He opened his overall, exposing something pink and erect; his face was devoid of expression and for a moment I stood there nonplussed; then I turned on my heels and fled. His preposterous gesture bothered me less than Charles VI’s display of madness on the stage of the Odéon, but it left me with the feeling that the oddest things could happen to me without any warning. After that, whenever I found myself alone with a strange man – in a shop or on a platform of the Métro – I always felt a little apprehensive.
