Perhaps I too could write those books you like to read . . . She can’t remember her exact words any more, they were spoken so long ago now. What does it matter? Who cares? This is where it all ends. This is where it was always going to end. An old man in the thrall of a young woman’s laughter, the words we write that will last or not, the pyramids – it’s all about death in the end.
Dominique sits by Jean’s bed, a notebook on her lap, pencil in hand. There is a small cot near his bed where she often sleeps, just so he will know that she is there in the night. There for him, if needed. At the moment he is sleeping, an uneasy troubled sleep. Long silences, followed by loud snorts and sudden exhalations. Breath in and out. Old breath, breathing its last. The faint blue light casting a dreamy glow over the room, almost as though the bed that Jean sleeps in, the chair she sits in, the very room itself, have been cut loose from their earthly moorings and they are floating through space.
Almost. For outside, in the glare of the corridor, the night nurse has her radio on, tuned to Radio Luxembourg, as does the whole city, it seems, and even from where she sits reality impinges. A news reporter is telling listeners what is happening on the streets outside their closed doors. Dominique, quite clearly, can hear the fizz and crack of gas canisters exploding in the night: crack, crack, like rifle shots. And the crash, the shattered sound of broken glass, a police siren, the boom of something blowing up. Probably a car. And then the sudden roar of the crowd, or is it a mob? For the people are both crowd and mob, and their cheers and shouts and screams pour from the radio out into the corridor and into the room in which she sits by Jean’s side.
And this music that she first heard years before, this elemental sound, can be heard among the shouts and cheers; the words indistinct, but always more utterances than words anyway. It is a picture painted with sound that distracts her for the moment. Takes her away from what she is writing in her notepad.
Jean sleeps through it all. The nurse switches the radio off and picks up a magazine. The room once again slips from its earthly mooring, and Dominique resumes writing her second love letter to Jean while they float through the space of their own private universe. It is the story of a girl in love, but a girl – and she calls herself that – who is afraid of losing her lover, for the girl is not young any more and every time she watches her lover’s eyes stray – to this woman and that one – she asks herself how long will it be before his body follows his eyes. And as much as she would never stop him or presume to deny anybody the pleasure of experience, she dreads that moment. Dreads it like death. For it would inevitably be a kind of death: a death to the spirit. Death in life. And so to stave off that moment and draw him back to her, the girl in the story decides to write for him, and for him alone, one of those books he likes to read.
That was her first love letter, a strange story – strange and baffling even to her – of a woman who is only known as O. This, her second love letter, which she calls A Girl in Love, is a record of her memories of writing the first. She has only just begun and it is written as much to distract her from the enormity of what is happening as to entertain Jean. And, perhaps, to recapture the time. For although she is not much of a sentimentalist, Jean is. It is in this sense her search for their lost time, so that she can retrieve it and together they can relive it when she reads it to him, just as she did when they parked by the river years before, and she read him the first instalments of O’s tale.
This story takes her into the places they took refuge in all those years before: her old car, the quai des Grands Augustins, the quai de la Tournelle, when they strolled along the river and kissed in the secrecy of the open space of the riverbank where the irises inclined towards them like old friends in greeting. It is a tale that takes them back to the cheap hotel room that was theirs on those occasions, two or three times a week, when they met in the blue hour: the single globe (no shade) suspended from the ceiling, the black-out curtains, there during the war and long after, and the double bed, bearing, if you knew where and how to look, the impression of their bodies, and always unmade when they left. A room, in its dim lighting and stark simplicity, that always had the look of a monk’s or nun’s cell, its seclusion broken at regular intervals by the rumble of the metro or traffic.
It is also a tale that takes them back to their partings (for they never spent a night together) when their hour or two was done: he to his wife; she to her parents’ apartment and her room, where she felt at home, and yet lonely. But above all the tale takes them back to that night after one of their meetings when, instead of taking down a book to read as she usually did, she lay down in bed sideways, and with a soft pencil (the occasional sounds of her parents in the next room) began to write the story she had to write: her response to the challenge of his straying eyes as much as his announcement, in the manner of an incontrovertible truth, that no woman could write such a book.
And so while he sleeps in the hazy, half-world glow of the clinic, with the radio occasionally going on and off in the corridor outside, she has entered that lost time, retrieving it in her writing, writing the way you do in dreams, the words effortless and flowing, and reclaiming that touch of heaven she felt when writing her tale of the young woman called O.
