Dance Card
(Vienna Waltzes and Pastries)
The booths are cozy, Mathias’s nails dig into the red velvet without encountering any resistance at all, it’s almost like the springs blend into the stuffing. Too tight, Mathias’s shoes tap to the beat, their soles do all they can in hopes that some dancer will notice, see that Mathias is one with the music, see Mathias as a perfect partner and rush over, inviting him onto the dance floor. It’s been a number of months, for almost two years already Mathias has been stuck alone on the edge of the floor. He’s waiting. His right sleeve is adorned with a fine spiderweb attaching it to the armrest with the stubborn grace of angels who prefer to tear out their eyes rather than accept they’ve fallen. He’s waiting. Mathias with his left hand is gesturing to Eugène drunkenly twirling in the arms of the publisher, the publisher whirling from Eugène to some others without ever, like Eugène, without ever glancing at all at that frail hand, at Mathias’s frantically waving hand.
From the moat around the dance floor, Mathias hears their voices ripping through the music, understands that the music is made up only of their voices. That’s all the music is, their accumulating words as the pages are turned are in the key of transported Mathiases, then a short silence followed b minor unhinged g level. But Mathias would again like one two three once oh just once one two three one two three just a little bit more to taste the warm air that slaps your cheek red one two three one two three that rushes into your mouth alchemizes in there and comes back out again high notes one two three one two three feeding in turn my turn must come around again my turn will come back around to me again one two three one two three wind goes into the mouths the mouths of the instruments waltzing notes words, Mathias chants one two three I’d really like to be just a little a little rustle again I’d have a tiny existence a breeze against the gale I had my moment I was a movement not so long ago yes was a movement in the midst of the composition was nth movement in the great symphony of the winds.
Mathias may have understood, his heart is still gaunt from learning its rejection. Mathias may know, his lungs are still frozen from understanding they are excluded from the great winds. His eyes roll to the beat, his pupils follow Eugène’s energetic frolicking. If his brain still lived in his arid skull, perhaps it would share the salve of survival with him.
Jealous Mathias still is hanging on like ivy, sallow ivy on the couch. Mathias’s ears struggle to hear every note broadcast on the great winds. Mathias’s ears ask his memory to pull a tune, a song, an old chorus, out of a drawer so they can listen to it more attentively. A recording dating from the time when Mathias was a good dancer, a sought-after partner. The tape plays. Sounds of utensils, clinking glasses. The tape plays. Sounds of thrashing, biting wind. Inside Mathias rage creates a little ball of stony bile, the shame of tiny crystals splintering in his membranes. Mathias has bitter blood filling his mouth, his long-dead tongue now adds to the salty taste a rotting flavor.
Mathias sees the dancers and with his ears reads the steps they are executing executed will execute on the polished floor. Mathias sees the dancers while his ears decode the compulsory figures as tinnitus. Those people didn’t like each other. Didn’t respect each other, thought even less of each other. Everyone intimately thought they were infinitely superior to the other members of the assembly. Sometimes they all thought so loudly in their heads that their inner voices covered the brouhaha of the shared banter. The revealed rumors then ended up crushed under the weight of a fuck you. They didn’t get together to converse nor really even to exchange the masses of information that knitted together their lives, but just to broadcast. They broadcasted to each other. Mathias’s ears ask his memory to check all the files. Mathias’s memory confirms: for every square dance Eugène was one among a hundred. Dinners, dances, society parties, salons: in the foreground and wearing jabots the publishers, drowning in crinoline or starched satin a few writers, and in between a silky powdery error-cloaked mass, the hack journos.
