Adventures In Immediate Irreality (10 page)

Chapter Eleven

Autumn came with its red sun and misty mornings. The houses
in the outlying districts, crowded together in the light, smelled of fresh
whitewash. There were lackluster days as well, with clouds like dirty laundry, days
when the rain pattered endlessly in the deserted park, heavy curtains of water
swaying through the paths as if in a vast empty hall, streaming in torrents down my
hair and arms as I waded through the wet grass.

The doors in the dirty back streets would shut the moment the rain began, and the
houses gasped for air. Their rooms were humbly furnished with wardrobes fresh from
the lathe, bouquets of artificial flowers on the dressers, plaster statuettes
painted bronze, and snapshots of relatives in America. I knew nothing of the lives
wasted in those musty, low-ceilinged rooms, lives sublime in their indifference and
resignation. I would have liked to live in those houses, get to the root of their
most intimate secrets, let my dreams, my bitter dreams dissolve in their atmosphere
like a powerful acid.

What I would have given to enter one or another of those rooms as if I belonged
there, flinging myself exhausted onto the old sofa’s floral-patterned cretonne
pillows, to breathe another air, acquire another inner intimacy, become a completely
different person, to contemplate the street I had been walking along stretched out
on the sofa, from the inside, from behind the curtains (I tried to conjure up as
accurate a picture as I could of the way the street looked from the sofa through the
open door), suddenly discovering memories in myself, memories I had not lived,
strange memories of a life I perpetually carried with me and belonging to the
intimacy of bronze statues and an old light bulb with its blue and purple
butterflies. How good I would have felt in the confines of that cheap, indifferent
decor which knew nothing of me . . .

The dirty street’s muddy paste still stretched out before me. Some houses spread like
fans, others resembled cubes of white sugar, and others small, their roofs pulled
down over their eyes, clenching their jaws like boxers. I met hay carts and, now and
then, extraordinary things, like a man in the rain carrying a chandelier with
crystal ornaments that sounded like a symphony of hand bells on his back while heavy
drops of rain dripped down the shiny facets. It made me wonder what constitutes the
gravity of the world.

The rain washed the flowers and withered plants in the gardens. Autumn had lit them
with copper, red, and blue fires, flames flaring up just before they died. The water
and mud in the marketplace was flowing wantonly down enormous stacks of vegetables,
the deep red blood of the soil suddenly appearing in the slash of the beets, docile
potatoes lying side by side with the split heads of swollen cabbages, and off in a
corner an exasperatingly beautiful pile of bloated and repulsive pumpkins, their
skins riddled with cracks from the sun they had imbibed all summer.

Clouds grouping together in the middle of the sky only to disperse left corridors
leading off into infinity or immense holes setting off the heart-rending void
forever hovering above the town. Then the rain would fall from afar, from this sky
with no end. I liked the new color of the wood when wet and the water trickling down
the rusty gates in front of the prim, well-kept gardens swept by a wind mixed with
torrents of water like a horse’s tail.

Sometimes I wished I were a dog so I could see this sodden world from an oblique
animal perspective—from below, closer to the ground—or fix my eyes on that
ground, at one with the purple color of its mud. This desire, which I had long since
harbored, broke loose one autumn day and somersaulted across the wasteland.

On that day my walk had taken me all the way to the
edge of town, to the field where the cattle market was held. The sun was setting
against a tattered backdrop of gold and purple. The field stretched out before me, a
vast muddy swamp, sopping wet, warm and soft, its manure exhaling an acrid urine
smell. What could fill my heart with joy if not this pure, sublime mass of
filth?

I hesitated at first, the last traces of good upbringing doing vehement battle
within me like so many dying gladiators, but all at once they coalesced into a dark
night and I lost all
knowledge
of myself. I stepped into the mud first with
one foot then with the other, my shoes sinking pleasantly into the viscous, elastic
slime. I was now one with it: I had sprouted from, gushed forth from that earth. Nor
were the trees anything but coagulated mud fashioned of the earth’s crust. Their
color made that abundantly clear. And not only the trees. The houses too, and the
people. The people above all. All mankind. And, rest assured, this was no
simple-minded legend of the “dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return” variety.
That is too vague, too abstract for the wasteland, inconsistent with its mud. People
and things came forth from the very dung and urine into which I had sunk my very
concrete shoes.

In vain did man wrap himself in white silky skin and dress in raiments of cloth. In
vain, in vain . . . Implacable, imperious, elemental mud lay inside him, warm,
slimy, putrid mud. The tedium and stupidity with which he filled his life made this
amply clear.

