diff --git "a/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzqlmy" "b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzqlmy"
new file mode 100644--- /dev/null
+++ "b/data_all_eng_slimpj/shuffled/split2/finalzzqlmy"
@@ -0,0 +1,5 @@
+{"text":" \n#  \n\n#  \nCopyright \u00a9 2016 by Holiday Miller and Valerie Shepherd\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.\n\nSkyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.\n\nSkyhorse\u00ae and Skyhorse Publishing \u00aeare registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.\u00ae, a Delaware corporation.\n\nVisit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com.\n\n10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data\n\nNames: Miller, Holiday, author.\n\nShepherd, Valerie C., 1973- author.\n\nTitle: The ex-wives' guide to divorce : how to navigate everything from heartache and finances to child custody \/ Holiday Miller, Valerie Shepherd.\n\nDescription: New York : Skyhorse Publishing, 2016.\n\nIdentifiers: LCCN 2016016585\n\nISBN 9781510704060 (hardback)\n\nISBN 9781510704077 (ebook)\n\nSubjects: LCSH: Self-actualization (Psychology)\n\nBISAC: SELF-HELP \/ Personal Growth \/ General.\n\nClassification: LCC BF637.S4 M54744 2016\n\nDDC 646.70086\/53\u2013dc23 LC record available at <https:\/\/lccn.loc.gov\/2016016585>\n\nCover design by Jane Sheppard\n\nCover photo credit: istockphoto\n\nPrint ISBN: 978-1-5107-0406-0\n\nEbook ISBN: 978-1-5107-0407-7\n\nPrinted in the United States of America\nWe would like to dedicate this book to all the amazing ex-wives out there.\n\nYou inspire us.\n\nWe also dedicate this book to our ex-husband.\n\nYou clearly have great taste in women.\nContents\n\nMEET THE EX-WIVES\n\nFIRST STEPS\n\n{knowledge is power}\n\nIS YOUR MARRIAGE REALLY OVER?\n\n{maybe it is, but maybe it isn't}\n\nPREPARING FOR YOUR JOURNEY\n\n{this is \"the big\" pep talk}\n\nSTAGES OF DIVORCE\n\n{brace yourself}\n\nGET ORGANIZED, GIRL\n\n{let's talk money, honey}\n\nCHOOSE YOUR CREW\n\n{a.k.a. your \"peeps\"}\n\nOH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN\n\n{hiring an attorney}\n\nKIDS' CLUB\n\n{how to help the kiddos}\n\nGET OFF THE BOAT\n\n{settlement options}\n\nSHINE ON!\n\n{how to get your groove back}\n\nACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nRESOURCES\nMeet the Ex-Wives\n\nAre you shocked to be holding a \"divorce\" book in your hands? Does the thought of getting a divorce or being an ex-wife completely freak you out? Do you have a giant knot in the pit of your stomach? We can relate because we've been there, signed the papers, and have the many stories to prove it. Welcome to the club, girlfriend. The Ex-Wives Club. But don't worry. Our club isn't the kind that requires you to wear pink on Wednesdays or exclude those happily-ever-after friends who still have Mrs. in front of their names. In fact, our \"Club\" is quite the opposite; it's all about supporting each other.\n\nYou see, we ex-wives must stick together, which is exactly why we wrote this book.\n\nEven though we are both ex-wives, what you might not know is this: we married AND divorced the SAME MAN. Yep, ex-wives to the exact same man. And now we're friends. Really, really good friends. In fact, we're such good friends we decided to write a book together, the same book you are now holding in your probably sweaty palms. A book charged to help women survive divorce.\n\nGo ahead and let that sink in for a minute.... Get the \"Ohhh my!\" out of the way. Some may call it crazy. We call it brilliant. Valerie (ex-wife #1) married our ex straight out of college. Sooner rather than later they divorced. A few years after their divorce, Holiday (ex-wife #2) met and married said ex. Eventually they divorced as well. But our ex really has nothing to do with our story. You, dear girlfriend, on the other hand, do.\n\nThough the path to friendship took some time, we believe our meeting was fated and it was simply divine destiny. Valerie's motto is \"Always the bride, never the bridesmaid.\" Divorced three times, she is a self-proclaimed divorce expert. She's been there, done that, has a closet full of \"I got divorced and all I got was this lousy T-shirt\" T-shirts.\n\nHoliday has been divorced once, and has made it her goal to learn from the mistakes of those around her (namely Valerie\u2014who was more than happy to share her long list of \"Don'ts\"). These \"Don'ts\" not only helped Holiday during her divorce, but equally as important helped her get on the right path towards eventually finding another \"I Do!\"\n\nSure, there are plenty of women in the world who share ex-husbands, but what are the chances of them becoming great friends? Now that is rare. So, how did we meet? Thanks to social media. We give all credit to the one and only Facebook.\n\nOur connection began while we were both happily (well, kinda) married. During a random night of Facebook friend searches, Holiday and her husband \"found\" Valerie. Because Holiday was aware of their similarities (tall blondes, same initial college, same major, same sorority, both Junior League members... you get the drift), she sent a short and sweet introductory message. After a few email exchanges, it was clear the ex had married almost the same gal twice.\n\nAnd how could you not like someone who was almost just like you? Had we met under any other circumstances we would have been buying BFF necklaces.\n\nThe Similarities We Share:\n\n\u2022 We attended the same college and pledged the same sorority.\n\n\u2022 We eventually transferred to different colleges.\n\n\u2022 We graduated with degrees in education.\n\n\u2022 We now live in the Atlanta area and are active in our local Junior League chapters.\n\n\u2022 After some real-world experience, we both chose the self-employed route.\n\n\u2022 We're tall blondes with creative, Type A personalities.\n\n\u2022 We were raised in the North and are Yankees by nature; although Southern charm comes naturally, especially when we're wearing pearls.\n\n\u2022 We married and divorced the same man.\n\nSince we both had children, a play date was organized so we could actually meet in person through a mutual friend at a local park. We're not going to lie; it was awkward, but nonetheless we became friends. Well, at least Facebook friends. From there we shared our lives via posts, family updates, and images of our \"picture-perfect\" lives. Just like everyone on Facebook, right?\n\nFast-forward a couple of years, and enter a moment of complete desperation on Holiday's part. She had just separated from her husband days before and was dreading her first weekend sans kiddos. During a bubble bath (complete with wine and iPad), she sent Valerie an SOS Facebook message.\n\n\"You might possibly be the only person on the planet who could understand the hell I'm in right now. Would it be okay if I call you? Or, how about meeting for lunch, or a drink, or both?\"\n\nValerie took only a millisecond to respond. Both being mothers to little ones, and having so much in common, Valerie wanted to do what she could to help. She didn't even care that they shared an ex. This was clearly a woman reaching out in need, big time. When Holiday didn't respond immediately to Valerie's email, Valerie quickly searched her ex-husband's relationship status. It had changed from \"Married\" to \"Single.\" The picture of their happy family on the beach was removed. Valerie knew instantly what Holiday was experiencing. The \"Big D.\" Divorce.\n\nLittle did Holiday know, Valerie was also in the middle of a stomach-twisting divorce... only she was a few months ahead of Holiday in the process.\n\nWhile speaking with Holiday the next day and hearing the details of what prompted her to reach out, Valerie, without really thinking it through, extended an invitation for Holiday to join her for the weekend. Her advice? Bring a notebook and pen; she was going to tell her everything she needed to know about getting divorced. Holiday quickly accepted the offer. Because, to paraphrase Hippocrates, desperate times called for desperate measures. Holiday arrived on Valerie's doorstep the next evening, with notebook, pen, wine, and cheese in hand.\n\nValerie felt an overwhelming desire to help Holiday and prepare her for what was to come. Making several mistakes during the beginning stages of her (third) divorce, she wanted to do what she could to help Holiday avoid them. She knew how much pain these mistakes had and would cost her in the unforeseeable future. Feeling that if she had the chance to save just one person from the pain, and from the mistakes she was experiencing, other ex-wife or not, it was her duty as a woman to do so. Holiday eagerly listened, soaking up Valerie's knowledge and experience like a sponge. The bond of friendship was instant, and the rest is history.\n\nAnd we both bought BFF necklaces the very next day. (Umm, no. Hello... we were both getting divorced and on tight budgets!) However, our friendship did blossom. Seven months later we took our first vacation together. Yes, you read that correctly. We did what most women who share an ex-husband would NEVER do together. We loaded up Valerie's ol' grocery-getter SUV with all the kids and headed to the beach for Memorial Day.\n\nThe idea of writing a divorce guide together was born during this trip. As Type A women, we both revealed we had massive files, binders, and notebooks filled with documents from our divorces. We both independently googled our little broken hearts away, searching for an organizational tool to help, but came up blank. With few to no available options, we each created our own. Which led us to this conclusion: If we had both run into the same problem, how many other women out there were in the same boat? As women we trusted our shiny, happy wedding planners to get us down the aisle. Where was the equally as shiny (but maybe not as happy) divorce planner we had been looking for? Nowhere to be found, until we created our own.\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Guide to Divorce was Born\n\nRegardless of where you are in the process of divorce, there are a few things you need to know. You might think your story is completely unique, and no one has ever gone through what you are going through. We're here to tell you that you're not alone. Even though your circumstances may be different, there's one underlying factor here. Divorce is not fun. Some might even go so far as to say it sucks.\n\nDivorce is the death of a dream. It's the dissolution of what was supposed to be a lifelong commitment. Whether it's you, your friend, sister, mother, daughter, tennis partner, or any other woman in your life, the process of divorce is not easy. It's painful, emotional, and by far one of the hardest things you will experience in your life. But you will get through it. We wrote this book because it's exactly what we wish we had when we were going through it.\n\nIf there's one piece of advice we give to women facing divorce, and we will continue to do so this entire book so take note now, it's to be prepared. We definitely learned that the hard way. If you're armed with an organizational tool, knowledge, proper expectations, a map of where you're headed, and the optimistic mantra \"This too shall pass,\" the process of divorce is manageable. Sprinkle in a little humor and love from us, as well as this book, and it might even be manageable plus.\n\nWelcome to the Ex-Wives' Guide!\n\nOur ultimate goal in creating this tool was to help women navigate through what will be one of the most difficult times of their lives. If anything, the Ex-Wives' Guide to Divorce will give you the ability to laugh, which, trust us, girlfriend, you will definitely need during this period of darkness.\n\nSo grab a pen, take a deep breath, and repeat after us: This too shall pass.\n\nIt's time to put your big girl panties on and get down to business!\n\n(You will read the phrase \"This too shall pass\" and \"Time to put your big girl panties on\" about forty-seven times each in this book. We counted. Well, not really. But probably really close to forty-seven. So get down with the good intentions behind both of these sayings. We promise they come from love and wanting to see you have a little yin and yang of strength and peacefulness at a time when we know you need it more than ever.)\n\nFirst, a disclaimer: The Ex-Wives' Guide to Divorce was written with one goal in mind: to help women prepare, organize, and navigate effectively through the divorce process. We are not in any way encouraging or suggesting divorce, but rather providing helpful tools and resources. The topics presented in this book have been developed strictly from our personal experiences. Our mission is to share our stories with you so you can avoid making the same mistakes we made. Every situation is different, and only you can be the true judge of your marriage or relationship.\n\nThis book does not seek to replace legal advice or licensed professional expertise. We do not make any guarantees regarding results or outcomes in your personal relationship or divorce proceedings. Just like a facial scrub featured in Glamour magazine, we are simply sharing our thoughts and experiences. You might get zits. Don't hold us accountable. We can't guarantee a pimple-free future.\n\nPlease know that we have collaborated with others who have experienced divorce. Some names and events may have been changed or altered to protect the privacy of those involved.\n\nOur wish for you is to prepare yourself, protect yourself, and remember to love yourself. We sincerely hope you can repair your marriage and restore your fairy tale. If this isn't an option, we hope to give you the tools you will need to effectively go through your divorce.\n\nRegardless of your marital status, we wish you happiness, peace, and a happily ever after.\n\nWe are NOT:\n\n\u2022 Professional Therapists\n\n\u2022 Licensed Counselors\n\n\u2022 Relationship or Divorce Specialists (unless personal experience counts!)\n\n\u2022 Financial Planners or Specialists\n\n\u2022 Attorneys or Legal Advisors\n\n\u2022 Behavioral Psychologists\n\n\u2022 Professional Mediators\n\n\u2022 Child Specialists\n\nWe ARE:\n\n\u2022 Ex-Wives\n\n\u2022 Mothers\n\n\u2022 Girlfriends (who LOVE to talk!)\n\n\u2022 Entrepreneurs\n\n\u2022 Focused on helping women not only survive divorce, but take charge of their situation.\n\n\u2022 Believers in the kind of love that lasts forever. Fairy tale and all.\nFirst Steps\n\n{knowledge is power}\n\n\"Always be prepared.\"\n\n\u2014The Girl Scouts\n\nWhile there's really nothing in this world that can entirely prepare you for divorce, we're going to give it our best shot. If you don't read any other chapter in this book besides this one, we feel you've at least been given the \"quick-start\" overview of what you are in store for. You know, like when you buy that new camera with all the fun filter settings that will make you look thinner, decrease your wrinkles, and make you look thinner (totally worth repeating). It comes with a quick start sheet, because they know you want to dive into the basics right away so the camera will at least function. Because when you first enter or contemplate divorce, the one thing we know you have to be able to do is function.\n\nKnowledge is indeed power, so put your big girl panties on, girlfriend, and let's get started. In our experience, below are the first steps you should consider when contemplating or entering divorce. These aren't baby steps, they're giant steps. But they're giant steps toward the future you need to secure for yourself and the ones you love.\n\nGet Organized\n\nOrganization is so important, we dedicated an entire chapter to it (see page 37, \"Get Organized, Girl\"). There you'll find lists of the paperwork and information you need to collect, as well as tips on keeping it all organized. We've also created worksheets and checklists you can use to create your very own Divorce Planner, just visit www.exwivesguide.com. Samples of these worksheets can be found in the back of the book.\n\nFinances\n\nFirst and foremost, save your money. We are channeling both your mother and Suze Orman here. Whatever you do, don't spend money on anything you don't need. If you're anything like us, this might present a challenge; see the samples below to help you define wants versus needs.\n\nWANTS vs. NEEDS\n\nWANT: This season's designer shoes at Nordstrom.\n\nNEED: Shoes for your kids.\n\nWANT: Girls' night out with friends at the chic new restaurant downtown.\n\nNEED: Time with your friends... for free. (Key word here is FREE!)\n\nWANT: A mani\/pedi\n\nNEED: Money to pay your attorney; he\/she won't care how your nails look.\n\nWANT: Your favorite bottle of Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley.\n\nNEED: Wine. In the box, in a bottle, whatever.\n\nPrepare Financial Documents\n\nPreparing your financial information is tedious and time-consuming. Actually, it's more like super tedious and super time-consuming. But it's the first step in ensuring you receive or pay the right amount of support from\/to your spouse. Do not take this lightly! In our experience, every minute spent preparing will save you ten minutes of worrying or scrambling.\n\nMost attorneys will email or send you a financial worksheet to complete. Do your best to fill this out in its entirety prior to your first meeting. You may think it's overkill at first, but take it from us, it's not. This will save you not only time, but also money. And money is what puts a roof over your head and food in your mouth. Many state courts also have a standard financial form available online.\n\nOpen a Separate Bank Account and Credit Card ASAP\n\nIn addition to gathering financial documents, you'll want to take the necessary precautions to protect yourself. Not only should you save money, but it's time to open a separate bank account. Don't get caught in a financial trap. If you can save money and keep it in a secure account, you'll be prepared for future expenses. Far too many women become trapped by their spouse's control over money, especially in the case of abusive relationships. Don't let this happen to you. It might be the one thing you'll be high-fiving yourself for in years to come.\n\nIf possible, open a separate credit card in your name only. This will help establish your credit as well as provide spending flexibility.\n\nThe sooner you take these steps the better, especially if your income is significantly less than your spouse's.\n\nClose and\/or Freeze Joint Credit Accounts\n\nSure, a Caribbean vacation would be great right about now, but in reality it will get you into trouble (and we don't mean the fun kind of trouble). To avoid incurring additional joint debt, it's in your best interest to cancel any accounts you share. Some creditors require a balance of zero prior to closing an account. In this case, call and request a freeze; this way no spending or charges will be allowed without your written\/verbal consent. In addition, follow up with a signed and dated letter stating your marital status, and again request that a freeze be placed on your credit. Don't forget to file copies of each letter sent for documentation.\n\nKnow Your Credit Score\n\nYou are entitled to a free credit report every year. Get one now, as in right now. You'll need to settle any disputes and monitor future credit history like a hawk. Remember, knowledge is power. To receive your free credit report, visit www.freecreditreport.com. You will receive a detailed report on your credit history, outstanding debts, etc.\n\nAt-A-Glance: Financial Checklist\n\n\u2022 Bank Information (monthly statements, deposits, loans, savings, money market and retirement accounts, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Income (current family income totals)\n\n\u2022 Tax Returns (federal, state, and local)\n\n\u2022 Debts (includes mortgage, credit cards, personal loans, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Personal Property (list all personal property owned prior to marriage as well as any gifts\/inheritance received during marriage)\n\n\u2022 Real Estate and Appraisals (list all real estate owned prior to marriage as well as any property purchased during marriage, or received as a gift or inheritance)\n\n\u2022 Automobiles\n\n\u2022 Wills and Trusts\n\n\u2022 Stocks, Bonds, and Mutual Funds\n\n\u2022 Safety Deposit Boxes and a detailed list of contents.\n\n\u2022 Insurance (health, car, life, disability, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Memberships (country clubs, gyms, private groups, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Any additional assets you have as an individual and\/or couple.\n\nIs This Really Happening?\n\nDivorce is like a bad dream. You're hoping for that moment when you'll wake up and everything will be okay. While we hope this happens for you (and for some of you it will), the reality of the situation is just that. It's really happening.\n\nChances are you've got the following questions swirling around in your head:\n\n\u2022 Is this really happening?\n\n\u2022 Is this normal?\n\n\u2022 Can I, or more importantly we, fix this?\n\n\u2022 Is it really over?\n\n\u2022 How and when did it get so bad?\n\n\u2022 Am I going to be okay?\n\n\u2022 What about the kids?\n\n\u2022 What will my family and friends say?\n\n\u2022 How am I going to make it on my own?\n\n\u2022 Am I being selfish or unreasonable?\n\n\u2022 Did he seriously just say what I think he said?\n\n\u2022 Did I seriously just say what I think I said?!?\n\n\u2022 Will I ever be happy again?\n\n\u2022 And many, many more questions\n\nEmotional Management\n\nEmotional management is absolutely crucial during your time of separation\/divorce. Don't get ahead of yourself. Take things one step at a time and do your best to think clearly. If you don't keep your emotions in check you will drive yourself (and everyone around you) crazy. And crazy ain't cute. Trust us. One of us tried it. (Notice we didn't specify which one of us.)\n\nWhether you're the one leaving or you're begging him to stay, be prepared for an emotional rollercoaster. And not in the clich\u00e9d kind of way, more in the I'm-about-to-take-a-plunge-on-the-tallest-oldest-most-rickety-wooden-rollercoaster-without-a-seatbelt-and-I-think-I-am-going-to-vomit-up-that-crappy-funnel-cake-I-just-ate kind of way.\n\nDivorce is like an onion. There are many layers to the process, and as you peel them back you're bound to shed some serious tears.\n\nWith the loops, the twists, the highs, and the lows, it's imperative to keep your emotions in check. We know it's easier said than done, but it's time to hike up those big girl panties a little more and mean business.\n\nIn the unfortunate circumstance that your spouse has requested the divorce, you probably feel helpless and abandoned. This is normal, and it sucks\u2014no doubt about it.\n\nFor those of you who have made the decision to end your marriage (or perhaps you are in the beginning stages), you're probably experiencing guilt, self-doubt, and fear. Again, this is normal, and it sucks.\n\nThe best way to manage your emotions is to be aware of them. Acknowledge them, and consider the true source of your feelings. When you feel an emotion surfacing take a minute to just breathe. Write your feelings down. When you are aware of your emotions you tend to not overreact. Take this from two women who struggled with this. Had we stopped to breathe a little more instead of fuming at others or ourselves, things would have been easier.\n\nWe know this is probably going to be one of the hardest times for you during the entire process. Your head, heart, and anything else that helps guide you will be pulled in a million directions. As long as you stay focused on preparing (as well as remaining calm), no matter the outcome of your divorce, you will still be able to keep your head held high.\n\nSurround yourself with people who will encourage you, support you, and love you unconditionally. You need them more than ever now.\n\nBeware: Emotional Rollercoaster\n\nYou're going to cry. A lot.\n\nBut we promise you'll laugh again.\n\nYou're going to get mad. Really mad.\n\nBut we promise you'll get through it.\n\nYou're going to feel hopeless.\n\nBut we promise there is hope.\n\nYou're going to feel alone.\n\nBut we promise you're not alone. {Hello, Girlfriend!}\n\nYou're going to feel scared.\n\nBut we promise you're going to be just fine.\nIs Your Marriage Really Over?\n\n{maybe it is, but maybe it isn't}\n\n\"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.\"\n\n\u2014Marilyn Monroe\n\nI'll never forget the moment I realized my marriage was over. I was recovering from breast augmentation surgery and woke up in the middle of the night with a massive infection. When I called my doctor, he instructed me to get to the hospital immediately. My husband refused to wake up, reminding me this surgery was my choice and the infection was my fault. I knew this was a serious infection. I also knew that if I didn't get to the hospital I was at risk of losing my breast, and possibly my life. As a mother of three, I couldn't take this chance. I drove myself to the ER and was rushed into emergency surgery. Thankfully, I survived, but my breast did not. When I woke up in the recovery room, I realized my husband had not called or visited the hospital to check on me. After waiting several hours, I picked up the phone to tell him I was alive. His response: \"I'm fishing.\" That was the moment I knew our marriage was over.\n\n\u2014Michelle\n\nWhile some of you may be able to relate directly to Michelle's story, not all of us have had such defining moments when we knew our marriages were over. For Michelle, this experience was the final straw in her decision to file for divorce and finally put an end to her abusive marriage. (She suffered from years of both emotional and physical abuse.) For others, this defining moment may not be so obvious, especially if your spouse is the one requesting the divorce.\n\nSo, how do you know if your marriage is really over?\n\nThis is a question only you and\/or your spouse can answer. Unfortunately, we realize the decision isn't always mutual. Most likely you're reading this book operating from one of these three perspectives:\n\n1. You want a divorce, but he does not.\n\n2. Your spouse wants a divorce, but you do not.\n\n3. The divorce is mutual\u2014you both want it.\n\nLet's get personal and break things down depending on where you stand.\n\n#1: You want a divorce; your spouse does not\n\nBefore you go running for the hills, there are a few things you need to know.\n\nDivorce isn't the solution for the following:\n\n\u2022 He doesn't give me butterflies anymore.\n\n\u2022 I love him, but I'm not \"in love\" with him.\n\n\u2022 We are more like friends than lovers.\n\n\u2022 We're just not happy.\n\n\u2022 Our life is boring.\n\n\u2022 We have grown apart.\n\n\u2022 We have the same argument all the time.\n\nIf one of the reasons listed above is the main culprit for your divorce, we strongly suggest that you donate this book to your local library, skip the attorney's office, and head straight to a marriage or personal counselor. Maybe you tried counseling but it didn't work. Don't give up just yet. Not all marriage counselors are created equal, and counseling takes time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was your marriage. It's only fitting that repairing your relationship will take some work, but it's definitely worth the investment in terms of both time and money.\n\nFor the record, butterflies will disappear no matter who you're married to. The \"in love\" feeling lasts an average of two years; friends make better long-term partners than lovers do. And the only person you can blame your boring life on is you. Sorry, girlfriend, these excuses just don't cut it in the divorce arena.\n\nAs for the repetitive argument... news flash: it doesn't matter who you're married to, you're going to fight about something. We might even take a shot in the dark and guess your arguments revolve around money, sex, or work. Welcome to the club.\n\nWhile we aren't marriage counselors or experts by any means, what we can tell you is this: the grass isn't always greener. Before you make the final decision to end your marriage, we want to encourage you to do everything you can to save it.\n\nMy husband and I vowed from day one that divorce was not an option. So I didn't know what to do when the cycles of arguing became nonstop. Both of us were miserable. I suggested marriage counseling; he suggested that we separate and not communicate for a month. This was not what I wanted, but I agreed to it.\n\nAlthough he refused to go to counseling with me, I decided to go alone. I wanted to spend that month fully dedicated to working on our marriage and myself. My counselor helped me to see the situation for what it was, and my role in it. My husband was emotionally checked out and I was initiating arguments in order to get attention and emotions out of him.\n\nEven though it was our noncommunication month, one of the terms we set forth in our separation was that we would be allowed to email if it was an important issue or something constructive. Every time I went to counseling I sent him an email to let him know what I learned, how I felt, and what I took away that I thought might help our marriage. Not once did he email me back. Not a single response. In fact, not a single email from him that entire month.\n\nAfter the month was over, I called him. I took about ten minutes and shared what I was feeling, that I missed him, and how hopeful I was for continuing our marriage with a few changes from each of us. I then asked how his month apart went and for his thoughts on our marriage. His response: \"It was fine. I didn't really think about our marriage much.\" He then asked if he should move back in today or wait until after the weekend since he didn't know if I already had plans or not with friends. In that very second I knew my mind was made up, and soon after I filed for divorce. He would never emotionally invest in me, not even at the most crucial moments of our marriage.\n\nI don't know what my future holds, but even though I'm saddened I'm the one who initiated the divorce, I have a sense of peace about it after giving my all.\n\n\u2014Ginny\n\nIf you've exhausted all resources and still feel like divorce is the best decision for you, then by all means you've gotta do what you've gotta do. For some of you divorce really is the best option; take Michelle, for example. If this is the case, remember you're not alone and you're going to be just fine. After all, we are the ex-wives, and it's our duty as girlfriends to help you plan and prepare for your journey, but more importantly, to be there to hold your hand throughout this process.\n\nKeep in mind that once you've made the final decision to end your marriage, you're going to feel tremendous guilt. This seems to be a common thread between women who choose to leave, especially if there are kids involved. When doubt starts to settle in, break out your list of reasons why you made the decision to divorce, and keep it close to you. Laminate it if you have to. Listen to your gut and stay true to yourself. Stick to your guns.\n\n#2: Your spouse wants a divorce; you do not\n\nI'm sorry, did you just say you want a divorce? After seventeen years of marriage and all the bullshit I've put up with, the years of forgiveness, the thousands of dollars we've spent in counseling. I've stuck it out, and now you don't want to do this anymore? If anyone was going to walk away it should have been me.\n\n\u2014Chrissi\n\nYour heart is broken, you can't eat or sleep, and your world as you knew it is over. Nothing makes sense. You feel betrayed, shocked, confused, vulnerable, and full of fear. Panic is setting in. Sound familiar? Yes, we've been there.\n\nYour mind is overwhelmed with repeated thoughts such as these:\n\n\u2022 What did I do wrong?\n\n\u2022 Why does he want to leave?\n\n\u2022 Can't we work this out?\n\n\u2022 Is there someone else?\n\n\u2022 What about the kids?\n\n\u2022 How will I survive without him?\n\n\u2022 I can't believe this is happening.\n\nThe good news: you're going to be okay.\n\nThe bad news: it might take a while.\n\nUnfortunately, there isn't an easy fix for a broken heart, but we do have some tips on how you can get through this. There are some important things you need to keep in mind as you journey down this bumpy road.\n\nAs desperate as you are to save things and get your life back to normal, remember, the only person you can control is you. Your commitment to saving your marriage is a huge factor in how things progress during this time, but you've got to do things right. The last thing you want to do is make mistakes that will push your spouse even farther away. Think of this as a game of chess\u2014your ultimate goal is to checkmate the king (your husband).\n\nWe aren't experts, but we have seen quite a few women turn things around.\n\nHis thought was: the grass was greener on the other side. I knew better. After two months of separation he thought I would be begging him to come back. I wasn't. I focused on our girls and building a life on the hypothetical \"just the three of us\" instead of four. Even though this was hard and hurt me, because I really loved my husband, I also needed time to sort some issues out.\n\nI was angry with him, as well as angry with myself for some of the things that I had swept under the rug because I was so focused on the kids. He then set New Year's Day as the date he would move back in. The date passed without him moving back. It crushed me, but I went about my life, like my friends and family urged me to do. I gave him the space he wanted, and I came to realize I also needed [space] in order to give our marriage another try. He eventually moved back, but not right away. Our marriage is stronger because I was committed, not desperate. And, most importantly, he's a better husband and I'm a better wife.\n\n\u2014Elise\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Tips:\n\n\u2022 Don't beg him to stay. It might sound good in theory, but it really looks pathetic and will push him even farther away.\n\n\u2022 Take a good look in the mirror and be honest with yourself. How have you contributed to the problems in your marriage? Have you been critical, nagging, difficult to live with, etc.? If so, you have to stop these behaviors ASAP. Actions speak louder than words, especially now.\n\n\u2022 Back off. Don't pressure him into anything he doesn't want to do. Focus on yourself and give him the space he's requesting.\n\n\u2022 Don't compromise your personal morals and values\u2014ever. Insist on respect and keep your boundaries tight.\n\n\u2022 Get help. If he refuses to go to counseling, go by yourself. If he's willing to give it a shot, find the best marriage and family counselor you can afford and make an appointment now.\n\nObviously, we are ex-wives, so we're not exactly professionals at saving marriages. We do, however, want to give you hope. Just because divorce papers have been filed, that doesn't mean you'll end up divorced. And just because he's telling you it's over, doesn't mean it really is.\n\nJust keep calm and by all means carry on. It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings, girlfriend.\n\nNow, this isn't to say you should hang out in la-la land (a.k.a. denial) waiting for his return. If he's requesting a divorce, then you need to get your ducks in a row ASAP. Instead of crawling into bed with a box of Thin Mints, get on the phone and hire an attorney, pronto. Start pulling your financial records and keep a tight watch on your bank accounts. You can't afford to be a shrinking violet right now, and although every inch of your body wants to shrivel up and hide, now is the time to do the exact opposite.\n\nRegardless of whether you reconcile or proceed with divorce, we think it's time for a pep talk. And if there's anything the Ex-Wives love, it's a good pep talk.\n\nThis is Your First Pep Talk\n\nYou are going to be fine. Right now your life sucks, you're scared to death, and you're wondering if you'll ever smile again. Guess what? You will! We are welcoming you with open arms and lots of good advice to help you through this. You are not alone! Surround yourself with people who love you, and only take advice from those you would trade places with. Hire a badass attorney, and keep your big girl panties on. There's a whole new chapter in your life ready to be written. So let's get started. Everything in life happens for a reason, and as Gloria Gaynor says: \"I will survive!\"\n\n#3: The divorce is mutual\u2014you both want it\n\nMy ex-husband and I were married for twenty-one years, and the decision to divorce was completely mutual after our children went to college. We are both happily remarried, but even now, after twenty-five years, I have random unexpected moments of sadness when I think of him. When you share a life with someone, those feelings and memories don't just disappear.\n\n\u2014Elizabeth\n\nSometimes things just don't work out. We get it. If you find yourself in this situation, consider yourself lucky. Breaking up is never easy, and it's even harder when one person wants out and the other resists. Thankfully, no one is feeling betrayed or shocked. You've weighed the options, probably attended couples counseling, and have mutually decided the marriage is irreparable. The future looks brighter without each other, and neither one of you is happy. Sounds like an easy way out, even though we all know ending a marriage is never easy.\n\nDivorce will shake up your world, even if both of you agree it's the best decision. Sure, you may not have a big legal battle, but don't be caught off guard when feelings of guilt, doubt, disappointment, and sadness set in. No one is immune to this; it comes with the territory.\n\nWe've talked to women all over the world about their experiences with divorce; many exposed their raw emotions and feelings. Here's what some of them had to say regarding the end of their marriage.\n\nI knew my marriage was over when...\n\n\u2022 I drove laps around my neighborhood because I didn't want to go home.\n\n\u2022 I felt more alone with him than without him.\n\n\u2022 My children begged me to leave.\n\n\u2022 I found myself in bed with another man.\n\n\u2022 I overheard my best friend tell him she loved him.\n\n\u2022 I realized I was the only one fighting for it.\n\nMaybe your marriage isn't over, but maybe it is. Regardless of your circumstances, divorce sucks. Whether you're the one leaving or the one left brokenhearted, you will inevitably experience the stages of grief. Be prepared to grieve the death of your relationship, but hang in there; there's a light at the end of this tunnel.\n\nBefore You Jump Overboard\n\nDivorce is serious business. Before you make any final decisions, we feel it's our duty to encourage you to save your marriage. Keep in mind that we are not licensed counselors or experts on saving marriages (obviously). We don't know your personal situation, so we can only speak from our experiences.\n\nWe are advocates for healthy, happy, loving relationships. When couples start discussing divorce, they are most likely at their breaking point. No one is feeling loved and\/or happy. This isn't a reason to get divorced. This is, however, a good time to seek professional marital counseling (and limit your outdoor voice).\n\nMarriage counselors are in the business of saving marriages, especially the ones that are worth saving. It's their job to help you navigate rough waters. Regardless of how you're feeling toward your spouse (even if you want to strangle him or leave him on a deserted island with killer monkeys), you made vows to each other for a reason, so it's only fair to give it a shot.\n\nIf he's open to seeing a counselor, then by all means, girlfriend, take him up on it. If he refuses counseling, then go by yourself. You just never know until you try.\n\nSometimes a third party is exactly what you need. You know, a safe place, a Switzerland, if you will; a neutral environment where you can hash out the bad and reconnect with the good. In many cases the threat of divorce can bring a couple closer together. After a few sessions you may find yourselves regaining trust and committing to making things work. If finances are a challenge, look to friends, family, or possibly your place of religious worship for help. There are resources available to you, but sometimes it takes doing a little homework to find them.\n\nIt's Over (The Fat Lady Has Sung)\n\nYou've come to the realization that this is, in fact, really happening. You have exhausted all avenues for a relationship rescue, and you are prepared to move forward with divorce. It's okay. You will survive. It won't be easy, but you are going to get through this. Now, pick up the phone and call your best friend.\n\nI was shocked, and still am. My husband wanted a divorce after seventeen years of marriage. Our kids were set in schools and had their bus and neighborhood buddies. I just couldn't understand why now. Why do this to the kids? Why do this to me, your best friend? But I knew my husband, and there was no going back once his mind was made up. And I told him if he went through with this there would be no going back for me. Our divorce was a rude awakening for me; I just didn't know where to start. Thankfully, I had many friends and family waiting to support me, especially when I didn't even know how to support myself.\n\n\u2014Kerri\n\nNo matter what your situation is, and who wants to start the divorce process, as we've said many times throughout this chapter, it's gonna suck\u2014big time suck. But when something sucks, it doesn't last forever.\n\nThis may be the end of your fighting, which will lead to a \"new and improved\" marriage. This may be the end of your marriage, which will lead you to a \"new and improved\" you. Or this may just be an end to both, in which case let's get down to business\u2014time to prepare for both a \"new and improved\" you as well as a \"new and improved\" life.\nPreparing for Your Journey\n\n{this is \"the big\" pep talk}\n\n\"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.\"\n\n\u2014Dorothy (from The Wizard of Oz)\n\nIf you're anything like us, you're now throwing your hands in the air, exclaiming \"Now what?\" Possibly with some tears or swears (or both) added in. The life you've been living will soon be in your past, you think. Your future has a big ol' question mark on it, you know. Where in the heck are you now? Welcome to your first destination, The Land of Preparation.\n\nYes, dear readers, this is not only your first stop, but the most important stop of the entire journey through divorce.\n\nLuckily you have the Ex-Wives here to guide you. Considering our priority is to help you arm yourself with information, we are going to help you prepare as if Napoleon himself has risen from the grave and is ready to do battle against you. Any smart girl knows that information + preparation = win, win, even against a Napoleon.\n\nNow comes the fun part. We are going to ask you to ditch a certain piece of your wardrobe, something you might need in the future but definitely not now: your thongs. (Don't throw them away, just tuck them away in a drawer for now.)\n\nIt's officially time to put on those big girl panties we keep mentioning.\n\nBecause when preparing for the business of a legal divorce, one needs the appropriate armor, and anything that rides up your rear will not cut it.\n\nThey may not be pretty, but damn if big girl panties won't help you deal with anything that comes your way. Big girl panties encourage you to remember that the process of getting a legal divorce is not an emotional transaction, it's a business transaction.\n\nYour boundaries will need to be drawn bolder than they ever have been before, as in black permanent, never coming off, marker. Say no and mean absofreakinlutely no way. Say yes and mean hell yes. Say, \"Let me think about that,\" the majority of times, and actually breathe and think about it, without the pressure of time limitations. Don't cave in if you're being pressured. Absolutely no big decisions should be made without careful thought and review. Get where we're going here?\n\nBullying is not allowed on our playgrounds anymore. It's time to get on your feet and stand up for your fabulous future self. Your decisions and actions during the process of divorce will affect almost every aspect of your future life. So buy an entire new wardrobe of BGPs\u2014you're gonna need them.\n\nThe Business of Divorce vs. Personal Divorce\n\nbusiness [biz-nis]: that with which a person is principally and seriously concerned\n\npersonal [pur-suh-nl]: of, relating to, or coming as from a particular person; individual; private\n\nAs ex-wives, we know that this is going to be a very emotional time of your life, and it will be hard to separate the emotional part of divorce from the business side of divorce. But this is the one time you must truly separate business (legal divorce) from personal (private, sobbing, nonstop eating an entire freezer's worth of Ben and Jerry's Hazed & Confused, while tearing up photos of your soon-to-be ex).\n\nLet us say this, and let it sear into your big, beautiful brain: you must take care of yourself emotionally in order to do business like the mogul we know you are (we'll go into that more soon). Ask yourself if you would work for a boss that went on emotional tirades, sobbed uncontrollably at the most inopportune times, or didn't have their s@#t together? You wouldn't.\n\nYou, soon-to-be ex-wife, get to be the CEO of your divorce! That's right, Chief Empress Organizer of your divorce. The BIG BOSS!\n\nSo, order the desk nameplate, or print off those business cards you've been eyeing on Pear Tree even though you're a stay-at-home mom, because it's up to you to run this business of divorce you are about to enter into. More importantly, it's up to you to set the tone for a divorce that's as pain free as possible.\n\nWhat kind of boss do you want to be? You want to be the boss everyone thinks has their life so freaking together because they are so \u00fcberorganized that they probably have all of their freshly ironed clothing on wooden hangers facing the same direction, sorted by color and sleeve length, in their custom-built mahogany walk-in closet. That's how together we want your soon-to-be ex to think you are. (Even if you're shoveling in pints of ice cream while defacing wedding pictures on top of piles of dirty, crumpled clothing on the floor of a closet that's barely big enough to hold a broom.)\n\nLeave the emotion, as well as the drama, out of your role as CEO in your business of divorce. Take it from us: your financial, custodial, and future kickass self is going to depend on this.\n\nTime to earn your new title of Empress and focus on the most essential piece, organization.\n\nOrganizing\n\nSo, what exactly will you be organizing to help you get to your happy, shiny new life after divorce? Just about everything. Every professional you hire or encounter\u2014attorney, county clerk, counselor, mediator, child psychologist, financial planner, post-divorce party planner (okay, maybe not her)\u2014will need documents from you. Not just a couple, but many documents.\n\nBe prepared to whisper sweet nothings to a copier or scanner and spend a day or so collecting\/sifting\/sorting\/scouring your paperwork to find everything you need and get organized. We want you to bolt straight out of the gate, not wobble out wearily as we did. Hire a babysitter, ask your most OCD friends to help you for an afternoon, or do whatever you have to do to get ready to create binders and folders even Martha Stewart would approve of. Trust us, the work and organization you do now in the initial stages of your divorce is what will get you to the finish line without collapsing from mental exhaustion.\n\nSuggested First Steps for Organization of Financial Matters:\n\n1. Change all passwords, as in ALL passwords that would potentially give your soon-to-be ex access to any private information. And, yes, that includes your Delta SkyMiles account.\n\n2. Order or request credit reports from all three reporting bureaus and put a freeze on your credit. This way no one will be able to apply for credit under your name without the lending institution contacting you first for approval.\n\n3. Open a new checking and\/or savings account with you as the sole name on the account.\n\n4. Open a new credit card in your name only.\n\n5. Rent a post-office box where you can start receiving personal and\/or financial mail.\n\n6. Start saving money or filtering some into your new account for emergency purposes or rainy days (light showers or monsoons). We can't tell you how many women exclaimed that they were shocked when their ex withdrew all of the money from their joint checking account.\n\n7. Be smart and start stocking up on what you might need later for rainy days; gift cards, credits, and vouchers.\n\n8. Start having your paychecks or any earned income deposited directly into your new accounts. Only transfer what is needed to pay joint expenses into the joint accounts if you and your soon-to-be ex decide to keep them open for now.\n\n9. Make sure you retain and make duplicates of each and every account you have that is a liquid asset.\n\n10. Make a list of every tangible asset you possess individually and jointly. Sometimes things tend to go \"missing,\" so if you have a picture as well as notes it's amazing how quickly things can be \"found.\"\n\n11. Speak candidly to your financial planner or accountant about the impending divorce and ask for suggestions on protecting your financial future.\n\n12. Start asking your friends and people you respect for attorney referrals. The faster you call and schedule initial consultations, the quicker you'll know what your personal situation most likely entails.\n\nAs we discuss at length in Chapter 5, \"Get Organized, Girl,\" every document or bit of information you can gather will save you money, lots of money. And smart girls don't waste money.\n\nNot only will it save you money, but it will also give you a quick reference tool when you're asked the same questions over and over, which, in turn, will save your sanity. And if there's one thing the Ex-Wives learned the hard way, it's that you can't put a price tag on sanity.\n\nSuggested First Steps for Organization of Personal Matters\n\n1. Make a list of your \"must haves\" versus \"would like to haves\" versus \"don't care\" when it comes to your divorce. Be honest about this and be realistic. \"Must haves\" are deal breakers, and you don't want to waste those on something trivial. Save them for the times when you want to draw the line in the proverbial sand.\n\n2. Speak to a personal counselor via your church, synagogue, community, paid professional, etc. Schedule a visit and get on it. There's no avoiding going through the seven stages of grief, and they are not pretty without the help of respected, experienced, and trusted individuals.\n\n3. Remember the golden rule: What you put out into the universe returns to you. If you spend your days bad-mouthing your soon-to-be ex to everyone and anyone, or have a one-way ticket on the negative train daily, stop it now. It will only end up hurting you.\n\n4. Map out, collage, or journal what you envision your future life will look like until you've run out of glue or ink (or both). Put your vision somewhere you will see it (Valerie's is in her closet, and Holiday keeps hers on the mirror in her bathroom) to remind you daily that you have everything you need to be everything you want.\n\n5. Be honest with family and friends about your relationship status (no, that doesn't mean plastering sassy crap all over Facebook), but keep the \"ace card\" up your sleeve. Realize that even though your family and friends love and support you, their advice, actions, and opinions are going to be based on their personal experiences as well as their relationship with your soon-to-be ex, not yours. This is a big change for everyone. Try not to take things personally when you get unexpected, unsolicited advice, or when they still communicate with your ex. Keep those big girl panties hiked high, ladies.\n\n6. Keep a daily calendar of how much time your soon-to-be ex is spending with your children, as well as any information that would be pertinent to giving the best day-to-day chronicle of your family life. This will be your saving grace if it becomes a bigger battle than you think it will be, because 75 percent of the time it does.\n\nAdditionally, you will need to start taking copious notes on just about everything. Think communication, daily expenses, household expenses, behaviors, etc. To get you headed down the right path of super-duper A+ note-taking, you'll find worksheets at the back of the book, as well as online at www.exwivesguide.com.\n\nBesides being the best damn CEO of divorce there ever was, the more notes you take, the more organized you will be during future meetings with individuals you are forking money over to. The more organized you are, the more you will be able to save money and your sanity as well as not stray from your \"must haves\" (a.k.a. more visitation time with the kiddos, not a meaningless velvet Elvis).\n\nBecause if we know anything, it's this: a woman who is unorganized or in disarray feels it in every fiber of her being and literally and figuratively becomes a mess!\n\nEmotions and Personal Divorce\n\nTo ensure a successful business divorce, clich\u00e9d or not, you must \"save the drama for your mama.\" Or save it for your girlfriends, or therapist, or voodoo doll\u2014whoever will give you fifteen minutes to vent\/stress\/freak the hell out. It's defined as \"private\" for a reason.\n\nThat doesn't mean you have to try to force those spewing feelings back where they came from. We are in no way telling you to pretend like you're not also having a personal divorce. Create time and space in constructive capacities to let the lavalike emotions ooze out slowly in order to keep you from erupting.\n\nHow does one constructively do this? This is the perfect time for you to take up that sport or hobby you have put off for years. Valerie always wanted to play tennis but never felt she had the time or energy. Let's just say once she uttered, \"I'm not okay with what happened, and I'm not sure I want to be married anymore (insert bad word here),\" during her third divorce, she picked up a tennis racket and hasn't put it down since. Hitting balls as hard as she could gave her the opportunity to beat up on something, as opposed to someone, like she was dreaming of doing.\n\nJoining teams provided her the chance to meet new people and increased her support system. Playing in weekend matches gave her something constructive to do when her little one was with her ex and all she wanted to do was watch the Lifetime network all weekend and eat an entire jumbo-size bag of Twizzlers.\n\nYou get the drift. Want to get your om on? Take up yoga. Do you always look at runners and think, Why the hell are they so happy? Try running and find out. Been dying to travel but your soon-to-be ex hated it so the farthest you traveled was your county line? Update your passport and go see the world, or get out locally for day trips that are budget friendly to feel connected to what both your heart and soul are pulling you toward.\n\nMy ex hardly ever supported or encouraged the fact that I played a musical instrument. I started having children shortly after marriage, so I never felt like I had the time to do the things I enjoyed. Once we started the divorce, a friend that knew I used to play an instrument invited me to go to a community band practice with her. She thought it would be good for me to do something for myself, even if it was for only two hours a week, and to get my mind off the intensity of my divorce. Boy, was she right. Not only did playing again bring something I loved back into my life, both during and well after my divorce, but it's also how I eventually met my second husband, who is also a musician.\n\n\u2014Chris\n\nWe also suggest drawing a map of what the \"new and improved\" you looks like, which we touched on briefly in the Organization section. We both collaged what our ideal life would look like after divorce. It was bright, full of boundaries, and had us spreading joy just about anywhere the sun shined, especially while wearing outfits from the pages of the Anthropologie Lookbook. Remember, this is your second chance; don't blow it by not envisioning it.\n\nWomen by nature are visual creatures; if we see it, we can achieve it. It's also important for you to set up safety nets anywhere you predict you will most likely fall. If you know you can't handle seeing your soon-to-be ex without sobbing or screaming (or both), it's best to make sure anytime he picks up the kiddos it's at someone else's home, or school, or aftercare.\n\nNo kids? Well, then any time you have to meet your soon-to-be ex meet him somewhere public, where going postal would be a no-no. Think Barnes & Noble caf\u00e9\u2014inside voice mandatory and it's usually pretty crowded, total lifesaver.\n\nHate being by yourself? Schedule your weekends at least a few weeks in advance. Make plans with your friends, visit local exhibits, and attend community social events so you always have something that keeps you connected to others. You know those single gal pals who keep you out until 2:00 a.m. and then you wake up with a fast-food bag mysteriously on your nightstand? Plan to meet them for a quick happy hour right after work or an alcohol-free brunch instead, so you don't end up doing something you know you (and your waistline) will regret.\n\nMost importantly, plan on being emotional, going through the seven stages of grief, and having to carve out and envision a new life for yourself. Even the most amicable of divorces is a major change for you. It's also a huge change for your family and your day-to-day routine. This brings us to the next most important thing you can prepare for as you embark on your journey through divorce... your expectations.\n\nBe Realistic\n\nReality\u2014not always our friend, but not always our foe. Not being realistic with the changes that will and are happening is normally what takes the wind out of our sails or steers even the most vigilant of us on the wrong course.\n\nTake charge early on to set the tone for accepting and preparing for change, not fighting it. And as we all know from Oprah, change starts with ourselves, lovely ladies. Plan for the worst and expect the best. That way you won't ever be more than halfway disappointed but might actually be pleasantly surprised.\n\nStrategies based on reality\u2014Create a strategy based on everything you know for sure, have organized, or discovered so far. Facts speak for themselves. Don't have just one strategy; have several plans of action. You never know how somebody is going to act or react to your best-laid plans, especially a soon-to-be ex.\n\nDon't make rash decisions based on feelings. Prioritize, research, organize, look at the facts and truly analyze them from every angle (just like the talented CEO we know you are). Then, write down a couple of possible outcomes in pencil. As smart women, we know changes, and more changes, may happen during our divorces. This is reality, and we need to accept that. Spend this time anticipating any potential pitfalls that might happen so if they do you're already a step ahead.\n\nTime to be savers, not spenders\u2014Step away from the Target cart. Yes, sadly you read that correctly, and luckily it wasn't being shouted to you over the loudspeaker at Target. It's part of preparing for your divorce journey. Put back the chic new lamp, fab new spring door wreath, and the ten other shiny, pretty items you don't really need. The reality is, only a very, very, (did we say very yet?) few of us get to maintain our previous lifestyles. We promise your glorious days of filling up the bright red cart will come again, but not for a while. Better to have that extra money in your bank account than to be worried whether you'll eventually have to live out of a shopping cart. So, seriously, you in the home goods section, put it back now.\n\nBe smart, rather than emotional, with your money. This is no time to buy the Hunter boots you've been eyeing forever because you need a pick-me-up as you prepare for divorce. However, it is the time to stock up on Publix gift cards every time you buy groceries (this goes mostly unnoticed; we ex-wives can vouch for this). You never know if you'll find yourself strapped in the future, and at least you know your children will be fed if you have grocery store gift cards. Because if the bottom falls out, nobody in the soup kitchen line is going to say, \"Great Hunter boots!\"\n\nValerie assumed because of her third ex's choices and behaviors during their marriage that their divorce was going to be calm and straightforward, with her firmly holding the reins. She asked for the moon and the stars, oh, and the planet and the galaxies, too. Valerie expected to get everything because things had been civil, and she had supported her ex in bettering himself at a time most others wouldn't have. Guess what? Her ex grew a set the day he moved out. He made it his mission to fight for the aforementioned moon and stars (and the planet and galaxies) all while wielding ninja knives and a Freddy Krueger mask. Had Valerie been realistic, she probably wouldn't have suffered the catastrophic financial loss, as well as the emotional torture that seemed never-ending during and after the divorce.\n\nThe more organized and realistic you are about what the next several months or years may hold, the sooner you'll be able to ditch the big girl panties and put your thong back on. And if that's not an incentive, we don't know what is.\nStages of Divorce\n\n{brace yourself}\n\n\"Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.\"\n\n\u2014Anne Roiphe\n\nMichael and I were high school sweethearts. We married shortly after college, built a dream house in our small hometown, and spent weekends with friends. Many thought we had a perfect marriage, including me. Everything changed the night I found him in my best friend's tent during our annual summer camping trip. They told me they loved each other and were planning to marry. My world instantly collapsed. He was the only man I had ever loved, and she was more like a sister than a friend. I stood there, in the middle of a campground, completely shocked. I had been betrayed by the two people closest to me.\n\n\u2014Denise\n\nYou can google a lot of things, but a cure for heartbreak isn't one of them. Truth be told, there isn't an easy way to get through the mess of divorce. Divorce is the death of a relationship, but more importantly, it's the death of a dream. The dream of a happily ever after, the dream of the \"perfect\" family (believe us, there is no such thing), and the dream of sharing forever with your spouse. The whole \"till death do us part\" thing has gone flying out the window, and you're just trying to figure out how to make it through the day without another massive crying session.\n\nDon't give up just yet. A slew of shrinks have done their research, and according to the experts there's a specific cycle of grief you can expect to experience. Seeing how knowledge is, in fact, power, we thought it would be helpful to share these stages with you. And remember, as we will remind you over and over, this too shall pass.\n\nThanks to Elisabeth K\u00fcbler-Ross (author of On Death and Dying, 1969), we can identify the five stages of grief as follows:\n\n1. Denial\n\n2. Anger\n\n3. Bargaining\n\n4. Depression\n\n5. Acceptance\n\nSorry, girlfriend, there isn't a magic button that can fast-forward you to acceptance, but we seriously believe that if you process and acknowledge each stage, you'll find yourself accepting your situation much quicker than if you stick your head in a pillow and ignore what's really happening. Hint: if your head is stuck in a pillow, you're currently in denial.\n\nWhile acceptance is the ultimate goal, keep in mind that the process of grief isn't linear. You won't move seamlessly from one stage to the next. (Although that would certainly make things a little easier\u2014wish there was a suggestion box for that one!) The feelings of grief are better illustrated as a chaotic circle, similar to the Mad Tea Party ride at Disney World. Constant pushing, pulling, and twisting in multiple directions interfere with your ability to focus, leaving you dizzy and nauseous. We can't help but wonder why there's always a crazy long line for this ride. Using your Fast Pass for this ride... total insanity, but we wish. In all seriousness, our best advice would be to hold on tight and remember that eventually the ride will end. Of course, some rides will be longer than others, but one day you'll step out of your teacup, the dizziness will fade, and your focus will change.\n\nWhile we can't predict exactly what will happen or how you will feel during these stages, we can share our personal experiences and the lessons we learned. Personal circumstances also significantly contribute to how you react during each stage of grief. If you were blindsided by your husband's request for divorce, your process of grief is going to be different from the woman who has finally mustered the strength to leave an abusive marriage.\n\nThanks to years of research we can identify these stages of grief, and while we may not go through them in exactly the same way, you can expect to find yourself somewhere on the spectrum on any given day.\n\nStage 1: DENIAL\n\nThis is just a bad dream\n\nOur bodies are pretty amazing. In fact, we have this incredible ability to protect our minds (and hearts) from pain and shock. This coping mechanism is called denial, and for some it's a favorable stage in the grieving process. After all, there's much to be said about putting on a brave face and pretending everything is going to be A-OK. \"This isn't really happening,\" or \"I'm sure he'll change his mind, it's just a phase,\" are examples of signs that you're in denial. Denial is like the calm before the storm; you know, that peaceful, yet eerie, blanket of silence that prefaces a hurricane. Yep, that silence would be denial, and the hurricane is blowing loudly and rapidly behind it ready to rip your roof off.\n\nIf you're the one who's chosen to leave the marriage, your denial stage may have come prior to your request for divorce. Most likely there have been days, months, or even years leading up to your decision to end the marriage. Thoughts such as \"Things will get better,\" or \"My life could be much worse,\" or \"He promised he would change,\" are just a few examples. Denial can also be the culprit of abusive relationships, and maybe it was these very feelings of denial that caused you to stay married longer than you should have.\n\nIf you're in denial, please listen carefully. This is not the time to make any major promises, such as signing legal documents or agreeing to final custody terms. Get your head out of the pillow before you sign on the dotted line. You're vulnerable, weak, and not thinking clearly.\n\nRushing through the denial process is kind of, well, impossible. (Again, we tried it.) You can't force your heart to face the truth; this is a mental thing. Once your brain catches on, you'll swiftly realize what's about to happen. Instead of being broken and confused, that beautiful poetic heart of yours is going to get mad.\n\nStage 2: ANGER\n\nAre you f#$%* kidding me?\n\nReality has set in and you're pissed, really, really pissed. Go ahead, let it out. This isn't the time to be polite or ladylike. It's kind of like having an emotional \"get out of jail free\" card, but not really, so please don't do anything illegal. The calm before the storm is over, and the hurricane is in full swell, tearing down everything and anything in its path. Think Godzilla stomping through the eye of the hurricane and that should paint an accurate enough picture.\n\nDuring the anger phase your ex will become the enemy. Instead of romanticizing the past, you'll remember everything about this man that pissed you off. Whether it was his sloppy habit of leaving facial hair in the sink, lack of finesse in the bedroom, hotheaded temper, clipping his toenails in bed, smoking, horrible money management, little man syndrome, heavy breathing, loud chewing\u2014you get where we're going here\u2014he will quickly become incredibly undesirable in your eyes. This is a good thing, roll with it!\n\nSuggestion: write these down for future reference. This list will come in handy when depression kicks in and you start feeling lonely.\n\nBelieve it or not, this can be a healthy stage. Your heart recognizes the pain it's feeling and lashes out accordingly. Anger is also a sign that you're beginning to move on. Everything was tucked in nice and neat during denial, but now the caged lion is breaking free and has meat on the brain. We say let 'er rip, girlfriend (as long as little ears can't hear you). You've earned the right to that mighty roar.\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Dos and Don'ts of Anger:\n\n\u2022 DO allow yourself to feel angry.\n\n\u2022 DON'T do anything you could potentially regret (like attacking him with the pepper spray he gave you for Christmas last year\u2014unless, of course, it's self-defense   ).\n\n\u2022 DO share your feelings with people you trust: close family, friends, or a professional counselor\/therapist.\n\n\u2022 DON'T drag your children into your feelings of anger. Keep those mama bear instincts intact and protect your kids.\n\nAnger came pretty quickly for me. One night during dinner my husband announced he was in love with his secretary and moving out the next weekend. Denial lasted for about thirty seconds, and after that I just wanted to kill him.\n\n\u2014Kimberly\n\nStage 3: BARGAINING\n\nBut I'll do anything...\n\nThis stage is tricky. You're at a major fork in the road, and as far as you're concerned all you have to do is get back on the marriage trail and things will be just fine. You've gone through denial, you've been angry and upset, and now you're starting to feel the need to regain control. Bargaining is a last-ditch effort to get your life, your marriage, your normal back.\n\nIf you're the one who left the marriage, this is when you'll realize that you have either\n\na) made the right decision\n\nor\n\nb) made a huge mistake\n\nHint: If you think you've made a huge mistake, we strongly recommend you RUN, not walk, home.\n\nIf your spouse was the one to leave, bargaining is where you will do anything and everything to win him back. The feelings you're experiencing now are tough, and the obvious solution is to fix the problem and attempt to repair the damage that has been done as opposed to face the uncertain. \"I know our life wasn't perfect, but I just can't handle this... I'll do whatever it takes.\"\n\nThis can be an ugly process, involving groveling, begging, pleading, reasoning, and even bribing. While we strongly advise against the use of these tactics, we realize you're probably not going to listen. Remember, your spouse will also experience the bargaining stage, and if he believes he's made a mistake, eventually he will come back to you. (Sometimes this takes longer than we would like, but hold tight. You never know, and it normally involves an apology with a flashy, blingy sort of thing.)\n\nWhen my husband filed for divorce, I felt completely helpless. I was lonely, angry, and confused. I would have done anything to win him back. I sacrificed my self-worth by offering forgiveness for years of infidelity, was willing to repay the thousands of dollars of debt he racked up, and even promised him guilt-free weekends to play golf if he would just come home. I didn't care what I had to do or what indiscretions I needed to forget. I just wanted my life, and my husband, back. My bargaining didn't work, and although it was the most painful time of my life, I am so thankful he didn't buy into my pleas. He never treated me with the respect or love I deserved, but it took me several years to realize that.