Seiobo There Below

233. WHERE YOU’LL BE LOOKING

Anywhere, just not at the Venus de Milo — this was written on their faces, he could really say that, this was written so unambiguously on his colleagues’ faces that he nearly found it amusing to sit among them during the weekly or monthly meetings for assignment of duties, to sit there among them, and in part to hold out without laughing, as no one wanted to be assigned there, in part because he, to the contrary, was just waiting for the departmental director to look up at him and to say again and again, so well, Monsieur Chaivagne, you shall stay in your accustomed place, you know, LXXIV, and then, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, and XXXVIII on the first floor of the Sully in the hourly shift rotation, when of course the emphasis was on LXXIV, the Salle des 7 Cheminées, and at such times, when he heard that he was assigned there, not only was he filled with immeasurable satisfaction, but it was also gratifying how on each occasion he always sensed a kind of complicit recognition in the departmental director’s voice, a gratifying praise, some granting of distinction beyond words, that as for LXXIV, XXXV, XXXVI, XXXVII, and XXXVIII, since he was trustworthy, Monsieur Chaivagne was the man — this had been trembling in the voice of the departmental director for seven years now, ever since he, Monsieur Bruno Cordeau, had been named Director — he was the man who could be trusted with the Salle des 7 Cheminées, the present location of the work, with all the crazed tourists; and he did all of this — for which Chaivagne was especially grateful — without in the least mocking that which every older museum guard knew, of course, and which everyone regarded as a question of individual temperament, namely that he, Chaivagne, had a special relationship to the Venus de Milo, and because of that, for him, as he expressed it himself on several occasions during his first few years, the daily routine of eight hours was not work, but a blessing, such a gift as can never be repaid, that he would do anything to win, if it hadn’t fallen into his lap all by itself, having been hired at that time — thirty-two years ago — and found to be suitable for the task of tactfully yet decisively protecting it for the eight hours of the day, from ten in the morning until six in the evening, that had been determined as the museum’s opening hours; he’d been found suitable for the task of safeguarding it from the careless, the crazy, the ill-bred, and the loutish, as these were for the most part the four categories which Chaivagne was obligated to identify among a certain percentage of the museum’s visitors, a certain percentage, but not all of the museum’s visitors, because in contrast to the majority of his colleagues, he did not clump the problematic figures together with the merely inquisitive, the latter namely never did the kinds of things which he himself, given similar circumstances, would never have done, because well, how could one not be jostled or pushed forward a little, if one has already drifted into the desired room and is then in the presence of the great work, he, Chaivagne, deemed this to be an even very tolerable weakness, and he never even intervened; in general, he did not really wish to call attention to his presence, in the end he was not a military sentry, but a museum guard; not a prison warden, but a guardian of the work, so that accordingly he tried to remain as invisible as these particular circumstances permitted, because there was, during the course of the day — in particular surges, completely at random, but on the basis of Chaivagne’s three decades of experience, still arriving in certain predictable time-intervals — there was always a certain kind of “event,” as they termed it among themselves in the professional jargon, when one had to intervene, not conspicuously, albeit decisively, not disturbing the general, although fairly clamorous, rapture, but with an unequivocality that brooked no dissent, and it was not a question here of someone touching the cordon surrounding the work, and you have to dash over there immediately — he motioned to the younger, chiefly female colleagues, eagle-eyed and ready to leap into action, who were more inclined to wait for that moment when they could finally pounce upon an unruly child or adult — no it wasn’t about that, but when you sense that someone, perhaps a tourist who has forgotten himself, is about to step across this symbolic boundary by sheer accident, well then, in that case, the person in question must be unconditionally ushered out, not to speak of those instances when somebody not only creeps behind the cordon, but when you sense that they are headed toward the work, well, those are moments which one has to be able to feel, Chaivagne explained to the beginners and to the less experienced, the crazy, the obsessed, the nut-cases, the confused, the despoilers, in a word, those figures posing a real danger to the work must immediately — Chaivagne, who was not particularly stern, raised his index finger sternly to the younger colleagues, or to the women — those figures must immediately be removed not just from the room, but from the museum as well, there are ways of handling this; the security system is adequate, in the last few years in particular it has developed a great deal, but at the same time, in his opinion, the dangers must not be over-exaggerated, and for that reason, he considered with