My Year in No Man's Bay (47 page)
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t is not just since the beginning of this year that I have spent early evenings now and then standing in that bar, also a tobacco shop, that for me marks the last spit, the
finis terrae
of the bay. But only this year has it become an observation or looking post.
t is not just since the beginning of this year that I have spent early evenings now and then standing in that bar, also a tobacco shop, that for me marks the last spit, the
finis terrae
of the bay. But only this year has it become an observation or looking post.
It happens that two major roads from Paris to Versailles meet there, one of them formerly the route that kings took over the chain of hills, both ascents very steep, with an actual top of the pass up there; the other, Route Nationale 10, leading from the great bend in the Seine down by Sevres through a gently climbing, meandering, gradually broadening valley, in my eyes at the place in question already an upland valley. The acute-angled junction of the two roads is officially called a
pointe,
a tongue, or, as I call it, a spit. Certain buses of line 171 have POINTE posted as their destination or last stop, whereas the majority continue on to the palace of Versailles, and likewise almost all the nearby facilities are called after it: Ambulance de la Pointe, Garage ⦠, Pharmacie ⦠, Video ⦠, Tailleur de la Pointe (specializing in alterations).
pointe,
a tongue, or, as I call it, a spit. Certain buses of line 171 have POINTE posted as their destination or last stop, whereas the majority continue on to the palace of Versailles, and likewise almost all the nearby facilities are called after it: Ambulance de la Pointe, Garage ⦠, Pharmacie ⦠, Video ⦠, Tailleur de la Pointe (specializing in alterations).
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n the Bar de la Pointe I avoid standing directly by the door, located I right in the spandrel of the junction, and instead seek out the back of the bar and gaze through the gaps between the others at the counter. And time and again at nightfall I had the image of a particular darkness, in which cars on the former royal road that cuts across the bay were all in a hurry to get onto the decidedly brighter and also wider highway, the Nationale, and as they accelerated it sounded like the squeaking of rabbits in flight, while the vehicles approaching in the opposite direction seemed to hesitate before the already palpable wooded darkness of the bay.
n the Bar de la Pointe I avoid standing directly by the door, located I right in the spandrel of the junction, and instead seek out the back of the bar and gaze through the gaps between the others at the counter. And time and again at nightfall I had the image of a particular darkness, in which cars on the former royal road that cuts across the bay were all in a hurry to get onto the decidedly brighter and also wider highway, the Nationale, and as they accelerated it sounded like the squeaking of rabbits in flight, while the vehicles approaching in the opposite direction seemed to hesitate before the already palpable wooded darkness of the bay.
Yet not only in my imagination is this Pointe something like a place of transition, or actually more a line of demarcation. On old postcards it is also represented as such. On one photograph of the two-road spit of land, taken facing toward the east and the metropolis, what is today the Route Nationale still has trolley tracks and plane trees along the sidewalks, then as now the width of a boulevard, seeming even wider than in Paris, because so much less crowded. Only an old man is walking along, on crutches. The road from the pass, on the other hand, already part of the bay, initially more a path through the hollow, has trees only in the background on that turn-of-the-century postcard, the hillside forests, which at that time extended farther down, and for pedestrians on both sides, then as now, there are only slats, boards set on edge, balance beams. In those days the present junction or fork or bifurcation café, was, in accordance with the significance of the spot, an
auberge,
and why shouldn't the innkeeper of Porchefontaine, as his last undertaking, someday open a very special place with a view, here on the spit of land?
auberge,
and why shouldn't the innkeeper of Porchefontaine, as his last undertaking, someday open a very special place with a view, here on the spit of land?
