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  Thank you!

  OLIVIA TAPIERO

  Phototaxis

  TRANSLATED BY KIT SCHLUTER

  NIGHTBOAT BOOKS

  NEW YORK

  Copyright © 2017 Éditions Mémoire d’encrier inc.

  English Translation Copyright © 2021 by Kit Schluter

  Published originally as Phototaxie

  by Mémoire d’encrier in 2017

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64362-111-1

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-64362-129-6

  Cover & interior art: Postcards of La Quebrada, Acapulco, México, 1948

  Design and typesetting by Kit Schluter

  Typeset in Bembo Book MT Std

  Cataloging-in-publication data is available

  from the Library of Congress

  Nightboat Books

  New York

  www.nightboat.org

  for Lucie

  CONTENTS

  Meat

  Prelude

  The Falling Man

  A Walk in the Park

  The Horizon Is Burning

  Fires—Narr Sings

  Tacked up on telephone poles and the plywood boards that block off the no man’s land from the Business District to the Gourmet Sector, flyers all over the city announce the pianist Schultz’s return to the stage. They mention neither his disappearance, nor his absence at the Grand Concours, nor how he still attended the cocktail dinner that followed, despite the attack.

  Soberly described at first as an assault on culture, the museum’s deliberate razing came to be deemed an act of terrorism in light of the minority status of its organizers. The phrase had stuck within the hour, while smoke still plumed from the building: the museum attack, and then, not long after, simply the attack, a term uttered with a grievous shake of the head, which grazed with pleasure on the thought that one could cast oneself as a victim.

  Like those of any catastrophe, the overwhelming images of this event churned out in speeches and repetitions quickly lost their impact. The videos in circulation of the artwork’s evacuation were marked by an entirely plastic, unsettling texture—more so than even the charred sculptures and empty frames tasseled with shreds of burnt canvas. Carbonized forms, removed by the firemen like pieces of wood while the dumbstruck crowd watched on. That repeatedly aired commentary of an art restaurateur who, in an on-scene interview, explained in quavering tones that we would have to make do from now on with digital copies or the well-known reproductions on posters, placemats, and coffee cups no longer moved anyone at all. The impact had lasted a few minutes; the idea of the impact, a week. It was foremost an economic loss, a vague concern regarding the city’s cultural prestige. All other sensitivities were feigned, all other outrage simply diversion, a crusty adornment to conceal the profound and liberating thrill brought on by the spectacle.

  The falling man multiplies, telescoping in Schultz’s eye.

  *

  In the public park, silky little bodies crack under the soles of Narr’s feet. The sky is black and the ground moist, a sanguine mud. Bits of metal shimmer on the branches of the sickly oaks.

  “Public parks are a consolation prize of totalitarianism,” Zev once said atop the Jéricho Hotel. “Just space manicured according to political dictate. Their hypocritical purpose is to render city life more bearable, to buffer the riot with the possibility of a walk in the park, the illusion of some bifurcation.”

  The birds crazed with exhaustion peck at bacon bits, glands, liver, and giblets, while children, running away from those families’ chirps, dig and compare their treasures—little bones, meticulously polished molars in the creases of their imperturbable hands. A few viscous crows circle around them. They fly low, and hungrily.

  Narr walks toward the pond, that part of the park spared of the steaming flood of animal mash by its lack of sewage drains. There, on the lawn where legal herbicides cover up the diazinon residue, people let their pet dogs run free, destructive bodies hunting the birds that have survived the genocide. On the water’s surface, a duck tears out its feathers to the point of drawing blood, curious toddlers ask questions. Across the pond, a military parade—must be commemorating something or other.

  The falling man keeps falling, following himself endlessly.

  The leaflets announcing Schultz’s return litter the ground, soak up the meat juice, the putrid smell of which, combined with the portrait on the upcoming concert’s announcement, chisels at Narr like a migraine.

  The parade marches on.

  *

  The course of Théo Schultz’s professional life, unusual in the context of the classical scene, to say the least, had by turns been deemed the stuff of prodigy and impostor. According to his detractors, it was all careerism, technical shortcomings, and a restricted musical vocabulary, and the journalists, whether enthusiasts or critics with some other score to settle, devoted entire pages to the young performer’s signature sensitivity, the breadth of his palette, and his assiduous stage presence. The truth, of course, lay in some intermediary mediocrity, or at least that’s what Théo told himself, the thought as unbearable as it was inevitable. Then came the day of the Grand Concours, but it had already been a long time since anyone had spoken of him, and in the media his absence had been quietly eclipsed by the attack.

  On the shores, beached whales bloated with methane explode all over the closing shore shops, their glorious stench seeping under the skin for days. The protests ended a long time ago. Eyeing promotions, diligent guards move on to officially randomized ID checks. Relocated populations bump into each other elsewhere, dismissed by unfamiliar authorities as new arrivals. The ones who stay behind get sick most often, sick like this city whose body’s filtration system no longer works, entrails in this air, toxic organs; from now on, everything is visible, and areas that once lay underground now jut out conspicuously. Electric fences, cameras, and motion detectors surveil the unaffected territories, invite transgression. The Conservatory’s decor slaps the passersby with its gilding.

