The Cemetery in Barnes

by Gabriel Josipovici

  Sometimes, in the early morning, in the summer, the light shone most gently on the earthenware teapot and, seeing it, he would feel tears come into his eyes. I could never have experienced that light if I had not been alone, he would say. I could never have felt as I did then that I wanted to bless the world and be blessed by it in turn.

  When he got back to the little flat after lunch he would hang up his hat on the peg and sit straight down to work. He liked those long afternoon sessions with nothing to disturb him except the occasional sound of a police siren in the Boulevard Saint-Germain. He liked the sense of himself at work in his high room and Paris busily going about its business far below.

  Time stands still when you are working, he would say.

  Time never stands still, his wife – his second wife – would say.

  For me, at the time, it did.

  But it never does.

  As you will.

  No, she would say. Not as I will. It never does. Period.

  You are right, of course, he would concede, but, since I felt it did there was a sense in which it did.

  He can’t get rid of me that easily, she would say, laughing her full-throated laugh. He thinks he can but he can’t.

  It’s not a question of getting rid, he would say, it’s a question of perception.

  And you perceived time standing still?

  Sometimes.

  Sometimes, sometimes, she would mock him.

  It was like a repetition of their marriage vows, and the guests were sometimes tempted to clap at a particularly pithy exchange.

  I thought when my first wife died my life had come to an end, he would say.

  Nothing comes to an end. You never leave anything behind. It always catches up with you.

  Perhaps.

  No perhaps. It never comes to an end. Not till the end comes.

  Friends who dropped in to see them never failed to remark on the wonderful sense of peace emanating from the house high up in the hills above Abergavenny, or to be captivated by his wife’s full-throated laugh. As he stuck out his leg and pulled up his trousers to reveal the scar, a hush would descend on the company. But it is not easy to pull a trouser-leg up above the knee and he invariably had to give up his endeavours before he had succeeded, assuring them that the scar was indeed visible after all those years.

  It was in Putney, he said, that he had conceived the ambition to translate the sonnets of du Bellay which most appealed to him.

  Comme le marinier, que le cruel orage

  A long temps agité dessus la haulte mer,

  Ayant finablement à force de ramer

  Garanty son vaisseau du danger du naufrage,

  Regarde sur le port, sans plus craindre la rage

  Des vagues ny des vents, les ondes escumer:

  Et quelqu’autre bien loing au danger d’abysmer

  En vain tendre les mains vers le front du rivage:

  Ainsi (mon cher Morel) sur le port arresté

  Tu regardes la mer, et vois en seureté,

  De mille tourbillons son onde renversee:

  Tu la vois jusq’au ciel s’eslever bien souvent,

  Et vois ton Du Bellay à la mercy du vent

  Assis au gouvernail dans une nef percee.

  But ambition is one thing and execution another. Du Bellay’s rhymes, so seemingly effortless in French, simply would not transfer into English, no matter how hard he tried. And what of the syntax? We imagine when we start that the subject will be the poet, but it turns out to be his friend Morel, now safe in the harbour, watching the poet, ‘at the mercy of the winds, / Sitting at the tiller in a ship full of holes.’ It was the combination of quiet precision in the writing and profound despair in what was being written about that never failed to move him. There is his dear Morel on the shore, ‘bien loing du danger d’abysmer’, well clear of the danger of sinking down into the abyss, gazing out at the ship in trouble in the turbulent seas, and somehow then zooming in on ‘your du Bellay’, sitting (we are not told what else he is doing, perhaps he is just hopelessly sitting, waiting for the inevitable to happen) at the tiller of the sinking ship. Icy calm and cosmic violence, despair and love and resignation all yoked together in fourteen lines of even rhythm and impeccable rhyme. The wonder of it made him want to cry.

  Once, in the library in Putney, as he leafed through a book about nineteenth-century Paris, he noticed a young woman sitting cross-legged on the floor in the next bay, absorbed in a book she had obviously just taken off the shelf. Something about the ease with which she had established herself in this public space and the concentration on her face touched him. He waited to see if she would raise her head from the book but as long as he waited she remained resolutely absorbed in it. He changed his books at the desk and went out, determined to forget all about her, but on the library steps he hesitated, then sat down. He did not know exactly what it was he was waiting for, but he stayed there, looking at the passers-by, dipping into his books, glancing every now and again at his watch. Finally, unable to contain himself any longer, he went back inside and hurried, as though he had forgotten something, to the shelves of travel and geography books. She was still there, exactly as he had left her and still did not look up, even when he stood very close.

  He went away again and sat down once more on the low wall outside, but still she did not emerge. Finally, embarrassed by his own actions, he forced himself to leave, walking away quickly without looking back.

  After that he went to the library every day, sitting for hours looking through the weekly papers and wandering vaguely from shelf to shelf. But she did not return. At least, not when he was there.

  We walk in the labyrinth of our lives, he would say, and we do not know if we are lost or not, do not know if we are happy or not.

