Like this, as much as the strong breast stands out, that triumphant signal was saying: “Come along! The feast can start!”

But why the hell did I speak of the breasts? Is it a sexual obsession linked to the senescence? I would like to get on... Oh yes! I am there: it was to show you how feminine was my Jeanne. It seems that the breasts are not at all capable to play, that important erotic role. Ah well have you seen? She had really feminine breasts, very much alive, such as I could not ask for anything better. And, on that territory of femininity, she never failed in her promises: she was a woman: she revealed herself a woman afterwards, every time that she invented a new quality: she is still a woman, she will remain a woman until her last day and even in the other world which the future would graciously grant her.

“- What? You find I did too much of it. May you know that for my Jeanne, there is never too much of it.”

Do you want other examples?

You will never come to rummage in the motor of her car by assuming an inspired air: besides she does not even know how to open the hood. If the chain of the bike has jumped, rather than pushing down her hands, she will prefer throwing the vehicle in the ditch. Her feminine beauty, which she studies and reinvents unceasingly with so much love, she does not want to be soiled with dirty oil.

In another life, would she like to drive a bus or a lorry? It is necessary to fulfil many conditions, and I believe that that will never happen. To start with, it is necessary that she will be exempted from the handling and the maintenance, activities which are a threat to beauty. Then, the rear view mirror must allow my Jeanne to see all of herself and clearly. The profile of the vehicle will be matching with the elegant silhouette of the mistress of the premises. The piloting cabin will be at the same time intimate and spacious: the décor, will conform to the good taste of the lady of the castle, and will be renewed as often as she desires. Evidently, the photos of her wonderful children will be there in a good place, as well as that of her beloved one and, perhaps of herself, and that of her good grandmother. An extremely reliable system of automatic piloting must assure the running of the vehicle. Like this, the driver can take care of the most important tasks: welcome in the piloting lounge the most interesting clients and discuss with them the best way to lead her life, her indispensable social activity which certain ignorant people, with a scornful tone, call chattering.

Therefore, for that time, and although she operates only by feeling, Mômmanh has well succeeded in her feminine ideal. I had every right to feel fulfilled, I who loved women so much.

And the cultural femininity, which generates history, did it succeed equally?... Ah well, no!... Very often even, I have thought that she was irreparably spoilt. It is true that I was not capable of understanding the process which had led my well beloved into fearing men and, sometimes even hating them.

The little man learns the existence in his family, principally besides god, his “Father”, and his goddess, his “Mother”. He learns a great deal at a tender age. It is there that the structures of his thought are formed, and it will be very difficult, nearly impossible to modify them afterwards. If the tastes and the necessary steps for the formation of a cultivated thought are not acquired yet so, the child cannot succeed in his long studies.

But, the failures in the education of my beautiful one were elsewhere.

It was in her family that Jeanne learned to distrust men as well as to love them.

Her grandparents were Spanish immigrants. They had come to France after the First World War, to escape the great poverty which they had in their country. (I cannot speak about the misery, because the great pride of that people forbids me from using that term. ) They decided rapidly to found a line in our country, and France became their homeland. Following a tradition that they had not dreamt of questioning, they had many children of whom some died.

The will that they put into becoming French could not forbid them from keeping certain values and certain Spanish customs. It was their cultural heritage of which, very often, they were not aware, being to such an extent part and parcel of them, a little like their faith and their pituary gland.

All that, in your childhood, you have integrated, whether good or bad, or even still like having a normal behaviour, do you believe you can do without it? Even if you make use of all your will power, it is impossible. In the first place, you will not manage to get rid of an accent! So, those precious know-how's and those deep attachments, acquired during youth, both during the moments of wonder as well as in those of fear, and which are like grafted in your being, all those veins of your soul, even if you accept to bleed to eliminate them, they are there for the whole life. As Maurice says, “One can never redo himself.”, whatever the learned pedagogues of our times say about it. (Maurice is a happy vagabond who sometimes came “for a drink” to our house, and whom Estelle loved to quote as an intellectual guide. )

All this to tell you that Jeanne's grandparents had Spanish roots which were still very strong, and fresh. Her mother, Paloma, pushed that way just as well by the will of her parents rather than by the necessity to integrate herself, discovered the French way of living at her neighbours, to start with, then in the street, and finally at school. In truth, she was quite often led to choose between the two cultures.

