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It was cool in this apartment, almost cold. I searched through the cupboards for something to eat and threw together a scant meal of sardines in oil, raw onion, black bread, and rosé. I finished the bottle, my body already trembling with cold under my thin tracksuit; I had barely finished clearing away when I felt my abdomen contract, the meal came back up suddenly, the still cold wine mixed with the remnants of onions and sardines in a thick mush that splattered the sink; it eased up a little and I ran with my hand in front of my mouth to the bathroom, everything came up again and I finished emptying myself out in the white porcelain toilet bowl, tears in my eyes, my throat burned by the acid mixture, my stomach twisted by spasms. When it was over I rinsed my mouth out thoroughly, then sat on the floor to catch my breath. Finally I got up. In the kitchenette, I poured myself a large glassful of schnapps and drained it in one swallow, it added to the burning sensation but slightly masked the foul taste that still filled my mouth. I washed the sink as well as I could and returned to the bathroom to run a shower, waiting for the water to get hot before undressing and plunging in. The water struck my exhausted body without reinvigorating it, I found it hard to get my bearings, I ran my hands along my sides, my hips, my ass, and my thighs without managing to find the sense of this body that was crumbling and escaping me. In the bedroom, I dried myself off in front of a large round mirror leaning at the foot of the bed, a simple mattress placed on the floor and covered with an embroidered bedspread, quite thick, of long green grass on a golden background. My body in the mirror seemed inscrutable to me, I abstractly contemplated the limbs and torso marbled with blue and black spots veering to green, only the veined member, forgotten and useless between the thighs, seemed to distinguish it from a woman’s body, it was in any case a vague, indistinct body, and when I turned around it became even more so, reduced to a few illuminated lines, curves and sections of skin that could have belonged to anyone. I knelt down on the bedspread, back to the mirror; turning my head I could see the white globes of the buttocks and nestled between them the brown recess of the anus, I squeezed my thighs to hide the balls, thus leaving in my field of vision only the behind, the anus and the green grass of the bedspread, I pulled on the buttocks and the anus dilated a little, opening up like an iris onto its unfathomable depth, a black hole that seemed the only part still whole of this body slowly breaking up, struggling in the mirror to reorganize itself around it. I wet a finger with saliva and ran it over the edge of the cavity, pressing in little circles, then closed my eyes and inserted one fingertip, the contact reassured me and I pushed some more, it spread a sensation of well-being all around that diffused itself throughout my frozen body, outlining a shape for it, still approximate, but quite real. The intercom buzzed and I withdrew the finger, opening my eyes. I waited. It buzzed again, in long repeated rings, grating. I got up and with the same finger I had just withdrawn from my body angrily pressed on the button: “Yes?” I barked. A woman’s voice replied, a gentle and firm voice, the voice of a blond woman I thought without understanding how I could know that. “Sir,” she said, “I also live in this building, and your electric circuit is having strong surges that are causing outages for all your neighbors. This has to stop.” Anger swelled my face and I shouted into the intercom with a broken, trembling voice: “Madam, I’ve had that circuit completely overhauled by a professional electrician, twice in a row. That’s enough, now!” I yanked my finger from the button, then switched off the intercom so it couldn’t ring again. Still furious, at a loss, I lay down on the bedspread, on my belly with my arms spread out, and abruptly fell asleep. When I woke up I was trembling with cold. I got up and wrapped the bedspread around my shoulders, then crossed the studio in the darkness to go stand in front of the bay window. Below, I could see in the darkness a lozenge of light, the window of a neighboring apartment forming a section crossed lengthwise by a long sofa upholstered in white upon which had sunk a naked young woman, quickly followed by a man with an erection. He lifted her legs to enter her, moving in and out with a regular, jerky, almost mechanical rhythm, then turned her over on her knees and resumed his motion, still to the same rhythm. After a few minutes they changed positions once again, this time he was seated on the sofa and she was crouching over him, but the rhythm remained the same, almost comical, the rhythm of an old Buster Keaton film shot at sixteen frames per second, they tried out one after another in this way as if they were systematically attempting all the positions recommended by some German sex manual for couples, I watched a while more the doubled moons of their asses, facing the luminous lozenge of the window, then wearied of that and returned to lie down on the mattress, still rolled in the bedspread that protected me a little from the coolness of the night. I dreamed of endless, poorly executed construction work, and also of a blond woman, my mother or my wife, I couldn’t be sure, who didn’t know how to drive and didn’t want to learn. When I woke up again a cold light fell in the room, making the golden fabric of the cloth sparkle but warming nothing. I got up and dressed quickly, swallowed a glass of juice, and headed for the door. As I opened it I hesitated, hand on the knob, something was vaguely holding me back, the voice of the woman in the intercom perhaps, but this fleeting feeling faded as quickly as it had appeared, I pulled the door open and went out. Immediately a soft warmness invaded my limbs, and, suddenly relaxed, I