The Things We Don't Do

PIOTR CZERNY’S LAST POEM

AS HE DID every morning when the weather was fine, not very late (because he was hungry), nor very early (because he liked to sleep), Piotr Czerny went out for a walk. He caught a glimpse of himself leaving the front entrance to his home in a looking glass being carried by two uniformed young lads. The looking glass continued on its way, and Piotr Czerny was tempted to invent an aphorism concerning the paradox that a transparent object could be the worst obstacle. He denied himself that pleasure until after his espresso.

His portentous stomach swaying from side to side, Piotr Czerny gratefully inhaled the breeze the morning offered him. He walked several blocks down his street, then turned right towards Jabetzka Square. There he came across two birds disputing the same crumb of bread, and, a little farther on, a pair of truanting students disputing each other’s mouth. He came to a halt to catch his breath, stroked his moustache and since he was there, spied on the two teenagers. A simple, effective verse he could use to portray both lovers and birds leapt into his mind; he considered it for a moment, only to reject it. He walked on, and almost immediately Piotr Czerny saw himself pushing open the glass doors of the Central Café II.

He ordered an espresso, and the waiter soon brought it, together with two sachets of sugar and a glass of water: Piotr Czerny always asked for his water in a wine glass. After sipping the coffee, he opened his leather-bound notebook and took out his Mont Blanc. He waited until a slight tremor gave the starting signal. He immediately began to write in his minuscule handwriting. After a while he looked up from the page and put down his pen. He drank the glass of water in one long gulp, and managed a delicate belch, shielding his lips and moustache with two fingers. He mentally went through the poems he had written over the previous year. He was torn between two titles, but could not make up his mind: one, which had come to him unheeded as he was starting to write but still did not quite convince him, was The Absolution; the other, more hermetic and which he somehow preferred, was Flower and Stone. In any event, he had already filled two notebooks. If he continued at this rate, he would have the whole book ready by early summer. Since he did not like the idea of having to go over the poems during the summer months when the weather was at its hottest, he decided he would dedicate himself exclusively to aphorisms until the August inferno had abated. Calling over the waiter, he paid him with two coins. Keep the change, young man, he said as he always did, and the waiter gave the usual nod. As he walked wearily towards the exit, Piotr Czerny glanced out of the corner of his eye at the spotted surface of the oval mirror presiding over the Central Café II. He instantly felt a rush of consternation. Turning round, he looked for a free table. He sat down and used his Mont Blanc to write in his notebook: What we cannot see is what gets in our way. Contented, he put the notebook away, and let himself be swept along by the friendly current shuffling the lime tree leaves on the pavement like a deck of cards.

He did not have much money left. They rarely paid him on time for the reviews he wrote in the magazine. As for that vampire Zubrodjo, he had lost all hope he would pay him what he had promised. To be an editor, thought Piotr Czerny, you needed two basic qualities: a great vocation and little shame. But he had a secret that consoled him for all the rest: up his sleeve he had quantities of quarto-sized laid paper, filled with his minute, meticulous handwriting. Two books of poems, plus a possible memoir. Perhaps later on there would also be a small collection of aphorisms. He would give them to Zubrodjo, of course. Glancing down at his fob watch, Piotr Czerny saw that it was still early, and allowed himself a stroll down by the river before returning home. He peered over the edge of the bridge: the water was churning, creating and dissolving glittering patterns. He walked away from the centre, in search of silence. All of a sudden he imagined the sounds as huge rings with a stark white centre. Silence, he told himself, must be only at the edges, defining the circumference, as fine as it was intangible: you can go through it from the outside or glimpse it from inside, but you can never dwell in it. Piotr Czerny could not be bothered to look for a bench and open his notebook, so he set aside the image until he was comfortably back at home. He concentrated on the cascading water, letting himself be carried along by the inertia of his stroll and a delicious lack of any thoughts.

