Best European Fiction 2013 (9 page)

– I told you to take the violin, repeated the man in the first row, in a slightly more confident voice.

– But I don’t know how to play, stuttered Traumont.

– Go on, it’s not so hard, added the violinist, smiling and pressing the instrument on him a little more insistently. A bit of good will and the job is half done.

– Take it and play: those are the rules, said the man from the first row, who seemed more and more at ease.

– And if I refuse?

– I’d advise you not to refuse, Monsieur Traumont. I wouldn’t advise that at all.

The extras in the auditorium seemed to titter in unison. The spectators whispered to each other:

– But why are they laughing?

– I don’t see anything funny about it, myself.

– Well, you know Damploune’s sense of humor …

The young woman took a step in Traumont’s direction, smiling at him with an almost angelic expression:

– If you don’t take the violin, you won’t leave, believe me, Monsieur Traumont.

Traumont raised his hand to take the violin, then snatched it back.

– What a fantastic actor! Look, he seems more and more indecisive.

– But I’m telling you, I know that Traumont isn’t an actor. He’s the one who audited my brother’s tax returns last year. Made him pay through the nose, the swine!

– He doesn’t
look
like a bad guy.

– Sure, but just wait till he gets his claws into you.

The man from the first row had stepped into the street, and now seemed perfectly at ease. In an almost threatening tone, he once again repeated:

– Play, Monsieur Traumont. I’m telling you to play.

– But I’ve explained, I don’t know how. This whole thing’s absurd. Besides, it’s too cold, my fingers are completely numb.

– Play!

– Well … since you insist …

With a resigned, a timid gesture, Michel Traumont took hold of the violin and bow offered by their owner. He placed the instrument against his left shoulder, imitating as best he could the standard pose, and then, with his right hand, lowered the bow toward the strings. But he paused, and lifted his head again, looking around with a grimace, as if to say: No, this is too stupid, don’t ask me to do what I don’t know how to do.

– Come on, Monsieur Traumont, play!

This time it was the young woman who insisted. With elegance and vivacity, she indicated the theater, to make him understand that everyone was waiting. Whether he liked the idea or not, he was part of the show now, wasn’t he?

So he played. Or rather, produced a frightful screech, as anyone would who was scraping a bow across the strings of a violin for the very first time in his life. All the extras seated in the auditorium burst out laughing, and then loudly booed, before once again ceasing abruptly in unison. As if an invisible conductor had given the signal.

– That wasn’t brilliant, said the man from the first row.

– But I told you, stuttered Traumont.

– Make a bit of an effort, insisted the young woman in the fur coat, her smile still seraphic.

– But what do you want? responded Traumont, in a despairing voice. I’ve never played, I never learned how.

– Come, come, just a little effort, Monsieur Traumont, repeated the young woman. We aren’t asking the impossible.

– But that’s precisely what you’re doing! protested Traumont. Stop this nasty joke! Let me go home.

Once more, as if with a single breath, the laughter of the extras rang out, and cut off.

– Do you want to try one more time? asked the man from the first row, who now seemed to have his role by heart.

– It’s no use, you can see that.

– Is that your last word?

Traumont acquiesced with a nod of the head.

– Pity. We would have loved to see you board the tram without our assistance. Bon voyage all the same, Monsieur Traumont!

A gunshot rang out, causing a number of audience members to jump. It was impossible to say straight off just where the report had come from, for, apart from Traumont, who crumpled to the ground, everyone in the auditorium, everyone in the street, remained perfectly still. A moment afterward the applause crackled out, then stopped dead, replaced all at once by the music of the violin. But it wasn’t the musician who was playing anymore: they could all see Traumont stretched out impassive on the ground, his left hand still clutching the instrument’s neck. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once, this music, from the depths of the theater, from the receding walls of the houses in the street.

– It’s impossible …

– I don’t understand this business at all.

– To be forced to play an instrument you don’t know! To be shot right down!

– Wait! You don’t actually believe … They’re actors! They’ve shot him with a blank!

– You’re saying he isn’t dead?

– He’ll get up to bow at the end.

– But I’m telling you, I know him. He isn’t a professional actor, he’s a tax official …

– He plays his part so well, it’s obvious he’s a professional …

– Believe me, he works for the fisc—

– Whatever you say. For my part, I prefer to wait till the end of the show to leave.

It had stopped snowing. Above the street the sky had cleared, and the scene was now lit by the brilliant silver of the moon. The fur-clad man who had shot Michel Traumont slipped his pistol into his pocket and stood motionless. Two of his comrades stepped forward and scooped up the corpse. The old streetcar’s front door accordioned open. The two men stepped into the vehicle, deposited their burden there with a bit of difficulty, and exited again. They had barely descended when the door slid shut and the ancient streetcar, rattling all of its antediluvian metal, began to move off, to roll slowly away. The men who’d pursued it as far as the theater now followed it off at a run, each of them stopping an instant, at irregular intervals, according to some unguessable logic, to draw their pistols from their pockets, aim in its direction, and fire, before continuing the chase. When the streetcar was so far away that one could no longer distinguish its pursuers or even hear their shots, the young woman turned to the auditorium and saluted with an elegance out of another century. After a few moments the music stopped. The extras in the theater broke into violent applause, and then, as a single man, laid their hands in their laps.

None of the spectators dared to move. A leaden silence descended on the theater, and all sat motionless in the cold.

TRANSLATED FROM FRENCH BY AARON KERNER

[ARMENIA]

KRIKOR BELEDIAN

The Name under My Tongue

The laser spot

kept appearing, disappearing, flickering, leaping from place to place, skipping, beaming in short, quick blinks, returning to its point of departure, suddenly calming down, almost sweeping across the illuminated surface, to the left, where it would rest; the tip of the long, thin plastic pointer would stop for a second, quivering in the dust that slowly turned into a half shadow, then caught by a sudden fever—a growing, dancing tongue of flame—it would blaze from one side of the map to the other, withdraw all at once, then move forward again as if exploring something, now more hesitant, cautious, it would seem that it had disappeared, but it would reappear, flying like an arsonist setting fire to a field, or like erupting gunfire, exploring the void, the shadow, or more precisely—the light layer of the shadow;

the woman standing at the podium went on playing with the pointing stick with one hand, while she leaned against the table with the other, resting her body, her torso outlined in the half dark, her widely opened collar showing yellow alabaster skin where soon a bead of sweat would appear, the muscles of her neck and throat, taut with tension, kept straining then relaxing, reaching up to the restless chin and its complex working machine;

meanwhile the staccato voice, zigzagging, rising suddenly, forcing itself into higher notes, was pushing out words that were barely separable, that didn’t fit into one sentence, but became an open slope, a surface, a plateau, unraveling around a panting breath that tried to say everything at once; it wound around itself layers of details, digressing from the main path, it expanded, extending into episodes, then with a thrust of the tongue muscle, hitting the hollow of the mouth, it returned, finding again its previous force and depth, a kind of subtlety in its sharpness, it would bend the medium, exposing the sullen, hermetic amphitheater to something jolting, something disturbing for a moment; but without lessening its vehemence, it suddenly stopped; an unexpected caesura, while the echo was still reverberating in the distance;

as someone who has stepped onto a dangerous ledge and automatically draws back from a head-spinning precipice, I woke from my doze; it was a late afternoon relaxation, a numbness or stupefaction that would allow my mind to err, to wander aimlessly from one image to the other, involuntarily jumping from one scene to the next; the more I focused the more I exhausted myself, falling into utter helplessness, it seemed as if I were taking refuge behind a neutral, invisible screen, and the more or less fragmented segments of reality passed, along with the inevitable voids that separated them;

I was half reclining, my legs stretched underneath the chair in front of me, perplexed, having lost the sense of place and time—was I searching for something that wasn’t there, but that seemed to be there nonetheless? my writing journal was still on my knees, open, the first page was scrunched, a little dirty, marred with ink, and there were even a few sentences illegibly scribbled on it … just as, when I went on a plane trip, after putting away my handbag and camera in the compartment above the seat, I would settle in with the calmness and contentment of someone who occupies his seat without paying a slight attention to the flight attendant, and with the enthusiasm of someone about to do something very important, I would take out my journal with the intention of writing down a random thought that had just crossed my mind, start by jotting down the date and place, as if that in itself would mark the entrance into a new world, but then gradually the sound of the engine, and the time that failed to pass, would diminish my excitement, I would slowly drift into a restless drowse filled with noise, following the panting sound of a fireplace that spread its radiating glow and warmth in the distance, while the ghostly images forming on the walls would turn, disappear;

they had been speaking for a while in dull, monotonous tones despite the diversity of languages, people with thunderous names; I had heard about them from the papers, announcement leaflets, anecdotes circulating among the intellectuals; they would get up from the big long table that was nearly as wide as the blackboard, place their notes on the podium, leaf through the pages, sometimes turn left toward the Chair of the panel who was sitting at the other end of the table, a man with a slightly ragged, dirty beard, his head resting on his hand, deep in thought or perhaps already half asleep, who made hand or eyebrow gestures to this or that person—there was still time, the speaker could continue with his paper, twenty minutes, five minutes, after which, predictably, the Chair would have to interrupt—

nearing his conclusion, the speaker would raise his voice, take a deep breath, look at the audience, immediately accelerate, utter the last sentence or what seemed to be the last sentence in one breath, the dynamic young woman sitting next to me, who was either busy with her notes or with the recording machine, would occasionally glance up from beneath her eyelashes, as if somewhat indifferent, while the wave of fragrance from her loose hair and armpits diffused into the air, conquering, discomforting even, I would feel I had to write down the final conclusive statement: there is a history … memory, historical truth, duty to memory, free interpretation of historical events, what is history without memory? everything could have been razed to the ground, lost, disappeared, etc., etc., something along those lines, generalizations that sounded more like aphorisms, descriptive, elementary maxims, capitalized words that, with their luminous aureole, would define, concretize, deepen a vague, undefined, unstable reality;

all the speakers had tried to gain the fluctuating attention of the audience; sometimes they would depart from the paper’s main topic in the last part of their speech, they would try wearing memorable clothes, apparently they entrusted the role of impressing the crowd, of keeping their audience awake, to the outfit, noting the inevitable finale, at which their voice, having reached a certain pinnacle, would bow down; this was followed by several more or less sparse rounds of applause, erupting, then ceasing;

each speaker would leave the podium and sit down behind the long table, pour some mineral water from the plastic bottle into a paper cup, raise it to his mouth, clear his throat; he would watch the audience from the distance of his half closed eyes as people moved, dared to change the position of their bodies, cough, whisper a few words to their neighbors, sneeze, smile, shake their heads or simply stand up and leave the room, go to the bathroom or out for a cigarette break, disturbing the others, saying hello to acquaintances, friends, sometimes distant relatives whom they would meet only at such places,

ah, you’re here too, isn’t it interesting?

sure, indeed, certainly … certainly …

meanwhile, the Chair was inviting the next speaker, standing ceremoniously behind the podium with the orderliness of a pontiff whose main mission is to guard the economy of time, making a few appropriate, polite remarks about the previous presentation, noting that it was indeed a truly important work in the context of the conference, leaning toward the audience with the feigned intimacy of a salesman, as if conversing with each individual person,

everyone in the audience certainly agrees with me, bon, without exaggerating … we can say, very … important claims … we are most … grateful to the Professor … or esteemed Counselor,

there were variations in his tone, a few minor observations, which could have been easily dismissed despite the obvious effort to complicate the speech; he would slightly raise his neck with the persistence of someone who has valiantly agreed to carry a heavy burden, gesticulate a greeting with his hand to someone familiar, smile indulgently, the solemn smile of a national benefactor,