Trio

by Robert Pinget

  But I can tell you how it happened: after the neutron’s failure, the pumpkins took it upon themselves to grow of their own accord. They started to bulge, like bottoms. They existed. There you are.

  But the best of it is that they supplanted the neutron. He’d become deflated, they were the bosses. If we don’t grasp the implications of this phenomenon, we run the risk of understanding nothing about the cosmos. Anyone could have cultivated his own way of seeing, but pumpkins see in the round: they’ve imposed their own vision on the universe. From then on, everything was an excuse for roundness, sphericity, orbicity, ellipsoidicity—and gravitations in general.

  Man in no way escaped the virus. Everything that touches him, from near or from far, cucurbitaces—I mean: belongs to the gourd family, like the pumpkin—starting with the spirals in shells, cow pats, and velodromes, and ending with his own body, which pullulates with oblate spheroids. But it’s in his thoughts that man is really the most pumpkin-headed. He can’t write “in the beginning” without being obsessed by “at the end.” Look at philosophy, where the summum bonum is when you come full circle. You get there, roughly speaking, by sticking on a bit of hope, “in termino speculationis,” and you’ve done the trick.

  There’s no doubt that an antibiotic is within reach. Someone catches an infectious disease such as pride, pomposity, etc., you give him some pumpkin, and he gets well.

  I’m bombarded by ideas, but I still can’t wait to finish this story: like the one about the cucumbers, it is indeed pretty third-rate. How do I know? Self-criticism. Soul-seaching. Vicious circle. Pumpkin.

  I’ll still mention this trivial incident, though: the other day, a schoolboy had a problem that stumped him, so I expounded my theory to him. He applied it to the solution of his problem. Believe it or not, his teacher was fooled and gave him top marks. Ever since, the old idiot himself has been nuts on my doctrine. He’s become incapable of seeing a nicely-rounded behind in a tight-fitting summer dress without getting his hands on it.

  THE PARROT

  Stuck out in the courtyard since time immemorial, Methuselah the parrot never saw a soul—except, sporadically, the concierge, a maid who got herself tumbled by a hawker, and a nun who had got lost on the service stairway. Until the day when a corrosive theme began to haunt him. With no experience of these phenomena, his ears throbbing and deafened with fever, Methuselah soon became no more than a decorative motif on his perch. Some people who had lost their way in the courtyard took him and exhibited him in the market square. This was where his calvary began.

  Serious things should be approached obliquely. He was unaware of this. He judged, too hastily, that the only honest way was to meet them head on. The years passed in the horror of cross-purposes, of rejected passion, of vulgarity.

  People got into the habit of coming to consult him as if he were a third-class prophetess. And, ever scrupulous, he prostituted himself in this service. People flocked around his perch, recipes were transmitted from mother to daughter in the new built-up area. In three hundred years Methuselah was decorated thirty times with all the orders of the magi, the sibyls, and the fortunetellers.

  Nevertheless, the theme plagued him. A wild, heterogeneous orchestration, in which the leitmotif played the paradoxical role of bait, was improvised. It took the form of an internecine conflict which ravaged the city. For absolutely no reason. An illustrated magazine was conducting a survey into the origins of dialogue. Tendentiously, the author of the articles made out a case designed to prove that dialogue was a bastard form of monologue. He insisted on its degenerate character. A monologue, seen from its most abstract angle as “a reflection of oneself”—did that not contain, he asked, all the creative power of spontaneity? When you talk to yourself, your assertions and repartee have a freedom and vigor which any intrusion by a second party immediately eviscerates. The interior monologue, like the primitive forest whose vegetation later spreads over the entire globe, is a concentrate of various forms of expression—amongst which, in particular, is the dialogue—in its original, healthy form.

