My Year in No Man's Bay (55 page)
Whenever I prepared the evening meal for us both, it came to mind how at one time the thought of having a family, my family, had not made me feel strange or beside myself, but rather positively sturdy, with both feet on the ground. To create a family: for me in those days there was, as far as everyday life was concerned, no greater fulfillment; and I wanted to do my work not merely for those entrusted to me but also in their midst, unisolated, without a solitary study. To do the housework as well, washing windows, cooking, darning stockings, was all right with me; I had not really needed the precedent of David Herbert Lawrence, another cottager's son, who had expertly scrubbed the floor for his aristocratic wife.
Now during evenings with Vladimir, and most powerfully during apple peeling or cutting bread, the memory of that meant it was coming alive again for me, also as something I had been missing after all throughout the time I was alone. The half orphan's ways intensified this feeling. If I, worn down by my neighbors' racket, actually felt hostile toward one child or another out there, that was unthinkable with this one here.
When he imitated me, it was never a question of mimicking; he did it in his own unique way, in whose reflection my actions in turn pleased me and made me happy. Thus it happened that in his presence I sketched
out on a piece of paper what I had in mind to write the following morning, whereupon he, though only beginning to speak, every time wrote and drew something, which, although it seemed fairly similar, was an entirely different process: his writing was very vehement, yet his drawing was very deliberate. And both were done smoothly, without hesitation, and he always knew when something was finished; with the dashing final stroke and a last mighty drop of spit falling from his open mouth onto the paper came the decisive: “Done!” (But with the start of an undertaking, even selecting crayons, he was choosy, like the itinerant workers.) Compared with his, my own handwriting seemed to me ugly, also insignificant, and I wished it were as indecipherable, dense, and delicate as that of this little child.
out on a piece of paper what I had in mind to write the following morning, whereupon he, though only beginning to speak, every time wrote and drew something, which, although it seemed fairly similar, was an entirely different process: his writing was very vehement, yet his drawing was very deliberate. And both were done smoothly, without hesitation, and he always knew when something was finished; with the dashing final stroke and a last mighty drop of spit falling from his open mouth onto the paper came the decisive: “Done!” (But with the start of an undertaking, even selecting crayons, he was choosy, like the itinerant workers.) Compared with his, my own handwriting seemed to me ugly, also insignificant, and I wished it were as indecipherable, dense, and delicate as that of this little child.
When in the course of the year he acquired speech, it was quite an event to hear his first questions. That raising of the voice at the end of a sentence had the ring of a formulation never heard in such a way, close to song. And I experienced an even greater event when Vladimir then, in response to a question of mine, for the first time began to tell a story. That happened completely apart from his usual speaking and even singing; a long, tense silence preceded it, followed by a palpable formation of images and then a rhythm in the deepest recesses of the child's inward being, a shining forth, and then he launched into it, his introductory sound a rolling of the tongue, a clacking, a positively melodic jubilation.
Yet in his everyday speech, too, he visibly had an object before his eyes for every word, in contrast to so many French children, who before the first image had learned already the words for it, so that even for them as adults the words could never represent something actually seen.
And another special thing happened with him: when he began to stammer. It was not regression into infant babbling, but rather a sort of ecstatic state, from which the child, so fiery and imperious that no one needed a translation, took a position on the world's goings-on and proclaimed his view of the situation. These speeches always began with a sharply articulated, almost shouted “And now!” and only after that launched into inspired stammering.
If Vladimir could say of someone: “I know him,” the expression was infused with pure pleasure. If he was asked what this person or that “did,” he would reply: “He's there.” But at intervals he would fall completely
silent, and when I then glanced over at him, his eyes would be wide open, focused on me, as they had been for a long time already, almost alarmingly. And when he played, what credulous playing it was âthe credulity of play.
silent, and when I then glanced over at him, his eyes would be wide open, focused on me, as they had been for a long time already, almost alarmingly. And when he played, what credulous playing it was âthe credulity of play.
Sometimes he merely listened for a while, and it became clear to me, from the birdsong, trains pulling in and out (which in the meantime I had otherwise long since stopped hearing), the rattling of the garbage trucks (here often in the evening), how wide the bay was becoming. With him at my side, it was as if the barking of dogs, as well as the year-round screeching of the ravens, were happening for his and our protection. And when he then slept, I sat next to his room in the kitchen as the household employee on call, and I liked that as much as the unaccustomed view from there through the trees of my own house, with lights on, as always at nightfall, in every room, and looking so mysterious from the unfamiliar kitchen.