\n\n\u2014Julie\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Advice:\n\nHold your head up high and surround yourself with people who love you. They will help you maintain your dignity, or at least throw a bucket of water in your face to wake you up if you start to slip.\n\nStage 4: DEPRESSION\n\nThis sucks\n\nWe're not going to sugarcoat this for you. Divorce sucks. It really, really, really sucks, and the depression stage is probably the worst. Keep in mind, you're probably going to cycle in between different stages at various times, just be prepared for the feeling of depression to set in.\n\nDon't be surprised if depression creeps up on you. It's kind of like an unwanted houseguest. You have no idea when it's going to knock on your door, but when it does, it takes over. Your fancy soaps will lose their luster, meals no longer have the same appeal, and hiding in your bedroom makes you feel both better and guilty. And you never know when the unwanted houseguest will leave, no matter how hard you try to get it to pack up and just go home.\n\nDepression is tough to control. In fact, most of us experience depression along with whatever other stage we're currently processing. The feelings of sadness, loneliness, and lack of motivation can send you into a dark spiral at any given moment.\n\nI'll never forget the time I was checking out at the grocery store and our wedding song came on in the background. Tears streamed down my face, and I couldn't control the sadness. It hit me like a Mack truck.\n\n\u2014Megan\n\nI realized I was depressed when I found myself eating Raisin Bran out of a coffee mug in bed for the fourth day in a row. In my mind I had no reason to get dressed or leave the house. I was in survival mode, and depression had definitely kicked in.\n\n\u2014Jennifer\n\nOne week I literally didn't leave my house for three straight days. Not even to get the mail. I just ate, watched TV, and slept on the sofa the entire time. It wasn't until day four that I realized I hadn't changed out of my clothes either. A friend stopped by to see if I was okay, and I pretended I had a stomach bug so she couldn't come in. Not changing clothes and piling up empty bottles of Gatorade on my family room table is one thing, but not wanting to see one of my good friends? Yes, I had finally hit depression, and I didn't even have the energy to care.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nWhile it's perfectly acceptable to skip a shower here or there, don't fall into the trap of wallowing in self-pity for more than a few days. Now is the time to seek professional help from a divorce counselor or marriage and family therapist. We know you think your situation is unique, but truth be told, these pros have seen it all. Chances are your story is very similar to ours. Divorce is kind of a textbook operation; there are certain things that typically happen while going through the process, and depression just happens to be one of them.\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Advice:\n\nEveryone handles depression differently. Some people retreat and completely isolate themselves. Others respond by booking their social calendars to the gills, not leaving any room for time alone or, even worse, silence.\n\nInstead of tackling your demons alone, we strongly recommend you confide in close family members and friends and seek professional help. You might think you've got it under control, but, girlfriend, a week (or more) in bed without basic personal hygiene is a flashing neon sign that you're in need of an intervention. Ditch the sweatpants, break out your favorite sugar scrub, and hit the shower, or better yet, the day spa if you followed our earlier advice and tucked away money for a \"rainy day.\" Hitting the depression stage certainly counts as one to us!\n\nI will never forget the first time my children left my home to spend the weekend with their dad. The minute I closed the door behind them I fell to the floor in tears. I realized there was no denying the pain of my current truth. I think it was the silence that hurt the most. It was unbearable... the emptiness, loneliness, and overall feeling of helplessness. The thought of staying in the silent, empty house alone just broke my heart. I grabbed my keys and left. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew I had to go somewhere.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nStage 5: ACCEPTANCE\n\nOn the bright side\n\nYou've been through the wringer, your heart has started to heal, and believe it or not, there's a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel. Welcome to acceptance, girlfriend! While this stage doesn't mean you won't feel the pain of loss or sadness, you're starting to get your groove back. Rock on and don't look back!\n\nAcceptance is an absolute cakewalk compared to the other stages of grief. Remember the Mad Tea Party ride? You've now stepped out of the cup and onto solid ground. As promised, the dizziness is fading, and you're regaining focus. Looking back, the tears, fits of rage, and brief moments of insanity seem like a total waste of time. You're ready to take the next step and embrace a new life.\n\n*Warning: Depression has a sneaky way of creeping in during all stages of grief, including this one.\n\nGive yourself permission to have authentic feelings, but don't allow them to paralyze you. Keep moving forward.\n\nThe most important thing to remember during this process is just that: it's a process. Unlike a trip to the grocery store, you can't just breeze down the aisle and check things off a list. Divorce doesn't work like that. We're confident you will progress through recovery; be patient with yourself and allow your heart the time it needs to heal.\n\nCAUTION:\n\nDivorce, like the death of a loved one, results in grief. While we can pretty much guarantee you'll experience all five stages of emotional grief, they could occur in any order. Chances are you'll repeat the cycle multiple times... just hang on for the ride and do your best to get through the rough patches. Acceptance and hope are just around the corner.\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Advice:\n\n\u2022 Allow yourself to grieve and thoroughly experience each stage of the process. There's no beginning, middle, or end to these stages. You will most likely experience them several times; remember, it's a circular process.\n\n\u2022 REST. Grief takes a toll on your body. You need to rest and allow your body (and heart) to heal.\n\n\u2022 Connect with people and get out of the house. Don't alienate yourself.\n\n\u2022 Give yourself a three-day sweatpants\/elastic waist rule. Sorry, we're not budging on this one.\n\n\u2022 Keep a gratitude journal. Be thankful and have a heart of gratitude. We know it's hard, but the more you practice the attitude of gratitude, the easier it will get, we promise.\n\n\u2022 Channel your inner Oprah and take note of your favorite things. Finding joy in the little things can be helpful during this process.\n\n\u2022 Participate in activities that you enjoy and do things that make YOU happy (hobbies, sports, etc.).\n\n\u2022 Don't take advice from anyone you wouldn't trade places with, period. Ignore any horror stories you may hear; everyone's divorce is different, especially if it's someone from a different generation.\nGet Organized, Girl\n\n{let's talk money, honey}\n\n\"Organization is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up.\"\n\n\u2014A. A. Milne\n\nDivorce, quite simply put, is a business transaction, as we touched on in the third chapter, \"Preparing for Your Journey.\" Even though by definition divorce is the legal dissolution of a marriage by the courts, it also involves dividing almost everything you jointly acquired during the marriage, and I do mean almost everything. So put down the Kleenex (and the third box of Thin Mint cookies you have eaten in the last twenty-four hours) and start thinking like a man.\n\nNot only will you be figuring out how to divide assets like 401(k)s and deciding who's responsible for which joint debt, you will also be figuring out who gets awarded said assets. Yep, that includes the brand-new Pottery Barn sofa you had your eyes on for years and finally purchased six months before the you-know-what really hit the fan. Do we have your attention now?\n\nDo yourself the biggest favor you can and take the emotion out of divorce when it comes to gathering the many financial documents that will be required. Your present and future financial security depend on it.\n\nBoth the attorneys and the courts are going to require you to gather several financial documents. This is of the utmost importance, and the more work you do on providing everything, the better chance you have of having a favorable outcome.\n\nAdditionally, the more effort you put into compiling all of the required documents yourself, the more money you will save. Whether you're participating in discovery or preparing it yourself, if attorneys need to get involved (something extreme, such as having to subpoena records, or as simple as calling or emailing you to discuss missing documents) you will be charged for it. And we all know smart girls would rather spend the extra hours getting the documents they need as opposed to wasting money on needless attorney's fees.\n\nThat goes for your soon-to-be ex also. Generally speaking, men may not understand joint cooperation when they're angry or upset, but they do understand money.\n\nIt would be wise to thoroughly discuss with your soon-to-be ex the importance of providing and compiling all needed paperwork when it comes to financial aspects. It will actually help keep money in both of your accounts (yes, his too), which in turn will give you more to divide. Win-win!\n\nSo now you're thinking, OK, I definitely want to be awarded the Pottery Barn sofa, and I don't want to have to pay my attorney two thousand-plus dollars (and my ex pays his attorney the same if not more) to get hold of documents we both could have provided. I will put on my best \"I mean business\" outfit and discuss this with my soon-to-be ex in a calm, businesslike manner. Besides, that's money we could spend on other areas of our life that are a little more important once we move on as singletons, such as our child, or somewhere to live, or the matching Pottery Barn loveseat I really wanted to go with the sofa.\n\nSo, let's break this down into steps:\n\nStep 1. Purchase\/Gather the Following:\n\n1. Two large accordion file folders\n\n2. Thirty to fifty manila or colored file folders\n\n3. Highlighters\n\n4. Printer ink (you will be printing\/copying a TON of papers)\n\n5. Two reams of paper\n\n6. Pen and notebook\n\nOnce you have all of these items together, go ahead and get ready to spread out wherever you keep the majority of your documents. Turn on your favorite tunes, pour a glass of wine (we said a glass, not a bottle), and get ready to channel your inner admin. Now boot up the computer and turn on the printer, because you are about to kill a tree.\n\nStep 2. Start Collecting, Printing, and Copying Documents\n\nTypically, you will need to provide a minimum of twelve months' worth of all statements, further back throughout the course of the marriage if any unusual or uncharacteristic activity has taken place. Whether you receive printed statements in the mail or e-statements online, you will need to access each of these accounts.\n\nIt is imperative for you to have all of the logins, passwords, pass keys, telephone codes, verbal passwords, secret knocks, and so on documented. This would be the perfect time to write each one down as you access each account.\n\nUse our handy \"Accounts\" worksheet, found in the Resources section of this book as well as online at www.exwivesguide.com, and write down the name of every service provider or institution you have an account with, as well as the phone number, email address, and login\/password credentials. Triple laminate this sheet. Not only will laminating it make you realize what a go-to resource it will be during your divorce, but it will also shield it from any wine spills. (Notice I didn't say tears here, since we are in business mode, right?) As many of you know, divorce does not happen in the blink of an eye. Most divorces take anywhere from ninety days to two years to finalize. So you will probably have to update these statements every few months. Having all of this information in one place is key, as it will save you hours later.\n\nHere is a list of documents and statements you will need to compile and make a minimum of two copies of:\n\nUtilities\n\n\u2022 Gas\/oil bills\n\n\u2022 Electric bills\n\n\u2022 Water bills\n\n\u2022 Cable bills\n\n\u2022 Internet bills\n\n\u2022 Landline and wireless phone bills\n\nRevolving and Installment\n\n\u2022 Credit cards (joint, personal, and business if applicable)\n\n\u2022 Mortgage statements\n\n\u2022 Home equity line of credit statements\n\n\u2022 Lease (if you are renting)\n\n\u2022 Last two years of property and vehicle tax bills\n\n\u2022 Secured loans\n\n\u2022 Unsecured loans\n\n\u2022 Family loans\n\n\u2022 Automobile loans\n\n\u2022 Medical bills\n\n\u2022 Other fixed payments\n\nFinancial\n\n\u2022 Checking account statements\n\n\u2022 Savings account statements\n\n\u2022 Investment account statements\n\n\u2022 Retirement account statements (401(k), IRA, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Stocks and bonds\n\n\u2022 Annuities\n\n\u2022 Mutual funds statements\n\n\u2022 529 college savings plan statements\n\n\u2022 Medical savings account statements\n\n\u2022 Children's savings account statements\n\n\u2022 Copy of any trusts\n\n\u2022 Amount of cash on hand\n\nEmployment\/Income\/Self-Employed Business\n\n\u2022 Pay stubs for the past sixty days\n\n\u2022 The past two to five years of filed tax returns (personal, joint, business)\n\n\u2022 Past two years; bonus or commission statements\n\n\u2022 Additional perks\/benefits (car allowance, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Business expenses (reimbursed and non-reimbursed)\n\n\u2022 Accounts receivable\n\n\u2022 Accounts payable\n\n\u2022 Profit and loss statement for the past six months\n\n\u2022 Twelve months of business bank statements (more if deemed necessary)\n\n\u2022 Existing contracts\n\n\u2022 Stock options\n\nPersonal\n\n\u2022 Birth certificates\n\n\u2022 Social security cards for every family member\n\n\u2022 Passports for every family member\n\n\u2022 Driver's licenses for every family member\n\n\u2022 Marriage license (we're hoping you haven't burned it quite yet)\n\n\u2022 Life insurance policies\n\n\u2022 Will\n\n\u2022 Health, dental, and vision insurance cards\n\nDeeds\/Titles\n\n\u2022 Car titles\n\n\u2022 Boat, RV, etc. titles\n\n\u2022 Deed to home\n\n\u2022 Deed to other properties or land owned\n\nAppraised Assets\n\n\u2022 Jewelry appraisals\n\n\u2022 Artwork appraisals\n\n\u2022 Collection appraisals\n\n\u2022 Appraisals of other high-value items\n\nMiscellaneous\n\n\u2022 Gym memberships\n\n\u2022 Club memberships (country club, Costco, Bon Jovi fan club)\n\n\u2022 Season tickets\n\n\u2022 Organization memberships (museums, zoo, etc.)\n\n\u2022 Frequent flyer miles\n\n\u2022 Gift certificates\n\n\u2022 Loyalty memberships (hotels, rental cars, DSW shoes, etc.)\n\nI couldn't believe how expensive getting divorced was. If I knew then what I know now, I would have acted sooner on putting aside some of our joint money and being a little bit more of a DIY girl when it came to gathering information and making copies. The very first month I got my attorney's invoice I opened it and just looked at the bottom line figure. After two months in, I decided to really start looking at the breakdown of fees and hours, since it was getting so costly. I almost fell over when I saw I had been billed for four hours of work at $250 an hour to make copies and \"reorganize\" my file my first month, on top of the many other charges. And the worst part was, I wasn't surprised; what I turned in was incomplete and a mess. I had wasted one thousand dollars on something I could have easily done myself. A few weeks after that charge I had to hold off on registering my son for baseball because it was one hundred and sixty-five dollars and I didn't have it. I should have looked at the details on the very first bill!\n\n\u2014Hillary\n\nStep 3: Separating Your Documents\n\nNow that smoke is pouring out of your printer or copier from overuse, it's time to make use of the handy-dandy supplies we suggested you have in Step 1.\n\nMake sure that you have separated each of the above items into individual piles. After you have done that, start labeling your file folders accordingly. This would be a great time for all of you aspiring Martha Stewarts to color-code the eight categories for easy retrieval.\n\nOne of your two copies can go in one large pile to give to your attorney; the rest should have files labeled and created for them. You don't really need to label those individually for your attorney unless you are really on a roll or bought the one thousand-count box of file folders at Costco and are on a mission to see if you can use them all.\n\nAnything in the first four categories\u2014Utilities, Revolving and Installment, Financial, Employment\/Income\/Self-Employed Business\u2014will go into a separate file for each account.\n\nFor example:\n\nUtilities\u2014Gas | Utilities\u2014Water\n\n---|---\n\nRevolving\u2014My AmEx | Revolving\u2014Our Discover Card\n\nInstallment\u2014My Car | Installment\u2014Our SunTrust Loan\n\nFinancial\u2014My Ivy Funds | Financial\u2014His 401(k)\n\nIncome\u2014His Pay Stubs | Business\u2014My Profit & Loss\n\nFor the last four categories\u2014Personal, Deeds\/Titles, Appraised Assets, Miscellaneous\u2014label a single file with each of the category titles. All of the items listed under the category can go into one file. If you really want to break them out, go for it. However, these are items you won't need to access as much. Once you have a copy of these it's unlikely you'll need to update them.\n\nFor example:\n\nPersonal\u2014Inside are the driver's licenses, passports, marriage certificate (slightly charred), and so on.\n\nStep 4: Organize Your File Folders\n\nNow you'll put those two large, expandable, accordion-style file holders to use. One you will use to house all of the file folders you made from the first four categories. If you have an exceedingly large number of these files, then purchase another accordion file holder, but remember to keep all the files in the same category together.\n\nThe second file holder will be used for everything from the last four categories. You won't want to bring this file holder back and forth to your attorney's office, as it contains items that are not easily replaced.\n\nLose a copy of a utility bill, no problem. Lose a copy of your social security card, big problem.\n\nOnce you have your file folders nicely stored for easy access and quick transport, you should have the rather large pile of second copies you made of everything. Put these copies in an envelope, file folder, or whatever you prefer (or what they will fit in).\n\nThe first two times I got divorced all (and I do mean all) my documents fit neatly in an average-size envelope. For my third divorce I needed about four XXX-large envelopes and binders, as well as a forklift to carry them.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nStep 5: Developing a Workable Budget\n\nAll your statements and documents have now been printed, copied, and sorted. So what's next, run the world? Well, almost. In order to run the world you need to have a budget. (Many politicians have tried to do this without one... need we say more?) Without a budget your world will most likely be one of chaos and confusion, and we all know how that plays out on the highlight reel on CNN. It's no different for you.\n\nSome of you might be thinking, Well, I'm not really sure how much child support, alimony, or blood out of a turnip I am either going to squeeze, receive, or be responsible for paying. So how can I develop an accurate budget?\n\nOur response: figure out a way to never rely solely on that money from your soon-to-be ex for your budget, or your new life. We know this may seem impossible at first, especially for those of us who weren't working full time prior to the divorce. But we promise it's doable; we ex-wives are living proof.\n\nMaking a two-year plan to secure your own financial destiny is highly recommended. If you bought this book, we know you're bright. So go share your talents with the world; make that money, honey. Be an example and show others that when the phoenix does rise, it soars even higher!\n\nDon't know where to start to create a budget? You will find worksheets for proposed expenses and income in the Resources section in the back of the book and online at www.exwivesguide.com. You should now be able to fill in the blanks, due to the fact that you did a phenomenal job of collecting all the information. We warn you, it will most likely change by the time you go to mediation, court, or finalize your divorce, but at least you will be able to see what the initial financial picture should look like.\n\nMy husband and I had a pretty amiable divorce, and we decided to use an independent mediation counselor to help us come to financial conclusions in order to save money with our attorneys. We both had to spend the many hours it takes to collect financial documents. The bottom line wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be; however, it wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be either. Although I was in my forties, I had never completed a formal budget before. Not sure why I had avoided it for so long. Forecasting and budgeting for the next seven years with our mediation counselor actually took away a lot of the stress I was holding on to by not knowing the real picture.\n\n\u2014Amy\n\nMaking a budget for your new reality doesn't have to be as scary as you think it's going to be. To help you with this, we created a budget worksheet, which you can find in the Resources section in the back of the book, as well as online at www.exwivesguide.com.\n\nMany of you would rather pull out your well-manicured fingernails than create a budget and stare reality in the face. We, the Ex-Wives, would be included in the \"many,\" as we knew the fingernails we would be pulling out would most likely no longer be well-manicured, due to having to afford other stuff, like, for example, food.\n\nOnce you complete your new budget, if the numbers aren't pretty, it's better to stare (okay, more like gulp wine and squint out one eye) your new reality in the face. Sure, there might be a little freaking out at first as you try to figure out how you are going to live on that budget, but as the shock quickly settles you will most likely feel an overwhelming renewed sense of purpose. Putting your head in the sand about financial matters is not only a bad idea, it could also lead to financial devastation if you're not careful. Bottom line: develop your budget, get a new game plan, and, it bears repeating, go make that money, honey!\n\nWorksheets and Checklists\n\nDon't reinvent the wheel! We've created checklists and worksheets to help you get organized. You can download them on our website, www.exwivesguide.com, and find them in the Resources section in the back of the book.\n\n\u2022 Accounts worksheet\n\n\u2022 Copies of documents and paperwork checklist\n\n\u2022 Budget worksheet\n\n\u2022 Personal expenses spreadsheet\n\n\u2022 Personal income spreadsheet\nChoose Your Crew\n\n{a.k.a. your \"peeps\"}\n\nChoose wisely or your lifeboat will sink.\n\n\"You cannot change the people around you, but you can change the people you choose to be around.\"\n\n\u2014Anonymous\n\nIn the middle of divorcing my husband I broke up with my mom. \"Disconnect with love\" was the advice given to me by my counselor. My mom resisted. But truth be told, she was driving me insane. I had enough voices going off in my head, not to mention my mother chiming in as the peanut gallery. I could barely keep my thoughts straight. Anytime I talked to her I felt stressed, defensive, and argumentative. I can't blame my mom for being overprotective. I get it. She had been through divorce, so she wanted to help me in every way possible. I knew she meant well and that her words were coming from a place of love, but it didn't matter. I needed a break. My mother was in \"mama bear\" mode.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nWe titled this chapter \"Choose Your Crew,\" because as we all saw in the movie Titanic, a lifeboat will only hold so many people before it sinks. In addition, you need people in your boat who will help you repair holes, steer you to safety, and will keep on rowing. During divorce your circle of influence is your lifeboat, and the crew is the group of people you choose to allow on board. Be mindful of who you allow on board and be very selective. If you wouldn't depend on these people to pitch in when your boat hits the perfect storm, kick them overboard. They don't belong in your lifeboat.\n\nThe challenge with certain people (for example, Holiday's mom) is that they are too close to you. Your pain is their pain. If you are crying or hurt, they want to cry along with you. If you are angry, they are pissed. You can't call this person just to vent; they love you too much to listen without feeling your emotions alongside you. They want to solve every little problem and take away every bit of sadness, anger, and frustration you're facing. Not everything that comes out of your mouth during divorce will need this level of solving, though. In fact, very little will need that Code Red kind of solution or attention. The vast majority of it will just require someone who will listen.\n\nThis isn't to say your closest family members shouldn't be a part of your crew, just be aware of how these relationships affect your overall mental health. So take Holiday's counselor's advice: sometimes you need to disconnect with love. It will be the best decision for both of you. Your \"breakup\" won't last long, but it will be long enough for you to establish boundaries for your relationship.\n\nFriends\n\nYour friends are typically lifelines during a divorce. Below you'll find descriptions of the types of friends you'll want rowing side by side with you in your lifeboat.\n\nFun Friend\u2014This beloved friend will get you out of those yoga pants you have worn for about two days too long, off the sofa, and out and about into the land of the living. They will be the one to make you a divorce mix that includes all your faves, along with the standards (Madonna's \"Respect Yourself\" and \"You Oughta Know\" by Alanis Morissette\u2014you get the idea) and then roll down the windows as the two of you sing loudly while hitting the town for a night out. This friend will bring a smile to your face and remind you of who you really are as a person deep down inside.\n\nSafe House Friend\u2014This is the friend you call when all you want to do is curl up on a sofa, eat massive amounts of anything that has more fat grams than hours in a day, and recount every single detail of every single thing that is wrong to someone you know has your back. This person is your safe house; they will protect you and your feelings. They have no interest in helping you see the bright side if you're upset. They know their job as a friend is to only focus on how you're feeling at that moment. Your secrets are always safe with them. Bonus, this type of friend would rather stay in on a Friday night anyway, so your last-minute call is music to their ears.\n\nStraight Shooter\u2014If you ask this friend, \"Does my butt look big in this skirt?\" they will actually answer, \"Yes. Huge.\" We all need a straight-shooter friend while going through a divorce. This friend will not only let you know when you're heading for a ride on the Crazy Train, but will slap the ticket out of your hand and drag you out of the station.\n\nIt's best not to call this friend on the days you feel super emotional. They will tell you to stop looking at your wedding photos and get out of your wedding dress stat; you are being pathetic. No matter how you act they will label it accurately, and having a trusted friend take control of the reins and steer you toward reality is priceless during this time in your life.\n\nListener Friend\u2014We all have that one friend that is a super-duper-good listener. You know the one. You can rant for hours on the phone about how crappy your soon-to-be ex is for not noticing your new highlights because he's just jealous you're actually taking care of yourself now, or something deeper, like you're seriously considering running away and never ever coming back, and they don't hang up. They will listen to everything your little mouth can spew out, help sort it out until it makes sense, and then recite a motivational quote.\n\nThey won't tell you what you need to do next, and, more importantly, they won't tell you how you should feel. Because they know it's not your story that matters, they are listening to you (as in deep down, past all this shrieking and admitting and sobbing, to the real you), and that's what matters. This friend is invaluable.\n\nIn the Weeds Friend\u2014This is the friend that will help you bury the body. Just kidding! Well, they will at least help you bury the voodoo doll they helped you hand stitch and then torture with pins. This friend wants to help you move forward, and they will jump in and stay at your house for a couple of days to make sure you do so. They are not afraid of your day-to-day problems; their goal is to help you clear back the weeds so you can marvel again at the big picture.\n\nThey understand that to get from A to Z you have to go through all the other letters of the alphabet first. Need to go to your counseling appointment but not sure who's going to watch the kids that night? No problem, this friend makes it all happen. They hold your hand throughout the entire process, whether it's clenching or swinging, because they know they can help you the most by doing some of the heavy lifting.\n\nIn my opinion, family sees you for who you used to be and who you are today. Friends tend to see you for who you should or will be. It's as if they have had a secret viewing into the depths of your soul and the universe has sent them the key to help you unlock that authentic girl out from where she's hiding.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nWe know that there are many types of friends out there, and any friend that adds value at this point in your life should be considered a blessing. No matter what type of friends or family you choose to have by your side, you should also follow these suggested guidelines.\n\nBe Selective\n\nFriends, family, and random acquaintances will come crawling out of the woodwork when they find out you're getting divorced. Beware, girlfriend. This is not the time to spill the beans to people you don't trust. Remember, whatever you say or do can and will possibly be held against you.\n\nThat \"Debbie Downer\" friend you've known for more than twenty years and stay friends with for longevity's sake? Avoid her. The aunt that keeps calling you because she was divorced thirty years ago and still talks nonstop about how her ex ruined her life and caused her to gain 100 pounds? Email her that you're just not up to talking on the phone these days or checking email, thank her for her sweet thoughts, and tell her you will be out of contact for a while. The friend you and your soon-to-be ex both know at the club who is more of a frenemy than a friend? Every time she approaches you pretend you're having a coughing fit and run to the ladies' lounge.\n\nYou're trying to keep your lifeboat afloat. Anyone who normally pokes holes, even when you're not depending on an oversized rubber tube to get you to safety while sharks are lurking below, is o-u-t, out! If they can't understand that this is time you need for yourself, then they're probably not people you need in your new life.\n\nExpect to lose friends during this process. The \"family friends\" you used to vacation with will feel the ripple effect of your divorce. Don't be surprised or hurt if they go MIA. The feelings of loss are real during divorce. Along with the end of your marriage will come the end of some friendships. It's sad, but true. The best advice we can give you is to keep the people you trust the most close to you.\n\nBoundaries\n\nThe ability to set (and enforce) boundaries will make or break you. This is serious stuff. Not to be taken lightly, this word packs a mean punch.\n\nBoundaries are the rules and guidelines you establish for yourself\u2014a general outline of the behavior you will, and will not, accept. This also includes your response to any behavior that may violate your limits.\n\nBoundaries need to be established in all aspects of your life, especially when it comes to the people you surround yourself with. When it comes to choosing your crew, the boundaries you set are vital to your survival. It's amazing how family, friends, and even random acquaintances suddenly have advice and will try to influence someone (you!) going through divorce.\n\nKeep in mind that sometimes the people who love you the most are the ones you need to distance yourself from.\n\nIf a family member or friend is closely involved in your situation, it will be hard for them to maintain rational thinking, especially when they see you upset. Continue to focus on surrounding yourself with people who lift you up. Your lifeboat is on rocky water, and you need a stable crew.\n\nTeamwork Makes the Dream Work\n\nFamily and friends you trust will emotionally help you during this time, but you also need a team of professionals. Your needs may be different depending on your personal circumstances, but at the very least we recommend having the following professionals on your divorce \"team\":\n\n\u2022 Family law attorney (nonnegotiable!)\n\n\u2022 Divorce financial planner\n\n\u2022 Counselor or therapist\n\nDivorce Attorney (The Captain)\n\nAn experienced divorce attorney can make or break your divorce process. This is the most important member of your team. We have written an entire chapter on how to choose an attorney, but, ultimately, you should hire a qualified divorce lawyer with extensive experience in cases like yours (for example, custody, high net worth, etc.).\n\nDivorce Financial Planner (It's all about the \"Benjamins\")\n\nUnfortunately, what you've heard is probably true. Far too many women end up broker than broke after their divorce. More often than not, the woman is the one who gets the short end of the stick when it comes to the money, the new debt, the lifestyle, you name it. Lucky for you, we've already made some really stupid mistakes, and we've written this book to make sure you don't do the same thing. You're welcome.\n\nA divorce financial planner is a professional trained in the details and legalities of divorce. This is their specialty. Already have a family financial planner? Tread carefully. If your financial planner worked for you during your marriage, he\/she may or may not be as loyal or as focused on you and your best interests at this time. It's best to find a third party, one who has not had prior interactions with your soon-to-be ex.\n\nWe can't emphasize this enough: do not hire a regular financial planner, fancy accountant, or CPA right now. You need someone who specializes in divorce. They will know the common pitfalls, recommend structuring of debts, assets, and settlement payout options, such as a QDRO (qualified domestic relations order) or sliding scale alimony, to name a few. Think of them as the soldier on the battlefield who knows there will be bloodshed and loss, but has an aerial view of the past, present, and future, and is going to chart the best possible map of how you can get to your future with the minimum amount of casualties.\n\nIt's their job to make sure you're financially prepared now, as well as in the future. Divorce financial planners work closely with your attorney, analyzing the short- and long-term financials of your settlement, as well as varying tax obligations, etc. They will work to protect your assets and provide financial planning strategies for your life post-divorce.\n\nIf you and your soon-to-be ex don't have that many assets or savings to protect, a good neutral friend who is financially savvy is a viable alternative. They should create spreadsheets that figure premarital, marital, and post-marital financial obligations, debts, and assets. Then they can paint the picture of where you and your soon-to-be ex need to be headed, and how best to get there. Be advised, they most likely won't know specific divorce implications, but they can at least break down the figures on spreadsheets and forecast expenses and financial needs. You can then work with your attorney more effectively to create a settlement that won't leave you financially ruined.\n\nCounselor\/Therapist (But... I'm not the crazy one!)\n\nDoes the word \"counseling\" give you the heebie-jeebies? Yeah, us too, until we tried it.\n\nI always had a negative connotation with \"counseling\" as a kid and young adult. It wasn't until I had my first baby when I realized, \"Hmm, my friends don't really want to hear this crap, and if I told my parents what I really wanted to say they'd probably send a police officer to come and look for me.\"\n\nI finally broke down to my neighbor one day (bless her heart). She stuck her counselor's business card in my mailbox the next day. The rest is history. I've always told my counselor she would be the one person I'd bring with me to a deserted island (other than my children, well, at least one of them, just kidding... kinda). My girlfriend (said neighbor) and I still joke about how we would love to invite her for a sleepover and just pick her brain all night, then we could analyze our dreams in the morning over coffee and pancakes. Ah, I digress.\n\nIn all seriousness, my counselor has been a source of guidance for me several times in my life, not just divorce. In fact, I had been seeing her long before divorce was on the horizon. Now, that doesn't mean she was completely shocked when I busted through her door on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, announcing, \"It's over!\" Shock was hardly her response. In fact, it appeared to be more like a sign of relief\u2014remember, this poor woman had listened to me for several years.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nAfter my second divorce I knew I needed to talk to someone professional about why I was going to be officially divorced twice and was just shy of thirty. There seemed to be a common denominator there, and it seemed to be me. After working with Helen, it was as if someone finally turned on the \"Oh, that makes sense now\" switch. Sure we talked about what happened in my past (let's save those daddy issues for another book), and what happened with both the failed marriages I left (hello, needing to be wanted), but we also talked about what I could do to try and make better decisions.\n\nJust having someone I could let it all spill out to once a week, who wouldn't judge me, for those two years, was priceless. Even when I ran back to her comfy, now reupholstered chair five years later because I was facing my third divorce, she helped guide me through understanding a time in my life I didn't think I'd ever fully wrap my head around.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nA counselor or therapist will be your source of safety. You are safe to share your authentic feelings, fears, sadness, emotional challenges, just about anything and everything that's on your mind. A professional counselor will help you navigate these experiences and provide you with coping mechanisms and strategies.\n\nWhen choosing a counselor or therapist, the most important thing is for you to feel comfortable. Counseling is typically a very intimate experience. If you don't feel comfortable with the other person, you're wasting your time.\n\nIt's like going on a really, really bad date, and at the end you get stuck with the bill. Now what fun is that?\n\nMake sure your counselor or therapist is someone you feel you can trust and not hide anything from. If you don't share the full story, again you're wasting your time, and chances are you're not fooling them anyway. You need someone who will not only listen to you, but who will also speak to you in a manner that will motivate you personally to move toward a better life.\n\nThe first counselor I met with seemed to be soft-spoken and gentle. After two sessions it was clear that all he was doing was making me want to cry and eat Chick-fil-A as soon as I left his office. Although he was qualified and kind, it just wasn't my style. I then reached out to my insurance and they recommended a couple of counselors that were close by. I called all three and within fifteen minutes one had called me back to discuss what I was looking for. Within two minutes I knew she spoke the language I needed to hear\u2014the language that would help get me through my divorce. If I wasn't going to settle for a husband that was a bad fit, why would I settle for a counselor that wasn't a good fit?\n\n\u2014Joy\n\nWhen it comes to mental health, there are a variety of professional options to choose from. We will translate for you.\n\n\u2022 Psychiatrist: A medical doctor specializing in preventing, diagnosing, and treating mental illness. Licensed to write prescriptions. Monitors the effects of mental illness on the physical conditions of the patient (blood pressure, etc.). May refer patient to counseling for therapy in addition to medication.\n\n\u2022 Psychologist: Has a doctoral degree in psychology (the study of the mind and behaviors), however, is not a medical doctor. Qualified to perform counseling, psychotherapy, psychological testing, and provide treatment for mental disorders. Unable to write prescriptions (in most states). Will most likely provide psychotherapy for patient and collaborate with psychiatrist for medical treatment.\n\n\u2022 Licensed Mental Health Counselor: A mental health professional with a master's degree in psychology, counseling, or related field, licensed by the state. Qualified to evaluate and treat mental problems via counseling or psychotherapy.\n\n\u2022 Clinical Social Worker: A professional with a master's degree in social work, as well as training on diagnosing and evaluating mental illness. Can provide psychotherapy as well as case management for patients. May also serve as an advocate for patients and their families.\n\n*Original source: www.webmd.com\n\nDon't let these titles scare you. There are several different avenues in the mental health field, so choosing the professional that will best serve your personal needs is important. Talk to your physician about your circumstances and ask for referrals. If you have health insurance, contact your provider and ask about mental health coverage.\n\nA friend suggested I call my insurance provider to see if meeting with a therapist was included in my health plan. I had no idea that was part of my coverage. Bonus: not only was it covered, but I was quickly approved for unlimited sessions that calendar year and only a small co-pay. Who knew? Either I was really messed up, or I just had really great insurance. Either way, win-win!\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nAs a part of your divorce team, your counselor will help you manage this crazy emotional tidal wave otherwise known as divorce. Don't underestimate the power of a positive mental state of mind. You're going to need some serious emotional support, even if you think you've got it all together right now. Since a counselor or therapist offers an outside view, they're better able to provide you with unbiased opinions and perspectives. If you have children, we will go into more detail on counseling for kids in Chapter 8, \"Kids' Club.\"\n\nOnce you have a list of referrals, visit a few offices and choose the person you feel most comfortable with. Give it a chance. You've got nothing to lose and everything to gain.\n\nDivorce isn't easy, but having a solid divorce team helps make things manageable. Hire the best professionals you can afford to protect you and fight for you. It will be money extremely well spent.\nOh Captain, My Captain\n\n{hiring an attorney}\n\nCowritten by \"Captain\" Carol S. Baskin, Esq.\n\n\"The jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.\"\n\n\u2014Robert Frost\n\nNavigating a divorce without an attorney is like setting sail on a sinking ship; it's not a good plan. Girlfriend, you absolutely need to have an attorney, especially if you have children and\/or assets to protect.\n\nNot only do we share an ex-husband, but we also shared a divorce attorney. It seemed only fitting to weigh in with our expert counsel for advice on hiring an attorney and what to expect from a legal perspective during the divorce process. Carol was our \"Captain\" because she made sure the ship never sank. She still does. We trust her\u2014you should, too!\n\nTop Three Reasons You Need an Attorney:\n\nFrom the captain herself, Carol Baskin, Esq.\n\n1. When going through a divorce you will be dealing with a lot of emotions that will color your perspective and may lead you to make some bad decisions. An attorney is there to represent your interests and to help you through the emotional land mines. We are here to help you understand the logic in your choices and to guide you down the correct path.\n\n2. Unless you have a law degree, you will not understand the rules of engagement. You may enter into agreements that may not be enforceable by the court, or worse yet, once agreed to can't be undone after there is a court order.\n\n3. The attorney you hire should have experience in the court system you are getting divorced in. They can advise you as to what to expect from the judge, or judges, you are assigned to. Judges are human beings with their own value systems and perspectives, which will play a large role in how they are likely to interpret and decide on a case before them. It is imperative that the facts, as well as the situation, are presented in a professional manner and in a light that the court will find both reasonable and acceptable so that you can prevail in your settlement or litigation.\n\nCaptain Carol explains, \"It is unethical and unacceptable for an attorney to represent both the husband and wife in a divorce. Get your own attorney and discuss your entire financial situation. It is common for spouses to make threats; the kind of threats your husband is probably making right now if you are in the process of a divorce. The judge is the one who will make a decision about what will happen, not your husband. All of the assets and income in the marriage must be considered. The value of a business begun and run during marriage is an asset that is divided by the court. Talk to an attorney before you jump to any conclusions about who will have to pay what.\"\n\nMistakes the Ex-Wives Have Made:\n\n\u2022 LegalZoom: Don't laugh, some people really try.\n\n\u2022 Uncontested Divorce: This is only an option if you don't have any assets or children or represent that .001 percent of humanity.\n\n\u2022 Sharing an attorney: In Fantasy Land you and your husband initially dream up this fabulous idea of marching into an attorney's office and proceeding with the divorce together to save money. It sounds like a great idea, but in the real world you need your own captain, girlfriend.\n\nThings You Should Look for When Hiring an Attorney:\n\nExperience\/Expertise: Family and Divorce Law\n\nWould you hire your hairdresser to change the oil in your car? No. Same thing goes for attorneys. Any divorce attorney you consider should have substantial experience with (or knowledge of) divorce and\/or family law. The Google search key words are \"family law attorney in [your home town, or state].\"\n\nAbility to Communicate\n\nWhat's worse than a friend who always sends your calls to voice mail? An attorney who ignores you. Trust us, you want to be sure your attorney will effectively communicate with you. It's important for them to be accessible and prompt in responding to your requests and\/or inquiries. It's important that your personalities mesh well. Keep in mind, sometimes opposites attract. For example, if you're timid and shy, you may work better with a more aggressive attorney.\n\nAssessment of Fees\n\nWhen you make your initial appointment with the divorce attorney, you should inquire about a consultation fee. Some attorneys do brief initial consultations for free; however, most experienced divorce attorneys will charge between one hundred and four hundred dollars as a consultation fee, or will charge their normal hourly rate. Find out what the attorney's hourly rate is, what the up-front retainer will be, whether any portion of the retainer is refundable if it is not used, and how often you can expect to receive invoices that detail their hourly charges and expenses. At the very least, comparison shop so you know the going rates in your area. You don't have to just take the cheapest, and paying the most does not necessarily mean you'll be getting the most, but you should spend time interviewing a variety of attorneys, and getting familiar with the costs involved. Do not be afraid to ask for payment arrangements based on your financial situation\u2014fees can be negotiable.\n\nIntuition\n\nOkay, this may sound odd, given the fact that you may now be feeling as though you didn't make the right choice in a spouse, but follow your gut. Plain and simple. If you don't get a good feeling from a particular lawyer and\/or firm, then continue your search. Just like choosing a wedding dress: you might end up with the first one you tried on, but you've got to try on several to make sure the first one was \"The One.\" You need to be 100 percent confident with your legal representation, so be sure to follow your intuition along with listening to your gut. If something doesn't seem right, then it probably isn't. And always remember, your attorney works for you, not the other way around. There are certain ethical standards to which family law practitioners must adhere. Hiring a lawyer is like being on a job interview. Don't fall prey to condescension. You have done nothing wrong, and your attorney should respect you and do their job and represent your interests to the best of their ability.\n\nWhen Is It Time to Hire an Attorney? (Hint: The time is NOW)\n\nCaptain Carol advises: \"Unfortunately, most individuals put this off too long. Frankly, the sooner you start getting some advice from an experienced attorney to set proper expectations in the event of a separation or divorce, the better you will be able to handle the situation when and if it actually occurs.\n\n\"By doing this you are not admitting defeat to the relationship. Sometimes actually speaking to a knowledgeable attorney might assist you in finding out how to preserve and save your marriage.\n\n\"As attorneys, we all should know the law, but we vary greatly in our approach and dealings with our clients. You have to determine who is your right match, and doing this before (and if) you decide to go through the process of divorce will definitely help you.\"\n\nWe say: Amen! Hallelujah! Word. Wish we had spoken to an attorney before the you-know-what had already hit and was swirling around in the fan!\n\nI Know Someone Who Knows Someone...\n\nCaptain Carol says to be mindful that:\n\n\"Your friends and family will have an ample amount of advice, but unfortunately most of it will be ineffective for a number of reasons:\n\n\u2022 They may relay horror stories that may inhibit your personal decisions.\n\n\u2022 They may lead you to have unrealistic expectations in regard to your specific situation.\n\nI'm not suggesting you underestimate the value of friends or family, just be cautious; their situations most likely vary drastically from yours. They may, however, be an excellent resource in helping you to find the right match for an attorney that fits your needs and personality.\"\n\nTake it from us, once you start the process of divorce and tell family, friends, etc., you'll quickly realize that everyone (your hairdresser, mechanic, and the person behind you in line at the grocery store) will want to contribute their two cents. Don't get caught in the middle. Find the right attorney for you and only take advice from people you would trade places with.\n\nGet the Scoop\n\nNow is the time to ask your friends or family who have experienced divorce for recommendations. Most people are quick and open to discussing their personal experiences with their previous or present attorney and the law firm they represent.\n\nHere is a list of the most important things Captain Carol believes you should find out about these referrals:\n\n\u2022 The personality of the professional counsel they are recommending\n\n\u2022 The experience level of the attorney that represented them\n\n\u2022 How comfortable they were in communicating with their attorney and the firm staff\n\nUnfortunately, we both forgot to ask several of these key questions when getting referrals. We mostly asked, \"Are they a badass, and do they take AmEx?\" Because of this, we have created a handy-dandy form (found in the back of the book and at www.exwivesguide.com) you can use so you won't forget. You'll thank us big time for this.\n\nYou've got recommendations from people you trust and you've done your homework. Check and check. Being the C.E.O. we know you are (Chief Empress Organizer), you've picked up the phone and contacted several firms. You have spoken with the staff at the firm and possibly with one of the attorneys directly. The search is almost over. Now, pick up the phone and schedule an appointment or two for consultations.\n\nNow is NOT the Time for Bargain Shopping\n\nCaptain Carol warns: \"Don't select an attorney just because he, or she, offers free consultations. They may be great and knowledgeable attorneys, or they may be just starting out in their career and need to hone their skills.\n\n\"If you and your husband have any assets to speak of, or if custody is involved, you will absolutely need an attorney who knows domestic relations law backwards and forwards. Don't sell your whole future to the lowest bidder; place it with the best bidder and fit for you.\" Just like most things in life, you get what you pay for.\n\nWhen Holiday was looking for an attorney, her mother's exact words were, \"This is NOT the time to go bargain shopping.\" She was right. This doesn't necessarily mean the most expensive attorney is the right one. (Valerie can attest to that!) However, you are setting yourself (and your children) up for the future. As in, for the rest of your lives\u2014don't F this up.\n\nHire the best attorney you can afford. Save the bargain shopping for the Bullseye's Playground at Target.\n\nBe Prepared (Yep, we're beating this like a dead horse)\n\nBefore you have your initial consultation with an attorney, Captain Carol notes that you'll most likely be asked to fill out some preliminary paperwork. Her advice: \"Do not take this assignment lightly. Work hard to be as complete as possible. You will be rewarded with the attorney being able to assess your situation much more thoroughly and give you a clearer insight as to what the future might hold for you. We do not have crystal balls; we work with information. The more we have, the better we can assess and discuss the most probable outcome for you, the client.\n\n\"You may not wish to think of your marriage as a business partnership, but in effect, it will be seen that way in the court system. If you have tax returns, checking account records, investment records, copies of debts and values for property (for real estate, investments, and personal property) at your disposal, make copies to provide to the attorney on your first visit. This is a treasure trove for us in assisting you to understand what may, or may not, happen as a result of an eventual divorce.\"\n\nRefer back to Chapter 5, \"Get Organized, Girl,\" for a complete list of all documents you will need to gather up. We've even given you organizational tips. If you followed our advice and organized all the paperwork, you can hand over the folder, binder, or \"treasure trove\" as Captain Carol calls it, to your prospective counsel. Our guess is that they will try and hire you as their client, not the other way around! We'll say it again: this will save you thousands of dollars and hundreds of headaches. Smart women save their money and energy for the things that deserve it.\n\nWhat about custody?\n\nIf you think your husband is going to fight you in the area of custody, which is normally one of the biggest concerns among parents, according to Captain Carol, you will need to convey to your prospective attorney the following important points:\n\n1. What is your typical parenting style for the child (or children) and what is your husband's parenting style?\n\n2. Does one parent currently spend a considerably larger amount of time with the child (children) than the other?\n\n3. How do you divide up the responsibilities?\n\n4. Is a child particularly bonded to one parent more than the other parent?\n\n5. Is one parent the fun parent and the other the disciplinarian?\n\n6. Do your children have any special needs and, if so, which parent spends their time addressing those needs?\n\n7. Are any of your children old enough to make a legal declaration as to which parent they wish to live with?\n\n8. Are you prepared to accept the situation if they do not wish to live with you?\n\nCaptain Carol states, \"Be sure to have these answers ready to give to the attorney at your initial consultation. They will use these as insight as to how they may help you now, as well as in the future.\"\n\nThis is where we, as ex-wives with children, need to warn you: don't be surprised if your spouse uses custody to threaten you. This is a scare tactic and it's a \"go-to\" manipulation strategy men use to flex their muscles. Remember, he's going to do anything he can to push your buttons. If you're like most mothers in this world, your children are the hottest button of all. If we had a dollar for every girlfriend who has called us in hysterics regarding her husband's custody threats we would be dirty, filthy rich. During this time of crisis, it is more important than ever to be the best parent you can be. Keep your composure and try your best to be level-headed. Leave the custody threats to your attorney\u2014yet another reason to make sure you find the right fit for you!\n\nEvery time my ex and I would fight during our separation he would threaten me that he was going to get full custody of our children. I would cry myself to sleep almost every night. As soon as I hired an attorney, I told him what was happening. He suggested I record it once, save it, and then pay no attention to it. He also said I should tell him that threat is not going to work anymore. It worked like a charm.\n\n\u2014Denise\n\nConsultation Day\n\nYou've got your ducks in a row and your files are prepared. The day of your consultation has arrived, but suddenly you have cold feet.\n\nWhy?\n\nNo one on this earth wants to believe they have made a mistake, and you are no different. You have not made a mistake. No action or choice is ever wasted\u2014it brings us closer to who we are supposed to be through life lessons. Each of us evolves in our own unique way as we age. You could no more predict how you or your spouse would evolve than you could predict the winning numbers for Wednesday's Powerball lottery. Sometimes our aging brings us closer, other times it pulls us apart as our interests and life goals change. Maturity and clarity also set in. Sadly, this sometimes only happens for one spouse and not the other. Don't blame yourself.\n\nYou made this appointment for a reason. It is one hour of your life. Now go to the appointment and find out what the professional has to say.\n\nCaptain Carol's Tip: \"Bring a notebook and pen to take notes or a recording device (with attorney's permission) during your first meeting. Be diligent about taking notes and writing down the attorney's response as you go through your list of questions.\n\n\"Speaking of questions... don't be afraid to ask! You will not be able to address how to deal with your issues properly if you do not have the requisite information. Is the professional giving you their undivided attention, or are they trying to impress you with how busy they are or how many people work for them? Be impressed with eye contact, not a two-page firm roster.\"\n\nCaptain Carol's Heartfelt Advice: \"You should be the only thing that matters to him, or her, when you are with that person. This is your time and it should be honored. If not, look elsewhere.\"\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Tip:\n\nIf you're too nervous to go by yourself, ask a friend or someone you trust to join you... especially if you're experiencing nausea and\/or diarrhea (yes, this is very normal). Two memories and notetakers are better than one. Make sure the person you bring can keep you on task and make the most of your time, especially if you have to excuse yourself to go to the restroom every ten minutes.\n\nExpect to be nervous and anxious the first time you meet with your attorney. Arrive early and settle in prior to your scheduled appointment time. Be prepared with your list of questions and the areas of concern you want to discuss. This is an excellent way to determine if they are interested in hearing what you have to say, or if the attorney is only interested in hearing their own voice and their rehearsed sound bites. Shy away from the latter!\n\nValerie recalls an initial consultation with a potential attorney: \"It seemed the counsel was mostly concerned with showing me the one-of-a-kind view from their spectacular office overlooking downtown Atlanta, rather than discussing the major issues I was having pertaining to my already-filed divorce. That should have been my red flag: racking up billable hours to pay for that beautiful view was more important to them than helping build a better view of life for me in the future.\"\n\nQuestions to ask before writing a big, fat check:\n\n1. Ask about the attorney's experience in the handling of domestic relations cases.\n\n\u2022 Is it the primary focus of the firm, or do they practice other areas of law as well?\n\n\u2022 Do they practice in the court system where your case will be filed and heard (highly recommended)?\n\n2. Who will you be working with?\n\n\u2022 Paralegals, secretaries, associate counsel, interns, etc.?\n\n\u2022 What hourly rate will you be charged for each professional? (Rates differ. The more experience and degrees, the higher the bill rate.)\n\n3. How will you communicate with the office and with the attorney?\n\n\u2022 What is the best method of communication for after office hours or on the weekend?\n\n\u2022 Will they schedule telephone appointments?\n\n\u2022 What are the charges for email communications?\n\n4. Ask important questions about your retainer.\n\n\u2022 Is your retainer refundable?\n\n\u2022 When will you be expected to replenish your retainer?\n\n5. How long is the process likely to take from the beginning to the end of the litigation?\n\n6. Will your action require expert testimony? (This may be the case in hotly contested custody actions or in actions involving complex assets and\/or closely held corporations.)\n\n\u2022 What is likely to be the cost for these experts?\n\n\u2022 How will that be funded?\n\n\u2022 Are you or your attorney responsible for hiring the professional?\n\n\u2022 What is the benefit to you as to which method is done?\n\nMoney Matters\n\nDon't be afraid to ask about fees and the general costs associated with litigation. Remember, you are the one entering into a contract with this firm. You are ultimately liable for the associated fees. Though the firm may seek fees from your spouse, nothing is guaranteed in that endeavor. Try to have a realistic understanding of those expenses prior to engaging the firm so that you will be able to make the best business decision for yourself.\n\nCaptain Carol says: \"You will be expected to pay a 'retainer' prior to the firm starting work on your behalf. This can be modest, or a very substantial sum of money based on the work the attorney and firm believe they will have to conduct on your case. Read the contract that is given to you to sign! Take it home with you to review when you are less stressed. No firm should be pressuring you to sign on the dotted line without you having a full understanding of the office procedures and practices. Do not feel compelled to make a decision that day. The simple truth is that the day you do make a decision is the right day, and not a moment before.\"\n\nCaptain Carol's Tip for avoiding an oil spill: If the retainer is a substantial sum, ask if it will be escrowed, entitling you to a refund in the event the entire sum is not used.\n\nCommunication Is Key\n\nBefore you walk out of the attorney's office, Captain Carol strongly encourages you to \"find out how accessible the attorney will be in case you need to contact them during the litigation process. Most of us now use email for almost all instantaneous communications with our clients. If we are both clear as attorney and client at what works best for both of our schedules, then we are more likely to be more efficient.\"\n\nCaptain Carol's office policy you will dig: \"Our staff designates a specific time for a client to call into the office to speak with us about their case. The benefit of this is that the file is given to us prior to the designated time, and we are able to review and check for any and all updates so we can provide you with the most up-to-date information.\"\n\nKnowing up front how Carol's office operated required me to condense my questions and really use my time with her wisely. Before reaching out (via email or phone) I made sure I knew EXACTLY what I was asking. It was intimidating at first, but over time I realized this was a helpful exercise for me because I was always prepared. This also helped to keep my bill down!\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nListen to Your Gut\n\nCaptain Carol says to answer these questions immediately following your appointment. (If you vomited or had diarrhea during your consultation, take a Pepto pronto, then answer these questions.)\n\n1. How did you feel when you left the office?\n\n2. Were you heard, or were you preached to?\n\n3. Did the attorney explain the law to you, or patronize you?\n\n4. Were you criticized for your conduct, or accepted as you are with all your flaws? (Trust us, we all have them.)\n\n5. Did you feel rushed, or were you allowed to communicate fully with the attorney?\n\n6. Did you become comfortable with the attorney you were speaking with and feel that you would be able to tell that professional everything (and she does mean everything) that may have to be revealed about your life?\n\nAgain, refer to the handy-dandy form at www.exwivesguide.com that we created for you to jot down all the stuff you may be likely to forget. We know this because we FORGOT! You will be so stressed and emotionally charged; writing it down will help lasso those runaway thoughts back into the corral forming in your head, cowgirl. Yeehaw!\n\nOne Size Does Not Fit All\n\nCaptain Carol's favorite advice to our girlfriends: \"You are unique. You are special and do not fit into a box so that an outcome can be predicted prior to a final decree. Yes, as attorneys we do look at generalities and the initial parameters of your case to determine major issues we predict to encounter on your behalf. If we skip that step, we cannot properly prepare to make the necessary decisions, which will ultimately affect your future post-divorce. Remember, knowledge and communication with 100 percent transparency is the key to the outcome you are seeking. I wish you good luck.\"\n\nDon't forget to use the Questions to Ask Your Lawyer form, which you can find in the back of the book and online at www.exwivesguide.com.\nKids' Club\n\n{how to help the kiddos}\n\nCowritten by Sheri M. Siegel, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist\n\n\"Divorce isn't such a tragedy. A tragedy's staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love.\"\n\n\u2014Jennifer Weiner\n\nWelcome to the Kids' Club. The one club you probably never wanted your child to have to join and your child never wanted to be a part of. Divorcing parents already feel guilty for just about everything; now throw in the kids and it's a downright sobfest.\n\nBut as all of us know, we must remain strong for the sake of our little or not-so-little ones. To help us with this chapter we turned to Sheri M. Siegel, PhD, a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in family counseling, for her professional advice. She has been practicing privately for more than twenty-five years in Metro Atlanta. She often testifies as an expert witness in court, so she knows her stuff, to say the least.\n\nThe Most Important Message for Kids\n\nDr. Sheri suggests you make it your mission to ensure your children know these three very important things:\n\n1. This is a life change we will work through together.\n\n2. Our love for you as parents is strong and will never change, even though the family is changing.\n\n3. Your best interest is our primary goal.\n\nBelow are Dr. Sheri's top pieces of advice. Consider this your ultra-do-and-don't list when it comes to the kids.\n\nTop advice for a mother facing divorce:\n\nDr. Sheri suggests: \"For a mother facing divorce, planning ahead is key. Get answers to as many anticipated questions as possible in place long before talking with the kids. Children remember the moment of being told\/finding out forever. That moment needs to be handled very carefully and thoughtfully.\"\n\nTop advice to a mother in the thick of it:\n\n\"To a mother in the midst of divorce, it's imperative to maintain perspective and balance. While the well-being of your children is a primary focus, you must take care of yourself also.\"\n\nWe totally get that. If the children see mommy falling apart, they will feel responsible for taking care of you. You can't take care of others until you take care of you.\n\nTop advice to a mother after the dust settles:\n\n\"Throughout the divorce process, and especially afterwards, the relationship you maintain with your ex is crucial to the well-being of your children. Do everything you can to maintain a positive working relationship with him for the sake of the kids. Treat the relationship like a business partnership, and try to disconnect from the emotions you may have towards him. Co-parenting the children is the primary business in the custodial relationship. Regardless of how he acts, remember, you can only control yourself. Your kids are paying attention to how you act, react, and handle yourself in all situations.\"\n\nTalking with Kids\n\nDr. Sheri says, \"Verbal affirmation is crucial for childhood development. They need to have confidence in what you are telling them. Here are some things your kids need to hear:\n\n\u2022 It's not your fault.\n\n\u2022 We both love you, and we always will.\n\n\u2022 We will work together to minimize the changes in your life\u2014we know you didn't ask for divorce.\n\n\u2022 There is nothing you can do to change our decision; it is a grown-up decision and not one you get a vote in. However, there will be plenty of opportunities when you can make decisions.\"\n\nTop Five Don'ts for a Parent:\n\n1. Don't hate your ex more than you love your children.\n\n2. Don't remain emotionally married after you are legally divorced.\n\n3. Don't tell your children adult details about the marital breakup, especially regarding misconduct or infidelity. Children never need to know this.\n\n4. Don't have too many life changes occur at once if at all possible (moving, changing schools, remarriages, etc.)\n\n5. Don't communicate with your ex through your children, directly or indirectly.\n\nBreaking the News\n\nIt's the moment you've been dreading since you made the final decision. That moment your kids will remember forever... the moment that will rock their world, and it will never, ever, ever be the same. That moment when once it's been said, there's no turning back.\n\nTelling your kids that you are getting divorced is one of the hardest conversations you will have in your life, if not the hardest. And it's one you shouldn't take lightly.\n\nI still remember vividly, over thirty years later, when my mother sat my brothers and I down to tell us that she and my father were getting divorced. I remember her shaking, looking frail, fighting back tears. I had never seen her that upset before. It made me want to jump out of my chair and run. When I asked her what divorce meant she started crying uncontrollably. I didn't know what divorce was at that point in my life, but I knew it couldn't be something good.\n\n\u2014Jessica\n\nDr. Sheri says, \"Being prepared is crucial to the success of this conversation. A clear and concise strategy should be in place, and it should involve your ex. In a perfect world, both parents can sit down with a plan, already have specific answers to the questions you know the kids will ask, and agree to mutually support each other.\"\n\nMeeting with a mental health professional who specializes in divorcing and divorced families is ideal to prepare for this. The purpose of pre-divorce meetings is to focus on the best interests of the children. A counselor or therapist can help both parents prepare for the conversation.\"\n\nWe both agree. We both divorced when our children were younger. Valerie's son was three, and Holiday's daughters were two and four. Just because they were younger didn't mean that we wouldn't have to have the \"Big Talk\" at some point. Thanks to the therapists we were each seeing, we were prepared to keep it together and build our children's confidence.\n\nBecause my son was only three when my ex and I divorced, it was as if he didn't know any different. There was mommy's house and daddy's condo. Mommy's car and daddy's car, and so on. One day he was telling me that daddy's condo had a balcony, and I said \"I know\u2014you can see the street!\" He replied, \"How do you know daddy's condo, Mommy?\" It was as if he had a mommy and daddy, but we were completely separate entities. Somehow I had dodged having to have the big talk.\n\nIt wasn't until he was five that he asked me what a divorce was and if I was I ever married. I explained to him what a divorce was in a definition sort of way, gave him examples of people that we knew who were divorced, and told him that I had been married to his daddy. He had the strangest look on his face, a half smirk of sorts. He then asked \"So you loved my daddy like I do?\" I replied, \"Yes, yes I did.\"\n\nThe ironic part was that his father had just sent me a really mean-spirited email earlier in the day and I wanted to wring his neck, but it was in that very moment I realized, no matter how challenging his father could be, he had given me the thing I love most in the world, my son. And luckily for me my son obviously felt nothing but that love despite our very contentious divorce. It might single-handedly be one of my proudest moments ever.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nDr. Sheri's Tips:\n\n\u2022 Strategize and plan the conversation with your ex and be prepared to have the conversation with the children together.\n\n\u2022 Sit down with all the children together and maintain a unified front. Even though your marriage is over, you will continue to be a team as co-parents.\n\n\u2022 Have predetermined and mutually agreed-upon answers to questions children are likely to ask, such as, \"Where will we live?\" and \"What about Christmas?\" Rehearse what you will say, who will be saying it, and ensure both of you are on the same page.\n\n\u2022 Keep the conversation short. The kids will be emotional and will tune out quickly.\n\nDr. Sheri's Thoughts on Family Counseling:\n\n\"In a perfect world, as the divorce process starts, the parents enter into custodial counseling electively long before a court order is issued by a judge. It's this divorce counseling that helps the parents stay focused on the children, and working together on the children's behalf instead of focusing on the emotionally heated issues that led to the divorce.\"\n\nWARNING: Do not make arrangements for child counseling without the consent of your ex.\n\n\"I can't tell you how many calls I get from moms (most well-meaning; some trying to sneak behind their ex) to set up counseling for their children,\" explains Dr. Sheri. \"Most divorce arrangements these days involve joint legal custody. Regardless of who has primary custody or final say in medical decisions, if there is joint legal custody, both parents need to sign the consent forms for the children to enter counseling. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen for the mental professional who enters into a case otherwise, unless it is court-ordered by a judge or guardian ad litem.\"\n\nShe says, \"Ideally, if children are coming to counseling, it's best for parents to alternate bringing the children so they can feel that both parents care. It also allows both parents to be involved in the counseling process.\"\n\nNote: Not all children of divorce need counseling. In general, the more unhealthily and heatedly the divorce process is being handled by the parents, the more potential damage could be caused to the children.\n\nDr. Sheri notes, \"It is usually detrimental for children to be in family counseling with both parents in the room at the same time. Usually this is quite stressful for the kids. It can be helpful for the kids to be in the counseling room with both parents in the waiting room area ONLY IF the parents are behaving and not in conflict. Otherwise, it creates a great deal of stress for the children.\"\n\nDo not quiz the children about their counseling sessions. We think this should be a given, but we know how hard it is to not fully know what our beloved children are thinking and feeling.\n\n\"It is horrible to use the kids as spies during sessions,\" states Dr. Sheri, who shares the following example: \"Recently, I was facilitating a reunification session with a daughter and father. The mother hates her ex so much that by default she is teaching her daughter to do so as well. The mother had the daughter secretly record the session so she (the mother) could challenge me regarding the process in the sessions.\"\n\nUsing your children for anything regarding your ex is off limits. Period. If you have one goal or rule for yourself as a parent, let it be this.\n\nEmotional Management\n\nStaying strong\n\nThe big question most women ask when it comes to emotional management is, \"How can I be strong for my kids when I'm falling apart inside?\" All mothers feel this at some point, if not throughout the entire divorce process.\n\n\"Get support for yourself and make sure your kids know you are getting support to reduce their worry about you,\" Dr. Sheri recommends. \"They need to see that it's okay to get help. Support can come in many forms, including but certainly not limited to family, friends, formal therapy, support groups, empowerment services (such as Visions Anew, a local organization), places of worship, self-help books, Internet\/social media support. This is a great opportunity to teach your kids about coping with adversity.\"\n\nDr. Sheri's Top Tip: It is important to not lean on your kids for adult emotional support.\n\n\"Keep boundaries clear so your kids do not feel like your therapist, parent, friend, etc. Often, sensitive kids will develop school avoidance behaviors because they feel the need to stay home to take care of the parents they are worried about,\" she notes.\n\nTake it from Dr. Sheri as well as us, you definitely don't want to head down that road.\n\nBedtime tears\n\nSo, it's the first couple weeks of daddy being gone and your kids are crying at night begging for their daddy. Awesome.\n\nWhen we asked Dr. Sheri how she recommends handling this, she offered this advice: \"It helps to have family photos, memorabilia, etc. in kids' rooms, especially pictures of the child with the parent they aren't with (pictures of the child with mom at dad's house and vice versa). It can also help to have objects that have some meaning to help the child stay connected with the parent they aren't with, such as dad's nightshirt to wear or use as a pillowcase, mom's nightgown or special piece of jewelry, etc.\"\n\nSticky questions (like, Why doesn't daddy live here anymore?)\n\n\"It is very helpful for the kids to hear from the noncustodial parent frequently (ideally, daily), and in many different forms, including calls, texts, Skype, Facetime, letters, etc.\n\n\"It can also be helpful to have books for kids on divorce to help normalize the process, books that focus on the kids having two homes now. 'Mom's house and dad's house'\u2014start this type of language early on to prevent the feeling that kids are living with one parent and visiting the other.\n\n\"Overall, parents need to normalize the process from the onset and set the goal of helping the kids to adjust to the situation as it is. Kids do not need to feel they have the power to shorten their time with one parent by trying to be with the other. The parents ideally need to work together to help the kids adjust instead of trying to change the schedule.\n\n\"Refer to having planned, prepared answers to these types of questions so the answer can be reported and repeated in a nonemotional fashion.\"\n\n\"Dad has a different home now, but it is also your home, because you now have two homes.\"\n\nAge makes a difference\n\nThe ages of the kids, their developmental stage, and gender may all have an impact. Dr. Sheri says it's important to \"stay in tune with your child and where your child stands in their current stage of development. For example, a pre-puberty boy may need more time with his dad. This is normal and nothing against mom.\"\n\nWe know how important this was to us. With our children being so young we were worried about scarring them forever, especially during the formative years. Thanks to advice from the counselors we were working with, we read books that focused on children that were age appropriate with our situations, as well as prepared ourselves for regressions and outbursts from toddlers, which we happily report were minimal.\n\nBoth my boys handled our divorce differently. My ten-year-old wouldn't stop asking when was it a dad weekend. It's all he talked about, which at the time was really hard for me personally. My twelve-year-old acted like my protector and wanted to be by my side at all times to be the problem solver. I had to constantly keep my finger on how their very individual personalities, as well as different ages, played out to help me understand why they were reacting the way they were.\n\n\u2014Jenny\n\nChanges in Behavior\n\nWarning signs from Dr. Sheri (a.k.a. the flashing neon signs you shouldn't avoid).\n\nTop five most common changes in behavior:\n\n1. Anxiety and\/or separation anxiety\n\n2. Defiance and\/or opposition\n\n3. Depression\n\n4. Isolation\n\n5. Self-destructive behaviors, such as drugs, drinking, cutting class, and promiscuity\n\nDr. Sheri notes, \"There are so many red flags to look for, and ways kids can exhibit maladjustment behaviorally and emotionally. Stay tuned in to your kids and look for changes or reports of changes (like from teachers). As a general rule, look for changes from the norm with kids and\/or exaggerations of their typical behaviors and emotions.\n\n\"Keep an open door for conversations and make sure your kids have key people well positioned in their lives to lean on if they are not going to talk with you directly. That includes teachers, clergy, parents of friends, coaches, etc.,\" she suggests. \"The saying 'It takes a village to raise a child' is true, especially during a divorce.\"\n\nSibling Love\n\nChildren react differently to divorce. Don't be surprised if siblings are affected differently, as was seen in Jenny's case above.\n\n\"Just as each child is different, each of your children will act differently toward the divorce,\" Dr. Sheri explains. \"Some inherently are more resilient than others. Some will adapt better. Some will lean on each other for support. Some will only lean on others outside the family. It shouldn't be a surprise when siblings don't react the same way.\"\n\nShe adds, \"Note: in the cases I have seen where siblings get split up, this is usually quite detrimental. Siblings for the most part need to go back and forth between parents as a sibling unit.\"\n\nThings to Document as a Parent\n\nAlthough you will be taking copious notes at every turn in your divorce, you will want to keep this level of vigilance away from kids, according to Dr. Sheri.\n\n\"Try to not assume that your ex will be a poor parent, abusive parent, or neglectful parent, even if he was a crazy husband,\" suggests Dr. Sheri.\n\n\"As far as actual documentation and level of detail to keep, consult with your legal representative; just keep the note-taking far away from kids' eyes and certainly don't have it be their responsibility to report on the other parent.\"\n\nOne thing to remember is any and all notes should be largely taken to help determine what is best for the child, not for yourself. Anything you document should help the counsel, courts, and therapists get a fair and accurate picture of something that could be detrimental to your child. Detrimental is your child stating dad left them alone all day to go out to the bars. Your child stating dad was on his phone for a while Saturday morning is not.\n\nCustody\/Visitation: (Ideal way to determine)\n\nDr. Sheri says an ideal way to determine custody and visitation would be for the husband and wife to have discussions first. \"This is helpful in the presence of an experienced mental health professional to help the divorcing couple stay focused on what will work for the kids,\" she notes.\n\nWe know the ideal way is not always the realistic way. In fact, after listening to all the women we spoke to and interviewed while writing this book, we think it's safe to say about half worked solely with their attorneys and counsel on determining custody and visitation plans. The women with the most success were the most realistic and did what was best for the children based on schooling, activities, and special needs. The women with the least success, and most frustration, were the ones who weren't okay with the fact that change was going to happen. Not just for their kids, but for themselves.\n\nAs we have said all along, change is inevitable. So be the bright, shining example we know you are for your kiddos, and continue to put their true needs ahead of yours.\n\nWe'll dive into more detail on this in the next chapter, so take Dr. Sheri's advice and try to work this out with your soon-to-be ex, ideally at the onset of your divorce, using professional counselors to help you.\n\nOptimal Way to Explain\n\nDr. Sheri suggests, \"Once decisions are made that impact the kids, discussions with the kids can now take place.\"\n\nMake sure to include important details such as:\n\n1. When the separation will happen\n\n2. Who will live where, and when\n\n3. Housing changes that will be made\n\n4. Schooling changes that will be made\n\n5. Other large changes that impact your child's day-to-day schedule\n\n\"I will emphasize again, you need to continue to tell the kids that they will now have two equivalent homes,\" Dr. Sheri says. \"If this was set at the onset, it will help your discussions go more smoothly as time goes on.\"\n\nCo-Parenting and Visitation\n\nDr. Sheri wisely explains that communication is the key to successful co-parenting. In this day and age, this doesn't have to mean the divorced couple needs to talk directly to each other. There are many apps and shared electronic calendars (such as Cozi and iCal) where scheduling can be shared and posted.\n\nGauge the developmental level of the kids to assess their level of understanding to help them adjust to the new schedule. Older kids can participate in shared electronic calendars, whereas younger children will need you both to guide their scheduled time.\n\nKeep in mind that the kids need to continually get the message that they have two active, loving, parents. There is no primary or secondary parent. All you can do is set the expectations; you cannot control how the other parent acts and if they are going to follow the rules\/guidelines. However, you can control how you act.\n\nValerie's ex wasn't quite getting the picture two years into being divorced that every time he \"passed\" on visitation with their son, it was affecting their child (not just her). Because he preferred to communicate via email and text, it was suggested she start color-coding a calendar with the dates and times when each parent had visitation. She decided to upload it to Dropbox, since her ex was down with technology, and seeing the facts would be the easiest way to share. Within a week of doing this, it became blaringly clear their 70\/30 visitation schedule was actually more like an 85\/15 schedule. He didn't miss a single scheduled date for a couple months after she started that system, and is now more mindful about making changes.\n\nHoliday is a self-confessed bright color addict. So she naturally mapped out the month and color-coded about everything on a calendar she and her ex emailed to each other monthly regarding visitation schedules. Anytime a change was discussed, it was added to the calendar. He was happy to have her manage the calendar, and she was happy to use her favorite color: bright pink.\n\nTransition Day\n\nTips for smooth transitions\n\nYour first transition day will possibly be one of the hardest days during your entire divorce. You'll be on edge, and so will your ex as well as the children. Do your best to stay cool, calm, and collected. Put forth the brave face for the kids that this \"new normal\" is going to be okay. And if you're anything like us, save the breaking down for after the car pulls out of the driveway. Better yet, save it until it's out of the driveway and down the street, a good mile or two.\n\nOnce you have the first transition down, they will get easier for you, and hopefully for the children as well.\n\nDr. Sheri's best advice on transitions:\n\n1. Give kids the space and time they need to adjust to the transition.\n\n2. Assist the kids in acknowledging celebrations and holidays for the other parent.\n\nShe explains, \"Help to make sure they get birthday presents, holiday presents, etc., for the other parent, so they are not left empty-handed or on their own. This is a little gesture that goes a long way. It is a terrible feeling for a kid to know it is dad's birthday, for example, but they are unable to get a present for dad.\"\n\nDr. Sheri adds, \"I had a recent case where the dad and his new wife were having a baby. The ex-wife went out and got a present for the new baby. She brought both the son, as well as the present, to the hospital so that he could meet the new sibling. She even let him hold the new baby. Now that is extremely positive co-parenting. It took a lot of planning, discussion, and putting emotions aside to pull that off to make a smooth transition into being a brother for her son.\"\n\nWhat NOT to do on transition day:\n\n1. Don't quiz the kids about their time with the other parent or the other parent's life.\n\n2. Don't assume that your ex is mistreating the kids.\n\n\"Do not accuse your ex of mistreatment just to get back at him,\" Dr. Sheri warns. \"This will ultimately backfire and really upset your kids. Most importantly, it may turn them against you, as they will lose both confidence and trust in you.\"\n\nThis may be hard to do when your ex is more than two hours late and you have missed the hair appointment it took you over a month to get. Swallow the urge (later you can swallow the wine or whatever makes the bitter pill go down faster) to make defaming comments about their father, no matter how upset you are. You will only be hurting yourself in the long run.\n\nIn general, Dr. Sheri recommends that you \"try your best to remain hyper-focused on what is best for the kids. Keep the balance on transition days so that your love for the kids is always higher and more of a priority than your hatred\/resentment\/anger for your ex. Do this regardless of why the marriage is breaking up or has broken up. Your kids did not ask for this, and they need to know it is okay to love both of their parents, as well as spend time with both of their parents.\"\n\n\"Continue to reassure the kids verbally and by example that you and your ex are going to work together on their behalf. Behave accordingly, regardless of what your ex does and how he acts.\"\n\nEstablish a Meeting Place\n\nHandoffs are difficult for all parties involved, period. The one thing you can and should do is always establish a meeting place that will help avoid any confrontations during transitions.\n\nIf you know your children will cling to you like a kitten being declawed if you are anywhere near them during transitions, then pick somewhere like day care, or school, or a family member's house, where you won't need to be present. If your kids aren't clingy, but need the comfort of home for transitioning, then by all means plan to pick up and drop off at the house.\n\nWe both know from experience, establishing the regular meeting place for transition that best fits the needs of the children, right from the beginning, is one of the key elements to helping you both co-parent. This sets the tone for all future pickups and drop-offs.\n\nIf you agree to meet your ex halfway the first month, they will most likely expect you to keep doing this. If you allow your ex to constantly change times and places, he will most likely keep doing it. Your first few months of separation are just like your first few months of marriage: you are setting the tone for what to expect.\n\nBe careful as to what you compromise on during transitions. Not only will this throw you off, but more importantly, it will throw your children off as well.\n\nPacking for Transition Day\n\nDo as much as you can to help the children gather their belongings before moving to and from the other parent's house. Again, they did not choose divorce, and packing (and ultimately remembering) all of their \"things\" is a chore no child should solely be responsible for.\n\nThis is especially true for younger children. If they forget their favorite stuffed animal, it may literally make them feel as if their world is upside down. Try to be sympathetic as well as realistic about how hard it is for your children to make actual transitions. A simple verbal (or written!) checklist may save tears as well as one of you the inevitable trip to pick up or deliver the aforementioned stuffed animal to your little one.\n\nMy eldest daughter had a complete breakdown once at age four, realizing she had left her favorite doll at daddy's house. As I listened to my daughter cry, I suddenly felt overwhelmed with guilt. This was not her fault. The fact that her daddy and I didn't live together was not her fault, yet she was paying the price right in that very moment. I called him and within thirty minutes she had her doll. Obviously, this may not always be possible, but as a parent I made the decision early on I would do anything I could to make sure the kids didn't suffer because of a choice I made.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nBe forewarned, children may become resentful and angry, especially preteens and adolescents, when burdened with packing their things.\n\nIf they forget items they need for school, try to be understanding and lenient. Yes, your child should take some responsibility for ensuring they have everything they need for school no matter which home they are at. However, sometimes a book, or project, or report gets left at the other parent's house due to late nights or the sheer volume of course work your child is responsible for. Remember the big picture is helping them succeed, especially when it comes to school.\n\nMy ex forgot to repack my daughter's ballet shoes after picking her up at lessons almost every week. The first week, I lectured him when we didn't realize it until right before her second class. The second week it happened again, and this time I lectured her for not noticing until right before class again. I was not prepared for how upset this would make her (or me). The third week, I was already prepared with an extra set of ballet shoes ready to go. I accepted that this was just going to be one of the pitfalls of traveling back and forth between two homes, and I wasn't going to let frustrations from the situation get the best of me or her.\n\n\u2014Mary\n\nWhat to Do When the Child Refuses to Go or Acts Out\n\nTransitions become dreaded when a child refuses to go with the ex. Equally as hard is when you get the heartbreaking call from your child (or ex) for an early pickup or drop-off due to a meltdown. The selfish half of you is glad they want to be with you; however, the rational and good parent in you knows this is far from flattering and will only lead to more problems down the road if you don't set the example now.\n\nDr. Sheri says, \"It is best to establish from the beginning that you and their father worked hard to create the schedule. Although you hear and understand your child is upset, and can acknowledge it, you both have confidence that with time and effort they will adjust. Do not allow the child to feel he\/she has the power to change\/manipulate the visits.\n\n\"If there is going to be trouble with being with the other parent, ideally the parents need to talk about this and come up with a plan of action to help the kids be more comfortable. Often this can include \"transition objects\" that the child needs to feel the presence of the other parent during the period of absence. Examples are pictures, clothing to wear, jewelry, a stuffed animal, and so on.\"\n\nWe know this may be hard to avoid or deal with if you and your ex are not on the best of terms. Asking your ex to show a picture of you or carry a stuffed animal everywhere they go if your child is prone to getting upset might go over like a box of rocks to the head. Gently, and in a non-lecturing kind of way, remind him it's is in the child's best interest to remain a united front as their parents, whether you are living together or not. Even if your ex doesn't want to do anything to help you in any way, they will normally certainly want to help their child.\n\nKids and Their \"Stuff\"\n\nWarning: this will be an ongoing issue until your baby birdies have left the nest.\n\nThere are many things you can do to help manage\/exchange your children's belongings. Consider this list the top advice we received from every divorced mother we interviewed, as well as ourselves. It will save you from many a headache and your child from many a meltdown.\n\n\u2022 Have a complete set of personal hygiene items at each home\u2014do not pack their toothbrush every time they visit daddy. You're just setting yourself up for failure if absolutely everything has to come back and forth.\n\n\u2022 Allow children to bring their favorite toys\/playthings with them between homes (within reason). Tossing a few stuffed animals in their bag should be permitted, but the Barbie Dream House needs to stay put.\n\n\u2022 Both parents should have complete wardrobes for the children. They should never feel like they are living out of a suitcase or don't fully reside at one of the homes. A proper closet\/dresser, etc. should be established for each child in their bedroom at each home. Complete wardrobes include shoes, uniforms, and inexpensive sports gear.\n\n\u2022 Have two of their absolute favorite things. If they just can't live without Freddy the Bear, then have his identical twin, Teddy the Bear, at the other house. If their sparkly red shoes are in high rotation, have the same pair at both houses.\n\nRemember when you cried for hours on end when you were a child and left your sticker book at your best friend's house? The stuff your children love is no different. You were panicked that you might never get it back, as well as sad you didn't have something you truly loved and cared for in your hands. Bring back that feeling you had as a child and channel it when you have to drive thirty minutes each way to retrieve their One Direction covered notebook with all their drawings in it, because they will \"just die\" if they can't have it to doodle in today.\n\nConsistent Routine\n\nChildren thrive with a routine. This is not a secret. Chances are you probably thrive from routines yourself! The one thing we do know about routines is that they must be consistent and predictable in order for children to feel comfortable.\n\nTo help you set and follow a routine, we suggest the following:\n\n\u2022 Minimize changes in schedules, routines, and transitions.\n\n\u2022 If you have to travel for your job, make sure your child stays with the other parent or same caregiver each time you are gone.\n\n\u2022 Find a routine that works for you; every family is different.\n\nDr. Sheri notes, \"Kids will eventually adjust to their new reality, whatever that reality is. If your ex does in fact have to cancel or skip their planned visitation, do not overly nag the other parent. Do not put down that parent in front of the kids.\n\n\"Do reassure the kids that it is okay to talk with you about their feelings, but be careful to not impose your feelings into the situation. Air those out with your own adult support system so your negative feelings (which you are allowed to have) do not become your children's burden.\n\n\"Do stay consistent yourself; no matter what your ex chooses to do. Your kids will see this and it will help them feel secure with you.\"\n\nMy ex pretty much let our son set his own bedtime, despite his age, and despite me telling him our son was always a total mess the day after drop off. It wasn't until formal schooling that the teachers also started noticing a big difference on certain days (days after our son spent the night with him!). Thank goodness it was finally someone besides me telling my ex how important it was he ensured that our son stick to a set schedule.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nSchooling\/Education\n\nSchooling and education are probably one of the main focuses for not only you and your ex, but also your children. It is their every day, and the vast majority of their life. With that being said, we know how important it is to maintain normalcy in your child's school life during a divorce.\n\n\"It is okay to let the school counselor and teachers know that the kids are going through life transitions,\" says Dr. Sheri. \"Ask them to alert you if there are any changes and\/or concerns academically, behaviorally, and socially.\n\n\"Most teachers these days communicate with parents via email; make sure all parenting figures are on the teachers' email distribution list. It is a burden to teachers to have to spend extra time to respond to parents about school assignments and activities because divorced parents won't talk with each other. Like with the kids, it is not the teachers' fault or responsibility because the students' parents are no longer together.\n\n\"As a general rule of thumb, it is ideal for the parents to be co-parenting well with respect to the kids' schooling. It should be a goal that the teacher is unaware of it as an issue and has no extra work or concerns about the student as a result.\n\n\"Many schools have counseling groups available for students who are going through divorce in their families. These groups could be helpful for kids but are not needed for all; it really depends on how the kids are adjusting and how the parents are behaving.\n\n\"Ideally, both parents should participate in kids' school (and extracurricular) activities.\n\nThis means, for example:\n\n\u2022 Having the teacher email you both (as described above)\n\n\u2022 Going to student-teacher conferences together\n\n\u2022 Alternate going on field trips\n\n\u2022 Both parents attending special performances, presentations, awards, etc.\n\n\"Try your best to leave negative emotions aside and be there to support and celebrate your kids,\" Dr. Sheri advises. \"It is helpful, if at all possible, to sit close enough to your ex during these special moments for your children's benefit. This is so your kids can see you in one eyeshot instead of having to scan the room in two different places to find their parents. I cannot emphasize enough how much anxiety it creates in kids when they know their parents' negative emotions for each other are spilling out into their school environment.\"\n\nAdolescents and Teenagers (A whole different ball game)\n\nAdolescence is typically a time when you're racking your brain on how to best deal with teenagers and their raging hormones, need to be independent, and sassy attitudes. Add a divorce to the equation and undoubtedly one of you will end up wanting to pull your hair out\u2014or paint it blue.\n\nDr. Sheri's best advice if you're dealing with teenagers is to keep marital and divorce business personal and private. \"Do not lean on your teen as a friend or confidante. That is inappropriate, too much pressure, and sets up an imbalance that often backfires where the teen eventually resents you,\" she explains.\n\nIn addition, she says, \"Do not talk with your teens about laws. Never offer them the knowledge that when they get to a certain age, they can choose who they want to be with.\"\n\nAt the age of twelve, my eldest son told me his dad had informed him that as soon as he was fourteen he could choose to go live with him. I told him his dad was mistaken. One minute later my son came towards me, laptop open, with his googled results showing, trying to prove me wrong. I couldn't believe that my ex would ever threaten disrupting a living situation that was working and was best for our son. I still don't believe that he was the one that told him. I shut my son's computer screen, walked away from my son without saying a word, and slowly walked into my bedroom where I shut the door and sat on my bed in shock for a good hour or so. I think it was in that very moment I realized I no longer had my little boy, I had a full-blown teenager on my hands.\n\n\u2014Shelly\n\n\"Along the same lines, do not bring your kids to your lawyer's office and make them feel pressured to sign a letter of election.\" Dr. Sheri warns. \"Remember, you have told your kids they should love you both and not have to choose loyalties.\"\n\nShe adds, \"Be especially aware of if\/when the teen is trying to manipulate you or play one parent against the other. Teens are infamous for this, and parents need to work particularly hard as co-parents during this time and phase of life.\"\n\nDating and Introducing Children\n\nThis is probably the second hottest topic when it comes to kids and divorce. You will most likely find yourself swimming in the dating pool sometime during and\/or after your divorce. With so many different pressures on you, as both a single woman as well as a newly single mother, it's only natural to be overwhelmed by the many suggestions out there on how to handle dating with children.\n\nWhich guideposts do you follow?\n\nLet us rephrase that. Which guideposts do you follow so you can successfully play the role of both caring girlfriend and stellar mother?\n\nTo help cut down on the confusion, Dr. Sheri has developed a list:\n\nThe General Rules of Thumb for Dating and Introducing Your New Partner to the Children:\n\n\u2022 No introductions of another partner for a minimum of a year after the finalization of the divorce; this is easier said than done.\n\n\u2022 Only introduce another partner IF the relationship seems like it will be serious and potentially long term.\n\n\u2022 Do not force the relationship on the kids. It needs to grow over time.\n\n\u2022 Balance time with the kids, so it doesn't appear to the kids that the new relationship is more important than they are.\n\n\u2022 Reassure the kids that a potential future partner does not mean that you're replacing their father in any way.\n\nFollow these suggestions from Dr. Sheri and you won't be regretting a relationship that doesn't work out. We suggest showing your kids with your actions and attention that no matter what the future brings with your partner, they are and always will be the most important thing to you.\n\nFighting with Your Ex\n\nAs we and Dr. Sheri have said more than a few times, your child did not choose for his parents to get divorced. Regardless of the circumstances, children should never have to witness their parents' disagreements, especially when the argument is related to the child\u2014ever.\n\nA fight with your ex over money, schedules, visitations, etc., is inevitable. Doing it in front of your kids is not.\n\nDr. Sheri states, \"Your child should never feel caught in the middle between mom and dad.\" We couldn't agree more. Bottom line: don't do it. Not to them, not to your ex, not even to yourself.\n\nEven when your ex is teeing you up, and hoping you take the swing while the kids are within eyeshot and\/or earshot, take the pass. Once they are safely away from you feel free to lose your s#%@\u2014big time. (Remember that voodoo doll we spoke about in earlier chapters?) Just don't ever take the bait or be the one holding the fishing pole when it comes to fighting in front of the kids.\n\nYou're not only setting an example of how adults should behave and cooperate, you're also showing your children how you expect them to handle themselves now and in the future.\n\nEvery time I had to see my ex he would take a jab at me. The kind of jab the kids didn't realize was a slap in the face, but intended to get a big reaction out of me in front of our kids. I literally would have to physically pinch myself to remind myself that this is exactly what he wanted, and a better win for me was just to smile and pretend I didn't care what he was talking about for our kids' sake.\n\n\u2014Melody\n\nThe Importance of Co-parenting\n\n(Dr. Sheri's final piece of advice)\n\n\"Overall, you and your ex have control over how well, or poorly, your kids do with the divorce. As a general rule, from what I've seen over the years, the more the parents maintain their battle with each other through the kids post-divorce, the worse the long-term prognosis is for the kids. Try not to let this happen to you and your children,\" Dr. Sheri advises.\n\n\"I tell parents all the time to love their kids more than they hate\/resent each other. Obviously, in an emotionally charged situation like a divorce, this is easier said than done.\" She adds, \"I am aware that many situations are less than ideal, and that there are no cookie cutter, perfect situations. However, the ideal situation is, and always will be, both parents working together on behalf of their kids.\"\n\nThe Main Goal\n\nMake sure your children feel safe and loved.\n\nBooks\n\nFind books that normalize the experience and treat divorce as the life transition that it is. There are many specialty books for specific situations, such as when the other parent is absent or when other family members, such as grandparents, are raising the child. Children's books offer a safe place to open the door for healthy conversations and also show children that they aren't alone in this process. Seek out the right books for your particular situation. The books below are general books that should help in almost any situation where children are involved.\n\nSuggested reading for parents:\n\n\u2022 The Truth About Children and Divorce, Robert E. Emery, PhD\n\n\u2022 Helping Your Kids Cope with Divorce the Sandcastles Way, M. Gary Neuman\n\n\u2022 Putting Children First, JoAnne Pedro-Carroll\n\nSuggested reading for children:\n\n\u2022 Two Homes, Claire Masurel\n\n\u2022 Standing on My Own Two Feet, Tamara Schmitz\n\n\u2022 It's Not Your Fault, Koko Bear, Vicki Lansky\n\nSuggested reading for teens:\n\n\u2022 Now What Do I Do?, Lynn Cassella-Kapusinski\n\n\u2022 The Big D; Divorce Thru the Eyes of a Teen, Krista Smith\n\n\u2022 The Divorce Helpbook for Teens, Cynthia MacGregor\nGet Off the Boat\n\n{settlement options}\n\nDisclaimer: Divorce laws differ from state to state. Please refer to your professional counsel for specific laws regarding your personal legal circumstances and divorce. This chapter is meant to provide a general breakdown of common divorce settlements and questions pertaining to such.\n\n\"All's fair in love and war.\"\n\n\u2014Anonymous\n\nIf only this were true.\n\nIf we could put divorce in a pretty box and label it \"one size fits all,\" we would. But the truth is all divorces are different. The same goes for the settlement options and outcomes. There are multiple factors to consider when settlement options are presented. The most common question asked is, \"Is this fair?\"\n\nThe definition of a \"fair\" settlement will certainly vary between parties, so it's nearly impossible to define a fair settlement. We can, however, help you prioritize your options and outline some basic guidelines you should stick to.\n\nWhen it comes to divorce settlements, there are three main issues to resolve:\n\n1. Custody of minor children\n\n2. Alimony and child support\n\n3. Division of marital property\n\nTop questions you (and everyone else getting divorced) are probably thinking that pertain to all three main issues:\n\n\u2022 What are my legal rights?\n\n\u2022 How much child support will I get?\n\n\u2022 Will I get custody of the kids?\n\n\u2022 Will he have to pay me alimony?\n\n\u2022 Can I keep the house and my car?\n\nThese big questions are probably keeping you up late at night. Typically, these concerns are discussed during the initial meeting with your attorney. While your attorney won't be able to answer them on the spot, he\/she should be able to assess your marital circumstances and give you a general idea of what you can expect. This is why it's crucial to choose an attorney who can work through these financial details and thoroughly explore all options, as was discussed in Chapter 7, \"Oh Captain, My Captain.\" Your financial future is at stake, and you don't want to be left in the poorhouse while your ex is enjoying a financially secure lifestyle in the penthouse.\n\nYour final settlement will be a work in progress. Do not rush the process. Patience is key.\n\nHoliday will never forget the conversation she had with her dad a few months into the divorce process.\n\nHoliday: \"Dad, I just want this to be over!\"\n\nDad: \"Holiday, take it easy. Calm down. Be patient. He wants you to give in and give up. Just like the early bird gets the worm, the patient one gets the reward. There is no timeline on divorce. Sit on it. Pray on it. Let time take its course. See what he says, and wait for him to get anxious. He will, but it's going to take some time. And, did I mention patience?\"\n\nMy father's famous words. Patience, darling. Patience. If there's one thing I'm really not good at, it's being patient. I learned at a young age not to pray for patience, because sure enough, God will test you, and a test on patience is never fun.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nWhile you're patiently preparing for this settlement process, your brain will be filled with concerns and unanswered questions. Your attorney will be able to provide you with some answers based on your personal situation, but like anything, there are several mistakes to look out for during this process. Take our advice and avoid them.\n\nDon't Get Screwed\n\nThe top five mistakes women make in divorce settlements:\n\n1. Not knowing the value of your assets and trusting your spouse when he says you already know everything.\n\n2. Forgetting about Uncle Sam\u2014the IRS wants your money, honey, regardless of your marital status.\n\n3. Failure to budget properly and plan accurately for your future.\n\n4. Ignoring debt and your credit score.\n\n5. Not understanding retirement accounts and their value.\n\nI wasn't focused completely on the most important aspects of the divorce settlement: financial matters. I was worried about not spending every day with my son. I was worried about having to give up the house I brought my baby home to. I was worried that if I didn't hurry up, the divorce would never happen and I would have to remain sad for the rest of my life. Not that these weren't important things, they were just the wrong things to worry about\u2014they are the things that normally work themselves out. The financial stuff... that's the stuff that will haunt you for years.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nCustody Arrangements\n\n\"Will I get custody?\"\n\nWhen it comes to custody, the judge will ask questions regarding what custody arrangement will be \"in the best interest\" of the children. There are multiple factors to consider, such as the age of children, personal relationships with each parent, siblings, school, other family, work schedules, etc. Depending on who is filing for divorce, your custody situation may vary. It takes quite a lot for a court to strip a mother of her parental rights. More often than not, the mother will be awarded primary physical custody with a percentage split given to the father.\n\nMultiple factors come into play when deciding on a custody arrangement. Ultimately, you'll have to figure out what works best for you, your ex, and, most of all, your kids. We'll give you a breakdown of the most common custody arrangements found today in divorce settlements. We'll also give you our two cents on what we really think (warning: our filter is about to go out the window).\n\nBefore you consider any custody arrangement, it is important for you and your ex to discuss any and all of the factors below. This will give you a true snapshot of what the most realistic and beneficial arrangement is not only for the kids, but for what your capabilities are and will be.\n\nYour top priority is the present and future needs of children. Here are some things to consider:\n\n\u2022 The age of your children\n\n\u2022 The developing needs of your children (the social calendar of a middle school girl is much different than a toddler's social schedule)\n\n\u2022 The current and future school track they are enrolled in (gifted classes, IEPs, etc.)\n\n\u2022 The special needs of your children, such as medical needs, special schools, and extracurricular commitments\n\n\u2022 Geography\u2014what if one of you decides to move?\n\nWe recommend reading this list with your ex, as if it affects both of you on an equal level. But, if we're being honest here, as the mother you're normally left to pick up the slack. So, (start reading to him now) how will you and your ex agree to handle when:\n\n\u2022 a child is sick and it's during your scheduled parenting time;\n\n\u2022 multiple siblings have to be in multiple places at the same time;\n\n\u2022 one of you has to work late;\n\n\u2022 your child has an appointment (doctor, haircut, etc.);\n\n\u2022 school-related issues come up\n\n\u2022 school emergencies (little Suzie busted her chin during recess)\n\n\u2022 parent\u2013teacher conferences\n\n\u2022 open house\/meet the teacher days\n\n\u2022 discipline\/behavior problems during school\n\n\u2022 early release days\n\n\u2022 snow days\n\n\u2022 teacher in-service days\n\n\u2022 managing homework\n\n\u2022 school projects (There's nothing better than a kid coming back to your house only to find out a school project was due that the other parent didn't take care of during their time.);\n\n\u2022 it's summer (What will happen with the kids when school is out?);\n\n\u2022 there are special events like birthday parties (who is responsible for purchasing the gifts), fall festivals, dance recitals, sports games, family commitments, etc., that fall on your time;\n\n\u2022 there are extracurricular activities (If Noah's baseball practice is every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., the parent who has designated custody will be expected to take him to practice during those times or be responsible for finding a way to get Noah to practice if there is a work commitment); or\n\n\u2022 one parent wants to keep coaching, say, your son's travel baseball team (basically taking up every weekend for five months of the year), which will result in your daughter sacrificing her weekend time with \"the coach\" when she is dragged to the baseball field or pawned off on a friend\/family member or anyone willing to take care of her.\n\nThe list could go on and on, trust us! But you get the drift. These are the kind of things that are best talked about whether your child is two or twelve. Before deciding any custody plan, each parent must be clear about the reality of their day-to-day situation in order for your visitation to truly work.\n\nYou may be incapable of being honest to each other, but at least be honest for the sake of your children and the potential of letting them down about your true capabilities.\n\nFor us, the responsibility of getting kids to practices, rehearsals, games, etc., has mostly fallen on us. Whether it's their father's scheduled time or not, we know this is how it's going to be. It's part of the gig, and we're okay with it. You have to think about the circumstances for your family and figure out what will work best for all of you, especially if you both work full-time jobs. Does it mean it's easy for us or necessarily fair that if our children are home sick it always falls on us? Absolutely not. But, like we said before, the kids didn't ask for a divorce, and they need their mommy to love on them when they are sick.\n\nMy girls shouldn't have to miss out on things like playing sports, attending birthday parties, special weekend activities, etc., just because their father and I can't agree on who covers what or a definite schedule.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\n50\/50 Split\n\nA typical 50\/50 custody schedule would look like this:\n\nIt looks like the perfect solution, right? Think again.\n\nWe're going to be bold here and just come right out with it. Too many parents live in dreamland, believing their children's lives will be perfectly balanced and have minimal disruption with an equal custody arrangement. We couldn't disagree more, unless you have extreme extenuating circumstances, like a job that requires frequent out-of-town travel or physical limitations.\n\nHoliday and her ex originally agreed on this option until her attorney advised her against it. It wasn't because her ex was a bad father, or incapable; it was simply in the best interest of the children.\n\nWe were both heartbroken when we filed for divorce, but my ex's only plea was for us to agree on 50\/50 custody. I was experiencing so much guilt, and I truly believed it would be best for our kids to see both of us equally. The children weren't the ones asking for divorce, and he was a good dad. As far as I was concerned, they loved their daddy and deserved to see him as much as they saw me, regardless of our marital status.\n\nWhen I met with my attorney, I immediately told her we had agreed on 50\/50. She dropped her reading glasses to the edge of her nose and shook her head. Her words of wisdom spoke volumes to me, especially after I had experienced divorce within my own family as a teenager. She told me the children needed a stable home, and by floating back and forth between houses they would never have a \"home base.\" As a mother I could understand that, but why did it sound so bad?\n\nMy attorney showed me the calendar of a 60\/40 split, and I realized the breakdown was much more promising than I had thought in my head. The truth was clear: as their mother, I took care of almost everything pertaining to the children. I scheduled their doctor's appointments, arranged extracurricular activities, attended school conferences, stayed home with them when they were sick, and pretty much everything in between. As a self-employed, work-from-home mom, I was able to have flexibility as a parent, whereas their dad had a very demanding job and work schedule. The reality was he would never be able to legitimately pull his weight as a 50\/50 dad. There was just no way. I knew my attorney was right. I presented him with the 60\/40 split, and after talking through it he agreed. It just made sense.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nWhy 50\/50 Rarely Works\n\nWhile it sounds like a perfect solution, it usually results in one of two scenarios:\n\n1. an expensive visit back to court for custody modification\n\nor\n\n2. a really pissed off ex-wife who is constantly picking up the slack of her ex (we've met way too many)\n\nThere are several different ways families break up the 50\/50 visitation split, the most common being one week on, one week off, with the children rotating houses each week. The problem with this is that the children never truly get \"settled.\"\n\nThink of yourself on vacation. You arrive at your destination, unpack your suitcase, and as soon as you start to feel settled, it's time to pack up and go home.\n\nNow, imagine you're not even going somewhere fun, like Mexico, you're just going between mom's house and dad's house.\n\nAs a kid, floating back and forth between mom's house and dad's house can become really annoying. It's also hard work, especially as the kids get older and have to start keeping up with their stuff. All it takes is one meltdown from a teenage daughter who doesn't have the \"right\" pair of jeans at mom's house because she forgot to bring them from dad's house last week. With younger kids a 50\/50 split might be easier at first, but as the kids get older it's almost impossible to keep a healthy, balanced lifestyle.\n\nForget about the \"stuff.\" Let's get to the real problem with equally shared custody.\n\nOne of the biggest challenges women face with 50\/50 custody is the father's ability to equally contribute and, ultimately, be responsible for everything that happens during his 50 percent of the time. No matter how hard they try, it honestly just doesn't cut it in the long run.\n\nLet's take a classmate's birthday party for example, which would include purchasing and wrapping a gift, dropping your child off at the party, killing most of the day while your child plays in a huge monkey-shaped jump house with duct tape all over it and eats cake filled with high fructose corn syrup, then picking your child up. While this isn't a totally impossible feat for a dad, we are saying that it is rare that they're up for everything it entails.\n\nA 50\/50 split of time is doable, but a 50\/50 split of parental responsibilities is nearly impossible.\n\nIn fact, we're pretty sure if you showed him the list we gave before as well as the birthday party scenario (because, guess what, he hasn't thought of any of this because up until now you have done it all!) he would just reply, \"Umm.\" He won't figure it out, he won't know what to do, and he won't have a backup plan. Not because he isn't a good dad, not because he's not willing to give it the old college try, but because he's a man. He doesn't have the maternal gene, and the bottom line is this: he is not their mother.\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Advice:\n\nDon't agree to a 50\/50 custody arrangement (which will also affect your child support) unless you truly believe your soon-to-be ex will be able to fulfill his 50 percent of parental duties during his time with the children. Again, maybe you have to travel every other week for work or have physical limitations, so 50\/50 is perfect. Or maybe your ex has been and will continue to be a stay-at-home dad while you focus on work and bringing home the bacon, whether you're married or not. We're not saying this never works. However, for the typical family it just doesn't. We don't want to see you in a constant battle with your ex, or your children, on what will always be most likely a difficult situation for all of you.\n\n60\/40 Split\n\nAs we mentioned, Holiday and her ex settled on a 60\/40 custody arrangement. Their schedule was as follows:\n\nHoliday had roughly seventeen days a month and her ex had eleven. During this time, she and her ex lived within ten miles of each other, and the children were ages two and four. You will notice that her ex had the kids every Monday night, and Holiday had the kids every Tuesday and Wednesday night. This made scheduling for play dates, extracurricular activities, etc., much easier. Holiday knew she would be able to take the girls to a dance class every Tuesday, gymnastics on Wednesdays, etc.\n\nThe schedule was predictable; the kids knew they were with mommy mostly during the week, and they also knew Monday nights were their special nights with daddy, no matter what. Monday nights were a night \"off\" for Holiday. The perfect time to meet a friend for dinner, catch up on laundry, take a class, or go on a date. Yes, dating did eventually enter the picture, and it will for you, too; yet another reason to have a solid schedule in place for both you and your kids.\n\nAfter three years of this schedule, Holiday got remarried and moved twenty-seven miles away from her ex. Their schedule had shifted, and they have had some bumps in the road. But again, Holiday is the mother, and she has the majority of custody, so this also gave her more control when making the decision to move. Had she been bound to a 50\/50 custody arrangement, it would have been almost impossible for her to manage moving thirty-five minutes away from her ex. It would have made driving back and forth to school an absolute nightmare for the kids, and the extracurricular activities would have to have been located somewhere in the middle. Not. Gonna. Happen.\n\nHow 60\/40 Can Work for You\n\nA 60\/40 schedule gives you some freedom and flexibility as a parent, but also provides enough time for the children to continue to build strong relationships with both parents while living in two homes. From our research (and Holiday's experience) a 60\/40 split usually works best when:\n\n\u2022 both parents are able to contribute significantly to time and parental responsibilities, but one parent will be taking the lead;\n\n\u2022 you are flexible and willing to accommodate each other should a change in schedule arise;\n\n\u2022 you and your soon-to-be ex are able to communicate effectively and co-parent without fighting about the schedule;\n\n\u2022 your children feel comfortable with the schedule and feel safe and loved at both homes; and\n\n\u2022 both homes will be relatively close to each other (within reason for school, friends, extracurricular activities, etc.)\n\n70\/30 or 75\/25 Split\n\nThis is probably one of the most popular and widely used custody plans American families use. This is the plan Valerie and her ex settled on, a 70\/30 custody arrangement. Their schedule is as follows:\n\nValerie had her son roughly twenty days a month, and her ex had him ten. During this time, she and her ex lived within fifteen miles of each other and their son was three years old. You will notice that her ex has their son every Wednesday night, and Valerie has him the remaining weeknights. This made scheduling for play dates, extracurricular activities, etc., much, much (much) easier.\n\nValerie and her son's schedule is very predictable. She has the ability to pretty much plan her son's schedule and run with it. Her son knew he had a \"Daddy Day,\" as he called it, one night a week, and looked forward to that special time with him. Valerie knew she had at least one night a week to recoup from the demands of being a single parent, and looked equally as forward to what she called her \"Off Night.\" She knew she could eat popcorn for dinner (as the main and only course), or meet a group of friends for dinner, or go on a date here or there, or just catch up on sleep.\n\nHaving every other weekend off was also a great balance and allowed her to get out and do things she normally couldn't do while taking care of her son. It was the little things, like being able to sleep in past 7:00 a.m., that helped fill her tank back up.\n\nValerie is mostly happy with this plan, but she was not happy that her ex kept their son on Sunday night and dropped him back off directly at school Monday morning. She felt their young son needed a reset of sorts on Sunday night to get ready for school. But she and her ex were anything but amiable during their divorce. If that meant she rarely had to see her ex by him picking up and dropping off their son either directly at school or with an after-school sitter, well, she considered it a very small sacrifice. As their son gets older and his school commitments and obligations get larger, this might have to change. But for now it works and has helped Valerie's ex drop the sword he mostly wielded during their divorce.\n\nHow 70\/30 or 75\/25 Can Work for You\n\nThe common 70\/30 or 75\/25 schedule gives you some freedom and flexibility as the primary parent and also provides enough time for the children to continue to build strong relationships with both parents while living in two homes. From our research (and Valerie's experience) a 70\/30 or 75\/25 split usually works best when:\n\n\u2022 the primary parent is able to contribute significantly to time and parental responsibilities, but the other parent will be taking the \"backup\" position if needed;\n\n\u2022 you understand that as the primary parent you must be flexible and willing to accommodate each other should a change in schedule arise;\n\n\u2022 you and your soon-to-be ex prefer to keep communication centered on your children and co-parent without fighting about the schedule due to the larger amount of time spent with the primary parent;\n\n\u2022 your children feel comfortable with the schedule and feel safe and loved at both homes. It might mean missing some social events, but due to the majority of the week being spent at one house, it's normally not a problem;\n\n\u2022 both homes ideally will be relatively close to each other (within reason for school, friends, extracurricular activities, etc.); and\n\n\u2022 one of the parents has a larger role at work and would rather devote their entire weekend to the child, as opposed to leaving them with sitters or other family members during the week.\n\nNo matter which custody or visitation plan you and your ex agree on, it is important for us to remind you that your ex might not always take the children during their scheduled time with them. Yes, despite it being scheduled, and despite it being outlined in a legally binding document, it's best for you to be mentally prepared in case this happens.\n\nValerie can attest to this. There were numerous times her ex would tell her at the last minute that he would not be taking their son, and sometimes for extended periods of time. Additionally, much of the holiday and vacation time he fought her for during the divorce went mostly unused, and it was up to her to cover that time.\n\nGetting extra time with her son was awesome; however, this made it hard for her to ever make plans that she could keep. In order to cover the scheduled times her ex decided he wasn't going to take their son, she had to cancel plans as well as modify\/cancel trips she had already paid for. This drove her bananas, and many times she wondered if she would ever have a social or dating life again. To add insult to injury, any time she had to cover her ex's time or modify her plans in order to do so, it cost her even more money (babysitters, food, activities, canceled flights, etc.) she didn't have with her already tight budget. This drove her even more bananas (more like f'ing crazy).\n\nOur strong suggestion is to include verbiage in your separation agreement stating that if the party who has scheduled visitation time cancels without an extenuating circumstance, a specific financial amount will be paid to the parent that will have the children. This amount will be used to cover the additional expenses, such as babysitters, nonrefundable deposits paid for canceled trips, extra costs incurred if the children join you for an activity or trip. You and your attorney should discuss this to determine what would be fair.\n\nOnce your ex has to pay anywhere from twenty dollars to two thousand dollars for passing on scheduled visitation, he's more likely to think twice before canceling again.\n\nThis is especially important if you have a job that requires you to work on the weekends. If your ex does not take advantage of his scheduled visitation time, you might find yourself in a horrible predicament. Make sure you always have a backup plan.\n\nIt should also be noted that most of the time the two of you will know in advance if something will throw off scheduled visitation time with the kiddos. It can be anything from a family wedding to a work trip or relatives visiting. These are times you should work with your ex (and your ex should work with you!) on covering for each other. It is common to trade weekends on the rare occasion when these types of things happen, and you should be open to doing what is best for the children.\n\nHow Much Child Support Will I Get?\n\nThe question heard 'round the globe. This is the first and foremost question almost every woman will ask herself (as well as everyone she knows who is divorced). Or, if she is the breadwinner, she will ask, \"How much child support will I have to pay?\" All states are required to have minimum child support guidelines. Your attorney will provide you with a child support worksheet, and there are several factors added into the calculation. This is not the time to be lazy! Break out your budget worksheet and get to work! Every single expense needs to be documented and accounted for, otherwise you'll get stuck paying for things while your ex-husband enjoys his fancy car and fine wine. Be diligent about submitting the proper information to ensure your child support is what will be necessary to support your family now, as well as in the future.\n\nThis is where your divorce financial planner we discussed in Chapter 6, \"Choose Your Crew,\" will come in handy. Your financial needs with young children are much different than they are with teenagers. It is crucial to plan properly and project future expenses and make adjustments as necessary.\n\nLegally we can't give you specific numbers when it comes to child support, but here are the main factors that go into the calculation:\n\n\u2022 Gross monthly income of the noncustodial parent\n\n\u2022 Gross monthly income of the custodial parent\n\n\u2022 Number of children\n\n\u2022 Cost of living\/family expenses\n\n\u2022 Cost of family group health insurance\n\n\u2022 Who pays for family group health insurance\n\n\u2022 Amount of time each parent spends with children (refer back to the 50\/50, 60\/40, 70\/30, and 75\/25 plans discussed previously)\n\nModifying Your Custody Arrangement\n\nSome people have asked me if we went back to court for adjustments in child support or for legal documentation of our schedule change once I got remarried and our visitation schedule had to change. The answer is no. Why? Because, thankfully, he and I were and still are able to work together in an effective manner to do what's best for the kids. We both have their best interest at heart. It's how we do things, and it's how our family works.\n\nAs far as child support goes, either of us could request a modification at any time, but again, we are able to work together effectively to make things work. If we headed back to court, could it possibly result in more child support from my ex? Sure. But it would also cost me a fortune (and a headache) to gather all of the documents necessary to proceed. There are two sides to the child support coin given our personal circumstances:\n\n1. Technically, we aren't 60\/40 anymore (honestly it's more like 80\/20 now that I've moved).\n\n2. My income (down), cost of living (down), expenses (down), etc., have changed over the past few years.\n\nI've also noticed that my ex's lifestyle seems to have bumped up a notch. My guess is he's making more money now than he ever has, and is probably planning a kickass vacation to Bora Bora with his new wife. Could I take him back to court and demand proof of his income, provide the court with proof of his drastic decrease in parenting time, and request a modification of child support? You bet. Will I do it? Not unless I absolutely have to.\n\n\u2014Holiday\n\nMost people try to avoid modification unless they really have no alternative. They especially like to avoid it when it comes to visitation, as children's needs change every year and your settlement agreement should include verbiage stating that both parties will be sensitive and acknowledge this. Hopefully you are in a situation like Holiday and her ex, where they are amiable and seem to keep their eye on the prize: making sure their girls are happy, healthy, and feel loved. But if you're not, please know you are not alone.\n\nThe realities of modification are that it is extremely expensive and very time-consuming. Imagine having to compile all of the same paperwork you just spent hours and days and weeks compiling for your divorce all over again. And this time for just one particular issue. If you're going to go through the extensive effort needed for a modification, it better be worth it, and not just because Wednesday nights don't work for you anymore because of tennis team.\n\nWhen it comes to modifications in visitation or custody, you must pretty much prove two things:\n\n1. The children's needs have changed significantly, and the current plan is not adequately meeting them.\n\nand\/or\n\n2. One of the parent's visitation hours, capabilities, or limitations is affecting your children (such as a move, a new demanding job, or, God forbid, an addiction problem) and has changed the overall picture significantly.\n\nNotice we keep saying significantly here. Complaining to a judge that your ex is supposed to have your kiddos 25 percent of the time but only takes them 21 percent of the time is not going to hold much weight. However, proving he is supposed to have them 30 percent of the time but only takes them 10 to 16 percent of the time is something to consider modifying and would most likely entitle you to more support if deemed a valid request worth modifying.\n\nWhat if He Doesn't Pay?\n\nIn a perfect world, people would pay their bills on time and fulfill their obligations to society. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case, especially when it comes to divorce. If your ex-husband refuses to pay your child support (or is not paying you on time, the correct amount, etc.), you need to take action immediately. Hopefully this won't happen to you, but just to be on the safe side, we want you to know how important it is for you to take action now and not wait.\n\nThere are laws in effect designed to protect women (and specifically children) from a parent who is withholding support. RUN, don't walk, to your nearest child support office and fill out the paperwork you need to start your case. Like anything else in the legal world, this will take time. So the faster you start the process, the faster you'll get your money. The courts will start an investigation, and you will need to provide proof to back up your claim (just another reason to keep all of your paperwork, checking accounts, checks received, receipts, etc., organized).\n\nIf the court is able to determine that your ex is, in fact, delinquent with his payments, or in violation of his court-ordered child support obligation, he will be charged with contempt of court. This is serious business and isn't to be taken lightly.\n\nFar too many women have to fight through this process, so we want you to be as emotionally prepared as possible. When you take child support through the state legal system, chances are your ex will get angry. Very, very angry. He may even threaten you with continuing to hold out on paying you. Don't allow his threats to interfere with what is legally yours!