BUT THERE IS NO NEED to continue searching for the flatulent man. He is delivered to them. Or to Adrien, at least, on a temporary basis: the subject for a study of Embarrassment.
M. Pujol's face, upon seeing the photographer, causes the director to reconsider. He is Stupefaction, the director cries, personified!
Adrien ducks behind his machinery. He, too, is taken by surprise. For here at the hospital, where hygiene is so furiously pursued, the matron has forbidden moustaches, especially those that require waxing, and M. Pujol's face, destitute of moustache, is hardly recognizable as his face at all. It would have been preferable if he had lost an eye. Also his body: it does not seem the same. Underneath the white smock that all the patients must wear, M. Pujol appears to be less perfectly slim, less gentlemanlike, and though Adrien has seen him a hundred times without clothes, the thought of it now horrifies him, faintly.
For this reason the photographer remains hidden beneath his black hood, even after the director has left them alone. He is afraid that if he were to emerge, his own face would be legible, a new entry for the alphabet. Under D, for Deadened Affection? No, that is not it, exactly. The sight of M. Pujol still provokes him. He is dismayed to feel something twitching, like the snout of a little dog rooting in the leaves. He snaps it backwards on its leash; his nose wrinkles at what it has found.
Perhaps, if M. Pujol were behind the camera and he in front of it, the photograph would be titled Repulsion.