The Festival of Insignificance Page 5

  Watching the little feather’s wanderings, Charles felt a stab of anguish: It struck him that the angel he had thought about these past weeks was alerting him that it was already somewhere here, very nearby. Perhaps, frightened, before it was to be flung out of heaven it had let loose from its wing this tiny barely visible feather, like a wisp of its anxiety, like a memory of the happy life it had shared with the stars, like a calling card meant to explain its arrival and declare the approaching end.

  But Charles was not yet ready to face the end; he would have liked to put it off for later. The image of his ailing mother rose up before him, and his heart clenched.

  Still, the feather was there; it rose and fell, while at the far side of the salon Madame Franck was also looking up toward the ceiling. She raised a hand with the index finger outstretched, offering the feather a place to land. But the feather avoided La Franck’s finger and went on its wandering way.

  The End of a Daydream

  Above La Franck’s left hand, the feather continued to wander, and I imagine some twenty men who, gathered around a long table, focus their own gaze upward, though no feather is floating there; they are all the more uncertain and nervous because the thing they fear stands neither before them (like an enemy that could be killed), nor beneath them (like a snare the secret police could thwart), but somewhere above them, like a threat, an invisible, incorporeal, incomprehensible, ungraspable, unpunishable, mischievously mysterious threat. A few of them rise from their seats without knowing where they mean to go.

  I see Stalin, impassive, seated at the end of the long table, growling: “Calm down, you cowards! What are you afraid of?” Then, in a louder voice: “Sit down, the meeting is not over!”

  At the window Molotov murmurs: “Joseph, something is brewing. There’s talk they’re going to knock down your statues.” Then, under Stalin’s mocking gaze, under the weight of his silence, he docilely lowers his head and goes back to sit down at the table.

  When all of them have returned to their places, Stalin says, “That’s called the end of a daydream! All daydreams come to an end. It’s always as unexpected as it is inevitable. Don’t you know that, you morons?”

  All the men keep silent—except Kalinin, who is incapable of controlling himself and proclaims loudly: “Whatever happens, Kaliningrad will always be Kaliningrad!”

  “For good reason! And I am very pleased to know that Kant’s name will forever be bound to yours,” Stalin answers, increasingly amused. “Because, you know, Kant fully deserves it.” And his laugh, at once forlorn and gay, roams the big room for a long while.

  Ramon’s Lamento for the End of Jokes

  The distant echo of Stalin’s laughter trembles faintly in the salon. From behind the long drinks table, Charles continued to watch the little feather above La Franck’s raised index finger, and Ramon, amid all those upturned heads, was overjoyed that the moment had come when, unobserved and very discreetly, he could slip away with Julie. He looked left and right, but she was not there. He could still hear her voice, her parting words that rang like an invitation. He could still see her magnificent behind as it moved away, sending him greetings. Perhaps she’d gone off to the bathroom? To freshen her makeup? He stepped into a small hallway and waited outside the door. Several women came out, looked at him suspiciously, but she did not appear. It was all too clear. She was already gone. She had turned him down. Instantly all he wanted was to quit this dreary gathering, abandon it immediately, and he headed for the door. But a few steps before he reached it, Caliban appeared before him carrying a platter: “Good God, Ramon, you’re so sad! Quick, take a whiskey.”

  How do you refuse a friend? And besides, their sudden encounter had an irresistible advantage: Since all the halfwits around them were staring as if hypnotized at the ceiling, toward the same absurd spot, he could finally be alone with Caliban, here below, on the ground, in utter privacy, as if on an island of freedom. They stood still, and Caliban, to say something cheery, made a remark in Pakistani.

  Ramon answered (in French): “I congratulate you, my friend, on your superb linguistic performance. But instead of cheering me up, you’re sending me deeper into my misery.”

  He took a whiskey from the tray, swallowed it, set the glass down, took another, and held on to it: “Charles and you invented this Pakistani-language farce to entertain yourselves during these fashionable cocktail parties where you’re just the poor lackeys of the snobs. The pleasure of a hoax was supposed to protect you. In fact, that’s always been our strategy. We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously. But I think our jokes have lost their power. You force yourself to speak Pakistani to cheer yourself up. In vain. All you get out of it is weariness and boredom.”

  He stopped for a moment, and saw that Caliban had laid a finger on his lips. “What is it?”

  Caliban tilted his head toward a man—small, bald—a few yards from them, the only person whose gaze was locked not onto the ceiling, but onto the two of them.

  “So what?” asked Ramon.

  “Don’t speak French! He’s listening to us,” Caliban whispered.

  “But why does that disturb you?”

  “Please, not in French! For the past hour I’ve had the feeling he’s watching me.”

  Seeing his friend really upset, Ramon said a few nonsense words in Pakistani.

  Caliban did not react; then, somewhat calmer: “He’s looking away now,” he said, and then: “He’s leaving.”

  Uneasy, Ramon drank up his whiskey, set the empty glass back onto the tray, and mechanically picked up another (the third by now). Then, his tone serious: “I swear, I had never even imagined that possibility. But, yes, you’re right! If some servant to truth should discover that you’re French! Then of course you’ll be suspect! He’ll think you must have some shady reason to be hiding your identity! He’ll alert the police! You’ll be interrogated! You’ll explain that your Pakistani character was a joke. They’ll laugh at you: What a stupid alibi! You must certainly have been up to no good! They’ll put you in handcuffs!”

