by Nizon, Paul.
Why am I actually here? I asked myself, it’s not as if I’ve taken an oath. I felt that way when I hadn’t seen another person for a long time, when I hadn’t spoken with anyone, when I thought I couldn’t bear being alone any longer; when I started being so ashamed of my loneliness that I snuck through the streets: I was ashamed that I felt inconsolable, and I feared people could see my state of mind on my face. If only I lived in a cheerful, entertaining quarter, I thought, and not in this quartier couscous that was getting increasingly darker and even more weighed down with the problems of our new arrivals.
It’s my aunt’s apartment, it’s her apartment that she left to me, that’s one reason for my being here.
I was familiar with several of my Parisian aunt’s apartments, incidentally, my mother had also had a Parisian aunt whom she visited now and then, back when we were kids and my mother was still a young woman. Back then, it was still considered chic when one suddenly had to go to Paris because of relatives, and when my mother returned from such trips, in my eyes she looked like an elegant foreigner, like a young lady from Paris.
I was familiar with several of my aunt’s apartments, but this one here was the worst of them. She had owned this apartment for a long time, but had rented it out; she herself lived in a somewhat better apartment in the vicinity of Daumesnil, in a quartier résidentiel, as she liked to maintain, with some exaggeration. Shortly before her death she had sold the better apartment, to a musician and composer, and with the proceeds from that she had moved into this tiny dwelling to spend her twilight years here as a pensioner, she was already over seventy, and Montmartre, by the way, which is on the border between the eighteenth and the ninth arrondissements, had always been her quarter, so she was actually just returning home.
When I headed toward Rue Simart on that summer morning in 1973, in search of my aunt’s new home, I was very curious, but soon disappointed. This street is admittedly like thousands of other Parisian streets, and yet it seemed a bit gloomier to me, the stone here is a bit grimmer than usual—or dirtier? and has nothing at all in common with that white and ocherous gray that makes such an expensive impression, those cubist colors on façades that look like coated paper flaking off. They suck up and spit back the beams cast by the city of light in so incomparable a manner that one can’t help but call it spiritual. Here, though, the gray seemed brownish or dirty gray, in short, it seemed to me as if I was marching straight into a tunnel. Here, too, as in the rest of the city, one store or little shop stood next to another, but these shops were without awnings, a bicycle dealer, a wallpaper salesman, a grocer, a tool supplier, an employment agency, a pinball machine refinisher, a restorer of old furniture, a fur-coat mender, a health-food store, a real-estate agency, shops so introverted it was as if their owners lived in caves and didn’t conduct their business along the sidewalks as is done almost everywhere else in Paris, they might just as well have had their stores in the catacombs. Even the sky was barely visible here, as if it were something that only happened elsewhere.
In the semi-darkness of the corridor in the building, a woman called out after me, and when I asked her where my aunt lived, she directed me to the back, which faced the courtyard, to the third floor, the door on the right. I knocked, and after waiting for some time I pressed the old-fashioned doorbell that gave off a buzzing sound, after which I first heard the growling and barking of a dog and then my aunt’s mistrustful voice. Without opening the door, she asked from the inside if I was the mailman. I answered: It’s me, your nephew, your nephew from Switzerland, yes, it’s me, in the flesh, flesh and blood, please open the door, ma tante, I said, addressing her as “ma tante” in the same tone as one might say “mon general.” And the door opened at last, and she appeared, and she was still in her bathrobe, not yet dressed or made-up for the day, but she was unmistakably herself, even if somewhat thinner than I had remembered. She was very short, my aunt, she carried a considerable bulge, a bust like the bow of a ship, on her skinny legs, and had a quite large, pert nose, and in contrast to these bulges or up-turned features, she had small eyes, and her face was usually perfectly made-up under hair that she kept dyed blonde to the last. Her hands seemed to think for themselves, because her head was always somewhere else. She liked to hold her head slightly inclined to the side, which made her seem thoughtful, even absentminded. While her independent hands cooked and set the table and distributed all sorts of odds and ends, such as serviettes, a wine carafe, bread, and salt and pepper shakers on the table and the side-table, she went around with such a thoughtful look. What’s she thinking about, I wondered, is she thinking of the past, is she going over sad memories? The apartment looked different back then, it was jam-packed with rather cheaply ostentatious furniture, and the television seemed monumental on its stand. While “ma tante” ran around with dainty movements and tiny steps between the furniture that was blocking everything, her fox terrier Jimmy pattered around with even tinier, but exceptionally fast, scratching steps. He had gotten rotund and unkempt. My aunt always had dogs, and they were always called Jimmy or Tobe. The last one, Jimmy, I don’t know how many Jimmys she’d had by then, was a strange dog, he ate only when there were witnesses, and toward the end of his life he ate only when one pretended that one was going to go out, right away. My aunt put on her coat and made other preparatory gestures, or she lifted the telephone receiver and told an imaginary friend the important news that they would be going out right away, and this made Jimmy race for his food. They were always nagging at each other, just like an old married couple, nothing that Jimmy did was unworthy of comment to my aunt, either she smothered him with affection or she yelled at him and cursed him utterly. She alternated between the two tones without transition, which is why this Jimmy, like all his predecessors, by the way, was not only cranky, but also slightly crazy.
