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( Sergio Bissoli ITA – 63 RACCONTI SUPERNATURALI - tran. by G. M.)
Short stories on spiritism, witchcraft, the occult,
paganism, animism, the unusual and the mistery.
That very night of the month of november is gloomy and rainy.
The village appears desolate as nobody dare leave home. A torrential rain has been pouring down for hours and the storm doesn’t give any sign of calming down. Pools here and there do cover half carriage-way and ditches are overflowing.
I’m walking lost in thought. I am not sure I am in time to say good-bye to Sarah before she leaves. She has been a play mate for so many a year to me and now she’s also going off; she’s leaving the village for ever.
As I’m stepping forward I keep my umbrella slanting to defend myself against the rain showers pushed towards me by the wind. My heart is full of sadness, almost a feeling of impotence and annihilation has seized me.
Sarah’s house stands remote from the village. It’s but a dark lifeless shadow in the rainy night. Two little windows upstairs are letting in a dim light, as if there only were candlelights.
I knock at the wet door while finding shelter under the porch. Then I try to call out, but my voice gets lost in the wind.
The door silently opens a little, sufficiently to let me in. I see her as soon as I set foot in the small sitting-room : Sarah is dressed in white and her long fair hair is let down her shoulders. She has got a flat brass candle-holder in her hand bearing a lit candle. Bewilderment and fear are in her eyes.
She bolts the door while I go to a corner to lay my umbrella leaving a small pool on the tiles soon afterwards. I have a look around: the small empty room looks even smaller. The furniture has already been taken away, only a trunk and a few suitcases have been left behind.
Sarah beckons to me to follow her without saying a word. We go across the kitchen where we spent so many afternoons on playing between the mumbling of her grand-fathers and the barking of the puppies. Now that everyone is off that kitchen is nothing but a desolate, lifeless and cold room.
The girl moves with supple movements as she climbs the steep wooden stairs, the candle lifted up in her hand. The trembling flame is carving frightening shadows on the walls. The rain of november is falling down the roofs making a pauseless, monotonous noise.
She opens the door leading to the corridor. She lets me into a little, half-dark room illuminated by the reddish light of the fireplace. Only a bed, a carpet and a small tambour has been left behind. An oval mirror hangs on the wall.
I place myself by the lit fireplace to dry up. She also stoops to the fire without saying a word. Her thin body is shivering with cold. Through the little windows my eyes beat against darkness beyond the panes bedabbled by the rain.
In this Walpurgis-like night we linger on listening to the whistling wind and the incessant showering of the rain. We hear creakings, small splashes, groanings... The house seems animated and is quivering under the shaking gusts. We feel completely lonely just as if we were the only beings in the whole world. We feel lost, at the mercy of the strength of nature.
A rat rushes at the bottom of the room and finds shelter in a crack. Outside, in the dark night, there are but eavesdropping devils and we are just afraid of saying a single word.
Sarah bends her body towards the fire to catch the heat. Her hair is hanging over her face like silk rain. The wind is howling inside the chimney pipe, makes the sparks go up, scatters the ashes.
As time goes by we are seated on the carpet. Cold makes us keep closer. Her enchanting face has a serious, almost imploring, look. Our looks alone are enough to enable us to communicate the suffering of our hearts.
The night seems endless. I suddenly perceive flashes both of desire and of fear in Sarah’s eyes. I do recognize all Sarah’s eroticism that animated her in her adolescence and that she can now merely perceive and dream of.
Her downward bending lips are whispering few words, like a prayer :
"Kiss me, kiss me my love, and never stop it..."
In the grave silence that follows her words leave an echo similar to beads dropping into milk.
We shyly take each other by the hand. I look her right in the face and it just happens as though I reached the very bottom of her heart.
The first kiss is nothing but a light touching of our lips. Her hair sends back golden reflections. Her long velveted hands are tremebling.
I gently draw her nearer and nearer so that I can thoroughly hug her soft body.
* * *
It’s too late. It’s nearly dawning.
I must go away not to be caught by her parents who will call for Sarah and carry away the things left behind.
The very first lights of the day make the sky livid. I linger a little by the door before saying good-bye to her for the last time but no words come to me in reply. After my amorous night I go home and remain in bed till late.
At about noon a tepid sun illuminates the countryside. I’m looking through the window at the tears-like raindrops running along the old wall of the house opposite mine.
I dress in a hurry and rush out of the house. Perhaps I am still in time to see Sarah for the last time. The sky is nothing but a boiling of very white clouds, foaming among crystal towers.
I get to her house but all the windows are closed. Wheelprints have been left in the mud of the road. Sarah’s relatives have just called for her and now they are off, all of them.
I go back home almost dragging my feet. It’s all over. A part of my life has gone for ever.
The clouds in their radial trim expand the sky eastward. Even if winter is at the gates there is a certain feeling of hope in the air.
I hope the future will always be a blank page to me.
MARCH 1989
I have undertaken the task of tidying marquise Dionisis’s private library.
The marquise is quite aged and hardly ever I chance to see her. A very old parlourmaid gets me something to eat and I at times stay in the house even for the night. I like to go downstairs when I take a pause and to have a short stroll in the garden.
Books are in hundreds. All of them are rare parchment editions and some are also provided with copper locks and iron studs. The authors : Eliphas Levi, Crowley, Kremmerz, Barret, Papus, Kardec, Gardner, Blackwood, Frank Graegorius, all of them deal with such topics as spiritism, magic and witchcraft.
In a May afternoon there I am in the open air for the usual stroll, tired of book listing.
The gardner, who is also the keeper of the place, is a rustic little old man wearing a cap and a pair of patchy boots. I’m looking at him while he’s hoeing the onion field at an incredibly slow pace and whistling a tune at the same time. The flowerbeds are covered with weed and nettles are growing in the gravel as well. That man is too old and can’t just look after everything.
The garden is closed at the bottom by a very high gate that separates it from a wood thriving with age-old trees. A good few weeks have gone by without my being able to just set foot into the wood, as I’d like to, but the gardner finds a thousand and one excuses in order to put it off. Today, for instance, he’s telling me that he can’t open the gate because he has got to look for the key.
So I’m lounging about for a while till I find out an opening through the high honeysuckle hedge. I’m waiting for the man to turn his back to just slip into the wood.
I run to a large clearing with secular ash-trees in the middle. I get to a door-like passage through the trees. On going across the passage I am welcomed by a rain of pine-needles.
There are grotesque trees looking like venomous spiders. I’m following a footpath very close to a reed thicket. Then the path slopes down to finally run along a little pond.
I sit down on the bank and look at the big white water-lilies floating on the dark water. There is a little isle in the middle of the pond with the ruins of a small temple covered with moss. I throw some stones into the water and then look at the circles that develop and spread out. The water circles originate flowing, fleeting tiny waves.
On having a look out of the corner of my eye I seem to see somebody beside me. I turn, but no one is there. Then again, I turn back for another couple of times, maybe three, and I just seem to see someone beside me. So I decide to remain perfectly motionless and try hard to look without turning my head.
A few whiles later I am astonished at the occurrence. I see naked girls smiling and taking each other by the hand. I am at the very limit-point of my field of vision. When I have the presentiment they are on the brink of flashing away I make just an imperceptible movement and everything disappears.
I keep motionless till I see a nude girl by my side with long green hair. Despite the fact that she is very beautiful, she is casting a wicked look at me. I turn round and she suddenly disappears in a twinkle. Sure enough, on the bank there may be nothing but the play of lights and shadows brought about by the leafy, wind-stirred branches.
I begin to move again. The path keeps lengthening through very old mulberry-trees with squat trunks of huge proportions. The slanting sunbeams penetrate with great difficulty to create bizzarre light and shade effects.
There in the shade something is moving. I stop and remain eyeing. Nobody is there.
All of a sudden a child, or at least somebody looking like a child, but for his aged face, springs from behind a tree, then starts running to finally hide himself behind another tree. Soon after I see two other queer beings, both minute and wrinkled, running and hiding themselves behind the trees. They are almost indistinguishable from the vegetation owing to their wearing clothes made of tree-bark, and move very fast indeed.
Still semi-incredulous, I am amazed and in a daze. I am to such a point benumbed, so to speak, that my mind refuses to think it over. Then a thought suddenly breaks through: the wood is inhabited by gnomes!
The sunset is stagnating in the background of a sky striped with veins of orange light. I must get out of the place as soon as I can, I must find a way out to get back to the house.
Elms and beeches are crooked and bent. Small flames coming from the very bottom of a grotto are moving and hovering in the air.
I do my best to shrink inside a bush of box-plant and remain in wait. Odd people dressed in black are parading in procession and make for the thick. They are wrapped up in long black cloacks. Some of them are holding a lit torch in their hands, and there where their sleeves are just a bit rolled up a fleshless harm can be seen. They pass past me and I wait for the dark night to fall to just dare move.
It’s a quiet, moonlight night. The sense of solemnity is stressed by a far chirping of crickets.
I warily make my way through the wild oats in the clearing. I pass past a fountain : a Venus is bathing in a shell while shining, gem-like waterdrops are being raised all around her.
Beyond the wind-stirred poplars I see the sharp-cornered shadow of the villa. It looks like a cathedral and mysterious drawings on the lawn are sketched by its shape. On seeing it I feel greatly relieved and quicken my steps.
Under a few magnolias there are fountains with water-lilies and lotus flowers swingling in the wind. One flower is particularly big and I draw near it full of curiosity. When the wind bends it towards me I realize it looks like a head... The petals of the flower reflect one after the other my own face, and I’m now seeing a replica of my own figure, but represented older and archer.
I give a scream of terror and run away across the lawn. My wandering, panic-stricken mind is seeing black disgusting birds pass past the white disk of the moon, or perhaps they are true witches mounting their broomsticks. I make my way through the honeysuckle hedge and my shirt gets torn and I finally rush to take shelter in my little room.
When I set foot outside the house the next morning I see the gardner seated by the edge of the dungheap and busy at smoking a pipe. I wish I told him at once what I went through as well as I wish I called him to account, but I lack the nerve to do so. He looks at me in a queer manner, as if he knew, then gives a mischievous smile :
"You came off well last night... with your work... didn’t you?"
Unwilling to wait for my answer he takes the hoe in his hands and starts hoeing. I perceive by his look that he, too, knows the secret of the wood and that he’s inviting me to pass the thing over in silence.
APRIL 1989
"The lowest and the sublime are the two outlets off normalcy."
A guy busy with making little paper planes is talking to himself close to me, but I am not lending an ear to him. Seated in the waiting-room of the small railway-station I am bored waiting for the train that is not due before a couples of hours.
"I have chosen the second solution between the two and built up a God" the voice goes on.
I turn towards the man who’s just spoken. He’s slim, dressed in grey. And my looking at him gives him the opportunity to smile at me and to introduce himself :
"My name is Hartley and I am a mechanic."
He pauses a while : " As I was saying, for I am a mechanic, I wanted to build up a logic God, a rational God. Can you understand me?"
"You are telling me, sir, that you have actually succeded in making it? Goodness knows how much work it took you!" I remark.
"No, it didn’t. Some people build up empires and some people blow bubbles. As to me, I’ve taken the pleasure in building up a God."
"A God? This invention isn’t new at all. There’s already so many of them in every corner of the earth" I answer disappointed back to him.
"There are many Gods symbolizing all mankind’s aspirations and necessities. These Gods represent the materialization of a cry of grief, they are but surrogates. The God I myself have built up, on the contrary, enables us to make our desires come true".
This man is a thinker. I’m going to ask him a question which has been driving all philosophers mad for ages, just to make him feel uncomfortable :
"What’s the use of suffering in this world?"
He doesn’t seem to get upset and calmly draws this answer out :
"Suffering is like pepper, it is actually needed in order that our own life may be more relishable and interesting."
The little man’s words begin to beguile me.
"And how did you manage to build up your own God? In man’s own likeness?"
"I could have built up an anthropomorphous God, too, only with human failings and vices. No! What I did exactly want was to give my own God different features from human ones".
"And you are saying that it serves the purpose of making desires come true, aren’t you?"
"Yes, men’s desires."
"Yes, yes, surely so but... can you just prove what you’re stating?"
"Come. Come and see yourself. My workshop is near here. You know, I have not to go on a trip" the little man tells me, "I usually come here solely to study trains".
After a moment of perplexity I grasp my suit-cases and start to follow him outside the station. All the more so because it takes a great deal of time before the train arrives.
We are walking along a stream. Beyond a dilapidated building bearing the inscription "Lux Hotel" we take a semi-illuminated side-alley putting tens of mangy cats to flight. Here many buildings are still semi-destroyed by war bombings. Some bats are flitting out of the windows and we hear a moaning owl in the silence.
I am thinking I am wrong in trusting a stranger. He’s possibly going to take me to his accomplices in order to assail and rob me.
The first moon quarter up there in the dark sky is a knick-knack setting beyond foam-rubber-like clouds. This sight, goodness knows why, has the power to reassure me
and some dear, sad memories are coming back across my mind.
"I particularly did love two things in my youth days" I whisper in a low voice. " A woman I have lost and a stray dog someone purloined..."
"There’s also a God for dogs as well as a God for artists and for lovers" he interrupts me.
"Well, do you think it’s at all possible now to see both of them again?"
"Yes. For all a single tessera changing place in the whole picture of reality often implies unwanted shifting of other tesserae to give the overall plan a new balance again. So that summation of all modified events will in the end yield nothing but the exact equivalent to the original situation as a result!"
"You are telling me that it isn’t to our advantage at all to try to modify the course of events? You are contradicting yourself!"
"No. Every very complex philosophy seems contradictory. At the same time it does seem evident that even in nature contradictions are at all possible! But here we are, we have arrived at the place."
