Sinais e Simbolos e Apostasia Ficcional

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Apostasia ficcional: caminhos da fé verdadeira Ian McEwan Escritor britânico inquire os motivos pelos quais um leitor deveria se dedicar a relatos que não correspondem à realidade. O texto percorre o caminho que vai da descrença na invenção literária à retomada da fé na ficção, promovida pela constatação de que ela pode conter não só o que cria como também o que está no mundo. * Como um clérigo do fim da era vitoriana que se debate, no escuro, com suas Dúvidas, tenho momentos em que minha fé na ficção vacila, até chegar à beira de um colapso. Eu me vejo perguntando: 'Será que eu sou mesmo um fiel?'. E depois: 'Será que algum dia fui?'. As primeiras a cair são as narrativas desconjuntadas e distorcidas da ficção experimental. Ach"¦ fazer o quê? Depois, o milagre da concepção virginal do realismo fantástico. Quanto a este, porém, eu sempre fui meio recalcitrante. É quando as águas geladas do ceticismo começam a subir em volta do próprio realismo que eu sei que minha longa noite teve início. A empresa toda se vê privada de sentido. Romances? Eu não sei como ou quando suspender minha descrença. O que um Henry imaginário disse a uma Sue inexistente, a infância solitária de Henry, sua guerra, seu divórcio, seu êxtase e sua luta com a verdade e o quanto ele é um espelho de seus tempos --eu não acredito em uma só palavra; nem no artifício enferrujado de fingir que o clima tem alguma coisa a ver com o estado de espírito de Henry nem no artifício enferrujado do fingimento. Quando o deus da ficção deserta você, tudo tem que ser abandonado. A igreja forrada de livros e o púlpito com microfone, a respeitosa congregação, o catecismo do entrevistador, confissões disfarçadas de perguntas, a fila de suplicantes em busca do poder curativo de um autógrafo, a bênção ou a maldição do resenhista. Confesso que já estive naquele tipo de mesas-redondas em que, com outros fiéis, entoa-se a liturgia que diz que os humanos são fabuladores, que "não podemos viver" sem histórias. 30.jan.2010/France Presse

Transcript of Sinais e Simbolos e Apostasia Ficcional

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Apostasia ficcional: caminhos da fé verdadeiraIan McEwan

Escritor britânico inquire os motivos pelos quais um leitor deveria se dedicar a relatos que não correspondem à realidade. O texto percorre o caminho que vai da descrença na invenção literária à retomada da fé na ficção, promovida pela constatação de que ela pode conter não só o que cria como também o que está no mundo.

*

Como um clérigo do fim da era vitoriana que se debate, no escuro, com suas Dúvidas, tenho momentos em que minha fé na ficção vacila, até chegar à beira de um colapso. Eu me vejo perguntando: 'Será que eu sou mesmo um fiel?'. E depois: 'Será que algum dia fui?'. As primeiras a cair são as narrativas desconjuntadas e distorcidas da ficção experimental. Ach"¦ fazer o quê? Depois, o milagre da concepção virginal do realismo fantástico. Quanto a este, porém, eu sempre fui meio recalcitrante. É quando as águas geladas do ceticismo começam a subir em volta do próprio realismo que eu sei que minha longa noite teve início.

A empresa toda se vê privada de sentido. Romances? Eu não sei como ou quando suspender minha descrença. O que um Henry imaginário disse a uma Sue inexistente, a infância solitária de Henry, sua guerra, seu divórcio, seu êxtase e sua luta com a verdade e o quanto ele é um espelho de seus tempos --eu não acredito em uma só palavra; nem no artifício enferrujado de fingir que o clima tem alguma coisa a ver com o estado de espírito de Henry nem no artifício enferrujado do fingimento.

Quando o deus da ficção deserta você, tudo tem que ser abandonado. A igreja forrada de livros e o púlpito com microfone, a respeitosa congregação, o catecismo do entrevistador, confissões disfarçadas de perguntas, a fila de suplicantes em busca do poder curativo de um autógrafo, a bênção ou a maldição do resenhista. Confesso que já estive naquele tipo de mesas-redondas em que, com outros fiéis, entoa-se a liturgia que diz que os humanos são fabuladores, que "não podemos viver" sem histórias.

30.jan.2010/France Presse

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O escritor Ian McEwan durante entrevista em Cartagena, na Colômbia, em janeiro de 2010

Você não pode viver, os padres sempre insinuam, sem eles. (Ah, mas podemos.) O meu coração em dúvida tropeça quando entro na seção de ficção de uma livraria e vejo as torres infindas sobre as mesas de lançamentos, as frases súplices na capa ("Ele a amava, mas ela seria capaz de ouvi-lo?"), as sinopses da trama na sobrecapa em seu sincero presente verbal: "Henry se liberta de seu casamento e embarca em uma série de loucas...".

É aí que eu acho que vou para o túmulo sem ler "Anna Kariênina" pela quinta vez, ou "Madame Bovary" pela quarta. Eu estou com 64 anos. Com sorte, posso ter ainda uns bons 20 anos de leitura pela frente. Quero saber do mundo! Mandem cosmologistas falando da criação do tempo, analistas do Holocausto, aquele filósofo que aderiu à neurociência, aquele matemático que consegue descrever a beleza dos números para um imbecil, o historiador das ascensões e quedas dos impérios, os fãs da Guerra Civil Inglesa.

Descontados alguns prazeres literários bem espaçados, o que é que eu vou saber quando terminar mais um romance, além do remorso ou do triunfo de Henry? Será que um romancista pode me fazer o favor de me explicar por que a Revolução Industrial começou, ou como o bóson de Higgs confere massa às partículas elementares, ou como evoluiu a moral, ou o que Salieri achava do jovem Schubert em seu coro? Se eu me importasse minimamente com os choramingos de um Henry, eu poderia ler uma das "Dream Songs" de John Berryman em menos de quatro minutos. E, com as 15 horas assim poupadas, me deter sobre algum relato jurídico (eventos reais!), uma cartilha tão boa quanto qualquer outra sobre a estranheza e a selvageria do coração humano.

Essa apostasia se infiltra pela larga brecha que separa o fim de um romance e o começo de outro. Não é um bloqueio, não é tanto uma longa noite quanto uma

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questão de profunda indiferença. A felicidade está em outros lugares. Podem se passar meses e aí vir uma mudança, um realinhamento. Começa com um cutucão. Um detalhe, uma frase ou uma oração podem promover o princípio de um retorno ao rebanho. Não precisa ser brilhante. Só tem que exsudar certo tipo de calor imaginativo.

