And yet it may come to pass that you wake up in the middle of the night, your heart beating fit to burst: what if that person were in trouble? had been kidnapped by thugs? was overwhelmed by unimaginable worries? Yet how could you, in the name of a certain idea of civilization, have been prepared to abandon him so easily? What is the meaning of such abject coldness?
There is no solution. You must become resigned: you will die without knowing what has happened to your friend, and without knowing whether that friend would have liked you to care about his fate. You will die without knowing whether you are an indifferent bastard or someone who is respectful of another person’s freedom. The only thing you will want to go on believing, right to the end, is that this person truly was a friend: why should a friend made of paper and ink be any less precious than a friend made of flesh and blood?
In the summer of 2009 I had not yet reached that stage with Melvin Mapple. I refused to enter the mourning process which I knew so well, however: something in me rebelled against that eventuality. It seemed to me that the conditions were not at all ripe for me to put the mechanisms of resignation in motion. There are limits to how abrupt things can be. This was not irrational on my part: an obese soldier based in Iraq was bound to be in great danger.
After my summer vacation I went back to Paris. My new novel came out and I was overwhelmed, the way I am every fall. September, October, November, and December are grueling months for me, even my publisher cannot imagine how hard I work. And yet not a moment went by without some dark part of my soul eating away at itself over the thought of Melvin Mapple. A man who weighs over four hundred pounds does not disappear just like that.
When it came time to write a Christmas card to my American publisher, after Merry Christmas and Happy New Year I could not help but add an unusual P.S.: “There is this soldier from your army who is based in Baghdad, the one I talked about to the newspapers in Philadelphia, and he’s has given no sign of life for some time now. Is there anything I can do?” I would not have dared ask such a question had Michael Reynolds not been the best of men.
Immediately thereafter I received my Seasons Greetings from the publisher with an answer to my P.S. in the form of an e-mail address under the words “Missing in action.” Good man!
As the Internet is terra incognita to me, I enlisted the help of a press attaché to send my request for information regarding Private Melvin Mapple. We received an enigmatic message in return: “Melvin Mapple not known to U.S. Army.”
I then had the idea of formulating my request by wording the soldier’s name the way it was done on the envelope: a succession of incomprehensible initials with Mapple in the middle, and again a sequence of initials. There was nothing surprising about this. I had corresponded with several French soldiers whose military addresses were equally bizarre, and where the first name was never mentioned. The French army is sometimes known as la Grande Muette, the great silent woman; clearly la Grande Muette liked to shroud herself in mystery.
This time, the computer replied that on the subject of a certain Howard Mapple based in Baghdad there was nothing to report.
The press attaché asked me if I was satisfied. I did not want to bother her anymore so I said it was fine: “He probably uses his middle name for our correspondence.”
To be honest, I didn’t know a thing. I did not even know whether this Howard Mapple had anything whatsoever to do with Melvin. There might be more than one American named Mapple. On the off chance, I wrote a letter to this Howard Mapple, at the familiar address in Iraq:
Paris, January 5, 2010
Dear Howard Mapple,
Forgive me for disturbing you. I was corresponding with a soldier who is based, like yourself, in Baghdad, Melvin Mapple. I haven’t had any news since May 2009. Do you know him? Could you help me? Thank you very much.
Amélie Nothomb
After ten days or more had gone by, my heart began to beat harder at the sight of an envelope addressed to me, absolutely identical to Melvin Mapple’s envelopes, right down to the handwriting. “At last I will find out what happened,” I thought, glad we would be resuming our friendship at last. I was in for a shock, to say the least:
Baghdad, January 10, 2010
Miss,
I’ve had enough of your bullshit. I don’t owe that asshole Melvin another thing. Write to him in Baltimore, at this address . . .
Now just fuck off and leave me alone.
Howard Mapple
Well, this Howard fellow certainly did not express himself as decorously as Melvin. It was all the more striking in that, apart from his tone, everything was the same—the paper, the envelope, right down to the handwriting, which did not differ one iota from my friend’s. Which in itself was not all that surprising: I’ve often noticed how similar American handwriting can be from one person to the next—at any rate the block lettered handwriting they teach in some schools, and not the cursive handwriting which is bound to be more personal.
In any case, Howard need not worry, I would importune him no further. Besides, he had given me the most important information: Melvin had gone back to Baltimore, and I even had his address there.
This might be an embryonic explanation for my friend’s silence. They must have told him very abruptly that he’d be going home, and he probably had very little time to prepare himself. I could imagine how traumatic it must be for him to find himself back in the US, after six years on the Iraqi front, not to mention seeing his family again, who would be flabbergasted by his obesity.
Poor Melvin must have lapsed into utter dejection. The tragedy of those who have been shipwrecked by life is that instead of opening themselves to others, they withdraw into their suffering and refuse ever to emerge from it. The fact remains that if Melvin had written to me and told me about it, I wouldn’t have been able to help him. But at least he could have voiced his feelings, if indeed correspondence can even be said to be a form of speech; confiding in others can rescue you from asphyxia.
