The Enchanted Clock

by Julia Kristeva

  You are held by Stan, you upheld him, he held himself for you, and from now on he keeps to himself, with others and for others.

  Hold yourself in me now, I hold myself in you.

  Now does not say “There is time,” which, with its impersonal “there is,” gathers in and reassembles. No. Now is the pressure of the blood that rises and receives, its sonority preceding the voice. Without sounds, without communication, without words, neither I nor you. The expansion of the now transcends excitation, tenses it again and again, beyond pleasure.

  One in the other, one enfolding the other, outside of ourselves, inseparable. The universe calmly stands still. At the instant of orgasm, bodies are fixed, eternal. The density of the burning osmosis keeps light agglutinated. We are the same spacetime beginning to bend, but barely. Until the brilliance of light emanates from Theo and Nivi and daylight dilates, splendorous torrent, a blinding and a cry.

  Deep sleep.

  Theo will sleep until the sun rises. I wake before dawn. Not really—I don’t open my eyes; I live in the deep field of the dream.

  Everyone is familiar with those dreams that come before dreams. Tortures or pleasures, neither words nor images, they abandon you upon waking, as if destroyed, without memories, shipwrecks aground at the edge of ordinary life. Nothing like the pulsation of the embrace that fulfills my night. No characters, no plot. Skin, breasts, and genitals all engorged, pains and joys; emptied, the embrace concentrates and dilates, then the rhythm subsides into wandering shadows, and a bursting, airy sonority abducts me. Poignant yet sovereign, Couperin’s notes resonate in the dawn of time.

  Leave this dream? I don’t want to; I’m not able to. Because nobody inhabits that sleep. Not even me. Just masses of galaxies that pass by a milky way, are lost, stretch out into pink clouds, and end up descending upon the Louvre pyramid. A variable star pierces the dark matter like those white sculptures cutting through the shadowy lower sections of Café Marly, which we glance at when we kiss: an Egyptian queen, a Greek goddess, a decapitated head on the silver platter of the fleeing moon.

  My cell phone rings: the Owl informs me that the attack at Versailles was actually aimed at Passemant’s famous astronomical clock. I must be dreaming—how did she get my number? It’s my Astro’s voice that makes me realize I have rejoined the day: “Nine o’clock … You’re shivering, you left the window open … No, it’s not raining. The springtime dew smells of greenery.” Theo likes my perfume. “I don’t understand why people get bored.”

  He doesn’t close the window. Covers me with laughter and kisses. Didn’t have the same dream—another one, but similar to mine, because our two pleasures take us to a time from before time, a world from before the world. And wake us up glowing with a radiance that does not pertain to quotidian measures, that no code or identifier can decipher.

  “But that’s because they don’t know us yet!” Nivi replies, provocatively.

  She dares to claim that the two sexes will not die separated, each in their own spaces. And that neither Madame Bovary, nor Madame de Renal, nor Albertine, nor Lolita, nor Molly Bloom, nor Colette told the story of that now where a woman and a man, each in their own spaces, can together lose themselves and encounter each other.

  III

  REBIRTH

  27

  DEATH IS NOT NEWS

  A journalist famous for his investigations of the very private lives of stars has been found dead in his apartment on the rue du Pont-aux-Choux, near the Picasso Museum. Was it natural causes or a criminal act? At the present time, the demise of the Franco-British Loïc Sean Garret, known as LSG the King, remains unexplained, according to a source close to the police. An inquiry has been launched. Several leads are being considered, the most likely being connected to his profession. Did he perhaps use illegal phone taps? With whose assistance? One recalls the scabrous affair of the News of the World, known as NoW. Is the magazine that employed the King, PsychMag, a disguised tabloid? Who among the stars would have been angry about things to the point of committing the irreparable? Will multiple arrests follow?”

  Death is not news if it does not cause a scandal—the media impose this law: they decide on the tempo, feed it with details.

