Hallucinating Foucault

by Patricia Duncker

  “He was the reader for whom I wrote.”

  Paul Michel gazed out into the blue void. I heard joyful shouting from the beach below. Paul Michel spoke again.

  “He kept the secret. He never betrayed me.”

  I could restrain myself no longer.

  “But it wasn’t a secret. Anybody can see it. All that’s necessary is to read you both. Side by side, page after page.”

  “I know. That’s the joke. They talk of influence, threads, preoccupations. They know nothing about the unspoken pact. That was absolutely clear between us. We knew each other’s secrets, weaknesses and fears, petit. The things that were hidden from the world. He wanted to write fiction. He fretted that he was not handsome. That the boys would not flock to him, court him. I lived that life for him, the life he envied and desired. I had no authority, no position. I was just a clever charismatic boy with the great gift of telling stories. He was always more famous than I was. He was the French cultural monument. I was never respectable. But I wrote for him, petit, only for him. The love between a writer and a reader is never celebrated. It can never be proved to exist. But he was the man I loved most. He was the reader for whom I wrote.”

  I was silent. I never told him that I had read his letters to Foucault. I think he knew that I had.

  The last day we went back to the beach was the thirtieth of September. We decided to drive north on that Friday and to take our time,stopping at Avignon or Orange so that we would be in Clermont by Sunday night. I decided to fight the next round in Sainte-Marie itself. I had made my decision, but I had said nothing to him. There was no question in my mind that I would ever return to England. Nothing in the whole world mattered more to me now than Paul Michel. That never changed. I can remember how naïve, how unsuspecting, how happy I was. I had won all the past battles, to find him, to set him free. I would win the next one. And the next. But I had never anticipated what he still had to say to me. He was particularly gentle with me all that day. I would turn to face him and find his grey eyes upon me, no longer hooded or cautious. There was no more disguise, no pretense. He was improvident with his love, indiscreet with his desire. I know that he was now telling me the truth, all the truth.

  I hung my feet over the railings and watched the sand leak out of a hole in the toe of my gym shoes. I was aware of Paul Michel’s now dark sunburnt arm balancing the back of my chair. We watched the windsurfers cutting across the slow swell in the warm wind. It was late afternoon and the beach had begun to fill with a gaggle of working people. Some arrived wearing their office clothes, negotiating the steps with their plastic bags and city shoes. For the first time, I noticed that the huge concrete blocks protecting the entrance to the port were all shaped like coffins. The mark of the cross in faint, eroded black paint was upon each one. But they were gigantic, over fifteen feet long, six feet wide, an uncanny momento mori converted into a breakwater. I pointed them out to Paul Michel. He simply nodded.

  “They’ve been there for years, petit. The harbor bar is built on a natural shelf of rock. The coffins are reinforcing the wall like a breakwater. If you climb behind them there’s a way down to a promontory on the rocks which has a wonderful sequence of pools. I used to sunbathe over there.”

  I turned to look at him, squinting in the bright light.

  “So you know the beach? I didn’t realize that you had been here before.”

  He smiled slightly.

  “You’re going a lovely color.” He stroked my back affectionately. “You’re like a polished walnut table. So am I. You’ll be able to sell me off as a restored antique.”

  We watched some children below filtering sand into bottles and then pushing them out to sea.

  “Any messages in the bottles?” asked Paul Michel.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Because if there are, you must rush down and get them. That’s what my writing was. Messages in bottles.”

  “And don’t you have any more messages to send?”

  “No.”

  I was silent for a moment. Then he went on as if I had spoken, asking and replying to his own question.

  “And what is there left for a novelist to do when he has sent out all his messages? … Rien que mourir.”

  I sat up enraged.

  “I wish you wouldn’t fucking well talk like that. It gets on my nerves. You’re not mad. Or doomed. You’re getting well. You are well. You’ll write again. Even better.”

  He looked at me, detached, amused. I felt like the bull, watching the pointed darts in the toreador’s hands.

  “Have you ever loved a woman, petit?”

  I was caught off guard, and as always, both evaded the question and told the truth.

  “I’d never loved a man before. Until I read you.”

  He smiled at the oddness of the verb in the context of our conversation.

  “No? Well … I’m flattered. Let me tell you about something which happened to me. It has never ceased to haunt me. It was fifteen years ago. In August, around the time when you and I first came to the Midi. The beaches on the front were packed so I was looking for somewhere quieter to brood and to swim. I found an empty sheet of hot rock a long way away from everybody else. Out there, beyond the coffin breakwater. It was barren, empty, a sequence of sharp rocks and pools. I took notes, slept during the hottest part of the day. I always traveled alone, lived alone. I’ve never even shared a room with anyone else, not since childhood. It’s odd sometimes, hearing your breathing in the night, when I don’t sleep. You bring back the taste of my childhood, petit. I chose solitude and the deeper dimensions of that choice, which are inevitable and necessary. I condemned myself to isolation and loneliness. It was the only way I could work, it was my way of defending myself. I used to write in complete silence. I used to spend time listening to silence.

