Читать онлайн "Here Is Where We Meet" - Берджер Джон - RuLit

I come outside to have a pee and the nightjar is singing. Kutak-kutak-kutak. Only night birds sing so long without stopping. He’s much nearer than before and may be in one of the trees by the bridge. I walk down there, for I’ve never in my life seen a nightjar, I’ve only heard them. The first time I heard one was in the Epping Forest with Camellia. He eats insects all night long, she told me, and he opens his beak so wide, it’s like a train tunnel! One of the toes of his foot, she went on, has a saw-edge, nobody knows why.

On each outing with Camellia in the dark or daylight I learnt names. What is this furry thing? The larva of a White Admiral. This moss? Silk wood. This knot? A clove hitch. And this? You know very well — your belly button!

There was much that could never be named. In the room of the upturned boat I told myself that the wood-grain of the varnished walls was a kind of map of the nameless, which I tried to learn by heart, in the belief that it might one day be useful. The realm of the nameless was not shapeless. I had to find my way about within it — like being in a room with solid furniture and sharp objects in pitch darkness. And anyway, most of what I knew, most of my hunches, were nameless, or their names were as long as whole books I had not yet read.

Kutak-kutak-kutak. .

I am standing so still under the tree the nightjar is in, he starts to chatter again. And standing here under the tree, I remember a few of my hunches.

Everywhere there’s pain. And, more insistent and sharper than pain, everywhere there’s a waiting with expectancy.

The nightjar falls silent and another, further down the stream, replies.

Counting is a way of secretly approaching something other than what is being counted.

The Szum has the same voice as the Ching.

Liberty is not kind.

Nothing is complete, nothing is finished.

Nobody said this, yet I knew it in Gordon Avenue.

The nightjar above me flies out of the tree to join his companion and in the filtered moonlight I glimpse the white band on his tail-feathers.

Smiles invite to happiness, but they don’t reveal of what kind.

Of human attributes, fragility — which is never absent — is the most precious.

I point up to the sky in the direction in which the nightjar flew. And this? I ask.

That’s Andromeda, Camellia replies, I’ve told you many times.

I strolled back towards the house. Unless panic sets in, darkness tends to reduce hurry. There is more time. There were no lights in the windows.

I stepped up on to the concrete platform and found my way through the creaking portico-entrance. I did not switch on the light.

The door to the bedroom was ajar. The little light coming through the window trawled like a grey net over the bed. The three of them were asleep. Olek lay against his father’s chest, his hand up to his mouth and Danka was cupped around Mirek’s back. A moth touched my hand in the darkness. Cma! Only the human body can be naked, and it is only humans who long and need to sleep together, skins touching all night long. Cma.

Within a week, Olek, with his determination, will learn to walk here, and Danka will ask Mirek to build a doorstep to their house.

8½

Why did you never read any of my books?

I liked books which took me to another life. That’s why I read the books I did. Many. Each one was about real life, but not about what was happening to me when I found my bookmark and went on reading. When I read, I lost all sense of time. Women always wonder about other lives, most men are too ambitious to understand this. Other lives, other lives which you have lived before, or which you could have lived. And your books, I hoped, were about another life which I only wanted to imagine, not live, imagine by myself on my own, without any words. So it was better I didn’t read them.

I risk to write nonsense these days.

Just write down what you find.

I’ll never know what I’ve found.

No, you’ll never know. All you have to know is whether you’re lying or whether you’re trying to tell the truth, you can’t afford to make a mistake about that distinction any longer. .

Acknowledgments

‘We can only give what is already the other’s’ — Jorge Luis Borges. For this book I deeply thank: Alexandra, Andres, Anne, Arturo, Beverly, Bill, Bogena, Colum, Dan, Gareth, Geoff, Gianni, Hans, Iona, Irene, Jean, Jitka, John, Katya, Leticia, Liane, Libby, Lilo, Lisa, Lucia, Maggi, Manuel, Maria, Marisa, Michael, Mike, Nella, Paul, Pierre-Oscar, Pilar, Piotr, Ramon, Robert, Sandra, Simon, Stephan, Tonio, Victoria, Witek, Wolfram and Yves.

The following quotations from Borges’s poetry appear in the book. They are taken from Selected Poems by Jorge Luis Borges, edited by Alexander Coleman (Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1999) and are reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd.