by Alexis Jenni
The fog hangs its icy laundry in the streets, in corridors, on staircases, even in bedrooms. The damp sheets cling to passers-by, brush against their cheeks, insinuate, licking at the neck like tears of icy rage, like the drip of numbed furies, like the tender kisses of the dying who long for us to join them. In order not to feel, one must not move.
Beneath the clock tower of La Grande Institution the schoolboys survive by remaining as still as possible: shifting just a little to ward off the cold, but no more, lest the fog seep in. They stamp their feet, protect their hands, hunch their shoulders, lower their faces to the ground. They tug down their berets, pull their capes tight, while they wait for the bell to summon them. It would make a fine ink drawing, all those identical boys, round-shouldered, swaddled in black capes, standing in random groups against the classical architecture of the courtyard. But Salagnon had no ink, his hands were tucked away, and the frustration of waiting was beginning to get to him. Like the others, he was waiting for the bell. With a slight pleasure, he felt the stiff sketchbook digging into him.
The bell sounded and they raced to class. Shoving and sniggering, pretending to be quiet while making as much noise as possible, elbows flying, pulling faces, stifling giggles, they rushed past the two prefects standing guard at the door, who feigned an utterly impassive air, a military rigidity much in fashion that year. What do we call them, these pupils of La Grande Institution? They range in age between fifteen and eighteen, but in France in 1943 age is irrelevant. Boys? The word makes too much of what they are living through. Young men? That makes too much of what they have yet to live through. What can you call someone who hides a smirk as he passes a prefect, but a kid? Kids sheltered from the storm, living inside the compact box of icy stone, jostling like puppies. They wait as life passes by, yapping while pretending not to yap, doing things while pretending not to do them. They are safe.
The bell sounded and the kids assembled. The Lyon air is so damp, the air of 1943 of such poor quality that, rather than take flight, the clanging bronze notes did not ascend but dropped with the sound of wet cardboard, slithered down into the courtyard and mingled with the tattered leaves, with the remnants of snow, with the dirty water and the mud gradually submerging Lyon.
In serried ranks the boys headed to their classrooms down a vast stone corridor as cold as bone. The muffled thud of boots echoing against the bare walls was drowned out by the rustle of capes and the incessant jabber of kids desperate to be quiet, but unable to be silent. To Salagnon it created unspeakable cacophony. He hated it and strode through the hubbub stiffly, as he might have held his nose when passing through a foul-smelling room. The cold does not bother Salagnon; he rather enjoys the chill air of the institution; he can even bring himself to endure the school’s preposterous regulations. He could rise above his unfortunate circumstances if only everything could be done in silence. He finds the clamour in the corridors embarrassing. He tries to ignore it, to mentally stop his ears, to retreat into his own silent world, but his whole body is alert to the pandemonium. He is keenly aware of where he is. He cannot forget it: in a classroom full of boys, of kids, whose every action is accompanied by infantile noises that reverberate back as echoes, a commotion that envelops them like sweat. Victorien Salagnon has a horror of sweat; it is sludge secreted by a nervous, overdressed man when he exercises. A man who is free in his movements does not sweat. He runs naked, his perspiration evaporating as he moves; he is bathed in his own filth, he keeps his body dry. The slave sweats, hunkered in the mineshaft. The infant sweats, all but drowning, swaddled in layers of wool by his mother. Salagnon had a phobia about sweat; he dreams of having a body carved from stone that does not drip.
