Ahmed.
Ahmed is sitting in the audience. The stage is clear, but empty.
AHMED. You see, the stage is still empty. Nobody is showing up. So, I think to myself: they’re all dead. Behind, back there, in the wings, they’re all dead. Someone released a deadly gas on them, some Japanese sarin, for example. They were chatting, they had their makeup on, they had stage fright, they were waiting for the moment when they would come on stage before you, and then, just like that, a sneaky, lethal, stinging, creeping gas, left by a Japanese with a plastic watering can, right at the foot of the stage, in back, the Japanese leaves through the john, he gets out through the window of said john, he’s a skinny little Japanese, he very courteously put down his watering can next to the fireman on duty, he said to him, this way there’s always a little water in case of a fire, the fireman on duty said, it’s nice of you to think about the water, but that won’t go far, the Japanese said, it’s for a very little fire, a cigar fire or a sparkler fire, the fireman laughed, and the acrobatic Japanese slipped out through the window of the john, sight unseen, and took off to catch a plane. The gas spread around, and now they’re all dead, my actor friends. That’s why the stage is empty. Rhubarb is dead, Moustache is dead, Madame Pompestan is dead, Fenda … No, not Fenda. You can say all sorts of nasty, weird things to yourself, but Fenda dead, no way. Fenda was late. She saw the Japanese leaving through the window of the john, and, since she likes to daydream, Fenda, she stayed beneath a tree, wondering what a Japanese could be doing at that hour leaving like a contortionist through the window of the john of a theater. She was daydreaming and joyous, my radiant Black Fenda, because she’d seen—you only see this once in a lifetime, if at all—a Japanese leaving the john at night and through the window. She thought to herself that this was Japanese politeness: leaving by the door is vulgar, you risk bumping into those who are waiting for their turn in the john, you get seen right after having fulfilled a very animal need, it’s not proper, for a Japanese, thinks Fenda, to piss or even worse. The discretion, the solitude of the standing pisser! The civilized Japanese leaves the john through the window. Fenda thinks to herself. Which saves her life, for while she’s having this daydream, the sarin gas is killing off everyone else. And the stage remains empty.
They’re dead. But what does that mean? Aside from the empty stage? Aside from the supposed horrible pain that I experience because of their supposed death? Death makes someone disappear between an empty stage and a pain? Is that it? And death, as far as the dead person is concerned, what is it? There are philosophers who have said: before death, we’re alive. And after death, there’s nothing. Ergo, death is nothing. It’s like a cigarette paper between life and nothing. They called them stoics, these philosophers. What’s strange is that they also said: philosophy is learning how to die. Learning nothing, in other words, learning that we’re afraid of what’s nothing more than an invisible hair between life and nothing … This is worthless as far as I’m concerned, this idea of spending your whole life learning how to die in nothingness. For there’s nevertheless this: pain. The person who was there, in the spotlight, I’ll never see him again. Never again. And he’ll never see himself again either. There’s still what would have been on stage without him. Just imagining Fenda never again being in the spotlight … No. Between pain and the empty stage, there’s room, and not nothing, for death. But I can’t think about it. There’s nothing to think. My pain is thinking for me. For ever.
And death, as far as the dead person is concerned? Let’s see. Let’s try an experiment. In the theater you can experiment with anything.
Ahmed walks up onto the stage.
I’m dying. I’m dying.
Improvisation on death.
No, definitely, there’s nothing to think. Except for the pain that thinks by itself, that thinks “never again,” and that’s not a thought. It’s the capturing of everything by the empty black thing that ties the body in knots, that empties the soul. To be visited by “never again” and the body and the soul tied in knots.
Ah! Fortunately, they’re not dead! Fenda is daydreaming beneath her tree, beauty crowned by a starry heaven … No sarin, no Japanese, no fireman … Even the john doesn’t have a window, to tell you the truth. It’s a hermetically sealed john, a john without a window or a mirror. A good French john where there’s no paper and you can’t flush the toilet! Good old national john! And everyone uses it! Rhubarb! Moustache! Madame Pompestan!
Improvisation on these three characters, alive and well, going to the john.
As another philosopher, by no means a stoic, said: Philosophy is a meditation on life, not on death.
17 All it takes is for death to strike us, for there to be pain and the twisted soul. There’s nothing to think about, thank God, in that baleful interruption of everything that has meaning! And the theater, the theater too! Many people pretend to die, in the theater, they die every night, then they get up and take their bow! All the better! For the theater is also a meditation on life and not on death. The life of Rhubarb, the life of Madame Pompestan, the life of Ahmed! Forever! And your life, you who come here to see a representation of death! Your life forever! Down with death! Say it with me: “Down with death!”