began running with a regular, none-too-rapid pace, elbows in at my body, breathing with ease and focusing on the floor in front of my feet, as grey and hard to place with precision as the walls or the ceiling, quasi-invisible in the darkness, if there even was one, who knows, perhaps this long hallway was open to the outside, one couldn’t be sure of anything. From time to time, one of my sleeves grazed a wall; then I would instinctively correct my course, trying to follow the imperceptible curve without deviating, paying no attention to the darker zones that could just as easily have turned out to be recesses as security shelters or else other hallways, leading God knows where. I felt no difficulty in this running, I breathed with ease, filling my lungs and supplying my body with oxygen as it went forward in a supple, regular, even stride. A brilliant little spot, on one of the walls, drew my attention, it was a door handle and I opened it, passing the threshold without slowing down. Two steps further I had to pull up short to avoid bumping into a naked man who favored me with a reptilian look, at once puzzled and empty, before stepping back and then moving away. Another man, his arms and thighs covered with abstract motifs tattooed in black ink, had just finished undressing; still another was pulling on his member and his balls to slip a sort of metal ring over them. The air was damp, gorged with humidity, but it was cooler here than in the hallway, I was still sweating and began to undress in turn, opening one of the many white lockers that covered the walls to throw my clothes in. A young man handed me a bath towel, some flip-flops, and a padlock; I sealed the locker and tied the towel around my waist, then followed the other men who had disappeared in the darkness in back of the little room. The floor, tiled and wet, was a little slippery, an indefinable, irritating smell filled the air; I emerged at a little bar around which stood a few men, in towels or completely naked aside from their flip-flops. A smiling, well-built young man, his muscles thin but defined, both nipples pierced with little rings, came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder: “What will you have?”—“Whatever you like.” While the bartender was mixing the cocktails the young man stared at me mistrustfully; as I tasted my gin and tonic, clear, cool, sparkling, almost bitter, he leaned over and breathed a few words in my ear: “Do you come here often?”—“I don’t know. It depends.”—“I don’t remember seeing you. But it’s true that you don’t come to look.” He moved away to join his companions, leaving me to drink alone. I quickly finished the glass and headed for the staircase, which led to the lower floor. The smell intensified as I descended, growing more precise, it stank of rancid male sweat and dirty socks, mixed with strong animal effluvia, hints of sperm and of shit. Below, a dark labyrinth of hallways, cubicles and recesses opened up on several sides, guarded by a large black man, naked and motionless. I briefly contemplated his impassive face, his muscular chest, his thick, long member, then headed for the showers where I rinsed off my body before going to sit down in a very hot cubicle, full of steam. Other men were sharing it with me, no one spoke, I didn’t stay long and went out to shower again before returning, flip-flops slapping on the flagstones, toward the black Cerberus who didn’t seem to have moved an inch. Having come up even with him, I hesitated, then brushed my fingers over his hip bone; he pulled away, his gaze still distant, I didn’t insist and entered the labyrinth, moving slowly in the half-darkness. Men stood here and there, most of them in towels, barely discernible silhouettes in the darkness, some standing in the hallway, others sitting in a cubicle, hands on their members or behind their necks. As I passed them I could hear an almost imperceptible murmur, words perhaps but impossible to understand, or maybe also just inarticulate sounds, groans interspersed with stammering cries. In one room, very vaguely lit, several naked men, gleaming with sweat, were busying themselves around another man, suspended with his legs in the air in a sort of leather hammock; further on, in a little, almost completely dark cubicle, a man with hairy shoulders and a powerful back, crouching over another man’s thighs, was moving his hips in and out, without a sound. At random, I tried to approach one of the men stationed in the hallway, placing my hand on his chest, but he pushed it away without a word and I went on my way, repeating the operation with every man I passed, with as little success. Vexed, I ventured into a cubicle where a naked man, completely hairless, rather plump, was lying on a banquette, his towel over his face; I approached, he didn’t react, I placed my hand on his limp member: this contact provoked no movement, not even a start. I took his parts in my fingers and stroked them slowly, the man still didn’t budge, so I leaned over and slipped the member between my lips, it remained limp, I rolled it in my mouth while squeezing the balls a little, then I began sucking it, suckling as if it were an udder, but there was nothing to be done, it didn’t harden, finally I straightened up and left the man sprawled there to resume my movements through the hallway. In the back, I discovered a little round room with a basin full of bubbling water: the young man who had offered me a drink was immersed in it up to his chest in the company of two other men, inhaling, with a glass straw, some white powder arranged in rows on a little tray. When he saw me he handed me the tray and the straw, without a word I grasped it delicately and imitated him, inhaling first one line, then another; a shiver ran through my body, I passed the tray to his neighbor and straightened up, balanced tensely on my thighs, smoothing the towel with one hand over my hip and buttocks. I would have liked to slip into the water