A Book of Memories (39 page)

Dionysus was the happiest to see the new arrival, who was immediately named Pan, for in the language of the immortals this word covers the concept of All, Everything, Universal, and unless we are mistaken, the gods saw in him the perfect embodiment of that word.

With one hand the handsome youth sitting at the center of my picture raised to his lips a panpipe, unmistakable symbol of his panhood, and therefore, according to legend, he had to be the one who led the nymphs' nocturnal dances, and then also brought on the morning; he was a furious, spiteful god who let out his anger, especially when his midday sleep under a shady oak was disturbed; and he was also the friendliest of gods, high-spirited, generous, playful, prolific, fond of merriment, music, and noise; in spite of so many signs indicating that the figure in the picture was in fact Pan, I could not shake the doubt that perhaps he wasn't the great phallic god after all, but then who was he? A satisfactory answer seemed impossible, for not only did he hold in his other hand a leafy staff, which, according to legend, Hermes received from Apollo in exchange for his lyre, but his body wasn't hairy, his brow had no horns, and he had feet, not hooves
—unless the shapely billy goat lying at his feet like a watchdog was meant to symbolize everything missing from the god's smooth, anthropomorphic body; we know there are artists who tend to represent as beautiful what is completely ugly, because they're afraid to show the creature named after the universe as hairy, hoofed, and horned—this is but an absurd human weakness, of course, but all the same, I couldn't rule out the possibility that through his laughable weakness the painter had tried, misleadingly, to prettify the history of the gods; on the other hand, one couldn't claim with any certainty that the figure was Hermes, that blasted leafy staff of his notwithstanding, for then why the pipe in his other hand? It was all a muddle, the whole thing, and I probably wouldn't have paid attention to it if sorting it out had not been part of the preliminary studies needed for my planned narrative: I pondered and probed, toyed with and tested my alternatives, self-indulgently playing for time in the process, afraid to tackle my true task, which seemed formidable, and whenever I managed to come to a final decision about something, a new idea would invariably occur to me; for instance: Very well, I mused, let's assume that this figure is neither Pan nor Hermes but Apollo himself, who was also said to have fallen in love with Dryope once and, appropriately, to have chased after her, but because the lovely oak-maid refused his advances, the aroused Apollo changed himself into a turtle and found his way into the hands of the playful nymph; Dryope placed the turtle on her beautiful breasts, where he quickly turned into a snake and under her robe united with her—but this bubble of an idea soon burst, for if that's what happened, how did the lyre end up in Dryope's hand, and the lyre, as I've mentioned before, was made by Hermes after he left the cave on the morning of his birth, which happened much later than the Apollo episode.

My questions and ideas would have remained only questions and ideas if I hadn't found the behavior of the two other nymphs, on the left side of the picture, so peculiar: like the brown-skinned god, one of the nymphs was sitting on a white rock; she was wearing a red cloak, holding a small tambourine in her lap and two drumsticks in her hands, but her face was missing; the paint had simply peeled off the wall, though the position of her body suggested that when she still had a face she was looking straight ahead, she was the one looking out of the picture at us, her gaze, be it severe, forgiving, or gentle, following us wherever we might move in front of the picture; but what piqued my interest even more was the other nymph, standing directly behind the faceless one and wearing a turquoise cloak, the only one in the scene who showed any interest in the youth whom I ventured to identify as Pan; she was the most beautiful of the three nymphs, her face full, her brow clear, her blond hair loosely braided in a crown, her body slight and delicate; she stood there with her hip thrust out just a little and her arms intertwined behind her back, a pose that radiates calm, confidence, and openness; her eyes were huge, brown, and warm, a bit sad, too, sad with longing, and then
—I almost yelled out at the joy of discovery—I realized that this same sadness was reflected in the youth's eyes, although his head was turned away and he hardly took notice of the third nymph's wistful glance brushing his bulging chest; over the shoulder of the lyre-strumming Dryope, he was looking out of the picture, and—no mere coincidence—he, too, must have been looking at someone and was likewise being watched by that someone, but that someone was not visible, because he or she must have been standing not here in the clearing but among the trees of the forest.

And it was the forest I was mainly interested in, where this impossible love could be possible, even if it would never really come to pass; it was this love I wanted to write about.

