Portrait of a Man

by Georges Perec

  “Perhaps you’re right … What do I know, after all? No past and no problems … Dead and brought back to life … Lazarus Winckler, right? But that’s no use, it doesn’t lead anywhere either …”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know … I’ll never be a forger again, that’s all. I’ll try not to let myself get caught in a trap of my own making again. I’ll try to start from scratch, to find out what got me going, what kept me going … I don’t know … to give my best … it doesn’t mean much … to be clear in my head … To try to know myself and to know the world …”

  “Will you be a painter?”

  “I’ll try … Or maybe not … I feel I’m consumed by my own expertise, my patience, my manias … My memories and subterfuges … I really don’t know … Why do you want to know?”

  “You’ll have to start earning a living one day …”

  “Perhaps … It’s odd … Why am I thinking of a future? Why? It doesn’t mean anything … It’s a word that never did mean anything … I was living on the edge of a circle, I went round and round … I must have been rotating every three hundred and sixty-five days as well … from New Year’s Day to New Year’s Eve and round we go again … From Bosch to Ribera, Fragonard to Chirico … Here we go again … Doing the same detail a hundred, a thousand times to learn it, then a hundred and a thousand times to get it right … It’s not hard to become a forger … But it’s all dead and gone now. Dead like the other guy, the twelve years, the sixteen years, Nicolas, Madera, Otto, Rufus, Dampierre, Split, Geneva, Gstaad. Dead at a stroke. Places of refuge and fear. An unbridgeable gulf. Mila and Geneviève. Forgotten. Murdered. And because of me too, it was the same effort … It’s funny … It was meaningless … Twelve years vanishing just like that. One razor slash and splat! Without a word, just like that, at a stroke …”

  “Did you have to deal the blow?”

  “It’s possible … Hardly … I was going up the stairs with my razor in my hand … That’s all … And then I found myself in his study. He was lying on his back. He looked idiotic … Completely bewildered, he didn’t know what had happened to him … I don’t know what was going through my mind … it wasn’t my past nor my future life … I think I was badly out of breath … I don’t know … At a stroke … oh, for one millionth of a second I was unbelievably happy, incredibly proud … He looked so stupid lying there on his beautiful carpet, drowning in his own blood … he looked like what he’d always been, a kind of pig, a bloated seal … I can’t find the right word … I don’t want to be stupid or mean … I don’t want to fabricate … I don’t want to be in bad taste … At a stroke … as if the roles had been reversed, as if I’d done something natural … as if I’d done something natural for the first time in my life … Do you see? As if everything was changing, as if it was all falling to pieces and nothing would be the same again, I didn’t recognise myself any longer, I didn’t understand myself anymore … I don’t want to offer another lame excuse … I don’t want to cheat again … You know what I mean … It was as if the Condottiere himself was dead as well, along with my obsessions and my fear. It was as if with the collapse of the last bastion of my defences the reasons why I had constructed them were also falling to the ground … Perhaps that’s what I failed to understand … Perhaps that’s why in a flash I felt so happy … It was like the world was falling down, but not falling on top of me, not burying me in its ruins, but instead opening up a vista that had been blocked for ages, as if I’d suddenly come to the top of a mountain before dawn and all at once was able to see the sun rising …”

  “That was Altenberg, wasn’t it?”

