5. Emmanuel
. . . . .
Altogether I considered myself lucky this time. Emmanuel led a charmed life. I hoped maybe he would take me to Africa some day, how fantastic that would be. There I was sure to find others of my kind. That’s what I thought, I don’t know why. So, I didn’t understand one morning when he sat on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands. Léa had woken him up before leaving for school, and since then an absolute flurry of calls allowed him no rest.
Why does it never stop, he thought. Like I’m on an endless trapeze, swinging from one bar to the next and the next. Ulrich from Berlin, saying can I send two bands to the festival this weekend instead of one. Then Mona, will she see me tonight at the Chapelle? And Violette, are we still on for lunch? Hugo the bassist, he won’t be at rehearsal. Jean-François, can I make the meeting half an hour earlier? Nadine, she wants to sing me her new song on the phone. Philippe, about last week’s video. Kimi, the press release. And it goes on and on. I wish—at this he glanced around the room—I wish I could be that gray speckled rock there from the beach on Belle-Ile. I wouldn’t have to move, if I were that rock, not answer the phone, not anything. I could have peace. And time, pounding away at me like waves on the shore, would be as nothing.
The next I knew, Emmanuel had ceased talking and the most absolute, most beautiful silence I have ever known, took over. The silence spread around me like a calm sea, quieter than the sea. Yet there was no darkness. On the contrary, the light fell upon me from all about, and I felt the warmth of the morning sun pouring in through the window. Even at night, when the room was dark, what little there was of light hovered and danced in the air like a fine dust.
Nor was I the least afraid of my strange condition. Was I aware of having form? Somehow, the stillness in which I was embedded filled me with contentment and for the longest time—what was time?—it did not occur to me to wonder when I might get out. I was utterly self-contained. Why, where, should I escape?
However, if I was not impatient with my state, neither was I indifferent. I liked to be touched, as any sentient creature does when approached in the right way. Oblivious I was to the daily hours except for the waxing and waning of the light, like a slow extended breathing, though maybe it was not slow. How would I know? But every so often he held me in his hand, his fingers wrapped around my water-worn form and lifted me from the table, tossed me in the air, and I thought my heart would burst with joy. Does a rock have a heart? Did I? Who could speak for us, if not?
There was, naturally, a certain paradox in my position: a traveling soul who dwelled in a rock. I thought that was funny, and sometimes I just wanted to laugh. Unfortunately, I had not mouth nor muscles to laugh with. I had to settle for thinking my laugh, Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. It was not the same.
Would I ever move again? The curious thing was, at no point did I become anxious about my situation. I watched the question float into my thoughts, saw it turn around and stretch its arms, then gently sink away. Would I move again? And who did I think could answer me?
Occasionally, when the sky had been cloudy for days, I became aware of missing the sun’s warmth. After all, if a rock could think—this rock at least—then it could remember, and also forget. I forgot there was a sun, and that I was a rock, and those lapses (I later understood) were a way of enduring too.
I imagined that with enough willpower I might move myself, even just a little—a rock rocking on its rounded haunches. The trick was to concentrate; and I was nothing if not concentrated. I practiced at night, visualizing my compact form, then with a snap throwing my weight to the other side of me. It might have been a new sort of martial art I had invented. Was that a rush of air I felt scraping over me? But desire alone did not suffice. I kept trying, with a blind persistence more like instinct. It helped that I often forgot why I was striving for such a negligible result—every time I looked, to see which parts of me were touching the table, I found that nothing had changed. Until one morning. I’m sure it was morning because the sun was pouring over me when the impossible happened.
Suddenly I wobbled.
And with no hands! Surely there wasn’t anyone to witness my achievement, but nonetheless. The rock moved.
While I was engaged in such pastimes, it dawned on me that the summer was passing before I noticed. Frankly, I had lost track of the rhythms of the light. It seemed to me that the air had cooled slightly, and also, when I remembered about him, that it had been a while since Emmanuel held me in his hand. Maybe he was away on vacation. Vacation? I had to remind myself what that meant. Like a time of emptying. Had my thinking slowed? Was it affected by a mineral process now, that would absorb it altogether one day into inert matter?
