debt and forgotten. Revolution, where are you? Are you sinking in flames in the middle of Lac Léman, absurd sun that sheds no light on the depths where I’m making my way, incognito?… Between July 26 and my inflationary night, I keep inventing the arms of the woman I love and celebrating through the weary repetition of my prose the prophetic anniversary of our revolution. I keep coming back to this torrid room. Beneath our mingled bodies a muffled sound came to us from the joyful city: a constant gasping, unendurable punctuation transmitted all the way to our maquis. And I remember the disorder we inflicted on everything around us; I remember the brightness of the sky, the darkness inside our flying cabin. It was hot, very hot, on that June 24. It seemed to us, my love, that something was about to begin that night, that our torchlit parade would set fire to the colonial night, fill with dawn the great valley of the conquest where we’d seen the light of day, where on this summer night we’d reinvented love and, in the tremors and the tricks of pleasure, conceived a dazzling event that is loath to come into being. But tonight I am depopulated: my streets are empty, desolate. All these joyous people are abandoning me.The important persons I yearned for are breaking away from the future. The plot is being resolved at the same time that my sentence is dislocated without any fuss.
I won’t accept that what was being made ready on that particular June 24 won’t come about. An apocryphal sacrament joins us inextricably to the revolution. The project we’ve started we shall finish. To the very end I’ll be the person I began to be with you, in you. These things happen. Wait for me.
I FLOOR THE gas pedal. There’s a quiet place I know near the Château de Coppet. I can get there in a few minutes. I’ve already wasted too much time. As soon as I’ve finished with my passenger, I’ll leave the Opel near the Coppet station and take the omnibus-train to Geneva where I’ll get my Volvo back; this time, I’ll take the expressway so I’ll be on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre at half-past six to join K. Better yet, I’ll take the train to Lausanne, I’ll get a taxi at the station, and I’ll be at the Hôtel d’Angleterre three or four minutes later. I’ll abandon the Volvo immediately and gladly and report the incident to the Bureau, a mere formality. After all, I’m not going to travel around in a car that’s already been identified. Here I am at Coppet, ravenously hungry (it’s already past twelve-thirty), but I’ll eat when it’s over. I’m anxious to be done with H. de Heutz and all the rest. Before I board the train that will take me to Lausanne, I’m sure I’ll have a few minutes to munch a
croûte zurichoise
at the station restaurant, washed down with white wine from the Valais. While I wait and as I make my way through Coppet en route to the Château, I concentrate on the problem of von Ryndt-de Heutz. The minute the trunk is open, I’ll bring him out at gunpoint and haul him into the forest. It won’t be hard to find the clearing where I picnicked with K one beautiful Sunday afternoon. Here isNecker’s chateau already, with its worn-out romanticism and its princely iron gate. Now I just have to turn left. Yes, that’s it. I stay in second gear. All around me there’s nothing and no one. I’m perplexed. This bit of road doesn’t lead to the little forest, at least I don’t think it does. I stop the car, letting the engine idle. I decide to go on. I advance a few hundred feet: already the broader landscape looks familiar. Yes, I’m here. I advance cautiously, nearly at a walk; if I take anyone by surprise I can always claim I’m a tourist exploring the area around the chateau. All that’s missing is an edition of Benjamin Constant’s diary. I know where I am now. The edge of the forest. Will I have trouble finding the entrance we used in the parchment-green Renault we’d rented
I won’t accept that what was being made ready on that particular June 24 won’t come about. An apocryphal sacrament joins us inextricably to the revolution. The project we’ve started we shall finish. To the very end I’ll be the person I began to be with you, in you. These things happen. Wait for me.
I FLOOR THE gas pedal. There’s a quiet place I know near the Château de Coppet. I can get there in a few minutes. I’ve already wasted too much time. As soon as I’ve finished with my passenger, I’ll leave the Opel near the Coppet station and take the omnibus-train to Geneva where I’ll get my Volvo back; this time, I’ll take the expressway so I’ll be on the terrace of the Hôtel d’Angleterre at half-past six to join K. Better yet, I’ll take the train to Lausanne, I’ll get a taxi at the station, and I’ll be at the Hôtel d’Angleterre three or four minutes later. I’ll abandon the Volvo immediately and gladly and report the incident to the Bureau, a mere formality. After all, I’m not going to travel around in a car that’s already been identified. Here I am at Coppet, ravenously hungry (it’s already past twelve-thirty), but I’ll eat when it’s over. I’m anxious to be done with H. de Heutz and all the rest. Before I board the train that will take me to Lausanne, I’m sure I’ll have a few minutes to munch a
croûte zurichoise
at the station restaurant, washed down with white wine from the Valais. While I wait and as I make my way through Coppet en route to the Château, I concentrate on the problem of von Ryndt-de Heutz. The minute the trunk is open, I’ll bring him out at gunpoint and haul him into the forest. It won’t be hard to find the clearing where I picnicked with K one beautiful Sunday afternoon. Here isNecker’s chateau already, with its worn-out romanticism and its princely iron gate. Now I just have to turn left. Yes, that’s it. I stay in second gear. All around me there’s nothing and no one. I’m perplexed. This bit of road doesn’t lead to the little forest, at least I don’t think it does. I stop the car, letting the engine idle. I decide to go on. I advance a few hundred feet: already the broader landscape looks familiar. Yes, I’m here. I advance cautiously, nearly at a walk; if I take anyone by surprise I can always claim I’m a tourist exploring the area around the chateau. All that’s missing is an edition of Benjamin Constant’s diary. I know where I am now. The edge of the forest. Will I have trouble finding the entrance we used in the parchment-green Renault we’d rented
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