Life Is Elsewhere

  They talked for a long while that evening, and thus both mother and son, these disappointed lovers, at last found consolation, each in the other.

  PART TWO

  Xavier

  1

  The noise of the recreation period about to end reached him from inside the building; the old math teacher would be entering the classroom to plague the students with numbers chalked on the blackboard; the buzz of a stray fly would fill the vast duration between the teacher's question and a students answer. . . . But by then he would already be far away!

  The war had ended the year before; it was spring, and the sun was shining; he went down the streets to the Vltava and walked along the embankment. The five-hour galaxy of classes was far away, and only a small brown schoolbag containing notebooks and a textbook still connected him to it.

  He reached the Charles Bridge. The double row of statues over the water beckoned him to cross to the other bank. When he absented himself from his high school (he was absent gladly and often!), he was almost always drawn to the Charles Bridge and to cross it. He knew that today too he would cross it, and that today too he would stop at the place where, having left the river behind, the bridge passed an old yellow house on the riverbank; its fourth-floor window was almost level with the bridge's parapet and just an arm's length away; he liked to gaze at it (it was always closed) and to wonder who lived behind it.

  Now, for the first time (probably because it was so unusually sunny), the window was open. A cage with a canary was hanging at one side. He stopped, watched the small, elegantly wrought white rococo wire cage, and noticed a figure in the room's half-light: he saw its back, which he recognized as a woman's, and he longed for her to turn around so that he could see her face.

  The figure moved, but in the opposite direction; she disappeared into the darkness. The window was open, and he was convinced that this was an invitation, a silent, private sign meant only for him.

  He couldn't resist. He climbed up on the parapet. The window was separated from the bridge by a deep gap that ended in cobblestones. The schoolbag would hamper him. He hurled it through the open window into the murky room and jumped.

  2

  By extending his arms Xavier could touch both sides of the high rectangular window frame he had jumped into, and he entirely filled its height. He examined the room beginning at the far end (like people who always start by concentrating on the distant) and initially saw a door, then a big-bellied wardrobe along the left wall, on the right a wooden bed with carved posts, and in the middle of the room a round table with a crocheted cover on which stood a vase of flowers; and finally he noticed his schoolbag lying on the fringed edge of a cheap rug.

  Most likely at the moment he noticed it and was about to hop down to pick it up, the door at the dark far end of the room opened, and the woman appeared. She saw him at once; the room was actually so dim that the window rectangle shone as if it were night inside and day outside; from the woman's viewpoint, the man standing in the window frame seemed like a black silhouette against a background of golden light; it was a man between day and night.

  While the woman dazzled by the light was unable to make out the man's features, Xavier was a bit luckier; his eyes had already become accustomed to the dimness and he could at least see the softness of the woman's features and the melancholy of her face, the light of whose pallor would radiate to a distance even in deepest darkness; she stayed at the door, scrutinizing him; she was neither spontaneous enough to express her fear aloud nor quick-witted enough to address him.

  Only after long moments of gazing at each other's indistinct face did Xavier speak: "My schoolbag is here.''

  "Your schoolbag?" she asked, and as if the sound of Xavier's words had rid her of her initial amazement, she closed the door behind her.

  Xavier squatted on the windowsill and pointed at the schoolbag lying on the floor below him: "I have important things in it. My math notebook, my science textbook, and also the notebook with my Czech homework. It's the one with my newest composition, 'The Coming of Spring.' It was a lot of work, and I'd hate to have to rack my brains with it again."

  The woman took a few steps into the room, so that Xavier now was able to see her in better light. His first impression had been correct: softness and melancholy. He saw two big eyes floating in the indistinct face, and still another word occurred to him: "fright"; not a fright caused by his unexpected arrival, but an old fright that had remained with the woman in the form of the two big motionless eyes, in the form of her pallor, in the form of gestures that seemed to be asking forgiveness.

  Yes, the woman was really asking forgiveness! "I'm sorry,'' she said, "but I don't understand how your schoolbag got here. I was just cleaning here a while ago, and I didn't see anything that doesn't belong here."

  "All the same," said Xavier, still squatting on the windowsill and pointing at the rug, "I'm really glad it's here."

  "I'm very pleased too that you found it," said the woman with a smile.

  They were now face to face with nothing between them but the table with the crocheted cover and the vase filled with paper flowers.

  "Yes, it would have been annoying to lose it," said Xavier. "My Czech teacher hates me, and she might flunk me if I lost my notebook."

  Compassion appeared in the woman's face; her eyes suddenly became so big that Xavier could no longer make out anything else, as if the rest of her face and her body were merely their accompaniments, their containers; he didn't even know what the various features of the woman's face and the proportions of her body were like, all that remaining on the periphery of his vision; his impression of her figure was really only the impression made by her enormous eyes, whose brown light inundated all the rest of her body.

  It was therefore toward her eyes that Xavier now moved, going around the table. "I'm an old flunker," he said, grasping the woman by the shoulder (that shoulder was as soft as a breast!). "Believe me, there's nothing sadder than to find yourself back again in the same class a year later, to sit down again at the same desk. . . ."

