A Void (12 page)

its cord, twisting back, spun about his own body. Moby Dick, swirling

around, now swam straight for him.

"Till my dying day your blood is all I shall thirst for!" was Ahab's

cry. "From my Stygian limbo I shall assail you! In my abomination

I shall spit on you, spit on you, accurs'd Grampus, animal accurs'd

till Doomsday!"

His own giddily spinning harpoon snagging him, causing him to

thrash about in agony, Ahab's fall was nigh; and, soaring upwards,

Moby Dick caught him on its back and sank out of sight.

All around, yawning in mid-Atlantic, was a livid chasm, a colossal

canyon, a whirlpool sucking down into its foaming spiral, now a sailor's

body, now a harpoon cast in vain, now a capsizing boat, and now, at

last, Ahab's own forlorn ship which its captain's damnation was turn-

ing into a floating coffin . . .

Apocalypsis cum figuris:
as always, though, a survivor will hold out,

a Jonah who will claim that, on that day, his damnation, his oblivion,

72

was writ in plain sight in a Grampus's blank iris - blank, blank,

blank, as a tabula rasa, as a void!

Ah, Moby Dick! Ah, moody Bic!

Almost all
tout-Paris
turns out to mourn Hassan Ibn Abbou's

passing and accompany his coffin to its burial ground - or so

you might think from a column of VIPs so long it holds up traffic

for two hours from Quai Branly to Faubourg Saint-Martin. As

conspicuous in this as in any crowd, Amanda von Comodoro-

Rivadavia stands apart, chatting to Baron Urbain d'Agostino.

Olga sobs unconsolably. Ottaviani is just as surly as usual.

Amaury Conson, still grasping at straws, still struggling to throw

an inkling of light on Anton's "Moby Dick", is lost in his

thoughts.

Hassan Ibn Abbou's tomb is in a columbarium in Antony, a

suburb of Paris; and wholly charming it is, too, juxtaposing trans-

lucid quartz with onyx as blindingly brilliant as a South African

diamond, built up from a solid brass block with incrustations of

iridium and bristling with a galaxy of official cordons and chains,

of ribands, garlands and stars, posthumous honours by which

many a king, many a maharajah, sought publicly to display an

unconditional admiration for Ibn Abbou - Croix du Combattant,

Victoria Cross, Nichan Iftikhar, Ours Royal du Labrador and

Grand'Croix du Python Pontifical.

Six orators in all hold forth. First, Fran^ois-Armand d'Arson-

val, in his capacity as official administrator of a Civic Tribunal

that Hassan had thought out from A to Z; following him, and

acting for a major Anglo-Iranian bank, Victor, Baron d'Aiguillon

(no vulgar factotum, Hassan was for long his loyal right-hand

man); an Imam from Agadir who lauds his patriotism, his nation-

alistic passion for Morocco; Lord Gadsby V. Wright (Hassan

was his assistant at Oxford and by vigorous string-pulling would

obtain his nomination as Auctor Honoris Causa), who charms

his auditors with an account — so high-flown, so orotund, it's

almost Johnsonian - of his confidant's
curriculum studiorum
; and

73

Raymond Q. Knowall, who talks of Hassan's spasmodic though

always cordial association with OuLiPo.

Finally it's Carcopino's turn, Carcopino, a luminary of
I'lnsti-

tut
, that mortuary of Immortals on Paris's Quai Conti, who starts:

"Six springs ago Hassan Ibn Abbou won a uninominal 3-ballot

poll by 25 out of 26, a poll that was to stir up a commotion for

a day or two - but, as I say, voting in favour of Hassan Ibn

Abbou was practically unanimous, so our organisation thought

to appoint him to a subcommission of PC-IMAM (Patrimonial

Corpus of Inscriptions in Morocco's Adas Mountains), a fairly

lowly position but which had its own distinction, won by Hassan

on account of his polymathic study of an almost unknown tumu-

lus (and nobody who did know it could work out its import)

from an
oppidum civium romanorum
which a scholar from Munich,

a Judaist in flight from Austria's
A nschluss,
had found in diggings

at Thugga (or, as it's nowadays known, Dougga). It's said that

it withstood many attacks by Jugurtha, it's said that Juba Afri-

canus 'did pass a night by it' (
Titus Livius dixit)
and that Trajan

had a villa built on it for Adrianus, his son by adoption."

Carcopino, though, citing Piganiol's biography, affirms that

this is only a rumour.

Notwithstanding that Trajan has nothing much to do with

Hassan Ibn Abbou, a handful of his auditors warmly applaud.

For, although talking in a low, unsonorous, almost soporific mur-

mur, our Immortal knows how to grip his public with his oratory.

Now, totally impromptu, Carcopino starts painting a vivid

word-portrait of his companion. "Hassan Ibn Abbou was tragic-

ally cut down in his maturity, and his passing is a loss not only

to that
Institut
for which I am proud to talk today but also, most

profoundly, to our Nation — and it's a loss not only of a man, of

a scholar, but also of his vast scholarship and, which is just as

important, his unfailing practical know-how. For nobody could

match Hassan's capacity for conciliating romanisation and bar-

barisation, for coming to grips with an ambiguous if highly

significant association linking two outwardly opposing notions,

7 4

so constituting, so instituting, an insight out of which, poor

orphan as it is on this tragic day of days, will unfold, by that

important, nay, by that paramount, innovation of Hassan Ibn

Abbou's, will unfold, I say, a truly dazzling tomorrow. Faith -

that is what all of us now must put our trust in, faith in that

lowly grain that Hassan Ibn Abbou was first to plant, that acorn

of thought that will grow into an oak and thus grant us, and for

always, immunity from hardship," Carcopino says in conclusion,

his vocal chords almost cracking, his auditors sympathising with

him, sobbing along with him, sharing his pain, won round by

his oratorical skills and not daring to applaud.

To Amaury Conson's disgust, though, a man standing not far

off is actually smiling. But this individual, tall, of stocky build

and sporting a chic raglan coat, cut as only British tailors know

how, has a candid, jovial and, in a word, chummy look about

him, oozing "warmth and charmth" (to borrow a famous

Goldwynism), that soon disarms him. Amaury walks up to him

and asks point-blank:

"Pardon my intrusion, but may I know what's amusing you?"

"If you must know, I'm smiling at an omission in his oration

that I find most significant."

"An omission?" gasps Amaury, who cannot mask his agitation.

"About six months ago, for his CNRS Commission Ph.D.,

Hassan Ibn Abbou was author of a succinct but, in my own

opinion, slipshod monograph on
jus latinum
, which is to say,

Latin law, a topic that our Moroccan, notwithstanding his lack

of rigour on this occasion, could claim to know backwards. This

monograph of his sought to focus on a particular point, a point

so baffling it had thrown all you highbrows into a tizzy: to wit,

what obligation, if any, bound a city, a town or a rural district

to allow its population (rustics, occasionally shopfolk) a status

abjuring any kind of distinction that had, ipso facto, a Roman

outrank a Saharan nomad? Although not wholly satisfactory,

notably in its conclusions, his work, confirming Marc

Bloch's intuition vis-a-vis Donjon-Vassal's study, Mauss's on

75

Chaman-Tribu unification and also Chomsky's on that famous

Insignificant-Significant junction, was ironclad proof that no such

obligation was binding (it was at most an option among many),

thus proving in its turn that any analysis (from a
soi-disant
dog-

matic notion of Law) of a substratum which would contain colon-

isation, romanisation or barbarisation was automatically illusory.

It was, thus, important to avoid any sort of
a priori
thinking and,

most of all, to distinguish what about it was truly infrastructural.

It was a paradoxical situation: Karl Marx an Immortal! Nobody

thought to find such a day coming to pass. But a majority of

jurors had no difficulty swallowing it, and it was only Carcopino

(known at Quai Conti as Cola Pinada or Copacabana) who was

said to cry out 'Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!'"

"But what about that oration?" murmurs Amaury.

"I know. I admit I found that surprising. I must say I thought

our Immortal would slip in a handful of cryptic allusions to it.

But not at all!"

"Shhh!" says Olga, who has stood apart from this discussion.

"It's winding up now."

This man formally doffs his panama, that man his shako, a third

his homburg. An old fogy of an admiral, obviously gaga, starts

saluting nobody in particular. Ottaviani bashfully sniffs into his

cotton hanky. Olga sobs again. Paparazzi rush about, snapping

away at Amanda von Comodoro-Rivadavia who, with pinpoint

timing, falls into a swoon in Urbain d'Agostino's awaiting arms.

Now, first, a sacristan in a bright canary
cappa magna
and

waving a solid gold thingamajig . . . urn, you know, that sprink-

ling thing, walks forward; following him, a trio of chaplains

brandishing a slightly shopworn crucifix with its kitschy canopy

of swishily rusding frills; finally six human caryatids hoisting up

a mahogany coffin by its shiny brass knobs.

A clumsy pratfall - and Hassan's coffin slips, falls, its lid swings

up. Holy Christmas! No Hassan Ibn Abbou!

* * *

Talk of kicking up a row! What with diplomats accusing cops,

cops accusing Matignon, Matignon accusing Maison Roblot,

Maison Roblot accusing Maison Borniol, Maison Borniol

accusing - try to work this out if you can - Foch Hospital,

Foch Hospital accusing Carcopino, Carcopino accusing Baron

d'Aiguillon's Anglo-Iranian Bank and that bank accusing Pompi-

dou, Pompidou compromising Giscard, Giscard blaming Papon,

Papon in his turn lodging a strong complaint against Foccard

. . . it's a daisy-chain that could go on ad infinitum!

"I can't stand it!" says Ottavio Ottaviani. "First Ibn Barka,

now Ibn Hassan. Ibn forbid a third such calamity!"

It's a difficult job hushing up such a murky affair, but within

days a curtain of fog and iron, as Winston Churchill would say,

is drawn down tight. Nobody claims to know anything at all of

Anton Vowl's abduction - if abduction it was. And now, simi-

larly, nobody claims to know anything at all of Hassan Ibn

Abbou's body-snatching.

7 7

III

DOUGLAS HAIG

C L I F F O R D

10

In which an amazing thing occurs to an unwary

basso profundo

A day or two on - with, for company, that curious individual

who had had such an illuminating talk with him at Hassan Ibn

Abbou's burial - Amaury Conson pays a call on Olga who, laid

low with both a sniffly cold and a crippling bout of lumbago, is

vacationing in a small family manor at Azincourt.

It's by train that our two protagonists go first to Arras.

"In days of old," says Amaury's companion in a nostalgic drawl,

"if you had an inclination, say, or an obligation, to go to Dinard

or Pornic, Arras or Cambrai, your only option was to climb into

a mail coach, usually a wobbly old jalopy. As your trip would

last from four to six days, you would try to ward off monotony

by chatting to your coachman, taking an occasional sip of brandy

from a flask, skimming through a radical tract, airing your

opinion on this, that and virtually anything you could think of,

talking shop, narrating an amusing play by Sardou and holding

forth on a cutthroat's trial that had all Paris in its grip (notwith-

standing his prodigious oratorical skills, you'd attack this

cutthroat's QC, who, disparaging all his antagonist's accusations,

alibis and affidavits as a put-up job, sought to disclaim, in toto,

what was almost cast-iron proof of guilt and also vilify a poor,

law-abiding pharmacist from whom our assassin had bought his

poison, laudanum; you'd find fault with this or that juror; nor

had that shifty procurator struck you as wholly trustworthy). You

would gratify your company with ironic
bon mots
on political

topics, wittily puncturing Du Paty du Clam's corruption, as also

8 1

Cassagnac's, Drumont's and Mac-Mahon's. You would sing that

"Chanson du Tourlouru" that Paulin or Bach was immortalising

in Paris's most modish nightclubs and music halls. You would

vigorously affirm your unconditional admiration for Rostand's

Cyrano
or Sarah as
I'Aiglon.
Finally, you'd trot out a dirty story or two, about a maharajah and a cancan girl, or a vicar and a

choirboy, giving your auditors a good laugh whilst your mail

coach would roll on and on till dusk. At nightfall you would sup