Since I was this far, I began to wonder about my options for the future. I couldn’t recall if I had ever gone to college, perhaps it was not too late. But wait, no, that was a reflex left over from some other life. How I would like to be a tree, to live hundreds of years in a forest of old trees, like a chorus shaking our wooly heads at every passing breeze. To be home, in that way, to so many other creatures. Or I should like, and why not, to be a piano—vegetable and mineral both, and air, precious air, always breathing more life into me. Only, how could I wish myself there? Who would send me, through which eyes? And Emmanuel, was it possible anymore to return to him?
My, oh my, he does go on, that one. Have you ever heard such riprap?
A real triptrap on that one.
Full of scripscrap spilling every which way.
Who said that? I had no eyes to see, yet with a little effort I discerned a pattern in the light: my entire surface was more sensitive than I had imagined, enough to register light’s impression upon the other surfaces around the room. From what I could see, in my fashion, nobody was there. So, who had spoken just then? How was it I heard those voices?
Is anyone there?
Who are you calling anyone?
If this was communicating, we were not off to a good start. I decided to wait.
I heard voices, I said at last, not understanding how I was even speaking. Are you ghosts?
Ghosts? Hah, that’s rich! Are you?
I had to admit that I was not.
Don’t tell us you’re a new one.
I don’t know. How would I know if I’m new or old? I’ve been traveling for a long time.
How long is long to you?
Tell me this, I replied. We appear to be having a conversation.
You could call it that.
All right, then, how do we all hear each other? Where are you? Are you in this room?
No doubt you’re just getting started.
Don’t encourage him. He’ll only have more questions.
Why do you keep calling me ‘he’?
See?
Because that was your last home, the man who lives in this place. And yes, we are here too. See the closet door? Yours truly. The double window leading to the balcony? My distinguished colleague. The black telephone on the other side of the table? My other, no less distinguished, colleague.
So why did you never speak before?
When before? We’ve been talking all the time. Or rather, when we feel like it. Which is not really so often, as it turns out.
But often enough.
Quite, yes, often enough, thank you.
Excuse me, can I interrupt?
Ah, more questions. Why, certainly. How can we help you?
I considered how it would look if Emmanuel were to walk in at that moment. It wouldn’t look like anything at all. A rock and a door and a window and a phone. Just some things in a room having a nice discussion.
Well, for a start, if you don’t mind, can you tell me how did you all end up here?
The first thing you should know is we didn’t end up. We move on, that is our nature. The nature of traveling souls. But how did we get here, you ask. In my case, the story goes back some thirty years. At the time, I was a university student, a French girl whose father died in the Algerian war a decade earlier. She was a fervent Marxist, or something of the sort. She had gone to a group meeting that night, in this very room, and when the fellow who lived here, a young lecturer at the university, claimed that a Jewish family was kept hidden in this flat throughout the war, her eyes grew wide. “If only these walls could talk,” she remarked, in a burst of inspiration. Although she was staring right at the door. “How I wish I could hear what they’d say.” See, you have to be careful what you wish for. Here I am still, all these many years later.
Then can’t you move on? I asked.
Of course, I can. And one of these days I will. It’s quite an education, you know, being a closet door. Oh, the things I could tell; only I won’t. Open and shut, open and shut, that part never changes. But you begin to realize how indispensable you are, and how people take you for granted when you’re the one who knows all their secrets. As for the girl, though, she would have been keenly disappointed after all that. Walls don’t talk, no matter what you do to them. Unless they’re inhabited, that is. And if the walls in this room ever did talk, they haven’t since I arrived on the scene, I can assure you. However, that armchair over there used to have loads to get off its chest, I thought there’d be no end, but the soul living in it grew restless and went off with the cleaning lady years ago. My friend the balcony window came along after, brought in on a pigeon dazzled by the reflections.
What’s that sound?
