Hi Xavier. It’s Alain again. You sent me an email that petrified me. You titled it ‘Effroyable Solitude’.frightful solitude Not cheerful, this email. I don’t know if you’ll like my answer: Effroyable Solitude has the initials of Eden Saga. Here is the story I got from it. He looks a bit like you…
At the twilight of his life—expression that he once considered ridiculous, like a cliché of a calendar — he yet discovered himself at the exact edge of that twilight, one where the light does not decline suddenly but withdraws with measured steps, leaving behind it increasingly vast zones of shadow. He was going to be eighty. The number seemed obscene to him, almost hostile, like a scar inflicted on time.
He lived alone for a long time. Not only alone in the narrow apartment with its weathered furniture, but alone in that way memory closed in on itself, went round in circles without witnesses. He felt useless. Terrible word, harder than old, more cruel than finished. Useless: no longer required by anyone, no longer expected anywhere.
And yet, his life had been anything but useless, if one believed the scattered traces that remained—objects, notebooks, yellowed press clippings, forgotten prototypes in boxes. He had been creative, inventive, chaotic, trendy, as they used to say with a knowing smile.
He had crossed the decades as one crosses countries at war: with enthusiasm, arrogance, sometimes with contempt. He had ideas before the others, often abandoned them before their maturity. He had dated artists, engineers, dreamers, opportunists. He had loved quickly, left badly, hurt without always realizing it.
Now, there was only one man left sitting in front of a clear wooden table on a winter evening, while the rain traced paths on the glass that he had not taken.
That evening, the depression did not come with fanfare. It settled gently, like an inner cold. He had tried to read, without succeeding. The sentences slipped on him. The radio spoke in a low voice, unnecessarily. Then he got up, poured himself a drink that he didn’t want, and stood for a long time in the middle of the room, looking at what he suddenly called his lost territory.
He thought of all the mean things he had done. The first mean trickThe twentieth rather? dated from his twenty years. He immediately saw again the distress of the guy. One of the many illustrators he received at Bayard Presse. Impossible to remember his face or name. He had taken a brief look at his works, crossed out bad paintings, bad drawings, worse sketches.
He closed the drawing box with a sharp gesture and told him sharply: “Forget the drawing. Agriculture lacks arms.” The sentence was harsh, odious, contemptuous. Not only for the poor guy, but also for agriculture. The illustrator had taken up his book and left without a word. They had lost touch. So many cartoonists were passing by to present their drawing box to him, he forgot the incident and the sheepish little man.
Years later, in Angoulème BD, he had lined up in front of the stand of a cartoonist, the star of the year. He wanted a dedication of his new album. He would never have recognized the forgotten bad illustrator, but the cartoonist, for his part, recognized him right away. While drawing his dedication, the guy reminded him of the incident. Shame! He felt like a perfect idiot.
But the catoonist didn’t hold it against him, on the contrary: “You offended me, yes. But above all, you forced me to question myself. I burned all my crobards and got to work for good. No more dilettantism. And ten years later, here is the result: a prize in Angoulème. Thanks to you.”
Thanks to him? The old man he was still couldn’t believe it. Then an idea, absurd and serious, arose. An idea of a penitent more than an old man. He challenged himself, not to prove that he was still alive, but to measure the exact extent of his faults. Find in his memory the people he had despised.
Not the ones he had simply neglected, nor those he had loved and then forgotten. No. Those he had deemed unworthy of him, insufficient, slow, dull. One per decade. Then write to them to apologize, express his regrets. A real letter, by mail — or only virtual, if fate had scattered them beyond the possible.
We believe we lead destiny, but it is always destiny who leads us.
He did not seek forgiveness. He sought the truth.
The following decade is painful. Thirty-something. He led a small team of creators, convinced that he was ahead of his time. He had crushed under his irony a young woman, Claire, too serious to her taste, too methodical. He had dismissed her without ménagement. She had cried. He remembered it very well.
It took him more time to find her. She lived abroad. He wrote her a long, precise letter without clearing himself. He spoke of his vanity, of his contempt disguised as demand.
The response took weeks to come. When it arrived, he hesitated before opening it. Claire wrote calmly. She told him that after her dismissal, she had doubted, then formed differently. That she today led a team bigger than the one he had ever had. “I learned from you what I did not want to become,” she concluded. And yet, she wished him peace.
Thus he went, decade after decade, digging into his memory like an ancient land. The forty years old reminded him of a friend betrayed by opportunism. The fifty years old, a rival mocked for his lack of modernity. The sixty years old, a neighbor ignored with ostentation.
Every time, he wrote. Every time, or almost, an answer came. And almost always, she contradicted his own inner narrative. He was told about gestures that he had forgotten, secondary words that had become foundational, and kind looks that he believed he had never given.
He gradually understood that memory is an unequal land. One cultivates his sins there like monuments, and tramples his goodness like simple paths.
At seventy, he hesitated for a long time. Who had he despised recently? Maybe a young man, too confident, too hurried, whom he had rejected during a project. He found his name again. He wrote. The answer was brief: “You taught me that talent is not enough. I often think about it. And I work harder.“
Gift does not dispense with effort, talent does not dispense with work, genius does not dispense with humility.
The last letter was the strangest. The decade of almost eighty had not yet produced its victims. So he chose himself. He wrote a letter that he didn’t send to anyone. He apologized to the man he had been, and to the one he had not dared to become, and to the one who was soon leaving.
When everything was over, he realized that winter had receded. The morning light entered the room. He did not feel rejuvenated, but put back. In his rightful place at last. Neither useless nor a hero. He was once a compagnon passant, he still is sometimes. And simple passeur of moments, ideas, sometimes too hard, sometimes saving.
He then understood that solitude is not the absence of others, but the ignorance of what has been left in them. And that life, even chaotic, even imperfect, almost always leaves behind a trace sweeter than the step that produced it.
He arranged the letters in a box. Then he sat down, watched the day rise, and for the first time in a long time, in his narrow apartment with its weathered furniture, he was not ashamed to last.
Thank you Alain. This article is magnificent, like all those you write.
Sorry? It wasn’t an article? Too late, I published it.
Without daring to title it Frightening Solitude.
Years ago, I created a way to communicate
by the comic strip: Echo Vision.
Did you note the initials?
Echo Vision = Emptiness Vortex.
If you want the splendid album
hurry up, I have a few left
that I will dedicate to you
with great pleasure…
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