Time Ages in a Hurry

The Circle

“I asked him about the old days, when we were still so young, naive, hotheaded, silly, green. A little bit’s still there, except the young part, he answered.”

The old professor had stopped talking, his expression almost contrite, he’d swiped away a tear that had welled up on his eyelashes, tapped himself on the forehead as if to say how stupid of me, would you pardon me, tugged at his incredibly orange bow tie, and said in his French marked by a strong German accent: please pardon me, please pardon me, I’d forgotten, the title of the poem is “The Old Professor,” by the great Polish poet Wisława Szymborska, and at that moment he pointed to himself as if suggesting that he coincided somehow with the character in that poem, then he drank another Calvados, which was more responsible for his emotion than the poem was, and let out a half sigh, everybody rising up to console him: Wolfgang, don’t do this, keep reading, the old professor blew his nose with a large, checked handkerchief: “I asked him about that picture,” he continued in a stentorian voice, “the one framed on his desk. They’ve been and gone. Brother, cousin, sister-in-law, wife, daughter on the wife’s knees, cat in the daughter’s arms, cherry tree in blossom, above the tree, a bird, unidentified, in flight, he answered.”

She hadn’t heard the rest, or perhaps she hadn’t wanted to hear it, that sweet old professor from the canton of St. Gallen, the St. Gallen cousins are a bit rough, something she heard her great-aunt say one night in the kitchen, strange creatures, they’re good people, but they live in that isolated place surrounded by mountains and lakes, whereas she herself found the old professor of St. Gallen delightful, she’d even photocopied the poem he’d wanted to read for the toast, so courteous, and made the copies available for guests on the dining-room table, among the desserts and cheeses, because according to him that was the best tribute to the memory of the grandfather, “my late and unforgettable brother Josef in whose place the Lord should have called me.” But here he was, alive and kicking, the spider veins on his nose all the more pronounced from the alcohol, meanwhile the grandmother was listening blissfully (or perhaps she was asleep) to her brother-in-law’s poetic eulogy for her dead husband, because the anniversary of his death, ten years past now, was the reason for this solemn family reunion, one must celebrate the dead, yet despite everything life goes on, and the life that goes on deserves to be celebrated as much as or even more than the dead are, and to hell with all those who are envious, because family is family, especially an important family like ours that at the start of the nineteenth century already had mail stops from Geneva to the canton of St. Gallen, and from Lake Constance to Germany, and from Germany to Poland, there are still prints and photographs, all in the family album, from all those old mail stops the web of trade was born that makes the Ziegler family famous today in Switzerland and through all of Europe, the founders died long ago, the eldest heirs will be dead soon, but the family goes on, because life goes on, and that’s why we’re here, the great-uncle from St. Gallen triumphantly concluded, to celebrate the life that goes on, with our children and our grandchildren.

