My Last Breath

285 Pages·2008·29.54 MB·English

by  Luis Bunuel

Luis
&re delight
SALMAN
RUSHDIE
Luis Bufiuel
M y Last Breath
Translated by Abigail Israel
published by Fontana Paperbacks
Originally published in France as
Man derniersoupirby Editions Robert Laffont 1982
This translation first published
in the USA (as My Last Sigh) by Alfred A Knopf 1983
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1984
This Flamingo edition, with index, first published
in 1985 by Fontana Paperbacks,
a division of the Collins Publishing Group,
8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA
Second impression April 1986
Third impression February 1987
Copyright 0E ditions Robert Laffont S.A 1982
Copyright 0 in the translation Alfred A Knopf Inc 1983
Made and printed in Great Britain by
William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, Glasgow
PHOTO CREDITS
Archive of Georges Sadoul: Plate I1 (bottom), Courtesy of Cahiers du
Cinema. PlateV, Plate X (top), PlateXI (bottom), Plate XI1 (top),
Plate XI11 (bottom), Plate XIV (bottom), Collection ofJuan-Luis
Bunuel: PlateVII (bottom), PlateVIII, Plate IX (bottom), Plate
XVI, Collection of Luis Bufiuel. Plate I (bottom), Plate I1 (top left),
Plate I11 (top), Plate IV (bottom), Plate VI, Greenwich Films
Production: Plate XV; J Dreville/Cahiers du Cinema:P late I11 (top),
CourtesyofKeystone Press Agency, Inc . Plate VII (top), Mary Ellen Mark
Plate XI1 (bottom), Plate XIV (top), The Museum ofModern An/Film Stills
Archiie Plate IV (top), Photo Pcmuer. Plate X (bottom),
Photo Petit: Plate I (top). Photo Vandel Plate I1 (top right).
Conditions of Sale
This book is sold subject to the condition
that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,
be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of
binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition
ncluding this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser
To Jeanne. . . my wife, my companion
I'm not a writer, but my friend and colleagueJ ean-Claude
Carrit?rei s. An attentive listener and scrupulous recorder during
our many long iconversations, he helped me write this book.
Contents
Memory
Remembrances from the Middle Ages
The Drums of Calanda
Saragossa
Conchita's Memories
Earthly Delights
Madrid: The Residencia (191 7-1925)
Paris (1925-1929)
Dreams and Reveries
Surrealism (1929-1933)
America
Spain and France (1931-1936)
Love and Love Affairs
The Civil War (1936-1939)
Still an Atheist . . . Thank God!
Back to America
Hollywood Sequel
Mexico (1946-1961)
Pro and Con
From Spain to Mexico to France (1960-1777)
Swan Song
Index
Memory
D
URING the last ten years of her life, my mother gradually
lost her memory. When I went to see her in Saragossa,
where she lived with my brothers, I watched the way she read
magazines, turning the pages carefully, one by one, from the
first to the last. When she finished, I'd take the magazine from
her, then give it back, only to see her leaf through it again,
slowly, page by page.
She was in perfect physical health and remarkably agile for her
age, but in the end she no longer recognized her children. She didn't
know who we were, or who she was. I'd walk into her room, kiss
her, sit with her awhile. Sometimes I'd leave, then turn around and
walk back in again. She greeted me with the same smile and invited
me to sit down~rasif she were seeing me for the first time. She
didn't remember my name.
When I was a schoolboy in Saragossa, I knew the names of all
the Visigoth kings of Spain by heart, as well as the areas and pop-
illations of each country in Europe. In fact, I was a goldmine of
useless facts. These mechanical pyrotechnics were the object of count-
less jokes; students who were particularly good at it were called
memorim. Virtuoso memoribn that I was, I too had nothing but con-
tempt for such pedestrian exercises.
Now, of course, I'm not so scornful. As time goes by, we don't
give a second thought to all the memories we so unconsciously ac-
cumulate, until suddenly, one day, we can't think of the name of a
good friend or a relative. It's simply gone; we've forgotten it. In
vain, we struggle furiously to think of a commonplace word. It's on
the tip of our tongues but refuses to go any farther.
Once this happens, there are other lapses, and only then do we
understand, and acknowledge, the importance of memory. This sort
of amnesia came upon me first as I neared seventy. It started with
proper names, and with the immediate past. Where did I put my
lighter? (I had it in my hand just five minutes ago!) What did I want
to say when I started this sentence?A ll too soon, the amnesia spreads,
covering events that happened a few months or years ago-the name
of that hotel I stayed at in Madrid in May 1980, the title of a book
