Hygiene and the Assassin

by Amélie Nothomb

  “You’re exaggerating. I do not believe I misrepresented your memories to that degree.”

  “My novel needs an ending. Through your maneuvers, you made me believe that you were bringing me that ending. I had no longer dared to hope, I was coming back to life after an interminable hibernation—and then, shamelessly, you show me that your hands are empty, you have brought me nothing but the illusion of a sudden new plot twist. At my age, one can no longer bear such things. Were it not for you, I would have died leaving an unfinished novel behind. Because of you, my very death will be unfinished.”

  “Have you finished with your stylistic arabesques?”

  “Arabesques indeed! Might you have forgotten that you have dispossessed me of my substance? I’m going to teach you something, Mademoiselle: I am not the assassin, you are!”

  “Pardon?”

  “You heard me. You are the assassin, and you have killed two people. As long as Léopoldine was still alive in my memory, her death was an abstraction. But you have killed her memory with your muckraking intrusion, and by killing that memory, you have killed what remained of me.”

  “Sophistry.”

  “You would know that it is not sophistry, if you had the vaguest knowledge of love. But how could a filthy little muckraker understand what love is? I have never met a greater stranger to love.”

  “If love is what you say it is, I’m relieved to be a stranger to it.”

  “Clearly, I have taught you nothing.”

  “I really wonder what you could have taught me, other than how to strangle people.”

  “I would have liked to teach you that in strangling Léopoldine, I saved her from the only true death, which is to be forgotten. You may think of me as an assassin, when in fact I am one of the rare human beings who has killed no one. Look around you and look at yourself: the world is swarming with assassins, that is, people who allow themselves to forget those they claimed to love. To forget someone: have you really thought about what that means? Forgetfulness is a gigantic ocean where only one ship sails, the ship of memory. For the vast majority of human beings, that ship is no more than a miserable tub which takes on water at the slightest opportunity, and whose captain, an unscrupulous character, is only interested in saving money. Do you know what that foul expression implies? A daily sacrifice, among the crew, of those who are deemed superfluous. And do you know which ones are deemed superfluous? Do you think it’s the bastards, the bores, the idiots? Not at all: the ones who get thrown overboard are the useless ones—those who have already been used. The ones who have already given the best of themselves, so what do they have left to give? Come now, no pity, let’s clean ship, and hup! over the railing they go, and the ocean swallows them, implacably. There you have it, dear Mademoiselle, this is how the most ordinary of assassinations is carried out, in all impunity. I have never subscribed to that dreadful slaughter, and you stand here today accusing me in the name of my innocence, in accordance with what human beings like to call justice and which is in fact a sort of instruction manual for informing on others.”

  “Who said anything about informing? I have no intention of denouncing you.”

  “Really? Well then, you are even worse than I imagined. As a rule, muckrakers have the decency to come up with a cause. But you stir up shit gratuitously, for the sole pleasure of stinking up the atmosphere. When you leave here you will rub your hands together, knowing for sure that you have not wasted your day, since you have smeared dirt across someone else’s world. You have chosen a fine profession, Mademoiselle.”

  “If I understand correctly, you would rather I dragged you before the courts?”

  “Of course. Have you thought for a moment of my agony, if you do not denounce me, if you leave me alone and empty in this apartment after what you have done to me? Whereas at least if you drag me before the court, it will entertain me.”

  “Sorry, Monsieur Tach, you’ll have to turn yourself in: I won’t stoop to that sort of thing.”

  “Yes, you’re above all that, aren’t you? You belong to the worst sort of people, those who would rather pollute than destroy. Can you explain to me what was going through your head the day you decided to come and torture me? To what gratuitously foul instinct did you succumb that day?”

  “You’ve known that from the beginning, monsieur: have you forgotten our wager? I wanted to see you crawl at my feet. Now with everything you’ve told me, I want it more than ever. So go ahead and crawl, since you’ve lost our wager.”

  “I may indeed have lost, but I prefer my lot to yours.”

  “Good for you. Crawl.”

  “Is it your female vanity that wants to see me crawl?”

  “It is my desire for revenge. Crawl.”

  “So you have not understood a thing.”

  “My criteria will never be yours, and I’ve understood perfectly well. I hold life to be the most precious blessing, and none of your words will change any of that. If it weren’t for you, Léopoldine would have lived, with everything horrible that may imply, but also everything beautiful. There is nothing more to say. Crawl.”

  “After all, I’m not holding it against you.”

  “That’s all I need. Crawl.”

  “You live in a sphere that is completely foreign to me. It’s normal for you not to understand.”

  “Your condescension is touching. Crawl.”

