The Tyrant

Why did the knees prevent me?
Or why the breasts that I should suck?

He wrapped himself in the cocoon of convention, his family’s customs, the somewhat fishy tepidness of Lutry, his mother’s uneasy affection, the music, the meals, the bells. There was the Christmas tree as each year, as there had always been. There were his sisters, his brothers, the cries of his overexcited nephews, the melancholy of gifts, the eyes shining with tears in the light of candles. There was the father’s empty chair. There was the big clock standing in its coffin behind the ghost.

There was 31 December.

He went to bed.

The next day, he strolled along the lakeside. Still that rather sickening sweetness of the shore grown tepid in the winter sun. Mimosas bloomed in gardens. In vaguely opaque greenhouses gleamed carnations, begonias, cyclamens, reddish stains, a bit frightening, like bloodstained cotton wads under the hot glass. Palm trees rose in the blue sky among pines and plane trees with bare branches. People dawdled on the tree-lined avenues. On the embankment at Lutry, they were already having their aperitifs in the open air, and the women had those open, pulpy lips that you see them with in the spring, on the pavement cafés of La Côte.

Jean Calmet stopped at Les Peupliers to see his mother, then walked back to Lausanne. He thought about the old house under the trees. What silence, today, in the big sunlit room where his mother spent her days between the clock and the glittering lake facing Savoy. Tender pity came to him for that grey woman with nothing to do, helpless, who trotted from the kitchen to her armchair, a teapot in her hand; then she poured his tea warily and nibbled salted breadsticks, apologizing for making too much noise with her new dentures.

He had never known this woman. Compassion seized him. She, too, she more than any of them, had bent under the tyrant, had been broken, destroyed. She was silent. But her sad smile told all. She had not complained once, and the doctor’s absence left her deserted like a ruined city. She had opened old photo albums. She had not cried. But she stayed in her armchair, the album open on her lap, her gaze fixed, lost in the light from the window that she did not see, studying the ghostly presences that had peopled her past. Oh the destiny of a deprived Samaritan. A nurse forgotten in the depths of an abandoned hospital. Just then, evening was falling over Lutry; she must still be in the same spot, under the red bars of the setting sun, her gaze motionless before her cold teapot, Madame Jeanne-Aimée Calmet, née Rossier. She came from the isolated country, at the foot of the Jura mountains; she had been a maidservant, she had left the farms, the pastureland, the sheep runs, she had become his father’s servant. Jeanne! My glasses! Jeanne! My bag! My cane! A mug of coffee! And those lousy kids that you’re raising all wrong. And those meals that I won’t come to eat. Wait for me. You are made to wait for me, Jeanne. Your hands have stirred the soup, cooked the meat, opened the bottle. I won’t come. I’m roaming. I’m the master. I open bellies. I search through flesh. I cut. It’s me who threatens, who consoles, who heals, me who gives hope, me who keeps vigil at the door of the realm of death. Death, that miserable thing, doesn’t dare show itself! It falls back when I come, it beats a retreat, it buries itself in its domains! I cut, I pinch, I search, I set right, I tie up, I tear off, I sew up again, I’m a tireless soldier, a mercenary, a legionnaire; get out of here, Death, you don’t scare me. Do you understand? Leave me alone with your timetables and your pitiable looks, I have every right, me, the warrior, the master of life. You wait for me and submit to me. Jeanne cleans the untouched table and lies down alone in the big bed. Jeanne spends the summer waiting for the doctor, who is always on the move, waging war. The children come back, go off again, the summer ends, time ensnares itself in autumn, the lake smells of rotting fish on the edge of winter, Jeanne readies the house for the celebrations of Christmas, New Year’s Eve, she looks at the old photos. Jeanne Calmet. My mother. I was her Benjamin, her baby, her consolation and her joy. Her green grass. Her fresh air. I escaped in my turn. I didn’t return to Les Peupliers. I’ll come back more often. Her consolation. Her joy. I will outlive her. She will die in the room with the big bed, slight, shrunken on the pile of her pillows, white pillows from the song. Goodbye, Mother, gentle girl from the field of snow. You will be burned. There will be the same flowers, the same wreaths as in the month of September. The same faces at the services. We’ll have the same snack at the Café du Reposoir, white wine, tea, breadsticks, sweet wafers, and during the week, one fine evening, your children will sit at the table at Les Peupliers, around a mortuary catalogue from which they will select your urn. Goodbye, Mother, sweet austere woman of the Jura, you went to church trembling and the sky fell on your head…

There was the new school term in January.

Teachers’ meetings, piles of translations to be corrected. Flat boredom.

A month went by. Nothing to be said. Then it was 21 February, and Jean Calmet met the Cat Girl.

Then he could believe that the spirit of Dionysus had entered him.

It was five o’clock in the afternoon.

On the doorstep of the Café de l’Évêché, Jean Calmet saw the Cat Girl sitting in the seat that he liked. He took a few steps towards her, as if he too were going to sit near the window, in the angle where the light is soft and clear. The Cat Girl! She had not looked at him. But he had given her that name right away, it was law and magic, right away she had plunged him into the mad, mysterious joy of Dionysus. She wore a coat lined with yellow and white cat fur, open over a whole intricacy of necklaces. Her hair spilt out of a yellow and white fur hat. Golden hair, bronzed hair. She was knitting with white wool, her face bent towards her work; she had removed several rings in order to work more easily and the gems, the rings of blackish metal shone on the red tablecloth before her, where a half-consumed cup of milk also stood.

He had never seen her. Perhaps he would never see her again. He sat down at a nearby table, across from her. His heart pounding, happiness in his soul, he looked at her, he looked at her intensely, he felt cascades gushing deep within him; precipices opened up in his bones, sonorous, where age-old stones fell. The mountain wind whistled in the pines, the sea wind assailed the fig trees. He found himself borne by those forces, lifted, hurled; sap bounded into his blood, new humours shook him, starry skies, volcanos in flames, springs, storms, stampedes of horned herds, leaps of goats on slopes made wild with the smells of flowers; all these images seized him, went through him, came back to be swallowed up in him, threw him into a motionless, magnificent trance.

The Cat Girl lifted her eyes. Joy and burning! She rested her gaze on him: two emeralds ringed with copper that gleamed deeply in the late afternoon light.

She was still looking at him: to his own amazement he spoke to her first.

“That’s pretty, what you’re knitting. It looks soft…”

The Cat Girl was not surprised. She smiled, and her answer was as simple as her appearing there was marvellous.

“It’s knitting,” she said. And she continued to smile.

Jean Calmet noticed that, when smiling, like a cat, she ran the tip of her pink tongue over her lower lip, which began to shine.

“What a light,” he said, and he stretched himself, while noise-makers, marching bands, fires, drums crackled and resounded deep in his skull, making a great whirling festival.

