The Death of Picasso

by Guy Davenport

  They knew all the paths and small roads, the playing fields and children’s zoo, and each had favorites among them, the one making his choice without a word from the other.

  —These Trumai we were talking about yesterday, Lévy-Bruhl said, who are known by their neighbors to sleep at the bottom of the river.

  He stooped to greet and stroke a cat, causing a second and third to glide from the underbrush. Pastor Leenhardt took the occasion to light his pipe. Lévy-Bruhl held out empty hands to show the cats he had nothing to give them. There was an old woman laden with sacks who fed cats in the Bois. She was one of the regulars they met on their walks.

  —Madame your friend will be along. We know that it is a waste of breath trying to explain to the Trumai’s neighbors that nobody can sleep underwater. They know they do. The syllogism men cannot sleep underwater, the Trumai are men, therefore the Trumai cannot sleep underwater won’t work.

  —Perhaps, Pastor Leenhardt said, we are looking at their logic the wrong way.

  —Their logic!

  Footballers, their shoulders sagging, their feet heavy, straggled muddy and tuckered toward the goalposts, where they sat and lay, like tired soldiers making bivouac. Some were in jerseys so worn that the blue was slate and the red collars and cuffs pink, colors more fitting for a Chinese poet than for a French boy. Late-afternoon light burnished their hair, making flames of cowlicks. Time stood still.

  The captain of the junior team, Jacques Peyrony, fifteen and a half, was pulling on his sweater when he saw that he was being spoken to by an older halfback on the senior team, Robinet, twenty-four.

  —Went down four to one, ouch! Robinet said. I’ve been watching you for the last twenty minutes.

  —I saw you.

  Peyrony’s face was gloriously dirty from being wiped with muddy hands. His hair tangled out over his ears. It spun onto his forehead from a whorl like a young bull’s. He rubbed sweat from his eyelashes with his forearm. His mouth was half open with fatigue.

  —So you noticed me? I like that, but didn’t think you did. When you were barreling toward the touchline you gave me a quick glance as if I were a total stranger. No time for a hello, I know.

  Peyrony flopped down on the grass. Robinet took off his jacket and laid it over his legs.

  —Keep warm, he said. Cold muscles don’t relax.

  A dog who was being allowed by his person to romp galloped over to them, wagged his tail to ask if he could meet them, laughing, got called bon bougre, and came and sniffed Peyrony’s crotch.

  —Connaisseur! said Robinet. But to my nose Peyrony smells like oranges.

  Peyrony reached across Robinet’s legs, grabbed a dandelion out of the grass and ate it, yellow flower, stem, leaves, and root.

  —Green, he said. Raw spinach is greener. The best part of the orange is the rind, a nibble of it with the pulp and juice.

  Robinet’s frank eyes watched Peyrony chewing.

  —Girls suck lemons.

  —It figures. Next they’ll be playing rugby. Do they smell like lemons?

  —We must suppose so.

  —The greener the bitterer. Over there’s licorice. The Bois is full of it. The young roots halfway up the stem are sweet. Apple’s the best of tastes, pear next. The citrons are something else.

  —Kumquats, Robert said.

  —Vraiment. And peaches.

  Lucien Lévy-Bruhl walked with his hands behind his back. He stopped, spread a hand on his chest, and bowed to Maurice Leenhardt.

  —My father, Leenhardt had said, held a fact to be the word of God.

  —And your father taught science and was a geologist and, like yourself, was a Huguenot pastor?

  —He respected Darwin and Lyell with the same honor he paid to whoever wrote First and Second Samuel, a history without logic or consistency, a text so archaic that it makes Homer seem as polished as Balzac. Its names and places are confused, its narrative is frequently incoherent. The narrator is concerned with effect and high drama, with the terribleness of a bloody and arbitrary god and with human nature at its darkest.

  —And is also, like a fact, the word of God?

  —The poetry, perhaps. The music. Its truth, as with myth and folktale, is deep inside. That is why it is so beautiful.