Oh, that? I didn’t think you’d notice. It’s the phone laughing, happens all the time. Just listens in, hears so many silly conversations inside, you can’t imagine. Gets so worked up sometimes, the phone just starts ringing. Your friend Emmanuel doesn’t like that, much as he uses the thing. No, he does not like to pick it up and find no one on the line, or worse, to land in the middle of a crossed line right when two people, strangers to him, are sharing an important moment. The phone gets a kick out of such stunts, and then to hear him rail on about French technology.
Seems like you’ve all been having a swell time, I said. But tell me, how do I get out of here?
You want out?
What for?
Well, that depends.
On what?
Luck, desire.
And the right conditions.
But what’s your hurry? Why do you want to leave us?
Maybe thirty years was not a lot of time to a rock or a wall, but it was to me. I was afraid of getting stuck there, of growing complacent. I wanted to be back among people—that was a soul’s true place, was it not? It had been a fruitful lesson for me, this stay among the woodwork. Now I was ready to go.
Yet I wondered: if there was no reliable way to calculate the number of souls in the world—were they more or less numerous than the stars?—how could we hope to have an idea of the subspecies, if that is what we were. I held that we were not only specialized but unique. We did not, to my knowledge, communicate with ordinary souls. So then, how many traveling souls were there through the wide expanse of time? Surely our kind must be everywhere, listening where they can.
Concerning the possible methods of my return, I never did get an answer from my new friends. The months passed in pleasant and intermittent conversation with them, and my desire to move on was rarely remarked upon except as a jest inherent to our circumstances.
All the same, I somehow knew my departure was imminent. I liked to wax nostalgic for my early days as a rock. The silence was pure then, without limit, serene. It was a time of innocence. I must have suspected it could not last.
But my new sense of hearing proved difficult to master. Sometimes I heard Emmanuel come in, and then I lost track of him. Next I knew, he and one of his lady friends were making their hungry animal sounds, with my good friends the closet door and the window offering up their whispered commentaries. Had I known how to stop hearing the lot of them, gladly would I have done so.
. . . . .
. . . . .
Altogether I considered myself lucky this time. Emmanuel led a charmed life. I hoped maybe he would take me to Africa some day, how fantastic that would be. There I was sure to find others of my kind. That’s what I thought, I don’t know why. So, I didn’t understand one morning when he sat on the edge of the bed, his face in his hands. Léa had woken him up before leaving for school, and since then an absolute flurry of calls allowed him no rest.
Why does it never stop, he thought. Like I’m on an endless trapeze, swinging from one bar to the next and the next. Ulrich from Berlin, saying can I send two bands to the festival this weekend instead of one. Then Mona, will she see me tonight at the Chapelle? And Violette, are we still on for lunch? Hugo the bassist, he won’t be at rehearsal. Jean-François, can I make the meeting half an hour earlier? Nadine, she wants to sing me her new song on the phone. Philippe, about last week’s video. Kimi, the press release. And it goes on and on. I wish—at this he glanced around the room—I wish I could be that gray speckled rock there from the beach on Belle-Ile. I wouldn’t have to move, if I were that rock, not answer the phone, not anything. I could have peace. And time, pounding away at me like waves on the shore, would be as nothing.
The next I knew, Emmanuel had ceased talking and the most absolute, most beautiful silence I have ever known, took over. The silence spread around me like a calm sea, quieter than the sea. Yet there was no darkness. On the contrary, the light fell upon me from all about, and I felt the warmth of the morning sun pouring in through the window. Even at night, when the room was dark, what little there was of light hovered and danced in the air like a fine dust.
Nor was I the least afraid of my strange condition. Was I aware of having form? Somehow, the stillness in which I was embedded filled me with contentment and for the longest time—what was time?—it did not occur to me to wonder when I might get out. I was utterly self-contained. Why, where, should I escape?
However, if I was not impatient with my state, neither was I indifferent. I liked to be touched, as any sentient creature does when approached in the right way. Oblivious I was to the daily hours except for the waxing and waning of the light, like a slow extended breathing, though maybe it was not slow. How would I know? But every so often he held me in his hand, his fingers wrapped around my water-worn form and lifted me from the table, tossed me in the air, and I thought my heart would burst with joy. Does a rock have a heart? Did I? Who could speak for us, if not?
