Magnus has not understood a great deal of what the little fellow in his muddy-coloured homespun shift has been babbling on about. His voice is thin and his rustic accent very strong. Magnus has the impression of being confronted with a clown, juggling with both tamed insects and odd utterances, or rather a scarecrow suddenly endowed with movement and the power of speech, and he wonders where the fellow comes from and what he wants. The clown flaps his hands and his insects take flight, starting to circle round him again.
‘I’m Brother Jean. Who are you?’
Magnus is taken aback by this question, simple though it is, and he gives an answer that comes as a surprise to himself. ‘I’ve forgotten.’
The clownish monk does not seem to find this reply in the least unexpected. ‘That can happen. And it’s a good a sign.’ With this serenely delivered comment he goes toddling off, a golden flurry swarming round his hat.
No matter how much thought he gives it, he cannot recall his name. This lasting forgetfulness dismays him. He does not see any good sign in it. On the contrary, he feels stricken with anonymity, as though felled by a blow, an ailment. The sickness of loss, combining in this latest attack the stealthy attrition of wastage with the anguish of despoliation. Is this the only result of that long labour of decanting conducted in the solitude of footpaths and forests, in the silence of the barn?
Nevertheless he eventually returns to the barn. Planting himself against the back wall, he summons to his aid all those people he has known and loved, but their names come to him in a jumble, overwhelmed by those of people who have been an affliction to him. He does not want to hear the detested names of Thea and Clemens Dunkeltal, along with all their pseudonyms stinking of lies and wickedness, nor those of Horst Witzel, Julius Schlack, Klaus Döhrlich, But these names grow shrill, they cling, sticking to his tongue.
Knautschke, Klautschke — these nicknames plague him, slosh round in his mouth, turn into seething verminous words, Klasche Klapse Knalle Knaren Knacke Knülche Knauser Kleckse …1 Verbal smacks, verbal expectorations. He sees them as big clots of blood roiling in the pink gaping gob of a yawning hippopotamus. He feels them gurgling in his throat, thickening his saliva. He starts striking the ground with his stick to silence this viscous tumult.
Shut your trap, Knautschke! He strikes harder and harder, head down, straining his brow like an animal ready to charge, jaws clenched. So cold is he, he breaks into a sweat, chill perspiration running down his back; a stalactite reaching from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine.
A stalagmite rising from his belly to his throat. The Knautschke orifice closes, swallowing up all those reptilian words. Then out of an undercurrent of sound emerge the familiar names, like so many handshakes, greetings, smiles that pacify him. And caresses too, painful in their lost tenderness.
They come slowly circling round, all these names, in pairs or singly. Just a murmur each time, a sigh. A sob. May, Peggy…
A procession of utterances in colourless or grey-blue voices, ocre and violet laughter, ivory and russet whispers. Each name has its own complexion, style, timbre, and a slight tremor. A quavering sometimes. Each has its own intensity, its particular resonance. Sometimes a fleeting brilliance.
And the procession goes round and round. But his own name is absent.
He is no longer striking the ground with his stick, he is walking across the barn, pacing the emptiness. He follows after the names in the procession, begging for his own. His mouth is dry, his lips blue with cold. Darkness has long since fallen, but so profuse are the stars that a diffused pale luminescence tempers the darkness.
He lurches, leaning on his stick, still seeking his name. The starlight has faded. It is close to daybreak. The barn is now steeped in ashen gloom. The procession of beloved names dissolves in the silence. He is left on his own. He collapses with exhaustion, falls to his knees. But in falling, his mind fractures and his name suddenly resurfaces. Magnus.
Magnus laughs, on his knees in the dust. ‘Magnus!’ he exclaims in a breathless voice, and repeats his name as if calling out to himself. He is so happy to have recovered it he writes it in the dust with the tip of his index finger. At that moment as the sun rises the sky is filled with a milky brightness, and this dawn radiance steals between the slats of the barn, concentrating in an oblique beam that touches his finger.
A ray of white light. A lactation. And his finger does not write the letters of Magnus but those of another name, totally unknown to him.
He gazes at this name and quietly lies down beside it. He falls asleep immediately, dazed with tiredness and incomprehension.
Note
1 Claps slaps smacks rattles crackles misers blotches
Litany
Lothar and Hannelore, call my name.
Else and Erika, call my name.
Peggy Bell, call my name.
Mary and Terence Gleanerstones, call my name.
Terence and Scott, my brothers, call my name.
May, my lover of such vitality, call my name.
Lothar and Hannelore, call my name.
Else, call my name.
Peggy, my sister my love, call my name.
Lothar, my friend my father, call my name.
Myriam, young girl, call my name.
Peggy, my most beautiful my sweet, call my name.
Peggy, my Schneewittchen my lost one, call my name.
You, who were sacrificed, forgive me.
From the unknown, deliver me.
From this silence, deliver me.
From this oblivion, deliver me.
From disintegration, deliver me.
From my absence, deliver me.
I being nameless, in your mercy, name me!
From this perdition, in your mercy, save me!
In your mercy, listen to me!
Hear me …
Do you hear me?
May, do you hear me?
Lothar, are you listening to me?
Peggy, do you forgive me?
And you, my mother consumed by fire and the fire that consumes me, do you hear me?
Where are you? What do you say?
Do you hear me?
Fragment 28
When he wakes up it is already very late in the morning. Another hot August day. The atmosphere is close, laden with the smells of earth, of flowers. His head is strangely heavy, as if filled with mist, with white dew. He feels giddy. To get to his feet, he uses the ground to support his weight, but in doing so his hands erase the name dictated to him by tiredness, the name he had written in the dust at daybreak in the milky flow of light. By the time that moment resurfaces in his mind it is too late, the writing is illegible. He can only distinguish one letter: an l. So it was not a dream, he had actually written down some other unsuspected name: there is no l in Magnus. But examine the ground as he might, he cannot decipher anything more.
He pushes open the door. The direct sunlight blinds him. ‘Good morning, my son! Did you sleep well?’ The little old monk wearing his mobile beehive has returned, as buzzingly cheerful as the previous day. Over by the lime tree that shades the yard, he is busying himself round a table he has improvised with a wooden plank resting on some logs taken from the pile in the shed. He acts as if he is at home here, indeed like a host about to welcome a guest. For that is what he is preparing: lunch.