A sombre building. I halt and let him get in first and only when I see the light trembling through the filthy panes I take the risk to go inside. We are in a workshop. Grease and soot are all over the place. I’m catching a glimpse of a lathe, a pair of bellows, a press, a few big master cylinders. Some disassembled pieces of an aero-motor are on the work-tables. I’m following the man taking care not to stumble against the scrap-heaps.
He opens a little door. We go across a narrow, low underground brick passage leading to a hen-house where there is even a lavatory. We are stepping in a small muddy court-yard in between a drainage of waters and a few long dark buildings on the windows of which are hanging pieces of sackcloth. I hear the man pull the bolts and then exclaim :
"Here it is, here is my creature!"
I see no thing, though. Then he switches on a faint electric light and I, too, get in.
The spacious room is entirely taken up by the massive dimensions of a device which is half a tower-clock and half a printing-machine. Cog-wheels, levers, counterbalances, pistons, a long brass equalizer. We hear the far noise of a waterfall in the silence.
The mechanic doesn’t let me take the time to admire the machine as he seems impatient to give me his directions. He helps me to the top of a little iron ladder ending up with a small seat up there. In front of me is a complex system of lenses and prismas and more below the horn of a megaphone.
From up there I see Hartley busy at starting the racks. I suppose he’s perhaps opening some locks because the noise of the waterfall is increasing.
Then I see Hartley typing some monograms with a typewriter (an old modified Remington typewriter) N 10022 T. A A J W X 23 Y.
A creaking like that of a wheel turning under effort is being heard. All the steel framework begins to vibrate and the room all at once fills up with the low buzzing of gears, spaced at times by heavy metal clicks. As far as I can see, the machinery must be on.
Now I see the mechanic pressing a red key bearing the inscription : RECALL. The noise is getting more intense and I realize that the cog-wheels are working at a faster pace. Noises of boilers under pressure then follow, noises of sucking pistons, of croaking saws... A red index moves onto greater figures and the pointers of some other instruments start to vibrate.
Now the little man seems possessed. His bald head is dripping with sweat, his eyes are wide-open and he’s moving among the mechanisms more and more frantically. He shouts something at me I can’t grasp because of the terrible noise :
"Keep ready -- -- to arrive..."
He pulls levers and pushes ball-grips. He presses a black key with the inscription : CARRY OUT.
On a screen at the bottom of the pipe appears a wisp of very dark smoke swirling just as if it were in a whirlwind. The wisp of smoke is now attracting my attention and seems to be just taking the shape of a slim nude woman vaulting and writhing at an incredible speed. I am irritated both by a hissing sound and by a more and more unbearable and acute whistle at the same time.
I make gestures to make Hartley understand I want to get down but he does seem beside himself as he’s busy at spreading a little grease on the mechanisms with a big oil-can.
Semi-besotted by that deafening noise and by the vibrations of the machinery, I cry out louder and louder helping myself with frantic gestures. The noise becomes still shriller.
Now I do want to come down from here. I don’t care for the experiment any more. I try to move but I realize I am trapped in the narrow seat and cannot find the rungs.
"Hartley, Hartley. Help!"
In the ultimate attempt to find relief I plug my ears to quench the hissing sound and half-open my eyes. In the middle of that awful uproar I see swarms of white incandescent sparks.
The machinery seems to have gone mad. The vibrations are stronger and stronger. The levers move faster and faster, the gears turn faster and faster, faster and faster... Then I cry out in despair on top of it all :
"Help! Let me down! I wanna go back to the stationnn...."
I hear a screeching sound. A tearing noise, then the room fills up with an explosion of light followed by pitch dark.
When I open my eyes again I am seated in the waiting-room. What happened?
I rub my eyes to dispel tiredness, It’s been only a dream. I must have fallen asleep.
The loud-speakers hanging from the ceiling are croaking my train leaving. I must hurry up if I don’t want to risk to miss it.
I get on the train and put my luggage down. I sit on a wooden seat to listen to the station-master whistling his starting-signal and to the train moving and puffing away.
I’m looking at my shoes. They are completely muddy. My trousers are dirty with dark oil spots.
What an opportunity I missed!
I am astonished. What an opportunity I missed!
The train increases speed and I can’t get over the odd adventure yet.
But I’m sure I’ll be back one day to see the inventor, and I will be begging his artificial God for money, girls, youthful days, power...
APRIL 1989
It’s very late tonight and I think it’s quite improbable I’ll be able to get home before midnight. That is what I’m exactly thinking about as I’m cycling along the country road.
I’m going across the hamlet late at night. Few street-lamps hardly illuminate the semideserted street lined by low houses.
The hamlet seems to be wanting to squat down. Doors and windows are shut everywhere. Only when I arrive at the other end of the hamlet I hear some damped voices and the noise tinkling glasses coming from an old tavern.
As soon as I leave the village street behind I quickly recover the sultry, immense august night. The dark night is enlivened by chirping crickets and croaking frogs.
I suddenly realize my bicycle hasn’t got an easy rolling along the gravelled road. The rear tyre punctured!
The hamlet behind me is a few kilometres far, therefore I make up my mind to cycle forward all the same. After a while I am in a sweat because of the effort and my pace is so slow that I must go on foot. The country stretches all around me and two other villages remain to me to pass by.
I catch sight of a farmhouse faintly illuminated by reddish lamps, lost in the dark. I deviate along a narrow grassy pathway in search of help and, as I get nearer and nearer, I call out to signal my presence to the locals.
I go past a few brick arches, then through a large dark porch stuffed with carts, wooden rakes and other tools. A lit, nail-hooked lantern is hanging on the wall.
A waddling girl dressed in white comes and welcomes me. She’s slender and has got pink lips. Her chignon-combed hair is put up in a little silver ribbon. As she is heaping bunches of sorghum stalks for broom making she moves with very graceful movements, and every time she goes past the lantern her body stands out in silhouette against the light and her transparent dress lets see her naked features.
At the bottom of the porch someone is going past in the dark. He’s an old man pushing an awfully creaking wheelbarrow. Then in his rusty voice he calls out :
"Deridre. Deridre."
Some young boys, her brothers most probably, come and give me a hand to repair the bicycle. They are holding a tool-box and start taking the wheel down.
Meanwhile an old woman beckons to me to follow her to the house. I leave the boys at work and follow her in the hope of seeing the girl again.
We go across a dark corridor lined with many shelves and tufty maize-cobs hanging on the walls. I get into a spacious kitchen where some men and women are seated at table.
Two marble griffons support the cowl of a lit hearth. A lantern made of azure and pink glasses representing a floral motif and furnished with long white stalks is shedding a quiet light. On the massive table are the remains of the dinner scattered among a few half-empty bottles.
The old women point at a sink where I can wash my hands. Then I sit down together with all of them. I tell them what has just happened to me and they insist on my having a little wine. We remain that way, in silence.
They aren’t so talkative to be true, but are quite hospitable. In order to avoid all their looks upon me, I pretend to be interested in the photos that are slantingly hanging on the wall. They represent men as old as hills with thick grey beards ; they are probably their forefathers.
