Читать книгу Beyond Homer - Benjamin W. Farley - Страница 11

Hemingway dubbed Paris “a moveable feast.” For me, it was a wanderlust’s dream. Sabbatical or no sabbatical, everyday the magical city—founded by no one less than Priam’s son, offered up something new, totally avant-garde, or ancient and crumbling, or wondrous and shocking. Even if I never left my room, simply gawking out the windows at the chimney pots and tin roofs across the street, or listening to the drone and hum of the incessant traffic, or watching from my balcony the prostitutes ply their trade in the rue below, or translating French, or sipping tea—all of it was a philosopher’s quest come true, a metaphysician’s alchemy bubbling up, intoxicatingly delicious. I had arrived in Paris at that time in my life that psychologists might call “late youth,” or “early middle years,” when the wine in ones veins is still gurgling with passion and the desire to learn. I knew what I wanted. What the next steps up the long, tedious ladder of academia should be, even if I should stumble and fall, or never make it. Or so I thought I knew. Ambitious, yet cautious, single yet ready for marriage, I wanted to write that next book, or at least get it underway, before having to return to the States and the obligations of the classroom.

At the same time, a nagging uncertainty sported with my brain. What was the ultimate intendment of my goal? My impulses felt so dull. Rereading Sullivan’s book, falling anew under its mythical sway, meeting the man in person himself, becoming bewitched by the charming spell of his incestuous bride-to-be, and forcing myself to read subjects that had lost their initial intrigue, created a burden that weighed heavier and heavier on my dubious pursuits. I knew I had to fight back, that I couldn’t surrender my dream, or find refuge in the beckoning despair of self-pity. Perhaps that was why Christine had come into my life, I rationalized: to enable me to remain human, until I could regain my élan for the academic call. Besides, I knew I was on to something, just as Sullivan was, and I wanted with all my soul to discover what that “something” was. Sullivan seemed inseparable from it. Perhaps we would find it together. That following morning I turned to Pascal to translate and draft my chapter, devoted singularly to him. He writes:

The principal illness of mankind is his restless curiosity of things he cannot know; and he is never in graver danger to his being than when he lapses into this useless and purposeless malady [Pensée 18].

In still another section, he adds:

We always find obscure the thing we want to prove, and clear the method we employ in proving it; for when we propose to prove a thing, we are so filled with the notion that it is precisely obscure, and that, on the contrary, our approach is perfect, that we grasp it too easily [40].

Pascal knew there are limits to reason. “The heart has its reasons which reason can never fathom” [277]. He knew that the processes of rationalization can only carry us so far. In his quaint pre-Kantian way, he identified two methods of knowing, or of arriving at knowledge. One he called “the mathematical,” the other “intuitive.” The first involved the ability to conceptualize and to employ logical reasoning. The second was more immediate and belongs to the realm of sensory perception. Says Pascal, somewhat condescendingly, it requires only “good eyesight.” Neither method by itself is sufficient. What Pascal really seems to have wanted was an immediate and unwavering knowledge of the truth that lies beyond the capacity of either method to establish. Without it, man tumbles headlong into an abyss of anxiety from which he is unable to extricate himself. It was his own analysis of a hellish No Exit, indigenous to the seventeenth century. In many of his pensées, Pascal examined that abyss, before attempting to resolve it. I found it exhilarating and challenging to wrestle with his dicta. But, then, that was what my quest was all about. For epistemology, or the science of questioning how we come to know, is the Holy Grail of philosophy, the quest of all quests. Oh, to know with certainty and to banish all doubt! But even philosophers recognize a pipe dream when they see it, though they smoke it every day. It is the aromatic breath of the gods: to know with certainty the truth or fate about anything!

What is man when he reflects on himself? Let him consider his place against the totality of being. He is but an aberration in a sequestered corner of nature, his lodgment but a dungeon in the universe, from which he apprehends the earth, its kingdoms, cities, and himself. What is man in the Infinite? [72]

One can take only so much dazzling, or disruptive self-examination, even from Pascal. After translating a number of other relevant thoughts, I laid my pen aside and left the room. The rains from the previous day had enveloped the city in a soft fog. Cool air settled about the streets. The cafés and boutiques huddled under wet awnings. I had chosen no particular destination for my promenade, or better, my mindless wandering. But my mind was numbed by the dozen or so homeless people I noted, asleep in doorways along the side streets. To my horror, one was the old woman I had attempted to assist on the steps of the Pantheon. She appeared comatose, her body curled in fetal position against a doorframe. I paused and stared down at this human “aberration in her sequestered corner of nature” and remembered Jesus’ famous maxim: “You will always have the poor with you and you can do for them what you will.” I squatted beside her and placed a five franc note in her wrinkled right fist. I tucked it inside her clenched fingers. Hopefully, no one else would find it, or steal it from her.

