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By Root 876 0

their hidden weakness whose depths no book has ever plumbed, their element of madness, their conformism, their inescapable mediocrity and their ruined ambitions, the war of everyone against everyone, and the eternal rest to which they know that they will one day be condemned. But this conclusion is also correct because once you’ve grasped it, once you’ve understood that spitefulness is always born out of panic, a pathetic fear that has found this way out of having to expose itself, then you yourself are less afraid and better armed to resist and fight.

I’m going to tell you another story.

It dates from the same period. Although I thought then, just as I believe now, that you should not take legal action afterward, as the wrong has already been done, equally I believed and believe that you have to do everything you can beforehand, in the run-up to the publication of this kind of “book,” to limit the damage, clear the minefields, ensure that the worst lies are not all engraved in this wretched marble. So when I am asked to, I meet most of the authors of such books. I tell myself that there must be a speck of honesty in each of them that cannot resist my demonstration, with the help of hard evidence, that I am not a pedophile, that I didn’t kill my father or goodness knows what else. To be quite frank, I also think you shouldn’t miss an opportunity to have some fun and in fact (even if it is too soon to tell you more), I’ve had a lot of fun in misinforming that lot of idiots and making sure that even if their books were successful, they could only be ridiculous. So I agree to meet them when they are wise enough to request it for two good reasons, first the pleasure of misinformation and what almost amounts to a hoax and, second, an attempt to cushion the blow. One of them struck me as particularly vicious and I sensed him sniffing around some private matters that I really didn’t want him poking his nose into.

One day, after bolstering his ego in a suburban bar off the beaten track, I told him in the kindest, most honeyed tone, “Do you remember the conference of Helsinki and its famous baskets in the 1970s? Well, when I think of the slander, which I understand from your questions that you’re getting ready to publish about me, it’s the same kind of thing. There are some things that I can’t prove are lies. Let’s say we’ll put them in the first basket. There are some others where my keen lawyer Thierry Lévy will be able to make you eat your words and I assure you that he’ll do so mercilessly. And then there are some that I wouldn’t like to give any extra publicity to in a trial, even if I won. If you mention those you’ll lay yourself open to other types of revenge, such as getting beaten up, little accidents, minor and major frights. I know it’s not nice to talk like this, but isn’t it better, among good companions, to say this kind of thing before rather than afterward? Isn’t it preferable for everyone to reach this sort of understanding before it’s too late and while matters can still be rectified? Let’s call this the slander for the third basket, and I’m going to tell you exactly what it is …”

At that point, the guy got up. Very angry, his face purple with rage, he shouted, “That’s blackmail, sir. I won’t accept blackmail. There’s nothing left to say. Good night.”

So there I was on my own, like a fool, at the table, thinking, “I tried and failed. He might even—as I would do in his place—put the scene in his book and use it as an introduction. Too bad; it’s a good lesson. It’s never a good idea—and I knew that—to speculate too much on human baseness …”

I was at that point in my reflections when I saw the bar door open and the purple face reappear, a timid smile on his lips, his expression still antagonistic but a bit more pleasant. “OK,” he grumbled, sitting back down and taking out the policeman’s notebook he had been writing in before the incident. “I see that you’re not in your right mind and to some extent I understand that … your father, your wife, your children, yes, that I understand. But tell me, what exactly do