The relentless twisters had crossed the threshold into the Castle via the service entrance, once they had a foot on the varnished slats their credo was to accumulate more and more mandates. Mathias is watching Eugène as he starts to salsa. The assessment was clear, perfectly transparent: the majority of the Banana Republic of Letters’ citizens were under thirty and worked in journalism. Mathias is watching Eugène and think he looks out of breath. They were all journalists, they’d all published or aspired to do so. As a matter of principle. The deal was crooked but it didn’t matter to them. Their name on the cover of a book, an obsession, an actual obsession, sometimes even a secret form of motivation. How many times did they naively betray themselves opposite a depressive author going on about existential disasters in the course of their interview. But you sir, you my friend, you have your name on a cover. Since they were journalists, they met publishers. Because their friends were journalists, the publishers could do a market survey in advance. The first meeting always went the same way, in the same cafés, in the same neighborhoods, neighborhood. A quickly shared summary, a hard-hitting, trendy idea, generational if possible. After the appetizer, it was time for the main event. Bull’s-eye, impact, and media plan. The advance really depended on it. Mathias is watching Eugène with a stitch in his side. The writing phase, let’s say producing the object, wasn’t crucial. A bit of anecdotal posturing, writer’s block, excitement about unbridling the imagination, living from inside out, in the end clichés that few writers actually experience. An opportunity to stay put for a few months, a yearlong sabbatical. Living in the family vacation house, making your own setting, role, and memories. The Stanislavski method. Quite impressive for your friends and family. Appearance of seriousness combined with a halo of mystery. Sudden inspiration if possible in the middle of a barbecue. Obligatory public note-taking, concentrated-looking face, furrowed brow. Putting the plan in motion and attempting to get it into the right packaging always represented at least two-thirds of the time allowed before the deadline for submitting the manuscript. Since literary devices were not at all required, and a literary advisor with an armada of copyeditors armed with nothing but their mastery of French were more than enough to tackle the task, the novel could flow thick and fast, and its author could naively go into ecstasy over the post-trigger phrase. Mathias watches Eugène stopping at the buffet. Once the manuscript is finished and groomed, the period of the proofs begins. The network was drowning in them. The lack of security in the profession led to such an accumulation of freelance work all over the place ranging from trendy to ultra-serious, without forgetting the female focused, that everyone was connected to everyone else, starting with themselves. Mathias watches Eugène carefully blotting his dripping temples. The last phase, the ultimate phase, was finally taking shape. Recognition. A term in their void-befuddled minds. They’d never experienced editorial recognition, the recognition of the first reader who upon discovering a text by opening an anonymous envelope or one sent by a trusted friend falls crazy in love or simply curious enough to allocate space on its land. They never will experience critical recognition, the fact that upon a desktop chance pushed a journalist to read and really like, to even recognize themselves, to want to defend it, virginally free from any personal stakes. Not even public recognition, prized and precious in their eyes because, except for their desire to impress with their cute little glossy faces, nothing motivated them nearly as much, drowning in mail from lovestruck readers, becoming the vague object of feminine desire, being the heartthrob of their local grocery store, even public recognition was completely distorted. Access to mainstream media, manufactured product, hype, and editing. Herd instinct and brain washing, the term readership always vanishing, in favor of the term consumers. Mathias watches Eugène looking for his dance partner. On the arm of someone sharper and much better looking than him she wiggles seductively and continues to salsa as she looks away. The most pathetic part was that often, quite often in fact, despite all the energy, all the marketing plans, t
heir work didn’t reach a substantial sales threshold. The starlets and junior masters, the publishers’ contrived stunts, of equal or lessor quality to theirs, always made a clean sweep of things, mocking them from the top-ranked spot displayed in all the books offices. Their disillusion-blocked ambitious desire cracked bitterly. Mathias watches Eugène dancing offbeat in the middle of the floor. There’s always a bad side. Self-produced by the media+publishing system, these books could only ever be self-consumed. Mathias watches Eugène moving closer to a mirror standing near the bar. Energetically he swings his hips alone in front of his own reflection. Besides, they don’t have many people to talk to. A few readers at the book fairs but they only ever talk about their handsome faces they glimpsed on some TV show that was paying their rent. Mathias watches Eugène taking advantage of a new song to forcibly grab a stranger who seems annoyed around the neck. That’s why they had to meet a lot to talk about themselves. The soliloquies declaimed by the hack journos were the most common but each unique nonetheless. Writers were invited to places where they could talk about their work. These were called public reading discussions. The stars of formatting, too, even if they only talked about themselves. These were called TV interviews. The hack journos, once they’d hit all the bars run by their friends and colleagues, didn’t have anyone left to talk to. So they needed these. These permanent broadcasts. Mathias watches Eugène getting slapped in the face and asking the first guy who passes for a light. Everyone distractedly listens to everyone else’s trade secrets, in one ear not quite out the other, retaining the anecdote that would hit the nail on the head at another event, where the absentee would be discussed. Patiently awaiting one’s turn. Their rhetoric was solid, Mathias’s memory had recorded it all. Start the conversation with I really liked where you say. The other would answer and elaborate then politely ask in return. It could take all night to get around the whole table, they always went out in a group. Mathias watches Eugène smoking his cigarette on the edge of a seat where he’s slumped down alone. The hack journos’ conversation always seemed like a porno. Mathias watches Eugène not smoking anymore because he jumped out the window.
