Trio

by Robert Pinget

  Robert Pinget

  • BETWEEN FANTOINE AND AGAPA

  VISHNU TAKES HIS REVENGE

  The curé of Fantoine is an amateur. He hasn’t much of a gift for God. He’s bored. He subscribes to theater magazines. He dips into the fashionable authors. He gleans in learned vineyards. He passes for a scholar, but he’s a rotter.

  The Fantoine belfry dates from the ninth century. It is extremely stylish. It’s a pity that it goes for walks at night. It can’t read. It visits the church, the village, the environs. You get used to its moods.

  The inhabitants of Fantoine are hopeless. They drink. They work. They drink. Their children are epileptic, their wives pregnant.

  The Fantoine postman is a wag. When he goes to the café he orders a vermouth. The proprietor asks him: “Dry?” He answers: “No; wet.” It’s always the same. When he’s finished it he goes out, saying: “Love and kisses, see you soon.” An epistolary convention.

  The Fantoine crocodiles are stuffed. The cows are made of white-wood. The haylofts mumble. At midday, they shout from one street to the next, they strangle the hens, they cut the calves’ throats.

  But the curé of Fantoine is bored. Luckily, someone from Agapa-la-Ville takes an interest in him and sends him a book on Cambodia. The curé buries himself in it. He’s no longer bored. He teaches himself the Khmer language. He says: “Ban, La’a, Ke mien, Yuo, Kandiet, Pisa bay, Pisa Kraya.” Likewise Khmer mythology. He says: “Vishnu, Lakshmana, Bama, Baksava Viradha, Sita, Hanuman.” Likewise Khmer art. He says: “Angkor Wat, Bayon, Neak Pean, Naga, Nang Sbek, Bam-Vong, Bam Khbach, Sayam.”

  The Fantoine belfry no longer goes for walks at night. It listens to the curé divagating.

  The inhabitants of Fantoine become interesting: they ape the royal dancing girls.

  The forest of Fantoine becomes populated with yak demons, with Mrinh Kangveal spirits, with Banra trees. Paddy-fields cover the country. The Mekong river carries alluvial deposits.

  The sacrilege is complete.

  It was at this point that the curé of Fantoine made a mistake during the Consecration and said: “Hic est enim corpus Yak” …

  A gigantic demon sprang out of the Host, dispatched the curé, and pulverized the church.

  And Vishnu the Eternal deigned to smile.

  UBIQUITY

  “One day, a certain person happened to be in a certain place — Manhattan, let’s say.” No, that won’t do. We must say: “A horse dealer happened to be in Bucharest just at the moment when … ” I’d prefer: “In Vaugirard, one rainy day, my wife … ” No. The simplest is:

  Once upon a time sometime, in Manhattan, a person who was a horse dealer in Bucharest just at the moment when Vaugirard was annexed to Paris, in the rain, my wife …

  The result is that people don’t understand. If they are determined to look for a meaning they’ll more or less grasp that it’s a question of one and the same person. Now such is not the case. It’s a question of several persons who were each several persons, in different places at the same moment. It’s impossible to say this synthetically and with precision. One can only suggest synchronism by enumerating and linking propositions together by adverbial phrases. But the effect would be spoiled. A story must make an immediate impression. Never mind, to hell with elegance, I’ll tell it just the same.

  One day in 1860, the date of the annexation of Vaugirard to Paris, at the very moment of the signature of the document, a lady who lived in Manhattan took the boat for Bucharest where she had been working as a horse dealer for two years, and waited for me near the Medici fountain.

  At the same moment a Bucharest horse dealer, a real flesh and blood horse dealer who had lived in the town for two years and who was not to budge from it until his death, left Manhattan and waited for me in the rain in Paris.

  At the same moment my future wife, who was waiting for me in the Luxembourg Gardens and was furious because I was late, sold a packhorse in Bucharest and left Manhattan.