  When they hear the word “healthy,” which in theory implies “hygienic,” the partisans of dialogue react violently. This stupid allusion, which has nothing to do with the premise, is enough to envenom the argument. The magic power of hygiene! The newspaper supporting the opposing political party retorted that no dialogue could be fully achieved without a confrontation between two people, as this would oblige the parties holding divergent opinions to become incisive and precise; that to speak of a unilateral dialogue was merely to play with words; that the inquiry was simply one more mystification to be held against the newspaper. The latter replied that if one needs an opponent in order to clarify one’s thoughts it is improbable that the said thoughts will be original; and that in any case, in the hypotheses of the Dia party the persuasion factor actually acted as a catalyst, seeing that in the final analysis the fellow with the glib tongue completes his triumph by talking to himself.

  In short, civil war. And one of atrocious cruelty. Once the steak- tracts had been launched, an epidemic of the bacteria of contradiction broke out. Every individual affected by the microbe considered that his arm and his head, his eye and his foot, his navel and his spleen, were irreconcilable. He destroyed himself by tearing out, burning, or vivisecting the contradictory organ.

  Methuselah was physically preserved from the disease, but he contracted it spiritually because of his great porosity. Thus the painful theme became an integral part of the orchestral score, and Methuselah’s identity was realized through the absurd, by the projection of his psyche beyond the confines of parrot identity.

  When the carnage came to an end and Methuselah’s body was discovered intact on its perch, a qualified psychoanalyst equipped with an oscillograph approached it. The currents recorded by the machine traced a graph which was deciphered a thousand years later. Translated, this is what it says:

  “What-I-don’t-understand-is-that- in-spite-of-my-confusion- and-the-absurdity-of-the-world-I-am-still-happy.”

  BETWEEN FANTOINE AND AGAPA

  “Alopecia-impetrating prohibited.” My wife and I came across this notice. This was on our last weekend. We’d taken the tandem, with the tarpaulin, the camping equipment, and the kid on top. We’d gone along the autostrada as usual, but instead of branching off to Fantoine we’d carried on in the direction of Agapa. After riding for a couple of hours we decided to stop. We stopped. We pushed the tandem into a little field to have a nice quiet picnic and we were just going to sit down in the hay when my wife saw the sign. I read it. I wondered whether I wasn’t going haywire. What did it mean? Me and my wife, we aren’t very educated. I work in an office. I met my wife and we got married. The kid came along right away.

  There we were, wondering whether we could sit down or not. My wife said: “Better not. You never know.” But the kid was hungry. So we did sit down, a bit farther on. We didn’t eat it all. It’s my opinion that we were scared slightly shitless. Then we set off again. We hadn’t had anything to drink. We stopped at an inn. My wife was worried. Even though she isn’t very educated, she does sometimes look things up in the dictionary. She asked the innkeeper for one, she gave us a funny look and brought us a Larousse.

  Prohibited, we know what that means. For impetrate, it says: “To obtain from the competent authority.” Alopecia: “Baldness occurring in patches on the scalp.” That already made it more complicated. I’m a bit bald, but not completely. Did it have anything to do with me? My wife asked the innkeeper whether she knew of the prohibition. The innkeeper made a face as if she thought we were talking balderdash and we didn’t dare insist. There was a bit of a rumpus at the inn. The grandmother had got drunk. The previous night she had urinated in the jam pot on her bedside table, thinking it was the other one. At teatime they’d given her the jam pot without noticing and she’d swallowed the lot.

  So we left. The whole of the rest of the journey we were cudgeling our brains:

  “Could it mean that
people are prohibited from obtaining the right to be bald from the competent authority? Would it ever occur to anyone to ask for it? And why write it in the middle of a field?”

  “Maybe on account of it makes people think?”

  “It didn’t stop us sitting down … ”

  “But we didn’t have much of a lunch, did we?”

  “You’re joking, I stuffed my guts.”

  “Not true; we left half the roast.”

  My wife wanted to get me to say that we’d been upset. I didn’t like that. We dropped the subject. The kid was snoozing on the luggage. That evening, we got to Agapa. We put up the tent in a field. We put the kid to bed and then went straight to sleep.

  In the middle of the night the kid woke up and vomited jam. My wife was terrified, it made her hair stand on end. But not for long, because half an hour later she was as bald as a coot.

  THE ROADMAN

  Blimbraz the roadman went home to lunch. He said to his missis: “I saw Marie go by. She was wearing her mother’s hat. It didn’t last long.” His missis shrugged her shoulders and served the soup. “Do you really expect me to be interested in those tales about Marie?”