On the French side, she liked the status of the woman right away, so much so that her mother secretly praised her. Later on, the communist party had to strengthen that choice, because it needed to be a hundred times more equalitarian than our bourgeoisie republic.

If Paloma's mother, tied by her origins, was incapable of accompanying her daughter in that emancipation, she was aware of the benefits derived from it, certainly confused, but with sufficient force to encourage her daughter to take advantage of them. Such a point of view was in tolerable to her husband Mr. Gomez: it is because she took advantage of his absence to indoctrinate Paloma: “Oh my girl, above all, don't have ten children like me: what a lot of suffering!... And then, you know: to be free, you have to earn money. Like this, if your husband is unbearable, you can go away...” She said that in Spanish, the language of her heart.

As far as the good husband was concerned, the status of the woman in the Spanish tradition seemed like a sacred value to him. That his wife or his daughters could depart seriously from it was unacceptable for him.

However, his wife's sole and his were both originating from the same Spanish mould. But you know that our Mômmanh, the one who watches over our human nature, favours our ego every time that it is possible. Now, the status of the two sexes in France seemed, with regards to the Spaniards, advantageous for the women and de -spoilt for men. Therefore, by being equally attached to their values of origin, when they were faced by the problem of French feminine emancipation, father Gomez showed himself intransigent while his wife was rather more flexible.

What had to happen materialised itself.

The little Paloma had to help her mother in the housework, which was quite heavy at that time when linen was hand washed. Her brothers not only were exempted from those works which would have dishonoured them, but during mealtimes, they sat at table like little men, and their sister had to serve them. She did not have the right to hang about after school, neither to play in the road. Evidently, her brothers had all the freedom.

It was them who had to be good students in the French school, to integrate well in the new homeland and to have a good position later on, not to be manipulated in the building trade, like their father. They had to become gentlemen, in that beautiful country. Unfortunately, neither the daily begging of the mother, nor the grand theatrical scenes which the father sometimes made, in one of his outbursts of anger whose shouting and the terrifying oaths were the joy of all the district, neither the severe thrashing which was followed by a series of terrible warnings, nothing had the lasting effect which everybody was waiting for besides the wounds, bumps and rarely sometimes the torn clothes, the brothers brought from school mediocre grading and the reproaches of the teachers.

Paloma was the eldest of the Gomez children. If she had been a boy, being the father's deputy and on condition that he would assume the responsibilities linked to the right of the eldest, she would have had the right to particular attentions. But she was only a girl, and her place as the first born, besides the pride of helping her mother, cost her only a lot of ungrateful household tasks.

At the same time, little by little, she became aware of the walk of French women towards equality, she discovered in herself some qualities equivalent to those of her brothers. So she wanted, with all her strength, to realize herself fully. It was not only through a selfish desire to improve her personal situation. It was also out of generosity: since women had qualities hidden for many thousands of years, like buried treasures, it was necessary to release them so that humanity would benefit.

Paloma had inherited some of the great concern for being respected, the honour to which the Spanish are so tied; she called it dignity. She modified the conditions like this: “The woman worthy of that name has to prove that she too is as capable as a man and, consequently, demands the same rights for herself.”

Like this, she set about studying whole heartedly and that even more because the public school was the best place to discover the new femininity which her mother should not teach her. At the same time, she learned what later on, would assure her a good position of an emancipated woman. And why couldn't she become a civil servant? Perhaps even a head?... In all respects, she could well show them what a determined girl was capable of.

All proud and happy, on returning to their poor house, she brought back her good scholastic grades. Her unjust parents would have seen, it would not take them long to discover, at last, that evidence: their daughter was as capable as her brothers. So, she would be their equal: like them, one could also sometimes ask her for advice. Like them, she would have had the freedom to go out in the streets of the district. She could even, in the near future, be considered by her adorable father, for what she truly was: the eldest of the family, conscious of her responsibilities and quite set on assuming them.

But irrespective of the good grades and the congratulations of the teachers, the compliments of the parents were late in arriving, with the exception, of her mother, who had a feeling of great pride fearfully hidden.