And there they were, the heirs of so much tradition. The theatrical gesture of the great-uncle from St. Gallen who declaimed the poem in an emotional voice seemed directed right at them: at the little blond, curly-haired boy who already wore a tie and at the little girl with the face full of freckles, both unaware that that gesturing hand was aimed right at them, and unaware of the memory of the unknown grandfather Josef, intent as they were on arguing over a piece of chocolate cake, and the little boy, who’d won out over his sister, already carried the victory smudge under his nose, like a mustache in a Guignol theater, and the latest daughter-in-law, the white Greta, so thoughtful, with a lace napkin, also from St. Gallen like their great-uncle, wiped the chocolate from the boy’s face and smiled. A nice smile on a healthy face of milk and blood, as she’d heard it said once in that country, though maybe not in Geneva, maybe in Lugano: milk and blood. What a strange mixture, the first time she’d heard that expression it had a strange effect on her, almost nauseating, perhaps because she’d imagined a jug of milk into which drops of blood were falling. And her thought had turned all on its own to a childhood that wasn’t hers, to a village lost in time, at the foot of the mountains in a country that here, in this city where they were now celebrating a grandfather Josef who wasn’t hers and whom she’d never known, they called Maghreb, as if it belonged to an abstract geography. When she was young she didn’t know that the place where her ancestors lived was called Maghreb, even they didn’t know its name, they simply lived there, not even the grandmother knew, the grandmother, whose image surfaced from memory as though from a buried well, how strange, because this wasn’t a memory of a person, it was the memory of a grandmother she’d been told about, whom she’d never known, how could she recall so well a face she’d never seen? And then her mother came to mind, she was strong, her mother, but also so fragile, and so beautiful, with that proud profile and those big eyes, and she remembered her talking, and the ancient accent, so ancient, because it came from the heart of the desert where neither the Arab raiders who dealt in people’s bodies nor the Catholic priests who dealt in souls had ever dared penetrate, better to leave the Berbers in peace, they aren’t marketable. And at the same time she also wondered where that profound sense of herself came from, which for a moment she could feel surfacing in response to the perfect and resolute gesture Greta made as she wiped the chocolate blotch off her son’s cheek. From nowhere, that sense came from nowhere, like her memory that wasn’t a true memory but the memory of a story, and it wasn’t yet a sense, it was an emotion, and in the end not even an emotion, just images her fantasy had created when she was a little girl listening to others’ memories, but she’d forgotten that remote and imaginary place, and this astonished her. Why were those places of sand her mother had talked about when she was a little girl left buried in the sand of her memory? The Grands Boulevards, this was the geography belonging to her memory, the great avenues of Paris, where her father had an elegant law office with floral wallpaper and leather armchairs, her father, a well-known lawyer in a large Parisian office. On the next floor was the apartment where she’d grown up, an apartment with very high windows and plaster moldings, a building Haussmann wanted, at home they’d always said so: it’s a Haussmann building, and Haussmann was Haussmann, and that was that, yet what did Haussmann have to do with what she was?

She wondered this while Greta was wiping the chocolate blotch off her son’s face, and what she was asking herself she’d have liked to ask everybody at that family gathering, this family so hospitable and generous, which celebrated an enterprising grandfather who’d known how to transform old mail stops into a profitable venture that now belonged to her as well, because it belonged to Michel. But why bring up Monsieur Haussmann now? They’d look at her as though she were crazy. My dear, Greta might say (maybe it would indeed be Greta), what does Haussmann have to do with anything, he’s the greatest French urban planner of the nineteenth century, he redid Paris, you grew up in one of the buildings he wanted, what ever made you think of Haussmann? Greta had a complex about living in Geneva, which she considered provincial compared to Paris, and perhaps she would have felt provoked. This really wasn’t something to bring up in the dining room during a family gathering, in this solid house with its large windows facing the lake, in front of that table laden with every blessing, she could have talked about the desert, but they’d have asked her what the desert had to do with anything, she could’ve answered that it mattered as contrast, it’s just that here you have a wonderful lake before you overflowing with water and there’s even a fountain in the middle spouting water a hundred meters high, whereas my grandmother was surrounded by sand and when she was a child, each morning she had to go for a jug of water at the well at Al Karib, even now the name comes to mind, and she had to walk three kilometers in the dark and three kilometers back under the burning sun, with the jug on her head, and you can’t know what water really is because you have too much of it.

Why talk of these things? And what fault was it of theirs? But perhaps she could say she’d recalled the expression milk and blood, a really monstrous expression in her opinion, because when she was a child her grandmother would sometimes bring her into the shed in the evening, and she would watch, fascinated, while her grandmother squeezed that white liquid from the goats’ teats into a zinc bowl that they’d then carry home with the reverence due a gift of God, yet if some drops of blood fell into that pure white liquid, it would’ve seemed monstrous to her, she’d have run away frightened, but she couldn’t say that, because it wasn’t a memory, it was a fantasy, a false memory, she’d never been in that shed, and so, running from a false memory I now find myself here, in this nice family that has welcomed me with open arms, pardon me, everyone, what I’m saying isn’t logical, perhaps it’s because I was looking at my slightly darker hands and the expression milk and blood just sounded strange to me, perhaps I need a little fresh air, in the summer, Geneva is even hotter than Paris, even more humid, I’ve enjoyed this gathering quite a lot, you’re all so dear, I just need some air, years ago, when we were engaged, Michel took me up to the mountain pastures, we went by bus, the one that goes up to the last village, if I remember, it’s not that far, I’ll get there in half an hour by taxi, after all, the pastures aren’t even a thousand meters up. Michel must have gone already for his siesta, tell him not to worry, I’ll be back before dinner.

