B0040702LQ EBOK (36 page)

The barracks was hit by a bomb and the roof of the officers'
mess collapsed in on us. Soon afterwards, in the hospital to
which I was taken, I learned that my companion had been
killed in the bombing. As for myself, when the region where
the hospital was situated fell (it happened so suddenly there
was no time for evacuation), I was taken prisoner. When I was
freed, the war was over, and I was alone, with no money to
finish my education. How I began to write for the theatre,
and the circumstances by which I became a well-known
playwright, have no relevance to these pages. In any case, that
night in the train, my thoughts always came to a halt, over and
over again, no matter how hard I tried to cross the barrier, at
the night the bombs fell.

I arrived at my destination somewhat tired from the journey. My good friend Dr. H. met me with a group of students.
My friend and I embraced, and the young people greeted me
warmly, to which I responded in kind. I realised at that point
that my plays and critical essays were considered significant in that little world. I had noticed something similar on other
occasions, on other journeys, when young people would
gather round me, as though I had managed to express something they felt was important, and they wanted somehow to
let me know.

And so there arose the usual situation, which in this case I
would have liked to avoid: I was accompanied everywhere I
went - first of all to my hotel, where they had reserved a
magnificent room for me - and I was showered with attentions; there were constant questions, innumerable demonstrations of respect. I would have preferred to be alone for a few
hours, to wander by myself round my old haunts and relive
some of the feelings of that time when, amidst the horrors of
war, we dreamed of a better world and mingled with so many
people we would never see again. Yet how could I desert these
young people, with whom it was, in any case, so pleasant to
walk and talk? Eventually, in the late afternoon, I gave my
lecture on the artistic and social function of university
theatres, and after dinner, I said my farewells to everyone - I
would be leaving early the next morning - and told Dr. H.
that I felt like going for a stroll around the town on my own.
He thanked me for coming and promised to be at the station
the next morning to see me off.

So I walked off down the main street, where the darkened
doorways, for some reason, gave me an unpleasant feeling.
`Terrifying places,' I said incoherently, as though remembering something. I was approaching familiar territory, the area
surrounding my barracks. What would I find in its place? Had
it been rebuilt? Beneath a street light that I thought I recognised was a street name I did not. Apart from that, everything
else - the slope of the street, the coat of arms above the door
of a large house, the clock tower - was exactly the same.
`Some things,' I thought superficially, `never seem to change.'
That thought consoled me a little for the melancholy I was
beginning to feel, as I had on other occasions, about the passing of things we love, the death of cherished objects. This
feeling has always made me fearful of returning to places I
have been before, places where I've known people or loved someone. It began when I was a child and ever since then I
have continued to experience in similar circumstances the
same anguished emotion. On my way home from school as a
boy, I was often afraid I would find the main door half-closed,
and that would mean someone in my family had died. Once,
when I was older, for I was in secondary school at the time, I
did come home to discover the door half-closed: terrified, I
rushed upstairs, to find everything as I had left it, and my
mother smiling. I nearly burst into tears. And all through my
life, as I say, I've had the same reaction. I tremble when I
approach the scenes of my childhood. I rejoice in every tiny
item that has not changed, it makes me feel relieved and hopeful, and I'm scared to go on looking, exploring more surfaces,
because I know I'm going to find signs of deterioration and
evidence of the ravages of time. I realise that everything tends
to decay, and what I can't understand is how we manage to
endure. Anything that is worn or dilapidated arouses this
anguish in me; for example, wrinkles appearing on the faces of
those I love. My heart turns over whenever I see someone I
love falter on a staircase, or begin to breathe a little heavily
after an exertion. `Come on, chin up,' I think, nearly in tears;
`we mustn't give up just yet; hang on a bit longer, I need you
and I wouldn't know what to do, where to look, if you
weren't around. The fact of the matter is, when I think about
death, my only consolation is that it will happen to me too. I
couldn't bear to be the one left behind. If death has to come,
let it take me too.'

