Where’s that bottle? There were still a few dregs from the source in it. I drink to the source, to the archangel, to the breeze beating the bushes, and no more bars, oops someone’s coming. A woman, Mathilde, not Mathilde, it can’t be, I hear her stepping down from a leafy grove by Botticelli…
He shouted, “Who’s there?”
He grabbed the meat cleaver. The kitchen door was opening… “It’s me, Brigitte… Is Gertrude out? Who are you?” Alain put down the bottle, empty, saw the art books lying open, the matt blade in his hand. Waves pulsed through his head. “What? Who? Let’s see, Alain. I saw you at my show, at Fortuné’s, right?”
The intruder, in narrow jacket and white beret, slender-necked, was in truth Botticellian — but that poor lopsided face, those enormous twelve-year-old’s eyes seared by the fires of hell, you’re ill, tell me. You look crazy, that’s natural, it will happen or it won’t happen, keep drinking, there’s more left. Alain smashed the neck of another bottle and held it out to Brigitte, golden bubbles splashing onto the books and foaming all over his hand, my hands are incredibly filthy, I’m going to disgust you, Mademoiselle. Don’t drink it all, I’m thirsty too. The intruder asked, “Did Gertrude go out?”
“Out with her lover, by Jove!… Have a seat, you’re charming. Not feeling so well? Make yourself comfy and tell me all about it. You can trust me, you know. My head hurts, but that’s what a fine wine will do…”
“Who are you?” the intruder repeated in so penetrating a tone that she found her answer. “You’re French, aren’t you? An artist? But what is that for?” She was pointing at the meat cleaver. He cried out in a low voice, “Touch that and I’ll…” It almost sobered him. Damn the whole pack of you, don’t think I won’t put up a fight! Brigitte said, “You’re drunk. You can’t stay here. Come to my house, where you can sleep. Come on, get up.”
He smiled, beatifically compliant. Young, clear-featured, staggering with tiredness. “Your word is my command, Empress. You’re superb. Have another swig to please me, and I’ll finish the bottle…” Brigitte took a few swallows of the cheerful wine.
“Give me your arm. No one will ask any questions. Minus-Two knows me.”
“Minus what?”
(The algebraic X, the dot, the reduction to the abstract, to nonexistence. Minus times minus equals plus…)
“Franz. He lost a leg and an arm, so we call him Minus-Two. He’s a very good man.”
“What if I finished him off? Then he’d be minus everything. Zero. The ideal point.”
Alain spun the cleaver into the air and caught it like a juggler, nearly falling over in his exuberance.
“But there’s no ideal point,” she said mournfully, “and nothing is ever finished.”
He stuffed the cleaver into his clothing and took the Botticelli book under his arm. Under the arch of a bridge, blown there by the wind perhaps, he searched for a glimpse of water. There was none. Brigitte helped him up a ladder. “Lie down. Go to sleep.” Alain dropped onto the bed, opened the art book. The book fell from his hands. How good it is to fall asleep at last, how…
Every morning Herr Schiff the schoolmaster paid a visit to his lilac bushes. Neither the heat of the fires nor the cement dust in the air had deterred them from flowering. The force of simple vegetal vitality. His shrubs enjoyed more space and light, now that there were no houses around. Schiff pruned a few deviant spears, for the plant will be hardier if it concentrates its sap in a few well-proportioned branches. Then he noticed the silence. A blissful silence. Suspiciously so. What did it mean? The gravel crunched under the uneven step of Franz the cripple.
“Good day, Herr Professor. How are your lilacs doing? You’re a happy man, Herr Professor, to have such splendid blooms… Donnerwetter! Always so pleasant in your domain.”
The little garden measured less than eight yards square. Its wrought-iron railings, uprooted in some places, ballooned like a metallic sail in others. The neatly raked walk was the more enticing for the fact that it led nowhere: intimacy without issue. The diabolical stone lacework all around was kept at bay by this smooth path with its reminder that humble toil, order, and perseverance existed, and might still (albeit exceptionally) claim their reward from the very jaws of pan-destruction. To build and rebuild without tiring, without end, was that not man’s mission? Or not so much his mission as his chore. How many times was Rome rebuilt? Some nod of providential approval, Herr Schiff was sure of it, had spared this tiny corner of the world for the benefit of three lilac bushes, one of them stunted… A bomb could so easily have fallen here; flames had licked at the bushes, the smoke could have suffocated them, but Schiff, his gravel, his flowers, and his gardening shears had pulled off a gentle and astounding victory.
“My congratulations, Herr Professor,” said Franz.
The amputee was looking white and chapped, as though his skin were encrusted with lime scale. His voice sarcastic, slightly breathless. The hook where his hand used to be gleamed like the part of some bizarre machine. Herr Schiff felt vaguely uneasy.
“To what do I owe this compliment, Herr Noncommissioned Officer?”
“To your lilacs. Are there still any birds about, Herr Professor?”
“Yes. Look up there, a new swallows’ nest, up in the corner of the third window of Herr Kettelgruber’s apartment.”
Of course, neither Herr Kettelgruber nor his apartment existed, but the nest was there among the ruddy stones. With swallows dashing in and out, veering through the wide bays filled with sky.
“Marvelous,” said Franz.
“Indeed it is! Divine nature! What is new, Herr Noncommissioned Officer? Those swallows have returned from Egypt.”
“A lot of our boys won’t be returning from Egypt.”
Old Herr Schiff’s head wobbled erratically, as if about to lose its balance and fall off a neck which had been sliced through long ago.
“It’s the end, Herr Professor, and the beginning, for as I’ve heard you say, an end is always a beginning… Only one never knows if the new beginning won’t be worse than the end… The Americans, the British, the New Zealanders, the Kaffirs, and the Patagonians are in the city. Another hour or so and you’ll be able to show them your lilacs, assuming they are fond of flowers.”
“What? What? Ah yes, I understand.”
But Schiff did not understand. He groped for his stick with a doddering hand. Unable to find it, he leaned against the contorted fence.
“It was only to be expected,” he said after a few seconds. “Germany is finished for the next fifty years… Fifty years, I tell you, Herr Noncommissioned Officer!”
“As little as that? And when the fifty years are up, our grandchildren will pick up the noble dance right where we left off, I suppose!”
Seeing the papery old face turn haggard with bewilderment and dismay, Franz toned down his teasing.
“You are a peaceful citizen, Herr Professor. I suggest that you hang a white rag out the window. Then call your pupils together. Keep them from hanging about anywhere near the tanks. Very inconsiderate, tanks, they crush things and spit bullets just like that, for the hell of it.”
“You’re right, Herr Franz. I am a peaceful citizen, I have been so all my life. The true human ideal is one of orderly concord… No, I swear that Germany will never initiate another war, never… There will be no revenge, there will never be a just revenge… I say to you: Enough!”
He was rambling. He was thinking. An old schoolteacher who couldn’t prevent himself from rambling when he thought he was thinking.
“How about a sprig of lilac,” Franz said, “for my buttonhole?”