Writing

by Marguerite Duras

  Why not make a film about what is unknown, still unknown?

  I have nothing in hand, nothing in mind for making that film. But it’s the one I thought about most that summer. Because this film would be the film of the mad, unattainable idea, a film about the literature of living death.

  The writing of literature is what poses a problem to every book, to every writer, to every writer’s every book. And without that writing there is no writer, no book, nothing. From there, it seems one can also tell oneself that because of this fact, there is perhaps nothing more.

  The silent collapse of the world might have begun that day, with the event of the so slow and so painful death of the twenty-year-old Englishman in the sky over the Norman forest, that monument of the Atlantic coast, that glory. That news, that single fact, that mysterious news had infiltrated the heads of those who were still alive; a point of no return had been reached in the primary silence of the earth. From then on they knew it was pointless to keep hoping. They knew it all over the world, starting from that one object, a twenty-year-old child, that young casualty of the last war, the forgotten one from the final war of the first era.

  And then one day, there will be nothing left to write, nothing to read, nothing left but the untranslatable fact of the life of that dead boy who was so young, young enough to make you scream.

  Roma

  Italy.

  Rome.

  A hotel lobby.

  Evening.

  The Piazza Navona.

  The lobby is empty except for the terrace, a woman sitting in an armchair.

  Waiters carry trays; they’re going to serve the guests on the terrace. They return, disappear toward the far end of the lobby. Return.

  The woman has fallen asleep.

  A man arrives. He’s also a guest at the hotel. He stops. He looks at the sleeping woman.

  He sits down, stops looking at her.

  The woman awakes.

  The man speaks to her, timidly:

  “Am I disturbing you?”

  The woman gives him a slight smile; she doesn’t answer.

  “I’m a guest at the hotel. I see you cross the lobby every day and sit there.” (Pause.) “Sometimes you fall asleep. And I watch you. And you know it.”

  Silence. She looks at him. They look at each other. She says nothing. He asks:

  “Have you finished shooting?”

  “… Yes…”

  “So the script was complete … ?”

  “Yes, we already had one. I wrote it before we started filming.”

  They don’t look at each other. Their discomfort becomes visible. He murmurs:

  “The film would begin here, now, at this moment … when the light fades.”

  “No. The film already began here, with your question about the shooting.”

  Pause. Their discomfort increases.

  “How’s that?”

  “With just your question about the shooting, here, a moment ago, the old film disappeared from my life.”

  Pause—slowness.

  “Afterward … you don’t know …”

  “No … nothing … Nor do you …”

  “It’s true. Nothing.”

  “And you?”

  “I didn’t know anything before this moment.”

  They turn toward the Piazza Navona. She says:

  “I never knew. They filmed the fountains on April 27, 1982, at eleven in the evening … You weren’t at the hotel yet.”

  They gaze at the fountain.

  “It looks like it rained.”

  “It seems that way every night. But it isn’t raining. It hasn’t been raining in Rome these past days … It’s the water from the fountains that the wind blows onto the ground. The entire square is drenched.”

  “The children are barefoot …”

  “I watch them every evening.”

  Pause.

  “It’s getting chilly.”

  “Rome is very near the sea. That chill comes from the sea. You already knew that.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Pause.

  “There are guitars, too … aren’t there? It sounds like they’re singing …”

  “Yes, with the noise of the fountains … everything blends together. But they are singing.”

  They don’t listen.

  “It would all have been false …”

  “I’m not sure … Maybe nothing would have been. We have no way of knowing …”

  “Is it already too late?”

  “Perhaps. Too late even before the start.”

  Silence. She goes on:

  “Look at the large central fountain. It looks frozen, pallid.”

  “I was looking at it … It’s under electric light. You’d think there was a flame inside the cold water.”

  “Yes. What you see in those furrows in the stone is the flow of other rivers. Rivers from the Middle East and much farther away, from Central Europe; the course of their flow.”

  “And those shadows on the people.”

  “Those are the shadows of other people, who are looking at the river.”

  A long pause. She says:

  “I’m afraid that Rome existed …”

  “Rome existed.”

  “Are you sure …”

  “Yes, and the rivers, too. And the rest as well.”

  “How can you stand that …”

  Silence. She says in a whisper:

  “I don’t know what this fear is, other than what one sees in the eyes of those women in the stelae on Via Appia. One sees only what they show of themselves, what they conceal when they show themselves to us. Where are they leading us, toward what night? Even that illusion of clarity reflected off the white stones, perfect, regular—we still doubt it, don’t we?”

  “You seem to fear the visible side of things.”

  “I’m afraid as if I were suffering from Rome itself.”

  “From perfection?”

  “No … from its crimes.”

  A long pause. Glances. Then they lower their eyes.

