decided until a final overview was established. He, on the other hand, was way past this stage. He operated in a special realm, one that was, no doubt, less visible, like a mystery, a secret. With his memory and the data it contained, he could allow himself to think in different ways, and take a chance with new analyses. He was able to explore things unknown, things unthought.
Mattilda had never shared my fascination for knowledge. For her, all knowledge ought to be practical, and should help fill out an application, should lead to a diploma, a job. Right from the start, therefore, she had thought my obsession with learning was slightly ridiculous—all that frantic accumulation of references. According to her, it was precisely because I wanted to know everything that I remembered nothing. She had some fine ideas on the subject. Wolfing down great quantities of words, whole sections of the library to fill one’s little head or some machine didn’t count. What was important was to run into the right sorts of things. Just pick things up, gleaning them haphazardly. Wait to be touched by the words that strike you, really hit you. Besides, just to talk you don’t need to know everything.
It must be admitted that this off-handed approach was very becoming to Mattilda. Through either forgetfulness or ignorance she’d been able to hang onto a certain amount of freshness and innocence. You had to admit she had a point from her point of view. It was a matter of observing things, sudden changes, trends, seizing every moment, living them fully, being dazzled by them, and then, when they’re done, when they’ve fled, well too bad, indeed so much the better. Why always be stockpiling? The important things would stick around on their own. Besides, developing one’s memory too much would, sooner or later, mean the atrophy of sight, any sensation at all, any feeling. Being as scrupulous as I was meant I’d end my life in basement archives, I’d become like the others, gray and conventional. Method! Exhaustiveness! Always the same old story. When would I ever understand that you can get along without them? Hadn’t the artists I so admired and studied been the first to free themselves from all that?
Mattilda and I had known each other for fifteen years, at least. Playground friends. Then in high school we discovered sex, without much understanding what was going on between our two bodies, liquid surprises, erratic breathing, but bound together even more by these first awkward moments. And I’d been fascinated ever since by her attention to the details of love—the art of carrying involvement to extremes. You could see that this was a priority. As for her, she would have far preferred to see me consumed by pleasure rather than erudition. So, obviously, with notions like that about life and the world, and despite the gratification she got from hearing me speak, for once, become animated, yes, by his ideas, Mattilda couldn’t go along with my admiration for Robert. The expression on her face was one of wariness. As if she smelled danger. As if she had a premonition of what was going to happen.
She did, however, want to go to the old man’s place with me to take a look at this fellow whom she found intriguing because of my excitement in describing him. Seeing that I felt put on the spot, she insisted. But I refused. She was the one who never wanted to go out or meet anybody! Besides, I felt it would be better for me to go alone. Just out of politeness. Robert wouldn’t necessarily enjoy an invasion, especially if he had some proposition to make to me, one that just the two of us should discuss. Anyhow, I knew Mattilda, she’d have changed her mind at the last minute. Nonetheless, my refusal made her mad. I saw it in the way her eyes glazed over.
Chapter III
When we’d parted, Robert had explained to me how to get to his house. It was near the city, but looked like the country. To get there from the riverbanks you had to head into a real labyrinth of twisting alleys, so you had to do it right, but at the end of it all you’d come out onto half-cultivated fields. After that it was very simple, I couldn’t miss it. He’d even called that same morning, very early, to be sure I’d be coming and be on time, exactly five P.M. he said; he couldn’t stand people being late, because the way he organized his time meant there wasn’t a single minute left for improvisation. When he’d called, Mattilda was still asleep, and, as for myself, I didn’t know what to do with myself in those blue-green minutes of dawn. I’d never gotten up so early. Hardly a morning person, that’s the least you can say. But on this occasion I felt impelled by a new energy. I’d watched Mattilda, the way she had of being all wrapped up in sleep, taking great pleasure in it, yes, precisely, enjoying it, you could see on her face that she liked sleeping.
The neighborhood the old man lived in was amazing, a kind of enclave of greenery in the city, vast, with a public park down below, which was empty except for a couple of stray adolescents in love who were out in the cold; there were linden trees there too, and a cedar. Steps went up from there to the observatory and ran alongside Robert’s house, a third of the way up.
I hardly recognized him in his loose blue jacket and eyeglasses, which he hadn’t been wearing when we first met, probably he’d caught sight of me and wanted to meet me on the steps, so, right away, having only just arrived, I told him how enthusiastic I was about where he lived before we were even inside. All the advantages of the city plus peace and quiet; and what I could imagine of the yard surrounding his house was a pleasant, relaxed breathing space with a vegetable garden and fruit trees—how beautiful they must be in the fall, and especially in the spring, with the flowers . . . “Yes, you’re right, it’s magnificent. And I’ve really gotten used to it, just think, it’s been twenty years! At my age what makes it invaluable is how close it is to the city center. But don’t be fooled, things are changing, have changed, even here. Summer has become absolute hell.” The little park had turned into a veritable sluiceway into which the city vomited its excess of visitors. And by no means the cream of the crop! Drifting beer-soused youth. The nauseating foam of a horde of tourists, ever more cacophonous and invasive. And other parts of the city were no better off, especially the historical district with its gray-haired tourists and their sunburned faces. “Maybe the solution to this modern scourge is for you to hold it back, you with your data processing . . . Instead of entering literature and paintings into computers, why not put cities, with tourist routes described from every angle, into them? Images galore! Everybody could have the whole world via fiber optic, everybody comfortably settled in front of his little screen . . . Finally, a benefit of technology! Cities could be returned to their inhabitants, their workers, and that way they might recover their particular charm.” Like how it had been when he first traveled, but things were very different then. You could land anywhere at all that wasn’t your own region, somewhere that wasn’t necessarily very distant or exotic, no, simply elsewhere, and the contrast would jump out at you; you had the impression that you were discovering a new world. Today, all countries are just the same; international travel provides a uniform scenery: with identical products, identical cuisine, identical polite smiles. Only jet lag still managed to provide the thrill of being somewhere else, the notion of foreignness. Under such conditions, he was happily satisfied with his corner of this territory, a little island preserved in the urban tide. It was true that it was a good life, except sometimes for the isolation—in winter because of ice or snow, and in summer the dreadful way it became deserted in August. “But come in! You must be frozen just standing there listening to me. Once I get started . . . I all but forgot you were there!”
What had struck me right from the outset, enough almost to make me feel sick, was a terrible smell of mustiness, greasy cooking, and, on top of that, stifling smoke all over everything—furniture, knickknacks, people—which had to come from a chimney that wasn’t drawing well. From the outside, the house had seemed enormous to me—a first impression confirmed by the huge living room where, in the part of it softly lit by two squat lamps, Robert had asked me to settle in. A space far too vast for him, which could explain the smelly, filthy neglect in the place. My sense of smell has always been very sensitive. Really, just my luck. Later, thinking of the old man and myself, I often wondered if olfactory powers were not inversely proportional to those of memory.
He was already in a low, apricot-colored armchair that stood in piles of books lying every which way. That was his armchair, and it was no longer possible to tell if the springs had broken as a result of his weight, or if, on the contrary, they had gradually deformed the vulnerable,
