A Void (39 page)

with Orgon, son of Ubu.

Condors swoop down on us. Poor scrofulous lions slink out,

scrutinising dingos with scornful looks. Chipmunks run wild.

Opossums run, too, without stopping. North or south? I

wouldn't know. Plunging off clifftops, bison split limbs in two.

It hurts. Ivy grows on brick, rising up from stucco pots to

shroud windows or roofs.

Prom Ubu's bottom drops his own bulk in gold.

"Hmm," says Savorgnan, having difficulty in disguising his con-

fusion.

"What!" says Swann, as if furious at Savorgnan's stupidity,

"isn't it obvious what's so fascinating about it?"

"Frankly, no."

"Look at it, Savorgnan - it hasn't got a solitary 'a'!"

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"Good God!" says Savorgnan, snatching it out of Ottaviani's

hands and staring at it. "It hasn't at that!"

"Mindblowing!" says Squaw.

"Fascinating," Savorgnan concurs, "just fascinating."

"And in addition," adds Swann, "I can find just a solitary y

in it — in 'ivy'!"

"Astonishing! Amazing! Astounding!"

Ottaviani finally asks for his manuscript back. Savorgnan hands

it to him and, as though only now grasping its import, Ottaviani

quickly scans it, moving his lips but not saying a word.

"So, Ottavio," says Swann sarcastically, "do you catch on

now?"

Ottaviani looks ill, squirming in his chair, shaking uncon-

trollably, finding it impossibly difficult to say what's on his mind.

"I . . . I . . ."

"What?"

Crumpling up, Ottavio Ottaviani murmurs in a dying fall:

"Nor has it got a solitary

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26

Which, as you must know by now, is this book's last

"Pardon?" say his two companions, who hadn't caught that

Omission of which only Ottaviani was conscious.

But Ottaviani says nothing, making only a short, sharp sound

- a kind of pop or plop, a tiny bit grating, a tiny bit irritating,

but so soft you almost instantly forgot it.

Squaw abruptly cuts in with a mournful cry.

"What is it?" asks Swann, blanching.

"Ottaviani! Ottaviani!" howls Squaw.

Crimson, florid, Ottaviani starts inflating. As imposing and

plump as Buck Mulligan standing on top of a spiral stairway

whilst intoning an "Introibo", his slowly magnifying body brings

to mind a purplish balloon, of a sort that you might buy for your

child in Pare Montsouris.

And, in a twinkling, just as such a balloon will combust if

brought into contact with a sharp point, Ottaviani burst, his

body ripping apart, making a din as loud as an aircraft attaining

Mach III and outstripping sound with a mirror-smashing bang.

And, in an instant, not a nail, not a button - poor Ottaviani

is nothing but a puny, chalky mass as small as a tiny turd of ash

from a cigar but so oddly whitish in colour you might think it

was talc.

Savorgnan stands dumbstruck, stiff and still. His two last sons

dying in turn, two sons long thought in Abraham's bosom,

abruptly brought back to him and now just as abruptly dying

again — it was obviously too much for him. Sobbing, vainly trying

to control his sorrow, this poor papa says to Swann:

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"I'm right in thinking, am I not, that you did all his dirty work

- you did just what that Bushy Man told you to do?"

"I wouldn't put it that way - but I
was
his faithful right hand,

you know, his front, his proconsul. . ."

"No, I didn't know . . ."

"It was staring at you, though."

"I don't follow you."

"What is implicit in 'Aloysius Swann' if not 'a blank cygnal'?"

Savorgnan sighs, continuing, "As this is obviously my last call,

my last hurrah, may I know how it is that I'm to quit this world

of ours? For, if I know you, you won't disappoint your victim

with any humdrum sort of killing!"

uOh la la"
says Swann, cackling, "I can think of about 5 amus-

ingly roundabout ways of killing you.

