Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (5 page)

his
face and head, what I do know is that he was right to see that shadow, that veil over the face of the young London painter, whereas my unaware eyes hung greedily on the shadow, the veil over the face and head in their migration toward death,
he
said, it alarms me, don't photograph that young man, what you're photographing is not the life he transmits, it's the hand that holds the pencil, chalk on the open notebook, of a young man about to kill himself, tomorrow, in a few hours, it will be motionless, motionless perspiration on my brow and under the dark hair over my left ear, and I saw neither the shadow nor the veil that kept me from seeing, for the light from that dark sun stuck to my eyes, concentrating especially on the painter's right hand as it held the pencil to the book, and you could see the knot of veins and the squareness of nails, who could have detected the death sentence already on this body while it still breathed and perspired, it was like that when they asked me to photograph a group of soldiers just after a mission that had nearly proved fatal to them, I felt like suppressing what I say beneath those laden, hallucinating brows on a respite in some rest-house, it was as though the Grand Inquisitor had laid hands on them and caged them in their tormented postures, like the Allegories in the paintings by Max Beckmann, heads and bodies sadistically vice-gripped, or was I able to read in their hollow eyes what they were able to rescue of themselves from the trenches, cut off, decapitated, but still imprinted there on the painter's canvas, still breathing and alive, like marching ghosts, Max Beckmann, labelled a degenerate and forced to flee Germany, banished, had carved out the future of all monsters, the demons of a darker Europe, and there they were before me, sprung from the triptych panels by a painter who himself was demolished, painter or poet of the trench-mud, I said to myself, and is this how we face tomorrow, and our destiny still further on, and I wanted to suppress all I saw, for I was young then, barely out of my university internships, then the very same day, in that dark, ruined Europe, I heard a choir of voices so intensely jubilant that I just froze there in that dark, cold street, through the hearth of a destroyed building, I saw a stairway leading to a music academy, the teacher was a woman smiling at her students and letting herself be carried away irresistibly, guiding them with the baton and a wilful hand, it was a dress rehearsal of
Così Fan Tutte
by some very young people with voices that seemed already round and perfect with notes of joy spilling forth on this glacial night under the rhythm of the hand that led them, the banality of the libretto was forgotten — the drama of a few infidelities — all gave way to the songs of love and desire, almost the whistling of a bird or a mocking child warning you of the perils of love, and those who had burned the earth in hatred and vengeance were no more, each and every one joyfully buoyant on stage, a delicate tumult giving voice to the sensuality of living, Mozart, acute psychologist that he was, knew in the end that loving was needed and nothing more, of course it seemed that every struggle was pointless combat, senseless stubbornness, voices, notes of a purity we somehow could no longer hear in our bellicose moods, notes of joy in this glacial night, pitiless, and listening, I said to myself, yes, I will face my fate, but how, if only the ecstasy had endured, if only I were still preceded everywhere by these voices, their enchantment, and tomorrow that young man I photographed, his artist's pencil between his fingers, sad-eyed and melancholy, would have had enough time to end it all, to leave his studio and his house empty, and I would have been helpless to stop his over-thought act, helpless to say to him, come hear this music with me, Così Fan Tutte, a flight of birds or laughing angels brushing against your deep shadows, cold halo around your body, come, follow me, and why was I not able to communicate this knowledge of joy, because it was not just for me, do you hear Harriet, Désirée, Miss Désirée, in complete dismay, one must still sing, Désirée says, when you're shining white folks' shoes, or washing floors in airports and public places, you've got to sing, my mother said, for God is there to listen, and I don't know if my mother was right to say this: you must sing through gritted teeth or right out loud, but do not be silent, pray, she said, spare me the prayers, Caroline said grumpily, how can a black servant, a simple girl, call her back to God's existence or resign herself to it, you're getting on my nerves, I told you to move my armchair over by the window, how can one love a God of cold, Frédéric said, just as I thought, oh, I hope, Mélanie said to Olivier as she breathed the perfumed