Father Fobourdon was standing in front of the blackboard, waiting for them. The boys fell silent and each stood behind his desk waiting until the silence was total. The slightest rustle of fabric, a creaking floorboard, would prolong the moment. They would have to stand until the silence was absolute. Eventually, Fobourdon gestured for them to sit, and the resultant scrape of chairs was brief and stopped almost immediately. Then he turned and, in elegant cursive hand, wrote on the blackboard: ‘Commentarii de Bello Gallico: unseen translation.’ They set to work. That was Father Fobourdon’s method: not a word more than was absolutely necessary, no verbal confirmation of what he had written. Actions alone. By example, he taught internal discipline, which is a practical art that exists only through actions. He saw himself as a Roman, a block of rough stone, hewn and engraved. Sometimes he would launch into a brief commentary that drew some moral from the minor incidents that punctuated school life. It was a life that he despised, although he was proud of his vocation as a teacher. He considered the teacher’s rostrum superior to the pulpit, since the latter is used to censure and chastise, the former to guide, to lead, to act, thereby revealing the only worthwhile aspect of life, the moral aspect, which has none of the foolishness of the tangible world. And language is a worthy tool with which to reveal this facet.
They were to translate the account of a battle in which the enemy was skilfully surrounded and then slashed to pieces. Language allows for beautiful brushstrokes, thought Salagnon, wonderful touches that scarcely mark the page, delicate watercolour effects that enhance a story. But the Gallic wars themselves had been fought in the dirtiest way, without recourse to words, to metaphors. Using sharp, double-edged swords, you hacked the enemy to bloody pieces which you stepped over in order to slash another limb, until your enemy was dead or you fell on the battlefield.
Caesar the adventurer had marched into Gaul and put it to the sword. Caesar willed it and his will was strong. He wanted to crush nations, to found an empire, to reign; he wanted to be, to grasp the known world in his fist; he coveted. He wanted to be great and he wanted it now.
Of his victories, conquests, his mass murders, he wrote a spirited account, which he despatched to Rome to win over the Senate. He described battles as though they were sex scenes in which Vir Romanus – Roman virtue – triumphed, in which the flashing sword was like a glorious phallus. His skilled storytelling made it possible for those at home to experience the vicarious thrill of battle. He repaid their trust, gave them their money’s worth, he paid them in stories. And the senators sent men, more funds and tributes, which came back to them in the form of chariots laden with gold, and unforgettable anecdotes, such as the severed hands of enemies heaped into huge piles.
Through language, Caesar fashioned a fictional Gaul, one he created and conquered in a single sentence, a single gesture. Caesar lied as historians lie, describing only the reality that suits them. And hence the novel, the hero who lies, shapes reality more effectively than deeds, a great lie lays the foundation; indeed, it is at once the hidden foundations and the sheltering roof for those deeds. Together, word and deed carve up the world and give it shape. The military hero must be a novelist, a great liar, an inventive wordsmith.
Power is bought with imagery, it feeds on images. Caesar, a genius in all things, treated warfare, politics and literature equally. He attended to each aspect of a single act: leading his men, conquering Gaul, and writing the account of it, each reinforcing the other in an infinite spiral that would lead him to glory, to those lofty heights where only eagles fly.
Where reality evokes images, an image gives substance to reality: every political genius is a literary genius. At such a task, the Maréchal fails miserably: the ‘great novel’ he offers a humiliated France is no novel at all; it scarcely qualifies as a primary school reader, Le Tour de la France par deux enfants purged of anything controversial, a book to be coloured by children, tongues poking out in their concentration. The Maréchal’s voice quavers, he talks like an old man, he can hardly seem to stay alert. No one believes in the puerile goals of the Révolution Nationale. People nod distractedly, but their minds are on other things: sleeping, going about their business, slaughtering each other in the shadows.
Salagnon translated well, but slowly. The pithy Latin sentences inspired daydreams. He
filled them out with the details they lacked, restoring them to life. In the margin of the page he sketched a plan. The battlefield, the oblique edge of the forest enclosing it, the slope that would provide momentum, the Roman legions in serried ranks, each knowing the man next to him, never changing places; facing them, the hapless, half-naked hordes of Celts, our ancestors, the brave, moronic Gauls, always ready to fight for the thrill of battle, for the thrill itself, without caring about the outcome. Salagnon put a drop of violet ink on his finger, diluted it with spit and added translucent shadows to the sketch. As he gently rubbed, solid lines dissolved, space widened, light appeared. Drawing is an astonishing skill.
