The moment the head started moving, turning on its axis, my own head began to spin: I knew that in a few seconds the other side of the skull would appear, its frightful, dreadful face. It was in certain respects a perfectly well-formed face with all the normal human contours: eyes in proper sockets, a prominent chin, and a triangle excavated below each cheekbone such as one sees on thin men. The skin, however, was phantasmagorical, made up of fine slices of meat, one next to the other, like the brown folds on the undersides of mushrooms. There were so many folds and they were so close together that when I looked at the head with my eyelids half closed it did not appear at all abnormal, the tiny striae resembling the hatched shading used in engravings.
Chestnut trees laden with leaves in summer sometimes give the impression, from afar, of being enormous heads thrust upon their trunks, heads with deeply sunken cheeks like mine. When the wind blows through the leaves, the face undulates like the waves of a field of grain. This was how the head in question moved when its pedestal wobbled.
All I had to do to confirm that the head was made of folds was to insert my finger ever so slightly into its flesh. The finger met no resistance, as if entering a soft, moist dough. As soon as I withdrew my finger, the folds returned to their place, leaving no trace of it.
Once, as a child, I was present at the exhumation of a corpse, a woman who had died young and had been buried in her wedding gown. The silk bodice was a mess of long filthy rags, and what remained of the embroidery had mixed with the soil. Her face was more or less intact, however, and one could make out nearly all her features even if the head had turned purple and seemed modeled out of cardboard that had been soaked in water.
Someone ran his hand over the face as the coffin was being raised out of the ground. All present were in for a terrible surprise: what we had taken for a well-preserved face was nothing but a layer of mold about two inches thick. The mold had replaced its skin and flesh down to the bones, thus reproducing its form. There was nothing but the bare skeleton underneath.
The head I saw was similar except it was covered with folds of flesh instead of mold, and through them I reached the bone with my finger. Moreover, hideous as it was, the head was a refuge against the air.
Why against the air? Though viscous and heavy and trying to coagulate into ugly black stalactites, the air in the room was forever in motion. It was in that air that the head first appeared, creating a void all around it like an ever growing halo. I was so thankful and happy to see it that I felt like laughing. But how could I laugh in bed, in the dark?
I soon loved the head with all my soul. It became the dearest, most precious thing I owned. It came from the world of darkness, a world from which only the faintest echo made its way to me like a continuous boiling in the brain. What other things were to be found there? I would open my eyes and peer into the dark — to no avaiclass="underline" nothing ever came but the ivory head.
I began to wonder with a certain apprehension whether the head would not become the center of all my preoccupations, gradually replacing everything else until in the end all that remained was it and the darkness. True, life would then take on a clear-cut meaning, but for the time being the head was growing like a fruit about to mature. It was my joy, my repose; it belonged to me and me alone. Had it belonged to the world at large, it might have caused a terrible disaster: a single moment of utter bliss could have brought the universe to a standstill.
It was constantly opposed, though ever more feebly, by the viscous air flow. Now and again my father appeared alongside it, but as a vague, indistinct apparition, a mass of white steam. I knew he was going to put his hand on my forehead; his hand was cold. I would try to explain the battle between the head and the air to him, and I could feel him unbuttoning my shirt and slipping the slender glass lizard of a thermometer under my armpit. There followed a disconcerting activity around the head, like a flag fluttering. Nothing could stop it: the flag kept waving.
I recalled the time — we were having tea upstairs — when Paul had let his arm hang down along the chair and Edda, who was on the bed, tried in jest to reach over and touch his hand with her slipper. Each time I thought about it, the gesture grew more virulent. This time the slipper scratched frenetically at Paul’s hand, so much so that a small wound appeared and then a hole in the flesh. The slipper strayed not an instant from its irritating mechanical pursuit, hollowing out first the hand, then the arm, and proceeding to the entire body. .
The flag activity had begun in the same manner. Everything in the room was now in danger. I might be devoured whole. Drenched in sweat, I let out a desperate scream.
“Temperature?” came a voice from the shadows.
“A hundred and two,” my father responded and left, leaving me prey to the rising storms.
Chapter Thirteen
Convalescence was announced one morning by the extreme fragility of the light. It entered the room where I slept through the rep curtains of the skylight, oddly depriving the room of its density. The clarity of things made them lighter, and no matter how deeply I inhaled, I still had a large void in my chest, as if an important part of myself had disappeared.
Some crumbs had slipped under my calves in the warm bedclothes. My foot sought out the iron frame of the bed, and the iron pierced it with a cold knife. I was trying to get down. Everything was as I had suspected: the air was too inconsistent to support me. I took a few tentative steps in it. It was like moving through a hot, steamy river.
I sat down on a chair underneath the skylight. The light around me robbed things of their contours. They seemed to have been washed many times over to remove their shine. The bed in its corner was buried in darkness. How did I manage to make out every grain in the plaster during my fever?
Slowly I began to dress. My clothes too were lighter than usual. They hung on my body like strips of blotting paper and had the lye-like smell that comes of repeated washing and ironing.
Floating through waters ever more rarefied, I went out into the street. I was immediately stunned by the sun. Huge spots of its yellow and greenish rays covered just emerged from a high fever. There was something unusual about the way the gray, lop-sided carriage horses moved: now dragging, ponderous and unsteady, now racing, breathing heavily through their nostrils lest they collapse in the middle of the asphalt. The long column of houses shook slightly in the wind. A strong scent of autumn was wafting from afar. “A fine autumn day!” I said to myself. “A splendid autumn day!”
Strolling leisurely past the dusty houses, I came to a bookshop with a mechanical toy performing in the window. It was a small red-and-white clown banging two tiny brass cymbals. There it stood, shut up in its shop-window of a room amidst books, balls, and inkwells, playing joyfully away. I was so moved I could not hold back my tears. It was so wholesome, so refreshing, so attractive, the best spot in the world to stand peacefully and play your cymbals in your party clothes. At last something simple and pure after all that fever. The autumn light was all the more pleasant and intimate in the shop window. How nice it would have been to change places with that happy little clown, to stand there on a sheet of blue paper surrounded by those nice clean books and balls. Bam! Bam! Bam! How nice, how nice to be in the window! Bam! Bam! Bam! Red, green, blue. Balls, books, paints. Bam! Bam! Bam! What a fine autumn day!. .