And just as she imagines she might be finished for the evening, she hears Jean snort and watches his chest heave as he expels old air from his lungs and draws in new. There is a shudder, another breath. A giant intake, a sound like a burst drainpipe, and suddenly his eyes are open. For a moment he looks around, clearly wondering where on earth he is – if, indeed, he is still on Earth at all – then turns to see Dominique sitting by his side.
When his eyes light on her they widen and he smiles. A triumphant smile, one that says I did it! I came through. I’m back. I haven’t gone yet. And the eyes of her owl, eyes that are forever astonished and astounded by life, the majestic and the monstrous, are still there, beaming at her. Amazed till the end. Amazed by life. Amazed by death.
She reaches for his hand at the same time he does for hers. They clasp. Neither speaks. Touch is enough. A gesture that says welcome back, while she is also considering the beauty of touch. Oh, we talk of sight and sound and taste, but not enough of the wonder of touch. Two people hold hands, feel the warmth of each other’s grip, and they are no longer alone.
‘I have something for you,’ she eventually says.
He raises his eyebrows – and, she observes again as he does, such eyebrows – and quietly says in that reedy voice that has become thinner of late, ‘I don’t like surprises.’
‘You’ll like this one,’ she says, holding the notepad up.
‘Ah, you’ve been busy.’
‘It’s for you,’ she says, withdrawing her hand. ‘Shall I start?’
He nods and leans back on his pillow, looking at the ceiling and waiting.
From the moment she begins he closes his eyes, taking in the familiar, distant images, re-entering not so much lost time as neglected time. The walks, the river, the room, the unmade bed – all rise and take form around them, real and solid as in the most vivid dreams, and she watches his lips, smiling at the wonder of it, as the two of them fall back in step with those younger selves that were never lost, only neglected, and resume their riverside promenades, lie in their bed in their room and then leave it, the bed unmade, as if it were all just yesterday.
When she finishes he opens his eyes, alert, entranced by the tale of the girl in love and what she does for love, and says, ‘Go on.’
‘That’s all there is. For now. You’ll have to wait.’
‘And so I shall,’ he says, voice firm, a resolute, determined look on his face. For the moment not her owl but some Roman emperor, or the bust of one, speaking to her, making a promise that will be kept though time and the world may perish.
But they also know that the promise brings with it the shadow of an ending. Yes, I shall wait, and you shall resume your story and I shall listen. But all stories end and what shall we wait for then?
It is then that the night nurse enters the room and Dominique becomes aware of the radio again: the journalist’s commentary, the crack of gas canisters and the songs.
The nurse takes over and Dominique, placing her notebook in her satchel (the same leather satchel she has had since school), moves aside. The nurse does all the things that nurses do, as Dominique looks on: writes things on a sheet of paper at the foot of the bed and gives Jean tablets that he obediently takes.
When the nurse is finished she looks at Dominique with understanding eyes, glances at the cot by Jean’s bed, then back to Dominique, a look that says will madame be staying here tonight? This is the nurse who told her she couldn’t stay, it was against all the rules. Forbidden. But the word forbidden has never deterred Dominique, and so she refused to go. Nobody threw her out, and now she often sleeps by Jean’s side. And the nurse, over the last few weeks, has come to enjoy her company. But tonight Dominique has work to do and will go home.
And so she walks to the bed, leans over and kisses him good night. Leaving the blue, half-worldly light of the room behind her, she steps into the glare of the corridor, the radio louder as she nears the night nurse’s desk, the words of the next part of the story forming as she goes, as though through words and story she can keep her owl moored to this earthly forest of theirs, as surely as words and story once drew him back when she thought he was lost to her.
* * *
It is dark and quiet outside. Little traffic. She leaves the clinic, in this unfamiliar part of the city, and walks towards the nearest metro. But as she reaches a large boulevard, she sees the lights of a taxi approaching. Just for her, or that’s how it looks.
She waves to it, the taxi pulls into the kerb, the driver leaning out the window asking her where she wants to go.
‘Val-de-Grâce,’ she says, and he nods.
The revolution has not yet come to Val-de-Grâce. But the driver tells her it is difficult, if not impossible. The Latin Quarter, he tells her, is like something from a war zone. Can’t get through. She’s not thinking of revolution though, she’s thinking of death. And of hospitals, where everything ends. And just then the image of Jean’s triumphal eyes springing open as he woke comes back to her. But it was an effort for him. As though some still defiant part of him had dragged him back from inviting darkness. And at this moment she’s not sure if she wants to be there when he finally does succumb. Would there be a part of her that, faced with the end, would simply want to get the thing over and done with? And would that be a betrayal? Would it haunt her for years, forever possibly, that when the end approached she did not pour her will into his and stave the moment off from which there is no return? Who was it who said that death is not something that happens in life? And therefore not worth writing about? One of those philosophers, ancient or modern, she can’t remember. It sounds funny, almost something a comedian could come up with, but he was deadly serious, whoever he was. And she understands. Even agrees. Well, half agrees. If she is there or not there when the great event happens, it will make no difference. It will remain just as incomprehensible. Indeed, something that doesn’t take place in life.
