The Fata Morgana Books

I

My head broke the surface and my mouth opened to gulp air just as, amidst loud splashing, my hands found the edge, took hold and, transferring the force of my momentum to my shoulders, hoisted my dripping body out of the water. I stood for a minute balanced on the edge, disoriented by the muted echoes of the shouts and water noises, dazzled by the fragmented sight of parts of my body in the long mirrors surrounding the pool. Around my feet, a puddle was slowly growing; a child shot by in front of me, almost making me topple backwards. I caught hold of myself, took off my cap and goggles, and, throwing a last look over my shoulder at the gleaming line of my lats, went out through the swinging doors. Dried off, clothed in a grey, silky tracksuit, pleasant to the skin, I found myself back in the hallway. I unhesitatingly passed an intersection, then another, it was rather dark here and you could barely make out the walls in the indistinct lighting; I began to run, in short strides, as if I were jogging. The dull-colored walls streamed by; occasionally, I seemed to glimpse an opening, or at least a darker part, I couldn’t really be sure, sometimes also the cloth of my jacket brushed against the wall, so that I swerved to the middle of the corridor, which must have been curving, but very slightly, almost imperceptibly, just enough to throw my running off-balance; already I was sweating, even though it was neither warm nor cold, I was breathing regularly, inhaling an insipid gulp of air every three steps and then exhaling it almost in a whistle, elbows held close to my body so as not to bump into the walls, which sometimes seemed to grow farther away and sometimes to get closer, as if the corridor were snaking back and forth. In front I could make out nothing, I moved forward almost at random, above my head I could see no ceiling, perhaps I was already running out in the open, perhaps not. A sharp shock on my elbow made me stumble, I rubbed it reflexively and turned around: an object on the wall stood out from the greyness, gleaming. I put my hand on it; it was a door handle, I leaned on it and the door opened, dragging me with it. I found myself in a familiar garden, quiet and peaceful: the sun was shining, spots of light were scattered over the mingled leaves of the ivy and the bougainvillea, neatly trimmed on their trellis; further away, the twisted trunks of old wisteria emerged from the ground to cover with their greenery the tall façade of the house, raised in front of me like a tower. It was hot and I wiped the sweat beading on my face with my sleeve. Then I went in. In the back of the hallway, through a half-opened door, a series of curious sounds reached me, low-sounding plosives interspersed with whistles: the child must have been playing war, knocking his tin soldiers over one after the other in a deluge of shots and explosions. I left him there without disturbing him and headed for the spiral staircase leading upstairs, pausing on the landing to contemplate the ironic gaze, lost in the void, of the large reproduction of the Lady with an Ermine hanging there. The woman was in the kitchen; at the sound of my steps she put down her knife, turned around with a smile, and came over to kiss me tenderly as she pressed against me. She was wearing a pearl-grey house dress, thin and light; I caressed her hip through the cloth, then plunged my face into her Venetian blond hair, done up in an artfully disheveled bun, to breathe in her smell of heather, moss, and almond. She laughed quietly and disengaged herself from my embrace.“I’m making dinner. It’s going to take a while.” She brushed my face with the tip of her fingers. “The little one’s playing.”—“Yes, I know. I heard him when I came in.”—“Could you put him in the bath?”—“Of course. You had a good day?”—“Yes. I got the photos, they’re upstairs on the dresser. Oh, another thing: we have a problem with the electrical circuit. The neighbor called.”—“What did she say?”—“Apparently there are voltage spikes, it’s causing power outages at their house.” My face darkened. “She’s out of her mind. I had our circuit overhauled twice. By a professional electrician.”—“Yes, I know.” I turned my back to her and went back downstairs. The sounds of battle had ceased. Before opening the door, I went into the adjoining bathroom to run the bath, checking the temperature to make sure it wasn’t too hot. Then I went into the child’s room. He was only wearing a t-shirt; his buttocks bare, he was squatting and photographing with a little digital camera the tin cavalrymen armed with lances and rifles, carefully lined up on the rug spread over the grey tiles. I watched him for a minute, as if through a glass wall. Then I came forward and tapped his buttocks: “Come on, it’s bath time.” He dropped the camera and threw himself in my arms, squealing. I lifted him up and carried him to the bathroom, where I took off his t-shirt and put him in the water. Immediately, he began slapping the surface with his hands, splashing the walls and laughing. I laughed with him but at the same time drew back, leaning on the door to watch him as he plunged completely underwater.

* * *

At the meal, the child, seated between us, chattered on about his battles. I listened to him absent-mindedly, savoring the cool wine and the langoustines sautéed in garlic. The woman, her thin face framed by blond locks that had escaped from her bun, smiled and drank as well. The child finally fell silent to attack a langoustine, trying to break one of its claws between his little baby teeth; I wiped myself with my napkin and, with the tip of my fingers, stroked his hair, blond like his mother’s. His meal over, he quickly cleared his dishes and ran down the stairs, rubbing his greasy fingers on his pajamas as his mother gently scolded him. I finished clearing up as she went downstairs to put him to bed and carefully washed my hands before returning to finish my wine. A disk case was lying on the stereo, a recent recording of Don Giovanni; I put the third disk on and sat down in front of the bay window, lighting a thin cigar and contemplating the saffron light of evening dotting the green masses of the garden. The Commendatore was about to turn up for dinner and I thought about the meaning of this threatening, moralizing figure. He demanded, above all, to impose his law on the rebel son; but hadn’t the latter run him through in the beginning of the first act? Obviously, that hadn’t done any good, since now he was returning, even more monumental and deadly, the ruin of all pleasures. But the end was approaching and the son was resisting every inch of the way, like a stubborn kid, crafty and obstinate, refusing all adherence to that dead, outdated, stifling law, even if his life depended on it. Outside night was falling and I got up to turn on, one by one, the living room lamps. Then I poured myself another glass. Already the disk was coming to an end, in a comic final ensemble which sounded like the last echo of the unrelenting rascal’s mocking laughter. Later on, the woman came back up, and I followed her upstairs. Her hips swayed gently in the half-light of the stairway. As she showered I quickly went through the photographs on the chest of drawers: they all showed me in the company of the child, at different times and in different situations, at the circus, at the beach, on a boat. None of them caught my eye and I left them there before getting undressed, absent-mindedly examining my lean muscles in the tall upright mirror that stood next to the door. Seen from the back, my body seemed almost feminine to me, I examined the ass, white and round like the woman’s. When she emerged from the bathroom, naked and still wet, her long hair rolled up in a towel, I pulled her by the shoulders and pushed her onto the bedspread, a thick golden cloth embroidered with long green grass. She fell on her stomach with a little cry and I reached out to turn off the light. Now only the pale gleam of the moon lit the room, it flowed through the windows behind which stood out the mad twists of the wisteria, illuminating the green leaves of the embroidery and the white body sprawled out on it, the long, thin back, the hips, the twin globes of the buttocks. I lay down on top of this body and it shivered. The towel had fallen away and the hair covered her face. With the tips of my feet, I spread her legs, I slipped a hand beneath her belly to raise her hips, and pressed my erect member against her sex. But it was dry, I withdrew a little, poured saliva on my fingers and smeared the opening, gently massaging it. Then I could enter easily. Her breathing accelerated, her behind, beneath me, began moving, her long body, held in both my hands, went taut and a cry escaped her, immediately broken off. I felt myself melting with sweetness, a long needle of delight pierced my back, very thin, stretching the skin on the back of my neck and electrifying it. I turned my head: in the mirror, pale under the moonlight, I could again see my ass and the top of my sinewy thighs, hers too, pinned beneath, and in between them dark, reddish, indistinct shapes. Fascinated by this incongruous spectacle, I slowed down, the woman, her body lost in the long embroidered grass leaves of the bedspread, was panting, her hand sought my hip, I could see it in the mirror, the lacquered nails embedded in my muscles, while next to the mirror the door opened and in the section of moonlight I saw the pointy little face of the child, his eyes wide open and his lips stubborn, obstinate. I froze. The face also remained motionless; next to it, I could still see in the mirror the double mass of buttocks and the dark jumble of organs between them. I could feel the pleasure mounting, the woman was moaning, I withdrew abruptly and rolled onto my side, my wet, scarlet member still throbbing, I was coming in long spurts almost without realizing it, the kid’s face had disappeared into the darkness of the stairway, we could hear his little bare feet hurriedly slapping the stone steps, the woman was looking at me with a lost, confused air, I was still coming. Dripping with sweat, my breathing irregular, I rolled completely onto my back and distractedly wiped my stomach with the sheet as the woman, already standing, put on a bathrobe to go follow the child.

* * *

I must have been sleeping by the time she came back to bed. When I woke up, the sky through the windows was growing pale. The tentacles of the wisteria waved gently; the birds nestling in the branches began singing, a concert of shrill chirps. The woman lay half turned away, her face once again hidden beneath her long loose hair, I left her and quickly slipped into my tracksuit before going down to the living room. I entertained the idea of making myself coffee, immediately decided against it, and went down to the lower floor where the boy, curled in a narrow wooden bed, was sleeping. I sat on the edge and contemplated his severe face, lit by the slanting dawn light. Here too, birdsong filled the room. The child seemed to be breathing with difficulty, sweat was sticking his blond hair to his forehead, I brushed it away and he opened his eyes. “You are going?” he said without moving. I nodded. “I don’t want you to,” he said, staring at me stubbornly, almost greedily. — “But I have to,” I answered in a low voice. — “Why?” I thought about that and then replied: “Because I want to.” His gaze, both powerless and obstinate, grew veiled: “So, when you’re happy, I’m unhappy. And when I’m happy, you’re unhappy.”—“No, that’s not it at all. You’re getting it all mixed up.” I bent over, delicately kissed his damp forehead, got up and went out. In the garden, everything was calm, the leaves rustled gently, hiding the abrupt movements of the birds, which still hadn’t fallen silent. It was already hot, a strong morning heat that clung to the skin. The door opened easily and I found the hallway where I resumed my deliberate running, the wide strides in rhythm with my breathing. The hallway appeared a little lighter, I seemed better able to perceive the curves, even if I couldn’t manage precisely to locate either the walls or the ceiling, if there even was one. The temperature, here, was more moderate, but my body, heated by the running, was sweating in my clothes; the pants stuck to my hips, which didn’t prevent me, like a well-oiled machine, from maintaining a regular rhythm. I passed dark openings without slowing down, junctions or possibly merely alcoves; finally something on my left drew my attention, a metallic brilliance that floated in the corner of my vision; without hesitating or slowing down, I found the handle, opened the door and crossed the threshold. My foot sank into something soft and I stopped short. I found myself in a rather large, semi-dark room, sparsely furnished; on the walls, the golden vines of the wallpaper intertwined as they climbed; a dark red, almost blood-colored carpet covered the floor. Across the room, beyond the bed covered in a heavy golden cloth embroidered with long green grass, a figure with close-cropped jet black hair was standing in front of the window; the shutters were closed, but it was staring at something in the window, its own reflection perhaps. I contemplated it for a minute as if through a window pane, with a light, almost joyful feeling. At the sound of the door closing, it turned around, and I saw then that it was a woman, a beautiful woman whose matte, sharp-featured face lit up with a smile when she saw me. She skirted round the bed and embraced me, pressing her mobile little tongue between my lips, laughing. I lost my balance and fell with her onto the green leaves of the bedspread, my nose pressed against her short hair, filling my face with the smell of earth and cinnamon. Beneath me, she twisted, laughing, and tried to break loose. I straightened up and undertook as best I could to unbutton her sheer tulle blouse, brushing against her breasts held in by a rigid bra. She laughed again and slipped between my hands before kneeling on the green and gold expanse of the bed to re-button her blouse. “In the street,” she said, lifting her beautiful dark eyes, full of cheerfulness beneath eyelashes heavy with mascara, “I imagined I was touching your face. And now, here you are.” I stretched my hand out again toward her body and she brushed it away, laughing: “What impatience! Wait, I’m dying of hunger.” She picked up the receiver next to the bed, dialed a number and, holding up a cardboard menu, named a few items. I rose and shook my numb legs, then went into the bathroom where I opened wide the heavy porcelain faucets of the bathtub, my fingers beneath the stream of water to gauge the temperature.