As he turned the corner into his own street, he noticed something strange in the atmosphere. An unusual number of passers-by were rushing noisily down the street. Feeling too tired to quicken his pace, he tried to sharpen his eyes as he drew near to his building. He soon made out a crowd of people jostling each other on the far pavement, and a red vehicle obstructing the traffic. He realized that the distant siren he had been absent-mindedly hearing for some time belonged to the firemen’s truck pulled up outside his home. Making a painful effort, Piotr Czerny ran the fifty metres that separated him from his block of flats until, seriously out of breath, he was restrained by several policemen, who asked him if he was a resident in the building. Unable to respond, at that moment he saw the porter emerge from the crowd and throw himself on him, shouting wild-eyed: Mr Czerny! Mr Czerny, it’s a disaster! half the building up in flames! if only the firemen had arrived sooner, if only the residents were more careful…! Half the building? Piotr Czerny interrupted him, up to which floor? The porter looked down at the ground, wiped the sweat from his brow and said: Up to the third. Piotr Czerny could barely make out his voice above the uproar; it seemed to him like a distant memory. It looks like the fire started on the first floor, explained the porter, but it had reached the fourth floor before the firemen could bring it under control. Mr Czerny, I’m so sorry, so sorry…! Piotr Czerny felt as if a scimitar had sliced straight through his stomach. Looking up, he saw six balconies, as black as if they had been covered in pitch. It seemed to him his head was whirling. He said: All right, calm down, the important thing is to find out if there are any victims. The policeman who was still standing behind them butted in to inform them that the firemen had evacuated several inhabitants, and that fortunately only a few were slightly hurt or had passed out from the fumes. They were all very lucky, the policeman insisted. Yes, very lucky, agreed Piotr Czerny, staring into the void.

The firemen had given instructions that nobody was to get too close to the building until the smoke had cleared and the debris been removed. The crowd of onlookers that had continued to grow during the operation now began slowly to disperse. Piotr Czerny’s eyes were glued to a certain spot on the third floor. His feet and back were aching, and he could feel a stabbing pain in his stomach as he thought of the sheets of laid paper on his desk. He thought of the care with which he had kept them from his colleagues, his efforts to hide them until he had finished the definitive version. He thought of the last year of hard work and his proverbial poor memory. Trying to summon up the first poem in his unpublished book, he was surprised to find himself unwittingly repeating the second half of Rilke’s “The Captive”: …And you still alive… He looked away, and retraced his steps.

He walked along, his mind a blank. He headed towards Jabetzka Square; went into Central Café II. He searched for an empty table and, as he passed in front of the oval mirror, saw himself in the midst of the stains, hair dishevelled as he fought his way through a sea of occupied tables. While he was getting settled, he thought of ordering a salad and waited for the waiter to come over. He could not think clearly; his ideas slipped away from him. For a moment he even thought he was going to lose consciousness. He tried taking deep breaths. Since they were taking their time attending him, he took out his notebook and his Mont Blanc pen and studied them for some time.

Suddenly, hoping that the waiters had forgotten him, he began to write.

An hour later, having finished both his salad and the outline of a long poem about the ritual of fire and how words are saved, Piotr Czerny felt the electric shock of a conviction. He opened his notebook again at the first page, and wrote in tiny letters: The Absolution. Deep in his guts, he felt a sudden relief.

THE END OF READING

THEY KNOW, Vílchez announced. Tenenbaum turned towards him. He found him gazing out of the office window. Or perhaps studying the pane of glass itself, the trails from past rains, the microscopic scratches which, looked at from close up, were like those of a crashed car. This simile pleased Tenenbaum, who felt a moderate rush of poetic vanity. Rinaldi meanwhile was ignoring both of them, absorbed in the sophisticated mobile phone that invariably demanded his attention whenever he had to share a space with other authors. They know, they know, sighed Vílchez.

Tenenbaum rose to his feet. He stretched out an arm in search of Vílchez’s shoulder, although the other man did not seem to acknowledge this affectionate gesture, or possibly saw it as anything but affectionate. Both options were justified. Tenenbaum did not appreciate Vílchez, just as in truth he did not appreciate any writer of his generation other than himself. And yet he had begun to respect, or at least envy him, which in somebody as secretly insecure as himself amounted to almost the same thing.

