The Elegance Of The Hedgehog Part 9

"Don't tease me."

"Tease you? But Renee, you look wonderful!"

Full of emotion, she sits down.

"A real lady," she adds.

That is what I'm worried about.

"I'm going to look ridiculous going to dinner like this-like some vestal virgin in her finery," I say, making the tea.

"Not at all, it's natural, you're going to dinner, people get dressed up. Everyone thinks that's perfectly normal."

"And what about this?" I ask, raising my hand to my scalp and getting a shock as I touch this light, airy thing.

"You went and put something on your head afterwards, it's all flat in the back," says Manuela, frowning, reaching in her bag for a little pouch of red tissue paper.

"Nuns' farts," she adds.

Yes, do let us talk about something else.

"Well?" I ask.

"Oh, if only you had seen her!" she sighs. "I thought she was going to have a heart attack. I said: Madame Pallieres, I'm sorry but I can't come anymore. She looked at me, she didn't get it. I had to tell her two more times! Then she sat down and said, How am I going to manage?"

Manuela pauses, annoyed.

"If she had said, How am I going to manage without you manage without you? She's lucky I was able to get Rosie for her. Otherwise I would have said, Madame Pallieres, you can do what you like, I don't give a d ... "

Darned miter, says the Pope.

Rosie is one of Manuela's many nieces. I know what this means. Manuela may be thinking about going back to Portugal, but a seam as lucrative as 7, rue de Grenelle has to stay in the family-so she's been introducing Rosie in her place as part of getting ready for the big day.

Dear G.o.d, what am I going to do without Manuela?

"How am I going to manage without you?" I say with a smile.

Suddenly we both have tears in our eyes.

"You know what I think?" asks Manuela, wiping her cheeks with a very large red handkerchief fit for a toreador. "The fact I've quit Madame Pallieres, it's a sign. There are going to be some good changes."

"Did she ask you why?"

"That's the best bit," says Manuela. "She didn't dare. Being so well brought-up, sometimes it's a problem."

"But she'll find out soon enough."

"Yes," whispers Manuela, jubilantly. "But you know what? In one month she'll say, 'Your little Rosie is a gem, Manuela. You did the right thing, pa.s.sing the job on to her.' Oh these rich people ... What the heck!"

f.u.c.king miter, says the Pope impatiently.

"Come what may," I say, "we are friends."

We exchange a smile.

"Yes," says Manuela. "Come what may."

Profound Thought No. 12.

This time a question On destiny And its scripture Early for some And not for others.

I don't know what to do: if I set fire to the apartment, it could spread to Kakuro's. To complicate the existence of the only adult person thus far who seems worthy of respect is not the right way to go about things. But all the same setting fire to the place still means a lot to me. Today I had a fascinating encounter. I went to Kakuro's for tea. Paul was there, his secretary. Kakuro had invited Marguerite and me when he met us in the hallway with Maman. Marguerite is my best friend. We've been in the same cla.s.s for two years and it was love at first sight, right from the start. I don't know if you have any idea what a high school in Paris is like in this day and age in the posh neighborhoods-but quite honestly, the slummy banlieues of Ma.r.s.eille have nothing on ours. In fact it may even be worse here, because where you have money, you have drugs-and not just a little bit and not just one kind. don't know what to do: if I set fire to the apartment, it could spread to Kakuro's. To complicate the existence of the only adult person thus far who seems worthy of respect is not the right way to go about things. But all the same setting fire to the place still means a lot to me. Today I had a fascinating encounter. I went to Kakuro's for tea. Paul was there, his secretary. Kakuro had invited Marguerite and me when he met us in the hallway with Maman. Marguerite is my best friend. We've been in the same cla.s.s for two years and it was love at first sight, right from the start. I don't know if you have any idea what a high school in Paris is like in this day and age in the posh neighborhoods-but quite honestly, the slummy banlieues of Ma.r.s.eille have nothing on ours. In fact it may even be worse here, because where you have money, you have drugs-and not just a little bit and not just one kind.