* * *

In the water, her back to me, she leaned her long brown body against mine. Her short, thick hair tickled my nostrils; I patiently caressed her arms, her belly, the tops of her breasts floating on the surface of the slightly greenish bathwater. A number of little scars decorated her dusky skin, rather thick, the bumps long or short depending on the place, I counted three on her left shoulder, one on her groin, a large one on her ribs, just beneath the right breast, another forked one at the angle of her jaw. Abrupt knocks sounded on the door to the room. The girl turned round in a loud splash, placed a quick kiss on my lips, and leapt out of the bathtub, slipping her streaming body into a terrycloth bathrobe before going to the door. I relaxed in the water, my face scarcely showing above the surface. A powerful feeling of plenitude filled my body, but an almost unsettling plenitude, impossible to grasp or possess, which left something like a sensation of emptiness behind it. Some noises, stifled by the water covering my ears, reached me indistinctly. I got out of the bath, dried myself quickly, pulled on the other bathrobe hanging there and, without taking the trouble to close it, went back into the bedroom. Kneeling once again on the golden bedspread, the girl was contemplating a large tray on which were lined up dishes in lacquered wood, covered with raw fish and pickled vegetables. Two golden beers frothed in tapered glasses. I joined her and began eating without a word. Aside from the sound of the chopsticks everything was quiet; behind the shutters, where there must have been a street or a courtyard, there was not a sound; a lone lamp standing by the bedside lit us with its yellowish halo, and I could distinctly make out our reflections in the windowpanes, two slightly blurred silhouettes, draped in white, which stood out from the field of green grasses of the bedspread. From time to time one of us offered a piece of fish to the other, who snapped it up with a surprised smile; when I kissed her, her lips had the bitter taste of beer. It was very dry in this room, I could feel my skin pulling at my hands and face; the raw fish as well made me thirsty, I quickly finished my beer. The girl got up, took my empty glass, and went into the bathroom. I finished the last little vegetables and piled the plates on the tray to go put it in a corner, on the floor. The girl still hadn’t come out and I got rid of my bathrobe to stretch out on the bedspread, on my belly, my head resting on my crossed arms. Turning my face I could glimpse the twin moon of my buttocks reflected in one of the windowpanes, white and slightly rounded. When the young woman reappeared she was naked too, splendid, her bare feet advanced on the blood-red carpet as she held the glass filled with water in front of her, her hips caught in a leather harness that held a long black phallus strapped to her pubis. I took the glass from her hand and drank. She moved behind me, without thinking I spread my legs and pointed my toes, her fingers, smeared with a liquid, slippery substance, threaded their way between my buttocks to massage the areola of my anus, my hips rose, she lay on top of me and I heard her husky breathing whistling in my ear as her hand played with my hair, pressing my head onto the bedspread. The object attached to her hips beat against my ass, heavy, hard, and silky. I arched my hips a little and it began to move between my buttocks, with a very deliberate slowness, then it withdrew and the tip caught, I slipped a hand behind my back to guide it and the girl leaned in with all her weight: then my ass opened all of a sudden and she entered me, her hands gripping my buttocks to spread them more and her head weighing on my neck. A cold, biting flame filled my pelvis, I hollowed out my back some more and leaned with both hands against the headboard, her hips were beating against mine now in large long strokes that kept spreading further through my body horribly sweet sensations, my legs twisted, sought a support, slid, her firm, soft thighs pressed on mine, her hands, now, rose up and pressed with all their weight on my head. Pleasure invaded my neck and shoulders, a long, diffuse, electric stream, I arched my back convulsively, my member, limp and almost forgotten, beat against the embroidery of the cloth to the rhythm of her moving hips; supporting myself on one shoulder, I pulled back a little, turned onto my side and opened my eyes to look beneath her arm. Her brown thigh, marked with several scars, entwined my own, much paler and covered with curly hairs; the leather straps which held in place the object with which she was working my hips shaped small bulges in her flesh: and in the window, beyond her long slim back, I could see her ass, two golden orbs pushed upwards by the straps beneath them, overlapping mine on the green and golden field of the bedspread. All of a sudden, the light went out, erasing the image in the window and plunging the room into darkness; even with my eyes wide open I could see nothing, the electricity must have gone out, I was coming now with all my muscles and she, heaving against me and panting, must have been coming too, finally she collapsed on my back, her pelvis tense against my buttocks, the immobile phallus planted inside me, I slipped one hand behind my head to rub her hair, she bit my neck and I still spasmodically moved my hips. The blade of pleasure, long successive waves, kept unfurling throughout my abandoned body. I wanted to pull myself together, perhaps withdraw to take her in turn, but a great somnolence invaded me, I yawned, my hands moved with more and more languor and lightness, I ran my fingers again over my back, my hips and her thighs and I fell asleep thus, her member still inside me and her body stretched out on mine, melting with pleasure.

* * *

The return of the electricity woke me up. The girl had rolled onto her side, her legs intertwined with mine, the phallus still lodged inside me. Spreading apart my buttocks, I slowly pulled away, it was dry now and it stuck a little; finally the object came out and fell onto the bedspread with a small dull thud. My mouth was dry and pasty; I carefully disentangled myself from her legs, rose up and headed to the bathroom. The white light of the neon dazzled me, I turned it off right away; still blinking, I leaned over the sink to drink greedily from the faucet. When I came back out I contemplated the young woman: she was still sleeping, stretched out on her side, the phallus almost completely hidden in the shadow of her curved body; behind her, the yellow light of the bedside lamp illuminated her naked, brown back, the long green grasses of the bedspread crumpled beneath her body, the gilt vines of the wallpaper. I sat next to her and lightly ran the flat of my fingertips over the nape of her neck, her spine, her buttocks. She shivered but didn’t wake up. Her skin, almost rough, grated beneath my fingers; between her legs, the secretions had dried on the black phallus, reflecting light in places. I should turn down the heat, I thought confusedly. But I could see no thermostat, no temperature control. I got back up, filled two glasses of water, and placed them on the radiator; then I turned off the light and lay down again alongside the girl, on my belly, one hand on the small of her back. Sounds of water emanating from the bathroom woke me completely. The light was on again and I was alone on the bed. I got up, knocked on the door to the bathroom, and went in without waiting for a reply: the girl, sitting naked on the toilet, her elbows resting on her knees, the phallus still fixed to her belly, was peeing. I bent over to kiss her hair. She wiped herself and got up in a swift movement that made her artificial member bounce, before pressing the flush handle. “Aren’t you going to take that off?” I asked her as she rinsed her face and ran wet fingers through her hair. “Why? I like having a cock. I think I’ll wear it all day.” She laughed and I went out to stretch out on the bed. It was still just as hot and dry and I was thirsty again. She came out behind me as the little musical tone of a cellphone rang out. “Oh! I have to go,” she said cheerfully as she examined the screen. Leaning on one elbow, I watched her get dressed. She struggled with her jeans, already almost too narrow for her hips, trying to fit the object lying next to her thigh into them. Finally she managed to zipper them and buckle her belt. Then she put on her bra and her blouse, before tapping the bulge in her jeans: “Nice package, don’t you think?” I reached out and stroked it without a word. She laughed, shook her head, and went out. I got up, showered quickly, and got dressed. The smooth, silky material of the tracksuit glided pleasantly on my skin. At the entrance to the bedroom, I hesitated: there were two doors, one opposite the other, something I hadn’t noticed before. Which one had the girl taken? It didn’t matter. I opened one at random and crossed the threshold with a confident step; already my feet, in sneakers light as feathers, found their short stride again; I brought my elbows in against my ribs and concentrated on my breathing, inhaling through my mouth to the rhythm of my steps. The air here was less dry than in the bedroom, sweat soon beaded on my face, soaked my armpits, the hollow of my back; I followed the curve of the grey hallway, advancing almost noiselessly. It was dark, but that didn’t bother me too much, I could still see well enough; I could not, however, make out any source of light, the walls seemed smooth, identical, indistinct, I wondered vaguely where the lighting could be coming from, while still aware that it was of no importance. Here and there, a darker area seemed to open onto a cubbyhole, or even a tunnel, I went on my way without slowing down, following the curve that continued on, and like a child I held out my hand and let my fingers trail along the wall until they came up against an object that I hadn’t seen. It was a doorknob, I pushed it and opened the door. Right away, I knew that this space suited me. It was a vast and very bright studio, its walls covered with books; in the back a long bay window overlooked piles of little buildings rising in levels in front of a grey, luminous strip of sea. I came over and rested my hands on the long table in front of the window as I examined the city, contemplating the changing colors of the façades as the light faded. Then I turned around. A disk case was lying on a stereo, old recordings of Mozart piano concertos; I put one on at random and strolled through the studio listening to the first notes, letting my gaze wander absent-mindedly over the bindings of the books and the many engravings and reproductions hanging between the bookcases. The cheerful, lucid notes of the music danced through the room, filling me with a profound feeling of serene lightness. I poured myself a glass of schnapps, lit a little cigar found in a box, and burrowed into a black leather sofa to leaf through an album lying there, on a coffee table. In oblong format, bound in white cloth, it showed a series of photographs of naked men and women, executing various movements broken down into stop motion sequences by a multiple camera setup. I paused at one plate: a man, with a powerful movement, was drawing another man around his body to throw him on the ground, face-down, before falling on top of him to pin him there, his head seemingly confused with that of his opponent as the twin white globes of the buttocks and the vigorous lines of the thighs overlapped each other, a sinuous heap of forms, forever fixed in place by the successive shutter releases.

* * *

It was cool in this studio, almost cold. I changed the disk for another and searched through the cupboards for something to eat. There wasn’t much, but I was able to throw together a refreshing meal of sardines in oil, raw onions, black bread, and rosé. As I was finishing it my body shivered with cold; I quickly cleared the dishes and went to run the shower, waiting for the water to get hot before undressing and plunging myself underneath it. In the water I stretched my muscles, enjoying the sensations provoked by this long, wiry body. In the bedroom, I dried myself in front of a large round mirror placed at the foot of the bed, a simple mattress resting on the ground covered with a thick embroidered bedspread, long green grass on a golden background. The mirror showed only the lower part of my body, which, despite the little member shrunken against the balls, seemed almost like a womanish body to me, an image that caused me no anxiety but rather a diffuse, caressing feeling of pleasure. I turned around to contemplate from the side the curve of the thigh, the arch of the hips, the delicate oval of the buttock. I knelt down on the bed, my back to the mirror, and turned my head. The ass, hiding the top of the body, was now facing the circle of the mirror, and I spread it slightly with one hand, revealing the yellowish flower of the anus that blinked quietly, as if it were gazing at itself, a tiny opening but bottomless, dazzling. I found that very beautiful and I contemplated it for a long time before finally relaxing and stretching out full-length on the bedspread. I was no longer cold and I fell asleep that way, as if I were lying on a field of grass, rocked by the lighthearted, mocking, playful cadences of a last concerto. When I woke up it was dark, everything was quiet, goosebumps covered my skin and I slipped beneath the bedspread and sheets, pulling them around me to get warm. But I couldn’t fall back asleep and finally I got up, the bedspread still draped around my shoulders, to go drink a glass of water in the kitchenette. Through the bay window, down below, I could see in the darkness a lozenge of light, the window of a neighboring apartment forming a section crossed lengthwise by a long sofa upholstered in white upon which had sunk a young woman in delicate underclothes. A small round mirror was hanging above the sofa and she was putting on makeup, kneeling before it, her back arched a little to keep her balance. From time to time, she raised her arm to adjust the angle of the mirror, which was attached to a mobile support, or else to bring it closer to her face, and this gesture stretched her breast nestled in an underwire bra and made the edge of her pectoral muscle bulge, like a milky white cable attached to her shoulder. She carried out these gestures with swift precision, absorbed in the unconscious happiness of this routine so familiar to her body. I watched her for a while and then went back to bed. Sleep quickly brought me to the entrance of a house, a house that must have been my own, locked after a long absence. A series of doors led to the kitchen, out of which rushed a black cat as soon as I opened the door. The room stank of shit and trash, the cat must have been locked up in it during my entire absence and had soiled everything: No matter, I said to myself, shrugging my shoulders, my wife will clean it. I opened the door that led to the small back garden to air it out, then went down to the cellar; there I crossed a long hallway that led to a kind of grotto, opening onto the large front garden. My workers were waiting there. “So, Emilio,” I said, “how’s the work going?” The man I had spoken to came forward, hat in hand, and gestured for me to follow him outside. The view that greeted me filled me with horror: the garden, which had previously formed beautiful undulating curves protected from the neighbors’ sight, was now completely filled in, forming a flat surface at the same level as the next house. Distraught, I looked around me: the old ruined barn adjoining the house had disappeared; Emilio, in an excess of zeal, must have had it torn down to fill in the garden. Beside myself, I yelled at him violently: “But Emilio! This is not at all what I asked you to do!” Emilio timidly tried to defend himself as I ran back and forth, noting the extent of the damage. The garden thus renovated ended up at the windows of the neighboring house, barely hidden by a few shrubs, and now extended a small byroad that used to end at the outskirts of my property. In fact, a car was coming down and crossing my garden, cheerfully honking as it passed. “Come on, Emilio!” I shouted. “Just look at this! And what about my barn? Who gave you the order to demolish it?” In vain, I thought about how all this could be repaired, but the damages were too great, it seemed an impossible task. The car emerged from the garden by an open gate next to the neighbors’ house, and I followed it, still foaming. “Well now, first of all, close all this up!” I barked, pointing at the road. “This is a private property here, good God, not a highway!” I went out and contemplated the street. Another car was now coming slowly toward me, driven by a blond woman. Emilio had come out as well and was standing next to me, a little behind me. The car slowed down, as if to park, but didn’t stop and slowly crashed with a great crunch of sheet metal against the stone pillar that supported the gate. I rushed forward but the driver, who was still holding onto the driving wheel with both hands, wasn’t hurt. I thought I recognized my neighbor, who, what’s more curious, resembled my wife as well as my mother — two women who also didn’t know how to drive — and I went over to talk with her about our new problem of proximity; but she didn’t even let me open my mouth before pouring out a litany of complaints through the lowered window: “Oh, you! Do you know that your electric circuit is completely out of whack? There are surges all the time, they’re causing outages in the neighborhood.” These words filled me with fury and I began shouting as well: “Madam, you’re exaggerating! I’ve had that circuit completely overhauled by a professional electrician, twice in a row. That’s enough, now!” When I woke up a cold light was falling in the room, making the golden field of the bedspread sparkle, but warming nothing. I got up and quickly got dressed, swallowed a glass of juice, and went out. In the hallway I resumed my running without hesitation; the effort warmed me up and helped me shed the last scraps of sleep. In my distraction, however, I bumped several times against the walls, the indistinct light blurred all details and I couldn’t always place them with precision; sometimes darker zones appeared, junctions perhaps or else some nook, I avoided them and tried to stay in the center of the hallway, moving with short regular strides, my sneakers falling with a muted sound on a ground as smooth as the walls. I breathed evenly, in short quick puffs; I didn’t get tired, I knew I could run a long time this way. At one moment, I noticed that my shoelace had come untied, and I interrupted my running to kneel down and re-tie it; when I raised my head, I noticed that I was in front of a door handle, I leaned on it without hesitating and a door opened, which I went through as I straightened up. A few steps further in, there waited a proud, beautiful, rather curvaceous woman. She was standing with one hand on her hip; the other was bringing a long cigarette holder to her lips, painted blood-red: “You’re late, darling,” she murmured, exhaling a puff of smoke and taking me by the hand. “Good Lord, you’re sweating. And you’re not even dressed.” Golden bracelets jingled on her wrist; I leaned over and brushed my lips against her bare shoulder, my nose buried in her long reddish curls, inhaling their rich, almost musky smell of amber.“Forgive me. I had to run.”—“That’s all right. Come.” I followed her through a large room, at the back of which a sliding glass door, open, led outside. A brilliant green lawn, over which two yapping Dalmatians were chasing each other, stretched out to copses of palm trees, ficus, and bougainvillea; a group of girls in tight-fitting shorts and tank tops or bras were playing volleyball. “Almost everyone is here already,” my friend said in a slight tone of reproach as she climbed a stone staircase that ran alongside the façade of the house. Her stiletto heels clicked on the stone and her hips swayed in front of me. The staircase led to a vast, tiled terrace the color of terra cotta, in the center of which shone the emerald-green water of a long rectangular pool. A tall girl with black hair cut short, topless, was doing laps; near the edge, another young woman with an artfully disheveled Venetian blond bun, stretched out on her belly and leaning on her elbows, was following my movements with a mocking gaze; her pretty little feet, with bright red nails, swayed above her well-rounded buttocks, enclosed in a white swimsuit with blue stripes that left her slim back bare. I contemplated this magnificent body with a pang of envy; but already my friend was leading me through another sliding glass door into a vast living room, its carpet and walls a pale grey, with burnt orange and lemon yellow drapes, arranged on several different levels and furnished with elegance and restraint in green tones that went with the lawn. In the center rose a sort of bed or sofa without a back, of imposing dimensions, covered with a thick golden cloth embroidered with long green grass. We skirted around the piece of furniture and followed a long hallway that led to a bedroom. The adjoining bathroom, tiled in white with a polished slate floor, seemed immense. “Shower there,” my friend ordered. “I’ll find something for you to wear. Something classic, no?” She ran her painted nails over my chin: “And shave. You’re stubbly.” I quickly undressed and did what she had ordered. I had just finished shaving when she returned with a pile of clothes that she placed on a chair. It took some time to try them on, the sizes weren’t always right; she handed me a grey lace bra whose underwire rounded my form a little, a skintight pair of panties in embroidered tulle, and some silk stockings surmounted with a wide band of lace, also grey but of a darker shade, almost metallic. Perched on high pumps into which I had slipped my feet, I admired in the mirror the curve of my buttocks and thighs set off by the lace, delaying putting on the dress. It was sublime, a long body-skimming sheath made of pearl grey linen and rayon knit to form a fine silky jersey, without the slightest seam, and lined inside with a pale pink silk that flowed delicately on my skin as I slipped it over my head. The shoulder straps left my angular shoulders bare; in front, the cloth, molded by the bra, gave me a tiny but charming chest. My friend smoothed the cloth over my hips, without taking her eyes off our reflection in the mirror. Then she made me up, blue-grey for my eyelids, a pinkish shade for my lips, and a darker pink tint for my nails; she also put some jewelry on me, pearl earrings, a woven choker, a few tastefully wrought silver rings and bracelets. For my hair, it was simple: she smoothed it with gel, then separated it into a long side part, with a lock lying flat across my forehead and the sides held back with hairpins. I balanced on my heels and made a few movements. “You are superb,” my friend whispered hoarsely at the tall woman with a regal bearing whose gaze was devouring me from the mirror, her eyes enlarged by eyeliner and mascara, blazing with excitation. “I might not be the greatest beauty of the evening,” I murmured, pivoting on my heels and gazing over my shoulder at the back and hips of the figure in the mirror, “but my ass will make more than a few of the girls hard.”

