When the imminent demise of the great writer Prétextat Tach became public knowledge—he was given two months to live—journalists the world over requested private interviews with the eighty-year-old gentleman. To be sure, he enjoyed considerable prestige; nevertheless, it was astonishing to see them flocking to his bedside, these emissaries from dailies as renowned as (we have taken the liberty of translating their names) The Nanking Tattler and The Bangladesh Observer. Thus, two months before his death, Monsieur Tach was given the opportunity to measure the extent of his celebrity.

His secretary set about making a drastic selection from among the various proposals: he eliminated all the solicitations from the foreign press, because the dying man spoke only French, and did not trust interpreters; he turned down all reporters of color, because with age the writer had begun to express racist views, which contrasted sharply with his most deeply held opinions—Tachian specialists were greatly discomfited, and interpreted this as a senile desire to cause a scandal; finally, the secretary politely discouraged requests from television networks, women’s magazines, papers that were considered too political, and, above all, any medical journals that might have wanted to investigate how the great man had developed such a rare form of cancer.

It was not without a certain sense of pride that Monsieur Tach learned he was afflicted with the dread Elzenveiverplatz Syndrome, more commonly referred to as “cartilage cancer,” which the eponymous learned physician had individuated in Cayenne in the nineteenth century among a dozen or so convicts imprisoned for sexual crimes followed by homicide, and which had never been diagnosed since that time. Monsieur Tach viewed his diagnosis as a hitherto unhoped-for ennoblement: with his hairless, obese physique—that of a eunuch in every respect except for his voice—he dreaded dying of some stupid cardiovascular disease. Upon composing his epitaph, he was careful to mention the sublime name of the Teutonic doctor thanks to whom he would leave this world with a flourish.

Modern medicine was sincerely puzzled by the fact that this adipose, sedentary man had survived to the age of eighty-three. He was so fat that for years he had admitted to not being able to walk; he blatantly ignored any recommendations from nutritionists and had terrible eating habits. In addition, he smoked twenty Havana cigars a day. But his alcohol consumption was moderate, and he had practiced chastity since time immemorial: the doctors could find no alternative explanation for the sound functioning of a heart smothered in fat. For all that, his survival remained a mystery, like the origins of the syndrome that would bring an end to it.

Not a single newspaper the world over could help but be scandalized by the media coverage devoted to this upcoming death. Letters to the editor were largely devoted to reaffirming the papers’ self-criticism. Thus, in keeping with the laws of modern news coverage, the features by the rare journalists who had been selected were eagerly anticipated.

Biographers were already hovering. Editors were arming their battalions. There were of course a number of intellectuals who wondered if the man’s prodigious success was not overrated: had Prétextat Tach been truly innovative? Had he not simply been the ingenious heir to overlooked creators? They went on to support their thesis by citing authors with esoteric names, whose works they themselves had not read, a fact which enabled them to speak about them penetratingly.

All these factors helped to ensure that the man’s dying moments would make an exceptional stir. No doubt about it: it was a resounding success.

The author, who had twenty-two novels to his name, lived on the ground floor of a modest building: he required accommodation where everything was on the same level, because he could only get around in a wheelchair. He lived alone, without any pets. Every day, a very brave nurse would come by at around five o’clock to bathe him. He could not have stood for anyone else to do his shopping, so he went himself to buy what he needed in the neighborhood stores. His secretary, Ernest Gravelin, lived four stories up, but as much as he could he avoided seeing him; he telephoned regularly, and Tach never missed an opportunity to begin their conversation by saying, “So sorry, my dear Ernest, I’m not dead yet.”

Gravelin reminded those journalists who had been selected that the old man, basically, had a good heart: did he not give half his income every year to charitable organizations? And could this secret generosity not also be detected in some of the characters of his novels? “Of course he terrorizes us all, me to begin with, but I maintain that his mask of aggression is mere playfulness: he enjoys acting the placid, cruel fat man in order to hide his great sensitivity.” His words did little to reassure the chroniclers who, in any case, had no desire to overcome their jealously guarded fear, for it gave them an aura of war correspondents.

The news of the writer’s imminent death was reported on January 10. On the fourteenth a first journalist went to meet him. He entered the apartment: it was so dark that it took a moment before he was able to distinguish a corpulent figure in a wheelchair in the middle of the living room. The old man’s lugubrious voice uttered no more than an inexpressive “Good morning, Monsieur,” to put him at ease—which in fact only served to make the poor fellow more tense than ever.

