It took me a long time to get over my anger and Denmark. I cut my hair and I took up studying German. I was saying goodbye to past loves, or so I thought, although I didn’t distance myself from Dorothée, who had married a descendant of an ancient family of Prussian origins, who had died prematurely in circumstances that I was not given to understand. I knew virtually nothing of the defunct except weird and unimportant things. At 20, he already had grey hair, and people were, apparently, very surprised that such hair should surround such a very handsome and almost childlike face. I also knew that he had been brought up very strictly. To learn how to sit up straight, he had often had to slip a stick through his arms and behind his back. That was all I knew about him, and perhaps also his first name, Hermann, which escaped me, no doubt because I didn’t like it. German was the language of Dorothée’s engagement and wedding, but it was also for her something like black mourning crepe.
When I write, Theodore, I hear a voice, a high-pitched woman’s voice; I hear singing, a song of pain that is not a song. It is pain so pure, so isolated from everything around it; it is pain without name that gives this song an almost unbearable beauty. Often, I stop writing because of it, anonymous. It’s a mother’s song, I’m sure; it’s the song of a mother and her child is on her, I’m sure, and her child is dead. She sings — does she realize? — she sings for nothing. I hear it when I write. But it is not for me. The pain that it causes me is not pure. The mother is not me. The child is not me. It’s a son, and the song is not for me. The pain it causes me is too much. I can’t write when I hear it. It’s a pain, and I won’t talk about it but instead I’ll hide it in the bush in the place of the lamb, in the place of Isaac.
For one of my father’s sisters, who was called Rose — she didn’t have another name like Dorothée, German was also the language of her engagement and death. She died of an illness that took her quickly, a short time after her marriage. I didn’t have the time to get to know her. But her ghost accompanied my childhood because I was, so my family said, the portrait of Rose.
Dorothée looks like Rembrandt’s angel. But Isaac’s eyes, ah! Isaac’s eyes are not closed. Abrame has not put his hand like a blindfold over Isaac’s eyes.
While I was learning German, the world was drawing to a close. The sky was on the ground and I saw, in a very slow and endlessly repeated movement, my fall in the sky. This vision never left me, so that when at dusk, when I made my way to the Goethe Institute, it felt as if I were walking in the clouds. This impression, which reminded me of the magical and devilishly bewitched world of my childhood, gave my appearance a prudent and entangled allure. I was living in a whiteout hell, which had been revealed to me in a dream. It was not yet summer, yet I was already in the middle of a catastrophic August. The day of disaster spread out around me. I was Pompeii on the morning of August 24, 1979, or Hiroshima August 6, 1945. I continued to walk, I didn’t stop despite the dreadful certainty that wrapped itself around me. I was, nevertheless, watching my step. From one moment to the next I was going to be turned to stone. During German lessons I asked how to say disaster, how to say it. Bärbel always smiled.
One night, a shelf in the library collapsed under the weight of the books, and I screamed in the middle of the crash, believing the end of the world had come. How many hours, how many days to still live this panic-stricken waiting, this agony? I wanted to shout for help, ask to be rescued, but who, but who other than Dorothée could have stopped this universal catastrophe? And Dorothée no longer loved me. Like a god, she had withdrawn, distanced herself without glancing back to see the world gradually crumbling, crumbling a bit more with each of her distant steps. She was far off now, so far that she no longer heard anything. And if I thought of her now, it was of a god with an unknown face who obliquely answers offered up prayers.
Things were bad, very bad. Trees fell in the park, struck by lightning.
The books that had been damaged by the fall lay on the ground. One of them was open. I resisted the absurd desire to see it as a sign. But in the state I was in, I glanced at the page that was asking to be read. I was struck by these words: “My son, it is time to abandon figments of our imagination” It was the book Vita Nova.
I’m cold and I’m hungry. I’m so hungry, and this food is not for me! “What are you doing, Isaac? Who invited you to the banquet? You are not a son? Go, go away. Close the book and wait at the door. There will be some crumbs for you when the son has had his fill.” I wanted to stop here, but no, my soul has nothing to fear. I don’t pull my hair out. I didn’t tear my clothes or the page. I didn’t close the book. I was too hungry. I stole the son. I was dying of hunger. I was dying and I didn’t want to. I needed this advice and this affection. I was abandoned and I was jealous of the person who had been spoken to with such love. My eyes devoured what had been prepared for him. And my hunger made me hallucinate. I read: “My daughter, it is time ...” Me, who had no one to protect her, who had no one’s love to guide her, I read: “My daughter, it is time to abandon figments of our imagination.” And it was good. During that time, the delirium came to Isaac, and she was satisfied.
