The Plimsoll Line Read Online Free Page B

put into practice on his own, to exhaust the options open to his opponent until finally forcing them to make a decision they, in their ingenuity, believed to be the fruit of their own free will but which was in fact nothing more than the logical conclusion of a long-drawn-out and well-planned siege. Victory through attrition, exhaustion, a process in which time loses all consistency and his opponent’s intellectual capability is reduced, since once the final maneuvers—prolonged silences, moderate but well-aimed reproaches, false compassion, reconciliation, hurried intercourse, and back to the beginning—have been exhausted, the other loses the match in the false belief that they have won it. This is why, when his wife said “we’re finished and you know it,” his innate dramatic vocation contented itself with a slight, episcopal nodding of the head—“You’re right, Ana, you’ve taken the words right out of my mouth.”

2

    The succubus laughs from the bedhead, and its laugh sounds feeble, asthmatic. The man sits up in bed as if that simple gesture were enough to stop the chatter. He says, “Enough,” and the word elbows its way through his mind. He says “enough” again and drinks down the glass of water that sits covered in bubbles. He holds the tepid, soft water in his mouth and gets out of bed, ready to spit it out in the bathroom. The succubus stifles its laughter and adopts the pose of a sentimental harlequin. It sheds a fake tear while watching the man head off in the direction of the bathroom, his cheeks full of water.
    Two slippers trailing along the hallway, a raucous piss in the toilet bowl, the water cascading down the drainpipe behind the kitchen wall, the forked hiss of the water tank . . . The house awakes with a sudden, vulgar succession of noises, and the anonymous observer slowly turns away from the photographs, leaves the entryway, and moves noiselessly across the living room to the back of the blue sofa at the foot of the stairs. Meanwhile, in the garden, the movement of the cat’s ears indicates it is uncertain whether to remain at its observation post, waiting for the mole to make up its mind to leave its tunnel, or to return to the porch and mew at the window, since the man, like every afternoon at this time, will exit the bathroom, come down to the kitchen, and open the door to the refrigerator, that olfactory paradise that promises first-rate slices of boiled ham to which, if the cat is lucky, its owner will add a gelatinous ration of braised chicken and vegetables. The man descends the stairs with a rhythmical clacking and reaches the first landing. He looks much older than in the photograph, an impression that is heightened by a set of clothes the observer would judge more suitable for a tramp were it not for the fact that the house discredits this hypothesis—a frayed bathrobe knotted loosely beneath his belly, coffee stains on the sleeves, prison underwear, the ampleness of which reveals the wearer has lived through less meager moments, pea-green socks that stylize the anorexic thinness of his calves even more, and warped slippers. The man crosses the living room and opens the window to the garden. Driven by the certainty of a snack offered in the form of a wafer-thin slice of ham that banishes the mole and the remote possibilities it represents as a hunting trophy to the depths of an inhospitable gallery, the cat abandons the deckchair and, with feline cynicism, deploys all the signs that indicate familiarity and welcome. It rubs itself against his calves, swishes its tail. “Hello, fucking Polanski,” says the man, patting it on the head, while the cat ignores this offensive greeting and effectuates a frail mew, slightly shriller than normal. Man and cat zigzag, getting in each other’s way, toward the kitchen. The animal gives the anonymous observer a mineral, transparent look. It is far too busy weighing up the possibilities of slices wrapped in silver foil to devote its