night air drunk on music filtering into the gardens and up to the open doors of Chuan's house, she was saying, I hope that this does-n't come back to haunt us, she had the impression Olivier had forgotten his pride in oratory, so as to listen to her with full attention and anticipation he had placed his hand on her shoulder and said, I think of you often, you're a very active woman, full of fight, and you look out for the general good; your children will inherit those values too, but be careful who you rub the wrong way, their exasperation will quickly turn to intolerance and irresponsible fury, every day in the papers I read the sad story of anonymous madmen killing activists, one had founded two hospitals in Somalia and taken care of tuberculosis patients for thirty years, be careful my dear Mélanie, how serious you are, Chuan said, come dance with me, or shall I just dance by myself, Olivier, stop weighing Mélanie down with your advice, Chuan's red dress rippled by them like a wave, and suddenly the lightness of her spirit settled on Mélanie and Olivier, welded to one another by the weight of their thoughts: could it be that Samuel has really found the path of commitment in dance, Mélanie said, our children will go farther than us, accomplish more, and Mélanie replayed in her head the new choreography by Arnie Graal, it seemed that the work in which Samuel represented his dance school was defiance in the teeth of cruelty, or might she be thinking onerously of the over-wrought cruelty in the pillaging of scenes, tableaux, even dance steps which appeared fragmented and deformed? All at once, musical norms were fractured, and the show — one they had watched all night without sitting, no passivity, no seats, the inflexible choreographer said — could be compared to electronic music which was abstract in colour, was no more, and how was it that a show demonstrating such discomfort elicited so much popularity, Mélanie wondered, for the textures and sounds of synthesizers and sequencers, entangled with noise of a funereal fanfare, fires, the exceeding slowness of the dancers emerging like ghosts from walls of concrete and burnt asphalt, some on skateboards, toy vehicles, attacked in their positions by fire, could only increase in us this sense of uneasiness, indeed, the insistence and unbearable slowness of these bodies tumbling into the void became oppressive, one saw in it what one did not wish to, the huge collapse of a city, multitudes of inhabitants fleeing into one another, like bees smoked out of their hive, was Arnie Graal's choreography too suggestive or was the spectator too suggestible, moulded in the clay of dance-steps and images he saw, there was no mistaking the terror still inspired by the event from which Arnie and his dancers had created an almost too-vivid creation, you have to think, Arnie said, of the collapse of a cathedral in ancient times, when artisans and sculptors hung onto tower stones, tools in hand, constantly working, tied to the translucent wall stones, stained-glass, huge windows, luminescent at this hour, and from where all these bodies, stooped or spread-eagled under the violent shock, will plunge into the void with a slowness accentuated by stupefaction at the very moment the glass cathedral moves in seismic oscillations to its foundations, Mélanie thought she disliked Samuel's being one of these dancers, like a dominant, isolated figure falling headlong past a wall, his left leg advanced in a lamentable gesture of revolt against heaven, all of it was only too true, she thought in horror, it seemed to her that her son, in that fall to rocky ground, forgetting the stage onto which he would re-emerge . . . Arnie had so masked the sight-lines . . . would have his spine, kidneys, and neck broken, when for too long his head, brain, and all his faculties would be intact, and his memory-centre would have too much time, if only two seconds, to think, suffer the ultimate, in a reflection too agile, many a mother had lost sons thus, Arnie would have told them, she ought to have added that in the inconsolable part of herself, she was close to those mothers and sons, but Arnie also distracted the audience, those bodies falling with a slowness exacerbated by the artifice of choreography, he said, are bodies that have been thrown from helicopters into the sea in their hundreds by dictator-generals, a lone man capable of carrying out all these villainies with his military apparatus, prisoners and political detainees were tossed, still breathing, above the Pacific waters, and these operations are still going on, what do you feel when you are the pilot or mechanic of these helicopters after dropping their human bundles from Santiago or wherever it is into the sea, those who disappeared into the waters will say nothing, of course, but what do you feel when one by one the bodies fall with measured, concentrated slowness, Chuan said to Mélanie, remember, tomorrow at dawn will be the flotilla of sailboats for the summer festival, and at night the quays will shimmer with swaths of light, we'll see an exquisite chain of white boats beneath banners and decorations, I'll be up at dawn to see who wins the race,