My mother's ex-militants from May '68 make me laugh with their oh-so-daring memories of joints and bongs. At school (it is a public school, after all, my father was a minister of the Republic), you can buy everything: acid, Ecstasy, c.o.ke, speed, etc. When I think of the days when kids used to sniff glue in the toilets, they seem really corny and innocent. My cla.s.smates get high on Ecstasy the way we pork out on chocolate truffles and the worst of it is that where there are drugs, there's s.e.x. Don't act surprised: nowadays kids sleep together really young. There are kids in sixth grade (not a lot, but a few all the same) who've already had s.e.xual relations. It's depressing. First of all, I think that s.e.x, like love, is a sacred thing. My last name isn't de Broglie, but if I were going to live beyond p.u.b.erty, it would be really important to me to keep s.e.x as a sort of marvelous sacrament. And secondly, a teenager who pretends to be an adult is still a teenager. If you imagine that getting high at a party and sleeping around is going to propel you into a state of full adulthood, that's like thinking that dressing up as an Indian is going to make you an Indian. And thirdly, it's a really weird way of looking at life to want to become an adult by imitating everything that is most catastrophic about adulthood ... Where I'm concerned, just seeing my mother shooting up with her anti-depressants and sleeping tablets has been enough to inoculate me for life against that sort of substance abuse. Lastly, teenagers think they're adults when in fact they're imitating adults who never really made it into adulthood and who are running away from life. It's pathetic. Mind you, if I were Cannelle Martin, the cla.s.s pin-up, I would wonder what else I could do with my days besides take drugs. Her destiny is already scrawled across her forehead. In fifteen years, after she's made a wealthy marriage just for the sake of making a wealthy marriage, her husband will cheat on her, going to other women for the thing that his perfect, cold, and futile wife has always been utterly incapable of giving him-let's just say human, and s.e.xual, warmth. So she'll transfer all her energy onto her houses and her children and, through some sort of unconscious revenge she'll end up making the kids clones of herself. She'll doll her daughters up like high-cla.s.s courtesans, toss them out into the arms of the first financier to come along, and she'll order her sons to go out and conquer the world like their father did, and to cheat on their wives with pointless young women. You think I've got rocks in my head? When I look at Cannelle Martin, with her long gossamer blond hair, her big blue eyes, her tartan miniskirts, her ultra-clingy T-shirts and her perfect belly-b.u.t.ton, I swear to you I can see it as clearly as if it had all already happened. For the time being, all the boys in the cla.s.s begin to drool whenever they see her, and she is under the illusion that these p.u.b.escent males are paying tribute to her feminine charms when in fact they are merely idealizing the consumer product she represents. You think I'm being catty? Not at all, it really makes me unhappy to see this, it hurts me for her sake, it really does. So when I met Marguerite for the first time ... Marguerite is of African descent, and if she's called Marguerite, it's not because she lives in a posh banlieue like Auteuil, it's because it's the name of a flower. Her mother is French and her dad is Nigerian. He works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but he doesn't look like any of the other diplomats we know. He is simple. He seems to like what he does. He's not at all cynical. And his daughter is as lovely as the day is long: Marguerite is pure beauty, her skin, her smile, her incredible hair. And she smiles all the time. When Achille Grand-Fernet (the cla.s.s show-off) sang to her, on the very first day, "Melissa the mulatto from Majorca scarcely wears any clothes at all," Marguerite sang right back, straight off the bat and with a big smile: "Hey mama dear it hurts, why'd you go and make me so u-ugly." That's something I really admire in Marguerite: she's no whiz on the conceptual or logical side but she has an unbelievable gift for repartee. It really is a talent. I'm intellectually gifted, she is a champion of precision response. I'd give anything to be like that; I only ever find the right answer five minutes too late and I trot out the whole dialogue in my head. The first time Marguerite ever came over, Colombe said, "Marguerite, that's a pretty name but it's the sort of thing they named women of our grandmothers' generation." And she answered right back: "And is your other name Christophe." Colombe stood there with her mouth wide open; it was a sight to see! She must have mulled it over for hours, the subtlety of Marguerite's response, telling herself that it happened by chance, no doubt-but she was upset, all the same! Same thing when Jacinthe Rosen, Maman's great friend, said, "It must be hard to style hair like yours" (Marguerite has the wild mane of a lion of the savanna), Marguerite replied, "I don' understan' what she say dat white lady."

