Hygiene and the Assassin

by Amélie Nothomb

  “Monsieur Tach, you are a wretched person.”

  “And you only just figured that out? You need some rest, young man, so much genius is going to wear you out.”

  “What is the source of your despair?”

  “Everything. It’s not just the world that is badly made, but life. Another feature of contemporary bad faith is the way we go around claiming the opposite. Haven’t you ever heard them all bleating unanimously, ‘Life is beaueau-ti-ful! We love life!’ It makes me climb the walls to hear such drivel.”

  “Such drivel may be sincere.”

  “I believe that too, which makes it even worse: it proves that treachery is working, that people will swallow any lie. So they have their shitty lives with their shitty jobs, they live in horrible places with dreadful people, and they embrace their abject condition and then call it happiness.”

  “Good for them, if they’re happy that way!”

  “Good for them, as you say.”

  “And you, Monsieur Tach, what makes you happy?”

  “Nothing at all. I have peace and quiet, that’s already something—well, I did have peace and quiet.”

  “Have you never been happy?”

  Silence.

  “Am I to understand that you have been happy? . . . Or am I to understand that you have never been happy?”

  “Be quiet, I’m thinking. No, I have never been happy.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Would you like a handkerchief?”

  “Even during your childhood?”

  “I was never a child.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Exactly what I said.”

  “Well you must have been little!”

  “I was little, yes, but I was not a child. I was already Prétextat Tach.”

  “It’s true that we know nothing about your childhood. Your biographers always start with your adult life.”

  “That’s normal, because I had no childhood.”

  “But you had parents, after all.”

  “You do pile on your brilliant conclusions, young man.”

  “What did your parents do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They lived off their income. A very old family fortune.”

  “Are there any other family members besides yourself?”

  “Was it the tax man who sent you?”

  “No, I just wanted to know if—”

  “Mind your own business.”

  “One’s duty as a journalist, Monsieur Tach, is to mind other people’s business.”

  “Change your profession.”

  “That’s out of the question. I like my profession.”

  “My poor boy.”

  “Let me put it to you in another way: tell me about the time in your life when you were happiest.”

  Silence.

  “Should I phrase my question in another way?”

  “Do you take me for a fool or what? What sort of game are you playing at? Is this some sort of Belle marquise, vos beaux yeux me font mourir d’amour? Is that it?”

  “Calm down, I’m just trying to do my job.”

  “And I’m trying to do mine.”

  “So in your opinion, a writer is someone whose job consists in not answering questions?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And Sartre?”

  “What about Sartre?”

  “Well, he answered questions, didn’t he?”

  “So what?”

  “That contradicts your definition.”

  “Not in the least: it confirms it, on the contrary.”

  “You mean that Sartre is not a writer?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “What do you mean, he wrote remarkably well.”

  “There are journalists who write remarkably well. But it is not enough to have a way with words to be a writer.”

  “No? What else is required, then?”

  “A great many things. First of all, you need balls. And the balls I am referring to have nothing to do with one’s sex. The proof of it is that there are some women who have balls. Oh, not very many, but they do exist: Patricia Highsmith, for example.”

  “That’s astonishing, that a great writer like yourself would like the work of Patricia Highsmith.”

  “Why? There’s nothing astonishing about it at all. You might not think so, but she’s someone who must hate people as much as I do, and women in particular. You can tell she doesn’t write in order to be invited to people’s drawing rooms.”

  “And what about Sartre, did he write in order to be invited to drawing rooms?”

  “Did he ever! I never met the gentleman, but just reading him I could tell how much he loved drawing rooms.”

  “That’s a bit hard to swallow. He was a leftist, after all.”

  “So? Do you think leftists don’t like drawing rooms? I think that, on the contrary, they like them more than anyone. It stands to reason: if I’d been a worker all my life, it seems to me I would like nothing better than to spend my time in drawing rooms.”

  “You’re oversimplifying: not all leftists are workers. Some leftists come from very good families.”

  “Really? Then they have no excuse.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to be a rabid anti-Communist, would you, Monsieur Tach?”

  “And you wouldn’t you happen to be a premature ejaculator, now would you, Mr. Journalist?”

  “Oh, really, that has nothing to do with it.”

  “I do agree. So, to get back to our balls. They are the most vital organ a writer has. If he has no balls, a writer uses his words in the service of bad faith. To give you an example, let’s take a gifted writer, and give him something to write about. With solid balls, you get Death on Credit. Without balls, you get La nausée.”

  “Don’t you think you’re simplifying somewhat?”

  “Are you, a journalist, serious? And here I’ve been trying, out of the goodness of my heart, to bring myself down to your level!”

  “I never asked you to. What I want is a precise and methodical definition of what you mean by ‘balls.’”

  “Why? Don’t tell me you are trying to write some sort of Tach Made Easy for the general public?”

  “Not at all! I just wanted to have some sort of clear communication with you.”

  “Uh-huh, that’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Come now, Monsieur Tach, please try and make things simple for me, just for once.”

  “You must understand that I detest any form of simplification, young man; so if you start asking me to simplify myself, don’t expect me to be very enthusiastic.”

