My Two Worlds (13 page)

When I raised my eyes from my observation point on the terrace of the Café do Lago, I could make out some palm trees scattered as if at random throughout the park. Of course, only a few were actually visible, in fact no more than two or three, which stood like solitary columns above the rest of the trees and all the other plant life. During my walk I’d found it amusing to observe, time and again, the isolated plume of some one of them, as if it were definitively safe from any upheaval that might take place on the surface. I kept imagining that if the palm trees could think, and if they had time to harbor human feelings, disdain for the ground—for them no doubt a kind of despised and incomprehensible netherworld—would occupy a good part of their meditations. At the least sign of upheaval or turmoil, or indeed at any hint of activity on the lower level, that disdain would return each time, like a leitmotif, a recurrence that, far from making these trees suspicious of their own judgment and preconceptions, would confirm the appropriateness of their forebodings as well as the permanent chaos, as they saw it, from which they considered themselves safe. That reiterated thought, on the one hand, kept them safe, according to their logic, and was, at the same time, a concrete expression of their detachment from the ground.

I became completely self-absorbed during my walk and I told myself I’d never seen flora more autistic than these extremely tall palm trees, a probable consequence of their radical excess. Their autism appeared to be a sign of or condition for happiness, and as I walked about here and there and interrupted my thoughts to look up and see them standing erect like that in the most unexpected places, I felt a powerful sensation of envy, which led me to register with them a mental protest at the injustice of the situation: they were happy, indifferent to all that was earthly; and I was tormented by my doubts and worries, or quite simply condemned to scarcely take my eyes off the ground.

Very seldom had plants, generally speaking, induced feelings of empathy in me beyond the friendship you might feel as you pour water into your favorite flowerpot, for instance, or when you believe a modest spritz or some care will help the sick geranium. I also remembered the science experiments in school, especially the white beans or similar legumes set out to germinate, for which I used a glass jar and blotting paper soaked in water. And I told myself, on reliving it all, that my first and practically only experience of compenetration with the plant world dated back to that time; I don’t know what to call it, a state of intense identification, perhaps even mystical, though always wrapped in domestic ceremonies, like watering or the eventual pruning, and tangible effects, like the changing of leaves, growth or attenuation. Every result of that past activity had obviously disappeared, for who knows where the old sprout can possibly be today, or the leaves fallen years ago. My habitual indifference to plants thus gave my unforeseen solidarity with the palm trees an added coloration, much more specific because of its contrast to my former disregard, even if from all standpoints unverifiable since I clearly couldn’t take credit for the existence of those tall, healthy palm trees, of a perfect verticality and an enviable self-sufficiency, that was obvious.

In one open space in the park, astonishingly devoid of meaning because it was devoted to nothing in particular, I’d been able to come up to an exceedingly tall palm tree, maybe the oldest or the healthiest, at the base of which you got dizzy if you looked up. The ground in that spot was completely flat, and the tree thus formed a perfect perpendicular if you disregarded the logical thickening of the trunk before its base and above the ground. Consequently, the right angle could be verified from a distance, and up close would be refuted. I looked at the smooth trunk, to all appearances endless, so that it was hard to determine at which point it resolved into the fronds of the crown, which were long and curved downward under their own weight; I saw the trunk rising to that incredible point, at a distance that was possibly infinite, and told myself that perhaps the fronds were an expression of fear, or in any event, an improvised solution, because the tree itself considered it impossible to go on rising. Impossible, and perhaps useless too. At that moment, as I looked upward, overcome by vertigo, an idea occurred to me that even I found crazy: I longed to imagine the point from which a camera could take a picture of me at the foot of that tree, including the full height of the trunk beside me. I told myself it was probably impractical, since the camera would have to penetrate the deep underwood of the park and obstacles would intervene. If that image were possible, I’d look like a diminutive being, at the mercy of the whims of an outsized giant. What type of document would that photo be, I wondered. A moment from the naturalistic expedition, where the contrast with the majestic is a frequent and even obligatory step. I realized, then, that taking that photo was impossible, and still more, was inconceivable as fantasy, because the image created in my head proved more appropriate to tropical savannas, where the void finds its corroborating argument in those isolated, prominent trees. And in all likelihood that palm tree was nothing but that argument, the clearing’s justification, that is, an allusion to much of the territory.

I remembered all this sitting at my table on the terrace, as the reflection on the lake gradually darkened. I’ve been a casual viewer of Kentridge’s animated films. When I tried to get hold of one to watch at my leisure, it proved impossible. One time I managed to find a CD-ROM, but it was very costly and seems a joke, because it’s got barely forty to fifty seconds of just a few of his works. Since it was old, I needed programs that no longer exist in order to run it. When I inserted it my computer began making a brand-new noise, like a vacuum cleaner’s, that could be heard all over the house. Only after a great deal of effort and patience was I finally able to watch the disc, with the results just mentioned. In any case, though I consider myself a casual viewer of his work, and thus a mere admirer, I suspect that the recourse of the visible gaze was the initial find that allowed him to develop a good part of the rest.

I won’t expand on this too much. My hypothesis is that at a subsequent moment the artist noticed that in the dramatic world of his drawings, it was unnecessary for objects or individuals to have eyes in order to establish mutual relationships. In the end, a dotted line was able to render a relationship that was as invisible as any gaze. This has made the drawings seem subject to a process of nonstop self-generation, it’s something otherwise self-evident. It seems a world created out of geometry, and thus tending towards, or involuntarily, metaphysical. But this has also permitted a second success, I don’t hesitate to call it that, which consists in highlighting the materiality of his work, its deep and genuine artifice, because the dotted lines exhibit the intensive construction that shapes them and organizes the work. It’s a work that displays itself being made, insofar as the procedure—the lines and dots in constant transformation—is comprised in the sequential development of the stories.

