Hygiene and the Assassin by Amélie Nothomb Page A

to me? That women are not portrayed favorably in my work? That without women, men will never achieve fulfillment?”
    â€œWrong.”
    â€œWell, maybe you’d like to know who does housework here?”
    â€œWhy not? It will give you the opportunity to be interesting for a change.”
    â€œGo ahead, provoke, it’s the weapon of mediocre people. Well, I would have you know that a Portuguese woman comes every Thursday afternoon to clean my apartment and take my dirty laundry. There you have at least one woman who has respectable employment.”
    â€œIn your ideology, women stay at home with a broom and a dust-rag, is that it?”
    â€œIn my ideology, women don’t exist.”
    â€œBetter and better. The Nobel committee must have had a serious sunstroke the day they chose you.”
    â€œFor once, we agree. This Nobel Prize was a high point in the history of misunderstandings. To give me the Nobel Prize for literature is equivalent to giving the Nobel Peace prize to Saddam Hussein.”
    â€œDon’t brag. Saddam is more famous than you are.”
    â€œThat’s normal, no one reads me. If people read me, I would cause more harm and therefore be more famous than Saddam.”
    â€œBut the fact remains that no one reads you. How do you explain this universal refusal to read you?”
    â€œAn instinct for self-preservation. An immune-system reflex.”
    â€œYou always come up with explanations that are flattering for you. And what if people did not read you simply because you are boring?”
    â€œBoring? What an exquisite euphemism. Why don’t you say a pain in the ass!”
    â€œBecause I don’t think it’s necessary to resort to bad language. But don’t dodge the question, monsieur.”
    â€œAm I boring? I will give you a reply that is resplendent with good faith: I have no idea. Of all the inhabitants on the planet, I am the least well situated to know. Kant surely thought that the
Critique of Pure Reason
was a fascinating book, and that wasn’t his fault: he had his nose in it. Consequently I feel obliged, Mademoiselle, to redirect my question to you baldly: am I boring? As silly as you may be, your reply will be more interesting than mine, even if you haven’t read me, a matter about which I have many doubts.”
    â€œYou are wrong. Sitting before you is one of the rare human beings who has read all twenty-two of your novels, without skipping a single line.”
    The fat man sat there speechless for forty seconds.
    â€œBravo. I like people who are capable of such enormous lies.”
    â€œSorry to disappoint you, it’s the truth. I’ve read everything you’ve ever written.”
    â€œWith someone holding a gun to your head?”
    â€œOf my own free will—no, of my own free desire.”
    â€œThat’s impossible. If you had read everything I’ve written, you would not be the person I see before me.”
    â€œAnd who do you see before you?”
    â€œI see an insignificant little female.”
    â€œAnd do you think you can see what is going on in the head of this insignificant little female?”
    â€œWhat, is there something going on in your head?
Tota mulier in utero.
”
    â€œI regret to inform you, I did not read you with my belly. So you will be subjected to my opinions. There’s no way around it.”
    â€œGo ahead, let’s see what you mean by ‘opinion.’”
    â€œFirst and foremost, to respond to your first question, I was not bored for a single moment reading your twenty-two novels.”
    â€œThat’s strange. I would think that reading something without understanding it would be deadly boring.”
    â€œAnd what about writing without understanding, is that boring?”
    â€œAre you suggesting that I do not understand my own books?”
    â€œI would say, rather, that your books are overflowing with a desire to show off and bluff. And that is