The lecture theatre has migrated again and now exists in Paris and in the Man’s head at four in the morning.
Lacan arrives late.
He looks magnificent in the way only ageing French intellectuals and certain disappointed alcoholics can look: magnificent, exhausted, theatrical, faintly ridiculous.
The room is full.
Therapists. Students. Women in dark coats. Men who have grown beards. The Grotesques sit at the back attempting seriousness. The squirrels are on the window ledge. The peacocks remain outside because they are committed entirely to l’imaginaire and cannot sit quietly for ninety minutes.
Lacan writes on the board:
L’IMAGINAIRE / LE SYMBOLIQUE / LE RÉEL
Then beneath that:
LE MANQUE / LE DÉSIR DE L’AUTRE / LE FANTASME
He turns.
The Editor mutters: “Pretentious, moi?”
Lacan ignores him.
“The child,” he begins, “does not become himself. He becomes what is required.”
He paces slowly.
“If Mother is sad, he becomes amusing. If Father is angry, he becomes invisible. If the house depends on silence, he becomes quiet. If love appears conditional, he becomes useful.”
The Boy stops smiling.
Because he recognises the room.
The Man begins taking notes with the terrible urgency of somebody who suspects, again, that he may be the example. Or the one who has not done his homework.
Lacan writes another sign on the board:
$ ◊ a
“The sujet barré,” he says, “in relation to the objet petit a. The split subject and the object-cause of desire. Not the thing itself. There is no thing itself. Only the little missing piece around which the whole ridiculous machinery organises itself.”
The Man looks at the board.
Then suddenly he sees it.
M.
M1. M2. Mother. Moses. Man. Metro. M1. M2. Morrissey. McGinn. Me.
He has spent years scattering himself across women, countries, books, jobs, Poland, football, priests and theory itself in order not to encounter the simpler and more humiliating truth: That what he wanted was not out there. It was the abandoned self. The child outside the room. Or in the room with no door.
Lacan keeps speaking.
“Le fantasme is not a dream. It is a structure. A little private arrangement with the world. If I understand her, she will love me. If I save her, I may remain. If I suffer beautifully enough, perhaps somebody will finally come.”
The Night Manager nods approvingly.
“Very good,” he says. “Room 23 remains available.”
“No,” says Lacan sharply.
For the first time he seems angry.
“Il faut traverser le fantasme.”
One must cross the fantasy.
The room falls quiet.
Not because they understand. Because suddenly Lacan no longer sounds like a professor. He sounds like a man trying to speak himself out of a prison he built with enormous intelligence.
He looks at the board.
L’IMAGINAIRE. LE SYMBOLIQUE. LE RÉEL.
The three great kingdoms. The system.
And suddenly he understands, with visible horror, that he has done exactly what the Man has done. As if they were, in fact, the same person, a phrase he finds increasingly difficult to ignore.
He has spent a lifetime translating loneliness into vocabulary. He wanted admiration because admiration seemed safer than love. He wanted disciples because disciples do not leave in the night.
“C’était moi,” he says quietly.
The Boy looks at him. The Man looks at him. The Editor removes his glasses.
“It was me.”
Then, very slowly, like an old actor forgetting his lines, he sits down and to everybody’s embarrassment, he begins to sob.
The therapists stare fixedly at their notes. The Grotesques suddenly find the floor fascinating. One of the squirrels appears moved. Outside, even the peacocks pause in their display.
The Boy gets up first. Then the Man, muttering that this is all becoming intolerably sentimental.
They sit beside Lacan.
No one says anything for a while. Even now the temptation remains to make another revelation of this.
The Night Manager is already reaching for his pen. The Man takes it gently from him. “No,” he says. “Not this time.”
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