decided aversion those museums where the guards are authorized to stand, as it were, between the work and the visitor; here, of course, in the Louvre that did not pass muster at all, that was not admissible, and for that reason no one must ever forget that normality has its limits, and the Louvre operates within these limits, hence it should be thought of first and foremost as the most important museum in the world, which is open to everyone, and where it is the experience of a lifetime for every visitor to glimpse the inconceivable treasures of the Louvre face-to-face; the flood of tourists, the jostling and thronging crowds are just to be endured, it is part and parcel of the age we live in, such is the world, there are too many of us — Chaivagne expounded on his simple opinion of the world to his older colleagues — and in this world anyone can be a tourist; so that he did not consider himself to be one of those museum guards who hated tourists, it would be then as if he hated himself, no, this was not his standpoint, the fact that they come, they run around, they click their cameras, this must all be borne, well, my god, there are cameras, and there are circumstances that turn a person into a tourist, and in this situation a person is helpless, should he not then even look at the Venus de Milo? — isn’t that so? this is a difficult question already; Chaivagne looked around at his colleagues at such times, well, should they close the Louvre?! — and then no mortal being whatsoever, no one would ever see, all that is here, only here — from the classical Greeks to Hellenistic statuary — yes, this was his opinion, Chaivagne nodded at his own words, his opinion had been formed over many years, and that is why those who knew him considered him to be as gentle as a lamb, so mild in the face of the tourists’ wolf-like onslaught, that was already in and of itself perilous, well it was only Chaivagne who could neither be damaged by it nor induced to better judgment, for example, acknowledging that sometimes it was good to kick a Japanese tourist in the crowd there near the cordon, when no one was looking, but no, Chaivagne did not even react to such provocations, he just smiled — of course he always smiled just a little, his colleagues every morning recognized him from far away by that little indelible smile on his face, and not by how he parted his gray hair accurately in the middle with a damp comb, combing it closely across his skull, or his invariably ironed suit, but by this little smile, this was his token of defense, of which they only suspected — because Chaivagne did not reveal all — they suspected that it originated from the joy of being here again, which all the same seemed like pure absurdity to the colleagues, who just like all other Parisians hated coming into work, but the cause could not be anything else, they were obliged to state that this person was overjoyed if he was here, overjoyed if he could start work in the morning and take up his place, so he’s an imbecile, one or two of the more talkative museum guards noted, and with that they closed the discussion concerning this matter on that very day, because it was boring as well, one could not really talk about Chaivagne — the older guards in general didn’t even really talk about him — because Chaivagne was so much the same every day, every week, and thirty years ago he was exactly the same as today, yesterday, and he would be the same the day after tomorrow, Chaivagne did not change, they just brushed the matter aside, and there was something in it too; Chaivagne, too, just nodded, smiling if they taunted him ironically, saying you, Felix, you really don’t change, as if, with that little smile of his he wanted to convey that he felt the same way: but the reason why was that what he was guarding, the Venus de Milo, wasn’t changing either, just, well, they never talked about that, so that it could have gained ground and become a central theme if they ever discussed it, but, well, they discussed it only very infrequently, namely that Chaivagne and the Venus de Milo, those two, were living as if in some kind of symbiosis together, but here, at this point already, they were wrong, and they betrayed that they really knew nothing, but nothing at all about the essence of Chaivagne, because the situation was such, Chaivagne looked at them with that little smile of his, that there was the Venus de Milo, and beyond that there was nothing else at all, this was his, Chaivagne’s opinion, how could anyone even think that there could be any kind of connection between them, but even if there was, it was just that kind of one-sided connection, that is, an amazement, the intoxicating feeling of knowing that he could be here for the whole eight hours of the day, if among the colleagues it was agreed that for him there would be no two-hour shift rotations, here inside, because he belonged to the inner world of the Venus de Milo, namely he was one of the chosen of the Venus de Milo’s internal security, this was an uplifting feeling whenever it occurred to him — and it frequently occurred to him for more than thirty years — it continually flashed through his mind what a person as he could feel in an exceptional situation like this, and well, of course he didn’t talk to anyone about it, and not a single colleague ever really tried to discuss the topic with him, as that was not how they saw it, for them it was simply work from which their arches were going to fall in, their