And now Lotaria opens her folder, begins to read. The barbed-wire fences dissolve like cobwebs. All follow in silence, you two and the others.
You immediately realize that you are listening to something that has no possible connection with Leaning from the steep slope or with Outside the town of Malbork or even with If on a winter’s night a traveler. You exchange a quick glance, you and Ludmilla, or, rather, two glances: first questioning, then agreeing. Whatever it may be, this is a novel where, once you have got into it, you want to go forward, without stopping.
Without fear of wind or vertigo
At five in the morning, military vehicles crossed the city; outside the food stores lines began to form, housewives with tallow lanterns; on the walls the propaganda slogans, painted during the night by the teams of the various factions of the Provisional Council, were not yet dry.
When the band’s musicians had put their instruments back in their cases and came out of the basement, the air was green. For part of the way the patrons of the New Titania walked in a group behind the musicians, as if reluctant to sever the bond that had formed in the club during the night among the people gathered there, by chance or habit, and they went forward in a single party, the men inside the turned-up collars of their overcoats, assuming a cadaverous look, like mummies brought into the open air from the sarcophagi, which, preserved for four thousand years, in a moment crumble to dust; but a wave of excitement, on the contrary, infected the women, who sang, each to herself, leaving their cloaks open over their low-cut evening dresses, swishing their long skirts through the puddles in unsteady dance movements, thanks to that process peculiar to intoxication which makes a new euphoria bloom from the collapse and dulling of the previous euphoria, and in all of them there seemed to remain the hope that the party was not yet over, that the players at a certain point would stop in the middle of the street, reopen their cases, and again take out their saxophones and double basses.
Opposite the former Levinson Bank, guarded by squads of People’s Guards with bayonets fixed and cockades on their caps, the party of night owls, as if the word had been given, broke up, and each went off his own way, not saying good-bye to anyone. The three of us were left together: Valerian and I took Irina by the arm, one on each side. I was always at Irina’s right, to leave room for the holster of the heavy pistol I was wearing, hanging from my belt; as for Valerian, who was in civilian clothes since he was a member of the Heavy Industry Commission, if he was wearing a pistol—and I believe he had one—it was surely one of those flat ones you can carry in your pocket. Irina at that hour became silent, almost gloomy, and a kind of fear crept into us—I speak for myself, but I’m sure Valerian shared my mood, even if we never exchanged any confidences on the subject—because we felt this was when she truly took possession of the two of us, and however mad the things she would drive us to do once her magic circle had closed and imprisoned us, they would be nothing compared to what she was concocting now in her imagination, never pausing in the face of any excess, in the exploration of the senses, in mental elation, in cruelty. The truth is that we were all very young, too young for everything we were experiencing; I mean us men, because Irina had the precocity of women of her sort, even though in years she was the youngest of the three; and she made us do what she wanted.
She began whistling silently, Irina, with a smile in her eyes, as if savoring in advance an idea that had come to her; then her whistle became audible, a comic march from an operetta then in fashion, and we, always a bit afraid of what she was preparing for us, began to follow her, also whistling, and we marched in step as if to an irresistible fanfare, feeling ourselves at once victims and victors.
This was as we passed the Church of Saint Apollonia, then transformed into a lazaretto for cholera patients, with the coffins displayed outside on sawhorses surrounded by great circles of lime so that people wouldn’t approach, waiting for the cemetery wagons. An old woman was praying, kneeling outside the church, and as we proceeded to the sound of our irresistible march, we almost trampled on her. She raised against us a little fist, withered and yellow, wrinkled as a chestnut, propping herself up with the other fist on the cobblestones, as she shouted, “Down with the gentry!” or, rather, “Down with! Gentry!” as if they were two curses, in crescendo, and as if in calling us gentry she considered us doubly cursed, and then a word in the local dialect that means “brothel people,” and also something like “It will end”; but at that moment she noticed my uniform and was silent, hanging her head.
I am narrating this incident in all its details because—not immediately, but afterward—it was considered a premonition of everything that was to happen, and also because all these images of the period must cross the page like the army vehicles crossing the city (even if the words “army vehicles” evoke somewhat indefinite images; it’s not bad for a certain indefiniteness to remain in the air, appropriate to the confusion of the period), like the canvas streamers hung between one building and the next to urge the citizenry to subscribe to the national loan, like the processions of workers whose routes must not coincide because they are organized by rival trade unions, one demonstrating in favor of the unlimited continuation of the strike in the Kauderer munitions factories, the other for the end of the strike in order to assist arming the people against the counterrevolutionary armies about to surround the city. All these oblique lines, intersecting, should define the space where we moved, I and Valerian and Irina, where our story can emerge from nothingness, find a point of departure, a direction, a plot.