  “But I’m not asking you to simplify yourself, not at all! I’m just asking you for a brief definition of what you mean by ‘balls.’”

  “All right, all right, don’t whine. What is it with you journalists? You are all so hypersensitive.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Well, balls are an individual’s ability to resist the prevailing bad faith. Sounds scientific, right?”

  “Go on.”

  “I might as well tell you that almost no one has the balls for it. And the number of people who have both a way with words and the right kind of balls is infinitesimal. That is why there are so few writers on the planet. Particularly as other qualities are also required.”

  “Such as?”

  “A prick.”

  “After balls, a prick: that’s logical. Definition of prick?”

  “The prick is an ability to create. People who are truly capable of creating are rare indeed. Most of them are content with merely copying their predecessors with greater or lesser degrees of talent—and those same predecessors are, most often, copiers themselves. Sometimes you get
a writer who has a way with words and a prick but no balls: Victor Hugo, for example.”

  “And yourself?”

  “I may have the face of a eunuch, but I have a big prick.”

  “And Céline?”

  “Ah, Céline has everything: he’s a genius with words, and he has big balls, a big prick, and all the rest.”

  “The rest? What else is required? An anus?”

  “Absolutely not! It’s the reader who must have an anus, to be taken for a fool, not the writer. No, a writer also needs lips.”

  “Dare I even ask you what kind of lips you mean?”

  “Upon my word, you are revolting! I’m talking about the lips that are used to close one’s mouth, all right? Disgusting individual!”

  “Okay. Definition of lips?”

  “Lips fulfill two roles. First of all, they make words into a sensual act. Have you ever imagined what words would be were it not for lips? They would quite simply be something cold, dry, without any nuances, like the utterances of a courtroom bailiff. But the second role is even more important: lips are used to prevent what must not be said from getting out. Hands also have lips, the lips that prevent them from writing what must not be written. This is indispensable, beyond all proportion. There are writers who are brimming with talent, who have balls and a prick, yet they failed as writers because they said things they shouldn’t have said.”

  “That’s astonishing, coming from you: it’s not your style to practice self-censorship.”

  “Who said anything about self-censorship? The things that must not be said are not necessarily smutty things; on the contrary. The smutty things you have inside you must always be expressed: that’s healthy, lighthearted, invigorating. No, the things that must not be said are of another order—and don’t expect me to explain them to you, because those are precisely the things that must not be said.”

  “Well that’s not going to get me very far.”

  “Didn’t I warn you, earlier, that my profession consists in not answering questions? Change your profession, young man.”

  “So not answering questions is also one of the roles fulfilled by lips, is that it?”

  “Not only lips, balls too. It takes balls not to answer certain questions.”

  “A way with words, balls, a prick, lips—anything else?”

  “Yes, you also need an ear and a hand.”

  “The ear is for hearing?”

  “You heard me. You are a regular genius, young man. In fact, the ear is the sound box of the lips. It’s the inner gueuloir. Flaubert struck quite the pose with his gueuloir, but did he really think people were going to believe him? He knew it was pointless to holler his words: words holler all by themselves. You just have to listen to them inside.”

  “And the hand?”

  “The hand is for pleasure. This is devastatingly important. If a writer is not having pleasure, then he must stop immediately. To write without pleasure is immoral. Writing already contains all the seeds of immorality. The writer’s only excuse is his pleasure. A writer who does not have pleasure is as disgusting as some bastard raping a little girl without even getting his rocks off, just for the sake of raping, to commit a gratuitously evil act.”

  “There’s no comparison. Writing is not as harmful.”

  “You obviously don’t know what you’re saying, because you haven’t read me—how could you know? Writing fucks things up at every level: think of the trees they’ve had to cut down for the paper, of all the room they have to find to store the books, the money it costs to print them, and the money it will cost potential readers, and the boredom the readers will feel on reading them, and the guilty conscience of the unfortunate people who buy them and don’t have the courage to read them, and the sadness of the kind imbeciles who do read them but don’t understand a thing, and finally, above all, the fatuousness of the conversations that will take place after said books have been read or not read. And that’s just the half of it! So don’t go telling me that writing is not harmful.”

  “But you can’t totally rule out the possibility of encountering one or two readers who really will understand you, even if it’s only intermittently. Don’t those flashes of deep complicity with a handful of individuals suffice to make reading a beneficial act?”

  “Nonsense! I don’t know if those individuals exist, but, if they do, they are the ones who can be most harmed by what I write. What do you think I talk about in my books? Maybe you think I describe how good human beings are, how happy they are to be alive? How the devil did you come up with the idea that to understand me will make someone happy? On the contrary!”

  “But complicity, even in despair—is that not a pleasant thing?”

  “Do you think it’s pleasant to find out that you are just as desperate as your neighbor? I think it makes things even sadder.”

  “In that case, why write? Why even seek to communicate?”

  “Careful, don’t mix up the two: writing is not seeking to communicate. You ask me why I write, and this is what I’d say, strictly and exclusively: for pleasure. In other words, if there is no pleasure, one must stop, imperatively. It so happens that writing brings me pleasure—well, it used to—so much pleasure I could die. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. Moreover, every theory that has tried to explain pleasure has been more inane than the next one. One day, a very serious man told me that when you felt pleasure in making love, it was because you were creating life. Can you imagine? As if there could be pleasure in creating something as bad and ugly as life! And then, that would imply that if a woman is taking the pill, she should no longer feel pleasure because she’s no longer creating life. But this fellow really believed his theory! In short, don’t ask me to explain why writing gives me pleasure: it’s a fact, that’s all.”

  “And what has the hand got to do with all this?”

  “The hand is the source of pleasure in writing. And it’s not the only one: writing also brings pleasure to one’s belly, one’s sex, one’s forehead, and one’s jaws. But the most specific pleasure is located in the hand that writes. It’s a difficult thing to explain: when it is creating what it needs to create, the hand trembles with pleasure and becomes an organ of genius. I don’t know how many times while writing I have had the strange impression that my hand was in charge, sliding across the page all alone, without asking the brain its opinion. Oh, I know that no anatomist could accept such a thing, and yet very often that is what you feel. It is such a voluptuous moment, probably not unlike what a horse feels when it bolts, or a prisoner when he escapes. Which leads to another conclusion: is there not something disturbing about the fact that one uses the same instrument—one’s hand—for both writing and masturbation?”

  “You also use your hand to sew on a button or scratch your nose.”

  “How trivial you can be! Besides, what does that prove? The vulgar uses need not contradict the noble ones!”

  “So masturbation is a noble use of the hand?”

  “Indeed it is! The fact that, all alone, a simple, modest hand can perform something as complex, costly, tricky, and volatile as sex, isn’t that amazing? To think that this kindly, uncomplicated hand can procure as much, if not more, pleasure than a woman—who is a high-maintenance nuisance—isn’t that admirable?”

  “Well, naturally, if that’s the way you see things . . .”

  “But that’s the way they are, young man! Don’t you agree?”

  “Listen, Monsieur Tach, you are the one being interviewed, not me.”

  “In other words, you get off easy, is that it?”

  “It may please you to know that I don’t feel I’ve gotten off easy thus far. Here and there, you’ve been pretty rough with me.”

  “Something I enjoy doing, it’s true.”

  “Fine. Let’s get back to our organs. Let me recapitulate: a way with words, balls, prick, lips, ear, and hand. Is that it
?”

  “Isn’t that enough for you?”

  “I don’t know. I thought there would be more.”

  “Really? What more do you need? A vulva? A prostate?”

  “Now you’re being trivial. No. Perhaps you’re going to make fun of me, but I was thinking that you also need a heart.”

  “A heart? Saints alive, whatever for?”

  “For feelings, love.”

  “Those things have nothing to do with the heart. They are the realm of the balls, prick, lips, and hands. That’s quite enough.”

  “You’re too cynical. I could never go along with that.”

  “But your opinion doesn’t interest anyone, you said so yourself a minute ago. I don’t see what is so cynical about what I said. Feelings and love are the business of organs, we agree on that; what we disagree on is only the nature of the organ. You see it as a cardiac phenomenon. I’m not rebelling against that idea, I’m not throwing adjectives in your face. I merely think that you have bizarre anatomical theories and, as such, they are interesting.”

  “Monsieur Tach, why are you pretending you don’t understand?”

  “Now what are you on about? I’m not pretending anything at all, you rude so-and-so!”

  “Honestly, when I was talking about the heart, you know perfectly well I wasn’t referring to the organ!”

  “Oh, no? What were you referring to, then?”

  “To sensitivity, affectivity, emotions, don’t you see?”

  “All that in one stupid heart, full of cholesterol!”

  “Come now, Monsieur Tach, you’re not being funny.”

  “No, indeed, you’re the one who’s being funny. Why are you saying all these things that have nothing to do with the topic of discussion?”

  “Are you daring to imply that literature has nothing to do with feelings?”

  “You know what, young man, I think our understandings of the word ‘feeling’ diverge. For me, if I want to smash someone’s face in, that’s a feeling. But for you, if you can weep at the lonely hearts column in a woman’s magazine, now that’s a feeling.”

  “And what is it for you?”

  “For me, it is a frame of mind, that is, a fine story crammed full of deceitful ideas of which people convince themselves in order to procure an illusion of human dignity, and to persuade themselves that they are filled with spirituality even when they are taking a crap. It is above all women who invent such moods, because the type of work they do leaves their mind free. For one of the characteristics of our species is that our brain feels obliged to work continuously, even when it serves no purpose: this deplorable technical disadvantage is at the origin of all human misery. Rather than allowing her to indulge in noble inactivity or elegant repose, like a snake sleeping in the sun, the housewife’s brain, furious that it is not being useful, begins to secrete idiotic, pretentious screenplays—and the baser the housewife perceives her activities to be, the more pretentious her scenarios become. And all the more stupid in that there is nothing base about running the vacuum cleaner or scrubbing the toilet: these are things that need to be done, that’s all. But women always imagine that they have been placed here on earth for some aristocratic mission. Most men do, too, less stubbornly however, because their brains are kept busy with the help of bookkeeping, professional promotion, informing on their peers, and tax returns, which leave less time for wild imaginings.”