the girl, come now, I’ve an hour before the plane, just one no more, no time to resist you any longer, don’t tremble the pianist said, took her by the waist oh minuscule waist in the pianist’s hand, come follow me don’t speak whatever you do don’t say a word don’t be afraid I shan’t do anything to upset you, nothing I swear we’re just going to walk to the bridge and on the bridge you’ll see the river just that and you’ll have that particular air coming off the water to breathe, the air will rise off the water up to you and in the air if you like I’ll kiss you the French way, leaving the Gestapo HQ transformed into a museum and with his hand around, beyond believing, his hand around her, the girl’s waist so slim it was unbelievable, couldn’t get over her waist and dared not move his hand away, the pianist’s hand keeping her feet on the ground, with my hand here on her surface I’m keeping her on the ground and among the living, she is so light the pianist considers the air off the river would be enough to lift her, a squall not required to carry off the girl, a mere flux of river air and she’d be gone; he stops in the middle of the bridge, he is standing above the water, what to talk about now between the Gestapo and the airport, the girl’s hair hides her face from him, he reaches out, brushes the hair away, leaves his hand in her hair and the other hand, the one from her waist, moves to her neck, and up to her cheek her temple and the forehead of the motionless girl who doesn’t see the green river, she sees only me the pianist knows, me that’s all, I fill her vision now and moves closer to the girl and kisses the girl, kissing her would make her die the pianist knows but kisses again and dying over again, don’t move don’t say anything not a word nothing please be quiet the pianist says and kisses her again and infinitely on the bridge like that above the river, no thought of the future, suspended together eternally above the river as if after Goethe neither Flaubert nor Beckett had followed it’s funny to think, as if after Beethoven there’d been neither Wagner nor Schoenberg and yet he lets go, a pianist can’t play with his hand clenched, has always inscribed his hand in time and inscribed music in the gesture and the gesture in time, music without time is an imposture the pianist knows, he knows his departure time, doesn’t look at his watch, sand can’t be gripped in a fist, has never missed a flight, takes off at the pre-ordained hour every time but on this bridge with the girl how not to stay forever, a little of that slight gold still held between his fingers, once more please the pianist says, küss mich noch einmal, he is young Werther, won’t wait for her reply and mingles oh yes his tongue with the girl’s which doesn’t respond as a usual accompaniment’s would, responds without motherliness or understanding but in way that’s so strange it’s almost savage, not violently savage but strange and naturally savage, which is to say not cultural, no trace of culture in this girl’s tongue, nothing to suggest any command of culture, wholly uncultured from head to toe, this is what drives the pianist completely crazy, intolerable ignorance, stop! the pianist says to her, hör jetzt auf! bitte hör auf! repeats at the girl but actually to himself, and she then not asking why because she knows without having learned it and as if by magic, parts her tongue from the pianist’s tongue and parts the pianist’s hand from the nub of compressed sand and his other hand from her neck and fingers from her cheek, ear from his eyes, the substance from the form and the parts from the whole, goes on her way completely parted onto the western bank, as if by magic goes away on the other side of the bridge, doesn’t look back just goes, so it goes, in the realm of Resistance, thinks the pianist and as if it were important, thinks this not vaguely but in these precise words as if to be written in a private notebook, ridicule does not kill, quite the contrary.
We don’t know why, on leaving the bridge by the eastern side, the idea first came to the pianist here of a self-portrait, a portrait of a man alone and handsome, alone but not destroyed, the solitude of the composer, atonality as an abstraction, abstraction as an isolation, isolation as a resistance to the world, the world as unacceptable reality, impossible to make peace with reality, aware of the day as of the time and returning to the Gestapo HQ he would learn through the composition of this self-portrait, would understand through the self-portrait the refusal to compromise in composition, saying this in front of the Gestapo he found the cultural group he had left behind there and the Jasager, the group leader is always a yea-sayer, follows them into the Gestapo to drink a last beer with the Jasager and his aggregation, last drink before the airport, in the Gestapo’s little drawing room with this restrained group that is, the pianist realizes, the Jasager’s accompaniment, but in the Gestapo lounge waiting for his last minutes to pass, he was already writing the first bars of the Self-Portrait, inventing by unknown technique a minor-key atonality is this imaginable around F-sharp, could clearly see minor atonality anchored around F-sharp, a bit of good fun, this called for an allegro in sonata form without a true second subject, then descending via D-flat a scherzo veering into scherzando, the comedy of the Self-Portrait suggested it, the isolation of the comical dispatched by, why not, a Beethoven-style pedal effect, and as if