  Happy, unhappy, his wife – his second wife – would say. It doesn’t mean a thing.

  That’s true too, he would say.

  They seemed at such times to be completely unaware of the fact that there were other people there, carrying on a conversation which had no doubt been going on between them for years.

  You know me, she would say. I do not hesitate to tell it how it is.

  No matter what.

  No matter what.

  When they went shopping in Abergavenny it was always she who drove and, even in the car, it seemed, their animated conversation never ceased. In the middle of an aisle at the local supermarket they would stop, holding on to the trolley, and talk, making it awkward for the other shoppers to circulate. Friends and neighbours who saw them then would not dare to interrupt, but hurry by with averted eyes and open ears. They never noticed.

  It was in his Paris years, he said, that he had come to appreciate the value of silence. The faint hum arising from the rue Saint-Jacques would only make the silence in the room more palpable. I sometimes felt, he would say, that by moving my hand in the air I could alter the pitch of that hum.

  He liked to hear the scratching of his pencil as it raced over the paper. I found it soothing, he said. I found it hypnotic. The hours would race by when I was deep in my work and sometimes it was with a start that I realised it was time for my break.

  He was a man of regular habits, never carried on past his fixed time of eleven o’clock even when the work was going well. If I had finished in five months instead of six, he would say, what would it have gained me? I would have had to fill up that sixth month with another translation, and it’s not as if I had any great belief in the books I was translating or any burning desire to see them out in English sooner than the publisher had planned.

  Though translating was my life, he said, I did sometimes wonder why anyone would bother to buy the books on which I worked. There were days, he said, when he could not wait to finish his stint, leave the flat, descend the stairs and then the steps and walk out into the Parisian day.

  Sometimes he would take his well-thumbed copy of Shakespeare’s poems with him and sit under the shade of the lime trees in the Luxembourg Gardens, reading.<
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  Affection is a coal that must be cooled

  Else, suffered, it will set the heart on fire.

  The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;

  Therefore no marvel though thy hope be gone.

  La mer a ses limites mais le désir n’en a. Could he perhaps – or was that an intolerable arrogance? – turn the whole thing into alexandrines? He would lay the book open on his lap and repeat the words over and over again to himself: The sea hath bounds but deep desire hath none. The sea hath bounds but deep desire hath none. The sea hath bounds but deep desire hath none. And: Heavy heart’s lead melt at mine eyes’ red fire, / So shall I die by drops of hot desire. Heavy heart’s lead melt at mine eyes’ red fire. Heavy heart’s lead melt at mine eyes’ hot fire. They were words but more than words, rhythm but more than rhythm. If a human being had written those lines, and there was no reason to doubt it, then life was indeed a wonderful thing.

  We must never forget, he would say to their guests in the converted farmhouse in the hills above Abergavenny, that Shakespeare is a part of life as much as starving children in Africa and the atrocities of Pol Pot.

  Sometimes his wife – his second wife – would ask a few of the guests to stay to lunch. She would rustle up some cold chicken and a salad and they would sit at the old oak table looking out at the valley spread below them. Though people might sometimes have wondered at the precise nature of their relationship, he was eternally grateful to her for having come into his life.

  He needed a wife, she would say. I took one look at him and I saw that he needed a wife.

  Man is a social animal, he would say, and there comes a time when the strain of having to make every decision for yourself becomes almost unbearable. I had reduced decision-making to a minimum, he would say. I lived my regular life and let the world take care of itself. But there were days when I was afraid to doze off in my chair for fear of never waking up. I felt sometimes that if I let go for a single moment the darkness would invade me and I might never emerge again.

  I saved you from the darkness inside you, she would say.

  Darkness is a part of each one of us, he would respond.

  A part, she would say. When it becomes more than a part it is time to take action.

  It was as though I did not want to take up any space in the world, he would say. As though I wanted to be completely invisible.

  And yet, he would say, it would not do to exaggerate the negatives. There were moments in his Paris years when he had been happier, he thought, than he had ever been before or since. Moments which he felt to be blessed, he said. Moments when he would thank God, though he did not believe in him, for giving him the life he had. My life and that of no one else, he would say. Realising that it was my life and that of no one else was the most precious gift those Paris years gave me, he said. And so I had to live it as best I could.

  To do that you have to forget it is your life, she would say.

  That’s true too, he would say.

  Sometimes you felt he was humouring her, that it was she who was the frail one and it was really he who was in charge. At others you felt the exact opposite. But you always felt that they lived in and for each other and that neither could exist without the other.

  Sometimes they drove to the sea and picnicked on the beach. They liked to sit there as night came on, looking out at the infinite expanse of water. You lose yourself when you look at the sea, he would say. The hours go by and you wonder where they went.

  Once, on the way back, they passed a burning barn and stopped to look. A fire-engine stood next to it and the firemen, little black figures against the flickering light, were trying to drown the flames in water, to no avail. While they watched the order was given to stand back, and with a strange kind of sigh, as the firemen retreated, the large structure caved in on itself and the conflagration lit up the night sky.

