My Tired Father (2 page)

A young woman appointed professor in a gigantic school resolved to love her students

A photographer left his wife and felt compelled to accept the invitation of a priest retired to the south The priest succeeded in reconciling the separated couple

A man was stretched out next to his wife The ceiling reproduced the incline of the roof

A yellow spot seemed to emerge from its own absence

Two ladies told each other the scariest stories about the stagecoach They said it had turned over the day before they said that last year it had run over a child etc Speaking thus of catastrophes they came to the balloon that had recently fallen on British soil

For them even the meeting made sense even the walk in the mud with Abend

With that man alone lost in a black hostile immensity (many wanted to prolong their studies)

I gnawed on a little crust of bread to annihilate the emotional force of reverie

Afterward the thought lead me to the man fishing with bread He was neither my friend nor a close or distant relation He was small and green something of a recluse who says "ska-oo" and leaves his excrements when someone chases him from the tree trunk on which he has settled

The others did not let me even though I beat them with sticks and struck them with rocks They had no sense of discipline When I fell asleep they slid over me licking my lips and looking for meat

Now and then I woke up punching whoever was on me He fled howling frightfully The others followed One time one of them slipped and kicked me in the eye When I in turn hit him the others wanted to tear me to pieces

Consequently we longed for our muddled bodies

We indulged ourselves on leveled ground while we pecked at the earth

I don't know whether the feeling of encirclement followed on the affective void or vice versa

I nearly forgot one detail the earth was completely covered with a carpet

On the following mornings I went to the university around nine o'clock My legs were tied on with straps and on my head I wore the usual crested hood like a dwarf People seemed quite disappointed with my very rudimentary technical equipment and tried to convince me to give up the hood

It was a matter of finding again the central point from which each would have been able to return to his initial asymmetry

In selecting calligraphic works one voted with the aid of small pieces of cardboard As for the rest the selection was made by a show of hands

It was still more difficult with flat objects (for example the elk antlers)

Through brutal but precise experiments I searched for an explanatory model because even the physical schema of agitation could no longer serve me as a basis

I said bed for painful

The horror of the void became once again its own inverted retort

The grand champion A happy dog

On the other hand I gave proof of remarkable qualities by becoming the lover of a dentist whom I absolutely wished to marry But her assistant for the sole purpose of discouraging me maintained that the dentist was already married

It was clear that she thus meant to attract the attention of the most influential and at the same time most sentimental circles

From time to time she collapsed with a bird noise A little while later a small mouse covered with yellow grass sprang up in her place

To stop the penetration of the wax into her bones I lightly wetted them using to this end a paintbrush

Five years later she enrolled in physics and mathematics courses She lived in an attic and subsisted on milk and fruit

Then she asserted that she would to take me very far away to the Orient

In those days Abend came to repair the armchairs Francois-Marie I said to him there are those immense adjustable panels sometimes pink sometimes violet and they decompose us and we shine

Ageless women gravitated around us The heads of some of them emanated light

The visitors turned in a circle toward the left

The dogs accompanied by trainers lined up for the obedience test

The apples fell on the grass and were eaten with devotion

We sat lined up in silence on the low ridge of the roof of a nearby building We waited without much hope but also because we had nothing better to do

In any case I can swear that all we could do was unleash a mechanism of possible action Those who showed the fewest signs were the most worried

Thank you sir said a young girl with a charming smile I don't know what I would have done without you

I don't know you but modesty is a girl's most beautiful adornment which doesn't mean much she told me on another occasion

She was one of the cleanest and most demanding creatures but when I visited her they warned me to watch out for her black-and-white striped legs that struck with the force of a catapult

I touched her forehead and ascertained that it was as cold as marble

The dog's mechanism kept working Its amorphous and disordered memory became richer

I impregnated the untreated canvas I toned down the intensities I neutralized the shadows Fortunately the experience of space embarrassed most of us

The others appealed to the comforting feeling of confidence the sentinels gave and they over-estimated their prospects by eating decently

They rediscovered the plumb line and the double ladder

The calculation of the total points was made at well- lighted tables

Concomitant with the arrival of the eighth everywhere

Someone managed to press his face to the window before being beaten down with a stick and falling next to the wall where he was immediately and Pitilessly trampled underfoot

The ball or the fire element digested Under another form it colored the liquid which it changed into blood And still it shone in our eyes and glistened on our skin

At table I sat next to an old man glad to be with me That's instructive he said His hair was graying and naive He was a widower

I waved my hat as the guests left But they were far away in the room with the Pompeian pictures

A coach awaited me in front of the house I had to visit the forest

A half-hour's walk could do me nothing but good for I was soaked and frozen but I went into the watchman's cottage and left him my little bottle of rum and my provisions for the road

A messenger on horseback came to meet me

Some women passed by They stopped a moment greeted me then went on their way Their faces seemed very familiar

Afterward I visited the swamps The watchman explained everything and his stories made a deep impression on me Pardon me for talking like this to you he used to say And perhaps that he was right The nine tubes produced nine tones The second tone was obtained by shortening the first tube by half

To make the third tone the second tube also had to be shortened by half For the rest one manipulated small black sticks

When I explored the grottoes a blinding light overwhelmed me and I regrouped

Then I had at most an allegorical sense but even that was sustained more by force of habit

