Trio

by Robert Pinget

  No visible flaw.

  Turn, return, revert.

  Profoundly integrated night.

  It was the evening the visitor had been there, after he’d left, the idiot had gone to bed, the master was walking up and down between the bedroom and the kitchen, the frogs could be heard croaking outside and there were intermittent flashes of summer lightning in the sky, window open on to the garden, everything is in order, in those days the house was never shut up and there was no question of any project other than to live in it, happiness, an insipid taste to things with the feeling … walking up and down between the bedroom and the kitchen, I can still see him, a certain elegance, with that cold, hunted gleam in his eyes, he was talking to himself volubly and dramatically then suddenly stopped short, looked at himself in the mirror and restrained something like a hiccup, a strange person, no one had ever known him to have any attachment other than that to the idiot and later the doctor, a muted friendship, something broken in the mechanism, did they ever enjoy a single day of real gaiety together, when suddenly the corpse with its bloodstained trouser fly appears in the doorway, the master retreated and collapsed on the bed, the goatherd went up and touched him on the shoulder, they’d come to identify him while the doctor read in his papers word for word the murmured phrase.

  An interval of half a word.

  Pictures to extricate from their dross.

  He must have wanted to use the chainsaw, must have pinched it from the neighbor, started it up and the thing does a sort of side-slip, the cretin makes a wrong move, the terrible wound drains him of his blood. He collapsed on the dunghill clutching his groin. There was no one in the house, the maid shopping in the village and the master walking by the marsh. It was apparently round one o’clock that they found him at his last gasp under the bush. The child bringing the duck seems to have made a detour through the wood, seen him injured and unconscious with that red patch spreading and spreading, he runs home to his mother who comes and identifies the inanimate body.

  I can still see the woman going up to the corpse with a storm-lan- tern in her hand, she bent down, touched it lightly on the shoulder then raised her head up to the scarecrow with its arms outstretched in the bush, the torch lit up the ragged jeans from below, a red rag had just dropped, she picks it up and her oldest put it back as best he could, they went to tell the master and then they pick up the body and carry it into the bedroom, they put it down on the bed, it was already stiff, the maid kept herself busy heating up the coffee, the master was leaning against the mantelpiece sobbing and the doctor …

  After which followed the description of the funeral, hundredth repetition, with for its basic theme paternal love or whatever it was that served as such, an ambiguous savor, disordered feelings to say no worse and which one more glass of Pernod would have sunk in God knows what, well yes nature, we’ll have heard it in all its versions the business of the tub and the soaping, spiced this time by the bleeding wound, a scarecrow’s despair, an unprecedented defeat, in short enough to start you daydreaming.

  Whereupon the doctor leaning over the corpse plucked something bloody out of the wound which he said was the piece de resistance, a movement of the mandibles and a clicking of the tongue, plunged back into the hole and brought the manuscript out intact, a real miracle, put on his specs and reread the phrase in which the other found a bitter taste, our predators have been at work, all that was left of the poor body was the skull and one hand clutching the communicant’s little chain, that sort of jaded image which nevertheless had a poignant note for you, the time of merry shipwrecks, ah how young we were, all this to come back to the man walking through the twilight hoisting up the dummy, velvety flight, spreading clouds, a bad sign.

  The child bringing the duck had made a detour through the wood, he’d seen the idiot cutting down the scarecrow and had run up, they’d carried it over to the barn, put it down in the recess, I can still see the red rag that had served as its belt, its frayed jeans, its jacket quartered on its prop when suddenly night falls, you couldn’t see the outlines anymore, the straw sentry might well make anyone retreat, then the child went back under the bush where he had deposited his corpse and took it to the maid who took a couple of sous out of the drawer, here, this is for your trouble, she put the duck in the fridge.

  Something bloody.

  It was quite some time before this that the story must have begun but there again how much prudence, how much care, divergent elements, everything to be approached from a tangent, and to get what out of it all, insipid snippets, a shagged-out procession of exiles of every shade and hue …

  To stifle the murmur.