  It was that sigh which made the greatest impression on you, she said.

  I have never forgotten it, he said. It was as if the entire building had finally resigned itself to its end.

  His proudest possession in Paris was his rocking-chair. He had found it in a junk-shop not a mile from where he lived. It was painted a dark green with blue and red flower patterns on the sides, and was upholstered in red silk. As he listened to Orfeo he rocked himself gently and felt the music taking him over.

  Torn’a l’ombre di morte

  Infelice Euridice,

  Né più sperar di riveder le stelle,

  Ch’omai fia sordo a prieghi tuoi l’Inferno.

  Turn again to the shadows of death,

  Unhappy Eurydice,

  No longer hope to see the stars again,

  For henceforth Hades to your prayer is deaf.

  It was only in retrospect that he could really savour the complicated play of sounds in ‘infelice Euridice … riveder le stelle’, for, unlike later opera composers, Monteverdi did not pause and repeat for emphasis but let his music, like life itself, flow on.

  Dove t’en vai, mia vita? Ecco, io ti seguo.

  Ma chi me ’l niega, oimè? Sogno o vaneggio?

  Where are you going, my life? See, I follow you!

  But who prevents me, alas? Am I dreaming or delirious?

  Sadly, he is neither, and his language and the music both describe and enact his powerlessness in the face of the inevitable.

  Qual occulto poter di questi orrori,

  Di questi amati orrori,

  Mal mio grado mi tragge e mi conduce

  A l’odiosa luce?

  What occult power among these horrors

  Drags me against my will

  From these beloved horrors, and leads me

  To the loathsome light?

  A l’odiosa luce. To the loathsome light. Why did he always shiver with pleasure as he repeated the words to himself? He had known the feeling and it was anything but pleasurable, but there, in Striggio’s words and Monteverdi’s music, its horror was miraculously transformed, not by being repressed or annihilated but by something much more mysterious to which the phrase ‘the power of art’ did little justice.

  I did not last long as a tutor, he would say. Perhaps it was simply chance that had thrown such difficult students into his path at the very outset, but perhaps too it was something in him that balked at the relationship with his pupils and their families which his role had imposed on all of them, at once servant and tyrant. Swift had railed at it already in the seventeenth century when he accepted the invitation of Sir William Temple and became the tutor of his ward Stella, he said. And nineteenth-century literature was full of accounts of young geniuses forced into the ignominious position of tutoring for a living and being unable to stand it. Often it seemed they took their revenge, if revenge it could be called, by falling in love with the mistress of the house, or, if they were female, the master. But these things did not usually turn out well and, in any case, for good or ill, he had been spared their fate. For after his failure with the Hampstead banker’s Marxist daughter he had decided to cut his losses and make do with his poorly paid translation work alone.

  You needed your solitude, his wife – his second wife – would say when he talked about these things. You needed your days to yourself.

  Yes, he would say, but I could have done with another source of income.

  You needed your peace of mind, she would say. It upset you to have to argue with these rich, spoilt young women.

  I have to admit I was not much good at tutoring.

  You needed your peace of mind.

  Sometimes, when he waited, hidden behind the newspaper kiosk, for his wife – his first wife – to come down the steps of Putney Bridge Station, and watched her looking round for him and then starting to walk home on her own, it seemed to him that he did not know her, had merely glimpsed her once or twice before in the High Street or the library or perhaps as he strolled along the towpath. Even when she got out her key and opened the front door of the two-storied Victorian villa in Carlton Drive in wh
ich they had their flat, entered and closed the door again behind her, he had the feeling that she was entering a space which was her own and from which he was forever excluded.

  He had, he would say, been in a strange state in those first years in Paris after his wife’s death. Was he happy? Was he sad? He took each day as it came, kept to his regular routine and endeavoured not to think too much.

  Too much thinking can be bad for your health, his wife – his second wife – would say.

  Here’s to a life without thought, one of the guests would say, and they would all drink to that amidst the laughter.

  Sometimes, as he walked through the Parisian streets, he would suddenly be seized with the feeling that he was not there, that all this was still in the future or else in the distant past. He would examine the feeling with detachment, as though it belonged to someone else, and walk on.

  Sometimes he and his wife would walk along the towpath as far as Kew Gardens or even Richmond Park. In the trees on the other side of the river at Kew there was a heronry. He remembered passing by there one day in the Spring, he said, and noticing unusual activity in and about the trees. When he stopped to look more attentively he realised that what he was seeing was an endless procession of adult herons bringing food for their young ones hidden in nests in the trees and at once setting off again on the quest for more. Those great noble birds, usually seen standing alone in perfect stillness on the river bank, watching and waiting for their prey, were here flying backwards and forwards like any other birds feeding their young, though the commotion round the nests was a good deal louder and more raucous than that of smaller birds.