Death Sentences (13 page)

"That's right."

"They're not here anymore."

"Not there? Have they moved?"

"Probably. It was last night. They packed up and cleared out of here late at night."

"Where to?"

"I don't know anything about that. They said something about going out west but ... they didn't tell me where."

Breton bit his lip.

In that case, Who May had come by to drop off the manuscript the night before he left.

"Did they leave anything, a message of any kind?"

"Well, they seemed in quite a hurry. I don't think that they had the time to leave messages."

It sounded like he was covering up something.

He gave the impression that some sort of serious trouble had suddenly fallen on the father and son.

"Is that right ... ?"

Breton's voice dropped off.

He asked the landlord please to contact him if he heard where they'd gone, and hung up the phone.

He looked at Duchamp again.

"Not there, is he?"

Duchamp, who had been listening to the exchange, raised an eyebrow.

"That's right." Breton nodded. "He's vanished. Gone somewhere-"

Duchamp shrugged his shoulders.

"It's a shame. A bloody shame. I really wanted to see him-"

Still, even as he spoke, an expression of relief flitted across his face, as if he'd been relieved of some burden.

"By the way," he added. "I think we talked about it before, but what do you intend to do with it? Are you thinking of putting this-'Mirror'-into print?"

Breton gazed at Duchamp.

Then he slowly shook his head side to side.

"There's no way. I know that. At least it is not a task for a surrealist to publish this. Or, even if it were, not now ... not yet..."

"You think that it's too soon, don't you?"

"It may be too soon, or it may be its day will never come. In any event, I think it's clear that `now' is not the time. If something like this fell into the hands of the American mili tary, Who May would surely be carted off to some secret base for the fabrication of new weapons. Don't you think?"

"It's possible."

Duchamp grimaced.

"If they made use of his ability, they could make propaganda more effective than bombs. First, they would have to give him instruction in Japanese and German. But they'd do it. The Americans do that sort of thing."

"But-"

Pointing at the manuscript of "Another World" on the desk, Breton continued.

"I don't intend to change my position about this. Maybe another work-if we could meet with him again and see what he comes up with next, maybe. But until then, I'd like to keep all of this under wraps. I still can't figure out what this is."

Duchamp cast another glance at "Another World" on the desk.

`Another work, you say. To be honest, `Another World' and `Mirror' are enough for me. More than enough. It's already plenty. My impression hasn't changed either. I'm still wondering what in the world it means to make a mirror out of words."

A timid smile flitted across Duchamp's face, as if he were embarrassed by what he said.

And that was all.

That was all-for they had no more news of Who May after that.

Not a word from him, or even rumors of him, reached Breton.

The following year, in 1944, the final edition of the surrealist journal VVV was published in New York. There was a reason for this being the last one. Above all, Breton and Duchamp feared that if they continued to publish this journal, they'd eventually succumb to the temptation to publish Who May's work.

In the summer and fall, Breton traveled to Canada with Elisa, the woman of his dreams whom he had met in New York.

It was the happiest time of his life. He soon heard of the liberation of Paris. And in high spirits, he began writing Arcane z7.

The Great War dragged on. Yet it seemed that the world had suddenly turned toward the future and become brighter.

In 1945, Breton put his energies into traveling widely. He traveled throughout the American Southwest, to Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico, and wrote "Ode to Charles Fourier" during these travels.

That was also the year in which he officially divorced Jacqueline Lamba and made Elisa his new wife.

The day when he could return to France was approaching.

Late that year and early into the next, Breton traveled to Haiti and Martinique where he became a keen observer of voodoo rituals. Learning that these magical practices were adaptations of hypnotic techniques brought over from Europe, he felt as if a huge burden had been lifted off his chest.

For he had not forgotten. Both "Another World" and "Mirror" were tucked away in the bottom of his trunk.

Yet he had not once reread them. Maybe it was because he didn't have the time for it. Or maybe it was because he hadn't bothered to make time for it.

Either way, he could not possibly forget.

His deep attraction to magical practices in Central America was due to Who May's influence. The psychic wound that Who May had inflicted on Breton had, oddly enough, pushed him deeper into the world of malignant spells and incantations.

Yet through them, Breton learned to his surprise that these puzzling magical practices were very much rooted in the body. And this knowledge provided some measure of solace.

he would think. Maybe within the verbal operations of Who May's work, which appeared so magical, there lay hidden a very trivial trick to be exposed. (That's it ... surely.)

If you took the time to calm yourself and looked closely at it, you would certainly see right through it without any difficulty.

However-there was no time for that, not yet. He didn't have that kind of time.

In Haiti, Breton's speech served as the trigger for the outbreak of a large-scale general strike.

In Paris, the publication of Benjamin Peret's "Le Deshonneur des poetes" was met by great indignation on the part of the Resistance fighters who had continued to fight during the Occupation of France.

March 1946-

Breton returned to Paris.

The terrible reality of the postwar world immediately fell on him, swallowing him up.

The birth of the atomic bomb cast a cloud over humanity, darkening the end of the Great War.

His former comrades had split into various factions, some hostile and some friendly. Thus began the days that severely taxed Breton-battling for an applied surrealism while fighting against social realism, and then critically confronting a situation in which the return to power of those authorities who had collaborated with the Vichy government was simply ignored.

That year passed in the blink of an eye.

He had actually begun to forget.

