The Fata Morgana Books (2 page)

— WINTER 1996

My misfortune is that there had been this contact, that a part of me had remained caught by her and had gotten me tangled up in the workings of this machine. Without that, nothing would have happened, I could have admired her, desired her calmly, and her indifference would never have touched me. It had begun during a brief visit to K — . I had met an old friend there, A., who had put me up at her place, on her sofa. C., who shared the apartment with A., had come back at four in the morning (the train, apparently, had gotten stuck), making a huge racket because she thought the door was locked, and had left again at six. During the day, I had come across her at A.’s office, overexcited, always in motion, a manic whirlwind that left no room for getting acquainted. She seemed unable to stop even for an instant. Her features were hard, but mobile, and not without beauty; and especially she had a furious energy, concentrated on work to the exclusion of all else, but capable too at times of generating bursts of lively cheerfulness that lit up those who otherwise just kept bouncing off of her or bumping against her. A. had already left, leaving me in the apartment. I would probably not have seen much of C., since I myself was supposed to leave the next day; that morning, there were riots in the city, all flights were suspended, and we stayed stuck in the apartment. In the afternoon, unable to bear it any more, C. decided to go out, and I offered to go with her; the authorities, because of the situation, had forbidden the use of vehicles; adhering to the letter if not the spirit of their instructions, we went out on foot. At the time I had a slight injury on my big toe, an injury that due to the climate and the irregularity of my way of life had degenerated into a nasty infection. So I was limping, and our journey across the city was a comic spectacle—she straight, proud, hurried, and I hobbling along, more than a little amused by the situation. Our shopping done with, as all work was out of the question for that day, we sat on the terrace of a bar on the main street for a beer. This was the first time since she had arrived in K — , she told me, that she had taken such a break. We chatted, she told me about her many trips, her stays in countries where I myself had long dreamed of going. An old comrade, whom I hadn’t seen in a year, joined us, just as surprised as us by this unexpected day off, and we traded a few memories of the country where we had met, an atrocious region, but one that had seduced us both. The beer was cold, the terrace sunny, the rioters passed by in commandeered trucks, waving green branches and chanting slogans against the new authorities. It was pleasant, I think I can say that even C. had relaxed a little, and we were both in a cheerful mood when we returned to the apartment. The state of my foot had grown worse, and it had become very painful to walk. C. offered to cut open the abscess a little in order to relieve it. I had had a few drinks, and I agreed. I settled into an armchair and lit a cigar as she set to work, my foot wedged between her thighs. Her colleague D., exhausted, had fallen asleep sitting on the sofa, and the wild laughter that the pain of the operation strangely caused me didn’t awaken her. Between fits of laughter I dragged furiously on my cigar, C. kept making me drink and scraping away at the infection; I took such a keen pleasure in this charming operation that I hardly noticed the discomfort. I put an end to it when I reached the end of my cigar. C. held my foot very tenderly, she cleaned it and bandaged it properly; D., waking, went to bed. C. and I, I think, stayed talking for a long time. Our hands sought each other, touched, played with each other, intertwined. We were still drinking, nothing else happened, the damage had already been done.

The next morning I found C. in her usual frenzy. She was leaving on a mission to the other side of the country; having already lost twenty-four hours, her natural impatience had been exacerbated, and the office resounded with her orders and her movements. I found her sitting down for a minute, thinking, and I took her hand; she was smiling, and mechanically stroked my palm. I had to leave, she was running down a hallway, also in a hurry: she kissed me quickly on the mouth and disappeared.

The airport was a complete mess. Six huge military cargo planes had landed one after the other, no one could point mine out to me; I limped furiously from one to the other, grinding my teeth in pain as the sun beat down on me, winding my way between the sacks of food and the crates of supplies being unloaded, the pickup trucks weaving across the tarmac, the furious soldiers, the lines of haggard people waited to be evacuated, I called out in Russian to the Ukrainian or Lithuanian pilots to ask their destination, they themselves often weren’t sure. I actually came close to getting on the wrong plane and landing in the wrong country. I found C. under the wing of an Endover, crouching down with two colleagues, making plans and issuing last-minute instructions. She greeted me distractedly, everything was so confused that I didn’t pay much attention to it. I climbed into the Endover; she was taking one of the big cargo planes heading west.

