How long the night is. I’ve had it up to here with telling stories. I have told everything even if I did it my own way. Frankly I couldn’t give a shit whether this guy N’Gustro has croaked. Henri Butron is the only person I care about, and Henri Butron refuses once and for all to be fucked over anymore. You can do whatever you like with this fine confession of mine. Confession is just a word; I have nothing to reproach myself for except too strong a propensity to be helpful to others. People think right away that you are entirely at their service because you have saved their bacon just once out of pure good-heartedness or out of boredom. From now on things have to pay off. I have laid out too much from the start. Because the Wild West is over. I’m thinking of Paul Newman in The Left-Handed Gun when he sees things clearly. God knows there’s no problem with his turning a quotation from the New Testament completely on its head by his actions, and there’s no problem either when it is properly given: When I was a child I saw as a child, I spoke as a child, it goes like that more or less, and so on. And Newman says he sees clearly now, and his voice still rings in my ears: I go where I want, I do what I want. And he does what he says: he takes the shawl, I think, of the very exciting wife of his host and wraps it like a halter around her neck and harasses and possesses her; it’s really cute. So yes, the Wild West is dead and things have to pay off. The whorehouse of industry is overflowing. You had better decide to give me some, because if you go on promising but giving nothing, arousing a great abundance of impoverished desires, you will be overwhelmed by ever more paupers, O my country, O my brothel, many of them less accommodating than me. Which is why you are all going to die. Here ends this tape recording by Henri Butron.