The unbearable lightness of being (29 page)

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would lead one to
believe the opposite, namely, that Sabina was the mother and that her two
children doted on her, worshipped her, would do anything she asked.

Had she then, herself on the
threshold of old age, found the parents who had been snatched from her as a
girl? Had she at last found the children she had never had herself?

She was well aware it was an
illusion. Her days with the aging couple were merely a brief interval. The old
man was seriously ill, and when his wife was left on her own, she would go and
live with their son in Canada. Sabina's path of betrayals would then continue
elsewhere, and from the depths of her being, a silly mawkish song about two
shining windows and the happy family living behind them would occasionally make
its way into the unbearable lightness of being.

Though touched by the song, Sabina
did not take her feeling seriously. She knew only too well that the song was a
beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves
into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and
becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman
enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an
integral part of the human condition.

Kitsch
has its source in the categorical agreement with being.

But what is the basis of being?
God? Mankind? Struggle? Love? Man? Woman?

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Since opinions vary, there are various kitsches: Catholic, Protestant,
Jewish, Communist, Fascist, democratic, feminist, European, American, national,
international.

Since the days
of the French Revolution, one half of Europe has been referred to as the left,
the other half as the right. Yet to define one or the other by means of the
theoretical principles it professes is all but impossible. And no wonder:

political
movements rest not so much on rational attitudes as on the fantasies, images,
words, and archetypes that come together to make up this or that
political
kitsch.

The fantasy of
the Grand March that Franz was so intoxicated by is the political kitsch
joining leftists of all times and tendencies. The Grand March is the splendid
march on the road to brotherhood, equality, justice, happiness; it goes on and
on, obstacles notwithstanding, for obstacles there must be if the march is to
be the Grand March.

The dictatorship of the proletariat or democracy? Rejection of the
consumer society or demands for increased productivity? The guillotine or an
end to the death penalty? It is all beside the point. What makes a leftist a
leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into
the kitsch called the Grand March.

Franz was obviously not a devotee of
kitsch. The fantasy of the Grand March played more or less the same role in his
life as the mawkish song about the two brightly lit windows in Sa-

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bina's.
What political party did Franz vote for? I am afraid he did not vote at all; he
preferred to spend Election Day hiking in the mountains. Which does not, of
course, imply that he was no longer touched by the Grand March. It is always
nice to dream that we are part of a jubilant throng marching through the
centuries, and Franz never quite forgot the dream.

One day, some friends phoned him
from Paris. They were planning a march on Cambodia and invited him to join
them.

Cambodia had recently been through
American bombardment, a civil war, a paroxysm of carnage by local Communists
that reduced the small nation by a fifth, and finally occupation by neighboring
Vietnam, which by then was a mere vassal of Russia. Cambodia was racked by famine,
and people were dying for want of medical care. An international medical
committee had repeatedly requested permission to enter the country, but the
Vietnamese had turned them down. The idea was for a group of important Western
intellectuals to march to the Cambodian border and by means of this great
spectacle performed before the eyes of the world to force the occupied country
to allow the doctors in.

The friend who spoke to Franz was
one he had marched with through the streets of Paris. At first Franz was
thrilled by the invitation, but then his eye fell on his student-mistress sitting
across the room in an armchair. She was looking up at him, her eyes magnified
by the big round lenses in her glasses. Franz had the feeling those eyes were
begging him not to go. And so he apologetically declined.

No sooner had he hung up than he
regretted his decision. True, he had taken care of his earthly mistress, but he
had neglected his unearthly love. Wasn't Cambodia the same as Sabina's country?
A country occupied by its neighbor's Communist army! A country that had felt
the brunt of Russia's fist! All at once, Franz felt that his half-forgotten
friend had con-

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tacted him at Sabina's secret bidding.

Heavenly bodies know all and see
all. If he went on the march, Sabina would gaze down on him enraptured; she
would understand that he had remained faithful to her.

"Would you be terribly upset
if I went on the march?" he asked the girl with the glasses, who counted
every day away from him a loss, yet could not deny him a thing.

Several days later he was in a
large jet taking off from Paris with twenty doctors and about fifty
intellectuals (professors, writers, diplomats, singers, actors, and mayors) as
well as four hundred reporters and photographers.

The
plane landed in Bangkok. Four hundred and seventy doctors, intellectuals, and
reporters made their way to the large ballroom of an international hotel, where
more doctors, actors, singers, and professors of linguistics had gathered with
several hundred journalists bearing notebooks, tape recorders, and cameras,
still and video. On the podium, a group of twenty or so Americans sitting at a
long table were presiding over the proceedings.

The French intellectuals with whom
Franz had entered the ballroom felt slighted and humiliated. The march on
Cambodia had been their idea, and here the Americans, supremely unabashed as
usual, had not only taken over, but had taken over in English without a thought
that a Dane or a Frenchman might not understand them. And because the Danes had
long since

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forgotten
that they once formed a nation of their own, the French were the only Europeans
capable of protest. So high were their principles that they refused to protest
in English, and made their case to the Americans on the podium in their mother
tongue. The Americans, not understanding a word, reacted with friendly,
agreeing smiles. In the end, the French had no choice but to frame their
objection in English: "Why is this meeting in English when there are
Frenchmen present?"

Though amazed at so curious an
objection, the Americans, still smiling, acquiesced: the meeting would be run
bilingually. Before it could resume, however, a suitable interpreter had to be
found. Then, every sentence had to resound in both English and French, which
made the discussion take twice as long, or rather more than twice as long,
since all the French had some English and kept interrupting the interpreter to
correct him, disputing every word.

