Brodeck Page 23

  The day was another in an unbroken series of scorchers, yet it seemed peculiar, hollowed out inside, as if its center and its hours were unimportant and only the evening worth thinking about, waiting for, yearning toward. As I recall, after I returned from the inn that day, I didn’t leave the house again. I worked at putting the notes I’d taken for the past several months in order. My scribblings covered a variety of subjects: the exploitation of our forests; sections already cut and scheduled to be cut; assessments for all the parcels of land; replanting; sowing; timberland most in need of cleaning up next year; distribution of firewood-cutting privileges; reversals of debt. Hoping to find relief from the heat, I’d chosen the cellar for my workplace, but even there, where an icy perspiration usually dampens the walls, I found nothing but heavy, dusty air, barely cooler than in the other rooms in the house. From time to time, I heard the sound of Poupchette’s laughter above my head. Fedorine had placed her naked in a big wooden basin filled with fresh water. She could stay in there for hours, tirelessly playing the little fish while Amelia sat at the window near her, hands flat on her knees, staring out at nothing and intoning her melancholy refrain.

  When I came up from the cellar, Poupchette, rubbed, dried, and entirely pink, was having a big bowl of clear soup, a broth of carrots and chervil. She called to me as I was preparing to go out: “Leave, Daddy? Leave?” She bounded off her chair and ran to throw herself in my arms.

  “I’ll be back soon,” I said. “I’ll come and kiss you in bed. Be good!”

  “Good! Good! Good!” she repeated, laughing and spinning around like someone dancing a waltz.

  O little Poupchette, some will tell you you’re nobody’s child, a child of defilement, a child begotten in hatred and horror. Some will tell you you’re a child of abomination conceived in abomination, a tainted child, a child polluted long before you were born. Don’t pay attention to them, my little sweetheart, please don’t listen to them; listen to me. I say you’re my child and I love you. I say beauty and purity and grace are sometimes born out of horror. I say I’m your father forever. I say the loveliest roses can bloom in contaminated soil. I say you’re the dawn, the light of all my tomorrows, and the only thing that matters is the promise you contain. I say you’re my luck and my forgiveness. My darling Poupchette, I say you’re my whole life.

  Göbbler and I closed our doors behind us at the same moment, and we were both so surprised that we simultaneously looked heavenward. Our houses, fashioned for winter, are naturally dark, and we often have to burn one or two candles, even on bright, sunny days, in order to see. When I stepped out of the dark interior, I expected to find, as soon as I crossed my threshold, the leonine sun that had roared down at us unremittingly for the past several weeks. But it was as if an immense, drab, grayish-beige blanket, streaked with black, had been cast over the whole sky. On the eastern horizon, the crests of the Hörni were disappearing into a thick, metallic magma, speckled with fleecy blotches, which gave the suffocating impression of gradually sinking, lower and lower, as if it would eventually crush the forests and stave in the roofs of houses. Fitful patches of brightness mottled the dense mass here and there with a false, yellowish light, like aborted, soundless flashes of lightning. The heat had grown sticky and seized our throats like criminals’ hands, slowly but surely strangling us.

  After our first surprise had passed, Göbbler and I started walking: at the same time, in the same tempo, side by side, trudging like a pair of robots down the dusty road. Bathed in that strange illumination, it looked as though it were covered with birch ashes. The smell of chicken feathers and chicken droppings floated around me, a sickening, corrupt odor as of flower stems rotting in vases and neglected for days.

  I had no desire to talk to Göbbler, and the silence didn’t bother me. I expected him to start a conversation at any moment, but he uttered no sound. We walked through the streets like that, mute, rather like two men on their way to a funeral who know that all words are useless in the face of death.

  In proportion as we drew near the inn, more and more silhouettes joined us, gliding out of side streets and lanes, slipping out of alleyways and doorways, and walking beside us, as silent as we were. It may be that the general silence was due not to the prospect of discovering what we were going to be shown in the inn but to the sudden change in the weather, to the thick metallic cope which had brought the afternoon to a dark, winterish end and was still covering the sky.

