Life: A User's Manual

by Georges Perec

  She left Valence that same evening with her husband. They had certainly guessed they were being followed, and for more than a year they tried to evade me; they did everything they could, laying all sorts of false trails, decoys, and simulations, dropping misleading clues, holing up in sordid lodging houses, and accepting squalid jobs in order to survive: night porterage, bottle washing, grape picking, cess-pit cleaning. But week by week, the four detectives whose services I could still afford to use tightened the net. More than twenty times I had the opportunity of killing your daughter with impunity. But each time, on one pretext or another, I let the opportunity slip: it was as if my long pursuit had led me to forget the oath in the name of which I had undertaken it: the easier it became to assuage my vengeance, the more I drew back from doing so.

  On 8 August 1958, I received a letter from your daughter:

  Sir,

  I have always known you would use every effort to find me. At the moment your son died, I knew it would be no use begging you or your wife for a gesture of mercy or pity. News of your wife’s suicide reached me a few days later and convinced me you would spend the rest of your life hunting me down.

  What was to begin with only an intuition and an apprehension was confirmed over the following months; I was aware you knew almost nothing about me, but I was sure you would use every available means to exploit to the full the meagre details you possessed; on the day when in a street in Cholet a researcher offered me a sample of the perfume I’d used that year in England, I guessed instinctively that it was a trap; a few months later a small ad asking for a young woman with good English to accompany a team of archaeologists told me you knew more about me than I thought. From then on my life became a long nightmare. I felt I was being watched by everybody, everywhere, always, I began to suspect everybody, waiters who spoke to me, check-out girls who gave me change, customers at the butcher’s who shouted at me for not waiting my turn; I was being followed, tracked down, observed by taxi drivers, policemen, pseudo-drunks slumped on park benches, chestnut sellers, lottery-ticket sellers, newsboys. One night, at the end of my tether, in the waiting room at Brive station, I began to hit a man who was staring at me. I was arrested, taken to the police station, and but for a quasi-miracle I would have been sectioned in a psychiatric ward: a young couple who had witnessed the scene offered to take charge of me: they lived in the Cévennes, in a deserted village whose ruined houses they were rebuilding. I lived there for nearly two years. We were alone, three humans, a score of goats and chickens. We had no newspapers and no radio.

  With time my fears evaporated. I convinced myself you had given up, or died. In June 1957 I returned to live among men. Shortly after, I met François. When he asked me to marry him, I told him my whole story and he had little difficulty persuading me that my sense of guilt had made me imagine that incessant surveillance.

  I regained my confidence bit by bit, sufficiently to risk asking the town hall for a copy of my birth certificate, since I needed it to get married. It was, I guess, one of the mistakes which you, in your lair, had been waiting for me to make.

  Since then we have lived continually on the run. For a year I believed I could get away from you. I know now that I cannot. You will always have luck and money on your side; it is pointless believing I will ever succeed in getting through the holes in the net you have cast, just as it is illusory to hope that you will ever cease to pursue me. You have the power to kill me, and you believe you have the right to do so, but you won’t make me run any further: together with my husband François, and Anne, to whom I have just given birth, I shall live from now on, without shifting, in Chaumont-Porcien, in the Ardennes. I await you with serenity.

  For more than a year I made myself give no sign of life; I sacked all the detectives and investigators I had hired; I closeted myself in my flat, hardly went out, lived on ginger crackers and tea bags, using alcohol, tobacco, and maxiton tablets to maintain myself in a sort of pulsating fever which gave way at times to bouts of complete torpor. The certain knowledge that Elizabeth was waiting for me, went to bed each night thinking she might never awake, kissed her daughter each morning almost surprised to be still alive, the feeling that this reprieve was for her a new torture every day, was sometimes like being inebriated with revenge, a sensation of evil, omnipotent, ubiquitous exaltation, and sometimes it threw me into a boundless depression. For weeks on end, day and night, unable to sleep for more than a few minutes at a stretch, I paced the corridors and rooms of my flat chortling, or sobbing, seeing myself suddenly in front of her, rolling on the floor, begging her pardon.

  Last Friday, 11 September, Elizabeth got her second letter to me:

  Sir,

  I am writing from the Rethel maternity clinic, where I have just delivered my second daughter, Béatrice. Anne, my first, has just had her first birthday. Come, I beg you, it’s now or never that you must come.

  I killed her two days later. In killing her I understood that death delivered her just as, the day after tomorrow, it will deliver me. The meagre remnants of my fortune, deposited with my lawyers, will be shared, in accordance with my last instructions, between your two granddaughters when they come of age.

