Eric Chevillard

Palafox

1

Pop open an egg, or, actually, what should one call the delicate operation by which one removes an egg’s superior (or allegedly so) quarter, via a teaspoon’s well-placed tap? Does one behead, uncork, uncap, unhood an egg? Our three guests have no idea, dismissing the question with waves of their hands, impressive indeed from a technical standpoint, their shared gesture, economical and precise, ‘masterful’ never having found an object to which it more appropriately applied. Each compliments the other in turn while, not one to haggle, Palafox splits his shell with one fell peck. It hadn’t been his ambition to hatch, no, not yet, he merely wanted to annex the adjoining space. The day comes, though, when one can no longer grow in one’s egg. Palafox was running out of room. Around the table, by contrast, they maneuvered through more comfortable confines, each too far from the other to land a fork accidentally in an eye, bottles serving as buffers too. The war was mentioned, then the conversation turned to a looming marriage, and then to eggs when Palafox burst out and in. Nonetheless, while extending an arm, Maureen could have easily and unambiguously gouged out her father’s eye or that of her future husband for that matter, should they have happened into conversational contretemps. And Chancelade would have only needed to make the merest movement of a hand to gouge out either his future father-in-law’s eye or that of his future wife, or first that of his future father-in-law and then that of his wife or the inverse, future wife first and only then future father-in-law. Despite the blood that would have blinded him, Algernon could have then countered and, blow by blow, first gouged out his daughter’s eyes and then those of his future son-in-law, or the inverse… but no, fortunately, nothing like that had happened. Everyone agreed on the matters that mattered. Chancelade was leaving for the front. Of course Maureen would wait for him. Algernon was now too old to fight. He envied his young friend. The marriage would take place as soon as he returned, once the enemy had been undone. Nothing fancy. Or, of course, at the very least, one could rent a chateau for the occasion. Why not do something sumptuous? Maureen wanted to have three, the eldest to be called Algernon. But there would be time to worry over those details. For the time being, back to basics: did Chancelade like fresh eggs? Theirs they got fresh each morning locally, wholesale. They hadn’t even left the region. Like isn’t the word: Chancelade was literally crazy about eggs. What luck: fresh eggs!

Palafox too, who had thoroughly enjoyed his. Nothing left for him to absorb. So a shortage of supplies was another reason to make an outing. Palafox made a few first prudent pecks, one more, and stopped, trying to gauge the reaction of his unforeseeable neighbor. In any case he would not give up, he was ready for his release, there was no longer any question of his holding back. No reaction from his unforeseeable neighbor, or he was sleeping, or he was out, or he was deaf, or he was dead, or he could give two shits, or no one or no longer anyone or no one yet lived there. Hypotheses abounded. Palafox cracked the shell, and was on the table in one bound. Algernon had the presence of mind to cover the creature with his glass. Thus was Palafox discovered and speedily taken into custody. One should not put faith in the ramblings of the skipper Sadarnac, captain of the Rémora, who claims to have caught him wriggling in his net, then to have given him to Algernon. Poppycock.

His new interior was larger and brighter than his old one, where the sun, for one, never entered. In the beginning, on the whole, Palafox seemed satisfied with the change. Here, at least, he had all the spare space and time he needed to run rings around himself, for example, from right to left, or then from left to right, for another. He did sixty in a row and stopped on a dime, inspected his surroundings, continued spinning half-heartedly and stopped again. Everybody down, we’re under attack joked Chancelade, his sense of humor the first thing you loved about Chancelade. Maureen sent her glass waltzing in the direction of the piano and leaned, gently, so as not to frighten it, toward the little creature. She placed a finger on its heart, and shivered, Algernon jumped, Chancelade in full dress uniform drew his regal blade; bravado, another of Chancelade’s charms. In fact, only Palafox remained dignified, or shapeless, since the glass, as it was meant to, struck the instrument. A three-footed chandelier struck a simplistic harmony with the one-legged waltzer and silence returned, and remained. Still, one heard the protestations of the piano stool.

Maureen re-embraced her past, she bent over Palafox, put a finger lightly on its heart and prescribed three drops of water-weakened wine, fresh breadcrumbs and rest. Algernon climbed into the attic. He soon returned with the old wicker cage, or maybe it was rattan, the old rattan cradle, or perhaps wicker, that had been his daughter’s. It was a rectangular cage, rather large, with a trapeze for acrobatics. It had been jointly owned by a white mouse, a hamster and a guinea pig who all showed little inclination for acrobatics and were soon carried off by a mysterious illness, Snowball one day, Fireball the next, Sootball the day after. Zincball, the dwarf rabbit — the next one to move in — became paralyzed three days after arrival, but enjoyed Maureen’s games for at least another month. Then a squirrel christened Fireball in memory of Fireball kept her company for a few weeks, then a canary, Sootball in memory of Sootball, remained alive for a whole year, some mornings more than others, then Snowball in memory of Snowball and Zincball in memory of Zincball, two waxbills, joined them in the tomb, at the edge of the garden, beneath the tree. They persisted, bought more furballs and feathers, tried out horns and scales, in theory more durable, less silky, but more durable — all in vain. Maureen never stopped mourning. The cage went into the attic. They forgot about it. Maureen became quite a young woman. Chancelade met her at the house of President Franc-Nohain, a bosom friend of his late father’s, killed while hunting. That night, the presidential salon was illuminated in honor of the British ambassador’s retirement. But Algernon Buffoon would not return to his country, his daughter had grown up here, he owned a house in the capital and a lovely house on the Atlantic coast, La Gloriette. So you’re the son of this poor Chancelade, I was myself on the hunt, the brambles, the collapse, the gun slipped from his grip, the shot went off by itself, Franc-Nohain will have already told you, we tried everything, there was nothing we could do. Better that I introduce you to my daughter. Chancelade wore a mustache, Maureen pointed out to him he did not have it the next day when he called on the Buffoons. The roses were white, Maureen counted twenty-three, plus one in his boutonnière. They would keep for a week in a Chinese vase, more or less Chinese, in the salon, no more, then they would wilt, and need to be replaced, it was the way of things. Chancelade got into the habit of coming for lunch every Sunday.

Maureen’s childhood was no less mourningfilled by the disappearance of her four grandparents, a boy, a girl, a boy, a girl, the dream, but above all, and this is the point we wished to make, by the high and dry loss of a good twenty goldfish and sungold perch. However, Sadarnac lies, Palafox did not inherit the aquarium. Maureen had put him, dead or alive, in the rattan cage, let’s opt for the rattan, on a bed of freshly cut grasses. The first days, his condition remained alarming, then Palafox opened an eye, there was talk of a slight improvement, then he closed it. It was said he grew worse, that hope sprang eternal, that all hope was lost, that it was a true miracle, that he was officially dead, that the speedy recovery was astonishing. They celebrated too soon and unwisely invited friends to celebrate. That would be the Franc-Nohains, the Fontechevades, the Swanscombes, the old and the uncertain, all the old uncertain acquaintances of the Buffoons.

There was talk of a relapse. The party was called off. Palafox rolled over and bared his white belly. He would be buried with the others, at the edge of the garden, beneath the tree. Maureen handled everything immediately, found a box, when, all of a sudden, he dove back in and made two revolutions around his coral branch. Operations ground to a halt. He floated lifeless to the surface. In the wardrobe, Maureen found the box. Palafox opened his mouth, there was talk he was saved, and then he closed it. The box already had shoes inside. Once again the alternation of hope and despair. The second box contained letters, the third buttons, the fourth candy. Palafox shuttled between life and death, and vice versa, between death and life effortlessly. Algernon took it upon himself to delay the transfer to the coffin. However the fifth was empty, would have been entirely acceptable, seemed made for the task. A rectangular cardboard box, with a cardboard cover and silk-paper shroud.

Gumball, suggested Maureen. Palafox was chosen eventually, in memory of Palafox, duke of Saragossa, born in Saragossa, who distinguished himself in his heroic defense of Saragossa in 1809. The name was chosen unanimously, as follows. They first arrived at the number 111 by adding the ages of everyone present, Algernon, his daughter and Chancelade, upon which they opened the historical atlas to page 111. The article in question concerned the Treaty of Utrecht, 1579, without belaboring things here with the details, which brought into being the Netherlands. On page 1579, therefore, of the illustrated Dictionary were seven names composed of seven letters like Buffoon: Palacky, the Czech historian and advertising executive, Paladru, a village in the Isère, Palafox, a gentleman of Aragon, Palamas, theologian of the Greek church, Palamás, a Greek writer, Palatin, a mountain, and Palermo, an Italian port. The village, Paladru, the mountain, Palatin, and the port, Palermo, were rejected out of hand. Palamas and Palamás were rejected immediately in all fairness or fear of confusion. That left Palacky and Palafox. Chance decided, tails Palacky, heads Palafox: Chance adds spice to life. Heads. Palafox. He will be introduced to society at the opportunity provided by the reception Algernon gives each summer in la Gloriette. The Swanscombes had already RSVPed yes. The Franc-Nohains would try to make it. Which leaves us only three months to train Palafox. Why hide the fact that he disappoints. Such aggressiveness, such savagery. Two weeks ago he was dead, and now this violence. Algernon will be responsible for his education. Our friend is precisely the author, other than of a Guide to Collecting Ancient Pottery, the bible of collectors the world over warranting its own serious study which, alas, we will not be able to saddle up having already in the reins Palafox to whip on, of a work entitled, Advice to my Daughter: Choosing Friends, First Steps, Hygiene and Beauty, Be an Angel, Art of Conversation, Perilous Wit.

Two weeks ago Palafox was dying, it was only an attempt. He recuperated quickly. One morning at dawn, he made his cry heard, which is to say, a sort of chirping, or more of a meowing, or more of a barking, or more of a lowing, well that’s almost it, a roar, or more exactly a trumpeting, yes, that’s the word, a sort of chirping. Then he bit Chancelade, drawing blood from the hand that was giving him crumbs to peck at. Such were the first signs of his recovery. Two days later, his condition was no longer a matter of concern. Palafox leapt from his fishbowl, nestled between Maureen’s feet, scaled her back, bit her ear. She alone, by the way, could get near him. Despite his experience with diplomacy and rosebushes, Algernon himself had to retreat. Palafox devoured a sofa. It wasn’t a valuable piece of furniture, but our friend was attached to it for sentimental reasons, keeping it as an act of charity, in gratitude for services rendered. Even with his back to the wall, he wouldn’t have swallowed a single mouthful, the littlest morsel. A declaration of war was signed over the sofa. It was soft. It knew how to be firm. Women knew they could count on it, always available when they needed it to faint on, it was waiting. But nothing now is left, only the glimmer in our memories. A painting by father Buffoon, hobbyist, shows it still solidly settled on dachshundly hams, green against a scarlet background, shrewdly emphasized by the big bouquets of feathers, the baskets of flowers and fruits arranged around it, and by the naked courtesan, perhaps a bit overweight, lounging with complete abandon, thinking herself alone. Palafox next attacked a Louis XV sideboard attributed to the workshop of Charles Topino. Algernon had every reason to believe it was. Naturally, the left panel dated from much later. But the workmanship, the finish, the particular care given over to details, all of it seemed to indicate a work by the famous cabinetmaker.

You get them when they’re little, they’re adorable, so affectionate, you grow attached to their clumsiness, they grow up fast, their instincts awaken, then they become dangerous, Palafox constituted a permanent menace to everyone’s health and possessions. He broke the Chinese vase, or so-called. He refused to get into his cage, slept in a ball on a rug, fed on furniture, books or paintings, and to drink? Algernon’s multifaceted liqueurs. Maureen put herself in the fray, redoubled her efforts, she did not succeed at making him go back into the bowl. She tried her best to cajole him with caresses, sweets, she wanted him to be attached. He bared his belly to her palm but rejected every treat but his leash.

What about a strong sedative? Chancelade didn’t relish the thought either, it was just a suggestion. Zoologists called in to consult could doubtless explain Palafox’s behavior. Perhaps he was doing no more or less than obeying species-specific imperatives. Perhaps he was being little more than faithful to his nature. But before passing judgment, they would want to observe him in his habitat. They needed to be done with it. Algernon, Chancelade and Maureen approached the animal carefully, Chancelade in the center a bit behind the other two, all three backs bent over, all six hands extended, a recommended formation when trapping a goose in a pen, someone makes a move and wrings its neck, plucks it, guts it, trusses it, puts it on a spit, feasts upon it, whereas Palafox slipped through their fingers. Because Palafox is, recall, miniscule. With a flea-like leap he hid in the flowerbox. Amidst plants — philodendra, lilies, dauphinelles, aspidistras, dwarf palms — his frail frame, cylindrical, greenish, foliaceous paws lightly downy, blended in. Palafox was outsmarting them, there was no time to lose. They brought out the big guns. Fire. As if they were going to roast the goose now. Fire, there was the answer. Fires drive fauna from flora, would you lay eggs in a burning oak? Algernon struck a match.

When man discovered it, stumbled over it in his wanderings, fire turned all red and began to dance a jig. A strange reaction which it still maintains today, after thousands of years of complicity and pyromania. The flowerbox burst into flame, a young philodendron shoot tore itself away from the inferno screaming, falling into Algernon’s hands. Palafox was put into the box of matches, without the matches. Maureen punched ten, and then another five, little holes, fifteen in all. Upon which Chancelade took a deep breath and left for the front.

2

No need to cite all their books, those by professors Zeiger, Cambrelin, Pierpont, Baruglio, as if any of them required an introduction. It took them a great deal of study and effort to get them where they are, they had read a great deal, traveled, waited forever in blinds, tricked hunger with thirst, thirst with cold, cold with fear, fear with boredom and boredom, finally, with hunger. Henceforth bald, their precious knowledge under glass, they have little left to learn.

Let’s take Pierpont, the entomologist. After months of daily contact, he succeeded in quieting first the suspicion then, second stage, winning the trust of a colony of damselflies more commonly called dragonflies and more vulgarly still damselflies, they allowed him to play with them, go on their excursions, in exchange at first for a few sweets, then without anything in return, in friendship, in brotherhood, an adopted damselfly integrated into the group arousing neither fear nor curiosity, only the desire of the females in spring. The fear that gripped him at the beginning of the experience — he confessed it without false shame as soon as he recovered the use of words, after several weeks of reeducation, before a gathering that was taken aback to see the scrawny attendee try to scale his carafe — soon made room for a feeling of security, shocking when one knew the native nastiness and the strength of these animals. He could turn his back on them without fright. In the end, he slept without his weapon. Baruglio had followed the opposite initiative, no less rich in discoveries. Rather than going to live among the reptiles (he had no desire to drag his family with him), the celebrated herpetologist raised one in his home, like a son, having scrupulously recreated its Madagascar habitat in a cupboard. Could one imagine better conditions for the study of an animal? Its every gesture and deed, its daily routine, nothing escapes the observer who dwells on the grounds in these places, rises at dawn to exchange bittersweet words with his mate, drinks some coffee, reads the papers, answers the mail, lunches at noon, half-past, drinks a cognac, shuts himself in his laboratory until evening — where he is not to be disturbed under any circumstances — dines at the stroke of seven, half-past, steps out onto the balcony, contemplates street and sky, dispassionately flips through professional journals, swallows a sleeping pill, kisses his companion on the forehead, and falls asleep on his belly — yes, it is odd, almost systematically on the forehead and on his belly. The information made the rounds of the building, people came down from upstairs to watch Baruglio handle his reptile. All the same, certain neighbors complained, necessitating the immediate elimination of the creature. She seemed so sweet, inoffensive even, but how could one say what a wild animal would do in captivity? One way or another reptiles eventually escape into the sewers, it’s common knowledge. A petition circulated. Baruglio put an end to the experiment, and got rid of his blue radiata tortoise.

These two eminent zoologists responded to Algernon’s call. But let’s not forget professor Zeigler, polyglottal ornithologist able to imitate beyond reproach the calls or wheezes of some sixty birds, who could, thanks to his gift of the gab, marry an ostrich, however much he hesitated to do so. Finally Cambrelin, the ichthyologist, was sent by Sadarnac. This one claims whenever he gets a chance to have harpooned Palafox in the middle of the wide Sargasso Sea, after having missed him once in the Floridian Straits. A lie. Specialists not without other interests, Pierpont, Zeigler, Baruglio, and Cambrelin do not know all there is to know about wild animals, batrachians, rodents, mollusks, ruminants, primates, or seafood. Algernon entrusted them with Palafox. The four men made a circle around the glass cage where the exposed animal finally remained calm. Zeiger examined his eyes, his nostrils, his crest, Cambrelin his right side, Baruglio his rump, Pierpont his left hand, turn please, Pierpont his eyes, his groin, his goatee, Zeigler his right arm, Cambrelin his stinger, Baruglio his left wing, turn please, Baruglio his eyes, his beak, his antennae, Pierpont his right fin, Zeigler his flat, trowel-like tail, Cambrelin his left side, please turn, Cambrelin examines his eyes, his wattles, his horns, Baruglio his right gill, Pierpont his rectrices, Zeigler his left arm, they look at each other, yes, they would do well to dissect Palafox. They decide against it. Certain organisms do not tolerate well being cut into pieces, their hearts beat anxiously when handed around, and the effects of such shock to the nervous system tend to have unpredictable results, one example alone, there is nothing harder in all the world than to get a quartered thoroughbred to gallop. We content ourselves, then, with a few dermatological samples, some muscle, a bit of blood, bone and cartilage, which shouldn’t prevent the well-trained Palafox from carrying its jockey on to victory.

The arrangement satisfied everyone, after which everything went to hell. Pierpont and Zeigler begin to quarrel, brothers however, and with shared experiences — ah! these drinking orgies — who had stuck together when fireless winters encroached upon womanless springs, when you would’ve swallowed your own brain if you could to fill your belly, before either had tasted glory or had tossed to the public (beaten, standing, unleashed) the wolf at the door and the ears of a mad cow. Their friendship came to an end the day when the unforgivable ornithologist forgot the entomologist’s precious collection of coleopteran beetles in the aviary, in particular the weevil, the Capricorn beetle, the carob, and the june bug, thus the sapphire faded, the ruby, the topaz and emerald, all these gems fading, their value evaporating, soon to be gravel. The dispute is about Palafox’s nervous system. Pierpont refuses to use sulfuric acid, even in the interests of pacific experimental ends. Zeiger, on the contrary, swears by the benefits of the process, very popular with frogs, which allows for immediate observations, reproducible at will, thanks to which schoolchildren learn to develop their reflexes and respond intelligently to stimuli. Let’s admit that nothing could be funnier. A few drops of acid induce a string of irresistible visual gags, we might even believe we’ve been transported back to the golden age of silent film: the frog tears itself free of the cork board upon which it was resting, lazily, pinned, decorative, jumping like it possessed magic beans or the winning number or the solution to all the world’s problems, upending the contents of the laboratory, leaping into the middle of the retorts, devoting itself without believing in them to chemical experiments, alchemical, obtaining white precipitates, black precipitates, buttressing itself against the tip of the Bunsen burner, it melts lead, cinnabar, at whim, sipping bubbly alcohols, drawing liquid out of gold and from eau regale, inhaling the mix, obtaining this time a thick red smoke, a laugh-inducing tear gas, leaving no one indifferent — its number is up when it implodes, happily we have plenty of others, a whole crate.

Whereas Palafox is a rare specimen in our experience, Pierpont counters, perhaps the last, perhaps the first. Let’s not make another move, let’s watch it gather pollen, distill caterpillars, and weave its web and soon we will know everything about it. You see, with this sort of trunk linked to his digestive tube, how he pumps the nectar from flowers. On his rear paws, there, there, come closer, that there, we see miniscule balls of propolys, resin gathered on buds, which will allow him to caulk the cracks in his habitat, reinforce the attachment of these strips of wax, and to stickily ensnare the aphids he eats from time to time. Look at the progress we are making. These first observations are interesting actually, admitted Cambrelin, but, that said, let’s be reasonable. Think of all the errors made in the past in the classification of living things. We had first thought the whale a fish, for example, in those days when men were trusting and naïve. Today, we presume they belong to the same group as our own, dear Maureen, that of mammals, but a researcher more in the know, and better equipped as well, let it be said, perhaps will tomorrow discover that in reality it is a passerine, however heavy, a pretty sparrow. So let’s not go crazy here.

There are nearly two thousand species of snake, Baruglio announced abruptly. If Palafox seems at first not to resemble in any way an asp, that does not necessarily mean that despite everything it isn’t one, as we have seen many a screech owl that resembles an owl (raised eyebrow of our ornithologist duly noted). It was night, Baruglio insisted. That excuses nothing, hissed the ornithologist who will never forgive his brother for having forgotten an anaconda in his aviary, noting the bird of paradise, the lyrebird, the hornbill, the toucan, all these high-end parakeets bred in limited numbers by nature to distract the explorer, compensated for his efforts as a tsetse fly kisses his cheek. Having taken the floor (let him keep it) Zeiger wonders where Palafox nested before he had a cage at his disposal. The egg had only been a stage. In light of recent events and of the manner in which the animal, without having even been invited to sit down, had appropriated the sofa (even a repo man would have avoided eating it on the spot), he must have benefited parasitically from existing structures. In all likelihood, he would dislodge an enfeebled goldcrest and take residence in his nest. The brood collapses overboard, the birds, still weighed down with their eggish reflexes, slow to adapt to the soil — their cardboard skulls strike the corner of a violet, and the only witness to their death is a succulent slug. Palafox settles down, makes himself at home, his head beneath strangely endivelike wings, with no other means of escape from his sad destiny than to dream, he falls asleep. As for the slug, slugs are not famous for their spirit of initiative, Palafox the next day found it there, prepared in its own juice, served warm upon a mint leaf. This hypothesis, for want of being seductive, seemed the most likely. However, upon reflection, Zeiger put it aside, as a man accustomed to marching straight ahead no matter the reeds or rushes, and so it was precisely there in a swamp that he believed he could locate the true habitat of our palmiped. Palafox, therefore, widened and deepened a hole dug by a musk otter, built up the opening with mud, yes, with mud, where would he have procured the bones of a nun?

All the more so as he would have needed quite a few of them. I share your opinion on this point, Ziegler. But back to Palafox’s doings, you were conjuring up the sofa, let’s recall the breakfront, the vase, the liquors, and the books belonging to Algernon. How can you assert that this ferocity is a permanent characteristic of its nature, as characteristic as its goiter, for example, or its exasperating buzzing? Would you feel comfortable judging a being on the basis of only a few isolated facts? When you are angry, Zeiger, it happens, the biographer of Attila waits to see what will happen before writing to his editor that he has a great idea for his next book. Palafox dazzled by the gleam of the chandeliers will doubtless have given himself over to panic. And Pierpont goes on to mention how the trembling flame of a candle drives to similar acts of desperation the geometer moth: this little candlelit dinner beginning in high spirits ends in tragedy… (and if the child conceived beneath the table, during dessert, by a man and a woman, both tipsy, knew how many blue butterflies had paid with their lives to make his birth possible, would we see him ten years later test the twelve blades of his new knife on the lilac caterpillar? — but this is an aside).

Zeiger and Baruglio nod their heads. They are in agreement as far as this goes — free, Palafox lived a nocturnal existence. He lived in a hollow trunk. All day he remained there, immobile, unbudgeable, eyes stitched shut, impenetrable. At dusk, he exited his dugout canoe and went to work, punctual night watchman, guardian of nature’s order, he detected the vole ferreting about, like a fire starting among the crops. Taken one by one, the vole is the gentlest, the most delicate of beings, it arouses deep emotion and the desire within us to contaminate it with some mortal illness of which we will use every care we can muster to cure him. Two voles look almost identical. Three, lassitude sets in. Four eat like ten. Ten in a field closes a mill. One more and the country runs the risk of ruin, begging assistance from a neighboring state which in return for its help demands the return of a mountainous province, wooded, skiable, conquered by armed forces, then consents to the transportation of the supplies, supplies being powdered milk and radish-greens. Were it not for Palafox’s vigilance, his tireless rounds, his heavy but silent flight, since feathers and darkness ignore each other, brush against each other, want to avoid a scene, without his nyctaloptic angel’s eye, his watchmaker’s claws and beak hard at their task, without Palafox we would shiver with hunger, submitting to the humiliating generosity of the enemy that Chancelade at this very moment is tearing to pieces, if all goes as planned.

We have been living under high Palafoxian security most likely for a long time. The Museum has twenty thousand volic crania bequeathed to it by the artist, a collector who made his children pay dearly for their indifference. And yet the oldest of these skulls go back to the belle époque that precedes the first ice age. Thus, concludes Baruglio, by deduction, do we derive information on the probable age of Palafox. Baruglio concludes perhaps a bit too quickly, because nothing allows us to affirm that he had not survived by eating roots and wild fruits until the appearance of the vole. Nor would there have been life here, insists Zeiger, if each species had not been formed until its ideal prey had been fat and numerous enough to nourish it, if the mongoose had awaited the serpent, the serpent the toad, the toad the fly, if the fly had awaited us, etc., but man did not wait for the grocer to open his shop before spreading, he took the initiative. Similarly, not unreasonably, Palafox. Unless his appearance came after that of the vole. It might, what’s more — Zeiger exaggerates, to make sure the point is made — be that not one of the twenty thousand skulls in our possession was cleaned and spit out by Palafox. The vole doesn’t fare well in low temperatures. It constitutes the everyday fare of weasels, foxes, and wild cats. If it falls in water, it goes straight to the bottom. Plague, fire, famines never spare it. Finally, three or four years on, it is only a shadow of itself, it has no taste for living, you wouldn’t even recognize it, it dies from its pretty death. From there, conversation reaches an impasse, only a single step away-a step we will not take. We’re just hitting our heads against the wall, observed Pierpont. For the moment, let’s leave the question of dating aside. We’ll return to it, rest assured. Another point that remains to be clarified: Palafox and sex, which is to say which sex is Palafox? Does he have an organ, if yes where, if not what?

