by Yoko Tawada
In the restaurant to which Frau Finder took us, she ordered a bottle of red wine for the three of us. I didn’t want to drink any wine, only a sip to moisten my dry lips. But against my will I swallowed down the first glass in one gulp. Jörg refilled my glass. The wine tasted like a disagreeable insinuation. “You’re drinking too fast,” Jörg remarked as I gulped down the second glass. Frau Finder translated each of these sentences like a faithful echo. Back then in East Berlin, Jörg and I drank vodka. Now I was drinking wine staring at the very same face, and my rational faculties remained as clear as Evian.
Jörg coughed and said: “You ought to come back with me to Bochum and recuperate. There would also be the possibility of a therapeutic treatment.” Frau Finder continued to translate into French what Jörg said in German.
The French language was only sounding familiar to me now because it was mediating a language, German, that felt even more foreign. “Therapy? I’m not sick. And anyway I don’t want to disturb you. You have surely gotten married by now.” Jörg understood these sentences and responded in a flash: “I was briefly married once, years ago, then quickly got divorced.” Frau Finder went to wash her hands. Jörg’s forehead neared mine, and his voice, taking on a familiar tone, whispered something in Russian. I couldn’t recognize a single word of what he said.
“What are you living on? What is your profession? Why are you so thin?” I couldn’t tell if it was Jörg asking me these questions or Frau Finder. The scallops were served, they lay on the plate like charred butterflies. “I have to remain in Paris. I have an important reason.” A waiter with a lonely face wandered over, looking absent-mindedly out the window at a black car that had just pulled in and shut off its engine.
I said goodbye to Jörg. We made a date to meet the next day at Frau Finder’s desk at the library. At home, I imagined what it would be like if I were to go to Bochum with Jörg. We would buy a wall calendar and tear off one page every day until the calendar was thin and the days piled in the wastepaper basket. Then we would buy a new calendar and then another, and one day I would convince him to travel to Saigon with me on vacation. From Marie’s basement I would never be able to go to anywhere. So it would surely be better to return to Bochum. Marie would continue living alone. I couldn’t abandon Marianne at Place Vendôme, though. She would have to come with me. Otherwise she would drink and drink and would soon die with her nameless diamonds in her hand. I couldn’t let her die inside me.
Didn’t you warn that young woman never to take on the role of a messenger? The diamonds are transported by the hands of women. Once they reach their new owner, the messenger is destroyed. You tell the young woman everything you know even though she is your rival. The young woman doesn’t listen.
“Why don’t you want to come with me?” Jörg asked if I had a lover in Paris. “No, I don’t have one. I don’t want to leave behind the Parisian movie theaters.” Frau Finder laughed before she translated. Jörg laughed too and looked relieved. “You can see a movie anywhere in the world. That’s why they invented film. It’s really ridiculous to refuse to leave a city because of the cinemas.” I didn’t understand what he meant. He became impatient, and Frau Finder placed her hand on his thigh to calm him. “Every movie that is shown in Paris is shown in Bochum as well.” Frau Finder gave Jörg a critical look, and he corrected his statement: “Well, not every movie, but many of them.”
When I left the Institute together with Jörg and wandered among the nocturnal bars, I was confused by the scent of his jacket. I felt I was playing a part in a movie with a plot unknown to me.
C h a p t e r T w e l v e
E s t , O u e s t
It isn’t chloroform making my eyelids heavy. Who wouldn’t fall asleep at a moment of border crossing long anticipated in dreams?
Triton, tuna, Turkish freighters. The ocean’s water is rocking. The irresistible effect of film music. From the high waves upon the screen your name suddenly appears. I hold my breath. The name is a promise.
There was no Ecran in Bochum. Surely this city possessed a darkroom where my lonely retinas could make contact with your body. In the local newspaper, I found the “Movies” section. A new film of yours was scheduled to open the following week. “I’ll go with you,” Jörg said.
Russian and French intermingle in a parlor. A Frenchwoman who cannot speak Russian is sitting between two Russians who are speaking French. The Frenchwoman is named Marie—this Marie played not by you but by some other actress. Therefore I cannot call this figure Marie. I’ll call her Sandrine, since this is the actress’s name. The floor sways beneath the feet of the guests as they travel to the East on a ship.
Intellectuals with the obligatory piano and wineglasses. Even on a ship they insist on having the same fixtures as in their apartments. They are traveling back to the Russian soil they haven’t set foot on in thirty years. My soil! An old man squats down and kisses the earth. One of the soldiers pulls him up disrespectfully and forces him to stand upright. The soul is a sort of potato if the earth is its mother.
Nocturnal and wet gleams the harbor of Odessa. A coarse, crackling voice is pouring out of the loudspeaker: the Soviet Union welcomes the emigrants from the West. Someone steps out of line and is shot. “How awful,” Jörg whispers in my ear.
