The Elegance of the Hedgehog (9 page)

A
fter Manuela has left, I attend to all manner of captivating activities: I do the housework, use the mop in the hallway, take the garbage cans out into the street, pick up the leaflets, water the flowers, prepare the cat’s repast (including a slice of ham with a fat edge of rind), make my own meal—cold Chinese noodles with tomato, basil and parmesan—read the newspaper, take a moment’s retreat in my den to read a very fine Danish novel, and handle the crisis in the foyer where Lotte, the Arthens’s granddaughter, Clémence’s eldest, is crying outside my loge because Granpy doesn’t want to see her.

At nine in the evening at last I have finished with everything and I suddenly feel old and very depressed. Death does not frighten me, least of all that of Pierre Arthens, but it is the waiting that is unbearable, this suspension of time when something has not yet happened and where we feel how very useless it is to struggle. I sit on in the kitchen, in silence, in the half-light, a bitter taste of absurdity in my mouth. My mind drifts slowly. Pierre Arthens . . . A brutal despot, hungry for glory and accolades and yet, torn to the very end between an aspiration for art and a thirst for power, he endeavored to use language in pursuit of an illusion. Which way lies truth, in the end? In power, or in Art? Is it not the power of well-crafted discourse which enables us not only to sing the praises of mankind’s creations but also to denounce as a crime of illusory vanity the urge to dominate, which moves us
all
—yes, all, even a wretched concierge in her cramped loge who, although she may have renounced any visible power, nevertheless pursues those dreams of power in her mind?

Indeed, what constitutes life? Day after day, we put up the brave struggle to play our role in this phantom comedy. We are good primates, so we spend most of our time maintaining and defending our territory, so that it will protect and gratify us; climbing—or trying not to slide down—the tribe’s hierarchical ladder, and fornicating in every manner imaginable—even mere phantasms—as much for the pleasure of it as for the promised offspring. Thus we use up a considerable amount of our energy in intimidation and seduction, and these two strategies alone ensure the quest for territory, hierarchy and sex that gives life to our conatus. But none of this touches our consciousness. We talk about love, about good and evil, philosophy and civilization, and we cling to these respectable icons the way a tick clings to its nice big warm dog.

There are times, however, when life becomes a phantom comedy. As if aroused from a dream, we watch ourselves in action and, shocked to realize how much vitality is required simply to support our primitive requirements, we wonder, bewildered, where Art fits in. All our frenzied nudging and posturing suddenly becomes utterly insignificant; our cozy little nest is reduced to some futile barbarian custom, and our position in society, hard-won and eternally precarious, is but a crude vanity. As for our progeny, we view them now with new eyes, and we are horrified, because without the cloak of altruism, the reproductive act seems extraordinarily out of place. All that is left is sexual pleasure, but if it is relegated to a mere manifestation of primal abjection, it will fail in proportion, because a loveless session of gymnastics is not what we have struggled so hard to master.

Eternity eludes us.

At times like this, all the romantic, political, intellectual, metaphysical and moral beliefs that years of instruction and education have tried to inculcate in us seem to be foundering on the altar of our true nature, and society, a territorial field mined with the powerful charges of hierarchy, is sinking into the nothingness of Meaning. Exeunt rich and poor, thinkers, researchers, decision-makers, slaves, the good and the evil, the creative and the conscientious, trade unionists and individualists, progressives and conservatives; all have become primitive hominoids whose nudging and posturing, mannerisms and finery, language and codes are all located on the genetic map of an average primate, and all add up to no more than this: hold your rank, or die.

At times like this you desperately need Art. You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny, so that all poetry and grandeur will not be cast out from the world.

Thus, to withdraw as far as you can from the jousting and combat that are the appanages of our warrior species, you drink a cup of tea, or perhaps you watch a film by Ozu, and place upon this sorry theater the seal of Art and its greatest treasures.

A
t nine in the evening, I put a cassette into the video player, a film by Ozu,
The Munekata Sisters
. This is my tenth Ozu film this month. Why? Because Ozu is a genius who can rescue me from biological destiny.