If not, then it’s definitive: I’ve suspected it from the start — Palafox is a starfish. Cambrelin leads the charge. Essentially, starfish, like Palafox, present an axial symmetry reticulated in five and that carmine color which would so delight us, Maureen, if you were to change the water in the tank from time to time. We usually call them starfish, however imprecise and hard to grasp a term it may be. Another common feature, starfish are also weak-willed. Their bodies, tugged at by contradictory urges, tear in two parts, one with three branches, the other with two. Later, the missing half and the amputated arms grow back to form two distinct individuals, indifferent to each other, already torn apart by inner conflict, hesitating between North and South, East and West, North and East, South and West, East and South, West and North. The great advantage in asexual reproduction, surely you will agree with me, resides in its simplicity. It circumvents a series of strategies, humiliating rejections and unpleasant surprises, and one is certainly at the very least spared the six hundred and forty days of gestation that paralyze elephants. Somewhere in the Sargasso Sea, there must be a colony of Palafoxes that all spawned from the one original, who still lives and twitches within each Palafox including yours, Maureen, yours whose water you should change and whose limbs you should try to count. Professor Cambrelin has the distinction of supporting his assertions, if not with disabling proofs, then with tedious erudition. Of course the first starfish did not create itself, despite its five arms, which blows Chamberlain’s theory out of the water.

Which doesn’t even begin to mention, adds Baruglio, that cobras are afraid of water. One finds them in the desert. Therefore, how did Palafox reach us? To me, that’s the first enigma for us to resolve. Age and gender are matters under the auspices of anecdote and gossip, we’ll save those for when we’ve gotten to the heart of the matter, once we learn the grounds for his presence and by what means of transportation he arrived among us. Palafox would not have been the first to have traveled in a suitcase. Indeed I have unwittingly brought back from my excursions several of those hooded snakes, as their morphology allows them to slip on a jacket or a pair of trousers just like you or me, a disguise in which they go unnoticed, or to coil up inside a mitt or a slipper, or in a cap. The shock is considerable when the masks at last are lowered or just plain dropped (hood not included). But usually, they manage to get out when the suitcase is open on the bed without being recognized or bothered. So this is how I see it: Palafox crawled to a harbor, spotted a hotel, snuck past a porter’s stare, slipped into a room, perhaps even into the arms of a chamber-maid, hid between the covers, or perhaps in the wake of a prostitute’s steps, or a frail child’s, night fallen, taking advantage of a traveler’s distraction to slip into the luggage. It’s the only way he could have crossed the Ocean. If he took the plane, same deal, we only need to transpose the action from the Hotel Magellan to the Hotel Lindbergh.

You seem to forget he has wings. Palafox couldn’t have made it by swimming, Zeiger willingly admits, but he would not be the first albatross or the first heron to have made it across Europe without a motor.

3

We have therefore learned, Algernon recapitulates, that Palafox built a nest from twigs and moss in the shape of a cupola, with a side entrance. That he lives on tortoise eggs, rotting carcasses, and pollen. That he hibernates in a crevice, here opinions vary, or at the bottom of a hole, rolled in a ball or hanging from his feet. We have therefore learned very little — little that isn’t unreliable. We will swear to nothing, will not put our heads on the block for any of it. When you think about it, it seems even doubtful that Palafox thought of building a nest in a tree. When you weigh between nine and ten tons, you tend not to linger long in the foliage, on principle, doubtless one would like to remain a little longer, to enliven the leaves with chirping since the view is fine, unobstructed, the air purer, the sky radiant, but you never do more than pass through, the earth reasserts its dominance through violence, an iniquitous law voted into being by hummingbirds serving them and them alone. If a pear, which was destined to fall from the start, conceived and shaped in this manner, still bruises itself when rolling on the grass, imagine a mammoth, a true mammoth. Palafox would have been wrong to have perched so high, his maternal instinct would have warned him off. Whereas, without worry, he could climb in his hut in La Gloriette park, solidly fastened to the three limbs of the walnut tree that seemed tailor-made to his specifications and needs. In truth, Algernon had designed it for his son, Archie. He often placed the palms of his hands on his wife’s swollen belly: Archie training as a boxer in his mother’s belly developed his left hook and his footwork, the heir to the Buffoons would be a fighter, a chief, a leader of men, a true terror on earth. He would set up his own H.Q. in the plank hut, walls pierced with arrow slits, thatch roof, built by his father.

Archie was born and named Maureen a few days after the burial of her mother which at first had monopolized everyone’s attention. Algernon did not survive the poor dear. What good henceforth to drag oneself through life, he preferred to put an end to it and have the Fontechevades take care of the child. But imagining suicide is one thing, the ornamental lake was dry, the blade dull, the gas jet empty, the high beam worm-eaten, the window painted shut, the car being serviced, railway workers on strike, the revolver jammed, merde, and of course, at this late hour, the pharmacy closed, Algernon unto the breach once again with Maureen in his arms. Invited that summer to La Gloriette for the presentation of Palafox, the Fontechevades had responded yes, they would be at the party. Madame is a saint, a vice-squad volunteer, sufficiently robust and mustached to be put into service in the event of a redeployment of forces, treasurer of a cell fighting against prostitution that has sworn to imprison pimps everywhere and recently made the arrest of an orchid-sel ler who was exposing his flowers in his storefront window, as if in Amsterdam, an early victory. Fontechevade married her only a week after his having embraced military life, for however many conquests certain men may have, they always end up with the same type of woman. General Fontechevade loves his work, prospects are good, there’s time left over to read, which one can use to shoot rabbits, and he travels abroad a great deal, meets tons of people, or tonlets at first, one has to start somewhere, then more later, that’s what we do, pack people in, if not us who will? So it is not rare that the general’s wife should find herself alone in the house with Olympia.

Having already raised a parakeet, Olympia will know how to handle Palafox. Olympia is tall and thin — her parakeet a little green bird — one of those ageless women which time, kidnapper of children and crooked accountant, would not have wished to burden itself with during its bright flight. But the neighborhood cats came to eat neighborhood sparrows from her hand. When she appears at her window, pandemonium reigns, whereas the holy father waving his arms about from the balcony, scares off the sparrows and scatters the cats — over the public square the crowd sings, occasionally it brays, but purr with pleasure?

The Zoological Garden is her little slice of heaven. Were it not for the unfordable moat, Olympia would herself go to separate or — why not? — reconcile the monkeys with their fleas. She never misses watching the feeding of the big cats, tries to be there for the weekly defecation of the sloth, named that because it sleeps on its branch instead of sawing into it. All the zookeepers know Olympia, she walks through the paths of the park as if at home, accompanied by the ostriches with which, in spite of her bun, she shares a certain more-than-passing resemblance, not feature for feature, of course, but more a general vibe, something in the way she carries herself, something in the way she moves, you can sense in observing them wander the preserve that their pads have absorbed the same terrain. Together, they climb the stairs that lead to the terrarium. The porter sends them packing. Olympia presents her ticket: ah, it’s you! Olympia. The Olympian does not say a word. The hall is dark, overheated. A few families circulating in tight packs go window-shopping. A loudspeaker announces the imminent birth of a litter of vipers, and Olympia trembles. And when the lucky lady begins to eat her young two by two, jealousy eats away at Olympia to whom the simple joys of maternity were refused. On the other hand, she babies the general’s wife, dresses and undresses her, powders and corsets her, what century do we live in, washes her laundry and polishes her boots, and is given full run of the household where she attends to any domestic duty that does not endanger the life of ants, termites, roaches, and mice. One clause added to her contract denies her access to the kitchen: it is not unlikely that Olympia had a hand in the spectacular escape of one hundred and ninety-two oysters gathered, according to tradition, to celebrate the Nativity among us. The reasons for their escape remain mysterious — were they afraid of receiving in the eye, because of someone’s clumsiness, the lemon juice actually meant to rinse their fingers? But there was no doubt it was an inside job since the door to the kitchen leading to the garden was found bolted from the inside. However, searches undertaken by the sixteen guests proved in vain, or more accurately fruitless, as did the surreptitious search through Olympia’s own room. But let’s finish with her. When one serves her a calf’s foot or a shoulder of mutton, she sticks in a splint and releases them. That sums up her character. A sketch of Olympia is in order. Let us add that by way of clothing she wears an austere black dress buttoned to her collar, a gray shawl, gray stockings and, recently, by way of ornamentation, three strands of thirty-two, sixty-four, and ninety-six cheap pearls. One might add that her voice is bright and brittle, but that it softens sometimes, when Olympia no longer has to deal with her kind and invites others species to drop by. That’s her. That is Olympia. Never leaving the house without her shopping bag, wherever she might be going, a very big shopping bag, a very sturdy shopping bag, one day she’ll buy a baby elephant, she’s only waiting for the right moment, whether African or Asian, she could care less, African if you have one, or Asian actually, who cares.

Madame Fontechevade agreed to part with her maid. Such gestures can show you who your true friends are. Olympia was given over to the care of Palafox, to feed him, wash him, brush him, change his litter. She will live day and night in his intimate company so as to be there to help him if he weakens or best him if he raises a fuss. She will be treated no differently than when she was with the Fontechevades. She will enjoy four hours of freedom per day, two in the morning, two in the evening, during which Algernon will introduce Palafox to our customs. We are all in agreement. Good. Sign here. I wish to reiterate that you will be housed, fed if you are hungry, laundered if it is not too late, that you will be authorized, yes, to keep your parakeet, that you will spend next summer with us at La Gloriette, yes, that you can bring him. You will take your position immediately, Maureen will take you to the pen.

Palafox shows signs of stress. Three elastic strides then he twirls, three elastic strides then he twirls, three elastic strides then he twirls, seventy-one times, finally getting comfortable on his backside. Now is the time to introduce Olympia. The pen, set up behind the house, includes a garden and window-less bungalow where one enters like daylight — which then politely fades — through a low door. Neither trees nor flowers in this garden, but a pond, but a portico, from which swings, creepers, and an old truck tire are hung. The bungalow is soberly furnished. Palafox avails himself of a perch, of a basket, of a cuttlefish bone to sharpen his beak, a cow pizzle for his teeth, an old armchair to sharpen his claws. Olympia gets a mattress, tossed into one corner. Here she is. The surrounding chicken-wire recalls a tennis court, the enclosure has the same dimensions as one, in addition to innumerable bad bounces, the bungalow, the portico and the pond in the middle of the court come as no small consternation to the players. Whether sun, or wind, or an aching shoulder, any excuse will do after a bad game. Olympia makes up her mind to cross the threshold of the kennel. She hasn’t come empty-handed, and Palafox leaps onto the red rubber ball, drops it at Olympia’s feet, who throws it again, etc., things are off to a good start, leaves it at Olympia’s feet, who throws it again, etc., things are flowing, leaves it at Olympia’s feet, who stops. Palafox moans, curls up, bares his teeth, beats the ground with his hoof, all the signs are there, he’s going to charge. In these instances, the thing to do is to stay calm, whistle, play dead, proffer a treat, Olympia knows what to do. Palafox makes a few turns around the cadaver and then finally folds his wings and settles onto the treat. Olympia chose wisely. She rises, Palafox, grateful, licks her hands and face. He rubs against her legs. She pats his neck. He perches on her fist. She scratches his belly. He winds around her neck, her hips. But it would be cruel to prolong these games, and anyway Palafox wouldn’t tolerate this much longer. Olympia puts him back in the pond. So here we have acquired one more fact, we already knew him to be ferocious, but Palafox is also very playful. Maureen brings him a hoop, a ball of wool, Algernon sacrifices one of his slippers that helps him write, a slipper made worn, threadbare, shapeless by work — Everest, to risk a comparison, is more conscientious with his buskins. But Palafox prefers it to all his other playthings. He does not let go of it. Hereafter when we speak of him, you will have to imagine it not far, between his paws, between his teeth, and we will not mention it any more out of aesthetic concern, but know that it’s within eyeshot.

You are dynamic, open, enterprising, you show a real capacity for adaptability, a real sense of responsibility, an admirable availability, a solid background in a related field, you have a methodical approach, creative and innovative, a spirited temperament, you quickly find yourself adapting and adopting a way of speaking that puts your interlocutor at ease, if Olympia hurts herself, we know whom to call. Olympia has no shortage of things to do. It’s demanding work. Daily, Palafox devours fifty kilos of feed. Olympia comes and goes between the millstone and the hayrack, laden with armloads of hay. Three times a day she brushes Palafox’s tangled coat. She must still clean up his excrement, keep a vigilant eye on the cleanliness of the litter. When he runs over, she brushes him, unsaddles him, rubs him down, rolls him in a blanket. Her four hours of freedom, she takes in two equal parts, one for her, one for her parakeet. They each therefore have four intense half-hours of alternating attention. Olympia uses the first to wash herself, the second to refill the feeder with grain and the bottle with clean water, the third to wash or mend her wash, the fourth to clean the cage, the fifth to relieve herself. The sixth half hour is gone before you know it, spent in rapturous conversation. Then, Olympia apprises herself of current events, learns the latest body count, where things unfolded, the seventh half hour. Then the last, Olympia quickly refills water and feed.

Palafox’s washbasin is the setting for many a painful scene for all concerned. He holes himself up in the darkest corner of the bungalow as soon as Olympia, a bucket in each hand, heads for the pump, sometimes he will hide under the portico. Five trips are necessary. When the bowl is full, the chase is on, let’s keep it short, we have already been to the pen. Olympia grabs Palafox by the skin of his neck, or sometimes by the ears, and plunges him into the water. Hissing and screaming is all one hears.

Palafox’s excrement: Olympia sweeps or shovels, picks up or mops, or simply seeks in vain, some, nearly imperceptible, disturbing only flies.

More than one hundred journalists, all biases lumped together, collaborate each week in the conception and execution of his litter. Investigative reporting undertaken under conditions less than ideal, by men and women who risk their skins, followed then by the actual layout, involves designers and printers and delivery men and a big guy all bundled up opening his kiosk in the morning and Algernon Buffoon, who had been stamping his feet on the sidewalk for a good fifteen minutes, ostensibly staring at his wristwatch, picking five or six magazines, pulling some coins from his pocket, forking over the change and moving off, crossing the street, getting brushed by a cyclist — these are merely a few facts and acts in his risky existence, as emblematic as any of the thousand others anecdotes one could tell. In his living room, Algernon takes the time to read the magazines carefully. Sometimes he gets up to feed the fire, to get something to drink. He has misplaced his lighter again. He lights his cigar from kindling. A faraway look on his face, his fingers stroke the arms of his comfortable chair. A cat on his knees takes the opportunity to leave. It falls to the floor, supple and silky, as somnolent Algernon tries vaguely to grab it by the tail and falls victoriously asleep, his fist closed around his extinguished cigar. Olympia gathers the newspapers and magazines, goes through them carefully, eyes wet, before throwing them every which way into the back of the bungalow. Palafox later lounges in them. He nibbles them unread, curiosity unpeaked even by those with cover stories promising to tell everything one could want to know about the salaries of executives. In reality, they can vary from simple to triple, with equal qualification, depending on the sector, private or public, cutting edge or family business. Palafox is ignorant of all of this, of course, Palafox has everything to learn. Algernon puts off the I.R. courses for the time being, everything in its time. For now, he teaches him to stand upright. The whip is cracked, Palafox withdraws. Driven back to the chicken wire, he rears onto his rear paws, the whip cracks again, he makes a vague step or two, steals a sardine from Algernon’s hand and falls heavily back down to earth.

Our friend thus alternates threat and reward by design. Similarly the miller moved the otherwise inanimate ass. Palafox is a beginner. First of all he has to abandon his millipedal past. Algernon tries hard to convince him. When he walks on two legs, he will rediscover the instinct to use his arms, then his hands. Without hands no history, no art, no science, why bother to conceive a masterpiece or a rocket engine if its execution is unmanageable? Consider for a moment this brain boiling over with ideas, inventions, projects, this inexpressive thinking head, consider the seed — pure potential — when we’re talking about conceiving a plum. His still swollen fingers will little by little lose their stiffness thanks to appropriate exercise, qwertyuiop, do ré mi fa, he will then have the choice between two careers. But nothing is played out yet, Palafox falls heavily and shakes his mane of flames, despite hyperbole less red than his tail of plumes, it is far too early for applause. Algernon proceeds in stages. He gives his student goals: the portico, leaving the chicken wire, the bungalow, leaving the portico, the chicken wire, leaving the bungalow. Later he will increase the distances: a lap around the pen, two laps around the pen, then one more time, faster, and now backwards, then onto hikes in the country — before the final test of the town, of the random crowds unsure of which road to take. Twelve blows to a gong announce the end of the first lesson. Algernon returns to his daughter, still out of breath after her fight with a duck and a half-dozen oranges, who is using him as a guinea pig for the recipes she will treat Chancelade to, once the enemy is humiliated and the marriage concluded. Olympia takes her meals with Palafox. She swallows a salad and some fruit, compassionately avoiding using either her fork or her teeth too much. Palafox, we have said, eats June bugs and insect larvae exclusively. The second lesson begins at six in the evening. The plan is identical, put Palafox on a pedestal, give him back his pride. Erect, he seems like someone else, the brightest scales on his belly flashing palely, moon-like; in the half-light, he looks like any elegant young man, with his slender waist and his broad snakeskin belt. Then Algernon leaves the pen. Olympia locks the door behind him. Palafox curls up on a special seasonal section of the paper devoted to Graduates and Careers. He dreams, one might suppose. But of what future?

4

Olympia resists, clenches her fists, she will not let herself put up with being stripped like that, without a fight. But she is alone, no longer very young, and there are so many of them, soon she will have to let go. By contrast, we share a blanket, the cold comes in through the bungalow’s little door, dawn in a state of undress, Palafox is gone. No panic, after all this isn’t the first time it has happened, that he has slipped into or burrowed under a magazine. Olympia moistens the leaves, shakes them out, a few pages fall and fly through the shelter, naked beneath her little skirt Pamela picks up a tennis ball, naked beneath their sarongs Olga and Anaïs gather what must be mangoes, or guavas, glistening Amandine also gathers, without faltering, shells or pebbles, and in tow and in tatters though no less lovely follow Agatha, Elodie, Melanie, Cora, Deborah — not a single comma in this list that isn’t a hair from the head of Algernon — but not a single trace of Palafox. Acephalous, apterous, anurous, apodous, Palafox, Palafox disappeared, no more Palafox. He slipped out over here. Algernon, kneeling, inspects the opening of a narrow tunnel which comes out over there, far from the pen, in the rosebushes. Or through that gap, suggests Maureen, look, he forced his way. Or over here, and Olympia, certainly correct, pointing skyward to a red feather clinging to the chicken wire. Palafox will have flown over the garden and the house, then, with agility, holding onto the wisteria, he will have climbed over the outer wall before disappearing into the town — where danger awaits a little toad. Palafox will end up road kill. And not lumpy either, rather, almost liquid. In a liquid state, a toad can be thirst quenching, so that you know, whether you like it or not. Farewell Palafox, the doors slam, the motors moan, he won’t make it through alive, even a hedgehog wouldn’t stand a chance. Always too kind on tires, the hedgehog, another thirst quencher. Why would ours be spared?

Algernon curses his lack of planning, if we had only thought to have him wear a collar, with his name and address, his and ours, a kindly soul would surely have already returned him. It would have been so simple. A collar made of nickel or of rope, or of studded leather, or a ring on his paw. Rather than standing around moping, Olympia proposes action, rather than standing around moping, let’s post his photo on all the walls, with a description and the promise of an award?

What photo, Olympia? And as for circulating a description, we are willing to hear you out. His color, for example, do you recall the color of his coat? Yes, Sir, very clearly. Olympia triumphant. So, tell us! Oh but Sir, first tell me what he’s roosting on! (Olympia, naively, alludes here to a stunning ability Palafox possesses, we might as well mention it ourselves, he always adopts the color of the surface of the thing upon which he comes to rest: green on grass, red-orange on terra cotta, yellow with big brown spots in the scattered shadows of African leaves, hidden from predators despite his outsized neck.) Palafox in gray runs alongside the pavement splattered with gas — is there no solution for the incontinence of motorcycles? — an iridescent reflection on his neck completes the camouflage. He goes unnoticed by passersby, their curiosity dulled in the end by all they’ve had to look at. What’s more, even the pigeons think he’s one of them. Now and then he stops, sings two notes and bows, then disappears like a hat in a crowd. He feels he’s really earned the muesli this time, or the oatmeal that the sweet old ladies, skipping a meal, saved for him. Palafox settles onto the shoulder of one of these ladies, not in gratitude, but to carry his benefactress away and eat her elsewhere, in his eyrie. She thinks they are love bites when he pecks her ear or wrists, her eyes filling with tears. To drink, something hitherto unknown to us, Palafox tips back his head. Another thing to correct. His benefactress kneels and bleeds from her eyes. Another thing we were unaware of, but what we now know is that Palafox loves the taste of blood.

All the preceding information was provided to us by Professor Zeiger. He had risen before dawn, had crossed the sleeping town and garden of the Buffoons and made his way over to the pen — this long journey just to watch Palafox sleep — when he became aware of who was slipping out through a hole in the chickenwire — but how had you imagined to keep such a little creature captive behind so flimsy a barrier when he is barely visible to the naked eye? So rather than sounding the alarm, Zeiger preferred to follow the insect so as to study its behavior in an urban setting. The greatest discoveries are always made by observing the animal in action. In its maze, the white mouse meets a psychiatrist, a neurologist, and a metaphysician in distress, all of whom are fascinated by its strategic moves. Only by watching how animals live have we learned how to equip ourselves, knives, scissors, drills, pastry-cutters, and others are still busy diversifying our toolboxes, all, relentlessly, even if the lobster after having invented blow by blow the pincer and the nutcrackers now seems to have run out of new ideas. That being said, false modesty aside, our ingenuity ends up proving of use to animals as well. Call it an exchange of courtesies. Would the sea lion be able to spin a plate on its nose without our friendly guidance? Could four elephants carry a fifth?

Zeiger now knows all that he wishes to. He closes his notebook, slips it into the left interior pocket of his jacket then, changing his mind, into the right interior pocket, after which he rushes to help the old dear. With a well-timed intervention, one would be able to save her, no, but there are always a thousand things to glean from a cadaver, jewels, scarf, perhaps even a horrible anecdote for a local news reporter. And then it is time to gather Palafox into his cage. The ornithologist grabs him by one paw, the other claw crushes his hand. He lets go. Free, Palafox hops into the gutter. In the water, he gets his sea legs immediately — helped along by the current, he soon reaches a manhole, he lets himself be sucked down, head first, at the risk of blemishing his magisterial antlers.

Many other crocodiles before him had sought and found refuge in the sewers, for the most part tossed in by their owners — an alligator eight inches long proves to be a central part of family fun, you can dress him up, throw him from room to room while laughing all the way; when it becomes as long as your arm, it ceases to be fun for the kids, and you get rid of it as quickly as you can. Palafox is one of the rarer ones, the only one perhaps, to have arrived there of its own volition. Regardless, once there, his quality of life is no different from that of other crocs. As for food, there is no shortage of rats, nor of sewage workers who have learned caution after all manner of misadventure. In the past, they would fall roasted into our hands. Ready to eat. Henceforth they are almost nonexistent. Thus the joy we feel when luck is on our side and we run into one: lucky us! As far as nutritional value, rats were the same as a sewage worker’s foot, but as far as flavor goes, excuse the thought, whether booted or barefoot, the foot of a sewage worker surpasses a rat.

