My Manservant and Me by Hervé Guibert

Author:Hervé Guibert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nightboat Books

My manservant is extremely circumspect on anything having to do with teeth, to the point that I sometimes forget I only have one left, a sore spot for me. He acts like I’ve always had all of them, and no dentures, even though he’s the one who brushes them every night, and brings them back to me every morning in the glass of water that I pretend to drink, even as he immediately looks away. Once, however, my manservant declared something that caught me off guard: “Sir, I’m not joking when I say this: I’m ready to give you my teeth, to trade your device for my teeth which a dentist will have to pull out one by one by and graft onto your gums, that way you’ll have a smile that’s not so rigid as the one with your dentures, and I can just fill my mouth with gold.” I didn’t take him up on the offer, I just responded: “What a funny little idea! But don’t you care about having your own teeth? A young man’s stiff smile is far more unbearable than an old man’s.” My manservant cut me off: “How could Sir have possibly thought I was serious?” And he drew my bath. I don’t smile at my manservant anymore. He’s just as discreet when it comes to bathing me as to brushing my teeth. He never looks at my emaciated body, it’s as if I don’t have one, his eyes might pass over it but they never land on anything, they slide right past, like an ectoplasm. I’m always cold, so he rubs my feet vigorously with the towel, saying: “I’m giving Sir child’s feet again.” Similarly prudent with my dangling genitals and my wrinkly butt, he wipes them down with a towel, efficiently, repeating each time: “There we are.” I feel like he’s rubbing a chiffon cloth over some Chinese furniture, I’m a black console table that’s always a bit dusty.

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