The Festival of Insignificance Page 6

  They all listen, bewildered, and Stalin goes on: “Schopenhauer came closer to the truth. And what, my friends, was Schopenhauer’s great idea?”

  They all avoid the mocking gaze of the examiner, who, according to a well-known habit, ends by answering the question himself:

  “Schopenhauer’s great idea, my friends, was that the world is only representation and will. This means that behind the world as we see it before us there is nothing objective, no Ding an sich, and that to bring that representation to existence, to make it real, there must be a will, an enormous will that imposes it.”

  Timidly Zhdanov protests: “Joseph! The world as representation! All your life you’ve forced us to declare that that was a lie from the idealist philosophy of the bourgeois class!”

  Says Stalin: “What, Comrade Zhdanov, is the primary quality of a will?”

  Zhdanov is silent, and Stalin answers: “It’s freedom. A will can assert whatever it chooses. Let’s go on. The real question is this: There are as many different representations of the world as there are individuals on the planet; and inevitably that makes for chaos; how to bring about order in this chaos? The answer is clear: by imposing one single representation on everyone. And the only way to impose it is through one will, one single enormous will, a will that surpasses all other wills. Which I have done, as far as my powers have allowed me. And I assure you that in the grip of a great will, people come to believe anything at all! Oh, friends: anything!” And Stalin laughs, with pleasure in his voice.

  Recalling the partridge story, he looks around mischievously at his associates, especially at Khrushchev, short and round; whose cheeks are at that moment flushed red and who dares, once again, to be courageous: “Still, Comrade Stalin, even though people have always believed anything you say, these days they no longer believe you at all.”

  A Fistfall That Will Be Heard Around the World

  “You’re right,” Stalin answers. “They’ve stopped believing me. Because my will is weary. My poor will that I totally invested in this daydream that the whole world came to take seriously. I sacrificed all my powers for it, I sacrificed myself. And I ask you to answer this, comrades: Who is it I sacrificed myself for?”

  Dazed into silence, the comrades do not even try to open their mouths.

  Stalin answers his own question: “I sacrificed myself, comrades, for humanity.”

  Rather relieved, they all nod approval for the grand words. Kaganovich even goes so far as to applaud.

  “But what is humanity? Nothing objective about it, it is only my subjective representation, which is to say: It’s what I could see around me with my own eyes. And what did I see with my own eyes, comrades? I saw you—you! Remember the toilets where you would sequester yourselves to rage against my story of the twenty-four partridges! I had a fine time back in the corridor there, listening to you all howling, but at the same time I said to myself: Is it for these fools that I squandered all my powers? Are these the people I lived for? For these imbeciles? For these completely ordinary morons? For these pisspot philosophers? And as I thought about you I felt my will failing, weakening, wearing out, and the dream, our lovely daydream, no longer sustained by my will, collapsed like an enormous building whose beams had been wrecked.”

  And to illustrate that collapse, Stalin brings his fist down on the table, and it shakes.

  The Fall of the Angels

  The blow of Stalin’s fist resounds in their heads for a long time. Brezhnev looks toward the window and cannot help himself. He cannot believe what he sees: An angel is hanging above the rooftops, its wings spread. He starts up from his seat: “An angel—an angel!”

  The others rise too: “An angel? I don’t see it!”

  “Yes! Up there!”

  “Good Lord! Another one! It’s falling!” sighs Beria.

  “You idiots, you’ll be seeing a lot more of them fall,” Stalin hisses.

  “An angel is a sign!” Khrushchev proclaims.

  “A sign? But a sign of what?” moans Brezhnev, paralyzed with fear.

  The Old Armagnac Flows over the Floor

  Indeed, what is that fall a sign of? A murdered utopia, after which there will never be any other? An era that will leave no trace? Books, paintings, flung into the void? A Europe that will no longer be Europe? Jokes that no one will ever laugh at again?