\n\nStay strong and keep those big girl panties on\u2014you need to protect yourself and, most of all, your children!\n\nPerhaps you and your soon-to-be ex are on friendly, cordial terms, and you trust he will give you a check every week for what you are legally entitled to. Try it out and see how that goes. Different couples manage child support differently. Holiday's ex usually writes her a check every other week. She keeps track of the checks being deposited and sends him friendly reminders anytime it's past due. They are not the norm, nor is it recommended to exchange money this way. By sending her ex reminders and requests for money owed to her, it places him in a position of power. This isn't exactly ideal if you aren't on good terms, and even if you are, it could potentially cause uncomfortable situations.\n\nValerie has found the best way for her to ensure child support is paid in full and on time is to have it deducted from her ex's paychecks. This also eliminates the need for a conversation and\/or verbal exchange when giving money. It requires minimal reminders to the ex, and that's a good thing in her situation (for both of them actually).\n\nThere is a certain amount of a power a man feels when he hands a check to a woman. Subliminally, it may be best for you to make arrangements for your support to be paid via electronic transfer. That way there is no room for negotiation or for feeling vulnerable when exchanging children and checks.\n\nDo not make the same mistake Kim did...\n\nWhen my ex and I filed for divorce, we both agreed we didn't want things to get ugly. We didn't want to drain our life's savings on attorney fees to fight about things we thought we could handle on our own. We had been married fourteen years, and we had drifted apart. We didn't love each other anymore, and the decision to divorce was mutual. We had two children (ages five and nine), and both of us worked demanding full-time jobs with hefty salaries. Our income was almost the same, but when we got divorced I stayed in the house with the boys, and my ex moved to a small apartment. We agreed on 60\/40 custody, and when it came to child support totals, my monthly support didn't allot too much money.\n\nI also sadly didn't prepare properly or project the expenses from staying in our big house and being the primary custodial parent. My attorney brought this to our attention during mediation, and my ex made the statement, \"I don't want to fight about money. How about I just give you whatever extra money you need each month and then we won't have to waste any more time in this court? You know I'm a good man and a good dad, hell, I'll never let you live like dirt. You know I will always take care of you and make sure you and the kids have whatever you need.\" And just like that I agreed. I trusted him, and, honestly, I think he truly believed what he was saying. I think we both wanted to believe what he said, that he would always take care of us.\n\nThe ugly truth came a few months later, when the air conditioner broke in our three-story home. The bill was more than eighteen hundred dollars, and I was left worrying about paying the mortgage. Here's where the problem started: I didn't want to have to ask him for money. I didn't want to feel like I would owe him something, and I didn't want to give him leverage over me in any way. But I didn't have a choice. I couldn't pay the bill. I finally sucked up my pride and asked him for the extra money to cover the bill, and his response was, \"Why don't you ask your boyfriend?\" I didn't have a boyfriend at the time; in fact, I wasn't even dating. But he was going through the anger phase of grief (perfect timing, really), and just assumed I had been dating someone. What should have been a decent conversation after our little agreement in the mediation room turned into something ugly. And I mean ugly.\n\nI was bitter, resentful, and angry at him for making me feel guilty. He made me feel ashamed for asking him for the money that should have been rightfully mine to begin with. Had our child support payments been reconfigured with accurate numbers, it would have provided me with enough cushion to budget for emergency expenses.\n\nBut I trusted him in my moment of weakness and was burned in return.\n\nWhat's the moral of the story? Get it in writing. Don't accept his promises when he promises to \"give you extra money if you need it.\" Promises made verbally in the mediation room don't hold any weight out of or back in court. And, unfortunately, that's where we ended up. After almost a year of reworking our financials, I am finally receiving the child support that I should have fought for to begin with. I share this story with you, because if it helps one woman get the settlement she is entitled to, then my mistake was worthwhile.\n\n\u2014Kim\n\nModifying Child Support\n\nThings change over time, and your financial situation now may be drastically different from what it is five, ten, or fifteen years from now. (For some of us that are self-employed that is more like five, ten, or fifteen minutes from now!)\n\nWhen I got divorced, my kids were one, three, and six, so our extracurricular expenses were minimal. Fast-forward ten years and it's a different ball game. Extracurricular activities, summer camps, transportation costs. (You're not getting away with a little dance class at your neighborhood studio anymore; by the time they're ten you'll be driving all over God's green earth to get them where they need to be.) Once they turn sixteen\u2014forget it! The money alone for my teenager to drive will most likely result in a modification for us. I just can't afford it with the money my ex is paying me. It's been ten years!\n\n\u2014Carrie\n\nBy the time we got to mediation and settlement options my bank account was empty. I honestly didn't have any more money to pay my attorney, and I was ready to be done with the divorce and move on. I gave in to the initial custody and child support proposal, not really prepared for what was to come. A year later I was calling family members and asking for financial help while my husband was putting the finishing touches on the \"man cave\" in his basement, complete with flat screen TVs, a wet bar, and leather movie theater seating. Must be nice, I thought. The trouble was, he was paying me exactly what he was supposed to pay me.\n\nI hadn't calculated properly that my lifestyle as a single mom with three kids would cost more than my child support and income from my part-time job could or would provide. Working a full-time job would have been impossible, especially with three kids under the age of ten at home. The cost of childcare alone would have been more than my salary, so I didn't know what to do. Since I hadn't calculated our living expenses correctly, and couldn't afford to hire an attorney, I had to go through the child support office to request a modification. (Talk about a pain in the ass!)\n\nEventually we were able to reach an agreement with modifications to better support my children and me, but it took a large amount of time, energy, and effort on my part. If I could give anyone advice, it would be to get it right the first time. Yes, you might be broke right now and not able to pay your attorney for more time to fight for reasonable child support, but it's smarter to pay him\/her now than have to revisit an attorney a year from now (and attempt to survive with children on a budget you can't realistically live on).\n\n\u2014Michelle\n\nReading Carrie's story, you can understand her frustration and challenges with growing kids and changing budgets. You can't control the future, but you can control the present. We can't emphasize this enough: don't get screwed by settling quickly and agreeing to custody and child support that will not sufficiently take care of you or your children!\n\nYes, it is your attorney's job to watch closely and advise to the best of their ability what your future should look like, but ultimately it's your butt on the line. If you haven't adequately mapped out your budget the time is now! (Actually, it's past due, but we're being nice because you're our girlfriend.)\n\nLet's say you \"goofed\" the first time around and you want to request a modification in child support. What are your next steps?\n\nEvery state is different when it comes to divorce and child support laws, but the basic outline usually stays the same:\n\n\u2022 You will need to provide grounds for the modification request\u2014documenting a significant change in circumstances (loss of job, change in income, change in cost of living, change in custody, etc.).\n\n\u2022 Some states require a certain amount of time to pass before requesting modification (i.e., a request for review can only be made every two years after the last request or proceeding went through the courts).\n\n\u2022 Modifications will process through your state's official child support division.\n\nTo check the laws where you live, google \"child support modification,\" then add your state.\n\nTop Five Things to Remember About Child Support\n\n1. Unless it's on paper and legally documented, it doesn't count.\n\n2. Don't rely on his promises to \"trust\" that he will pay you.\n\n3. Make sure your expenses are accurate and you've accounted for the growing changes of your family over time.\n\n4. If he doesn't pay you, run, skip, jump, hop as fast as you can to the nearest child support services office.\n\n5. If your child support reward is not enough to truly support your children, take the steps necessary to make modifications as quickly as possible.\n\nWill He Have to Pay Me Alimony? If so, How Much and for How Long?\n\nNot every divorce results in alimony being paid. It usually depends on which state you reside in, how long you were married, and what your respective incomes are. If you've been married a short period of time and\/or earn similar incomes, you may not be rewarded with alimony. However, if you've dedicated a significant number of years to your marriage (usually ten or more), or put your career on hold to be a homemaker\/wife to raise your children and\/or to be a wife, and\/or do not make enough money to support yourself without additional financial resources, then you will most likely receive some sort of alimony.\n\nEach state has its own requirements, but, if allowed, alimony (or spousal support) usually comes into play when one spouse is truly unable to support themselves without financial assistance from the other spouse. Additionally, alimony typically is awarded for a specific number of years.\n\nIf you don't have children and earn comparable salaries, you can most likely expect a 50\/50 division of assets with little or no spousal support to be required.\n\nIf you've been married for twenty years, haven't had a job in fifteen, and have four kids running around the house, chances are your alimony will provide for your lack of income (the chances of you being able to get a job to fully support yourself and four children are slim) and the expenses required to maintain a decent lifestyle for you and your children.\n\nAlimony cases are decided on by a judge. Just as each divorce and situation is different, so is each judge, as Captain Carol pointed out. Your attorney should be able to give you a snapshot of what you can (or shouldn't) expect from alimony.\n\nIt's also important to understand that alimony is received under the conditions that you are unable to live without the financial support of your ex-spouse. Just like child support, if your circumstances change, your alimony is subject to modification and\/or termination. When it comes to termination, alimony usually stops after a designated amount of time (say three to seven years) and is normally effectuated on a sliding scale down. Another factor to consider is, oftentimes when the person receiving support remarries or enters a domestic partnership, (a live-in boyfriend could also provide grounds for termination\u2014just one of many reasons to stay single for a while!) verbiage is normally included in your settlement agreement that will make this grounds for immediate termination of any and all alimony payments.\n\nOne other suggestion for alimony is the lump-sum payment. This is an especially enticing option if you know there are savings, retirement, and accounts that qualify to be withdrawn against or set up funds within to provide for spousal maintenance when your ex may not actually have the month-to-month income to help you right now, despite your need. Valerie took this option in a QDRO after realizing the money just wasn't there monthly; however, there were funds she was entitled to that she would be able to tap into as a form of lump-sum alimony. Added bonus: every month her ex didn't have to write a check and cringe. It was set up once, the funds were transferred, and he never had to hear about it again.\n\nIn a Nutshell\n\nWhile a quick and seamless divorce settlement seems like the easiest option, we can't emphasize this enough: do not settle for anything less than you deserve.\n\nThere are so many details to be aware of, especially when there are minor children, property, and significant income and expenses to explore. The details of each category are so important, so take your time, do your homework, ask as many questions as you can, and consult with your attorney on things you don't understand.\n\nOne small oversight or mistake on your part could end up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars (not to mention years of struggle).\n\nDon't sign on that dotted line until you feel 100 percent confident in your settlement agreement, especially if you are going through court-ordered or independent mediation. Truly think about the terms you are agreeing to; there are no take-backs once both parties have signed. Trust us, although mediation may feel informal, it is anything but. Once you have a signed agreement, whether agreed upon and signed in or outside of mediation, you better be okay with what it looks like for a minimum of two to three years.\n\nYour well-being and the well-being of your children are at stake. Remember, your attorney's job is to get you the best settlement possible, but at the end of the day you're the one who will have to live with it.\n\nWhich leads us to our final discussion...\n\nNegotiation\n\n\"Don't bargain yourself down before you get to the table.\"\n\n\u2014Carol Frohlinger\n\nWhen we say \"don't settle,\" we don't mean \"don't settle ever or on anything.\" We just mean don't settle for less than your trusted intuition is telling you to! As ex-wives we have been through it, seen it, and survived it. You will, too.\n\nBut just like anything else in this world, you must be open to some sort of negotiation. If you're entering this divorce with a mindset of \"I'm gonna kill him in court,\" you might (okay, definitely) need to take a breather. And we say that in the most loving and supportive kind of way, of course.\n\nNegotiations are an important and essential part of coming to a settlement agreement, because, ultimately, your goal is to reach an agreement that BOTH of you can (gasp) agree on.\n\nUnless, of course, your soon-to-be ex is a saint from heaven and will happily agree to whatever you want. (In that case, can you send us his contact info?)\n\nMy counselor once said something very wise to me about why spouses hate negotiating. She said the problem was nobody liked half a pie when they were used to having the whole pie. And she was right. Every time I went grocery shopping at Publix I would just stare at the sad little half pies in the grocery store that only women with twenty cats bought on a Friday night at 9:59 p.m., a minute before the store closed so nobody would see them. A half pie sucks. Its edges are rough and something is just missing. Especially when you can see how beautiful the whole pie looks.\n\n\u2014Valerie\n\nOn a serious note... while you may be feeling attacked, vulnerable, angry, guilty, or anxious, you must check your emotions at the door. Lean in, channel your inner Sheryl Sandberg, and think of your divorce as a business transaction. Negotiations happen in almost everything when there's an exchange of something valuable (although that isn't to say we don't negotiate daily popsicles for clean bedrooms). Right now you have the ball, so don't give it up without a fight.\n\nThere's also an important lesson to be learned here. If you are unreasonable, and appear to be impossible for negotiating, the process will get ugly. And then uglier. There comes a point in time where you have to put the weapons down and agree to disagree.\n\nMediation\n\nDivorce is the dissolution of a marital agreement. You may or may not want a divorce, but when you've found yourself at the mediation table with your attorney, their attorney, and Satan himself, the divorce is happening, whether you like it or not.\n\nNow is not the time to cry or have a meltdown. (That's what your friends are for, and we are here for you, too!) Put your big girl panties on and get down to business.\n\nMediation (court-appointed or independent) should be described as the place where the negotiations will start, unless your attorneys can reach an agreement outside of court. In our experience, mediation just downright stinks. It is where the gloves first come off, and you're blindsided by the unexpected left and right hooks that are flying all over the ring.\n\nIn order to prepare yourself, have a list of your \"nonnegotiables.\" And no, your list can't include everything, as we stated in previous chapters. Sorry, girlfriend, we know. Your nonnegotiable list should be three to five items you absolutely will not budge on.\n\nGood examples of a nonnegotiable list would be:\n\n\u2022 you keep the house\n\n\u2022 the kids remain in the private school they have been attending\n\n\u2022 your ex pays for all incurred attorney fees\n\n\u2022 you are entitled to half of all marital 401(k) retirement account assets\n\n\u2022 your ex takes on all joint credit card debt as his obligation\n\nRegardless of what terms you deem nonnegotiable, have them listed on paper and share these wishes with your attorney well in advance of mediation. Your attorney needs to be prepared on what he\/she really needs to go to bat on for you.\n\nYour attorney will also advise you on what they think is reasonable during mediations. (But don't have long-winded discussions with them about this because it will cost you a bloody fortune. You are paying by the hour here for your attorney as well as the mediator.)\n\nValerie and her high-priced lawyer just sat there in the cramped, court-appointed room with all parties present staring at the desk while her ex and his attorney forked over collated, stapled, and printed handouts. Talk about a big old WTF moment. There it was, their well-thought-out snapshot of the current financial situation as well as an Excel spreadsheet of the points of contention they (Valerie's ex and his attorney) wanted to discuss. They were prepared to dig in and address the issues he wanted addressed and steer the negotiations toward the figures he wanted to draw attention to. She and her attorney were not.\n\nRather than a balanced, joint mediation, they spent eight hours following his agenda, leaving her shocked, unprepared, and somewhat screwed.\n\nAlthough her attorney kept saying things like, \"If you go before a court they are most likely going to rule this way anyway,\" and \"You don't really have the money to go to court so just do what you have to do,\" Valerie knew what was going on didn't feel right. She was also told horror stories of so-called recent cases, which she knew were meant to scare her into submission so all parties could tick off boxes and move forward.\n\nThe funny part is Valerie did agree to things that she swore to herself and her attorney were her deal breakers. Not because she wanted to, but because she just wanted the whole thing to be over: the divorce, the harassment, the expenses, and the f'ing nightmare of a mediation.\n\nAt one point the mediator told her, \"You know what, you've agreed to a lot. They need to start agreeing to some things. Let me go in and talk with them again and I'll be right back.\" How do you respond to that besides drop your mouth open and wish there was a bottle of tequila in front of you?\n\nEx-Wives' Tip:\n\nHave a short and concise list handy and prepared. List all of the premarital assets as well as the marital assets. Make sure to list all the current debts and financial obligations. You should have a firm income number to share at this time. Put all of this on a reference sheet or Excel spreadsheet clearly coding what the \"snapshot\" scenario is for the mediator. This will be invaluable.\n\nBecause Valerie felt utterly unprepared emotionally, as well as in the business sense, for what was unfolding right in front of her, she acted in rash ways, dropping her boundaries left and right, which ultimately had harsh consequences. She knew in her gut most of what she agreed to just felt wrong. The mediator kept telling her, \"Whenever you compromise it's not going to feel fully right; that goes against human nature.\"\n\nMost importantly, once that mediator signs what you will ultimately agree on with your ex, consider it written in stone, and at least for a while on things like custody and support. During mediation you don't have to agree on everything, however, the goal is to agree on as many things as possible to keep you from having to go to court and prolonging your divorce case.\n\nMediation is a safeguard of sorts so that one spouse can't continue to drag out the inevitable. We get that, but it shouldn't cause you to make emotional decisions that are not in your best interest.\n\nMediation will form the fibers of the fabric of your settlement agreement, so make sure it is tightly knit, but not so tight that it chokes you.\n\nSigned, Stamped, Delivered\n\nEverything in life is negotiable, divorce settlements included. Your attorney's job is to negotiate on your behalf to get you the best settlement possible. Be reasonable. Keep your cool. You will not get everything you want. That's just not reality.\n\nDon't let your emotions get the best of you. Be a duck if you have to at that mediation table (appear cool on the surface and kick your legs all you want under that table). Waddle away for a minute or two to really digest what you both would be legally agreeing to.\n\nWhen you take the emotions out of your divorce, chances are you and your attorney will be able to find a middle ground to agree on with the opposing side. Whether they're sitting across the table from you two feet away or are in separate offices miles away, a middle ground can be found.\n\nWe know all of this is somewhat scary and overwhelming. We know you're probably reading this and thinking, Oh. My. God. This is really happening. Yes, it is. But the good news is this won't kill you. You will survive this just like you survived the seventh grade and all of its awfulness. And this time with better skin.\n\nJust be prepared, stay firm on the nonnegotiables, and be rational about everything else. If you do this, your final settlement agreement will reflect something that you both can live with.\n\nWe are in no way implying that you will be jumping around asking strangers to give you a high five (okay, maybe you will on signing day). However, you no longer have to be concerned with what might be; you can now fully accept what is. Despite what you may feel today, we promise you, you will be relieved once it is over and official so you can move forward with your new life as a single woman again.\nShine On!\n\n{how to get your groove back}\n\n\"If you're brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.\"\n\n\u2014Paulo Coelho\n\nCongratulations! You've made it to the final chapter of our book. Let's celebrate with new beginnings, shall we?\n\nOur goal in writing The Ex-Wives' Guide to Divorce was to prepare women with the knowledge and tools they need to survive divorce. But, ultimately, we also wanted to be a glimmer of hope, a little dose of happy, and a ray of sunshine through the darkness of the process.\n\nWe have armed you with the information you need to prepare and protect yourself. Now it's time for us to remind you how to love yourself.\n\nWe've heard it a million times... if you don't love yourself, then how can you expect someone else to love you? Well, if you don't know how to love yourself, it makes for a tricky situation.\n\nLoving yourself isn't easy. As women, we tend to focus on our flaws, flood our brain with negative self-talk (\"I am so fat!\"), and shy away from compliments. What's the deal with our lack of self-confidence? Chances are, if there were a magic self-confidence pill to solve the problem it would be on the market by now (and we would have already purchased it).\n\nIf you're one of those women who has total inner peace about your life, your body, your being as a whole, then all we can say is: You go, girl! For the rest of us, there's some work to be done.\n\nDivorce can take a serious toll on your self-confidence, but only if you allow it to. We are living proof that there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. You can, and you will, find happiness in your life again. And you may even fall in love again (hopefully with yourself first, though). While there isn't exactly a road map for getting your groove back, we certainly have some tips for you.\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Top Ten Tips for Getting Your Groove Back:\n\n1. Take care of yourself first\n\nSleep. Exercise. Eat well. Limit your alcohol intake (a margarita at happy hour can be a groove-booster, but numbing yourself with a bottle of wine every night is a serious problem). It's time to take care of you. Stop worrying about everyone else. Obviously, this doesn't imply you should neglect your children, your family, or the pet goldfish. After all, it's much easier to take care of someone else than to face the reality of our own problems. Put that thong back on and step in front of the mirror to strut your stuff. You wore your big girl panties well. We are officially giving you permission to now be selfish. Consider this time in your life as a special gift to your future self.\n\n2. Do things that make you happy\n\nFar too often we lose ourselves in our marriage. Whether it's a hobby, a sport, playing Bunco, or taking long bubble baths... get back on the wagon! Dust off your tennis racquet, break out the yarn and knit a blanket, do whatever it is that makes you smile. It's your turn now.\n\n3. Get inspired\n\nMake a collage. All you need is a glue stick, scissors, poster board, and a stack of magazines. Cut out pictures, quotes, anything that inspires you. You may even get crafty and make a board for different categories. This exercise is fun to do with a group of girlfriends; trust us, we've done this together on several occasions!\n\n4. Buy new bedding\n\nThis is an absolute must. While we are firm believers in responsible budget management, we also believe you should include this expense in your divorce budget. New sheets equals new woman in bed. Need we say more?\n\n5. Update your playlists\n\nDitch the sappy love songs and channel your inner Beyonc\u00e9. Check out The Ex-Wives' Playlist at the end of this chapter (iTunes will be your new best friend for a while).\n\n6. Give yourself a makeover\n\nIf you've got the money in your budget, hire someone to help. Don't freak out or roll your eyes, this is not Teen Vogue advice. This is tried and true advice, and will continue to be for many years to come. Whether it's a chic new haircut, a new pair of jeans that lift and tuck, or an updated lipstick color, even the smallest change can make a world of difference in your confidence. When you look good, you feel good. Investing in your appearance is an investment in your self-confidence, and that is the end goal, right?\n\n7. Break up with negative people\n\nYou become like the five people you spend the most time with. Choose carefully. Who are you personally spending time with? Ever heard the phrase \"misery loves company?\" It's true. In order to get your groove back, you must surround yourself with people who've got the groove! If your friends are consistently Debbie Downers, then it's time for new friends. We're hoping you already did this at some point during your divorce, but if you didn't, we're giving you permission to get out there and find some shiny, happy new people to match your shiny, happy new life.\n\n8. Unplug\n\nTen years ago our lives were not interrupted by text messages, Facebook alerts, emails, or the desire to snap (and post) pictures twenty-four seven on Instagram. Nowadays we're expected to respond immediately to these alerts, beeps, vibrations, etc., from our phones and electronic devices. We \"multitask\" (a.k.a. text, check Facebook, take iPhone pics) while grocery shopping, having lunch with friends, and so on (but never driving because we are smart girls). The sad truth is this: we're doing so many things at the same time that we aren't living in the moment. When was the last time you just left your phone at home or kept it in your car during lunch with a friend? While it might not be possible to \"disconnect\" all day (wouldn't that be nice?), there's significant value in unplugging, especially while spending time with your kids or right before bedtime. By removing the distraction of our so-called \"smart\" devices and unplugging from the outside world, you allow yourself time to connect within. And this, girlfriend, is essential to getting your groove back, not to mention really, really smart.\n\n9. Set goals\n\nEven the smallest of victories can be an instant pick-me-up. When it comes to post-divorce goals, you must set yourself up for success rather than failure. Maybe you've dreamed about a two-month adventure to Australia using your budgeted savings from last year. It's a great goal, but this probably isn't the best time for you to run off to Australia (just a hunch). Instead of aiming for world peace, or an entire financial makeover, let's start small. Here are some daily goals that are easily attainable with some commitment from you:\n\nDaily Goals:\n\n\u2022 Get dressed. This includes shoes, hair, and makeup.\n\n\u2022 Make your bed\u2014this will make you especially happy after you've purchased new bedding and fancy pillows!\n\n\u2022 Write in a gratitude journal. This can be a simple notebook with a list of things you're thankful for each day. Simple gratitude can go a long way.\n\n\u2022 Every night, write a list of the six most important things you need to do the next day. Do the hardest thing first.\n\n10. Have faith\n\n\"Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be.\"\n\n\u2014Sonia Ricotti\n\nRegardless of your religious background or beliefs, faith is what will carry you through the trenches, the valleys, and the disappointments that seem to be inevitable during divorce. Whether it's through prayer, meditation, yoga, underwater basket weaving, whatever, this is a critical time for re-centering your energy. We challenge you to retrain your brain by bombarding it with positive affirmations. Feelings of self-worth will come along during this process, but the main goal is and should ideally be to start seeing the positive side in each circumstance. On average, it takes about sixty days to form a habit. Commit to daily positive affirmations (for example, I fill this day with hope, and I face it with joy) and you'll be amazed at the change that will come.\n\nThe Ex-Wives' Playlist\n\n(Because, after all, divorce is the ultimate breakup)\n\n\u2022 \"Roar,\" Katy Perry\n\n\u2022 \"Survivor,\" Destiny's Child\n\n\u2022 \"We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,\" Taylor Swift\n\n\u2022 \"Fighter,\" Christina Aguilera\n\n\u2022 \"Stronger,\" Britney Spears (Sorry, Holiday just can't have an awesome playlist without some Brit Brit on there!)\n\n\u2022 \"Stronger,\" Kelly Clarkson\n\n\u2022 \"You Oughta Know,\" Alanis Morissette\n\n\u2022 \"Wide Awake,\" Katy Perry\n\n\u2022 \"Payphone,\" Maroon 5\n\n\u2022 \"Irreplaceable,\" Beyonc\u00e9\n\n\u2022 \"Single Ladies,\" Beyonc\u00e9 (Sorry, Valerie just can't have an awesome playlist without Queen Bey represented twice!)\n\n\u2022 \"King of Anything,\" Sara Bareilles\n\n\u2022 \"Wings,\" Little Mix\n\n\u2022 \"Respect,\" Aretha Franklin\n\n\u2022 \"Respect Yourself,\" Madonna (See the pattern here about respect?!)\n\n\u2022 \"Unwritten,\" Natasha Bedingfield\n\n\u2022 \"Soak Up the Sun,\" Sheryl Crow\n\n\u2022 \"Someone Like You,\" Adele (just go ahead, cry it out)\n\nBe Selfish. It's Your Turn.\n\nIt's pretty easy to lose sight of yourself during a divorce. In fact, sometimes it's almost easier to take the focus off yourself and put it on others. This eliminates the need to face your reality. Once you've moved through the stages of grief and have arrived at the place of acceptance, we greatly encourage you to find solace in caring for yourself.\n\nFor far too long you've focused on taking care of others, whether it's your spouse, your children, your friends, etc. Make a vow here and now to yourself to be selfish.\n\nFocus on you, what makes you happy, what brings you joy, and the vision you have for your life.\n\nOnly then will you have the clarity and peace you need as you move forward with the next chapter of your life.\n\nEverything will be okay, and this too shall pass. Repeat it again. Everything will be okay, and this too shall pass.\n\nProgram it in your phone, plaster it on the fridge, write a Post-it to stick smack-dab in the middle of your bathroom mirror. Do whatever you have to do to remind yourself that you and millions of other women are going through, or have gone through, the same thing. Everything. Will. Be. Okay.\n\nThis is not the end of your life, but rather the beginning of the life you never thought you would live\u2014gratefully accept the challenge and honor.\n\nJust because our stories sometimes start without us, doesn't mean they need to end without us stealing the pen back.\n\nAlthough you are no longer wearing a rock doesn't mean you don't rock, and just because your relationship failed, that does not mean you have failed as a human being. Remember these two things and repeat them daily. They will remind you of what a uniquely wonderful person you are and to be kind to yourself. Because, girlfriend, if there's one thing we do know, it's that you shine brighter than any diamond you could ever wear on your finger.\nAcknowledgments\n\nFirst and foremost, we would both like to thank the many incredible women who helped contribute to the content and success of this book. Your stories and encouragement not only helped to shape our book, but also our lives. We would wholeheartedly like to thank Attorney Carol Baskin and Dr. Sheri Siegel for sharing their many years of expertise as well as insight to help provide invaluable advice to our readers. We are very grateful for your contributions. A tremendous thank-you goes to our agent, Roger Williams, who believed in the two tall blonde ex-wives that shared an ex-husband, liked to talk, laughed often, and had a vision that you helped bring to life. We will be forever in your debt. To our editor, Brooke Rockwell, and the Skyhorse team, thank you for taking a chance on our project from the heart. And lastly, we would like to thank our ex-husband(s), because without you, this book would not exist.\n\nValerie would like to personally thank:\n\nMy mother, who showed me that even when life knocks you on your butt, the only choice you have is to jump right back up and give it all you've got. I owe my resiliency and gratitude to you.\n\nMy sweet and empathetic little boy Honey Bee, who is by far the best souvenir from the worst trip of my life. I owe you more than you will ever know for being the reason I wear a smile each and every single day of my life.\n\nMy forever friends: AE, KOH, BT, CC, GB, SB, JC, HH, MH, HM, and KA. You're all, simply put, the best. We'll always be friends because you know too much.\n\nMy co-author, for teaching me to appreciate hot pink, snow days, and that friendships sometimes come to us in the most unexpected ways. Holiday, the world is a better place with you in it.\n\nGod and the Universe, for always showing me the signs (even though I don't always pay attention) and for giving me a second chance in life. I promise I won't waste it.\n\nHoliday would like to personally thank:\n\nElizabeth and Kennedy, my reasons for never giving up.\n\nMy parents, for their example of strength, dignity, and grace, even through divorce.\n\nMy husband, Clay, for loving me unconditionally, embracing and supporting me during this project, and most of all for showing me there can be a light (and even rainbows) at the end of a very dark tunnel.\n\nMy sister, Meredith, and my amazing girlfriends... for listening, laughing, and crying with me through it all... you know who you are :)\n\nValerie, the greatest ex-wife a woman could ever know. I could not have survived my divorce without you. Thank you for taking me under your wing and showing me the way... I love you!\n\nAnd to God, for the divine opportunity to share my testimony with the world.\nResources\n\nWe've gathered all the handy-dandy forms, worksheets, and checklists and put them on the following pages as well as on The Ex-Wives' Guide to Divorce website: www.exwivesguide.com. Now everything you need to get organized and help prepare you for the next chapter in your life is right at your fingertips.\n\n\u2022 Accounts Record\n\n\u2022 Budget Worksheet\n\n\u2022 Child Expenses Worksheet\n\n\u2022 Child Support Payment Log\n\n\u2022 Communication Log\n\n\u2022 Documents Checklist\n\n\u2022 Extracurricular Expenses Worksheet\n\n\u2022 Personal Expenses Worksheet\n\n\u2022 Personal Income Worksheet\n\n\u2022 Questions for the Attorney\n\n\u2022 To-Do List\n\nDocuments Checklist\n\nTo ensure you have copies of all your documents as you Get Organized, use this handy checklist.\n\nUtilities\n\n  Gas\/oil bills\n\n  Electric bills\n\n  Water bills\n\n  Cable bills\n\n  Internet bills\n\n  Landline and wireless phone bills\n\nRevolving and Installment\n\n  Credit cards (joint, personal, and business if applicable)\n\n  Mortgage statements\n\n  Home equity line of credit statements\n\n  Lease (if you are renting)\n\n  Last two years of property and vehicle tax bills\n\n  Secured loans\n\n  Unsecured loans\n\n  Family loans\n\n  Automobile loans\n\n  Medical bills\n\n  Other fixed payments\n\nFinancial\n\n  Checking account statements\n\n  Savings account statements\n\n  Investment account statements\n\n  Retirement account statements (401(k), IRA, etc.)\n\n  Stocks and bonds\n\n  Annuities\n\n  Mutual funds statements\n\n  529 college savings plan statements\n\n  Medical savings account statements\n\n  Children's savings account statements\n\n  Copy of any trusts\n\n  Amount of cash on hand\n\nEmployment\/Income\/Self-Employed Business\n\n  Pay stubs for the past sixty days\n\n  The past two to five years of filed tax returns (personal, joint, business)\n\n  Past two years; bonus or commission statements\n\n  Additional perks\/benefits (car allowance, etc.)\n\n  Business expenses (reimbursed and non-reimbursed)\n\n  Accounts receivable\n\n  Accounts payable\n\n  Profit and loss statement for the past six months\n\n  Twelve months of business bank statements (more if deemed necessary)\n\n  Existing contracts\n\n  Stock options\n\nPersonal\n\n  Birth certificates\n\n  Social security cards for every family member\n\n  Passports for every family member\n\n  Driver's licenses for every family member\n\n  Marriage license (we're hoping you haven't burned it quite yet)\n\n  Life insurance policies\n\n  Will\n\n  Health, dental, and vision insurance cards\n\nDeeds\/Titles\n\n  Car titles\n\n  Boat, RV, etc. titles\n\n  Deed to home\n\n  Deed to other properties or land owned\n\nAppraised Assets\n\n  Jewelry appraisals\n\n  Artwork appraisals\n\n  Collection appraisals\n\n  Appraisals of other high-value items\n\nMiscellaneous\n\n  Gym memberships\n\n  Club memberships (country club, Costco, Bon Jovi fan club)\n\n  Season tickets\n\n  Organization memberships (museums, zoo, etc.)\n\n  Frequent flyer miles\n\n  Gift certificates\n\n  Loyalty memberships (hotels, rental cars, DSW shoes, etc.)\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nAn Imprint of Penguin Random House\n\nPenguin.com\n\nRAZORBILL & colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.\n\nFirst published in the United States of America by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2017\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2017 Penguin Random House LLC\n\nPenguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.\n\nLIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE\n\nEbook ISBN: 9780448493572\n\nThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.\n\nVersion_1\nFor you, the unifiers of our universe:\n\nMay we work together to heal our worlds.\n\n# CONTENTS\n\n_Title Page_\n\n_Copyright_\n\n_Dedication_\n\n_Map_\n\n_The Houses of the Zodiac Galaxy_\n\nPrologue\n\nChapter 1\n\nChapter 2\n\nChapter 3\n\nChapter 4\n\nChapter 5\n\nChapter 6\n\nChapter 7\n\nChapter 8\n\nChapter 9\n\nChapter 10\n\nChapter 11\n\nChapter 12\n\nChapter 13\n\nChapter 14\n\nChapter 15\n\nChapter 16\n\nChapter 17\n\nChapter 18\n\nChapter 19\n\nChapter 20\n\nChapter 21\n\nChapter 22\n\nChapter 23\n\nChapter 24\n\nChapter 25\n\nChapter 26\n\nChapter 27\n\nChapter 28\n\nChapter 29\n\nChapter 30\n\nChapter 31\n\nChapter 32\n\nChapter 33\n\nChapter 34\n\nChapter 35\n\nChapter 36\n\nChapter 37\n\nChapter 38\n\nChapter 39\n\nChapter 40\n\nChapter 41\n\nChapter 42\n\nChapter 43\n\n_Acknowledgments_\n\n_About the Author_\n\nTHE HOUSES OF THE ZODIAC GALAXY\n\nTHE FIRST HOUSE:\n\nARIES, THE RAM CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Military\n\nGuardian: General Eurek\n\nFlag: Red\n\nZodai: Majors\n\nTHE SECOND HOUSE:\n\nTAURUS, THE BULL CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Industry\n\nGuardian: Chief Executive Purecell\n\nFlag: Olive green\n\nZodai: Promisaries\n\nTHE THIRD HOUSE:\n\nGEMINI, THE DOUBLE CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Imagination\n\nGuardians: Twins Caaseum (deceased) and Rubidum\n\nFlag: Orange\n\nZodai: Dreamcasters\n\nTHE FOURTH HOUSE:\n\nCANCER, THE CRAB CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Nurture\n\nGuardian: Holy Mother Rho\n\nFlag: Blue\n\nZodai: Lodestars\n\nTHE FIFTH HOUSE:\n\nLEO, THE LION CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Passion\n\nGuardian: Holy Leader Aurelius\n\nFlag: Royal purple\n\nZodai: Lionhearts\n\nTHE SIXTH HOUSE:\n\nVIRGO, THE TRIPLE VIRGIN CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Sustenance\n\nGuardian: Empress Moira\n\n(in critical condition)\n\nFlag: Emerald green\n\nZodai: Ministers\n\nTHE SEVENTH HOUSE:\n\nLIBRA, THE SCALES OF JUSTICE CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Justice\n\nGuardian: Lord Hysan\n\nFlag: Yellow\n\nZodai: Knights\n\nTHE EIGHTH HOUSE:\n\nSCORPIO, THE SCORPION CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Innovation\n\nGuardian: Chieftain Skiff\n\nFlag: Black\n\nZodai: Stridents\n\nTHE NINTH HOUSE:\n\nSAGITTARIUS, THE ARCHER CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Curiosity\n\nGuardian: Guardian Brynda\n\nFlag: Lavender\n\nZodai: Stargazers\n\nTHE TENTH HOUSE:\n\nCAPRICORN, THE SEAGOAT CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Wisdom\n\nGuardian: Sage Ferez\n\nFlag: Brown\n\nZodai: Chroniclers\n\nTHE ELEVENTH HOUSE:\n\nAQUARIUS, THE WATER BEARER CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Philosophy\n\nGuardian: Supreme Guardian Gortheaux the Thirty-Third\n\nFlag: Aqua\n\nZodai: Elders\n\nTHE TWELFTH HOUSE:\n\nPISCES, THE FISH CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Spirituality\n\nGuardian: Prophet Marinda\n\nFlag: Silver\n\nZodai: Disciples\n\nTHE THIRTEENTH HOUSE:\n\nOPHIUCHUS, THE SERPENT BEARER CONSTELLATION\n\nStrength: Unity\n\nGuardian: Master Ophiuchus\n\nFlag: White\n\nZodai: Sires\nPROLOGUE\n\nWHEN I THINK OF MY brother, I hear his comforting voice.\n\nStanton's words have always been my lifeline: They have the power to soothe me, guide me, even save me from my nightmares. I especially love what I call his _Stantonisms_ \u2014catchy one-liners he would come up with on the spot whenever I was afraid.\n\n_\"Don't fear what you can't touch,\"_ he told me the night Mom abandoned us. I used to think it was the smartest thing I'd ever heard, but now I know better.\n\nEverything touches us eventually.\n\nThe day Mom left us, I stayed up late with Dad and Stan, the three of us huddled on the couch, pretending to watch the wallscreen while we waited for her to come home. At some point I must have dozed off, and Stanton probably carried me to bed. The sky was still dark when I awoke to the sound of my own scream.\n\nThe door to my room opened, and my ten-year-old brother's familiar voice said, \"Rho, it's okay.\"\n\nHis weight settled beside me on the mattress, and his warm hand closed around my clammy one. \"You're safe. Everything's fine.\"\n\nMy entire body was slick with sweat, and my breaths were coming in short spurts. I could still feel the spot on my shoulder where the Maw from my nightmare sank its fangs, the same place where the real Maw had bitten Stan the week before\u2014only in the dream, Mom didn't swim swiftly enough to save me.\n\nAnd as the monster carried me far from my family, its eyes were no longer glow-in-the-dark red.\n\nThey were a bottomless blue.\n\n\"Is\u2014is she back yet?\" I whispered as I fought to free myself from the nightmare's hold.\n\nStan squeezed my fingers, but the pressure felt faint, like I hadn't surfaced to full consciousness yet. \"No.\"\n\n\"Is she . . . coming back?\" I whispered even softer.\n\nHe was quiet a long moment, and I grew fully awake as I awaited his answer. Then he slid up and rested his back against the bed's headboard, sighing. \"Want to hear a story?\"\n\nI exhaled, too, as I nestled under the covers beside him and closed my eyes in anticipation. I'd take a Stan story over pretty much anything on the planet.\n\n\"There once was a little girl whose name I can't remember, so let's call her Rho.\" His comforting voice wrapped around me like a second blanket, and I felt my heartbeat finally slowing down. \"Little Rho lived on a tiny planet that was about the size of Kalymnos.\"\n\n\"But how can a world be that small?\"\n\n\"Are you telling the story, or am I?\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" I said quickly.\n\n\"Let's try this again: Rho lived alone on a very small planet, in a different galaxy where things like small planets were possible, and if you worry too much about the science, this story will end. Anyway, little Rho knew everything about her world: the name of every nar-clam, the shape of every microbe, the color of every leaf. Her home was her heart, and her heart was her home, just like Helios belongs to the Houses and the Houses belong to Helios.\"\n\nHis words painted pictures in the black space of my mind, burning up the darkness with their light. \"But one day,\" he went on, \"a huge storm rolled through her planet, and little Rho was blown into the atmosphere, caught in a whirlwind that tossed her about the cosmos and stranded her on a strange, much larger world.\"\n\n\"But what about her home\u2014\"\n\n\"It sounds like you don't want to hear the rest of the story,\" he said, sitting up suddenly, \"so I guess I'll just go.\"\n\n\"No, no, I'm sorry, I want to hear it,\" I pleaded, tipping my head up on the pillow to stare at Stanton's gray profile.\n\n\"Then no more interruptions,\" he warned, settling back against the headboard, and I mimed sealing my lips shut. \"Anyway, she landed on a new world, and instead of the sea surrounding her, she stood on a field of feathers.\"\n\n_\"Feathers?\"_\n\n\"Huge feathers. They grew from the ground like grass, and they were every color and design you can imagine. When Rho walked, the feathers tickled her bare feet so she couldn't keep from smiling with every step.\"\n\nI squealed with laughter as something soft suddenly brushed the soles of my feet, and I curled into myself and shrieked, _\"Stan, stop!\"_\n\n\"Yeah, she reacted just like that,\" said my brother, and I could hear the ghost of a smile in his voice.\n\n\"Only every time she laughed,\" he went on, \"Rho's mind forced her mouth back down into a frown. She _shouldn't_ be happy, not when she was so far from her home. She had to get back. She had to be serious.\"\n\n\"Were there people on that planet who could help her?\" I asked\u2014and then I cringed as I suddenly remembered I wasn't supposed to be asking questions.\n\n\"Actually,\" said my brother, \"almost as soon as little Rho started walking across the field, she ran into someone. A purple bird that was human-sized and wore a wreath of flowers around its head.\"\n\n\"Whoa.\"\n\n\"Yeah. That's exactly what Rho said. And then the bird spoke to her.\"\n\n\"It _spoke_ \u2014?\" I asked, awed.\n\n\"In a normal\u2014if not slightly squeaky\u2014voice, it said, 'Welcome, friend. Why do you fight yourself?'\" I giggled at Stan's high-pitched bird impression. \"Little Rho's shock at meeting a talking purple bird turned into confusion as she considered his question, and she asked, 'What do you mean?'\n\n\"The bird pointed with its beak to Rho's feet. 'I can see the ground pleases you, yet you won't allow yourself to feel pleased. Why do you resist the pull of the present in favor of a pain that is clearly past?'\"\n\n\"That sounds like something Mom would say,\" I blurted, and then I sucked in my breath at my own boldness.\n\nStan paused only a second, and in that instant it occurred to me that he probably didn't want to sound like Mom right now.\n\n\"Little Rho's shoulders sagged with the weight of her sadness, and she said, 'I'm upset because I've left my home, and now I don't know how to get back.' The bird frowned. 'But why should that be upsetting? Every bird must leave her nest, and once she does, she can never return. The nest dissolves because she doesn't need it anymore.'\"\n\nA sense of unease settled in my stomach, and I went from enjoying Stan's tale to not wanting to hear its ending. \"I don't like this story. Let's start a new one.\"\n\n\"That's not how life works, Rho,\" murmured my brother, sounding older now that he wasn't speaking in character. \"It's like in a game when you're dealt a hand you don't like, you don't get to ask for a new one. You have to change your hand for yourself.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"By playing through it.\"\n\nI didn't understand what he meant because I didn't want to try. There was only one thing I was waiting to hear from him. \"Is Mom coming back?\"\n\nHe was quiet for a stretch, and in our silence his breaths grew louder, until they rose and fell in rhythm with my own. When at last he spoke, his voice was so low I barely heard it.\n\n\"I think our nest is gone.\"\n\nTears spilled from my eyes because I knew my brother wouldn't lie to me. Mom wasn't coming back.\n\nStan crushed me to his side as I cried, and he continued narrating his story in a tone as soft as my sobs. \"'That sounds like a terrible life,' little Rho said to the bird, horrified at the thought of never seeing her home again.\n\n\"But the bird's beak widened as it smiled and shook its head. 'Judging is a waste of time because most of what happens in our lives is out of our control. The only choice we get is what we do _right_ _now_ , with this moment. Every second is a choice we make.'\"\n\nI sniffled as I slid my face up on his shirt, which was stained with my tears. \"So little Rho can choose to smile or frown as she walks through the feathers,\" I said.\n\n\"Exactly,\" said my brother. \"You can get through anything, Rho. You just have to let go of your fears and keep moving forward.\"\n\n\"How?\" I asked.\n\nHe was quiet a moment, and then he said, \" _Don't fear what you can't touch_.\"\n\nI sat up a little, sounding the line out in my mind. There was something empowering about it, and I loved how neatly it declawed the monsters I couldn't fight, like my visions and my nightmares. And I knew then that I would survive the loss of Mom because I had Stan.\n\nMy brother was my strength, my guiding star, my anchor. It wasn't just the times he saved me from my nightmares\u2014it was the love and faith and patience he showed me our whole lives.\n\nWith Stan by my side, the monsters couldn't touch me.\n\nAs long as my brother was safe, my fears weren't real.\n\n# 1\n\nTHIRTEEN MASKED SOLDIERS SURROUND ME in the cadaverous Cathedral on Pisces.\n\nHeart hammering, I search beyond their white uniforms for a sign of my friends, but no one else is here. The lights of the Zodiac constellations hang overhead, and in the center, Helios is already starting to go dark. Half the sun is swallowed in shadow.\n\n\"Wandering Star Rhoma Grace,\" says the Marad soldier directly in front of me. His greasy voice reminds me of Ambassador Charon of Scorpio. \"You have been found guilty of Cowardice, Treason, and Murder. For these crimes, we sentence you to instant execution.\"\n\nMy pulse pounds as thirteen cylindrical black weapons are simultaneously trained on my chest.\n\n\"Do you have any final words?\" asks the Charon-like voice.\n\nI try to speak in my own defense, but my mouth won't open. I try to run, but my legs won't move. I try to pinch myself, but even my fingers are paralyzed. This can't be happening\u2014it isn't real\u2014they can't touch me\u2014\n\n_\"FIRE!\"_ he cries.\n\nMy scream freezes on my lips as blue lights flash from every Murmur and blast into my chest at once, the pain so agonizing it incinerates my insides.\n\nMy body collapses to the bone floor, and the force of my fall is so strong that I blow right through the ground and get sucked down to an even deeper dimension of this hell.\n\nI land on a flat field of prickly black feathers that scratch at my bare feet. The charcoal clouds above me darken and swirl, like a storm could blow through any moment.\n\nMy Lodestar suit has been replaced with a thin white dress, and the chilly air bites at my skin. A large silhouette materializes in the gray distance, and as it comes closer, the first thing I notice is it's not human.\n\nIts legs are thin as sticks, and tucked into its sides are great feathery wings. Something about the birdlike creature feels familiar, like I should recognize it, but I've never seen anything like it in my life.\n\nLightning strikes the ground, illuminating the bird-man's features: It's missing an eye, its wings are studded with spikes, and its beak is soaked in blood.\n\nI let out a high-pitched shriek right as thunder shakes the earth. Rain starts pouring down on me as I spin and run in the opposite direction.\n\nMy feet slide on the slippery feathers, and the soaked fabric of my dress clings to my skin as a shadow falls over me. I look up to see the bird-man diving down, its talons bearing on my head\u2014\n\nI roll into a ball, and the ground suddenly falls away, sloping down into a sharp descent. The lower I tumble, the faster I go, bumping my elbows, shoulders, and head on the slippery feathers again and again and again, until land runs out, and I roll into a roaring river.\n\nMy skin stings when it slaps the water, and I gasp for breath as the current tosses me around. The bird-man's shadow falls over me again, and I dive underwater to escape it.\n\nAlmost immediately, the river starts to shrink until it's too shallow to swim. When my head is in the clear, the creature's talons reach down again, too close to evade\u2014\n\nI cry out as sharp nails pierce my shoulders.\n\nBlood leaks out from the gashes, and it gurgles up my throat, my nerve endings searing in maddening agony until I hear my bones snap in the creature's claws\u2014\n\nAnd then blackness entombs me.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI blink a few times at Helios's brightness overhead, and as my vision adjusts, I realize it's a ceiling light.\n\nI'm lying on a bed, my heart racing like I'm still being chased. An incessant beeping in tune with my pulse comes into focus, and when at last my breaths start to slow, so do the mechanical chirps.\n\nI look down to see clear tubes sticking out of my arms, and my vitals flashing across floating holographic screens. I'm in a hospital.\n\nI raise my hands slowly, and my body feels heavy and sore, like I haven't left this bed in weeks. I scan the empty room expecting to see someone. Someone important\u2014only I can't remember whom.\n\nThere's one window in the small space, and it shows a dark, starless sky. My muscles are leaden, but I need to know what's happened. Where I am. _Who survived._\n\nI gradually remove every needle from my veins, and I hug the armrest to pull myself up.\n\nAs my feet drop to the icy floor, oblivion beckons in my mind, and the world grows dark for a few beats. I rest my forehead on the bed, and when I feel steadier, I straighten my crinkly white hospital gown and slowly manage to shuffle out of the room.\n\nEven though the shadowy hallway is empty, a prickle of unease climbs up the back of my neck, and I get the sense I'm being watched. Voices murmur somewhere nearby, and I use the metal handrail along the wall to hold myself upright as I walk in the sound's direction.\n\n\"Don't know what we'll do if she doesn't wake up soon.\"\n\n_Hysan_.\n\nRelief floods through me, heating my skin, and I move as swiftly as my weakened muscles can carry me. My pulse quickens as soon as I spy his golden head through the partly open doorway of an unoccupied hospital room.\n\nBut I freeze when I see who's with him.\n\n\"You look exhausted,\" says a statuesque Ariean with flawless bronze brown skin and long cat eyes. _Skarlet Thorne_.\n\n\"That's because I am exhausted,\" he says, and the heavy exhale that follows settles like a physical weight on my heart.\n\n\"All we needed was for her to be the face of our movement,\" he continues, and there's a lack of sunlight in his voice that makes me flash to the half-dark Helios from the Cathedral. \"We had everything else covered\u2014the strategizing, the fighting\u2014but still she couldn't help herself. And now the whole Zodiac is at risk just because Rho couldn't handle her emotions.\"\n\nMy jaw drops, and my chest hollows, like I'm being drained of every good emotion I've ever felt.\n\n\"I can distract you from all that,\" purrs Skarlet, moving in until she's too close to him. \"I missed you last night.\"\n\nAir hitches in my throat as her lips trail up his neck to his ear, and she says something that sounds like, \"Come tonight.\"\n\nMy heart holds its beat until Hysan answers.\n\n\"As you wish.\"\n\nI cover my mouth so they won't hear my gasp, and I hear her say, \"What if your princess wakes up and discovers us?\"\n\n\"Rho's the most trusting person in the Zodiac,\" says Hysan, and in the dim lighting his centaur smile looks more like a cruel sneer. \"She won't suspect a thing. And if she does, all it takes is a little sweet talking, and she's mine again.\"\n\nI squeeze my eyes shut and rub my temples, desperately hoping I'm just hallucinating from whatever drugs they've pumped into me. Then I look again, just in time to see Hysan pressing up against Skarlet.\n\n\"How about showing me what I missed last night?\" he asks huskily, grabbing her by the waist and pushing her onto the countertop.\n\nI turn away as their mouths come together, and then I bury my face in the wall and try to swallow the impulse to cry\u2014but when I hear Skarlet's soft moans, I muster every lingering store of strength within me and force myself to keep moving.\n\nIf I'm going to die, I want it to be as far from this room as possible.\n\nI don't slow down until I've made myself nauseous. I _knew_ Hysan wasn't trustworthy. I should have heeded my brain's warnings. I should have trusted my fears all along.\n\nThe sense that I'm being watched settles over me again, and I push past my pain so I can focus on finding the others. Mathias, Brynda, and Rubi can't be far, and I need to know where I am and how much time has passed.\n\nA flash of blond hair flickers around a corner, and I speed up. \"Wait!\" I call out, my voice scratchy and unused. \"Wait for me!\"\n\nThe woman turns around, and when I see her face, I try to call for help\u2014but my throat is too dry to make a sound.\n\n\"The stars must like me more than I thought,\" she says in the reptilian voice I remember as she raises a pistol to my chest.\n\nShe's me, and she's not. . . . Even on her Cancrian face, Corinthe's smile is still leering.\n\nShe takes a step toward me, and I will my legs to move, but my muscles are leaden, my body betraying me. Broken chains dangle from the metal cuffs on her wrists, and I realize she's escaped custody just as the pistol slams into my head.\n\n#  2\n\nWHEN I COME TO, I'M in a different dim hospital room, and I'm tied to a chair. Just like I was on _Equinox_.\n\nMy heart revs with adrenaline, and I struggle against the chains to free myself. I stop when I see Corinthe's face leaning into mine.\n\nShe's sitting beside me holding a jagged knife.\n\n\"Didn't want to start the _girl talk_ until you were awake to enjoy it.\" Her voice is almost gentle.\n\nShe presses the sharp blade to my gown's neckline and cuts down along the crinkly fabric until my chest is bare. \"I thought we'd go with a different design today,\" she whispers, bringing the icy metal up to my throat.\n\nI cry out as pain explodes through me. The knife punctures my skin and slices from my neck to my collarbone, and I start gasping for air.\n\n\"Rising into your House has turned me into a romantic,\" she croons as I suck in ragged inhales and try to fill my lungs.\n\n\"When I'm finished, you and your Guide will have matching scars . . . and if that's not a sign of fated love, what is?\"\n\nMy breathing is labored and high pitched as she carves down the rungs of my ribcage and reaches my stomach. I can't scream or blink or fight. I'm frozen in my torment, my vision blurry, my thoughts swimming, the agony so complete and overwhelming that even if I survive, I know I'm not coming back from this.\n\n\"So quiet today, Rho. . . . Aren't you going to tell me how I'm a victim?\" She pushes the blade so deep into my gut that my neck swings forward, and I vomit on my lap.\n\n\"Aren't you going to tell me how you still plan to plead for the acceptance of Risers?\" she hisses in my ear as I hack up my insides. \"How I can hurt you all I want, but you'll still forgive me?\"\n\nAnd even if I could speak, I know I couldn't say that.\n\nBecause if somehow I live through this, I'm going to kill Corinthe myself.\n\nThe door abruptly bursts open, and she leaps back as Mathias storms into the room with a dozen armed Lodestars. \"Arrest her!\" he booms, pointing to Corinthe, who's backed up against the wall but holding her bloodied knife out threateningly as the Zodai close in around her.\n\nMathias darts over and immediately starts undoing my bonds, his square shoulders blocking everything else from view. \"I'm so sorry, Rho. This wasn't supposed to happen.\"\n\nAs soon as my hands are free, I pull both halves of my gown together to cover the cuts on my chest. But when I look into his soft midnight eyes, I know he's already seen them. We wear the same scars now.\n\nBefore Mathias can say anything, Hysan barges into the room. \"What's happened?\" he demands.\n\n\"Corinthe escaped, but she's been captured, and the asset has been recovered,\" says Mathias, standing ramrod straight and saluting Hysan.\n\n_Asset?_\n\nWhen Hysan's eyes land on mine, his face splits into a sun-filled smile that cuts right through the bags under his eyes and the worry lines on his forehead. His green gaze brightens as he takes my limp hand in his warm one, and even though I know better now, my skin still buzzes from his touch.\n\n\"I missed you,\" he whispers, leaning in and pressing a velvety kiss on my lips.\n\nHis _concerned boyfriend_ act is so convincing that I wonder whether I made up the conversation between him and Skarlet. Then I look closer, and I notice the faded red lipstick on his chin and the crescent nail marks on his neck, and I know I'm not crazy.\n\n\"Get away from me,\" I snap, scrambling toward Mathias. I look up at him and say, \"Mathias, please, take me away from here. I don't want to be anywhere near Hysan.\"\n\nBut Mathias doesn't meet my gaze. He's assumed his unshakable Zodai stance.\n\n\"He doesn't answer to you anymore,\" says Hysan, the gentleness gone from his voice. \"Mathias is loyal to your heart, and you gave your heart to me. You're both mine now.\"\n\nI shake my head and grip Mathias's arms to try to force him to look at me. \"Mathias\u2014please\u2014snap out of it!\"\n\nHis blue eyes finally roll down to meet mine, but his irises are now as hard as stone. \"You made your choice, Rho.\"\n\n_\"Don't do this!\"_\n\nMy plea goes ignored as a couple of Lodestars cuff my wrists and forcefully march me up to Hysan. \"Time to deliver on all your promises,\" he whispers as he leisurely runs a finger along my jawline. \"You wanted to die for the Zodiac, didn't you? I'm happy to report that after so many failed suicide missions, the stars have finally judged you worthy of a martyr's death.\"\n\nOur faces are inches apart, and yet I feel no warmth radiating from his golden skin. His sunny glow never looked so artificial.\n\n\"Congratulations, my lady,\" he huskily breathes into my lips. _\"You earned it.\"_\n\nMathias comes up beside us, and Hysan turns to him. \"After all she put you through, you deserve this more than I do.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" says Mathias, bowing his head, \"but this is your right as much as mine.\"\n\nHysan unsheathes his ceremonial dagger. \"Together then?\"\n\nMathias nods and holds up Corinthe's bloodied blade\u2014then they turn and plunge their weapons into me.\n\n_\"NO!\"_\n\nI blink, and Hysan and Mathias are gone.\n\nI'm still tied to the chair.\n\n\"Welcome back,\" croaks Corinthe. Her savage and unhinged smile comes into focus, and I look down to see she's slicing lines across my abdomen.\n\nMy shredded white gown is patterned with splotches of red blood. \"What's happening to me?\" I manage to ask, my voice barely more than a breath.\n\n\"What do you think?\" she asks. \"You failed. And now you're dying.\"\n\nHer blade digs in too far, and my eyes roll back, only this time I don't lose consciousness\u2014I feel my soul floating up from my body and rising to the astral plane, like I'm deeply Centered.\n\nThe molecules of air around me transform into the slipstream where I first met Ochus, and I feel a wintry wind of warning before his monstrous form materializes.\n\n_I endured torture for an eternity,_ he booms, hurling his words like hailstones, _and you can't even handle a few nightmares? You are weak\u2014no wonder you failed the Houses._\n\n_I\u2014I don't understand what's happening,_ I stammer, his frigid Psynergy burning against my open wounds. _Help me, please! I need to get out of here. I need to get back to where my friends are, I have to rescue Nishi\u2014_\n\n_You are not listening\u2014you are too late, crab!_ he thunders at me. _The Zodiac is gone._\n\n_It\u2014it can't be\u2014_\n\n_What do you think is happening to you?_ he demands, his Psynergy wrapping around me like a hurricane, sending chills through my body. _You have joined me in the astral plane. Our destinies were always linked, child, and now we are doomed to face forever what we destroyed._\n\n_But I\u2014I didn't do anything\u2014_\n\n_You played right into the master's hands. The right leader would have stopped him, but you are rash, foolish, fearful\u2014what hope was there ever that you could go up against a star and win?_\n\nHis icy hands close around my throat, and I'm infected with winter. _Please!_ I beg him. _Don't\u2014_\n\nBut my veins ice over, freezing my blood, and I can't suck in any oxygen. Spots obscure my vision as I suffocate, and I'm not sure if I'm horrified or relieved that it's all ending.\n\nI'm so tired of dying and reviving, dying and reviving, dying and reviving. . . . I'm ready for it to be over.\n\n\"Oh, but I'm not,\" croaks Corinthe in my ear.\n\nThe pressure around my neck vanishes, as does the cold weather, and I blink my eyes open to find I'm back in my body. Only now I'm lying flat on my stomach.\n\nMy back is in scorching pain, like there are live flames licking my skin. \"I can't let you die before showing you how great these scars are turning out,\" says Corinthe as she carves across my shoulder blades. Her breath burns my raw skin.\n\n\"Please,\" I whisper, the fire in my body overwhelming. Water wells in my eyes, and pain presses into my mind. \"Just . . . finish.\"\n\nShe laughs softly, but there's no mirth in the mousy sound. \"I'll never be finished,\" she rasps in my ear. \"You'll never escape this place. You'll always be here with me _._ \"\n\nHer blade stabs into my lower spine, and I arch up in a piercing scream. She pulls the knife out and stabs me with it again and again and again, until I can't make any more sounds.\n\nThen I hear a loud knocking.\n\nMy eyes fly open, and I gasp to find I'm no longer lying down. I'm standing upright in my dorm-pod on Elara and wearing my blue Acolyte uniform.\n\n\"WHAT THE HELIOS IS HAPPENING TO ME?!\" I shout to the room.\n\nThe place looks exactly as it did when I saw it last\u2014my bed is unmade, my desk is riddled with clothes I meant to put away, and a uniform identical to the one I'm wearing is draped across my chair from when I changed into my black space suit for our Drowning Diamonds concert.\n\nSomeone knocks on my door again.\n\nI yank it open to find a trembling teen girl in a tattered blue uniform. Her knees are slightly bent, shoulders curved in, unkempt dark hair curtaining her features. She looks like she hasn't bathed in months.\n\nFirst I think she's a new monster I've dreamt up.\n\nThen I glimpse hints of her cinnamon face, and all my other fears fade from mattering.\n\n_\"Nishi?\"_\n\n# 3\n\nFASTER THAN A BREATH, NISHI unsheathes a dagger and shoves me against the wall, pressing the blade under my chin.\n\n\"I'm not scared of you, demon,\" she says in a guttural predator's voice. \"So do your worst.\"\n\nSince speaking means slitting my own throat, I stay completely still, not daring to even swallow. I just stare at the flickers of amber that shine through her matted clumps of black hair.\n\nThe terror in her eyes is so primal that she feels realer than the Hysan and Mathias I met in the hospital.\n\n\"Say something,\" she suddenly commands, pulling the knife back slightly.\n\n\"I'm going to find you,\" I say, my voice tight. \"Imogen and Blaze took you away from me, but I swear I won't rest until I\u2014\"\n\n\"Right, you're risking your life to save mine, and now you're going to make me feel like scum for the horrible things I said to you on Aquarius,\" she says sharply, the dagger in her hand trembling. \"And for joining the Tomorrow Party. And for getting Deke killed.\"\n\nA sob slips through her sharp-edged voice when she says his name. \"Aren't you going to tell me again how he\u2014he was free, and his back was only turned because he was freeing me? How I should have been looking out for him\u2014should have warned him\u2014should have taken his place\u2014\"\n\n\"Nish\u2014stop! I never said any of that because it's not true!\" Tears leak from my eyes, and I wish my subconscious had generated a monstrous version of Nishi\u2014like it did with Hysan and Mathias\u2014instead of this broken, beaten girl.\n\n\"None of this is your fault,\" I insist, and I don't care if she stabs me with that blade anymore. I just can't stand seeing her this way. \"Please don't think those things, Nish. I love you and will _never_ stop searching for you\u2014\"\n\n_\"Rho?