Well, has the war begun?”
“Uh . . . yes, it has, the first missiles have—”
“Excellent.”

“Really?”

“I don’t like to see young people sitting around with nothing to do. So at last, on this day of January 17, those young kids are having a good time.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What, don’t you think it would be fun?”

“Frankly, no.”

“Maybe you think it is more fun to go running after a fat old man with a tape recorder?”

“Run after? But we’re not running after you, you yourself gave us permission to come.”

“Never! It was another trick of Gravelin’s, that old dog.”

“Go on, Monsieur Tach, you are perfectly free to say no to your secretary, he’s a devoted man who respects your every wish.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. He torments me and never consults me. The nurse, for example, that’s all his doing.”

“Come now, Monsieur Tach, calm down. Let’s go on with the interview. How do you explain the extraordinary success—”

“Would you like a Brandy Alexander?”

“No, thank you. As I was saying, the extraordinary success of—”

“Wait, I would like one.”

Alchemical interlude.

“This brand-new war has given me a raging thirst for Brandy Alexanders. It is such a solemn beverage.”

“Right. Monsieur Tach, How do you explain the extraordinary success of your novels the world over?”

“I don’t explain it.”

“Go on, you must have thought about it and come up with some answers.”

“No.”

“No? You have sold millions of copies, even in China, and this doesn’t make you think?”

“Weapons factories sell thousands of missiles the world over every day, and that doesn’t make them think, either.”

“There’s no comparison.”

“You don’t think so? And yet there is a striking parallel. There’s an accumulation, for example: we talk about an arms race, we should also talk about a ‘literature race.’ It’s a cogent argument like any other: every nation brandishes its writer or writers as if they were cannons. Sooner or later I too will be brandished, and they’ll prepare my Nobel Prize for battle.”

“If that’s the way you look at it, I have to agree with you. But thank God, literature is less harmful.”

“Not mine. My literature is even more harmful than war.”

“Don’t you think you’re flattering yourself there?”

“Well, I’m obliged to, because I am the only reader who is capable of understanding me. Yes, my books are more harmful than war, because they make you want to die, whereas war, in fact, makes you want to live. After reading me, people should feel like committing suicide.”

“And how do you explain the fact that they don’t?”

“Well, I can explain it very easily: it is because nobody reads me. Basically, that may also be the reason for my extraordinary success: if I am so famous, my good man, it is because nobody reads me.”

“But that’s a paradox!”

“On the contrary: if these poor folk had tried to read me, they would have disliked me from the start and, to avenge themselves for the effort they wasted on me, they would have consigned me to oblivion. But because they do not read me, they find me restful and therefore I am to their liking and deserving of success.”

“That is an extraordinary argument.”

“But it is irrefutable. Take Homer, for example: now there is a writer who has never been this famous. Yet do you know many people who have truly read the real Iliad, or the real Odyssey? A handful of bald philologists, that’s all—because you can’t really qualify as readers a few dozy high school students mumbling their way through Homer in the classroom when all they’re thinking about is Depeche Mode or AIDS. And it is precisely for that excellent reason that Homer is the authority.”

“But assuming this is true, do you really think it’s an excellent argument? Is it not regrettable, rather?”

“I insist that it is excellent. Is it not comforting for a true, pure, great genius of a writer like myself to know that no one reads me? That no trivial gaze has sullied the beauty to which I have given birth in the secrecy of my inner self and of my solitude?”

“To avoid that trivial gaze, would it not have been simpler not to get published at all?”

“That would be too easy. No, you see, the nec plus ultra of refinement is to sell millions of copies and never be read.”

“Not to mention the fact that you have earned a great deal of money.”

“Certainly. I do like money.”

“You like money, do you?”

“Yes. It’s ravishing. I’ve never found it useful, but I do enjoy looking at it. A five franc coin is as pretty as a daisy.”

“Now, such a comparison would have never occurred to me.”

“That’s normal, you are not a Nobel laureate.”

“Basically, doesn’t your Nobel Prize go against your theory? Doesn’t it oblige us to assume that at least the Nobel committee has read your work?”

“I wouldn’t bank on it. But in the event that the committee members did read me, you can be sure that it wouldn’t change anything about my theory. There are a great many people who push sophistication to the point of reading without reading. They’re like frogmen, they go through books without absorbing a single drop of water.”

“Yes, you mentioned them in a previous interview.”

