Abel and Cain

by Gregor von Rezzori

  And I am still ready to write it, at least, this book. After eight agonizing nights and days, I am ready to write YOU, Schwab. For that’s what you are asking of me. How else am I to understand your omnipresence in my mental life? You want me to write you: in your intention to write me as I write you.

  Fine: that would be relative child’s play. Unfortunately, you won’t be satisfied with this. You want to materialize, in Uncle Helmuth’s terms: from the vaporous or gaseous or ethereal state in which you find yourself as a deceased person (the pure soul, if you please), you wish to transform yourself back into the denser human state of flesh and bone and skin that holds this stuff together. In a word: you want me to bring you back to life. This involves great difficulties. You see, the few biographical strokes are enough only for an obituary. Johannes Schwab: the name is a full program equipped with a curriculum vitae, but by no means with blood-throbbing life, especially not a life lived in the melancholy of a Hyperion: heavy with thought and poor in deed. That’s what you need me for. Even your full reality has to be achieved in the OTHER ever since our colleague Sartre. You need me as a mirror, Schwab. Just as I need you as a mirror, as the Other, whom I must reach in order to be my SELF. Please don’t keep pestering me with metaphysical digressions. Don’t keep making me dash about in my own brain like a rat in a trap, with the cat pushing its face up close. Do not slit my skin in order to let me ooze off into the transcendental: that’s where I truly lose myself—and thereby you. That’s trying too hard, man. I can write you by writing myself as you would write me; I can be your mirror, your medium, through which you materialize, in Uncle Helmuth’s terms: I can make you come to life, for a writer’s quill can create life and certainly wake the dead . . . but it will be a different, new book that I must write, a book containing me and you . . . do not try to convince me that this would require a third party: the GOOD LORD. Do not force him into our overloaded, our bursting concept. With you alone as a mirror image and partner in the rat-dash for form, we destroy the wonderful vision that I had of my book during the drive from Reims to Paris: a glass cathedral, shaped according to organic laws, as clear and beautiful as a crystal . . . this, I say, shattered into fragments, extinguished, kaput, even without the Almighty as the third member of the trio. I fear I cannot manage it with him. It would be more honest, for the time being, to again halt my labor on the masterwork of the era, contrite and modest (ridimensionato, as the Italians so profoundly put it), take up my work with the movie piglets and my refuge with Nadine.

  •

  She’ll welcome me. We’re of the same stock, she and I. She too lives a literary life. Of course, not in the counterfeit promise of eternally unrealized potentials. She transforms family-magazine literature into the gold of life. As a first-rate second-class film star, she has long since stopped belonging to the cinema; she now belongs to vast audiences of magazine readers—

  and thus (mindful of her lofty mission) she now lives the vicarious emotional life of millions, a never-ending series of high-frequency pulp novels:

  THE LOVE LIFE OF NADINE C.

  Installment #39

  The Chips Are Down

  The episode is terminated

  SUSPENSE!!!

  Who will the next man be?

  •

  I’m the ideal partner here. The more hopeless the liaison at the outset, the more suspenseful the course of events promises to be. And the more stylized the variation on the everlastingly identical theme of hopelessness (though at the end of course the simple way out, separating, remains open: for after all the game must continue). And the good Lord is kept out of it.

  Nor would I have to burden my conscience: Nadine has as little to fear from me as I from her. Whatever we do together takes place in the dimension of hopelessness. We move weightlessly through the space of the zero point. Thus, we’d both get our money’s worth, with neither of us having to pay with himself. The alternation of hopeless literary experience and hopelessly lived literature would take on the grace of a pas de deux.

  And the so to speak chemically pure literature would be set down in the entertainment section of the illustrated weeklies (where it has always been at home):

  NEW AND ENDURING HAPPINESS FOR NADINE CARRIER?

  Her relationship with Guitarist X came to a painful end. X could not help her get over her disappointment with Bobsled Champion Y. Nor could he help her forget the cataclysm of her love for Fashion Photographer Z. But now, France’s most popular screen star has been regularly seen in the company of Screenwriter A (author of such hits as Heart’s Blood, The Royal Eagle Project, and The Man in the Plastic Helmet):—leaving nightclub “8” in Rome—

  —skiing in Courcheval—

  —shopping on London’s Bond Street—

  —on location for her latest movie The Prodigal Daughter (scripted by A) in Cannes—

  —at the beach in Acapulco—

  —at the annual pilgrimage of the Gypsies in Camargue—

  —on the grounds of the diva’s country house on the Oise—

  NADINE CARRIER FINALLY IN SEVENTH HEAVEN AGAIN!

  Friends confirm the rumor that France’s most popular movie queen is planning a May wedding with the very busy screenwriter. . .

  A BABY FOR NADINE CARRIER?

  Upon leaving the world-famous hospital, the smile on the face of France’s most radiant star (here accompanied by the successful) seems to confirm the rumor . . .

  NO BABY FOR NADINE CARRIER

  The disappointment on her face shows all too clearly that . . .

  A DARK CLOUD OVER NADINE’S HAPPINESS?