‘Are you sure of their positions?’ asked Fobourdon.
Salagnon started, blushed, instinctively covered up his work with his elbow, then regretted it. Fobourdon made to tug his ear, but gave up; his pupils were seventeen years old. After a momentary awkwardness, they both straightened up.
‘I would prefer you made some progress with your translation, rather than wallowing in marginalia.’
Salagnon showed him the lines he had already completed; Fobourdon could not fault them.
‘Your translation is excellent and the battle plan is accurate. But I would prefer it if you added your doodles to a Latin text that represents the summit of human thought. You will require all your faculties if you are to reach the lofty heights of the Ancients. So kindly stop fooling around. Develop your mind, it is the only thing you truly possess. It is time to put away childish things and to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’
Satisfied, he wandered off, trailing a gust of whispered voices in his wake. Arriving back at the rostrum, he turned. The silence was immediate.
‘Carry on.’
And the pupils carried on mangling the Gallic wars in schoolboy Latin.
‘That was a close call.’ Chassagneaux spoke without moving his lips, a vital classroom skill. Salagnon shrugged. ‘Fobourdon can be strict. But at least we get a bit of peace and quiet here. Don’t you think?’
Salagnon grinned broadly. Under the desk he pinched the boy’s fat thigh and twisted.
‘I’m not one for peace and quiet,’ he whispered.
Chassagneaux whimpered and let out a stifled cry. Still smiling, still writing, Salagnon went on pinching. It must have hurt: Chassagneaux uttered a strangulated word, which sent out ripples of laughter, a stone tossed into the silence of the classroom. Fobourdon hushed them with a glare.
‘What’s going on? Chassagneaux, stand up, boy. Was that you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘May one ask why?’
‘Cramp, sir.’
‘Cretinous boy. In Lacedaemon young men endured being disembowelled rather than break the silence. You will clean the brushes and the blackboard for a week. You will focus on the moral of these tasks. Silence is the clarity of the mind. Let us hope your mind can learn to recapture the clarity of a blank blackboard.’
There was laughter, which he ended with a curt ‘Enough!’ The boys got back to work. Chassagneaux, lips quivering, gingerly felt his thigh. Chubby-cheeked, with his hair neatly parted, he looked like a little boy about to cry. Salagnon slipped him a note folded over several times: Well done. You kept quiet. You keep my friendship. The boy read the note and shot him a look of maudlin gratitude that made Salagnon feel nauseous: his whole body stiffened, he shuddered, he felt he might vomit. So he dipped his pen in the inkwell and started to recopy what he had already translated. He concentrated entirely on the act of writing, focused on the pen nib, on the ink flowing across the steel. His body became calmer. Given life by his breath, the letters looped out in violet arabesques, living curves, the steady rhythm soothing him until he finished his lines with a spirited thrust, as precise as a fencer’s riposte. Classical calligraphy provides the calm necessary to violent and troubled people.
You can see the warrior through his calligraphy, the Chinese say; so people say. The gestures of the pen are those of the whole body in microcosm, perhaps of life itself. The posture and the decisiveness remain the same, regardless of scale. It was a maxim he agreed with, though he no longer remembered where he could have read it. Salagnon knew little about China, no more than chance details and rumours, but he knew enough for his imagination to conjure a Chinese scene, distant, a little hazy, perhaps, but utterly present. He filled it with fat, laughing Buddhas, carved stones, blue vases that were somewhat graceless, with the dragons used to decorate bottles of encre de Chine – ink the English falsely claim hails from India. His fascination with China stemmed from Chine: a word, a single word on a bottle of ink. He so loved the black ink that he felt it could give birth to a whole nation. Dreamers and fools oftentimes have powerful insights into the nature of reality.
Almost everything that Salagnon knew about China came from a lecture given by an elderly man during a Philosophy class. The man had spoken slowly, he remembers, he had repeated himself, favouring long-winded generalizations that stultified the attention of his audience.
