Hygiene and the Assassin

by Amélie Nothomb

  He did not realize that Tach was offering him his last chance, and he let it slip by. Shrugging his huge shoulders, the novelist wheeled his chair over toward a sort of coffin, then raised the lid, revealing bottles, cans of food, and tankards.

  “This is a Merovingian coffin,” explained the fat man, “that I’ve converted into a bar.”

  He took hold of one of three big metal goblets, poured a generous dose of crème de cacao, and then some brandy. He gave the journalist a cunning glance.

  “And now, you’re going to learn the chef’s secret. The common of mortals adds a final third of heavy cream. I think that’s a bit too rich, so I’ve replaced the cream by an equivalent amount of . . .”—(he grabbed hold of one on the cans)—“sweet condensed milk.” (And went on to illustrate his words with his gesture.)

  “But that must be disgustingly rich!” said the journalist, sinking ever deeper.

  “This year, we’re having a mild winter. When it’s cold, I add a big dollop of melted butter to my Brandy Alexander.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Yes. Condensed milk does not contain as much fat as cream, so you have to make up for it. In fact, as it is still only January 15, theoretically I am entitled to add some butter, but to do so I would have to go into the kitchen and leave you alone, and that would be ill-mannered. So I will do without the butter.”

  “Please, I beg you, don’t deprive yourself for my sake.”

  “No, never mind. In honor of the ultimatum that expires this evening, I shall do without butter.”

  “Do you feel directly concerned by the Gulf crisis?”

  “So concerned that I am not adding butter to my Brandy Alexander.”

  “Do you follow the news on television?”

  “Between two commercial breaks, I sometimes subject myself to the news.”

  “What do you think of the Gulf crisis?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You still think nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re completely indifferent to it?”

  “Not at all. But what I might think about it is irrelevant. You shouldn’t ask a fat man for his opinion on this crisis. I am neither a general, nor a pacifist, nor a gas station attendant, nor an Iraqi. However, if you ask me about Brandy Alexanders, I shall be brilliant.”

  To conclude his flight of eloquence, the novelist raised the tankard to his lips and quaffed a few gluttonous gulps.

  “Why do you drink from a metal container?”

  “I don’t like transparency. That is also one of the reasons why I am so fat: I don’t like for people to see through me.”

  “Speaking of which, Monsieur Tach, I would like to ask you something that all the journalists are burning to ask, but have never dared.”

  “How much I weigh?”

  “No, what you eat. We know that food is a very important part of your life. Gastronomy, and its natural consequence, digestion, are at the heart of some of your recent novels, such as An Apology for Dyspepsia, a work which, to me, seems to contain a condensed version of your metaphysical concerns.”

  “Exactly. I consider metaphysics to be the best form of expression for the metabolism. Along the same line, since one’s metabolism can be divided into anabolism and catabolism, I have split metaphysics into anaphysics and cataphysics. This should not be seen as a dualist tension, but as two obligatory and, more inconveniently, simultaneous phases of a thought process devoted to triviality.”

  “Is this not also an allusion to Jarry and pataphysics?”

  “No, monsieur. I am a serious writer,” answered the old man icily, before imbibing another swallow of Brandy Alexander.

  “So, Monsieur Tach, if you please, would you be so kind as to outline for me the various digestive stages in a typical day of your life?”

  There was a solemn silence, while the novelist seemed to be thinking. Then he began to speak, in a grave tone of voice, as if he were unveiling some secret dogma.

  “In the morning, I wake up at around eight o’clock. To begin with, I go to the toilet to empty my bladder and my intestines. Would you like any details?”

  “No, I think that should be enough.”

  “So much the better, because while it is an indispensable stage in the digestive process, it is absolutely disgusting, that you may believe.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed. After that, I powder myself, then I get dressed.”

  “Do you always wear this dressing gown?”

  “Yes, except when I go out shopping.”

  “Does your handicap not make it difficult to get around?”

  “I’ve had time to get used to it. Then I go into the kitchen and make my breakfast. In the old days, when I spent my time writing, I didn’t cook, and I ate coarse meals, such as cold tripe . . .”

  “Cold tripe in the morning?”

  “I can see why you might be surprised. You must realize that in those days, writing was virtually my sole preoccupation. But nowadays I would find it repulsive to eat cold tripe in the morning. For twenty years I have been in the habit of browning it in goose fat for half an hour.”

  “Tripe in goose fat for breakfast?”

  “It’s excellent.”

  “And you have a Brandy Alexander with that?”

  “No, never when I eat. Back in the days when I was writing, I drank strong coffee. Nowadays I prefer eggnog. After that, I go out shopping and spend my morning cooking up a refined dish for lunch: fritters of brain, kidneys en daube . . .”

  “And complicated desserts?”

  “Rarely. I drink only sweet things, so I don’t really feel like dessert. The occasional toffee between meals. When I was young, I preferred Scottish toffees, which are exceptionally hard. Alas, with age, I now have to make do with soft toffees, which are excellent nonetheless. I venture to claim that nothing can equal the voluptuous sensation of being bogged down that is concomitant with the paralysis of one’s jaws caused by chewing English toffees . . . Do write down what I just said, I think it rings rather well.”

