Cocaine Read Online Free PDF Page A

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,