The Seventh Function of Language

Althusser is in a panic. He’s searched through all his papers, but he cannot find the precious document that was entrusted to him and which he hid in a junk-mail envelope, left in plain sight on his desk. Although he never read the document, he’s a nervous wreck because he knows it is of the utmost importance that he return it to the people who gave it to him for safekeeping, and that this is his responsibility. He rummages around in his wastepaper basket, empties his drawers, takes his books one by one from the shelves and hurls them onto the floor in a rage. He feels filled with a dark anger at himself, mixed with an embryonic suspicion, when he decides to shout: “Hélène! Hélène!” She runs up to him, worried. Does she, by any chance, know where … an envelope … opened … junk mail … a bank or a pizzeria … he can’t remember … Hélène, in a natural voice, says: “Oh yes, I remember, that old envelope … I threw it away.”

Time stops for Althusser. He doesn’t ask her to repeat it. What’s the point? He heard her perfectly well. But still, there’s hope: “The trash…?” I emptied it last night, and the garbagemen took it away this morning. A long groan howls deep inside the philosopher while he tenses his muscles. He looks at his wife, dear old Hélène, who has put up with him for so many years, and he knows that he loves her, he admires her, he feels sorry for her, he blames himself, he knows what he put her through with his caprices, his infidelities, his immature behavior, his childlike need for his wife to support him in his choice of mistresses, and his manic-depressive fits (“hypomania,” they call it), but this, this is too much, this is much, much more than he can tolerate—yes, him, the immature impostor—and he throws himself at his wife, screaming like a wild beast, and grabs her throat with his hands, which tighten around it like a vise, and Hélène, taken by surprise, stares at him wide-eyed but does not try to defend herself, putting her hands on his but not really struggling. Maybe she knew all along that it would have to end like this, or maybe she just wanted to put an end to it one way or another, and this way was as good as any, or maybe Althusser is just too fast, too violent. Maybe she wanted to live and recalled, at that instant, one or two phrases written by Althusser, this man she loved—“one does not abandon a concept like a dog,” perhaps—but Althusser strangles his wife like a dog, except that he is the dog, ferocious, selfish, irresponsible, maniacal. When he loosens his grip, she is dead. A bit of tongue—a “poor little bit of tongue,” he will say—sticks out of her mouth and her bulging eyes stare at her murderer or the ceiling or the void of her existence.

Althusser has killed his wife, but there will be no trial because he will be judged to have been temporarily insane at the time. Yes, he was angry. But why didn’t he say anything to his wife? If Althusser is a “victim of himself,” it’s because he didn’t disobey the person who asked him to remain silent. You should have said something, you jerk, at least to your wife. A lie is far too precious a thing to be misused. He should at least have told her: “Don’t touch this envelope, it’s extremely valuable, it contains a highly important document that X or Y [he could have lied here] gave me to look after.” Instead of which, Hélène is dead. Judged insane, Althusser will have his case dismissed. He will be committed for a few years, then will leave his apartment on Rue d’Ulm and move to the Twentieth Arrondissement, where he will write that very strange autobiography, The Future Lasts Forever, which contains this crazy phrase, placed inside parentheses: “Mao even granted me an interview, but for reasons of ‘French politics,’ I made the stupid mistake, the biggest of my life, of not turning up for it…” (The italics are mine.)

49

“Italy! That place is unbelievable!” D’Ornano paces the presidential office, lifting his hands above his head. “What the hell is going on in Bologna? Is that connected to our case? Were our men targeted?”

Poniatowski rummages around in the drinks cabinet. “Hard to say. It could be just coincidence. It could be the far left or the far right. It could also have been ordered by the government. You never know with the Italians.” He opens a can of tomato juice.

Sitting behind his desk, Giscard closes the copy of L’Express that he was leafing through and puts his hands together in silence.

D’Ornano (tapping his foot): “Coincidence, my ass! If—and I mean if—a group, of whatever kind, or a government, or an agency, or a service, or an organization possesses the means and the determination to set off a bomb that kills eighty-five people just to hamper our investigation, then I think we have a problem. The Americans have a problem. The English have a problem. The Russians have a problem. Unless it’s them, obviously.”