One summer evening, while the long holidays were approaching, the school headmistress, Madame Lépagneul in person, paid a visit to the Gomez family. She roughly said the following to them: “Your Paloma is an excellent student. Not only is she gifted, but she is hard working, diligent, and lovable, to top it all, and there is no loss in that. It should not be allowed to let these qualities be lost. Allow her to continue her studies in the higher course of my school; she will prepare herself for the competitive exam of the entrance to the Ecole Normale d'Institutrices and she will become a teacher, then a school headmistress, like me. Rest assured that her studies will not cost you anything.”

In front of that loving and nevertheless energetic woman, Paloma's grandfather behaved like a peasant in front of a queen: because he respected humbly in her a notable person, an authority of the country which had welcomed him. But, after she left the house, he became again the head of the family, intransigent, and unwilling to share his power.

And, to everybody's surprise, the lightning struck on the Gomez family: the father, who had remained too Spanish, cursed his favourite child because she had become too French and was not suitable for a respectable girl.

He started by finding that he was too poor to allow his children to continue their studies, even though the costs were not high; if one of the boys showed good dispositions, on condition that each and everybody in the family did an effort to help him, perhaps one could pay sufficient years of schooling so that he would become a “Gentleman”; but it was not a question that one would do so many efforts to educate a girl. Not only, would it be like casting pearls in front of swine, but, surely, she would then become like the French, if not worse, those French who, nearly all of them, are bad mannered, they don't keep to their place, and dishonouring their family, they are nothing but whores, those women who sleep with anyone like the dogs, and who do not know not even the fathers of their bastards.

No! A Gomez will never tolerate such an abominable thing. Besides, to avoid all the danger of that sort, on the way to school, Paloma will be from now on accompanied by her brothers, on her way there and back. And it was necessary that everybody should keep an eye on her so that she would not escape from her house to go and linger on in the streets infested by louts.

In Paloma the anger increased and started to erupt like a Mediterranean river reduced to a trickle of water hidden under the stones under the effect of a sudden storm, transforms itself brutally in a furious devastating torrent. And her much beloved father was changed into an enemy she wanted to trample on. While swallowing her sobbing, she shouted that “Yes, she will continue her studies!” that “Surely yes! She would become a school teacher!” that “She would go out in the street all alone, whenever she wanted !” that “No! She did not want above all her stupid brothers to protect her, because she would be ashamed of such a company...”

A couple of bitter slaps on the face interrupted her before she buried herself in the small garden howling to all the neighbourhood that her father was only an old idiot, the most stupid and the most nasty of all France, that “None of her friends had such a bloody fool of a father like him, luckily enough for them !”, that She would prefer to loiter about the streets rather than continue to live in such a family...

Jeanne's terrible grandfather became as pale as death before the reddish hue of an uncontrollable rage lit up his cheeks. All the family rushed to calm him. When he could finally talk, it was the most terrifying oaths which came out first. I cannot repeat it to you because I will hurt uselessly some pious Christians; whatever is possible for me to say, is that he pretended to defecate on a holy character, extremely venerated and implored by the believers; I suppose that such an odious treatment with regards to a highly venerated one in Heavens was given to him out of vengeance, which he had well deserved for not having spared the head of the Gomez family the misfortune of having such a creature as a daughter.

Everybody awaited the verdict. It did not take long to come. Since Paloma was bringing shame on the family, she herself would be humiliated. Like this, she would never yearn to start again to become an unworthy young girl whom nobody would want to marry, not even an old hunchbacked gangster. Because, if one let her be, she would not take long to be wretched like a bitch on heat which drags behind her all the dogs of the district.

Paloma was only twelve years old and she did not bother at all to find a lover; however, the young girl's shape started to stand out through all the childish clothes which were too tight. Above all, she had magnificent jet black shiny hair, fine hair, flexible and long which rippled like the waves of the sea always on the move, big sombre eyes bordering on intelligent curiosity, already intrepid, the outline of an adult face which would not take long to reveal itself serious, friendly, mocking and, above all energetic: such were the principles making up a beauty still free in the garden of childhood...

(-“How do I know it, since I was not there? - Because somebody has related it to me, by Jove!”)

This is what Jeanne's grandfather did to save the honour of his family.

