My Year in No Man's Bay (27 page)
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hen a clarification was achieved after all. (If not, I either would still be sitting there at the scratched hotel table, having just reached the place where the first black-water tributary flowed into the Orinoco, or would be part of the musty air up in the crevasses of the Puigmal, the “Evil Peak.”)
hen a clarification was achieved after all. (If not, I either would still be sitting there at the scratched hotel table, having just reached the place where the first black-water tributary flowed into the Orinoco, or would be part of the musty air up in the crevasses of the Puigmal, the “Evil Peak.”)
It was the fault of a day after which I thought I was finally out of danger with my book. After over a hundred days, often spent from morning until late at night at my table, I decided to let the writing go the
following day, and merely polish my shoes in my room and then immediately set out across country.
following day, and merely polish my shoes in my room and then immediately set out across country.
It was a clear day in early spring at thirteen hundred meters above the level of the sea at Alicante, which is how the altitude is measured everywhere in Spain, and soon the high plateau of the Pyrenees stretched at my feet, a sparsely populated scene in a natural amphitheater, whose terraces I mounted, going up the mountainside from one granite block to the next. I moved in a daze, as if released suddenly from intensive care directly into the sunshine.
Yet I could not achieve high spirits or pleasure. And with every step it grew worse. It was far too late to return to my writing table, and not merely for today. The deferment had run out. I would not even make it into the evening on this day.
Although I pushed on, with the world panorama below me, it was a mere wandering in circles. My pencil fell from my hand. My story did not continue. In just this way a person I had seen die was still moving his lips to draw in air long after he had died, or kicked the bucket.
I, who knew of nothing more worthwhile to strive for than to become a part of the world, to see through the eyes of another person, to land with a drop of rain on the dust in the road, now experienced myself, no matter where I turned, as such a part, but in a completely opposite sense. How sweet and kind the planet showed itself to be, and at the same time I gagged at any phenomenon. And it gave me not the slightest relief to tell myself that this was nothing compared to the children dying at this moment around the world. I saw down below in the distance, from the city of Puigcerda, the smoke rising from the highlands hospital, found myself transplanted into the bone-hard suffering there, and even so would much rather have been lying there myself.
And just as little was achieved by the rebuke: in view of the millions of years represented by the granite cliffs at my back, what did I count for? And I also knew that even in a merry crowd, even among all my friends, I would not be any less on the brink than alone here by the garbage dump on the mountainous steppe of the enclave of Llivia.
Twice in the past months I had been thrown to the ground. Now I threw myself down, face to the ground, and experienced a previously unknown masculinity. But the earth did not help me. She did not take me in. She even pushed me away. She had nothing for me.
Eyes open, look, straight ahead! And I had no choice but to look straight ahead from where I was lying on the ground, at eye level the ruins of a house of the steppe. And my gaze did not let go, and did not let go, and did not let go, and surrendered all hope, and was no longer waiting for any sign.
A rusty stove was lying among the ruins, with an oven from which old newspapers and books stuck out. I eyed the book on top, actually more a large brochure with a picture on the cover that still had some faded color, a princess surrounded by dwarfs, with the Spanish words “Los cuentos de los Hermanos Grimm,” The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
Venerate the unfathomable in silence. But isn't the act of circumnar-rating it an essential part of that? Suddenly I was seized by the certainty that my book would remain a fragment, and that that was as it should be. And that was not yet all: it was not even a fragment, but, unbeknownst to me, narrated to the end.
New lids grew over my eyes. I leaped to my feet. For a while nothing more could happen to me. I ran up hill and down dale, my first time running in how long? And at the same time I remained rooted to the spot: everywhere it was the same, one place. The little brooks in the pastures, together with the granite-glittering fence posts along their banks a sort of signature of the Cerdanya highlands, were rushing, wherever I looked, as though just thawed, and the randomly scattered turret blocks of the Chaos of Targasonne, above the tree line, likewise looked as though they had just been melted free of the glacier, long since gone.
And I swore fidelity to such a picture of the world. Never again should it change suddenly into a chimera, and that was within my power. It was my gaze that made it this way. It was my blinking that divided it up and organized it. But now I had to get going, down to where people were. From now on, that was my place.