  Peyrony searched around in a pocket and found the pulpy and gritty remains of an orange.

  —For you, he said. I didn’t finish it at halftime, as I ran to the bistrot in the woods and got half a cup of milk.

  —Half a cup! Robinet said laughing. You’re learning.

  —Butted that damned kick full force with the top of my noggin, and it still hurts.

  —Take an aspirin when you get home.

  —Maybe. It will go away when I’ve showered.

  —I love the way you look after yourself, goose. A week ago you had a cold which, as I remember, you proposed to cure with a good rubdown.

  —So what do you think of the team?

  —Anything’s possible. You have them in command. And it’s to your credit that several of them play better than you.

  —I know that all too well.

  —Is it, Lévy-Bruhl asked, that they think differently, or that they don’t think at all?

  —Differently, yes, and it’s what that difference can tell us that makes up ethnology as a subject. In New Caledonia I was the difference, my wife and children and I. We were intruders. We smelled peculiar, we spoke their language idiotically. We could not guess what we symbolized to them, what threats we brought. The English hope of exporting iron kettles, pots, and pans to Russia in the seventeenth century was dashed by the Orthodox clergy, who were certain that devils inhabited these utensils. We were lucky in that needles and thread were thought wonderful by our New Caledonians, who have clever fingers and like making things. My first great gift was arithmetic. The island traders had been cheating them for years. I taught adding, subtracting, and dividing. That five from eight was always three gave them assurance that in me there was sound doctrine somewhere. Of the multiplication table they made a hymn and sang it in church.

  —Mon dieu! C’est joli, ça!

  —They know, Robinet said, that a good captain isn’t always the best player on the team. And even if you fuck up as captain, they’ll play well right on, regardless. When in the last quarter you stubbornly badgered that winded player instead of making a decisive breakthrough, you can be sure that Labbé and that kid with the English hair saw how wrong you were but went along with you because you’ve trained them to. That’s fine. What in the name of God are you doing?

  —Getting some leaves to eat. I’m listening.

  —Off of a tree?

  —They’re good. And some sweetgrass, here, and whatever this frilly weed is.

  Nettles are good only in the spring.

  —Le forêt de Rouvray, Lévy-Bruhl said. The oak forest, roveretum. I played here as a child. Do primitive people ever play?

  —What else do they do?

  —Some advice, Robinet said, replacing his jacket over Peyrony’s legs, throw Guilhermet off the team. He’s weak. Every signal you give him, he’s parked on his butt like those streetcars that spend half their trip stopped.

  Peyrony chewed a leaf, staring across the level late-afternoon sun on the field.

  —But he’s my only friend on the team.

  —Einstein in an article I’ve been reading says that the eternally incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible. The years I’ve spent trying to comprehend the primitive mind.

  Pastor Leenhardt, smiling, relit his pipe.

  —Einstein! he said. Gravity, light, magnetic fields, time, history are as unintelligible still. None of these trouble the primitive mind, or even come to its attention. There are subatomic particles, the physicists say, which can be in two places at once. We have discussed the unfortunate missionary accused of stealing a Micronesian’s yams. The missionary was miles away at the time of the theft, picking up his mail at the port. This would have settled the matter fo
r a French jury. It cut no ice in the Micronesian mind.

  —You are confusing two things, Robinet said poking a finger against Peyrony’s nose. The discipline of the team applies to Guilhermet too. The team has one ideal, as its motto says, to do its best. So throw Guilhermet off, gently, with some tact and grace, but throw him off.

  —I wouldn’t like playing without him.

  —How do you know? Is his being on the team to have him near you more important than having another player who knows what he’s doing?

  —He stays. He’s my best friend.

  —You’re sure?

  —I’m not joking. He stays.

  Robinet was quiet for awhile.

  —In that case, keep a sharp eye on him. Make your friendship useful. Make him understand that he must play well, for you.

