Life: A User's Manual

by Georges Perec

  They took two years to cross Spain, went over to Morocco, then down to Mauritania and as far as Senegal. Around nineteen thirty-seven they took a boat to Brazil, reached Venezuela, then Nicaragua, then Honduras, and that was how in the end Henri Fresnel found himself in New York, NY, United States of America, on his own, one morning in nineteen forty, with seventeen cents in his pocket, sitting on a bench opposite St Mark’s-in-the-Bowery, in front of a stone plaque, placed diagonally by the wooden porch, attesting that this church, dating from 1799, was one of the 28 buildings in America built before 1800. He went to ask for help from the priest of the parish who – maybe touched by Fresnel’s accent – agreed to listen to him. The cleric nodded his head in sadness as he learnt that Fresnel had been a charlatan, an illusionist, and an actor, but as soon as he discovered that the man had run a restaurant in Paris and had had a clientele including Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier, Serge Lifar, Tom Lane the jockey, Nungesser, and Picasso, he broke into a broad smile and as he reached for the telephone assured the Frenchman that his troubles were over.

  It was thus that after eleven years of wandering Henri Fresnel became cook to an eccentric and super-rich American woman, Grace Twinker. Grace Twinker, then aged seventy, was none other than the famous Twinkie, the very same who started at sixteen in a burlesque show dressed as the recently inaugurated Statue of Liberty and who became at the turn of the century one of the most legendary Queens of Broadway, before marrying five billionaires in succession who all had the good sense to die shortly after their weddings and leave Twinkie all their money.

  Twinkie was extravagantly generous and supported choreographers and dancers, writers, librettists, set designers, etc., whom she had hired to write a musical based on her own fabulous biography: her triumph as Lady Godiva in the streets of New York, her marriage to Prince Guéménolé, her stormy affair with Mayor Groncz, her arrival in a Duesenberg at East Knoyle airfield for the meeting at which the Argentinian flyer, Carlos Kravchik, who was madly in love with her, jumped from his biplane after a suite of eleven dead-leaf dives and the most impressive zoom climb ever seen, her purchase of the monastery of the Brothers of Mercy at Granbin, near Pont-Audemer, which she had transported stone by stone to Connecticut and presented to Highpool University, which used it for its library, her giant crystal bath shaped like a champagne glass, which she filled with said (Californian) beverage, her eight Siamese cats with navy-blue eyes watched over day and night by two vets and four nurses, her lavish and extravagant contributions (which the beneficiaries, it was frequently reported, would have rather not had) to Harding’s and Coolidge’s and Hoover’s campaigns, the famous telegram – Shut up, you singing buoy! – she sent to Caruso a few minutes before his first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera, all these episodes were supposed to appear in an “All-American” show beside which the wildest Follies of the period would pale into provincial insignificance.

  Grace Slaughter – the surname of her fifth husband, a manufacturer of pharmaceutical toners and “prophylactic” products, recently deceased due to a ruptured peritoneum – was sharply chauvinistic and would allow no more than two exceptions to her all-American views, exceptions with which her first spouse, Astolphe de Guéménolé-Longtgermain, no doubt had something to do: cooking had to be done by French nationals of male gender, laundry and ironing by British subjects of female gender (and absolutely not by Chinese). That allowed Henri Fresnel to be hired without having to hide his original citizenship, which is what had to be done by the director (Hungarian), the set designer (Russian), the choreographer (Lithuanian), the dancers (Italian, Greek, Egyptian), the scriptwriter (English), the librettist (Austrian), and the composer, a Finn of Bulgarian descent with a large dash of Romanian.

  The attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the war at the end of 1941 put an end to these grandiose plans, which in any case did not satisfy Twinkie as she thought that every version inadequately emphasised the galvanising part she had played in the life of the nation. Though in total disagreement with the Roosevelt administration, Twinkie decided to devote herself to the war effort by sending all American soldiers serving in the Battle for the Pacific packets of samples of consumer products made by firms she controlled directly or indirectly. The packets were wrapped in a nylon sleeve depicting the American flag; they contained a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, three soluble effervescent tablets recommended for neuralgia, stomach pains, and heartburn, a piece of soap, three doses of shampoo, a bottle of pop, a ball-point pen, four packs of chewing gum, a set of razor blades, a plastic card case designed to hold a photograph – as an example, Twinkie had had her own put in, showing her at the launch of MTB Remember the Alamo – a small medallion cut to the shape of the soldier’s home state (foreign-born military received a medallion cut to the shape of the USA), and a pair of socks. The executive committee of the “Godmothers of America at War” which the Pentagon had made responsible for checking the contents of these gift packs, had had samples of “prophylactic” products withdrawn and strongly disapproved of any being sent to individuals.