  “Even here in the Midi I spent the days alone. But I had spent only one day meditating, like Prometheus chained to the rock, when my refuge was breached. I arrived early in the morning to find a boy, pale-skinned, scrawny, curly-haired, wearing nothing but jeans cut off to frayed shorts, investigating the rock pools. We stared at one another, both clearly resentful. He had already claimed that bank of rocks for his kingdom and had set up a pattern of traps in the pools, all of which were empty apart from a few weeds. We reset the nets and I made a few suggestions. He had huge eyes, an owl-like glare. I was fascinated by the intensity of this child, his halting French and his complete, staring fearlessness.

  “An odd friendship flared up between us. He spent the morning playing in the rocks or diving for objects. He brought me back whatever he found. I shared my salami, bread and apples with him. He vanished in search of his father at one o’clock, but came back later in the day to check his traps again. I like the honesty, the knowingness of children. He told me that he was nearly eleven years old, that unsettling time of questioning, awakening. He asked me what I was writing and spelled out whole sentences in my notebook, with uncanny concentration, fighting for their meanings. I remember him telling me how much he liked reading. Everything he had read sounded too adult for his age; strange, unsuitable texts, Zola, Flaubert, T. E. Lawrence, Oscar Wilde. He was pleased that we had read all the same things. I asked him which he had liked best of all the works he had read by Oscar Wilde. Unhesitating, he replied, ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray.‘ Then he looked at me suspiciously. ‘Not everyone who’s beautiful is honest.’

  “I tried very hard to keep a straight face. It would have been proof of my dishonesty if I had laughed.

  “But I asked who gave him all his books. I discovered that he had no mother and that his father had never bought any books for children. He had simply let the child loose all along his shelves.

  “He never told me his name. He never asked me mine.

  “I began to hope that he would already be there when I climbed over the rocks in the mornings.

  “He asked me why I was always alone. I told him that I was a writer. And that most writers worked alone. H
e asked me if I was a famous writer. I said that I was fairly famous and had won the Prix Goncourt. He asked if it was a very important prize and if I had a big house and gardens. I told him that I rented what used to be a servant’s room in the roof of a hotel. And how I remember the way he screwed up his nose at this. And asked me why I lived like an impoverished hermit if I was in fact a rich man. I realized then that I had assumed all the clichés of austerity.

  “And I remember his reply. He said, ‘Why make do with the bare minimum? Why live on so little? If I were you I’d want everything. I wouldn’t be satisfied with so little.’

  “And I remember how strange this sounded, coming from the stillness of that bony, innocent face, the salt sticking to his short, wet curls. And I laughed and said, ‘You mean I should have a big house and car and a wife and children?’

  “His face clouded and aged with contempt. He took on the aspect of a dwarf and answered with devastating, terrible seriousness. ‘No. I didn’t mean that. Anybody can have all those. You should want—all of it. All this.’ And he stretched out his arm, now reddening in the sun, high above his head, indicating the limitless, overarching blue above us, the forever retreating line of the sea, stretching away to Africa.

  “I stared and laughed. He shook his finger at me like a goblin. Then recited the day’s lesson with ecclesiastical solemnity. ‘It seems to me that you live in a mean and lonely way. You should live on a grander scale. You should never put up with shit if you can get cake.’

  “I was utterly charmed.

  “And I know what you’re thinking, petit. That I fell in love with this child who had read about buggery, castration, the class struggle, violent perverted sex and had come out upon the last page, still in possession of a breathtaking, romantic innocence and an arrogance that insisted on his own unflinching understanding of the world. You think that I’m telling you about first love. You’re right. That boy was my first love. And I was his.

  “He had his own ideas. He even had ideas about the kinds of books I should write. He looked at La Maison d’Eté and told me that it was far too short. I should aim at greater things.

  “‘Huge ones. Much longer than the things you write now. They should be vast. Not perfect. Nothing’s perfect. If you try to make it look perfect then it’s only pretending.’

  “I said that he was a literary megalomaniac. He didn’t know the word. He made me spell it out and explain all its dimensions. He made me write it down. He asked me to tell him the story of Midi, which I was writing then. I think I made it more exciting in the retelling. He asked me why the characters could never be happy, never united. I explained, without hesitation, and without thinking, that it was an allegory of homosexuality. It was then that he amazed me.

  “‘What’s an allegory?’ he asked, ‘and why should homosexuality always be unhappy in books? Elsewhere, it isn’t.’

  “I suggested that we should check the rock pools, and in his accusing stare I had the reprimand for my evasions.

  “He never engaged in pointless games or aimless conversations. There was always a goal to be achieved or information to be gathered. I remembered this, the terrifying purposefulness of an only child. I had the same inability to waste time. Day after day we haunted the rocks, inspected the weed-covered crevasses and tunnels, swam in the clear, warm water. I remember once, watching the curve of his back as he sat squatting, peering into the lapping, breathing sea. And noticing the way in which each vertebra was separate, a long bony chain, fragile, yet indestructible. He was extraordinarily strong.

  “Yes, I suppose I did fall in love with that child. But there was something more important. We became friends. What equality is possible between a child of eleven and a man in his thirties? Friendship, complicity, trust make all things equal. You remind me of him.