“Those are the frog-readers. They make up the vast majority of human readers, and yet I only discovered their existence quite late in life. I am so terribly naïve. I thought that everyone read the way I do. For I read the way I eat: that means not only do I need to read, but also, and above all, that reading becomes one of my components and modifies them all. You are not the same person depending on whether you have eaten blood pudding or caviar; nor are you the same person depending on whether you have just read Kant (God help us) or Queneau. Well, when I say ‘you,’ I should say ‘I myself and a few others,’ because the majority of people emerge from reading Proust or Simenon in an identical state: they have neither lost a fraction of what they were nor gained a single additional fraction. They have read, that’s all: in the best-case scenario, they know ‘what it’s about.’ And I’m not exaggerating. How often have I asked intelligent people, ‘Did this book change you?’ And they look at me, their eyes wide, as if to say, ‘Why should a book to change me?’”

“Allow me to express my astonishment, Monsieur Tach: you have just spoken as if you were defending books with a message, and that’s not like you.”

“You’re not very clever, are you? So are you of the opinion that only books ‘with a message’ can change an individual? Those are the books that are the least likely to change them. The books that have an impact, that transform people, are the other ones—books about desire, or pleasure, books filled with genius, and above all books filled with beauty. Let us take, for example, a great book filled with beauty: Journey to the End of the Night. How can you not be transformed after you have read it? Well, the majority of readers manage just that tour de force without difficulty. They will come to you and say, ‘Oh yes, Céline is magnificent,’ and then they go back to what they were doing. Obviously, Céline is an extreme example, but I could mention others, too. You are never the same after you have read a book, even as modest a work as one by Léo Malet: one of his books will change you. You will never again look at young women in raincoats in the same way once you’ve read a book by Léo Malet. Really, this is extremely important! Changing the way people see things: that is our magnum opus.”

“Don’t you think that, consciously or unconsciously, everybody changes the way they see things after they have finished a book?”

“Oh, no! Only the crème de la crème of readers can do that. The others go on seeing things with their usual flatness. And here we are only talking about readers, who in themselves are a very rare species. Most people do not read. In this regard, there is an excellent quotation by an intellectual whose name I have forgotten: ‘Basically, people do not read; or, if they do read, they don’t understand; or, if they do understand, they forget.’ An admirable summing-up of the situation, don’t you agree?”

“If that is the case, is it not tragic to be a writer?”

“If there is something tragic about the situation, that is certainly not the reason. It is beneficial not to be read. You can write whatever you like.”

“But in the beginning, someone must have read you, otherwise you would not have become famous.”

“In the beginning, perhaps, a little bit.”

“Which brings me back to my initial question: how do you explain your extraordinary success? Why did your early novels touch a nerve with readers?”

“I don’t know. That was back in the 1930s. There was no television, people had to find something to keep busy.”

“Yes, but why you, rather than another writer?”

“The truth is, it was after the war that I began to be so successful. Which is amusing when you think about it, because I was in no way involved with that huge farce: I was already virtually a total invalid, and ten years earlier, I had been declared unfit for service because of my obesity. In 1945 the great expiation began: whether they were confused or not, people felt they had reasons to be ashamed. So when they happened upon my novels, which seemed to be screaming with imprecations and were overflowing with filth, they decided they had found a punishment commensurate with their own baseness.”

“And was it?”

“It might have been. But it might have been something else, too. But there you are, vox populi, vox dei. And then very quickly they stopped reading me. As with Céline, moreover: Céline is probably one of the least read of all writers. The difference is that I wasn’t being read for the right reasons, whereas he wasn’t being read for the wrong reasons.”

“You often refer to Céline.”

“I love literature, sir. Are you surprised?”

“You do not expurgate him, I gather?”

“No. He’s the one who is constantly expurgating me.”

“Have you met him?”

“No, I’ve done better than that: I’ve read him.”

“And has he read you?”

“Certainly. I could often sense as much when I was reading him.”

“You think you have influenced Céline?”

“Less than he influenced me, but still.”

“And who else might you have influenced?”

“No one, obviously, because no one else has read me. Although, thanks to Céline, I have been read—truly read—at least once.”

“So you see that you do want to be read.”

“By him, only by him. I don’t give a damn about other people.”

“Have you met other writers?”

“No, I have met no one and no one has come to meet me. I know very few people: Gravelin, of course, and apart from him, the butcher, the milkman, the grocer, and the tobacconist. That’s all, I think. Oh yes, there’s also that bitch of a nurse, and the journalists. I don’t like to see people. If I live alone, it’s not so much because I love solitude but that I hate humankind. You can write in your rag that I’m a filthy misanthropist.”

“Why are you a misanthropist?”

“You haven’t read Filthy People, I suppose?”

“No.”

“Naturally. If you had read it, you would know why. There are a thousand reasons to despise people. The most important one, for me, is their bad faith, which is incorrigible. What’s more, nowadays, this bad faith is more widespread than ever. You can well imagine that I have lived through a number of eras: nevertheless, I can assure you that never have I so despised an era the way I do this one. An era of full-blown bad faith. Bad faith is worse than disloyalty, duplicity, perfidy. If you are in bad faith, first of all you are lying to yourself, not because you are struggling with your conscience, but for your own syrupy self-satisfaction, using pretty names like ‘modesty’ or ‘dignity.’ And then you’re lying to other people, but not with honest, nasty lies, not to stir up shit, no: your lies are those of a hypocrite, a lite liar, ranting and raving with a smile, as if this would make everyone happy.”

