SARABANDE

Why was everything so white? The steppe hadn’t been so white. I was lying in an expanse of white. Maybe it had snowed, maybe I was resting there like a fallen soldier, a battle flag lying in the snow. But I wasn’t cold. Actually, it was hard to say, I felt completely detached from my body. From far away, I tried to identify a concrete sensation: in my mouth, a taste of mud. But that mouth was floating, without even a jaw to support it. And my chest, it seemed crushed beneath tons of stone; I looked for them, but perceiving them proved impossible. Well, I said to myself, here I am really scattered. Oh my poor body. I wanted to huddle over it, the way you huddle over a beloved child, at night, in the cold.

In these endless white landscapes, a ball of fire was spinning, stabbing my gaze. But strangely its flames gave no heat to the whiteness. Impossible to stare at it, impossible to turn away from it too, it followed me with its displeasing presence. Panic overwhelmed me; and if I never found my feet again, how would I master it? Oh, this was all so difficult. How much time did I spend like this? I couldn’t say, a fetal lifetime at least. It gave me time to observe things, and that’s how I slowly became aware that all this white wasn’t uniform; there were gradations—none of them could have been labeled even pale gray, really, yet there were variations all the same; to describe them, one would need a new vocabulary, as subtle and precise as that of the Inuit to describe different kinds of ice. There must also have been a question of texture; but my sight seemed as unresponsive, on this point, as my inert fingers. Distant rumblings reached me. I resolved to cling to detail, a discontinuity of the white, until it revealed itself to me. I devoted at least another century or two to this immense effort, but finally I understood what it was all about: it was a right angle. Come, another effort. By extending this angle, I ended up discovering another one, then yet another one; so, eureka, it was a frame, now it went faster, I discovered other frames, but all these frames were white, and outside of the frames everything was white, and inside the frames too: faint hope, I despaired, of getting to the bottom of this anytime soon. Perhaps I should proceed by hypotheses? Might it be modern art? But these regular frames were sometimes confused with other forms, also white but fluid, soft. Lord, what a labor of interpretation, what endless work. But my obstinacy kept giving me new results: the white surface that extended to the distance was in fact streaked, undulating, the steppe perhaps seen from a plane (but not from a dirigible; that didn’t have the same appearance). What a success! I was more than a little proud of myself. Another final effort, it seemed to me, and I’d come to the end of these mysteries. But an unforeseen catastrophe abruptly put an end to my research: the ball of fire died, and I was plunged into darkness, a thick, asphyxiating blackness. Fighting was pointless; I shouted, but no sound came out of my crushed lungs. I knew I wasn’t dead, since death itself couldn’t be so black; it was much worse than death, a cesspit, a turgid bog; and eternity seemed only an instant compared to the time I spent there.

Finally, my sentence was repealed: slowly, the endless blackness of the world lifted. And with the magical return of the light, I saw things more clearly; then, as to a new Adam, the ability to name things was given back to me (or maybe just given): the wall, the window, the milky sky behind the glass. I contemplated this extraordinary spectacle with wonder; then I itemized everything my gaze could find: the door, the doorknob, the weak lightbulb under its shade, the foot of the bed, the sheet, veined hands, mine no doubt. The door opened and a woman appeared, dressed in white; but with her a color burst into this world, a red shape, bright as blood on snow, and it distressed me beyond all proportion, and I burst into tears. “Why are you crying?” she said in a melodious voice, and her pale, cool fingers caressed my cheek. Little by little I grew calm. She said something else, which I didn’t make out; I felt her handling my body; terrified, I closed my eyes, and that finally gave me some kind of power over this blinding white. Later on, an older man came in, with white hair: “Ah, so you’ve woken up!” he exclaimed cheerfully. Why was he saying that? I had lain awake for an eternity, I had forgotten the very name of sleep. But maybe we weren’t thinking of the same thing. He sat down next to me, pulled up my eyelid without ceremony, stuck a light in my eye: “Very good, very good,” he repeated, satisfied with his cruel trick. Finally he too left.

