The certainties, p.8
The Certainties, page 8
I have a scar on my forearm: a thin line of white skin, arcing like the tail of a comet. It’s from that time after Salomé, a time that is almost inexplicable to me from the vantage point of these years, this hotel room. When I look back on the man I was then—twenty-eight years old and toying the tip of a knife against my skin—I don’t recognize him, but for the urge to erase, to get away from a feeling I’m now mature enough to call futility.
After a period of silence Bernard walks over to the basin on the sideboard and splashes his face with water. His small pack, near empty save for a second set of clothes, sits on the chaise by the far wall of the room while Suzanne’s even smaller bag is clasped in the dark mouth of the closet.
‘Well,’ Bernard says, drying his face, ‘do we dare wonder what’s taking Suzanne so long?’
On the passeig below us, the sound of a girl’s laughter lilts skyward, its levity a shock. How long has it been since I’ve heard someone laugh so unabashedly?
I turn to Bernard. I raise my shoulders, fan out my hands. I have nothing, I know as little about what Suzanne is facing as you do. I desperately want to go out onto the street, want to see the girl who is laughing. In my heart that girl is you, Pia—but I’m stuck where I’m standing. I sense, then, that I ought to go back to my own room; that Bernard would prefer to be alone. As would I.
Back in my room I roll up my shirtsleeves and pick up a pen. It occurs to me that the reason I made that long arc with a knife up my forearm all those years ago was to prove something to myself: that the most impressionable things, the truest things, occur in solitude.
You will not need anyone, Pia. You will not stand by a stuttering fountain waiting for someone to drift in through the mist. You will be that rare and beautiful thing: someone who can give love without being constrained by the need to receive it.
* * *
I WENT TO YOUR ISLAND ONCE, Pia—this was a few months after I submitted my dissertation. What had started out as an analysis of German Idealism held up against Plato’s world of forms had transformed itself into a relatively slim volume on bridges: what it means to span, to give shape to space, to transport. My favourite chapter—if one is allowed such a thing in one’s own work—was on the Petit Pont in Paris. The most humble of the Seine’s bridges, the Petit Pont connects the Île de la Cité to the Left Bank via a single stone archway. I had meant to use this bridge as an example of the problem of universals—the current Petit Pont is but the most recent of many prior Petit Ponts to span that part of the Seine since antiquity—but rather than investigating the obdurate properties of the bridge itself I became obsessed by its history, by the dozens of wood or stone Petit Ponts that were swept away by floods, broken up in storms, or destroyed by fire. I became obsessed, I suppose, by hauntings—the echo of time in our thinking. My dissertation was a failure, of course—I was summoned to the office of a senior professor, who waved me toward a wingback chair. He lit a pipe and turned to a window that overlooked the botanical gardens. His plump cheeks flexed in silence for ten minutes. Finally he cleared his throat and said, ‘Add something. If you want to bring us the unexpected, this—’ and here he turned and gestured to the typed pages on his desk, ‘this cogitation…add the thing even you wouldn’t expect to find to your deliberation. As yet there’s no tension in it, nothing gets worked out.’ He sat in his chair and looked at me thoughtfully before taking off his glasses to wipe away some distortion on the lens. I felt as if everything was moving in slow motion. His glasses clear, the professor picked up a pen and began scratching out some notes. I intuited this had nothing to do with me. Eventually I stood to go, and at the creak of my chair he glanced up as if he’d forgotten I was there. ‘Your handling of Fichte is also inadequate.’ He nodded toward the door, his dissatisfaction no longer hidden, and went back to his work. I walked past his secretary without meeting her gaze and staggered toward my tenement in Sprengelkiez feeling like I’d been physically struck. I wanted to scream, but nothing, not even a whimper, came out. As soon as I was inside the door of my flat I kicked over a chair and swept three shelves of books to the floor.
After that I borrowed money from my father and went travelling to find the thing I hadn’t thought about. I went far west, to the point where there were no more bridges, only boats, and then I travelled west again until I reached another coast and a series of sea-bedded islands. I paid for passage on a small mail steamer and sat through a rough journey in the clerk’s cabin with five other passengers who took turns being sick in a wooden bucket one of the crew had left for us. I had three empty notebooks in my bag and clothes that were unsuited for the continual dampness of the weather. We docked at dawn on the south end of a hare-shaped island and made our way shakily up the pier toward a cluster of horse carts stationed at the top of the slipway. Behind the horse carts there were two cars. One of the drivers was willing to transport me and another passenger for a small fee, to which we both readily agreed. The road out of town was in poor condition, but the landscape was astounding: the rust reds and bog orange of a fertile earth, a world that seemed to be turning itself over; the ground thick-coated like some sort of pelt. I think I could have cried—from the relief of the island’s remoteness—were I not riding with a man who kept trying to speak to me about pharmaceuticals. ‘Good health,’ he announced, ‘depends on a number of factors. Exercise,’ he said, raising a thin finger, ‘ample nutrients’—another finger shot up—‘and tonics to cleanse.’ His case of wares bumped up and down on the seat beside him, its little vials tinkling. He left us at the largest town in the middle of the island and at last I was alone in the back of the car, listening as the driver, a local entrepreneur who offered his automotive services for the return journey, pointed out the loch, and an old parish church, and a rugged field where a circle of stones once stood. I was dropped off at the edge of the village not far from the hotel just as the sun nudged up above the fields. The gentleman’s car reversed noisily in a wide section of track. Up ahead, whitewashed cottages lined both sides of the road, but where I stood there was nothing but field, bracken and bog on one side, and a grassy ledge that dropped toward the sea on the other.
* * *
—
Here in Portbou, the church bells ring. I’m sitting at the foot of my bed when they chime five o’clock. Outside, the sky is turning dusky, but not like it would on your island, Pia—this Mediterranean dusk tends toward a saxe blue, as if a sloppy painter has washed the sea up into the horizon. Suzanne has been gone well over an hour, so I walk back to Bernard’s room and together we imagine the possibilities. I tell him that I think one or both of our names has appeared on an extradition list and that Suzanne has been detained, but Bernard will not hear of it.
‘They’d have come for us already.’ His tone is dismissive, but I can tell he’s anxious. ‘It could be my identity paper from Paris,’ he says. ‘It hasn’t been renewed, but Suzanne can explain that. Everything else is in order.’
I smile. Nothing is in order. Nothing has been in order since we left Paris and joined the march south. No matter where we stand, the ground shifts beneath us. At least my transit visas are in my name, but even though the stamps on them are real, they’re only valid for three more days.
Bernard moves toward the little desk opposite the bed and sits sideways on the simple chair in front of it. If he weren’t so gaunt he would look silly, like a man at a child’s desk.
‘We should have gone farther inland,’ I say, ‘kept walking.’
Bernard shakes his head—the question of when to present ourselves is a debate we’d had days earlier. ‘No,’ he says, ‘it was better to arrive with the others.’ He looks up at the ceiling light, the dead flies lining the bottom of its glass globe. ‘If only our contact—if only this “Marco” had been at the station.’
We have resolved to go downstairs and make enquiries with Alejandro when we hear the muffled sound of a knock on a door down the hall. Bernard runs his hands over his head—a habit from before the war when he had soft brown curls. I can feel my body’s heaviness, its lethargy—so unlike those months in Paris and Marseilles when even the squeak of a floorboard started my pulse racing.
‘¿Señor?’ Alejandro calls, rapping on the door to my empty room.
Bernard sticks his head out into the hall. ‘Ici,’ he says, and gestures toward his room. A second later Alejandro is in front of us, his eyes narrowed in reprimand.
‘Entrez,’ Bernard says and Alejandro steps into the room with a level of formality that, under different circumstances, would be amusing: the rigid posture, raised chin. He stands stiffly just inside the door, as if he’s entered a private house with fine carpets and art instead of a room with threadbare blankets and dead moths along the floorboards.
‘Your presence has been requested by the commissioner,’ Alejandro says. He holds a small square of paper in his hand, and glances at it as if it’s proof of this communiqué. ‘If you would come with me.’