Walzer
or
Compass Rose
, we won't sleep all night, of course, my wife's active and indefatigable, while my strength wanes, thought Olivier, admiring Chuan's intense appetite for life, the night is just beginning and she's already talking about tomorrow, did he need to approve of her agreeing with Jermaine on this hard-driving music that filled the house, and those boat-races on the ocean were so boring and especially loud, it's so hard to write my articles at this time of year, Olivier told Mélanie, but at least I see more of my son, he's like his mother, he also loves partying too much, Samuel's teacher in New York, Mélanie resumed, is our black Balanchine, that's what my son says, it's too bad everything he creates is so close to real life, you do have to respect tradition a bit after all, Olivier said absently, while admitting he understood nothing about the choreographer's controversial ballets when Mélanie referred to him, perhaps he's too innovative, don't people criticize him for pushing the limits of the human body too far? Is it necessary to break these young dancers at the beginning of their repertory, Mélanie wondered, then she remembered seeing her mother in a dream the night before, another of those same dreams, obsessing, rampant, perhaps indicative of Esther's difficulties and shoals; Mère invited Mélanie to dinner in her gazebo, but instead of the place settings, there were two black leather gloves on the tablecloth, difficulties and shoals, Mélanie thought when she saw her mother's serene and smiling face among the evening's guests, Esther always sprang to life when the conversation touched on something she knew about, no, Mélanie's mother was not showing any sign of weakness, except perhaps a trembling in the right hand, scarcely noticeable, a dream to be forgotten, except that the scene of the two gloves seemed bothersome, and Mélanie couldn't manage to rid herself of it, why not wait for dawn and the arrival of the boats on calm waters with Chuan and her impetuous feelings of joy and astonishment, all these forebodings would vanish out there on the beach, face and hair wet with the salt and the air, how could Augustino be left out, transparent water at dawn, salt air, and Caroline said, thank you Désirée, I am finally comfortable here by the window with Charly's cat on my knee, I don't want him taken away, he's fine here, affectionate creature, all that remains of Charly, I loved Charles too, when the man with thinning hair, whose name escapes me, still came to visit, till everyone began withdrawing from me, Charles who once confided in me, only you, dear Caroline, can understand me, he said, because you are a woman and a great spirit, shouldn't I admit that this wonderful essence of a spirit, so great that nothing can quench it, was really more Charles' than mine, noble ascetic of poetry that he was, perhaps he shared with me only that affinity, out of love, and he agreed to lose his soul, if soul is the flesh that submits to the tortures of love, if soul is also the body that marches on blindly, what do we really know, Charles had a loyal companion in Frédéric, with whom he shared a life in Greece whose splendours he praised in his books, already a distant happiness, so many books read and written, then suddenly those wrinkles at the corners of Frédéric's mouth, his first dizzy-spells, his fall when he was smoking by the pool, Charles thought the grey curtain of mortality was descending on them without warning, he thought he could heal his reluctance to write in his room with the blinds drawn and through which the emanations of jasmine and acacia drifted when opened, but denser than these perfumes was the melancholy that gripped his chest, he thought he was doing the right thing by withdrawing, this time so inaccessible, the misanthropy of the unapproachable poet was well known, every year he left like this, all alone and no one knew where, Eduardo stood his green Sunday-outing bicycle against the fence, where it rusted while he did the gardening, Charles preferred to spend Sundays in the deserted town, going by in my car, I pretended not to recognize him by the water-line, though that neck and delicate man's head were familiar to me, so often I had photographed them throughout Charles' literary life, from its precocious beginnings, I knew him as well as if he had been my own child, a dreamed-of adolescent that time altered so very little, now so impenetrable that no one could find him out, he would go to India, an ashram in Delhi, and that would be his fortress where he could meditate and write. He didn't know who was expecting him there, or under what