The Enchanted Clock

by Julia Kristeva

  Along the way, Astro is surprised to realize that the politico-erotic avatars of the royal French clock are only marking the start of the beginning of the end of the occidental male. And of Power with a capital P, the one the Terror is going to decapitate. But that survives as a necessary though unsustainable illusion in all regimes, be they democratic. Even women are seeking it: many are those who submit to it; others exert it like men.

  Is it really worth guillotining to understand that the recomposition of authority is not done with strokes of the ax and the pick? It is already under way in this war-and-peace of the sexes openly performed in the Le Nôtre gardens and between the Mansart walls. War-and-peace that continues thanks to revolutions, then feminism, ART, surrogacy, stem cells, artificial uteruses, and other such clonings. Even Astro finds himself at a loss: biology is moving as fast as cosmology, if not faster.

  The ancien régime is far behind us; marriage is available for all; certain men and women prefer to veil their faces, while others want to be everything and have everything … Here are the new Egerias of the globalized transhumance: they run in the Marais in the summer, they advance, they are in a hurry, they jostle one another. A swarm of laughing gulls: saleswomen, shoppers, hairdressers, researchers; they fly toward 9999 and beyond, they have won …

  This doesn’t mean the occidental male has lost: Astro is far from envisaging such a defeat. However, the question remains: this humanitude capable of shivering in expansion until 9999 and being dazzled by la Pompadour was missing something. But what? Ordinary lives are more difficult than the techniques, the knowledge, the philosophies, the revolutions. Those people needed new love connections. That’s what he thinks, stupidly, pretentiously. And they still need them so that the quantum states of the two sexes may agree. Quite simply, discreetly.

  1. In Molière’s play Tartuffe (1664–1669), the portrayal of the impostor Tartuffe angered the devout cabal. Dorine was the bawdy, free-speaking servant of the household.

  43

  WHAT IF HE’S THE ONE!

  What’s going on with Astro? His e-mails are becoming rare, elliptical; even Nivi can’t understand a thing about them. Could he be depressed? But about what? He’s not the type. Rather, he’s absorbed in computerizing the baby universe, 3,000 degrees centigrade of hot matter made of microscopic particles, boiling magma of electrons and protons from which not a single grain of light can emerge. No wonder he communicates by ellipses!

  That’s how she prefers to see things. It’s worrying. Or not, because the silences allow one to imagine. They force the imagination. They invite it. That’s the reason why neither Astro nor Nivi have wanted to utilize one of those geolocation applications that certain consumers love. What’s the difference if he’s in the Andes, in Antarctica, in Haute-Provence, or in Geneva? Astro and Nivi are “inoperable,” as Proust says, speaking of a love of Swann inseparable from his desires. And from those of the narrator.

  A silence, too, around the theft of the famous clock. The news deflated as quickly as it exploded. General indifference: Nivi was expecting it. The proof, Theo himself: “I see!” as his only comment on the e-mail announcing the incredible event. “In our period of austerity, no one is interested in Versailles.” Does Marianne hope to console Nivi or hurt her? Both.

  Whereupon Aubane Dechartre, whom Stan ran into at the Marly, tells her she saw Theo Passemant at the National Archives. That gentleman seemed to be in a great hurry. A simple hello out of pure courtesy. Does he really remember the assistant curator of Versailles, met briefly in Mme Delisle’s consulting room?

  Nivi pays no attention to these imbecilic rumors. Astro is in Santiago; Aubane must be mistaken. She would do well to occupy herself with the archives she’s in charge of.

  All the same, an idea takes hold of the psychology editorialist. Another one. The hypothesis may well be absurd, but it remains viral. It propagates by multiplication, takes advantage of the fragility of the host and imposes itself virulently in all circumstances—as much when she struggles to listen to her patients as when she works for GlobalPsyNet or loses herself wandering around the streets of Paris …

  It’s not because Astro has been avoiding her lately that she is going to suspect him of having something to do with the theft of Passemant’s masterpiece. Nor because he has apparently come to Paris without telling her, as the little Dechartre woman claims. Nor out of jealousy. She’s not one to be jealous. In no case. Nobody. Never! And why would she be now, and furthermore of Astro? Astro whose preference for a celestial object, a star, an emerging planet, a particle soup is the only thing that can surpass her, Nivi (other than his mother, Irene, or some vague double of that indelible infantile passion, but that’s another story, a really old one).

