And he refused to engage any more. I tried my most obsequious bow a number of times. To no avail. Maybe he didn’t really enjoy all this formalized ceremony.
I got up and was about to go on my way when something tapped me on the shoulder. It felt hard; I realized it was the tip of the sceptre.
“I won’t do it, but if you insist, you may have a try yourself,” he said, now poking me with the sceptre.
As I stood there in a quandary, he poked me again, several times. With each poke, the enormous blue jewel in the sceptre sparkled.
“Thank you,” I answered, finding this unbearable.
He finally stopped poking me and sank back down in his throne. The windmill made its loud whirring sound.
I walked to a place that was a distance away from the Boss, and then divided the bits of the girl into piles, carefully extracting the cell nuclei that looked as if they could be used for the replay. Copying the Boss’s usual practice, I injected a small amount of cell nuclei into the inside of my elbow with a micropipette, and then, again copying the Boss’s usual practice, I turned three somersaults. I had no idea how a somersault would help with a replay, but I wanted to do everything the exact same way the Boss did, so that’s what I did.
I waited a few moments, and then I dozed off.
I snoozed for a while, and woke up to find it was still night. So that meant there had been no replay, I thought, disappointed, but then, examining the inner part of my elbow, lo and behold, there were some new cells!
Overjoyed, I pressed my back against the ground, and spun myself round and round like a top. It was part of a little dance. I didn’t know what this was supposed to accomplish, but here again I was copying the Boss. The cells were gradually forming themselves into shapes—commas, ribbons, balls, all sorts of other weird things—and finally they turned into something that resembled a girl. By now my arm was getting numb with the weight of this girl-like thing. The time had come for separation, I understood, so I tied her stalk up with wire. Immediately, her stalk rotted, and she dropped off me.
She immediately did the replay dance, and then came and gave me a kiss.
The girl had come back to life. But she seemed mechanical, so I wasn’t totally convinced. I didn’t return her kiss very enthusiastically. She didn’t seem to care, and kissed me again.
The whirring sound of the windmill could be heard from far away. Coagulated bits of the night air were flung against me, and then unstuck themselves and flew off in great lumps somewhere else.
“You don’t care about me any more, do you?” the girl said, sensing my lack of enthusiasm.
“It’s not that,” I answered, vaguely.
The girl threw herself on the ground, wailing.
I was determined not to care.
“Why did you revive me then? Why did you bother?” she said, and started to sob loudly.
This irritated me, so I turned my back on her and started to walk away. The girl clung to me, crying.
“That’s so mean of you. To bring things this far…”
Nothing she said had the slightest effect on me. I knew I was being heartless, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Please. Please reconsider,” the girl begged.
The bits of coagulated night were now hitting me with more force, then falling about me like a meteor shower. I shook my head, dodging the paths of the flying lumps.
“All right, so that’s what you want. But I have my own ideas.”
There was a flash of silver, and the girl lunged at me with a knife, wielding it wildly.
Before I had time to react, the girl cut a piece of flesh from my right breast, then turned and raced away. I looked, dazed, at the blood dripping, and with a start it came to me what she was up to.
I made my way stealthily back, without being seen, to the place where the Boss was. As I thought, the girl was just handing the Boss the bit of flesh. The Boss nodded magnanimously, and immediately carried out a replay. As I watched, an exact replica of myself was born. The girl received the replica with an air of satisfaction.
After watching the girl leave hand-in-hand with the replica, I presented myself before the Boss.
“Is this how it’s supposed to go?” I asked.
The Boss cleared his throat, and nodded grandly.
“In general, this is how it’s supposed to go.” The blue jewel on the end of his sceptre was sparkling exaggeratedly.
“Do you have a problem?” the Boss asked.
“Sort of.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure,” I answered. It was the truth.
“If that’s the case, you should do another replay.”
The breeze from the windmill hit me, blowing into my eyes, my head, my belly, smearing me with the elements of the night. The spots on my body hit by the night gleamed black for a while, and then returned to their normal colour.
I did as he suggested, and carried out a replay. Any number of times I brought the girl back to life, and any number of times the result was the same.
“You just don’t give up, do you?” I said, as the girl flashed her knife at me for the umpteenth time.
The girl hung her head sadly.
“It’s because I’m always new. It’s always the first time for me,” she said, hanging her head so low her slender neck looked as if it would snap.
I took pity on her, and for the first time kissed her of my own accord. The girl, drained of strength, responded to my kiss. I felt even sorrier for her then, and put some passion into it. And that was when a touch of my old feeling for her came back.
“You’re the last replay I’ll do,” I said, hugging her a little more tightly.
This is how it’s supposed to go, I thought, more or less resignedly. I held the girl tight.
The night pressing around our bodies was showing slight signs of change, like cream on the point of thickening. The girl was still weak and lifeless.
“I won’t allow it!” the girl suddenly said, in a voice that seemed to come up from the depths of the earth.
Making a petulant sound, she pulled herself sharply away. I found myself on my hands and knees.
“Goodbye!” The girl cut off a bit of my flesh, as she had done before, and went away looking very pleased.
With sadness, I presented myself before the Boss.
“Is this how it’s supposed to go?” I asked for a second time.
The Boss answered with an unperturbed air:
“Well, yes—in general, I’d say it is.”
I withdrew, despondent, and conducted my final replay. Carrying the girl I had recreated in my arms, carefully, like a treasured possession, I made my way into the night. I kept going, into its very depths, as far away from the Boss as I could.
I nodded off, holding the girl’s hand in mine. I slept lightly, though I longed to sleep deeply, and for a while not to wake up at all.
The creature was sitting on a velvet cloth decorated with green and reddish-brown tassels. The cloth had been spread on top of a mound that was five metres high and made of compacted dried branches and leaves with some soft earth mixed in. One knee up, arms outstretched, palms turned upwards, the creature sat in an expectant pose. The base of the mound was quite wide, and all the way up its slopes steam rose in loose drifts, together with the stench of fermentation. Sometimes the steam was thin, and sometimes it was thick. It wound and curled about the creature’s limbs, like mist. The creature sat unperturbed.
Waak, waak.
The birds squawked. In a cluster around the base of the mound, they kept up an endless screeching. They looked rather like pheasants, and they squawked and they screeched, stretching out their necks, at times as if to menace the creature, at times as if to petition him. He, however, made not a move in response to their clamour. He was still as a statue, one knee up, palms turned upwards. His eyes, which, depending on the angle, were either a shiny purple or a subdued, ashen grey, remained fixed on one corner of the heavens. There, nothing twinkled: the fixed stars and dwarf stars and the nebulae that filled the rest of the sky were nowhere to be seen, and the heavens were uniformly black, as if blotted out by a cloth.