I had gone to see my father buried for one reason only: I had to make a good impression. Prison wardens are suspicious of those who fail to show filial duty.
So I went to the cemetery for the old man’s funeral.
Now I was making up for that a little. I took the case holding razor blades marked Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. (in English) and broke the blades one by one. I threw them onto the bathroom floor. I shaved with an electric gizmo. As I shaved I smoked, well before breakfast time; and I kept inspecting myself in the mirrors. I knew I looked like hell.
I tossed my father’s jars and tubes of ointment onto the floor. I crushed them slowly under my heel. The bathroom was disgusting. My old man was not clean and tidy. I broke the wire drying rack hanging over the bath on which he used to hang his boxer shorts. I screwed it up into a wild ball and dropped it into the tub. I went down to the ground floor holding my cigarette between finger and thumb so that I could whistle “Satin Doll.”
In the hall there were no keys on the little Henri II buffet. I used my heel to attack the locks. The doors flew open. I strewed old papers, rags, and pipes across the carpet.
I kicked over the umbrella stand with its copper decorations and it rolled up against the front door. The bumbershoots scattered. I snorted and went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of Nescafé.
I was overwhelmed by an urge to shit all over the floor.
I controlled myself.
I drank my coffee.
I adjusted my bathrobe—the same old plaid piece of shit. I would get another one the next day. The doorbell rang. Cocksure, my cig stuck between my teeth, I went to open.
Standing on the doormat was Commissioner Goémond, looking at me mischievously and waiting for me to open the door wide. I stayed put, blocking the narrow gap.
“I come as a neighbor,” he said.
“Diarrhea,” I said. “Excrement. Policeman. Half-breed. Night soil. Pisspot. Bitch. Shithole.”
He could tell I was somewhat hostile. The blood drained slowly from his face. I treated him, calmly, to other insults, each viler than the last.
“I understand you, you know,” said Goémond, taking a step forward.
I slammed the door in his face. I shot the bolts. I was trembling horribly. I wanted to kill him. I went to make myself another Nescafé. I went on uttering obscenities in the kitchen by myself.
To calm my nerves I dressed sharply. Silk shirt with French cuffs, no-iron gray pants, plum-colored jacket, very simple yellow woolen necktie with little green stripes. I wore my dark glasses. I stroked my mustache. I put on a little fedora to match my pants. The look was not bad at all.
I went out. I was heir to a comfortable sum of money. In two or three years I would have to find something to do, but in the meantime I had nothing to worry about. I ran around Rouen. I went in search of old pals, in search of a little social life.
Lots of them had disappeared or settled down. I found Babulique. He was much thinner. He had dropped out of school. He was working in a garage. He was pleased that I wanted advice from him. I bought an Ondine. The engine was tired, but the white bodywork was still impressive. I drove around and did a spot of shopping.
Little by little I was overcome by a feeling of uselessness.
For several days I stayed cloistered in the house drinking beer and smoking my cigarillos. I made a fire in the hearth that the old man had closed up with a sheet of metal and that was never used. I burnt my father’s old photos, old letters, medical records and file cards. Some of these I read before burning them. From the medical point of view, everyday life is sometimes unfathomable, if you know what I mean. There was the record of a guy who came in one Sunday morning, a little old man, well dressed and all the rest, to have a pencil case extracted from his rectum. He claimed that he had sat on the thing by mistake but eventually, without prompting, broke down in tears and confessed to his perversions and pleaded that the object be removed as soon as possible so his wife and daughter should guess nothing—that it be taken out within half an hour while the women were still at Mass. Another character was arrested, a real career pervert. His complete confession was noted: began at high school, where “I served as a woman for my classmates and swallowed all their excretions”; became an undinist, then very masochistic; at thirty years of age, had the blood vessels supplying his penis tied, having no further interest in erection; his greatest pleasure at the time of his arrest was to be attached below the shoulder blades to a meat hook and have his genitals, with myriad phonograph needles implanted in them, manipulated. I am not making this stuff up; this case was written up in medical journals and must be easy to find. Anyway, what did it matter? All went into the fire along with the rest. I poked the embers with my old man’s cane.
Neurosis is nothing that can’t be cured by a good screw. I headed for Anne’s on the off chance; I didn’t know whether she still lived there.
I didn’t ring. Some entrances should stun. I turned the front-door handle and went down the hall straight to her bedroom, cigarillo between my teeth. The room was still her room, to judge by the large photo of Lenin on the wall, but Anne was not there.
“What is it?” came a rather hoity-toity voice.
I turned around calmly. I checked out the woman who had popped up behind me: thirty-five or a little more, but good-looking, short skirt, white turtleneck. Short hair like Anne, but tidier. Small mouth, but hungry. A woman of the world.
“I’m looking for Anne,” I said to her, looking at her breasts.
She smiled and nibbled at her lip, an exciting habit. Suddenly it seemed to dawn on her:
“My God! You are Henri Butron!”
I nodded.
“Fantastic!” she observed.
She bothered her thumb with her teeth and hopped from one foot to the other like a little girl. I drew on my cigarillo and kept mum. Finally she strode toward me determinedly and held out her hand so fast that her arm seemed to spring forth of its own accord.
“I’m Jacquie, Anne’s mother,” she said, seizing my mitt in a virile way and giving it a firm shake.
“You’re well preserved.”
She gave me a look that said, Skip the bullshit, you jerk, but I saw pleasure slip furtively into her doe-like eyes in the shape of a tiny evanescent golden glimmer. I smiled like an idiot.
“Anne is away for the weekend,” she said.
A pause.
“I was just making some coffee. Will you have some?”
I nodded and we settled down. There were modern canvas-covered tubular armchairs, fake African artifacts, a low table with a thick glass top, a stoneware coffee service, and a good many books.
Our conversation got started in a strange way. Jacquie asked me questions like a psychosociologist, and I replied like a subject. In doing so I learnt some things about myself.
“Why did you fire at the cops?”
“To kill them.”
“How come you missed?”
I wondered then about my unconscious fears.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do nothing.”
“Until when?”
“Forever. I’ll never do anything. I’ll rip folks off.”
“Meaning what?”
“I’ll pinch cash wherever it is—in suckers’ wallets. But not armed robbery. I’ll use soft talk.”
“A swindler?”
“Not exactly. I’ll give value for money.”
“I’d like to know you better.”
“Likewise,” I said, scoping out her legs, not bad for what must have been her age.
She was cute, like a young chick, but you could tell how experienced she was. A real woman.
She got to her feet, the bitch, smoothing her skirt down with careful little taps to her thighs and giving a crooked lubricious smile.
“Well, I’m glad to have made your acquaintance.”
And all like that.
Baloney, just baloney; I didn’t dare brush against her as I left.
“I’ll come again,” I said.
“Right.”
The sarcastic old slut.
But I had her later, well and truly. I made her cry out.