Whatever: a novel (13 page)

The eldest stork replied simply, in a slow and terrible voice:
Tat twam asi.
Shortly afterwards the chimpanzee was executed by the tribe of storks; he died in atrocious pain, transpierced and emasculated by their pointed beaks. For having questioned the order of the world the chimpanzee had to perish; in fact one could understand it; really, that's how it was.

On Sunday morning I went out for a while in the neighbourhood; I bought some raisin bread. The day was warm but a little sad, as Sundays often are in Paris, especially when one doesn't believe in God.

2

The following Monday I went back to my job, a bit on the off chance. I knew my head of department had taken between Christmas and New Year's Day off, probably to go skiing in the Alps. I thought there'd be nobody there, that nobody would feel in the least bit like me, and that my day would be spent tapping idly away on some keyboard. Around eleven-thirty, unfortunately, some guy spots me, knows who I am. He introduces himself as my new immediate superior; I have no wish to doubt his word. He has the air of being more or less up on my activities, though in a very vague way. He also tries to make contact, to be friendly; I don't succumb to his advances in the least.

At midday, partly out of desperation, I went to eat with a business manager and a managerial secretary. I was of a mind to converse with them, but wasn't given the opportunity; they seemed to be pursuing an already ancient conversation:

-I finally got twenty-watt speakers for my car stereo, bragged the business manager. The ten watts appeared a bit weak and thirty watts was really much more expensive. I reckon it's not worth it just for the car.

-Personally, the secretary retorted, I've had four speakers put in, two in the front and two in the back.

The business manager contrived a ribald smile. So that was it, everything was proceeding as normal.

I spent the afternoon in my office doing various things; more or less nothing in fact. From time to time I consulted my diary: we were at 29 December. It was essential I do something for the 31st. People do something, for the 31st.

In the evening I phone SOS Amitié, but the line's busy, like it always is during the holiday period. Around one in the morning I take a tin of petits pois and hurl it at the bathroom mirror. That makes for a nice lot of glass splinters. I cut myself picking them up and start bleeding. This pleases me. It's just what I wanted.

The next day I'm in my office by eight. My new immediate superior is already there; has the idiot slept in the place? A grimy mist of unpleasant aspect floats above the esplanade between the towerblocks. The fluorescent lights of the offices through which the COMATEC employees pass to do the cleaning go on and off by turns, creating the impression of life unfolding in slow motion. The immediate superior offers me a coffee; he hasn't, it seems, given up on trying to win me over. Stupidly I accept, which means that before a few minutes are up I find myself being given a somewhat delicate task: the detection of errors in a
software package
that has just been sold to the Ministry of Industry. There are, it appears, some errors. I spend two hours on it, and as far as I can tell there aren't any; it's true that my mind is elsewhere.

Around ten we learn of the death of Tisserand. A call from the family which a secretary passes on to the whole staff. We will receive, she says, a formal announcement later. I can't really believe it; it's too nightmarish for words. But no, it's all true.

A little later in the morning I get a phone call from Catherine Lechardoy. She has nothing in particular to say. `Maybe we'll see each other again,' she opines; I rather doubt it.

Around midday I went out. In the bookshop on the square I bought number 80 of the Michelin map (
Rodez-Albi-Nîmes
). Once back in my office I scrutinized it carefully. Around five I came to the conclusion that I must go to Saint-Cirgues-en-Montagne. The name stood out, in splendid isolation, amid forests and little triangles representing mountaintops; there wasn't a single conurbation within a radius of thirty kilometres. I sensed I was on the edge of making a vital discovery; that a revelation of the highest order was awaiting me down there, between the 31st of December and the first of January, at the precise moment the year turns. I left a note on my desk: `Left early due to the train strike'. On thinking about it I left a second note announcing, in block capitals: Ì AM SICK'. And I returned home, not without some difficulty: the Paris Transport Authority strike, begun that morning, had spread; there was no more métro, just a few buses, depending on the route.

