Not a Clue

by Chloé Delaume

  My favorite virtue

  Patience and especially her daughter

  My character’s defining trait

  Its absence

  What I prefer in men

  Calmness

  What I prefer in women

  Discretion

  My worst point

  Absence

  My best point

  I am the silence of the sea

  What I like best about my friends

  That we’re still in touch

  How I prefer to spend my time

  I don’t prefer

  My idea of happiness

  To be a dreamless sleep

  What would make me unhappiest

  Having to go through with the next two chapters on my own

  Who I’d like to be besides myself

  Something more than someone

  Where I’d like to live

  In Switzerland

  My favorite color

  White

  My favorite flower

  Sainfoin (Onobrychis sativa)

  My favorite bird

  Flightless

  My favorite prose authors

  Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre when he was working on No Exit

  My favorite poets

  Christian Bobin

  My fictional heroes

  Bartleby and Garcin, each in his own way

  My favorite fictional heroines

  Her, because of Nevers

  My favorite composers

  John Cage

  My favorite painters

  Bernard Buffet and Botero

  My real-life heroes

  Like 34 percent of the French population, I’ll say David Douillet

  My favorite real-life heroines

  Maybe Bernadette Chirac since she’s very brave and managed to stay down-to-earth

  My historical heroes

  Albert Deshousse

  My favorite things to eat and drink

  Shepherd’s pie and café au lait

  What I hate most of all

  I’m not too fond of people who shout

  The historical figure I don’t like

  Robespierre

  The historical facts I look down on most

  The Russian Campaign and May ’68

  The military fact I appreciate the most

  The signing of the Armistice

  The reform I appreciate the most

  Thirty-five-hour workweek

  The natural gift I’d like the most to have

  The courage of birds

  How I’d like to die

  Somewhere besides in a book, if possible in bed

  My present state of mind

  Unexpected awareness

  The character flaw I’m most patient with

  Cowardice, and that’s the problem

  My motto

  Slow and steady, I can’t outrace.

  Colonel Mustard in the Billiard Room

  I got sick when I was cleaning my teeth with a toothpick. I’m going to tell the story in the third person, if fictional characters talked about themselves in the third person then when the time came we would never really need an omniscient narratrix in fact. Right now I’m not doing such a bad job. I’ll talk about myself in the third person, not out of any false sense of modesty or any crass self-centeredness but because he left himself. A long time ago now. Left so long ago and went so far, yes that’s it, for such a long time it’s been impossible for him to tame the sharp edges of the I.

  There’s no doubt about it, Stanislas is a coward: men of little faith have no right to say I. And when he says Stanislas, Stanislas and not I, Stanislas he not I, the I is all snuggled up in those three syllables. I an individuality deserter, I a deserter of my soul and conscious, I is a deserter Mr. President. And I knows that I can write only dead letters so feeble are its excuses and shameful its reasons.

  He got sick cleaning his teeth with a toothpick then. Stanislas was at work, with the aid of dental floss and tiny pointed objects he’d been trying for several days to dislodge the foreign object insinuated between front teeth. Inside, hidden face, between the central and lateral incisors, a little speck of tartar, a tiny pebble, Stanislas observed it in the mirror in the restroom on his floor, Stanislas inserted into his mouth a metal wire formerly used as a paper clip to use as a lever, Stanislas heard the squeal the tool committed against the dentin. I’ve noticed that the Omniscient Narratrix has a thing for repetition. Finally, he got the better of the unwanted rock. A sharp snap, a tongue jab, and in the palm of his hand a plastery triangle. One cubic millimeter, not much at all, no, the thing that had been wounding his lump of flesh and its seventeen upset muscles really wasn’t much at all. Grazing his gum as he carried out the extraction, Stanislas thought about everything that had slipped past his transit palate, everything that had participated in the mineral formation. A tartar triangle, a semiprecious stone, Stanislas stood there, speechless, in front of the sinks.