* * *

The party was in full swing. The whirlwind of women all around me gave me a slight vertigo; noise echoed in my ears, music, laughter, shouts, clinking of glasses and jewelry; I found myself in the middle of a slow ballet of winks, pouts, smiles, light touches, caressing gestures, fragments of movements multiplied in the long mirrors framing the living room. The narrow dress forced me to take tiny steps, and I was still ill at ease on my high heels; but little by little I found my balance, and with it I gained more self-confidence and began to laugh, talk, gesticulate, as freely as my companions. My friend handed me a cocktail, a gin and tonic, cool, sparkling, almost bitter, and leaned over to breathe a few words into my ear: “Everything is perfect here, isn’t it? We’re amongst ourselves.” There was too much noise to make myself heard, so I nodded. On a slightly elevated part of the room, three girls were dancing, swaying their hips, their pretty behinds shapely in miniskirts or shorts, their legs long and bare and smooth. Quite close to me, a haughty woman with a sculptural, exaggerated body, almost a head taller than me, was staring fixedly at herself in a mirror, her hands running up her hips and belly to gravely weigh her bulging breasts. The young woman with the blond hair in a bun whom I had seen earlier by the pool in a striped swimsuit had joined us, dressed now in a short embroidered dress with a violet stole draped over her narrow shoulders. Her hand rested familiarly on the hollow of my back and she brushed my neck with her lips: “What a beautiful dress! It suits you.” I blushed with pleasure and, pulling her neck toward me, pressed my mouth against hers. Near us, my friend was laughing; in the mirror in front of me, I could see the young woman’s back and hips, our intertwined bodies, my own gaze filtered through her loose strands of hair which smelled of heather, moss, and almond. Finally she broke away and contemplated me with a brief, joyful smile; then, stroking my face with the tips of her fingers, she moved away: “See you soon.” I sipped my drink as I watched her disappear into the crowd. My friend was still laughing and handed me a lipstick: poised in front of the mirror, I carefully retouched the outline of my lips; rolling one against the other in that so intimately feminine gesture, spreading a sensual joy through my entire body. Near me several girls were kissing now, standing against the walls or on the sofas, I could see hands with colorful nails wandering over thighs and buttocks and disappearing beneath dresses or skirts; breasts began appearing, well-rounded, the nipples erect and calling for lips; the girl with the short hair who had been doing laps in the pool was kneeling now between the thighs of the tall sculptural woman; and she, above the head pressing in on her, was still staring at herself in the mirror. I turned toward her reflection and tried to meet her gaze but it remained riveted on itself, impenetrable, and thus I could contemplate her at my leisure, without her noticing; seen from this angle her face took on a hard, angular, almost masculine aspect, her gaze, as the head with the thick close-cropped black hair moved down the length of her body, darkened, took on a fierce, wild look; and when finally the girl, with both hands, parted her thighs to place her beautiful painted mouth on her sex, her eyes came alive with a furious, devouring, superb joy. I kept sipping my drink without taking my eyes off the spectacle in the mirror; my friend was watching the couple itself over my shoulder and I could also see, in front of my own, the reflection of her ample curves and curly hair. A little silver tray that had been circulating among the guests reached us; I leaned over, delicately grasped the glass straw, and inhaled a line of white powder, followed by another; a shiver traveled through my body, I straightened up, arched nervously on my legs perched on the high heels, and with one hand smoothed the knit cloth over my hip and buttock. My friend took some cocaine as well and I helped her hold the tray. Then I passed it on to another woman and took my friend by the hand to lead her outside. As I crossed the threshold of the sliding glass door I shivered, it was cold outside the house, humid too, the grass, beneath the light of lamps placed all over, shone with dew. “There’s a lot of light,” I said to my friend. “Are you sure the fuses won’t blow?”—“Don’t worry about it. We had the entire circuit overhauled twice, by a professional electrician.” Here too there were dozens of guests, talking or kissing while drinking, laughing, smoking. Several girls, naked except for thongs or bathing suits, were swimming in the illuminated water of the pool, their beautiful, slim bodies deformed by the waves of green water. On the edge, kneeling, naked too, apart from a thin pair of black and purple lace panties, the young woman with the half undone bun whom I had kissed was scrutinizing her image in the lapping water. From where I stood, I could see her profile: her long neck freed by the bun, her sharp shoulder, the gracious curve of her back were almost those of a boy; but the round shape of her hips, when she straightened up in a fluid motion, the long firm buttocks that stretched the translucent cloth of the panties, were indeed those of a woman, a real woman. I was still drinking, my friend had handed me another gin and tonic and my lipstick stained the rim of the glass, I could feel my skin bristling in its underclothes, seeking with delight, in the places where it remained bare, silky contact with the pink lining of the dress. The young blond woman, hands on her knees and buttocks arched behind her like a little girl, was still contemplating herself in the pool water, and this spectacle filled me with joy. Then all of a sudden she stood up, arms raised and tiny breasts jutting out, took a deep breath, and dove in, erasing her reflection. I watched the long white body flow underwater, arms down by its sides, propelled by the feet. My friend was stroking my hips and my buttocks, making the almost liquid jersey of the dress slide over the rougher cloth of the lining, but I barely noticed. “You like her,” her voice spoke in my ear. “More than me.”—“It’s not that,” I said sadly. “I’m jealous of her body. Mine will never be like that.”—“You are very beautiful, too. Your body excites me.”—“Maybe. But it’s not the same thing.” I pressed against her, my heart beating. The girl was hauling herself out of the water, streaming, her hair undone and soaked, her wet panties taut over her delicate little parts. Another woman handed her a towel and she covered her shoulders with it before pattering toward us: “Give me something to drink!” she cried out, breaking into joyful laughter. Still leaning against my friend, who was now gently stroking my belly, I handed her my glass with an affectionate smile. I felt happy and light, my mind expanding from the alcohol and the cocaine, overwhelmed by the fullness of the ambiguous body that the beautiful clothes my friend had lent me shaped for me. “You’ll catch cold,” I said to the blond girl who was shivering, reaching out my fingers to wipe away the water beading on the bristling skin of her arm. “Come dry off.”

* * *

Alone now in the bathroom, I examined my face in the harsh, pitiless neon light. Beneath its mask of colors and powders it looked hollow to me, almost feverish. I quickly dashed a little powder on my burning cheeks before returning to the living room. The blond girl had gone in before me and, her image multiplied in the mirrors, was dancing almost naked in front of the large green and gold covered bed. All around was a vast confusion of bodies; partially or entirely undressed, they intertwined on the sofas and the carpet, opening up to each other in a wild joyous communism where organs, hands, and greedy mouths took precedence over individuals, splitting them open, confusing them, mingling them in a tide of cries and husky sighs, shaken by irregular spasms. I looked for my friend: she was still standing beyond the sliding glass door, poised with an ironic air on her high heels and smoking a cigarette, contemplating with an indifferent gaze, through the glass, the disordered utopia of bodies in the midst of which I slowly made my way forward. Having reached the blond girl, I took her by the shoulders and lay her on her belly, settling her tiny chest and her face in the long embroidered grass of the cloth. As if unwittingly, she spread her legs; I kneeled behind her on the divan and stroked her thin, nervous thighs; when I pulled the thin cloth of her panties toward me, her buttocks arched and then relaxed and spread under the pressure of my fingers. I bent down and brushed my lips against the still bristling skin of her ass; elbows drawn up against her sides, she shivered; then I slipped my tongue into the cleft, tasting a slight bitterness at the touch of the anus, nestled amid a tiny tuft of blond hair. I slipped one hand under her narrow body, along her belly and then her groin, pushing away the wet cloth of her panties to roll her small, soft member and her shriveled balls between my fingers. She began to groan, I lapped at her anus in quick strokes while playing with her parts, my own member had grown hard and I straightened to pull up my dress and extract it from my panties, I coated it with saliva and then drew against my belly the girl’s back and bare ass and slipped into her in one stroke before falling forward, my teeth on the curly hairs on the nape of her neck. The young woman, her hands clenched in the embroidered bedspread, her breath cut short, groaned in pleasure, I let go of her soft member and stroked a breast, turning a little and leaning with my other hand on her neck: thus, I could see parts of our bodies in the mirror, my ass, still molded in the jersey of the dress, drawing a pearl-grey curve highlighted by the ceiling lamp with, beneath it, almost crimson, naked except for the thin creased strip of the panties, arched on the gold and green weft of the fabric, the thigh and the ass of the blond girl. I pressed her thin little body tightly in my hands and then went back to her sex, she was hard now and the member, stiff, felt minuscule in my fingers, I jerked it off while continuing to burrow into her ass, she was panting and came quickly in a squeal, her behind and back quivering, without end. Then she sank onto the embroidered grass, expelling my member from her ass in a long, slippery motion. I hadn’t come yet and my member was throbbing, I was panting like her, my hands leaning on her long white thighs. But already another body was settling against my own and I lifted my head to rub it against hers: it was the tall girl with the close-cropped hair, whose thick, black hair, pressed against my face, filled my nostrils with a smell of earth and cinnamon. I turned my head to kiss her lips: just in front of my eyes, a long forked scar barred the angle of her jaw. Completely naked, she pressed against my back, stroking my chest, spreading my thighs with her knees; then she lifted my dress high up over my hips, drew my panties down just under my buttocks and began massaging my own anus, with the pad of her thumb, wet with saliva. Behind the window, my friend, impassive, was watching us attentively; the blond girl had curled up in a ball, and, from the far side of the divan, was also watching us, her large eyes moist from pleasure. The member of the girl with the black hair was beating against my ass, heavy, warm, and soft; pressed against her body, palpitating with excitation, I could feel my own body harden, take on for a brief instant all the density of the stone of a fruit before slowly beginning to melt. With my hand behind me, my heart beating, I guided the member, slippery with saliva, to my anus, it pressed and widened me and entered, filling my entire back with joy, unfurling it beneath the cloth of the dress. I was no longer hard at all, my parts beat limply against the lace of my lowered panties, my thighs, sheathed in silk, pushed against the muscular thighs of the girl burrowing powerfully into me, I collapsed onto one shoulder, twisting a little to the side, thus I could again see framed in the mirrors parts of our bodies, a mobile mound of pale flesh and pieces of disparate clothing piled on the verdant expanse of cloth, with, at the very top, the rounded ass of the girl, quivering at each thrust, then beneath that my thigh and the curve of my buttock, outlined by the grey of the stockings and the bunched-up dress. Her hands were pressing with all their weight on my neck and head and this is how, split in two by her magnificent sex, my body tore away from itself, projecting itself like a shade over those surrounding it, the one dominating it and the others all around, blurred and dismembered by the pleasure bearing them up like a vast swell.

