The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, Alison Anderson Page B
Authors: Muriel Barbery, Alison Anderson
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surpassing time, warms my tranquil heart.
15. The Rich Man’s Burden
C ivilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of the primate. For primates we have been and primates we shall remain, however often we learn to find joy in a camellia on moss. This is the very purpose of education. What does education imply? One must offer camellias on moss, tirelessly, in order to escape the natural impulses of our species, because those impulses do not change, and continually threaten the fragile equilibrium of survival.
I am a very camellia-on-moss sort of person. If I really think about it, there is nothing else that can quite explain my withdrawal into this bleak loge of mine. As I was convinced very early on of the pointlessness of my existence, I could have chosen to rebel, and taking God as my witness that I had been cruelly used by fate, I could have resorted to the violence inherent in our condition. But school made of me a soul whose unpromising destiny led only to abnegation and confinement. The wonder of my second birth had shown me the way to master my impulses: since it was school that had given birth to me, I had to show my allegiance, and thus I complied with my instructors’ intentions by tamely becoming a most civilized human being. In fact, when the struggle to dominate our primate aggressiveness takes up arms as powerful as books and words, the undertaking is an easy one, and that is how I became an educated person, finding in written symbols the strength to resist my own nature.
Thus I was utterly astonished by my own reaction when Antoine Pallières rang imperiously at the loge three times, and without a greeting began reproachfully haranguing me for the disappearance of his chrome scooter: I slammed the door in his face, and at the same time very nearly amputated my cat’s tail as he was slipping out the door.
Not so very camellia-on-moss after all, I thought.
And as I had to allow Leo re-entry into his quarters, I immediately opened the door again after I had slammed it.
“Excuse me,” I said, “a draft.”
Antoine Pallières looked at me with the expression of someone who wonders if he has really seen what he thinks he has seen. But as he has been conditioned to imagine that only what must happen does happen, in the way that rich people convince themselves that their lives run along a heavenly track that the power of money has quite naturally laid for them, Antoine decided to believe me. I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.
“Yes, well, anyway I was mainly coming to give you this from my mother,” he said.
And he handed me a white envelope.
“Thank you,” I said, and shut the door in his face for the second time.
And here I am in my kitchen with the envelope in my hand.
“What is wrong with me this morning?” I say to Leo.
The death of Pierre Arthens has been wilting my camellias.
I open the envelope and read this little note written on a business card whose surface is so glossy that the ink, to the dismay of the defeated blotter, has bled slightly underneath each letter.
Madame Michel,
Would you be so kind as, to sign for the packages
from the dry cleaner’s this afternoon?
I’ll pick them up at your loge this evening.
Scribbled signature
I was not prepared for such an underhanded attack. I collapse in shock on the nearest chair. I even begin to wonder if I am not going mad. Does this have the same effect on you, when this sort of thing happens?
Let me explain:
The cat is sleeping.
You’ve just read a harmless little sentence, and it has not caused you any pain or sudden fits of suffering, has it? Fair enough.
Now read again:
The cat, is sleeping.
Let me repeat it, so that there is no cause for ambiguity:
The cat comma is sleeping.
The cat, is sleeping.
Would you be so kind as, to sign for.
On the one hand we
15. The Rich Man’s Burden
C ivilization is the mastery of violence, the triumph, constantly challenged, over the aggressive nature of the primate. For primates we have been and primates we shall remain, however often we learn to find joy in a camellia on moss. This is the very purpose of education. What does education imply? One must offer camellias on moss, tirelessly, in order to escape the natural impulses of our species, because those impulses do not change, and continually threaten the fragile equilibrium of survival.
I am a very camellia-on-moss sort of person. If I really think about it, there is nothing else that can quite explain my withdrawal into this bleak loge of mine. As I was convinced very early on of the pointlessness of my existence, I could have chosen to rebel, and taking God as my witness that I had been cruelly used by fate, I could have resorted to the violence inherent in our condition. But school made of me a soul whose unpromising destiny led only to abnegation and confinement. The wonder of my second birth had shown me the way to master my impulses: since it was school that had given birth to me, I had to show my allegiance, and thus I complied with my instructors’ intentions by tamely becoming a most civilized human being. In fact, when the struggle to dominate our primate aggressiveness takes up arms as powerful as books and words, the undertaking is an easy one, and that is how I became an educated person, finding in written symbols the strength to resist my own nature.
Thus I was utterly astonished by my own reaction when Antoine Pallières rang imperiously at the loge three times, and without a greeting began reproachfully haranguing me for the disappearance of his chrome scooter: I slammed the door in his face, and at the same time very nearly amputated my cat’s tail as he was slipping out the door.
Not so very camellia-on-moss after all, I thought.
And as I had to allow Leo re-entry into his quarters, I immediately opened the door again after I had slammed it.
“Excuse me,” I said, “a draft.”
Antoine Pallières looked at me with the expression of someone who wonders if he has really seen what he thinks he has seen. But as he has been conditioned to imagine that only what must happen does happen, in the way that rich people convince themselves that their lives run along a heavenly track that the power of money has quite naturally laid for them, Antoine decided to believe me. I find this a fascinating phenomenon: the ability we have to manipulate ourselves so that the foundation of our beliefs is never shaken.
“Yes, well, anyway I was mainly coming to give you this from my mother,” he said.
And he handed me a white envelope.
“Thank you,” I said, and shut the door in his face for the second time.
And here I am in my kitchen with the envelope in my hand.
“What is wrong with me this morning?” I say to Leo.
The death of Pierre Arthens has been wilting my camellias.
I open the envelope and read this little note written on a business card whose surface is so glossy that the ink, to the dismay of the defeated blotter, has bled slightly underneath each letter.
Madame Michel,
Would you be so kind as, to sign for the packages
from the dry cleaner’s this afternoon?
I’ll pick them up at your loge this evening.
Scribbled signature
I was not prepared for such an underhanded attack. I collapse in shock on the nearest chair. I even begin to wonder if I am not going mad. Does this have the same effect on you, when this sort of thing happens?
Let me explain:
The cat is sleeping.
You’ve just read a harmless little sentence, and it has not caused you any pain or sudden fits of suffering, has it? Fair enough.
Now read again:
The cat, is sleeping.
Let me repeat it, so that there is no cause for ambiguity:
The cat comma is sleeping.
The cat, is sleeping.
Would you be so kind as, to sign for.
On the one hand we
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