Uma recente reversão à fé começou com a releitura de dois contos. (A brevidade é persuasiva.) O primeiro foi o discutidíssimo e elogiadíssimo "Sinais e Símbolos", de Nabokov.

Um casal de velhos abatidos visita o filho mentalmente perturbado num hospital psiquiátrico, no dia do aniversário dele. A mãe não usa maquiagem. Em vez disso, "ela apresentou um rosto branco e nu à mesquinha luz dos dias da primavera". Tom perfeito e um ritmo que se enrosca em torno de um paradoxo discreto ou modesto --a primavera, convencionalmente portadora de esperança, traz apenas críticas à aparência pessoal.

O segundo foi "Twin Beds in Rome", de John Updike. Os Maple decidiram se divorciar, mas, em termos sexuais, um não consegue deixar o outro em paz. Por hábito, eles tiram umas férias na Itália. Chegando lá, Richard acha seus sapatos, que lhe pareciam perfeitamente confortáveis em casa, uma fonte de tortura e mal consegue andar. Ele e

Joan topam com uma sapataria romana onde ele compra um par de mocassins pretos de couro de crocodilo. "Eram apertados, por terem um formato elegante, mas estavam mortos --eles não mordiam com a veemência vital, enfurecida, dos outros." Eu gostei daquele "mortos". O crocodilo estava morto, sugere essa tranquila observação. Uma criatura viva deve ter sido a causa do tormento dos sapatos americanos. O cotidiano, segundo a própria formulação de Updike, recebe o que lhe é lindamente devido --em termos cômicos e nada ambíguos.

Um ex-aluno da Universidade Cornell lembrou na revista literária "TriQuarterly": "Acaricie os detalhes", Nabokov dizia, com o "r" vibrante, numa voz que era a carícia ríspida da língua de um gato, "os divinos detalhes!".

Aceito de bom grado o conselho. Não emito qualquer grande juízo a respeito das sentenças acima; só digo que elas marcaram o começo de um derretimento em minha indiferença. Tanto uma como outra ilustram o generoso talento com que a ficção comenta o microscópico rendilhado da consciência, as letras miúdas da subjetividade.

Ambas são relatos em terceira pessoa que contêm uma pérola de experiência emprimeira pessoa --a luz mesquinha da primavera, os sapatos que não estão mais vivos e não mordem. Ao apreciar essas linhas, você não está só em sintonia com seus autores mas também com todos que as apreciam. No ato do reconhecimento, as rígidas fronteiras do eu cedem um pouco. Isso não acontece quando você fica sabendo o que um bóson de Higgs faz.

Eu tenho uma lembrança de mim quando criança, acariciando um detalhe de um romance. Evocar esse momento é mais uma forma de restaurar a fé na

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ficção. A experiência foi hipnótica e deixou marcas para toda a vida, pois me mostrou como os mundos da realidade e da ficção podem se interpenetrar. Eu estava com 13 anos, sozinho na biblioteca da escola, enfeitiçado por "O Mensageiro", de L.P. Hartley. Seu herói, Leo, vindo de origens humildes, passa as férias de verão de 1900 com um colega de escola cuja família é dona de uma imensa casa de campo.

O foco, claro, é o papel de Leo como mensageiro num caso amoroso ilícito. Contudo o que me atraiu foi a onda de calor de julho e o fascínio do menininho pelo termômetro da estufa e por saber se ele chegaria a 40 graus. O exemplar daquela semana da revista satírica "Punch" chega à casa e, nele, um desenho mostra "Mr. Punch sob uma sombrinha, enxugando a testa, enquanto Toby, o cachorrinho, murchava atrás dele com a língua de fora".

Eu me lembro de largar o livro e, num gesto inspirado, atravessar a biblioteca até onde estavam guardados os antigos volumes encadernados da "Punch", pegar o volume de 1900 e ir até julho. E lá estavam eles, o cachorro morrendo de calor, a sombrinha e Mr. Punch, apertando um lenço contra a testa! Era verdade. Eu fiquei cativado, extasiado com o poder de uma coisa simultaneamente imaginada e real. E, por um breve instante, senti uma tristeza nova, uma saudade de um mundo do qual eu estava excluído. Por um momento eu tinha sido Leo, vendo o que ele via; e aí estava de volta a 1962, no internato, sem amantes que me usassem de correio, sem onda de calor, só com aquele pequeno vestígio dentro de uma revista amarelada.

Eu não via isso assim na época, mas tinha percebido como o realismo pode ganhar força por meio do verdadeiro. Vinte anos depois, eu tentaria por conta própria. Coisas que nunca aconteceram podem se emaranhar com coisas que de fato aconteceram; um ser imaginário pode dar a mão para o real de carne e osso, pode morar na sua casa, como um Henry meu um dia morou, pode ler tudo que você leu e até fazer amor com sua mulher. O ateu pode se deitar com o fiel, a enciclopédia, com o poema. Tudo que foi absorvido e meditado durante os meses sem fé --ciência, matemática, história, direito e todo o resto-- você pode levar com você e colocar em uso quando voltar mais uma vez para a única fé verdadeira.

Sinais e Símbolos:  o conto de Nabokov.

 

1.

 

Pela quarta vez, em uma quantidade equivalente de anos, ambos se defrontavam com o problema da escolha de um presente de aniversário para um jovem com distúrbios mentais incuráveis. Ele não tinha desejos. Os objetos manufaturados eram colméias

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do mal, vibrantes de atividades malignas que só ele era capaz de perceber ou, então, eram apenas consolos grosseiros para os quais não encontrava aplicação em seu mundo abstrato. Depois de eliminarem uma série de produtos que poderiam ofender ou assustá-lo (qualquer coisa na linha dos gadgets, por exemplo, era tabu), seus pais escolheram uma bobagenzinha inocente e graciosa: uma cesta com dez tipos diferentes de gelatina de fruta, acondicionadas em dez pequenas jarras.

 

Na ocasião do seu nascimento já eram casados há muito tempo; uma porção de anos se passou e agora estavam bastante velhos. Ela usava roupas pretas e baratas. Seu cabelo mole e  cinzento era arrumado de qualquer jeito. Diferente das outras mulheres da mesma idade (como a Sra. Sol, sua vizinha de porta,cujo rosto era todo rosa e malva de pintura facial e seu chapéu era um cacho de flores lacustres), ela expunha sua face à luz crítica dos dias primaveris. Seu marido, e que no velho continente havia sido um homem de negócios, razoavelmente bem sucedido, ficara totalmente  dependente do irmão  Isaac,  um americano de verdade fazia quase quarenta anos. Eles o viam raramente e o apelidaram de "o Príncipe".