“For example?”

“Well, the condition of women in this day and age.”

“In what way? Are you a feminist?”

“Me, a feminist? I hate women even more than I hate men.”

“Why?”

“For a thousand reasons. First of all, because they are ugly: have you ever seen anything uglier than a woman? What a senseless idea to have breasts, and hips—I’ll spare you the rest. And then, I hate women the way I hate all victims. A filthy race, victims. If we were to exterminate them altogether, perhaps we’d have peace at last, and perhaps at last the victims would get what they want, which is martyrdom. Women are particularly pernicious victims because they are, above all else, the victims of other women. If you want to penetrate the dregs of human emotions, take a good look at the feelings that women cultivate toward other women: you will tremble with horror at the sight of so much hypocrisy, jealousy, nastiness, and iniquity. You will never see two women having a good healthy fistfight or even flinging a good volley of insults at each other: with women, it’s the nasty tricks that triumph, the vile little phrases that hurt far more than a good punch in the jaw. You’ll tell me there’s nothing new about all that, that the world of women has been like this since Adam and Eve. But I will tell you that the lot of women has never been worse, and it’s their own fault, we agree on that, but what does that change? The condition of women has become the arena for truly disgusting manifestations of bad faith.”

“You still haven’t explained anything.”

“Let’s look at the way things used to be. Women are inferior to men, that goes without saying: all you have to do is see how ugly they are. In the past, there was no bad faith. No one tried to hide women’s inferiority, and they were treated in consequence. But what we have nowadays is revolting: women are still inferior to men—for they are still just as ugly—but they are being told that they are man’s equal. And because they are stupid, naturally they believe it. Yet women are still being treated as inferior: salaries are merely one minor sign of this. There are others that are far more serious: women are still far behind in every domain—charm, to begin with—there’s nothing surprising about that, given how ugly they are, and how little intelligence they have, and given above all their disgusting spitefulness, which crops up at the first opportunity. You have to admire the bad faith of the system: take an ugly, stupid, nasty, charmless slave and make her believe that she is starting off with the same opportunities as her master—when in fact she has only a quarter as many. Personally I find it appalling. If I were a woman, I would be sick.”

“But you do conceive, I hope, that other people might not agree with you?”

“‘Conceive’ is not the appropriate verb. I do not conceive it, I am offended by it. What perfidy will you invoke to contradict me?”

“My own taste, to begin with. I don’t think women are ugly.”

“My poor friend, you have potty taste.”

“A woman’s breasts are a beautiful thing.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying. Already on the glossy paper of a magazine those female protuberances are at the limit of what is acceptable. What about the ones belonging to real women, the ones they dare not show and which make up the vast majority of tits? Yuck.”

“That’s just your taste. We’re not obliged to share it.”

“Oh, of course, you might even think a lump of fat sold at the butcher’s is a thing of beauty: nothing is forbidden.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“Women are filthy slabs of meat. Sometimes it is said of a particularly ugly woman that she is a lump of fat: the truth of the matter is that all women are lumps of fat.”

“Allow me to ask you then what you think you are!”

“A lump of lard. Can you not tell?”

“So do you think that men are beautiful?”

“I didn’t say that. Men’s bodies are less horrible than women’s. But that does not make them beautiful.”

“So no one is beautiful?”

“No, some children are very beautiful. Unfortunately, it does not last.”

“Do you consider childhood to be a blessed time?”

“Did you hear what you’ve just said? ‘Childhood is a blessed time.’”

“It’s a cliché, but it’s true, no?”

“Of course it’s true, animal! But is it necessary to say so? Everybody knows it.”

“Monsieur Tach, you are a wretched person.”

“And you only just figured that out? You need some rest, young man, so much genius is going to wear you out.”

“What is the source of your despair?”

“Everything. It’s not just the world that is badly made, but life. Another feature of contemporary bad faith is the way we go around claiming the opposite. Haven’t you ever heard them all bleating unanimously, ‘Life is beaueau-ti-ful! We love life!’ It makes me climb the walls to hear such drivel.”

“Such drivel may be sincere.”

“I believe that too, which makes it even worse: it proves that treachery is working, that people will swallow any lie. So they have their shitty lives with their shitty jobs, they live in horrible places with dreadful people, and they embrace their abject condition and then call it happiness.”

“Good for them, if they’re happy that way!”

“Good for them, as you say.”

“And you, Monsieur Tach, what makes you happy?”

“Nothing at all. I have peace and quiet, that’s already something—well, I did have peace and quiet.”