backs would become hunched, in consequence of which after a while it became habitual for them to keep unconsciously massaging their necks, as that gets worn out the most, well and of course the foot, not just the sole of the foot, that too, but the entire heel of the foot, the ankle, and the calf, and the waist, the entire spinal column, and so on, it’s difficult being a museum guard, and amid that difficulty, if there is even at the beginning some kind of sensitivity to one of the artworks, it usually is quickly dispersed by the fatigue that comes with the job, with the exception of Chaivagne; it was simply not possible to uncover in his case if he was particularly worn down by all that occurs to a person while standing — with the sole of the foot, the ankle, the spine, and the neck muscles — it wasn’t possible to state that his body did not ache, just that he somehow did not preoccupy himself with this, did it hurt, well yes it hurt, of course it hurt, a person, if he is a museum guard, is on his feet for nearly eight hours at a stretch, the breaks are measured in minutes, and that could never be enough for complete rejuvenation, eight hours on your feet, yes, it’s true, smiled Chaivagne, but at the same time it was eight hours in the inner world of the Venus de Milo; if someone asked, that is always what he answered, but nothing more, although as to why it was precisely this artwork that replenished his life to such a degree, and not the Mona Lisa, or Tutankhamen, and so on, he never spoke a word to anyone, because the answer was excessively simple, and no one would have been able to understand, because on the one side here was the Venus de Milo, on the other there was Chaivagne, who altogether could have said by way of explanation that it was because this was the greatest enchantment he had ever seen and ever could see, because among all the treasures of the Louvre, this ravished him the most, and that was all: it was due to the aura of the Venus de Milo; even if he had wanted to he could not produce more than that, the fact that this was the greatest of wonderments, at least to him, could hardly explain his peculiar life, which was in its entirety subordinated to the wonderment of the Venus de Milo, it would have sounded too simple, a blatant platitude, if he had tried to explain his extraordinary relationship with the Venus de Milo in this way, so he didn’t even say anything, he preferred to be silent instead, and to go on smiling, seeking, as it were, forgiveness that he could not really know more about himself than that, for if he were to relate what had happened to him when he was a youth, at the time of his first glimpse, even that would not have led anywhere, as he could not have said more than that he saw it, and his feet were rooted to the ground, and the Venus de Milo mesmerized him; since then nothing had changed, with no explanation; they had simply come in from the provinces, from a little village next to Lille, where he lived with his father, and his father brought him to the Louvre, and then a couple of years later he moved to Paris, applied for the position and was hired, his life story really altogether consisted only of that, namely, this would not have caught the attention of his colleagues, perhaps they wouldn’t even have believed that the whole thing was so simple, or that he would be so incapable of providing an explanation, so that, well, he remained silent; if from time to time someone tried to badger him about this strange devotion to the Venus de Milo, he just smiled but said nothing, preferring to stroll a little further on, and in the absence of an answer the secret remained as well, whereas he, Chaivagne, knew perfectly well that the secret was not within him, because inside of him — he acknowledged this at such times when at home — if he reflected upon it, there was absolutely nothing at all, he was completely empty; the Venus de Milo, however was completion itself, inasmuch as a museum guard could be permitted already, from time to time, to fling around big words like these, so that the secret was only in the Venus de Milo, but why is it exactly the Venus de Milo — Monsieur Brancoveanu, a particularly friendly and very sophisticated colleague once asked — with whom you stand in the most confidential of relations, why not the Medici Venice, or one of the countless Cnidian Aphrodites, and there is also the Aphrodite of Ludovici, or the Venus of Capua, or the Capitoline Aphrodite, or the Venus of Barberini, or the Belvedere Venus, or the Kaufmann head, in the world there are innumerable Aphrodites and Venuses, each more beautiful than the next, but for you — Monsieur Brancoveanu looked questioningly at him — for you, this Venus of scandalously ill-repute stands above all else, you cannot seriously think so; but yes, he nodded gently, he did think so, in the most serious manner possible, although it would be difficult to state that the Venus de Milo stands above all the aforementioned, in his opinion this was not a competition, here, not even one stands above the other, but yet and yet, what could he do, for him personally, this, the beauty of the Venus de Milo meant the most, he knew — he bent in closer to his colleague — it is difficult to justify such things, perhaps it is not even possible, at one time his heart was smitten, and that was all, no need to look for anything else here (at least he was not in the habit of doing so), moreover, he would even own that thinking was