Marianne, novice shrink riffling through the pink pages of the Larousse Freudien, does not fail to bring up the basic explanation: “Darling, you have always been sustained by another illusion, the illusion: Papa loves you better than anything! I know that’s it. I dare you to disagree …!”1
Thanks to her analysands, Nivi has got beyond that stage: Marianne should know that. Stan and Astro help her with this too. She is convinced that jealousy is just a return of the disillusion as a demolition of the self, a bitter yearning disguised as a sickly sweet hatred. Ultimately jealousy betrays a simple lack of imagination. It suffices to avoid autarchy. No ecstatic reclusion. Links, dreams, blossomings … Until that admissible affinity happens: Astro’s surprise in the waters of the Fier. A permanent and fragile adjustment, to be maintained permanently. By recomposing everything that happens, the weight of needs, desires, yearnings, the mythology of fidelity, among others, and the even stickier mythology of infidelity.
What a crazy idea to enclose fidelity in a box, to chain it! Links are played like a jazz vocalese, the text espousing the melody and the rules of life adapting as much as possible to the beat of the senses, morality to the attraction of skins and the passions of the sex organs, prohibitions to climaxing like death. Swing, bebop, soul … Until the jazz vocalese meets its Louis Armstrong and frees itself from the text, morality, words. Bursts apart into scat, disseminates into timbres, ground-up syllables, insane exactness, the entire body between cadenced glottis and ear, the musicked delirium! Images, intrigues, impasses—all exhausted …
You can also play it more coldly, more chastely, like serial music. Then you break conventional harmony by a rigorous succession of tones, and as a result of modulations you arrive at a total absence of reference points. Dangerous? Up to you to adjust the melody of the timbres.
Jealous people are the bachelors of the art because they have only the imagination of the possessed/possessing, in other words, an absence of inventiveness, it’s been said. But Nivi finds that’s not saying enough. The jealous person doesn’t risk composing his life in scats, series, modulations without reference points … He’s lacking the ear—and especially the tact.
More tact than Passemant needed, although he was a peerless tactile humanoid, to refine his 9999. A jewel of precision—no surprise they stole it! That’s not much worse than if 9999 remained stashed away in a lab in Seattle—and why not in Antarctica? The ultimate hiding place! Unknown on the Internet, just a warning … Invisible witness to this old species that was still transumanaring in human form not so long ago.
To be sure, but Nivi is not Theo. Even supposing he could ramble on like her—which is not out of the question, but still …—Astro is above all a scientist. Nothing says he might have participated in the theft … Perhaps he merely approved of the project of sequestering the object?
Where in god’s name could that damned clock have got to?
1. The pages roses of the famous Petit Larousse dictionary contained foreign words and phrases; Kristeva here invents a Freudian Larousse.
46
CONSPIRACY FOR A CAUSE
Theo Passemant? May I have a few minutes of your time? On behalf of Dobbel-you-are-ee-dot-eff-are … I would like to meet with you … It’s about the theft of the clock, the Passemant clock … Exactly …”
“Excuse me for interrupting, sir, but I don’t see how I can help you. I am not a clockmaker; I know nothing about the century of Louis XV and even less about Interpol, I’m afraid … As for my family name …”
“We know about it. But I’m seeking advice from the astrophysicist. I know, the connection is not obvious, but, that’s just it, I would like to explain myself, it’s important … really!”
The voice insists. Theo is so rarely in Paris, he has lost contact with reality and ends up accepting. They will meet at the P’tit Café, next to campus. “Not far from your lab, very discreet, the manager is one of us. Tuesday? OK! Name your time.”
The man looks like a teacher or a middle manager, maybe he’s a journalist. T-shirt under a jean jacket, glasses.
“Pierre Faure, from WRE.fr.”
He doesn’t pretend that the name Passemant didn’t intrigue them. He seeks eye contact with Astro, who stares at his coffee.
“We’re not expecting secret information about the inventor of the clock, let me reassure you!”