Just then the driver applies the brakes and calls out. She looks up the street and sees the reason. A wall of riot police, so many, too many to be counted, stands in front of them. Helmets, truncheons in hand, tear-gas canisters hanging from their belts. Boots like German soldiers wore. One holds his hand up. They shall not pass.
And it occurs to Dominique that because she has spent most of her time at the clinic and not at work over the last few days, she has only heard the sounds of the revolution on the radio. But as she sits in the back seat of the taxi she sees, for the first time, the orange glow of the sky. And with a jolt she also notices, just to the left of this wall of police, an upturned car. Windows smashed. Burnt out. Broken glass on the footpaths. And hears ever-present sirens, both near and distant.
The driver turns round to her, a helpless expression on his face, saying he can go no further. She’d be better off walking, he adds, pointing to his right, saying that Val-de-Grâce is just out there and that the revolution has not yet come to it.
Dominique steps out into the night. And the first thing she notices as she breathes in is the smell of riot gas. Sharp. Acidic. Not enough, from this distance, to sting and scald her eyes, but she can suddenly imagine how it would feel if she were under a cloudburst of gas.
The taxi driver, now turning back to the west of the city, where they came from, was right. The glow in front of her is like something from a war. But a discrete war. Tonight, at least, contained inside the invisible walls of the old Latin Quarter. Her Paris, upturned like the burnt-out car beside the wall of police.
She walks away, skirting the glow, Val-de-Grâce not so far, police and fire-brigade sirens rising and falling in volume all around her, the undulating music of the revolution flowing through streets and boulevards and over squares where students once lounged in another spring.
The boulevard she takes, leading down to the Luxembourg Gardens, is empty, apart from a car now and then. It is impossible now to look upon the gardens without remembering the Germans there, and flags, flags everywhere. While she is remembering this, and both thankful for this pocket of calm she has wandered into and nervy about the dark and the shadows, a large group of young people, mostly students she imagines, turns a corner and moves straight towards her, singing not ‘The Internationale’ but a football song, one she knows because it was sung by her father’s team. The closer they come, the louder the song. Soon they are all around her, embracing her, calling her ‘Comrade’, sometimes ‘Citizen’. One has a bloodied bandage around his head, a bottle of wine in hand. They are laughing, singing. Happy. It is a kind of floating party. A festival. A fête. And while she’s watching them and shaking hands, politely refusing a swig of wine, she is reminding herself that it is always the case. That revolutions begin in joy: an outburst of song, the exhilaration of a car exploding.
Then they are gone, she passing through them as if through a cloud. And as she watches them float up the street, she’s also dwelling on their youth, and Jean. They’re ready to take over the world; he is ready to leave it.
As she rounds the corner of the Luxembourg Gardens, she stops, staring at large white writing sprayed on a wall: BE REASONABLE it says, DEMAND THE IMPOSSIBLE! And straightaway she not so much fears for this revolution (for she has always distrusted them, and revolutionaries), as feels a sudden pang of something like poignancy. Death and revolution she understands. But irony and revolution will never accommodate each other. And the ironic revolution will always fail. For all the exploding cars, the exhilaration of broken glass, the fire and song, she can’t help but feel that they will all be left desolate in the end, wondering just where their revolution went.
And should Jean hear, coming from the night nurse’s radio, the sounds of what is going on out there beyond that little room of his in the clinic, and if he were to recognise what those sounds mean, she has no doubt – a thought that both amuses her and comforts her as she nears home – that his eyes would be wide with astonishment.
* * *
Shadow (all her cats are called Shadow – I, II, III, IV and so on, like a long line of Louis kings), having slipped in through the window, is stretched out on the sofa, a miniature panther at ease, coldly watching her as she steps inside the apartment. Wanting nothing, the cat closes its eyes and returns to those snoozes that cats have, seemingly asleep but always alert to everything around them.
From the hall she looks through to her father’s old study, everything as it was, except that her father is dead and will never sit in his study again. Her mother, frail but tenacious, is in bed. It is late, after all, and Dominique does not disturb her.
