The Last Days by Laurent Seksik Page A

outside the memories of a few people. That world had been annihilated. Who else would have been able to tell the story of that defunct era? Who would have the genius to bring its splendour back to life? He was the last, the only one who could pass this light on to future generations. This book was almost a relic.
    She was intimately acquainted with each and every sentence. Some phrases had been etched into her soul: “So I ask mymemories to speak and choose for me, and give at least some faint reflection of my life before it sinks into the dark.” She had read all his books. He had never before written anything as beautiful and profound, or as silvery and sad.
    She was the one who had typed up each page on her old Remington. She had typed out the title,
The World of Yesterday
. He was still dithering over the title. He thought about calling it
Lost Generation, Memoirs of a European
or
My Three Lives
. They had worked for six months on that book. She thought “they” because, yes, she’d had a role in its shaping. Stefan would draft it in his notebooks, whose loose leaves she would then type up. He would reread the pages, make his corrections and scrawl endless additions in the margins. She would then retype the corrected text.
    She said: “It’s good as it is, it’s perfect, there’s nothing left to change, it’s your best book yet.”
    He went back to work, spent whole days and nights correcting the text. He worked tirelessly and never seemed satisfied after reading each version. No, he would explain, that isn’t worthy of what I experienced. The trick is to describe both the light and the shadows, war and peace, the grandeur and the decadence. He wrecked his health writing that book, and slightly lost his mind over it too.
     
    He had begun work on his memoirs in New York, but had felt incapable of remembering each episode of his life and then piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle. He’d usually had a number of notes at his disposal and worked in libraries. But he had nothing that might help jog his memory. He had then thought of seeing Friderike again. Worse still, he had chosen to up sticks and leave town so as to rekindle his relationship with his ex-wife. Stefan and Lotte had left New York and relocated to a sad, dingy hotel in thetown of Ossining, for the sole reason that Friderike lived in the vicinity. Stefan would leave their hotel room each morning and go to meet his ex-wife. He excused himself by blaming his failing memory. He was forced to draw from the well of his ex-wife’s memories. He would leave in the morning and come back in the evening. Nothing carnal went on between them, Lotte knew that. It was even worse than that. Picturing him by her side as they walked hand in hand down the road of their radiant past was more terrible than the thought of them sharing a bed. The following day she’d worn her eyes out staring at her Remington and experienced the same dread as if she’d witnessed them embracing. Friderike
knew everything, remembered everything
. There had only ever been one Mrs Zweig and this book would stand as a testament to that until the end of time. Lotte didn’t belong to the world of yesterday. That book was her coffin, and she’d even nailed the planks together. Stefan and Friderike had known each other for thirty years—by contrast, what did the few years he and Lotte had spent together really amount to? Friderike von Winternitz had witnessed all of his moments of glory, his triumphs, the rapturous welcomes he’d received in Berlin, Paris and Rome. Friderike was the one who’d known the gates of Viennese palaces, the staircases adorned with flowers, the sound of violins, of orchestras, valets in their red livery, the dresses cut of pink tulle, the flamboyant hairstyles, the lacy shawls, the velour ribbons, wrists weighed down by bracelets, the opening bars of music and the intoxicating dances, fine pearls hung round necks, the sophisticated dishes that were served,