There was, naturally, a certain paradox in my position: a traveling soul who dwelled in a rock. I thought that was funny, and sometimes I just wanted to laugh. Unfortunately, I had not mouth nor muscles to laugh with. I had to settle for thinking my laugh, Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. It was not the same.
Would I ever move again? The curious thing was, at no point did I become anxious about my situation. I watched the question float into my thoughts, saw it turn around and stretch its arms, then gently sink away. Would I move again? And who did I think could answer me?
Occasionally, when the sky had been cloudy for days, I became aware of missing the sun’s warmth. After all, if a rock could think—this rock at least—then it could remember, and also forget. I forgot there was a sun, and that I was a rock, and those lapses (I later understood) were a way of enduring too.
I imagined that with enough willpower I might move myself, even just a little—a rock rocking on its rounded haunches. The trick was to concentrate; and I was nothing if not concentrated. I practiced at night, visualizing my compact form, then with a snap throwing my weight to the other side of me. It might have been a new sort of martial art I had invented. Was that a rush of air I felt scraping over me? But desire alone did not suffice. I kept trying, with a blind persistence more like instinct. It helped that I often forgot why I was striving for such a negligible result—every time I looked, to see which parts of me were touching the table, I found that nothing had changed. Until one morning. I’m sure it was morning because the sun was pouring over me when the impossible happened.
Suddenly I wobbled.
And with no hands! Surely there wasn’t anyone to witness my achievement, but nonetheless. The rock moved.
While I was engaged in such pastimes, it dawned on me that the summer was passing before I noticed. Frankly, I had lost track of the rhythms of the light. It seemed to me that the air had cooled slightly, and also, when I remembered about him, that it had been a while since Emmanuel held me in his hand. Maybe he was away on vacation. Vacation? I had to remind myself what that meant. Like a time of emptying. Had my thinking slowed? Was it affected by a mineral process now, that would absorb it altogether one day into inert matter?
Since I was this far, I began to wonder about my options for the future. I couldn’t recall if I had ever gone to college, perhaps it was not too late. But wait, no, that was a reflex left over from some other life. How I would like to be a tree, to live hundreds of years in a forest of old trees, like a chorus shaking our wooly heads at every passing breeze. To be home, in that way, to so many other creatures. Or I should like, and why not, to be a piano—vegetable and mineral both, and air, precious air, always breathing more life into me. Only, how could I wish myself there? Who would send me, through which eyes? And Emmanuel, was it possible anymore to return to him?
My, oh my, he does go on, that one. Have you ever heard such riprap?
A real triptrap on that one.
Full of scripscrap spilling every which way.
Who said that? I had no eyes to see, yet with a little effort I discerned a pattern in the light: my entire surface was more sensitive than I had imagined, enough to register light’s impression upon the other surfaces around the room. From what I could see, in my fashion, nobody was there. So, who had spoken just then? How was it I heard those voices?
Is anyone there?
Who are you calling anyone?
If this was communicating, we were not off to a good start. I decided to wait.
I heard voices, I said at last, not understanding how I was even speaking. Are you ghosts?
Ghosts? Hah, that’s rich! Are you?
I had to admit that I was not.
Don’t tell us you’re a new one.
I don’t know. How would I know if I’m new or old? I’ve been traveling for a long time.
How long is long to you?
Tell me this, I replied. We appear to be having a conversation.
You could call it that.
All right, then, how do we all hear each other? Where are you? Are you in this room?
No doubt you’re just getting started.
Don’t encourage him. He’ll only have more questions.
Why do you keep calling me ‘he’?
See?
Because that was your last home, the man who lives in this place. And yes, we are here too. See the closet door? Yours truly. The double window leading to the balcony? My distinguished colleague. The black telephone on the other side of the table? My other, no less distinguished, colleague.