  “It was … But my mistake was to believe that things could wait. And be resuscitated at will. To believe that the world had been frozen into place the day I became a forger. That was absurd. Gstaad wasn’t Altenberg. Geneviève wasn’t answering. And the long-cherished illusion of my victory had hit the rocks with the Condottiere … The world was on the move. I thought I was safe but my shell was stifling me, my ivory tower was cutting me off. I didn’t realise. It was a weird existence. So false. So much more false than what I wanted. False inside its own falseness, do you see? A life with no roots and no connections. With no past beyond the abstract, mummified past of the world, like a museum catalogue. A paltry universe. A camp. A ghetto. A prison. The fragile interest of fakery, luxury … But it cost me too dear … It wasn’t a profession, it wasn’t a way to pay the rent, it wasn’t a trade … despite myself, it had become my whole life. My raison d’être. My calling card. Gaspard Winckler, Forger. My definition. Absurd, unproductive, inefficient. A life that day after day was suffocating me because I needed something else, and the increasingly powerful feeling that nobody could or would come to my aid … The ever more stressful conviction that the malady was inside me, a malady of dissatisfaction and boredom, to which Rufus, Jérôme, Madera and everyone else had sentenced me … They didn’t lift a finger. They strapped me down. I couldn’t refuse, I couldn’t say no, I couldn’t tell them I was going to drop it. It was total and utter dependency. An entirely inextricable relationship. A Gordian knot. It couldn’t be undone by actions or by words. It couldn’t be remedied by dabs of pigment, by oils, by canvases. There was nothing to be done, do you see? I had to stay or run away. But I couldn’t run away. It had been too long. It was too late. I was too scared. I was too young. I was too old. Any old excuse … I said yes. My life became unbearable and I didn’t know it, I didn’t want to know, things fell over, went rotten, sank. I was still there, unmoved, blind … It all had to go up with a bang, at a stroke. To burst. Yes, at last, hands had to be raised, I had to wake from my sluggishness, from my game-playing, from my sleep. I had to strip off my masks and rise up against that man like a hairy, violent, unrestrained and fearsome monster. Revolt. Revolution. Freedom fight. Whatever. The battle … He died. And that’s enough. He is dead and all is well. Even if I’d lost, even if Otto had got me, even if I’d been turned over to the police, even if I’d been sentenced, it wouldn’t matter. I had to kill him. His blood had to flow and flood the room, I had to be happy that he’d died, I had to live because of his death. I killed Madera and I’m proud of it, I assert it, and I shout it from the rooftops, and I’ll yell it out. I needed to kill him. For years it had been necessary for him to die, it had to be possible all the same for me to refuse the yoke, the servitude, despite everything, in spite of myself, thanks to me, beyond me. I had to shake my head. I had to say no. I should have picked up the blasted telephone and shouted all my anger at him, my despair, my weariness, my conviction. I killed him without saying a word, like a coward. I didn’t dare burst out laughing. Never mind. I understood and that’s what matters. Yes, I was the victim and he was the oppressor, I was the slave and he was the master, I was the serf and he was the squire. I owed him everything. He’d taken me on, he’d given me a living. I lived only through him, but I had the strength to get up and kill him, the strength to get rid of him … to rise up against him, against everything he provided, help, forgiveness, lucre, food, understanding … He hovered over me like a vulture, but I wrung his neck and knocked him off his perch … He provided me with a living but I didn’t exist. I was my own prisoner, but he was too much of a jailer. He died and I won … For sixteen long years my life was like a dream. A bad dream. A bizarre nightmare. Throughout the whole story I was looking for my own face and I found it. He ought to have understood that his last hour was upon him. He should never have called me … I went upstairs, with the razor in my hand, panting, impatient, boiling over, I went through the door that was already ajar, I padded across the carpet in his study, I was behind him, staring at the back of his fat red neck, I grabbed him by the forehead and yanked his head backwards. The most wonderful thing in the world. My right hand came down nearer to him and I slashed him at a single stroke … All the violence and all the energy of all those years came together … I was brave enough, yes, brave enough to be done with it! Je ne regrette rien!”
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  The Condottiere never moves, will never move. He is ineradicable and in his palpable perfection he strikes terror as he gazes upon the world with the cold eyes of a judge. You got fascinated by those eyes, when you should have tamed them, explained them, overcome them and pinned them down on your panel. Antonellus Messaneus me pinxit. The Condottiere is not human. He knows neither struggle nor action. Behind his pane of glass, on the other side of the red velvet line, he has ceased to be alive once and for all time. He is not breathing. He does not feel pain. He knows nothing. You tried to reach out to him and to begin with you believed it was reaching him that mattered. But the only thing that mattered was your reaching towards him, the simple gesture, the forward thrust of your body, of your mind, your will and your effort. What you will reach one day after years and years of experiment and invention will lie somewhere else, after blind fumbling, exhaustion, and starting over for the twentieth or one hundredth time in search of your own truth, in pursuit of your own experience, in search of your own life. The world at your feet. Ghirlandaio, Memling, Cranach, Chardin, Poussin. The world at their feet. You will only get there at the end of a strenuous march, like the team that at the start of July 1939 did indeed reach a longsought vista near the summit of the Jungfrau and suddenly, forgetting its fatigue, was filled to the brim by the blazing joy of sunrise and the radiant revelation of the other side of the mountain, the watershed …

  The Condottiere does not exist. Only someone called Antonello da Messina. And like him you will seek out the order and coherence of the world that there is. Seeking truth and freedom. In that accessible hereafter lie your time and your hope, your conviction and your experience, your lucidity and your triumph.

  Perhaps it is a matter of uncovering the obvious necessity of men in their faces. Perhaps it is a matter of uncovering the obvious necessity of the world in material objects and landscapes. Perhaps it is a matter of uncovering in things and beings, in eyes and gestures, the obvious necessity of triumph. Perhaps. Perhaps not perhaps. Perhaps definitely. Definitely definitely. Dive into the centre of the world. Definitely. To the roots of the unexplained. To the explicable roots. Definitely. Into the unfinishedness of the world. Definitely. Into the world that remains to be possessed and to be built. Definitely. Dive. Push on. Definitely. Towards that perpetual reconquista of time and life. Towards that palpable lucidity. Towards that sensibility in full bloom. Dive. Definitely. Dive. Towards the light waiting to be born.

  Paris

  Navarrenx

  Druyes-les-Belles-Fontaines

  1957–1960

  GEORGES PEREC, born 1936, decided to be a writer at around the age of eighteen, but had a day job as a librarian in a medical research laboratory for most of his adult life. He made his first impact in 1965 with a barely fictional portrait of his own generation, Things. Shortly after, he joined Oulipo, the experimental “workshop” for mathematics and literature founded by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, of which he became the most ardent and celebrated doyen. He is the author of A Void, a novel written without the letter “e”, of the semi-autobiographical Wor The Memory of Childhood, and, most famously, of Life A User’s Manual, hailed by Italo Calvino as “the last real ‘event’ in the history of the novel so far”. He lived in Paris, and died of lung cancer in 1982. Portrait of a Man, written in 1960, remained unpublished in French until 2012. This is its first English publication.

  DAVID BELLOS teaches French and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Georges Perec: A Life in Words and of Is That a Fish in Your Ear? The Amazing Adventure of Translation. He has also translated many novels from French, including works by Fred Vargas, Ismail Kadare, Daniel Anselme, Georges Simenon and most especially Georges Perec. He is currently working on a study of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.