The King’s Jester

Abstract

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/89-01

Publication date:June 30^th 2022

For an epigraph of Le Fou du Roi [1], Binebine chooses,  to quote Victor Hugo who describes the jester’s job as follows:  « Poor red tail! Countless are the pains and numerous the sorrows in a buffoon’s gaiety!  What everlasting and incurable pains, what lugubrious occupation laughter is! ». When reading this, one wonders whether the narrative which is about to unfold, tells the story of the monarch or that of his jester. To this one may only go back to the title of the book which clearly sets the mood and the narrative mode: We are about to read the personal experience of the King’s favorite jester with his master. As a narrator, Lefqih is both a stakeholder and an onlooker. He partakes in, and witnesses, the servility of the courtiers. He, in an attempt to read and sound objective, describes his own «obsequiousness » before his master: « I was, as usual, closely following him with a slightly bent back, a little obsequious as appropriate when one is escorting the king. »

The French journalist, Jacques Martin, who used to host the very popular French T.V. program  «l’école des Fans (the School of Fans) » in the late eighties of last century, once asked a kid who was taking part in the program’s broadcast, «What job would you like to have when you grow up? »  The child’s answer was as follows: «Je veux devenir banquier (I would like to become a banker)» and when asked why, the young boy replied, « Dans ce métier on gagne beaucoup d’argent! [2] » In the child’s reply one can obviously pinpoint a lot of naïveté. The question worth asking, however, is whether this gullibility is proper to children only. How about a pastry chef? Does he consume a lot of the cakes he makes? And how about a tailor? Does he dress himself in the best garments of the city? The answer unfortunately may sometimes sound shocking, or (at best) unexpectedly surprising! The reason I have chosen to start the present essay with the mentioning of this case is that the child of Jaques Martin’s program is within every one of us. We all tend to think that a mechanic must be driving the best car; that a cook must inevitably be making the best dishes for himself, and so it goes. But how about a buffoon? Does his job, as a jester, make of him the happiest person on earth? A Moroccan proverb seems to answer the above Question. The proverb  goes as follows: though a butcher, he has turnips for dinner! This may fit perfectly the case of Mahi Binebine’s main character in Le Fou du Roi (The King’s Jester).

The opening sentence of the novel illustrates the contrast between appearance and reality and seems to refute the false impression one may have that life behind the palace ramparts can be made  only of joy: « Everything looked normal, but nothing was really so ». This sentence (or rather statement) seems – in the opening page of the novel – to   be used by the narrator as a refrain.  It is used four times to open the first four paragraphs of the first page of the novel. In what reads like a refrain, the repeated sentence, sets the mood and establishes the relation between this first person narrator and the novel’s main character (the King).

An actual person who spent nearly forty years in the Royal Palace’s pavilions at the service of  Hassan II, Lefqih* Binebine – from the outset – seems somewhat to legitimize his presence through the intimate bonds which link him to the deceased monarch. From the outset, too, the tone of the narrative seems to herald an impending event which does not say its name: We are here being told about the last hours of the life of a monarch who ruled the country for thirty eight years (1961 - 1999). And when we know that the scene in question is chronicling the Monarch’s last hours, we come to realize that the narrative unfolds in a flashback mode.

This last scene of the narrative, with which the novel starts, also portrays to the reader the attachment of the jester to his patron. « I had pains to see him suffer, but I was abstaining from showing it. I was endeavoring to be funny because it was my job to make my master laugh. » The irony of the situation is that the jester has no right to show his pain, since his job consists mainly in making his master laugh. The trouble, however, is that the master is in no mood to laugh.

[1] Mahi Binebine, The King’s Jester, translated from the French by M’hammed Benjelloun.

[2] Fr . « In this job, one earns a lot of money»

* In Arabic the title  Al Faqih, which in the Moroccan dialect is pronounced Fqih, refers to someone who is well versed in theology. It is also a sign of respect shown to anyone called by this title