In proportion to my father’s capacity for becoming invisible, untouchable, unattainable, in proportion to his capacity for metamorphosis, for disappearance even, he had made the most solid house, the strongest walls, the heaviest furniture, the most heavily loaded bookcases, the most heavily covered walls, the most heavily filled linen closets, the most completely filled and catalogued universe. Everything to testify to his presence, his duration, his signature to a contract to remain on earth, visible at moments. All this he promised, with his house, his possessions, his servants, his luxurious car. It was a lease, a lease on life. He lives in his own house, the neighbors could say, it may be he will stay a while. It took so much to persuade him to stay. At bottom life had offended him, failed him, like a shallow mistress. He didn’t have much use for it, but he would not spit on it. He was an aristocrat. His body continued to be courteous. But no one could tame his wandering spirit. There were consolations. Out of contempt for life, he seemed to be saying, for big sorrows there are consolations, things like bath salts and fur bed-covers. No more.
In my mind I saw him asleep upstairs, with his elbow under his chin, in the most uncomfortable position, one he had finally trained himself to hold so that he would never sleep with his mouth open, because that was ugly. I saw him asleep without a pillow, because a pillow under the head brought wrinkles. I pictured the bottle of alcohol which my mother had laughingly said, when I was a child, my father bottled himself in at night in order to keep young…
Now he was before me, and he was doing a stunt which used to make me laugh wildly when we were living in Brussels. He used to come in and imitate the cackles of a hen about to lay an egg. His cries were comical. He would produce one egg after another, which made the three of us laugh wildly. To-day he was doing it just as of old, but I was no longer able to laugh. Suddenly it occurred to me that his gaiety had never been genuine. It was simulated. It was for others. He did not feel it himself. It was a pretense, and realizing it, I felt sad.
After this prank he left me to wash his hands. He washed his hands after everything he did. He had a mania for washing and disinfecting himself.
The fear of microbes played a very important part in his life. The fear of microbes was his rational explanation. The fruit had to be washed with filtered water. The water had to be filtered for drinking. His mouth must be disinfected. The silverware had to be passed over an alcohol lamp before using it. He washed his hands continuously. He bathed meticulously. He never ate the part of the bread which his fingers had touched.
Thus it seemed to me had people washed in the baptismal waters of rivers all through the ages, hut they had always known that it was to wash away the traces of sin.
My father had never imagined that he was trying to cleanse his soul in the waters of his bathroom, to wash it of his lies, his deceptions, his callousness. The microbe for him was a danger to the body. He did not study the microbe of conscience which we carry within us.
When I saw him washing his hands, as I watched the soap foaming, I could see him again arriving behind stage at the concert hall in Berlin, with his fur-lined coat and white silk scarf, and being immediately surrounded by women. I seven years old, sitting in the front row with my mother and brothers, in a starched dress and white gloves, trembling a little because my father had said: “And above all, don’t make a cheap family show of your enthusiasm. Clap discreetly. Don’t have people notice that the pianist’s children are clapping away like a bh of jolly, noisy peasants.” This enthusiasm which was to be held in check was a great burden for child’s soul. I had never been able to curb a joy a sorrow; to restrain oneself meant to kill, to bury. This cemetery of strangled emotions—was it this my father was trying to wash away? And the day I told him I was pregnant and he said: “Now you’re worth less on the market as a woman…”—was this being washed away? No thought or insight into the feelings of others. Incapable of reading into others’ feelings, passing from extremes of hardness to weakness; no intermediate stage of human feelings, but extreme poles of emotions which never made the human equation… too hot or too cold, blood cold and heart weak, blood hot and heart cold…
While he was washing his hands with that expression I had seen on the faces of people in India thrust into the Ganges, of Egyptians plunged into the Nile, of Negroes dipped into the Mississippi, I saw the fruit being washed for his lunch and mineral water poured into his glass. Sterilized water to wash away the microbes, but his soul unwashed, unwashable, yearning to be free of the microbe of conscience… All the water running from the modern tap, running, floating in this modern bathroom, all the rivers of Egypt, of India, of America… and he unwashed… All the taps open in the modern world, and every man standing before it washing his modern body, washing… washing… washing… A drop ofholy water with which to exorcise the guilt.
Hands washed over and over again in the hope of a miracle, and no miracle comes from the taps of modern washstands, no holy water flows through leaden pipes, no holy water flows under the bridges of Paris because the man standing at the tap has no faith and no awareness of his souclass="underline" he believes he is merely washing the stain of microbes from his hands…
My father came in unexpectedly and saw that the outline of rouge on my lips was slightly blurred by kisses just received. My father talked rapidly, breathlessly, and left very hurriedly. I wanted to stop him and ask him to give me back my soul. I hated him for the way he descended the stairs as if he had been cast out, wounded by jealousy. I hated him because I could not remain detached, could not remain standing at the top of the stairs watching him depart. I felt myself going down with him, within him, because his pain and flight were so familiar to me. I descended with him, and lost myself, passed into him, became one with him like his shadow. I felt my self growing empty, and dissolving, and passing into him. I knew that when he reached the street he would hail a taxi even though it was a forbidden luxury. I knew that once in the taxi he would feel a certain relief in having again escaped from the place, the person who had inflicted the wound. There was always a possibility of removing one’s self physically. I knew he would sit in the taxi entranced with the speed of it, and abandon himself to rebellion: “I won’t see her again. I don’t want to be hurt any more.”
The organ grinder would play and the pain would gnaw deeper, hotter, bitterer, because even tuneless music could dissolve the crust we build around our feelings. Coming out of the taxi he would curse the leaden day which engraves its color on our mood, and from which we can never escape because we are born inextricably woven into the texture, color and temperature of nature. p align=”JUSTIFY” height=”0” width=”24”> He would curse the mood which dispossessed him of his own soul, and the tragic sense of life which distorted trees, faces, events, like one long, continuous nightmare. He would overtip the taxi driver because he imagined he might be suffering too, and that perhaps a gift and a smile might prevent him from committing suicide. He would have the feeling in so doing that he had relieved the sufferings of mankind. Then he would breathe a little more lightly. Giving to the taxi driver’s wife and crippled children was to give to his suffering self the gift he wished some one would make him—of a smile and of thoughtfulness.