* * *

When I opened my eyes we were all three sprawled on the embroidered cloth, our limbs intertwined, naked apart from a few pieces of tulle and lace. My mouth was pasty, cramps racked my muscles. The young woman with the Venetian blond hair was sleeping on her belly, completely naked; the one with the black hair was sleeping on her back, her long penis lying across her thigh. I brushed against it with the backs of my fingers, but the girl didn’t wake up. I rose, sat on the edge of the wide bed, and took off the pump that had remained on one foot all night, along with the silk stocking. Despite the acid pain running through my head, a great feeling of peace and plenitude filled my body. Around us, other girls were sleeping as well, scattered over the sofas and thick carpets, naked or half-clothed. Many of them had hard-ons in their sleep, one of them, a very slim little girl with a huge chest, was absent-mindedly caressing her breast and letting out little yelps. There was no sign of my friend. I got up and wandered through the silent house to find the bathroom where I urinated for a long time, seated on the toilet. Then I removed my makeup and took a shower, stretching with pleasure under the hot stream. My running clothes were still lying in the corner and I quickly slipped them on after drying myself off. In the living room, my two companions were still sleeping, snuggled against each other now in the middle of the green and gold field of the large cloth. The girl with the cropped hair had turned onto her side and their buttocks fit together, the thin, sinewy bottom of the blond girl half hidden beneath the more muscular buttocks of the other. My sneakers made no sound on the carpet and I awoke no one on my way out. I went downstairs, crossed through the house and opened the back door to pass into the hallway; as soon as I closed it, I began to run, zipping my jogging suit up to my neck. I didn’t count my steps, they fell one after the other, firm and regular like my breath, I guided myself as well as I could in the indistinct light, trying to guess the curve of the hallway, anxious not to bump into a wall. From time to time, when it became too dark, I held out a hand to guide me, but sometimes my fingers found nothing but emptiness, an intersection perhaps or just a recess, I faltered but didn’t stop, struggling to keep going. When my hand banged into a metallic object, I knew right away it was a doorknob, I stopped short to grasp it and opened the door. The light, beyond the threshold, dazzled me, I blinked and shielded my face with my arm. The air was like a furnace, already my face was covered with sweat, I quickly took off my jacket to wipe myself with it, before tying it around my waist. Then I looked around me. I found myself at the edge of an expanse of red earth, on which were scattered groups of round huts, with earthen walls and thatched roofs. People were coming and going, most of them women and bands of children, a few men as well, all with black skin and short, curly hair, dressed in bright colors that often clashed. A few tall palm trees rose between the huts; further on stood a vast wall of vegetation, where the brilliant green of the mango trees stood out from the darker tints, green-grey or yellowish, of the other trees. Bird sounds filled the air, children’s shouts burst out; sometimes too the barking of an invisible dog resounded. The air was heavy, electric. A woman, sitting in front of a blackened pot simmering on a little fire in the shade near a hut, gestured at me with her wooden ladle to approach. Near her, on a woven straw mat, a little baby was sleeping, a naked girl with just a colored cord around her hips. The woman pointed to another stool and handed me a tin spoon and a steaming bowl filled with red beans. I was very hungry and I cheerfully devoured the dish, thanking her with a smile and a few words; she answered in a language that I did not understand, encouraging me with a gesture to keep eating. It lacked salt but that didn’t matter, I swallowed spoonful after spoonful and scraped the bowl. I was still sweating copiously, the damp heat stuck my soaking clothes to my body. A gust of hot wind shook the palm trees and the woman raised her head. I looked too: heavy black clouds were covering the sky above the forest. Already the first drops were splattering the ground, throwing up particles of red dirt; the woman gathered the baby in its mat and then grasped the pot, gesticulating for me to follow her under a thatched roof erected over some posts, like a hut without walls. There were three little chairs and wooden stools there and we took our places in silence as outside the rain advanced with a hum, increasing in volume until it drowned out all other sounds. Everything had suddenly grown dark. The baby woke up and began to cry. The woman rocked it, then abruptly freed from her blouse a fat, round, flaccid breast that the infant greedily took hold of, suckling with all its strength. The rain was hammering the earth now and I watched the woman and her baby in silence, listening to the croaking of the toads that rose from the edge of the forest. Suddenly a shadow appeared in front of the shelter and shouted a few guttural words. The woman’s face contorted, she hugged the child to her, the shadow had bent down to enter the shelter, when it straightened up I saw it was an armed soldier, his head covered in short braids and his chest and arms decorated with ill-assorted objects, jewelry or fetishes. He was shouting and waving us outdoors with his weapon, the woman had slipped from the chair and was seated on the ground, the baby still clutched in her arms, the man, without warning, started kicking me, I fell to the ground and he kept beating me until I began to crawl outside to escape him. The rain soaked me immediately, I tried to stand up, leaning on my hands, but a violent blow on my back sent me flying into a puddle. Dazed, groggy, my mouth full of mud that I spat out in vain, I curled up on my side, pain shooting through me like a burn from a red-hot iron, unable even to haul myself out of the puddle. Blurry, barely distinct, the green rubber boots of the man filled my entire field of vision, I rolled onto my shoulders as the green and brown figure, veiled by the rain, towered above me shaking his rifle, behind me the woman was screaming as well, I followed the soldier with my eyes as he joined her, she was convulsively clutching her baby, the man tore it away from her with a brutal gesture and sent it flying into a bush, the woman cried out and rushed toward the bush; but a violent rifle butt blow to her stomach made her double over, and she fell to the ground where the man kicked her in the head. I didn’t see any more, something or rather someone had grabbed hold of my hair and was pulling me in the mud, I screamed and tried to grasp his arm, and got battered with blows for my trouble; I was suffocating, half smothered in mud and terror, finally I managed to rise to my knees as a relentless hand, twisting my arms behind my back, tied them together at the elbows. Then I was hauled to my feet and with a great shove propelled forward. It was almost night now, the rain blinded me and I could see nothing, a final blow threw me to the ground again near other people whom I could hear but not see. I twisted around to get back onto my knees, blinking frantically, I was surrounded by several heads, boys and girls, all looked very young and were shouting or crying in their language. The cord dug into my elbows and I could feel my hands growing numb. Little by little the rain grew lighter, a grey slice of sky appeared behind a cloud and shone a hesitant gleam on the scene. We were surrounded by soldiers, all looked like the first one, two of them were knotting ropes around the hips of the seated children, another came to tie me up in the same way, further on more soldiers, brandishing their automatic rifles, were pushing half a dozen men toward an immense solitary mango tree in the middle of the expanse of red earth, they stood them with their backs to the trunk and tied them together, the men let them without struggling, from where I was I couldn’t hear if they were protesting or not, the rain was still falling a little and the croaking of toads filled the evening, the failing daylight drew gleams from the puddles scattered over the expanse, one of the soldiers picked up a big stick lying there and, with calm, precise, methodical gestures, smashed the heads of the men tied to the tree. Already other men were kicking us to make us stand up; I realized that we were all tied to each other to form a human chain, I seemed to be the only adult there, all the others looked like children or young adolescents. Two soldiers were standing near me: “Please, s’il vous plaît, bitte, por favor, min fadlikum, pozhaluysta, molim vas,” I mumbled idiotically in all the languages I knew, waving my arms behind my back. One of them glared at me with very red eyes; the other barked a few words, and the first took out a knife and came forward to cut the ropes digging into my elbows. My hands and forearms were blue, I no longer felt them at all, I struck them against my thighs and a horrible tingling filled them, almost unbearable, a burning pain also pulsed through my elbows where they had been tied and I massaged them as well as I could, clenching my teeth to avoid groaning. A little further away, a young girl was thrashing about on the ground and shouting. A soldier tried to stand her up but she resisted, striking the muddy ground with her feet and screaming with all her strength. Finally the soldier let her go and stood up, took the rifle from his shoulder, and crushed in her head with a few blows from the butt, stopping only when the girl had completely ceased twitching. Then he detached the rope from her hips and tied it again to reform the human chain that was already getting underway with shouts and blows, leaving the corpse stretched out in the mud, blood and splattered brain staining the puddles, still pricked by the last drops of rain.

* * *

They forced us to walk all night. Like all the children taken with me, I had to carry on my head a heavy bag full of grain or flour. The throbbing pain in my arms, injured by the overtight cords, made the exercise even more difficult; I kept slipping in the mud, tripping over roots, creepers, or brambles, often I dropped the bag and for my trouble received a volley of blows. Thorny branches scratched my arms and face, mosquitoes were devouring me and I couldn’t even scratch the bites; I moved forward step by step, panting, roughly guided by the rope tying me to the young girl in front of me. Whenever one of the children, exhausted, wound up collapsing, they would shower him with kicks; if he didn’t get up quickly enough, they would kill him, with a blow from a stick, the butt of a rifle, or a knife: ever since the appearance in the rain of the first soldier, I hadn’t heard a single gunshot. Around us rose the immense trees of the forest, black and menacing, caught in a network of vegetation as in giant spiderwebs; the moonlight barely filtered through but that didn’t seem to bother the soldiers leading the march. The darkness, on both sides of the column, was animated by the mad dance of fireflies, minuscule points of green light that appeared and disappeared, brief as a friendly wink; on all sides, the forest rustled, bird cries or monkeys frightened by the passing of the troop, sounds of crunching leaves, of broken branches, of drops of water shaken from branches, an order barked out in an unknown language, the yap of pain and fear of a child being hit, the hoarse noise of desperate breathing. Violent odors seized me in the throat, odors of earth, mud, swamp, decomposed leaves, the sharp smell of sweat from the soldiers who sometimes passed by me, the sweeter smell of shit when one of the children, unable to hold back anymore, shat while walking, the smell of fear, the most recognizable of all. When we arrived at the camp it was still night. Armed soldiers and a crowd of children welcomed us in a vast subdued murmur; bags, jerrycans, pots were taken off our heads by agile, almost invisible hands; separated into two groups, boys and girls, we were led, through a clearing still soaked with rain, before the leader of this strange army. Installed on a little seat made of woven wood, he sat in state beneath a straw awning, surrounded by a dozen soldiers armed with Russian rifles and machetes, young women and girls at his feet, sitting in silence. Rough hands forced us to our knees on the wet grass, a dozen meters from the group; the commander rose, the moon lit up his features and I could clearly make them out, he looked young, barely older than his men, I could see them better too and not one of them seemed to have passed adolescence. A soldier approached his chief, who, in a loud but slightly shrill voice, uttered several phrases, immediately translated by the soldier into a language that I understood no more than the original. Then the entire assembly knelt around us, the commander alone remaining standing, his little oiled braids and his gris-gris gleaming in the nighttime brightness, and intoned a solemn hymn, taken up in unison by all the others. When this was over, several soldiers passed among us, each holding a little gourd; at each new captive they dipped their fingers in the container and with a thick white substance drew a cross on his forehead, chest, back, and both hands. When my turn came, I submitted passively, closing my eyes; from now on, I belonged to them. Then the commander shared out the girls among his soldiers, keeping two for himself, and I was pushed with the other boys to a corner of the clearing, where we were again tied to each other by the waist and ordered to lie down and sleep. Above my head, the foliage of the trees stood out from the pale nighttime sky, a few drops were still falling from the leaves, the moon shone a little higher, and I could see no stars. A brief little cry sounded behind me, followed by a rustling of leaves and a grunt; I turned around as well as I could: in the midst of an expanse of tall green grass, near the first trees, a soldier had just pushed one of the girls onto the ground. She had fallen on her stomach, on the faintly golden ground, and he was lowering his pants and kneeling behind her to lift up her dress. She cried out again and he struck her, a brutal punch to the back of her neck; she fell abruptly silent, and he lay down on top of her; his black buttocks and his powerful thighs, almost blue in the cold light of the moon, were facing me, I watched them move in and out for a few moments, the girl’s body had disappeared in the tall grass but I could sense her powerless trembling, finally I turned onto my back and closed my eyes. The respite didn’t last long, a kick in the ribs woke me up too soon, all around me, in the dawn light, the camp was bustling about, young girls were pounding food in wooden mortars, boys were bringing in dead wood, fires were being made and water boiled. A few soldiers untied us and indicated that we could go into the woods to attend to our needs. I walked between the trees, distancing myself a little from the other boys and looking for a bush, and finally lowered my pants, stiff with mud and filth, and squatted: shit began to flow right away, liquid, stinking, almost green. When it was over I wiped myself as well as I could with some leaves and stood up. A little further on some soldiers were shouting, boys were running through the trees toward the camp. It was then that I noticed with surprise a hut, planted there on the edge of some land cleared between the trees, with earthen walls and a little wooden door. I approached and pulled the metal latch to push the door open, it gave way easily and I lowered my head and shoulders to enter. Once in the hallway I straightened up and despite the pain still shooting through my muscles immediately resumed running. I no longer felt either fatigue or discomfort, my breathing came easily and my long strides fell with regularity, even though I had trouble keeping my balance, I reeled a little, disoriented by the lack of light and landmarks, I bumped violently against a wall but didn’t interrupt my running, gropingly searching for the way to navigate between the walls, avoiding the darker sections that could have turned out to be dungeons, or else side galleries leading God knows where. Finally I stumbled into the locker room and changed rapidly, pulling my swimming cap over hair still stiff with mud and going through the swinging doors to find myself in a large and very blue space echoing with shouts and water sounds. All around, long mirrors framing the pool sent back reflections of my body, fragmented and impossible to connect to each other, I tottered again, then pulled myself together, straightened up, and, body taut, buttocks tight, plunged straight as a spear into the clear, cool water.