"I could first of all, finding you caught up in a work of fiction,

a book by Zola, say, from his Rougon-Macquart saga (but not

L'Assomnwir,
possibly
Nana)
- I could hand you a fruit that had

a bomb in it: an apricot, a cantaloup, or possibly an ananas, that

sanguinary fruit that Lyndon B. Johnson, day in, day out, would

drop on Hanoi, not giving a hoot for any notion of supranational

rights, as many political symposia would forthrightly affirm. Any-

way, my cunning apparatus would go off just as, hot and thirsty,

you cut your ananas in two, so blowing you sky-high.

"Or I could also, using a nodal cord, submit to amputation,

mutilation, incision, ablation, castration, abscission, scission,

omission or division that most vital part of your body - your

cock, your prick, your manly organ - or, possibly, by a kind of

phallic symbolism, just your snout, an act that would kill you off

within six months at most.

"Or, if I sought a truly outlandish solution, I could, in a

country wood in which you had a habit of taking your consti-

tutional, look, in an oak or a birch, for a good roosting spot for

birds and submit its occupants to a fatal quantity of radioactivity

(a milligram of uranium would do, its fission producing a strong

gamma ray). In addition, not far from that oak or birch, I'd

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simply drop a big bag of fondants — I know how fond of fondants

my old chum Arthur is. So, strolling to and fro, idly larking

about, nibbling on cat's-tails and cowslips, you catch sight of this

alluring bag of bonbons. Pouncing gluttonously on it, you sit

down to stuff your gob and, just at that instant, from out of

said oak or birch, birds start dropping on to you, birds full of

radioactivity, irradiating your body with maximum impact.

"Or I could go about it this way.

"You'd fly out to Japan for a gala. In Tokyo, for I know your

skill at Go, you'd no doubt want to watch a foolhardy tyro taking

on a champion, Kaku Takagawa, a 'Kan Shu', if not actually a

'Kudan', in a local charity match - taking him on, as I say, but

obviously with a strong handicap to assist him, not a 'fiirin' but

a 'Naka yotsu'. Kaku Takagawa would start with a 'Moku had-

zushi' and, his antagonist lost in a 'Ji dori Go' as clumsy as it was

vain (what you should play is, as you know, Arthur, a Takamoku

Kakari'), would triumphantly follow it up with an 'Ozaru' (or

'Grand Baboon's Gambit', as it's still known) and, rounding it

off with a brilliant 'Oi Otoshi', win by a 'Naka oshi gatchi', to

acclamation from an approving public.

"But, Takagawa having won his match, a production of a Noh

play would follow, a play you'd find both long and mystifying.

You'd want at first to go, but, out of tact to your hosts, you'd

try to follow it for an act or so and, by constantly consulting a

fitfully illuminating synopsis, try to grasp a word, a look, a sound,

a hint of fury, of sorrow, of passion, that would allow you to

know what it was all about, allow you to know what was going

on not all that far from your fourth-row chair but what simply

wasn't swimming into focus, just as a man who, rapt in a book,

a work of fiction, constandy hoping for a solution, for a solution

that's driving him crazy by lurking just out of his grasp, a solution

that has had throughout, in fact from its first word, an infuriating

habit of staring at him whilst continually avoiding his own scru-

tiny, might find, advancing into its story, nothing but ambiguous

mystification and rationalisation, obscurantism and obfiiscation,

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all of it consigning to a dim and murky chiaroscuro that ambition,

so to say, that lit its author's lamp.

"So at last, worn out by such taxing brainwork, you'd nod off,

just as a dog would if Pavlov, stimulating it with a salivating

aroma, didn't follow it up with a gift of a juicy chop, thus maxi-

mally inhibiting its cortico-subcortico-cortical circuit, that which

controls its instincts, its 'arousal', as biologists say. And, at that

instant, I'd find it child's play to bump you off.

"Or, finally (I told you, did I not, that I had 5 options), I

could attack you whilst idly strolling in a public park admiring

statuary by such as Girardon or Coustou, Gimond or, most par-

ticularly, Rodin. All I'd do is clutch in my fist a jack, a car jack, so

that, as you stood in front of a Rodin, say, studying its imposing

contours, I'd simply undo that bolt that maintains it upright,

causing it to fall and crush you."

