was defending his interests like the first animal arriving in times of war. He was not really going to be scratched dirtily and die a slow death without ever seeing the window washing again.
After an effort of three quarters of an hour, Gérard returned, hardly out of breath. He had climbed, and especially gone back down like never before; the regulars of the bistro at the Porte de Vincennes, Chez Kowalski, could even testify of this capacity to go down. It required a minimum of intelligence to lie, and Gérard’s intelligence, so sought-after by all his human attitudes, was only leaving crumbs all over the place. He therefore had not thought of buying some chewing-gum. Hector recoiled his nasal horizon by a few centimetres to be able to follow his brother-in-law’s exploits. He stopped him short:
‘I know you did not win Ouarzazate-Casablanca.’
‘…’
‘And if you don’t tell me who is meeting your sister tonight at five, I will reveal everything to your family … And to all your alcoholic friends!’
‘…’
If Gérard was a tad mythomaniac, everyone accorded in finding him nice. He was not used to being attacked (there had already been a polemic on this race, but the affair had been settled for a long time, and in his mind, buried; of course, lies are Lazaruses always ready to raise themselves in the miracle of a new light …), and that was why his capacity to answer jammed up for a moment. There is a saying that speaks of the calm before a storm – hmm – as soon as he had recovered from what he had just heard, he broke out violently against Hector. He broke two of Hector’s teeth and then stopped:
‘The best thing is to sort this out at my place!’
Hector sought by all means possible to retract what he said, but he had gotten on Gérard’s sensitive nerve. Ouarzazate-Casablanca was his whole life; the pedestal on which he had let his days run. No negotiation was possible; in two beats and three movements, the two samples from this same family found themselves in Gérard’s cellar. A bit earlier in the day, when they had come to find the spare cycle in this very cellar, Hector had not noticed the enormous poster for the film
The Silence of the Lambs
. Suddenly, in the flash of a second, a vague reminiscence of a pseudo-cinephile discussion came back to him, where Gérard had practically had tears in his eyes in evoking the sequestration scenes of his favourite film.
2
In this space close to agony, Hector thought back to those moments where flesh had finally delivered him from the identical infinity of his life. The unforgettable details of the first moments of his love for Brigitte were misty in the vapour of a sovereign feeling, subtly tyrannical. Although he could almost no longer feel the blows that Gérard was striking him (there exists a strange stage where pain joins sensuality), the blood in his mouth was transforming itself into cleaning product for windows. He was not begging, he was not saying anything. Bound like a bootleg ham, he was awaiting death quietly on a riverbank, with the hope that there would not be any delays like last time. Of course, he would not die; if Gérard had little experience in excessive violence, he knew, and this thanks to his movie knowledge, that all that was required was to scare the infamous traitor who was threatening to speak. He was intending to stop his punches as soon as he would hear the eternal promise of his victim’s eternal silence. But in lieu and place of this silence, was face to a smile. Hector, plunged in an ecstasy judged perverse by his torturer, was discovering a quasi-masochistic pleasure. Gérard did not understand: in
The Silence of the Lambs
, the victim was not smiling; well, ok, she was being dismembered, but with what he had thrown at him (his fists were hurting him), this brother-in-law smiling with all his teeth minus two seemed like a hallucinating vision. Gérard suddenly began to shake in front of the one he was torturing.
After an effort of three quarters of an hour, Gérard returned, hardly out of breath. He had climbed, and especially gone back down like never before; the regulars of the bistro at the Porte de Vincennes, Chez Kowalski, could even testify of this capacity to go down. It required a minimum of intelligence to lie, and Gérard’s intelligence, so sought-after by all his human attitudes, was only leaving crumbs all over the place. He therefore had not thought of buying some chewing-gum. Hector recoiled his nasal horizon by a few centimetres to be able to follow his brother-in-law’s exploits. He stopped him short:
‘I know you did not win Ouarzazate-Casablanca.’
‘…’
‘And if you don’t tell me who is meeting your sister tonight at five, I will reveal everything to your family … And to all your alcoholic friends!’
‘…’
If Gérard was a tad mythomaniac, everyone accorded in finding him nice. He was not used to being attacked (there had already been a polemic on this race, but the affair had been settled for a long time, and in his mind, buried; of course, lies are Lazaruses always ready to raise themselves in the miracle of a new light …), and that was why his capacity to answer jammed up for a moment. There is a saying that speaks of the calm before a storm – hmm – as soon as he had recovered from what he had just heard, he broke out violently against Hector. He broke two of Hector’s teeth and then stopped:
‘The best thing is to sort this out at my place!’
Hector sought by all means possible to retract what he said, but he had gotten on Gérard’s sensitive nerve. Ouarzazate-Casablanca was his whole life; the pedestal on which he had let his days run. No negotiation was possible; in two beats and three movements, the two samples from this same family found themselves in Gérard’s cellar. A bit earlier in the day, when they had come to find the spare cycle in this very cellar, Hector had not noticed the enormous poster for the film
The Silence of the Lambs
. Suddenly, in the flash of a second, a vague reminiscence of a pseudo-cinephile discussion came back to him, where Gérard had practically had tears in his eyes in evoking the sequestration scenes of his favourite film.
2
In this space close to agony, Hector thought back to those moments where flesh had finally delivered him from the identical infinity of his life. The unforgettable details of the first moments of his love for Brigitte were misty in the vapour of a sovereign feeling, subtly tyrannical. Although he could almost no longer feel the blows that Gérard was striking him (there exists a strange stage where pain joins sensuality), the blood in his mouth was transforming itself into cleaning product for windows. He was not begging, he was not saying anything. Bound like a bootleg ham, he was awaiting death quietly on a riverbank, with the hope that there would not be any delays like last time. Of course, he would not die; if Gérard had little experience in excessive violence, he knew, and this thanks to his movie knowledge, that all that was required was to scare the infamous traitor who was threatening to speak. He was intending to stop his punches as soon as he would hear the eternal promise of his victim’s eternal silence. But in lieu and place of this silence, was face to a smile. Hector, plunged in an ecstasy judged perverse by his torturer, was discovering a quasi-masochistic pleasure. Gérard did not understand: in
The Silence of the Lambs
, the victim was not smiling; well, ok, she was being dismembered, but with what he had thrown at him (his fists were hurting him), this brother-in-law smiling with all his teeth minus two seemed like a hallucinating vision. Gérard suddenly began to shake in front of the one he was torturing.
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