Whatever I had intended to do evaporated as a goal, as I “considered my place against the totality of being.” I wandered into a bon marché, stumbled upon a bargain department entirely by accident, and spotted rain gear on sale. I bought one and returned to the old woman. She was still asleep, the money still clenched in her fist. Perhaps it was out of sheer self-indulgence, or remorse for wrongs forgotten and lost, but I bent down and covered her shoulders with the coat. Feeling somewhat absolved and yet sad, I walked up to the Boulevard du Montparnasse and searched for a quiet café for lunch. I had lost my appetite but ordered a sandwich and beer, nonetheless. Afterwards, I hunched over a café noir. Slowly, I stirred in two lumps of hard sugar, until they dissolved into a brown froth of momentary anodyne.

Never one to waste even a glum day, I resolved to take the metro to the Louvre and revisit my favorite artworks. Upon arriving at the Louvre, I paid and mounted the stairs to gaze at the Winged Victory of Samothrace. With wings windblown and ready to take flight, the stone figurehead inspired my ascent as I drew ever closer to her pedestal. I stood before her in silence. After that, I sought out the rooms that displayed the Mona Lisa and Rembrandt’s Bathsheba. I had included a description of the latter in my published dissertation: The Ethics of Virtue, and had never tired of viewing it, again and again. Bathsheba’s comely simplicity, the contemplative look on her face, and the soft glow of lamp light about her hips and breasts, had a way of slipping into the deepest crevices of my humanity. Her nudity aroused neither lust nor inordinate desire. She was the complete opposite of Manet’s Olympia. Before leaving the museum, I returned downstairs to gawk at the Venus de Milo: the Roman counterpart of the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. For me, her statue elicited the highest sense of grace and respect for love’s mystery that a human masterpiece can create. I tried not to glance back as I departed her room. It was time to return to the pension for tea and Mme. Angleterre’s visit.

I had no idea what the concierge deemed so urgent. She brought the tray, nicely arranged with two bone-white cups and saucers, a silver creamer and sugar bowl, with spoons and forks and napkins and two small shimmering peach tarts. “The British know how to do it better than we, but, voila, Monsieur. Just for you!” she gestured with a flourish of her hands, after setting the tray on my desk.

“Well, do take a seat and tell me what’s up,” I smiled.

“Ohh, a pension’s secrets, Monsieur! The walls have eyes, you know, and ears. Don’t be upset if I whisper.”

“Whisper away,” I grinned. “You’ve got my ears burning with curiosity, and my mouth salivating over these tarts.”

“Ohhhh, you charming devil, if only I were younger and pretty, like the English mademoiselle. You like her, non?”

“Oui. She’ll do in a rainstorm.”

“Ahhh, l’amour, it isn’t just for the young, you know? I was married myself,” she boasted shyly. “But Robert was killed in the war; actually, during the Resistance. They shot him not far from here.”

“I’m humbled to hear that.”

“Humiliating was more like it. They lined him up with three others and gunned them down. Bang! Bang! Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!” she motioned, as if spraying the room with a machine gun. “They left them on the sidewalk of the Rue D’Ulm for their families to take away. But, that’s not why I’m here!” she frowned, regaining her composure. “It’s to share a little scandal, oui!”

“I’m listening.”

“Alors! It’s Mme. Dufavre. She’s hiding a man in her apartment, a lover, I do believe. He comes late at night and leaves before anyone can see him. I’ve watched him do it three times.” She sipped her tea, while munching on the sticky tart. She wiped its glaze off her fingers and onto her apron, never once touching her fork or napkin.

“But how do you know he’s her lover? Maybe he’s just a friend, or relative?”

“Ohhh, Professeur! Come now, we’re adults!” she said, raising her voice a tiny pitch. She completed eating her tart and, tilting her head back, drained the cup to the last drop of tea, then wiped the saucer with her napkin.

“My grandmother used to do that, only she drank her tea, or rather coffee, from a saucer. Perhaps that’s an old French custom.”

“I think there’s more to Madame’s lover than—,” she paused, as if searching for the mot juste, “sensuality,” she beamed.

“Oh!”