  Then he saw the brown eyes raised toward him, and a wave of happiness engulfed him; Xavier knew that he could now slide his hand lower and touch her breast and belly and anything else he wanted to because the fright that supremely dominated this woman had dropped her, docile, into his arms. But he did nothing; he held his hand on her shoulder, that beautiful rounded height, and he found this beautiful enough, exhilarating enough; he wanted nothing more.

  For a few moments they stood motionless, then the woman seemed to be alerted by something: "You have to leave. My husband's back!"

  Nothing could have been simpler than for Xavier to pick up the schoolbag and jump onto the windowsill and from there over to the bridge, but he did not do it. The delightful feeling took hold of him that the woman was in danger and that he had to stay with her. "I can't leave you alone here!"

  "My husband! Go away!" the woman pleaded with anguish.

  "No, I'm going to stay with you! I'm not a coward!" said Xavier, while footsteps were already resounding clearly from the stairway.

  The woman tried to push Xavier toward the window, but he knew that he had no right to abandon this woman when she was in danger. A door opening at the other end of the apartment could already be heard, and at the last moment, Xavier flung himself down and slid under the bed.

  3

  The space between the floor and his ceiling consisted of five boards supporting a torn mattress and was hardly bigger than a coffin; but, unlike a coffin, the space was fragrant (the good smell of the mattress straw), very resonant (the floor clearly transmitted every footstep), and full of visions (just above him he saw the face of the woman he knew he must never abandon, a face projected against the dark fabric of the mattress, a face pierced by three wisps of straw protruding through the ticking).

  The footsteps he heard were heavy, and when he turned his head he saw a pair of boots tramping into the room. Then he heard a female voice, and he couldn't help expe
riencing a vague yet heartbreaking feeling of regret: the voice was as melancholy, frightened, and entrancing as it had been a few moments before when she was speaking to Xavier. But Xavier was reasonable and controlled his sudden impulse of jealousy; he understood that the woman was in danger and that she was defending herself with what she had: her face and her sadness.

  Then he heard a male voice, and he thought that this voice was like the boots he saw moving across the floor; then he heard the woman saying "No, no, no," and then footsteps staggering toward his hiding place and then the low ceiling under which he was lying dropped still lower, nearly touching his face.

  Again he heard the woman saying, "No, no, not now, please, not now," and he saw the vision of her face on the coarse ticking a centimeter from his eyes, and he thought the face was confiding its humiliation to him.

  He wanted to stand up in his coffin, he wanted to save this woman, but he knew that he had no right to do it. The woman's face was so close to his, it bent over him, it pleaded with him, and it bristled with three wisps of straw like three arrows piercing it. The ceiling above Xavier started to sway rhythmically, and the wisps of straw, the three arrows piercing the woman's face, brushed rhythmically against Xavier's nose and tickled it so that he unexpectedly sneezed.

  The movement stopped short. The bed became motionless, not even breathing could be heard, and Xavier too was as if paralyzed. Then, after a moment, he heard: "What was that?" "I didn't hear anything, darling," the woman's voice answered. Then there was another moment of silence and the male voice asked: "Whose bag is that?" Then heavy steps resounded through the room and the boots could be seen moving across the floor.

  I'll be damned, that guy was in bed with his boots on! thought Xavier indignantly; he realized that he had to act immediately. Using his elbows, he slid out from under the bed far enough to see what was going on in the room.

  "Who've you got here? Where did you hide him?" shouted the male voice, and Xavier saw that above the black boots was a pair of dark blue riding breeches and the dark blue jacket of a police uniform. The man inspected the room with a probing look and then threw himself at the big-bellied wardrobe, whose depth fostered the suspicion that a lover was hiding inside.

  In a moment Xavier bounded out from under the bed, silent as a cat and agile as a panther. The man in uniform had opened the wardrobe, filled with clothes, and was starting to grope around inside. But Xavier was already there behind him, and when the man again plunged his hands into the darkness of clothing to search for the hidden lover, Xavier grabbed him by the collar and violently threw him into the wardrobe. He closed the door, locked it, put the key in his pocket, and turned to the woman.

  He stood before the big brown eyes, and behind him he heard the pounding from inside the wardrobe, the racket and the shouts so muffled by the clothing there that the words were unintelligible.

  He sat down near the big eyes, gripped a shoulder, and only then, with the touch of bare skin under his palm, did he realize that the woman was wearing only a flimsy slip, under which her bare, soft, supple breasts swelled.

  The drumming from the wardrobe didn't stop, and Xavier held the woman's shoulders with both hands, trying hard to discern the clarity of her contours, which had disappeared in the flooding immensity of her eyes. He told her not to be afraid, he showed her the key to prove to her that the wardrobe was really locked, he reminded her that her husband's prison was made of oak and that the prisoner could neither open it nor break it open. And then he began to kiss her (his hands were still on her soft, naked shoulders, so boundlessly voluptuous that he was afraid to let his hands slip lower and touch her breasts, as if he were not strong enough to resist being overcome by vertigo), and as he put his lips to her face he thought he was going to drown in immense waters.

  He heard her voice: "What are we going to do?"

