18 Suddenly, the Cliff #3
I never heard from Pauline. Her coffee remained in the cup, and a waiter cleared away the drawing and the jar of pencils to entertain a child at another table.
And me? I took a while to leave the bar, ecstatic to have seen her, elated to have reaffirmed our feelings, and crushed, too, for having lost her again right before my eyes.
I ordered a malt and remember little else.
I know I wandered the city without finding the way or the right time to return to the station.
“Now, very happy,” I repeated with every step, lost in a meadow turned forest. “Now, very happy.”
Sometimes intention counts more than the words.
And I was convinced, the moment her answer left her mouth, that that “now” referred to the fleeting instant of finding each other again, to the precise scene of being together, even if it was just five minutes that felt like five hours, or five seconds.
Everything happened fast but in slow motion.
Do you know what I mean? In the weeks afterward, I turned that “now” over and over, hearing a dozen possible intonations—questioning, affirming.
I even thought it might refer more generally to her life in Barcelona, with her family.
That idea frightened me, but then I realized I was mistaken.
What mattered wasn’t whether it meant “now that we’re together” or “now with my way of living,” but that wherever she was, with whoever she was, she was happy.
And if Pauline was happy, I could not wish her anything more.
Anything else would have been selfish on my part.
“Now, very happy.” Her last words. Today, with her terrible death that will take me months to accept, I know I will live the rest of my days with those three words. Tell me, isn’t this something we have to tell? Are you happy? Now, very happy. Isn’t that the essence of love?
I write to you, Julie, while Schubert’s songs play, the ones Pauline and I listened to at my apartment, and listening to them today is unbearable.
Schubert wanted to compose love songs and what came out was sad.
Now I understand. How long will it take before I can hear our music—Bulgarian love songs—and not want to smash my head against the past?
I write with her pipe in front of me, the pipe she smoked.
Yes, you read that right: the pipe that one day, suddenly, she wanted to try.
You know how alive Pauline was, how open to new experiences.
Looking back now, it’s as if she knew she had to gather all these experiences, because her body maybe sensed it was in a rush. And time is never wasted.
Life begins, life ends, as I said before. But we are children of what we’ve loved. And I will carry Pauline with me always. I want nothing more.
Let me speak of Gina. Only a few lines to say that I think about her a lot, though I do not know her.
I saw her only in that brief meeting in Girona.
As you can imagine, I watched her mother more than I watched her, though the child did seem quick and bright.
She really was so wise, the little one, that she did not let go of her mother’s hand for a second.
I would have done the same. I wouldn’t have let her go either.
You say her uncle went to fetch her from school to give her the news.
What a moment. What an ordeal. In all of this, she’s the one that fills me with the most pity.
To lose her mother like that, so young, will mark her forever.
Sooner or later these things surface. You can’t predict how, but they end up breaking through.
Even though she doesn’t know me at all and has never even heard of me, and it must stay that way, when you see her again, give her the kiss I didn’t give her in the bookshop.
You told me you were going down to Barcelona for the funeral and that you’d be there for a few days.
So you will read this letter when you have returned to Croissy with your grief.
Call me when you and Alain are back home.
You, at least, with Alain, your philosopher, you have your questions and answers at hand.
In this deep disorientation, I too would need someone to stitch together the few certainties of life.
I would like, then, to come and hug you.
In days of cold and loneliness, I feel that a tight embrace from you, who loved her like a sister, will do me good.
And I would like to ask you what Pauline said exactly when you called her to read my letters.
How did she react? What words did she use?
I have always wanted to know what effect my written words from the heart had on Pauline.
At one point, seeing that she stopped responding, I even began to doubt you had read her my second letter.
Now that everything is over, I must ask for your forgiveness, Julie, for having thought badly of you in a moment of blindness. Forgive me for doubting you.
And forgive, too, the length of this letter.
It has helped me, I suppose, to vent, to remember, and to cry.
I haven’t known how to do anything else in the last few hours.
I will not apologize for that. I want to believe it is normal.
Those of us left behind to turn off the light must harden our hearts, I suppose. Life begins, life ends, n’est-ce pas?
With as much shock as affection . . .
With fury and infinite sadness.
Jean-Pierre Zanardi