My Year in No Man's Bay (59 page)
Instead of continuing to wander around there, she worked until now, using a skill she had once acquired, one of her many, on the restoration of an early Christian Coptic church in Cairo. She was the oldest in the group. Yet no one would have noticed that; she presented herself as an apprentice just like all the others, and during this time made herself, as only she, the beauty queen, could, invisible.
Although there, already fairly close to the edge of the city, or at least in an enclave far from the center of town, almost exclusively natives were at work, in the barely chapel-sized building young people from all over the world had come together, youth such as was perhaps to be observed only here, at this little-bitty restoration work, on the door ornamentation, the inlays, and especially the frescoes, and otherwise nowhere else on earth.
From outside one's eye at first fell on only scattered individuals, for instance the girl up in the tower, who, her upper body leaning out of an opening, yet without twisting, was scrubbing down the wall. The interior, however, was packed, up to the ceiling, with similar young people, busy scraping, injecting, stroking, brushing. Each of these hand
movements required hardly any room, took place in one spot, like a dot, close to soundlessness, at the same time with an intensity that bent all parts of the body to the task. Often elbow to elbow with the next person, from one level of staging to the next, they all had a place to work in and radiated that certainty, as uncramped on their knees as on their tiptoes.
movements required hardly any room, took place in one spot, like a dot, close to soundlessness, at the same time with an intensity that bent all parts of the body to the task. Often elbow to elbow with the next person, from one level of staging to the next, they all had a place to work in and radiated that certainty, as uncramped on their knees as on their tiptoes.
The satisfaction, so quiet, that emanated from the restorersâalong with a little transistor-radio music, whether the Mississippi sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Central European Tyrolienne of Haydn, or the inner-Arabian singing of Uum Kalsum, at whose sound the walls of Jericho came tumbling down in an entirely different wayâwas, as the work progressed steadily, one that resulted from having time; or, as if what they were doing were something like gaining time, the most precious thing, not only for them, the young people, here alone, but of general utility and general validity: no matter what troop of warriors, to whom in their killing-training camp such a restoration might be shown on film, would have their eyes opened to the fact that in the current era there were other images besides those of the evil empire in their video games.
Yet away from such activity my woman friend was caught up in a state of near oblivion, menacing as never before. Not the fact that she was constantly losing her way in Cairo afflicted her, but that her wandering each time led her into seemingly permanently ruined and garbage-strewn areas, where the dusty lump of rubble that she just barely missed stepping on was the face of a human being, very alive and not at all old, lying there amid rags and charred animal skulls, and the rusty tin can next to him was his blood-warm hand. Once, thinking herself completely alone in an expanse of smoking tatters, she had, crouching down to relieve herself, almost done it on one of these seemingly camouflaged people, asleep, or unconscious, or dying.
More and more she felt the urge to fall down beside them. Into the North African winter she did not speak another word, remained, except when at work, silent even with herself, no longer knew her name (that single name that otherwise tripped off her tongue with such gentle self-confidence). It did her good, in between and on days of rest, to turn away from the unchanging, also all equally round and naive-eyed faces of the Coptic saints, which day in, day out were as close to her as under
a microscope, and look into those so differently alike faces of Egyptian antiquity, and at the bodies belonging to them, by no means so childlike, inside which, in the heart muscle, the pyramids had palpably been first of all, even before the actual building, like funeral barges ready to set sail for infinity.
a microscope, and look into those so differently alike faces of Egyptian antiquity, and at the bodies belonging to them, by no means so childlike, inside which, in the heart muscle, the pyramids had palpably been first of all, even before the actual building, like funeral barges ready to set sail for infinity.
Two cards Helena sent me, wordless ones: one of just such a broad-shouldered ancient Egyptian, striding along with a curved space between his trunk and the arch of his shoulders (unthinkable in Christian figures of that region), onto which she had sketched on one side the moon, on the other the sun; the second with a papyrus, as the hieroglyph for “green.”
Before her departure, she took the train to Helwan, up the Nile, where the deserts were closer, and also because of the similarity of the town with her “Helena.” (The river itself remained for her not only nameless; with time she had also forgotten it so completely that one day on a bridge her heart stopped at the sight of the oil-streaked water in the unsuspected depths.) In Helwan a December rain was falling, a child was making its way carefully through the wet part of a puddle, as if to wash off the citywide mud, and my woman friend sat down outside of town on a pile of rubble in the Arabian Desert, which appealed to her more because of its darker coloration, also the absence of human beings, than the left-bank section facing Libya. The sand there also had coarser grains, and the rain could be heard very clearly plashing on it, also more into the wide-open spaces, all the way toâhere articulated thoughts finally resumed inside herâ“the Red Sea,” over the empty, rippled expanse, which appeared tinted and inscribed like the roof-tile landscape back in Maribor outside her bedroom window. And here, too, there were sparrows.
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he painter lost in the course of this year just about everything that could be lost.
he painter lost in the course of this year just about everything that could be lost.