“Have you never been happy?”

Silence.

“Am I to understand that you have been happy? . . . Or am I to understand that you have never been happy?”

“Be quiet, I’m thinking. No, I have never been happy.”

“That’s terrible.”

“Would you like a handkerchief?”

“Even during your childhood?”

“I was never a child.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what I said.”

“Well you must have been little!”

“I was little, yes, but I was not a child. I was already Prétextat Tach.”

“It’s true that we know nothing about your childhood. Your biographers always start with your adult life.”

“That’s normal, because I had no childhood.”

“But you had parents, after all.”

“You do pile on your brilliant conclusions, young man.”

“What did your parents do?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“They lived off their income. A very old family fortune.”

“Are there any other family members besides yourself?”

“Was it the tax man who sent you?”

“No, I just wanted to know if—”

“Mind your own business.”

“One’s duty as a journalist, Monsieur Tach, is to mind other people’s business.”

“Change your profession.”

“That’s out of the question. I like my profession.”

“My poor boy.”

“Let me put it to you in another way: tell me about the time in your life when you were happiest.”

Silence.

“Should I phrase my question in another way?”

“Do you take me for a fool or what? What sort of game are you playing at? Is this some sort of Belle marquise, vos beaux yeux me font mourir d’amour? Is that it?”

“Calm down, I’m just trying to do my job.”

“And I’m trying to do mine.”

“So in your opinion, a writer is someone whose job consists in not answering questions?”

“Exactly.”

“And Sartre?”

“What about Sartre?”

“Well, he answered questions, didn’t he?”

“So what?”

“That contradicts your definition.”

“Not in the least: it confirms it, on the contrary.”

“You mean that Sartre is not a writer?”

“You didn’t know?”

“What do you mean, he wrote remarkably well.”

“There are journalists who write remarkably well. But it is not enough to have a way with words to be a writer.”

“No? What else is required, then?”

“A great many things. First of all, you need balls. And the balls I am referring to have nothing to do with one’s sex. The proof of it is that there are some women who have balls. Oh, not very many, but they do exist: Patricia Highsmith, for example.”

“That’s astonishing, that a great writer like yourself would like the work of Patricia Highsmith.”

“Why? There’s nothing astonishing about it at all. You might not think so, but she’s someone who must hate people as much as I do, and women in particular. You can tell she doesn’t write in order to be invited to people’s drawing rooms.”

“And what about Sartre, did he write in order to be invited to drawing rooms?”

“Did he ever! I never met the gentleman, but just reading him I could tell how much he loved drawing rooms.”

“That’s a bit hard to swallow. He was a leftist, after all.”

“So? Do you think leftists don’t like drawing rooms? I think that, on the contrary, they like them more than anyone. It stands to reason: if I’d been a worker all my life, it seems to me I would like nothing better than to spend my time in drawing rooms.”

“You’re oversimplifying: not all leftists are workers. Some leftists come from very good families.”

“Really? Then they have no excuse.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be a rabid anti-Communist, would you, Monsieur Tach?”

“And you wouldn’t you happen to be a premature ejaculator, now would you, Mr. Journalist?”

“Oh, really, that has nothing to do with it.”

“I do agree. So, to get back to our balls. They are the most vital organ a writer has. If he has no balls, a writer uses his words in the service of bad faith. To give you an example, let’s take a gifted writer, and give him something to write about. With solid balls, you get Death on Credit. Without balls, you get La nausée.”

“Don’t you think you’re simplifying somewhat?”

“Are you, a journalist, serious? And here I’ve been trying, out of the goodness of my heart, to bring myself down to your level!”

“I never asked you to. What I want is a precise and methodical definition of what you mean by ‘balls.’”

“Why? Don’t tell me you are trying to write some sort of Tach Made Easy for the general public?”

“Not at all! I just wanted to have some sort of clear communication with you.”

“Uh-huh, that’s what I was afraid of.”

“Come now, Monsieur Tach, please try and make things simple for me, just for once.”

“You must understand that I detest any form of simplification, young man; so if you start asking me to simplify myself, don’t expect me to be very enthusiastic.”

“But I’m not asking you to simplify yourself, not at all! I’m just asking you for a brief definition of what you mean by ‘balls.’”

“All right, all right, don’t whine. What is it with you journalists? You are all so hypersensitive.”

“I’m listening.”

“Well, balls are an individual’s ability to resist the prevailing bad faith. Sounds scientific, right?”

“Go on.”

“I might as well tell you that almost no one has the balls for it. And the number of people who have both a way with words and the right kind of balls is infinitesimal. That is why there are so few writers on the planet. Particularly as other qualities are also required.”

“Such as?”

“A prick.”

“After balls, a prick: that’s logical. Definition of prick?”