  Grace Twinker died in nineteen fifty-one, from complications arising from a little-known disease of the pancreas. She left all her servants more than comfortable incomes. Henry Fresnel – he had adopted the English spelling of his first name – used his money to open a restaurant which he dubbed Le Capitaine Fracasse in memory of his years as a travelling player, published a book boastfully titled Mastering the French Art of Cookery, and founded a school of cooking which rapidly flourished. That didn’t stop him from satisfying his deepest passion. Thanks to all the show-business personalities who had tasted his cooking at Twinkie’s and who soon found their way to his restaurant, he became producer, technical adviser, and the main actor in a TV series called I Am the Cookie (Higher Ham Zee Cool Key, in Fresnel’s inimitable Marseilles accent, which had stood up successfully to so many years of exile). The broadcasts, which ended each time with Fresnel presenting one of his own original recipes, were so popular that analogous acting parts as a likable Frenchman were offered to him on several occasions, and thus did he finally fulfil his vocation.

  He retired from business in 1970 at the age of seventy-six and decided to go back to see Paris, which he had left more than forty years before.

  He was undoubtedly surprised to discover that his wife was still living in the little room in Rue Simon-Crubellier. He went to see her, told her all he had lived through, the nights in barns, the rutted roads, the messes of rain-sodden potatoes in pork fat, the slit-eyed Touaregs seeing right through every one of his sleights of hand, the heat and the hunger in Mexico, the wonderland soirées of the aged American lady for whom he made set pieces out of which, at the right moment, troupes of girls with ostrich plumes would prance.

  She listened to him silently. When he had finished, after he had nervously offered to give her some of the money he had amassed in the course of his peregrinations, she said only that none of all that, his story or his money, was of any interest to her, and she showed him the door without even asking for his address in Miami.

  There is every reason to believe that she had only stayed on in this room to await her husband’s return, however brief and disappointing the meeting might be, for within a few months she sold up and went to live with her son, a serving officer stationed at Nouméa. A year later, Mademoiselle Crespi received a letter from her; it described her life out there, in the Antipodes, a sad existence where she was used for household chores and for looking after her daughter-in-law’s children, sleeping in a room with no running water, reduced to washing in the kitchen.

  Today the room is occupied by a man of about thirty: he is on his bed, stark naked, prone, amidst five inflatable dolls, lying full length on top of one of them and cuddling two others in his arms, apparently experiencing an unparalleled orgasm on these precarious simulacra.

  The rest of the room is more bare: blank walls, a sea-green lino on the floor, strewn with odd pieces of clothing. A chair, a
table with an oilcloth covering, the signs of a meal – a can, shrimps in a saucer – and an evening newspaper lying open at a monster crossword puzzle.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  On the Stairs, 8

  ON THE SIXTH floor, in front of Dr Dinteville’s door. A patient is waiting for the door to open; he’s a man of about fifty, with a military bearing of the up-country bruiser variety, wearing cropped hair, a grey suit, a printed silk tie pinned by a tiny diamond, and a heavy gold stopwatch. Under his left arm he carries a morning daily on which can be seen advertisements for stockings, for the forthcoming premiere of a Gate Flanders film, Love, Maracas and Salami, with Faye Dolores and Sunny Philips, and a banner headline – The Princess of Faucigny-Lucinge is back! – above a photograph of the princess, sitting in an art-nouveau armchair with a furious look on her face while five customs officials extract with the utmost care, out of the recesses of a crate, stamped all over with international markings, a solid silver samovar and a large mirror.

  Beside the doormat stands an umbrella-holder: a tall plaster cylinder made to look like a classical pillar. To the right, a bundle of newspapers tied with string and intended for the students who periodically come to the building to make a collection of wastepaper. Even after the concierge has extracted all the illustrated blotters, which she gives away, Dr Dinteville remains one of the best suppliers. The paper on the top of the pile is not a medical publication, but a journal of linguistics with the following table of contents to be seen:

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Madame Orlowska

  (Servants’ Quarters, II)

  ELZBIETA ORLOWSKA, THE Polish Beauty – as everyone in the quartier calls her – is a tall, stern, and majestic woman of thirty with a head of long, thick blonde hair most often done up in a bun, dark-blue eyes, a very pale complexion, and a fleshy neck on round and almost plump shoulders. She is standing in her bedroom, almost in the middle of the room, with one arm in the air, as she wipes a brass lighting fixture with open-work branches resembling a scaled-down copy of a Dutch domestic chandelier.