 

Naquela sexta-feira tudo deu errado.

O metrô perdeu sua corrente vital entre duas estações e, por um quarto de hora, não se ouvia nada senão a batida comportada do coração e o sussurro das folhas de jornal. O ônibus que precisavam tomar em seguida os deixou um tempão à espera e, quando chegou, vinha lotado de escolares tagarelas. Chovia forte quando ambos subiram caminhando a ladeira marrom que conduzia à clínica.  Ali esperaram mais uma vez; e, em vez do filho se arrastando para a sala como de hábito (seu pobre rosto coberto de acne, mal barbeado, emburrado, confuso), uma enfermeira que conheciam, e de quem não gostavam, finalmente apareceu e, alegremente, explicou que ele tinha novamente tentado o suicídio. Ele estava bem, disse, mas a visita poderia perturbá-lo. O local era muito mal administrado e as coisas eram misturadas facilmente, ou então, perdidas. Por causa disso decidiram não deixar o presente no escritório e só levá-lo para o rapaz na próxima visita.

 

Ela esperou seu marido abrir o guarda-chuva para lhe segurar o braço. Ele pigarreava de modo especialmente barulhento, como seu costume quando se sentia perturbado. Alcançaram  a cobertura da parada de ônibus, situada do lado oposto da rua, e ele fechou o guarda-chuva.  Alguns passos adiante, sob uma árvore gotejante e tangida pelo vento, um filhote de ave estrebuchava numa poça de água.

 

Durante o longo percurso até a estação do metrô, ela e o marido não trocaram palavra;  toda  vez que ela olhava para suas velhas mãos (veias inchadas, pele marcada de manchas marrons) estrebuchando, ainda agarradas à alça do guarda-chuva, ela sentia uma pressão crescente de lágrimas. Quando olhou em volta para enganchar sua mente em algo diferente, ela sentiu um choque suave, uma mistura de compaixão e surpresa, ao notar que uma das passageiras, uma menina de cabelo escuro, unhas vermelhas e sujas no dedão do pé, estava chorando no ombro de uma mulher mais idosa. Com quem se parecia ela? Ela se parecia com Rebecca Borisovna, cuja filha havia casado com um dos Soloveichicks - em Minsk, fazia anos. Da última vez em que ele o havia tentado seu método tinha sido, nas palavras do médico, uma obra prima de inventividade; ele teria sido bem sucedido

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se um outro paciente invejoso não tivesse acreditado que ele estava conseguindo voar - e o segurado. O que ele realmente queria conseguir era fazer um buraco no seu mundo e escapar.

 

O sistema dos seus delírios havia sido assunto de um artigo elaborado numa revista mensal científica, mas muito antes disto, ela e seu marido haviam decifrado aquilo sozinhos. "Mania referencial" foi o nome que Herman Brink atribuiu a este quadro. Em tais casos, bem raros, o paciente imagina que tudo que acontece a sua volta é uma referencia velada a sua personalidade e existência. Ele exclui pessoas reais da conspiração - porque se considera muito mais inteligente do que os outros homens.  A natureza fenomênica rastreava seus passos por onde quer que ele fosse. As nuvens no céu arregalado transmitiam umas às outras, por meio de lentos sinais, informações incrivelmente detalhadas a seu respeito. Seus pensamentos mais íntimos eram discutidos ao cair da tarde, num alfabeto manual por obscuras arvores gesticuladoras.Seixos, manchas ou marcas do sol formavam padrões que representavamterríveis mensagens que ele precisava interceptar. Tudo era uma cifra e de tudo era ele o tema. Alguns dos espiões eram observadores neutros, como a superfície das vidraças e poças de águas paradas; outros, como os casacos expostos numa vitrine, eram testemunhas preconceituosas, no fundo, linchadoras; outras, novamente (água corrente, tempestades) era histéricas até alcançarem à insanidade e ainda por cima, mantinham uma opinião distorcida sobre ele, interpretando com erros grotescos todos os seus atos. Era preciso permanecer vigilante para devotar cada módulo e minuto da vida para decodificar a ondulação das coisas. O próprio ar que exala será indexado e arquivado.  Se apenas o interesse que provocasse estivesse limitado ao seu ambiente mediato - mas, infelizmente, não era assim! Com a distância as torrentes selvagens de escândalo aumentavam de volume e volubilidade. As silhuetas dos corpúsculos sanguíneos ficavam mil vezes ampliadas, flutuando sobre vastas planícies; e, ainda mais longe, enormes montanhas, de solidez e alturas insuportáveis, resumiam, em termos de granito e ao grunhir dos pinheirais, a verdade última sobre o seu ser."

 

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Quando emergiram dos trovejares e ares poluídos do metrô, as sobras do dia vinham misturadas às luzes da rua.  Ela queria comprar um pouco de peixe para o jantar e entregou-lhe a cesta com as jarras de gelatina dizendo-lhe  que seguisse direto para casa. Ele subiu até o terceiro andar e então lembrou que, mais cedo, dera-lhe as chaves. Sentou-se nas escadas em silêncio, e em silêncio também se levantou quando ela chegou, mais ou menos dez minutos depois, arrastando-se pesadamente pelas escadas, rindo amarelo, balançando a cabeça como se pedindo desculpas pela tolice. Entraram no apartamento de dois cômodos e ele imediatamente se dirigiu ao espelho. Repuxando os cantos da boca com os polegares, com uma careta horrível de máscara, removeu a incomoda dentadura nova e cortou os chifres compridos da saliva que ainda o ligavam a esta. Leu seu jornal em língua russa enquanto ela punha a mesa.  Ainda lendo, comeu os alimentos pálidos que não requeriam dentes.  Ela conhecia seus humores e permaneceu silenciosa.

