Trio (22 page)

Then what of the rumors about her gifts as a witch.

A missing link.

Or only existed in the mind of an ill-intentioned person, who didn’t come from hereabouts, or quite simply in the mind of the unfortunate uncle.

Voices from all around.

But the explanations after the event could only diminish, if not reduce to nothing, the importance of the writings in question, to see things from the analyst’s point of view would in any case have been aberrant, a text worthy of the name only being what it is by a kind of grace which cares nothing for the latest craze.

Preceded by his dog which disappeared in the grass, the child used to go and pick bunches of flowers in the mornings.

A magnificent phrase which will have to be repudiated so that we can glow beyond the frightful glossary.

Step by step, this redemption.

…
 
for the tourists, those disgusting swellings, you remember, she’s still there, poor thing, she takes up even more room on the sidewalk, she doesn’t exactly come into the flyweight class, she’s getting even fatter as she gets older and she doesn’t wash herself anymore, can you imagine the stench she trails around with her, it makes you feel sick.

And the other didn’t know what to do with her lettuces which were going to seed, she didn’t dare eat strawberries on account of urticaria, she didn’t want to have anything to do with cherries on account of her intestines, she was hesitating between a tin of sardines and one of tuna fish, in the end she settled for a packet of rice, that’s still what goes down best, as you might say-

Because with this craze for leaving town, the tourists are always asking me whether I know of anything for sale, only the day before yesterday I told one that the hut behind my orchard was going, well, it’s already been bought, where’s it all going to get us, this flight into the countryside, as the papers say.

A slate, yes, on which he notes down whatever comes into his head, and when morning comes he effaces it all, but the words stick in his throat so he retraces them.

Until the day when his hand is no longer capable of following his thought and he chokes once and for all.

But the master rebels against this prediction and repeats, no, I shall never keep silent, confusing speaking with tracing words on the slate, and he stuffs himself with remedies for rheumatoid arthritis, how stupid, you know what I think of pills and other expedients.

And of psycho-posology, or posolo-psychagogy, or menopau-chatology, in short, that’s all for the moment.

What’s the moment.

It’s the shit you find yourself in when you’re hoping to get out of it, only to fall back into it at another moment, go on.

The implausible story of Uncle Alexandre’s pince-nez which it seems he only needed to put on his nose in order to see a pumpkin turn into a phoenix, a rabbit hutch or a wheelbarrow, a monumental staircase which led you up to the seventh heaven, in short his usual verbiage which with the passing years took on a clinical form as if a dream, I mean the sort that saves, could be the fruit of expedients or procedures.

Monsieur Théodore went back up to his room and noted down a thought relative to the mistaken ideas of the most distinguished minds, then he reimmersed himself in his reading.

His reading, his reading, we know what that was, old books of spells dealing with magic, witchcraft, alchemy, which he attributed to his uncle to put that idiot of a maid off the scent, tormented as he was by the pledge he had so lightly made to devote the rest of his life to Alexandre’s dossiers.

Or if the old crackpot, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, had devoted the rest of his life to the accumulation of notes relative to those matters which were as scabrous as they were esoteric, how can we tell, the so-called bound volume that’s supposed to be in our library, just try and find it, it’s only a fable that was given credence by some people who have never set foot in the Foundation, or who were making fun of Mademoiselle Moine.

Attached to the desk by a chain.

Ask Marie habits Alexandre and obsessions Théodore, intolerable confusion uncle nephew.

The slate in smithereens, it really made her laugh that anyone should make a drama of it, the dog had broken it by tugging at the string attaching the sponge to it, a puppy, playful like all puppies, the slate had been lying on the kitchen table, it had fallen onto the floor and got broken. Marie had replaced it the next day.

One day plus one day, the details change, you don’t realize it, and then in the end you don’t recognize anything anymore.

One day plus one day.

He was walking in a garden he didn’t recognize anymore because an invisible manitou, et cetera, the kind of mawkishness that sets children dreaming but then that dream, where is it, and how can we gain access to it without cheating, something, a detail, a nothing, must have got lost en route.

A drifting nothing.

Something like the soul, or that kind of vagrant wind, the notion of which should one day be reconsidered with the seriousness of a child, well yes, we’ll come back to that, and people will be most surprised to
 
…

Most surprised, and suddenly overwhelmed.

And Monsieur Théodore, who thought he was making a discovery, was rubbing his hands like Punch after he’d given the policeman a good hiding, that would have been a sight worth seeing but there weren’t any spectators.

Or that he must have been very blind to believe himself so enlightened, and what followed, in short, that sort of cheap rhetoric.

No spectators, but an ear that it was quite impossible to disregard, maybe it was the soul in question, in short that sort of
petitio principii
,
at least he wasn’t confusing it in order to get himself in good with what they call conscience, that old trap that is so aptly named, the science of
 
…

But that at all events it was out of the question to be able to sleep when, like him, one had the task of seeing this beastly classification through to a successful conclusion.

Adieu the twenty hours of sleep, and the dream, he wouldn’t find it in his bed.

Knock knock knock, Marie at the door, she was bringing his breakfast, she enters and is stupefied to see the master at his writing desk where he was sleeping like a log, he opens an eye, he says he’s going to sell his bed, she says you’re losing your marbles.

To sell his bed, yes, so as no longer to be tempted to sleep but to stay glued to his desk, why not attach yourself to it with a chain while you’re about it, so as to find there and nowhere else the relative peace of the soul, relaxation, repose, ecstasy, or God knows what, he launched out into his verbiage again and Marie pulled him by the sleeve to where she’d put his breakfast and kept saying a good hiding, that’s what you need.

Or that nature had really done things very well, to lapse into second childhood would be the salvation of anyone who has lost his soul, the only place for dreams, the nursery of chimeras, and carry on papa with your pee-pee, pot-pot chirruping.

