Il n’y a toujours qu’une réalité

“There is always only one reality” is both the chauffeur’s counsel to Aomamé and a phrase she recalls as she prepares to leave the expressway. Its insistence on a single, solid world gains force from the scene around it: Aomamé is about to undertake an extraordinary action, and the landscape may look different afterward, but the warning asks her not to mistake altered appearances for a second reality.

The chauffeur’s warning

The chauffeur frames the statement as practical advice rather than abstract doctrine. Aomamé is about to do something ordinary people would never do: descend an emergency staircase from an expressway in broad daylight. He tells her that after such an action the landscape may seem markedly different from everyday life, then cautions her not to be deceived by appearances. He adds that he too has had an experience of that kind, without explaining it further.

The chauffeur repeats the assertion slowly, as if emphasizing an important line. Aomamé answers that she understands. The exchange gives the phrase a double edge: it acknowledges the possibility that experience can make the familiar world seem altered, while insisting that such a change in perception does not multiply reality.

Aomamé’s reasoning

As she considers his words, the broadcast of Janáček’s music ends and recorded concert applause fills the car. Aomamé imagines the conductor bowing and greeting the soloist, but the prolonged applause gradually becomes, in her perception, like an unending sandstorm on Mars. This shift from recognizable concert scene to an alien image echoes the distinction the chauffeur has just made between appearances and reality.

Aomamé’s own reasoning turns the warning into a stark physical proposition: a body can occupy only one place at one time, as Einstein proved. Reality, in this thought, is cold and solitary. The statement therefore does not reassure her that the world is comforting or familiar; it asserts that, however strange the experience, existence remains singular and embodied.

The phrase at the expressway

When Aomamé prepares to climb over the metal barrier, the assertion returns in the narrative as a reminder: there is only one reality. Drivers watch silently as she removes her shoes and coat. From a nearby black Toyota Celica comes Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” Aomamé accepts that people may look, but distinguishes what they can see from who she really is.

She takes a deep breath, climbs the barrier, and sets her skirt back in place on the other side. The gray emergency staircase stands before her, shaking as a truck passes on the opposite roadway, with wind blowing through its metal rails. It was designed for function, not for a woman in tights, without shoes, and wearing a tight miniskirt; still, it is a staircase, and solid ground lies below. In this concrete moment, the phrase links a disturbing possibility—that the world may seem different—to the immediate fact of Aomamé’s body and the descent she is choosing to make.