Slow Homecoming (25 page)
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here was something outrageous about moving back to the beloved foreign city with the child, who by then was about five and had grown accustomed to the community on the edge of the woods; but he didn't hesitate long, for he thought of it as a natural and even necessary thing to do, requiring no justification. He felt that the image spoke for itself: a man taking his own and setting out for an unfamiliar world. Shouldn't everyone attempt something of the kind, time and time again? Wasn't it in foreign surroundings that a man's own becomes his determining certainty? Besides, in going back to the foreign city, he was simply resuming the regular life he had led there; throughout the interim, he had thought of the distant metropolis as his permanent base; it was the only
place that gave him a feeling of “reality” for any length of time, a lasting tie between outside and inside, body and soul. And with regard to his charge, he had always thought: What's good for me is good for her (and conversely).
here was something outrageous about moving back to the beloved foreign city with the child, who by then was about five and had grown accustomed to the community on the edge of the woods; but he didn't hesitate long, for he thought of it as a natural and even necessary thing to do, requiring no justification. He felt that the image spoke for itself: a man taking his own and setting out for an unfamiliar world. Shouldn't everyone attempt something of the kind, time and time again? Wasn't it in foreign surroundings that a man's own becomes his determining certainty? Besides, in going back to the foreign city, he was simply resuming the regular life he had led there; throughout the interim, he had thought of the distant metropolis as his permanent base; it was the only
place that gave him a feeling of “reality” for any length of time, a lasting tie between outside and inside, body and soul. And with regard to his charge, he had always thought: What's good for me is good for her (and conversely).
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In the foreign country the child's history, without unusual events, became a small paradigm of the history of nations, and of ethnology as well; and the child herself, by none of her own doing, became the heroine of frightening, sublime, ridiculous, and on the whole plausible everyday-eternal happenings.
On a day in December they arrive in the somber apartment, brightened by the sparkling water that flows with brooklike gurgling in the gutter outside and by the vault, to be found nowhere else in the world, of the sky over the fringe of the metropolis, where the staggered traffic lights reach out into the void, incessantly jumping about, changing color, and pointing the way to a vast and sweetly mysterious western gate. Here the large grass plots around the house in the community, which brought nature constantly close, are replaced by narrow French windows with small diamond-shaped panes in which the outside world seems reduced to the right scale; and the silence of the house is replaced by the sound of steps from the floor above and the voices next door, which at first are welcome as something long missed. The many alien objects in the apartment borrow an air of familiarity from the few things that have been brought alongâbooks and stuffed animals suffice; and the long hallway leading to the surprisingly light back rooms has the feel of a suite in a luxurious hotel.
The child had her first schoolday toward the end of winter, in midterm. This had not been planned by the
adult, it just happened. The school also happened to be a special sort of schoolâintended, that is, only for children of the one “people” deserving of the name, the people of which, long before its dispersion to the four corners of the earth, it was said that, even “without prophets,” “without sacrifices,” “without idols”âand even “without names”âit would still be a “people”; and whom, in the words of a later biblical scholar, those wishing to know “the tradition,” the “oldest and strictest law in the world” would be obliged to consult. It was the only actual “people” to which the adult had ever wished to belong.
adult, it just happened. The school also happened to be a special sort of schoolâintended, that is, only for children of the one “people” deserving of the name, the people of which, long before its dispersion to the four corners of the earth, it was said that, even “without prophets,” “without sacrifices,” “without idols”âand even “without names”âit would still be a “people”; and whom, in the words of a later biblical scholar, those wishing to know “the tradition,” the “oldest and strictest law in the world” would be obliged to consult. It was the only actual “people” to which the adult had ever wished to belong.
The schoolhouse resembled many city schoolhouses, with a small, dusty yard, cramped, ill-lit rooms, and the rumbling of the Métro from deep underground. But taking the child there gave the adult a feeling that he was going the right way, a vast and for once absolutely suprapersonal feeling of happiness. His child, by birth and language a descendant of murderers who seemed condemned to flounder for all time, without aim or joy, metaphysically dead, would learn the binding tradition, would go her way with others of her kind, and embody that steadfast, living earnestness which he, who had been rendered incapable of tradition, knew to be necessary but forfeited day after day to frivolous caprice. Though the child was accepted only provisionally, for one semester, he hoped she would stay there for good, and not only in the school. Just as she was, despite the color of her hair and eyes, wasn't that where she belonged? And these strange holiday celebrations, in which the child, a participant and not just an onlooker, joined the others in the symbolic gestures recapitulating their exemplary historyâdidn't such celebrations at last supply a possible meaning for words such as “community” or “initiation”? And when for the first time the adult saw the child
transcribing the strange characters of the ancient language, did he not experience the emotion of one witnessing a historical moment (and was he not at the same time determined, as the ancient historian had been, to understand it clearly)?
transcribing the strange characters of the ancient language, did he not experience the emotion of one witnessing a historical moment (and was he not at the same time determined, as the ancient historian had been, to understand it clearly)?
