2.
In my grandfather’s notebooks, there’s no mention of that journey at all. I don’t know where he boarded the ship, if he managed to get some sort of documentation before he left, if he had any money or at least an inkling of what awaited him in Brazil. I don’t know how long the crossing lasted, whether it was windy or calm, whether they were struck by a storm one night in the early hours, whether he even cared if the ship went down and he died in what seem a highly ironic manner, in a dark whirlpool of ice with no hope of being remembered by anyone except as a statistic - a fact that would sum up his entire biography, swallowing up any reference to the place where he studied and everything else that had happened in his life in the interval between being born and the day he had a number tattooed on his arm.
3.
I don’t want to talk about it either. If there’s one thing the world doesn’t need it’s to hear amy thoughts on the subject. It’s been dealt with in the cinema. It’s been dealt with in books. Eyewitnesses have already recounted the story detail by detail, and there are sixty years of reports and essays and analyses, generations of historians and philosophers and artists that devoted their lives to adding footnotes to all that material in an effort to refresh again the world’s view on the matter, the reflex reaction everyone has to the word Auschwitz, so not for a second would it occur to me to repeat those ideas if they were not, in some way, essential if I am to talk about my grandfather and, therefore, about my father and, therefore, about myself.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
Thursday, 1 September 2016
...of complicity
13.
I often dreamed about the moment of the fall, a silence that lasted a second, possibly two, a room full of sixty people and no one making a sound, as if everyone were waiting for my classmate to cry out, or even just grunt, but he lay on the ground with his eyes closed until someone told everyone else to move away because he might be injured, a scene that stayed with me until he came back to school and crept along the corridors, wearing his orthapaedic corset under his uniform in the cold, the heat, the sun and the rain.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
I often dreamed about the moment of the fall, a silence that lasted a second, possibly two, a room full of sixty people and no one making a sound, as if everyone were waiting for my classmate to cry out, or even just grunt, but he lay on the ground with his eyes closed until someone told everyone else to move away because he might be injured, a scene that stayed with me until he came back to school and crept along the corridors, wearing his orthapaedic corset under his uniform in the cold, the heat, the sun and the rain.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
...of ostracism
4.
My father quoted from If This is a Man during the first serious argument we had. It was in the second term of the year in which I had my bar mitzvah, when I told him I wanted to leave the school. By that time, things had already changed, I had severed all ties with my former friends. I didn’t even talk to them and had already become accustomed to being ignored by them too: from one day to the next, people start turning their back on you, they stop phoning or asking you so much as to lend them a pencil and, in the space of a week, you no longer feel able to talk about this with anyone, a state of affairs that can easily last for what remains of your school life, because there’s nothing more difficult when you’re thirteen than changing your label.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
My father quoted from If This is a Man during the first serious argument we had. It was in the second term of the year in which I had my bar mitzvah, when I told him I wanted to leave the school. By that time, things had already changed, I had severed all ties with my former friends. I didn’t even talk to them and had already become accustomed to being ignored by them too: from one day to the next, people start turning their back on you, they stop phoning or asking you so much as to lend them a pencil and, in the space of a week, you no longer feel able to talk about this with anyone, a state of affairs that can easily last for what remains of your school life, because there’s nothing more difficult when you’re thirteen than changing your label.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
...of privacy
23.
