Above the yard, on a kind of raised cat-walk, Randon made his rounds without stopping. From time to time he would look down into the yard where we were standing about. He was the meanest of the guards. In order that he not notice the cruelty of the scene—he would have had the guilty ones punished for the sake of virtue—the big shots and the jerk himself made their attitudes and gestures look inoffensive, even friendly, while their mouths were spewing insults, though in a muffled voice that veiled their malevolence. The queer was smiling with the utmost humility, as much to put off the guard as to try to mollify Botchako and his cronies.

“You bitch, you swallow it by the mouthful!”

With a single twist, unique in the world, Botchako hitched up his pants.

“I’d shoot it up your hole, you punk!”

Bulkaen was leaning against the wall with his elbow, in such a way that his head was under his arm, which looked as if it were a crown. This crown-arm was bare, for his jacket was, as always, simply thrown over his shoulders, and that enormous coil of muscle, his baron’s coronet on the light head of a child of the North, was the visible sign of the ten years of banishment that weighed on his delicate pate. He wore his beret the way Harcamone did. At the same time, I saw his neck, the skin of which was shadowy with grime; from his round shirt-collar emerged a wing-tip of the blue eagle. His right ankle was crossed over the left, the way Mercury is always depicted, and the heavy homespun trousers, as worn by him, had infinite grace. His smiling lips were parted. From his mouth came a breath which could only be perfumed. His left hand was poised on his hipbone as on the handle of a dagger. I haven’t invented this posture. That’s how he stood. I add that he had a slender figure, broad shoulders and a voice strong with the assurance that came from the awareness of his invincible beauty. He was watching the scene. Botchako was still spitting insults and getting more and more nasty.

Lou Daybreak, the most isolated of us because of his name, made a vague gesture. Lou’s name was a vapour that enveloped his entire person, and when you pierced the softness and approached him, when you passed through his name, you scraped against the thorns, against the sharp, cunning branches with which he bristled. He was blond, and his eyebrows looked like spikes of rye stuck to his stylized brow. He was a pimp, and we didn’t like him. He hung out with other pimps, whom we called “Julots” or “Those Gentlemen” . . . and they often got into brawls with our mobs.

We thought that this gesture—his hand dropping on Botchako’s shoulder—was an attempt to make peace, but he said, with a smile:

“Go on, marry him! You’re in love with him. Anyone can see it!”