The snow smothers her. Flakes work their way into her nostrils. She coughs. The storm howls or sings; it’s hard to say. If it howls, it means it is cruel; if it sings, it means it belongs to her imagination.
She flinches, raises a hand in front of her for protection. The wind follows the road men have cut through the mountain. It bars her way, seems to protest at meeting an obstacle, swirls, dashes itself against the rocks, drags along the snow that bursts apart in turn. The sky has taken up its cloak of night again.
She hadn’t imagined the climb would be so hard. Her hair whips her face. She goes on anyway. She hadn’t imagined anything at all.
Drivers hurry to climb or descend the mountain before the storm blocks the road completely. They honk. She pulls her scarf back around her neck. The thought that they might stop and come to her aid frightens her. She talks to herself under her breath, tells herself important things. Near her heart, something or someone breathes out a little warmth, as best it can. She breathes into her hands. Something? Her blood, no doubt. Someone? Perhaps her soul.
The frantic branches of the trees seem to implore the god of storms. The cold makes them loud. Shadows run to hide behind the trees; sounds threaded with dread pass over her. “They’re only trees,” she tells herself, “that’s all it is, noise without ghosts.” She goes on, shaken by violent convulsions. Now the pain, now the cold.
When she moves a foot forward, her sex rubs against her clothes. The pain. There is only her, in reddish blotches, in split membranes, the scratches on her arms, the macerated breasts. Is there a single region of her body that has been spared? The doctor advised her not to walk too much, to take care of herself.
It doesn’t sound serious. He must have been talking about someone else. Life takes its revenge, that’s all. Maybe, and never mind. It’s hard to say in this storm. She coughs again. Goes on, blind to the dangers or unwilling to see them. It’s so hard to say. She walks to stop hurting and it’s stupid. The trees have turned into waves and the mountain into a furious ocean.
To go on into this darkness is terrifying. That, or drown. She is afraid, too cold, too afraid. She feels a presence behind her, turns around. No one is there; swallowed by the snow, the road drops away, white and vague. Not a single driver left. How long has she been walking? The prints of her steps are barely visible. It resembles the idea she has of death. The pain sings again. The snow nips her cheeks the way shards of glass would. She isn’t dressed to face the storm. She’s still bleeding. Her feet are cold, always the cold. The storm takes her for a tree, plays with her hair. Something chants inside her. Perhaps her blood, or her drowned soul. She is thirsty, lowers her eyes; the past comes back to haunt her once more.
She was walking, no one in the street, night. They threw themselves on her, at once beat her senseless as though they had long been waiting for prey.
The wind whips her coat; the thin cloth it’s made of can’t push back the cold. She closes her eyes, wraps her arms around her body to try to keep some warmth in. She’s breathing hard now. Swallows the storm.
They were drunk, bawling the insults of the wasted. That, she remembers very well. She had screamed, but could do no more. Someone had knocked her out.
Total darkness, her return to consciousness, much later, in an overheated room, her senses at bay flinging up red alerts the brain wasn’t listening to, barricaded to face the hurricane. Strapped down, at the mercy of their desires, she’d been forced to swallow alcohol. There were three of them. Grown terribly silent in their movements. That too she remembers, but no more than that.
Then had come the snow, a frightened passer-by, police, the hospital. Long days of sleeping between the pain and the care. A social worker had come to sit beside her, had spoken of a shelter where she could be taken in. She had shaken her head no. The worker had insisted, gently. She preferred not to answer.
Police had come back to take her statement. They asked too many questions, tried to wake her memory. Nothing worked. For now, forgetting seemed the best cure.
After four days, a doctor had discharged her, telling her in a tone she found clumsy that she’d been lucky in her misfortune. Now she had to let time do its work, he’d concluded, so the welds would hold. He’d prescribed her a tranquillizer and made a follow-up appointment for a week later.
Welds? But she wasn’t made of metal.
She’d rushed home and locked the door, swallowed a tranquillizer. Twelve hours of a dead woman’s sleep.
When she woke, the silence of the apartment terrified her. Her thoughts stayed inside their diving suits, forbidding themselves to speak to one another. Heading to the bathroom, she caught sight of herself in the big hallway mirror. She hadn’t recognized herself, had let out a cry of horror. It was indeed her in the glass, yet the rest, the bearing, the look in the eyes, the swollen face, the torn lips, the tangled hair, the trembling… A murdered being, but alive.
She’d tried to lie down again, but unable to sleep, she’d wrapped herself in a blanket on the couch, getting up only when she had to.