What was I going to find that night? So many years had
passed, I was surely going to find myself in another world.
Everything I remembered - the tavern, the moss-covered
square - would have gone; like so many things from that
period, when I was still happy, because I had not yet learned
to experience time as something that ravaged the soul. I was, I
recalled, a sort of Epicurean in my modest way; I lived each
moment and enjoyed or suffered every instant according to
what chance brought my way; I was unaware of the past (I
forgot it, let go of things as they faded and never thought of
them again) and I felt no anxiety about the future; I could see nothing of what lay before me; I was blind to it and to everything else beyond the horizon of the immediate. What
horrible destruction was I about to encounter? The passing of
so many years is like a cataclysm. What would be left standing?

No, it was all just the same. When I reached the square, I
was convinced that instead of the barracks, destroyed in the
bombing, I would find a park or a tall building, or maybe
another barracks built in a modern style. Or a convent. But no,
the barracks had been rebuilt on the site, following the plan of
the old one. The high tower . . . The sentry box, from which,
no doubt, a pair of eyes was watching me now ... the flagpole,
with the flag at present lowered ... I remembered my surprise
on the earlier occasion, but I felt nothing special on seeing it
now. I stood and gazed in delight at everything in the square. I
felt the joy and relief that I mentioned earlier. I wanted to
believe that, within existence, there are fragments that are
incorruptible, and if we could somehow lodge in one of those
we would be safe from destruction and decay. I was standing
before one of those fragments now. Of everything present,
only I had aged. How wonderful to see the green grass. I
refused to contemplate how much of that lawn had died and
been reborn in the intervening years. At eye-level, everything
was exactly the same: the bronze statue, the bay windows on
the houses, the bus stop, the door of the old tavern, on whose
lintel one could read the notice, painted in ox-blood red:
Wine Retailers.

Now for the difficult bit. I felt anxious just thinking about
the interior of the tavern. Everything material might still be
there, the stone, the metal, but what about the people? I
thought of not going in, staying outside, and by not going in
to find out, preserving the illusion that Senor P. would still be
joking behind the bar. But what if it was true? What if Senor
P., though now very old, was still there? It would be wonderful to see him, strong as the iron railings my tired gaze now
rested upon. I went in. No, I did not notice any great change.
The atmosphere was just the same as it had been in my time.
It was as though I had only been away for a couple of hours
in the middle of the day. There stood Senor P's daughter, apparently wearing the same apron she always did, and not
looking noticeably different. `So there are people, too,' I
thought, `who never change.' All the same, I was certain she
would not recognise me. I looked her straight in the eye and
ordered a glass of wine in the bantering manner we young
officers had used. I meant it as a joke, to jog the girl's memory.
To my surprise she carried on the joke with complete naturalness: `One glass of wine coming up, Lieutenant.' She had
recognised me too. We both laughed then and I stared down
at my wine, somewhat shyly. I was playing for time, turning it
all over in my mind. I noticed that the girl was wearing black;
probably for her father, though I seemed to recall that she had
always dressed that way. So there was still room for hope. But
how could I ask her? What if my question revived a dormant
grief? I took a sip of wine and the taste had a magical effect,
like one of Proust's madeleines, or the feeling Cocteau
describes in his Opium. Revisiting the district where he lived
as a child, as he ran his fingers over the walls of the houses, at
the height a child's hand would reach, he heard the sound of
memory playing in his head, like a gramophone record. The
wine, of course, was the same wine as before. The local wine.
There was nothing strange about the fact that it was the same,
nor that the taste of it, associated with so many things from the
past, should bring some ghosts to life. Helped by the atmosphere of the place, with its echoes of military life: that officer
sitting in front of a glass of beer writing a letter, whom, at first
glance, in the dim light, I had taken for one of my former
army comrades. The uniform, the way he sat! ... nothing
surprising about those, either. I ordered another glass of wine,
then another; and it was only then that I realised how fond I
had once been of wine. Yet this time, I felt it was doing me no
good, indeed it was making me feel queasy. I now believe it
was the wine that finally persuaded me to ask the girl, with
feigned casualness: `What about your father? Where is he?'
`He's inside, having a bite of dinner,' the girl answered. `He'll
be out in a minute.' This was great news, and it persuaded me
to order another glass of wine and drink it exultantly, with a
toast to those things that never die and a nod to good old Parmenides, whose poem on the subject I tried in vain to
recall.

