Weill’s music and Helene Weigel’s food are essentially suicide inhibitors, the pianist had said to all who would listen, Weill fills us with life and Weigel’s food likewise, not with that lively, joyous life singing in the open air and collective life as life can be in a way, but with a life that resists collective, singing, joyous life, there are limits to the joyous life the pianist had said to all who would listen. If, in Brecht’s house, I had been invited by the pianist to sleep in the offspring’s bedroom I’d have said a warum nicht of resistance so nourished by Helene Weigel and by Kurt Weill, but nourished by nobody at the Kaiser Café I spoke that collaborationist and suicidal warum nicht, why I didn’t say to the pianist that I’d nevertheless prefer to sleep in the offspring’s room than go to the Sony Center’s cinema I don’t know, though actually I’d much much much rather have ended up in that tiny room or rather roomette with the pianist than in the Sony Center’s cinema, and would probably have preferred to find myself in the roomette even without the pianist than at the cinema with him, would’ve preferred the roomette to room 203 at the Polish B&B, yet I said no to the roomette and yes to the cinema, I’d really like to understand, I told my sister. You are able to say no for tomorrow but not today, you can say no to an uncertain future but not on the spot, no in general yes but no in particular no, that’s how you are, I know because you and I are the same, my sister said in the plane, identical educations, saying yes is good but not no, you have to say yes Maman used to say having always said yes in general down the generations which made her say no in particular, used to say you mustn’t say this or that, no, above all don’t say that, used also to say you mustn’t do this or that, above all don’t do that so I’d say yes to Maman as a general yes while my sister who said yes was thinking no, I obedient but she disobedient, that’s how my sister has been from her very first yell, my sister’s waah still ringing in the maternal ears but my absence of yelling all the more, we can’t hear her, I would hear people saying about me, obedience doesn’t make a fuss, I thought in the plane, at the same time as my sister was remembering her yes that had nothing in common with any obedient yes, my own yes always so servile but my sister’s yes always free, she remembered she’d always say yes too soon, I always say yes and then regret it, sometimes I even regret it before I speak and knowing I’ll say it like the day I got married, my sister said, I can’t swear to it but I do think I started to regret it before I said it but said it anyway, because I’m contrary. I’ve also said it anyway, I told my sister, but I don’t know why, I’ve said no but too late, when the choice was irretrievably limited to no or no such that my no lost all meaning, choosing no or no is easy, as the guide said in the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation, saying no in particular when the yes is general, yes, the guide was saying, the no of those names up there is a more resistant no than the no of the names that followed and which aren’t written up because they don’t deserve the name of Résistants, first-and second-wave are not the same, the guide explained, first-wave are the first and the second wasn’t too late but as good as, and as good as too late is well and truly too late. It isn’t always possible to say no, the guide said as we reached Déportation, sometimes no is quite simply impossible to say but possible to think and sometimes even impossible to think, but also not, either.
After his concert in Lyon, a concert of resistance for which he had composed resistant music, not just composed but interpreted its resistance at the piano, a general resistance but also specifically to Lyon, the pianist had decided to see the exhibition and followed the guide through the rooms commemorating the deported and begun to consider the Jasager, he who says yes. The question of Ja or Nein appears to the pianist not a new question but an old one, a very old, ancestral question, the Jasager’s ancestors whom we’re obliged to deal with, doing deals with the ancestral Jasagers is an ongoing business. Composing a Neinsager would be one way of not giving in to the yes, the pianist thought; he had decided to talk about the Jasager in the Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation’s lecture hall specifically in the presence of a communication specialist, i.e. a specialist on Jasagung, on communication in the Resistance as everywhere else and on the piano in communication as on Resistance and Deportation in communication, the communicant was asking the pianist questions about music and the Resistance and the pianist answering the communicant, the pianist sitting beside the Jasager was seeking an escape route, caught sight of the fire extinguisher, choosing not extinction but exit, saying yes to say no and not no for no, no for yes but not yes for yes, the extinguisher is no for no the exit yes for no, ultimately in the dark was hunting for his escape route. She was there. Sitting not on a folding seat but perched on the steps. He looked at the perched girl, saw nothing beyond the girl yes her alone, legs crossed and uncrossed and hair around her finger twisted then untwisted, now to leave the plateau of Resistance and go into hiding, to abandon the Jasager and abduct
