Doppelgänger

by Daša Drndic

  I’m a little white weasel in a traveling cage. The cage has a handle and is easy to carry. It has bars I look out through. Through which I sniff the outside world. It could not be said that I am imprisoned. No. I’m not imprisoned. The little white weasel came of its own accord. I close the door from inside and I can go out whenever I wish. Sometimes I do. I dream in the cage. In the cage I sometimes grow, sometimes I shrink. When I grow, I grow big as a horse. I become a big horse, a transparent horse, I become a glass horse, fragile, invisible. But big. When I shrink, I become a cicada.

  The lair is that hiding-­place in the park behind the fortress, near the zoo. During the day, Printz walks, at night he reads. He reads his notes, the torn-­out pages from books, all that he managed to bring with him. He reads by candlelight, Printz bought a heap of candles for reading. When it gets cold,

  it’s not cold yet, it’s still spring, then summer will come, then autumn, winter’s a way off

  when it gets cold, Printz goes to reading rooms. To the city reading rooms, local and foreign, there are foreign reading rooms in the city, it is a big city. There is a French, a British and a German reading room. The German reading room is named after Goethe. In the city there are several reading rooms of various kinds. It is warm in doctors’ surgeries as well. In the surgeries Printz waits in line. As he waits, he reads. Sometimes he sleeps. Printz takes care of his health. He has his blood pressure measured. He monitors his blood count. Monitors his eyesight. Sight is important to Printz, very important, because of reading. Sometimes Printz buys vitamins. He buys foreign vitamins, he does not want to buy locally produced vitamins. He does not know why.

  Don’t throw away your old newspapers, Printz says to the women in the reading rooms. In all the reading rooms, the employees are women. In both the foreign and local reading rooms, nothing but women. Give me your old newspapers.

  Printz uses the old newspapers to line his lair, his shoes and in winter, his body. Printz is also given magazines with headlines in color. Magazines are too short for lining the lair but the color headlines are nice because they do not leak ink. They are foreign magazines.

  Over and over again.

  For five years.

  For five years.

  For five years.

  Five years.

  Five.

  Printz knows what is happening in the world. He keeps up. He keeps up with wars and he keeps up with culture. And the discovery of the human genome. And extra-­uterine conception. Sperm donors. He keeps up with insanity. With everything. That is why he is not like anyone else, he is special. Pupi.

  He visits the animals. He does not converse with them. No.

  I’d like to have a laptop. Battery-­driven.

  When it is warm and dry outside, Printz goes barefoot. He still has those Florsheim shoes, the black ones, brogues. Florsheim shoes are indestructible.

  I’ve got some Bally loafers as well, I’m saving them.

  Printz has a pair of Bally shoes hidden under a heap of newspapers in his residential hole in the park.

  When I get back on my feet, I’ll buy some Paciotti boots. Two pairs.

  Printz goes to exhibitions. Printz knows that he will not see Maristella at those exhibitions. Maristella is at other exhibitions, far away,

  but not that far away

  nevertheless, Printz goes to exhibitions, almost regularly, in autumn and spring. Not in winter. Exhibitions open when it gets dark and from the street, they look cinematic because they have large display windows, brightly lit. Inside, the exhibitions contain some people Printz knows. Printz endeavors to go to the exhibitions spruced up but his Burberry has seen better days. His Burberry is full of wine and burek pie stains, Printz adores burek pies, especially meat ones because of the onion taste. Afterward, he belches.

  I sometimes have stomach problems.

  His beige Burberry is crumpled, in fact it is already an old raincoat, the hem has come undone and hangs down. Its collar is greasy, really greasy, black. Printz is paid a small pension, small. It sometimes happens, when he calls around for it, for his pension, that it is not in the mailbox. It sometimes happens that he just finds a little note, saying: We borrowed your pension, we’ll return it next month. Herzog. It sometimes happens that they do not return it. Then difficult days, months, ensue. Nonetheless, when he goes to exhibitions, Printz cuts his nails. When he does not go to exhibitions, he does not cut his nails, they are long and dirty. But Printz has his hair cut regularly. Mostly regularly. His hair has thinned. He is not bald, his hair has just thinned. Printz will not go bald, he is one of those people who do not go bald. Printz has two Pierre Cardin shirts, white. They are worn out too, especially the collars and cuffs, but on the whole they are clean, even pressed, on the whole. He has retained that from his past, cleanliness in clothes and body although he has increasingly frequent lapses. When sadness comes over him, then he lapses, then Printz looks terrible.