Why isn’t it like that now? Ah! To be able to hallucinate Someone! And to devour him, my God, to devour him, so that he remains forever in my presence.
I’d like that, I’d like a new life, I said to myself surrounded by scattered books, but what fiction should I abandon? Which one holds me in chains? And then tears blinded me, once again tears blinded me.
For some time already, it was Dorothée who had explained hidden things to me. How could people live who didn’t know her? And how was I going to survive amongst incomprehensible and necessary phrases? It didn’t really matter because it was already too late. It was the end of the world.
There was a jazz concert in the old town, and I went there hoping to find Dorothée. I had to go down narrow, dark streets, down an inky black staircase that led to the smoky room where people drank while waiting for the musicians to arrive. The room was full already. The music lovers were already stamping their feet with impatience, and the atmosphere was exciting. But it was also, I knew, a place where it was easy to lose consciousness.
If Dorothée wasn’t there, should I stay for the concert and wait until the end? I observed the musicians as they entered, their features, their gestures, their clothes ... hoping to work out whether what they had in mind for us was tolerable. Both music and the cinema are arts that are so violent they seize time. The oeuvre starts and continues and it becomes impossible to see into the future, to anticipate what follows. The phrase, the coming scene, will perhaps make me feel sick, tear my soul apart and I don’t know it, I don’t expect it. The future washes over us without warning. It’s too late to close our eyes and ears. I saw, I heard, I didn’t have the time to turn away. Now how can I erase it? I don’t like surprises, the performances that show us our destiny. No doubt, I sometimes say yes to imperious works of art like one abandons oneself to life, but rarely, as I’m not made for that. I was born for death, Theodore, and death has everything planned.
Dorothée loved music and she loved jazz. I never understood how she could love so many people and things at the same time, while me, I loved only her, and even that was only half true. She was the keeper of my life and I was dependent on her. If I had said I hated her, I would still have been speaking the truth. But Dorothée wasn’t afraid, and that’s why she was free for so much love.
I sat down at a table after having gone round the room without seeing Dorothée. The musicians tuned their instruments; a waiter made his way towards me. And I thought of leaving. Angst essen Seele auf. I thought of the German film that I had seen at the Institute the night before. The title was wrong on purpose, but it was true. Fear eats away at the soul, and mine was almost completely devoured. I was an eaten soul, virtually dead. There was only one piece intact, and that was Dorothée. I decided to stay and listen to the concert. I examined the artists on the stage. Perhaps their music contained something that would finish me off. Perhaps their music would kill me? Tough luck; it would be easy, as I was dying. Anyway, the world was soon coming to an end.
Suddenly, I saw Dorothée. She arrived, accompanied by some friends whose faces I recognized. She was surrounded, and to get to her I would have to break through the circle. The group was already sitting at a table when I walked towards her. And I saw that she was smiling. She signalled to me to sit next to her, the circle opened to admit me. The concert began and I was next to Dorothée. I was invulnerable.
Today, I’m lying down waiting, in the narrow angustia. It is difficult to imagine how I could breathe freely there; it is difficult to hear me speak of beatitude when talking of that evening.
All I ask of you is that you hear me say that word and you don’t laugh. Because it was that. Do you know what it is like to be next to Someone? I didn’t get carried away; I wasn’t beside myself. I was whole, I simply was. And don’t laugh, because in this story, when we get to this point, when we get to the episode where “I was”, the narrative is interrupted by the most vivid pain. It’s the pain present in every story, its death cry. And often the narrator stops there and can’t continue. He stops because the suffering is too great.
And, if he continues afterwards, it is not the same. He is a survivor like Isaac and Lazarus. Lazarus, they wanted to kill him afterwards. Because he was alive again, they thought of killing him. Isaac was back and as pale as death.