With the round table on the importance of reading in our day about to commence, Tenenbaum thought that the proverbial arrogance of Vílchez, who had never expressed so much as a doubt or any praise in his presence, probably had the same root as his own failings. This revelatory hypothesis filled him with a relief that was close to tears. When Vílchez repeated, as if coming round, as if surviving the accident of the window that he had contemplated: They already know, I’m sure they already know, Rinaldi finally raised his eyes from his mobile. What do you mean? he asked. Vílchez’s only response was an ironic smile.

Rinaldi and Vílchez had never got on well, or rather they had always pretended not to get on badly. Tenenbaum compared their expressions, glancing first at one and then the other, trying to unite them on a diagonal. In his view, the rivalry between Rinaldi and Vílchez was based on a grave misunderstanding: that they were both striving for the same thing. Nothing was further from the truth. Vílchez aspired to a prestige that excluded all others, a sort of moral leadership in the long term. Rinaldi on the other hand desired with a fury (but also with humour, something often lacking in his colleagues) to be recognized as quickly as possible. One of them, it could be said, was anxious to win the lottery. The other hoped all his colleagues would lose it, in order to be remembered as the only one who had not stooped to place a bet.

Rinaldi still had no idea what Vílchez was talking about. Tenenbaum would have preferred not to know, but had just found out. Gradually withdrawing the arm that was still draped round Vílchez’s docile shoulder, he looked him in the eye. He looked at him with an attention he had never previously bestowed on a colleague, taking in the irregular lines on his brow, the baroque colouring of his cheeks, his sideburns and the hairs in his nostrils, which were vibrating as if they were hiding an internal ventilator. Tenenbaum was so inordinately pleased with this witty simile that he almost forgot what he was about to say. After a few moments of poetic distraction, he recovered the thread and Vílchez’s gaze and asked him, straight out: And you, how long is it since you last read?

All Vílchez could do was snort, shake his head, shrug his shoulders. It seemed to Tenenbaum that, at the far end of the room, Rinaldi was smiling like a thief confirming that the police also steal. This comparison did not give him the slightest satisfaction.

There was the sound of three short knocks on the door of the office where the writers were waiting. The hyperbolical head of the poet and translator Piotr Czerny appeared. As the organizer of this series on the promotion of reading, he was to be the round-table moderator. Ready, gentlemen? he asked in a voice that to Rinaldi, who tended to mistrust other people’s courtesy, appeared to be tinged with mockery.

Eyes popping, his body stiff, Vílchez whispered in Tenenbaum’s ear: We have to go and admit it once and for all, out there, in front of everybody.

Gentlemen, the moderator crooned, whenever you like. The audience is keen to hear you, there’s a good crowd.

Better if I start, eh, Vílchez? said Rinaldi, switching off his mobile.

THE GOLD OF THE BLIND MEN

IT WAS ONE of those evenings that only some kitsch writers describe as concave. The seven o’clock sun seemed to want to linger over things, and plunged into the Foundation’s courtyard. We were ready. Everything had been planned with great care. It was the first, and probably the last, opportunity we would have. It had taken us months to get him to agree, to convince his mother, receive the last-minute confirmation, settle all the details. It was, if you wish, a concave evening in the year 1971. We were warmed by the small sun and the closeness of surprise. We were waiting for Borges.

The Foundation’s headquarters were on Calle Defensa, just before Avenida San Juan. Back then, the San Telmo neighbourhood was not what it is today: tourists came more warily, in fewer numbers. We had been granted a licence to convert an old mansion with damp rooms and whitewashed walls that had once belonged to a family of wealthy criollos, and subsequently to an English couple who had murky dealings down in the port. Borges was happy, or so he said: he had just published El Hacedor, and the Peronists were still banned. He had promised to arrive at seven o’clock sharp, although the talk was not scheduled to start until half an hour later. The audience found it hard to stay in their seats. They were all aware of what we were going to do. Those of us who had organized the event hid our anxiety by straightening the chairs and making risqué jokes. I know it sounds odd: we were telling dirty jokes while we waited for Borges. Irma Moguilevsky was wearing a low-cut blouse and a daring skirt. To please the maestro, she had said when she came in. Borges is blind, Irmita, I had to tell her. What’s the point then? she had asked, with a mixture of disappointment and confusion. Don’t worry, Irmita, just do as we said, I sighed.