With Marguerite, our favorite topic of conversation is love. What is love? How will we love? Who will it be? When? Why? Our opinions differ. Oddly enough, Marguerite has an intellectual vision of love, whereas I'm in an incorrigible romantic. She sees love as the fruit of a rational choice (of the www.sharedtastes.com variety) whereas I think it springs from a delicious impulse. There is one thing we do agree on, however: love mustn't be a means, it must be an end. variety) whereas I think it springs from a delicious impulse. There is one thing we do agree on, however: love mustn't be a means, it must be an end.

Our other favorite topic of conversation is fate, and people's prospects in life. Cannelle Martin: ignored, cheated on by her husband, marries off her daughter to a financier, encourages her son to cheat on his wife, ends her life in Chatou in a room costing eight thousand euros a month. Achille Grand-Fernet: becomes a heroin addict, goes into rehab at the age of twenty, takes over his father's plastic bag business, marries a bleached blonde, engenders a schizophrenic son and an anorexic daughter, becomes an alcoholic, dies of liver cancer at the age of forty-five. And so on. And if you want my opinion, the most awful thing is not that we're playing this game, but that it isn't a game.

Anyway, when Kakuro ran into Maman and Marguerite and me in the hall, he said, "My great-niece is coming to visit me this afternoon, would you like to join us?" Maman said, "Oh yes, of course," before we even had time to say boo; she's hoping this will lead to her own invitation someday soon. And so we both went down. Kakuro's great-niece is called Yoko, she's the daughter of his niece elise who is the daughter of his sister Mariko. She is five. She's the prettiest little girl on earth! And adorable, too. She chirps and babbles and clucks and looks at people with the same kindly, open gaze as her great-uncle. We played hide and seek, and when Marguerite found her in a closet in the kitchen, Yoko laughed so hard she went wee-wee in her undies. And then we ate some chocolate cake while we talked with Kakuro, and she listened and gazed at us sweetly with her big eyes (and with chocolate up to her eyebrows).

Looking at her, I wondered, "Is she going to end up just like all the others, too?" I tried to picture her ten years older, blase, with high-rise boots and a cigarette dangling from her mouth, and then another ten years later in a sanitized decor waiting for her kids to come home while she plays the good j.a.panese wife and mommy. But it didn't work.

And I felt extraordinarily happy. It's the first time in my life that I've met someone whose fate is not predictable, someone whose paths in life still remain open, someone who is fresh and full of possibility. I said to myself, "Oh, yes, I would like to see Yoko grow up," and I knew that this wasn't just an illusion connected with her young age, because none of my parents' friends' little kids have ever made that sort of impression on me. I also said to myself that Kakuro must have been like that himself when he was little, and I wondered if anyone back then had looked at him the way I was looking at Yoko, with delight and curiosity, just waiting to see the b.u.t.terfly emerge from its coc.o.o.n, not knowing, yet trusting, the purpose of its wings.

And so I asked myself a first question: Why? Why these people and not the others?

And yet another: What about me? Is my fate already written all over my face? If I want to die, it's because I believe it must be.

But if, in our world, there is any chance of becoming the person you haven't yet become ... will I know how to seize that chance, turn my life into a garden that will be completely different from my forebears'?