  He saw the anxiety return to Caliban’s face.

  “Ah no, no! Forget what I just said! I’m talking nonsense. I’m exaggerating!” Then, lowering his voice, he added: “Still, I know what you mean. Joking has become dangerous. My God, you must know that! Remember the story about the partridges that Stalin used to tell his pals. And remember Khrushchev, shouting in the lavatory! Khrushchev, the great hero of truth, spluttering with contempt! That scene was prophetic! It really was the start of a new era. The twilight of joking! The post-joke age!”

  Once again a little cloud of sorrow passed above Ramon’s head, as for a moment he pictured Julie and her behind moving away; he quickly emptied his glass, set it down, took another (the fourth), and proclaimed, “My dear friend, I lack only one thing—a good mood.”

  Caliban looked around him again; the little bald man was gone; that calmed him down. He smiled.

  And Ramon went on: “Ah, a good mood! You’ve never read Hegel? Of course not. You don’t even know who he is. But our master who invented us once made me study him. In his essay on the comical, Hegel says that true humor is inconceivable without an infinite good mood—listen, that’s exactly what he says: ‘infinite good mood, unendliche Wohlgemutheit.’ Not teasing, not satire, not sarcasm. Only from the heights of an infinite good mood can you observe below you the eternal stupidity of men, and laugh over it.”

  Then, after a moment, glass in hand, he said slowly: “But how can we achieve it, this good mood?” He drank, and set the empty glass on the tray. Caliban smiled a farewell, turned, and left. Ramon raised his arm toward the departing friend and called: “How can we achieve that good mood?”

  Madame Franck Departs

  The only reply Ramon heard was shouting, laughter, applause. He turned to look at the far end of the salon, where the little feather had finally alighted on the upright finger of La Franck, who raised her hand as high as possible, like an orchestra conductor directing the final bars of a great symphony.

  Then the excited crowd slowly calmed down, and La Franck, her hand still high, declaimed in clarion tones (despite the morsel of cake still in her mouth): “Heaven has sent me a sign that my life is going to be even more glorious than before. Life is stronger than death, because life is nourished by death!”

  She fell silent, looked at her audience, and swallowed the last bits of pastry. The people around her applauded, and D’Ardelo approached her as if to embrace her solemnly in the name of all the assembly. But she did not see him and, her hand still raised up toward the ceiling, the little feather caught between thumb and index, slowly, with dancing steps, skipping slightly, she moved toward the exit.

  Ramon Departs

  In wonderment Ramon gazed upon the scene and felt that laughter reborn in his body. What—laughter? Could it be that the Hegelian good mood had at last noticed him from on high and decided to welcome him to her home? Could this be a mandate to take hold of that laughter and keep it close as long as possible?

  His furtive glance fell upon D’Ardelo. Throughout the whole evening he’d managed to avoid him. Should he, out of politeness, go and bid the man good-bye? No! He would not spoil his great unique moment of good humor! Best to leave as quickly as he could.

  Elated and completely drunk, he ran down the stairway, out to the street, and looked for a cab. Now and then a shout of laughter burst from him.

  Eve’s Tree

  Ramon was looking for a taxi, and Alain was sitting on the floor of his studio, leaning against the wall, his head bent low: Perhaps he had dozed off?

  A female voice woke him.


  “I like everything you’ve said to me so far, I like everything you’re inventing, and I have nothing to add. Except, maybe, about the navel. To your mind, the model of a navel-less woman is an angel. For me, it’s Eve, the first woman. She was not born out of a belly but out of a whim, the Creator’s whim. It’s from her vulva, the vulva of a navel-less woman, that the first umbilical cord emerged. If I’m to believe the Bible, other cords too: with a little man or a little woman attached to each cord. Men’s bodies were left with no continuation, completely useless, whereas from out of the sexual organ of every woman there came another cord, with another woman or man at the end of each one, and all of that, millions and millions of times over, turned into an enormous tree, a tree formed from the infinity of bodies, a tree whose branches reached to the sky. Imagine! That gigantic tree is rooted in the vulva of one little woman, of the first woman, of poor navel-less Eve.

  “For me, when I got pregnant, I saw myself as a part of that tree, dangling from one of its cords, and you, not yet born—I imagined you floating in the void, hooked to the cord coming out of my body, and from then on I dreamed of an assassin way down below, slashing the throat of the navel-less woman, I imagined her body in death throes, decomposing, so that whole enormous tree that grew out of her—suddenly without roots, without a base—starts to fall, I saw the infinite spread of its branches come down like a gigantic rainfall, and—understand me—what I was dreaming of wasn’t the end of human history, the abolition of any future; no, no, what I wanted was the total disappearance of mankind together with its future and its past, with its beginning and its end, along with the whole span of its existence, with all its memory, with Nero and Napoleon, with Buddha and Jesus; I wanted the total annihilation of the tree that was rooted in the little navel-less belly of some stupid first woman who didn’t know what she was doing and what horrors we’d pay for her miserable coitus, which had certainly not given her the slightest pleasure.”