 

Depois que ele foi para a cama, ela continuou na sala, segurando um baralho de cartas manchadas e uns velhos álbuns de fotografias. Através do quintal estreito onde a chuva tilintava no escuro 

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contra latas de lixo amassadas, janelas mansamente claras mostraram-lhe   um homem de calçaspretas, deitado sobre uma cama em desalinho,  seus cotovelos nus erguidos. Ela fechou as persianas e examinou as fotos. O rostinho dele estampava mais surpresa do que o da maioria dos bebês. De uma dobra no álbum a empregada alemã que tinham tido em Leipzig escorregou para fora, mais seu noivo de rosto gorducho. Minsk, a Revolução, Leipzig, Berlin, Leipzig, a frente inclinada de uma casa fora de foco. Quatro anos de idade, num parque: timidamente, de modo temperamental e de testa franzida, desviava o olhar de um esquilo ansioso, como o faria também diante de qualquer estranho. Tia Rosa, uma velhota angular, bisbilhoteira, de olhos esgazeados, que vivera num mundo tremulante de más notícias, falências, acidentes de  trem,  tumores  -  até  que os alemães a mandaram para a morte, junto a toda aquela gente que lhe causava tantas preocupações. Seis anos de idade -  esta foi a época em que ele  desenhou maravilhosos pássaros com pés e mãos humanas, e começou a ter insônia como qualquer adulto. Seu primo,  agora um jogador famoso de xadrez.Ele novamente, mais ou menos aos oito anos, já criança  difícil de entender, tinha medo do papel de parede no corredor, medo de uma imagem em um  livro  que ilustrava simplesmente uma idílica paisagem,com rochas na colina e um velho carrinho pendurado nos galhos de uma árvore sem folhas. Aos dez anos: o ano em que deixaram a Europa. A vergonha, apenas, humilhações e dificuldades, crianças cruéis, feias e atrasadas com as quais havia sido colocado naquela escola especial. E então chegou uma época na sua vida, coincidindo com a longa convalescença de pneumonia quando aquelas pequenas fobias, que seus pais teimosamente  consideravam como excentricidades de uma criança prodigiosamente bem dotada, pareceram ter congelado num emaranhado de ilusões que interagiam logicamente, fazendo com que ele se tornasse totalmente inaccessível às mentes normais.

 

Isto, e muito mais, ela aceitou - pois afinal de contas viver significava  perder uma alegria atrás da outra, no caso dela nem mesmo alegrias - meras chances de melhora.  Ela pensou nas intermináveis ondas de dor que, por uma razão ou outra, ela e o marido tiveram de suportar; dos gigantes invisíveis que feriam seu filho de uma forma impossível de imaginar; da quantidade incalculável de ternura contida no mundo; do destino dessa ternura,  ser esmagada, gasta ou transformada em loucura; das crianças negligenciadas murmurando consigo mesmas por cantos mal varridos; do belo mato que não consegue esconder-se do fazendeiro e impotentemente observa a sombra de sua corcunda simiesca ao passar  largar atrás de si flores retorcidas enquanto se aproxima a monstruosa treva.

 

3.

 

Passava da meia noite quando, na sala de estar, ouviu os gemidos do marido. Logo ele cambaleou até a sala, usando como robe seu velho casado de gola de astracan que ele preferia ao novo roupão azul."Não consigo dormir," ele disse."Por quê?", perguntou, "por que você não consegue dormir? Você estava se sentindo tão cansado.""Não consigo dormir porque estou morrendo," respondeu e deitou-se no divã."É alguma coisa no estômago? Quer que eu telefone para o Dr. Solov?" " Nenhum médico, nenhum médico," gemeu. "Que vão pros diabos! Precisamos tirá-lo de lá depressa. De outro modo seremos responsáveis. Responsáveis!", repetiu, e sentou-se subitamente, com os dois pés no chão, batendo na testa com o punho fechado."Tudo bem," ela mansamente revidou,"vamos trazê-lo para casa amanhã de manhã.""Gostaria de tomar chá," disse seu marido, e caminhou para o banheiro.Curvando-se com dificuldade ela recolheu do chão algumas cartas e uma ou duas fotografias que haviam escorregado do divã: valete de ouros, nove de espadas, ás de espada, Elsa e seu namorado bestial.

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Ele retornou exultante, a exclamar em voz bem alta: "Já resolvi a charada. Vamos dar a ele nosso quarto de dormir. Cada um de nós passará parte da noite ao lado dele e na outra, neste divã. Em turnos. Vamos trazer o médico para examiná-lo pelo menos  duas vezes na semana. Não importa o que o Príncipe vai dizer.Não terá muito a reclamar, afinal  de  contas  porque sairá mais barato."O telefone tocou. Era um horário pouco comum para o telefone tocar. O chinelo esquerdo saiu do seu pé e ele tateou por ele com o calcanhar e dedão enquanto  permanecia em pé no meio da sala, infantilmente, desdentado, olhando de queixo caído para a esposa. Sabendo falar inglês melhor do que ele, ela era quem atendia aos chamados telefônicos."Posso falar com Charlie," murmurou a voz monótona de uma moça."Qual foi o número que você discou? Não. Este número está errado."O receptor foi gentilmente recolocado no gancho. Colocou a mão no seu coração velho e cansado."Levei um susto," disse.Ele sorriu depressinha e imediatamente retomou seu monólogo animado. Buscariam o filho assim que amanhecesse. Facas teriam que ser guardadas em gavetas trancadas. Mesmo quando piorava ele não representava uma ameaça para ninguém. O telefone tocou pela segunda vez. A mesma voz sem tom e ansiosa queria falar com Charlie."Você está discando errado. Vou lhe dizer o que é que você está fazendo: você está girando a letra O em vez do zero."

 

Sentaram-se para o chá inesperado e festivo da meia-noite. O presente de aniversário estava sobre a mesa.  Ele dava goles barulhentamente; seu rosto estava corado; de vez em quando ele fazia um movimento circular com o copo erguido para fazer o açúcar dissolver-se melhor. A veia lateral em sua calva mostrava uma marca de nascença bem visível e, se bem que ele tivesse feito a barba de manhã, pelos prateados apareciam no queixo.  Enquanto ela lhe dava mais um copo de chá, ele colocou os óculos e examinou de novo e com  prazer as jarras em amarelo luminoso, verde, vermelho.  Seus lábios úmidos e desajeitados soletravam os rótulos eloqüentes: damasco, uva, ameixa de plátanos, marmelo. Ele tinha alcançado a maçã- gala quando o telefone soou novamente.