“The prick is an ability to create. People who are truly capable of creating are rare indeed. Most of them are content with merely copying their predecessors with greater or lesser degrees of talent—and those same predecessors are, most often, copiers themselves. Sometimes you get a writer who has a way with words and a prick but no balls: Victor Hugo, for example.”

“And yourself?”

“I may have the face of a eunuch, but I have a big prick.”

“And Céline?”

“Ah, Céline has everything: he’s a genius with words, and he has big balls, a big prick, and all the rest.”

“The rest? What else is required? An anus?”

“Absolutely not! It’s the reader who must have an anus, to be taken for a fool, not the writer. No, a writer also needs lips.”

“Dare I even ask you what kind of lips you mean?”

“Upon my word, you are revolting! I’m talking about the lips that are used to close one’s mouth, all right? Disgusting individual!”

“Okay. Definition of lips?”

“Lips fulfill two roles. First of all, they make words into a sensual act. Have you ever imagined what words would be were it not for lips? They would quite simply be something cold, dry, without any nuances, like the utterances of a courtroom bailiff. But the second role is even more important: lips are used to prevent what must not be said from getting out. Hands also have lips, the lips that prevent them from writing what must not be written. This is indispensable, beyond all proportion. There are writers who are brimming with talent, who have balls and a prick, yet they failed as writers because they said things they shouldn’t have said.”

“That’s astonishing, coming from you: it’s not your style to practice self-censorship.”

“Who said anything about self-censorship? The things that must not be said are not necessarily smutty things; on the contrary. The smutty things you have inside you must always be expressed: that’s healthy, lighthearted, invigorating. No, the things that must not be said are of another order—and don’t expect me to explain them to you, because those are precisely the things that must not be said.”

“Well that’s not going to get me very far.”

“Didn’t I warn you, earlier, that my profession consists in not answering questions? Change your profession, young man.”

“So not answering questions is also one of the roles fulfilled by lips, is that it?”

“Not only lips, balls too. It takes balls not to answer certain questions.”

“A way with words, balls, a prick, lips—anything else?”

“Yes, you also need an ear and a hand.”

“The ear is for hearing?”

“You heard me. You are a regular genius, young man. In fact, the ear is the sound box of the lips. It’s the inner gueuloir. Flaubert struck quite the pose with his gueuloir, but did he really think people were going to believe him? He knew it was pointless to holler his words: words holler all by themselves. You just have to listen to them inside.”

“And the hand?”

“The hand is for pleasure. This is devastatingly important. If a writer is not having pleasure, then he must stop immediately. To write without pleasure is immoral. Writing already contains all the seeds of immorality. The writer’s only excuse is his pleasure. A writer who does not have pleasure is as disgusting as some bastard raping a little girl without even getting his rocks off, just for the sake of raping, to commit a gratuitously evil act.”

“There’s no comparison. Writing is not as harmful.”

“You obviously don’t know what you’re saying, because you haven’t read me—how could you know? Writing fucks things up at every level: think of the trees they’ve had to cut down for the paper, of all the room they have to find to store the books, the money it costs to print them, and the money it will cost potential readers, and the boredom the readers will feel on reading them, and the guilty conscience of the unfortunate people who buy them and don’t have the courage to read them, and the sadness of the kind imbeciles who do read them but don’t understand a thing, and finally, above all, the fatuousness of the conversations that will take place after said books have been read or not read. And that’s just the half of it! So don’t go telling me that writing is not harmful.”

“But you can’t totally rule out the possibility of encountering one or two readers who really will understand you, even if it’s only intermittently. Don’t those flashes of deep complicity with a handful of individuals suffice to make reading a beneficial act?”

“Nonsense! I don’t know if those individuals exist, but, if they do, they are the ones who can be most harmed by what I write. What do you think I talk about in my books? Maybe you think I describe how good human beings are, how happy they are to be alive? How the devil did you come up with the idea that to understand me will make someone happy? On the contrary!”

“But complicity, even in despair—is that not a pleasant thing?”

“Do you think it’s pleasant to find out that you are just as desperate as your neighbor? I think it makes things even sadder.”

“In that case, why write? Why even seek to communicate?”

“Careful, don’t mix up the two: writing is not seeking to communicate. You ask me why I write, and this is what I’d say, strictly and exclusively: for pleasure. In other words, if there is no pleasure, one must stop, imperatively. It so happens that writing brings me pleasure—well, it used to—so much pleasure I could die. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. Moreover, every theory that has tried to explain pleasure has been more inane than the next one. One day, a very serious man told me that when you felt pleasure in making love, it was because you were creating life. Can you imagine? As if there could be pleasure in creating something as bad and ugly as life! And then, that would imply that if a woman is taking the pill, she should no longer feel pleasure because she’s no longer creating life. But this fellow really believed his theory! In short, don’t ask me to explain why writing gives me pleasure: it’s a fact, that’s all.”

