Raynand slips into a winding corridor. As he is swallowed up within, his unease worsens. He experiences the painful feeling of being gulped down by some enormous intestine. A carnivorous boa constrictor. Who would have predicted that he’d end up as a pastry crust thrust into the oven of some reptile’s’s mouth. It seemed as if he were threading his way through some kind of trenches, boarded up by rusty iron sheets. He raises his eyes toward the cutout bits of sky. He sees his own image there, reversed.
The corridor is strewn with the cadavers of children, which he avoids brushing against. What can it mean, he ruminates, this evil spell? This macabre sorcery? In front of him a dazed old man is walking with a comic limp. Once he’s closed the three-meter gap between them, he glances furtively at the old man and notices that he’s dragging along a voluminous hydrocele that hangs down to his knees. Stupefied, Raynand distances himself hurriedly. Further ahead, a chubby-cheeked, obese woman raises the cloth between her legs. Lets loose a powerful stream of piss. When Raynand passes by her, he can’t help but look lustily at her hairy genitals. But under the effect of some curse or other enchantment, she suddenly pushes out a set of stillborn twins. Two little runts coated with tallow, or maybe wax. A bloody placenta. Overcome with nausea, Raynand speeds up, thinking that, whatever the cost, he’s got to dig up Paulin. See him. Talk to him. Get to the bottom of all these magic spells. Try to exorcise himself. Finish that novel … and come up with the title.
A newcomer to sorrow, the widow has a bloody star where her belly button should be. With its tail, the serpent kills the child in its sleep and sucks the breast of the slumbering mother as she dreams of violent love.
Hated Death, pit without bottom, old garbage pail that the centuries can never fill up.
Nostalgia of the river that rushes along, unable to stop at the most beautiful landscapes, then dies at the vertiginous blue mouth of the sea. Hallucinatory visions. Dreams. Reveries. Melancholic revenge on a world gone mad. Memory, gaping wound that bleeds and lets flow diffuse streams of recollections. Noon, a burning killer, assassin of my creeping shadow — give me back my double and my memory. Voiceless actors metamorphose into statues of salt. Though his tongue has been cut off, the whistler carries on with his role. To the very last scene. To the very height of silence. Audience of the leprous and the paralyzed. Lazy toads from stagnant ponds, legs swollen. What happy chance will make you believe in the sovereign urgency of walking?
Stones, slumbering minerals, reason awakens in the troubled waters of my memory. Stones! Are you still sleeping while I go thirsty?
Season of blindness, what a groping track this is, where our dreams run out of breath! And if our passions die out and our desires are silenced, misery is sure to follow. The great blue fear ferments in the solitary caves of exile. Can it be that I’ve never succeeded in hearing the voice that calls to me? I’d so love to inhale the warm odor of hairy armpits. I won’t live in the city of these white houses, pure spaces of solitude. Formidable exile, don’t distance me from the stench of the word and of sex. I reject my pride and become a faithful spouse. Sacrifice reclaimed by the long drudgery that goes on and on through the night. Jealousy, hatred, vengeance, petulance, impatience, annoyance, for some time now you’ve been eating away at me, down to my very roots. Now let my plant grow in good health, in peace, and in wisdom.
Right at dawn, an incessant rain taps lightly against the roof. Clouds engorged with moisture pushed along by a cold wind. The sun gives in. The town wakes up late. The doors open only halfway. Through the half-open windows, a few women talk about the vagaries of the weather.
— Such a dreary day! Who’d have predicted such a thing last night?
— Looks like it’s going to be cloudy all day.
— It’s the beginning of the rainy season.
— That calls for a nice hot dish of ground corn.
— I figured that out as soon as I woke up.
— I sent that maid to the market a while ago now. I’ve had enough of her dawdling.
— Maybe that’s how she manages to get the goods at a better price. The cost of food has gone up.
— Well, I’ll bet she passes the time listening to the local boys spout their nonsense.
And so goes a typical conversation among the old ladies in the town’s working-class neighborhood every time there’s a rainy day. Without sun. Somehow it makes them happy to talk about what a dreary day it is, about what bad weather we’re having. But without attributing any particular misfortune to it.
Smack in the middle of the streets, on the sidewalks, surrounding the houses, the wanderers meet up. With noisy exaltation, they clasp hands. Happy as can be to be able to up their ration of raw rum on this rainy day. Then to relax in their bedrooms papered with photos, pages from foreign magazines, places where some sweet forsaken neighbor lives. The street children exult. Play Hula-Hoops. Push wheelbarrows. Stamp at the ground as the soft rain falls. But on this particular day, at around noon, something different happens that causes a general worry to spread. And then full-blown panic. The wind suddenly stirs up more and more intense gusts.
A terrifying winged delegation smacks against the trees in an incredible disarray of branches. Green disorder. Instrumental poem of unbridled nature. Musical writing created out of total uprooting. Removal. Amputation of leafy hands. Raging destruction via the injunction of a new language. The winds cough incessantly. Cough up their water-soaked lungs onto the unbolted roofs. The dismantled doors of the heavens vomit up a load of slovenly clouds. In a confused pell-mell. Theatrical inversion of violence. Profound breach. Deafening blare. In a nutshell, an unexpected cyclone. Children cry, collapse in one fell swoop. People are already talking about the number of victims. And the unstoppable winds tirelessly continue their hysterical pursuit.
Painful embrace that lasts six full hours. Leaving insomnia to swell our eyes. Total nightmare. The streets have become hills of mud. Detritus. Rubble. Debris. Ruins. Mobilized volunteers come and go. Help the disaster victims. Aid the wounded.
In a neighborhood that overlooks the city, Raynand hurries. Runs. For the past month, running has become an essential aspect of his existence, as if he were trying to catch a thief in flight, or to capture lost time.
With as much speed as the hurricane, Raynand crosses the streets strewn with puddles and blocked by uprooted trees. In the blink of an eye, he reaches Magloire Ambroise Avenue. Attracted by a gathering of onlookers in a large circle, he comes upon the scene. At the center, two unmoving bodies. Swept up by the floodwaters of Oak Tree River, they’re laid out in a cross. Raynand knows right away who they are: Gordin and Lil’-Pope. Two inseparable hobos. They lived the life of drunken jesters. Everywhere they went they created general hilarity. Lil’-Pope had always been a bum. He got his nickname because of his small stature and slight form. He had a strange and comical way of saying to people he passed in the street: I drink this rum for the fate of my liver and the sake of my faith.