Things: A Story of the Sixties; A Man Asleep

by Georges Perec

  There are some enemies that you will face up to only once, just long enough to know, to recognise, the icy hiss of the snake which would turn you to stone, just long enough to beat a timely retreat, chilled with loneliness and impatience, done for, betrayed by your own eyes, by the ever sharper and ever more futile perception of the tiniest details: a curl of hair, the shadow of a glass, the shifting outline of a discarded cigarette, the final tremor of a closing double-door. You miss nothing, but neither do you grasp anything, or if you do it is too late, always too late: shadows, reflections, cracks, sidesteps, smiles, yawns, tiredness or abandon.

  Unhappiness did not swoop down on you, this was no surprise attack: more of a gradual infiltration, it insinuated itself almost ingratiatingly. It meticulously impregnated your life, your movements, the hours you keep, your room, like a long-obscured truth, or something that was staring you in the face but which you refused to recognise; tenacious and patient, subtle and unremitting, it took possession of the cracks in the ceiling, of the lines in your face in the cracked mirror, of the pack of cards; it slipped furtively into the dripping tap on the landing, it echoed in sympathy with the chimes of each quarter-hour from the bells of Saint-Roch.

  The snare was that feeling which, on occasion, came close to exhilaration, that arrogance, that sort of exaltation; you thought that the city was all you needed, its stones and its streets, the crowds which carried you along, a tiny space on the counter at the Petite Source, a front of stalls in some local cinema; you thought you needed only your room, your lair, your cage, your burrow, to which you return each day, from which you set out again each day, this almost magical place which no longer contains anything to occupy your patience, not even a crack in the ceiling, not even a feature of the grain in the wood of your shelf, not even a flower in the patterned wallpaper. Once again you deal out the fifty-two cards on your narrow bed; once again you search for the unlikely exit from a shapeless labyrinth.

  Your powers have deserted you. You no longer know how to follow the lazy drift of the bubbles and twigs over the surface of your cornea. You are no longer able to summon up a face, a triumphal cavalcade or a distant city out of the cracks and the shadows.

  The snare: the dangerous illusion of being - what is the word? - impenetrable, of offering no purchase to the outside world, of silently sliding, inaccessible, just two open eyes looking forward, perceiving everything, the tiniest details, retaining nothing. Like a sleepwalker who is wide awake, or a blindman who can see. A being without memory, without alarm.

  But there is no exit, no miracle, no truth. Shells, protective armour. Ever since that stifling day when it all started, when everything stopped. You hug the filthy walls of the black streets, your right hand knocking against the porch-steps, the bricks of the façades. Sitting for hours above the Seine, your legs dangling, you contemplate the scarcely perceptible eddy caused by the arch of a bridge. You withdraw the four aces from your fifty-two cards. How many times have you repeated the same amputated gestures, the same journeys which lead nowhere? All you have left to fall back on are your tuppeny-halfpenny bolt-holes, your idiotic patience, the thousand and one detours that always lead you back unfailingly to your starting point. From park to museum, from café to cinema, from embankment to garden, the station waiting-rooms, the lobbies of the grand hotels, the supermarkets, the bookshops, the art galleries, the corridors of the metro. Trees, stones, water, clouds, sand, brick, light, wind, rain: all that counts is your solitude: whatever you do, wherever you go, nothing that you see has any importance, nothing that you seek is real, everything that you do, you do in vain. Inviting or calamitous, solitude alone exists, this solitude with which, sooner or later, every time, you are confronted; every time, you face it alone and defenceless, raging or distraught, in despair or impatient.

  You stopped speaking and only silence replied. But those words, those thousands, those millions of words that dried up in your throat, the inconsequential chit-chat, the cries of joy, the words of love, the silly laughter, just when will you find them again?

  Now you live in dread of silence. But are you not the most silent of all?

  The monsters have come into your life, the rats, your fellow creatures, your brothers. The monsters in their tens, their hundreds, their thousands. You can spot them from almost subliminal signs, from their silences, their furtive departures, from their shifty, hesitant, startled eyes that look away when they meet yours. In the middle of the night a light still shows at the attic windows of their sordid little rooms. Their footfalls echo in the night.

