The Fool and Other Moral Tales

by Anne Serre

  Narrator, it’s not good to behave in this way. Were you at all serious, you would love your fellow men and go among them without being afraid they will attack you, without wanting to mesmerize them in order to render them harmless. Go on, take a closer look: is there anyone you sleep next to at night without worrying they will murder you? Anyone in whose presence you are neither visible nor invisible but like a person alone with his dreams and recollections? “I don’t know . . . ,” says the narrator. Well then, search. A few fleeting images flit through him: “No, I can’t see anyone . . . ,” he repeats. Go on, I insist. The narrator’s heart starts pounding. Faster and faster. He thinks of a name. He can’t put a name to the name. It’s the name that would explain everything.

  VII

  What kind of mother, then, gave birth to the narrator? He recalls an elusive, very tall woman who paid very little attention to him. From time to time, as though at the end of her tether, she would stride off into the mountains, scattering on her path small herds of quietly grazing goats, and sending up in what can only have been her fury — her utter fury — flights of birds bursting out of the foliage. The very stones on the paths would come bounding, hurtling downhill as she tramped through the dust like Atalanta. Standing dumbfounded at the foot of the path, the tiny infant narrator feels the stones ricocheting off his ankles as they come tumbling down behind his fleeing mother. “Maman!” he probably cries out. But she doesn’t look round; she’s so far away now that she can’t hear a thing. “Maman!” he shouts at the top of his lungs. And the young nanny goats come down to give him succor and support. He’s three years old, sturdy on his legs already, and his heart is stubborn: surrounded by the goats, imprisoned in their foam, he sets out to climb the hill, a hundred yards or so behind the furious or despairing long legs of his mother plowing their way up the path.

  And in this way, he grows. On the path behind his fleeing mother, who is quite mad and quite determined — determined perhaps to fling herself from the top of the hill onto the rocks that tumble down the other slope — he’s five now, then seven, then twelve, then twenty. The goats get smaller. He himself is as tall as the giant Antaeus. All of a sudden, he towers over everything: the hill, the landscape, the region. He can still see his mother with her beautiful brown legs, her long legs running to fling themselves where exactly? Onto the rocks? He must stop her. He must get there in time to prevent her from flinging herself onto the rocks and dashing her pretty body, her motherly heart and mind, to pieces. How the little three-year-old narrator runs! It’s because he’s running behind his mother to prevent her from dying that he’s a narrator. And as he runs, much to his surprise he’s overcome with joy. It’s his first experience of joy. He has all the scents of the wild thyme underfoot, the stench of sweat from the goats clambering up the hill all round him, the sensation of heat and the stones bouncing off his ankles, the knowledge of the force that has taken hold of him since he was turned into a giant by running behind her.

  And then she disappears. She has vanished into thin air. He inspects the rocks: she isn’t there. Her great magisterial body isn’t there. He rummages in the undergrowth: she isn’t there. He climbs onto the highest hill to get a good look at the landscape: nowhere is her great mouth at rest, nowhere can her huge body be seen, her long legs are missing. Very well, decides the narrator: you will turn into a landscape. And so, on the top of the hill where she has vanished forever, he decides that his mother has turned into a landscape and is now in the grass and flowers, the woods and fields. When he walks there forever, how can he fail to be happy and in his element, his absolute element?

  What the narrator would like is to lie down in the flowers, smile at the passing sky, sing a little song in which the same syllable is repeated over and over, lose himself in the giddying repetitions and then feel the earth yawn open and swallow him up. And then start afresh. Lie down in the same meadow ten yards further on, sing his little song, repeat the same syllable over and over, and feel the earth yawn open and swallow him up, and then start afresh. Lie down ten yards further on, work himself into a frenzy singing quietly to himself, laugh at the thrill of feeling himself snatched away, swallowed up and devoured. And then start afresh. Needless to say, he can’t indulge in these intimate little orgies when Madame Saintier is around. He has to be alone. But when he returns to the chalet, his back covered with scratches from rubbing against all that dry grass, and a bit spooked by all that humming and smiling to himself, how glad he is to find everything exactly as he had left it, with the wash hung out in the garden and his hostess looking stern or flinty or with a little smirk on her face. What the narrator likes is being left to his own devices, and then discovering, when he gets back, that nothing has changed.

  VIII

  Madame Saintier has mellowed. The narrator is a lot less scared of her, though he’s still on his guard; and she’s hardly afraid of him at all anymore, she’s beginning to understand him. Very gently, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and laughing copiously to hide his embarrassment, he has begun talking to her about poetry, jumping back with a shout whenever he has grazed the enchanted circle. And now that she has understood how important it is at times like this to keep a cool head and show him a little extra affection — just a tiny bit more, barely perceptible — she plays the part of midwife almost to perfection. Here he is, waving his arms about like a madman, in her presence he’s no longer afraid of approaching the circle at the risk of getting burned: she stands there without flinching, like a schoolmistress. The good she does him! “You know,” he tells her, now that they are on more intimate terms, “I think I have a knack for turning the people I love into midwives.”

