During the midday break, he fetched his suitcase, coat, and umbrella from the locker and walked up the nearby rue Saint-Placide, where he found a small hotel inhabited primarily by students and foreign workers. He demanded their cheapest room, they offered him one for fifty-five francs, he took it sight unseen, paid in advance, left his baggage at the reception desk. At a kiosk he bought himself two raisin rolls and a pint of milk and walked over to the place Boucicaut, a small park in front of the Bon Marché department store. He sat down on a bench in the shade and ate.

  Two benches away squatted a clochard. The clochard had a bottle of white wine between his thighs, half a baguette in his hand, and a bag of smoked sardines lying next to him on the bench. He pulled the sardines out of the bag by the tail, one after the other, bit each head off, spat it out, and stuck the rest in his mouth. Then a piece of bread, a large swallow from the bottle, and a moan of content. Jonathan knew the man. In winter he always sat on the grating near the delivery entrance of the department store, just above the cellar where the furnace was, and in summer in front of the boutiques on the rue de Sèvres or at the door of the traveller’s aid or next to the post office. He had lived in the neighbourhood for decades, about as long as Jonathan had. And Jonathan remembered that when he had first seen him back then, thirty years ago, a kind of angry envy had risen up in him, envy of the happy-go-lucky way the man led his life. While Jonathan fell in for duty every day at nine on the dot, the clochard would come along at ten or eleven; and while Jonathan had to stand at attention, the fellow would lounge comfortably on a cardboard box and have a smoke; while Jonathan guarded the bank hour after hour, day after day, and year after year, at the risk of his life and as a way of painfully earning his keep, the fellow did nothing but trust in the sympathy and assistance of his fellow men, who tossed their cash into his cap. And he never seemed to be in a bad mood, not even when his cap remained empty, never seemed to suffer or to be afraid or even bored. He always exuded an infuriating self-assurance and self-satisfaction, an exasperating, publicly displayed aura of freedom.

  But then once, in the mid-sixties, in autumn, as Jonathan was walking into the rue Dupin post office and at the entrance almost stumbled over a wine bottle placed on a cardboard box between a plastic bag and the familiar cap with a few coins in it, and as he stopped automatically for a moment to look for the clochard, not because he missed him as a person but because the focal point of this still life of bottle, bag, and box was absent, he spotted him on the far side of the street, squatting between two parked cars, and watched as the man relieved himself: he was crouching beside the curb with his trousers pulled down to his knees, his rear turned towards Jonathan, totally exposed. People were passing by, anyone could see it: a pasty white rear end brindled with blue smudges and reddish scabby spots, that looked like the rear end of a bedridden old man – whereas the man was in fact no older than Jonathan himself at the time, thirty perhaps, at most thirty-five years old. And from this scruffy rear end a jet of brown, soupy liquid, of monstrous force and quantity, spurted onto the pavement to form a puddle, a pond, that sloshed about his shoes, and the splash was flung high and low over his soiled socks, thighs, trousers, shirt, everything….

  So wretched, so nauseating, so ghastly was the sight, that even now the mere memory made Jonathan shudder. At the time, after staring in horror for a moment, he had fled into the post office, paid his electric bill, then, though he really did not need them, bought some stamps to prolong his stay in the post office till he could be sure that on leaving he would not meet the clochard doing his business. When he did leave, he squinted, lowered his gaze and forced himself not to glance to the far side of the street, but hard to the left, up the rue Dupin, and he walked that way as well, to his left, although he certainly had no business to attend to there, simply so that he would not have to pass the spot with the wine bottle, the box, and the cap, willingly made a wide detour, via the rue du Cherche-Midi and the boulevard Raspail, before reaching the rue de la Planche and the haven of his room.