  But these tales are worth some consideration.

  A very long time ago, under the last Merovingian kings, the ones they called the faineants, a noblewoman by the name of Albergonde gave birth to a daughter. Who was brought up in the country. When she was fifteen, the faineant took a fancy to her. Albergonde was jealous and decided to take her revenge. She broke a dish which she ground into powder and mixed into a custard. The custard was served to Chilperica, who thought it would be the end of her. Hence the expression: “vengeance is a dish that should be eaten cold.” Chilperica had her mother’s throat cut. She too had a daughter, who was the mistress of the next faineant.

  The Carolingians passed on mothers and daughters to each other, then the Capetians, the Valois, the Bourbons and the Bonapartes. The Empress Eugenie herself was one of them. Before her marriage to Louis-Napoleon she had given birth to a daughter, the grandmother of the present-day Marie.

  But all that is just a sidelight on history. The truth is that Marie has just hanged her mother. We realized this on account of the spinach not growing anymore. But we don’t dare start an investigation. Why not? Because Marie is a redhead. “Every person of the fair sex who is congenitally redheaded enjoys the privilege of absolute immunity,” says the law. The new law, that is. The old one merely accorded jamboreeing immunity. They forgot what that meant. They revised the text. In spite of strict capillary control, women started to become redheads. But with Marie there was never any doubt: she was a redhead from the day of her birth. And everyone knows her weakness for firemen. There’s nothing to be done against her. So as not to attract people’s hatred, these days she wears a hat. It was this hat that Blimbraz recognized. He repeated to his missis:

  “Her mother’s hat, you understand?”

  “Since I tell you … ”

  “You’re not interested, you’re not interested? And what about our spinach? You think I’m going to eat turkey every day?”

  “Turkey isn't so bad … ”

  “It makes your beard grow.”

  “So what?”

  “So—that I always cut myself shaving.”

  “Have to change the cut of your jib!”

  Blimbraz stood up. He clouted his missis round the earhole. They ate their soup. When they’d finished, the roadman looked out of the window. Marie was already waiting for him. He didn’t mention this to his wife. He took his mattock from the coal bucket and departed. He went up to Marie and took her hat off: she was as black as ink. “Are you crazy?”

  “I can’t bear it any longer. I had me hair dyed.”

  That evening, she was under arrest.

  POLYCARPE DE LANSLEBOURG

  From the street, you could see a big head silhouetted against the curtain. It was Polycarpe de Lanslebourg. He was putting the finishing touches to a paper bird, the nine hundred and forty-sixth of the day.

  For a Lanslebourg, it’s a delicate matter to find work. Ancestors who were Crusaders, a long line of patricians, intimates of princes, counsellors, flourished in the XXth century in Polycarpe. He had been looking for the ideal employment for a long time.

  An advertisement had appeared in “The Blazon”:

  “Wtd. yng. m. anct. fam. 16 quart, home fab. ppr. birds of distinc. proj. avic. mus. sbrbs.”

  Polycarpe immediately offered his services. An old aristocrat living in the suburbs replied, making an appointment for him to call on her. Freshly gloved, he went. A little villa, surrounded by factories. No bell. He knocked. A tame leopard came and opened the door. “Whom should I announce?” He proffered his card and was shown into an attic. Hens of all breeds, wyandottes, leghorns, houdans, barbets and pheasants, rubbed shoulders with others that were stuffed, cast in plaster, or photographed.

  “When I reveal the fact that the first brahma hen was imported by a Lanslebourg,” he said to himself, “I shall make a sensation.” He waited without moving, for fear of walking on eggs. The aristocrat entered. Abundantly feathered, flowered negligee, espadrilles. Polycarpe paid her his respects and trod on an egg. The lady had to suppress a manifestation of ill-humor, but the young man’s excellent pedigree appeased her. She informed him of her intentions.