Although the subject interests them—interests him even, personally—that’s not their problem, not our problem for the moment. Astro takes note, thanks. The other man hurries to make his point.
“You have certainly seen that the theft of 9999 is part of a militant action.”
As for being “part of” it, Astro reminds him that it is in fact the central object! But speaking of militant action, “You’re joking! A pretty word to designate what is really nothing but a heist.” Small smile, eyes slightly raised from the coffee cup.
“The objective consists in alerting opinion and forcing the authorities to close the nuclear-power stations.” Faure continues without paying attention to the qualms of his interlocutor.
Astro congratulates him: “Bravo.”
The other man concludes, “For the benefit of renewable energy …”
“That’s debatable, but what can I do? Is this a conspiracy?” Astro: hostile or threatening?
“There’s little time, you understand. We can’t wait until 9999. Besides, at our rate of pollution (and I’m not even talking about the nuclear risk that is our major preoccupation at present), everything suggests the Earth won’t last until then.” WRE.fr, serious.
“That’s a hypothesis.” Astro has managed to slip in a doubt; the man doesn’t flinch.
Faure lets him know that the authorities are standing firm, will certainly not move in the good direction.
“The deadline we gave for a favorable response comes in a few days; we are going to launch a global request for gifts to ‘buy’—in quotes, of course—Passemant’s work.”
“Passemant’s work”: that is indeed how Faure describes the clock. Duly noted. A symbolic purchase, in fact: it consists of intensifying the fight. Imposing it on public opinion, on TV screens, on the media, and on the Internet—that’s where it will play out, agreed?
Astro agrees. The man repeats that it’s a matter of time. So they logically thought about his lab: “Your lab … In this new phase of the action, we need to store 9999 in a safe place, to entrust it to the researchers involved in reflecting on time—that makes sense, doesn’t it? And who can keep it hidden. In secret.” He insists. “That way we will have our hands free to run the collection of funds in his name in all security—in the name of 9999, you understand … Nothing could be more indicated or more serious than your lab!”
Astro shakes his head as if he’s reflecting. He tells Faure that the idea, quite surprising—but that’s his intent, after all—is not bad in itself … He has to admit, however, that he is a little puzzled by this affair, actually a lot. Between Seattle, the Andes, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Studies, it’s hard to follow … As for the lab, he regrets having to disagree, but people have strange ideas about labs. Those sorts of places are much more open than it would seem. A safe place? Not what you think! More like a store window. Might as well put 9999 at an intersection. You cannot imagine all those teams busy deciphering the data from a telescope like the Hubble, more than eleven tons rotating in the sky … Or like the one from the ESA, the Planck space observatory launched by the Ariane 5 … We have completed the collection of the data, but we haven’t finished interpreting them … Not to mention the European space telescope Gaia, recently launched from Kourou in Guiana, a “galaxy surveyor” whose mission is to chart a 3D atlas of the Milky Way … Do you realize? All those minds focused on the time-out-of-time and those simmering postdocs speculating about the invisible. No no, some hiding place!
Astro can see he is not convincing his companion. Tries to be more precise, admits he no longer works in the great AIM lab—Astro
physics, Instrumentation, and Modeling, with MAXI telescopes and satellites orbiting the Earth and Saturn, gigantic digital simulations on supercomputers. Is that really what Mr. Faure is looking for? No, Astro is now at LUTH—yes, more musical, if you like, more obscure, in any case: Laboratory Universe and Theories, connected to AIM. But the work there is more meditative, if you see what I mean …
WRE.fr looks annoyed; he can’t leave the stammering professor. Astro likewise: these ecology nuts are really passionate, impassioned … But he does give him the name and the contact information of a young colleague. She has just wrapped up her thesis on “Time as Illusion,” let’s call it that, to simplify. A subject that will surely interest WRE.fr, since it connects to your concerns, dear sir … A remarkable person, an ecologist so committed that she can have only one idea in mind: to help you out … Don’t hesitate!