I last saw my aunt laid out in the hospital mortuary in Evian, where she had spent her holidays, and after feeling slightly unwell, she had been sent by the physician to the hospital, where she promptly died. She lay like a strange army commander in dry ice, she lay like that for a long time because the hospital wasn’t equipped with a freezer, and also because she couldn’t be buried without the necessary papers, and in order to procure these papers and to take care of everything else as well, the police had notified me and summoned me to Evian, obviously my aunt carried my address with her at all times for the event of an emergency. So I saw her for the last time in the Evian hospital, Jimmy had remained at the hotel, I had the porter hand him over to me, and the police gave me the keys and my aunt’s few things, her suitcases, and I traveled with all of it to Paris. I now entered my aunt’s apartment with power of attorney, I had to sift through all her papers and then complete the formalities, I had to liquidate this aunt’s life and whatever was left over from it, it took me weeks, and then I had the apartment to myself, I cleared it out and furnished it to my liking.
The street that had seemed depressing to me on my first visit continues to make the same impression. It’s dreary, leads nowhere, only to itself, and this self is as shabby as an unshaven face, somehow dirty, the impression of dirtiness somehow associated with poverty or dilapidation, it’s a street people have given up on, written off, Rue Simart, the name belongs to an architect, I read, Monsieur Simart was a very enterprising gentleman, very busy, just as Eugène Sue was a popular author, the two of them, I mean the two streets, intersect at the corner, but aside from that there is truly not a grain of culture or art in the air here.
I’ve been asking myself for some time what it is about the call of the turtledove that forces me to listen to it and count the number of cries, it sounds like the endlessly repeated call of the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock. It’s a call like panpipes getting started, a three-note sob, a cry of misery, if nothing else, and since it sounds at all hours of the day or night, it’s often unbearable. By the way, it’s the only noise here that really bothers me. Below me is a lodger who gives guitar lessons and plays organ concertos so loudly that t
hey make my apartment vibrate, but he is significantly less of a nuisance than that hopeless call for help from the turtledove.
I want out into the world, I want to live outside in the world, I don’t want to be in Zürich anymore, I thought back then, not on those few streets and squares that are always the same, where I take my dog for a walk and everyone knows who I am, my thoughts went along those or similar lines, and then I said to myself Now or Never, when I got offered this apartment, this stroke of luck that my own aunt had given me with her demise, I sensed a new beginning, it was presumptuous of me at the time to hope for a new beginning, and then I departed.
I took a berth on the train from Zürich and fell asleep almost immediately. I woke up in Basel, I had heard my name being called loudly, yes, I didn’t doubt for a moment that the loudspeaker, with those cracking distortions and detonations that are characteristic of all loudspeaker voices in train stations, had called out my name. I sat up with a start, rolled the window down, and looked out anxiously in all directions, always expecting that someone in uniform would appear, confirming my fear, my trepidation. But what was I afraid of? I was traveling legally, I had handed over my passport and ticket to the sleeping-car conductor in accordance with the regulations, and still I was afraid, was I afraid of this exodus? because I was leaving Switzerland and traveling into the world, I want to go out into the world, those words had been sounding so long inside of me, as if Zürich was not a part of the world. During the long switching of cars between the Swiss and the French train stations, this being pushed across the border and back again, this indecisive back and forth, I kept a lookout for my pursuers, but then we rode on, and I didn’t fall asleep for a long time, now I was afraid the train would derail, I felt the wheels clattering and jolting on the rails, and the train raced and raced along, I thought the engineer must have gone crazy, the train was doing at least two hundred kilometers an hour, and on my bed I felt the rails just managing to hold the racing wheels, but for how long could they continue to do so? And in this state of panic I finally fell asleep, and in my sleep I dreamed I was on a train and the train was racing along, but now in my dream it couldn’t go fast enough for me, I began to support its racing with my body, just as one tries to get an open handcart going by rocking one’s upper body back and forth, I began to spur on the racing train, I abandoned myself to the ride, and when that wasn’t enough, I let the window down and leaned far out, throwing my arms into the air, I was already hanging half outside in this air canal created by the racing train, and then suddenly, on a little square we were just riding past, the main square of a small town, with town hall, church, stately houses, and monument, I saw a girl standing all alone and forsaken there in the deserted square at night, alone with a St. Bernard dog, and as I looked back at the lonely, freezing girl, the orphan, her eyes began to shine, and then a real shower of stars rained out of the child’s eyes, a girl with eyes spraying showers of stars? I’d never seen anything like that and didn’t know it was possible, I thought in my dream, and then the sleeping-car conductor woke me up to give back my passport and ticket. We were already entering Paris. The train compartment was full of happy mountain climbers, all wearing the same red plaid shirt and the same velvet corduroy climbing pants and the same woolen socks, I stared in wonder at these mountain climbers, and then the voice, the announcer’s voice, came to mind, and I was quite relieved to realize that I had slipped through and arrived. Those weren’t policemen’s voices, pursuers, no, it was my, I mean, it was LA VOCATION. I was in Paris.