  The mother’s voice went silent, Ramon stopped a cab, and Alain, leaning against the wall, dozed off again.

  PART SIX

  Angels Falling

  Farewell to Mariana

  With the last guests gone, Charles and Caliban put the white jackets back in their valise and became ordinary beings. Saddened, the Portuguese girl helped them to clear the plates, the crockery, the bottles, and to set everything in a corner of the kitchen for the catering staff to carry away the next day. With every intention of being useful to them, she kept close by them, so that the two friends, too weary to go on spouting ridiculous insane words, could not get a single second’s rest, not a single moment to exchange a sensible idea in French.

  Stripped of his white jacket, Caliban looked to the Portuguese woman like a god come down to earth and become a mere man, someone a poor servant girl could easily talk to.

  “You really don’t understand anything I say?” she asked him (in French).

  Caliban answered something (in Pakistani) very slowly, carefully enunciating each syllable, looking deep into her eyes.

  She listened attentively as if, pronounced at a lesser pace, this language could become more comprehensible to her. But she had to acknowledge her defeat. “Even if you speak slowly, I don’t understand a thing,” she said, sadly. Then, to Charles: “Can you tell him something in his language?”

  “Only very simple phrases, things about cooking.”

  “I know,” she sighed.

  “You like him?” Charles asked.

  “Yes,” she said, blushing hard.

  “What can I do for you? Should I tell him you like him?”

  “No,” she replied, with a violent shake of her head. “Tell him … tell him …” She stopped to think: “Tell him that he probably feels very lonely here, in France. Very lonely. I wanted to tell him, if he needs anything, any help, or even if he needs to eat … that I could …”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Mariana.”

  “Mariana, you’re an angel. An angel appearing in the midst of my journey.”

  “I’m not an angel.”

  Suddenly uneasy, Charles agreed: “I hope not, too. Because it’s only toward the end that I see an angel. And the end—I’d like to put that off as long as possible.”

  Thinking of his mother, he forgot what Mariana had asked him; he remembered it only when she reminded him, in a supplicating tone: “I asked you, monsieur, to tell him—”

  “Oh, yes,” Charles said, and he said a few nonsense sounds to Caliban.

  His friend moved toward the Portuguese girl. He kissed her on the mouth, but the girl held her lips closed tight, and their kiss was intransigently chaste. Then she ran off.

  That modesty made the two men nostalgic. In silence they went down the stairs and took their seats in the car.

  “Caliban! Wake up! She’s not for you!”

  “I know that, but let me regret it. She’s all goodness, and I’d like to do something good for her, too.”

  “But there’s nothing good you can do for her. Just by your presence you can only do her harm,” Charles said, and he started the car.

  “I know. But I can’t help it. She makes me nostalgic for chastity.”

  “What? For chastity?”

  “Yes. Despite my stupid reputation as an unfaithful husband, I have an insatiable nostalgia for chastity!” And he added: “Let’s stop by Alain’s place.”

  “He’s asleep by now.”

  “So we’ll wake him up. I feel like drinking. With you and him. Raise a glass to the glory of chastity.”

  The Armagnac Bottle on Its Proud Heights

  A long, aggressive horn sounded from the street. Alain opened the window. Down below, Caliban slammed the car door and shouted, “It’s us! Can we come up?”

  “Yes, sure! Come on!”

  From the stairwell Caliban called: “Is there anything to drink in the house?”

  “I don’t recognize you! You were never a drinker!” Alain said, opening the apartment door.

  “Today’s an exception! I want to raise a toast to chastity!” said Caliban as he entered the studio with Charles behind him.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Alain was debonair again. “If you really want to toast chastity, you have a dream opportunity …,” and he waved a hand up at the armoire crowned with the Armagnac bottle.

  “Alain, I need to make a phone call,” Charles said, and for privacy he vanished into the hallway and closed the door behind him.

  Caliban looked at the bottle atop the armoire. “Armagnac!”

  “I put it up there so it could reign enthroned like a queen,” Alain said.

  “What year is it?” Caliban strained to read the label; then said admiringly: “Ah no! Can’t be!”

  “Open it,” Alain commanded. Caliban took a chair and climbed up. But even standing on the chair, he could barely manage to touch the base of the bottle, inaccessible on its proud heights.

  The World According to Schopenhauer

  Surrounded by those same colleagues at the end of that same long table, Stalin turns to Kalinin: “Believe me, my dear fellow, I too am sure that the city of the renowned Immanuel Kant will remain Kaliningrad forever. As the godfather of his native city, could you please tell us about Kant’s most important idea?”

  Kalinin hasn’t the slightest notion. And so, according to an old habit, tired of their ignorance, Stalin answers his own question:

  “Kant’s most important idea, comrades, is ‘the thing in itself—in German, das Ding an sich.’ Kant thought that behind our representations there is something objective, a ‘Ding,’ that we cannot know but that is real nonetheless. But that idea is wrong. There is nothing real behind our representations, no ‘thing in itself,’ no Ding an sich.”