What to Do

by Pablo Katchadjian

  19

  We’re trying to make the students of an English university understand what Debord saw in Thucydides. The students understand it perfectly, but Alberto insists on repeating it over and over again. Each time he repeats it, the students come to understand him again. And everything seems to go on like this until one student, who is eight feet tall, grabs Alberto and stuffs him into his mouth while saying that our lecture is all “chicanery.” He repeats “chicanery” so many times that the other students start saying the same thing. Without me realizing it, Alberto is suddenly not there: only a piece of his jacket’s hood peeks out from the student’s mouth. I try rescuing him but it turns out to be difficult. The student, each time more anxious, repeats: It’s all chicanery. I hear Alberto repeating, from inside of the student, that everything’s fine, that we shouldn’t worry; he says: It’s fine, it’s fine. I don’t know what’s happening, but I get the feeling that everything gets more complicated. This state of confusion lasts a long time and everything gets darker until we’re in a bank. Alberto wants to sell a broom; a naked girl attends him. I try making him notice that the girl is naked, but Alberto scowls and motions with his hand. Then I notice that the entire bank is made of old rags and that’s why it smells disgusting. I tell Alberto this, but he’s very focused on counting the money he gets. And yet, later, instead of money in our pockets, we have cold butter and we’re very anxious because we don’t want it to melt and ruin our clothes (because, although our appearance is pitiful, we’re certain that we’re well dressed). Suddenly there’s a woman with muslin in her mouth; her singing covers everything in some sort of perfume. The chorus of the eight hundred drinkers that suddenly appears in the background to support her melody has a different effect, converting everything into a tavern.

  20

  Alberto and I are in a room in an English university trying to sleep on the floor, but we’re covered by blankets that are too small for us. Each time I’m about to fall asleep, an old woman enters the room and adjusts our blankets with a violence that is distorted by her kind face. Alberto also wakes up each time this happens. We try telling her to stop doing this, but she says: Who is going to help you once you’re asleep? I see that Alberto is blinking: he’s very anxious, and that’s because he understands, like I do, that if we fall asleep we will be left in this woman’s hands, although she has the tact to avoid this situation, which would put her in quite a predicament, impeding our sleep. Due to this, we try getting up, but can’t. Then I don’t know what happens and suddenly we’re on a bridge. There are eight drinkers on behalf of eight hundred. Then we’re in an English university giving a lecture on Bloy; for some reason, the students are old women. The odor we feel is of rags.

  21

  The students in the English university ask me very difficult questions; I go about answering all of them. This gives me the feeling of knowing everything that can be asked of me and fills me with joy, but all this is interrupted when an eight-foot-tall student asks: What will you do with your hands when you no longer have a head? Alberto looks at me and, blinking, says: Your head is getting too big. Now, there’s a tense situation that lasts a long time without climaxing. Suddenly we find ourselves in a room destroying sculptures, and even though we appear happy, we don’t feel any type of joy nor anything like it: we feel that we should be enjoying ourselves and that something is denying us this. I find out that my head is the problem: it stretched upwards to the point that it damaged the ceiling; through the visible hole in the ceiling, a few birds come in and take the sculptures. Alberto is furious. He accuses me of not wanting to have a good time. He tells me: This room was all we had. I tell him that, on the one hand, he’s exaggerating and, on the other, all of this is just “chicanery,” and even though I feel like an idiot saying this word, I repeat it several times. Alberto tells me that this isn’t “chicanery” but rather a “chicane” of mine. I ask him to say this in a different way because I don’t understand the word (and I repeat “the word” several times, each time more anxious). Suddenly there’s an old woman and she asks: Would it be a mysterious relationship? The old woman holds in her arms a baby with a distinctly medieval cow’s head.

  22

  It’s all a bit hazy, because we’re in an English university, but simultaneously we aren’t in any definable place, although we’re certain that we’re at war. I’m very anxious; I ask Alberto if the same is happening to him and he tells me yes, and that we’re anxious because we have to guard the positions we’ve won and advance over the enemy’s territory. But when we try seeing what positions we’ve won, we don’t see them; and when we try defining the enemy, we can’t. We do know we’re at war, although the only indication is that we’re anxious, truly anxious. Alberto, as a result of his nerves, blinks, and I feel my head grow. Anxiety and permanent worry, Alberto tells me; and those nerves, he adds, are war (that, at least to him, seems to be a certainty). Everything remains confusing for a long time until, suddenly, we’re in a tavern. There are eight hundred drinkers singing a war song that goes: To war / there’s nothing more. These two lines are repeated again and again. And above them the melody of the old woman with muslin in her mouth is heard, but this time it’s a tense and discordant melody that makes us even more anxious. Then suddenly we’re running through a forest in which the trees are burnt or have fallen down or both. Alberto asks: What are we going to do with our hands? I tell him that I don’t know, that he’s the one who knows what to do, and in that moment a failure stands in front of us. Although we run, the failure remains standing in front us. The failure tells us: I didn’t want it to be this way. Alberto gets very anxious. I grab him by the hood and suddenly we’re in an English university talking about Clausewitz and his relationship to Thucydides. The students are fascists and we’re so anxious that the lecture is terrible. From the classroom’s door, the poor-in-spirit observes us.