It was really hot. She wondered how it could possibly be hotter at a thousand meters than it was in the city. Perhaps the city felt the benefits of the lake effect, it was logical that a large body of water cooled the air all around. But maybe Geneva was the same temperature, maybe she was the one feeling the heat, an internal heat as when the body’s temperature, for reasons only the body knows, becomes much higher than that of the surrounding environment. The sun was beating down on the plateau, and there weren’t any trees, only a vast expanse of meadows, rather, a stubbly field, many years earlier when Michel had taken her up there for the first time, it was spring, the plateau was green after the winter rains, they hadn’t known each other long, she’d never been to Switzerland, they were young or nearly so, Michel was in his last year of medical school, so around fifteen years back, because that June he’d graduated and they’d also celebrated his birthday then, his twenty-fifth. For a moment she thought of time, and of what it might be, but it was only for a moment because once more the panorama of that yellowish plain caught her gaze and thoughts, the stubble wasn’t easy to walk on, probably the grass had been cut in June for the farmers’ winter supply, green goes yellow, she thought, and then her mind returned to the calendar, the months, the years, the dates, almost forty years, she said out loud, actually, thirty-eight, but thirty-eight’s almost forty, and I haven’t had a baby yet. She was aware that she’d spoken out loud, as though she were addressing a nonexistent audience on that scorched yellowish plain, and she continued aloud: why have I never asked myself that before?. How is it possible that a woman married for almost fifteen years hasn’t had a baby yet and hasn’t asked herself why? She sat on the ground, on the bristly grass. If it had been something planned, an agreement with Michel, it would’ve made sense, but it hadn’t happened because they’d willed it, that’s just how it had gone, a baby never arrived, period, and she’d never asked why, she’d found it normal, just as she’d found it normal growing up in a beautiful building on the Grands Boulevards, as if that elegant Parisian apartment were the most natural thing in the world — it wasn’t — the most natural thing in the world didn’t exist, things exist as you want if you think them and if you want them, then you can guide them, otherwise they go along on their own. All right, she said to herself, but then what’s guiding everything? Was there something on the outside guiding that sort of huge breath she perceived all around? The grass that becomes stubble and that will go green again as the season turns, that suffocating late-August day which was ending, and the old grandmother from the house in Geneva whom she suddenly felt she loved very much, and also the great-uncle from St. Gallen, who drank too much and read poetry, she thought of his undone bow tie and the red spider veins on his nose, and tears welled up in her eyes and who knows why she saw the image of a child and his mother walking hand in hand from a village fair, the fair is over, it’s Sunday night, and the child has a balloon tied to his wrist, he displays it proudly like a trophy and suddenly, ploff, the balloon goes flat, something has punctured it, but what, perhaps a hedge thorn? She seemed to herself like that child who was suddenly holding a deflated balloon, someone had stolen it from him, but no, the balloon was still there, only the air had been stolen. So that’s how it was, time was air and she’d let it exhale from a tiny hole of which she was unaware? But where was the hole? — she couldn’t see it. She thought back to Michel, to those first years when he spent his days in his laboratory and came home late at night, dead tired, it was good waiting for him till midnight and eating a little spaghetti thrown together, Michel was searching for a drug that would save young children from a cruel disease, and this was wonderful, though why save abstract children if their own child wasn’t among those to be saved? Those evenings returned clearly in her memory, Chopin’s nocturnes playing softly, Michel sometimes suggested an album of Berber music, he said the beat of the tambourine soothed his weariness and distress, but she really couldn’t stand those tambourines, and then they’d go to bed in that little apartment overlooking an unadorned square in Paris, and they’d love each other with an intense love, but from that love a baby was never born.

And why was she wondering just then about the why, in this place that wasn’t hers, on this desolate plain shrouded in August heat? Perhaps because Greta, two years younger, had produced two splendid children? That was the word exactly, produced, and she regretted thinking it, the word was somewhat obscene, but at the same time she sensed its intimate truth, the truth of flesh, because the body produces, and flesh reproduces itself, propagating, when it’s alive, through the vital humors circulating within it, when there’s water, that amniotic fluid of the placenta nourishing the tiny witness who’s received the transmission of the flesh. Water. She felt she’d grasped that everything depended on water and all she could do was ask herself if her own body lacked water, if she too couldn’t avoid the destiny of her people who’d fought against the desert for centuries, resisting the sand that covers everything, and who then had to surrender and go somewhere else, and by now the wells were all buried where her ancestors once lived, only dunes remained, she knew that. Panic invaded her, her gaze wandered, lost, over that yellow plain where a too-red sun was beginning to set. And in that moment, she saw the horses.

A herd of a dozen horses, maybe more, almost all of them gray, some dappled. And a little farther on, head raised proudly as though he was the leader, a black stallion pawed at the ground and whinnied. The horses weren’t far, no more than two or three hundred meters, yet she hadn’t seen them, and only now, looking at them, it seemed to her that they were looking at her, and then the black stallion whinnied louder, and as though their mutual gaze were a sign of agreement, the horses started forward in waves on that trembling hot afternoon, the stallion shook his mane, whinnying louder now, and began galloping on, dragging the herd behind him. She watched them advance, unable to move, realizing that the space of the vast plain had distorted the view, they were more distant than she’d thought, or they were taking too long to approach, like certain scenes in films where movements occur more slowly in space, almost like liquid, as though their bodies were endowed with a hidden grace revealed only by a strange sorcery. They advanced like this, the horses, with that fluidity a dream sometimes offers, almost as though they were navigating in the air, but their hooves were touching the ground because behind them rose a thick curtain of dust, veiling the horizon. They advanced, changed formation, now a line, now fanning out, now splintering off as if each had a separate aim, and finally reuniting in a compact line, each head and neck following the same rhythm, the same pace as they fanned out again like an ocean wave of bodies. For a moment she thought of fleeing, but realized she couldn’t. She turned toward the animals and stood still, hands crossed over her breasts as if to protect them. In that moment the black horse halted, planting his hooves in the dust, the whole herd stopped with him as though an unknown conductor’s baton had decreed a pause in that mysterious ballet without music, it was only an interval, this she understood. She watched and waited, they were no more than ten meters away, she could see their huge moist eyes, their pulsing nostrils, the sweat shining on their backs. The black horse raised his right hoof as circus horses do when the show begins, kept his hoof raised, then bolted ahead, circling around her, his hooves scoring a perfect circle in the soil, and then, almost as if this were an agreed-upon signal, all the other horses began following after, first at a trot, then at a gallop that gained in intensity, their speed set by the stallion’s, like a crazy whirling merry-go-round with broken brakes. So she saw them streaking by, an ever faster circle, so fast there was almost no space between them, only a wall of horses become one horse, the uninterrupted shape of a horse whose head resumed with a tail and whose tail was a head; and the hooves, raising a cloud of dust all around her resounding on the dry ground, seemed to her like the pounding of drums from a place she didn’t recall but sensed with utter clarity, and for a moment she saw hands beating the drum skins, the music rising to her ears emerged from the soil, as if the earth were shaking, she sensed it, before reaching her ears it climbed from her feet to her legs, her torso, heart, brain. Meanwhile the horses were circling, ever faster, fast like her thoughts gone circular, a thought that thought itself, she was aware only of thinking she was thinking, nothing more, and in that moment the leader of the herd, in the same sudden way he’d drawn the circle, now broke it, and with an unexpected swerve that seemed to defy the laws of nature, he slanted off dragging the whole herd behind him, and the horses galloped away.

She stood there, watching the shimmer of the straw specks raised in the dust as they glinted in the sunset, she thought she should keep thinking of not thinking of anything, she sat down and scraped at the grass stubble, searching for the ground, the sun was disappearing and the orange light already held hints of indigo, up there the horizon was circular, it was the only thing she was able to think, that the horizon was circular, it was as though the circle drawn by the horses had expanded to infinity, transmuting into the horizon.