not his forte, because just as he embarked upon it, one thought immediately leaped out, while another was already pushing out the first one, but his head couldn’t even remain with that for too long, along came another, then another again, and so on, the various thoughts, having absolutely nothing in common, practically hounded each other, and so, the smile that otherwise always played upon his face disappeared for a moment, no, it was not possible to think, he owned that much to Monsieur Brancoveanu, but then they never again spoke of such confidential matters, and Monsieur Brancoveanu had already been gone from here for a good ten years now, so that there was no one with whom he could then continue the discussion, otherwise, he had never before, never after, ended up in such a close relationship with anyone, which of course did not mean that he felt solitary among the colleagues — because he was still there, he noted to himself, if he examined this question now and then on a weekend, when in his boredom he had too much time to ponder things — the colleagues, for the most part, were amiable, if occasionally there was even a little so-called scurrility, but, well, this, in such a workplace, where one had to comply with such solemn demands, and where the work itself entailed a physical burden, was really no wonder, people have to let off steam somehow, he tried to resolve the question of these scurrilities within himself in this way, as when, for example, precisely he was the target; and he went home on the number one to Châtelet, and from there to the teeming Gare de l’Est, from there finally on the seven to Aubervilliers, and he just couldn’t drive what had happened that day out of his head, he kept repeating to himself that he had to get away from the tension somehow, but somehow the matter could not be so easily resolved; he soaked his aching feet in a wash-basin filled with cold water for a while, then he just sat in his striped pajamas on the bed, looking at the countless reproductions of the Venus de Milo on the walls, nicely framed and all arranged proportionally in a nice row, so what is the problem if I find that which is beautiful to be beautiful, he posed the question, and he shook his head uncomprehendingly, and it still hurt, although ever more dully, that latest affront still hurt, because of course one or two of them had just pestered him about his attachment to the Venus de Milo, but the steam, he thought, really has to be let out somehow — he sat on the bed, hunched over in his striped pajamas, his hands in his lap, and he just looked, looked around at the countless reproductions, and on such occasions as this he could not fall asleep for a long time.

Praxiteles, he is at the center of everything here, or if you wish, he said, everything goes back to him, and if one looks away, i.e., looks away from this fact, everything is a mistake, or will immediately become a mistake — that was usually how he began if anyone in the crowd turned to him, or if one or another guideless group happened to surround him to get some kind of orientation as to what was going on in this room, Praxiteles, he answered, and he didn’t bother with what the question was — such questions, as what the statue was made of, or how old it was, why wasn’t it in its place on the ground floor, and why was it so renowned all over the world, and did he not know its Christian name, and so on — he was not annoyed by such questions, he did, however, immediately brush them aside, or more precisely, he didn’t even hear them, he didn’t notice them, but if he could, he just said Praxiteles, and inasmuch as it appeared that the person or group in question was not turning away from him, but demonstrating interest as to what he was getting at with this Praxiteles, then he just came forward with the center and with everything here going back to him, namely in this case he tried to explain — at times more briefly, at times more elaborately — just as much as he could, that Praxiteles, this extraordinary genius from late classical Greek antiquity, that Praxiteles, this genial creator from four centuries before Christ, this inimitable artist of the decades after Pheidas, created, with his statue of Aphrodite intended for the island of Knidos, the ultimate form, the ultimate sense, and the ultimate realization of Aphrodite as an extraordinary archaic cult, and just as Knidos, the capital city of the Doric Hexapolis partially built upon the island, became the starting point of the Aphrodite cult, so too did the Cnidian Aprodite — its name derived from this place — become the starting point of all the Aphrodite statues that were to follow, this was how he understood it, he looked around at the members of the group, or looked smilingly at the person posing the question; everyone, therefore, should be acquainted with the name of Praxiteles, everyone who wanted to know even just a little bit about, well, what the Venus de Milo was anyway, and since the one, or the ones, who had addressed him, were generally of that sort, they decided that they would continue to listen to the chatter of the museum guard; at this point he always without exception paused for just two brief seconds, and if the interest proved to be genuine and more sustained, he then continued by saying that well, of course, when one spoke of the cult of Aphrodite, then one had to add immediately that in point of fact we have no certain knowledge of what that Aphrodite cult even was, as