Borges was blind, although he could still make out shapes, blotches, shadows. He could not read books or recognize faces, but he could see phantoms. Golden phantoms. As those of us who were his unconditional fans were aware, out of the precarious well into which time had gradually been plunging him, Borges could distinguish a single colour. Therefore, when we learned he had agreed to give a talk to our Foundation, some of us thought up the idea of preparing a modest homage for him: all those present were waiting for him dressed in yellow, the feline yellow. Irma buttoned up her blouse, staring into space.

At two minutes past seven, on the arm of a young woman I did not know, Borges crossed the courtyard and carefully advanced between the fig plants. Several members of the Foundation went out to receive him. He approached them smiling gently, as though he had just been commenting on some amusing anecdote or other. The first thing I heard Borges say was exactly: Oh, you don’t say. And then: But that would be impossible. To my disappointment, I never found out what he was referring to. He was wearing a smart, old-fashioned-looking suit. His hair was better groomed than perhaps he himself would have wanted, and he was clutching a slim, black-bound volume. I remember how impressed I was by Borges’s hands: manicured, podgy, cold. As if, in their lassitude, they were the hands of someone who had fainted or was caught up in a not entirely pleasant dream. In a calm voice, Borges asked about details of the mansion. All our replies seemed to leave him thoughtful. Following the presentations, and after exchanging a few polite phrases which I am afraid will never find their way into any collection of aphorisms, we moved towards the events room. Borges freed himself from the arm of his young companion and walked across the entrance hall, his forehead pointing up towards the ceiling. At once there was a murmur of excitement, and the sound of chairs being pushed back. Everyone stood up and began to applaud. Still sideways on to the audience, he greeted the applause with a shy nod of the head and allowed himself to be led to the platform. I preferred to stay standing by the door. It seemed to me that it was only when he was seated and silence had returned to the room that Borges felt at ease again. And it was then that, clearing his throat, he directly addressed the yellow gathering. At first there was a slight tremor on his absent face, then it contracted; and finally, after a few seconds of whirling eye movements, it relaxed into a knowing smile. His eyes shone like two coins underwater. Chuckling mischievously, Borges exclaimed: And to think that one had already given up the idea of seeing treasure in one’s lifetime… We all laughed, and applauded once more: for a while it seemed as if the event would end there and then, before it had started.

I do not think I would be making any great mistake or showing any lack of due respect for Borges if I say there was nothing extraordinary about his talk. Borges gave us thirty-five minutes during which he simply retold, in his habitually skilful and elegant manner, what he had already said in many other lectures. That evening at the Foundation he talked about North American narrative, Nordic swords, two or three milongas, Irish revenge; I also seem to remember there was an ironic reference to Sartre. As soon as he had finished, half the hall rushed to congratulate him, ask him to sign a book or simply touch his elbow. When I bumped into Irma Moguilevsky, she gave me a bewildered look and whispered in my ear: Did you understand any of that? Surrounded by a throng of yellow, Borges attended to everyone unhurriedly, still smiling up at the ceiling the whole time. The room gradually emptied. We saw him search out the young woman’s arm and cross the dark courtyard once again. By now, night had fallen. Outside the building, several of us who were his greatest fans suggested we invite him to dinner. Borges made his excuses, saying he was afraid of catching a cold. There were some who, for this reason, were critical of his polite refusal. But what they did not know, what almost nobody knew, was that at the end of his talk his companion had come up to me to ask if I was part of the organization. Borges wanted us to know he was deeply touched by our golden greeting, and was adamant he did not want any fee for his talk, calling on our absolute discretion.

