Absence
Table of Contents
L
ate one Sunday afternoon the statues on the city squares are casting long shadows and the humped asphalt of the deserted suburban streets is giving off a bronze glow. The only sounds from inside the café are the hum of the ventilator and an intermittent clatter. A glance goes up to the branches of a plane tree, as if someone were standing under it, watching the countless incessantly swinging seedpods, the large-lobed, long-stemmed leaves, which move spasmodically, all together, like a semaphore, and the swaying, deep-yellow nests of sunlight in the foliage; where the blotchy trunk forks there is a hollow that might be the home of some animal. Another glance goes down to a fast-flowing river, which, as seen from the bank, the sun shines through to the bottom, revealing a long fish, light-gray like the pebbles rolling in the current below it. At the same time, the rays of the sun reach the wall of a basement room, filling the entire pictureless surface and giving the whitewash a grainy look. The room is neither abandoned nor uninhabited; it is populated, always at eye level, by the silhouettes of flying birds and, at intervals, of passersby on the road, for the most part bicyclists. Likewise, at eye level, a lone Far Eastern mountain appears on the horizon, lit by the last rays of the sun. The picture comes closer, bringing into prominence at its rounded upper edge the precipitous summit which, with its crags and chimneys, ledges and glassy walls, suggests an impregnable and inaccessible castle. The sun has set; here and there a light in a house; on the blank wall of the basement room the reflection of the yellow sky is traversed by patterns that have now lost their outlines. The wall is now so totally blank
that the deep-red number on a small tear-off calendar moves into the picture.
ate one Sunday afternoon the statues on the city squares are casting long shadows and the humped asphalt of the deserted suburban streets is giving off a bronze glow. The only sounds from inside the café are the hum of the ventilator and an intermittent clatter. A glance goes up to the branches of a plane tree, as if someone were standing under it, watching the countless incessantly swinging seedpods, the large-lobed, long-stemmed leaves, which move spasmodically, all together, like a semaphore, and the swaying, deep-yellow nests of sunlight in the foliage; where the blotchy trunk forks there is a hollow that might be the home of some animal. Another glance goes down to a fast-flowing river, which, as seen from the bank, the sun shines through to the bottom, revealing a long fish, light-gray like the pebbles rolling in the current below it. At the same time, the rays of the sun reach the wall of a basement room, filling the entire pictureless surface and giving the whitewash a grainy look. The room is neither abandoned nor uninhabited; it is populated, always at eye level, by the silhouettes of flying birds and, at intervals, of passersby on the road, for the most part bicyclists. Likewise, at eye level, a lone Far Eastern mountain appears on the horizon, lit by the last rays of the sun. The picture comes closer, bringing into prominence at its rounded upper edge the precipitous summit which, with its crags and chimneys, ledges and glassy walls, suggests an impregnable and inaccessible castle. The sun has set; here and there a light in a house; on the blank wall of the basement room the reflection of the yellow sky is traversed by patterns that have now lost their outlines. The wall is now so totally blank
that the deep-red number on a small tear-off calendar moves into the picture.
Â
In a park there is a castle-like nineteenth-century building with tall windows surmounted by triangular tympana and just under the eaves some hundred attic windows running all around the building. The immensity of this edifice makes the park seem small; vegetation, walks, and benches are unimpressive; only an aborted avenue of birches and the solitary plane tree with its pillar-like branches, which seems to grow out of an enormous bench, give an intimation of a past epoch. Because it is Sunday afternoon, the expressways on either side of the apparent castle are not being used by trucks but only by private cars. Unlike the few houses scattered roundabout, which in the presence of the huge building look like little more than huts, the castle shows light in almost all its windows, as though some great festivity were in progress from floor to floor and, through the open double doors, from hall to hall. But the building is an old people's home or, as the sign at the entrance indicates, a SANATORIUM FOR THE ELDERLY, and the bright serried window squares signify separate rooms. In some of them, behind often curtainless panes, the silhouettes of the occupants, always immobile, inactive, and for the most part unseeing. Other windows are open, making the rooms look deserted in spite of the burning ceiling lights, the potted plants, and the birdcages. Even the lights from the television sets leap across empty walls and change color for no one but themselves. The clicking of an electric iron and the clatter when it is set down come from a room occupied by one of the staff. The head in the attic window, with the all-seeing
eyes of a detective or a scientist, is that of a young man, not an inmate of the home. The only laughter in the festively illumined transept is that of the audience on the television screen, which erupts at regular intervals, as though on command. The only natural singing comes from a kitchen maid who is lifting the lid from an enormous tin pot in the white-tiled basement; actually, it is more like short snatches of monotone humming, with which she is merely testing her voice. The gravel path to the entrance ends at a low step, an impediment large enough that it has to be flanked on either side by a railing, whose brass supports, along with the elbow crutches of the one elderly person still to be seen there, are the only glittering spots under the yellow sky.
