Adam Haberberg by Yasmina Reza Read Free Book Online Page B

other end of the apartment. Do you have any idea, Irene had wept, lying prone on the bed and turning the face of a demented woman toward him, do you have any idea of the vulgarity of this conversation? Don't change the subject. I want to know who these other people are, I want to know the meaning of that remark immediately. Do you find it normal to discuss your wife's breasts on the telephone?! Irene, you've given yourself away. You can't begin to imagine what I'm capable of now! Do you find it normal to joke about my breasts with a stupid prick who likes only whores and manicurists, a notoriously brainless scrounger who eats sprats for breakfast?! I don't give a flying fuck about Albert, don't change the subject!
    Say you're sorry, Irene had bawled, down on your knees and say you're sorry, say I'll never discuss my wife's breasts with anyone ever again! I should kill you now, Adam had replied. So what are you waiting for? Irene don't push me! Given the life we lead you might as well go ahead! she'd challenged him, kneeling on the bed and offering her neck. Adam hears her voice saying go ahead, squeeze, squeeze, he sees her legs twitching, he hears the little boy's voice saying, what's happening and his own commanding, get out, get out, shut the door. And then the older boy appears and says you're nuts and starts crying, followed by the little one and Adam wants to murder the lot of them.
    If you don't understand self-destructiveness in a man, you don't understand men, he remembers saying, during the hellish discussions that follow crises. Better stark tragedy, he thinks, than these nauseating postmortems. You had to understand this mania for talking, this mania women had for always wanting to talk. This ignoble need for explanations. Considering how rare and insipid their sexual encounters were it would make sense if Irene had a lover. Adam resisted this bitter hypothesis. Adam wanted no talk of this bitter hypothesis. And if an access of madness or violent behavior overcame him, he didn't want to talkabout it. Madness yes, discussion no. Irene charged him with irrational jealousy. Where will this irrational jealousy lead you? she said. Adam didn't take
irrational
to mean groundless, he took it to mean absurd, given that the ties now binding us are minimal. A spurious jealousy, he thinks, there in the Wrangler Jeep, that's what he takes it to mean. A terrible word, he thinks, there in the Wrangler Jeep, that he could apply to his entire condition, for a man must be recognized for what he aspires to be, and who am I, he thinks, staring out through the windows at the darkness sullied with fog, if not a spurious paterfamilias, a spurious writer, in other words, he thinks in the Jeep idling in the traffic on the A6 throughway, a spurious man? Do you have children? he says to Marie-Thérèse.
    “No, sadly, no.”
    “Would you have liked to?”
    “Yes.”
    “Why didn't you?”
    “That's how it was.”
    “Didn't Serge Gautheron want them?”
    “That's not it.”
    “So you weren't able?” he says, knowing he should have stopped two questions earlier.
    “That's not it.”
    “So what happened?” he asks, made impatient by her
    hushed tones.
    “I lost the baby, twice.”
    “You had two miscarriages?” he insists, irritated by
    her tone and the word
baby.
    “Yes.”
    “For what reason?”
    “They don't know. Often there's no reason.”
    “You didn't try again?”
    “Yes.”
    “I didn't hear that.”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “And you didn't try with other men?”
    “Yes…”
    What's the point of all this mawkishness, these hushed tones, what's the point of all this miserliness with words? Life is cruel, OK, no point in laying it on thick with a tremulous voice, thinks Adam.
    “That didn't work either?”
    “No …”
    First find your man who wants to give Marie-Thérèse Lyoc a child, Adam says to himself. But no, he thinks at once, at the school gates you can see dozens of Serge Gautherons and Marie-Thérèse Lyocs,