Time is going by and I look forward to seeing Desidre again, on the contrary she never comes in.
Someone comes in, but it’s only a boy: he has come to tell me that my bike has been repaired. I go back to the porch. I thank everybody, I tip them with a little sum of money, then I go away pedalling off with few strong strokes to make up for lost time.
Only when I get home I remember my hat I have forgotten there on the cart. It doesn’t matter. I’ve got the pretext of coming back to take it sooner or later and hope therefore I’ll be able to see the girl again.
* * *
About a month later, in an autumn afternoon, I happen to have to call at that place again.
I cross a flat bridge supported by eight piers. A stretch of rotten apples are floating away to the surface of the little stream. The red purple sunset has got orange streaks, like spots of blood clot.
I come in sight of the farmhouse in the background of yellow, trembling poplars in the blue sky. It’s a little orange-painted building lined by two persimmon-trees loaded with fruit. Red and violet skirts are hanging from the windows.
The main gate is open wide, stopped by luxuriant creepers. On a pillar I can read an inscription half scratched out : Lost Star Place.
When I get nearer I realize they’re not skirts, but vine leaves. Burnt leaves with the red colour of evil and with shades of violet.
I shout to signal my presence, as usual, but nobody comes to me this time. There are darkened, smashed tubs and a chipped old sun-dial. The dry vine-shoots are dangling from the rusty iron banisters. The cats are running along the low roofs of the hen-houses and on the worm-eaten tree stumps. The wind has brought some leaves to the threshold of the entrance and arranged them all slanting by chance.
The porch is much more dilapidated than I remembered. A few beams are worm-eaten and I’m afraid they won’t be able to support the roof for long. I get in and find my hat again on a layer of dust, just where I left it. While calling once more I open the door, go a few steps along the corridor and enter into the kitchen.
I am bewildered and my blood is running cold. It’s not improbable the room has been neglected for tens of years. The chairs round the table are still there, as though the people of the home had just stood up after a game of cards. But everything is covered with dust and dirt. Dust on the table and on the smashed furniture which is falling to pieces. There still is a log in the hearth where spiders have interwoven huge cobwebs.
Then I climb the spacious staircase leading upstairs. The orange sunset light is stagnating inside the large empty rooms. The shutters are banging and the wind forces its way into the rooms. A rotten bedroom is abandoned to wood-worms and dampness.
In another room there are rusty tins, an insecticide-vaporizing machine. There’s a broken doll further on.
Disconsolate I get near a window and remain thoughtful looking outside. The sky is deep blue-veined with lilac shades. The dry vine leaves are screeching like glass. The mist is rising from the river. There’s so much beauty and loneliness.
The first shades of the evening are lenghthening into the room. I seem to be perceiving silent ghosts, perhaps the ghosts of those who once lived among these walls.
The house livens up owing to some mysterious rustling noises and creakings. It’s the secret meetings of silence that can be heard in all the empty houses.
Something strange on the floor attracts my attention. It’s a lozenged tile standing out for its colour that is slightly different from that of the other tiles. I stoop and see it’s a false one because it’s both unfastened and made of wood. It’s a peep-hole, just as they used to fit up in the country houses.
I lift the tile and recognize the room below. It’s the kitchen. An old woman is working into lasagne dough. Another one seated by the window is knitting a shawl...
My God! I can’t believe this! The farmhouse was without doubt uninhabited! I must find out at once if I don’t want to go crazy.
I rush to the staircase at once but while going past a window I see something white moving in the middle of the vineyard over there. I suddenly stop and my heart gives a throb :
"Deridre!!!" I cry out
I frantically run downstairs, go across the large hall and then out through the rear of the house.
In the farmyard are high fig-trees along the wall northwards, in the middle of darkness and dampness. A horse saddle is hanging over the door.
The evening has fallen in the vineyard. A cold breeze makes me shiver.
Nothing. Nobody. The cracking of dry leaves comes from the stretch of the red purple vineyard. Under a lilac bush an old smashed rocking chair is swingling in the wind.
I tread a few steps on the high grass and see her again.
"Deridre! Deridre!" I call out in a hoarse voice overcome by emotion.
Then I run towards her but high weed and nettles slacken my impetus. A fair-haired little girl leaning against a rick of straw is eating an apple and looking at me.
Lost in the twisted rows of the vines I halt a while.
A white sinuous shape is rapidly flashing over there.
"Deridre! Deridre!"
I call her again and my voice has a shading of despair, as I start to run again and my feet catch in the tangle of the high, luxuriant, drought-reddened grass.
"Deridre! Deridre!" I shout out as I’m waving my arms.
I’m frantically break into a run, like a possessed man. My shoes fill with seeds. I have many a fall; I stand up time after time and every time there I am dirtier and dirtier, more and more filled with earth and then resume running.
My running after her becomes an obsession. I feel I am almost out of breath. I feel I’ll be falling exhausted to the ground within very short whiles, but I refuse to think it should happen and keep running and crying out.
The leaves of the vines around me are red, orange, brown, violet, blue...
MAY 1989
Suddenly in the course of the night has Chevalier Commendatore Grand Officer Bartolomeus R. Fergusson passed away. Four gold medals of merit. Aged 96.
Deeply grieved his cousins Ernest, Gustav, Bertand and their wives make it known.
Grief-annihilated at the incommensurable loss of the 96 years old Bartolomeus R. Fergusson - Honorary Member of the Society for Human Rights - Bountiful President of the Committee Pro Humana Caritate - A man who has distinguished himself by virtue of his excellent qualities and his superior merits.
His nephews and great grandchildren.
Wall-stuck obituaries are oozing with glue in the scorching sun of July. Second-class obsequies are being solemnized in the little suburban church. The cracked bell has got tired of its knelling as the arrival of the corpse is forty minutes late.
It’s three in the afternoon and the heat is so stifling that I seem to be bursting. The little parvis garden isn’t any more grassy and the flowers in the flower-beds are drought-scorched. On the gargoyles of the church the pigeons are cooing. Their excrements fall down from time to time. The thermometer of the bank is standing at forty eight degrees centigrade in the shade.
The heat makes the people pant. We are fed up with waiting in the fierce sun, with the pidgeons dropping their excrements on our heads now and then. A fat guy dressed in black beside me looks like being on the brink of bursting in his suit. He’s oozing big sweatdrops and keeps wiping his head and forehead with a handkerchief already soaked.
I move towards the shade of a pinnacle but have pins and needles throughout my body owing to the extraordinary heat phenomenon. The thermometer located on the other side of the street is showing forty nine degrees.
There it is coming, terribly slowly, from the other end of the street. In front are the black-edged flags and the funeral ensigns. In the hearse the anthracite-dyed coffin is shining in the sheer sun. Inside it is the corpse certainly boiling with such a record heat.
A guy in black begins to pronounce the funeral eulogy :
"Gentlemen..."
"Shit" a little boy cries.