  Alain was not asking himself these questions, frightened as he was at the sight of Caliban, who, grasping the bottle in his hand, had just fallen from the chair onto the floor. He bent over his friend’s body, lying on its back and motionless. The only thing moving was the old (oh, the very, very old) Armagnac flowing onto the floor from the broken bottle.

  A Stranger Bids His Lover Farewell

  At that moment, at the other end of Paris, a beautiful woman was waking in her bed. She too had heard a blunt, brief sound like a fistfall on a table; behind her closed eyelids, memories of dreams lived on; half-awake, she remembered they were erotic dreams; their specific nature was already hazy, but she felt in a good mood, for without being fascinating or unforgettable, the dreams were unquestionably pleasant.

  She heard: “That was very beautiful,” and only then did she open her eyes and see a man standing by the door, about to leave. The voice was high-pitched, frail, thin, fragile—like the man himself. Did she know him? Yes; she vaguely remembered a cocktail party at D’Ardelo’s where she had also seen old Ramon, who is in love with her; to get away from him she had agreed to leave with a stranger; she remembered that he was very nice, so discreet—nearly invisible—that she could not even recall the moment when they separated downstairs. But, my God, had they separated?

  “Really very beautiful, Julie,” he repeated from near the door, and she understood, with some surprise, that this man must have spent the night in the same bed with her.

  The Bad Sign

  Quaquelique raised a hand for a last good-bye, then went down to the street and sat in his modest car, while in a studio at the other end of Paris, Caliban was picking himself up from the floor with Alain’s help.

  “Nothing wrong?”

  “No, nothing. Everything’s all right. Except for the Armagnac—there’s none left. I’m sorry, Alain!”

  “I’m the one who should apologize,” said Alain.

  “It’s my fault for letting you climb onto that old wreck of a chair.” Then, concerned: “But, dear fellow, you’re limping!”

  “A little, but it’s not serious.”

  At that moment, Charles came back from the vestibule and snapped shut his cell phone. He saw Caliban oddly bent over and still holding the broken bottle. “What happened?”

  “I broke the bottle,” Caliban announced. “There is no more Armagnac. A bad sign.”

  “Yes, a very bad sign. I have to leave right away for Tarbes,” Charles said. “My mother is dying.”

  Stalin and Kalinin Escape

  When an angel falls, it is certainly a sign. In the Kremlin meeting room everyone is frightened, staring out the window. Stalin smiles, and—taking advantage of the fact that no one is watching him—he moves toward an unnoticeable door in a corner. He opens it and steps into a storage room. There he takes off the handsome jacket of his official uniform and pulls on a shabby old parka, then takes up a long hunting rifle. Thus disguised as a partridge hunter, he steps back into the room and moves toward the large door onto the corridor. Everyone is still staring out the windows, and no one sees him. At the last moment, as he is about to set his hand on the doorknob, he stops for a second as if to throw one last malicious glance at his comrades. His eyes meet those of Khrushchev, who begins to shout:

  “It’s him! You see him in that outfit? He’s trying to make people think he’s a hunter! He’s leaving us alone in this mess! But he’s the guilty one! We’re all victims! His victims!”

  Stalin is already far down the hallway, and Khrushchev is punching the wall, slamming the table, stomping on the floor with his feet in their huge, badly waxed Ukrainian boots. He whips the others into a fury too, and soon they’re all shouting, cursing, stamping, jumping about, pummeling the walls and table with their fists, hammering the floor with their chairs, so that the room reverberates with a hellish sound. It is a riot like earlier ones, when in breaks in the meetings they all gathered in the bathroom in front of the colored urinals decorated with ceramic flowers.

  They are all there as before; only Kalinin, quietly, has disappeared. Hounded by a terrible urge to urinate, he wanders through the Kremlin corridors but, unable to find a pissoir anywhere, in the end he runs out into the streets.