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act as if the bay had fixed boundaries. In truth these seem to me to have become fluid during the current year, also because I have undertaken a kind of survey. One day a spot that I previously included as a matter of course falls out of the picture, on another it is reincorporated, and another that had previously gone unexamined reveals its bay character. There is a constant shrinking and stretching going on, and on some days outside the bay I have even circled around little enclaves, and likewise here in the bay, on the contrary, enclaves of other realms.
act as if the bay had fixed boundaries. In truth these seem to me to have become fluid during the current year, also because I have undertaken a kind of survey. One day a spot that I previously included as a matter of course falls out of the picture, on another it is reincorporated, and another that had previously gone unexamined reveals its bay character. There is a constant shrinking and stretching going on, and on some days outside the bay I have even circled around little enclaves, and likewise here in the bay, on the contrary, enclaves of other realms.
A factor contributing to such changeability is probably also the way
in which I approach my writing terrain. Sometimes, in order to get closer to the original image, I have moved away from it and then approached again in a wide arc. But precisely in this process, as a result of the different directions from which I returned to the bay, its boundaries became most fluid. And my inner image of the entire region also changed and jumped about, depending on the path I took to get home; and thus I came upon it every time as a new arrival who knew nothing about it, which was fine with me for this year, without a trace of memories from my decade-long life here.
in which I approach my writing terrain. Sometimes, in order to get closer to the original image, I have moved away from it and then approached again in a wide arc. But precisely in this process, as a result of the different directions from which I returned to the bay, its boundaries became most fluid. And my inner image of the entire region also changed and jumped about, depending on the path I took to get home; and thus I came upon it every time as a new arrival who knew nothing about it, which was fine with me for this year, without a trace of memories from my decade-long life here.
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newcomer of this sort turned off the Route Nationale one rainy evening and promptly found himself in an abandoned coal-mining area in the Ardennes. In the former miners' settlement, a village along a street that stretched farther than the eye could see, the doors of the few still-occupied houses were slightly ajar, and the road surface, rumbling from the heavy traffic, had blackish streaks and potholes, from whose huge splashes one escaped only into the half-open entryways of the houses.
newcomer of this sort turned off the Route Nationale one rainy evening and promptly found himself in an abandoned coal-mining area in the Ardennes. In the former miners' settlement, a village along a street that stretched farther than the eye could see, the doors of the few still-occupied houses were slightly ajar, and the road surface, rumbling from the heavy traffic, had blackish streaks and potholes, from whose huge splashes one escaped only into the half-open entryways of the houses.
This bleak, unchanging highway finally dipped under a railroad overpass, on one side of it a bunkerlike concrete protuberance, the Rive Gauche (Left Bank) station, on the other side a building whose ridgepole hardly came up to the height of the railroad embankment, the hotel (with bar) of the same name. A woman, shadowy, ran inside, and in passing he heard her asking for a glass of water. And after her, out of the darkness under the bridge, came a pack of derelicts and inquired, one more addled than the next, after the Route Nationale or the Rive Droite station.
The underpass, then, barely lit, nothing but pale, crumbling concrete, some of it already fallen, had a ceiling from which thousands of whitish nails were sticking, at second glance stalactites, deposits from the concrete, of which drops landed on the asphalt sidewalk, falling onto the corresponding stalagmites or ground dripstones, tiny mounds, glassy cones, which could now be felt under one's soles. The rattling of trains overhead interjected itself into the sound of trucks crashing along, and a squad of soldiers came by at a run, loaded with heavy sacks, almost knocking over the stranger to these parts.
On that evening this was the main access to the no-man's-bay, in the form of the gate to a dripstone grotto, with the rounded mounds below as its threshold; since then, whether returning home or setting out, I have always made a point of rocking and swaying on them for a moment on the balls of my feet.
After that a leap to another image: in front of a dense, lumpy-wet stretch of woodland along the road, a longish, dim rectangle of light, the across-the-way bar, with the name Little Robinson, a sort of log cabin, surrounded by junk and even more by tree trunks, more higgledy-piggledy than stacked, but protected by tarpaulins as if for several rough winters; the silhouettes inside less those of patronsâthe proprietor seemed to be alone there with a shaggy dogâthan again those of branches lined up and halves of tree trunks. And smoke puffed from this shack. And then in the woods something rare after all, bunches of rowan-berries, in a resolute red.