  A ball, kicked by a player who had gone back to the field, was falling from high in the air toward two companions. Peyrony bounded up, as if catapulted, leapt, and caught it between his thighs and midriff, like a nut in a nutcracker. He released it to roll down one leg, balanced it on his toe, and then held his foot on it, David with the head of Goliath. He then jumped it into the air with both feet and kicked it with a solid dry thunk across the field, his leg at a perfect right angle to his body.

  La liberté de cette jambe.

  —Thought you were frazzled, Robinet said. You’re worse than a dog that can’t keep out of whatever fray’s handy.

  —It is as if the primitive mind thought with things rather than concepts and words, Pastor Leenhardt said. Our logic falls between things, and connects them, or dissociates them. We cannot believe that a young man who thinks himself ugly and unloved can become a bird and be befriended by the girl he longs for. You know the myth.

  —Oof! Peyrony said. A good leg can’t resist a hurdle. A leg that snaps into action and takes you along with it is a good leg.

  —You’ve a fine leg, for sure.

  Peyrony absentmindedly opened Robinet’s small backpack, looking around in it.

  —Baume Bengué!

  He uncapped the tube, sniffed, and made a show of falling backwards.

  —Comb, clean socks, experienced underwear, and tiens! A book. De natura rerum of all things. You read Lucretius at halftime?

  —On the train, coming in. Speaking of which, shall we go back together?

  Silence, with thought.

  —I promised Maman I’d take the 6:32, and you stay later, don’t you?

  The rain that had been threatening began to fall as a light shower. Peyrony took his beret from his backpack. He found a twig and began to chew it.

  Robinet, staring at Peyrony, paid no attention to the rain.

  —I think I’ll call you on your fib, he said, to see what’s behind it. Just yesterday your mother told me that she never expected you before eight, or half past. I won’t deceive you in keeping back that you’re handing me a line.

  Peyrony picked a blade of grass and ate it.

  —The truth, then, he said smiling. I’d rather go back with the team.

  —Than with me. And so’s not to admit that, you fib. Remember last summer, when you asked me to go with you to the France-Angleterre match, and I said no, that I was going with Remond, just that, no explanation, thinking I was doing you the honor of imagining that you were above silly infatuations. There are times when I prefer to be with Remond than with you, so there are times you’d rather be with the team than with me. Absolutely natural and reasonable. But take care. You begin with a pretense of being nice, and then trickery gets into it, and then you find yourself fucking with people’s feelings for the fun of it. Look, we’re football players, not like those tennis players over there running in from the rain. Telling the truth is part of having a well-built body. So is letting it rain on you. Take your beret off. The rain wants to know who you are.

  —Rain is a blessing, Lévy-Bruhl said, holding out his tongue to taste it. For my old bones, however, I think that copse with the benches is wise.

  —Europeans rarely see real rain. They see gentle rain like this, and a cloudburst now and again. Rain in the Pacific is a season all to itself. Napoleon only thought he had seen mud when he called it the fifth element.

  —The light is beautiful here. Would the primitive mind think it beautiful?

  —Why not? It would be sensitive to the pleasantness you’re calling beautiful light, but it would be very interested in the spirit inside this old tree, and in events that have happened here, a murder or debate or words of power said here by a wise elder.

  Peyrony, throwing aside the jacket over his legs and pushing his tall socks down to his ankles, stretched out and welcomed the rain.

  —Your boots, Robinet said, Do they lace up to a proper fit?

  —I think so. Yes.

  —A good boot must be against the foot on all surfaces, snug.

  He felt his boot all over, pressing with his fingers, like a doctor palpating.

  —How are your cleats holding up? They feel firm. Let me see your other foot.

  —No!

  —You’re not really saying no, Robinet said, seizing the other leg by the ankle and inspecting the sole while Peyrony, half-angry, protested. So you’re of the race of soldiers who would rather face death than dig a foxhole? Better to lose a cleat, bungle a kick, and risk fucking up a play than make a boring visit to the cobbler, is that it?

  He tore the wobbly cleat from Peyrony’s sole.

  —Now you have to replace this boot.

  —You idiot!

