Hygiene and the Assassin (2 page)

“No, I have also been sleeping and smoking. And reading a bit.”

“And yet we have been hearing about you constantly.”

“That's the fault of my excellent secretary, Ernest Gravelin. He's the one who empties out my drawers, meets my publishers, fuels my legend, and, above all, brings me the latest doctors' theories—they all hope to put me on a diet.”

“In vain.”

“Fortunately. It would have been really too silly to deprive me because, at the end of the day, the origin of my cancer is not nutritional.”

“What is the origin of your cancer?”

“It's mysterious, but not nutritional. According to Elzenveiverplatz”—(here the fat man took great delight in articulating the name),—“it seems to be the result of a genetic accident, programmed before my birth. Therefore, I was quite right to eat anything and everything.”

“So you were already doomed at birth?”

“Yes, Monsieur, like a true tragic hero. And to think there are people who still talk about human freedom.”

“But you were granted a reprieve of eighty-three years all the same.”

“A reprieve, precisely.”

“But you won't deny that during those eighty-three years you have been free? For example, you could very well have chosen not to write . . .”

“Might you by any chance be reproaching me for having written?”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Ah. A pity, I was beginning to have some respect for you.”

“But you don't regret having written?”

“Regret? I am incapable of regret. Would you like a toffee?”

“No, thank you.”

The novelist shoved a caramel in his mouth and chewed it noisily.

“Monsieur Tach, are you afraid of death?”

“Not at all. Death must not be a very big change. I do, however, have a fear of pain. I've acquired a stockpile of morphine, which I can inject myself. Thanks to this measure, I'm no longer afraid.”

“Do you believe in life after death?”

“No.”

“So, do you believe that death is annihilation?”

“How can you annihilate something that has already been annihilated?”

“That's a terrible answer.”

“It isn't an answer.”

“I see.”

“Good for you.”

“Well, what I meant was . . .” The journalist attempted to come up with something he might have meant to say if not for being thrown off by a difficulty in putting his words together. “. . . a novelist is a person who asks questions, not one who answers them.”

Silence of the dead.

“Well, that's not exactly what I meant . . .”

“No? Pity. I was just beginning to think that was rather good.”

“And may we talk about your oeuvre, now?”

“If you insist.”

“You don't like to talk about it, do you?”

“I can't hide a thing from you.”

“Like all great writers, you are very modest when it comes to your work.”

“Modest, me? You must be mistaken.”

“You seem to enjoy underestimating your own worth. Why do you deny that you are modest?”

“Because, Monsieur, I am not.”

“Then why are you so reluctant to talk about your novels?”

“Because there is no point in talking about a novel.”

“But it's fascinating to hear a writer talk about his creation, to hear him say how and why he writes, and what he writes against.”

“If a writer manages to be fascinating about his own novels, then there are only two possibilities: either he is merely voicing out loud what he wrote in his book, and he is a parrot; or he is explaining interesting things that he didn't discuss in his book, in which case the book in question is a failure, since it does not live up to its claims.”

“But still, any number of great writers have been able to talk about their work and avoid such pitfalls.”

“You are contradicting yourself: two minutes ago you said that all great writers were extremely modest when it came to their work.”

“But you can talk about a work and still preserve its mystery.”

“Oh, indeed? Have you ever tried?”

“No, but I'm not a writer.”

“Then what makes you think you are entitled to come out with such rubbish?”

“You are not the first writer I have ever interviewed.”

“Might you by any chance be comparing me to those scribblers you normally interview?”

“They are not scribblers!”

“If they can discuss their oeuvre and be fascinating and modest at the same time, there can be no doubt that they are scribblers. How can a writer possibly be modest? It is the most immodest profession on earth: whether it's the style, the ideas, the story, the research, writers never talk about anything but themselves and, what's more, with words. Painters and musicians also talk about themselves, but with a language that is substantially less crude than our own. No, Monsieur, writers are obscene; if they were not, they would be accountants, or train conductors, or telephone operators; they would be respectable.”

“That's as may be. How do you explain the fact that you personally are so modest?”

“What on earth are you going on about?”

“Well, yes. For sixty years you have been a fully fledged writer, and this is your first interview. You are never featured in the press, you do not belong to any literary or nonliterary circles, and by all appearances, you only leave this apartment to do your shopping. You are not even known to have any friends. If that is not modesty, what is it?”

“Have your eyes adjusted to the darkness? Can you make out my face now?”

“Yes, vaguely.”

“Well, good for you. Let me tell you, sir, that if I were handsome, I would not live as a recluse. In fact, if I had been handsome, I would never have become a writer. I would have been an adventurer, or a slave trader, or a barman, or a fortune hunter.”

“So are you saying there is a connection between your looks and your vocation?”

“It is not a vocation. It came to me the day I became aware of my ugliness.”

“And when was that?”

“I was very young. I have always been ugly.”

“You're not that ugly.”

“You, at least, are tactful.”

“Well, you're fat, but you're not ugly.”

“What more do you want? Four chins, piggy eyes, a nose like a spud, no more hair on my head than on my cheeks, my neck is one roll of fat upon the other, my jowls droop—and, out of consideration for you, I have only described my face.”

“Have you always been this fat?”

“At the age of eighteen, I was already like this—you can say obese, it doesn't bother me.”

“Yes, obese, but we can still look at you without trembling.”

“I'll grant you that I could have been even more repugnant: I might have had a blotchy face, covered in warts . . .”

“As it is, you have very nice skin, it's white and smooth, I can tell it must be very soft to the touch.”

“A eunuch's complexion, my good man. There's something almost grotesque about having such skin on my face, particularly on a chubby, clean-shaven face: in fact, my head resembles a fine pair of smooth, soft buttocks. My head inspires laughter rather than disgust, although there are times I would have preferred to inspire disgust. It's more invigorating.”

“I would never have imagined that you suffer from your looks.”

“I don't suffer. Suffering is for other people, for those who see me. I don't see myself. I never look at myself in the mirror. I would suffer if I had chosen another life; but for the life I lead, this body suits me fine.”

“Would you have preferred another life?”

“I don't know. Sometimes I think that all lives are equal. One thing is sure, and that is that I have no regrets. If I were eighteen years old now, with the same body, I would start all over again, I would reproduce exactly the same life, insofar as you can say I've had a life.”

“Isn't writing a life?”

“I'm not in a good position to answer that question. I've never done anything else.”

“You've had twenty-two novels published, and according to what you have told me, there will be even more. Among the host of characters who inhabit your immense oeuvre, is there one in particular who resembles you more than others?”

“Not a one.”

“Really? Let me tell you something: there is one of your characters who seems to me to be your exact double.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, the mysterious wax vendor, in
Crucifixion Made Easy.
”

“The wax vendor? What an absurd idea.”

“I'll tell you why: when he's the one speaking, you always write ‘crucifiction.'”

“So?”

“He's no fool. He knows that it's a fiction.”

“And so does the reader. But that doesn't mean he resembles me.”

“And this mania of his, making wax masks of the faces of the crucified—that's you, isn't it?”

“I've never made wax masks of crucified people, I assure you.”

“No, of course not, but it's a metaphor for what you do.”

“What do you know about metaphors, young man?”

“But . . . I know what everyone knows.”

“An excellent reply. People don't know a thing about metaphors. It's a word that sells well, because it sounds classy. ‘Metaphor': even the most illiterate person can tell it comes from Greek. Incredibly chic, these phony etymologies, and absolutely phony: when you are familiar with the dreadful polysemy of the preposition
meta
and the polyvalent neutrality of the verb
phero
, if you're at all in good faith you should logically conclude that the word ‘metaphor' doesn't mean a thing. Besides, when you hear how people use and abuse it, you come to exactly the same conclusion.”

“What do you mean?”

“Precisely what I said. I don't use metaphors to express myself, now do I?”

“But the wax casts?”

“The wax casts are wax casts, sir.”

“It's my turn to be disappointed, Monsieur Tach, because if you exclude the metaphorical interpretation, all that's left of your work is bad taste.”

“Well, there are all sorts of bad taste: there is healthy, regenerative bad taste, which consists in creating horrible things for salubrious, purgative, robust, male purposes, like a good well-controlled binge of vomiting, and then there's the other bad taste—it is apostolic, offended by such elegant barfing, and in need of a waterproof diving suit in order to make its way through. This particular frogman is the metaphor that enables the relieved maker of metaphors to exclaim, ‘I went from one end of Tach to the other, and I didn't get dirty!'”

“But that, too, is a metaphor.”

“Obviously: I try to crush metaphors with their own weapons. If I had wanted to play the Messiah, if I had had to rouse the rabble, I would have cried out, ‘Conscripts, come and enlist in my redemptive mission; let us metaphorize our metaphors, let us amalgamate them, beat them until they're stiff, let's make them into a soufflé and let that soufflé puff up, a gorgeous expansion, getting bigger and bigger until it explodes, conscripts, then subsides and collapses and disappoints all the guests, to our utmost delight!”

“A writer who hates metaphors is as absurd as a banker who hates money.”

“I am sure that great bankers hate money. There's nothing absurd about it, on the contrary.”

“Words, however—you do love words?”

“Oh, I adore words, but there's no comparison. Words are a fine substance, sacred ingredients.”

“So metaphors are a form of cooking—and you do like cooking.”

“No, Monsieur, metaphors are not cooking—syntax is cooking. Metaphors are bad faith; it's like biting into a tomato and asserting that the tomato tastes like honey, and then eating honey and saying it tastes like ginger, then chewing on ginger and saying the ginger tastes like sarsaparilla, and at that point . . .”

“Yes, I understand, sir, you needn't go on.”

“No, you don't understand: to make you understand what a metaphor really is, I would have to go on playing this little game for hours, because metaphorians never stop, they will go on playing until some well-intentioned person comes along to smash their face in.”

“And are you that well-intentioned person?”

“No. I've always been a little too soft and too kind.”

“Kind, you?”

“Terribly. I know of no one as kind as I am. And such kindness is terrifying, because I am never kind out of mere kindness, but only out of weariness and, above all, a fear of exasperation. I get exasperated very easily, and I find exasperation very hard to take, so I avoid it like the plague.”

“You scorn kindness, in other words?”

“You haven't understood a thing of what I'm trying to tell you. I admire kindness when it is truly founded on kindness or love. But how many people do you know who actually practice that form of kindness? In the vast majority of cases, when human beings are kind it is in order to be left alone.”

“Granted. But that still doesn't explain why the wax vendor was making casts of the faces of the crucified.”

“And why shouldn't he? Every trade has its own merits. You're a journalist, are you not? Have I asked you why you're a journalist?”

“Go right ahead. I'm a journalist because there's a demand, because people are interested in my articles, because they're buying them from me, and because it enables me to communicate information.”

“In your shoes, I wouldn't brag about it.”

“But Monsieur Tach, I have to make a living!”

“Do you think so?”

“That's what you're doing, no?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“It's what your wax vendor does, in any case.”

“You really do have a thing about this old wax vendor, don't you? Why does he make casts of the crucified? For reasons, I suppose, directly opposed to your own: because there is no demand, because people aren't interested, because no one buys his casts, and because it doesn't enable him to communicate information.”