Cocaine (4 page)

“Why don’t you inhale?” Tito’s friend asked.

One of the men replied by leaning his head backwards, showing that his nasal septum was worn away by an ulcer.

“
Coco?”
Tito asked.

“Yes,” the young man replied. “It begins with a small scab that itches. It swells slowly and then turns into an ulcer that destroys the cartilaginous part of the septum; fortunately it never reaches the bone.”

“And what did the doctor say?”

“
Rien à faire.”

“Really?”

“Yes. What the doctors say is: Give up cocaine. But I prefer giving up my nasal septum.”

Tito smiled.

The man with the ulcer laughed. He laughed immoderately, frenziedly. The four women, the other man and Tito joined in.

Tito instinctively touched his nose. He seemed no longer to have one, though it was very heavy in spite of its nonexistence.

He laughed again, and the others laughed too.

The drug peddler rose as if to take his departure. “Goodnight, ladies and gentlemen,” he said.

“Don’t go yet,” said Tito, holding him by the round wooden leg. “Stay and have a drink.”

The man sat down next to him, stretched his wooden leg under the table and withdrew the other one.

“You earn more that way than by begging for alms,” the yellow, skeleton-like young man said.

“Yes,” the dealer admitted. “But don’t imagine that begging’s a bad job. It all depends on where you do it. Certainly you can do it anywhere, but some places are far better than others. You do big business outside brothels, for instance. You don’t do so well as outside churches, it’s true, but well enough to make a comfortable living. I prefer working outside churches. In the streets, on the boulevards, at the doors of cafés, there’s a crowd with the average percentage of rogues and fools, but on the steps of churches the percentage is higher; they’re nearly all fools, ninety per cent of them are fools, and you can’t go wrong. Rogues go to church too, of course; actually I’d say that most church-goers are rogues, but going into or coming out of church, which is God’s pied-à-terre, they don’t want to look wicked before or after vowing to be pious.”

The man emptied his glass, put it down, said thank you and made for the door. Just as he reached it a woman stopped him and bought another box.

“Goodbye all,” he called out.

He counted on the effect of his departure, and in fact the other women swarmed round him as if their savior were departing and gave him more money. Tito also bought another box, opened it and inhaled.

“Just look what journalism leads to,” his waiter friend said. “To investigate cocaine addiction you become an addict yourself.”

“And so what?” Tito replied. “It might be much worse. When Pythagoras travelled among the Egyptians he had to be circumcised before being admitted to their mysteries.”

“And what newspaper do you write for?” the pale man asked him confidentially.

“An American newspaper,” Tito replied. “And what’s your job?”

“I haven’t got one,” the pale man replied with great naturalness. “Christine works for me. If I could work without any great effort as Christine does, I’d work for her. But as I can’t . . .”

Tito’s friend failed to conceal slight surprise at the candor with which the man admitted to being an
alphonse.

“Your bourgeois friend is surprised,” he said, alluding to the waiter. “But what’s strange about it? Christine and I used to work in a factory where there were five hundred women. They were all destined for TB, or anemia at the very least. The factory owner exploited them. I couldn’t take away all of them, but rescued Christine, and now I exploit her. I don’t know why I should be regarded as more contemptible than that industrialist who exploited five hundred women at the same time. Particularly as the work she does now is less tiring, more hygienic and more profitable. They say it’s bad for one’s conscience, but what does that matter so long as it doesn’t dirty one’s hands?”

“What’s the time?” asked Tito, thinking it was time to go.

“I haven’t got a watch. Man shortened the days by inventing clocks, and he shortened the years by inventing calendars. I have neither the one nor the other.”

“My calendar’s here,” said Christine, making an indecent gesture.

“And she never makes a mistake,” said her lover, laughing.

Tito turned to his friend and said in an undertone: “The first things that cocaine destroys are the will and the sense of shame.”

“But what shame remains to be destroyed among these people?” said the waiter. “They’re worse than respectable women.”