I was so excited about six months ago. I search and search, but it's
always futile, and I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that
can erase an entire life, as it did my mother's.
So far, I've managed to keep this final darkness at bay. From my
distant past, I can still conjure up countless names and faces; and
when I forget one, I remain calm. I know it's sure to surface suddenly,
via one of those accidents of the unconscious. On the other hand,
I'm overwhelmed by anxiety when I can't remember a recent event,
or the name of someone I've met during the last few months, or the
name of a familiar object. I feel as if my whole personality has
suddenly disintegrated; I become obsessed; I can't think about any-
thing else; and yet all my efforts and my rage get me nowhere. Am
I going to disappear altogether? The obligation to find a metaphor
to describe "table" is a monstrous feeling, but I console myself with
the fact that there is something even worse~tobe alive and yet not
recognize ourse elf, not know anymore who you are.
You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces,
to realize that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory
is no life at all, just as an intelligence without the possibility of
expression is not really an intelligence. Our memory is our coherence,
our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing.
Imagine (as I often have) a scene in a film where a man tries to
tell a friend a story but forgets one word out of four, a simple word
like "car" or "street" or "policeman." He stammers, hesitates, waves
his hands in the air, gropes for synonyms. Finally, his friend gets so
annoyed that he slaps him and walks away. Sometimes, too, resorting
to humor to ward off panic, I tell the story about the man who goes
to see a psychiatrist, complaining of lapses in memory. The psychi-
atrist asks him a couple of routine questions, and then says:
"So? These lapses?"
"What lapses?" the man replies.
Memory may be omnipotent and indispensable, but it's also
terribly fragile. The menace is everywhere, not only from its tradi-
tional enemy, forgetfulness, but from false memories, like my often
repeated story about Paul Nizan's wedding in the 1930s. The Church
of St.-Germain-des-Prks, where he was married, is crystal clear in
my mind's eye. I can see the congregation, myself among them, the
altar, the priest~evenJe an-Paul Sartre, the best man. And then
suddenly, one day last year, I said to myself-but that's impossible!
Nizan, a militant Marxist, and his wife, who came from a family of
agnostics, would never have been married in a church! It was cate-
gorically unthinkable. Did I make it up? Confuse it with other
weddings? Did I grafi a church I know well onto a story that someone
told me? Even today, I've no idea what the truth is, or what I did
with it.
Our imagination, and our dreams, are forever invading our
memories; and since we are all apt to believe in the reality of our
fantasies, we end up transforming our lies into truths. Of course,
fantasy and reality are equally personal, and equally felt, so their
confusion is a matter of only relative importance.
In this semiautobiography, where I often wander from the subject
like the wayfarer in a picaresque novel seduced by the charm of the
unexpected intrusion, the unforeseen story, certain false memories
have undoubtedly remained, despite my vigilance. But, as I said
before, it doesn't much matter. I am the sum of my errors and doubts
as well as my certainties. Since I'm not a historian, I don't have any
notes or encyclopedias, yet the portrait I've drawn is wholly m i n e
with my affirmations, my hesitations, my repetitions and lapses, my
truths and my lies. Such is my memory.
Remembrances from the
Middle Ages
I
WAS thirteen or fourteen years old when I left the region of
Aragon for the first time to visit some friends of the family
who were spending the summer in Vega de Pas near Santander,
in northern Spain. The Basque country was astonishing, a new
landscape completely the opposite of my own. There were clouds,
rain, forests dripping with fog, damp moss, stones; from then
on, I adored the north-the cold, the snow, the great rushing
mountain rivers. In southern Aragon, the earth is fertile, but
dry and dusty. A year can go by, even two, without so much as
a single cloud in the impassive sky. Whenever an adventuresome
cumulus wandered into view just above the mountain peaks, all
the clerks in the grocery next door would rush to our house and
clamber up onto the roof. There, from the vantage point of a
small gable, they'd spend hours watching the creeping cloud,
shaking their heads and murmuring sadly:
"Wind's from the south. It'll never get here."
And they were always right.