Round 6
(Loaded Dice Because Nothing Is Random)
Mathias didn’t show up. I’d warned him: if you don’t love me come tell me to my face. Mathias didn’t come, he doesn’t know it’s me, his Esther from the past that he buried so deep, he doesn’t know it’s me but who I really am, my past, my id, my fleshy incarnation, doesn’t matter. Mathias is in love with several bits of me. He adores Lain, his emails said so. He can’t do without all her secrets, she’s his twin soul, over my desk I pinned up the paragraph where he says so, and I enlarged it. Mathias is in love and all these bits are me. He thinks Allegra, Mina, and Lison are touching. He answers each of them at about two in the morning with charming little words, overnight my in-box fills up with Mathias’s sugar, I smile at the idea that everything flowing from him comes to fertilize my root, he is linked to me without ever guessing I alone am loved, unique, and fragmented. For the black-and-white photos offering him my body, his dark voice leaves messages where he’s nothing but desire on the end of the line. The day my long ribbon-tipped tress went into the envelope with my out-of-focus nose, my stomach, and my right hand, I bravely picked up and we talked for three hours and fourteen minutes. Mathias didn’t come, he has too much love and he recognized me.
Mathias recognized me, recognized me maybe not exactly as Esther Duval but recognized me as his familiar dream. When he discovers I was his first and will be his last he’ll be so happy, sometimes when I think about it I cry, my eyes are possessed like two little Cassandras with the tears that will come to Mathias’s lids.
Since he didn’t come to refuse love, Mathias has stopped answering all my doubles. He must be living locked up and in absolute darkness, he was fascinated by Anne Frank’s diary and gave me a copy when I turned eighteen, nineteen, on the phone with Mathias for three hours and fourteen minutes, he would say what strange days they must be living like that shadow and silence, he would say it would have an effect on you too, such an effect it’s obvious it was our first kiss, Mathias is living locked up to test me, to check my love and my understanding of rituals and signs, immersed memories. Since the papers, the radio, and the television have stopped showing Mathias, I’d gotten used to taking his picture to fill the emptiness. Mathias knows it. I sent him a really nice album for his birthday. He told Lain: if I make a nest or hide in my room will I finally be sure not to be exposed anymore. A nest or. My heart took such a leap at the pun. Another reason I love Mathias is because Mathias had understood and from the very beginning that I alone am his love, unique, behind all this, I love Mathias because he knows and knew and never said anything just to let me get on with it, to see what I would do, amused watching my string of strategies, letting me get entangled in the meandering map of Tendre, that’s just like Mathias in fact.
On April 7 I went to find Mathias. April 7 is an important date. We made love for the first time one April 7, and we agreed that it would be in tribute to us both losing our virginity that we would get married on this date, even if it was in the middle of the week and was a big pain in the ass for everyone. I knocked on his door for a really long time. The building manager came over and told me Mathias was gone. She didn’t know where, he hadn’t said anything. He put all his stuff in storage, it’s strange she added, it’s like he was hiding something, strange she added he was strange, something to hide. If I love Mathias so much it’s because he’s the only one with such a flair for the dramatic. If he’s not writing books anymore, it’s because I’m the one he’s aiming his novel at. To me alone. A great novel in small bits. Mathias knows I’m the one who’ll be able to put all the chapters back in the right order, the necessary order, Mathias knows I’m the one who will support him so much he’ll come back stronger than ever and so brilliant that everyone will bow down before him, praising in Mathias the return of the prodigal son galvanized by love. I left the building manager with a knowing smile. She must really like him, or else he paid her a fortune, she put her heart into it. I’m impressed. Now I’m dreading the next step cause it’s my turn to play. I bought my wedding dress. I keep it in a bag with the shoes that I chose in creamy satin, with very becoming laces. My purse is always with me from morning to night the strap in the hollow of my shoulder as my temporary transplant the weight hits me in the hip as I rush around investigate trot willy-nilly across the whole of Paris and every night I watch a bruise stretch across my pelvis, a black-and-blue promise glittering purple studded yellow epidermis star cloud, I’ve been branded slave lord and master. Mathias is waiting to be flushed out, he wants me ready and ready I will be.