The article on cocaine addicts was a great success. The American newspaper editor telegraphed one hundred dollars to his nephew even before the article appeared in the centre columns of his sensational news page. A hundred dollars amounted to one thousand francs and convinced him that he was a great journalist; and with that belief in his epigastrium (for that is where arrogance, presumption and pride are situated) the first thing he did was to jump into a taxi, hurry to his shady little hotel in Montmartre, pay the bill, pack his bags, and move to one of the smartest hotels in Paris, the Hotel Napoléon in the Place Vendôme, where he installed himself in an unheated room on the fourth floor, facing the interior courtyard.

That same afternoon he called on the editor of a newspaper with a big circulation called
The Fleeting Moment.

The editor was a very elegant individual. It is only aged teachers at technical schools who fail to understand that it is possible to be both intelligent and well dressed. A big ruby on his finger gleamed like a tiny lamp. Like one of those little lamps that novelists compare to big rubies.

“Yes, I know your uncle,” he said, as erect in his armchair as if had been fixed with a u-joint, for an editor’s conscience always remains perfectly upright no matter how much his ship is tossed by stormy seas. “Yes, I know your uncle, and if your flair for journalism is anything like his,” he added, stropping an ivory paper knife on his thigh, “you’ll go a long way. Where did you work in Italy?”

“On the
Corriere della Sera.”

“And what were you?”

“Sub-editor.”

“Have you a degree?”

“In law and medicine.”

“And what are your political views?”

“I have none.”

“Good. If you are to argue convincingly for a point of view, it’s better to have none yourself. But the difficulty,” the editor went on, applying his scissors to an English newspaper, “is that I have no vacancies at the moment, and I have no work to offer you. But I shall bear you in mind and send for you as soon as there’s an opening. Where are you staying?”

Tito, gloating over the sensational impact of what he was about to say, replied with deliberate gravity: “The Hotel Napoléon.”

The editor, who had picked up a pen to jot down his address and had pressed a bell to have him shown out, put down the pen and the notebook and sent the commissionaire away.

“I’ll give you a month’s trial on a salary of 1500 francs,” he said.

“Tomorrow’s the first, so let us start tomorrow. Come and see me as soon as you arrive at the office and I’ll introduce you to your colleagues. Goodbye.”

He then pressed the button again.

That evening Tito dined at Poccardi’s and bought himself an orchestra stall at the Boîte à Fursy, where he picked up the latest tune. He went back to his hotel whistling it.

To the Hotel Napoléon.

Remember that you’re staying at the Hotel Napoléon, he said to himself. In an unheated, back room on the fourth floor, it’s true, but it’s also true that you’re staying at the Hotel Napoléon.

He unpacked his bags, arranged his toilet articles on the washstand, put his shirts, socks and vests in the drawers and hung his jackets on the clothes hangers in the wardrobe. There was even a telephone in the room.

What a shame I’ve no one to ring up, he said to himself. To have a telephone and no one to ring up is sad. But not having anyone to ring up is not sufficient reason for not using the thing.

He picked up the receiver and asked for a number, the first that came into his head.

He did not have long to wait. A female voice replied.

“Is that you?” Tito said. “What did you say? Madame . . . Good, it was you I wanted to speak to. I must warn you that your husband knows everything. That’s all I have to say, and it’s no good pressing me for details. All I have to say is that your husband knows
every
thing. No, no, it’s no good pressing me for details. No, I’m not Giacomino . . . Well, since you have guessed it — yes, I am Giacomino. Goodnight.”

And he replaced the receiver.

“Who on earth is Giacomino, I wonder?” he said to himself with a smile. “And I wonder who she is.”

His face suddenly darkened.

“Poor creature, that was a dirty trick I played on her,” he murmured with genuine regret. “I’ve given her a bad night. Perhaps I’ll get her into serious trouble. I’ll ring her again and tell her . . . But I don’t remember the number. So much the worse, or so much the better. Perhaps I’ve done her a good turn.”

And he laughed again.

He undressed and put his watch, money and a small golden box on the table. He opened the box. It was nearly empty; during the two intervals at the theater he had inhaled a few grams to celebrate his getting a job on that great daily
The Fleeting Moment
, and little more than a gram was left. He poured it on to the back of his hand and inhaled voluptuously.