“I am extremely pleased to meet you, Monsieur Tach. This is a great honor.”

The tape recorder was switched on, eagerly awaiting the words of the silent old man.

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur Tach, would you mind if I switch on a light? I cannot see your face.”

“It is ten o’clock in the morning, Monsieur; I do not switch on the lights at such a time. And besides, you will see me soon enough, once your eyes have adjusted to the darkness. So make the most of the respite you have been granted, and in the meantime you’ll have to make do with my voice; it’s the most beautiful thing about me.”

“You do indeed have a very beautiful voice.”

“Yes.”

The silence weighed heavily upon the intruder, and he wrote in his notebook: “T.’s silence is caustic. Avoid as much as possible.”

“Monsieur Tach, people the world over admire your determination to avoid being admitted to the hospital, despite all the doctors’ orders. So the first question I must ask you is, how do you feel?”

“I feel just as I have felt for twenty years.”

“In other words?”

“I do not feel much.”

“Not much of what?”

“Not much.”

“I understand.”

“Then I admire you.”

There was no irony in the sick man’s implacably neutral voice. The journalist gave an awkward little laugh before continuing: “Monsieur Tach, with a man like yourself, I won’t waste time with the circumlocutions common to my profession. So, if you’ll allow me, I’ll ask you outright: what might be the thoughts and moods of a great writer who knows he is going to die?”

Silence. A sigh.

“I don’t know, my good man.”

“You don’t know?”

“If I knew what I was thinking, I suppose I would never have become a writer.”

“You mean that you write in order to find out what you are thinking?”

“It’s a possibility. I’m not really sure anymore, it’s been such a long time since I’ve written anything.”

“What? But your last novel came out less than two years ago . . .”

“Emptying my drawers, my good man. There is enough material in my drawers for a new novel by me to be published every year for a full decade after my death.”

“That’s extraordinary! When did you stop writing?”

“At the age of fifty-nine.”

“Then that means that all the novels that have come out in the last twenty-four years . . . you were emptying your drawers?”

“You have done your math.”

“How old were you when you began to write?”

“That would be hard to say: I began, then stopped, several times. The first time, I was six years old, and I wrote tragedies.”

“Tragedies at the age of six?”

“Yes, and in verse. Ludicrous. I stopped when I was seven. At the age of nine I had a relapse, which earned me a few elegies, again in verse. I had nothing but scorn for prose.”

“That’s astonishing, coming from one of the greatest prose writers of our era.”

“At the age of eleven I stopped again, and did not write another line until I was eighteen.”

The journalist wrote in his notebook: “T. does not respond to compliments.”

“And then?”

“I started writing again. To begin with I wrote fairly little, then more and more. By the age of twenty-three I had hit my cruising speed, and maintained it for the next thirty-six years.”

“What do you mean by ‘cruising speed’?”

“That I did nothing else. I wrote, nonstop; apart from eating, smoking, and sleeping, I had no other activity.”

“You never went out?”

“Only when forced to.”

“In fact, no one has ever found out what you did during the war.”

“Neither have I.”

“How do you expect me to believe that?”

“It’s the truth. From the age of twenty-three to the age of fifty-nine, all my days were alike. I have a long, homogeneous memory of those thirty-six years, which were virtually devoid of chronology. I got up to write and went to bed when I had finished writing.”

“But, after all, you must have gone through the war like everyone. For example, how did you feed yourself?”

The journalist knew he had touched upon one of the fat man’s major preoccupations.

“Yes, I do recall eating badly during those years.”

“So you see!”

“I did not suffer. In those days I was a glutton, not a gourmet. And I had an extraordinary reserve of cigars.”

“When did you become a gourmet?”

“When I stopped writing. Before that, I did not have time.”

“And why did you stop writing?”

“On the day of my fifty-ninth birthday I felt it was all over.”

“What made you feel that way?”

“I don’t know. It simply came on, like menopause. I left one novel unfinished. That’s fine: in a successful career, you must always have one unfinished novel if you are to be taken seriously. Otherwise, they think you’re a third-rate writer.”

“So you spent thirty-six years writing continuously, and from one day to the next—not another line?”

“Correct.”

“What have you been doing for the last twenty-four years, then?”

“I told you, I became a gourmet.”

“Full time?”

“Let’s say, rather, full capacity.”

“And other than that?”