He announced that he was going, on the field, to shave Paloma's hair and that she would go like that to school, exhibiting her shame. Neither the children's protests nor the begging of his wife changed his determination; on the contrary, they persuaded him that all the family was contaminated by the bad French influence and that it was necessary to act very quickly. Such was his power that each member of the family, whether he liked it or not, came to help him to shear poor Paloma. While biting her lips, she swallowed her sobbing. Her eyes, seemed, like blazes. Her hair was burnt.

Her mother gave her a scarf to cover her shaven skull and it is like this that she went to school. Luckily, the long holidays were near. Some wicked school mates took the opportunity to try and torment her.

Nothing surprising. You know that Mômmanh has chosen for us a wish for existence organised in six elements. One of the six is the bond with the others.

In that element, the place occupied by our “myself” in the heart of the others is very important. She has different names according to its positive aspects (esteem, notoriety, glory... ) or negative (rejection, shame, opprobrium... ). Just as, in a family, each child jealous of his brothers and sisters tries to occupy the first place in his parents' love, in society, everybody wants to reach a high level in the heart of the others.

There are two ways in which to reach that high level. The most evident consists in raising oneself even by means of actions of a certain quality which please the others. The other is without nobility: instead of raising oneself, he wants to lower down the others, by tripping them for example.

The first means, generous, enriches existence: it is a vector of life. The second, strictly selfish, impoverishes the existence: it is a vector of death.

Therefore, those few selfish schoolmates whom we can call “pests” pretended that the “shorn” one was so dirty that she had caught lice, perhaps even scabies or some other disgusting infection. They wanted to “treat” her: “Dirty Spaniard!... Paloma Lice-Lice!... Spanish scabies”, but the side of the kind ones was very strong in silencing them.

During the holidays, her hair grew enough so that she did not need to hide it under the scarf. Therefore, she did not suffer much from what should have been a big humiliation. No, it is not there that she's been hurt, marked for life!...

She had just lost her father: such was at least the feeling that she had for a long time.

That man so strong, so generous, so handsome, such a rock, a family pillar, that model of a man without whom she did not know how to live, that adorable father,- “But at last ! What am I saying? It was much more than that: the Unique Man, Dad... the only man of the earth, had just exploded like a soap bubble, leaving in her heart only a sorrowful emptiness.”

And he whom she had just discovered, the nasty man who kept the place of her “Dear Father”,... she hated him.

“- Have I exaggerated, you'd tell me? - Hardly, believe me. The Gomez family, doubtlessly because of their Spanish roots, adore exaggerating.”

After that memorable evening, the Gomez father did not miss one single opportunity to humiliate his daughter publicly, principally in front of her brothers. She had to serve them at table, stand beside them while they ate sitting, and wash the crockery all by herself. She was the idiot, the fool, the slob, the stupid, the debauched, the shame of the family. After the end of the compulsory schooling, at the age of thirteen, having obtained, in spite of the negative blows, the famous Certificate of the End of the Primary Studies, she went to work to help her family survive. At sixteen years of age, she had a lover and her father compelled her to marry quickly.

How could she love that evil father who was set about causing the unhappiness of his daughter? How, could she be so stupid, as to admire for such a long time that evil man?

Bad! Bad! Bad!... And however, luckily enough, she could not forget the “Father” of her childhood. Here is why, all her life, her heart like a Norwegian omelette, all her life, Paloma was condemned to hate men as much as she loved them.

It is like this that from time to time and in an unjustified manner, Paloma started to pour a torrent of insults on her husband, Louis, that good man who is Jeanne's step-father.

You see that great guy, wearing his eternal cap which served to dress his skull as well as to protect it from bad weather. He has left his overall at the factory, to put on more suitable clothes, nearly elegant. Since he has no meeting today, exceptionally he soon goes back home in his suburban house. It is Louis, Paloma's husband.

Louis is the head of a workshop in a big enterprise, shop-steward, and sympathiser of the “Party”, which did not prevent him from having a vast culture as well as various competences, at the same time being a loving spouse and a responsible father of the family. I will speak to you of his faults another time: they are minor. Louis receives the respect and the sympathy of nearly everyone.

