As for the square at Meknes, where I used to go every day, it's even simpler: I do not see it at all any more. All that remains is the vague feeling that it was charming, and these five words are indivisibly bound together: a charming square at Meknes. Undoubtedly, if I close my eyes or stare vaguely at the ceiling I can re-create the scene: a tree in the distance, a short dingy figure run towards me. But I am inventing all this to make out a case. That Moroccan was big and weather-beaten, besides, I only saw him after he had touched me. So I still know he was big and weather-beaten: certain details, somewhat curtailed, live in my memory. But I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.
32
There are many cases where even these scraps have disappeared: nothing is left but words: I could still tell stories, tell them too well (as far as anecdotes are concerned, I can stand up to anyone except ship's officers and professional people) but these are only the skeletons. There's the story of a person who does this, does that, but it isn't I, I have nothing in common with him. He travels through countries I know no more about than if I had never been there. Sometimes, in my story, it happens that I pronounce these fine names you read in atlases, Aranjuez or Canterbury. New images are born in me, images such as people create from books who have never travelled. My words are dreams, that is all.
For a hundred dead stories there still remain one or two living ones. I evoke these with caution, occasionally, not too often, for fear of wearing them out, I fish one out, again I see the scenery, the characters, the attitudes. I stop suddenly: there is a flaw, I have seen a word pierce through the web of sensations. I suppose that this word will soon take the place of several images I love. I must stop quickly and think of something else; I don't want to tire my memories. In vain; the next time I evoke them a good part will be congealed.
I make a pretence of getting up, going to look for my photos of Meknes in the chest I pushed under my table. What good would it do? These aphrodisiacs scarcely affect my memory any more. I found a faded little photo under my blotter the other day. A woman was smiling, near a tank. I studied this person for a moment without recognizing her. Then on the other side I read, "Anny, Portsmouth, April 7, '27."
I have never before had such a strong feeling that I was devoid of secret dimensions, confined within the limits of my body, from which airy thoughts float up like bubbles. I build memories with my present self. I am cast out, forsaken in the present: I vainly try to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.
Someone knocks. It's the Self-Taught Man: I had forgotten him. I had promised to show him the photographs of my travels. He can go to Hell.
He sits down on a chair; his extended buttocks touch the back of it and his stiff torso leans forward. I jump from the end of my bed and turn on the light.
"Oh, do we really need that? We were quite comfortable."
"Not for looking at pictures. . . ."
I relieve him of his hat.
33"True, Monsieur? Do you really want to show me your pictures?"
"Of course."
This is a plot: I hope he will keep quiet while he looks at them. I dive under the table and push the chest against his patent leather shoes, I put an armload of post cards and photos on his lap: Spain and Spanish Morocco.
But I see by his laughing, open look that I have been singularly mistaken in hoping to reduce him to silence. He glances over a view of San Sebastian from Monte Igueldo, sets it cautiously on the table and remains silent for an instant. Then he sighs:
"Ah, Monsieur, you're lucky ... if what they say is true-travel is the best school. Is that your opinion, Monsieur?"
I make a vague gesture. Luckily he has not finished.
"It must be such an upheaval. If I were ever to go on a trip, I think I should make written notes of the slightest traits of my character before leaving, so that when I returned I would be able to compare what I was and what I had become. I've read that there are travellers who have changed physically and morally to such an extent that even their closest relatives did not recognize them when they came back."
He handles a thick packet of photographs, abstractedly. He takes one and puts it on the table without looking at it; then he stares intently at the next picture showing Saint Jerome sculptured on a pulpit in the Burgos cathedral.
"Have you seen the Christ made of animal skins at Burgos? There is a very strange book, Monsieur, on these statues made of animal skin and even human skin. And the Black Virgin? She isn't at Burgos but at Saragossa, I think? Yet there may possibly be one at Burgos. The Pilgrims kiss her, don't they?ù the one at Saragossa, I mean. And isn't there the print of her foot on a stone?ùin a holeùwhere the mothers push their children?"
Stiffly he pushes an imaginary child with his hands. You'd think he was refusing the gifts of Artaxerxes.
"Ah, manners and customs, Monsieur, they are . . . they are curious."
A little breathless, he points his great ass's jawbone at me. He smells of tobacco and stagnant water. His fine, roving eyes shine like globes of fire and his sparse hair forms a steaming halo on his skull. Under this skull, Samoyeds, Nyam-Nyams, 34
Malgaches and Fuegians celebrate their strangest solemnities, eat their old fathers, their children, spin to the sound of tomtoms until they faint, run amok, burn their dead, exhibit them on the roofs, leave them to the river current in a boat, lighted by a torch, copulate at random, mother with son, father with daughter, brother with sister, mutilate themselves, castrate themselves, distend their lips with plates, have monstrous animals sculptured on their backs.
"Can one say, with Pascal, that custom is second nature?" He has fixed his black eyes on mine, he begs for an answer. "That depends," I say. He draws a deep breath.
"That's just what I was saying to myself, Monsieur. But I distrust myself so much; one should have read everything."
He almost goes mad over the next photo and shouts joyfully: "Segovia! Segovia! I've read a book about Segovia!" Then he adds with a certain nobility:
"Monsieur, I don't remember the name any more. I sometimes have spells of absent-mindedness . . . Na . . . No . . . Nod . . ."