The Catalan state, whose reestablishment he, previously the world-famous artist of that country, had cursedâ“This state is an injustice, its establishers are traitors”âconfiscated his estates there. His foreign properties burned down, along with the arsenals of paintings. A new iconoclastic movement, fleeting as a dream and all the more lasting in
effect, also destroyed his works in museums (his black was stamped over with Day-Glo corrosive paint). The banks once founded specifically for painter-princes went bankrupt. One of the last gallery owners announced an exhibition with my friend's few remaining paintings and then disinvited him, without explanation. His film, which premiered in the fall in Madrid, in a theater so full that the audience was also sitting on the steps, was crowded out a week later by an American film, which the theater owner had to run, lest he be prevented from ever showing another Hollywood film. The one copy disappeared, and the original cans of film, the negatives, without which no further copies could be made, were tossed out onto the rails as worthless during a train robbery, run over by the train, and, it was reported on the news, shredded beyond repair.
effect, also destroyed his works in museums (his black was stamped over with Day-Glo corrosive paint). The banks once founded specifically for painter-princes went bankrupt. One of the last gallery owners announced an exhibition with my friend's few remaining paintings and then disinvited him, without explanation. His film, which premiered in the fall in Madrid, in a theater so full that the audience was also sitting on the steps, was crowded out a week later by an American film, which the theater owner had to run, lest he be prevented from ever showing another Hollywood film. The one copy disappeared, and the original cans of film, the negatives, without which no further copies could be made, were tossed out onto the rails as worthless during a train robbery, run over by the train, and, it was reported on the news, shredded beyond repair.
And still, after the time spent filmmaking, he was incapable of going back to his painting. “I don't know anything about painting, have never known anythingâexcept perhaps what not to do.” For a time there was probably a voice inside him repeating over and over that he was finished (or something of the sort). Yet the moment then came when he no longer wanted to have that said of him. To be sure, he seemed to accept it when on his trip up the Spanish
meseta,
to the sources of the RÃo Duero, here and there, in Tordesillas, in Burgos, in Soria, an old admirer expressed pity for him. Yet within himself he had long since achieved the Roman
amor fati,
love of fate. Yes, he was glowing with love for everything that had happened to him during the year. In the pitch-darkness within which he moved, his eyes opened wide not only with watchfulness but also with passion for knowledge. He was ready for a battle, though in his own way, instead of with clenched fists with fingers spread wide.
meseta,
to the sources of the RÃo Duero, here and there, in Tordesillas, in Burgos, in Soria, an old admirer expressed pity for him. Yet within himself he had long since achieved the Roman
amor fati,
love of fate. Yes, he was glowing with love for everything that had happened to him during the year. In the pitch-darkness within which he moved, his eyes opened wide not only with watchfulness but also with passion for knowledge. He was ready for a battle, though in his own way, instead of with clenched fists with fingers spread wide.
Later in the summer he then turned away from the water of the river, as if he did not want to see himself comforted by it anymore: it was comfort, in fact, which seemed to awaken in him that sorrow he had always resisted, out of the experience that it was almost certain to be followed by bad temper and even world-weariness. He swerved off to the south and all fall roamed back and forth across La Mancha, that almost shadowless rump and residual landscape, so easy to recapitulate with every glance, where the few watercourses had been dried out for years now, and as if forever.
He also ended up there farther away from the parts of Spain “behind the mirror,” Vigo, La Coruña, Pontevedra, the fjords deep in the interior
of Galicia, where he had shot his film and which, it seemed to him in retrospect, had been damaged by the picture making, the spotlighting. Although the camera had always remained at a distance, it was as if the areas had been plundered by the process. And only now, with time, and also with his, the responsible party's, distancing himself, did these areas gradually return to their senses and go back, recovered, like grass that bounces back after being trampled down, to their place behind the mirror, into the very special light there, which arrayed them as if nothing had happened.
of Galicia, where he had shot his film and which, it seemed to him in retrospect, had been damaged by the picture making, the spotlighting. Although the camera had always remained at a distance, it was as if the areas had been plundered by the process. And only now, with time, and also with his, the responsible party's, distancing himself, did these areas gradually return to their senses and go back, recovered, like grass that bounces back after being trampled down, to their place behind the mirror, into the very special light there, which arrayed them as if nothing had happened.
And he, as far from the sea as also from a source, now became in barren La Manchaâthe end of sorrow and of guilt, and no one left who recognized himâentirely free for his love of fate, a love that more than anything else drove him to create, but what? For the time being at any rate Francisco simply kept on reading that kindly master, Horace, who taught him that a god did not have to intervene in a situation until “the knot is worthy of such a savior.”