Without suffering any harm, I let myself drop that day from a cliff higher than I, stuck my hand into the thorns of a juniper cypress, waded through the icy waters of the RÃo Mahur along the border. On the last stretch, going uphill again to the terrace of the sturdy little capital of Puigcerda, I was accompanied by a shaggy dog, which then kept close to my side until late that night. In the local movie house, the Avinguda, more roomy than almost all movie houses in large cities nowadays, I saw
a sequel to
Jaws,
whose adventures, so harmless or peaceable compared to those I had just survived, gave me a warm glow around my heart. Afterward, with the dog tagging along, I followed in the darkness a woman who I thought had given me a sign with her hip, and at the very moment when I had decided to accost her and broke into a run, I fell flat on the street, tripping over the dog or a loose shoelace. Satisfied, I then dropped into the municipal casino, at that time still a traditional male stronghold, black with men's suits under white neon patterns on the ceiling, and, standing beside a stranger, I played pool with a sureness of aim and a casualness such as I otherwise have only when I am throwing something or sometimes selecting a word. I kept one eye on the always busy television screen, felt as caught up in the advertising images as in the reports of terrible events from around the world, absorbed it all with grateful gusto. Then I invited my partner to dinner, whereupon, on the terrace of the Maria Victoria Hotel, with a view of the snow-glowing highlands and the railroad station at the border, with the dog between us under the table, he told me his entire life story, including the bombardment of Puigcerdá in his early childhood, in which the casino was almost the only building left standing. I decided that if I wrote anything at all after my book, it would be simply as a chronicler. And then we went down the steep slope to the station. I had the choice of traveling from there either to Barcelona or to Perpignan, or, by way of Toulouse, to Paris or God knows where. In any case, I would leave the enclave the next day. Extraordinary how the world was open to me, into whose neck, just a few hours or moments ago, that string had still been cutting by which, according to an old custom of Cerdagne, killed moles are hung up in a row. That was the first time I felt balls of air swelling in my armpits.
a sequel to
Jaws,
whose adventures, so harmless or peaceable compared to those I had just survived, gave me a warm glow around my heart. Afterward, with the dog tagging along, I followed in the darkness a woman who I thought had given me a sign with her hip, and at the very moment when I had decided to accost her and broke into a run, I fell flat on the street, tripping over the dog or a loose shoelace. Satisfied, I then dropped into the municipal casino, at that time still a traditional male stronghold, black with men's suits under white neon patterns on the ceiling, and, standing beside a stranger, I played pool with a sureness of aim and a casualness such as I otherwise have only when I am throwing something or sometimes selecting a word. I kept one eye on the always busy television screen, felt as caught up in the advertising images as in the reports of terrible events from around the world, absorbed it all with grateful gusto. Then I invited my partner to dinner, whereupon, on the terrace of the Maria Victoria Hotel, with a view of the snow-glowing highlands and the railroad station at the border, with the dog between us under the table, he told me his entire life story, including the bombardment of Puigcerdá in his early childhood, in which the casino was almost the only building left standing. I decided that if I wrote anything at all after my book, it would be simply as a chronicler. And then we went down the steep slope to the station. I had the choice of traveling from there either to Barcelona or to Perpignan, or, by way of Toulouse, to Paris or God knows where. In any case, I would leave the enclave the next day. Extraordinary how the world was open to me, into whose neck, just a few hours or moments ago, that string had still been cutting by which, according to an old custom of Cerdagne, killed moles are hung up in a row. That was the first time I felt balls of air swelling in my armpits.
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t is another story altogether that the mutt ran off on me as I was making my way home in the dark, that when I passed the lonely border station in the no-man's-land just outside Llivia I wanted to be there in place of the uniformed guard watching television in his bare room under the stars of the Pyrenees, and that I choked on the final sentence of my book all through spring and summer, from one city in Europe to another, with the last line finally typed in Munich or somewhere or other, on the
day of the Blessed Virgin's birth or some day or other, in the garret in the house of my reader, who later told me he had just made up his mind, after days of silence behind my door, to break it down, when finally the typewriter started up, then again nothing for a long time, and then Gregor K. with a packet of manuscript and his traveling coat asking where the nearest post office was.
t is another story altogether that the mutt ran off on me as I was making my way home in the dark, that when I passed the lonely border station in the no-man's-land just outside Llivia I wanted to be there in place of the uniformed guard watching television in his bare room under the stars of the Pyrenees, and that I choked on the final sentence of my book all through spring and summer, from one city in Europe to another, with the last line finally typed in Munich or somewhere or other, on the
day of the Blessed Virgin's birth or some day or other, in the garret in the house of my reader, who later told me he had just made up his mind, after days of silence behind my door, to break it down, when finally the typewriter started up, then again nothing for a long time, and then Gregor K. with a packet of manuscript and his traveling coat asking where the nearest post office was.
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nd it is also another story that for at least the following year I considered my salvation or release into a new freedom, or this change, a delusion; I thought the verdict on me was still in force, and now, right now, the time to execute it had arrived.
nd it is also another story that for at least the following year I considered my salvation or release into a new freedom, or this change, a delusion; I thought the verdict on me was still in force, and now, right now, the time to execute it had arrived.
That this relentless pressure finally let up I owe to reading, not Holy Scripture, but the poet Friedrich Holderlin, who filled my veins with new blood, and then Goethe, who could be counted on to raise my spirits. This reading provided me with roots in the air and the light; and only on this basis did I then develop a sense for the Gospels, and not only the Christian ones. And simultaneously, although at the time I clearly understood religion, no matter which, as a given, even in previously incomprehensible variations, I still felt it was the highest calling to be a storyteller.