  What kind of sadness?

  Planetary. Familial. Personal.

  That’s claptrap. I’ve changed my theory of life, I’ve recognized my priorities.

  He has changed his theory of life, he has recognized his priorities.

  Printz takes his shirts to a laundry, with his underpants, which are also washed out and torn, with holes in them. When he does not go to exhibitions, Printz does not wear white shirts, no way. He has a cotton T-­shirt, gray-­black, anthracite. Printz likes the gray-­black color and he is fond of his dirty T-­shirt, he is fond of it.

  Yes.

  Besides, before he falls asleep in his lair, Printz twists the ends of that T-­shirt. That is a hangover from his past as well, from his childhood. He twists a bit of hair, a bit of the edge of his T-­shirt and falls asleep. On the newspapers.

  So, at exhibitions, Printz does not look like a vagrant, no. Only he does not wear socks. Printz does not wear socks and that looks odd, especially in winter, but in the winter he does not go to exhibitions so there is no one to wonder about it. It is only at exhibitions that Printz might come across a familiar face. He avoids the other places where he might come across a familiar face. Nonetheless, not wearing socks gives Printz away. Not wearing socks suggests that perhaps something should be done. Wearing shoes on bare feet might be fashionable in summer, but not in winter. At public gatherings, some people give Printz a wide berth. Some do not. Some observe him although they pretend they have not seen him, they watch him surreptitiously, head down. Because, there is a difference, there is. Printz today and before, those are irreconcilable images, irreconcilable. And the city is not exactly so big that people do not know each other. Some people.

  Don’t talk crap.

  At exhibitions they serve canapés with red or black caviar, there is champagne. Printz likes that. Printz has refined taste, educated taste. It just happened that way. At exhibitions there is Roquefort and Camembert. There are slices of smoked salmon coiled into little flowers, into little fishy roses. There is roast beef, dark pink inside, as it should be, sometimes there are slices of Wellington, prawns with sauce or without, sometimes mignon,

  I don’t eat mignon

  there is excellent wine, from the islands, what are you doing, Pupi?

  Psshht.

  Printz takes two unopened bottles of wine and tucks them into the inner pocket of his Burberry. That is intolerable! Printz takes a bottle of red and a bottle of white.

  so they won’t be missed.

  The bottles clink like small bells, softly. They clink in Pupi’s inside pocket. Printz:

  So what! Althusser used to steal. He stole small things around the shops of Brittany.

  Althusser. It would be better for Printz not to mention Althusser. Althusser killed his wife Hélène Rytmann, he suffocated her while massaging the vertebrae in her neck. Then he spent three years in hospital.