  During location shooting of her movie Take Me! (scripted by A), the well-known author showed movie starlet B (who debuted in Fever Curve) an interest that went beyond professional considerations . . .

  NADINE DEFENDS HER LOVE!

  Her relationship with her steady beau was endangered by a recent crisis. But now the woosome twosome have reconciled and are spending quiet weeks again in . . .

  NADINE DISAPPOINTED BY LOVE AGAIN?

  Our photo reporter managed to get a shot of the extremely shy . . .

  A CAREER OVER THE BROKEN HEART OF CARRIER?

  Movie starlet B accompanied by Nadine’s previous steady beau:—

  leaving the Zoum Zoum nightclub in Cannes—

  —skiing in Cortina d’Ampezzo—

  —shopping on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse—

  —shooting on location for her movie Till the Seventh Member (scripted by A) in Munich-Geiselgasteig—

  —on the beach at Marbella—

  —by the swimming pool of her villa on Lake Schlier (Lake Tegern, Lake Constance, Lake Wörther, Lake Como)—

  STARLET’S ESCORT KNOCKS DOWN PHOTO REPORTER!

  Upon leaving, on again, off again escort brutally attacked our. . .

  IS THIS THE END?

  Her tense face since her separation from her previous and now steady shows all too clearly that . . .

  NEW LOVE FOR NADINE CARRIER!

  We managed to get this unique snapshot—

  —upon leaving the—

  —while skiing in—

  —when shopping at—

  —on location at—

  —on the beach at—

  —during the annual—

  —in the verdant countryside of—

  IS NADINE CARRIER ABOUT TO WED

  —racing-car stable-owner C?

  —coiffure creator D?

  —breaststroke champion E?

  —sociologist F?

  —playboy G?

  ???

  ??

  ?

  (Read our next installment, #40)

  I, for my part, would merely have shortened the path to contemporary immortality.

  For assuming I didn’t eat humble pie this time, sparing Nadine and myself a joint pulp romance, remaining here in my hideout, beating down all my weaknesses, difficulties, afflictions, and reservations; feeding on wheat germ and yeast; standing on my head for
six minutes every morning to circulate the blood through my brain; and slaving away with Aunt Selma’s tenacity in this cell of godforsaken human loneliness until I finished my book (and it would indeed be a book that bore witness, before the conscience of our race, to being a human being in this era—and God would be in it as he is in Nagel’s best sellers)—what would be the happy end of this poignant story?

  •

  Let Scherping take the floor:

  •

  “Damn it, it’s not so important what a man writes. People want to know how he brought it about. What does the guy who fabricated this stuff look like? What makes him different from me, what is there about him that he can pull himself out in this (profitable!) way from the dismal affair of TAEDIUM VITAE? You’ve got to understand the poor souls who are so bitterly dependent on vicarious experiences. They don’t want to hear any more old wives’ tales. People aren’t interested in stories, people are interested in existence—you understand? Do you seriously believe that anyone today has any interest whatsoever in Ulysses’ adventures? As a book for young readers, maybe. But if you can come up with a book that scientifically demonstrates: WHO WAS HOMER?, it’ll be on the best-seller list months before it even comes out. Take my word for it—after all, I serve experience to people—values have shifted. Anyone who wants stories goes to a flick or sits in front of the tube or scans the funnies. Today’s book reader is a literary scholar—above all, a psychologist. He wants an analysis not only of the book but of the author—personal, flesh and blood: shaving early in the morning, creating, having sex (marital and adulterous), and, if possible, folding his hands for his nightly prayers. The reader wants to know: what induced this man to write this book in this way? The educated reader wants to get to the root of the literary: the dichotomous, the suspicious, the crack in the author’s personality. He wants accurate information: what was Shakespeare’s real name? how schizoid was Goethe? how queer was Proust? how good was Hemingway with handguns? And so on and so forth . . . The masses—the masses are adequately served by a hundred thousand publications. But in literature, they now go very personally into everything: color of eyes, shape of nose, cut of hair, and distinguishing characteristics. The literature you create is, so to speak, your own ‘wanted’ poster. Only then are you recognizable. Only then does the public retain your physiognomy. That’s how you achieve prominence and get into the newspapers.”

  So (posthumously or otherwise), it all ended the same way:

  OUR PHOTO REPORTER MANAGES TO SHOOT THE WORLD-FAMOUS CELEBRITY

  (if possible in exotic company)

  —while leaving the—

  —while vacationing in—

  —while recovering in—

  —on location at—

  —at his desk—

  —at the annual—

  —laid out under—

  (under floral tributes, today no more luxurious even for Nobel laureates than those under which my friend Schwab finally came to rest).

  JACOB G. BRODNY

  literary agent

  B

  Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo.

  —OVID

  Whatever we see could be other than it is.

  Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is.

  —LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

  The “I” is not an obstacle in being with people. The “I” is that which they desire.