“You like that yellow sky too?” asked the Cat Girl, who placed her knitting on the table and slipped her rings back on, massaging the joints.

“That yellow sky,” said Jean Calmet, “that yellow sky and that pink sky. Agate… It’s as warm as spring.”

And instantly he saw buds burst open, sap running over tree trunks covered with bees, fawns cowering in the dense hay. The miracle lasted. The Cat Girl stared at him tranquilly, as if she wanted to fix his features in her memory, and her attention did not embarrass Jean Calmet; on the contrary, he felt pleasure at being studied by that green eye spangled with light, which showed its curiosity without haste. He exulted. The red tablecloths kindled glowing fires along the walls. Rays of sunlight, where the cigarette smoke danced, striped the penumbra up to the bar. A grotto hubbub full of tenderness and passion cheered the heart. What power emanated from this girl? What enchanter had provided her with that power, near this window, in this café where Jean Calmet spent several hours each day? The sun placed orange bars on the rooftops of La Mercerie; the cathedral was a torch before the sky. The Cat Girl finished her milk; once again the pink tongue ran over the slightly swollen mouth.

“Do you come to this café often?” asked the Cat Girl.

He was expecting that question: as if its banality were the sign of an extraordinary understanding between the apparition and himself.

“I come here every day,” said Jean Calmet. “I’ve never seen you…”

“I’m from Montreux. Today I rented a room in this neighbourhood.”

Jean Calmet would have liked to ask why she had left Montreux, what she had come to do in Lausanne. But he knew that those things would be revealed to him. The enchantment did not stop: Montreux with its solar palaces in their gardens of fig and orange trees, Montreux with its pearled turbans and Rolls-Royces across from the saw-toothed Alps, a town that a number of prodigies are metamorphosing into a surrealist cemetery, into an Anglo-Balkan postcard, into a haven for baroque theatre, into a brochure for the Orient Express, into a worldly Swiss Ali Baba’s cave! And the Cat Girl had just left that exotic reserve, aided by the spirits of the mountains and the water that inspired her and protected her like their mysterious child!

The Cat Girl had put all her rings back on, the Afghan rings, the Arab rings. She tossed her knitting and skeins of yarn helter-skelter into a little basket, she slid over the bench all the way along the table and rose.

“Are you coming?” she said simply.

Jean Calmet put some change on the red tablecloth and followed her. He opened the door for her, and the setting sun haloed them with its crimson sparks. Towards the city, the Bessières bridge was burning. All the windows on the Rue de Bourg were Archimedes’ mirrors. The tower of l’Évêché, a square, dark mass against the sky, was crowned with charred timbers like the ruins of the castles of the heretics, and, before them, the cathedral, a sheaf of wax tapers and pink cannons, hurled its rockets into the sky.

They walked in the direction of La Cité. Jean Calmet looked at the Cat Girl’s little round basket with gentle exasperation. She swung it against him, at arm’s length; it was all childhood, that basket, the treasure of Little Red Riding Hood in the forest, the baggage of dreams, the solicitude of mothers for lonely grandmas, and, in her little boots, a girl starts trotting under the big trees and night falls and the woods grow thicker and the wolf comes. The Cat Girl, too, she would bring her galette and her little jar of butter deep in the woods. Her present. Or has she already delivered it?

She stopped before a door on the Rue de la Cité-Devant.

“It’s here,” she said, and he followed her into a narrow hallway that smelt of wet cement. The timer on the hall lights was ticking away. She stopped at the second landing.

“It’s here,” she said again, and he went behind her into a large room that the red evening flooded.

A bed, a chair. At the foot of a wall an open suitcase where clothes and sheaves of paper were piled up. The bells of the cathedral began to strike six. He had known the Cat Girl for one hour, and already she busied herself in the kitchen; he heard her moving cups, filling a pot.

“You aren’t bored, are you?” she shouted at him. “Take a look out of the window – it’s pretty.”

Pretty, it was the courtyard of the Gymnase, the big esplanade lined with elm trees, and, behind them, harmonious, the old Bernese façade under its turret and its great roof of brown tiles. The windows of the principal and the secretary’s office were still lit. Jean Calmet came back into the room and sat down on the only chair. Then the Cat Girl brought a little coffee pot and two tiny cups on a tray. She still had her angora hat on her head and her coat of yellow and white skin.

“Get out of there,” she said gaily. “You’re taking up the only table in the house!”

She placed the coffee pot and the tray on the chair, and Jean Calmet sat on the bed. It was a big bed covered with a gilded spread. He sank into it with happiness. The Cat Girl took off her coat and hung it at the window. She served the coffee in the dolls’ cups and sat down next to Jean Calmet on the big bed.

“I’m glad it’s you,” she said. “I’ve been here since early this afternoon, I needed somebody for the house-warming. I’m glad it’s you. Your health!”

“Your health,” said Jean Calmet, and he looked at the room full of red sun the way a Welsh cabin boy studies the hold of a galleon from the Indies. The empty room that the last rays gorged with rubies and copper. They drank their coffee. Night fell. Jean Calmet did not feel the need to speak. He was borne by cool sweetness. The Cat Girl did not light her only lamp. When he knew that all the intensity of the mystery and tenderness would not disappear, he left her: in her doorway, she drew close to him, her arms glued to her body, her gaze questioning.

“Yes,” said Jean Calmet. “I’ll come back.”

She came closer still; he breathed an odour of cinnamon mixed with cool night, a little sweat, pollen, he felt her long hair against his neck, against his cheek. Then he bent towards her and, on her forehead, as one might reassure a little girl before the darkness, he placed a brief kiss which made them both shiver.

In the days that followed, a host of objects arrived to fill up the Cat Girl’s red room and the gilded bed. First, there was a yellow stone, big as a man’s fist, that she wanted on the only chair, beside the bed. Then there were swan feathers on the pillow. Then came an unsteady little chest, and on the chest, some oak leaves, a five-bladed penknife, postcards from before 1914, a pocket watch with a broken crystal, an old tea can on which one saw the picture of a castle and a little lake under a hill covered with heather. Then there was a black-painted rocking chair, a small bench, a round cushion on the bench, on which the Cat Girl had crocheted a purple snail.

“I’m furnishing the place!” she said, laughing. But nothing seemed less weighty than the booty that she brought back from her outings. The feathers and the leaves fluttered. The chest looked like something from a doll’s house. The yellowing postcards came from the back room of Melusina’s shop. The yellow rock cast gleams like the philosopher’s stone. The rocker invited children in high shoes, on the porch of a bungalow, to rock themselves endlessly before a big garden full of catalpas where a stream reflecting daffodils ran. The bench awaited a parasol bearer.

“Where do you make your finds?” asked Jean Calmet.