II

I did lap after lap without counting them, reveling in the strength of my muscles and the fluid, viscous feel of the water, barely pausing at the ends of the pool before starting back again with a vigor each time renewed. Finally, plunged beneath the surface, eyes wide open, I finished. My head broke the surface, my hands found the edge, took hold, and, in one push of the shoulders, hauled my streaming body out of the water. Disoriented by the blue light and the sounds, I tore off my cap and goggles and stayed there for a moment, the water running from my body to form a puddle at my feet. The lapping of the water, shouts, laughter resounded around me, the large mirrors framing the pool reflected from every side fragments of my body, a shoulder here, a thigh there, the flank, the pectoral, the back of my neck, the curve of my back. Near me a slender girl dove into the water in a brief, powerful motion. I came to myself and headed for the swinging doors which I banged open with the palms of my hands. Dried off, wearing a silky grey tracksuit, pleasant to the skin, I found myself back in the hallway and began running in small strides, my white sneakers hitting the ground with a light step, my breathing whistling between my lips. A diffuse light reigned here, almost opaque, I could see no source of light and could just make out the walls enough to steer myself; in places, darker zones seemed to indicate intersections or perhaps some sort of gaps, I ignored them and continued straight on as well as I could as the hall seemed to curve and I constantly had to correct my course to avoid bumping into the walls. Sometimes, to guide myself, I held out my fingers, and this is how they collided with a metallic object, a handle which I grasped and pushed without hesitating, following the movement of the door that opened. I found myself in an unknown garden that nonetheless seemed vaguely familiar, an almost wild garden, abandoned, invaded by weeds. I made my way with difficulty between the long thorny branches of bougainvillea, half stifled by the ivy covering everything; in front of me, the tall façade of the house, raised like a tower, disappeared beneath the wisteria which proliferated up to the roof and twined together, or else fell back beneath its own weight, masking the sun and plunging the garden into a half-darkness that failed to mitigate the humid, heavy heat. I wiped off the sweat bathing my face with a sleeve and entered the house. Everything was quiet. Down the hallway, I pushed a half-open door: it was a child’s room, I examined for a moment the toys, the movie posters, the tin cavalrymen scattered over the large carpet before turning back and climbing up the spiral staircase to the next floor. A framed reproduction of Lady with an Ermine, barely visible beneath the filth, decorated the landing; upstairs everything was empty. I passed my fingers over surfaces black with dust, thick, intact layers, as if the house had been abandoned long ago; nonetheless, I could discern everywhere traces of a recent presence, dirty dishes were piled in the sink, the fridge was full even though the food was beginning to stink, the irises in a narrow vase were only just wilting; in the dining room, the table was still set, the remnants of a meal filled the dishes and plates; clothes lay on the furniture, a book open on the sofa, an uncorked bottle on a cabinet. I climbed up to the next floor. The bedroom was dark, bathed in a weak greenish light, the daylight almost completely filtered by the wisteria covering the window. A suffocating heat reigned here and I tried to open the window, but the wisteria prevented me and I could only open it a crack. I wanted to turn on the lights but the bulbs seemed to have blown; I found a new one in a cupboard in the bathroom and changed the one in the bedside lamp, which still wouldn’t light; I went back downstairs, found the fuse box in the kitchen, the fuses had blown and I reset the main circuit breaker, turning on several ceiling lamps in the process. Upstairs, the bedside lamp now threw a gloomy yellow light on the scene. I looked around me. At the foot of the bed lay piled a large embroidered bedspread, long green grass on a golden background, negligently thrown there; women’s clothes were scattered pretty much everywhere, dirty panties, skirts, mismatched shoes; on the dresser lay several photographs that I picked up and quickly examined, one after the other. They all showed me in the company of a beautiful little blond boy with lively, sparkling eyes, shown at different ages and in different situations, at the beach, at the circus, on a boat, but always near me, in my arms or sitting on my lap. I put them down and began searching through the drawers. In the nightstand, I found what I was looking for, a pair of scissors, made of very heavy metal; I picked up the photos again and began cutting them, separating my image from the little boy’s, which I threw in the drawer that I closed when I was done. Then I shuffled the remaining pieces of the photos like a pack of cards and fanned them out. Abstracted thus from its context, my frozen face came to life, it reflected like a mirror the presence of the eliminated child, laying bare everything that connected it to him and that could never be undone. This aroused in me a glacial feeling, I couldn’t tear my eyes away from these images and at the same time I couldn’t look at them either; finally, overwhelmed with anguish, I threw them in a rage on the dresser where they fell, scattered.

* * *

In the kitchen, I searched through the fridge and the freezer in search of something edible; I finally found a few frozen langoustines that I sautéed in a saucepan with olive oil and garlic. I ate them with a delicious very cool white wine, separating the shell from the abdomens with my fingers and cracking the pincers between my teeth to suck out the fibers and juice. The meal over, I quickly cleared the dishes and carefully washed my fingers, which smelled of garlic and seafood, before returning to finish the wine with a thin little cigar in front of the bay window in the living room, contemplating the saffron light of evening through the tangle of wisteria. When the light faded completely I lit the living room lamps, one by one. I also tried to put a disk on, but the stereo was dead, something must have blown. Finally, I went upstairs. Near the bed, the bedside lamp still illumined the bedroom with its dirty light; my gaze ran over the wrinkled, unclean, stained sheets; when I tried to beat the pillow, a cloud of dust rose up, making me sneeze several times. Annoyed, I took off the pillowcase and removed the sheets, then dug into a cupboard to find clean ones and hastily remade the bed. I dragged the bedspread to the stairway to shake it; the space filled with dust, I slapped it several times against the stone steps, sneezing convulsively, before returning to throw it over the sheets. Through the gaps in the wisteria, the moonlight barely filtered, spotting with little white dots the long green grass and the golden background of the cloth. I quickly got undressed; a fine layer of sweat covered my skin, it was still just as hot, I felt as if I were suffocating. I lay down on my belly, stretching out my arms and stroking with my fingers the thick weft of the embroidery. My member had gotten stuck under my stomach and I freed it; my buttocks prickled and I turned around to look at the tall upright mirror standing near the door: but it reflected nothing other than an empty corner of the bed, a section of white wall, the edge of the window. I fell asleep this way, my naked body on the grass of the bedspread, bathed in that uneven, hesitant light. An indefinable noise drew me from a dream where I was trying to convince a young blond woman, her bun artfully disheveled, to take driving lessons. Without turning around, I looked over my shoulder toward the door: it was open now, whereas I was sure I had closed it. The black rectangle of the stairway stood out from the doorframe, I scrutinized this darkness, in vain, there was nothing there. When I woke again the sky, behind the wisteria, seemed to be growing pale. Apart from a very slight rustling of leaves there was still no sound. I got up, quickly pulled on my tracksuit and went down to the living room. In front of the kitchen door, I briefly entertained the idea of making myself coffee, but I immediately gave it up and went down to the lower floor. In the child’s room, I tried to head toward the bed, but the tin cavalrymen scattered over the carpet were in my way, I was afraid of crushing them and I remained for a moment near the door, contemplating the empty bed and the sheets rolled in a ball, before turning round and walking down the hall to emerge into the garden. Dead leaves and twigs crackled beneath my feet, the morning heat clung to my skin, the profusion of uncontrolled vegetation filled me with a dull, vague anxiety. I headed for the door at the back which opened easily beneath the pressure of my hand. As soon as it closed behind me I began to run, relieved by the relative coolness that reigned here. The cadence of my breathing gave rhythm to my stride; everything seemed slightly blurred, indistinct, I couldn’t even see the ceiling, if there was one, but that didn’t bother me, I could guess at, more than I could make out with precision, the walls, the darker grey that here and there indicated a juncture or at least a recessed corner, I avoided all obstacles to follow the long sinuosity of the corridor, cheerfully striking a wall from time to time to assure myself of its solidity and of the softness of its covering. This is how my hand fell on a metal protuberance: I grasped it, turned, and pushed. Past the threshold my foot burrowed into something soft and I stopped short. I found myself in a rather large room, quite clear, sparsely furnished; on the walls, the golden vines of the wallpaper intertwined up to the moldings; a dark red, almost blood-colored carpet covered the floor. Across the room, separated from me by a bed covered in a heavy golden cloth embroidered with long green grass, stood a figure with close-cropped jet black hair. The shutters were closed, but it was staring at something in the window, perhaps its own reflection. I gently pushed the door, which closed with a muffled sound; the figure turned round, and I saw then that it was a man, a handsome young man who as he saw me let a fleeting little smile cross his dark, angular face. He was of an unreal, almost perfect beauty, a beauty that definitively isolated him from the world. With a supple, feline motion, he skirted round the bed and without a word grasped my neck to draw my mouth against his. His stubble scratched my skin, but I greedily returned his kiss, at once intoxicated and put off by his smell of cheap cologne mixed with musky sweat. In one motion, he laid me down on the green leaves of the bedspread and knelt above me, leaning on his powerful arms, which I stroked with my fingertips along with his shoulders, neck, and sides. My member, stuck a little sideways, hardened beneath the tracksuit; he straightened up, I held out my hands and began undoing the buckle of his heavy leather belt, he withdrew some more and stood up, my fingers searched to free his member, wedged beneath the elastic of the briefs, finally it came free, swollen already, soft and firm, and I leaned over to lick its tip before sliding it between my lips, it hardened some more and filled my mouth, pressing against my tongue and the back of my throat, I rolled it between my lips, savoring its sweetness and its power, his hand, on the nape of my neck, pushed me against the curls of his pubis, I breathed through my nose, driven to a frenzy by his insipid, acrid smell of urine and deodorant, sucking in the taut member with my tongue and lips, finally a retch made me gag and I tore myself away from him, swallowing convulsively. His moist cock struck my cheek as he emitted a brief chuckle, his hand still pressed against the back of my neck. I wanted to bring my mouth to his member again but he took a few steps back, letting it beat to the rhythm of his heart between the open fly of his jeans before shoving it back into his briefs and buttoning everything up. “Wait. I’m hungry.” He picked up the receiver next to the bed, dialed a number and, holding up a cardboard menu, named a few items. I rose, shaking my numb legs, and went into the bathroom, where I opened wide the heavy porcelain faucets of the shower, one hand under the stream of water to gauge the temperature.

* * *

Under the scalding water he rubbed against me, gripping my ass and pressing me against him, his still half erect member knocking against my own. I turned him around to soap his shoulders, his back, his hips, gliding my fingers between his buttocks and caressing the tufts of curly hairs around his anus. His matte skin was covered with numerous little scars, thick enough in places to form bumps, I counted three on his shoulder and could feel a few more beneath my fingers, on his chest and his groin, and also a long forked one at the angle of his jaw. I pressed my sex against his ass and bit the nape of his neck as he leaned against the tiled wall. Muffled knocks sounded on the bedroom door. He broke away, running his fingers along my balls and member, and slipped on a large terrycloth robe before going to the door. I relaxed in the stream of water, bending my neck under the scalding pressure. A powerful desire filled me, stretching my muscles with excitation while leaving me racked with an empty, sated feeling. Finally I turned off the water and dried off quickly, putting on the other bathrobe hanging there without taking the trouble of closing it. Sitting cross-legged on the green and gold bedspread, the young man was contemplating a large tray on which were lined up dishes in lacquered wood, filled with raw fish and pickled vegetables. Two golden beers frothed in tall, slightly tapered glasses. I joined him and began eating in silence. Aside from the clicking of the chopsticks there was no sound; behind the shutters, which, I supposed, looked out on a street or a courtyard, everything was quiet; a lone lamp, by the bedside, lit us with its pale halo, and I could clearly see our reflections in the windowpanes, two slightly blurred silhouettes, draped in white, which stood out from the verdant field of the bedspread. I finished the last little vegetables, pushed away the tray, and began undoing the knot of his bathrobe, sliding my hand between his thighs to stroke his member. He let out a long sigh and fell back on the bedspread. I spread his legs and leaned forward to run my tongue around his balls and then roll them between my lips, one after the other. With both hands, I pushed his knees back, almost to his shoulders, and continued licking him, sliding my tongue along the perineum and burrowing between the hairs, flicking the tip, to finally come and tickle his anus. It had a slightly spicy, sour taste, I buried my tongue in as he sighed and stroked my hair with one hand, pulling his calves even further back. It was very dry in that room, I quickly lacked saliva; I let his legs go and straightened up to drink a little beer, he took the glass from my hands and drank too, then in a swift motion he shed his bathrobe and turned over onto his belly, offering me his downy thighs and powerful, muscular buttocks; I stripped in turn and stretched on top of him, my stiff member pressed between his thighs, I took his chin in my hand and turned his head toward mine, his lips still had the bitter taste of the beer, I lifted his pelvis and with one hand guided my member toward the opening of his anus, but it was too dry, so I straightened up and brought some saliva up on my tongue as with both hands I spread his buttocks, the saliva streamed onto his hairs and his puckered, barely dilated anus, I massaged it with my thumb, which I dug in a little, and also coated my member with saliva. Then I pressed it again in the center of the hairs, he grunted, pushed as well, it opened all of a sudden and I found myself sucked in, glued against his ass, I slid my hands under his armpits and closed them over the back of his neck, gripping onto him and forcing into him with large thrusts, he moaned, his face pressed in the green leaves of the bedspread, I lifted his pelvis some more and turned around: in the panes of the window, I could clearly make out our two bodies on top of each other, the twin moon of my ass and my spread thighs, suspended above his with between them a darker, indistinct mass. Already pleasure was bursting open my back, stretching the skin of my neck; I slowed down; just at that moment, the phone rang, freezing us on top of each other. As I withdrew to pick it up, I squeezed the muscles of my pelvis with all my strength, but it was too late, pleasure had overcome me and my sperm, as I articulated a hoarse “Yes?” into the receiver, spurted out in long jerks, spattering my stomach, the boy’s ass, the embroidered leaves of the bedspread. “Yes?” In the receiver, no one replied. I pressed my ear to it, repeated several times “Hello? Hello?” but I could hear only the light buzzing of the empty line. Still lying on his stomach, the young man was quickly jerking off, I finally hung up and grasped his ass and balls with both hands, clenching my fingers as he came in turn.

