The Shattered Sky

by Bernard Uzan

  Even in the street I don’t want to look like I’m alone, it’s too sad. When I walk, I always walk very fast with a specific goal in mind even though I don’t even know what it is. I don’t want people to think I’m just taking a stroll or they may think I’m a male prostitute. When I do let myself go and actually take a stroll, I feel all those eyes looking at me filled with doubts, often with hatred, sometimes with desire, heavy looks that intrude upon me, of men and women, old and young! Reptilian looks that leave their traces of foamy spittle_on my cheeks.

  Go away! Leave me alone! I don’t want to get to know you…. I only want people that smile as they look at me without any second thoughts. Several times I’ve even been groped in the metro by the professionals who hang around in the crowds, those who rub themselves up against you, the guys who lurk behind the urinals, who give each other a slimy look, quickly, shamefully and sniff one another in their excitement like dogs in heat.

  What filth.

  “Julien, you must be careful, you know there are some men who are real pigs.”

  “Yes, mother.”

  “Never follow anybody! Never listen to anyone! Don’t trust anybody. Especially in your condition. Even if they offer you candy.”

  “Yes, mother”

  In my condition? Does she also think I’m retarded?

  Just to disobey her and get on her nerves I would be ready to go if a pig has something to offer; He will give me candy, and he’ll take me to the movies, maybe he’ll hold my hand and say nice things to me, it’ll feel different, for a change.

  I lean on the counter in the café.

  “A cup of coffee, please.”

  I say it casually, in a relaxed and almost tired way, just to show some bearing, bearing, …bearing, at any price, always create the impression that you’ve just done or are about to do something important. The waiter either didn’t hear me, or pretends he didn’t… Yes I’m convinced that he’s doing it on purpose. I’ll have to start over and order my coffee a second time. What if I just walked out as if I couldn’t bear waiting! And then go where? After all, having a cup of coffee will waste all of five, maybe even ten minutes. I can just hear them repeating incessantly, drumming it into me:

  “He’d be better off getting a job; he wouldn’t have time to be bored. He’ll regret it later on when he’s a failure. An actor! He wants to be an actor, that’s really off the wall. Why not become a singer while he’s at it? An opera singer, what a joke! He’ll regret it later on, life goes by very quickly. The world belongs to those who get up early. You have to be bold, you get out of it whatever you put into it, the early bird catches the worm, and blah…blah… blah…

  Work, and do what? Huh? What? What?

  Money. Money… You have to make money, more money always more… I don’t want a little nine-to-five job, I couldn’t take an inconsequential position. I’d rather die, just like a big wine skin draining itself out.

  To croak, be buried, rot, make worms, and all that, all that suffering for nothing, nothing. To die for nothing, to live for nothing, to die in order to live, to live in order to die, without having done anything, seen anything, to go through those exercises in order to die! To die without having had every woman in the world, without having had everything there is to eat, to drink, everything! Death? Death? Death!

  What is death? To go to sleep one day and wake up dead, is that it? If that’s what it is then it’s very tempting! To wake up and say: fine, now I’m dead. I’m finally at peace, I’m free at last, I am dead. I could then tell everybody, you know now I don’t give damn about anything because I’m dead. You can hurt me, ignore me, hate me, humiliate me; I don’t give a hoot because I’m dead. I’ll run through the streets yelling “Fuck you, I’m dead, I’m dead!”

  Isn’t that great?

  I can go anywhere without anyone seeing me, enter apartments, penetrate other people’s brains, their hearts, and find out what they’re thinking.

  I’ll finally find out why people are so mean.

  “Man is born good.” What a pathetic sod that guy Rousseau must have been. To find out why people are cruel, selfish, pitiless, loveless, to know why people are all losers, why they are mentally impotent, to discover why man has remained at that stage of underdevelopment… Now that’s a real mission, something truly useful, that’s going to be my coming career.

  “May I take your order sir?... Sir?”

  I pretend I can’t hear him, my turn to be a shit. He insists.

  “What’ll it be sir?”

  “Oh, sorry, I was thinking of something else… Coffee.”

  I should have pretended that I was tired instead, that I was being tormented by a difficult problem or that I had just pulled off a tough caper. I passed up a good opportunity to play a role, something I need so badly, I’ll show them, I’ll prove it to them, I’ll force them to admit that I have talent, a lot of talent, an immense talent, that I am a great actor… who hasn’t had the opportunity to prove himself… In any case they couldn’t care less about my talent, what they want is a name the public can recognize that would fill the theaters, sell tickets, a star! Ah, yes! A name, what crap, what a fraud.

  What about the art of acting?

  I can offer a lot, I know, I feel it, I have so many things to say… I can play any role, be it dramatic or comic, I can make you laugh, cry, I can do anything

  Tania, my drama teacher told me as much… The first time I played a scene in her class…

  She said: “Are you a Jew or a Slav? Only Jews and Slavs have that kind of ‘soul’ … You can come to my class…”

  I answered, “But Mrs. Balachova unfortunately I’m unable to pay for the classes…”

  She looked at me very much annoyed…

  “But no one is asking you to pay anything,” she answered. “And call me Tania. I’m taking you in my class…”

  Since then I’ve been an actor in search of a part…

  But they need a name… Ah! A name! In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen!