I had counted on seeing her the following week; but it would be over a month. The day before my return to K — , a doctor friend examined my foot and formally forbade me to travel. I was dismayed, but there was nothing to be done: the infection was far advanced, it was threatening the bone, I needed surgery right away. The country where we were didn’t have adequate infrastructure; he advised me to go to the capital of a nearby country, where there was an excellent hospital. Appalled by the idea of not being able to join C. again, I had to resign myself to it. In K — , C.’s favorite perfume had disappeared; a friend had quickly shipped me a bottle; unable to go offer it to her in person, I packed it up and, before my departure, asked her office to forward it to where she was. I added a magnificent card, a Vermeer showing a girl sitting at a table in front of a window, her face in full light, holding a glass and smiling at a proud soldier shown from behind. I found this girl’s face luminous, and I wrote a brief message on the back of the card: I tried for a charming, ironic tone, I don’t know, maybe I succeeded. I was too unsure of what was happening really to express what was overwhelming me, but I also didn’t want to seem cold, indifferent, as my letters so often are, incapable of expressing true emotions. Still in doubt, I sealed the card and handed it and the perfume over to a colleague of C.’s, who promised me they’d be forwarded.

He would not keep his promise; but then nothing would happen as planned. C. in fact still hadn’t returned to K — : this news, which had wrenched my heart when I learned it, consoled me a little now for my forced departure, and I hoped that my return from convalescence would coincide with hers. Such was not to be the case, of course. The Fates, those teases, reveled in scrambling up our movements. The operation went very well, my surgeon turned out to be an old and admirably eccentric German, who livened up the procedure by holding forth, as he cut away at me, on the history of the medical use of cocaine from 1875 to the present. I thus learned that the invention of cocaine derivatives, preserving the anesthetic properties of the product while suppressing its euphoric aspects, had been stimulated by the excessive love the greatest doctors and surgeons of the time had for this drug, a love that motivated them to empty their shelves of it in order to consume it through the nose, the veins, and even, at that time, through the eyes. This problem, quite embarrassing for the reputation of the medical profession, came to an end in 1919 with the appearance of Novocain, a distant and coarse ancestor of the miraculous molecule that now made it possible that only the unpleasant scraping sound of the scalpel carving through my flesh distracted me from the surgeon’s eloquence. I had to keep to my bed for a few days; once I was, precariously and painfully, on my feet again, I inquired about departing flights. I was booked on a Friday light for G — , the city where most of the flights leaving for K — originated. I had a lot of work to catch up on elsewhere, but I wasn’t worried about taking the not very professional liberty of adjusting my travel plans this way. I called K — : C. was neither there, nor even in the city in the West where she had stayed to work (the city of M — ), but had returned to G — to report on her activities. I was delighted: I could, without any qualms, spend the weekend in her company in G — , then see to my affairs elsewhere and join her again later on. Then the people who controlled the airplanes canceled my booking: there was freight, they explained, that was more important. There were no planes before Monday, I was in despair, I knew that C. would have gone back to M — by then. For some time now, I realized, this woman had completely occupied my life, and at bottom I even delighted at the suffering that the impossibility of seeing her again caused me, so strong was the emotion. I decided to call her in G — (I was very anxious about how she would welcome such an importunate step): she seemed delighted to hear from me; her voice pierced my soul. She was leaving Saturday for K — , then from there for M — . I asked her to wait for me before going to K — , she couldn’t, but promised to meet me again a little later. “See you soon, dear child,” she said as she hung up; torn between the pleasure these words gave me and the frustration of not being able to see her again, I spent the afternoon trying every way possible to find a plane. Another organization had chartered one, I contacted a friend there, he promised to find me a seat on it; two hours later, he called me back to explain that his boss had vetoed it (I learned later on that another woman, whom I only barely knew, but who for a reason I never found out heartily detested me, had struck my name from the list). I thus spent several hours oscillating between the most violent hope and the blackest rage. I stormed, limping from one office to the other, I drove the secretaries mad with my obstinacy, I forced them to chase down leads whose uselessness was obvious, but which made them lose their time and their patience. At six in the evening, a miracle occurred: the first carrier, whom I had called back as a last resort, calmly informed me that he not only had room for me, but also for some two hundred kilos of freight that I was supposed to bring back. This was a call to action, since of course the freight wasn’t ready, the customs papers were missing, the freight forwarder was closed for the day: by eight o’clock, though, everything was in order. I had to be at the airport at six in the morning, I was there at 5:30, it didn’t open till 6:30, and at 7:00 they came to tell me that the plane had broken down and wouldn’t fly that day. My despondency was so profound that I was only barely aware of the appalling comedy of the situation. In the afternoon I called C. again: she was still leaving the next day and couldn’t delay her trip, but hearing her comforted me a little. I did indeed leave the next day. The plane was flying on to the city where I was supposed to work,there was no point for me to get out at G — , now that C. was no longer there. On the flight, I devised the mad hope of meeting her for a few minutes on the tarmac in G — , of being able to speak to her even if only for a moment, see her eyes and her smile, kiss her. Her plane, of course, had left hours earlier.