Cut.

He did indeed babble a bit, the excellent man, when people asked him the question, why do you go on keeping your records, taking notes, making your rough drafts as you call them, he replied habit, habit, you know what it’s like, and then if he had confidence he would reveal some touching little secrets about his need for company, how his papers played the part of confidants, and his need for a hobby, even when he was very young he always had to have some little work in progress, a little painting, a little sonnet, a little thingummy, adding in a very low voice, as if he were confessing to some horrid failing, I used to have gifts, yes you wouldn’t think it but that’s what people used to tell me, but uniquely in this domain, don’t worry I never understood the first thing about mathematics, or sociology, or important things, just as well, because if that had been the case they wouldn’t have got me any further than I am at this moment, there must be something strange about my character, I really don’t know what to call it, but it would have prevented me from ever in my life finishing anything.

Enough good intentions to pave the whole of hell.

And then he took another sip of white wine, and he smoothed his little hat and his little moustache, and pff, once again he started jabbering adorable little things about nature, sunsets, the little mice, the coupons his mama had to have when milk was rationed, everything he could have said if he hadn’t been what he would have liked not to be.

But well, obviously, we stood him another drink, and then he was enough to break your heart, mixing up helter-skelter little clichés about art, and feeling, and poverty, and the hic, pardon me, trouble you had with the taxes, and the invisible things that, hic, pardon me, what was I saying, on the occasions when it didn’t all finish in little sobs.

Ah, the café of illusions, it certainly heard some things, our youth, as you might say.

Or our resignation, our colossal failure, pff, another little glass of wine.

And why not when all’s said and done, said Louis the waiter, to end up like that or any other way is all much of a muchness, the hardest part is to accept it, after that you forget, but he was a drinker too and there were times when we couldn’t follow his arguments, did he mean to accept one more round, we never had much difficulty in doing that, or to accept our colossal failure, in that case you go on thinking about it until the end, you cling to it as you do to a life belt, or to accept the fact of saying what you didn’t mean to say, or of not saying it, in which case everything has to be started all over again, that really can’t be what existence is all about, unless
 
…

A missing link.

Another thing from beyond people’s consciousness.

One thing’s certain, Magnin added, and that is that we shall all have been in the same boat, and that’s comforting, it proves we’re interested in the ties that unite us and not merely in our own problems, as unthinking people claim, but did he mean comforting in the sense of resignation to our collective failure, or in the sense of necessary rebellion, which incidentally in both cases implies more rounds until the end.

The little corner on the left as you go in.

And he came out again to walk around his garden where the grass, the leaves, the perfumes, and the birds, were suddenly of the same nature as things said, everything was confused in an illocalizable murmur as if the eye, the ear, and the nose were merely one single means forged by the manitou in question to make unthinking people fall into the trap that is so aptly named.

To say it all over again, yes, that was the program, but just imagine the state of that old man who had never succeeded in anything, not even in becoming Dodo’s heir, could you reproach him for losing his marbles over it, or seeming to be crushed, depending on the days, conscience is all very fine, duty, giving your word, but strength, what do you make of that, he replied, gabbling, though, we’ll get there in the end, hic, pardon me, with a little method.

Or if the formula say it all over again had been whispered in his ear by an evil spirit who had dedicated itself to his downfall, because in any case, he himself had never said a thing.

Or if, by dint of repeating the crackpot’s formulas, he had ended up taking them for his own.

Good God, she’ll drive us bonkers, said the other, but the maid didn’t take any notice or didn’t hear or only so badly, she was no longer of this world, dedicated as she had been all her existence to the man who had died.

And I’ll have some beans, too.

Doesn’t time fly.

That old fritter they want to get us to take for the memory of Aunt Marie.

Impossible anamnesis.

What about your writing, then, is it progressing, they asked him, knowing that he was hoping to make something of his uncle’s hodgepodge, he adopted a contrite air and made out that he would no longer have the strength to see it through to a successful conclusion, at the same time boasting of his failure so as to authenticate his work.

Authentic, authentic, isn’t shit authentic, where do you get all your excuses from, and anyway that way of cultivating other people’s fiascos,
we
are real artists.

Regress to before the flood, which is the time they still live in.

She thought she could remember, but it was all so long ago that he told her he couldn’t believe it, so much of the arbitrary about this work, when you think of how serious great books are, the reflection they demand, the method they impose, he didn’t feel up to it anymore but she wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about, his confidences were rare and she wasn’t a woman who allowed herself indiscretions, but outspoken as usual, she added curiously, when you try to bite off more than you can chew you only get what’s coming to you.

Well, that’s another new one.

And in any case, who’s talking about respectability.

Or that he might have told Théodore, the wheel has come full circle, everything is more or less clear to me today, or at least the essential, I can’t wait to get out of it, which he did anyway a few weeks later by means of the knife we have spoken of, planted not in his back but right through his heart, he didn’t miss.

Suicide camouflaged as murder, which represents a fair amount of perversity.

But then that changes everything, said Madame Buvard, how the old slob must have hated his nephew to want to get him convicted, what do you know of the sequel.

The other replied, Théodore, personally I never saw him, nor anyone from his place, it was his maid he had a grudge against, or else someone that I don’t know.

Someone she didn’t know.

The room was filled with a pink light, he went over to the bed where Marie was sleeping like a log, he searched her drawers, but he bumped into the chamber pot and knocked it over, the maid opened an eye, she gave a little cry, he bound her with a rope and gagged her with a scarf, then, thinking he heard a sound in the corridor he escaped through the window, taking a notebook with him.

She recounted her adventure in the disturbing, monotonic voice of a sleepwalker, and then started all over again
da capo
, like an old record playing nonstop.