“It takes time, you know. Other than that, almost nothing. I reread some classics. Ah yes, I forgot, I bought a television.”

“What, you like television?”

“Commercials, only commercials. I love them.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, I don’t like television, other than commercials.”

“This is extraordinary: so you have spent the last twenty-four years eating and watching television?”

“No, I have also been sleeping and smoking. And reading a bit.”

“And yet we have been hearing about you constantly.”

“That’s the fault of my excellent secretary, Ernest Gravelin. He’s the one who empties out my drawers, meets my publishers, fuels my legend, and, above all, brings me the latest doctors’ theories—they all hope to put me on a diet.”

“In vain.”

“Fortunately. It would have been really too silly to deprive me because, at the end of the day, the origin of my cancer is not nutritional.”

“What is the origin of your cancer?”

“It’s mysterious, but not nutritional. According to Elzenveiverplatz”—(here the fat man took great delight in articulating the name),—“it seems to be the result of a genetic accident, programmed before my birth. Therefore, I was quite right to eat anything and everything.”

“So you were already doomed at birth?”

“Yes, Monsieur, like a true tragic hero. And to think there are people who still talk about human freedom.”

“But you were granted a reprieve of eighty-three years all the same.”

“A reprieve, precisely.”

“But you won’t deny that during those eighty-three years you have been free? For example, you could very well have chosen not to write . . .”

“Might you by any chance be reproaching me for having written?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Ah. A pity, I was beginning to have some respect for you.”

“But you don’t regret having written?”

“Regret? I am incapable of regret. Would you like a toffee?”

“No, thank you.”

The novelist shoved a caramel in his mouth and chewed it noisily.

“Monsieur Tach, are you afraid of death?”

“Not at all. Death must not be a very big change. I do, however, have a fear of pain. I’ve acquired a stockpile of morphine, which I can inject myself. Thanks to this measure, I’m no longer afraid.”

“Do you believe in life after death?”

“No.”

“So, do you believe that death is annihilation?”

“How can you annihilate something that has already been annihilated?”

“That’s a terrible answer.”

“It isn’t an answer.”

“I see.”

“Good for you.”

“Well, what I meant was . . .” The journalist attempted to come up with something he might have meant to say if not for being thrown off by a difficulty in putting his words together. “. . . a novelist is a person who asks questions, not one who answers them.”

Silence of the dead.

“Well, that’s not exactly what I meant . . .”

“No? Pity. I was just beginning to think that was rather good.”

“And may we talk about your oeuvre, now?”

“If you insist.”

“You don’t like to talk about it, do you?”

“I can’t hide a thing from you.”

“Like all great writers, you are very modest when it comes to your work.”

“Modest, me? You must be mistaken.”

“You seem to enjoy underestimating your own worth. Why do you deny that you are modest?”

“Because, Monsieur, I am not.”

“Then why are you so reluctant to talk about your novels?”

“Because there is no point in talking about a novel.”

“But it’s fascinating to hear a writer talk about his creation, to hear him say how and why he writes, and what he writes against.”

“If a writer manages to be fascinating about his own novels, then there are only two possibilities: either he is merely voicing out loud what he wrote in his book, and he is a parrot; or he is explaining interesting things that he didn’t discuss in his book, in which case the book in question is a failure, since it does not live up to its claims.”

“But still, any number of great writers have been able to talk about their work and avoid such pitfalls.”

“You are contradicting yourself: two minutes ago you said that all great writers were extremely modest when it came to their work.”

“But you can talk about a work and still preserve its mystery.”

“Oh, indeed? Have you ever tried?”

“No, but I’m not a writer.”

“Then what makes you think you are entitled to come out with such rubbish?”

“You are not the first writer I have ever interviewed.”

“Might you by any chance be comparing me to those scribblers you normally interview?”

“They are not scribblers!”

“If they can discuss their oeuvre and be fascinating and modest at the same time, there can be no doubt that they are scribblers. How can a writer possibly be modest? It is the most immodest profession on earth: whether it’s the style, the ideas, the story, the research, writers never talk about anything but themselves and, what’s more, with words. Painters and musicians also talk about themselves, but with a language that is substantially less crude than our own. No, Monsieur, writers are obscene; if they were not, they would be accountants, or train conductors, or telephone operators; they would be respectable.”

“That’s as may be. How do you explain the fact that you personally are so modest?”

“What on earth are you going on about?”