one was also compelled to disclose immediately that in reality, certainly, not a single work of Praxiteles, but not a single one, but really not a single statue at all remained, only Roman copies — and here Chaivagne raised his index finger — or at most, copies created in the Hellenistic Period, from Alexander the Great to the beginning of the golden age of the Roman Empire, furthermore, here is the essence of the matter — these are works of art that grew out of the legacy of Praxiteles, as yet preserved, and in a word we know nothing about the original, as in so many cases, all we can do is to try to trace things back to this lost past, or — and then Chaivagne once again raised his index finger — we don’t look back at all, but we say here is the Venus de Milo, this statue originating most likely in the second century before Christ, which was discovered in pieces by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas in the nineteenth century, at least in two pieces and damaged, missing this or that; he found it on the Greek island of Melos, and although he supposedly also found an arm with an apple, or an apple by itself and also supposedly found a plinth with the name of the sculptor, unfortunately, from this point on, we cannot be convinced of what is true in the story, and we — speaking here as one of the personnel of the Louvre, Chaivagne winked with complicity at his audience — we cannot say any more than that, being bound in this case by self-evident loyalty; but enough about that, because in addition, if a person looks at this wondrous artwork, the whole story isn’t even interesting, rather what is interesting is how the path led from Praxiteles’ Cnidian Aphrodite to the Venus of Melos, or more correctly, how it leads backward, as one had to be aware as well that hypothetically, with the copies of Praxiteles’ Cnidian Aphrodite, with the numerous Aphrodites generated through its established tradition, the goddess is depicted in a certain place, a certain state, and a certain moment, namely in such a manner — Chaivagne leaned, in a courteous, friendly way, closer to his listeners, or to the one who happened to be there — she covers her modesty with her right hand, and with her left she generally holds up her robes falling down in folds, or raises them from a jug, which maybe had been added earlier, which is in contrast, is it not, to this one here — Chaivagne motioned toward Venus placed upon the high podium in the middle of the room — due to her missing arms, we cannot know what she is doing, but in all probability it is not the same thing; although it can be imagined that with that right arm of hers she is reaching for the robe that is about to fall down, one cannot know, let us at least not speculate, there has been enough speculation, because you can just imagine what happened when we Frenchmen — in the persons of a certain Olivier Voutier and a certain Jules Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville — when we Frenchmen got hold of the Venus de Milo on Melos, and had it brought back via adventurous means and various individuals to the repulsive Louis XVII in Paris as a kind of gift, which is ridiculous, isn’t it, an artwork of Praxiteles as a gift; there were those who said this, and those who said that, the most varied kinds of reveries flared up, moreover, of course, there were those who created maquettes, Monsieur Ravaisson, for example, who pictured her with Ares, then came Adolf Furtwängler, who had her with her right arm, as I myself described a moment ago, reaching for her robe, and with her left arm leaning against a column, I won’t innumerate them all, because it is already obvious that in the sense in which we usually know something about an artwork, when it comes to this artwork, as a matter of fact, we know nothing that is essential, even the identity of the sculptor is doubtful, as the inscription on the damaged plinth, which later mysteriously disappeared — if it even really belonged to the statue at all — permits us to believe that the artist was Alexandros, but it also permits us to believe that it could have been anyone whose name ended in “. . andros” who came from Antioch, but you know, Chaivagne said in a more reticent manner to his auditor — if there was one at that moment, and of course, remaining, wished to hear more — you know, said Chaivagne, if I look at this magnificent goddess, namely if I — believe you me, nearly every blessed day, it’s been a long time now, already a very long time — if I look at her, then the least painful part for me is not knowing the name of the sculptor, who perhaps came from Antioch, and who maybe really was the son of Menides, as the plinth immortalized him, who knows; because then the least troubling for me is that I don’t know what the right arm was doing at one point, and what the left was doing, because I feel that instead what is important here is the connective thread that leads the Venus de Milo back to its own original, back to the one-time Aphrodite created by Praxiteles on Knidos, that is what is important to me; if I look at her — and here Chaivagne, sensing that he could no longer deprive his audience of their time, lowered his voice, as it were signaling that here he intended to conclude, and took one step backward — you know, if I look at her, he said softly, all that there is within me — and maybe this is truly a form of pain — is that this Aphrodite is so enchantingly, so ravishingly, so unspeakably beautiful.

