by Alexis Jenni
I was irritated by the France with the big, emphatic ‘F’, the capital ‘F’ you can hear when De Gaulle pronounces it, a pronunciation no one dares use nowadays. That big ‘F’ is something no one understands any more. I’m sick and tired of the big ‘F’ I’ve been talking about ever since I met Victorien Salagnon. I’m sick and tired of the preposterous, misbegotten capital ‘F’ that is spoken with a hiss of menace and utterly incapable of balancing: if it leans to the right, it topples, dragged down by the weight of its asymmetric bars; ‘F’ can only stand upright if forcibly supported. Ever since I met Victorien Salagnon, I’ve been talking about that big ‘F’ at every opportunity. I’ve ended up talking about France, capital ‘F’, as much as de Gaulle, that barefaced liar, that brilliant novelist, who, with the stroke of a pen, with a single word, made us believe that we were victors, when we were no longer anything at all. By a literary tour de force he transformed our humiliation into heroism: who would have dared disbelieve him? We believed him: he said it so persuasively. It felt so good. We sincerely believed that we had fought. And when we took our seat at the victors’ table, we brought our dog along to emphasize our wealth, and gave it a kick to demonstrate our power. The dog whimpered, we hit it again, and then it bit us.
France is pronounced with a faulty letter, as cumbersome as the Général’s cross at Colombey. We find it hard to pronounce the word: the unequivocal grandeur of the upper-case ‘F’ makes it difficult to correctly inflect the crowd of lower-case letters following behind. The capital ‘F’ exhales, the rest of the word has trouble breathing, how then can we go on talking?
What is there to say?
France is a way of expiring.
Everyone here sighs. We recognize one another by our sighs, and those who are weary of sighing go elsewhere. I don’t understand them, the ones who leave; they have their reasons. I know them, but I do not understand them. I do not know why so many French people go elsewhere, why they forsake this place, the ‘here’ I cannot imagine leaving, I do not know what makes them want to go. But they are leaving in droves; the statistics clearly show they are emigrating. There are almost a million and a half of them, 5 per cent of the electorate, 5 per cent of the working population, a sizeable group of us, running away.
I could never go elsewhere. I could never breathe without the language that is my breath. I cannot do without my breath. Others can, it seems, and I cannot understand that. So I asked an expatriate who was here for a few days’ holiday before going back there, where he earned more money than I could dare dream of, I asked him: ‘Don’t you want to move back?’ He didn’t know. ‘Don’t you miss life here?’ Because I know that elsewhere people love life here, they often say as much. ‘I don’t know,’ he said with a faraway look. ‘I don’t know whether I’ll move back. But I know’ (here his voice became more self-assured and he looked me in the eye) ‘I know that I’ll be buried in France.’
I was so surprised that I didn’t know how to respond, although ‘respond’ is not the right word: I didn’t know how to carry on the conversation. We talked about other things, but it has been preying on my mind ever since.
He lives elsewhere, but he wants to be dead in France. I had assumed that a dead body, stricken by ataraxy and deafness, by anosmia, blindness and a general insensibility, is indifferent to the ground where it decays. This is what I believed, but no, even in death the body clings to the earth that nurtured it, that saw it take its first steps, heard it stammer its first words with that characteristic way of modulating the breath. Much more than a way of life, France is a way of expiring, a way of almost dying, an incoherent hiss followed by little, muted sobs.
France is a way of death. Life in France is a never-ending Sunday that ends in tears.
That never-ending Sunday intrudes early on a child’s sleep. The window is briskly opened, the shutter thrown wide and light floods in. We sit up with a start, blinking in the light, longing to curl up in the sheet rumpled by the night that no longer fits snugly with the blanket, only to be told to get up. We get up, eyes puffy, shuffling slowly. Thick tartines are cut from a large baguette; we dunk them and the sight is faintly disgusting. We have to drain the large bowl, cradling it in both hands, holding it before our faces for a long time.
Clean clothes are laid out on the bed, clothes we do not often wear, not enough to make them soft, to become fond of them; but we must put them on, taking care not to crease or dirty them. They are never exactly the right size, because we rarely wear them and they last too long. Having been worn only infrequently, the shoes are too tight; the stiff uppers cut into the ankle and the tendon, making holes in the socks.