  Althusser did not kill Rytmann. He helped her to kill he
rself because she wanted to kill herself. After that Althusser lost some of his reputation and influence. But his former students, Balibar and Rancière, did not reject him, no. Philosophers are lonely creatures Althusser used to say, he could never understand what people saw in Foucault’s definition of insanity. Foucault was Althusser’s former student too. Foucault was therefore younger than Althusser, but he died before him, Althusser. They were both bipolar. Foucault died in 1984, bald. Althusser was born in 1918. Rikard was born in 1918. Rikard is my father. Althusser died before my father. My father is called Rikard. He is dead. Althusser died in 1990, and Rikard five or six years later. Foucault was born in 1926. He was fifty-­eight when he closed his eyes. He closed his eyes forever in hospital. That sounds good: closing one’s eyes forever. Foucault died of AIDS and shaved his head like Yul Brynner who died of cancer. After Brynner’s death, the Yul Brynner Foundation was set up for the treatment of carcinoma of the head and neck. Althusser does not have a foundation named after him. Nor does Foucault. They did not die of cancer. Yul Brynner was born on the island of Sakhalin, in Russia. Yul Brynner had Romani blood, he played the balalaika in a Paris nightclub and was a trapeze artist. Yul Brynner studied for a while at the Sorbonne. It is possible that Althusser and Brynner passed one another in the streets of Paris and it is possible that they did not. When Foucault appeared, Brynner was already in America, so the two bald men could not have met. Yul Brynner was better looking than Foucault. Now they are both dead. Foucault died of AIDS and Brynner of cancer. Sorry? I’ve already said that? Foucault had various lovers, and Umberto Eco wrote a novel Foucault’s Pendulum which has nothing to do with Michel Foucault but is about the physicist Jean-­Bernard-­Léon Foucault from the 19th century. Michel Foucault belonged to the 20th century. Umberto Eco recently published a new novel Baudalino. The action takes place in Alessandria, Eco was born in Alessandria and Baudalino was the protector of that little town, which is incidentally where Borsalino hats come from. Alessandria was famous for its good-­looking girls. Alessandria is in Lombardy. Serbian officers from the Austro-­Hungarian army serving in barracks in Lombardy used to go to Alessandria. They went to look for women as the little town was known for its good-­looking girls. I’m not married.

  Printz is standing in the middle of a gallery talking. It is impossible to stop him. Printz has not spoken for a long time, not to anyone, to no one, for a very long time, and now he is exploiting the opportunity. If they wish, these people can listen to him, if they do not, they can go. He will talk, he will talk as long as his thoughts keep coming, Printz has a lot of thoughts, those are perfectly okay coherent thoughts, they are often intelligent thoughts, Printz knows that.

  I haven’t slept for a long time. A week. That’s why I’m talking.

  Some guests are smiling with evident discomfort on their faces, they shift from foot to foot, some pick leftovers from the table, others pay no attention to Printz, they converse as though he was not there. Printz still has no intention of stopping. Whenever the clamor increases, he raises his voice. In a corner someone with a mobile phone calls an ambulance. What shall we do with him?

  With whom?

  As soon as structuralism became fashionable, Althusser took it up with enthusiasm. In addition, Althusser was a member of the French Communist Party. Later he persuaded Foucault to sign up. Althusser joined the Party in 1948 and Foucault in 1950. Both of them later signed out. 1948 was an awkward year, the year of the Informbiro. My father Rikard did not mess up. In hospital they stuffed Althusser with drugs that were not innocuous. They told him, “Mr. Althusser, you are a manic-­depressive, you are bipolar.” Althusser said: “What can be done, I was born in Algeria.” Althusser was born in Algeria. He was a Marxist who criticized Marx. He rejected the Marxist theory of economic determinism; he rejected the idea that economic systems determined the organization of society, its political and intellectual reality. For Althusser, Marxism was not a moral philosophy concerned with man’s alienation in capitalism and his salvation in socialism, no. Althusser saw Marxism as an anti­humanist science. Althusser wrote a lot about the relationship between art and ideology; about the relationship between the individual and institutions. According to Althusser, man is an ideological being, man is shit, therefore ideology, or ideological state apparatuses, influence all aspects of society, including art.

  These paintings of yours are naked ideology, pernicious and hollow. This art of yours is no good! says Printz, in fact he is already shouting.

  The ambulance does not come. Printz carries on. Now he is going to toss Foucault in, obviously.

  Do you know what ideology is? It’s an activity that permeates the whole of society; all groups and all classes participate in it voluntarily. That’s why it’s impossible to overthrow tyrants and dictators, that’s why. That’s why tyrants endure, for at least ten years, but they always carry on longer than that, far longer. If they don’t die of cancer. Or heart problems. Or old age. What do you mean repression? Repression is your choice, your food. Your pictures. You are inside. If you want to get out, prisons, madhouses, and hospitals await you. Now we’ve come to Foucault, the unfortunate Foucault who could not stand his father, the surgeon. My father was a chemist. There’s no genuine knowledge. Knowledge is determined by power, power manages knowledge. The humanist, ostensibly reforming institutions of the nineteenth century, were despotic institutions. They subordinated their spirit to the surveillance of cultural norms. Various technologies control our mind and body. That’s what Foucault maintains, not me. I agree. Althusser persuaded Foucault to join the communist party. He fucked up. The communists said that homosexuality was a vice and consequence of bourgeois decadence. One of Foucault’s lovers was the composer Jean Barraqué. Foucault adored the word archaeology. Everything was archaeology to him. He was forever digging.