  From that hour on, Jonathan’s soul was dead to every sense of envy for the clochard. If, until then, a gentle doubt had still stirred within him from time to time about whether there was any meaning in a man’s spending one-third of his life standing at the entrance of a bank, while occasionally opening a grille and saluting for the president’s limousine, always the same, with minimal holiday and minimal pay, of which the greatest part disappeared in the form of taxes, rent, and social security payments … whether there was any meaning in all of this, the answer now appeared with the clarity of that horrible vision on the rue Dupin: yes, there was meaning. It was indeed very meaningful, for it safeguarded him from baring his rear end in public and shitting in the street. What could be more miserable than having to bare your rear end in public and shit in the street? What could be more demeaning than those pulled-down trousers, that crouch, that coerced ugly nakedness? What could be more wretched and humbling than being forced to do your embarrassing business before the eyes of the world? Nature’s necessity! The very term betrayed its tormented victim. And like anything that you had to do out of duress, it demanded, for it to be at all bearable, the radical absence of other people … or at least the appearance of their absence: a wood if you found yourself in the country; a bush if you were overcome in an open field, or at least a farmer’s furrow, or twilight or, if there was nothing else, a good steep bank that commanded a view of several miles in all directions, with no one in sight. And in the city? With its teeming masses? Where it was never really dark? Where even the ruins of an abandoned lot offered no adequate safeguard against obtrusive stares? In the city, nothing but a good lock and bolt helped you distance yourself from other people. And the man who did not have this one, this sure refuge for the necessity of nature, was the most miserable and pitiable of men, and freedom just silly talk. Jonathan could have managed on very little money. He could imagine himself wearing a shabby jacket, tattered trousers. If need be, and if all his romantic imagination were mobilised, it would even have seemed conceivable for him to sleep on a cardboard box and to reduce the intimacy of his own home to some nook, a heating grille, a stairwell in a Metro station. But if you could not close a door behind you to take a shit in the city – even if it was just the door to a shared toilet – if this one, most essential freedom was taken from you, the freedom, that is, to withdraw from other people when necessity called, then all other freedoms were worthless. Then life had no more meaning. Then it would be better to be dead.

  Once Jonathan had come to the realisation that the essence of human freedom consisted in the possession of a shared toilet and that this essential freedom was at his disposal, he was immediately seized with a profound satisfaction. Yes, it was indeed right to have arranged his life as he had! He led a thoroughly successful existence. There was nothing, absolutely nothing whatever to regret or to envy other people for.

  From that hour on, he stood on sturdier legs, as it were, before the entrance of the bank. There he stood as if cast in bronze. The solid self-satisfaction and self-assurance, which until then he had attributed to the person of the clochard, had flowed into him like molten metal, had hardened to an inner suit of armour, had given him specific gravity. Henceforth nothing could shake him and no doubt could cause him to waver. He had found his way to sphinx-like imperturbability. For the clochard – whenever he met him or saw him sitting somewhere – he felt only the sentiment that is generally termed tolerance: a very lukewarm emotional stew of disgust, contempt, and sympathy. The man no longer ruffled him. The fellow was of no consequence to him.

  He had been of no consequence to him until this very day as Jonathan sat in the place Boucicaut consuming his raisin rolls and drinking milk from a paper carton. Normally he would have gone home during the midday break. After all, he lived only five minutes away. Normally he would have fixed himself something warm on his hot plate at home, an omelette, fried eggs and ham, noodles and grated cheese, soup left over from the day before and a salad and a cup of coffee. It had been an eternity since he had sat on a park bench at midday and eaten raisin rolls and drunk milk from a carton. Actually he had no special liking for sweets. Nor for milk either. But he had paid out fifty-five francs for the hotel room today; it would have seemed an extravagance to him to have gone to a café and there ordered an omelette, salad, and beer.

  The clochard on the bench across the way had finished his meal. After the sardines and the bread, he had dined on cheese, pears, and biscuits as well, taken a big pull on his wine bottle, given a sigh of deep contentment, and rolled his jacket into a pillow, bedding his head on it, stretching his lazy, satiated body out on the bench for a midday nap. Now he slept. Sparrows came hopping over to peck away at the breadcrumbs, then, attracted by the sparrows, pigeons waddled their way to the bench to hack with their black beaks at the sardine heads that had been bitten off. The clochard did not let the birds disturb him. He slept soundly and peacefully.

