“That’s what I thought at first, but then I started to question that. There was something really unique about her. I’ve never come across a reader as gullible as her before… She was as trusting as a newborn baby.”
I spent almost the entire show trying to convince him how naïve my teenage reader really had been. Yes, I was laughing along with him, but if I’m honest I was angry: first she wouldn’t believe that Bakar didn’t exist, and now he wouldn’t believe such a naive reader did exist…
I really don’t understand how it could be so difficult to believe in the nonexistence of one or to entertain the notion of the other.
“That could only happen with someone who’s never read a book in their life,” one caller argued (there was a phone-in as part of the show). “It sounds like your novel was the first book she’d ever read.”
Well yes, it’s not impossible. But so what?
“Or maybe she was actually the ideal reader?” one woman argued. “Maybe that’s how people read the world’s very first books? So here is a pure, untarnished reader, a virgin reader if you like, and we sit here with our erudite skepticism, drunk on our own intellect, and assume she has psychiatric problems…”
And so this real-life event dragged me into a discussion about the education—or lack of education—of society at large. But regardless of how naïve or insane Bakar’s admirer was, we all agreed on one thing: there was no way you could describe this girl as a “quality reader”—we all felt it was completely impossible for a book to have an impact like that on a reader with any level of competence.
“You should write a novel about it, you know,” the presenter said to me after the show had finished.
A novel? I don’t think so.
I’d say it was more suited to a short story.
And if I do write it, I’ll finish it like this:
I see the girl again (in a crowded place, like a station, or at a demonstration, or the airport, or a sports stadium), but this time I just watch her; she doesn’t see me. Standing next to her—or is he sitting?—there’s a young man. He has black hair, a tattoo on the back of his hand, and the yellowed face of someone with hepatitis C. I can’t believe it: it’s Bakar Tukhareli. The Thief, the one and only. Exactly as I described him in my novel.
[BELGIUM: FRENCH]
PAUL EMOND
Grand Froid
This evening a play was performed at a little theater in suburban Brussels, one of those curious productions in which the actors mix so intimately with the audience that the latter wind up believing they’re part of the cast. Before the performance began, extras had been installed in the auditorium, scattered here and there among the seats. When the audience began to enter, usherettes dressed up in black conducted them with great ceremony to their assigned places, while around them the extras sat hunched and immobile in heavy fur coats covered with snow, or a sort of white powder that imitated it precisely. Surprised, certain members of the audience couldn’t prevent themselves from emitting a few sotto voce comments:
– See that? They look like they’re frozen.
– Like cadavers, almost.
– They keep it horribly cold in this theater.
– It’s scandalous, they could warm it up a bit.
– Look, look at that one, there’s a little icicle hanging from his nose!
– That’s not an actor, it’s a mannequin.
– No, no, it’s an actor.
– Touch him, you’ll see.
– I wouldn’t dare.
– Remind me who wrote this play?
– It’s another one by that Damploune, whose pieces are playing almost everywhere these days. They’re never very cheerful, but this one sounds promising!
– If I’d known…
– Grand Froid! You can see where he got the title!
– It’s even colder in here than outside.
– They’re saying it’s minus twenty tonight.
– Let’s hope this doesn’t last too long. My teeth are chattering already.
The lights had been lowered, but the performance failed to begin. A fine white powder, a sort of light sleet, perhaps even genuine sleet, or a feathery, almost impalpable snow, like that which covered the extras, or mannequins, had begun to sift down from the ceiling onto laps and shoulders.
– You can’t see where it’s falling from, they’ve snuffed out all the lights up there.
– It’s as cold as real snow.
– But it is real snow, I assure you.
– Let’s not exaggerate.
– My feet are already frozen.
Very quickly it became almost impossible to distinguish the extras from the spectators, unless one of the latter happened to fidget a bit, so that there slid from his lap or his shoulders a minute amount of that frozen powder, that sleet, that almost impalpable snow, which had gradually covered everything: the extras and the audience, the seats, the floor, the carpeting in the aisles, everything, all of it now veiled by a slightly glimmering layer of white, while the stage remained in darkness. Several spectators, in increasingly timid whispers, exchanged a few more words:
– We’ve got to get out of here.
– It isn’t possible.
– Yes it is, no one could stop us.
– I wouldn’t dare.
– I’m so cold, I’m going to get sick.
Finally, after what had felt like an interminable wait, there came something like an enormous silent rupture. Up front, where the stage should have been, a street appeared, a street with slightly melancholy lamps, a street covered with snow, a street where it was still snowing, where it never stopped snowing, a street empty and cold and of seemingly infinite depth; out of which there emerged, to the great stupefaction of the audience, squealing across the snow, all of its ancient metal rattling, an almost antediluvian streetcar, slowly advancing toward the auditorium: an antediluvian streetcar likewise skinned with snow.
– Do you see that old tram? It’s magnificent!
– Unbelievable: it’s a real street, not a set.
– Are you sure?
– Don’t you feel that wind?
– I can’t feel much of anything. I’m still too cold.
– In theory, there shouldn’t be wind in a theater.
– In theory…
The old streetcar looked so exhausted, it seemed to have come from the farthest of far-flung faubourgs, from those frozen and deserted suburbs where the avenues dwindle and lose themselves in almost infinite extension. It crept toward the audience, magnifying little by little, like some strange white caterpillar crawling out of the depths of time, and finally halted a scant three meters from the first row of spectators; its windows were flocked with frost, nothing of its interior could be distinguished.
The streetcar had stopped, but its doors did not open. In the auditorium and on the street that had taken the place of the stage, another long silence descended.
– It’s just like Damploune, that.
– All the same, it’s crazy!
– I don’t want to stay here. I’ve been sitting in the cold, at a show I don’t understand at all. Let’s go.
– Impossible, how can you want to leave?
– I’m afraid.
– That’s absurd, there’s no reason.
Then, approaching the front of the stage at a slow trot—at a pace so dragging, so seemingly fatigued, that one might have imagined they too were emerging from the depths of time—there came a group of men dressed in heavy fur coats identical to those worn by the extras in the audience, coats whitened by snow, or that white powder that so perfectly imitated snow. At irregular intervals, and according to some quite unguessable logic, each of these men would stop for a moment, draw a revolver from the pocket of his coat, aim with an extended arm, fire in the direction of the old streetcar, and then resume the chase.