I see the Audiers’ cat prowling around our house. He brushes against the wall with his tail in the air, his hypocritical gaze half concealed by his blinking eyelids. He has gray fur like an old man. His meowing has often woken me up at night. He is Augustine’s worst enemy, often stealing food whenever she is the least bit careless. I have an idea. I will use him as practice. I will kill him to see what happens, to know what it feels like, how much strength one needs to get it right.
Joël is alone with Jean Luze.
They are listening to music in the living room. I hear them talking in hushed voices. There is a quiet knocking at the door of the dining room and I see Joël run to it. He invites Pierrilus, the one-armed beggar, to come in, and takes a package from him that he conceals when he notices me.
“Careful!” Jean Luze cries.
Doesn’t he trust me anymore? I feel so humiliated it seems to me I no longer exist. He looks through us. He doesn’t see us anymore, except when we interrupt his interminable discussions. He looks at us in a cold, impenetrable, and disconcerting way. With utmost silence, I put down the bottle of rum and glasses he asked for. Félicia never dares to interrupt him. Finally, she suffers, she too! She has become a harmless rival. As affectionate as he is with her, as solicitous as he is, I know now that he never loved her.
In any case, her death will push him to me. I can only master him through grief. With her gone, I will once again be mother to his son. There will be intimacy between us again.
Here I am sitting in bed, dagger in hand. I contemplate and caress it. Its tip is sharp and its finely chiseled handle is slightly curved. Where does this weapon come from? What is its history? The main thing is whether or not it can kill someone with a single blow. Will I have to witness some drawn-out agony if I miss? Will I have the courage to strike several times to make sure the deed is done? I have considered everything. I will leave nothing to chance. The Audiers’ cat will be my guinea pig. I will plunge the dagger in his back as practice. I don’t want Jean Luze to have to worry about anything. Suspicion will initially fall on him. I will stage things so that the police shift their investigation and conclude that it was suicide. Invoking her upcoming departure, I will ask Félicia to inscribe a moving note on the bottom of that family photo taken on the day of Jean-Claude’s baptism, something along these lines: “Adieu, Claire, I leave you here with everything I love.” The police will not see through this because their plate is fulclass="underline" the police only care about politics.
After killing Félicia, I will put the dagger in her hand. They will say: “She committed suicide because she couldn’t bear to leave the country, poor Madame Luze!”
The cat is dead. I followed it, lured it with fresh fish, raised my hand high and struck. From my window, I look upon its dead body. It collapsed in the yard beneath my window. Its legs are already stiff. Its lips, curled in an awful grin, reveal sharp white teeth. “Good riddance!” Augustine will exclaim when she sees it. And Mme Audier will mourn it in good form, lamenting the demise of this sly and deceitful animal she never thought to feed in its lifetime.
Before it dropped dead, the cat looked at me. This is what I can’t forget: its eyes. Pathetic! A cat! Nothing but a cat! And yet I’m gnawed by remorse. Is it because in my eyes it was innocent?
The thought of crime haunts me. It is eating away at me. I feel as weak as a convalescent. What am I waiting for? Sleep has fled from me. I think of Jane. I think about her little one and I want to scream.
I am ready; Félicia is alone in her room. I am going to go in. In the meantime, I practice killing her in my head.
My teeth chatter. I bite my fist. I’m nauseous, sick to my stomach. My mind is blank. No, no! I mustn’t admit that I will never have the courage to kill Félicia. I will die instead of her. It is time for me to put an end to these desperate struggles. I’m burning up. Is it fever? So much the better! Come, delirium. It will give me a taste of death in life. I am used to burying myself all on my own. These plunges into the void are comforting. I hope they will spare me from reality’s torments. Thanks to them, I’ve become familiar with the idea of death. It doesn’t frighten me. I have my very own coat of mail, my own shell and insulation: my imagination.