So then I turned my attention again to the officer writing
the letter and again I thought to myself, more forcibly this
time, that he was very like my friend, Lieutenant R., the
one who had died in the bombing raid and whose air of
abstraction, in the empty officers' mess, I now recalled with a
shudder. It was a searing vision. I stared fixedly at him and he
seemed to feel my gaze on the back of his head. At any rate, he
turned round, looking annoyed, but his face immediately
cleared when he saw me, and I realised that it really was him. R.
- for there was no doubt it was my friend - moved his lips and
some words could be heard, in a tone I recognised, although I
immediately noticed something odd: the movement of the
lips did not initially correspond precisely to the words spoken,
as though there were a slight fault in synchronisation, as sometimes happens with films; but on this occasion, the fault was
quickly corrected and everything began to work smoothly.
Lieutenant R. had greeted me by name and promised to finish
his letter quickly and join me in a couple of glasses of wine
and a chat. Though shaken, I agreed, so as to have time to
think about what was going on; these strange events could
hardly be blamed on the wine I had drunk.

The girl invited me, as usual, to have one on the house, and
I was transfixed with fear on noticing my arm, resting on the
counter; around it was the sleeve of a uniform on which I
noticed the dull gleam of a lieutenant's stripes. So I did not
initially register the fact that Sr. P. had come out into the bar,
until I heard his voice commenting with his usual joviality on
some aspect of the war, probably the scarcity and cost of
everything. I raised my head slowly, hoping to see in his face
something that would rescue me from this dreadful delusion
into which I was sinking; but my shipwreck continued relentlessly. Senor P. was the same as ever, an elderly man smoking
his famous pipe with youthful delight: `So, Lieutenant,' he
said to me, `how goes the war? Will the front hold?' I tried to
answer politely, but I could tell him nothing; perhaps because
I was befuddled with wine, or perhaps because it had been a long time since the events he was asking about (if, indeed, I
ever knew the answer). I stammered out a foolish reply and
Senor P. must have realised how drunk I was, for he discreetly
dropped the subject, puffing instead on his briar pipe and
slowly exhaling the smoke.

When Lieutenant R. joined me and put a friendly arm
round my shoulder, I offered him a drink without looking at
him, nor did I look at him as he sat drinking it by my side.
When the air-raid sirens finally began, I was incapable of running back to the barracks. R. told me later that I collapsed
when I tried to stand up - a dispatch rider with a siren had
driven noisily past the tavern - and that was what saved our
lives. The next day, still suffering the effects of a massive hangover, I learned that the barracks had been destroyed in the
bombing and that the wall of the officers' mess had collapsed,
though no one could tell me if there had been anyone inside
when disaster struck.

Our unit was transferred, and I was disciplined for not
being in the barracks that night, when I should have been on
call. When I tried to explain what had happened, it was useless: the year was 1938, and I couldn't be a post-war dramatist.
R. died shortly after, fighting at the front, and I was sent to
a psychiatric hospital in B . . . , by the sea. As the end of the
war approached, I crossed over into France, where I suffered
the rigours of a concentration camp guarded by Senegalese
soldiers, until I managed to fix myself up with a labouring job
in a small town in eastern France, near the German border.
Having joined the French Resistance, I marched at the head
of the troops that entered the town of T ... the day France
was liberated. I must have been drinking too much during all
those years, for when I became aware of the danger it was
already too late: I had become an alcoholic. I had a reputation
as a heavy drinker who got into absurd scrapes. In this lamentable state, I enlisted in the Foreign Legion, at a time when
there was a need for cannon fodder in Indochina.