I don’t know if my father went to the funeral. I don’t know how long it took him to make the connection between my grandfather’s death and Auschwitz, if he did so on that very day, at that very moment, of if this only became clear when he read my grandfather’s notebooks, and there would inevitably have been a delay between their discovery and the delivery of the translation that my father commissioned without telling my grandmother. I don’t know who did the translation, I don’t know how my father paid them, I don’t know if he asked the translator to keep quiet about it, if he made it clear to the translator that he or she should make no comment on what the notebooks contained, because up until then my father had no idea what my grandfather had written in those sixteen volumes without ever once mentioning the relatives he saw die, and it’s possible that he may have seen each and every one of them die, the last breath, the wide, lifeless eyes of his brother, another brother, a third brother, of his father and mother, of his girlfriend and his cousin and his aunt and who knows how many friends and neighbors and work colleagues and people he was quite close to, my father making it clear to the translator that he didn’t want him to make any comment on any such scenes because none could justify the scene of my grandfather lying dead at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
I don’t know if my father went to the funeral. I don’t know how long it took him to make the connection between my grandfather’s death and Auschwitz, if he did so on that very day, at that very moment, of if this only became clear when he read my grandfather’s notebooks, and there would inevitably have been a delay between their discovery and the delivery of the translation that my father commissioned without telling my grandmother. I don’t know who did the translation, I don’t know how my father paid them, I don’t know if he asked the translator to keep quiet about it, if he made it clear to the translator that he or she should make no comment on what the notebooks contained, because up until then my father had no idea what my grandfather had written in those sixteen volumes without ever once mentioning the relatives he saw die, and it’s possible that he may have seen each and every one of them die, the last breath, the wide, lifeless eyes of his brother, another brother, a third brother, of his father and mother, of his girlfriend and his cousin and his aunt and who knows how many friends and neighbors and work colleagues and people he was quite close to, my father making it clear to the translator that he didn’t want him to make any comment on any such scenes because none could justify the scene of my grandfather lying dead at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
...of reticence
…When I found out about my father’s illness, it was three o’clock in the afternoon and I went into a bar and ordered a beer. I drank the beer and ordered a whisky. The whisky immediately warmed me up, ethanol on a sunny day at a bar with a few nibbles and a sweet-vending machine.
I thought about my father while I drank the whisky. And I thought I really should stop drinking. And I ordered another whisky, and then another and another, and the hours passed and then a moment came when I remembered what had happened, and I couldn’t possibly go home in that state because I didn’t want to explain and discuss the details of my father’s medical tests with anyone.
The lights at night are blurred and you walk along talking to yourself. It’s almost a joy to do that, knowing that no one is listening. One block before you reach a park. The damp, muggy air and the bus fumes. Fresh mud after the last rain shower. The scratched surface of a bench, no animals around, the results of my father’s test in an envelope, just me and the silence, me lying down and the sense of of imminent physical torpor, just relax and close your eyes and imagine some dark, isolated place and a warm, slow, constant rocking taking you nowhere.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
I thought about my father while I drank the whisky. And I thought I really should stop drinking. And I ordered another whisky, and then another and another, and the hours passed and then a moment came when I remembered what had happened, and I couldn’t possibly go home in that state because I didn’t want to explain and discuss the details of my father’s medical tests with anyone.
The lights at night are blurred and you walk along talking to yourself. It’s almost a joy to do that, knowing that no one is listening. One block before you reach a park. The damp, muggy air and the bus fumes. Fresh mud after the last rain shower. The scratched surface of a bench, no animals around, the results of my father’s test in an envelope, just me and the silence, me lying down and the sense of of imminent physical torpor, just relax and close your eyes and imagine some dark, isolated place and a warm, slow, constant rocking taking you nowhere.
[Diary of the Fall, Laub, M.]
...of pedestrians
It was like walking along the bed of an ocean, too, with the thick silence of heavy bubbles rising from concealed sulphur vents, clouds of mud sliding away, fish crying out, sea urchins screeching, whale sharks grunting. And especially the invisible mass of water bearing down with its countless thousands of tons.
That’s exactly how it was. Hogan was making his way through the streets of a submerged town, surrounded by the ruins of porticoes and cathedrals. He passed men and women, occasionally children, and they were strange marine creatures with flapping fins and retractile mouths. The shops and garages were gaping caverns where greedy octupuses lurked. The light circulated slowly, like a fine rain of mica dust. One could float for a long time among this debris. One could glide along currents that were alternately warm, cold, warm. The water penetrated everywhere, sticky, acrid, it entered through the nostrils and flowed down the throat to fill the lungs, then swirled over the eyeballs, mingled with the blood and urine, and took leisurely possession of the the whole body, impregnating it with its dream substance.