  He caressed her shoulders and told her not to worry, that they were all right here for now, that he was happier than he had ever been, and that the pounding from the wardrobe troubled him no more than the sound of a storm coming from a record player or the barking of a chained-up dog at the other end of the city.

  To show her that he was in control of the situation, he stood up and examined the room. Then he laughed, because he saw a black nightstick lying on the table. He picked it up, went over to the wardrobe, and, in response to the pounding from inside, he rapped the wardrobe door a few times with the nightstick.

  "What are we going to do?" the woman asked again, and Xavier replied: "We'll go away."

  "And what about him?" the woman asked, and Xavier said: "A man can survive two or three weeks without food. When we come back next year there'll be a skeleton wearing a uniform and boots in the wardrobe," and once more he went over to the noisy wardrobe, gave it a rap with the nightstick, laughed, and looked at the woman in the hope that she would laugh with him.

  But the woman didn't laugh, asking instead: "Where will we go?"

  Xavier told her where they would go. She replied that this room was her home, while the place Xavier wanted to take her to had neither her linen closet nor her bird in its cage. Xavier replied that a home is not a linen closet or a bird in a cage but the presence of the person we love. And then he told her that he himself had no home, or rather, to put it another way, that his home was in his pace, in his walk, in his journeys. That his home was wherever new horizons opened. That he could only live by going from one dream to another, from one landscape to another, and that if he stayed too long in the same setting he would die, as her husband would die if he stayed in the wardrobe more than a couple of weeks.

  When he had said this, they both suddenly noticed that the wardrobe had become silent. That silence was so striking that it roused them both. It was like the moment after a storm; the canary in the cage began to sing its head off, and through the window the setting sun glowed yellow. It was as beautiful as an invitation to a journey. It was as beautiful as great forgiveness. It was as beautiful as the death of a cop.

  This time the woman caressed Xavier's face, and it was the first time she had touched him; it was also the first time that Xavier saw her not blurred but with firm contours. She said: "Yes. We'll go away; and we'll go wherever you wish. Wait a moment, I'll just get a few things for the journey."

  She caressed him once more, smiled at him, and headed for the door. He looked at her with eyes full of sudden peace; he saw her stride, supple and flowing like the stride of water transformed into a human body.

  Then he sat down on the bed feeling wonderful. The wardrobe was silent, as if the man inside had fallen asleep or hanged himself. The silence was filled with the space that entered the room through the window with the murmur of the Vltava and the distant shout of the city, a shout so distant that it resembled the voices of a forest.

  Xavier once again felt that he was filled with journeys. And there is nothing more beautiful than the moment before a journey, the moment when tomorrow's horizon comes to visit us and makes us its promises. Xavier was lying on the rumpled bedspread and everything seemed to merge into a wonderful unity: the soft bed resembled a woman, the woman seemed just like water, the water he pictured outside below the window resembled an aquatic bed.

  Then he again saw the door open, and the woman entered. She was wearing a blue dress. Blue like water, blue like the horizons he was going to rush toward, blue like the sleep he was slowly but irresistibly sinking into.

  Yes. Xavier fell asleep.

  Xavier doesn't sleep in order to gather strength for being awake. No, that monotonous pendulum movement, wakefulness-sleep, accomplished 365 times a year, is unknown to him.

  For him sleep is not the opposite of life; for him, sleep is life, and life is a dream. He goes from dream to dream as if he were going from one life to another.

  It is night, it is a dark night, but here are luminous disks coming down from above. They are lights given off by lanterns; in these circles carved from the darkness snowflakes falling thick and fast are to be seen. r />
  He rushed through the door of a low building, quickly crossed the waiting room, and went onto the platform, where a train, its windows lit, was about to depart; an old man, a lantern in his hand, went by closing the doors of the cars. Xavier jumped nimbly aboard the train, the old man raised his lantern high, the slow call of a signal bugle answered from the other end of the platform, and the train began to move.

  6

  As soon as he entered the front of the car, he stopped to catch his breath. Once more he had arrived only at the last moment, and arriving at the last moment was a pride of his: everyone else had arrived at the prearranged time, living their whole lives without surprise, as if they were copying texts assigned by their teacher. He imagined them in the train compartments, in their prearranged seats, conducting prearranged conversations about the mountain chalet where they were going to spend a week, about the daily schedule they had learned at school so that they would be able to live blindfolded, by heart, without the slightest error.

  Xavier, however, had arrived unprepared, at the last moment, led by a sudden impulse and by an unexpected decision. Now, in the railroad car, he was wondering what could have prompted him to join in a school excursion with boring schoolmates and bald teachers whose mustaches crawled with lice.

  He went through the car: boys were standing in the corridor breathing on the frosty windowpanes and then gluing their eyes to the circular peepholes; others were stretched out lazily on the compartment seats, their crossed skis in the luggage racks overhead; some were playing cards, and in another compartment they were singing an endless student song made up of a primitive melody and a few words tirelessly repeated hundreds and thousands of times: "The old yellow canary is now quite dead, the old yellow canary is now quite dead, the old yellow canary is now quite dead. ... "