Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

I closed my door behind me: raindrops were pattering on the windowsill, it was nice and warm in the room, and on the wall the feeble light from a streetlamp swayed in tune to the nodding, shiny branches of the maple trees, so I didn't turn on the light, I took off my coat and walked to the window, there to open the envelope: I could hear her, she was there all right, outside the door, waiting.

But here below, though the wind was less, the surging sea would not be tamed, and up above the wind kept howling and whistling; now and then the sky seemed to brighten just a little, as if the wind had ripped and dispersed the clouds covering the moon, but I imagine this was as much a sensory illusion as was my hope that I would soon be past the dangerous part of the embankment; I literally could not see a thing, a condition my eyes perceived as a state of emergency and rebelled against, conjuring up nonexistent lights to lull their disbelief, and, as if claiming their own independence, resented having to look, and also resented my forcing them to look, even though there was nothing for them to perceive, and so they not only devised rings of light and sparkling dots and rays but several times illuminated the entire seascape before me: as if through a large, narrow slit, I could see clouds rushing above the foamy, tempestuous sea and myself walking on the wave-pounded embankment, but in a moment everything would go dark again, and I had to realize that this vivid image had been sheer hallucination, since no natural light source could possibly account for it — it couldn't have been the moon, whose light was not present in these images; yet these dazzling internal visions, sources of a peculiar internal pleasure, made me believe that somehow I could still feel out the path ahead of me, though in fact there was no longer any trail, my feet kept getting caught on stones, I was stumbling and slipping.

I think by then I must have lost all sense of time and space, presumably because the capricious wind, the impenetrable darkness, and the rolling sea, lullingly rhythmical for all its stark grandeur, were like some narcotic numbing me. If I said I was all ears, I'd not be wholly wrong, since every other mode of sensory perception was now useless; like some odd nocturnal creature, I was dependent only on my hearing: I heard the rumble not of the waters or the earth but of the depths, and it was neither threatening nor impassive, and though it may sound much too romantic, I'd venture to claim it was the monotone murmur of infinity I heard issuing from the depths, a sound like no other, evoking nothing but the idea of the depths: where the depths lay, or the depths of what, was impossible to determine, since the sound was everywhere — on the surface of the water and in the air as much as at the bottom of the sea, seeming to fill out and dominate everything, so that everything became part of the deep until the sound itself became visible: a slowly rising boom, like the mighty effort of a vile mass rising up into motion somewhere at a great distance, ready to break free, to rebel against the fateful calm of this seemingly infinite rumbling, kept drawing closer and closer at a measured but forceful pace until suddenly it reached its own peak, sounding in a triumphantly thunderous blast that no longer allowed the depths to be heard; it rose above the depths, content, its goal achieved: it had defeated, for a brief moment obliterated, the depths; but in the very next moment all that apparent force, mass, surge, and victory crumbled away and with an unpleasant crackle disintegrated among the rocks on the beach, and the rumble of the deep could be heard once more as if nothing had ever challenged its rule; and the wind was there again, capricious and sinister, whispering, whistling, screeching; it would be hard for me to say when and how that subtle change came about; I perceived it not only inasmuch as the embankment was becoming narrower and the waves could therefore sweep right over it, but mostly in that I could acknowledge those rather striking environmental changes only long after they had occurred, and even then somewhat thoughtlessly, as if they had nothing to do with me, as if I were hardly concerned that my shoes and pants were sopping wet and my coat was less and less water-resistant; I yielded so readily to the sounds of darkness that even the fantasizing and recollecting, with which I had kept myself amused at the beginning of my walk, were now gradually dissolving into these sounds; what we might call self-preservation was thus functioning only in a limited capacity, as when someone waking from a nightmare keeps kicking and screaming and flailing his arms, instead of reminding himself of the moment just before he fell asleep and of the fact that what he is being forced to experience so painfully is real only in a dream, and he cannot remind himself, precisely because he is dreaming; similarly, I was trying to protect myself, but the means were dictated by the given situation: what was the use of hiding among the rocks, groping helplessly, stumbling and sliding, the water found me there too, and it never occurred to me that what had started out as a pleasant evening stroll had ceased to be that quite some time ago.

Then something touched my face.

It was just as dark as before and the silence came to an end, something I could not really account for came to an end, and when that something touched my face again, I realized it was water, cold but not unpleasant, and I knew this should remind me of something, but I couldn't, simply couldn't remember what it was, even though I heard, once again I was beginning to hear its sounds, so some time must have elapsed since I had last heard it, but despite this it was still dark, nighttime, and everything was wet; and indeed, it was dark.

And at last I understood that I was lying among the rocks.

But then Helene's appearance solved everything, or at least for a few wonderful moments our future, thought to be so ominous, seemed to turn captivatingly bright again.

The next morning I was standing in front of my desk, unwashed, unshaven, undressed, lost in thought, absently scratching my stubbly chin, unable to begin what in the end would turn out to be a fateful day; also, I was filled with tension, because the night before, after the exhausting round of farewell visits, I had fallen into a deep, dull, dreamless sleep and slept so late one might have thought that all was well, but this coma-like sleep had been the direct consequence of my latest lies, my constrained acquiescence in the intractability of my life, and after awaking, my conscience, slightly more relaxed, rested, and tentative, was returning ever more forcefully and disquietingly to its familiar haunts, and by then I was also in the grip of wanderlust, of a thrilling anticipation that makes you believe that by merely changing locale you can put behind you all that is tiresome, unpleasant, depressing, or insoluble; my luggage had already been put out in the entrance hall, waiting to be picked up by a porter; all I had left to do was to gather the notes and books I'd need for my work and slip them into the black patent-leather case that lay open in the middle of the room, on the carpet, but since my train wasn't leaving until late that afternoon, I had plenty of time for this critical last-minute chore, which, for various reasons, caused me no little anxiety; and to avoid accumulating more unpleasant feelings, I tried not to concentrate on the task at hand and let my thoughts wander aimlessly; while waiting and dawdling, I heard the distinctive knock of my landlady, good old Frau Hühner, whose habit it was not to wait for permission to enter but to barge right in; I could consider it a great feat of education that she no longer burst in without knocking when she had something urgent to tell me, for I had been unable simply to make her understand that, even if she was my landlady, it was customary not only to knock but also to wait for a reply before entering. "But what could the gentleman be doing when I know for sure that you are alone?" she had said, rolling her eyes in exasperation and smoothing the apron on her distended belly, the first time I put this request to her, in my politest manner too; but she proved to be otherwise such a helpful and kind person that, though utterly incapable of learning something even this trifling, she amused rather than annoyed me with her habit, but now the noise she made could in no way be called knocking, for she was pounding with her fists, and the door was torn open as if by a blast of wind: "A young lady is here, wearing a veil, and she is asking for you, the young lady is," she whispered breathlessly, and spacious as the outside hallway may have been, the visitor must also have heard her, because needless to say Frau Hübner failed to close the door behind her; "A young lady is here, and I think she is the gentleman's fiancée."