police are at the end of the assembly line, You've learned a lot, I'm at a good school, sir, Do you know something, I'm all ears, sir, Let's leave the poor devil alone, who knows, tonight, when I get home, or later on, in bed, I might tell my own wife what the letter said, and you, my dear cabinet secretary, will probably do the same, your wife will look at you as if you were a hero, her own sweet husband privy to all the secrets and webs that the state weaves, who's in the know, who inhales, without benefit of a mask, the putrid stench of the gutters of power, Please, sir, Oh, take no notice, I don't think I'm as bad as the worst, but sometimes I'm suddenly very conscious that that isn't enough, and my soul aches more than I can say, Sir, my mouth is and will remain closed, As will mine, as will mine, but there are times when I imagine what the world would be like if we all opened our mouths and didn't stop talking until, Until what, sir, Oh, nothing, nothing, leave me alone now.
Less than an hour had passed when the prime minister, summoned urgently to the palace, entered the office. The president gestured to him to sit down and, as he handed him the letter, said, Read this and tell me what you think. The prime minister sat down in the chair and started to read. He must have been about halfway through the letter when he looked up with an interrogative expression on his face, like someone who has not quite grasped what someone has just said to him, then he went on and, without further interruptions or other gestural manifestations, read to the end. A patriot full of good intentions, he said, and, at the same time, a complete swine, Why a swine, asked the president, If what he says here is true, if this woman, always assuming she did exist, really didn't go blind and helped these six other people to survive that terrible time, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the writer of this letter owes her the good fortune of being alive today, my parents might be alive too if they had had the good fortune to meet her, He says that she murdered someone, No one knows for certain how many people were killed during that period, president, it was decided that all the bodies found had died accidentally or from natural causes and the matter was laid to rest, Even things laid to rest can be woken, That's true, president, but, in this case, I don't feel it would be for the best, it's highly unlikely there were any witnesses to the crime and, even if there were, they were just the blind amongst the blind, it would be absurd, a complete nonsense, to bring that woman to trial for a murder no one saw her commit and where the corpus delicti does not exist, The writer of the letter states that she killed someone, Yes, but he doesn't say that he was a witness to the murder, besides, sir, as I said before, the person who wrote this letter is a complete swine, Moral judgements are beside the point, As I well know, sir, but it does one good sometimes to say what one feels. The president took the letter back, looked at it as if it wasn't there and asked, What do you think you'll do, Me, nothing, replied the prime minister, there isn't a thread of evidence to go on, You noticed, of course, that the writer of the letter suggests the possibility of a link between the fact that this woman didn't go blind and the massive casting of blank votes that got us into this mess in the first place, Sir, we haven't always agreed with each other, That's only natural, Yes it is, as natural as it is for me not to have the slightest doubt that your intelligence and your common sense, which I greatly respect, will reject out of hand the idea that a woman, simply because she did not go blind four years ago, should today be deemed responsible for the fact that a few hundred thousand people, who had never even heard of her, chose to cast blank ballot papers when summoned to vote in an election, Well, put like that, There is no other way to put it, sir, my advice is to file the letter under correspondence from crazies and let the matter drop, while we continue the search for a solution to our problems, real solutions, not the fantasies or grudges of an imbecile, You're quite right, I was taking a lot of inconsequential twaddle far too seriously and I've wasted your time by asking you to come over here to see me, Oh, that doesn't matter, sir, my wasted time, if you want to call it that, has been more than made up for by our having reached agreement, Thank you, I'm glad you see it like that, Right, then, I'll leave you to get on with your work and I'll return to mine. The president of the republic was about to hold out his hand to say goodbye when the phone rang. He picked up the receiver and heard his secretary say, The interior minister would like to speak to you, sir, Put him through. The conversation was a long one, the president listened and, as the seconds passed, the expression on his face altered, sometimes he murmured Yes, on one occasion he said It's certainly worth looking into, and he ended with the words Speak to the prime minister about it. He put the receiver down, That was the interior minister, And what did that delightful man want, He's received a letter along the same lines and he's decided to begin an investigation, Bad news, But I told him to talk to you first, So I heard, but it's still bad news, Why, If I know the interior minister, and I'm sure few can know him as well as I do, he will have already spoken to the chief of police by now, Stop him, Oh, I'll try, but I'm afraid it might be useless, Use your authority, What, and be accused of blocking an investigation into facts that affect the nation's security, at a moment when everyone knows that the nation is in grave danger, asked the prime minister, adding, You would be the first to withdraw your support from me, the agreement we've just reached would be a mere illusion, it already is, since it serves no purpose. The president nodded, then said, A little while ago, in connection with this letter, my cabinet secretary came out with a very illuminating phrase, What was that, He said that the police were at the end of the assembly line, Let me congratulate you, sir, on having such an excellent cabinet secretary, meanwhile, you had better warn him that there are some truths that should not be spoken out loud, This room is soundproof, That doesn't mean there aren't a few microphones hidden about the place, Perhaps I'd better have the room searched, Please believe me when I say that, if you do find any microphones, I was not the one who ordered them to be placed here, Very funny, Very sad, May I say how sorry I am, my friend, that circumstances have left you in this blind alley, Oh, there'll be some way out, although, I confess, I can't see one at the moment, and going back is impossible. The president accompanied the prime minister to the door, It's odd, he said, that the man who wrote the letter didn't write to you as well, He probably did, but your secretariat and that of the interior minister are clearly more diligent than mine, Very funny, No, sir, very sad.
...
THE LETTER ADDRESSED TO THE PRIME MINISTER, BECAUSE THERE WAS a letter, took two days to reach his hands. He realized at once that the clerk in charge of recording the letter had been less discreet than the president's clerk, how else explain the rumors that had been flying around for the last two days, rumors which, in turn, were either the result of a leak by mid-level civil servants eager to demonstrate that they were au courant or in the know, or else had been deliberately started by the ministry of the interior as a way of stopping in its tracks any attempt by the prime minister to oppose the police investigation or, however symbolically, obstruct it. There remained the possibility, which we will describe as the conspiracy theory, that the supposedly secret conversation between the prime minister and his interior minister that took place after the former had been summoned to the presidential palace, had been far less private than one might have thought, given the padded walls, which, who knows, may have concealed a few latest-generation microphones, of the kind that only an electronic gun-dog with the finest pedigree could sniff out and find. Whatever the truth of the matter, there was nothing to be done about it, it is a sad moment for state secrets, which have no one to defend them. The prime minister is so conscious of this deplorable certainty, so convinced of the pointlessness of secrets, especially when they have ceased to be so, that, with the look of someone observing the world from a very high vantage point, as if he were saying Don't say a word, I know everything, he slowly folded the letter up and put it in one of his inside jacket pockets, It came straight from the blindness of four years ago, I'll keep it with me, he said. The air of shocked surprise on his cabinet secretary's face made him smile, Don't worry, my friend, there are at least two other letters identical to this, not to mention the many photocopies that are doubtless already doing the rounds. His cabinet secretary's face suddenly assumed a look of feigned innocence or abstraction, as if he had not quite understood what he had heard, or as if his conscience had suddenly leapt out at him along the road, accusing him of some ancient, or else very recent, misdeed. You can go now, I'll call you if I need you, said the prime minister, getting up from his chair and going over to one of the windows. The noise he made in opening it concealed the sound of the door closing. From there, he could see little more than a succession of low roofs. He felt a nostalgia for the capital city, for the happy times when votes did as they were told, for the monotonous passing of the hours and days spent either at his petit-bourgeois official residence or at the national parliament, for the agitated and not infrequently jolly and amusing political crises, which were like sudden eruptions of foreseeable duration and controlled intensity, almost always put on, and through which one learned not only not to tell the truth, but, when necessary, to make it correspond, point by point, with the lie, just as the wrong side and the right side of things are, quite naturally, always found together. He wondered if the investigation would already have begun, he paused to speculate upon whether the agents taking part in the police action would be those who had fruitlessly remained behind in the capital charged with obtaining information and submitting reports, or if the interior minister would have preferred,