* * *

An electrical outage plunged us into darkness as I tried to wipe the traces of sperm from the bedspread with the help of a roll of toilet paper. I lay down next to the boy, who turned his back to me with a sigh that was hard to interpret. I pressed against him, my now-soft member nestled in the hollow of his buttocks. We must have fallen asleep that way. The return of electricity woke me suddenly. My mouth was dry, pasty; blinking, I dragged myself out of bed to go drink greedily from the bathroom faucet, briefly blinded by the neon light that I turned off right away. Emerging from the bathroom I contemplated the boy: he was still sleeping, sprawled out on his belly, his downy legs intertwined with the embroidered cloth. I slowly ran the pads of my fingers along his back and buttocks, tripping over the scars; his skin grated, almost rough; between his legs, my sperm had dried in long whitish trails. I should turn down the heat, I thought confusedly. But I could see no thermostat, no temperature control. Finally I filled two glasses with water and put them on the radiator before turning off the light and lying back down alongside the young man, one hand on his side. Sounds of water emanating from the bathroom woke me completely. The light was on again and I was alone on the bed. I knocked on the bathroom door and went in without waiting for a reply: the young man, standing in front of the toilet, was peeing. I kissed his shoulder and quickly rinsed off in the shower. When I emerged, a towel knotted around my waist, he had just finished putting on his jeans and buckling his belt. With a smile I tapped the bulge formed by his limb: “Nice package,” I said. He chuckled dryly, slipped his t-shirt over his head, pulled a cellphone from his pocket and consulted it: “I have to go. Will you give me the money?” I looked at him with surprise: “The money?”—“Yes, the money. Like always.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed now and was pulling on his socks and leather ankle boots. A dull anxiety was seeping into my muscles; I hesitated, then went to search through the pockets of my tracksuit before returning with a helpless gesture. The boy had gotten up and was standing in front of me, his shoulders hunched a little and his face calm and cold; a threatening feeling emanated from him, not from his face but from his rounded shoulders, the tension of his thighs, the deceptive calmness of his dangling arms. “Well?”—“I don’t have any money, actually.”—“Are you fucking with me, or what?” His arm straightened and before I could make a move of defense he slapped me across the face, sending me into the wall; another blow, with his closed fist to my belly, doubled me over and sent me to my knees in front of him, stunned, my breath cut off. He took me by the hair, straightened me up, and struck me again several times in the face, sending me flying onto the bed where my mouth splattered the heavy cloth of the bedspread with blood. “Are you fucking with me?” He chased me through the room, the towel had fallen and I crawled naked as he rained my ribs and limbs with kicks, which exploded in my body like bursts of fire. Finally he left me sprawled on the carpet, my mouth and nose full of blood, wheezing and struggling to breathe in a little air. The backs of his legs were in front of me, I saw my clothes fall to the floor one after the other. “Fuck, you really don’t have anything, you son of a bitch,” his voice said far above my head as his legs turned toward me. I saw the tip of one of his boots draw back, then nothing. When I came to I was still lying thus, naked on the carpet soaked in blood; fortunately, the color was the same, it wasn’t too visible. I stayed there for a while panting, letting the pain shoot through my body, then I dragged myself to the bathroom where I managed to haul myself up to the sink. I rinsed off my face, my mouth; the water, turned red, splattered the sink and mirror, I delicately felt my nose and my teeth, one or two moved a little but they were all there, my nose didn’t seem broken, I kept drinking and rinsing off until the water ran almost clear. Then I returned to the bedroom where I gathered my clothes with difficulty and sat down like a block on the edge of the bed to put them on, painfully. Finally dressed, I leaned back for a few minutes to catch my breath, then headed for the door. There were in fact two, I hadn’t noticed, and I had no idea which one had been taken by the young man, whom I had no wish to cross paths with again. I opened one at random and went out. Immediately the cool air of the hallway invigorated me, the pain racking my limbs faded away and I began running in short strides, setting one foot regularly in front of the other and breathing with ease. It wasn’t so dry anymore and quickly a fine layer of sweat covered my face and my bruised body; swallowing saliva, I could still taste the sharp, slightly ferruginous hint of blood; I pressed my tongue against my teeth, it hurt but they held firm. Everything was very grey here, my sight remained blurry and I could make out almost nothing, barely, perhaps, a few slightly darker rectangles which could just as easily have been nooks or alcoves as junctions, I tried to remain in the center of the hallway, which wasn’t easy since it kept curving, from time to time I almost collided with a wall and I would stumble as I recovered, but never did I stop running, I set one foot in front of the other while holding out a hand, fingers open, to assure myself of where the walls were, and that’s how I noticed somewhat by chance a metallic object, a doorknob apparently, my fingers closed on it and pushed and the door opened all of a sudden. I followed it and without letting go crossed the threshold. The space that opened up before me, a vast studio, welcomed me like a refuge and I crossed it, staggering, leaning on the walls and the bookcases that covered them, to reach the large bay window in the back, in front of which I collapsed into a black leather armchair. I felt disoriented, empty of thought but terribly ill at ease with myself, it wasn’t the physical pain which had already almost disappeared, no, it was something else, a numb anxiety that bored into my mind and kept me from enjoying the peaceful view in front of me, piles of colorful little buildings, rising in levels in front of the double wall formed by the long blue strip of the sea and the paler strip, veering to grey at the edge of the horizon, of the sky. I stayed there for a long time, breathing through my lips, before hauling myself painfully out of the armchair to stroll through the studio. A disk case was lying on the stereo, old recordings of Mozart piano concertos, but I had no desire for music and I left it there. Everything seemed futile to me, emptied of meaning and interest, the books lined up on the shelves, the reproductions and engravings hanging on the walls. I poured myself a glass of schnapps, drank it down, and poured another before burrowing into the sofa, black leather like the armchair, rolling between my fingers a little cigar, which I didn’t light. An album was lying there on the coffee table, I leafed through it absentmindedly: in oblong format, bound in white cloth, it showed naked women and men, executing various movements broken down into stop motion sequences by a multiple camera setup. I didn’t pause at any plate in particular, they passed in front of my eyes, a frozen series of backs, thighs, and white asses, seized for eternity by the successive triggering of the shutter in poses that no longer formed a single movement but served rather to emphasize these white bodies and what they were reduced to, backs, asses, and thighs.

* * *

It was cool in this apartment, almost cold. I searched through the cupboards for something to eat and threw together a scant meal of sardines in oil, raw onion, black bread, and rosé. I finished the bottle, my body already trembling with cold under my thin tracksuit; I had barely finished clearing away when I felt my abdomen contract, the meal came back up suddenly, the still cold wine mixed with the remnants of onions and sardines in a thick mush that splattered the sink; it eased up a little and I ran with my hand in front of my mouth to the bathroom, everything came up again and I finished emptying myself out in the white porcelain toilet bowl, tears in my eyes, my throat burned by the acid mixture, my stomach twisted by spasms. When it was over I rinsed my mouth out thoroughly, then sat on the floor to catch my breath. Finally I got up. In the kitchenette, I poured myself a large glassful of schnapps and drained it in one swallow, it added to the burning sensation but slightly masked the foul taste that still filled my mouth. I washed the sink as well as I could and returned to the bathroom to run a shower, waiting for the water to get hot before undressing and plunging in. The water struck my exhausted body without reinvigorating it, I found it hard to get my bearings, I ran my hands along my sides, my hips, my ass, and my thighs without managing to find the sense of this body that was crumbling and escaping me. In the bedroom, I dried myself off in front of a large round mirror leaning at the foot of the bed, a simple mattress placed on the floor and covered with an embroidered bedspread, quite thick, of long green grass on a golden background. My body in the mirror seemed inscrutable to me, I abstractly contemplated the limbs and torso marbled with blue and black spots veering to green, only the veined member, forgotten and useless between the thighs, seemed to distinguish it from a woman’s body, it was in any case a vague, indistinct body, and when I turned around it became even more so, reduced to a few illuminated lines, curves and sections of skin that could have belonged to anyone. I knelt down on the bedspread, back to the mirror; turning my head I could see the white globes of the buttocks and nestled between them the brown recess of the anus, I squeezed my thighs to hide the balls, thus leaving in my field of vision only the behind, the anus and the green grass of the bedspread, I pulled on the buttocks and the anus dilated a little, opening up like an iris onto its unfathomable depth, a black hole that seemed the only part still whole of this body slowly breaking up, struggling in the mirror to reorganize itself around it. I wet a finger with saliva and ran it over the edge of the cavity, pressing in little circles, then closed my eyes and inserted one fingertip, the contact reassured me and I pushed some more, it spread a sensation of well-being all around that diffused itself throughout my frozen body, outlining a shape for it, still approximate, but quite real. The intercom buzzed and I withdrew the finger, opening my eyes. I waited. It buzzed again, in long repeated rings, grating. I got up and with the same finger I had just withdrawn from my body angrily pressed on the button: “Yes?” I barked. A woman’s voice replied, a gentle and firm voice, the voice of a blond woman I thought without understanding how I could know that. “Sir,” she said, “I also live in this building, and your electric circuit is having strong surges that are causing outages for all your neighbors. This has to stop.” Anger swelled my face and I shouted into the intercom with a broken, trembling voice: “Madam, I’ve had that circuit completely overhauled by a professional electrician, twice in a row. That’s enough, now!” I yanked my finger from the button, then switched off the intercom so it couldn’t ring again. Still furious, at a loss, I lay down on the bedspread, on my belly with my arms spread out, and abruptly fell asleep. When I woke up I was trembling with cold. I got up and wrapped the bedspread around my shoulders, then crossed the studio in the darkness to go stand in front of the bay window. Below, I could see in the darkness a lozenge of light, the window of a neighboring apartment forming a section crossed lengthwise by a long sofa upholstered in white upon which had sunk a naked young woman, quickly followed by a man with an erection. He lifted her legs to enter her, moving in and out with a regular, jerky, almost mechanical rhythm, then turned her over on her knees and resumed his motion, still to the same rhythm. After a few minutes they changed positions once again, this time he was seated on the sofa and she was crouching over him, but the rhythm remained the same, almost comical, the rhythm of an old Buster Keaton film shot at sixteen frames per second, they tried out one after another in this way as if they were systematically attempting all the positions recommended by some German sex manual for couples, I watched a while more the doubled moons of their asses, facing the luminous lozenge of the window, then wearied of that and returned to lie down on the mattress, still rolled in the bedspread that protected me a little from the coolness of the night. I dreamed of endless, poorly executed construction work, and also of a blond woman, my mother or my wife, I couldn’t be sure, who didn’t know how to drive and didn’t want to learn. When I woke up again a cold light fell in the room, making the golden fabric of the cloth sparkle but warming nothing. I got up and dressed quickly, swallowed a glass of juice, and headed for the door. As I opened it I hesitated, hand on the knob, something was vaguely holding me back, the voice of the woman in the intercom perhaps, but this fleeting feeling faded as quickly as it had appeared, I pulled the door open and went out. Immediately a soft warmness invaded my limbs, and, suddenly relaxed, I began running with a regular, none-too-rapid pace, elbows in at my body, breathing with ease and focusing on the floor in front of my feet, as grey and hard to place with precision as the walls or the ceiling, quasi-invisible in the darkness, if there even was one, who knows, perhaps this long hallway was open to the outside, one couldn’t be sure of anything. From time to time, one of my sleeves grazed a wall; then I would instinctively correct my course, trying to follow the imperceptible curve without deviating, paying no attention to the darker zones that could just as easily have turned out to be recesses as security shelters or else other hallways, leading God knows where. I felt no difficulty in this running, I breathed with ease, filling my lungs and supplying my body with oxygen as it went forward in a supple, regular, even stride. A brilliant little spot, on one of the walls, drew my attention, it was a door handle and I opened it, passing the threshold without slowing down. Two steps further I had to pull up short to avoid bumping into a naked man who favored me with a reptilian look, at once puzzled and empty, before stepping back and then moving away. Another man, his arms and thighs covered with abstract motifs tattooed in black ink, had just finished undressing; still another was pulling on his member and his balls to slip a sort of metal ring over them. The air was damp, gorged with humidity, but it was cooler here than in the hallway, I was still sweating and began to undress in turn, opening one of the many white lockers that covered the walls to throw my clothes in. A young man handed me a bath towel, some flip-flops, and a padlock; I sealed the locker and tied the towel around my waist, then followed the other men who had disappeared in the darkness in back of the little room. The floor, tiled and wet, was a little slippery, an indefinable, irritating smell filled the air; I emerged at a little bar around which stood a few men, in towels or completely naked aside from their flip-flops. A smiling, well-built young man, his muscles thin but defined, both nipples pierced with little rings, came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder: “What will you have?”—“Whatever you like.” While the bartender was mixing the cocktails the young man stared at me mistrustfully; as I tasted my gin and tonic, clear, cool, sparkling, almost bitter, he leaned over and breathed a few words in my ear: “Do you come here often?”—“I don’t know. It depends.”—“I don’t remember seeing you. But it’s true that you don’t come to look.” He moved away to join his companions, leaving me to drink alone. I quickly finished the glass and headed for the staircase, which led to the lower floor. The smell intensified as I descended, growing more precise, it stank of rancid male sweat and dirty socks, mixed with strong animal effluvia, hints of sperm and of shit. Below, a dark labyrinth of hallways, cubicles and recesses opened up on several sides, guarded by a large black man, naked and motionless. I briefly contemplated his impassive face, his muscular chest, his thick, long member, then headed for the showers where I rinsed off my body before going to sit down in a very hot cubicle, full of steam. Other men were sharing it with me, no one spoke, I didn’t stay long and went out to shower again before returning, flip-flops slapping on the flagstones, toward the black Cerberus who didn’t seem to have moved an inch. Having come up even with him, I hesitated, then brushed my fingers over his hip bone; he pulled away, his gaze still distant, I didn’t insist and entered the labyrinth, moving slowly in the half-darkness. Men stood here and there, most of them in towels, barely discernible silhouettes in the darkness, some standing in the hallway, others sitting in a cubicle, hands on their members or behind their necks. As I passed them I could hear an almost imperceptible murmur, words perhaps but impossible to understand, or maybe also just inarticulate sounds, groans interspersed with stammering cries. In one room, very vaguely lit, several naked men, gleaming with sweat, were busying themselves around another man, suspended with his legs in the air in a sort of leather hammock; further on, in a little, almost completely dark cubicle, a man with hairy shoulders and a powerful back, crouching over another man’s thighs, was moving his hips in and out, without a sound. At random, I tried to approach one of the men stationed in the hallway, placing my hand on his chest, but he pushed it away without a word and I went on my way, repeating the operation with every man I passed, with as little success. Vexed, I ventured into a cubicle where a naked man, completely hairless, rather plump, was lying on a banquette, his towel over his face; I approached, he didn’t react, I placed my hand on his limp member: this contact provoked no movement, not even a start. I took his parts in my fingers and stroked them slowly, the man still didn’t budge, so I leaned over and slipped the member between my lips, it remained limp, I rolled it in my mouth while squeezing the balls a little, then I began sucking it, suckling as if it were an udder, but there was nothing to be done, it didn’t harden, finally I straightened up and left the man sprawled there to resume my movements through the hallway. In the back, I discovered a little round room with a basin full of bubbling water: the young man who had offered me a drink was immersed in it up to his chest in the company of two other men, inhaling, with a glass straw, some white powder arranged in rows on a little tray. When he saw me he handed me the tray and the straw, without a word I grasped it delicately and imitated him, inhaling first one line, then another; a shiver ran through my body, I passed the tray to his neighbor and straightened up, balanced tensely on my thighs, smoothing the towel with one hand over my hip and buttocks. I would have liked to slip into the water with them but there was no more room; so I turned around and once again penetrated the labyrinth. Here and there men were sucking a member, licking an ass, or penetrating each other, there weren’t many single men and these, inexplicably, scorned my advances, they seemed to prefer to remain solitary, standing stiff in the dark, their eyes empty, slowly stroking themselves. In the room with the hammock, the suspended young man was alone now, sprawled with his head back, his legs dangling, his body stained with sperm and marbled with traces of blows or cigarette burns, emptied, inert, lost in another space. I could have lifted his legs and screwed him myself, but I preferred to remain there and watch him softly moan, withdrawn into himself and very far away, I envied him and would have certainly liked to be in his place, but it appeared I hadn’t mastered the obscure rules of this place, for no one wanted me. I lay down for a long while in a cubicle, my ass facing the entrance, the cocaine buzzing through my body, but no one came to caress me or take what I was so willingly offering; from time to time, I sensed a vague presence in the opening but when I turned around it had already disappeared; exasperated, I finally got up, elsewhere it was the same thing, the black giant, at the entrance, when I squatted down in front of him to take his heavy, veined member in my mouth, gave me a clout that sent me flying onto my ass, in the room in the back they gave me more cocaine without batting an eyelid but no one made room for me in the basin, the excitement spread through my body gave me no respite and sent me for yet another expedition into the labyrinth, just as vain, finally I returned to the sauna, letting the moist heat relax somewhat my enervated body, tensed to the breaking point.