  No, the origin of this viral and virulent idea is simple: if Nivi were in Astro’s place, if she even were Astro, she would like to live in proximity to that now stolen being. Visitors looking at 9999 admire an extravagant automaton, or the vestiges of former grandeur, or even a witness to non-passing Time. But that’s not the case with Theo, who, two and a half centuries after Passemant, has gone infinitely farther, from Big Bang to Big Bang, in cosmic expansion.

  Some people lose the sense of human time when it inspires neither curiosity nor temptation, and they take themselves for bosons. Others close themselves up in the finiteness of our death-in-life and do not dare to transpose quantic and gravitational pulsations into their love life. Could it be because these internal coups d’état ceaselessly remind them of infinite rebounds resulting in death to oneself? Which make one live, live again, survive? Nivi believes that the android 9999 could actually be a point of reference and that as a result Theo himself could have, should have envisaged it like that. Even more: 9999 is a safeguard. A sort of third-generation neuroleptic capable of returning us to human scale, of tamping down the abstract ardor of science, to moderate excesses.

  9999 in the body of a man … Proust was the last to see humans with the sovereign eyes of an inhabitant or a visitor at Versailles. His In Search of Lost Time proves it. The giants standing on their stilts, which bring regained time to a close, are hideous, verbal responses to the astronomical clock. At least that’s how Nivi sees them. Unlikely that Theo didn’t think of it. The Guermantes, Palamède de Charlus, Mme Verdurin, Swann, Albertine, the narrator himself—all are sensitive clocks excessively, simultaneously reaching to distant eras in time. Body-times not only occupying space but having accumulated time.

  Today there are no sovereign bodies. The photo of the Big Bang, calculations and interpretations of what precedes it or follows it, those gravitational waves that forever fashioned the universe at the instant of its very first billionths of billionths of billionths of billionths of a second of existence—none of this can be held in a box; no model can possibly represent it. Try to imagine what that photo would look like … taken by a satellite like Hubble, if Astro wanted to give it human form. Certainly not like Louis XV, nor like the giant penis, nor like the dancer’s leg. But who? Obama, Sarko, Lula, Ban Ki-moon, Mandela, Netanyahu, Hollande, Pope Francis, Bin Laden? Just asking the question makes one grasp its absurdity. No human form today can contain the present knowledge about time and space, no more than to embody it. Writers, scientists, artists, and musicians are no more capable of embodying it than world leaders. However, since a 3D photo contains knowledge of another temporality, the idea of integrating it into human life is tempting. It arouses the imaginary, the passions. The social animal being by nature successive, it does not wish to know in what expansion it is living. It says to itself that life is already complicated enough without that; it does not imagine that other vital experiences could be possible—precisely in expansion. Not in a box, nor even in sequences.

  The man-machine still exists; it is serviceable, and the robot 9999 is one of its both most ambitious and most charming versions. If Nivi were Astro, she would install Passemant’s clock beside a telescope or a screen to demonstrate what we are not, or are no longer, and what we
do not want to know.

  Our accelerated discoveries do not make of us individuals who are sure of themselves and omnipotent but imaginations that surpass the human in the human. Dante said transumanar. To transumanar in human bodies and codes. Passemant himself knows perfectly well how to pose limits, measure distances, meditate separations, calculate appearances/disappearances. His totem is the homunculus, the astronomical clock. But there are now artisanal and increasingly learned engineers who tame deliriums and comas, rebirths, pain, and happiness. Below 10−33 centimeters, where trajectories no longer exist, each observer, each object, possesses its own time. Superimposition of different, ungraspable, counterintuitive, but real times. To transumanar escapes us from the finite and makes the unknown emerge. No one other than Theo could have joined or brought together side by side a screen from the Hubble or from Planck, which transmits 300 million years after the Big Bang, and the 9,999 years of Passemant in human form.