It entered the ears, pressing against the tympana two little air bubbles that excluded the world for ever. There were no cries, no words, and thoughts became like coral, immobile living lumps lifting superfluous fingers.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
That’s exactly how it was. Hogan was making his way through the streets of a submerged town, surrounded by the ruins of porticoes and cathedrals. He passed men and women, occasionally children, and they were strange marine creatures with flapping fins and retractile mouths. The shops and garages were gaping caverns where greedy octupuses lurked. The light circulated slowly, like a fine rain of mica dust. One could float for a long time among this debris. One could glide along currents that were alternately warm, cold, warm. The water penetrated everywhere, sticky, acrid, it entered through the nostrils and flowed down the throat to fill the lungs, then swirled over the eyeballs, mingled with the blood and urine, and took leisurely possession of the the whole body, impregnating it with its dream substance.
It entered the ears, pressing against the tympana two little air bubbles that excluded the world for ever. There were no cries, no words, and thoughts became like coral, immobile living lumps lifting superfluous fingers.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
...of a journey
He was still looking out of the window. He watched the ground slide away along the sides of the bus, and his mind was a blank. Not everything moved at the same speed. First, nearest the window, were the embankments, springing forward so fast that one didn’t even notice them. The concrete poles, too, rapid, darting toward the rear like propeller blades. The low, sagging telegraph wires undulating with a vertical movement. After that, the houses, the fields, the walls. But they were still apparitions, openings, winks of the eye. White face, red face, pile of stones, white face, tree, tree, tree, white face, yellow face, pile of stones. A little farther away, the houses lumbered forward like huge trucks, like huge boats. The beige-coloured blocks floated above the trees, then veered aside, and became heavy, laden rafts as the current carried them away. The tops of the trees thrashed around, drooped, made their little leaves sparkle. Occasionally, a branch, higher than the others, stretched up and passed across the sky like the arm of a drowning man. Still farther away, the motionless hills, with their cubes of houses, their patches of fields. After that, the landscape was no longer motionless: it retreated. Enormous blocks of mountains, cliffs, reservoirs of the sea, capes, black islands. Their slow movement twisted the earth, ripped the forests and headlands. Lastly, overhead, in the sky, the clouds altered their shapes completely as they merged, then drew apart again.
The cumulative effect was one of dizziness. All these superimposed movements that were destroying the landscape were heavy, painful, tragic, filling the eyes and creating a hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. The grumbling of the engine went on and on, constructing its own silence out of all the multiple waves that swarmed over you.
The world crumbled, very quickly and very slowly at the same time. And each departing thing stripped the back of your mind of an idea. Each uprooted tree fleeing towards the rear was a vanished word. Each house proffered for a single second, then spurned, was a desire. Each face of a man or a woman that had appeared in front of the window, had been repudiated in the same instant, was a strange mutilation, the abolition of a very tender, much beloved word.
He went on looking out of the window, lost for words.
Some were off in a flash, BOOK, CAT, CIGARETTE, the time it took two or three concrete poles to fall back. Others flew by interminably, WALL, IDEOLOGY, LOVE, INNOCENCE, while the black mountain slid forward, leaned, pitched forward, and gradually sank to earth. There were tattered cloud-ideas which disappeared mysteriously: they hovered in the sky like great birds, then, circle after circle of them, melted into space. And there were ant-ideas which swarmed among the tufts of grass, and which were crushed in millions by the headlong flight. Each mile he became more impoverished. Dumbness entered his body. Perhaps it was the engine’s noise, its regular throbbing that was sending waves through him.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
The cumulative effect was one of dizziness. All these superimposed movements that were destroying the landscape were heavy, painful, tragic, filling the eyes and creating a hollow feeling in the pit of the stomach. The grumbling of the engine went on and on, constructing its own silence out of all the multiple waves that swarmed over you.
The world crumbled, very quickly and very slowly at the same time. And each departing thing stripped the back of your mind of an idea. Each uprooted tree fleeing towards the rear was a vanished word. Each house proffered for a single second, then spurned, was a desire. Each face of a man or a woman that had appeared in front of the window, had been repudiated in the same instant, was a strange mutilation, the abolition of a very tender, much beloved word.
He went on looking out of the window, lost for words.