I was. Dorothée by my side. I was. And nothing was missing from my happiness. I gave myself over to music without being put off by its domination, without meeting any nasty surprises. I caught a glimpse of how one could love music; I had an idea of the state in which those who love it find themselves. I thought I understood how they managed to escape from its blows. I myself had been spared. I was with Dorothée, and the music held me, wrapped itself around me without injuring me.
During the first intermission, Dorothée turned towards me. I smiled and I was so moved that my smile became fixed. I look stupid, I thought, a stupid look, but I couldn’t speak anymore. “You have nothing to say to me?” she asked. “What is it like outside? Tell me what it is like.” I made an effort to remember the town and the dark streets, the books on the floor and the tears, the disaster in German, the disaster. I didn’t have the courage to talk about that, because now it was false and the words wouldn’t come. I stayed looking stupid, with Dorothée watching me. The concert was about to start, and she didn’t know that it was the end of time. I pulled out of my bag Le ciel tombe and laid it out before her eyes.
Sometimes, between us, conversation was difficult and writing would take its place. You could have called it a sort of game thanks to Isaac’s soul, which otherwise crumbled, like a collapsed sand cathedral; it was a place of prayer, Isaac’s soul, a vast monument consecrated to prayer, stayed together under Dorothée’s gaze. “Write it down,” she said when she found Isaac fighting with impossible words. “Write it down, don’t wait to be devastated.”
Dorothée’s in extremis intervention saved me from despair. And I wrote for her — it would be more correct to say that I deflected on to her that which threatened to engulf me like a plague. I don’t know how she read it, how she resisted, how, all things considered, she underwent my fate, suffered that which was destined for me and from which I escaped by leaving it to her. Today, I worry about it; but in those days, no, I didn’t think about it. I didn’t fear for Dorothée, and I didn’t spare her anything. As far as she was concerned, she kept it all, never showed or returned anything. Never once had she left me a single word, except those words cut through with arrows, written in capitals and in chalk on a blackboard.
I wouldn’t have been able to recognize her handwriting. I would have been incapable of copying her signature. Did she want to avoid tempting me to do so? Had she foreseen everything, she, the inexorable, that word that she cherished and repeated over and over? Did she know that one day I would attempt to get under her skin, mimic her gestures, copy her way of living and suffering? And that she was before me like a destiny, Dorothée, the inexorable. She held my life; my Moira, my part, it was her, the inflexible, who guarded it. And I didn’t understand, I didn’t suspect anything; I was too busy giving it to her for safe keeping, for her to find it a shelter, my soul battered from all sides.
I showed her a drawing, and it was uncommon. Our story only held one, that of a hand reaching for the inaccessible sun. The gesture and vision of despair that dated from the time when I encountered Dorothée. When I met her the first time, she had asked me this question, to me who was a stranger to her: “Do you sometimes paint?” I had replied no, never, no, except once, and I had spoken of the exhausted force that wanted the sun, and about world famine, because it was, I said, the last gesture of a person who dies of hunger.
Several days later I had seen Dorothée again, and at her request, I had brought the drawing. I didn’t give it to her, but she kept it. It was no doubt still in her possession, and she thought no more of it. It was a forgotten vision for me as well; since I was separated from it, I had stopped loving the sun, to suffer, I mean, because of it. When I think about it today, I tell myself that I probably had devoured it; and, in the dark of night, I had continued with an increased zeal to search for Someone.
The concert was going to start again. It wasn’t the moment to show Dorothée Le ciel tombe; nevertheless, for me the time was right. It was laid out before her eyes, which lingered over the title written in large clumsy letters on the bottom of the drawing. Dorothée no doubt thought that I wrote like a child, like a child who is not used to writing yet. She looked at the title and the image, and I saw suddenly what she saw. The sun was falling. It was the sun falling on the town. It was a setting sun, and the title was somewhat laughable if not wrong for dusk. But Dorothée didn’t laugh. It wasn’t for nothing that I had entrusted my life to her.