All those qualities did not prevent Paloma from pushing him down lower than the ground and to persevere on him by shuffling furiously on him like a doormat, in the figurative sense, of course, because he is rather strong to make her fall by a flick. Her voice marked by a deep contempt, she let her man know that he is a good for nothing, a “wet blanket”, an idiot who does not know how to distinguish between an iron and a roasted chick, a wimp which flattens itself in front of all those who assume a commanding tone, a stupid who trips in his own feet while walking, and, to conclude all, a sack of shit with an appalling stench. Such sessions of humiliation, more frequently in public, take place brutally, like a summer storm, with that difference that there were no warning signs close by. In that case, the Grand Louis scratches a little bit his skull beneath the cap, the attitude of one taken aback, and then he seems to understand something and returns to his business, indifferent to the storm which is raging.

Ah well, that abnormality in behaviour, my Jeanne had inherited from her mother. The legacy had not been made in front of a notary, but in the complicity which, from time to time, united mother and daughter. Jeanne learned that as a ritual which seemed important to her although she did not know the reasons: perhaps her mother did not want to destroy the beautiful image, which Jeanne had of her grandfather. It is because even my well beloved spouse practised the sessions of public humiliation on her husband, your servant, but uniquely in mitigated versions. Besides, she only did them in the presence of her family, at the time of reunions, like those Christians whose faith has faded, who forget the duty of assisting for mass every Sunday for such a long time that they remain distant from their parents.

With that element of her cultural heritage, Jeanne had already a good reason to mistrust the masculine sex. There was another, the fruit of a personal test which should have inspired her with a definite aversion in the meeting with her male complement. Luckily enough, she has known how to find the means of her cure. But, fearing probably to hurt our love, she has never dared to entrust me with what she went through that summer evening, of her eighteenth birthday. I incidentally learned it through the gossiping of Claire, one of her childhood friends.

Following in her mother's example, Jeanne wanted the same freedom like boys, and even more. One had tried however to put her on guard against the dangers which the defenceless young girls have to watch out for: she had only heard the nuisances to make her return amongst “the well behaved girls”.

For some reasons which I will not tell you, because I feel you are impatient, she who still ignored the happiness of being my Jeanne, the poor one, had no wish to celebrate her eighteen years; eighteen years which seemed to her leading towards distress. After having shared in her family the birthday cake, she had gone out alone to the cinema.

She had seen Brigitte Bardot, the bold star of the time, who dared show the erotic beauties of her body as well as the rewards, promised to those who knew how to conquer her. She dared provoke the sexual desire in men to seduce them better. To those for whom the erotic games still seemed dirty and diabolic, those exquisite effronteries said that carnal love was a feast. But that was not a revelation for Jeanne: she had already loved, with her thought as well as with her flesh. Alas, her lover had left her for another, before leaving for the War of Algiers. Therefore, the film did not answer the worries of the moment.

Moreover the heroin, not only accepted to be considered like an idiot, but she believed that it was right; little did it matter, provided she attracted men at her feet, keeping them on the lead like Pekinese, and leading them to satisfy all her whims, very often ruinous. Jeanne did not want above all to play the role of the “Ravishing Idiot”, even with the compensations which a luxury doll receives.

Night was falling. The shortest way to go back home crossed the “zone”, those uninhabited lands of which I have already spoken. Jeanne had gone out like a boy of her age and also as free as a boy, she chose the shortest way. She was not going to let herself be accompanied like the retrograded girls! At the same time that night was falling, observing that half wild territory where she had played so often in her childhood, she remembered how it was full of beautiful hiding places where even the smartest parents would not discover you.

So, just a little later, she thought that a girl runs more risks than a boy when she ventures like this alone and far away from any help.

Suddenly she was overcome by fear and started to run.

She heard some quick, numerous, steps and a fit of panic overwhelmed her. But already three men surrounded her with their arms stretched forth. A big brutal hand fell on her lips before she uttered a sound. She tried hard to recall all her energies to try, in all ways, to escape from such brutes, they gagged her quickly then, amongst the three of them, they carried her easily, like a sack of potatoes, as far as the hollow covered with wild grass spread in the middle of an entanglement of bushes and brambles; it was there, formerly, one of her favourite hiding places, where she related the most beautiful stories.

And I, I will not relate the rape.

When that was over, one of the criminals, the one who seemed to be the leader removed the gag of the poor victim: “There you are. You are a big girl now, for good. Say thank you to the gentlemen.” But Jeanne started to vomit. There followed a series of violent words which roughly meant:

“- Hi boys. One has come across a crazy girl, started the leader.
- On my word of honour, she is completely crazy, that woman, replied one of the accomplices.
- Completely mad, retorted the other. She has loved it however.”

