Jonathan Littell - The Fata Morgana Books

* * *

I joined my friends in the train compartment with some satisfaction. One of them had called me, laughing: “You haven’t forgotten, have you? It’s tomorrow morning, the train leaves at 8:43. I have your ticket.”—“What’s the weather like, there?”—“I don’t know. They’re still predicting rain, but for now it’s nice.”As I closed the red door of the room, I realized I hadn’t brought a bag; as for the girl, I didn’t really know where she was; it was possible that she had stayed in the bed, and that I hadn’t seen her, or she might have left before me, I don’t know. In front of the door to my building stood two men in dark suits: one, his foot resting on a step, was jotting something down in a notebook; the other stopped me for a second to ask for a light. On the way, I passed large modern apartment buildings, constructions of cubes with bluish, brown and rust tones, where the windows alternated with metal strips to form long vertical bands, divided in sections of varying width. The streets were getting crowded; I passed many people, men and women hurrying to work, lost in their thoughts; from time to time, however, a young woman would raise her eyes and smile at me, and I would return the favor, but it was rare. In the station’s concourse a cheerful agitation reigned; my friends, in the compartment we had reserved, were trading books; I went to order a sandwich in the café car and settled on a tall stool.The train had gotten underway with a grinding noise, behind the window the city’s buildings were already rushing by, then increasingly disorderly and dirty suburbs, which finally gave way to the first trees and to fields dotted with pretty little cemeteries. The sky was clear, luminous, streaked with long white contrails; in the distance a few clouds were gathering, casting large shapeless shadows on the fields of wheat and pale barley. It wasn’t I who had chosen the destination but the friend who had called me the night before; she had enumerated the charms of this little provincial town one after the other, as well as the pleasure of the crowd that filled its streets at night, in this season: everything, she said, made it an ideal goal for our excursion. She had picked the hotel as well: my room was all white, with an ivory carpet and a white bedspread, a black leather chair, and as sole decoration the picture of a red square framed over the bed. The shower, tiled in white and grey, was roomy; I stood under the water with pleasure, vaguely regretting that the girl wasn’t there, for this shower would have pleased her, I was sure of it; but I forgot this thought as soon as it had arisen, abandoning myself to the burning stream hammering the back of my neck.