Accept me, create me! I cried as I ran around, I won’t leave you, I want to be out in the world! I crawled through the thousands upon thousands of prone people’s limbs, I strolled, stalked, marched, ran through the streets, with my legs through the lower streets, with my eyes through the upper streets between the rooftops; in the rows of streets with the magnificently channeled sky, the brightest sky in the world, I stood as if in endlessly extended church naves, I saw the sides waft away in the all-enchanting light, they led out and away, the whitish rows of houses, blinking with all the gaps in their Venetian blinds, and I ran along the sidewalks under the awnings on the stores and the bars, beauty before my eyes, I saw it all, I was in it—and yet I remained outside, a stranger.
And then I took myself off to my boxroom, my home, to this surplus of free time, He sat there, surrounded by time, and still couldn’t capture it, I once wrote, and that was still the case.
Sometimes one or another of my acquaintances remembered, when he came to Paris, that I lived here now. And since I still didn’t have a telephone, it had resulted in several surprising visits, unannounced visits from acquaintances I hadn’t seen in a long time. Suddenly they were sitting in my room that looked out on the courtyard, sitting there with faces that reflected their great desire for Paris, a readiness for adventure that they had brought along from Switzerland, they were now really free and game for anything, as my Uncle Alois said of himself when he was in a good mood, which didn’t really seem to suit him, honest and decent man that he was. But my visitors often had this expectation, so I took them out to show them around the district. We also went through the Arab streets up ahead at Barbès-Rochechouart, through this Orient, and I drew their attention to the lines, the groups of men outside the brothels, there really still were brothels here, if one looked through the barred window in the door one could see half-naked whores of every color and race in the dark corridor inside, heavily made-up faces, flesh bulging out of underwear, like images from Fellini films. The unemployed men without wives or girlfriends stood in lines outside these peepholes, at first I thought they were standing in a line because they had to line up, that the demand was greater than the supply, but of those standing outside, few went in, and seldom at that, most of them were just standing there and picturing to themselves how it would be if they could afford it. We had a sip of white wine or a Ricard at a corner bar, and as we chatted, stimulated both by these exotic activities as well as by seeing each other again, I thought to myself, if only I had stayed home.
My door has three locks, two Yale locks and then a normal European door lock in the middle, as well as a chain across the inside. My aunt had the locks installed, I see her clearly in my mind’s eye, searching for the different keys on her key ring so she can lock the door, she has her little crocodile purse in her other hand, along with the dog leash, and this locking up was always a procedure I found touching as I watched and waited a few steps down. And now, whenever I’m fiddling with all the keys, I see my aunt and myself simultaneously, it’s as if the one person is superimposed over the other, and then it seems to me that my fiddling with the keys is not allowed, it’s as if I’ve robbed my aunt, deceived her, done her out of her apartment, if not done her in. She certainly hadn’t intended to die when she went to Evian for a holiday, and she probably intended even less to leave me the apartment with everything she owned and all her personal things in it, she hadn’t thought of a line of succession, hadn’t made a will, she was extremely suspicious, kept everything under lock and key, had three locks to lock herself and everything she possessed inside and to keep intruders out. And now I had acquired it all.
To a certain—sentimental—extent, my aunt was generous, but not open-handed, she was thrifty, economical, mistrustful. She also lived on her own and was entirely reliant on herself, that had always been the case, and that’s why she had learned to assert herself, elle sait se défendre, as they say here, and part of such behavior is never, under any circumstances, to show one’s hand. When I had finished university, she let me know that she wanted to give me a present on the occasion of this great event, my dear boy, she wrote, your aunt doesn’t exactly have what might be called a fortune, but she has a sense of commitment to the family, and for having obtained your degree at last, even if it was by dumb luck, she now wanted to give me the money to buy, or pay the first installment on, or finance in some manner, a small used car. During one of my visits to Paris she referred again to her promise, she w
ould, she said with a sigh, give me a thousand Swiss francs on my departure. I was moved and pleased, and during dinner, which we always ate very late, so I didn’t have much time left if I wanted to catch the night train, I kept wondering if she had forgotten about it, she made no move to give me the cash. I drank coffee, and after coffee I had one more last glass of wine, then I packed my things, and she still hadn’t uttered a word about the money. I won’t remind her of it, I thought, either she’ll come back to the topic herself, or we’ll forget about the whole thing. Then, at the last moment, I was already in my coat, she came up to me with an envelope and a scowl: here, she said, what I promised you, take it, but you’ll lose it, won’t you?
