from anguish and then from rage. His whole life rises before him, and for the second time that day, tears flood his eyes; yes, he is weeping, and from the depth of those tears an idea rises to his head: he has lost everything, all he has left is his muscles; but those muscles, those wretched muscles, what good do they do him? Like a spring, the question sets his right arm into terrible motion: from it comes a punch, a punch as huge as the sorrow of a denture, huge as a half century of wild fucking at the edges of all the swimming pools of France. The man in pajamas vanishes beneath the water.
His collapse is so swift, so thorough, that the Czech scientist thinks he has killed him; after a moment of stupefaction, he bends, lifts him up, gives him a few light taps on the face; the man opens his eyes, his vacant gaze falls on the misshapen apparition, then he frees himself and swims toward the ladder to rejoin the woman.
40
Crouched on the edge of the pool, she has been attentively watching the man in pajamas, his battle and his collapse. Once he has climbed onto the tiled edge of the pool, she stands up and walks toward the staircase, without looking back but slowly enough for him to follow. Thus, without a word, superbly drenched, they cross the lobby (long since deserted) and take the corridors to their room. Their clothing drips, they tremble with cold, they must change.
And then?
What do you mean, “then”? They will make love, what did you think? That night they will be silent, she will only moan a bit, like a person who has been wronged. Thus everything can go on and the play they just performed tonight for the first time will be repeated in the days and weeks to come. To demonstrate that she is above all vulgarity, above the ordinary world she disdains, she will force him to his knees again, he will blame himself, will weep, she will be all the nastier, she will cuckold him, parade her infidelity,
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133
make him suffer, he will fight back, be crude, threatening, determined to do something unmentionable, he will smash a vase, yell hideous insults, whereupon she will feign fear, will accuse him of being a rapist and aggressor, he will refall to his knees, recry, redeclare himself guilty, then she will let him sleep with her and so on and so forth for weeks, months, years, for eternity.
maybe Turkish, Russian, or even a dying child in Somalia. When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself.
When I described Madame de T.‘s night, I recalled the well-known equation from one of the first chapters of the textbook of existential mathematics: the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting. From that equation we can deduce various corollaries, for instance this one: our period is given over to the demon of speed, and that is the reason it so easily forgets its own self. Now I would reverse that statement and say: our period is obsessed by the desire to forget, and it is to fulfill that desire that it gives over to the demon of speed; it picks up the pace to show us that it no longer wishes to be remembered; that it is tired of itself; sick of itself; that it wants to blow out the tiny trembling flame of memory.
My dear countryman, companion, renowned discoverer of Musca pragensis, heroic laborer on the scaffoldings, I can no longer bear to watch you standing stock-still in the water! You’re going to catch your death of cold! Friend! Brother! Stop torturing yourself! Get out! Go to
41
And the Czech scientist? His tongue stuck against the loose tooth, he says to himself: This is all that’s left of my whole life: a loose tooth and my panic at having to wear a denture. Nothing else? Nothing at all? Nothing. In a sudden flash, his whole past appears to him not as a sublime adventure, rich in dramatic and unique events, but as a minuscule segment in a jumble of events that crossed the planet at a speed that made it
His collapse is so swift, so thorough, that the Czech scientist thinks he has killed him; after a moment of stupefaction, he bends, lifts him up, gives him a few light taps on the face; the man opens his eyes, his vacant gaze falls on the misshapen apparition, then he frees himself and swims toward the ladder to rejoin the woman.
40
Crouched on the edge of the pool, she has been attentively watching the man in pajamas, his battle and his collapse. Once he has climbed onto the tiled edge of the pool, she stands up and walks toward the staircase, without looking back but slowly enough for him to follow. Thus, without a word, superbly drenched, they cross the lobby (long since deserted) and take the corridors to their room. Their clothing drips, they tremble with cold, they must change.
And then?
What do you mean, “then”? They will make love, what did you think? That night they will be silent, she will only moan a bit, like a person who has been wronged. Thus everything can go on and the play they just performed tonight for the first time will be repeated in the days and weeks to come. To demonstrate that she is above all vulgarity, above the ordinary world she disdains, she will force him to his knees again, he will blame himself, will weep, she will be all the nastier, she will cuckold him, parade her infidelity,
132
133
make him suffer, he will fight back, be crude, threatening, determined to do something unmentionable, he will smash a vase, yell hideous insults, whereupon she will feign fear, will accuse him of being a rapist and aggressor, he will refall to his knees, recry, redeclare himself guilty, then she will let him sleep with her and so on and so forth for weeks, months, years, for eternity.
maybe Turkish, Russian, or even a dying child in Somalia. When things happen too fast, nobody can be certain about anything, about anything at all, not even about himself.
When I described Madame de T.‘s night, I recalled the well-known equation from one of the first chapters of the textbook of existential mathematics: the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting. From that equation we can deduce various corollaries, for instance this one: our period is given over to the demon of speed, and that is the reason it so easily forgets its own self. Now I would reverse that statement and say: our period is obsessed by the desire to forget, and it is to fulfill that desire that it gives over to the demon of speed; it picks up the pace to show us that it no longer wishes to be remembered; that it is tired of itself; sick of itself; that it wants to blow out the tiny trembling flame of memory.
My dear countryman, companion, renowned discoverer of Musca pragensis, heroic laborer on the scaffoldings, I can no longer bear to watch you standing stock-still in the water! You’re going to catch your death of cold! Friend! Brother! Stop torturing yourself! Get out! Go to
41
And the Czech scientist? His tongue stuck against the loose tooth, he says to himself: This is all that’s left of my whole life: a loose tooth and my panic at having to wear a denture. Nothing else? Nothing at all? Nothing. In a sudden flash, his whole past appears to him not as a sublime adventure, rich in dramatic and unique events, but as a minuscule segment in a jumble of events that crossed the planet at a speed that made it
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