Yann Andrea Steiner

by Marguerite Duras

  And then she has forgotten the rest, she says.

  I’ve forgotten, she says, I’m sorry.

  Then the children howl:

  Never! Never!

  So she tells the story all the same. And the children listen as before, but at the end they notice that she’s no longer telling the same story, the one she had begun, and again they shout:

  You finish that story now, or we’re going to beat you up. Then she tells the story:

  But it’s an equatorial island, says David.

  Exactly, says the shark.

  Then she says that she really doesn’t know anymore about anything, and in fact ...

  And she falls asleep.

  IT’S THE evening of a hazy, sunless day. On the boardwalk passes the young counselor from the beach. She is with the child. He is taking a little walk by her side. They are moving slowly. She is talking to him. She tells him she loves him. That she loves a child.

  She tells him her age, eighteen years old, and her name. She asks him to repeat it. The child repeats her name, her age. He says, Johanna. And he says, Eighteen years old. Then he repeats the word Johanna again. Then he asks, Johanna what? The girl says, Goldberg. Johanna Goldberg. The child repeats the full name.

  The girl asks what his name is.

  The child says:

  Samuel Steiner.

  He smiles at an image that only he, in all the world, still retains.

  He says:

  And my little sister was Judith Steiner.

  THE CHILD and she, the counselor. They are walking together. They are thin, skinny; they have the same body, the same long, lazy walk. This morning they are walking along the seashore. The same, both of them. Two Negroes, very thin and white. Fallen from the sky.

  Concern about them seems to be spreading among the other counselors and the administrators. Because they never leave each other’s side.

  Beneath the streetlamp she stopped, took the child’s face in her hands, and raised it toward the light to see his eyes: Gray, she said. Then she let go of his face and spoke to him.

  She tells him that all his life he will remember this summer of 1980, the summer when he was six. She tells him to look at everything. Including the stars. And also the long line of oil tankers from Cap d’Antifer. Everything. She tells him to look carefully, this evening. The sea, this city, the cities across the river, the spinning lighthouses, look carefully, and at every kind of ship on the sea, the black oil tankers, so beautiful. And the large English ferries, the white boats . . . And all the fishing boats – Look over there, at all those lights – and she tells him to listen well to all the night’s sounds. That this is the summer when he is six. That that number will never come back again in his life. And to remember Rue de Londres – which only they know, she and he – which is the Temple of the Sun. She tells him that when he’s sixteen, on the same day as today, he can come here; that she will be here in this same spot on the beach but at a later hour, near midnight. He says that he doesn’t really understand what she’s saying but that he’ll come.

  She says she’ll recognize him, that he is to wait for her opposite Rue de Londres. That he can’t miss it.

  She says, We’ll make love together, you and I.

  He says yes. He says he doesn’t understand.

  She says, The seashore will be deserted. It will already be night and the beaches will be empty, everyone will be with their families.

  They walk together toward the sea until they disappear in the sand, until the people following them with their eyes are horrified.

  Until they return toward the tennis courts.

  She is carrying him on her shoulders. She sings that by the clearwater stream she rested and never never shall she forget him.

  They walk for a long time. It’s already late and the beaches are deserted.

  They leave the boardwalk, disappear into the cliffs.

  After they leave it’s still not entirely dark. He says that he’d like to tell her something.

  Then the young counselor cries again and tells him there’s no need, she knows what he wanted to tell her but there’s no need, she already knows, they told her at the orphanage. And then she hides her face and cries and she tells the rest of the story of David.

  The other children always come back when the counselors tell stories.

  So, says the counselor, we’re on an equatorial island. Ratakataboom deposits David on the beach. You are now on the Source’s Island, he tells David. David asks where the Source is. The shark says she lives in a huge iron cage. David says, Thank you very much. David thanks the shark. Thank you, Sir, says David. Don’t mention it, says the shark. But what’s to become of you? We’ll see, says David. And how about you, what’s to become of you? Nothing, same as you, says the shark. Apart from that, he’s heading off to Guatemala. He asks, What else is there to do? David agrees. A little warm seawater in the winter is good for chronic bronchitis, says the shark. He looks intensely at David: seeing him so fresh, so well fed, he falls into an obvious depression and begins talking very loud, at abnormal speed, in any old language, made up of grunts and hiccups, unbelievable exclamations, clacking of teeth, and so on. Then David tells him to calm down. Okay, says the shark. And the shark calms down.

  The children ask the girl to talk a little in “any old language.” She says she doesn’t know how, that it’s very difficult.

  Then the shark and David part company. They wish each other a good stay and a good trip, good health, a good year, and they part company. Honestly, what else could they do?

  After the shark leaves, David falls asleep and then he wakes up, and then he falls asleep again, and this goes on for a long time, back and forth. And then one evening something happens to David. The sky is the color of storms and sea gold, as dark as if it were night – all of a sudden, without leaving any time for understanding.