  The room is tiny and tidy. On the left, against the partition wall, is a bed – a narrow pallet graced with a few cushions, and with fitted drawers underneath; then a whitewood table with a portable typewriter and various papers on it, then another table, an even smaller one, made of metal, collapsible, holding a gas camping cooker and several kitchen utensils.

  Against the right-hand wall stands a cot and a stool. Another stool by the pallet-bed, filling the tiny space between it and the door, serves as a bedside table: on it, a lamp with a whorled pedestal huddles against an octagonal white earthenware ashtray, a small carved-wood cigarette box in the shape of a barrel, a voluminous essay entitled The Arabian Knights. New visions of Islamic Feudalism in the Beginnings of the Hegira, by a certain Charles Nunneley, and a detective story by Lawrence Wargrave, The Magistrate Is the Murderer: X kills A in such a way that the law, which knows he did it, cannot convict him. The examining magistrate kills B in such a way that X is suspected, arrested, tried, found guilty, and executed without his being able to do anything to prove his innocence.

  The floor covering is dark-red linoleum. The walls, fitted with shelving on which clothes, books, crockery, etc. are stacked, are painted light beige. They are enlivened a little by two posters in very bright colours pinned to the right-hand wall between the cot and the door: the first is a portrait of a clown with a ping-pong-ball nose, a wisp of carrot-red hair, a chequerboard costume, a huge polka-dot bow tie, and long, very flat shoes. The second depicts six men standing in a row: one of them has a full beard, black, another has a heavy ring on his finger, another has a red belt, another has trousers rent at the knees, another has only one eye open, and the last of them bares his teeth.

  When asked what is the meaning of this poster, Elzbieta Orlowska replies that it illustrates a popular Polish nursery rhyme told to children to get them to sleep:

  – I met six men, says the mother.

  – What were they like? asks the child.

  – The first has a black beard, says the mother.

  – Why? asks the child.

  – Because he doesn’t know how to shave, silly! says the mother.

  – And the second one? asks the child.

  – The second wears a ring, says the mother.

  – Why? asks the child.

  – Because he’s married, silly! says the mother.

  – And the third one? asks the child.

  – The third has a belt round his waist, says the mother.

  – Why? asks the child.

  – Because otherwise his trousers would fall down, silly! says the mother.

  – And the fourth one? asks the child.

  – The fourth has torn his trousers, says the mother.

  – Why? asks the child.

  – Because he ran too fast, silly! says the mother.

  – And the fifth one? asks the child.

  – The fifth has only one eye open, says the mother.

  – Why? asks the child.

  – Because he’s nearly asleep, just like you, my little one, says the mother ever so softly.

  – And the last one? the child asks in a whisper.

  – The last one is baring his teeth, says the mother all in one breath.

  Now the child mustn’t ask anything at all, for if he should make the mistake of saying:

  – Why?

  – Because he’s coming to eat you up if you don’t go to sleep, silly! the mother will say in a booming voice.

  Elzbieta Orlowska was eleven when she first came to France. It was a summer camp at Parçay-les-Pins in Maine-et-Loire. The camp was run by the Foreign Ministry and catered for the children of staff of the Ministry and of embassies abroad. Little Elzbieta went to the camp because her father was a concierge at the French Embassy in Warsaw. The camp was designed to be international, but it so happens that French youngsters were in a large majority that year, and the few foreign children that were there felt quite at sea. One of them was a Tunisian boy by the first name of Boubaker. His father, an orthodox Muslim who lived in almost total isolation from French culture, would never have dreamt of sending his son to France, but his uncle, an archivist in the French Foreign Ministry on the Quai d’Orsay, had insisted on bringing the boy over, as he was convinced it was the best way to acquaint his nephew with a language and a civilisation which the next generation of Tunisians, henceforth self-governing, could not afford not to know.

  Elzbieta and Boubaker quickly became inseparable. They kept apart from the others and did not join in their games, but walked together holding hands by their little fingers, smiled at each other, and told each other long stories in their respective tongues which the other listened to, enchanted, without understanding a word. The other children didn’t like them, played cruel tricks on them, hid dead field mice in their bunks, but the adults who came to spend a day with their offspring went into ecstasy over the young pair, a chubby little girl with blonde locks and bisque skin, and a slim, curly-headed boy as lithe as a liana, with sallow skin, jet-black hair, and huge eyes brimming with angelic sweetness. On the last day of camp they pricked their thumbs and mixed their blood, swearing eternal love.