  “In these days, my dear Monsieur, we no longer have the right to remain indifferent to the aspirations of the third estate. Our congenital charity must adapt itself to the troublous times in which we live. I have decided to create an avicultural museum in my house. Few such exist. The suburban folk will welcome my enterprise with enthusiasm. You see here a few specimens supplied by my leopard. Matters of greater moment closed my eyes to the somewhat larcenatory method he judged fit to employ to this end. The gallinaceans other than the living ones come from a family collection. The weathercock you see there is that of our own chapel, in the provinces.

  “Your task will consist in helping me convert the premises. Before that you will have to make some ten thousand paper birds. It is essential that the walls of the museum be covered with them. Between one and two in the morning you can obtain a supply of wrapping paper at the Central Market, where it is disgracefully squandered. When you have completed this work we shall be able to transform my apartments and prepare a catalogue at our leisure. We shall get in touch with the authorities to organize a bus service. We must aim high, my dear Monsieur, we must aim high.'’

  The lady breathed no word about retribution. Polycarpe suspected that she was appealing to his honor. “This lady is right: how can one reconcile work, charity and wages?” He was being called to a vocation. He accepted.

  Hence, behind the curtain, he had just finished his eighth day. Only three more, and the ten thousand paper birds would be done. He stood up, drew the curtain and opened the window. The wind rushed in. The birds flew. He shut it again quickly. The birds had already taken over three quarters of the room. He hadn’t stacked them properly. By the fifth day he couldn’t even get to his bed. He slept under the table. And since yesterday the door had been blocked. But he still had enough paper to finish the job, and a few scraps of food to eat. Everything would be all right.

  On the eleventh and last day, the lady and her leopard were outside his house. They knew. They didn’t attempt to go up. Polycarpe couldn’t let them in. They brought a ladder and climbed up to the window. Through it they saw Polycarpe de Lanslebourg, smothered in paper birds, beseeching Providence to come to his aid.

  And they laughed, they laughed! …

  THE SWAN CAFÉ

  “God, what a load of crap,” she said.

  I don’t at all like her way of expressing herself, which in any case is symptomatic of her lack of culture. How often have I told her: “It’s better to confess your ignorance and try and educate yourself than to come out with a crude judgment,” she still hasn’t understood. I have striven in vain to cultivate her. I couldn’t appeal to her intelligence: she has n
one. But I did try to develop her sensitivity. My efforts were so totally wasted that I now see intelligence and sensitivity as synonymous. To hell with casuistry.

  We were looking at a work of art by the sculptor Dâd Surprise. True, it was botched, and amorphous. Above all the intention, to my taste, was too obvious (it was precisely this intention that escaped my wife). And there were a few echoes that bothered me in this sculpture, but on the other hand there was a sure sense of the inexpressible that made me like it.

  I didn’t try to convince Ida. I merely said: “I adore that limp arm. It looks as if it’s stroking an invisible bear.”

  Coincidence: I hadn’t even finished my sentence when Dâd Surprise came into the gallery. He had probably come to talk to the director. He approached us and said to me: “I like your idea very much. You understand my art. It’s made from very little, but there are so many cosmic geniuses about these days … ” Was this naive artist aware of what he was doing, then? He interested me enormously, and he felt it: “Would you,” he suggested, “like to come along to my place for a moment? I have several works in progress. Maybe we could talk about them?”

  His studio was in the traditional style: glass roof, loggia, etc. We were expecting the master to confide in us. But instead of initiating us into his technique, he told us this:

  “I’m almost certain that the cashier in the Swan café, at the Oublies crossroads, is accumulating other charges. To be quite sure, she would not only have to be watched for a whole day—which I have done—but someone would have to manage to get behind the counter. This is impossible for anyone but the barman. And the barman is the proprietor, and he never leaves his post. No waiter ever goes behind the counter.

  “The cashier keeps an ever-watchful eye —a far too watchful eye —on everything that goes on. Every so often she makes an imperceptible, but unusual, movement: she stretches her arm out under the counter, as if to reach some object behind the cash drawer. A switch? A bell? I wouldn’t have been worried had it not been for a few disturbing facts, not altogether unconnected with this movement, it seems to me, which put me on my guard. I will mention only the two latest ones: