Status Updates From Life: A User's Manual

The main problem was to stay neutral, objective, and above all flexible, that is to say free of preconceptions. But, that is exactly where Gaspard Winckler laid his traps.

È vero che “Il Conte di Montecristo” me lo portavo dietro con il carrello per leggerlo persino ai semafori, ma questo non è il Conte e, pertanto, siccome viaggio ogni settimana per lavoro, lo interrompo sempre in favore di altri più maneggevoli. Per ora arrivata qui, mi piace, impazzisco per i voli della telecamera su ambienti, cose, arredi e persone.

People said on some nights she held sumptuous parties, that men came to see her clandestinely, always shortly before midnight. People said that a third person also lived in the flat, but was not allowed to be seen, and that ghostly abominable noises rose through the cavities of the chimney, making children sit bolt upright in bed out of fright.

Today it is Isabelle’s turn to care for her father, who is now often sick. She does the shopping, beats the eggs into omelettes, scours the pots, keeps house. She is a thin little girl with a sad face and gloomy eyes who spends hours in front of her mirror whispering frightful stories to herself.

It was during this unforgettable journey that one evening, facing the crenellated walls of Rovingo, Valène declared to the young woman that he loved her, and obtained in reply only an ineffable smile. Many times he dreamt of eloping with her, or fleeing from her, but they stayed where they were, near yet far, in the warmth and despair of an insuperable friendship.

Sometimes he went out at 10 pm and returned the next morning, unaltered, showing no apparent sign of his sleepless night; he went to see films in filthy cinemas on the Grands Boulevards that stank of disinfectant; he haunted all night cafes, playing pinball for hours on end or gazing, bleary-eyed, across his filter coffee at merry revelers, gloomy boozers, fat butchers, sailors, and tarts.

But no. Only those shabby squabbles over buckets and tubs, over matches and sinks. And behind that ever-closed door the morbid gloom of that slow revenge, that ponderous business of two senile monomaniacs churning over their feigned histories and their wretched traps and snares.

The pieces in a jigsaw puzzle are readable, take on a sense, only when assembled; in isolation, they mean nothing — just an impossible question, an opaque challenge. But as soon as you have succeeded in fitting it to one of its neighbors, the piece itself disappears, ceases to exist as a piece.

Hard read probably start again

...one day the young Marquiseaux girl will run off with the Reol boy, one day Madame Orlowska will leave again for no apparent reason, for no real reason either; one day Madame Altamont will fire a revolver at Monsieru Altamont and the blood will spurt onto the glazed hexagonal tiles of their octagonal dining room...

There was in that avoiding look something more violent than a void, something that was not merely pride or hatred, but almost panic, something like mad hope, like an appeal for help, like a signal of distress.

E magari ci fossero, delle istruzioni! Incipit accattivante: proseguo.