Some were off in a flash, BOOK, CAT, CIGARETTE, the time it took two or three concrete poles to fall back. Others flew by interminably, WALL, IDEOLOGY, LOVE, INNOCENCE, while the black mountain slid forward, leaned, pitched forward, and gradually sank to earth. There were tattered cloud-ideas which disappeared mysteriously: they hovered in the sky like great birds, then, circle after circle of them, melted into space. And there were ant-ideas which swarmed among the tufts of grass, and which were crushed in millions by the headlong flight. Each mile he became more impoverished. Dumbness entered his body. Perhaps it was the engine’s noise, its regular throbbing that was sending waves through him.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
...of the mind
I am walking. I move through the town, and my feet slap the tough ground. Silence has closed around me. I walk on the horizontal ground and hear nothing. The silence has swollen horribly in my head, has pressed against me with all its strength. I advance without knowing where I am going, the world has suddenly been emptied of its sounds. The ground is hard, flat. The walls are high. The roofs are not visible. The sky is an immense, deserted esplanade. Around me, the movements of fast cars, the itineraries of people. From behind my glass screen I walk like a deaf man, enclosed within my peaceful bubble. People cry out and I hear nothing. Cars spurt forward with roaring engines, jet aircraft fly through the clouds, and I hear nothing. Well, I do hear them in a way, I register the rumblings and the horn blasts. My ears vibrate with noises. But it is inside my head that I am deaf. All these ruthless, earsplitting sounds are around me. I can see them all, really, just as they are, large dark splotches bearing down on me, pack of mad dogs, circular waves radiating from the sun, arrows, thick patterns. But inside my head, as I walk, nothing. I have no sooner registered them than they are forgotten, gone without even leaving a scar. Or else I am under water, 3,000 fathoms deep, in a world of slime that quivers and swirls into sluggish clouds under my feet.
No, I hear nothing. Silence is in my head. I do still hear something, but it is so hard and so terrible that it thrusts me even farther into silence, it hurls me yet more light-years away from a free existence: it is the sound of my footsteps. One, two, one, two, one, two, dull blows of heels on the sidewalk’s concrete, blows as though I was driving nails in with my feet. Plodding of my footsteps, alone, in rhythm, tenaciously, alone, quite alone. I walk over myself and bury myself. The noise of my heels echoes through the world, it is just as though I were hastening, knowing that escape was necessary, along a deserted corridor reigned over by a silence that was tubular.
It is this silence which abstracts me. It is because of this silence that I am no longer there; silence dense as an ocean in front of which one sits and stares. Silence of cast iron, of ferro-concrete, silence of a lake of mud. I should never have thought such a thing possible: to be in the midst of so much noise, so much matter and light, and hear nothing. Balls of wax thrust into the auditory canal, balls of calm water. Screen of unbreakable glass that has been raised without my knowledge, isolating me. I shall never be able to re-experience the music, the long, complex music of anonymous cacophonies.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
No, I hear nothing. Silence is in my head. I do still hear something, but it is so hard and so terrible that it thrusts me even farther into silence, it hurls me yet more light-years away from a free existence: it is the sound of my footsteps. One, two, one, two, one, two, dull blows of heels on the sidewalk’s concrete, blows as though I was driving nails in with my feet. Plodding of my footsteps, alone, in rhythm, tenaciously, alone, quite alone. I walk over myself and bury myself. The noise of my heels echoes through the world, it is just as though I were hastening, knowing that escape was necessary, along a deserted corridor reigned over by a silence that was tubular.
It is this silence which abstracts me. It is because of this silence that I am no longer there; silence dense as an ocean in front of which one sits and stares. Silence of cast iron, of ferro-concrete, silence of a lake of mud. I should never have thought such a thing possible: to be in the midst of so much noise, so much matter and light, and hear nothing. Balls of wax thrust into the auditory canal, balls of calm water. Screen of unbreakable glass that has been raised without my knowledge, isolating me. I shall never be able to re-experience the music, the long, complex music of anonymous cacophonies.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
...of anonymity
Among the endless streets, with their horizons that are constantly opening out, then closing in again, like series of sliding doors, he who is walking without going anywhere advances into the devouring jungle. He leaves scraps of his skin, fragments of his flesh on the thorns and the hooks. There is no emptiness more empty than this abundance, there is no cruelty more cruel than this security, everywhere.