  Contractually bound, Théo daydreams of distant forests, arctic deserts, and sandy plains. He will have wanted it, however, this execution in the public square. His face peppers the city, ridicule amplified by the public health crisis, the still unexplained overflow of animal flesh that recalls the piano to the bourgeoisie of its origins, folded into the folds of the city.

  THÉO

  The audience stirs between the movements, coughs, applauds from time to time. I always enjoyed starting in on a piece before a respectful silence had set in: the listener’s guilt over having to interrupt a thing such as art only increases their indulgence. This obviously superficial sympathy is enough for the critics and music lovers, turns into a pleasant murmur that overflows onto the street. To make the audience feel like they’re disturbing the music with their noise between the movements is to imply their inferiority, their lack of refinement; it was also a way for me to suggest my complete immersion. I always lowered myself to such schemes, which enlivened my playing without overshadowing it. In the beginning, all of that offered me a kind of transmis
sion, a community, a recognition, and it was total recognition that I was seeking: gratitude and belonging.

  THE AGENT

  You’ve got nothing to prove, the concert’s in eight weeks and the hall’s already sold out, it’s plain to see they’ve been waiting for you. As for the fluff, you’ve absolutely got to talk about how you practice, the hours of practice, the people love work, it sells better than talent, anyway, and you’ll notice how artists are always talking about work, even if I admit there’s maybe a kind of anxiety behind this word, who cares, practice, practice as work, you’ve got to talk about it, make no mistake about it, mention sometime how you work on your Schubert, your Brahms, how you work on your trills, your arpeggios, you’ve absolutely got to talk about it in your interviews, and you’ve got to say something about all the long hours, too, the discipline, because people don’t believe in talent anymore, no one cares about it, it just doesn’t work. So, you’ve got to talk about work and you’ve got to talk about love, and you’ve absolutely got to say that one isn’t worth a dime without the other, people will just eat that up, you’ve got to talk about music and the piano, about passion and the nuts and bolts of it, and boom, just like that, you’ll have played it well, obviously they’ll put a couple portraits of you next to the text, but whatever you do, don’t try to recognize yourself in the portraits or the quotes, remember, you’re selling a product, just make an image of yourself that’s mysterious and accessible all at once, charming and respectable. About all the rest, don’t say a word.

  Desire is one form of suicide. As with the last glance we shoot out at the crowd, we shoot ourselves with a blank. After this momentum that hinges entirely on a blind spot: the fracas. From now on, all approval will be punitive. Whereas some take aim from one elsewhere to another, adjusting their aim, honing in on passing objects, preparing their consolation, minimizing risk and turning themselves into diverse but modest business venture, Théo Schultz’s ambition was voracious and wild, an inarticulate madness. An aestheticization, equally applied and detached, fed his musical staff like his fascination with disaster, ruins swallowed up by plants, forest fires, floods, industrial chemical explosions, snuff films, and above all, infinitely, the image of the falling man.

  The scene comes from the day of the attack. Not from the museum in flames but from a distant building, the fifty or so floors of which are occupied by financial offices. We don’t see the man as he hits the ground, only his fall, and so the video is more popular than the ones of the Dnipropetrovsk maniacs or the more recent one of Omayra Sánchez’s death recorded in real time. Filmed coincidentally by a tourist whose theatrically blasé commentary causes Théo to turn off the sound every time he watches, the video depicts a perfect fall, forever available on the screen.

  The witness’s distance does not establish their power—if they are protected, the risk they run freezes them back into a jealous revery, a congested longing. The fissure of the gaze is never at rest, but persists in disintegration, imperceptible gaps.

  The tab remains open, the image of the falling man repeats, still an erotic mystery to Théo despite the accumulating months, the hundreds of repetitions, his body emptying out as if drugged. He doesn’t tell anyone about this. He tries to locate the moment of grace, pauses the video with every passing second, starts it over from the beginning. “I’m twisted, a total sicko,” he tells himself, all the while convinced that, in his entire life, he’s never seen anything so beautiful.

  *

  Slowly the water recedes, the infertile land settles and cracks like how a wound heals, a placeless wound—hurled to the borders by displaced bodies—which moves on like blood, uprooted memories.

  Narr looks closely at the poster, its use of different fonts, the pieces it announces. She has thought about Théo since the evening of the Grand Concours, it’s true, but not until today has she wanted to see him again. Although, it’s not so much a desire to see him as a desire to obtain, through his person, news about Zev. Narr decides to go to Théo’s. To knock on his door, convinced he still lives in the same apartment: per Schultzian logic, a change of address would have required an update of his promotional photograph.

  *

  “Théo! It’s me. The building’s locked, I’m downstairs.”

  The aggressive buzzing of the intercom vibrates down to Narr’s bones. In the vestibule a man mops the tiled floor, muttering under his breath about how his job is pointless, given the pervasive smell and all this dust that has started to creep in. “Better head home, young lady. They say one hell of a storm’s coming.”

