What I want to say is, I get these weird ideas going through my head the whole time, about me, and Paul, or my father and mother. I can’t shake off the feeling that somehow I don’t exist in the way other people do. Or else I find myself wondering why I’m not Paul, why Paul is the one who’s stretching out his arm towards the ashtray. It’s just the same with my mother and father. I know it’s silly of me, but I can never isolate them as individuals, define them in relationship to myself. What I’m trying to say is, all I manage is the act, the external act, do you see what I mean? And that doesn’t, can’t, isolate anything, it just reflects back at me like a mirror. Paul was — Look, François, please, I’m not telling you all this just for the fun of it. I want you to understand why — why Paul going made such a difference to me. I think one of these days I really will take that overdose of Gardenal. And I wouldn’t want you to think I’d just done it for nothing but messy sentimental reasons. I — look, I think I must be having a kind of nervous breakdown. But there are always thousands of things like that, little hints and details that go over my head. It’s true, though, I’d hate you to think it was just maudlin self-pity. It’s a matter of general understanding, awareness, do you see? Well, anyway, I’d better finish my story. Paul stood over me like that for a moment, and then he began to leaf through my typescript. I can’t stand people going over my stuff when I’m there — I mean, reading a word or two at random on each page. Oh,
now, obviously, I couldn’t care less, people can do what they like with my manuscripts, it’s all the same to me. They don’t mean anything to me any longer, they might as well be today’s newspaper. But at that particular moment it still really drove me crazy. I just sat there waiting till he was through. After a bit he must have got bored with turning pages over, because do you know what he did, he picked one out of all the pile at random, and began to read it aloud. When he did that—oh, you won’t understand, but it was at that moment I really saw what a bastard he was. I mean, he — it wasn’t just that he read it as though he didn’t give a damn about it, but on top of that, and this is what I found really awful, he read it so well, as though he understood every word, in a fine, serious voice, the works. Paul’s always had a beautiful speaking voice. He used to talk very loud, to make sure people noticed what a beautiful voice he had. The nerve of it, playing a dirty little trick like that on me—and with one of my own manuscripts! You know, he read so wonderfully, that was what got me. He didn’t give tuppence for the words, and still it was superb. It was, oh I can’t explain, like an apple with maggots inside it, do you see what I mean?