“I don’t know. At the marketplace. At the Salvation Army! You ought to come with me. They’ve got everything in their store. There’s an old sergeant who’s seen me a lot for a week now, she gives me discounts; it’s nice, she put an army overcoat away for me. A corporal’s hooded coat, with stripes, the belt at the back and everything! And the federal cross on the brass buttons, you see how beautiful it will be?” Jean Calmet loved that gaiety. And the fact that she dawdled around all day. He asked her:

“What did you do this afternoon?”

“I was knitting in a café.”

“Which café?”

“I don’t know. Not a very big café, not a very small one, near the Place de la Riponne. It was brown. I was talking to some guy, he was sad, he bought me tomato juice.”

“And after that?”

“After that I went for a walk in a supermarket. I looked at the posters.”

So it was. She dreamt. She stopped. She started again. When he came back to her place on the day after their first meeting, Jean Calmet wanted to know what she did, what she lived on. She did not answer that type of question. She had a little bit of money, her room was supposed to be paid for by relatives. But what relatives? She remained evasive, she dreamt again, she imagined odd, mysterious relationships, disinterested ones, returns to a shiny past, trips into other lives, islands in time, voyages. Everything was made up and everything was true in those stories. She levitated, but in an obvious, sweet happiness that continued to bewitch Jean Calmet. Who is she? he wondered during the day. He taught his classes; a growing impatience took hold of him, threw him into confusion, and, when the pink and yellow hour came at the end of the afternoon, he heard Dionysus’ torches sputter; the landscape burst into flame, the torrents seethed, women – dishevelled, slimy with juice and sunlight – leapt in echoing vats, and Jean Calmet found, once more, that burning joy which had seized him the minute he had laid eyes on the Cat Girl.

She was named Thérèse Dubois. Her father had died in a mountain-climbing accident. She had begun studying at the Beaux-Arts. Regained her freedom. She went home to Montreux on Saturdays, spending Sundays with her mother. Thérèse was the Cat Girl. It was law. Magic. And what curiosity would be worth this joy?

One evening, Jean Calmet found her tacking up a huge poster over her bed. A bristling animal – a cat, a furry girl, a panther crouching to spring from the depths of a forest or from an abyss, or from a set of black walls on which its ghostly reflection trembled. Thérèse, standing on the bed with its gilded spread, was unrolling the print which she had managed to secure by the upper edge, on the left and on the right, but the photograph coiled itself back up capriciously, the panther’s paws ended up comically on its head, the dark opening behind her grew smaller, filled with wrinkles, tautened like Balzac’s Peau de Chagrin that a wicked enchanter had turned inside out on her like a glossy black coif. But the Cat Girl’s left hand succeeded in securing the wild roll, and two firm little fingers seized a thumbtack balanced on an upraised knee. The joints grew white in the effort of her finger to sink the tiny barb into the wall. A double operation. Now the Cat Girl moved back one step, two steps, she ran a caress over the smooth surface, and the feminine animal, the tigress-girl, the little female ghoul sprung from the erased prison, reflected her in the black mirror of the paper.

“It’s pretty,” said the Cat Girl.

“It’s pretty,” said Jean Calmet. And he sat down in the rocking chair with perfect happiness. Joy and courage! The little tray, the coffee pot from the fairy tale, the dwarfish cups. And you, coffee, in our breasts. In our neighbouring, linked bellies, and each of us drinks his little cup like a miraculous crater…

One evening Jean Calmet masturbated and was ashamed to see Thérèse again, staring at him with her pure eyes. She had her complicated necklaces, her rings, and on her head a tiny iron chain fastened a transversal braid. Jean Calmet remembered his father’s gaze: does the sweet sorceress know? He was overcome with curiosity: and what about her – is her hand taut, her finger gluey in the nocturnal milk? The lights of the Café de l’Évêché began to circle with mystery the faces of lone drinkers, as if the wooden panels behind them were burning black, like impenetrable mirrors. An old panic stirred Jean Calmet. What other tragedy to be lived through without his father? He remembered that night’s strange quarter-hour: he had imagined the Cat Girl slipping a bottle of milk into his pyjamas and warming it between his legs. He himself had taken hold of his penis in his right hand, the sweetness had spurted without his hurrying. Avenging father, get away! I didn’t even think about you. Now Thérèse sets the green water of her gaze on you, the copper in a blazing circle deep in her pupil, and suddenly, the odour of the starched handkerchief under the pillow in Lutry came back to him, suddenly the red face on the wall surged back, the hard eyes burned, but it is a joyous odour, these are happy tortures, these nasty deeds which try to strike you at the core and which only succeed in making you taste even purer happiness. The Cat Girl knew, Jean Calmet was sure of it, but he felt it like glory. One of Thérèse’s rings gleamed in the sun. An iron ring encircling a stone like a bloody berry.

“Did you sleep well?” asked the Cat Girl.

Jean Calmet blushed violently. It was starting again. No, he had to be happy. The corridors of blue ran in his veins. A scream rent the rocks behind the vision.

“How do you sleep?” the Cat Girl went on to ask. “On which side? Do you put your arms under the quilt?”

She added in a dreamy voice:

“I’d like to see you sleeping, Jean.” She repeated dreamily: “See you sleeping. See you sleeping. Maybe it’s a whim. Still, since we’ve known each other…”

Jean Calmet was thinking about the enchantress in The Golden Ass. Was he going to be metamorphosed, too, into a quadruped to be tortured? He had reread the text that very morning, in one of his classes. The stable where the blows rain on Lucius. Was he going to be changed into an animal by this golden-tressed sorceress? And why not? With pleasure, he imagined himself in the fairy’s power. The Pamphile of the tale. And Circe. And Morgan. All the mediatresses of the gloom. And you, white and yellow coat, and you, petal face, face of transparent garden, of Alpine night? Who is calling from the back of the walls? What owl, what panic-stricken animal in the moonlight began to cry in the turbulent fibre? Jean Calmet sees the circles, the copper stria light up in the Cat Girl’s eyes. But does she screw? he wondered. Who plunders her little basket? He, who has only had whores, wretched leavings, imagines the Cat Girl’s shadowy slit, the tender, honeyed furrow that he has only touched on the shopworn, the weary, and now, for the first time, he slips his hand into Thérèse’s panties, he touches the tender, lukewarm lawn, he descends to the hole that emits white resin, he bends over the smooth pelvis, he places his mouth on the curly moss…

The café was full of teenagers who were playing cards and chess. It was exactly ten past five. A few working men in blue smocks were eating sandwiches and drinking beer in the back room, beyond the narrow part of the bar and the toilets. Among the boys and girls who took up almost all of the tables in the main room were many of Jean Calmet’s students, those who, just today, had attended the lesson on The Golden Ass. It was then that an event took place which has not ceased to echo in the annals of the Gymnase and which the police have placed on the blotter, now that this story is over and that no one on this earth can do anything for Jean Calmet’s errant soul. It was ten past five. New teenagers pushed open the door of the Café de l’Évêché, joined the groups of players by sliding over the benches along the walls.

