96
PARTISAN REVIEW
This business of moving in and out gives me nausea, as though I
were living on some wretched boat, and not in this most lovable
city.
I
have no desire to write, or read, or talk, or do anything at all, except
lie down on the couch and dream of wilderness: Arizona, Lower Cali–
fornia, Patagonia. But even Long Island would do, or any place that
were at least fifty miles from the crowds-and the rules. I wonder why
I am living in Paris at all. What do I get out of it?
I get the
Figaro
every morning, plus another paper, preferably a
leftist one, to strike the balance and puzzle the onlookers, since the paper
you buy in Paris is not just a paper, but also a flag and an insignia. I
used to get
Combat.
But
Combat's
third reincarnation, under Louis
Pauwels, is so discolored, that I now get the
Aurore
and
Franc-Tireur,
by turns. The first gives me the best crime reportage, much better than
the
Daily Mirror's
in dramatic value. Two of them, lately, were excellent.
One was the story of the
machine
a
tftrangler.
A
rentiere
in her fifties
had rented a villa she owned in the Midi to a Monsieur in his late forties.
The Monsieur was
tres bien,
since he paid a high rent with admirable
regularity. One day, he sent the lady a letter offering to buy the villa.
The
rentiere
was enchanted, and went to talk things over with the gentle–
man right away. They met in the
salon,
debated the price, agreed. Then
Monsieur took out of a drawer the
machine
d
tftrangler.
The contraption
was both simple and ingenious: it consisted of the revolving drum of a
Colt to which a piece of steel wire of a convenient length was attached.
Monsieur explained to Madame how the thing worked: the wire was
passed in the form of a noose around the throat of the patient, then in
the proper way around his arms and chest, the length of the whole, and
especially of the noose, being automatically controlled by the revolving
drum in such a way as to strangle the person in question as soon as a
certain peg had been reached. Keeping the upper part of his body
extremely tranquil, except for breathing, was vital for a person wearing
such an ornament. Clear?
And now would Madame mind following Monsieur out in the
garden? In the garden was a shack, all padded inside. There Madame
remained locked for three days, without food or drink. The third day
Monsieur came back, and proceeded to the application of the
machine
a
etrangler
to Madame's exhausted body. Thereafter, the poor
rentiere
appears to have become nothing but an inert instrument of the criminal's
plans. She was forced to call up her lawyer and instruct him to send
all her stocks and bonds to the bank; then, still chained to her torturer,
she had to go to the bank, sell her property, and collect the money. After
which the couple went to a restaurant, where the inventor of the strang-
