Story of Love in Solitude

by Roger Lewinter

  to Claude Royet-Journoud

  Contents

  Story of Love in Solitude

  Passion

  Nameless

  Histoire d’amour dans la solitude

  Passion

  Sans nom

  Copyright

  Landmarks

  Cover

  Start of Content

  Title-Page

  Frontmatter

  Backmatter

  Story of Love in Solitude

  ONE EVENING IN AUGUST, as I was going to bed in the northeast room, which I had finally decided to use — the connecting wall of the other apartment had been broken through two years earlier —, I noticed on the transverse edge of the alcove, obliquely above my head, a spider, black, large, and since I didn’t want to have it there above me during the night, I went into the kitchen of the other apartment — one has to cross through two rooms and a hallway forming the downstroke of a large L pointing southwest —, to look for a glass and a small plate; then, putting a cushion on the bed in order to reach the ceiling, I caught the spider and returned to the kitchen to release it on the balcony.

  The next evening, as I was about to go to bed, in the corner between the two windows I noticed, a little surprised by the proliferation, another spider, the same kind, which I caught in the same manner, to release it as I had the first; but the following day, in the same place — in the corner between the two windows —, there was a spider again, black, large, which I caught, now with a certain exasperation, asking myself whether I shouldn’t perhaps close the window in the room, which I left cracked open during the day.

  The next three days, I saw no spider, but on the fourth evening, in the corner to the left above the head of the bed, there was a spider, again the same kind, which I caught now with the calm of routine, to release it on the balcony off the kitchen and then return to bed, only to get up again immediately, however, to go back into the kitchen to smoke a cigarette, sitting cross-legged, as usual, on the arm of the caved-in couch against the wall, noticing then, on the back of the couch, running headlong, the spider that I had just released on the balcony, which had returned through the partly open window: understanding now, I just managed to catch the spider on the floor tiles — panicked, it was skillfully dodging the glass —, in order to release it this time on the landing — thinking to disorient it that way — : I saw the spider make its way, still running, toward the stairs, where it descended the first step.

  The next day, I did not see any spider, nor, indeed, for the three days that followed, but on the fifth evening, in exactly the same place as the first time — on the transverse edge of the alcove —, the spider was back again: disarmed by this obstinacy, I resolved to let the spider be; and in the morning it was out of sight — it must have slipped into some crack —, but I expected, with a certain impatience, to see the spider again in the evening, then was disappointed not to be able to find it in the alcove, nor in the corner between the two windows, nor did I see the spider the next day, disconcerted by its disappearance just when I had accepted it — spiders, creatures of routine, of absolute punctuality, are the only animal, in practice, with whom it is possible to coexist within strictly defined, and respected, territories —; but two days later, while vacuuming late in the afternoon — I had to straighten up a bit —, on the floor, at the edge of the rug, in the corner between the two windows, I discovered, on its back, legs curled up, dead, a spider, which I didn’t touch, leaving it there, this time, as it was.

  Passion

  A CAMELLIA WITH WHICH I identified — placed, in my parents’ living room, opposite my office —, in November 1978, one week after the death of my mother, had withered on the stalk, suddenly losing its leaves — I had given it to my parents, a dozen years earlier, for their anniversary, one December 27 —, while a second camellia, which was bought for the same occasion the following year and which my mother, six months later, when it wilted — I said she ought to throw it out soon —, not having a green thumb but remaining obstinate, had been able to bring back to life, flourished; from then on, having misunderstood what is beyond understanding, gripped, to the same degree that the second responded, by the impulse to buy a camellia that would restore the first — in December 1980, and whereas until then its buds had fallen, a sudden passion elating me, it had produced two long-blooming flowers, to flower again regularly when I had taken it home with me, in November 1982, shortly before the death of my father —, restraining myself: the one, however, that I saw, on February 1, 1986, at eight o’clock in the morning on my way to the flea market, in front of Fleuriot, riveting me on the spot — it was a shrub more than three feet high, not simply a flowering stalk the size of an azalea, like the others —, I resolved to let fate decide; because, looking for something that would motivate me to occupy the apartment next to mine, which had served for eight years as a storage room — the connecting wall had been broken through the previous May, without my having taken the next step —, I envisioned buying an antique Chinese rug whose dimensions corresponded to those of the corner room, which I thought I would fix up first — the owner of the rug wanted to get rid of it for health reasons, and when someone had spoken to me about it in January, on impulse I had said I would take it for 1,000 francs — the price was around 5,000 francs —, the negotiations being thus entered into, through an intermediary, without my having seen the rug —, the following Thursday a meeting having at last been set for Sunday morning, when, Saturday the fifteenth, in the afternoon, the owner let it be known that the rug had just found a buyer; making up my mind then to take the step.

