Benjamin at Portbou

By Niall Twohig

He tracks across the mountain, a bookish man not built for the life of refugees and partisans. What moves Walter Benjamin is inside his dusty briefcase: the manuscript. Its words glow like the word writ on the tip of the Golem’s tongue.

Those words came to him through the keyhole opened in a hashish haze. Peeking through, he saw the restless dead and beyond them: the Angel. Wordless, the Angel gave him words. To write them on the page was to breathe life into the Golem. Its hulking mass would move through history again, innervated by a life force that the Enemy thought It had crushed.

The words matter more than life. He sees their glow through the briefcase. Adorno won’t see it. He’ll scoff at the words as he does. This once hurt him more than the thought of death. But here, on the border of France and Spain, he finally knows the import of the words. He needs no assurances.

At Portbou, Benjamin lay in the hotel room awaiting deportation. He feels the Enemy closing. Senses Its shadow. Senses It sensing his words. It fears them. Opening the briefcase, he sees one word more luminous than others:

מת

Its afterimage stays in his eyes after closing the case. When he looks to the door of his room, he sees it is no longer an earthly door. The key, visible in keyhole, turns on its own accord like a wound toybox key. Door opens wide. On the other side, pure light, the Aleph glows brilliantly and joins the afterimage to form a new word:

אמת

All else dissolves. Portbou. The room. The briefcase. The manuscript. His body. He becomes the Word.

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