— What’s this? You’re wearing a long white dress with a train. Marina! A thin man holds you by the arm … You’re married! I see the lit candlesticks … I hear the hymns — the “Come, Creator Spirit!” … You’re leaving the church on your husband’s arm. And so it is that you’ve become someone else’s wife. So this is how you betray our love?
Suddenly, a blinding flash surges from Paulin’s eyes. His eyelids blink rapidly. He holds his head in his hands for a moment. Then picks it up. And sees the large signed photo of Marina back on its shelf. He’s exhausted. For three months, not a day has gone by that he hasn’t lived, in his thoughts, his sad love story. Imagining all the scenes of this unrequited love. Going over the painful path to failure. In an unbearable torture. In fact, it was happening just then to him … right after the departure of his friend Raynand, who’d looked at the photo. It had been three months since he’d learned of Marina’s marriage in a foreign country. Three months …
After a few moments spent lost in bitter reflection, Paulin gets up. Wipes his brow. Rubs his head, inside of which wheels full of teeth seem to grind. Then says to himself that this is the last time … the last time.
— My obsession is over. Reason is now looking for a way past the fragility and weakness of the body. My nerves tense up in the face of the dust and the rust of the dreary darkness. A blaze burns inside me. My heart has jumped into my fiery mouth. I want my words to be embers. And if my voice drains all the blood clots, it’s that my chest is ripening a glowing red apple tree in the place of my heart.
Tired out, Paulin moves toward the bookshelf. Picks up the photo. And places it carelessly in a corner. Far back in an old faded buffet. The corner of the forgotten. His complete healing.
In my native province, as a very young man, I learned from the peasants that one should never go to sleep on an empty stomach. Famished sleepers, they cautioned me, suffer the torments of a repose polluted by nightmares. I had the experience without intending to one night when I couldn’t find anything to put in my mouth. That night, I’d lain down in my bed earlier than usual, worn out by the day’s labors. Sleep came quickly, despite my agitation. But what happened next, and must have been a nightmare, remains a troubling enigma for me to this day. On the margins of everyday life. Between dream and reality.
I was walking along a narrow street, accompanied by strange creatures. Monstrous. Handicapped. Having emerged from the factory of some demon counterfeiter. Let loose on the world without control. Spilled hurriedly onto the market of the living, their sole purpose being to consume. They were missing, respectively, some organ or the other. Their points of distinction. A whole range of hideous malformations. Faces pocked with holes. Without eyeballs. Heads without ears. Bodies without heads. Legless cripples. They spoke incessantly, yet seemed unable to understand one another. A surrealist game of automatic language. Dadaist Babel.
— Where have my madrepore eyes flown away to? I want to rinse the skin of sickly words in the humid air. My mouth opens and closes, entablature of star-laden branches. I’ll trim the tapestries of the sky so as to bandage the wounds of light and the leprosy of the moon.
— I threw up my brains through my nostrils, in the form of a liqueur imbibed by birds of prey, lapped up by drunken dogs. I will detach my hollow head and use it in a volleyball match.
— I’ve buried my heart in a bottle and tossed it into the sea. The message insults the throne of kings and discredits the aqueous genitals of my mistresses. As a bee, I fly from tree to tree and peck at the young fruits.
— A voyager thirsting for space, I gather nectar and pollen and I become delirious from the perfume of the stars.
— My hair gives shelter to vermin. Let us raise the curtain of deception for the backwash of lies. The jesters throw out the wash water. And the virgins chatter, touched by roaming tomcats who fart forcefully while opening their flies.
— Writer of prefaces for state-sponsored publications, I announce the disintegration of abandoned towns. I weigh the fleshy lips of the poets. I clean the mold off of animals and plants. I open the shutters of the clouds and throw the herb tea of the Assumption down the throats of drinkers of warm blood.
— Where have they gone, my feet and my arms, leaving me unable to run and embrace the girl being auctioned, and thus to try my luck against the prejudice of love? Without regret, I bet my pupils on the washed-out cheekbones of an anonymous cadaver.
— We live in the muck. From morning till night we empty out the mass graves, looking for the organs we’re lacking. It’s nothing but a waste of time. Everything gets mixed up and entangled under the piles of fallen rocks thrown at us by some intruder. We would do better, crippled companions, to seek out the guilty one and punish him. He’s here. Hidden among us.
— Here’s the intruder! The one who has never spoken. He’s all in one piece, this one. He’s been making fun of us. He’s not missing any organs. Let us seize him. And distribute his parts to the mutilated. His ears. His eyes. His nose. His brain. His heart.
— Yes. Let us share his organs. Take him alive!
And all these pieces of humanity came closer to me. Pounced on me. Tied me up with intestines. I wanted to scream. I realized that I was mute and that my tongue was missing. So I tried to explain to them that I was missing an organ, that I’d been denied the use of language. But all my gestures were in vain. To convince them, I jumped up and down on my two feet. Then I opened my mouth wide. I woke up with a start in my own bed. Bathed in sweat. Out of breath. I got up wearily. After drinking a bit of cool water, I checked my watch for the time. Five in the morning. I reflected on the strangeness of my nightmare, which seemed to have lasted the entire night. Understanding nothing, I spoke about it with my friends that same day. My stupefaction was all the more troubling when it became clear that they’d all had the same nightmare, with only some slight variations. The agitated repose of famished sleepers, the peasants said to me whenever I spent my holiday in the provinces.
— How’s it going, Raynand?
— My dear Paulin, things aren’t going well at all. For some time now, everything has gotten complicated. A rise and fall that yields nothing. Even finding some grub has become an unsolvable problem.
That day, Raynand and Paulin meet outside Sylvio Cator Stadium. It’s six in the evening. Paulin has just returned from a tutoring session he’s been doing for the past month with two sons of a businessman from the Carrefour-Feuilles area. Raynand, for his part, has been walking for hours. He isn’t even aware of how long it’s been. He’s always been a pair of legs walking. Bringing him nowhere. In the city. In the wind. From the earliest hours of the morning on, he begins his walk, contemplating the pale light of night’s end. His secret joy, the conquest of dawn. It’s then that the most rebellious stars fight not to disappear into the greedy mouth of the invading light in which the day sets up house. Inscribe a new page in the blue of the sky. A sweet ravishing. Surprising the sun’s retractable claws as they scrape at the death throes of the night. Peeling back the mourning veil from all dead things. Destroy. Create. Change. Place oneself at the center of all movement. Transform oneself. Become the very hinge, the supreme core of movement. Get mixed up with the dust of atoms, essence of infinite vertigo. Immortality. Raynand has often told himself he’ll never die. He knows it. He’s convinced of it. And if it were to happen, his heart would lift up the earth. And out of it would emerge a flamboyant mango tree that would flower in the month of June. Flowers to decorate a great altar of repose, for the Corpus Christi. Benediction for the pair of shoes we’re lacking! Benediction for our worn-out clothes! Benediction for our handicapped love stories! Benediction for the victims of assassination! Benediction for the blood of innocents!