  The rats don't speak to each other or look at each other when they meet. But you can sense these eyeless faces, these frail or drooping figures, these hunched, grey backs, you can feel their constant proximity, you follow their shadows, you are their shadow, you frequent their hideouts, their pokey little holes, you have the same refuges, the same sanctuaries: the local cinema which stinks of disinfectant, the public gardens, the museums, the cafés, the stations, the metro, the covered markets. Bundles of despair sitting like you on park benches, endlessly drawing and rubbing out the same imperfect circle in the sand, readers of newspapers found in rubbish bins, wanderers who wander come rain or storm. They follow the same circuits as you, just as futile, just as slow, just as desperately byzantine. Like you, they hesitate in front of the maps in the metro, they eat their buns sitting on the river banks.

  The exiles, the banished, the pariahs, the wearers of invisible stars. When they walk, they hug the walls, eyes cast down and shoulders drooping, clutching at the stones of the façades, with the weary gestures of a defeated army, of those who bite the dust.

  You follow them, you spy on them, you hate them: monsters in their garrets, monsters in slippers who shuffle at the fringes of the putrid markets, monsters with dead fish-eyes, monsters moving like robots, monsters who drivel.

  You rub shoulders with them, you walk with them, you make your way amongst them: the sleepwalkers, the animals, the old men, the cretins, the deaf-mutes with their berets pulled down over their ears, the drunkards, the dotards who clear their throats and try to control the spasms of their cheek muscles or the twitching of their eyelids, the peasants lost in the big city, the widows, the slyboots, the old boys, the snoopers.

  They came to you, they grabbed you by the arm. As if, because you are a stranger lost in your own city, you could only meet other strangers; as if, because you are alone, you had to watch as all the other loners swooped down on you. As if only those who never speak, those who talk to themselves, could ever meet up, just for the time it takes to drink a glass of red wine at the same bar. The old lunatics, the old lushes, the cranks, the exiles. They button-hole you, they hang on to your coat tails and your cuffs, they breathe in your face.

  They sidle up to you with their wholesome smiles, their leaflets, their newspapers, their flags, the pathetic champions of great lost causes, the bony masks crusading against poliomyelitis, cancer, slum housing, poverty, hemiplegia, blindness, the sad chansonniers out collecting for their friends, the abused orphans selling table-mats, the scraggy widows who protect pets. All those who accost you, detain you, paw you, ram their petty-minded truth down your throat, spit their eternal questions in your face, belabour you with their charitable works and their True Way. The sandwich-men of the true faith which will save the world. Come unto Him all ye who suffer. Jesus said: if ye were blind, ye should have no sin.

  The sallow complexions, the frayed collars, the stammerers who tell you their life story, who tell you about their time in prison, in the asylum, in the hospital, their imagined voyages. The old school teachers who have a plan to standardise spelling, the pensioners who think they've devised a foolproof system for recyling old paper, the strategists, the astrologers, the water diviners, the faith healers, the witnesses, all those who live with their obsessions; the failures, the dead beats, the harmless and senile monsters mocked by bartenders who fill their glasses so high that they can't raise them to their lips, the old bags in their
furs who try to remain dignified whilst knocking back the Marie Brizard.

  And all the others who are even worse, the smug,. the smart-Alecs, the self-satisfied, those who think they know a thing or two and who smile in a knowing sort of way, the fat men and the forever young, the dairymen and the decorated; the revellers on a binge, the Brylcreem-boys from the suburbs, the stinking rich, the dumb bastards. The monsters confident of their own rights, who address you without further ado, call you to witness, stare you out. The monsters with their big families, with their monster children and their monster dogs; the thousands of monsters caught at the traffic lights; the yapping females of the monsters; the monsters with moustaches, and waistcoats, and braces, the tourist monsters tipped out by the coachload in front of the hideous monuments, the monsters in their Sunday best, the monstrous crowd.