8. Saints Alive.

At seven o'clock, more dead than alive, I head for the fourth floor, praying fit to burst that I shall not run into anyone.

The hallway is deserted.

The stairway is deserted.

The landing outside Monsieur Ozu's apartment is deserted.

This silent desert, which should have filled me with joy, weighs upon my heart with a dark foreboding and I am overcome with an irrepressible desire to flee. My gloomy loge suddenly seems a cozy, shining refuge, and I feel a wave of nostalgia thinking of Leo sprawled in front of a television, which no longer seems so iniquitous. After all, what is there to lose? All I have to do is turn my heels and go back down the stairs and into my loge. Nothing could be simpler. It is an entirely reasonable proposition, unlike this dinner, which borders on absurdity.

A sound from the fifth floor, just above my head, interrupts my thoughts. I begin instantly to sweat with fear-how very elegant-and, not fully understanding my own gesture, press frantically on the doorbell.

Not even time for my heart to start pounding: the door opens.

Monsieur Ozu greets me with a big smile.

"Good evening, Madame Michel!" he trumpets with what seems like genuine good humor.

Saints alive, the sound on the fifth floor is becoming more distinct: someone closing a door.

"Yes, good evening," I say, and very nearly shove past my host to get in the door.

"Let me take your things," says Monsieur Ozu, still smiling profusely.

I hand him my purse and take in the immense hallway before me.

Something draws my gaze.

9. Dull Gold.

Directly opposite the entrance, in a ray of light, hangs a painting.

This is the situation: here am I, Renee, fifty-four years of age, with bunions on my feet, born in a bog and bound to remain there; here am I going to dinner at the home of a wealthy j.a.panese man-whose concierge I happen to be-solely because I was startled by a quotation from Anna Karenina Anna Karenina; here am I, Renee, intimidated and frightened to my innermost core, and so acutely aware of the inappropriateness and blasphemous nature of my presence here that I could faint-here, in this place which, although it may be physically accessible to the likes of me, is nevertheless representative of a world to which I do not belong, a world that wants nothing to do with concierges; as I was saying, here am I, Renee, somewhat carelessly allowing my gaze to wander beyond Monsieur Ozu and into a ray of light that is striking a little painting in a dark frame.

Only the splendors of Art can explain why the awareness of my unworthiness has suddenly been eclipsed by an esthetic blackout. I no longer know who I am. I walk around Monsieur Ozu, captured by the vision.

It is a still life, representing a table laid for a light meal of bread and oysters. In the foreground, on a silver plate, are a half-bared lemon and a knife with a chiseled handle. In the background are two closed oysters, a shard of sh.e.l.l, gleaming mother-of-pearl, and a pewter saucer which probably contains pepper. In between the two are a goblet lying on its side, a roll showing its doughy white interior and, on the left, half-filled with a pale golden liquid, is a large goblet, balloon-shaped like an upside-down dome, with a large cylindrical stem decorated with gla.s.s lozenges. The colors range from yellow to ebony. The background is dull gold, slightly dusty.

I am a fervent admirer of still lifes. I have borrowed all the books on painting from the library and pored over them in search of still life paintings. I have been to the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the Musee d'Art Moderne, and I saw-a dazzling revelation-the Chardin exhibition at the Pet.i.t Palais in 1979. But Chardin's entire oeuvre does not equal one single master work of Dutch painting from the seventeenth century. The still lifes of Pieter Claesz, Willem Claesz Heda, Willem Kalf and Osias Beert are masterpieces of the genre-masterpieces full stop, for which, without a moment's hesitation, I would trade the entire Italian Quattrocento.

And this picture, without a moment's hesitation either, is unquestionably a Pieter Claesz.

"It's a copy," says Monsieur Ozu behind me; I had totally forgotten about him.

Must this man forever startle me?

I am startled.

Taking hold of myself, I am about to say something like: "It's very pretty," a statement that is to art as using "bring" when you mean "take" is to the beauty of language.

