by Fleur Jaeggy
She was trying to make up for lost time. She went back to boarding school. She came out of boarding school. She went back to boarding school. At last, she turned seventeen. For the last time she was sent off to a boarding school in Zug, half an hour from Zurich, a Haushalt school for the domestic arts. She did not learn to cook, she learned nothing; she was away for only three months. She came home, which wasn’t her home, because she never did have a home. We tried to be affectionate toward her; I wondered what affection might be to her, as soon as my mother tried to kiss her she would back away; she slept a lot and sometimes I heard her laughing in her room with a Sardinian maid we had at the time. Who had already tried to caress me. Not even during that relatively long time did we manage to become acquainted, she was different from us. One day she received a letter from her father’s secretary. It said that her father was ill. That she should go to Zurich. My mother packed her suitcase and maybe hinted at the father’s possible death, as she folded a black suit, and my sister got furious and said: I only want my red suit. As if to say that those like us don’t use external signs, that she certainly won’t wear black to her father’s funeral. My mother looked at her with compassion. I hated disagreements, and my father likewise. But one must wear dark clothes to a funeral. I understood later that it wasn’t about the dress — but that no one should come between her and her father’s death.
Then she left. She left her papers at our house. I didn’t know that my half sister wrote. I found notes about boarding school, on her feelings for Françoise, on her love for Françoise, she is the last person I can imagine in love and that makes me smile. I also found a childhood diary from the time when she was living with our grandmother, in which she referred to my happiness, to the luxury I lived in, she spoke of tropical countries and of Central America, where people are butchering one another these days, as though it were a paradise, and the greenery in those countries rested like a crown on the lake across from the house, and she saw her brother playing with plants, with the sky. And when he was tired of playing and the servants came to fetch him, he could say: “J’en ai assez de la beauté.” * She dreamt, dreamt of her lucky brother, of her lucky mother whom, instead of hating, she loved; and that may be why when she saw me again, she saw in me a little prince, or a dignitary from the Tropics, and bowed her head as a mark of respect and devotion.
* * *
* I’ve had my fill of beauty.
Cat
Observing others is always interesting. On a train, in airports, at conferences, while waiting on line, when sitting across from someone at a table; on any occasion, in fact, that people flow into. Even someone who doesn’t travel or is very much alone will at some point go out on the street for half an hour. And observe a cat terribly concentrated and alert, stalking his prey. Or clawing it. Maybe it’s a butterfly, or a leaf, or a piece of paper, an insect. On reaching the target, suddenly a cat becomes distracted. Animal behaviorists call this movement Übersprung. It happens just before the deadly blow. We see the cat shift and move the prey as if it were a feather. The last moves. The butterfly dances its agony. It vibrates imperceptibly, and this attracts further interest from the cat. And then he looks away. Walks away. Calmly, he changes route. Changes the mental route. It is like a dead moment. Stasis. It’s as if nothing interests him. It’s as though he has forgotten the fluttering wings that only moments earlier had inspired his total dedication. That which had possessed him before, as though it were an idea, a thought. Now he pulls away. Looks elsewhere. With his little paw he rubs his muzzle. With his little paw he scratches behind one ear, head bent. He has many tasks to fulfill. They have nothing in common with the preceding one. With action. The cat is looking elsewhere. He is elsewhere. It is a strategic move. It is part of a mechanism of precision. All of it is reminiscent of the puppets in Kleist’s story. The precision of the assault, the lightness and agility. The detachment, the distance. Maybe the butterfly and the leaf have the same moment of Übersprung. Like the cat. They distract themselves from agony, abstract themselves from their own death. From the idea of death. That’s what the cat does. He distances even himself from the agony. That he has inflicted. We don’t know why it is that the cat turns his gaze away. He knows why. Who knows, maybe this Übersprung is a delectatio morosa. A melancholic doing away with any connection to the victim. Übersprung: a word that involves us, too. It is a turning away, going on to something else, manifesting a gesture of detachment, like a good-bye. Wandering from the theme, escaping from a word — at once hunting for words and doing away with them: these are all a mind’s modes of writing. Some write according to delectatio morosa. Thomas De Quincey, for instance, once hinted at the “dark frenzy of horror.”
Osmosis
It is quiet in the house. The quiet seems imposed by violence. The shutters are drawn down, as if they were eyelids. “I don’t want you to take my life to heart,” Franzi, a five-year-old Bohemian girl, had said. The parents, the Protestant pastor and his wife, have just left the room. Followed by the words of the little girl. They sat in front of the fireplace, hoping that the fire would burn the words. They had never seen anything as beautiful as that delicate, frail, and hardheaded little being. The pastor, who for thirty years had baptized children, would have liked to baptize one of his own. Born of the fraternal union with his wife Ruth. Finally the “gift of the Lord,” that was how he called his little girl, was born. Sometimes Ruth dreamt that she was about to give birth and that dream stayed with her for many years. In the morning she was not sad. Being sad is not allowed. Praise the Lord. We give thanks for what we don’t have. Both of them started to give thanks too often for what they had received. They are in ecstasy before that little girl. Before her eyes. Cold and vacant. Suspicious. Eyes that seem better suited to a puppet on the floor of the room of the little girl. She kept her arms raised in a sign of greeting and devotion. Like them, bowing before that little deity. The pastor might have taken her to church, placing a crown of flowers on her head, almost an image.