A flock of pigeons flying over us at that very moment has dropped their excrements on our heads and jackets like many black confetti. The speech is suspended to avoid further nuisances and we get into church.
An oppressive heat is indoors, too, and the sun is assailing us through the large windows. The petals of the flowers are withered and are falling onto the floor. The porters lift the coffin upon the catafalque and the funeral service begins.
The man in charge of the cleaning goes up the altar and acts as an altar-boy. The lean and clumsy guy manages to upset the sacred vases during the religious service. The lame, super-slow and old priest doesn’t seem to notice it. He intones an out-of-tune chant and somebody accompanies him in his out-of-time psalm-singing.
The relatives of the dead man are praying beside me. Then they ask one another in a whispering voice when the testament will be made known. Those who occupy the pew behind me are making up a few accounts about their probable shares of inheritance and are estimating their gainable profits.
The candles are crooked and upset and are dripping odorous wax. At half service time it becomes necessary to pause to put out an incipient fire. The wooden base of a candle-bearer is catching fire and some of the bystanders rush to get it outdoors. Clouds of smoke spreading over the nave make me cough. The priest takes the censer at last and with a few little clouds of incense shaken out of it he dismisses the funeral gathering.
As soon as we get out of church there is the heat hitting me with its hard slap : sweat is oozing down my back, a strong sensation of thirst and choke oppresses me as if I were suffering from sort of overpressure. All my body is itching as I join in the burial procession winding along the sunny road.
Once at the cemetery we make for the latest part of it. The pavement stones along the little alleys are hot and send back a hell of a heat. Many a tombstone have their inscriptions illegible. We go past a little chapel with its ceiling broken down. At a point I happen to set foot in a dried up puddle where there are hundreds of dead tadpoles.
Few of us have remained because the most part have already gone home. In the meanwhile, further on, the labourers have heaved the tombstone and are shedding some liquid down. The pungent smell of disinfectant makes me draw back. When I get near again, through the narrow, open trap-door I indistinctly see piles of black coffins on both sides of the niche.
The sextons heave high the coffin vertically. I can sense the cracking noise of the corpse wrinkling and crouching up inside the coffin that they make knock against the wooden walls. They tie up and then let the coffin down the trap-door keeping it upright. Some snorts both of rage and of exhaustion escape the men at the highest pitch of their efforts :
"Go on"! Pull! Oooh..."
A dull thud tells us that the coffin has been grounded. Now it’s up to a lean man to get down and arrange the coffin. He wears an ash-coloured overall and has got a bristly beard as grey as his face.
With the help of the other men he silently lets himself down. He pushes the coffin as the other labourers pull the ropes from above. He manages to put it down taking care to position one side of the coffin on top of the other ones. Now he tries to also lift the other side of it, but the coffin slides out of his hands with a thud down to the ground. A few curses and noises together with a catarrhal coughing are heard below in the dust.
The operation is brought to an end on second attempt. By dint of efforts and puffs the coffin is laid at last upon the other ones. The workers take the ropes back. The man below gets ready for the difficult climbing in the middle of a great cloud of dust. He lays his feet upon the coffins using them as steps. He’s almost made it. I now see his head and hair covered with cobwebs.
Crack! A crash and a desperate cry :
"Aaaaagh..."
An awful uproar follows brought about by the coffins falling the one upon the other. One of the coffins has evidently broken causing the fall of all the other ones.
The workers shout out and move excitedly. Bustling and din reign. Dust comes up through the trap-door like smoke and obstructs the view of what’s just happened.
Another labourer ties to a rope and lets himself down.
After many an effort the fellow is recovered in bad state, dirty and bloodstained, but still alive.
MAY 1989
"... those darned herbs must be carnivorous..."
I turn to my friend Bob who has just spoken.
"Eh? What are you talking about?"
"I’m talking about the herbs sprouting in the old, desolate, brick-made kiln..."
He’s referring to an old kiln abandoned more than forty years ago.
"Herbs carnivorous in the environs here, with this climate? I absolutely deny it may be true..." I reply to him while fishing my old botany recollections out of my memory.
I’m awake at night in my bed and I’m remembering fragments of my latest talk with Bob. I’ve been one of the very last witnesses to see him, before his sudden disappearance. That night at the tavern I was tired and was absent-mindedly listening to his words. There was stormy weather and I was waiting for the rain to stop and wanted to go home to bed.
The day after Bob didn’t arrive at his house and the police have been looking for him for over two weeks. Some people say they have seen him with a woman. Other people suggest he definitely left home for the sake of liberty.
In effect, since I’ve known him, he’s always shown a difficult unforeseeable temper. He had a great sense of friendship and a profound love for liberty. His problem maybe arose from the contrast he fought against : he did love people, but he just couldn’t at the same time stand ties love always establishes.
I remember Bob had on various occasions asked me to go to the kiln to study the herbs growing there... How could I forget all this! He might have gone to the place without telling anybody and have hurt himself. That’s where he ought maybe to be looked for now.
I turn on the light and have a look at the clock; a quarter past two at night. Who knows whether he has on the contrary definitely gone in search of liberty.
The next morning I’m about to go to the police, but I change my mind at the very last minute not to risk to cut a ridiculous figure.
Late in the afternoon all the anxieties of the past night are flocking again in my mind. So, scruple-stricken I take the sloping pathway leading to the kiln. I suppose the place is quite dilapidated at least judging from what I can catch sight of in the distance. Smashed roofs. Two iron belts of a chimney have come off...
The kiln rises isolated in the fields. That very village where the labourers used to stay at the time is abandoned because the families have emigrated. As I draw nearer, the size of the building becomes huge, impressive and the aftermaths of the ruinous neglect are more evident.
I get to the rear side, which is westwards, after going across a patch of uncultivated land. I am in a sweat. The heat is sultry in this excessively humid summer. A tract of the very long fencing wall has fallen down, which is sparing me the effort to climb it. I move upon the debris and get in through the breach.
A courtyard crammed with strange thorny herbs typical of arid soils. Gigantic, reddish-stalked artemisias. Broom herbs* as big as I’d never seen before. In front of me the low, brick-made buildings are run over by the sun. Further on, the long spans of the roofs follow one another and a dark-red chimney towers in the background against the blue sky.
I stay in the shade of the fencing wall and feel a strange excitement. Bob, too, has been here before me and has seen all this.
Then I step down and watch the herbs. Which herb was my friend referring to? There’s the thistle, then a certain kind of reddish herb I’ve already seen somewhere... No, that’s not it.
I’m wandering a while up and down the deserted courtyard and have an odd feeling. I make some short detours to avoid to rub myself against the thorny herbs, till I arrive at an iron, black-painted gate. On one side there is a gigantic thistle plant which comes as high as the roofs of the buildings. On the ground are some long rusty nails and a few heads of chimney-pots have crashed.