It had gone on three more long days. At the start of the third day, she’d urinated where she lay, knowing it was wrong. Since she’d found it funny, she’d rushed to the kitchen and come back with something to wipe the couch, lecturing herself for being a bad girl. A wicked girl whom the devil had entered with the cock of three men. A bad woman starting to go mad. Where are the tranquillizers? The dose isn’t enough. Can she up it? Maybe she should call someone?
She had to talk to someone, not stay alone in this ordeal. Picking up the receiver, she’d realized no one had called her. Of course, she’d given no news of herself at all, all the more since she isn’t the type to. And besides, out of work, there isn’t even a boss to take an interest in you. So she must have been alone before that.
She dreaded hearing the unavoidable reproach she was already making to herself too much. What was she doing outside, that night at that hour? You shouldn’t go out like that, when no one is there to protect you. She’d looked at herself again in the mirror and let her discovery ripen. It was ugly like that, on the inside. An abscess bursting. Her lips had begun to tremble, but it changed nothing.
She had to leave the apartment, for no reason. She was suffocating. She’d dressed quickly, hurting herself badly as she pulled on her boots, for she couldn’t bend without cramps in her belly reminding her of the violence she’d suffered. Barely outside, she’d wanted to go back in, but held off. There was no one to wait for her, no one to hear her.
The outside had struck her at once as chaotic. It moved, like a mad rush of atoms, people in orbit around the skyscrapers, their arms clutching their documents. The least thing stirred her without leaving any trace in her memory. People, women especially, stared at her because she still carried marks on her face. She refused their tacit fellowship. Why be friends if no one did anything worthwhile. Better to empty herself out, to travel, unchanged, uncertain, sheltered from others.
She couldn’t walk long before the wounds at her groin begged her to rest. She’d step into some establishment, order a coffee, close her eyes, edge gently towards the cliff where her memories plunged. She tried. God how she tried. Too many contradictory memories. Too much experience, or too many disappointments.
In one of these cafés, an old man had touched her shoulder and said something she hadn’t quite caught. It was gentle, but she was crying just then, ashamed to be doing it. The man hadn’t pressed and had gone out at once. After a few moments, she’d done the same and had just time enough to see him go into a bookshop. Can one confide in an old soul?
The tranquillizer she’d swallowed before going out put her in a second state, a third world where humility suits better than pride. She’d gone up to the shop, leaned against a wall and hesitated before entering, sealed inside an acid reverie, the temperature of her body dropping and rising at a dizzying speed. She managed to let herself be rocked by the shifting flow of the wind, the metallic sounds of the city, the sirens, the doors slammed shut. She managed to feel well, drunk on the drug and the coffees. Someone had touched her shoulder and she’d started. A lady, in a fur coat, was asking if she was all right. She’d smiled without answering. Had gone into the bookshop. She hadn’t spotted the old man. Where was he? Had she missed him while she drifted? The bookseller had come over to serve her. Unable to speak, seized by panic, she’d fled. She must have been dreaming, blamed herself for clinging to so thin a hope. Yes, all of it was a metaphor, something complicated, and she no longer controlled anything, no longer wanted to control anything.
She’d washed up in a bar, sat in a dark corner and knocked back four or five glasses of scotch too fast. On top of the drugs, it’s terrible, it makes the miseries more certain, the doubts more glaring and the nausea more swollen. “That’s it,” she told herself, “close your eyes, take a good breath.” So painful, the wounds, the kiss of the rapists. An urgency. “Close your eyes again.”
Ashamed and lost in the fog of the medications and the alcohol, she tried to convince herself it had only been violent sex, cocks seeking the vagina, the anus, the mouth, that her senses had simply been jostled. She clenched her fists at every moment, took breaths she wanted to be reassuring. She told herself too that she’d done worse: those evenings of her youth when she let herself be taken by everything that was hard until it hurt badly, those other nights when her lovers took her by force while she let it happen because it was the fashion and Laborit had written something like a eulogy for it. She’d let her body follow the wind of others, their storms of desire. It was almost always good. She was young and the pain could pass for necessary. So she’d felt, at least. Now? She watched her hands tremble, her wrists still bruised blue by the straps of her rapists. She’d been powerless. Nothing in that past had prepared her for that. She seethed.
She rages. She strikes her body with her aching hands, tries to whip the veins so they’ll row in the ocean of the hours. The drugs at least have the effect of numbing her to the pain now and then. She manages to bear it. The storm seems bent on barring her from the mountain. Her body protests and urges her to go back down. Her head refuses. “We’ll see,” she murmurs. She moves slowly forward. God how it hurts, even so. She should have swallowed, at the bar, all those cursed pills she’d pocketed before leaving the house. If it gets worse, she can gulp more down with the help of some snow.
