Table d'hôte la carte - AFTERTHOUGHT
JOHN WELLS
Paris. Friday—Deadlock still reigns unbreak- able here in the Vietnam Peace War over the seating arrangements for the preliminary talks about talks about talks. At first the dispute seemed simple. Should the South Vietnamese delegation and the Americans sit opposite the NLF and the North Vietnamese, as the Com- munists puggested, or should each deputation have its independent seat at a circular or quad- rangular table, as envisaged by the `Allies'? Since then, as Monsieur Yves Haybrique, the lugubrious concierge Jit the Hotel Majestic, puts it, `evenements have escalated themselves.' `For a kick up, as you say, there is the removing of the movables. Tables this way, tables that way, squares, diamonds, hobalongs, triangles of isosceles. Each time we create a novel environ- ment, either the little personnages from the Extreme East or the gross Americans enter into the room and exclaim "Non." It is to spit.'
Gaspard Lebif, a journeyman carpenter who weighs over twenty-three stone in his sabots and suffers from asthma, continues the story. 'Then have begun,' he wheezes, brushing aside with his fingertips the sad wisps of white moustache that tremble under his porous red nose,' `the experimental structures.' He lights a large cigarette of black tobacco rolled in yellow paper, casts his alcoholic eyes upwards in despair, and puffs out his blue-veined cheeks. `In the first plan, we have created, by the dint of exquisite joinery, an enormous table, vast, polished, and of baroque aspect, having the form of a graceful starfish. At various places around this starfish, it was calculated, the dele- gations could seat themselves, each one holding himself towards a different direction. In this way, it was reasoned, the amour-propre of the combatants would allow itself to be assuaged. But . .
Monsieur Lebif shrugs in his baggy blue overalls and spreads his hands. `Enter the NLF delegation, they examine my handiwork, I await with a modest demeanour their gratitude and gratuities. Without a word said, they depart. Ten minutes later, the same delegation returns, furnished with an axe. Pif, paf, paf, creche, my handiwork lies in smithereens. I enrage myself,
but to no avail. I devote myself anew to philo- sophic musings. After a week I have it. We install tastefully decorated and in the style of the environs, partitions designed to reduce the council chamber to four as you say mini- chambers. In each we fabricate a miniature table. At each table the delegation places itself, able to boast at the same moment that the con- ference exists—they are able to telephone to each other, even to embrace physically in the event of a happy phrase—but able to boast at the same time that the other delegations, from the metaphysical point of view at least, do not exist.
`They have entered into their mini-chambers, we have closed the doors, we have congratulated ourselves and quitted the building. But then, helas, evenements. A morsel of the partition— this partition which I have painted with love and care until three o'clock in the morning— flies out of the window, creche tinkle tinkle, and has hit me paf on the head. I am incredu- lous. I revolve, and render myself as speedily as my enormity permits to the chamber. It is, as you say, a proper old how's your grand- mother. Believing themselves trapped, the Vietcong have exploded a hand-grenade and made their escape to the roof, the North and South Vietnamese delegations are punching each other through small holes in the partition, and the Americans have resorted to, as you put it, arson. The Pumpers arrive, jets of water everywhere, ouiche, ouiche, psssssss, and all the world is coughing in the smoke.
'Nil desperandutn. For a long time I was drunk. I have brooded. Even, I confess it to you, I was in a sulk. Then I have a brainstorm. Kinetic art. Why, I am posing the question to myself, should these people feel such dis- satisfaction, such weariness of the world, such petty boredoms and ennui? Because, I have replied to myself, they are static, immovable: what should be a fluid go-and-come of humanity has become crystallised, as you say in the political circles, into a frustrating blocus. What, I am asking myself this question, to do? Then it has hit me all of a blow, paf. The kinetic experience. Delegates, instead of resting static at their tables, can be made to whizz about in a manner most exhilarating. No one and nobody will complain to themselves of their pfifsition at the conference table: and why, you demand?—because their positions will be changing themselves at every moment in the giddy brouhaha of the debate.
`Accordingly, I and my companions have set ourselves to the work. Constructing at the centre an enormous engine, we have built the basic structure of a carrousel. To it, labouring through white nights with a persistence almost teutonic, we have attached large seats for thb delegates, designed to pursue an-Interweaving course, circling around each other, now upside down, now this way up, now that. In addition, and for this we have had recourse to the mightiest computer in Europe, we have bn- structed tiny seats fof the interpreters, pursuing —what joy— independent course, creating feagieet pirouettei and rolling spins in thn 'neighbourhood of their delegates. If only you could have seen it! What joy on the faces of the humble artisans as they test the conference table of delight! The table itself, again by dint of skilled joinery and dismembery, separated itself into a thousand parts, flying round in predetermined courses to the electronically mingled strains of their respective national hymns. But helas . .
Monsieur Lebif again shrugs and gestures helplessly. Monsieur Haybrique looks lugu- briously at the floor. 'It was net a success.' He casts a mournful eye at the still smoking build-. ing, lit from time to time by red flashes and echoing to the deep thump of explosions. 'The discussions continue as to what went wrong with the apparatus. The peace talks about the machinery open in Saigon, Hanoi and New York simultaneously next week. There is talk of introducing the United Nations. It is tragic, but that, as we say in France, is the war.'
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