“It’s not the end of the world, you can see,” she said, “it’s not the end of the world. Come on, Isaac, it’s time to stop these stories, it’s time to forget all that.” She said these words in a low murmur, and her face was already turned away, because the musicians were starting up again. I cried abundantly, and Dorothée knew that it was like a rainbow between us. For the first time since my return, the world was at peace and secure. I was relieved, delivered from my fearful panic. I leant towards Dorothée and recognized her perfume. While I watched her, she turned her head and winked at me. That’s how Dorothée brought catastrophes to an end.
A story is reassuring Theodore; even the strangest ones calm worried children. They go to sleep believing they can live another day. Stories, like days, look alike. Only those who wish for metamorphosis refuse stories, those who received so little love that tomorrow they don’t want to wake up, but rather wake others. Those do not want stories; they want to shut them away in chests or salt cellars, while a new life is prepared for them.
The childhood home was full of trunks and sideboards, but it wasn’t me who was found in them; it was the little son who fainted or fell asleep everywhere, always pretending to be blind when he came out. He didn’t want to see the same house, the same life. He wanted to lose it. Me, I wasn’t desperate enough. I had glimpsed for a moment the loving face of Someone, and I went searching for it in books. I read all the stories. I searched for a happy ending to my life that I kept for that purpose. “He who wishes to keep his life, loses it. He who wishes to lose it, keeps it.” The desperate little boy was going to be happier, livelier than me. One day, he would be found lifeless in a cupboard, and this time, his wishes would have been granted, his whim given in to. He was laid to rest in a small white box that he would never leave. And he was left there. He was not disturbed, and no longer seen. But all the love of the house was carried by him after that day. And he was alive. He lived from then on more and better than me. But that, you see, is another story.
Who, but who then can understand Dorothée? Often, during the night, I’d meditate for a long time on her words and gestures without, however, managing to find a coherent interpretation. Several came to me, but just a single one, no never. The effort that I needed to go beyond the multiple hypotheses seemed immense to me, almost inhumane. Tiredness overcame me, and I slept amongst the obscure questions, without ever admitting either my paucity of ideas or my defeat. My tiredness was destined to increase even more, as I didn’t give up with this attempt.
The idea that I wasn’t mature enough to understand Dorothée didn’t occur to me. That idea didn’t occur to me. So that, all this time, my tiredness and blindness grew. Already, in Denmark, my sight had weakened, but since the day of my return, it was even worse. I was going to become the blind Isaac. Incapable of recognizing my child. That day when, on the altar in Moriyya, Isaac had seen the sun on Abrame’s knife, that day, Isaac’s sight had been irreparably damaged. Almost as if it had imprudently contemplated an eclipse.
After the concert, I easily gave up on the idea of an imminent end to the world. Delusions, you know, are tenacious; it is not easy to sacrifice them. This one, however, I abandoned without much effort. It left me of its own accord. That departure could have appeased me, you’d think, but the truth, the truth is that it was the truth which terrified me more than the visions of apocalypse. I discovered my need of Dorothée, an imperious need of her. I had been afraid of the sky falling, and chaos; I found beneath this fright the fear of Dorothée, my horror faced with her possible anger. The “Fear of Isaac,” was now the other name of Someone.
After abandoning the figments of our imagination, a declaration of love follows in Vita Nova. And no doubt, I would have written a letter or a love poem to Dorothée, if I had been capable of a sentiment as simple and pure as love. But it was, like Dorothée’s understanding, beyond me, beyond, I mean, that which I was given to live.
Today still, Theodore, today still, pure love, that nothing can alter or corrupt, is something I don’t know. And no doubt it is why I suffer so much; it’s why he does not come, him, Someone. He’s waiting for me to discover I’m capable of that. He’s waiting for me to love. He’s rigorous. I’m doomed to feel distress.
So that’s why the letter was necessary ... It was inevitable, it was certain like the prayer after the vision. I couldn’t understand nor face Dorothée’s wrath; I was going to plead with her, ask her to spare me. My life and my sanity depended on her; she called the shots in my universe — the rain, the fine weather, light and chaos. I knew that now, I knew that.
The idea of writing to Dorothée came to me, tapped me on the forehead. And it wouldn’t let go. It was time to put an end to people, thoughts and things abandoning me, to avoid losing my way again to a place where Dorothée’s silence had flung me. I attached myself to that idea, the rest was unthinkable. I couldn’t risk being thrown into terror’s clutches again, into Dorothée’s absence.