  So far, it’s clear. I must now say that the person from Manhattan was going to Bucharest to visit the horse dealer. The horse dealer was waiting for her. My future wife, at the fountain, was waiting for herself between the two of them. When the person had arrived in Bucharest and gone into the horse dealer’s premises—the latter was therefore visiting himself—the person kissed herself on the mouth, my wife did both (I was married by this time), and all three were in my bed.

  I may add that my wife was the person from Manhattan, whom I met six months later and whom I had arranged to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens on the day of the annexation of Vaugirard. Given that while she was waiting for me she was thinking of her departure from Manhattan and of her Bucharest horse dealer, it follows on the other hand that she must have been present at the fountain six months later, for she was madly in love with me. Love does things like that, and many others, that’s a platitude. As for the horse dealer, he knew beforehand that he’d be jealous six months later. Hatred has the same effect: so he was present at the Medici fountain right from the start. My wife and her lover, when they met in Bucharest and found themselves at the same time in my bed. … But I won’t dwell on it, it’s crystal-clear.

  BARAMINE

  Miss Goldwick-Baramine’s guests were late. She wandered around her apartment, checking that every object was in its place—this was important to her, as you will see. She slid open the glass door in the hall, which gave onto the underground River Menseck; not long ago it was unknown, but she owned half its course. Menseck!

  Miss Bara had been a great sportswoman in her youth, and she had a passion for speleology. From the sporting point of view at first, but later from that of science. The fashion for caves, in both the literary and plastic arts, was then unknown. It was the discoveries of the speleologists that created it. Miss Goldwick, with some of her friends, was the first to embark on the adventure of the grottoes. This was the result of a wager.

  The “Fifth Club,” of which she was a member, was inquiring into the childhood of its members, to pass the time at their evening meetings. When Miss Bara began her story one day, everyone’s attention was riveted. Obviously, a tale that begins: “I was born on a dunghill in Krasnodar. My mother was probably a Georgian. My father, who was a descendant of Valerius Flaccus, had abandoned her in Pomerania … ” is bound to arouse interest. Miss Baramine never tried to make an impression, no, never. She was simple and straightforward. Her confession, which she disclosed the way one peels an orange, gradually revealed a dramatic existence. At the age of fourteen, in a factory that made mousetraps, a Kalmuk workman had violated her on a steel plate. Sickened, she had run away. She had lived for more than eight years in quarries in the Urals, feeding on Jupiter’s beard. This diet had caused her physiognomy and her whole person to become so mannish that she took a job as a railroad mechanic, and trafficked secretly in diamonds and magnesium. Next she became an innkeeper in Calabria, then a torturer in a prison, then the mother of two stillborn dogs, and finally the owner of a passport found in the sub-office of an embassy. At twen- ty-six, having come into an inheritance from one of the passport’s relations, she settled in Menseck. This was when she was introduced to the club.

  After this story, her friends wanted to put her to the test: she was to lead a roped party of four people and climb the north face of the Menseck peak. Miss Bara did so, with her comrades. Halfway up the rock face she called a halt. She had observed a deep crevice on their right. Her partners agreed to go down it. No one suspected the importance of this rift. Abseiling by stages, they arrived at the bottom. The rift was the exit of a series of linked galleries which the explorers took twenty days to traverse. On the twenty-first day they arrived at the underground river.

  For ten years without a break they prospected this chasm and its side-branches. Through their abnegation they became the pioneers of modern speleology. The account of these ten years of research and work can today be found in every library.

  Miss Goldwick-Baramine had a granite bungalo
w built on the river bank and, at the age of thirty-six, she settled there for good. She had found the habitat that suited her.

  The spirit of mortification that she had inherited from her mother gradually surfaced in her: “I must expiate,” she said, “I must expiate my turbulent youth.” People recognized in this the exaltation characteristic of her race, for one could just as easily say that all she had done with her youth was to suffer it. But it was in vain that they found excuses for her. She persisted. As these years of retirement went by, her ideal became deformed. Having judged her former exploits absurd, and stigmatized their realism as horrible, (she said “howwible,” barely pronouncing the two w’s), she perched herself, if we may so put it, on the extreme point of an abstruse irreality. She paced over subliminal distances, inhaled cosmic vapors, sustained herself on pulped clay, in one-gram doses, and on the moisture oozing from the stalactites.