  A tartar triangle, a fossilized trace of his life between two teeth. What foods, what liquids, what tall tales, what substances, what words too, especially what words and how many round-trips. Once the little rock was removed, a micro-draft below his lower lip. His jaw as it was in the beginning, in the beginning twenty years earlier, dentist visit free. Yet he didn’t remember the space. The space constantly causing him tongue scrapes due to its newness. At his desk the triangle carefully wrapped in a blue handkerchief in his pocket Stanislas felt his tongue stupidly hit the sharp angle. His tongue required a period of adaptation, my tongue, thought Stanislas, has to get reoriented and find my former mouth’s landmarks. Stanislas went home early and spent the whole night looking in the mirror: this means my mouth has changed.

  Tartar is a deposit that collects on the teeth, its crystals are harder for those who dream of unchangingness. Under a globe, a little glass globe set upon a placemat, Stanislas placed the triangle he’d retrieved. Tartar is a deposit, an existential vestige, in twenty years I only lived one square millimeter, Stanislas kept repeating, squinting harder and harder.

  Stanislas thought to himself I’ve never done anything and still the tartar proves that I’m corroding, that the outside is damaging me, that it’s gotten into me, into me even though I set up an absolute policy of nonintervention. I’m the just a little bit. A little bit corroded I don’t know if I want to have really truly been or not at all. I have no opinion on anything but this time I’m worried. Stanislas thought to himself when I’ve been laid out in the ground my dentition will still be intact, and still I don’t want anything, I’ve never wanted anything, I was just an embryo when everything within me was already secreting too late, my mother gave birth resignation fetus.

  He stopped going anywhere, especially to the office. He stared at the triangle, his life condensed, his life period his life nothing but a tartar fragment, sometimes he even thought about swallowing it to see if the scrawny memories could inhabit him as he digested. Over and over again he watched his condensed life his life period mental video twenty seconds all day long, every elastic day since he was constantly awake.

  At first his regular doctor diagnosed a slight depression. He prescribed the usual Xanax Prozac Stilnox trio and didn’t call Dr. Lagarigue until several months later. Several months later when his patient admitted he’d ground up some benzodiazepine pills so he could nasally ingest a little bit of the tartar that refused to be inhaled by itself.

  Colonel Mustard in the Billiard

  Room with the Revolver

  There’s no reason for me to be in the Billiard Room. My place is in the vestibule. Leave Dr. Black out of this, I can get started with Canto III on my own, I’m in shirt-sleeves my flesh encouraged harassing horseflies and wasps, I’m aware of your grievances and accusations. From the depths of the Archeron I join the passive mass of humanity, I am one of those who have lost the good of the intellect. Don’t say anything to Dr. Black, don’t say anything I can hear, my eardrums three shots Brigadier I know t
he role I now must play, on the record player The Divine Comedy is scratching along.

  The Vestibule of Cowards, that’s where I am, Dr. Black. I also finally know that you haven’t left me, for a long time I fed my own pus to the ochre abscess that brought you down, when indifference is conspired spinelessness like mine indignity it changes blood into stagnant swampy water. I gangrened you more and more every year. I’m fully aware of all this. I am the fruit of a wall pierced by an eel, you hoped a crack would carry me away or get me to stand up, yes above all stand up, quickly stand up straight, but I didn’t have the nerve for neck and spine to attempt the tiniest of movements.

  I finished you off, but I didn’t shoot. Once again, of course, I didn’t act in any way.

  III, 1–9

  First shot

  Master, what is it that I hear?

  Second shot

  Who are these people so defeated by their pain?

  Third shot

  This miserable way is taken by the sorry souls of those who lived without disgrace and without praise.

  Fourth shot

  They now commingle with the coward angels, the company of those who were not rebels nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.

  Fifth shot

  The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them—even the wicked cannot glory in them.

  Sixth shot

  What is it, master, that oppresses these souls, compelling them to wail so loud?

  Seventh shot

  I shall tell you in a few words.

  Eighth shot

  Those who are here can place no hope in death, and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other fate.

  Ninth shot

  The world will let no fame of theirs endure;

  Tenth shot

  both justice and compassion must disdain them.