\"_\n\nI blink at the abrupt change in her tone. Her voice has dropped about a dozen decibels, and she sounds more fearful than furious.\n\n\"It's me, Nish. I don't know what's happening or if any of this is real, but I'm trapped in some kind of nightmare. Everyone's been awful to me, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, my Helios, it's _you_!\"\n\nNishi throws the dagger aside and crushes me to her chest. We hug so tightly that I can't breathe, but I don't care. I'd rather die right here, clasped in the arms of my best friend, than anywhere else.\n\nI hear her soft sobs in my ear, and soon I'm crying, too. When at last we let go of each other, we wipe our wet faces on our sleeves, and I shove the clutter off my bed so we can sit.\n\n\"How is any of this happening?\" I ask.\n\n\"The Sumber.\" Now that she's not putting up a violent front, Nishi sounds much weaker than I first realized. \"It took me a while to remember, but I finally figured it out,\" she says, her hands trembling. \"The gun Imogen pointed at me was a Sumber. She shot me, and then the nightmares started.\" Even though she looks so different, it's comforting to know she's still the same quick study I remember.\n\n\"H\u2014how long have we been here, Rho?\"\n\nI almost cringe at hearing her sound so brittle and breakable. And as I open my mouth to answer, I realize I have no idea how much time has passed.\n\n\"I'm not sure. . . . It feels like\u2014\"\n\n\"Forever,\" she finishes for me, and I nod as our eyes meet. \"Just try to focus,\" she orders me, and I'm relieved to hear some of her bossy Nishiness coming back. \"What can you remember before the nightmares?\"\n\nFor a brief moment, the fog lifts a little in my mind, and I see Crompton standing before me, flanked by a Stargazer and a Dreamcaster. As I raised my Scarab to shoot him, the Zodai beside him raised weapons of their own\u2014an Arclight and\u2014\n\n\"I was hit by a Sumber, too,\" I say, piecing it together out loud as I go. \"I think it was a few days after you. But how did we find each other here?\"\n\nHer gaze loses its intensity as her focus drifts away. \"The Sumber's mind control must run off Psynergy . . . and our Psynergy signatures must be naturally drawn to each other. What can you remember from before you fell? Who shot you?\"\n\nAs usual, while I'm still trying to process the new information, she's pressing us onward. If we were in class, Deke would be groaning and begging our instructor to ban Nishi from the room until the rest of us mastered the lesson.\n\n\"Why are you smiling?\" she asks in surprise.\n\n\"I just really missed you,\" I say, reeling her in for another, longer hug. Neither of us says anything as we hold each other, and I close my eyes as I breathe in her thick, dark hair. Even now, unwashed and in an alternate dimension, it still holds hints of the expensive, lavender-scented products she imports from Sagittarius. \"I'm going to find you,\" I whisper, tears threatening to overtake me again.\n\n\"I know, Rho\u2014\"\n\nShe cuts out and yanks on my hand, and we leap off the bed just as an explosion blasts above us, and the ceiling comes crashing down on the mattress.\n\n\"RUN!\" she shouts.\n\nFingers laced together, we burst out of my room and hurtle down the hallway, ducking our heads and skidding to stops as chunks of the cement compound begin crumbling down around us. \"Don't let go!\" calls Nishi over the deafening quaking and thundering.\n\nWe turn the corner toward the dining hall and freeze as a massive ball of fire rolls our way. She shrieks, and I pull us in a new direction.\n\nThe air grows hotter with every breath as the fire burns up more and more of our oxygen until I shove open a searing red door, and we topple into the swimming complex. Sucking in synchronized breaths, we leap into the salt water.\n\nWe stay down as long as we can, and when we finally surface for air, there's no trace of fire, not even a wisp of smoke. \"What's next?\" I ask between breaths.\n\n\"Something worse,\" says Nishi darkly. \"It's always something worse.\"\n\nWe climb out of the pool and take each other's hands again as we step through the red door\u2014only we're no longer in the Academy.\n\nThe gray hall has turned glossy black, and it extends infinitely in either direction. The feeling that I'm being watched is back, and I pull Nishi along with me through the passage at a quick clip.\n\n\"How do we wake up from the Sumber?\" I ask as we hurry hand in hand past symmetrical rows of nondescript doors.\n\n\"It's not up to us. Whoever has our bodies has to administer the antidote.\"\n\nI slow down in disgust at the thought of someone else having complete control over me. And suddenly the polished ground rises before us like a black wave.\n\nNishi's grip on me tightens as we start to slide backwards, and we wheel around to run in the opposite direction\u2014but we skid to a stop as the path ahead starts rising, too.\n\n\"What do we do?\" I ask.\n\nNishi yanks open one of the nondescript doors, and we escape into an unknown room. As the door shuts behind us, I look around and see we're standing in the entrance hall to Zodai University.\n\nEvery campus includes this identical chamber, a remnant from the days when all our worlds were ruled as one. The mismatched walls are crafted from stone, and they represent the four elements\u2014sapphire for water, tigereye for earth, ruby for fire, and gold for air. On the ceiling above us is the ancient crest of the Zodiac Galaxy: a massive Helios with twelve sunbeams, each one pointing to a different House symbol. Within the sun is our old name: _Houses of Helios_.\n\nI used to cut through this place every morning when I visited the solarium.\n\n\"Where'd the door go?\" asks Nishi.\n\nI turn to see there's no longer the outline of a doorway in the wall made of rubies, and I hear a strange flickering sound. \"What is that?\"\n\n\"Do you smell\u2014\"\n\nNishi's voice cuts out as a blast of red flame blazes out from the wall, like a fiery hand reaching out for us.\n\nWe leap across the room, falling back against the wall of cool sapphires. \"What's happening?\" I shout as water starts to shower down from the blue wall, drowning my words and drenching us both.\n\nSince the fire's flames are still reaching out for us, we tread along the wall of gold to avoid the water and the heat\u2014until a strong gust of wind punches out from behind us, blowing our bodies across the room.\n\nNishi and I lose hold of each other, and my back hits the tigereye wall, and then I slide down to the floor. Behind me the stones tremble from the impact.\n\nWater is still falling from the sapphire wall, and by now it's about a foot high, so I'm soaked once more. Nishi reaches down to pull me up, and then we back away from the brown wall as its shaking intensifies.\n\nTigereye stones begin dislodging and rolling down like pebbles, spraying our heads and faces and legs until we're forced to huddle together in the middle of the room, equidistant from all four sides.\n\n\"What happens if we die?\" I ask Nishi, shouting over all the noise.\n\n\"Each time we survive a danger, a new, worse threat is waiting for us,\" she says, shivering as more of the flames are drowned by the rising water. \"And it keeps going until the dream finally kills us, and a new nightmare begins.\"\n\nI flash to Corinthe's torture; I instantly shove the image away, terrified that the mere thought could re-trigger it.\n\nThe water is now up to my waist, and it seems to be pouring in faster and faster. \"If we drown, will you and I be separated?\"\n\nNishi doesn't answer, but she tightens her grip on my hand as my feet float off the ground. \"When Imogen shot me, how did you escape the Party?\"\n\nWhether she's asking from curiosity or just to distract us from our imminent deaths, I'm glad to feel useful one last time. I furrow my brow in concentration, and I find that the more I focus on the past, the better I remember it.\n\n\"It was . . . _my Mom_.\"\n\n_\"What?\"_ Nishi's amber irises grow bright with wonder.\n\n\"She saved me.\" As I say the words, the full memory unfurls: \"Hysan found her. They were working together in secret for weeks\u2014\"\n\nOur heads bob against the Houses of Helios emblem on the ceiling, and we cling to each other as our faces tilt up into the last layer of air. I pull in as deep an inhale as possible before we're sucked under.\n\nIt's pitch black all around us, more like Space than underwater, and I feel bubbles streaming from my nostrils as we descend deeper and deeper and deeper. My head starts to pound from the lack of oxygen, and Nishi's hand grows limp in mine, and I know soon this will all be over.\n\nSuddenly my boot brushes against something solid, and I reach down and feel the ground. There's some kind of metal lever sticking up from the floor.\n\nI try to push it down with one hand, but I can't. Nishi must realize what I'm doing because she frees her fingers from mine and wraps both hands around the metal, and together we try shoving it.\n\nThe lever gives way, and water begins to whirlpool around us as a drain opens in the floor, and all of it swirls away. As I finally draw breath, I turn to my best friend in relief\u2014and I run out of oxygen again.\n\nNishi's sprawled on the ground, her long dark hair fanned around her.\n\n_Dead._\n\n# 4\n\n\"NISHI, NO!\"\n\nI drop down beside her fallen body, her eyes closed and chest unmoving. Remembering my childhood training, I apply chest compressions and administer mouth to mouth, again and again and again. \"Don't leave me alone here, Nish, please,\" I beg as tears well in my eyes, and I press down on her chest yet _again_ \u2014\n\nHer eyes fly open, and she starts coughing up water.\n\nAir rushes out of my lungs as quickly as it rushes into hers, and I help her sit up, the tension in my body finally easing. When it's clear she's going to be okay, I finally take note of our surroundings.\n\nWe're in a supersized supply closet lined with aisles upon aisles of shelves. Compression suits, helmets, oxygen tanks, and other gear are stacked alongside weapons like Tasers, pistols, and Ripples.\n\nI help Nishi to her feet, and we survey the supplies around us. Then she wordlessly grabs a pistol and starts filling her pockets with extra ammunition, and I raise a Ripple to eye level, resting its butt against my shoulder. It's House Cancer's signature weapon, but it's considered mostly ceremonial, since Cancrians don't have a violent gene in us.\n\nUnless our loved ones are threatened.\n\nThe crossbow device is made of tightly woven strands of Sea Spider silk that propel up to a dozen slender darts whittled from nar-clam shells and dipped in the paralyzing poison of a Maw. The weapon isn't light, but its weight is comfortable, making the device sturdy enough to keep steady.\n\nEven though I've never held one before, it feels familiar. As Nishi hands me extra dart cartridges, she says, \"Remember that _Protector of the Planets_ holo-game you used to love playing because it always greeted you by announcing to the whole entertainment center that you had one of the highest scores?\"\n\n\"That's not _why_ I loved playing it\u2014\"\n\n\"The Ripple is just a fancier version of the crossbow you always used in there,\" she finishes.\n\nIt feels like years since the carefree days when I used to hologram myself into that virtual reality world. The game would provide players with a weapons cache that holds twelve devices, and now that I think about it, they all seemed a lot like watered-down versions of the signature weapons of every House.\n\n\"I always chose the crossbow,\" I muse out loud.\n\nNishi strides up to a different shelf and pulls down a couple of blue space suits with the university's logo. She hands one to me. \"In case the walls come down around us,\" she says with a shrug.\n\nSince she means that literally, we pull the suits on over our uniforms. \"So where's your mom been this whole time?\" she asks as we change.\n\n\"With the Luminaries.\" It's getting easier to lower my guard with Nishi around, and I continue pushing down on the walls that barricade my memories to keep filling in the blanks. \"It's a secret society of people who've Seen the Last Prophecy, which is\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah, I've heard of the Last Prophecy,\" she says dismissively as we clip black helmets to our belts and holster our weapons. \"There are tons of conspiracy nuts on Sagittarius who believe in it.\"\n\n\"It's real, Nish. The master himself confirmed it.\"\n\nShe stops working and steps closer to me, staring into my eyes. _\"Who's the master?\"_\n\n\"Crompton.\" For some reason, I whisper the name. \"He's the original Aquarius.\"\n\nHer face pales, and she begins to shake her head. \"No way\u2014\"\n\n\"It's true, Nish. He betrayed Ophiuchus to the other Guardians and stole his Talisman to keep his immortality for himself\u2014\"\n\nAn arrow flies over our heads, and we duck.\n\nWithout looking back, we hurtle down the aisle, holding hands, running past rows of shelves in search of an exit as more arrows shoot after us. A dart lodges into the wall a hair behind me, and items keep exploding over our heads.\n\n\"There!\" shouts Nishi, and she pulls me down a row that dead-ends in a metal elevator, its doors opening like it's welcoming us in. An arrow bounces off the helmet clipped to my hip as we slide inside.\n\nNishi frantically presses the button to close the doors, and while we wait for them to shut, I catch a glimpse of our pursuer. He's in a billowing black cloak, his facial features shrouded in his hood's shadow. And as he marches toward us, I realize he isn't human.\n\nTwin walls of metal swallow the view before I can see more, and I blow out a hard breath as we ascend somewhere\u2014 _anywhere_.\n\n\"What's the plan?\" I ask Nishi. \"While we wait for someone to save us, we're just condemned to live out our worst nightmares?\"\n\nShe shakes her head. \"The antidote alone isn't enough.\" Her voice sounds small again. \"Even if you're dosed, you won't escape until you've faced your greatest fear.\"\n\n\" _My greatest fear_? Nish, this _whole place_ is one huge fear fest!\"\n\n\"You don't understand. This is the final thing the nightmare world is keeping from you\u2014it's the blow that breaks you.\" Her voice grows rough, and she clears her throat.\n\nDeke's death must've been the last memory she recovered. Her greatest fear was probably a future without him.\n\n\"That's why some people never awaken from a Sumber dose,\" she explains. \"And I think that's probably why you're still here.\"\n\nThe person I've forgotten clouds my mind again. The one I expected to see at the hospital . . .\n\nThe elevator opens.\n\nWe raise our weapons quickly but step out slowly. The metal doors shut behind us, and we find ourselves in the place that was literally and figuratively the brightest point of my time on Elara. It's the highest peak in the whole compound, a wide room with windowed walls that curve to form a windowed ceiling.\n\n_The solarium._\n\nSilver starlight glints across the collection of moonstone statues that are modeled after our Holy Mothers, and written across the floor beneath them is the Zodai axiom: _Trust Only What You Can Touch._ Any fantasies I ever had about the future were born in this room.\n\n\"No way out again,\" says Nishi, and I realize she's right\u2014the only exit is the elevator. And its doors are opening again.\n\n_\"Hide,\"_ I whisper, and I pull Nishi into the collection of stone statues. I place her behind Mother Crae, and then I hide behind the neighboring sculpture of Mother Origene. I'm in the exact spot where Mathias used to sit when he meditated.\n\nI rest the Ripple against my shoulder, and from the corner of my eye I see Nishi aiming her gun at the elevator as our pursuer steps into the silver light.\n\nI can't tell if the gasp is mine or Nishi's.\n\nThe creature's legs are as thin as sticks, and tucked into its sides are great feathery wings. _It's the one-eyed bird-man._\n\nIts beak is still steeped in blood, and adorning its head is a crown of pointy thorns\u2014they're the arrows it's been shooting at us. Trying to steady my nerves, I lean out the slightest bit and aim my weapon at its chest.\n\nWhen I see that Nishi's also in position, I shout, _\"Now!\"_ We fire at the same time, and the bird-man immediately goes down.\n\nWe approach it carefully, and Nishi hangs back, her pistol pointed at its head, while I make sure it's really dead.\n\nI lean over its cloaked body slowly . . . and it rears up and launches at me.\n\nWe crash to the floor, where the creature easily overpowers me. Pinned down, I feel strong hands wrapping around my neck\u2014not wings, but human hands. Blackness drowns my vision as I choke, and my pulse echoes in my ears, my throat afire\u2014\n\nA bullet goes off, and my attacker's hands fall away.\n\nHe slumps to the side, and through my blurry vision I see Nishi, her chest rising and falling with adrenaline, her face set in a warrior's scowl.\n\n\"Stellar,\" I say hoarsely, and she reaches down and pulls me up. I rub my throat as we stare at the human man beneath us, facedown on the floor.\n\n\"Let's flip him,\" I say. Nishi takes his feet and I grab his shoulders, and together we turn him over.\n\nNishi gasps, but I don't understand.\n\nI stare at each individual feature like it's a clue: the blond curls, the sun-kissed skin, the open and glassy green eyes.\n\nThen I blink, and all at once the pieces come together.\n\nAnd I scream.\n\n# 5\n\nDESPAIR DROWNS ME, AND I remember the Cathedral, watching my brother and Aryll roll around on the bone floor, struggling to overtake each other. I see Hysan and Mathias running to help Stan, but they're too late.\n\nThere's no cry or gunshot or blood\u2014there's only Stan's pale green eyes as they turn toward me, lifeless.\n\nMy heart howls in agony, and it feels like every bone in my body is breaking. I'm coming apart bit by bit, painfully, permanently, and even if the heartbreak doesn't kill me, it doesn't matter, because I'll never recover.\n\nI've already lost everything I loved in the Zodiac. My brother, my home, my House. Returning to reality would be the true nightmare now. I'm safer in here, where the horrors aren't real.\n\n\"It's okay, Rho, it's okay, calm down. . . .\"\n\nNishi's murmurs of reassurance blow softly into my ear, and as her voice comes into focus, I register that I'm on the floor, sobbing hysterically beside my brother's body, held up only by my best friend's arms.\n\n\"It's going to be okay, I promise,\" she goes on gently. \"This isn't real. Don't let this place destroy you, Rho. I need you. Please, focus\u2014this is just another nightmare.\"\n\nNishi's presence is proof I was wrong\u2014I do have a reason to return.\n\nJust one.\n\n\"He\u2014Aryll\u2014killed him,\" I spit out between sobs, my teeth chattering and limbs shivering. \"The master told Aryll to take my mom, and my brother attacked him to try to save her. But I don't even know if she\u2014if she made it out\u2014\" My muscles feel gelatinous, and I sink down further until my head is pressed into Nishi's chest cavity.\n\nShe inhales sharply. \"You mean, he's actually . . . oh, Rho. I'm so sorry,\" she breathes, her voice choking with her own sobs.\n\n\"I don't want to go back,\" I say, shaking my head vehemently against her. \"I don't want to go back, I don't want to go back, I don't want to go back\u2014\"\n\n\"Shhhh,\" says Nishi, stroking my hair and holding me tighter to her. \"Rho, you're the bravest, strongest, most fearless person I know\u2014\"\n\n\"No, I'm not, Nish! I'm not. I'm foolish and na\u00efve and a _coward_!\" The last word comes out as a shout, and it scrapes my throat.\n\nBut still I can't lower my volume. \"When I was young, my mom trained me to trust my fears, and it's all I've ever done! It doesn't matter if I leave this place or stay here\u2014either way, my fears always rule me. At least this world is more honest about it!\"\n\n\"You're wrong, Rho. In here, you can only run from your fears. Out there you can _face_ them.\"\n\nHer wisdom reminds me painfully of Stan. He always believed I was strong enough to face my fears, but he never knew _he_ was the source of that strength. Because I never told him.\n\nI should have been there for him sooner. I stopped being a kid long ago, but I kept expecting Stan to treat me like one, to watch over me and love me and protect me unconditionally. But who was there to protect _him_?\n\n\"Rho, you couldn't save him,\" says Nishi, like she knows exactly what I'm thinking. The way she reads my thoughts reminds me of the way Stan and I used to understand each other's minds, and my heart hurts so much that I have to gasp to catch my breath.\n\n\"Remember that this was all Aryll's doing,\" she insists.\n\n\"But _I'm_ the reason Aryll screwed with Stan in the first place!\" I break free of her hold, and I'm shouting again. \"When the Marad surrounded us, I recognized Aryll, and I called him by his name! I should have realized how Stan would react. If he hadn't known it was Aryll, he wouldn't have attacked\u2014\"\n\n\"Rho, your brother attacked Aryll because he grabbed your mom!\" Nishi's voice rises to match mine. \"And if a different soldier had taken her, he would have jumped in just as fast! Stop taking credit for Stan's death. He died the way he lived\u2014on his own terms\u2014and the only choice you have now is to accept that!\"\n\nLines suddenly start spiderwebbing across the solarium's glass walls, like they did in the crystal dome on the day of our concert, and we leap to our feet just as the window shatters.\n\nNeither of us has a helmet on, so my next breath never comes. Shards of glass slice shallow cuts along my skin and suit as I'm sucked out of the compound and onto the moon's soundless surface.\n\nAnd the instant I leave the solarium, the nightmare changes.\n\nI'm in a familiar gray room, sitting in a chair, and when I try to move, I realize my wrists and ankles are cuffed. There's an empty hospital bed before me, stained with pools of blood.\n\nA woman in white healer's scrubs has her back to me while she sorts through medical tools on a table.\n\n\"Where are we?\" asks a familiar voice.\n\nI swing my face around in shock to see Nishi sitting next to me. She's also tied to a chair, and a sense of dread blooms in my stomach, keeping me from answering her.\n\nThe healer turns around, and I start struggling, desperately fighting against my shackles.\n\n\"Rho, what's wrong?\" asks Nishi because she doesn't know this Riser wears my face now.\n\n\"Welcome back.\"\n\nNishi snaps her gaze to the healer, and whether it's the raspy voice or the leering smile, somehow I know she recognizes Corinthe.\n\nThis can't be happening.\n\nI can't bring Nishi into this nightmare.\n\n\"Our time together being almost over,\" says Corinthe, holding up an even larger and sharper knife than before, \"I wanted one more moment with you to say goodbye.\"\n\n_Our time is almost over?_\n\nSuddenly the room begins to shake around us, and Corinthe's image flickers, like I'm streaming a holo-show through a poor connection.\n\nThis doesn't seem to be happening within the dream\u2014it's happening without.\n\n\"One of us is waking up,\" says Nishi, our minds arriving at the same realization. \"It's you.\"\n\n\"Yes, but you also have a choice,\" injects Corinthe, bending over us so we're eye-level. Her knife is inches from me, reflecting back my terrified face. \"You can choose to stay.\"\n\n\"Ignore her,\" snarls Nishi.\n\n\"Or you can do that,\" concedes Corinthe, shrugging. \"But if you go . . . she replaces you.\"\n\nDarkness flashes in her familiar pale green eyes. \"I'll take out every moment of your absence on her. Every cut, every wound, every nightmare she suffers will be because of you.\"\n\nMy whole body is shivering, and I wish my hands were free so I could punch Corinthe again.\n\n\"Rho, don't even think\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not going,\" I say to Nishi, ignoring Corinthe's presence beside us. \"I'm sorry, I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"You're playing right into the Sumber's game!\"\n\nSince I know Nishi won't let me stay for her, I reach for another reason. \"Crompton could have custody of my body right now! The last thing I remember is shooting him at the same time that I got shot, and if he's still alive, he's not going to be happy with me\u2014\"\n\n\"And if that's the case, you'll face it,\" she says, speaking over me. \"He's already outed himself, so who knows what his next move will be? You're needed. And whatever you find when you get back, you'll be ready for it. _I know you will_.\"\n\n\"Don't worry, I won't kill her,\" says Corinthe, looking at me like I'm being paranoid. \"I'll just bring her right up to the point of death. Every time. That way I can keep her with me forever.\"\n\nThe walls around us start to shake again, and this time I feel a forceful pull on my mind, like my thoughts are being vacuumed out of my head.\n\n\" _Tick, tock, tick, tock, crab_ ,\" taunts Corinthe as the quaking intensifies.\n\n_\"I'm staying,\"_ I say out loud, hoping it helps me hang on.\n\n\"Excellent,\" says Corinthe as the air settles, and she returns to rooting through the tools on the table, giving us space. Nishi leans closer to me, and I wish our hands were free so I could comfort her.\n\n\"Rho, I don't have any siblings\u2014 _Helios_ , I barely have _parents_. But you're more than a sister . . . you're a part of me. I can't picture my life without you in it.\"\n\n\"I feel the same way\u2014\"\n\n\"Before we found each other in the nightmare,\" she goes on, her features drawing together like she's admitting something shameful, \"I had given up. I thought I'd be better off in here, where the nightmares aren't real.\"\n\nShe takes a loud breath. \"After a while, without the dream of hope, it got harder and harder to hang on to my sanity\u2014on to _me_. I was alone, and tormented, and tired, and afraid\u2014and then you rescued me.\"\n\nShe leans over as far as she can and presses a soft, slow kiss on my forehead. Tears sprout from my eyes. \"You reminded me of who I am. Of who _we_ are, and why we've committed our lives to this war. For House Cancer. For our classmates. For Deke. _We can't give up_.\"\n\nThe room shakes for the third time, more violently than before, and Nishi and I press into each other to keep steady. I know my best friend is right\u2014but I also know nothing awaits me in a world without Stanton or Nishi.\n\n\"I swear I'm going to get you out of here, Nish,\" I say as we pull apart, my voice sounding strong to me for the first time. \"Just hang on a little longer\u2014and if this place starts to feel like too much again, know that I won't rest until I find you.\"\n\nHer face softens with relief. \"I know you won't, Rho.\"\n\nCorinthe cuts over to us as she realizes what's happening, and everything begins to flicker like the Sumber is running out of power. \"Who's the monster now?\" she shouts as I quit resisting reality, and I feel myself being pulled to the surface.\n\n\"You'll abandon your best friend to save yourself?\" she keeps shouting. \"So much for martyrdom, right, Rho? Just remember that for every minute you're up there breathing your free air, she's down here drowning in your nightmares!\"\n\nA dizziness engulfs me, and my surroundings begin to fracture. As the room starts to fade, I hear Nishi cry out in agony.\n\n\"NO!\"\n\nI want to hang on, but I'm too close to consciousness to stall the process, and I try calling out to her, but my voice is gone. The whole scene is slipping through my thoughts, like trying to hold water in my hands.\n\nI don't know who, or what, will be waiting for me when I awaken.\n\nAll I know is I have to save Nishi from my nightmares.\n\nAnd I have to do it _now_.\n\n# 6\n\nTICK, TOCK, TICK, TOCK, CRAB.\n\nI open my eyes to find four unfamiliar faces peering down at me. All are wearing white healer's scrubs.\n\n\"She's awake!\" says the youngest-looking healer, who's probably my age\u2014though she's about a foot taller. \"Hi, Rho!\"\n\n\" _Finally_ ,\" says a woman who seems only slightly older, her hair so red it looks like it's on fire. \"Check out her dumb expression, though. Could be a sign of brain damage.\"\n\n\"Oh, do be quiet, Kenza,\" says the only man in the group. He's so heavily muscled that he looks like a professional holo-wrestler. I must be on Aries.\n\nI survey the woman closest to me last, and she smiles down gently. \"Welcome back, Wandering Star.\" Her voice is soft and soothing, at odds with the static-style white noise buzzing in my mind.\n\n\"Focus on the sound of my voice . . . breathe in deeply, go ahead and inhale, slow and easy, and then exhale, taking your time. Good. Can you feel my hand on yours? Blink for yes.\"\n\nMost of my body is numb, but I start to feel a small pressure on my hand. I blink.\n\n\"Good. Now can you squeeze my fingers?\"\n\nIt takes me a while to locate my muscle's strings, to remember where to pull and what to push to activate my various joints. But I think I manage to move my fingers a little.\n\n\"Good, you're doing great, Rho. Any moment now, the buzzing in your head will fade, and you'll be able to think clearly. Take your time, don't rush, don't panic. Just remember you're safe, and you're awake.\"\n\nWhen most of the numbness melts, I feel like I've just surfaced from a deep dive that lasted days. I blink a few times, and then I clench my hands, one of which is still entwined with the fingers of the woman beside me. \"Good,\" she says soothingly. \"I'm going to raise your backrest so you can sit up.\"\n\nThe bed gradually begins to curve, and I carefully shift a little, my muscles sore from lack of use. \"You're on Aries, and you're among friends,\" she goes on.\n\n\"Hysan is going to be so happy!\" squeals the youngest of the women, and then she covers her mouth like she's said something wrong. \"Sorry\u2014it's just, he's been sitting here, holding your hand around the clock, and\u2014\"\n\n\"Th\u2014thank you.\"\n\nMy voice is soft and insubstantial, but it's enough to silence her. I swallow, and the woman holding my hand says, \"Would you like some water?\" I nod, and the man passes her a glass, which she holds for me as I drink.\n\nThe cool liquid relieves the tightness in my throat, and after a few sips, I ask, \"How long was I out?\"\n\n\"Almost three galactic weeks,\" reports the man.\n\n\"Is there any news on Nishi?\"\n\nNo one answers immediately. Then the fiery-haired Ariean asks, \"What the Helios is a _Nishi_?\"\n\nScowling, I try to get out of bed, but I feel a slight pressure on my arm. \"Slow down,\" says the woman with the kind voice, as she gently eases me back. \"Your friends are in training, but we can summon them here for you if you'd like.\"\n\nThe youngest healer leans forward. \"I can go get Hysan\u2014\"\n\n\" _No_ ,\" I say, a little too quickly. \"I need a moment . . . please.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" says the older woman. \"We'll give you space to gather yourself. Remember to relax and go slow, okay?\"\n\nI nod, and as soon as they're gone I look down at the three lightweight metallic disks clinging to my crinkly white gown like they're magnetized. When I pluck one off, it pulls away easily. It seems to be a noninvasive sensor that reports my vitals to the holographic screens around me, because as I pull each one off, the displays disappear.\n\nIt takes a while to trust my feet to hold my weight. Once I'm finally standing barefoot on the cold floor, I have to lean against the bed for a long moment before I can take my first step. I flash back to the hospital from my nightmares, and part of me wonders whether I've actually woken up or if I'm still trapped inside that Sumber.\n\nMaybe I'll never know.\n\nI find my clean Lodestar suit and boots inside the dresser. I strip off the crinkly gown, and when I'm naked, I inspect my reflection in the mirror for any signs of Corinthe's torture from the Sumber. But all I see are the mostly healed scars on my left arm.\n\nThe Scarab around my wrist is gone and my nails have grown back, but Sirna's pink pearl necklace still hangs from my neck. I wonder what happened to the other pearl necklace, the one Mom made me a decade ago that Crompton re-created.\n\nI also wonder what happened to Crompton.\n\nAnd _Mom_.\n\nI crack open the door once I'm dressed, and I step into a rocky passage that's not at all what I expected. It reminds me a bit of the Zodiax, and I get the sense I'm underground. So this can't be Phaetonis; it must be one of the other Ariean planets\u2014Phobos or Phaet\u2014since neither of them has a breathable atmosphere.\n\nThe corridor spills into a high-arched, cavernous space that looks like the hollowed-out inside of a mountain. The balconies of higher levels are illuminated by red bonfires that provide most of the light in the place, and all around me Arieans are marching in different directions, most of them lugging weapons and tools and gear.\n\nThis has to be Phaet\u2014the smallest Ariean planet. We studied it in school because it houses The Bellow, the highest-security prison in the Zodiac, which is built inside a mountain. Most likely, _this_ mountain.\n\nThe House's Majors\u2014Ariean Zodai\u2014guard The Bellow. Even when the junta of warlords overturned the government and marginalized the Zodai, they left Phaet alone. It's just a prison planet, and historically, regardless of the power battles happening on Phaetonis, the Zodai have never stopped guarding it.\n\nFrom the way the Majors are shuffling back and forth, their red suits covered in soot and scratches and burns, this place feels like an underground forge that's in the midst of preparing for war. The mountain is so dark and oppressive that I'm immediately depressed about being stuck inside. After all those nightmares, I need to breathe fresh air.\n\nI need to be outside.\n\nThe giant Arieans pay me no attention as I thread through them, and soon I start to feel a light breeze that doesn't belong in the depths of a mountain. I follow it down a small, rocky passage, and as the gust grows stronger, I smell sweet notes that make me think of plantlife.\n\nBut when I make it to the end of the hall, there's only a wall and a burly Major blocking it. \"What's your business here?\" he asks in a harsh tone.\n\nBefore I can answer, an assertive voice behind me says, \"She's with me.\"\n\nI turn to see the statuesque Skarlet Thorne, and every muscle in me tightens. Her hair cascades around her flawless face, her skintight red uniform bringing out the enviable curves of her body. She must have been following me.\n\nThe man nods. Then he pulls on a lever, and the whole wall slides down.\n\nOrange sunlight spills into the cave, and I hold up a hand to shield my eyes. I follow Skarlet onto a stone outcropping that descends to the earth like a long ramp, providing a panoramic view of Phaet. In addition to the giant, golden Helios, there's a second small sun in the sky that's ruby red, and it's the combination of both colors that's giving everything an orange glare.\n\nThe grassy horizon holds three large hills, and massive Rams as large as Pegazi graze along the banks of a dozen blue rivulets that wind around the hills and disappear into the surrounding forest. Each of the three hills is topped with a monumental stone fortress.\n\n\"What the hell is going on?\" I demand when Skarlet doesn't volunteer an explanation on her own.\n\nShe chuckles and starts walking down the ramp. I grudgingly follow, annoyed to find myself suddenly dependent on her.\n\n\"Our Zodai terraformed this planet a long time ago.\" She's so leggy that I have to take two steps for every one of hers. \"We never told anyone, not even the rest of our House, and since The Bellow is as much as most people ever see of this planet, we've been able to keep the forest hidden.\"\n\n_\"Why?\"_\n\nShe sighs and slows down to keep pace with me. \"Because our people are constantly rising up. In the early days of our House, our Zodai decided we would need a failsafe, and since the Majors have always had control of this planet, they terraformed this place so we'd have a haven and a training ground. Over time, we've managed to quietly transfer over the most important pieces of our history here, in case Phaetonis ever falls apart . . . which it very nearly has.\"\n\nI spot a few groups of Zodai spread out along the landscape, but we're too far to see anyone clearly. Some people seem to be practicing Yarrot, some are speaking in groups, and some are training with weapons. From the range of uniform colors represented, it looks like the whole Zodiac is here.\n\n\"Haven't you noticed how a lie grows exponentially more powerful over time?\" asks Skarlet, her bronze brown skin shimmering in the suns' light. \"When people are repeatedly told the same thing by those in power, they tend to believe it\u2014that is, until a girl raises her voice to prove power wrong.\"\n\nI think she might be complimenting me, but it's hard to tell since everything that comes out of her mouth sounds like a challenge.\n\nThe stone ramp ends, and as we step onto the grassy ground, I turn around to take in the view behind me. Beyond the towering mountain, the woods seem to grow wild, with trees as tall as starscrapers covered in autumnal foliage. Plumes of black smoke rise over the coppery treetops, like a fire getting out of control.\n\n\"That's the Everblaze,\" she says, following my gaze. \"It's a fire that's never gone out. Our forebears used to burn our warriors' souls there so their spirits could rise to Helios, and our Zodai still carry on that tradition. Phaet is the most special part of our House,\" she adds, and I think this is probably as gentle as her voice gets. \"It's always been a warrior's world . . . a land where the spirituality of the Zodai and the might of the soldier meet.\"\n\nI follow her onto a dirt path that unfurls in the direction of the stone fortresses, and I pan my gaze across the closest group of Zodai, their faces growing more distinct as we approach. When their familiar features sharpen, my breath catches as I make out Mathias's dark locks and Hysan's golden head.\n\nThey're speaking apart from the others, and I don't see Mom or Pandora or Brynda or Rubi nearby.\n\nRather than picking up my pace, my legs seem to grow heavier at the sight of the guys, and I stop moving altogether the instant it hits me that Skarlet is taking me right to them.\n\n\"Don't you want to see your _boyfriend_?\" she asks, her tone almost taunting.\n\nI thought the tension between us was something I brought back from the Sumber, but now I realize it's coming from her, too. I guess Hysan must have told her about us . . . and I don't think she's used to coming in second place.\n\nRather than answer, I step off the dirt path and cut across the grass in a new direction, away from the crowd. I don't elaborate, and Skarlet doesn't ask.\n\n\"Then how about a shower?\" she offers instead. I glare at her, and she crinkles her nose. \"You smell awful.\"\n\nRolling my eyes, I ask, \"Do I have a room somewhere?\"\n\n\"This way.\" She marches us toward the forest, and I don't look back because I don't want to risk Hysan or Mathias spotting me. So to keep focused on what matters, I ask, \"What happened when I shot Crompton?\"\n\n\"When their master fell, his soldiers prioritized his life over the mission, and they rushed him to safety, leaving you behind. The Guardians knew the master would likely return for you, so you had to be hidden. General Eurek agreed to give you sanctuary here.\"\n\nWhen we reach the shade of the tree line, I can't pry my gaze off the oranges and reds and golds of the foliage. I'm so busy looking up that I nearly walk into a pair of giant Rams, and I only steer myself away at the last moment.\n\nSkarlet laughs, and I turn to see that she was watching me\u2014and most likely hoping I'd collide with them. I bite down on my lip to keep from calling her what I think she is, and I take in the two enormous creatures I nearly hit, ogling at their curved ivory horns and muscled backs.\n\nOne of them is black furred and white horned, the other white furred and black horned. They look terrifying, but they don't seem the least bit interested in us.\n\nAfter being asleep for so long, my muscles are sore from all this walking, but I won't give Skarlet the satisfaction of seeing my weakness. Still, I'm relieved when a stone keep comes into view\u2014much smaller than the three fortresses on the hilltops\u2014its doors wide open.\n\nThere's no guard by the entrance, nor do I see much in the way of security, not like there was inside the mountain. This whole forest feels like a secret garden where Arieans can let down their armor and just be themselves. It's like the Majors' own version of Zenith and Paloma's hideout.\n\nWe step into a cool, dim chamber outfitted with a sitting area of lumpy and mismatched couches, a couple of wallscreens, and dozens of shelves stuffed with ancient-looking paper books. \"The dining hall is through there,\" says Skarlet, pointing to a stone corridor that leads beyond this room, \"and the bathrooms are downstairs,\" she points to a staircase at the other end of the space. \"Got it?\"\n\nI nod. I guess that's the extent of our tour.\n\n\"So where's my stuff?\"\n\n\"In your lodgings,\" she says, and she marches across the keep to a door at its other end. When we step through it, we're outside again.\n\nOn this side of the structure, the forest's trees are more spaced out, and sitting between them are massive, multihued tents of every fashion\u2014I see a black one studded with silver stars, a rainbow one with color-changing stripes, a hi-tech one that projects a slideshow of holographic captures, and more.\n\n\"Every Zodai picks out their tent and chooses where to place it,\" says Skarlet as we wind through them. I keep waiting for her to slow down, but her pace stays brisk. When I finally think I'm going to pass out, I see flashes of blue, and excitement replaces exhaustion, quickening my steps.\n\n\"Hysan set yours up,\" says Skarlet, and I almost stumble when she says his name. \"He thought you would want to be by the water.\"\n\nAs the golden trees thin out, we step into a clearing, and blue overtakes the view. A sparkling cobalt sea hugs the forest, and on its banks, on the outskirts of the woods, stands a silky sapphire tent that's larger and lovelier than all the others I've seen.\n\nI follow Skarlet through the entrance flap into a beautiful domed space with a central, star-shaped ceiling window where the tent's fabric becomes clear and daylight shines through. The ground is blanketed in white feathers, and there's a wide bed with deep blue sheets. There's also a polished wooden desk and a small area that's blocked off by a sapphire curtain; on its other side is a floor-length mirror, a vanity, and a rack of hangers with silky clothes I don't recognize in bright reds, blues, and greens\u2014the primary colors Librans love.\n\nMy Wave sits on the vanity's tabletop, my traveling case is on the white-feathered floor, and beside it is Nishi's lavender levlan bag.\n\n_Tick, tock, tick, tock, crab._\n\nMy gut knots up, and I feel like I'm going to be sick.\n\n\"Bathrooms are at the keep, so unless you want to rough it, grab your toiletries and head back up there when you're ready,\" throws Skarlet over her shoulder as she walks out. \"I have to check in with my troop, so I'll see you in the dining hall in an hour for dinner.\"\n\nI'm starting to see why Arieans are so physically fit if just going to the bathroom is this taxing. When she leaves, I try to gather the energy to trek back up to the keep to bathe, but I can't. My muscles are more drawn to the sea.\n\nSo I strip off my Lodestar suit, leave the tent naked, and walk into the cobalt water.\n\nI lose track of the minutes as I float freely on my back, hoping the orange sunlight can penetrate the darkness coating my skin. I want to inhale the salt of the sea and the musk of the trees, but Phaet might as well be another nightmare world. I can touch it, but I can't taste it.\n\nWhen my fingers look like prunes, I finally swim back to shore. Since I didn't bring a towel with me, I'm naked and dripping wet when I slip inside the sapphire tent\u2014where Hysan is already waiting for me.\n\n# 7\n\nGLOWING IN HIS GOLDEN KNIGHT suit, Hysan holds a red robe open in his hands. His vivid green eyes fill with light as I approach, and his happiness weighs so heavily on me that I have to drop my gaze.\n\nMy head is still bowed as I reach him, and I twist around to slide my arms into the silky red sleeves. \"I've missed you so much,\" he murmurs behind me, his breath brushing my ear as I cinch the robe's belt closed.\n\nEven though he's _right here_ , his cedary scent smells faint, like I'm only remembering it. I pull away quickly and pad to the tent's opening. Then I breathe in a lungful of fresh air and stare out at the darkening day.\n\nHelios's dimming light combined with the Ariean sun's red rays now dyes the water bloodred and saturates the sky with combustible clouds. It looks like we're boiling inside a cauldron, only I can't feel the fire's flames.\n\nI can't feel anything.\n\n\"How are you, Rho?\" asks Hysan, who's still standing where I left him. Since he was careful not to touch me while he helped me into the robe, he must already realize something's off between us.\n\nHe probably picked up on it as soon as he learned I was awake and didn't go straight to him.\n\n\"Can I get you anything?\" His tone grows tighter in my prolonged silence. \"Would you like some food? Are you in any pain?\"\n\n\"What happened at the Cathedral?\" I ask, still staring at the infernal world beyond this tent.\n\n\"Mathias and I reached the hall in time to watch you and Aquarius fall. His soldiers were stunned to see him go down, and all they cared about was hauling him to safety. They left you and Ophiuchus behind . . . but they took your mom.\"\n\nI close my eyes, snuffing out what's left of the daylight, and the first real feeling since awakening tugs on my chest as I think of my proud, strong mother being held captive. I have to help her after I've saved Nishi.\n\nAfter all, she only came to the Cathedral to protect me. She had a life she enjoyed among the Luminaries, and she abandoned it to help me with my cause. Because she's always placed her duty to the stars above her own happiness.\n\nAbove her House.\n\nAbove her _family_.\n\n\"The Marad also took Aryll.\"\n\nHysan's voice brings me back to the present, and I repeat the name in my head until I remember.\n\n_Aryll._\n\nIt tastes like venom, and I'm tempted to spit it back out. Swallowing the impulse, I keep my gaze focused outside, on the scarlet sea. \"I shot him.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" says Hysan, the word so soft I barely hear it. I can't tell if it's pity or disappointment dampening his voice\u2014nor do I want to turn around and find out.\n\n\"Since the Scarab's poison has a twenty-four-hour grace period,\" he goes on, \"I'm sure the Marad was eager to get out of there and administer the antidote to both Aquarius and Aryll.\"\n\n\"And Nishi?\"\n\nAt last I spin around in anticipation of the answer I'm seeking above all others. \"Where is the Tomorrow Party keeping her? What's the rescue mission? Is Brynda helping with the plan?\"\n\nSomething like understanding flashes in Hysan's gaze, and his expression clears. Like he's been rifling through all the possible explanations for my mood and has finally found the one that syncs up. Now he can adjust his act accordingly.\n\n\"We know the Party left Primitus,\" he says, bringing up the warmth in his voice, like a musician tuning an instrument. \"But we don't know much more than that yet. We're in the midst of forming a galactic army for the first time in a millennium, and new Zodai volunteers are arriving daily. There's a lot going on\u2014but we haven't forgotten her.\"\n\nI don't know what's going on inside me, but somehow the fact that Hysan thinks he has me all figured out bothers me. I feel like I've become one of his devices: He just has to say the right sequence of words, and I'll fall back in line and follow his lead.\n\nI'll just accept that he's been too busy to put any thought into rescuing Nishi.\n\n\"Rho . . . I know you need time to recover, but this base needs you,\" he says, and even from a few paces away I can see the vulnerability softening his incredible eyes. \"The Houses unanimously voted that when you recovered you would be leader and tiebreaker of our operation, reinstating the power of the Wandering Star position. So I'd like to get you caught up on everything as soon as you feel up to it.\"\n\nPart of me is listening, but most of me is marveling at how he even knows that I need him to stay completely stationary right now. His feet have been locked in place this whole time, like he's trying to limit his presence in my space.\n\nAnd yet, I feel the same discomfort as when I awoke in the hospital and the youngest healer said he'd been visiting my room daily. The better Hysan behaves, the less certain I am about him.\n\nEven though I know my nightmares in the Sumber weren't real, I can't shake the sense of distrust that slid into my heart. The feeling that I should have trusted my instincts about him.\n\n\"So Ophiuchus is here,\" I say, desperate for anything that will drown the doubt from my skin and mute the memory of Hysan pressing Skarlet against the countertop. _It wasn't real_.\n\nAnd yet, the distrust I feel now _is_ real. Hysan lied to me so easily the night of the ball\u2014that whole time we were together, he knew my mom's story, and he didn't say a word. Worst of all, I don't even know why it's so surprising to me, since he lies to his own people every day.\n\n\"He's been unconscious this whole time, like you.\"\n\nI blink, and it takes me a moment to remember we're now talking about Ophiuchus. \"Where is he?\"\n\n\"We have him secured in the mountain, and healers are monitoring his vitals. He's physically fine, but he's in a medically induced coma because we can't be sure how powerful he is in this form. We also can't be certain he won't contact Aquarius psychically as soon as he's awake. So until we know more, we're keeping him sedated.\"\n\nI try to care, but I can't even muster up some curiosity. At this instant, Corinthe is carving up Nishi's skin, tormenting her to the point of death and then pulling back so the dream won't end. Nishi will remain in overwhelming pain, without sleep or friends or hope, until I rescue her.\n\nIf her subconscious doesn't break her first.\n\nI've already lost my brother and Dad and Deke. I won't lose what's left of my family. There's no care left in me for anyone else.\n\n\"Any word from the master?\" I ask. \"Any more Marad attacks? Anything on that front?\"\n\n\"Nothing new, and Piscenes are still in their comas. More are dying every day\u2014we still haven't found a way to reverse the Psyphoning's effects.\"\n\nI let out a heavy exhale. It's getting harder and harder to tell apart the real nightmares from the imagined ones.\n\n\"I'm getting the sense you'd rather be alone,\" says Hysan tentatively, and on the last word his perfectly pitched tone cracks.\n\nI take a step toward him, and for the first time, I notice his face is blanketed in a light layer of stubble, like he hasn't shaved in days. \"How's Neith?\"\n\nHis shoulders slump forward, and his touseled golden locks fall over his eyes. \"I have to inhabit him manually without activating his artificial intelligence in case Aquarius tries taking him over again. I've been keeping him disconnected from holographic communications and shielded from the Psy at all times. Since Guardians have to travel Veiled, I've just been claiming he's in flight as often as I can.\"\n\nHe sounds so tired, and a part of me wants to take him in my arms and comfort him. My feet carry me forward another step, but then the thought of his warmth makes my joints lock up in protest, and I come to a halt. \"Does the whole Zodiac know Crompton is the original Aquarius yet?\"\n\nHysan looks disappointed at the distance that's still between us, but he answers my question. \"The other Guardians present at the Cathedral plead our case to the Plenum and to their Houses. Any Zodai who wants to join our cause is either here or on their way here. But most remain skeptical, and since Aquarius hasn't said anything yet, nor has the Tomorrow Party issued any statement, our accusations have been met with silence, which prolongs people's indecision. I'm mostly worried about what Aquarius is planning during his silence.\"\n\nThis time Hysan takes his first step toward me, and I realize we're now close enough to touch. He holds out his hand for mine, and sucking in a quick breath at the prospect of feeling something, I place my palm on his.\n\nBut when our fingers interlock, the pressure feels just as faint as when the healer touched me. Like the numbness from the Sumber hasn't worn off yet.\n\nOr maybe I just came back different.\n\nLess awake.\n\nLess _alive_.\n\nBut there could be a way back. . . . Ochus once said the worst possible fate is being truly alone\u2014no hope, or future, or escape, or loved ones\u2014which was how I felt in the Sumber, until I found Nishi. It's how she's feeling now, nonstop, until I get her out of there.\n\nAccording to Ophiuchus, the only thing that could cure that condition is opening up to someone. And now that Stan is gone . . .\n\nWell, Hysan is all I have left.\n\nMaybe if I confide in him about what I've been through, he'll understand why it's so important we rescue Nishi. _Why she can't wait._\n\n\"In\u2014in the nightmares,\" I start, staring into his leaf-green eyes, \"I saw Nishi.\"\n\nHysan's brow scrunches with curiosity and concern. \"You're certain it was really her?\" When I nod, his expression clears a little, and he says, \"I've heard stories of people who claimed their consciousness were linked together in the Sumber, but it's extremely rare\u2014it usually just happens with twins. Your connection with Nishi must be very strong.\"\n\nI faintly feel his fingers tightening around mine, and I keep my gaze steady on his as I say, \"Hysan, you don't know what it's like in there . . . there's no time, no break, no hope. And Corinthe . . . she found me, and she . . .\"\n\nSadness softens his expression, and he tugs on my hand like he wants to pull me into a hug. \"I'm so sorry, Rho\u2014\"\n\n\"This isn't about me,\" I say quickly, drawing away and releasing his fingers. \"Corinthe has Nishi now. She's going to make her suffer until I save her. I don't know how long Nishi can hold on. Every instant is a lifetime for her. We have to help her _now_.\"\n\n\"We're going to help her, Rho,\" he says seriously. \"I swear it. We'll hold a meeting first thing tomorrow to get you up to speed on what's going on, and then we can consult the other Houses on the best strategy for a rescue operation\u2014\"\n\n\"No, _now_!\" I insist, anger coursing through me and making my voice shake. \"When Blaze took Nishi, I told you I was afraid the Party would torture her, and you said they wouldn't, that they needed her allegiance too much to hurt her. _You were wrong._ I need your help to fix this, and we can't just _sleep on it_. We need to act!\"\n\nHysan studies my eyes like he's searching for something, and after failing to find it he says, \"As you wish, my lady. I'll go make the arrangements.\"\n\nHe takes my hand again and brings it to his lips. Then he presses a soft kiss on my skin.\n\nI wait for the Abyssthe-like rush that usually follows, but I don't feel a thing.\n\nWhen he goes out through the tent's sapphire flap, I dart to my traveling bag and dig into its pockets until I find what I'm looking for\u2014the Veil collar Hysan loaned me on Aquarius. I slip it around my neck, and without replacing the red robe with real clothes or even throwing on shoes, I activate the invisibility and chase after him.\n\nHe moves so swiftly that I have to run to catch up. The soles of my feet sting from stepping on sharp objects, and my sore muscles scream in agony. I'm going to need a pain tonic to sleep tonight.\n\nThe clouds above are growing as dark as charcoal, but the red sun is still burning in the twilight sky, its laser-like light a fiery torch illuminating our way. We cut through the woods, and I fall as far back as I can so the crunching of copper leaves won't give me away.\n\nI speed up once we're out in the grassy field, in the shadow of the mountain. Up ahead a dozen rivulets tangle through the hilly landscape, delivering fresh water from the cobalt sea to the three fortresses.\n\nI follow Hysan along the banks of the closest stream. The water wraps around the smallest hill and disappears behind it, and as we trace the curving shoreline, I spy a man in a navy blue Lodestar suit.\n\n_Mathias._\n\nI stop moving so they won't hear my heavy breathing. Mathias has trimmed his hair in a Zodai style again, and he's smooth-faced, like the days before his capture. It's Hysan who looks disheveled now, his locks too long and poking into his eyes, his features masked in facial hair.\n\n\"How is she?\" asks Mathias while Hysan is still far away.\n\nI edge as close to them as I dare, keeping my breaths as subtle as possible. \"Devastated,\" says Hysan once he's in front of Mathias. Sadness floods his voice, and he doesn't sound anything like the person he was moments ago.\n\n\"I should go see her,\" says Mathias, squaring his shoulders like he's ready to march to my tent right now.\n\n\"Give her a moment . . . and maybe a head's up,\" says Hysan, and I wonder if he's picturing the state in which he found me.\n\nMathias nods, the furrow of his brow forming a wall between his eyes. \"Did you ask what she wants to do about the . . . body?\"\n\nEverything in me hardens, and I almost gasp. The thought of my brother's corpse makes the world spin around me, and I force myself to fall a few more steps back.\n\n\"I couldn't\u2014not yet,\" says Hysan, and he clears his throat like he's trying to cut a path through a wave of emotion. \"He's frozen, so there's no rush to decide.\"\n\n\"What about\u2014\"\n\n_\"No.\"_ Hysan's voice is almost forceful as he anticipates whatever Mathias was about to ask. \"In fact, I think we should push that news to tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" says Mathias, who's suddenly comfortable taking orders from Hysan. \"I'll let her know.\"\n\nSo Hysan and Mathias are working together to keep information from me? I guess my nightmares weren't so far off the mark after all.\n\nI lower my gaze to the green ground to calm the icy storm rising within me. Somewhere in my subconscious, somewhere so deep I needed the Sumber to unlock it, I must have known they never fully trusted me. _And that means they can't be trusted._\n\n\"All she cares about is Nishi,\" I hear Hysan say, and I look up to see Mathias blowing out a hard breath.\n\n\"You were right, then,\" he says. \"For a Cancrian, the loss of a loved one is . . . well, when we succumb to an emotion as powerful as grief, it can completely overtake us if we're not careful. I'd hoped, since she coped so well with her father's death, that she might rise from this loss as well\u2014\"\n\nI fall back a few more steps, enough that they can't hear me when I crumple to the ground.\n\n_Coped so well?_ What is he talking about?\n\n\"It's too much,\" says Hysan mournfully. \"She's lost too much, she's been put through too much, and now she's drawn the line at Nishi\u2014she's all that anchors her, and Rho's determined to locate her. Once she does, she'll go to her straight away, everyone else be damned.\"\n\n\"So what you're saying,\" says Mathias almost too softly, \"is you don't think we should give her a full report.\"\n\nMy eyes latch on to Hysan's face with an intensity that should be able to ignite fires. His jaw tightens, like he's tasting something bitter, and he says, \"We can't tell her where Nishi is . . . not yet.\"\n\nThe rest of my body suddenly comes into sharp focus, shattering the shell of numbness that had been shielding me from this nightmare.\n\nDespair clangs through my bones, and I try to keep listening past the pain, past the d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu of the dream that prophesied Hysan and Mathias's betrayal.\n\n\"She's not going to like that plan,\" says Mathias. \"And I can't say I'm a fan either.\"\n\n\"Nor I,\" says Hysan, his voice growing more forceful, \"but unless you have a better one, I don't think Rho is in the right mind to hear this information, not when Nishi and Aquarius are in the same place. We can't just show up on Leo and start shooting\u2014Aquarius will See us coming.\"\n\n_Leo._\n\nThat's where Nishi is.\n\n\"We need a real plan,\" Hysan goes on, \"one we coordinate as a team with the other Houses, and that will take more time.\"\n\n\"Can Rho be convinced of that?\" asks Mathias hopefully. \"Can we explain the importance of combining Nishi's rescue with our strike on the master?\"\n\nHysan shakes his head, and after a moment Mathias says, \"Okay then. I'll talk to the others about redacting the report we give her at tonight's meeting.\"\n\nI push down on the outrage surging up from my core, and I turn back the way I came. Invisibly, I stalk through the field, then the forest, then the keep, until I'm back inside my sapphire tent, and only then do I bury my face in my pillow and scream.\n\nWhen my throat is a raw flame of pain, I fall limp on the bed and wait for the aching to crush my heart, for the tears to flood my eyes, for the loneliness to scorch my soul.\n\nBut nothing happens.\n\nI'm not even angry anymore.\n\nI'm just _done_.\n\nI'm sick of being handled by the people around me. Since becoming Guardian, everything I've done has been dictated by someone else\u2014Crius, Mathias, Hysan, the Plenum, Ophiuchus, Aquarius. Most of them men, all of them older, and each one convinced they could decide what's best for me.\n\nOn Scorpio, Strident Engle told me I've been playing someone else's game, and he was right. Everyone thinks they're so much smarter than me. They're so sure they know better. Even though _I'm_ the one who uncovered Ophiuchus. _I'm_ the one who Saw the Dark Matter. _I'm_ the Wandering Star.\n\nAnd I'm sick of their condescension. I'm sick of _them_. I'm done being a pawn in everyone else's game\u2014now it's time to make everyone play _my_ game.\n\nI don't need Hysan or Mathias or a Zodai army.\n\nI can save Nishi on my own.\n\n# 8\n\nI MAKE MY WAY TO the keep after changing into my Lodestar suit.\n\nIn the entrance hall, I follow Skarlet's instructions and turn down the corridor she pointed to earlier. Red flames flicker from torches bracketed high up on the stone walls, and the passage ends in a vast dining hall lined with long communal tables. I go straight to the buffet bar and stack my plate with hunks of unidentifiable meats and rainbow-colored vegetable cake.\n\nMost people haven't arrived for dinner yet, so I sit at an empty table and dig into my meal. It's been so long since I've eaten solid food that before I know what I've scarfed down, my plate is empty and my stomach is grumbling in discomfort. I have to lie back in my chair to keep the foreign food from making a spectacular exit.\n\n\"Wandering Star.\"\n\nI sit up at the sight of an auburn-haired girl in an aqua-colored Zodai uniform. \"Hi, Pandora.\"\n\nShe bows and sets her tray down across from me, and then she reaches over the table to trade the hand touch. \"It's wonderful to see you awake,\" she says as she sits, and there's a lightness in her expression that feels unfamiliar since I've only ever known her at her unhappiest. \"Your leadership has been missed.\"\n\nI observe her silently, but she doesn't seem bothered by my curious gaze. She just gives me a small smile as she brings a bite of the vegetable cake to her mouth. The shadows that haunted her after her capture seem to have retreated, and there's a glow in her ivory skin\u2014a glow I used to be familiar with.\n\nShe's at peace.\n\n\"Tell me what's happened since the Cathedral,\" I say. I need the information as much as I need to distract myself from the feeling that's so loudly radiating from her Center.\n\nHer face grows serious, and she puts her fork down. \"We left Pisces right after the Marad took off. Every House left a team of Zodai to continue looking after the Piscene people, but the Guardians had to return to their Houses to prepare for whatever the master's planning. Hysan has been instrumental in organizing our resistance\u2014he seems to know people on every House, and it's thanks to him we've been able to rally so many Zodai so quickly.\"\n\nThe food jostles uncomfortably in my stomach again, and I shift positions in my chair. \"What have you been up to for the past few weeks?\"\n\n\"We've set up three camps, each in a different Fort.\" She holds up a finger for each one. \"The first is metaphysical, where seers are trying to find answers in the stars; the second is physical, where we're training in weaponry to face the Marad; and the third is intelligence, where we're using advanced technology to collect clues about the master and the army and the Last Prophecy.\"\n\n\"Have you guys made any progress?\"\n\n\"Well . . . we don't know much about what's coming, but there has been progress of a different sort.\"\n\nI tilt my head questioningly, and she says, \"None of the teams on Phaet are divided along House lines\u2014people from any House can contribute in whichever way best suits their skills. It doesn't matter where we come from because it's more important that we're here. It makes me think about the kind of world Black Moon would have been.\"\n\nHer eyes are large and bright as she waits for my reaction, and I try to summon some vestige of excitement. When I can't I ask, \"So what have _you_ been doing?\"\n\n\"I've been helping out in metaphysical,\" she says, deflating slightly. \"Mathias is in weaponry, and Hysan is in intelligence. We could definitely use you in the metaphysical camp.\"\n\nI stare at the crumbs on my empty plate and don't answer because I know I'm never going back into the Psy again. If I do, Aquarius will be able to read me, and he'll know he's won. He'll know I have nothing left.\n\n\"Maybe _you'll_ actually See something.\"\n\nI look up. \"What?\"\n\n\"No one's been able to See anything. Not even Guardians.\" She drops her voice to a low whisper, like she's afraid the Psynergy might overhear us. \"The master is doing something to the astral plane. It's like the jitteriness was a precursor, and now everything is pure static. Reports from Primitus are that the Pegazi have vanished into the woods\u2014they're no longer interacting with people. It's like the stars have stopped whispering to them.\"\n\nShe's turning her Philosopher's Stone round and round in her hand, and I remember that the devices are linked to everyone in an Aquarian's Clan, so she probably receives regular updates. I'm sure the Eleventh House has fallen into chaos now that Supreme Advisor Untara is dead and the Guardians are accusing Crompton of being the master. But at least Pandora can be in constant contact with her family. With her _sister_.\n\nMy gut burns, and I need to change the subject fast. \"You're a Zodai now,\" I say, admiring her official aqua uniform. \"How'd that happen?\"\n\nHer glow seems to brighten. \"We've all been promoted. Everyone who's come to fight has been declared a full fledged Zodai by the Plenum\u2014\"\n\n_\"Rho!\"_\n\nMathias sets his tray next to mine, and then he pulls me up into a tight hug. \"It's so good to see you awake,\" he murmurs musically in my ear, his muscled arms pressing into my numb skin. . . . But just as with Hysan, I barely feel his touch.\n\nMathias flashes me a rare toothy grin when he pulls away and says, \"Anything you need, I'm here for you.\"\n\nI spy him trading shy smiles with Pandora as we sit down, and their expressions don't seem to hold any of the insecurity from before. \"We've organized a meeting of senior officers to bring you up to speed right after dinner,\" Mathias says to me as he cuts himself a bite of pink steak.\n\n\"Good,\" I say, my gaze distracted by a familiar statuesque Ariean sashaying into the dining hall, escorted by an even more familiar golden-haired Knight.\n\nHysan grins at whatever Skarlet says, and she yammers on even as he pulls out a tray for her, and they start piling food onto their plates. The smile is still on Hysan's face as they turn around and scan the tables for a place to sit.\n\nMy hand curls into a fist on my lap. How can he be so carefree when I told him what Nishi's going through?\n\nHysan grows alert when he sees me, and he and Skarlet stride over to our table. He takes the seat to my other side.\n\nI'm stuck between Hysan and Mathias. How original.\n\n\"My lady.\"\n\nI nod back my greeting and to avoid trading the hand touch, I reach for my glass of water.\n\n\"We'll have a full report for you tonight,\" Hysan goes on in a tense voice. \"I've made it clear rescuing Nishi is a top priority, and it's the first operation we'll plan.\"\n\nSkarlet sits next to Pandora, measuring me through her catlike eyes. I stare back at her just as blatantly, until she smirks and takes a swig of her drink.\n\n\"So Brynda and Rubi aren't here?\" I ask in general, without meeting anyone's gaze.\n\n\"They're organizing their House's defenses and recruiting Zodai for our army,\" says Hysan. \"We need to be careful about whom we approach, since the only advantage we hold is that Aquarius doesn't know Arieans terraformed this planet. The Majors believe the Everblaze protects this world's secrets from the Psy. So if we approach the wrong person, we risk discovery\u2014that's why we have to transport everyone here ourselves.\"\n\n\"What about Ezra and Gyzer?\" I ask without looking at him. \"You sent them to Aquarius to spy on the Tomorrow Party\u2014have you checked to make sure they're okay?\"\n\nHysan hears the sharpness in my voice because it takes him a moment to answer. \"We asked them to join us here, but they . . . they decided it would be better if they infiltrated the Party and became our spies. Ezra and I built a special device with a heavily encrypted code to communicate that should be near-impossible to break.\"\n\nI sit up. If Ezra and Gyzer are with Imogen and Blaze, that means they're with Nishi, too. \"Have you heard from them? Have they told you where the Tomorrow Party is?\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" he says, and on my other side Mathias sets down his fork and doesn't meet my gaze.\n\nFrom the corner of my eye, I notice a tall girl in a brown suit slowing down as she walks past our table. She has dark skin and darker eyes, and she's scrutinizing me so closely that she doesn't seem to realize I'm staring back. Her gaze drifts to Hysan next, and when I look at him, I find he's glaring at her. Like they know each other.\n\nThe girl blinks and strides away. Hysan locks eyes with me next, and I see the next lie starting to form on his lips\u2014when I suddenly realize I don't care what he's hiding. Whatever's going on with Hysan and his harem of women, it's just a distraction.\n\n\"She's\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't think I'm up for a meeting tonight after all,\" I say, cutting him off.\n\nMathias, Pandora, Skarlet, and Hysan watch me in bewildered silence, until Hysan finally says, \"But I thought you said there was no time to waste\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm tired,\" I say loudly. \"I've been through a lot, don't you think?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" Mathias answers, jumping in. I spy him shooting Hysan a warning look over my head. Then he touches his Ring, like he's accessing the Collective Conscious to send out the necessary alerts.\n\n\"General Eurek would still like to meet with the rest of us,\" says Hysan, his gaze as distant as Mathias's, like he's syncing with either the Psy or his Scan.\n\nSkarlet stands, her plate spotlessly clean. \"Let's go then.