* * *
—
I expected, as we walked out the front door of the hotel, that we would be turning toward La Rambla de Catalunya—the route to the police station—but instead Alejandro indicates that we are to turn right onto the Passeig de la Sardana. The street is busier than it was during my outing yesterday. Gone is the mineral lilt of the sea I’d savoured as I’d walked along; now there is only the odd fug of cigarette smoke as men return home from their offices or sit on restaurant patios having a drink. It gives me some pleasure, as we walk, to look at the locals’ faces. Every now and again we pass one or two people who seem almost content, who have somehow managed to come through the worst of the civil war intact. At one of the larger cafés, two young men in white shirts are smiling. Next to them, a father listens attentively to his young son. Normally, today would be a school day—though I’m unsure if the schools are running here again. And that thought, of education, of the tide of the world’s knowledge still churning, strikes me as insane—like naming the parts of a house as it crumbles. How will that boy remember these years? What will his catalogue of images be? How do you teach from within the centre of what is barbaric?
The boy’s father senses that he’s being watched and glances up toward the street, but when he sees Bernard and me being escorted by a guard in uniform, he immediately busies himself with some object on the table in front of him. Shortly after this Alejandro picks up the pace and Bernard and I fall behind. Alejandro turns and glares at us. I imagine there’s no honour in parading us through town and that he’d prefer to make quick work of it. I stop walking out of sheer obstinacy and Alejandro comes back to face me.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
Alejandro doesn’t reply. He’s staring over my shoulder at one of the café patios, his face anxious. I turn to the café to discern the cause of his unease but before I can track the subject of his attention—the trio of girls with black hair, the young man alone with a beer—Alejandro says ‘We’re almost there’ and starts off again, though more slowly this time. When we reach La Dorada with its bougainvillea wreathing the archway and its yellow door, Alejandro turns in. Even before he opens the door, I see Suzanne through the window, sitting with four men at a round table in the centre of the room—her dress and hair elegant in the globed light, though I know there is a tear on her sleeve and that the stains along the cuff didn’t wash out. As we enter, she tosses her head back in laughter.
‘Commissioner,’ Alejandro says, saluting a plump man in a navy business suit—plump as only a government official with connections to the black market can be.
The commissioner stands up and shakes Bernard’s hand, then mine. ‘My name is Camilo Estévez,’ he says. ‘Please sit.’ He indicates two empty chairs at the table, opposite Suzanne. We take our seats and I look to Suzanne for a cue but her eyes tell us nothing. ‘Of course you know Señor Porras, who met you yesterday at the station?’ the commissioner continues.
Señor Porras nods.
‘And this,’ Commissioner Estévez extends his hand to the towheaded man beside Porras, ‘is Herr Gabler, a guest in our country. And here, beside me, is my friend Señor Noguerra.’ The commissioner places his hand on the shoulder of a middle-aged man in a grey suit. ‘He’s out of uniform just now, but I think you will forgive him.’
I look at Bernard. He is following the round of introductions but says nothing. Instead he lifts his linen napkin and places it across his lap.
‘We were just being delighted by your friend here,’ the commissioner says, taking his seat again before turning to address Señor Porras in Spanish.
‘Of course,’ Porras replies, making a little shooing gesture at Alejandro. Our guard excuses himself and takes up a stool at the marble-topped bar at the far end of the restaurant.
‘What would you like?’ the commissioner asks jovially. ‘I’m sorry to hear you’ve both been unwell. The least we can do for guests in our country is feed them.’ He hands Bernard and me menus and waves his fingers in the air for the waiter. There are three other occupied tables in the restaurant behind him: two sets of men drinking coffee, and a wealthy couple in their fifties. None of them raise their eyes toward us.
Suzanne has a glass of wine in front of her, and the men have coffees and some sort of dark brown liquor. The commissioner takes a drink of his, then drops his glass down with a thud. ‘The merienda is very good here. For you, sir?’ he asks me. ‘Some cured meat perhaps? Bread? Cheese? The olives are wonderful as well, from the local groves.’