All of a sudden, Jean Calmet screamed. It was a series of violent cries, a series of furious yelps, uninterrupted barking that instantly froze everyone present. He stood up at his table, his arms outstretched; he did not utter anything; he screamed. Then the hideous concert changed into a frantic speech:

“I’m not a dirty bastard,” raged Jean Calmet, gesticulating.

“I’m clean, I’m not a bastard, leave me alone, all of you, I haven’t done anything to you, I’m clean, I’m innocent, I have nothing else to tell you, I’m innocent, I’m innocent!” And he fell flat across the table, breaking glasses of beer and cups, cutting himself on the chin and cheek; suddenly inert, exhausted, as if struck by sacred lightning.

After Jean Calmet’s first cries, silence had reigned in the Café de l’Évêché, and all the amazed faces were turned towards him, horrified, full of pity and sadness. Then, as the madman belched forth, cards and dice fell from hands, the waitress and the buffet waiter froze on the spot; an elderly man who was opening the door and innocently entering the café stopped abruptly, his foot in mid-air, his hat held out before him, and he remained standing, petrified, comic in the middle of that amazing scene.

At Jean Calmet’s first cries, the Cat Girl had stared at him intensely, her eyes lifted towards him, and she smiled. She smiled with tenderness and admiration. She smiled amid the horror and scandal. Then she placed a hand on the brow of the prostrated man who was crucified on the table strewn with broken glasses, overturned cups. The waitress and the buffet waiter started up again. The old man worked his way up to the nearest chair. The playing cards resumed their places in the moist hands of forty teenagers. Pawns began to move again on seven chessboards. Hands were carried to throats, rubbing them, feeling them as one might after a shipwreck, when reassuring oneself and trying oneself out again in the fresh air full of birds after the horrible onslaught of the sea. Balls of saliva were sent to the bottom of many an unknotting stomach. Tendons unwound. Fingers grew red as though reborn.

It was then that the terrible scales of good and evil called Jean Calmet to appear in their pans. At first, raising his eyes from the horizon of shattered glass where he was bleeding, he saw a whole assembly of young censors who were staring at him. Lenses of eyeglasses gleamed over formidable prophets’ beards. Hair of Pharisees brushed over shoulders, and the court stared at him, weighed him, gauged him; they were going to pronounce the sentence, the judges, they were going to speak words that would never cease to echo in Jean Calmet’s troubled skull. The terrible words of the father! For that was the result of the scene: the young people had changed into so many avenging fathers, and, deeper still, in the darkness of his memory and heart, it was his father himself, the doctor, the tyrant, that the scandal had brought back to life after several weeks of calm and lightness. As if Jean Calmet had begun screaming in order to bring his father out of the shadows where those five weeks had confined him. As if he had suddenly felt unbearably guilty about this relegation, as if he had killed his father a second time by forgetting him, by driving him out of his days and his dreams, by refusing him access to the Gymnase and to the Cat Girl, by driving him into the red night of the crematorium for ever, into the cold, congealed belly of the urn. But the doctor had avenged himself, he had broken the padlock, smashed the iron bars, he had got out of the columbarium, and his fleshy ghost, his lumbering footfall, his shining red skin, and his hat, his big coat, his hard eyes, his cigar, his smell of wine, his bossy voice, his persecutor’s manias, his cries, his contempt, his anger swept down on his son like a tornado! Crushed, Jean Calmet looked at his judge looming massively over the court of his students. The trickle of blood that ran over his chin tickled him like a vile kiss, but he did not dare bring his hand up to the cut, or stand up, or go away.

All that had lasted forty-five seconds.

Already, the waitress was carrying the debris of glass away on a tray, the buffet waiter was changing the sodden tablecloth, the conversations were resuming, the Cat Girl had taken a tissue from her little round basket and was cleaning the blood from Jean Calmet’s cheek and chin. Already the faces of the bearded youths, already the long hair of the girls were coming back into their nice sharpness before the bay window; already the evening sun was turning pink; the rooftops, the bridge, the cathedral were beginning to burn against the hill. The Cat Girl opened her little purse and tranquilly lined up her coins on the table. She rose, Jean Calmet rose too; they crossed the café, they opened the door, they were on the Rue de l’Université. Just like yesterday. Just like before. They went up to the little room. They sat down on the gilded bed, they drank coffee in the dolls’ cups. Now, for the first time, they lay down side by side under the poster, silent, breathing softly; time envelops them like a fur coat, the light is orange; through the closed windowpane they hear the bells of the cathedral strike six o’clock, and long after they have been stilled, it seems that their echo resounds in the deep stones, the corridors, the courtyards, the gardens and the crypts of the old town. In the room there is a bed; on the bed there are two recumbent figures, a young man with his chin scarred by a long gash, and a girl with a head of luminous hair. They are motionless. They listen to their breathing. A quarter of an hour goes by. The light has grown dim in the room: pink, then grey-pink, then grey, like fire growing pale in the embers and dying out, melting like rays in that calm air.

“I’m cold,” says Jean Calmet, and he raises the bedspread, he slides into the sheets, he pulls the woollen blanket up over his shoulders.

The Cat Girl slips in next to him. Warmth settles in. Jean Calmet is motionless, Thérèse is motionless, the blanket encloses them, weighs down maternally, hides them from the world, brings them together. They know it and they do not move. They have closed their eyes. Jean Calmet does not struggle against the sluggishness. A torpor sets in under his brow. Has he slept for a few minutes? Or made himself believe that he is asleep? He is about to lose consciousness when a cool hand is placed on his throat; two fingers follow the cut that burns and a third finger touches his cheek, presses a little; Jean Calmet turns his head, his face is close to the face of Thérèse, who has raised herself up on one elbow and who bends her head and who places on his mouth her moist mouth whose lips move, and Jean Calmet is sucked into that sweetness, he drinks at the deep spring! He breathes an odour of cinnamon, pollen, hot flint… For an instant, it is as though he were finally living his truest childhood, days and days suspended in the green water of dreams. Fresh strength rose in him, and on his lips, in his mouth, the Cat Girl’s little tongue ran and was everywhere at once. He did not return her kisses, transported by her: he gave himself up, he let himself float in infantile delight, protected, where all fear had given way. And still this perfume of flowers, of tepid stone, of green, earthy gardens, that smell of childhood, holidays, Easter vacations when the church bells ring. Happy clouds went by in his thoughts: his eyes closed, he saw a verdant prairie, at the back of the landscape a forest scalloped the sky, and little wisps of vapour like sheep drifted over the emerald and blue. The Cat Girl’s quick tongue ran over his teeth. Jean Calmet opened his jaws, the tongue insinuated itself deep inside his mouth, it came back, followed the whole contour of his lips, came back to hone itself on the ridge of his teeth. The Cat Girl lay down against him; he breathed her warm, tart smell near her ear, where she must have washed herself with eau de cologne that morning, and the odour of her hair, riper, more hidden, like a secret that she had exposed for a moment before shutting it up again in her golden tresses.

