Not a Clue

by Chloé Delaume

  When he was in high school, it used to take Mathias an hour to get into Paris, and all alone in the heat of his quest, on Saturdays and Sundays he took twice as much time or more so he could strategically and spirally go from one bookstore or record store to the next, without ever being sure of a lucky strike. He would’ve liked to have seen his blue-covered aborted texts in one of the magazines littering the shops in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Not so much for the prestige of it, for the silly satisfaction of printed letters, but for the social side, the exchanges, a feeling of community. In Carrières, Mathias never conversed. He broadcasted. Or resisted collective programing. Unilateral movements, repressed fatigue and anger, a yellow ball of blood slipped between his glottis and his esophagus. He started taking courses at Nanterre, convinced that conversations would be a natural part of studying literature, that he’d stop drowning Esther in his torrential references, imagined he’d have unending Norton anthology discussions, and going so far as to dream of having friends he could rip into the latest issue of the geometrically titled review with.

  He was studying at Paris-X-Nanterre (Greater Paris), a train every twenty-five minutes during rush hour, he took the long ramp, a concrete tongue vomited up from the guts of the station, welcomed by being short of breath, greeted by an unobstructed view of the employment center sign, the proximity of the buildings being an Aristotelian irony, a roll of the dice, nothing random. After six months nothing, still nothing. But he’d marked out the territory, double-majored in literature and drama, poetry novels and theater, no literary genre could reasonably evade him, no pimply reader’s profile could escape his gaping demand, the dead would be studied in overcrowded classrooms, the living discovered in the cafeteria, with this prospect exciting him beyond all reason, Mathias had a hard-on all during orientation week. The first day of classes was like a cold shower.

  The undergrad program in drama, since renamed theater studies thanks to Guy Debord, was mostly composed of illiterates who’d discovered within it the unexpected payments that allowed them to obtain parallel parental financing as if they’d registered at an acting school like Juilliard, along with the studio apartment they always described as being in a good location. So almost every single student in the program turned out to be someone whose only goal was to get noticed as quickly as possible, jumped at every occasion to read out loud, or do a presentation, or answer a question—no matter how briefly—as if they were potential casting calls, since all the instructors in the areas studied were actual professionals in the field, usually directors. From the start, Mathias’s eardrums were assaulted by gelatinous tremolos and incredibly pertinent remarks like What I love about Ionesco is the strength of his titles; Sartre’s Les Séquestrés d’Altona’s completely outdated since you can’t understand a thing without the costumes; Saturday I went to see a play by Novarino with Hélène and Pierre, it was so incredible I almost wet myself; or perhaps Shakespeare’s kind of overrated.

  The literature students had the advantage of not inviting him to some ridiculous nightclub where he’d endure a free-form jazz adaptation of Claudel’s Tête d’or [sic] or Beckett’s Endgame in sign language [re-sic] or a montage of some starving Apollinaire’s advertisements recited with accompaniment by a late-middle-aged alcoholic pianist who was sooo cool [re-re-sic], but it still hurt Mathias. It’s noon Charles-de-Gaulle Métro station, the girl who knocks into his suitcase, too fat not to clutter up the aisle block the folding seats the suitcase, reminds him of some stupid girl he dated for three years how much time way too much time Mathias thinks to himself, her habit of putting on makeup without a mirror when I was a teenager I was so self-centered that now I know my face by heart it’s useful for putting on blush without looking and the questions always more questions she never left me alone Does Rimbaud end in t or d I can never remember so fucking stupid any desire was pulverized but what an ass she had but no way no really or maybe by cutting out her tongue yes by cutting out her tongue but when she kept at it I’d imagine the trickle of blood dripping down her speechless but mutilated completely mutilated chin her mouth a pudgy puddle of blood ready to overflow a projection of fresh blood what was her name already it was two or maybe even three years ago that midterm

  can you come over I have your Blanchot I didn’t understand everything but I thought it was really great I wasn’t super-interested but it wasn’t impossible she was just barely a b cup anyway. It’s noon and Mathias is on his way to the Right Bank, it’ll take something like another forty minutes because of the two transfers. It’s noon Mathias’s brain still has room, this is maybe even the moment when it’s the most immense and insatiable, a still unpolluted brain, a still unencumbered brain, a brain still free of future garrotes.

