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An absolute panic took hold of me. I no longer knew where I was going. I ran along the docks, I turned into the deserted streets of the Beauvoisis district: the houses watched my flight with their mournful eyes. I kept saying to myself in anguish: ‘Where shall I go? Where shall I go? Anything can happen.’
And it was true, I had always realized that: I hadn’t any right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. My life grew in a haphazard way and in all directions. Sometimes it sent me vague signals; at other times I could feel nothing but an inconsequential buzzing.
I felt such utter loneliness that I thought of committing suicide. What held me back was the idea that nobody, absolutely nobody would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.’
It was out of habit that he put that sentence in an interrogative form. In fact, he is making a statement. His veneer of gentleness and shyness has peeled off; I don’t recognize him any more. His features reveal a massive obstinacy; he is a wall of complacency.
‘Cheese,’ I say heroically.
The most profound thing I've ever read
People embrace one another without knowing one another on days when war is declared; they smile at one another every springtime.
Perhaps one day, thinking about this very moment, about this dismal moment at which I am waiting, round-shouldered, for it to be time to get on the train, perhaps I might feel my heart beat faster and say to myself: ‘It was on that day, at that moment that it all started.’ And I might succeed – in the past, simply in the past – in accepting myself.
