Cosmética

Freely adapted from the novel Cosmetics of the Enemy by Amélie Nothomb.
Waiting in a train station is for most travelers a curse that cannot be remedied. In the case of Jérome Angust, the delay of his train means attracting unwelcome attention from a man who seems to enjoy the annoyance of others. Textor Texel, this Dutch homunculus with an onomatopoeic name, begins to annoy him simply by his cumbersome presence. He presses him with impertinent questions, unleashes his pedantic and endless solo with the sole purpose of exhausting him. When he reaches that point, he picks up his best weapon and strikes, lacerating the ego of the unfortunate on duty to add him, therefore, to the number of his numerous victims. Like the ones he confesses to have sown on his past path; the same ones that have caused him strange feelings of guilt and inhuman behaviors. The passerby admits without much ado that he is a heinous criminal, a despicable, deplorable, evil man. If this were not enough, Textor in the delirium of his Jansenist claptrap finally leads Jérome to an unexpected confession, to the admission of a guilt that he has tried to cover up for years with a rather desperate oblivion. The man never expected to hate that train to Barcelona, which for a strange concatenation of events, seems to be, in spite of himself, the occasion for a session of self-therapy, in which, however, his psyche does not come out cured but permanently damaged...