The Secret of Evil (4 page)

T
HE
R
OOM
N
EXT
D
OOR

I was once, if I remember rightly, present at a gathering of
madmen. Most of them were suffering from auditory hallucinations. A guy came up
and asked if he could have a few words with me in private. We went to another
room. The guy said that his medication was unhinging him. I’m getting more
nervous every day, he said, And sometimes I have weird thoughts. That often
happens, I told him. The guy said it was the first time it had happened to him.
Then he rolled up the sleeves of his sweater and scratched his navel. He had a
hand gun pushed into the top of his trousers. What’s that? I asked him. It’s my
fucking belly button, said the guy: It itches and itches and what can I do? I’m
scratching it all day long. Sure enough the skin around his navel was red and
raw. I told him I didn’t mean his navel, but what was below it. Is that a gun? I
asked. Yes, it’s a gun, said the guy, and he pulled it out and aimed it at the
only window in the room. I considered asking if it was a fake, but I didn’t. It
looked real to me. I asked if I could have a look. Weapons aren’t for loan, the
guy said. It’s like with cars and women. If you steal a car, you can lend it.
Not something I’d recommend, but you can. The same if you’re with a hooker. I
wouldn’t do it myself, I’d never lend any woman, but, you know, you could. When
it comes to weapons, though, no way. And what if they’re stolen or fakes? I
asked him. Not even then. Once your fingerprints are on a weapon, you can’t lend
it. You understand? Sort of, I said. You have a commitment to the weapon, said
the guy. In other words, you have to take care of it for the rest of your life,
I said. Exactly, said the guy, you’re married and that’s all there is to it.
You’ve got it pregnant with your fucking prints and that’s all there is to it.
Responsibility, said the guy. Then he raised his arm and aimed the gun straight
at my head. I don’t know if it was then or later that I thought of Moreau’s
belle inertie
, or maybe I remembered having thought about it
earlier, in a feverish and futile sort of way: beautiful inertia, the
compositional procedure by which Moreau was able, in his canvases, to freeze,
suspend and fix any scene, however hectic. I shut my eyes. I heard him asking me
why I’d shut my eyes. Moreau’s tranquility, some critics call it. Moreau’s fear,
say others who are less drawn to his work. Terror bedecked with jewels. I
remembered his transparent pictures, his “unfinished” pictures, his gigantic,
shadowy men, and his women, small in comparison to the masculine figures and
inexpressibly beautiful. J. K. Huysmans wrote of his pictures: “An
identical impression was created by these different scenes: that of a spiritual
onanism, repeated in a chaste body.” Spiritual onanism? Onanism period. All
Moreau’s giants and women, all the jewels, all the geometrical poise and
splendor drop like paratroopers into the zone of chastity or responsibility. One
night, when I was a sensitive young man of twenty, I overheard, in a boarding
house in Guatemala, two men talking in the room next door. One of the voices was
deep, the other was what you might call gravelly. At first, of course, I paid no
attention to what they were saying. Both were Central Americans, though perhaps
not from the same country, to judge from their intonation and turns of phrase.
The guy with the gravelly voice started talking about a woman. He weighed up her
beauty, the way she dressed and carried herself, her culinary skills. The guy
with the deep voice agreed with everything he said. I imagined him lying on his
bed, smoking, while the guy with the gravelly voice sat at the foot of the other
bed, or maybe in the middle, with his shoes off, but still wearing his shirt and
trousers. I didn’t get the feeling they were friends; maybe they were sharing
the room because they had no choice, or to save some money. They might have had
dinner and some drinks together; that was probably as far as it went. But that
was more than enough in Central America back then. I fell asleep several times
while listening to them. Why didn’t I sleep right through till the next morning?
I don’t know. Maybe I was too nervous. Maybe the voices from the other room got
louder every now and then, and that was enough to wake me up. At one point the
guy with the deep voice laughed. The guy with the gravelly voice said, or
repeated, that he had killed his wife. I assumed that it was the woman he’d been
praising before I fell asleep. I killed her, he said, and then he waited for the
other guy to respond. It was a load off my mind. I did what was right. Nobody
laughs at me. The guy with the deep voice shifted in his bed and said nothing. I
imagined him with dark skin, with Indian and African blood, more African than
Indian, a guy from Panama on his way home, maybe, or heading north to Mexico and
the US border. After a long silence, during which all I could hear were strange
noises, he asked the other guy if he was serious, if he’d really killed her. The
guy with the gravelly voice said nothing; maybe he nodded. Then the black guy
asked if he wanted a smoke. Why not, said the guy with gravelly voice, one more
before we go to sleep. I didn’t hear any more from them. The guy with the
gravelly voice might have gotten up to switch off the light, while the black guy
watched from his bed. I imagined a bedside table with an ashtray. A dark room,
like mine, with a minuscule window that looked onto a dirt road. The guy with
the gravelly voice was skinny and white, for sure. A nervous type. The other guy
was black, big and solidly built, the sort of guy who doesn’t often lose his
cool. I stayed awake for a long time. When I reckoned they’d gone to sleep, I
got up, trying not to make any noise, and switched on the light. I lit a
cigarette and began to read. Dawn was infinitely distant. When I eventually
started to feel sleepy again and switched off the light and stretched out on the
bed, I heard something in the room next door. A woman’s voice — it sounded like
she had her lips to the wall — said Good night. Then I looked at my room, which,
like the room next door, contained three beds, and I was afraid, and a scream
rose in my throat, but I stifled it because I knew I had to.

