The Possibility of an Island (21 page)

I had decided at that particular time to remain in Madrid all week, and two days later I had a little argument with Esther on the subject of
Ken Park,
the latest film by Larry Clark, which she had been keen to go and see. I had hated
Kids,
and I hated
Ken Park
even more, the scene where this dirty little shit beats up his grandparents was particularly unbearable. That filmmaker completely disgusted me, and it was no doubt this sincere disgust that made me incapable of stopping myself from talking about it, while I strongly suspected that Esther liked him out of habit and conformism, because it was generally cool to approve of the representation of violence in the arts, and that she liked him without any real discernment, in the same way she liked, for example, Michael Haneke, without even realizing that the meaning of those sorrowful and moral films by Michael Haneke was completely different from that of those by Larry Clark. I knew that it would have been better for me to keep quiet, that abandoning my usual comic character could only bring me trouble, but I couldn’t, the imp of the perverse was the stronger. We were in a bizarre, very kitsch bar, with mirrors and gold fixtures, full of paroxysmal homosexuals who buggered themselves silly in adjacent backrooms, yet which was open to everyone, with groups of young boys and girls calmly drinking Coca-Colas at neighboring tables. I explained to her while rapidly downing my iced tequila that I had built the whole of my career and fortune on the commercial exploitation of bad instincts, of the West’s absurd attraction to cynicism and evil, and that I therefore felt myself ideally placed to assert that among all the merchants of evil, Larry Clark was one of the most common, most vulgar, simply because he unreservedly took the side of the young against the old, because all his films were an incitement to children to treat their parents without the least humanity, the least pity, and that there was nothing new or original about this, it had been the same in all the cultural sectors for the last fifty-odd years, and this supposedly cultural tendency in fact only hid the desire for a return to a primitive state where the young got rid of the old without ceremony, with no questions asked, simply because they were too weak to defend themselves. It was, therefore, just a brutal regression, typical of modernity, to a stage preceding all civilization, for any civilization could judge itself on the fate it reserved for the weakest, for those who were no longer either productive or desirable, in short Larry Clark and his abject accomplice Harmony Korine were just two of the most tedious—and artistically the most miserable—examples of the Nietzschean scum who had been proliferating in the cultural field for far too long, and who could in no way be put on the same level as people like Michael Haneke, or like me, for example—who had always made sure to introduce a certain element of doubt, uncertainty, and unease into my shows, even if they were (I was the first to admit it) otherwise repugnant. She listened to me with a sad expression, but with great attention, she hadn’t yet touched her Fanta.

The advantage of giving a moral lecture, is that this type of argument has been under such strong censorship, and for so many years, that it provokes an incongruous effect and immediately attracts the attention of the interlocutor; the disadvantage is that the interlocutor never manages to take you completely seriously. The serious and attentive expression on Esther’s face threw me for an instant, but I ordered another glass of tequila and plowed on, while becoming conscious that I was getting excited artificially, that there was something false about my sincerity: apart from the patently obvious fact that Larry Clark was just a small, undistinguished merchant and that to cite him in the same sentence as Nietzsche was already in itself something derisory, I felt in my heart of hearts scarcely more concerned about these subjects than by world hunger, human rights, or any rubbish of that kind. Nevertheless, I went on, with increasing acrimony, carried away by that strange mixture of nastiness and masochism, which I perhaps hoped would lead me to my destruction, after it had brought me fame and fortune. Not only did the old not have the right to fuck, I continued ferociously, but they no longer had the right to rebel against a world that nevertheless crushed them unsparingly, made them defenseless prey to the violence of juvenile delinquents before dumping them in ignoble twilight homes where they were humiliated and mistreated by decerebrated auxiliary nurses, and despite all this, rebellion was forbidden to them, rebellion too—like sexuality, like pleasure, like love—seemed reserved for the young and to have no point for other people, any cause incapable of mobilizing the interest of the young was disqualified in advance, basically, old people were in all matters treated simply as waste, to be granted only a survival that was miserable, conditional, and more and more narrowly limited. In my script
The Social Security Deficit,
which hadn’t seen the light of day—it was, moreover, the only one of my projects not to see the light of day, and this appeared highly significant to me, I continued, almost beside myself—I incited instead the old to rebel against the young, to use them and to
show them who’s boss.
Why for example should male and female adolescents, voracious and sheeplike consumers, always greedy for pocket money, not be
forced into
prostitution, the only means by which they could modestly reimburse the immense efforts and struggles that were made for their well-being? And why, at a time when contraception had been perfected, and the risk of genetic degeneration perfectly localized, should we maintain the absurd and humiliating taboo that is incest? Those are the real questions, the authentic moral issues! I exclaimed angrily; now that was no Larry Clark.

If I was acrimonious, she was sweet; and if I took, unreservedly, the side of the old, she did not take, to the same extent, the side of the young. A long conversation ensued, becoming more and more emotional and tender, first in the bar, then at a restaurant, then in another bar, and finally in the hotel bedroom; we even forgot, for one evening, to make love. It was our first real conversation, and it seemed to me to be the first real conversation I’d had with anyone for years, the last probably took place at some point at the start of my life with Isabelle, I had probably never had a real conversation with anyone other than a woman I loved, and essentially it seemed unsurprising to me that the exchange of ideas with someone who doesn’t know your body, is not in a position to secure its unhappiness or on the other hand to bring it joy, was a false and ultimately impossible exercise, for we are bodies, we are, above all, principally and almost uniquely bodies, and the state of our bodies constitutes the true explanation of the majority of our intellectual and moral conceptions. It was only now I learned that Esther had had a very serious kidney illness, at the age of thirteen, which had necessitated a long operation, and that one of her kidneys had remained definitively atrophied, which obliged her to drink at least two liters of water a day, while the second one, saved for the time being, could at any moment show signs of weakness; it seemed obvious to me that this was an essential detail, that it was even no doubt for this reason that she had not
calmed down
on the sexual level: she knew the price of life, and how short it was. I also learned, and this seemed even more important, that she had had a dog, found in the streets of Madrid, and that she had looked after it since the age of ten; it had died the previous year. A very pretty young girl, treated with constant regard and paid enormous attention by the whole of the male population, including those—the huge majority—who no longer have any hope of obtaining sexual favors from her, frankly especially by them, with an abject emulation that with some fifty-somethings borders on senility pure and simple, a very pretty young girl before whom all faces open, all difficulties are ironed out, greeted everywhere as if she were the queen of the world, naturally becomes a sort of monster of egoism and self-satisfied vanity. Physical beauty plays here exactly the same role as nobility of blood in the Ancien Régime, and the brief consciousness that they might have at adolescence of the purely accidental nature of their rank rapidly gives way among very pretty young girls to a sensation of innate, natural, and instinctive superiority, which places them completely outside, and far above, the rest of mankind. Everyone around her having as their objective to spare her all difficulties, and to satisfy the least of her desires, a very pretty young girl effortlessly comes to consider the rest of the world as made up of so many
servants,
herself having the sole task of maintaining her own erotic value—in the expectation of meeting a boy worthy of receiving her homage. The only thing that could save her on the moral level, is having a concrete responsibility for a weaker being, to be directly and personally responsible for the satisfaction of its physical needs, for its health and survival—this being could be a brother or a younger sister, a pet, whatever.

Esther was certainly not
well educated
in the normal sense of the term, the thought never crossed her mind to empty an ashtray, or to clear away what was left on her plate, and she didn’t mind in the slightest about leaving the lights on behind her in the rooms she had just left (there had been occasions when I, following step by step her journey through my residence in San José, had had to flick off seventeen switches); there was also no question of asking her to think of doing the shopping, to bring anything back from a shop that was not intended for her own use, or more generally to do any kind of favor for anyone. Like all very pretty young girls she was basically only good for fucking, and it would have been stupid to employ her for anything else, to see her as anything other than a luxury animal, pampered and spoiled, protected from all cares as from any difficult or painful task so as to be better able to devote herself to her exclusively sexual service. But, nonetheless, she was very far from being that monster of arrogance, of absolute and cold egoism, or, to speak in more Baudelairean terms, that
infernal little bitch
that the majority of very pretty young girls are; there was in her the consciousness of illness, weakness, and death. Although beautiful, very beautiful, infinitely erotic, and desirable, Esther was no less sensitive to animal infirmities, because she knew them; it was that evening that I became conscious of it, and I began to truly love her. Physical desire, however violent, had, for me, never been enough to lead to love, it had never been able to reach that ultimate stage where it was accompanied, through a strange juxtaposition, by compassion for the one I desired; any living being, obviously, deserves compassion for the simple fact that it is alive, and therefore exposes itself to innumerable sufferings; but, when you’re talking about a being that is young and in perfect health, it is a consideration that appears very theoretical. Through her kidney illness, her physical weakness, which was above suspicion yet real, Esther could arouse an unaffected compassion in me, whenever I wanted to feel this way about her. Being herself compassionate, having the same occasional aspirations toward goodness, she could also arouse in me esteem, which completed the edifice, and even though I was able to desire someone completely contemptible, even though I had even found myself on several occasions fucking girls with the sole aim of confirming my power over them and, it’s true, to
dominate
them, if I had gone as far as using this unworthy feeling in some sketches, as far as displaying a troubling understanding of rapists who sacrifice their victim immediately after finishing with her body, I had, however, always needed to respect in order to love, never in my heart of hearts had I felt perfectly at ease in a sexual relationship based purely on erotic attraction and indifference to the other, I had always needed, to feel sexually happy, a minimum—for want of love—of sympathy, respect, and mutual understanding; no, I had not given up on mankind.

Not only was Esther compassionate and gentle, but she was also intelligent and shrewd enough to put herself, when necessary, in my place. After this discussion in which I had defended with an impetuosity that was wearisome—and, moreover, stupid, since she hadn’t even dreamed of putting me in this category—the right to happiness for aging people, she concluded by saying that she would speak to her sister about me, and would get around to making the introductions very soon.

During that week in Madrid, when I was almost always with Esther, and which remains one of the happiest periods of my life, I also realized that if she had other lovers their presence was unusually discreet, and if I wasn’t the only one—which was, after all, equally possible—I was no doubt the
favorite.
For the first time in my life I felt unrestrictedly happy to be a man, by this I mean a human being of the masculine sex, because for the first time I had found a woman who opened herself completely to me, who gave me totally, without limits, what a woman can give to a man. For the first time also, I felt moved in regard to others by charitable and friendly intentions: I would have liked everyone to be happy, like I was myself. I was no longer a clown, I had left
the humorous attitude
far behind me; in short I was living again, even if I knew that this would be for the last time. All energy is of a sexual nature, not mainly, but exclusively, and when the animal is no longer good for reproducing, it is absolutely no longer good for anything; it is the same for men. When the sexual instinct is dead, writes Schopenhauer, the true core of life is consumed; thus, he notes in a metaphor of terrifying violence, “human existence resembles a theater performance which, begun by living actors, is ended by automatons dressed in the same costumes.” I didn’t want to become an automaton, and it was this, that real presence, that taste for
living life,
as Dostoyevsky would have said, that Esther had given back to me. What is the point of maintaining a body that no one touches? And why would you choose a nice hotel bedroom if you have to sleep there alone? I could only, like so many who had finally been defeated despite their sniggers and their grimaces, bow down: immense and admirable, undoubtedly, was the power of love.