Desolation by Yasmina Reza Read Free Book Online Page B

saved.’ I hear this, Genevieve, the words
love
and
hope
being thrown out into empty air and all I want is to declare war on the planet. From a biological perspective, my dear Genevieve, I cannot tolerate any speeches about virtue—I don’t mean yours, which is charming and comes from someone who is authentically good and fine (and besides it’s not a speech about virtue, it’s a reproach)—I told you this anecdote to show you just how incapable I am, alas, of moderation. At the very least I know I should moderate my words. Either keeping quiet or cooling down whatever is boiling inside us should be within the grasp of any civilized human being, but I’ve ceased to want to play that role, you know, which means I’ve also ceased doing damage to my health, because always trying to be elegant and balanced was proving fatal for my nerves. No less fatal, to be honest, than the unbridled expansiveness of my moods. So, you see, I’m delivered twice over. Delivered from the paradise of temperance and delivered from the obligation of being in harmony with one’s body. No, Genevieve, I would not at some other time have accepted the apartment in Jerusalem. At some other time there would not have been an apartment in Jerusalem, at some other time Arthur would never have given in to the farce of reinventing himself as an exile. At the time you’re referring to, Arthur couldn’t endure the heat, he hated old stones and bigots, and had no thought of contributing his quota to Jewish history. At that particular time, Arthur wasn’t yet considering the world from an objective standpoint, a crowning piece of nonsense, born of who knows what, which is just tolerance by another name. Because that’s the word, the defining word at the heart of his speech,
tolerance.
Like a number of people who resemble him, over time Arthur concocted himself a persona of the modern man with his panoply of noble attitudes, his frenzied openmindedness, and his pact with mediocrity. No one is more contemporary than our friend Arthur. That said, Genevieve, you’re not wrong to insist that the same act doesn’t have the same value when performed by different people. If you yourself were to buy an apartment in Jerusalem, it wouldn’t be of any importance to me, any more than a pied-àterre in Cagnes-sur-Mer, who knows why that came to my mind, I’ve never said Cagnes-sur-Mer in my life before. In Arthur’s case, alas, the proceeding is not a trivial one. Arthur buys in Jerusalem to become a member of a club. The twentieth century has invented the Jew without constraints, without obligations, and without a purpose in life. Here’s someone who has lived unwittingly as the hero of his own existence and suddenly, without much of an investment, in his old age wants to become a citizen of all humanity. Member of the club of liberated Jews. What could be more select than that? Zionism and tolerance. Residency and free will. What could be more irreproachable? As for me, who have no desire to belong to any community, I don’t want to have a measured step and I don’t want to have a measured spirit, my dear, that’s the wrong pair of clippers you put in your wagon, let me show you something better and then we’ll talk about your balcony.”
    In the refreshment bar where we find a seat, Genevieve doesn’t talk to me about her balcony, she talks about Leo Fench. “One day I got this note from Leo, and I’ll tell you right away it’s a quote from Louis Aragon which he’d picked up from who knows where because you know, Leo really didn’t read much at all (he said he’d read the
essentials
long ago); on this piece of typing paper, folded in four, he’d written,
Don’t read this letter: read the other one, the one I tore
up. Think about the fact that I’m constantly tearing up
a letter, a sort of letter. . . .
Followed by the name of the poet and nothing else. This other letter, my dear, gave me my reason to live for years. And even at this age, taking