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On March 5th 1934, Oskar Serti locked himself up in his bathroom, hoping to find the privacy he needed to think about what he was going to put into his next novels. Plunged in his illusions, he thought he had at last found his life's work.
Unfortunately, on getting out of the bath, his enthusiasm was immediately dampened at the thought of the inevitable refusals he was bound to get from the publishers.
Would he ever achieve the status he deserved? Serti asked himself this question in front of the mirror, his image drowned in a thick layer of steam. But he could not abide taking such a self-effacing view of himself, so with one hand he wiped the place where his face was in the mirror. He was then appalled to discover just how little space his image took up in the world. His head was no bigger than a pear. People might see him as no more than a pear.
Preferring oblivion to mediocrity, he brought his mouth up to the mirror, and shouted the most intense passages from his next novel, hoping that his burning breath would make his poor head disappear under the condensation.
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