Having regained my self-control, I am about to resume my role as obtuse caretaker by uttering something like: "Amazing the things they can do nowadays!" (In response to: it's a copy.) And I also very nearly deliver the fatal blow, from which Monsieur Ozu's suspicions would never recover and which would establish the proof of my unworthiness forever: "Those gla.s.ses are weird."

I turn around.

The words, "A copy of what?" which I abruptly decide are the most appropriate, remain stuck in my throat.

And instead, I say, "It's so beautiful."

10. What Congruence?

Whence comes the sense of wonder we perceive when we encounter certain works of art? Admiration is born with our first gaze and if subsequently we should discover, in the patient obstinacy we apply in flushing out the causes thereof, that all this beauty is the fruit of a virtuosity that can only be detected through close scrutiny of a brush that has been able to tame shadow and light and restore shape and texture, by magnifying them-the transparent jewel of the gla.s.s, the tumultuous texture of the sh.e.l.ls, the clear velvet of the lemon-this neither dissipates nor explains the mystery of one's initial dazzled gaze.

The enigma is constantly renewed: great works are the visual forms which attain in us the certainty of timeless consonance. The confirmation that certain forms, in the particular aspect that their creators have given them, return again and again throughout the history of art and, in the filigree of individual genius, const.i.tute nonetheless facets of a universal genius, is something deeply unsettling. What congruence links a Claesz, a Raphael, a Rubens and a Hopper? Despite the diversity of subject matter, supports and techniques, despite the insignificance and ephemeral nature of lives always doomed to belong to one era and one culture alone, and despite the singular nature of a gaze that can only ever see what its const.i.tution will allow and that is tainted by the poverty of its individuality, the genius of great artists penetrates to the heart of the mystery and exhumes, under various guises, the same sublime form that we seek in all artistic production. What congruence links a Claesz, a Raphael, a Rubens and a Hopper? We need not search, our eye locates the form that will elicit a feeling of consonance, the one particular thing in which everyone can find the very essence of beauty, without variations or reservations, context or effort. In the still life with a lemon, for example, this essence cannot merely be reduced to the mastery of execution; it clearly does inspire a feeling of consonance, a feeling that this is exactly the way it ought to have been arranged this is exactly the way it ought to have been arranged. This in turn allows us to feel the power of objects and of the way they interact, to hold in our gaze the way they work together and the magnetic fields that attract and repel them, the ineffable ties that bind them and engender a force force, a secret and inexplicable wave born of both the tension and the balance of the configuration-this is what inspires the feeling of consonance. The disposition of the objects and the dishes achieves the universal in the singular: the timeless nature of the consonant form.

11. Existence Without Duration.

What is the purpose of Art? To give us the brief, dazzling illusion of the camellia, carving from time an emotional aperture that cannot be reduced to animal logic. How is Art born? It is begotten in the mind's ability to sculpt the sensorial domain. What does Art do for us? It gives shape gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all those works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions. to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all those works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions.

The seal of eternity ... What absent world does our heart intuit when we see these dishes and cups, these carpets and gla.s.ses? Beyond the frame of the painting there is, no doubt, the tumult and boredom of everyday life-itself an unceasing and futile pursuit, consumed by projects; but within the frame lies the plenitude of a suspended moment, stolen from time, rescued from human longing. Human longing! We cannot cease desiring, and this is our glory, and our doom. Desire! It carries us and crucifies us, delivers us every new day to a battlefield where, on the eve, the battle was lost; but in sunlight does it not look like a territory ripe for conquest, a place where-even though tomorrow we will die-we can build empires doomed to fade to dust, as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now? We are filled with the energy of constantly wanting that which we cannot have, we are abandoned at dawn on a field littered with corpses, we are transported until our death by projects that are no sooner completed than they must be renewed. Yet how exhausting it is to be constantly desiring ... We soon aspire to pleasure without the quest, to a blissful state without beginning or end, where beauty would no longer be an aim or a project but the very proof of our nature. And that state is Art. This table-did I have to set it? Must I have covet this repast in order to see it? Somewhere, elsewhere elsewhere, someone wanted that meal, someone aspired to that mineral transparency and sought the pleasure offered by the salt, silky caress of a lemony oyster on his tongue. This was but one project of a hundred yet unhatched, leading to a thousand more, the intention to prepare and savor a banquet of sh.e.l.lfish-someone else's project, in fact, that existed in order for the painting to come to life.