  Jonathan watched him. And as he watched him, a strange disquiet came over him. This disquiet was not fed by envy as in the old days, but by amazement: how was it possible – he asked himself – that this man, well over fifty now, was still alive at all? Given his thoroughly irresponsible way of life, should he not long ago have starved or frozen to death, been cut down by cirrhosis of the liver – be dead at any rate? Instead, he ate and drank with the best of appetites, slept the sleep of the just and, wearing a cotton jacket and patched trousers – which of course had long ago replaced those that he had pulled down on the rue Dupin, relatively smart, almost fashionable corduroy trousers, apart from a repair here and there – gave the impression of a firmly grounded personality in finest harmony with the world and enjoying life … whereas he, Jonathan – and his amazement gradually mounted to a kind of nervous bewilderment – whereas he, who his whole life long had been a well-behaved and orderly fellow, unpretentious, almost ascetic, clean, always punctual and obedient, reliable, respectable … and every sou he had he had earned himself, and always paid cash, for his utility bill, his rent, the concierge’s Christmas tip … and never incurred debts, never been a burden to anyone, never once been sick or cost social service agencies a centime … never done anything to hurt anyone, had never, ever wanted anything from life except to maintain and guarantee his own modest, small contentment of soul … whereas he now saw himself, at the age of fifty-three, plunging head over heels into a crisis that confounded the life’s plan he had devised for himself and was making him crazy and confused and had him eating raisin rolls for the pure confusion of it, and for fright. Yes, he was frightened! God knows, he needed only to look at this sleeping clochard and he started trembling with fright: all at once he was dreadfully frightened that he might have to become like the dissipated man there on the bench. How quickly it could happen, impoverished and on the skids! How quickly the apparently solidly laid foundation of one’s existence could crumble. You missed Monsieur Roedel’s limousine came flashing through his mind again. Something that had never happened before and that never ought to have happened, happened today nonetheless: you missed the limousine, and tomorrow perhaps you’ll miss work entirely, or lose the key to the steel gate, and next month you’ll be ignominiously fired, and you won’t find a new job, because who would hire a failure? No one can live on unemployment cheques, by then you will have long since lost your room – there’s a pigeon living in it, a family of pigeons lives there, fouling and ravaging your room – the hotel bills grow to incalculable sums, in your worry you start drinking, more and more, drink away every centime you’ve saved, become a slave to booze with no way out, get sick, ridden by decay, lice, depravity, are driven out of your final doss-house, you haven’t a sou left, you stand before total ruin, out on the street, you sleep, you live in the street, you shit in the street, you’re at the end of your tether, Jonathan, within a year you’ll be at the end, like that clochard in his rags on the park bench, you’ll be lying there, his brother in degradation.

  His mouth had become dry. He turned his gaze from the mene tekel of the sleeping man and choked down the last bites of his raisin roll. It took an eternity before the bite got to his stomach, it crept down his oesophagus with snail-like slowness, sometimes almost sticking there and pressing and hurting as if a nail were being driven into his chest, till Jonathan thought he would choke to death on this nauseating mouthful. But then the thing did slide on, one tiny piece and then another tiny piece, and finally it was down, and the cramping pain subsided. Jonathan took a deep breath. He would leave now. He didn’t want to stay here any longer, although the midday break would not be over for half an hour yet. He had had enough. The place was spoiled for him. With the back of his hand he swept his lap and uniform trousers clean of the few raisin roll crumbs that, despite all the care he had taken, had fallen as he ate, pinched the folds of his creases, got up and walked away, without casting one glance more at the clochard.

  He was already back on the rue de Sèvres when it occurred to him that he had left the empty milk carton on the park bench, and that troubled him, for he hated it when other people left their rubbish lying on benches or simply tossed it on the street instead of where rubbish belonged, which was in the litter baskets set out everywhere. He himself had never simply tossed rubbish away or let it lie on a park bench, never, not even out of negligence or forgetfulness, something like that simply did not happen to him … and therefore he did not want it to happen to him today, especially not today, not on this precarious day on which so much damage had already been done. He was already on shaky ground as it was, was behaving like a fool as it was, like some irresponsible tramp, almost like a derelict – he had missed Monsieur Roedel’s limousine! Had eaten raisin rolls for lunch in the park! If he were not careful, especially in little things, and did not put all his energy into stemming the tide of such apparently trivial matters, like leaving his milk carton behind, then he would soon lose his grip entirely, and nothing would prevent his ending in misery.