  Madame de Beaumont, even if she had been overcome on learning of her daughter’s death, read without a shiver to the end of this story, by whose sadness she seemed no more touched than she had been some twenty-five years before by her husband’s suicide. This apparent indifference to death is perhaps explained by her own history: one morning in April nineteen eighteen, when the Orlov family, scattered to the four corners of Holy Russia by the Revolution, had miraculously succeeded in uniting almost intact, a detachment of Red Guards took their villa by storm. Véra saw her grandfather, old Sergei Ilarionovich Orlov, whom Alexander III had appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Persia, her father, Colonel Orlov, the officer commanding the famous battalion of Krasnodar Lancers and nicknamed the “Butcher of Kuban” by Trotsky, and her five brothers, the youngest only just eleven years old, shot dead before her eyes. She and her mother managed to escape, protected by a thick fog that lasted three days. After a nightmare of 79 days’ forced march, they got at last to Crimea, then occupied by Denikin’s commandos, and thence via Romania to Austria.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Marcia, 2

  MADAME MARCIA IS in her bedroom. She is a woman of sixty or so, tough, broad, and bony. Half-undressed, wearing a white lace-edged nylon slip, a girdle, and stockings, and with her hair in curlers, she is sitting in a modern-made moulded wooden armchair upholstered in black leather. In her right hand she is holding a large barrel-shaped glass jar full of pickled gherkins and is trying to get hold of one between the index and medius fingers of her left hand. At her side there is a low table overloaded with papers, books, and miscellaneous objects: a prospectus printed in the style of a family announcement, advertising the marriage of Delmont and Co. (interior design, decor, objets d’art) and the House of Artifoni (flower arrangers, designers of decorative gardens, greenhouses, balconies, flowerbeds, and potted plants); an invitation from the Franco-Polish Cultural Association to an Andrzej Wajda Festival; an invitation to a private viewing of an exhibition of Silberselber’s paintings: the work reproduced on the card is a watercolour entitled Japanese Garden, IV, of which the lower third is taken up by a set of perfectly parallel dotted lines and the upper two-thirds by a realistic representation of a heavy, storm-laden sky; a novel, probably a detective story, called Clocks and Clouds, on the cover of which you can see, against a background of a backgammon board, a pair of handcuffs, a small alabaster figurine copying Watteau’s L’Indifférent, a pistol, a saucer full of a no doubt sugary liquid since several bees are buzzing over it, and a six-sided tin token in which the number 90 has been cut by stamping; a postcard bearing the legend Choza de Indios, Beni, Bolivia, exhibiting a group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping, amid a swarm of infants, outside some primitive shanties of osier; a photograph, certa
inly depicting Madame Marcia herself, but at least forty years younger: the picture shows a frail young girl dressed in a spotted sleeveless jacket and a bonnet; she is driving a cardboard motor car – one of those painted panels with various cutouts for heads used by fairground photographers – and is accompanied by two young men in pin-striped white jackets and boaters.

  The furnishing of the flat boldly combines the ultramodern – the armchair, the Japanese wallpaper, three floorlamps looking like large luminescent pebbles – with curios of different periods: two display cases full of Coptic cloth and papyri, above which two gloomy landscapes by a seventeenth-century artist from Alsace, with the outlines of towns and burning fires in the background, are placed on either side of and show off a plate covered in hieroglyphs; a rare set of so-called “footpads’ goblets”, widely used by nineteenth-century innkeepers in major ports with the aim of reducing brawls between sailors: on the outside they appear properly cylindrical, but they are tapered on the inside like sewing thimbles, the intended imperfection being skilfully masked by uneven bubbles blown into the glass; parallel rings engraved from top to bottom show how much can be drunk for such and such a price; and lastly a sumptuous bed, a Muscovite fantasy alleged to have been offered to Napoleon I for the night he spent at the Petrovsky Palace, but which he certainly declined in favour of his customary camp bed: it’s an imposing piece, all its surfaces inlaid with tiny lozenge-shaped marquetry of sixteen different woods and shells, creating a mythical picture: a world of roseate forms and entwined garlands from the midst of which arises, Botticelli-like, a nymph clad only in her own hair.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Basement, 1

  CELLARS.

  The Altamonts’ cellar, clean, tidy, and neat: from floor to ceiling, shelving and pigeonholes labelled in large, legible letters. A place for every thing, and every thing in its place; nothing has been left out: stocks and provisions to withstand a siege, to survive a crisis, to see through a war.