  There was no woman in that stream of men, which swelled with every step. We were all men, nothing but men, men among men. And yet, there are women in the village, as there are everywhere else, women of every sort, young, old, pretty, and very ugly women, all of whom know things, all of whom think. Women who have brought us into the world and who watch us destroy it, who give us life and often have occasion to regret it. I don’t know why, but that’s what I thought about at that moment, as I walked along without saying anything, in the midst of all those men who were walking along without saying anything, either, and I thought especially about my mother. About her who does not exist, whereas I exist. Who has no face, whereas I have one.

  Sometimes I look at myself in the little mirror that hangs above the stone sink in our house. I observe my nose, the shape and color of my eyes, the color of my hair, the outline of my lips, the formation of my ears, the shade of my skin. And aided by all that, I attempt to compose a portrait of my absent mother, of the woman who one day saw the little body emerge from between her thighs, who cradled it to her breast, who caressed it, who gave it her warmth and her milk, who talked to it, who gave it a name, and who no doubt smiled a smile of happiness. I know what I’m doing is futile. I’ll never be able to compose her features or draw them out of the night she entered so long ago.

  Everything had been turned upside down inside Schloss’s inn. The place was unrecognizable. It was as if it had put on a new skin. We went in on tiptoe, almost not daring to enter at all. Even those ordinarily incapable of keeping their mouths shut remained speechless. Many turned toward Orschwir, apparently under the impression that the mayor was different from them and would show them what was to be done, how they should behave, what to say and not to say. But Orschwir was like everybody else. Not any cleverer, not any wiser.

  The tables had been pushed against one wall, covered with clean cloths, and laden with dozens of bottles and glasses, lined up like soldiers before a battle. There were also big platters piled with sliced sausages, pieces of cheese, strips of lean bacon, slices of ham, loaves of bread, and brioches, enough sustenance to nourish a regiment. At first, all eyes were attracted by that array of food and drink, which was lavish to a degree that is rarely seen among us, except at certain weddings where well-to-do peasants unite their progeny and seek to impress their guests. And so it was only later that we noticed the cloths hanging on the walls, covering what appeared to be about twenty picture frames. Members of the company pointed out these objects to one another with quick chin movements, but there was no time to say or do anything else, because the staircase steps began to creak and the Anderer appeared.

  He didn’t have on any of the bizarre clothing that people had willy-nilly grown accustomed to—no frilly shirt, no jabot, no frock coat, no stovepipe trousers. He was simply wearing a sort of large, ample robe, which covered his entire body and fell to his feet, baring his big neck in a way that made it look disembodied, as though an executioner had neatly lopped off his head.

  The Anderer walked down a few steps. He made an odd impression, for his robe was so long that even his feet were hidden; he seemed to glide along a few inches above the floor, like a ghost. No one who saw him said a word, and he precluded any reaction by beginning to speak himself, in his discreet, slightly reedy voice: “I have long searched for a way to thank you all for your welcome and your hospitality. The conclusion I reached was that I should do what I know how to do: look, listen, and capture the souls of people and things. I have done much traveling, all over the world. Perhaps that is the re
ason why my eyes see more and my ears hear better. I believe, without presumption, that I have comprehended you yourselves to a great degree, and likewise this landscape which you inhabit. Accept my little works as homages. See nothing more in them. Mr. Schloss, if you please!”

  The innkeeper had been standing at attention, awaiting only this signal before going into action. On the double, he sped around the perimeter of his inn’s main room, whipping off the cloths covering the pictures. As if the scene were not yet sufficiently strange, this was the moment when the first thunderclap sounded, loud and sharp, like a whip cracking on an old nag’s rump.