  From the cupboard the doctor took the jeans and the red rag to make the scarecrow, nailed the bits of wood together then got some straw and stuffed it into the gear hanging on the gallows, it was the time of the starlings who devastate the cherry trees, the time of plans for the garden, the time of visitors and of friendships without a shadow …

  The master has gone back to his reading.

  Liliaceous plants against a wall, tufts of poisonous weeds in the corseted little garden, the bench on which she’s sitting with her knitting on her knees, she’s not asleep, she’s staring at a point over on the other side of the well, the goats remind her of the time, she stands up abruptly, straightens her apron and limps down the lane behind her flock, the dog was frisking in the stubble.

  The man took advantage of the old woman’s absence to creep into the kitchen, he opened the cupboard, the sideboard, went and looked under the bed, came back, was searching a chest when a cat started miaowing outside, the intruder jumps, no one in the garden, he goes out hugging the wall, he’s disappeared.

  The master has gone back to his reading.

  He emerges from behind the bush, he’s coming this way, he’s holding the red rag and he puts it on his head, you could see the blood running down his temple, he collapsed onto the terrace.

  He emerges at the corner of the house coming from the cold room, holding the red leather-bound book, he sits down on a chair, he starts trembling, it was quite late in the season, not a single leaf left on the elms, that icy north wind whistling in the courtyard, he stays for hours staring at a point over on the other side of the barn, night was falling, he jumped when he heard the doctor call, the doctor was no longer of this world, his thoughts were elsewhere, endlessly repeating things.

  Passed his hand over his forehead and said I saw him coming towards us holding that red thing, acknowledged us from a distance and going down the path by the fountains kept looking right and left at the busts of satyrs or wood nymphs, disappeared behind the orange trees and reappeared here, he wasn’t expecting to see the doctor, after that he couldn’t remember anymore, and yet I was there he kept repeating, we were drinking pastis, all I can see now is the rag on the ground and the mud-stained boots, came back from the marsh, someone was lying down and being given first aid, after which the cold room crossed and the bed, someone was at his last gasp, try and remember … he was answering it could well be, other details, I’ll have another look, the lamp on the table, yes, the clock on the mantelpiece, the door …

  To go out into the garden at night, count your steps to the well, come back the way you went and then branch off towards the little party wall, four or five yards up to the bush, on a moonlight night the scarecrow would have made you jump, they’d stuffed it with straw, the neighbor’s jacket and trousers, the farmhand’s cap and the red scarf that had fallen on to the ground testified to the child, he’d tried to put it back but he wasn’t tall enough, he’d pulled the dummy down by mistake, it’s on the dunghill now.

  Death at the slightest deficiency in thought.

  For the night to get up, light the lamp, all the shutters closed, the clock makes him jump, someone had just come into the kitchen by the tradesmen’s entrance, there’s a red patch against the wall, he went up to it holding his breath, it was the neighbor’s child, he’d left his purse in the drawer, you gave me a fright said the ma
ster but the child was a long way away, someone was pacing up and down the room, the neighbors had just gone out, the coffee was getting cold in the coffeepot, he sat down in the armchair as if he were repeating that funereal farce, through the slit in the shutter was keeping a watch on the scarecrow which all of a sudden collapsed on the dunghill, the corpse of the idiot or of the duck man, farmhand’s cap and bird’s beak, the breastbone broken, slashed by a penknife, he took his head in his hands, the clock made him jump.

  Or in the wood where the carcasses were, very early in the morning, to forget that dream, you could hear the goats bleating when suddenly the child disappears in the marsh, someone is laughing unpleasantly, he turned round, the echo from the fountain …

  For the night to get up, count your steps to the kitchen, the child had been present at the massacre, a precise contour with that hole in the groin.