* * *

Afterward, I went under the shower again; the cold water beat against my face, which I pictured prematurely aged, worn out, wearied by desire. When I emerged I saw, beyond the sauna and the labyrinth, a room that I hadn’t noticed before: behind a large glass wall, standing in the half-light, half a dozen naked men were intertwined. I watched them for a while, then joined them, and this time no one tried to push me away. I was very quickly pulled in by the press of bodies, hands ran over my body and massaged my buttocks, moist fingers came to knead my anus, stubbly faces pressed their lips against mine, mouths sucked then painfully bit my nipples, my own hands, gropingly, found stiff members and stroked them, the smell of rancid sweat and flesh intoxicated me and I was losing my bearings, I found myself on my knees, a cock pressed into the back of my throat, another rubbing against my cheek, a third beating against my forehead, powerful, dominating grips held my hair and neck and directed my head, members knocked against my rounded lips and pressed against my palate, half suffocating me, they finally withdrew and a pair of hairy buttocks took their place, pressed against my face, I stuck out my tongue and absorbed the acrid, bitter taste of the anus, another tongue, greedily, was doing the same with mine, boring into it as several hands spread my buttocks, little by little I found myself pressed to the ground, an arm or a foot wedged my neck there and my ass was pulled up for a first member to come plant into it, I grunted under the pressure of the arm and was rewarded by having my head lifted up for another cock to bury in my mouth, both members moved in and out inside me, quartering me and filling me with a white fire that shot right through me, making me tremble with pleasure so strongly that hands had to support me so I wouldn’t collapse, the man behind me was forcing my ass held almost vertically with large thudding strokes, finally he stiffened completely, overcome by pleasure, his cock quivered as it emptied itself and then, before it had even gone limp, withdrew all of a sudden, dragging behind it the flaccid latex of the condom full of sperm, another immediately took its place and everything started over again, in my mouth as well one member followed another, I had lost all notion of time, a man came abruptly on my face and the sperm, sticky, covered my eyes and lips, I wiped it off as well as I could and blinked to unstick the eyelids, I was surrounded by fragments of bodies, hands, thighs, hairy or else clean-shaven and tattooed, thick cocks, erect with their foreskins pulled back, I closed my eyes and gave in to all these members that kneaded me, pierced me, opened me even wider, my body seemed impossibly rounded, enlarged like a corolla swollen with sap, arched also by the discharges of pleasure that tensed it to the breaking point before suddenly letting it go, instantly resuming their increasing pulsations, it overwhelmed my senses and exhausted my muscles that trembled more than ever, I opened my eyes, the glass wall, near me, vaguely reflected the intermingling of bodies, I could make out nothing with precision except asses, superimposed and shining like moons, behind the window too there was a figure, I opened my eyes wide to discern it better, it was a little child, a blond boy with a pointy face, completely naked, who was watching us through the glass wall with his eyes wide open, his lips stubborn, obstinate. I froze, the face too remained immobile, around me the throng of bodies staggered, grunted, panted; a diffuse uneasiness filled me, quickly detaching me from my own body. What was this boy doing here? I wondered. Wasn’t admittance to this establishment forbidden to minors? The boy, silent and willful, kept staring at me, and I tried to free myself from the man who was brutally penetrating me, but his hands gripped my hips and held me pitilessly riveted to his member which went in and out at a frantic pace, I pushed him away in vain, the little boy never took his eyes off us, panic submerged me and I struggled even more, other hands came to twist my arms and pin my shoulders again to the ground, a foot crushed my head against the tiles as the limb withdrew all of a sudden to splatter my ass with cum, already another was taking its place to come delight in me, then I closed my eyes, instantly erasing both the little boy and the organs surrounding me, and I surrendered to the storm of flesh, my body as if torn away from itself, splashing everything around it before being carried away by a black, raging sea.