Herr Gabler laughs at this. I notice now that he’s wearing a black uniform like those of the SS agents we saw south of Paris.
‘Have you had the lamb, commissioner?’ Porras asks, and then he leans toward Suzanne and whispers something in her ear. She smiles and laughs politely and lifts her glass, knocking her elbow lightly against the table edge. A splash of wine spills on the tablecloth, and when the men on either side of Suzanne lean in with napkins to blot the stain, she looks at Bernard and me with wide eyes as if to say she has no idea why we’re here or what’s transpiring.
Bernard clears his throat and juts out his chin. ‘Is it possible to order a bottle?’ he asks cheerfully, and for a second I see the old healthy Bernard holding court at the foot of a table of artists in a Paris restaurant. He surveys the menu. I see exactly what he’s doing and act accordingly: I imagine I am back home at a dinner party, where I belong. This, I know, will have been Suzanne’s ruse as well—to act as if we have no cause to be frightened.
An elderly waiter with tufty grey eyebrows leans over to serve our wine, shakily wiping the bottle’s lip on a linen cloth between pours. He’s undoubtedly a local—he has the same colouring as Señor Porras and Señor Noguerra, their eyes dark and quick, their accents similar. Porras, the architect of this meeting, leans toward Suzanne, making recommendations on the menu while conferring with the waiter: Is it too early for food? Ah, but our guests are hungry now. ‘This,’ he says to Suzanne, pointing to her menu, ‘is—’ and then he kisses his fingers with his lips.
Commissioner Estévez, the senior figure at the table, laughs, chiding Porras in Spanish, saying that it’s too early for a full meal but surely the owner will accommodate his guests with some small plates. He switches to English, asks Suzanne ‘What time do you have supper in France?’
‘Whenever we want,’ Suzanne replies, and the slightly flirtatious tone of her comment lights up the men’s faces. We are suddenly neck-deep in the farce, in this amplified comedy. More wine is poured. I look again at the tables of locals sitting between us and the door: common people, working people drinking coffee, nibbling on sandwiches. People struggling to pretend we’re not here, in the middle of the room, ordering extravagant food—as conspicuous as a circus act.
Bernard lets out a laugh, light and quick, at something Herr Gabler says in his rustic French, and I see Alejandro, over at the bar, dare a quick glance over his shoulder. Our eyes meet and I feel something in the exchange; some form of alliance.
‘Now then—’ Commissioner Estévez says, placing his arms and elbows on the table and leaning forward, ‘no one has asked me what I’m the commissioner of.’ He smiles first at Suzanne and then at me and Bernard. ‘It’s a simple question and we’re all friends.’ I note, in his smile, the health of his teeth, that his moustache is thick, well groomed, and as grey as the hair on his head. ‘But first we should agree on a language, don’t you think? Herr Gabler’s Spanish is not so good and his English is frightening. And my German is, well…’ He waves his right hand in the air as if swatting at a fly.
‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch?’ Herr Gabler asks me.
‘Je préfère parler en français,’ I say, lifting my wine to my lips.
‘Of course we speak some German,’ Suzanne says in English. ‘Most Austrians and educated French people do. We also speak some Hungarian.’
‘So we will convene in Hungarian?’ the commissioner asks, and he laughs. Señor Porras and Herr Gabler laugh with him, but less enthusiastically than before.
The waiter comes toward the table then with eight small plates on a wide silver tray. Behind him, the locals finally turn their heads our way. This is black market food: cured chorizo, cuts of beef, even the butter on the mound of steaming vegetables is rare these days. I recall how walking back to the hotel yesterday, I’d passed by a beggar who was clearly starving. How I gave her a few of my olives.
The beef is placed in front of Suzanne—four rare strips that she will find hard to digest after months on the barest of rations. The vegetables are arranged in the middle of the table with a silver serving spoon, the lamb and fish dishes between Herr Gabler and us. The chorizo is placed in front of Commissioner Estévez, who beckons the waiter closer with one finger to give further instructions. The waiter totters off, and the commissioner returns his attention to Bernard and me.