Sheets of metal, iron-panelled doors, sidewalks, walls, safes, tin roofs, hardness everywhere, impenetrable surfaces.
The hand cannot pass through, the hand of thought.
The havens are false, they lie.
The skin is hypocritical, only cold steel can pierce it.
The face with familiar features,
hair
forehead
eye eye
nose
mouth
chin
is a mask of plaster and tinplate, it never says anything. There is nothing more dead than this living person. There is nothing that radiates greater silence.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
Sheets of metal, iron-panelled doors, sidewalks, walls, safes, tin roofs, hardness everywhere, impenetrable surfaces.
The hand cannot pass through, the hand of thought.
The havens are false, they lie.
The skin is hypocritical, only cold steel can pierce it.
The face with familiar features,
hair
forehead
eye eye
nose
mouth
chin
is a mask of plaster and tinplate, it never says anything. There is nothing more dead than this living person. There is nothing that radiates greater silence.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
...of others
‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
The girl yelled:
‘WHAT?’
He took another breath and yelled:
‘THAT! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY! EVERYTHING IS SO! SILENT!’
The girl yelled:
’SO WHAT?’
’SO SILENT!’
The girl thought he was joking, and began to laugh.
‘NO!’ yelled Young M. Hogan. And after a pause:
‘ITS TRUE! THERE’S LOTS OF NOISE! BUT NO ONE! EVER SAYS ANYTHING.’
He took a sip of beer to clear his throat.
‘WHY IS EVERYONE! SILENT! INSIDE! I DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
The girl laughed, flashing her gold teeth, and yelled:
‘THAT! DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING!’
Young M. Hogan yelled into her ear:
‘AND THE TOWN! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY ALL THESE PEOPLE! ARE TOGETHER! THE OTHER DAY! I CLIMBED! TO THE TOP OF A BUILDING! TO SEE! AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY! ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE HERE! I MEAN! WHAT KEEPS THEM HERE! WHAT DO THEY DO! WHY ARE THERE! ALL THESE BLOCKHOUSES! AND THESE CARS! AND THESE BARS! HERE RATHER THAN SOMEWHERE ELSE! HERE! AND NO ONE! WANTS TO TELL ME! THE PEOPLE SAY NOTHING! NOTHING SAYS NOTHING! THE STREETS SAY NOTHING! EVERYTHING IS CLOSED! THERE IS NO EXPLA! NO EXPLANATION! ONE NEVER MANAGES! TO FIND OUT!’
The girl made a loud-hailer of her hands:
‘WHY DO YOU WANT! TO KNOW?’
‘BECAUSE! IT INTERESTS ME!’
Young M. Hogan gulped some beer straight from the bottle.
‘I’D LIKE TO KNOW! WHY THE PEOPLE! ARE HERE! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! HOW THEY MANAGE! NEVER TO SAY ANYTHING! IT’S AS THOUGH! THEY WERE MADE OF WOOD! THEY ARE ALL! THEY ARE ALL EXTERIOR! NO WAY! OF KNOWING WHAT GOES ON! INSIDE THEM!’
The girl brought her lips forward. Her eyes were two lumps of coal.
‘NOTHING!’
‘NOT TRUE! OTHERWISE! THEY WOULDN’T STAY! TOGETHER!’
Then:
‘WHAT KEEPS THEM! TOGETHER?’
It was good to yell like that, across the uproar of the music. It was like standing on top of a mountain, and calling out to a woman standing on top of the mountain opposite.
‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHAT’S MEANT BY THE WORD COUNTRY!’
‘I DON’T KNOW!’
‘WHY! DON’T THE PEOPLE EVER SPEAK?’
‘NOTHING TO SAY!’
‘THEY ARE HIDING!’
‘THEY ARE SCARED!’
’SCARED OF WHAT?’
‘I DON’T KNOW!’
‘DON’T YOU CARE?’
‘NO! ALL THIS YELLING! IS MAKING ME TIRED!’