L
ABYRINTH

They’re seated. They’re looking at the camera. They are, from
left to right: J. Henric, J.-J. Goux, Ph. Sollers, J. Kristeva, M.-Th.
Réveillé, P. Guyotat, C. Devade and M. Devade.

There’s no photo credit.

They’re sitting around a table. It’s an ordinary table, made of wood,
perhaps, or plastic, it could even be a marble table on metal legs, but nothing
could be less germane to my purpose than to give an exhaustive description of
it. The table is a table that is large enough to seat the above-mentioned
individuals and it’s in a café. Or appears to be. Let’s suppose, for the moment,
that it’s in a café.

The eight people who appear in the photo, who are
posing
for
the photo, are fanned out around one side of the table in a crescent or a kind
of bent-open horseshoe, so that each of them can be seen clearly and completely.
In other words, no one is facing away from the camera and no one is shown in
profile. In front of them, or rather between them and the photographer (and this
is slightly strange), there are three plants — a rhododendron, a ficus and an
immortelle — rising from a planter, which may serve, but this is speculation, as
a barrier between two quite distinct sections of the café.

The photo was probably taken in 1977 or thereabouts.

But let us return to the figures. On the left-hand side we have, as I
said, J. Henric, that is, the writer Jacques Henric, born in 1938 and the author
of
Archées
,
Artaud traversé par la Chine
, and
Chasses
. Henric is a solidly built man, broad-shouldered,
muscular-looking, probably not very tall. He’s wearing a checked shirt with the
sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. He’s not what you would call a handsome
man; he has the square face of a farmer or a construction worker, thick eyebrows
and a dark chin, one of those chins that needs to be shaved twice a day (or so
some people claim). His legs are crossed and his hands are clasped over his
knee.

Next to him is J.-J. Goux. About J.-J. Goux I know nothing. He’s
probably called Jean-Jacques, but in this story, for the sake of convenience,
I’ll continue to use his initials. J.-J. Goux is young and blond. He’s wearing
glasses. There’s nothing especially attractive about his features (although,
compared to Henric, he looks not only more handsome but also more intelligent).
The line of his jaw is symmetrical and his lips are full, the lower lip slightly
thicker than the upper. He’s wearing a turtleneck sweater and a dark leather
jacket.