The meeting reached its peak when a
famous American actress rose to speak. Because of her, even more photographers
and cameramen streamed into the auditorium, and every syllable she pronounced
was accompanied by the click of another camera. The actress spoke about
suffering children, about the barbarity of Communist dictatorship, the human
right to security, the current threat to the traditional values of civilized
society, the inalienable freedom of the human individual, and President Carter,
who was deeply sorrowed by the events in Cambodia. By the time she had
pronounced her closing words, she was in tears.

Then up jumped a young French
doctor with a red mustache and shouted, "We're here to cure dying people,
not to pay homage to President Carter! Let's not turn this into an American
propaganda circus! We're not here to protest against Communism! We're here to
save lives!"

He was
immediately seconded by several other Frenchmen.

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The
interpreter was frightened and did not dare translate what they said. So the
twenty Americans on the podium looked on once more with smiles full of good
will, many nodding agreement. One of them even lifted his fist in the air
because he knew Europeans liked to raise their fists in times of collective
euphoria.

How
can it be that leftist intellectuals (because the doctor with the mustache was
nothing if not a leftist intellectual) are willing to march against the
interests of a Communist country when Communism has always been considered the
left's domain?

When the crimes
of the country called the Soviet Union became too scandalous, a leftist had two
choices: either to spit on his former life and stop marching or (more or less
sheepishly) to reclassify the Soviet Union as an obstacle to the Grand March
and march on.

Have I not said
that what makes a leftist a leftist is the kitsch of the Grand March? The
identity of kitsch comes not from a political strategy but from images,
metaphors, and vocabulary. It is therefore possible to break the habit and
march against the interests of a Communist country. What is impossible, however,
is to substitute one word for others. It is possible to threaten the Vietnamese
army with one's fist. It is impossible to shout "Down with
Communism!" "Down with Communism!" is a slogan belonging to the
enemies of the Grand March, and anyone worried about losing face must remain
faithful to the purity of his own kitsch.

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The only reason I bring all this up
is to explain the misunderstanding between the French doctor and the American
actress, who, egocentric as she was, imagined herself the victim of envy or
misogyny. In point of fact, the French doctor displayed a finely honed
aesthetic sensibility: the phrases "President Carter," "our
traditional values," "the barbarity of Communism" all belong to
the vocabulary of
American kitsch
and have nothing to do with the
kitsch of the Grand March.

The
next morning, they all boarded buses and rode through Thailand to the Cambodian
border. In the evening, they pulled into a small village where they had rented
several houses on stilts. The regularly flooding river forced the villagers to
live above ground level, while their pigs huddled down below. Franz slept in a
room with four other professors. From afar came the oinking of the swine, from
up close the snores of a famous mathematician.

In the morning,
they climbed back into the buses. At a point about a mile from the border, all
vehicular traffic was prohibited. The border crossing could be reached only by
means of a narrow, heavily guarded road. The buses stopped. The French
contingent poured out of them only to find that again the Americans had beaten
them and formed the vanguard of the parade. The crucial moment had come. The
interpreter was recalled and a long quarrel ensued. At last everyone assented
to the following: the parade would be headed by one Ameri-

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can, one Frenchman,
and the Cambodian interpreter; next would come the doctors, and only then the
rest of the crowd. The American actress brought up the rear.

The road was narrow and lined with minefields. Every so often it was
narrowed even more by a barrier—two cement blocks wound round with barbed wire—passable
only in single file.

About fifteen feet ahead of Franz was a famous German poet and pop singer
who had already written nine hundred thirty songs for peace and against war. He
was carrying a long pole topped by a white flag that set off his full black
beard and set him apart from the others.

All up and down the long parade, photographers and cameramen were
snapping and whirring their equipment, dashing up to the front, pausing, inching
back, dropping to their knees, then straightening up and running even farther
ahead. Now and then they would call out the name of some celebrity, who would
then unwittingly turn in their direction just long enough to let them trigger
their shutters.

Something
was in the air. People were slowing down and looking back.

The American
actress, who had ended up in the rear, could no longer stand the disgrace of it
and, determined to take the offensive, was sprinting to the head of the parade.
It was as if a runner in a five-kilometer race, who had been saving his

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strength by hanging
back with the pack, had suddenly sprung forward and started overtaking his
opponents one by one.

The men stepped
back with embarrassed smiles, not wishing to spoil the famous runner's bid for
victory, but the women yelled, "Get back in line! This is no star
parade!"

Undaunted, the
actress pushed on, a suite of five photographers and two cameramen in tow.

Suddenly a
Frenchwoman, a professor of linguistics, grabbed the actress by the wrist and
said (in terrible-sounding English), "This is a parade for doctors who
have come to care for mortally ill Cambodians, not a publicity stunt for movie
stars!"

The actress's
wrist was locked in the linguistics professor's grip; she could do nothing to
pry it loose. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she said (in
perfect English). "I've been in a hundred parades like this! You won't get
anywhere without stars! It's our job! Our moral obligation!"

"Merde"
said the linguistics professor (in perfect French).

The American
actress understood and burst into tears.

"Hold it,
please," a cameraman called out and knelt at her feet. The actress gave a
long look into his lens, the tears flowing down her cheeks.

When at last the
linguistics professor let go of the American actress's wrist, the German pop
singer with the black beard and white flag called out her name.