Ocean Sea Read online

  you walk

  you look

  you breathe

  you converse

  you observe it,

  from the shore, I mean,

  and that one

  in the meantime

  takes your thoughts

  of stone

  that were

  road

  certainty

  destiny

  and

  in exchange

  offers

  sails

  that sway in your head

  like the dance

  of a woman

  who will drive you

  mad.

  Pardon the metaphor.

  But it’s not easy to explain

  how it is that you have no more answers

  by dint of looking at the sea.

  So now, to sum up, if sum up we will, the problem is this, that I have many roads around me and none inside, on the contrary, to be precise, none inside and four outside. Four. First: I go back to Elisewin and stay there with her, which was also the principal reason, if you will, for this journeying of mine. Second: I carry on this way and go to the Almayer Inn, which is not an entirely salubrious place, given its dangerous proximity to the sea, but which is also an unbelievable place, such is its beauty, and its tranquillity, and its airiness, and its anguish, and its finality. Third: I go straight on, I do not turn off toward the inn, and I go back to the Baron, in Carewall, who is waiting for me, and all things considered my home is there and there is my place. It was, at any rate. Fourth: I drop everything, take off this sad black cassock, I choose any other road, learn a trade, marry a witty woman who is not too beautiful, have a few children, grow old and finally die, with your pardon, serene and tired, like any other Christian. As you see it’s not that I don’t know my own mind, I know it very well but only up to a certain point in the matter. I know perfectly well what the question is. It’s the answer I want.

  This carriage races on, and I don’t know where. I think about the answer and in my mind darkness falls

  So

  this darkness

  I take

  and I put it

  in your

  hands.

  And I ask you

  O Lord Most High

  To keep it with you

  For one hour only

  hold it in your hand

  just as long as is needed

  to wash away its blackness

  to wash away the ache

  it gives both head,

  that darkness,

  and heart,

  that blackness,

  would you?

  You could

  simply

  stoop

  look at it

  smile at it

  open it

  steal a light from it

  and let it fall,

  in any case

  I’ll look

  to see where

  it is and

  find it.

  A mere trifle

  for you,

  such a big thing

  for me.

  Are you listening to me

  O Lord Most High?

  It’s not asking too much

  of you

  to ask if.

  It’s not insulting

  to hope that you.

  It’s not foolish

  to fancy that.

  And then again it’s only a prayer,

  which is a way of writing down

  the scent of an awaiting.

  Write

  where you will,

  the way

  I have lost.

  A sign will do,

  something,

  a slight

  scratch

  on the glass

  of these eyes

  that look

  without seeing,

  I shall see it.

  Write

  on the world

  just one word

  written for me

  I

  will read it.

  Lightly brush

  an instant

  of this silence,

  I will hear it.

  Do not be afraid,

  I am not.

  And may this prayer

  slip away

  with the strength of words

  beyond the world’s prison

  to who knows where.

  Amen.

  A Prayer For One Who Has Once Again Found His Way, And Therefore, to Tell the Truth, a Prayer for Me.

  Have patience, do

  O Lord Most High

  for once again it is I

  He is dying slowly,

  this man

  is dying slowly

  as if he wished

  to enjoy,

  to destroy

  the last life

  he has.

  Barons die

  as do men

  beyond our ken

  no more.

  I am here

  and it’s clear

  that my place

  was to stand here.

  The dying Baron

  wants news

  of his daughter

  no longer here

  who knows where

  she is

  he wants to hear

  she’s alive

  where she is

  she didn’t die in the sea

  in the sea

  she was cured.

  I tell him this

  and he dies

  but to die this way

  is a lesser death.

  I talk to him

  up close

  and a bit slowly

  and it’s clear

  that my place

  was

  here.

  You took me from

  a road like any other

  and patiently

  you brought me

  to this hour

  when he needed me.

  And I

  who was lost

  in this hour

  have found

  myself.

  It’s amazing to think

  you were listening

  that day

  really

  listening

  to me.

  You pray

  so as not to remain alone

  to while away the time

  you’d never dream that

  God . . .

  that God

  likes to listen

  to you.

  Isn’t that amazing?

  You heard me

  You saved me.

  Of course, if I may be permitted, in all humility, I don’t believe that there was really any need to cause a landslide on the Quartel road, something that was, apart from any other consideration, fairly irritating for the local folk, something milder would have been enough, probably, a more discreet sign, you know, something more intimate, between us two. The same holds true, if I may make a small objection, for the scene where the horses stopped dead—and there was absolutely no way of persuading them to continue—on the road that was taking me back to Elisewin. It was technically very well done but perhaps far too spectacular, don’t you think? I would have understood even with much less, do you occasionally tend to overdo things, or am I wrong? But, be that as it may, the folk down that way are still talking about it, you don’t forget a scene like that so easily. All things considered, I think that that dream of the Baron would have been enough. The one where he got up from his bed and shouted, “Father Pluche! Father Pluche!” It was a thing well done, in its way, left no room for doubt, and indeed the next morning I was already on my way to Carewall, you see it doesn’t take much, at the end of the day. No, I’m telling you this, because if it should happen again, you’ll know how to go about things. Dreams are the kind of stuff that works. If you want my advice, that’s the best way. To save someone, if need be. A dream.

  So

  I shall keep

  this black cassock

  an
d these hills

  lightsome hills

  in my eyes

  And upon me.

  In saecula saeculorum

  this is my place.

  It’s all

  simpler

  now.

  Now

  all is

  simple.

  I shall be able to do

  what remains to do

  by myself.

  If you need anything,

  you know where to find

  Pluche,

  who owes you his life.

  And may this prayer

  slip away

  with the strength of words

  beyond the world’s prison

  to who knows where.

  Amen.

  CHAPTER 3

  Ann Deverià

  Dear André, my beloved of a thousand years ago,

  the little girl who has given you this letter is called Dira. I have told her to have you read it, as soon as you arrive at the inn, before letting you come up to my room. Right to the last line. Don’t try to lie to her. You cannot lie to that little girl.

  Sit down, then. And listen to me.

  I don’t know how you managed to find me. This is a place that almost does not exist. And if you ask for the Almayer Inn, people look at you in surprise, and do not know. If my husband was looking for an inaccessible corner of the world for my cure, he has found it. God knows how you managed to find it, too.

  I have received your letters, and they were not easy reading. They open with pain the wounds of memory. If I had continued here, desiring and waiting for you, those letters would have been a dazzling joy. But this is a strange place. Reality fades away and everything becomes memory. Even you, little by little, ceased to be a desire and became a memory. Your letters reached me like messengers from a world that no longer exists.

  I have loved you, André, and I cannot not imagine how one could love any more. I had a life, which made me happy, and I let it fall to pieces just to stay with you. I did not love you out of boredom or loneliness or caprice. I loved you because the desire for you was stronger than any happiness. And I also knew that life wasn’t big enough to hold together all of desire’s imaginings. But I didn’t try to stop myself, or to stop you. I knew that life would have done it. And it did. Suddenly it all blew apart. There were shards everywhere and they cut like blades.

  Then I came here. And this is not easy to explain. My husband thought it was a place where one might recover. But recover is too small a word for what happens here. And too simple. This is a place where you take leave of yourself. What you are slips away from you, bit by bit. And you leave it behind you, step by step, on this shore that does not know time and lives only one day, always the same one. The present vanishes and you become memory. You slip away from everything, fears, feelings, desires: you keep them, like cast-off clothes, in the wardrobe of an unknown wisdom, and an unhoped-for peace. Can you understand me? Can you understand how all this—is beautiful?

  Believe me, it’s not just a way, only an easier one, to die. I have never felt more alive than I do now. But it’s different. What I am has already happened; and here, and now, it lives in me like a footprint on a trail, like a sound in an echo, and like a riddle in its answer. Not that it dies, no, not that. It slips to the other side of life. With a lightness that seems a dance.

  It’s a way of losing everything, in order to find everything.

  If you can manage to understand all this, you will believe me when I tell you that it is impossible to think of the future. The future is an idea that has detached itself from me. It isn’t important. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. I have no eyes to see it with anymore. You speak of it so often, in your letters. I struggle to remember what it means. Future. Mine is already all here, and now. My future shall be the repose of a motionless time, moments collected and placed one upon the other, as if they were only one. From here to my death, there will be that moment, and that’s all.

  I shall not follow you, André. I shall not make any new life for myself, because I have just learned how to be the dwelling place of what has been my life. And I like it. I do not want anything else. I understand your distant islands, and I understand your dreams, your plans. But the road that can take me there no longer exists. And you cannot invent it for me, in a world that isn’t there. Forgive me, my beloved, but your future will not be mine.

  There is a man, in this inn, who has a funny name and studies where the sea ends. In these last few days, while I was waiting for you, I told him about us and how I was afraid of your coming and at the same time how I wanted you to come. He is a good, patient man. He sat and listened to me. And one day he said: “Write to him.” He says that writing to someone is the only way to wait for him without hurting oneself. And I have written to you. I have put into this letter all I hold inside me. The man with the funny name says you will understand. He says that you will read it, then you will go out onto the beach and, walking along the seashore, you will think again about everything and you will understand. It will last an hour or a day, it doesn’t matter. But in the end you will return to the inn. He says that you will climb the stairs, you will open my door, and without a word you will take me in your arms and kiss me.

  I know it seems silly. But I would be glad if it really happened. Losing oneself in another’s arms is a fine way to lose oneself.

  Nothing can steal from me the memory of when, with all of me, I was

  your Ann.

  CHAPTER 4

  Plasson

  PROVISIONAL CATALOG OF THE PICTORIAL WORKS OF THE PAINTER MICHEL PLASSON, ORDERED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER STARTING FROM THE SAID PLASSON’S STAY AT THE ALMAYER INN (BY QUARTEL) UNTIL THE DEATH OF THE SAID PLASSON.

  Compiled, for the benefit of posterity, by Professor Ismael Adelante Ismael Bartleboom, on the basis of his own personal experience and other reliable testimony.

  Dedicated to Madame Ann Deverià.

  1. Ocean sea, oil on canvas, 15 x 21.6 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Completely white.

  2. Ocean sea, oil on canvas, 80.4 x 110.5 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Completely white.

  3. Ocean sea, watercolor, 35 x 50.5 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  White with a vague hint of ochre on the upper part.

  4. Ocean sea, oil on canvas, 44.2 x 100.8 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Completely white. The signature is in red.

  5. Ocean sea, drawing, pencil on paper, 12 x 10 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Two dots, very close to each other, are visible in the center of the sheet. The rest is white. (On the right-hand margin, a stain: grease?)

  6. Ocean sea, watercolor, 31.2 x 26 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection. At present, and quite temporarily, in the care of Mrs. Maria Luigia Severina Hohenheith.

  Description:

  Completely white.

  When he gave this work to me, the artist’s words were, and I quote verbatim: “It’s the best I have done so far.” The tone was of profound satisfaction.

  7. Ocean sea, oil on canvas, 120.4 x 80.5 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Two blobs of color can be seen: one, ochre, on the upper part of the canvas, and the other, black, on the lower part. The rest, white. (On the back, a handwritten note: Storm. And below: tatatum tatatum tatatum.)

  8. Ocean sea, pastel on paper, 19 x 31.2 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection.

  Description:

  In the center of the sheet, located slightly to the left, a small blue sail. The rest, white.

  9. Ocean sea, oil on canvas, 340.8 x 220.5 cm

  The Quartel District Museum. Catalog number: 87

  Description:

 
; On the right, a dark cliff emerges from the water. Very high waves, breaking against the rocks, foam spectacularly. Amid the storm, two ships can be seen as they succumb to the sea. Four longboats are suspended on the edge of a whirlpool. The shipwrecked are packed aboard the longboats. Some of them, having fallen into the sea, are going under. But this is a high sea, much higher down there toward the horizon than it is close by, and it hides the horizon from view, against all logic, it seems to be rising as if the whole world were rising and we were sinking, here where we are, in the womb of the earth, while an ever more majestic comber looms over us and, horrified, the night falls on this monster. (Dubious attribution. Almost certainly a forgery.)

  10. Ocean sea, watercolor, 20.8 x 16 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Completely white.

  11. Ocean sea, oil on canvas, 66.7 x 81 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Completely white. (Badly damaged. Probably fallen in water.)

  12. Portrait of Ismael Adelante Ismael Bartleboom, pencil on paper, 41.5 x 41.5 cm

  Description:

  Completely white. In the center, in italic script, the word Bartleb

  13. Ocean sea, oil on canvas, 46.2 x 51.9 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Completely white. In this case, however, the expression should be understood literally: the canvas is completely covered by thick brushstrokes of white paint.

  14. At the Almayer Inn, oil on canvas, 50 x 42 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  A portrait of an angel in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. The face is devoid of lineaments. The wings display a meaningful richness of color. Gold background.

  15. Ocean sea, watercolor, 118 x 80.6 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection

  Description:

  Three small blobs of blue paint on the top left (sails?). The rest, white. On the back, a handwritten note: Pajamas and socks.

  16. Ocean sea, pencil on paper, 28 x 31.7 cm

  The Bartleboom Collection