Alma occupies the blue vertex of the chromatic star because that’s the color of breathable air, but I still don’t know how to distribute the other colors. Maybe there’s no need. I suppose that green is for the trenches. And yellow for my parents, but I’m not sure about that, because maybe it would only be my mother’s color.
If I had to choose one moment with Alma to place in her vertex, I would opt for a dusk we spent together at Hauterive. Sitting in the garden, in silence. Alma watering. The sun low. The murmuring of the river. The gleam of the leaves. The aroma of the damp earth. For a few moments I had the sensation — as potent as it was naive — that nothing could separate us. That I had lost my parents and Konrad but that, finally, after a long wait, someone had come to fill that void. Alma must have noticed that I was looking at her, because she turned. And smiled. That’s all. Then she continued watering. I never felt so close to anyone as I did to her then.
My father said more or less the same about my mother. Although sometimes, when he divulged one of his rare confessions, I was flustered. For a while the fact that he had loved her so much even made me feel a little jealous. But later, when I realized that what he felt for my mother was no threat to me, I was more surprised that such a serious, circumspect man had ever behaved — as he occasionally described it—“like an impetuous lovesick boy.”“I would have done anything for her,” he told me more than once. Now I know that those two behaviors aren’t mutually exclusive. And, in fact, he was the same way about his work. The rational, methodical scientist coexisted with the juggler of stories. When he got excited, he was unpredictable. He could jump from reagents or the chemical structure of any element to the rooster eggs hatched by toads to create basilisks, whose ashes, when mixed with red copper, the blood of a redhead, and vinegar, made what’s called Spanish gold. Or that’s what a Benedictine monk he once told me about had said. At an age when I barely understood how children were born, I was as surprised to hear that roosters could lay eggs as I was by the lethal gaze of the basilisks, and I drove him crazy asking for the only animal that could protect me from it. “How can we have a weasel in the house?” he would ask me when at night, drawn by my shrieks, he lay down in my bed to calm me.“I don’t know,” I would answer,“but I’m really scared.” Finally I was so annoying about it that, instead of a weasel, he gave me a little hand mirror and, after repeating ad infinitum that, if necessary, it would work to kill the basilisk with the reflection of his own gaze, he managed to get me to sleep soundly without nightmares. For a long time I carried it in my pocket at all times and, before getting into bed, I had to check several times to make sure it was under my pillow.
I’ve always been pretty obsessive. Having to confirm a bunch of times that I’ve closed a door properly or that I haven’t left any light on in the house is a drag, but there’s nothing I can do about it. During the first months of my illness, I went through the same thing with my medication times. Now I don’t even worry about it. I couldn’t care less. Since I don’t have any hope that it’ll do anything, I don’t worry if I’ve forgotten my dose. The doctor doesn’t understand it, but I think he’s given up. At least he no longer insists. He must think I’m a lost cause. But nothing happens, and that’s what I’ve tried to make him see, because I have the impression that he feels a little guilty for his inability to spur me on to continue to play the game out to its end.
As a little kid, I was as terrified — or more — of getting sick as I was of running into the basilisk. That’s why I did everything I could to keep from complaining when I was feeling poorly. Until I couldn’t stand it anymore or until the symptoms were so obvious that my father noticed. Then, as always, he called for Doctor Zomer. They were friends, and he trusted him so deeply that he didn’t care that I panicked over his resemblance to Doctor Moreau from the Wells’s novel that Marcellus Goldschmidt had loaned me and I’d read, stiff with fear. With his white hair, his narrow forehead, his thick lips with drooping corners, those small black eyes topped by thick brows. . Or that was what I thought when I saw him come into my room with his kit under his arm. I was convinced that Doctor Zomer had read Wells’s book and was secretly continuing Doctor Moreau’s experiments, except instead of turning animals into men, he was doing it the other way around. That was why he looked at my throat, eyes, and ears with such avid interest. And squeezed my belly and made me cough. To find out which beast would be best suited for my body. And I feared that, when my father was distracted, he would try to turn me into a dog. Or a hyena. Or a monkey. I’m not surprised that, sometimes, between one thing and another, it was so hard to get my fevers down. Like now. But the doctor says it’s normal. Because of the tumor and I don’t remember what else. Maybe, if I tell him a little bit about Doctor Zomer’s visits, he’d understand it might also be because of my apprehension.
When I would explain all that to Alma, she couldn’t believe I was so impressionable. “You’re almost as lily-livered as me,” she would say when I listed my childhood fears.“But with a lot more imagination. Just my father was enough to make me shit my pants.”
I could talk to Alma so easily. Much easier than anyone else. And even though sometimes it was hard for her to get started, she was no slouch either. But you had to know when it wasn’t the right moment. Either because she wasn’t in the mood or because she was studying for a role. Then it was best not to bother her. Occasionally though, she would let me help her. When she died, she was on her way to the first rehearsal of The Stronger, by Strindberg, in a production by the Théâtre de l’Atelier. For two or three weeks she prepared for it in Hauterive and asked me to play the part of Miss Y. Since the role of Miss Y is always silent, all I could do was nod my head, make a disdainful expression, laugh loudly, or observe Mrs. X curiously. Even though it was completely different from The Human Voice, Alma’s monologue was equally affecting. When she compared Miss Y with an empty vessel or when she rebuked her for her inability to love, her voice really stung. Sometimes, when we were rehearsing, I thought how I was lucky she hadn’t ever had to use it against me. I don’t even know if I could have endured one of those harsh, arrogant stares. Even though I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised — after all, it was her job to play roles — it upset me to see that Alma could bring up such rage from inside her. One day, after rehearsing, I got up the courage to tell her that. Alma didn’t answer for a long time. And, when she did, I regretted having opened my mouth because every one of her words sounded like a reprimand to herself. “It’s just that, sometimes, I don’t know what to do with all the hatred I feel,” she finally said.
Alma could be very hard on herself. Not only when things didn’t come out the way she felt they should — she was demanding — but also when she was in one of her “black moods,” as she called them. Then, overwhelmed by the despair she felt over not having found a way to forgive or a way to digest her guilt, she would disappear for hours. “I have no right to complain,” she told me more than once,“but being a survivor, without even knowing how or why, isn’t as easy as it seems.” Having randomly been one of those who made it out of Ravensbrück and having abandoned her mother to get away from her father and devote her life to the theater were burdens that weighed too heavily on her. Telling her that I understood, that her Ravensbrück was my trench and that her mother was my Konrad, wouldn’t have been of any use. I never knew how to help her. Over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that, when you understand someone else’s suffering too well, you aren’t the right person to console them.