Yasmina Reza - Adam Haberberg

In the kingdom of the couple the mild voice with no memory is no more. Adam thinks again about that analogy between couples and houses, an idiotic analogy, like all analogies, what can Goncharki know about couples, drunks have no business putting forward theories on any subject, even though drunks have a greater lust for theories than anyone else. Apparently the ostrich is a great seducer, he's just read this. The male ostrich has a harem, which he apparently assembles after performing an irresistible courtship display. And you, poor creatures, thinks Adam, observing the pair alone behind the wire netting, do you occasionally make some kind of wild display, you poor creatures, trembling there under the drizzle in that cement enclosure? Irene would have liked to live in the shadow of a man. For Irene a successful life would have been subordinating her own to a man's success. That was what Irene had dreamed of, to be a powerful man's bondwoman. Being a vilified writer's wife was for Irene the worst possible scenario. Before he was vilified, Irene had supported him with all her strength, she had stimulated and encouraged him, she had everywhere extolled his excellence, and she had, Adam thinks, truly believed in his excellence. Could she go back on this? Could she accept society's verdict without going back on her own? Not least because society's verdict doesn't come all at once. Society's verdict is insidious. The first book had had a mainly favorable reception. The second had been totally demolished. The latest had been ignored by everyone except Theodore Onfray, who had alluded with a note of skepticism to the miraculous praise accorded to the first. Irene was trapped, it was her duty to maintain solidarity with the vilified poet against the world. She whose most secret dream was to sacrifice herself for a man. To sacrifice herself for a man who won recognition would have been a kind of achievement for Irene, she would never, in any case, have spoken of sacrificing herself, since she would have sacrificed only the social part of herself, her useless part. Instead of which she'd had to resign herself to the path in life for which her randomly oriented studies had prepared her. After the Higher National Telecommunications School and several years of professional experience, while pregnant with their first child, she'd done an MBA on space radiocommu-nications systems and was now working as project head at France-Télécom's Research and Development Department in Issy-les-Moulineaux. As for a brilliant career, Adam thinks there on his bench, an expression that often comes to mind, and in exactly these words, Irene Haberberg is the one who's had one.

“So how was Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue?” says Albert, who's just called him back. “Catastrophic.” “Of course.” “Where's Martine?” “In the supermarket.” “Are you outside?” “Yes.” “So you've got fuck all to do.” “What do you mean I've got fuck all to do? What about you? At least you ate some oysters?” “Sure. They're the best on the whole North Atlantic coast.” “Who told you that?” “My friend in Cherbourg.” “The best are Cancale.” “Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue.” “Cancale or Marennes-Oléron.” “Oléron is way down south!” “The best are Cancale or Oléron, everyone knows that.” “OK, you're getting on my nerves. Ciao.”

A woman emerges from the shop. At the top of the steps to the big cats' house a woman has emerged from the shop. She sets down her two bags and opens a folding umbrella. Adam watches her walking down the steps and as she walks down the steps it looks as if she's watching him. Adam turns back toward the ostriches. It looks as if she's coming toward me, he thinks, staring hard at the ostriches. He takes a sidelong squint. She's coming toward him. A woman on the verge of smiling, encumbered with two bags and an umbrella, is approaching him. Marie-Thérèse Lyoc. Marie-Thérèse Lyoc, Adam thinks. And immediately thinks, no, not Marie-Thérèse Lyoc here, today, no. And then he thinks, for such is fate, yes it is.

“You recognize me?”

She stands there, unable to get over it and bursting with energy.

“Marie-Thérèse Lyoc.”

You couldn't call her ugly, thinks Adam. You couldn't have called her ugly thirty years ago, nor today either, he thinks, what you could have called her at the time, as now, was insignificant, even though at the time, he thinks, it would not have occurred to anyone to describe her at all, if it occurs to him today it's because by appearing from nowhere, by taking the form of a happening during the course of a day set aside for lethargy and gloomy thoughts, Marie-Thérèse has suddenly become somebody.

“This is great,” she laughs.

“Yes.”

There's a silence. And then a sudden squall blows everything toward the Crimean pine, including the umbrella, which is transformed into a feather duster. Adam gets up to help her, trying to put the ribs the right way round. Marie-Thérèse laughs in the wind, struggling with the fabric; he doesn't hear her very well as she says, You see, I've not changed, clumsiness incarnate!

“You don't need it, it's stopped raining,” says Adam.

The umbrella resumes its shape and the wind blows itself out.

“I know. In fact I never use an umbrella. I generally have a little rain hat. And the day I forget my rain hat, there's a howling gale, my hair's blowing all over my face, and I run into Adam Haberberg.”

You run into Adam Haberberg, himself bald, puffy, soon to be blind in one eye, my God, he thinks, how time wrecks us.

“So, Marie-Thérèse,” he says with a start, “what's new, Marie-Thérèse, a thousand years on?”

“You want some hot news? I need glasses. That's a fact, from this morning.”

“What kind of glasses?”

“For farsightedness. That's the truth. Do you wear glasses?”

“No.”

“What frightens me is that this is only the start.” She's wiped the damp bench with a tissue and sat down beside Adam. “I can still read everything, you know, I get slight headaches, there are times when I have to frown but I can read everything, and I have the feeling that as soon as I start wearing glasses it's going to get worse in no time at all. The optometrist says no, but everywhere you look there are people who start wearing glasses and within a year they can't even decipher

a restaurant menu.”

“Well, that's true….”

“But you're going to tell me, OK, we all come to it.”

“Well, yes.”

“And you, what about you?”

“Well …”

“Are you married? You have children?”

“Two.”

“And what do you do?”

“I write.”

“Books?”

“Yes …”

“Great.”

“Yes …”

“Are you making it?”

“I'm making it,” he says, thinking, What vulgarity.

“Great.”

“And are you making it? What are you doing these days?” thinking, did I ever know what she was capable of doing, did I ever know she existed.

“I sell merchandise.”

On top of the thrombosis, the failure of the book, and the weekend on the Cotentin did he need Marie — Thérèse Lyoc? On top of the rain, the wind, and the wretched animal from the forests of Asia, after considerable efforts to keep his head above water, did he need Marie-Thérèse Lyoc selling merchandise? Marie-Thérèse opens the larger of her two bags.

“I work with zoos, amusement parks, and museums. We're in a zoo here, so it's all customized to relate to animals; I have mini fridge magnets, traditional fridge magnets, magnetic words, a pocket flashlight, look, an unbreakable ruler, there's a giraffe motif on this one but at Giverny there'd be a picture by Monet, a ballpoint, same thing, a different theme for each site, all kinds of pencils with heads, here you've got a parrot, a bear, they used to do little animals but they don't do them anymore, they get all this stuff from Asia.”