“A child,” I thought, “keeps joy going in the world, and what else is the world?” That I had already had a similar thought: all the better.
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hen in the course of the summer the business with the mushrooms in the bay began, in time even interfering with my year's work, and this time the danger came from me myself.
hen in the course of the summer the business with the mushrooms in the bay began, in time even interfering with my year's work, and this time the danger came from me myself.
But perhaps I am exaggerating, and mushroom hunting should be seen more as a kind of competition to sitting and recording, a fruitful one?
During that year every species of edible mushroom gradually found its way to my heart, and the main characters, yes, were the cèpes, or, as we called them in Austria, king boletes. I had never been a mushroom expert, and am still not one today. (Or any kind of “expert,” God forbid.) Yet finding them had been a great pleasure way back in my childhood, even if in the Jaunfeld region I had at most had an eye for what we called egg yolk mushrooms, or chanterelles, which often had parasols or umbrellas that more than covered both palms. I recall how after an extraordinarily rich find, halfway into the mountains along the Yugoslav border, when I was out hiking with my grandfather, a night came during which in my sleep I zigzagged from one yellow patch of chanterelles to
the next, scooping them up, and in the end that was one of my most enduring nightmares. And no one in the house ate these yellow ones; they were sold (I owed my first paperbacks to the proceeds) to a cooperative and transported from there by truck to the regional capital. And if memory serves me, there was not a single find of king mushrooms in my entire childhood. My grandfather turned up, rarely enough, with one, called
jur
ek
in Slovenianârather disrespectfully, precisely out of admiration?âbut he, who otherwise was happy to share, did not reveal his sources to me, his frequent companion, and I still picture stumbling one day upon a sealed testament in which he passes on to me the secret locations.
the next, scooping them up, and in the end that was one of my most enduring nightmares. And no one in the house ate these yellow ones; they were sold (I owed my first paperbacks to the proceeds) to a cooperative and transported from there by truck to the regional capital. And if memory serves me, there was not a single find of king mushrooms in my entire childhood. My grandfather turned up, rarely enough, with one, called
jur
ekin Slovenianârather disrespectfully, precisely out of admiration?âbut he, who otherwise was happy to share, did not reveal his sources to me, his frequent companion, and I still picture stumbling one day upon a sealed testament in which he passes on to me the secret locations.
Not until the summer of my move here on the other side of the hills above the Seine did I suddenly see, without really looking, on a sunken road, from whose crest it was not all that far east to the next Métro, and only a hop, skip, and jump to the Eiffel Tower, king boletes standing there, amazing also in their perfection so close to the mountain-bike ruts, and as if they were there just for me. The hat in the crook of my arm was then wonderfully weighed down by the few light brown caps, whose fresh smell accompanied me through the subway and along the avenues, except that the pedestrians in the metropolis took them, along with the leaves clinging to them, for theatrical props, real live objects like the edibles in the windows of Japanese restaurants.
That summer was also the summer of the king boletes on the future Bordeaux bank, along the forest side of the bay's main road, grubbed out of the earth by children sliding down for fun. And both finds I cooked for a reconciliation meal with the woman from Catalonia, or wasn't it simply a matter of enjoying them together, without any particular purpose? And of these meals I still recall that we immediately pushed aside the other ingredients, meat as well as herbs, because all at once these tasted so insistent, even coarse, and put only the white thin mushroom slices into our mouths, one piece only after we had thoroughly savored the previous one; that with each bite the taste promptly became a feeling, not merely gratifying the palate but also the head and then the entire body; and that, if we two mushroom eaters took on the air of conspirators, certainly not ones planning anything bad.
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ince then I have been on the lookout every year in the bay, but have hardly ever encountered the king bolete again (except in the autumn at the market on the railroad station square, though heaps of them there, at fruit and potato stands, with a little sign indicating their origin,
cèpes de Corrèze,
a region considered the most remote or interior in France).
ince then I have been on the lookout every year in the bay, but have hardly ever encountered the king bolete again (except in the autumn at the market on the railroad station square, though heaps of them there, at fruit and potato stands, with a little sign indicating their origin,
cèpes de Corrèze,
a region considered the most remote or interior in France).
