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How easy the inquisitor's questions are! Compare them, he says, with the questions I sometimes dare not ask myself:

What hidden tribe gave you gangrene?

Are you utterly untainted by power?

Have you broken all the mirrors?

From what weaknesses do you draw your strength?

What taboos govern your rectitude?

Why do you pay lip service to the scope of your ignorance?

Do you not sometimes settle for a mere approximation of what you really wanted to say? Are you not sometimes annoyed by your own most righteous passions? Do you know not sometimes tend to curse your fine reasons for living?

Are you not a little prone to play the martyr?

from "Skinned Alive"

Donald Nicholson-Smith, translation from
the French written by Abdellatif Laabi


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