In the unadorned church darkness dwelt. Contemplation. The solemn colors of the window panes dimmed as if they were candles. In the winter night came in the afternoon. One day, a day even darker and shorter, the sound of the bell was deafening. It broke the dazed silence of the landscape and almost shattered the windows of the few houses. The bell ringer was a seventeen-year-old boy who looked like a sailor. He sailed with sounds — the bells a triumphant figurehead in the middle of the sky. He rang them a long time when Franzi was born. The faithful thought there had been a fire. They were frightened. When they found out that a little girl had been born to the pastor they were just as frightened.
One Sunday of Advent the little girl found the puppet on a trail. She recognized the eyes. Crystal eyes. The thing’s gaze was fixed on the landscape, but the eyes were looking at the little girl. As though reflected on a screen, she saw a pond surrounded by trees. Trees that seemed to be wearing armor. The water, their trophy. The water dimmed by the ghosts of scrubs and vines. Sounds of shadow. The breeze drew faint lines, written as though by a magnetic needle and erased. And every second the song changes, is erased, is transmuted. An empty bench. Franzi waits for the thing to speak. It has human features. Its gaze closes in on the landscape which recedes and disappears.
The way home is all that remains. Franzi stops in front of the house. A lit window, the father’s and mother’s profiles. She felt the urge to leave.
Franzi dried flowers and leaves, not because she was interested in botany. Out of instinct, she said. She looked at the garden. At the trimmed hedge. Seventy-five rosebuds withdrew into their stems. They are cold, thought Franzi. Immediately, she plucked them, laid them on paper, stifled them. The puppet gnawed on dry flowers and leaves. It takes nourishment, then. The pastor and his wife are worried. The child has changed so much since that root, the puppet, came into the house. Franzi feels affection only for it. Whenever she is less indifferent to them, she treats them with cruel,
precise ill will. What might one call it? What name do nameless things have? And what are they? And if they had a name, would that alone make them recognizable? The pastor calls the root a mandrake. In the Middle Ages, he explained to his wife, it was said that to unearth that root was very dangerous. A black dog had to be found that would take it in its fangs. And when the mandrake comes out of the earth, it screams and one should cover one’s ears. Ruth was terrified to observe that the thing more and more resembled her daughter. She is not superstitious. She prays. Prays grudgingly.
It happened one day that Franzi got angry at the puppet. “Give me your eyes. They are not yours.” She took them: “I know that when I was born I was not alone. Someone else was born with me. And that someone is stealing my life. Because of you.” The parents listen from behind a locked door. That thing is aware of the past and maybe had already been in the house and had pretended to turn up on the trail. When Franzi was born her twin had not managed to survive. They never told her. It would be their secret. They had named her Theresia. They’d had just enough time to baptize her. The pastor baptized them both together, never realized that one would never awake again. They didn’t let on. In silence they said their last good-bye to the little one. In too much of a hurry, perhaps. They dried their eyes which were already dry.
Ruth sews all day long, without looking. Every dress had its double. The sewing machine ran by itself. She dressed Franzi and the other girl. It seemed to her that each object imitated the other. The teapot duplicated itself and the pages of the Bible appeared to be made of stone. The pastor had enough. He built himself a summer house in the garden and devoted himself solely to astronomy.
Ruth’s final night came in the month of March. A bullhorn announced a puppet show. Accompanied by the sound of an oboe. Ruth listened carefully. The bullhorn was silent. The sound is very close to her. “It has come in,” thinks Ruth. Like a refrain. She felt herself to be that sound. She was the instrument, and the breath of a procession of puppet players on wood instruments. And that breath kindled the fire she was lighting in every room. For a moment the flames seemed to back away before a small being with incandescent eyes. As the house burned, the town children watching the show turned around simultaneously to look at the pastor’s house. It was a wonderful sight. Franzi was seated in the front row. She was the only member of the audience who didn’t turn around.
Names
“I can’t go back to visit Auschwitz,” said Basia, a Polish girl. She will remain in the hallway, sit on a bench, and wait. Next to the entrance. The tone of her voice is impersonal, graceful, and distant. She does not want to accompany Anja beyond the gate with Arbeit macht frei written over it. She will remain seated on a bench until closing time. She gave Anja a map of the Lager, an umbrella.
That day, it was winter, almost to apologize and out of kindness she suggested to Anja going with her to the other side. To the other camp. To Birkenau. En route from Krakow, Basia mentions certain foreigners she had shown around Auschwitz. They were frech. Arrogant with everyone. With the driver. He drove too slowly. They were on vacation. In the program, the trip to Auschwitz. They told jokes. Laughed wildly. Basia opened the window to let the laughter out. When they sighted Auschwitz, they instantly put on an air of decorum. Condolence spread across their faces. An ostentation of grief. They manifested contrition with ease, to excess. The solemn contrition owed to a solemn occasion, the visit to Auschwitz. Where everyone should go, they said in a chorus. Walking briskly they reached the Wall of Death. They deposited some flowers.