Some high and thin stalks draw my attention on the southern side. Never have I seen such luxuriant stuff as this. I get near to examine them. I notice that it is about dark-brown herbs and more than two metres high. I have a shy at shaking the hard flexible stalk. Pointed peduncles have sprouted all along it and long thin leaves are growing at the foot of each of them.
The red bricks illuminated by the setting sun submerge the courtyard with an odd, reddish, blood-like light. Then I enter the gloomy, dusty buildings. I hear a noise of fleeing birds under the roofs. I go along the corridors lined with the cooking rooms. I cast my eyes into the dark, deep arcades. I get to the huge base of the chimney. There are no tracks of my friend Bob.
Upon the raised section of a footbridge I find a shoe maybe belonging to Bob. But it’s a worn, dusty shoe and who knows how long it’s been here.
The golden sunbeams coming in through the large windows alerts me that the night is already falling. Dirty and wet with perspiration, I go back and give up researching.
That very night I think of my excursion to the old kiln again. Does the shoe I’ve found over there really belong to Bob? Just to dispel every single doubt I decide to go back the day after and to pick it up.
But my morning engagements don’t allow me to leave work. In the afternoon a storm unfortunately breaks out bringing rain, wind gusts and hail and I have to wait till it ends.
Late in the afternoon when everything is over I make for the muddy pathway leading to the kiln. After the storm the air is cold and the sky reflects a crystal luminosity. The red-blood sun is on the brink of setting in a scenery of violet and cobalt-blue clouds.
After going beyond the breach of the wall the courtyard appears smaller and more isolated. The bricks reflect dark-red shades, the wet herbs look vitrified. Since I want to be quick I begin to run, but the sticky ground imprisons my shoes and makes me fall.
Completely out of breath, I remain seated to dry up my sweat. There’s a very high temperature in this place, which I attribute to the buildings reverberating the sunlight all around the closed courtyard.
There’s a reddish cobweb, something like moss, that grows in quite a good part of the place. On touching it, my hand reddens. I scratch my itch away and stand up. I hear an odd, faint, far and intermittent whistle. I stop to listen to the phenomenon. It’s most probably the wind making the laminated coverings of the gutters whistle.
I bend down once more to watch the reddish cobweb which is even more conspicuous just in this point. And the odd whistling sound over my head intensifies and becomes shriller. But what’s happening around here?
The ground shows strange swellings like very tiny hills and it is just in these points that the ground does seem to be softer and stickier. Worried and frightened I suddenly raise my head. The strange filiform herbs are now bending towards me as though it depended on the wind. But there’s no wind at all!
Then I notice a bright, red shoot as monstruously open and throbbing as a mouth...
Without wasting any more whiles, I dash headlong under the bending herbs. I get to the fencing wall at its nearest point taking care not to go across the courtyard to reach the breach to exit.
I frantically climb up the brick-made wall taking no heed of the things that graze me and that seem to apparently want to imprison me. When I am on top, I have a look at the killing courtyard for the last time before jumping down to the other side.
Everything is vibrating and moving. The herbs are hissing, bending, the cobweb has swollen like blood streams.
My forebodings go to my friend Bob and from that moment on I’ve given up hope of seeing him again.
AUGUST 1989
* Erigeron canadensis
During spring and summer time I would go and see Monelle, the farmer’s younger daughter.
Her father is old and usually works in the stables. Her mother is semi-paralyzed and it is therefore up to the girl to do the housework. She has got a brother, a nice sturdy young fellow whose queer original name is : Aldighier, all the time busy at studying occultism and country-folklore.
Monelle lives together with three other families in the latest part of a fifteenth century building. The oldest part of the same building has got bulging iron gratings and two towers to both of which dangling screwed eaves gutters are arranged.
In the evening of June 30th during the second season of hay-harvesting, since I’ve had a lot of work to do, I am late for the appointment. Monelle is already waiting for me by the threshold of her house and welcomes me with a gentle kiss on the lips. She takes me by the hand and allures me indoors.
As the evenings before, we keep to ourselves in a corner of the kitchen to talk about our own prospective plans. She is a simple and good-natured young girl, maybe a little naive. If I happen to inadvertently hurt her, as is the case of all lovers, I do deeply regret.
Monelle feels tired some time later and I let her go to bed. When she comes and kisses me good-night, she’s wearing so long a white night-gown as to be covered till her bare thin ankles. Her hair is loose and she’s holding a candlestick in her hand. She slightly bends forward to give me a little kiss. I realize she has put on scent and feel the soft caress of her hair, then she runs away towards the spacious semi-dark staircase.
I therefore remain in the large kitchen to have a chat with her brother. This robust, unmarried, forty-year-old fellow does have got a knowledge of occultism undobtedly profound. He goes and brings piles of yellowed papers and reads me quite a few relations of local news which sometimes sound odd, sometimes unbelievable.
I hear the crickets chirp through the open windows. It is getting late and I am to get up early tomorrow. So I pay no more attention to Aldighier as I have to go.
He sees me out to the large silent farm-yard illuminated by the plenilune. The piles of stakes seem bristling with horns and the lines of porches plunge into darkness. I am about to go away when Aldighier suggests me to take a short cut across the back-side of his property to get home sooner.
"Just follow the short cut through the apple-orchard, cross the ford over the little stream and call at the witches’ mound".
This is a very small hillcock of hard ground, five or six metres high, covered with blackberry bushes. The legend has it, that it was made higher by witches in such a short time as only one night. As a matter of fact we have to deal with a small artificial formation Napoleon’s troops embanked with the object of using it as a look-out.
"But are you sure it is practicable at this time of the season?" I ask him.
"Quite so. Let’s go, I’m coming with you."
He puts on his boots and we get to the rear of the house and then across a field where the grass is high and dewy. The night is warm, wonderful. The moon is flooding the flat country with its pale light.
"Look at these veins of dryness."
He shows me some burnt striations expanding all across the crops. Something attracts his attention and he bends to pick it up :
"And here we have some hen feathers. That’s the mark that somebody has cast a spell" I hear him mumbling.
"But that’s ridiculous! All this is paganism, error, gloomy beliefs of bygone times..."
"Things that are dead and buried, you say? You’ve not the faintest idea of how common the witchcraft practising is just nowadays in these parts of the country. Old hags still get dew at Lammas and in the solstice nights. And it is just there that Vertha lives, an old woman who has maintained the particular custom of performing the pot rite and who has been seen to trip along upon tree-tops in the full-moon nights..."
The cry of an owl interrupts his talking. Aldighier turns and raises his head and I, too, follow his gaze. In the distance the house looks like a wild beast lying in wait, ready to jump at us. The two towers rise dark and toothed in the moonlight. After a little pausing silence another cry is heard which is a shrill lamentation at the beginning and then turns into a sort of shuddering laughter. Aldighier makes a comment on it and tries hard to give a smile :
"The owl calls on our right?, that means a danger is threatening one of us. If it came from the left, on the contrary..."
Walking along the stream in the tangle of high weed we see lots of stones arranged in such a way as to form a triangle. They resemble small menhirs, and Aldighier makes long detours to avoid them. The stream bends and narrows. It is in that very spot that I jump over helping myself with a pole. Then I throw the pole back and keep walking along the pathway by myself.