But when we gaze at a still life, when-even though we did not pursue it-we delight in its beauty, a beauty borne away by the magnified and immobile figuration of things, we find pleasure in the fact that there was no need for longing, we may contemplate something we need not want, may cherish something we need not desire. So this still life, because it embodies a beauty that speaks to our desire but was given birth by someone else's desire, because it cossets our pleasure without in any way being part of our own projects, because it is offered to us without requiring the effort of desiring on our part: this still life incarnates the quintessence of Art, the certainty of timelessness. In the scene before our eyes-silent, without life or motion-a time exempt of projects is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed-pleasure without desire, existence without duration, beauty without will.

For art is emotion without desire.

Journal of the Movement of the World No. 5.

Will he move, or won't he.

Today Maman took me to see her shrink. Reason: I hide. Here's what Maman said to me: "Sweetheart, you know very well that it is driving us crazy the way you go off hiding. I think it would be a good idea for you to come and talk about it with Dr. Theid, especially after what you said the other time." In the first place, Dr. Theid is only a doctor in my mother's perturbed little mind. He's no more a doctor or author of a doctoral dissertation than I am, but obviously it gives Maman great satisfaction to be able to say "Doctor," something to do with his apparent ambition to treat her, and take his time (ten years) about it. He is after all an old leftie who's converted to psychoa.n.a.lysis after a few years of not terribly violent studies in Nanterre and a lucky encounter with a big wheel in the Freudian Cause. And in the second place, I don't see what the problem is. That I "hide" is not true, anyway; I go off to be alone in a place where no one can find me. I just want to be able to write my Profound Thoughts Profound Thoughts and my and my Journal of the Movement of the World Journal of the Movement of the World in peace and, before that, I just wanted to be able to think quietly in my head without being disturbed by the inanities my sister says or listens to on the radio or her stereo, or without Maman coming to bother me, whispering, "Mamie's here, sweetheart, come give her a kiss," which is one of the least enticing injunctions I know. in peace and, before that, I just wanted to be able to think quietly in my head without being disturbed by the inanities my sister says or listens to on the radio or her stereo, or without Maman coming to bother me, whispering, "Mamie's here, sweetheart, come give her a kiss," which is one of the least enticing injunctions I know.

When Papa, putting on his angry look, asks me, "Well, why on earth are you hiding?" in general, I don't reply. What could I say? "Because you all get on my nerves and I have a work of great significance to produce before I die?" Obviously, I can't. So, last time I tried to be funny, just so they'd stop over-dramatizing things. I put on a sort of lost look, I stared at Papa and, with the voice of someone on their deathbed, said, "It's because of all these voices in my head." Egads! Red alert throughout the house! Papa's eyes were popping out of his head, Maman and Colombe came running full tilt when he called out for them and everybody was talking to me at the same time: "Sweetheart, it's not serious, we'll get you out of there" (Papa), "I'll call Dr. Theid right away" (Maman), "How many voices have you heard?" (Colombe), and so on. Maman put on the expression she keeps for special occasions, somewhere between worry and excitement: and what if my daughter were a Case for Science? How awful, but how glorious! So, seeing them get all carried away like this I said, "No I'm not, just kidding!" but I had to say it several times over before they heard me and then another few times before they believed me. And even then I'm not sure I convinced them. In short, Maman made an appointment for me to see Doc T., and we went there this morning.

