Free Desolation by Yasmina Reza Page B

one loses at solitaire, I accept that, just as I accept these days that things are slowing down, I can even accept that there’s nothing going on, provided my body holds out a little longer, I accept that my light is slowly going out and I accept the ordinary death that will step into my place. I am in the process, Nancy, of accepting how modest a chapter in time mine has been.
    So on top of all this, my love, must I also adapt myself to the inanity of my descendants? Under the pretext that these are my genes, must I forgive someone whose views of the world make me sick to my stomach? In a word, must I accept—the very thought makes me shiver—that the final person in my life is a worm whose ideal is not to get in a fight with anyone? In my philosophy, Nancy, I would have said to her, a father wants his son not to be like the rest of humanity. In my philosophy, what is good for everyone else is not good for my son. I couldn’t give a fuck, I would have said to Nancy, though she wouldn’t have allowed me to go that far, I don’t give a fuck, please understand, that this boy spends his time flocking from Java to Bermuda and back again, and if I keep coming back to this more than is necessary, it’s because every mention of this ludicrous geography feeds my sense of mockery. But I don’t give a fuck how he lives his life, I don’t give a fuck if he’s in this place or that, whether he’s doing this or that is a matter of total indifference to me, I don’t give a fuck if his mediocrity is, in society’s view, more or less acceptable. Whatever he does and wherever he goes, whether he elbowed his way in or trumpeted his lack of ambition, my son has
adapted
to the modern world. I have sired a
well-adapted man
(read: adapted to everyone except his father). I have given life to someone who, like a mutating fly—I read in
Science
and the Future
that a breed of flies that got trapped in the London Underground while it was being built mutated a hundred times faster than normal in order to survive—ends up bowing to the exigencies of the world, sees what’s reasonable and makes himself at home there, finds a comfortable little niche or two and settles in to wait for his own extinction. When you were a teenager, my boy, you had a sort of attack of nerves, an obsession with revenge, something set fire to you. I approved of that son. He was hostile to me, but I recognized him. You defied me with that ridiculous thirst for the absolute that everyone has at that age and I said to myself, The boy is as obstreperous as one could hope for, he’s going to manage to break out. But you didn’t break out of anything. Once the upheavals of youth were over, you went back to your place in the ranks of the average. No more trace of rebellion. No more trace of revenge. No more trace of passion. Everything that nourishes a man and fortifies him and lifts him out of the conditions of his existence, you consigned to oblivion. You traded fever for restraint. And you did it before you’d even set foot in inhospitable territory, before even daring to take a few steps into the kingdoms of uncertainty. You were so quick to fear for your own skin, my poor child. Like the rest of the troop of your wormlike friends, you know that every act has its price, and so from the beginning you chose never to stand out again. Avoiding suffering, that’s your whole horizon. Avoiding suffering is your substitute for the heroic epic. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present my son, a cut flower from the gang of cut flowers. I would have liked you better as a criminal or a terrorist than as a militant in the cause of happiness.
    I would have liked him better as a criminal than as a militant for happiness, I’d have said to Nancy if the solitude of marriage hadn’t rendered any exchange pointless. “What dramatics!” she would have said and smiled as she stroked my face, if the collapse of our marriage hadn’t rendered any caress impossible. My ideal