  NARR

  You open the door for me, but I was already open, like a cracked fruit, and you stand there smiling, calm in the doorway, at the threshold, as if you’d spent the last year waiting for me, but I can see you shaking, too, where your collar bones meet, and all of a sudden I want to bite you till you scream, till you bleed, you know I’ve seen the poster, that’s how you explain my presence here, and I can feel your shame, you’re ashamed, aren’t you?

  “Coming in?”

  Théo’s room oozes a studied dilapidation. Narr knows of his means, that enormous inheritance, knows that behind his bohemian airs, behind these dirty walls and the mattress on the floor, behind the dust and old photos taped up on the doors hides an aristocratic guilt. The objects are all the same as before. Théo repeats himself. Regulation envelops him, an ingested metronome.

  “Come on, have a seat.”

  “I saw what happened… the concert. Bravo.”

  “Yeah, well, you know…”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  They eye each other like animals considering whether the prey is worth the attack.

  “Do you need money?”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  “No, I mean it. What did you come here for? Are you lonely? Do you want something?”

  “I don’t know… to slap you in the face.”

  “Why?”

  “To get you to come out of your shell a bit.”

  Théo doesn’t ask Narr to leave. He just stands there, looking disgusted and squirming.

  Narr scolds him with a half-smile.

  “The last time I saw you, you were puking prosciutto all over my rug.”

  “I already said I’m sorry. I was in a bad place. The Concours, the cocktail party, all those people… But let’s be honest: that rug was hideous. I was only doing you a favor.”

  “I’m not looking for apologies. I’m glad to see you again.”

  “Me too.”

  “You seem tired.”

  “Not as tired as you. It’s this war. The city’s suffocating, it just never ends…”

  “Feel like going for a walk in the park together? Out in the storm.”

  Outside the dust is rising, slowly reaching the upper stories. Théo closes the window.

  “All right. Let’s go.”

  THÉO

  I haven’t been in touch with Zev since he left for good. I didn’t want to cling to him anymore. It was all starting to look like love, but I could feel a despondency coming on, and the thought that he might notice horrified me. I almost wrote to him once, joking around, to forward an article I’d just read. It was called, “Rise in Animal Population in Radioactive Environments.” I thought he’d appreciate the picture of the deer, partridges, and boars in Chernobyl, that it might make him smile, but I never hit send. Our friendship had been too beautiful for such a banal gesture, especially after such a long time, and since we’d left off on bad terms.

  NARR

  I looked for him for a long time, looked all over, rushed West through the communes, through the orchards, and begged the field workers for some trace of him, asked around among the fire chasers, those pioneers of devastation and fertile ashes who think of nothing more than the profitability of foraged mushrooms. I caught up with the blockades, the resistance fighters, and I said Zev’s name to everyone I met as one might flash a passport, and some were familiar with his ghost, a tale, a
trace, nothing more than a disembodied story.

  After a brief dance, in which everyone wants to seem like they know more than the rest but don’t want to say, they all confess, without a fight, that they know nothing about what Zev is up to and want to know where he is, too. Yes, out west, almost certainly, but Zev knows how to hide his tracks and his hatred is totalizing. Narr speculates that he must have ended up in trafficking, conspiracy: it’s all going to blow soon, and the ruins will be pretty. Surely he must be traveling, planning various acts of destruction from a distance. “Maybe the attack…” Théo tosses out the idea. Seeing the fire, he had the immediate feeling that it was a message, a gift meant especially for him.

  “Do you actually believe what you’re saying?”

  “No.”

  *

  The sandstorm spreads in a matter of minutes, engulfing the streets, the buildings, finally blanketing the meat and bringing about a suffocation that comes from something other than that smell. No doubt this will give the impression that things are generally improving. But, by word of mouth, people are already starting to warn each other to move around only on foot. In the public park, silhouettes emerge from the orange mist.

  The paths fork.

  The falling man keeps falling.

  THE CONDUCTOR

  Enough with the cordialities. Your artistry on the piano is laughable, the illusion of refinement, gone the way of all so-called classical music. A sickness. The piano carries its own particular violence, demands interiority, sedentariness, it’s the double frontier of execution: the salon on the one hand, the gallows on the other. Don’t be fooled, ever since the beginning it’s been about distracting us from a revolution that’s already underway, keeping little ladies busy and seducing them into their caste. You already know all that, don’t you, Théo Schultz? That’s why you pulled out of the Grand Concours, that’s what you told me at the cocktail party. I saw the fire, you said. If you do come and play here, it’s only because you can’t, or don’t, know how to do anything else. You want to cover up all your embarrassment over being alive. And that’s what it means to be a pianist, ever since the old days of patrons. That’s it. Go look at the garbagemen, the cleaning ladies, the supermarkets, the traffic jams, go take a walk in the Northern District, or out by the city limits—only then will I let you talk to me of survival. They told you you had talent? They let you hoover up grant money and public funding? Very well. Your job, like mine, is first and foremost to entertain the rich. The old lords. People with horrible taste. So, let’s start back in. From measure 17. Andante!