I have a new friend, I have a new friend!
We were at lycée together. We were classmates for so many years. And since this spring, which is coming to a passionate close, he has become a new friend to me. His name is no other than: my friend. I have many friends; but he is my new friend. He is my only friend.
I share with him my thoughts on both poetry and prose. He doesn’t always follow, but he understands me. We spend the May nights talking and talking. I reveal to him manuscripts no one else knows about. He recites poems to me that he will never publish. Whatever I think, I share with him; whatever he feels, he shares with me. I feel so many other things and I will share them with him. Perhaps he too thinks thoughts that I will come to know.
We had a candid conversation one evening, at my place, in the attic. He was in love. And I told him things no one else had ever said to him. I met the woman he loves in a bookstore. She read a lot, worshipped Beethoven, vanquished sleep throughout lonely nights at a white piano. They had met in the mountains and fallen in love. The woman’s husband was an architect. Perhaps she realised that there was something more to the friendship of that tall fair-haired youth who listened to her glorifying the Sonatas.
My friend was a student like all the others: blond, tall, pleasant, well-read, talented. But he loved a woman, and he loved Beethoven. Waves of potential were unleashed in his soul. I realised this the afternoon we met. He spoke with so much restrained passion, and with so much belief in his strengths and his capabilities regarding the love of the woman.
Through loving, the fair-haired young man became my friend. I no longer recognised him. He was so exalted, restless, determined. We got along so well; I, who was not in love.
He rarely spoke to me about his love. He spoke to me of his agony at first, of how he struggled to forget her, but did not succeed – because once you are in love you never forget – of how he agonized thinking about the woman in the company of her husband, about her whom he could conceive only in the company of Beethoven. And he spoke of the woman who did not believe him at first, and then of their first kiss seated at a piano still resonating from a minor arpeggio, and of their evenings, when her husband was out, on the fur rug in the salon, he dedicating poems to her, she creating improvisations somewhere between Tchaikovsky and Grieg, and of their promises to each other, in which he believed.
He found himself and was fulfilled in love. Henceforth he wasted no time. He worked at the library, and in the evenings went out. He wanted to finish a series of promising papers. Everything had become a calling, an impetus for life and work, because of love. He believed in himself and the love of the woman. He believed in me after he was convinced that I understood him and envied him. I told him that I sincerely envied him. His lady was such a rare specimen, I lied.
Hot nights, at the beginning of the summer, with my new friend. How they passed, and how they cannot, ever, return. Here I am, writing the first book of my youth; there he is, in the middle of a western country, carrying his tortured soul that had wanted to discover the horizons of love. Love that had kindled within him ambition and desire, and given him an unexpected capacity for work. That which was destined to happen, happened, and so quickly. The lady with her white hands on the keyboard said that she loved him, but that she was no longer in love with him. Who knows, who knows?
My friend was carried away by the sails of despair that darken and destroy. I supported him, wept with him, and then berated him with harsh injunctions.
He has run away. He will waste years of his life: we both know it. But all that he gleaned from the love of the woman will become seed that bears precious fruit. I shall wait for him.
Why have I interrupted the thread of my story with this fleeting sadness? Because at the beginning of spring, my friend had been happy. And I thought: If for him closeness to that lady had created him anew, endowing him with manly spirit, what would happen to me, with the happiness I might encounter in the love of a woman’s soul ? I caught a glimpse of myself in the glory, the glory of increasing happiness.
And the thought of having to wait, made me anxious, but also brought me comfort.