We are all set. The discomfort and the awkwardness are not visible; the outfit looks perfect, we are beyond reproach. We polish the shoes, which have already begun to pinch, but so what? We will not be walking far.
We go to church. We join the congregation – ‘we’ is no one in particular. We go together, and it would be such a pity if we were not there. We stand, we sit, we sing like everyone else, badly, but the only escape is not to be there, and so we sing, badly. Outside the church we make polite small talk; the shoes are painful.
We buy cakes and have them packed in stiff, white cardboard boxes tied with ribbon. We hold the box delicately, one finger hooked through the loop in the ribbon. We are careful not to shake the box, since inside there are miniature castles of cream, caramel and butter. These will be the culmination of the substantial meal already simmering at home.
It is Sunday. Shoes hurt. We sit where we are told to sit. Everyone sits down in front of a plate, we each have our own; we sit down with a sigh of contentment, although it could just as easily be weariness, resignation, you never can tell with sighs. Everyone is here, although we might wish we were elsewhere; no one wants to come, but we would be mortified not to have been invited. No one wants to be here, but we dread being left out; being here is tedious, but not being here would be agony. And so we sigh, we eat. The meal is good, but too long and too heavy. We eat a lot. Much more than we would have liked, but we feel pleasure and gradually belts tighten. Food is not merely a pleasure, it is a substance, it has weight. Shoes hurt. Belts dig into bellies, making breathing difficult. Before we even leave the table we feel queasy and long for some fresh air. We are sitting with these people for all time and we wonder why. And so we eat. We ask ourselves. Just as the answer comes, we swallow. We never answer. We eat.
What do we talk about? About what we are eating. We anticipate it, we prepare it, we eat it: all the time we talk about it. What we eat occupies the mouth in more ways than one. While we eat, the mouth is busy saying nothing; we keep it busy so we cannot talk, to finally fill this bottomless tube that opens outwards, opens inwards, this mouth that, alas, we cannot plug. We busy ourselves filling it, to justify the fact that we have nothing to say.
The shoes pinch, but under the table they cannot be seen, merely felt, so it is of no importance. Belts are loosened a notch, discreetly or with a raucous belly laugh. Under the table, the shoes pinch.
Then comes the promenade. We dread it, because we do not know where to go, so we go somewhere obvious; we long to walk, because we cannot breathe in here. We will walk with hesitant steps, reluctant steps that scarcely inch forwards, a shuffle stumbling at ever step. Nothing is less interesting than a Sunday walk, all together. We get nowhere; footsteps trickle like the listless sands of time; we pretend to move forwards.
Eventually we come home, take a little nap; this we do lying on our back with the window open. Throwing ourselves on the bed, we finally kick off the shoes, the shoes that pinched, we rip them off and toss them at the foot of the bed. Shirt collars are unbuttoned, belts opened, we lie on our back, because our bellies are too swollen. Very slowly the heat outside dies down.
The heart beats a little too fast from the effort of coming upstairs to the bedroom, from too quickly unbuttoning those things that restricted the belly and the throat, that kept the toes curled tight, from having jum
ped too eagerly on the bed with a loud sigh. The squeaking of the mattress slows, and at last we can gaze at the silent room and the tranquil outdoors. The throat beats a little too fast, struggling to push the syrupy blood that moves sluggishly, fat-rich blood that struggles to move, that slithers rather than flows. The heart works away, exhausting itself with the effort. When standing, blood naturally flowed towards the bottom; the leisurely stroll helped it to move; while sitting, at table, it was warmed by conversation, eased by volatile alcohol; but lying down, the thick blood spreads, it pools, it clogs the heart. We die without any drama of inertia, of viscous, fatty blood, because in a horizontal position nothing circulates. It is a slow process, each organ struggles on, each dies in turn.
Dying in France is a long Sunday, a gradual congealing of blood that is no longer going anywhere; that stays where it is. The dark source no longer moves, the past is frozen, nothing stirs. We die. It is better this way.
