Affliction in the Form of a Question (Week 6)

[serpentinejacaranda]

Inspired by the fabulous "If It's Any Consolation" by used-songs from Week 2: https://used-songs.dreamwidth.org/1266735.html

***

Affliction in the Form of a Question

La première démarche de l’esprit est de distinguer ce qui est vrai de ce qui est faux.

The first step of the mind is to distinguish what is true from what is false.

— Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe 

 
My dad sits in his recliner by the front door. The chair has faint yellow cracks across its rich brown leather, both in the backing and across the padded armrests. Right now, these cracks are covered by his large frame. When I visit, he doesn't get up from it except to use the bathroom.

It's seven o'clock. The TV is way too loud, as usual. My dad's hearing aids whine softly whenever turns his head.

Albert steps into the threshold that divides the living room from the kitchen behind us. I can feel thick heat on the back of my head. Me and dad turn around to look at the man.

 
He's wearing an apron ("Embrassez le chef") and aims a long wooden spoon at his mouth. He pauses thoughtfully. "Même humiliée, la chair est ma seule certitude." The author and dramatist licks the spoon. "Je ne puis vivre que d’elle. La Liberté absurde!" He walks back into the kitchen.

My dad laughs absently. He taps the side of his glass with his fingernail: an absent pattern, like the nervous jounce of a leg.

"What did he say?"

"I think he had some good things to say about meat?" I tell him. "And he thought it was absurdly... really good?" I reach over and tap his shoulder. "So hey, dad, how are your toes?"

My dad winces and shakes his head a little. It's answer enough. After a septic infection, he's had intense pain in his leg and especially in his toes, usually at night. We've decided it's better he stay on pain meds than live the rest of his life in agony. Still, we wonder. The doctors thought it was pre-diabetes, but when the tests came back negative, over and over, the doctors settled on infection, then claudication, now just pain management.

"THIS... IS... JEOPARDY!"

My dad taps the cup again: Clinky-clink, clink-clinky-clink clink. The Jeopardy theme plays so loudly out of the little TV speaker that it sounds warped.

"... AND NOW THE HOST OF JEOPARDY: ALEX TREBEK!"

Johnny Gilbert's voice introduces three contestants: Arthur Chu, François-Marie Arouet, and Eugène Ionesco. The camera whips to each of them, with Gilbert's blurb: "An eighteen-century writer from Paris, France..."

Trebek thanks Johnny and with his usual feline caution steps forward to start some banter.

"First off we have Arthur Chu from Albany, New York. It says here you're an insurance compliance analyst, is that right?"

"Yes, Alex."

"Do you find the work interesting?"

"It's fine."

Murmuring laughter from the studio audience.

"Have you ever analyzed a life insurance policy?"

Arthur laughs. "Too many to count."

Trebek pauses. "Would you take a hard look at mine?"

The audience laughs again, bigger this time. What's going on? The camera holds on Trebek, who turns to face the camera directly with a fake-bashful expression on his face.

Cut to Arthur, implacable. "You mean right now?"

"No, not RIGHT NOW," Trebek replies, testily. "After the show. AFTER the show!"

The audience releases a few scattered, uncertain murmurs.

Trebek stares at the floor and adjusts his tie. His frown dips down, increasingly exaggerated. He looks up slowly, holding his right hand up to his face, with his thumb and forefinger pointing up, like a little TV antenna. He moves his hands down until the tips of his fingers meet the corners of his mouth. His fingertips draw his mouth ever-downward, beyond what seems possible, like the clown in Pagliacci. A tear forms on one side of his eye and glides down his cheek.

Behind us, at the kitchen threshold, Albert clears his throat. He has dark circles under his eyes and his prominent brow sweats. "Mime du périssable, l’acteur ne s’exerce et ne se perfectionne que dans l’apparence." He glides back out of view to attend to dinner. My dad takes a sip of his milk, then taps the plastic cup again. (Get on with it.) He has no time for Albert. He's fixated on Trebek and his shenanigans. "Huh?" he asks absently, glancing over at me. "Dinner's ready?"

On the TV, the studio camera wobbles slightly, like a cameraperson is getting jostled, then it starts to zoom in on Trebek, so slow as to be almost imperceptible.

"Not yet, dad. Albert was just saying the masks we wear are the same anywhere we go."

My dad shrugs. "It's just a crock pot."

Trebek waits for our attention. I notice his frown is gone, replaced with his usual patient smile. Maybe he's on the verge of a witticism? "The wheel," continues Trebek, "lies. It measures everything against itself. Every burst of chaos, every injustice, is just a denial of the wheel. But active denial of fate and fortune is keeping the wheel aloft and turning."

Cut to camera two, panning leisurely from left to right. Arthur, with a trapped-animal grin, François-Marie with an amused sneer, and Eugène, looking astonished and angry, staring offscreen in the direction of the malfunctioning host.

"Election season..." says Trebek, who pauses again, as if mustering courage. "Election season will be a continuous affair. When our side wins, the wheel turns. When we lose, there is no wheel. To say there's no wheel is to argue in its shadow."

One of the contestants begins to clap and laugh. The camera cuts to the mirthful Eugène and back to Trebek, who holds his notecards in a death grip. Back to Eugene, then back to Trebek, who turns to the next contestant.

"François-Marie... I'm told you're a rather accomplished playwright?" Trebek inches forward and delivers his next line with a twinkle: "Would you have written anything I've heard about?"

The Frenchman rolls his eyes and gestures around him. "Les anciens Romains..."

Hearty laughter drowns him out. François-Marie stares eighteenth-century daggers at the studio audience. The laughter stops instantly. François-Marie adjusts his wig and turns to Trebek, then gestures up and around, as if to the studio cavern itself. "Les anciens Romains élevaient des prodiges d'architecture pour faire combattre des bêtes."

My dad glances over at me from his leather recliner. "What?"

"Dad, he's saying they're gonna fight to the death."

Albert is in the kitchen doorway again. I pivot my neck. The intellectual is agitating his wine glass in quick, pretentious circles. "L’époque s’y prête, je l’ai dit." He stands there, expectant. I watch the dark purple claret form a tiny funnel in the center of his glass. "Jusqu’ici la grandeur d’un conquérant était géographique."

I touch my dad's shoulder. "He says dinner's almost ready. And that his talents in the kitchen are a kind of... manifest destiny? Dad, I don't really understand. Sorry."

On TV, Trebek turns to Eugène. Eugène is all smiles now.

"We have two playwrights in Sony Pictures Studios today. You're a leading voice in what they call 'The Theater of the Absurd'?"

"Il faut se méfier des rhinocéros."

"You have a pet rhinoceros?"

Eugène shakes his head, smiles wistfully. He bends over and picks up something at his feet. The camera cuts to Trebek, then back to Eugène, who is suddenly wearing a large rhinoceros mask that covers his entire head.

Albert's hand reaches over my dad and me to place empty plastic plates on our laps, then retreats back into the kitchen. They're sturdy plastic with raised edges, like upside-down frisbees.

Trebek goes through the six categories. The camera pans to each header as he announces it: "The Best of all Possible Worlds. Potent Potables. Despair by Any Other Name. Famous Grievers. Blue State, Red State--and Hospital Equipment."

He continues: "Albert, you have control of the board."

"Red State, Blue State for 1200, Alex."

"This is for 1200. 'These game shows divide the United States of America neatly into two political philosophies."

 

BEE-DEE-DEEE!

"Arthur."

"What are Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune."

"Correct."

"Hospital Equipment for a thousand."

Trebek glances at me through the TV before he speaks. "'This irritating and stressful piece of diagnostic equipment is hooked up to patients dying of congestive heart failure.'"

I glance over at my dad.

BEE-DEE-DEEE!

"François-Marie."

The Frenchman looks pleased. "Qu'est-ce qu'un moniteur de patient."

"Ooo..." Trebek winces, holding his hand up to his heart. "Ooo. No, I'm sorry. No. That's incorrect."

BEE-DEE-DEEE!

"Arthur!"

"What is a multi-parameter monitor."

"Correct."

"Hospital equipment for eight hundred."

"This piece of common therapeutic equipment is used to get cardiac patients out of bed and walking for at least forty-five minutes a day. Stubborn patients, such as a dying father"--he gives the camera a quick glance--"will reject it out of hand. Some people just want to go home. They don't want to die, but the hospital doesn't give relief or care to their satisfaction. This piece of equipment makes him afraid that this is the place he's going to die."

BEE-DEE-DEEE!

"Arthur."

"What is a walking frame."

"Right!"

"Red State, Blue State for two hundred."

"'The host of Wheel of Fortune, Pat Sajak, used to make jokes about climate change. He once said it was a hoax. He doesn't want to live in a world where science gives us the best-informed answer but not always the right answer. And yet... science is not a collection of facts. It's not a belief system. It's a methodology. They say the government in this country is corrupt, rotten, and the best we have. But this is no longer good enough. It may soon be actively destructive."

Trebek reaches out of frame and then a glass of water appears in his hand. He takes a sip.

"All sides, all sides, I know. Flattening our ethics until the whole world is equal corruption. Certainly, God has given His people a perfect world and would release the planet before humans destroy it for their slightly larger quarterly returns. Flame up a religion around someone taking your hard-earned money and squandering it. Sure. Kick out the poor people or put them into perpetual work if you can't automate their jobs or enslave them overseas. Kick out anyone who got here after us. Stoke the fear of theft and squander, the anger of injustice that someone would get to where I am without the kind of hard work I put in. Yes, give me a world that would fuck my neighbor without providence, without grace, and call it mercy."

Someone clucks with their tongue. The camera finds François-Marie, who shakes his head and wags his finger. I can't tell if he disagrees with the answer or the inevitable question, which no doubt he anticipates. Behind him, Eugène's rhinoceros head bobs backward and forwards, now adorned with a red baseball cap. (It's 2014. I don't know what that means.) A camera cuts to the absurdist's abandoned podium, then back to Trebek.

"Anyone?"

BEE-DEE-DEEE!

"Arthur."

"What is The Fall of the American Empire."

"Yes!"

"Famous Grievers for one thousand."

BZZ-DOO DE-BZZ-DOO DE-BZZ-DOO!

"...The Daily Double!"

The audience claps politely.

"Arthur, How much do you want to wager?"

"I'll make this a true Daily Double, Alex."

"Good man. For thirty-two hundred dollars: 'This American politician, who first ran for president in 1988, lost his father to heart disease in 2002. The death shook him deeply. Ten years from now, he will be blamed for what his political enemies will call the largest political scandal of a generation, while his successor shifts and bullies and criticizes and sows and reaps and forms a new religion in which he is John the Baptist to this wayward country, the truth-teller, the man with coins falling into his back pockets, falling and expanding and never-ending, a manifest destiny, his family a forever family, with wealth beyond measure."

BEE-DEE-DEEE!

Eugène makes roaring noises and runs around the stage. The paper mâché tip of his rhinoceros horn flies in and out of frame every time the camera cuts. Sometimes a handheld camera--surely a first in this game show's long production history--follows behind him to track the carnage. The rhinoceros-man is on all fours, his red baseball cap askew, poking at the short breeches and stockings of François-Marie, who is attempting to fight him off with a walking stick.

"Arthur?"

Arthur clears his throat and pulls his eyes away from the rhinoceros. "Who is..."

SNORKLE CRASH SNORKLE GRRRRRROWL

"Who is Joseph Robinette Biden Jr."

"Correct!"

I stare at my empty plate. Albert pulls up a foldable chair from the kitchen and sits in it backwards, his arms on the plastic backrest. He's between the couch and the leather recliner--between me and my dad. My dad snores.

Albert rests his hand on my arm reassuringly. Crashing sounds come out of the TV. The novelist looks at me, gently. With his other arm, he gestures towards my father, dozing in his favorite place: next to me, his child, with the comfortable sounds of media confirming that his world continues to spin around him. In five years, he will be gone.

Albert's voice careens through our twenty-first century English: "We get into the habit," he begins slowly, "of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that contest which every day draws us closer to jeopardy or death, the body"--he waves his hand all around my father, like an incantation--"maintains always its lead."

I think for a second. "Until it doesn't."

Albert nods and pats my arm. "Jusqu'à ce que cela ne."

He stands, stretches, adjusts his apron, and walks back into the kitchen. I have reached over and carefully taken command of the remote control while my father naps. Our empty plates are still on our laps. I press the mute button. Wheel of Fortune is up next. I need to gird myself for it.

Comments

[roina_arwen]

This was very intriguing, in a sort of abstract way. Makes me wish I knew French, lol!

[xeena]

Your imagery is beautiful as always. You have a real gift for hooking us from the first line and keeping our attention. I really felt like I was in this scene and could picture it as a movie. All the details are perfect and the emotion is palpable. I really love this.

[rayaso]

Poor Alex! You did such a great job on this - even though I don't know French, I was able to follow along. You did a great job in imagining the father, and I loved the description of his chair.

[halfshellvenus]

I had to go back and re-read the original entry for reference, and I remembered how much I liked it at the time.

You've abstracted some parts of it and made a kind of parallel setting that is like a political fever dream. Well done!

[bleodswean]

It can be so difficult an achievement to tackle "the human condition" in short form that isn't dirty realism. This is well done and a great prose expansion on the original.

Have you read any John Hawkes? Travesty in particular.

[serpentinejacaranda]

To my shame, I have not! But thanks for the recommendation, looks like an author I'd enjoy. :-)

[drippedonpaper]

Humans treat politics as a game, an uncontrollable wheel, not realizing when the wheel pops off it's track, they may be crushed beneath it.

Very clever entry and so much truth within it.

[legalpad819]

This was very smart!

[inkstainedfingertips]

Very abstract, giving it an almost dreamlike feel. But within those abstractions are some very sharp, pointed social critiques. This piece was really intriguing and a very interesting read.