“Well, yes. For sixty years you have been a fully fledged writer, and this is your first interview. You are never featured in the press, you do not belong to any literary or nonliterary circles, and by all appearances, you only leave this apartment to do your shopping. You are not even known to have any friends. If that is not modesty, what is it?”

“Have your eyes adjusted to the darkness? Can you make out my face now?”

“Yes, vaguely.”

“Well, good for you. Let me tell you, sir, that if I were handsome, I would not live as a recluse. In fact, if I had been handsome, I would never have become a writer. I would have been an adventurer, or a slave trader, or a barman, or a fortune hunter.”

“So are you saying there is a connection between your looks and your vocation?”

“It is not a vocation. It came to me the day I became aware of my ugliness.”

“And when was that?”

“I was very young. I have always been ugly.”

“You’re not that ugly.”

“You, at least, are tactful.”

“Well, you’re fat, but you’re not ugly.”

“What more do you want? Four chins, piggy eyes, a nose like a spud, no more hair on my head than on my cheeks, my neck is one roll of fat upon the other, my jowls droop—and, out of consideration for you, I have only described my face.”

“Have you always been this fat?”

“At the age of eighteen, I was already like this—you can say obese, it doesn’t bother me.”

“Yes, obese, but we can still look at you without trembling.”

“I’ll grant you that I could have been even more repugnant: I might have had a blotchy face, covered in warts . . .”

“As it is, you have very nice skin, it’s white and smooth, I can tell it must be very soft to the touch.”

“A eunuch’s complexion, my good man. There’s something almost grotesque about having such skin on my face, particularly on a chubby, clean-shaven face: in fact, my head resembles a fine pair of smooth, soft buttocks. My head inspires laughter rather than disgust, although there are times I would have preferred to inspire disgust. It’s more invigorating.”

“I would never have imagined that you suffer from your looks.”

“I don’t suffer. Suffering is for other people, for those who see me. I don’t see myself. I never look at myself in the mirror. I would suffer if I had chosen another life; but for the life I lead, this body suits me fine.”

“Would you have preferred another life?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think that all lives are equal. One thing is sure, and that is that I have no regrets. If I were eighteen years old now, with the same body, I would start all over again, I would reproduce exactly the same life, insofar as you can say I’ve had a life.”

“Isn’t writing a life?”

“I’m not in a good position to answer that question. I’ve never done anything else.”

“You’ve had twenty-two novels published, and according to what you have told me, there will be even more. Among the host of characters who inhabit your immense oeuvre, is there one in particular who resembles you more than others?”

“Not a one.”

“Really? Let me tell you something: there is one of your characters who seems to me to be your exact double.”

“Ah.”

“Yes, the mysterious wax vendor, in Crucifixion Made Easy.”

“The wax vendor? What an absurd idea.”

“I’ll tell you why: when he’s the one speaking, you always write ‘crucifiction.’”

“So?”

“He’s no fool. He knows that it’s a fiction.”

“And so does the reader. But that doesn’t mean he resembles me.”

“And this mania of his, making wax masks of the faces of the crucified—that’s you, isn’t it?”

“I’ve never made wax masks of crucified people, I assure you.”

“No, of course not, but it’s a metaphor for what you do.”

“What do you know about metaphors, young man?”

“But . . . I know what everyone knows.”

“An excellent reply. People don’t know a thing about metaphors. It’s a word that sells well, because it sounds classy. ‘Metaphor’: even the most illiterate person can tell it comes from Greek. Incredibly chic, these phony etymologies, and absolutely phony: when you are familiar with the dreadful polysemy of the preposition meta and the polyvalent neutrality of the verb phero, if you’re at all in good faith you should logically conclude that the word ‘metaphor’ doesn’t mean a thing. Besides, when you hear how people use and abuse it, you come to exactly the same conclusion.”

“What do you mean?”

“Precisely what I said. I don’t use metaphors to express myself, now do I?”

“But the wax casts?”

“The wax casts are wax casts, sir.”

“It’s my turn to be disappointed, Monsieur Tach, because if you exclude the metaphorical interpretation, all that’s left of your work is bad taste.”

“Well, there are all sorts of bad taste: there is healthy, regenerative bad taste, which consists in creating horrible things for salubrious, purgative, robust, male purposes, like a good well-controlled binge of vomiting, and then there’s the other bad taste—it is apostolic, offended by such elegant barfing, and in need of a waterproof diving suit in order to make its way through. This particular frogman is the metaphor that enables the relieved maker of metaphors to exclaim, ‘I went from one end of Tach to the other, and I didn’t get dirty!’”

“But that, too, is a metaphor.”

“Obviously: I try to crush metaphors with their own weapons. If I had wanted to play the Messiah, if I had had to rouse the rabble, I would have cried out, ‘Conscripts, come and enlist in my redemptive mission; let us metaphorize our metaphors, let us amalgamate them, beat them until they’re stiff, let’s make them into a soufflé and let that soufflé puff up, a gorgeous expansion, getting bigger and bigger until it explodes, conscripts, then subsides and collapses and disappoints all the guests, to our utmost delight!”

“A writer who hates metaphors is as absurd as a banker who hates money.”

“I am sure that great bankers hate money. There’s nothing absurd about it, on the contrary.”

“Words, however—you do love words?”

“Oh, I adore words, but there’s no comparison. Words are a fine substance, sacred ingredients.”

“So metaphors are a form of cooking—and you do like cooking.”

“No, Monsieur, metaphors are not cooking—syntax is cooking. Metaphors are bad faith; it’s like biting into a tomato and asserting that the tomato tastes like honey, and then eating honey and saying it tastes like ginger, then chewing on ginger and saying the ginger tastes like sarsaparilla, and at that point . . .”

“Yes, I understand, sir, you needn’t go on.”

“No, you don’t understand: to make you understand what a metaphor really is, I would have to go on playing this little game for hours, because metaphorians never stop, they will go on playing until some well-intentioned person comes along to smash their face in.”

“And are you that well-intentioned person?”

“No. I’ve always been a little too soft and too kind.”

“Kind, you?”

“Terribly. I know of no one as kind as I am. And such kindness is terrifying, because I am never kind out of mere kindness, but only out of weariness and, above all, a fear of exasperation. I get exasperated very easily, and I find exasperation very hard to take, so I avoid it like the plague.”

“You scorn kindness, in other words?”

“You haven’t understood a thing of what I’m trying to tell you. I admire kindness when it is truly founded on kindness or love. But how many people do you know who actually practice that form of kindness? In the vast majority of cases, when human beings are kind it is in order to be left alone.”

“Granted. But that still doesn’t explain why the wax vendor was making casts of the faces of the crucified.”

“And why shouldn’t he? Every trade has its own merits. You’re a journalist, are you not? Have I asked you why you’re a journalist?”

“Go right ahead. I’m a journalist because there’s a demand, because people are interested in my articles, because they’re buying them from me, and because it enables me to communicate information.”

“In your shoes, I wouldn’t brag about it.”

“But Monsieur Tach, I have to make a living!”

“Do you think so?”

“That’s what you’re doing, no?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“It’s what your wax vendor does, in any case.”

“You really do have a thing about this old wax vendor, don’t you? Why does he make casts of the crucified? For reasons, I suppose, directly opposed to your own: because there is no demand, because people aren’t interested, because no one buys his casts, and because it doesn’t enable him to communicate information.”

“An expression of the absurd, maybe?”

“It’s no more absurd than what you do, if you want my opinion—but I’m not sure you do.”

“Of course I do, I’m a journalist.”

“Precisely.”

“Why do you feel such hostility toward journalists?”

“Not toward journalists, toward you.”

“What have I done to deserve it?”

“This is too much. Here you have been insulting me, treating me as a metaphorian, accusing me of bad taste, inferring that I was not ‘so’ ugly, importuning the wax vendor and now, to take the cake, you claim to understand me.”

“But . . . what am I supposed to say?”

“That’s your profession, not mine. When one is as stupid as you are, he ought not to harangue Prétextat Tach.”

“You yourself gave me permission.”

“I most certainly did not. It was that idiot of a secretary, Gravelin, and he has no talent for discernment.”

“Earlier, you said he was an excellent man.”

“That doesn’t preclude stupidity.”

“Come now, Monsieur Tach, don’t make yourself more disagreeable than you already are.”

“You vulgar so-and-so! Leave here at once!”

“But . . . the interview has only just begun!”

“It has lasted far too long already, you ill-mannered lout! Get out of here! And tell your colleagues to show some respect for Prétextat Tach!”

The journalist hurried away, his tail between his legs.

His colleagues were having a drink at the café across the street and hadn’t expected to see him come out so soon; they waved to him. The poor fellow was green, and he collapsed in their midst.