And now, yesterday, on a winter evening in Albacete, the city of knives, seemingly only recently bombed to pieces in the civil war, after one of his daily trips to the moviesâthe latest Hollywood himâmothered by the movies as in his childhood, the painter stumbled upon something in a corner of the open projection booth, without a projectionist: the copy of his
As I Lay Dying
that had disappeared from Madrid, six reels, too heavy for a man, but not for him: already they were stowed in his camper, ready to be shown when all his friends were gathered here in the no-man's-bay. And last night there appeared to him Horace, son of a freedman, with a little paunch, and instructed him to go out and simply ask a young person: “What should I paint?” Upon awakening, Francisco resolved to pose this question to Valentin, Gregor Keuschnig's son. He would have an answer for him, and he would act upon it. And the following morning the few paintings by the painter that had been spared by the iconoclasts revealed changes; for instance, mine here, the only piece of art in the house, had acquired a black rocky mountain hovering in the air, a hole, or rather a place where one could see through, while the other undamaged pictures changed their coloration.
As I Lay Dying
that had disappeared from Madrid, six reels, too heavy for a man, but not for him: already they were stowed in his camper, ready to be shown when all his friends were gathered here in the no-man's-bay. And last night there appeared to him Horace, son of a freedman, with a little paunch, and instructed him to go out and simply ask a young person: “What should I paint?” Upon awakening, Francisco resolved to pose this question to Valentin, Gregor Keuschnig's son. He would have an answer for him, and he would act upon it. And the following morning the few paintings by the painter that had been spared by the iconoclasts revealed changes; for instance, mine here, the only piece of art in the house, had acquired a black rocky mountain hovering in the air, a hole, or rather a place where one could see through, while the other undamaged pictures changed their coloration.
And soon after setting out for the north he drove on the high plateau past a shallow depression, apparently dug out centuries earlier, an empty square a little lower than the plowed fields already sown with winter
rye, a former livestock pen, overgrown, with bristly grass, the remains of a wooden fence, also of a shed, with shreds of horse tethers, on the ground a donkey's hoof, a bird skeleton, and he thought: “This is Cervantes' world! This is Spain!” and then: “This is what my next film will begin with,” and then: “How the human race needs such ridiculous, pointless, and one-sided heroes as Don Quixote from time to time!”
rye, a former livestock pen, overgrown, with bristly grass, the remains of a wooden fence, also of a shed, with shreds of horse tethers, on the ground a donkey's hoof, a bird skeleton, and he thought: “This is Cervantes' world! This is Spain!” and then: “This is what my next film will begin with,” and then: “How the human race needs such ridiculous, pointless, and one-sided heroes as Don Quixote from time to time!”
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he reader, on his tour of Germany, long after the end of the hostilities there, sparked his own civil warâto be precise, one day in some small city he took an iron rod and hurled himself at the tribe of automobile drivers lined up at a traffic light as if at a starting line, revving their engines and honking at each other. As a result of this violent act, which was leniently punished, to be sureâas an extenuating circumstance the “nosogenous” or illness-generating glitter of the thousands of chrome auto parts was citedâhe had once again become incapable of doing his reading, and to this day has not recovered, and the reading policewoman from Jade Bay was far away.
he reader, on his tour of Germany, long after the end of the hostilities there, sparked his own civil warâto be precise, one day in some small city he took an iron rod and hurled himself at the tribe of automobile drivers lined up at a traffic light as if at a starting line, revving their engines and honking at each other. As a result of this violent act, which was leniently punished, to be sureâas an extenuating circumstance the “nosogenous” or illness-generating glitter of the thousands of chrome auto parts was citedâhe had once again become incapable of doing his reading, and to this day has not recovered, and the reading policewoman from Jade Bay was far away.
In this state of deprivation, however, he gained the ability to articulate what reading had meant to him, and would mean again. “When I could still read, I looked at the individual words until I saw them in stone or on barkâexcept that the words had to be the right ones. Heart of the world, writing: a secret matched only by the wheel and the eyes of children. I must read again. Reading would be a passion, a wondrous one, if it is a passionate desire for understanding; I feel compelled to read because I want to understand. Not simply to plunge into reading: you must be receptive to a particular story or book. Are you receptive?”
In compensation for having forfeited his reading for the time being, he had become capableâagain as a result of loss?âof a kind of looking fundamentally different from contemplating: an accomplishment, a very rare and precious one. The object looked at, however inconspicuous, could expand into the entire world. Looking in this way, he had the paradigm of the world before his eyesâonly he could no longer say it. “So I simply have to say it anew!” And in looking at an object until he had become part of the object (just as during his reading period he had looked at many a word until he became the word), he became disarming, of himself first of all, and had a contagious effect.
And for this period, for the summer, for the fall, and up to this day, in winter!, objects in his Germany, previously inexplicably abstract and downright nauseatingâan old phenomenon, not merely since the last Reichâfinally also became concrete, just as, from time immemorial, so many, so wonderfully many German words had been. After the civil war, a clothes hanger in a German hotel room, a lamp, a chair, a wheelbarrow up on a German railroad platform took onâan unprecedented occurrenceâshape, were nothing to be ashamed of, O peace!, the sight of them no longer pierced one to the heart. During this autumn they filled out and actually acquired color, even “apples from German orchards,” and then, when on the same day the first postwar snow fell, from the Kiel Canal down to the Saarland, there was a new generation of children, who, unlike the previous ones, upon seeing snowflakes when they woke up, no longer merely stared at them dully.
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