The Arcades Project - Operi

For all that came later. l11en, back in Banyuls, after my first trip on the Lister route, I
thought: Good old Benjamin and his manuscript are safe, on the other side of the
mountains.
In about a week the word came: Walter Benjamin is dead. He took his life in Port-Bou the
night after his arrival.
The Spanish border authorities had informed the group that they would be retunled to
France. New orders, just received from Madrid: Nobody can enter Spain without the
French exit visa. (Several different versions* exist of the reason Spain gave this time for
closing the border: apatridest may not travel through Spain; or Spanish transit visas issued
in Marseilles were invalid.) Whatever the new di.Tective was, it was lifted soon. Had there
been time fo r the news to reach the French side of the frontier, crossings would have been
halted while watching developments. We were living in the lge of New Directives";
every governmental office in every country of Europe seemed to devote full time to
decreeing, revoking, enacting, and then lifting orders and regulations. Yo u just had to
learn to slip through holes, to tmu, to wind, and to wriggle your way out of this ever­
changing maze, if you wanted to survive.
But Benjamin was not a wriggler ...
" . .. fout se debrouiller": one has to cut through the fog, work one's way out of the
general collapse-that had become the only possible way of life in France. To most, it
meant things like buying forged bread tickets or extra milk for the kids or obtaining some
kind, any kind of permit; in other words, to get something that didn't officially exist. To
some, it also meant to get such things by "collaborating.n For us, the apatndes) it was
primarily a matter of staying out of concentration camps and escaping from the Gestapo.
But Benjamin was no debrouillard . ..
In his remoteness, what counted was that his manuscript and he were out of the reach
of the Gestapo. The crossing had exhausted him and he didn't believe that he could do it
again-he had told me so during our climb. Here, too, he had calculated everything in
advance: he had enough morphine on him to take his life several times over.
Impressed and shaken by his death, the Spanish authorities let his companions con­
tinue their traveL
July 1980
During a recent conversation with Professor Abramsky from London, we talked about
Wa lter Belamin and his work, and I mentioned his last walk.
Tben I got a call from Professor Gershom Scholem, a trustee of Benjamin's literary
estate and his closest friend. He had heard from Abralllsky about our conversation and
wanted to lrnow more, I gave him a summarized description of the events on that day
almost forty years ago.
He asked for every detail concenling the manuscript:
"There is no manuscript;' he said. "Until now, nobody knew that such a manuscript
ever existed."
I am hearing: there is no manuscript. Nobody knows about the heavy black briefcase
carrying the papers that were more important to him than anything else.
* see F. V. Grunfcld, Harmah Arendt, G, Scholem et a1.
"I Stateless persons, literally "People without Fatherland"-official French term for refugees from
Nazi Germany whose citizenship had been taken away by the Nazi government.