* * *

My friends wished to visit a church, then go for a stroll; as for me, I opted for the museum, and agreed to meet up with them in the early evening. The sky, above the maze of narrow streets that led to the museum square, was turning grey, and I told myself I should have listened to the forecasts and brought an umbrella, or at least a raincoat. The museum, still little known, had just recently opened its doors: a local eccentric millionaire, whose only daughter, they said, had hanged herself, had left his collection to the city, along with a large enough endowment to ensure its preservation and exhibition. The rooms were not large, but they were tall and filled with light, white like my hotel room, which gave a feeling of space conducive to meditation.There weren’t many visitors, the rare sounds remained hushed, even footsteps scarcely echoed on the waxed floor. I passed through these rooms aligned like chapels, casting my gaze over the images hanging there, most of which, in fact, said nothing to me. They were beautiful paintings, painted with talent and vigor; the figures, rendered according to all the rules of art, seemed endowed with life and movement, but they didn’t speak to me, and I kept moving. I finally came to a halt in front of a large, almost square canvas, slightly taller than me, a red background on which was painted a large black rectangle, then below it another narrower rectangle, red too but darker than the background, and more irregular. This indeed was not much, but what struck me is that if you stood your ground for a moment as you contemplated them, these rectangles began to move, to float forward or to withdraw, vertiginously. When I stepped back a little, the black rectangle advanced gently toward me, as if it were inviting me to join it; but as soon as I took a step forward, it speedily withdrew and passed far behind the background, revealing itself as a gaping abyss into which I nearly fell. Overcome with fear, I would stumble back, and immediately it leaped forward, recovering in an instant its place suspended in front of the background, opening up to me with a light, silent smile. As for the lower rectangle, it evaded me more mischievously: for instance, if you took one or two steps to the side, it changed color, veering to orange, a more muted, slightly burnt color; otherwise, it danced from side to side, always a little behind the large black rectangle. This surprising painting acted as if it were the one looking at me, it was a face, smiling seriously and kindly, a face that was watching me watch it, without taking its gaze off me, preventing me from moving away or even looking elsewhere. Finally, a guard had to come over to tap me on the shoulder: “We’re closing, sir, it’s time.” Freed by his intervention, I joined the last visitors heading for the exit. Outside, a few drops had begun to fleck the grey stone of the sidewalk; one hit me on the forehead, another on my hand. Just opposite, a store was closing its doors; the storekeeper, quite politely, allowed me to buy a felt hat from her before she pulled down her metal grate. On the square where I was supposed to meet my friends, the crowd was dense, compact and noisy, the first signs of rain discouraging neither its cheerfulness nor its animation. I found my friends at the covered terrace of a café and ordered a drink as they made fun of my hat, which, however, was quite practical. We drank and smoked as they described the church in detail; for my part I was silent, happy to hear the excited sound of their voices. When we left the bistro, the rain had intensified; umbrellas in the crowd unfurled one after the other and began to bump against each other, so that I sometimes had to duck my head to avoid being hit in the eye. Little by little, in the heart of this crowd, I lost sight of my friends; finally they disappeared altogether, and I found myself alone. I wasn’t worried: It’s not such a big town, I said to myself, I’ll find them again soon. I was walking alongside a curved stone parapet; behind, I knew, flowed the river in whose bend the town nestled, but it was too dark on that side to see anything. Two men in raincoats were approaching me, walking at the same pace, their faces invisible beneath their large black umbrellas. I found their appearance vaguely threatening; but as they reached me, they separated without a word, passing on either side of me to join up again behind me. Further on, the street rose and widened, leading to a broad stone bridge that connected this bank to the new part of town; at the entrance to the bridge, I turned back, picking a narrow street that rose toward the squares further up. But I didn’t find my friends there either. Dodgy-looking figures in long coats were clustered in little groups beneath the trees, whispering furtively; cars with tinted windows came and went in an incessant ballet; sometimes, one would pull up next to one of the groups, a door would open, a few words would be exchanged, or else a man would get in, slam the door, and the car would start up again. Above the streets and the little squares, lamps hanging from wires shone in the night, their gleam, under the now continuous rain, forming large, ovoid haloes. There are strange things going on here, I said to myself as I avoided these groups of suspicious-looking men; as for my friends, no matter how much I paced up and down the streets, there was no sign of them; as it got late, passersby grew more and more infrequent, but still I persisted, searching each corner with a growing feeling of unease. I thus found myself in a little park nestled between some old houses; tall old trees grew between the paths, perched on mounds surrounded by metal gates; set a little back, in a recess, one could make out the opening to a sort of bower, accessible by a few steps and feebly lit; I stuck my head in, in the vain hope of finding my friends chatting away, sheltered from the rain, but on the stone benches there were only three soldiers, in officer’s uniforms with wet epaulets; they were smoking cigarettes and speaking loudly, without paying any attention to me. “Frankly, they’re going too far,” one of them was saying, his grey mustache, yellow with nicotine, quivering over his unpleasant mouth. — “Yes, that’s for sure. They’re provoking us,” declared the second one,lifting his cap to scratch his forehead. “We can’t let them get away with it,” gravely concluded the third. “We have to react.” I left them to their discussion and regained the street, profoundly discouraged. My hotel, I knew, wasn’t far away; perhaps it would be better to go back and wait there, rather than wander like this in the rain. And also, all these sinister figures had me a bit worried. In fact, two of them, hands in pockets, were standing in front of the hotel; despite the night and the rain, which was still falling in small, thin droplets, they wore dark glasses, as if they were playing cops, or spies. I walked past the entrance without stopping; they followed me with their gaze, but didn’t move. The street dipped down to join the main street; here the crowd grew thicker, but I kept catching glimpses of one of the sinister gentlemen standing beneath a tree or seated behind the window of a diner. At the end of the main street stood the station; a train was leaving within the hour, I bought a ticket and took a seat with relief, wiping with the back of my sleeve the damp felt of my new hat.