The High-Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

blue cat, is when the cook fucked the baroness up the ass in the middle of all those simmering dishes ... What do you say we try it'? ..." Without waiting for me to answer, she grabbed me, tore off my clothes, and tried to insert me between her enormous buttocks. This time the idea of such a journey drove me crazy. I managed to slip away from her, the horror of the situation increased my strength, it was too much, the runt revolted, he yelled, he hopped from stool to stool, and finally, he knocked Madame C. out with an enormous pot. Then he ran back to his place, naked as a worm, and he locked himself in.
    I didn't leave my apartment for two weeks. I phoned my boss to tell him that I was seriously ill. Terrible asthma attacks laid me up in bed. I was living in a state of perpetual terror. The slightest sound made me jump. At any moment, especially at night, I thought I heard the elephantine step of Madame C. in the stairwell. My door was securely bolted, but I knew very well that, with a simple flick of her wrist, she was capable of smashing it to bits. I had nightmares where King Kong was chasing me so he could sodomize me. Giant women disguised as little girls surrounded me, clapping their hands. I was sinking into quicksand, I was sinking straight to the bottom, unable even to cry out. Sometimes, Madame C.'s vagina was endowed with teeth, and she threatened to cut me in two if I wasn't nice to her. In the morning, I was so depressed, so agonized, that I didn't even have the courage to keep an eye on my father's grave. I spent the whole day flopped on my bed. I closed the shutters so as not to see the cemetery crushed by the heat. And, sometimes, I missed Madame C., and I wondered why she wasn't coming to see me and I burst into tears. I was terribly cold.
     
    I began to recover, slowly. I was no longer afraid to leave my place. I was ready to apologize to Madame C. for having knocked her out. So I stopped by the lodge. She was no longer there. A little old woman, all shriveled, had taken her place. "What, you don't know what happened? Don't you read the paper? Madame C. tried to kill herself, she threw herself under the train, at Gaite station. Funny, isn't it? The poor woman must not have been in possession of all her faculties anymore. And then, hold on, monsieur, would you believe it, the old biddy didn't even manage to get squashed. It was the train that went off the rails. Six people had minor injuries, yes monsieur. I myself say that women like that are a public menace, that's all there is to it. First off, the woman was just too fat. It was abrr,rmal. Where is she? At Sainte-Anne, I think. Yes, with the crazies." The little old woman seemed beside herself with joy, telling me the misfortunes of the woman she had replaced. I left, shrugging. All that no longer concerned me.
    Monsieur Rameau greeted me coolly at the shop. He didn't even ask me if I was feeling better. He himself wasn't in good health just then. He confided to me that he was afraid he had cancer. He sat in the shop, in front of his plastic flowers, hands on his knees, for hours at a time. He would just stare into space at who knows what. Good breeding no longer told. Good breeding wasn't good for anything anymore, not even for humiliating me.
    Every evening, as usual, I left the shop at seven o'clock. Now it was my job to close the metal shutter. The August light was relentless, still, at that hour. Not a shadow in the street. And yet, I was shivering. My overcoat offered poor protection. My ears rang. The ivy was motionless. Not a breath of air. Sometimes I went to sit down in front of the statue of Ludovic Trarieux, 1840-1904, among the old men who, like me, no longer wanted anything and weren't taking off for vacation. I hadn't the slightest desire to leave rue Froidevaux. Traveling terrifies me. Anyway, where would I go? The world is a prison. My cell was enough for me. Sometimes a hot wind stirred up the dust on square Georges-Lamarque. The acrid