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By Root 505 0

where I had been taken, I looked for her everywhere. I roused our whole neighborhood and they locked me up in an asylum. But I wasn’t crazy, I kept telling them. One day, the head doctor came to see me because I was giving the orderlies a hard time, making a devil of a racket. He said: ‘What do you want, son?’ And I ripped the pen and paper from his hands. ‘From now on, you will give him what he needs to write,’ he told the orderlies. ‘I think I’ve figured out how we can get him to behave.’ But one day I had enough and ran away. I hid out nearby and then jumped on a passing truck. ‘So, pal,’ the driver told me, ‘cutting school, are we?’ I gave him such a wild look that he kept quiet. I went straight to a publisher and left him my poems. More than a hundred. Everything I had written in the asylum. I begged, slept outside on public benches. I was cold. I was hungry. But I patiently awaited wealth and glory. This time the publisher greeted me laughing.

“‘Good sir, this is the tale of a madman you’ve got here … The public will have no use for your ravings … ’ But all I had done was to faithfully record what I lived through during their rotten war.”

“Vulgarians love to talk about what’s realistic and what’s not,” I said, “as if it’s so easy to tell true from false.”

“I feel sick,” André whispers.

“No. One is enough. Bugger me!” Simon protests. “Have a little courage. We’ll be able to get out of here soon. We’ll go to the shore, to Saindor’s …”

“He’s dead,” I say.

“Dead!” Simon cries out.

“They killed him,” André says.

“When?”

“Didn’t you see his body in the street? Right in front of the door.”

“When did this happen?”

“A few days ago.”

“Bugger me! If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were crazy.”

“Unfortunately we are,” I reply.

“You’re making me fucking nauseous with your devil stories,” Simon screams. “I’m already drunk as a skunk, and you’re fucking making me nauseous with your devil stories!”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” André sighs. “They’re going to hear him.”

“Shit! I’m drunk as a skunk! When I’m drunk, there’s nothing to do, you know, I have to scream.”

And he screams.

“The devils will hear you,” André whispers in a weak voice.

“Let them come,” Simon roars.

This is no call for rebellion

Just a poor drunk white man with his full white moon in the air

Like so … staggering about23

he recites with sweeping gestures, getting his arms tangled in the barricade.

“Don’t know if you noticed,” he says, suddenly calm again, “but I just butchered Prévert.”

“In two places,” André answers.

“What is he doing against the wall?” Simon asks André.

“He’s spying on Cécile,” André answers.

“Clever man!” Simon exclaims. “She’s beautiful, eh? She inspired one of my poems. Listen:

Young goddess of bronze and amber

Black woman of sun, adorned in tender grace.”

“Leave Cécile out of it,” I say.

“Jealous?”

“Leave her alone. That’s all. Sleep.”

They both yawn and Simon stretches, touching the ceiling. They lie down on the ground and yawn again. Finally I’ll be alone! I am waiting for them to start snoring before returning to my post. Cécile’s light is on. There are figures coming and going behind the curtains. Young goddess of bronze and amber, as Simon said. She’s mine. He’s wasting his time. I hated him during that moment when I heard him speak of her beauty.

Nothing must distract me from my goal. I know they’ll come back. I need silence and solitude. I won’t open up to Simon anymore. He wouldn’t understand. He’s made me waste enough time. My battle plan is perfect. I am ready for the great offensive. They’ll be back, I can feel it. They must be there, lying low somewhere waiting for a signal, some order coming from I don’t know where but which they will know how to interpret. A few lights tremble in the distance and the vague silhouette of the Grand-rue emerges as an extension of these lights. Grand-rue, dear to my heart, lined with beautiful multistory houses crowned with hat-shaped gables! Tall houses with wraparound balconies and white brick verandas! Grand-rue’s business district, and high-society Grand-rue where