\"\n\n\"Rho, would you like someone to walk you back to your tent?\" asks Mathias as he rises, too.\n\n\"I can escort you, my lady,\" injects Hysan, also getting to his feet. His meal is the only one that's untouched.\n\n\"That's okay,\" I say, remaining seated in the space between the guys as I stare after Skarlet, the only one of the group who's started walking away to bus her tray.\n\n\"Skarlet will take me.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen we leave the dining hall, the others exit the keep through the front door while Skarlet and I head the back way, toward the tents.\n\nAs soon as we're alone, she rounds on me. \"You don't feel like going to the meeting, _fine_ \u2014but you're not the only leader here. I have a duty to my House and the Zodiac, and I didn't sign up to play babysitter.\"\n\n\"Well I need your help.\"\n\n\"With what? Pulling you a bath?\" She crosses her arms, her breath blowing down on me like an angry wind. \"I know you're used to lady's maids and all that fluff, but that's _not_ how things work on Aries.\"\n\n\"Are you refusing a direct order from your superior, Major Thorne?\" My voice is thin as ice.\n\nHer nostrils flare as I pull rank on her, and even though she's a head and a half taller and could squash me like a water-fly, she snarls, \" _No_.\"\n\n\"Then you'll do as I say, and you won't tell a soul.\"\n\nHer fingers fidget toward the weapons holstered to her belt, but she just jerks a nod and says through gritted teeth, \" _As you wish_.\"\n\n\"Stellar.\"\n\nSkarlet may not like me, but she's an honorable soldier\u2014she won't go back on her word. \"I wish for you to take me to see Corinthe. _Immediately_.\"\n\nThe Ariean's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline.\n\nAs she opens her mouth to argue, I add, \"And I further wish that you shut the hell up.\"\n\n# 9\n\n\"I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU'RE MAKING me do this,\" growls Skarlet as we walk up the stone plank, back into the mouth of the mountain.\n\nBy now the night is fully cloaked in darkness; the red sun seems to have set, and the clouds are so opaque that I can't see any stars. Behind us only the shadowy shapes of the forest trees and the three fortresses shade the horizon.\n\n\"This is a really stupid idea,\" Skarlet goes on. She's been complaining the whole way, and her whining is making it hard to concentrate on what I'm going to say to Corinthe. \"Do you even have a plan\u2014\"\n\n\"What part of _shut up_ is giving you trouble?\" I snap.\n\n\"The part where you get to keep interfering with my life and meddling with what's _mine_ ,\" she says as we reach the hidden doorway in the mountain.\n\nI roll my eyes. \" _He_ chose. Get over it.\"\n\n\"I think _he's_ the one who's getting over it,\" she says, glowering at me. \"He was just distracted by something new, but I think it's quickly losing its charm.\"\n\n\"Quit baiting me and open this door. I'm going to make you take me to Corinthe's cell no matter how hard you piss me off, so you're wasting your energy.\"\n\nSkarlet presses her face to a retinal scan, and the world thunders around us as the slab of stone slides down.\n\n\"I don't know what you think you're going to get out of this,\" she says as we stride inside. The wall shuts quickly and deafeningly behind us.\n\n\"She won't tell you anything,\" Skarlet goes on. \"Her mind has no reaction to Aquarian truth-telling tonics, and Stridents report that she seems to actually _enjoy_ pain\"\u2014the sour turn her tone takes when she speaks of Scorpio's methods makes it clear she disapproves of them\u2014\"and even the most persuasive of Librans couldn't charm anything out of her.\"\n\nI wonder what Libran fits that bill.\n\nI stay silent as she leads us into the cavernous heart of the mountain, the place illuminated with red flames, just as it was when I woke up here a few hours ago. Skarlet parades past two Majors stationed at either side of a passage, and my muscles clench in anticipation of an interrogation, but they don't stop us or even ask us for identification. I thought for sure Skarlet would have to do some scheming to get us into The Bellow, but it seems nobody cares where we go.\n\nI'm about to ask her why we haven't been stopped yet, but the question escapes my mind when I see what the guards are protecting: a massive wall of black flames.\n\n\"What is that?\" I ask in awe.\n\nShe turns to me solemnly, the dark fire's reflection dancing in her catlike eyes. \"This wall is what makes The Bellow impenetrable. The flames are from the Everblaze, and the wall is called Black Truth. This is the sole entry point to the prison: Every other surface beyond here\u2014floor, wall, ceiling\u2014is armed with enough firepower to bring down this whole mountain.\"\n\n\"So then . . . how do we get in?\"\n\nHer manner grows professional, and I'm reminded of how quickly the Leonine Truther Traxon switched to his journalist persona on Aquarius. \"If you have any nefarious plots beyond this point\u2014if you plan to murder or break out a prisoner\u2014this fire will burn you when you walk through it. But if you are pure in your purpose, you will walk through unharmed.\"\n\nI blink, completely at a loss for words. Finally, I manage, \" _How_?\"\n\nSkarlet doesn't break her official demeanor. \"I can only provide this warning: If you wish to turn back, now is your only chance\u2014\"\n\nBut I'm already marching toward the fire. I don't stop when I hear Skarlet shouting my name or her footsteps thudding behind me as I eagerly rush into the black flames' embrace.\n\nI'm almost disappointed when I don't feel anything.\n\nThere's just a slight tickle in the air when the flames touch me, and I get the weird feeling that if I were wearing my Ring, I'd sense the Psynergy's buzz intensify. This fire feels connected to the stars somehow, like the Pegazi of Aquarius or the Cathedral of Pisces.\n\nSkarlet is out of breath by the time she joins me, and she yanks on my arm so I'll face her. \" _Helios_ , Grace! I've been through that fire tons of times, and it still freaks me out. _You_ looked like you couldn't wait to burn!\"\n\nI jerk my arm free of her grip. \"Fear is a useless emotion. You should really try rising above it.\"\n\nSkarlet's nostrils flare again, but I don't wait around for her retort. I keep forging ahead, even though I don't know where I'm going, and soon she marches past me to take the lead again. We pass another pair of guards as we turn down an endless rocky hallway illuminated by torches, both walls lined with windowless metal doors.\n\n\"Why hasn't anyone stopped us yet?\" I finally ask when we're out of earshot of the Majors.\n\nShe waits almost a whole minute to answer me, and then she speaks through gritted teeth. \"Because as far as this army is concerned, you're the top-ranking person in the Zodiac.\" She spares me a glare. \"Since you woke up, your position is now official.\"\n\nI try to process what that means, but I can't. It sounds like too much power and responsibility, and I don't want it.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" she adds in a low voice, \"when they realize you left your mind back in that Sumber, they'll totally strip you of the title\u2014but hey, at least it'll be a familiar experience.\"\n\n\"I must be getting you in some major trouble,\" I say without looking at her or breaking stride.\n\n\"If someone reports our little visit here,\" she whispers heatedly, \" _I'm_ the one who'll be breaking the law, since I didn't disclose this with my commanding officer\u2014\"\n\n\"Then let's not get discovered,\" I cut in.\n\nSkarlet starts taking such large strides that I have to double my speed to keep up. By the time we get to Corinthe's cell, I've memorized the number of doors we've passed. The Ariean places her hand against the dark metal, and a laser scans the length of her body. Then she crosses her arms and juts at the door with her chin, like she's telling me to do the same, so I do.\n\nAfter a noticeable delay, the door slides open, revealing an immaculate white room. The place is so glossy and pristine that it's almost blinding, and I squint on walking in. It takes my eyes a moment to adjust. There's a white bed against the wall and a toilet in the corner. Other than that, the room is empty.\n\nCorinthe sits on the mattress wearing white scrubs, her back stiff as she stares at the blank wall before her. A curtain of blond curls conceals her face.\n\n\"What's wrong with her?\" I ask, approaching slowly and noting the metal cuffs around her ankles, wrists, and neck.\n\n\"Before the cell door opens, a prisoner's mobility is suspended.\"\n\nWhen I'm directly in front of Corinthe, I can't repress my gasp. She looks just how I pictured her in my nightmares.\n\nWhat Skarlet told me on Aquarius is true\u2014Corinthe could be my twin. Except for her mouth.\n\nHer too-long lips look just as they did mid-transformation. When Risers shift too many times, they develop deformities that carry over through different identities; Corinthe's massive mouth seems to be one of those mutations.\n\nHer pale green eyes widen on seeing me, and even though they're the same color as Stan's, they reflect none of his light. Her gaze grows duller and colder as her overlong lips curve into a sinister smile that I'm sure will haunt me long after I leave this room.\n\nI glance at Skarlet and find her standing in a Zodai stance by the closed metal door. She doesn't offer to leave the cell to give us privacy, and I don't feel like arguing, so I decide to ignore her.\n\nTurning back to Corinthe's leering grin, I say softly, \"Tell me what Aquarius wants with Nishi.\"\n\nShe blinks but gives no other sign she's heard me.\n\n\"Where is his army headquartered?\" I try next.\n\nShe blinks again.\n\n\"What's his plan? How can I stop him? What leverage do I have?\"\n\nIt's pretty clear she's not going to answer me, so I tip my head toward Skarlet and command, \"Major Thorne, hand me your bayonet.\"\n\nTo her credit, Skarlet exhibits no doubt or hesitation as she marches over to me. Carefully turning her back to Corinthe as she faces me, she shoves the levlan handle into my hand and narrows her catlike eyes at me in warning. I close my fingers around the reddish-brown grip and nod in understanding before she returns to her position by the door.\n\nWhen I turn to Corinthe again, she's watching me without a trace of fear, like she knows I'm only pretending.\n\n\"What does the master want with Nishi?\"\n\nCorinthe deliberately drops her gaze to my left arm, slowly trailing her eyes down the blue sleeve, like she can see every mark she carved into my skin through the fabric. I set the bayonet down on the bed beside her, and Corinthe's gaze follows it longingly. Her arm quivers slightly, like she's struggling to reach for it.\n\nIn a different dimension, an alternate Corinthe is mutilating my best friend's body, and I can't stop her unless I get answers. \"Please,\" I say softly _._ \"Help me.\"\n\nIt's strange how quiet my heart is, almost like it's not even beating.\n\n\"I'm trying to save my best friend,\" I go on, and I take Corinthe's cold hand in my steady one and lovingly stroke her skin. Revulsion flashes across her face. \"Your master went out of his way to recruit her into his new army, the Tomorrow Party. Why would he do that?\"\n\nShe stares at me stoically. My touch grows even gentler, and I tenderly wrap my fingers around her thumb.\n\nThen I squeeze tight and yank her nail off.\n\nCorinthe's scream would awaken the whole mountain if we weren't inside this insulated cell. The nail falls from my fingers as Skarlet pushes me into the wall.\n\n_\"What's wrong with you?\"_ she hisses at me as I watch Corinthe panting in pain over her shoulder. \"The Zodai have more humane ways of extracting information\u2014\"\n\n\"Well I wasn't making a political statement. This was personal.\"\n\n\"These Risers have been brainwashed\u2014I thought we were in agreement on that!\" Skarlet squeezes my chin between her fingers, forcing me to look at her frowning face, and I smell her spicy fireburst scent. \"Corinthe isn't the master\u2014she's a person who's never known anything but hate, so that's all she can reflect back. But you're Cancrian\u2014you're privileged enough to know how _real_ love feels. You should know better.\"\n\n\"It's so easy to think that way,\" I say, envying the simplicity of her outrage. \"I never appreciated what a luxury it was to see things as black or white. I guess it's harder to do after a Riser has tortured you and branded you and murdered the people you love.\"\n\nSkarlet's scowl deepens. \"I made a mistake bringing you here. What you've endured has made you prejudiced\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" I say, setting my jaw. \"It's made me entitled.\"\n\n\"Entitled to what, exactly?\"\n\n_\"Justice.\"_\n\nI go around her and grab the bayonet off the bed, and I stab the blade into Corinthe's arm. Swivelling my neck to look at Skarlet, whose mouth is hanging open, I warn, \"Stand back. That's an order.\"\n\nCorinthe's bloodcurdling scream rings in my ears, and as her blood gushes out, my hand remains on the levlan handle, the blade still buried in her skin. My muscles recoil, and nausea fights its way up my throat, but I don't move away. Her eyes sear with agony, and I start to lose myself in their greenness. I'll never again see Stan's pale irises grow vivid with excitement or shiny with emotion or dark with determination or soft with compassion or\u2014\n\nMy head knocks into the wall as Skarlet shoves me back and yanks her bayonet out of Corinthe. Then she holds up the bloody knife in horror and stares at me like I'm the only monster in this cell.\n\nThe same horror works its way up from my Center as I stare at Corinthe.\n\nHer smile is large and delirious, her eyes dancing with dark delight. Blood is still streaming down her white-sleeved arm, but she doesn't seem aware of it.\n\n\"I knew you weren't better than the rest of us,\" she rasps, her voice gravelly from lack of use.\n\nSkarlet gasps and spins around at the sound, but Corinthe doesn't break our stare.\n\n\"You're not so incorruptible after all.\"\n\nI step toward the bed. \"You're right,\" I say, coming as close to Corinthe as I was before. \"Don't you want to see how dark I go?\"\n\nI take her hand in mine again, and I'm pleased to feel her fingers twitching in response to my touch, like she's fighting the technology immobilizing her. \"Lucky for us, you have nine more nails to lose. And that's just for starters.\"\n\nFear flickers in her eyes, and her smile starts to look fake. \"Tell me what your master wants with my best friend,\" I demand.\n\nA muscle in her jaw quivers, but she doesn't answer.\n\n\"Why did he recruit Nishi to lead the Tomorrow Party?\"\n\nShe doesn't answer again, and I wrap my hand around her next finger in anticipation.\n\n\"I don't know his plans,\" she suddenly growls, and I hear Skarlet step closer to us. \"But I know they don't involve your friends. So if he hasn't killed her yet, he's keeping her for another reason.\"\n\n_For me_ , I realize, and I drop Corinthe's hand.\n\nHe's holding Nishi as leverage\u2014 _she's a prisoner because of me._\n\n\"But he doesn't want me,\" I blurt. \"Not yet.\" He said so at the Cathderal\u2014he needed Mom because he wants to find the Luminaries, but he said I wasn't ready to join him yet. So why hasn't he awoken Nishi?\n\n\"Where is his full army?\" asks Skarlet, coming up beside me.\n\nCorinthe keeps her gaze on me when she answers. \"We move somewhere new every month. I don't know where they'd be by now.\"\n\n\"So why don't you tell us what you _do_ know?\" I ask, leaning in until our noses are almost touching.\n\n\"All I know is the Marad was unleashed to cause as much chaos and death and distrust as we can\u2014to make the Houses pay for their sins. As long as two people never come to harm.\"\n\nOne side of her mouth hitches up. \"But I've never cared for rules.\"\n\n\" _Who_?\" I ask.\n\nHatred hardens the skin of her face until it looks like she's wearing a mask. \"You, _unfortunately_ . . . and Ophiuchus.\"\n\n\"Why? What does he want with me?\"\n\n\"Isn't that just the question of our time?\"\n\nShe must sense the violence rising within me, because before I can reach for her hand again, she clarifies, \"I doubt anyone actually knows.\"\n\nThen her too-familiar eyes light up with deadly intrigue as she adds, \"But judging by his methods, I'm guessing it's the last thing you're willing to give him.\"\n\n# 10\n\nWHEN I OPEN MY EYES in the morning, Hysan is in my tent again.\n\nHe's clean-shaven and sitting at the end of my bed, wearing an expression too gentle for war. \"I came to see how you're feeling,\" he says in his husky voice, \"but I couldn't bring myself to wake you.\"\n\nI don't speak or sit up. I don't remember falling asleep.\n\nAll I remember is staring up through the tent's star-shaped window at the velvety black sky, imagining what new tortures Nishi must be enduring at nightmare-Corinthe's hand. And when glints of gold began burning holes in the darkness, a plan came together in my mind.\n\n\"Better,\" I say, sliding up in my red silk pajamas and propping my back against the bed's headboard. \"Thanks for coming by.\"\n\n\"Of course, Rho,\" says Hysan, his voice fuller now that he knows he's welcome. \"Skar said she missed last night's meeting because you asked her to stay with you until you fell asleep. She told me you were scared to be alone.\"\n\nMy jaw instinctively clenches. Of course she would come up with a lie that makes me sound weak.\n\n\"I just wish she would have had the forethought to offer you a dreamless sleeping tonic so you could have gotten more rest,\" he adds, studying what must be the bags under my eyes.\n\n\"Yeah, she's not the brightest log in the fire,\" I say, using a Sagittarian expression Nishi taught me.\n\nPain pinches my chest at the thought of my best friend, and I fight it down by clearing my throat. \"So I guess we should have that meeting now.\" I pull off the covers and swing a leg off the bed.\n\n\"Not yet.\"\n\nI stop moving as I register Hysan's frown. \"Why?\"\n\n\"There's something you need to know first.\"\n\nAdrenaline burns the drowsiness from my body, and I ask, \"What is it?\"\n\nHis eyes grow bright, making the golden star in his right iris sparkle, and my stomach tenses from the tender way he's looking at me. \"I need you to know I'm truly sorry for lying to you about your mom.\"\n\n\"You already told me that on Pisces.\" I try to infuse my voice with warmth, but his words produce only ice inside me. I haven't forgiven him yet.\n\n\"I know,\" he says heavily, \"but now there's something else you need to know. I should have brought it up yesterday, but I thought you deserved a day to recover.\"\n\nThe same spark of hope I felt when he and I spoke then\u2014that fleeting instant when I thought I might not have to carry this pain alone\u2014flickers in my chest again, threatening to melt my glacial shell of numbness. He's going to tell me he knows Nishi's location.\n\n\"Go on,\" I say eagerly.\n\n\"Do you remember that Capricorn girl who walked past us at dinner last night?\" he asks.\n\nI nod as I recall the brown-suited girl, and his brow furrows deeper. \"She's a Luminary. I've confirmed her identity\u2014she's come to help us.\"\n\nI try to hide my disappointment by keeping completely still.\n\n_This isn't about Nishi._\n\n\"Her name is Gamba,\" he goes on, somehow oblivious to the light that just went out inside me. \"And she's helping us because of your mom. They were close.\"\n\n\"What do you mean? That girl is our age.\"\n\n\"I don't know the full story. It sounds like Gamba joined the Luminaries as a child, and Kassandra instinctively started looking after her.\"\n\n\"My mom doesn't have a nurturing bone in her body.\"\n\n\"Well I just want you to be ready . . . because Gamba calls her _mother_.\"\n\nI blink. _\"What?\"_\n\nHysan slides closer to me on the bed. \"I didn't want you to be taken by surprise again\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't understand,\" I say, my mind abruptly blank.\n\n\"She's been cagey with the details\u2014with any details, in fact. But I'm sure she'd be more willing to share them with you.\" Hysan's voice is soft and soothing, and even through my shock, I realize what he's doing. \"I think you should speak to her, Rho.\"\n\n_And report back what I learn_ , I silently add.\n\nBecause Hysan and the other Guardians need to get whatever information they can from this Luminary, and I'm their best tool for extracting it. So is this Hysan my boyfriend or Hysan the diplomat advising me?\n\n\"Okay,\" I say, not meeting his eyes. \"I'll talk to her.\"\n\n\"I thought you'd say that,\" he says, getting to his feet. \"I'll have both Gamba and breakfast brought to your tent.\" He leaves quickly, like he's just as eager as I am to avoid the awkward moment of deciding how to touch each other.\n\nAs soon as I'm alone, I sink back into bed and number my breaths. I can't let myself think through what Hysan just revealed, or I'll fall apart. Nishi's counting on me to save her, and I can't let my family drama distract me.\n\nBut if this girl's story is true, then Mom didn't just abandon me\u2014\n\nShe _replaced_ me.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen Hysan announces himself outside my tent, I'm already in my blue Lodestar suit, my curls pulled back in a ponytail. \"Come in,\" I say.\n\nHe enters with a couple of Majors carrying trays of food and silverware, and they lay out a thick blanket on the white feather floor before setting everything down for an indoor picnic. I fix my gaze on the tall, dark-skinned Capricorn girl with tourmaline eyes.\n\n\"Rho, this is Gamba,\" says Hysan when it's just the three of us. The girl keeps coming closer, until we're face to face.\n\n\"We'd like to be alone,\" I say, staring only at the Capricorn who calls my mother _Mom_. \"I'll let you know when we're finished so we can meet with Eurek and the others.\"\n\n\"As you wish.\"\n\nWhen Hysan disappears through the tent flap, Gamba immediately starts speaking.\n\n\"Sister\u2014\"\n\n_\"Wandering Star.\"_\n\n\"Wandering Star,\" she repeats, correcting herself without hesitation or emotion. \"I've been longing to meet you for almost ten years, ever since the stars delivered me to our mother\u2014\"\n\n\" _My_ mother.\"\n\nThis time she doesn't correct herself. She just stares at me in defiant silence\u2014like she's not going to cede on this one.\n\n\"Let's get some air,\" I suggest, striding past the picnic and slipping out through the tent flap. Like Fernanda, the Guardian of Taurus, I no longer trust rooms that aren't my own.\n\nOutside, a breeze brushes my face and cools my skin. We march across the grass to the cobalt water, and as we walk along the sea's banks, I survey the golden trees that seem to have no end.\n\n\"You grew up on Tierre?\" I ask, thinking of Ferez, the one adult in my life who's yet to let me down.\n\n\"I was born on Tethys of House Virgo,\" she says, her voice even and measured. \"I became a Riser when I was eight\u2014right around the time I saw a vision of the Last Prophecy, and the Luminaries came for me.\"\n\nShe tells her life story like she's reading it from a book, the words devoid of emotion. And I hate how much it reminds me of Mom.\n\n\"Why are you here?\" I ask, planting my feet and facing her.\n\n\"To help rescue our mother.\"\n\n\"She's not your mother.\"\n\nGamba doesn't flinch. \"That's your perspective.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"There are no absolutes. Every truth is relative.\"\n\nI grit my teeth. \"Thanks, but when I need wisdom, I'll Wave Ferez.\"\n\nShe tilts her head, scrutinizing me. \"Hysan and the others want you to gain my trust. So why are you mistreating me?\"\n\n\"I don't really care what Hysan or anyone else wants. I don't know who the hell you are, yet you feel completely comfortable calling me sister and claiming my mother as your own. So no, I'm not interested in gaining your trust\u2014and if you want me to care, maybe you should start by gaining mine.\"\n\nShe doesn't speak immediately, and in her sharp silence I see traces of Mom's discipline. \"Fine,\" she says, for the first time sounding like she's losing her cool. \"What do you want to know?\"\n\n\"Where are the other Luminaries?\"\n\n\"I can't say.\"\n\n\"So much for trusting you.\"\n\nI start marching back to my tent, but I stop when she says, \"It's not that I don't want to\u2014I don't _know_. Once you enter the compound, you can never leave it again, and if you do, you can never find your way back. As a safety measure, none of us knows our geospacial location.\"\n\n\"Where are the rest of you?\" I ask, crossing my arms. \"Aren't more coming to help us fight?\"\n\n\"The Luminaries aren't warriors\u2014we're seers. I've come on behalf of the others. I was dipatched to help the Zodai, and I was told to confide only in you.\"\n\n\"Confide what exactly? I already know what the Last Prophecy is, and you can't tell me where the Luminaries are, so what information could you possibly provide?\"\n\nShe sucks in a deep breath and scans our surroundings before speaking. \"We think we know what Aquarius needs to trigger the Last Prophecy.\"\n\n\" _What_?\" I ask, stepping closer to her.\n\n\"Not what,\" she says, shaking her head. _\"Who.\"_\n\nHer dark eyes drill into mine, and before she can say the name, I hear myself say it for her.\n\n_\"Ophiuchus.\"_\n\n# 11\n\nMY BODY HUMS WITH EXCITEMENT now that Gamba's information confirms what I began to suspect after questioning Corinthe. And it cements my commitment to the plan I started outlining last night.\n\n\"Do you know where General Eurek is?\" I ask Gamba.\n\n\"I do.\"\n\n\"Take me to him now, please.\" I'd rather talk to the Ariean Guardian alone, without Hysan.\n\n\"Will you tell him that Ophiuchus would make a better ally than prisoner?\" she asks, her dark eyes studying me.\n\n\"Will _you_?\" I shoot back.\n\n\"Luminaries only collect information; we do not share it. Once a fact is free, it can never again be hidden. My orders are to speak only with you, and to trust your wisdom.\"\n\n\"Good.\" I enter the woods and cut in the direction of the looming mountain. I don't know if Gamba is following until I hear her voice at my side.\n\n\"So will you tell him?\"\n\n\"That's not your concern,\" I say, and she doesn't speak again.\n\nThe orange daylight makes everything glint\u2014the blades of grass, the stone fortresses, the Rams' antlers. I have no idea in which of the three Forts I'll find Eurek, and I turn to see that Gamba has stopped walking a few feet behind me.\n\n\"What are you going to do about our mother?\" she demands.\n\nI roll my eyes. \"I'll just find someone else to take me to Eurek\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't you care what happens to her?\" Gamba's dark face cracks with desperation, and it's the first time I see a bit of myself in her. She reminds me of how protective I used to feel about my family.\n\nBack when I still had a family to protect.\n\n\"Once I know the situation, I'll figure out what to do about Mom,\" I say to end our standoff. \"Now take me to General Eurek and stop asking questions.\"\n\nGamba doesn't argue as she leads me up the hill into the first fortress, which isn't at all what I expected. We enter a massive chamber with a holographic carousel of the cosmos, where people from every House are spaced out and Centered. It's a massive communal reading room.\n\nWe edge around the silent crowd and descend a stone staircase into a meeting space. Weapons of every variety line the walls, like an art exhibit or a military museum, and there's a massive rectangular table where half a dozen Majors are gathered. As soon as we enter, General Eurek's strong voice greets me.\n\n\"Welcome to Phaet, Wandering Star.\"\n\nThe Guardian of Aries is decked in bloodred military garb, and as he marches over, I can't help admiring his towering stature and muscular frame. We trade the hand touch, and I say, \"Thank you, General.\"\n\nThe Majors all stand up and salute me.\n\n\"Wandering Star,\" says the soldier with the most stripes on his sleeve. \"We wanted to commend you for the bravery and sacrifice you showed on Pisces. When faced with the opportunity to take out the enemy's General, even though guns were pointed at you, _you_ _took the shot_. That takes guts of steel.\"\n\n\"Indeed,\" says Eurek good-naturedly. \"By taking out the heart of their operation, you found their place of vulnerability and helped us hold on to Ophiuchus\u2014a definite combat advantage.\"\n\nI've no idea what to say to any of this, so I just stick with, \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"I thought you would be coming by later with Hysan,\" the Guardian goes on, \"but I can summon the senior officers now if you'd\u2014\"\n\n\"I'd rather speak with you alone.\"\n\nHe nods and jerks his chin toward the door, and all six Majors file out. I look to Gamba, and she follows them, shutting the door behind her.\n\n\"I don't mean to be rude, but I'm eager to know what's been going on.\"\n\n\"I would expect no less from you,\" says Eurek, his orange-red eyes glowing like embers. \"Aquarius and his Tomorrow Party have vanished. We've been unable to locate their base of operations, yet we do have Zodai who've infiltrated their ranks and have been reporting back to us when they can. Unfortunately, none have breached his inner circle yet, so we know nothing of value.\"\n\n\"So we don't know that he's on House Leo?\"\n\nEurek's black skin pales as he's caught off guard, and his voice drops several decibels.\n\n\"He\u2014he is our primary target, Wandering Star,\" he says apologetically. \"I'm sorry for the subterfuge, but please understand that we can't go there without a real plan, and at the moment we don't have one. He can foresee anything we try, so we have to be very careful. We can't risk the lives of our troops until we have a trained army that has a chance of defeating him\u2014no matter how much his hostages may mean to us.\"\n\nI square my shoulders and make my voice as strong as I can. \"General, I sacrificed my _life_ to kill Aquarius. I'm the only one who's come close to destroying him. Do you really think I would do anything to jeopardize the Zodiac's survival?\"\n\n\"No,\" he says quickly, tipping his head down a fraction. \"I apologize for making assumptions, but your friend Hysan\u2014\"\n\n\"The Libran has developed feelings for me, so his concern colors his logic.\"\n\nIt's amazing how easy it is to say the words\u2014to betray Hysan. Now I understand how he's been able to lie to me again and again and again. It's really not that difficult, if you can just set aside your emotions.\n\n\"I had no idea,\" says Eurek, frowning. \"Thank you for telling me.\"\n\n\"Furthermore,\" I go on, my voice gaining gravity, \"he is _not_ a Guardian and does _not_ outrank me.\" If Hysan won't own the title, then he doesn't get the power that comes with it.\n\nEurek nods and says, \"Affirmative.\"\n\nHoping that his guard will have weakened now that he's feeling sorry, I ask, \"Could you tell me about the Everblaze?\"\n\nHe seems relieved for the change of subject. \"Of course. It's existed since before Phaet was oxygenated because the flames aren't fire but Psynergy\u2014the purest concentration you'll ever come across. It's said that if you can find your Center within the Everblaze, you'll be rewarded with a rare vision that most mortals couldn't See. Few people through history have experienced it because the Psynergy is so powerful that when you try to channel it by Centering, it scorches like real fire. That's why we burn our fallen warriors' bodies there: to free their souls' Psynergy and release it to Empyrean. It's a festival called the Ascension, and the shell that remains is later burned to ashes.\"\n\nI nod as more pieces of my plan come together. \"And the wall of Black Truth\u2014does it really protect The Bellow?\"\n\n\"We believe the stars would never allow anyone through who means us harm,\" he says without hesitation.\n\nCareful to keep my voice neutral so I don't sound judgmental, I ask, \"General, have you been on this planet the whole time you've been under house arrest?\"\n\nHe nods. \"Affirmative. Only the Zodai of our House know this planet is habitable. Our people have so thoroughly destroyed themselves on Phaetonis that the vast majority would never have the means to travel off-planet. The Bellow and the Zodai who guard it have a fierce reputation that people fear, so most won't come near here. We always transport prisoners ourselves.\"\n\nThe door suddenly swings open, and Hysan strides into the room with Pandora in tow. She bows to me in her aqua Elder uniform, her hair pulled away from her amethyst eyes.\n\n\"Wandering Star, General,\" says Hysan by way of greeting, his green gaze locking on mine. \"I thought you were going to send for me when you were ready to meet.\"\n\n\"I decided a one-on-one meeting would be best.\"\n\n\"Any word from Lord Neith?\" the Ariean Guardian asks Hysan, his deep voice sharp. The question sounds almost like a challenge, and Hysan wrinkles his brow as he registers the tension in Eurek's tone.\n\n\"He's with a team of trained Knights investigating a potential Marad base off a tip we received. The plan is for him to check in when he's at a safe communication point.\"\n\n\"As soon as you hear from him, let him know I'd like a word,\" says Eurek without offering additional details.\n\n\"I'll pass it along,\" says Hysan politely, and then he faces me again, and I quickly turn back to Eurek.\n\n\"General, I'd like to give my brother the proper passing rites.\" Something lodges in my throat and I swallow twice, but the obstruction won't budge. \"I\u2014I'd like to celebrate the Ascension,\" I say thickly.\n\nDead silence meets my declaration.\n\nI doubt anyone has ever been put to rest through the funeral rites of a different House, and Eurek and Hysan are staring at me like I've just declared myself a Riser.\n\n\"It's the best honor I can offer him,\" I add softly. \"Under the circumstances.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" says Eurek, his strong voice dipping to a gentle tone. \"The Ascension always takes place when Helios sets, so we can pick an evening when\u2014\"\n\n\"Tonight.\"\n\nHysan's hesitation is written all over his face, so I pull on my most pathetic-looking Cancrian expression and fend off his objections by saying, \"I really need the closure.\"\n\nPity replaces concern in his eyes, and then Eurek says, \"I'll have the arrangements made. And afterwards, the body\u2014\"\n\n\"Should be launched to Helios in the Cancrian tradition,\" I say quickly before he can even suggest burning my brother's body to ashes. My knees grow shaky, and I know I can't discuss Stan another moment or the reality of his passing will settle over me and I'll never make it to the Lion constellation.\n\n\"Would you like me to assemble the senior officers for a meeting now?\" offers Hysan.\n\n\"No need,\" I say without meeting his gaze. \"I'm going to the weapons camp to train with Mathias.\"\n\n\"We thought you'd want to stay here in the metaphysical camp,\" counters Hysan, and I can't tell if it's a suggestion or a command. \"Pandora will join you\u2014\"\n\n\"I've been told the astral plane has become inaccessible,\" I cut in.\n\n\"Yes, but perhaps _you_ \u2014\"\n\n\"I need to regain my strength first. I think I should do some physical training. And Yarrot.\"\n\n\"Good strategy,\" says Eurek, and he stares at Hysan like he's daring him to disagree. But the Libran does no such thing.\n\n\"I'll escort you over,\" he offers instead.\n\nMy gut hardens. I don't want to be alone with Hysan, but I also need to be doing a better job of pretending everything's fine. Otherwise, he'll be the first to suspect I'm up to something.\n\n\"Actually, I can walk her,\" says a soft, dreamy voice, and we all turn to look at Pandora. \"I'd like to talk to Rho about what's been going on in the Psy. We can regroup for lunch.\"\n\nHysan looks like he disagrees, but before he says so out loud, I jump in. \"Pandora's right. General, thank you for your time. Hysan, we'll see you later.\"\n\nI don't look his way as I stride past him, and the last thing I hear is his quiet murmur, \" _As you wish_.\"\n\nBut that's the biggest lie of them all.\n\nBecause nothing will ever be as I wish.\n\nNot anymore.\n\n# 12\n\n\"HOW ARE YOU?\" ASKS PANDORA as soon as we're outside, bathed in orange daylight.\n\n\"You don't have to come with me. You can just point me in the right direction.\"\n\n\"I need to check in with Mathias,\" she says, leading us down the hill toward the other two fortresses. \"And anyway, I agree there's no point in you trying to do a reading. Even if the astral plane weren't collapsing, you still wouldn't See anything.\"\n\n\"What's that supposed to mean?\" I ask, the words coming out sharper than I intended.\n\n\"You're hiding,\" she says simply, as though she were commenting on the state of the weather and not my mind. \"You're not even interested in recovering yet, so there's no point.\"\n\nPandora may not have Hysan's powers of perception, but she's experienced enough horrors firsthand to recognize a dead woman walking. I'll have to do a better job of summoning my emotions.\n\nA rivulet cuts through the valley between the first hill and the next, and we step onto a low stone bridge to get across it. The climb up the second hill is steeper than the first, and my muscles are cramping in pain, my body aching for more recovery time. . . .\n\n_But it's nothing compared to what Nishi's body must be enduring._\n\nI fight down that thought by forcing myself to stay present as we enter the second Fort. In place of a communal reading room, the main hall is crammed with dozens of elevated rings where Zodai from every House are practicing sparring with each other using blue-bladed swords.\n\n\"Why is everyone using the same weapon?\" I ask.\n\n\"The Marad's technology is Aquarian,\" explains Pandora. \"The blue light it sends out is an energy wave. The Zodai tested every House's weapons against the Murmurs in our possession, and they found the Barer is the only one capable of shielding people from its blast. But we're also training in _all_ Zodai devices, since they're so different.\"\n\nWe stop in front of a display of weapons with holographic tags hovering over each one. The Ripple, the Arclight, and the Scarab are familiar, but this is my first time seeing the other Houses' devices up close. I avoid the Sumber and instead study a couple of the Earth Houses' horn-shaped weapons by reading their text overhead.\n\n_The Capricorn Shrill is made from Seagoat horns, the insides of which are carved with a series of ridges using a centuries-old Capricorn technique. When sounded, the Chronicler's breath passes through thousands of intricate airways to emit a sound at a frequency that shuts down the nervous system of anyone who hears it._\n\n_The Taurian Tremble is_ _a stout, horn-shaped device that can be plunged into the earth to trigger a small, targeted earthquake. The Tremble is most effective when used in teams of three to create a devastating and contained quake within a triangulated area._\n\nA crowd erupts in celebration, and I turn to look at the training area again. \"What's going on there?\" I ask, pointing to the Zodai gathered around one of the center rings. Squinting, I recognize the pair of fighters\u2014Skarlet and Mathias.\n\n\"They do this all the time,\" says Pandora, following me as I move in for a closer look. I can't take my eyes off them.\n\nThe match is like a sensuous and deadly dance between two beautiful warriors. As they spar, the audience cries out in excitement, and some even seem to be taking bets.\n\nI've never seen Mathias move like this before. Skarlet lunges, and he parries. She flickers around in her red suit like a living flame, moving so stealthily and attacking so suddenly that it takes near superhuman reflexes to deflect her\u2014which Mathias has. His fighting technique reminds me of Yarrot\u2014his movements are smooth and connected and focused\u2014and he only raises his sword to defend himself. He never strikes.\n\nA bell rings, signaling the end of the match, and there's no clear winner. The Zodai seem upset by this, and they start arguing with each other about who owes whom payment, but Skarlet and Mathias are laughing as they step off the ring.\n\n\"You're tough for a crab,\" she says, shoving him roughly.\n\n\"You're pleasant enough for a ram,\" he teases back, and then he actually _smirks_. \"Well, some of the time.\"\n\nShe punches him in what was probably supposed to be a playful touch, but Mathias cries out and cradles his arm. _\"Ow_! The match was over!\"\n\n\"I take it back,\" says Skarlet, letting out a loud laugh. \"You don't seem so tough now.\"\n\nThey walk side by side, their bodies tall and muscled and sweaty, and there's a comfortable ease between them that he and I never shared. Studying him, I realize he's less burdened than he used to be, and he's almost emanating the same peaceful aura as Pandora\u2014until he catches me watching.\n\n\"Hey, everything okay?\" he asks, cutting over to us quickly, his gaze panning from me to Pandora. \"Is there news?\"\n\nSkarlet comes up behind him, also looking alert.\n\nWe're so primed for tragedy that apparently anything out of the ordinary is cause for alarm\u2014like my presence in a physical training area.\n\n\"I was hoping to train with you today,\" I say, looking from Mathias to Skarlet. \"That is, if Major Thorne is finished with you.\"\n\nSkarlet smiles sweetly. \"How nice of you to ask for permission this time.\"\n\n\"I guess it's only fair after what we went through last night,\" I can't help saying. Her eyes widen in warning since we're within earshot of other Majors, and I add, \"You know . . . how you stayed by my side until I fell asleep so the monsters couldn't get me?\"\n\nHer frown eases a little, but her expression is still tense. \"Can we speak alone for a moment _,_ please?\"\n\nShe seems to tag on the last word unwillingly, and Pandora takes Mathias's arm and pulls him away. \"I just spoke with your parents,\" I hear her tell him as they walk, \"and they asked me to tell you a new troop of Zodai from Virgo will be arriving tomorrow morning with Numen and Qima. They'll need lodging. . . .\"\n\nAs her voice fades, Skarlet says, \"I had to call a healer I trust last night to covertly close Corinthe's wound, and then I had to change her scrubs so no one would know anything happened. This whole thing is too risky\u2014I'm telling my commanding officer what we did before it gets out.\"\n\n\"No, you're _not_.\"\n\n\"Then you need to go to Eurek. And after you've explained to him how you forced me to help you, you can tell him what we learned from Corinthe. It might be important.\"\n\nI wait a few seconds to pretend I'm thinking it over, and then I say, \"Fine. But tomorrow.\"\n\n\"No,\" she says, crossing her arms over her chest. _\"Now.\"_\n\nI blow out a hard breath, and without meeting her gaze, I say, \"We're launching my brother to Empyrean tonight. So I would rather not do this now.\"\n\nAfter a moment she says, \"Tomorrow then.\"\n\nWhen she leaves, I find Mathias waiting for me by the weapons display. \"Pandora told me about Stan,\" he says, his musical voice soft. \"She said you wanted to take your mind off the Ascension by doing some physical training.\"\n\nI nod.\n\n\"Then let's get you fitted with a Barer,\" he says with newfound energy, and we step into what seems to be a stockroom of weapons. Mathias rummages through the Barers until we find one with rings that fit my fingers comfortably. Since it's suited to a person's dominant hand, I have to transfer my Zodai Ring to my left hand to make room.\n\n\"The Barer's strength is completely dependent on your connection to it,\" says Mathias as we climb inside an elevated ring to test it out. \"It's similar to the Zodai Ring\u2014the more attuned you are to its energy, the easier it will be to call on it when you need it. This is where your Centering skills come in handy\u2014you'll need to be completely focused on the energy you're wielding for it to work the way you want.\"\n\n\"How do I do that?\"\n\n\"You dig down into the energy you feel buzzing in your hand until you've bonded with the weapon. Unlike the Ripple, the Barer isn't about having good aim\u2014it's about concentration. Generally speaking, those who are best at Centering themselves do best with this weapon\u2014so you have an advantage.\"\n\nAs he talks, I flash back to us on Oceon 6 when he taught me how to use the Ring. I remember the way my emotions jostled my mind then, adding their own voice to the conversation. But I can't remember how those feelings felt.\n\n\"Metals in the rings convert energy from the atmosphere into electricity. When you're ready, make a fist and think of the shape you want the energy to take\u2014it can become a sword, or a bow that fires off electric blasts, or brass knuckles that deliver electric jolts every time they connect with your opponent.\"\n\nI close my eyes and reach inward, toward the humming in my right hand. It's similar to the Psynergy from my Ring, only the electric current in the Barer is more of a physical sensation than a mental one. I can feel my skin tingling and the hairs on my arm stiffening from the static. I concentrate on honing the energy into the long blade of a sword, and then I squeeze my hand into a fist.\n\nI hear a crackling sound, and I open my eyes to see a blue flame.\n\n\"I'd be impressed if I weren't so used to you impressing me,\" says Mathias, his midnight gaze bright with admiration. \"The second part is projecting a shield around yourself\u2014that's how you can repel a Murmur attack.\"\n\n\"How does that work?\"\n\n\"You have to dig deep and pull the Barer's energy through every part of your body. Only thing is you need to Center yourself first so you're protected by a barrier of Psynergy. Otherwise, if the blue energy touches your skin, it will electrocute you. So the first thing you do is access your Center and feel the Psynergy bonding with the Barer's energy, and then you spread the shield through your whole body. It takes supreme concentration, and you have to feel every single inch of yourself, or you'll risk leaving holes\u2014\"\n\n\"I can practice that on my own time,\" I say before I shut down from information overload. \"I'm more interested in learning your fighting technique. There isn't much of a point to wielding this weapon if I don't know how to use it.\"\n\nFirst he teaches me how to turn the Barer into a bow. It takes me longer to envision the right shape to manifest it, but once I do it's easy enough to shoot electric blasts. The sword is hardest for me to wield, and Mathias and I spar for hours until the muscles of my arms and legs grow leaden. I'm not very good, but that's not important.\n\nI don't plan on fighting fair with it anyway.\n\nWhen I'm worn out\u2014which doesn't take long\u2014we sit on a bench far from everyone else and fill up on water. As we drink, we watch the dozens of fights going on throughout the space, our thoughts adrift.\n\n\"Rho,\" he says after a long silence, \"I'm sorry about your brother.\"\n\nMy throat goes dry even though I've had two glasses of water, and I stand up to pour myself a third. When I sit back down, Mathias says, \"I'm sorry I didn't save him.\"\n\nI take a long drink and don't look at him. \"I should go see Hysan,\" I say after swallowing. \"I told him I'd check in by now.\"\n\n\"I'll walk you\u2014\"\n\n\"No, I'm fine. I could use the alone time.\"\n\nHe nods, and I know he understands. But before I get up, he says, \"I missed you.\"\n\nI stiffen and look at him, and his ivory face grows pink as he goes on. \"When I thought I lost you . . . that you'd never wake up . . . I guess I understand how it must have felt when you thought I was dead.\"\n\nI stare into his indigo eyes, and it feels like the first time since the Sumber that I'm truly seeing someone\u2014or maybe it's just the first time I'm letting someone see me.\n\n\"You're my best friend,\" he says, his gaze strong and steadfast. \"And if you want to talk, I'm here. Anytime.\"\n\n#  13\n\nAFTER A QUICK SHOWER IN the women's locker room, I pull on the Veil collar I slipped into my pocket this morning and activate its invisibility.\n\nMathias's heart-to-heart left me feeling raw, like a wound that was scabbing just got exposed, and I don't want to risk running into anyone who might irritate it further. Especially since there's more I need to do before tonight.\n\nThe entrance hall in the third fortress is hushed and riddled with semiprivate terminals where Zodai are sitting at screens and pulling up information. A massive wallscreen wraps around the upper half of the room; it's divided into twelve sections, and news from every House is updating in real time. I flatten myself against the wall so that no one runs into me, and I scan the headlines.\n\nThe Piscene death count from the master's Psyphoning is nearing half a million. There's a chart showing a correlation: With every wave of Piscene deaths, the hole in the Dark Matter around Ophiuchus expands.\n\nIt seems the governments of every House are as divided as their citizens. Most don't want to believe Crompton is the original Aquarius or that he's going to usher in the end of the Zodiac. Capricorn's Chroniclers have been citing the Axis more than ever, noting that this is exactly how the century-long civil wars started. The master is re-creating our past\u2014and without trust in each other, we're doomed to repeat it.\n\nI trail along the room's perimeter and turn into the first passage I come across. Torches bracketed along the stone walls illuminate my way, and soon I reach a crossroads where the corridor splits in three. I pick a direction at random and keep going, until I come upon a lounge with couches and tables and food, where Zodai in different colored uniforms are meeting or snacking or napping.\n\nI trace my way back to the crossroads, and this time I pick a different path. It ends in a set of open doors, where a pair of Majors stands guard. This must be where they keep the more sensitive information.\n\nI close my eyes and reach down to the humming of the Barer's electricity, and I mentally mold it into a bow. When I open my eyes, an arc of blue energy glows before me. I turn to make sure the passage behind me is empty, and then I fire a blast of electricity down the dark hall.\n\nThe blue ball of light blazes down the stone corridor, and the guards instantly raise their silver tasers to eye level and charge after the electric arrow.\n\nI dart through the entryway they were protecting and enter a narrower stone passage. A series of doors line both walls, and I carefully crack open the first one. It's an empty room of semi-private terminals, like the ones in the entrance hall. Since no one else is in here, I sit down at a screen and try to pull up the menu\u2014but a retinal scan is required.\n\nTime to see how much power I actually have on this base.\n\nI deactivate my invisibility collar and line my eye up with the scanner. A light flashes, fleetingly blinding me, then the screen dissolves into a navigational menu with headings like _Tomorrow Party_ , _Marad_ , and _Ophiuchus_. I click on the last one, and holographic surveillance footage beams out.\n\nThe Thirteenth Guardian is asleep in a bright white cell that looks just like the one Corinthe is in, with metallic sensors spaced out along his body. Metal cuffs wrap around not just his ankles, wrists, and neck, but also his waist, chest, and knees. A needle sticks out from his neck, hooked up to an IV, presumably what's keeping him sedated.\n\nMy breathing stalls when I magnify his face. He's _young_.\n\nHe doesn't look a day over eighteen.\n\nHis hair is so black it's like Dark Matter, and his skintone seems to shift from light to dark, like he's not one shade but many. Its texture makes me think of snakeskin.\n\nI click on the small map thumbnail, and a holographic rendering of The Bellow replaces the footage of a sleeping Ophiuchus. A red line outlines the path to his cell, and I take a moment to memorize it before shutting the screen down and returning to the main menu.\n\nThere's nothing noteworthy under the Marad heading, but there are a number of updates for the Tomorrow Party. It looks like Hysan's encrypted communications with Ezra have paid off because Zodai managed to track the Party to the Artistry Pride of House Leo. It's the preferred destination for controversial figures in hiding, since artists are known to judge the least.\n\nI close my eyes to review what I know. I have a general location for Nishi. I have access to Ophiuchus. And I have the perfect distraction.\n\nI'm leaving for Leo tonight.\n\nI shut down my terminal, and my Barer hand buzzes with static. I study the intricate designs etched into the metal rings, and I don't feel the same initial distrust and disgust I had for the black pearl Scarab a few months ago. Now, having a weapon isn't weakening but empowering\u2014it's the difference between dependence and independence.\n\nI reactivate my Veil, and when I leave the room, a woman's laugh floats down the stone passage. Recognizing the sound I instinctively and invisibly step up to the partly open doorway and peek inside.\n\nMy whole body hollows, and it feels like d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.\n\nHysan is sitting on a bench in a small training space filled with outdated exercise machines. He's in a pair of shorts and no shirt, and sweat gleams across the Ariean-worthy contours of his torso and arms, his chest rising and falling like he's just finished an intense workout.\n\n\"Why won't you train with the rest of us in the other Fort?\" asks Skarlet, who's also barely clothed, baring every single line and curve of her figure. She's wearing shorts and an athletic bra made from some kind of Ariean sweat-absorbing workout fabric that's so thin and skintight it might as well not be there.\n\n\"I was already here,\" he says, his husky voice choppy from exertion. He stands up to grab a water bottle off a stone counter that juts from the wall and takes a swig.\n\n\"Is that really why?\" Skarlet edges closer to him and leans into the counter. \"See, I think you're here because you're afraid.\"\n\nHysan sets the bottle down and arches an eyebrow. \"Of?\"\n\n\"Running into me.\"\n\nHis lips hitch into his crooked smirk even as he takes a step back. \"You don't scare me, Major Thorne.\"\n\n\"I know you're tempted,\" she says seductively, moving in close enough that Hysan's shoulders touch the wall. \"We used to have so much fun together.\"\n\n\"Skar,\" he says softly, his expression sobering, \"I told you after the ball. I'm in love with her.\"\n\nI exhale and wait for my veins to flood with relief. . . . Instead, I find myself wondering how long his resistance will last.\n\n\"But are you sure she's in love with you?\"\n\nSkarlet asks the question with the same gentle voice she used when describing to me what Phaet means to Arieans.\n\n\"I've made it clear I'm challenging her, and she doesn't seem bothered by it. Or, who knows,\" she adds with the flicker of a dangerous grin, \"she might even be open to sharing you.\"\n\nHysan's jaw tightens, and his words come out slightly clipped. \"Why are you messing with her? I thought you said you admired her.\"\n\n\"I do,\" she says, shrugging. \"You know I only pick on people my own size.\"\n\n\"You have a strange way of making friends.\"\n\n\"What is it about her?\" she asks, bringing her mouth right up to his, so close that the slightest movement would bring them together. She's wearing so little clothing that Hysan can't avoid touching her bare skin. \"I _know_ she's not the best-looking woman in the Zodiac,\" she adds with a sultry smile.\n\n\"But she is the most beautiful,\" he says, all traces of good humor gone from his voice.\n\nSkarlet takes a surprised step back, and for a moment she just stares at him, while he calmly holds her gaze.\n\n\"You really are in love,\" she says at last, tacking on a small shrug. _\"Pity.\"_\n\nAs she sashays past me out the doorway, her expression crumbles with the pain she's too proud to let Hysan see, and I turn back to watch him.\n\nHis skin's golden glow is dull, like a lamp that's been put out, and he hasn't moved at all. He seems more affected by Skarlet's presence now that she's gone.\n\nI wonder if he regrets rejecting her, or if he's just thinking of what she revealed about me.\n\n_But is it true?_\n\nI know on a rational level that I once loved Hysan, yet I've lost the memory of the way it felt. It's like my emotions have been muted; I know they exist, but I can't tap into them. Maybe this is what it's like to be Libran.\n\nI'm so lost in my head that it takes me a moment to realize he's moved. Hysan digs into his bag and removes something I can't see. After pulling on a shirt he'd draped over one of the machines, he turns toward the door to go and looks at me.\n\nI freeze in place, until I remember I'm invisible and he can't see me.\n\n\"Hi, Rho.\"\n\n\"What\u2014\" I cut myself off when I see the collar he's just fastened around his neck, peeking out from beneath the shirt's neckline. The Veils are networked.\n\n\"Been here long?\" he asks.\n\n\"I\u2014\"\n\n\"Actually, I'm glad,\" he says quickly, like he's not at all interested in discussing what I just witnessed. \"There's something I'd like to show you\u2014but I should shower first.\"\n\n\"Shower later,\" I say impatiently. \"We're invisible anyway.\"\n\n\"Follow me then,\" he says, and we take off down the hall, away from the room with the terminals and into a different, smaller space that smells musty and old. \"This is where the Zodai keep this House's earliest records, the ones they didn't turn over to the Zodiax. It's all the data from when our ancestors first landed on Phaetonis.\"\n\nHe clicks keys on a screen embedded into the wall, until a hole opens up in the floor at the center of the room. A platform rises up, and all that's on it is an open manuscript, its pages yellowed and wispy and faded. The book is encased in light, and unintelligible words begin to rise from it into the air, a holographic recreation of the text, which is written in some archaic language.\n\n\"Do you remember when Sirna read that story to us, _The Chronicles of Hebitsukai-Za, the Serpent Bearer_?\"\n\nI'm instantly intrigued, and I start regurgitating what I remember. \"Sirna said Holy Mother Crae sent Lodestar Yosme to House Aries seventy-seven years ago to study the first version of the myth, about the time-worm\u2014but the report was buried because there were details too alarming to be made public. Details having to do with _time_.\"\n\n\"You really weren't lying about your infallible memory,\" says Hysan with a half-smile.\n\n\"What have you found?\" I press.\n\n\"Apparently this story dates back to the days of the Original Guardians,\" he says, growing businesslike again and not meeting my gaze. \"I've found more texts with allusions to Ophiuchus; sometimes he's represented with one snake and sometimes with two, like the Caduceus symbol.\"\n\n\"On Cancer, the Caduceus is just one snake.\"\n\n\"That's because the Thirteenth House's mythology has been so twisted over time that we can't be sure what's true. In the Tale of Hebitsukai-Za, thirteen travelers traverse the time warp to enter the universe, and the last one gets wrapped in the coils of a giant worm biting its own tail\u2014so it looks like _two_ snakes, but it's really just one.\"\n\n\"But what's important about this?\"\n\n\"The fact that this version of events circulated at the beginning of time means there must be more truth to it than we realize.\" The holographic text begins to translate itself as Hysan recounts the story, and I see the images Sirna once projected for us at the Libran embassy.\n\n\"Za was the last to come through, and when he did his body was entwined in the ropey coils of an enormous worm biting its own tail\u2014 _Time_. Passing though the time warp created an unstable leak between the old universe and ours, and they were in imminent danger of sliding together and collapsing, so the travelers sealed off the warp, but only after Za had brought the time-worm through. The travelers recognized the chaos this would cause and tried to kill the worm, and by accident bludgeoned Za to death. The worm needed a host, so it reversed time and resurrected Za.\" It ends with what looks like the glyph of House Ophiuchus.\n\n\"I remember all this,\" I say impatiently, \"but I still don't understand why it's been filed as dangerous\u2014\"\n\n\"Because it's true,\" he says, his large green eyes sparkling with excitement. \"Ophiuchus's Talisman lets him control Time\u2014namely, his own time line. And the other Guardians felt threatened by this, so they killed him. Only the Talisman\u2014the time-worm\u2014never truly let go of Ophiuchus. It resurrected his essence and kept him tied to our universe.\"\n\n\"So you're saying it's just like the Ochus stories of every House\u2014more evidence hidden in our art that there was a thirteenth world\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes, but I think there's another secret in that story,\" he says carefully. \"Travelers came from another universe through a time warp to settle the Zodiac . . . sounds a lot like the universal myth about the first humans arriving here through a portal in Helios, doesn't it?\"\n\n\" _Myths speak to us through metaphor_ ,\" I whisper, recalling Hysan's words when Sirna first told us this story.\n\nHis ears turn pink, but he doesn't comment on my memory again. \"Rho, I think the gateway through Helios might be real.\"\n\nHis eyes are entranced, and his golden glow burns brighter. \"I think just as they erased House Ophiuchus from history, the Original Guardians also convinced newer generations to believe the portal their ancestors came through was just a legend\u2014so that no one would ever attempt going through it again.\"\n\n\"And _that's_ the master's plan,\" I finish for him as Hysan nods. _\"_ Holy Helios. _He's going to turn off the sun by going through it_.\"\n\n# 14\n\nWHEN I GET BACK TO my tent, there's an outfit and fresh food waiting for me.\n\nAs I eat and get ready, I'm still thinking of Hysan's theory. If the Last Prophecy is really about Aquarius going through Helios, then it's not a future written in the stars\u2014it's a future written by _a_ star.\n\nOur sun is only going dark because the master is going to travel through it.\n\nAquarius himself said he was the first person to prophesize this future, so he must also have the power to stop it. He just has to make a different choice. He has to abandon his plan to go through Helios.\n\nFor the Ascension ceremony, it's tradition for Zodai to don silky robes, and as I'm in mourning, I'll be the only one in white. Everyone else will be in dark colors. Since I don't plan to come back to the tent, I leave on my Lodestar suit beneath my robe, and I stuff my Wave, Vecily's Ephemeris, and my Psy shield into its various pockets. I leave Sirna's necklace behind so that Hysan can't track me.\n\nI wonder where the necklace Aquarius re-created from my childhood went. I'm betting Hysan thought it was a transmitter or weapon of some kind. He lost his parents too young to understand the necklace's true power.\n\n\"My lady?\"\n\n\"Come in,\" I say as I take one last look in the vanity's mirror to make sure my suit isn't visible. I've closed my robe all the way up to my throat, and my boots are hidden by my silky white train.\n\nI step out to the middle of the white feather floor to meet Hysan, who's dressed in a dark charcoal robe. His hair is brushed back, and in the dying day's light his eyes are a dazzling shade of green. And as I'm absorbing every detail of his face, it strikes me that I might never see him again.\n\n\"Everyone is heading to the Everblaze,\" he says huskily. \"I came by to offer to escort you . . . if you'd like the company.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you're here,\" I say, surprised that I actually mean it.\n\nHysan seems surprised, too, because he comes closer and strokes my cheekbone.\n\nThis time his touch doesn't feel so far away, and I lean into his hand. He moves in, too, until his mouth hovers over mine, and something in my chest dislodges, like a chunk of glacier melting. I part my lips to catch my breath, and he tips his face down, like he's going to kiss me.\n\n\"Let's go,\" I say, exiting the tent quickly to escape Hysan's heat. I let the cool evening breeze stomp out the last cinders of whatever just sparked between us so I can keep my wall of ice in place.\n\nIt takes a few moments for Hysan to follow me out, and when he catches up, I ask, \"What happened to the necklace Crompton threw at me at the Cathedral?\"\n\n\"I got rid of it. I thought it could be a recording device.\" He clears his throat. \"So how did it go with Gamba today? Did she have any message from the Luminaries?\"\n\nI shake my head. \"She's here because she loves my mother. I don't think she knows anything helpful,\" I lie.\n\nSoon we're engulfed in a massive crowd of robed Zodai from across the galaxy, all of us marching toward the black smoke that rises over the golden trees. Above us, the sky has become a boiling cauldron again, the red sun setting the clouds on fire.\n\nWhen we reach the clearing where the Everblaze burns, I stare up in awe: The black flames rise so high that they practically lick the stars. The crowd parts for Hysan and me, and many Zodai solemnly stick out a hand to touch me as we pass.\n\nWe wade through them slowly, until we make it right up to the fire, where General Eurek is waiting with Mathias and Pandora. Hovering beside them is a body on a metal bed, covered by a thin white sheet.\n\nHysan wraps a steadying arm around me, but I still feel like I'm floating away. A part of me yearns to throw myself at the flames and join my brother\u2014and I probably would, if that didn't mean abandoning Nishi, my sister.\n\nPandora and Eurek bow to me, but Mathias pulls me into his blue-robed chest and holds me there tightly. When we part, Eurek murmurs, \"Do you wish to say something, Wandering Star?\" I shake my head no. \"Then if you're ready, I'll commence the ceremony.\"\n\nI nod in agreement. It's as articulate as I'm going to get.\n\nEurek raises his voice, and it's so strong and clear that it could be echoing through the entire forest; I notice a volumizer floating near his mouth, amplifying his reach.\n\n\"We are here to bid farewell to our fallen brother, honorary Lodestar Stanton Grace. He's the first Cancrian\u2014the first non-Ariean\u2014whose soul will rise to Empyrean through the Everblaze, but may he not be the last.\"\n\nEurek's bloodred robe flickers in the dimming light, and his dark skin grows darker as night lengthens its shadow. \"In Stanton's honor, henceforth, anyone seeking refuge, including Risers, will find a home on Aries.\"\n\nGasps of surprise spread through the crowd, and one girl whoops so loudly that people's heads turn in her direction. But Skarlet\u2014in a low-cut black robe\u2014doesn't look the least bit sorry.\n\nI feel like in an alternate universe there's a Rho Grace rejoicing at this news. A Rho Grace who just accomplished something she set out to do a dozen lifetimes ago. But that Rho Grace doesn't live here anymore.\n\nShe left this world with Stanton.\n\nI'm just a holo-ghost with unfinished business.\n\nThe elevated bed holding Stan starts floating forward until the black flames swallow him whole. Eurek bows his head in prayer, and all the Majors do the same. Pandora and Hysan follow their example, as do the Zodai in the crowd.\n\nMathias and I lock eyes. When Cancrians launch their dead to Empyrean, we look up, not down.\n\nMaybe I was wrong to do this\u2014I'm deceiving my brother by putting his soul to rest through traditions that aren't his own, all so I can betray everything he stood for to save Nishi.\n\n_You're honoring him beyond anything he could have hoped for_ , says Mathias's voice in my head, my Ring buzzing with the influx of Psynergy. _You've just made him a pioneer\u2014the first of us to truly break barriers and belong not to one House but all of them. He would be proud, Rho._\n\nI close my eyes and send back, _Thank you._\n\nMy chest feels like a fracturing glacier again, and I suck in another open-mouthed breath to push the wall back in place.\n\nWhen Stan's blanketed body floats back out, it looks exactly as it did going in\u2014except my brother's really gone now. His essence has moved on to Empyrean.\n\n\"Per the Cancrian tradition,\" says Eurek, \"we will now launch Stanton Grace's body to Helios. May he find his place with his father, his people, and all those we've lost, and may he bring us together in Empyrean as he's brought us together now.\"\n\nMetal walls roll up from either side of the bed and seal around Stan, enclosing him in a Space capsule. Eurek inputs a sequence, and the whole thing tips up until it's perfectly vertical, like a rocket.\n\nEurek rests a hand on the metal and says, \"Go in peace, brother.\"\n\nThen he stands back, and the rest of us do the same, right as a blast of fire booms out, and the capsule shoots into the sky. My robes flutter as it goes, and in seconds it disappears among the stars.\n\n_I love you so much, Stan._\n\n_I'm sorry for failing you._\n\n_But we'll be together again soon_.\n\n# 15\n\nLIKE SAGITTARIANS, ARIEANS CELEBRATE DEATH\u2014they don't mourn it. So there's a huge party following the Ascension, and it's exactly what I was counting on.\n\nRed bonfires spring up all around us, illuminating the night. Since everything has been so tense until now, most Zodai are already drunk within the first hour. Raucous music blares through the clearing, and the party has an \"end of the worlds\" feel to it\u2014like no one's sure they'll ever laugh or dance or kiss again after tonight, so they're getting their fill.\n\nPandora stands close to me while Hysan and Mathias fetch us drinks. \"Whatever you're planning, let me help you,\" she says the instant the guys disappear.\n\nMy gut clenches with alarm. \"I don't know what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"You've been secretive all day. Hysan can tell something's up.\" The deep purple of her robe makes her violet irises pop. \"I'm offering you my help because I think you need it.\"\n\n\"I'm fine,\" I say too quickly. Then I turn away from her and distract myself by watching the tables of food that Majors are carrying over from the closest keep's kitchen.\n\nIt seems like any Zodai who aren't drinking or dancing or hooking up are leaping into the cobalt sea or standing in the shallows of the Everblaze. A tall Ariean girl enters the black flames, her eyes closed and head tipped up to the sky; I count off the seconds, and when I get to thirteen, she jumps back out like she's been burned.\n\nThere are no visible scars, but she's clutching her chest like the fire is inside. When she looks up, she spots me.\n\n\"Rho!\" she shouts over the loud music, and as she bounds over, I recognize the youngest healer\u2014the one who was eager to summon Hysan for me. \"I'm so sorry about your brother. Can I get you anything?\"\n\n\"Hysan's on it.\"\n\nHer brown eyes light up and grow even larger. \"I'm so glad you guys found each other! He was so worried about you\u2014I swear, I've never seen anyone so distraught before. Just watching him as he watched over you was enough to break even an Ariean's hard heart\u2014\"\n\n\"What were you doing in there?\" I ask, cutting her off and jutting my chin at the fire. I can't hear another word about how perfect Hysan is; not when I alone am keeper of his secrets.\n\n\"Oh, that,\" she says, shrugging. \"I was trying to get a vision, but it's impossible. I can count on both hands the number of Arieans in history who've managed it. They're legendary.\"\n\nHysan and Mathias come up behind her, and they each hand a drink to Pandora and me. \"Hi, Valea,\" says Hysan, greeting the Ariean. \"Can I get you something?