an
odradek
in La Closerie that speaks to me as if I were Hemingway. I sat down at the bar, waiting for a table. I looked around several times and saw nothing, perhaps he wasn’t there anymore. Until suddenly, when I least expected it, I heard someone behind me say with a laugh: “You owe a lot of money.” I thought immediately of all the times I had left that place without paying. Terrified, I turned around but couldn’t see him, it seemed as if he wasn’t there. I looked everywhere, but he had to be between the bar and the entrance. But he wasn’t there, or else I couldn’t see him. The voice, in any case, was his, unmistakable, like the rustling of fallen leaves. And his laugh was the same, the laugh of someone with no lungs. “Remember I was your supporter, remember I introduced you to Max Perkins,” I heard him say all of a sudden. And then I saw him. He was in the darkest corner of the bar. He looked like he’d drunk every single bottle in the cellar of the old vacant house. “What are you doing here, Scott?” I asked him, perhaps using too thuggish a tone of voice. He was silent for a long time, holding out against time just as the wood he’s made of also resisted. I was already seated and talking to the waiter when, coming out of the very wood of my table, I heard his unsettling voice again. “You owe me lots of money, Hemingway. I helped you succeed,” he said, and laughed somewhat bitterly. I could have sworn that for a fraction of a second, under the direction of the
Monstre Vert
, all the bottles in La Closerie des Lilas did a little dance.
Though I could see he was drunker than ever, essentially he was still the same as always, still laughing without lungs, but laughing like the immortal being he was, and the old broken threads of this beautiful and damned thingamajig hadn’t aged at all, the old threads of my beloved, secret Scott.
26
One evening, I went to Raúl Escari’s apartment planning to get him to give me some guidance on the meaning of the expression
linguistic register
, the greatest enigma as far as I was concerned on the sheet Marguerite Duras had given me with instructions on how to write a novel. “You really want to know that?” Raúl responded when I asked him about it. “So you know what it is?” I said hopefully. “I know, but I can’t be bothered to tell you,” he replied. And he added: “Act instead of asking.” This last clearly disconcerted me, I wanted to know what he’d meant. “I mean you ask too many questions when really you should be doing something, in this case just start writing. Once you do that without asking yourself so many questions you’ll come face to face with
linguistic register
.”
We were back where we’d been at the beginning of the conversation. “Couldn’t you tell me what a
linguistic register
is like, what sort of characteristics it has?” With great annoyance at having to explain this to me, Raúl said at last: “You don’t speak the same way in the living room as you do in the barracks, with your family as you do with students, in a political meeting, in church, or the bar on the corner. You get the picture now? By the way, why don’t we go to the bar on the corner?”
Once we were at the bar, he deigned to say: “We change the language we use when our surroundings change. Get it?” “But,” I said, “you talk the same way in this bar as you do at home.” “Well, if, for example, your mother came and sat down with us now, I would speak in a different
register
.” “I get it,” I said. Then, as if annoyed that I got it so quickly, he added: “We shouldn’t really be talking about
linguistic registers
in this bar so much as
diaphasic varieties
, which are the various idiomatic styles individuals adopt according to the communicative situation they find themselves in.”
“And isn’t a
linguistic register
the same thing as a
diaphasic variety
?” I asked. “Of course it is,” he replied, “see, now you
odradek
in La Closerie that speaks to me as if I were Hemingway. I sat down at the bar, waiting for a table. I looked around several times and saw nothing, perhaps he wasn’t there anymore. Until suddenly, when I least expected it, I heard someone behind me say with a laugh: “You owe a lot of money.” I thought immediately of all the times I had left that place without paying. Terrified, I turned around but couldn’t see him, it seemed as if he wasn’t there. I looked everywhere, but he had to be between the bar and the entrance. But he wasn’t there, or else I couldn’t see him. The voice, in any case, was his, unmistakable, like the rustling of fallen leaves. And his laugh was the same, the laugh of someone with no lungs. “Remember I was your supporter, remember I introduced you to Max Perkins,” I heard him say all of a sudden. And then I saw him. He was in the darkest corner of the bar. He looked like he’d drunk every single bottle in the cellar of the old vacant house. “What are you doing here, Scott?” I asked him, perhaps using too thuggish a tone of voice. He was silent for a long time, holding out against time just as the wood he’s made of also resisted. I was already seated and talking to the waiter when, coming out of the very wood of my table, I heard his unsettling voice again. “You owe me lots of money, Hemingway. I helped you succeed,” he said, and laughed somewhat bitterly. I could have sworn that for a fraction of a second, under the direction of the
Monstre Vert
, all the bottles in La Closerie des Lilas did a little dance.
Though I could see he was drunker than ever, essentially he was still the same as always, still laughing without lungs, but laughing like the immortal being he was, and the old broken threads of this beautiful and damned thingamajig hadn’t aged at all, the old threads of my beloved, secret Scott.
26
One evening, I went to Raúl Escari’s apartment planning to get him to give me some guidance on the meaning of the expression
linguistic register
, the greatest enigma as far as I was concerned on the sheet Marguerite Duras had given me with instructions on how to write a novel. “You really want to know that?” Raúl responded when I asked him about it. “So you know what it is?” I said hopefully. “I know, but I can’t be bothered to tell you,” he replied. And he added: “Act instead of asking.” This last clearly disconcerted me, I wanted to know what he’d meant. “I mean you ask too many questions when really you should be doing something, in this case just start writing. Once you do that without asking yourself so many questions you’ll come face to face with
linguistic register
.”
We were back where we’d been at the beginning of the conversation. “Couldn’t you tell me what a
linguistic register
is like, what sort of characteristics it has?” With great annoyance at having to explain this to me, Raúl said at last: “You don’t speak the same way in the living room as you do in the barracks, with your family as you do with students, in a political meeting, in church, or the bar on the corner. You get the picture now? By the way, why don’t we go to the bar on the corner?”
Once we were at the bar, he deigned to say: “We change the language we use when our surroundings change. Get it?” “But,” I said, “you talk the same way in this bar as you do at home.” “Well, if, for example, your mother came and sat down with us now, I would speak in a different
register
.” “I get it,” I said. Then, as if annoyed that I got it so quickly, he added: “We shouldn’t really be talking about
linguistic registers
in this bar so much as
diaphasic varieties
, which are the various idiomatic styles individuals adopt according to the communicative situation they find themselves in.”
“And isn’t a
linguistic register
the same thing as a
diaphasic variety
?” I asked. “Of course it is,” he replied, “see, now you
Similar Books