  “Homicide, suicide, hard sex. Wire taps and incestuous relations with the police. Show-biz, LSG-LSD, the Murdoch empire. Could Levallois-Perret, where the respectable PsychMag has its office, be to the Champs Élysées and boulevard Blanqui what the London Docklands are to the once honorable Fleet Street? It is not known how long it has been since LSG contacted his editorial staff.”1

  Am I dreaming, or is that France Info? The sleepy voice of the announcer buries the information under the threat of a market crash or a New York hurricane; then comes a report on the kamikazes blowing themselves up in Kabul, in Algiers, in Iraq; last is the death of a security guard in Paris.

  Is it the start of the broadcast or the end of the story? So the world turns. I go back to sleep, then hang around for a while. Marianne’s cell phone is on voicemail. I have some tea; it’s ten o’clock. One more try: Marianne is still not answering: what’s she doing? I rush to the office.

  The police are already there: seals, searches, inquiries, depositions, everyone gets a turn. Ulf is livid, Marianne aghast. And me? I don’t know the first thing about it.

  The investigation is just beginning; no hypothesis is favored for the moment. But we are subjects supposed to know! And it’s not over: we’ll have to report to the police station. Supposedly, we are the sources, the witnesses, the accomplices—the suspects, while they’re at it! Tension succeeds stupor; the team comes together and speaks with one voice—“we.” No tears for the time being. “We are overwhelmed.”

  I gather my wits. All I need to do is call Rilsky, my friend—ex-friend—Northrop Rilsky, the most enigmatic of men devoted to criminality, his vocation. He’ll know. Otherwise, after such a creepy business, our goose is cooked. That’s it, I’ll get him. Not right away, tonight, tomorrow, he’ll be willing to see me, like before.

  1. Offices of the distinguished daily Le Monde are located on the boulevard Blanqui; the Champs Élysées are the site of Le Figaro and other newspapers. The Docklands scandal refers to the Murdoch style of journalism.

  28

  OVERDOSE

  Police Chief Rilsky is not personally involved in the LSG matter. I had guessed as much. Paternalistic and undeniably provocative (that’s his way of staying in love with me), Theo’s uncle reminds me that I shouldn’t neglect the importance of his responsibilities in the National Police hierarchy. No comparison to the fieldwork where our paths had crossed before. To satisfy my curiosity, though, he does what’s needed to obtain “a few secret elements.” Here’s where we’re at, my dear Nivi, he says.

  “The autopsy done by our services confirmed the initial observations by the police: it was indeed a suicide. Loïc Sean Garret, the star reporter of your PsychMag, succumbed to an overdose. What reasons for his action (if you can talk about reason)? The dashing LSG, ‘the King,’ who covered the world of nightlife, often began his day with a rock star’s breakfast: Jack Daniels and a line of coke. That’s not all. To be at the top of his profession, demanding as he was, your diva had become accustomed to inviting fame-seeking therapists along on his nocturnal outings. When you powder your nose with such people, you end up uncovering intimate if not precious information about the private lives of people in the media, in cinema, in music or television … You can see what I’m getting at: some of the honorable protectors of our mental health are in danger of losing their jobs. They sold information like raw material, like industrial silicone or Mediator … We know that GlobalPsyNet and PsyNetOne have already spent several million euros to stop judicial proceedings and avoid trials for the extortion of medical secrets by various shrinks who were treating celebrities like Zina, whom LSG was very close to … Ah, when dope—I mean the spin doctor—has hold of us …”

  Rilsky is jubilant. I remember the King’s article on Zina. The detailed a
ccount of her enforced sexual relations with her brother and their abusive teacher at elementary school had provoked denials from the alleged sexual delinquent: “Do you have any proof?” The King’s reply, stating that a team of psychologists had gathered the needed evidence, had put an abrupt end to the denials … His lapidary formula had brought fear. It implied that LSG drew his information neither from Zina nor from her brother—whom alcohol and drugs had rendered voluble, in the end—nor even from illegal phone taps. It was becoming clear that his principal source consisted only of the confidences of certain shrinks. But since no one had sought to bring accusations of professional malpractice, it seemed the matter had been buried.

  I can hear Rilsky’s appetite feeding on the supposed culpability of my colleagues. I don’t point it out.