Beside J.-J. is Ph. Sollers, Philippe Sollers, born in 1936, the
editor of
Tel Quel
, author of
Drame
,
Nombres
, and
Paradis
, a public figure familiar to everyone. Sollers has his arms
crossed, the left arm resting on the surface of the table, the right arm resting
on the left (and his right hand indolently cupping the elbow of his left arm).
His face is round. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that it’s the face of
a fat man, but it probably will be in a few years’ time: it’s the face of a man
who enjoys a good meal. An ironic, intelligent smile is hovering about his lips.
His eyes, which are much livelier than those of Henric or J.-J., and smaller
too, remain fixed on the camera, and the bags underneath them help to give his
round face a look that is at once preoccupied, perky and playful. Like J.-J.,
he’s wearing a turtleneck sweater, though the sweater that Sollers is wearing is
white, dazzlingly white, while J.-J.’s is probably yellow or light green. Over
the sweater Sollers is wearing a garment that appears at first glance to be a
dark-colored leather jacket, though it could be made of a lighter material,
possibly suede. He’s the only one who’s smoking.

Beside Sollers is J. Kristeva, Julia Kristeva, the Bulgarian
semiologist, his wife. She is the author of
La traversée des signes
,
Pouvoirs de l’horreur
, and
Le langage, cet inconnu
. She’s
slim, with prominent cheekbones, black hair parted in the middle and gathered
into a bun at the back. Her eyes are dark and lively, as lively as those of
Sollers, although there are differences: as well as being larger, they transmit
a certain hospitable warmth (that is, a certain serenity) which is absent from
her husband’s eyes. She’s wearing just a turtleneck sweater, which is very
close-fitting but the neck is loose, and a long V-shaped necklace that
accentuates the form of her torso. At first glance she could almost be
Vietnamese. Except that her breasts, it seems, are larger than those of the
average Vietnamese woman. Hers is the only smile that allows us a glimpse of
teeth.

Beside la Kristeva is M.-Th. Réveillé. About her too I know
nothing. She’s probably called Marie-Thérèse. Let’s suppose that she is.
Marie-Thérèse, then, is the first person so far not to be wearing a turtleneck
sweater. Henric isn’t either, actually, but his neck is short (he barely has a
neck at all) while Marie-Thérèse Réveillé, by contrast, has a neck that is long
and entirely revealed by the dark garment she is wearing. Her hair is straight
and long, with a center part, light brown in color, or perhaps honey blonde.
Thanks to the slight leftward turn of her face, a pearl can be seen suspended
from her ear, like a stray satellite.

Next to Marie-Thérèse Réveillé is P. Guyotat, that is, Pierre Guyotat,
born in 1940, the author of
Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats
,
Eden, Eden, Eden
, and
Prostitution
. Guyotat is bald.
That’s his most striking characteristic. He’s also the most handsome man in the
group. His bald head is radiant, his skull capacious and the black hair on his
temples resembles nothing so much as the bay leaves that used to wreathe the
heads of victorious Roman generals. Neither shrinking away nor striking a pose,
he has the expression of a man who travels by night. He’s wearing a leather
jacket, a shirt and a T-shirt. The T-shirt (but here there must be some mistake)
is white with black horizontal stripes and a thicker black stripe around the
neck, like something a child might wear, or a Soviet parachutist. His eyebrows
are narrow and definite. They mark the border between his immense forehead and a
face that is wavering between concentration and indifference. The eyes are
inquisitive, but perhaps they give a false impression. His lips are pressed
together in a way that may not be deliberate.

Next to Guyotat is C. Devade. Caroline? Carole? Carla? Colette?
Claudine? We’ll never know. Let’s say, for the sake of convenience, that she’s
called Carla Devade. She could well be the youngest member of the group. Her
hair is short, without a fringe, and, although the photo is in black and white,
it’s reasonable to suppose that her skin has an olive tone, suggesting a
Mediterranean background. Maybe Carla Devade is from the south of France, or
Catalonia, or Italy. Only Julia Kristeva is as dark, but Kristeva’s skin —
although perhaps it’s a trick of the light — has a metallic, bronze-like
quality, while Carla Devade’s is silky and yielding. She is wearing a dark
sweater with a round neck, and a blouse. Her lips and her eyes betray more than
a hint of a smile: a sign of recognition, perhaps.