eyes of a detective or a scientist, is that of a young man, not an inmate of the home. The only laughter in the festively illumined transept is that of the audience on the television screen, which erupts at regular intervals, as though on command. The only natural singing comes from a kitchen maid who is lifting the lid from an enormous tin pot in the white-tiled basement; actually, it is more like short snatches of monotone humming, with which she is merely testing her voice. The gravel path to the entrance ends at a low step, an impediment large enough that it has to be flanked on either side by a railing, whose brass supports, along with the elbow crutches of the one elderly person still to be seen there, are the only glittering spots under the yellow sky.
At the back of one of the few apparently unlit rooms, a lamp is burning after all; it is mounted on a lectern. In the surrounding half darkness, this lamp, tiny as it is, casts a bright circle of light on the lectern, on which lies an open notebook, with outsized hard covers, wrapped in cracked, many-times-mended canvas, its paper spotted with mold, as though the whole had a story of its own, as though it had often been exposed to sun and rain, or had even been part of someone's luggage on the high seas. The pages are covered with columns of signs that vaguely suggest hieroglyphics. Beside them, written in a clear, official-looking, yet childlike hand, are words that seem to be attempts (some followed by question marks) to decipher the signs, such as “to bear in mind”; “to master”; “to break camp”; “to set out”; “to sit down?”; “the runnel?”; “the cliff on the border?”; “the watershed?” In the space under the spine of the notebook: a black hexagonal pencil. The near-emptiness of
the room, with its long, broad floorboards, whose converging lines, marked by spiral knotholes and polished nail-heads, tend toward a single point in the distance, makes it seem spacious, while the oval ornaments of its stucco ceiling give it an air of nobility. The lectern stands on a raised platform, suggesting the balcony in the study of a medieval scholar. The only other furniture is a folding bed in a wall niche, stored there, one supposes, in anticipation of some expedition; in lieu of a blanket a sleeping bag is draped over the naked frame. The slight rounding at the top of the window makes it look like an arcade. On the floor below it two dumbbells, their paint flaking, and an empty, shapeless, and shrunken knapsack.
the room, with its long, broad floorboards, whose converging lines, marked by spiral knotholes and polished nail-heads, tend toward a single point in the distance, makes it seem spacious, while the oval ornaments of its stucco ceiling give it an air of nobility. The lectern stands on a raised platform, suggesting the balcony in the study of a medieval scholar. The only other furniture is a folding bed in a wall niche, stored there, one supposes, in anticipation of some expedition; in lieu of a blanket a sleeping bag is draped over the naked frame. The slight rounding at the top of the window makes it look like an arcade. On the floor below it two dumbbells, their paint flaking, and an empty, shapeless, and shrunken knapsack.