Until last night, at eight ... when he had heard that voice on the phone-

3

It was unbelievable all the same.

How was it that Who May, who had completely vanished from sight, had had an opportunity to meet Arshile Gorky?

Even more important, why had Who May simply dropped out of Breton's sight?

And why did he now want again to meet with Breton in Paris?

"I met Mr. Gorky in Connecticut. David Hare let me stay with him, and that was when he introduced me to Gorky."

"Hare?"

"Yes, I came back on my own. To New York ... but there was no one there. This was after you had returned to Paris. I did get your message, though. You said to contact David Hare-and so I decided to give him a call. He was very kind. He talked to me a lot once he had read my works. He gave me some sound advice as well. I stayed in his house in Connecticut some two weeks, and then I got on a ship bound for France."

Breton had left the message when leaving New York. At the time, beyond returning to Paris, he had no idea how or where he would find a place to live.

He trusted Hare, however. And so he gave him Who May's name.

Breton himself had long forgotten about the message. But it had all worked out after all.

Breton now understood.

He knew that David Hare had been quite close to Arshile Gorky.

The year after the Bretons had met Gorky, Hare offered him a room in his home, and during his stay there Gorky completed his Plough and the Song series.

Hare was truly generous about such things.

Breton was surprised that Who May had received Gorky's address, but if Hare had been involved, it wasn't unthinkable.

"-that's all very well." Breton asked: "But why did you disappear without telling us? `Mirror' did reach me. Marcel Duchamp and I were both quite taken by surprise with it. We really wanted to ask you some questions about it. So we called the apartment number you had given me, but you and your father had already cleared out of there."

"I must apologize, Monsieur Breton. Jean-Pierre Carron, my father, ran into trouble in his business dealings with an Italian gentleman-and we had to leave New York. And so we fled all the way to California."

"Fled?"

"We were in fear of our lives. My father was penniless at the time. We couldn't tell anyone where we were living. I have to apologize ..."

"I see."

"I parted with my father in San Francisco. He told me that if we stayed together, I could be implicated in his troubles-so I returned alone to New York."

(His father?)

Breton tried to imagine the stepfather whom he had never seen.

A man whose business with an Italian man in America involved the sort of troubles that put a price on his head, so it seemed.

"That much I understand, but-"

Glancing up at the clock, Breton continued.

"You said that you're in the Chaillot area, right? So no time like the present. Come to my house. You're more than welcome here. I would like to hear more about this `request' of yours. And there are many other things I would like to talk about."

"That's not possible. I can't go anywhere right now."

"Why is that?"

"Right now, Monsieur Breton-right now I am writing. I can write. I have found a completely new key. It's such a-oh, how I can write with it!"

"A key?"

"Monsieur Breton-oh, please listen to me. I am fearful. Truly fearful. If I do write it, what will happen to me ... I really don't know. It scares me. I am terrified."

"What are you afraid of?" Breton replied somewhat exasperated. "What key have you found? What are you trying to write-this time?"

"Time. I can write time. I have found the way to do it, the words for it."

"Time!? But that's ... no, wait."

Breton cleared his throat to suppress the impulse to yell at him.

"Time is, after all, a fairly common topic, isn't it? You're surely aware of all the poetry and prose about time. And thenthere's film, too. The art of film is, by its nature, an art of time. Putting that into words, for instance-"

Breton was doing his best to rebut him.

If one considered Who May's first work in the same manner, it was a "picture." Regardless of whether it was a simple picture or not, it was unmistakably a "scene" written with words.

If, when Who May said he was "writing time," he meant transforming cinema into words-then he could use the same arguments that he had used with Hare and Duchamp.

Immediately, however, from the other end of the line came a firm rejection.

"That's not it at all! Mr. Breton, that's not what it is!"

"It's not?"

"What I am trying to write is not an illusion of time. It is time itself. I can put into words time itself, duplicating the time that binds this world. I can produce another time with words. I have discovered the key for it!"

Feeling overawed, Breton was at a loss for words.

"Monsieur Breton, you have to believe me! It's the truth! I truly can write it."

"I understand," Breton replied in a strangled tone. "So, that's what you're now trying to write?"

"That's right, Mr. Breton!" Who May replied excitedly. "I have already written down the title. And then, well, I became afraid ... I didn't know what to do. I felt that I had to call

"And what exactly is the title?"

"I called it `The Gold of Time.' That's right. There is an amazing resemblance between the qualities of gold and of time. I have come to understand why alchemists were so taken with gold. They didn't want gold. They were trying to control time, life itself!"

"What do you intend to do? That is-from here on ..."

"Yes. Listening to you, I have reached a decision. I will write it this very night. I will try writing it. I already know how. It is already finished in my head. I only have to write it."

"Tonight, you say? So you will have it finished by tomorrow?"

"That's right. I will write it! And I would like you to look at it first! Tomorrow! Please!"

"All right. That's what we'll do."

Breton thought a bit and made a suggestion.

"Tomorrow at three-you know Place Blanche in Montmartre. A cafe of the same name has opened there. I'll wait for you there. How's that?"

Who May repeated the place and time and promised to be there.

"I will definitely be there. Without fail-oh, Mr. Breton, truly ... I will! Time! I will create time with words! It's unbelievable, I never would have thought it possible, until today. But I can do it. I can! It can be written ..."