  Left behind, he counts, he ranks in real time what he’s left behind, Carrières-sur-Seine, the studio apartment on boulevard Gambetta, Esther, the university in Nanterre, the part-time window at the Credit Lyonnais in Sartrouville, the rer-a, Marc, Gregory, and Jean, the Café de la Mairie, the banks of the Seine, the bookstore, and that’s when he starts to laugh. He laughs a little too hard and especially in a loud, almost booming voice. According to tradition, Angoulême-leaving Mathiases may not laugh in a loud almost booming voice. There really is more than a just Relais h shop in Angoulême. Literary tradition really must admit that urban sprawl is a horrible thing, a lot more horrible than such a sweet thing as “province.” Mathias’s brain gobbles up the sentence and will mull it over with a bunch of others till he gets to the Strasbourg–Saint-Denis station.

  Mathias Rouault works a lot, really a lot. His brain is more than a machine, it’s a word centrifuge. It gorges itself and then makes them dance to the whims of the carousel assembly, Mathias’s fingers sometimes struggle to keep up with the rhythm, a rhythm that is always fluid, despite some jerky bits, a rhythm so frantic he risks a sprain with every move, Mathias’s keyboard clicks in a lively way, Mathias’s keyboard proves to him that he’s alive, a lot more alive right now, here, beating his keyboard as some would the bushes, pruning his sentences raking up his words plowing through his brain digging white patches into the paragraphs here and there, he’s alive, living proof, his body is the interface, his brain is connected only his brain is reacting, often Mathias says to himself I’m a brain and a penis, just a brain and a penis, but very clearly both.

  Unlike the not-yet-very-distant time when his major organs shared Esther and his little notebook, these days the only thing Mathias strokes is his computer. And not just its keys. He owns a laptop with a slightly soft screen, he likes to touch the words, puts them under his thumb while his pointer lightly presses. I’m touching my words with the tip of my finger, Mathias says. This must be what literary masturbation is, Mathias smiles. Then he goes right back to his smudged chapter. Mathias was happy in his little room under the eaves, using clichés to find the strength he needed to keep at it. At what? A book, obviously. Mathias is happy. Happiness has always made people stupid, which is just and right. What would all the disadvantaged and social outcasts hang onto if the temporary chosen ones also found power sharpness critical reasoning in abundance. Let’s not push it.

  Mathias is reveling in joy. His furnished room is dangerously dilapidated and filthy, it’s an attic room, with Parisian rent and unpredictable heating. One night Mathias watches the birth of frostbite just as Saint Ludwina once watched the bubonic growth on her forehead. Mathias is a boy. It must be noted that as far as superegos and symbolic fathers go male writers are specialists. Mathias is also thinking about famous dead men who, like him on this December night, were freezing to death as they produced a masterpiece. To alleviate his hunger, which by the way could be alleviated with one simple phone call to his mother, his father, his brother, his grandparents, any of the nice people with whom he has an indestructible and completely normal relationship, Mathias is reading Antonin Artaud in a clear, loud voice, swallowing big gulps of fresh air between each line. Mathias says to the friends he’s made in Paris: I’m living on Artaud
. Mathias is anemic and has recently become susceptible to aerophagia.

  Mathias doesn’t have TV. Mathias only reads the literary pages in the few magazines and newspapers where these columns are actually a thoughtful critique and not a long synopsis. So Mathias doesn’t buy very many of them. He doesn’t pay any attention to the reporters’ names, the articles are enough on their own. He’s surprised though to sometimes read about writers adored by Martine Baudouin, the bank manager he worked for at the Crédit Lyonnais in Sartrouville, but hardly ever about writers recommended by his favorite bookshop in Les Abbesses. From time to time Mathias gets his hands on a work whose subtlety, comedic virtue, and analytic acuity had been highly praised in the press, which had made great use of terms like a vitriolic portrait of our society, a whole generation cruelly crushed, or even, our modern world placed in an uncomfortable position with unrivaled panache. Next comes a real feeling of despondency and even profound and very sincere astonishment.