As for me, I was a special creation of the mud, a missionary it had sent into this
world. Such moments awoke its memory in me; I revisited my nights of torment and
dark fever when my essence, my mud, seethed with futile attempts to break through
the surface. As long as I kept my eyes shut, it would continue to churn its
incomprehensible sputterings into the dark.

The wasteland stretching all around me was my true flesh—stripped of clothing,
stripped of muscle, stripped
to the mud
. Its dank elasticity and crude odor
reached deep into my innards because deep down I wholly belonged to them. Only some
purely accidental external features—the few gestures I am capable of, for example,
or the fine, gossamer-like hair on my head or my moist, glassy eyes—separated me
from its primordial immobility. But they were little, precious and little, in the
face of the immense majesty of muck.

I walked in every direction, my feet sinking to the ankles. The rain was gentler now,
and the sun was setting in the distance behind a curtain of bloody, purulent clouds.
I suddenly bent down and plunged my hands into the manure. Why not? Why not? I felt
like howling.

The slime was lukewarm and soft: my hands had no difficulty moving through it. When I
made a fist, the muck oozed through my fingers in beautiful, black, shiny slices.
What had my hands been doing till then? Where had they been wasting their time? I
had been gallivanting about with them to my heart’s content. What had they been all
the while but prisoners, pitiful birds chained to my arms and shoulders by the
formidable bonds of skin and muscle, birds taught to fly in stupid patterns of what
passed for good taste. Now they had gradually grown wild again and were enjoying
their old freedom by rolling their heads in the dung, cooing like doves, beating
their wings, happy . . . happy . . .

I too was so happy I began waving them above my head, making them fly. Large
splotches of mud ran down my face and over my clothes. Was there any reason to wipe
them off? What for? It was only a beginning. My deed had had no serious
consequences: the sky had not fallen nor had the earth trembled. The next thing I
did was smear a handful of mud across my face. I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense
of joy. It was ages since I had felt so exhilarated. I placed my hands on my face,
then on my neck, then ran them through my hair.

All at once a fine yet heavier rain began to fall, but the sun continued to
illuminate the field like a gigantic lamp in the rear of a hall of gray marble. It
rained by the light of the sun; it rained a rain of gold; it rained a rain of the
scent of newly washed linen.

The field was empty. Here and there lay a pile of the dried corn stalks used for
cattle fodder. I picked one up and attempted to take it apart. I was shivering with
cold and had trouble getting my mud-caked fingers to do the peeling, but I found it
interesting. There was ever so much to see in a dried corn stalk.

In the distance I spied a rush-roofed hut. I ran to it and took shelter under the
eaves. The roof was so low my head nearly touched it. The ground along the wall was
perfectly dry. I lay down. I propped my head up on some old sacks, crossed my legs,
and gave myself up to a minute analysis of the stalk.

I was glad to be able to engage in such fascinating research. The grooves and canals
of the stalk filled me with enthusiasm. I undid it with my teeth and found a soft,
smooth down inside. It was the perfect lining for a corn stalk. If people had
arteries lined with soft down like that, the darkness inhabiting them would be less
harsh, easier to bear. As I inspected the stalk, I felt the silence in me smiling
calmly, as if someone were blowing soap bubbles there.

The rain sparkled in the sun, while in the distant mist the town smoked like a
dunghill. Scattered roofs and steeples glowed eerily in the damp twilight. I was so
happy I could not decide which petty project I should attend to first: go back to my
stalk, stretch, or gaze at the distant town.

Not far from my feet, where the mud began, a frog took a few sudden jumps. At first
it moved in my direction, then changed its mind immediately and set off for the
field. “Farewell, fair frog,” I called out to him. “Farewell. You’re breaking my
heart leaving me so soon . . . Farewell.” I improvised a long speech, and when I had
finished I threw the corn stalk at the frog, aiming as best I could. Then, having
stared for some time at the beams above my head, I closed my tired eyes and dozed
off. Sleep had soon penetrated the marrow of my bones.

I dreamed I was walking through a town steeped in dust but very sunny and full of
white houses, an oriental town perhaps. There was a woman at my side, a woman in
black, in mourning, her face veiled. Oddly enough, the woman had no head. The veils
were tastefully arranged where the head should have been, but she had only a gaping
hole there instead, an empty sphere running down to the nape of the neck. We were
both in a hurry, following a cart with red crosses on the sides: it was carrying the
corpse of the woman’s husband.

