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By Root 280 0

are becoming dim, so that even the midday light seems murky, and the line of women waiting at the door of the dispensary looks like a row of sacks. Over the years I have become accustomed to their rotten teeth and their stinking breath. So I go on gently from morning to evening, from day to day, from summer to winter. I long ago stopped noticing the insect bites. My sleep is deep and peaceful. There is moss growing on my bedding and damp rot has invaded the walls. Some peasant woman or other takes pity on me from time to time and feeds me a gelatinous liquid apparently made from potato skins. All my books are going moldy. The covers crumble away and fall off. I have nothing left, and I can barely distinguish between one day and the next, between spring and autumn, between one year and the next. Sometimes at night I seem to hear the distant wail of some primeval wind instrument: I have no idea what it is or who plays it, or whether it comes from the forest or the hills or from inside my skull, under my hair that is turning gray and thinning. So I am gradually turning my back on everything around me, and in fact on myself as well.

Apart from one event that I witnessed this morning, which I shall report now in writing, without expressing an opinion.

This morning the sun rose and transformed the marshy vapor into a dense, viscous rain. Warm summer rain that smelled like an unwashed, sweaty old man. The villagers were beginning to come out of their huts and preparing to go down to the potato fields. Suddenly, on top of the hill to the east, a healthy, handsome man appeared, between us and the rising sun. He started waving his arms, describing all manner of circles and spirals in the damp air, kicking, bowing, jumping on the spot, without uttering a sound. "Who is that man?" the village men asked one another. "What is he looking for here?" "He's not from here, and he's not from the next village, and he's not from the hills either," the old men said. "Perhaps he's come down from a cloud."

"We must watch out for him," said the women. "We must catch him red-handed. We must kill him."

While they were still discussing and arguing, the yellowish air filled with a rush of sounds, of birds, dogs, bees, mooing, scolding, buzzing of insects as big as beer mugs. The frogs in the swamp joined in, and the chickens were not slow to follow suit. Harnesses jangled. There were coughs, groans and cursing. All sorts of different sounds.

"That man," the gravedigger's young son said, and then he stopped.

"That man," said the innkeeper, "wants to seduce the girls."

The girls shrieked: "Look, he's naked, look how big it is, look, he's dancing, he's trying to fly, look, like wings, look, he's white right through to the bone."

And the old gravedigger said: "What's the good of all this chatter? The sun is up, the white man who was there, or who we imagined was there, has disappeared behind the bog. Words won't help. Another hot day is beginning and it's time to go to work. Whoever can work, let him work, put up or shut up. And whoever can't work anymore, let him die. And that's all there is to it."