  And suddenly, instead of telling her story, the young counselor lies down in the sand and says she’s sleepy. Then the children scream, beat on her, call her a dirty meanie, and she laughs. So are you going to tell us the rest, yes or no, or we’ll kill you. And she laughs some more. She falls asleep still laughing, and they go to swim in the sea. Except for him, the child with gray eyes; he remains near this sleeping body that is hers.

  ONE MORNING the sky is like blue lacquer, the sun still behind the cliffs. On the boardwalk the child has passed by. I watch him. I watch him until he disappears. And then I close my eyes so that I might again see the vastness of his gray gaze.

  The young counselor stands on the boardwalk, watching the child return. There he is. He looks at the postcard she told him to buy; he knew that the general store carried the best postcards. She had told him so. He had done just as she’d told him to do.

  The girl writes on the postcard.

  On the postcard, on the writing side, there is now the girl’s name, the date, July 30, 1980, and the date and time ten years from now when he is to come, July 30, 1990, at midnight.

  On the picture side there is the place on the beach from last night, at the intersection of the pathway to the tennis courts, the walkway, and Rue de Londres – so beautiful, she says, the most beautiful of all, her favorite, beautiful as a tunnel of sunlight before the sea.

  In the sea, as in sleep, I can’t tell the child apart from other children. I see him when she joins him. I watch them. The tide is low. The sun is enormous, going from one horizon to the next, yellow as gold.

  At that moment, it happens; she joins him and I see it. She takes him on her shoulders and they walk into the sea as if to die together. But no. The child lets himself be taken by her into the ocean water. He’s still a little afraid, with a fear that makes him laugh, a lot.

  They emerge from the sea. She’s the one who rubs down his body. And then she leaves him. And then she goes back into the sea. He watches her. She goes a long way; at low tide you have to walk far out to reach the deep water. The child never takes his eyes off her. He is still prey to fear when she esc
apes into the sea, but he says nothing. She stretches out on the waves and heads away. She barely turns around to blow him a kiss. And then he can’t see her anymore; she goes toward the wide open sea, head lowered in the ocean. He is still watching her. Around her the sea has been forgotten by the wind. She is abandoned by her own strength; she has the grace of a deep sleeper.

  The child is sitting.

  Still he watches her.

  The girl returns. She always comes back, this girl. She has always come back. Then she asks him if he remembers her name, which she wrote on the postcard. He says a first and last name. She says that’s right, that’s her name.

  The counselor has drifted off to sleep.

  The child stares insistently at the beach; he can hardly understand how this beach happens to be here without him ever having seen it. Then finally he no longer tries to understand; he pulls nearer the counselor. She is asleep. He gently slips his hand beneath hers so she won’t forget him. Her hand hasn’t moved. Right afterward, the child, too, falls asleep.

  THE SUN came back again the following day. Just when everyone had stopped expecting it, there it was again in the perfect sky. Below, the sea was flat, as smooth and innocent as the sky. One could see past Le Havre, Sainte-Adresse, even Cap d’Antifer.

  In the dark room we watched the clarity of night, its transparency. You were near me. I said, Someone, just once, should talk about the beauty of Antifer. Should say how it’s alone even as it stands before God. Savage and naked along the cliffs of the very first ages, as vast as the absolute absence of even the possibility of God.

  THE GIRL returns from swimming in the sea. She, too, is nude, like the child; her body is now stretched out next to the child’s.

  They remain silent, eyes shut, for a long time.

  And then she told the child the story about the shark.

  That evening, which was the color of storms and gold, she said, the young counselor said, David heard a noise, a living sound. Someone on the island was crying, but without anger, perhaps without really knowing he was crying, perhaps in his sleep.

  David looks around. He turns and sees the entire company of the island’s animals stretched out in the golden light, a great tawny field pierced by the diamonds of their eyes. Their eyes that are all looking at David.

  I am the lost child, David cries out, don’t be afraid.

  Then the animals come up to David.

  Who’s crying? David asks.

  The Source, say the animals.

  And a very soft sound of weeping floats on the wind from the sea.

  Every evening she weeps. She’s a weeping Source. She comes from a faraway land, Guatemala it’s called, and to get here she crosses two oceans and twenty-two continents on the bottom of the sea.

  And she is 700 million years old, says an old hare, so now she’s had enough and she wishes to die, and when night comes, the Source calls out to death.

  David doesn’t answer.

  That’s why she’s weeping, you see, says a very small panther.

  Gotta put yourself in her place, says a little gray monkey.

  It’s as if she were listening, says David.

  She’s calling, listen . . . It’s the Source, the mother of us all, our great half-breed of the oceans. The great equatorial Source from the North of the earth, says the little white monkey.

  All the animals strain to hear. David does too.

  Who has come to the island? asks the Source in a small voice.

  A child, says the young Asian buffalo.

  Ah, a son of man ...

  That’s right.

  Does this child have hands? the Source asks.

  Yes, all the animals say in unison, at least two hands, it seems ...

