The French Art of War

by Alexis Jenni

  My grandfather would speak beneath the blade. He would sit in his blue velvet armchair in the corner. On the wall above him hung a knife in its sheath. From time to time, it swayed in the breeze without making a sound. I had seen him take it down, seen the knife removed from the battered leather scabbard. The crusted red flakes on the blade might have been rust or blood. I was deliberately left in doubt; everyone laughed at me. Once, someone mentioned ‘the blood of a gazelle’ and everyone laughed harder. On the other wall hung a large framed drawing of a city that I have never been able to identify. The houses were lopsided, the people were veiled, the streets half hidden by canvas awnings: it was difficult to make out the shapes. I remember this drawing the way you remember a smell, without ever knowing which continent it might have come from.

  It was here that my grandfather would sit and talk, in the big blue velvet armchair that only he used. He would hike up his trousers before he sat down, to stop them creasing at the knees. The rounded chair back traced an arc over his shoulders, encircling his head with a halo of studded timber. He would sit bolt upright, arms resting on the armrests, never crossing his legs. When he had settled himself comfortably, he would address us. ‘It is important to know the origins of our name. Our family lives on the border, but I have found instances of our name in central France. It is an ancient name that means working the land, taking root. Names spring up from places, like plants that later spread their seeds. Names contain their own origin.’

  Sitting on my little stool, I would listen. My grandfather had an enormous wealth of knowledge on the subject of bloodlines. He could read the past through the way that names were spelled. He could trace the phonological shifts that led to a place name being transferred to the name of a clan.

  Later, much later, when I had found my voice, I never discovered a single detail of what he had told us in any book, nor in any of the conversations I had. I think he made it up. He drew on hearsay, he embellished, pushed the slightest link to its logical conclusion. He took his need to explain very seriously, but the realities he described to us existed only at the foot of his blue velvet armchair for long as his story lasted. What he said existed only as words, but it was spellbinding, since it made it possible to hear the nasal sound of the past. On the subject of bloodlines, his desire for rules was inextinguishable and his thirst for knowledge inconsolable. No encyclopaedia could ever fill his boundless appetite, so he invented those things he wished existed.

  Towards the end of his life he became obsessed with genetics. He learned the fundamentals through popular science magazines. Genetics finally gave him the clear-cut answer he had longed to hear. He had his blood ‘read’. It took twenty years and a lot of study for me to understand how blood could be ‘read’. My grandfather contacted a laboratory that classified the mitochondria that bind to white blood cells. Mitochondria never die, they are handed down, like words. Mitochondria are the words and we are the sentences. By counting the frequency of words in speech, we can know the secret thoughts in the hearts of others.

  He had a laboratory analyze all the blood groups he carried. He explained to us what he was looking for. I would get mixed up and call them ‘bloody groups’. This made everyone laugh, but kindled a spark of curiosity in my grandfather’s eyes. ‘Blood,’ he said, ‘is the most important ingredient. We inherit it, we share it, and we see it from outside. The blood you carry gives you colour and form, because it is the broth in which you were simmered. The human eye can distinguish between different blood types.’

  My grandfather had a sample of his blood taken, and one from his wife. The sealed vials were labelled with their names. He then sent them to the laboratory and from these few drops of blood he learned the mysteries of the bloodlines. Look around at the turmoil in the world. You’ll be able to discern something that will give it order. That thing is resemblance; and it can be spoken of as ‘race’.

  The results arrived in the sort of thick envelope used for government documents; he opened it, his heart hammering. Beneath the state-of-the-art logo of the laboratory were the results of the tests he had requested. My grandfather was a Celt and my grandmother Hungarian. This, he announced to us on a winter day when we had all gathered for dinner. He was a Celt, she was Hungarian. I wonder how he persuaded my grandmother to hand over some of her blood. The laboratory had ‘read’ it, using a process whose details he did not trouble to explain. He had little interest in details. The results had arrived in an envelope and only one thing mattered: she was Hungarian, he was a Celt.

  His knowledge of the life sciences was superficial, the sort of information not found in academic textbooks, but frequently reprinted in the popular magazines, which are the only ones anyone actually reads. He had no interest in abstractions; he wanted concrete answers, answers he called facts. Of the wealth of twentieth-century science, he remembered only this one ghostly idea, which would haunt him all his life. The idea which was repeatedly dismissed, refuted by academic papers, yet still he would come back to it, through half-truths and rumours, through his longing to finally understand; if you want something badly enough, if you are prepared to read between the lines, molecular analysis makes it possible to recuperate the concept of the bloodline. Tacitly, the study of molecules and how they are passed on seems to corroborate the idea of race. This is not something we believe, it is something we long for only to dismiss. Yet such is our desire to impose order on the confusing mysteries of resemblance that the idea constantly reappears.