It was growing dark.

The lights of the Gymnase illuminated the walls above the recumbent figures, and Jean Calmet marvelled at the distance that separated him, at that moment, from the classrooms where he would give his lessons on the following morning.

Suddenly the Cat Girl knelt close to him; she quickly unbuttoned Jean Calmet’s shirt, spreading the cloth over his armpits and plunged to the centre of his chest where she placed a kiss. Her hair caressed the throat, the collarbones of Jean Calmet. The spots of light on the wall disappeared, the night was complete, but the Cat Girl’s form and hair filled it with sparks and rockets, and Jean Calmet marvelled at the fact that the darkness was so scintillating and tender in its simplicity.

Then the Cat Girl gently licked his chest.

Then, while her tongue lapped his nipples and a cool hand was descending over his navel, Jean Calmet felt the extraordinary violence of the sensations and visions that carried him away the way that typhoons rip away whole houses, beginning by shaking them, then breaking them, tearing them asunder, sucking them up, hurling them, scattering all their components violently into the air like castles that have exploded.

All his castles exploded.

He was shattered and he was flying.

A terrible coolness streamed into his bones, riddled his veins with white droplets, unknotted his throat, ran between his shoulders. The Cat Girl’s hand touched his navel. Two fingers slipped into the garment, they ran along his pubis, made a stop, resumed their gentle way, climbed back around his pelvis, came back to massage his loins gently.

Jean Calmet was motionless, and he wanted to stay that way. Lying in the dark, flat on his back, his arms resting alongside his body, his belly bare, his legs spread. A corpse, yes, I’m dead, I’m made of stone, I’ve been laid to rest for ever on my own grave and I have only to clasp my hands over my chest to be really changed into cold limestone or marble!

He joined his hands, the fingers raised towards the sky, he closed his eyes in the darkness and recalled the strange Sire François who lies in the same position, at the bottom of Château Jacquemart de la Sarraz. Outside, the castle raises its towers above the vale of wolves and witches. In the shadow of the chapel the cruel Sire sleeps in the stone under the sorrowful vigil of his widow, his daughter and his two sons, who have prayed unceasingly for six centuries for the remission of their master’s sins. What struck Jean Calmet, the first time he went into the Jacquemart with his father, was the fact that the sculptor had covered the recumbent man with repugnant, slithering creatures: snakes squeezed his chest and arms. Toads buried themselves in his eyes, ran over his cheeks. Thus the bad spirits of the Venoge had come out of the cold river and the night of the ponds, they had joined their suzerain that they covered for eternity with their scales and their drool.

But a tepid mouth is running over Jean Calmet, two smooth, warm hands feel his ribs and his back. He is not guilty like the abominable Sire of la Sarraz! I haven’t killed anyone. I’m good. The sorry Sire François robbed wayfarers, raped them, tortured them, killed them for his pleasure. Fire, blood, black vengeance. I’m innocent and I’m new. The dead man has the kiss of ghouls. A child’s tongue plays over my breast. O deep night. Mystery of sharing and the denial of all sharing. O night of privilege. Mercy.

Kneeling, the Cat Girl seized Jean Calmet’s wrists and secured them, by the pressure of her hands, on the flat of the sheet. Crucified now, he felt the strain on his arms with strange pleasure. He was breathing slowly, his sides rose. In the darkness, he saw his armpits offered up to Thérèse’s kisses, his smooth belly, his hips quivering under her caress. With a gentle hand, she assured herself that Jean Calmet was still crucified. Then she seized the buckle of his belt, unfastened it rapidly, opened the fly of his trousers which she drew off, then his shorts, and, like little parachutes, she let them drop on the rug. Jean Calmet was naked under her alert hands. Cat Girl, braced, a succubus, an exquisite vampire, bent now over his penis. Her hair caressed Jean Calmet’s thighs: her mouth, rapid, placed – on his knees – brief salutations, like the calling cards brought to the table of a host at a marriage, a funeral, from which one withdraws on tiptoe, leaving him without witness to his joy or sorrow, and, in the street, turns back to look at the windows of the apartment lit as one would on the only paradise in which one might have been able to live, cherished at last. But the succubus did not leave, and with its muzzle, with its sweet snout, with its maw, it grazed Jean Calmet’s penis, which straightened up without impatience towards the demon’s happy breath.

He began to gasp quietly under her lips.

Now the Cat Girl shed her clothes with nimble speed in the darkness where Jean Calmet sensed her every movement. On Jean’s chest lay the round breasts, then the sweet-haired head lodged itself against his throat, the belly glued itself to his, the pelvis moulded itself to his pelvis, the Cat Girl’s long thighs pressed his, and her curly pubis crushed itself against Jean Calmet’s penis, which burned gently and took on its form under the round, constant pressure. The Cat Girl rose slightly, she panted in her turn, the tip of Jean Calmet’s penis seated itself in the pubic hair of the succubus, who moved her croup to fit it deeper in her antrum. Everything was all right. The promise of Dionysus had been fulfilled. Jean Calmet felt himself sliding into the milky path towards the maternal cave. He exulted.

Suddenly the power failed.

Panic swooped down on him.

He was cold, he was being drawn down into space, he was terribly alone on a rock that was drifting in the open sea, he did not know who was calling him from the top of a tower and who he could never reach, he was condemned by a court of ghostly ancestors; deep in his bones, a burned wolf, an exiled prince, a snake trampled and despised, he howled as no man on earth will ever again howl.

Shame crowned him with iron.

His penis fell back against his belly.

He himself remained motionless.

The Cat Girl moved a little more. Jean Calmet knew that she was pretending not to know: speechless, he closed himself off, he sealed himself up ludicrously while, with all his senses, he waited for the word that would unbind him, comfort him, bring him back from the dead. The Cat Girl did the irreparable: with one finger she grazed Jean Calmet’s penis. The doctor thundered in the dazzling clouds, flung himself into her, took her, left her panting and gluey, took her again, broke her, illuminated her, filled her, flooded her. The doctor bursting with laughter.

“So, you’ve been humiliated, my son. Didn’t you take your vitamins? You’ve gone limp? Look at your old father. Wrinkled, burned, but he still makes the women dance on his cock. This woman, too, you miserable sap. Your Cat Girl. Yes, yours. When a man isn’t up to screwing his conquests, he should skip the bluffing!”