“And what has the hand got to do with all this?”

“The hand is the source of pleasure in writing. And it’s not the only one: writing also brings pleasure to one’s belly, one’s sex, one’s forehead, and one’s jaws. But the most specific pleasure is located in the hand that writes. It’s a difficult thing to explain: when it is creating what it needs to create, the hand trembles with pleasure and becomes an organ of genius. I don’t know how many times while writing I have had the strange impression that my hand was in charge, sliding across the page all alone, without asking the brain its opinion. Oh, I know that no anatomist could accept such a thing, and yet very often that is what you feel. It is such a voluptuous moment, probably not unlike what a horse feels when it bolts, or a prisoner when he escapes. Which leads to another conclusion: is there not something disturbing about the fact that one uses the same instrument—one’s hand—for both writing and masturbation?”

“You also use your hand to sew on a button or scratch your nose.”

“How trivial you can be! Besides, what does that prove? The vulgar uses need not contradict the noble ones!”

“So masturbation is a noble use of the hand?”

“Indeed it is! The fact that, all alone, a simple, modest hand can perform something as complex, costly, tricky, and volatile as sex, isn’t that amazing? To think that this kindly, uncomplicated hand can procure as much, if not more, pleasure than a woman—who is a high-maintenance nuisance—isn’t that admirable?”

“Well, naturally, if that’s the way you see things . . .”

“But that’s the way they are, young man! Don’t you agree?”

“Listen, Monsieur Tach, you are the one being interviewed, not me.”

“In other words, you get off easy, is that it?”

“It may please you to know that I don’t feel I’ve gotten off easy thus far. Here and there, you’ve been pretty rough with me.”

“Something I enjoy doing, it’s true.”

“Fine. Let’s get back to our organs. Let me recapitulate: a way with words, balls, prick, lips, ear, and hand. Is that it?”

“Isn’t that enough for you?”

“I don’t know. I thought there would be more.”

“Really? What more do you need? A vulva? A prostate?”

“Now you’re being trivial. No. Perhaps you’re going to make fun of me, but I was thinking that you also need a heart.”

“A heart? Saints alive, whatever for?”

“For feelings, love.”

“Those things have nothing to do with the heart. They are the realm of the balls, prick, lips, and hands. That’s quite enough.”

“You’re too cynical. I could never go along with that.”

“But your opinion doesn’t interest anyone, you said so yourself a minute ago. I don’t see what is so cynical about what I said. Feelings and love are the business of organs, we agree on that; what we disagree on is only the nature of the organ. You see it as a cardiac phenomenon. I’m not rebelling against that idea, I’m not throwing adjectives in your face. I merely think that you have bizarre anatomical theories and, as such, they are interesting.”

“Monsieur Tach, why are you pretending you don’t understand?”

“Now what are you on about? I’m not pretending anything at all, you rude so-and-so!”

“Honestly, when I was talking about the heart, you know perfectly well I wasn’t referring to the organ!”

“Oh, no? What were you referring to, then?”

“To sensitivity, affectivity, emotions, don’t you see?”

“All that in one stupid heart, full of cholesterol!”

“Come now, Monsieur Tach, you’re not being funny.”

“No, indeed, you’re the one who’s being funny. Why are you saying all these things that have nothing to do with the topic of discussion?”

“Are you daring to imply that literature has nothing to do with feelings?”

“You know what, young man, I think our understandings of the word ‘feeling’ diverge. For me, if I want to smash someone’s face in, that’s a feeling. But for you, if you can weep at the lonely hearts column in a woman’s magazine, now that’s a feeling.”

“And what is it for you?”

“For me, it is a frame of mind, that is, a fine story crammed full of deceitful ideas of which people convince themselves in order to procure an illusion of human dignity, and to persuade themselves that they are filled with spirituality even when they are taking a crap. It is above all women who invent such moods, because the type of work they do leaves their mind free. For one of the characteristics of our species is that our brain feels obliged to work continuously, even when it serves no purpose: this deplorable technical disadvantage is at the origin of all human misery. Rather than allowing her to indulge in noble inactivity or elegant repose, like a snake sleeping in the sun, the housewife’s brain, furious that it is not being useful, begins to secrete idiotic, pretentious screenplays—and the baser the housewife perceives her activities to be, the more pretentious her scenarios become. And all the more stupid in that there is nothing base about running the vacuum cleaner or scrubbing the toilet: these are things that need to be done, that’s all. But women always imagine that they have been placed here on earth for some aristocratic mission. Most men do, too, less stubbornly however, because their brains are kept busy with the help of bookkeeping, professional promotion, informing on their peers, and tax returns, which leave less time for wild imaginings.”

“I think you’re a bit behind the times. Women work now, too, and they have the same worries as men do.”