‘DO YOU WANT! SOME BEER?’
‘YES!’
‘TELL ME! WHY THE PEOPLE! NEVER SPEAK!’
Young M. Hogan yelled one last time:
‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY! WHEN ALL THE NOISES! HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY! EVERYTHING BECOMES! SO SILENT! THERE IS NOTHING! UNDERNEATH! PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THAT! TOGETHER! THEY DON’T KNOW WHY! THEY DON’T WANT! TO KNOW! WHY! THEY SAY NOTHING! THEY ARE! RIGID! THEY ARE TONGUE-TIED! THE CARS! SAY NOTHING! EITHER! THIS SILENCE! HURTS ME! IMPOSSIBLE! TO HEAR A WORD! THERE IS! NO ONE! NEVER ANYONE! I DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
The girl yelled:
‘WHAT?’
He took another breath and yelled:
‘THAT! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY! EVERYTHING IS SO! SILENT!’
The girl yelled:
’SO WHAT?’
’SO SILENT!’
The girl thought he was joking, and began to laugh.
‘NO!’ yelled Young M. Hogan. And after a pause:
‘ITS TRUE! THERE’S LOTS OF NOISE! BUT NO ONE! EVER SAYS ANYTHING.’
He took a sip of beer to clear his throat.
‘WHY IS EVERYONE! SILENT! INSIDE! I DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
The girl laughed, flashing her gold teeth, and yelled:
‘THAT! DOESN’T MEAN ANYTHING!’
Young M. Hogan yelled into her ear:
‘AND THE TOWN! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY ALL THESE PEOPLE! ARE TOGETHER! THE OTHER DAY! I CLIMBED! TO THE TOP OF A BUILDING! TO SEE! AND I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY! ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE HERE! I MEAN! WHAT KEEPS THEM HERE! WHAT DO THEY DO! WHY ARE THERE! ALL THESE BLOCKHOUSES! AND THESE CARS! AND THESE BARS! HERE RATHER THAN SOMEWHERE ELSE! HERE! AND NO ONE! WANTS TO TELL ME! THE PEOPLE SAY NOTHING! NOTHING SAYS NOTHING! THE STREETS SAY NOTHING! EVERYTHING IS CLOSED! THERE IS NO EXPLA! NO EXPLANATION! ONE NEVER MANAGES! TO FIND OUT!’
The girl made a loud-hailer of her hands:
‘WHY DO YOU WANT! TO KNOW?’
‘BECAUSE! IT INTERESTS ME!’
Young M. Hogan gulped some beer straight from the bottle.
‘I’D LIKE TO KNOW! WHY THE PEOPLE! ARE HERE! I DON’T UNDERSTAND! HOW THEY MANAGE! NEVER TO SAY ANYTHING! IT’S AS THOUGH! THEY WERE MADE OF WOOD! THEY ARE ALL! THEY ARE ALL EXTERIOR! NO WAY! OF KNOWING WHAT GOES ON! INSIDE THEM!’
The girl brought her lips forward. Her eyes were two lumps of coal.
‘NOTHING!’
‘NOT TRUE! OTHERWISE! THEY WOULDN’T STAY! TOGETHER!’
Then:
‘WHAT KEEPS THEM! TOGETHER?’
It was good to yell like that, across the uproar of the music. It was like standing on top of a mountain, and calling out to a woman standing on top of the mountain opposite.
‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHAT’S MEANT BY THE WORD COUNTRY!’
‘I DON’T KNOW!’
‘WHY! DON’T THE PEOPLE EVER SPEAK?’
‘NOTHING TO SAY!’
‘THEY ARE HIDING!’
‘THEY ARE SCARED!’
’SCARED OF WHAT?’
‘I DON’T KNOW!’
‘DON’T YOU CARE?’
‘NO! ALL THIS YELLING! IS MAKING ME TIRED!’
‘DO YOU WANT! SOME BEER?’
‘YES!’
‘TELL ME! WHY THE PEOPLE! NEVER SPEAK!’