  Nevertheless, her mannish nature suffered a convulsive movement. At the age of forty-five, Miss Bara finally became unhappy. She wrestled with her chimeras and her underground habits.

  It was in this frame of mind that she was preparing to entertain her friends that day. They didn’t come. She went out onto the bank. She reached a secret stairway and climbed up it.

  Her friends were waiting for her in the sun, on a terrace in Saint- Cloud.

  SUICIDA, -AE, M OR F

  By following the abscissa from the point 1317, Mahu emerged onto a lawn where a cat was lying in wait for a wood pigeon. He sat down, interested by this stratagem. His chair was resting against a prunus tree; he moved it a little and observed that the lowest branch of the tree was in line with the coordinate axis. But he didn’t want to think about it. The time was comfortable. The cat intrigued him.

  After a moment he saw, sticking up through the grass, some fingers holding some wires. The wires converged towards the cat. They were manipulating it. Mahu was disappointed. These outdated images annoyed him: they were the negation of freedom. The scene had lost all interest. Mahu stood up and said to the other people who, like him, were watching: “It’s full of fingers.” The others counted on their hands. They understood, and turned their backs on the spectacle.

  “Victory,” thought Mahu. And he sat down again. The lowest branch was now in line with the axis of the abscissa. So he must have changed chairs, and now be mentally locating point 1317 in relation to the ordinate. A simple geometrical theorem comprises many corollaries.

  Mahu was relaxing when someone touched him on the shoulder. He turned around and saw a group of statues. “It’s not possible,” he said to himself, “they weren’t there just now; let’s not be a fool.” But the statues were coming closer. Mahu kicked a bronze Hercules. His foot cracked from the inner cuneiform to the astragalus. The Hercules murmured: “Well, well!” Furious, Mahu stood up and exhorted the sightseers to pass along there, please. His task was facilitated: he only had to point to the statues. They obeyed him, and were soon persuaded.

  Mahu reacted further by deliberately deriving another corollary from his problem. “Given that the lowest branch starts at point 1317, determine its coordinates.” That changed the picture. On the line Y'' Y''', at one sixth of the distance from the new 1317 to the intersection of the axes, he marked a point which he very arbitrarily named S. Then, lowering the perpendicular, he put his chair down. He was not surprised to find himself thus raised to the level of the lowest branch, maybe because this branch was strictly parallel with the first level, but especially because no one is ever mathematically surprised. Seen from above, the lawn was in the form of a hexagon. This reassured him. He relaxed again.

  This time, all the termini of the subway, as dishevelled and aggressive as the Furies, bit him on the thighs. Mahu howled, but out of vexation. After all, it is extremely annoying not to be able to get a bit of rest when you feel like it. But he didn’t acknowledge defeat, he went back to his calculations, repositioned his chair, and so on until the park closed.

  On his way home he went down the wrong street. Fatigue. The window of a bookshop brought him to a halt. Among the visible titles, he read the following: “Formula absolutionis ad usum suicidarum.” Flabbergasted, he went in and bought the book. Its imprimatur was on the flyleaf.

  All night long he annotated the text. The next day he’d got the formula off by heart. That evening, without even thinking, he recited it. The penknife with which he was about to cut a slice of bread plunged itself, of its own accord, between his two eyes.

  VELLEITIES

  Amused, the lady in the “Tout-Cuit” (short orders, French fries, fast food), says to the yellow customer: “Huh, you look just like Don Quixote!” Whereupon the customer shows her his ring, which is in the form of a windmill: “You don’t know how right you are.” The lady laughs like mad: “And Sancho?” The customer points to another customer, a fat one. The lady laughs a little less heartily. The yellow man takes his bag of French fries and departs. Sancho orders a boiled beef. The lady serves him cautiously. And then a croquette. The lady hesitates. “A croquette,” he repeats. Right, she adds a croquette. “A puree.” Oh-oh, what a bore. The lady ventures: “Wouldn’t you rather have a herring?” He says no. She scrapes a portion up the side of the saucepan. “And some cauliflower!” The lady beckons to a policeman. He grabs the pseudo-Panza, who drops his grub, and takes him off to the police station. The next customers give their orders without turning a hair. The lady can’t see the dishes anymore. She just gropes. She serves blindly.