 

C. Comentários em inglês de L.F. Gallego:

 

 A Brazilian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Luiz F. Gallego Soares,after reading "Signs and Symbols" exclaimed: My God, such an infinity of sadness! This is one of the saddest stories I've ever read. According to him VN's short-story revolves around the axis formed by family blood-ties and ambivalent affection. VN's language is as cutting as a bistoury and the reader finds no sentimental gushings nor affectation even though the plot is still capable to cut into the hardest of hearts. He said: "This story hurts me, using Ingmar Bergman's words,'as a tooth-ache in the soul'." For him, the young man's psychosis ( its hopeless prognostic) and the old couple's ravages by age and destitution, create a purgatory that encompasses their entire life - a life devoid of hope of any kind of heavenly comfort. The boy's psychosis represents an irreparable loss to the couple.(and even the boy wants to drill a hole and escape from the world. ..btw, what a cretin that doctor, the one who said that his suicide attempt was a "masterpiece of inventiveness"!!!)""The clinical picture described in the story suggests 'paranoid schyzophrenia', something not at all as rare as that guy Herman Brink asserted. The only

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atypical feature derives from something about this patient's delusions because he excludes people altogether to set the focus onto nature. This may be the result of having his self so fragmented and projected outwards that its pieces are then intermingled with the landscape. Nature can divine his innermost thoughts because they became a part of the scenery. The basic event, from a phenomenological stand-point, such as Karl Jaspers' - is the loss of the "awareness of self" ( in the sense of an opposition between Self-Non Self). Jaspers considers that these alterations are exacerbated in schizophrenic processes and lead to: (a) a loss of identity; (b) a loss of the unity of the self; (c) a loss of the self's independent activity ( external forces are felt as prodding the individual into action) and (d) the loss of boundaries between self-non self ( including the sinesthaesias and the "publication of his thoughts"). These disturbances pertain to a formal dimension of being in the world and, although the boy doesn't seem to extend his perceptions and delusional interpretations towards people, we may observe in him the presence of ideas of "grandeur" at the back of his persecutory feelings. A paranoid idea of grandeur always carries along feelings of persecution. The boy must also suffer from auditive hallucinations because he can hear the conversation that takes place in the clouds.""Nabokov presents a masterful rendering of the psychotic apprehension of the world. He achieves that mainly because he alternates descriptions about how theboy sees his environment with his mother's normal daily routine (at least, as it reaches the reader through the narrator). There are no delusions there but her world teems with foul and thunderous emanations from the underground. The pale victuals and tusks of saliva appear in an almost poetical way - whereas for a psychotic the same image might have suggested that "these tusks are coming out of my mouth and they tie me to my dentures". When she looks at the pictures of her son, already different from any other babies she remembers his fears about dangerous images in a wallpaper and in an etching. I was reminded of "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In this story, like in VN's, there is a merging of background and figure, a fusion of its main theme and the rest.""How the background is perceived by an abnormal mind teaches us learn about the sick boy's visions. Contrary to what usually happens in routine life when the "figure", not the "background", is invested with meaning, in them it is the background who seems to move. This is a story of profound grief and pain, full of weeds and flowers mangled by a troglodyte farmer who introduces the monstruous darkness that shall transform tenderness into madness or crush it out altogether."

 

D. Comentários de Jansy B. S.Mello (originalmente  incluidos em um debate com outros estudiosos de Nabokov e recortados para o Aeternus semuma organização especial )

 

 

Lines that illustrate certain shifts in narration, the sequence of "she,he,they,etc". Part One:Friday morning, or early afternoon:(a) they were confronted...He had no desires...his parents...(b) they had been married...Her drab gray her..She wore...Her husband..They

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seldom saw him...(c) That Friday... one could hear nothing...the bus they had to take, a nurse they knew...(d) She waited for her husband...He kept...They reached...(e) She and her husband did not exchange a word...she felt...As she looked around...a girl, old woman, she resembled...(f) The last time he ( the sick boy) had tried to do it...What he really wanted...(g) The system of his delusions...long before that she and her husband had puzzled it out...Herman Brink...In these very rara cases the patient imagines...he excludes...he considers...His inmost thoughts are discussed...Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme. Some of the spies...( now we, as readers, areno longer learning about those patients who suffer from 'referential mania' but begin to invade the young man's thoughts to spy and register things about him)grotesquely misinterpret his actions. He must always be on his guard...The very air he exhales in indexed and filed away...If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings...Part 2Friday afternoon, early night(a) When they emerged...She wanted... He walked...(b) In silence he sat down...she came... They entered their two-room flat and he at once... She knew his moods...(c) When he had gone to bed, she remained in the living room ( living room?). She pulled the blind down and examined the photographs. [ Ms. X muses and peruses?] As a baby he... From a fold in the album, a German maid...fell out(?). Four years old, in a park...Aunt Rosa...Age six - when he drew...His cousin...He again...Aged ten: the year they left Europe. [ Shift away from her musings] The shame, the pity...then came a time in his life ...which his parents stubbornly...(d) She accepted...She thought...she and her husband..hurting her boy [ another shift towards an impending unknown]... of the incalculable amount of tenderness...neglected children in unswept corners; of the beautiful weeds that cannot hide from...as the monstrous darkness approaches.part 3Saturday, past midnight, early morning (a) she heard her husband moan...he staggered in...(b) "I can't sleep," he cried.(c)"Why," she asked...(d) "I can't sleep because..."(e) "Is it your stomach?..."(f) "No doctors..." "To the devil with doctors! We must get him out of there quick...(g)"All right," she said quietly, "we shall bring him home tomorrow morning."(h)" I would like some tea," said her husband ( bathroom) (i) Bending with difficulty she... a photograph OR two ( who doesn't know how many if there were at most two cards?)(j) He returned..."I have it all figured out"...It doesn't matter what the Prince says...(k) The telephone rang. His left slipper...Having more English than he did, it was she who...(l) said a girl's dull...(m) "What number do you want? No. That is not the right number."(n) The receiver was...her hand went to her old and tired heart...(o) "It frightened me," she said.(p) He smiled (?)... resumed his excited monologue... Even at his ( the son's) worst...(q) The telephone rang..the same toneless... voice(r) "You have the incorrect number. I will tell you what you are doing..."

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(s) They sat down..festive (?) midnight tea...He sipped noisily...the vein on the side of his...While she poured him...he put on his spectacles... He had got to crab apple, when the telepone rang again...After I selected pieces from various paragraphs besides the two mentioned above I noticed something:part one: "She waited for her husband to open his umbrella and then took his arm."part two:"he had given her his keys earlier in the day" ; "They entered their two-room flat"part three:"He returned in high spirits, saying in a loud voice: I have it all figured out. We will give him the bedroom. Each of us will spend part of the night near him and the other part on this couch".   Most of the initiatives seem to be the woman's. When she realized she'd forgotten about the keys she immediately rushed home and, probably, without buying the fish she intended to cook for dinner. After taking off his dentures her husband ate "pale victuals" prepared for a toothless mouth ( what kind of colourless, mushy food is implied? Would he eat it every night?) The thunder and foul air reminds the reader of the rain outside the underground shelter: noise and discomfort outside and inside... These sentences also bring up the dire circumstances in which they live (only one set of keys, perhaps only one umbrella, a two-room flat with one bed and a couch) and their closeness. There is no special place in their flat for a son and, should they keep him at home, they would have be separated in turns to keep him under surveillance during the night. Still, this rotatory shift is quite peculiar:Why couldn't one of the parents stay with the boy all night long? In such a small apartment, why would it be necessary to sleep with him in the same bed and not let him use the couch? Why was a special surveillance needed during the night? What happened at night that would be so exausting to those that were lying at his side that they had to be relieved of duty after some time? As we can see from the items listed below  (Dolinin's echoing title; the background-figure fusion comparing VN's text and C.P.Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"; Baudelaire's "Correspondances" and VN's description of "a system where a main story is woven into, or placed behind" a more superficial one), as readers we are invited to diminish the light shining on VN's "lithography" ( following D.B. Johnson's beautiful find and illustration) to be able to apprehend this story's holographic or  three-dimensional image. Although we have Kinbote's hints about "an underside of the weave" for "Pale Fire", in "Signs and Symbols" we could try to look simultaneously at two superimposed images ( the hidden main story and the semitransparent one), instead of focusing either on itssuperficial or its main level, on either background or figure. Up to now we've been using both perspectives but I still haven't been able to get at the "holographic" one that would enable us to continually oscillate and change perspectives. My private overall impression arises from a dejected emotional response to its basso continuo message: "Homo homini lupus" - and an impeding darkness on the move. And yet, my unexpected reaction doesn't fit in with Nabokov's prevalently nacreous writings.   The diagnostic made by "Herman Brink" ( "referential mania") seems to me to be one of Nabokov's inventions and a very significant one. I'm still checking the psychiatric terms that were used in America at the time the novel was written ( 1946/48),but obtained no positive information yet. What I can advance, though, is that "Delusions of Reference" appear in what was formerly named "Manic Depressive Psychosis" and in "Paranoia." but I found no designation of "referential mania", as such).Common dictionaries describe "mania", "manic states" and inform that the word "mania" comes from the Greek for "madness".   I consider "madness" ("mania") in Nabokov a sign for his having introduced elements that defy "common-sense" and that pertain to his own other-world metaphysics and his vision of art/science.   In the case of S&S, VN described the adolescent's plights in detail without considering standard psychological terms or a precise symptomatology ( the narrator had the parent's describe how the young man "excluded real people from the conspiracy.")Nevertheless, VN might have based his stories on details observed in people he knew. At the time when the novel was written little was known about autism, andAsperger in particular ( the "Savant's" extraordinary mnemonic and

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intellectual feats, talent with numbers, chess-games and often, synaesthesia) but VN must have met young boys who had these talents: Alexander Luzhin's phobias and his unsociability at school, his genius with chess are suggestive of it and, in the presentnovel, so are the boy's initial behavior, lack of social skills, "inventiveness", drawing abilities. Also his parents considered him a "prodigiously gifted child". After a prolonged convalescence from pneumonia  we learn that things radically changed because the boy became "totally inaccessible to normal minds." ( a revealing way of describing his affliction) and, in my opinion, it was when the "normal" people of his environment began to consider him "mentally deranged". So the unfortunate boy was institutionalized! I believe it is only on paragraph seven, part one, that VN uses his trademark style writing about "minute and module...undulation ...volume and volubility...granite and groaning.." to give word to the adolescent's misdirected hypersensitivity.   The reference to the Symbolists came from Nabokov's Otherworld by Vladimir E. Alexandrov, when he explained that "irony and faith need not be incompatible. Indeed, this blend was fundamental for the German Romanatics...and was widespread amont the Symbolists... Another link between Nabokov's metaphysics and aesthetics hinges on his seminal epiphanic experiences..."(page 7,Ardis)  Both Mallarmé and Baudelaire were known to have "synesthaesia", like Nabokov.Is it now possible to make assumptions about the identity or reliability of any VN narrator, even "Nabokov" himself?  On a Book Entitled Lolita he writes: After doing my impersonation of suave John Ray, the character in Lolita who pens the Foreword, any comments coming straight from me may strike one - may strikeme, in fact - as an impersonation of Vladimir Nabokov talking about his own book. A few points, however, have to be discussed; and the autobiographic device may induce mimic and model to blend.... Often, while I read special texts written by Nabokov, I'm reminded of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (Pessoa=Person). Unlike VN Pessoa used various "heteronyms" (writerly personas) for his different writing styles and views. [Cf. The Book of Disquiet, FernandoPessoa, Penguin  Classics, 2002]. Pessoa once wrote something roughly translatable as: "the poet is a liar who lies with such skill that the pain he then feigns expresses a pain that's real."  I think Nabokov might have achieved similar effects through autobiographical and self-referential tactics,infinite regress aso.To attribute "moral agency to nature" means to hold "animistic beliefs", I suppose. Nabokov often deliberately employed personification, hyperboles, animism to engender doubts about a metaphorical or a literal interpretation - and yet, that the narrator or "Mrs.Nameless" were morally "fault finding" in S&S has totally eluded me.    Myself, I still believe that we are invited to consider simultaneously both levels (the manifest explicit one and a hidden theme), instead of considering only one of the levels as being the true one. Later Nabokov will offer us at least ten other "hidden" dimensions ( Pale Fire, ADA...) and those with a talent for abstraction and good memories might retain them like a musician does listen to a symphonies various instruments and themes...

I'm almost certain that I understand Nabokov's hints about "postustoronnost" ( "the other-world") and enjoy how they gained literary expression in his various works. Your quote about God as "the most moved mover" is very beautiful and also revelatory of your vision. I believe in psychoanalysis, but I don't see the point of discussing Freud when I know VN might have invented "unconscious motives and symbols" as a trap constructed with the information he had at that time about Freud. In a way I could say that my faith lies in the "omniscient narration" that is peculiar to

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the unconscious... Nevertheless, it seems that we can agree about the vagueness of label such as "omniscient narrator", specially when he speaks in a singular first person. In "Signs and Symbols" Nabokov allied two strategies. We know that realistic stories are most often open and leave the reader wondering about "what will happen next". In these the world of the story coincides with the world we experience. Fantastic stories take us to a world with unknown rules and codes and we frequently learn beforehand about "future" ( the story is closed, as VN once wrote about "Lolita"). In such circumstances the reader is left wondering about "what is actually happening now". In S&S we are puzzled about real life and a third phone-call while, simultaneously, we are invited to investigate a present event that seems to elude us. We may thus experience from the inside a "mysterious dimension" and inhabit two worlds, while firmly planted in the one we still have faith in.  If we move towards Signs and Symbols, Part 2, we find in the first chapter: "When they emerged from the thunder and foul air of the subway, the last dregs of the day were mixed with the streetlights. She wanted to buy some fish for supper, so she handed him the basket of jelly jars, telling him to go home.  He walked up to the third landing and then remembered he had given her his keys earlier in the day." and in the second chapter: "In silence he sat down on the steps and in silence rose when some ten minutes later she came, heavily trudging upstairs, wanly smiling, shaking her head in deprecation of her silliness. They entered their two-room flat[... ] he ate the pale victuals that needed no teeth. She knew his moods and was also silent."