On the surface, everyone is worried. Algernon finally apprised of the situation, responsible in the eyes of the law for whatever damage Palafox has done, resolves to lead the hunt himself. He is given help in lifting the heavy cast-iron lid, he puts two feet on the rungs of the ladder, he’s going down. Sadarnac (still out of breath from having sprinted) hands him a shrimp net that Algernon accepts since, after all, in the absence of a more suitable net, perhaps this will somehow suffice. Our eyes never adjust to the dark, Algernon gropes around. Sometimes he sinks into the muddy water all the way to his belt. The stink is horrible, but this you adjust quickly to, you just don’t think about it, you think about other things, an opportunity for introspection, for self-examination, where am I in this life? The ambitious young man I once was, would he be ashamed to see me now? Would he blush with shame or pride? At sixty, Algernon Buffoon, honorary ambassador, widower because father, esteemed author of the Guide to Collecting Ancient Pottery and many other scientific works, searches through the sewers brandishing a shrimp net in search of a butterfly. This net is the one false note in Algernon’s otherwise brilliant destiny. A delicate wing marks his cheek, Palafox flutters around him, ungraspable, brushes his lip, then disappears like smoke from a cigarette. Algernon beats the walls, beats the water, captures a few rats, thinks its Palafox he’s gotten each time, his beveled teeth, his stiff tail, but then he realizes that Palafox is dancing just over there, right over here, there, you can’t miss him — Algernon decked out with his shrimp net might force us to adjust the rather stern image we’ve had of him up until now. Now, mumbling, he retraces his steps. Feeling his way in the dark, he parts the velvet drapes, smoothes out endless heads of hair, pets soft fleece, digs through deep bodies, the blind man invents all he touches, Afghan hounds brush against him, rug sellers pester him. Algernon sometimes sinks all the way to his belt in the blue water of the lagoon. An unknown woman leaning on her balcony throws him a silk ladder, he can already make out her smiling face, her white arms extending toward him, two square red hands that grip his armpits. Sadarnac has already brought heavier things up from the bottom, this wouldn’t be Palafox alone in his brimming pot, he lifts Algernon effortlessly and leaves him on the shore.

His dorsal flipper cuts the waves, Palafox won’t be spending his life here. After having watered the city and suburbs, the sewers service the surrounding countryside, eventually pouring their worn waters into a stream (murmurs of protest). Sooner or later, Palafox will get there. We will be there to pick him up.

Except for Chancelade and Fontechevade in reserve — at this very moment, if everything goes as planned, they are razing enemy churches and burning enemy cottages — no one is missing. We are all here, crouching together around the bank, rather perplexed. Five short fingers tipped with terrible claws, there is no question the print was left by Palafox. He beat us. His trail disappears into the undergrowth. You’d have to be crazy to look for him. It would be like looking for lice in the proverbial haystack. Better just to wait. Patience, Palafox will make a mistake eventually. Hunger will make him careless, will make him show himself, even if we are not unaware that he can live for extended periods on the stores of fat in his two humps (which are also responsible for giving him the hideous appearance mentioned time and again). Contradictory information makes its way to us. A few practical jokers claim to have seen him, however incapable they are of describing him or able they are at providing pencil drawings as good as those by the proverbial police sketch artist, more or less ornithologically inspired, although somewhat anteatery, or coelacanthy, too. Algernon wastes no time confusing them. We follow other, more promising trails, the first to a fattened chicken, the second to a black sheep, the third to a coypu. We rejoin our camp as night falls. Fallen, a new character arrives, his name would mean nothing to you, and asks if he might avail himself of our hospitality as he shrugs off a heavy pack of beige sackcloth, the contents of which we will not bother listing. The darkness disorients, the only illuminated path leads to the moon — he thought it best to stop for the night. We welcome him, are you thirsty, are you hungry, might you have seen anything unusual on the road? He slakes his thirst, restores himself, and yes he did recall almost flattening a strange little luminous animal, fluorescent green, that moved out of the way just in time and then flew a zigzagging course into the night. We identified Palafox from this description, it could only be Palafox, he must have molted his winter fur.

The sun will rise, the cock will let the cat out of the bag. Worms will eat nightingales. We set out. Our guest takes us to the very place where, last night, radiant Palafox appeared to him. We ask him to tell it to us again, and to see if there’s anything he may have forgotten. The animal whose size is close to that of a fat wasp or a little cheetah was nonetheless neither striped nor spotted, therefore there was no mistaking it. His rapid flight, without displaying his wings, sinuous and slender like a swimmer’s stroke, seemed to support professor Pierpont’s hypothesis; first filed among the fish, the mammals and the sparrows, the whale would be in reality a coleopteran insect, close cousin to the firefly, the etymologist was only waiting for proof, he nearly had it. Because our goal was in sight, in a verdant patch of black undergrowth, our guide advised us to forget the possibility that Palafox could still be there and for a good reason, as easy to understand as it is difficult to admit: the odor of man upsets the wild boar and is enough to drive them from their muddy den. Likewise, we change our sheets after a hurtling retreat of a wild sow, the last of her eight little ones evacuated as soon as possible, and don’t we also change the pillow, a little later in the night, as soon as a ninth little boar is discovered and at last flushed out? Caught once in his wallow, Palafox will not appear there again.

Nonetheless, leaving the cave, his trail is easy to follow. Broken branches, uprooted bushes, mangled hedges, Palafox did as Palafox does, running full bore before him, straight ahead, scorning obstacles, mountains and valleys, bitter winds, thorns, his path looking like what a grouchy little blonde baby girl might do to her braids, through the wheatfields, the ponds, only giving up a tuft or two of wool here or there, stuck to the broken barbs along a fractured fence. Algernon leading the group guides us up the hill marked with the flesh-less sculpted head of a cow and bloody corpses: millers, road-workers, shepherds and goatherds, with their animals, a fly fisher whose rod had changed hands, then donkeys in the fir trees, flat dray-horses, uncountable cows bathing in their milk. To butter a bovine, we drive the thought out of mind, Palafox on the other hand cultivates it when it comes, he makes a single mouthful of the bee and its honey, the chicken and her egg, the grape-picker and his bunch. We arrive too late at the devastated farm. The dovecote has been gnawed through at one corner and is lying across the yard. Stables and sties are empty, bent bits spit onto the ground, clover and flowering alfalfa in the rabbit hutches. Not a single pig to bless himself with, nor the littlest poussin, as for the blabbing mallards, they will not go far, just to the wall, just to the pond, wherever they go they will be poorly received. Would you have happened to have seen a sort of buzzing bird? So asks Algernon tactfully. Kneeling at the edge of the well, making a megaphone with his hands, he repeats his question in other ways, you wouldn’t have happened to have seen my cat? No one answers, but what could they say? How can one scream, or even sob, without a glottis? From the bottom of the well, wounded but miraculously saved, the old peasant contents herself by throwing a clog at Algernon, and another, then a pebble, hoping he will understand.

A femur (of an ox, claims Franc-Nohain, of a pig, states Algernon, of a ram, has decided Swanscombe, of a buffalo, insists Franc-Nohain, which is not even to say peccary, underscores Algernon, or even of an ibex, argues Swanscombe — African antelope! Indonesian wild pig! Basque chamois! yak! koiropotamus! mouflon! — a femur according to Franc-Nohain, a fibula according to Algernon, a tibia according to Swanscombe) discovered in the meadow adjacent to the farm puts us back on the trail of the beast. Palafox has been delayed, is having dessert in the orchard. A handful should have sufficed, but no, not one cherry is without a cruel beak’s peck, from this one he tears a cheek, from another a thigh. There’s no excuse for it. Purest vandalism. Bad for bad’s sake. He paused at each apple, at every pear (early for the season, or else very late), in each fruit he bored a tunnel with no exit, opened a gallery to show nothing, gnawed heart and lungs, poisoned all the vital organs of the figs, and brained the nuts.

Tracks and leftovers showed us the way. Having eaten, Palafox will have smoothed his whiskers and restored his vigor. We dig in vain for scales or horsehair in the tall grass, a feather that would suggest which way he went. It would be only reasonable to assume that Palafox is busy digesting at the moment, under our noses or nowhere near at all, hiding beneath a stone or hidden in the branches. Patience, hunger, always hunger, hunger which he supposes to have gotten past and left behind will make him step from the woods on two paws and three tails, his wind-beaten side, miserable. But the wait, this time again, could be long. Palafox has had all the time in the world to stock up on provisions, grain in his belly, meat in his crop, fish in the expandable pocket of his beak, dried fruit to nibble filling his jowls — enough to endure a siege, all the more so for a reptile of his size, capable in other circumstances of incredible speed, who digests slowly, slowly, plunged into a sort of lethargic sleep which could last weeks. In all likelihood therefore, immobile as crabs mimicking pebbles, eyelids closed to avoid distraction, Palafox melds into a herd, a poultry yard, an orchard, a few feet from us or nowhere near, curled up under the shelter of a bush or pressed against the bottom of his burrow. It was he who was seen close to the bank where yesterday we spotted his tracks among those of beavers and woodpeckers. Hikers heard him knocking with violent, regular blows against the trunk of a birch — testimony corroborated by the log dike newly built across the stream and by the rise in the water level, drowning men and beasts, flooding meadows and nearby farms. In the evening, Palafox would have still attacked a family out for a walk, biting a child in the heel, stinging his mother on the lip, soiling the father’s hat, finally caught up in and struggling in the sister’s hair, the sister who hasn’t spoken since, but perhaps one day will walk again.

We are no longer the only ones on his heels. The countryfolk arm themselves, organize search posses, set traps, bird netting, set snares, nooses, prepare ferrets, falcons, mirrors, nets, bird-traps, mousetraps, glue traps, pesticides, sulfurous wickers, poisons, gasses, fumigants. Their displeasure is no source of bafflement. Palafox pillages their haylofts, their stores of wheat, gnawing and burrowing, he empties beets from within, he parasites, perforates, grinds, weakens. He devours buds, seedlings, bulbs, rhizomes. What he doesn’t eat rots. Where he ripped the shallots from their rootlets, you see black necroses. He weaves fine tight webs which asphyxiate the young shoots, seedlings, cuttings. He stunts the growth of small trees, bores out their trunks, blocks the circulation of the sap. The damage is incalculable. On the list of natural disasters, Palafox rises through the ranks, neither drought nor hurricane ever caused as much damage as this single Colorado beetle. Nothing frightens him, neither the scarecrows in the fields, nor the aluminum ribbons in the apricot trees, not the little owls crucified to the fences, not the cries of buzzards or kites broadcast uninterrupted over loudspeakers — to complete the illusion the cries seem to come from the pumpkins themselves. Palafox remains elusive. A few dogs from the farms dispatched to pursue his scent return rabid and have to be destroyed. Now we barely get a glimpse of him if that, sometimes a red shadow, a silver shimmer, a brown shape which leaps from the ground, shaking his little pink hands like an impudent marionette, or a green tail which slides silently between stones. We immediately grab a stick, you name it, a sachet, a scythe, we rush, but are too late, again too late, the black dot on the horizon, the white dot at the zenith, Palafox remains out of reach.

5

Spaniels, beagles, bassets and border collies, a fine pack of hounds, followed by beaters, a dozen or so — all preceding Sadarnac whom we weren’t expecting and who jumped from the dog-cart, his canes fagotted on one shoulder, let him come along if he wants to. Palafox is in danger. The countryfolk are expanding their search, armed with their anger, shotguns and pitchforks in fist, it’s a matter of saving the district from a volcano, nothing more nothing less. They will not hesitate to fire. The dogs will help us to flush him out before they do, Algernon wants him alive, Algernon remains convinced that with patience, effort, work, something can be made of him. The progress the creature made in its first lessons was sufficiently encouraging. His aggression diminished, he was frequently docile around us, even affectionate, with a sweetness at first impossible to imagine, given his carapace covered with barbs, his long rostrum perforated and sharp as a saw, the foul liquid he emits when rising so as not to soil himself, his fanlike tail, or also this nasty habit he will have to lose, of swallowing his prey alive. Of course, Palafox, like ourselves, has four hands or, depending on the need and the task, like ourselves, has four feet, two magnificent almond-shaped black eyes and a jovial smile between his ears, but this wouldn’t be enough to take him in our arms — the elephant and the mosquito both have trunks, have they ever shared an embrace, a real embrace, a single brotherly embrace? Our physical similarities don’t explain everything. Look elsewhere for explanations of these crude moments of tenderness.

The humid ground kept a record of his itinerary, straight ahead to the crossroads, then to the left, again to the left. The tracks are clear all the way to the forest. When Palafox leaps he sends his posterior paws far in front of his anterior paws, so that the oval impressions of the former always preceded those of the shallower tridactylic latter. Both come to an end at forest’s verge, as if Palafox took off for good never to return to earth or, who knows, opting for a mode of locomotion most discrete, infinitely more so, had preferred to continue by swimming.

Fruitless morning hunt.

Sounds of horns.

Our guides signal us at last, with horns, after a fruitless morning hunt. A stag? A wild boar? Or, him? The dogs seem out of sorts, a rare disarray in hunting dogs, in which respect they recall the sea horse, similarly nonplussed by you-name-it. But that’s as far as the similarities go, a sea horse is less faithful, more independent, something of the cat in him, perhaps. Some among us recommend sun exposure, others blotting paper, now the conversation turns to the preservation of sea horses, knowing that the sun makes them shrivel and fades their colors but that too often, alas, they rot under the blotter — when no one is willing to alter his position the discussion bogs down. Not another word. The animal approaches, his gallop resounds in the silence, and Franc-Nohain regales us with a similar case of a foreign sovereign preceded in his travels by his drummers. A tree conceals him once again, an oak, one of these enormous oaks from which one would have the right, finally, to expect something other than acorns, better than acorns, acorns, three hundred years of acorns, nothing but acorns, acorns, acorns, why not wise maxims for example — at the foot of which families would unpack their picnics without the slightest regard, worse still without a crumb for the legendary patriarch crouched there, today having abandoned all hope of disengaging his beard from the roots, around which the family now sated dances, and, compelled in order to close their dance circle, it’s sad to say, tear the baby apart.

A wild boar would have charged. A stag would have been frozen in place and would have devoured us with his eye, incredulous, still full of love, looking to divine our intentions, judging the joke to be infantile and of doubtful taste, nonetheless ready to laugh with us, out of courtesy. Someone then would have shouldered his rifle. The stag would have stared hard for an instant to be certain to have understood, before resolving, too late, to flee. Palafox, upon seeing us, swings around us and forks off into the undergrowth. The pack of hounds takes off after him, the small group of us stays together, womanizers, pipe-smokers, lovers of billiards and old whisky, among other aptitudes. The bushes impede our progress. We move slowly (similarities end there, snails live in bunches on thistle and our efforts in this sense fail without glory one after the other), the movement that frees us from one bramble delivers us to the next and we progress in this manner, as though carried in triumph, but in actual fact skinned by the cutpurses who put on our hats, blow their noses in our handkerchiefs, under the pretext of touching us, and claw at our hands and faces. It was on a similar fine spring afternoon, in identical circumstances, that Franc-Nohain while struggling dropped his rifle and that our friend Chancelade, the father of the present Chancelade, struck right in the heart, crumpled. Among the many hypotheses mentioned in the instance of violent death — sordid settling of affairs, tragic amorous contretemps, inexplicable and momentary madness, bitter battle for power — it was the unfortunate accident model that was maintained and broadcast with a few alterations to key details, Franc-Nohain really only blamed the roe deer. We had been tracking them since dawn, sensitive to butterflies as well (not particularly credible as a metamorphosis from spineless prickly black caterpillars, come now, look elsewhere), to their furtive flight, under the spell of their days (the pretty vanessa morio and its soot-black wings rimmed with yellow which slips a poppy into the midst of its blue bouquet, periwinkle, forget-me-not, is doubtless not the most representative of country people), but stingy with our buckshot. The herd wasn’t far; the bramble presented itself to us as chaperone, and how could we refuse and under what pretext? The roes slipped away from us. In a way, the ex-Chancelade paid for their escape. A few tears, a few scratches, this time the damage isn’t as bad, repairable with a little green thread, as much rose, and some brown copper buttons tanned for our jackets.

The pack of hounds has muddied the faint trail in the humus that Palafox leaves when he soars off or lands, prints left by his wings. On the leaves and the dark mosses, on the other hand, his trail of saliva is still very clear, very white, very fine, with several variations of the scallop stitch at the end of which a basset hound is lying as if asleep, but his head is between his back paws, a spaniel’s head, he is not really asleep. In a nearby bush, Algernon finds the body of the spaniel cleaved longitudinally in two. The blood had not dribbled onto the fur, the longitudinal cut was made with care. Essentially, as we see, the biology of dog and man is not so different. There’s the heart, the intestines and the brain, less of a jumble, sure, but still complex. And the lungs, the liver, the stomach, the kidneys are all there, where they should be, we could make do. A few of the dogs, once springy and soft, henceforth stiff and stout, tongue and chops now blue, pink noses pale, eyes yellow, and yet seem not to have been touched. Some, disemboweled, disgorged and carved alive, bear marks from blows and seem truly dead, those over there, without any reservation beyond the ticks leaping and the breeze ruffling their fur. All in all, a huge sample, in fact the gamut of shrewd methods of disposing of a dog without having to resort to drowning or shooting, nothing more than the application of tentacles, fangs, horns, venom and your ten fingers. Under such conditions, following Palafox’s trail is child’s play, a real pleasure, the dog-pack does its job well. After three hours’ march, nevertheless, the traces diminish. The ear of a beagle, here. A bit farther, the other half of the animal. Night falls. We take turns by the fire. Of the single hound found alive, four paws are missing. He moans, asleep on one side, he no longer leaps up when we near. We finish him off more than once during the night, with the same seizing of our hearts each time, with a mortal blow to his neck.

Our strategy, designed for the carnage of rock partridges, a crowning success well beyond our expectations (haven’t we all pheasant feathers in our caps?) shows its limitations. With certain game, it is awkward to use the same strategy, as with killing one’s grandmother. This is the first major lesson the learning of which we owe to Palafox. And we’ll reiterate: there are many things to learn from him, certainly in the wooded domain of the hunt but not only there, not only, he knows the grasses that cure and, by instinct, before everyone, before the clouds, what the weather will be the next day. And better than anyone, adds Sadarnac — the coral massifs of the Sargasso. But do not listen to him.

I have an idea, Swanscombe shouts and, interrupting himself — draws on his pipe, allows his stare to stray, wins all the prizes for best male lead, becoming a teenage heartthrob — at last continues: the success of my plan depends upon choosing the proper decoy. That steel whistle does nothing for the linnet or the skylark (you have to use one made of silver or copper) which works wonders on warblers and wagtails. With a split cherry branch, a bit of silver birch bark, a cherry pit and quill from a feather, beech leaves, ivy, scrub brush and two serrated teeth, I would be able to reproduce the cry, the song, the groan or the gallop of every animal in the forest — tipi-ti, tipi-ti, fioiu-fiou-frou, krr-ek, chchch-st, tuituitui, kyac, tirlitt, gah-onk-aa-onk, ou-rou-rou, piap, di-del-di-o, zizibeh-zizi-beh, et cetera. Because the onomatopoeias that we commonly use to beastify among men, that we teach to young children before the alphabet and the colors, belong to the lexicon of a dead language, extant perhaps on Noah’s Ark, but that is hardly used today or even understood by the mules of today, the cows and cocks. Cock-a-doodle-do may as well be the sound of pots falling to the floor, heehaw when they hit the earth. Exhaling gently onto a beech leaf chosen from among more than one hundred thousand trembling candidates, Swanscombe bleats out, then croons, groans, ululates, growls. Here is a nannygoat, a ringdove, a woodcock, an owl, and a cat which all and each one by one are calling Palafox, singing themselves hoarse, shouting at the top of their lungs, and, panting, fall silent as their voices are carried away by the wind.

The punitive raids of peasants also fail, despite the importance of their land and air forces, mobilized. Airplanes spray the region with copper sulphate on hedgehopping flights, methodically, and spread upon the cultivated land a terrible mixture made of pulverized chrysanthemums and pimpernel — excellent against certain pests, efficacious when it comes to melons and cabbage which we would willingly send away for three weeks to a mountain sanatorium before allowing on our table but which Palafox, our Palafox, laughs at. The field of his exactions has expanded. He no longer hesitates to push in greenhouse doors, breaking windows and frames, hindering the ripening — just like the unfortunate irruption of the amateur photographer’s wife in the toilet-cum-darkroom, go on, go on, I just have to powder myself and then I’m gone — of the tomatoes which will remain an unwavering yellow. And of course he avails himself of tangerines and oranges, and strawberries, strawberries above all, how couldn’t one prefer them to all other fruits, to apples that bump into the glutton’s nose and to bananas that poke his eyes, whereas the strawberries kiss one’s lips before being swallowed? As for the wolf traps hidden in bushes and ferns, that manage to trap a few field mice, Palafox has evaded them all. Fooled by a few chunks of weasel, it happens that the peasants think themselves well rid of him at last. Congratulations abound, the carcass is thrown onto the pyre. By the flicker of flames, we notice Palafox passing through, hugging the ground, gosling between his teeth. Others found him slow. He limped slightly, they claimed. He is wounded. He was the gosling. Too much talk, overhead. In truth, it isn’t unusual for animals caught in a trap to mutilate themselves to gain their freedom. Badgers and flying squirrels gnaw on their trapped paws, chew until it gives, it gives, three bites by a fox are enough, does, hares and birds of prey make the same sacrifice — all of them do it with the exception, however regularly chained to an unfriendly policeman, of man, who never has the courage or even the imagination to do this.

Perhaps one of these paws belonged to Palafox. A poacher is speaking. He dumps his game bag onto the grass, with a sinister smile, as if he were the incarnation of a critic in a choreographer’s nightmare. This poacher has forgotten one thing, or overlooked it, ophidians in general and Palafox in particular lack limbs. Consequently, when we happen upon his sinuous trail in the sand or in the dust, how can we know if we should take our own steps towards the Arctic or the Antarctic? There, his fur would within days develop a pallor sufficient to mask him within the whiteness of those lands. Meager would be our chances of spotting two black pupils in all that snow. Whatever it takes, Palafox mustn’t be allowed to reach such parts.

Once in a while a hunter boasts that he has killed him. In the minute that follows, this dark man emerges from anonymity. The wildlife photographer from the local newspaper immortalizes him, seated on the creature or gripping it by the gills, his son beside him seems so small, or by the ears, but preferably by the wings, so as to show to all the extraordinary wingspan and as if to say he’s become somebody. And these are in effect good little catches, dappled deer, wild rabbits, pike-perch, magnificent briar cocks that share the front page with General Fontechevade. (Heartening news from the front. The enemy is in retreat. Our brave boys are gaining ground for our cows. We harvest the hills.) Algernon, pensive, folds the paper, a fly-fisherman kisses the general on both cheeks, and then bites him on the nose, Fontechevade frowns, punches his attacker, tears the tremendous carp from his grasp and secrets it on his person, the other retaliates, tries to strangle him, twist off his head, throw him over his shoulder, the earth trembles and cracks around them, then Algernon abandons them to their fate. My friends, he concludes, change of plans. Since Palafox is deaf to your cooings, my poor Swanscombe, we will need to supply him with different temptations. Can we lure him? It’s a tried and true tactic, the corncob delivers the rat, the lamb the wolf, the bee need only claim the bear tempted by a honeycomb. Sadarnac offers worms, larvae, flies, grasshoppers, balls of cheese, pieces of apple or raw meat. It has got to stink, bleed or wriggle. Or at least shine, and Sadarnac draws golden spoons from his boots, gilded with black dots, gilded with red dots, silver-plated, silver-plated with black dots, silver-plated with red dots, and others, gilded or silver-plated, with stripes, red or black, and feathered hooks, glittering lures, glass pearls…

Sides of beef, chicken giblets, wildflowers, marrow bones, buckets of oats, hazelnuts, berries, chicory, carrots, lights, bran, salt, milk… our trap is simple: victuals kept in plain sight at the foot of a tree; between the branches, a large net hung on two hoops crossed and manipulated from afar with the aid of a rope that will require one firm tug at the right moment to trap: Palafox. This hiding is a new exercise for us, men of action, it would be more natural for us to be seated in an arena. Beneath the shelter of a hedge we wait. We wait. We wait several days, the sting of the nettle is more painful but less lasting than that of the mosquito. At dawn, the humidity sticks you to your bed of leaves, fingers interlaced, a bronze lamp-base twisted tastelessly for a neck, eyes extinguished behind the head. The birds also tell their dreams to each other, in his a jay was a sow with a slit throat. A thousand nights’ other observations of general interest. No Palafox. We throw stones at crows, rodents and little carnivores that whirl around the buffet. Pssch, we’re scaring off the vipers. Flies land on our pâté, briefly, as if afraid of the snap of a tail. The sun sets — at the antipodes we do all our business with this bright fat coin darkly in hand: here is night that comes at such a cost, came with only a dime change, risen, there, the moon.

And there, Palafox. At last he appears, unhurried, to the feast. He was skinning a fly when the net fell on him. His buckings and gesticulations are to no greater effect than to ensnare him more deeply. We approach, he recoils, frightening, he beats his chest with his enormous fists, as if he was trying to hammer out armor in a hurry. We draw back. Palafox takes advantage of our hesitation, and wriggling around he attempts to slip through the netting — he has already managed to get his head and one of his paws through, three, seven, then twelve of his paws, but already we are on him. Franc-Nohain winds rope around his ankles. Swanscombe muzzles him and Algernon, Algernon chloroforms him. Two fat balls of cork borrowed from Sadarnac take the treachery out of those horns. Let us be sure we make him exhaust his venom: be careful not to make him spit his poison. Then Algernon slips him gingerly into a crystal-clear paper pouch and gives free reign to his joy. We have him, hooray. Frankly, there are few trophies on our walls of which we are as proud (Franc-Nohain nonetheless asks that we not overlook the lone lunatic that he finished off with a knife the year before, nor the courage and the cold-bloodedness which he was able to prove in such circumstances, but this goes without saying). Is it necessary to mention that Sandarac’s version of these events differs from those already reported? In this version, Palafox was caught by the light rod and reel method — he opposed a protracted resistance, twice broke the line, unwound up to a hundred and twenty meters of line, and bit the hook and bait with such force that I had to shove my hand inside his mouth to unhook him, you can imagine the hazard, knowing that a pike’s jaw sports no fewer than seven hundred teeth. But Sadarnac tells tall tales, you know him, what really was at risk given he had a gutting knife? A child of five years, his little brother of four would have been able to withdraw the spoonbait.

