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claim that enemies are extremely useful when you know how to handle them properly. In medicine, as you know better than I do, germs are used to fight the illnesses that they cause, are they not? The whole of serotherapy is based on the exploitation of our enemies to our own advantage. Isn’t the leech a parasite of man? Well, in a doctor’s hands it’s a very useful thing. Enmity is a force, a negative, contrary force, but it’s still a force, and all forces are exploitable by man to his own advantage. What do you think?”
    Pietro Nocera replied:
    “I think that with a mind like yours —”
    Tito interrupted: “ . . . it’s a pity to ruin it with alcohol.”
    The chief sub-editor turned to Tito and said: “You remind me of those who say it’s stupid to believe that seventeen’s an unlucky number, because it’s a number like any other; thirteen is unlucky, of course, they admit, but seventeen isn’t. That’s exactly what you do, Arnaudi. You’re killing yourself with cocaine, and you think it’s stupid of me to be killing myself with alcohol. You don’t see that if the two of us get on well it’s because there’s an affinity of poisons between us which in turn has led to an affinity of ideas.
    “You and I have the same type of mind, and basically Pietro Nocera has it too. The three of us get on well because we are all three attuned. We are simply men of our time, not three exceptional individuals who have come together to form a particular triangle. I may be wrong in saying that it’s our poisons that have made us like this. Perhaps it’s our being like this that makes us drown ourselves heroically in our sweet poisons. However that may be, I’m happy poisoning myself; and, as it give me a little joy, it would be absurd not to do it. If half a liter of alcohol is sufficient to do away with depression and transform the world in my sight, and if all I have to do to get half a liter of alcohol is to press a button, why should I deprive myself of it? If it were painful, I should understand. We could rid ourselves of all the agonies of love by having an operation, but it would be painful, and an operation is always a step in the dark. Instead I regulate my intake of alcohol myself; it’s a tool I use on myself with my own hands. I know very well that it earns me a great deal of disapproval, but I go on drinking all the same, because these five or six glasses give me a sense of well-being and result in insults seeming to be acts of courtesy, in sorrows being transformed, if not into joys, at least into indifference. Being removed from reality, I see it with the changed perspective that forms the basis of irony. What could be better than being near one’s neighbor without recognizing anyone and living in a kind of unconscious intoxication? Fools say I’m ruining myself, but what I say is that the fools are those who cling to the useless and contemptible thing that is life. Even our editor, who has such a clear mind, sometimes makes me sit down in front of him, tries to counteract the bellicosity of those ferocious moustaches of his by the gentleness of his voice and advises me to give up drink. But it’s only when I’ve been drinking that I’m fit for work, flexible, docile. When I’ve been drinking he could order me to polish the floor and I’d do it.”
    A thin, pale lady, dressed completely in black, came in, looked round, and sat at a table.
    “ De quoi écrire et un Grand Marnier,” she said.
    The waiter brought her writing materials and her drink.
    That’s Madame Ter-Gregorianz,” said Pietro Nocera, indicating the attractive new arrival. “She’s an Armenian, living at the Porte Maillot, and she’s famous for her white masses.”
    The lady wore a black tulle hat through which you could see the waves of her black hair; a black bird of paradise descended over one temple, caressed her neck and curved under her chin. Her face seemed to be framed in a soft, voluptuous upside-down question