Next to Carla Devade is M. Devade. This is presumably the writer Marc
Devade, who was still a member of
Tel Quel
’s editorial committee in
1972. His relationship with Carla Devade is obvious: man and wife. Could they be
brother and sister? Possibly, but the physical dissimilarities are numerous.
Marc Devade (I find it hard to call him Marc, I would have preferred to
translate that M into Marcel or Max) is blond, chubby-cheeked and has very light
eyes. So it makes more sense to presume that they are man and wife. Just to be
different, Devade is wearing a turtleneck sweater, like J.-J. Goux, Sollers and
Kristeva, and a dark jacket. His eyes are large and beautiful, and his mouth is
decisive. His hair, as I said, is blond; it’s long (longer than that of the
other men) and elegantly combed back. His forehead is broad and perhaps slightly
bulging. And he has, although this may be an illusion produced by the graininess
of the image, a dimple in his chin.

How many of them are looking directly at the photographer? Only half
of the group: Henric, J.-J. Goux, Sollers and Marc Devade. Marie-Thérèse
Réveillé and Carla Devade are looking away to the left, past Henric. Guyotat’s
gaze is angled slightly to the right, fixed on a point a yard or two from where
the photographer is standing. And Kristeva, whose gaze is the strangest of all,
appears to be looking straight at the camera, but in fact she’s looking at the
photographer’s stomach, or to be more precise, into the empty space beside his
hip.

The photo was taken in winter or autumn, or maybe at the
beginning of spring, but certainly not in summer. Who are the most warmly
dressed? J.-J. Goux, Sollers and Marc Devade, without question: they’re wearing
jackets over their turtleneck sweaters, and thick jackets too from the look of
them, especially J.-J. and Devade’s. Kristeva is a case apart: her turtleneck
sweater is light, more elegant than practical, and she’s not wearing anything
over it. Then we have Guyotat. He might be as warmly dressed as the four I’ve
already mentioned. He doesn’t seem to be, but it’s true that he’s the only one
wearing three layers: the black leather jacket, the shirt and the striped
T-shirt. You could imagine him wearing those clothes even if the photo had been
taken in summer. It’s quite possible. All we can say for sure is that Guyotat is
dressed as if he were on his way to somewhere else. As for Carla Devade, she’s
in between. Her blouse, whose collar is showing over the top of her sweater,
looks soft and warm; the sweater itself is casual, but of good quality, neither
very heavy nor very light. Finally we have Jacques Henric and Marie Thérèse
Réveillé. Henric is clearly not a man who feels the cold, although his Canadian
lumberjack’s shirt looks warm enough. And the least warmly dressed of all is
Marie-Thérèse Réveillé. Under her light, knitted, open-necked sweater there are
only her breasts, cupped by a black or white bra.

All of them, more or less warmly dressed, captured by the camera
at that moment in 1977 or thereabouts, are friends, and some of them are lovers
too. For a start, Sollers and Kristeva, obviously, and the two Devades, Marc and
Carla. Those, we might say, are the stable couples. And yet there are certain
features of the photo (something about the arrangement of the objects, the
petrified, musical rhododendron, two of its leaves invading the space of the
ficus like clouds within a cloud, the grass growing in the planter, which looks
more like fire than grass, the immortelle leaning whimsically to the left, the
glasses in the center of the table, well away from the edges, except for
Kristeva’s, as if the other members of the group were worried they might fall)
which suggest that there is a more complex and subtle web of relations among
these men and women.

Let’s imagine J.-J. Goux, for example, who is looking out at us
through his thick submarine spectacles.