6

So your life unfolds without other concerns but the search for a little food and a shade, without other activities than the seasonal harvest of berries and mushrooms, the hunt for butterflies, the fishing of crayfish, without worse predator to fear than a female post-coitum. And then they arrive with their dogs, their weapons, their traps. They hunt you. They capture you. Put yourself in the place of Palafox. They rip you by the roots from your sylvan existence. Palafox paws the ground, you’d paw too in this narrow box. He snorts, relax. Calm down. Maureen appeases him, her fingers play along his nape, creep up between his ears and, lower, her hand rests flat on the nearly perfect white star near his nose. Be a good little Palafox, behave now. He doesn’t reject a fist full of grass. His teeth are yellow and uneven, his tongue is rough. Blinders keep him from seeing the professors Cambrelin and Baruglio to his right, Zeiger and Pierpont to his left. This new consultation was obviously necessary. We cannot pretend to be unaware of the savage acts he has committed, or so it would seem, while he has been on the run. Before starting to train him again, Algernon wants to know if he is or isn’t salvageable, whether he can or can’t be broken. In addition to the misdemeanors about which we know, or think we know, innumerable tragedies past are bubbling up to the surface again, those that preceded Palafox’s first appearance amongst us and for which the true culprit was never identified: whenever the field mouse was implicated in a case, the wolf came out pure and white, and vice versa, the wolf being implicated, white became the mouse. In brief, Palafox is suspected of having slit the throats of many thousands of our fellow creatures. And of having horned many thousands of others. Suffocated still more. Strangled others. Crushed others still. Poisoned countless. Through the centuries. For motives that remain uncertain. Of having mutilated, well yes, millions and millions more, ripping a finger or two from the hand extended only to pet him or bully him, never to give. If that were all it had been, but tearing the arm with it, and with the arm the shoulder, with the shoulder the breast, with the breast the infant, rending a foot here and there, tearing away leaden limbs of swimmers weak at the knees — those, pitiful in the water, diminished on the banks, unfortunate wherever they fall, sinking into despair in a balloon or along a line. To this list of crimes please add the decimated herds, the pillaged granaries, the emptied ponds, the poultry yards, the sheep barns, the sacked pigsties and vines, the devastated orchards, because pig doesn’t make for good dessert (hors d’œuvres variés, asst. cold meats, plate upon plate, nutritious, filling, but nothing sugary to bring it all to a close, no chocolate, no sweetness). Let us then list, in the hosts of houses where Palafox, doubtless, by turns, served as pet, or companion animal, the soiled carpets, the confettied curtains, splattered ceilings, debased baseboards, compromised couches, marked mirrors, furniture befouled, sweaters unraveled, knickknacks paddywacked, spools tangled, books unbound, cooling pies pinched from sills, plants phylloxerized, stolen diamonds, nights ruined, sons stripped bare, trashcans upended, endlessly….

It would be endless were we to list his hideous crimes in full, the multiple pillagings, every trespass of paws that brought death or destruction, whatever the intention behind them, of which Palafox is suspected, to provided an exhaustive list that would leave out none of the relevant details, for every incident, each circumstance, the date and the place of the event, the level of intimacy that linked him to the victim, when their association began, how often they were in each other’s company, if the nature of their company were normal, ordinary even, the magical moment when in the heat of the moment death arose and what happened to the ashes, and to hear one after the other the plaintiffs still alive enumerate their suffering and their gripes! Incidentally, his ferocity was also and on many occasions for our own good, right away Baruglio wishes to make the point were Palafox was ever found to have been guilty of this and all things. It’s all a question of point of view, of course, as it often is, a matter of the angle from which one observes the event: only the explorer who was well placed to watch the animal swallow a cloud can speak with authority on hippo mucous membranes. His back-packing companion will remain mute on the subject, or very evasive, but saw, on the other hand, with his own eyes a rocky island disappear beneath the mist and advises us to hurry because there isn’t anything good about having night creep up suddenly in these regions far from camp. And in effect it was high time, for in a few minutes the jungle has filled with shadows. This example chosen among a thousand possible others for its exceptional setting, Zambezi, its roseate twilight, its white birds, will it be properly understood? Our eyes are rolling like marbles on the surface of things, this is the banal idea that Baruglio is arguing for: beware of appearances. Let us give Palafox his due. He defeated many malefactors and destroyed many caterpillars, worms, beetles, the banes of our flowerbeds, his guano fattening the fruit of our vegetable gardens, and therefore in turn our vegetables, our children, our ogres, his tunnels favoring aeration and the fertilization of our soil, fighting against the oversilting of our rivers, more effectively than our engineers of the Departments of Water and Forestry, without him the muskrat and the starling would swarm our countrysides.

But we aren’t here to plead in his defense. His guilt remains to be proven. The accusations rest on nothing: no fingerprints, contradictory testimony, the private conviction of Madame Fontechevade constitutes the only serious element we could level against him. The unresolvable question of his age alone would have us stay his execution. He seems young, recall his mischievousness. His fur is silky, his groin humid, his mouth full of teeth, his eyes glitter, his tail functions, sweeps. It would be in bad faith to try him for murder, even for walking out on a check, someone not yet in the world at the time of the facts already mentioned. We will not begin to blame larvae for every shadowy crime, all the unsolved murders. Imagine for a moment the number of maternity wards the police could then assault in search of supposed assassins, caught like rats in a trap, plucked up at birth, with no other choice but to give themselves up, and be shot on the spot? Needless to say such an alibi would be impossible to contradict, and would clear Palafox. Alas! It will be difficult to establish. Even if his mother of whom we know nothing were suddenly to step forward, we would have to buy her testimony. Yet we know what lies and sacrifices a mother can make if it should mean saving her endangered child. She would perhaps go so far as to confess to having committed the crimes herself. Besides, she seems thoroughly compromised in this affair. It is not impossible that we are mistaken in believing he is so young. Since his arrest, everything is calm. No sign of new aggression or attack around us. Henceforth walking in the woods does one good, on foot or horseback. Peace begged on bended knee before wine and wiseman alike, peace that had been refused us, here she reigns, reestablished, in this church where wafts the scent of a cellar. Coincidence, adds Baruglio, simple coincidence.

The study of reptiles (the researching of the aviary origins of the blindworm in particular) have led Professor Baruglio to take a closer interest in paleontology-a small demonstration of his general competence in this field: to reconstruct hour by hour the schedule of a tyrannosaurus, all he has to do is take a look at its fossilized footprint, preserved by some miracle, since that muddy morning of the secondary era when the monster, rudely awakened, did not himself know what he would do with his day. But in the absence of even the barest hint of a trail, the most meagre trace, Baruglio’s enquiry is stuck, is at the mercy of the winds. Palafox left no prehistoric traces, or he erased them, or bad weather did, glacial erosion perhaps accountable, or why not Aeolian, or fluvial, or we could inadvertently attribute them to some animal already on file, present at the same times at the same places or somewhat earlier or long after, or long before or a little after. It would have been too terrific to find his fossilized shell in the rock like those of numerous other cephalopods. (In the interest of those who have seen an ammonite, take rapid note that they would be wrong to bother seeing a second. Save for variations of weight and diameter, nothing differentiates one from the next. Their discovery dates back to an ancient era and once the initial surprise was past, man’s interest in the whole kit and caboodle diminished exponentially, daily were dug up more examples, leading us to little more than a lot of clutter. It’s with the invention of paper, then the loose sheet that one saw a movement in their favor take shape, initially almost imperceptible, it was born in literary milieus before settling though the lower strata of society. The ammonite became indispensable to man the day he understood its raison d’être and made corresponding use of it. He had lost interest in it before, as he would have if clothespins had existed in nature, in the rough, until the invention of fabric, at which point the clothespin would have been a runaway success, thus the ammonite remains today, despite the competition of Plexiglas cubes and varnished pebbles, the paperweights most prized by people of taste-a position of trust already ostensibly coveted by young mollusks that barely find use as rubber bands, but time is on their side, time passes.)

As you have already noted, a great many of the rock paintings (blood and ash, brown ochre) dated to the middle-Magdalenian era, represent a humped quadruped, with back-curving horns, of which the curved neckline of wooly fur recalls that belonging to Palafox. Let us not rush to conclude the image is in fact of him. Drawn in the shadowy discomfort of a rocky wall, these approximate figures, clumsy, frequently unfinished, suggest a great many other animals, such as the bison. Above all, what do we know of the artistic conceptions of the troglodytic painters? Why, for example, wouldn’t they have left their imaginations run free and invent this ruminant from scratch? Let us not expect an answer from Baruglio. These men and their rituals have become foreign to us. The generation gap — widened and flooded in zoos to keep monkeys or Lemuroid from sneaking into the company of visitors — this famous trench seems deeper still, and more unbridgeable, which keeps us from the carcasses and other fine remains of our direct ancestors. All one need do is show their gently prognathous skulls to a contemporary to judge, and listen as their laughter overflows.

Now immobilized, head held low, masticating hay, Palafox seems indifferent to everything said around him. He makes no move to exculpate himself. In fact, he conducts himself as if he were convinced of the inutility of the least effort, as if the executioner had already hoisted his cleaver, lowered it, and was now walking away at dawn in search of other thrilling adventures, other unbalanced encounters, other temporary liaisons. It is true, once again, that everything points to him, his ferocity, his omnivorousness, his claws sharper than canines, his canines like sabers, his coat clotted with blood. Scientifically, declaims Pierpont in staccato syllables (he polishes each and joins one carefully to the next), we must prove sci-en-tif-i-cal-ly the innocence or the guilt of Palafox and therefore, in the first place, go back and consider the entirety of his life, search backward for the moment of his birth. We can do this. The lengths of his tusks, the wear and tear on his hooves, his song, the position of his ears at rest, the suppleness of his spine, the size and number of his tines and antlers, we have enough information to succeed. But would it not be faster to have recourse to the techniques commonly utilized to date relics? Zeiger envisions for example the partial dissolution or perhaps irradiation of Palafox. Thanks to this last method, the historian knows instantly where, in which Greek or Inca dresser, to arrange the exhumed plate with a fistful of gold pieces — an archeological discovery then, but also a fine symbol of an earth at once nurturing and nurtured, let it be noted. There are many other methods of dating more or less along the lines of those already mentioned. Push a fisherman into the water and count the circles that expand around the place he fell, you will learn the age of the river.

Or the age of the fisherman, opinions differ on this point, but at root this changes nothing for us, proclaims Baruglio who suggests that we could count, rather than Palafox’s antlers, the concentric circles of the green and red scales of his carapace. Because the antlers mislead — you admit along with me that the stag wears no hat, and yet look at where we all threw ours when we came in. And Baruglio points out, hung on the wall, the varnished antlers of a ten-point buck. Antlers mislead, here’s why, they break in battle, stop growing and multiplying after ten years and never produce more than stolen fruit. You just can’t trust them. Nor the ridges on the shells, Pierpont objects. While quite clear during the early years, very deep and numerous, they become erased through time. After half a century, any carapace will appear perfectly smooth, flawless, as polished as our skulls, Messieurs, which may as well be compared to billiard balls, to staircase finials and pommels, in the best of cases to the knees of actresses. (From that time on we better understood why Madame Fontechevade had finally thrown her tortoise Tatiana out a window. While her own face wrinkled, Tatiana’s shell grew smoother with time, and as a result of inverted evolutionary trajectories there reached a point where they criss-crossed and each exhibited an identical state of dilapidation, from which a chain-reaction of comical mistaken identity arose, and what was bound to happen did, and one day Tatiana was taken for a younger sister of our old, vexed, terribly vexed, friend.)

According to the spot where Sadarnac had caught him, in the very center of the Sargasso sea, it is likely that Palafox followed the migratory route, gulping down unrelentingly, and without deviating from his route, the offspring of sardines and anchovies and herrings which really hit the spot, here as elsewhere, when tasty little dishes won’t do. This established, continues Cambrelin, the problem remains undiminished as we have no idea in which direction Palafox swam. Did he return to spawning-grounds, a vigorous adult at the peak of his prowess, or, just out of the egg, did he take to the open sea for the first time? In fact, we would be no more enlightened about his age if we were to illuminate this mystery. The eel, for example, undulates with the river until it reaches the delta, making its way down the warm currents to reproduce in the sea, while the salmon, counter-exemplary, abandons the sea, making its way up the icy stream and lays its twenty five thousand eggs beneath the stones of a calm river bordered by willow and alder or aspen. It is in this manner that the returning salmon journeys accompanied by the young eel and the young salmon accompanied by the mature eel. Was Palafox born in saltwater, in which case the vigorous adult at the peak of his powers when Sadarnac caught him, on his way to spawn in fresh water? Or was Palafox born in fresh water, fresh out of the egg when Sadarnac caught him, heading out for the first time to the open sea? Really, this is the only point that demands clarification.

Cambrelin is a stern fellow, sloppy in appearance. His passion for ichthyology comes from his maternal grandfather, an eczematous double-pedal amputee, taciturn, who used to revel in the presence of water and liked to make bubbles in his bath beneath the interrogatory and already myopic eye of the keyhole. Cambrelin wears silver-framed glasses, patched with red plastic tape. When he speaks he barely moves his lips. His voice is dry, rather disagreeable to hear. What he might say or think is of no interest to anyone. By the end of his intervention, along the lines of those indices enumerated above, length of horns, state of coat, wear of hackles, etc… the three other naturalists counted seventy-four, seventy-four years, the likely age of Palafox. For now, it is important to locate the animal in relation to ourselves, in our pyramid of ages.

The oldest of Ziegler’s recollections concerns a little boy who was very keen on ornithology who went by the name Swift Eagle and wanted to become sachem. According to him, all we have to do is multiply this number, seventy-four, by seven. Palafox would therefore have merited the respect that we owe and the care that we offer our elders of five hundred eighteen years of age. Pierpont contests this calculation. Pierpont also draws on bonafide experience. In his tender youth, each day he invented an ingenious grasshopper and, blindfolded, spent most of his free time taking apart and reconstituting various beetles. According to him, the right answer was to divide the existing number, seventy-four, by twelve. Then Palafox could be our son, or our grandson, even our great grandson, meaning it would be up to him eventually to take care of our long-term care. (Once, of course, beds become free. Because of the war, all the hospitals are full to bursting. Sets and staging are conventional, metal beds in a row, white walls, grey blankets, stark fluorescent lighting; the casting however allows for pleasant surprises, the nurses, the wounded, the powerless doctors then the providential priests, all are remarkable. We expect an extended run. The enemy is mounting an underhanded resistance. Guards are stabbed to death. Bridges explode underfoot.) As for Baruglio, he remains quiet as to the birth of his vocation, nonetheless we know that he laughs at snake bites — at worst a rattlesnake with a head cold will inject him with its virus. Like experienced boxers who smile when you break their noses, he has developed total immunity. His idea seems straightforward and smart: multiply our number, seventy-four, by seven, five hundred eighteen, and then divide that by twelve. Palafox, like most forty-somethings, still has many good years ahead of him.

By the same token, his innocence is blinding. Palafox did not exist in 64, when the emperor Nero first fed Christians to the lions. Other persecutions followed, under Domitian (81–96), under Trajan (98-117), under Decius (249–251), under Valerian (257–258), under Diocletian (309–311), before the Edict of Tolerance of Milan put these massacres to an end, in 313. But at that time, still no Palafox: neither the imago we know, nor the silken chrysalis swaddled in silk, nor the first worm, nor the blackberry shrub where he first nibbled the tender young leaves, one by one, avoiding those awful fruits and the hooked hand of the vampire that gathered, to make jams, these clots of black blood. The counts of indictment are laid to rest, one upon the next. Dismissed. Dismissed. How could he have spread the plague to London in 1347? Dismissed. Nothing to keep him from his training sessions. The routine needs to be ready this summer at La Gloriette. Algernon is counting on the attendance of professors Pierpont, Zeiger and Baruglio. They will come, they promise. But not my wife, alas! Cambrelin makes clear, she is unwell, she no longer goes anywhere, do please excuse her.

7

The caravan of the Luzzatto circus ungirds before the church, it is early, the little town still sleeps. They silently unyoke the horses, no words are necessary, everyone knows what to do, movement precedes thought. Clowns and acrobats spill into the night — off to pounce on all the key positions — posters rolled up under their arms — then they cover walls and fences with the official notices, surrender, give your weapons to the authorities, eight p.m. curfew. Everyone must act fast. Every minute counts. Everything must be ready by dawn.

Mission accomplished. When they awake, the inhabitants discover the red and white tent, already raised above the church square. All resistance is futile. They capitulate. The nearness of the two structures inspires among a few some cynical notions of a general sort. They claim to see there the symbol of the destiny of the human race, the decline of ideals, of universal history, of the emptiness and vanity of it all, of the docility of the masses, or the irresolution of hearts, etc. Those who seek a wider audience compare the big top to a birthday cake, or to some sort of miraculous mushroom that cropped up overnight. Pupi Luzzatto, abetted by a megaphone walks at the front of the procession. Behind him, in a tutu, wearing handcuffs, is Antonio the Bear. Nino the dwarf follows, sitting on the shoulders of a trumpet-playing monkey (a rare sub-species of gorilla whose most stupefying trait isn’t its talent for jazz, in fact overblown, but the silver-plated zipper visible between its shoulder blades), then Nina the dwarf in her carriage drawn by white poodles, then three elephants who hold each other by the tail so as not to lose themselves in this crowd. A concern because the gathered population on the sidewalk cheers the happy troupe. Then a squad of unicyclists, then a single girl-jockey on two different ponies each with plans of their own, then a laughable clown handing out pamphlets — the great luzzatto circus has inspired awe in all the capitals (…), feats that will take your breath away, Perla and her wild animals, the prestidigitator Massimo (…), the Human Cannon, Giuseppe’s performing fleas (…). The great luzzatto circus will perform an amazing show tonight.

Palafox, left without surveillance in the Buffoons’ garden, will not waste away. The grass is thick, abundant. Three meters of rope to move around his pole, some families are worse off. Algernon, Maureen and Olympia won’t be gone for long. They will be back at night, after the show, with a surprise. Roasted peanuts — the surprise, the suspense will not last, Palafox would eat them all day if he could. Maureen bought this bag for him, in front of the menagerie, from the occupant of the first cage who also takes the tickets, it was enough to toss in a few coins. Twelve smart wire-covered horse-drawn caravans, arranged in a circle, look toward each other. The two ponies trot side by side, driven by habit, but the girl-jockey has provisionally disassociated herself from the movement. Visitors press against the cages. An old man stooped or hunched, often one wonders which, whose ravaged face is adorned with a gleaming straight nose, as if this nose alone had by stroke of luck or magic or miracle escaped from accident or illness or explosion, observes the lions while mumbling or chewing, something bitter, in any case. Farther along, a little boy with jutting ears and his two little brothers, twins dressed alike, similarly jutting, similarly merry, make fun of the chimpanzees. But impossible to witness everyone and everything, mankind is present, with his sex, that of a sergeant or a majorette, with deerskin gloves or red fingers, with or without his tie, pretty well-represented. Antonio nonetheless notices that coalminers, shoe repairmen, blowers of glass or of verses, the moleskinners and repairers of chairs have very nearly become extinct. When I was a cub, there were countless. And the lady grocers? I who am speaking to you, I remember the time when it wasn’t rare to see a lady grocer. I don’t see them anymore. The savage destruction of their habitat has condemned them. The nimblest of them have found refuge in the mountains but, unless a law is suggested and passed and at this rate who could believe such a thing possible, the last of their kind will disappear within a few years. Antonio could care less after all. He’s primping in his trailer, in the shadows. Pssst, say the photographers, pssst, as if the bear will leap onto all fours and offer up the world premiere of his latest number. They don’t know Antonio at all. Pssst, Olympia says. Two somersaults to start things off then the bear stands up, then an about-turn, a back-bend, flat as a board, another somersault, full split, back onto his feet at last, a curtsy. There really wasn’t enough space in the trailer to execute, between back-bend and handstand, the cartwheel without which this too-sudden revival of a cut-up tree is a bit laughable. But Antonio is easy to forgive. No, it was perfect, just perfect. Olympia offers him a hearty thanks since it is formally forbidden and practically impossible to stick your hand or any other food between the bars. And then of course tonight we’ll get to see the whole thing.

Algernon is expecting a lot from the performance. Perhaps he’ll steal some ideas for the Palafox show he’s planning. No harm there. When you steal an idea you’re liable to go on to steal an apple, announces Algernon who could care less about assonance. Ideas belong to everyone, like apples. The lucky devil who finds them didn’t make them, his job is nothing more than watching them ripen, tending to them, keeping crows away. Who would dare claim paternity of an apple? Algernon dreams up an original routine for Palafox, something original or perilous, original and perilous, or burlesque, and burlesque. We’ll have to see.

Lorenzo Luzzatto, Dino Luzzatto, Stefano Luzzatto, Pietro Luzzatto, Oneto Luzzatto, and Claudio Luzzatto kneel, onto the shoulders of whom are hoisted and then kneel Giorgio Luzzatto, Aldo Luzzatto, Ermanno Luzzatto and Leonardo Luzzatto, onto the shoulders of whom are hoisted and then kneel Francisco Luzzatto, Luciano Luzzatto, and Silvio Luzzatto onto the shoulders of whom are hoisted and then kneel Carlo Luzzatto and Domenico Luzzatto, onto the skulls of whom is hoisted and then kneels the little Giaquinto Luzzatto. We applaud the Luzzatto brothers. But it isn’t over yet. Little Giaquinto Luzzatto lifts himself slowly, arms extended, and stands on tiptoe on the skulls of Domenico Luzzatto and Carlo Luzzatto who stand on tiptoe on the shoulders of Francisco Luzzatto, Luciano Luzzatto, and Silvio Luzzatto who stand on tiptoe on the shoulders of Giorgio Luzzatto, Aldo Luzzatto, Ermanno Luzzatto and Leonardo Luzzatto, who stand on tiptoe on the shoulders of Lorenzo Luzzatto, Dino Luzzatto, Stefano Luzzatto, Pietro Luzzatto, Oneto Luzzatto, and Claudio Luzzatto. A new ovation for the Luzzatto brothers’ pyramid. Which risks dragging on forever since Lorenzo Luzzatto, Dino Luzzatto, Stefano Luzzatto, Pietro Luzzatto, Oneto Luzzatto, and Claudio Luzzatto all lift their right legs, and since Giorgio Luzzatto, Aldo Luzzatto, Ermanno Luzzatto and Leonardo Luzzatto all lift their left legs, and since Francisco Luzzatto, Luciano Luzzatto, and Silvio Luzzatto all lift their right legs, and since Domenico Luzzatto and Carlo Luzzatto both lift their left legs, and since little Giaquinto Luzzatto balancing on a hand alternates his perch between the head of Domenico Luzzatto and that of Carlo Luzzatto. As they get older, they’re bound to collapse. Algernon hardly hides his boredom. So, after a final round of applause, the Luzzatto brothers throw themselves into the demolition of their pyramid, but with every conceivable safety-measure, stone by stone, in a way that later can allow for rapid reconstruction if necessary, as soon as tomorrow, in some new metropolis.

Then darkness falls again, which restores silence (a generic expression used to designate various droning insects of the order of diptera, with their stocky shapes, their short antennae, dangerous because of the microbes carried on their feet and probosces, according to the clarification of professor Pierpont). Nothing lasts, a cymbalist waiting in the shadows crushes the unfortunate black fly. Music explodes. Drums beat each other up. Pupi Luzzatto returns with light, himself radiant and twinkling, and tips his white top-hat by way of announcement, Mesdames and Messieurs, Giuseppe Luzzatto and his performing fleas! There aren’t many performing fleas left, Olympia notes. Generally speaking, the quality of primary education isn’t much to speak of these days. Most nine year olds can barely read. Then there’s the question of recruitment, Algernon observes. I don’t have an explanation but there seems to be a stunning paucity of fleas these days, even though the blood of our fathers, which used to delight them, still flows through our veins. The spectators in the first row are the most fortunate, Maureen notes. Giuseppe Luzzatto has Charybdis and Scylla jump from his right wrist to his left wrist, then back again. It would seem that they execute a series of airborne acrobatics, barrel-rolls, loop-de-loops, between the two, a first good idea worth noting for Palafox’s performance.

Darkness, silence, cymbals, top hat, Mesdames Messieurs, Polo the Clown! Polo the Clown runs along a tightwire, dances on the tightwire, descends, bows, steps on his shoe-lace, takes a spill. Polo the clown juggles three oranges, four oranges, five oranges, and a lemon, two lemons, and a pineapple, bows, steps on his fruit, takes a spill. Polo the Clown pulls a violin out of his ear, plays Brahms with great sensitivity, waves, steps on his violin, takes a spill. The crowd roars each time Polo falls.