It is then that the leader of the criminals took things in hand.

“- But it's true that she loved it. Is it true that you liked it? Hey! My slut. Are you going to answer? Good God!...
- Dirty filth ! replied Jeanne who was overtaken suddenly by a wave of anger. You are not a man. You are no longer a beast: no beast would do such things. You are a sack of excrements.
- Fortunately for you that you have done me some good: that renders me patient. Is it not true, perhaps, that you have looked for it, slut? Walking all alone in the zone, you were looking for trouble, hey! But say, Good God! that you loved it ! You were horny, slut, and you were burning to such an extent that it took three like us to satisfy you! Isn't it true, perhaps?

- How could you also be so stupid? You, a real bastard, doing me good? You have calf's flab in your skull, to think such a thing!
- Be careful about your words, you slut! I am running short of patience. You did me some good, I tell you!... See ?... Even if I had proposed to do that again, at my house, from time to time, but gently this time, and with great comfort. True ! You could have become my darling, if you were not such a crazy girl.”

As I have already told you, for the questions which the existential anxiety poses, we only find most frequently some approximate answers which we must believe: it is because we have a tendency to take our wishes for realities.

Another law leads us in the same direction. In the realisation of the existence, if the altruism commanded by the ideology is a priority, the selfishness, the “myself-here-now” is our “darling”. Although it seems attainable to a slight extent, we grant it preference. When the altruist says: “No, you must not steal money from your grandmother.” the selfish replies: “She does not need it.”. And our three rapists, when one tells them that they are criminals, they answer that they are, on the contrary, benefactors.

In order that the fault caused to somebody else does not appear evident, the selfish persuades himself that he is right. It is in this sense that he takes his desire for reality. The culture is a means to counter that fault: when one is well read in everything, it becomes difficult to hide the consequences of his acts.

“- You did me no good! Do you understand, you big itinerant waste? Being three on a single girl, you have hurt me a good deal, little dirty beasts and great cowards which you are. Like some little queer depraved who ganged in three to beat up a kid at the corner of the wood.
- You do not want to say thanks to dad, impolite? I don't give a damn! In any case, I've had you, my slut! You saw how I stripped you off! I fucked you as best as I could, my pretty one. It is good, believe me: you have enough for your life! Ah yes, your little buttocks are mine, now: it has been so well lined with my impact that all your life will remain like that! And all your life he will demand it of you. Ah yes, you can believe me, my little slut. There you are! Here is my number. You can call me when you are craving...”

One of the accomplices interrupted abruptly.

“- Hey! Shut up! Bloody idiot! Do you want her to hand us to the police?...”

Jeanne continued.

“- No? But it is not true. Do you believe in such idle talk? But that date of Cro-Magnon! You have never left your wood, poor retrograded child.
- Eh! Sweetly...
- Ah yes! I have screwed you well, so I have possessed you. You still believe that nonsense, poor half witted one! You have not possessed anything at all, do you understand!... Can an atom of truth go into your poor silly head?... First of all, what you call my “my buttocks”, in fact, it is the proper place, luckily, to make love and to conceive babies. It is there where you have placed your filthy stick. It is there that you have fucked. You understand when I use that sort of word? As if you have shitted in a chapel. Particularly a filthy old man: you have seen it easily. But, after all, that place can be washed just like any other. Since you don't know what it is like “to make love”, since you are too much of a non-entity to understand, you would have done better to fuck on the basin of the boys' toilets. You may be a wretch who found nothing to please girls, but not a criminal in this case.”

Along the course of its strong struggle for existence, man has cogitated a lot to satisfy his important needs. He has nearly always found some answers, which were adapted to his times. But, of course, his contemporaries did not want to do again the steps which had led to those temporary solutions: they have been satisfied with the formulas. The latter, since they touch our continuation, have become articles of faith transmitted from generation to generation, more and more detached from reality, and strong in spite of everything.

They have had to perpetuate themselves in that way, the three false ideas which we have just seen in action: “coitus is dirty, the adulterous woman is definitely filthy, and masturbation is a shameful feebleness”. Let us see the second.

