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panatella. Catherine Lechardoy and I remained facing each other. A distinct silence fell. Then, seeking a way out, she proceeded to talk about the bringing into line of work procedures between the servicing company and the Ministry - that's to say, between the two of us. She was still standing right beside me - our bodies were separated by a gap of thirty centimetres at most. At a certain moment, and with a clearly involuntary gesture, she lightly rubbed the lapel of my jacket between her fingers.

    I felt no desire for Catherine Lechardoy; I hadn't the slightest wish to shaft her. She was looking at me and smiling, drinking Crémant, trying her hardest to be brave; nevertheless I knew she really needed to be shafted . That hole she had at the base of her belly must appear so useless to her; a prick can always be cut off, but how do you forget the emptiness of a vagina? Her situation appeared desperate, and my tie was beginning to choke me slightly. After my third glass I came close to suggesting we leave together, go and fuck in some office; on the desk or on the carpet, it didn't matter; I was feeling up to making the necessary gestures. But I kept my mouth shut; and anyway I don't think she'd have accepted; or else I'd have first had to put my arm around her waist, say she was beautiful, brush her lips in a tender kiss. There was no way out, for sure. I briefly excused myself and went to throw up in the toilets.

    On my return the theoretician was at her side and she was listening to him docilely. She'd managed, in short, to regain control; perhaps it was all to the good, for her.

    12

    This retirement drink was to constitute the derisory apogee of my relations with the Ministry of Agriculture. I had gathered together all the necessary material for preparing my courses; we'd barely be seeing each other again; I still had a week before leaving for Rouen.

    A gloomy week. We were at the end of November, a time which is commonly taken to be gloom itself. For me it seemed normal that, for want of more tangible events, changes in the weather would assume a certain place in my life; besides, old people can talk about nothing else, they say.

    I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself, that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.

    At times, too, I've had the impression that I'd manage to feel quite at home in a life of vacuity. That the relatively painless boredom would enable me to go on making the usual gestures of life. Another big mistake. Prolonged boredom is not tenable as a position: sooner or later it is transformed into feelings that are acutely more painful, of true pain; this is precisely what's happening to me.

    Maybe, I tell myself, this tour of the provinces is going to alter my ideas . Doubtless in a negative sense, but it's going to alter my ideas ; at least there will be a change of direction, a shake-up.

    Part Two

    1

    At the approaches to the narrows of Bab-el-Mandel, beneath the ambiguous and immutable surface of the sea, huge and irregularly spaced coral reefs are hidden which represent a real danger to navigation. They are barely perceptible except for a reddish bloom, a slightly different tinge to the water. And if the occasional traveller should call to mind the extraordinary density of the shark population which characterizes this area of the Red Sea (it has some two thousand sharks per square kilometre, if my memory serves me correct), then it will be readily understood if, despite the overwhelming and almost unreal heat that makes the surrounding air quiver with a viscous bubbling, he feels a slight shudder at the approaches to the narrows of Bab-el-Mandel.

    Fortunately, because of the odd way the sky