Blood hammers my temples. Hammer blows raining on metal, my head bursts, blood runs down my face. There is some on my sheets, my shirt, on the floor, everywhere. No, it’s not true. I’m the one seeing red. From anger. I’m angry with myself. I overestimated myself and seeing my cowardice makes me sick.
I am nothing but a heap of mutilated flesh. I’m the one dying, murdered. The dagger buried somewhere in my body. I don’t know where exactly. Ah! The hemorrhage of despair! Oh, to disappear! If only I could disappear without leaving a trace. It’s impossible. One doesn’t disappear that way. I exist. I am free, face-to-face with myself. I must act and this time I must not fail. Will I be up to it? Yes. My pride is intact. It will back me. The moon smiling in the sky scoffs at me. Its serenity reminds me of Félicia’s. Flashes from the past! The long and tedious unreeling of the sad film of my life…
Contradictory feelings claw at each other within me. I am seething with them. My heart is in shreds. What can be done without passion? The lukewarm are like reptiles: they crawl on all fours or drag themselves about. I don’t envy them. I’d rather croak standing. Who says suicide is an act of cowardice? That’s just an easy excuse to resign ourselves to living with our disgust, filthy puppets that we are with a hole in our stomachs to be filled three times a day! At last, like some vigilante, I’ve accosted life. I imagine grabbing it by the collar. I am deciding my own fate. I juggle my own existence! I’m drunk! I clench my fist tightly. And there it is, life, trapped in there. How easy it was to vanquish! I was the stronger one. Oh, I feel like laughing! Life is nothing. We can deal with it as one power deals with another. It’s just that our weapons are not comparable. Life dug a gaping hole beneath our feet to frighten us. Life bent us under a degrading dictatorship. With every step we bump up against the points of its bayonets. Life keeps stabbing us in the back. I am going to settle the score with it once and for all. I am sick of hanging my head and trembling. I look at my furrowed face in the mirror. I discover, to my surprise, that my face is asymmetricaclass="underline" left profile, dreamy and sweet; right profile, fierce and sensual. Is this me or is this how I see myself? My hands also suddenly seem dissimilar, the one made for action seems thicker, heavier. Why this taste of venom in my mouth?…
Granting myself a final and supreme bit of vanity, I’ve put on my nicest nightgown, untied my hair and got in bed. Everything has to be perfect, it’s a point of honor. I feel wrapped in cool air. Am I hesitating? Ah! Cowardice, how full your disguises! The dagger is in my hand. I am preparing for death. The rough touch of my sheets is gone. I am gliding in silk. So sublime. Can this be me walking ecstatically, draped in crimson, toward that strange land of shadows? The fever is rising. Now I am buried in a shroud of flowers. I am spewing mist. I’m pierced by the freezing air. I am an iceberg pushed by the wind across the vast expanses of the sea. In the end this bitch of a life is not such a bitch when the heart has even the slightest reason to hope. Yes, but what about me, do I have some reason to hope?
I lift the weapon to my left breast, when the cries of a riotous mob shake me out of my delirium. Stretching out my arm with the drawn dagger, I listen. Where are these cries coming from? Now my attention is turned away from its goal. Life, death, do they depend on chance? I hide the dagger in my blouse and I come down. There are so many beggars that their stench overpowers me. The street is lit by the peasants’ torches. They are hollering, “Down with Mister Long,” and walking toward the American. He immediately aims a submachine gun: twenty fall. Calédu and his officers rush to the police station. They apparently intend to reestablish order by shooting in the air. I have the impression a bullet came from Jane’s house. Pierrilus draws his gun from his rags and aims at Calédu, and others do the same: three policemen fall to the ground. The bullets whizz by me, coming, I am now sure, from Jane’s balcony: I recognize Joël and Jean lying low behind the balusters. Uniforms are strewn on the ground. The commandant retreats as he fires. He is afraid, alone in the dark, hounded by the beggars he himself armed. He is moving backward toward my house. Does he realize that? Behind the blinds of the living room, I watch and wait for him.