  So my grandmother was Hungarian and my grandfather a Celt. She was a monstrous horsewoman with slitty eyes; he a naked colossus smeared with woad. She galloping across the steppes in a cloud of dust raised by her horses’ hooves, seeking out villages to plunder, children to abduct and devour, buildings to raze, leaving the land grassy and barren; he drunk and holed up in a circular, stinking hut, practising insalubrious music-related rites from which the body cannot emerge unscathed.

  How did it come about, their coupling? Their coupling. Because they must have coupled, they are my grandparents. How did they manage? She a Hungarian, he a Celt, savage peoples of an ancient Europe, how did they even manage to meet? To meet. How did they come to be in the same place, to be settled for long enough, since they did not travel through Europe at the same pace? Were they forced by threats? By the threat of spears with jagged heads, bronze swords, quivering arrows threaded on the strings of double bows? How did they manage to remain still next to each other without one of them being drained of their lifeblood?

  Did they protect themselves? Did they protect themselves from the cold, the bitter chill of an ancient Europe roamed by primeval tribes? Did they protect themselves against the blades they lunged towards each other the moment they came within striking distance? They wore leather clothes which smelled of rot, thick furs ripped from animals, and breastplates of boiled hide studded with nails, shields emblazoned with bulls’ heads ringed by red symbols, nostrils streaming with blood. Could they protect themselves?

  And yet they must have managed to couple, because I am here, but where could it have happened? Where could they have found a place to lie when they had no common ground beyond the battlefield? When one tribe spent their days astride sweating horses, while the other congregated in huge enclosures scattered with bones and defended by palisades of sharpened stakes.

  Where could it have happened but on a patch of trampled grass, amid smoking ruins strewn with broken weapons? How could such a thing have happened between two mismatched peoples except in the aftermath of war, in the flickering shadows of great pennants planted in the ground at the close of some conjuration; how but on the mossy ground in a forest of tall trees, or on the flagstone floor of some colossal castle? How?

  I know nothing about their coupling. I know only two words: ‘Celt’ and ‘Hungarian’. I do not know what he means by informing me and the rest of the family about the results of his blood test. He floats the words on the warm air of a wintry living room, ‘Celt’, ‘Hungarian’, and, havi
ng uttered them, he marks a silence. The words swell. He had had his blood analyzed and I have no idea what he was trying to find out, why he was telling us, those of us gathered around him, me sitting on my little stool, on a winter’s day when we were all together. ‘Celt,’ he said, ‘and Hungarian.’ He let loose these two words as one might take the muzzles from two huge hounds and let them prowl around us. He was demonstrating how much could be read from a drop of blood. He was telling those of us gathered around him: we are bound by blood. Why did he say this, and to me, a child? Why did he want to silently conjure the coupling that was the source of that blood?

  He suggested that each of us have a drop of our blood read, so that all of us gathered in this winter room could know what peoples we are descended from. Because each of us was descended from some ancient tribe. In so doing, we would discover who we were, and the mystery of the fraught tensions we felt when we were together would finally be solved. The table around which we gathered would be transformed into the icy continent roamed by ancient peoples, each with weapons and pennants that looked alien to the others’ eyes.

  His proposal fell on deaf ears. It terrified me. I was sitting lower than the others on my little stool, and from below I could see their awkwardness. No one responded. No one said yes or no. They let him speak; left him unanswered; left ‘Celt’ and ‘Hungarian’, the two huge hounds he had unleashed, to lick the floor, to slobber over us, to threaten to bite us.

  Why, on this winter day, did he want to recreate a primeval Europe peopled by barbarians and clans? We were gathered around him, a single family sitting around the blue velvet armchair where he sat, ringed by a halo of brass upholstery nails, beneath the knife that hung on the wall, swaying silently. He wanted us to read a drop of our blood and in that blood to find the story of warring peoples, the history of insurmountable differences written in our bodies. Why did he want to divide us, we who were gathered around him? Why did he want to see us as unrelated? When we were, as much as possible, of one blood.

  I have no interest in knowing what can be read into a drop of my blood. I feel queasy enough thinking about their blood. Enough is enough. I don’t want to say any more about it. I don’t want to hear about the blood that flows between us. I don’t want to hear about the blood that flows over us, but still he keeps talking about the race that can be read in us and which confounds reason.

  He went on talking. He claimed to know how to read the stream that represents lineage. He wanted us to follow his example, to become intoxicated by this reading, to bathe together in this stream that constitutes human history. He was inviting us to bathe with him in the stream of blood; this would be our bond.

  My grandfather was thoroughly enjoying himself. In veiled terms, he embellished the laboratory report in which nothing was said but everything was implied. The narrative of race is never far from madness. No one dared say anything; we all looked the other way. I watched from below, silently squatting on my little stool. In the crystalline air of the wintry room he eagerly performed his theatre of the races, staring at us, one by one, looking through us, looking past us, to the never-ending clash of ancient peoples.

  I do not know what people I am descended from. But it doesn’t matter, does it?

  Because there is no such thing as race. Is there?

