The Sermon on the Fall of Rome, стр. 42

wanted to unmask Annie by catching her in the act, it was the only way to do it otherwise she would completely deny everything, the fucking whore, the slut, the vile bitch, and he only calmed down when he had found a way to arrange the in flagrante delicto that his vengeful fury demanded. He recruited a group of young people in the town, making sure that Annie did not know any of them, and gave them money they were under orders to spend in the bar down to the last cent the following night. They were to claim they were just passing through the area and had no plans ever to set foot there again, and, above all, they must keep a careful note of all the drinks they had had, prior to making a precise report to Libero of what they had consumed, a mission they carried out to the letter. So the next day, when Annie came on duty in the afternoon, Libero was waiting for her in the bar with a big smile.

“You had a few people in last night.”

His smile froze for a moment when Annie replied “yes” and handed over the money together with the till receipts. Libero counted it and his smile returned.

“Not many people, then.”

No, not many, just a couple of fellows from Zonza who’d stopped off for a drink for a few minutes on their way home, she’d waited there and closed up at about five in the morning, it had been a long night, it couldn’t work every time, but no matter, and then Libero started to yell, paying no attention to the customers who nearly jumped out of their skins,

“When are you going to stop giving me all this crap?”

and he yelled that he knew Annie had had more customers but Annie replied,

“No! That’s not true! It’s not true!”

pouting stubbornly like a little girl, and he went up to her with clenched fists, describing each of the young people and reeling off a list of what they had drunk and telling her what they had paid, piling on the evidence relentlessly until all she could do was to burst into tears and beg for pardon. Libero said nothing. Matthieu thought, with relief, that the episode was finished, that Annie would get away with a proper lecture and the threat of punishment the next time she put a foot wrong, she would pay back the money and everything would begin again as it had been before, she said it herself,

“I was out of order. I’ll pay it all back. I’ll never do it again, I swear it.”

But Libero’s silence was not one of forgiveness and he had no intention of letting Annie repay her debt.

“I don’t want you to pay it back. Keep what you’ve taken. I want you to go up to the apartment, right now, and pack your bag and get out. I don’t ever want to see you again. You’re out. Now.”

Annie pleaded with him, she swore through her tears never to do it again, one after the other the customers got up and left the bar so as not to witness any more of the scene and Annie pleaded again, she’d been out of order but she’d also done good work, he couldn’t do this to her, where would she go? he didn’t realize, she was forty-three, he didn’t realize, he couldn’t kick her out like that, like a dog, and she repeated her age again, she was on her knees now, she reached out her hands to Libero who remained unmoving, eyeing her with a look of hatred, forty-three, he didn’t realize, she’d do everything he wanted, everything, and the more she wept the more Libero grew rigid beneath his protective shell of hatred, as if this woman before him on the ground were the incarnation in her quaking flesh of an absolute evil of which the world must be purged at all costs.

“I shall come back in an hour’s time, and, in an hour’s time, you won’t be here.”

When he had gone she got up unsteadily and Rym took her arm to help her climb up to the apartment. Matthieu did not dare look at her, a painful burden weighed on his chest, but he understood neither its nature nor its origin, he was waiting for night to fall and life to resume, without any further surprises, for he had once more become a little child who only finds reassurance in the perpetual repetition of what is the same, far away from ill-formed concepts whose unpleasant stirrings came to trouble his mind before bursting like bubbles on the surface of a swamp, he was waiting for the taste of the alcohol, for the constant tension that kept him sharp, his nerves on edge, alert for no purpose, and he was waiting for the moment of going to bed, Izaskun’s skin and Agnès’s eyes, despite the weariness, despite the acrid heaviness of breaths laden with champagne, gin and tobacco, the thick saliva that clung to stained teeth, sleep would come later, despite heavy eyelids, despite the strangeness of this impetus toward a body as exhausted as his own, which gave off the same toxins in damp sheets, and nothing would close his eyes in dreamless sleep before the unfolding of the nocturnal rite ordered by the law of this world, which was not the law of desire, for desire counted for nothing, any more than the weariness or the vulgarity of orgasm, and for each of them what mattered was to play their part in this choreography that validated their waking up in the morning, and kept them on their feet so late into the night. Thus are all worlds based upon ludicrous centers of gravity from which they secretly derive all their equilibrium and, as Rym took up her station behind the counter in Annie’s place, Matthieu rejoiced that the stability of this equilibrium had not, in the end, been threatened, he did not