The occupant, who is standing at the window, is not an inmate of the home; he is the master of this room. True, he is holding a stick, but it is not a crutchâit is a walking stick, made of hard, rigid, almost unbreakable rosewood; with the few large, sharp-beaked thorns that are still on it, it might also serve as a weaponâits owner, an old man, holds it in his fist like a scepter. Though everything else in the man's face, the skin, the lips, the hair, may be those of an old man, the eyes invite comparison with those of the young man upstairs in the attic window: while the young man considers the things within his field of vision with suspicion or curiosity, the old man views the world outside his window with total indifference. Unmoved, the old man lets his eyes follow the swaying branches, an airplane in the sky, or the pallbearers in their braided jackets carrying a coffin into the building through a side entrance. The sharply bent lower branch of a plane tree takes on the shape of a stirrup. The slanting shingled roof of the toolshed emanates
an archaic slatelike gray, and the elder bush climbing the plank wall has parallel branches that imitate the rungs of a ladder. The old man's gaze seems to postpone the coming of dusk and bathe its objects in daylight. The bays of shadow at the edges of the short, straight canal that runs through the grounds seem to frame the meanders of a great river; the trees of the long line of forest on the horizon beyond them are the masts of ships. Closer to the observer lies a strip of no-man's-land, traversed by an expressway; the inaudible cars become speedboats on a busy watercourse. The most distant point on the horizon is the bald hill behind the forest of masts; the chalk-white church becomes a lighthouse, the hilltop an atoll, and the treetops in front of it an outer reef. It's a short step into the distance, and a short step back again; long lines of fishermen's huts elsewhere on the horizon, in the harbor of another island, extend directly the lines of the old man's hand, which is resting on the windowsill of the old people's home. In the empty blue zenith above him appears the dark outline of a parachutist, revolving slowly, gliding this way and that, and finally, as a matter of course, landing on the old man's open palm in the shape of a light-winged linden seedpod, from which is hanging the “parachutist,” a little ball no larger than a juniper berry.
an archaic slatelike gray, and the elder bush climbing the plank wall has parallel branches that imitate the rungs of a ladder. The old man's gaze seems to postpone the coming of dusk and bathe its objects in daylight. The bays of shadow at the edges of the short, straight canal that runs through the grounds seem to frame the meanders of a great river; the trees of the long line of forest on the horizon beyond them are the masts of ships. Closer to the observer lies a strip of no-man's-land, traversed by an expressway; the inaudible cars become speedboats on a busy watercourse. The most distant point on the horizon is the bald hill behind the forest of masts; the chalk-white church becomes a lighthouse, the hilltop an atoll, and the treetops in front of it an outer reef. It's a short step into the distance, and a short step back again; long lines of fishermen's huts elsewhere on the horizon, in the harbor of another island, extend directly the lines of the old man's hand, which is resting on the windowsill of the old people's home. In the empty blue zenith above him appears the dark outline of a parachutist, revolving slowly, gliding this way and that, and finally, as a matter of course, landing on the old man's open palm in the shape of a light-winged linden seedpod, from which is hanging the “parachutist,” a little ball no larger than a juniper berry.
The old man moves. He starts walking back and forth between his window and the lectern. Each time he comes to the lectern he takes the pencil and, apparently holding his breath, adds a new sign at the foot of a column; back at the window, his lookout, he exhales slowly; that seems to bring out the last colors in the grass outside, in the oblique grooves on the porter's lodge, and in a folded wheelchair.
The signs in the notebook, however, are unrelated to what is going on outside; at the most they might stand for a feathered arrow, the forked end of a branch, or the whirls of a bird plunging through the air. The old man walks back and forth without his stickâit is leaning against the wall; his gait is not a shuffling but a sauntering, a negligent thrust forward of one leg after the other, which, oddly enough in so small a space, sometimes becomes a striding. A column of words is finally added to the signs: “participate”; “occasion?”; “gather”; “separate?”
The signs in the notebook, however, are unrelated to what is going on outside; at the most they might stand for a feathered arrow, the forked end of a branch, or the whirls of a bird plunging through the air. The old man walks back and forth without his stickâit is leaning against the wall; his gait is not a shuffling but a sauntering, a negligent thrust forward of one leg after the other, which, oddly enough in so small a space, sometimes becomes a striding. A column of words is finally added to the signs: “participate”; “occasion?”; “gather”; “separate?”
His day's work is evidently done. The old man sits down on the camp bed; wearing a loose-fitting suit and a fully buttoned shirt, he sits erect with his hands on his knees. The window is open and the roar of the Sunday-evening traffic pours in from the expressways, punctuated now and then by a backfire. Then comes a loud screech, followed at once by a crash. A brief silence is broken by screams of pain, fear, and horror, cries for help; finally a general shouting and bellowing, accompanied in the background by a mindless blowing of horns. The old man's window offers a good view of the goings-on. But he remains seated, apparently unmoved. Then by chance, in the midst of the sobbing and wailing from the scene of the accident, the institution's funeral bell starts to ring for an entirely different person. Though the clamor outside continues, now intermingled with the howling of sirens, and though the old man in his cell has raised his head to listen, he shuts his ears more and more resolutely to all that. What gradually becomes audible, drowning out the tumult, are bird calls and the flow of water in the little irrigation ditch, merging with the rustling of the trees in the park, ocean breakers, the chirping of birds,
the cry of gulls. The old man on the folding bed begins to rock back and forth from the waist and to tap his thighs with his fingers in the same rhythm. He leans his head back and opens his mouth, but no sound emerges. With his dilated nostrils and protuberant eyes he resembles an old, old singer, long fallen silent, whose singing today comes only from his hearing and seeing.