From the time of this discovery, my Felix of Kentridge (put that way, he sounds like a distinguished personage or a nobleman) became my secret coat of arms. I ought to say “my Felixes,” since they take on differing personalities and are moved by different motives. For quite some time, in my private language—the unspoken one that belongs to me exclusively and which I use only in my constant mental soliloquies—to feel “like a Kentridge character” is my way of expressing the worst possible condition, the level beneath which one is unable to live. Feeling that way means being squashed to the ground, pulverized as a result of an act of vengeance of matter itself and undone until the next, but still uncertain, resurrection. Because apart from that, these characters have no moral alibi, they’re not able to escape the blame or responsibility the story itself places on them. They can only express a diffuse suffering, between physical and spiritual, although they don’t always do so, just like me. True suffering is a borrowed emotion, assigned by a viewer on seeing Felix’s face in close-up as he looks at himself in the mirror, for instance, or when thanks to the transformation of his features, he reaches old age in two or sometimes three seconds.

I felt, then, that I was in the presence a painting of a lacustrine type. The swan was looking at me head on and fixedly, and the father and daughter, though only a few meters from where I sat, pretended to be absorbed in contemplating the environs. When the waiter emerged from the building to come to me, the swan began to retreat, surely thanks to the reverse capability of the pedal mechanism. It seemed to me to be backing off in order to make a final charge, but it promptly whirled around, pointing its tail to the right, and set off at once in forward gear. The
pedalinho
left the shore behind; I could now see the heads of the crew peeking out above the animal’s hindquarters, probably unaware of what they were leaving behind them. A second later, the waiter arrived and I ordered a coffee.

An intense and perhaps prolonged digression then began, from which not even the waiter himself could distract me. The swan kept getting farther away, as if this were the end of a movie, or as if the father and daughter, reconciled with the animal world after their adventure, were truly able, thanks to the kindhearted bird that transported them, to find their way back home. I then imagined the lake and that same park as the anteroom of that great continent—the green denseness composed of plant life and mystery, devourer of people and dignities, pulverizer of souls, the implacable nature I referred to earlier, etc. I remained on the side of civilization, enacting one of the most habitual of writerly scenes: seated at a table in a café, the predictable backpack with literary tools inside it, a cup of coffee or some other vague drink in front of me; that is, circumstances favorable to writing.

I could take out my notebook and start controlling the navigation of my mind in a kind of semi-public session that everyone around me—though no one was present at that moment—would expect and tolerate. But I didn’t do so, even after the waiter had already brought my order and nothing would interrupt me for a good while. The two writer friends have done it. I could even argue that those two books were written entirely in public places, almost exclusively cafés or similar locales. Why should I be any different? What circumstance keeps me from being just like them? I didn’t find the answer then, and I don’t have it now, either.

So on the one hand, I could find no reason not to set about writing in the Café do Lago, but on the other it’s true that for some time I’d begun to feel a sort of cautiousness, or insecurity, when, in one of the few cafés near my home, after certain preliminaries, I’d decide to open my notebook. I’d feel threatened, or closely observed. In fact, it was all in my head; no one was looking at me, or at anyone else. Until one afternoon, it must have been some two or three years ago, after focusing my mind on the idea of the threat—since I couldn’t get over it—while the rest of the café’s customers were reading or writing, carefree, a good number of them doubtless writers as well, I noticed that in fact something else was going on, though similar: what I felt was shame. I was ashamed to write, a feeling that still persists. And like everything shameful, if one wants to put it into practice, one has no choice but to do it surreptitiously.

For a long time I considered writing a private task, which at a certain moment nonetheless had to become public, because otherwise it would be very hard for it to stay alive, in particular and in general. My shame, though, proceeded not only from being engaged in something private in full view of everyone, but also from doing something unproductive, a thing both moderately useless and fairly banal. I felt they’d speak of me as a frivolous character, capable of squandering his time without concern, at a remove from any significant interest. And since I knew myself all too well, I had no choice but to concur with them in advance. Accordingly, my main worry wasn’t so much overcoming my faults and my foolish illusions about writing, but rather, not being discovered. That’s what life boiled down to, I could say as I approached a crucial birthday: not being discovered. All of us have one vital lie, without which routine daily existence would collapse; mine consisted of simulacra, in this case of literature.

Having so often adopted a writerly attitude, I ended up being a writer; and now, in a kind of retrospective panic, I was terrified they’d find me out, just when I was able to consider almost all the dangers cleared away. And the fear was reflected in what was most basic, as always: hands at work, the anonymous circumstance. I no longer feared not being published, or living far from success or recognition, I already knew that those things would always be within my grasp, for better or for worse; I feared that somebody, passing alongside my open notebook, would unmask me as a simple, deliberate impostor. The leaves of my notebook wouldn’t contain sentences, or even words, just drawings that sought to simulate handwriting, or repeating pages with the word “what,” especially “how,” or with disconnected syllables that never made sense.

So I kept the backpack shut, didn’t take out the book, much less the notebook, and once again passed up a session of writing that might have been fruitful, that sometimes happens, in order to sink into a diffuse meditation on the matters I’m in the process of recounting. The table was bare, except for the solitary cup of coffee. In the distance No. 15 looked like a white dot in slow flight, safe from any danger. I thought of my birthday, its charged imminence. Had my hour of reckoning arrived? With different emphases and arguments, one friend as well as the other counsel against it and refuse to take it on, though in their own way they engage in it, that I remembered pretty well. Accordingly, I thought it best to obey them.