  He says:

  “What is that constant thought that makes you so pale, that sometimes makes you shut yourself away on this terrace, waiting for daylight …”

  “You knew I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Yes. I couldn’t sleep either. Like you.”

  “Already, you see.”

  A pause.

  “What is that distraction you’re caught up in?”

  “I’m constantly finding myself turned away from Rome by a philosophy other than its own … which would have been contemporaneous with Rome’s, and which originated somewhere other than here, far from here, from Rome, in the direction of northern Europe, for example, you see …”

  “By a philosophy that has left no trace?”

  “None but a kind of vague memory—invented, perhaps, but plausible.”

  “It was in Rome that you remembered that northern country.”

  “Yes. How do you know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes. It was here, in Rome, in the school bus.”

  A pause. Silence.

  “Sometimes in the evening, around sunset, the colors of Via Appia are those of Tuscany. I learned of that northern region when I was very young, still a child. First in a travel guidebook. And then during a school trip. It was a civilization contemporary with Rome that has now disappeared. I wish I knew how to tell you about the beauty of that region, where that civilization and that philosophy occurred in a lovely and fleeting coincidence. I wish I could tell you about the simplicity of their existence, their geography, the color of their eyes, of their climates, their agriculture, their pastures, their skies.” (A pause.) “You see, it would be like your smile, but lost, untraceable after it occurs. Like your body, but vanished; like a love, but without you or me. And so how can one say? How can one not love?”

  Silence. Delayed glances.

  A pause. They are silent. He looks toward the distance, toward nothing. She says:
>
  “I do not believe that Rome had a philosophy, you see. It enunciated its power. People philosophized somewhere else, in those other regions. It was somewhere else that philosophy occurred. Rome was to be only the place of war, the place where that philosophy was stolen and where it was decreed.”

  “At first, what did that guidebook and that trip tell you?”

  “The book said that everywhere else one could find works of art, statuary, temples, civic buildings, public baths, red-light districts, arenas for executions—and that there, in those moors, nothing like that could be found.

  “I read that in childhood. Then it was forgotten.

  “And then another time there was a ride in the school bus and the teacher said that this civilization had existed there in a splendor never attained anywhere else, in the region the bus was driving through.

  “It was raining that afternoon. There was nothing to see. So the teacher spoke about the moors of heather and ice. And we listened to her as we might have looked at her. As we might have looked at those moors …”

  Silence. He asks:

  “The region was flat, without contour, and you couldn’t see anything?”

  “Nothing. Except the line of the sea at the far end of the fields. None of us had ever thought about the moor—never, you understand … Not yet.”

  “And Rome?”

  “Rome was taught in school.”

  “The teacher spoke …”

  “Yes. The teacher said that—although we couldn’t see anything—a civilization had been created there. In that place on earth. And that it must have been there still, buried under the plain.”

  “The infinite plain.”

  “Yes. It ended at the sky. Nothing remained of that civilization: only holes, cavities in the earth, invisible from outside. We asked: Did they know those holes weren’t graves? No, she answered, but we’ve never known if they weren’t temples. All we knew is that they had been made, built by human hands.

  “The teacher said that sometimes those holes were as large as bedrooms, sometimes large as palaces, that sometimes they became like hallways, passageways, hidden developments. That all these things had been made by human hands, built by them. That in certain deep layers of clay, they had found traces of those hands flattened against the walls. The hands of men, open, sometimes injured.”

  “What did the teacher think those hands were?”

  “They were screams, she said, for later on, for other men to hear and see. Screams made with hands.”

  “How old were you when you took that trip?”

  “I was twelve and a half. I was awestruck. Beneath the sky, above the holes, we could still see cultures that had reached year after year down through the centuries all the way to us, the little girls in the school bus.”

  Silence. She looks. Recognizes.

  “The holes are very near the ocean. They follow the sand embankments, in the arable soil of the moor. The moor crosses through no village. The forest has vanished. After its disappearance, the moor was not renamed. No. It has been there in space and time since it emerged from the central mud of the submerged earth. This is known. But we can no longer see or touch it. It’s finished.”

  “How do we know what you’re telling me?”

  “How we know this, we will never know … We know. Probably because we have always known it, we have always asked the question and people have always answered the same way. This has been so for thousands of years. They tell it to every child at the age of reason, they teach the facts: ‘Look, those holes you see were made by men who came from the North.’”

  “As elsewhere they say: ‘Look at the flat stones of Jerusalem. That’s where mothers rested on the day before their sons were crucified, those fanatics of the God of Judea whom Rome branded criminals.’”

  “The same way. They say: ‘Look, there, in the same way, the sunken lane was for going to fetch water, and also for traveling from the country to the merchants in the city, and also for the thieves of Jerusalem to go to Calvary to be hanged. It was the only road for all those things. And it was also for children to play in.’”

  Silence.

  “Can we also talk here about a celebrated love?”