  For the night to get up and make a note in the memo book of an image which disintegrates as you write it, snippets, that problematic past, the old toothless mouth, the clock face, those two hands forever knitting … the clock made him jump, the doctor had just left, an ant at this distance, the visitors at that time, the idiot in the morning his hair all over his face, the blue line of the forest, those interminable glasses of pastis and the crows’ flights, a fainting fit, then nothing anymore, night was falling.

  So calm. So gray. Making notes at his table. Outside, those fogs from one season to another. You go back to the marsh, the hanged man’s tree has gone. The old woman hardly ever leaves her fireside. Things are unsaid, people are asleep. What else. The doctor in his flowery frame looks as if he’s working. The maid out shopping …

  Then he made a new will.

  I the undersigned in the cold room, hemlock, clock out of action, I the undersigned in the marsh, goat or bird’s carcass, I the undersigned at the bend in the road, in the master’s garden, maleficent old woman, sentry of the dead, satyr, scarecrow, in a van on the route deviated by the evil eye, plaything of that farce that is called conscience, no one, I the undersigned midnight in full daylight, overwhelmed with boredom, old owl, magpie or crow …

  To get up at night, go back to his notebook, make his will again, be overwhelmed with boredom, open the door, go out, fall into a reverie waiting for the old herdswoman of the dawn who disappears, gray and limping, into the wood, the sentry has gone off to get some sleep, the day may break, the pink and the blue, a morning, go back into the cold room and put the clock out of action, the action of a maniac, from one season to the next, night again.

  As for the sentry, he’d fallen asleep in the corner of the barn, you could see him sitting there, his head slumps forward, dawn, that old herdswoman of dreams, will come and shake him, her flock shake themselves and she disappears round the bend, day is about to break, people are opening their eyes again, the nightmare fades, they’ll be catching up with it, picking it up stitch by stitch all day long and in the evening they’ll plunge back into it until the following dawn, gray and limping, her goats the color of dust and ashes, chimeras.

  I the undersigned the sentry of the dead, at the crossroads, at the confines of such gray lands in the notebook, at the top of the elm tree whence the poor quality of our land becomes perceptible, nothing but stones, I the undersigned on the dunghill, in the goat shed, at dawn, at twilight, it must have been before clocks and all that rubbish of measuring and know-how …

  There follows a description of the assets but in such a way …

  As if his existence had been cut off.

  The doctor in his flowery frame.

  On an October morning or was it November, the elms have lost their leaves, the harvest is over, beetroots and pumpkins are piled up in the courtyards, the doctor is on the terrace. His hat on the grass beside him. In the midst of the clumps of rotting flowers you can make out a statue that has fallen off its plinth. Farther off, what used to be the main entrance, one side of the gate is missing, the other very much the worse for wear. The van stops in front of it, the man gets out, it looks as if he’s going to come in but then he changes his mind and walks round the little party wall. The master emerges from behind the house, coming out of the kitchen. He’s carrying a tray that looks heavy, objects piled up on it, you can’t quite make out. The fog coming up from the river spreads rapidly, you can’t see anything at all now. You can hear the doctor saying sit down, you can hear the word marsh, the word bend, but the words very soon become blurred, there’s nothing but the sound of the axe on the chopping block coming from the neighbors’, then that too disappears.

  Until nightfall.

  Sitting at that table a few hours earlier, found dead on the dunghill, a sentry was on guard, he had seen no one but the deceased one cold, gray day, must have gone over to the slit in the shutter and apparently distinctly saw him put the clock out of action and then sit there prostrate in his chair, elbows on the table, head in his hands.

  Notes

  [SB: Dr. Stephen Bann: Article in 20th Century Studies, Dec. 1971: “Robert Pinget: the end of a modern way.”

  MC: Madeleine Chapsal: Review of Passacaglia in L’Express.

  ACP: Anthony Cheal Pugh: Introduction to Pinget’s Autour de Mortin. In Methuen's Modern Texts, 1971.