Her boots aren’t made to endure such cold and she hasn’t dressed properly. She keeps telling herself so. An inner voice scolds her. Nothing new. When she breathes, her lungs take fright. The wind rounds past her, the snow hits her full in the face. She shivers, then feels hot. She doesn’t lose heart. She has to climb, she tells herself, reach the edge of the universe, fire an arrow at it to see what will happen. Is it hopeless? She knows it and doesn’t care. Falls. The snow burns her fingers. That’s how she feels it. There’s no one left to contradict her and so much the better. Or so much the worse. Pouts; the storm sets her cheeks on fire. She doesn’t want to cry. A branch, weaker than the others, breaks, carrying other branches down in its fall. The storm scorns the beauty of the frozen trees. This is the jungle. This is the cold. She blinks heavily.
The current of snow seems to thicken. She walks slowly, gropes for air, stops now and then to watch the city, lower down. This climb is madness, she tries to convince herself, but she looks away every time, fixes on the summit, refuses to believe her thoughts, which never stop circling the answers.
The trees, in the storm, tell her so: “You love your wound.” She answers them: “Hush…” Clenches her fists, sets one foot before the other, drives it into the snow until she feels firm ground, brings the other forward. The drugs are like the wind, they daze her then vanish. Then her belly cries out, her thighs run through with painful shooting aches. She’s forgotten to apply the prescribed ointment. How can anyone love a wound? The trees lie, words lie. To want to forget everything, even if to do so you must silence what might help you forget.
They got you, you could have tried to fight back, you could have…
She shakes her head.
…bitten them, burst their testicles with your nails.
You could have died instead of submitting.
You couldn’t do anything, you saved your skin, you submitted to avoid the worst. Good girl.
She remembers nothing. Which tells the truth, her imagination or her unconscious? Then, suddenly, she sees one of them again. He was handsome and afraid. Young? In other circumstances, it’s probably she who would have hurt him. She laughs. Something, someone, near her heart, breathes on the embers: You have no right to laugh, you have no right to turn away from the outrage, you have no right to take this lightly. She makes a gesture with her hand in the empty air, as if to drive off this reproach.
The storm is everywhere, even in her clothes. She’s surely alone on this mountain. How cold can it be out here? Too cold. Too long she’s been walking. The road winds. The trees never stop flinging themselves in every direction. The snow never stops fleeing. No one can hold out long against such cold. Bruises, she has them everywhere; the rapists would have done better to kill her. She didn’t give in, she was unconscious. It’s not the same thing. As with the storm, she surely screamed, even beyond knowing? Her throat grabs all the air it can. In doing so, the snow smothers her. She coughs.
At a bend in the road, she makes out a tree stump anchored to a small rocky outcrop, all but buried in the snow. Bushes form a screen against the wind; she goes to it. As she reaches the stump, she thinks she sees something scurry off. She hesitates, but sits down anyway. If there’s danger, she can do nothing against it. She lets it be, sets her hands on her knees, tries to breathe steadily. She knows she shouldn’t do this; the cold of the stone will freeze her wounds, her hemorrhoids will add to the suffering, her lungs won’t manage to expel the carbon dioxide and take in oxygen properly; they’ll grow irritated then, which could bring on pneumonia. That’s what she imagines. Every cause has an end. Settles deeper into her makeshift seat. Her spine trembles faintly.
She watches night come down over the city. In spite of the storm, she can make out the traffic lights stop, allow, warn. The streetlamps wake in military clusters, the neon signs gather strength. People come out of the buildings. They study the sky, weigh the storm, press against one another. She knows how the story goes. She too is a woman of the city.
In her makeshift shelter the storm seems far off, the trees less wild. Shivers. Shouldn’t have come here. The snow, more snow. The floor belongs to the pains that stay silent all the same. Nothing left but to close her eyes.
Rest.
Who on earth is saying that inside her head? Her. The thing that, as she closes her eyes, speaks low, carried on the breath of the lungs. The people of the city? She knows them well, can imagine their gestures. They go home. They make themselves comfortable. They eat, watch television, glance at each other now and then, brush their teeth, stretch in front of one another, smile, sigh, go to bed. Sometimes murmur an “I love you” into the hollow of an ear; it makes a warmth that brings a smile. Tom-toms sounding? The blood stands guard at the body’s edges, registers the change in temperature, the brain falls silent and dreams. People soon turn demanding: “get down,” “suck me,” “yes,” “no,” “take me.” They work themselves up, catch fire, sweat, tremble as they dance together under the sheets, as their movements go frantic, as hands join. They slide their tongue into an ear, set a finger between the teeth, knead the lips, breathe on the armpits, rub their hips. They run their hands over skin, savour the pleasure of being blind, play the piano between the pores of the epidermis. Enter this way into the lovers’ labyrinth, all curved caresses, drawing the pleasure out. They take long detours to reach the dirty places or the fragility of the eyes. Not like rape, this is love in a straight line, the love of the survival of the species. The men push their member in and are surprised to meet warmth, as though they were vultures watching, fascinated, their victim’s heart beat fit to burst because there is all at once too much light. The inside of a body is like a monstrous cathedral, armed with antibodies, sucking salivas and honeyed damp. People strike each other, drive their sexes in very deep, want to do as Christ did and chase the infidels from the temple. They swear, could turn necrophagous, roll, distraught, in that alien heat. Some douse themselves in a golden shower, others flagellate. That’s what pleasure is, tiny gestures, violent and tender, violent again, violent all the same. And then the sexes burst, like touch-me-nots. People are happy. They laugh.
She opens her eyes. The laughter, she isn’t sure of it. She doesn’t remember laughing. Coming, maybe, but laughing, while anonymous glands are giving you orders? No! laughing, she saves it for now, lowering her eyes, letting her thoughts play at being makeshift nurses. Clenches her fists tighter. The palms were spared. She lingers on this fact. It means nothing. Shrugs. One must no longer laugh for the right reasons, she tells herself, one must dress one’s joys in silence, lose one’s way as adults do, the soft warmth of their maturity bedding down with their anxiety, never betray oneself, despite the vultures, the acids, the men, their affairs or their bitter tongues.
She breathes, tries to hear the air enter her lungs. The storm… The snow piles up fast on her. She keeps her eyes half open, fixed on indistinct flakes. The snow settles pell-mell, acclimatizes to the ground, breaks branches, gives itself up. The wind polishes the rough edges. The snow turns to sand. Her own skin is on fire. She has a wild urge to piss. Holds it, because letting go would be suicide. And besides, people, when they’ve finished loving each other, let themselves slide slowly one against the other. Their skin is still warm, shivers. Sweat gathers on the drunken surface of the epidermis.
She stands, brushing off the snow. Animals are rivers. Fists shut, she laughs, mocks her own gift for lying to herself. The city has turned many-coloured, its heart pounding wild beneath its skin of concrete. At last she cries, standing before the city, because the people who make love do the same thing as the people who rape and because it’s sometimes absurd to grasp the difference. We hurt each other, either way. Sorting the wounds is impossible.
She leaves her shelter. The body doesn’t want to. The storm wraps her at once. It knows it’s in danger. She won’t listen to it, the way she won’t cry. She won’t cry! A woman, she doesn’t cry anymore. It’s men who from now on have the permission for it. Men are afraid; women hold a black region that gives life, that soon won’t give it anymore, when children will dream between the walls of test tubes. Nothing then will be left but this pleasure so hard to reach. No, she’s wrong again, she tells herself. Her thoughts jostle. She’s still telling herself too many things. And yet she’d need to let herself really go, for the tears to be good for something at least. The words are too present.
She tells herself again that climbing this mountain is madness, tells herself she’s surely going to die.
She tells herself, she tells herself, she tries to keep control, but in vain.
It’s dark on this mountain. That sssssss frightens her suddenly. Someone could be following her… Something or someone! Is the storm singing? Of course not! ffffff But then why is it singing? She forces herself to look ahead. The mountain hides the horizon from her. Her heart quickens its beat. She mustn’t look back. She must silence her fears. It hurts so much anyway. She focuses on the few metres ahead of her. But this stretch is terrible too. The trees cast their unsteady shadows across it, the snow makes menacing shapes. So much noise, quick, silence. Where is that region of the heart that isn’t moved? You feel it so clearly sometimes. She searches. Is it enough just to close your eyes? She searches again. When you close your eyes, where do you go? Quick, quick, silence.
She clenches her fists. She clenches her fists harder. Her body stiffens. The effort is unbearable, but she goes on. She rages. What she fffffffff would give to have the rapists in front of her! Oooooooh yes! She’d bind them to the snow, and with the wind she’d ssssssssss freeze their testicles, swallow their sex and draw out all the sperm to make them sterile. Then she’d tear out their eyes, engulf them in her vagina so they’d see what a woman is. She’d ffffffffffff roll their eyes inside her until they drowned in her climax. And then she’d throw them to the wind!