He had said enchanting, he had said ravishing, he had said unspeakable, but he was silent, however, about how in the course of the past years he increasingly felt the beauty of the Venus de Milo to be a rebellion, he was silent about this in the Louvre; only at home — reaching it by the one, then the four, and transferring at the Gare de l’Est, and then the seven to Aubervilliers, returning home at the end of one day or another, and quickly filling the wash-basin with cold water, and quickly pulling off his shoes and socks, and arranging the basin by the armchair and slowly lowering his feet into it, and there and thus sitting quietly — what he had related to a group of older American ladies or a young Japanese man that day in the chaotic crowd came into his mind, and he was ashamed, ashamed of himself for not telling the entire truth, because the entire truth was that the secret of the beauty of the Venus de Milo was its rebellious strength, if the secret of her beauty could be named at all, this was largely the attribution that he had arrived at in connection with the Venus de Milo in the past years, for it was futile to say to him, as Monsieur Brancoveanu did that time, that the entire valuation of the Venus de Milo was greatly exaggerated, it was the French who made her world-famous when they propagated the notion that it was the work of Praxiteles, and in general, Monsieur Brancoveanu noted, curling his lips, how could such an artwork as this — trite, falsified, enervated, gnawed down, grossly over-praised, over-aggrandized, and hence in this way made utterly commonplace — be deserving of the all-encompassing attention as he paid to her; he — namely, Brancoveanu — could not understand this in such an informed person as Monsieur Chaivagne, but the latter just smiled, and shook his head, and said that one must be detached from the circumstances, we cannot allow ourselves to be pressured to believe that just because humanity has for some reason or another placed a work of art upon the highest pedestal, it is already well on its way to becoming commonplace, Monsieur Brancoveanu should believe him, he stated; he looked at the statue almost uninterruptedly: it was possible to be detached from the crowd, to be detached from the statue’s unpleasant — as far as they, the French, were concerned — early history, it was possible to disregard every manipulated, mercantile, hence false, devotion weighing upon it, and possible just to look at the statue itself, and the Aphrodite within it, the god within the Aphrodite, and then one saw what an unsurpassable masterpiece the Venus de Milo was; but you really don’t think — his colleague, much more passionate than he, then raised his voice, that when you look at the Venus de Milo itself, that you are also seeing all the Aphrodites created earlier by Antiquity and then Late Antiquity and then all the other Hellenistic artists, you surely don’t think that?! — but of course, Chaivagne smiled at him, how could he not think that, well, that was the point exactly, in the Venus de Milo there was the Cnidian Aphrodite and there was the Belvedere Aphrodite and there was the Kaufmann head, everything was there, Chaivagne gave a broad movement with his arm, everything that happened from Praxiteles, from the presumed fourth-century original onward up until Alexandros or Hagesandros — then he gestured toward Venus, still in her old spot, that is to say on the ground-level Galerie de la Melpomène, and he said: but at the same time the sculptor of the Venus de Milo imbued his own Venus with such a kind of strength, as he nearly let the robes fall down upon her, a strength that does not originate from this Venus’ earthly sensuality, not from her alluring nakedness, not from her cunning eroticism, but from a higher place, from whence this Venus truly comes, and at that point — even today he remembered it well — he did not continue his train of thought, in part because he was not prepared to do so, in part because he was frightened by what he was thinking, for already at that time, at the time of Monsieur Brancoveanu, he was already aware that the existence of the Venus de Milo, that is to say, her being there in the Louvre, and how she stood there in proud sanctity — across from her were the crowds, lining up, jostling, surging with their cameras and their complete ignorance and vulgarity — in that place in this Louvre, exactly where she, the Venus de Milo, stood, a kind of distressing scandal erupted, it was just that Chaivagne didn’t dare express it, even to himself for a while, or even to formulate the thought that namely the Venus de Milo in the Louvre was. . unbearable, even to admit to himself, for a long time he even dismissed that word from his mind, trying to quickly think about something else, to think, for example, that he was a museum guard and nothing else, and it was not for him to be concerned about these matters, only with those things that pertained to being a museum guard, but well what could he do, he