A gigantic building filled with barren spaces and broken walls. In the next room, someone is screaming in fear; the footsteps in the corridor reverberate as in a prison. Sandrine, suspected of spying, is being interrogated. Alexei is advised to divorce her and marry a Soviet woman. Since he is unwilling to do this, his wife and son are sent with him to Kiev as punishment. Sandrine has never in her life shared an apartment with five families. There is only a single bathtub for everyone, and one kitchen. An inebriated man with a fluttering shirt staggers into the kitchen and teases Sandrine, who, distracted by him, drops the plate she is drying on the floor. The plate shatters, laughter erupts. A woman with an ignorant, aggressively painted face gives a spiteful laugh. “I’m sure Kiev is a gorgeous city, but that’s not what they’re showing us,” I whisper in Jörg’s ear.
“This is horrible,” Jörg murmurs at my side. Perhaps he has already begun to identify with the character Alexei. The film is drilling these characters into our hearts. “Jörg, you aren’t a doctor, you can’t play the piano, you are not Alexei!” My ironic remarks have no effect. Jörg is Alexei and is suffering at having to share such close quarters with simple people. He has fallen into the screen’s trap. The walls are broken, the pipes in the bathroom rusted.
Close quarters? Really? Do you feel cramped? Do you think an apartment like this is fit only for simple folk? In the house where I was born, we lived in even tighter quarters. Do you consider me one of these simple folk?
“No, not at all,” Jörg said right away, “but we can’t simply join in the workers’ lives, I mean, we can’t even bear the workers, that’s really something we should honestly admit.” I asked: “Are you not a worker? Every day you work like a slave for your boss. You’re scarcely allowed to make any decisions at all. Are you really not a worker?”
There is someone behind the screen who is trying to convince Jörg and the other moviegoers of something. Jörg, you are something better than a worker, Jörg, you are a free man. Who is saying this? The writer? The director? The producer? What are the names of these cowards who are hiding behind the screen? The only thing I want is for you to finally make your appearance on the screen and change the plot, which displeases me.
Unbefitting, Sandrine thinks at first. We are not accustomed to living under poor conditions. It must be a misunderstanding that we’ve wound up here. We have to leave this place as quickly as possible. How unjust that the family of a doctor should have to live like workers, Sandrine thinks. How much longer until we can go back again? An outrage. Sandrine is furious—she is not permitted to return. Her French passport is taken from her and torn into pieces, and she is struck in the face. Her lips bleed and swell. She is to remain there and become a worker. T
here is no other interpretation.
“Get out of here!” I say to the cinematographic current trying to carry me off with it. Leave me alone. I don’t want to be carried off. But it was difficult to maintain a distance from the images. They swept me away with them, wanting to drown me. Why was I, a free human being, not allowed to turn off the images when I wished or at least correct them? I wished to experience boredom, for this would at least entail the individual freedom not to take part. If I fell asleep in my seat, the film would have been better for me. I had to remain awake, though, to wait for you.
A simple woman: this is how the woman sharing the apartment with Sandrine’s family describes herself. I am a simple woman. How did the filmmaker find this face, which really does embody the type of the flawlessly simple woman? Perhaps she was operated on before the shoot. It cannot be possible for a person to look so typical. It is possible that the camera shows the woman only from one particular angle to make her appear typical. Perhaps it isn’t even necessary to operate on a face because the retina is secretly being operated on during the screening of the film.
Choirs are rehearsing on the stage of a theater. In the dressing room, Sandrine is ironing a dancer’s rubashka. Ironing is now her profession. And while her work dress doesn’t suit her, her unfriendly colleague wears the very same dress like a second skin. Even if only for reasons of fashion, the upper class must remain on top, the film is saying, the upper class should never wear workers’ clothing, the workers must do the working.
As a swimmer, Sasha has nothing on but swim trunks. He is wearing neither an office suit nor a military uniform nor a work shirt. For reasons of fashion, his future is open.
Day after day Sasha trains in the cold river. He was on the team that trained in the warm indoor pool, but when his performance began to wane, the trainer kicked him out. “You drink too much!” “I’m having a rough time. My grandmother just died.” “Mine too. That’s no reason to get lazy. You’re off the team! We can send only the very best to compete in the West. They despise us there. That’s why we must win.” Sasha’s parents were liquidated long ago as enemies of the state. Later the same thing happened to the grandmother who had raised him.
The characters in this film spoke both French and Russian. I pretended that I understood a great deal linguistically. The German subtitles drifting across the lower edge of the screen like autumn leaves did not disturb me.
