“…he’d like to tear the war out of him like a dead scab - the rifle is still on his knees, though, the memories inside him…” (p. 108)
I think the best connection is the bond they share in suffering the effects of war.
We don’t know the war from which the soldier deserted; I can’t help but wonder if it was WWII which had so much effect on Paul. But, does it matter which war? They’re all horrifying. And Mathias Enard makes mention of so many: WWII, the attack on the Towers in New York City, Russian invading Ukraine, and even now we find ourselves involved with Iran.
Paul Heudeber, director of the Mathematics Institute of the Academy of Sciences in GDR, is a politician, a mathematician, a communist, the lover of Maja, and the father of Irina. Maja is a politically active woman from the West, and their daughter narrates their story for us.
It is particularly poignant how she speaks of the love between her parents. Though never married, they never stopped loving each other.
“You are my malady - my passion has the malady of infinity, my love can only be written with your name. There is no other way to designate love but to say your name. Come back to me soon.” ~Paul, in a letter to Maja (p. 42)
They are not the only couple in the novel, however. The deserting soldier has found a woman, walking with a wounded donkey and several packs of her belongings. Her hair is shorn, her fear is great, with reason, we learn later on. Together they make it to the Black Rock, to what they hope will be utter escape and freedom.
I think one of the points Enard is so eloquently making is that there is no escape. There is no freedom, in a world which always seems so capable of producing a new war. A new way of wounding one another. We can only hope, and search out peace, as the soldier tries to do.
“…after the border will I be returned to myself, will my wounds be erased, I’ll look for a place to heal, a place to get cured, a place of oblivion.” (p. 133)
May he find it. May all our wounds be erased.