It happens that the wife of the messenger studied physics and had taken courses and attended lectures by Professor Theo Passemant … “Exceptional! You have the reputation of a great scientist … your diplomas, your awards … but also of a man of progress and probity, not so common. So naturally we turned to you, Professor.” A timid grimace; shouldn’t overdo it. “This action has to be ultrasecret, you’ll have understood, we couldn’t entrust it to just anyone. Will you promise to keep this all to yourself?”
“No problem. You can count on it. My compliments to your wife.”
The other man will transmit his wishes; his wife teaches in a high school, science exists at all levels, doesn’t it, they take small steps … The man leaves, crestfallen, disappointed.
47
TOGETHER AGAIN
The King and His Clockmaker
Theo has left WRE.fr to his concerns; he’s still tracking his Passemant at the Notarial Registry. Strange phantom, here he is … Astro glimpses him.
They are together again, the king and his clockmaker, in the council chamber henceforth called the Clock Cabinet. Claude-Siméon shuffles in, gangling; his open physiognomy speaks of nothing but gentleness and goodness under the banal appearance of an artisan with the eyes of a distracted child. He behaves so modestly and so well that the king appreciates him more and more, and the clockmaker finds himself protected from the courtesans instead of being mocked, as happens often to newcomers unknown to the town. Amusing and useful, this Passemant. He provides His Majesty with a new product from his workshop: pocket lenses. The king likes him; it’s perfectly normal.
Louis is also amused, like a kid. “Obviously, nothing can stop the artfulness of science … We creatures are of an age you defy, Passemant … How far will your technique go? Is it a gift of God or of the devil?”
Two years separate Claude-Siméon from his death, and the king of France has seven more years to live. On this October 2, 1765, the engineer has come to propose to His Majesty another vision from his dreams—not celestial this time but maritime.
“Another one of your original ideas, my good man. Will you never age, then?”
“A seaport in Paris, Majesty. It’s possible. Your Paris cannot do without a port on the Atlantic.”
“A port? Do you mean a maritime port? Where are you finding a sea in Paris, my friend? You see big, I know; is it your magnifiers that turn the Seine into an ocean?”
The sovereign seems not very surprised to discover that his clockmaker has ventured into a science he did not suspect him to possess. On the other hand, he doubts that the project is timely. Okay to scrutinize the stars and calculate the days that pass, but to implant a maritime port on the Seine, opposite the Louvre! Though the idea is several centuries old, and Louis approves it, basically, the times, alas, do not lend themselves to it … Now? With these crises, these attacks … These illnesses, these deaths … No way, no means …
“You’re not with Apollo anymore, Passemant? You abandon us for Neptune? This is a pharaonic vision you have brought me, in your drafts!”
Claude-Siméon persists. First, it’s doable. “Look, Sire: these canals, these dams, these locks, these sheltered basins. The Seine is navigable along a large part of its course: Troyes, Paris, Rouen, Le Havre. As Your Majesty well knows, its present appearance dates from almost twelve thousand years before us, and its minimal incline has brought about multiple deep meanders. The tide can be felt for about a hundred kilometers, as far as Poses. Those tidal bores are well known; in Normandy they call them “bars.” We are going to do everything over, Majesty. Your engineers, your technicians, your workers will dig further, widen, canalize. It’s perfectly doable, I swear! A seaport in the capital, on the Seine as you see it in Paris. That is what the Great Sovereign of Europe that you are needs, and the people will applaud!”
“Maybe. Do you think …? It’s very costly, such a job … The coffers are empty, my good man, everyone knows that. Would Parliament agree?”
“Indispensable, Sire. Everything on earth will play out on the sea before man learns how to conquer the sky. The English have understood this; they are ahead of us. They conquer America, India. The naval power is England. London is a great port; Paris should be, could be.”
Louis XV is not insensitive to this rivalry, but do we still have the means? Isn’t it already too late? What will the council say? However sovereign he may be, a man cannot do everything in the face of people’s remonstrances. Not everyone can be pharaoh.
“We will think about it, Passemant. The idea is grandiose. Will I see it realized one day?”
