‘EPILOGUE, from Gr.
epilogos
, conclusion –
epi
and
lego
, to speak. A speech or short poem addressed to the spectators by one of the actors, after the conclusion of a drama.’
From
New Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary
of the English Language
, 1952
ANOTHER STATION. LICHTENBERG, BERLIN. I LIKE THINGS that rhyme, even though I myself do not write rhyming poetry. Berlin is the departure point for trains to Poland and Russia. I have an appointment here, though I do not know it yet. The schedule reads: ‘Warszawa Centralna 20. 55, Minsk 08.49, Smolensk 14.44, Moskva Belorusskaya 20. 18 .’ Different journeys, different trains. I am going on a journey to make up for a loss. Anyone who has ever written a book knows the feeling. A leave-taking of sorts, and therefore always a form of mourning. For a year or two you have lived with your characters, you have given them names that may or may not suit them, you have made them laugh and cry, they have made you laugh and cry, and after that you have sent them on their way, into the big wide world. You hope they will be OK, that they will have enough breath to live for a long, long time. You have left them to their own devices, but it feels as if they have left you. So here you are, alone in a deserted station in what used to be East Berlin. It does not get much sadder than this.
‘Wallowing in self-pity won’t help,’ Almut would say, and that is exactly what I mean. They go on talking to you. They have been talking to each other for two years, and you have been listening. The question is where does it all begin? If the first word came from me, does that mean the second one did too? Last night I jotted down a sentence that I cannot make sense of this morning. My handwriting is always a gauge of how much I have drunk the night before.
Quite a bit, in this case. I can never just say goodbye and let them go. What I scribbled down was this: ‘Some voices are clearly written voices.’ Or was it ‘frightened voices’? I cannot read my own handwriting, but ‘written’ is better, so let’s leave it at that. An announcement is made over the loudspeaker, but my train has not been announced yet. I don’t know why I picked Moscow. Probably because I have never been there before. I will not know where I am going, so it will be easier to get lost. Meanwhile, the young man sitting beside me has a cracking whip assailing his ears – a mechanical lash that is repeated over and over again. His head bobs up and down to the beat. He is clearly not someone who has just finished writing a book.
At the end of a project I always have the feeling, for some inexplicable reason, that I am clairvoyant. I mean that literally – not in the sense that I can predict the future, but rather that the things I normally overlook are now seen with great clarity: the fake granite exteriors on the rubbish bins, the yellow-tiled catacombs beneath the station that take you from the U-Bahn to the main station, the corridors that seem to go on forever, the face of the cokehead with the cracking whip next to me. Nothing escapes my notice, but it’s of no use to me. It has come too late. The others have already left, they are on their way to Brazil or Australia. In any case I am no longer in control. At the other end of the hall I see two guards in olive-green shirts and white caps – a whiff of the past, a slight shudder. I hear the call of the wild – a three-toned gong – but I still do not see very many people. The train has pulled into the station. Cyrillic letters, curtains, table lamps, everything as it should be. The trains of Dostoyevsky and Nabokov, on their way to Baden-Baden and Biarritz. I do not have to wait long. She is wearing the same outfit she had on in the plane and is carrying the same book – the book I thought I had written, the book I still have not been able to shake off. The last part is true, the first part is not. This time I can read the title right away, as if she has come here specially for me, and perhaps she has. It is the same two words, but in a different order, though in either case Paradise has been lost. Of course we find ourselves in the same compartment. The person who thought that up knew what he was doing. At least this way we’ll be able to talk. The conductor’s whistle sounds more dramatic here than in other stations. Both of us stare out of the window, perhaps in embarrassment.
I do not know if she’s recognised me. During the flight from Friedrichshafen to Berlin she did not look at me once, and as far as I could tell she did not notice me after we landed at Tempelhof either, though you can never be sure. In any case the man who picked her up at the airport is nowhere now in sight.