  It’s hard being an actor in France when you’re the son of a small-time Jew from North Africa, the son of a nobody. I suddenly have an idea of genius, I’ll change my name. Then glory will be all mine. Glory. I’ll be triumphant.

  I am a great Roman general after five years of conquest and victories returned to Rome cheered on by thousands of people. Women fell to his feet, begging him for a glance and me, magnificent and disdainful on my chariot drawn by five white stallions. Was it five or six?

  “That’ll be 90 centimes sir…”

  “The tip is not included… Sir…”

  He interrupts my dreams of glory again with his small-time requests.

  I must leave this café, everybody is smoking and you can barely breathe. It’s filled with little chicks who are so irritating when they make faces while trying to be cute. They cough and smoke at the same time while they drink Coca Cola… It’s full of crummy students who act as though they’re going to run the country some day, and provincials who are thrilled to be living in Paris. Everyone is talking at the same time like a bunch of_Italians and the noise is deafening, bone crushing and deadly.

  Back in the street, the sky is covered with dark grey clouds and Paris stinks of dog shit.

  The street hasn’t changed, it’s the same as yesterday, and tomorrow, no, not tomorrow because by then I will have blown everything up, it can’t go on like this, there is a malaise… It is inconceivable that someone like me should be completely ignored. Something doesn’t work. I have no name, nobody knows me, I don’t know anybody, fine… But… That must change, I’ll get back at all those bastards! I hate them. I feel like throwing up on them, I feel red blotches coming over my face, coffee always does this to me.

  “Can’t you look where you’re going?”

  Had I been wearing a silk suit that clown wouldn’t have talked to me like that. Ah! Catherine, if I had a silk suit you wouldn’t have left me!

  I hate you because you see m
e at a low point and I can’t stand it. I’d rather be dead to you, I’d rather set fire to myself, waste away. I feel like dying of shame, of rage, of disgust. Not like that asshole, Mike, who drives me in his red Ford Mustang, the red car of a jerk, he must think he’s a fireman or something. I met him at the drama classes, he wants to be an actor, he’s the son of a famous movie actress, he’s tall, blond with blue eyes, and plays at being an American.

  He is a very bad actor but he is somebody’s son. He also inherited mountains of cash, soon he’ll probably be the lead in a worthless vaudeville show. He’s happy, so happy he makes me sick and gives me a stomach ache just thinking about it.

  How can such an animal be so happy?

  To top things off he even says he’s happy.

  Catherine you should have waited, waited for me, understood, understood me, after it will be too late. I must tell this to someone but to whom? To whom? Who can hear me, who….

  I feel like looking at myself, seeing myself to feel sorry about myself,_how sad I am, and how lonely, tears roll down my cheeks!

  I’m fed up! So fed up! What am I going to do about my own fucking life, my own very fucked-up life. This can go on ten days, ten months or ten years.

  I’ve got to make a phone call, I must…

  “I’d like a token for the phone please.”

  “Yes, just a second, can’t you see I’m busy?

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sixty centimes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sixty centimes! Are you deaf or what?”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon, madam!”

  “Yeah, sure, I know all about your kind of people.”

  “Stupid bitch!”

  I didn’t dare say that to her face but mumbled it to myself on my way to the phone booth.

  “Hello, Jean? It’s Julien… How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks, and you?”

  “Very good, I’ve got a lot of things going.”

  “Great, I’m happy for you!”

  “Any news, otherwise?”

  “The same old stuff, the ships sinks, the rats jump overboard and try to stay afloat. Last night I met Philippe, he’s in bad, bad shit, the blackest shit possible. You know The Great Game is a colossal fiasco, he lost his shirt with that movie, and he’s in debt up to his neck.”

  The Great Game being a failure is really no surprise, an absurd movie about nothing where Philippe thought of himself at the same time as the reincarnation of Truffaut and of André Breton, his beloved Pope of Surrealism. Philippe wanted to produce the movie he had written, he put all his chips on the table and assembled all his buddies and a few stars who had lost their stardom years ago… He picked Pascale Baudret for the female role only because he is secretly fucking her since she’s married to a very rich doctor who I suspect has financed the whole adventure without even realizing it; her brother, the popular singer Hughes Dufray will write the musical score and will bleat out something…Philippe had offered me a part commensurate with my talent: that of a young man who thinks he’s the double of the ghost of his best friend, in this case played by Jean. This art movie will be shot on location in a big country house and we spend three weeks squeezing our brains trying to make some sense out of this monument of intellectual pretentiousness that Philippe calls his public declaration on what the new cinema should really be. Actually he spends more of his time in Pascale’s bedroom than on the set…but we are all being collectively creative and share in friendship and pleasure a vast number of bottles of red wine and Philippe furthermore has found a way to pay us enough money so that we can survive for the next three months. We are happy, we’re in the movies, we are actors and even better than that, we are artists.