"Impossible," I tell him quickly, "you were only up to Lavergne."
I regret my words immediately: after all, he had never told me about his reading methods, it must have been a precious secret. And in fact, his face falls and his thick lips jut out as if he were going to cry. Then he bows his head and looks at a dozen more post cards without a word.
But after thirty seconds I can see that a powerful enthusiasm is mounting in him and that he will burst if he doesn't speak: "When I've finished my instruction (I allow six more years for that) I shall join, if I am permitted, the group of students and professors who take an annual cruise to the Near East. I should like to make some new acquaintances," he says unctuously. "To speak frankly, I would also like something unexpected to happen to me, something new, adventures."
He has lowered his voice and his face has taken on a roguish look.
"What sort of adventures?" I ask him, astonished.
"All sorts, Monsieur. Getting on the wrong train. Stopping
in an unknown city. Losing your briefcase, being arrested by
mistake, spending the night in prison. Monsieur, I believed the
word adventure could be defined: an event out of the ordinary
35without being necessarily extraordinary. People speak of the magic of adventures. Does this expression seem correct to you? I would like to ask you a question, Monsieur."
"What is it?"
He blushes and smiles.
"Possibly it is indiscreet!"
"Ask me, anyway."
He leans towards me, his eyes half-closed, and asks:
"Have you had many adventures, Monsieur?"
"A few," I answer mechanically, throwing myself back to avoid his tainted breath. Yes. I said that mechanically, without thinking. In fact, I am generally proud of having had so many adventures. But today, I had barely pronounced the words than I was seized with contrition; it seems as though I am lying, that I have never had the slightest adventure in my life, or rather, that I don't even know what the word means any more. At the same time, I am weighed down by the same discouragement I had in Hanoiùfour years ago when Mercier pressed me to join him and I stared at a Khmer statuette without answering. And the IDEA is there, this great white mass which so disgusted me then: I hadn't seen it for four years.
"Could I ask you . . ." the Self-Taught Man begins . . .
By Jove! To tell him one of those famous tales. But I won't say another word on the subject.
"There," I say, bending down over his narrow shoulders, putting my finger on a photograph, "there, that's Santillana, the prettiest town in Spain."
"The Santillana of Gil Bias? I didn't believe it existed. Ah, Monsieur, how profitable your conversation is. One can tell you've travelled."
I put out the Self-Taught Man after filling his pockets with post cards, prints and photos. He left enchanted and I switched off the light. I am alone now. Not quite alone. Hovering in front of me is still this idea. It has rolled itself into a ball, it stays there like a large cat; it explains nothing, it does not move, and contents itself with saying no. No, I haven't had any adventures.
I fill my pipe, light it and stretch out on the bed, throwing a coat over my legs. What astonishes me is to feel so sad and exhausted. Even if it were trueùthat I never had any adventures ùwhat difference would that make to me? First, it seems to be a pure question of words. This business at Meknes, for example, I was thinking about a little while ago: a Moroccan jumped
36
on me and wanted to stab me with an enormous knife. But I hit him just below the temple . . . then he began shouting in Arabic and a swarm of lousy beggars came up and chased us all the way to Souk Attarin. Well, you can call that by any name you like, in any case, it was an event which happened to ME.
It is completely dark and I can't tell whether my pipe is lit. A trolley passes: red light on the ceiling. Then a heavy truck which makes the house tremble. It must be six o'clock.
I have never had adventures. Things have happened to me, events, incidents, anything you like. But no adventures. It isn't a question of words; I am beginning to understand. There is something to which I clung more than all the restùwithout completely realizing it. It wasn't love. Heaven forbid, not glory, not money. It was ... I had imagined that at certain times my life could take on a rare and precious quality. There was no need for extraordinary circumstances: all I asked for was a little precision. There is nothing brilliant about my life now: but from time to time, for example, when they play music in the cafes, I look back and tell myself: in old days, in London, Meknes, Tokyo, I have known great moments, I have had adventures. Now I am deprived of this. I have suddenly learned, without any apparent reason, that I have been lying to myself for ten years. And naturally, everything they tell about in books can happen in real life, but not in the same way. It is to this way of happening that I clung so tightly.
The beginnings would have had to be real beginnings. Alas! Now I see so clearly what I wanted. Real beginnings are like a fanfare of trumpets, like the first notes of a jazz tune, cutting short tedium, making for continuity: then you say about these evenings within evenings: "I was out for a walk, it was an evening in May." You walk, the moon has just risen, you feel lazy, vacant, a little empty. And then suddenly you think: "Something has happened." No matter what: a slight rustling in the shadow, a thin silhouette crossing the street. But this paltry event is not like the others: suddenly you see that it is the beginning of a great shape whose outlines are lost in mist and you tell yourself, "Something is beginning."
Something is beginning in order to end: adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makes sense when dead. I am drawn, irrevocably, towards this death which is perhaps mine as well. Each instant appears only as part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irre-
37placeableùand yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated. This last moment I am spendingùin Berlin, in Londonùin the arms of a woman casually met two days agoùmoment I love passionately, woman I may adoreùall is going to end, I know it. Soon I shall leave for another country. I shall never rediscover either this woman or this night. I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass.
All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning. Following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would acceptùeven if I had to risk death, lose a fortune, a friendùto live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from end to end. But an adventure never returns nor is prolonged.