IT IS PART OF the mood and strange lack of consistency in one’s later years that life loses a lot of its reality, or of its proximity to reality, and that reality, which itself is already a somewhat insecure dimension of life, becomes thinner and more translucent, its claims on us no longer make their presence felt with the same force and relentlessness of earlier times, and it allows us to talk to it, play with it and handle it. Reality for us old people is no longer life but death, and we no longer wait for it as for something external, but we know that it dwells within us; although we resist the pains and problems that its proximity inflicts on us, we do not resist death itself—we have accepted it, and if we care for and coddle ourselves rather more than we did before, we care for and coddle death too, because it is with us and in us, and is our air, our task, our reality.
What’s more, the world and the realities that were once all around us lose much of their truthfulness and even their probability, for they are no longer obviously and indisputably valid, and we can take them or leave them—we have a certain power over them. Thus everyday life takes on a kind of playful surrealism, because the old fixed systems are not quite so authoritative, aspects and emphases have shifted, the past increases in value compared to the present, and the future is of no serious interest whatever to us. And so our day-to-day conduct, from the standpoint of reason and the old rules, becomes somewhat irresponsible, frivolous, playful—the sort of behaviour that is popularly known as ‘being childish’. There is a lot of truth in that, and I have no doubt that I often innocently and irresistibly react in childish ways to the world around me. But observation teaches me that these reactions are definitely not always so innocent or uncontrolled. Old people can do childish, impractical, unprofitable and playful things with total (or semi-) consciousness, and with the same sort of pleasure as a child feels when it talks to a doll or according to its own mood and imagination magically transforms its mother’s little kitchen garden into a jungle full of tigers, snakes or hostile Indian tribes.
Here’s an example—it was the hour when after reading the morning post I would go out into the garden. I say ‘garden’, although in fact it’s a pretty steep, very overgrown grassy slope with a few vine-covered terraces that are well cared for by our good old hired hand, while the rest shows a pronounced tendency to change back into virgin forest. Where two years ago we still had a meadow, the grass is now thin and bare, and instead there are flourishing anemones, Solomon’s seal, Paris quadrifolia, bilberries, here and there even a few blackberries and heather, and a lot of woolly moss all over the place. The moss and all its neighbouring plants would have to be grazed by sheep, and the ground trampled on by their hooves, if the meadow was to be saved, but we haven’t got any sheep, we wouldn’t have any manure to fertilise the rescued field, and so year by year the tough roots of the bilberries and their comrades creep deeper and deeper into the grassland, and the earth thus reverts to being a forest floor.
According to whatever mood I’m in, I see this transformation either with ill humour or with good grace. Sometimes I have a go at a piece of this dying meadow, attack the rampant wild plant life with rake and fingers, mercilessly comb out the mossy upholstery between the endangered bunches of grass, rip out a basketful of bilberry tendrils complete with roots, without believing for one moment that this will do the slightest bit of good, as my gardening in the course of the years has become nothing but a hermit’s pastime without any practical meaning—that is to say, it has a meaning for me alone, which is a matter of personal hygiene and economics. When the pains in my eyes and head become too much for me, I need to change over to some mechanical activity, a physical occupation. The horticultural and charcoal-burning make-believe work that I have devised over the long years not only serves the purpose of this physical change and relaxation, but it also helps me to meditate, to continue spinning threads of fantasy and to concentrate on matters of the soul. And so from time to time I try to make it a bit more difficult for my meadow to turn into forest. At other times, I stop in front of the wall we built up more than twenty years ago on the southern edge of the property—it’s made of earth and the countless stones we dug up when we were making a trench to hold back the neighbouring forest, and once we planted it with raspberry canes. Now this wall is covered with moss, grass, ferns and bilberries, and a few already quite imposing trees, including a shady lime tree, stand as the advance guard of a slowly encroaching forest. On this particular morning, I had no objections to the moss or the undergrowth, or the overgrowth or the forest itself, but I gazed on the world of wild plants with pleasure and admiration. And all over the meadow there were lots of young narcissi, with fleshy leaves, not quite blooming, their calyxes still closed, not yet white but a gentle yellow, the colour of freesias.
