The Seventh Function of Language

The coffee streams into Kristeva like a river of lukewarm lava. She feels the skin in her mouth, in her throat.

The editor wants to commission a book from Sollers when he has finished this one.

For the thousandth time Sollers recounts an anecdote about himself and Francis Ponge. The editor listens politely. Ah, these great writers! Always banging on about their obsessions, always shaping their material …

Kristeva thinks that phobia does not disappear but slides under the tongue, under language itself, that the object of the phobia is a proto-writing and, conversely, all use of words, inasmuch as it is writing, is a language of fear. “The writer: a phobic who succeeds in making life a metaphor in order not to die of fear but to come back to life in the signs,” she thinks.

The editor asks: “What’s the latest on Althusser?” Suddenly, Sollers falls silent. “After Barthes, it’s so awful. What a year!” Sollers looks away when he replies: “Yes, the world is mad. What can you do? But that is the fate of sad souls.” He doesn’t see Kristeva’s eyes open like two black holes. The editor takes his leave and walks off with the child, who makes little yapping noises.

Sollers stands silently. Kristeva visualizes the mouthful of coffee forming a sort of stagnant pool in her stomach. The danger has passed, but the skin is still there. The nausea remains at the bottom of the cup. Sollers says: “I have a talent for differences.” Kristeva drains the cup in a single gulp.

They walk toward the large pond where children play with wooden boats that their parents rent by the hour for a few francs.

Kristeva asks for the latest on Louis. Sollers replies that the dogs are standing guard but that Bernard was able to see him. “In a total daze. Apparently, when they found him, he kept repeating: ‘I killed Hélène. What happens next?’ Can you imagine? What … happens … next? Extraordinary, isn’t it?” Sollers savors the anecdote greedily. Kristeva brings him back to more practical concerns. Sollers tries to reassure her: the chaos of the apartment means that if the copy wasn’t destroyed, it has at least been lost forever. At worst, it will end up in a cardboard box and some Chinese people will find it, two hundred years from now, with no idea what it is, and they’ll use it to light their opium pipe.

“Your father was wrong. No copy, next time.”

“There were no consequences, and there won’t be a next time.”

“There is always a next time, my squirrel.”

Kristeva thinks about Barthes. Sollers says: “I knew him better than anyone.”

Kristeva replies coldly: “But I killed him.”

Sollers quotes Empedocles: “The blood around the heart is men’s thought.” But as he is unable to last more than a few seconds without bringing the conversation back to himself, he grits his teeth and whispers: “His death will not be in vain. I will be what I will be.”

Then he takes up his monologue again, as if nothing happened: “Of course the message has no importance anymore … ah, ah, this little affair is far from clear, oh, oh … the public, by definition, has no memory it is blank it is virgin forest … You and I, we are like fish in air … What does it matter if Debord is wrong about me, even going so far as to compare me with Cocteau?… Who are we, to begin with, and in the end?”

Kristeva sighs. She leads him toward the chess players.

Sollers is like a child—his short-term memory lasts only three minutes—so he becomes absorbed in a game between an old man and a young man, both wearing baseball caps with logos featuring a team from New York. While the young guy launches an attack clearly designed to neuter his opponent’s ability to castle, the writer whispers into his wife’s ear: “Look at that old guy, he’s as cunning as a fox, ha ha. But if they look for me, they will find me, ha ha.”

They hear the poc-poc of tennis balls on nearby courts.

It is Kristeva’s turn to drag her husband by the sleeve because it is nearly time.

They walk through a forest of swings and arrive at a little puppet theater. They sit on wooden benches, surrounded by children.

The man who sits just behind them is badly dressed and has a mustache.

He pulls at his crumpled jacket.

He traps his umbrella between his legs.

He lights a cigarette.

He leans toward Kristeva and whispers something in her ear.

Sollers turns and exclaims joyfully: “Hello there, Sergei!” Kristeva corrects him curtly: “His name is Nikolai.” Sollers takes a cigarette from a blue tortoiseshell case and asks the Bulgarian for a light. The child sitting next to him watches curiously. Sollers sticks out his tongue. The curtain opens, and the puppet Guignol appears. “Hello, children!” “Hello, Guignol!” Nikolai explains to Kristeva, in Bulgarian, that he has been tailing Hamed’s friend. He searched his house (without making a mess, this time) and he is absolutely certain: there is no copy. But there is something odd: for some time now, he’s been spending his days at the library.