There was a time, some thousands of years ago, where men understood like this the phenomenon of reproduction: “Woman is the earth, man buried his semen there.” On that wrong basis, it was logic to suppose that the grains which had not yet blossomed could awake, be it by giving a baby, or be it by contributing to it. The husband who wanted to generate his own descendants had to therefore watch over rigidly that his spouse came to him still a virgin and had to be kept away from other men. Failing which, she risked giving him bastards instead of the proper descendance. It was in this case that she was filthy. And it is that last conviction, detached from its distant origins but anchored in the heads, like a virus, which continued to cause damage. 

“She has failed, therefore she is filthy, and so she is a whore.”

The third virus, under its innocent air, does some damage as well. Man produces a superabundance of sperms and he feels the need to dispose of it. If the masturbation is forbidden, for a long time because he has not found a consenting lover, he has to suffer the ever increasing pressure of the unfulfilled need. Will there be less rapes ?... incests ?... degrading sexual trafficking ?... if the solitary relief was no longer considered as a destructive vice of virility and even of health, if it was no longer shameful ?

Let us go back to Jeanne, still in the hands of the rapists. Anger leads her to take enormous risks: the leader of the wretched trio loses patience. He repeats to the poor girl.

“- Have you finished saying stupid things?
- No, I have not started. But I can always try. All that I wish for now, you see...
- It is that!... You have been gentle, just the same. So, make a wish.
- All that is wish for now is to see you three die with your throat open in a ditch of shit.
- Hi pals! What does she want, the slut?
- She is asking for more.
- Do you believe? It may be that, but she is too much of a filthy swine. A good hiding is what she needs.
- Come on guys, take it easy! I have a wonderful idea: we are going to have fun, you will see! Dédé, pass me your can of beer...”

Jeanne did not wait to see what was going to happen. Escaping from her executioners, she jumped across the brambles and she started to shout, out of terror and anger. Then, behold a miracle! Some human voices made an echo and a party of revellers who was passing over there came to the rescue. I need not tell you that the three torturers, the ravagers of love, had already escaped.

“- How? You might tell me, that particularly despicable rape has not traumatised her for life? - Oh well, no. She found the means to come out of it.”

Some beliefs have been born in the distant past, as an outcome of deep reflections which seemed quite completely pertinent. The law hardened them like rocks, then time fossilised them and now, they poison our existence. Ah well, the fiction-theory which I call Mômmanh gives us the means to get to the bottom of them.

Like in psychoanalysis, it is enough to relive their history by means of thought. So, in the light of modern knowledge, their absurdities become evident. Then the fossils start to crumble before falling in dust.

But my Jeanne did not know Mômmanh yet. And then, luckily enough, to eliminate the after effects of a rape, she had other remedies.

First of all, she had studied passionately the process of male reproduction: the superstition concerning a supposed defilement was diminished however. Afterwards, her communist education had taught her this: rape is surely deplorable, but like the theory of “The Struggle of the Classes” cannot be explained, the lasting trauma that it causes often is only in the imagination. Finally, and above all, my Jeanne had already expe rienced love: carried away by her impulsive nature, she had felt more strongly than others the delights which Mômmanh lavishes on us on that occasion. She wanted to find that happiness again and the despicable dirt of those three brutes was not going to forbid her from doing so.

In any case, it was not the rape which traumatised her most, but the fact that she had been attacked by same beings like her. Her great trust in human beings found itself shattered even more, particularly in what concerns the category of the “adult male”. To start with, she decided not to venture alone in the dangerous places and a series of nightmares came back to remind her very often how that wise decision was imperative: like this, she instilled it deeply in her head.

During some months, the act which we poetry engineers, I want to say “the psychologists”, qualify as sexual, the “sexual act” therefore, seemed repulsive to her, linked as it was to the memory of the violence inflicted upon her by those three criminals. Every time that she met a healthy man,- and there are plenty of them- , she saw the mask of the three brutes placing itself on her face. But she managed rather rapidly to remove it, that mask of a nightmare. Soon, she was capable again, when limited opportunities presented themselves, to experience a blossoming sexuality, as the sexologists well define it, quite useful to avoid myself the repetitions.

So, and even after a despicable rape, the still strong memories of the ancestral taboos can stop the formidable momentum which sweep it away. It is necessary to sweep aside those misleading troublemakers from loving in our times, and they were so: they vanished like the crust of an old wound finally turned into a scar eliminated, by the new and healthy flesh. As soon as the moment had arrived, my beloved gained the happiness of making love, better than before.