I traveled through a symmetrical garden In its center next to the fountain were a pendulum and a chair From there I looked at the landscape and I said It seems to me that I've already come this way but the color prevents my recognizing the surroundings

In that inexhaustible region there was a kind of signature on the sand if you will and I deciphered it with a complete lack of external senses

I did some enthusiastic reading in Malmo but not being able to put up with the climate I had to leave There I met Catherine Mahoney a young actress a real star (she lifted her eyes to the sky) My pohems enchanted her she adored me and her family kicked her out of the house

She listened with true devotion with complete abandon to each word I spoke and never offered her own opinion

All her deepest inclinations and especially her predilection for silence brought up in a strange way the ease with which this frail and gracious creature could penetrate any word whatever and transform herself into that word

A few constant signs warned us of other sometimes accessible meanings

I listened to how the exaltation I knew so well reflected in her voice but she brusquely interrupted herself as if she were awake and put her hand on the boat's railing and on my hand

What made understanding more difficult was the permanent solicitation of ambiguity

At a certain moment that I would be tempted to place toward evening I grabbed a ladder I leaned it against the wall and I got ready to climb up to her

That's when I received that blow between my neck and shoulders

At her age girls sleep peacefully but I had seen her suddenly wake up get out of bed and go out She went as far as the gate There she sat down on a rock and started to cry

She put on her most beautiful dress When she saw her father she no longer feared him she had the strength to stop obeying him Making a gesture with her hand she whispered to him only in passing I'm saying farewell for the third and last time

I sprayed her face with water in an effort to wash off the mud I took care always to have my back to the embankment I untied the stone I took the shell out of her mouth I took her in my arms carried her to the car and put her down between the front seats

Borrowing a bicycle I was going to tell the driver that I had arrived then I hid beneath the sandy shoals in the muddy water

While the parents crowded in a circle with a contented look congratulated themselves on their partially articulated speech

The watchman somberly flapped his wings and pointed out some obscure thing in the north

Upon her return to a small island she gave birth to a daughter The little one came into the world so unexpectedly we were forced to put up at a castle Mother and child found shelter there but her heart was broken (she wiped her eyes with her index finger)

After the ceremony there was a dinner during which I chose a name I improvised something about it then I asked that they take the chairs from the room so we could dance

Someone went behind the house to check on a water drop Maybe it was inherited or a recurrence of the rhythmical phenomenon

The old winged author of food

The conversation remained fixed in the bones

Certainly there was a physical resemblance but it could well have been just a simple coincidence

A month later I encountered a pedestrian who whistled as he approached us I heard his whistling before I saw him Still whistling he passed Catherine and continued on his way

A few days later I spotted another pedestrian a small man walking behind Catherine without anyone hearing his footsteps I had the impression she hadn't noticed him that's why I told her Let him go by We walked three abreast and Catherine Mahoney was at the side of the road

From time to time Iran into two individuals always the same ones who wore around their faces a kind of white collarette If I looked up I saw only the sky

A rather curious detail When I went into the room I always found it full of cotton batting and broken tiles The windows and the door were always shut tight

Compelled to leave on the first morning train I examined the ground under the window of the room and found no traces

Someone was saying that all these things were due to a magnetic force unleashed either by the peculiar nature of the terrain or of Catherine Mahoney's body

Recently I had succeeded in endorsing her prototypical character and in confirming the similitude linking her to the sands technique

I had invented a velvet-lined solar system Its poles generally pointed in the same direction but with a little more vertical inclination

Afterward I moved up to a narrow orange margin with a white corner

We had been together for more than ten years an unusual thing if one takes into account the brief existence of the others

After the birth I moved to another house

As a professional in various bands I had studied the tuba the electric bass and musical instruction

Before an excited crowd I noticed that my hair had turned gray

I played saxophone clarinet and flute

I played saxophone and clarinet I was the youngest

I played saxophone oboe and French horn

I played trumpet fliigelhorn and piano I had received a scholarship

I asserted that we were witnessing a slow and general atrophy

I manifested myself by closing my eyes and opening them but in the most frequented rooms I stamped my feet and snapped my fingers

The space between the walls had been filled with earth

One of us (the drummer) would say nothing One fine day he declared to the horror of everyone present I don't know what's the matter sometimes I feel utterly alone

He turned to the others and said It's absolutely necessary that I phone home

Which lived under the waters of the sea

(The notes in question belonged to the translator Dr. Abend now employed by the Sprachen und Deltmescher Institut of Hamburg who was capable of rectifying all the tendentious interpretations made of them)

Then came lead and copper

Compressed in action

Sitting in the center a young man was running and (pallas) Below two over the body of one

The paint applied to the body shone In three times the great solitude

We finished our dressing with accessories alien in principle to male attire which stressed even more the picturesque character of the waist

Catherine Mahoney moaned softly in the room She was very young with her hair undone and she stroked her forehead in an unconscious gesture

My angel she said and with arms outstretched moved toward the window

At our approach she would move farther away

She experience the heroic aggressiveness of children

She had had the luck to witness several births of this type

The eye with which she saw was not a human eye Because what's more while breathing

She had youth on her side (upper-right photo)

A copy did not correspond to her absolutely simultaneous remembrance

At a given moment she covered my whole visual field she had the complexion of a two-year-old girl (in the middle of the corridor the carpet had a wet spot)