Lack

“Which deals with the multiple aspects of the question. Inevitable confrontation.

Coughs and conversations cease, silence settles while the man steps onto the stage, heading without haste — almost floating — toward the large, gleaming black lacquered piano, on which he then very slowly lies down, full length: since he is but dust.”

Éric Chevillard, The Absences of Captain Cook, Les Éditions de Minuit

While Lucian lingered for a moment, absorbed in his thoughts before the image of the day, revisiting his own images of a drifting circus, Igniatius still held the notebook between his fingers, the way one holds a letter that either accuses or saves…
How could one know?
Lucian, back in his armchair, watched him with that slightly restrained, almost deferential attention one gives to fragile objects that are never quite objects.
“Read me that passage again,” said Igniatius in a broken voice. “The one where you say that the earth and the sea — father and mother, as you put it — are arguing in the sky.”
Lucian found the page and read.
As the words fell into the room like heavy drops of rain striking the dusty path, Igniatius stiffened, then relaxed, then stiffened again, as if each sentence were a wave pushing him forward only to pull him back.
When Lucian fell silent, Igniatius did not move.
Then he exploded — but with an inward, muffled, almost vibrating explosion.
“So that is what you see?”
His voice was trembling.
“That is what you think I lived? A quarrel between father and mother… followed by a reconciliation… a…”
He broke off, breath failing him, caught in the act like a child about to utter an obscene word.
“An… an act of coupling, yes, that’s what you wrote, Lucian.
You wrote that the moaning of the storm could be the moaning of two bodies.
You dared to write that.”
Lucian did not flinch. He had the calm of a man who knows he must hold a precise place, even when the ground trembles.
But Igniatius, he held onto nothing anymore.
He stood, took two steps, then came back to sit — but in a different posture, almost vulnerable, like a child who falls back at the edge of the bed where he felt in danger.
“How can you… think that? About me?
How can you imagine that I heard my parents… I never had any, Lucian. Do you hear me? Never. Not a face, not a name. Nothing.
I have no father to turn into thunder, no mother to turn into sea.
You fabricate ghosts out of my storms!”
He buried his head in his hands.
“I was born… I don’t know where. I never knew.
They always told me I had been ‘found’. Found! Like a lost object!
And you, you draw me a conjugal scene with cries, quarrels, and… and moans of love.
But where would they come from, those moans? From which bodies? Which mouths?
I only ever heard the wind, Lucian — nothing but the wind!”
He tapped lightly on the armrest with the palm of his hand — not out of violence, but out of inner imbalance, as if the gesture kept him from collapsing.
“These things… these things without memory… perhaps I invented them, yes… but only afterwards.
Not then.
Then, I had no one. No one to quarrel. No one to reconcile.
No bed too close. No room next door.
Just the straw.
Just the animal.
Just… a sound that came from above and could be anything: the world, the circus, the end of a day.
But not… not parents.”
He remained silent for a moment, then with a suddenly soft, almost tender voice:
“So why did you write that, Lucian? Why?”
He lifted his eyes: naked distress, raw, heartbreaking.
Lucian chose then an almost too quiet voice, low, so that the words would not be too heavy:
“I wrote nothing about you except what your own story already contained, Igniatius.
I did not invent parents.
I merely observed that your metaphors — your sky, your sea, your earth — might speak more than you think.
A metaphor is never pure. It always carries something of the real, even if that real was not lived in the usual way.”
Igniatius suddenly wiped his eyes with his sleeve — a child’s gesture, surprised at crying.
“What you’re saying… then they are not my parents?” he whispered.
“It could be something else,” said Lucian. “An origin without a face. A scene you inherited without ever having lived it.
The world does not need real parents to make a child hear the voices of father and mother.
Sometimes, it is the voices of others — all the others — that the child transforms into a primal scene, so that he can give himself a place in a world where he does not yet have one.”
Igniatius froze, as if something inside him had shifted by an invisible notch.
He murmured:
“So it’s not that you invented them… but that I was searching for them… in the noise of the sky.”
Lucian did not answer — he let the sentence hover.
Igniatius continued, with a new emotion, almost tender, almost dangerous:
“Lucian… I would like to know… when you wrote those lines… were you thinking of me?
Or were you thinking… of someone else?”
A silence.
Then, in a trembling voice:
“Of yourself?”
The question remained suspended — a gentle blade, but a blade nonetheless.
Lucian did not move.
But Igniatius, watching him with almost painful intensity, added:
“Because sometimes… I swear… I feel as if I am the one listening to you, as if you speak through my words.
As if my storm… you already knew it.
As if you too had heard a noise above a bed that was too big.”