Lost in her anger, she can’t withstand a gust, stronger than the others, that manages to capsize her. She finds herself on the ground once more, doesn’t resist. Falling is an act as old as the world. She loses consciousness for an instant, still with time enough to smile at the idea of dying there, gently in the cold.
The snow on her face is almost warm. The skin can’t stand such a play of temperatures. The wounds split, run, then freeze again. It’s too late now to avoid the scars. You mustn’t disturb pains as they close over. You mustn’t press.
Lying like this, she can feel the planet turn. She hears something. Lifts her head. No one there; she presses back into the snow. Those steps again. Looks left, mad trees, right, snow fleeing among the brush. No, no one. Tries to catch her breath. She senses a danger but can’t name it. And then she understands. An enormous roar warns her. She springs up. Ahead, a snowplow howls, its blade agape. She has just time enough to throw herself into the ditch. The snow flung off by the machine half-buries her. Her coat falls open in the fall, the snow soaks her clothes. She’s going to die, she tells herself, because she was mad to attempt this climb in this storm. Gets up, shakes herself off, closes her coat, teeth chattering, catches a second wind, takes up her climb again, the night blacker and blacker and the storm a little more inhuman and earthbound. She had a narrow escape. She still has courage, and that reassures her.
The city falls asleep, or rather purrs its secrets and its gestures.
What time can it possibly be? God how cold it is. Stop, storm, stop, I’m cold.
At moments the wind’s force drops so fast that the snow, taken by surprise, hangs suspended in the void. But it’s only another of those tricks storms are so good at, for a monster of air roars all at once and spits out its fury.
Then she despairs of ever making it. She’s mad, raving mad. Maybe up there she’ll be able to take shelter. Doesn’t much believe it. The city purrs, bloody. What time was it, once? You can’t make all this effort when you’re hurt. The wound tends to protest, the body doesn’t love the mind; the mind believes the body is mistaken. The city whirls inside her. The wounds would be slow to heal, the doctor had said; the body, in those places, means no harm. And yet… If ramparts of muscle and fur could bar the road of the senses…
The slope grows steep, her ankles ache. She sneezes often. Her past is cold as the snow she crushes underfoot; she tells herself she has no present anymore, that she lives among the long hours of waiting, hoping for the future.
No, no.
Always the words to explain what is beyond understanding. She commands herself to silence. How long will this climb last? Sometimes she slips, curses herself. The cold and the effort make her giddy.
She hears the far-off rumble of a second snowplow. She goes still an instant, sees the glow of headlights come like a scout to check that the way is clear. The machine appears, dead centre in the lane, driving back the storm the way a whale splits the oceans. She fills her lungs slowly. Does her heart have too much light? Her body gives her no time to think, shoves her into the ditch once again. The snowplow tears past.
No, her heart doesn’t have too much light; it’s in its cage, warm, romantic as you please, pumping around her wounds the blood they need to be fed, if it can with strokes of the bow like those who thrust their hips because they’re taking pleasure. She almost smiles. Fat drops bead on her forehead, announcing the fever. She takes up her walk again, turns up her collar, faces into the wind. She puts herself back at the centre of the now-cleared road. The snow comes down from the heights like a legion of phosphorescent insects fleeing predators. She stays on her feet, not knowing all at once whether to climb or descend. Can’t see the summit, turns around. The city vanishes, now and then, carried off by a curtain of snow. In which direction lies hope?
She is resolved, doesn’t turn around. Elves guide her in her dreams, fairies stand watch beside her as she forces her way through the storm. She’s ashamed of the deliverance her pain brings her. One step after another, the cold at her heels, the warmth of her childhood joys against the present that mounts her gently, second by second, her steaming breath at her back.
This climb is endless. She loses herself in the hours. How long has she been walking? She follows her body obediently; cries, falls, gets up again stubbornly. Look as she may in every direction, she sees only the night. Fatigue and fever have seized her thoughts. Then the colours change, the trees slow their dance, the wind is warm at times. Her teeth chatter feverishly. There are ships, blue as the sky, red sails carried off on the wind of sorrows. Birds shriek, animals brush her legs, catch the scent of the intruder, go back to tell the rest of the jungle to beware. Eyes pierce the night, watch her come forward. She is brave. She’s losing blood. The cold has destroyed her legs, tears the crust from her wounds. The brain takes up its childhood prayers again. The snow drips salt. Now and then she starts to hum, stops at once, because she no longer hears the storm. It’s so dark now.