The Gare de Lyon was practically in a state of siege. Patrols of CRS riot police were cordoning off areas in the entrance hall and circulating along the platforms; the word was that squads of `hard' strikers had decided to prevent all departures. Nevertheless the train turned out to be almost empty, and the trip completely trouble-free.

At Lyon-Perrache station an impressive number of buses were being laid on for Morzine, La Clusaz, Courchevel, Val d'Isère. For the Ardèche, nothing like. I took a taxi to the Part-Dieu bus station, where I spent a fastidious quarter of an hour browsing through a malfunctioning electronic timetable before finally discovering that a coach was leaving at 6.45 the next morning for Aubenas; it was half-past midnight. I decided to spend those few hours in Lyon Part-Dieu; I was probably making a big mistake. Above the bus station proper rises a hypermodern structure in glass and steel, with four or five levels linked by stainless steel escalators which are activated at the least approach; nothing save luxury shops (perfume and cosmetics, haute couture, gadgets) with absurdly aggressive window displays; nothing for sale that might prove remotely useful. All around there are monitors which broadcast pop promos and adverts; and, of course, permanent background music consisting of the latest Top 50 hits. At night the building is invaded by a gang of vagrants and semiderelicts. Filthy, wretched creatures, brutish and completely dull-witted, who live in blood, hate, and their own excrement. They gather at night, like huge flies on shit, around the deserted luxury shops. They move in packs, the solitude in this place being all but fatal. They remain in front of the video monitors, blankly absorbing the advertising images. Sometimes they strike up a quarrel, get their knives out. From time to time a dead body is found in the morning, throat cut by his mates.

I strolled all night among the creatures. I was completely unafraid. Partly out of provocation, I even made a show of drawing out all the money remaining on my Visa from a cashpoint. One thousand four hundred francs in notes. A handsome prize. They watched me, watched me long and hard, but no one tried to speak to me or even get any closer than three metres.

Around six in the morning I gave up on my plan; I took a TGV in the afternoon.

The night of 31 December will be hard. I feel as if things are falling apart within me, like so many glass partitions shattering. I walk from place to place in the grip of a fury, needing to act, yet can do nothing about it because any attempt seems doomed in advance. Failure, everywhere failure. Only suicide hovers above me, gleaming and inaccessible.

Around midnight I feel something like a muted parting of the ways; there's something painful going on inside. I no longer understand anything.

A clear improvement on January the first. My state approaches something like stupor; this is no bad thing.

In the afternoon I make an appointment with a psychiatrist. There's a system of urgent psychiatric appointments by Minitel; you tap in your schedule, they supply you with the practitioner. All very practical.

Mine is called Doctor Népote. He lives in the 6th arrondissement; like a lot of psychiatrists, I get the feeling. I arrive at his place at 7.30. The fellow looks like a psychiatrist to a striking degree. His library is impeccably arranged; there's neither African mask nor first edition of Sexus; he's not a psychoanalyst, then. On the other hand it looks like he subscribes to Synpase. This seems an excellent omen.

The episode of the abortive trip to the Ardèche appears to interest him. With a bit of digging, he succeeds in making me admit that my parents were Ardéchois in origin. So now he's on the track: according to him I'm in search of `signs of identity'. All my shiftings about, he generalizes audaciously, are so many `quests for identity'. It's possible; I rather doubt it, though. My professional trips, for example, are obviously something imposed on me. But I don't want to discuss it. He has a theory, which is fine by me. After all it's always better to have a theory.

Somewhat bizarrely, he goes on to question me about my work. I don't get it; I'm unable to grant his question real importance. That's clearly not the issue here.

He defines his thinking precisely, in speaking to me of the `possibilities for social rapport' offered by the job. I burst out laughing, much to his surprise. He gives me another appointment for Monday.

The next morning I phone my company to say I've had a `slight relapse'. They seem mightily pissed-off about it.

A weekend without drama; I sleep a lot. It astonishes me that I'm only thirty; I feel much older.

