A Void (8 page)

Conson ransacks Anton Vowl's flat from top to bottom; calls on

that Samaritan living two doors down who informs him about

Cochin ablating Vowl's sinus; and asks anybody who might assist

him in tracking down his companion.

Vowl's flat is in a most unpromising sort of building, wholly

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without "standing": walls in a whitish stucco; filthy, poor-quality

cotton rugs losing tufts of dank hair on an almost daily basis; a

narrow drawing room; an untidy living room with a mouldy sofa

josding a cupboard that has a rancid oniony stink about it and

a trio of horribly kitschy prints stuck on to its shaky doors with

a Band-Aid; a bow window of milky-murky glass giving off a

dark and turbid glow, a pallid photocopy of sunlight; a monkish

cot to doss down on with torn pillows and a quilt full of scummy

stains; and a dingy lavatory-cum-washroom with a jug, a pot, a

bowl, a razor and a washcloth hanging all in rags, off which

a tiny stowaway of an animal, a moth but just possibly a rat, had

got fat.

Cautiously lifting down, from a flagrandy DIY-built rack, a

stack of dusty old books with grubby bindings and torn stitchings

and a lot of rambling, criss-crossing annotations and marginalia,

Amaury is drawn to 5 or 6 works that Vowl was obviously study-

ing with a particular goal in mind: Gombrich's
Art and Illusion,

Witold Gombrowicz's
Cosmos
, Monica Wittig's
L'Opoponax,

Thomas Mann's
Doctor Faustus
, Noam Chomsky, Roman

Jakobson and, finally, Louis Aragon's
Blanc ou I'Oubli.

Now Conson starts rummaging about a bulky cardboard box

and finds a host of manuscripts proving to his satisfaction that

his companion was thirsty for instruction, for Vowl, who was

always an anal, finicky sort of chap, hadn't thrown out anything

dating from his schooldays. Studying it rapdy, practically word

by word, Amaury could thus follow from its halting origins all

of what you might call Anton's
curriculum studiorum.

First, composition:

Ld ou nous virions jadis, il n'y avait ni autos, ni taxis, ni

autobus; nous allions parfois, mon cousin m'accompagnait,

voir Linda qui habit ait dans un canton voisin. Mais, n'ay ant

pas d'auto, il nous fallait courir tout au long du parcours;

sinon nous arrivions trop tard: Linda avait disparu.

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Unjour vint pourtant ou Linda partitpour toujours. Nous

aurions du la bannir a jamais; mais voild, nous Vaimions.

Nous aimions tant son parfum, son air rayonnant, son blou-

son, son pantalon brun trop long; nous aimions tout.

Mais voild, tout finit: trois ans plus tard, Linda mourut;

nous I'avons appris par basard, un soir, au cours d'un lunch.

Now philosophy:

Kant, analysing
a priori
intuition, had for an instant a

nagging doubt about his Cogito ("I think, thus L am") and

its validity, knowing that it would fail to account for a situ-

ation in which God, musing on His own primacy in that

Trinity on which Christianity was built, might boast (but to

whom?) of constituting a holistic, all-including "I". "And

so," said Kant, "Spinoza thought to accomplish a mutation

that would abolish all godhood? Judaising Baruch? Bandag-

ing 'Natural suturing it (or, should I say, saturating it),

closing up its gaps, by a Siv with aspirations to Infinity!"

Thus, a Platonician by anticipation, but fallaciously so, Kant

saw Spinoza as part of a long tradition of castrating cosmolo-

gists. For, many moons prior to that, Plato, killing off all

archaists, saw that no participant having his origin in that

cosmic "I" could bring it to a concision.

That aboriginal Arc thus found its triangulation, drawing

out its diagonal to its sinusoidal tip, casting a sharp point at

Kant's brow, causing him to pass away from having thought

for an instant of a Cogito without a God.

Maths:

On Groups.

(By Marshall Hall Jr LIT 28, folios 5 to 18 inclus.)

Who first had this particular notion, who brought it to its

maturity, who found a solution to it? Was it Gauss or Galois?