  “In fact, I’m far more tolerant than you are: I am capable of accepting the fact that you live with other criteria. But you aren’t. For you, there is only one way of seeing things. You are narrow-minded.”

  “Monsieur Tach, you may be sure that your existential considerations do not interest me. I am ordering you to crawl, and that’s it.”

  “So be it. But how do you expect me to crawl? Have you forgotten that I’m a cripple?”

  “That’s true. Let me help you.”

  The journalist stood up, lifted the fat man from under his arms, and with a great effort managed to heave him onto the carpet, face down.

  “Help! Help!”

  But in that position, the novelist’s lovely voice was muffled, and no one could hear him, except the young woman.

  “Crawl.”

  “I cannot bear to be on my stomach! My doctor won’t allow it.”

  “Crawl.”

  “Shit! I’m about to suffocate, any minute now!”

  “So then you’ll know what suffocation is, since you inflicted it on a little girl. Crawl.”

  “It was for her salvation.”

  “Well then, it is for your salvation that I’m exposing you to the risk of suffocation. You are a despicable old man whom I want to save from decline. So it’s the same thing. Crawl.”

  “But I’ve already declined! I’ve done nothing but decline for sixty-five and a half years!”

  “In that case, I want to see you decline some more. Go on, decline.”

  “You can’t say that, there is no such thing as an imperative of the verb ‘to decline.’”

  “I really couldn’t care less. But if the verb ‘decline’ bothers you with its lack of imperative, I know another one that will work very well: crawl.”

  “This is terrible, I’m suffocating, I’m going to die!”

  “Well, well. I thought you looked on death as a good thing.”

  “And it is, but I don’t want to die right away.”

  “No? Why delay such a happy event?”

  “Because I’ve just realized something, and I want to tell you before I die.

  “All right. I will agree to turn you over onto your back, but on one condition: first of all you have to crawl at my feet.”

  “I promise you I’ll try.”

  “I’m not asking you to try, I’m ordering you to crawl. If you don’t manage, I’ll let you die.”

  “All right, I’ll crawl.”

  An
d the huge sweaty mass dragged itself along six feet of carpet, puffing like a locomotive.

  “This is positively orgasmic for you, I suppose?”

  “It is indeed. All the more so knowing that I’m avenging someone. I have the impression that if I look through your hypertrophied body I can see a slim silhouette which, through your suffering, is finding relief.”

  “Theatrical and ridiculous.”

  “You don’t like it? Do you want to crawl some more?”

  “I swear to you, it’s time to turn me over. I can feel my soul departing, insofar as I have one.”

  “How surprising. If you’re going to die anyway, isn’t a fine assassination better than a slow, cancerous death?”

  “You call this a fine assassination?”

  “In the eyes of the assassin, murder is always beautiful. It’s the victim who has cause for complaint. Right at this moment, are you really interested in the artistic value of your death? You must admit you aren’t.”

  “I admit I’m not. Turn me over, I beg you.”

  The journalist grabbed hold of the mass by his hip and armpit and swung him over on his back, grunting with the effort. The fat man was breathing convulsively. It took several minutes for his terrorized face to regain a measure of serenity.

  “So what is this thing that you have just discovered and that you are so eager to share with me?”

  “I wanted to tell you: that was a rotten thing to have to go through.”

  “And then?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “What do you mean? Is that all you have to say? It has taken you eighty-three years to find out what everyone has known since birth?”

  “Well you see, I didn’t know. I had to be about to die to understand how horrible it is—not the death we all know nothing about, but the very instant of dying. It is a very rotten thing. Maybe other people have the necessary foresight, but I didn’t.”

  “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

  “No. Until today, I always thought that death was death, period. It was neither good nor bad, it was a disappearance. I didn’t realize that there was a difference between that death and the moment of one’s death, which is unbearable. Yes, it’s very strange: I’m still not afraid of death, but from now on I will sweat with fear at the thought of what I’ll have to go through, even if it only lasts a second.”

  “Are you ashamed, then?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Shit! Must I make you crawl again?”

  “Let me explain. Yes, I am ashamed at the thought of having inflicted that passage upon Léopoldine. But I persist in believing, or at least hoping, that she was granted an exemption. The fact remains that I examined her face during her brief death throes, and I saw no anxiety there.”

  “What wonderful illusions you’ve found to ease your conscience.”

  “I don’t give a damn about my conscience. My quest is on a higher level.”

  “Dear Lord.”

  “You said the word: yes, perhaps to certain exceptional human beings Our Lord allows a passage without suffering or anxiety, an ecstatic death. I think that Léopoldine was granted such a miracle.”

  “Listen, your story is already despicable enough as it is; do you want to make it even more grotesque by invoking God, ecstasy, and miracles? Perhaps you imagine you have perpetrated some sort of mystical murder?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You are completely out to lunch. Do you want to know the reality of this mystical murder, you sick pervert? Do you know the first thing a body does after it dies? It pisses, Monsieur, and shits whatever remains in its intestines.”

  “You are repugnant. Cease your comedy, you’re bothering me.”

  “I bother you, do I? Going around murdering people, that doesn’t bother you, but the idea that one of your victims might piss and shit, that’s intolerable, isn’t it? And the water in your lake must have been very murky, when you went to fish out your cousin’s corpse, if you didn’t see the contents of her intestines rising to the surface.”

  “Hold your tongue, for pity’s sake!”

  “Pity for whom? For an assassin who is not even capable of assuming the biological consequences of his crime?”

  “I swear to you, I swear to you that it didn’t happen the way you say it did.”

  “Oh, really? So Léopoldine had neither bladder nor intestines?”

  “Yes she did, but . . . it didn’t happen the way you say it did.”

  “Let’s just say, rather, that you can’t stand the idea.”

  “The idea is unbearable, indeed, but it did not happen the way you say it did.”

  “Do you intend to go on repeating that until you die? You’d do better to explain.”

  “Alas, I cannot explain my conviction; however, I know that it did not happen the way you say it did.”

  “Do you know what they call this type of conviction? It is called autosuggestion.”

  “Mademoiselle, since I am unable to make myself understood, would you allow me to approach the question from a different angle?”

  “Do you really believe there is a different angle?”

  “I fear I do, yes.”

  “Well then, go ahead; we’ve gotten this far.”

  “Mademoiselle, have you ever loved someone?”

  “I don’t believe it! The lonely hearts column!”

  “No, Mademoiselle. If you had ever loved someone, you would know that that has nothing to do with it. Poor Nina, you have never been in love.”

  “Don’t talk about stuff like this with me, do you mind? And then don’t call me Nina, it makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. There’s something revolting about hearing my name said by an obese murderer.”

  “What a pity. And yet I really did want to call you Nina. What are you afraid of, Nina?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything. You disgust me, that’s all. And stop calling me Nina.”

  “What a pity. I need to call you something.”

  “Why?”

  “My poor young lady, you are so hardened, so mature—but in some respects you are still like a newborn lamb. Don’t you know it means, when a person needs to say a name? Do you imagine that I feel the same need for just anybody? Never, my child. If, deep within, one feels the desire to say a person’s name, it is because one loves that person.”

  The journalist looked at him, speechless.

  “Yes, Nina. I love you, Nina.”

  “Have you finished with this utter nonsense?”

  “It’s the truth, Nina. I had a first inkling of it a little while ago, and then I thought I had made a mistake, but I have not made a mistake. This, more than anything, is what I had to tell you when I was dying. I think I can no longer live without you, Nina. I love you.”

  “Wake up, imbecile.”

  “I have never been more lucid.”

  “Lucidity hardly becomes you.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I no longer matter, I am all yours.”

  “Stop your raving, Monsieur Tach. I know very well that you don’t love me. There is nothing about me that could possibly be to your liking.”

  “That is what I thought, too, Nina, but this love is far above all that.”

  “For pity’s sake, don’t tell me you love me for my soul, or I shall laugh so hard I’ll cry.”

  “No, this love is greater still.”

  “I find you very ethereal, all of a sudden.”

  “Don’t you understand that it is possible to love someone outside of any known reference?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a pity, Nina, and yet I do love you, with all the mystery the verb suggests.”

  “Stop it! Let me guess: you’re looking for a decent ending for your novel, isn’t tha
t it?”

  “If you only knew how I’ve lost interest in that novel over the last few minutes!”

  “I don’t believe it for a second. You are obsessed by the unfinished nature of it. You were disgusted upon learning that I have no personal connection with you, so now you’re trying to fabricate a personal link from scratch, by inventing some last-minute love story. You have such a hatred of insignificance that you could make up the most enormous lies to give meaning to something that will never have any.”

  “You are wrong, Nina! Love has no meaning, and that is why it is sacred.”

  “Don’t try to fool me with your rhetoric. You love no one, except for Léopoldine’s corpse. You should be ashamed, moreover, to defile the only love of your life by saying such outlandish things to me.”

  “I am not defiling that love, on the contrary. By loving you, I am proving that Léopoldine taught me to love.”

  “Sophistry.”

  “It would be sophistry, if love did not obey rules that are completely estranged from those of logic.”

  “Listen, Monsieur Tach, you may go ahead and write such nonsense in your novel if it amuses you, but stopped using me as a guinea pig.”

  “Nina, it does not amuse me. Love is not for amusement. Love serves no purpose other than love.”