A couple of fat Russians waddle along the platform, loaded down with so many suitcases they can barely carry them all. As the train glides out of the station, I see that it is raining: a grey city in a grey shroud. In my mind’s eye I can see where the now-invisible Wall used to be. Another book that the writer thought was finished, though things are never that simple.
‘So what do you think of the book?’ I ask. I have never been very clever at striking up conversations with strangers, but in my present mood I am much more daring. Those legs, which were too far away from me on the plane, are now excitingly close. The khaki is stretched over her thighs, showing the powerful muscles underneath. I do not know whether she caught my glance, but she parts her thighs ever so slightly – and that takes my breath away. As I have already explained, for weeks after a project I feel a heightened awareness – a mixture of excitement and longing – which I still have not learned to cope with. Perhaps women are more used to this kind of thing. In any case, she stares out of the window, looking right past me, at the yellowy stubble beside the tracks, the rust-coloured rocks between the sleepers, the city gradually being enveloped by the veil of rain, a pale ship on the horizon.
She has laid the open book on the seat beside her. I can see the old-fashioned spelling of a facsimile edition. My title, but inverted.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It’s a rather depressing book. The whole thing seems to be based on a misunderstanding, in which case the punishment is too severe. “Misunderstanding” is such a lovely word, isn’t it? What started out as a misunderstanding has gone on to repeat itself over and over again into infinity. You could add a dash of wilful disobedience to that if you want to, though it’s usually not necessary. A woman listens to a serpent just once and is cast out for all time, and then a ship lands on an unknown coast where people with painted bodies are hiding in the bushes, or early one evening a woman drives into the wrong neighbourhood and will never be the same again. You know, I think the title is the best part. In that sense the story never really ends. Why do you think writers do that? Do they do it on purpose, so they can have something to write about the next time? Actually, when you get right down to it, I don’t know any books that
aren’t
about misunderstandings:
Hamlet
,
Madame Bovary
, Marcel who didn’t realise that Gilberte loved him, Othello who believed Iago . . . If you stop and think about it –‘
Just then, the conductor burst into our compartment to check the tickets, which took forever since the various bits of paper had been stapled together.
‘If you stop and think about it?’ I asked her, after he had gone.
She laughed, then said, ‘Are you sure you want hear what I have to say?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Why? Do you really think it’s so important?’
I noticed that her eyes were green, and I also understood that she was seeing me for the first time.
I paused. It was necessary to strike the right tone. I took one last look at the snow-capped Alps in Vorarlberg, at the rock paintings in Ubirr and the Sickness Dreaming Place, at the old man with the signet ring who at that very moment was being laid to rest in Darwin, at the deserted bedroom above the luxurious gardens of Jardins where the
bem-te-vi
sang its high-pitched song, and finally at the only one who was left, and said, ‘Because the last sentence is the most important one.’
‘And you’d like me to say it?’
I did not answer. I waited.
‘Honestly,’ she said, ‘it’s so easy, you could have written it yourself. Have you ever thought about the creator of Paradise – a place where there were no misunderstandings? It must have been incredibly boring. Whoever thought that up must have meant it as a form of punishment. Only a very bad writer could have come up with something like that. Is that good enough for a last sentence?’
‘All I have to do now is add a place and a date,’ I said.
‘And an epilogue,’ she said. ‘You usually have one, don’t you? Here, I’ve already found you one.’ She opened the book to a page towards the back, marked by a slip of paper, and then passed it to me. The lines she wanted me to read had been underlined in pencil.
Amsterdam, February 2003 – Es Consell,
San Luis, 26 August 2004
They looking back, all th’ eastern side beheld Of Paradise, so late thir happie seat, Wav’d over by that flaming Brand, the Gate With dreadful Faces throng’d and fierie Armes. Som natural tears they drop’d, but wip’d them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide: They hand in hand with wand’ring steps and slow, Through Eden took thir solitarie way.
Milton,
Paradise Lost
, Book XII