That’s how it goes, the gangster saying scratch my feet, a sign, you thought up until then that you were going to get away with it and suddenly you have to start thinking it’s all over, it’s the opposite in this bookshop, I know this is the end but I don’t see a sign, an alleyway which is a trap, all it takes is a car at each end, you imagine that a friend can never betray you, but though I keep looking I can’t see anything, scratch my feet.
Until then no thug had ever dared say anything like that to me, they probably knew that I’d made men like them toe the line at Buchenwald, but that day, when their chief said, here, you, politician man, scratch my feet, I knew I no longer had any choice, he must have learned something, he knew more than I did, he looked at me as if I was already dead:
‘Scratch my feet for me!’
The other thugs were watching me, and then he said:
‘No, not now.’
I never had to scratch his feet for him, I could invent and say that at that moment I looked him squarely in the eye, the guy had almost no nose left, his skin was very swarthy, very pitted, the middle of his face an agglomeration of rolls of fat, a sort of hole for a nose, and between the rolls of fat two light-coloured eyes, maybe he backed down because he was scared by the strength he could sense in me, a whole life of Bolshevik strength, a prisoner at Magadan and the experience of Buchenwald and Birkenau, but no, he probably just wanted to check his facts one last time, it was a bet, if you lost the bet your losses would be too high, his feet were unspeakably disgusting.
He had almost no nose left, you could smell the stench of him at ten paces and he was meticulously cutting his nails as he said scratch my feet, I never had to scratch them for him but I knew that death was creeping up on me, it had just set off on my trail, it was merely hesitating about the speed it would travel at, it was a signal, a thug told you scratch my feet and you knew that the guards had given the go-ahead, that the commandant had spoken to the guards, that the regional rep had spoken to the commandant, that in Moscow someone had taken a decision, not even a decision, decisions require a report-card, a signature or a stamp, no need for all that, someone must have just said:
‘Him? Surely he’s not still there?’
And a subordinate gets the message at once.
I was put in a group which went out cutting wood in temperatures of minus twenty, very heavy work, especially when you were with youngsters, those youngsters in the Gulag went at it like mad things, they wanted to prove that an injustice had been done when they’d been found guilty, I was with a man who taught natural science, about my age, he nodded to the trees:
‘See, the trees have faith, they’ve seen the axes but they have faith, they’re not afraid, and do you know why the trees have faith although they’ve seen the axes? Because the handles are made of wood too, you know what you can do with faith, comrade.’
I let the teacher of natural science ramble on, he was not a Trotskyite nor right-wing nor a Stalinist, he just liked natural science.
I started sleeping like a hare, with my eyes open. When I realised that I was on the point of dying I knew what I’d yell at them:
‘Long live Gogol!’
Up to that point I had said nothing, it would be:
‘Long live Gogol!’
To the guards, the gangster, the men in Moscow and Berlin, it wouldn’t have seemed very political but it was all I had, I could have said bunch of traitors, or up with the Revolution, not yours, but long live socialism anyway, ‘long live Gogol!’ was much wider, less political but much wider, my hatred suggested something else, ‘bunch of bastards’ but that was too predictable, I’d drink tchaïfir, I’d continue keeping a tight rein on my hatred and I’d shout ‘long live Gogol!’ yes, tchaïfir, four hundred grams of tea in a quarter of a litre of water, the tannin acts exactly like opium.
It was at that point that I was freed, the death of Iosif Vissarionovich, I am alive because a gang of yes-men took a long time to go into the bedroom of the man with the moustache to give first aid, dead drunk he was, we had tchaïfir, but the man with the moustache had real vodka, he took three days to die, looking furious.
About that copy of Tintin in America, the one that was stolen, the owner told me he was a prize idiot, that he couldn’t see straight any more, that he was gaga, I don’t like it when the owner has a go at himself, because immediately afterwards he has a go at me, he says I’ll get a job at Gibert’s, Gibert’s second-hand department, books by the kilo, he gives himself a right roasting and then it’s my turn, he blames me, you being bloody part-time, if there were two of us here full-time nothing would get nicked, what good will having a philosophy degree do you? Qualify you to sort peaches? He’s pleased with his little joke, the ruse of reason, the passion which acts in its stead, reason which takes the form of a flame, that supposes an overly optimistic vision, go back to the origins, ratio, it’s both the power of knowledge and the content of knowledge, there’s also the rationality of ends and means and the beige coat that’s heading this way.
The head of the bear on the ground, it wrings the heart of comrade Gédéon, ah! next chapter, Gédéon gives alley cats the milk intended for pet moggies, I don’t see the connection, a sequence in which you get told about a massacre and on the next page milk gets given to alley cats, no transition, no link, after all maybe there never is, there are also rabbits tied up in a sack, how can they be freed? first a sequence showing a massacre in a forest, Gédéon has disappeared, then with no transition we’re confronted with the rabbits tied up in a sack.
And they’re going to get me too, it’s in the bag, all tied up, my friend has sold me down the river to the CIA, no way out, for years I told him I want you to be inventive, I want you to tell me things I don’t know, I’ll try to be inventive, out loud, here and now, we shall invent two roles, young gentleman of France, just the two of us and nobody else, when we’re together nobody will be able to make a move against us because we shall invent, you will see me inventing and you will invent in turn, and today he’s being inventive by arranging for me to be stuffed in a sack, for thirty-five years I’ve kept him safe from every threat and now he ties me up in a sack, but it’s all over for him, lackey of the Americans, from the outside it looks like he’s in clover, in reality he’s turning into a slave, in his shoes I’d rather be dead, when it was just us two we were in charge.
I’m going to die.
The hunters have gone, the job of freeing the rabbits is taken on by the mole, a very mole-ish idea, dig a tunnel under the sack, why do it the easy way, instead of just opening the sack the mole lets off a huge banger underneath it, curtains for the rabbit comrades, bang! ‘gone away, destination unknown’.
Fine ring to those words, in Berlin we used to say ‘unknown in Records’ or ‘not known at this address’, I’ve known smarter moles, a mole was never meant to work with explosives.
The two youths who’ve just come in, long hair, yobs, like the ones we have back home, trainers, jeans, bomber-jacket, one of them is carrying a Coca-Cola bag, I know why, the bag is because you can’t get a walkie-talkie in a bomber-jacket.