“How naïve can you get! They’re pretending. Their desk drawers are full of nail polish and women’s magazines. Contemporary women are even worse than the housewives of old, who served some purpose at least. Nowadays, they spend their time chatting with their colleagues about subjects as substantial as relationships and calories, which amounts to the same thing. When they get too bored, they get laid by their bosses, which gives them a deliciously intoxicated feeling, knowing they are messing with other people’s lives. What better professional promotion for a woman! When a woman destroys another person’s life, she views her exploit as the supreme proof of her spirituality. ‘I cause trouble, therefore I have a soul,’ is how she reasons.”

“To listen to you, anyone would think you have a score to settle with women.”

“Indeed I do! One of them brought me into this world, although I certainly never asked her to.”

“You sound just like a rebellious teenager.”

“A bilious one would be more like it.”

“Very funny. But a man had something to do with your birth, too.”

“I don’t like men, either, you know.”

“But you do despise women more than men. Why?”

“For all the reasons I already gave you.”

“Yes. But you see, I have difficulty believing you don’t have another motive. Your misogyny stinks of a desire for revenge.”

“Revenge? Whatever for? I’ve always been a bachelor.”

“It’s not just about marriage. Besides, maybe you yourself don’t even know where your desire for revenge comes from.”

“I can see where you’re headed, and I refuse to be psychoanalyzed.”

“Without going that far, you might spend some time thinking about it.”

“Thinking about what, for God’s sake?”

“Your relationships with women.”

“What relationships? What women?”

“Don’t tell me that you . . . No!”

“What, ‘no’?”

“You’re not a . . . ?”

“What, out with it!”

“ . . . virgin?”

“Of course I am.”

“Impossible.”

“Absolutely possible.”

“Neither with a woman, nor a man?”

“You think I look like a fag?”

“Don’t take it badly, there have been some brilliant homosexuals.”

“You make me laugh. You say that the way you would say, ‘There have even been some honest pimps,’ as if there were some contradiction between the words ‘homosexual’ and ‘brilliant.’ Still, I must protest against your refusal to accept that I might be a virgin.”

“Put yourself in my shoes.”

“How do you expect someone like me to put myself in your shoes?”

“But it’s . . . it’s unthinkable! In your novels, you talk about sex like a specialist, like an entomologist!”

“I have a Ph.D. in masturbation.”

“Can masturbation result in such a thorough acquaintance with the flesh?”

“Why do you pretend that you’ve read me?”

“Look, I don’t need to have read you to know that your name has been associated with a very precise, expert depiction of sex.”

“How amusing. I didn’t know that.”

“I even came across a dissertation with the following title: ‘Tachian Priapism as Expressed through Syntax.’”

“How droll. I’ve always had a soft spot for dissertation topics, I find them very entertaining. Those sweet students who, to imitate a great man, write idiotic things with hyper-sophisticated titles, when the contents are the very height of banality—like a pretentious restaurant embellishing scrambled eggs with a grandiose description.”

“Naturally, Monsieur Tach, if you’d rather I wouldn’t, I won’t talk about your virginity.”

“Why? Isn’t it interesting?”

“On the contrary, it’s extremely interesting. But I would not like to betray such a secret.”

“It’s not a secret.”

“Why have you never spoken about it, then?”

“Who would I have spoken about it with? I don’t go off to the butcher’s to talk about my virginity.”

“Of course not, but you shouldn’t go telling the newspapers, either.”

“Why not? Is virginity against the law?”

“It’s just that it belongs to the sphere of your private life, your intimate world.”

“And everything you’ve asked me up to now, you two-faced bastard, that didn’t belong to my private life? You weren’t so scrupulous a few minutes ago. It’s pointless trying to play the blushing virgin (a case in point) with me all of a sudden, it won’t wash.”

“I don’t agree. Where indiscretion is concerned, there are certain boundaries. A journalist is indiscreet by nature—it goes with the terrain—but he knows the limits.”

“You’re talking about yourself in the third person singular now?”

“I’m speaking in the name of all journalists.”

“That’s a typical reflex with your cowardly lot. I speak only in my own name, with no other guarantor than my own self. And I insist that I will not comply with your criteria: it’s up to me to determine whether something, in my private life, is secret or not. I couldn’t give a damn about my virginity: do whatever you like with it.”

“Monsieur Tach, I believe you do not realize the danger of such a revelation: you ought to feel sullied, violated . . .”