  “There’s no need, it’s all being recorded.”

  “What? But that’s dishonest! I can’t say anything foolish, in other words?”

  “You never say anything foolish, monsieur Tach.”

  “You are as flattering as a sycophant, Monsieur.”

  “Please, do go on with your digestive stations of the Cross.”

  “My digestive stations of the Cross? That’s a good one. You didn’t steal it from one of my novels by any chance?”

  “No, I made it up.”

  “That would surprise me. I would swear it was Prétextat Tach. There was a time when I knew my works by heart . . . Alas, we are as old as our memory, don’t you agree? And it’s not the arteries, as some imbeciles would have it. Let’s see, ‘digestive stations of the Cross,’ where did I write that?”

  “Monsieur Tach, even if you had written it, I would be just as deserving for saying it, given that—”

  The journalist came to a sudden stop, biting his lips.

  “—given that you’ve never read a thing I’ve written, have you? Thank you, young man, that’s all I wanted to know. Who are you to believe such boundless twaddle? Do you honestly think I would ever make up such a flashy, mediocre expression as ‘digestive stations of the Cross’? It’s just about worthy of a second-rate theologian like yourself. Well, I can see with a somewhat senile sense of relief that the literary world has not changed: it is still the triumph of those who pretend to have read What’s-his-name. However, even that is no longer an achievement, for nowadays you can buy so-called study guides that enable illiterate people to talk about great authors with every appearance of a person of average culture. And this is where you are mistaken: I consider the fact th
at someone has not read me to be most deserving. I would have warm admiration for a journalist who came to interview me without even knowing who I am, and who would not hide his ignorance. But if you know nothing of me except what amounts to an instant powdered milkshake—can you imagine anything more mediocre?”

  “Try to understand. Today is the fifteenth, and the news about your cancer was announced on the tenth. You have already published twenty-two major novels, it would have been impossible to read them in so little time, particularly in these turbulent days when we are all focused on the latest news from the Middle East.”

  “The Gulf crisis is more interesting than my corpse, I’ll grant you that. But the time you spent cramming with the help of those study guides would have been better spent reading even just ten pages from one of my twenty-two books.”

  “I have something to confess.”

  “There is no need, I understand: you tried, and you gave up before you had even reached page 10, is that it? I guessed as much, the moment I saw you. I can recognize instantaneously the people who have read me: you can see it on their face. But you looked neither upset, nor bright, nor fat, nor thin, nor ecstatic: you looked healthy. So you haven’t read any more of me than your colleague from yesterday. And that is why, in spite of everything, I still find you somewhat to my liking. All the more so in that you gave up before page 10: that is proof of a strength of character I have never been capable of. Moreover, your attempt to confess—superfluous—does you credit. In fact, I would have disliked you immensely if you had well and truly read me, and were just as I see you now. But that is enough laughable conjecture. We were talking about my digestion, if my memory serves me correctly?”

  “That’s right. Talking about toffees, to be exact.”

  “Well, when I have finished lunch, I head for the smoking room. This is one of the high points of the day. I can only tolerate your interviews in the morning, because in the afternoon, I smoke until five o’clock.”

  “Why five o’clock?”

  “At five o’clock this stupid nurse arrives, who thinks it’s useful to bathe me from head to toe: yet another one of Gravelin’s ideas. A daily bath, can you imagine? Vanitas vanitatum sed omnia vanitas. So I take my revenge however I can, I find a way to stink as much as I can, so as to inconvenience that innocent young thing. I garnish my lunch with entire heads of garlic, I invent all sorts of circulatory ailments, and then I smoke like a Turk until the intrusion of my washerwoman.”

  He gave a hideous laugh.

  “Don’t tell me you smoke like that with the sole intention of asphyxiating the unfortunate woman?”

  “That would be reason enough, but the truth is that I adore smoking cigars. If I didn’t choose to smoke at that time, there would be nothing pernicious about the activity—I insist on the word ‘activity’, because for me, smoking is an activity in its own right, and I can tolerate no visits or distractions while I’m smoking.”

  “This is very interesting, Monsieur Tach, but let’s not get off the subject: your cigars have nothing to do with your digestion.”

  “You don’t think so? I’m not so sure. Well, if it doesn’t interest you . . . And my bath, are you interested in that?”

  “No, unless you eat the soap or drink the bath water.”

  “Can you imagine, that bitch has me get naked, then she scrubs my spare tires, and showers my hindquarters? I’m sure it gives her an orgasm, just to be soaking a naked, hairless, crippled fat man. Those nurses are all obsessed. That’s why they go into such a filthy profession.”

  “Monsieur Tach, I believe we are getting off the subject again . . .”

  “I don’t agree. This daily episode is so perverse that it upsets my digestion. Can you imagine! I’m all alone, humiliated, monstrously fat, and as naked as a worm in the bathwater, in the presence of this clothed creature who undresses me every day, wearing her hypocritically professional expression to hide the fact that she’s wetting her underpants—if the bitch is even wearing any—and when she goes back to the hospital, I’m sure she shares all the details with her girlfriends—they’re all bitches, too—and maybe they even—”

  “Monsieur Tach, please!”