  When the camellia was delivered, on Monday at eleven o’clock, in the desire to enjoy its flowering, instead of putting it in the corner room, for which I had intended it — it was very cold and the apartment was unheated —, I put it in the kitchen, against the corner of the cupboard, halfway turned between the window and the counter on which was set, next to the sink, the other camellia, whose austerity it accentuated by its profusion, obviously giving umbrage — the sun came around to shine on them early in the afternoon —, because the next evening, after I had, as usual, smoked a last cigarette sitting cross-legged on the arm of the caved-in couch, opposite the little camellia, which I thus contemplated before going to bed, when I studied it I found that its two strongest leaves — those on which, a dozen years earlier, having read that one must devote one’s thoughts to a plant for it to thrive, I had concentrated, so that they grew to the point of becoming, at twice the size of the others, disproportionate — had died in the night: the dullness that had suddenly appeared on each side of the central vein — I knew it because I had observed it each time —, the depression hollowed out in the deep green thickness, spreading to the entire leaf, which, withering, in two or three weeks would fall; while the first reaction of the new camellia was to lose, almost immediately, most of the flower buds that studded it — but evidently artificially forced, it had had too many, and their fall could have been normal, since camellias react this way to a change of position while in bloom —; so that I was asking myself whether, once it became acclimated, it would still produce, despite everything, a flower — their color, deep crimson bordering on purple, seemed to me as exceptional as their form, opened out flat — without the crumpled petals at their heart like those of a peony —, like the roses of medieval illuminations —, when one of the surviving flower buds, among the smallest, on the overhang of the curved branch that formed the prow of the tree — situated at my eye level when, sitting at the low round table, I gazed at it as I ate —, seemed after a week’s time to want to bloom, without managing to open, for as soon as the stamens sprang up from the half
-open corolla, the calyx unfolding toward the bottom, the upper petals grew horizontally, like a visor, while the lower petals atrophied like a ruff — it was in fact two flowers joined together, the second of which took shape as the first opened —, continuing to hollow out at the bottom as they flared backward, torn apart by a proliferation of stamens; while scarcely ten days after its arrival — this also explained the dropping of the flower buds —, the leaf buds exploded, branches and leaves crossing impetuously, though the location near the window wasn’t suitable — under the sun’s rays the new leaves languished, only to recover in the evening, after a watering —; so that, no other place in the kitchen proving to be any better — the ideal position was facing east: in the corner room of the other apartment —, I finally put it in my office — there had never before been a plant there —, in the corner formed by a book cabinet that, in the afternoon, shielded it from the direct sun: next to the octagonal table where I write, to the left behind me, spreading out as if leaping, rising up slender, protective.

  In March, on the first warm afternoon, the kitchen was invaded by moths — many came out from behind the cupboard, fluttering around between the branches of the camellia that was still there —, which — since they were what I feared most, because of the Kashmir shawls covering the walls of the bedroom and the office — I refused to perceive as such — not imagining that such a horde could hatch out in March, not giving any thought, moreover, to this invasion —, soon even giving up crushing them when, practically familiar, they threw themselves against me; a few days later, while moving the camellia, organizing the tangle of connecting wires of the stereo system under the counter — where lie spread, in the middle of a swath of empty matchboxes among the napkins and the silverware, tea, coffee, honey, cheese —, once again intrigued by the number of moths darting through the dust, too engorged or lazy to fly away; when, at the end of March, on returning from a reading in Paris of Kraus’s texts, after lunch, during my nap on the caved-in couch, at the head of which, the previous July, before leaving for a Groddeck colloquium in Frankfurt and because it was extremely hot, in place of the two heavy wood crates containing some old 78s on whose account suddenly — they had been there for two years — I dreaded the sun’s heat, I had set a big package of books, by Groddeck and about Groddeck, among them about twenty copies of L’apparat de l’âme — it seemed to me more prudent to put the records in the books’ place, in the shadow of the hallway —, noticing a maggot crawling on the metal foot of the low round table, I abruptly moved the big corrugated cardboard package: troops of larvae and moths, on the square of rug eaten down to the thread, were crawling at my bedside, not even scared off now by the light; and, the scales falling from my eyes, I realized that the kitchen was infested, the colony having swarmed over the half of the rug between the table and the window — the cracks between the tiles, under the rug, were infiltrated with cocoons, intact or frayed, maggots and eggs in clusters scattered everywhere —; while in the entry, where I now examined the things hung in a heap on the coat hooks, with the exception of what I wore every day, everything was riddled — the previous summer, before throwing myself into the third Kraus, Nachts, I had told myself repeatedly that I had to straighten things up, but I had always postponed it, even though it weighed on me like guilt —; thus taking a month to fill garbage bags with soiled, disintegrating clothes — the Kashmir shawls, however, sprayed regularly each spring — the woolens rolled up underneath in a heap acting as initial bait —, were practically unharmed —; relentlessly spraying walls, floors, baseboards, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the office, the hall; to discover, after a month, that the moths had taken refuge in the cupboards of the other apartment, where I had stored the few articles of clothing that had been spared; making up my mind then to throw out every superfluous thing made of animal fiber.

