When we returned from America, I resumed my position behind the turntables at the Apocryphe, but only on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays — the nights with the biggest crowds. I had resolved to resume my studies and to devote my four days off per week to analyzing metaphysical texts in order to write an essay on the apophatic tradition.
For too long I had neglected a regular intellectual practice because it had been incompatible with the new mind-numbing nocturnal life to which I had made myself prisoner. I became aware of these constraints and of their consequences once I had had a vacation from them, a pause that suspended the chain of overindulgent nights. It made me realize the bleak inanity of the time I had lost squandering my life in the night, devoting myself exclusively to venal pleasures.
The Eden had closed — momentarily, so they said — and A***, with neither work nor guaranteed income, moved in with me. Living together seemed only natural following a month of vacation without any drama, and the vastness of my apartment spared us from sharing any awkward propinquity.
The airy, sweet closeness was not, however, without tension, brought on by the radical difference in our lifestyles. All day we stayed in the house, barely leaving; but while I withdrew to my study to read in peace, A*** would spend most days in front of the television screen watching shows and films, despite my attempts to suggest a less passive pastime. No book or work of art was enticing enough to evoke curiosity. A***’s sole activity was a daily exercise routine to maintain good physical form and bodily suppleness. At the end of each week, we would have dinner together at a restaurant before heading to the Apocryphe, or, when A*** felt the desire (more and more frequently) to meet up with some friends, we would separate at the door of the club, where I would carry out my night’s work.
In April I took a three-month vacation, which we spent visiting some cities in Europe before continuing on to New York. Venice, Florence, Rome, Munich, Heidelberg, Berlin, Amsterdam, and London: we made a tour of these cities over the course of May and June without spending more than a week in any of them. In the space of a few days, I would visit the museums that I knew had some paintings (by Mantegna in particular) or collections I was hoping to see. I also visited a few universities where I had friends who introduced me to the professors there who might be interested in my research. They were all very welcoming and encouraged me to pursue my studies.
A*** followed me begrudgingly into the museums in Italy, preferring to enjoy the sea and to tan through long — and, in my opinion, inhuman — sessions. A*** found the cities of the North disappointing and boring, devoid of charm as picturesque as that of the Alps. In Berlin, as in London, we went to the opera as well as to some classical concerts, which for A*** were mere social occasions, failing to incite any profound interest. The only things that provided A*** with an unfeigned pleasure were walks through the streets, from café to café, from fashion boutique to jeweler’s.
New York was less boring, because it was a familiar city where A*** could demonstrate superiority over me. We experienced an extraordinary resurgence of our passion; the city’s power and excitement infiltrated us just as it had during our first visit. It was summer, and the heat, not too excessive, made for pleasant walks through the streets. The nights, singularly electric, lured us out. The clubs and bars were crowded with vacationing students who had come to New York to revel in the monstrous buzz of the artistic and cultural scene.
Basking in a renewal of passion for the world, for life, and for our love, we shared secrets, words, and caresses profusely, allowing ourselves to forget all our past hurts and to believe for a moment in an idyll whose state of grace lingered even after we had left its source, that city.
The Eden reopened in September with a brand new show on the billing. A*** was asked to join the new troupe. The rehearsals took up the end of August, with six hours of work a day and up to ten hours in the days preceding the premiere.
We rarely saw each other. During the day, I stayed in to work in my study without going out, while A***, with renewed professional rigor, met the artistic and physical demands of preparation. In the evening, we would eat dinner together and then go to bed very early. The nights when I was working, A***, who had stopped going out, stayed at the apartment. Returning at daybreak, I would go to sleep in the bed that A*** would soon be vacating.
I don’t know whether it was A***’s absence or a kind of unhinging, a solitude induced by the disjunction in our lifestyles, that was producing this effect, but clubs were now inspiring only a growing boredom in me, dangerously close to contempt. I was about to turn twenty-three, and for the three years the night crowd had passed before my eyes, I had seen reputations be made and dismantled. I had seen temporary passions transport places and individuals to the apex, and then, burning what they had once adored, those notorious night owls who make up the club scene would abandon them for no apparent reason for other idols destined for a glory just as brief.
It was a never-ending cycle: a new club would open with flashier décor than ever and resounding, luminous sound equipment more over the top and expensive that anything we had seen before. Always bigger, better, louder, more exclusive and more chichi: the propensity to outdo others governed the cycles of this sparkling microcosm. But behind the circus I discerned only a dreadful repetition; the same shady characters would dominate this market where the figureheads, straw men, and wax mannequins were waltzing to an infernal rhythm. For ages, some thirty individuals, usually vulgar and with unconvincing respectability, would hide behind the scenes and open, close, and resell the clubs, all conceived on the same model. The machine was running on empty, racing, turning out a fortune without producing an iota of delight: no one enjoyed themselves in the least in these clubs, and I started to doubt whether anyone ever had.
Money, reigning despotically, was reducing these places to nothing more than interchangeable settings for dreary prostitution and, to make up for this disgrace, they were rotten with snobbery. The only people seen there, noisily upstaging everyone else, were the nouveau riche and the horde of thieves that money draws: dealers, prostitutes, gigolos, and crooks of all calibers. For the sake of appearance or photo opportunities, the crowd was sprinkled with a few celebrities, people who were recognized and idolized.
I could no longer bear the assault of this ambient vulgarity. Behind the simulacrum of festivity and opulence, I witnessed the most sordid trafficking and the seediest machinations, sheepishly disguised. The four months I stayed on in Paris were a calvary for me: the obligatory visits to this cloacum were nauseating. I was being drained by my academic essay whose subject was as far as possible from what I confronted on a daily basis. And finally, I was suffering from the distance I felt growing between A*** and me. We continued to live together, yet we scarcely spent time together.
Without realizing it, I started longing for my detour via the Eden, those rendezvous from the first days of our relationship, the route that I took every night to the Apocryphe. Disgust at the milieu we now took no pleasure in visiting was gradually surfacing, combining destructively with the loss of substance in our relationship.