I had met Irina the day the front collapsed, less than twelve kilometers from the Eastern Gate. While the citizens’ militia—boys under eighteen and old men from the reserves—was taking up a position around the low buildings of the Slaughterhouse—a place whose very name had a ring of ill omen, but we didn’t yet know for whom—a flood of people was withdrawing into the city over the Iron Bridge. Peasant women balancing on their heads baskets with geese peeping out, hysterical pigs running off among the legs of the crowd, followed by yelling children (the hope of saving something from the army’s requisitions drove the rural families to scatter their children and their hogs as much as possible, sending them off at random), soldiers on foot or on horseback who were deserting their units or trying to regain the body of the dispersed forces, elderly noblewomen at the head of caravans of maidservants and bundles, stretchers with the wounded, patients discharged from the hospitals, wandering peddlers, officials, monks, gypsies, pupils from the former College of Officers’ Daughters in their traveling uniform—all were channeled through the grilles of the bridge as if swept along by the cold, damp wind that seemed to blow from the rents in the map, from the breaches that ripped fronts and frontiers. There were many that day seeking refuge in the city: those who feared the spreading of riots and looting and those instead who had their own good reasons for not being found in the path of the reactionary armies; those who sought protection under the fragile legality of the Provisional Council and those who wanted only to hide in the confusion in order to act undisturbed against the law, whether new or old. Each felt his personal survival was at stake, and precisely where any talk of solidarity would have seemed out of place, because what counted was clawing and biting to clear a path for yourself, there was nevertheless a kind of common ground and understanding established, so that in the face of obstacles, efforts were united and all understood one another without too many words.
It may have been this, or it may have been that in general confusion youth recognizes itself and rejoices: whatever it was, crossing the Iron Bridge in the midst of the crowd that morning, I felt satisfied and lighthearted, in harmony with the others, with myself, and with the world, as I had not felt for a long time. (I would not like to use the wrong word; I will say, rather: I felt in harmony with the disharmony of others, myself, and the world.) I was already at the end of the bridge, where a flight of steps led to the shore and the river of people slowing down and jamming, forcing some to shove backward
to avoid being pushed against those who were going down the steps more slowly—legless veterans who rested first on one crutch then on the other, horses led by the bit in a diagonal line so the iron of their hoofs would not slip on the edges of the iron steps, motorcycles with sidecars that had to be lifted and carried (they would have done better to take the Wagon Bridge, as the pedestrians did not fail to shout at them, inveighing, but this would have meant adding a good mile to the trip)—when I became aware of the girl who was coming down beside me.
She wore a cloak with fur at hem and cuffs, a broad-brimmed hat with a veil and a rose: not only young and attractive but also elegant, as I noticed immediately afterward. While I was looking at her obliquely, I saw her open her eyes wide, raise her gloved hand to her mouth which was gaping in a cry of terror, and then sink backward. She would surely have fallen and been trampled by that crowd advancing like a herd of elephants if I had not been quick to grab her by the arm.
“Are you ill?” I said to her. “Lean on me. It’s nothing, don’t worry.”
She was rigid, unable to take another step.
“The void, the void down below,” she was saying. “Help ... vertigo...”
There was nothing visible that could explain any vertigo, but the girl was truly panic-stricken.
“Don’t look down, and hold on to my arm. Follow the others; we’re already at the end of the bridge,” I say to her, hoping that these are the right notions to reassure her.
And then she says, “I feel all these footsteps come loose from the stairs and move forward in the void, then plunge ... a crowd falling...” And she digs in her heels.
I look through the spaces between the iron steps at the colorless flow of the river down below, transporting chunks of ice like white clouds. In a distress that lasts an instant, I seem to be feeling what she feels: that every void continues in the void, every gap, even a short one, opens onto another gap, every chasm empties into the infinite abyss. I put my arm around her shoulders; I try to resist the shoves of those who want to proceed down, who curse at us: “Hey, let us past! Go do your hugging somewhere else! Shameless!” But the only way to elude the human landslide that is striking us would be to walk faster into the air, to fly.... There: I, too, feel suspended as if over a precipice....
Perhaps it is this story that is a bridge over the void, and as it advances it flings forward news and sensations and emotions to create a ground of upsets both collective and individual in the midst of which a path can be opened while we remain in the dark about many circumstances both historical and geographical. I clear my path through the wealth of details that cover the void I do not want to notice and I advance impetuously, while instead the female character freezes on the edge of a step amid the shoving crowd, until I manage to carry her down, almost a dead weight, step by step, to set her feet on the cobbles of the street along the river.
She collects herself; she raises before her a haughty gaze; she resumes walking and does not stop; her stride does not hesitate; she sets off toward Mill Street; I can hardly keep up with her.
The story must also work hard to keep up with us, to report a dialogue constructed on the void, speech by speech. For the story, the bridge is not finished: beneath every word there is nothingness.
“Feeling better?” I ask her.
“It’s nothing. I have dizzy spells when I least expect them, even if there is no danger in sight.... Altitude or depth makes no difference.... If I gaze at the sky at night, and I think of the distance of the stars ... Or even in the daytime ... If I were to lie down here, for example, with my eyes facing up, my head would swim....” And she points to the clouds that are passing swiftly, driven by the wind. She speaks of her head swimming as of a temptation that somehow attracts her.
I am a bit disappointed that she hasn’t said a word of thanks. I remark, “This isn’t a good place to lie down and look at the sky, by day or by night. You can take it from me: I know about it.”