It took a little more time for me to connect these fragmentary impressions and to understand that I had fallen into the hands of representatives of the medical profession. I had to be patient and learn to let myself be manhandled: not only did women, the nurses, take unheard-of liberties with my body, but doctors, solemn, serious men with paternal voices, entered at any moment, surrounded by a horde of young people, all wearing lab coats; lifting me up shamelessly, they moved my head and discoursed about my case, as if I were a mannequin. I found it all extremely disagreeable, but I couldn’t protest: the articulation of sounds, like my other faculties, still failed me. But the day when I was finally able distinctly to call one of these gentlemen a swine, he didn’t get angry; on the contrary, he smiled and applauded: “Bravo, bravo.” Encouraged, I grew bolder and went on during their next visits: “Piece of filth, bastard, stinker, Jew, asshole.” The doctors gravely shook their heads, the young people took notes on clipboards; finally, a nurse scolded me: “You could be a little more polite, really.”—“Yes, that’s true, you’re right. Should I call you meine Dame?” She waved a pretty ringless hand in front of my eyes: “Mein Fräulein,” she replied lightly, and slipped away. For a young woman, this nurse had a firm, skillful grip: when I had to relieve myself, she turned me over, helped me, then wiped me clean with a thoughtful efficiency, her gestures sure and pleasant, free of all disgust, like those of a mother cleaning her child; as if she, still a virgin perhaps, had done this all her life. I probably took pleasure in it, and delighted in asking her for this service. She or others also fed me, slipping spoonfuls of broth into my lips; I would have preferred a rare steak, but didn’t dare ask, it wasn’t a hotel, after all, but, I had finally understood, a hospital: and to be a patient means precisely what it says.

Thus, clearly, I had had some sort of health problem, in circumstances that still escaped me; and judging from the freshness of the sheets and the calm and cleanliness of the premises, I must no longer be in Stalingrad; or else things had changed quite a bit. And indeed, I no longer was in Stalingrad but, as I finally learned, in Hohenlychen, north of Berlin, at the German Red Cross hospital. How I had gotten there, no one could tell me; I had been delivered in a van, they had been told to look after me, they didn’t ask any questions, they looked after me, and as for me, I didn’t have to ask any questions, either: I had to get back on my feet again.

One day, there was a commotion: the door opened, my little room filled with people, most of them, this time, not in white but in black. I recognized the shortest of them after some effort, my memory was slowly coming back to me: he was the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. He was surrounded by other SS officers; next to him stood a giant whom I didn’t know, with a rough-hewn, horselike face slashed with scars. Himmler planted himself next to me and gave a brief speech with his nasal, professorial voice; on the other side of the bed, men were photographing and filming the scene. I didn’t understand much of what the Reichsführer said: isolated phrases bubbled to the surface of his words, heroic officer, honor of the SS, lucid reports, courageous, but they certainly didn’t form a narration in which I could recognize myself, I had trouble applying these words to myself; and yet the meaning of the scene was clear, I was indeed the person being discussed, it was because of me that all these officers and these gleaming dignitaries were gathered in this tiny room. In the crowd, in back, I recognized Thomas; he made a friendly gesture toward me, but alas I couldn’t speak to him. His speech over, the Reichsführer turned to an officer in round, thick glasses with black rims, who eagerly handed him something; then he leaned toward me, and with an increasing panic I saw his pincenez, his grotesque moustache, his fat, short, dirty-nailed fingers approach; he wanted to put something on my chest, I saw a pin, I was terrified at the thought of it pricking me; then his face descended even lower, he was paying no attention whatsoever to my anguish, his verbena-smelling breath was stifling me, and he deposited a wet kiss on my face. He straightened himself and launched his arm into the air, bellowing; the entire audience imitated him, and my bed was surrounded with a forest of raised arms, black, white, brown; timidly, so as not to be singled out, I too raised my arm; that had its effect, since everyone turned around and hurried to the door; the crowd quickly flowed out, and I was left alone, exhausted, incapable of removing this curious cold thing that was weighing on my chest.