1. NOTHING

Ahmed, Moustache.

Ahmed takes the stage and points his stick threateningly at the audience.

AHMED. What are you looking at? There’s nothing here. Me, Ahmed, I’m absolutely nothing. Superlatively nothing. And, believe me, looking at nothing is exactly the same as not looking. Check out how I’m nothing.¹

Ahmed’s improvisations on nothing. He tries to make himself look as narrow and as shrunken as possible, as if he were disappearing on stage.

If one of you were clever, really a genius, better at straightening out the messes of the world than Ahmed and Einstein put together, you’d say this right into my nothing-face: “My little Ahmed-nothing, how do you know that you’re nothing? Huh? Because if you know you’re nothing, it’s because you’re something. Because nothing is nothing and nothing can’t know much. Especially not nothing. Nothing knowing nothing? That’ll be the day! To know nothing, you have to be something and not nothing.” And then, me, Ahmed, I’d look like a sucker. If nothing can be a sucker. Does nothing suck? There’s a lollipop, but is there a nothing-pop? The pop, the crackle, the snap …

Ahmed’s improvisation on nothing and popping.

Anyway, no doubt about it. Me, Ahmed, I didn’t know I was nothing and I would never have known it. If it hadn’t been for Moustache. Albert Moustache. Moustache, he’s not nothing at all. He has a moustache. He’s a big hulk of a guy, Moustache. He carries weight in Sarges-les-Corneilles, Moustache does. He’s something, Moustache, not nothing. And then one day … But I’m not going to tell you. Me, Ahmed, I’m not going to make nothing speak. Nothing says nothing, that’s only natural. Moustache is going to tell you himself. He’s the something that says something. Naturally. Moustache! Moustache!

Moustache makes his entrance.

My dear Moustache, just tell them who I am, me, Ahmed.

MOUSTACHE. There’s no “you.” There’s just “all of you.” You, you’re in the all of you. All of you immigrators from all over the world. The Orientals and them who come from Africa. Them who are gobbling up all the welfare money. Them on account of who we don’t have any more work, not even sweeping the street. All of you who bow and scrape before an Islamic God who looks like death warmed over and uppity to boot. Now if you were you and not all of you, you might be someone, who knows? But, fortunately, your you is in the all of you of the others. All one big block! That belongs in one big cell block! And that’s the end of that!

AHMED. Take it easy, fatso. So, I’m not someone?

MOUSTACHE. You’re all a bunch of less-than-nothings.

AHMED. What did I tell you? Less than nothing! That’s not nothing, being less than nothing. Because less than nothing, well, that’s got to be something! Above nothing there’s something and below nothing there’s something too.

MOUSTACHE. Are you trying to mess with my head again, towel head? Less than nothing is even more nothing than nothing.

AHMED. And how can you assume that nothing can be more or less, fatso? In nothing there’s not a thing. More nothing is still nothing. It can’t change, nothing. Nothing is like zero Celsius. Above zero, it’s hot, below zero, it’s freezing. If I’m less than nothing, I’m freezing. It’s freezing, yeah, it’s freezing cold …

Hey, Moustache, are you freezing? Can you feel how it’s below zero? Do you freeze up at thirty below nothing? It’s colder than a witch’s tit on account of less than nothing!

Moustache is frozen solid; he’s literally petrified.

MOUSTACHE. Shiver me timbers! I get the feeling I’m a snowman.

AHMED. Hey, it’s Moustache the snowman! Deep down, he looks to me as though he’s a hell of a lot less than nothing!

MOUSTACHE (in a sepulchral voice). The Arab has turned me into a cold-storage truck.

AHMED. Let’s see if it sounds hollow.

Ahmed smacks Moustache with his stick, and Moustache falls to pieces.

No way! I just smashed my proof. My beloved proof, Moustache, that I was nothing. And even less than nothing! I don’t know nothing anymore. Whatever. It’s only nothing that knows nothing. Anyway, the stick isn’t nothing. When nothing has a stick, it’s something. When they tell you you’re nothing, smack the proof with your stick. That’ll cool him down for good.

Well, anyway, I’ve got to warm myself up.

Ahmed improvises on the theme of warming things up; he induces a heat wave. Moustache is reconstituted; he stands up straight again.

MOUSTACHE. Where am I? Who am I? Where am I going? Who am I going? Where was I heating? Who’s heating? Who? …

AHMED (giving him another smack with his stick). Whoever says to nothing “you’re nothing” is nothing.

Moustache collapses again.

AHMED (wiping his face). You think it’s nothing, being something? Believe me, it’s not nothing …