"No matter what sort of pills, and how
many,
you've got to swallow this morning, you feel it is not over for you
yet.
No matter, by the same token, how autonomous you are, how much you've
been
betrayed, how thorough and dispiriting is your self-knowledge, you
assume
there is still hope for you , or at least a future. (Hope, said Francis
Bacon, is a good breakfast but a bad supper.) This optimism derives
from
the haze, form the prayer part of it, especially if it is time for
breakfast.
On days like this, the city indeed acquires a porcelain aspect, what
with
all its zinc-covered cupolas resembling teapots or upturned cups, and
the
tilted profile of campaniles clinking like abandoned spoons and
melting
in the sky. Not to mention the seagulls and pigeons, now sharpening
into
focus, now melting into air. I should say good though this place
is for honeymoons, I've often thought it should be tried for divorces
also
- both in progress and already accomplished. There is no better
backdrop
for rapture to fade into; whether right or wrong, no egoist can
star
for long in this porcelain setting by crystal water, for it steals the
show. I am aware, of course, of the disastrous consequence
the above suggestions may have for hotel rates here, even in winter.
Still,
people love their melodrama more than architecture, and I don't
feel
threatened. It is surprising that beauty is valued less than
psychology,
but as long as such is the case, I'll be able to afford this city -
which
means till the end of my days, and which ushers in the generous notion
of future."
Julian Barnes "History of the World in ten and a half chapters" (from the 1/2 chapter):
I would have died for you but I never had the luck!
Let's start from the beginning. Love makes you happy? No. Love makes the person you love happy? No. Love makes everything all right? Indeed no. I used to believe all this of course. Who hasn't (who doesn't still somewhere below decks in the psyche)? It's in all our books, our films; it's the sunset of a thousand stories. What would love be for if it didn't solve everything? Surely we can deduce from the very strength of our aspiration for that love, once achieved, ease the daily ache, works some effortless analgesia? A couple love each other, but they aren't happy. What do we conclude? That one of them doesn't really love the other; that they love one another a certain amount but not enough? I dispute that really; I dispute that enough. I've loved twice in my life (which seems quite a lot to me), once happily, once unhappily. It was the unhappy love that taught me the most about love's nature - though not at the time, not until years later. Dates and details - fill them as you like. But I was in love, and loved, for a long time, many years. At first I was brazenly happy, bullish with solipsistic joy; yet most of the time puzzingly, naggingly unhappy. Didn't I love her enough? I knew I did - and put off half my future for her. Didn't she love me enough? I knew she did - and gave up half her past for me. We lived side by side for many years, fretting at what was wrong with the equation we have invented. Mutual love did not add up to happiness. Stubbornly we insisted that it did. And later I decided what it was I believed about love. We think of it as an active force. My love makes her happy; her love makes me happy: how could this be wrong? It is wrong; it evokes a false conceptual model. It implies that love is a transforming wand , one that unlooses the ravelled knot, fills the top hat with handkerchiefs, sprays the air with doves. But the model isn't from magic but particle physics. My love does not, cannot make her happy; my love can only release in her the capacity to be happy. And now things seem more understandable. How come I can't make her happy, how come she can't make me happy? Simple: the atomic reaction you expect isn't taking place, the beam with which you are bombarding the particles is on the wrong wave length. But love isn't an atomic bomb, ....
So where do we start? Love may or may not produce happiness; whether or not it does in the end, its primary effect is to energize. Have you ever talk so well, needed less sleep, returned to sex so eagerly, as when you were first in love? ....
A qui parler maintenent? Aupres qui prononcer le nom de Dominique, lui redonner corps, reveiller nos souvenir, les remettre au present? Le seul temoin de notre couple, notre seul ami, Helie Paumard, n'a pas pu venir, retenu au Vesinet par sa cure de desintoxication annuelle. Il a envoye une gerbe de lys, sa fleure emblematique qui faisait le desespoir de Dominique chaque fois qu'il venais diner, les corolles semant un polen undelebile sur la moquet blanche. Mais notre vieil Helie ne tirait plus ses revenue que de la rediffusion parsimonieuse des films qu'il avait ecrit jadis, la douzaine de lys rituelle etait l'unique depense futile qu'il s'autorisait encore et Dominique n'avait jamais eu la cruaute de lui dire qu'elle detestait ces fleures. Apres l'avoir embrasse dans cet elan de joie spontanee, de gratitude si sincere qui m'emerveillait toujours, elle filait dans la cuisine pour disposer le bouquet tout en coupant discretement les tiges de pollen. Le lendemain, comme je me levais le premier, j'avais la mission d'aller traquer les fleurs qui s'etaient ouvertes pendant la nuit pour leur trancher les etamines. Pauvre Helie. Mon regard chercha son dernier bouquet, a demi cache par les gens des pompes funebres qui avaient mis en avant les couronnes expediees par le maire, le journal, l'orchestre et le jury Interallie, jugees plus dignes que la simple carte marquee "Lili" surnom que seul pouvait lui faire admettre, voir revendiquer, l'enthusiasme affectueux de Dominique qui abregeait tout le monde - et j'eus un choc. Les etamines des lys etaient tranchees au ras de la corolle. J'aireculai d'un pas, la gorge serree par ce signe. Les endeuilles me regarderent. Je relevai la tete. Dans l'aveuglement du soleil entre les branches du pin, Dominique me souriait. C'etait bouleversant, c'etait doux, c'etait drole, c'etait simple; c'etait elle. Au lieu de saisir la petite pelle de terre que me tendait solonnellement le croque-mort, je sortis mon portable, cet accessoire grotesque dont le journal avait gratifie ses collaborateurs les moins presents dans l'illusion de les rendre joignables - je n'avais jamais allume cette chose que dans les embouteillages, pour telephoner a la clinique - et j'ai appele Helie Paumard au Vesinet. On me repondit qu'il etait en reunion du groupe. Je pretextai urgence, on alla le chercher. les pompes funebres, desarconnees, attendaient que j'aie fini ma communication pour achever la ceremonie. - ouais, c'que c'est? grommela Helie de la voix pateuse que lui donnaient toujours les medicaments de sevrage. - C'est Frederic. Je t'appele du Cap-Ferrat. - Voulu etre la, murmura-t-il. Connerie. - Merci pour les fleurs. Dis-moi, tu les as envoyees toi-meme? Une quinte de toux explosa a mon oreille, m'obligeant a diminuer le volume d'un coup d'index. Offusques, les convives du cimetiere dardaient sur mon portable le regard vitreux des bonnes consciences. - Interflora, finit par glisser Helie sur un ton epuise. Pourquoi, probleme? - Non, elles sont superbes. Tu as donne des consignes particulieres, au telephone? - Lys blancs, pourquoi? Ont mis des roses? - Non. - M'appelent. T'aime. Suis triste. Cet homme qui. de derives en meandres, ecrivait le francais le plus raffine que j'aie lu depuis Chateaubriand, s'exprimait comme un telegramme des qu'il fuyait ses demons pour tomber sous la coupe des medecins. Je l'imaginai, dans son jogging bleu schtroumpf, rejoignant a petits pas le cercle des Alcooliques anonymes qui, tour a tour, assis en tailleur sur les nattes, exposaient avec une lentaur abrutie par les cachets leurs raisons de boire et leur ferme intention d'arreter. chaque fois qu'il renoncait au whisky, Helie recommencait a fumer ; son pneumologue s'arrachait les cheveux, finissait par lui envoeyer une bouteille de Glenfiddish avec ses voeux de retablissement, et tout rentrait dans le desordre.