Posthumous Speech

Late at night, widening: the great speech that speaks without you, and to which all speaking is joined. Late at night, adrift in itself, speech speaks of itself, of the fact of speech and that there is speaking. Because it is only then that everything is said. Only then that speech becomes posthumous, outliving what can be said and what cannot be said.

Posthumous speech, the river that spreads out beneath the sky: Duras reaches it in The Vice-Consul; it is allowed to speak, there and in India Song. Voice without attribution. Speech without speaker: what does it matter what is said? There is speech, the hubbub of speech, but it is only the stammering of the Vice Consul that speaks. He is the only speaker, he and Anne-Marie Stretter.

Their speech is silence; it is the suspension of speech. He suspends speech as he speaks it. It is broken in him, the continuity of things, of time, of speech. And she knows it; only she knows it. What can the young men around her know? She knows; she’s met speech as she danced with the Vice Consul; speech has found her.

Wisdom: she keeps, I think, what the Vice Consul cannot. He is the husk of speech, but she is the one enclosed by its praying palms. Speech keeps her. Speech closes itself at her heart, and she is buried there, inside herself, outside herself, there where speech speaks of itself in his hesitancies, in his inability to speak.

Think back. A hotel room. A phonecall. Remember that. You were half asleep. And then? You opened the door. And then? You were there, drunk and in your jacket. You sat in the armchair across from me, and I listened, half awake. You spoke. I listened to the gaps in speech, its accelerations. You took a bottle of water from the fridge, then another bottle. You spoke, and criticised me for not speaking. But what was I to say?

It was very late; it was early; dawn was coming. Either I’d lived a whole life, or I’d not begun to live. I found a few words. I spoke them; I threw them at speech. But you were the one to whom speech was given. It turned in you. I listened, and thought: you must remember this. Must let yourself be enclosed, must be carried by this memory as between praying palms.

But you were not the husk of speech, and I was never wise. The next day, we met again in the sun. This time, I was to speak; I thought: I must make an offering. Not confidences – I did not speak those, but other things. Until speech flowed like the water in the rivulets that ran along the street. Which one of us was wise? Which one was kept by speech? Neither, I would say. Both, I would say.