  “But it was only a matter of time before the father came in search of the vanishing child. Parents rightly suspect that the serpents of corruption are lurking on every street corner. Or in this case stretched out upon the summer rocks.

  “The scene he witnessed was tranquil and innocent enough. We were playing cards and drinking Badoit under the shadow of a huge grey rock, an overhanging mass like the nose of an elephant. Then the father was suddenly present, making the third in the triangle, standing above us. He was wearing jeans and a light, cream jacket. I was aware of the colored outline, as if he had been one of the child’s drawings. I think I expected him to pull out a gun. The child looked up briefly. Then concentrated on his cards.

  “‘This is my Dad,’ was all he said.

  “The father crouched beside us and looked at our cards.

  “‘Twist. You’ve got to,’ he said to the boy, covering his eyes from the sun. He was about ten years older than I, slick, good-looking. I noticed a gold signet ring on the last finger of his left hand. We played out the game. The child won.

  “‘I hope you weren’t cheating,’ his father said casually.

  “‘I never cheat unless I have to,’ was the reply. Then the father addressed me directly.

  “‘Will you have dinner with us tonight? We go on to Italy tomorrow.’ We looked straight at one another. I agreed. And at the same moment I realized that he was homosexual.

  “They were staying at the best hotel in Nice. The moment of reversal, of revelation if you like, came that night on the steps of the hotel. The child was waiting for me, perched on the balustrade beside a huge palm tree in a Roman urn. He was on the lookout, alert and tense as a cat. But I saw him first, and noticed the brushed curls, washed with gold, the cheekbones pink with sunburn and freckles, the long arms curled around the knees. His ambiguity suddenly broke over me with all the force of the sea against the great rocks. I had not mistaken the nature of this child. But I had certainly been deceived in her sex. She swung down from the solitary ledge and rushed into my arms.

  “When we parted that night she said something I shall never forget. Largely because only children, children like myself, children like that girl, always keep their promises. She said, ‘If you love someone—you know where they are and what has happened to them. And you put yourself at risk to save them if you can. If you get into trouble, I promise that I’ll come to save you.’

  “I think that’s the strangest, most romantic declaration I’ve ever had.

  “‘Will you?’ I said.

  “‘Yes, and when I can read French better, I will read every word you write. I will be your reader.’

  “Wasn’t that an extraordinary promise, petit? They were English. Her father was a charming man. He worked in the Bank of England. I sometimes wonder if she remembers me.”

  I sat staring at Paul Michel, speechless and terribly frightened. Then I said, “She never forgot you. She kept her promise. She sent me.”

  He didn’t reply for a moment. It was now after seven o’clock and the light was softening on the barrels, the rocks, the ropes, supporting the café above the beach. The world was being transformed into luminous gold.

  “Oh? Did she?” was all he said.

  That night he was restless again. I was almost asleep when I heard him getting out of bed.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Shhh, petit. I’m just going downstairs for a drink.”

  He kissed my ear and stroked my head for a moment. I fell fast asleep again.

  It was after four in the morning when I heard an urgent tapping on my door. I sat up shaking. Paul Michel had not returned. I was alone. It was a woman’s voice at the door. Through a fog of sleep and fear I recognized Marie-France Legras. She was calling my name. But she didn’t wait for me to reply; she was already in the room, calling and calling.

  “What is it?” I stammered.

  “The police are here.”

  “Paul Michel?”

  “I’m afraid it’s bad news.”

  I howled out his name and began to cry uncontrollably. I had been waiting for this, the empty bed, the call in the night. I had known that he would not wait for me. Marie-France put
her arms around me and whispered all the gentle reassuring things that she would have said to her son. I realized that she was crying too. It was some hours before I was able to face the police.

  The manner of his dying was bizarre. He had taken the car, although he was not authorized to drive, and had set out along the coast road of the Esterel in the direction of Cannes. You can’t build up much speed on that road, even in a more powerful car than a 2CV; it is too narrow, uneven, winding. There wasn’t much traffic. A gigantic white owl, drawn to the yellow lights and the swerving car, fixed its great eyes on his face and plummeted towards the Citroën. The creature smashed through the windscreen, sinking its claws into his face and throat. The car hurtled into the cliff. He was killed instantly. They laid him out on the stretcher with the great dead bird wrapped around his face. Weeks later the inquest gave the cause of death as multiple injuries received on impact; accidental death, killed in a car accident, a futile death, daily, banal. But the autopsy revealed that he had enough alcohol and paracetamol mixed in his blood to end the days of several Hollywood film stars. He had taken all the drugs in our bathroom cabinet, everything, even the travel sickness tablets and swallowed them down with a bottle of whiskey. It had been a miracle that he had been able to drive as far as he did. There had been no mistake. He had intended to die. He had been searching for the great white owl on the narrow frontier between the mountains and the sea.

  And then I knew what he had seen—the last vision he had had before the darkness had been drawn across his sight: the belly of a great white owl, its wings outstretched, ht from beneath, its huge yellow eyes, the pupils sharpening to slits as his claws reached for the glass and the white face beyond, blurred and magnified, as if by a powerful lens.