  David shows his hands to the animals and to the Source.

  He’s picking up a stone, say the animals.

  He throws it in the air.

  He catches it.

  So then, tonight, he’s the harmonica? asks the Source.

  Tonight he’s the one, say the animals. They are happy for the Source. The other days the animals don’t know who this little David is, but tonight he’s definitely the harmonica.

  Thank God, says the Source. And little David too.

  Yes, repeat the animals.

  In a marvelous gibberish, the Source says a prayer. The animals answer in their own ways of speaking and this makes for a very unexpected cacophony.

  And then: And what about killing? Does the child know how to do that? the Source asks, hypocritically.

  Oh, no, say the animals. Then the animals wait. They remain nearby to keep the Source from doing whatever she can to die.

  No, say the animals, no, no, no . . . The kid can’t kill anything. Not a thing.

  The Source falls silent, then stays silent some more. And then suddenly in the evening stillness they hear a furious rushing of water.

  She is emerging from the Atlantic Reservoir, say the animals.

  The Source appears.

  The girl says the Source is a person and at the same time a mountain of water, vitreous as emerald. That she has no arms, no face, and cannot see; that she glides forward without moving so as not to disturb the folds of water she wears draped around her presence.

  She is seeking out David’s hands, she says, the Source says.

  The setting sun enters her dead eyes and then it is night.

  David, David, calls the blind Source.

  She is seeking David in order to die. And the child looks around him.

  She is weeping. David, David, she cries.

  So this is what David does next: David takes out his harmonica and plays a very old polka from Guatemala.

  And then . . . and then ... listen carefully . . . then the Source stops, dumbstruck, and with a great and youthful slowness she begins to dance, with the grace of a child, the sweet, slow polka from her native Guatemala.

  Until dawn she danced, said the young counselor, and when daylight came she danced in her sleep. Then the animals of the island very gently brought her back into the dark grotto of the Atlantic Reservoir. They warmed her body of shadows with kisses and those kisses restored her to life by making her forget life.

  The young counselor falls silent. The child with gray eyes had lain down against her and fallen asleep. He had rested his hands on the girl’s young breasts. She hadn’t moved; she had let him do as he wished. Beneath her dress, he had found her breasts. His hands were frozen with the sea wind. He was in awe, he squeezed them tight, he hurt, he could not let them go, he couldn’t think of anything else, and when she removed his hands from her breasts his eyes welled with tears.

  We tell each other things that have no relation to the afternoon’s events or the coming night but that relate to God, to his absence that is so present, like the breasts of the young girl, so young before the immensity of what is to come.

  One final time Callas sang her despair and Capri fell upon her to kill. Once Norma had been murdered, the screams of Capri is over reigned over the beaches, States, Cities, and Oceans, and the dazzling reality of the world’s end was confirmed.

  AUGUST 1980.

  Near me is this crowded beach, this solar revolution in the circle of the sky.

  August 1980. Gdansk.

  The port of Gdansk. For the entire world it became the suffering of a people invaded because they were poor and isolated.

  Gdansk, making us tremble like children. Alone like that child. Captive. Strangled by the fascism endemic to Central Germany.

  The child passed by with the other campers. He looked behind him and then he looked at the sea.

  The girl came later; she brought breakfast. She joined the child. She put her hand on the back of his neck. She speaks to him. He walks with his head slightly raised toward her, listening carefully, and sometimes he smiles. Like her, he smiles. It’s as if she’s happy because of Gdansk, she says. He knows nothing of Gdansk, but he is happy too.

  She tells of the shark’s visits to David. That one t
ime he comes by with an American accent, another time with a Spanish accent, another time with an accent from nowhere at all, a sneezing, blowing, bellowing accent, and David just has to deal with it. The child laughs. He laughs and laughs and laughs. While he is laughing the girl stops telling her story. Then she resumes. She says that one time he comes with a baseball cap that he found in the sewers of New York on his way to hear a rock concert; he doesn’t even know where this concert was or if it was really a concert, that din he heard, but the shark is the way he is, nothing to be done about it. He’s stupid, says the counselor. Stupido.

  The child asks what the shark was doing in New York.

  The young counselor says that the shark works as a cop for shoals of herrings and goes into the ports of New York and Mandalay to spy on fishermen, so that he can then report back to the herrings. It’s not very nice, says the girl, but life is like that sometimes. The child doesn’t really look like he understands.

  Then she says that one day the shark came back to the island and asked David to come, that he wanted to show him the Sargasso prairie, where there is never any wind or waves, only a long, gentle swell. Never cold. And where sometimes the sea turns milky white from a mother whale whose mammary glands have been injured; where you can bathe in the sea of milk that comes from her mammaries and drink it and roll around in its warmth. That it’s an indescribable happiness.

  Come, David. Come. David.

  And David, finally, comes.

  And the shark cries and David can’t understand why.

  And all the animals of the island encircle David and begin to wash themselves as they do every evening, and also lick David, who is now their child.