Once he’d ordered a triple egg flip, he found the strength to relate his misadventure. His fear meant he was giving off a terrible smell, which must not have been unlike that of Jonah emerging from his cetacean sojourn. His companions found it off-putting. Was he aware of his fustiness? He himself evoked Jonah: “The belly of the whale! I assure you, it was all there! Dark, ugly, frightening, claustrophobic . . .”

“Did it stink?” ventured a colleague.

“That was about the only thing that was missing. But the man himself—like a slimy intestine! Smooth as a liver, as blown up as his belly must be. Perfidious as a spleen, and as bitter as a gallbladder! Just the way he looked at me, I felt as if he were digesting me, dissolving me in the juices of his totalitarian metabolism!”

“Go on, you’re exaggerating!”

“On the contrary, I’ll never find words strong enough. If you could have seen how angry he was at the end! I’ve never seen such terrifying anger: it was both sudden and perfectly controlled. You’d expect a lard-ass like him to go red, swell up, have trouble breathing, and sweat like a pig. Not at all, the only thing that equaled the suddenness of his anger was his coldness. If you could have heard his voice when he told me to get out! It was just how I imagined a Chinese emperor would speak when ordering an immediate beheading.”

“In any case, he gave you the opportunity to play the hero.”

“Do you think so? I’ve never felt so pathetic.”

He gulped down his egg flip and burst into tears.

“Go on, this won’t be the first time anyone’s taken a journalist for an idiot.”

“It’s true, I’ve heard worse. But there was just something about the way he said it, his smooth face icy with scorn: it was very convincing.”

“Can you let us hear the recording?”

In a religious silence, the tape recorder unreeled its truth, which was bound to be partial, because it had been amputated of the darkness, the placid features, the huge inexpressive hands, the general immobility, and everything which had contributed to make the poor journalist reek with fear. When they had finished listening, his colleagues, cruel as only humans can be, could not help but think the novelist was right: they admired him, and each one had to put in his two cents and lecture the victim.

“Sorry old boy, but you asked for it! The way you talked about literature with him—as if from a school book. I totally understand his reaction.”

“Why did you want to identify him with one of his characters? What a simplistic idea.”

“And those biographical questions, nobody cares about that. Haven’t you read Proust, Contre Sainte-Beuve?”

“You really screwed up, saying that you’re used to interviewing writers.”

“How tactless can you get, saying he’s not ‘so’ ugly! Don’t you have any manners, you pitiful old thing?”

“And what about the metaphor! He really got you there. I don’t mean to be hurtful, but you deserved it.”

“Honestly, how can you talk about the absurd with a genius like Tach? It’s pure slapstick.”

“In any case, one thing is patently clear about this botched interview of yours: this guy is amazing! So intelligent!”

“So eloquent!”

“So much finesse for a fat man!”

“So nasty and yet so concise!”

“But you do agree, at least, that he is nasty?” cried the unfortunate fellow, clinging to this notion as if it were his last hope.

“Not nasty enough, if you want my opinion.”

“I think he was even quite good-natured with you.”

“And funny. When you—forgive me—were stupid enough to tell him you understood, he could easily, in all fairness, have come out with a scathing insult. But he merely showed his sense of humor—completely tongue-in-cheek, and you couldn’t even see it.”

“Margaritas ante porcos.”

They were going for the jugular. The victim ordered another triple egg flip.

As for Prétextat Tach, he preferred Brandy Alexanders. He did not drink a great deal, but when he wanted to imbibe a little something, it was always a Brandy Alexander. He insisted on preparing it himself, because he did not trust other people’s proportions. Luxuriating in spite, the intransigent fat man was wont to repeat an adage that he himself had coined: “You can measure an individual’s bad faith by the way he mixes a Brandy Alexander.”

If one were to apply this axiom to Tach himself, one would be forced to concur that he was the very incarnation of good faith. A single sip of his Brandy Alexander would suffice to defeat the champion of any raw egg or condensed milk ingestion contest. The novelist could digest an entire tankard without a flicker of indisposition. When Gravelin marveled at his employer’s prowess, the fat man replied, “I am the Mithridates of Brandy Alexanders.”

“But can we even still call it a Brandy Alexander?”

“It is the quintessence of Brandy Alexanders, and the rabble will never know anything but unworthy dilutions thereof.”

To such august declarations, there is nothing more to add.