Beyond the open window the gentle splendours of twilight unfurl. Floral scents disperse and mingle; the sky that we can see in its entirety is a huge sheet of copper that quivers as the birds drum on it with tiny sticks wrapped in felt. In the gathering purple darkness, they begin to sing. We were neatly dressed. We have no stains on our shirts. We put up a good show. We took part in the feast like all the others. We are dying now from our clotting blood, from the thickening of veins and arteries blocking our circulation, from an asphyxia that chokes the heart and makes it impossible to cry out. To call for help. But who would come? Who would come at siesta time?
France is a way of dying on a Sunday afternoon. France is a way of failing to die at the last minute. Because the door bursts open; young, bullet-headed men rush into the room; they crop their hair so short that all that remains is a shadow on their skull; their shoulders stretch their clothes so taut that they rip, their muscles bulge; they are carrying heavy objects and moving quickly. They race into the room. Behind them comes another man. He is older, thinner. He barks orders, but never panics. He reassures, because he sees everything; he directs everything with his finger, with his voice; the wolves around him curb their strength. They race into the room and we feel better; they give us oxygen and we breathe; they open out a gurney and lay on it the motionless body that is about to die, pick it up and rush out. They push the wheeled stretcher down the corridor with the suffocating body strapped to it; they put it in the ambulance, whose engine has been running all the time. The gurney is adapted to all kinds of vehicle. They drive through the city much too fast; the wailing ambulance leans into the bends, runs the red lights, scorns rights of way with an arrogant wave; they are no longer following the rules, because there is no time to follow rules.
At the hospital they race down the corridors, pushing the stretcher on which lies the suffocating body. They run. They kick open the double doors, jostle those who do not get out of the way in time. Finally they arrive in the sterile room where a masked man is waiting. It is impossible to recognize him, because his face is hidden by the surgical mask, but it is clear who he is from his posture: he is so calm, so confident that he knows that in his presence no one else knows. They fall silent. He addresses the leader of the young men by his first name. They know each other. He takes charge. Around him, masked women hand him shiny instruments. Under the glare of a spotlight that casts no shadows, he cuts the artery, he operates, he sutures the gash with minuscule stitches with the troubling gentleness of a man who excels at women’s work.
We wake up in a pristine room. The young, bullet-headed men have set off again to other suffocating patients. The fortunate man who knows how to wield the scalpel and the needle has pulled his mask down to his throat. He is dreaming by the window, smoking a cigarette.
The door opens soundlessly and a beautiful woman in a white coat brings a light meal on a tray. On the thick crockery the food looks like a toy: the fat-free ham, the thin slices of bread, the little mound of mashed potato, the sliver of Gruyère, the dead water. Every day the food will be like this: transparent to the point of recovery.
With their older, thinner leader, the muscular young men have headed off to another operation; the faceless master to whom they bring bodies that are all but dead, almost lifeless, saves them with a simple gesture.
This is the nature of French life: almost dying, only to be saved by the thrust of a blade. Choked by blood, by blood that has thickened until it no longer moves, then suddenly saved by a spray of bright blood spurting from the wound.
Lost, then saved. France is a peaceful almost-death and a brutal resuscitation. Though I could not explain it, I could understand why the man I asked was hesitant to come back, the exile who lived elsewhere and had no desire to return, and why he also knew that he had to be buried here.
I knew nothing about this death, this languid, gentle death, and the brutal salvation by men who are constantly running; of salvation by the scalpel thrust of a skilful man to whom one would be eternally grateful; I was not expecting it. And yet everything I was told in France, everything I have made my own through the language that courses through me, everything I know, everything that has been said, written and recounted in the language I call my own has meant that, from the beginning, I have been prepared to be saved by the use of force.
‘You understand nothing about France,’ Victorien Salagnon would say to me.
‘Oh, but I do. It’s just that I don’t know how to put it into words.’
So I got to my feet, kissed him, kissed his leathery old man’s cheeks, stubbled here and there with white hairs, since he no longer shaved properly; I kissed him tenderly and thanked him, and I went home. I walked home through the empty streets of Voracieux-les-Bredins, through snow blighted by tyre tracks and footprints. When I passed a patch of undamaged snow, lawns and footpaths as yet untrammelled, I walked around, so as not to spoil it. I understood only too well how fragile was this white harmony, which, in any case, would not survive the day.