And again the image changes. The entry had not yet been negotiated. I had not yet turned into the bay, as I usually did at that spot. The previous highway, after an unexpected curve, cut across a hollow and became a nocturnal landing strip in a penal colony, far from the rest of civilization. Although the inmates could move about relatively freely, they slunk past the wire fences and piles of muck with heads either bowed or turned away from each other, and though the paths were wider here, each walked at a distance from the next person, including the couples, and not only the old ones, to whom it was probably not a new experience, for either the man or the woman, to be a few steps ahead of the other.
There were hardly stores in this sector; the one supermarket, like those otherwise found on military bases, was without displays, without price lists, with sight screens, and if a product was visible, then only its back, and the cashier's head itself seemed to be that of a prisoner, just as the children sat there trapped in the bare neon-glare-lit room, in a deeper cut in the hollow, in a camp school, born already unfree, the offspring of the banished.
In addition, out of the hill-darkness all around, the watchtower loomed, many-storied, huge, each story shining down fixedly on the isolated stragglers and slinkers along the track, and only from the top of the tower a restless flashing and smoldering.
On that evening I did not feel I had arrived in my bay until I reached the square in front of the local railroad station, full of motion from the shadows of the plane trees, whereas usually the bay began way back at the Route Nationale and sometimes even before that, for instance at the Armenian church, or at the shop of the alterations tailor beyond the junction, the Pointe.
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n another such day during this year I returned after tracing a similar arc through the woods, from which far more wood roads and hiking paths led to the settlement than streets from anywhere else. And just as I daily had the experience of noticing something I had previously overlooked, it was the same now: by a clearing deep in the forest, among the oaks and edible chestnuts, a palm tree; and one of its fronds, on an almost windless day, was rustling and rattling like a sail on the high sea. An owl hooted, and yet it was the middle of the day, with the bells of the Catholic church chiming noon, and the almost simultaneous siren from the roof of the only official building in the bayâa mere annex to the main building somewhere elseâan indication that it was the first Wednesday of the month.
n another such day during this year I returned after tracing a similar arc through the woods, from which far more wood roads and hiking paths led to the settlement than streets from anywhere else. And just as I daily had the experience of noticing something I had previously overlooked, it was the same now: by a clearing deep in the forest, among the oaks and edible chestnuts, a palm tree; and one of its fronds, on an almost windless day, was rustling and rattling like a sail on the high sea. An owl hooted, and yet it was the middle of the day, with the bells of the Catholic church chiming noon, and the almost simultaneous siren from the roof of the only official building in the bayâa mere annex to the main building somewhere elseâan indication that it was the first Wednesday of the month.
In the distant outlet of the forest, directly facing it, stood a house, framed and overarched by the last trees; the path led directly to the door and the few steps up to it. It was a sight so different from that at the other end of the forest, up on the plateau with the office complexes, which as a rule displayed only their often windowless side elevations to the roads there, and then only parts of these, the edge of a wall, a ventilation pipe, a propane gas tank, their colors also clashing with any of those in the forest. Perhaps, I thought, this impression of the office buildings' defiantly confronting the trees stemmed not only from the fact that the buildings towered above the latter, but also that one had to go uphill to reach them in the end, whereas the wood roads more or less gently descended toward the houses in the bay and merged with the side streets or even pointed toward a particular door, as though that were its destination.
Yes, the houses down below, the great majority of them, were proportioned to the forests around them, and not only when glimpsed momentarily through the trees. I have never seen woodlands and human
dwellings achieve such a vital and beautiful communion anywhere else. That comes, I saw, specifically from the bay character of the settlement, extending deep and with every glance deeper into the otherwise intact primeval forestâan illusion renewed almost daily and perfectly fine with meâand even more from the wildness, no, the aboriginal quality of almost every individual shape amid the hodgepodge of houses, comparable to the trees in the forest primarily by virtue of a similarity in the spaces between them. And to me, the new arrival, even when I had long since passed the outer edge, and instead of on the wood road was walking down the side streets here, which I hoped would go on forever, the robustness and simultaneous delicacy of the arboreal structures and the residential structures seemed similar.