  The left-hand wall is allocated to food provisions. First, basic ingredients: wheat flour, semolina, corn flour, potato starch, tapioca, oat flakes, sugar lumps, granulated sugar, castor sugar, salt, olives, capers, condiments, large jars of mustard and gherkins, cans of cooking oil, packets of dried herbs, packets of peppercorns, cloves, freeze-dried mushrooms, and small tins of sliced truffle; wine vinegar and pickling vinegar; chopped almonds, peeled green walnuts, vacuum-packed hazelnuts and peanuts, biscuits, aperitifs, sweets, bars of cooking chocolate, bars of dessert chocolate, honey, jam, tinned milk, powdered milk, powdered eggs, yeast, pre-cooked puddings, tea, coffee, cocoa, herb tea, stock cubes, tomato concentrate, harissa, nutmeg, bird pepper, vanilla pods, spices and flavourings, breadcrumbs, crispbread, sultanas, candied fruits, angelica; then come tinned foods: tinned fish, tuna chunks, sardines in oil, rolled anchovies, mackerel in white-wine sauce, pilchards in tomato sauce, hake Spanish style, smoked sprats, lumpfish roe, smoked cods’ roe; tinned vegetables: garden peas, asparagus tips, button mushrooms, baby runner beans, spinach, artichoke hearts, mange-tout peas, salsify, diced vegetable salad; as well as sachets of dried vegetables, split peas, lentils, broad beans, green beans, bags of rice, of pasta products, macaroni, vermicelli, pasta shells, spaghetti, crisps, mashed-potato flakes, and packets of soup powders; tinned fruit: apricot halves, pears in syrup, cherries, peaches, plums, packs of figs, boxes of dates, dried bananas, prunes; preserved meats and pre-cooked meals: corned beef, ham, terrine and rillette pâtés, chopped liver, liver pâté, boned meat in aspic, ox muzzle, sauerkraut, cassoulet, sausage and lentil stew, ravioli, lamb with potatoes and turnips, ratatouille niçoise, couscous, chicken with boletus and Bayonne ham, paella, and traditional veal blanquette.

  The rear end wall and the larger part of the right-hand wall are reserved for bottles, stacked on their sides in plastic-coated wire racks in an apparently canonical order: first come the so-called table wines, then the Beaujolais, Côtes-du-Rhône, and that year’s white wine from the Loire, then the wines to be drunk young, Cahors, Bourgueil, Chinon, Bergerac; then the real wine cellar, the grand cave controlled by a wine list in which every bottle is entered by geographical origin, name of grower, name of supplier, vintage, date of entry, optimal maturity date, and, where relevant, date of leaving: Alsace wines: Riesling, Traminer, Pinot noir, Tokay; red Bordeaux: Médoc vineyards: Château-de-l’Abbaye-Skinner, Château-Lynch-Bages, Château-Palmer, Château-Brane-Cantenac, Château-Gruau-Larose; Graves vineyards: Château-Lagarde-Martillac, Château-Larrivet-Haut-Brion; Saint-Emilion vineyards: Château-La-Tour-Beau-Site, Château-Canon, Château-La-Gaffelière, Château-Trottevieille; Pomerol vineyards: Château-Taillefer; white Bordeaux: Sauternes vineyards: Château-Sigalas-Rabaud, Château-Caillou, Château-Nairac; Graves vineyards: Château-Chevalier, Château-Malartic-Lagravière; red Burgundy wines: Côtes de Nuits vineyards: Chambolle-Musigny, Charmes-Chambertin, Bonnes-Mares, Romanée-Saint-Vivant, La Tâche, Richebourg; Côtes de Beaune vineyards: Pernand-Vergelesse, Aloxe-Corton, Santenay Gravières, Beaune Grèves “Vignes-de-l’enfant-Jésus”, Volnay Caillerets; white Burgundy wines: Beaune Clos-des-Mouches, Corton Charlemagne; Côtes-du-Rhône wines: Côte-Rôtie, Crozes-Hermitage, Cornas, Tavel, Châteauneuf-du-Pape; Côtes-de-Provence wines: Bandol, Cassis; wines from the Mâcon and Dijon areas, ordinary wines from the Champagne vineyards – Vertus Bouzy, Crémant – and various Languedoc wines, wines from Béarn, from the region of Saumur, from Touraine, and wines from abroad: Fechy, Pully, Sidi-Brahim, Château-Maffe-Hughes, Dorset wine, Rhine and Mosel wines, Asti, Koudiat, Hochmornag, Egri Bikavér, etc.; and last of all come a few cases of champagnes, aperitifs, and various spirits – whisky, gin, kirsch, calvados, cognac, Grand-Marnier, Bénédictine, and, up on the shelving again, various cartons containing miscellaneous non-alcoholic beverages, effervescent and still, mineral waters, beer, fruit juices.