I realized there was a war going on, and in fact we soon came to a station where a
convoy of wounded soldiers had just arrived and nurses scurried about on the
platform with baskets of cherries and pretzels, distributing them to the invalids in
the train. Suddenly a man came out of a first class compartment; he was portly and
well dressed, had a decoration in his buttonhole, and was wearing a monocle and
white shoes. His bald spot was poorly hidden by several strands of silver hair. In
his arms he held a white Pekinese, its eyes like two agate marbles in oil.

For a while he paraded up and down the platform looking for something. Finally he
found it: a flower-girl. He chose several bouquets of red carnations from her basket
and paid her for them, taking the money out of an elegant wallet of soft leather
with a silver monogram. Then he went back to the train and I could see him putting
the Pekinese on the table by the window and feeding it the red carnations one by
one. The animal ingested them with obvious relish . . .

I was awakened by a violent shudder.

It was pouring by now. The drops were pattering down next to me, and I had to press
against the wall. The sky had gone black, and I could no longer see the town. I was
cold, yet my cheeks were burning. I felt the fever in them just beneath the crust of
coagulated mud. When I tried to stand, an electric shock ran through my legs. They
had fallen asleep, and I had to unfold each of them separately. My socks were cold
and wet.

I had thought I would take shelter in the hut, but the door was locked and the only
window was a boarded hole in the wall. The wind was blowing the rain in all
directions, and there was nowhere I could turn for refuge.

Meanwhile evening had come on, and before long the field was dark. At the far end,
where I had come from, a light went on in a tavern. I was there in the twinkling of
an eye, my intention being to go in, order something to drink, and bask in the
warmth of the crowd and the fumes of the alcohol. I rummaged through my pockets but
found not a single coin. There, at the entrance, the rain was mixing cheerfully with
the curtain of smoke and vapors coming from within, and I would have to leave. Go
home, for example. Yet how could I, covered in filth as I was? Besides, I had no
desire to relinquish the filth.

I was overcome by an inexpressible bitterness, the kind that comes when one sees one
can do absolutely nothing, achieve absolutely nothing. I started running through the
streets, through the darkness, leaping over some puddles and landing up to my knees
in others. At first I sensed despair welling up in me, and I felt like knocking my
head against the trees, but a moment later it recoiled into a calm, soothing
thought. I now knew what to do: Since nothing could go on as before, I had to make a
clean break. What was I leaving behind? An ugly world in a gentle rain.

Chapter Twelve

I went in by the back door and slipped through the rooms,
avoiding all mirrors. I was looking for a quick, effective means of discharging
everything at once, everything I saw and felt, as one unloads stones from a cart by
removing a board.

I rummaged through the drawers in search of a strong poison. I thought of nothing as
I looked; I had to get it over with as quickly as possible. It was as if it were an
everyday task I needed to do.

All I could find were things of no use to me: buttons, string, thread of various
colors, notebooks—all strongly redolent of naphthalene and none capable of causing
a man’s death. Buttons, thread, and string—that is what the world contained at
this most tragic of moments.

Then at the back of one drawer I came across a box of white pills. They could have
been dangerous though they could just as easily have been a benign palliative. They
might be lethal if I took enough of them, I thought.

I placed one of them on my tongue. It tasted slightly salty, though bland. I bit into
it. The powder absorbed my saliva and my mouth was suddenly dry.

The box had many pills, more than thirty. I went out to the tap in the courtyard and
slowly, patiently set to swallowing them. I filled my mouth with water for each pill
so it took a long time to finish the box. The last few refused to go down: my throat
must have swollen.

The courtyard was completely dark. I sat on the stairs and began to wait. My stomach
was soon seething terribly, but I was otherwise fine and the patter of the rain made
me feel inordinately serene. It seemed to understand my condition, and tried to help
by going deep inside me.

The courtyard became a kind of sitting room, and I felt light there, lighter and
lighter. Everything was making desperate attempts to keep from drowning in the
darkness. I suddenly noticed I was having a hard time breathing. I slipped my hand
under my shirt; it was wet when I pulled it out. The void around me was growing
vertiginously fast. I dragged myself into the house. By the time I reached my bed, I
was dripping with sweat.