That is what his father bellowed into Jean Calmet’s anguish-filled ears. Into his end-of-the-world ears.

The Cat Girl lay back down against him where he was still motionless; she pressed her lips against his temple and remained quiet in the darkness. A few minutes went by.

“Do you want to sleep here?” she asked a little later.

“No,” Jean Calmet said simply.

He found his clothes in the dark, dressed quickly, placed his hand – by way of farewell – on the brow of the Cat Girl, who had not stirred from her bed. Then he went out into the cold night.

Crossing the Rue de la Cité, he raised his eyes towards the little room that he had just left, and he was torn by what he saw, completely filling his wound with tender, violent-tempered nostalgia: on the window sill stood a bottle of milk like a first childhood image. When he got into his car, tears were running down his face.

Isabelle died on Easter Monday; it was 23 April, she had held out longer than expected, she was exhausted, she remained lying down, only getting up for a moment to greet the school friends who met in her room every day.

She was buried in Crécy.

There was an immense crowd of boys and girls in blue jeans, a line of farmers in black, holding their hats in their hands.

Jean Calmet was not at the funeral.

They told him those things the next day, it was just when school reopened, a little breeze was blowing over La Cité, the sky burned blue, groups of children called to one another and broke up on the pavements of La Mercerie.

Jean Calmet was dying of shame. He had abandoned Isabelle. He had gone to see her only once, on her birthday, 20 March, her friends had eaten cake, they had opened bottles of wine, listened to Leonard Cohen, and Joan Baez, and Donovan, and Bob Dylan.

As long as he lived, Jean Calmet would reproach himself for not going to the funeral. Why had he taken sleeping pills that morning, knocking himself out, going back to sleep with his head tucked under a heavy pillow, waking up at five o’clock in the afternoon, just when they were serving the buffet at the farm in Crécy? He had not dared appear before the eyes of Isabelle’s parents, her family, all of his students gathered there. He was in fear. An evil, shameful fear that had ensnared him from the moment he had learnt of his student’s death, a vile dread of being reproached for living, he, the useless one, the bachelor, the restless one, while the beautiful girl had been covered with earth. “What are you doing here, Monsieur Calmet? Are you crying? And are you enjoying the tingling of the sun on your skin? You’d do better to take our daughter’s place, my friend. For what use you’re making of your life… And then, you’d be doing us a favour. When I stop and think that, at thirty-nine, all you’re good for is distilling the affectations of a few decadent poets. What a shame, Monsieur Calmet. You hesitate? Look at our daughter once more, let’s seal the casket, let’s throw her into the hole, and we’ll go and drink a glass of wine at our grandparents’ farm. There’ll be sweet wafers, cakes. Just what you need to drug your cowardice, right, Monsieur Calmet, Monsieur the distinguished Latin master at the Gymnase!”

Jean Calmet looked at the photos of the funeral. With infinite sorrow, he had them tell him about the afternoon.

There, it is over. The class remembers the little dead girl. Jean Calmet sees the Cat Girl almost every day. Often one of his students brings him a poem, a song, and it is always the same title, which scalds him with chagrin and distress as soon as he opens the envelope: For Isabelle.

Some evenings, the summer already hangs in the branches of the lime trees.

One afternoon late in April, when the weather was mild, Jean Calmet followed a cat on the path at the edge of the lake. That cat spoke to him of many things:

“You don’t understand anything,” said the cat. “You’re an ass, Jean Calmet, an idiot who’s drifting from bad to worse. I’m fond of you, Jean Calmet, you’ve got loads of good points, but why don’t you stop acting like a fool day after day?”

At that time, Jean Calmet was walking tranquilly behind the oracle; he listened to him with obvious interest.

“Look at me,” said the cat. “Do you see me worrying? Do I stew in remorse or sadness?”

“You don’t have a father,” said Jean Calmet, who kicked a white pebble on the path.

“Nothing doing,” said the cat. And he raised his tail towards the cloudless sky; one could see his pink anus in his black behind.

Jean Calmet felt good. All along the little path stood hedges and tepid walls; on the right, and on the left, the lake that was beginning to grow red in the twilight.

“It’s beautiful,” the cat went on to say. “Fill your eyes, fill your fibre, cram your soul, Jean Calmet. One fine morning you won’t be here any more to enjoy your ecstasies of the living. See that boat, in front of Évian? Look at that white, that nougat bar against the green and red. And Savoy – see it? Blue and purple, all the mountains resound with cascades and rock slides into chasms. And those mists – over near the Rhône? Do you remember the ponds full of eggs, the snakes that zigzagged over the still water where the red rays were reflected? Remember the kites over the mouth of the river? And the young fish in the bubbles?”

“And you, cat,” said Jean Calmet, “do you remember your father’s face?”

He regretted his question at once, for the cat turned around and looked at him in amusement.

But they continued to go on their way. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The sun is an orange. The lake is covered with bands of gold.

The cat is first to break the silence.

“Jean Calmet!”

“Yes! That’s me,” said Jean Calmet.

“Have you thought about your death yet, Jean Calmet? Don’t answer. I’m not talking about the death of others. Nor of its echo in your skull. Nor of your dear cemeteries. I’m talking about your death, Jean Calmet. Have you thought about your nothingness yet?”

“Cat not be happy,” said Jean Calmet. “Mean cat ask companion too sad question. Companion not understand why cat mean on such a walk.”

“Don’t act like a fool,” said the cat. “Answer about your death. You’re keeping quiet, aren’t you? You don’t understand anything, Jean Calmet. You’re half-alive. You’re eating yourself up. You’re more ash than your father. And your blood? Your flesh that’s still young? Your head full of foolishness? You’re kidding, Jean Calmet. It’s the spirit of Dionysus or nothing. Pan or death. Salvation through one’s works or the last ravine at the bottom of the last hole in the last mountain in Greece or elsewhere. Go to the end of the oldest mythologies or into each hour’s brazier. You’re all washed up, Jean Calmet, unless you make up your mind!”

Undulating, the cat walked over the pebbles of the path, his fur glossy, his paws precise. Jean Calmet admired the animal’s exasperating sureness and could not listen to what he had to tell him. The cat was right. Perfectly. He was stewing in boredom, he was sinking into it. When would he get out of the brambles? If his father saw him following this prophet… What a burst of laughter! Ah, bollocks to my lousy father. And immediately the vision of the red bruiser revolted him to the depths of his being. Horror seized him. He looked at the beautiful, lithe cat, saw his power, saw his wiliness, saw his pleasure on that path, and decided to listen to him. To obey him methodically. He had to be happy now. He had to flee from the ravines and lethal space where he had taken an unwholesome pleasure for years. Nothing was going to stop him.

