[34] D’Alembert’s memoirs

As he had been walking along Rue Mouffetard, he had remembered a detail from the city guide of the past. He had walked into the Hotel Orfila without thinking and had asked to see the room where Strindberg had stayed. He had learnt then what every madman in Paris learns sooner or later: that there is no ready-made hell. When he left the Hotel Orfila, he had begun to think about hell. The passage of the Thermopylae came to his mind. More than the sight of the whimpering dogs being sold on Rue Brancion, the huge iron fence had filled him with pity. He had discovered traces of blood in the Rue des Périchaux. As Strindberg recognised evil omens on the tiles of the Hotel Orfila, fragments of the past had detached themselves as he crept through the dirty, blood-spattered alley and now swayed lazily before his eyes, filling him with terrible forebodings. He had seen his own blood spilt. The dirty street was covered in his own blood as far back as he could see. Somewhere behind the houses there was a muffled noise. The traffic on the Boulevard St Michel. But that had been in another world, and between the roofs he had suddenly seen a piece of the star-studded sky. In the blackness of the houses opposite, rectangles of stronger and weaker light had emerged, and sometimes one would go out. Sometimes shadows could be seen moving silently behind illuminated curtains. Noises at the end of the street. Voices echoing between the houses, a man’s voice and a woman’s voice. He could almost understand what they were saying. A few houses further on they had fallen silent. A door had slammed shut. Or the quiet Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. One side in the sun, the other in the shade. Two dogs sniffed at each other on the carriageway, and housewives went about their work behind open windows. Three nuns in wide skirts and winged bonnets that fluttered like birds walked to the Jardin du Luxembourg. He saw them from afar without thinking of anything. Breathless, Paris seemed to him like a vicious machine that had cut him off defencelessly from all that was indispensable, bearable only by means of occasional stations of comfort, traps that caught the wanderer. As soon as he found the right place, everything would change. In the evening, he had gone for a walk in the gloomy neighbourhood, crossed the St-Martin canal, which was as black as a grave and made for drowning in. He had stopped at the corner of Rue Alibert. Why Rue Alibert? Who was that? Then Rue Dieu. Why God? Rue Baurepaire. A detention centre for criminals. Rue de Bondy. Did the devil lead him? An old church between vegetables and blue street lamps, the gutters slippery with rubbish. The Place St. Sulpice, silent and deserted, where the woman with the broken umbrella and the crazy veil came at midnight; every night she slept there on a bench under her tattered umbrella, her dress stained green, her fingers knotty with the smell of decay that her body gave off. One night he had walked down the Rue Lhomond, dejected. Because he had walked down this street particularly often in despair? Because he remembered the sentence he had heard here? Why don’t you show me the Paris you’re always talking about? The Paris that never existed. He hadn’t read the street names. He had gone astray, turned back on his own tracks without finding his way back. He had recoiled from a monstrous shed that reeked of raw meat and rotten vegetables. Suspicious figures brushed against him, coarse words were spoken. He had been afraid of the unknown. He’d been caught in a filthy cul-de-sac where filth, vice and crime dwelled. Whores 354 had blocked his way. Street urchins laughed at him. Further away, high walls with numerous barred windows. Behind them a forest of chimneys. In the distance, the tower of Notre-Damr-desnhamni church with its cross and cockerel. In the middle of the dense crowd that flowed into the Gare St. Lazare, the whores under the archways, the seltzer bottles on the tables, a thick stream of semen flowing into the gutters. Only rarely did a bus pass through the street, and a few pedestrians wandered along the wet pavements. A group of silhouetted figures on the corner of Rue Lamarck. He had walked along the right-hand pavement on Rue Lamarck. Not a soul. Only the lights of two cafés along the entire length of the street. He had stopped in front of a house that looked like all the others on this street, an old six-storey building with lights still burning behind individual windows. He had rung the bell. The door had opened. He had seen that it was still light in the concierge’s lodge. Radio music sounded through the glass door, behind which he saw a bed, an elderly woman knitting and a man in felt slippers, collarless, his shirt open over his hairy chest, reading a newspaper. There was no lift. The stairs were covered with a dark-coloured runner. An electric light bulb burned on each landing. Brown doors to the right and left. The house had been clean, without luxury. The walls were painted to look like marble. The white was brownish in colour. The same radio music on every landing. Sometimes he had sat there in the morning and taken a nap in the sun, cursing the pigeons that pecked everywhere. St Sulpice. The moulded bell towers, the garish chimes on the portal, candles inside. Anatole France had liked the square, with the babble of voices, the sound of bells from the altar, the splashing of the fountains, the cooing of the dew. As he had walked down Rue d’Assas, he had stopped in front of a house with a monastic appearance. A large sign: Hotel Orfila. The house had been old, the rooms low, the corridors dark, and the wooden stairs wound like a labyrinth. There had been an atmosphere of mysticism in the building that had attracted him. Or walking along the Seine at night. 355 356 Walking and walking. Except for the drooping trees, the reflections in the water, the current under the lights of the bridges, the women sleeping under the arches of the bridges, on newspaper and in the rain. The mouldy porticoes of the churches, beggars and vermin and old fools. Handcarts stacked on top of each other like wine barrels in side streets. The smell of berries in a market square. He had walked through the Rue de la Paix, through the Tuileries and across the river and then, as if determined to the utmost, had stopped. Pushed along between five and seven in the crowd, following a leg or an arse, pulled along. No appointments, no programme, no money. Scurrying here and there like a rat, sometimes, secretly, picking up cigarette butts. He had stopped in front of a house that looked like all the others in this street, an old six-storey building with lights burning behind individual windows. He had rung the doorbell. The door had opened. He had seen that it was still light in the concierge’s lodge. Radio music sounded through the glass door, behind which he saw a bed, an elderly woman knitting and a man in felt slippers, collarless, his shirt open over his hairy chest, reading a newspaper. There was no lift. The stairs were covered with a dark-coloured runner. An electric light bulb burned on each landing. Brown doors to the right and left. The house had been clean, without luxury. The walls were painted to look like marble. The white was brownish in colour. The same radio music on every landing. Wasn’t it strange that the same thing had happened about six months apart? He had walked from Boulevard Rochechouart with its illuminated cinemas and dance halls. But from the corner of Rue Coulaincourt, which climbed quite steeply, it had become frighteningly quiet. He had filled the gaps with gloomy figures. He found the secluded corner he had been looking for. His room opened onto a cul-de-sac. From its centre, all you could see was a moss-covered wall with two round windows. Sitting at the table, he gazed at the landscape he had not expected. 357

machine translation of D’Alemberts Memoiren by Heissenbuttel…