  She laughs, because she laughs now. Henceforth, she understands humor, jest, irony, the perverse streak peculiar to narrators and their inviolate childhood. Sometimes he takes her by the hand and prances about like a feebleminded child. She doesn’t bat an eye, but prances about with him. They can be seen passing along the ridge, prancing about like figures in a shadow play: she in her tailored suit or in one of those outfits that are a little too showy for a walk in the mountains; he, the invisible one, growing visible now thanks to her. Monsieur Saintier, who is positioned behind a window in the chalet, observing the scene through binoculars, is dumbfounded and slightly aroused by it all: “She’s crazy!” he thinks fondly. He’d always known she was crazy, it’s what he likes about her. She’s crazy and at the same time serious; in other words, she’s beginning to love. She has understood that, in order to love the narrator, she must merge with his shadow, accompany and support him, dance a jig with him — and then withdraw when he seems utterly indifferent all of a sudden. Is he interested in my body? she wonders. He is, since he pounces on her from time to time and appears to be mad about her breasts, her thighs, her entire anatomy. Then suddenly he pulls away and seems to lose all interest in her body. “Let’s wait and see,” Madame Saintier says to herself, “there’s something odd going on.”

  IX

  When the narrator holds not the slightest attraction for anyone, he wanders through cities and landscapes as if he didn’t exist, as if he were the memory of himself. He barely inhabits the hotels he stays in, barely ruffles the sheets he sleeps between. Were you to take a photo of a bus he was on, he might not appear in it. In his place, you’d see an empty seat.

  When he’s in this state and roaming about the countryside, he’s identical in every respect to the tarot card for death. He’s also the most solitary of creatures, since death is the one figure in the world not to have a companion. Joy walks with sorrow, wisdom with folly, Sancho Panza with Don Quixote, Ophelia with Hamlet, Hector with Achilles; death, however, always walks alone. She has no companion to reign over and none to reign over her. Her one redeeming feature is that she’s practically invisible, except to little children. Only they, who so love being made to laugh, only they see her as I see you — approaching, entering, quietly biding her time. Only they can perhaps convince her
to relinquish her plans. They speak her language, the language of death being different from the language of the living. Little children speak that language up to the age of six or seven, at which point they grow feebleminded and well-adjusted for the most part, and remain that way until the age of twelve or so, when they begin to suffer. Their sufferings are put down to the transformation of their bodies, the difficulties they encounter coming ashore on the continent of sex. In reality, a twelve-year-old child suffers from the amnesia that has taken hold of him. He used to speak the language, he knew how to deal with death, he could see her, she wasn’t especially frightening, he was big enough to confront her. Then, all of a sudden, the language he once spoke has been forgotten. Now he has zero power over death. Isn’t losing that power the same as losing one’s life?

  And if, at times, the narrator so enjoys the company of babies, so enjoys bonding with them while their mothers keep a wary eye on him, sensing that what’s flowing between them is not quite kosher, it’s because there are times when nobody else can understand him. Just as when he’s in the presence of a second narrator and, unbeknownst to others, they exchange one of those smiles or glances that mean: “I know who you are. I speak your language,” so, between babies and the narrator, a private conversation washes back and forth, fluid and dark, which the baby gorges on like a love potion or a slug of gin. In the narrator’s presence, babies fall into a sort of goggle-eyed trance, babbling the same sounds over and over, the ones that open onto the underworld where the darling bodies that have lived, loved, suffered and desired now reside and cry out for a story.

  X

  In the country asylum where Fanny lives, a man has committed suicide, a friend of hers. He’s thrown himself under a train “to ensure nobody will be able to identify him,” says Fanny. The narrator, who has come to visit his friend, listens and shares in her grief. They’re each seated in an armchair, and between them is this hole, this whirling void, this man she saw at breakfast yesterday who, rather than hang himself, say, has thrown himself under a train, “to ensure nobody will be able to identify him.”

  The narrator, needless to say, is at a loss for words. There are no words to express this thing directly. Words circle overhead, trying to draw a line around this poor, mangled body, this poor spirit — God rest his soul — crushed by the machine. “I’d like there to be a Mass,” says Fanny, “a celebration. I’ll see if I can arrange for one to be said. I’m not religious, but a mass would do us all some good.” She’s reached the stage where she’s burying her dead, thinks the narrator to himself. There’s progress for you! That’s what I call success!

  They spend three days together, and all the while, lying between them, guarded by them, watched over by them, is the body of this poor man crushed by the machine. Both are pious, both are bent in prayer over the mutilated body, while the world welcomes in triumph someone or other whose evil wishes have been crowned with success. We live in a century that bows down before cruelty, muses the narrator. It shapes the Fannys and the suicides, the friends at the chateau battling to safeguard their dignity. Oh, I shall avenge you, I’m determined to avenge you, thinks the furious narrator. I would much rather be here with you than among those apes besotted with power who carry all the envious blockheads and nonentities in their wake. “But, alas, we don’t like fighting, and that’s where we fall down,” he confides to his friend. “We like to ramble around, experiencing all kinds of keen, delicate emotions; but more than anything, we feel as a delight, an inexpressible blessing, the gift bestowed on us of being able to converse with death on equal terms, walking in the mountains among the succulent grasses. We have such stupendous conversations, in fact,” enthuses the narrator, “that whenever we meet other hikers or fall in with our fellow guests back at the chalet, we feel ashamed to have been admitted to a place from which nobody, in principle, comes back alive. For we come back alive from these conversations with death.”

