For example, her views on probability. Though she was named after the founder of probability theory, she thought the entire concept a perversion of reason. An event that happens happens. Its non-occurrence, therefore, cannot happen. Never, when something happens, can its not happening also happen. It is happening 100 percent, and it is 0 percent that it is not happening. And since a thing either happens or not, there is only 100 percent or 0 percent of the probability. C’est logique! Therefore, what is the probable but the confused? And what is the confused but the cowardly? And what is the cowardly but the immoral? And what is the immoral but the probable? It is full circle! Therefore-she always said this word with a special emphasis, equal accent on both syllables, and blowing a bit of air into the f, so that the aspirated phoneme seemed to ascend on the smoky fragrance of her voice-there is only the absolutely impossible, what they rightly call the thing with 0 probability, and the absolutely necessary, which they say has probability 1, Papa had informed her, but she had vehemently countered that, no, it must be measured as 100, or, better yet, as infinite, since certitude is infinite. Therefore-maybe she had inherited the love of the adverb of consequence from mathematical Papa, or maybe, as Cass enjoyed picturing, all the children of Bures-sur-Yvette, hanging upside down on the jungle gym, solemnly sprinkled their sentences with donc-there is only, in the calculus of probability, the numbers zero and infinity.
“And do you know, Cass-Papa, he did not argue with me.”
Cass could well believe that Papa, he did not argue with her. What Pascale believed, she knew, and what she knew, she knew with savage certitude. La Sauvagerie et la certitude.
“Basically, she’s full of shit” was the way that Mona had put it, which Cass thought hardly did the situation justice. Mona, with her high-school-level French, couldn’t even read Pascale’s poetry in the original. Cass had translated as best he could, but clearly it wasn’t good enough.
“Her poetry is a crock, too. That relentless keening. It hurts my ears just reading it. She’s the Yoko Fucking Ono of poetry. She’s anti-art.”
“How is she anti-art, Mona?” Cass felt compelled to ask, even as he acknowledged to himself that Mona’s Yoko Ono comparison had something to it. “Say what you will about her, Pascale is a brilliant poet. How can her poetry be anti-art?”