I do not think it is unfair to suggest that the lukewarm words Borges pronounced in the Foundation will soon be forgotten. And yet I know that evening was memorable. The memorable evening in which among all of us, thanks to him, we succeeded in causing a tiger.

THE POEM-TRANSLATING MACHINE

A POET AMONG those so-called major figures receives a letter containing a poem. It is a windy morning, and the poem is by him: a magazine has translated it into a neighbouring language. His linguistic intuition suggests that it is an awful translation. Therefore, with the sincere intention of finding out if he is wrong, he decides to send this foreign version to a certain friend of his: a professor, translator, poet, and short-sighted. He accompanies it with a friendly little note begging him to translate the text into their shared mother tongue. The poet smiles, perhaps mischievously: he has of course not mentioned who the author is.

Since his friend belongs to the old postal school, not a week has gone by when in his letter box the poet finds a carefully addressed envelope containing the required response. The sender also admits he is slightly surprised, because he cannot help but feel that it must have been relatively easy to read for someone as discerning as his beloved poet, and in addition so expert in other languages; nevertheless he is happy to provide a version in their shared language which he hopes will meet with his approval, and signs off with affectionate best wishes. Without wasting a second, the poet sits down to read the translation. The result is a disaster: on a close analysis, this third poem has failed to grasp anything of the rhythm, the tone, or even what is evoked by the original. He considers himself a reader who is more tolerant than not of other people’s literary liberties. However, in this case it is not that his friend has permitted himself certain artistic licences, but seems to have taken them all at the same time. The subtleties have been lost. The diction seems unclear. Its sonority has sunk without trace.

Once he has recovered from the horror, he hastens to write to his friend, thanking him for his diligence and, above all, for the translation which he considers without a doubt to be exquisite. In spite of this, the poet does not give up, and sends this third version to another translator, who is less of a friend but has more of a reputation. He asks him if he would be so kind as to translate it into another neighbouring tongue. The excuse he gives is that a foreign magazine has asked him to translate a poem by a friend and he quite frankly feels incapable of carrying out such a delicate task. So, offering his sincerest admiration and gratitude, he signs off, promising him, wishing him, etcetera.

By this stage, the poetic result is what matters least to the disturbed poet; as soon as he receives the second translator’s reply, he dispatches it again, with an apocryphal signature, to a rigorous, bald philologist whom he has never known personally but who on one occasion penned a highly favourable review of his work. He asks him to put this text by an important foreign poet into their own language so that he can study it more closely. Several weeks later, with typical, courteous academic delay, the professor sends the rewritten poem back and suggests they meet some day to discuss the author. Although he is plainly of only minor literary interest, the philologist is amazed not to have heard of him before.

Unless the poet’s good taste is failing him, this fourth version of his poem is full of errors and is already close to unintelligible. The referents have gone out of the window, the theme has been cast to the remotest margins, the enjambments sound like saws. Devastated but at the same time amused, for a moment he imagines all his books translated into this or any other language. He sighs gloomily. No two ways about it, he thinks to himself, poetry is untranslatable. No longer caring, he gifts this distant poem to a foreign female colleague whose opinion he values: it is the work of a fraternal friend — he writes to her — and I would be very happy if you could make it known in translation in whatever magazine you consider most appropriate. I have complete faith in your judgement, and blah, blah, blah. With — underneath — best wishes, yours, and all the rest.

Suffice it to say that the poet repeats this back and forth operation several more times, with identical requests and similar pretexts. Each reply he receives upsets, outrages and fascinates him in equal measure. Sometimes his poem is praised to the skies, at others it is criticized ruthlessly. Like someone indulging in a feverish pastime, almost without glancing at the succession of translations and retranslations, he simply passes it on to another translator friend.

Time goes by, dumbly.

And so it is that one grey morning the poet opens the file with the fourteenth translation and is confronted by a familiar version. As far as he can recall it is word for word, comma for comma, his own poem, the first one of all. For a moment he is tempted to go and check. Then, calming down, he tells himself it is fine as it is, original or not. “No doubt about it, poetry is untranslatable,” he writes in his notebook, “but, sooner or later, a poem will always be translatable.”