  —Before every match line up your little shits and inspect every foot, carefully.

  —What we call myth, Pastor Leenhardt said, is the very essence of the primitive mind. The logic is of things, not ideas. In First Samuel it’s the honey on the tip of Jonathan’s spear and lost asses found by prophets that occupy a space we would fill with abstract nouns and verbs, or omit altogether. Unless, of course, we are poets and children.

  —Not, then, an early logic but an alternative one?

  —What, after all, is thought? And why should we French, who have given the world a Pasteur and a Voltaire, be so curious about the mentality of Trobriand Islanders?

  —The mentality, ah yes.

  —I play backfield exclusively, Robinet said. For an hour and a half I serve the ball to the forwards. Only that, nothing more. I serve. I must make up for the errors, stopping balls that have got past, converting weaknesses into strengths. It’s a lively position. To block a strapping big bastard going like a cannonball before he can make trouble is to be alive. Your ordinary person in his daily round experiences nothing like it. To outwit galloping bulls in cleated boots coming at you like a freight train and come out in one piece, that’s looking life in the eye. You have balls. You feel big. You’re free of all the mingy littleness that makes people tightfisted and afraid.

  —It’s done you good, hasn’t it? I mean, you’re still in shape.

  —I started out as a brawler, believe me, with fingers in eyes and elbows in ribs, but now I stick to the rules, like the clean English players, chest forward and shoulders squared. What’s behind me is history.

  —This light, this lovely light. Monet can paint light.

  —These trees are a word of God. I learned that from the Kanaka. A leaf is a word. They have a tree that embodies forgiveness, and I gave its name to Jesus. They could have taken him for a word, except that he wasn’t there. The tree was. Everything, mon cher Lucien, is a fiction we have supplied to complement nature.

  —If we could know the history of gestures.

  Pastor Leenhardt chuckled.

  —Because people without history have a history. There is no event without a past.

  Peyrony was eating a stick.

  —There was a woman sitting near me at the Rouen match last week who said to her boyfriend that you play like a cow. You do keep your eyes lowered and shift about like somebody who has wandered onto the field.

  —That way I can do inside the rules all sorts of things that cou
ld count as errors, like not responding to taunts, saving my revenge for later. That was the one pleasure in the war, getting even. I forget what writer said that the Roman circus was a focussing and containment of violence. If I don’t take out my aggressions on the field I’d bloody noses in the streetcar.

  —But there’s the saying that we should do unto others as we’d like them to treat us. It’s in the Bible, I think.

  —And it’s wrong. Have you ever heard me complain about a player who’s rough and mean? Do to others what they’re doing to you. When you’re on top of a return, naturally you’re going to feed it to the team, and naturally you’re going to feint, right? You’ve got Beyssac’s eye, and Beyssac is the last person you’re going to kick the ball to, and then you kick it to Beyssac.

  —And the Red Lions always fall for it.

  —Eh bien! Beside that little ruse we can put a phrase of Aristotle.

  —Aristotle! Merde alors.

  —Don’t laugh at Aristotle. It is precisely when we seem most modern that we are imitating the past. I love sport, its training and spirit, the more for knowing that the classical world loved it. Aristotle said of gymnastics that they make a strategic mind, a healthy and prudent soul, and shape a liberal and courageous character. Aristotle would have said that of football, yes?

  —He makes it all very moral, doesn’t he? Where’s the fun?

  —The beauty of it is in the word liberal: an openness of spirit, an acceptance of the world. For the hour and a half of a game you’re freely consenting with a male and liberal heart to all the fire and sanctions of the game. You accept that the sun goes in when it might have got in the other team’s eyes, and that it blazes out when it’s in ours. You accept the wind going against you and its dying down when it might have been in your favor. You accept your team’s doing the opposite of what you know is the right play.

  Peyrony listened with big eyes. Eating grass.

  The rain was letting up. Lévy-Bruhl stood, brushed his sleeves with his hands, and nodded toward their path.

  —Have you read Swedenborg? I mean, some of him.