As between the iron steps of the bridge, in the dialogue, intervals of emptiness open between one speech and the next.
“You know about looking at the sky? Why? Are you an astronomer?”
“No, another kind of observer.” And I point out to her on the collar of my uniform the insignia of the artillery. “Days under bombardments, watching the shrapnel fly.”
Her gaze passes from the insignia to the epaulets that I don’t have, then to the not very obvious chevrons of rank sewn on my sleeves. “You come from the front, Lieutenant?”
“Alex Zinnober,” I introduce myself. “I don’t know if I can be called a lieutenant. In our regiment, ranks have been abolished, but orders change all the time. For the moment, I’m a soldier with two stripes on his sleeves, that’s all.”
“I’m Irina Piperin, as I was also before the revolution. For the future, I don’t know. I used to design fabrics, and as long as there’s a shortage of cloth, I’ll make designs for the air.”
“With the revolution, there are people who change so much they become unrecognizable, and other people who feel they are the same selves as before. It must be a sign that they were prepared in advance for the new times. Is that the case?”
She makes no reply. I add, “Unless it’s their total rejection that preserves them from changes. Is that your situation?”
“I ... You tell me first: how much do you think you have changed?”
“Not much. I realize I have retained certain points of honor from before: catch a woman about to fall, for example, even if nowadays nobody says thank you.”
“We all have moments of weakness, women and men, and it isn’t impossible, Lieutenant, that I may have an opportunity to return your kindness of a moment ago.” In her voice there is a hint of harshness, or perhaps of pique.
At this point the dialogue—which has concentrated all attention on itself, almost making one forget the visual upheaval of the city—could break off; the usual military vehicles cross the square and the page, separating us, or else the usual lines of women outside the shops or the usual processions of workers carrying signs. Irina is far away now, the hat with the rose is sailing over a sea of gray caps, of helmets, kerchiefs; I try to follow her, but she doesn’t turn around.
Several paragraphs ensue, bristling with names of generals and deputies, concerned with the shelling and retreats from the front, about schisms and unifications in the parties represented in the Council, punctuated by climatic annotations: downpours, frosts, racing clouds, windstorms. All this, in any case, solely as a frame for my moods: a festive abandonment to the wave of events, or of withdrawal into myself as if concentrating myself into an obsessive pattern, as if everything around me served only to disguise me, to hide me, like the sandbag defenses that are being raised more or less on all sides (the city seems to be preparing to fight street by street), the fences that every night billposters of various factions cover with manifestos that are immediately soaked by the rain and become illegible because of the absorbent paper and the cheap ink.
Every time I pass the building that houses the Heavy Industry Commission I say to myself: Now I’ll go and call on my friend Valerian. I have been repeating this to myself since the day of my arrival. Valerian is the closest friend I have here in the city. But, every time, I postpone the visit because of some important assignments I have to take care of. And yet you would say I apparently enjoy a freedom unusual for a soldier in service: the nature of my duties is not quite clear; I come and go among the offices of various headquarters; I am rarely seen in the barracks, as if I were not on strength in any unit; nor, for that matter, am I obviously glued to a desk.
Unlike Valerian, who doesn’t budge from his desk. The day I go up to look for him I find him there, but he doesn’t seem intent on government duties: he is cleaning a revolver. He chuckles into his ill-shaven beard, seeing me. He says: “So, you’ve come to fall into this trap, too, along with us.”
“Or to trap others,” I answer.
“The traps are one inside the other, a
nd they all snap shut at the same time.” He seems to want to warn me of something.
The building where the commission offices are installed was the residence of a war profiteer and his family; it was confiscated by the revolution. Some of the furnishings are gaudy and luxurious and have remained to mingle with the grim bureaucratic equipment; Valerian’s office is cluttered with boudoir chinoiserie: vases with dragons, lacquered coffers, a silk screen.
“Who do you want to trap in this pagoda? An Oriental queen?”
From behind the screen a woman comes: short hair, a gray silk dress, milk-colored stockings.
“Male dreams don’t change, not even with the revolution,” she says, and in the aggressive sarcasm in her voice I recognize my passing acquaintance from the Iron Bridge.
“You see? There are ears that listen to our every word...” Valerian says to me, laughing.
“The revolution does not put dreams on trial, Irina Piperin,” I answer her.
“Nor does it save us from nightmares,” she retorts.
Valerian intervenes: “I didn’t know you two were acquainted.”
“We met in a dream,” I say. “We were falling off a bridge.”
And she says: “No. Each has a different dream.”
“And there are even some who happen to wake up in a safe place like this, guaranteed against any vertigo...” I insist.
“Vertigo is everywhere.” And she takes the revolver that Valerian has finished reassembling, breaks it, puts her eye to the barrel as if to see whether it’s properly cleaned, spins the chamber, slips a bullet into one of the holes, raises the hammer, holds the weapon aimed at her eye, again spinning the chamber. “It seems a bottomless pit. You feel the summons of the void, the temptation to fall, to join the darkness that is beckoning....”
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Page 8
