a daughter.” And Balzac says that, after hearing the Colonel’s sympathetic and generous response to these words’ – and Díaz-Varela again read from the book (with his fleshy, kissable mouth) – ‘“The Countess shot him a look of such intense gratitude that poor Chabert would gladly have returned to Eylau and climbed back into his grave.” Meaning that he wishes to cause her no further problems or anxieties or to intrude upon a world that is no longer his, to cease being her nightmare or ghost or torment, and to remove himself and disappear.’
‘And is that what he did? Did he just abandon the field and accept defeat? Did he return to his grave, did he retreat?’ I asked, taking advantage of a pause.
‘You’ll find out when you read it for yourself. The great misfortune of remaining alive having once died and been assumed dead even according to the army records (“an historical fact”), doesn’t affect only his wife, but him as well. You cannot pass from one state to the other, or, rather, of course, from the second to the first, and he is fully aware of being a corpse, an official and, to a large extent, real corpse, because he himself had thought he was dead and had heard the moans of his fellow corpses, which no living person could hear. When, at the beginning of the novel, he turns up at the lawyer’s office, one of the clerks or messengers asks him his name. He answers: “Chabert,” and the other man says: “The Colonel who died at Eylau?” And the ghost, far from protesting or rebelling and growing angry and immediately contradicting him, merely nods and says meekly: “The very same, sir.” And a little later, he makes this definition his own. When, at last, he manages to see the lawyer, Derville, and the latter asks him: “To whom do I have the honour of speaking?” he responds: “Colonel Chabert.” “Which one?” insists the lawyer, and the answer is an absurdity, but absolutely true for all that: “The one who died at Eylau.” Later, Balzac himself refers to Chabert in the same terms, albeit ironically: “Sir,” said the dead man …”, that’s what he writes. The Colonel cannot escape from his vile condition as a man who did not die when he should have died or, indeed, when he did die, as Napoleon himself had regretfully ordered two doctors to verify. When he sets out his case to Derville, he says the following’ – and Díaz-Varela searched through the pages to find the quotation – ‘“To be frank, during that period, and even now sometimes, my name is distasteful to me. I would prefer not to be me. My sense of what should be mine by rights is killing me. If my illness had taken from me all memory of my past existence, I would have been happy.” That’s what he says: “My name is distasteful to me. I would prefer not to be me.”’ – Díaz-Varela repeated the words to me, underlined them. – ‘The worst thing that can happen to anyone, worse than death itself, and the worst thing one can make others do, is to return from the place from which no one returns, to come back to life at the wrong time, when you are no longer expected, when it’s too late and inappropriate, when the living have assumed you are over and done with and have continued or taken up their lives again, leaving no room for you at all. For the person who returns, there is no greater misfortune than to discover that he is surplus to requirements, that his presence isn’t wanted, that he is disturbing the universe, that he constitutes a hindrance to his loved ones, who don’t know what to do with him.’
‘“The worst thing that can happen to anyone”? Oh, come on. You’re talking as if the story were real, but things like that never happen, or only in fiction.’
‘Fiction has the ability to show us what we don’t know and what doesn’t happen,’ he retorted, ‘and in this case, it allows us to imagine the feelings of a dead man who finds himself obliged to come back, and shows us why the dead shouldn’t come back. With the exception of mad people or the very old, everyone, sooner or later, tries to forget the dead. They avoid thinking about them, and when, for some reason or other, they can’t avoid it, they grow sad and gloomy,