Jean-Baptiste's death was the biggest event of my life - it returned my mother to servitude and gave me freedom.

There is no such thing as a good father, that's the rule. Let's not aim this grievance at men but at the rotten paternal bond. There is nothing better than making babies but having them, what an outrage! Had he lived, my father would have lain on me, spread-eagled and would have crushed me. Luckily, he died young. In the midst of those Aeneas' carrying their Anchises on their backs, I cross from one riverbank to the other, on my own, despising those invisible fathers riding on their sons' shoulders for their entire lives. I left behind a man who had died young, who had not had time to be my father and who today, could be my son. Was this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know; but I willingly subscribe to the conclusion of an eminent psychoanalyst - I have no Superego.

It is not only a question of dying: one must die at the right time. Later, I had felt guilty, a self-aware orphan blames himself. Offended by his point of view, his parents retreated to their big apartments in the sky. Personally, I was delighted: my sorry plight demanded respect and made me important. I counted my bereavement as one of my virtues. My father had the courtesy to die in the wrong. My grandmother used to say that he had shirked his responsibilities whilst my grandfather, rightly proud of the Schweitzer family's longevity, could not accept that he had died when he was only thirty and in the light of this suspicious demise, came to doubt that his son-in-law had ever existed and in the end forgot him. I didn't even have to forget him - by taking French leave, Jean-Baptiste had denied me the pleasure of making his acquaintance. Even today, I am amazed at how little I know about him. He loved, yet he wanted to live and he died: that is enough to make him a man.