A network of little rills ran across the pale sand of the road the shoulder gradually crumbled collapsed slid in tiny and successive avalanches that for a moment obstructed one of the arms of the network then vanished attacked corroded carried away, the whole world was collapsing with a continuous murmur of a spring, of drops running along the gleaming branches catching up with each other running into each other separating falling with the last leaves the last traces of the summer the days gone for ever that would never come again never what had I looked for in her hoped for pursued upon her body in her body words sounds as crazy as he is with his illusory sheets of paper blackened with hen tracks with words our lips pronounced to fool ourselves living a life of sounds without any more reality without any more substance than that curtain on which we thought we saw the embroidered peacock moving trembling breathing imagining dreaming of what was behind it not even having seen the face cut in half probably the hand that had let it fall back waiting tensely for the faint movement of a draught), she said What are you thinking about? I said About you, she said No Tell me what you’re thinking about, I said About you you know I am, I put my hand on her right in the middle it was like down the light feathers of a bird a bird in my hand but also a bush an English proverb she said Why do you keep your eyes closed, I opened them the light was still on she was lying on her back one leg straight the other bent up like a mountain above me the foot flat on the rumpled sheet and behind, a little below the ankle the skin thicker at that place made three horizontal folds above the heels slightly tinged with orange, my cheek on the inner surface of the other thigh under the light I could see where it joined the body under the hairs that began there the swelling formed by the tendon that crosses the groin diagonally, the skin very white above the thigh, tinged with a pale ochre starting at the groin, the lips a more pronounced ochre at the place where the mucous membrane began as if there remained persisted there not completely effaced something of our savage primitive dark ancestors clutching clinging rolling naked violent and quick in the dust the thickets: in that position it was scarcely open at all, I could see a trace of pale mauve like a hem a lining, the ochre colour deepening accentuating more pronounced tawny as the eye moved down towards the folds like a cloth a pale-dyed silk pinched from inside by two fingers the upper part making something like a loop or rather a pucker a buttonhole of flesh, she said What are you thinking about tell me Where are you? again I laid my hand on her: Here, and she: No, and I: Don’t you think I’m here? I tried to laugh, she said No not with me All I am for you is a soldiers’ girl something like the kind you see drawn with chalk or a nail in the crumbling plaster of barrack walls, an oval split in two and the rays round it like a sun or a vertical eye surrounded with lashes and not even a face . . . I said Oh stop it will you can’t you understand can’t you realize that for five years I’ve dreamt of nothing but you, and she: Exactly, and I: Exactly? and she: Yes let me go she tried to pull away I said What’s the matter What’s got into you? she still tried to pull away and get up, she was crying, she said again Drawings the kind the soldiers make, soldiers’ jokes, I listened to them still arguing in the evening watching the daylight fade through the rain, Blum said he would like to drink something hot and Wack told him that since he was so smart why didn’t he go knock on the door and ask her to make him a little coffee, and Blum said he didn’t like guns that he was carrying one on his back but that he had never had much desire to be a hunter still less to be game and that the lame man looked as though he was awfully eager to use his, saying “After all he has the right to shoot his off when everyone everywhere else is making his little bang. After all there’s a war on,” but now I heard only his voice it was dark again and we couldn’t see anything and all the knowledge of the world we could have was that cold that damp that penetrated everywhere now, that same obstinate omnipresent streaming that mingled seemed to unite with the apocalyptic and multiple trampling of horseshoes on the road, and jolting on our invisible horses it seemed that everything (the village the barn the milky apparition the shouts the lame man the adjutant the senile old crone the whole dim and blind and tragic and banal imbroglio of characters declaiming insulting threatening cursing each other stumbling in the darkness groping until they finally bumped into an obstacle a contraption hidden there in the shadows (and not even for them, not even intended particularly for them) that would explode right in their faces leaving them just time enough to glimpse for the last (and probably the first) time something that looks like light) had existed only in our minds: a dream an illusion whereas in reality we might never have stopped riding, riding still in that streaming endless darkness and still answering each other blindly . . . Then maybe she was right after all maybe she was telling the truth maybe I was still talking to him, exchanging with a little Jew dead years ago boasts gossip obscenities words sounds just to keep us awake to deceive ourselves into thinking we were awake to encourage each other, Blum saying now: But maybe that gun wasn’t even loaded maybe he didn’t even know how to use it People like making everything into a tragedy a drama a novel