Ahmed.
Ahmed enters, using his stick like a cane, looking old and in pain.
AHMED. Suddenly I’ve gotten a lot older. And why? You’ll never guess in a million years. Because of Rhubarb! My friend Rhubarb, the man of all the dynamic and ethical associations! The defender of all the rights of man, of woman, of the handicapped, of the Jew, of the Negro, of the Arab, of the dog, of the island parrot, of the sexual and adolescent minorities, of the overworked and the underprivileged, of the youngest children and the oldest mammoths. Do you know him, Rhubarb?
Improvisation on Rhubarb.
I run into him yesterday on the square in front of the Sarges-les-Corneilles city hall, and I notice that he looks sad. “Rhubarb,” I say to him, “you don’t have that airy air you had ere we met. Your earlier air and your air today make me think you’re in error. You have the air of one who’s erring.” “I have been erring since yesterday,” he says to me in a frankly funereal tone, “that’s why I have this air.” “And why are you erring, Rhubarb?” I murmur to him tenderly. “I have encountered the truth,” he blurts out to me. I’m struck. You can just imagine! The truth! It’s terrifying! Rhubarb and the truth! A shock to knock your block off! A rude barb from a barbed rube! Rhubarb meets the true barb: now I understand only too well why he has that eerie air of someone in error. So I say to myself: “Ahmed, step very lightly, my boy. This is serious stuff. This calls for the utmost tact, for extremely precise philosophy.” I begin very gently: “And in what circumstances did you encounter the truth, my dear Rhubarb?” He gives me this depressing look, with the air of one who’s been erring forever. “I was presiding at a meeting that was completely convivial and democratic, lively, concrete, and we were discussing all sorts of sincere and genuine things,” he says to me, with an empty, hangdog look in his eye. “In front of me, at the back of the room, there was this great big strapping guy, with a really dark moustache, a Turk, I think. He had his arms crossed, and he was staring at me. I was speaking, and speaking, and moderating the discussion, and we had just gotten to the subject of business practices. Fascinating! A very nice lady, Madame Pompestan, was explaining that, if we set a minimum wage for workers, then we’re violating human rights because we’re preventing the boss from freely proposing a contract to the worker who freely accepts it. Her point was debatable, no doubt about it, but it was interesting! It was the whole issue of the ethics of wages! And one can’t emphasize enough that wages aren’t completely ethical unless they’re completely free! And therefore free to be low, very low, almost right down in the dirt. But the Turk kept staring at me, and, besides, he kept stroking the ends of his moustache in a ferocious way. I tell myself: Rhubarb, the Turk at the back of the room isn’t happy. He isn’t participating, the Turk, he isn’t contributing to the discussion. He kept staring me down and looking more and more somber, the Turk. And I start to get tongue-tied. Already, as a rule, whenever I see a human person not participating in the discussion, I’m uncomfortable. But here he was staring at me like it was my fault. So I get tongue-tied, I start getting all mixed up. I begin a sentence, something like, ‘The ethics of the minimum mustn’t lead us to forget the ethics of the maximum’—pretty clever, huh, the whole moderate rhetorical balance and all?—and then I can’t go on. Really, I just get stuck. Everybody’s looking at me. There’s a deadly silence, like when in a debate there’s no more democratic dynamism. And suddenly, the Turk, still staring me right in the eyes, says very calmly, like this: ‘Monsieur Rhubarb, not only have you been saying nothing but bullshit for years now, but, what’s more, you’re going to end up saying disastrous bullshit.’ You can imagine the effect! Everyone looks at me, looks at each other, looks at me … And then, at that precise moment, a sentence invades my poor troubled head. It forces itself on me, this sentence! It takes up, in spite of myself, the entire surface of my brain. It’s the sentence ‘The Turk is nothing other than the truth.’ And I can’t get it out of my cerebral circumvolutions. ‘The Turk is nothing other than the truth.’ I pull what’s left of myself together, I pretend I need to go take a leak and I exit through the back door. And since then I’ve been wandering around with this errant air at which you stare.”
That’s what he told me, Rhubarb. I think about it. I tell him: “You’re mixing up what comes after and what comes before.” “What?” he whines feebly. “OK,” I continue, “so the Turk has arrived in your democratic life. But he, the Turk, isn’t the truth in person! It’s not a person, the truth! The truth is afterward, a long time afterward, after you’ve been putting the Turk to work for a very long time! After you’ve spent your life thinking about the Turk! After you’ve drawn the conclusions from the Turk! After you’ve grown old with the Turk in your brain! After you’ve changed everything about yourself because of the Turk! After what the Turk has said has suffused your actions, your thoughts, your very way of being Rhubarb! After Rhubarb has become as strong as the Turk! You haven’t encountered the truth, Rhubarb! You’ve encountered what happens so that there might be a little bit of truth! What’s happened to you in the form of a Turk is the chance for a little truth! You’ve encountered yourself, Rhubarb, capable of making truth out of what happens in the form of a Turk. The truth comes after the Turk, in your life, which will be entirely haunted by the Turk! Just think! Watch how you’re going to grow old with the Turk inside of you, with the trace, the impact of what the Turk said, that utterance thus becoming, in the name of Rhubarb, a piece of truth!” And I performed for him the blow of the truth that comes in time, the blow of the old truth! Just like this, I performed it for him.
Improvisation: the aging of Ahmed under the effect of the becoming inside of him of his own truth.
And, as I grew older, Rhubarb grew younger! He lost his air of one who errs up in the air! He had a gleam in his eye, a bounce in his step, and the gift of the gab. Me, I had practically one foot in the grave and getting truer by the minute. And he—horrors—he was a young man and more and more false! To the point where he ended up saying to me: “Ah, I understand everything! It’s that Turk who says nothing but bullshit! He doesn’t even know what a real democratic discussion is, that Turk! It’s a problem, all these illiterates who come to France with their frankly backward culture! Wait a minute! I’m going to suggest to my association that we have meetings to integrate the Turks! Integration! That’s the only truth there is! And for those who can’t be integrated, expulsion! We’re not letting ourselves be called bullshitters and disasters by antidemocratic cultures! Now that’s the truth! So long, Ahmed!”
That’s how I cured him, my friend Rhubarb! The most unsuccessful philosophy lesson of my entire career! Not to mention that it’s aged me ten years! I’m the one who has to absorb the Turk’s truth, and Rhubarb, nothing! I purged him! I purged him of his Turk! Ahmed, old pal, you’ve sacrificed yourself on the altar of the truth of alterity. Bloody Turk! It seems like I’m carrying him on my back.
Ahmed exits the stage painfully, as if he were carrying an enormous burden on his bent back. Just before exiting:
Each of you is on your own with the truths you encounter! Don’t put them on me!
If you come face to face with your Turk some day, don’t go out to take a leak! And don’t come fobbing him off on me! Don’t plan on pulling the Turk trick on me! To each his trick! To each his Turk! And good luck.