References to bare elbows are quite common in VN's novels. I've found them associated to a movement, such as "clasping shut a necklace", three times and I always associated this position to "wings". It is mentioned in KQK and in ADA, but I chose a particular sentence from Bend Sinister to bring it up as an example: ...and similarly the priest had failed to perceive the futility of his metaphysical promise in relation to those favoured ones (men of bizarre genius, big game hunters, chess players, prodigiously robust and versatile lovers, the radiant woman taking her necklace off after the ball) for whom this world was a paradise in itself and who would be always one point up no matter what happened to everyone in the melting pot of eternity. Perhaps here VN might have also implied "wings" and called our attention to an unprotected window in the "living room". In this story it seems that the young man who suffers from "referential mania" certainly didn't fit in the category of those for whom "this world was a paradise" the parents might have taken shifts watching him at night because they'd be sitting on a chair placed by the bed. The room where cooking might take place (or, at least, which had been used when boiling water) also sports a dangerous window for anyone intent on "flying out".And yet, in my opinion, these precautions are preposterously planned, also because the young man ( at least as a child) was an insomniac.  The article bt Jacqueline Hamrit: The Silence of Madness in "Signs and Symbols" by Vladimir Nabokov  (available thru google) contains a summary and various comments about literature and madness, examined from a philosophic point-of-view.  Excerpts of what J.Hamrit wrote: "Madness has always fascinated writers and has a privileged relationship with literature, being sometimes more than a mere metaphor and rather corresponding to a thematic network underlying a text. It has even been compared to the reading and/or writing activity of literature. I intend in this paper, to make a comparison between madness and literature, to wonder about the way they can be linked and/or separated, through the analysis of a short story by Vladimir Nabokov entitled "Signs and Symbols" which was written in 1948 [...] Being himself subjected to auditory and visual hallucinations, Nabokov staged many characters tempted by madness. Thus, the protagonist Luzhin who is a chessplayer in The Luzhin Defense is

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the prey of a monomaniac passion which ends in a suicide. Nabokov has also dealt with sexual deviations such as paedophilia in Lolita in which the protagonist Humbert Humbert is cured in psychiatric hospitals. And the main character, Krug, in Bend Sinister, becomes mad at the end of the book when he learns about the death of his son[...] Nabokov declared during a lecture at Stanford University in 1941:"Genius is the greatest sanity of the spirit."[Vladimir Nabokov, "The Art of Literature and Commonsense," Lectures on Literature 1980 (London: Picador, 1983) 377]...In a letter dated March 17, 1951 and addressed to the New Yorker editor Katharine A. White, Nabokov alluded to "Signs and Symbols" by mentioning the story of an old Jewish couple and their sick boy, saying: "Most of the stories I am contemplating [. . .] will be composed on these lines, according to this system wherein a second (main) story is woven into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one." The short story narrates a day in the life of an old couple of Russian Jewish immigrants who, being themselves deprived of any name, live in a nameless city in the United States. Their twenty-year-old son had been treated in a psychiatric hospital for four years because, the narrator tells us,"he was incurably deranged in his mind[...] Divided into three parts, the story offers a dialogue, a conversation in direct speech, only in the last part. The narrator mainly uses indirect speech to narrate the conversation between the father and the mother, or between the parents and the nurse[...] We are then informed rather ironically that "the system of his delusions had been the subject of an elaborate paper in a scientific monthly" and that it had been called "referential mania"[...] 

SYMBOLS AND SIGNS

For the fourth time in as many years, they were confronted with the problem of what birthday present to take to a young man who was incurably deranged in his mind. Desires he had none. Man-made objects were to him either hives of evil, vibrant with a malignant activity that he alone could perceive, or gross comforts for which no use could be found in his abstract world. After eliminating a number of articles that might offend him or frighten him (anything in the gadget line, for instance, was taboo), his parents chose a dainty and innocent trifle—a basket with ten different fruit jellies in ten little jars.At the time of his birth, they had already been married for a long time; a score of years had elapsed, and now they were quite old. Her drab gray hair was pinned up carelessly. She wore cheap black dresses. Unlike other women of her age (such as Mrs. Sol, their next-door neighbor, whose face was all pink and mauve with paint and whose hat was a cluster of brookside flowers), she presented a naked white countenance to the faultfinding light of spring. Her husband, who in the old country had been a fairly successful businessman, was now, in New York, wholly dependent on his brother Isaac, a real American of almost forty years’ standing. They seldom saw Isaac and had nicknamed him the Prince.That Friday, their son’s birthday, everything went wrong. The subway train lost its life current between two stations and for a quarter of an hour they could hear nothing but the dutiful beating of their hearts and the rustling of newspapers. The bus they had to take next was late and kept them waiting a long time on a street corner, and when it did come, it was crammed with garrulous high-school children. It began to rain as they walked up the brown path leading to the sanitarium. There they waited again, and instead of their boy, shuffling into the room, as he usually did (his poor face sullen, confused, ill-shaven, and blotched with acne), a nurse they knew and did not care for appeared at last and brightly explained that he had again attempted to take his life. He was all right, she said, but a visit from his parents might disturb him. The place was so miserably understaffed, and things got mislaid

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or mixed up so easily, that they decided not to leave their present in the office but to bring it to him next time they came.Outside the building, she waited for her husband to open his umbrella and then took his arm. He kept clearing his throat, as he always did when he was upset. They reached the bus-stop shelter on the other side of the street and he closed his umbrella. A few feet away, under a swaying and dripping tree, a tiny unfledged bird was helplessly twitching in a puddle.During the long ride to the subway station, she and her husband did not exchange a word, and every time she glanced at his old hands, clasped and twitching upon the handle of his umbrella, and saw their swollen veins and brown-spotted skin, she felt the mounting pressure of tears. As she looked around, trying to hook her mind onto something, it gave her a kind of soft shock, a mixture of compassion and wonder, to notice that one of the passengers—a girl with dark hair and grubby red toenails—was weeping on the shoulder of an older woman. Whom did that woman resemble? She resembled Rebecca Borisovna, whose daughter had married one of the Soloveichiks—in Minsk, years ago.