the cry of gulls. The old man on the folding bed begins to rock back and forth from the waist and to tap his thighs with his fingers in the same rhythm. He leans his head back and opens his mouth, but no sound emerges. With his dilated nostrils and protuberant eyes he resembles an old, old singer, long fallen silent, whose singing today comes only from his hearing and seeing.
The pencil lies diagonally across the book, in the small circle of light. Its upper surface is imprinted, in block letters: CUMBERLAND. The writing beneath the pencil suggests several trains waiting on parallel tracks, the words being cars and the signs locomotives. A whistle, as though to signal the trains' departure, is actually blown in the distance, prolonged by a whistle-blowing that fills the whole building.
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The whistling is repeated close at hand. The window past which the lighted train rolls over a bridge is not the one in the old people's home. It, too, is open, but it is rectangular, wider than it is high, and has no sill. The walls of the room are covered with photographs of all sizes, some in framesânot mere metal strips, but carved mahogany. The pictures are all of the same person: as a shapeless infant, as a sturdy toddler, as the youthful queen of a costume ball, and finally, in a variety of poses and with different sorts of lighting, as a beauty. In almost all the pictures she is alone andâwhether as infant or as young womanâalways displays the same look of imperiousness and of knowing herself to be the center of attention. All the pictures betray an indomitable self-confidence, with two exceptions. In the few photos that show her resting her head on a man's shoulder, her expression is naive or artificial; and in the one
picture of a little girl with a pigtail and white stockings, sitting on a wicker chest beside a bunk bed in a nursery suggestive of a stage setâthe slumped figure with her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap, and the for-once-perplexed eyes (which appear to be looking only at a wooden penguin about the same size as herself, holding a clothes hanger in its beak and bearing the legend: CLOTHES VALET)âshe seems vulnerable and forsaken.
picture of a little girl with a pigtail and white stockings, sitting on a wicker chest beside a bunk bed in a nursery suggestive of a stage setâthe slumped figure with her legs crossed, her hands folded in her lap, and the for-once-perplexed eyes (which appear to be looking only at a wooden penguin about the same size as herself, holding a clothes hanger in its beak and bearing the legend: CLOTHES VALET)âshe seems vulnerable and forsaken.
On one wall the photographs frame a mirror showing from behind the woman as she is now, with a bend in the part of her hair. Her hair seems wet. Clad in a white dressing gown, she is sitting at a desk, bent low over a copybook the size of a ledger. Seen from the front, her real face, as opposed to the one in the photographs, seems sullen, almost hard. With lowered eyes and pursed lips, she is wielding a thick fountain pen, blind to the last yellow glow in the sky outside the window, to the basket of fruit in the dining nook, to the bunch of flowers at the head of the enormous bed in the seemingly illuminated bedroom. In spite of the block letters, her writing is almost illegible; the few characters with anything approaching a shape have the sweep of Chinese calligraphy. However, she speaks in an undertone as she writes. Her fingers covered with ink spots, an extraordinarily large lump on her middle finger, she delivers herself, more or less, of the following: “He said I was always demanding love, though I myself was totally incapable of giving love. He said that I've never been anyone's wife and never will be. He said I was restlessness personified and whoever I was with I'd never give him anything but trouble. Sooner or later I'd inspire the gentlest person in the world with a destructive urge, in the form either of homicidal
frenzy or of a death wish, and convince him that this trait was his true character. He says the childlike creature who casts her spell on anyone she pleases turns out, once I've lured my victim into my child's lair, to be a monster from whose clutches there is no escape; he says I'm the witch Circe, who transformed every one of Odysseus' companions into a pig, and Odysseus himself as well. Living with me, he says, made him homesick for the fresh air of solitude and made him resolve, no, swear, never again to go near a woman. He says I brought him to the point that if the most glorious apparition made eyes at him, his only thought would be: Get lost! He asks why in all this time he has never learned to love me, why he has come to regard himself as hopelessly unlovable, and why he can't help hating himself as much as me for it. He cursed my father and mother. He cursed the place of my birth. He cursed my entire