…, Mesdames Messieurs, Perla and her wild animals! A cage has been placed in the ring. For reason x or y, Perla is in a swimsuit. The animals are released, two lions, three lionesses, a leopard, a cheetah not to be confused with the leopard, and a jaguar whose spotted coat recalls Palafox’s own. Perla produces a hoop, the eight beasts leap through, the hoop is set on fire, the eight beasts leap through, another hoop is added, the eight beasts leap through. Perla sticks to her idea, she lights the second hoop, but the eight beasts leap through. Palafox should be able to handle this trick. Then Perla sticks her head into the lion’s mouth. I could do that too, Algernon thinks.

…, the great, the fabulous Massimo Luzzatto! The prestidigitator flattens his opera hat with one fist, throws it to the ground, tramples it, pops it back into shape with the flick of a foot, from it withdraws eggs, doves, three white rabbits, in short, the old false bottom. Murmurs of disappointment from the peanut gallery. The fabulous Massimo next fills ten empty bottles from a single full one, so apparently identical to the others, and yet too apparently a matter of another false bottom, once again. “Mademoiselle if you would be so kind,” Massimo lays Maureen in a box, which he nails shut, which he saws in half, out from which Nino and Nina burst, while Maureen reappears in her seat, wearing his opera hat. Polite applause for the illusionist who, really, has to give the false bottom thing a rest. These old tricks aren’t fooling anyone, mutters the fabulous Olympia who, on the other hand, knows a card-trick that will knock your socks off. It’s actually very simple. Take a deck of fifty-two cards. Shuffle well. Have someone pick a card at random. Close your eyes while saying, Do not, I repeat, do not show me the card. Cut the deck. Let your opponent place the card on the pile of the deck of his choosing. Gather the deck together again. One by one turn over the cards. You say It’s this one, and you read the look of pristine surprise on the face of your opponent who says Why yes it is. Now, of course, no magician worth his salt reveals his secrets, but, in this case I’ll make an exception. When you reconstitute the two piles of cards, covering the opponent’s card with the other half of the deck, you peek at the card on the bottom of the deck you are covering the card with. The card at the bottom will be the card that precedes your opponent’s card. Therefore, when you are turning over the cards, you will know that your opponent’s card will follow when the card you spied arrives.

All things considered, it’s hard to imagine pulling an animal Palafox’s size from a hat. As a matter of fact, five elephants are now in the ring. While we were hanging on Olympia’s every word, we missed their entrance. They stand stock-still, huddled together, one animal. Giovanni and Noretta Luzzatto bump them, unsettle them, pile into them, palpate this fine flesh in their hands; then, at a sign from Giovanni the pachyderms prostrate themselves, before what, great gods, before whom, or does there exist someone or something worthy of such striking humility, of such reverence, of all that ivory? It would be unfortunate were the answer no, were the effort wasted. Then, they rise as one, interlace their trunks, cradle Noretta. Then they shower her. Then they groom her. Then they don’t know what to do next for a joke and turn to Giovanni who nods to a cluster of stools. Ah! Yes, the stools, they almost forgot the stools, they heave themselves onto the stools, and nothing is sadder to see than these five elephants, torn from their natural habitat as babes, and made to sit like this, ridiculously plumed, while there are old women without seats in the crowd.

In all honesty, scaling an elephant isn’t the hardest thing in the world. It’s just the sort of thing I’d be good at, thinks Algernon.

Pupi Luzzatto announces the next act with an a note of gravity quite rare coming from him — but, of course, what do we know of Pupi Luzzatto and his customary customs? What do we know of his true features? Laughter scrambles a face. Joviality only proves the elasticity of the rubber, after all. That’s Pupi Luzzatto for you. The true waxen face of this orphan, this cuckolded husband, this aging man. For Pupi Luzzatto announces the acrobats. They will risk their lives before our very eyes, without a net, Mesdames Messieurs, in a high-wire act unlike any in the world. Do not applaud during their feats, please, move around as little as possible. Rolando Luzzatto is balancing in the void, suspended by his feet from a trapeze. Rosella Luzzatto, his own wife, hangs from his outstretched arms. Twelve yards away, Nanni Luzzatto, her own brother, balances in the void, suspended by the feet from a trapeze. His own wife, Antonella Luzzatto, hangs from his outstretched arms. But that’s only the beginning: Rolando lets go or more accurately launches Rosella, Nanni lets go of or more accurately launches Antonella, Rolando and Nanni part fiercely, Rosella and Antonella execute a first spiral, Rolando and Nanni split apart, a second spiral, Rolando and Nanni grow nearer nonetheless, a third spiral again and the two brothers at the ends of the arc grab their respective sisters-in-law by the ankles nose down, Rolando Antonella and Nanni Rosella, while Algernon thinks of the harmony of a world where relations between men and women would never be more complicated than this. Then he snaps out of it, and at once he and the rest of the spectators feel the irresistible urge to crack their knuckles, as if they were afraid they had broken a bone. If we were to subsitute for the real trapeze artists above an imaginary string quartet, then all the spectators would feel the irresistible collective urge to clear their throats, as though a choir at mass about to burst into song. The spectators above all else need to remember that they are there, very much alive, they must be understood, that they exist and would be capable of such feats themselves, it’s just that no one ever gives them the opportunity for God’s sake. On the other hand, Algernon will ask all his friends to approach Palafox, to touch him, to harness him, to fight him, it will be an interactive performance. The animal will be allowed to choose his own partner for the high wire act. For this launch into the void, his partner, whoever she may be, will be at somewhat of a disadvantage. Palafox possesses over Madame Franc-Nohain or the general’s wife the double advantage of being able, primo, to glide effortlessly thanks to his patagium, and secondo, to latch onto anything with his prehensile tail.

Next into the ring come Nino and his monkey, Nina and her dogs, Antonio and his velocipede. The Human Cannon is unwell. The evening therefore ends with Clara Luzzatto and her ponies. Algernon rubs his hands together, Palafox’s show will go well, he thinks. The program is almost completed in his head. A bold opening: an arrival on tricycle, trumpet improvisations. Real crowd-pleasers. After the laughter, the shivers, Algernon will crack his whip. Stools and hoops on the grass, if time allows, and trapezes in the trees. Yes, he can see it all. Maureen will look smashing in jodhpurs.

Palafox nearly choked to death curled up on his side like a bum. After having tugged in vain on his tether, he started to graze unhungrily just to pass the time, how else could we explain his clockwise course? The cord wrapped around the stake, and with each new lap the tether drew shorter, and tighter for want of slack, as if caught in a collar, the poor thing falling to his knees and onto his side, nearly choking to death. Sure, all he needed to do was turn back in the opposite direction, counter-clockwise, to see comfort once again restored. But Palafox isn’t there yet. He possesses only the fuzziest sense of the interdependence of space and time in his world. He still has to ask the stars (how dare he?) which way to go. Maureen disentangles him, tosses his peanuts into a saucer. Palafox capers about, rolls around at Olympia’s feet, unties the laces of her boots. No, he’s decidedly not an eagle.

Algernon would get a lot more credit if he were able to get the thing to speak. He’s been trying for quite some time. Palafox as his own ringmaster, that’s the idea. Thanks to so many of you for coming, Algernon repeats endlessly into his ear. Chirp, says Palafox. Articulate more clearly, Algernon instructs. Chirp? ventures Palafox. Better. Once again. Chirp! Recites Palafox. And Algernon is so happy he could kiss him. (Ovid, Cato, Petronius and Pliny all mention the art of teaching birds the rudiments of conversation, whereas Cicero’s silence on this matter could be seen as a silent reproach of the practice. Later, Clement of Alexandria scolded women who tried to teach their nightingales. And yet look at where we are now. We hardly read Cicero, Clement of Alexandria wouldn’t manage to find a publisher for his Hypotyposes, Madame, Mademoiselle, Monsieur, your work unfortunately does not quite fall within the constraints of our list — but each night, in spring, in the gardens and the undergrowth, rise the sad songs of the Roman and Greek women they found so frivolous.

Most of Palafox’s lesson-time is devoted these days to matters of elocution. As for the remainder, just tweaking and fine-tuning. His stride, for example, is still somewhat heavy, halting, which wouldn’t be so surprising if he were devoid of limbs. At first glance you’d be so sure he was, you’d take the bet. But he’s just a torso! exclaimed Franc-Nohain after his capture. In reality, the seal has two paws, which may as well be called flippers since the five fingers are joined by webbing — thanks to which he is able to move forward, in spite of everything, painfully sure, as if he were dragging himself forward beneath a sack of geological bric-a-brac. Palafox should shake it off before he enters the living room of La Gloriette, in order to move with ease between tables, and he should trim his mustache, and above all he should overcome his fear of taking his head out of his shoulders. He has made great lingual leaps. Léon, he says while doing cartwheels, Léon, but the next part of his story is less clear. Léon, he keeps repeating, and once again he unfurls the one hundred fifty ocellus feathers of his tail, Léon gyrryrryrryvnid-vnid… Could it be that he knows some bawdy anecdote about one of the thirteen popes that blessed this name? Unless he meant to quote Tolstoy or Trotsky. But, in that case, Tolstoy or Trotsky?

8

Because of the war, Algernon decides it is preferable to leave the capital. The enemy has mounted a counter-offensive. Their allies are already encircling our allies. We were wrong to empty our borders. Our troops are laying siege to deserted cities, held by a handful of snipers, while the main body of the opposing army advances upon us. Useless to dwell any longer on these events, all this will be told to you in detail after the armistice with a romance as counterpoint, he would be a fighter pilot, she would break enemy lines to find him, hidden in a flour sack or a spare tire, he would be wounded in the course of a raid, she would watch over him night and day, finally he would get his eyesight back and would even be back at the controls of his plane, but wait, will he be able to destroy the arsenal? Or wait, another idea, he will be the lieutenant commander of a warship, she will cross enemy lines to find him, disguised as a barrel of fuel or a lifesaving buoy, he will be wounded in the midst of a mission, she will watch over him night and day, finally he will recover the use of his limbs, will regain command of his vessel, but wait, will he succeed in torpedoing the flagship of the enemy fleet? Thanks to the friendly intervention of General Fontechevade, a one-month leave has been arranged for Supply Corps Lieutenant Chancelade. Thus, it’s time to celebrate, he will be coming back to be with Maureen in La Gloriette.

La Gloriette — Constructed during the reign of Henri IV by Pierre Cormon, intendant of the last duke of Alençon (…) this home, which contributes to the already lovely panorama of the countryside, (…) has five windows on its face; the ones that are at the edge of the façade facing south each jut out a dozen feet, an architectural trick that gives the illusion of there being an extra wing (…); the one in the middle serves as a door (…). Although constructed of granite, a difficult stone to work, its angles, the frames of the windows (…) are decorated by bosses cut to a diamond point. (…) The roof is gracefully contoured at the corners with sculpted latticework mansards and leaded bouquets at the gables, (…) nestled rather elegantly into gutters (…) trimmed with balustrades (…). A weather-cock represents a hunter in the midst of shooting a hare. (…) This little castle as finely wrought as a flower (…) seems not even to rest on the ground. (…) The ground floor (…) leads to a broad walk giving onto a bowling-green… Amidst all the houses visited while scouting a location, we have chosen this one, like us, you have scanned the prospectus, somewhat prefab but solid. At least we can agree about that. Olympia and Palafox have settled into Archie’s shed, made of planks and kindling, that one, but built with our own hands, with a view of the sea. The beach is right there. You can hear the cries of children swallowed up by the waves; above the garden, in this sky of fussy gulls and regimented sheep, a kite demonstrates the superiority of loners and shoulder-shruggers, you hear the cries of the child rewinding the string, rewinding, rewinding nothing but wind. The sun appears episodically, indispensable foil of seaside landscapes, immediately bombarded by creamy cumulus clouds (you will not find this defeatist postcard on the racks of the gift shop). There is a warm wind, which also blows through the branches of the walnut tree where Olympia, her parakeet, and Palafox have set up house. That these two climbing birds managed to reach the shack comes of course as no surprise. But an arboreal Olympia leaves us slack-jawed. She gets up there first. Who would have bet on her? She moves with great agility among the branches, from tree to tree even — professor Cambrelin wasn’t wrong, the current classifications of the species does leave something to be desired, too compartmentalized, we change during the course of a life, we evolve, and like the flying fish chased by the conger eel feels its wings growing, Olympia adapts. The theory of transformism is only valid for terrestrial populations, the kangaroo for example will always have feet too big for Melbourne sidewalks. And while man will seek in vain to contact the Martians and fruitlessly send probes into the cosmos, Marsupials sick of being massacred, sick of hearing the jibes directed at them every time they take their offspring for a spin in their pouches, won’t waste a minute re-boarding their spaceship, hidden beneath the Victoria desert, and return to Mars, disappointed, renouncing the notion of establishing good relations with us and telling their relatives and friends who had remained behind, incredulous at first and then horrified, that humans drag their kids around in rickety strollers and fire without warning on interplanetary travelers.

This respite at La Gloriette isn’t merely strategic. Thus, Palafox will have the time to become familiar with the layout of his future, exploits being too strong a word, and to rehearse his role in the very theater of, operations not being quite right either. Algernon would like to display what Palafox, broken, trained, coached by a refined connoisseur of animal psychology, is capable of. And yet, his performances aren’t limited, disabuse yourselves, merely to displays of athletic superiority. Certainly, he runs faster, longer, jumps higher, further than anyone, and we see that he has mastered swimming, no contest, but that is no reason to conclude, nor on the basis of his brain weighing less than an ounce, that he should remain excluded from the world of art and ideas. Like us, you have heard Palafox discuss the economic policies of Léon Blum and express his admiration (with only minor reservations) for the pamphlets of Léon Bloy.

Olympia never lets Palafox out of her sight. Without her intervention, and only 10 minutes ago, the animal would have been stoned to death. Here’s what happened. Four young lads approaching military age had grabbed, a limb each, a young lass approaching the age at which she might be inclined to send them letters, and raced down the beach with the clear intention to drown their merry captive. This game was all the rage. Another young lass ran beside the group and was photographing it from every angle so that nothing of the scene would be lost and twenty or thirty years later one could laugh as heartily as today. She was the one who slipped on Palafox. The camera fell and smashed on a rock, so many precious touching testaments of our inimitable age that historians will be without, while she sprawled out clumsily, nose in the water but big toe on dry land, about as far from sirendom as one could imagine. Hence, the four young military hopefuls abandoned their war-bride-in-training to steal to the side of the fallen one. Nothing serious, but her foot was itching unbearably. Like poison ivy, she clarified. Palafox was careful not to move. Nearly flat and nearly transparent, trying his best to hide his nematocysts and pass for a plastic bag in the eyes of the nearly-draftables, who were looking around to see what could have caused the double mystery of her skid and her pruritus. Seaweed was ruled immediately out, slippery sure but not prurtitary in the least, then the possibility of an allergy to cold water was discarded, but nothing, then, explained the slide. Of course, a combination of the two could have yielded a satisfactory explanation, the seaweed to blame for the slip and the cold water culpable for the itch, after which the enigma would have been resolved and they could have gotten back to things as they were before, collaring the sweet creature and tossing her into the drink. But it was at this point that the captive caught sight of Palafox. What an odd plastic bag, she remarked while extricating herself. Odd for a plastic bag, came the concession, as she was allowed to wriggle free. A jellyfish! she added while nestling herself in our arms. Pebbles were pouring down on Palafox, crushing his lips and nose, making his various cheekbones swell. He was pretty much torn apart when Olympia interceded. Fortunately, none of his vital organs had been touched. Olympia threatened the killers with their very own weapons, in addition to the pebbles, the translucent shards that the sea spits out and that children fooled in turn pick up and suck like tangy candies. They soon beat a retreat, what a good start, even if they did shout obscenities, albeit from a safe distance. A bit unsettled, Olympia leaned down over Palafox. He was wagging his tail, a good sign. For creatures of his species, such spasms are indicative of everything being for the best. Palafox writhed in the sand, lying on his right side, lifting himself up a few inches before falling once again onto the same spot on his left side — thus a sole, in a world created by someone with a really practical mind, would turn of its own accord in the frying pan. Merciful God, a thousand thanks, Olympia knew which end to grab him by, for there aren’t thirty six ways to catch a crab without risking the loss of a finger, and so farewell Chopin, bye-bye Liszt, kiss triumphant recitals across the globe goodbye. But Olympia, again thanks, knew the technique. She caught Palafox by the scruff of the neck, placed him into the water. He swam swiftly from the shore, splashing a little pot-bellied fellow, immersed up to his navel, sitting as if at his table in the middle of the Atlantic as though he were watching for the imminent arrival of a ship full of rum, smoked meats, dried cod and exotic fruits, all that was missing was a plate and a tablecloth, otherwise he would drink a jet of wine.

How’s the water? Wonders the wife of the empurpled bather who shivers and does his stretches in front of the Buffoons’ umbrella, hardly concerned about obstructing our otherwise excellent view, an eyesore spoiling the otherwise excellent view, etc., the caretakers, paid to care, won’t tarry in their expulsion of this iconoclast from the maritime museum of Willem Van de Velde the Younger. The sea is of a gray tending to blue tending to green (this green tending to gray tending to blue, this blue tending to green tending to gray), she is oil before the swell, oil after the swell, she is salted, refreshing, bumpy, navigable, shipwreck-prone, oil-bearing, all-consuming, fishy, crashing, haemostatic, roaring and abnormally silent… Cold when you get in, the lout continues, delicious when you’re in, cold when you’re out, then he bent over all the way, he flopped down and our horizon brightened, which we scanned for the familiar silhouette of Palafox — in vain. Olympia immediately thinks the worst. Maureen sniffles. Algernon lists the reasons for hope. First of all, Palafox can remain up to ninety minutes beneath the surface. A privilege of amphibians who may choose between our world and the depths. We rarely see them. They rise to the surface to breathe and, their cup full, dive below once again. Palafox has still a good quarter of an hour left to be carefree. But have no fear, he’ll be back. Be aware, Olympia, that the leftovers of our meals, all mashed together, however lovingly arranged, don’t begin to do it for an animal nursed on plankton. As stunning as this may seem, these microscopic creatures constitute Palafox’s only food. And he does well by it given that his weight, between a hundred and two hundred tons, is comparable with that of fifteen hundred protesters, according to the police, or three thousand according to the organizers, if you think that the disgruntled participant averages around one hundred and forty pounds, it’s roughly that, angry senior citizens and pregnant women cancel each other out.

Maureen blows her nose and mouths a smile, blowfly and young mouse, Maureen has such fine features. She rises. Remarried to a scarlet snorer, the ex-wife of the empurpled bather is painting a watercolor. The paper still seems blank, but as she gets closer Maureen makes out traces of pale color, barely differentiated, as if the watercolorist had drenched her brush in the palest of infusions, cloudy lemony verbena for the hesitant sky, lime-blossom mint tea for the smooth surface of the sea, with a teaspoon and a half of salt for flavor. Maureen likes it, but you’re going to need a drop of strong coffee to paint Palafox’s black fin, over there, oh there he is, at last. (Howling from the watercolorist.) Where would she get a bugle — that subtle instrument that calls us to supper and to battle, two popular melodies massacred by cellists — if a bugle is not at hand, the ex-wife of the scarlet snorer, her third husband is a pale ghost, shouts until she’s hoarse. Panic all of a sudden. Once again, the clamor of men rises to compete with that of the sea. Bathers surge into the surf. The little pot-bellied man backs away from the table, turning over his chair. Suddenly no one knows how to swim anymore, elementary strokes are forgotten, all we can recall are the steps for a waltz, boxing moves, we dribble, we flip, we cobble, we knit, each according to his formative years, pedaling hard, knocking down walls, doing what we must to make the beach ours again, somehow. But Palafox, much more quickly, making up for lost time, gets dangerously close to the bathers. He overtakes them all. He finds footing on the rocks, flaps his wings, not angry in spite of everything to find himself once again where cows tread.

The sea withdraws with a bow, a thousand ironic curtsies to the disappointed children, looking ridiculous behind their fortresses of sand. The young students from the Maginot school of architecture spent their afternoon organizing the defense. They built quite a bastion, fortifying walls with seaweed and stone, digging moats, everything ready for the siege, the Ocean will be in for quite a surprise, the Ocean is going to fall flat on its face, let it launch its attack, we will wait firm-footed, we’ve got a nasty surprise in store for it, and yet not only does the Ocean refuse battle but it surrenders to us a vast building plot and tons of raw materials… Tomorrow, my dear, we’re leaving now. But mom! But mom! But we won’t have any but-moms. Taking up the defense at the rear, mothers demolish their children, slap them and drag them away. Olympia is gentler with Palafox, more patient, infinitely more delicate, and anyway the little urchin doesn’t put up a fight.

For the night, he enjoys an old zinc bowl encrusted in madrepore, shells and white pebbles. Maureen Buffoon decorated it. The important thing is that Palafox feel at home here, the hollowed-out cephalothorax of a spider-crab will be his cozy nest. On Olympia’s bedside table, the bowl occupies the space ordinarily reserved for her wig. They go to sleep this way, the two of them, telling each other about their day. Tonight, the distance makes them raise their voices. So, begins Olympia. The conversation, confidences exchanged in the tenor of a harangue, nothing hidden, everything said, nothing invented that isn’t shared, the conversation ends up boring Palafox. Ejecting himself from the basin, he glides for a moment through the shack, propelled by his powerful pectoral fins, before collapsing, cold and slimy, between Olympia’s breasts, which withdraw rather than heave, oh well, if she doesn’t want it she doesn’t want it. The rejected animal releases his octopodal grip with considerable regret and slinks away like a bundle of laundry, a cowl and four pair of pants, back into the basin.

Despite calls to order reiterated by Algernon, Palafox persists in throwing himself under the skirts of visitors, without inhibition he sniffs their ankles and hands, approving of them or not. Nearly deaf — he hears only at the ultrasonic level — stricken with color-blindness, surrounding reality always appears to him in black and white despite the breakthrough of Technicolor — he depends on his sense of smell to determine his interactions. Since the beginning, Chancelade has seemed unpleasant to him. Although the lieutenant wears a cologne containing essence of violet, such a bloodhound won’t be fooled, who smells goat hidden under the little flowers. Circumstances become aggravated, Palafox can’t stand the sight of a uniform. Chancelade, crouched before the basin, makes a mistake tickling him with his riding crop in such a way that he shouldn’t really be surprised to receive a sepia splash across the front of his regulation uniform. He arrived in the cool of the morning. Maureen was still sleeping, head on her folded arm, brunette and pale for Palafox, brunette beyond a shadow of doubt, yet delicately tanned, if you were to ask the soldier’s opinion. Maureen opened her eyes, gray-blue or green-gray or blue-green or gray-blue-green, and delicious when you’re in, and cold when you are out, poor us, who will hereafter encounter only the stares of black olives, marbles in the mud. A ray of light made them blink, Maureen coughed — as for her, it is the fluttering of her long lashes, long long lashes, that gives her a cold. At last, she saw, identified, nestled into, slipped beneath Chancelade. Forget the pretexts collected above by Palafox. His hate is sheer jealousy. With us, he is timid and grumpy. He tolerates Olympia who suckles him, brushes him, walks him. The four zoologists only arouse his distrust. But he loves Maureen. For her, he would go to the ends of the earth. When she leaves he’s barely alive, his anxious eyes seek her everywhere. Behind him, no one. To his right, no one. But look, straight ahead, here she comes. Palafox shoots a glance to the left nonetheless, just to be sure. Then his beak starts twitching, his gullet turns a deep violet, wings flutter, eighty beats per second to rise against the gale, mounting, spinning, lighter than his feathers, poised between heaven and earth. All this high drama, for her.

However, Palafox only obeys his master. He is obedient with Algernon. Their sessions in the water have recommenced. This one directs that one from the shore. They work on conditioning as much as they do technique. The former is satisfying. Palafox develops into a powerhouse of 520 horsepower, his average speed approaches fifteen miles-per-hour, peaking at twenty-five, but, still according to his trainer, his margin for improvement is staggering. After warm-ups, they move on to games of skill, Algernon expects this aquatic act to be the lynchpin of the whole show. He claps his hands once, and Palafox propels himself from the water, spindle-shaped and case-hardened, aerodynamic, gaining altitude, then falling, or so it appears, changing course before diving down once again. Algernon claps twice and Palafox catches a rubber ring while in the air. Three times, and Palafox juggles, a bowling pin balanced on his nose, a red balloon balanced on the bowling pin, and bowling pin balanced on the red balloon. Four times, he balances on his tail and poises himself on the crest of the waves, without apparent effort, it’s Algernon we must congratulate. A few minutes of rest have been well-earned. Palafox swims slowly toward the shore; the blurred mass of his body grows more distinct, only his eyes and his tightly set nostrils break the surface. He heaves himself onto a rock, takes root. Where he comes to rest he tends to stay. Palafox always experiences great difficulty tearing himself away. This time again, Algernon comes to his aid. He slips the blade of his knife between the rock and the ventral suction cup of his shell. Palafox skids, freed from all fetters, diving head-first into the water. Back to work. Algernon casts the familiar parts. Maureen rejoins Palafox and sits astride his back. She mounts bareback, arms and legs bare, holding onto the animal’s fins. As expected, Palafox crosses the bay, as expected Maureen waves her hand. Not bad, Algernon notes to himself, certain transitions still lumber, tomorrow we’ll work on timing. But enough for today, time for bed. The day is winding down, soon Algernon loses sight of Palafox and his rider. They approach the horizon and enter the open sea. Maureen embraces Palafox, cheek against soft, smooth little head. Full steam ahead.