  These warring peoples do not exist.

  Our life now is much more peaceable. Isn’t it?

  We are all the same. Aren’t we?

  Don’t we all live together as one?

  Don’t we?

  Answer me.

  In the area where I live the police never venture; or rarely; and when they do venture here it is in small groups who chat lazily, who stroll along, hands behind their backs, staring into shop windows. They park their blue cars on the kerb and, arms folded, they watch the young girls go by like everyone else. They are athletic, armed, but they behave like gendarmes from the sticks. I like to believe my neighbourhood is quiet. The police never notice me; I barely notice them. That said, I have witnessed an identity check.

  I’m talking about it as though it were a big deal, but in my area ID checks are rare. We live in the city centre; we are protected from such checks by the distance between the city and the suburbs. We never venture into the suburbs, and when we do, we go by car to supermarkets in shopping malls, and even then we keep our windows closed and ensure our doors are locked.

  In the street, no one has ever asked me to prove my identity. Why would they ask? Don’t I know who I am? If someone asks my name, I tell them. What more could they want? Like most people who live in the centre, I never carry the little card with my name on it. I am sufficiently certain of my name not to need an aide-memoire. When politely asked for my name, I give it, the way I would give directions to someone who is lost. No one in the street has ever asked me to produce my card, the little card the colour of France that bears my name, my photograph, my address and the signature of the préfet. Why would I need to carry it on me? I know all the information by heart.

  This, of course, is not the issue: the carte nationale d’identité is not intended as a reminder. It could just as easily be blank, the colour of France, blue with the scribbled signature of the prefect of police. It is the act itself that counts. This is something every child understands. When little girls play at being shopkeepers, it is the act of handing over imaginary money that forms the basis of the game. An officer carrying out an ID check does not give a damn about the contents of the card, he doesn’t bother to decipher the writing, to read the names; an ID check is an unvarying sequence of actions. It begins with a brusque request, there is no greeting, just a simple, resolute demand; the subject fumbles for the card, proffers it; those who know they may have to produce it always keep it within easy reach; the card is scrutinized, first one side, then the other, for much longer than it takes to read the printed words; it is handed back reluctantly, almost regretfully, and may be followed by the subject being searched. Time stands still. This can take a while. The subject of the inspection must be patient and silent. Both parties know their roles; all that matters is the sequence of actions. I am never subjected to an ID check, my face is self-evident. Those who are asked to produce the card I never carry are identified by something in their faces, something unquantifiable but instantly recognizable. ID checks follow a circular logic: officers check the identities of those whose identities are checked, and in doing so confirm that those whose identity they are checking belong to the group whose identities are checked. The check is a gesture, a hand on the shoulder, a physical call to order. Tugging on the leash reminds the dog he is wearing a collar. No one checks me, my face inspires confidence.

  So, I witnessed an identity check at first-hand. No one asked me for anything, no one checked my ID. I know my name by heart. I never carry the little France-blue card that corroborates it. I was carrying an umbrella. It was because of the storm that I witnessed the ID check. The lowering clouds burst and the downpour came just as I was crossing the bridge. The bronze expanse of the Saône was hammered by the raindrops, overlaid by thousands of intersecting circles. There is no shelter on the bridge, nothing before you reach the far bank, but I had my umbrella, so I crossed it at a leisurely pace. People scurried through the torrent, shielding their heads with jackets, with a briefcase or a newspaper that quickly became sodden, even a hand – anything that offered a token display of protection. They were warding off the rain; everyone was running, while proving they were trying to shelter, while I sauntered across the bridge, savouring the fact that I did not need to run. I clutched the canvas sail sheltering me from the raindrops that beat like a drum roll, splashing all around me. A sodden young man grabbed my arm, laughing, and huddled against me, and we walked together. ‘Lend me your umbrella till we get to the end of the bridge?’ Chuckling and dripping wet, he nestled against me, he was supremely cocky and smelled nice; his impudence made me want to laugh. Arm in arm, we walked in step to the far side of the bridge. I now had only half an umbrella an
d one side of me was getting soaked, he cursed the rain and chattered to me incessantly. We made fun of the people running and making protective signs above their heads. I smiled at his audacity, his brazen cheek made me laugh, the guy was a livewire.

  As we came to the far side of the bridge, the storm began to abate. Most of the rain had fallen and was now coursing through the streets, only a light drizzle now hung in the freshly washed air. He thanked me with the same zeal he invested in everything; he gave me a pat on the shoulder and set off at a run through the last of the raindrops. He dashed too quickly in front of the blue car parked next to the bridge. The handsome athletes scanned the street, arms folded, standing like statues beneath a shop awning. He was running too quickly; he noticed them and this modified his path; one of them stepped forward, gave a curt salute and said something; he looked confused, he was running too fast; he did not hear straight away. They all leapt out and chased after him. He did not stop, instinctively, observing the laws of momentum. They took him down.