Nobody could say. Nowadays, though, all of us know. But it's

said that, just prior to dying, at night, at about 4 or 5 a.m.,

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Galois put in writing on his jotting pad (Marshall Hall Jr,

op. cit, folio B) a long, continuous chain of factors in his own

form of notation. To wit:

aa -1 = bb - 1 = cc - 1 = dd - 1 = f f - 1 =

gg — 1 = hh — 1 = ii — 1 = jj — 1 = kk — 1 =

U — 1 = mm — l = nn — 1 = oo — l=pp — 1 =

qq — 1 = rr — 1 = ss — 1 = tt — 1 = uu — 1 =

w — 1 = ww — 1 = xx — 1 = yy — 1 = zz — 1 =

As part of his manuscript is missing, though, nobody knows

to this play what conclusion Galois was hoping to draw from

his calculations.

Cantor, Douady andBourbaki thought, on many and vari-

ous grounds (from algorithms to topoi, from Mobius strips to

C-star, from Shih's K-functor to Thorn's Qf, and including all

sorts of distributions, involutions, convolutions, Schwartz, Koszul,

Carton and Giorgiutti) of following a hunch that would sur-

mount such an abrupt hiatus. It was, alas, all in vain.

Though it took him from 1935 to 1955, working at it

virtually nonstop, Pontryagin finally had to admit to accom-

plishing nothing.

Just 8 months ago, though, Kan, working on his own

adjoint (cit, D. Kan Adjoint Functors Transactions, V, 3,

18) could, it was said, show by induction (his calculation -

so Kan told Jaulin - had a major cardinal as its basis) this

proposition: G or H or K (H a G, G K), 3 magmas

(following Kurosh) in which a(bc) - (ab)c; in which, if a is

a constant, x > xa, x > ax do not "vary", so that G ~ H

x K, ifG = H\JK; ifH is as invariant as K; ifH has

with K a solitary unit in common H
fl
K = Alas! as Kan

quit this world prior to bringing his work to fruition, a sol-

ution is not jbrthcoming.

Pastoral:

It is a story about a small town. It is not a gossipy yarn; nor

is it a dry, monotonous account, full of such customary

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"fill-ins" as "romantic moonlight casting murky shadows

down a long, winding country road". Nor will it say anything

about tinkling, lulling, distant folds, robins carolling at twi-

light or any "warm glow oflamplightf'from a cabin window.

No...

Continuing his inquiry, Amaury Conson also finds out that

Anton Vowl had a fascination with aboriginal customs:

In Gogni (Chad) a Sokoro, clad in his traditional tunic, a

tunic as long as a raglan coat such as a snobbishly insular

Parisian might sport whilst on safari, paid a visit to a son

of his who was living in Mokulu as a willing victim of

an unusual (and, until now, unknown) marital status con-

stituting a paradoxical - or, as anthropologists say, "uxori-

local" - form of subjugation. It was no doubt wrong of him

to jurnish a youth to such mountain folk (or Diongors),

thus forcing him out of his own tribal circuit, with its basic,

lucid, rigorous - in a word,
structural -
warp and woof of

articulation.

Sun
or
Margina, Uti
or
Kaakil, Longai
or
Zori -
O

almighty rain gods, grant us comfort in our sorrow. What I

now pray for is oblivion, that soft, cradling balm of oblivion,

for my solitary misdoing. If not, would you slay a man for

simply, unmindfully, ignoring his duty?

Finally, avoiding both Scylla and Charybdis, our Sokoro

saw a witch doctor who told him that what would pacify his

Sun
was sacrificing a goat kid - and, as an additional victim,

a black cock, so as to find grain for a rainy day.

Zoology:

Ovibus, or musk-ox: an animal, half-lamb and half-bullock.

Its natural habitat is that snowbound Arctic or Russian plain

that is commonly known as a "tundra". Its skin, which turns

soft if you pound it, has a sharp and piquantly liquorish

flavour. To catch hold of such an animal, you must fix upon

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what you think is a propitious occasion, lying flat out as it

runs towards you and pouncing on it just as its front hoof

looms up in front of you, monstrous and intimidating.

As soon as you put your hands on its throat, surrounding

it, it looks up at you, starts lowing and, in its turn, squats

along by you and actually nods off.

At which point you will find that its body, with its aroma

of acacia, alfa, alfilaria, onion, oxalis, origanum, upas and

union, is oddly soft to your touch.

Urus, or aurochs: a wild ox living in our own country

and not found in any zoo. I f s said, though, that you may

occasionally find, on a nocturnal trot, a urus casting its

hunchback shadow. Not so: its back has no hump at all. Nor

has it any dip. In fact, it's just a boringly normal sort of back.

So why should anybody hold forth on a urus ?

Social conflicts:

3 May 1968. "Agitation on Boul'Mich", so would claim a

Figaro
photo-caption. Slavishly carrying out his boss's com-

mand, an adjutant had a battalion of cops attack a crowd

of anarchists, communists and sundry radicals who, wanting

only what was right and just, sought total and unconditional

pardon for six companions rotting in jail. A giant slab of

paving brought from a courtyard was thrown at a Black

Maria crawling with vicious gun-toting gorillas. A mound

of paving bricks was soon built up in front of it; and a wiry

old poplar, its thick trunk sawn in half, lay diagonally across

a chaotic, haphazard mass of burning cars. Worrying that

this situation was about to turn against him, Grimaud

did not balk at imposing a pogrom, and his thuggish

minions would thrash, gas and harass many a half-moribund

agitator.

But public opinion wasn't for long in his favour. A crowd

a million strong took Paris by storm, brandishing black flags

and crimson flags and shouting out anti-dictatorial slogans:

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"Down with Gaullism!', 'Charly is not our Darling!" and

«CRS -
ssr.

Grouping Parts's population according to job classification,

a union got all work to stop, all production to shut down, and

had sit-ins in public transport, coal basins, shops, workshops,

schools, mills and dockyards. Gas-stations would soon start to

go short. . .

And Sarrish patois:

Man sagt dir, komm doch mal ins Landhaus. Man sagt dir,

Stadtvolk muss aufi Land, muss zuriick zur Natur. Man

sagt dir, komm bald, moglichtst am Sonntag. Du brummst

also los, nicht zu frith am Tag, das will man nicht. Am

Nachmittag fdhrst du durchs Dorf, in Richtung Sportplatz.

Vorm Sportplatz fdhrst du ab. Kurz darauf bist du da. Du

hoist am Tor, durch das du nicht hindurchkannst, parkst das

Auto und blickst dich um. Du glaubst, nun taucht vor dir

das Haus auf, doch du irrst dich, da ist das Dach. Ringsum

Wald, dickichtartig, Wildnis fast. Wold, wohin du schaust.

Baum und Strauch sind stark im Wuchs. Am Pfad wachst

Minzkraut auch Gras, frisch, saftig und griin. Ins Haus,

wovon du nur das Dach sahst. Du traumst, doss das Haus,

wovon du nur das Dach sahst, laubumrankt, gross und mcich-

tig ist. Mit Komfort natiirlich, Klo und Bad und Bild im

Flur. Dazu Mann und Frau stoltz vorm Kamin. Traumst

du, doch das Tor ist zu und ins Haus, wovon du nur das

Dach sahst, kannst du nicht. Nachts, auch das traumst du

noch, loscht man das Licht und danngliiht rot und idyllisch

das Holz im Kamin. So traumst du vor dich hin, doch man

macht das Tor nicht auf, obwohl Sonntag ist. Da sagt man

dir also, komm doch mal ins Landhaus und dann kommst

du wirklich zum Landhaus und bist vorm Landhaus und

kommst doch nicht ins Landhaus und warst umsonst am

Landhaus und fdhrst vom Landhaus aus zuriick nach

Haus. . .

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At long last, on top of a writing pad of an ochrous gold similar

to that of artificial chamois, Amaury Conson finds Anton Vowl's

diary; unclasps it; sifts through it till night falls; and thoughtfully