A meeting is held at La Gloriette. Has Palafox stolen Maureen away? Has Maureen stolen away with Palafox? Is the duo in cahoots? Where is he taking her? Or is it she who is taking him? Olympia defends Palafox. Chancelade defends Maureen. Olympia rather suspects Maureen. Chancelade rather suspects Palafox. What does it matter, Algernon interrupts, we have to find them, they are at risk either way, thirst and hunger, or the opposite, worse still, drowning, sharks. The Rémora is anchored in the bay, let’s go, Sadarnac will be only too happy to be of use to us. Algernon is correct, the captain offers his services, they set sail immediately. The sea was this calm when I first captured Palafox in the West Indies, Sadarnac recounts, taking advantage of the opportunity, and the night was just as dark. Oh, let him talk. The lights of the coast go out one by one, it is late, the listless men snuff their candles out. There is no looming sign of the storm which would have mauled our ship, a tempest the likes of which has never blown in the memory of any sailor on the seven seas, the Rémora dances like a cork on the waves, like a dead fish, beneath red skies, while the passengers drenched to the bone, to avoid being carried away by the waves sweeping over the deck, bind themselves to the mast, distinguishing already in the tangle of swaying rigging and through the tracery of tatters of sail the black shapes of foaming reefs, look-alikes for the monsters of legend, and gusts shred the forestaysail, the foresail, the spanker and the royal, an overexcited special envoy photographs the shipwreck for the Olympia Gazette, powerful lightening bolts pierce the clouds, so many sensational snapshots, the flying jib ripped to ribbons, the horn of the mizzen broken, the tangled topsail, and amidst all of these the one I like best, Sadarnac tied upside-down to his useless rudder and everywhere on deck the debris of shattered row-boats, we lean on the ship’s rail, splashed by the spray, the sea breeze plays like a child’s hand in our hair. Chancelade directs a beam of light onto the water’s surface, cast by a pivoting projector fastened to the front of the ship. You’ll see how they’re going to turn up, Palafox will be irresistibly attracted by the fishing lamp, last time it wasn’t… there! cries Chancelade… long, what did I tell you, says Sadarnac shutting off his motor. Algernon tosses a life preserver overboard. Maureen, no strength left in her, hangs on, a shivering Palafox curled up in a ball under her arm.

9

The rosebushes at La Gloriette are Algernon’s pride and joy. My daughter and my roses are all I have, he can be heard repeating now and again. And there’s no question of leaving Palafox to gambol throughout the park. We know how to behave ourselves, we can resist the temptation to nibble on roses, brains of lamb, whipped cream, meringues, Palafox would throw himself instinctually and hungrily on these tender cauliflowers. The art of the table and the garden, it’s all the same to a herbivore. Apart from the hours of seaside work and play, we lock him up in late lamented Archie’s shack. The evening constitutional with Olympia should last only as long as necessary. On those rare occasions when he is allowed in the house, care should be taken to protect against his scaling the staircase leading to the upper floors or to his crossing the threshold of the blue living room where Algernon has his collection of old earthenware on display. My daughter and my earthenware are all I have, he can be heard repeating now and again. But Palafox is tolerated from time to time in the kitchen or the laundry.

Barbed flowerbeds, short grass grown for the eye and the naked foot, even if he succeeded at escaping our attention, Palafox wouldn’t find a great deal here to nibble, chomp or bite. Olympia takes him to graze in the neighboring fields. They leave, dawn ebbs, a bell around the neck of the drowsy creature jingles merrily, a gentle music, unpretentious, background music to which your ear quickly grows accustomed, above which we can continue to talk, soon you won’t pay it any mind, without ceasing to hear it though as it will accompany Palafox hereafter wherever he may roam. We won’t spend the rest of our lives chasing after the dirty beast. Henceforth, should it seeks to flee, it will not get far, if it gets lost we won’t have to find it. Music written by Algernon Buffoon. Olympia holds the baton. She doesn’t hesitate to use it. The pasture is nearby but Palafox is slow, reluctant, called by the ferns and thistle of the ditches. Two strokes of the baton applied without the least cruelty by its mahout make him pick up the pace. His tail reveals his aching croup, caresses it as if in consolation, swats flies from his nose, wipes away tears. The field and the pond belong to Algernon. A perfect location. Olympia sits in the grass making sure no harm comes to anyone. The grasshoppers happily make room for her. Palafox on one paw searches the silt of the pond for little earth-worms or tadpoles. Towards noon, Algernon, his daughter and Chancelade rejoin them, a fine idea, picnicking together. Maureen lays a white blanket by way of a tablecloth, everyone gets to it, Algernon breaks bread, Olympia peels, Chancelade opens cans and pulls corks, the wind distributes their paper napkins to the wasps, paper plates to the tree frogs, time to eat. Chancelade serves the wine. Maureen, no thank you, drinks only milk. She eats little. Her lips part, the flower always first before the fruit, Maureen hesitates a moment between a peach and a pear, and instead swallows a cherry — but she hasn’t touched a thing, objects Algernon. Not even her milk — this morning a cow was padding heavily around them and now a wisp of a myriapod foundered in a mad panic waiting for Maureen to save him, it was time, Palafox will live.

Quick, look, Olympia whispers. Before obeying, this brief aside, the notion of progress has no meaning but for the human race, all others stagnate, including the dolphin and the ant, very overestimated, those two. That’s the way that men (of peasant stock, now on Wall Street) have developed then brought to perfection through time many tactics for landing fiancées, the best and the most widespread of which consists of bumping into them and then picking up the bags you made them drop, there are others, you can also flatly apologize for having run into their car with yours, slammed a door on their fingers or overturned your alcoholic beverage, staining her dress, too bad, such a pretty dress, I’m just the worst, take my handkerchief, etc. But the kingfisher has no need to come up with anything imaginative or constructive. He has it made. Because of a ballet established once and for all time in the beginning by the first varicolored couple in the line, the female allows herself to be mounted, her throat swells, her cloaca tints a delicate pink. Olympia — her voice betraying her emotion — rightly calls our attention to the nuptials in progress of one kingfisher. The bird zooms into the sky, right above the pond, spreads water-repellant wings (like a lecher his raincoat passing among schoolchildren) and exhibits his unearned decorations (like an officer exhibiting his medals after getting back into his uniform, when the fathers of the little girls threaten to beat the shit out of him) so as to seduce the female on the ground below. Queen lifts her head in a sign of acquiescence. She consents to lay his eggs. King calls it quits and alights near her on the bank of the pond, and we might note parenthetically and alphabetically the presence of reeds, rushes, arrowheads and sedges. Busy at his business, he doesn’t hear the furious chirping of a rival who approaches, who is beside him, thrown like a stone, Palafox flies at him. He had been grunting dully, huddled in Maureen’s palm, while we admired the bird’s acrobatic flight. He tensed all of a sudden when he saw the Queen on the bank, his fur standing on end. Maureen murmured mollifying words. Palafox trembled beneath her touch. He reared back his head, his antennas vibrated, pointed towards the pond. We offered him a chicken carcass, the remains of a rice cake, he pushed the bowl aside. Two delicate clouds of vapor left his two wet nostrils. He frowned, chops curled up to his eyes, gums and ruby palate bared, his bifid tongue, he emitted a short cry and pounced. Maureen, thrown aside, rolled into the grass.

Initially surprised by the speed and ferocity of the attack, the King has collected himself. The two adversaries size each other up. Palafox bobs and weaves beneath jabs from the King’s beak. Using his open mandibles, he counter-attacks with irritating little raids.

(Algernon knew the Tsu-Chi-King well, very nearly by heart from having read and reread it, which regulated cricket-fighting in Ancient China. The noblest of these insects lived in richly decorated palaces, built for them, where they had their own miniature dishes and furniture, and very meticulous servants. Drugs were mixed into their food to stimulate their natural aggression. The crickets fought unto death, in a closed field of battle, spurred on by the cracking of whips (four hairs at the end of an ivory rod) and by the flicks of the gamblers. Curled in his palace, the winner would devote himself to reproduction. Larvae were chosen, certain vintages proving highly esteemed. Then a magnanimous sovereign condemned the sport as cruel and hundreds of cricket gladiators were released into the wild. Now it all becomes clear: Palafox’s roots. Algernon won’t hear different.)

Their short twisted paws find no footing, the two males slip, clash, vacillate, each trying to knock the other on his back. Queen has drawn her head into her shell. She could care less about the outcome of the struggle, may the best win and mount her, and may the other swiftly die. King dominates, his pincers fastened over Palafox’s own, he arches like a matador to deliver the deathblow, the stinger sticking from his abdomen is a redoubtable weapon, difficult to improve upon, in the possession of which we humans doubtless would be if function truly induced form. Algernon takes Olympia by the arm and reassures her, he explains that the venom of one is harmless to the other while mortal for man, spinsters included, that she would be wrong to risk her life, that Palafox doesn’t need any help, and look, he’s broken free. A strong attack lands Palafox’s adversary against a tree. For the weeping willow it’s the last straw — what sadness is life, what boredom — it flops into the pond. The right eye and the groin wet with blood, King barely on his feet once again lurches at Palafox. Indifferent Queen chews an ash sapling, or maybe it’s poplar, it’s really hard to say, you really have to taste it to be sure. All of a sudden she stops, her eyelids shut. King freezes. When Palafox wails, you listen. Then he lowers his head, life starts back up again, so does King, the hit is horrible, the two grow entangled, the tangle tires them, King and Palafox spin in place without breaking apart or coming unstuck, Philemon and Baucus knew the feeling — and by the way, Algernon spits out, it was ash. King tires. Palafox standing on his spurs makes him back up, his tail is a bouquet of billhooks, the other clings with beak and nails to the scarlet wattles on his neck, a few feathers fly, the two topple into the pond. Never before had we heard Olympia lament her inability to swim. It’s the very first time.

Palafox and King tear each other apart, we count already among the duckweed twenty-seven gray or golden scales, number twenty-eight gold, number twenty-nine gold, thirty gray, thirty-one and thirty-two gold, King has the upper hand, thirty-three gold, thirty-four gray at last, thirty-five and thirty-six gray, Palafox back on top, gray, gray and gray the next three. The pond bubbles, bubble, backwash, silt, sludge, roe, tattered translucent flippers. Then silence, suddenly, the water flat and calm, pacified, appeased, a lesson to us all. Palafox resurfaces, fist raised, hair plastered to his forehead, streaming wet, the kingfisher between his teeth.

No one would have stretched out on a table, riddled with raisins and soaked in rum, in the middle of dessert, amidst the desserts, and especially would not have disturbed Palafox when he was feeding on raw meat. Make like an apple. Queen too keeps her distance. Palafox has dragged his victim, a hundred times fatter and heavier than he but making light work of it, into the center of the field. He devours its stomach, the acidic juices he secretes softening the flesh and the viscera of the bird, of which the feathers saved from the feast will soon adorn the headdresses and tomahawks of the local Indians. (Ziegler himself can bear witness: the discovery of a feather by ten children turns eight of them into bloodthirsty Apaches and out of the remaining two one becomes a mattress-maker and the other a writer. The professor adds that the little squaws are ravishing in their nursing uniforms, but he’s out of his depth.) Victorious, filled to the gills, Palafox remembers Queen. Before her, he places a twig and a pebble she is asked to accept, as if she has a choice, these are the gifts of ritual, the equivalent of our crowns of blossoms and our rings. Palafox croaks, his gastric pouch expanding to bursting but not bursting, such is the serenade. He warms up, blood rises to his head, coloring his muzzle and his lips a bright blue. Two very prominent red rolls of fat, not particularly becoming, appear beneath his eyes. He stealthily adopts the attitude of a fledgling seeking morsels from his mamma’s beak, stealing worm and first kiss from Queen, more mother than lover. So he crawls, prostrates himself, gently flaps his widespread wings and offers her once again, in a pearly gray silk purse, a mosquito fattened on his very own blood, to which we have no courtly equivalent. Queen licks her lips and bends her spine, and as quickly the roaring Palafox is on her, she roaring too, claws dug deep into her flanks. After a few clumsy or imprecise attempts, but this is no time for niceties or careful calculations, the stallion triumphs, grace smiles upon him, his incomparable penis finds its fit. Queen takes it in stride. Her whole body mists like a plowed field, a warm October morning, horseflies would be the starlings, in which case her incomparable rump is the rising sun. Palafox pushes, Queen wriggles, collapsing for a moment to rest, without parting, delousing each other. Then the biting of the neck, lifting her up and nailing her again, liming her, for want of true complicity of hearts and communion of souls, Algernon counted fifty-six effusions in sixty minutes.

It’s over, they separate, parting forever and for good, without a glance, they couldn’t care a whit about each other, memory of the moment they shared already beginning to fade, older images rush up to fill the void, it all clouds over, they forget, dates and places get mixed up, verses from other songs get sung, they pass each other on the street without recognition — Palafox groans, braces himself, Queen tugs, nothing will separate them, it’s laughable and pathetic, two dogs stuck together have found themselves in a fine mess. Things slow down with age: elevators, public gardens, civil aircraft, carriage entrances lose their power of erotic suggestion, one suddenly comes to understand the smallness and discomfort of these places, the risk of being surprised by a policeman or by a stewardess does not add the least spice to the situation, hereafter nothing beats a bed between two naps for those things, besides less and less often, let’s be honest, the frenzy of passion and desire is followed by the complicated tenderness and fidelity of male menopause, a purer and more enduring attachment — Queen and Palafox spin on the spot, without succeeding to break the engagement, Philemon and Baucis certainly experienced this as well. For the years pass, the resentments take root and grow, a festering rancor, they are so old and so sick, too thin and bumbling to touch each other without hurting each other, still they stay together, they haven’t legs left to walk away, the mountain begins just beyond the threshold of their little house, so they tolerate each other, they remember, sitting side by side, silently, language forgotten, two hands crumbling into each other, eyes see only their own tears, the world swallowed up inside them, the sole survivor, the widow or widower, taking turns with death — there is no question that we must rescue these unfortunates, but how? Chancelade imagines a bucket of water, why not, which will lubricate one and soften the other. That was how he’d always seen it done in his family. Do we have a bucket, yes Chancelade will plunge it into the stream, bring it unsteadily back and, just like that, toss its contents onto the entwined pair, Queen and Palafox inseparable despite mutual consent — you will forgive us the tangents that punctuate this story, or make it unravel, since we always manage to make our way back to the point.

So they come apart, sweet victory, laurels to Chancelade. Queen bolts, of course, and disappears. Her future is all laid out, for those interested, first find a forked branch, gather the materials necessary for the building of a nest, branches, twigs, mosses, pieces of wool and cloth, sacrificing a bit of her duvet to the task at hand (when they run low on nails, our carpenters prefer to overlook that they have heavy hairs on their chests), then build it, this nest, without her hands, already with an intense desire to lay, to lay it, this egg, this second egg, this third egg, lay them, these fourth and fifth eggs, cover them, alone, patiently, cautiously, knowing that an egg is never truly safe, even in a tree, then clearing the nest of shells after the sensational birth, feed her brood, five fledglings less one the three others forced out, four fledglings less one that the three others forced out, three insatiable insectivorous fledglings, who no sooner have they swallowed a mosquito whole are they clamoring for the whole swarm, who no sooner have they swallowed a worm than are they clamoring for an acreful, reminding us not a little already in certain respects of our Palafox, their presumptive father.

Who didn’t appreciate Chancelade’s meddling, at all, we know how he hates water, how he prefers dry dusty land, burning rocks burning still beneath a midnight sun, where feet smoke, where you turn to stone if not wax, if not snow, where he basks in the sun anyway, flat as though flattened, happy, the least shadow sufficient to quench his thirst. In anger, he deploys a strange annulus approximately ten inches in diameter, iridescent on a background of old gold, lacey, ribbed, usually folded into its neck as we watch, when not angry almost invisible, reinforcing, one might recall, professor Pierpont’s thesis stated long ago, that Palafox was an annulated lizard, but let’s not get carried away. He charges at Chancelade, the universe wavers, Chancelade in midair instinctively drops into a fosbury flop, far more efficient than the scissor-kick disdained by the modern athlete, and which allows each new generation to rise higher than the one before it, even if the goal they are reaching for always remains unclear even for those involved, or grows increasingly distant in direct proportion to the closer they are to it, but the beauty is in the trying, in the surpassing of oneself, of one’s limits, then Chancelade falls. The second bucking of the mustang propels him into the air but not as high as the first, he’s on his back now, arms crossed, face rearranged, eyes reversed, ears fused into one, finally listening to each other, the nose, as for the nose, no more nose, lips swollen but smile imperceptible — we’re suppressing certain unbearable details, in the interest of protecting those sensitive souls among us, not to say various houseplants listening in — lucid enough nonetheless to count the fingers of his right hand on the fingers of his left and vice versa, the fingers of his left hand on the toes of his right foot. But already Palafox charges in his direction. Algernon, we can see, isn’t taking this lying down. As soon as it’s clear, primo, that Palafox isn’t playing, secondo, that Chancelade isn’t having any fun either, our friend leaps into action, reed in one hand and knife in the other, he undertakes to carve a flute, a perfunctory little flute, the reed pipe we now see before us.

Let us be clear — the instant if not self-explanatory is at least well-chosen — that elephants’ graveyards do not exist. One sometimes finds, in essence, three or four skeletons in a clearing, or more, but here’s why: old, sick or wounded, elephants swear off roaming the earth and remain near a water source, where food abounds, it’s wise, thus our widows clattering with ivory, instinctively or without thinking, end their days along the Riviera. No serious zoologist now believes in some occult force leading them to these wild gardens. Another myth, please note, is the supposed appreciation of music by rattlesnakes. In reality, Palafox is only attracted to the movements of the flute. He follows Algernon through the fields, as if hypnotized, Maureen and Olympia helping Chancelade along, and we’re back in La Gloriette again.

We are at war, lest we forget. The battles are intensifying. The outcome of the conflict grows uncertain. Of course, our collections of Egyptian art have been enriched by ten sarcophaguses, four superb blue earthenware hippos, statuettes and canoptic jars, an obelisk, various rare papyri, above all a large number of mummies of cats and ibex, but the enemy has certainly helped itself to most of our cubist and post-impressionist paintings. And if we have been able to recoup the Renaissance masterpieces they took from us during a previous conflict — two Fra Angelicos, a fine Arcimboldi among others — it would seem that the enemy had, for his part, made off with all our Flemish masters, including those which never belonged to him. That is all the information we have available to us. Status quo, really. Hard to say who will win. But things can change quickly, one way or the other. Lieutenant Chancelade will be indisposed for a few weeks, we’ll have to manage without him.

Palafox wanders in the pit dug and paved for him in the middle of the park, appointed according to his taste. A rock symbolizes a mountain. The plantigrades need this minimum of space, without which they perish. While fighting him, Chancelade tore off his tail, but Palafox remains dangerous, and anyway it’ll grow back. Algernon filed down his claws and canines, we cut down his horns, he remains dangerous despite it all, his electrical discharges attain an intensity of 600 volts, could stop a steer, even more so a cowboy, in this instance our poor old Olympia. Doubtless it is sad to arrive here, at this end, but there is no other solution, gelding him, neutering Palafox, all his aggression comes from there, from that end. Palafox in rutting season cannot be controlled, cannot control himself, Algernon’s attempts to civilize him are for naught, he once again becomes the man-eater who Sadarnac, lying, claims to have fished out of the Pacific, but who lived in all likelihood in a Bengali forest, where he was captured before being sold to a zoo, escaped, burst in chez the Buffoons as we all recall who took him in, pampered him, very nearly domesticated him, and unthinkable that all this should be for naught — so we neuter Palafox. First thing, hobble the animal, done, then wash the belly with warm water. Sharpen a razor and make an incision a hair longer than an inch at the base of the scrotum. With two fingers, as if you were digging for a dime lost in the lining of a jacket, nudge the nut towards the tear, ibid ball two, then pull until it releases from the spermatic cord, it will release, it must release, it releases. Apply an antiseptic healing salve to the wound, repellant to flies — maggots be hanged — and leave the pit without dragging your feet. Prudently Algernon undoes Palafox’s ties.

10

They did not hesitate to ditch every one and thing to join us, their students, their families, their workbenches, as soon as they received Algernon’s alarming letter they packed their bags, professors Baruglio, Pierpont and Zeiger are La Gloriette’s invitees. You come in too, Cambrelin, since you’re here. The four zoologists lean forward. Baruglio moves aside to let Pierpont pass who moves aside to let Zeiger pass, Cambrelin didn’t have to be asked twice, behind him the three others bump into each other and curse, recall that Pierpont can’t stand Zeiger who can’t stand Baruglio, he who allied himself with the entomologist against the ornithologist, it’s all perfectly clear, it would be unfortunate that a simple question of entrance protocol condemns us to interrupt this story, whatever one might think of it, so close to the end. But Cambrelin steps back out to press on his colleagues, and it’s the same melee all over again. Just as we are on the brink of throwing this manuscript into a drawer, bitterly, to accommodate the touchiness of four professors — indeed, why introduce this one before that one? — Maureen holds us back (inspiration therefore is a pale little face with shimmering eyes), closes the drawer, then leans to open another door by the window and the pace of our story picks up, our invitees barrel into the hall where Olympia waits for them, so there you are, who gives each of them a copy of the preceding chapter. You should know, adds Algernon while they bring themselves up to date on the latest events, you should know, I, in essence, am telling them, that the castration of Palafox has done nothing to modify his anti-social behavior. Yesterday, he bit the mailman and the milkman. As a result, neither milk nor mail this morning, sad breakfast that. Later, a vendor of marble headstones who’d heard about Chancelade’s misadventures came to see what had happened, we reassured him, Chancelade will pull through, the state of my health seemed to concern him, Maureen’s lack of appetite, Olympia, her fear of water in particular, it all interested him. And then Palafox charged and began making loops around his head, cawing, the little guy didn’t take it very well, summer or winter you can count on him, day as night, one cry and he’ll be there. But not all our visitors have his patience, someone will end up trampling Palafox underfoot. We had him well in hand however, he obeyed our orders, pooping in the sawdust at last, and only in the sawdust, no longer eating his fleas, walking upright on two paws, even beginning to talk.

Algernon’s discouragement and discomfort are justifiable, the date of the exhibition approaches, but Palafox has never been less presentable. Now, he barely recognizes us. He won’t give us his paw. He doesn’t come when we whistle. He flees our company, as if he were suddenly afraid of us, takes off as if spooked, flies into the windowpane, tries to hide under the furniture, between the floorboards, comes to rest on the ceiling and stays glued there until dark. Thanks to darkness — rabble finds a friend in darkness — he steals into the cellar and dips into our stores of sugar, rice, coffee, cookies, you never know with this war, he eats his way into our hams, this must end.

We may as well admit it: we are seriously considering getting rid of Palafox. Pupi Luzzatto, contacted by Algernon, offers him a good price. The first number in his program — for the record: Lorenzo, Dino, Stefano, Pietro, Oneto, and Claudio kneel, on the shoulders of whom heave themselves then kneel, Francisco, Luciano and Silvio, on the shoulders of whom heave themselves then kneel Carlo and Domenico, on the heads of whom heaves himself then kneels little Giaquinto — would be even more dazzling were Palafox, with a flutter of wings, to come to perch on the head of little Giaquinto. But the Luzzatto Circus isn’t the only party interested in Palafox. A fight promoter dreams of pitting him against a cock from the Barbary coast, and against a mongoose should he win, and a panther should he triumph, and an aurochs should he triumph, and so on. This sort of spectacle brings the public back to theater, he argues. A good story, well constructed, with unexpected reversals, no digressions or dull patches, an unrelenting dramatic tension, a real suspense from beginning to end, believe me, people will be fighting to get a seat. Yes, or perhaps, but no. No, Algernon says ‘no’ flat out, we won’t let a panther tear Palafox apart (easy winner over the cock and the mongoose) just for the pleasure of the gallery. We hesitate at greater length before declining El Bravo’s proposition, henceforth illustrious Spanish matador, resplendent in matadorial dress — less under consideration, his French equivalents must content themselves with blue and white checkered shirts — for we know Palafox is capable of being the first to gore this handsome hunk. There is always a risk. El Bravo leans over the cadaver studded with banderillas, slices off its ears, its tail, brandishing them to the cheering crowd, one would think he held a toppled tyrant by his hair, the people on their feet cry his name, El Bravo places the trophy on the knees of a señorita overcome with emotion, blushing, who holds it to her heart while batting her lashes and who will keep them on her nightstand long into the future. There are bloody games that passion can forgive, Algernon admits, so long as when we think back on them with a cool head they inspire remorse. Palafox will not die in the arena. Nor will we upon reflection sell him to Pupi Luzzatto. If the animal were disposed to circus life, we would readily exploit those talents ourselves. But Algernon doesn’t think it very likely. Lazing in the sun with his muzzle between his paws, larking about in the hunting ground or in the scrub brush, lying in wait, immobile, to pounce upon his prey, to be consumed raw, then a tongue twenty inches long launches from his mouth, a faded red carpet leading dynastic scarab beetles down into the depths of the palace, the queen-ants and her seconds who will never see the light again, Palafox drinks the dew from a calyx, hoots with a full moon in the background, reads Shakespeare in the stars when among them are enough bats for the bad parts, and falls quadripelegically asleep as if he had done anything more than break stones since dawn — no, it would seem that none of these tricks is well-suited to the ring.