  Mathias prints his manuscript, his first manuscript, while drinking dark, expensive wine. Adénomes et margaritas, Mathias Rouault, 167 pages. As the pages are burped out, he picks them up meticulously, the pile takes shape, another swallow with each page that fattens it, Mathias is dead drunk by the end of the process. Yesterday Mathias confided to Eugène, a new friend, the strategy he plans to use. He’s siphoned three excerpts off Adénomes et margaritas, which he plans to send shortly to three poetry magazines. Mathias is not a poet. He would’ve loved to be, the word breathes a divine tingle down his spine, particularly an outcast poet splendid destiny to be butchered and abused during his lifetime but ashes ultimately canonized in a Norton anthology. Backhand tapping Mathias tames the unruly sheets, then slips the manuscript into a brown envelope that he’ll bring to the Copy-Shop tomorrow. He sees his conversation with Eugène last night: I’ll be the phoenix of these plagued animals, even if no one wants it in a century I know I’ll be understood. Mathias is a little ashamed of letting himself go so far. Luckily Eugène boldly concluded we’ll screw them all just before he cut his forehead open against the corner of the bar.

  In their defense, Mathias and his brain pound words and grind syntax with enough confidence, seriousness, and good faith to be able to present the fruit of their plume to anyone capable of reading it. The three magazines were chosen by default. The last two literary collectives just closed up shop. One due to the founders’ simple choice when faced with the immensity of the work to be done, which Mathias regrets now and will continue to regret for quite some time, his brain vainly watching for the definite and enduring return of what will turn out to be more than a simple magazine: a real anthology. The other due to horrible tangles with a published author whose words reminded Mathias and everybody else with any common sense of the exploits and opinions of Robert Michu, the owner of the betting bar Les Bons Amis in Vitrolles near Aix-en-Provence. There remain a few old members of the rearguard that a pen pusher trainee who loves neither Kundera, Edouard Balladur, or Castel could gladly do without. Mathias therefore has his heart set on La Revue Noire, Musette, and LIADJ. They all combine poetic practice and experimental, philosophical, or literary texts, the excerpts Mathias chose are in the image of the whole manuscript: precise, unbridled language, that uses the story as neither a pretext nor a hostage, pure words but no wordiness, a unique tongue with its cankers showing. Mathias’s texts aren’t short stories, and they’re certainly not poignant, inoffensive little slices of life like the current critics seem to enjoy so much. Even uprooted from their matrix, they’re still autonomous little laboratories. Submitting them is the first part of the plan (Phase 1).

  Mathias is wearing a T-shirt, which he hates. He hates springtime’s last gasps because of his skinny arms, they still disgust him despite the passing of years. His bones are so visible, his two sharp-bowed arms linked cartilage-elbowed bones, revealing your skeleton to everyone verges on indecency, thinks Mathias every summer, it’s like I’m showing everyone my corpse, I’m a Vanitas walking the streets of Paris. Mathias has a meeting at place Saint-Sulpice, at the Marché de la Poésie. Little stands covered in paint even greener than a Granny Smith remind you of lady apples, there’s something enlightening about the look of it. The Marché de la Poésie, pretty, picturesque, so delightful with its bright walkways around the fountain, its bright posters hung here and there, charming little Smurf village, the Marché de la Poésie, the big brother of corniness and kitsch, but there’s nothing like it so a bird in the hand is worth none in the bush, the Marché de la Poésie, the meeting place for poets for those who publish poets for those who read poets for poetry amateurs and amateur poets, a snowball, some Alpine chalets.

  Books aren’t burned in a democracy. People are not gagged in a tender republic. They’re much too polite. The dark force is neutralized by disguising it as a Provençal crèche figurine. There are only two events in Paris that allow publishers of poetry to interact with the public and, in the case of new publishers, with industry professionals: the Salon du Livre, where, given the exorbitant price per square foot, the majority of these publishers wind up at their regional stand—meaning they get to place their titles between La Cuisine périgordienne pour tous and Les Mémoires de Daniel Cusselin: capitaine de gendarmerie—and the Marché de la Poésie. Mathias stops at the snack bar, because there is indeed a snack bar. On the small stage an ageless woman is reciting Leo Ferré. Mathias doesn’t drink his beer at a table. The entire walkway alongside the snack bar is served by the amplifier linked to the mic of the reciter, and with a strong voice she is now reading a poem of her own composition about love, migratory birds, freedom, and Jacques Chirac, with great exaggeration and in rhythmic lines of eight syllables.

