Agamemnon's Daughter Read Online Free

elite or, to be more precise, of the upper circle’s dark side. That’s why our neighborhood activist had looked me over with his evil eye and had probably muttered under his breath: “What’s this guy doing here? Who the hell selected such a nonentity to sit in the grandstand?”
    That’s all it took to make me begin to watch out for signs of hostility. And the nearer I got to the Grand Boulevard, the more I noticed them. But I hadn’t seen anything yet. Just when I was least expecting it, when I had come to believe that I could now be pricked only by hauteur (people who were accustomed to getting invited every year would naturally take exception to newcomers), and that I had nothing to fear apart from a single enemy called jealousy, since the other, nagging, questioning foe (“So what did you do to earn the invitation, eh?”) had been cordoned off by our common condition on that score, since we were all more or less in the same boat, it was precisely at that point that the snake reared its ugly head higher than ever. Two youngish men in raincoats, with the kind of faces that made you think you’ve seen them before somewhere, but who knows where, looked me up and down from the side as they crossed my path. I got the impression that their glances had a touch of sarcasm about them. I turned around to make sure they weren’t focusing on me, that I was simply a trifle paranoid, but I saw to my alarm that it really was me they were glaring at. Not only did they carry on ogling me, they were also whispering in each other’s ears while the smiles on their lips twisted into something close to a sneer.
    I went red in the face. The automatic reflex of hurrying on past suddenly went into reverse, and I almost stopped to shout at them: “What’s making you cluck like a pair of hens? What makes you think I don’t have my own suspicions about you two as well!”
    I didn’t do anything of the sort, of course, but kept on going and tried to forget about them, to no avail I calmed down slightly when we got separated by a good-humored group, in the middle of which I could make out the squat father with his redand blue-beribboned girls.
    I was still carrying on under my breath my argument with the two young men. What gives you a monopoly on the right to suspect people? When all is said and done, what makes you any more qualified than I am in that domain?
    That’s what I muttered to myself, but, who knows why, I felt that nothing would ever wipe the snigger off their faces. However, I suddenly thought I had found the key to the mystery: the first person to entertain suspicion wins the match. The suspected person, despite probably being innocent, is always on the defensive simply from having been slow off the mark.
    What a crazy idea! I protested inwardly. As a last resort, I tried to recall what I had read about collective guilt and so on. But nothing came back to me.
    The beribboned girls ahead of me had started demanding something in twittering voices. The father dealt with them patiently, sugaring his answer with affectionate nicknames for each of his daughters.
    An ideal paterfamilias, holding his daughters by the hand, on a sunny socialist First of May. A pretty picture, I said to myself. But tell me — who’s paying for this idyllic tableau? Who did you put away to get your place in the sun?
    I was the first person to be surprised by my own outburst of anger. But surprise didn’t stop me from looking around with hatred streaming from my eyes. I’d turned into a terrorist, driven to ecstasy by the sight of blood, who starts to fire indiscriminately into the crowd. Since that was the way things were, I preferred to shoot first, and take my punishment later.
    He who lingers is lost.

4
    Soon thereafter, I felt my forehead glazing over with cold sweat. I’d lost sight of the two guys in raincoats and of the model family in blue and red ribbons. I was moving forward among strangers whom I had shamelessly attacked, at whom I