“Yes! Definitely! I think he’s the thief who killed the old woman across the street.”

“How do you know that, or that the motive was a theft?”

“The old woman was rich, they say. Kept her money in a pillow slip. The Madame knew her. She used to be a lodger here.”

“Still, murder and theft would be hard to prove.”

“I know, so I don’t tell anyone but you.” She leaned forward and stared curiously at me. “I’d keep an eye on her. She’s a strange one, I tell you. Beware!”

Seeing I had finished my tart and tea, Mme. Angleterre gathered up the tray, with its empty dishes, and walked toward the door. I rose to open it for her.

“Remember. Watch your back.”

“Yes! Thank you. I will.”

After the concierge left, I returned to my desk to mull over her “secret.” I hardly believed that Dufavre and her visitor were murderers or thieves. Why would Mme. Angleterre have even posed the possibility, unless she herself were implicated, or entertained an incredible, creative imagination, or thwarted desire for riches of her own? I could only assume the latter disjunctives, but, surely she wasn’t involved! But that wouldn’t be the first time a concierge was at fault. There were always whispers in the dining room about previous concierges, who had cheated Dufavre of clients’ money. “They come to your room, pretend that Dufavre is ill, and that she has delegated them to collect the rent,” the two companions to my right had explained. The short, black-haired one had shaken his head with great disapprobation. “Terrible! It was terrible!” he stated, with a dour look. “She made us pay again, twice! Called us ‘Stupid!’ Oui!”

I didn’t doubt it.

That evening, as I sat at table, I surveyed the room, wondering if any of the pensioners present might be involved. The Japanese rarely came down to eat. They cooked in their room. You could smell their food the moment you entered the stairwell. Dufavre frequently threatened to oust them, but they were still there. Other than the Belgian and Christine, the other guests were all Frenchmen, or widows, and elderly at that. One old gentleman always came down in coat and tie, smartly dressed, save for his unpolished shoes, and would line up a row of spices and hot sauces to douse on each course, save for his dessert. That was usually a pudding or tart. Once in a while I would see him in the park, reading newspapers, or playing boules with a small cadre of other old gentlemen.

The only younger pensioners were Christine, myself, the Japanese, and a French woman in her thirties, along with her teenage daughter. They sat at the far end of the salle à manger, near Christine. Both had dyed their hair red; wore short skirts, and squabbled quietly between themselves. Sometimes the mother would suddenly stand up, throw her napkin in her plate, and denounce her daughter for all to hear. My knowledge of her colloquial slang was limited, but I gathered she was accusing the girl of bringing boyfriends to their room when she wasn’t there. Since they didn’t room on my floor, I had no idea how true her accusations might be. The two guys to my right would turn their heads and listen with amused interest. “Alors! There you go, Gaston! No more bus rides across town. Oui?”

“Silence!” Gaston would blush. He was the taller of the two and younger as well.

The Belgian was an engineer and worked for an electrical company on the outskirts of Paris. He dressed conservatively—dark trousers and gray shirts, with black ties, and kept to himself. He never once spoke to me, but he would nod respectfully toward Christine and greet her with a smile. Maybe he was the one? To my knowledge, he roomed in the top floor, just under the attic, which was reserved for the dishwasher, server, and cook. It was unheated, and I always felt sorry for them. They wore the same clothes, or outfits, everyday, appeared clean, but, as in the case of the server, no amount of cologne could disguise or suppress their body odor. I never knew the cook’s name, but the dishwasher was a tall, dark haired French girl, obviously poor, but pretty. The server was a shorter woman of medium height, jet black hair, her face always white from an over-application of facial powder, and her lips a bright red. Her name was Madame Cueillier. The dishwasher simply referred to herself as, “Charlene.” She would have made a good match for Gaston. Surely none of these were suspects!

Upon returning to my floor, I walked down to Christine’s room and knocked on her door. She had left the dining room earlier, glancing secretively at me.

“Hello!” she said, as she opened the door. “We still on for tomorrow?”

“Yes! You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

“Heavens, no! Remember, I have quite a story for you. But I want it to wait till tomorrow.”

“Will I like it?”

“Maybe!” she cooed, with teasing eyes. “Tomorrow! After we’ve eaten dinner, I’ll tell you. At the café-bar! Ok? Just come for me up here.”

“Sure! There’s a great little place on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, I’ve been wanting to try. We’ll go there.”

She opened the door enough for me to step in. “Kiss me,” she said. “I need a kiss, till then.”

I complied and returned to my room.