And now, my dear friend reader, do you want to do me a favour? Will you remind me what the aim of the long digression was? Ah! Yes! I remember: Jeanne had started to explain to me why, from time to time, she ill-treated me without apparent reasons.

“- Our baby will soon be there, she said to me, he must find a peaceful hearth, to develop well.
- That is what I think. So, there must be no quarrels in the household.
- No more quarrels in the household. Otherwise, hardly has he arrived, he will have already an obsession: clearing off the camp! And finding other parents!
- What a horror! So, you will no longer look for me to humiliate me even in front of the family?
- No, I will do everything possible so that it will not happen any longer. Besides, you perhaps don't know it, but after a quarrel, I am sorry and I give you a little treat so that you will pardon me.
- Since you say it to me, I believe I remember now, those treats. If I did not mention them, first of all I am waiting for other things.
- And what then?
- Some excuses by Jove.
- Some excuses! That, never!...
Never!... Do you understand me ?...”

For that time, I had the wisdom not to push the discussion any further. I was hoping that, later on, the favourable moment for a resolution of the conflict would come. Luckily enough, I could not then appreciate the stretch of the events which we had to face before arriving there, because I could have lacked courage and it seemed to me that I would not have lived, passing on that land like a soap bubble, except that the last one, that vanity bubble, doubtlessly does not suffer, even at the moment as it bursts.

Besides, even if the way in which she made me know it was detestable, wasn't Jeanne right on the subject matter, by judging that I was not worth of the trust? Remember the way in which I conceived existence as a couple!...

1789: “Freedom, Equality, Fraternity”. Two centuries later, it had not yet been integrally realised.

When a revolution takes place, that is to say a substitution of an ideology in power, it never happens that the people and the material means are entirely ready: to start with, one must satisfy himself with a demi-revolution. Equality, for example, which Jeanne and I had to contend with, like two dogs who wanted to fight over a bone, ah well, it was impossible to realise it right away. One had to wait for the lower class to be one over by the taste for studies, that he has the means to go to school, that he picks up the habit of controlling his ediles rather than trusting them blindly, that women were freed from the multiple pregnancies and other subjections, and I stop there, because I can fill ten pages like this...

It is like this that in 1968, the gap between the revolutionary promises and the daily life was particularly striking. For whom?... For the young ones evidently, at the age when they reject the security of the family life belts and they take the plunge on their own in the tumult of existence. Naturally they start by making an inventory of the fixtures. In that year, an important updating seemed necessary to them, a revision which their elders, engulfed in their traditions, could not understand.

In 1968 therefore, the young ones made the inventory of the promises which had not been kept, those of the eighty-nine as well as the revolutionary ideas adopted after: the sexual freedom, the emancipation of women, the existential freedom, the equality of opportunities, the equality in front of justice, the control of powers by the people... That made a sacred ramdam. De Gaulle never recovered from it.

Our generation has preceded that of the sixty-eight. It did not have the same worries. However, at least on the important project of the female emancipation, Jeanne had taken advantage.

All this to tell you that, my Jeanne so badly loved, as well as that too dear myself, we had a long way ahead of us before realising a crude attempt of the new love. But love, which, after all, is a fusion of two existences, isn't it always new, always to be invented, everyday, as one goes along governing our life and carried away on the river of “Time”? Yes, surely, but we ignore it: otherwise, the misfortune could perhaps have passed its way.

Africa had to participate in the following stage of our search while we proceeded tentatively and stumbled. The Ministry for Cooperation had proposed a post in Upper-Volta, a place which afterwards chose the name itself and which we now call “ Burkina Faso”. I ignored the existence of the Republic of Upper-Volta. After having consulted the atlas and an encyclopaedia, I informed Jeanne of the good news. She accepted right away.

However, I felt curious that she only prepared a simple suitcase, nothing else as if we were going on vacation for a few days. Taking my desires for realities, I attributed that fact to the proverbial inconsequences of women, incapable of elaborating a future plan and to hang on to it, because reflection is repulsive to them: they are like this without defence in front of the events which surprise and jostle them. Luckily enough, the men are there. Dear Jeanne, so fragile! I loved her twice as much for it. Ah yes, happy idiot, I was even more stupid than now.

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