From Benching With Virgil
by Gad Hollander
It was in January, if I remember. The curtains were already drawn by late afternoon. She lies motionless, face down on the floor, her legs spread across the little hearth-rug by the bed. The lamp on one of the sidetables is overturned and rests on its shade. Its light shines on her hair and part of her back. A hazy line of shadow runs obliquely over her middle- and lower-back. The lower part of her body is completely submerged in that dimmer, more diffuse light. A book is strewn in the middle of the room, near the foot of the bed, where the light is considerably weaker, a darksome light. She may have been reading it earlier that afternoon, or it may have fallen from the table near the centre of the room. In any case, it lies on its spine with the pages fanned open. If she has been reading it, it is impossible to say at what page she stopped or, indeed, whether she has even started it or, perhaps, finished it. We enter the room through a doorway on the right connecting with an adjacent room. Mr Laurel is seated behind the desk, set in the recess of the bay window. The curtains are drawn. Near the centre of the room stands a low rectangular table; on the table, a book. Judging from its thickness it may be a novel or a history book, or perhaps the complete works of a poet. It looks like a new edition, with the dust-jacket still intact, and is probably as yet unread. To the left of the table, between two identical sidetables supporting identical lamps, stands the bed, its large mahogany head-board pressed against the wall. At the far end of the room, equidistant from the centre table and the desk and facing the latter at an angle, stands a chaise-longue on which Bergson is comfortably perched. His left arm lies lengthways along the back of the sofa, while his right arm hangs loosely over the side facing the room. He seems to be twirling a greyish-green viscid pellet with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. He has been listening attentively, while exploring his nostrils, to Mr Laurel expounding on the desperate loneliness of the writer\rquote s profession, particularly the poet's. Mr Laurel has said that it is an incomparably solitary profession and has offered some concrete examples as evidence for his statement. He has argued that, unlike actors, musicians, painters and the like, the writer's especially the poet's has no public forum in which to exhibit his stuff. Bergson has nodded in agreement. And Mr Laurel has gone even further and maintained that whereas a playwright will view the fruits of his labours through the medium of the stage, and the novelist, if successful, will see his book skilfully transformed into moving (and talking) pictures, or at least prominently displayed in bookshop windows all over the city, the poet, alas, however praiseworthy his song, is at the best of times doomed to obscurity: his work, even when published, is tucked narrowly away among the back shelves of a few select bookshops. Mr Laurel has emphasised \lquote select\rquote . If he has any readers, they are mostly fellow practitioners who are more often envious than appreciative of his work. Isn't it a crying shame, Mr Laurel has asked rhetorically, especially when the exact opposite of the situation had once been the norm. Wasn't it so in antiquity? For his part, Bergson has said very little except that poets are still held in high esteem, if only by a few. At another point he has added, this should not, nor does it, detract from their merits; on the contrary, it only serves to elevate their song to an almost sublime pitch, and what would the philistines do with such music but drown it in their own cacophony? Bergson has retorted with his own rhetorical question. Mr Laurel is on the verge of tears, but restrains himself. Since L's disappearance and the subsequent discovery of her body, he suspects Bergson of complicity-- but with whom and in what sort of scheme he is as yet unsure. Bergson lights a cigarette and changes the topic as we enter the room. Nasty business, he says. Through the open doorway the shifting of table and chairs can be heard. Presumably Mr Hardy is hanging up the lace curtains which he has recently laundered. He hums a light tune to himself as he works. The door, however, shuts behind us, cutting off Mr Hardy's air. In the room the sole source of light is the lamp on Mr Laurel's desk. Coincidental with the narrator\rquote s dream is the reader's (qua reader) disappearance from one's mind, as though that figure occupied a previous, now fading dream. He is watching television with L. In moderate, digestible doses, the programme depicts life in a death camp. A dramatised documentary. Narrator and L, before as well as after the show, discuss its ethical and aesthetic implications, argue its validity within their current historical context, refer to other sources, in small, reserved voices, as in a gallery, before and after, in front of the glazy olive screen, cooling, or about to be warmed. They eat and drink nothing during the hour of its airing. The narrator smokes several cigarettes; L is a non-smoker. A scene recounts the death of a man for whom escape and suicide have become synonymous. The action seems well rehearsed: from an overview shot of some twenty or thirty men laboriously wielding their implements inside a vast, half-dug, rectangular pit, the camera cuts to a medium shot of a figure who has just dropped his pickaxe and whose face (in close-up), despite a wry, jocular appearance, bears traces of tears among its pock-marks and bristles. After an initial hesitation, the actor scrambles up the slope of the pit towards the left of the screen (the camera following him from a fixed position) then, on reaching level ground, breaks into a lame trot and heads for the fence which looms in the background. In following him, the camera has glimpsed one or two dumb, inoffensive gazes from the crowd of prisoners. Before he reaches the fence a whistle is heard, followed immediately by a shouted command, then a second whistle followed by a sarcastic warning shot. The man has only a few more feet to run, a diminishing figure in the centre of the screen, before he latches onto the electrified fence with a muffled scream. Cut, simultaneous with second shouted command, to watchtower. As more whistles and commands are heard the images begin to melt away, taking with them the screen itself, the companion, the furniture and cigarette smoke, until the whole room is momentarily enveloped in darkness, yet only momentarily, for then the images reform, slowly, crystallising with acrid urgency, with a poignancy too true-to-life, with characters whose likeness is almost perfect, and with a smell that hangs close but cannot be described. Familiar with the literature, the visitant draws comfort from his knowledge. For as far as he can remember, he does not figure in any of the chronicles, neither directly nor indirectly nor in any symbolic or metaphorical way. Yet, as if by some primal instinct, his behaviour immediately complies with these demonic circumstances. He shuffles aimlessly among the condemned. He obeys orders. To the best of his abilities he establishes routines in his daily existence in order to maintain his moral strength. But these are only gestures, he knows. He knows that for the executioner death is merely a formality, a tedious bureaucratic stamp, a means towards an idea. Nevertheless, he feels his knowledge to be a kind of hindsight \endash perhaps he has dreamt this or is dreaming it now-- and his presence a kind of absence, an invisible presence. At times he believes he will pass through it all unscathed, like an insect through a combine harvester. He knows that others have, somehow; he has read their testimony. But theirs was a twofold struggle against death and sleep, whereas for him sleep and death have become synonymous, something to be succumbed to at the end of the day.