Basia and Anja climbed the tower in Birkenau. In the distance, past the railway yard, the ruins of crematoria are faintly visible. The retreating SS didn’t manage to destroy them altogether. One reads in the brief guidebook that the tower offers an excellent panoramic view of the largest death camp.
The windows overlook the tracks. Anja would like to say something to Basia. To her kind forbearance. To the hidden flintiness of her gaze. Basia seems to prevent it. With diligent courtesy she shows her the barracks. The dormitories. Basia goes in first. She reads the inscriptions on the beams out loud. Ordnung. Sauberkeit. Order. Cleanliness. Ehrlich währt am längsten. Honesty pays off in the long run. Basia hangs back. She waits for Anja to look around. To finish looking.
They go out. Light snow covered the landscape. There are hardly any visitors. The two women walk close to one another. Now Anja no longer tries to talk to her. She tries to do something similar to thinking. Thoughts like blocks of ice.
“Listen,” Basia says. An acute sound could be heard, muffled almost, and muted. Basia stretched her hand toward the trees. Which seemed silent and nonexistent. “Sie ist eine Lerche,” Basia said. Anja, who didn’t know German very well, understood Leiche, corpse. A corpse singing a melody. For a moment it seemed likely to her. Perhaps there is something that the dead don’t wish to disclose. That is why they mimic the sound of birds. And it sounded like a voice, in the shadowless desolation. She looked it up in the dictionary, it was a lark. But were there larks in winter? And lark turned out to be Basia’s only word, more or less, during the visit to Birkenau.
Basia sits on a bench. She waits. Maybe Anja shouldn’t have asked her to go with her. When Basia refused, she was relieved. She had thanked her. Her Polish friend’s presence is all that she needs. Waiting for her, sitting on a bench, in her dark coat, beret, and melancholic patient air. What is Basia thinking? How many people has she already taken to this place? And, in her imagination, how many more will she take to visit Auschwitz? At night, perhaps, Basia sees her form leaving the room. Heading toward the photographs, faces that haunt her. From Block Number Six. She thought that her grandparents’ letters were still coming. They were well, working, and the food was good. They were still well, at Auschwitz then at Birkenau. Even when they were separated. Even when they didn’t return. They were always the same letters. Those sheets of paper were present in her, a fine hedge of unspoken censored words. The silence was visible. So was the simplicity and clarity of those seemingly insignificant sentences.
She is not a guide. Basia. She is just a kind person. Out of weariness and atavistic patience. She said once more that she would take Anja to the threshold. No further.
Anja is alone. She follows a set itinerary. She goes beyond the gate with the words Arbeit macht frei over it. The landscape all around is calm. A pale wintry green. The visitors are dwindling. Some are taking pictures. Anja enters a barracks where there are two cremation ovens. A small family group is posing in front of them. A souvenir snapshot. As soon as they become aware of the intruder’s presence they break out of the pose.
To deportees who attempted to conceal their photographs the guards said, “You won’t be needing either photographs or documents.” Olga Lengyel, while naked for the inspection, managed to hide the photograph of her family by slipping it into the garments at her feet. Her family should not witness her degradation. Others were able to tear the photographs of their dear ones into pieces that they placed under their tongues.
Anja continues the tour, heads toward the permanent exhibits. In front of her a woman with blond hair worn loose down her back. A white cane. A honey-colored labrador. Anja follows her. The blind woman becomes her guide. And the dog, too. The dog, too, knows how many massacres have been perpetrated on animals. It is docile and alert. His owner is young, walks with a firm step. Anja walks hesitantly. Her mental foothold is now the girl with the white cane. She stops at the kiosk and buys a couple of postcards. Anja imitates her. She wants to do everything that the blind woman does. The dog lies at her feet. Ears pricked up. He sniffs at the words he hears around him. Not many, nearly everyone has left. In the muddied snow footprints remained. Now he escorts the woman, wants to stay close to her. Together they enter the blocks. Anja is just behind her. The blind woman seems to know what is there behind the glass. To Anja it seems that the blind woman could see. Her eyes scan every object. As though she were touching them. The object
s met her gaze. And maybe they wanted to be seen by her. Before the display of hair, of shoes, of orthopedic limbs, the blind woman directed her gaze. As if they were targets. Maybe she could perceive what was on display and imagined it. Anja knows nothing about her. But it seemed to her that the blind woman had a sharper visual mind. Before the jars of Zyklon B by the Degesch company she pressed ahead right away. She lingered before the display of suitcases with name tags. The names visible and well-defined. They are almost detached, becoming notes without a recipient. Marie Kafka, Klara Goldstein, Rote Kreuz Gasse, Peter Eisler — Kind. Child. 20-III-1942 and the number 6446, written large twice. Lost objects. Notes in transit, handheld. Names that exist because they are written. And, once written, stare at us fixedly.
