The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, Alison Anderson Page A

hair’s breadth . . . But then another idea surfaced thanks to these mirror neurons. A disturbing idea, moreover, and vaguely Proustian, no doubt (which annoys me). What if literature were a television we gaze into in order to activate our mirror neurons and give ourselves some action-packed cheap thrills? And even worse: what if literature were a television showing us all the things we have missed?
    So much for the movement of the world! It could have been perfection and it was a disaster. It should be experienced in reality and it is pleasure by proxy, like always.
    And so I ask you: why stay in such a world?

14. When of a Sudden, Old Japan
    T he next morning, Chabrot rings at my loge. He seems to have mastered his emotions, his voice no longer trembles, his nose is dry and suntanned. But he makes me think of a ghost.
    “Pierre has died,” he says, in a flat voice.
    “I am sorry.”
    I truly am sorry for him, for even if Pierre Arthens is no longer in pain, Chabrot will have to learn to live, however dead he may feel. “The undertakers will be arriving,” adds Chabrot in his spectral voice. “I’d be very grateful if you’d show them up to the apartment.”
    “Of course.”
    “I’ll be back in two hours, to take care of Anna.”
    He looks at me for a moment in silence.
    “Thank you,” he says, for the second time in twenty years.
    I am tempted to reply in keeping with the ancestral traditions of concierges but, I scarcely know why, the words will not come out. Perhaps it is because Chabrot will not be coming here anymore, because the strongest barriers break down in the presence of death, because I am thinking about Lucien, and because decency, after all, precludes any sort of wariness that might offend the deceased.
    So I do not say, Don’t mention it, but rather: “You know . . . everything comes at its appointed time.”
    That might sound like a platitude, although it is also something similar to what Marshal Kutuzov says to Prince Andrei in War and Peace: I have been much blamed, both for war, and for peace . . . But everything comes at its appointed time . . . Tout vient à son heure pour qui sait attendre.
    I would give anything to be able to read it in Russian. What I have always liked about this passage are the pauses, the balance between war and peace , the ebb and flow of his thoughts, like the tide on the shore carrying the riches of the ocean, in, and out. Was this merely a whim on the part of the translator, embroidering something that might have been very simple in the original— I have been much blamed, both for war, and for peace —thus consigning my maritime ruminations to the chapter of unfounded extravagance, or is this the very essence of a superb text which, even today, still moves me, however I resist, to tears of joy?
    Chabrot nods his head slowly, then departs.
    The rest of the morning is dreary. I have no posthumous affection for Pierre Arthens, but I find myself wandering about like a lost soul, unable even to read. The camellia and the moss had offered me a brief but happy interlude from the coarseness of the world: now that is over, leaving no hope, and my heart is bitter, tormented by the darkness of all these unhappy events.
    When of a sudden Old Japan intervenes: from one of the apartments wafts a melody, clearly, joyfully distinct. Someone is playing a classical piece on the piano. Ah, sweet, impromptu moment, lifting the veil of melancholy . . . In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from an unfamiliar piece, a touch of perfection in the flow of human dealings—I lean my head slowly to one side, reflect on the camellia on the moss of the temple, reflect on a cup of tea, while outside the wind is rustling the foliage, the forward rush of life is crystallized in a brilliant jewel of a moment that knows neither projects nor future, human destiny is rescued from the pale succession of days, glows with light at last and,