  —WITOLD GOMBROWICZ Diary, volume one

  All kinds of things drop down the air shaft outside my window: refuse—

  withered linden leaves wafting down off the roof (God knows from where)—

  bones of smoked fish—

  spit-out peels of the sunflower seeds that the monkey-eyed Algerians chew—

  sometimes, in the evening hours: cottony October fog—

  and cigarette butts, condoms, sanitary napkins, hairpins—

  but no light: not a single unfiltered mote of sunlight.

  Only once have I seen the shaft fill with something which in its complete transparency seemed to shine from within, like pure, ethereal gas; namely, yesterday: the morning after the night in which I had been with the girl at the Madeleine.

  I had slept for a couple of hours and, in effortless renunciation, eluded the magic image-weaving of some dream (rising smoothly and imperceptibly and bringing with me not a single shredded tangle, like the surfacing merman with watercress on his fish-mouthed skull)—

  (Incidentally, I recall dreaming that I had to lead my foster mother Aunt Selma along the narrow ledge of a building wall—I no longer know where to. Anyway, it was high and dangerous, and suddenly a stone crumbled under her foot; she tried to cling to me, but I wrenched loose, she plunged down, and I grabbed hold of the smooth wall, closing my eyes and waiting to hear the dull thud of her body on the sidewalk below. But nothing came, and when I peered down, I saw her: her legs had either dug into the ground or were totally crushed, for she sat in the billowing skirts of a bright summer frock as though in a flower cup, waving happily up to me . . .)

  For the first time in years, I felt myself awakening with no perceptible malaise—and I instantly knew that I was in Paris and under what circumstances and where (in which mangy hotel room) and to what sublime joys and torments with my papers I would have to open my eyes. So I did not open them right away. I lay there, enjoying my precarious peace—

  enjoyed ME: yes indeed: me SELF-brimming SELF-towered (the vertical Anglo-Saxon I)

  MAN-ANIMAL SELF

  and as such, heartrendingly split in two: physical SELF and abstract SELF.

  What is a woman like when she awakes? Embedded in herself, twin-hilled: a more intimate body, breathing life, renewing itself from life, physically more uniform: skin-SELF, flesh-SELF, hair-SELF, and yet an inner cavern: SELF de profundis, well and source (my foster mother in the flower cup: as if floating on the watery surface: images of flooding)—

  WELLSPRING SELF (I’d like to know what kind of a face I make during an orgasm. I once tried to catch it in a mirror: it didn’t work, of course. What I saw was an embarrassingly indiscreet face—embarrassingly convicted of its embarrassment. Yet strangely bloated in shock: like when you step on a garden hose. Like Schwab when he was made to see or hear something embarrassing) . . .

  Schwab and the scene with Gaia in the car: we in front (very uncomfortable), he supposedly drunk and unconscious in the back . . . I must have acted quite predatory: guttural sounds squeezed out through grinding teeth and the like—

  was that why Schwab thanked me? . . . (Gaia by the way came entirely without jungle shrieks, completely interiorized, an inner shudder. Christa sobbed blissfully, albeit only during our engagement. Dawn? I don’t remember; I remember almost nothing about Dawn; only her breasts, the way I finally peeled them out of the onion sheathes of her bedtime armature that first time . . . Few women emit that beautiful cry, like Stella and sometimes Gisela . . .)

  At last (for a long time now) I am sovereignly I MYSELF: undisturbed by remorse that I am as I am. I carry imprinted within myself the image of the girl I slept with last night. Sharply inscribed upon my mind’s eye. How does it go in the Arabian Nights? “As if someone had sewn it into my eyelids . . .”

  the linear curves of a young female body and their punctuation: from the angle of the raised arm propping up the head (the hand drowned in the whirling torrent of hair), drawn in an arc into the seashell of the underarm and then lifted to the apple roundings of the breasts, from whose buds a rhythmic slope runs down to the flat declivities and curvatures of the flanks and belly, where the line, to which the now entirely symbolic flesh is confined, swings out again from the violin-like constriction to the voluptuousness of the hip, from which a thigh rises, exposing its inner surface in a steep, indolent warping.

  She sleeps, very happy and relaxed. So I’m still together as a man (Kisa Gotami at the sight of Buddha: Blessed indeed is the mother, blessed indeed is the father, blessed indeed is the wife whose is a
lord so glorious). I am even still young enough to imagine beating someone up—the handsome Pole with his awful arms, for instance. (Schwab always wanted to do that.) He was presumably a lot stronger than I—at least heavier. Cousin Wolfgang also carried a powerful thorax on his somewhat short legs and womanly Germanic hips (from Uncle Helmuth).

  In the first of my formative years in Vienna, Wolfgang was tormentingly superior to me (but never took advantage of it), but I soon caught up with him. By fourteen or fifteen (disgusting: the masculine trail of pubic hair running to the navel, on boyish skin), I beat the hell out of him. I wasn’t stronger but was tough as a whip and full of evil tricks—After all, I had the more beautiful mother (and the evil bewitchment of my foster mother Aunt Selma in my eyes . . .). By the way, there was nothing nixie-like about Aunt Selma in my dream: she was smiling: ce si joli sourire de toute jeune fille qui était vraiment elle.