Then, because he understood his agreement, the cat knew that Jean Calmet no longer needed him. He took a fork to the right, started along a trail that climbed towards an ivy-covered house, slipped into a hedge and disappeared.

Marvelling at the encounter, Jean Calmet transformed the animal’s elegance into supernatural beauty, his careful tread into mysterious adventure and his words into divine warning. He recalled his arrival at Ouchy, the delicacy of the quays, the old hotels, pink in the evening light, the pavement cafés overflowing with young people. He remembered the hours that he had spent after the crematorium and the funeral buffet. He felt anew the joy that he had known then, and afterwards, his gloom. And what have I done since? he wondered. And what of my scene at the Café de l’Évêché? And the little room on the Rue de la Cité-Devant? And he hardened his resolve to be good, to be happy, to live in glad strength and faith.

In the weeks that followed, the Cat Girl was particularly good and gentle, and Jean Calmet spent several nights with her. He squeezed himself against the wall, under the poster of the panther. Thérèse kissed him, took him in her, kept him, took him again for hours. Now Jean Calmet loved her, he was really her lover, she said that she was happy, and he was happy too, that beginning of May, when the birds of La Cité woke them up at dawn in tender happiness.

Around that time, Jean Calmet was called in to see the principal of the Gymnase. Colonel, member of government, Monsieur Grapp was a tall, righteous man, with physical strength apparent in his powerful, nervous movements. He was bald, with an enormous, dented skull. He always wore dark glasses.

Jean Calmet hated this summons. What did Grapp want of him? He knew his violent rages, his prejudices of the so-called honest man faced with unexpected events. Most of all, he feared in him the senior, the master. He had yet to meet him, or even to spy him from afar in one of the little streets of La Cité, without experiencing a sense of fear, of uneasiness, of remorse as well, very abrupt, sharp, as if he had been found at fault suddenly and all his ruses exposed. What have I done this time? thought Jean Calmet at those encounters. What is he going to take me to task for? And he would run away as fast as his legs could carry him in the other direction, or duck into a corridor, from which he would watch Grapp go by: his nose glued to the chicken-wired glass, sweating with anguish and ashamed, how many times he had watched the bald man move forward with great strides, vigorous, a fighter, while he, Jean Calmet, burrows into the dusty shadows of the corridor!

Several times, in the teachers’ room or in the vestibule leading to the principal’s office, Jean Calmet felt the same agitation, the same fear that he had experienced when going to his father’s consultation room. He spies Grapp’s tall frame, his caramel-custard camel’s-hair coat, his dark glasses, the double crêpe soles, and he immediately finds himself trembling and humiliated as at Les Peupliers, when he used to knock at the doctor’s door, sweating with rage and anguish. Dozens of times he wondered if his fellow schoolmasters also went through that fear. Did François Clerc and Verret flee when the bald giant loomed up? He observed them from a corner of the teachers’ room, where he pretended to look up a telephone number or consult a dictionary. No answer. François Clerc and Verret looked relaxed, both of them, and conversed calmly with Grapp. But perhaps they were feigning ease? Perhaps they were hideously uneasy, as he was, at seeing themselves transfixed by the Master. He would ask François the question one of these days. If he dares. For did this blunt question not mean revealing oneself to the core?

He reported at the secretary’s office, and Madame Oisel, whose green eyes and comely bosom Jean Calmet admired, asked him to wait a few minutes until Monsieur principal was free. Jean Calmet, who was becoming sweaty, fastened on to the spectacle of Madame Oisel. She had gone back to her typewriter, and her breasts were trembling in her thin blouse. Twenty-five years old, tanned, happy. But she also intimidated him by having access to the principal at all times, by being tied to the master’s humours, to his plans, to his secrets. She took part in the Eleusinian mysteries: admitted to the tripod, to the embers, to the philtres, and in the smoke of the god-principal-of-men, she exhales an initiatory power that pulverizes Jean Calmet. She is a beautiful woman. She is happy. She has found her master: a handsome, sophisticated man, a Frenchman, a trainee at the school who teaches maths and physical education.

So Jean Calmet was waiting for the principal to open the temple door to him. He sweated more profusely now, wiped his hands on his trousers, fearing that as a result of rubbing his palms over his knees and thighs he would leave obscene, comical yellow spots. Madame Oisel ripped a letter from her typewriter, applied the seal of the Gymnase to it, signed it, folded it, slid it into its envelope, licked the flap with a long tongue, pressed it quickly with her fist and threw it into a small cardboard box where the god’s mail was piled. The principal’s door opened, and Monsieur Grapp appeared on its threshold. Jean Calmet wanted to rise; something in him went mad, refused, shut itself up in a black burrow; suddenly the resistance gave way, he got to his feet with apparent ease, he moved forward smiling at Monsieur Grapp. Enormous, fantastic, the tall figure was framed in the doorway like an immense yellow, woollen parallelepiped. The dark glasses crowned the camel’s-hair sinisterly, and, above them, his bald skull gleamed, white, dented. The giant opened his mouth, saliva welled up at the corners, his uneven teeth appeared like tombstones at the back of an old graveyard for child-eaters. And his hairy hand reaches out, enormous, towards Jean Calmet… Jean Calmet, who stumbles over the doorstep, blushes, feels sweat squirting from the root of every hair on his head, stretches out in turn his moist hand, follows the glutton into his lair, drops into the thin armchair that the suzerain designates. Imposing, the suzerain is comfortably ensconced behind his desk, big-boned, massive, his dark glasses hiding and revealing glaucous globes that go through Jean Calmet’s heart.

“I won’t beat around the bush, Monsieur Calmet,” said the Director in a loud voice, and Jean Calmet noticed once again his Vaud accent, in which the humming and the thickness of the sh had retained their peasant flavour. “You’re well liked in this school, Monsieur Calmet, we respect the high level of your professional conscientiousness. Your students work, you know how to make them enthusiastic, I know through many parents that you are respected and admired. That’s why I feel free to speak to you very firmly today.”

He struck a pose, grinned; Jean Calmet prepared himself to be knocked out and devoured.

“I didn’t want to speak to you about it right away, Monsieur Calmet. You needed to get hold of yourself and think things over. I’m talking about the incident at the Café de l’Évêché. Naturally, the whole business came to my attention. Several colleagues spoke to me about it, and some parents let me know how astonished they were. Let me add that I got a discreet call from the criminal-investigation department wanting to know if drugs had been involved. We’re very much in the public eye in our trade, Monsieur Calmet, and that makes it all the harder for me to understand how you, with the keen sense of the duty that binds us all, could let yourself go in such an extreme way. What happened, Monsieur Calmet? Had you been drinking? Did you lose your head completely? An entirely understandable moment of confusion, provided that it stops there. Tell me, Monsieur Calmet. After all, I could be your father…”

Jean Calmet made a terrible effort at staring into the mysterious glasses: he could not speak; his hand, damp with sweat, was trembling on the armrest of the chair.