  The camellia in my office, however, was thriving, and, the new branches luxuriant, it was soon encircled with an armor of foliage that, under the low-angled rays of the sun in late afternoon, lit up, wrapping like a subtle body the opaque mass of old foliage with a trembling into which, often, in the evenings, with exultation, I would plunge my face; nevertheless struck by the torment that appeared to flog its luxuriance — some of the leaves, among the oldest, were clipped, half-cut-away, but among the new ones, too, were many that, lifted up in the middle along the length of the central vein by a shriveling, were in contortions; and, branches bursting forth in all directions, in their intertwinings the leaves, when they didn’t wind tightly around an obstacle, collided head-on and remained bound together in their opposite motion —, new leaf buds, not only on the trunk but also along the length of the branches, ceaselessly springing up and bursting open, like suckers on a rosebush; while already now — it was June —, the buds of flowers destined to grow plump in October revealed themselves everywhere, nevertheless very quickly starting to swell as if, in the urgency of fecundity catching up with the leaves, they would open at any moment; while with the idea — which had been on my mind since the beginning of the year — of finally translating the Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rilke — to which I had, in fact, committed myself by translating, two years earlier, the Duino Elegies, that the Sonnets might fulfill what the Elegies gave rise to: angel here below questioning, man beyond answering —, I read — with a determination incomprehensible even to me — The Celestial Hierarchy, by Dionysius the Areopagite, found at the beginning of July at the flea market, which, suggesting to me, to translate the word Stille — from which the Sonnets proceed —, rather than silence, impassivity, which, at the heart of suffering — its passion —, there seeing the beauty — objective, foreign —, knows its glory, the suprahuman rapture that it speaks through its surmounting, gave me the second word I had lacked until then — which I was, at the time, convinced was a given in French — and which, placed like a bolt in the first line of the first sonnet, thus laid it out — “Un arbre là monta. Ô pur surmontement” —, opening the entire cycle of the song of Orpheus, into which — “arbre haut dans l’oreille” —, after a few starts, on the twenty-fourth of August I threw myself as if it were now a matter of life and death; only occasionally worried about the camellia, beside me, which this struggle must have been irradiating even as it invigorated me; thus hardly surprised — noticing in it the sympathy I had sensed — that it began, in the course of the month of September, to lose some leaves — the most vigorous, which, majestic opened out, crowned its leader —, not worrying at first — their fall counterbalanced the luxuriance of the new leaves —, also seeing in it the repercussions of the uncontrollable development of the flower buds, which bent its branches and which, suffusing it with crimson, already burst open at the tips, which disconcerted me, although I recognized in it the sign of the frenzy rushing its cycles as if — and for a tree, which is truly its embodiment, this was a paradox —, for it, time didn’t exist; while, as with the other camellia, I was letting the fallen leaves litter the soil — although under normal conditions they didn’t decompose but, impervious to rot, withered —, when, moving them aside one afternoon to see whether I should water — it had been extremely muggy and hot for three weeks —, I found that the leaves that touched the soil were reduced to a network of veins; surprised — despite the varieties, there couldn’t be such a difference between camellias —, so that — leaves more recently dropped on top of the others being likewise stripped of their tissue —, a few days later, to be clear in my own mind about it, I removed the mat: maggots, yellowish white, about a quarter inch long, crawling on the surface, immediately went back belowground; and removing the soil then with the tip of a leaf, I discovered yet another type of maggot, perhaps a half inch long, threadlike, translucent, like a fine rice noodle; and so, the insecticide sticks recommended by the florist seeming to me insufficient to check the likely proliferation of parasites — the leaves, invariably the strongest, of other branches were now decimated —, on September 23, reluctantly — dreading the effect on the swollen flower buds —, I