\"\n\nWhen the healer looks at him, she freezes like a prisoner in The Bellow whose mobility has been suspended. \"I\u2014I\u2014sorry, I mean no, I mean thank you!\"\n\nHer face looks radioactive, but Hysan gallantly pretends not to notice the effect he's having on her. \"Let me introduce you to some friends,\" he says, and as Valea trades the hand touch with Mathias and Pandora, I watch Gamba step into the Everblaze.\n\nTendrils of fire reach up and engulf her brown robe until she's barely visible through the black flames. I count off the seconds, but when I get to thirty, she's still inside. I haven't seen anyone endure it that long.\n\nWhen she finally reappears, she looks pallid and out of breath, and I wonder if she Saw anything.\n\nShe turns to me suddenly, like she feels my stare, and we hold each other's gaze as she walks over to where I'm standing. \"Wandering Star. May I have a word?\"\n\nI hand off my untouched drink to Valea, and I don't offer her or my friends any explanation as I follow Gamba to the tree line where the forest grows denser. Once the music from the party sounds faint, she stops walking and asks, \"So what's the plan to save our mother?\"\n\n\"Tell me about her.\"\n\nHer troubled expression slackens, like she's taken aback by the question. \"About Mom?\" I nod. \"What do you want to know?\"\n\n\"What was she like with you?\"\n\n\"Insightful. Tough. Protective.\" She recites adjectives like she's reading a report, not describing a beloved parent. \"Honest\u2014\"\n\n_\"Honest?\"_ I almost laugh.\n\n\"She told me everything. She was my mother by _choice_ , not chance.\"\n\nEven though the subject we're discussing couldn't be more personal, she still speaks in even, measured phrases, like this is an intellectual exercise. And I feel like in this girl I'm seeing who I might have become if Mom had raised me.\n\n\"What's _everything_?\" I challenge.\n\n\"I know her mom was an imbalanced Riser, and she had to fight her for her freedom. I know the night she ran away from her childhood home was the first time she Saw herself Rising. I know that to this day she doesn't know her mother's fate.\"\n\nI try to interrupt, but my brain feels frozen, like my thoughts can't move beyond this moment. Gamba goes on, and I have no idea if she's aware of how much her words are affecting me because I'm not sure she's capable of comprehending emotions.\n\nIf she did have feelings once, Mom drilled them out of her.\n\n\"I also know that she was always going to abandon you and your brother and your dad. To protect you, in case she turned out to be too much like her own mother.\"\n\nI can hardly breathe, much less respond. _Mom trusted her_.\n\nGamba chose Mom, and Mom chose her back.\n\n\"She's _your_ mother,\" I say at last. \" _You_ save her.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe music grows louder as I walk away from Gamba, and I dig my hand under my robe's neckline and activate the Veil collar.\n\nI have to force myself to wall off thoughts of my dysfunctional family so I can focus on tonight. I can't let my mother derail me anymore\u2014Gamba can worry about rescuing her. After all, she's the daughter Kassandra wanted.\n\nWhen I return to the party, people's guards are down, but there's still tension in the air. Everyone is too ready to switch into Zodai mode at the first sign of trouble. I spy Skarlet in the crowd chugging drinks with a couple of male Majors, and my lip curls\u2014the perfect fuse to set off.\n\nAs I make my way over, I nearly topple into Mathias and Pandora, who are filling their plates with food. \"I think that's enough, thanks,\" says Pandora as Mathias keeps piling her plate with desserts.\n\n\"Don't be shy,\" he says, adding yet another chocolate treat to her teetering stack. \"I saw what you put away after last night's meeting.\"\n\nPandora's eyes grow so large that they're practically bulging out of her head. \"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n\"Just that you have a weakness for sweet things,\" he says, popping a star-shaped candy into his mouth.\n\n\"And you're enabling my addiction.\"\n\n\"Or,\" he says, leaning in, \"maybe I just want to give you everything you want.\"\n\nFire rushes to her pale cheeks, but to her credit, she keeps her composure. \"How . . . how do you think Rho is doing?\"\n\nMathias's brow furrows down and his lightheartedness is replaced with something heavier. I could slap Pandora for ruining her own moment by bringing me up.\n\n\"I don't think even she realizes how much she's suffering,\" he says. \"She's protecting herself from fully feeling the loss of her brother. And she's only making it worse for herself when she finally confronts her pain.\"\n\nI bite my inner cheek so I won't scream.\n\nMathias hasn't mentioned Nishi once.\n\n\"Do you remember when Corinthe tried using me to get you to denounce Rho?\" whispers Pandora, and my breathing stalls.\n\nMathias doesn't answer, but the color drains from his features, making his dark blue eyes stand out even more.\n\n\"Afterwards,\" she goes on, \"while you were setting my shoulders back in place, you told me a story to distract me from the pain. It was about a boy who was in love with a girl he knew he could never have, and yet every day, he woke up and watched her. Even though he knew the more he watched, the harder he'd fall, and the more he'd hurt . . . he couldn't help himself.\n\n\"You said pain is one of the side effects of love\u2014we can't feel one without suffering the other.\"\n\nHe nods, just barely, and murmurs, \"I remember.\"\n\n\"Rho loved her brother more than most people will ever love anyone,\" she says, her voice feathery soft. \"I don't think she's pushing away her pain. I think she's drowning in it.\"\n\nI walk away before I can hear more, and once I'm close to Skarlet I deactivate my Veil. While waiting for her to finish another round of chugging, I scan the crowd and spot Hysan. He's speaking with a group of people, but he keeps lifting his gaze, like he's searching for someone. He's not going to let me go.\n\n\"He's a great kisser, isn't he?\"\n\nI turn to see Skarlet, her smile sloppy and her face shiny. She seems delighted to have caught me off guard, which works for me\u2014if she thinks she got under my skin, that's all the pretext I need to get under hers.\n\n\"Maybe you should quit drooling over Hysan and start spending your time on the people of your own House,\" I say, raising my voice so the nearest Zodai\u2014two Ariean Majors, a Taurian Promisary, and a Leonine Lionheart\u2014can hear me.\n\n\"What in Helios is that supposed to mean?\" she asks, slurring her words slightly.\n\n\"It means your Zodai have this amazing life on this planet, but I've been to Phaetonis, and I've seen how the rest of your people live. In shacks, surrounded by the smell of death and decay\u2014did you not think they might appreciate a place like this?\"\n\n\"Who do you think built the train system and the Hippodrome and all that stuff on Phaetonis?\" she demands, and a Strident from Scorpio and a Minister from Virgo come closer, intrigued by the conversation. \"The Majors have tried to promote diplomacy for resolving conflicts, but our people have always preferred war. We're fiery tempered, and we need to let off steam often. It's just our nature!\"\n\nI shake my head sadly. \"The other Houses used to feel sorry for you. How you're one of the poorest Houses, how your Zodai were exiled from governance, how your Guardian was under house arrest\u2014and yet all this time, you've been in control behind the scenes, living in this paradise. I guess no world is what it seems.\"\n\n\"It _is_ pretty selfish,\" injects the Taurian. \"I mean, your people are dirt poor, and you've just abandoned them\u2014\"\n\n\"She's right, though! Arieans are all hotheaded,\" argues the Scorp. \"You can't help them if they don't help themselves.\"\n\n\"Who the hell are you calling hotheaded, you ugly arachnid?\" asks a burly male Major.\n\nThe whole group dissolves into a rowdy argument, and now that I've kindled the flame, I let the people around me fan it\u2014helped along by all the alcohol, of course\u2014until most of the party is embroiled in debate. I activate my Veil, but before making my way up to the mountain I turn toward the Everblaze.\n\nAll the noise evaporates as I step into its black flames.\n\nThe fire crackles around me as it tickles my skin, and I close my eyes. I access my Center and start numbering the seconds, until I'm buzzing too hard to keep count. My Ring starts to burn, and blood begins to boil in my veins, but the heat feels good. Even as it scorches my organs and destroys my insides, I don't mind, because it's a change from the numbness.\n\n_Let it burn and consume all I am. . . ._\n\nExcept it if does, who will save Nishi?\n\nWithout Deke or me, who will care enough to go after her?\n\nThe fire has become so painful that I can't move my feet. I would scream if I could summon my voice, but my lungs are gone, too, and my knee joints give out until I drop to the grass.\n\nI'm dying and I'm invisible, and no one will find me.\n\nI think only of Nishi as I feel myself fall, only the drop isn't physical\u2014I'm descending to an even deeper Center. Light blasts through the darkness of my mind, until I See a familiar wizened face, her skin so wrinkled it looks sun-dried.\n\n_Moira?_\n\nThe vision vanishes, and the Psynergy chokes me until I'm gagging. I claw at the ground, digging my nails into the grass as I drag myself forward.\n\nThe sound blasts back on when at last I make it out.\n\nPeople are still partying, none of them aware that I'm dying at their feet. I curl into a fetal position, taking in raking breaths until the cool air finally reaches my lungs. And by the time I stand up, all the effects of the fire have worn off, healing as swiftly as Ochus's Psynergy wounds.\n\nBreathless and invisible, I climb uphill into the woods, away from the party and toward the hulking mountain. When I'm at the edge of the tree line, far from the wasted crowd, I turn back to take one last look at the world I'm leaving behind.\n\nAnd that's when Hysan unVeils before me.\n\n# 16\n\nHIS EYES ARE DARK AND EXPLOSIVE.\n\n\"Did you really think I wouldn't know?\" asks Hysan as he deactivates my invisibility. He must have unlinked our collars so I wouldn't see him tailing me. A medley of emotions swirls in his green-gold irises, and I know he's already read everything on my face. All the secrets I thought I'd been so carefully concealing.\n\n\"So because you've lost loved ones, it's over?\" he goes on, as a chilly breeze blows between us. \"What about everyone else who's lost family and friends to this war? Are their sacrifices less meaningful than yours?\"\n\n\"And what would you know about losing a _loved one_?\" I ask, and it's almost a snarl. \"You have no family, and you've never been honest enough to have a real friend. _You've never had anyone to lose._ \"\n\nHis eyes grow round with disbelief, but they quickly revert to their normal size as he reins in his emotions. It's so easy for him to bypass his heart; he doesn't care that abandoning Nishi is killing me because he can't possibly understand the pain I'm going through.\n\n\"So your solution is to turn your back on all of humanity?\" he asks tonelessly. \"To save Nishi you'll damn us all? That's how you'll honor your brother and your father's sacrifices?\"\n\nI don't feel the sting of his words because they're not true\u2014but I'm not surprised to learn that's what he's thinking. It's almost liberating to hear the truth from him for once. \"If you really believe I would damn you all, then you've never known me.\"\n\nI used to think Mathias was the one who had no faith in me, but now I see how na\u00efve I was. Hysan was only ever fine following my lead if I was doing what he wanted. This whole time he's never trusted anyone but himself.\n\nA dozen Ariean Majors and Libran Knights suddenly march out from the trees and encircle us, and I realize Hysan must have been hailing them through the Psy. They're armed and in uniform, and they came so quickly that there's no doubt Pandora was right\u2014Hysan already knew I'd make my move tonight.\n\n\"Rho is trying to breach The Bellow to break out Ophiuchus and take him to Aquarius,\" says Hysan, his voice hard and unforgiving. I flash back to the Hysan I met in the Sumber, the one who plunged a knife in my chest, and I'm not sure which one I'm seeing anymore.\n\n\"She's not herself right now and needs to be seen by healers.\"\n\nI can't believe I ever thought I loved him. Darkness fills every part of me, feeding the barricade of numbness protecting me from my feelings until it grows thick enough to completely separate my words from my body.\n\nUntil my mouth is no longer connected to my heart.\n\nUntil my voice is a weapon.\n\n\"Nice try, Hysan.\"\n\nI don't sound angry or afraid; I sound somber and sad, like a disappointed parent. \"No one\u2014including General Eurek or Lord Neith\u2014is going to believe I would _ever_ free my sworn enemy, the destroyer of my world, the monster I gave up everything to pursue.\"\n\nI take a measured step toward him, and the Zodai around us fidget like they're not sure what to do. \"The real question is,\" I say softly, \"why were _you_ about to free him?\"\n\nHysan is so shocked by my accusation that it takes him a few seconds to respond\u2014enough time to cast doubt on his innocence.\n\n\"If that were true, why would I call for reinforcements?\" he asks, his voice hoarse. \"Why did I ask this team of Zodai to be on guard tonight?\"\n\n\"Because you knew I was on to you,\" I say, still speaking in the calm voice of authority that I've heard him use so many times. \"But I'm not going to let you get away with this.\"\n\nHysan's whole face goes slack, like his brain has suddenly stopped producing thoughts. \"Rho . . . you're _lying_.\"\n\n\" _I'm_ lying?\" I ask incredulously. \"I have no secrets! I'm the Wandering Star\u2014everyone across the Zodiac knows everything about me. But who are _you_?\"\n\nHysan's glassy eyes widen with horror, but I don't stop there.\n\n\"Where is Lord Neith?\" I press. \"Why hasn't anyone seen him?\"\n\nMost of the Knights turn toward Hysan, and from their suspicious reactions it's clear they've already been discussing this amongst themselves. But rather than try to protect his secret, Hysan just stares at me, openmouthed yet speechless\u2014like for the first time in his life he's been outplayed.\n\n\"I believe Hysan Dax has done something to the Guardian of Libra,\" I announce, looking to the Ariean and Libran Zodai, \"and now he's trying to escape with Ophiuchus. Please hold him for the night, and tomorrow morning Eurek and I will question him. No need to ruin everyone's one night off.\"\n\nThe nearest Major cuffs Hysan's wrists, and his golden face betrays no emotion as he's flanked on all sides; he just keeps staring at me in disbelief.\n\n\"And for the record,\" I add, forcing myself to meet his gaze, _\"Cancrians don't lie.\"_\n\nLight footsteps approach, and a girl in a purple robe creeps out from the tree line, looking paler than usual.\n\n\"Pandora!\" Hysan seems to come alive at the sight of her, and he starts struggling against the Majors who are trying to march him away. \"Please\u2014tell Mathias Rho was trying to break out Ophiuchus! She's not well. She needs help!\"\n\nHer astonished gaze jumps from Hysan to me, her orb-like eyes glowing like stars.\n\n\"Pandora\u2014\" I start, but she rushes back into the woods before I can explain myself.\n\nI glower at Hysan as the Zodai march him away, and he watches me the whole time. Once he's completely out of view, Pandora steps out from the trees. \"Are you good from here?\"\n\nHer voice quivers, and I wonder if she's going to sell me out the moment I turn my back.\n\n\"Why are you helping me?\" I ask.\n\nShe takes my hand in her cold one, and her hold is firm and unwavering. \"Same reason you're going after Nishi. . . . It's just what friends do for each other.\"\n\nHer loyalty kindles too much warmth in my chest, and I squeeze her hand before dropping it. \"Can you just make sure they let him out by morning?\"\n\nShe nods. \"I'll tell Mathias everything at sunrise. He'll sort it out.\"\n\n\"Thanks, Pandora. Stay safe.\"\n\nI activate my Veil as she bows. \"Good fortune, Wandering Star.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI copy everything I saw Skarlet do to enter the mountain and access The Bellow.\n\nOnce I'm standing before the wall of Black Truth, I let my silky white robe fall to the ground, and I stay in my blue Lodestar suit. I put away my Ring so Mathias and the others can't contact me, and then I pull out one of the trinkets I stuffed in my pocket\u2014my only hope for getting into the prison: the turquoise Psy shield Hysan gave me as a birthday present at the Libran embassy.\n\nUntil the armada no one but Hysan knew of the existence of Psy shields. And as there's been so much going on since then\u2014and given that the Ariean shields were sabotaged\u2014I doubt the Majors have had time to anticipate this loophole.\n\nThis crab-shaped, cristobalite-bead brooch must be one of the few functional Psy shields in existence, since it was created by Hysan himself. I activate it and clutch the crab to my chest as I cross the black flames, bracing myself for more pain, or for an alarm, or for the stars themselves to strike me down.\n\nBut nothing happens. The fire doesn't even tickle.\n\n_It worked._\n\nI invisibly walk through the prison's passages, following the map I memorized to find my way to Ophiuchus's cell. There are fewer guards than last time, and they've all been drinking. No one has ever broken out of The Bellow in the history of its existence, so why should they sense any threat?\n\nYet as I near the cell, for the first time, I start reviewing and reconsidering my plan. Whatever Hysan might think of me, I'm not going to doom the Zodiac with my actions. Once I've freed Nishi, I'll do whatever it takes to find out if Aquarius truly plans to go through a portal in Helios\u2014and if he does, I won't leave his side until I've stopped him or he's killed me, whichever comes first.\n\nAfter that the stars can have what's left of me.\n\nThe metal door to Ophiuchus's cell scans me, and then it slides open. I step into the blindingly white room and find the Thirteenth Guardian asleep on his back just as he was in the surveillance footage I saw earlier.\n\nEven though he's in mortal form, he doesn't look human. He's even larger than an Ariean, and the subtle patterning of his textured skin is indescribably delicate.\n\nThe metal cuffs confining his movements are still in place, as is the needle keeping him sedated. Once I pull it out, I won't undo his bonds with my Barer until I'm sure he's onboard with my plan; I'm hoping I won't need the weapon for self-defense since last I checked, Ophiuchus and I were on the same side.\n\nWatching him sleep it's hard to reconcile the shape-shifting ice phantom that's been haunting me with this overgrown, otherworldly teenager. And as the seconds tick by, something starts to feel wrong.\n\nI should have woken him up by now, only my hand won't move to the needle. All I can think of is Hysan.\n\nIs he trapped in a cell just like this one? Did they do him the favor of sedating him, too, or is he stuck with nothing but his memories of my betrayal for company?\n\nI had him arrested. I almost divulged his identity. I made him the scapegoat for my sins. Just like Aquarius did to Ophiuchus, and the Plenum did to me.\n\nI'm acting exactly like the crooked leaders I was supposed to replace. I'm going behind everyone's backs to defy a democratic decision just because I believe _I_ know better. That's the act of a tyrant, not a leader. And if I keep making the same mistakes as the politicians who came before me, what hope does the Zodiac have?\n\n_But I_ need _to save Nishi_.\n\nMy hand trembles as I reach for the needle, only I still don't touch it. Maybe I can find Mathias and ask for his help. He told me earlier that I could come to him about anything, and I should have spoken up then. He'll understand when I explain to him why Nishi can't wait\u2014after all, he was tortured by Corinthe, too.\n\nI drop my hand, and with a last look at Ophiuchus I turn to go. But a deep, booming voice stops me in my tracks.\n\n\"I knew you wouldn't do it.\"\n\nI gasp and wheel around. Ophiuchus is still lying in bed, his face angled up at the ceiling, but he's awake.\n\n\"Though I also didn't think you would make it this far.\"\n\nMy throat dry, I take a few steps closer and meet a pair of eyes that are wider and longer than any human being's, with vertical slits for pupils. \"You know why I'm here?\" I ask, my voice insubstantial when compared to his.\n\n\"Undo my binds and let's go,\" he commands.\n\n\"I c\u2014can't,\" I stammer, my skin breaking into a chilly sweat. \"I changed my mind.\"\n\nHis silver irises glow like starlight, and flecks of platinum swirl around his pupils, like worlds orbiting elliptical black holes. \"Are you certain?\" he asks, his words reverberating through me long after he's spoken.\n\nI think of Nishi, and most of me wants to scream _NO._ But I force myself to jerk a nod instead.\n\nWithout warning Ophiuchus sits bolt upright.\n\nA mere flexing of his muscles and he blasts apart the metal cuffs holding him. I leap back until I'm pressed against the wall, too stunned to run out or raise my Barer.\n\n\"Y\u2014you had the power to escape this whole time?\"\n\nHis bare feet fall to the floor, and he tugs off his crinkly hospital gown and tosses it aside. I drop my gaze to the ground to avoid staring at his naked body, and I notice his toenails are curved like claws.\n\nIn the fringe of my vision, I watch him dig into a hidden drawer beneath the bed and pull out white healer's scrubs. The textured patterns of his skin gleam in the room's blinding brightness, and once he's stepped into the too-short pants, I look up again.\n\n\"Why didn't you leave before now?\" I ask as he pulls on the shirt. His body is so powerful that his muscles ripple through the fabric, straining every thread.\n\n\"I was weak. While I waited for you, I focused on regaining my strength.\"\n\n\"For _me_? You foresaw I'd come?\"\n\nHis starry eyes lock onto mine, and the shading of his thick skin shifts from light to dark as he moves toward me.\n\nI try retreating even further into the wall until the back of my skull starts to ache from the effort. \"W\u2014why do you need me?\"\n\n\"If I'm going to bargain for my House,\" he rumbles, \"I'm going to need something Aquarius wants.\"\n\nI have to tilt my chin up to keep my eyes on his. \"Your plan is to use me?\"\n\n\"Just as yours is to use me.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nAnd before he comes any closer, I raise my right hand to his face, tapping into the Barer's buzzing until my fist grows a set of electric brass knuckles. \"I came to my senses in time. I'm not going with you.\"\n\nHands as strong as stone grip my arms, and my head bashes into the wall.\n\nPain blasts through me, and the Barer fizzes out as my body is pinned in place, my scalp stinging and eyes streaming tears. A boulder presses into my chest, knocking the air from my lungs, and through my bleary vision I see Ophiuchus, his body pushed up against me, his lustrous snakeskin face just inches from mine.\n\n\"I'm not one of your little boyfriends,\" he hisses, his swirling silver irises rampaging with rage. _\"You don't turn me down.\"_\n\n# 17\n\nMY HEART RACES, AND ITS ferocious pounding feels foreign and new. I can't remember the last time I heard it this clearly.\n\nFear coats my tongue, releasing gallons of adrenaline through my veins. And though my head is in agony, this is the first time I've felt something real since the Sumber.\n\nThe first time I've felt _alive_.\n\nOphiuchus steps back, and without him to hold me up I crumple to the floor. My pulse fades away, and as the emotions recede I'm left even emptier than I was before.\n\nHe reaches down for me again, and I scream as he bundles up my limbs as if I'm weightless. He cradles me to his chest like a newborn, wrapping me completely in his arms, and then he rams his back into the cell's door.\n\nThe slab of metal goes flying and slams into the rocky passage.\n\nAnd then we're racing through the mountain, and I feel like I'm moving as swiftly as when Candor carried me. Ophiuchus pushes my head down with his chin, and I'm like a turtle being shoved into her shell until I can't see anything. An instant later shots explode all around us, and I squeeze my eyes shut, waiting for a bullet to lodge into me.\n\nSoon the air changes from warm and musty to cool and earthy, like we're aboveground and soaring across Phaet's surface. Ophiuchus's grip is as firm as stone, his hold steady and his stride stable, but I can't see what's going on.\n\nWhen he finally slows down, I peek my head up. We're on a landing pad filled with ships from across the Zodiac. He sets me down roughly, and I'm dizzy on my feet, so I drop to the ground and close my eyes to get my bearings.\n\n\"There's no time for weakness,\" he barks, and I glare up at him. But he's not watching me\u2014he's looking behind us. I follow his gaze, but I don't see anything.\n\n\"They're coming. The Bellow's guards have alerted the whole base. We only have minutes. Let's go.\"\n\nHe strides up to a round red ship with twisty wings that look like ram horns, and as I get up to follow him, I notice the Ariean pilot pointing his pistol at Ophiuchus's chest.\n\nEven though the man is nearly a giant by human standards, he's still a full head shorter than the Thirteenth Guardian. \"Stand back!\" he warns him, his hand trembling.\n\nBut Ophiuchus keeps moving forward, and the man begins to discharge his weapon. The bullets burn through the white healer's scrubs but bounce right off of Ophiuchus. When he's just a foot away, the man throws the whole gun at the Guardian's head, but the latter merely tilts his face to avoid it.\n\nThen he curls his fingers around the man's neck, and the Ariean's knees buckle as he runs out of air. I want to tell him to stop, but I can't find my voice. When the man finally faints, Ophiuchus lets go, opening the ship's door with brute force and motioning for me to follow.\n\nI feel like I'm wading through water as I wind around the man's comatose body. Part of me wants to drop to the floor and make sure he's still breathing\u2014but a smaller, newer part of me wonders if it even matters.\n\nEveryone here has committed their lives to this cause. Didn't Fernanda say teamwork meant making sacrifices for the greater good? Besides, if I can't defeat Aquarius, we'll _all_ be blown to pieces and none of this will matter.\n\nI board the ship, which is much smaller than _Equinox_ , and Ophiuchus shuts the door behind me. But instead of accessing the control helm, he turns toward the nose's glass window and closes his eyes. He looks like he's Centering.\n\nThe engine fires up.\n\nHe's not touching any buttons or speaking any commands\u2014 _he's navigating the ship with his mind._\n\n\"How are you doing that?\" I ask, clinging onto a handrail as we shoot into the air.\n\n\"I've told you before,\" he says, his eyes still shut. _\"Everything is Psynergy_.\"\n\nI hold on tightly as the ship shudders through Phaet's atmosphere, and I'm relieved when my feet don't float off the floor. Though the walls are shaking, Ophiuchus stays completely still, even without holding onto anything. Once we jump into hyperspeed and the ride stabilizes, I finally let go of the railing, and while Ophiuchus remains Centered, I check out the rest of the ship.\n\nMy tour is brief: All I see is a lavatory, a galley, and a cabin. This is clearly a one-person military vessel.\n\nI take a moment in the cabin to catch my breath. The Zodai were right to sedate and restrain Ophiuchus, but they should have realized that if he's really as powerful as they feared, those measures might not be enough.\n\nSince the master already knows everything about me, I decide to learn everything I can about him, from the only being alive who knows the true Aquarius. So I return to the front of the ship, determined to yank Ophiuchus out of the astral plane and back to reality\u2014but when I see him, I freeze.\n\nA shadow has fallen over Ochus, and he's curved and hunched over, the way he was when time took its toll on him in our battle during the armada. I keep as far back from him as possible as he suffers in soundless torture, his expression contorted with misery, and I desperately hope this doesn't affect his ability to navigate the spacecraft.\n\nI don't know how many hours pass, but gradually, Ophiuchus reverts to his full strength. When the process finishes, he's breathing heavily and his eyes fly open.\n\n\"What was that?\" I whisper from my spot on the floor against the far wall. We've been silent for so long that the sound of my voice feels intrusive.\n\n\"All power has a price,\" he murmurs, his gaze turned toward the stars.\n\n\"So\u2014does that mean\u2014Aquarius has a weakness, too?\"\n\n\"Whatever he's doing is warping the Psy and undoing the astral plane. I have no idea what he's capable of, or how to stop him.\"\n\nI think of Hysan's theory about the portal through Helios. I'm sitting next to one of the only two souls still around to confirm or debunk it.\n\n\"Where do humans come from?\"\n\nA dreamy expression relaxes Ophiuchus's features, and he closes his eyes again. He's silent for so long that he's either asleep or deeply Centered, and I'm about to call out to him when the ship goes completely dark.\n\n\"What's happening?\" I whisper.\n\nThe darkness begins to recede from the center of the room, like curtains being drawn, and a rocky landscape unfolds around us. I feel like I'm viewing a Snow Globe.\n\nThe nose fully vanishes as the memory overtakes everything, and I get to my feet and scan the vast, barren terrain. Above us is a high-tension fabric dome that seems to be held aloft by air pressure, like the domes of Phaetonis.\n\n_That's_ where we are. Where history says the humans first landed.\n\nAs soon as I have the thought, I begin to notice an antiquated fleet of ships on the far horizon, high above the dome's protection. There must be thousands of vessels. They look like metallic insects getting ready to launch an attack.\n\nTime takes one stride forward, and now the people have disembarked and they're packed inside the dome. There must be a million of them.\n\nI'm not sure how I come up with the number\u2014it's like I'm not simply seeing our history, but _embodying_ it. Hysan once told me the Guardian's Talismans contain the essence of a survival skill\u2014the meaning of the thing itself. And that's how this feels.\n\nWhich makes sense, since Ophiuchus is a living representation of his Talisman.\n\nThe humans are all standing around anxiously, as though they're waiting for something. They were invited here, I realize. Some still have their air masks on, like they distrust this dome. I look around me just as they do, trying to find the reason for this gathering. And then I see them.\n\nFourteen silhouettes grow clearer in the distance beyond the dome, all equally spaced out and encircling the whole human population. Through some trick of Psynergy, they've made it so that every person has a clear view of every Original Guardian, even if that person is short and standing in the middle of a million-person crowd.\n\nI turn in a slow circle, observing them\u2014the Geminin Twins are so perfectly identical they look like clones\u2014and I see that the humans around me are doing the same thing. Some Guardians look more masculine and others more feminine, but most are so androgynous they don't seem to have a gender. And just like the ice carving of Sagittarius that Nishi showed me in Starry City, these mortal stars have an amalgamation of features that probably represent the ultimate evolution of their people. No human I've seen in modern times looks anything like them, yet somehow I can still find traces of all my friends' faces in theirs.\n\nI stop studying the fallen stars and stare instead at the humans around me. Unlike the Guardians, these beings all look more or less the same. They have a small range of skin tones, and hair shades, and eye colors, and body types. They're not all that distinguishable from each other\u2014they must hail from a single planet.\n\n_Earth._\n\nAt least our history records seem to have gotten that much right.\n\nThe humans also look unhealthy. Thin, tense, tired, terrified, tiny\u2014and as they behold the majestic Guardians and their magic tricks, they don't seem all that inclined to trust them.\n\n\"Welcome to the Zodiac Solar System,\" says the tallest Guardian, who's draped in red fabric. I get the sense that everyone understands him, like he's somehow speaking to them in their own language. \"When our Thirteen Constellations foresaw your arrival through Helios, each of our Houses gave up its Guardian Star\u2014 _us_.\"\n\nGasps rise from the crowd, but when he speaks again, a million people fall to instant silence.\n\n\"We shooting stars crashed onto planets in our own Houses, and we arose in human form, each of us with a Star Stone, or Talisman, that stores our particular power\u2014the strength we bring to the Zodiac.\"\n\nI thought the Talismans were secrets entrusted only to the Guardian of each House\u2014and yet Aries is freely telling everyone about them. Is this another one of Aquarius's manipulations? Did it occur to him that knowledge of these Talismans would one day inspire another ambitious soul to attempt the same theft he committed?\n\n\"In these mortal forms, we have been charged by the stars to work together and harness the powers of our Stones to protect our planets, and, hopefully\u2014if you'll have us\u2014our _people_.\"\n\nI can barely process any of this.\n\nHumans came through Helios\u2014Hysan was right. Which means there's really a portal in our sun, and it could lead anywhere. This might not even be the largest solar system\u2014our Zodiac could be another offshoot from something bigger.\n\nAnd _that_ has to be what Aquarius is dying to find out.\n\n# 18\n\nA DIFFERENT GUARDIAN STEPS FORWARD and enters the dome, walking through the barrier like it's not even there. I know I didn't notice him earlier, because if I had I wouldn't have been able to take my eyes off him.\n\nMy amazed reaction is reproduced through the crowd, as everyone's eyes find Ophiuchus. If his appearance is striking now, it's nothing to what he looked like then, in his original form. He's as tall as Aries, maybe taller, and his skin seems to contain every color imaginable and unimaginable. When he moves, he glimmers and shines like he's made of pure light\u2014even the day's shadows don't seem to touch him.\n\n\"Friends, I have come to tell you that you have nothing to fear from us,\" he says in a voice that emanates strength and warmth and trust. \"If you choose to form your own society, we will honor your wishes and leave you in peace.\"\n\nMurmurs of shock and relief break out, but they die down as soon as he speaks again.\n\n\"We have no desire to hurt or control you. We are the stars of the Zodiac, and we are here to watch over you. It's our fate to steer you toward your passions and your purpose and your soul mates\u2014but ultimately, your destiny is designed by your decisions.\"\n\nHe bestows on the humans a dazzlingly brilliant smile that could make the sun swoon. \"We would never take your free will from you. Nor are we unknown to you. We are manifestations of universal concepts, and if you search yourselves, you'll find you're more drawn to one pursuit or pastime or value than all others, and therein you will find yourself and your Center.\n\n\"For my part, I seek only to promote Unity\u2014a skill you do not yet possess. You are divided by man-made barriers that you have been born into; yet we are offering you a chance to choose your own identity. It's a right I hope you will be humble enough to extend to your children when they're old enough, and that they will one day extend to their children, and so on.\"\n\nI can't believe how far we've strayed from Ophiuchus's vision for our future. It's only now that I can fully appreciate his original purpose in our galaxy.\n\nThe earthlings were ultimately swayed by him, and we zoom forward in time to see how the Guardians took turns addressing the population, each one sharing what strengths they most valued and describing what kind of world their House would one day become. It took centuries to colonize some of the more topographically complex planets, like Sconcion of Scorpio and Kythera of Libra, so for many generations, people of different Houses shared their land and resources with each other. They elected representatives for a galactic government, and though they'd just divided themselves into thirteen new nationalities, the humans felt united.\n\nThey were a homeless people who'd found a new home to inhabit.\n\nThey were _survivors._\n\nOver time, people evolved to better suit or reflect the environment around them. In the deepest waterworlds of Scorpio, humans developed red eyes that cut through darkness. On the rough streets of Aries, people grew buff enough to hold their own. On the swampy Ophiuchan planet, teens developed scaly skin when they reached puberty that protected them from the bites of most poisonous creatures.\n\nEach House designed its own system of rules, but those laws were superseded by the Zodiac's universal government. The Original Guardians acted in an advisory role for the humans, and they continued to meet in the astral plane to work together to ensure the Zodiac's wellbeing. They read the future together, traded resources, dispensed advice, ensured harmony, and planned for tomorrow.\n\nThe scenery shifts, and as I skim through a montage of these Guardian meetings, I realize there's one fallen star with whom Ophiuchus appears to be particularly close.\n\nAquarius and Ophiuchus are constantly presenting opposing viewpoints, and since they're so well matched, there's rarely a clear winner. Yet instead of getting on each other's nerves, they seem to share a deep mutual admiration and respect; when one of them makes a particularly compelling point against the other, I can see it secretly makes the other one proud.\n\nI notice the two of them sometimes linger longer in the astral plane after the others have returned to their bodies, but Ophiuchus moves us quickly through those memories, so I can't explore those moments. Until time slows down again, in the midst of another meeting during which Ophiuchus and Aquarius are having one of their signature arguments.\n\nAquarius has Crompton's pink sunset eyes, but that's where their similarities end. In his original form, the somewhat androgynous-looking Guardian has ivory skin that glows like moonlight, silver hair that shines like starlight, and a sculpted face that looks like a carefully crafted work of art.\n\n\"Do you realize these mortals have seen more of our universe than we have?\" he demands of the other fallen stars. \"I propose we go through the portal ourselves to see what else is out there.\"\n\nOphiuchus frowns, for the first time not getting pleasure from his friend's words. \"You jest, of course. Using the portal will destroy this reality, just as the earthlings' passage destroyed theirs.\"\n\n\"Do we know that for certain?\" asks Aquarius, only concern and curiosity in his voice. \"That is just what the humans _claim_ they saw, but they do not possess our keen senses.\"\n\n\"They told us not all their ships made it because their universe began to collapse as soon as the first vessel went through,\" says Ophiuchus, his tone conveying complete trust of the humans. \"I believe them. Why would they lie about that?\"\n\n\"They are small and fallible,\" says Aquarius simply, no judgment in his voice. \"They come from an ordinary dimension. _We_ are sentient stars. To these humans, we are gods. The portal might work differently from this side.\"\n\nA couple of Guardians look intrigued by Aquarius's words, but most seem to find them as unpleasant as the Thirteenth.\n\n\"I have foreseen that the right cosmic conditions to reactivate the tunnel will not repeat themselves for at least three millennia, and these semi-mortal bodies we're in will decay long before then,\" continues Aquarius, his voice gaining strength. \"We must act now before our window closes. This is our shot to discover a different dimension of existence, a new reality! We are stars\u2014we are not meant for small deaths. When we die, we redesign the sky.\"\n\nThe silence that follows feels charged.\n\nOnly Ophiuchus dares break it.\n\n\"We will not abandon these humans,\" he says with an authority that chills the air, even among this group of gods. \"Nor will we destroy our home.\"\n\nThe scene suddenly fades to darkness, and we're back on the Ariean ship. Ophiuchus is wide-eyed and staring at the ground, his breaths shallow. He's lost his Center.\n\n\"You knew,\" I whisper, glaring down at him from where I'm standing. \"You've always known. Only one being could have had the cruelty and nerve and access to you to pull this off. It's been three millennia, so either you're so stupid you still don't see it, or you've been _protecting_ him.\"\n\nI spit the word out.\n\nHe doesn't meet my gaze, so I keep going. \"You made me feel bad for being weak before, but the truth is _you're_ weak. Love's turned you into a murderer and a monster and the Zodiac's ultimate _fool_.\"\n\nOphiuchus lunges at me, and the whole ship tilts to the side as he shoves me into the wall. \"You have no idea what you're talking about,\" he growls, his lethal jaws at my neck.\n\nHis starry eyes sear into mine with such fury that I know in my gut he could kill me right now.\n\nMy heartbeat grows more present with every breath, and I can't deny it feels good to hear it again. I'm afraid, but I'm also excited . . . because deep down I crave the death he offers.\n\nHe lets go of me suddenly, and as the ship straightens I dig my back into the wall so I won't fall to the ground again.\n\n\"If Helios goes dark, so does this whole universe,\" I warn as my pulse fades into the void in my chest once more. \"That means your precious people go, too. So if you really care about your House, talk to me about the portal and the Last Prophecy. How do we stop Aquarius?\"\n\nHe stands with his back to me and stares out at the blackness looming ahead. \"We keep him from activating the portal.\"\n\n\"Why? What happens when he activates it?\"\n\n\"The Zodiac's days will be numbered. _Seven_ , to be exact.\"\n\n\"What happens after seven days?\" I press.\n\n\"That's how long it takes for the portal to fully open. The instant the first ship goes through, the solar system will begin to fall.\"\n\n_\"And how exactly does he plan to activate the portal?\"_\n\nStill turned away, Ophiuchus says, \"He's going to sacrifice me.\"\n\n# 19\n\nTHE THIRTEENTH GUARDIAN SITS ON the floor and tunnels deep into his Center for the rest of the trip. I've asked him a dozen follow-up questions, but he hasn't answered any of them. Not that I think he'd tell me the truth anyway.\n\nI dig through the galley for a squeeze tube of protein, and then I try to sleep a little in the cabin. I wake up just a couple of hours later, drenched in sweat, the skin on my chest burning like it's been freshly carved, and I don't close my eyes again.\n\nOphiuchus doesn't seem to have any needs, because he doesn't move again until the Lion constellation flies into view.\n\nThe House has one planet, Leo; two moons, Lion and Leon; and a small sun. Its people are divided into nine Prides: Power, Courage, Honor, Leadership, Truth, Adventure, Competition, Sensuality, and Artistry. I've read that much of the planet is covered in harsh terrain\u2014mountain ridges, jungles, marsh\u2014and even the moons have strange topographies: Lion has forests and a lake that is the House's largest store of freshwater, and Leon is a vast glacier with mountains made from crystals.\n\nSince I'm not wearing my Ring or checking my Wave\u2014so Hysan can't locate me\u2014all I have for company as we travel are the memories Ophiuchus shared with me. I keep picturing the beautiful god he started out as and comparing it to the lethal beast he's become. And what frightens me most is how much of myself and Hysan and Ferez I saw in him in his early years.\n\nWhen he addressed our ancestors, Ophiuchus was nurturing and wise and just, and his intentions to lead and protect humanity appeared selfless and pure. He seemed the embodiment of hope.\n\nJust as with Aryll, it was easier to hate Ochus before seeing his beginnings, and something Lord Neith once told me comes to mind. He said the symbol for Justice is a set of scales, because good and bad exist in equal quantities and to eradicate one is to eradicate both.\n\nI wonder if that's because the bad can never truly be separated from the good, since each of us harbors the potential for both.\n\nWe are all Grey Gowan. We are all Ophiuchus.\n\nWe are all the heroes and the villains of our own stories.\n\n\"I can't locate Aquarius's Psynergy signature.\" The Thirteenth Guardian breaks our silence, his eyes still shut. \"Where does your army believe he is?\"\n\n\"The Artistry Pride.\"\n\nHe finally meets my gaze, and I know why he's frowning. Supposedly, nothing stays in place in Artistry because the scenery is always changing. We could never hope to navigate that world without a guide.\n\nI sigh. There's only one Leonine I know who might be willing to help us.\n\nBut I really hate having to call on him.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI send Traxon Harwing an encrypted message from my Wave, and I hope to Helios that Hysan can't trace the transmission.\n\nThe Truther agrees to meet me at the _Friend_ gate outside the Artistry spaceport. Before disembarking, Ophiuchus changes into a red Major uniform. He couldn't fit into one suit, so we had to sew two together. I also give him my invisibility collar, and before disembarking I activate it.\n\nI wish we had two so that I could vanish with him.\n\nWe walk into a terminal swarming with eclectic Leonines showing off a dizzying array of traveling styles\u2014pajamas, courtsuits, floor-length dresses, animal costumes, beachwear\u2014and we hang back from the crowd so that no one runs into Ophiuchus's boulder-like body. I feel the heat of his giant presence at my side as we follow the flow of passengers toward the main transportation hub, and my gaze finds the brilliant blue sky beyond the windowed wall.\n\nLike Aries, Leo has a small secondary sun, but instead of red this one is golden and looks like a mini Helios. Mountaintops break through the foamy white clouds in the distance, and I watch what looks like planes or large birds diving off the tallest peak and soaring toward the small sun. Then I squint for a closer look as the birds or planes begin to drop off, freefalling like they've been shot down, and disappear from view.\n\nIt takes me a moment to realize they're people.\n\n\"Sun-sailing!\" says an excitable Leonine in a constellation-patterned jumpsuit. She suddenly slings an arm around my shoulder and pulls me up to the window, and I spy a half-moon tattoo on her cheekbone.\n\n\"See that point there?\" she asks, touching a spot on the glass. \"That's Mount Luz. It's our planet's highest peak. We have a sport called sun-sailing where you change into these protective suits with wings and try to catch a solar ray and ride its energy wave. There's a net waiting to catch you when you fall!\"\n\nShe turns to me, and I notice the crescent tattoo on her cheekbone has shape-shifted. It's now phased into a full moon. \"Interested? I can get you a discount\u2014\"\n\nAn invisible grip yanks on my arm, pulling me away from the girl and the window. \"If you buy tickets, tell the salesperson I sent you!\" she calls after me. \"Name's _Solay_!\"\n\nI stay close to Ophiuchus as we're funneled down a winding path that dead-ends in two queues: one is for Leonines, the other is for out-of-House visitors.\n\n_I'll meet you on the other side_. I hear Ophiuchus's voice in my head as his hand pulls away.\n\n\"Thumb out, please,\" says the Leonine sitting behind the podium of the visitors' queue. The holographic nameplate on her purple uniform reads HERRA, and I'm mesmerized by how the color of her afro changes with every customer. When she helped the Sagittarian couple ahead of me, her hair was bright blond, but now it's turned inky black.\n\nHer device registers my identity, and the words WANDERING STAR RHOMA GRACE flash before us. I guess my location isn't a secret anymore.\n\nHerra shoots to her feet, and panic flares in my chest as she surveys the area around us like she's searching for a Zodai. Then she looks at me again, and her face splits into a broad grin.\n\nShe tugs on her right sleeve, revealing a tattoo on her wrist: It's the glyph of me wrangling the snake into submission that I saw on Centaurion.\n\n\"It's an honor to meet you, ma'am,\" she says, her afro now a shocking shade of pink. \"Welcome to the Lion.\"\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nI'm still trying to process what happened as I step forward into the main transportation hub, when a bloodcurdling scream pierces the air.\n\nThe crowd around me parts in half, and my brain stalls as a troop of Marad soldiers marches toward me. They must have set up an alert for my astrological fingerprint.\n\nI stand frozen, my pulse materializing in my throat, as the porcelain-faced army comes closer and closer. _Where the Helios is Ophiuchus?_\n\nThe soldier in the lead lifts his Murmur. I will my legs to move, but I'm paralyzed in place, the way I was when I faced the Marad tribunal in my nightmares. I squeeze my eyes shut as he aims his weapon\u2014\n\n_\"CUT!\"_\n\nThe Marad soldiers groan and talking abruptly breaks out all around me. I open my eyes to see stylists approaching the soldiers to adjust their masks, while some people in the crowd pull up holographic scripts to review.\n\n\"Who is this girl in the middle of my shot?\" demands the same man who yelled \"cut.\" \" _Why_ is she just standing there? Can somebody get this crab to scuttle off my set? NOW!\"\n\nWhen I realize he's talking about me, my muscles grow even more leaden, like my body skipped over the fight-or-flight debate and went straight for surrender.\n\nAn invisible hand wraps around my arm, and when Ophiuchus tugs, my legs miraculously work again. I turn away in time to avoid the handful of harried Leonines who were running over to chase me off.\n\nI'm relieved when Ophiuchus leads us through the exit, and at last I can breathe fresh air again. I have no idea where the _Friend_ gate is, but the Thirteenth Guardian seems to know the way because we're charging through the crowd.\n\nWELCOME TO ARTISTRY\n\nI look up at the huge, color-changing holographic sign hovering high in the bright, dual-sun sky. All around me, hundreds upon hundreds of people are posing for holo-captures with the words in the air behind them. Since the plaza is so packed, eventually Ophiuchus has to slow down to keep everyone from noticing the violent ghost in their midst.\n\nHe's already knocked at least five people to the ground.\n\nHolograms of the most famous stars in Zodiac cinema float through the tourists, telling them about the Artistry Pride. \"Ever wish your life was more like a movie?\" asks the hologram of the Cancrian actress who plays Amara in the galaxy's most popular holo-show. It follows the love triangle of the last human survivors after the Zodiac has been wiped out, and the characters are inspired by the three Guardians behind the Trinary Axis.\n\n\"When you're in Artistry, you can be anyone you want to be,\" she says, and while some people walk through her, most stop and try to snap holo-captures with her image. \"You're entering the land where the art you love is created. Want to drop by the set of your favorite holo-show and be an extra for a scene or two? Want to bid on an exclusive invitation to dine with the cast? Want the chance to purchase new merchandise far before it's available to the rest of the Zodiac? If this sounds like Empyrean to you, then you'll want to enter through the _Meet the Stars_ gate.\" Winking, she adds, \"I'll see you there.\"\n\nHer hologram wends past me in the crowd, but I can still hear her because her voice is amplified to carry. \"Or perhaps you'd rather be the star of your own adventure. Do you often fantasize about saving the universe? Have you always longed to solve a crime? Would you relish the chance to safely channel your darker impulses by stepping into a villain's shoes? Then enter through the _Be the Star_ gate and purchase the Storyline that's right for you!\"\n\nI finally see where the towering wall that surrounds this Pride breaks for a series of gates. _Friend_ is the smallest of them; it's closed and locked and there's no official nearby.\n\nA large holographic sign says: ARTISTRY LAW STATES THAT VISITORS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY A LEONINE AT ALL TIMES, OR YOU RISK ARREST. PLEASE WAIT HERE UNTIL YOUR NAME IS CALLED.\n\nThe gate suddenly opens, and a Lionheart peeks her head out. \"Thumb, please.\"\n\nI press my finger to the reader she holds out, and a moment later my name appears.\n\nThe opening widens, and the Leonine Zodai holds the door for me. I feel Ophiuchus move ahead, and I think he must brush her as he goes by because she looks around like she felt something.\n\nI hurry through and follow her down a long, dark tunnel that cuts through the extra-thick black wall that encloses Artistry. This Pride certainly takes its privacy seriously.\n\nWhen we get to the other side, we're on what looks like a fake street. The storefronts are too squat and bright, and the holographic graffiti on the walls is too evenly spaced. This must be an old filming set they don't use anymore.\n\nA troop of Zodai is standing guard nearby, and a guy with a bushy brown mane and pierced eyebrows waits among them. Traxon is wearing the white outfit he wore when I first met him on Taurus, when he spoke on a panel with other members of 13.\n\n\"We release you into Traxon Harwing's custody,\" says the Lionheart who let me in, scrutinizing me curiously through rainbow-colored eyelashes. \"Enjoy your stay, and we wish you a happy ending!\"\n\nAs soon as I trade the hand touch with Traxon, his feet start moving and his mouth starts running. \"Rho, always exciting to see you! I'm glad you decided to do the honorable thing and hold up your end of our bargain, but you could have given me more of a head's up.\" His feet work at the speed of his words, and I hurry to keep up with him. \"I had a speaking engagement for 13 today that I had to walk out on\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm not here for\u2014\"\n\n\"But it doesn't matter because this interview will be worth it! Obviously, I would have much rather done this in my studio on the Truth Pride, but at least Artistry is crawling with production hands. We've managed to improvise a decent setup\u2014but here, you can see for yourself!\"\n\nBeaming, he pulls open the door to one of the abandoned storefronts, and we step into a small, dark space. Only a couple of chairs and camera equipment have been set up, and there's two Leonines dressing the set with flowers and water glasses.\n\n\"Okay, so we should be ready to go in a few minutes, but in the meantime, maybe you can run me through the main talking points\u2014\"\n\n\"Trax, _stop_ ,\" I say, stepping up to him so he'll see _me_ and not a headline. \"I'm here for something else.\"\n\nHe furrows his decorated brow. \"We had a deal. I kept up my end, I told you who was funding the Tomorrow Party, and you\u2014\"\n\n\"Look, I'll give you an exclusive. I will. Just not now, okay? First I really need your help.\"\n\n\"No,\" he says, crossing his arms over his chest. \"We do the interview first, and then I help you.\"\n\nI clench my jaw and try not to snap. _\"Can we talk in private?\"_\n\nHe wordlessly turns to his two production hands, who've stopped working to watch our argument, and they step outside.\n\n\"I need you to take me to the Tomorrow Party,\" I say once we're alone. \"They're hiding somewhere on this Pride.\"\n\nMy request seems to stump Traxon, and he looks more confused than upset. \"What makes you think I can find them?\"\n\n\"Because you're an incredible investigator.\"\n\nRather than appease him, the compliment seems to inflate his ego, and his chest swells with pride. \"Well I'm not interested unless you do this interview. You and your Aquarian friend were so pleased with yourselves when you offered me an ultimatum last time we met, remember? Now I'm offering you one: If you want my help, do my interview.\"\n\n\"There are more important things going on!\" I shout.\n\n\"Great!\" he roars. \"Let's hear about them!\"\n\n\"You're being a _child_ \u2014\"\n\nTraxon's eyes suddenly shift away from me, and the dark tan drains from his skin until he looks as pale as an Aquarian. His mouth opens and closes, like he's finally run out of words, and I know better than to believe I could have that effect on him.\n\nI wheel around and see that Ophiuchus has deactivated his collar.\n\n# 20\n\nIN HIS TOO-SMALL UNIFORM, WITH his too-wide eyes and his too-big clawed feet, the Thirteenth Guardian looks too large for this world.\n\nTears streak down Traxon's cheeks, and he bends into a low bow that goes on for an uncomfortably long time. When he straightens, he says, \"Your holiness, I\u2014\"\n\n\"Traxon, we need to go _now_ ,\" I say, my hands curling with impatience. \"There's no time for this!\"\n\nBut he still isn't looking at me, nor does he appear to be listening. \"Your holiness, I want to apologize on behalf of the Zodiac for what's happened to you and your House,\" he murmurs, hanging his head.\n\n\"Thank you,\" rumbles Ophiuchus, his booming voice shaking the walls of the small space. Then he turns to me and says, \"He will get us where we need to go.\"\n\n\"Stellar. Then let's move,\" I command. \"You should reactivate your collar\u2014\"\n\n\"No need,\" says Trax, looking away from Ophiuchus long enough to remember my presence. \"Everyone's always playing a character here\u2014people will just assume you have killer costumes.\"\n\nWhen we're outside, Traxon dismisses the two production hands, and he reaches out to his sources to inquire about the Party. Ophiuchus and I hang around a few moments while Trax consults his Lighter, and then he says, \"This way.\"\n\n\"Have you found the Party?\" I ask as we hurry down the street.\n\nTraxon clings so close to Ophiuchus that he reminds me of the tiny fish that hitch rides with crab-sharks. \"I have a friend who lives nearby. Whatever's going on, he'll know.\"\n\nSoon we arrive at a busy shopping district filled with restaurants and stores and theaters and street performers. More holograms of Zodiac celebrities float through the crowd offering additional services.\n\n\"The present is so fleeting!\" I hear one of them say. \"Don't let your Storyline end when your vacation does\u2014relive the experience again and again and again by purchasing the film!\"\n\n\"Isn't there a faster way to get there?\" I ask Traxon. \"Some kind of public transportation system?\"\n\n\"It'd take us longer to reach the wall than it would to cut through the crowd,\" he says, and seeing my confusion he explains. \"There's a train that runs inside the wall enclosing this Pride. But like I said, walking will be faster.\"\n\nI look to Ophiuchus to see if he's as exasperated as I am, but his expression is distant and detached, like Trax and I are kids at an amusement park and he's the parent with bigger things on his mind.\n\nI glimpse a young Taurian girl eagerly unwrapping a purple chew candy at a treat stand and shoving it into her mouth. \"Slow down,\" chides her mom as the girl's jaw works exra hard to eat it quickly. When she swallows, her parents and the salesperson all stare at her expectantly.\n\nSuddenly she releases a shockingly loud burp, blasting her parents' faces with purple smoke.\n\nThe little girl and the Leonine salesperson are in hysterics, but her parents don't look amused. I look up at the holographic sign over the stand: PURPLE URPLES\u2014YOU'LL BURP PURPLE SMOKE!\n\n\"Please, I want them!\" I hear her begging her mom long after we've passed them. _\"Pleeeease!\"_\n\nI fall back a step as a man in an inconspicuous black getup sidles up to Trax. \"I'm hiring people for a major jewel heist. Max told me you're the man for the job.\"\n\nTrax glares at the Leonine and adopts a deep, husky voice unlike his usual one. \"I've got other plans today, old man. Now scram, and don't breathe a word about me to Max. I'm undercover, understand?\"\n\nThe man nods and hurries away.\n\n\"What the Helios was that?\" I ask.\n\nTraxon shrugs. \"People don't come to Leo for judgment\u2014they come to give in to their passions. Sometimes you need to shed your inhibitions and let your weirdness out, so when you hear a Storyline you like, you _take_ it.\"\n\nI feel like under other circumstances, I might be charmed by the playful nature of this world, but right now I just want to find the Party and awaken Nishi.\n\n\"Your holiness,\" Traxon says, turning to Ophiuchus, \"I would be honored if I could ask you a few questions, if you're feeling up to it. I have a show dedicated to exposing politicians' lies, to keep them from doing to others what was once done to you\u2014\"\n\nI roll my eyes so hard I think I see the back of my head.\n\n\"You see,\" Trax blathers on, \"it's been my life's dream to find proof of your existence and help you reclaim your place in the Zodiac, and now\u2014well, you can't imagine what meeting you means to me.\"\n\nAs Traxon professes his adoration, I'm relieved to see he's steered us away from the tourist district and onto a quieter street that looks like a real residential area. No one seems to be selling anything here, and the Leonines entering and exiting buildings are dressed up for dramatically different occasions, like the travelers at the spaceport.\n\nI dodge a woman wearing a pink tutu and ballerina shoes who's dancing her way down the street, and a block later I edge around a painter who's planted himself in the middle of everything to capture the scene with his brush. Then a man in a top hat emerges from his townhome, sucks in a huge breath, and starts belting out a song:\n\n_Life is a story_\n\n_About seeking glory_\n\n_Whose plot isn't always so clear . . ._\n\nHe strides up the street, tipping his hat to people as he sings, and some of the passersby join his song, like they're familiar with the lyrics.\n\n_So when they told me_\n\n_To pick who I would be,_\n\n_I asked for a heart with no fear!_\n\nA group of girls starts dancing around him, and soon there's a mobile musical number making its way down the street. Some people join in by playing their instruments from their balconies, and others contribute by drumming on windows and walls. Even those who are too busy to participate don't look put out by what's happening\u2014performing seems to be as natural as breathing here.\n\n\"He must've just gotten some great news,\" says Trax, like that justifies the man's decision to burst into song in public.\n\n\"Is this whole Pride just one big production?\"\n\nRight as I pose the question, Traxon stops before a rundown townhouse and knocks on the door. After a moment, a disheveled teen guy opens it and studies us. \"Traxon.\"\n\n\"Tom\u00e1s.\"\n\nBoth guys nod and trade a complicated hand touch greeting, then Tom\u00e1s stands back to let us in. His home is small but cozy: We step into a narrow sitting area that's adjacent to a kitchen and a study, and in the back of the space a staircase spirals up.\n\nThe seating area has a couch and two armchairs around a coffee table, and all the furniture looks beat-up and heavily used. Tangible paper books line the shelves that were built into every wall, and painted canvases of every size and at varying stages of completion clutter the floor. When I look at Tom\u00e1s again, I notice the paint on the underside of his hands and the back of his neck.\n\n\"Tom\u00e1s is a member of 13,\" says Trax, swinging an arm around his friend's shoulders. \"In exchange for helping us, I've promised him a secret.\"\n\n\"A _secret_?\" I ask.\n\n\"Truthers trade in secrets,\" he explains. \"It's the most valuable currency we can offer. So, Tom\u00e1s\u2014my secret is this.\" He turns to Ophiuchus, who's standing beside me, and says, \" _That_ , my dear fellow, is the one and only Ophiuchus.\"\n\nTom\u00e1s's eyes widen with awe as mine fill with fury and fear. \"Are you _insane_?\" I shout at Traxon.\n\n\"A Leonine always pays his debts,\" he says simply, no apology in his voice. I turn to Ophiuchus for backup, but now he's sitting on the floor beside the coffee table, his eyes closing like he's descending to his Center. _Perfect._\n\nTom\u00e1s orbits the Thirteenth Guardian, scrutinizing him closely like a collector evaluating a new piece. \"Incredible,\" he murmurs every few seconds. When he finally looks at us again, his eyes are just as shiny as Traxon's.\n\n\"Given that you're all about the _truth_ ,\" I say to Traxon, \"you must hate this Pride since everything seems to be a performance.\"\n\nTom\u00e1s answers in place of his friend, frowning at me. \"This is a land of _performers_. That's not the same as a _performance_ , which is something you put on for others. Simply put: Performers perform. Making art is just how we live our lives. We're not doing it for an audience, but if people want to consume our art because it makes their lives meaningful or enjoyable or even bearable, we welcome them.\"\n\nTom\u00e1s's speech sounds rehearsed, like he's defended his profession before, and I wonder if he realizes that even now he's performing.\n\nThen again, I'm probably the last person to know what's real anymore. I'm no longer sure any of us can be completely certain where performances end and truth begins.\n\n\"So can you help us find the Tomorrow Party?\" Traxon asks his friend.\n\n\"I might have a lead. But you and I should go alone\u2014any non-Leonines would be suspicious.\"\n\nTrax nods and turns to me. \"We'll be back soon.\"\n\nAlone with Ophiuchus, I sit on one of the faded couches and try not to think about how much time has already passed. How much pain Nishi has already endured.\n\n_Tick, tock, tick, tock, crab._\n\nI distract myself by contemplating the Thirteenth Guardian. Even though he's nothing like the godlike being he was in his original form, he's no mere mortal either. Being around him feels like I'm in the presence of something holy, yet undeniably dark.\n\nHe's a fallen god who succumbed to the worst kind of evil.\n\n_A broken star_.\n\nThe front door opens, and I'm relieved the guys were so quick. I stand up in anticipation\u2014only instead of Trax and Tom\u00e1s, a dozen masked Marad soldiers in white uniforms march inside, training their Murmurs on us.\n\nI can almost delude myself that it's just a bunch of Leonine actors, but then a thirteenth Lion strides into the room.\n\nThe leader of the Tomorrow Party.\n\n# 21\n\nI RAISE MY HAND AND make a fist, releasing the blue sword of my Barer. \"Wake up!\" I shout at Ophiuchus, but he remains on the floor, deep in his Center.\n\nBlaze Jansun eases in with the same conqueror's confidence he always exudes\u2014like every room he enters instantly becomes part of his domain. He's wearing a royal purple Lionheart uniform, and his russet eyes and bright brown skin glow against his newly dyed white hair.\n\n\"I'll kill you,\" I warn as he walks closer, holding the sword as steady as I can. \"Your master wants me alive, so you can't hurt me,\" I remind him.\n\n\"I have no intention of hurting you, Rho,\" he says, sounding wounded by the mere suggestion. He settles into the center couch cushion, stretching his limbs and taking up the whole thing. \"These weapons are for your friend.\"\n\n\"Did you hurt Trax?\"\n\nTraxon comes forward from behind the wall of soldiers, and for the first time I hear how truly gullible I am.\n\n\"We knew you spoke with Traxon on Aquarius because we saw you meeting with him in the Pegazi stables,\" says Blaze. \"So once you left, I found him and offered to hand over the one thing he's always wanted from both of us.\"\n\n_The truth._\n\nTraxon doesn't shrink from my glower because by his standards, he didn't do anything wrong. He's stayed true to his own code\u2014 _truth above all_ \u2014and he probably sees _me_ as the one in the wrong for manipulating him. And maybe I am.\n\n_Every truth is relative._ I hear Gamba's words in my mind, but I shake them off by digging into Blaze. \"And what version of _the_ _truth_ did you give him?\"\n\n\"We told him _everything_.\" From the way Blaze says the word, it's clear that Traxon's knowledge of the Party now far surpasses mine. \"And in exchange, we asked that he tell you Untara was funding Black Moon\u2014which, full disclosure, was all along just a ploy to draw you in and steal your followers.\"\n\nFire flames inside me at the thought of how they used Nishi, but for her sake I keep it tamed. I need to save her first\u2014I'll worry about making them pay for what they did after.\n\n\"I thought you were honorable,\" I growl at Traxon.\n\n\"I don't go back on my deals,\" he says, glaring back at me just as angrily, and in his hurt expression, I see the pain of my refusal to trust him. \"Besides, you wanted me to take you to the Party, and now I've brought the Party to you.\"\n\nI lower my hand but don't turn off my Barer. Instead, I transform the energy into electric brass knuckles, and I keep my arm ready to swing if the need arises. \"So what exactly are you doing for Aquarius, Blaze?\"\n\n\"It's what _he's_ doing for us, Rho,\" he says, sitting up with excitement. \"He's freeing us from the old ways and the old politicians and the old prejudices\u2014he's giving us a chance to re-create our universe. To make it the way it ought to be. All of us living as one, not twelve or thirteen.\"\n\n\"That's inspiring, but I'm curious: How does murder play into that utopia?\"\n\n\"That's what you Cancrians don't understand,\" he says, shaking his head. _\"Sacrifice_.\"\n\nI hear Fernanda's accusation in his words: _On Cancer you believe the loss of one life is as unacceptable as the loss of ten thousand\u2014but on Taurus, we're team players and we believe in making sacrifices for the greater good._\n\n\"Sometimes a broken building can't be repaired,\" he goes on. \"Sometimes you have to blow up its foundation and build it anew.\"\n\nThis time, it's Deke I hear: _To change the norm, you have to break it._\n\nWords can be so easily manipulated\u2014all you have to do is assign them new meanings, and the message changes. They're as inconstant as the streets of the Artistry Pride, and that's what Aquarius\u2014a wordsmith by nature\u2014realized. It's what he's used to change the Zodiac.\n\nWords have always been his weapon of choice.\n\nBut they've also been mine.\n\n\"So what are we waiting for?\" I ask, and the electricity snuffs out from my Barer. \"Take us to him.\"\n\n\"You friend is a little large to carry,\" says Blaze. \"We'll wait for him to wake up.\"\n\nOphiuchus's silver eyes open, and he rises to his impressive height.\n\n\"Well then.\" Even though Blaze is still playing it cool, there's a tense note in his voice now. \"As they say in Artistry: _It's time to meet the director_.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nRather than marching us out, Blaze and his soldiers force Ophiuchus and me upstairs, and then they open a hatch in the ceiling and make us climb onto the rooftop. Traxon and Tom\u00e1s stay behind.\n\nA machine that looks like a massive silver cat lands lightly and soundlessly before us, and I gasp.