Anyway, I walked slowly through the garden, looked at the young, reddish-brown rosebushes through which the morning sun was shining, and the bare stems of the newly bedded-out dahlias between which with boundless vitality soared the thick stalks of the Turk’s cap lilies, heard our faithful vine man Lorenzo clattering around further down with his watering cans, and decided to have a chat with him and discuss all sorts of gardening politics. Slowly I went down the slope, terrace by terrace, armed with an implement or two, enjoyed looking at the grape hyacinths in the grass, which many years ago I had scattered in hundreds all over the slope, wondered which bed would be best this year for the zinnias, was delighted to see the wallflowers in bloom, and dismayed to see the gaps and crumbling areas in the fence of latticed branches we’d put round the top compost heap, which was covered in the beautiful red of the fallen camellia blossoms. I climbed all the way down to the level vegetable garden, said hello to Lorenzo, and started off the conversation I’d planned by asking how he and his wife were, and exchanging views on the weather. I thought it was a good thing that there was evidently some rain on the way. Lorenzo, however, who is almost as old as I am, leant on his spade, threw a quick glance up and across at the driving clouds, and shook his grey head. There wouldn’t be any rain today. You never know, surprises can happen, although … and once more he squinted knowingly skywards, shook his head vigorously and ended the rain discussion: “No, signore.”
Next we talked about vegetables, including the freshly planted onions, and I was full of praise for everything as I guided the conversation round to what I was really after. The fencing round the top compost heap probably wouldn’t last much longer, and I’d advise rebuilding it, although of course not now, when he already had his hands full with so many other things to do, but maybe some time getting towards autumn, or winter even? He agreed, and we decided that when he did get round to this job, it would be best not to renew just the lattice of green chestnut branches but also the posts. Although they might stand up for another year or so, it would be advisable … Yes, I said, and while we were on the subject of the compost heap, I’d also be grateful if in autumn he wouldn’t put all the really good soil on the higher beds again, but would set some aside for my flower terrace—at least a few wheelbarrowfuls. Right? And we shouldn’t forget to increase the strawberries this year, and clear out the lowest strawberry bed down by the hedge, which had been there all these years. And so each of us in turn came up with good and useful ideas for the summer, for September, for the autumn. And after we’d discussed everything, I carried on, while Lorenzo went back to work, and both of us were pleased with the outcome of our conversation.
It had not occurred to either of us to tackle one awkward subject that was perfectly familiar to both of us and would have ruined the conversation and rendered all our decisions illusory. We had negotiated with each other straightforwardly and in good faith—indeed with too much good faith. And yet Lorenzo knew just as well as I did that this conversation, with all its plans and good intentions, would not remain in his memory or in mine, and within a fortnight at most we would both have forgotten every single word months before the times set for the rebuilding of the compost heap and the expansion of the strawberry beds. Our morning chat beneath a non-rainy sky had taken place purely for the sake of talking—a game, a divertimento, a totally aesthetic activity that would have absolutely no consequences. It had been sheer pleasure for me to gaze for a while into Lorenzo’s dear old face and to be the recipient of his diplomacy, which established a protective wall of the most delicate courtesy between himself and his interlocutor, without ever taking the latter seriously. As contemporaries, we also have a feeling of fraternity towards one another, and when one of us is limping particularly badly, or is having extra difficulties with his swollen fingers, although we don’t actually talk about it, the other will smile understandingly with a slight feeling of superiority, and on this occasion will experience a certain satisfaction based on a sense of solidarity and sympathy in which he is not displeased at being temporarily the more robust of the two but, at the same time, is made to think with anticipatory regret of the day when the other will no longer be standing there beside him.
From Notizblätter um Ostern
(Notes at Easter) 1954