I’m stepping forward lost in reverie and try hard to forget those threatening superstitions. I hear the crickets chirp and the breeze brings me the sweet scent of honeysuckle now and then. The night is lukewarm in an overwhelming stillness.
A red light is shifting about in the fields over there. I stop to watch it. It’s a small trembling flame; it moves along by jumps. What may it be? Perhaps it’s an ignis fatuus.
The light comes forward by mid-air jumps, passes over the stream and beyond me, and keeps going forward athwart towards the fields. Then the reddish glare disappears beyond the mulberry-trees. When it turns up again farther on, I hardly can catch a glimpse of it through the thick foliage, then I definitely lose sight of it.
I stop, my heart throbbing with emotion. When I start to move again, after only a few steps, I see another light coming from the same direction. I instinctively remain motionless and watch as it’s passing by soon afterwards, this time much closer to me. It seems a gas sphere made of red yellowish light suspended in the air. It then moves forward rapidly towards the artificial mound. I try to follow it full of curiosity, but this, too, disappears soon afterwards.
The witches’ mound rises dark by my side, covered with high weed and blackberry bushes. Then I see more lights both big and small coming from many a direction. They are moving along fast and silently at various height levels and are all tending to the witches’ mound. My eyes follow them and I am bewildered.
The small mound seems wrapped in a greenish light from time to time. I draw even nearer moving along through the brushwood almost up to the base of the mound. The moonlight illuminates it and I see its unevenness, the little crooked branches of the greenery growing there, its bare top where some shadows are moving...
I hear womanly whispers and low subdued sneers brought here by the breeze. The shadows slowly rise to their feet and begin to undress. They go on stripping until they are completely naked, then they take one another by the hand and remain motionless.
I see young girls and old hags. In the great silence their bodies are ivory under the moon.
A low dull singing is coming from the mound. It’s hardly perceptible through the rustling leaves and goes with the wind from time to time. After a while it grows louder and its rhythm becomes faster.
Now the women begin to move and dance in a ring. I see bodies of young girls and bodies of hideous old women. Some smirking faces of theirs, as well, don’t escape my notice. Their firm flesh reflects white flashes, their breasts hop about.
They go round slowly at first and sing the sing-song over and over again, then they quicken rhythm. Their dancing gets more and more frantic, their movements faster and faster, their singing more and more obsessing... The dancing in a ring becomes fast, unco-ordinate...
Now they go round like persons possessed, shout out loud while turning round something placed in the middle. Some of them suddenly cry out a name. The singing stops out of the blue. Their dancing in a ring also stops. The witches fall to the ground and astonished utter some exclamations.
Every noise ceases completely. I see no more people there. The astonishment and the waiting are lessening little by little and so I realize that perhaps I’ve only dreamt of everything. I am in a sweat. I then look at the country stretching under the moon and have a great feeling of peace.
Yet something is still moving up there on top of the mound. Something like a thin wisp of smoke is slowly rising from the top of the small hillcock. It’s a naked girl. A pale Goddess of the night stretching out her arms.
When she raises her head, her hair stops to hide her face and I recognize Monelle who is looking at me with her wide sad eyes.
OCTOBER 1989
There’s an odd bustle coming from my neighbour’s house this morning. Just him, he has not gone to work yet. Some people come and go, some gather together in front of the gates.
My neighbour is a hodman of fifty five and lives with his wife, three sons and his old father in a small house surrounded by a garden blossoming with lilac flowers.
A few more people have just come over, so I go downstairs and step to the street after breakfast. I address an awfully fat woman who’s standing and queuing up and ask her whether she knows what’s going on. Soon afterwards she’s recounting me the most incredible story I’ve heard of.
The evening before, July 15th, the hodman called at a greengrocer’s to buy a water-mellon on his way home after work. After choosing a big one in the field himself, he cuts it off the peduncle and takes it away. Once at home he cuts the mellon in two in front of his wife and his sons and their eyes are immediately attracted by a capital letter W conspicuously impressed, so to speak, in the pulp of the fruit.
They remain speechlessand dare not touch it. Then they call their neighbours and stay up all night to argue about the strange finding. They at last agree to keep it into the ice-house all over the next day.
This morning many people have already become acquainted with this novelty and have made up their mind to come and see. In this village where it’s certain that nothing ever happens even a trivial piece of news makes a sensation.
So I join in the curiosity party and wait for my turn to see what’s going on. One of his sons comes and opens the door and lets us in. We are still standing and waiting in the little kitchen. Some are talking in a low voice and fancying suppositions, some are inquiring into details.
The kitchen is small, sultry and faintly illuminated. The brick-made floor uneven, the furniture dark and dirty. I can catch sight of the back of the kitchen through a little open door. A small semi-illuminated room with a cabinet, a little window and an old ice-house.
The host of the house, tall, thin and toothles, comes in at last. He kindly marshals us into the back of the kitchen. He pulls the bolts to open the door of the ice-house. He looks like a priest while opening the reliquary of a God. I restrain myself from laughing. Why, has everybody gone mad here? What do they expect to see?
The wooden door opens and in there, sunk into the whiteness of the ice, there are two red halves of a mellon showing up. As we see them, we are dumbfounded. Because there’s a big, perfect and cut out on both sides W. The W has got a sharp, exact outline, so that it does seem sort of engraved.
We remain astonished and watch it for a good few whiles, in the silence and in the dim light of the old pantry. A woman kneels down. A man throws some money down, promptly imitated by another one.
I go back home and many more newcomers arrive at the house in the afternoon to see the phenomenon. Before evening all those people will be getting bored for sure and will be going away.
The next day, on the contrary, the pilgrimage has even increased. Folks arrive from everywhere to see the water-mellon. The courtyard gates are always open now.
I also go downstairs, make for the street and mingle with the crowd. Small groups of people are gathering together, they discuss in a low voice and yet excitedly. Some are of opinion that the case in question concerns extraordinary deeds, some heavenly signs.
I get in and when I am in the kitchen I finally understand the reason for such a swarming. The old, bald and plump priest is now speaking in his shrill voice :
"... in my opinion, this is nothing but a mere sport of nature and it’s neither a heavenly nor an ultramundane sign."
At about noon some smart men arrive carrying floodlights and cameras. They are reporters for a local newspaper. Some people are kindly requested to go out to make room for them. The sons move a cupboard and the floodlights are placed. Then the host, helped by his wife, takes the fruit off the ice and puts it on a table in front of the floodlights.
I see the mellon again with its disquieting signs. It’s even redder, the W is still more outlined, for the incisions, though a bit rim-chipped, have widened.
Offerings, coins, golden bracelets, earrings are put down in front of the fruit, on the table. The hodman is always available and obliging. He welcomes everybody, gives something to eat to every stranger that enters in his house. He seems to be carrying out sort of a mission which he has been entrusted with by a superior fate.