had become such a museum guard, and so, well, the thought just took shape more and more, as he looked, he looked at the statue, as when for example it was moved, due to reconstruction, one story higher, and turned up here temporarily in the Salle des 7 Cheminées, and they set the statue upon a high — and especially to Chaivagne’s taste, not particularly appropriate — podium, and then the scandal somehow just became all the more obvious, because the statue still rose above the people, but it was not very suitable here, because she, the Venus de Milo, in Chaivagne’s opinion, did not belong here, more precisely, she did not belong here nor anywhere upon the earth, everything that she, the Venus de Milo meant, whatever it might be, originated from a heavenly realm that no longer existed, which had been pulverized by time, a moldering, annihilated universe that had disappeared for all eternity from this higher realm, because the higher realm had itself disappeared from the human world, and yet she remained here, this Venus from this higher realm remained here, left abandoned, and this, as he explained to himself of an evening — while soaking his aching feet, he sat down in the armchair and tuned into the news on France 1 — he understood this abandonment to mean that she had lost her significance, and that all the same here she stood because that Yorgos dug her up, and that d’Urville had her brought here and that Ravaisson put her together and exhibited her, yet she had no meaning, the world had changed over the past two thousand years; that part of humanity, thanks to which it had not been in vain for the Venus de Milo to stand anywhere and to signify that there was a higher realm, had vanished; because this realm had dissipated, vanished without a trace, it was not possible to understand what the one or two remaining fragments or pieces dug up could even mean today, Chaivagne sighed — and he moved his toes in the cold water — there was nothing higher and nothing lower, there was just one world here in the middle, where we live, where the number one and the four and the seven run, and where the Louvre stands, and inside it is Venus, as she looks at an inexpressible, mysterious, distant point, she just stands there, they put her here or they put here there, and she just stands there, holding up her head proudly in that mysterious direction, and her beauty emanates, it emanates into nothingness, and no one understands, and no one feels what a grievous sight this is, a god that has lost its world, so enormous, immeasurably enormous — and yet she has nothing at all.

And yet she had nothing at all, not even any meaning — this was a very sad thought; Chaivagne even tried continually to drive it out of his head, he didn’t want to think about it, he tried to convince himself, well, why was it not enough that every morning he could get up and immediately stand there again in her presence? — of course it was enough; at such times, he relaxed, and sleep really did chase these thoughts out of his head, and once again the next morning he appeared at his workplace with the same little smile on his face, and he took up his designated position in the room entrusted to him, tactfully withdrawing into one of the inner corners — from where he could keep an eye on the visitors, but could simultaneously also see the rising figure of Venus — another year went by like that, and again it was autumn, and it frequently rained in the city, although he took virtually no notice of this, because he did not move from his place, and the Venus de Milo did not move either, the reconstruction was still going on down there, and no one could even predict when the statue would turn up in its old spot, and neither he changed, nor did the Venus change — nor did that long crack in the Parian marble, which extended from the back of the statue along the back contour of the right thigh, and which of course was kept under strict observation by the restorers, but no, nothing happened — and well, really, nothing happened even with him, nothing, the days came and went, the crowds flooded in every morning, and flooded out every evening, he stood in the inner right-hand corner, observing the eyes and face of Venus high above, but never where the eyes and the face were looking, he observed the crowd as they trampled on each other, then once again he raised his gaze to the statue, and he just stared on and on from one autumn to another autumn, he diligently soaked his feet, he went in with the seven, the four, then the one, then he went home with the one, the four, and the seven, he meticulously parted his hair in the middle of his head in the morning with a damp comb, he stood and stood with his hands always clasped behind his back in the inner right-hand corner, he always smiled a little, so that he was always being approached, now by a group without a tour guide, now by a solitary visitor, and he always started by saying — and never saying anything else but — Praxiteles, always just Praxiteles.