“I was taken ill,” he said at last.

Monsieur Grapp nodded approvingly, as he might have encouraged a child.

“I lost control of myself,” Jean Calmet continued in a weak voice. “I said incoherent things… I couldn’t see anything…”

“The trouble is that you screamed those things,” the Director broke in harshly. “In your position it’s most unfortunate. There were more than thirty students in that café… but that’s another question I’ll take up in due course. But you acknowledge, Monsieur Calmet, that your behaviour was perfectly scandalous.”

Jean Calmet admitted it, mumbling.

“Do you have a problem with your nerves, Monsieur Calmet? Shouldn’t you seek help, have yourself treated in a clinic for a few weeks?”

Jean Calmet gave a start, horrified. The clinic, the psychiatrists, his poor heart drilled right through, the cell, the diet… He dared to state that he was in good health.

“Do you drink, Monsieur Calmet? People have often seen you sitting at students’ tables, with beer, aperitifs…”

No, Jean Calmet did not drink. To be sure, he liked the company of young people. No, he did not encourage them to drink. No, no, Monsieur, he did not have any special taste for alcohol. No, wine was not necessary to him. And it never had been.

“You ought to get married, Monsieur Calmet,” said the Director. “It’s no good for a man to be alone. Especially you, who come from a large family – you must feel even lonelier now. I knew your dear father, you know; now there’s a man who lived for his family, surrounded by children, by patients! Ah, what a fine man he was. We don’t have enough people like that nowadays. This country is in real need of them. His greatness, Monsieur Calmet! His energy! His strength! His devotion! In a word—” He broke off suddenly. “I’m counting on you not to allow the little incident in the Café de l’Évêché to happen again. Think of your family, think of us. Give yourself a breath of air. Find a young lady, give her children, Monsieur Calmet. Et libri, et liberi, as your dear Latins said. You’d have time to keep your nose in a book and raise a little family. All right, good day, Monsieur Calmet. It’s been a pleasure to see you. I have complete confidence in you.”

He rose; his overwhelming figure in the yellow jacket hid the whole window, a big hairy hand reached out towards Jean Calmet, crushed his, shook it in mid-air between the cannibal’s belly and the tentatively spared victim. The survivor found himself completely bewildered in the corridor, where the bronze Ramuz stared at him with its vacant, nauseating orbs.

Jean Calmet went down to the Place de la Palud. He was not thinking, he walked mechanically, it was the end of the afternoon, a bit tepid, a bit sugary. He knew where he was going. He was not ashamed. He had to drive away the scene that he had just experienced with another uncommon scene. He had to escape Grapp’s bulk blocking the window, killing life.

Tranquilly, Jean Calmet walked down the Place de la Palud to the Place de la Louve. He pushed open a door with his right hand, started up a staircase. Fourth floor. A black-painted wooden door. A card is stuck against it: Pernette Colomb. Jean Calmet rings. The door opens: Pernette Colomb. Her big breasts in the open bodice. Her eye lengthened with glossy makeup. Fifty-eight years old. Plump, her mouth red, a vile, ironic face.

She fusses, places a kiss on Jean Calmet’s cheek, makes a curtsey and, with a comical gesture, invites him into her three-room apartment.

“How’s our little professor? It’s been a while since he’s been back to see his Pernette! He must have had lots of things to do and lady friends to love!”

Jean Calmet is not put off: under the banter, he spots a kind of veiled affection that gently drives away his anguish: Pernette slides next to him on the couch:

“We want to think about the little present first, right, sweetie? That way, we’ll have our minds clear for what comes afterwards. The usual, little prof?”

Without looking at her, into the hand that she has placed on his thigh, Jean Calmet slips the single fifty-franc note that he had ready in his pocket. Pernette snatches it and tosses it into the drawer of a chest, which she double locks. She claps her hands, comes running back towards Jean and flings herself against him on the couch, raising aloft her bare legs that gleam. She puts her arms around him; her red mouth that smells of grenadine settles quickly on his mouth.

“Come, baby.”

She pulls him by the arms. She pushes him into the other room, stops him in front of a sink. The water is warm. She unbuckles his belt, slips her hand into his briefs, grasps Jean Calmet’s penis, lays it on the cold rim of the basin. A bar of pink soap. Two hands, under the hot stream, slowly wash his erect penis. He holds his trousers up over his thighs. He follows the fat woman to the flat bed. Slip. Pink girdle. Legs already bare. She bends over the panting belly, the grenadine mouth sucks, licks, a hand comes and goes under Jean Calmet’s narrow back with surprising speed.

The black panties slide over heavy thighs. Pubis almost rose-pink. The hand of the master of Latin language and literature at Gymnase Cantonal de la Cité searches in the pubic nest, spreads lips lubricated with Vaseline.

“Come on! Come on!” Sighs. Squirms. Jean Calmet kneeling in the rotundities, the cannonballs, the casks, the smooth hams of Pernette Colomb. Once she explained that name “Pernette” to him. “Actually, my name is Denise. But my father was crazy about me. He was a drinker, my father was. He was a roofer. That was in Fribourg, before the war. He used to take me on his bike. We used to ride all around the countryside. We stopped at cafés. He would drink apple brandies, absinthes, one after the other, they had real absinthe in those days. My father called me his ladybird, his pernette, he used to laugh and tell his friends that I was his only love, his consolation and his grace. One day when he’d had more to drink than usual, he fell from a roof and split his head open on the pavement. Since then I’ve never wanted people to call me anything but Pernette. That’s all I’ve got left of him. My pen name, professor!” Jean Calmet buried himself in the fat coccinella who could feign emotion adeptly. “Chéri! Chéri!” cries the bug. Français, encore un effort, thinks le chéri, whom the word injures. But the wet sweetness presses him, sucks him; he anchors himself deep within her, almost motionless, he spills out into the happy cave.

As he leaves, Jean Calmet is not sad, and the clamour from the square promises to keep him warm in a little while. Denise has some nice words: as she has known her client for years, she offers him a glass of liqueur brandy so that he does not go out into the city too lonely.

Jean Calmet receives another grenadine-flavoured kiss. He hesitates in the doorway. He goes out. Yes, of course, I’ll come back. It is in the corridor that the sadness descends on him. He goes down the stairs. Out on the square again, he feels a shame that chills him, makes him flee the eyes of the people. Oh Jean Calmet, you know all too well that Denise is the feminine of Dionysus! The sister, the daughter, the exalted companion of the divine! Derision. Parody. But night is falling. Jean Calmet lowers his head, and, at that very moment, as one gives in to its panels of darkness, he consents to turn away from the great mountains full of gods.