And why not break stones? Why not work, be useful, take children for walks in the square, or harnessed to a fine barouche take tourists through town turning monuments to see into monuments seen, rid attics of rats, watch the herds, harvest bananas for us from up in the stratosphere, or find truffles for us six feet underground, guide blind men through the maze of streets, gather the hay, pull the plow, clear trees, load the timber, maneuver the press and the noria, we lack workers, Algernon enumerates a few of the careers that are wide open to Palafox, and those he forgets we willingly add, save the unlucky buried beneath rubble or under avalanche, a little barrel of rum around his neck, carry coded messages to our spies, return to the dovecoat with microfilm, or place mines beneath the hulls of enemy ships.

Why not entrust him to me, Cambrelin proposes — who secretly hopes to learn through proximity the art and technique of pilot — fish, to then catch a big blue shark and at last get his revenge on life, which is to say on women who reject him, finding him too young then, the next day, much too old for them, adding with a bit of meanness you stink of algae. Baruglio has perfected an anti-venom serum, now he needs the toxin, Pierpont has an insecticide that he wants to test — for different reasons, the three other zoologists covet Palafox equally. Zeiger is planning an ornithological expedition which will cross the Sahara, if he manages to find some camels, and will then make his way to Asia which he expects to cross on mule back, if he manages to find some mules, before undertaking the long return voyage via Northern Siberia and the Laplands, so that was it, he needed a sixth reindeer for his team. Algernon pretends not to understand. He won’t part with Palafox for anything, the animal cost us so much, in oats, in water fleas, in white mice, which is not to begin to mention Olympia’s upkeep. We intend to get something out all of this, if not some fabulous profit, at least to break even. However, Palafox’s market value remains well below what we’ve spent thus far in upkeep, in the cost of sponges alone to clean up after him, we’re not even close — and yet this one here, come closer Mesdames come closer, not only will it absorb and scour but, do not fear Mesdames come closer, is so powerful it will clean on its own once you teach it the motions, if you are slow and patient with it, and will whistle while it works, whose presence will serve as a definitive deterrent against burglars and neighbors who come to borrow, what cynicism, margarine.

Certainly, we would be wrong to sell him to the first housewife or coral-collector to come calling. Piecemeal retail is the way to go. One example of a thousand — but we’ll list them all, you’re getting to know our tricks — Palafox will be of interest to jewelers, knowing that his tusks weigh, one two hundred seventeen, the other two hundred twenty six pounds, so 217+226, four hundred forty-three pounds of pure ivory to sell, to chisel, to polish, which trinkets will then be aged with walnut stain, having belonged to Yong-Io, of the Ming Dynasty, and which will then be easily sold off — knowing that the pearl from his shell, sliced thin and set in the gossamer net of the rose gold crown, will add sparkle to Madame Fontechevade’s conversation, above all when our old rejuvenated friend will have set the pearl sold with it into a ring, and wear it around her neck, so that the finery is completed, this magnificent necklace of alternating claws and teeth, a claw a tooth a claw etc. - knowing then that the multicolored back of his carapace, hollowed, bared, varnished, and lined with velvet, will be fitted with a silver lid. In this way, Madame Fontechevade will make use of a superb jewelry box in which to keep her booty safe. Or a candy-dish, or why not a sewing kit. Or a makeup kit with all the paraphernalia — because Palafox will prove of interest to cosmetics barons and perfume makers — horsehair brushes, silk brushes, pearl combs, down powder-puffs, brushes made of delicate hairs, musk and civet extracts, blush for cheeks and shadow for lids, rouges made from tallow and carmine (that lover who places a kiss on those painted lips, in addition to that adorable little mouth, kisses too hundreds and hundreds of crushed and pressed Mexican cochineals, then melted into a tube of animal fat, it seems normal to us that he would be alerted to that, if he were looking for a pretext to escape, he’s got it). One more word on this subject — amber-a pretty, vague word, is actually an intestinal secretion. The gray amber Palafox produces will be used in the making of heady perfumes… but let us leave the general’s wife to her boudoir. Palafox will be of interest to milliners, clever scheming monarchists who confect queenly coiffeurs for their clients out of ribbon and rags and the solitary aigrette of a crowned crane. Feathersellers will buy the black and white remexes from his wings, out of which they will design costumes for the stage. Thus disguised, the girl from the chorus line becomes irresistible, infinitely more desirable than a plain woman, the clot of spectators swollen to bursting with desire would pay anything to touch her (there are those nonetheless who remain stone-faced, there are those who take offence, those who think it’s a ruse). Furriers and skinners will line up as well. Palafox’s fur is doubtless our most valuable commodity, we will negotiate accordingly. The artisan will do with it as he pleases, this partisan of the royalist plot, tailoring for some arrogant lady far richer than she is cold a panoply fit for Russian princesses, coat, muff stole, toque, mittens and linings for boots, or instead elect to treat with moth-repellant this silky bedside throw, its four paws outstretched, its head and tail intact. At the hour when lions drink, others are trampled underfoot, flabbergasted carnivorous carpets, perfectly inoffensive if they slip into our dreams, it is absolutely time for us men to go to sleep.

(Tan or tannin, according to Webster, is a brownish or yellowish substance found in plants and used in tanning, dyeing, and as an astringent, making skin rotproof. Webster’s also says that tannin can produce ink, perhaps that’s the secret of those books that become immortal? No of course, what an idea, still we should admit to having gotten our hands on some of this ink, a barrelful, as a joke, for fun, gallons and gallons of the ink, and another barrel, defiantly, in order to last, in order to be read until the end of time, day and night until all the lights go out for good.) Tanned therefore, then curried, mollified, Palafox’s leather will find its way into the hands of a fine leather craftsman, and from there, emblazoned with a crest, provided with a zipper, on the pilot’s shoulders, one of these brave men who even as we write this are bombarding enemy villages, if all is going as planned. But we can nonetheless hope that it will be allocated differently, that the girdle makers and bookbinders will fight over his glossy, flexible skin. By their own admission, there is no finer material to work with than galuchat, named after its discoverer, Monsieur Galuchat, who was the first to have the idea to use the skin of a shark to slim down the silhouette of his wife, fat Madame Galuchat. We will happily pit them against the upholsterers, leather-workers, glove makers and bookmakers, who will not hesitate to outbid the others to get their hands on the piece, since crocodile pumps, it seems, are back in style.

Palafox’s nasal horn won’t be on our hands for long either. They’ll fight over that too. A persistent rumor in Asia, spread by traffickers, attributes astonishing properties to it. Ground, crushed, mixed with a little water, isn’t it said to supply those unlikely to tolerate their profiles in a mirror with renewed vigor and vitality, whether disgraced lovers, flaccid fellows, dried out old men, or limp little fuckers? Crushed, ground, mixed with a little water, we stand by it.

Two days later, Algernon received the recipes from Madame Fontechevade. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, we’ll slow things down to seconds (insects of the order siphonaptera that are about an eighth of an inch long, with rear hopping legs and a proboscis designed to suck up human blood, according to professor Pierpont’s definition) before ringed eternity, consisting of a succession of legless segments, seals the fate of seconds and our own. We recalled therefore this oriental legend in which the dead awaken and smile again, among other things, thanks to the virtues of the elixir with a base made from the ground horn prepared by their widows. Chancelade seemed distracted. All of a sudden he struck his forehead. Eureka, he cried while picking up his shako, we’ll fatten Palafox, force-feed him chickpeas, like filling him up with gold, his hypertrophied liver will be our ingot, a rare commodity, priceless, do you have a funnel? But the duration of the operation and the risks incurred by this or that person charged with holding Palafox still between his thighs was enough just thinking about it to dissuade us. Nonetheless, Chancelade was right about one thing: Palafox, already so charming and in addition worthy of admiration, would doubtless be, as much as for his qualities as a loyal companion, appreciated for his meat. The list of potential buyers is already approaching infinity, to which now we’re to add roasters and skinners? And why deal with the middlemen? Why not go straight to the consumer? We could slice him up ourselves, price out the parts, brain, sirloin, breast, sparerib, rump, collar, ribs, hocks, rack, filet, tongue, kidneys, tripe, haunches, bacon, sweet-breads, saddle, heart, flank, shoulder, spare ribs, to each his own, everyone gets some, and the head of household grants himself the gizzard his wife and kids coveted, quia nominor leo. But why resort to consumers? Algernon asked the question. The friends I invited to come cheer Palafox, since because of him I’ve had to cancel the spectacle I’d promised them, will console themselves by devouring him, which would make for a memorable feast. Madame Fontechevade has recipes passed down from her mother whose mother passed them down to her, etc., savory recipes dictated to her grandmother by her own father, one of these all-powerful master-chefs who transform the world into an edible pumpkin with a plain wooden spoon. She will be happy to send them our way, she has a big heart. Two days later, she did.

Pluck Palafox while he’s still warm, begins the letter from the general’s wife, without beating around the bush. Clip fins and tail. Put him on his back and cut into the underside of the rump. Remove the air bladder, the intestines and other viscera and make sure not to puncture the sac of venom. Roll him back over, cut the neck, scald the paws to remove the skin. Bone, dress, stuff with garlic bread, baste with lard and braise. Allow it to brown. Then add butter and diced onion to it and allow that to brown. Collect the soft roe in a bowl. When Palafox’s redness is gone, add salt and dust with flour. Add white wine and bouillon, an equal amount of cider, pick it up with thyme, horseradish, spices, ground pepper and a pinch of cayenne. Figure an hour and a half cooking time (stir regularly from right to left). Add pitted olives, sliced pickles, a teaspoon of mustard and twelve little quartered mushrooms. Return the casserole to full boil for ten minutes. Skim off the fat, bind with starch from the refrigerator. Turn it out of the pan, glaze it with the cooking liquid and the roe, sprinkle parsley, garnish with halved hard-boiled eggs and send to the table with tomato puree or boiled potatoes (serve a ravigote sauce on the side). Another suggestion, submerge Palafox alive in a pot of boiling water. Add shallots, bouquet garni, lemon zest, sweet pepper, saffron, chervil and a finger of Madeira. Beat with a whisk. Cover. Let it cook over a high flame for a good two hours. Then coarsely dice Palafox (carefully remove all the small bones), thicken the juice, marinate. When the pieces are golden, season with sweet peppers, shaved truffles, tarragon and ground nutmeg (optionally cinnamon and clove). Cover it all in small bards of lard. Serve with Creole rice. Or…. Madame Fontechevade lists a dozen such recipes. In the pan, on the spit, in the oven, braised, court-bouilloned, on coals or under embers, such that one would believe Palafox equally succulent grilled, breaded, minced, raw or spiced. Finally she recommends, should we wish to eat him later, that we first salt and then smoke the animal, you never know with this war, you just might find yourself very thankful to have stocked provisions. Start by curing the meat in a bath of spiced vinegar (7 oz) and crushed juniper berries (.7 oz), submerge it in a bucket of brine with a pinch of saltpeter for every pound of salt, do whatever else you can think of during the next three weeks, then take it out, drain it, hang it in your chimney and smoke it under beech or laurel, wait a few more days, take it out, rub it with ashes, wrap it in a thick cloth, dear friends, be well, be careful, cover yourselves when you get out of the bath.

Algernon exults, we’ll have to figure on a month if we prepare Palafox according to Madame Fontechevade’s recipe, and since the reception is going to take place in exactly one month, everything is going according to plan, our job will have been to adjust the various gears in this delicate chronometrical instrument, with patience and meticulousness, without throwing a wrench into the rhythm of the saga. Slaughter Palafox immediately. This morning, he slit the throat of Olympia’s parakeet, the little bloody ruffled body which he didn’t devour right away, that he toyed with for hours, of which he grew bored, to which he returned, the little green bird intriguing him much as ram’s testicles intrigue us when served in white sauce announced coldly by that mistress of the house however little inclined she is to salacious asides, we’ve all been there, what do you do? — what face to put on, what place setting to use, is this really edible? — and we decide to adopt the same behavior of the other guests before trying whatever it is, they seem neither surprised nor amused nor disgusted, use the fork, and it seems excellent, Palafox drove the cat away that had claimed the corpse but then Palafox ate the rest. Olympia, for her part, despite her resentment, refuses to wring his neck. Chancelade volunteers. Chancelade is still suffering from the wounds Palafox inflicted. He grabs a knife in his fist and heads towards Palafox, bound. Seeing Chancelade approaching, the animal changes color, reclothed in the livery of ferocious animals and venomous insects, alternating yellow and black stripes-a disarming defensive strategy — Chancelade blanches, how typical, and drops his weapon. Console yourself, Cambrelin says, with the knowledge that his drab flesh would have left you with little more than the aftertaste of silt and worms, a mouthful of bones, tough and riddled with nerves, adds Zeiger, somewhat fermented, adds Baruglio, and very toxic, concludes Pierpont, and anyway the flagellate protozoans are hell on your system, Palafox included, be consoled: he was inedible.

11

And then there’s the matter of our becoming attached to these creatures despite ourselves, it is possible, after so long, Palafox is like a member of the family by now, neither more nor less, he’s a part of the furniture, his death would bring sadness, and that sadness would be relayed by faint nostalgia on the second step of this spiral staircase leading to the dungeon of oblivion where he would be forgotten. And while abandoning him is very tempting, he would surely find us again, whether he had to cross oceans or deserts, he would make his way back to La Gloriette, mangy, scabby, skinny, he would roll around at our feet, he would lick our fingers, no, Chancelade, find another way.

Maureen’s idea, on the other hand, let Maureen have the credit since she hasn’t had much of an opportunity to talk, Maureen’s idea is altogether tenable — what if we were to offer him to a public park to decorate its main pool? Maureen’s idea is altogether tenable, anyone who has seen Palafox slide down a wave would agree with us that his place is there. He swims, one wonders how, without breaking ice or ruining anything. Stately, aware of his standing, he bows to his reflection. Here, Palafox fears no one. He is his own master, his own humble servant. In the background, leaves and fountains, you wouldn’t find him in some hovel with crumbling walls. His two profiles are equally beautiful. A sketch artist would begin by tracing the upper part of the beak, without lifting his charcoal pencil the curve of his skull, the undulating line of his neck, the curve of his back, without lifting his charcoal pencil the contour of his curled tail, a line like the calm surface of a lake, then the bulge in his belly, the curve of neck up to the beak, which he will be able to close at last, but no, he drops his charcoal pencil, he gives up, he’s sprained his wrist, and anyway we don’t like his drawing at all, it looks like a fan in a saxophone, let him keep it. Palafox is oblivious. He floats. He picks up no passengers. He takes silence for a sail. His plumage is white (subject verb complement, we would prefer to stop there, believe us, but were we to do so we would be endlessly referring our readers to notes at the bottom of the pages, to addenda at the end of the book, where we would develop, elaborate, explicate each of our comments, that’s no life either. White, for example, white means nothing, an empty notion, a suspicious tint, beware of optical illusions, of false witnesses, get past it, double-check everything, a trained eye never is fooled, snow is blue, pale, very pale, but blue, sheep are beige, teeth yellow, milk pistachio, gun red, the race pink, nights of insomnia the color of ink and all these translucid pages to blacken still, Palafox’s plumage is white). Two short webbed feet, poorly suited, as our shoulder blades are to gliding, Palafox when out of water yomps, suddenly disgraceful, ridiculous. Take pity on him, you see that he has trouble breathing, put him back in the pool. When half asphyxiated he can’t move, or a little, a convulsion. His swollen lower lip is distended, trembling, his eyes are glassy. Get him something to drink, quick. Like a crumpled carnation in the boutonniere of a dead man, his bronchia. Another convulsion. He’s going to die, help him. Palafox makes hands sticky, impregnates your clothes with his stubborn scent (you’re seeing someone else and don’t even try to deny it). Easy does it, release him above his pool. Splash, so-called splash. Palafox breathes. Weak motions of his tail to begin, swimming on his side, Indian-stroke; back to life, he dives for the bottom, Palafox red in the limpid pool, easy to follow with your eyes. He does not stray far from the edge, reduced to begging. Children lure him with crusts of bread. Palafox hereafter, summer as winter, an autumn leaf, decorates the great pool. That’s all they ask of him. He does what he wishes with his time. From morning to night, then, this wisher shares his leisure with dead rats and other souls in torment. He swells, he floats, he wastes away. His scales grow yellow. A scrawny cat leaps onto the cement rim, he hides a fork in his sleeve, Palafox will not escape him, Maureen, is this really the end you would want for him?

Maureen cannot understand her father’s reproaches. She swears it wasn’t her idea. Someone has slandered me. Algernon is willing to believe her. Anyway, if it were up to Maureen, we’d keep Palafox. She climbs onto his back, she pretends to take his bone, Palafox doesn’t hurt her at all. But if Chancelade tries to play with them… Chancelade is acting on our orders, he immediately ties one, two, three pans to Palafox’s tail, as a joke, and then a ladle. Palafox registers the change. First, the good news: Chancelade isn’t going back to the front — where, it seems, right now, sparks are flying — tomorrow as planned. The bad news, once again he has lost a lot of blood.

Be not the producer of effects that should neglect the bidding of the beastie, professor Zeiger quotes his master Guillaume Tardif, author of the treatise The Art of Falconry, a remarkable work in every way but which nonetheless sold not altogether well in its day, 1492, because of the simultaneous appearance of a collection of indiscreet remarks and gossip, more commercial of course, History of the Wrangles Between Pope Boniface VIII and Philippe the Handsome, King of France (out of print). Zeiger was able to find the passage where Tardif described Palafox, according to him, Palafox exactly — here: rounde heade high and talle; a fat short beake; longue neck; broade plumpe breast, skeetish, harde and stong of bone. And, for them among their kinde with thighs slight and weake, they fight with clawes; their haunches high; longues winges that at rest lay crossed upon the taile; a shorte and shorte-tempered taile; nimble faethers, cacheted, spaerse and sublime; a ready red beneath the winges, well spread, fingers longue as well, fine aflight, bold to attackerie toward all manner and prey of means. Yes, admittedly, somewhat disturbing, but how can we be sure it refers to our Palafox? Tardif’s falcon shares its traits, but we can’t really say much more. Call up your memories, you are still a child, you are walking with an uncle in the country. The fine fellow is teaching you the names of flowers, pointing out the cepes, the chanterelles, the morels, and never touch the death caps, you moron, he slaps you and regrets it immediately, wiggles his hips; like a golfer he hits a puffball with his cane which explodes strangely as it takes off from the ground and spits behind it its smoke of red spores, you laugh between your tears, at that moment your uncle stifles a cry, you search out the bird he’s pointing at with his index finger, up there, look, immobile in the sky, above the field, it’s a buzzard. Your uncle enthrones himself on a stump, thumbs under his armpits, he has a belly, you believe everything he says. You’ll swallow anything. Perhaps it is a buzzard. Or a harrier, or an osprey, or a merlin, a sparrowhawk, a goshawk, a kite, or perhaps a falcon after all, and beware of the mushrooms he pointed out, at this distance, how can one be sure that that one is a buzzard? Another thing, Tardif’s falcon never let’s his prey escape. He collapses on the desperate bird and carries it away, plucked, gutted, to his master. Palafox, you know, would more likely marry the dove.

Broaches, ornaments, bookends, piggybanks, buoys, stuffed animals, toys on wheels or whatever, let us end there our enumeration of articles that could be made in Palafox’s image and that we could mass-produce and unleash on the marketplace, our profits would be considerable, but Algernon wouldn’t have his heart in that kind of business (the kind of heart, let it be said between us and in passing as with everything else, the kind of heart at the mercy of an able pick-pocket). Algernon cares for the rosebushes. Algernon collects old earthenware.

Straight and curved scissors, thinning shears, brush, wool card, three hand clippers, #00 ( of an inch), #0 (⅛ of an inch), #1 ( of an inch), Olympia outfits herself. The Modern Style is accepted but a Lion Style, of equal quality, will be given preference. Go for the Lion Groom. Maureen will help Olympia, Algernon will keep Palafox on the kitchen table. The standard of the Lion Groom is very specific, disqualifies those who stray from it, the subject will be shaved on his hindquarters up to his sides. Also shaved will be: the snout, above and below, beginning with his lower lids; the cheeks; front and rear legs, except the cuffs or wristbands, and the optional patterns on the hindquarters; the tail, with the exception of an oblong pompon at the end. Moustache is required for all contestants. The shaping of the fur around the front paws, referred to as bloomers, is allowed. Palafox primped and groomed into such a shape will thus make his appearance in tomorrow’s competition, and if he wins the title we’ll keep him. Everything was decided quickly. Olympia, therefore, was changing the creature’s litter — yesterday’s scoops tossed onto the dump heap, fresh news from the morgue and the stadium — when her stare fell on an ad slipped into the local paper: major exposition-competition, sponsored by c.i.b.i. (Certified by the International Beauty Institute). Maureen and Olympia knew how to persuade us, understood, agreed, if Palafox carries the day we will keep him. Only on that condition. Algernon plays fair. If he is beaten, shoot! One shot from a pistol held behind the ear, we whack him. We will put ourselves at the mercy of the judges. Without their knowing it, they will rule on Palafox’s fate. All things considered, it is normal for judges to have the last word in this matter.

Olympia starts with his head, clipper #0, going against the grain of the fur over his muzzle, cheeks from ears to lips, the underside of the snout, the neck, the throat, shouts a curt order to Maureen, clipper #1, with which she shaves the slightly faded perimeter around the eyes, above all do not emphasize his ungainliness, then, scissors straight, she evens out the hairs of the short mustache, card, yes, she untangles the frizzy mane on his head, curved scissors, and clipping it along the shape of the head, careful, neither too flat on the top nor too low along the nose, so, at last, she grooms the ears, thinning shears, thin without shearing, and the hair around the ears is long, better that way, the head’s done. Clipper #00, onto the body. A cakewalk. Beginning at the tail, Olympia shaves the small of his back, his behind, the thighs, the belly and the flanks up to the middle of the body — stop! — the mane should cover the sides, a dense and furry muff flexible under your fingers, scissors straight, keep it to two inches thick, curved scissors, Olympia nonetheless rounds the angles, and cheats a little when cutting the hair on the chest, in such a way as to obtain an ideal curve from the sternum to the last rib, so the body’s done, we see that Olympia has given up on the patterns on his behind, vulgar according to her, and in terrible taste. For the same reason, she’s against grooming the bloomers on the front legs, clipper #00, she shaves the four legs one after another, then the four feet, sparing nonetheless the fur around the ankles, curved scissors, she trims them into bowls, highlighting the incredible finesse of the feet and their bluish nudity. Now only the tail remains, clipper #00, Olympia shaves it along two thirds of its length, opting at its end for the oblong pompon, it’s done, Algernon can let the animal go. Palafox wriggles his tail. It looks like he’s cleaning a baby’s bottle. The orphan and the dame smile sadly.

With that, as every evening, restful night — the sound of the sea, the only known variant of silence, diffused by a favorable wind yours for the taking, the grain of salt added by a nightingale, only a half-moon, but the prettier half, billions of stars both dead and alive, shimmering, darkness in the house, the regular exhalation of sleepers, their extravagant dreams — as every evening, night without trouble. At the moment when our story starts up again, Algernon pushes open the door to the registration office. We haven’t missed much: rising early, washing absent-mindedly (left to right, then right to left, then low to high, then high to low), scalding hot coffee drunk standing up, one gulp, like a sword it went down, and then out, Palafox on a leash, the sandy roads bordered by bushes and gorse one shouldn’t confuse, the barking of dogs from far off, from nearer still, the tents of the exhibitors in the distance, nearer still, the cages, the dogs in the cages, the bungalows of the officials, we rejoin Algernon at the moment when, understanding that he must pull and not push this goddamn door, he enters the office of the registrar. Palafox is in order, here are his vaccinations for rabies, Carré’s disease and contagious hepatitis. The official responsible for registration — quickly inflate a chubby flat character with rosy cheeks — notes the registration number, x366, tattooed on the inside of his right ear. (Scenes of vaccination and tattooing, whether forgotten or ignored, do not figure in this story.) Make your way to the veterinary checkpoint, hisses the functionary, suddenly less chubby cheeked and who seems to lose his composure in direct proportion to each step towards the door we take, stoops, withers, fades, who still finds enough breath to indicate the adjoining bungalow, then he passes away and rises to heaven, in a zigzag course, crushed against the ceiling and falling again, henceforth useless, in a wastebasket.