The last time the boy had tried to do it, his method had been, in the doctor’s words, a masterpiece of inventiveness; he would have succeeded had not an envious fellow-patient thought he was learning to fly and stopped him just in time. What he had really wanted to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape.The system of his delusions had been the subject of an elaborate paper in a scientific monthly, which the doctor at the sanitarium had given to them to read. But long before that, she and her husband had puzzled it out for themselves. “Referential mania,” the article had called it. In these very rare cases, the patient imagines that everything happening around him is a veiled reference to his personality and existence. He excludes real people from the conspiracy, because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His in- most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing, in some awful way, messages that he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme. All around him, there are spies. Some of them are detached observers, like glass surfaces and still pools; others, such as coats in store windows, are prejudiced witnesses, lynchers at heart; others, again (running water, storms), are hysterical to the point of insanity, have a distorted opinion of him, and grotesquely misinterpret his actions. He must be always on his guard and devote every minute and module of life to the decoding of the undulation of things. The

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very air he exhales is indexed and filed away. If only the interest he provokes were limited to his immediate surroundings, but, alas, it is not! With distance, the torrents of wild scandal increase in volume and volubility. The silhouettes of his blood corpuscles, magnified a million times, flit over vast plains; and still farther away, great mountains of unbearable solidity and height sum up, in terms of granite and groaning firs, the ultimate truth of his being.

When they emerged from the thunder and foul air of the subway, the last dregs of the day were mixed with the street lights. She wanted to buy some fish for supper, so she handed him the basket of jelly jars, telling him to go home. Accordingly, he returned to their tenement house, walked up to the third landing, and then remembered he had given her his keys earlier in the day.In silence he sat down on the steps and in silence rose when, some ten minutes later, she came trudging heavily up the stairs, smiling wanly and shaking her head in deprecation of her silliness. They entered their two-room flat and he at once went to the mirror. Straining the corners of his mouth apart by means of his thumbs, with a horrible, mask-like grimace, he removed his new, hopelessly uncomfortable dental plate. He read his Russian-language newspaper while she laid the table. Still reading, he ate the pale victuals that needed no teeth. She knew his moods and was also silent.When he had gone to bed, she remained in the living room with her pack of soiled playing cards and her old photograph albums. Across the narrow courtyard, where the rain tinkled in the dark against some ash cans, windows were blandly alight, and in one of them a black-trousered man, with his hands clasped under his head and his elbows raised, could he seen lying supine on an untidy bed. She pulled the blind down and examined the photographs. As a baby, he looked more surprised than most babies. A photograph of a German maid they had had in Leipzig and her fat-faced fiancé fell out of a fold of the album. She turned the pages of the book: Minsk, the Revolution, Leipzig, Berlin, Leipzig again, a slanting house front, badly out of focus. Here was the boy when he was four years old, in a park, shyly, with puckered forehead, looking away from an eager squirrel, as he would have from any other stranger. Here was Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, and cancerous growths until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about. The boy, aged six—that was when he drew wonderful birds with human hands and feet, and suffered from insomnia like a grown-up man. His cousin, now a famous chess player. The boy again, aged about eight, already hard to understand, afraid of the wallpaper in the passage, afraid of a certain picture in a book, which merely showed an idyllic landscape with rocks on a hillside and an old cart wheel hanging from the one branch of a leafless tree. Here he was at ten—the year they left Europe. She remembered the shame, the pity, the humiliating difficulties of the journey, and the ugly, vicious, backward children he was with in the special school where he had been placed after they arrived in America. And then came a time in his life, coinciding with a long convalescence after pneumonia, when those little phobias of his, which his parents had stubbornly regarded as the eccentricities of a prodigiously gifted child, hardened, as it were, into a dense tangle of logically interacting illusions, making them totally inaccessible to normal minds.

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All this, and much more, she had accepted, for, after all, living does mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case, mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the in visible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer.It was nearly midnight when, from the living room, she heard her husband moan, and presently he staggered in, wearing over his nightgown the old overcoat with the astrakhan collar that he much preferred to his nice blue bathrobe.“I can’t sleep!” he cried.“Why can’t you sleep?” she asked. “You were so tired.”“I can’t sleep because I am dying,” he said, and lay down on the couch.“Is it your stomach? Do you want me to call Dr. Solov?”“No doctors, no doctors,” he moaned. “To the devil with doctors! We must get him out of there quick. Otherwise, we’ll be responsible.... Responsible!” He hurled himself into a sitting position, both feet on the floor, thumping his forehead with his clenched fist.“All right,” she said quietly. “We will bring him home tomorrow morning.”“I would like some tea,” said her husband and went out to the bathroom.Bending with difficulty, she retrieved some playing cards and a photograph or two that had slipped to the floor—the knave of hearts, the nine of spades, the ace of spades, the maid Elsa and her bestial beau. He returned in high spirits, saying in a loud voice, “I have it all figured out. We will give him the bedroom. Each of us will spend part of the night near him and the other part on this couch. We will have the doctor see him at least twice a week. It does not matter what the Prince says. He won’t have much to say anyway, because it will come out cheaper.”The telephone rang. It was an unusual hour for it to ring. He stood in the middle of the room, groping with his foot for one slipper that had come off, and childishly, toothlessly, gaped at his wife. Since she knew more English than he, she always attended to the calls.

”Can I speak to Charlie?” a girl’s dull little voice said to her now.“What number do you want? . . . No. You have the wrong number.”She put the receiver down gently and her hand went to her heart. “It frightened me,” she said.

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He smiled a quick smile and immediately resumed his excited monologue. They would fetch him as soon as it was day. For his own protection, they would keep all the knives in a locked drawer. Even at his worst, he presented no danger to other people.The telephone rang a second time.The same toneless, anxious young voice asked for Charlie.“You have the incorrect number. I will tell you what you are doing. You are turning the letter ‘o’ instead of the zero.” She hung up again.They sat down to their unexpected, festive midnight tea. He sipped noisily; his face was flushed; every now and then he raised his glass with a circular motion, so as to make the sugar dissolve more thoroughly. The vein on the side of his bald head stood out conspicuously, and silvery bristles showed on his chin. The birthday present stood on the table. While she poured him another glass of tea, he put on his spectacles and reëxamined with pleasure the luminous yellow, green, and red little jars. His clumsy, moist lips spelled out their eloquent labels—apricot, grape, beach plum, quince. He had got to crab apple when the telephone rang again. ♦