  At half past one, the kitchen closes. The lady drags herself into the back room and vomits. “I’ve killed him. The season of rings. Cyanide. Didn’t you announce a Mendelssohn concert? Poor beige soprano. It’d be just great if they all carried on that way … ”

  On the sidewalk, in front of the door, a man dying of hunger is lying between the tar and the asphalt. Instanter, DANGER appears on the door. Underneath, can be read: Attempted poisoning. The false Don Quixote, who’s finished his meal, passes the shop again and picks up the starving man. They go to a bistro where the starving man gulps down a sandwich. The yellow customer is as proud as anything. Which makes him quite forget that he’s lost his ring. As it’s Saturday, they play cards.

  At the police station, the little fat man is released, with apologies. He decides to lose weight, so as not to look like Sancho anymore.

  The beige soprano is practicing at her home. She gives a recital three weeks later but her career stops there. A question of cash, of her family, etc. The concert marks the close of the season of rings and the eatery is reopened to customers.

  Rotten season of phony promises, of velleities! If only they did away with it once and for all it would put an end to people having to tremble at what, every ringed day, they saw on naive faces.

  THE CUCUMBERS

  Once upon a time there was a young cucumber, but, well, he wasn’t a bit likeable. He tanned himself. He turned orange-tawny. Always the first on the beach and the last to leave it. He would swell and swell, with half-closed eyes, with provocative peduncle. The cucumbresses were crazy about him. He had a special way of sidling up to you, of rubbing himself against … And what’s more, such enormous veins. … So, well, he was the idol of the beach. Which made the beans dry up. And the viper’s grass die by the kilo. Soon the only things left in the market of this little seaside town were cucumbers. Encouraged by their colleague’s conquests, they proliferated. The police had to impose restrictive measures to control their growth. In spite of this decree, the cucumbers overran the district. They were to be seen everywhere. They climbed up balconies and smothered the nasturtiums; they filled the bathtubs; they rotted in linen baskets.

  “My goodness,” said Mademoiselle Solange to herself one day, “I’m going to have to change my lifestyle. I’m going to have to eat cucumbers in the morning, make Pernod out of cucumbers, scour my pots and pans with cucumber.” And indeed, she did adapt herself. It’s incredible how a beautiful vegetable can hold you at its mercy. Mademoiselle Solange became pregnant b
y a cucumber, and gave birth. The mayor, with his clerk as witness, drew up an official report of the birth. He couldn’t believe his eyes: Mademoiselle Solange, on her bed of suffering, was all cucumber leaves, flowers and fruits.

  At the school, it was a huge joke. Children understand everything. On their way out of school the little girls made the old ladies blush: they pulled up their skirts and exhibited cucumbers, they sucked them all day long.

  As for the boys, we won’t talk about them. They invented a new game: the hooded cucumber. Stuffed with explosives and equipped with a rubber cover, you chuck it at a passerby, where it explodes. If the hood holds out, you’ve won; if not, you’ve lost.

  Monsieur le curé had to preach a sermon on cucumbers. It was a terrific scandal, even though he went no further than the etymological analysis of the word.

  But do you think that the guilty party, the first one, on the beach, was at all put out? Far from it. They let him indulge in his filthy goings-on in the sun for the whole of the season. So he’ll probably start all over again next year.

  THE PUMPKINS

  When the supreme neutron finally settled on the idea of Pumpkin, he couldn’t believe it. It was beyond him. The pumpkins got by very nicely. The neutron vaticinated. The prophetic style certainly suited him. When you consider the number of practical jokes he perpetrated, you can only gawp. Mystifying, that was his forte. And the poor world made mysteries out of these mystifications. Where’s the evidence? No one knows the origin of pumpkins. You can ask the greatest experts if you like—but the answer will invariably be: “It’s a mystery.”