Barthes Tells the Story Wrong
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by Sridala Swami

If you want definitions, here is one: a lover is one who waits.

The next part, the part where definitions are unwoven and the threads laid
bare, can be left to Barthes, Roland, who said everything about it that needs
to be said. And for what cannot be (and there are still some of those things)
there are films, which—no matter what the structuralists say—are not to be
read.

There was a girl who sat every evening at a particular table, hoping it was
close enough to where the boys sat to make it appear a natural veering off when
(if) he came to sit at it, opposite her; but not close enough to make her seem
desperate.

Not always was her waiting played out as gestures of solitude. Other people
gave her company. There was nothing in her face that could be read as signs of
biding. This did not mean that she knew her time was up. This did not mean that
she ceased to wonder and hope and despair and curse.

This is where Barthes got the story of the mandarin wrong, the one who pined
for the courtesan who had said that after the 100th night of waiting, she would
be his. What Barthes did was to report the mandarin’s departure on the
penultimate night. He didn’t say how, on the night the mandarin left, the
courtesan had made up her mind to tell him he’d waited enough, he could come in
and

instead

she waited.