Context
from Trio
Robert Pinget
The curé of Fantoine is an amateur. He
hasn’t much of a gift for God. He’s bored. He subscribes to theater
magazines. He dips into the fashionable authors. He gleans in learned
vineyards. He passes for a scholar, but he’s a rotter. The
Fantoine belfry dates from the ninth century. It is extremely stylish.
It’s a pity that it goes for walks at night. It can’t read. It visits
the church, the village, the environs. You get used to its moods. The inhabitants of Fantoine are hopeless. They drink. They work. They drink. Their children are epileptic, their wives pregnant. The
Fantoine postman is a wag. When he goes to the café he orders a
vermouth. The proprietor asks him: “Dry?” He answers: “No; wet.” It’s
always the same. When he’s finished it he goes out, saying: “Love and
kisses, see you soon.” An epistolary convention. The Fantoine
crocodiles are stuffed. The cows are made of whitewood. The haylofts
mumble. At midday, they shout from one street to the next, they
strangle the hens, they cut the calves’ throats. But the curé
of Fantoine is bored. Luckily, someone from Agapa-la-Ville takes an
interest in him and sends him a book on Cambodia. The curé buries
himself in it. He’s no longer bored. He teaches himself the Khmer
language. He says: “Ban, La’a, Ke mien, You, Kandiet, Pisa bay, Pisa
Kraya.” Likewise Khmer mythology. He says: “Vishnu, Lakshmana, Rama,
Raksava Viradha, Sita, Hanuman.” Likewise Khmer art. He says: “Angkor
Wat, Bayon, Neak Pean, Naga, Nang Sbek, Ram-Vong, Ram Khbach, Sayam.” The Fantoine belfry no longer goes for walks at night. It listens to the curé divagating. The inhabitants of Fantoine become interesting: they ape the royal dancing girls. The
forest of Fantoine becomes populated with yak demons, with Mrinh
Hangveal spirits, with Banra trees. Paddyfields cover the country. The
Mekong river carries alluvial deposits. The sacrilege is complete. It was at this point that the curé of Fantoine made a mistake during the Consecration and said: “Hic est enim corpus Yak” . . . A gigantic demon sprang out of the Host, dispatched the curé, and pulverized the church. And Vishnu the Eternal deigned to smile. Ubiquity “One
day, a certain person happened to be in a certain place–Manhattan,
let’s say.” No, that won’t do. We must say: “A horse dealer happened to
be in Bucharest just at the moment when . . .” I’d prefer: “In
Vaugirard, one rainy day, my wife . . .” No. The simplest is: Once
upon a time sometime, in Manhattan, a person who was a horse dealer in
Bucharest just at the moment when Vaugirard was annexed to Paris, in
the rain, my wife . . . The result is that people don’t
understand. If they are determined to look for a meaning they’ll more
or less grasp that it’s a question of one and the same person. Now such
is not the case. It’s a question of several people who were each
several persons, in different places at the same moment. It’s
impossible to say this synthetically and with precision. One can only
suggest synchronism by enumerating and linking propositions together by
adverbial phrases. But the effect would be spoiled. A story must make
an immediate impression. Never mind, to hell with elegance, I’ll tell
it just the same. One day in 1860, the date of the annexation
of Vaugirard to Paris, at the very moment of the signature of the
document, a lady who lived in Manhattan took the boat for Bucharest
where she had been working as a horse dealer for two years, and waited
for me near the Medici fountain. At the same moment a
Bucharest horse dealer, a real flesh and blood horse dealer who had
lived in the town for two years and who was not to budge from it until
his death, left Manhattan and waited for me in the rain in Paris. At
the same moment my future wife, who was waiting for me in the
Luxembourg Gardens and was furious because I was late, sold a packhorse
in Bucharest and left Manhattan. So far, it’s clear. I must
now say that the person from Manhattan was going to Bucharest to visit
the horse dealer. The horse dealer was waiting for her. My future wife,
at the fountain, was waiting for herself between the two of them. When
the person had arrived in Bucharest and gone into the horse dealer’s
premises—the latter was therefore visiting himself—the person kissed
herself on the mouth, my wife did both (I was married by this time),
and all three were in my bed. I may add that my wife was the
person from Manhattan, whom I met six months later and whom I had
arranged to meet in the Luxembourg Gardens on the day of the annexation
of Vaugirard. Given that while she was waiting for me she was thinking
of her departure from Manhattan and of her Bucharest horse dealer, it
follows on the other hand that she must have been present at the
fountain six months later, for she was madly in love with me. Love does
things like that, and many others, that’s a platitude. As for the horse
dealer, he knew beforehand that he’d be jealous six months later.
Hatred has the same effect: so he was present at the Medici fountain
right from the start. My wife and her lover, when they met in Bucharest
and found themselves at the same time in my bed . . . But I won’t dwell
on it, it’s crystal-clear.