  PART SEVEN

  The Festival of Insignificance

  Dialogue on the Motorbike

  The next morning, at about eleven, Alain was to meet with his friends Ramon and Caliban in front of the museum near the Luxembourg Gardens. Before he left his studio, he turned back to say good-bye to his mother in the photo. Then he went down to the street and walked toward his motorbike, which was parked not far from his house.

  As he straddled the bike, he had the vague sensation of a body leaning against his back. As if Madeleine were with him and touching him lightly.

  The illusion moved him; it seemed to express the love he felt for his girl; he started the engine.

  Then he heard a voice behind him: “I wanted to talk some more.”

  No, it wasn’t Madeleine; he recognized his mother’s voice.

  Traffic was slow, and he heard: “I want to be sure there’s no confusion between you and me, that we understand each other completely—”

  He had to brake. A pedestrian had slipped between cars to cross the street and turned toward Alain with a threatening gesture.

  “I’ll be frank. I’ve always felt it’s horrible to send a person into the world who didn’t ask to b
e there.”

  “I know,” said Alain.

  “Look around you. Of all the people you see, no one is here by his own wish. Of course, what I just said is the most banal truth there is. So banal, and so basic, that we’ve stopped seeing it and hearing it.”

  For several minutes he kept to a lane between a truck and a car that were pressing him from either side.

  “Everyone jabbers about human rights. What a joke! Your existence isn’t founded on any right. They don’t even allow you to end your life by your own choice, these defenders of human rights.”

  The light at the intersection went red. He stopped. Pedestrians from both sides of the street set out toward the opposite sidewalk.

  And the mother went on: “Look at them all! Look! At least half the people you’re seeing are ugly. Being ugly—is that one of the human rights too? And do you know what it is to carry your ugliness along through your whole life? With not a moment of relief? Or your sex—you never chose that. Or the color of your eyes. Or your era on earth. Or your country. Or your mother. None of the things that matter. The rights a person can have involve only pointless things, for which there is no reason to fight, or to write great declarations!”

  He was driving again now, and his mother’s voice grew gentler. “You’re here as you are because I was weak. That was my fault. Forgive me.”

  Alain was silent; then he said in a quiet voice: “What is it you feel guilty for? For not having the strength to prevent my birth? Or for not reconciling yourself to my life, which, as it happens, is actually not so bad?”

  After a silence, she answered: “Maybe you’re right. Then I’m doubly guilty.”

  “I’m the one who should apologize,” said Alain. “I dropped into your life like a cow turd. I chased you away to America.”

  “Quit your apologies! What do you know about my life, my little idiot! Can I call you idiot? Yes, don’t be angry; in my opinion you are an idiot! And you know where your idiocy comes from? From your goodness! Your ridiculous goodness!”

  He reached the Luxembourg Gardens. He parked the bike.

  “Don’t protest, and let me apologize,” he said. “I’m an apologizer. That’s the way you made me, you and he. And as such, as an apologizer, I’m happy. I feel good when we apologize to each other, you and I. Isn’t it lovely, apologizing to each other?”

  Then they walked toward the museum:

  “Believe me,” he said, “I agree with everything you’ve just said. With everything. Isn’t it lovely to be in agreement, you and me? Isn’t it lovely, our alliance?”

  “Alain! Alain!” A man’s voice interrupted their conversation. “You’re looking at me as if you never saw me before!”

  Ramon Talks with Alain About the Age of the Navel

  Yes, it was Ramon. “This morning Caliban’s wife phoned,” he told Alain. “She told me about last night. I know everything. Charles has gone to Tarbes. His mother is dying.”

  “I know,” said Alain. “And Caliban? When he was at my house he fell off a chair.”

  “She told me. And it wasn’t so trivial. She says he’s having trouble walking. He’s in pain. Now he’s sleeping. He wanted to see the Chagall show with us, and he won’t see it.”

  “Neither will I, actually. I cannot bear waiting in line. Look!”

  He waved toward the crowd moving slowly toward the museum door.

  “It’s not so long, the line,” said Alain.

  “Not so long, but disgusting anyhow.”