  The perfumed card had told the truth: there were portraits, and there were landscapes. They weren’t, properly speaking, paintings, but rather ink drawings, sometimes composed in broad brushstrokes, sometimes in extremely delicate lines jostling, covering, and crossing one another. To see the pictures up close, we passed before them in procession, as though making a strange Way of the Cross. Some in attendance, such as Göbbler and Lawyer Knopf, who were both blind as bats, practically pressed their noses against the pictures; others did the opposite, backing away to take the full measure of a drawing and falling behind the rest of the company. The first cries of surprise and the first nervous laughs came when some of the men recognized themselves or others in the portraits. The Anderer had made his selection. How was not clear, but the portrait subjects he had chosen were Orschwir, Hausorn, Father Peiper, Göbbler, Dorcha, Vurtenhau, Röppel, Ulrich Yackob (the verger), Schloss, and me. The “landscapes” included the church square and the low houses around its perimeter, the Lingen, Orschwir’s farm, the Tizenthal rocks, the Baptisterbrücke with the grove of white willows in the background, Lichmal clearing, and the main room in Schloss’s inn.

  What was really curious was that although we recognized faces and places, no one could say that the drawings were perfect likenesses. It was almost as though they elicited familiar echoes, impressions, resonances that came to mind to complete the portraits which were merely suggested in the pictures before us.

  Once everyone had completed his little round, things began to get serious. The company turned its back to the drawings as though they had never existed. There was a general movement toward the laden tables. You would have thought that most of the men in the inn had neither eaten nor drunk for days, so savage was their assault on the refreshments. In no time at all, everything that had been put out disappeared, but Schloss must have had orders to provide a steady supply of full bottles and platters because the buffet never seemed to be depleted. Cheeks grew flushed, foreheads began to sweat, words became louder, and the first oaths reverberated off the walls. Many in the group had doubtless already forgotten why they had come, and no one was looking at the pictures anymore. The only thing that counted was what they could get down their throats. As for the Anderer, he had disappeared. It was Diodemus who pointed this out to me: “Right after his little speech, he went back up to his room. What do you think about that?”

  “About what?”

  “About this whole affair …” Diodemus waved a hand at the exposition on the walls. I believe I shrugged my shoulders. “It’s funny,” he said. “Your portrait, I mean. It doesn’t look very much like you, and yet, it’s completely you. I don’t know how to describe it. Come have a look.”

  Not wanting to be disagreeable to Diodemus, I followed him. We slipped past the bodies in our way, with their emanations, their smells, their sweat, their beery or vinous breath. Voices were growing heated and so were heads; many of the company were talking very loud. Orschwir had removed his velour hat. Lawyer Knopf was whistling. Zungfrost, who ordinarily drank only water, had downed three glasses under compulsion and was starting to dance. Three laughing men held back Lulla Carpak, a vagrant with yellow hair and the complexion of a radish, who as soon as he got drunk always felt an absolute need to break someone’s face.

  “Take a good look,” Diodemus said. We were standing before my portrait. I did what he suggested. At length. Initially, I didn’t fix my attention too closely on the lines the Anderer had traced there, but then, little by little, and without understanding why or how, I went deeper and deeper into the drawing.

  The first time I’d seen it—a few minutes earlier—I hadn’t noticed anything. My name was written under it, and maybe I felt a bit embarrassed about being portrayed, because I’d quickly turned my head away and hurried on to the next picture. But when I saw it again, when I stood in front of it and considered it, it was as if it sucked me in, as if it came alive, and what I saw were no longer lines and curves and points and little blots, but entire pieces of my life. The portrait the Anderer had composed was, so to speak, alive. It was my life. It confronted me with myself, with my sorrows, my follies, my fears, my desires. I saw my extinguished childhood, my long months in the camp. I saw my homecoming. I saw my mute Amelia. I saw everything. The drawing was an opaque mirror that threw back into my face all that I’d been and all that I was. Diodemus, once again, brought me back to reality.

  “Well?”

  “It’s peculiar,” I said.

  “If you look, if you really look, it’s like that for everyone: not really faithful, but very true.”

