The dead are born, they burn up their lives believing they understand what drives them to act. They stir about, they do things they know nothing of, and others they take for certainties. Then weariness takes hold of them. They go back into the earth, with one last astonished look at their own existence. They go off to repopulate the night, to tell their disquiet to Persephone.
Cafés are the sort of place where solitudes linger, in search of the absolute, gleaning a little rest, and listening there to sadness practising on a cello, with false notes, second attempts, fits of temper. And fear.
What matters is to arrive at the beautiful sentences, because they marry, in a second marriage, rhythms one can just barely remember afterwards. Never heard again. Living beings are born astonished to see so much ageing pile up each time they say the word “love.” They feel themselves hemmed in on one side by the void, on the other by their own death. By the death of others too. By the absence, the gaps and the darknesses left behind by those who spoke to you, who loved you and who ran you through just as thoroughly.
Shadows frighten us as much as death does. The terror of the betrayed, the quartered and the enraged comes out of that dread. And so these sad people try to thwart the desires of fate. They want to drive off the hours and the shadows. They get drunk, they want their drunkenness to take itself for Louis XIV, that great hydrogen. They rock back and forth, they close their arms over their hearts, because they want to make their tears ripple and move the sun to pity.
The dead are born, others begin dying again. Beings love one another, and several are starting up their hatred. The betrayed man refuses self-denial and demands wonder. The distress that settles in can bear every terror, and it conscripts grammar. To be stupefied by words and sounds, to arrogate to oneself the burning touches — how many hopes were born there, out of pleasure and out of safety, how many sorrows ease the way into the mysteries!
For a long time I wanted to be eternal. It would be truer to say that I did not realize I was going to die. When I was young I lived inside the infinite. Now, worried about growing old, I waste the hours no less for that. Everything I feel, everything I want, has no chance of being conquered by these words. We really are nomad islands, joined now and then by narrow isthmuses. Our birds never see any other land, our ships keep coming back to our own quays, unable to find the promised land or the end of the world. On the chance of the currents we meet other islands, and sometimes we begin with them a tectonic attempt. It can last a long while, a whole life even, but sooner or later we come away, when our lands fall into the abyss of forgotten beings.
Holding forth like this does not stop me from being thirsty and ordering my umpteenth coffee of the evening. I have no wish to go home; I am more at ease with my solitude here.
The people have deserted; there is no one left but two little old women who braved the storm. Unlike the old man who coughed all the time, these two talk at the top of their lungs, happy to be together. One is small and so bent that her spine makes a pronounced c, running from the pelvis and ending at the mouth, level with her cup of coffee. The other is inordinately tall, so that the two of them look at each other from different heights. The first raises her head and smiles, blinking continually; the other looks down from above, a wide, tender smile beneath oval eyes, slightly misted over. They might be a fable of La Fontaine’s, but from where I sit I can hear almost nothing of what they say to each other. They are enjoying themselves; you can see it. There is light around their friendship. I catch a few dans not’ temps, c’tait pas pareil — in that old Québécois accent that hours of Radio-Canada finally wore away, and that you always come upon with surprise in the mouths of people who no longer watch television.
Two little old women, like ants, exchanging information. In a hundred years, other little old women will run through the same routine, will have borne children, will then outlive their husbands, will wait for death, satisfied at having given.
The old women eat and make crumbs, which they pick up with their fingers. Miss nothing of life, since — short as it already was — it is shorter now than it was before; in their case one can almost count the last seconds. And their happiness, or at least their joy at being together, is enough to silence the least brave among us. Enough to shut me up…
And yet I know nothing at all about them. They have known conflicts, and then have very certainly lost interest, because men are always making new ones. They may have been assaulted; it was so common in those days, it was the commonest form of sexuality there was. They could not sign a lease or open an account without their husband’s signature, they were told their souls were insipid next to the souls of males, they found themselves obliged to play with dolls and to think like their husbands. They are no less happy for it, I imagine — or perhaps only humble, willingly submitted to life.
The storm hides everything. You can hardly see the other side of the street any longer. People come in all the same, determined not to be put down by the snow. The café fills up again. It is a different clientele, younger and more talkative, easily burying the twittering of the old ladies.
I have been here too long, but it isn’t the waiter who is going to hold it against me. I am part of the furniture, so to speak, and the furniture will leave a good tip. I have seen a great many people come through the door of this café since this afternoon. And they all end up resembling one another, since their visit to this place comes down to a total on a bill. Except, of course, the ones the system has mislaid, the ones who weep or who wait. I could write the story of each of them; it wouldn’t be original, but it would fill my hours. I already have a story in mind for the old man who coughs, and for the wounded woman. The soaked man intrigued me too. Who else? Yes — that woman, in the middle of the afternoon…
She would go outside to smoke one cigarette after another, then come back in to sip a coffee that must by then have gone cold. She fitted badly with the clientele of the moment. She kept glancing at her watch, and yet did not seem to be waiting for anyone, since she never looked towards the door, or the window. She examined her nails, then her coffee.
Further off, two men appeared to be putting an end to their relationship. The younger and better-looking of the two kept silent while the other, plainly the richer, worked his hands over one another, said dry little words, then looked away, so as not to burst out in anger or in tears. The young man left abruptly.
The woman who smoked had watched them for a long time, but was also distracted by what a policeman, sitting at the counter, was telling about his day. The waiter had asked him what it was like in the cells once night came. The policeman had laughed, and not warmly… but had offered his opinion all the same. An opinion the woman was taking seriously.
She had sighed when the policeman left. The waiter had then given her a wink. So they knew each other.
She had signalled him to bring the bill. He had asked her: “And your husband?” She had answered: “It’s for tonight; I had to get out for some air, but the doctor is coming, I have to go now.” “Good luck to you, then.” “He may be the one who needs it most.” He had helped her into her coat. “You’ll let me know.” She had nodded, patted his shoulder. “If I don’t come back here tomorrow…” On those mysterious words, she had left.
I should come back tomorrow, then; perhaps I will learn more about that story… The couple had broken up almost as soon as the woman was gone. The young one left first, and the other came to pay at the counter. “Keep it all.” The waiter had no time to thank him, because the man was already hurrying off to find the one who was making him suffer.
Cities are so made that stories cross one another and only very vaguely manage to form a coherent polyphony. And yet cities swell and give birth, like women. The blood that runs in them is the blood of men — or rather of souls. I ought to leave this place; I have enough to write with. If suffering is the greatest onlooker in the world, then boredom is the shadow she casts when we fall asleep over our hours.