  “The investigation is continuing … In the meantime, your profession enjoys the benefits of the presumption of innocence, needless to say. As for the phone taps, the King was not a rank beginner: his lucrative relationship with Scotland Yard is well known, and he thought he could continue the same little games with us in Paris. We had him under surveillance … We didn’t put pressure on him until he attacked therapeutic deontology.”

  Northrop thinks he’s surprising me. I let him have his triumph.

  “LSG was paid for that; granted, it’s common in the media, needless to say, except that he overshot the mark a bit—to the point of slinging mud on some good doctors. He may not look it, but your King was a clever manipulator. He got them to sing … oh, sorry, professional jargon. He got them to talk, like so many magpies … serious druggies … Their required reserve, the Hippocratic oath—what a joke! A disappointment, your dear colleagues, hmm? Psychiatrists with diplomas, plus the others who are their own authority, as they put it so wittily, imprudent people. Real suckers in the PR game … You know who I’m talking about? It’s a hypothesis, an interesting lead … To be followed up …”

  To think that all this emerged from that pathetic business about Zina! Not so petty after all. The secret services are interested in psychoanalysis! How long before an NSA lurks under the couch? Drug trafficking in the pharmaceutical labs—forgotten; from now on, it’s the shrinks being wiretapped. And what if they flood the wiretaps with stories about cocaine maniacs’ vices corrupting the community? Paranoid cops or puerile psychiatrists: which are more dangerous? Was Rilsky hiding a story from me about gangsters charged with eliminating their most naïve member, a rat, a squealer, LSG? Or was he expecting me to confirm his suspicions—but about what? Shrinks? Journalists? Power and the sensational transform man into a machine who no longer dreams but consumes artificial paradises, so … Surely Rilsky doesn’t believe that the police are going to save morality?

  LSG was just an actor; he had simply participated in a transplantation of Murdoch-type methods. The conception, the brains, was none other than Larson. But his global network, our network, covered him, and no one for the time being had an interest in proving anything … So we would be stuck with the underlings, and PsychMag as well as GlobalPsyNet, PsyNetOne, and so on would survive without Larson, sent back to Sweden.

  As is often—or always—the case, I had guessed Rilsky’s “secrets” before he discovered them. I had my own intuitions. Which are not proofs, I admit. The police chief did not know that I was already informed about the departure of our CEO. By way of explanation, our sponsors had just eliminated his position—perfectly normal in times of crisis. And since Guy Thibault, the editor-in-chief, was about to retire, it was logical to promote Marianne Baruch to the position of director of the publication. “You’re in charge, no helicopter surveillance, you’re the master of the ship, my dear little mommy,” Larson congratulated Marianne before flying off to Uppsala.

  “You see, they noticed that the ‘French exception’ exists, and it rejects any graft of models that maybe work elsewhere but turn out to be catastrophic for us.” Marianne is already reasoning like a director. “You weren’t expecting it, I know … The nation is well and truly a reality, that’s what you tell yourself, isn’t it? With your dreams, your clocks at Versailles, your French follies … We haven’t been French enough at PsychMag. Well, we will be, you can count on me!”

  She announces her promotion like a highly strategic decision that I have to accept on the spot. I reassure her: I find it perfectly well deserved.

  “And also I’ll be needing cash to have someone mind the baby, if I want to pursue my professional life … Obviously I want to! You have to agree: there’s no turning down a salary increase, is there?”

  Of course not. A little embarrassed, Marianne even has a consolation prize for me.

  “Ulf is leaving Paris, as expected. As a result, his apartment is free. You adore the Lux—it’s an unbelievable stroke of luck, isn’t it?”

  Larson had set up a nice little pied-à-terre in an old apartment building overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens, not far from the mansard I used to occupy during the time of the Vogels. I had never been to see it, but Marianne had not failed to connect it to my former love life.

  “We can go see it when you like … Later! I have to run, got to get the baby’s bedroom ready … It’s a jewel, that apartment, you’re going to love love love it.”

  29

  ONCE AGAIN I HAVE BROKEN WITH THE HUMAN RACE

  For three whole days I have disappeared into my imagination. Absorbed by a tale in which I am searching for myself. I listen, I look, I read, I plant, I water, I cook, I converse. I direct (rarely), I raise, I educate, I write, I live. I try to make my surroundings live. My A? A lover, but more than that. Beside the point. A tutor for Stan, for lack of being a father like the others. “The secret of being boring is to say everything.” I will not say everything.

  The salt marshes in front of the garden are covered with pyramids of salt. It’s summer; people are on vacation. Stan also, not me. Still and always this suspended time. Its luminous weightlessness, nowhere as palpable as in front of the steeple of Ars, which overlooks the ocean and gives me vertigo.

  Astro has just left for I don’t know what sky at one of those labs that don’t have a name, just a series of capital letters. Is it infantile to open one’s soul to an interstellar friend? Harkening to his cosmic babble, is it possible I find pleasure only in the calculations of a quantic James Bond whose returns I am on the lookout for, whereas he saved me from drowning the better to cut me off from the world? Little Nivi, a masochist? No more than Astro. Each of us is a searcher aspirated by our Grails. I, accessory to roses and souls; he, navigator of stars and dark matters. What relation? “There are no sexual relations.” Fine. Ought I to write him, as did lovers of those times past: “Love me a little, it’s only justice, loving you, as I think, tenderly.” This rhetoric from the more-than-perfect past is not merely outdated; it is unavailable to us because it remains to be translated into our world as it is. One does not see its anguish, which may eventually be revealed and delivered in words. Astro plays with it and displays it, against, or in addition to, or without eroticism. He admits it, even if he doesn’t say so using my words. Love is our traversal of anguish, like the happiness that emerges from grief.

  Love exists so rarely that it has not changed since the time when lovers sought it in the sun and the stars. A sixth sense, a mutual taste (Émilie constantly brings me back to it) that links two equally sensitive souls to happiness. Like Theo and Nivi, persuaded that happiness is an illusion—tenacious and irrefragable—that one should avoid if it makes us lose the fruit of our reflections.

  9999 heard the Newtonians, the Cartesians, the Leibnizians argue. Today my A’s instanton is of interest only to hyperspecialists and a few peerless lovers, like us. Bloggers, indifferent, spend all their time on their iPads, get worked up over sordid little news items, or bet on the given name of the British royal baby: It’s a boy! Fortunately, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks repair these forsaken egos, unless they precipitate them into suicide. And the sands of August, pushed toward Singapore and othe
r offshores, erase the traces of fiscal evasion.

  Nivi contemplates the flotilla of shoveler ducks in front of the lavender, six just hatched and the two gray-chocolate-green parents. She thinks about the other side of Planck’s Wall, where Theo is. “We are two in one, my Astro and I.”

  When Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight shook up the planet, I was a quite young girl, discovering I was in love.

  “Gagarin has brought the world together!” said Papa, always a believer.

  “You’re dreaming …” Mama, a convinced Darwinian and always pessimistic, gently objected.

  I went dancing with Wlad, who was getting ready to take his baccalaureate exam, pressed against him as we did at the time, overheated teens fired up by totalitarian communism, ardently romantic. He kissed me for a long time, biting my tongue and my lips, in front of the door of my apartment building at 4 Saint Sophia Street in Sofia. Until the end of summer we danced and wept some more. After his exams, Wlad left for Dubno in Siberia to study astrophysical engineering and work on the future sputniks. We corresponded, a little. I never saw him again.

  I delved into astronomy. I think I read everything one could find on the subject at the time. Papa and Mama were not communists: I was not admitted to study the hard sciences (secret defense) nor allowed to join my dancer in Siberia. All I could do was fall back on my inner core: languages, literature, writing. Psychology inevitably followed. All taking place against a backdrop of warming relations, the Six-Day War, May ’68, the Yom Kippur War, Glasnost, Perestroika, Solidarity, the fall of the Wall, studies in Paris, avant-garde, modernity and postmodernity, Twin Towers, and the Clash of Civilizations … Until the sky once again fell on me: my Stan, my Astro, and along with them, Passemant’s clock.