Le Passe-Muraille

I tend to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives. And the film then becomes an examination of how they cope with very few options. And that's, I guess, what interests me in terms of human behavior.
~William Friedkin

Happy Poetry Friday! Continuing my National Poetry Month project of using short stories as inspiration for poems...Today's story is The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls (Le Passe-Muraille) by Marcel Aymé (1943), translated by Karen Reshkin. I'm going to give you the shortest summary I can, haha!

In it, a 42-year-old Frenchman named Dutilleul discovers he can walk through walls. He goes to a doctor, who prescribes "two doses a year of tetravalent pirette powder containing a mixture of rice flour and centaur hormone." Dutilleul only takes one and then leaves the other in a drawer. When he becomes annoyed with his contemptuous boss, Dutilleul starts sticking his head through the wall into his boss's office to make him think he's crazy. After that success, Dutilleul robs banks, jewelery stores, wealthy homes, etc., leaving behind notes from "The Lone Wolf."

Although he becomes one of the richest men in Paris, Dutilleul still keeps working at his regular job and one day brags to his coworkers that HE is the Lone Wolf. They laugh and he winds up proving it by letting himself be caught. No prison walls can hold him, of course, so he drives the warden crazy. When he's had enough of prison life, Dutilleul escapes and changes his appearance, planning on leaving Paris.

He falls in love with a woman he sees on the street, which makes him want to stay. She is married to an evil man who watches her every move and locks her up at night. Dutilleul visits her one night, walking through the walls of her room, and they have an affair. He has a headache the next day and takes medicine, accidentally taking the anti-wall-walking pill. After he visits his paramour, he gets stuck in a wall outside her room. "He is there to this very day, imprisoned in the stone."

I wanted to write a poem where Dutilleul is able to use his power to help the locked-up lady, but I went another direction.

photo by Neal Sanche

Walking through Walls

When I imagine
walking through a wall,
it's made of stone
not drywall or plaster,
nothing a fist could find
its way through.
Maybe molecules parted
for M. Dutilleul,
but I picture
moving into
that stone
feels like pushing
through a thick curtain
of slug—
gray-brown jelly
that squishes
and fights back a little—
and you, plunging forward
holding your breath
as tight
and still
as someone who doesn't
want to be
called on in class,
with your hands
searching
in front like
antenna, shuffling
til you slip out
the other side
like a baby being born
gasping
your first breath,
eager
to begin.

********************

Addendum for my later visitors (4/28) I mentioned before that I wanted to write a poem about rescuing the lady but I was as stuck as Dutilleul. Here's the draft I wrote this morning:

It seems like, if you can walk through walls,
it would be easy to save a woman who's been imprisoned
by her jealous, violent, rich husband but then
when it comes down to unlocking the door
and letting her out, you find you don't have the key for
"I'll keep your kids," or "you'll be on the street,"
maybe you think you have the one for "I'll find you,"
but then you spot the row of locks that her parents added
during her childhood that all say "Submit"
and you're not sure how you're going to get her out
when all you can do is walk through walls.

What If You Could Walk Through Walls (a "What If" video)

There is no such thing as a Godforsaken town has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Ruth!