The Enchanted Clock

by Julia Kristeva

  “Which brings us back to our swan, your Leibniz.” Astro’s half serious. “Neither dissident nor revolutionary nor anarchic. Only passionate.”

  “Like Leibniz—and the swan, if you like—she folds the forces of desire into the order of existing things, and vice versa. Even in philosophizing she relies on enthusiasm, which leads to her death but also allows her to think of the inexistent.” Nivi speaking.

  “The infinite is unthinkable. A way of defying finitude other than by the birth from which she will die (and her baby will follow).” Astro is moved, for once.

  “Pregnant at age forty-two … Can you imagine such a snub at nature, at medicine, at common sense! While still continuing her translation of Newton that Voltaire will publish! And which will remain authoritative until modern times … Émilie never finished beginning.” Nivi sticks to historical facts.

  “Nevertheless your Leibnizian is a monad mixing clear ideas with obscure representations that seem to escape her, as it were.” Theo is critical but nonetheless admiring.

  “Isn’t God a ‘capricious Worker who is determined without sufficient reason’?” Nivi returns to Leibnizian sources.

  “Not a worker but a passionate researcher who operates within another order of reason, neither ordinary nor extraordinary. It’s no longer a matter of understanding but of explaining how what resembles chance is in reality conforming to what today we call information that precedes us.” Theo speaking of himself.

  “By dint of frequenting its mysteries, this libertarian exceeds herself in the quantity of possible worlds … While putting herself in danger … Finitude put to death is passion, isn’t it?” Nivi, grave, almost inaudible.

  What are those two doing at the edge of the Fier d’Ars? Abstractions as flying buttresses against the appetites of desire? Cold follies, impenetrable allusions?

  Far from separating them, as a hasty observer might have thought, each proposition here is a question that they both share, that echoes and rebounds in each of them. You’re the one saying it, or is it I? To think together, not the same thing but the encounter of two ways of being. Their way of loving together.

  “You’re not calling him Swann, your swan?”

  “No, Leibniz.”

  “I thought so, an admirer of your Teresa d’Avila too.”

  “The difference between Émilie and Teresa: the saint is thunderstruck by the divine. She prays to the Dome of the world and her church; she savors their messages with her five senses and all her flesh.”

  “God is invaginated inside Teresa; she unfolds His dwelling places inside herself with her art of pleasure and writing.”

  “Epileptic or enraptured, the Madre yields to streaming sensations, body and soul wound up like two entwined clocks.”

  “Look at her Transverberation by Bernini. Even though the luminous point is above our heads, the ecstasy reveals that the incarnation is a bodily tumult. The sculptor noticed that, and his marble draping palpitates like flesh.”

  “But Émilie? The same thing in concepts.”

  “Not the same experience, not the same being in the world. Émilie understands like a mathematician and presents like a philosopher what Teresa lives in her organs and recounts in letters, like a novelist.”

  “The fire of desire and the fire of reason, happiness and damnation, confront the folds of this soul of infinite density. Did she feel their singular harmony, as the saint did?”

  “In thought, I believe. But with all her senses?”

  “You’re telling me that the theodicy of your Émilie completely separates itself from the Great Clockmaker who fascinated Passemant’s time. He is the one who secretly governs modern minds when we extol social harmony, with the rights of man as key.”

  “Voltaire with the deists, the agnostics, or the atheists, everyone is content to ensure the Great Clockmaker’s impersonation and service. We separate reason from faith and we lose the infinity of inner experience. Or what remains of it.”

  “Basically, the French Revolution occurs in the wake of the Voltaireans or, more concretely, in the movement of Passemant the Newtonian’s clock.”

  “If you continue to spin out that metaphor, you will notice that the social contract, supposed to bring happiness on earth, was programmed from the start to become a universal timepiece—globalized, in the end, but perpetually needing repair.”

  “In search of unlocatable values that do not dissociate but definitively depend on the value of values: the Supreme Being.”

  “Newton’s God, consisting of physics. In politics, the Supreme Being of evil spreads terror, becomes totalitarian … Among us postmoderns, we prefer to put him between parentheses, more or less evacuated.”