  You drift around, but the crowd no longer carries you, the night no longer protects you. Still you walk, ever onwards, untiring, immortal. You search, you wait. You wander through the fossilised town, the intact white stones of the restored façades, the petrified dustbins, the vacant chairs where concierges once sat; you wander through the ghost town, scaffolding abandoned against gutted apartment blocks, bridges adrift in the fog and the rain.

  Putrid city, vile, repulsive city. Sad city, sad lights in the sad streets, sad clowns in the sad music-halls, sad queues outside the sad cinemas, sad furniture in the sad stores. Dark stations, barracks, warehouses. The gloomy bars which line the Grands Boulevards, the ugly shopfronts. Noisy or deserted city, pallid or hysterical city, gutted, devastated, soiled city, city bristling with prohibitions, steel bars, iron fences, locks. Charnel house city: the covered markets that are rotting away, the shanty towns disguised as housing projects, the slum belt in the heart of Paris, the unbearable horror of the boulevards where the cops hang out: Haussmann, Magenta—and Charonne.

  Like a prisoner, like a madman in his cell. Like a rat looking for the way out of his maze. You pace the length and breadth of Paris. Like a starving man, like a messenger delivering a letter with no address.

  You wait, you hope. Dogs have grown attached to you, so have barmaids, café waiters, usherettes, cinema box-office ladies, newspaper vendors, bus conductors, the war veterans who watch over the empty rooms in museums. You can speak freely, they will always answer you in the same measured tone. Their faces are now familiar to you. They identify you, recognise you. They do not realise that these simple daily greetings, these mere smiles, these indifferent nods are all that keeps your head above water; nor do they know that you have been waiting all day for them, as if they were the reward for some heroic deed that you are not at liberty to talk about, but which they have somehow divined anyway.

  So, occasionally, you attempt in desperation to impose a rigid discipline on your faltering existence. You bring a little order into your life, you tidy up your room, you draw up a strict budget: your monthly allowance of 500 francs, less 50 francs for your room, leaves you 15 francs a day, which breaks down in the following way:

  a packet of gauloises 1,35

  a box of matches 0,10

  a meal 4,20

  a cinema ticket 2,50

  a tip for the usherette 0,20

  Le Monde 0,40

  a coffee 1,00

  You have 5,25 francs left for your second meal - which will be a raisin bun or half a baguette - for another coffee, for the metro, the bus, some toothpaste, the laundry.

  You set your life like a watch, as if the best means of saving yourself, of avoiding going under altogether, were to set yourself derisory tasks, to decide everything in advance, to leave nothing to chance. Let your life be closed, smooth, rounded and full, let your actions be dictated by a fixed, immutable order which decides everything on your behalf, which protects you against yourself.

  You establish your itineraries with commendable thoroughness. You explore Paris street by street, from Montsouris park to the Buttes-Chaumont, from the Palais de la Défense to the War Ministry, from the Eiffel tower to the Catacombs. You eat the same meal, at the same time, every day. You visit the stations and the museums. You drink your coffee in the same café. From five until seven you read Le Monde.

  You fold up your clothes before getting into bed. On Saturday mornings you clean your room thoroughly. You make your bed every morning, you shave, you wash your socks in a pink plastic bowl, you polish your shoes, you brush your teeth, you wash up your coffee bowl, dry it, and place it in the same spot on the shelf. Every morning you remove, at the same time, in the same place, in the same way, the gummed paper seal from your daily packet of gauloises.

  The orderliness of your room. The regularity of your timetable. You impose childish constraints on yourself. You do not step on the cracks between the paving slabs near the kerbside, you go the right way around traffic islands, you observe parking restrictions. You cannot stand being late or early. You would like to light your cigarettes at intervals of precisely forty-five minutes.

  It is as if you were living with the constant dread that the slightest weakening of your resolution might, all at once, take you too far.

  It is as if you constantly needed to tell yourself: it is this way because I wanted it this way, I wanted it this way, otherwise I am dead.