  AV: Anne Villelaur: Review of Passacaglia in Les Lettres françaises.

  RP: Robert Pinget: Letter to the translator.]

  Passacaglia is as short as anything that Pinget has previously written. But it resumes in an extraordinary way the themes and motifs of his previous work. SB

  Passacaglia is an amusing book, but it is also terrible. MC

  The virtuosity of Pinget’s attempts to reconcile the demands of the imagination with those of the intellect is sometimes astonishing, and it is the tension resulting from this continual conflict that produces humor. Pinget plays upon his own scepticism regarding the situations that he invents, so that in all his books, sometimes within the space of a single phrase, the reader is pulled violently in opposite directions. ACP

  If we allow ourselves to be caught up by this book, without bothering too much at first about solving its little enigmas, we find that these perpetual enigmas make us want to read on, as they do in a detective story. And then we discover a work that goes much farther than all these enigmas put together. Pinget’s tour de force is that, starting from the most concrete elements, he makes us think about the most serious subjects. AV

  The object of Passacaglia is to exorcise death by magical operations with words. As if the pleasure of playing with the vocabulary could delay the fatal issue … RP

  Passacaglia perpetually hovers on the edge of nothingness, as the operations of the mechanical universe are called into question: “Something broken in the mechanism.” The “cogito” still confirms existence, but on the edge of an abyss: “Death at the slightest deficiency in thought.” SB

  Much of Pinget’s work consists, explicitly or implicitly, of a dramatization of the situation of the artist who no longer believes that conventional fiction is capable of giving real imaginative satisfaction, but who is nevertheless propelled by the need to find a means of projecting his imagination into situations that can better be presented within the novel format than any other. ACP

  Pinget is pointing out that in fiction there is no standard of truth, not even a relative one. An original version of an event is not necessarily truer than a subsequent one—and vice versa. ACP

  The dimension of Pinget’s work has been that of every novelist: the world in time. But the unerring direction of his language has led him to the end of the world, the end of time. Hence the structural role of his progressive introduction of apocalyptic imagery.

  … The act of stopping the clock, which is an initial and recurring motif in Passacaglia, suggests the removal of the temporal coordinates of the Newtonian universe. As a result of this act, the God/author is identified not as the efficient cause, whose creation runs like clockwork from the primordial decree, but as the conserving cause, whose constant intervention is indi
spensable. SB

  The return to spoken language and the abandonment of the rhetoric of accepted literary style … is a feature of all his writing. … We must adjust our reading technique, if we are to appreciate fully Pinget’s style. This involves retrieving the “childish” habit of allowing the vocal organs to form the unpronounced sounds. … Moreover, if the reader adopts this mimetic reading technique consciously he will also be able to assume a certain critical distance, or a more sceptical attitude to what he is reading, that will allow him to perceive more readily both the underlying seriousness of the text and the constant element of half-concealed irony. ACP

  Don’t bother too much about logic: everything in Passacaglia is directed against it. RP

  About the Author

  Robert Pinget (1919-1997) was the author of numerous plays, essays, and fourteen novels, including Someone, The Inquisitory, Baga, and Mahu or The Material. Best known for his association with the Nouveau Roman (New Novel) literary movement, which also included Alain Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute, Pinget received a number of awards, including the prestigious Prix Femina for Someone and the Prix des Critiques for The Inquisitory.

  PRAISE FOR TRIO

  “If we can imagine a Faulkner who began with the combative intellectual playfulness of Queneau or Jarry, or a Sound and the Fury that ends with everyone dissolved in Benjy’s idiocy, we start to taste Pinget.”

  — John Updike, New Yorker

  “It can and should be claimed for Pinget that he has produced a sequence of some twenty books over the past three decades, all of which observe the kind of stringent laws of discourse and development that we associate with the Beckett oeuvre. … But the comparison with Beckett should not be allowed to mask the fact that this is a wholly original and distinctive achievement.”