LITMIR.BIZ

      She roams around inside her memories as in a place that is both familiar and unknown, a house fallen into darkness where she searches for markers by feeling her way. In this half trance, she sees herself, a different self, stretched out on the bed, intoxicated with confusion and her surrender to sadness. She lies there for a long time, and it is the ringing of her telephone, she recalls, that draws her from her inertia.

      A friend suggested they go to the theatre that evening. Since she couldn’t remain lying on her bed indefinitely and had no idea what to do next, she accepted the invitation. The voice on the other end of the line was clearly delighted, and she had trouble responding to it. It was always the same voice that showed up when things weren’t going well with the other one, the voice she also associated with the most substantial discussions: Victor’s voice.

      The play presented a man with an incurable disease whose unpronounceable name hinted at a connection to the country that had so harshly regained her attention that morning. She could easily identify her mother tongue even if she didn’t know how to speak it. In the play, the man was visited by his guardian angel, who suggested that, while he was awaiting death, he spend his time collecting inside a small box everything he wanted to leave behind of himself, everything that he’d want to be associated with afterward. The play’s title was In Memory of Him. For some reason she didn’t admit to herself at the time, she thought it was beautiful but hard to take and disturbing. A few years later, sitting at her desk, she thinks she knows why the show had been so gripping. Perhaps that was the moment when the link was formed between the revulsion that had submerged her and the project to which she now devotes herself thousands of kilometers away.

      After the play, she invited Victor to have a drink. At first she was surprised that he didn’t seem to have heard the news that had so shaken her that very morning, and, powerless to think about anything else, she only half listened to his comments on the play. Still, he came to it in the end:

      “Did you hear those unbelievable figures on the prisons in your country? It seems that the number of prisoners is so enormous and the legal authorities so overloaded that it will take several centuries to handle all the cases.”

      “Yes,” she answered, feigning the same neutrality as if she’d been told the score of the cricket world cup.

      “It’s really incredible, all the same, that such a situation can exist. It gives you a terrifying idea of the violence in that country but also of the indifference that obscures it all. It’s as if a crime were committed in France resulting in the imprisonment of the entire population of Lyon and no one would care.”

      “It’s terrible, but what can you do . . .” she uttered, to see his reaction.

      For a moment he held the glass he’d just picked up to his lips, put it back down, and yelled at her, “You’re appalling!” She smiled at him, and then he understood she wasn’t speaking seriously.

      What he said was exactly right: what she’d just expressed, which is what she’d heard that morning from the mouth of a classmate, was appalling. That’s what had shocked her in the sentence: the world’s obscenity, not in the display of horror and injustice but in the attitude of those who could find nothing else to say in reaction but “It’s terrible, but what can you do . . . ,” who could do nothing about it except allude to it between a sip of coffee and a little joke, as they’d invariably become indignant over it before moving on to something else, to normal life. That’s what she could no longer deal with, that way of being resigned to every upheaval, of not letting themselves be shattered at the risk, they thought, of adding their own misery to the already-crushing wretchedness of the world. Suddenly, the attitude she had been so lovingly taught and in which she had wallowed so comfortably for years made her sick. But could it be any other way?

      Perhaps, she thought as she came back to Victor who was still dwelling on how unacceptable he found the situation, that was why she’d always had a special feeling for him. He was always moved, even if it was just limited to words, and he’d always react while drawing the attention of the indifferent to the issue. That’s already something.

      She can’t understand why she’d managed to be insensitive to the world for so long. How many times before today, when her normal routine had fallen apart, had saying “It’s terrible, but what can you do . . .” been enough for her as well? How many people have, and will always have, no other reaction but that? Would she still be among them if the volume on the radio hadn’t shattered her routine?

      She sighs and goes back to her memories.

      The interminable discussion and her walk back brought her home at the break of dawn. But instead of sleeping she began to write. That day had just made her decide to embark on a crucial project. Writing the summary of this undertaking couldn’t wait. She concentrated first on writing the title in calligraphy on a separate sheet of paper: In Memory of . . . It took her a solid hour before she was satisfied with the result. At the time she thought she was following her usual meticulous ways. Today she knows she was mostly taking the opportunity

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