Then, lazily, he opens a novel and starts to think of something else.

ON DESTINY

AS PRESTIGIOUS as he is chaste, a certain person called P likes abstract art, chamber music and Petrarchian poetry. He has devoted two-thirds of his life to a rigorous study of the arts; the remaining third, to dreaming about them. Scrupulousness and serenity are the hallmarks of P’s domestic existence. Very occasionally, he permits himself to send a book of verse to the printers. It might even be suggested that he is not entirely dissatisfied with his latest collection. What greater excess could there be, P argues moderately, than a touch of literary vanity?

A certain person called Q, an unbridled drinker and compulsive womanizer, has for years had a vague friendship with P. Neither of them appears to be able to adequately explain their friendship to himself. Probably Q envies his friend’s wisdom and the solemn respect he receives. On the other hand, it could be suggested that P feels an obscure admiration for Q’s licentiousness, which he sees as an art or some sort of aesthetic militancy.

Out of mutual curiosity, in the course of an exceptional evening when, exceptionally, P has drunk too much wine, and Q, very unusually, seems to have sated all his appetites, they reach an accord: they will exchange places for twenty-four hours. Q informs P that the following night he has made a date with a woman friend of merry inclinations, and promises to praise his friend P to the skies. P tells Q he has promised to send a poem in honour of a certain bard who has passed away, and suggests with a chuckle that Q should be the one to pen it.

Not so much daunted as wryly amused, the two friends shake hands on their agreement.

Two days later, they meet again in a café. Q confesses his amazement at the unexpected demands of poetic creation. He describes for P his tortuous, sleepless night surrounded by the works of the deceased bard, listening to Austrian sonatas in search of inspiration. Sympathizing with him, P reveals to Q his exhaustion after an unbelievable succession of late-night bars, litres of alcohol and sexual gymnastics. Haggard-looking, he admits his inability to maintain a rhythm of this sort while still keeping, as his friend does, his appearance cheerful and his lucidity intact. His friend nods, and in turn declares himself unworthy of consorting with the muses. Equally dismayed, they agree that the experiment was worthwhile, since it has confirmed them in their respective destinies. The two men finish their coffees. Shake hands once more. Say farewell again.

That same night, P receives a call from a famous colleague, who thanks him effusively for his homage to the deceased bard, and goes so far in his praise as to dismiss all his previous production. “It was high time,” he tells P in a fit of enthusiasm, “that you gave up all that mannerism and risked saying something truly deep!” A few hours later, as he is on the verge of sleep, Q hears a whisper from the woman lying on her back in the darkness alongside him: “Don’t be offended, sweetheart, but could you give me the phone number of that friend of yours?”

THEORY OF LINES

I LIVE SEATED at my desk, looking out of the window. The view is not exactly an Alpine landscape: a narrow courtyard, dingy bricks, closed shutters. I could read. I could stand up. I could go for a walk. But nothing compares to this generous mediocrity that encompasses the whole world.

These bricks of mine are a complete university. In the first place, they offer me lessons in aesthetics. Aesthetics connects observation with understanding, individual taste with overall meaning. As a result, it can be seen as the opposite of description. When you only have an inside courtyard to fill your vision, that distinction becomes a matter of survival.

Or lessons in semiotics. Talking to the neighbours tells me less about them than spying on the clothes they hang out to dry. In my experience, the words we exchange with our fellows are a source of misunderstandings rather than knowledge. Their clothes though are transparent (literally, in some cases). They cannot be misinterpreted. At most, they can be disapproved of. But that disapproval is also transparent: it reveals us.

I spend long periods of time contemplating the washing lines. They look like musical scores. Or lined exercise books. The author could be anybody. Anonymous. Chance. The wind.