  “We are rescuers: we repair the endemic crisis of the incurable financial system, we announce the systematic flattening of our social systems …”

  “Whereas the Leibnizian Émilie may be in advance of her lover in Cirey-sur-Blaise?”

  “Oh yes! Because she concentrates on infinite fire and singular happiness. The automatons: overtaken! Long life to inaccessible and transversal spirals, inflections, symmetries and dissymmetries, spongy and cavernous worlds, continually variable curvatures, turbulences and new beginnings!”

  “Émilie the baroque! If her body had been able to transfigure her science, if she had enjoyed the illusion, music boxes, love fiction, the flamboyant Émilie would have written novels. Or would have become a mystic Carmelite, after Teresa d’Avila and before Edith Stein.”

  “Certainly not! It’s definitely because she is the way she is that she can anticipate dark energies!”

  They will never finish rejoining and disjoining, those two, in time’s states of emergency.

  Leibniz the swan uncurls his neck. He stares fixedly at the geranium blooms on the low wall in front of the veranda. He approves. Not a single crease on the horizon.

  The medieval steeple of the church at Ars hasn’t heard of Teresa or Émilie. It stands out against the garnet sunset, quenching the stars and the dew that prepares to come.

  36

  VARIATIONS ON SUICIDE

  What does the irreplaceable Rilsky have to tell me that I don’t already know?

  “Every suicide is unexplainable, isn’t it? I’m not expecting you to explain it. This King was neither a beginner nor a naïf. Could he have taken everything seriously? Was he swayed by remorse over having violated medical secrecy, this holy of holies of modern times? Oddly, this type of young man possesses a severe superego. I’m speaking to a specialist.” The police chief is thinking of the Zina case. Does he really believe it?

  My old friend likes to be ironic, almost smug, when he wants to impress me. I don’t bite.

  “I won’t kid about it—it’s serious for me too. But is that a sufficient cause?” I temporarily abandon depth psychoanalysis and return us to the social, even societal, level.

  “It seems he was intimate with the CEO, the great Ulf.” The cop takes a further step.

  “You’re not telling me anything I didn’t know. An affair among others. Perhaps more important for the CEO than for him, for little LSG.”

  It’s clear the police chief hesitates to go further. But he does: “The King kept a journal. A fragile person, the way you like them. A shrink would have done him good.”

  I wait.

  “We have the journal, okay, and a voice recording. LSG was furious at the world, particularly against the world he belonged to, which systematically violates the privacy of stars and ordinary citizens. He was getting ready to denounce everything, and denounce himself. A real outing, in the end!”

  “You mean someone suicided him to keep him quiet?”

  “It’s a hypothesis. Personally, I can’t believe that GlobalPsyNet and its branches are mafioso to that extent … You’re only amateurs, needless to say … Maybe you’re right … Anyway! The Levallois-Perret scandal has nothing to do with the Docklands scandal in London … no! You are much too small to make the truth come out.”

  I wa
it some more.

  “You know who Indira’s father is?”

  The Purloined Letter! Rilsky as Edgar Allan Poe! I should have thought of it. Of course! Marianne won’t say anything. It’s nobody’s business. Maybe Indira’s, one day? But is it possible to say everything? Shrinks have different opinions on this, as on the rest. I’m annoyed at myself for having been so closed, so impermeable. I’m stupefied and have a hard time not showing it. The police chief hastens to come to my aid.

  “I haven’t read the file, but it’s likely. At least the King actively participated in it. Adding that to the rest, the man ended up cracking … A sort of suicide by society, but suicide all the same. However, he could also have been suicided … For less than that.”

  I remember Marianne was abrupt, stubbornly close-lipped. This suicide is an additional burden on her. Or a relief in her lioness’s solitude. Are hardness and harshness the appendices to contempt?

  Indira will need a family. She has a few more or less distant cousins; Marianne introduced me to some of them. Not forgetting Nivi, Stan, Astro: we will love her. If Marianne and Indira even let us. “So goes the world,” Stan will say.