Novel V
The war in this bloody garden
THERE IS NO CITY in the world that Salagnon despised more than Saigon. The horrendous everyday heat and the noise. To breathe is to suffocate; the air is hot and waterlogged. Open the window you think will protect you and you cannot hear yourself speak or think or breathe: the deafening roar of the street drowns out everything, even inside your head; close it again and you cannot breathe; you feel a clammy sheet wrap around your head and tighten. In his first days in Saigon he opened and closed the window of his hotel room many times, then gave up; and he lay in his boxer shorts on the damp bed; he was trying not to die. Heat is the sickness of this country; you have to acclimatize or you die from it. Better to acclimatize and gradually it subsides. You no longer think about it, so it takes you by surprise when you are called upon to do up the buttons of your jacket, make a vigorous gesture, carry even the slightest weight, lift a kitbag, climb a flight of stairs; in such moments the heat returns like a crashing wave that soaks your back, your arms, your forehead, as dark stains spread over the pale uniform. He learned to wear light clothes, to leave everything unbuttoned, to save his energy, to make sweeping gestures so that skin never touched skin.
He did not like the teeming streets, the constant noise, the swarming anthill that was Saigon; because to him, Saigon was like an anthill in which an infinite number of indistinguishable people scurried here and there, for reasons he could not fathom: soldiers, unobtrusive women, gaudy women, men in identical clothing whose expressions he could not interpret, more soldiers; people everywhere you looked pulled rickshaws, human-powered vehicles; and a bewildering array of businesses on the pavements: food stalls, hawkers, barbers, toe-nail clippers, sandal repair, and nothing: dozens of crouching men in threadbare clothes, some smoking, others not, half watching the commotion, although it was impossible to know what they were thinking. Soldiers in striking white uniforms passed, sprawled in the back of rickshaws; others sat on the terrace of the grand cafés, sometimes with other soldiers, sometimes with women with long
black hair; a few sporting golden uniforms moved through the crowds in automobiles, opening up a path with honking horns, threats and a rumble of engines, and as soon as they had passed, the crowds merged again into a teeming throng. He loathed Saigon from the very first day, because of the noise, the heat, all the horrid invasions it endured; but once outside the city, having ventured a few kilometres into the countryside with a good-natured officer keen to show him the calmer, more serene, outlying villages, some of which had swimming pools and pleasant restaurants, when he found himself in the boundless paddy fields beneath motionless clouds, he experienced such utter silence, such emptiness, that he thought he was dead; he suggested they cut short the excursion and go back to Saigon.
He preferred Hanoi, because on his first morning there he was woken by the sound of bells. It was raining; the light was grey and the chill air made him think he was elsewhere, back home, perhaps in France, although not in Lyon, because he did not want to think of anyone waiting for him in Lyon; he thought he was in another part of France, somewhere he felt at ease, a green-grey place, an imaginary place drawn from his readings. He shook himself awake and found he did not sweat while getting dressed. He was to meet someone in the hotel bar, ‘after Mass’ he had been told, the Mass at the cathedral; the bar in the Tonkin Grand Hôtel, a curious mixture of provincial French and far-flung colonial. In Saigon you had to squint into the light, an overexposed yellow, dotted with patches of colour; in Hanoi the light was simply grey, sometimes ominous, sometimes a beautiful melancholy grey, and the city teemed with people who wore only black. It was just as difficult to move through the streets congested with goods, carts, convoys, but Hanoi worked with a seriousness that was quietly mocked elsewhere; Hanoi worked and was never distracted from its gold; here, even war was waged seriously. The soldiers were thinner, wiry and as tense as live cables, their eyes burned in faces haggard with exhaustion; they did not dawdle; harried, economical in their movements, there was nothing extraneous in their gestures. Dressed in ragged uniforms of indeterminate colour, there was nothing Oriental or decorative about them; they moved unaffectedly, like Boy Scouts, explorers, mountaineers. One might have encountered them in the Alps, in the middle of the Sahara, in the Arctic, crossing vast wastes of stone or ice with the same unvarying tension in their gaze, the same eager leanness, the same economy of movement, because meticulousness makes it possible to survive, mistakes do not. But these things he discovered later, by then he was already a different man; his first contact with Indochine was the revolting hot wet rag that enveloped Saigon and smothered him.