Il ne faut pas se laisser abuser par les apparences

The rule “Do not be misled by appearances” gives Aomamé a way to face the disorientation that follows her extraordinary decision to descend from an expressway in broad daylight. A taxi driver tells her that the world may look different after she acts, but insists that reality remains one. The phrase is both a warning against trusting appearances and a precarious anchor: Aomamé repeats it as she approaches the emergency stairway, even as the new landscape makes the certainty of a single reality difficult to sustain.

The driver’s warning

The principle takes shape during Aomamé’s conversation with the taxi driver. He first distinguishes things from their appearance, then makes the distinction specific: descending an emergency staircase from an expressway in daylight is not an ordinary act, and once she has done it, the landscape may seem different from the one she knows. He speaks from experience, though he does not explain what happened to him. His advice is not that Aomamé’s perception will remain unchanged, but that she should not mistake a changed appearance for a second reality.

The driver repeats that there is only one reality, giving the idea the weight of a deliberate maxim rather than a passing reassurance. Aomamé answers that this is obvious and thinks of the body as capable of occupying only one place at one time, invoking Einstein. In that moment, the principle sounds like a cool, physical certainty: reality is singular, and a body cannot escape its position within it. Her thought also carries a note of isolation, making the rule less comforting than austere.

A phrase carried into action

The advice acquires practical force when Aomamé leaves the car and makes her way toward the emergency stairway. In the traffic, she removes her high heels and coat while motorists watch. The song “Billie Jean” plays from a nearby black Toyota Celica. She rolls her miniskirt up to her hips to climb over a metal barrier, then puts her clothes back in order on the other side, adjusts her sunglasses, and takes up her bag again. The action is conspicuous and awkward, but she refuses to let the onlookers’ gaze define what she is.

At this threshold, the maxim returns in the narration: appearances are not to be trusted; there is only one reality. The wording links the driver’s counsel to Aomamé’s own resolve. What the motorists see—a woman in a miniskirt climbing a barrier—is not, in her view, an account of who she is. The thought does not erase the public spectacle; it draws a boundary between visible appearance and identity, allowing her to continue despite being watched.

The stairway and the limit of certainty

The stairway makes the rule concrete. It is a plain, gray-painted metal structure, built for emergencies and function rather than for a woman in tights, without shoes, in a tight miniskirt. A passing truck makes it tremble; wind blows through its bars. Aomamé registers the mismatch between the stairway’s intended use and her own situation, but concludes that it is still a staircase, and that firm ground lies below. The utilitarian structure offers a physical route through uncertainty: whatever its unusual context, it leads downward to the earth.

The maxim therefore does not promise that the world will look familiar after Aomamé acts. The driver explicitly prepares her for the possibility that it will not. Instead, it separates a change in the view from the claim that reality itself has multiplied. That distinction is tested by the very act the driver names: Aomamé’s descent from the expressway. As she moves toward the ground, the assurance of one reality coexists with the prospect of a landscape that will seem different.

Repetition and significance

The rule gains force through repetition. The driver introduces the distinction between things and appearances, explains it through Aomamé’s unusual plan, and restates the claim that reality is singular. Later, the same conviction returns as Aomamé crosses the barrier. This recurrence makes the phrase more than an abstract lesson: it passes from one speaker to another and accompanies a physical crossing from the stalled traffic toward the stairway.

Its certainty remains deliberately uneasy. Aomamé’s appeal to the body’s single place and time offers a rational formulation, while the approaching change in the landscape presses against that formulation without yet resolving it. The rule can steady her action, but it cannot make the unfamiliar familiar or prove in advance how the world should be understood. Its significance lies in that tension: Aomamé is urged to distrust what appearances suggest while holding fast to the possibility that reality, however altered it seems, remains one.