I opened the door. An elegant gentleman. Gray pants, dark blue coat. Thin-framed glasses, matching his delicate, open face.
“My name is …”
The name didn’t seem familiar.
“I am your postman.”
“Oh yes! Yes, of course, yes, yes.” I understood, suddenly.
He asked me what country I came from, for how long, whether I was enjoying Berlin. Oh, very nice, yes, yes, very nice of this gentleman to inquire about me! I thanked him. He smiled, as if wanting to add something. He asked me how I pronounced my name. If the accent fell on the first a or the second a. Then he smiled again.
“I’ve noticed you receive a lot of mail. From many places.”
Indeed, I received many letters, and waited for them all impatiently. Yes, the day began with my reading my correspondence. I can’t help it, every day I watch for the mail. It makes me glad, all the more so that I now know the one who opens the doors to my new day.
“I’d like, if possible, to ask you to save the stamps from your letters for me. I’m a collector, you know …”
I keep a vigil by my window, watching for the little yellow car. It always arrives around ten o’clock. It stops right in front of the house where I live. A slender gentleman, always wearing the same clothes, gets out. Gray pants, navy blue coat, blue shirt, blue tie. Thick hair with a nice trim, glasses. His controlled gestures have a certain elegance and cheerfulness. I see him stop to answer some old lady or young man, whose questions are very likely always the same. He’s never in a hurry, chatting with them, even if they take more of his time than necessary.
On his shoulder he carries a bag that’s always full, and in his hand a pile of envelopes. He always begins his round with the house where I live. Maybe because several foreign guests live here, so there are more letters. The day begins around ten o’clock.
The little yellow car, parked right in front of the house, under my window. “Schreib mal wieder” (“Write again”) says the car door. The polite, refined gentleman gets out, cheerful, but in no hurry. He could be anything: a professor, an engineer, Steuerberater,* a cello player, anything.
He takes out the pile of envelopes, puts the bag on his shoulder. Looks once again inside the car to see if he left anything. Closes the car door. Now he’s in the courtyard. I’m waiting to see him get out. I go down, open the mailbox. The urn with the ashes of the days. The lottery box from the Devil or God, from the police or a lover. A sentence for life or a death threat. A connection to others or to the earth or the sky. To chance and destiny. To myself. To myself, of course. Am I writing these letters to myself to keep the rules of the game going? Could it be that the beings inside me are in dialogue via the unlikely addressee that I am, thus fueling daily life for their own fun? A dark, childish game. Or maybe a naïve author’s cruel script, with tears, hugs, laughs and pratfalls.
A foreigner, here? A foreigner or estranged anywhere, in the end. I have found here all my old habits. I carry them with me anywhere. Partir, c’est rester en même temps (To leave is to stay at the same time) …
He just went out. He never shuts the gate. He goes out, cheerful, the way he comes in. He never takes the trouble to push the gate shut behind him, not even lightly, with his shoulder. A bizarre carelessness for such a careful, proper man. I watched him every day, anxious to see if I was wrong. No, I wasn’t. He would cheerfully open the gate, enter the courtyard, slowly cross the paved alley, enter the building, come out. The gate always stayed wide open behind him. I wonder who this gentleman is, whether the mission given him by chance reaches its goal too easily, in such trivial disguise.
I see him get out of the car again, take out his bag, heading for the gate. I go down, eager to welcome him in the lobby. He is already at the door, facing me, near the labels indicating the names to which he dispenses a daily serving of chance.
He greets me, I answer. I smile, he smiles. I show him the red coupon: the notice to pick up a package.
“When did you receive it?”
“I found it yesterday in the mailbox.”
“That means you weren’t home, that you were supposed to go to the post office to pick up your package.”
“I was home all day.”
“Well, my lazy colleague doesn’t want to bother to go all the way up to the fourth floor. It’s easier to throw a notice in the mailbox! Then it’s up to the resident to go to the post office and pick up his package … I’ll take care of it. I’ll send the notice to the post office and they will send you your package here.”
He fills in the form for me. What can he think about someone who is addicted to his mailbox? A home, a minuscule home we are still permitted. The urn with the days’ ashes. A coffin of hope … A box full of lottery tickets.
He would probably answer me that as a foreigner it’s normal to be dependent. But I was the same back home! I feel like shouting.
Should I tell him about the text I’ve never managed to write? I kept looking for a title. “84”? 1984. The number of my destiny, my mailbox number, there, in the apartment building where I used to live. Or the title of a famous book? In the end … yes, in the end I kept Defining the Object … Just a title, nothing more, not a line.
The text, I never wrote it, though I had found the formula: the repetition, slightly modified, of a half-a-page text, the character at different ages simultaneously hiding and unveiling the object in question.
“How would you define such an object?”
I never asked him. He was filling out the form, with a very preoccupied air. Then he began to distribute the envelopes into the mouths above the names inscribed on each box. He moved from one to the other, throwing in the bait. He moved to another one, still watching me. When he finished, he thanked me for the stamps. Each Saturday I hang on my mailbox an envelope with the stamps I cut out during the previous week.
He was about to leave when, I don’t know why, I extended my hand to shake his. He seemed surprised, smiled. We shook hands. When he was by the door, he turned back. He seemed to remember something.
“Have you been to the Wall?”
I didn’t answer.
“Have you been to the Wall?” he repeated, with his hand still on the doorknob.
“Oh, of course … Right after I got here. For us, in Eastern Europe, it’s a special moment. We’ve seen it from the other side. For Eastern Europe, you know, it’s more than a simple … I mean, it has a special … It isn’t simply emotional, it’s …”
I’d spoken fast, I couldn’t find my words. He made a gesture, as if he knew already or as if this story had no interest for him, he’d heard it too many times.
“No, I wasn’t speaking of our Wall. I was thinking of something else, another wall. I was asking about the Wailing Wall …”
Of course, the Berlin Wall. The Wailing Wall, of course. As if someone had guessed behind my words some other words I hadn’t uttered. As if our friendly conversation was a code for another one, tangled, old, unending …
He noticed my bewilderment and hurriedly explained:
“I saw, from the stamps you’ve given me, that you receive letters from Israel too. I thought that maybe … I wouldn’t have wanted to … I was just wondering if … I would have liked …”
This time, it was he who couldn’t find his words. I answered briefly: “Yes, of course. I have. I have been there too.”
He seemed satisfied with the short answer, didn’t insist. I watched him as he left. Then I watched the sky, the sparrows in the tree in front of the house. The tree, its quiet faithfulness.