Suffering is the greatest gawker in the world. She walks barefoot over our thorny hearts, unhurried, plays leapfrog across our bodies. At the great parties her dress sweeps the floor and flattens the senses; the guests at the ball had better watch themselves if they want a taste of the rare hors d’œuvres of happiness that will be offered them in the course of a life. In the street she walks naked, neither man nor woman, with a fairy’s fingers for slapping lost souls. I don’t know who I am writing to. Perhaps to those who have peopled my life, or to the man sitting across from me. A left-hander bent over his pen. We always end up finding someone who resembles us and who writes in the same direction we do. It is one of the laws of humanity. Dear humanity…
The waiter brings the coffee I ordered. I thank him. The storm they announced is about to fling its cold salt across the city. It is warm in here.
Very few customers this evening. Each at his own table, they look like nervous insects burrowing under the vegetation for fear of being carried off by the power of the sky. To my right, two lovers are kissing, caressing each other methodically. Preludes to a night of wild animals. To my left, an old person coughs without stopping, grumbles, clears his throat. Further off, other people. I don’t know, I don’t want to know what I am writing for. Chance goes along with my glances. The lovers are leaving already. They make a noise getting up, they laugh. She knots his scarf for him while he pays; he lets her, smiles at her, kisses her forehead… On the way out he draws her in against him to protect her from the cold, and no doubt to make use of that kindness to excite himself further. Behind the glass they stop, each of them lights a cigarette, and they mix their fog of nicotine with the fog of the snow.
To my left, the old man coughs.
The left-hander across from me gathers up his things, then leaves in his turn. Since I have no one to talk to, I hand my information over to paper. I play at being temporary memory. Someone else, passing by, will pick it up one of these days. Perhaps never, perhaps in three thousand years, fragmented and mysterious.
In three thousand years… It makes me dream and it fills me with dread, because I have nothing else to say than this: I am afraid of dying and of having lived nothing, I am afraid of being no more than an ordinary person who will have spent his whole life dreaming of not being like the others, of never having felt like the others, while everyone will agree to file me away in the little box prescribed for the purpose, because I do in fact resemble all the others.
The storm is growling outside, exactly as the weathermen predicted. Soon there will be no surprises left on that front. We will get used to knowing months in advance what the weather will do; we will wait patiently for the rain to fall, and we will be pleased when it lasts three minutes more or less than forecast, just so we can tell ourselves that something unusual has happened.
I am wandering. I have trouble staying on the platform of indifference. In this café a lunar and humanoid landscape is taking shape. A woman comes in, sits down quickly, her back to me. There are wounds on her face that are frightening to look at. The people around her watch her on the sly. The waiter comes over, flinches when he sees her, pretends to notice nothing. “A coffee,” she says. The old man who coughs has a better view than I do, and doesn’t scruple to use it. She doesn’t seem to care, looks straight ahead; at least, that’s what I believe. The waiter comes back. She thanks him. He hesitates, then asks if she is all right. With her hand she lets him know, gently, that it is none of his business, but that she appreciates the thought. He doesn’t press it; another customer is signalling for the bill.
Suffering really is the greatest gawker in the world. I sing it to myself constantly and I cling to my happinesses, to my thirst for living. I am bored too, because to live intensely means to die intensely; indecision scuttles my every act. Despite the man who coughs, despite the music, a little grouchy and newly old, despite the waiter who couldn’t care less about the fragility of the china, despite all these noises, nothing is happening here. The moment is like this city: you can only guess at the life inside it from the ceaseless racket, quickly smothered by a furious wind, from the comings and goings of people, from the chattering of car engines, from the electric customs travelling along the telephone wires — a life that is nevertheless a little dead, or dull, always the same, day after day, probably no different from the life of the Roman cities, already so far back in the past. Car horns against the noise of short swords. Ambulances against the clamour and the horrors of the arena.
The wounded woman is crying now; I can tell by the way she tilts her head forward and breathes in great jolts. God, how people suffer. The old man looks at her. He says, loudly enough (perhaps he is too deaf to hear the tone he is using): “Mustn’t cry, madam, it does no good. I’m eighty-three and I stopped crying a long time ago.” People have stopped talking, surprised and uncomfortable. The wounded woman does not seem to react; she picks up her cup of coffee, her hands are shaking… I… unfortunately I cannot help her, I don’t know how to go about it, or whether anything ought to be done at all. My compassion is useless. I am like the others after all… If only we were not so coarse, so afraid of being flayed alive. If we could give each other our stories to read… I would love…
I would love, full stop. That alone would be enough. But there are too many people on this planet, we would not have hours enough to read one another, and so we are reduced to an ignorance cultivated by good manners. Even in this one room there is surely enough to supply the whole output of a single novelist; he could come back here every day and set himself a fresh programme of reading and writing; and after only a few days he would find himself obliged to stop listening to anyone at all, to begin his hard architect’s labour, knowing he will write only the smallest fragment of the truth, that he will have to die without ever knowing the end of the story, or the beginning.
That’s exactly it: after a few days you stop listening to anyone, because you see clearly enough that it is the same as in yourself.
The door opens again. One might say: “oh, what now” — because the man is livid and soaked through, as though he had spent the whole day outdoors. He sits down slowly. He holds tight to a bag slung across his shoulder. It isn’t polite, but I watch him.
I’m hungry, he says to the waiter, who hands him the menu.
He doesn’t read it:
A ham sandwich.
Mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato?
The man makes a vague gesture with his hand, meaning yes, or meaning anything at all so long as it can be eaten. I notice that it is the same gesture the wounded woman made. He is out of breath. He keeps wiping his eyes. Is he crying too? He sits motionless for long minutes, then stirs, looks around; I avoid his eyes. The sandwich arrives. He bites into it ferociously. He chokes, and seems to be, like her, on the edge of tears.
I write all this down, hypnotized by the strange atmosphere of this evening of storm. A chair tips over, the woman who was crying leaves money on the table and goes out in a hurry. The old man rises in his turn, with difficulty.
The soaked man has gone back to his sandwich. He has settled. Vague tensions still cross his face from time to time, but he seems able to hold himself in check. He looks at me and I have no time to turn my eyes away. He smiles at me faintly before going back to his sandwich. The waiter brings him a coffee.
Meanwhile the old man who coughs has worked his way to the door. He opens it slowly; the storm howls. The waiter hurries to help him out. “I don’t need your help, my boy.” The customers laugh, but they are plainly impatient for the door to close. Not the storm. Not yet.
Where is he going, that old man?