  So, Theo as gentleman thief? Why not? And 9999 his antimadness manual?

  44

  AUBANE WOULD HAVE PREFERRED TO EVAPORATE

  At the Château no one has seen the Owl’s assistant since this implausible theft was announced on the eight o’clock news on France 2. Not even her hierarchical superior.

  The fact that her brother was mixed up in this burglary demonstrated the absence of professional probity in Aubane herself, since it was through her supposed intermediary that Thibault had formed a friendship—oh so suspect!—with certain staff members presently under judicial review. At least that’s what Aubane believed, and she thought that everyone had the same opinion about this horrid affair—beginning with the law. The young woman had been interrogated like the others, and more than the others, it goes without saying, but this inquiry had taken such a mean turn that she had been left speechless—nothing but futile and irrepressible tears, a sort of stunned shock.

  She was ashamed, but beyond that, she literally collapsed at the thought that Thibault could have done that to her, his only sister, whom he claimed to love, his one and only love, he would say, which she had always believed. And for good reason: this elegant, distinguished, and well-known Parisian antiquarian was not known to have a girlfriend, and at past forty wasn’t even married. Since childhood the brother and sister had shared the same tastes, the same sense of perfection, a reciprocal, almost spiritual passion. And now comes this ignominy—there is no other word for it—enough to hide her head in shame.

  No news from Thibault. He could have sent word, said he was sorry, because it was a frankly criminal act, and Aubane wants her brother to refute these suspicions or at least explain himself. Nothing. The presumed guilty party has suddenly cut off relations with the family. The Dechartres’ lawyer is no longer on the case. He claims Thibault fired him and chose an international expert; all he is doing now is shielding poor Aubane, hoping to prove her innocence. Aubane is afraid that on the pretext of protecting her they will hide disagreeable truths from her, infantilizing her. She who knows Passemant’s clock better than anyone! Not to mention the inventor himself, the illustrious stranger, including thieves who likely don’t know a thing about his life or his work, she would bet …

  Only at the Château does the matter still make for chatter. Elsewhere, people were interested a little, a lot, not so much, less and less, not at all. Now it’s over. Radio silence. The system is a spectacle in which Aubane inevitably has a part, at her humble level … All those visitors who come to look, what do they see? A brouhaha, body to body, the need to be together, to jostle one another in front of the myths, nothing more, or only rarely: Mme Delisle, for instance, such a subtle person … The system does not need 9999, oh no. This showcase of images, instant and toxic, is in its essence impermeable to mystery, to the sublime. Louis XV’s misbehaviors, that’s one thing, but what could he have been thinking more than two centuries ago? His clock, its last stroke of midnight before the year 10,000: people don’t give a damn; they don’t have the time; no one has the time anymore, today. Even the Owl, usually protective, isn’t calling her assistant anymore … Today she finally decides to do so.

  “There’s news. You don’t know about it? It’s on the net. Go look … Yes, do, it’s worth the trouble … A new development … Unheard of, I swear … It’s hard to understand much about it, I hope it’s not another PR stunt, there are so many … Internet surfers are all on it, we had to expect that, there’s lots of tweeting already … They’re likely to take an interest in us in high places—I’m not talking about the Château, no: much higher … This affair has become political … You’ll see, click on WRE.fr for World Radical Ecologist, section France … No connection? Oh yes, there are always links, you have to believe it …”

  The stiff voice becomes maternal again. As the Owl can sometimes be. In contrast to Aubane’s mother, who never was.

  The little sparrow couldn’t believe it. Did Thibault succeed in exfiltrating 9999 to sell it to a superrich lover of French eternities in Dubai? Or was that hypothesis a decoy, worse, a trap that swallowed up Police Chief Rilsky himself? Could Thibault have orchestrated this staging to divert attention, allow the thieves to gain the time they needed to deploy another strategy, the real one, revealed only today yet at work from the start?