The shadows multiply. She has no time to learn their origin before they vanish just as fast, chased by other shadows. Her cheeks burn; she tries to shield them with her scarf. Something hits her head, probably a branch. She screams, but here again, falls silent at once. “Easy now,” sing the trees. Eyes, from everywhere, spy on her. Who are they? Only the snow. She brings her hands to her forehead to soften the blow of the cold, but then she has to come to the rescue of her ears, which ring and hear voices. She walks into a tree, believes for the space of a gust that it’s a man, lets out a shrill cry, and in doing so backs away and strikes a rock. In her fall, she’s slapped by the branches of the bushes. Every creature for itself in the grand world of nature. Yet she falls gently, quickly comes to her senses, gets up. The road is right there; she hadn’t seen that it turned sharply. She hears sirens in the distance. She manages to smile all the same. From where she stands, she can see the observation belvedere, up at the summit, an old stone structure joined to a building older still. She’s made it!
She leans against a tree, closes her eyes. Her body is no longer there. She breathes deep. What is existence? A few cells that join and fight for better days? The tree sways at the wind’s whim. It doesn’t care, it sleeps, has the sleep of winter. She’s tired, can’t hold back the endless trembling of her body. The pains. No. The pain. There is only one. The ankles, the lips, the back, the eyes, above all the eyes and their memory, the consciousness, there is only a single pain that has no name. Tomorrow it will be better, she promises herself. The days will be better; in a month the wounds will be dead things of the past. It’s as simple as that.
The belvedere seems far and near at once. She has to go to it, find shelter. Her body won’t follow her. It sulks or it’s dead. Looks around her. It’s like a dream where you dream you’re waking and reality has become something else entirely. She has to walk. She tells herself she has to walk now, but the body goes on refusing. The pain! It goes for her belly. Feels blood inside her. Bends her back, the pain is so strong. She didn’t bring the right medicines. Faints, the snow takes hold of her again. Like a dream, yes, like reality when you wake and realize it isn’t as terrible or as easy as all that. Going to die, die, die, go.
Go! Get up!
She has to do something. Otherwise she’s going to die. Going to die anyway. She manages to get back on her feet. The horizon lurches. It’s raining. No, snowing. The snow liquefies on her forehead. Maybe she should take off this coat. She fixes on the goal to reach. The stretch she has to cross hasn’t been cleared. She mustn’t be afraid, she tells herself. Afraid of what? There’s only the storm howling. There’s only the deep silence of danger and solitude. There’s only death. It’s so simple to say and so hard to understand. She walks, gone deaf to reality. Is she losing too much blood? She mustn’t. When the blood leaks, it means the ship no longer holds the water. It sinks into the earth.
The way ahead is full of snares, of bushes, of invisible holes, maybe of dead rats under the snow, maybe of human refuse, maybe nothing, only her fatigue. Sweating, she reaches the foot of the stairs. She tells herself she may be about to die, but the idea fails to move her.
She shivers too much. The alarm is raised. She feels the fever harrying her eyelids. Coughs without restraint, her lungs no longer suffice. She looks for somewhere warm, scans the building, tries to open the main door. The temptation is strong to break a window, but bars discourage her at once. Her coat has come open, the wind gets in everywhere, breathes on her wounds, freezes her chest. Freezes her with sleep.
The snow has whitened her eyelids. Tiny but heavy bits of ice clog her eyes. She thinks she hears her heart, so close to death it’s already lapping the water of it, a middle note followed by a low note, both muffled by the labyrinth of the organs: toump, toump. toump, toump. Is that what dying is? She skirts the wall. A woman, she doesn’t cry anymore. Thoughts, freed of their fears, travel at the speed of light. She hallucinates, goes silent, can she no longer feel her feet? toump, tooooump. Her thoughts have wings, frrrrrrr, she envies them, for they know how to flee when it hurts too much.
She slides down the wall, huddles in a corner of the building. It’s no less cold there. Her head rests against the stone. She is neither sad nor bitter, the poetry of the cold lulls her. And then the waking is brutal. She mustn’t fall asleep, it would be the end. Breathes into her hands. It’s too late. It’s the storm howling. No, it’s angels. The snow has a high, young voice. Curls up tighter, plunges her head between her knees, pulls her coat down as best she can. Do thoughts freeze like water, to melt at the spring of some other border? The idea pleases her. She drowns in the cold, tries to breathe calmly. How long has she lived? Is it enough? She can’t remember anything anymore. She thinks only of the cold, then dreams again. She falls asleep. The cold protects her. The storm will probably be one of those follies of the century. She wakes once more with a start. She begins at once to cry. They weren’t many, her years. Three men burst the bubble of her destiny. Her heart is slow. Toump.