First we sat in a very elegant waiting room with magazines dating from various periods: a few National Geographics from ten years ago and the latest Elle clearly displayed on top of the pile. And then Dr. Theid came in. Looking just like his photograph (in a magazine that Maman had shown to everyone), but in the flesh, in living color and odor: that is, brown and pipe tobacco. A dashing fifty-something, carefully groomed; but, above all, everything was brown: his hair, neatly trimmed beard, complexion (newly minted Seych.e.l.les), sweater, pants, shoes, and watch band-all in the same tones of chestnut brown. Or, like dead leaves. With, moreover, a high-cla.s.s pipe aroma (light tobacco: honey and dried fruit). Anyway, I said to myself, let's go have a nice autumnal chat by the fireplace among people from good families-a refined conversation, constructive and perhaps even a bit silken (I love that adjective).

Maman came in with me, we sat down on the two chairs facing his desk and he sat behind the desk, in a big swiveling armchair with strange wings, Star Trek Star Trek style. He crossed his hands in front of his belly, looked at us, and said, "How are you two ladies doing today?" style. He crossed his hands in front of his belly, looked at us, and said, "How are you two ladies doing today?"

Well, that was getting off to a very bad start. It instantly got my hackles up. The kind of sentence that a supermarket flunkey uses to sell two-sided toothbrushes to Madame and her daughter hiding behind their shopping cart is not exactly what you expect from a shrink now, is it? But my anger stopped short when I became aware of something that would be fascinating for my Journal of the Movement of the World Journal of the Movement of the World. I looked carefully, concentrating as hard as I could and I thought, No, it's not possible. Yes, yes it is! It is possible! Incredible! I was enthralled, to such a degree that I hardly heard Maman telling him all her little woes (my daughter hides, my daughter frightens us, tells us she hears voices, my daughter doesn't speak to us, we are worried about my daughter), saying "my daughter" two hundred times while I was sitting there five inches away and, as a result, when he spoke to me, I almost jumped.

Let me explain. I knew that Dr. T. was alive because he had walked ahead of me, sat down, and talked. But for all the rest, he may as well have been dead: he did not move. Once he was wedged into his s.p.a.ceship armchair, not another movement; just his lips trembling, but with great restraint. And the rest of him: immobile, perfectly immobile. Usually when you speak you don't just move your lips, you naturally bring other things into play: face muscles, tiny little gestures of the hands, neck, shoulders; and when you're speaking, it's still very difficult to stay absolutely motionless, there's always a little trembling somewhere, an eyelid blinking, an imperceptible wiggling of the foot, etc.

But here: nothing! Nada! Wallou! A living statue! Can you imagine! "So, young lady," he said, making me jump, "what do you have to say about all this?" I had trouble getting my thoughts together because I was completely absorbed by his immobility and so it took me a while to come up with an answer. Maman was writhing on her chair as if she had hemorrhoids but the Doc was staring at me without blinking. I said to myself: "I have to make him move, there must be something that will get him to move." So I said, "I will only speak in the presence of my lawyer," hoping that that would do it. Total flop: he didn't budge. Maman sighed like a martyred Madonna but our man stayed perfectly immobile. "Your lawyer ... hmm ... " he said, without moving. By now I was completely absorbed by the challenge. Will he move, or won't he? I decided to muster all my forces into battle. "You're not on trial here," he added, "you know that, hmm." And I was thinking, if I manage to make him move, it will all be worth it, really, I won't have wasted my day! "Well," said the statue, "my dear Solange, I'd like to have a little tete-a-tete with this young lady." My dear Solange got up, flashed him the look of a tearful c.o.c.ker spaniel, and left the room, making a lot of useless movements (to compensate, no doubt).