  Has someone called an ambulance? When it comes, they will take me to a madhouse, and a madhouse — this is what Foucault says — is a place where people are accused, where they are judged, a place out of which there is no escape without repentance. I shall not repent. In a madhouse, madness is punished even when that madness is completely innocuous outside the madhouse. Like mine. My father was a chemist. He was called Rikard. He agreed to give his chemistry a political status and his chemistry became the faithful servant of ideology. Power models our souls. Look at yourselves! I was punished by my father. I had to kneel. Kneeling is like penitence. I knelt for hours with my face turned toward the corner of a room, not to the wall, but a corner. On maize kernels. I had to apologize. I had to say forgive me, I did wrong, forgive me. He sent me to bed without supper. When I did not agree with my father, even if that disagreement was about some chemical question, insignificant, because chemical questions are on the whole insignificant, I am a chemist too, but I didn’t want to be a chemist, so when I didn’t agree with Rikard, he would say: “I’ll pierce your tongue with needles. I’ll pierce your tongue with needles.” With needles. How many needles did he have in mind? How much of the surface of my tongue did he intend to pierce with needles, how much? Did he intend to leave those needles in my tongue, leave them sticking out of it until he decided to remove them? How deeply did he intend to push those needles into my tongue? There is a lot a blood in a tongue. The tongue bleeds when it is injured, but it does not bleed for long, that’s one good thing, that’s the good thing about a bloody tongue. Saliva stops the blood, saliva is antiseptic, it coats the tongue so it doesn’t bleed for long. The tongue stretches deep into the throat. My father didn’t pierce my tongue with needles, but he said he was going to. There, that’s Foucault. Where’s that ambulance? I’m tired.

  At the hospital, Printz tells the doctor: Everything’s under control. Give me a bed. I’ll be good, I’ll be quiet.

  Printz sleeps for 72 hours without stirring. He sleeps for as long as he had stayed awake without a break. Now he was back in form.

  I’m as good as new.

  Don’t worry, sa
ys the doctor. Now you’re good as new. Do a bit more walking.

  But, Printz is worried. He’s worried because he can feel an attack of satyriasis coming on, he has occasional attacks of satyriasis. When the attacks pass, Printz is calm for a long time, there is nothing, no urges. Indeed, Printz is then largely dead, as far as urges go.

  Sexually speaking, insects have the most staying power. They stay conjoined for several hours and as soon as they separate, they die. Cicadas are insects. There is a type of insect as small as a grain of rice, they’re known as love­bugs (Plecia nearctica), because most of them are in Florida. They only live for 150 hours and spend 56 of those hours conjoined, without a pause.

  Printz’s attacks of satyriasis are paltry compared to the urge and potency of some animals. So, it is stupid for Printz to get upset, to be worried, he knows that. It is stupid that the doctor says take up sport and go to concerts, he always says that, he’ll say it today as well. When chimpanzees have an attack of satyriasis, they fuck 60 times a day. Lions screw up to 30 times a day, sables 30 times in 18 hours, rats shag up to 500 times in 6 hours, pheasants — 100 times in 12 hours, and bulls hump 30 times a day.

  Of course, all these animals do not fornicate constantly. They bonk intensively satyriatically, only when they are imprisoned, when they live in zoos, when they are bored and when it is the season for mating, only then.

  I feel like fucking something, says Printz.

  Go to a concert. If possible a piano or violin recital. Piano and violin recitals are soothing. Avoid orchestral concerts. That’s what the doctor tells Printz.

  Violins irritate me, says Printz. They remind me of my life.

  There are a lot of lives like yours, it isn’t anything terrible. The doctor does not give up. The doctor is a completely modern type. Cole Porter, for instance . . .

  Cole Porter fell off a horse, he had his right leg amputated, after a manic spell, he fell into a depression and he was rich, says Printz.