Or perhaps in Baltimore Melvin Mapple had found old friends or made new ones, and he no longer needed me. I sincerely hoped as much. But that did not stop me from wanting to have one last communication with this man who, for a brief time, had meant something to me.
I had to find the right tone. It would not even cross my mind to reproach him: everyone has the right to keep silent. Since I myself cannot bear it when others complain about my prolonged silences, it is only fair that I grant the same prerogative to my acquaintances. Moreover, could I hide the fact that I had missed him?
There is only one way to overcome the difficulty of writing, and that is to write. Thought only becomes effective and productive at the time of writing.
Paris, January 15, 2010
Dear Melvin Mapple,
A gentleman by the name of Howard Mapple has informed me that you have gone home and he gave me your address. What a joy it is to have news of you! I must confess I was beginning to get a bit worried, but I can understand that your sudden departure, compounded by the emotion of seeing your family again, must not have left you the time or the receptiveness of mind to write to me.
When you can, would you write me a little letter? I would like so much to find out how you are. The few months we spent corresponding to each other made you important to me. I think of you often. How is Scheherazade?
Best wishes,
Amélie Nothomb
Thus, I mailed what seemed not so much a letter as a message in a bottle.
As a rule, I toss any vulgar correspondence I receive into the wastepaper basket. However, I did not throw out Howard Mapple’s letter: I was somewhat intrigued by it, while conceding that its meaning might be perfectly benign. I am in a good position to know that people often say the oddest things in their letters, things that lack any meaning whatsoever. Most people are afraid of seeming too pleasant or of lacking mystery.
Melvin’s repl
y was taking a long time. The Postal Service of the United States Army must be more efficient than the ordinary US Postal Service. I realized I was always making up excuses for the soldier. Had I forgotten that I had found an art gallery for him, that in my role as a confidant I had never let him down? My indulgence toward other people’s failings will be the end of me.
I hardly even noticed the ordinary envelope, that day, with its stars and stripes stamp. I stared wide-eyed at the letter I had opened:
Baltimore, January 31, 2010
Dear Amélie,
I had decided not to write to you anymore. I am stunned by your letter: how can you not be angry with me? I expected even worse than reproach. You mean you still haven’t realized that I don’t deserve your friendship?
Sincerely,
Melvin
I replied right away:
Paris, February 6, 2010
Dear Melvin,
I was so happy to hear from you! Please tell me how things are going for you over there. I’ve missed you.
Best wishes,
Amélie
I mailed this note and reread the soldier’s short letter. This was the first time he had used my first name on its own, and signed off with his own first name. So I did likewise. His handwriting had changed. That is also why, initially, I hadn’t noticed the envelope. Poor Melvin, going home must have really been hard on him: he was letting himself go, he wasn’t holding his pen the way he used to, and so on. I was right not to mention it in my reply, that was the appropriate reaction. That way he would know it didn’t matter in the least.
I could just imagine what he must have been going through over these last months. All those idiots finding out he had become obese and saying, “Well, buddy, it seems to have been a rewarding experience. They didn’t let you die of hunger.” All those bastards blaming him for that disastrous war, when he had been no more than a miserable underling. Human beings can be so revolting when it comes to judging a poor fellow like this! They weren’t there, they didn’t have to go through the sort of thing he went through, but then they become contrary about things they don’t understand at all, and are only too happy to share it with the person in question.
The second envelope from Baltimore:
Baltimore, February 13, 2010
Dear Amélie,
If I had known you were this kind of person, I would never have written to you. I was wrong about you. From your books I had assumed you were hard and cynical, the sort or person you can’t put one over on. Basically, you are a simple, kind person, you’re not pushy. And so right now I could just kick myself.
I’ve behaved very badly toward you. I’ve been lying to you from the start. I’ve never been to Iraq, I’ve never been a soldier. I just wanted to get you interested in me. I’ve never been out of Baltimore, where my sole activities are eating and surfing on the Internet.
My brother Howard is a soldier in Baghdad. Years ago I helped him pay back some gambling debts after a time he spent in Las Vegas. Since he still owed me a lot, I persuaded him to copy out the e-mails I sent him and forward them to you as letters. When he got your answers, he scanned them for me.
The hoax wasn’t meant to get that far out of hand. I thought I’d send you one or two letters, no more. I didn’t expect you to be so enthusiastic, nor did I think I would be. Very soon our correspondence became the most important thing in my life—and I should point out that there isn’t much in my life. I didn’t feel I could tell you the truth. The situation could have dragged on forever. That’s what I wanted.