The hours pile up. Or so she believes. She can no longer move, feels good, in the cold, motionless and pure as an icicle. If the outside is loud, the inside is silent now. And yet she hears voices, the thoughts of people. But still. She hears steps, noises, memories, laughter, gestures. She hears all of it in the silence of her inside sheltering from the cold. The memories stream past at full speed. Then no, she hears nothing more. She is c.o.l.d c.o.l.d. c.o.o.o.o.o.l.d.
They were so many inside her. To warm her? She doesn’t know. The first man had been kind but ignorant. The girls at school called him Hormone, he reeked of the thing so. He screwed every girl. They were many inside her; she’s going to die. No child. Toump. The storm dares to cross the limit of the belvedere. Isn’t there a monastery on this mountain? Does the idea hold her awake an instant? Her last chance? The cold convinces her to attempt nothing. Too much effort. The second man took her by force sometimes. His member entered quickly, unfeeling, strong as lions. He cared only for himself but needed her to do it. She smiles, tries desperately to cling to that little warmth this memory holds. c.o.o.o.l.l.l.d. The third man was several at once. The ones after were grey, black, white, English or Bedouin. The last were not men, oh no! not men, vvvvvvvvvvv.
She forgets what she’s supposed to feel. Is it really cold? There are shadows around her. There are memories, snow, jjjjjjzzz. How could the last males take pleasure? What did they want to see? She doesn’t understand. Does she want to understand? The storm inside her. There is light. When had she really lost consciousness? They had bitten her breasts. Men are carnivores. They don’t know what ecstasy is, they dream and ejaculate. She can still cry, her vision darkens, telluric spasms shake her bones. She looks at the storm, always the storm that will never cease. Teeth chattering.
One. Two. Three, breathe in…
There are, on this earth, people dressed in colours and wearing Nazi perfumes, young people with carefree hormones, aesthetes who sow the void, wearing disease like a style.
She loved poetry.
There are people who die in the winged bitterness of faith, perfect people whose only drama is death, others who will see it only through a dream.
Loved?
One. Two. Three, breathe out…
The men were many inside her; their seed, clear, smothered by human medicines, gave nothing. Alone, alone, alone, far from people with their well-earned happiness.
One… One… One… Breathe out… One…
The partitions of her intelligence collapse one after another, the verbs flay the nerves, the body seizes the adjectives and bloodies the consciousness. Her eyelids are heavy, glaciers block her sight. There are those who know how to live, who bring the daily bread, who fuck their wife with philosophy, others who pay no attention, who ejaculate because they can’t do otherwise, while others have the limp cock of the dull and the vipers. She is alone in the world of her kind, because there is only her on this hellish mountain. There are unscrupulous people who wait only for nakedness to soil themselves, others who will go straight to heaven, others straight to hell, others upright, knights of the senses who know how to wound no wall, who have no weakness. She knows they exist, these people, they have ears to hear, smiles to soften misfortunes. She knows they exist, she wants them to exist. Happiness too exists.
One… two… Breathe in.
Three, breathe out. She tries not to drink the water of the rising silence, stretches her neck to reach the air. There are men, tender, tender, who, effeminate, plunge into the guts of males. There are women, alone, alone, who open their hearts only to get back some vague promise. There are human beasts who know neither how to love nor how to build loves. There will be many, still many people who will pass across this earth, there where she sits. There is the snow, ready to fossilize her entrails, sad women, sad, who give birth in happiness and hope while the cold ossifies her skin.
One!
Two!
Three!
Several! Wounds to break your soul, the freedom of the strongest. The storm, always the storm, the cold, more cold that bites and rapes, the bones that slap themselves. Alone, far from people with their well-earned happiness. She didn’t do it on purpose. She didn’t want it to happen this way. She wanted to live. Asked nothing of anyone. No, that’s false, but she can no longer know it. There is no truth in what she feels. She tries to scream. The dark. The dark? There is a man beside her.
You’re hallucinating, she tells herself, you’re dying.
She curls tighter into a ball, clenches her fists. The snow rushes into the belvedere so as not to die just yet, or die further. It’s like people, she thinks. She already told herself that a while ago. What time is it? No, she’s not thinking anymore. There were three or four of them. Adulthood, the age of the singular. She tells herself again that there is someone beside her.