I’m thinking, for example, of my downstairs neighbour, the woman on the left. A lady of a certain — or uncertain — age, who lives with a man. At first I thought he must be a chubby son, but he is more likely to be her husband. It’s unusual nowadays for any youngster to wear one of those white vests that are so frowned upon by his generation, which has not imbibed so much as a single iota of neo-realism to help them mythologize the proletariat. My neighbour has left pairs of bloomers of biblical proportions flapping in the wind, and a flesh-coloured bra that could serve perfectly well as a shower cap (or two of them, to be precise). Therein lies the mystery: her rotund husband wears short, elasticated briefs. Some red, others black. I doubt whether a woman of such demure tastes encourages her spouse to wear such bold underwear. Conversely, it appears unlikely that a gentleman who shows such daring underneath his trousers has not suggested other options to his consort. I therefore deduce that, by donning those briefs, the gentleman in question is pleasing (if “to please” is the right term) a much younger woman. Of course, his wife takes it upon herself to lovingly wash them and hang them out to dry.

A couple of floors higher up, in the centre, there is another line belonging to a female student with bohemian habits, if I’m permitted the redundancy. She never pokes her head out to hang up her washing before nine or ten at night, when the courtyard is already in darkness. This prevents me from observing her as clearly as I can her clothes. Her wardrobe ranges from all kinds of short T-shirts, minuscule outfits, exotic tangas, as well as the occasional old-style suspender belt. This last detail suggests to me a certain penchant for the university film club. I imagine my student as one of those intrepid people who, at the decisive moment, are overwhelmed with a sense of shame, possibly the result of gloomy hours spent in catechism classes. One of those beauties who are better at seducing than at enjoying themselves. Or not. On the contrary, she could be one of those wonders of nature who, even at the moments of utter abandon, are capable of a touch of elegance. Or not. In the happy medium, my neighbour sets limits on her own brazenness, she has a modicum of self-restraint which makes her irresistible and sometimes infuriating. Particularly to that sort of man (namely, all men) who are enticed by a woman’s wardrobe and, with exemplary simple-mindedness, hope to uncover a lascivious woman beneath a skimpy dress. Deep down, my neighbour is a fragile soul. All you need consider are those socks of hers with childish patterns on them, in which I imagine she sleeps when she is alone: little ducks, rabbits, squirrels. She detests paternalism as much as having cold feet.

A little lower down, three windows to the right, a mother rectifies her offspring’s grubbiness. To judge by the size of the washing, some of them are no longer children. Why do teenagers refuse to take responsibility for their clothes? What kind of embarrassment keeps them away from their own underpants? My neighbour’s eldest son stains quite a few of them each week. Does he also leave lots of clues on his computer, hide magazines in all the obvious places, shut himself in the bathroom for hours? Is he aware that his mother can read his underpants? What a waste of energy. The same applies to my male neighbour on the third floor, who takes the trouble to sort out his washing by size, type and colour. Never a shirt next to a hand towel. He lives alone. I am not surprised. How could anyone possibly sleep with someone unable to trust in the hospitality of chance? No doubt about it, my obsessive neighbour is a master of camouflage.

As the years go by at my window, I have learned that you should not go too far in changing what you observe. You can discover more by concentrating on just one point rather than transferring your attention hither and thither. This counts as a lesson in synthesis. Three or four washing lines ought to provide sufficient material for a thriller.

It’s a fine day today. The sun is flooding the courtyard. My neighbours’ unruly washing lines are gleaming, full of promise. Too many clothes to strip their lives bare.

My lines cannot be seen.

END AND BEGINNING OF LEXIS

EVERY SUNDAY AFTERNOON, after his siesta, Aristides would get up and say “tra”, “cri”, “plu”, or even “tpme”. He would say this out loud, with the utmost eloquence, without the slightest idea why. It was not that his mind was filled with the shreds of interrupted dreams, concrete images, pressing tasks. Not even with words from the tens of thousands he allegedly knew. No, what Aristides used to say, and he expressed it very clearly, was “fte”, “cnac”, “bld”. Still drowsy, unshaven, he became once more someone before lexis. Thus, for a brief moment before he entered the world again, he was boundlessly happy, feeling that the whole language lay before him.