sun he would melt, cook and be struck down, was he forgetting, in these spiritual shadows he looked for, the meditation, the going-beyond individual consciousness, a denatured mental concentration, how could Charles forget that, beyond this iron thought supported by pride, there was another Charles, still a man of the flesh, subject to temptation as others were. We never know when a star will detach itself from the vault of heaven and make us stumble. I can say that I knew nothing of it, yet love came easy to me, before I met the man whose ashes now sleep at the bottom of the sea, at that island no one owns, and as for Charly, you forbid me to speak her name, as if you had any right, Harriett, she phoned yesterday and asked to speak to me, didn't she? Now why can't I see her, you're all plotting against me here, my hat and gloves, I want to go out, you say I might fall down in those rainy avenues with my dog, and I assure you it was the dog that got me lost that time, don't give me any of that medication, tell Charly to come and see me, I can show you the club she goes to in the evenings, it's just a matter of cheques and stolen goods, I can forgive for all of it, you, Harriett, and Miss Désirée, you misjudge her, you're a zealous woman, always off to church to pray when you're not here with me, and if I decided to stop eating, what would you do, let me die in peace, just one star detached from the heavens and we see nothing anymore. I don't think it's good for you to pray so much, good thing you sing as well when you're in church, and sometimes I go to sleep to the sound of your voice, but I sense too much begging and prayer in it, as though you were reciting psalms to get on my nerves, yes, like you were doing it on purpose, Désirée, remember how I used to love hearing the guitar-players in the streets of New Orleans, the rhythm of those blues, and the Mardi Gras celebrations, remember, Harriett, my mother used to say those rhythms set me loose, even then I felt myself possessed and ready to break all the rules, though they left everything up to you, Harriett, because my family didn't have much time to bring me up, so you had to decide everything for me, like Mai, that girl of Mélanie's, you couldn't do anything with me, and if that one is already a runaway, just wait and see how much trouble Mélanie's going to have with her, and in Delhi Charles meet his devastating angel without knowing it, theatre was Cyril's stock-in-trade, true or false, was Cyril a comedian, lazy and unemployed? The young man certainly had the key to reciting poetry with a deep voice, you like the contemplative poets, like me, Charles said, Milton, Blake, how could one be still in the company of a thirty-year-old, whether it was all lies or truth, and Cyril said to Charles, wasn't it like a fiancé's promise, and Cyril lacked Charles' modesty, Charles who was truly great, I will read your poems all over the world, here in Delhi, later in Holland where they've invited you, not without vanity, Charles basked in this new discovery, Cyril was excessively lanky, more than Charles liked, without being wiry, his back and shoulders being muscular, it would be very pleasant to travel, continue those professional travels that Charles had told everyone he was giving up, but meeting Cyril changed everything, he would go off tomorrow to those conference halls he so hated with this alter-ego whose clear and azure eyes — so clear one saw nothing in them — one got lost in, this double lyrically reciting Charles' poetry, contemplative, reflective, like the work of Milton to whom the critics compared him, Charles, who was reserved, relating to his admirers only through letters, forgot his reserve, welcomed Cyril's spontaneity, he who dressed Charles up in his cajolery, and how can those accustomed to discreet, almost cold, personal relations with others, not be suspicious of the comfortable bodies of such liars? Perhaps at this moment Charles missed the peace and safety of his correspondence over many years with Vladislav, the young Russian poet, one of Charles' passionate admirers, whose face, praise heaven, he had never seen nor whose tempestuous heat he had never felt close to him. Cyril, though, was simply there, never asking Charles if he was wanted or not, but just there waiting to be taken in his arms, at once abandoned and compromising. Heavier still, and bulkier than Charles had ever imagined, when he constantly felt the attraction of eyes so very clear, yes, perhaps at those moments he missed the unpremeditated quality of Frédéric, the subtle words of Vladislav, the Russian that Charles knew how to translate, disconcerted, Charles wondered what was happening in his life, he felt spoiled and put upon, like his friend Caroline, where had he stumbled and into what trap? He recalled Jacques, so loved by Tanjou, and who knows, these things are as unavoidable as they are brief . . . he