“Did you know things were like that in the Soviet Union?” Jörg asked. I was beginning to understand more and more of the words Jörg said to me. What I couldn’t grasp was what exactly he meant by them. My counter-questions remained unspoken in my head. What do you mean by “like that”? Do you mean that every older female department head in the Soviet Union sexually harassed a good-looking young doctor? Do you mean that…
… ice cream from Kiev tasted good to a Parisian child? Sandrine’s little son eats ice cream in a boat on the river. The simple man rowing the boat asks him if it tastes good. On the shore, Sandrine stands watching with an earnest face as Sasha swims against the current. He feels the woman’s expectant gaze on his skin. I hate the unambiguous language of images. They’re supposed to tell me that Sandrine loves Sasha and Sasha loves Sandrine. No member of the audience is allowed to think anything different. One can at most allow oneself individual shades of interpretation, for example when Jörg says: “To Sandrine, Sasha embodies the energy a person needs to reach freedom. That’s why she loves him.” “So what?” I reply, two words I can pronounce fluently. “So what?” Sasha’s supple skin is protecting his burden, his heavy muscles, from the world outside. Sandrine smears white fat…
… on his back before he leaps into the river. She smears and smears; she is already perfectly familiar with his skin before she touches it for the first time in the bedroom. And the beautiful actress who is not entangled in any love story and will remain free until the end …
… still does not appear. I am waiting for you, the one I know so well, the one who still does not know me. Alexei sleeps with a female functionary in order to save his skin politically, and Sandrine throws him out of the room. The neighbor, the simple woman in a nightgown, offers him a cigarette as he stands helplessly in the corridor. He is permitted to eat bread with her, read the newspaper, and sleep with her.
“No,” I say aloud. “What?” Jörg asks in bewilderment. “She’s the actress who stopped the train to Paris for me that night.” Finally you’ve appeared on the screen—a stage actress arriving from France to perform a play by Victor Hugo. “I have come out of ideological conviction,” you say. Therefore you have to speak with ordinary people; you don’t want to participate in the staged official dinner. You have come to us out of ideological conviction. What ideology? The ideology of Victor Hugo? He was the cult figure of Caodaism, but as far as I know these teachings were unknown in France. What do you believe in? Your costume is a fusion between reptiles and flesh-eating plants. Gemstones glitter in your labia. Like a…
… an angel from Sieben Planeten you stand onstage, exactly as on that day beside the train tracks in Bochum. What freedom did you mean to promise me that day? Gabrielle is your name in this movie. Sandrine hurries into the changing room after the performance and asks Gabrielle to help her.
The Danube is calling Sasha. He has been nominated for the international competition in Vienna. “You must win—only sports can win over the people in the West. And don’t get into any trouble.” He is being encouraged and warned. His departure is prevented at the last moment: in his bag they found a letter that Sandrine had written to her sister in Paris.
I’m fine here, don’t worry about me, Mama, says Sandrine’s little boy. He isn’t lying. He has other children to play with, children he runs giggling with through the building. The boy sits beside Sasha, who makes a paper airplane for him in a quiet park. Even the so-called simple workers have plenty of time for him. They give him ice cream, play with him. He plays, learns, eats, sleeps, and forgets what things were like before. It becomes more and more incomprehensible to him that life in Kiev is a catastrophe in his mother’s eyes.
Sasha has been sent to Odessa to purify his heart in a training camp because he’s been polluted by Sandrine. He secretly decides to leave the country for the free world no matter what—Turkey to start. A Greek captain is willing to transport him on his freighter for money. Then on the day of departure the captain refuses. Something has happened that has resulted in increased security measures. Sasha, who doesn’t want to give up his plan, tells the captain he will meet the freighter out in the ocean. He’ll have to swim five hours to get there. He leaps from the cliff and swims through the water, which is gradually darkening. Somewhere in the night he is supposed to find the ship. This is the climax of the film. Should I allow it to entrance me? The music forces me to swim along with him. The men’s chorus sings melancholy Slavic melodies. In between we hear lighthearted Siberian dance rhythms that have a military ring but are still cheery enough to dance to. The music accompanies the loneliness of the swimmer, lending it a generous portion of romanticism and drama, tries to tug me along to reach the mainland of freedom.
Frozen months and years in the story of a lifetime. Sandrine’s stay in the labor camp lasts five years. She emerges with skin white as wax, engraved with deep furrows. The camera holds for a long time on the wrinkles around her eyes. I wonder if these wrinkles have been painted on or if they are real wrinkles that are ordinarily hidden beneath make-up. Whatever the case they are nothing other than shadows on the screen, which remains smooth the entire time. On the day of Sandrine’s release, Alexei and their son come to pick her up. She cries because of the smell she is unable to remove from her body.
And the son, who is already taller than his mother, keeps his lips closed for the most part, saying only the most necessary things. Sometimes he cries in secret. Otherwise he sits bolt upright before the Party assembly on the television. In front of the TV screen, his eyes become hollow. “Did you also see programs like
that when you were a child?” Jörg asked me on the way home. We didn’t have a television, I replied. At home he opened the bottommost drawer of his dresser and pulled out a manuscript. “I kept this…