I knew that someday you would ask me for a photograph. So I sent Howard this picture that is an utterly truthful reproduction of my state, in all its gravity. At the time I did not imagine I would be posing for a Belgian art gallery. I can never thank you enough for what you did in that respect, but your generosity merely served to make my bad conscience even worse. When this Monsieur Cullus wanted a picture of me in uniform, I knew I was cornered.
So I began to negotiate the matter with my brother: could he get me some combat fatigues, size XXXL? At that point Howard blew a fuse. He informed me that he had been charging me five dollars a page (something I knew nothing about), so now he didn’t owe me anymore. He added that he was fed up to here with all the crap he’d had to write for me, that he was getting sick of copying stuff that was so lame, that you must really be off your rocker to write back to me. In short, I could no longer count on him.
That’s why I stopped writing to you. Yet I could have gone on, I could even have kept up my version of the story. I could have typed out the letters and told you that I had burned my uniform in a symbolic gesture as soon as I got back to Baltimore. But by keeping silent, I was giving a decent end to a squalid story. I would be no more than a memory for you, and you would come to the conclusion that my return to the fold was making me take a long hard look at my life.
So I cut all ties with you. What made it easier was that my brother no longer forwarded your letters to me; I imagine there were a few of them. I missed our correspondence. However, I was convinced I had to keep silent from now on, in our mutual interest.
Then three weeks ago I got your message. It made no sense: you had found out about Howard and yet you weren’t angry with me at all, you wrote in as friendly a manner as ever. Could it be you failed to see the truth, even when it was sticking out a mile? Just to dispel any last illusions, I sent you a handwritten reply, so that the change of handwriting would show you it was a hoax. And then, what do you know, you wrote right back to me, this happy little note, as if you hadn’t suspected a thing, despite all the flagrant contradictions in the story.
Rest assured, it doesn’t mean I think you’re an imbecile. It’s a beautiful thing to be so trusting. But I feel bad. I know perfectly well that the commonest of mortals will say that I was trying to take you for a ride, and that I succeeded. Most people will see you, if you’ll pardon the expression, as the fall guy. And that was not at all what I intended. To be honest, I don’t know what my intention was.
One thing is for sure, I did want to attract your attention. And so I did everything I could. I had read on the Internet that you get tons of letters every day. Since I spend my life on the Internet, I thought this was fascinating, all these paper and ink letters that you were constantly writing and receiving. It seemed, how to put it, so real. And there is so little reality in my life. That is why I wanted so desperately for you to share some of your reality with me. The paradox is that in order to enter into your reality, I had to make a travesty of mine.
And that is where I really hold myself to blame: I underestimated you. I didn’t need to lie to you to attract your attention. You would have replied in the same way if I had told you the truth, which is that I am a fat man who has ended up in his parents’ tire warehouse in Baltimore.
I would like to ask you to forgive me. But I would understand if you refused.
Sincerely,
Melvin Mapple
I sat there, flabbergasted, for an indefinite length of time, incapable of doing a single thing. Was I annoyed, or angry? No. I had simply reached the ultimate degree of speechlessness.
Ever since I was first published in 1992, I have been exchanging letters with so many different individuals. Statistically, there was bound to be a certain proportion of nutcases among them, and over the years this has proved to be the case. But that someone could go as far as Melvin Mapple—that was something I had never envisaged, not even by a long shot.
How should I react? I had no idea. Should I even react?
In lieu of an answer to my question, there was one thing I felt like doing: writing to Melvin and laying my cards on the table. Which I promptly did.
February 20, 2010
Dear Melvin Mapple,
I was so thrown by your letter on February 13 that I can hardly express myself. This might be a knee-jerk reaction but it won’t n
ecessarily keep me from a levelheaded response.
You ask me to forgive you. I have nothing to forgive you for. To forgive you would be to assume you had wronged me in some way. Which you have not.
It would seem that in the United States, if I may say so, lying is the quintessential evil. I am, no doubt, very European: lying does not offend me unless it hurts someone. In this case, I cannot see who has been hurt. A few American soldiers might object, and they would probably be right to do so. But that’s not any of my business.
You say that people will take me for a fall guy. I don’t see things that way. As a human being, I need to see what is there before me. What you showed me in your letters was simply another way of conveying reality. Out of your hell you made another hell. I have no time for the cries of protest of people who will assert that you cannot compare the horror of the Iraqi war with the horror of an obese body—and I quote—“who has ended up in his parents’ tire warehouse.” This metaphor made sense to you because to you it was vital, and you needed a witness, the sort of person who had impressed you with her steady practice of letter-writing. To see your story written down in ink by a third party was the only way for you to give it the reality it was so cruelly lacking.
You write, “You would have replied in the same way if I had told you the truth.” We don’t know about that. Yes, I would have replied to you. In the same way? I don’t know. You had a lot of nerve, using such a metaphor, but it did have the advantage of showing me, ever so eloquently, how ignominious your life is. If you had told me everything straight out, would I have understood? I hope so.
Life Form Page 7