  We return to Paris, we are all convinced that this is at last our ticket into the world of filmmaking, we’ll be celebrated as the new creative generation and our future is now guaranteed.

  Philippe who thinks of everything and doesn’t leave a single stone unturned has asked Sophie Tatischeff to edit the film. Sophie is the daughter of the famous Jacques Tati, the maker of well-known films like Mr. Hulot’s Vacation and Traffic. So the big day finally arrives, Philippe who is either sensitive to the proper decorum or just a megalomaniac has rented a projection room on the Champs-Elysées to show the edited version of the movie. He invited the great Jacques Tati himself who appears in his long coat, rust-colored scarf and his beat up little hat looking just like a caricature of himself.

  He sits in the middle of the room and is rather silent, in all probability he must be concentrating. We all sit at some distance from him out of reverence and respect and while the movie is being shown we are on edge watching for every one of his reactions. But he doesn’t show any kind of reaction and I conclude that he must be concentrating very hard. The lights are turned back on in the projection room, Philippe gets up and walks over to the great master solicitously …our eyes turn anxiously toward Monsieur Tati who raises his entire six foot three frame and says: “Philippe, you think too much…” and he leaves without adding anything else. We all are back on the Champs Elysées in total silence and each one goes home; I take the metro in a state of shock.

  “Julien are you listening?”

  “Yes, yes, Jean I’m here.”

  “I think Philippe is thinking about another movie, a very interesting topic, it’s the story of a guy who suddenly one day realizes that the woman with whom he’s been living and who has just left him is really…

  The words become confused, I stop listening, Jean’s voice gets lost in the telephone…

  Where are you now, Catherine? Maybe you’re laughing with him, eating with him or drinking with him.

  Maybe you’re interested in what he says and fall for his false charm and display of intelligence?

  He’s telling you that he’s unhappy and you pretend to believe him, that you feel sympathy for him, he takes your hand and looks deep into your eyes with all that longing, he’s got that seductive side smile, he’s sure of himself, and you are taken by him, blush and then laugh! He tells you the same things I said to you the first time and you listen to him as though you were discovering something.

  He says:

  “It’s odd I have a feeling I’ve always known you.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, we are really connecting in a way I didn’t think was possible anymore. You see…may I call you Catherine?”

  “Yes of course!”

  He’s going much too fast, a bit of self respect please!

  “You know Catherine, life is really strange and at the same time it’s so fascinating!”

  The asshole really has no imagination at all!

  “What do you mean?”

  Don’t go down that slope, you know very well that to have that kind of conversation with a man is already like surrendering or at least giving him that impression.

  “Well because…because…”

  The poor bastard isn’t doing too well.

  “…because it always happens when you don’t expect it.”

  “Yes…What do you really mean?”

  Really, you disappoint me! This guy is frightening commonplace. All that, the pseudo intelligent sentimental crap, what people call the opening shots, you know that! What a joke, how sad, and how absurd life is! With everybody repeating the same stuff!

  But no, not you, do something. This is too demeaning, not you, I loved you, we were both in the same Chekhov and Molière plays, I loved you, I see you and imagine you in such a completely different light, not like this, please, you must react! Just get up and leave without saying a word, without speaking, without turning around, with a smile like the Queen of England.

  But I see you carrying on:

  “I asked you… Bertrand, I asked you: what do you mean?”

  “Well.. I actually… I can’t really express it…instant understanding, the fact that we immediately and suddenly can communicate…”

  Catherine, Catherine! Hogwash, blah, blah, bl
ah!

  Can’t you see that he doesn’t believe a word he’s saying, that the only thing he wants is to get you in bed, and that’s all. If you feel like it say so, and just stop the whole stinking charade.

  Why are you using the same words with him as you did with me, with such little difficulty and with no remorse?

  The words you said to me belong to us, they don’t belong to everyone, I believed them, you believed them, we built castles in Spain together, we rebuilt the world, we saw each other on the world stage as Othello and Desdemona, we traveled through Italy together… Do you remember?

  You’re too smart, too sensitive, too generous to listen to this kind of nonsense; you have too much talent to waste it with someone other than me.

  Jealousy, I get so jealous I could die, a look, a gesture, an idea, an image makes me sick. I’m jealous of the present, of the past and the future, I’m even jealous of myself.

  “Julien, you know the first time I saw you I wanted to sleep with you!”

  “When you saw me walk? That really does sound ironic!”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “For no reason. You wouldn’t understand anyway. So you see a guy walking and you feel like sleeping with him, that makes you a rotten little slut.”

  “But darling, it’s you!”

  “It’s me! It’s me! First of all nothing proves that I’m the same person now as the one you saw then? And it was only a reflection of who I am!

  Anyway, I can’t stand the thought that you desire someone, even if it’s me!”

  Catherine, I can’t believe that you have already forgotten all the love I gave you… I probably don’t represent much of anything to you anymore. You’ll probably start collecting mementos of your past loves like all the others?

  They keep them…they look at them and reassure themselves.

  “To my dearest Madeleine, in memory of our summer of ’71.” They collect letters, yellowing pieces of paper, faded pissy looking photographs and they sigh.