The child, too, was pleased with the school. She didn't even have to get used to it; with the first step across the threshold, into the little vestibule with its layers of different-colored coats hanging on hooks, she had forgotten her fear, as one sometimes forgets a burden; thanks no doubt to the teacher, by whom, through the usual hubbub, she immediately and for all time felt seen. This old woman had mastered the art of the inquiring yet overwhelmingly hospitable glance (though her interlocutor never felt observed, let alone scrutinized). And it was sheâherself of German descent, she spoke Germanâwho taught the child the language of the land in no time. It was not yet summer when the adult heard the child engaged in fluent conversation with the other children. How charming she seemed when speaking the foreign language. Whenever she slipped into it, she seemed to summon it up by magic, but never employed the unfortunate turns of phrase used by many of the native children. Listening to her, the adult remembered how he himself as a child had longed to speak a foreign language and had occasionally mistaken a certain play gibberish for one. He saw that his child was now in many respects ahead of him, and for that he was thankful to be living in the present time.
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It seemed to the adult that the child's life and his own were on the right track. And so he argued with the fervor of one imbued with the exemplary fitness of things as they were, when toward the end of the school year the
principal suggested that the child should be transferred to a different school. In the autumn, she said, religious instruction would begin, and since the child came of a basically different tradition, no good could come of it. Citing his experience of many years, the adult tried to persuade the woman that no tradition, however longed for, could ever be meaningful to someone like him, and that he could certainly transmit no trace of any tradition to his child. But the elderly teacher felt that she knew better and merely shook her head. When he left the schoolhouse with the child on the last day, it seemed to him that she had been banished without guilt, and that he, the scion of an unpeople, an unworthy man-of no-people, bore the responsibility.
principal suggested that the child should be transferred to a different school. In the autumn, she said, religious instruction would begin, and since the child came of a basically different tradition, no good could come of it. Citing his experience of many years, the adult tried to persuade the woman that no tradition, however longed for, could ever be meaningful to someone like him, and that he could certainly transmit no trace of any tradition to his child. But the elderly teacher felt that she knew better and merely shook her head. When he left the schoolhouse with the child on the last day, it seemed to him that she had been banished without guilt, and that he, the scion of an unpeople, an unworthy man-of no-people, bore the responsibility.
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The same year witnessed a conflict between man and child that was something more than momentary irritation. In the past year he had adjusted his work schedule entirely to the child's needs. During the day he could be little more than her “provider,” and in time he came to think of this as of a splendid role and worthy occupation (serving could be a pleasure), even when it proved almost impossible to switch to another activity in the evenings and he often sat silent for hours, not knowing how to go on, occasionally seized with a desperate longing for such accessories of leisure as wine, books, or a television set, until suddenly, amid a sea of silence, an idea might come to him and transform the table he was sitting at into a writing desk. But what emerged was transitional bits and pieces, and little by little he conceived a desire for the larger project he had long carried in the back of his mind. Often it appeared to him as a dream of paradise, the realization of which must, as hitherto, determine his continued existence.
The time seemed to have comeâthanks to school, which in that country took up almost the entire day. But the eight hours of freedom were not enough; it turned out that his work “trip,” if it were to carry exemplary force and proceed in the right sequence, would have to go on day and night (at least in his head), and though the child never particularly disturbed him, she interrupted his work dreamâor rather prevented it from getting started. The present arrangement might leave room for a coherent act of minor insights, but he was not often able to convert experience into invention as one must if a piece of work is to be glorious and a joy to others. And this absence of form, he thought, was the fault of the child, who by her mere presence paralyzed his imagination and diverted him from his destiny.
There was no violence between them, only unfriendliness; on the adult's part, against his own better judgment, verging on hostility. He was unable to give himself wholly either to his work or to the childâand the child, sensing the change in him, withdrew of her own accord, not in an offended sulk, but proudly; on one occasion, she said of her father: “I don't want to see him anymore. Let him go away.” This laconic threat of a rupture terrified the adult and brought him to his senses. He postponed his long journey and became suspicious of all those who, tied down as he was, had ever forsaken the day-today rut in the name of a lifelong dream. Their deeds lost their radiance; he no longer believed in them. (But still he dreamed.)