Jean will be drifting off in his room, dozing through a different kind of blue hour. He sleeps a lot now, and she hears the sounds of his slumbers in the night when she lies in the cot beside his bed. Sometimes it is a troubled sleep, his body restless and tossing. But tonight he looked calm, almost in a state of grace.
He is dying, they both know that. He hopes, and she hopes, it will be a good death when it comes, drifting from one kind of sleep to another. The body peaceful, the mind ready. Like this evening. And although she has watched death creep up on the dying, as it did to her father, she knows this will be a different kind of death altogether. It will create an absence impossible to fill.
She turns on the television, gazing absent-mindedly at the screen. At first she is not even thinking about what she is watching, her mind on Jean (the chocolate by his bed, the half-drunk fruit juice, the nurse chatting about her favourite television serial), the whole baffling mixture of the mundane and monumental that is there when impending death is in the room. But slowly she is drawn to the spectacle on the television. It is a news item, not the revolution outside, but something else. Something, it seems, happening in America. A group of people is gathered round a fire. They seem to be religious, they have that look. A man in a dark suit is holding a megaphone, but she can’t hear what he is saying because the French journalist is speaking over him. Many of the people in the gathering are carrying placards, most of which mention God and sin and judgement. She takes in all of this indifferently for she has death on her mind, and so the spectacle remains a mere curiosity until her attention is suddenly drawn to one of the placards. For there, in boldly painted print, are the words STORY OF O; WITCH’S WORK on another; REPENT on another – and she realises what they are burning: her book.
She sits up and stares intently at the screen until the spectacle gives way to another. So, she tells herself quite calmly, the human comedy a never-ending puzzle, we still live in an age where they burn books. And somewhere, out there in the broad daylight of America, they are burning hers. A love letter, intended for an audience of one, has inspired this. No doubt, she reflects, they would burn her too – the witch who wrote it – the way they once burnt witches. The scandal has long since faded in France, but the book has not long been published in America. And once more it is a scandal. Evil, wicked, immoral. An assault on public decency all over again. Enough of an outrage to be publicly burnt. And as much as she should be shocked, she’s more bemused, even amused – somehow removed and above it all, like one of those vilified eighteenth-century philosophers.
She rises and switches the television off, the image of the flames, her book and the man with the megaphone – hate, she now concludes, in his eyes – lingering.
Distant history, she muses, is never so far away as to be called distant. It’s always there, just behind the façade of all our precious modernity, just behind the mask of the civilised – where those who would burn, have burnt and will burn again the objects of their outrage lie in wait for their time and place to come round.
Still shaking her head, she hangs up her coat and goes to her room, where she takes her notebook from her satchel. The wicked witch taking not a pencil this time but a ballpoint pen, for that is the first thing that comes to hand when she reaches into a pocket in her bag. She goes to her bed, lies down on her side, and continues the story of the girl in love. Let them burn this.
Soon she is deep into her story, the television, the news, far from her thoughts as she enters the dark wood of storytelling. The tale moves on through secret meetings – the girl reading her book to her lover – through the joy of assignations kept and the disappointment of assignations not kept, because one or the other couldn’t ‘get away’, a phrase they used like prisoners slipping from their dungeons. Or were they slipping from the everyday world into the longed-for dungeon of clandestine love? For aren’t we all, she murmurs to herself as if whispering to Jean, writing it down as she murmurs, aren’t we all jailers? All in our cells, enchaining some part of ourselves or others? But might it also be the case, that like Sisyphus walking back down the hill to his rock, happily immersed in that hour of consciousness that freed him from the fate ordained by the gods, that prison might open the door to freedom, just as occupation once did, when they had never been so free as when they were defeated and occupied and chose to fight. Freedom and confinement, like light and dark: are they not the two sides of the one coin, the one useless without the other?
She writes all night, until she hears the rubbish trucks outside and knows she must rest a little before the day begins again. The tale of the girl in love has moved on, the words have flowed from her once again like words in dreams. A tale of the most elemental, pure love, like the stories of those born on some blasted heath or moor.
When she is ready to leave for work she puts her notebook in her satchel and clips it shut, satisfied with her evening’s work and vaguely wondering if the government has fallen overnight. The sofa is vacant; Shadow has not yet returned from her nocturnal wanderings. She pops her head into her mother’s bedroom and says farewell, then slips out the door and into the common garden below, no scent of riot in the air, for the revolution has not yet come to this part of town. As she walks up the street to a metro that may or may not be running, she clutches the satchel, telling herself that just as words and story once drew him back to her when she felt he was lost, so too words and story will keep him here now, in this earthly forest that is theirs and theirs alone.