  Whatever the case may be, according to WRE.fr (at the Château they pronounce à l’américaine), the French branch of this powerful NGO network found a spectacular means, one not lacking in audacity, for pressuring the French authorities to close nuclear-power stations! No joke! Beginning with the most dangerous, according to them: Fessenheim, Flamanville, Gravelines, Bugey, Blayais, Tricastin. How?

  “We have sequestered 9999 in order to sound the alarm. We will return the astronomical clock to its rightful owner on the condition that the French government promises to close the most dangerous atomic power plants in the country within a month from today. If not, 9999 will be deposited and sold in a secure location. The price of this sale, which we hope will be considerable, will finance our militant actions on behalf of a radical ecology. Upon the expiration of the announced time, lacking a favorable response to our demands for the closing of Fessenheim, Flamanville, Gravelines, Bugey, Blayais, Tricastin, we will proceed to the auction with our supporters throughout the world, and 9999 will not return to its place in the cabinet of King Louis XV at Versailles.” A communiqué from WRE.fr.

  People should have thought of it. They steal the clock that symbolizes the infinite desire to live, to survive, to preserve the earth and its inhabitants, the universe itself. They point a finger at those irresponsible politicians and those industrial-financial mafioso giants that are destroying the planet well before the last stroke of the clock resonates on December 31, 9999. An atomic apocalypse during the lifetime of 9999 is being readied, good people! Up in arms!

  Aubane doesn’t understand a thing about what’s going on, even less than the Owl. What she can grasp nevertheless is that Thibault works, has worked, or will work for this WRE (not to put too fine a point on it). A senseless thing by madmen. Hardly a militant fiber can be found in Aubane, and she has never suspected Thibault of having one either. But her brother has always had a life of his own: she knew it but didn’t think about it much; unlike her, Thibault did not share everything with her. Whom does he see? At the Emirates, the royal families—to be expected. But in Paris? At the Hypnosis Café, the Baron, the Montana, the Carmen? “I’m not taking you along, little sister, you’re not mad at me are you, angel? Not interesting for you, I know … Later …” That’s what he said when he went out. How could she answer, since he had already decided everything, whereas she would have liked to be with him too, follow him? But Aubane did not dare, and visibly Thibault had no desire for it … She would close the door and return to her monitor with the scanned archives.

  With that communique, the affair of the theft takes a much more serious turn. The Owl is right. The clock will again be on the TV during prime time for the eight o’clock news on TF1. An eco action, durable politic
s. Well played, if Thibault is in on it, not bad at all! Otherwise, let them find another guilty party; we are innocent, and so much the better!

  Aubane takes a shower, puts on some pretty makeup—why not a garnet lipstick, like for big occasions—and reappears at the Château.

  45

  JEALOUSY? WHAT JEALOUSY?

  Nivi is incapable of it. Just as she is incapable of feeling hatred. “You don’t know how to hate,” her mother would say in a reproachful tone. This kind of naivety that excludes distrust is a handicap.

  “Too bad. I prefer delayed disappointments to the smallness of hearts,” was the girl’s reply from her stock of moralizing quotations.

  It does, however, happen that a woman or a man spoils her illusion with absolute stealth. Waste, bitterness. But the aggravation that follows is nothing like a catastrophe. Not even an annoyance. Nivi is never annoyed. Eventually it could even be a relief. Because from the start the wound itself is doubled by curiosity: how can they, what do they do to take pleasure in that?

  And the certainty returns, the ancient certainty that the will refuses but that survives at the bottom, muted: Nothing is everything. Everything is nothing.

  Melancholy superiority? Infantile defense? A dose of confidence also, but in what? In oneself? Which “self”? No fixed identity—other than the one attested by the passport—but a mosaic of “selves” that do not break into pieces. On the contrary: a tenacious mosaic that endures. More or less. Why?