  Mathias has an important meeting. The magazines he contacted all replied favorably, their directors are here, the initial contact by mail and phone was cordial. Mathias expects a lot from this meeting in order to move to the second part of his plan (Phase 2). He knows his manuscript can’t be accepted by any of the big publishers, not narrative enough, not formulaic enough. He’s already quit trying to find the crack that’ll let him squeeze into a community, he’s already quit looking for drinking partners, Adénomes et margaritas ten bound copies, Adénomes et margaritas return to sender publisher’s form letter Gallimard Le Seuil POL Minuit Denoël he won’t try Fayard Stock Flammarion Grasset and the others he knows, get information on the small companies the small spaces the micro gaps, Mathias says places likely to Mathias says the publishing priorities Mathias says lots of things like chosen affinities TAZ common enemies similar interests parallel problems complementary practices, but in his brain there’s static because in his brain Voice Number 2 repeats monotone the sample information we’re looking for information.

  Mathias doesn’t like turkey and one day he’d like to be able to tell his father I’m better than you are but I still respect you. Mathias hates turkey and the way it’s cut, inevitably butchered by his father who still can’t remove the breasts. When Mathias and Sébastien aren’t there, their mother subjects the poultry to a slightly excessive cooling off time to save her husband from such torture and the embroidered tablecloth from grease stains. Her sons stand up against the ploy, imperceptibly delighting in the unchanging paternal failure. Mathias takes the yule log out of the fridge and thinks to himself that it’s about time he stands up a bit on his talons. That’s nice but I hope you’re not giving up on your degree because troubadour is not a real job. He’s father has a full mouth and an imposing crest.

  Mathias’s cerebellum said:

  No, your marrow isn’t pure and forever from your throat will sons of bitches belch babble: one is born a cadaver, my darling, one doesn’t become one. I will enter into love as others do into orders and I’ll bash your skull and tear off the rest and you’ll think dawn is an assumption. If I drink every night it’s to better skin myself against the thorny fissure that will bruise us.

  Annabelle Senan (an intern) adds:

  Mathias Roualt is twenty-five yea
rs old. Adénomes et margaritas is his first novel.

  Today on the Pont Alexandre III Mathias has a rather strange taste laminating his throat. His book’s only been out for two months and it’s already disappeared from the bookstore display tables. Letter R shelves, sometimes one copy. The wind pierces his temple, he waivers slightly watching the waters agitate lasciviously, painful gushing. At a discount stall, the barely open pearl gray cover whispers the naive dedication he’d written to some more or less respected popular critic. A determined dagger blade pushes into his heart oozing thick drops of pride. His publisher said you always have to figure about a hundred for the media copies, for us the books go in the loss column but you have to, no choice at all. So Mathias asks, and the clerk tells him to go look on the shelves but for new books it’s about four euros. Mathias thinks about the beer drunk by the critic on the occasion in question and about the other unknowns or established writers who are behind in rounds, maybe even meals for everyone, so many payments receipts minuscule fake expenses paid for by their prose sometimes sold by the kilo. The Seine wasn’t so dirty on the embankments in Carrières.

  The night is more feverish, and Mathias’s fingers are tapping out a fox-trot, his agitated brain initiates another rhythm. Along with the primal anger oppressing his innards a trickle of vinegar covers his mucous membranes. His brain has stopped spinning like a centrifuge, it’s more like a greedy paddle oxidized by bitterness and constantly threatening to the lurch of the breakdown.

  A book and four magazine publications is enough to apply for a Centre National du Livre incentive grant Eugène says to Mathias. The coffee’s bad, Mathias has bronchitis and not enough media coverage to move to the next part (Phase 3). Mathias is having a lot of fun with the magazine crowd. He’s learning a lot too. He’s realized his knowledge of contemporary poetry is a knowledge of modern poetry, for example. Eugène isn’t very interested in Mathias’s discoveries. Eugène wants to be a journalist, he does regular freelance work for a trendy magazine, he wanted to write articles for the Living section but they had all they needed there, the book pages’ publisher liked him though so for six months he’s been a literary critic. He prefers interviews to columns, they lead to lunches with pretty girls who are a little ditzy and often pay the bill. Plus interviews take more space so they pay a lot better. Mathias would have liked to introduce Eugène to his work colleagues but something tells him it’s a better idea not to.