Heartbeat Detector Page #6

You have clients.

Have you seen the time?

You're right. It's stupid.

Shall we go?

Mr. Paolini, let's go somewhere else.

It's hell here.

I don't have the time, I'm sorry.

I just got this letter.

It was addressed to me personally.

At least look at it.

Why don't you sign

the letters you send?

Do you find

this revolting game funny?

I didn't write it.

Please stop bothering me.

I've received a second

anonymous letter,

this time at my home.

I'm angry and frightened.

Like the letters sent to Mathias Jst,

it was posted in Le Mans.

It mostly consists of ordinary phrases

taken from a corporate psychology

manual that I know well,

but invaded and devoured

by another text.

I can see a clear allusion to my job

and my contribution

to the eradication of all those

whom I judged affected

by alcoholism, absenteeism

and unable to meet

the company's criteria.

"Any element unfit for work

will be dealt with accordingly

in line with the objective criteria

as one deals with a sick limb.

We'll bear in mind items such as:

according to ability/convertibility

not forgetting the regularly

updated evaluation codes.

It must be remembered

that faulty individuals

may have a negative influence

on their successors.

Security checks will employ

modern electronic technology

to detect stowaways and other

undesirable elements in the vans

by picking up carbon gas emissions

in the breath.

We've recently installed

heart-beat detectors,

which are more efficient,

and enable us

to detect signs of life.

The device will examine

each vehicle.

No one can escape it.

since the beginning of the year.

The engineers are pleased

with their results.

We used to arrest 230 per day.

This figure has now dropped

to 160 a month,

thanks to increased Franco-British

collaboration in this field.

Our operation

will progressively spread

to all French and English ports

affected by the same problems."

I found this article in a daily paper

from February 2006.

Here you are.

Enjoy your meal.

Thank you.

A beer, please.

-News from Patrice?

-He got attacked.

-And?

-He's going to report it.

He's right.

Good-bye.

What's wrong with him?

Bladder stones.

It's something cats get.

Couldn't you have prevented it?

No, you can't do much about it.

Almost all cats get them.

I know, but....

After a certain age,

it's bound to happen.

Give him a little kiss from me, okay?

I always get "Kimsala" and "Kimsal"

mixed up.

It's Timsal.

I always get it wrong.

I say it every morning.

It's crazy!

Did he say it was serious?

It happens to cats when they're nine.

I know. Just give him

a little kiss for me.

Another coffee, please.

-It's been ages.

-I'll give him a hug.

Even if it's a cat, we don't care.

I promise I'll give him a cuddle.

-He'll be happy.

-I'm going over there.

Don't forget your knife.

Thank you.

-Hello.

-Hi, Philippe. How are you?

Arie Neumann?

Yes, that's me.

You wrote to me.

Sit down.

It's cowardly to send letters

without signing them.

Why did you come to see me?

Your last letter

was particularly insulting.

You could have ignored it.

You could have just burned it.

Maybe.

But I wanted to see your face.

Each one of these texts is signed,

with a name or by the system

that produced them.

It's perverse to hide like this.

It's not human.

You're right.

Those are the exact words:

"not human."

A gratuitous play on Jst's name.

A play on a name,

one word for another.

A resemblance.

It's so common these days.

Language is a powerful means

of propaganda.

It's the most public

and the most secret

at the same time.

The effect of this propaganda

isn't produced by speeches,

articles, and flyers.

It seeps into the masses'

flesh and blood.

Did you know we don't have

poor people anymore?

Only people on modest incomes.

We no longer talk of "issues"

such as "social issues",

but "problems" that our specialists

split up into a series

of technical details.

For each one,

they'll find the optimum solution.

Efficient methods.

But....

But words emptied of all meaning.

It's a break down of the language.

A dead language.

Neutral.

Invaded by technical words.

A language which gradually

absorbs its humanity.

Understand?

I see a gray truck crossing the city.

It's an ordinary steel panel truck

heading towards the mines,

two or three kilometers

from the last houses.

Neither the driver

nor the escorting officer

look back through the observation

window into the truck.

They're tired.

They've still got 10 transports

before night falls.

in difficult conditions.

All the more difficult

because in the first few minutes

of the transport,

they have to run the engine

at full throttle

to drown out the screams

and the strange lurches and jolts

that almost make the truck

topple over.

Fortunately,

things soon go quiet again,

and the transport

is always completed on time,

in keeping with the schedule.

"Where do the trucks go?",

asks the child

standing at the window.

At nightfall,

the child sees the vehicles

lined up in the schoolyard.

He sees the drivers handing around

a bottle of Schnapps.

The men are exhausted,

happy to end a day

which began, like the others,

much too early.

The escorts finish off

writing up their figures

and hand in their daily reports.

The child sees his father,

the officer-foreman,

slap each man on the back,

and joke with each in turn.

The officer thinks

that if the weather's fine

and there's no rain

to bog down the trucks,

he might be able

to finish his mission

by the end of the week.

And his superior,

the Obersturmbannfrher

who issued the order

from a place 100 kilometers away,

will congratulate him

on the smooth-running

of the operation.

If you were to ask each man

what he was doing,

he would reply,

"Everything's going as planned,

although it's possible

we're a little behind schedule."

He'd answer using

that same dead, neutral,

technical language,

which makes him a truck driver,

an escorting officer,

an Unterfhrer,

a foreman, a scientist,

a technical director,

an Obersturmbannfhrer.

Were you the child at the window?

The child at the window was

Officer-Foreman Neumann's son.

He didn't want to tell me

his first name,

but I know "Arie" wasn't the one

his father gave him.

The musicians took their places

and I saw the scene from my dream.

Arie Neumann came in last,

holding his violin.

He remained standing,

looking directly at me.

I saw a man go towards the door

but I didn't shout for him to stop.

I saw the black mass

of tangled bodies.

Merchandise.

Cargo.

I saw a world of nakedness

under the yellowish,

caged-in light,

which slid down

a lightly sloping floor,

exposing a hand, a leg,

a crushed face,

a twisted mouth,

bleeding.

Fingers clutching

a dirty undergarment

stained with urine, vomit,

blood, sweat, drool.

Liquid.

Here was part of a back,

the head and arms

buried under other bodies.

There, a body entwined

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