  To the far right, finally, between the wall and the door – a thick wooden palisade with iron braces, and two large padlocks for closing it – comes the maintenance, cleansing, and miscellaneous supplies section: stacks of floorcloths, cartons of washing powder, detergents, descaling liquid, bleach products for unblocking wastepipes, supplies of ammonia bleach, sponges, products for polishing floors, cleaning windows, shining brass, untarnishing silver, for brightening glassware, floortiles, and linoleum, broomheads, Hoover bags, candles, spare matches, piles of electric batteries, coffee filters, soluble aspirin with added vitamin C, candle bulbs for chandeliers, razor blades, cheap Eau de Cologne in litre bottles, soap, shampoo, cottonwool, cottonbuds, emery nailfiles, ink cartridges, beeswax, paint pots, dressings for minor cuts, insecticides, firelighters, dustbin liners, flints for cigarette lighters, and kitchen paper towel rolls.

  Cellars.

  The Gratiolets’ cellar. Here generations have heaped up rubbish unsorted and unordered by anyone. Three fathoms deep it lies, under the watchful eye of a fat ginger-striped cat crouching high up on the other side of the skylight, tracking through the wire netting the inaccessible but nonetheless just perceptible scuttling of a mouse.

  The eye, becoming slowly accustomed to the dark, could end up making out beneath the layer of fine grey dust heteroclite remains coming from each of the Gratiolets: the base and posts of an Empire bed, hickorywood skis having lost their spring long ago, a pith helmet that was of purest white once upon a time, tennis racquets held in heavy trapezoidal presses, an old Underwood typewriter of the celebrated Four Million model, which was held to be, in its time, and owing to its automatic tabulator, one of the most sophisticated objects ever made, and on which François Gratiolet began to type his invoices when he decided he had to modernise his accounting systems; an old Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustré beginning with a half-page 71 – ASP sbs (Grk aspis). Colloquial for viper. Fig. Asp-tongue perpetrator of calumnies – and ending with page 1530: MAROLLES-LES-BRAULTS (Dept of Sarthe, Mamers County); pop. 2,000 (vill. 950); an old cast-iron coatstand still holding up a raw-wool cloak patched with pieces of different colours and
even different materials: the overcoat worn by Pte Gratiolet, Olivier, taken prisoner at Arras on 20 May 1940, released as early as May 1942 thanks to the efforts of his uncle Marc (Marc, the son of Ferdinand, was not Olivier’s uncle but his father Louis’s second cousin, but Olivier called him “my uncle” just as he said “uncle” to his father’s other cousin, François); an old cardboard globe, with quite a few holes; piles and piles of incomplete runs of papers: L’Illustration, Point de Vue, Radar, Détective, Réalités, Images du Monde, Comédia; on a cover of Paris-Match, Pierre Boulez, wearing a tuxedo, waves his baton at the première of Wozzeck at the Paris Opera; on a cover of Historia two adolescents can be seen, one in the uniform of a colonel in the Hussars – white kerseymere trousers, midnight-blue dolman with pearl-grey frogging, tasselled shako – and the other in a black cloak and lace cravat and cuffs, rushing into each other’s arms, above the following legend: Did Louis XVII secretly meet Napoleon II at Fiume on 8 August 1808? The most amazing mystery of French history finally solved! A hatbox full of curling photographs, of yellowed or sepia-tinted snapshots you can never remember of what, or taken by whom: three men on a country lane; that dark man of graceful carriage, with curling black moustaches, wearing light-coloured check trousers, is surely Juste Gratiolet, Olivier’s great-grandfather, the first proprietor of the block of flats, with friends of his, who might be the Bereaux, Jacques and Emile, whose sister Marie he married; and those other two, standing in front of the Beirut War Memorial, both with empty right sleeves and medals on their chests, saluting the flag with their left hands, are Bernard Lehameau, a cousin of Marthe, François’s wife, and his old friend Colonel Augustus B. Clifford, for whom he worked as interpreter at Allied Forces General HQ at Péronne, where, like the colonel, he lost his right arm when the said GHQ was bombed by Richthofen, the “Red Baron”, on 19 May 1917; and the other one, the obviously long-sighted man reading a book on a raked lectern, is Gérard, Olivier’s grandfather.