  23

  Alberto and I are giving a lecture in an English university. The lecture doesn’t have a clear subject, although it seems we’re trying to address war (it appears to be about a war that’s happening). First, Alberto says that war is latent, that’s to say, present but invisible. Then I add that war isn’t the act of war but rather the feeling it produces. The students, the majority of whom are fascists (for some reason we’re certain that they are), don’t want to understand this. We continue with the subject of war by writing out different variations of a phrase, for example:

  – war is to be anxious

  – to be at war is to be anxious

  – to be anxious is to be at war

  And many others like that until we find one which, in that moment, seems perfect to us: war is a state of anxiety. The phrase keeps echoing until one of the students, who is eight feet tall, asks: War is a state of the soul? And an old woman asks: Would it be a mysterious relationship of war? It’s then we realize that we should’ve clarified that war, despite all of this, exists independent of anxiety, but that we didn’t to avoid sounding contradictory. Alberto says to me: We should’ve said the following: The state of anxiety is one way to live war; the other is to participate in it, but for that it’s essential to know what to do. I tell him that this sounds good to me, but that I’d add the following: To know what to do is the only way of nullifying anxiety or of transforming anxiety into action. Alberto tells me that this sounds good to him and when we’re about to explain all of this to the students, we’re suddenly in a forest with trees that are simultaneously burnt and healthy. In the background, there’s a beautiful yet tense and discordant melody; that’s to say, a melody that’s beautiful but not relaxing. And in the background, eight hundred drinkers who repeat: We agree / war is all you see. Meanwhile, although we’re not running, we get the feeling that we’re running very fast. In the distance, like a desired but not really desired objective (that’s to say, an objective that fulfills the role of the desired), we see a failure who is simultaneously a poor-in-spirit. Along the sides, eight hundred old women applaud us.

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sp; 24

  Alberto greets me from the end of a road that goes downwards. I seem to take a couple of hours in arriving at where he is; when I reach him we’re suddenly in an English university talking about things we know nothing about. The students notice that we don’t know what we’re talking about and stand up: they’re all eight feet tall. Together, they grab us and it seems as though the group were only one huge student with dozens of arms, but it’s only a feeling because we know that they’re a group of students. Suddenly we find ourselves on a ship talking to an old woman. The old woman says we’re geniuses, but for some reason it bothers me that she says it like this and I respond that if we were geniuses we wouldn’t have anything to decide. In that moment we realize that what we have to do on this ship is teach, so that’s what we do. While we’re giving the lecture (which doesn’t have a subject) we notice that the students don’t understand what we’re saying and ask questions unrelated to the subject (because even though there’s no fixed subject, it feels like there’s a subject and what the students say feels different). Everything keeps on like this until a students asks: Which one of you will help me? The student is two feet tall and looks like a baby. Alberto approaches him and picks him up in his arms and in that moment three things coincide: Alberto is an old woman, I see him mummified, and the baby-student has a distinctly medieval cow’s head. For some reason, the situation becomes tense; Alberto blinks and that makes me think about war. The image that suddenly appears in that moment is one of a trench full of soldiers.

  25

  On an English university’s blackboard is written: If we don’t do anything, afterwards we’ll be able to do everything. This phrase (it’s a certainty) was written by militant fascists from an English university. Upon reading the phrase, Alberto and I feel that we’re terrorists because we don’t know what we’re capable of. I ask Alberto: How could we stop being terrorists? Mummified, Alberto responds: One must act and err like Che. And Alberto, now completely mummified and yet still himself, says: Che wasn’t a terrorist because he knew what to do, that’s to say, he used his intelligence to make it so the possibilities that the world offered him were not so many; like that, little by little, the possibilities were each time fewer until he only had one; few people achieve this, although it happens to many, like, for example, the terminally ill, who at one moment, towards the end, are only left with dying; or babies, who can only grow; in reality, it happens to everyone: the only difference is to have or not have been able to have made one or many decisions, that’s to say, to have acted after thinking or simultaneously, or, in any case, that one has deliberately searched for that situation at which one arrives. And yet, in that moment, I realize that in order to act this way, it would be necessary to abandon the state of anxiety that is war; Alberto, as if he were listening, tells me: War, as long as it is a state of anxiety, immobilizes, and that immobilization turns us all into terrorists. And, in that moment, he repeats: One must act and err like Che. But all this unproductive productivity dissolves when we’re suddenly on a ship giving a lecture to a group of very old students who, when we don’t establish any relationships because we don’t know what we’re saying, ask us things like: Would it be a mysterious relationship? Then we’re in an airport and see approaching us three girls who are returning from a nightclub and are sweaty from dancing so much; the girls move towards us, but the moment is censored (although we feel anxiety); the censorship makes everything dark and it stays like this until one of them asks us for a relationship between Bloy and Lawrence of Arabia. Alberto looks at me and says that he doesn’t know; I don’t know anything either and in that moment we notice that the girls are old and very drunk. Afterwards we’re suddenly in an English university giving a lecture but there aren’t any students (except for an old woman who, instead of listening, sings a beautiful melody that dissolves all problems).