He let himself fall back into his seat, exhausted, but more open than before.
“Speak to me, Lucian.
Even if it is through me.
Speak to me of yourself… by speaking of me.
Perhaps that is how I will finally find… those I never had.”
While Lucian lingered for a moment, absorbed in his thoughts before the image of the day — revisiting his own images of a drifting circus — Igniatius still held the notebook between his fingers, the way one holds a letter that either accuses or saves…
How could one know?
Lucian, back in his armchair, watched him with that slightly restrained, almost deferential attention one gives to fragile objects that are never quite objects.
“Read me that passage again,” said Igniatius in a broken voice. “The one where you say that the earth and the sea — father and mother, as you put it — are arguing in the sky.”
Lucian found the page and read.
As the words fell into the room like heavy drops of rain striking the dusty path, Igniatius stiffened, then relaxed, then stiffened again, as if each sentence were a wave pushing him forward only to pull him back.
When Lucian fell silent, Igniatius did not move.
Then he exploded — but with an inward, muffled, almost vibrating explosion.
“So that is what you see?”
His voice was trembling.
“That is what you think I lived? A quarrel between father and mother… followed by a reconciliation… a…”
He broke off, breath failing him, caught in the act like a child about to utter an obscene word.
“An… an act of coupling, yes, that’s what you wrote, Lucian.
You wrote that the moaning of the storm could be the moaning of two bodies.
You dared to write that.”
Lucian did not flinch. He had the calm of a man who knows he must hold a precise place, even when the ground trembles.
But Igniatius, he held onto nothing anymore.
He stood, took two steps, then came back to sit — but in a different posture, almost vulnerable, like a child who falls back at the edge of the bed where he felt in danger.
“How can you… think that? About me?
How can you imagine that I heard my parents… I never had any, Lucian. Do you hear me? Never. Not a face, not a name. Nothing.
I have no father to turn into thunder, no mother to turn into sea.
You fabricate ghosts out of my storms!”
He buried his head in his hands.
“I was born… I don’t know where. I never knew.
They always told me I had been ‘found’. Found! Like a lost object!
And you, you draw me a conjugal scene with cries, quarrels, and… and moans of love.
But where would they come from, those moans? From which bodies? Which mouths?
I only ever heard the wind, Lucian — nothing but the wind!”
He tapped lightly on the armrest with the palm of his hand — not out of violence, but out of inner imbalance, as if the gesture kept him from collapsing.
“These things… these things without memory… perhaps I invented them, yes… but only afterwards.
Not then.
Then, I had no one. No one to quarrel. No one to reconcile.
No bed too close. No room next door.
Just the straw.
Just the animal.
Just… a sound that came from above and could be anything: the world, the circus, the end of a day.
But not… not parents.”
He remained silent for a moment, then with a suddenly soft, almost tender voice:
“So why did you write that, Lucian? Why?”
He lifted his eyes: naked distress, raw, heartbreaking.
Lucian chose then an almost too quiet voice, low, so that the words would not be too heavy:
“I wrote nothing about you except what your own story already contained, Igniatius.
I did not invent parents.
I merely observed that your metaphors — your sky, your sea, your earth — might speak more than you think.
A metaphor is never pure. It always carries something of the real, even if that real was not lived in the usual way.”
Igniatius suddenly wiped his eyes with his sleeve — a child’s gesture, surprised at crying.
“What you’re saying… then they are not my parents?” he whispered.
“It could be something else,” said Lucian. “An origin without a face. A scene you inherited without ever having lived it.
The world does not need real parents to make a child hear the voices of father and mother.
Sometimes, it is the voices of others — all the others — that the child transforms into a primal scene, so that he can give himself a place in a world where he does not yet have one.”
Igniatius froze, as if something inside him had shifted by an invisible notch.
He murmured:
“So it’s not that you invented them… but that I was searching for them… in the noise of the sky.”
Lucian did not answer — he let the sentence hover.
Igniatius continued, with a new emotion, almost tender, almost dangerous:
“Lucian… I would like to know… when you wrote those lines… were you thinking of me?
Or were you thinking… of someone else?”
A silence.
Then, in a trembling voice:
“Of yourself?”
The question remained suspended — a gentle blade, but a blade nonetheless.
Lucian did not move.
But Igniatius, watching him with almost painful intensity, added:
“Because sometimes… I swear… I feel as if I am the one listening to you, as if you speak through my words.
As if my storm… you already knew it.
As if you too had heard a noise above a bed that was too big.”
He let himself fall back into his seat, exhausted, but more open than before.
“Speak to me, Lucian.
Even if it is through me.
Speak to me of yourself… by speaking of me.
Perhaps that is how I will finally find… those I never had.”