He took the last things from his suitcase: his pajamas, a Bible, and a revolver. He put on his pajamas and put the Bible on the commode.

They say that all good men should have a Bible at their bedside, he told himself. I’ve never read it, but I always have it by my bedside.

He got into bed, drew the bedclothes up to his mouth, and switched off the light.

The fresh, volatile odor of cocaine descended to the very bottom of his lungs. How cold one’s feet get in this hotel, he grumbled, and curled up.

With his head on the pillow he could hear the beating of his heart.

My heart has started racing, he said to himself, it’s chasing my nose that has run away. I’m going to be a huge success on that newspaper. I’ll be editor within a year. Then I’ll marry a politician’s daughter. And I’ll be a deputy. A deputy at the Palais Bourbon. And from there I shall make speeches: “And believe me, Alcibiades, it is better to associate with one of those not unwilling youths than with the hetairae of Athens . . .”

But why had a phrase from Plato’s
Symposium
that he had picked up years ago at school, heaven knows when or why, suddenly returned to his mind?

And how cold his legs were.

His heart quieted down, but his imagination still ran riot. His brain was like a carnival in a madhouse; his closed eyes saw a blue darkness in which cold sparks ignited and exploded. Each split into two, then each half again divided. One of the sparks expanded like unraveling thread and throbbed with amoeba-like movements, invading his whole field of vision and flooding out all the darkness. His closed eyes were full of light.

And in that light a mobile, elastic circle formed and grew into a square, then into a rectangle, then into a parallelepiped; a black parallelepiped with one golden side and then two and then three; it was a book, the Bible.

The Book of Genesis — what a jester, what a great humorist God is, Tito said to himself, while his heart beat loudly in the bed, which was as resonant as a resonance chamber. What a jester, what a humorist God is.

God said: “Let there be light

Let there be heavens

Let there be grass

Let there be trees

Let there be the sun

Let there be the stars for when there’s no gas

Let there be gas for when there are no stars

Let there be reptiles

Let there be birds

Let there be farmyard animals

Let there be wild animals for the menageries

Let there be male human beings

Let there be female human beings . . .”

And then He told them to have children, authorizing them to lord it over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air and the beasts that wander over the face of the earth. All he had to do was to say: “Let there be stars” or “let there be crocodiles,” “let there be Mediterranean monk seals” — or porcupines — and all those creatures came into existence ready-made and complete at the mere sound of their names.

If that was how it was done the Creation was not very hard work. Nevertheless on the seventh day He felt He needed a rest.

What a jester God is, Tito went on. No doubt it was He who created such blessings as water to make the grass grow, grass to fill animals’ bellies, animals to fill men’s bellies, women for men to keep, the serpent to cause trouble to both sexes, truffles to slice and serve with lobsters, the sun to dry washing, the stars to shine on poets, and the moon so that Neapolitan songs could be written about it. But it strikes me as strange that things should have emerged from nothing at the mere sound of their names. I think the Almighty likes parlor tricks and arranged the whole thing beforehand, that like a good conjurer He had His boxes with double bottoms and His glasses prepared in advance, and that His bravura in seeming to create everything out of nothing in six days was a piece of American-style ballyhoo designed
pour épater les bourgeois.

But He had a trick up His sleeve.

To give life to man He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.

I believe He did this, not to give him life, but to inject into him an artistic assortment of germs. Adam in fact lived for only 930 years, though he could have lived much longer.

God began on a lavish scale, creating the stars with their huge orbits, the sun with its eternal light, and innumerable species of plants and animals. He acted entirely regardless of expense. But to make woman He performed the niggardly act of using one of Adam’s ribs.

What a humorist the Almighty is.

He knew from experience that when you see a “no smoking” notice you have an irresistible desire to light a cigarette. He regretted the excessive favors granted to Adam and his wife and wanted to withdraw them without making a bad impression, so He applied to the serpent, suggesting to it that dirty trick with the apple that we all know about. And the serpent fell in with the idea.