Young M. Hogan yelled one last time:
‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND! WHY! WHEN ALL THE NOISES! HAVE BEEN TAKEN AWAY! EVERYTHING BECOMES! SO SILENT! THERE IS NOTHING! UNDERNEATH! PEOPLE LIVE LIKE THAT! TOGETHER! THEY DON’T KNOW WHY! THEY DON’T WANT! TO KNOW! WHY! THEY SAY NOTHING! THEY ARE! RIGID! THEY ARE TONGUE-TIED! THE CARS! SAY NOTHING! EITHER! THIS SILENCE! HURTS ME! IMPOSSIBLE! TO HEAR A WORD! THERE IS! NO ONE! NEVER ANYONE! I DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
...of self-awareness
I would like, most of all, to talk about silence. A silence which is neither an absence of words nor a mental blockage. A silence which is an accession to a domain beyond the bounds of language, an animated silence, so to speak, a relationship of active equality between the world and man. The botched universe of immediate significance, of useful words and actions, is no longer particularly important. What counts is this harmony of rhythms. One cannot forget this journey, this passage of thought into material existence.
In the centre of this flat countryside, on the Ayutthaya road, for example, when the terrible heat of noon holds sway. Steam rises from the scorching ground. I look around me. All I can see is the great expanse of earth moist with sweat, sweeping straight to the sky, with no horizon in between. There is no sound, and the light bounces back upon the huge puddle. There is no movement. The whole experience is indescribable. Then, quite naturally, without the slightest wrench, words, ideas and actions have all ceased to exist. All that remains is this prolongation of time over space. Somewhere in this land of inherited wisdom, people are living, are working in the rice fields. Their thoughts and words are present, mingled with this soil and this water. It is as though, gently and smoothly, the veil separating me from reality had grown thinner, had worn away its texture, ready now to rip apart so that the great forces may pass through. It has become transparent, almost transparent. I can just make out, through its immobility, the blurred symbols of the replies that are about to flow forward. They are the symbols of silence.
Or else, sitting in the bows of the boat, on the river. The heat glows on the metal-edged waves. Square-stemmed canoes plough upstream, through the bulging mass of water that flows between rows of wooden houses. Their motors screech. And, that too, is silence. For the weighty river is a voice; and what this voice says is more important and more beautiful than a poem.
In the hot night, cockroaches prowl. The booths of a fair have been set up inside the temple’s courtyard. Men, women, and children are squatting on the ground, in front of one of the booths, watching a play in which the masked actors are at this moment frozen in quivering poses, while music blares from the loudspeakers. The quickened rhythms of the Auk Phassa, the nasal songs of the Rabam Dawadeung, the intoned chants of the Ramayana. Old, violent tableaux under the neon lights, tableaux of a continuing life, music born of the sounds of the world, magic rhythms that one no longer hears, silence which demands that I should listen, that I should at last stop interrupting what is being ceaselessly communicated to me.
Rhythm of the day and the night, rhythm of the baths, rhythm of the Ja-Ké, rhythm of the pitch-accented language of Klong verses, of Kap and Klon verses. Rhythm of the light, of the rains, of the architectures whose roofs brandish claws. Rhythm of the wooden houses whose verandas slope gently downward so that the evening breeze can waft its way as far as the sleeping bodies inside. All these rhythms are silence, because they extinguish other rhythms in me, because they oblige me to be quiet.
This silence from beyond words is not apathetic. This peace is not a sleep. Together, they are a rampart built against the aggressions of the sun, of noise, of war. Pride and willpower are written on the naked face of this woman standing in the centre of her canoe. On her fixed mask, cast from the primordial matrix of her race, is written the text of the ancient deed whereby this people exchanged its soul with that of this piece of land. Every day, in the centre of the river, this face confronts the invisible enemy. She is not aware of the fact, no one really suspects it, but this combat is joined each day, each minute, and it is a mortal combat. Is she even aware that she is victorious? Is she aware of the strength and violence that animate her, when with her slow swaying movement she leans on the oar, propelling the fragile craft beneath her feet into the centre of the river? She is neither aware nor unaware, for she is she, and this river is she, and each of her gestures is noble because it is not gratuitous. She describes her destiny, her civilization.
