The Samurai was behaving as if it had a sense of smell too – it stalled. I sat in the car, assaulted by the stink, and a hundred metres ahead of me I saw some buildings surrounded by a high wire fence – some barracks lined up one behind the other. Along the top of the fence ran triple-strand barbed wire. The Sun was dazzlingly bright. Each blade of grass cast a sharp shadow, each branch resembled a skewer. It was as silent as the grave. I pricked up my ears, as if expecting to hear horrifying sounds coming from behind this barricade, the echoes of what had happened here in the past. But it was plain to see there wasn’t a living soul inside, neither human nor animal. In the course of the summer the farm would be overgrown with burdock and nettles. In a year or two it would vanish among the greenery, at best becoming a house of horror. It crossed my mind that one could set up a museum here. As a warning.
A little later I started the car and drove back to the main road.
Oh yes, I knew what the missing owner looked like. Not long after I moved here I met him on our little bridge. It was a strange encounter. I didn’t yet know who he was.
That afternoon I was on my way home in the Samurai from shopping in town. Ahead of the bridge across our stream I saw a four-wheel drive; it had driven onto the verge, as if it had suddenly felt the urge to stretch its bones: all its doors were open. I slowed down. I don’t like those high, powerful cars, made with war in mind, rather than walks in the lap of nature. Their large wheels churn up the ruts in the dirt roads and damage the footpaths. Their mighty engines make a lot of noise and produce exhaust fumes. I am convinced that their owners have small dicks and compensate for this deficiency by having large cars. Every year I protest to the village representative against the rallies held in these dreadful vehicles, and I issue a petition. I get a perfunctory reply, saying that the representative will consider my comments in due course, and that’s the end of it. But now one of them was parked here, right by the stream, at the way in to the valley, almost on my doorstep. Driving very slowly indeed, I scrutinised this undesirable guest.
There was a pretty young woman sitting in the front seat, smoking a cigarette. She had peroxide-blonde shoulder-length hair and carefully applied make-up, a notable feature of which were lips outlined with a dark pencil. She had such a deep tan that she looked as if she’d just been removed from the barbecue. Her toenails were painted red. She was dangling her legs outside the car, and a sandal had slipped off one of her feet and fallen into the grass. I stopped and leaned out of the window.
‘Need any help?’ I asked amicably.
She shook her head to say no, then raised her eyes skywards and pointed her thumb somewhere behind her; at the same time she smiled knowingly. She seemed perfectly nice, though I couldn’t understand her gesture. So I got out of the car. The fact that she had answered with a gesture, rather than words, prompted me to act quietly; I approached her almost on tiptoes. I raised my brows enquiringly. I liked this air of mystery.
‘No worries,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I’m waiting for my… husband.’
For her husband? Here? I simply couldn’t understand the scene in which I too was accidentally taking part. I looked around suspiciously and then I saw him, this husband. He was coming out of the bushes. He looked rather weird and comical. He was dressed in something like a uniform, in green-and-brown camouflage. From head to toe he had spruce twigs stuck all over him. His helmet was covered with the same fabric as the uniform. His face was smeared in black paint, with a white, neatly trimmed moustache standing out against it. I couldn’t see his eyes – they were hidden behind an unusual optical device, a bit like an optician’s instrument for testing sight defects, with lots of screws and joints. Whereas his broad chest and ample belly were festooned in mess tins, map cases, compass sets and a bullet belt. He was holding a shotgun with a scope; it looked like a weapon out of Star Wars.
‘Holy Mother of God,’ I gasped in spite of myself.
For a few seconds I couldn’t produce any human sound. I gazed at this freak, feeling frightened and amazed, until the woman flicked her cigarette into the road and said in a rather ironic tone: ‘And here he is.’
The man came up to us and took off his helmet.
I don’t think I had ever seen a Person with such a saturnine look before. He was of average build, with a wide forehead and bushy eyebrows. He stooped slightly and stood with his feet pointing inwards. I couldn’t help thinking he was inured to debauchery, and that throughout his life he had been led by one thing – the consistent gratification of his own desires, at any cost. This was the richest man in the neighbourhood.
I sensed that he was pleased to be seen by someone other than his wife. He was proud of himself. He greeted me with a wave of the hand, but instantly ignored my existence. He put the helmet and the bizarre spectacles on again and gazed in the direction of the border. At once I understood everything and felt a surge of Anger.
‘Let’s get going,’ said his wife impatiently, as if to a child. Perhaps she could sense the waves of Anger emanating from me.
For a while he pretended not to hear, but then he went up to the car, removed all the tackle from his head, and set aside the shotgun.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him, for nothing else occurred to me.
‘What about you?’ he said, without looking at me.
His wife was putting on her sandal and settling in the driver’s seat.
‘I live here,’ I replied coldly.
‘Ah, you’re the lady with those two dogs… We’ve told you before to keep them close to the house.’
‘They’re on private land…’ I began, but he interrupted me. The whites of his eyes gleamed ominously in his blackened face.
‘For us there’s no such thing as private land, madam.’
That was two years ago, when I was still finding things easier. I had forgotten about this encounter with Innerd. What did he matter? But later on, a fast-moving planet had suddenly crossed an invisible point and a change had occurred, one of the kind we’re not aware of down here. Perhaps tiny signs reveal this sort of cosmic event to us, but we don’t notice them either – someone has stepped on a twig lying on the path, a bottle of beer has cracked in the freezer when someone forgot to remove it in time, or two red fruits have fallen from a wild rose bush. How could we possibly understand it all?
It’s clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment, as I write, there’s a planetary configuration on this table, the entire Cosmos, if you like: a thermometer, a coin, an aluminium spoon and a porcelain cup. A key, a mobile phone, a piece of paper and a pen. And one of my grey hairs, whose atoms preserve the memory of the origins of life, of the cosmic Catastrophe that gave the world its beginning.
X
CUCUJUS HAEMATODES
By early June the houses were inhabited, at the weekends at least, but I was still taking my duties quite seriously. For instance, at least once a day I’d go up the hill and conduct my usual surveillance through binoculars. First I’d monitor the houses, of course. In a sense, houses are living creatures that coexist with Man in exemplary symbiosis. My heart swelled with joy, for now it was plain to see that their symbionts had returned. They had filled the empty interiors with their comings and goings, the warmth of their own bodies, their thoughts. Their dainty hands were mending all the little cuts and bruises left by the winter, drying out the damp walls, washing the windows and fixing the ballcocks. Now the houses looked as if they had awoken from the deep sleep into which material sinks when it’s not disturbed. Plastic tables and chairs had already been carried into the front yards, the wooden shutters had been opened, and finally the Sunlight could get inside. At the weekends smoke rose from the chimneys. The Professor and his wife appeared more and more often, always in the company of friends. They’d walk along the road – they never ventured onto the field boundaries. They went on a daily post-prandial walk to the chapel and back, stopping on the road, deep in conversation. Occasionally, when the wind was blowing from their direction, the odd word would reach me: Canaletto, chiaroscuro, tenebrism.