Father Fobourdon had invited the elderly Jesuit, who had spent his life in China, to speak to the class. The man had lived through the Boxer Rebellion, witnessed the sacking of the Old Summer Palace, survived the uncertain period when warlords struggled for power. He had loved the empire, even in its dying days, had adapted to the republic, made his peace with the Kuomintang, only for them to be ousted by the Japanese. By then, China had descended into a terrible chaos that seemed likely to endure for some time; given his advancing years, he had little hope of seeing the end. He had returned to Europe.
The old man walked with a stoop, breathing heavily, leaning on anything within reach; the pupils stood while it took him an eternity to cross the classroom and slump into the chair that Father Fobourdon never used. For an hour – precisely one hour marked by the school bell – he droned on, reeling off the sort of banal clichés that might have appeared in the newspapers – the ones before the war, the usual newspapers. But in this same wheezing voice, this colourless voice which brought nothing to life, he also read from strange texts that you couldn’t have found anywhere else.
He read the precepts of Lao-Tzu, through which the world seemed at once clear, concrete and utterly unknowable; he read excerpts from the I-Ching, whose meaning seemed as manifold as a hand of cards; finally he read from Sun Tzu on the art of war. He demonstrated that it is possible to drill and discipline anyone for battle. He demonstrated that obedience to military order is a human characteristic and disobedience is an anthropological exception; or an error.
‘Give me a horde of unschooled peasants and I will have them drilled and disciplined as precisely as your guard,’ Sun Tzu once said to the emperor. ‘Following the principles of the art of war I can drill and discipline the whole world, as in a war.’
‘Even my concubines?’ asked the emperor. ‘That flock of featherbrains?’
‘Even them.’
‘I do not believe you.’
‘Allow me complete freedom and I will have them drilled as precisely as your finest soldiers.’
Amused, the emperor accepted, and Sun Tzu began to instruct the courtesans. The girls played along; they giggled, they tripped over themselves, nothing good came of it. The emperor smiled. ‘I expected no better of them.’
‘If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame,’ said Sun Tzu.
He explained again, more clearly this time. The drill began again, they went on laughing, they broke ranks and hid their faces behind their silken sleeves.
‘But if his orders are clear and the soldiers nevertheless disobey,’ said Sun Tzu, ‘then it is the fault of their officers,’ and he ordered that the emperor’s favourite be decapitated, since she had started the laughing. The emperor protested, but his strategist respectfully insisted; he had been granted complete freedom. If His Majesty wished to see his plan accomplished, he had to allow the man he had entrusted with this mission to do as he saw fi
t. The emperor agreed, a little reluctantly, and the young woman was beheaded. A heavy sadness hung over the terrace where they played at war, the birds themselves fell silent, the flowers breathed no perfume, the butterflies ceased to flutter. The beautiful courtesans marched in silence, as disciplined as the finest soldiers. They moved as one, in serried ranks, united by the bonds of survivors, by that exhilaration triggered by the smell of fear.
But fear is merely a pretext given for obeying; for the most part, people prefer to follow orders. They will do anything to be together, to bathe in the stench of terror, to drink in that comforting thrill that dispels the terrible unease of loneliness.
Ants communicate through scent: they have scents for war, for flight, for attraction. They obey them invariably. As human beings, we are subject to unpredictable psychological humours that act like scents, and we like nothing better than to share them. When we are together, united, we think of nothing but running, slaughtering, fighting, one man against a hundred. We are no longer ourselves; we are as close to being who we truly are.
On a palace terrace, in the oblique evening rays that tinted the stone lions yellow, the courtesans marched in tiny steps before the heavy-hearted emperor. Night was drawing in, the light began to take on the dull hue of military uniforms, and still, to Sun Tzu’s terse orders, the courtesans continued to march in rank, to the rhythmic clack of clogs, the rustle of dazzling silk tunics, whose colours no one thought to marvel at. Each individual body had vanished, all that remained was the movement determined by the strategist’s orders.