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s for my book on prehistoric forms, alias the chimerical world, I thought during my relapses that I had ended it wrong, and was thus a failure and at the same time finally in the place where I belonged, and then again that I could build the rest of my life on it, or at least a piece of my life.
s for my book on prehistoric forms, alias the chimerical world, I thought during my relapses that I had ended it wrong, and was thus a failure and at the same time finally in the place where I belonged, and then again that I could build the rest of my life on it, or at least a piece of my life.
My notion that no one would read it was not borne out. To be sure, many people, especially members of my own generation, distanced themselves from me and my project, wordlessly as a rule, almost considerately, and when someone did say something, he said he found the sentences too long, the words too archaic, the focus on nature too exclusive. But then, with the passage of time, new readers turned up, younger ones, and, something I had always wished for previously, above all older ones.
The reviews were nothing special. Only one of the critics, the cleverest
and at the same time the most limited, a man who presented his limitations as simplicity, sniffed out something and offered the opinion that the longing for salvation that presses on one of the heroes' eyelids was an infelicitous image, and wondered whether falling to one's knees, which happens to one of the characters in the course of events, provided a suitable position for thinking.
and at the same time the most limited, a man who presented his limitations as simplicity, sniffed out something and offered the opinion that the longing for salvation that presses on one of the heroes' eyelids was an infelicitous image, and wondered whether falling to one's knees, which happens to one of the characters in the course of events, provided a suitable position for thinking.
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uring the following year I remained in my birthplace, Rinkolach on the Jaunfeld Plain, taking shelter like a child in the cottager's house that had belonged to my parents, recently bought back by my successful brother, my almost-twin, the uncrowned king of our family, and yet again and again the loser (at the appointed time perhaps I shall write my first play about him, with the title “Preparations for Immortality,” a tragedy?).
uring the following year I remained in my birthplace, Rinkolach on the Jaunfeld Plain, taking shelter like a child in the cottager's house that had belonged to my parents, recently bought back by my successful brother, my almost-twin, the uncrowned king of our family, and yet again and again the loser (at the appointed time perhaps I shall write my first play about him, with the title “Preparations for Immortality,” a tragedy?).
Earlier I had thought of the house, which belonged to us three siblings, as my last refuge. Now it felt as though there I would finally make a real beginning. In my ancestral region, the world in the form of details now opened up to me as it had revealed itself to me in the suburbs of Paris. The way of seeing I had developed there had become so much my own that it persisted in this area, similarly simple and unpicturesque, as I now realized. At last Austrian objects, along with the spaces between them, showed themselves to me, and spread out to form an environment.
None of these things forced themselves on me any longer (which in my childhood had often made the impression of hypertrophy). Now on the plain the pines and firs stood there, and Globasnitz Brook and Rin-ken Brook flowed as all over the world, as above them much more than a purely Carinthian sky hovered blue.
And thus the place names in my more immediate homeland also acquired resonance and rhythm, even if only those of the villages: Dob, Heiligengrab, Mittlern, Bistrica, Lind, Ruden, and of course Rinkolach. The names of the towns, as small as they wereâBleiburg, Völkermarkt, Wolfsbergâremained mute, not to mention Klagenfurt or Villach. Only on the other side of the borders did it continue, with Maribor, Udine, Tricesimo.
And likewise the natives, though again only those in the villagesâ
which in any case were almost all I saw during that yearâstruck me as people from anywhere, with the appropriate horizon as a backdrop.
which in any case were almost all I saw during that yearâstruck me as people from anywhere, with the appropriate horizon as a backdrop.
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ll this I took in, and yet for a long initial period I was utterly incapable of having dealings with anyone. Even with my brother I could hardly get out a word. It was a kind of violence that forced me to hide myself from him as from the others, or to turn my head the other way.
ll this I took in, and yet for a long initial period I was utterly incapable of having dealings with anyone. Even with my brother I could hardly get out a word. It was a kind of violence that forced me to hide myself from him as from the others, or to turn my head the other way.
And even the simplest daily tasks I seemed to have to learn all over again: to put my jacket on a hanger, to make my bed, to get on a bicycle.
Once, when I was swimming absentmindedly, I paused and almost went under. Another time, when with my brother I had set out after all for the town of B., he sent me off to do an errand, and secretly watched me from outside on the public square, and afterward described how I had suddenly stood there with a package of butter in my hand, not knowing what to do next, and the cashier had had to reach into my pockets for the money, and, when I finally found my way back to him, the butter had melted between my fingers.
That I finally got my bearings can be ascribed, I believe, to the location of my bed or sofa, in the back corner of the entrance hall, under the stairs leading up to the former granary. My brother had hung a lamp for me there, with a switch next to it, and a table and stool also graced my little realm. Here, while reading, looking up through the cracks and knotholes, and likewise while sleeping, I was plainly gathering strength for the world outside. What a relief, simply to have the top of my head touching the underside of the stair treads when I sat there.
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