Funeral Rites by Jean Genet

Author:Jean Genet
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Grove Press

Nevertheless, I smiled. I was awaiting death. I knew it was bound to come, in violent form, at the end of my adventure. For what could I desire in the end? There is no rest from conquest; one enters immortality standing up. I have already considered every possible kind of death, from the death by poison that an intimate friend pours into my coffee to being hanged by my people, crucifixion by my best friends, to say nothing of natural death amidst honors, brass bands, flowers, speeches, and statues, death in combat, by stabbing, bullets, but above all I dream of a disappearance that will astound the world. I shall go off to live quietly on another continent, observing the progress of, and the harm done by, the legend of my reappearance among my people. I have chosen every sort of death. None of them will surprise me. I have already died often, and always in splendor.

I sensed the child's distress, and, despite my delicacy, I could think of nothing to say that would reassure him.

“You're very good-looking,” I said.

Paulo smiled wanly, with that extremely weary smile in which the teeth are not even bared. He did not take his eyes off mine, which had grown gentle. The gentleness that he could see in my gaze thrust me deeper into the region of foulness. I was a figure emerging from a silent cave. I seemed unhappy in the open, and it was evident from my attitude that I wanted to go back to my darkness. I think of that lair, the eye of Gabès.

“You're very good-looking,” I repeated.

But I felt that the sentence did not have the amorous ring that would shatter the youngster's fear. And my graciousness found the following: I placed my two hands on his eyes, obliging his eyelids to close. I waited ten seconds, then I said, “Are you less afraid?”

I was laughing wildly, and at the same time my left hand was pressing Paulo's shoulder, forcing him to sit down on the bed. I paused to contemplate the folds of his ear, the head part of which was shiny, polished. My laughter widened his smile and made him show his teeth. That wider smile in which the teeth got a breath of air and the light infused a bit of intelligence into Paulo, banished his fear and some of the mortal beauty with which that fear covered up his fate. He was less close to death, less dominated by the rites that the heart devises for the killing, but his body thereby gained a little well-being, a slight relief. Anyway, the first gesture of a man and not of a shadow that he made—laying his cap on the rug—led him a little farther into the light. The deep silence in the room, which was no doubt insulated by cork, reassured him, for the slightest noise, even that of an alarm clock or of water dripping from a tap, would have been suspect to him and have meant invisible, hence supernatural, dangers.

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