She’s being touched. The dark shifts. She lifts her head, opens her eyes. She sees only the eyes beneath the hood, but she knows it’s a man. She cries out, tries to get up; the cold has killed her legs. The man takes her by the shoulders, shakes her. She struggles, screams. She’s mad, would have wanted to die far from men. As in a bad dream, she can’t move. There is a man, an enemy, a rapist. Men aren’t all alike. Yes, they are. She struggles. He still holds her firmly. She thinks she hears something that ends in “…no harm.” She doesn’t believe it. Where is the storm? Where is the storm! She’s lost control. She must be dreaming. Her impoverished eyes make out only shadows. She goes limp, carried off by weeping. After a few moments, something is held to her mouth. Her lips tremble but open greedily. Alcohol! No. No. No. She coughs, loses control of her breathing for a moment. She’s struck on the back. She goes back to drinking. He says, “Easy…” Is he alone? His voice is far away. She drinks greedily, chokes again.
She manages to open her eyes. The man stands, searches in a bag. She curls into a ball again: he’s going to undress her, she knows it, they all do that. But the man draws a blanket from it and lays it over her at once. He bundles her up carefully, tucks the edges under her body, without a single needless gesture. The whole time, he says not a word.
She tries to understand what he’s doing there, but can see neither his face nor his hands. His fur coat envelops him and makes him anonymous. He draws back a little. She hears him speaking further off. She manages to grasp better what he is. Snowshoes stuck in the snow. A thick coat. A man who takes pleasure in living the storm.
He’s on the phone. She catches only scraps: a street, the mountain, the word “quick.” He comes back to her. “Help is coming up,” she makes out. Her head spins; she sees the stars. Impossible, in this storm.
The man crouches beside her. He touches her now only to hold the blanket closed. She glimpses him an instant, motionless, a dark mass between her and the wind. He resembles someone. Her father, maybe. Her father always left the bathroom door open. She manages to smile. There is someone, there, who takes nothing.
She needs to piss. She’d have to get up, she can’t, her legs are dead. Her bladder bursts. Never mind. To hell with it. Auf Wiedersehen. The urine burns her legs, then cools. She begins to tremble uncontrollably. She manages to say, “…gone in my underwear…” The man doesn’t flinch. He only tightens the blanket, lays a hand on her forehead, leaves it there.
Don’t touch me, she thinks, deep down, there where words no longer rise. He hasn’t touched her. He says, “It’s going to be all right. They’re coming.”
She’d like to believe him. Her trembling, little by little, dies down. Is it the warmth of the blanket, or the cold gaining ground? She no longer knows. Her soul protests, but silence settles in her head. She forgets the cold. The man’s hand stays on her forehead, motionless, honest. He says, “Hushhh…” She no longer hears the storm. The snow no longer reaches her. She lets herself go.
One, two, three, as if for a waltz.
Breathe.
Three, two, one, die. It’s good. Like childhood, and the moments too of certain embraces. Is she dreaming? She’d had a fine childhood. Her parents loved her; their faces appear. They smile at her; it comforts her. The fifth man could have been her saviour. She should have called for help; she could have stayed huddled at home. He would have come, would have consoled her. She’s wasted her life. It no longer matters.
The man has a good warmth. It reminds her of the dog of her childhood. She used to love burying her face in its fur. She could hear its slow breathing tell her it would protect her all her life. Toump, toouuump. All the smells of the world, all the sensations of the Earth. Words float and dance. There are images of her past too, many of them. It’s a long, simple dream. The pains in it are neither warm nor cold. What was his name, that first lover?
The man tells her again to be quiet: “Hushhh.” But she wants to know. He shrugs: “It’s no use anymore.” She persists, realizes he’s reading her thoughts.
“Am I dying?” she asks. He doesn’t answer. She nestles closer. “I’m not afraid…”
Opening her eyes is painful. She sees the stone before her, the building… The storm rages, howls more than ever. Her head is half-buried in the snow. She can see, before her eye, a snowflake fall heavily. She closes her eyes.
The man’s hand on her forehead erases her wounds. She’s no longer in pain. She has no more memories. She turns her head a little towards the warmth, against the fur of the coat, there where the wind no longer comes. Her heart stops.
Light over there. She wants to go to it. It’s easy; the thought is enough. The man goes with her. They walk hand in hand. That was happiness, when love was tasted in silence, without fear of the outrages of envy. There is nothing left now to say. Arrived close by, the man crosses the wall of light first. It looks like the vertical water of an African falls. Pure and wild. She doesn’t hesitate. It’s the end of her life.