The Elegance of the Hedgehog (18 page)

I
am a fine one to reproach those phenomenologists for their catless autism: I have devoted my life to the quest of timelessness.

But those who seek eternity find solitude.

“Yes,” he says as he takes my bag, “I agree. It is one of the sparest paintings, yet it contains a great deal of harmony.”

Monsieur Ozu’s place is very grand and very beautiful. Manuela’s stories had led me to expect a Japanese interior, but although there are sliding doors and bonsai and a thick black carpet edged with gray and objects that are clearly Asian—a coffee table in dark lacquer or, all along an impressive row of windows, bamboo blinds drawn at various levels, giving the room its Eastern atmosphere—there are also armchairs and a sofa, consoles, lamps, and bookshelves, all clearly European. It is very . . . elegant. Just as Manuela and Jacinthe Rosen had noted, however, there is nothing superfluous. Nor is it Spartan, or empty, as I had imagined, transposing the decors from Ozu’s films to a level that would be more luxurious yet identical for its sobriety, so characteristic of this strange civilization.

“Come,” says Monsieur Ozu, “let’s not stay here, it’s too formal. We’re going to have dinner in the kitchen. Anyway, I’m the one who’s cooking.”

I see that he is wearing an apple green apron over a chestnut colored crew neck sweater and beige linen trousers. On his feet are black leather slippers.

I trot along behind him to the kitchen. Oh gracious me. In such a setting I would cook every day, even for Leo. Nothing could turn out ordinary; even opening a can of Whiskas would be a real treat.

“I am very proud of my kitchen,” says Monsieur Ozu with simplicity.

“And so you should be,” I reply, without a trace of sarcasm.

Everything is white and pale wood, with long worktops and tall dressers filled with blue, black, and white dishes and bowls. In the center is the range with oven and hotplates, a sink with three basins, and a bar seating area with comfortable stools, where I take a seat facing Monsieur Ozu, who is busy at the stove. He has set a small bottle of saké down before me, with two beautiful little cups in crazed blue porcelain.

“I don’t know if you are familiar with Japanese cuisine?”

“Not very.”

A wave of hope lifts me up. It may have become apparent thus far that we have hardly exchanged a dozen words, and all the while I am acting as if I were an old friend of Monsieur Ozu’s, while he stands there cooking in his apple green apron, after a hypnotic Dutch episode that elicited no commentary and is now filed in the chapter of forgotten things.

Perhaps this evening will simply be an initiation into Japanese cuisine. A plague on Tolstoy and all my doubts: Monsieur Ozu, a new resident who is as yet ill-acquainted with hierarchy, has invited his concierge for an exotic dinner. They will converse about sashimi and soy noodles.

Could there be a more innocent occasion?

And then, catastrophe.

T
o begin with, I must confess that I do have a small bladder. How else can I explain that the least little cup of tea sends me running to the ladies’ and a whole teapot will have me repeating the operation in proportion to its contents? Manuela is a regular camel: she holds what she drinks for hours on end, happily nibbling away at her florentines without ever moving from her chair, while I find myself making endless pathetic tos and fros to the bathroom. But that is when I am at home: in the space of my six hundred square feet the toilet is never very far away, easily located in a familiar place.

And here I am now and my tiny bladder has just reminded me of its existence. Painfully aware that I have imbibed liters of tea that very afternoon, I cannot ignore its message: reduced autonomy.

How does one deal with this situation in polite society?

Where is the can
?
does not strike me as the most fitting option.

On the other hand:

Would you kindly tell me where the place is
?
, however my tactful efforts not to name
the place
, could be easily misunderstood and, consequently, merely exacerbate my embarrassment.

I need to pee, while sober and informative, is not something you say at table to someone you do not know.

Where is the toilet?
is problematic. It’s a cold request, with something of the musty provincial restaurant about it.

This is not bad:

Where is the bathroom?
This I like, because the terminology has something innocent and welcoming about it, conjuring images of lavender-scented bubbles. But it nevertheless has ineffable connotations evoking bodily functions.

At that point I am struck by a flash of genius.

