wet mould from which I had learnt to stamp pressing the clay with my thumb the soldiers infantrymen cavalrymen and cuirassiers climbing out of Pandora’s box (a race armed booted and spurred helmeted) spreading across the world the armed spawn they had a crescent-shaped metal plate hanging round their neck by a chain sparkling like silver, braid, silver fringe there was something funereal something deadly; I remember that field where they had put or rather penned or rather piled us: we were lying in successive rows heads touching feet like those lead soldiers stacked in a box, but when we first came it was still virgin undefiled so I threw myself on the ground dying of hunger thinking The horses eat it why not me I tried to imagine to convince myself I was a horse, I was lying dead at the bottom of the ditch devoured by the ants my whole body slowly turning by a thousand tiny mutations into a lifeless substance and then it would be the grass that would feed on me my flesh nourishing the earth and after all it wouldn’t be so much of a change, except that I would merely be on the other side of its surface the way you pass from one side of a mirror to the other where (on that other side) things may go on happening symmetrically, in other words up above it would go on growing still indifferent and green just as they say hair goes on growing on dead men’s heads the only difference being that I would be eating the dandelions by the root our dripping bodies exhaling that sharp pungent odour of roots, of mandragora, I had read that shipwrecked men that hermits eat roots acorns and then she took it first between her lips then far back in her mouth like a greedy child it was as if we were drinking each other slaking each other’s thirst gorging on each other feasting famished, trying to appease calm my hunger a little I tried to chew it, thinking It’s like salad, the harsh green juice putting my teeth on edge a sharp blade cut my tongue like a razor, burning, then somebody taught me how to recognize the ones you could eat for instance rhubarb: they had immediately recovered their primitive nomad instincts managing to make a fire and cooking a dog they had stolen I wonder from whom probably one of those fools one of those officers or NCOs ambushed in general-staff offices the kind you see occasionally their elegant uniforms intact probably thinking they were well protected and caught one fine morning by someone kicking open the door and ironically shoving them with his machine-gun barrel to make them line up in the courtyard hands over their heads stupefied and not understanding what was happening, they said whole general staffs had been captured like that hair slicked down spick and span, we took our time jeering at them but these men had found it more profitable to steal their dog and put it in the pot sharing it among them sitting there, ochre or olive, enigmatic, scornful with their shiny white teeth their harsh guttural names Arhmed ben Abdahalla or Bouhabda or Abderhamane their speech sudden, guttural and harsh their bodies smooth and shiny as those of girls, and there were dandelions too but they kept bringing up others whole herds exhausted and ragged some with civilian caps their coats unbuttoned hanging at their heels and soon the whole meadow was trampled and torn entirely covered by the rows of bodies lying head to foot and in the grey dawn the grass was grey too covered with dew which I drank drinking all of her there taking all of her into me like those oranges that despite grown-ups telling me it was dirty that it was impolite noisy I liked to make a hole in and squeeze, pressing drinking her belly the globes of her breasts slipping under my fingers like water a pink crystalline drop trembling on the bent blade of grass under that light rustling breeze that precedes the sunrise reflecting containing in its transparence the sky tinged pink by the dawn I remember those incredible mornings never had spring never had the sky been so pure so clean so transparent the evenings so cold, we pressed close together hoping to preserve a little warmth wedged together head to foot I was thinking how he had held her like that my thighs under hers that wild and silky brush against my belly holding the milk of her breasts in my palms in the centre of which their tea-rose moist shiny tips (when I took my mouth away it was a darker pink, as though irritated, inflamed, of a grainy bruised texture, a bright thread still connecting it to my lips, I remember that I saw a tiny one on a blade of grass leaving behind it a luminous metallic streak like silver, so small it scarcely made the blade of grass bend under its weight, with its tiny spiral shell each scroll striped with fine brown lines its neck (grainy too and yet fragile and cartilaginous) stretching raising its horns that retracted when I touched them able to stand erect and to retract, she who had never given suck been refreshed drunk by any lips except the rough lips of men: in the centre you could make out something like a tiny horizontal slit with close-pressed edges out of which sprang, invisible, the milk of oblivion) rising pressing like the heads of nails driven into my palms thinking They’ve counted all the bones, able to hear my whole skeleton clattering, waiting for the cold dawn, seized with a continuous trembling waiting for the moment when it would be light enough to have the right to stand up then I carefully stepped over the interlocking bodies (they looked like corpses) until I reached the central lane where the sentries with metal collars like dogs walked back and forth: standing then still trembling for a moment, teeth chattering, trying to remember what that ceremony was in which they were all lying on the ground, row after row, head to feet, on the cold stones of the cathedral, ordination I think or the taking of the veil the girls the virgins lying full length on either side of the central aisle down which the old bishop passes in clouds of incense like a wizened mummy and covered with gold and lace, weakly waving his ringed hand in its amaranth glove and singing in a scarcely audible exhausted voice the Latin words saying that they are dead for this world and apparently a veil is stretched over them then, the uniformly grey dawn stretching over the field and in the low part a little fog hovered over the stream but they only let us stand up when it was broad daylight and meanwhile we lay trembling all our limbs shivering closely interlaced entwined I rolled on top of her crushing her with my weight but I was trembling too much feverish groping for her flesh for the entrance for the opening of her flesh among that tangled bushy moisture my clumsy finger trying to divide them blind but too hurried trembling too much then she put it in herself one of her hands sliding between our two bellies separating the lips with her middle and ring fingers in a V while her other arm seemed to crawl down her body like an animal like an invertebrate swan’s neck creeping along Leda’s thigh (or some other bird symbolizing the shameless the vainglorious yes the peacock on the net curtain falling back its tail spangled with eyes swaying oscillating mysterious) and finally slipping round passing under her buttock reaching me wrist bent back placing her palm bent back flat against me as though to push me back then taking it introducing it thrusting it in burying it engulfing it breathing heavily she raised her arms again the right arm round my neck the left pressing the small of my back where her feet were locked around me, breathing faster and faster now her breath cut off each time I fell back drove against her crushed her under my weight pulling away and driving against her she rebounding towards me and once it came out but this time she put it back very quickly with only one hand not letting my neck go, now she was panting moaning not loud but continuously her voice changed different from the way I knew it as if it were someone else a stranger childish disarmed moaning revealing something frightened plaintive lost I said Do I love you? I drove against her the spasm shaking her choking still she managed to say: