Public Enemies_ Dueling Writers Take on Each Other and the World - Bernard-Henri Levy [39]
There are things like that, that you just know.
For example, I have the impression that I more or less know what the last book I’ll write will be and even the last one I’ll read.
I have a vague idea—I’ve always had one—about some of the appointments I still have to honor.
And this is the same. This may seem very silly but I’ve always felt that the day might come, I don’t know when or where, how, in what context, whether literary, judicial, political, revolutionary, where I might hear, “An injustice for Lévy? A serious injustice? Very serious? Well, he went looking for it. He shouldn’t have been such a show-off. In any case, better that injustice—a thousand times better—than disorder in the world!” And I know that the phrase will sound so fair, so obvious and reasonable, that there will be no one to protest, to contest it, to petition or rebel against it.
It’s the story (which has haunted me since I first read the book in the summer of 1968 at Antibes) of Solal in Chapter 5 of Albert Cohen’s Belle du Seigneur, alone in his cave in Berlin with the dwarf Rachel, exiled by the League of Nations, stripped of his honors, abandoned by everyone, condemned.
It’s the last words of Emmanuel Levinas’s Proper Names (I don’t have my books with me either, as I’m writing this time from Salvador da Bahia in Brazil, and I don’t even have the Internet)—it’s that last, lugubrious page, in which Levinas evokes the naïveté of one of those who used to be called French Jews: sure of himself and his place in this world, cosseted, rich in talents and titles, surrounded by friends, possibly powerful. But then overnight, without warning, an icy wind blows through the rooms in his house, the tapestries and drapes are torn from the walls, all the poor glories of his life are swept away like rags, and in the distance he hears the screeching of a pitiless crowd.
In fact, it’s the story of Alfred III, the grocer in Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s The Visit. I suppose you know Dürrenmatt? If you don’t, get to know him at once. He’s not much worse than Goethe. He wrote that brilliant text, which has also haunted me for twenty years and tells the story of an “old lady” who as a child lived in Güllen, a small town that used to be wealthy and is now ruined and that Goethe, no less, is supposed to have visited once. She left Güllen and made her fortune elsewhere. She returns as a total show-off, broadcasting her success as the town’s prodigal daughter. After a few days of psychological preparation, as shifty as it is intense, she announces to her former fellow citizens, “You remember Clara, the mason’s daughter, who was in love with Alfred but was abandoned by him when she became pregnant? She went through hell, that little Clara. She snuck off like a thief, fleeing the insults of those who mocked her red braids and her advanced pregnancy. Well, I’m Clara. I’ve come back to avenge myself and at the same time to save my town, as you’re about to go under, aren’t you? Your factories have closed. Your young people are unemployed. Don’t worry, citizens and friends. I’m offering fifty billion plus another fifty billion to share among yourselves. All I ask in return is one thing, the head of the man who dumped me and whom you must kill.” Naturally, the village cries out, “That’s blackmail, outrageous. Have you ever heard of honest citizens, respectful of the spirit of justice, agreeing to such a transaction?” The old lady smiles in a corner and replies, “That’s all it will take. I’ll wait. When you change your mind, I’ll be there with my valets, my eighth husband, my chambermaids, my trunks, and my billions, at the Inn of the Golden Apostle, near the railway station.” And indeed it doesn’t take her long to get her result. It begins with an epidemic of new yellow shoes that invade the town, then dresses for the young girls, colorful shirts for the boys. To his