  Eleventh shot

  Let us not talk of them,

  Twelfth shot

  but look, and pass.

  Twelve shots just like Garcin, you’re dead tied to the post with me. I’m going to leave the room, my place isn’t in the Billiard Room. I’m not going back to the smoking lounge either, I have no business there, I’m not one of them. I’m worse, I know. In the game there are secret passages and unknown trapdoors that go to the only place that suits me. I’ll find them all right, I’ll manage. I see twinned girls in blue dresses holding hands at the end of a long hallway. Maybe they can tell me the best.

  Passageway(s)

  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy All

  Fifth Officer

  I’m Number 324. I’m not that well-known. I’m not even known at all, as a matter of fact. There are numbers who’ve done better, who’ve made better breakthroughs, who even managed to become leaders. But not me, no such luck for me. It’s not really my fault. In our world, the world of numbers, there’s nothing you can to do increase your own notoriety. It’s better not to be too ambitious, we’re so dependent on others. We exist and well that’s about it. It’s not very exciting, I know. But on the other hand, we’re very useful. At least there’s that.

  Being jealous, I’ve had that happen to me. It happens to all of us, or almost all of us. I’m in the majority. We’re jealous of short numbers and the primes, that goes without saying. We’ve all dreamed of being zero. We would have loved carrying decimals and being crowned one day, then idolized because π. We secretly keep an eye out to be enthroned as bronze if golden is impossible, the result of a messiah-expected formula. We pretend because we are well aware that it’s more than impossible. Especially for me, I’m not even round.

  We are infinite, calculate randomness, and must all tolerate having ended up just a few steps away from a star. Our life is unfair. In most cases. I spend a lot of time inviting over my brothers just to be closer to a failed possibility. I can’t accept that it’s incalculable. Me, Number 324, I could’ve been who, one chance out of how many? Nobody asks numbers to pass a logic test. We’re nothing but tools and I can dream if I want to.

  We all appeared from the first one to the last because the last one does exist even if it’s elastic. It’s just that people’s brains can’t name it. I’m quite familiar with it. I can’t tell you its name, no medium in your world can hold it completely. The incomplete is calculable, too, you know. Someday you’ll be able to. I know it’s planned. I know a lot of things, they say numbers are God’s neurons.

  Our popular
ity doesn’t depend on us, ever. It’s a result of world history and some of its disciples are what certain of us owe our distinction to. The ones with four digits are pretty lucky because they always go down in history in a familiar way. Some are even more privileged. 1,515 for example, not only born a palindrome, blood is what cloaked it in such finery. There was a time when I too was well-known. The year 324 is when Christianity became a state religion in the Roman Empire. That’s not nothing, but nobody cares in the least. Eusebius of Nicomedia rejecting the theory of God-Christ in one was me too, but no one’s interested. The Battles of Andrinopolis and of Scythopolis, Constantine I defeating Licinius, previous emperor of the East, imagine for a minute what it was like being Constantine I in. Never mind, I’ll stop. Still, I was pretty happy at the time.

  Having three digits is a serious handicap. It’s pretty hard to become symbolic, I’ve seen jobs disappear, doled out to lesser ones or even to the more graceful. All things considered, in my class, 666 did the best.

  I’m nobody’s birthday. Four and six digits must have no idea of the immense loneliness that weighs on those like me. Who waits for me, begs for me, I don’t even show up on lottery tickets, too long for roulette, too small for a blaze.

  I’m a bastard number because I embody nothing.

  Until recently just to give myself a little substitute confidence, I stooped to numerology. I’m 3 + 2 + 4 so 9 at the end of the day. The number 9 is really spoiled. Like all the ones that are in the Bible and all the mysteries recorded there. But 9 deserves to be famous, and even on its own it would’ve managed. That’s why I can’t get over it, I can’t get over 666’s incredible career, because of how handsome it is. I was so sure that 999 would be on the front page of the History of Humanity, two myth-bent capital Hs. A Trinity of 9s should’ve made a mark. I don’t understand people at all, I gave up on it from the start. That was a long time ago now.