“It’s my turn to ask you a question, young man: are you stupid or merely masochistic?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because if you’re neither stupid nor masochistic, I can see no explanation for your behavior. Here I am giving you a superb scoop, making a noble gesture of disinterested generosity—but, instead of seizing the opportunity like an intelligent vulture, you start inventing scruples and making a fuss. And do you know what you are in danger of, if you go on like this? You are in danger that out of exasperation I might take your scoop away from you, not to preserve my sacrosanct private life, but quite simply to piss you off. I’ll have you know that my spurts of generosity never last very long, above all when I get annoyed, so take heed at once and accept what I am offering you before I take it away. And you could thank me all the same, it’s not every day that a Nobel Prize winner offers you his virginity, now is it?”

“You have my heartfelt thanks, Monsieur Tach.”

“That’s better. I love brown noses like you, dear boy.”

“But you yourself asked me to—”

“And so what? You’re not obliged to do everything I ask.”

“All right. Let’s go back to the previous subject. In the light of your most recent revelation, I believe I can understand the origins of your misogyny.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, couldn’t it be that your desire for revenge on women is founded in your virginity?”

“I fail to see the connection.”

“But there is one: you despise women because none of them wanted anything to do with you.”

The novelist burst out laughing. His shoulders were shaking.

“That’s a good one! You’re very funny, old boy.”

“Am I to understand that you are refuting my explanation?”

“I think your explanation is self-refuting, my good man. You have just invented an edifying example of retrocausality—something journalists excel at, moreover. But you’ve done such a good job at reversing the issues that it’s mind-boggling. So, you are inferring that I despise women because no woman has ever wanted anything to do with me, whereas in fact I wanted nothing to do with any of them, for the very simple reason that I despise them. A double reversal: well done, you are talented.”

“You would have me believe that you despise women out of hand, for no good reason? That’s impossible.”

“Give me the name of a food that you despise.”

“I hate skate, but—”

“Why such a desire for revenge on that poor skate?”

“I have no desire for revenge on skate; I’ve always found it inedible, and that’s all.”

“Well then, we understand each other. I have no desire for revenge on women, but I’ve always hated them, and that’s all.”

“But really, Monsieur Tach, there’s no comparison. What would you say if I compared you to calf tongue?”

“I would be very flattered, calf tongue is delicious.”

“Go on, be serious.”

“I’m always serious. And more’s the pity for you, young man, because if I were not so serious, perhaps I would not have noticed that this interview has gone on for an unprecedented length of time: you do not deserve such generosity on my part.”

“What have I done not to deserve it?”

“You are ungrateful, and you are in bad faith.”

“I’m in bad faith, me? And what about you?”

“You’re insolent! I’ve always known that my good faith would never get me anywhere. Not only does no one notice it, but it is reversed—it’s true that you are an expert in reversing things—and is qualified as bad faith. My sacrifice will have been in vain. At times I think that if I were to start over, I would play the bad faith card for all it’s worth, so I could enjoy some of your peace of mind and respect. But then I look at you and find you so repugnant that I congratulate myself on not having imitated you, even if it has condemned me to solitude. Solitude can only do me good if it keeps me well away from your mire. My life may be nasty, but I prefer it to yours. Leave my home, Monsieur, I have just finished my tirade, so prove to me that you know how to take your cue, be so good as to leave my home.”

In the café across the street, the journalist’s story added fuel to the debate.

“Under these conditions, are we deontologically justified in continuing our interviews?”

“Tach would surely reply that we must be two-faced bastards to dare talk about deontology in our profession.”

“That is certainly what he would say, but he isn’t the pope, after all. We’re under no obligation to put up with his dreadful nonsense.”

“The problem is that his dreadful nonsense stinks of truth.”

“Here we go, he’s got you jumping through hoops. I’m sorry, but I have no respect for the guy anymore. He’s too full of himself.”

“It’s just as he said: you’re ungrateful. He gives you the dream of a story and to the only way you can think of to thank him is by heaping scorn on him.”

“But didn’t you hear how he insulted me?”

“Precisely. That’s why you’re so full of rage.”

“I can’t wait until it’s your turn. Then we’ll have a good laugh.”

“I can’t wait until it’s my turn, either.”

“And did you hear what he said about women?”

“Oh, he’s not completely wrong on that score.”

“Shame on you. It’s a good job there are no women around to hear you. Actually, whose turn is it tomorrow?”

“Don’t know him, and he hasn’t come to introduce himself.”

“Who does he work for?”

“We don’t know.”

“Don’t forget that Gravelin has been asking each of us for a copy of our recordings. That’s the least we owe him.”

“That guy is a saint. How many years has he been working for Tach? It can’t have been a Sunday picnic.”

“No, but it must be fascinating to work for a genius.”

“Genius had nothing to do with it.”

“Actually, why does Gravelin want to listen to the tapes?”

“The better to know his tormentor. That, I can understand.”

“I wonder how he can put up with that fat slob.”

“Stop calling Tach a fat slob. Don’t forget who he is.”

“As far as I’m concerned, as of this morning, there is no more Tach. He will always be a fat slob and nothing more. We should never meet writers.”