Free Hygiene and the Assassin by Amélie Nothomb Page B

not something disturbing about the fact that one uses the same instrument—one’s hand—for both writing and masturbation?”
    â€œYou also use your hand to sew on a button or scratch your nose.”
    â€œHow trivial you can be! Besides, what does that prove? The vulgar uses need not contradict the noble ones!”
    â€œSo masturbation is a noble use of the hand?”
    â€œIndeed it is! The fact that, all alone, a simple, modest hand can perform something as complex, costly, tricky, and volatile as sex, isn’t that amazing? To think that this kindly, uncomplicated hand can procure as much, if not more, pleasure than a woman—who is a high-maintenance nuisance—isn’t that admirable?”
    â€œWell, naturally, if that’s the way you see things . . .”
    â€œBut that’s the way they are, young man! Don’t you agree?”
    â€œListen, Monsieur Tach, you are the one being interviewed, not me.”
    â€œIn other words, you get off easy, is that it?”
    â€œIt may please you to know that I don’t feel I’ve gotten off easy thus far. Here and there, you’ve been pretty rough with me.”
    â€œSomething I enjoy doing, it’s true.”
    â€œFine. Let’s get back to our organs. Let me recapitulate: a way with words, balls, prick, lips, ear, and hand. Is that it?”
    â€œIsn’t that enough for you?”
    â€œI don’t know. I thought there would be more.”
    â€œReally? What more do you need? A vulva? A prostate?”
    â€œNow you’re being trivial. No. Perhaps you’re going to make fun of me, but I was thinking that you also need a heart.”
    â€œA heart? Saints alive, whatever for?”
    â€œFor feelings, love.”
    â€œThose things have nothing to do with the heart. They are the realm of the balls, prick, lips, and hands. That’s quite enough.”
    â€œYou’re too cynical. I could never go along with that.”
    â€œBut your opinion doesn’t interest anyone, you said so yourself a minute ago. I don’t see what is so cynical about what I said. Feelings and love are the business of organs, we agree on that; what we disagree on is only the nature of the organ. You see it as a cardiac phenomenon. I’m not rebelling against that idea, I’m not throwing adjectives in your face. I merely think that you have bizarre anatomical theories and, as such, they are interesting.”
    â€œMonsieur Tach, why are you pretending you don’t understand?”
    â€œNow what are you on about? I’m not pretending anything at all, you rude so-and-so!”
    â€œHonestly, when I was talking about the heart, you know perfectly well I wasn’t referring to the organ!”
    â€œOh, no? What were you referring to, then?”
    â€œTo sensitivity, affectivity, emotions, don’t you see?”
    â€œAll that in one stupid heart, full of cholesterol!”
    â€œCome now, Monsieur Tach, you’re not being funny.”
    â€œNo, indeed, you’re the one who’s being funny. Why are you saying all these things that have nothing to do with the topic of discussion?”
    â€œAre you daring to imply that literature has nothing to do with feelings?”
    â€œYou know what, young man, I think our understandings of the word ‘feeling’ diverge. For me, if I want to smash someone’s face in, that’s a feeling. But for you, if you can weep at the lonely hearts column in a woman’s magazine, now that’s a feeling.”
    â€œAnd what is it for you?”
    â€œFor me, it is a frame of mind, that is, a fine story crammed full of deceitful ideas of which people convince themselves in order to procure an illusion of human dignity, and to persuade themselves that they are filled with spirituality even when they are taking a crap. It is above all women who invent such moods, because the type of work they do leaves their mind free. For one of