It was a beautiful head, extraordinarily beautiful.
About three times the size of a human head and revolving slowly on a bronze axis
that pierced it from the crown to the neck. At first I could see only the back. What
could it be made of? It had the matte finish of old porcelain with ivory highlights.
The surface was covered with tiny blue drawings, a kind of filigree reproducing
itself geometrically like a linoleum pattern. From a distance it looked like a fine
script on silk paper. It was unimaginably beautiful.

The moment the head started moving, turning on its axis, my own head began to spin: I
knew that in a few seconds the other side of the skull would appear, its frightful,
dreadful face. It was in certain respects a perfectly well-formed face with all the
normal human contours: eyes in proper sockets, a prominent chin, and a triangle
excavated below each cheekbone such as one sees on thin men. The skin, however, was
phantasmagorical, made up of fine slices of meat, one next to the other, like the
brown folds on the undersides of mushrooms. There were so many folds and they were
so close together that when I looked at the head with my eyelids half closed it did
not appear at all abnormal, the tiny striae resembling the hatched shading used in
engravings.

Chestnut trees laden with leaves in summer sometimes give the impression, from afar,
of being enormous heads thrust upon their trunks, heads with deeply sunken cheeks
like mine. When the wind blows through the leaves, the face undulates like the waves
of a field of grain. This was how the head in question moved when its pedestal
wobbled.

All I had to do to confirm that the head was made of folds was to insert my finger
ever so slightly into its flesh. The finger met no resistance, as if entering a
soft, moist dough. As soon as I withdrew my finger, the folds returned to their
place, leaving no trace of it.

Once, as a child, I was present at the exhumation of a corpse, a woman who had died
young and had been buried in her wedding gown. The silk bodice was a mess of long
filthy rags, and what remained of the embroidery had mixed with the soil. Her face
was more or less intact, however, and one could make out nearly all her features
even if the head had turned purple and seemed modeled out of cardboard that had been
soaked in water.

Someone ran his hand over the face as the coffin was being raised out of the ground.
All present were in for a terrible surprise: what we had taken for a well-preserved
face was nothing but a layer of mold about two inches thick. The mold had replaced
its skin and flesh down to the bones, thus reproducing its form. There was nothing
but the bare skeleton underneath.

The head I saw was similar except it was covered with folds of flesh instead of mold,
and through them I reached the bone with my finger. Moreover, hideous as it was, the
head was a refuge against the air.

Why against the air? Though viscous and heavy and trying to coagulate into ugly black
stalactites, the air in the room was forever in motion. It was in that air that the
head first appeared, creating a void all around it like an ever growing halo. I was
so thankful and happy to see it that I felt like laughing. But how could I laugh in
bed, in the dark?

I soon loved the head with all my soul. It became the dearest, most precious thing I
owned. It came from the world of darkness, a world from which only the faintest echo
made its way to me like a continuous boiling in the brain. What other things were to
be found there? I would open my eyes and peer into the dark—to no avail: nothing
ever came but the ivory head.

I began to wonder with a certain apprehension whether the head would not become the
center of all my preoccupations, gradually replacing everything else until in the
end all that remained was it and the darkness. True, life would then take on a
clear-cut meaning, but for the time being the head was growing like a fruit about to
mature. It was my joy, my repose; it belonged to me and me alone. Had it belonged to
the world at large, it might have caused a terrible disaster: a single moment of
utter bliss could have brought the universe to a standstill.

It was constantly opposed, though ever more feebly, by the viscous air flow. Now and
again my father appeared alongside it, but as a vague, indistinct apparition, a mass
of white steam. I knew he was going to put his hand on my forehead; his hand was
cold. I would try to explain the battle between the head and the air to him, and I
could feel him unbuttoning my shirt and slipping the slender glass lizard of a
thermometer under my armpit. There followed a disconcerting activity around the
head, like a flag fluttering. Nothing could stop it: the flag kept waving.

I recalled the time—we were having tea upstairs—when Paul had let his arm hang
down along the chair and Edda, who was on the bed, tried in jest to reach over and
touch his hand with her slipper. Each time I thought about it, the gesture grew more
virulent. This time the slipper scratched frenetically at Paul’s hand, so much so
that a small wound appeared and then a hole in the flesh. The slipper strayed not an
instant from its irritating mechanical pursuit, hollowing out first the hand, then
the arm, and proceeding to the entire body . . .

The flag activity had begun in the same manner. Everything in the room was now in
danger. I might be devoured whole. Drenched in sweat, I let out a desperate
scream.

“Temperature?” came a voice from the shadows.

“A hundred and two,” my father responded and left, leaving me prey to the rising
storms.