“My heart skips a beat out of fright, or perhaps from surprise. What is this cinema — or rather this ancient theater, with choir and coryphaeus? I get up, shove a few crumpled bills in the hand of the artisan, who verifies the amount with a glimpse of the eye—l’oeil du maître—then pockets them without saying a thing. I don’t know why, I feel a strong desire to slap him but I restrain myself, for these events are bigger than me and I find it all very tiresome. Well, it’s decided, I’ll leave this incomprehensible town — after all, my article is written. I start running, on the big avenue I stop an old Strindberg car, and I slump into a beat-up seat. The road that leads to Casablanca snakes around the plateau that shines with a thousand fires, etc. (I’ll describe it another time). I have a moment to think, between two deviations in the road. And it’s then that I understand.”
“You understand the deviations?”
“No. I understand this story of Bouazza the hairdresser, who calls to mind a cretin from the Atlas, who most certainly is a cretin, and a beautiful one, and yet, it’s in his den where conflicts are mitigated, it’s in this insignificant place, essentially empty…”
“That reminds me of the Tao: The spokes of the wheels converge at the hub. They converge toward the empty space. And it’s thanks to the empty space that the chariot advances.”
“Oh yeah, yeah, there’s another: The vase is made of clay but it’s the empty space that makes it a vase.”
“So, continuing on: It’s in this insignificant, essentially empty place that the way of the world is negotiated between the authorities, the futile people, Kafouyi, the businessmen, etc. War, devastation…”
“Again with the deviation.”
“No, I said: devastation, dev-uhhh-stay-shin.”
“Apologies.”
“War, devastation, the struggle of everyone against one, or even everyone against everyone, all that is resolved at the barber’s. There, each person unloads, without giving the impression of doing so, his observations, his demands, his remonstrances, his conditions, his numbers, his statistics. The choir — these bumpkins who have nothing else to do between two harvests other than populate Bouazza’s cavern — the choir records it all and makes it into a refrain. The governor, the businessman, the trade unionist, the journalist take a seat in turn in the armchair, and at the end of the day, it creates a permanent negotiation. And it’s thus that we are a nation. Because we all accept this incessant palaver at Bouazza’s.”
“Isn’t it Renan who wrote something like ‘What is a nation?’”
“We’ve had the answer for a long time. We are a nation because, despite our differences of opinion, we all find ourselves at Bouazza’s.”
“We are smarter than Renan.”
“On the other hand, he wouldn’t have given me a monk’s tonsure.”
“Certainly not…”
“…àlamoude.”
And on this lovely afternoon (“golden brown,” “glowing,” etc.); on this lovely afternoon when time seemed to stand still, as if awaiting its hour, when we claim the sun stops its trajectory (“have I really been following its course all this time?”) for a few moments, just before plunging behind its horizons (“bluish,” “distant,” etc.), leaving man as an orphan of its light and uncertain of tomorrow; so, in this lovely Casablancan afternoon, in the middle of the crowd (“colorful,” “rushed”) invading the paths of the park, we looked at each other, moved; and in the same gesture, with the same energy, in this Café de l’Univers where, after our ramblings, we discovered certain laws (“the Laws of the Universe”), we raised our empty glasses to the memory of Ernest Renan and to that (future) one of Bouazza, to the longevity and vitality of our beautiful nation — and, above all, above all, to the empty space perfect in its milieu, the incredibly beautiful empty space that one sometimes has the desire to bow before and kiss on its hands — even the rain, even autumn, doesn’t have such delicate hands; the empty space so opportune, so violent and so efficacious, that it’s thanks to it, and only it, that the chariot (of the State) advances — that our cows are well guarded — and that our banner flaps in the wind, proud, haughty, and perfectly useless.
WHAT WAS NOT SAID IN BRUSSELS
“Brussels,” murmured John…
…and something in him whispered: “Funny place to meet up.” They were irritating, these set phrases that surged on the current of his thoughts. In this case, he knew where the expression came from. A film, of course. A French film, with Deneuve and Depardieu. But more often than not he didn’t know where these stray fragments came from, but they were there, suddenly, clearly stated, floating in the intimate monologue that accompanied John from morning till night, a wave of words he could only escape by closing his eyes and listening to a sonata (“Again with your Bach!” sighed Annie…). An article caught his attention in the Volkskrant he had just bought in the Amsterdam train station and was now reading while waiting on the platform for the Thalys departing for Brussels. Scientists had made “a giant step” in mindreading. More irritation. Why were they talking about progress (a step is progress, isn’t it?) when science made an advance — hmm, “an advance…”—when science made an incursion (an intrusion) in people’s heads? John tried to inculcate a sense of perspective in his students at the University of Amsterdam: yes, science is still the most precious thing man has (“And art, m’sieur?”—he had chosen to ignore, for once, Guusje and her little face riddled with freckles, eternally questioning everything…), yes, science, it’s what separates us from barbarism, but (he had raised an imperious finger) limits must be established!
He finished the Volkskrant article and the Thalys still hadn’t arrived. He consulted his watch then began an imaginary course for the ectoplasms: “What does that mean, ‘to read the thoughts of Mr. Tartempion’? All I had to do was think of Brussels and the phrase ‘funny place to meet up’ formed mechanically in my head. Where does this idiocy come from? We don’t know! From physicochemical connections in the spongy mass we call the brain, from an electric shock…It all happened automatically, as if I had inadvertently pushed a button programmed, unbeknownst to me, to open a hidden door. (A sweeping glance around the lecture hall to check that his students had understood the image.) To what extent am I, me, responsible for that chain of events?”
The Thalys pulled in noiselessly along the platform. John steered himself toward car 11, in front of which stood an affable employee who took a glance at his ticket.
“Seat 74, on your right,” said the employee in Dutch and then French.
John contented himself with nodding his head and giving a faint smile. He had stopped making remarks along the lines of “Yes, I know, I take this train two times a month” a long time ago, for they accomplished nothing, except, perhaps, an irate reaction from the employee (“Excuse me for trying to be of service…”). He had decided, once and for all, to consider each civil functionary as a machine with which it was necessary to maintain relations that our descendants will maintain with their South Korean robots: informative, brief, concrete — never any affect or emotion. (“But, m’sieur, you’re dehumanizing the world.” “That happened long before I came along, mademoiselle Guusje.”) Placing his suitcase above seat 74, John resumed his course: “Even if we get to that point one day, by implanting the most advanced electrodes in Mr. Tartempion’s brain, to ‘read’ his thoughts, how would we separate those that belong to him of his own right, those that engage him and genuinely express his ‘ego,’ from those that appear all of a sudden, that do nothing, so to speak, but pass through?”