  “What does she look like?” inquires Fanny. “Well,” says the narrator, “she’s just like the picture on the tarot card.” “She’s that skinny?” asks Fanny. “Oh yes, and she can’t even be called skinny: emaciated is the word. She’s that skeleton depicted by all those who have seen her and conversed with her at length.” “She’s a woman, right?” asks Fanny, who has herself seen something of this kind. “Yes, she’s a woman, of course, I can confirm that,” replies the narrator. “At her feet, if I’m not mistaken, are half-buried bodies,” adds Fanny, a stickler for accuracy. “What’s her voice like? Is it bleak?” “Her voice is companionable,” explains the narrator. “I couldn’t begin to describe her qualities. You see, Fanny, when I walk with her in the mountains, I feel a sense of companionship that no one else in the world gives me.” “Are you never frightened of her?” asks Fanny. “Aren’t you afraid of brushing against her, for example?” “I avoid doing so,” replies her friend. “I walk at a respectful distance so that there’s never any risk of my touching her. No, I never feel scared. Our meetings are harmless and controlled by fate, as we both know. And I would add this, dear Fanny: the company of a narrator might even be of some comfort to her, for in any other circumstance she is obliged to go about her work. I’ve noticed in her, at times, a certain weariness at forever reaping, reaping. I grant her a respite, a period of rest.” “But, narrator, can you intercede?” asks Fanny. “Ask her to spare such and such a person, for example?” “No, I can’t do that,” the narrator replies. “She mows down whomever she wants, she’s unrelenting, she goes her way. But, yes, Fanny, I think, I think and I feel, that she’s in no great rush to mow down the ones I love.”

  Fanny and the narrator make their way through the woods surrounding the country asylum devoutly, like does. Fanny is wearing a red dress from which her slender brown arms emerge, and at the tip of one of those arms her right hand — her writing hand — which she clenches and unclenches continuously to exercise the muscles, for a few years back it was cut open in an accident that destroyed the nerves and atrophied the muscles. Fanny was advised to exercise it continuously, so she exercises it continuously. With this right hand, she picks flowers for the narrator and offers them to him. He tears off a pretty strip of bark from a tree and offers it to her. They exchange primitive gifts like beings who lack a common language, or rather, who refuse to believe in the effectiveness of language — which is always illusory — and have reverted to exchanging gifts to convey that they mean well, no longer wish to murder each other, and would like to stay in touch.

  Sometimes, a man or a woman wanders by who in two or three sentences Fanny describes to the narrator. “Why do you describe them to me with such skill and panache?” he asks. “You know I’m a narrator, you know how enthralling — and how moving — I find it when you describe your friends to me.” “I know,” says Fanny. “It’s as though you were telling me a story so that I can tell a story,” the narrator goes on. “What do you think?” “No,” says Fanny, wavering. “Of course, I know for you it’s all grist to the mill, but I tell stories in the same way to others.” She evades the issue, refusing to discuss it further while continuing to deliver up with insane generosity stories so intoxicating that the narrator could fall asleep in one of them. She tells him about P., who is forever clamoring for respect by showing off his immense learning, but can’t fall asleep at night if his blanket has not been tucked in properly. R., fifty years of age, who phones her mother six times a day, knows she shouldn’t but is unable to cut the cord. V., who everyone is very sweet to, Fanny says, acts and speaks like a child of three. G., who only gets on well with cats, cannot speak to her fellow men, but is on such good terms with cats that they reply to her. F. never goes anywhere without a mirror so that he can examine himself in another mirror and try to catch a glimpse of whatever’s “in the back of his mind.” “It’s too much for me,” sighs the narrator. “I’m not sure I’d be able to give an account of it all.”

  Fanny’s role is so strange, muses the narrator. Her whole predicament,
in fact. What on earth is she doing in this madhouse when she’s not herself mad, just frail in the face of cruelty, indifference, brutality? You’d think she was a spy, observing this alien world and wondering if she would be better off here or in the other, the brutal and pitiless one. “Choose,” the narrator tells her. “And choose, I beg you, the world of the living. You have a body, you’re pretty and you know so many things. Believe me, Fanny, you will be loved.” But Fanny wavers, tempted in one direction, tempted in the other. And it’s this wavering that makes her an ideal friend in the narrator’s eyes. “God knows, I managed to choose,” he says sheepishly. “To side with the living, the two-faced, the heartless, the pitiless, but protected by my secret function in life. What else could I do? Protect yourself, Fanny, protect yourself with a secret. Don’t tell everything, don’t show the world the beauty of your anxious soul. Learn to play, learn to show the world only what it’s willing to accept in the way of mediocrity, and keep your beauty for yourself and your friends.” She listens. She wants to stand naked before the world and be accepted or rejected for what she is. “The Madame Saintiers will kill you,” the narrator tells her. “Too bad,” says Fanny, who’s incapable of lying.