Instead I collected the multitude of other edible varieties, and was happy with every russula, cèpe, or ringed bolete, varieties the mushroom-seeking clubs tended to leave behind. For years I also spent not a few autumn evenings studying a large-format, thick book with the title
The Mushrooms of Alaska,
simply as a stimulus to fantasizing, at the same time struck by the similarities among a number of mushrooms from the tundra up by the Bering Strait or from the volcanic Aleutian Islands and those here in the bay, for instance in their rich coloration, along with their adaptation to the soil colors, also their woodiness (especially those under birches). And I encountered variations so rare in the forests here that they were not mentioned in even one of the French mushroom guidesâwhich claimed that the chestnut forests and acidic soil around Paris made for poor mushroom countryâbut turned up in a Slovenian guide, the fruit of an expedition of engineers, as researchers and authors.
The Mushrooms of Alaska,
simply as a stimulus to fantasizing, at the same time struck by the similarities among a number of mushrooms from the tundra up by the Bering Strait or from the volcanic Aleutian Islands and those here in the bay, for instance in their rich coloration, along with their adaptation to the soil colors, also their woodiness (especially those under birches). And I encountered variations so rare in the forests here that they were not mentioned in even one of the French mushroom guidesâwhich claimed that the chestnut forests and acidic soil around Paris made for poor mushroom countryâbut turned up in a Slovenian guide, the fruit of an expedition of engineers, as researchers and authors.
The king boletes, after almost a decade in which they had not allowed me to catch a glimpse of them in this area, returned only this year, and again unexpectedly, without my having to search for them, and most abundantly right around my spot deep in the woods behind the Nameless Pond, where I settled down two seasons ago to get on with my work.
One midsummer morning when I arrived there, the first one received me, majestically, right after I had slipped through to the burned-out stump, my backrest. And to convey the sight, I shall use after all what I noted down at the time: “Reflection in the face of a beautiful thing: âI have never seen such a thing before!' And although he had often seen it before, he was thinking the truth.”
I then waited a long time to pick it, traced an arc around my find, first picked one of the much softer and more yielding ringed boletes, in which, when I held it to my ear, maggots were raging audibly. And when I finally took hold of the shaft of the thing, or being, or kingâwithout my fingers' quite getting around itâI felt a trembling in it, and when I cut it off, with utmost care, using my pocketknife, there was a sound from the last subterranean fiber as if from a string even
lower than the lowest guitar string, and certainly not one that was snapping.
lower than the lowest guitar string, and certainly not one that was snapping.
As I then took my place, with a glance at the rotund form at my side, it was as if my daily work quota were already done for today.
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rom that time on, for months, until late fall, I did not once begin my writing until I had found at least a hatful of edible mushrooms, which I first lined up on the forest floor, with all their faces toward me.
rom that time on, for months, until late fall, I did not once begin my writing until I had found at least a hatful of edible mushrooms, which I first lined up on the forest floor, with all their faces toward me.
Initially there was hardly another king bolete among them; coming upon one remained for a goodly time a rarity. But gathering the other kinds (and they, too, had to be searched for attentively) in the forests around the bay, and occasionally eyeing them, in the midst of my work, could be refreshing and cheering. I then saw myself, while I continued writing about the year here and my distant friends, as having company, one which with its so varied colorations and sizes accompanied me.
And this did not produce a sense of guilt like picking wildflowers: these mushrooms, the fragile, snow-white head of the inky caps (still too young to have ink in their lamellae), the rough-skinned boletes, called birch scaberstalks, repeating in miniature a birch with their scarred-looking stems (though with a reddish-brown mushroom cap in place of the tree's crown), the bluish russulas, called indigo milkcap, at the same time spattered with the clay of the sunken pathâthey had all lived for the purpose of being found by someone, by me, for example.
Whenever such a mushroom had already been nibbled away by worms, I had a sense of having missed something, and specifically with this one; as if it had grown not for this brood of worms but only for being consumed by someone like me, and perhaps beforehand being gnawed at a bit by a snail. And it was the same with the mushrooms that had simply dried up or rotted: I felt sorry for them, sorry that at the appointed time they had not become a taste sensation in a human mouth.
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