So why did you never speak before?
When before? We’ve been talking all the time. Or rather, when we feel like it. Which is not really so often, as it turns out.
But often enough.
Quite, yes, often enough, thank you.
Excuse me, can I interrupt?
Ah, more questions. Why, certainly. How can we help you?
I considered how it would look if Emmanuel were to walk in at that moment. It wouldn’t look like anything at all. A rock and a door and a window and a phone. Just some things in a room having a nice discussion.
Well, for a start, if you don’t mind, can you tell me how did you all end up here?
The first thing you should know is we didn’t end up. We move on, that is our nature. The nature of traveling souls. But how did we get here, you ask. In my case, the story goes back some thirty years. At the time, I was a university student, a French girl whose father died in the Algerian war a decade earlier. She was a fervent Marxist, or something of the sort. She had gone to a group meeting that night, in this very room, and when the fellow who lived here, a young lecturer at the university, claimed that a Jewish family was kept hidden in this flat throughout the war, her eyes grew wide. “If only these walls could talk,” she remarked, in a burst of inspiration. Although she was staring right at the door. “How I wish I could hear what they’d say.” See, you have to be careful what you wish for. Here I am still, all these many years later.
Then can’t you move on? I asked.
Of course, I can. And one of these days I will. It’s quite an education, you know, being a closet door. Oh, the things I could tell; only I won’t. Open and shut, open and shut, that part never changes. But you begin to realize how indispensable you are, and how people take you for granted when you’re the one who knows all their secrets. As for the girl, though, she would have been keenly disappointed after all that. Walls don’t talk, no matter what you do to them. Unless they’re inhabited, that is. And if the walls in this room ever did talk, they haven’t since I arrived on the scene, I can assure you. However, that armchair over there used to have loads to get off its chest, I thought there’d be no end, but the soul living in it grew restless and went off with the cleaning lady years ago. My friend the balcony window came along after, brought in on a pigeon dazzled by the reflections.
What’s that sound?
Oh, that? I didn’t think you’d notice. It’s the phone laughing, happens all the time. Just listens in, hears so many silly conversations inside, you can’t imagine. Gets so worked up sometimes, the phone just starts ringing. Your friend Emmanuel doesn’t like that, much as he uses the thing. No, he does not like to pick it up and find no one on the line, or worse, to land in the middle of a crossed line right when two people, strangers to him, are sharing an important moment. The phone gets a kick out of such stunts, and then to hear him rail on about French technology.
Seems like you’ve all been having a swell time, I said. But tell me, how do I get out of here?
You want out?
What for?
Well, that depends.
On what?
Luck, desire.
And the right conditions.
But what’s your hurry? Why do you want to leave us?
Maybe thirty years was not a lot of time to a rock or a wall, but it was to me. I was afraid of getting stuck there, of growing complacent. I wanted to be back among people—that was a soul’s true place, was it not? It had been a fruitful lesson for me, this stay among the woodwork. Now I was ready to go.
Yet I wondered: if there was no reliable way to calculate the number of souls in the world—were they more or less numerous than the stars?—how could we hope to have an idea of the subspecies, if that is what we were. I held that we were not only specialized but unique. We did not, to my knowledge, communicate with ordinary souls. So then, how many traveling souls were there through the wide expanse of time? Surely our kind must be everywhere, listening where they can.
Concerning the possible methods of my return, I never did get an answer from my new friends. The months passed in pleasant and intermittent conversation with them, and my desire to move on was rarely remarked upon except as a jest inherent to our circumstances.
All the same, I somehow knew my departure was imminent. I liked to wax nostalgic for my early days as a rock. The silence was pure then, without limit, serene. It was a time of innocence. I must have suspected it could not last.
But my new sense of hearing proved difficult to master. Sometimes I heard Emmanuel come in, and then I lost track of him. Next I knew, he and one of his lady friends were making their hungry animal sounds, with my good friends the closet door and the window offering up their whispered commentaries. Had I known how to stop hearing the lot of them, gladly would I have done so.
. . . . .