generation, calling us aimless, prematurely corrupt, profane, incapable of yearning. He said I had no interest in anything outside the two of us, no interest in work, nature, history, that I was obsessed with love, with twosomeness, and failed to understand that two people can attain happiness only with the help of something outside themselves. He says I have no ambition to achieve anything, that I lack the thirst for knowledgeâwhich might have enabled me to understand myself through my forebearsâor any longing for the unknown; he says I've been living in my apartment for ten years and still don't know the name of the mountain on the horizon, or of the river outside my window, or where the trains on the bridge out there are coming from and where they are going; he says the only place-name known to me in this city is that of the street I live on; he says the points
of the compass are all the same to me, that the word âsouth' means nothing to me but sea and sunshine, that if anyone mentions north or west I crinkle my nose and look bored. He says my reaction to any form of knowledge is to panic, as if someone were threatening to push me into a hostile element. He says I have no time for any person or thing other than myself, that however beautiful a thing may be, I barely take note of it and never look at it, and that as a result my conception of beauty or ugliness is unforgivably superficial; he thinks it outrageous that I find nothing worth looking at or listening to. And from this follows the worst thing of all, that with me no stability is possibleâand without stability there's no everyday life. Nevertheless, he says, he has discovered that some part of me is good and great. But it shows itself only on the fringes, and I give it neither time nor space. So, he says, I should finally forget my dream of becoming part of a couple, and in that connection he quotes
Parzifal
and
King Lear
to me: âA person of breeding does not speak of love.' And âLove, and be silent.'”
frenzy or of a death wish, and convince him that this trait was his true character. He says the childlike creature who casts her spell on anyone she pleases turns out, once I've lured my victim into my child's lair, to be a monster from whose clutches there is no escape; he says I'm the witch Circe, who transformed every one of Odysseus' companions into a pig, and Odysseus himself as well. Living with me, he says, made him homesick for the fresh air of solitude and made him resolve, no, swear, never again to go near a woman. He says I brought him to the point that if the most glorious apparition made eyes at him, his only thought would be: Get lost! He asks why in all this time he has never learned to love me, why he has come to regard himself as hopelessly unlovable, and why he can't help hating himself as much as me for it. He cursed my father and mother. He cursed the place of my birth. He cursed my entire generation, calling us aimless, prematurely corrupt, profane, incapable of yearning. He said I had no interest in anything outside the two of us, no interest in work, nature, history, that I was obsessed with love, with twosomeness, and failed to understand that two people can attain happiness only with the help of something outside themselves. He says I have no ambition to achieve anything, that I lack the thirst for knowledgeâwhich might have enabled me to understand myself through my forebearsâor any longing for the unknown; he says I've been living in my apartment for ten years and still don't know the name of the mountain on the horizon, or of the river outside my window, or where the trains on the bridge out there are coming from and where they are going; he says the only place-name known to me in this city is that of the street I live on; he says the points
of the compass are all the same to me, that the word âsouth' means nothing to me but sea and sunshine, that if anyone mentions north or west I crinkle my nose and look bored. He says my reaction to any form of knowledge is to panic, as if someone were threatening to push me into a hostile element. He says I have no time for any person or thing other than myself, that however beautiful a thing may be, I barely take note of it and never look at it, and that as a result my conception of beauty or ugliness is unforgivably superficial; he thinks it outrageous that I find nothing worth looking at or listening to. And from this follows the worst thing of all, that with me no stability is possibleâand without stability there's no everyday life. Nevertheless, he says, he has discovered that some part of me is good and great. But it shows itself only on the fringes, and I give it neither time nor space. So, he says, I should finally forget my dream of becoming part of a couple, and in that connection he quotes
Parzifal
and
King Lear
to me: âA person of breeding does not speak of love.' And âLove, and be silent.'”
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