So once again he confined himself to his short-term projects, and in the end he was content with that. Often he did no work at all, wandered about the town in all directions, from its highest point to its lowest, and relished the freedom his idleness gave him. At this point
his spells of activity coincided with the child's absences (in the country with her so-called green class, or during the summer months with her mother). But then there was something uneasy and secretive about the fanaticism with which he then stuck to his project day after day, as though what was a vision to the adolescent had become almost a vice to the adult. Even in his moments of Magical Light, the emptiness of the house, where he no longer had anyone to turn to, was overpowering, seeping into him like a poison gas, until he became rigid and empty. And then he knew: it was the child who gave the passing hours their consecration. Without the child he was godforsaken, and his activity seemed excessive and meaningless (though once he wondered how it would be to lead a life of debauchery, with the most beautiful woman in the world and
without
the child). Coming home one night, he stood leaning on something in the shrill silence of the apartment, and it occurred to him that some people must drop dead from sheer loneliness.
his spells of activity coincided with the child's absences (in the country with her so-called green class, or during the summer months with her mother). But then there was something uneasy and secretive about the fanaticism with which he then stuck to his project day after day, as though what was a vision to the adolescent had become almost a vice to the adult. Even in his moments of Magical Light, the emptiness of the house, where he no longer had anyone to turn to, was overpowering, seeping into him like a poison gas, until he became rigid and empty. And then he knew: it was the child who gave the passing hours their consecration. Without the child he was godforsaken, and his activity seemed excessive and meaningless (though once he wondered how it would be to lead a life of debauchery, with the most beautiful woman in the world and
without
the child). Coming home one night, he stood leaning on something in the shrill silence of the apartment, and it occurred to him that some people must drop dead from sheer loneliness.
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It was at that time that visitors began to tell the man that his way of living and working was taking him further and further from reality and the present. He had once taken such criticism seriously. But after all these years with the child, he felt that no one had a right to lecture him about reality. For gradually, through the insoluble conflict between his work and the child, he had come to the conclusion that with the child, free at last from the fraudulent life of “modern times,” he was continuing a kind of transtemporal Middle Ages, which had perhaps never existed, but which to him, when beside the child's sickbed, when bidding her goodbye, or just hearing her bouncy step, struck him as the only true, authentic epoch, behind and beyond the so-called modern era.
The reality-mongers, he felt, were the tyrants of a new day; with their mania for measuring degrees of reality, they reminded him of those sea captains in the oldest accounts of naval battles who, once the fighting had stopped, would total up the corpses and the wreckage washed ashore and diagnose victory or defeat accordingly. They, too, belonged to human eternityâbut to the bad kind. If you listened awhile to these born public prosecutors, it soon turned out that as a rule, with their counting of worldsâthe “third” and “fourth” were the most “relevant”âthey were trying to drown out a secret guilt if not an unforgivable betrayal: they had all done much evil. These reality-mongers-in all likelihood the world had always swarmed with themâstruck the adult as Empty Existences, remote from Creation; though long dead, they kept going with a vigor equaled only by their wickedness, left nothing behind them that anyone could hold on to, and were good for nothing but war. It was useless to argue with them, because they were convinced that each new daily catastrophe confirmed their beliefs. If you had an idea, you couldn't talk to them or even approach them: they were strangers, and I don't talk to strangers âaway with you, I am the voice, not you! And so he decided to close his door irrevocably to these depressing intruders, and in general not to “let their ships bar the seas to him” any longer. Only then did he hear the murmur of a reality again. O murmur, stay with us!
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In the summer of the same year, the child returned with her parents to the country they came from, where she was to spend her vacation with her mother. For her return to her father in the autumn a new school had been found, not far from the old one. Their motor trip took them from the Metropolitan Basin, hardly above
sea level, through a vast terraced landscape rising in an even rhythm to the low mountain range, from the crest of which one can look down across the frontier river to the next large country; those hilltops were much disputed in a world war and their almost total bareness (which stems from another cause) provides a more enduring reminder than the many commemorative monuments of the battles fought there.
sea level, through a vast terraced landscape rising in an even rhythm to the low mountain range, from the crest of which one can look down across the frontier river to the next large country; those hilltops were much disputed in a world war and their almost total bareness (which stems from another cause) provides a more enduring reminder than the many commemorative monuments of the battles fought there.
On the afternoon of the trip, the three of them are sitting on one of these hillside slopes, looking westward. From here the structure of the terraced country, extending as far as the Metropolitan Basin, almost a day's journey distant, can be seen clearly. A quarrel starts up between man and woman. It is pretty much like some of their earlier quarrels and probablyâas the man can't help thinkingâmakes use of the exact same terms as are passing back and forth between disunited mates all over the world at this same moment. (If thus far he had made no move toward a final separation, it was only because a third party in a position of authority, however experienced and knowledgeable, could not possibly have been expected to know anything about the woman, the child, and himself, and any court decision would have struck him as presumptuous and outrageous.) But it's serious all the same; and despite his better judgment, despite the peace that pervades the country all about, he lets himself be engulfed in a mechanical exchange of insults.
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