Jonathan Baumbach - You, or the Invention of Memory

He hesitates before leaving, seems troubled, considers refusing you, but decides to postpone whatever scene he will eventually make.

And then for the first time that evening, we are alone. Everyone else has left the stage.

“Look,” you say, “this has nothing to do with us; I want you to understand that. You and I are through as we both know; this had to do with Madeleine.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Madeleine has a sweet tooth for younger men. She is a notorious man-eater. I stood up to her to protect you from an embarrassing situation.”

“I don’t see why you think I need protecting,” I say. “Besides, Bruno will be in the room, won’t he?”

You shake your head, impatient with what seems to you my willed innocence. “They have separate rooms,” you say, not looking at me, watching the door for Madeleine’s return. “Don’t you see what’s going on? Are you so totally oblivious?”

Unwilling to understand the intensity of your concern, I nevertheless thank you for your trouble on my behalf just as Madeleine returns.

“Your bed is made up,” Madeleine says, making a point of saying bonne nuit to your back as you leave.

Madeleine’s room is not as large as I imagined it, but there is a six foot high Japanese-style screen between her plush queen-size bed (which she makes a point of showing me) and my austere single. A well-appointed private bathroom, which includes a bidet and double sinks with gleaming faucets, is on my side of the room.

I wait a few minutes to let Madeleine use the bathroom, but when she doesn’t appear after about ten minutes I take my turn, following my usual routine except for the addition of a mild sleeping pill, and get into my cot, which is reassuringly comfortable. Your warning makes a brief appearance in my thoughts. Before I know it, before I can obsess about the difficulty I have falling asleep in other people’s beds, I have fallen asleep.

I have fallen asleep.

I have fallen asleep.

The third of my dreams has to do with rescuing a woman in some historical movie (of indeterminate period) who I discover tied to a tree in the Bois de Boulogne. “Only a man pure of art has the power to free me,” she says.

And yet I have been the one chosen to untie her. Is it possible that I have been mistaken for someone else and so arbitrarily put into a false role? I look for a sharp-edged stone to cut her bonds.

The woman, who is dressed in tatters, laughs mockingly at my efforts. “If you are the right person, all you have to do is kiss the hem of my robe and my ropes will untie of their own accord.”

I hesitate. Which of the tatters represents her robe, I wonder. “And what will happen if I am the wrong person?”

“We will both die,” she says. “I hope you understand that I am speaking metaphorically.”

How can I determine whether I am sufficiently pure of art, whatever that means. A kind of inertia or paralysis holds me as I try to assess the potential negative consequences of the good deed I am asked to perform — like what is a metaphorical death? — when I hear footsteps.

“What the hell’s holding you back?” the woman says, then adds something in a language that is not one of mine.

Is it possible to be aware of dreaming or is that an inherent contradiction? I find, unexpectedly, a Swiss Army knife in my right hand pocket and I use the first blade to release, which turns out to be a bottle opener, to cut the woman’s bonds, spilling the smallest possible amount of blood.

She rubs her wrists, then puts her arms around my neck and mumbles in a grudging tone of voice something about being forever in my debt. “You have a kiss coming,” she says. “Where would you like it?”

I am embarrassed to say what I want, and she laughs and says, “All right, dummy, then I’ll make the choice for you.” The next thing I know we are on the mossy ground together, rolling around, struggling for position.

It is at this point I usually awake, but tonight the dream insists on playing itself out.

When I open my eyes at first light, I am shivering and sweating, my covers in a sprawl on the floor next to the cot.

I drag myself up to go to the bathroom, but the door is latched from the inside so I return to my cot. Exhausted, I try to go back to sleep — that is, I shut my eyes — but the urgencies of my bladder become the more crucial concern.

So I put on the gray suit I wore at the wedding — my overnight case lost — and go off to find an unoccupied bathroom. The first two I try are, like my own, latched from within and I begin to consider other alternatives.

Then I remember there being a closet with a toilet in it right off the kitchen and I work my way down two flights of stairs. In the dark, nothing seems quite like it was in the light. Somehow I manage to find myself inside the closetlike enclosure. With the door closed and latched against my back, there is barely room to stand.

After peeing, I rub my hands against the sides of my pants, then comb my hair with my fingers. When I step out of the bathroom after a serious struggle with the latch, the light is on in the kitchen and Roget in his overcoat is sitting with his back to me, drinking coffee from a mug the size of a soup bowl.

Looking over his shoulder to take my measure, he offers me a scornful smile.

“Bonjour,” I say.

“ Ça va, ” he says in return.

The amenities out of the way, he finishes his coffee in silence.

The coffeepot is one of those plunger types I have no idea how to use but I stumble around self-consciously opening cupboards. “Where does she keep the coffee?” I ask him.

Roget seems not to hear me or perhaps not to understand the question.

He is washing his coffee cup when you come into the kitchen and say something to him in French — the inflection suggests a question — which he answers, or seems to, without turning to look at you.

Roget pushes open the side door, the door that comes off the kitchen, makes no attempt to button his coat, and disappears from the scene.

You walk to the window and look out after him, tracking his progress, or so it seems.

“What was that about?” I ask.

You ignore my question, retreat to the table in a defeated posture, slump into the chair farthest from mine.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“No.”

“Is there something I can do for you?”

“Absolutely not.” You keep your face turned away.

I take sips of my coffee and wait my turn, my patience running thin as the coffee turns cold. After a while, after my cup is drained, I get up and announce that I am going back to my room.

“Don’t you leave me too,” you say.

“Did Roget leave you?” I ask. “The impression he gave me is that you asked him to go.”

You raise your head momentarily. “Is that what he told you? Whatever, it comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? The fact is, he’s gone.”

I sit down at the table, honoring your request, leaving an empty seat between us. After a moment, you take the seat next to me and put your head on my shoulder. And then I put my arm around you — where else can it go? — and your body stiffens almost imperceptibly.

And that’s the way we are, trapped by the flashbulb of the imaginary onlooker’s imaginary camera, when Madeleine discovers us, sitting cheek to shoulder at the kitchen table.

She makes a point of not looking directly at us, asks the room if anyone — we are the only two in the kitchen — would like some breakfast. She has, I notice, put her long gray hair in an over-elaborate bun, a designer chopstick seemingly holding it in place.

“I almost never eat breakfast,” I say.

You seem about to speak, but instead get up from the table, nod to me, and leave the room.