It was late afternoon on a clear winter day when I wandered into this hinterland, and, following a railroad cut, which gradually rose to become an embankment, went under an overpass, and reached a square that in any suburb would have been large enough to make one rub one’s eyes, and was also quite remarkable.
On one side it was bordered by the railroad station, on an embankment several stories high, on all the other sides by buildings huddled together, also distinguished from the previous ones by the fact that every single one was a shop. Nothing characteristic of a suburb could be detected around that extended rectangle, emerging from its surroundings brightly lit by the streetlamps, the shopwindows, the neon signs, the waiting room, animated by the trains streaming into and out of the lower level of the station (on the upper level apartments with laundry hanging out to dry), while the sparrows, looking for a sleeping place, were as audible from the plane trees to the newly arrived observer as the cars, the train whistles, and the one-armed bandits in the three or four cafés.
Not only because of its three bakers, three butchers, three flower shops, Vietnamese delicatessen, North African restaurant, its newsstand that carried international papers: this was a real town. I had an experience similar to that of my friend the painter with Vigo, the place he had entered through a mirror, as terra nova, which had been there for ages, a planet unto itself, pulsing and vibrating just as now when he discovered it; or similar to that of Filip Kobal with his karst, where he, who for a good part of his life had been on intimate terms with every pile of stones, had one summer evening taken a step off the beaten path in this little highland, usually visible at a glance, and found himself on a “second karst,” right next to or behind the familiar one, with similar desert villages, whose lights, reflected at night here and there in the clouds, had always been present, but for him constituted a fresh, a young light.
Thus I, too, upon arriving in this unexpected place, was excited and at the same time sure of myself. There was something here for me to do. Yet it did not occur to me that I could ever reside or live in this neighborhood. I wanted only to work here. The square, with the railroad platforms up on the embankment, would be my field of activity.
And my activity was to consist chiefly of what suited me best, as I had recognized in the meantime: observing. Hadn’t I always been a good observer? One whose manner of empathizing had often not merely influenced events but actually created them? Whenever I had taken the stage as a hero or man of action or intervenor, I had made a fool of myself, if not in front of others, then in my own eyes. But as soon as I became an observer, I felt that I was coming into my own, and that my way of observing was almost the only action possible for me. And I remain convinced that actors become gloomy without an audience and go back to war. Yes, all those gloomy competent ones: I would rather be a bright spectator, as when I started out.
Yet my observing had never become anything steady, seldom extended beyond an hour, and besides was more a question of luck than discipline (in the sense of an athletic discipline). But now, immediately upon my arrival, I had the idea of steadying it, by making it my work, “for an entire year.”
Daily, from morning to evening, I would do nothing but record what took place before my eyes on this suburban square and in its environs. I would spend the nights elsewhere, back in Paris, or even farther out, in Versailles.
And as my place for writing I had in mind a room on the second floor of the Hôtel des Voyageurs, where, as I immediately found out, one could rent a room for several months at a time. I would sit there close to a view out the window through the plane trees, with nothing but paper and pencil, would also need no table; as a writing surface I would wish for a windowsill as wide as the one back home in Rinkolach, where doing homework would pass imperceptibly into looking out, far and farther, and vice versa.
At the window of the Hôtel des Voyageurs my observing, my empathizing, and my writing would be one. My hand would be guided by nothing but the happenings outside, and if an image, a thought, or a daydream interposed itself, it would be welcome material for my notes, provided it materialized or hove into sight only as a result of my attention to the external world and immediately made way again for this and its yearlong annals.
I pictured my project as child’s play, as effortless and free of strain and constraint as I had always wished the work of writing might be. Working while at rest, as part of resting, out of restfulness; working as the great form of resting.
And what did I promise myself from this kind of year of simply recording? Something to read; a book, airy, penetrating, full of discovery, oblique as none had ever been; the kind I myself needed to read. And why should it be set here, of all places, in such a place? And furthermore without a plot? Because it was a place in which I trusted myself to spend an entire year as nothing but a hardworking observer, and because I wanted to read a book whose locale would not grow a second head from previous knowledge, not a Paris book, not an America book, not an Arctic book, and also not a book that would dissolve into mere atmosphere for made-up stories.
In this respect I can say that I believed in the place at first sight, and consequently also saw something to do there. In its presence I felt more unrestrained and at the same time more blessed with space than by the Dead Sea or in the Gobi Desert. And I was certain that here I would succeed, if anywhere, in remaining an observer.
The fact that I would be merely a guest, and only during the day, assured that I would not be co-opted by the square in any way; I would not be in danger, as I might as a resident, of finding myself called upon to participate and abandoning my observation post. And aside from that, the place itself seemed ideal for the policy I had developed over the decades: “Participate by observing!” In this place I was exactly where I belonged with my project, and yet it would never become my home. Any such prospect would have been a threat to me. What I saw before me, however, I experienced as a promise, a moderate and nicely modest one.
An additional factor was that while I was circling the square, slowly and unceasingly as evening fell — a brightly lit stadium surrounded by near-darkness, a rump metropolis, New York’s Bronx surrounded by chestnut forests — my ancestors, the dead ones, from far away in the village of Rinkolach on the Jaunfeld, also those interred in the Russian taiga, could be felt walking by my side. What a rare occurrence. Otherwise they turned up almost only in conjunction with those images I had of the future in which I was a resistance fighter in a world war, and they gave me their approval there, and almost only there. But this place and my plan for it meant even more to them. This was the place and the approach that would make them most consistently present to me. Here and thus, with my observing and recording, they could be counted on to be constantly and reliably butting in. And those interred in the taiga would also light my way in the form of a bud on one of the wintry linden trees up on the railroad platform. That was how it was.
And I was also certain that I had something even better ahead of me than the resistance struggle I had so often daydreamed into existence. The locale, my future realm of action and inaction, seemed, as the workday drew to a close, as indestructible as it was inexhaustible. Here there would not be the same danger as with systematically recording one’s dreams, which as a result of the process became more and more fuzzy and finally ceased altogether, or were no longer worth mentioning. Here, as I envisioned it, recording things would, on the contrary, cause the events to blossom, day after day. All the objects, obscure corners, and likewise people’s gestures, as well as their postures, would present themselves to me for the long haul as unspent, imperishable, always good for a new surprise, in bright contrast to not only Austria and Germany. Here I would not have to begin by summoning up and ordering the physicality of the world by means of scientific, religious, philosophical inquiry, would not have to rely on the miracles of the moment. For me something would be happening, taking place, and revealing itself constantly, and that would be true not only for this one hour but for at least an entire year. There, for me and my way of thinking, was where it was. It was there.