But to return to the picture, hoping to make clear in the light of what follows why I was so preoccupied with it, even though in my story I wasn't even going to mention the mural or any of the characters in it, I thought I recognized Salmakis in the figure of the nymph hidden in the background; while the name further fueled my already inflamed imagination, and feeling as if I'd been given the key to a puzzle, I thought of yet a third, equally complicated story: this is the one, I thought to myself with some satisfaction; as we know, Hermes had another son
—a dubious designation, perhaps, for the issue of his union with Aphrodite, if only because according to some genealogies, the two of them had to have been siblings, children of Uranus the night sky and Hemera the light of day, and not only siblings but twins! for we also know that they were born on the fourth day of the lunar month, and therefore the fruit of their love possessed in equal proportions the features of their parents' faces, bodies, and characters, just as when two ample streams converge and, with much splashing and bubbling, flow into one another, and who can separate water from water! consequently, in their offspring there was an equal measure of what our language calls boy and girl but what coexists quite naturally in some gods, and to make this divine mingling of male and female unmistakable, the child was given a name that contained equal proportions of its father's and mother's names, Hermes and Aphrodite.

By now everyone can guess whom I'm thinking of: yes, the newborn was Hermaphrodites, and immediately after his birth Aphrodite entrusted him to the care of the nymphs of Mount Ida, who properly raised the child
—we have here another case of a mother abandoning her child, but once we get over our disillusionment, we must see that for the gods this is only natural: every one of them is complete unto himself, this is what they all have in common, the gods are born democrats, one might say; but to continue with Hermaphrodites' story: he grew to be such a dazzlingly beautiful youth that many mistook him for Eros, thinking that Eros must also have been the fruit of Hermes' loins and Aphrodite's womb, which of course was highly unlikely; at the age of fifteen, Hermaphrodites set out on a journey across all of Asia Minor, and wherever he went he kept up his curious habit of admiring all bodies of water, until he reached Caria, where, on the bank of an enchanting spring, he came upon Salmakis.

And at this point our third story also becomes hopelessly tangled; many versions of it have come down to us, and we can sense how time obscures the actual event, but this is the very nature of tales, to indicate the limits of human memory; but if our inferences are correct, we may imagine that at its source the clear spring formed a small pond, and Salmakis, wearing her turquoise robe, was combing her long hair while looking at her reflection in its surface, and when she managed to comb out the tangles of the night, something was amiss: either she did not like the way her hair looked or ripples may have disturbed the water's mirror, so that she began anew, and then kept on combing her hair; today we would call her mad, for she did nothing but comb her hair, that's how she spent her life, and since she was a fountain-nymph, we can't claim that what she did had neither rhyme nor reason.

And just as in any promising human encounter, it is the first moment, the very instant of catching sight and discovering the unexpected presence of the other, that offers the most insignificant, one might say imperceptible, change
—no, it doesn't happen accidentally, for in what follows, the two beings, created for and guided to each other by the gods, would recognize themselves in the other, but since each sees his or her own reflection in the other, they are not compelled to do what is so common in everyday encounters, namely, to step out of themselves and, because of the other, break the boundaries of their own personalities; no, the two separate personalities can penetrate each other while remaining intact; what is usually most delimited is now limitless, and later, looking back on this moment that proved to be so significant, one simply has the feeling that one hadn't noted, most curiously, the very thing one had indeed noted most of all; something like that must have happened with the gods as well: Hermaphroditos looked at the water, and to him Salmakis combing her hair in the water's mirror was nothing more than a feature in the infinitely attractive body of water, another of its details, one might say; he saw it, of course, but so many other things were reflected in that water—sky, rocks, white patches of slowly moving clouds, dense sedge— and to Salmakis, intent on her own reflection and on combing her hair, it was of little importance that besides her face, the flash of her naked arm, and the gleam of her comb, she also saw, beneath her own reflection, the silver streak left by swiftly swimming fish or the golden ridges of sand at the bottom of the pond, so for her the appearance of Hermaphroditos' image in the water meant little more than, let's say, when a water spider, its long legs barely sinking into the surface and creating minuscule ripples in its wake, flitted across her reflected face; at that moment Hermaphroditos was not thinking of anything, he was sad, infinitely sad, as sad as he had ever been, and sadness keeps one from thinking in great detail; not only had creation granted him all at once what it grants us only piecemeal, but as a bonus he also received every possible desire; however, he knew nothing of the exciting little games used to attain those desires, because in him all desire was already attained; we might also say that creation had denied him ordinary gratification because he himself was creation's own gratification—hence the sadness, that infinite sadness which, it so happened, reinforced my suspicion that the figure in the painting was neither Hermes nor Pan, both known to be cheerful and wild, and sadness was not one of Apollo's attributes either, for though he was attracted with equal passion to goddesses and divine youths, nymphs and ordinary shepherd boys, we know of no instance when he would have been at a loss at fusing in himself this dichotomous world; no, sadness came naturally only to Hermaphroditos, it was his special trait, I decided, and this was his great moment: without tearing herself away from her reflection, a surprised Salmakis lowered her comb onto her lap; although each saw the other, they were still not looking directly at each other, and then Salmakis thought (what in later stories became the source of much confusion) she was seeing Eros, that it was his beautiful face gliding over hers like a water spider; and Salmakis was respectful enough to fall in love promptly; she was a kind of ancient bluestocking, but the question of why and how it happened was completely irrelevant at the moment when the two reflections overlapped, eyes over eyes, nose on nose, mouth inside mouth, forehead in forehead, and sad Hermaphrodites now felt what he could never have felt before—his two lips stifled a divine roar!— what an ordinary mortal feels when able to reach out of his self and make contact with another—think of it!—and while everything is perfectly still, there is yet thunder and a raging storm, the rumble of rocks crashing into the sea—think of it!—how great the pleasure when a god tears out of his own boundaries! at that moment Salmakis lost her reflection and Hermaphrodites lost the water; they both lost the very things for whose possession they had been created, and so it should come as no surprise to anyone that they could not remain in one another, as we mortals can, even if the legend speaks of a perfectly consummated love.

But when I tried at this point to summarize what I did and didn't know about this mysterious and beautiful youth who over Dryope's shoulders was looking out of the picture, gazing longingly at someone, while Salmakis was watching him, filled with the same longing, and when it also became clear to me that neither of them would ever possess the object of their longing, then all I could ask was: Ye gods, what's the point of it all? if such a foolish question may be put to you, I felt as lost about my own feelings as the figures in the painting seemed to be confused about each other and themselves; stripped of my usual artful deceptions, I had no choice but to recognize in Salmakis' gaze, plain and direct, the gaze of Helene, my fiancée, as she tried with great longing, sadness, and understanding to absorb and make her own my every thought and gesture, while I, accursed and doomed, incapable of love no matter how much I loved her and, like the youth in the picture
—alas, my beauty no match for his—not looking at her, not only was I not grateful for her love, but it downright irritated and disgusted me, and I was looking at someone else, of course someone else! and that someone, I might as well risk the highfalutin claim, excited me more than Helene's palpable love, because that someone promised to lead me not into a cozy family nest but into the murkiest depths of my instincts, into a jungle, into hell, among wild beasts, into the unknown, which always seems more important to us than the known, the reasonable, and the comprehensible; yet, while observing this emotional chaos within me, I could have thought of another story, no less plainly and directly out of my own life—to hell with these ancient tales and legends! I could have thought of a sweet-smelling woman whose name I must keep secret so as not to ruin her reputation, a woman who, in spite of my will, resolve, even desires, was at the center of my secret life, standing there as firmly, enchantingly, and coldly as fate is usually depicted in stylish pseudo-classical paintings, a woman who reminded me of Dryope most of all, the one who could not return my love, not with the same burning love I had for her, because she was in love, as deeply as I with her, with the man whom in these memoirs I mentioned rather misleadingly as my kind paternal friend and to whom I gave the name Claus Diestenweg, concealing his real identity because I was determined to reveal that it was not this woman whom he loved, with the kind of fervent love with which I could have loved her or the hopeless love she bore him, but I was the one he loved and wanted with an insane passion; and if on occasion he submitted to the woman's ardent desires, it was only to taste something of my love for her, to be my surrogate, as it were, to partake of something I had denied him; he loved me in the woman, while I, if I wanted to keep something of her for myself, was forced to love him, at least as a friend or a father, and thereby to feel what I would have to be like for that woman to love only me; although this incident took place in my early youth, we became deeply involved in it only after my arrival in Berlin, following Father's horrible deed and subsequent suicide, but then occurred another terrible tragedy which, though it could not eliminate the effects of the first, ended the story of our curious threesome, and then, because I lacked the strength or courage to die, I had to start a new life; but how dreary and empty, conventionally bourgeois, petty and false this life turned out to be! Or could it be, I wondered, that the story in which man is brought closer to what is divine in him is made of just such, or similar, human muddling and confusion, or just such a frightful tremor in the unattainable? is there nothing but tragedy? but then, what's the use of all this accumulated material, research, notes, all this paper, all these ideas? once past tragedy, we tend to admonish ourselves as if we were gods, but of course we're not even close to being gods; consequently, I could not tell who the youth in my picture was and couldn't even understand why the whole thing interested me so much; how could I possibly get beyond what only the gods can get past?