"Your mother is very worried about you," he attacked, managing this time not to move even his lower lip. I thought for a moment, and decided that provocation was not the best tactic if I were to succeed. If you want to reinforce your psychoa.n.a.lyst's belief in his own mastery, provoke him the way kids provoke their parents. So I decided to say something with a lot of gravitas: "Do you think it has something to do with the foreclosure of the Name of the Father?" Do you think that made him move? Not a fraction. He remained immobile and impa.s.sive. But I seemed to detect something in his eyes, like a flicker. I decided to exploit the lead further. "Hmm?" he went, "I don't think you understand what you are saying." "Oh yes, yes I do," I went, "but there is one thing I don't understand in Lacan, it is the exact nature of his relation to structuralism." He opened his mouth slightly to say something but I was quicker. "Oh, yeah, and the mathemes, too. All those knots, it's a bit muddled. Do you understand any of it, this topology stuff? Everybody has known for quite a while that it's a scam, no?" Here I detected some progress. He hadn't had time to close his mouth and, in the end, it stayed open. Then he took hold of himself and on his motionless face came a motionless expression of the sort, "You want to play games with me, little girl?" Well yes, I do want to play games with you, you big fat marron glace marron glace. So I waited. "You are a very intelligent young lady, that I know," he said (price of this information conveyed by My dear Solange: sixty euros the half-hour). "But a person can be very intelligent and at the same time quite dest.i.tute, you know, very lucid and very unhappy." No kidding. Did you find that in Pif Gadget Pif Gadget? I almost asked. And then suddenly I felt like upping the ante. I was, after all, sitting across from the guy who has been costing my family close to six hundred euros a month for nearly a decade, the results of which we are already familiar with: three hours a day of squirting house plants and an impressive consumption of state-subsidized substances. I felt my anger flaring up, nice and nasty. I leaned toward the desk and said in a very deep voice: "Listen carefully, Mr. Permafrost Psychologist, you and I are going to strike a little bargain. You're going to leave me alone and in exchange I won't wreck your little trade in human suffering by spreading nasty rumors about you among the Parisian political and business elite. And believe me-at least if you say you can tell just how intelligent I am-I am fully capable of doing this." I didn't really think this would work. I couldn't believe it. You really have to be out to lunch to believe such a load of nonsense. And yet, however incredible, victory: a shadow of disquiet pa.s.sed over the face of the good doctor Theid. I think he believed me. It's extraordinary: if there is one thing I'll never do, it's spread untrue rumors to harm someone. My father with his republican soul has inoculated me with the virus of deontology, and I may find that as absurd as all the rest but I stick to it, strictly. But the good doctor, who has only had my mother on whom to base his opinions of our family, has apparently decided that the threat is real. And there, oh miracle! He moved! He clicked his tongue, uncrossed his arms, stretched one hand out toward the desk and slapped his palm against the kid leather blotter. A gesture of exasperation but also intimidation. Then he stood up, all gentle kindness vanished, and went to the door, and called Maman to come back in, and gave her some patter about my good mental health and that everything would be fine and sent us expeditiously away from his autumnal fireside.

At first I was really pleased with myself. I had managed to make him move. But as the day went on I started to feel more and more depressed. Because what happened when he moved was something not very nice, not very decent. So what if I know there are adults who wear masks that are all sweetness and light but who are very hard and ugly underneath, and so what if I know that all you have to do is see right through them for their masks to fall: when it happens with this sort of violence, it hurts. When he slapped the blotter, what it meant was, "Fine, you see me as I am, no point carrying on with this useless farce, it's a done deal, your pathetic little bargain, now get the h.e.l.l out of here, and fast." Well, that hurt, yes, it hurt. I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don't want to see it.

Yes, it's time to leave a world where something that moves can reveal something so ugly.

12. A Wave of Hope.

I am a fine one to reproach those phenomenologists for their catless autism: I have devoted my life to the quest of timelessness. am a fine one to reproach those phenomenologists for their catless autism: I have devoted my life to the quest of timelessness.