Bulkaen came from the depths of Mettray, sent forth by her, born God knows how, bred in the faraway, dangerous world of tall ferns, learnèd in evil. He brought me the most secret perfumes of the Colony, where we found our own odours.

But when I work on the fabric of our love, I shall know that an invisible hand is at the same time undoing the stitches. In my cell, I wove; the hand of destiny destroyed. Rocky destroyed. Although at the time of those first two meetings I did not know that he had loved, I did know that he had been loved. I sensed it. It did not take me long to learn of Rocky’s existence in his life. When, for the first time, I wanted to ask a guy in his shop whether Bulkaen had gone downstairs, I tried to describe him, since I didn’t know his name. The guy replied:

“Oh, you mean the little crasher who pukes on dough! Rocky’s girl. Or, if you prefer, Bulkaen. . . .”

Rocky’s “girl.” . . . The crasher who pukes on dough! The convict thus informed me of one of Bulkaen’s most amazing peculiarities: whenever he discovered cash while doing a job, a kind of nausea made him vomit on the bills. The whole prison knew it, and no one ever dreamed of joking about it. It was as strange as Harcamone’s limp or Botchako’s epileptic fits, as Caesar’s baldness, as the Viscount of Turenne’s fear, and this strangeness aggravated his beauty. Hersir destroyed. As did Divers’ presence. I invented the most curious designs for our love, but I sensed beneath the loom the fatal hand that unknotted the kinks. Bulkaen would never belong to me, and I could not weave firmly on the mere basis of a single meeting, even of a whole night of love. The following is the usage of the expression “It was too good to be true.” I had the feeling that no sooner had life brought us together than it would separate us, to my shame and sorrow. And life was so cruel as to make Bulkaen disappear just as I was putting out my arms to his apparition. But for the time being I enjoyed tremblingly the precarious happiness that was granted me.

So I could see him whenever I liked, could go up to him, shake his hand, give him what I had. I had the most avowable of pretexts for approaching him: my fellowship with a former colonist and my fidelity to Mettray. That same evening he called out to me from his row:

“Hey, Jean!”

I imagined him smiling in the darkness. When he smiled, we all felt our knees give way.

I was lying down. I hadn’t the force to spring up and rush to the door, and I yelled back:

“Yes, what do you want?”

“Nothing. How goes?”

“All right. And you?”

“All right.”

A tough voice broke sharply through the silence: