translated by Linda Ledford-Miller
First Excerpt
After an exchange of four messages, Hugo was at the door of his sister’s house, waiting for a strange woman whom he had never seen. It wasn’t the first time this had happened to him. In New York, many years ago, he had shown up at a meeting with a young woman he’d met over the phone when she complained about an abusive electric bill. He didn’t remember her name; what he did remember, yes indeed, was that she had the voice of a gospel singer. Although in those days music was still a distant future in his life, there was already something in him that music appealed to, a muscle or a nerve that would only awaken to a specific tone. The telephone operator had that tone. After a conversation that ended with corrected bill and an invitation, Hugo learned to accept the power that hearing had in our lives. The timbres, the tones, the nuances; of voices, of birds, of the multitudes; the power that sound had to make someone smile or cry, to provoke fear or joy. The power that sound had to be music, and not just sound. If all the sounds of nature had a tone, then the voice of that young woman on the phone was a gift, because her timbre was not like that of the others; she didn’t share the same human frequency.
The girl was blind, he later discovered.
They went out to dinner once. The second time they went out, they went to a bar in Brooklyn, near her house. Now, with cigarette in one hand and the other in the pocket of his coat, planted at the door of an apartment in the street of Green Windows, Hugo was feeling like the dumbest of the dumb. When he remembered it all, he blushed: the way the girl took him home; the way she sat him down on the sofa in a room decorated with impoverished taste — but did a blind woman have taste? There was a cuckoo clock in the hallway that, incorrectly adjusted, sounded a false hour. He remembered how she put the cane on the floor. The way, on her knees, she groped along his pants until she found his fly. He recalled his feeling of horror, but more than that, of immense excitement, when the girl couldn’t find his sex, couldn’t insert it correctly into hers, and the guttural sounds, yet, magnificent sounds that she let flow from her throat at the moment of an orgasm that came too quickly, improvised: a Bach fugue in G minor. They never saw each other again. Or at least, he never saw her again. It was with the bitter taste of this pathetic mental joke that he discovered Elsa standing in front of him.
Second Excerpt
Stockman’s email.
I read it during a really hot afternoon, at the end of August, when my wife and daughters were away for a vacation week in the country. I had the house to myself, and I liked that. I was shocked when I turned on the computer and saw that I had a message from Luis. I’m lying: it wasn’t a message but rather a letter.. If it had been typed, it would take up several pages, perhaps as many as the letter left to Stockman. I was surprised by the length and complexity of the text. My friend was not much of a fan of computers. He adapted to email late, principally because of professional commitments and at the insistence of his agent. When he wrote, he did it in short phrases, poorly punctuated, without the care that a more attentive person would give to the construction of sentences or grammar. This, however, was a different email. It came to me like a wave of words as far as the eye can see, with that invisible order that we know exists in a smear of text that we don’t so much read as intuit as a work of great precision. Not common for him.
I spent several hours reading. I did it in ten minutes, the first time, and read it again all afternoon, each time more slowly, each time more absorbed, each time more incredulous. Stockman wrote better than I, but that didn’t scare me. I knew that my friend would be an expert at anything he did with passion. What frightened me was the unexpected depth of his emotions, the intensity of his words and, finally, the shock of discovering that he would probably never come back, that I had lost him.
It happened like this: he met Catherine on a very hot day. The humidity was so brutal that while going down Saint-Laurent Boulevard toward Little Italy he felt like he was losing his mind. He bought a hat in a corner shop to protect himself from the sun. He turned into Jeanne-Mance Street, in a residential neighborhood with brick houses whose façades were decorated by diagonal iron staircases. He went up one of these staircases and knocked on the door. A young woman of about thirty opened it. When she saw him, all sweaty, his clothes clinging to his skinny body, the hat hiding part of his face, she embraced him. Stockman suddenly froze. He wrote exactly that: I froze. It was at the same time a summer day and a winter day. Then the woman took a step backwards, and when Stockman took off his hat, she put her hand over her mouth. Stockman noticed how beautiful her fingers were.
“I’m sorry,” she said in French. “I confused you with someone else.”
They were now separated by the open door. Catherine blushed, crossing her arms. From the interior of the apartment Stockman sensed the aroma of wood and varnish. He introduced himself. He said he was a friend of Édouard. She replied that she had only been with Édouard twice; she asked if she could do something for him, saying that if he needed help with an instrument, he should have called first.
“I remind you of someone,” said Stockman.
Catherine looked at him. In her eyes there was a mixture of familiarity and fear. Her hair was light brown, curly, in a ponytail. Over her clothing she wore a close fitting beige apron that she used for working the wood.
“Yes, that’s true. Someone I haven’t seen for a long time.” “It’s because of him that I’m here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m also a musician. A pianist.”
Stockman passed his hand through his grey hair and felt the sweat that had accumulated there.
“Do you mind if I come in? It’s unbearably hot.”
Catherine hesitated a moment and then moved aside to let him pass. The apartment was unusually cool, the air conditioning eliminating the torture of summer. They crossed a hallway in half-light and then a large door opened onto a studio full of instruments. It was a small space, but thoroughly organized. On the right side were the double basses in various shades, from yellow to dark brown, the arms framed on horizontal supports; in the center was a work table, with a large tourniquet, chisels, brushes, dismantled sound boxes, guitar bottoms, carillons, tuning pegs, coffee cups. In a nearby ashtray a cigarette was burning; Catherine grabbed the butt and extinguished it. An ancient, string less double bass rested in a support.
“At the moment I’m very busy with a couple of mandolins,” said Catherine, opening a small refrigerator and filling two glasses with water. She handed him one and sat down on a footstool. “I’ve never worked with pianos.”
She had a sad look, thought Stockman; as if she lacked some crucial element of the blood and suffered a congenital sadness as a result. He sat on a half broken chair that was leaning against the wall.
“I didn’t come looking for help, “he replied. “I came to talk about this person that I remind you of. “
“You could be twin, did you know?”
“I knew.”
“Except that there’s something different about your gestures. More self-
confidence perhaps. Or arrogance. After all, it takes guts to knock on the door of someone you don’t know and go into her house.”
“It wasn’t a conversation that I would be capable of having by telephone.” “Are you related?”
“I don’t know.”
She tilted her head to one side, confused.
“So?”
“He supposed so.”
“Supposed?”
Stockman looked at the ground. He saw that the laces of one of her shoes were untied. He thought about leaning over and tightening them, as if that could put off the next moment. Then he drank water from the glass in one gulp and told her that the man of whom they were speaking had died. He registered her expression of surprise, then of shock, and then of profound sadness. Catherine asked him what had happened. Stockman described, briefly, the strangeness of the suicide. Catherine remained silent for a few minutes. Then she got up from the footstool and leaned against the wall with arms crossed.
“You came here to tell me this story?”
“I came here because I’m looking for an answer. I met him, and I concede that we were very similar. But I didn’t believe in ghosts. ”
“And now you do?”
“I believe that if he were my shadow, then I am also his shadow.”
“Do you mind saying something that makes sense?”
She was annoyed, as if suddenly her sadness had become anger. “We wrote exactly the same composition. Or rather, he wrote it. He left me a long letter, saying that I was his other, the half that he was missing. And then, on a staff, he scribbled a melody that only I knew.”
“He was disturbed,” argued Catherine. “I don’t know if you know that. Aside from drink, I suspect that at times he was involved in drugs. He lived by night. He ate only trash; he sent without sleep for days.”
“That doesn’t mean that he was crazy.”
“It means that he had one foot here and the other, who knows where. I told him one time that he should go away. This city was going to be the end of him. He missed his family. I believed that, I thought it was the best thing for him. I thought it would do him good to disappear for a while.”
“The exact opposite happened.” She swallowed dryly and squeezed here arms more strongly around her torso. “It’s not your fault,” said Stockman softly. “It’s no one’s fault. If anyone’s guilty, it would be me, for living so many years believing in the wrong things.”
“What things are those?”
“Believing that we are original. Or that we are unique.”
“And we aren’t?”
Stockman couldn’t avoid an ironic smile.
“If you could see us, side by side, would you say that you were in the presence of two different men?”
“I already told you. Your posture is different.”
“Yes, I heard that. More arrogant. Perhaps I am a bit more arrogant. Or full of myself, as they say. And isn’t that simply the way we were raised, or how our lives turned out? Imagine that his life had gone well. That he had some success, that he didn’t have drinking problems. Can you imagine him then? We would be the same, right? “
“It seems to me that in the end you’re the one who went crazy.”
“I am not crazy, or even verging on crazy. On the contrary.”
“Well. You are completely lucid,” commented Catherine, with lifeless sarcasm. “Did he ever talk to you about this? About a twin?”
She shook her head.
“We talked mainly about ‘Nutella.’”
“What?”
“The double bass that he bought. I worked on it. He started calling it ‘Nutella’
because of the color.”
“Did you like the music he played?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I heard him a few times. He was committed and hard working. Or he was, for a few years.”
“And you liked him?”
“In what way?”
“Meaning liking. Or loving.”
Catherine avoided Stockman’s gaze.
“That’s a rather personal question.”
Stockman got up and went closer to her. Catherine moved away.
“I only ask because I feel like I’ve know you for a long time.”
“We’ve just met.”
“He was working on a composition, wasn’t he?”
“It’s possible. He said many times that he wanted to be a musician, not just play.”
“Where did this composition come from? Do you know where he got the inspiration?”
“You talk a lot, but you don’t listen well. I’ve already told you that I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Stockman leaned against the opposite wall and they stood face to face, looking at each other. He tried a few notes, found the C sharp and began to sing. He sang the melody that he knew so well with his own hands. When he finished, Catherine was watching him. She didn’t know what to say and looked at him touched, though with commiseration.
“So?” asked Stockman.
“It brings something to mind, yes.”
“What?”
She uncrossed her arms and let them fall along her sides. She was looking at the ceiling.
“One night he showed up here. It was very cold. Perhaps it was snowing, I don’t remember. I know that he knocked on my door and asked if I had a tape recorder. I wanted to know why, and he replied that my house was the closest. He seemed possessed by some idea and was afraid of forgetting it. It was pretty late, and I couldn’t find the tape recorder, which is why he stayed in the room, walking from one side to the other, humming something. I was very sleepy, I swear. I only felt like hitting him.” She smiled gently. “I found the damned thing. He yanked it from my hands, pushed the button and started recording. He did exactly the same as you. He leaned against the wall and started humming.”
Catherine lowered her eyes from the ceiling and looked at him intensely. Stockman felt that, finally, she was beginning to understand.
“Was it the same melody?”
“It was a long time ago. Hard to say.”
“And where is this tape recorder?”
Catherine wrinkled her eyebrow.
“He took it home that night, but I think he returned it. It must be around here somewhere, lost. I never needed it again.” She paused. “Why?” “It was a cassette recorder?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe the cassette is still in it.”
He stayed in the studio while Catherine went, for the second time, to look for an old recorder lost among the innumerable objects that constitute a home. He turned to sit down in the broken chair and looked at the double bass with strings that rested on the easel. The feminine form of the instrument was more than evident, the long neck ending in the gathered hair of a nymph; but it wasn’t these details that awoke his attention. Above all the color of the instrument attracted him, a rare nut-brown, like dark chocolate covered by a layer of sugar. He imagined that it could have been Hugo’s double bass, his other, and he felt a strange tenderness.
Catherine returned after some time. She had removed the apron, and Stockman noticed her small breasts. She was carrying the recorder in her hand. She handed it to him. Stockman opened the top; there was a cassette in it. He rewound it and pushed the button. He held the recorder, the two of them in silence, as if they expected a call from a distant planet. They soon heard a noise, like a drawer banging or a door closing. The sound of Catherine’s voice arose, distant, grumbling something imperceptible. Silence again. Then a voice came on the recording, a man’s voice. Stockman felt the hair on his arm stand up; for a few instants it was as if he had lost all his other senses, the world funneled into that remote, archaic sound that came out of that cassette forgotten by time.
The man’s voice hummed the same melody that he had hummed for Catherine. It wasn’t that, however, that left him shivering from his feet to his head; it was the fact that the voice from the recorder was identical to his, as if he were hearing himself, in another time, parallel to this one, but necessarily real; or, at least, as real as this, though perhaps without any reality. The recording lasted less than a minute. The voice disappeared and the silence of an empty cassette followed. Far from being a complete composition, what was recorded on that tape was little more than an idea, a grouping of notes on a supposed chord of C sharp. But it was someone’s idea; as impossible to imitate or reproduce as the soul or timbre of a voice that, moments before, had been imitated and reproduced by a small machine which could only register, with the indifference of things without soul and without timbre, what was dictated to it.
Stockman got up, feeling his body fleeing. He rested the recorder on the chair. Then, step by step, he approached Catherine. Leaning against the wall, she put her hand to her mouth and cried. With the other arm she hugged her own waist, trying to contain her spasms. Perhaps, thought Stockman, the truth had finally found its path to her heart and she cried for death and the miracle of the resurrection. He went to her and embraced her; they remained that way for a long time, at the edge of nothing, discovering together the absence of meaning in this world.