Yasmina Reza - Desolation

“This is my life. A few days in rue Ampère, a few days in the Marne, rue Ampère, Marne, the stock exchange, the garden. The ancients used to go off on wars of conquest to ward off tedium. Conquest versus tedium, the bloodied saber versus unendurable peace. Me, I take the train to Châlons and plunge into GardenEarth to buy a manure pitchfork or my umpteenth sprayer. Genevieve, my friend, Genevieve, let’s use this evening to fight the grayness of existence. This morning I was thumbing through a magazine article about the correspondence of a Nobel Prize — winning Japanese writer and Oz, the Israeli writer (my daughter wants to cultivate me, Amos Oz has a good place on the lists, she thinks she can lure me with secular-progressive Jewish literature; two pages and I was sound asleep). The title of the article: ‘The Battle for Tolerance.’ Tagline: the sentence from the Japanese guy, I hear the note of hope that echoes in your words. Hope of what, Genevieve? What is it these people hope? The great minds of the century. So absolutely convinced they’re on the road to somewhere. So thrilled, poor guys, to be predicting some ultimate achievement (the very idea is grotesque). What is it they hope? What sort of progress? Peace? A horizon with no hidden chasms, no contradictions. No people.

The peace of dead souls. Every day the world shrivels me. A world of word-twisters. Of optimists done up in tutus. Genevieve, I’m crazy about your laugh. Genevieve, what could we scheme up tonight, the two of us? I’m going to order another bottle. Let’s drink. Time marches on, nothing is real except this moment. Let’s drink and let’s laugh. And scheme up some piece of madness. I’m your man tonight.”

“Yes,” she says sadly, “nothing is real except this moment. Why do the people we love not understand this? I remember there was this song by Léo Ferré, the beautiful years race by, use them my poor love. . It’s impossible to put words to your feelings because every phrase already belongs to another time and everything you find to say is empty and out of date and a lie. My friend, I’ll be glad to drink with you this evening as much as you want, but since you love my laugh, look at this for a catastrophe, my eyes are full of tears.”

I long to stand up, take her in my arms and kiss her eyelids. I don’t, inhibited by some petty sense of shame.

Then, my dear, I set out to help her regain her good humor. To get us out of our gloom, I deploy all my gifts as a clown. Naturally you are summoned up as part of this festival, along with your sister and her pharmacist, but I keep you in reserve for the finale.

I begin with Monsieur Tambourini. Tambourini is Lionel’s manager. I tell Genevieve about the catastrophe of the curtains, which she grasps immediately, wonderful woman, and segue into the drama of the shutters, which you don’t know about. I told you about the catastrophe of the curtains. In addition to the catastrophe of the curtains or I should say as companion piece to the catastrophe of the curtains, Lionel went through the drama of the shutters, refusing categorically that they be taken down to be repainted. To know the importance of the window in Lionel’s life is to measure just how testing any instability in the life of objects can be to him. Lionel refuses to have his shutters taken down and sends for Tambourini. He immediately starts yelling, Monsieur TAMBOURINI, Monsieur TAMBOURINI, you want me to die! The literary critic in him rejects the violence of this introduction, You’ve killed my crescendo, he says to himself, but so what and he keeps going at the same pitch, you want to rob me of my shutters for a fortnight, my wife has just robbed me of my curtains to put up others which aren’t yet lined which means they’re not even there yet, which means that between you and my wife, Monsieur Tambourini, I have been reduced to a state in which I can no longer create in my own home the consolations of darkness, the CONSOLATIONS OF DARKNESS! Monsieur Tambourini, Monsieur Tambourini, I handed him his Tambourini, said Lionel, as I tell Genevieve to make her laugh, you understand a name like that, you can’t make it up, Monsieur Tambourini, it’s out of the question and stop trying to gargle with that expression Co-op Board, a Co-op Board is a collection of assholes and I don’t belong to it and if they’re assholes enough to pay 4,900 francs per window for a lick of white paint I’m glad for you all but don’t count on me, Monsieur Tambourini, don’t count on me to goosestep through the building! I’m yelling in the restaurant and Genevieve has found her smile again, I’m off to a good start. I move on to my vacation in Norway, to Serge Goulandri, our osteopath, whose gradually eroding positivism is a joy to us both, Lionel and me, as we finally watch the first glints of despair dawn over his view of life. During one of his sessions, Goulandri complains that he loses his sense of humor when he’s depressed. That’s because you haven’t hit bottom, Lionel explains. Oh, okay, Goulandri says, nodding profoundly. Genevieve laughs. I move on to my illness, always an entertaining topic, I complain about my stomach, I’ve ballooned right up, Genevieve, I disgust myself, I complain about my stomach and Michel my son-in-law (pharmacists think they’re doctors) says you eat too fast, that’s why you’ve got a poor digestion. In the Tao-te-Ching, interjects my daughter, who’s going further and further afield in search of material to shore up the weightiness of her pronouncements, the Taoists say you have to chew each mouthful sixty times before you swallow. To which I reply they’ve never been in Drancy, these guys. [1] French transit camp for Auschwitz.

Genevieve is beaming beatifically and we crack open a bottle of Nuits-Saint-Georges. After a quick detour to Dacimiento, I get to you. My son, Genevieve, I start, my son. . the my son comes out really well, the tone is interrogative, which road should I take, where should I begin? But my boy I don’t go anywhere, I halt at the boundary of a subject I launched into, admittedly, in a mischievous tone, I’ve barely said my son and a feeling of defeat sinks the jester in me, my son I say and I see, far away at the end of a corridor, a child bathed in yellow light, in a Zorro costume, sitting in front of an aquarium. You’re not playing Zorro? I say to him. Papa, play the invincible one, you cry as you run toward me. No, I don’t have time. Oh, please! I do two or three lunges as the invincible one. You wave your sword and try to get me. I dodge around the furniture in our apartment back then, thinking one day I won’t be up to being the invincible one anymore, he’ll catch me every time. Genevieve takes my arm: “Jean-Louis Hauvette!” she hisses in a whisper.

“Excuse me?”

“Behind you, there on the right, don’t turn around, it’s Jean-Louis Hauvette.”

“Who’s Jean-Louis Hauvette?”

“The man who killed Leo.”

“Leo was assassinated?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“By this man?”

“Yes.”

I turn around furtively and see the back of a man, sitting alone at a table by the window.

“Can you see his face in the glass?” says Genevieve in a whisper. “Samuel, be nice, stand up, walk past him, and get a discreet look at him.”

“This man killed Leo?”

“He’s responsible for his death.”

“I’m going.”

I go. I pretend to be going to the men’s room and make a little detour to come back past the window. “I saw him.”

“Old?”

“My age.”

“Good-looking?”

“Ricardo Montalban after eighteen hours on the bus.”

“That’s him. Eyes?”

“Pale, from what I could see.”

“It’s him. Would someone recognize me, do you think? Have I changed a lot? We haven’t seen each other for twenty years.”