70 Jackie 1930–1962
felt he was closing in on himself, becoming harsh and selfi sh. In
April 1954, succumbing to a new attack of gloom, he implored his
friend to stay for at least a whole weekend in Paris:
Try to see me before the vacation, when you’re the only friend
left to me; nobody, nothing, nobody. When people talk to me
here, even when they show friendship towards me, they are
addressing a ghost. And a person soon becomes a shadow in
his own eyes when this happens. [.. .] I want to see you, as I
always have.
The life I’m leading is glum, depressing, and anxious. [.. .]
I don’t know why this is, but even my glumness is changing
shape; it is starting to be permanent, dry or acidic. I think it
used to draw sustenance from another joy or another hope,
truer than it was itself.^25Michel missed his friend too, and ‘those fulfi lling times’ of their
life in Paris: breakfast together at the corner of the rue Gay-Lussac,
‘those trips to Sceaux, on the banks of the Seine at night, to Orly
in the old boneshaker, that page of Don Quixote that you read to
me in your room at the École, laughing like a child’. In his letters,
he expressed his ‘tender feelings’ for his dear friend Jackie over and
over again. But he was often worried that Jackie was drifting away:
‘Perhaps, for you, I’m lost in the mist, a pale shadow of a friend,
awkward? [.. .] I don’t know if I deserve your friendship, or if my
friendship for you is strong enough.’^26
Jackie’s relations with women at this time are still rather mys-
terious. At the Sorbonne, he met Geneviève Bollème, a student in
lettres, a Flaubert devotee who was already frequenting literary
circles. Apparently the young woman roused Derrida’s interest, but
she herself seemed somewhat uneasy about the ambiguity of their
relationship. ‘We really are going to have to talk about our respec-
tive feelings for one another,’ she wrote to him one day. ‘I’ve always
had the impression, if not the certainty, that they were based on
a misunderstanding.’^27 This did not prevent them from becoming
long-standing friends.
From October 1954, now that they were preparing to take the
agrégation, ‘the Der’s’ and ‘Coco’ were given rooms of their own
in the École. But they were neighbours, and they carried on sharing
the same car and subscribing jointly to Le Monde. Above all, they
continued their political discussions. Over the summer, Bianco had
the opportunity to go on a long trip to China, with a delegation
of people from the Franco-Chinese association (Félix Guattari
was also one of their number). On his return, the future author of
Origins of the Chinese Revolution could not stop talking about it.