Free Magnus by Sylvie Germain Page B

the move. May is the figurehead of a free ship that sets sail whenever the fancy takes it and adapts easily to prevailing conditions. Thanks to her he finally shrugs off his ghosts, leaves his past behind. The horizon now opens before him, no longer gaping behind him like a black hole. But as much averse as May is to being in any way dependent, especially financially, he takes up translation, translating articles for art magazines, technical publications, essays. His work is irregular, but it suits him because it allows him great freedom of movement.

    On three occasions, however, those ghosts reintrude on his life: the first time shortly after moving to San Francisco, at dinner in a restaurant one evening with the Gleanerstones and Scott, when Terence suddenly interrupts the conversation and says to May and Magnus in a low voice, ‘Listen to the people at the table behind us. Listen carefully …’ They pay attention, Scott too. The guests at the table behind them are speaking in a harsh-sounding language. Magnus shrugs his shoulders slightly as a sign of incomprehension. May frowns, concentrating hard. ‘It reminds me of something, but what?’
    Terence helps her out by suggesting, ‘Comala?’
    May immediately concurs. ‘Comala! You’re right!’
    Then, turning to Magnus, she says, ‘It sounds like the language you spoke at times in your delirium at the hospital in Veracruz … those words that weren’t German, that no one could identify…’
    Magnus has no recollection of these words he apparently uttered, only the vision of that fateful night in Hamburg has engraved itself on his memory – an explosive image that has cast a new light on his life, but also a blinding image, an obstacle blocking off all his most distant past.
    Scott, who feels left out of this memory game, finds a way of joining in: he gets up and goes and asks the tourists what country they are from. He returns to the table, sits downs, and turns it into a guessing game. None of the guesses his friends make is correct, so he finally tells them the answer: ‘Iceland. Magnus must be a clandestine Icelander!’ he announces, and proud of the word he has just elicited from the Icelanders, he raises his glass to Magnus, addressing him with a deep-toned ‘ Skal !’
    But to the surprise of the Gleanerstones and of Scott, Magnus displays no emotion or curiosity in the face of this revelation he regards as fanciful, and he is eager to change the topic of conversation. For the time being he has no desire to look back, to start rummaging through the rubble once more, to wear himself out ferreting around in obscure labyrinths. He is happy where he is and now wants to live only in the present.

    On the subsequent occasions, his ghosts return by less fortuitous routes, evoked by current events: these occur in quick succession, in 1961 with the opening in Jerusalem of the trial of Lieutenant-Colonel Eichmann, which gets extensive world-wide coverage, then with the construction of the wall dividing Berlin in two.
    A report on the trial of the Nazi criminal, written by the philosopher Hannah Arendt for the New Yorker weekly magazine, causes a sensation. She is criticized for her tone, felt to be casual, arrogant, and above all for her analysis and judgment. Magnus reads the indicted report and far from taking exception to it embraces the idea of the ‘banality of evil’. For him, it is no ill-considered concept but rather a finger placed unerringly on a wound so ugly and shameful everyone would rather not see it. Reading Hannah Arendt’s text, he cannot help hearing in the background the voices of those other perpetrators of death and destruction he knew, with whom he came into close contact: the resounding laughter of the humorist Julius Schlack, the perfect elocution of that fine connoisseur of poetry Horst Witzel, and the deep baritone of Clemens Dunkeltal. Voices that would surely have responded, like Eichmann, in a curt monotone devoid of any remorse,