“Ramen is prepared using noodles and bouillon, it’s Chinese in origin, but in Japan it is eaten regularly at lunchtime,” says Monsieur Ozu, lifting up an impressive quantity of noodles which he has just dipped into cold water.

“Excuse me, where is the restroom?” is the only reply I can find to give him.

I will grant you that this is somewhat abrupt.

“Oh, forgive me, I forgot to show you,” says Monsieur Ozu, perfectly naturally. “The door behind you, then the second on the right in the hallway.”

Can’t everything always be this simple?

It would seem not.

Panties or van Gogh?

T
oday with Maman we went to the sales on the rue Saint-Honoré. Hell on earth. There were lines outside some of the boutiques. And I think you can picture what sort of boutiques you have on the rue Saint-Honoré: that people can throw themselves so tenaciously into getting a scarf or a pair of gloves on sale that even with the markdown will still cost as much as a van Gogh just floors me. But these ladies go at it with an enraged passion. And even with a certain lack of elegance.

But all the same my day wasn’t a total loss, because I was able to observe a very interesting movement—although, alas, it was anything but esthetic. Very intense, however—that it was! And funny, too. Or tragic, I’m not really sure. Since I started this journal, I guess I’ve lowered my sights, in fact. My original idea was to discover the harmony in the movement of the world and here I am about to describe well-bred ladies squabbling over a pair of lace panties. But anyway . . . I think that in any event I didn’t fully believe in it. So while I’m at it, I may as well just have some fun . . .

Here’s what happened: with Maman we went into a boutique of fine lingerie. Fine lingerie is already an interesting name. What else would it be—coarse lingerie? Anyway, what it means, in fact, is sexy lingerie; you won’t find your grandmother’s sturdy old cotton drawers in a place like this. But since it’s the rue Saint-Honoré, obviously, it’s sexy-chic, with hand-stitched lace bottoms, silk thongs and cashmere nightgowns. We didn’t have to stand in line to get in, but it would have been better if we had because inside the boutique we were crammed shoulder to shoulder. It was like being inside a wringer. Cherry on top: Maman immediately went into ecstasies when she started digging through a pile of underwear in really dicey colors (red and black, or petrol blue). I wondered where I could hide and find shelter while she looked for (faint hope) some flannelette pajamas, and I threaded my way toward the back of the fitting rooms. I wasn’t alone: there was a man, the only man, and he looked as dejected as Neptune when he’s missed a shot at Athena’s hindquarters. That’s the down side of “I love you dear.” The poor guy gets dragged off to a steamy session of trying on chic underwear and finds himself in enemy territory, with thirty females in a trance who step on his feet and look daggers at him whenever he tries to park his cumbersome male carcass somewhere. As for his lovely lady friend, she has been metamorphosed into a vengeful fury, ready to kill for a fuchsia tanga.

I shot him a glance full of sympathy, to which he responded with the expression of a hunted beast. From where I stood I had an unrestricted view of the entire shop and of Maman who was drooling over some sort of teeny-tiny bra made of white lace (at least there was some lace) and huge purple flowers. My mother is forty-five, a few pounds overweight, but the big purple flower doesn’t frighten her off; the sobriety and chic of a uniform beige, on the other hand, would leave her paralyzed with terror. Anyway, there’s Maman painstakingly extirpating this mini floral-bra from the rack, and she thinks it’s her size, and she reaches for the matching panties, three racks lower down. She is tugging on them with determination but suddenly she frowns: at the other end of the panties there is another lady, who is also tugging on the panties and frowning. They look at each other, look at the rack, and realize that these panties are the last survivors of a long morning of sales: they prepare to do battle, each armed with her most ingratiating smile.

And now the stage is set for an interesting movement: a pair of panties at one hundred and thirty euros does not amount to much more than a few centimeters of ultra fine lace. So you have to smile at the other woman, hold firm to the panties, and pull them toward you but without tearing them. I’ll tell you straight out: if in our world the laws of physics are constant, this will not be possible. After a few seconds of unsuccessful endeavor, the two ladies say amen to Newton but don’t give up. The war will have to be fought using other means—diplomacy (one of Papa’s favorite words). And this results in the following interesting movement: pretend to be unaware of pulling firmly on the panties, while asking for them with faux courtesy. So here are Maman and the other lady and all of a sudden it’s as though they have each lost their right hand, which is in fact clinging to the panties. It’s as if the panties did not exist, as if Maman and the lady were chatting quite calmly about a pair of panties that were still on the rack, that neither one would ever dream of trying to expropriate by force. Where has my right hand gone? Poof! Vanished! Disappeared! Time for diplomacy!

As everybody knows, diplomacy always fails when there is an imbalance of power. No one’s ever seen the stronger party accept the other party’s diplomatic proposals. As a result, the negotiations which began in unanimity with, “Oh, I think I was quicker than you, chère Madame,” don’t get you very far. When I went up to Maman, they had reached the point of, “I won’t let go of them,” and it’s easy enough to believe both warring factions.

And of course Maman lost: when I came up next to her, she remembered that she is a respectable mother and that it would not be possible for her, unless she wanted to sacrifice all dignity before my eyes, to send her left fist smack into the other woman’s face. So she regained the use of her right hand, and let go of the panties. End result: one left with the panties, the other with the bra. Maman was in a foul mood all through dinner. When Papa asked what was going on she replied, “You’re a member of parliament, you should pay more attention to the degradation of people’s attitudes and civil behavior.”

But let’s get back to the interesting movement: two women in full possession of their mental capacities who suddenly become totally unfamiliar with a part of their body. It results in a very odd spectacle: as if there were a break in reality, a black hole opening up in space-time, like in a real sci-fi novel. A negative movement, a sort of hollow gesture, in a way.

So I said to myself, if you can pretend to ignore the fact that you’ve got a right hand, what else can you pretend to ignore? Can you have a negative heart, a hollow soul?

P
hase One of the operation goes smoothly.

I find the second door on the right in the corridor without being tempted to open the seven other doors, my bladder is that small, and complete phase two with a relief untarnished by embarrassment. It would have been cavalier to question Monsieur Ozu about his bathroom. No mere
bathroom
could be white as snow, from the walls to the toilet bowl, by way of an immaculate toilet seat on which one hardly dares be seated for fear of sullying it. All this whiteness, however, is tempered—so that the whole business does not seem too clinical—by a sun-bright yellow carpet that is thick, deep, silky, satiny and caressing, and that rescues the place from any operating room atmosphere. From these observations I conceive a great deal of respect for Monsieur Ozu. The clean simplicity of white, with no marble or embellishments—a common weakness among the privileged classes, who seek to make anything trivial seem luxurious—and the gentle softness of a sun-bright carpet are, as far as toilet fixtures go, the very prerequisites of consonance. What are we looking for when we go there? A bit of light, to keep us from thinking of all those dark depths swirling together below us, and something soft on the floor so that we can get our task accomplished without doing penance by freezing our feet, particularly when we go there at night.

The toilet paper, too, is a candidate for sainthood. I find this sign of wealth far more convincing than any Maserati or Jaguar. What toilet paper does for people’s derrières contributes considerably more to the abyss between the classes than a good many external signs. The paper at Monsieur Ozu’s abode—thick, soft, gentle and delicately perfumed—is there to lavish respect upon a part of the body that, more than any other, is partial to such respect. How much for one roll? I wonder, as I press the middle flush button, which is crossed with two lotus flowers; my tiny bladder, despite its lack of autonomy, can hold a fair amount. One lotus flower seems a bit skimpy, three would be narcissistic.

And then something dreadful happens.

A monstrous racket assails my ears, practically striking me down on the spot. What is terrifying is that I cannot tell where it is coming from. It is not the flush, I cannot even hear the flush, it is coming from above me and right down upon me. My heart is pounding wildly. You know what the three alternatives are: in the face of danger, fight, flee, or freeze. I freeze. I would gladly flee but suddenly I am no longer capable of unlocking the door. A number of hypotheses spring to mind, but offer no explanation. Did I press the wrong button, misjudging the amount produced—such presumptuousness, such
pride
, Renée, two lotus flowers for such a ridiculous contribution—and consequently I am being punished by the earsplitting thunder of divine justice? Am I guilty of overindulging—of
luxuriating
—in the voluptuousness of the act in a place that inspires voluptuousness, when we should actually think of it as impure? Did I succumb to envy in coveting this princely ass-wipe, and have therefore been roundly reminded of my deadly sin? Have my lumpen manual laborer’s fingers, succumbing to the effect of some unconscious
wrath
, abused the subtle mechanism of the lotus button, thereby unleashing a cataclysm in the plumbing that threatens the entire fourth floor with seismic collapse?

I am still trying with all my strength to flee, but my hands are incapable of obeying orders. I fiddle with the copper latch which, if correctly operated, ought to set me free, but nothing of the sort occurs.

At that very moment, I am convinced I have gone mad, or have arrived in heaven, because the unholy racket, indistinguishable thus far, now becomes clearer and, unthinkably, sounds not unlike Mozart.

Sounds, in fact, like the
Confutatis
in Mozart’s
Requiem
.

Confutatis maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis!

I am hearing beautiful, lyrical voices.

I have gone mad.

“Madame Michel, is everything all right?” asks a voice from behind the door, it is Monsieur Ozu’s voice, or, more likely, that of Saint Peter at the gates of Purgatory.

“I . . . I can’t open the door.”

I have been doing everything in my power to convince Monsieur Ozu of my mental deficiency.

And I have succeeded.

“Perhaps you are turning the knob in the wrong direction,” suggests the voice of Saint Peter, respectfully.

I ponder this information for a moment while it makes its tortuous way to the circuits that will process it.

I turn the knob in the other direction.

The door unlocks.

The
Confutatis
comes to an abrupt end. A delicious wave of silence washes over my grateful body.

“I . . . ” I say to Monsieur Ozu, for there is no one else here, “I . . . well . . . You know, the
Requiem
?”

I should have named my cat Badsyntax.

“Oh, I imagine you were frightened!” he says. “I should have warned you. This is a Japanese thing . . . my daughter’s idea to import it. When you flush, it sets off the music, it’s . . . more pleasant, you see?”

What I see, above all, is that we are standing in the hallway outside the toilet, in a situation that is blasting to smithereens all world records for ridiculousness.

“Oh . . . ” I say, “uh . . . I was surprised.” (And I make no mention of all my deadly sins exposed in broad daylight.)

“You are not the first,” says Monsieur Ozu kindly and, if I am not mistaken, with a trace of amusement on his upper lip.

“Mozart’s
Requiem
. . . in the bathroom . . . it’s rather . . . surprising,” I answer, in order to regain my composure, then I am immediately horrified by the turn I have given the conversation, and in the meanwhile we are still standing in the hallway, facing each other, arms dangling, uncertain what to do next.

Monsieur Ozu looks at me.

I look at him.

Something snaps in my chest, with a decisive little click, like a valve opening and shutting again. Then I notice, helplessly, that my body is trembling slightly and—it never rains but it pours—the same incipient trembling has gained the shoulders of the man standing opposite me.

We look at each other, hesitating.

Then a sort of faint, gentle ooh ooh ooh escapes from Monsieur Ozu’s lips.

I realize that the same muffled but irrepressible ooh ooh ooh is rising in my own throat.

Both of us are going ooh ooh ooh very quietly, looking at each other incredulously.

Then Monsieur Ozu’s ooh ooh ooh grows more intense.

My own ooh ooh ooh begins to resemble an alarm signal.

We are still looking at each other, exhaling ever more unrestrained ooh ooh oohs from our lungs. Every time they begin to subside, we look at each other and are off on the next round. My guts are paralyzed, and tears are streaming down Monsieur Ozu’s cheeks.

How long do we stand there laughing convulsively by the door to the bathroom? I have no idea. But it is long enough to deplete us of all our energy. We exhale a few more exhausted ooh ooh oohs and then, more fatigued than satiated, put on a straight face.

“Let’s go back to the living room,” says Monsieur Ozu, quicker than me to regain the use of his respiratory faculties.