I spent a week working with my colleagues, and I planned then on returning to K — : I had in fact to settle some debts there, which justified a trip that my sense of duty would not otherwise have permitted. I had to go back through G — , the planes for K — were canceled several days in a row; but C. was still in M — , so I was patient. C.’s superior then told me that she was supposed to return to K — on Wednesday, the day of my own departure. I was happy, but terrified at the idea of another unforeseen occurrence. The plane I was supposed to take would fly on from K — to M — and then return to K — ; before I learned she would be on the return trip, I had decided to make this additional journey and bring her a flower, even if only to see her for half an hour. So I modified this plan somewhat: I would get off at K — , but would still send her the flower, without telling her from whom it came, to greet her in the plane. The spitefulness of an office manager, who also seemed to hate me, nearly made me miss this plane: whereas I had booked my seat days before, my name didn’t appear on the list, and the employee in charge of boarding refused to let me get on. I must have looked quite a sight in my wretchedness, standing on the tarmac holding a big yellow flower, so incongruous in this context that I hesitated for a long time before daring to take it with me. But a friend showed up at the right moment, one who supervised the flights directly, and he put me on the plane. On board there was a Swede who was continuing on to M — : I gave him the flower, with precise instructions. The flight was horrible, we were caught for half an hour in a violent storm; I reassured myself by telling myself that such bumps must be normal for such a small plane, but when we arrived in K — , I saw that the pilots were livid. I soon came across C.’s superior, with whom I was developing a strong camaraderie; C. was supposed to arrive a few hours later.

I found her that afternoon in the offices, amazed that there hadn’t been any additional mishaps, that she hadn’t, for instance, returned to G — without stopping in K — . “So, you didn’t want to make the round trip to accompany me,” she scolded. “Ah, but I sent you a flower in my place.” She hadn’t received it, the Swede had forgotten it on the plane. She had seen it when boarding and wondered who it could be for, where it could have come from. Even for that, I was happy of the gesture. As for the perfume, she told me later, it had never been sent on to M — , but she had picked it up during her trip to G — , and it had made her very happy, these last few weeks, to be able thus to fight the abominable stench of the people she had to take care of.

She had kissed me in a friendly way when I arrived; everything, from that moment on, would become more difficult. I said so earlier, I had gone too far forward, I had too hurriedly opened a door that my instincts, in general quite good, usually kept firmly closed.