“What about the people who stop themselves from doing evil because it is evil?”
“José says that if a person really needs to do something he will not trouble about what others may think of him. If he is really hungry, he will steal. If he is in real danger, he will kill. If he is really afraid, he will be cruel. He says that it was people who were safe and well fed who invented good and evil so that they would not have to worry about the people who were hungry and unsafe. What a man does depends on what he needs. It is simple. You are not a murderer. You say that murder is evil. José would say that you are as much a murderer as Landru or Weidmann and that it is just that fortune has not made it necessary for you to murder anyone. Someone once told him that there was a German proverb which said that a man is an ape in velvet. He always likes to repeat it.”
“And do you agree with José? I don’t mean about my being a potential murderer. I mean about why people are what they are.”
“I do not agree or disagree. I do not care. For me, some people are nice, some people are sometimes nice and others are not at all nice.” She looked at him out of the corners of her eyes. “You are sometimes nice.”
“What do you think about yourself?”
She smiled. “Me? Oh, I am sometimes nice, too. When people are nice to me, I am a little angel.” She added: “José thinks that he is as clever as God.”
“Yes, I can see that he would.”
“You do not like him. I am not surprised. It is only the old women who like José.”
“Do you like him?”
“He is my partner. With us it is business.”