* * *

When I opened my eyes again I was alone, lying on the tiled floor. I turned onto my back and instinctively covered my parts with my hands, as if to protect them from blows that didn’t come. Streaks of sperm were drying on my skin, smearing my face, my hair. I thought of the young man in the hammock, abandoned to himself; I too, now, must have looked just as overcome. But my mind couldn’t manage to detach itself from my body, bruised, racked, weighted down. I hadn’t come yet and I feebly tried to jerk off, but my member refused to harden and I finally got up and went to shower. I remained for a long while under the stream of water, my legs still trembling, my limbs shattered with fatigue, I let my head and neck roll under the stream which little by little rinsed off all the filth stuck to my skin and warmed my muscles. Finally I turned off the water and headed for the stairway. My towel had disappeared and I was walking naked, still dripping. On my way, I passed several men, they didn’t pay the slightest attention to me and there was no way of knowing if they had been part of those who had used me or not. I felt only a vague curiosity about it, almost abstract, amused even. At the bar, I asked for a towel, dried myself and wrapped it around my hips, then ordered a gin and tonic which I went to sip on a mock leather sofa, facing a television screen where pornographic scenes were playing with the sound turned off. The images, changing but repetitive, flashed before my gaze, which, at times, absentmindedly focused on them, but immediately it would shift away, nothing caught it, it had become as indifferent to the series of swollen cocks penetrating series of round, white asses as to the large photographs of expanses of tall grass, shining on a golden ground, which covered the wall behind the bar. Aside from the bartender, there was almost no one left, near me a man was drinking a soda and tugging in boredom on his sex while staring at the screen with a glum, empty gaze, I finished my cocktail, got up, and returned to the locker room. My body was still vibrating, overtaxed by sensations but always avid, I vaguely hoped to meet the young man with the pierced nipples, the one who had bought me a drink when I arrived, I wanted to offer him one in turn and then greedily caress his sleek, beautiful body, but there was no one and I took my clothes out of the locker, put them on, and headed for the door. It opened easily and as soon as I passed through it I began running again. The effort invigorated my exacerbated muscles, I felt them relax and rediscover their natural, orderly sense of balance which propelled me with an even stride, neither too slow nor too fast, timed to the breathing that whistled between my lips. In the half-darkness that reigned here, I guessed at more than saw the walls of the hallway, they seemed to be curving and I regularly had to adjust my course so as not to collide with one, at times darker parts seemed to indicate a junction or even a kind of crypt, I ignored them and ran with my head empty, not thinking of anything, happy with the easy deployment of my body, which adjusted quite naturally to the unfolding of this space whose end could not be guessed, I felt like a child free of all constraint and didn’t worry about anything, here and there my fingers gaily beat against the walls, for fun as much as to ensure my orientation, and this is how they encountered a kind of metal projection, a door handle it seemed, on which I leaned and pushed, opening a door through which I passed without slowing down, in a supple bound. My sneakers crunched in the snow and I stopped. A man passed in front of me, leading a horse by a tether, followed by two men carrying a cooking pot, their frozen breath hung suspended in the frigid air that cut through the thin cloth of my tracksuit. I shivered and rubbed my arms. A little further on, under a large beech tree with bare, grey branches, a group of men were crowded around a fire. I approached, my feet sinking into the fresh snow; one of the men noticed me and called out to me: “Well now, sir! You’ll catch cold like that. Come change.” He led me toward a little hut where I found in a rough wardrobe made of boards everything I needed: pants of solid brown material and a turtleneck sweater, which I pulled on over my tracksuit, an officer’s jacket with golden buttons, leather boots, and a long, thick, high-collared coat, with heavy folds that beat against my calves. There was also a fur hat and a close-fitting pair of white gloves, which I put on and buttoned with a remarkable feeling of satisfaction. The soldier was waiting for me at the door: “Don’t forget this,” he said, handing me a riding crop and a leather holster that contained a heavy long-barreled pistol with a rounded butt made of polished wood. Snow was starting to fall, a drift of flakes light as air that danced gaily and melted at the slightest contact. I fastened the holster to the belt of my jacket as I followed the soldier to the fire. Other men had come join the first group, they all wore a uniform similar to mine; when they saw me approach they stood to attention, clicked their heels, and saluted me. Several of them were wearing a heavy, wrought metal cross around their neck; I took my own out of my jacket pocket and placed it around my neck too, softly caressing the metal with my fingers before lifting my head up toward a naked man, hanged by a single foot to a branch of the beech, his grey skin lacerated with blows and gashes. “This one?”—“A spy, sir. He was prowling around the horses, we gave him a good lesson.” I nodded and approached the blaze. A man slid over a folding stool on which I sat, another handed me a tin spoon and a steaming bowl filled with red beans. I was very hungry and I cheerfully devoured the dish, it lacked salt but that didn’t matter, I swallowed the last spoonful and scraped the bowl. I was now completely warmed up, the fire was pleasantly roasting my feet and thighs, a few snowflakes stuck for an instant to my sleeves before melting and I contemplated them with pleasure. I belched and drank some water. “Have the horses saddled,” I ordered as I got up. “We’re leaving.” Immediately, the men began to bustle about. Above the fire, the hanged man swayed gently, held in place by a thinner branch impaled in his anus. A soldier came up to me and saluted: “What about the prisoners, sir?” I thought about it for an instant: “Shoot them.”—“The women too?”—“The women too.” I headed in long strides for the enclosure. A man was leading toward me a handsome bay horse, whose nostrils exhaled spirals of steam that mixed with snowflakes, falling thicker and thicker. I took the tether from the soldier’s hands, patted the animal’s neck, checked the girth, and hauled myself onto the saddle, where I settled to watch the preparations. In my jacket pocket I found a cigar case; I lit one and drew on it, immediately the puffs of tobacco brought me a sensation of serenity, light and almost joyful like the snow filling the sky. Around me, men were coming and going, lining up the horses, striking the tents; further on, some soldiers were escorting a small group of men and women, most of them dressed in rags. Having reached a copse of pine trees, they forced them to kneel in the snow. Then a soldier pointed his rifle, aimed at a neck, and pressed the trigger; the man flew forward in a sudden spurt of blood; already the soldier was moving on to the next one and adjusting his weapon. Men on horseback came and joined me. One of them handed me a spear, with the handle made of polished ash and a long, sharp, thin blade shaped like a leaf; I grasped it joyfully, hefting it and then placing it across my knees. When everything was ready I took a last puff on the cigar, threw the butt into the snow and brandished the spear to give the signal for departure. My horse pawed the ground and I guided it with my heels, slipping the spear under my arm and grasping the reins with my free hand. Around me the column was getting underway, moving alongside the trees, skirting round the bodies of the condemned which lay face to the ground in the reddened snow, their limbs akimbo like broken dolls. A little further on, we joined an intersecting path and I set my horse trotting, hooves flew in the virgin snow, spears struck the branches and rained sprays of snow, needles, and pinecones on us, I laughed and my men laughed with me, filled with joy by this impromptu evening race through the woods. Further on opened up vast snowy fields, striped with the brown of tilled earth, we crossed them without slowing down, the snow was no longer falling, the sky was veering grey and growing darker, little by little the clouds unraveled, spilling over the tranquility of the countryside the white light of the full moon. Finally night settled in and I slowed the horses down to a walk. We moved through fields to the jangling of harnesses and spurs, the snorts of the horses, the muted sound of dozens of hooves in the snow, wrapped in the rich smells of frozen earth, leather, gun oil, horse sweat, and manure. The moon now illuminated everything, we could clearly make out the white and undulating expanses interspersed with little woods, slightly darker masses scattered here and there under the bluish vault of the nighttime sky. In the distance lights were shining, and without a word I headed the column toward them. Little by little, the forms of a great building took shape in front of us, nestled in trees and surrounded by outbuildings, an isolated manor like so many still left in these lands. A dog, alerted by our approach, began barking, followed by another, more lights came on and we heard brief shouts and the sound of doors. With a gesture of my spear, I sent two groups of men to flank the house as I continued to advance at a walk, followed by the bulk of the troop. Having reached the large gate of the enclosure, built of strong metal-trimmed wood, I knocked on it with my spear and cried: “Open up!” The dogs were barking louder, no one answered. “Open up! Open up or I’ll burn everything down!” Finally a voice made itself heard: “Who goes there?”—“Open up, in the name of God,” I growled, “if you care for your life.” Finally the hinges grated and the heavy doors swung open. An older man appeared, holding up a lantern: “Who are you? What do you want?” Without taking the trouble to answer I sent my spear into his throat; his voice strangled in the blood, the lantern fell into the snow where it continued to shine, he remained suspended for an instant on the spear, until I twisted the shaft a little to free it. The corpse slipped onto the snow in turn and I shook the spear to clean it off; then I planted it in the ground and dismounted, tying my horse’s tether to it. I didn’t have to say anything, my men knew their work, I calmly lit another cigar and drew on it as they rushed toward the house, on foot or still on horseback. Gunshots rang out, one of them rolled onto the ground and stretched out full-length, the others knelt in the snow and opened fire, aiming for the windows, which burst one after the other in showers of glass. It was quickly over. A dozen soldiers rushed like mad dogs through the battered-in front door, some more gunshots rang out from inside, the sounds of doors flying into pieces, hoarse cries, the panicked screams of women. Leaving my horse there, I pulled my pistol out of its holster and went in, stepping over the body of a half-clothed young man whose blood was soaking the entry hall rug. Women in nightdresses were running down the halls, pursued by laughing soldiers; in the living room, in the midst of overturned furniture and corpses sprawled like puppets, an old man was sitting in his armchair, his eyes wide open, his lower lip trembling. All of a sudden, all the electric lights went out, the fuses must have blown, but the lighted candles and lanterns were enough to illuminate the scene. A sharp smell of cordite and blood filled my nose and I sniffed it with delight. In the outbuildings, a soldier was raping a fat maid on a table, under the laughing eyes of his comrades, another, calmly seated on a chair, was cutting slices of bread and cheese; two men overturned a sideboard filled with dishes, which collapsed in an immense racket of broken porcelain. A few gunshots still sounded in the back of the house; in the rear courtyard, behind the outbuildings, three soldiers, swearing, were struggling to bleed a pig, which squealed and fought with all its strength under the knife; near them, two ill-shaven peasants were being hoisted onto a cart, their hands tied behind their backs, to be hanged from a large oak tree; further on a barn was blazing, cheerfully. I went up to the second floor: the same joyful chaos reigned here, a sergeant, champagne flute in hand, was dancing alone in front of a large mirror hugging his own shoulders, a soldier was pissing into the drapes, a third was displaying hands covered in women’s rings and bracelets. From a half-open door came piercing cries: two men, pants lowered, were screwing a naked boy bent forward on an iron bed, his head buried in the embroidered cushions. Further on, in the back of the hallway, there was a closed door. I tried the handle, the door was locked, I knocked, no reply, I knocked again with my fist and shouted “Open up!”, still nothing. So I stepped back and kicked in the lock. The door flew open; standing in front of the bed was a woman wearing a pearl-grey house dress, thin and light, her Venetian blond hair done up in an artfully disheveled bun lit now by the wan light of the moon falling through the windowpanes. When she saw me she cried out and brought her hand to her mouth. “You!” she moaned. “You? But you are mad! You are mad!” I looked at her, puzzled by these words: “We don’t know each other,” I said curtly, stepping forward and giving her a slap that sent her spinning onto the green and gold expanse of the embroidered bedspread. She curled up and began sobbing, scratching her beautiful contorted face with her nails. I pushed the door, took off my coat and then my belt which I placed on a chair, and approached the bed, undoing my jacket. The young woman tried to hit me with her heel, I caught her ankle, laughing, and twisted it, forcing her onto her belly. I caressed her buttocks under the silky material of the dress, a knit jersey without the slightest seam and lined in a fine pale pink silk, she yelled with all her strength, her face buried in the long green grass embroidered in the cloth, I struck her in the back with my fist and her shouts instantly stopped, and then I pushed the dress up to her hips and curtly lowered her panties, revealing a white, round ass. She was moaning now, “No, no, I beg you,” I hit her again to shut her up, undid my fly, hauled myself onto the bed and, spreading her buttocks, entered her with a fierce thrust of my hips. She cried out shrilly one last time, then fell silent. I buried my hands, still gloved in white, in her disheveled bun and leaned with all my weight on her head, breathing in the fragrance of heather, moss, and almond that emanated from her hair. But she was dry and I didn’t find the sensation very pleasant, I withdrew, spit several times on her anus, nestled in the midst of tufts of blond hairs, rubbed saliva on my glans and pushed in there, slowly this time, she still didn’t emit a sound, sprawled in her grey dress on the verdant bedspread, her face hidden by her loose hair. I turned to the side: next to the half-open door stood a tall upright mirror, I could see my ass there, white in the moonlight, moving in and out between her long white thighs, pinned beneath my own. I slowed down, feasting on the spectacle, the woman, under my body, breathed with a whistling sound but kept silent, I hit her again, without really knowing why, then again, at each blow she choked but restrained herself from crying out, and this silence enraged me, I began strangling her, both my gloved hands squeezing on her neck, I felt her thighs go taut and struggle beneath me, her ass contracted and I came abruptly, emptying myself into her in long spurts before letting her go and rolling onto my back, spread full-length on the embroidered grass, my eyes closed. Next to me I could hear the woman hiccup, cough, swallow air convulsively. I opened my eyes and sat up, looking at my crotch, there were traces of shit on my member, I drew a section of the bedspread toward me to wipe myself off, then buttoned up again. The woman was still lying on her belly, her buttocks exposed, she was sobbing quietly now, biting the cloth of the bedspread to stifle the sound. I gave her a little slap on the behind and she immediately fell silent: “You can go now,” I said to her. Her head turned away, she painfully straightened up onto her knees, pulling on the cloth of her dress to cover her behind; she stood up, stumbled, leaned on the edge of the bed, then bent over to pull her panties up under her dress. I could only see her profile. She was biting her lower lip and the moonlight played with the stray hairs on her neck. Then she looked at me, her wild eyes empty of all comprehension. I made a little sign to her with my finger and she staggered toward the door. I leaned toward the chair, took my pistol out of its holster, cocked it, and aimed at her neck. The shot sent her flying against the door, she collapsed on the rug in a grey, twisted mass, leaving long red trails on the polished wood. I put the weapon down next to me and fell onto my back, absent-mindedly stroking the thick embroidery of the bedspread with my gloved fingers.

* * *

When I woke up the sky was just beginning to grow pale. A few muffled noises could still be heard, glass being broken, a melancholy song. I straightened up and tried to light a bedside lamp, but the electricity still wasn’t working. In front of the door, the dark mass of the woman’s body looked like a pile of dirty laundry, thrown there to be carried away by the maids. I got up, lit a few candles, and began searching through the furniture, pocketing the jewelry and currency I found. In the drawer of the night table I found several pieces of photographs. These cut fragments represented a little blond boy; and even more than the arms of a man that showed now and then, it was the expression of the child, now concentrated, now frightened, now bursting with joy, that reflected the presence of the other person eliminated by the scissors, a presence that meant everything to him. I threw them on the floor, finished my search, and, pushing the corpse away with my boot, went out to join my men. Most of them, drunk, were sleeping in armchairs, on rugs or on tables, others were humming as they emptied the last bottles; in front of the main steps, more sober soldiers were already preparing for departure, tying bags of spoils or provisions to their saddles. I ordered four of them to go wake up and collect their comrades; then I had my horse brought out and gave the order for departure to those who were ready. Spears in hand or on our shoulders, we went through the gate, skirting round the corpse of the old man with the lantern, stiff in the snow. Day was dawning, the sky was grey, in front of us stretched out the muted white of snowy fields, scattered with the darker patches of copses. I urged my horse to a trot with my heel, the men followed, cheerful and laughing. In the distance, isolated on the white expanse, I could make out a little black point, and I directed my horse toward it. As I grew closer I could see it was a figure, the figure of a naked, blond little boy staggering in the snow. We quickly caught up with him and he faced us as we surrounded him, pale, shaking with cold, his legs stained with shit he had let flow without realizing it during his flight, and his features deformed by tears, cold and terror. All around him, my cavalrymen formed a wall of spears and closed faces. My horse stepped forward, the kid fell on his ass, moved back, staggered up, floundering in the snow mixed with shit, he was soiling himself again, his face twisted by sobs, I killed him with a swift stab of my spear to his chest, lifted him up a little, then threw him down like a marionette in the snow, to the coarse laughter of my men. Then I set my horse to a gallop through the plain, lifted by an exalted feeling of sovereign freedom, the cold air bit into my cheeks and lungs and I fed on it, I felt myself growing in my saddle until I became equal with the vast plain, the snow, and the sky above me. In the late afternoon we reached a railway station occupied by enemy forces. Most of my troops had joined us and we assaulted it on all sides, in a deluge of gunfire and incoherent shouts; the enemy had positioned a machine gun at the main angle of attack and it held us at bay for a long time, until one of my soldiers, crawling to the foot of the wall, managed to silence it with a grenade. Then there was a mad scramble. The survivors poured out through the doors, hands over their heads, my men pressed them against the station wall and shot them without a pause, I was one of the first to enter the building itself, pistol in hand, an enemy soldier was aiming his rifle at me and I killed him with a single shot, further on a wounded man was crawling and I finished him off as well, all around us resounded gunfire and the screams of the dying. At the end of the main room there was a door, I kicked it in, it opened onto an empty gallery that I crossed while undoing my coat and belt, at the end of the gallery there was another door, I let my pistol fall and took off my jacket, also throwing away my two white gloves, quickly I undid the rest of my clothes, keeping only my tracksuit and pulling on my sneakers, which I had kept in a pocket, already the door was open and as soon as I had crossed the threshold I began to run. It was dark here, I was disoriented and I slammed against the walls several times, finally I found a semblance of balance and was able to move forward regularly, breathing with ease, to the rhythm of my strides. But the hallway was curved, I couldn’t manage to stay in the center and again my shoulder hit a wall, I thought I could make out darker spots, intersections perhaps or just cubbyholes, I avoided them as well as I could until a stronger impact than the others made me stumble, I slowed down but didn’t stop running, finally I ended up in the locker room and quickly changed, adjusting my swim cap and passing through the swinging doors, they opened onto a large space full of the echoes of shouts and sounds of water, all blue and luminous and made even bigger by long mirrors framing it, mirrors in which I could glimpse only fragments of my body, fleeting and with no connection between them, I swayed, almost fell, then I pulled myself together and straightened up, my balance suddenly returned, my body found its center of gravity and, muscles tense, buttocks tight, I dove in straight as a spear, slicing with all my weight through the clear, cool water of the pool.