I had understood one thing; another I had not understood.
I knew that the intolerable order of things must be overthrown, but I believed that something like the idea of a nation could exist, as real as a material object.
Things moved pretty quickly and pretty smoothly. I had gone back to school as a way of prolonging my sloth. My mother’s death had taken a savage toll on my father—not from attachment to the poor woman, but because her demise made him think of his own, which was not a long time coming. He seemed to diminish. He shrank. He went on working, as well off as he was. My lying in bed in the mornings revolted him. For his part, he got up at seven to go and massage prostates. When he came home for lunch he would find me ensconced in the kitchen dunking a croissant in my café au lait. I paid no attention to him but made noise deliberately, with bits of sodden dough clinging to a recently cultivated mustache.
He would shake his head and sigh. I would be wearing sunglasses in the semidarkness with the shutters closed. He was loath to get on my case, given my challenged eyesight.
All the same, the old retard soon threatened to cut me off. Had I had to survive on that bastard’s allowance alone, I would have been dead. Every day I hustled LPs or old books pinched from his library. A good number of ancient medical tomes with plates showing nerves, internal organs and all that sort of stuff. Also autographed editions.
When he finally gave me an ultimatum according to which I must do something, I caved, fully aware that school would hardly stop me from doing fuck all. And I was already sure that with a little patience I was bound to get involved in interesting stuff.
I laughed to myself. You might say I had won.
And as for school, it was a lot of fun.
The teachers scarcely dared deal with me, because I was always at the back, silent, with my shades, and because they knew I had almost killed a guy. I’m sure I frightened them, at least subconsciously.
The best part was outside school, with the chicks. The business with Ventrée impressed them more than my military service. But since I didn’t care to spend all my time telling pathetic tales of car theft, I went to town on Algeria.
“Killing is nothing,” I would say. “Torture is the hardest.”
“You tortured people?” one girl wanted to know, her eyes gleaming in the half darkness of her room in student housing at Mont-Saint-Aignan University.
I shrugged imperceptibly. Otherwise my gaze, veiled by dark glasses, was fastened on her. I was standing in the middle of the room, arms dangling. Dust floated in the sunbeams filtering through the venetian blinds.
I eyed the girl’s breasts, rather plump breasts, stuffed into a short-sleeved sweater with narrow ribbing, after the fashion of the time. She was breathing faster. I watched her chest heaving, awaiting the exact moment when she would be ready.
“No one wanted to do it,” I told her in a monotone. “But someone had to. The man, I’m sure, knew nothing, but interrogation was part of the game. A tragic game.”
At the word “tragic” the tips of her nipples pricked up. I moved closer to her slowly; she was leaning on her elbows on the bed.
“I did it,” I said. “I’m not proud of that. Not ashamed either. I felt ignominious, but neither ashamed nor proud of my ignominy. I think I was a bit afraid. Not afraid of punishment. But of the idea that such things were allowed, not just for me but for humanity. Humanity all alone in space on this pathetic little globe called earth.”
As I uttered these words, I took her gently by the throat, caressing her with my two thumbs below her lower jaw. She shuddered. I delivered the kicker: “He and I both knew that resistance was useless. And that eventually I was going to slit his throat.”
She closed her eyes and drew air in between her teeth. I lay down on top of her and went on stroking her throat.