  He therefore turned round and went back to the park. Even from a distance he could see that the bench on which he had sat was still vacant, and as he came nearer, to his relief he spotted the white carton of the milk container through the dark green of the bench’s back slats. Apparently no one had noticed his carelessness, he could eradicate the unforgivable mistake. Stepping up to the bench from behind, he bent down, right over the back, grabbed the milk carton with his left hand, and in straightening up again, gave his body a decisive twist to the right, in about the same direction he knew the nearest litter basket to stand – and suddenly he felt his trousers being given an abrupt, violent downward tug, and, since it had happened so suddenly and because he was in the midst of an upward rotating motion in exactly the opposite direction, he could not move with the tug. And at the same time there was an ugly noise, a loud rip, and across the skin of his left thigh, he felt the stroke of a draught that bespoke an unchecked invasion of air from the outside. For a moment he was so horrified that he dared not look. It also seemed to him that the rip – it was still echoing in his ears – had been so monstrously loud that more than his trousers had been torn, that the tear had ripped right through him, through the bench, through the whole park, like a gaping crevasse during an earthquake, and it seemed as if all the people round about must have heard it, this terrible rip, and in their shock were now watching him, Jonathan, as its instigator. But no one was watching. The old women went on knitting, the old men went on reading their newspapers, the few children over on the playground went on sliding down the slide, and the clochard slept. Slowly Jonathan lowered his eyes. The tear was about five inches long. It ran from the lower corner of his left trouser pocket, which had caught, just as he rotated, on a screw protruding from the bench, then down his thigh, and not in an orderly fashion down the seam, but right through the middle of the lovely gabardine of his uniform, and then finally made a right angle, about two thumbs wide, with the crease, so that there was not simply a discreet rent in the material, but a glaring hole above which fluttered a triangular banner.

  Jonathan felt adrenalin shooting into his blood-stream, the tingling stuff he had once read about – how in moments of great bodily danger and mental distress, a gland of the kidneys poured it out to mobilise the body’s last reserves for flight or for a battle to the death. In point of fact, it seemed to him as if he had been wounded, as if the gaping hole was not just in his trousers, but in his own flesh, a wound five inches long from which his blood, his very life, was gushing instead of circulating in its internal, closed system, and that he would die of this wound if he did not close it at once. But then there was the adrenalin, and even though he sensed that he was bleeding to death, its rush invigorated him most wondrously. His heart beat strong, his courage was great, his mind was suddenly quite clear and directed towards a single goal: “You have to do something at once,” he shouted silently, “you must take action right now to close up this hole or you are lost!” And even as he asked himself what action he could take, he knew the answer – so rapid was the effect of the adrenalin, that splendid drug, such were the wings that fear lent to intelligence and resolve. Quick to decide, he snatched the milk carton, still in his left hand, with his right, crumpled it up, threw it away, somewhere, anywhere, on the grass, on the sandy path – he paid no attention. He pressed his free left hand to the hole at his thigh, and stumbled away – keeping his left leg as stiff as possible so that his hand would not slip, flailing wildly with his right arm – in a storm-tossed limping hobble, ran out of the park and up the rue de Sèvres; he had less than half an hour.

  In the grocery department of the Bon Marché, at the corner of the rue du Bac, there was a seamstress. He had noticed her only a few days before. She sat right at the front, near the entrance, where the shopping trolleys were parked. She had a sign hanging at her sewing machine, and he could remember exactly how it read: JEANNINE TOPELL – ALTERATIONS AND REPAIRS – FAULTLESS AND FAST. This woman would help him. She had to help him – that is, if she wasn’t on her lunch break herself at the moment. But she wouldn’t be taking her lunch break, no, no, that would be too much bad luck. He couldn’t have that much bad luck on one day. Not now. Not when his need was so great. When you were in direst need was when you had good luck, when you found help. Madame Topell would be at her spot and would help.