3

The first incident, the following Monday, occurred around two p.m. I saw the guy approaching a long way off, I felt a slight wave of sadness. It was someone I liked, a nice man, though highly unfortunate. I knew he was divorced, that he'd been living alone with his daughter for some time now. I also knew he was drinking a bit too much. I had no wish to mix him up in all this.

He came up to me, said hello and asked me for the details of a programme that apparently I should know about. I burst into sobs. He beat a hasty retreat, nonplussed, a bit bewildered; he even apologized, I think. He really had no need to apologize, the poor sod.

I ought to have left right then, obviously; we were alone in the office, there'd been no witnesses, the whole thing could still be sorted out in a relatively decent manner.

The second incident occured around an hour later. This time the office was full of people. A girl came in, cast a disapproving glance at the assembled company and finally chose to address herself to me, to tell me I was smoking too much, that it was insupportable, that I clearly had no regard for others. I replied with a pair of slaps to the face. She looked at me, she too slightly bewildered. Evidently she wasn't used to this; I surmised that she couldn't have received enough smacks as a kid. For a second I wondered if she wasn't going to slap me in return; I knew that if she did I'd burst into sobs right away.

There's a pause, then she says, 'But...', her lower jaw idiotically agape. By now everyone has turned towards us. A tremendous silence has descended on the office. I turn away and in a loud voice I proclaim, to nobody in particular, 'I've got an appointment with a psychiatrist!' and I leave. The death of a professional.

Besides it's true, I do have an appointment with the psychiatrist, but there are still something like three hours to go. I will spend them in a fast food joint, shredding the cardboard packaging of my hamburger. Without real method, so that the final result proves disappointing. A shredding pure and simple.

Once I've recounted my little fantasies to the practitioner he puts me on leave of absence for a week. He even asks me if I wouldn't like to take a short break in a rest home. I reply that no thanks, I'm afraid of mad people.

A week later I go back to see him. I’ve nothing much to say; I do manage a few sentences, though. Reading his spiral notebook upside-down I see he's jotted

'Ideational decline'. Huh, huh. According to him, then, I seem to be on the way to becoming an imbecile. It's a theory.

From time to time he glances at his wristwatch (fawn leather strap, rectangular goldplated face); I get the feeling of not overly interesting him. I ask myself if he keeps a revolver in his drawer, for patients in a state of violent crisis. At the end of half an hour he pronounces a few phrases of general import on periods of blankness, extends my leave of absence and increases my dosage of medication. He also reveals that my condition has a name: it's a depression. Officially, then, I'm in a depression. The formula seems a happy one to me. It's not that I feel tremendously low; it's rather that the world around me appears high.

The next morning I go back to my office; my head of department wishes to see me to `take stock'. As I expected, he has returned from his stay in Val d'Isère extremely suntanned; but I make out a few fine wrinkles at the corners of his eyes; he is a little less handsome than my recollection of him. I don't know why, but I'm disappointed.

I inform him right away that I'm
in a depression
; he is stunned, then recovers. After this the conversation drones on pleasantly for half an hour, but I know that from now on it's as if there's an invisible wall between us. He will never again consider me as an equal, nor as a possible successor; in his eyes I no longer even really exist; I have forfeited all rights. In any case I know they're going to get rid of me as soon as my two months of legal sick leave are up; it's what they always do in cases of depression; I've seen it happen before.

Within the limits of these constraints he acquits himself rather well, he tries to make excuses for me. At a certain moment he comes out with:

-In this line of work we are sometimes put under terrible pressure ...

-Oh, not really, I reply.

He gives a start as if he were waking up, brings the conversation to an end. He will make one last effort and accompany me to the door, yet keeping at a safe distance of two metres, as if he were afraid I might suddenly puke all over him. He ends with,

`Well, get some rest then, take all the time you need.'

I leave. Here I am, a free man.

4

The Confession of Jean-Pierre Buvet

The subsequent weeks have left me the memory of a gradual decline, interspersed with acutely painful phases. Apart from the psychiatrist I was seeing nobody; I was going out after nightfall to buy cigarettes and sliced bread. One Saturday evening, though, I received a phone call from Jean-Pierre Buvet; he seemed tense.