It all started one day when I told Angèle, our little librarian, that I was very fond of the early Wim Wenders films, and she said, Oh, have you seen
Tokyo-Ga
? And when you’ve seen
Tokyo-Ga
, which is an extraordinary documentary devoted to Ozu, then obviously you want to find out more about Ozu. So I found out more about Ozu and, for the first time in my life, the Art of the cinema made me laugh and cry as real entertainment should.

I press the start button, sip my jasmine tea. From time to time I rewind, thanks to this secular rosary known as the remote control.

And here is an extraordinary scene.

The father, played by Chishu Ryu, one of Ozu’s preferred actors and a vital lead through all his work, an extraordinary man who radiates warmth and humility—this father, therefore, is about to die, and is conversing with his daughter Setsuko about the stroll they have just taken through Kyoto. They are drinking saké.

THE FATHER

And the Moss Temple! The light made the moss even more splendid.

SETSUKO

And the camellia on the moss, too.

THE FATHER

Oh, did you notice? How beautiful it was! (
Pause
.) There are beautiful things in old Japan. (
Pause
.) Insisting that it’s all bad . . . I find that outrageous.

The film continues and right at the end comes this last scene, in a park, where Setsuko, the eldest, is talking with Mariko, her capricious younger sister.

SETSUKO
,
her face radiant

Tell me, Mariko, why are the mountains of Kyoto violet?

MARIKO
,
mischievously

It’s true. They look like azuki bean paste.

SETSUKO
,
smiling

It’s such a lovely color.

The film is about disappointed love, arranged marriages, parents and children, brotherhood, the death of the father, the old and new faces of Japan, as well as alcohol and the violence of men.

But above all it is about something that is unattainable to Western sensibilities, and that only Japanese culture can elucidate. Why do these two short, unexplained scenes, not driven by anything in the plot, arouse in us such a powerful emotion, containing the entire film between their ineffable parentheses?

Here is the key to the film.

SETSUKO

True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time.

The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup—this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?

The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life.

Go on, catch up with her!

W
hen I think there are people who don’t have television! How do they manage? I could spend hours watching. I turn the sound off and watch. I feel as if I’m watching things with an X-ray. If you turn the sound off, in fact, you’re removing the wrapping paper, the pretty tissue paper enveloping some two-bit piece of rubbish. If you watch the television news reports in this way, you’ll see: the images have no connection to each other, the only thing that does link them is the commentary, which wants you to take a chronological succession of images for a real succession of events.

Anyway, I love television. And this afternoon I saw an interesting movement of the world: a diving contest. Several contests, in fact. It was a retrospective of all the world championships in this particular sport. There were individual dives, with compulsory figures and freestyle, men and women, but above all, what caught my interest was the synchronized diving. In addition to their individual prowess with all these twists, somersaults and flips, the two divers have to be synchronized. Not just more or less together, no: perfectly together, to the very thousandth of a second.

The funniest thing is when the divers have very different builds: a stocky little person with a long slim one. You tell yourself, this will never work; from a physical point of view, they cannot take off and arrive at the same time, but they do, go figure. Object lesson: in the world, everything is compensation. When you can’t go as fast, you push harder. But here’s where I found subject matter for my journal: two young Chinese women got up on the springboard. Two long slim goddesses with shining black braids, who could have been twins, they looked so alike, but the commentator made a point of saying they weren’t even sisters. In short, they went out on the springboard and at that point I think we must have all been doing the same thing: holding our breath.

Following a few graceful bounces, they jumped. The first microseconds were perfect. I felt that perfection in my body; it would seem it’s a question of “mirror neurons”: when you watch someone doing something, the same neurons that they activate in order to do something become active in your brain, without you doing a thing. An acrobatic dive without budging from the sofa and while eating potato chips: that’s why we like watching sports on television. Anyway, the two graces jump and, right at the beginning, it’s ecstasy. And then, catastrophe! All at once you get the impression that they are very very slightly out of synch. You stare at the screen, a knot in your stomach: no doubt about it, they are out of synch. I know it seems crazy to describe it like this when the jump itself cannot last more than maybe three seconds in all but, precisely because it doesn’t last more than three seconds, you look at every phase as if it lasted a century. And now it has become clear, you can no longer hide from the truth: they are out of synch! One of them is going to reach the water before the other! It’s horrible!