would write to Frédéric, he would phone him tonight from Delhi to say he would soon be back, as a prisoner of his senses, he did feel so unworthy of the Hindu tradition he'd wanted to take up, didn't he? Frédéric understood him, didn't he? He had just written to him, warning him to be financially prudent and not to let into their house everyone who came to the door begging for help, Frédéric's weak point was never being able to say no to the most off-the-wall and marginal of people. Whenever Charles was not keeping an eye on him, wasn't he always giving his money to whoever needed it without discriminating, it seemed an incorrigible fault in him, Charles thought, exhorting his friend to exercise caution and not go out to jazz sessions alone at night, but in his declining health to make sure Edouardo was always nearby. In his letters to Frédéric, Charles omitted Cyril's name, surely it was better that way, and he repeated to himself that the burn he got in India would certainly heal soon. My dear Caroline, he wrote me, I can tell you everything, including what to do, but I no longer know what to think. The problems I have with Charly, her disobedience, her nastiness, keep me from replying to Charles. I think it all began with Jacques, who left us before he was fifty, the just man, the Kafka specialist, impartial, exuberant, how is it he was struck down like the patriarch Job on his bed of manure, with wounds, low blows, and so on — for that is how he is seen in paintings — Jacques the first of wave in an infinite ocean? The first breaker before so many others? He left us so suddenly, we all felt ourselves going with him. We were dismayed, not even able to shed a tear, unlike Tanjou, to whom Jacques had promised to return every evening as the sun set on the sea, his faithful visits would be heralded in pink to recall his exuberance in life, Tanjou waited, but Jacques never came, perhaps only in a slight breeze, a summer's breath on Tanjou's mouth. We need to be concerned when we completely change our habits or build up fantasies, Charles, however, wasn't, he walked down Delhi's lush green streets, hand-in-hand with Cyril, seeming to put on his partner's daring, his limitless temerity, and his former virtue of temperance was gone, now his life was stormy and exalting, and he wrote these new verses as soon as he was alone in his room by the river, no dryness, no dessicated regimentation for him, there were no rules for poets, all at once his lines took on a volcanic quality, ardent and sensual as his writing had rarely been, that he had always avoided these excesses and was now metamorphosed did not bother him. I wrote to tell Charles that his friend, the poet Jean, had let me down badly, never answering the letter I sent via Charly. Never. I was certainly not expecting that moment of ashes on the ocean near The Island-Nobody-Owns. I thought we all had so much time ahead of us, Charles did too. Jacques was the one who caused all this upset, Harriett, Miss Désirée, he shook us all up, the last time I took his picture, it was summer, but he was cold, and I could sense him shivering under his corduroy pants and turquoise sweater—almost the colour of his eyes—do you know what Tanjou says to me, Caroline, that I don't love him enough, is it true, Caroline, I'm not detached nor impassive, or that's just the way I am, this feigned frigidity, and then he wept, poor child, and went on repeating, you don't love me enough, God what can you do, tomorrow, later on, tell him Jacques loved him well enough, very much, don't forget, and through my lens I captured Jacques like a painter, his ironic expression, his pale cheeks, saying good-bye to him all the while. Was it the loss of the little cloth handbag or the loss of her memory that affected Caroline more on The-Island-Nobody-Owns, it seemed catastrophic to Mère that she had dreamed about two opaque travel bags someone had put on that rough, back lawn in autumn and winter that had gone unmown for a long time, what was the figure two that ran through some of her presentiments, or that confrontation between Mélanie and her mother, two women telescoped into one when death made its entry, the faded condition of the garden had moved Mère to call Julio, Jenny and Marie-Sylvie to help her with the clearing of it, and where were they all, why weren't they answering, an icy wind whipped at the windows, they've all run off and left me alone, even my daughter, she'd thought, when just at that moment, Augustino appeared with one of his birds sitting on his shoulder, not Samuel's parrot, but an odd sort of parakeet that moved bizarrely on his shoulder, you called me, Grandmother, he asked, look at our garden, where did all this rain come from, the frost on the palm-leaves, and why are the trees so bent over, as soon as Mère and Augustino were outside, the parakeet flew off its familiar perch but seemed to have forgotten how to