  As for Theo, he says nothing. Or rather, he changes the subject by shrugging his shoulders, meaning: there is no answer, since a suicide is not a question. The fact is, it comes only when there are no more questions.

  Still absorbed in Émilie’s reflections on fire, he shoots in passing: “People didn’t fail to say that Émilie’s pregnancy, at her age and at that time, was a suicide, or even a sort of rootless happiness. A delivery.”

  On the matter of happiness, I’d be glad to see the apartment freed by Larson overlooking the Lux.

  IV

  THE THEFT OF THE CLOCK

  37

  9999 HAS BEEN STOLEN

  That’s the last straw! Did you see the headline from AFP? The astronomical clock at Versailles has been stolen. Oh yes, darling, yours, the only, the unique, the clock from the King’s Cabinet! Unbelievable but true, what can I say. After all the fuss about this hotbed of science and curiosities, it seems. There are no safe places any more in this country of retirees, everyone knows that, why should Versailles be the exception to the rule? I have to confess it’s really pretty cheeky. ‘Your clock, France, is out the window!’ ”

  Consulting the other headlines on her computer, Marianne exults but pretends to sympathize with my supposed sorrow, or my stupefaction, which is worse: “I’d say they really had to be after that jewel of yours to elude the cameras, the guards, the guides, the curators, that armada of ‘Culture for All’ supported by our taxes … But your national treasure must have been guarded to the max! Wow, they did it! Well done! Congratulations!” she says in English—the only way she can show how impressed she is.

  She’s right, I don’t know where my head is. This is enormous. What can I do? Not much … So I “invent myself absent,” as Astro says when I’m in shock. Paralyzed. Why should I, Nivi Delisle, feel concerned when I hear that the fabulous clock by the engineer So-and-So has flown away to land in a vault in Qatar or China? It’s never been mine, this “Fabulous Clock,” and I don’t want it. It’s the clock that possesses me; I belong to it, in a sense, much more than it belongs to me. With Stan, we are of the clock. We dream about it. We invent it, we place and displace it. Marianne may realize that. She’s annoying me the better to console me, as usual.

  “This is serious, actually!” I say, to cut off the detective’s catechism she’s improvised. Waste of effort: she charges ahead.

  “You know the robbers could not have worked alone. I mean it’s not enough to get into the Château, which is only child’s play … At least I suppose … You have to infiltrate the staff … Are you following me? … Better, you have to be one of them … Don’t you think? You aren’t listening … Nivi, are you okay? You should see yourself … You know everything about this clock, isn’t that enough? Anyone can see it when they want, it’s printed in all the catalogues, art books and others, they have even filmed it from all sides … So with this theft we’re not losing much, okay, it’s true …”

  I don’t even raise an eyebrow. She can minimize it if she wants, but this robbery is an event. Marianne isn’t letting go, however.

  “Besides, was that the real king’s clock on exhibit there in front of the world’s tourists, including you and Stan? Excuse me … Maybe it was just a model … Suppose the robbers only stole a copy? That’d be a good one! The real one is probably sleeping somewhere in the reserves of the Banque de France … But then why all this buzz at AFP?” Marianne reasons, skeptical.

  “Buzz or not, the stolen clock deserves better than a brief item …” I am disappointed.

  “You poor thing, you’re not with it at all! No one’s heard of your adored automaton! A few enthusiasts, nuts about former glories and … sorry, I’m not forgetting the rare connoisseurs, like Astro and you …” If there’s a chance to put her foot in it, Marianne never misses: she’s not joking; she says what she thinks and thinks what she says. I give up!

  Who, in fact, could take the risk of committing the robbery of such a precious object? Not enormous, to be sure: 226 centimeters tall, but still, it’s the size of a significant piece of furniture … A true enthusiast? A supersnob clockmaker, a fanatic of royal antiquities? Not likely. Not a single French person is capable of such madness today. A lover of astronomy, a spiritual person hooked on the stars, a Rosicrucian? No, that type of visionary crank is not enterprising enough, not courageous enough.