applied a liquid pesticide — I had to water the plant with it, at the rate of one tablespoon diluted in a quart of water, three times at ten-day intervals —; the mixture absorbed, the soil — a sudden myriad of threadlike maggots, translucent, which lifted up twisting in every direction, contorting themselves in broken convulsions before slackening, struck down — heaved; and now, from everywhere, the yellowish-white maggots surged up, wandering across the surface, not dying instantly like the others; and two millipedes, driven from a clump of short branches at the base, streamed out, attempting to climb onto the trunk — so this was what I had found, ten days earlier, near the window, three feet from the pot, and had taken for a dead caterpillar —; faced with this devourment endlessly pouring forth — an hour, meanwhile, had gone by —, beginning to doubt that the treatment could be more than palliative — in the evening, by artificial light, the soil still shuddered —, and the second application, then the third, provoking the same cataclysm, I realized beyond any doubt that there was no other remedy than to transplant the tree — though this be fire and sword —, since the old leaves, pocked, fell in such numbers that wide gaps formed in the previously impenetrable thicket, while the flower buds, whose swelling had stopped with the first treatment, began to wither and soon fall as well; despite everything, still hesitating — I applied the pesticide six times —, when, in the middle of December — the Sonnets had been finished since October 5 —, upon my return from a brief stay in Paris, discovering, in the evening, at the foot of the tree, the same teeming, I made up my mind and took the camellia, on December 18, to a horticulturist to whom I had presented the case, by telephone, at the beginning of November — in a Tribune de Genève from the summer, I had read an article on the alternative approaches he used to combat parasites, and unlike other nurserymen and florists, he had listened to me —, his diagnosis now confirming my own: it would be necessary, though it would have been better to wait till spring, to cleanse the roots and change the soil — that the rotting of the maggots was moreover poisoning —, and, he said, to cut back the tree because of the destruction of its roots; without my expecting that the camellia, when, on December 22, I came back to retrieve it, would be, broken lyre, the stump of its former self; while I had to wait a month, the tree living off its reserves, to know whether it would recover; two days after my return from a reading in Paris from L’attrait des choses, on January 26 or 27, I don’t know anymore, coming, in the morning, into the corner room — where I had placed it — to mist it, in front of its crushed leaves — at the beginning of January, one leaf bud having burst forth like a sucker at the base of the trunk, I had begun to hope —, I knew that in the night the tree had died, and that what would follow would be no more than the process of withering; coming into the kitchen, studying with increased attention the little camellia, the leaves of which, when I had taken the other one to the horticulturist, as if they had been tensed — the two trees, one in the kitchen, the other in the office, separated by the partition but at the same height, were back to back —, had seemed to me to spread out into their space; anxious that something might happen to it as well — for although it had two flowers, unlike the previous year’s single flower bud, which had blossomed out fully on Christmas Day, they were only half-open —; suddenly concerned that instead of the five leaf buds corresponding to its five living branches, it had only three; thinking of giving it some fertilizer — only the previous year, and for the first time, because it was exhausting itself, I had added some peat moss and compost, to which it had responded with seventeen leaves, which had eased its destitution —; my worry increasing when, a few days later, I discovered that a small leaf on the long, leafy branch that, starting just above the soil, descended, greedily reaching for light through an ample bend, below the pot, had withered without my having noticed; deciding on the addition of the fertilizer when, the following week, from their dullness, I saw that one, two, three vigorous leaves were going to fall; stopping the treatment — the effect wouldn’t become apparent for three weeks — on February 28 for the spring; that day spreading a tablespoon of salts — on this occasion, also breaking off the dead woody branches that, superstitiously, I had left, like a shield —; waiting: on March 20, from the dull gray of the exhausted leaves — for two weeks, they’d been stiff — realizing that it was too late; so that after three weeks’ time, I put back in the kitchen of the other apartment, beside the dismantled shrub, the trunk burned to its pith.