Without warning, lightning rends the sky. Rémi jumps. The night rumbles. As though excited by the prospect of receiving holy water, the trees shake their branches with what looks like jubilation. In the distance, other massive flashes of lightning attest to the scale of the battle; the storm spreads wide. A terrible fury that heralds the possible end of the great heat. A second bolt, more powerful still, fancies itself Zeus. The immediate crash proves that the wrath of the gods is at hand.
Rémi gets up, his head heavy. He goes inside and mechanically makes sure the windows are closed. He trips over Victor’s clothes, left in the living room. He looks up at the ceiling, beneath his husband’s bedroom. Victor is surely unaware of anything. The sleep of the just, the sleep of the pure, the sleep of boredom.
He returns to the patio. He is thirsty. The evening’s wine has overcome his liver. His lungs have trouble separating fresh air from intoxication. A thunderstorm this close is rare. Dangerous too. No matter; when the first drops strike the wood of the patio, he leans resolutely against the railing, ready to die there or, more modestly, to believe that he might lose his life. A flash, followed by a resounding crash, almost convinces him to return to safer ground. Beyond all proportion to his ecstasies and his desire to be what he is—him. Him? Him, nothing else, nothing but that. A little nothing; the thunder confirms it.
The rain now falls with such brutality that it hurts. But Rémi holds firm, implores the gods of the sky, broadens his chest, tries to breathe in the air imprisoned by the rain. One, then four peals, three, six distant flashes, and more drumrolls, followed by total brilliance and the air splitting open as though the world were ending. Rémi cries out in terror, gripping the wooden railing tightly. The atmosphere becomes electrified; the street lamps flicker, go dark, come back on. Rémi weeps, then bursts out laughing. The dense rain no longer hurts him but flows like a vertical river over his hunched back.
Although the thunderstorm is far from over, Rémi knows it has already rushed away to raise its clamour elsewhere, that the danger has passed. And yet it still manages to frighten, hurling a few well-aimed bolts behind it while the mercenary rain violates the earth and takes possession of it.
Rémi straightens his back. He feels like Ulysses after the Sirens, happy, as Ulysses was, to have made the voyage. Soaked to the bone, he nevertheless remains there, standing, naked and trembling. The thought of kneeling crosses his mind, of returning to that simple gesture that once silenced consciences, that made people accept everything without flinching or protesting too loudly. He does not do it. Instead, he would like to sing, to release from his entrails a sonorous arrow equal to his smallness. But once again, he does nothing. The idea alone is enough. Tomorrow will be another day. He is tired because he does not sleep enough. Tomorrow truly will be another day, but will the sun take its revenge?
Defeated, he accepts the water as a new baptism. To his left, he sees Irène’s silhouette. In her soaked nightgown, she has done as he has and seems happy. Has he made a spectacle of himself? Did she hear him? It does not matter. Weeping is like praying. He closes his eyes to do as she does.