She had laughed in his face, and even he wasn’t very convinced by his pro domo plea. (He got angry when Anna contradicted him, and even more so when he knew that she was right, at least partially — but he never let it show, true to his credo: “I am not at home here, I am a sort of guest in this country.”)
…as if one were never at home… a little speck of dust in an unlimited universe. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me… Or is it “the infinite silence of these eternal spaces frightens me”? And if some people believe they are at home, in this tiny particle of dust, in a tiny corner of a speck, and others are invited here…
But here, for God’s sake! Here, in Utrecht, wasn’t he ten times more of a foreigner than he would have been if he had moved to Nantes or Montpellier? Over there, the trees would have had familiar names, the trees and the animals and the household items at the supermarket; over there, he wouldn’t have needed to consult a dictionary to buy a mop — a mop, goddamnit! It had come to this, he who had dreamed of “changing the world”—what was it again, that Marx quotation he had repeated with elation (in his youth, for now opportunities for citing Marx were rare — at university, he had seen people defend a thesis in economics, in sociology, without being able to define surplus value or the tendency of the rate of profit to fall)…
…but s…! All that’s finished, it’s history…What use is it to you now, here? All of Marx in the Pléaide…One day, someone will throw it in a dumpster, not understanding anything (“It’s French”)…Very distinctly, he sees the scene and is submerged in a wave of infinite sadness. Young men, grinning, talking about soccer, throwing his Pléaides one by one into a dumpster full of trash and these millions of words, these millions of dead birds, will rot in a corner of polder.
… with a sort of pride by anticipation — like a program, like a project…ah yes: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it!”
He mutters, tears in his eyes: Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert; es kömmt drauf an, sie zu verändern. It finishes as a sob: verändern! Take note, Deus absconditus: one winter night, Transvaalstraat, in a little town in Holland, a Moroccan in complete dislocation, quoted out loud, in German, the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Not a blade of grass trembled, not a mouse stirred. (When an oak tree falls in the middle of the forest, does it make a sound? He finally has the answer, but it’s too late.)
He added long ago, a bit of a pedant, but a winning pedant: “the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach,” yes, yes: “the point is to change it!” But today? Life’s vicissitudes…
Let’s accuse life, it won’t defend itself. Life’s a bitch, but at least it shuts up. (Oh…but you’re not really going to reproach sweet, kind Anna for her babbling — isn’t that what you used to find the most charming about her — that incessant chirping — when she had nothing to say, she hummed…Yes, what charms in the first days, the first months, can perfectly well become a reason to murder ten years later…)
Here he is, an immigrant in a world where he doesn’t know the codes, or only very vaguely, a world where each day he must discover the codes — a discreet nudge from Anna, the nudge in his side…
He touches his side, there, on Transvaalstraat, as if feeling the blow again, several months after the incident. To the eyes of the world still intact / It feels grow and weep, unspoken, / Its sharp, underlying crack / Do not touch, it is broken.
…that night when he had enthusiastically plunged his spoon into the soup bowl, the night when her parents were visiting — hey, we have to wait for the short prayer giving thanks to God for the food on the table — wasn’t her father a pastor of the Reformed Church of the Netherlands? Hadn’t he accepted, this strict father (but not overly), bearded like Jehovah (but not overly), Bach amateur (without moderation)…
All along that horizon line toward the void, at that exact instant, perhaps in one or the other of these absolutely identical houses, a Bach cantata plays…It was here, in this country, in this city, that he discovered the Great Consolation — if he could emerge from this dislocation, start back on his route, drag himself to the living room and slide the Passion into the CD player…But what kind of passion? (“Here we go, he thinks he’s Jesus.” And again this phrase steeped in irony clearly formed in his head, boiling over. But who is speaking, after all? He turns around brusquely — but no, he’s alone in the embalmed twilight.) Continuing on. “Passion.” Wasn’t he the one suffering from the great translation that brought him to these shores? Wasn’t he persevering in this irrational disorder? Why does man distance himself from his home? Why does he make himself into a foreigner?
…that his daughter marry a foreigner?
And isn’t she a foreigner, too? Vis-à-vis the rest of the world? The vast world? The infinite spaces?
Shouldn’t he be grateful to him? Even if it was possible to read this entire story differently, and view him, the foreigner, as the loser in the affair; and paint a picture, passing from one German to another, from Marx to Nietzsche:
Didn’t he, one day in Turin, disintegrate, as I here decompose? He collapses…he passes a carriage whose coach driver is whipping the horse violently…wrings his neck and bursts into tears…Nothing here on Transvaalstraat betrays an animal presence — except for me — tiger, porcupine, bonobo — who becomes an animal again as soon as everything loses its meaning — perhaps a cat will appear — cats, the other consolation — and I would take it under my wing, the wing of the animal that I am, I would forbid anyone from approaching it…Yes, I would be rather insane to cry with an animal next to me. My fellow creature, my brother.
“This one went forth in quest of truth as a hero, and at last got for himself a small decked-up lie: his marriage he calleth it.” A decked-up lie (so sweet, so kind) that nudged him in the ribs… Hastily putting the spoon back down next to the bowl, he had clasped his hands (he who had never done so in his country, who had never prayed, nor even entered a mosque)…
…too late now: The die is cast. He wouldn’t enter anything anymore. Enter here, with your cortege of métèques, the workforce of immigrants… Listen, I am an immigrant. A good war, a good Occupation, and I could choose ignominy, or indifference, or heroism — and I would end up on a red poster, and I would scare passersby with how difficult it is to pronounce my name…
…and lowered his head — they didn’t expect him to do the short prayer (what was it called? “Doing grace?”) but at least he had given the impression of reflecting with them, so that he would be slightly of their world) — a world where everything was foreign?