Someone coughs in the darkness, a cold clear morning from the window of a hotel; he coughs. He goes out to the street, pulls up the hood of his bluejacket, buttons all the buttons except the top one. He buys a pack of cigarettes, takes one, stops on the sidewalk by the window of a jewelry shop, lights a cigarette. He has short hair. He walks with his hands in the pockets of his jacket, the cigarette dangles from his lips. The scene is a closeup of the man with his forehead resting on the window. The rest is tiny passageways that hardly ever lead anywhere. The glass is foggy. Now he's twentyseven and he gets off the bus. He heads down a deserted street.
26. AN EXTRA SILENCE
The fuzzy images of the hunchback and the policeman begin to retreat in opposite directions. The scene is black and liquid. In the space without memory a freshly shaven man with short hair appears. He's notable for his pallor and slowness. A voice says that the South American didn't die. (It's to be assumed that the figure who replaces the misthunchback and the mistpoliceman is the South American.) He's wearing a navy blue jacket that calls to mind the last days of fall. Clearly he's been sick, his pallor and haggard face suggest as much. The screen splits down the middle, vertically. The South American walks along a deserted street. He recognizes the author and keeps walking. The screen recomposes itself as if it's just stopped raining. Sundappled gray buildings appear on an empty, familiar afternoon. The asphalt of the streets is clean and gray. The wind sweeps down avenues of red trees. Bright clouds are reflected in the windows of offices where no one is at work. Someone has created an extra silence. The mountain swoops at the end of the street. Little redroofed houses scattered along the slope; thin spirals of smoke rise from some chimneys.
Above is the reservoir, a lot for trucks, some makeshift latrines. In the distance a farmworker bends over the black earth. He's carrying a package wrapped in yellowed newspaper. The blurry heads of the hunchback and the policeman disappear. "The South American opened the door"… All right, take him away"… "I don't know whether I'll be able to get in"…
27. OCCASIONALLY IT SHOOK
The nameless girl spread her legs under the sheets. A policeman can watch any way he wants, he's already overcome all the risks of the gaze. What I mean is, the drawer holds fear and photographs and men who can never be found, as well as papers. So the cop turned out the light and unzipped his fly. The girl closed her eyes when he turned her face down. She felt his pants against her buttocks and the metallic cold of the belt buckle. "There was once a word"… (Coughs)… "A word for all this"… "Now all I can say is: don't be afraid"… Images forced up by the piston. His fingers burrowed between her cheeks and she didn't say a thing, didn't even sigh. He was on his side, but she still had her head buried in the sheets. His index and middle finger probed her ass, massaged her sphincter, and she opened her mouth without a sound. (I dreamed of a corridor full of people without mouths, he said, and the old man replied: don't be afraid.) He pushed his fingers all the way in, the girl moaned and raised her haunches, he felt the tips of his fingers brush something to which he instantly gave the name stalagmite. Then he thought it might be shit, but the color of the body that he was touching kept blazing green and white, like his first impression. The girl moaned hoarsely. The phrase "the nameless girl was lost in the metro" came to mind and he pulled his fingers out to the first joint. Then he sank them in again and with his free hand he touched the girl's forehead. He worked his fingers in and out. As he squeezed the girl's temples, he thought that the fingers went in and out with no adornment, no literary rhetoric to give them any other sense than a couple of thick fingers buried in the ass of a nameless girl. The words came to a stop in the middle of a metro station. There was no one there. The policeman blinked. I guess the risk of the gaze was partly overcome by the exercise of his profession. The girl was sweating profusely and moved her legs with great care. Her ass was wet and occasionally quivered. Later he went over to look out the window and he ran his tongue over his teeth. (The word teeth slid across the glass, many times. The old man had coughed after he said don't be afraid.) Her hair spilled over the pillow. He mounted her, seemed to say something in her ear before he plunged into her. We knew he had done that by the girl's scream. The images travel in slow motion. He puts water on to boil. He closes the bathroom door. The bathroom light softly disappears. She's sitting in the kitchen, her elbows resting on her knees. She's smoking a cigarette. The policeman, the fake policeman, appears in a pair of green pajamas. From the hallway he calls her, asks her to come with him. She turns her head toward the door. There's no one there. She opens a kitchen drawer. Something gleams. She closes the door.
28. AN EMPTY PLACE NEAR HERE
"He had a white mustache, or maybe it was gray"… "I was thinking about my situation, I was alone again and I was trying to understand why"… "There's a skinny man over by the body now, taking pictures"…"I know there's an empty place near here, but I don't know where"…
29. YELLOW
The Englishman spotted him through the bushes. He walked away, treading on pine needles. It was probably eight o'clock and the sun was setting in the hills. The Englishman turned and said something to him but he couldn't hear a thing. It occurred to him that it had been days since he'd heard the crickets chirping. The Englishman moved his lips but all that reached him was the silence of the branches moving in the wind. He got up, his leg hurt, he felt for cigarettes in the pocket of his jacket. It was a denim jacket, old and faded. His pants were widelegged and dark green. In the woods the Englishman moved his lips. He noticed that his eyes were closed. He looked at his fingernails: they were dirty. The Englishman's shirt was white and the pants he was wearing looked even older than his. The trunks of the pine trees were covered in brown scales, but when a ray of light fell on them they turned yellowish. In the distance, where the pines ended, there was an abandoned car motor and a few crumbling cement walls. His nails were big, and ragged because of his habit of biting them. He took out matches and lit a cigarette. The Englishman had opened his eyes. He flexed his leg and then smiled. Yellow. Flash of yellow. In the report he's described as a hunchbacked vagrant. For a few days, he lived in the woods. There was a campground nearby, but he didn't have enough money for that, so he only went every so often to the restaurant for a coffee. His tent was near the tennis and handball courts. Sometimes he went to watch people play. He came in through the back, through a gap the children had made in the tall grass. There's no information on the Englishman. Possibly he invented him.
30. THE MEDIC
An obsessive boy. Actually, what I mean is, if you knew him you couldn't stop thinking about him. The sergeant went up to the fallen shape in the park. He noticed people looking out their windows. Behind him came the medic's footsteps. He lit a cigarette. The medic blinked and asked if they could finally take the fucking body away. He yawned, putting out the match. "I have no idea what city I'm in"… "It's always the picture of that idiot boy on the screen"… "Always clowning on the brim of hell"… "Always tapping my shoulder with his skinny fingers to ask if he can come in"… The medic spat. He felt like farting. Instead, he knelt by the body. People, undressed, leaning on their elbows in the dark windows. It had been a while since they felt any real sense of danger. The writer, I think he was English, confessed to the hunchback how hard it was for him to write. All I can come up with are stray sentences, he said, maybe because reality