Marguerite Duras: Abahn Sabana David

“Where is Auschstaadt?” asks David.

“Here,” says the Jew.

“Everywhere,” says Abahn. “Like Gringo. Like the Jew. Like David.”

“Here. Everywhere,” says the Jew.

Sabana is still thinking about Auschstaadt.

“And when?” asks David.

“Always,” says the Jew. “Right now.”

“We’re all from Auschstaadt,” says Abahn.

Silence. A new fear seems to grow in David.

“She wouldn’t be any different from the Jew if she knew something,” says Abahn.

David recoils, still looking at the form of Sabana on the ground, leaning back, as if he recognizes something evil in her. He says:

“It’s true, Gringo said she was crazy, that she makes things up.”

“What do you think?” asks Abahn.

David makes an effort to speak. The fear retreats a little. He tries to pull his thoughts together. He answers without looking up:

“I don’t know.” He smiles a tight and painful smile. “I amuse myself with her.”

Silence.

“Who is she?” demands David.

The fear has gone.

“No one knows,” says the Jew.

David and the Jew look up at one another.

•

David and the Jew are looking at each other still.

“You have to try anyway,” says the Jew to David.

David starts to attention.

“What?”

“To move toward communism,” says the Jew.

“To where ?” David smiles as if it were a joke. The Jews smile too.

“To where we don’t know,” says Abahn. “You don’t know.”

The Jew smiles, at David, at everyone.

“You have to try not to create it,” says the Jew.

Unthinking, David strokes his gun. Having found it again, he yanks his hand back as if burned.

“To arrive in the forest,” says Abahn.

“Wild,” says the Jew.

“The forest,” David repeats.

They fall silent. David is still looking at them. They look elsewhere.

“You came to destroy our unity,” says David. His voice is dull, flat. Trembling.

“Yes.”

“To divide? Sow dissent in our unity?”

“Yes,” says the Jew.

“To sow dissent in our spirit?”

“Yes.”

“To what end?” asks David.

“No one knows,” says the Jew.

“To break, to shatter,” says Sabana.

“Where?” asks David.

“To Sabana,” says the Jew.

Silence. David fights against sleep.

“It would be normal to kill you, to hunt you like a pest.”

“Yes,” says the Jew.

Silence.

Sabana looks through the dark window.

David stands up.

Sabana and David can hear what the Jews do not hear, see what the Jews do not see.

“We walk by the ponds,” says Sabana.

“There’s a light!” David calls out.

She turns back to the window, the darkened park, the field of the dead.

“There’s a light out in the field,” says David.

Sabana peers out, listening. “I saw it,” she says calmly. “It’s not there anymore.”

He turns to her. She is still there, at the window, looking out at the field.

“I’m afraid,” says David. “Come over here.”

“No.”

He collapses back into his chair. He closes his eyes. With all his strength he tries to fall asleep again. He calls out to Sabana. He tells her to come back to him, he says he doesn’t understand.

She does not answer.

He calls again, weaker. Then he calls to her no more.

She turns toward him, sleep is overcoming him, his arms again on the armrests, his face fallen. She leaves the window, goes to his side, she takes his hand, sits next to him.

“Don’t fall asleep,” says Sabana.

“No,” says David.

•

Sabana stays with David.

“Don’t fall asleep,” she says.

“No,” says David.

She holds his hand in her own. She says:

“The light in the field wasn’t real. Your hands are so cold.”

He does not answer.

“You’re less afraid,” she says.

He turns an inquiring look upon her.

“I think so,” he says.

The Jews are at the table, in the same position. Heads resting back against the wall, they are silent. The Jew looks at Sabana, her blue eyes, dark, blue, fixed upon David.

“You must not be afraid,” she says to David.

“No.”

There is a look of complete confidence on David’s face. She takes his hand, she studies it.

“Your hands are so heavy,” she says. “It’s the cement.”

“It set,” he says.

“You work so much,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He pauses before answering:

“I don’t know.”

Silence.

Sabana holds David’s hand in hers and looks toward the road. She speaks, her voice even and low:

“Tonight, in the frost and ice, in the desolate cold, there is Jeanne, out in the cold desolation.”

“Jeanne?” asks David. “Where?”

He almost cries it out. His voice sounds dull, broken.

“I’m not sure,” says Sabana. “You forgot,” she says to the Jew, “we’re afraid for Jeanne, night and day.”

“Why?” asks David.

Sabana doesn’t answer David. She speaks to the Jew. “She works against Gringo, she’s trying to subvert him, she’s trying day after day.”

David pulls his hand from Sabana.

“That’s not true!” he cries.

Sabana does not answer. Her gaze is fixed, her voice broken, like David’s.

“She thinks she can. She’s crazy.”

Silence.

“When Jeanne gave her report tonight, I wasn’t sleeping,” says Sabana. She gestures at David. “David was sleeping. But I heard. Gringo told her to write down ‘criminal lies,’ but she wrote ‘criminal liberties.’ Gringo wanted her to say ‘in service of the great power of the merchants,’ but she wrote ‘the ideological aberration.’ Gringo cried out. Jeanne said she went to wake up David to ask him what the Jew said in the café, and after she wrote exactly what David said. Gringo laughed. He told Jeanne not to treat him like a child. Then Jeanne wrote the word, ‘liberty.’”

Sabana leaves David’s side and walks over to the door that opens onto the darkened park.

“Jeanne doesn’t know that I know,” she says, turning toward David. “You didn’t know.”

“No,” says David. He waits. The intensity of his waiting slowly shows in his face.

“You don’t know anything?” she asks.

“A little. I came to know,” he admits. “Gringo did say once that Jeanne was useless, a wreck.”

Silence.

“Jeanne is young, like David,” says Sabana. “She is the same age as him. Beautiful like him.” She looks at the Jew. “And one day they will kill her like they will kill you.”

“Shut up!” cries David.

Sabana turns to the darkened park.

“We live together,” she says. “We are both David’s wives.”

A sob bursts from her chest. She presses her palms against the cold glass of the window. Then presses them to her forehead.

A racket bursts out in the part of Staadt beyond the darkened park.

“There’s shooting!” cries David. “Near the ponds!”

Sabana does not move. David’s face has again taken on the expression of a child.

“What are you afraid of?” asks the Jew.

David does not answer. He stares at the Jew. His gaze wavers.

Sabana returns to David’s side.

•

Again the cry of a dog. In the field. A strange cry, a strangled bark, a whine.

“Diane,” says David.

“You were still sleeping?” Sabana asks.

David sits up with difficulty.

“I heard you from far off,” he says to her, “as if you were on the other side of the park.”

“With the dogs.”

He listens.

“Diane. It’s Diane.” He starts as if seeing Sabana for the first time by his side. “Oh, there you are.”