Then the reporters of a local broadcasting station are coming over for interviewing. In the afternoon, when I go down to the street among the crowd, I learn that the priest has blessed the house. Now they are going to make a written request for His Excellency the Bishop’s visit to the place.
At dawn the next day I am awoken by honks and roaring engines. The road is obstructed with vehicles that are moving forward at a walking pace so that a long serpent of cars is formed.
There’s a strange crowd of smart bearded men coming and going. They must be strangers coming from far away. I take advantage of all this hurley-burley to get into the kitchen and see how the thing has evolved.
Everything’s changed here now. The furniture has been taken off the kitchen that now looks like a sanctuary : ornaments, books, talismans, pentacula are on show...
I learn that among the newcomers there are occultists and magicians. They are talking to each other in their cryptic language. They hypothesize, look for similarities, study prophecies... A guy ups and speaks in his thundering voice :
"The W may mean World, Womb, Wonder, Winner... Yet, on reading it overturned, it might just be considered as a M and in this case mean Mother of a new age..."
Someone else intervenes :
" I found out the very quatrain in which Nostradamus mentions this episode, please listen..."
But he’s interrupted by a cabalist :
" On July 15th, Sun in Cancer after the summer solstice, it means ascent. Number 15 stands for the devil according to tarots, i.e. energy. Now, gentlemen, I’m pointing out that if we add 15, the day, to 7, the month symbolizing mysticism, we get 22, the destiny number..."
The day after in the morning I am awoken up by a buzz below my windows. The street is crammed with people. A policeman is directing admittance to the house. Another one is in front of the gates. There must be at least 500 persons there looking forward to being in front of the marvel. There is a chap holding a fruit-basket, a seller of picture-souvenirs, a seller of balm-mint water... Quite a few parties are getting out of some coaches bearing number-plates of far towns... For how long will it be lasting?
At about one past noon I hear hymns and noises coming from the courtyard. I rush downstairs to the street and push my way through the stream of people.
Some hysteric shriecks are coming from inside the house. The lookers-on are talking of a woman who recovered from paralysis after fifteen years of motionlessness. I elbow my way forward and finally manage to look inside through a window.
The kitchen is illuminated by candles and there’s smoke and smell of wax. I see a short ugly woman surrounded by a ring of people who are stirring her up.
The woman staggers forward and utters hysteric cries. An empty wheel-chair behind her. On the floor are some shawls she has dropped while standing up. The crowd knell down, pray, keep syllabizing and saying the word ^Miracle^.
At dawn the fifth day, as soon as I wake up, I rush and have a look in the street to see how things have turned out. People have overcrowded. Someone cries out and signals with a stick. Both the doors and the windows of my neighbour’s house are open wide.
But something strange occurs. The people step out, the coaches manoeuvre to make a U-turn and then those who have got out, now get in again.
I go downstairs to the courtyard and draw near the groups of people who are animatedly discussing. After a while I get to know what the novelty is : this morning the fruit has gone bad and has been thrown away into the garbage bin!
The people are sorry, disappointed. Somebody makes comments; someone else isn’t just inclined to find peace and talks of a sacrilege, of a blasphemous deed...
Now that there isn’t anything to be seen many people are off and the all the others crowd along the edge of the road waiting for their turn to leave. Before the evening comes, all the people are off and the place appears desert.
A humid, foggy Autumn has come and the people seem unmindful of what happened. Everything is now the same as before. My neighbour’s house is still a house like many others. The gates are closed and nobody comes here any more.
The host leaves home early every morning to go to work and comes back in the evening. They say the host still purchased water-mellons since last time, but couldn’t find anything strange.
It’s all over. The grey routine of the little country village has wiped out the red wave of madness.
One morning I wake up after a rainy night. I look through the window at the pale sun rising behind the roofs. My neighbour’s garden is flooded with rain. Then I turn my eyes to the eastern side of the house and notice a phenomenon.
During the night quite a few snails, in their bizarre dragging along, have drawn big Ws that are shining silvery in the sunlight.
SEPTEMBER 1989
One Autumn night I am in the small room reserved to me of my uncle’s country-house, but I can’t sleep.
I hear the Autumn wind whistle. I hear the faraway rustling of poplars.
But I also hear another noise at times, shriller and more worrying. It’s something like a hiss or a cry and I don’t at all know where it may come from.
I must have fallen asleep. I suddenly wake up at dead of night as I hear some thuds downstairs in the kitchen. I wait a little more. Those unexplainable noises, again ; shrill creakings, hustle-bustle.
This time I can’t be mistaken. There is somebody downstairs, maybe a thief. Just of late, some calves in the near farms have been reported missing.
I slowly get up, take the nightlight and reach the corridor without making noise. I half-open my uncle’s bedroom door and see him lying in his bed open-eyed. He beckons to me to get in. He also has heard the noises, therefore he gets up, wears his boots and precedes me with his night-shirt still on.
I enter my grand-father’s room : because he suffers from insomnia, he remains seated in bed with his clothes on and smokes a pipe. He also has heard the noises, so he takes his walking-stick and follows me.
I put the nightlight out and we all go down the stairs, step after step, doing our best to avoid any noise.
Once downstairs, we stop by the door and look. The kitchen is almost in darkness. Streaks of moonlight come in through the fissures of the shutters.
Then we slowly step forward and get to the small sitting-room. This place, too, is in the dark but for the fact that the moonlight comes in through the fissures of the door. My uncle lights a match and then the lantern.
It doesn’t take us long to inspect the two small ground-floor rooms. The doors have been accurately bolted, the windows are closed and, on top of that, provided with iron-gratings. I have a look inside the wash-basin and at the space under the staircase.
Just to appease our tension we stay up a while and talk before going back to bed. But this time what we hear very close to us is a shrill, piercing cry keeping us on the alert. Then silence follows and we all make for the closed door leading to the wood-store. It’s a little and powerful door, barred by two hooks and two bolts. My uncle points at it while speaking in a low voice :
"Somebody got into the wood-store."
We slowly draw near the door we have so many times passed through, but now it does appear inaccessible and threatening. We slowly unbolt the door. After a brief pause, my uncle lands a powerful kick with his boots making the door bang against the wall. Then he stretches out his arm holding the candle to illuminate the small dreary room, stuffed with piles of firewood for the winter.
We climb down the two steps. Even in there, we don’t find anybody. We halt in the middle of the small room below the low ceiling made of woodbeams and look all around us.
A thin, angry hiss makes us jerk back. On top of a pile of chopped wood is our male cat spitting with his hair standing on end and his back arched. He had altered beyond recognition. After jumping down, he takes the door of the kitchen at full speed and disappears.
Silence, again. Then, one more noise, this time shrill and furious. On seeing something, my uncle grasps a rake and rushes to the other end of the wood-store.
In a corner is a monstrous snake with big, long body and head of a cock! My uncle firmly faces it with the rake. The snake withdraws, then suddenly turns and raises its head.
Regretting his rash move, my uncle turns to go back. T