  “I’m not sure … Yes, no doubt …”

  Silence. Discomfort. Altered voices.

  “Who could she have been, the woman in that love story?”

  “I would say, for example, a queen of the deserts. In official history, that’s what she was: the Queen of Samaria.”

  “And the man who won the Samaritan war, the one who would have answered?”

  “A general in the Roman legions. The head of the Empire.”

  “I believe you’re right.”

  Silence. Heavier, as if far away.

  “All of Rome knew the story of that war.”

  “Yes. Rome knew history only through wars. And here the difficulties love encountered were linked to the publicity that surrounded the war out of love for her, the Queen of Samaria.”

  “Yes. That love was great. How did they know?”

  “In the same way they knew the number of the dead, the number spoken in low voices at night; they knew the number of prisoners. In peacetime they would have known just the same. Because he made her a captive instead of putting her to death, they would have known it just the same.”

  “Yes.”

  “In the midst of those thousands of deaths, that young woman from Samaria, Queen of the Jews, Queen of a desert that Rome had no interest in, brought back to Rome with such respect … How could they not guess the scandal of passion …

  “All of Rome devoured the news of that love. Every evening, every night. The slightest bit of news … The color of her robes, the color of her eyes behind the prison windows. Her tears, the sound of her sobbing.”

  “Is that love greater than history says?”

  “Greater, yes. You knew that?”

  “Yes. Greater than he would have wished, he, the destroyer of the Temple.”

  “Yes, greater. Less known, too. But hold on … I believe he didn’t know he loved her. From the moment he was denied that right, he didn’t believe it, you understand … I remember that, something like that, his ignorance of his own love.”

  “Except perhaps when he had her at his mercy in the palace chambers, once the guards were asleep. Toward the end of night, they say.”

  “Yes, except perhaps then … No one knows.”

  Long pause. He says:

  “According to you, did the moor people learn of the Romans’ attempt to conquer the world of thought and bodies?”

  “I suppose they knew of it.”

  “They knew everything in those moors, those first lands to emerge from the sea.”

  “Yes, that’s right, everything. In those subterranean moors, they knew from those who had fled the Empire, from deserters, wanderers of God, thieves. They knew all about Rome’s attempt and they watched the dilapidation of its soul. And while Rome declaimed its power, you see, while it lost the blood of its very thought, the people of the holes remained plunged in the darkness of the mind.”

  “Thinking. Did they know what they were doing?”

  “No. They didn’t know how to write, or how to read. This went on for a long time, for centuries. They didn’t know the meaning of those words. But I haven’t told you the most important thing: their sole occupation was centered on God. With empty hands, they looked outside. At the summers. The winters. The sky. The sea. And the wind.”

  “That’s how they acted with God. They spoke to God the way children play.”

  “Did you talk about a contemporary love, in your film?”

  “I don’t remember. It seems to me I spoke about a living love, but only about that.”

  “How would Rome have been involved?”

  “From the very fact that the dialogue took place in Rome. These dialogues concern a love that covered Rome for centuries with a sheet of freshness. It is where the massive corpse of its history lay that the lov
ers could finally weep over their own history, over their love.”

  “What would they have wept for?”

  “For themselves. Reunited by their very separation, they would finally have wept.”

  “You’re talking about the lovers of the Temple.”

  “No doubt. Yes. I don’t know who I’m talking about. I’m also talking about them, yes.”

  A pause. Silence. They are no longer looking at each other. And then he says:

  “Not a word has remained of the lovers of the Temple, not a confidence, not an image, isn’t that right …”

  “She did not speak Roman. He did not speak the language of Samaria. It was in that hell of silence that desire grew. He was the sovereign. Irrevocable.

  “And then he passed away.”

  “They say it was a cruel, bestial love.”

  “Yes, I believe it was that, a cruel, bestial love. I believe it as if it were love itself.”

  A pause.

  “The Senate gathers its information and he takes it from there, he, the Roman chief, forced to tell her of his decision to abandon her.”

  “He’s the one who announces it to her.”

  “Yes. It’s evening. It happens very fast. He comes into her chambers and with incredible brutality he tells her that the boat will soon come.

  “In a few days, he tells her, she will be brought to Caesarea.

  “He says he can do nothing else but give her back her freedom.

  “They say he cried.

  “For her to live, he also tells her, she must go far away from him.

  “He also says that he will never see her again.”

  “She does not speak Roman.”

  “No. But she can see he is crying. She cries because he is crying. Why she is crying, he does not know.”

  A pause.

  “She was to die. But no. She will live a while longer.”

  “She lives. She does not die. She dies later, from the deception of being at once a man’s captive and his lover.

  “But because of this, she also lives on until the end of time.

  “She lives from knowing that love is still there, even if shattered; that it is suffering at every moment and yet still there, present, whole, and ever stronger.

  “And she dies from it.”