Then He drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and at the entrance He put a police guard equipped with flaming swords and He called them cherubim. In short, like all arranged marriages, the marriage of Adam and Eve was unhappy.
But what repels me most is seeing the Almighty feigning ignorance. He, who is all-seeing, all-knowing and makes all the worst arrangements, goes to Adam and with hypocritical ingenuousness says to him: “What have you done with the apple?”
And He goes to Cain and says to him? “What have you done with your brother?”
If I had been in Cain’s position I would have given Him a punch in the eye.
The eye of God. The eye of God who sees everything — and hears everything. Perhaps He’s listening to my blasphemy now. And He’s capable of striking me down.
But how cold my feet are.
All the same, if I were to die now, I should be almost glad. No, I don’t want to commit suicide, but I should like to fade away and die gently. To depart from life as one gets out of a bath. What a fine thing is death. Only decomposing corpses are happy; the more advanced the decomposition, the greater the happiness. And if I’m not going to die, I should like at least to remain here, inert, like a mineral, devoid of will, devoid of initiative, devoid of rebellion, letting everything take its course all round me, letting everything collapse, without lifting a finger, behaving like decent women in the old days who grew old and ugly and disintegrated without the use of make-up or lipstick. But what an extraordinary effect cocaine has on me. Cold feet, fireworks in my head, a torrent of stupid ideas, my heart throbbing like a sewing machine, and a calm acceptance of the idea of total inertia. All the same, I’d like to stay in bed for two or three days until the staff came and knocked; then the owner would come, and then the police, and I wouldn’t answer any of them, I’d let myself be shaken and I’d let myself be taken away, as they liked and where they liked… What a strange effect cocaine has on me.
His heart went on beating hard, and the whole of his body trembled as a result; it trembled, vibrated and shook like a stationary car with the engine left running.
But the exalting and depressing effect of the drug began to fade. Tito came back to himself.
And fell asleep.
When he awoke the sun was high. He did not notice it, because in Paris the sun is always at the same height; so high that you never see it.
He had to be at the newspaper office at ten. The editor, thrusting his fierce animal-tamer’s moustaches at him, had told him to report to him personally. So he would have to have a good shave.
Standing in front of the mirror and applying his safety razor to his thin, lathered cheeks, he said to himself: How boring life is. How futile. Having to get up every morning, put on your shoes, shave, see people, talk, look at the hands of your watch returning inexorably to where you have seen them millions of times before. Having to eat. Having to eat bits of dead bodies, or dead fruit, or fruit worse than dead, adulterated by cooking; having to pick fruit that is so beautiful only to spoil it and pass it through our bodies. Having to swallow dead things until we become dead things ourselves. Having to make new things in order to use and so destroy them so that other new things may result from their destruction. Everything around us is dead; here and there are some traces of life, but everything else is dead: the wool of my jacket is dead, the pearl that adorns a young woman’s neck is the coffin of a worm… Having to smile at women; having to try and be a bit different from the majority of mankind. Yet even we who try to be different and make wide detours to avoid following the main road end up exactly where ordinary people end up, that is, following the main road. Life is an arc from A to B. Except for the stillborn or congenital idiots, it’s not a straight line. For those with some intelligence the curve is gentle; for the highly intelligent the curve is greatest; for the simple-minded it’s almost a straight line. The brainy, the eccentric, the odd and out-of-the-way individuals who want novelty, flavor, something different from the normal, arrive more slowly but just as inevitably at the point that conventional people reach without question and without hesitation. The only difference is in the width of the arc. Those with a taste for liberty and adventure who scorn marriage end by envying those who marry young and have a large family; those who live a dazzling life of unpredictable changes of fortune, alternating between poverty and wealth, luxury and hunger, end by regretting not having had a career in the civil service. I believe that at heart the great actress envies the good housewife who washes and plays with her children. I believe that the great statesman who makes history regrets not having been a country schoolteacher or a stationmaster.
The height of perfection is mediocrity (Tito went on). The height of perfection is the bookkeeper who shaves every other day, travels second class, aspires to purgatory, is satisfied with a dowry of 50,000 lire, lives in a third-floor flat, was a non-commissioned officer, and wears detachable shirt cuffs and silver gilt cuff links. So let mediocrity be praised.
And in that case why do I go and get a job on a newspaper in the secret hope of being a great success? But that isn’t true. At heart I don’t hope for anything at all. I have no ideals. But I have a strong beard, and this blade is blunt. That’ll do. I’ve scratched myself enough. The editor of The Fleeting Moment won’t want to embrace and kiss me, I hope. I shall be an employee, a humble employee. I shall never aspire to be the idol of the mob. The mob loves those who amuse and serve it. But to amuse it you have to love it. I love no one, least of all the mob, because the mob, the multitude, are like women: they betray those who love them.
Tito bent over the washbasin and rinsed his face. The cold water clarified his ideas.
What a pessimistic idiot I am, he said to himself. I’m an idiot and a liar. I want to succeed. And I shall.
He walked briskly down the stairs, and at the door he sent a boy resplendent in a red uniform like an acrobat’s costume to get him a taxi.
The editor of The Fleeting Moment was in the salle d’armes fencing with the drama critic, but he would be back in his office in three quarters of an hour.
In the meantime Tito took off his overcoat and hung up his hat. That is the first act that marks taking possession of an office.
A gentleman in black came towards him with outstretched hand. His jacket and hair were black, and he was all straight lines (his parting, the crease in his trousers, the shape of his mouth, the set of his shoulders); he seemed to have been drawn with a ruler in India ink.
“Aren’t you the new man?” he said. “I’m Ménier, the secretary of the editorial department. Won’t you come this way?”
He led him through three huge, richly upholstered rooms furnished with marble busts, dainty desks and huge armchairs — those soft armchairs that caressingly adjust to all the curves and bulges of the human form. The difference in substance between the flimsy desks and the hospitable armchairs was an apt acknowledgment of the supererogatory nature of work in the face of claims of idleness and sloth. After passing through the three rooms on a long length of oriental carpet they found themselves in front of the American bar.
The barman, whose generous form looked as inappropriate in his white uniform as an ancient Egyptian priest would have done if he had absent-mindedly put on the short black jacket of a contemporary Spaniard, was absorbed in mixing some highly complicated drinks for three or four members of the staff who were seated, or rather perched like lookouts, on high, slender stools.