A narrative could be structured simply by juxtaposing memories. It would just need a reader without illusions. A reader who, having read so many realist narratives that tell a story from beginning to end as if their authors possessed the laws of memory and of existence, aspired to something a bit more real. This new narrative, based purely on a foundation of memories, would have no beginning or end. It would be more of a circular narrative, and the position of the narrator would be like that of a boy who, riding a horse on a merry-go-round, tries at each pass to snatch a steel loop from the ring. It takes luck, skill, and continual adjustments of position, and having them all one would still come up most of the time empty handed.
There are many types of memories. Generalized memories, for example. During my childhood, during our summer siestas, my uncles would drive over from the neighboring village and the car’s chrome radiator, glittering in the sunlight, would be full of yellow butterflies smashed into the metal vents. The image that remains with me is not of any particular event. It is an abridgement, almost an abstraction, of all the times I saw radiators full of butterflies. And yet it is a memory.
There are also immediate memories: we are bringing a cup of tea to our lips when we remember, even before the cup reaches its destination, the previous moment when we lifted it noiselessly from the table. And I would even venture to say that there is also a category we could call simultaneous memories, which consist of remembering the instant we are living in the same instant we live it; that is, we remember the taste of this tea and no other, in the same moment we are drinking it.
There are intermittent memories, which flicker periodically like lighthouses. Distant memories with which we remember, or think we remember, the memories of others. And also memories of memories, in which we remember remembering, or which present us with the memory of a moment when we had remembered something intensely. As you can see, remembering is complex stuff. Memory itself is not sufficient to grasp it. Voluntarily or involuntarily, our memory cannot control the act of remembering; it is more accurately a servant to it. Our memories are not, as empiricists claim, purely illusions: but nevertheless an ontological scandal separates us from them, constant and continual and stronger than any effort we can exert to construct our lives like a narrative. That is why, from another point of view, we could consider our memories a region even more remote than the whole world outside ourselves.
The Traveler
He broke the watchthe glass that protected the great face whose Roman numerals ended in florid filigreesdelicatehe scattered the pieces onto the smoking heap of ash that two nights ago had been a flickering fire he himself had set
He had squatted for a momentutterly absorbed in the childish task of brushing all the gray, caked-on lumps of soot from the glassafterward he paused and gazed at his surroundings
It continued to drizzleslowly impalpablycondensingso that it looked more and more like mistexpanding toward the great circular horizon
His face remained firmer and calmer than if he had raised it to see the time on Big Ben
He was so accustomed to that plain which seemed to retreat before him even as he advanced that he felt for a moment the illusion of not having progressed at allhe had become so familiar with it and at the same time had always thought of himself as such a genteel and resigned sort of fellowthat the notion of wandering around in it for the past five dayshis horse had tripped in a ditchcracking one of its front hoovesthe notion of having walked around in circles without being able to find any point of reference a ranch a treeor any possibility of using the stars to guide him since it had not let up raining for more than a few hours in the whole five days and even when it had the sky had never fully clearedthe notion of being lost on the plainwithout a thing to eat without speaking anything but English without seeing another living thing besides some birdsblack stiff highin the airmigratingthey didn’t seem to elicit any emotion from himserene confirmationcold desperationperplexity
The moment before he broke the watch his perplexity had grown somewhatdiscovering that after having walked for two days straight and stopping only once in a while to catch his breathhe had arrived once more at the place where a brief respite from the rain had allowed him to light a weak fire in the hope that someone would notice its glowthe perplexity grew somewhat settling in his face in the form of a wry smile
Nobody had seen a thingnot the fire he had lit nor the other firesthe ruddy face with bluish bags under the eyesthe red hair surrounding his large balding forehead and patethe unrelenting water makes them glisten
Again he has come to the place where he lit the firehe removed the watch from his packbroke itscattered the little shards of glass onto the ash heapsquatting
He stopped and gazed toward the horizonel pajonalhe didn’t know the straw was called thatit extended all the way to the uniform horizonmonotonously
He was up to his hips in itstraw
Sometimesthere were little clearings between the tufts of grassa man could lie down there and disappearone had to be there to know such clearings existed
When he advanced the blades of grass whipped open and then closed behind himhe stoppedturned aroundnot even a trace of his passagehe was going in circles and couldn’t tell the differencenot at allhis language his memory said I have gone in circlesI have gone in circles I wasn’t always looking this way
He can’t detect the smallest difference
It’s precisely the samethe rain is denser or more transparent closer or farther away from the horizonthe gray skybelowthe strawel pajonalhe didn’t know it was called thatto the horizongray uniform monotonous
Reasonably and gracefully I acceptI have gone in circlesI’m facing the other directionNow I’m calling out againI’m in the same place againI thinkI persevereJeremy Blackwood in the name of the companyestablishes the cardinal directionsI’ll find the salting room
He looked at the ash heapthe broken watchscattering he continued to walk
He walked some incalculable interval
blackness more even than the straw and denser than the rainwhipped by the supple blades of grassimmersed to the hipsit rang in his mind in his memoryfor hourseven if it paused for a moment it did not crackHe could not filter the silence
A dry snap ending in a sort of slipping snappingback in place the blades of grass unleashedthatnoise and made it swayingand resounding
He awoke
Everything remained thereidenticalsevereimplacablethe rain the sky the horizon the straw
I know I’ve gone forwardthe company from Londonhe knew he was walking and advancingI seeat dawn a point identical to the restan identical pointbut not the sameI’m sureit is my own wordagainst the rain the sky the horizon the straw
He pants
Everything is wetthe leather sacktwisted stuck to his bodythe waterdrippingover his facehis carrot-red locksdarkly blazing
He walked all dayI’m going to stop when the water stopsstopping only to catch his breaththe night came and the mist
He stopped
He toppled forwardonto the straw blades that opened and closed like a whip
He remained sleepingstill
At dawn his dreams unfurleda phosphorescent screenhe saw Londonfloatingilluminated like a transparent cathedralLondonred bricksthe sound of carriages resounding on the pavementgossips calling out from window to windowmarketsshort pyramids of tomatoesfish laid out smooth and open like womenlive shrimps dragging themselves across the fishmonger’s counterlewd red beefsteak dismemberedprostitutes flashing their sin-stained titslittle boys running among the merchantsmusic from taverns and from the blind beggars rising above the throng