Dance Card
(Lost)
The grass is a little damp in the Castle grounds. Mathias turns up his collar and adjusts his triple-thread cashmere scarf. The gaping French window leading into the room lets the noise from the dance intertwine with the wisteria. Heavy bunches hang down in ropes, with the tip of his toe Mathias pulls one off and with his fingers crushes the lilac flowers, a note, a squeak escapes along with a summer fragrance. Behind the squared-off panels, Mathias catches a glimpse of the tenacious dancers. He plucks to the beat, index finger and thumb snatching from his palm his empurpled booty. There are a lot of trees, even more bushes. The little pond is brimming with water lilies and pale corpses, with her long veils a marble Diana looks down on young sleeping girls, entertaining cultural products yesterday, Ophelia today. Crunching at each step the gravel barely covers the sticky uproar escaping from the window. Following the main path, Mathias is startled, shadow puppets, the dancers’ projected movements are too full frontal, he makes out the frolicking, closes his eyes and that’s all. As it closes, the gate’s laugh sounds like an old maid. The craggy path slopes downward, but still Mathias struggles as he moves forward. The buzzing from the grand ball is following him and pushing him, a feverish growl, flicked off, ejected, stiff Mathias’s body seems to ref
use, Mathias feels his heart of stone, worries it will roll away. The ditch is alive flush with bustling larvae, talon-gloved hands will rise up suddenly, pierced-lace fingers dirt bugs cling to Mathias’s ankles as, out of breath, he slowly goes on. At the entrance to the village, Mathias’s ears are filled with silence.
For three long days Mathias has been leaning on his elbow at the window. A window with sashes on the second floor, the top floor of his house as a matter of fact. He’s watching for the mailman, hoping for a messenger or a courier or something. His vision goes muddy, it was a year ago, he thinks, a year ago to the day that I left Vaubyessard and its numbing grand balls, I left the Castle, they’ve probably all forgotten about me. It’s a cool night, Mathias’s lungs assaulted by consumption. In his brainless head Mathias can see the texture of the embossed invitation, its refined envelope, printed landscape style. In his brainless head Mathias wanders across the grounds, counting as he climbs the 315 steps that lead to Heidelberg Castle. Ten thousand suicides throughout Germany following The Sorrows of Young Werther, how many in Rhineland alone. Because Goethe spent time at Heidelberg Castle, because that’s where Goethe wrote his broken-tower Werther, at Heidelberg Castle, one last pilgrimage. The tourist guides don’t stipulate that fact or the number either. Scholars of that vintage talk about a real plague, disheveled young ladies seen alone and wound up dismembered in the main courtyard, waxy-looking young men smashed against the cobblestones or found in daylight behind some thicket with their dagger in their heart. Heidelberg Castle was a steaming ossuary, without the Germans’ legendary sense of maintaining their monuments the romantics would have spent a hundred years swatting flies as they swooned, mired down in the peat of a huge mass grave. Ten thousand suicides throughout Germany, at the grand ball Mathias again hears it should’ve been a best seller, ten thousand suicides throughout Germany how many pints of blood is that. Channels filled with pints of blood, bottomless puddles, trickles running into streams vomiting into the Neckar their vermilion broth, how much blood in Heidelberg, the castle of disillusions. In its lair the structure holds a huge cask, one of the biggest in the world, two hundred thousand liters, in the past all the wine in the region was stored there. It’s been described as empty for so many centuries, but the phantom corpuscles of all the suicide victims have filled it forever. Mathias closes the window. In his brainless head the dance yelps in the distance, in the very far-off distance and yet. From the top of the hill, the Castle crushes him, his heart is an old eternally splitting stone, how much blood, how many candles for such a shine, Mathias says to himself as he closes the drapes. Banished from the Castle, I’ll stay in the village, there’s nothing left for me. So dazed with pain is Mathias that in his sleep he thinks he hears the rolling of some kind of Last Judgment.
Not a Clue Page 15
