Dialogue (english version)

On the way, Lucian could not say when the name Anatole appeared. It was not written in the notebook. Not yet. Until then, it had not been spoken by Igniatius either—at least not during their many meetings. One day it slipped in between two sentences, between two sighs…

“Anatole…,” he himself had said.
Almost just to see what it would do. And Félix had not reacted. Not even a sign. Just a silence—and that silence was neither approval nor refusal. Rather a way of not giving substance too quickly to what had just been released.

“It’s not a proper name,” I had gone on afterward, as if correcting myself without having been asked. “It’s… what remains when none of the three really speaks.”

I was searching for my words. I felt clearly that if I started using my jargon, it would go too far… and I would then have fabricated what one calls a figure. And that would already be too much…

“Don Carotte speaks in order to hold on. Sang Chaud speaks in order to resist, and Igniatius speaks in order to tell himself.”

Then I stopped.

“Anatole… is not someone who speaks. It is what happens when speaking is no longer enough.”

Félix lets it come.

At that moment, Lucian’s sense of time suspends its flight and hovers above him. The past disappears, and Lucian resumes, more slowly, as if Félix were present and walking beside him.

“In the notebook, there is a strange moment. Nothing is added to it, yet something has changed. The sentences are shorter. As if the writing hesitated to continue producing images.”

He flips through it.

“Look… here, Don Carotte no longer describes. He states.”

“And Sang Chaud?”

“Sang Chaud no longer answers. He takes notes.”

“And Igniatius… Igniatius has disappeared from the text without his absence being indicated.”

“And Anatole?” Félix asks, without insisting, almost innocently.

Lucian smiles faintly.

“Anatole is perhaps that very silence that is beginning to form a link. Not a unity, nor a solution. A point where no one can say ‘I’ without stumbling.”

He stops abruptly.

“I realize that as soon as I try to define Anatole, I lose him… or I lose myself…”

“Then don’t define him,” Félix says.

The sentence falls simply. It closes nothing.

Lucian breathes deeply.

“Anatole does not think. He does not act. He does not even remember.”

A moment of silence settles, stretches, and then everything resumes.

“He illuminates. But not like a lamp. More like a curtain that gapes under the action of a draft… and then, all at once, too much light. The curtain has opened completely… one looks away.”

He lifts his head.

“If I make him a character, I betray him. If I make him a symbol that has meaning, I imprison him. He exists only as long as no one takes hold of him.”

Félix nods almost imperceptibly.

“Then let us leave it at that,” he says. “There where something is said without yet wanting to be understood.”

Lucian closes the notebook.

For the first time in a long while, he does not look for what comes next. He accepts that the text—or their dialogue, for the moment—stops where language begins to fail, and that this failure itself, precisely, does the work.

Back home, Lucian begins to write again. He knows perfectly well that he will repeat himself, but he does not care…

“There is, in representation, a certain flaw that sometimes makes it possible to escape repetition…”

He returns to the beginning of the conversation with Félix, when he could not say when the name Anatole imposed itself.

It was not written in the notebook. Not yet.

How and why had this idea slipped into my mind?

The name Anatole had not been spoken by Igniatius either. It had slipped in between two sentences, between the two sides of a curtain shaken by the tremors of my emotions and only asking to open.

“Anatole…,” I had said, almost provocatively… to see what it would do.

Félix had not reacted. Not even a sign.

“It’s not a proper name… not a family name… just a first name,” I had said afterward, as if I wanted to correct myself without Félix asking me to. “It’s… what remains when none of the three really speaks.”

He searches through his notes.

“Anatole… is not someone who speaks. It is what happens when speaking is no longer enough. It is perhaps that very silence that begins to form a link.”