beginning to escape me in great swathes and to dissolve into airspace, I might hope to grasp the most piddling portion of meaning in the pianist’s music, to accede to the pianist’s interpretation, knowing as he does better than anyone Adorno by heart and Mann by heart, and able, at the drop of a hat to give a public lecture on music in literature or on literature in music, when my sister said for the umpteenth time “I just love planes.” My sister just loves planes, she has flown over Madagascar in a plane, seen Johannesburg by plane, Venice by plane, she’s been in love with an aviator, fallen head over heels for the aviator’s plane and when you’re in love it’s forever, she had her eyes glued to the porthole, admiring our plane’s wing or, more precisely, its air brakes, saying it was crazy to think that one fine day some guy had invented the air brake, she said that was a real boy thing to invent the air brake, as if girls all had other fish to fry, lucky we had men to invent the air brake I thought, otherwise the only way out of here would be by parachute and parachutes also needed men to invent them. I used to know a para a time ago. He used to vacuum between the sheets, slept with a revolver under his pillow and played chess against himself. He had dumbbells and resistance bands and used to rub petrol into his hair so he wouldn’t go bald. He had a set of identical paratrooper’s shirts with epaulets and a set of stripy vests, also identical; a pile of indistinguishable shirts, a pile of vests: that was his wardrobe. Later on I copied him with the vests, I had a stash of them which I built up one by one, gradually, a vest for every jilting, quite soon I had a fair number, I had compiled my anti-marital wardrobe, having everything the same does not encourage connubiality, I revealed to my sister who has no inside knowledge of the subject but extensive acquaintance from the outside, my stack of vests was my para uniform, Debout les paras il est temps d’s’en aller sur la route au pas cadencé, he would sing Debout les paras, il est temps de sauter sur notre Patrie bien-aimée, had come to my parents’ house to whisk me away, had arrived at the parental home by sky like a true para, cooee, here I am, from time to time he would throw himself at my feet and say, hands clasped in supplication, “I doan’ deserve ya” in his over-egged manner that confirmed my belief in very little indeed despite my religious education. Why do I remember the para now, perhaps so I can forget the pianist a minute, it makes a change but not much of one in the end, my identi-kitted para and pianist, para uniform and the pianist’s not so different, the para’s fatigues and those of the pianist comparable in every respect, the pianist dressed as a pianist and the para as a para, both of them dressed equally comme il faut for civvy street and for combat, the pianist’s civvies equivalent to the para’s, the pianist as much in awkward camouflage as the para in their respective civvies, I noted the consistency of get-up that marked the pianist as belonging to one classification and the para to another without making either one or other truly classifiable, each man first of all himself and not the other but each of them equally standard-issue, the one adapted to the international concert stage and the other to the French-speaking lands of Africa, the pianist at heart a fish out of water in francophone Africa and the para a shadow of himself on that stage I mean on his knees hands clasped I doan’ deserve ya, the pianist frankly looking rather silly out of uniform, that’s why I made that observation about his get-up as if this pianist’s mufti were my business, why I pointed out his civvy style, it’s funny seeing you like this, I said without counting to ten, nine or any number at all, I said I actually said it without a moment’s pause for thought it’s funny to see you in civvies, das ist komisch, said it without even counting to one, dropped that word komisch about his get-up just as I had once also found the para’s wardrobe of identical shirts and identical vests thoroughly komisch, it seems I haven’t made much progress between him and him, however different they were I had to spout my observation unsupported by any prior observing, why did I bring in the para? it was my sister and planes, my sister and her beloved air brakes, a fine masculine invention my sister gushed, and I thought she would have loved personally to have been the inventor of the air brake, seeing how she watched them rise and sink, why didn’t she invent the air brake, I suppose that comes down to her education. Thinking about my sister’s education triggered inside me, that is in my deepest and most true self, the muffled, heart-rending cry of a cow, a cow calling to her calf suffocating in silence. Not that my sister is poorly educated, at the end of the day her education isn’t as disastrous as all that, but it’s because of mine, my education, which was give or take very little the same as hers, and thinking about my own education has me plumbing the depths of my own identity. I think about it very rarely but that’s still a good deal too often and I think a good deal more often about my sister’s education, almost every time I see my sister, not—once again—that she was mis-educated, there are many worse educations than my sister’s, but because I know that education like no one else since it was practically the same as my own and
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