"Nobody, I think," says Arthur Wilburg Savorgnan, "could

claim that I was lacking in humour. So I applaud your final spasm

of imagination. But, if you want my opinion, I truly don't know

how you could, at this instant, bring about my downfall in any

such outlandish fashion. For, if I'm not wrong, this room con-

tains nothing at all of what you want - no igniting fruit or nodal

cord or radiating birds or Go board or Rodin statuary."

"Don't think I'm not conscious of that," says Swann icily. "But

I'm carrying at my hip a plaything that I find is just as handy!"

So saying, Swann draws out a Smith-Corona pistol and, with-

out pausing for an instant, shoots Savorgnan point-blank.

"Voila," says Squaw, in a sort of monosyllabic singsong, "all

kaput. All kaput. Who would think it? And, you know, I find

this conclusion just a tiny bit anticlimactic, a tiny bit
Much Ado

About Nothing,
a bit irritating, a bit discouraging, don't you

think?"

"Oh,
cht va piano va sano,"
says Swann, smiling. "All kaput, as you say. And all worthy of absolution; all, I pray, worthy of

magnanimity and pardon. For, though guilty of many criminal

acts, of many sins, our companions did, you must admit, furnish

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a constant and unfailing collaboration. And I can think of many

a protagonist, factual or fictional, who hasn't had to put up with

so rigorous a constraint. In this story, though, our lot would

confront it unflinchingly from start to finish . . ."

"Shut up," murmurs Squaw, to Swann's mortification, "you

talk too much . . ."

"So now," says Squaw again, "is this actually our
Finis Coronat

Opus
? Is this how our story must finish? Is this its last word?"

"It is," says Swann, "it is. This circuitous labyrinth, through

which all of us would drift with a somnambulist's languorous

gait, driving our plot forward with our contribution to it, our

participation in it, moving on and on, braving its paralysing

taboo, concocting out of that taboo, to a point of saturation, a

story which, with all its manifold ramifications, would abolish

what you might call its random factor only at a cost of our giving

up any claim to a solution, similar to a lamp illuminating, and

fitfully, only part of our path, according us only a hint, an inkling,

of what is lying in front of us, of what is awaiting us - it is, I

say, fast approaching its conclusion, its last word. But Franz

Kafka said it first: you know what your goal is but you don't

know of any path to that goal and what you call a path is only

your own blind, groping doubt.

"All of us did, notwithstanding, go forward, slowly, haltingly,

approaching a final point, for a final point was obligatory in a

story such as ours, imagining, too, on occasion, that it was obvi-

ous what that final point was, confronting a 'What?' with a That5,

a Why' with a Tor\ a 'How5 with a This Way' or a 'That Way'.

"But an illusion was always lurking in such solutions, an illu-

sion of wisdom, wisdom to which not any of us could truly lay

claim, not our protagonists, not our author, and not I, Swann,

his faithful right hand, and it was that lack of wisdom, that

chronic inability of ours to grasp what was actually going on,

that had us talking away, constructing our story, building up its

idiotic plot, inflating all its intrinsic bombast, its absurd hocus-

pocus, without at any instant attaining its cardinal point, its

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horizon, its infinity, that climactic coda of harmony out of which

a solution would at long last loom,

but approaching, by an inch, by a micron, by an angstrom,

that fatal point at which,

without that taboo constituting us and uniting us and drawing

us apart,

a void,

a void with its brass hands,

a void with its cold, numb hands,

a void rubbing out its own inscription,

a void assuring this Book, of all Books, a truly singular purity

and immaculation, notwithstanding all its markings in ink and

paragraphs of print,

a void brings our story to its conclusion."

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P O S T S C R I P T

On that ambition, conspicuous throughout this tiring book

which you will soon shut, having had your fill of it without,

I trust, skipping too much - on that ambition, so to say,

which lit its author's lamp

My ambition, as Author, my point, I would go so far as to say