  “How many times is it now that you’ve come and left?”

  “Three times. So that, really, I don’t come here to see Chagall but to take note that from one week to the next the lines are longer and longer, thus that the planet is more and more heavily populated. Look at them! You think that suddenly they all started to love Chagall? They’ll go anywhere, do anything, just to kill time they don’t know what to do with. They don’t know anything, so they let themselves be led around. They’re superbly leadable. Excuse me. I’m in a foul mood. Yesterday I drank a lot. I really did drink too much.”

  “So then what do you want to do?”

  “Let’s walk in the park! It’s nice weather. I know, Sundays it’s a little more crowded. But it’s fine. Look! The sun!”

  Alain did not object. True, the atmosphere in the park was peaceful. There were people running, there were passersby, on the lawn there were rings of people going through strange, slow motions, there were people eating ice cream; inside the enclosures there were people playing tennis.

  “I feel better here,” said Ramon. “Of course, uniformity rules everywhere. But in this park it has a wider choice of uniforms. So you can hold on to the illusion of your own individuality.”

  “The illusion of individuality … It’s odd: A few minutes ago I had a strange conversation.”

  “A conversation? With whom?”

  “And then the navel—”

  “What navel?”

  “I haven’t talked to you about that? For a while now I’ve been thinking a lot about navels …”

  As if some invisible theater director had arranged it, two very young girls walked by, their navels elegantly exposed.

  Ramon could only say: “There we are.”

  And Alain: “Walking around with the navel uncovered is the fashion now. It has been for at least ten years.”

  “It will pass, like any other fashion.”

  “But don’t forget that the navel fashion came in with the new century! As if on that symbolic date someone raised the blinds that, for centuries, had kept us from seeing the essential thing: that individuality is an illusion!”

  “Yes, that’s indubitable, but what has it to do with the navel?”

  “On woman’s erotic body there are certain golden sites: I always thought there were three such: the thighs, the buttocks, the breasts.”

  Ramon considered, and: “All right,” he said.

  “Then one day I understood that there is a fourth: the navel.”

  After a moment’s reflection, Ramon agreed: “Yes. Maybe.”

  And Alain: “The thighs, the breasts, the buttocks have a different shape on each woman. So those three golden sites are not only arousing, they also express a woman’s individuality. You could never mistake the buttocks of the woman you love. The beloved buttocks, you’d recognize them among a hundred others. But you could not identify the woman you love by her navel. All navels are alike.”

  At least twenty children, laughing and shouting, ran past the two friends.

  Alain went on: “Each of those four golden sites represents an erotic message. And I wonder what erotic message the navel tells us.” After a pause: “One thing is obvious: Unlike the thighs, the buttocks, or the breasts, the navel says nothing about the woman bearing it; it speaks of something which is not that woman.”

  “What then?”

  “The fetus.”

  “Yes, of course, the fetus,” Ramon agreed.

  Alain again: “In the past, love was the celebration of the individual, of the inimitable, the tribute to a unique thing, a thing impossible to replicate. But not only does the navel not revolt against repetition, it is a call for repetitions! And in our millennium we are going to live under the sign of the navel. Under that sign we are all, every one of us, the soldiers of sex: all of us setting our sights not on the beloved woman but on the same small hole in the middle of the belly, the hole that represents the sole meaning, the sole goal, the sole future of all erotic desire.”

  Suddenly an unexpected arrival interrupted the conversation. There before them, approaching along the same pathway, was D’Ardelo.

  The Arrival of D’Ardelo

  He too had drunk a good deal, had slept poorly, and was now out to clear his head with a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. The sight of Ramon made him uncomfortable at first. He had only invited the man to his cocktail party as a courtesy, since Ramon had found him two good servers for the event. But since this retiree was no longer important to him, D’Ardelo had not even looked for a moment to greet him and bid him welcome to the gathering. Now, feeling guilty, he spread his arms wide and cried, “Ramon! My friend!”