He holds him in his arms for a long moment. Strokes his body. Then saddens, and releases him like a wounded stag handed over to the kill. The engineer withdraws, dubitative, already heartsick. The project will remain in its boxes and with it his vision of France. Time plays in favor of the English, Passemant has always known it, alas. Too bad. If that is the will of the Great Clockmaker …
A century later, the port of Paris will become the port of Gennevilliers, then take its current form thanks to works undertaken after World War II. The first French river port, the second in Europe. In the meantime, the British fleet will have carried the English language to all the continents. A few charming Bateaux-Mouches will cruise the Seine in Paris, a delicious tourist consolation.
Passemant will know nothing about it.
He withdraws, more stooped than ever, convinced that no one will remember his “pharaonic” ambition, as His Majesty was so kind to call it. No one, except obviously the astronomical clock, which will bear witness until 9999 and after all sorts of apocalypses.
Except Astro, too, who has momentarily abandoned his telescopes to scrutinize the past with a magnifying glass.
48
BEEHIVE
My library is a real beehive. Files pile up on the shelves and in my PC’s memory. Close-fitting alveoli, frail equilibrium that maintains me. Each in its more or less regular hexagon stocks the pollen I gather and the honey I draw from it.
Each file is an irreducible binnacle. There I lodge, shelter, make tame. The alveolus becomes my home, and I start over: next choice, new passion. Through their incredible union, I am fragmented, plural, polymorph. No “me” survives this tourney. My heart, my brain, all my organs diffract and recompose in the heart of the beehive. I observe my documents, read them on the screen of my computer: without a doubt the beehive works and makes me live. Through me and without me. I escape from myself, and a sort of swarm rebuilds, rebuilds me.
I’m not hallucinating: the proof is all there; notes and documents compose me in a cubist portrait, as Stan insists. I consult Google: “The human being is a beehive of beings.” Could that be me, that being? Nothing less! Others rustle in my head, aggravate my tachycardia, take my breath away. I put myself in their place, argue with them; they flee, I retrieve them. No surprise I don’t exist.
My former friends no longer call me. They consider me dead, I think. They are not wrong. When I left La Salpêtrière after Stan came back to life, I was the one left for dead. Another alveolus of the beehive then fills with the honey of Passemant, whom we will go
see together, at 9999’s, when they have arrested the thief. La Pompadour comes along, a beautiful mortal delighted to escape the frigidity of her bronchitis. Until Marianne, alias Dr. Baruch, comes and makes me laugh with her one-quarter-Indian “bébée.”
Am I really alone, too alone? If Astro asks me, it’s because he loves me. He knows that Nivi is not dead. She is, however, in a certain way, but reincarnated in the rustling of her beehive.
“What would you say if I told you I am a survivor?”
He doesn’t answer. He has already told me that there are no graves in beehives, even though statistics are showing that bees are becoming more and more rare. In his opinion I would do better to count on him. He keeps an eye out for me. It’s already huge that he says so, and thinks it. All the same, nothing replaces the beehive.
49
WHERE WERE YOU?
So you weren’t in Santiago? You prefer the Notarial Registry now?”
Theo knows how to lie like nobody else. Caught in flagrante delicto, he neither blushes nor shuts up but literally disappears, buried under a placid mask of insignificance. Man as erasure! How is that possible? Since he does ten times as many logical operations per second than most gifted people, Astro knows that his lie has been, is, and will be discovered. He has therefore prepared not 9,999 disavowals, justifications, or denials but the parry of an expressionless face. Better: expression without a face. The labs are fooled: a natural innocence. Not Nivi. No, this blank glibness isn’t in the least neutral, only a sort of eclipse that in no way covers the incandescent, explosive star.
“Me? Someone must have confused me with one of those defenders of nature who ripped off 9999 and don’t know what to do with it. Unless they took me for a Qatari who’s taking aim at Versailles after having taken over soccer? Do I look like a Qatari?”
The Enchanted Clock Page 24