The Jester is making people laugh. That is good. He will get to eat tonight. At the royal palace of Versailles, no less.
He rubs his belly. All these signs make the signifiers very happy. He makes unseen things visible, this guy, with his big and little gestures.
All this is a bonus, a serendipitous coinkidink as we might say, because the jester himself is deaf.
As the Jester walks away from where he performed, a courtier stands in his way. Following custom, the courtier makes a sweeping bow, the kind which shows you what “ostentatious” means even if you don’t have a dictionary. The Jester breathes, then gesticulates his way through a bow which is much more involved and probably can’t be topped by the other fellow. In any case, if the courtier tried to do something that gymnastic, his fake-ass wig would likely tumble off his head.
The year is 1788. December. Things are going well for the Jester. He is 18 years old. He was raised in a religious school where, lucky him, French Sign Language was invented and that was only in 1771. He grew up with this shit. Sure, society was not exactly equal, but if someone like him could perform in front of the King, then things must be on their way to equal access and prosperity. Perhaps, at this rate, poverty would be eliminated by, maybe, 1795.
A gentleman sat in the back row, sneering at him. Most of the aristocratic guests had left the performance space to dance a quadrille or other bullshit. This gentleman was still sneering at him, seeming very sad. Then the Jester remembered his name. It was de Sade, the Marquis de Sade. If anyone from the quote unquote normal world were to start using sign language, one would not expect it to be this person.
‘How are you?’ he signed.
‘Living my best life,’ signed the Jester.
‘Glad to hear. So, how about this brouhaha with The Third Estate?’
This guy was very good at sign language. The skill extended to certain abstract terms that take too long to explain in word language.
‘Not really at liberty to talk about it. But, all things being equal.’
‘I’ll tell you about equality,’ whisper-signed the Marquis, as he rose to leave. ‘This is like telling the King FUCK YOU. And if he’s fucked, I’m fucked, we’re all equally fucked.’
The Marquis de Sade, it turned out, had an excellent grasp of how parts are subsumed in the whole. This would someday be referred to as the Gestalt, for those who might live long enough to encounter the term. We would not live that long. We were more fucked than fucked. Don’t forget to make a grand gesture of it.