  Maybe it was Diodemus’s passion for novels that made him always peer into the deepest folds of words and caused his imagination to run ten times faster than he did. But on that particular occasion, what he said to me wasn’t stupid. I made one more tour around the room, studying the drawings the Anderer had put up on the walls of the inn. The landscapes, which had at first struck me as run-of-the-mill, came to life, and the faces in the portraits told of secrets, of torments, of heinousness, of mistakes, of confusion, of baseness. I’d touched neither wine nor beer, and yet I tottered and my head spun. In Göbbler’s portrait, for example, there was a mischievousness of execution which caused the viewer, if he looked at the image from the left, to see the face of a smiling man with faraway eyes and serene features, whereas if he looked at it from the right side, the same lines fixed the expressions of the mouth, eyes, and forehead in a venomous scowl, a sort of horrible grimace, haughty and cruel. Orschwir’s portrait spoke of cowardice, of dishonorable conduct, of spinelessness and moral stain. Dorcha’s evoked violence, bloody actions, unpardonable deeds. Vurtenhau’s displayed meanness, stupidity, envy, rage. Peiper’s suggested renunciation, shame, weakness. It was the same for all the faces; the Anderer’s portraits acted like magic revelators that brought their subjects’ hidden truths to light. His show was a gallery of the flayed.

  And then there were the landscapes! That doesn’t seem like much, a landscape. It has nothing to say. At best, it sends us back to ourselves, nothing more. But there, as sketched by the Anderer, landscapes could talk. They recounted their history. They carried traces of what they had known. They bore witness to events that had unfolded there. In the church square, on the ground, an ink stain, located in the very spot where the execution of Aloïs Cathor had taken place, evoked all the blood that had flowed out of his beheaded body, and in the same drawing, if you looked at the houses bordering the square, all their doors were closed. The picture displayed only one open door, the one to Otto Mischenbaum’s barn. I’m not making anything up, I swear it! For example, if you tilted your head a little while looking at the drawing of the Baptisterbrücke, you could see that the roots of the white willows figured the shapes of three faces, the faces of three young girls. In the same way, if you squinted slightly when you looked at the picture of the Lichmal clearing, you could make out the shapes of the girls’ faces in the oak branches. And if I was unable at the moment to discover what was to be seen in some of the other drawings, that was simply because the events they alluded to hadn’t yet taken place. At the time, for example, the Tizenthal rocks were just that, dumb rocks, neither pretty nor ugly, figuring in neither history nor legend, but it was before the Anderer’s drawing of those very rocks that I found Diodemus. He was planted in front of it like a milestone in a field. Transfixed. I had to say his name
three times before he turned a bit and looked at me.

  “What do you see in this one?” I asked.

  “Several things,” he said dreamily. “Several things …”

  He added nothing more. Later, when he was dead, I had (needless to say) time to reflect. I thought about the Anderer’s drawing again.

  I suppose it could be said that I’ve got a hot head and a broken brain. That the entire rigmarole with the drawings was pure nonsense. That an unsound mind and deranged senses would be required for someone to see in those simple doodles everything that I saw. And that it’s surely easy to bring all this up for consideration now, when there’s no proof of anything, when the drawings no longer exist, when they’ve all been destroyed. Yes, exactly right, they were all destroyed! That very evening, no less! If that’s not proof, then what is it? The drawings were ripped into a thousand pieces, scattered to the four winds, or reduced to ashes, because they said, in their fashion, things that should never have been said, and they revealed truths that had been carefully smothered.

  As for me, I’d had more than enough.

  I left the inn when drinking was proceeding at a steadily increasing pace and men were bellowing like beasts, but they were still happy beasts, merrily carousing. Diodemus, for his part, stayed until the end, and I got my account of what happened from him. Schloss continued to bring out pitchers and bottles for about an hour after I left, and then, the ammunition having run out, an armistice was abruptly declared; evidently, the sum agreed between him and the Anderer had been reached. From this point on, everything went sour. At first, there were words, followed by a few deeds, but nothing really nasty as yet—general grumbling, a bit of breakage, nothing more serious than that. But then the nature of the grumbling changed, as when a calf is separated from its mother’s teats; at first it whimpers, but then it resigns itself and looks around for some other amusement, some small raison d’être. The change came when everyone recalled the reason why they were all there in the first place. They turned back to the drawings and considered them again. Or differently. Or with the scales fallen from their eyes, if you will. In any case, they took another look at the pictures and saw themselves. Exposed. They saw what they were and what they had done. They saw in the Anderer’s drawings everything that Diodemus and I had seen. And, of course, they couldn’t bear it. Who could have borne it?