The veterinarian, but instead read the bill that concerns him, is alone responsible for allowing or rejecting a participant, before or even during the exposition: those specimens that appear sick or afflicted with skin conditions, blind specimens, crippled or deformed, those with one testicle or none at all, females that are visibly pregnant, lactating or accompanied by their pups, and those females in heat. The decision of this corpulent personage with rosy cheeks is without appeal. He examines Palafox, pure formality, and countersigns the registration form while whistling to himself, he wasn’t whistling, he was exhaling. We take Palafox to the cage he has been assigned. He will not leave it again but to be brought before the judges. Any infraction at this point can keep the animal out of the competition and any reward he might have earned be revoked. The organizers decline all responsibility in the instance of theft, loss, flight, sickness, death of animals on display, bites from those animals, whatever the circumstances. In other words, the exhibitors are alone responsible for any accidents or damages that are the result of their animals’ actions, whether involving a third party or the animals themselves, the organizers would be in no way liable. All the toy poodles are in the same boat, we count twenty-one, black, gray, white or brown, shorn into lions, with or without bloomers, bibs around their necks. There are some pretty creatures, but Palafox seems to be the only one apricot in color, an easy trump since the objective of all is to look most like a lion, and therefore as little like a little sheep.

A loudspeaker announces the arrival of the three official judges. They are accompanied by a secretary, two magistrate’s assistants and a ringmaster (a pretty bunch of pink balloons that we will soon release into the blue). The ring, we’re not exaggerating, consists of a space approximately four hundred square feet, the edges of which are indicated by cords, where the masters maneuver their animals. The judges proceed by process of elimination. They confer in hushed tones then convey their decisions to the assistants who carry them out. The disappointed candidates leave the ring, only thirteen remain, twelve, eleven, ten, there are only nine now who have a chance, three black, two white, two gray, a brown and Palafox. The judges deliberate. Deliberate. The sky clouds over, blusters, false star a token in the clouds, it will rain. An anecdote to kill some time: once upon a time in a bourgeois salon containing a housewife and an elephant, a white mouse appeared, the housewife and the elephant scared to wits both hopped onto piano bench, the moral is, women have a reason to be afraid of mice. No news yet, the judges are deliberating. It is raining. A helpful hint while waiting: looking to get rid of a bulky or aesthetically displeasing stone? Stick it in a sack with a bunch of kittens and throw the sack into a pit. In Latin deliberate, endlessly deliberating. Deliberating at length, then award a yellow ribbon to two white poodles and one brown (Not Bad), decided via their rigorous system of evaluation that recognizes their characteristic but not notable features; a green ribbon (Good) goes to two blacks and gray which possess all the characteristics of the breed, certain of which nonetheless might be identified as less than perfect; a blue ribbon (Very Good) to the last black and the last gray, worthy of each other, despite a few pardonable flaws, to be used as breeders; and the red ribbon at last (Excellent) and the title of Champion to our hero, Palafox, presented in perfect condition, manifesting a perfectly balanced and harmonious whole, approaching as best one can the ideal of the breed.

Palafox’s victory — Palafox who flutters around the lamp while we put down these lines — was able to surprise Pierpont, delight Maureen and Olympia, disappoint Chancelade and flatter Algernon, my lessons beginning to bear fruit, at last. Despite the shadow of Palafox dancing across the page, his tiresome and ineffectual buzzing, as if he were imitating with astonishing accuracy that of the famous universal machine tool conceived to execute every manufacturing operation, drilling, milling, cutting, sanding suddenly set in motion, this shadow and this buzzing once again bothering our work today. We have no desire to invent excuses, but is it sheer chance that the most questionable passages in this treatise were written in Palafox’s presence, and if our phrases become tangled each time that he hangs around our lamp?

The bug has come to rest on the notebook. It is walking between the lines, either ahead of or behind the pen we handle happily with enough virtuosity to avoid a shock which would prove fatal to it, alas! We would have to elect to consider this ugly blot of blood and ink as the last period of our story. We blow on the page to chase Palafox away, he topples onto his back, flimmering without rhyme or reason his three sets of legs, pathetic, this driver caught beneath his immobilized vehicle, tightening this, unscrewing that, infuriated by his powerlessness and the uselessness of his efforts, nailed there until the tow truck arrives, the finger to which he now clings, elytra disjointed, little wings all creased. He crawls the length of the finger to its tip, knuckle, phalanx, changes its mind, frightened by the moist depths of the palm, half turn, phalanx, knuckle, tip, he halts on the nail, there’s no way around it. It’s our turn to decide-a flick ends this episode.

The reception is tomorrow. Palafox does not know the first word of the text written in his honor by Algernon, he has not perfected any of the routines or magic tricks that he should perform, he is barely able to perform the simplest addition problems by stomping the ground with his hoof. Algernon comes to his senses. He gives up on the idea of the show. Anyway, Palafox showing his face will be enough to satisfy the curiosity of those among our invitees, exhausted by all the talk, who have never even seen him. His somewhat unsophisticated manners may be a source of shock to Madame Franc-Nohain, the wife of the president having withdrawn from the world with her hairdresser, her doctor, her Scottish-terrier and a string-quartet, she only frequents her sycophantic courtiers, so reverential that they have never seen her face, and only tolerates around her housekeepers afflicted with scoliosis, as if petrified by respect, another advantage, they fit perfectly into attics. But let’s not exaggerate, Madame Franc-Nohain is also a noble spirit, she doesn’t hesitate to get her hands dirty when the moment requires it, as, say, when it comes to giving aide poor countries require, she devotes hours stolen from her own personal hygiene to embroidering the altar linen for the missions. Palafox’s unsophisticated manners could offend her, if he were to nibble her wig, or if he were to fly directly into her ear, such signs of affection would seem out of place, or at the very least premature. You can’t just suddenly be a courtier (except in enemy territory, where bodily punishment is inflicted on women without waiting for a second date. In this respect, all freedom is left to privates, all latitude, it is right that they should feel personally involved in the murderous war in which they figure and disfigure others, first as murderers then as murdered: it makes them brave. Then, they only better defend the interests of their country. Of course as soon as they’ve dishonored the old mother and daughter of the enemy, the privates finds his way back to their battalion, end of story, their shore leave is scuttled if they’re missing a button).

Our invitees will want to pet him, pick him up, we should dress him up, his scaly nudity will induce in them a very human repulsion. Who can explain why, in a few days, his skin has become rough, has lost its luster. So, Palafox is barely presentable. Olympia tries a series of hats, cotton coats, cardigans. The imperative for elegance seems secondary to all others, not to say reprehensible, we voluntarily ridicule those who can’t try on a tie without being before any one of a number of mirrors. One forgets that pants were invented or discovered by a man who clothed himself elegantly; they made their way into the collective consciousness and now sell better than loincloths. Olympia moans about it. Nothing suits Palafox. He slips on a coat, fine, then slips out of the right sleeve before disappearing into a pocket. Olympia is at wits end. According to professor Baruglio, however, these fittings, all these manipulations have led to the exceptional event that we are witnessing now. Nothing extraordinary, Baruglio retracts. Palafox is writhing on the ground, his old skin slipping from him like a stocking. He is molting, Baruglio says. We immediately lose interest in the cloth and direct our gaze on the stripper’s skin, Palafox regenerated, as if new, with his smooth glittering scales, his almond-green back decorated with black lozenges which form a perfect zigzag from head to tail, the red stripes along his sides, his immaculate cream-white belly. Dressing him is no longer an issue, this goes without saying. A little pink bow between his ears perhaps, because Olympia insists, a few little bells in his mane.

12

Palafox blows his entrance. We give a reception in his honor, to present him to the world, put ourselves out for him, all the leading experts are there, stately, at their peaks, footmen by their sides, all gathered to celebrate him, and just moments after getting there, Palafox decapitates Madame Franc-Nohain’s Scottish terrier with one bite, the last thing he should have done. Her Scottish terrier meant the world to her. Métalo, she had called him Métalo, derisively, Métalo followed her everywhere, he ate from her plate, one pea for each of hers, he slept in her room, quite a loss for the president’s wife. And if he had stopped there it might have been forgotten, but Palafox made more mistakes, as if at will, many faux pas, upending chairs and side tables, without releasing Métalo’s head from which a mischievous eye hung, someone should wipe up all this blood.

Algernon’s salon is mobbed. A man in a black morning coat and white gloves moves from group to group with his platter, without a word, but each understands, it seems, who beg of him the alms of a toast, or an olive, or a shrimp or a round cake, without anything to say either, without exhorting him to work like everyone else, with great tact actually, with great compassion, going so far as to not look him in the face so that he needn’t even have to lower his gaze. Other than the four zoologists already there at La Gloriette, we should mention the Franc-Nohains, the Swanscombes, the Fontechevades, the Sadarnacs, a few Luzzattos. The Palackys also came, the Paladrus, the Palamas, the Palamás, the Palatins and the Palermes, friends all. General Fontechevade, the fighting getting entrenched, was able to break free. Many of our invitees, who had not yet met him, find Palafox disappointing and don’t hide it. We would have forgiven his ignorance of custom, one had thought he would have felt some discomfort at the beginning, before learning to hide his boredom, to laugh and lie with some finesse, to submit to our cushions and customs, but he’s gone too far, him who we take for an herbivore, to gulp down Métalo’s head right now shows a total lack of willingness to tolerate our society that our solicitude is brought immediately back into question. In the same way, coming from where he does, a certain sloppiness of dress would have been tolerated. We suspected that the fabric and the cut of his suit would have brought a smile to people’s faces, that his thick shoes, his poor tangled tie, his hat from another century would stand out amidst the elegant finery of our guests (thus the dress of Madame Franc-Nohain is decorated with a gold lamé train, supported by five ladies in waiting whose more modest veils, in silver lamé, seem like shimmering cascades dripping from the pool of their shoulders — we will allow ourselves to borrow that puddle from realist literature — coming down to refresh the hands of her hand-maidens, five teams of three, themselves dressed by an inventive couturier. We understand that it would be difficult for the president’s wife to slip away unnoticed with all these people around, despite her despair, especially if she expected to jump out a window). Our indulgence was all Palafox’s. But he went too far. May the rhino, or the hippo — since it is impossible to talk of the one without mentioning the other — wallow in the marny waters to escape maddening insects, the many parasites that burrow beneath their skin, it’s only fair that they would, but ours, bathed daily by Olympia, never had to defend himself against dust mites. Palafox armored in black mud makes a terrible impression on our guests, just as the clown with a painted face on his powdered counterpart impresses, disastrously.

The chaos is indescribable — if you’ve skimmed no more than two books you know that this formula I’ve used trumpets a particular state of affairs, scenes of meticulously described disaster, an inventory of broken or scattered objects and live reports of the crowd’s movements: Palafox runs on the long buffet table, does some gardening in the salad bowls, tastes all the dishes, bouquets, worse, cuts the carotid artery of genies Algernon bottled forty years earlier, unstable and aggressive in their time, improved by the humid straw of his cellar, each day gaining in respectability, to finish thus, trickling around shards of broken glass, drowning in their own blood. Palafox drinks from the puddle. Now he takes the opportunity to throw fruit, pastries, whatever he gets his mitts on, glasses, knives, ashtrays, our guests protect themselves as best they can, those who brought their mothers use them as human shields. Palafox’s behavior does not augur well the outcome of the war. Laugh if you want to, professor Zeiger continues, but without horuspication the Roman Empire wouldn’t have spread past its seven hills. Priests read birds’ flights, appetites, songs. No general would go into battle without consulting a bird. They would wait if necessary, this one buffing his shield, the other sharpening his double-edged sword, waiting for a more propitious hour to take flight. They triumphed without encountering resistance, they met no match, undone their enemies capitulated, they dominated the Occident for five centuries. Horuspication also directed matters of the state. A cock picked the successor to emperor Valens, in 379. An alphabet had been drawn on the ground, a grain of wheat placed on every letter, then let the bird go. t,h,e,o,d, he pecked without hesitation. They bowed. It was done according to avian will and Theodosius, first named co-emperor of the Orient, became in 394 the single sovereign of the empire. He recognized the authority of the bishop of Rome, guardian of the true faith, and was also on this occasion the first to speak the word ‘pope,’ as if by chance, because it all fits together, which is also the common name of a bird, the whitethroat with brightly colored plumage, I will stop my lesson there since you seem convinced. Palafox’s behavior, believe me, augurs nothing good, it would be better to cease maneuvers.

A chase scene in the salon. Algernon and Chancelade were on the hunt. Blinded by the electric light, the animal begins to fly headfirst into the walls; beneath the dress of Madame Fontechevade where he hides, cave dwelling creature accustomed to dark and to lichen-roughened walls, Palafox gets around far better, digs into the calf and thigh of the general’s wife, spreads vermillion in the shadowy lace, and let us note that he has already lost his pursuers long ago. When he reaches her navel, that most ancient of scars — where surgeons may one day succeed in screwing a lecherous eye — waiting wide for visitors — Palafox hesitates to make contact, and then no, his path is chosen, he will follow the crease in her belly to the side, the dorsal spine to the nape, in the wake of shivers find himself on the bare shoulder, uncovered, and from there, secreting his liana, reach the ground, and from there the wall, which he scales, then the ceiling, where he catches his breath. Madame Fontechevade twists in her armchair, occasionally a little nervous laugh escapes her lips, a long moan, then the cries begin again. She would no better and to no clearer end negotiate in hell. She puts her hands under her dress; clawed fingers, fists clenched that no longer recognize the damage they are doing to her own body, all the blows land, and in her distraction, Madame Fontechevade believes she has the horrible beast, of which she refuses to be anything less than unforgiving, rousing more screams from him, tearing him to pieces, turning him to gruel, and the more her pain increases the harder she tries, while Palafox, suspended from a nearly invisible silky thread oscillates gently above her head as if to tell us that were we to drill there we would find a well.

A wild animal remains a wild animal, Algernon, he must be slaughtered. Franc-Nohain shares the general’s opinion, a wild animal remains a wild animal, and we are not going to cut to the story of his head-to-head with a crazy loner, the year before, but I hit him twice, without carefully aiming at first, my buckshot had about as much effect on him as a bucketful of confetti, he bowled the dogs over, I knelt to aim, he rushed at me, I shouldered the gun — the president’s hunting exploits prompt admiration, but his presence among us gets in the way of the dramatic progression of the story, as we are able to divine that the writer whose autobiography weighs on our knees will not die of the whooping cough he contracts at the end of chapter one, despite the talent with which he describes his agony for us and the anguish of his family it is clear that Franc-Nohain will win the day, if not we would all be there listening to the wild boar, I rushed at him, he aimed, his second shot went into the branches, I was on him already, tearing his chest and sides, he resisted, I crushed his nose into his cheeks, he fell silent, I tore out his liver, spleen, intestine, intestines, large and small, Messieurs-dames, your winding intestines, so many unnecessary detours, the itinerary of some gold convoy for routine cargo, with all due respect, we see straight away that this sort of installation wasn’t put in yesterday, I got tangled up in these guts, I dragged the cadaver of the president for several meters before becoming untangled — the second shot hit him in the jaw without slowing him down, he pushed straight ahead, his fur stiff and vermillion, like the bloody mane of a cannonball which has just removed eighteen heads and continues on its path, I had just the time to pull my knife, he was on me already, tearing my chest and sides, three times I sunk the blade into his throat, he collapsed. I was a bit sad at first not to be able to keep his bloody head, at the very least to put it in a bottle, but it would have spoiled the collection of trophies that decorate the walls of my library, tiger heads, elk, swordfish, in addition to the death mask of my poor mother, whose every feature we knew, she who was peacefully extinguished and whose smile I am not ready to forget, thanks to this mold, the pretty smile she had when she came to kiss me goodnight and, before leaving my room, was willing to check under my bed to see if a wolf was hiding there, and kissed me again, then, before leaving the room, was willing to check again, ready to face this wolf barehanded, if he had been there, and perhaps she would have won, so give me his head, huh mom? For my collection. All the same I kept a souvenir of the boar in question, instead of his head, his gut, which I inflate from time to time to amuse my grandchildren, when I’m out of balloons.

But Palafox has his defenders, among whom is Madame Swanscombe, a bit intimidated though she may be to grab the reins of the narrative so late in our journey, but whose voice grows stronger with each word she now speaks, aren’t you afraid of committing a sacrilegious act by executing Palafox? I have skimmed the preceding pages, and it occurs to me that you haven’t bothered to consider for one moment the significance of his presence among us. Do you have any idea what you are on the brink of destroying? You believe you are dealing with crude and chaotic stuff, and yet you aren’t the least surprised to hear the beast whimper in his sleep. This living room’s upheaval is a devastated corner of the world, you would see the cyclone responsible punished, you refuse to admit that he belongs here, that we in fact are the undesirables, the vandals, the troublemakers, with our flower arrangements, our peach preserves, our mahogany end tables, our walnut drawers, our screens, our umbrellas, our parasols, all our artifices of shadow and light, can’t you see that Palafox is only here to treat wood as wood, glass like sand, the only one in this wax-polished room to think about the bees that burnished it. Madame Swanscombe grows bolder. She strides the length of the room descanting her text and punctuating her words with one unwavering gesture: the dagger she draws from her belt transforms into a silk fan above her head, then the arm falls and tightens, the hand opening and shaking it off. All this apostolic rhetoric is only suggestive of course, but little by little we are swayed by our friend’s conviction, threat and charm work their magic, the old accomplices that serve our idols and their makers, recruiting hearts and minds, that root the idea of God in a pebble and bring to power an athletic tyrant, blonde and bright-eyed whose political program would be contained in this inadmissible proposition, eliminate from the surface of the Earth all men neither short nor weak, dark, with slanting forelocks and straight mustaches. But our charming and threatening friend is only trying to save Palafox. She mentions people of high culture who keep pandas, cows or crocodiles as sacred and woe betide the malefactor who spills their blood. Haven’t you already seen Palafox or any old ladybug rebel against their fate and dispute the universe? They behave like creatures, they have no pretensions of changing the earth beneath their feet, to conquer outer space, nor that of measuring time, they scrape together seconds, they are the true owners of this world, the legitimate tenants, God’s true champions.

But then, dear Madame — this crude reply emanating from the general, unsurprising in its crudity even if his kepi stung with stars gives him, from afar, the appearance of a poet lost in his astral dream — do tell us why Palafox only kneels to drink, only joins his hands to break open nuts, and doesn’t pretend to follow any sort of religious practice? Why, among the animals who secrete their lairs into being, those who, more than all their counterparts, should give thanks to their creator, not one of them ever thought it useful to burden themselves with a steeple?

The following reply, from out of the mouth of Baruglio, is just as upsetting — Unless, dear Madame, Palafox is not himself descended from Olympus in the shape of an animal to seduce and carry off Maureen, so great is the beauty of this young mortal, in which case I would wager on Zeus whose tricks we can see in Palafox, this new metamorphosis would betray him as surely as his emblematic lightening-bolt, were he to wield it in our presence, one more metamorphosis in a long line of others, the swan that Leda loved, the eagle that ravished Ganymede, the white bull with gold horns that carried off Europa, the cuckoo that perched on Hera’s lap, the serpent that married Persephone, the jig is up, I have unmasked the God of gods.

More seriously, professor Pierpont will say a few words on the subject of metempsychosis — he clears his throat, that done, he thanks us for putting our pencil sharpeners away, yes, we’re listening — so the fallen souls will be sent to do penitence on the Earth, prisoners of the crude animal envelope in which they are sealed, dominated by basic instincts, condemned to ruminate hay. Think about that before destroying Palafox. Perhaps he shelters the humiliated soul of a sinner that we will expose, in cutting his punishment short, to God knows what worse torments, eternal damnation, trial by fire, eternal wandering in a misty, ruined land. You will doubtless think that this believed assassin, this barbarian, this debauched monk, this bag-thief, after all, merits no pity, but — and there Pierpont slips, just as the hippo inevitably occurs in the mind of he who thinks of the rhino, as we have already noticed, and then storms the lips, in the same way the professor raises the initial subject of metempsychosis, and soon mentions an entirely different hypothesis, reincarnation, as if his knowledge of zoology made him an expert there too — he could also be a righteous man, one of our valiant ancestors, Fontechevade, or your dear wife, Buffoon, in a transitional situation, awaiting his next human incarnation: to destroy Palafox would then be a crime that we would ourselves pay for, in our lives to come.

Madame Fontechevade blushes three times over, out of shame, anger and urticaria, three very nearly imperceptible reactions on this naturally crimson face, opens her mouth to speak next, and a terrible racket of broken dishes reaches our ears, at the same moment, from the neighboring room, priority given over to events, the general’s wife understands. Out of respect for all those who delighted to hear her, were there one such person, comfortably settled in the salon, feet up near the hearth, here, in quick order, is what Madame Fontechevade should have said: by sacrificing Palafox to the gods, we will obtain their mercy for our faults and their support in battle. And now, please join us next door. Taking advantage of our inattention, but of course metaphysics owes everything to scatterbrains, Palafox slipped into the blue salon where Algernon displays his earthenware, his unique artifacts, Hannongs, Clérissys, Fontanas, Masséot Abaquenes. Each day, our friend dusts them, he washes his hands in milk before picking them up, elbows held tightly to sides, he keeps a lid on his gestures, handles the items carefully, like delicate little girls, they are the apple of his eye. The rare visitors admitted in the blue salon are given a thousand instructions on the threshold, roll up your sleeves, make sure your laces are tied, step prudently forward, move like a fox but with your tail tucked in, please, sneeze into your pocket and don’t even breathe. Even a butterfly could do damage in here, even a mosquito, and so here’s Palafox. The pachyderm has broken everything, tureens, tea-pots, mustard bowls, compote cozies, sugar bowls, hanaps, ewers, Delft plates, treasures of Urbino, wig-holders, shaving bowls, tobacco-holders. Sugar-sprinklers and saltshakers pulverized, the animal upsets all the tables, rattles the walls, shelves collapse, two decorative polychrome pharmacy jars, with stickers on their bellies reading Onc. of Mercury and Elec. of Theriac, break at Olympia’s feet. Algernon is livid, the veins in his temples seem drawn with manganese violet, like the arabesques and leaves of eighteenth century Strasburg ornamentalists, while three hairs stuck to his forehead imitate the cracks in the enamel — it must be that his heart has stopped beating, or that Algernon will fall in pieces as well, among the white shards of his pottery. Swanscombe pieces together the two halves of a bidet bowl, then adjusts them so as to reconstitute the group of musical angels which decorate the background, it’s reparable. We can also save an oil-vessel and its cruets, not, though, a handle and the two tops, a cup and saucer, and two painted plates, the first representing a circle of Chinese children beneath a sky full of birds, lightly nicked, and the other, intact, Mirabeau’s tomb beneath an unreadable revolutionary phrase, all around it three kinds of alternating emblems, a sword, a cross, a bouquet, a sword, a cross, a bouquet, a sword, a cross.

Palafox signed his death sentence, the sentence that satisfied everyone, including Madame Swanscombe, including Maureen and Olympia now disillusioned, let us now presently decide the means of execution. Just try and quarter an eel, we renounce the pike as well since it wouldn’t impress an armadillo, the axe which brushes against the turtle, and the noose, of course, the giraffe is everything but gallows-food. He deserves to die a rat’s death, but we don’t want to use poison, we aren’t assassins, instead let’s give these two boxes to Franc-Nohain, his wife’s a pain, the young woman he’s provided for for the past three years has just blown in his hair, the day before yesterday, for the first time, and he’s pretty confident about what will come next. Rifle, garrote, cleaver, Sadarnac only has eyes for the trident. Perhaps the pyre, why not, since the salamander, (if we have enough time and room left to tear down one more silly belief), and without claiming to compare logs and coal, grills as well as anything else over a fire. But Ziegler’s suggestion, to disembowel Palafox, is the most seductive of all, the examination of his entrails will offer us so much new knowledge and far more than what may be gained by watching his behavior, and from which investigation we will be able to choose a strategy to repel the enemy that has occupied two thirds of our territory already, at last word, sewing death and despair, and its exotic grain in our furrowed earth, which spreads in a forced march in the direction of our coasts. The gods gave us Palafox for this purpose, so that we could know their wishes, all their future plans for the world, he shares with a fist of stars the secret of our destiny, open him up, let us discover it all, lean over him quickly, explore the fateful viscera, the heart, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys, pull them all into the light. The Roman priests, the haruspicants, who practiced this form of divination best of all recommended the veal, the colt, the lamb: grab Palafox.

But we will learn nothing. Fontechevade struck too hard. The green blood, or whatever, this juice on the wall, a bitter scent of moisture and cold wax, Palafox squashed will harm no one again. We want to see, Algernon steps in, note the death throes, aggression follows resentment. Cadavers fresh from existence do not lose their fighting reflexes immediately, their organs are bathed in venom, draw back, these posthumous nervous crises offer a unique sort of violence, entirely excusable, but dangerous for those nearby, don’t get eaten now that it’s finally over and done. And yet the animal has resigned himself to death. He is dead, Maureen says (and this final parenthesis will have to be pretty airtight to contain the tears, pure pearls that roll down her cheeks, shining still while falling with a crystal brilliance, but which form on this notebook without stains or deletions little lakes of black ink, courage, my child). Fontechevade can put his shoe back on. There really isn’t anything to fear now. Not even that of having nothing else to do. Excellent idea, Olympia: we’ll stuff Palafox.

Content

Eric Chevillard
Palafox

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