  “This will teach you to record me, young man! If you took notes like any honest journalist, you could censor the senile horrors I’m sharing with you. With your machine, however, there is no way you can sort out my pearls from my filthy rubbish.”

  “And once the nurse has left?”

  “She’s left already? You don’t waste time. Once she’s left, it’s already six o’clock or later. That bitch has gotten me in my pajamas, like a baby you bathe and wrap up in his rompers before giving him his last bottle. By then I feel so infantile that I play.”

  “You play? What do you play?”

  “Anything. I drive around in my wheelchair, I set up a slalom, I play darts—look at the wall behind you, you’ll see the damage—or else, supreme delight, I tear out the bad pages in classic novels.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, I expurgate. La Princesse de Clèves, for example: it’s an excellent novel, but it’s far too long. I don’t suppose you have read it, so I recommend the version I have taken the pains to abridge: a quintessential masterpiece.”

  “Monsieur Tach, what would you say if, three centuries from now, someone tore the pages deemed superfluous from your novels?”

  “I challenge you to find even one superfluous page in my books.”

  “Madame de La Fayette would have told you the same thing.”

  “You’re not going to compare me to that schoolgirl, are you?”

  “Really, Monsieur Tach . . .”

  “Would you like to know my secret dream? An auto-da-fé. A fine auto-da-fé of my entire work! That’s shut you up, hasn’t it?”

  “Fine. And after your entertainment?”

  “You are obsessed with food, I swear! The moment I talk about anything else, you get me onto the subject of food again.”

  “I am not obsessed, but since we started on that subject, we have to see it through to the end.”

  “You’re not obsessed? You disappoint me, young man. So let’s talk about food, since it doesn’t obsess you. When I’ve finish expurgating, and have had a good round of darts, and slalomed and played nicely, when these educational activities have made me forget the horrors of my bath, I switch on the television, the way little children do, watching their idiotic programs before they have their pablum or their alphabet soup. At that time of day, it’s very interesting. There are endless amounts of commercials, primarily about food. I channel surf in order to put together the longest sequence of commercials on earth: with the sixteen European channels, it is perfectly feasible, if you surf intelligently, to get a full half-hour of uninterrupted commercials. It’s a marvelous multilingual opera: Dutch shampoo, Italian cookies, German organic washing powder, French butter, and so on. What a treat. When the programs get too inane, I switch off the television. I’ve worked up an appetite after all the hundreds of commercials I’ve seen, so I set about making some food. You’re pleased, aren’t you? You should have seen your face, when I pretended to be getting off the subject again. Rest assured, you’ll get your scoop. In the evening I have a fairly light meal. I’m perfectly happy with cold dishes, such as rillettes, solidified fat, raw bacon, the oil from a tin of sardines—I don’t like the sardines very much, but they do flavor the oil, so I throw out the sardines and save the juice, and drink it on its own . . .Good heavens, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Please continue.”

  “You don’t look very well, I assure you. Along with that I heat up a very fatty bouillon, prepared ahead of time: for hours, I boil cheese rind, pigs’ trotters, chicken rumps, marrowbones, and a carrot. I add a ladleful of lard, remove the carrot, and let it cool for twenty-four hours. In fact, I like to drink the bouillon when it’s cold, when the fat has hardened into
a crust that leaves my lips glistening. But don’t worry, I don’t waste a thing, don’t go thinking that I throw out all that delicate meat. After I’ve boiled it for a long time, the meat gains in unctuousness what it’s lost in juice: the chicken rumps are a real treat, the yellow fat takes on a lovely spongy texture . . . What is the matter?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. Claustrophobia, perhaps. Could we open a window?”

  “Open a window, on January 15? Don’t even think about it. The oxygen would kill you. No, I know what you need.”

  “Please let me go out for a moment.”

  “It’s out of the question, stay where it’s warm. I’m going to make you one of my very own Brandy Alexanders, with melted butter.”

  Upon hearing this, the journalist’s livid complexion turned bright green: he went off at a run, bent double, his hand on his mouth.

  Tach wheeled at full tilt to the window overlooking the street, and had the intense satisfaction of contemplating the unfortunate man on his knees, retching, overwhelmed.

  The fat man muttered into his four chins, jubilant, “When you have a delicate constitution, you don’t go trying to measure up to Prétextat Tach!”

  Hidden behind the net curtain, he could indulge in the delight of seeing without being seen, and he witnessed two men running out of the café across the street, to hurry over to their colleague who, his guts now empty, lay on the sidewalk next to his tape recorder, which he had not switched off: he had recorded the sound of his own vomiting.

  The journalist had collapsed on the bench in the bistro and was recovering as best he could. He said again and again, his expression bleak, “No more food . . . I don’t ever want to eat again . . .”

  They got him to drink a little bit of lukewarm water that he eyed suspiciously. His colleagues wanted to listen to the tape; he intervened.

  “Not in my presence, I beg you.”

  They called the victim’s wife, and she came to collect him with her car. Once he had left, they could at last switch on the tape recorder. The writer’s words aroused disgust, laughter, and enthusiasm.