I sat there shouting at the television: go on, catch up with her, go on! I felt incredibly angry with the one who had dawdled. I sunk deeper into the sofa, disgusted. What is this? Is that the movement of the world? An infinitesimal lapse that has just succeeded in ruining the possibility of perfection forever? I spent at least half an hour in a foul mood. And then suddenly I wondered: but why did I want so desperately for her to catch up? Why does it feel so rotten when the movement is not in synch? It’s not very hard to come up with an answer: all those things that pass before us, which we miss by a hair and which are botched for eternity . . . All the words we should have said, gestures we should have made, the fleeting moments of
kairos
that were there one day and that we did not know how to grasp and that were buried forever in the void . . . Failure, by a hair’s breadth . . . But then another idea surfaced thanks to these mirror neurons. A disturbing idea, moreover, and vaguely Proustian, no doubt (which annoys me). What if literature were a television we gaze into in order to activate our mirror neurons and give ourselves some action-packed cheap thrills? And even worse: what if literature were a television showing us all the things we have missed?

So much for the movement of the world! It could have been perfection and it was a disaster. It should be experienced in reality and it is pleasure by proxy, like always.

And so I ask you: why stay in such a world?

T
he next morning, Chabrot rings at my loge. He seems to have mastered his emotions, his voice no longer trembles, his nose is dry and suntanned. But he makes me think of a ghost.

“Pierre has died,” he says, in a flat voice.

“I am sorry.”

I truly am sorry for him, for even if Pierre Arthens is no longer in pain, Chabrot will have to learn to live, however dead he may feel. “The undertakers will be arriving,” adds Chabrot in his spectral voice. “I’d be very grateful if you’d show them up to the apartment.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be back in two hours, to take care of Anna.”

He looks at me for a moment in silence.

“Thank you,” he says, for the second time in twenty years.

I am tempted to reply in keeping with the ancestral traditions of concierges but, I scarcely know why, the words will not come out. Perhaps it is because Chabrot will not be coming here anymore, because the strongest barriers break down in the presence of death, because I am thinking about Lucien, and because decency, after all, precludes any sort of wariness that might offend the deceased.

So I do not say, Don’t mention it, but rather: “You know . . . everything comes at its appointed time.”

That might sound like a platitude, although it is also something similar to what Marshal Kutuzov says to Prince Andrei in
War and Peace: I have been much blamed, both for war, and for peace . . . But everything comes at its appointed time
. . . Tout vient à son heure pour qui sait attendre.

I would give anything to be able to read it in Russian. What I have always liked about this passage are the pauses, the balance between
war and peace
, the ebb and flow of his thoughts, like the tide on the shore carrying the riches of the ocean, in, and out. Was this merely a whim on the part of the translator, embroidering something that might have been very simple in the original—
I have been much blamed, both for war, and for peace
—thus consigning my maritime ruminations to the chapter of unfounded extravagance, or is this the very essence of a superb text which, even today, still moves me, however I resist, to tears of joy?

Chabrot nods his head slowly, then departs.

The rest of the morning is dreary. I have no posthumous affection for Pierre Arthens, but I find myself wandering about like a lost soul, unable even to read. The camellia and the moss had offered me a brief but happy interlude from the coarseness of the world: now that is over, leaving no hope, and my heart is bitter, tormented by the darkness of all these unhappy events.

When of a sudden Old Japan intervenes: from one of the apartments wafts a melody, clearly, joyfully distinct. Someone is playing a classical piece on the piano. Ah, sweet, impromptu moment, lifting the veil of melancholy . . . In a split second of eternity, everything is changed, transfigured. A few bars of music, rising from an unfamiliar piece, a touch of perfection in the flow of human dealings—I lean my head slowly to one side, reflect on the camellia on the moss of the temple, reflect on a cup of tea, while outside the wind is rustling the foliage, the forward rush of life is crystallized in a brilliant jewel of a moment that knows neither projects nor future, human destiny is rescued from the pale succession of days, glows with light at last and, surpassing time, warms my tranquil heart.