by Yasmina Reza
He should take me in his arms and say all that to me, Genevieve, and everything would be in order. So please, my son, keep going with the inventory of laughter.
He should say I remember you, Papa, when you prided yourself on being a king when it came to fast talking, you were getting your first orders of shirts from Korea, your specialty was late delivery, you used to be screaming down the telephone in English, even on Sundays, nobody was allowed into the living room, and next morning you said to your clients the boat will be here in a week and after a fortnight you said the boat has had engine trouble, and then you asked yourself okay what can I think up next and we said say there’s been a storm, Papa, and you said yes, good idea, children, there’s been a terrible storm, bring me the atlas and let’s see where it hit. And when the boat docked you got forty thousand shirts with three-quarter-length sleeves because the sleeve measurements you gave them were taken from the shoulder but the Koreans understood them as being taken from the neck. He should say I remember you, Papa, when you were the king of imprecision, he should say, Genevieve, our childhood home is not deserted, I can still hear a voice yelling, “The first person who complains about anything whatever is going to get his throat cut, I’ll do it with my bare hands. Not one of you, you band of parasites, has a stock of forty thousand shirts as unsalable in summer as they are in winter.” And later, when we were teenagers, Papa, and you started doing business with Rumania, importing blue jeans, denim jackets, youth apparel, as you called it, for mass distribution, and we asked, “Don’t you have a sample of straight-leg jeans with buttons, not a zipper?” you said, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got those,” and we said, “But you’re sure they’re really tight at the ankle and the fly’s the same as you get on Levi’s?” and you said, “I’ve got them,” “And are they faded like Wranglers, Papa,” and you said, “I’ve got them, I’ve got them,” “And my size, Papa, are you sure there are samples in my size?” “I’ve got them in every size,” and then you added, “And every color,” and we got worried. “What do you mean every color, Papa, real jeans only come in blue,” and you cut the discussion off by screaming, “Mine are better!” and right away we knew they were shit, the moment you said mine were better we knew they were shit and we were going to find ourselves with orange bell-bottomed jeans with a zippered fly. What you did at home in the seventies was to create a sort of ultimate antichic, les BETTER de Perlman and Company, just like les MUST de Cartier.
He should say, Papa, I remember les BETTER de Perlman. For years, did I ever wear anything but les BETTER de Perlman? Did you take on board what it would do to me, at an age when you have no idea whether you’re the tiniest bit attractive or quite simply hideous, to have to go choose your clothes in the warehouse in Orly, and not ever once be able (the expense was an outrage) to own a single genuine pair of Levi’s, a single genuine New Man, a single genuine pair of jeans of any kind, frankly, not to mention anoraks, shirts, polyester pajamas, and super-Shetlands that felt like emery boards. You admitted, Papa, that les BETTER de Perlman were absolute shit, you admitted it years later, before that what you said, if you remember, was, “Prisunic and Monoprix rip off my collections, I dress half of France but what’s good enough for half of France isn’t good enough for the little Perlmans.” You admitted later that the little Perlmans were dressed like clowns (les BETTER had their fair share of minor manufacturing errors) and how we laughed the day you admitted with absolute balls, with absolute balls and genuine hilarity, that the occasional BETTERs samples that were halfway okay had been too fancy and too expensive for the central buyers for the chains.
What wouldn’t I give, Genevieve, for him to tell me you’re the king of bad faith, the king of injustice and the king of impatience, I carry them inside me like secret assailants, even though I want to be in my proper place or live like a cork floating on water, you can count on me, I too am a member of the tribe of sons, and when death comes for you it will find me watching over your little empire.
And I would say to him don’t let yourself be upset, my boy, by my deplorable rantings, with the people I love, I like to explore the precipice, I like extreme danger. I make myself odious, I make myself utterly ugly to test your affection. When it comes to ugliness, I can scale Everest. He would laugh, Genevieve, just as you’re laughing right now, I adore the way you laugh, your laughter is my salvation, he too would laugh and I’d say everything’s in order, my boy. Finally it doesn’t matter whether you’re a cork on the water or a man chasing his own grail. Goulandri, my osteopath, came back from Egypt. You came back and at least you shut up. When Goulandri, after three-quarters of an hour of my mythological massage, gets to the high point of his story and announces that, “So Isis finds Osiris’ limbs, all except for the phallus, which has been swallowed by a fish,” I beg for mercy. You at least come back and you shut up. For which I’m grateful. Doesn’t matter if you were out to save your skin or to live in harmony with who knows what. Doesn’t matter if the goal of your wanderings was the genealogy of the gods or your own little sweet self. At least you’re not bored. You have nothing to share, nothing to pass on. I approve. If only you didn’t have that little superior smirk, that little. . . . I’m feeling dizzy, Genevieve, I’m going to keel over, I have to sit down.
Genevieve, I said, after collapsing on the sofa (while trying to maintain some semblance of a ramrod spine), give me your hand, I’m going under. A guy who was born on the Volga and I’m done in by three shots of Stolichnaya. Your hand is warm, I like holding it. What would Leo say if he could see us? Nighttime in the rue Ampère, listening to Jewish songs and facing down death. The rue Ampère, which you said—and you were right—wasn’t a place. Where are you, my friend? Are you still out there somewhere, or have you left us for good? One fine day a man is walking cheerfully down a street in Paris, he has the sky, he has the river, he has his old friend—sky, river, old friend—he has the buildings, the doors, the faces, he has (though he doesn’t know it) you, Genevieve Abramowitz. You went away, Leo, before defeat could have the last word. The world in its essence, reduced to almost nothing. All his life our friend Lionel has looked at the chestnut tree at the intersection of Laugier and Farraday. Every day, in every season, Lionel looked at this arrogant, detestable tree which doesn’t deserve the slightest attention, and which kept up an unceasing litany of I don’t give a fuck about you standing up there hunched behind your window, I was alive a long time before you came on the scene and I’ll keel over a long time after you do, I dominate you absolutely, my sadness is no sadness, my nakedness is no nakedness, nothing wears me down, nothing fills me with anticipation, and I pity you. As for these Jewish melodies— adieu, you’re too gloomy, my son-in-law can play them at my burial. This evening what we want is gaiety, Genevieve. Do you know The Art of the Fugue? Counterpoint 13, the thirteenth fugue. My entire life in dance and song. My entire life somehow inexplicably contained in dance and song, and whether I was numb or happy, defeated or upright, somehow inexplicably it always brought me joy. It’s so strange to see all this furniture pushed into the corners. As if the line had already been drawn under my balance sheet. For years on this library ladder I played the Indian shot through by an arrow. It wasn’t ever enough for me to fall from my full height. They had to have the high rock, the chasm, and the long death rattle. The fleetingness of objects. I haven’t stood on that ladder for twenty-five years. Not to play Indians and not to fetch a book. Would you like me to do the Indian shot through by an arrow, Genevieve? There’s a danger I’ll do it better than ever, given my condition. Don’t be afraid, it’s really only a matter of two steps up. Best was when I managed to pull off a couple of last convulsions on the floor. The children adored final spasms. I only did them when they had special friends over. Show them, show them how you die! they begged. I’m going to show you how I die, Genevieve
1 French transit camp for Auschwitz.
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, OCTOBER 2003
Translation copyright © 2002 by Carol Brown Ja
neway
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Reza, Yasmina.
[Désolation. English]
Desolation / by Yasmina Reza; translated from the French by Carol Brown Janeway.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-0-307-42553-9
I. Janeway, Carol Brown. II. Title.
PQ2678.E955 D4713 2002
2002016263
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