dwellings achieve such a vital and beautiful communion anywhere else. That comes, I saw, specifically from the bay character of the settlement, extending deep and with every glance deeper into the otherwise intact primeval forestâan illusion renewed almost daily and perfectly fine with meâand even more from the wildness, no, the aboriginal quality of almost every individual shape amid the hodgepodge of houses, comparable to the trees in the forest primarily by virtue of a similarity in the spaces between them. And to me, the new arrival, even when I had long since passed the outer edge, and instead of on the wood road was walking down the side streets here, which I hoped would go on forever, the robustness and simultaneous delicacy of the arboreal structures and the residential structures seemed similar.
On that day the boundaries of the bay thus extended to include the last houses up on the opposite slope, and the intrusive sounds, almost the only ones in this great expanse, were the shouts of children playing, dogs barking, hammering, while behind me, from the woods, the owl could still be heard.
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nd on yet another day, as I was walking home toward midnight, by full moon, on the wood road, no owl was hooting anymore. Instead a fox was standing in front of the house at the forest outlet, and stood there, and stood there, a fox profile as never before. And when it ran then, showing up in a flash several gardens away, it appeared to me as a ghostly flitting through all the fences and walls and house foundations, whereupon it just stood still again, its entire silhouette horizontal, from the bushy tail to the perfectly pointed nose, its head over its shoulder for a long, long stare at me, at no one but me, and from there it dashed on again, fleeing or directly toward me? A shudder ran through me. Where was that? Was that even here in the bay at all? And in the current year?
nd on yet another day, as I was walking home toward midnight, by full moon, on the wood road, no owl was hooting anymore. Instead a fox was standing in front of the house at the forest outlet, and stood there, and stood there, a fox profile as never before. And when it ran then, showing up in a flash several gardens away, it appeared to me as a ghostly flitting through all the fences and walls and house foundations, whereupon it just stood still again, its entire silhouette horizontal, from the bushy tail to the perfectly pointed nose, its head over its shoulder for a long, long stare at me, at no one but me, and from there it dashed on again, fleeing or directly toward me? A shudder ran through me. Where was that? Was that even here in the bay at all? And in the current year?
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s for this, the first thing I recall is the bats, again in a clearing in the forest, at dusk up in the hills of the Seine, and that was in January, right at the beginning of my sitting down, during a hike over the hills to Meudon, and a warm wind was wafting. The bats did not
show their faces again until late summer, and then only for one evening, flying by rapidly in a zigzag through my yard, above which a few swallows were still swooping.
s for this, the first thing I recall is the bats, again in a clearing in the forest, at dusk up in the hills of the Seine, and that was in January, right at the beginning of my sitting down, during a hike over the hills to Meudon, and a warm wind was wafting. The bats did not
show their faces again until late summer, and then only for one evening, flying by rapidly in a zigzag through my yard, above which a few swallows were still swooping.
It was likewise still January that time I stepped barefoot into the grass outside my garden-level study to sharpen my pencils and then spent a good hour walking back and forth between the pear tree and the cherry tree, the ground was so warm under my soles. But it was probably only my imagination that at the same time crickets were chirping from the forest preserve, the result of the great winter silence there sometimes. (More later about the sounds of the crickets here and their connection with the silence.)
No hallucinationâalthough I took it for one at firstâwas seeing a little snake creeping along the sidewalk at the foot of the Bordeaux bank on the bay's main street, on a winter night that was damp and cold after all, no, not an earthworm or a novelty store item, and it really moved, though in very slow serpentines, and when I crouched down beside it, it raised its head weakly in the lamplight, flicking its tongue with its last strength, or not at all. The lone late passerby to whom I pointed out the snake was not surprised for a moment to see the animal at this time of year, and altogether the people of the area seemed to find hardly anything astonishing. And as several boys approached from the floodlit athletic field, I pushed the dying snake over the bank into the thick-layered fallen leaves of the forest.
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