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Above the red button it says
Above the red button it says
poussez ici
. You press and two
old women, who sit inside a small box on the wall and
drink tea, shake their mandibles. Automatons. Automatons.
Some mechanism propels the visitors of
Musée des
automates et de la magie
deeper through the catacombs. As if
they stepped beneath the arches of some incessantly
dividing question. And there is the master of magic
Houdini with his mustache, body floating above his hands,
unclasped chains around a hypnotized beauty and a magic
hat. Less and less oxygen and more and more staring eyes,
although only the effects of language are visible, sometimes
levers and cogs, never a finger, which presses a button for
you to speak.
At one in the morning, he leans over and says
res publica
academia
to the dark-skinned porter at
École normale
supérieure
. His father always blamed himself for not
speaking to the German teacher he met near the bridge
from which he intended to commit suicide. Mao always
blamed himself for the Cultural Revolution not having
sufficiently purged the French Maoists. The French Maoists
blamed themselves for not abolishing the Latin lectures of
their father. The son blamed himself for enduring the theft
by the Maoist philosophers, who stole Prometheus’ lighter
from the French poet’s pocket.
Res publica academia
. The
tireless babble of a fountain on an August night. The busts
of the members of this strange society on the four walls