  26

  Alberto is about to finish building something that looks blurry although we know that it’s a machine that yields something positive. I have the same machine in front of me and, so it seems, I’ve already finished building it. Then there’s a few minutes of confusion until, without anything happening in the middle, the machines we’ve built start attacking us. Now it’s clear what they are: they have the shape of an eight-foot-tall student and the smell of an old rag. Alberto tells me: We made things that destroy us. I tell Alberto that what he’s saying is obvious, although that doesn’t mean, I tell him, that it ceases to be true. Alberto keeps talking to me and at some point in the conversation (which seems to be only noise, because I can’t make sense of what he’s saying), the dangerous situation we’re experiencing dissolves and we’re suddenly on a ship. Alberto talks about the enigma of the earlier situation and it’s clear that by “earlier situation” he’s not referring to what happened to us earlier. I ask, then, what he’s referring to, but he says that he can’t know; he tells me: I can’t solve the enigma because it is an enigma; if I were to solve it, it would cease to be an enigma and then we wouldn’t be able to think about it and I like thinking about it. In that moment, I’m certain that, in reality, Alberto can’t think about the enigma precisely because he likes the enigma; then what he doesn’t like is thinking about the enigma, because thinking about the enigma supposes to attempt to undo it. I want to tell him my conclusion but something impedes me; I gather my strength and when I’m about to do it, a poor-in-spirit is suddenly there and he tells him. I see that Alberto is fascinated by this discovery and this fascination seems to tint everything white. Suddenly we’re in an English university giving a lecture to two students: one failure and a poor-in-spirit. The lecture is about something that isn’t clearly understood but which has to do with the annoyance of having to think against oneself. The subject, I’m certain, was decided by the poor-in-spirit; Alberto tells me: He wants to know about what he doesn’t know. I respond yes, that’s why one teaches, and he responds: Yes, but he knows that he will never know about that. In that moment, we’re suddenly on a ship and Alberto wants to jump off. He wants to reach an island in the distance. I tell him that the island is far away, but he tells me: If we get there, we get there. So we jump, but upon falling we’re suddenly in an English university giving a lecture on random topics.

  27

  We’re on a ship and, in the distance, an island to which Alberto wants to go can be seen. He tells me: Everything’s on that island. Suddenly, we notice that the ship, which is simultaneously a bridge, is full of dead, fat people; Alberto tells me: They died, but because of an obesity problem. A little surprised, I ask him what he means with the “but.” Alberto, a little annoyed, scowls and motions for me to keep quiet because he’s very focused on staring at the island and repeating “everything’s there.” Alberto wants to jump into the water, but I come up with a better idea; I tell him: If the ship is simultaneously a bridge, then it can take us to the island. But this situation disappears and suddenly we’re in a restroom in an English university, which is simultaneously the restroom of a nightclub and simultaneously the kitchen of a church (we find this triple situation a certainty). Alberto wants to go out to the street, but something stops us. An old woman is making a steaming soup; when we approach her to take a look inside the cauldron, there’s suddenly some type of censorship which makes us think about an old rag. A very tall student tells us: The problem is that the rag is knitted: half of the things can’t be seen. And as if the student’s words were something to be fulfilled, suddenly we see only half of the things that are there. Alberto tells me: Everything’s there but only half of it’s visible. The argument that builds up between Alberto and me, on one side, and the students of an English university, on the other, is as follows: how can one know that what one sees is half of something, that’s to say, that it’s not simply something complete with the appearance of half of something? Alberto and I want to believe that the half is hidden but, somehow, available; the students say that they’re appearances of halves that, in reality, are complete things and not halves. The concl
usion at which we arrive is as follows: be they halves of something or complete things, the fact that they’re presented as halves makes the other half claim existence. This conclusion fills us with happiness. Everything that follows has a party-like atmosphere that’s interrupted when we notice that the students are still arguing over the non-visible half’s type of existence.

  28

  The ship-island situation is repeated; Alberto says: Everything’s there. He wants to jump off but I suggest we use the ship as a bridge. We’re discussing this when suddenly we’re in an English university giving a lecture. But neither Alberto nor I want to give the lecture so we talk about random things: about him, about me, about what we had for breakfast, about the things we don’t like. The students are deeply interested and are participating so much that they don’t let us talk. Like that we manage to escape, because they remain discussing pants and stop paying attention to us. Somehow, we’re able to control the following moment and suddenly we’re on the ship. Now very determined, Alberto wants to jump off the ship, but I insist on using the ship as a bridge and arriving at the island properly. In that moment, Alberto throws himself into the water and I don’t know whether to follow him or not. My hesitation is so great that it gives me an unpleasant feeling. Suddenly we’re in an English university talking about Lawrence of Arabia, but everything we’re capable of saying is so basic that even the students know more than we do. Intermittently, there’s suddenly the ship scene and the previous incident repeats itself: Alberto jumps off and I hesitate over whether I should jump off as well. Then, all that’s left is the censored hesitation.