  Marianne’s got me going. Or maybe an astrophysicist seeking precursors, an archeologist of the prehistory of current cosmologies? Why not? But a scientific vocation is not sufficient for someone to commit such an act: there would also have to be a special passion, an abnormal refinement, indeed, courage … No … There is only one person in the world who possesses all these qualities: Astro, so as not to name him … Marianne doesn’t think about it for a billionth of a second, no surprise … Nivi does! She starts to think … Not impossible, but absurd … Pure speculation. An upswelling of jealousy, of baseness? To be rejected right away! No likelihood, besides … Astro is in Chile now. Yes, but he could have accomplices. Stupid. Let’s get rid of this idea … What else?

  “Look, another headline: ‘Three men wearing caps with their faces hidden by scarves burst into the King’s Cabinet, where there were several people. Threatening with automatic pistols or AK-47s—witnesses differed—they carried off the famous object.’ ” Marianne sounds serious: this business looks like a real crime.

  I have not forgotten the fire and the bomb alert during our visit to the Château with Stan … That was when? A false alarm? Are you kidding … What if that was already a test, a preparation for this theft they would supposedly accomplish one day or another?

  “Listen to this! Are you listening? ‘It’s reported the police are on the track of a network of traffickers in ancient objects, museum thieves, including certain French people working for the Emirates. The latter, not content to own soccer and the Champs Élysées, are becoming antiquarians.’ Why not? ‘Art history schools are flourishing in Dubai. In view of the future Louvre in Abu Dhabi …’ Skipping ahead: ‘Their best students work in the great museums of Paris, London, New York … The Emirati are on the watch, constantly. We lend them our skills, as mentors and partners …’ And how! Wait, wait, the best: ‘The Emirate takes its place on the cultural stage, it’s preparing for after-oil …’ Oh yes! That’s it!” Marianne has just discovered the track.

  The Owl! I can see her as if I had just met her this instant. That woman was not just a guide: she was an experienced curator who didn’t simply take tourists around but palled around with foreign students. I did notice … What were they saying on the terrace of the Marly?

  These thoughts, which bring parasites into my brain like flies overexcited by approaching storms, don’t fool me. What does the Owl have to do with this? An agent of some Qatari mafia or other would not let herself be seen with the me
mbers of her network in the café at the Louvre … Or maybe she would, on the contrary … And so what would that prove?

  “A bit of advice, if you don’t mind: you shouldn’t talk about this with Stan, he could be very unhappy.” Marianne looking for someone more unhappy than I am.

  “Don’t worry.” I stick to my guns. “Stan must already know about it; he follows everything that circulates on the Web about this subject … Must have seen the news on TV about the clock … If another blow is added to 9999, I don’t think he suffers, on the contrary … Stan is all memory and all virtual.”

  Marianne does not understand. She must think I’m a bad mother.

  Best to talk about it with Rilsky.

  38

  BEAUTY SPOTS

  What is beauty? Hybrid, rare, strange. Or whorled, a moiré of shady-clear, sweet-bitter, slow-fast. For Astro, beauty is called Venice: he only needs to arrive at the slab covering Monteverdi’s sepulcher in the Chiesa dei Frari and stay there for hours with his eyes riveted on the eternal rose that a secret hand deposits on the marble.

  “Your eye makes a summer for me in my soul.” Ronsard’s poem comes to mind as soon as I arrive on the Grand Canal. Renaissance and baroque palaces, gondolas and gulls, all my senses dazzled, fulfilled, borne to the pinnacle of life, which only the churches of Venice attain. I had to know the Serenissima to formulate my religion: beauty, the soul becoming visible like a flower in the summer’s light.

  Stan has no trouble letting himself be initiated: his gaze “incorporates.” We enjoy only one painting per day. Narrow streets and canals impregnate our skins and absorb them. When we have passed body and soul into the eye of the beautiful, it is time to go back up to the terrace of the studio we have rented. Cormorants alight beside us—are they newly arrived from Ré? They’re again going to break the breakfast dishes. The vaporettos pass each other down below; the church bells, in regular rhythms, make the ocher air of June iridescent.