Another soldier entered the room. He was barefoot; they hadn’t heard him. The seated soldier cried out, “Spanier,” and passed the bottle to the newcomer. The painting showed two gentlemen with gardenias in their buttonholes and wing collars. The frame slowly split in two, but then the figures reassembled, as if brought together by a stubborn desire for unity. The newcomer was short, dark, and quite slender. “Mister, mister. . the telephone.” He stood halfway up, but a curious softness in his knees made him sit down again. The newcomer was distracted, didn’t respond, and began to hum a song. The other followed, then two more soldiers joined them. One had his holster looped across an arm, the other a bottle of champagne in each hand. They began singing in unison, solemnly, a vague expression on their faces.
Ich hatt’einen Kameraden,
einen bessern find’st du nit
They opened the bottles of champagne. It foamed over, spilling onto the floor. They passed it from one to another, all of them drinking.
Eine Kugel kam geflogen
gilt es mir, oder gilt es dir?
The painting now held three gentlemen, or four. All with gardenias in their buttonholes. Occasionally one was superimposed on the other, perhaps filled with the hurried wish to share confidences, but then they separated in a disorderly fashion, surrounded by gold. At one point it was possible to make out six or seven of them. A whirlwind. The champagne was followed by cognac. At times the singing resumed. Two girls came in, wearing pajamas. The first soldier stood up, filled with rage and tottering, grabbed one girl by the shoulder, the other by the arm and dragged them brutally out of the room, standing for a moment at the door, facing the hall. Every now and then he yelled with a deafening voice, “Raus!” The room became spongy, ethereal, all cottony. The chairs, floor, walls, all of it was clouds and mist. Order, order, or. . He was filled with a sense of optimism and a loud laugh issued from his mouth. He would have embraced the entire world if he could, all the men, all the birds. “All the birds.” He climbed onto the chair, concentrated a moment, and began reciting verses he had memorized twenty years before, forgotten, then retrieved in this moment of joy:
. . né dolcezza di figlio, né la pietà
del vecchio padre, né ‘l debito amore
lo qual doveva Penelope far lieta
vincer poter dentra da me l’ardore
ch’i’ebbi a diventir de modo esperto
e de li vizi umani e del valore. .
Everything spun madly around, rolling down a moss-covered slope, while the gentleman in the frame multiplied, multiplied all by himself, raised to the third, fourth, fifth power. Four gardenias? A bouquet for the pregnant senyora, shut in her room! Carpe diem. The last drop of. .
They didn’t have time to realize. Two gendarmes with brass and steel badges hanging over their chests emerged out of nowhere, in the center of the room, like two towers. “Feldgendarmerie!” A buxom, irritated woman pointed her finger at the sofa and armchair. “Les voilà, maison verboten, ma maison verboten, les salauds.” Boots. Four boots: black, opaque, lugubrious. Dozens of gendarmes. “Sakrament!” A bottle flew through the air. Order, or. . der. The gendarme beside him dragged one of the soldiers toward the hall. He ran after the gendarme and grabbed him by the belt. “Cochon! Vous cochon!” “Was?” A heavy blow from the gendarme’s fist sent him crashing against the wall. He was alone, helpless, seated on the floor, the whole side of his face in pain. A woman’s screams, hurried footsteps on the stairs, the sound of glass breaking beside him. A shadow was leaning over him: “Papieren!” “Merde!” Two hands grabbed him by the lapel of his coat and stood him up. A slap knocked him down. . How delightful the air on the street. His whole body was aflame. The air must be coming from the clouds, from the stars. He vomited. “Voyons,” shouted a woman who looked ruffled, her nose bleeding. “Bande d’acrobates!” He passed the door to his building, without seeing her. At the corner they loaded him onto a truck. With a tremendous din, everything disappeared forever, down the street, enveloped by silence and the night.
THE RED BLOUSE
I’ll tell you a story about my student days.
My desk stood by the window that looked out onto the street. My field of vision was limited by the house in front. Its third-floor window was directly opposite mine, and the blinds had been painted green. On the windowsill sat geraniums and a birdcage with a bird that never sang, although it escaped one day. A neighbor had shouted the news from her window to my concierge. One afternoon I saw beds, chairs, tables, a piano being lowered to the street: the people opposite were moving. I was gazing absentmindedly at the furniture swinging in the air at the end of a rope and listening to the movers shouting at the woman driver. I was slowly growing lethargic. The first signs of a precocious spring had appeared, filling me with a lingering melancholy that one encounters at the age of nineteen when a chance event can highlight the ephemeral. At that point in my life, I would have wished to fix each moment of my existence, making it definitive, so that I might continue to exist among objects that were meant to remain there forever. I don’t even know what I wanted! Those dusty pieces of furniture, the parcels and trunks being removed, one after the other: all of it would now belong to the past, out of sight, leaving me with a bitter taste of uncertainty.