“I thought she was one of Mme Randelis’s domestics,” I said. “I was actually amazed myself at how large her bathroom was. With pink tiles and a bidet.”
To steer the conversation to other topics, I stated:
“I think that you two should persuade him not to go on living in this apartment.”
“You see, Jura? Everybody agrees that it’s not a good idea for you to live in her apartment,” said Nataša. “We’ve told him that a hundred times.”
“Just until the formalities are complete,” Jurij Golec said.
“So, in the meantime let’s get to work,” said Dolores-Dola, and the two women stood up simultaneously. “The sculptures are gone. That’s good. Never mind the ashtrays, Jura; I’ll empty them. What do we do with this?”
We were standing in the next room, where Noémie’s library was housed. The books were arranged over an entire wall, stretching all the way up to the ceiling.
“These are valuable books,” Jurij Golec said, taking down a volume of The Jewish Encyclopedia.
The women ran their eyes over the shelves and each of them pulled out a book at random.
“These are new books,” Dola said. “Tomorrow we’ll take whatever interests you over to the apartment by car. As for the rest — the used bookstore!”
Jurij Golec was standing in the middle of the room with a volume of the Encyclopedia still in his hand, not knowing what to do with it.
“Some of them are autographed,” he remarked.
“It’s not like she’s got one signed by Victor Hugo,” Nataša said. She was crouched down on the floor, running her fingers over the worn carpet in Noémie’s room as though picking a fabric swatch. “This is a Persian,” she said and pointed to the carpet in front of the dressing table, upon which, as in a poem by Baudelaire, little glass perfume bottles were lined up.
“Tomorrow we’ll come with the car for all that,” she said. “Vladimir Edmundovich, M. Brauman, and the two of us. Do you see, Jura? Everything will be taken care of.”
“And what’s in there?” Dola asked, indicating the cabinets in the foyer.
“Her stuff,” Jurij Golec said after laying the encyclopedia down on the radiator and opening one of the cabinet doors. “Toward the end she was buying fur coats. She complained about the cold. She even wore them around the apartment. She claimed that she was feeling the effects of the extreme cold that got into her bones forty years ago in Siberia. Pustjaki,” he added with a dismissive wave. “She was thinking of moving to Africa permanently.”
“There are some good furs here,” Dola noted. “They should also be sold. This one alone cost at least 20,000 francs.”
Jurij Golec added: “120,000. She only wore it once. Last year. For Yom Kippur.”
“For what?”
“For a holiday.”
“There are at least thirty pairs of shoes here,” Dola said.
“In Russia,” said Nataša (who had emigrated only recently and was still making use of anti-communist propaganda), “this could all be sold for hard currency in a Beryozka.”
“Boh s tobój!” cried Dolores-Dola. “What do you mean, a Beryozka? We should donate this to the Red Cross.”
“Maybe some of it, via the Croix Rouge, will make it to Afghanistan,” Jurij Golec said, casting a glance at the clock.
Then the doorbell rang.
“Doctor Wildgans,” he said, as if to himself.
Dr. Wildgans was a tall man of approximately thirty, with curly, luxuriant hair, already decorated with patches of white. There was something wild about him, something “Bedouin-like”—and not simply on account of the unusual color of his eyes, greenish-yellow, and the large shawl that he had tossed over his shoulders. Two weeks ago he had returned from Afghanistan. He had crossed the border with two other doctors and, dressed as a combatant, trekked through trackless mountains. He had observed ambushes from his hiding place; and through binoculars he had watched armored vehicles be abandoned by their crews; he carried out a number of amputations in a tent, under the most primitive conditions, about a hundred kilometers outside of Kabul.
“You have helped so many people,” Jurij Golec blurted out. “It’s just me you won’t help.”
“Take two at bedtime,” Dr. Wildgans said and set a little bottle of pills on the table. “These are more effective.”
After the two women had left, it felt as if a heavy layer of fog had once more settled over the room. The muted hum of the city was audible; music from one of the neighbors’ flats seeped through the walls. Somebody was stubbornly practicing chromatic scales on the saxophone; now and again the notes merged with the howling of ambulance sirens.
“You can talk freely in his presence,” Jurij Golec said, turning to Dr. Wildgans.
“You can’t demand it of me. I am a physician.”
“That’s precisely why. You are a physician, and I require an effective treatment. Cyanide. Or a pistol.”
“These pills will help you.”
“All right,” Jurij Golec said. “So you two want me to hurl myself from a fifth-floor window. To end up a cripple. Like miserable Raoul. You know Raoul. Or slice open my jugular. ‘My loved ones and friends shied away, seeing my wounds, and my fellow men are remote.’”
Suddenly he arose and picked up the ashtray in order to empty it. He left the bathroom door open as if he feared we might conspire against him. I heard him urinate and then flush the toilet.
“I don’t have it in me to open my veins or hang myself,” he said, as he returned with the now gleaming ashtray. “I can’t imagine myself with my face all swollen and blue, and my tongue stretched out. I’ve seen enough scenes like that in my life already. Let me assure you: a hanged man is not a pretty sight, not in the least. Even the fact that I could have one final ejaculation doesn’t much thrill me. If it’s even true that one ejaculates from the gallows. Can I take these with alcohol?”
He was holding the little bottle in his hand.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said Dr. Wildgans.
The next day I called him again.
“You’ve reached 325-26-80, Madame Golec, or Noémie Dastre. Be so kind as to leave a message and your telephone number. Good-bye, and thank you.”
It was Noémie’s voice. It was coming either from heaven or from hell; it doesn’t matter which.
On Friday I went to Lille to teach my classes. I had about ten students; my classes were on “one of the languages that make up the great family of Slavic languages, along with Russian and Polish. ” I tried to make use of Mme Yourcenar’s sensational acceptance to the Académie française in order to introduce the students to the Serbian folk poetry that Mme Yourcenar held in high esteem, as her book Oriental Tales demonstrated. The students had not read Yourcenar. So I tried using love poems. In sonnet form. But they didn’t know what a sonnet was. I tried it in alexandrines, like Racine. (No doubt just some bourgeois scam.) So I switched to palatalization and the death of yat. Apparently that held some interest for them. They wrote it all down in their notebooks. Therefore I myself had to bone up during the train ride on palatalization and the death of yat.
Saturday I called up Ursula Randelis.
“Noémie’s voice is on the answering machine,” I said. “I felt like I was talking with the Hereafter.”