  SOMETIMES YOU SPEND whole evenings listening to the comings and goings of your neighbour, half stretched-out on your narrow bed, with no other light than that which filters through your garret window, pale and diffuse, augmented only, and at almost regular intervals, by the glowing tip of a cigarette. The partition wall that separates your two rooms is so thin that you can almost hear him breathing, that you can still hear him even when he is shuffling around in his slippers. You often try to imagine what he looks like, his face, his hands, what he does for a living, his age, his opinions. You know nothing about him, you've never even seen him, or perhaps, once at most, when you bumped into him on the stairs, squashing up against the wall to let him pass, but without knowing at that time, without being certain, that it was indeed him. And in any case, you do not try to catch a glimpse of him, you do not open your door a crack when you hear him going out onto the landing to fill his kettle from the tap, you prefer to listen to him and to be free to imagine him as you wish. You know only that his room is much bigger than yours, since he can move around in it, since he has to move in order to get to the window, or the bed, or the door, or the wardrobes; whereas, from the centre of your room, at a point about three quarters of the way down your bed, you are able, keeping your feet together, to touch any part of it: the window, the door, the wash basin, the alcove where you hang your clothes, the pink plastic bowl, the shelf.

  He must be old, judging from his rather chesty cough, the rattle of his throat, the way he drags his feet. Not that it is even necessary to put down his solitary lifestyle to old age (like you, he never has any visitors to his room, as if the top floor of the apartment block, of which you two, as far as you know, are the only occupants, had recently come to represent some kind of threat to the safety of those who might once have been tempted to venture up there), nor is old age necessarily the explanation for the obsessively regular hours that he keeps. The latter would rather tend to suggest that he is, again a little like you, a creature of set habits, but, if that is the case, he is probably easier in his mind than you. He leaves his room every day, even on Sundays, just before lunchtime, and returns regularly at nightfall, as if his occupation, whether gainful or not, were determined by the hours of daylight rather than by the hours of the clock: he returned a little earlier each day until Christmas, now he comes back each day a little later.

  You think he might be a street-vendor selling neckties displayed in an open umbrella, or, more likely, a demonstrator for some miracle product which removes corns, stains, warts or varicose veins, or, better still, a small-time haberdasher whose stall, consisting of an open suitcase resting on four telescopic legs, tempts the passers-by on the Grands Boulevards with combs, lighters, nail-files, sunglasses, protective cases, key-
rings. This supposition is largely based on the fact that his main activity, when he is in his room, morning and evening, consists in closing and opening, or opening and closing, drawers, as if he had a considerable amount of material to get together each morning before he goes out, and to put away each evening at the end of his day.

  Perhaps he needs his open suitcase, perhaps he uses it as a bedside table, or to write on, or to eat his meals off: you deck him out with an array of somewhat ceremonious, and faintly ridiculous, characteristics: on his suitcase he lays out an embroidered tablecloth, the last vestige of a vanished fortune, a shoddy candelabrum set with cheap candles, a dinner service identical to the ones he may sell, consisting, that is to say, of a beaker and a plate in pink plastic, and a set of aluminium cutlery whose pieces all fit inside one another, the spoon bearing the hollow imprint of the fork, and the fork that of the knife, the three pieces being held together by a rivet in the form of an elongated collar stud fixed to the spoon and passing through the fork and knife, and to which a leather band is attached; all in all, it is as if, through some strange confusion in your mind, this suitcase, whose very existence is at best only hypothetical, could be at one and the same time a haberdasher's stall during the day, and a picnic basket in the evening. But it is not even certain that your neighbour dines in his room: you never hear, or smell, the sizzling giblets and kidneys which you imagine to be his favourite food. All that you know with any degree of certainty is that he goes and fills his kettle from the tap on the landing (for although his room is bigger than yours, it still doesn't have drinking water), and that he places it on a hotplate, whose mode of operation is unknown to you, but which is doubtless of a rather primitive variety, given the time it takes for the kettle to start whistling, that is to say, for the water to boil.