His space in the photo is momentarily vacant and we see him
walking along Rue de l’École de Médecine, with books under his arm, of course,
two books, till he comes out onto the Boulevard Saint-Germain. There he turns
his steps toward the Mabillon metro station, but first he stops in front of a
bar, checks the time, goes in and orders a cognac. After a while J.-J. moves
away from the bar and sits down at a table near the window. What does he do? He
opens a book. We can’t tell what book it is, but we do know that he’s finding it
difficult to concentrate. Every twenty seconds or so he lifts his head and looks
out onto the Boulevard Saint-Germain, his gaze a little more gloomy each time.
It’s raining and people are walking hurriedly under their open umbrellas.
J.-J.’s blond hair isn’t wet, from which we can deduce that it began to rain
after he entered the bar. It’s getting dark. J.-J. remains seated in the same
place, and now there are two cognacs and two coffees on his tab. Coming closer
we can see that the dark rings under his eyes have the look of a war zone. At no
point has he taken off his glasses. He’s a pitiful sight. After a very long
wait, he goes back out onto the street where he is gripped by a shiver, perhaps
because of the cold. For a moment he stands still on the sidewalk and looks both
ways, then he starts walking in the direction of the Mabillon metro station.
When he reaches the entrance, he runs his hand through his hair several times,
as if he’d suddenly realized that his hair was a mess, although it’s not. Then
he goes down the steps and the story ends or freezes in an empty space where
appearances gradually fade away. Who was J.-J. Goux waiting for? Someone he’s in
love with? Someone he was hoping to sleep with that night? And how was his
delicate sensibility affected by that person’s failure to show up?

Let’s suppose that the person who didn’t come was Jacques Henric.
While J.-J. was waiting for him, Henric was riding a 250-cc Honda motorbike to
the entrance of the apartment building where the Devades live. But no. That’s
impossible. Let’s imagine that Henric simply climbed onto his Honda and rode
away into a vaguely literary, vaguely unstable Paris, and that his absence on
this occasion is strategic, as amorous absences nearly always are.

So let’s set up the couples again. Carla Devade and Marc Devade.
Sollers and Kristeva. J.-J. Goux and Jacques Henric. Marie-Thérèse Réveillé and
Pierre Guyotat. And let’s set up the night. J.-J. Goux is sitting and reading a
book whose title is immaterial, in a bar on the Boulevard Saint-Germain; his
turtleneck sweater won’t let his skin breathe, but he doesn’t yet feel entirely
ill at ease. Henric is stretched out on his bed, half undressed, smoking and
looking at the ceiling. Sollers is shut up in his study, writing (pinkly snug
and warm inside his turtleneck sweater). Julia Kristeva is at the university.
Marie-Thérèse Réveillé is walking along Avenue de Friedland near the
intersection with Rue Balzac, and the headlights of cars are shining in her
face. Guyotat is in a bar on Rue Lacépède, near the Jardin des Plantes, drinking
with some friends. Carla Devade is in her apartment, sitting on a chair in the
kitchen, doing nothing. Marc Devade is at the
Tel Quel
office, speaking
politely on the phone to one of the poets he most admires and hates. Soon
Sollers and Kristeva will be together, reading after dinner. They will not make
love tonight. Soon Marie-Thérèse Réveillé and Guyotat will be together in bed,
and he will sodomize her. They will fall asleep at five in the morning, after
exchanging a few words in the bathroom. Soon Carla Devade and Marc Devade will
be together, and she will shout, and he will shout, and she will go to the
bedroom and pick up a novel, any one of the many that are lying on her bedside
table, and he will sit at his desk and try to write but he won’t be able to.
Carla will fall asleep at one in the morning, Marc at half-past two, and they
will try not to touch each other. Soon Jacques Henric will go down to the
underground parking lot and climb onto his Honda and venture out into the cold
streets of Paris, becoming cold himself, a man who shapes his own destiny, and
knows, or at least believes, that he is lucky. He will be the only member of the
group to see the day dawning, with the disastrous retreat of the last night
wanderers, each an enigmatic letter in an imaginary alphabet. Soon J.-J. Goux,
who was the first to fall asleep, will have a dream in which a photo will
appear, and he’ll hear a voice warning him of the devil’s presence and of
hapless death. He’ll wake with a start from this dream or auditory nightmare and
won’t be able to get back to sleep for the rest of the night.