Jean-Philippe Toussaint - The Bathroom

In the beginning, the narrator of Jean-Philippe Toussaint's first novel, The Bathroom, had no intention of living in his bathroom. No, he simply wanted to spend his afternoons there. He doesn't lock the door, but nor does he broadcast his situation – Edmondsson, his girlfriend, finds out when she does, and that's that. And there's no reason for it either, or at least, there are no reasons explicitly provided within the text. The narrator is too passive for a declaration, content to withdraw from the world and simply be, squirreled away in his bathroom.

Around me were cupboards, towel racks, a bidet. The washbasin was white; a narrow shelf projected above it, and on the shelf lay toothbrushes and razors. The wall facing me, studded with lumps, showed cracks, and in places cavities pitted the lifeless paint. One crack seemed to be gaining ground. I spent hours staring at its extremities, vainly trying to surprise it in action. Sometimes I made other experiments. I would scrutinize the surface of my face in a pocket mirror and, at the same time, the movements of the hands on my watch. But my face let nothing show. Ever.

The narrator remains nameless throughout the text. Added to that, each paragraph is numbered and, aside from the paragraph breaks, the text remains unbroken by dialogue or other punctuation marks. Characters, if they speak, do so within the structure of the narrator's narration, which has the effect of keeping them within his purview, and not theirs. Though passive, the narrator remains in control – it is always on his terms by which we perceive his world.

Edmondsson seems oddly unaffected by her boyfriend's sudden retreat to the bathroom. She engages two Poles to paint the walls of the kitchen, and doesn't seem too bothered when, in the middle of stripping, one of the Poles watches through a crack in the door while talking with her. Like the narrator, she refrains from action, and often the only difference between the two seems to be that she is outside the bathroom, and he, inside.

Toussaint is enamoured with descriptions of physical actions and the make-up of rooms. From the outset, the reader quite naturally wishes to understand the why of the narrator's retreat to the bathroom, but what we are instead provided with is the following what. We don't often get a chance to discover the thoughts of the narrator, and none of the characters discuss anything above the banal, but we certainly learn the ins and outs of skinning an octopus for lunch:

The octopus had been completely stripped. Only the tips of its prehensile limbs were still covered with fragments of grayish skin, their ends turned back like socks. Overflowing the wooden board on all sides, the tentacles writhed in every direction; they lay on the surface of the sink, draped themselves over obstacles, touched and sometimes climbed over one another. Several of the longest ones dangled in the void. Kabrowinski [one of the Polish painters] put his knife down and, turning to me, informed me that he was beginning to get the hang of it.

The octopus is skinned over roughly a third of the text, with the implication that the mechanical and quite ordinary act of preparing food for a meal is significantly more interesting than one man's unexplained absence from the world. Toussaint luxuriates over the details of the octopus' preparation, returning to it again and again every couple of numbered paragraphs. The sheer visceral impact of skinning the octopus juxtaposes neatly with the anecdotes relayed, which deal mostly with the narrator's relationship with Edmondsson, but also touches on how they came to live in the apartment. Again, the preparation is significantly more detailed – more real – than any of the events or stories that make up the life of an actual person.

Throughout, Toussaint's narrator shows himself as a rather droll young man. He refers to himself as twenty-seven going on twenty-nine, and in a quite comical interlude, the following occurs between the narrator and the man who previously rented the apartment:

The former male tenant, a man of distinction, looked at the bottle and opined that it was a very good wine, but confessed, with a prudent laugh, that he was not partial to Bordeaux and preferred Burgundy. I replied that I myself was not overly enthralled by his style of dress.

Much of the text is related in a similar manner, understated but effective, clever and funny without making one laugh. We come to understand that the narrator can't truly take the world seriously, that there is, in a sense, a sheet of thick glass separating himself from everyone else. He is a part of things, but not exactly. He is involved without really being a participant. Events, situations, and the natural solipsism of others doesn't touch him – it's all a bit done.

...it is possible to imagine that the essential tendency of motion, however lightning-swift it may appear, is toward immobility and that, however slow it may sometimes seem, it is continuously drawing bodies toward death, which is immobility.

The first part of the novel, titled Paris and running to forty numbered paragraphs, ends with the skinning of the octopus. Along the way, the narrator receives an invitation from the Austrian Embassy, which is odd, considering he is French, and even odder when he considers that he knows nobody in the Austrian Embassy, and can't think why he would be wanted, given his (lack of) skills. At any rate, in the second section he heads off to Italy, at first alone, though he is soon joined by Edmondsson. Though he doesn't restrict himself to the bathroom this time, there is an increasing sense of withdrawal. He begins to feel oppressed by the eyes of others, anguishing over the smallest conversation.

In this, Toussaint's narrator reminds one of Mersault from Camus' The Stranger, another character unable to quite align himself with the world. The second part carries with it a certain menace as the narrator increasingly vanishes into the world of solitary darts and imaginary soccer games. He is withdrawing from everything, Edmondsson included. And, like Mersault, violence erupts in an unexpected manner.

The conclusion of the second part sees a brief jolt of activity, but events soon smooth over and the monochromatic tedium of the narrator's life continues. Toussaint's novel is cyclical, returning again and again to the same themes. He refuses to provide answers or meaning, and there is nothing akin to a 'philosophy' ascribed to the narrator. He lives in the bathroom because he lives in the bathroom; the few times the narrator comes close to offering a reason for his behaviour he inevitably trails off, unable to complete the sentence. Why? He doesn't know – and won't – and can't.

The Bathroom provides a strong example of the crippling ennui of the apathetic intellectual; that is, it is a story of a man unwilling to answer the question of what to do with my life?, and unwilling also to allow the question to be asked. Toussaint's novel is funny without making you laugh, shocking without making you gasp. The plot moves along without anything ever happening, and the characters interact with one another without saying much of anything. The days bleed into each other without becoming dull and grey – they simple are. For all that, there's a lot of truth to the story; Toussaint provides an unblinking examination of those desperately smart, desperately young, desperately lost men and women who don't know quite how to take over the reigns from the generation above, and aren't even sure if they want to. If the narrator was to ask the question, he would ask – is this all there is? But he won't, because the answer is yes.

Author	Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Title	The Bathroom (Original Title: La salle de bain)
Translators	Nancy Amphoux and Paul de Angelis
Nationality	Belgian
Publisher	The Dalkey Archive Press
Published	2008 (English) 1985 (French)
Pages	102
Availability: ---Amazon (US) ---Amazon (UK) ---Amazon (FR) ---Fishpond AU)

See Also

Titles by Toussaint also under review:
---Zidane's Melancholy (From The Dalkey Archive Press' Best European Fiction 2010 Anthology)

Other titles from The Dalkey Archive Press under review.

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