Against the fearful noise that threatens every man, against hatred and anguish, she sets the harmony and peace of her silence. And at moments, beneath the enormous pressure of this sun, in the presence of this flat, waterlogged land bereft of horizon, or else in the face of the giddy swirl of this crowd with similar faces, similar thoughts, all moved by the same mysterious breeding instinct, this silence opens the way to a rare miracle that is the privilege of lands of self-awareness: the miracle of perceiving, through the fine net curtain separating us from reality, the exact design if the adventure.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
In the centre of this flat countryside, on the Ayutthaya road, for example, when the terrible heat of noon holds sway. Steam rises from the scorching ground. I look around me. All I can see is the great expanse of earth moist with sweat, sweeping straight to the sky, with no horizon in between. There is no sound, and the light bounces back upon the huge puddle. There is no movement. The whole experience is indescribable. Then, quite naturally, without the slightest wrench, words, ideas and actions have all ceased to exist. All that remains is this prolongation of time over space. Somewhere in this land of inherited wisdom, people are living, are working in the rice fields. Their thoughts and words are present, mingled with this soil and this water. It is as though, gently and smoothly, the veil separating me from reality had grown thinner, had worn away its texture, ready now to rip apart so that the great forces may pass through. It has become transparent, almost transparent. I can just make out, through its immobility, the blurred symbols of the replies that are about to flow forward. They are the symbols of silence.
Or else, sitting in the bows of the boat, on the river. The heat glows on the metal-edged waves. Square-stemmed canoes plough upstream, through the bulging mass of water that flows between rows of wooden houses. Their motors screech. And, that too, is silence. For the weighty river is a voice; and what this voice says is more important and more beautiful than a poem.
In the hot night, cockroaches prowl. The booths of a fair have been set up inside the temple’s courtyard. Men, women, and children are squatting on the ground, in front of one of the booths, watching a play in which the masked actors are at this moment frozen in quivering poses, while music blares from the loudspeakers. The quickened rhythms of the Auk Phassa, the nasal songs of the Rabam Dawadeung, the intoned chants of the Ramayana. Old, violent tableaux under the neon lights, tableaux of a continuing life, music born of the sounds of the world, magic rhythms that one no longer hears, silence which demands that I should listen, that I should at last stop interrupting what is being ceaselessly communicated to me.
Rhythm of the day and the night, rhythm of the baths, rhythm of the Ja-Ké, rhythm of the pitch-accented language of Klong verses, of Kap and Klon verses. Rhythm of the light, of the rains, of the architectures whose roofs brandish claws. Rhythm of the wooden houses whose verandas slope gently downward so that the evening breeze can waft its way as far as the sleeping bodies inside. All these rhythms are silence, because they extinguish other rhythms in me, because they oblige me to be quiet.
This silence from beyond words is not apathetic. This peace is not a sleep. Together, they are a rampart built against the aggressions of the sun, of noise, of war. Pride and willpower are written on the naked face of this woman standing in the centre of her canoe. On her fixed mask, cast from the primordial matrix of her race, is written the text of the ancient deed whereby this people exchanged its soul with that of this piece of land. Every day, in the centre of the river, this face confronts the invisible enemy. She is not aware of the fact, no one really suspects it, but this combat is joined each day, each minute, and it is a mortal combat. Is she even aware that she is victorious? Is she aware of the strength and violence that animate her, when with her slow swaying movement she leans on the oar, propelling the fragile craft beneath her feet into the centre of the river? She is neither aware nor unaware, for she is she, and this river is she, and each of her gestures is noble because it is not gratuitous. She describes her destiny, her civilization.
Against the fearful noise that threatens every man, against hatred and anguish, she sets the harmony and peace of her silence. And at moments, beneath the enormous pressure of this sun, in the presence of this flat, waterlogged land bereft of horizon, or else in the face of the giddy swirl of this crowd with similar faces, similar thoughts, all moved by the same mysterious breeding instinct, this silence opens the way to a rare miracle that is the privilege of lands of self-awareness: the miracle of perceiving, through the fine net curtain separating us from reality, the exact design if the adventure.
[The Book of Flights, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]
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