\n\n_A Panthera plane._\n\nEveryone in the Zodiac has heard of Panthera planes, but hardly anyone has ever seen one. Only the highest level of Leonine government officials have access to them because of their stealth\u2014since the ships don't exactly fly, they have no real engine and operate on minimal technology, so they slip past almost every kind of detection.\n\nPanthera planes play a big part in pretty much every Leonine action film, so on Cancer every kid grew up wanting one. Even Dad used to talk about them.\n\nThe craft operates on four powerfully springy legs that silently leap from rooftop to rooftop. The only windows are in the plane's catlike head, where the driver sits, guiding the legs' direction.\n\nAn entryway opens in the silver cat's round belly, and Ophiuchus and I follow Blaze inside, Murmurs aimed at our backs. The space is dark and velvety, without windows or wallscreens, and each of us straps into a seat. Then the mechanical cat extends its legs, and the craft barely shakes as we leap from roof to roof.\n\nWith nothing to watch or listen to, all I have to think about is the meeting that's coming. If Traxon's betrayal did anything, it cemented that I was right not to trust anyone but myself. It's not like any of this changes my plan anyway: I was always going to go before Aquarius and beg for Nishi's life. I was just hoping to show up on my terms, not dragged in at gunpoint.\n\nMy stomach tickles as the Panthera makes an especially low jump, and as soon as we land, Blaze and the soldiers get to their feet. When we deplane, I turn around quickly to watch the huge silver cat leap away.\n\nWe're on the banks of a vast body of water, and docked on the blue shore is a piece of home I never thought I'd see.\n\nA giant ridged shell reaches up on either side of the iconic Cancrian vessel we called the _Mothership_. It's the floating residence where our Holy Mothers used to live. Aquarius must have moved the Party's headquarters here for _me_.\n\nI've always dreamt of seeing this place up close. I studied it so much as a kid that I memorized everything about it, and Mom promised to take me one day if I trained hard enough.\n\nThe top part of the ship is domed and crystalized, and it looks like a pearl caught in a giant nar-clam's jaws. This Leonine replica is smaller than the real vessel, but it still looks sizable enough to hold a few hundred people.\n\nEven though it's a knockoff, I still feel a chill as I step onto the boarding ramp, like I'm entering the holiest home on House Cancer. Since it's an abridged version, the Leonines only included the parts that are best known to us, so we step directly into one of the most famous places in the ship\u2014the Family Room.\n\nIt's a hall decorated with the crests of Cancer's twelve founding families, and it's where Mother Origene used to hold her beloved \"seaside chats.\"\n\nShe would sail to different parts of the planet and invite families from all levels of society to sit with her and discuss everything and anything. Then she'd listen to questions and complaints from anyone, even kids, and Lodestars would broadcast the chat to the whole planet. I wanted so badly to attend one so I could show her everything Mom taught me and make both of them proud.\n\nWhich inspiring initiatives will Cancrians remember from my tenure as Guardian? The way I ran away from the Crab constellation right after my coronation, or how I led an armada of Zodai to their deaths?\n\nI try to keep focused on the present as we climb up a spiral staircase that's polished and pink, like the inside of a seashell. It goes on for so long that my muscles start screaming in agony, reminding me that my body hasn't fully recovered from the Sumber yet.\n\nI breathe a sigh of relief when we finally reach the top, and I lean against the wall to catch my breath. We're in a domed room encased in crystal, a place few people have ever seen\u2014the Holy Mother's reading room.\n\nThe Marad soldiers are no longer with us, and now it's just Blaze, Ophiuchus, and . . . Aquarius.\n\nHe stands before us in a billowing aqua cloak, but he's not looking at me. He and Ophiuchus are staring at each other like Blaze and I don't exist.\n\nIt's strange to see the Original Guardians in these bodies\u2014Aquarius as a forty-something man and Ophiuchus as a teen. Yet both are really fallen stars who've shared an eternity together.\n\nOphiuchus's silver eyes gleam with emotion, like he's finally yanked his head out of the astral plane and joined us in reality. Aquarius moves toward him until they're standing face to face.\n\n\"I meant for you to leave Pisces with me. But when I was hit, my people chose to save me rather than follow my orders to bring you with us. I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Your eyes.\"\n\nOphiuchus's voice is so soft it's almost a whisper. \"They're the only part of you that hasn't changed.\"\n\nAquarius reaches into his robe and pulls out the diamond-bright Talisman he brought to the Cathedral\u2014Ophiuchus's Star Stone. The Thirteenth Guardian stares at it in muted shock, and I spy his jaw clenching.\n\nBut Aquarius doesn't notice his reaction because he closes his eyes and holds the Talisman between his hands, concentrating so hard that a vein bulges on his forehead, and he seems to be in terrible pain. After a moment, his face relaxes and he lowers his hands.\n\nWhen he opens his eyes, his ivory features glow, a ghost of the moonlight he gave off long ago. His silver hair grows silkier, and even his voice sounds different, more velvety than before. He looks ageless and otherworldly, like he's shed his human skin at last.\n\n\"Does this please you more?\" he murmurs as he slips the Stone back inside his cloak.\n\nOphiuchus exhales heavily. \"You know I never cared for such things. It was your soul I admired, not your shell.\"\n\n_\"Where's Nishi?\"_\n\nAquarius jerks his face to me, like he's just noticing I'm here.\n\n\"Wandering Star, welcome!\" He gives me a bow that only serves to remind me of how little power I actually have in this room. \"Thank you for coming.\"\n\n\"I'm not here for tea,\" I say, my voice a low growl. \"I came to bring you Ophiuchus in exchange for my friend. Now free Nishi.\"\n\n\"You're quite wrong,\" says Aquarius pleasantly. \"Ophiuchus came to me of his own accord, same as you . . . but you have other things to barter with.\"\n\nI cross my arms. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"When you're _really_ ready to listen,\" he says in a maddeningly condescending tone, \"I'll tell you.\"\n\nI ball my hands into fists at my sides and try to restrain the Barer from activating. \" _Please_ \u2014I can't wait anymore. Every moment she's in there, Nishi's suffering.\"\n\nMy voice cracks, and though my gut hardens in disgust, I fall to my knees before him.\n\n\"Take me instead. Let me take her place in the nightmare world. I'll do anything\u2014just get her out of there. Please. Name your price and I'll pay it, but don't make her stay in there another moment. _I'm begging you_ \u2014\"\n\n\"Rho.\"\n\nAquarius frowns, and to my shock he drops to his knees before me, too. His pink eyes look so concerned that a more trusting version of myself might have believed he actually cares. \"I told my army to avoid inflicting pain on her at all costs. They should have used the Sumber's dream chamber, not nightmare. Were _you_ also\u2014?\"\n\nHe reads the answer on my face because he grows even more pallid. \"I'm so sorry . . . I have forgotten how frail mortal minds can be. We will have her awoken immediately, and you can go to her straightaway.\"\n\nThe whole Zodiac suddenly fades to background noise.\n\n\"I can go _now_?\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\" He looks to Blaze. \"Please see that this is done immediately, and let Rho have some privacy with her friend. I expect Nishi to receive the best care possible, and I will personally see to anyone who disobeys me. Clear?\"\n\nBlaze nods. \"On my honor.\"\n\nI take one last glance at Ophiuchus, who's still staring at Aquarius and looking hopeful for the first time, and though part of me would like to stay to hear what's said between them, nothing matters more than Nishi. So I run after Blaze, who's climbing down a different spiral staircase.\n\nI remember from my studies that the Mothership has four wings, just like the Cancrian embassy has four bungalows, but what's new are all the books stuffed into every shelf and nook and cranny\u2014the paper kind that are rarely sold on most Houses anymore, since everything went holographic centuries ago.\n\n\"Aquarius is quite the reader,\" Blaze explains as we step into a sitting area crammed with more manuscripts. \"He's read every single book every Zodai on every House has ever published.\"\n\nAs I pass the rows of spines, I wonder how we stand a chance against someone who knows us better than we know ourselves.\n\nAt the other end of the sitting area is a set of swinging double doors. Inside is a medical bay with curtains hanging from the ceiling between hospital beds, but only one set is drawn around the sole patient.\n\nI race past Blaze and shove back the black curtains.\n\n_Nishi._\n\nI drape myself over her chest and clutch her to me, my breaths loud and labored. I found her. She's alive.\n\nWe're together, and it's _real_.\n\n\"Rho, move back so they can help her,\" says Blaze, and I look up to see a pair of Leonine healers coming over. I step aside without letting go of Nishi's hand, and I watch as they inject something into her system. Nishi suddenly grips my fingers, and I gasp\u2014but the others don't seem surprised.\n\n\"It just means the injection's kicked in,\" explains Blaze. \"Now it's up to Nishi's mind to wake up.\"\n\n\"I remember,\" I say through gritted teeth. \"Leave us.\"\n\n\"But Aquarius said to offer her the best care\u2014\"\n\n\"And I will,\" I say, glaring at him. \"I want you all out of here. Go tell Aquarius if you want, but I'm sure he'll instruct you to follow my wishes.\"\n\n\"Okay, then,\" says Blaze. \"Let's go.\"\n\nI shut the curtains around us and sit next to Nishi, taking her hand again. Since she's already faced her worst fear, the antidote shouldn't take long to work. But I watch her for hours, and her eyes never open.\n\nAt one point, Blaze comes by and drops off food for me, but I don't touch it. He offers to escort me to my quarters, but I ignore him until he goes away.\n\n\"Please, Nish,\" I whisper, late into the night when the lights have been dimmed and the whole place is silent. \"Please wake up. I'm so sorry I left you for so long, but you're safe now, I promise. You have to fight for this. _Please fight._ I need you.\"\n\nI must doze off at some point, because the next thing I know I jerk awake to find Nishi's eyelids blinking open.\n\n_\"Nish?\"_ I whisper, my voice thick with hope.\n\nHer amber irises find mine, and her hand twitches, so I squeeze her fingers. \"I'm here,\" I say, cupping her face with my free hand. \"You're okay. Just follow the sound of my voice,\" I go on, repeating everything I remember the Ariean healer saying to me. \"Inhale deeply, then exhale, but take your time. Blink once if you can feel my hand squeezing yours.\"\n\nShe blinks.\n\n\"Good. Can you try squeezing back?\" I wait to feel something, but nothing happens. \"It's okay,\" I say soothingly. \"You're okay.\"\n\nHer fingers suddenly clamp down on mine, and my face splits into its first smile since Pisces. My shoulders fall and a pressure eases behind my eyes, and only now do I realize how tightly wound I've been this whole time.\n\nThen Nishi's lips part, and she whispers hoarsely, \"I knew you'd find me, Rho.\"\n\n# 22\n\nTHE SECOND THING NISHI SAYS is, \"You're not real.\" Her expression falls, and what little color she had recovered begins to fade.\n\n\"I am, Nish, I promise,\" I whisper, squeezing her hand firmly, but her fingers are limp and panic is exploding in her eyes.\n\n\"Nish,\" I plead as gently as I can. \"You're safe, I swear it.\"\n\nHer whole body stiffens, her shoulders peaking up, her hand twitching in mine. She doesn't trust me. \"I know you're scared,\" I say, stroking her dark hair. \"So how about we just sit here and wait for a bit?\"\n\nNishi nods her head slightly but doesn't say a word. After almost an hour of holding hands in silence, she finally seems to relax, and I try talking to her again. \"How do you feel?\"\n\n\"Confused,\" she finally answers, sitting up. I grab the glass I left on the counter, and I slowly tip the water into her mouth. When she wraps her own hands around the glass, I let go.\n\nAfter a few sips she asks, \"Where are we?\"\n\n\"With the Tomorrow Party.\"\n\n\"Why did they let you come to me?\"\n\n\"What do you remember from what I told you in the Sumber?\" I ask tentatively.\n\nShe takes another drink of water. Then she hands the glass back to me and says, \"Crompton is the master.\"\n\nI nod. \"He gave me permission to see you. I don't know why\u2014but I'm not questioning it. I just want to get you back to the others.\"\n\nHer eyes grow alarmed. \"Rho, we have to get out of here now, before the Party members come for us. The master will never let us go\u2014\"\n\n\"Shhh, calm down,\" I say. \"First you have to recover your strength. We'll worry about everything else once you're better. We're safe for now.\"\n\n\"How? _How are we safe, Rho?_ These are the same people who shot us with the Sumber in the first place\u2014\"\n\n\"Just trust me, Nish,\" I say, my voice firmer than before. \"I'll protect you\u2014 _I swear it on my mother's life._ \"\n\nThe ceiling lights suddenly brighten, and I hear footsteps. I get to my feet and position myself in front of the bed, my Barer at the ready in case I need to defend Nishi.\n\nOne of the healers pokes her head in through the curtains. When she sees that Nishi's awake, she looks pleased. \"May I check her vitals?\" she asks me.\n\nI nod, and she comes in and reviews the data flashing on the holographic screens. \"Everything looks good,\" she says at last. \"But you've been under for so long that your muscles need rehabilitation. We can pop you into a healing pod if you'd like to expedite things\u2014otherwise, you're looking at a couple more days in here.\"\n\n\"She'll take the healing pod,\" I say before Nishi can speak. There's no time for an extended hospital stay.\n\n\"Actually, _she'll heal naturally_ ,\" says Nishi testily.\n\nI turn to her. \"You need to get better faster than that.\"\n\n\"I'm _not_ going inside the healing pod,\" she says, her voice loud but shaky.\n\n\"Why not?\"\n\nShe drops her gaze, and suddenly I realize I know the answer. She doesn't want to go back to sleep.\n\nHow could I not anticipate that fear when it's tormented me, too?\n\n\"We have dreamless sleeping tonics,\" says the healer gently, understanding the problem as well.\n\nNishi perks up a bit at this news, but then she abruptly turns to me, concern resurfacing in her eyes. \"I'll be right here when you wake up,\" I assure her. \"I promise.\"\n\nShe nods in agreement, and the nurse and I carry Nishi between us. Once she's sealed inside, the pod runs a scan, and then the total time it will take to heal Nishi flashes on a screen. While the nurse sets the program to begin, I step through the double doors and leave the medical bay.\n\nIn the sitting area, I spot a small stone table with two plushy armchairs on either side, and Aquarius is sitting in one of them, reading the holographic news projecting from his Philosopher's Stone. His skin is still glowing like a star.\n\n\"I brought you breakfast,\" he says, gesturing to the tray of food on the table. \"How long do you have?\"\n\nI frown at his generosity and guardedly say, \"The healing pod opens in fifteen hours.\"\n\n\"Excellent.\" He waves the holographic screens aside and takes a sip of his tea. \"Then we'll make the most of our time together before you have to return. Would you like a nap or a shower?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nIt's actually pretty liberating not to care about myself anymore. I'm free to run my body down completely because I have no future to save it for. Once I get Nishi away from here, all that matters is gaining Aquarius's trust and thwarting his plans, or relaying what I learn to my friends so they can stop him.\n\n\"So, any more questions, or are we about done with the _dullatry_?\" I ask.\n\nHis pink eyes sparkle with delight when he hears me using his vocabulary. \"You eat, I'll talk,\" he says, and he waits for me to take a bite of toast before he keeps going, as though to remind me that all the power lies on his side of the table.\n\n\"I'm sorry it's proven so difficult for us to get together. I'd meant to avoid that by giving you the pearl necklace at the Cathedral.\"\n\n\"The necklace?\"\n\n\"It was a Psynergy device of my own design that enabled us to communicate privately.\"\n\nHysan was right. As usual.\n\n\"I'm guessing your boyfriend interfered.\"\n\nI cross my arms. \"How did you know about Lord Neith?\"\n\n\"Now _that_ was a clever trick,\" he says, sitting up and leaning forward. A strand of silver hair falls over his face, and he brushes it back. \"I can't believe it got by me for so long. Any other era and I would never have been caught unaware by a human, but, as you know, I've been a bit . . . distracted.\" He smiles indulgently, like I'm an amusing pet he loves but doesn't respect.\n\n\"I figured it out the day Neith malfunctioned at the Hippodrome, when he answered _Insufficient data_. At first I thought Neith had built a robot decoy for his own protection at Plenum meetings\u2014so I watched him closely after that, and soon a golden-haired boy caught my eye. It wasn't hard to figure the rest out.\"\n\nI think back to that day on Aries, my second attempt to convince the Plenum that Ophiuchus was real. Hysan got Tasered when he tried standing up for me, so he has no idea what happened while he was unconscious. I should have mentioned Neith's malfunction to him.\n\n_Why didn't I say something?_\n\n\"I managed to get my hands on Neith for a day,\" Aquarius goes on, and I know he's now referring to the day Hysan was supposed to fly me to meet the Marad, when Twain replaced him as _'Nox_ 's pilot. \"When I inspected the android, I realized the Psynergy around him was being artificially attracted to cover for the fact that he has no _soul_. His insides were designed to look human\u2014only instead of blood, his heart pumps Abyssthe through his veins. It's really quite clever.\"\n\nThe day Hysan started helping me, his own life starting falling apart.\n\nI've done nothing to aid him.\n\nI've done nothing to deserve him.\n\n\"After all, androids are my specialty,\" he adds, and I stare at him in wonder. \"How else could I be multiple people at once?\"\n\n\"You mean you had android versions of Morscerta and Crompton?\"\n\n\"Naturally. Only unlike Neith, I don't imbue them with artificial intelligence\u2014I inhabit them myself through the Psy. It took me centuries of training and studying to perfect my technique, and unfortunately I haven't found a way to permanently install my essence in a more sustainable vessel, but no matter. I won't need to do that anymore now that my secret is out.\"\n\n_What the Helios is happening here?_ I feel like I've entered some kind of alternate dimension. Why is my enemy being more honest with me than my own friends?\n\nHe nudges my plate closer to me, and I look down at my toast; I've taken exactly one bite. \"Would you like to see your mom?\"\n\n\"What do you want from her?\" I ask, forcing the bread to my mouth, even though my stomach's sealed itself off.\n\n\"Information she doesn't possess,\" he says dismissively, looking disappointedly at my plate.\n\nI swallow, and the bite of bread slowly descends down my dry throat. \"Did you hurt her?\" I ask, my tone tight.\n\n\"That approach would have been a waste of time,\" he says matter-of-factly. \"You can't break someone who has always been broken.\"\n\nI don't like thinking of Mom that way, and suddenly I want to see her.\n\n\"Well, if you're not going to eat, shall we get started?\" he asks, linking his hands together on the cold table. \"This has been a charming chat, but I would hope you have more important questions to ask me, and I'd like to get through most of my answers before your fifteen-hour window closes.\"\n\nI make a point of pushing the plate aside, scraping it across the stone, and I lean forward. \"Really?\" I ask dryly. \"You're actually going to answer my questions and tell me everything I want to know?\"\n\nHe leans in, too. _\"Try me.\"_\n\n\"Okay,\" I say, sitting back. \"What's your master plan?\"\n\n\"Like your ancestors, I am going to travel through the portal in Helios to colonize a new galaxy, and I hope to save as many samples of the Zodiac's species as possible when I go. Because Helios is dying.\"\n\n\"Our sun isn't dying!\" I snap, straightening my spine. \" _You're_ killing it.\"\n\nHe sighs and says, \"You've already come this far. Will you at least hear my side before condemning me?\"\n\nI'm not going to get anything I want by antagonizing him, so I force myself to nod. \"Okay.\"\n\nHe seems to think for a moment and then rises. \"Let's speak elsewhere.\"\n\nI follow him up the closest pink spiral staircase, and we cut through a series of passages to the north wing. The Mothership's sand-and-seashell floors and walls remind me so much of Cancer that by the time we step out onto a higher deck of the ship, I could be convinced that I'm actually home\u2014if not for the second sun in the sky.\n\nThe deck is secured with a crystal railing, and the space is small enough that there's only room for a handful of benches. We're so high up that we can see the curving tops of the giant shells on either side of the ship, and I realize we've been moving this whole time.\n\nI lean against the crystal railing, and the wind blows strands of my hair in my eyes as we sail into the blue horizon. Aquarius joins me, and he's so tall that he has to fold half his body down to lean on the banister.\n\n\"At the turn of the first millennium,\" he says, his pink eyes gazing at Helios, \"I began to notice a change in our solar system that was brought on by the presence of Dark Matter. Helios was losing her strength\u2014the Dark Matter was sucking her energy, and her light was dimming. I alone noticed her weakening. I, who had watched her all this time. I hoped it was only my imagination, but then came the year when Helios's Halo stopped taking place altogether.\"\n\nDespite my hatred for him and everything he stands for, I'm instantly sucked into his story. I flash back to when I asked Sirna why she thought that phenomenon had vanished from the sky, and she said, _I think it's because we don't look up as often as we used to._\n\nShe was kind of right.\n\nIf we had looked up, maybe we would have seen the disappearance of Helios's Halo as an omen\u2014a sign of the deeper darkness that would one day steal all our light.\n\n\"I knew the cosmic conditions for the portal's activation wouldn't repeat themselves until this millennium, so I had to wait.\" Aquarius straightens his spine and turns to face me, resting his hip against the crystal and crossing his arms over his chest. \"In that time, I prepared. I remembered how the first humans described a fleet ten times the size of the one they came with, but the portal didn't stay open long enough for all of them to get through. I knew there would be no way to save the entire Zodiac.\"\n\n\"So why did you decide to blow Cancer, Virgo, and Gemini off the map first?\" I ask tonelessly.\n\nHis shoulders sag, but he doesn't defend himself. \"The quantum fusion experiments Origene, Moira, and Caaseum were conducting had a Psynergetic component to them\u2014something only the three of them knew about. The Houses had exhausted every attempt to study Dark Matter, but they were unable to learn much about it, other than the fact that it could suck the energy from a planet. But these three Guardians were convinced they could find more answers using Psynergy. What they didn't realize is that they were disturbing the Dark Matter, and to keep it from reaching Helios and killing us all, I had to divert it. Alone I couldn't move it, but with Ophiuchus I could.\"\n\nHe furrows his brow. \"Rho, I don't expect you to see this from my perspective\u2014that would be like asking the ocean tides to consider the moon's point of view. But when it comes to protecting an entire population, sometimes sacrifices must be made.\"\n\nI tune into the singing surf of the sea because I don't want to process his words. I don't want to think of my beautiful blue planet as expendable. I don't want to think of Dad as an acceptable loss.\n\nAnd yet as my mind waits for my heart's counterargument, it doesn't offer one.\n\nI can't hear its beat.\n\n\"I have spent the better part of my immortality looking for a way around the Last Prophecy, but the Dark Matter we created will destroy us.\" Aquarius's voice is gentle, and again I don't know how to reconcile his warmth and openness with everything I know about the master. \"There is no possible way to save everyone. All I can offer is the chance to save _some_.\"\n\n\"That's why you started the Tomorrow Party.\" I don't know if I'm asking or telling him. \"So the Marad members are expendable to you, but the Zodai of the Tomorrow Party are worth saving?\"\n\nHe shakes his head. \"I have a separate deal with the Marad. Believe me, everyone is getting what they want.\"\n\nSeeing the confusion on my face, he explains, \"I'm doing what any scientist, or _god_ , would do: I'm taking my best samples, my optimal representative group of the species, to build a new and better world. But that isn't enough.\"\n\nMy confusion only grows after his explanation. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"It's taken me millennia, but I've finally understood how your species lost its way,\" he says, and he walks over to one of the benches and sits down. \"I understand why Ophiuchus's presence was so important. Your lives are so brief that hope is often short-lived among people. You forget your history when it's unpleasant, yet you obstinately cling to outdated values and belief systems, because the only thing you fear more than facing the darkness of your past is confronting a future that's unknown.\n\n\"You need _inspiration_. People don't need to be told what they're capable of\u2014they need to _know_ it. They need proof they can touch: an example to emulate, a leader worth following, a person who speaks out even in the face of injustice, who stays honest even when tempted with power, who embodies the best of what an individual is capable of even when it seems everyone is at their worst.\"\n\nHis pink eyes stare into mine, and I suddenly realize: \"You're talking about _me_?\"\n\nHe nods, and this is so outrageous that I have to sit down at the other end of his bench.\n\n\"I foresaw you,\" he goes on. \"A seer who could actually detect Dark Matter and who would warn the worlds of their doom.\"\n\nMom's vision that someone in her bloodline would be the harbinger of the Zodiac's demise, and Empress Moira's declaration that she'd long been expecting me\u2014if they both predicted my arrival, of course Aquarius did, too.\n\n\"I Saw that most would be too blinded by this seer's light to see her for what she was, but the rare few who did would be the best of their species. Only those who believe in you are worthy of surviving\u2014all who did not heed your warnings will be left behind.\"\n\nIt's the first time he truly seems like a parent, in the realest sense\u2014a lion protecting his cub.\n\n\"You were my vision's first ambassador, Rho.\"\n\nI have to let the salty air fill my lungs to keep from drowning in this newest revelation. Aquarius used me as bait\u2014he dangled me out to the Zodiac to lure his chosen ones.\n\n\"But first I had to be sure _you_ were worthy.\"\n\nI glare at him. After all my experiences with Guardians, I know exactly what that means. \"You tested me.\"\n\n\"Naturally. First thing I did was set Ophiuchus on your tail.\"\n\nMy eyes widen in horror, but since calling Aquarius a sociopath won't help me free Nishi, I clamp my mouth shut.\n\n\"And, as I'd hoped, you survived his numerous attempts on your life.\"\n\n\"He stopped trying to kill me as soon as he realized I would make a better ally to escape you,\" I say, desperately trying to wound him even a little.\n\nBut he only sits up straighter. \"That was after he saw your strength, which proves my point.\n\n\"Next, I had to learn what part of you I needed to enlist. I had to discover whom you needed me to be so I could give you what you were missing. For this test, I had to hack away at your shell, removing the armor you hide behind and stripping you down to your essence. That required another kind of tool; not a blunt object but a fine blade.\"\n\n_\"Aryll,\"_ I growl. \"And what exactly did he teach you about me?\"\n\n\"That your pity betrays you,\" he says, like he's analyzing a character from a book he's reading. \"You find infinite value in every man, every soul. You fail to grasp what my eternal existence allows me to know\u2014that humans are a brief phase of biological evolution who exist but for a minute, in a galaxy that is but a drop of water in an ever-expanding ocean. And _none_ of you can be saved.\"\n\n\"That's one hell of a pitch.\"\n\n\"It's not a pitch\u2014I'm not selling you anything. I want to open your eyes so you can decide for yourself.\"\n\nI swallow, remembering when Hysan said something similar to me on Centaurion.\n\nAquarius leans in, his pink eyes glinting in the sunlight. \"The prime directive of your organism is to die; death is the _only_ thing life guarantees you. The truth is, the length of time a random individual lives matters little to the stars, or even to most members of your species. And yet, even an unknown, faceless person can imprint forever on your soul.\"\n\nIn his eyes I see the small Cancrian girl's pink spacesuit that's been branded into my mind since Elara.\n\nHe knows _everything_.\n\nAll I've felt, all I've known, all I've wanted. I feel exposed. And I also feel trapped, like there are no moves I can make because I'm playing against an opponent who sees how the game will end before it's even begun.\n\n\"It's not your fault you're like this,\" he goes on. \"The potential is there; you just haven't had the right upbringing. And that is where I can help you. See, I've studied you closer than even you have. I've seen your mind's corners, its curves, its contradictions . . . and beneath your Wandering Star luster, you are held up by an unshakable Cancrian core.\"\n\nHe takes my hand in his, and though my Barer buzzes, my fingers feel limp, like my body's tired of resisting.\n\n\"I can give you the thing you've always felt you were missing,\" he whispers. \"I can be your true parent, Rho. One who knows you, who puts you first, who never abandons you. I've been there for all of your most important moments, even if you didn't know it. When you faced the Plenum. When you were disgraced. When you returned triumphant. I've watched you grow. I was so proud when I got to crown you Wandering Star.\"\n\nHis warm eyes grow shiny, and I realize that even though he caused the tragedies that led to these moments, he still believes he means these words.\n\n\"Let me teach you what I know. Men are mortal, but I am a star, an everlasting part of this galaxy. Let me help you feed your flame so that for the blink of an eye you're here, you can blaze brighter than Helios herself.\"\n\n# 23\n\n\"I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND WHAT you want from me.\" My voice sounds so small, it feels like it's coming from light-years away.\n\nAquarius's sunset eyes stare steadfastly into mine. \"When we go through that portal, I want you at the helm of the first ship. I want you to lead humanity into a united tomorrow\u2014and I want to be the star that guides you.\"\n\nI shake my head in complete confusion. \"But\u2014you've been trying to kill me this whole time.\"\n\n\"No, I've been providing you with opportunities to understand your own strength,\" he says, like that's a perfectly acceptable justification. \"You were never in any danger, not if you were the person I believed you to be.\"\n\n\"That's quite a gamble to make.\"\n\n\"Which came first, fate or free will?\" he asks, smiling paternally. \"That's the universal question.\"\n\nThis whole conversation makes as much sense as the nightmares in the Sumber, and I don't know how to begin digesting anything he's said, so I blurt, _\"But why did you put me through the worst moments of my life if you wanted me on your side?\"_\n\nHis expression grows pitying, which only irritates me further. \"Heart, mind, and soul . . . that's what you Cancrians test for the Guardianship, right? I already knew you had the soul of a star because you could See Dark Matter. I knew you had the mind of a leader because you succeeded in bringing the Houses closer together than they've been in millennia. But how do you test the heart of the most forgiving person in the Zodiac?\"\n\n\"Do you always answer questions with riddles?\"\n\nHis pink stare grows grave, and for a moment I worry I've pushed him too far.\n\n\"First you take everything from her,\" he says, and I'm beyond certain my heart has stopped. \"Then you dare her to forgive you.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI've already been sitting by the healing pod a couple of hours when at last the countdown reaches zero and the lid opens.\n\nI don't know what time it is, but it's late into the night. After my talk with Aquarius, Blaze took me on a tour through the Mothership and introduced me to Party members, and I tried to take as many mental notes as I could\u2014but I was still in too much of a daze from everything the master revealed.\n\nNow that I know what he wants\u2014my trust\u2014I finally have leverage over him. All I have to do is make him think he's earned it, and then he'll confide in me the specific details of his plan. But I can't reach out to Hysan until I know something that can actually help the Zodai defeat Aquarius; otherwise, I'll risk the master discovering my duplicity before I've had a chance to be useful.\n\nI grow instantly alert as Nishi sits upright, and I'm relieved to see that warmth has returned to her cinnamon skin.\n\nWhen her eyes find mine, I spy a familiar shrewdness in their amber depths. \"Something's wrong.\"\n\n\"Should I call a healer?\" I ask, leaping to my feet.\n\n\"Why are you here, Rho?\" She narrows her gaze, and her suspicious expression is further proof that the old Nishi is back.\n\nAnd the old Nishi will be impossible to fool.\n\n\"I can't talk in here,\" I say softly, barely moving my lips, which is at least true. I have no idea if the Party has installed hidden surveillance\u2014and since I'm playing both sides, that means trusting no one.\n\nNishi nods in understanding. \"So, what's next?\" she asks tentatively.\n\n\"We get out of here and get you back with the others.\"\n\nShe wrinkles her brow. \"We. _We_ have to get back to the others. Why didn't they come with you?\"\n\n\"Nish, I can't talk,\" I say, again dropping my voice to barely a whisper.\n\nShe blows out a hard breath, but at least she doesn't press me. I guess truth is the most convincing lie.\n\n\"Wandering Star?\"\n\nI turn to see the healer from earlier poking her head through the privacy curtains. \"May I see to our patient?\"\n\n\"She's fine,\" I say.\n\n\"Your presence has been requested at dinner. Blaze said a change of clothes awaits you in your suite.\"\n\n\"I'm not hungry. And it's late.\"\n\n\"But Aquarius specifically requested\u2014\"\n\n\"I don't care.\"\n\n\"She'll be there,\" announces Nishi, and when I glower at her, she's already glowering back. \"We just need a moment,\" she tells the healer, who nods in relief and retreats.\n\n\"You have to go, Rho,\" she says in a firm tone. \"If you let me distract you from defeating him, I'll never forgive myself.\"\n\nI swallow and turn away so she won't see the guilt on my face. \"I'll come back right after,\" I toss over my shoulder.\n\n\"Maybe you should get some sleep right after.\"\n\nI whirl around, and she winces at my wounded expression. \"I'm sorry, Rho, it's not that I don't want to see you. It's just\u2014you look like you could use some rest. You can tell me all about the dinner first thing in the morning.\"\n\nI shrug and say, \"Here's hoping they don't poison my food.\"\n\n\"Hey, _you're_ the chosen one; you have nothing to worry about.\" Her feral grin makes me think of the warrior Nishi from the Sumber. \"If you don't piss anyone off too much, I'll probably be fine, too.\"\n\nI smile at her innocently.\n\n\"Then I guess I'll have to be on my _best_ behavior.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI search for room number nine, and when I turn the key Blaze gave me, I enter a spacious suite outfitted with sparse furniture. The few pieces in here are all silver with a pearl finish, and they look exquisite and expensive. The minimalist aesthetic reminds me of Aquarius's office at the royal palace, and it seems to suit his philosophies well\u2014if you're chasing tomorrow, you probably want to pack light.\n\nA sparkly dress has been laid out for me on the seashell-patterned bedspread, and by now I'm so used to people telling me what to wear and when to wear it that I don't even care how it looks. Since I have to put it on to curry Aquarius's favor, there's no point in having an opinion.\n\nI force myself to take a quick shower so I can pretend to care about tonight, and I've just pulled on the dress when there's a knock on my door. I open it to find Blaze in a hot-pink suit, his white hair twisted into a bun atop his head.\n\n\"Now _that's_ a Wandering Star,\" he says gallantly, admiring me. \"Let me just fix your hair.\"\n\nWithout waiting for permission, he comes around me and corrals my wet curls behind my neck, weaving them into one long, loose braid.\n\n\"Did you dye your hair white because you're desperate to be Aquarian?\" I ask as he works. \"Or do you honestly think that looks good on you?\"\n\nHe faces me and plucks a few curls free to frame my face. \"Are you this charming with all your admirers, or do I warrant special treatment?\"\n\n\"My _admirer_ \u2014\"\n\nBut my outrage is cut short because he disappears into my bathroom and returns with a tin of tiny diamond pins that he starts inserting into my hair. I ignore what he's doing so I won't give him the satisfaction of a reaction, and I pick up where I left off. \"You and Imogen attacked Nishi and me just weeks ago\u2014\"\n\n\"We didn't kill you, nor would we.\"\n\nHe stops working and looks me in the eye, his handsome face creasing with concern. The expression is so full of Aquarius's magnetic sincerity that I can see why these two fell in with each other. \"These are times of war, Rho\u2014but you should know that, as you were the one who sounded the alarm months ago.\"\n\n_\"Sounded the alarm?\"_ I don't care if I blow my cover anymore, because anger is setting my gut ablaze.\n\n\"If we're going to have a real talk,\" I say fiercely, \"then let's start by calling things by their real names. My home planet was _demolished_ \u2014and it was Aquarius's doing. He destroyed my entire world and murdered my people, and that's in addition to what he did to Virgo, Gemini, Pisces, Capricorn, the armada\u2014can you _understand_ that, or are you just too damned brainwashed?\"\n\nBlaze's brown skin pales, and the confident light fades from his russet eyes. \"Okay . . . let's talk honestly.\"\n\nEven his voice sounds different, deeper. \"I want an existence where we're all allowed to be whom we want. I think what happened to Cancer\u2014and Virgo and Gemini and Pisces and all the other lives lost\u2014is abhorrent and devastating and I'm _sick_ about it. _I'm sick about it_ ,\" he repeats, his voice growing guttural.\n\n\"But I'm not a god.\"\n\nHe blinks, and his eyes are bright again. \"A human who judges Aquarius is like the lion who judges man. We can never know what it's like to be stars.\"\n\nBlaze raises his arm and offers me his elbow. I hesitate, and on seeing my indecision he adds, \"Gods create and destroy\u2014it's the nature of their condition. We can't have life without death, or fortune without misfortune. That's just the way things are.\"\n\nI have no choice but to play along, so I give in and link my arm through his. As soon as I do, he pulls me in close and murmurs in my ear, \"Rho, you should know . . . there's no tomorrow without you.\"\n\nI tilt my head back to look into his eyes. \"What?\"\n\nHe seems completely serious. \"The Tomorrow Party believes in your Sight _and_ your vision, and we will follow you to any universe.\"\n\n\"Except this one,\" I say.\n\nHis eyes flash and his arm tightens around mine. \"Don't you understand? _We're leaving the Zodiac because we don't want to die._ This solar system is coming to an end: Our sun will burn out. As hateful as his actions seem\u2014and as distasteful as this sounds\u2014what Aquarius is offering us isn't doom.\"\n\nBlaze brushes back one of my flyaway curls and buries it in my braid.\n\n\"It's _hope_.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWe head to the south wing of the ship and enter a semi-dark room, and immediately I understand why we're clothed the way we are: My sparkly dress and Blaze's neon-pink suit are giving off their own light. There are probably a hundred people here, and they all look like different-colored stars. The effect is dreamy and romantic and otherworldly.\n\nSomething bright flits in the corner of my eye, and I look behind me. There's a mirror hanging on the wall, and I catch my own reflection.\n\nThe dress hangs above my knees but has a long train in the back, and glimmers of silver trail in the air behind me. The silky fabric isn't visible\u2014all that can be seen of my silhouette are the constellations of sparkles that adorn the bodice and the twinkling of the diamonds Blaze placed in my hair.\n\nA Scorp girl walks up to us, and I stare at her in awe. Her blue dress swirls like it was sewn from actual water, and her translucent skin glows with light, like Aquarius's. She hands Blaze and me glasses with a glow-in-the-dark white drink. Blaze clinks his glass with mine and tips the substance into his mouth. Without waiting to see what happens, I down mine, too.\n\nI feel a warm sensation spread through me, and I look down to see my _skin_ is lighting up.\n\nI turn to Blaze. He's also glowing. He flashes me one of his winning smiles and says, \"The idea is to look past people's shells to the light they carry within.\"\n\nBut as I gaze out at the hundred or so senior Party members here, all I see is the darkness surrounding the lights. The souls who had to be snuffed out for Aquarius to shine even brighter.\n\nIn this solar system of people, it's not hard to spot the sun. Aquarius's light is so authentic that he's obviously the only real star among imitators.\n\nStudents flock around him, soaking up his wisdom like he's their favorite Academy instructor, and it looks incredibly inviting to be one of his followers. To be that inspired, that hopeful, that wholly devoted . . . It seems like it makes everything so much easier.\n\nEven through the crowd of shimmering bodies, his eyes find mine and his voice suddenly rises high enough to cut through the conversations, silencing everyone at once.\n\n\"What you all blame on the stars,\" he declares, \"is something you impose on yourselves.\"\n\nThere isn't a sound in the room.\n\n\"The stars do not decide which House you are born into\u2014your parents do that, as did their parents before them, and their parents before them. It's your dependence on ancestral memory\u2014your delusional insistence on chaining your future to your past\u2014that hinders you.\"\n\nHe steps forward, toward me, bringing the crowd with him.\n\n\"But every so often, a star is born from beyond the universal chaos, free from the call of a single constellation, who can see things as they truly are. She needn't be a conqueror or a genius, but in possession of a soul so pure that she shines a light on the human condition for us all. And when her brightness reaches so far that all are illuminated by her splendor, we see each other as we truly are.\n\n\"The presence of such a star amongst us is like the light before the storm. We are forced to see our own reflection and decide who we are. We have been shocked into a growth spurt, and so we must evolve. Once touched by such a light, one cannot abide the dark. And in that instant when the brightness blinds us, when it wraps around us so that even those in power look away for a moment, forgetting to jealously guard it\u2014the universal clock takes one tick forward.\n\n\"The tick echoes in Space's silence like thunder, and now everyone sees the light for what it truly was: _Lightning_. And by the time this storm moves on, what was present will become past, and what was already past will fall another notch farther from us. That is how today becomes _Tomorrow_.\"\n\nHe's in front of me now, and as he holds out his hand for mine, everyone is watching.\n\nI place my palm on his, and the whole room breaks into applause. Aquarius leans in and says, \"Welcome to Tomorrow, Wandering Star.\"\n\n# 24\n\nTHE NIGHT IS A WHIRLWIND of introductions.\n\nMost members are in their late teens and early-to-midtwenties, and they've already distinguished themselves in some way. Stan was right: This Party is as elitist at it gets. But now that I know Aquarius's plans, I understand why.\n\nHe's admitted he's a scientist, and since he has no idea what's on the other side of the portal or how long it will take to find a habitable planet, it makes sense to fly with a young and talented crew. I also understand why he wouldn't want to go alone: He may have the soul of a star, but he's in the body of a man. He has no chance of surviving on his own.\n\nBesides, it's in an Aquarian's nature to be a social architect\u2014he wouldn't derive any pleasure from surviving alone. He'd rather lead the chosen to a new world.\n\n\"This is Barg,\" says Aquarius, introducing me to a Scorp with red eyes.\n\n\"It's an honor to meet you, Wandering Star,\" says Barg, trading the hand touch with me.\n\n\"I visited your House,\" I say, angling my head curiously. \"I've found most Scorps want nothing to do with the rest of us.\"\n\n\"I know.\" He hangs his head a little. \"I've never fully fit in there. When I was eight, I used to talk about how I wanted to meet people from other Houses and see more of our solar system, and my classmates started calling me a _Riser_. I was bullied by my family for lacking proper Scorp pride, until I finally gave in and stopped dreaming of other worlds.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry that happened to you,\" I say.\n\n\"But then I watched you speak of a united Zodiac, and I saw how people's hatred and ignorance didn't stomp out your fire\u2014it only fueled it.\" He raises his chin. \"And I felt hopeful for the first time in years.\"\n\nBlaze wraps an arm around Barg's shoulders. \"You're home now, brother,\" he says, and Barg beams.\n\n\"Barg has synthesized a regenerative formula from an underwater plant on Scorpio that can reverse years of aging without any of the painful procedures of the Geminin methods,\" says Aquarius proudly, and Barg's face seems to radiate even more light as he basks in the Guardian's admiration. \"We're honored to welcome him to our family.\"\n\n\"I heard my House mentioned,\" says a new voice, and I turn to see a curvy, tawny-skinned Geminin with glowing red lips.\n\n\"Imogen,\" says Aquarius, tipping his head to her. He cautiously pans his gaze to me and back to her and says, \"I hope the two of you might consider beginning anew tonight. In the spirit of the unity we're trying to foment, I think we should leave the past where it belongs and move forward unburdened by the pain we've suffered to get here.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" I say, relishing how easy it is to lie now that my heart is mute. I hold out my hand for the greeting, all the while envisioning stabbing her with a bayonet the way I did to Corinthe. Then doing it again and again and again.\n\nShe'll pay for what she did to Nishi.\n\nI smile sweetly.\n\nImogen merely bumps her fist with me, but I don't let her stop there\u2014I make her go through the whole elaborate choreography of knocking knuckles, bumping elbows, and slapping hands. She seems annoyed that I've co-opted her greeting style, and my smile widens.\n\n\"So you're coming with us?\" she asks in a dry voice.\n\n\"I'm here for Nishi,\" I say, opting to use the truth to lie again. \"The leader you admired so much that you shot her. I'm not sold on anything else yet.\"\n\n\"And you're fine with leaving Hysan and the others behind to die?\" she presses.\n\n\"No\u2014but if there's one thing you taught me, it's that I can't save everyone. I have to let my friends choose their own fates.\"\n\nEveryone nods approvingly.\n\n\"What about you guys?\" I ask, turning the question around on them. \"You're fine with leaving your families behind?\"\n\n\"Party members may bring their families if they wish,\" says Aquarius. \"It's painful enough to leave everything we know\u2014but it would be inhumane to leave behind our loved ones. There are still spaces free for your friends, if they should change their minds.\"\n\nI'm speechless but not for long, because more and more Zodai are coming up to introduce themselves. I keep expecting to see Ezra and Gyzer, but they're not here. Eurek mentioned they haven't been able to breach Aquarius's inner circle yet, so they're probably not high ranking enough to be invited tonight.\n\n\"Rho!\"\n\nA couple of people come over, and I recognize the girl who called out to me as Geneva of Taurus, Blaze's date to the royal ball. \"The youngest Promisary in Taurian history,\" I say, and she burns bright red.\n\n\"Wow, you remembered.\"\n\nBlaze also looks pleased, and he flashes me a smile.\n\n\"Hi, June,\" I say to the Libran in the medical hover-chair who's come over with Geneva.\n\n\" _Helios_ , is my face as red as Geneva's right now?\" she asks, and everyone laughs. \"I can't believe you remembered me!\"\n\nI notice a third person behind them, and when I see her, I'm thrown back in time to Helios's Halo, the first time I ever saw the Zodiac come together, the night before we set off in the armada.\n\n_\"Mallie?\"_\n\n\"Okay, you can stop showing off your memory now,\" says Blaze, and everyone chuckles once more.\n\n\"It's an honor to see you again, Wandering Star,\" says the Aquarian Mallie, and her orb-like eyes make me think of Pandora. \"Have you designed your universe yet?\"\n\n\"My universe?\"\n\n\"Everyone's submitted a prediction of what they think the universe we land in will be like. Come do yours quickly before they're all screened,\" she says eagerly, and I'm led away from the group toward the back of the space where there are a dozen enclosed white booths. She hands me a black drink in a shot glass.\n\n\"Take as long as you need. You paint a detailed picture in your mind of what you think we'll see as soon as we go through the portal, and when the image is clearest, down this drink. Whatever you envision will imprint on the walls around you for an instant and then disappear. But it will be re-created holographically in a different terminal so that you can actually see what you imagined.\"\n\n\"What is it?\" I ask, sniffing the telltale licorice scent of Abyssthe.\n\n\"It's an aural tonic.\"\n\nMy hand shakes at the name. Immediately, I see Stan and Aryll, when they tried these at the Taurian festival after I was given the title of Wandering Star.\n\nStan's soul projection was an image of our home and our family.\n\n\"I don't want to,\" I say, handing it back to her. She looks confused yet curious, and before she can press me, I ask, \"Did Pandora tell you about the Tomorrow Party?\"\n\nI remember Pandora mentioning it was Mallie who inspired her to sign up for the armada in the first place.\n\n\"No, I haven't seen her since Helios's Halo. I came because I Saw myself joining. I'm one of the newest members.\"\n\n\"You _Saw_ yourself?\"\n\n\"Back when we could still See visions in the Psy . . . yes, I foresaw that I would join this Party. And of course it's not surprising to find you here. If I had any doubts about any of this, they're quieted knowing it has the Wandering Star's blessing.\"\n\nShe bows her head slightly, and I feel a line of sweat forming along my hairline. I know I should keep quiet, but my conscience is shouting at me, and I can't help myself.\n\n\"Mallie, the truth is I don't\u2014\"\n\nThe place falls silent so abruptly that I stop speaking. I survey the room, and I gasp along with everyone else as hundreds of silver bubbles are released at once, and they float into the air above us. As they glide gently along the ceiling, I see that each one contains a different imagined galaxy. They're everyone's visions of various universes.\n\nColors and shapes swirl within each bubble, and as they dance together they create an ethereal and entrancing light show. I see blue worlds and new constellations and unknown stars, and I think of the earthlings when they washed up on Phaetonis, tiny and tired and terrified. I try to picture how it would feel to peel back a layer of existence and glimpse a larger universe.\n\nAnd I'm ashamed to admit that a small part of me is intrigued.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen the party ends, Aquarius offers to escort me back to my room. While we walk, I want to say something about the people I met, something that will make him think I'm coming around so he'll tell me more about the portal. But instead I ask, \"Why are you being so open with me? How do you know I'm not a double agent?\"\n\nI instantly bite my lip, regretting my bluntness, but to my shock, Aquarius laughs. \"Because you're so honest that you can't help yourself,\" he says, still smiling. \"Also because trust is a two-man operation: It won't work unless we both feel it. And, more to the point, because you trusted me with a secret about your mother even when you didn't know who I was or whether I was trustworthy.\"\n\n\"How can you expect me to listen to anything you say when just yesterday you had my world destroyed and my family and friends killed?\" I try to keep the hatred out of my voice, but it's an especially impossible feat when I'm walking through sand-and-seashell halls that are constant reminders of what he's taken from me.\n\nHe stops and faces me, just a few feet shy of the east wing staircase. The light under my skin is feeble since by now the drink's glowing effect has mostly worn off, but Aquarius still shines as luminously as a full moon in a black sky.\n\n\"I am sorry for your pain, Rho.\"\n\nI'm not sure he's capable of remorse, but even if it's a performance, the apology sounds real.\n\n\"I understand this makes me a monster in your eyes, but you are the first human whose life I have felt invested in. I don't think I ever fully understood the weight of mortal emotions until now, when for the first time in millennia, I have something to lose.\n\n\"Ophiuchus . . . he was different.\" His voice grows so soft that it feels steeped in memories. \"He had a vulnerability to him, a special ability to access the purest parts of his core, and it enabled him to think as both man and god.\"\n\n\"Do you regret what you did to him?\" I chance.\n\nHe doesn't answer, but he doesn't look upset so much as pensive. He starts climbing up the polished pink staircase, and I follow a step behind.\n\n\"I don't see the past the same way you do, so I don't have regrets,\" he says as we spiral upward.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"There's a reason there are no lines in nature. There are only circles. _O's._ Everything works in cycles, even immortality, because everything is happening simultaneously: We are all growing, we are all dying. _Time_ is just how we give small moments meaning. It contextualizes our existence. But it's like a railing on a staircase: On its own, it's nothing.\"\n\nWe step off the spiral stairs and pad down another sand-and-seashell passage. \"We're so obsessed with the future and the past,\" he goes on, \"but neither of them truly exist. There is only the present. _This moment._ \"\n\nHis words send me plummeting back in time, to the day Mom left. Stan's story about a little girl who got lost on a new planet and wouldn't let herself enjoy it because she couldn't let go of her home. And a different Stantonism jumps out at me from that story instead of the usual one.\n\n_Every second is a choice we make._\n\nAquarius stops outside suite number nine, and the concerned way his sunset eyes sweep my face makes me think of Dad the morning after Mom left us. He looks like a parent trying to explain something difficult to their child.\n\n\"Rho, we can never be free of Time's rule because none of us are truly immortal\u2014not even the stars in the sky. But life _is_ forever. Existence is eternal. Your compassion for your fellow humans is admirable, but the Zodiac's thirteen skills were divided among thirteen worlds, not people, because it's the survival of the species, not individuals, that matters.\"\n\nI don't want to think that way.\n\nI could never think that way.\n\nSo I cut directly to what I want to know. \"What will you take for Nishi's freedom?\"\n\nHis brow furrows and his expression grows puzzled. \"I don't understand. I want her to survive the Last Prophecy. I want her to come with us. Don't you?\"\n\nBlood drains from my face, and I drop my gaze as I spot the flaw in my plan. If I push too hard for her to go, I'm showing him my hand\u2014so I need to soften my approach. \"I think she needs to get away from here and decide for herself . . . or she'll always feel like a prisoner.\"\n\n\"What do you propose?\"\n\n\"I'd like to send her back to our friends. Who knows, maybe she'll even bring some of them over to our side.\" I didn't mean to say \"our side,\" so I stop speaking abruptly when I hear the words fly from my mouth.\n\nAquarius nods like he's considering my viewpoint, but then he grows resolute again. \"This is war, Rho, and exceptions are weaknesses. If those opposing us regain Nishi\u2014a powerful ally\u2014then we must have something equally powerful in exchange.\"\n\nFrom the calculating way he's looking me, I can sense another test coming on, and I steel my gut.\n\n\"You asked me what I want from the Luminaries earlier. I'm after a prophecy they're concealing from me\u2014a vision of the universe that awaits us through the portal. I will grant you Nishi's freedom if you can procure me another Luminary.\"\n\n\"But\u2014you said Mom didn't know anything. Why would a different Luminary know more?\"\n\n\"Your mother is a hard woman to get information from.\"\n\nThat's the understatement of my lifetime.\n\n\"How do you know this prophecy even exists?\" I press.\n\n\"I've come close to Seeing it enough times over the centuries that I know it's there, and it's being blocked by the same power that lets the Luminaries hide from me in the Psy. Any time I've been able to locate a member, I Psyphon their Psynergy to try to glimpse the prophecy, but so far it hasn't worked.\"\n\n_He Psyphoned Mom._\n\nMy stomach hardens with disgust at the violation even as my chest relaxes with relief that she wasn't physically tortured.\n\n\"Until now,\" he goes on in his velvety voice, \"I'd only ever managed to Psyphon former Luminaries or recruits I've been able to capture before they vanish from existence, but I've never read a current Luminary, one who hasn't severed her connection to the society. Tomorrow morning, I want you to convince your mother to reach out to them and ask them to send someone to help. Once the Luminary arrives, you have my word that one of our ships will fly Nishi anywhere she wants.\"\n\nI cross my arms. \"How can I trust that when you've already gone after everyone I love? Why would you suddenly leave her alone now?\"\n\n\"Haven't you noticed that my army hasn't attacked the Zodiac in months?\" he asks, his expression open, his gaze direct. \"We haven't even bothered tracking down your resistance because it's not our concern\u2014those are Zodai affairs, and this solar system won't exist for much longer. I swear to you that we will not go after any of your friends or the Zodai they're working with\u2014and I would not want to risk your friendship or your trust by betraying you. The only two beings in the Zodiac I want by my side are already here . . . Ophiuchus and _you_.\"\n\n\"Sir.\"\n\nI spin around to see that Blaze has just come up behind us, and I spy something wild in his eyes when he looks at me, but he quickly tames it down when Aquarius turns. I wonder if he heard the last thing the Original Guardian said.\n\n\"I'm coming, Blaze.\" Aquarius gives me a small bow. \"Good night, Wandering Star.\"\n\nHe starts walking away.\n\nThe longer I take to make this decision, the longer it will take to get Nishi out of here because they'll have to fly to Aries first. And I don't want my best friend here another moment.\n\nIf\u2014or _when_ \u2014Aquarius discovers I'm a double agent, he'll definitely use her to punish me. I need her as far away from here as possible.\n\nGamba's face forces its way to the forefront of my mind even though I've been trying to push it back this whole conversation. Am I really considering handing over an innocent girl to the same monsters that tortured and traumatized me and Nishi and Mathias and Pandora?\n\nBut I already committed to free Nishi, and that's what I intend to do. Gamba can take care of herself. She chose to be a Luminary, and she took herself out of hiding to get involved\u2014but Nishi never asked for any of this. She was only sticking by my side.\n\nShe's endured enough.\n\n\" _Wait_ ,\" I say, and Blaze and Aquarius stop by the staircase _._ I swallow, hard. \"I know where you can find another Luminary. _\"_\n\n# 25\n\nI TRY TO GET SOME sleep like Nishi suggested, but when blue dawn light streams in through the window, I'm not sure I ever even closed my eyes. Sitting upright, my head is heavy on my neck and my left eyelid feels twitchy.\n\nI open the room's closet and pull on a royal purple pantsuit. I'm not surprised to find it fits me perfectly; I might as well be living in the virtual world of a holo-game. Or the nightmare world of the Sumber.\n\nThese theories are further reinforced when I step out of my room and glimpse a familiar face with a headful of braids.\n\nI instinctively take off after Ezra as she rounds the corner, but when I get to the end of the hall, she's gone. I follow in the direction where she disappeared, peeking into a couple of alcoves and common spaces, but they're all empty.\n\nI turn to head back when I notice a door that's slightly ajar, like someone thought they closed it but the lock didn't catch. I swing it open slowly and slip inside a large supply closet with a few rows of shelves that house cleaners and maintenance tools.\n\n\"Ezra?\" I call out, looking between the aisles. Is she hiding in here?\n\nThere's a small door at the back of the space, and since it's also ajar, I pull it open. It's an empty lavatory.\n\nI give up and turn around to leave, but I stumble back at the sight of a grave, golden face glaring at me.\n\n\"Hysan\u2014 _what are you doing here_?\" I whisper when I've recovered my breath.\n\nSince it takes him a moment to react, I know he's a hologram\u2014but his transmission is remarkably clear, like he's only a few rooms over. Ezra must be projecting his call through whatever special comm device they designed.\n\nShe set me up.\n\nThe anger lining his frozen face transforms into raw concern when his hologram activates. \"Rho, are you okay?\"\n\nI'm guessing I look like total sharkshit.\n\n\"I'm fine.\"\n\n_\"Has he hurt you?_ \"\n\n\"Hysan, stop,\" I snap, staring at the shelves behind him to avoid his gaze. \"Why do you even care after what I did to you?\"\n\n\"Believe me, I had every intention of being angry,\" he says, and even without looking, I can feel his eyes scrutinizing me closely. \"But you're not yourself. Ezra's working on a plan to get you and Nishi out of there\u2014\"\n\nMy stomach flips itself, and I say, \"We don't need Ezra's help. I've got it handled.\"\n\nEvery part of me itches to warn him of what I've done, but I can't form the words, and I can't bear to see his face when he learns how I've badly I've betrayed him and everyone else on Phaet. There's no coming back from what I've done.\n\nBut I wasn't coming back anyway.\n\n\"How?\" he demands. \"What's your strategy?\"\n\n\"Why is it so hard for you to trust my decisions?\" I shoot back.\n\nAnd since I know he's going to try to sweet-talk me into opening up, I strike first.\n\n\"I told you I wasn't ready to lead the armada when we were on the Hippodrome stage, but you insisted I was. It didn't matter to you that I didn't want that role. Then you pushed me again on Centaurion by recruiting an entire army of teens using my name without even asking whether or not I wanted the charge! And on Phaet you claimed I would lead us, but you were totally fine with censoring my reports. You've gotten so used to being the puppeteer behind the scenes that you treat me like one of your androids!\"\n\nHe flinches at my words like they're projectiles, and before he can defend himself, I say, \"I know what I'm doing. And if you really believe all the things you've said about me, then you'll respect my choices.\"\n\nI walk through him to leave, and since he's a hologram, he can't follow. \"Rho\u2014wait!\"\n\nBut I don't.\n\nI have no idea how private that conversation was\u2014if he and Ezra haven't been caught yet, then maybe we weren't either. But what if Aquarius knows all about Ezra and Gyzer, and he's just playing along for now? Either way, I'm pretty sure nothing I said could make Aquarius distrustful.\n\n_I hope._\n\nWhen I get to the medical bay, breakfast is brought in for us. Nishi wants to hear all about dinner and everything that's happened since the Sumber. So I tell her in detail about Pisces, from my reunion with Mom to what went down in the Cathedral, and then I fill her in on the Artistry Pride. I pretend I can't talk about the Zodai army so I won't give away their headquarters, even though I already have.\n\nWhenever Nishi asks about the deal I struck with the master to be here or begins to reference an escape plan for breaking out, I change the subject to remind her we're being watched. We visit my quarters in the afternoon, where there's a matching purple suit in Nishi's size waiting for her. We take turns showering, and right as we're flipping on the wallscreen to check the news, there's a knock on my door.\n\n\"Nishi's transport is here,\" announces Blaze.\n\n\"What\u2014what's going on?\" Nishi turns to me in alarm.\n\n\"We're leaving,\" I say. _It's half-true_.\n\nWe follow Blaze downstairs, and I keep up with him so that Nishi can't try talking to me. We step outdoors onto a hangar deck in the back of the vessel where there are three small black bullet-ships, but only one of them has its engine running.\n\nAquarius must have spacecraft positioned all over the galaxy if he picked up Gamba this quickly\u2014and they must fly exceedingly fast.\n\n\"What's happening?\" Nishi asks me again, and she doesn't bother keeping her voice down. She knows something's wrong, and I know I can't hide it from her anymore.\n\nI pull her in for a hug and whisper all I dare say into her ear. \"I can't go with you yet. Find Hysan. Tell him it's Dark Matter that will make the sun go dark, not the portal, and that's why Aquarius is leaving. See if Hysan can disprove it.\"\n\nShe stares at me in awe as we pull apart, her long, slanted eyes bright with disbelief. She seems ready to cause a scene, but something in my expression shuts down the impulse, and instead she says, \"Be careful, Rho. _You might not like yourself when this is over_.\"\n\nThey're the same words I said to her on Aquarius. I nod like I agree, but she doesn't realize that for me it's already over.\n\nThe only reason I'm still fighting is for _her_.\n\nTears fall from Nishi's eyes, but mine don't even burn. I'm so numb that it shouldn't be hard to convince Aquarius I'm ready to embrace his plans. I just have to be like one of those razed buildings Blaze described that's ready to be designed anew.\n\nI'll make this up to Nishi and Hysan and the others when I uncover Aquarius's exact plans for opening the portal. It's the last thing I'll do for them before I join my brother.\n\n\"Please go, Nish,\" I say softly. \"I woke up and left you in the Sumber when you asked me to\u2014now I'm begging you to do this for me.\"\n\nShe stares deeply into my eyes, and I see something there that I haven't felt in a long time.\n\n_Trust._\n\n\"Hold on for me the way I held on for you,\" she says, and she squeezes my hand before turning to Blaze.\n\nShe spares him a dark glare and flashes him an obscene gesture that almost makes me smile, and then she starts walking toward the Marad soldier that just disembarked from the bullet-ship. But before she gets there, another soldier deplanes, struggling with a bound and gagged Gamba.\n\nNishi freezes in horror.\n\nShe turns to me with an unfamiliar expression, one completely different from the way she just looked at me moments ago. Like she's seeing me clearly for the first time.\n\n_\"Rho, what did you do?\"_\n\nI spin and walk away, unable to see that look on Nishi's face.\n\n\"RHO! How could you? You knew I wouldn't want this\u2014not at this price! _How could you_?\"\n\nShe keeps shouting at me, but I move onward, unwilling to hear her screams. She can hate me if she wants, but I got her out\u2014that's all that matters. Her fate is finally in her own hands.\n\nWhen I'm back indoors, I know Blaze is following me up the stairs, and after a moment I say, \"I'm fine.\"\n\n\"Would you rather I leave you alone?\" he asks.\n\n\"Can you take me to Ophiuchus?\"\n\n\"Aquarius is the only one who sees him.\"\n\nI figured as much. I guess that means it's time to face my other childhood monster.\n\n\"Then take me to my mother.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nMom is in one of the smaller rooms belowdecks, but she has her own private lavatory and wallscreen, so it's no prison cell. Her eyes look tired and her skin is sallow, but I see no visible bruises.\n\nI was expecting to feel sorry for her\u2014so the anger takes me by surprise. The moment I step across the threshold, I feel like I've crossed a barrier that releases some of the darkness that's been keeping my numbness in place.\n\nMy brother died protecting a mother who stopped protecting him ages ago. A mother who lied to us every day of our lives, then abandoned us, and then replaced us with a child she chose to love honestly.\n\n\"Rho!\" She springs off the bed and throws her arms around me. \"Are you okay?\"\n\nIt feels foreign to be hugged by her, and my arms don't know what to do, so they stay limp at my sides. After the moment we shared on Pisces, I thought the worst between us was over\u2014only it turns out she wasn't being completely honest. I wonder if she was ever planning on telling Stanton and me about our _sister_.\n\n\"Why are you here?\" she asks, pulling away, her brilliant blue eyes studying my face as she probably analyzes the possibilities.\n\n\"Gamba told me Aquarius is going to use Ophiuchus to activate the portal. Is that all you know, or do you have more information?\"\n\nShe takes a step back.\n\nThe shadows under her eyes deepen and her mouth tightens, and she suddenly looks about twenty years older.\n\n\"How . . . how do you know Gamba?\" Her voice fades to a whisper midsentence.\n\n\"Who is she?\" I ask, and I'm fleetingly proud of how my voice stays even and my heart keeps quiet.\n\n\" _Where is she_?\" demands Mom.\n\nHer weakness for this girl makes me furious, and the anger is so near my throat that I can't keep from lashing out. \"Aquarius offered me a way to save Nishi\u2014a trade for a _less broken_ Luminary. So I offered him your _daughter_.\"\n\nPain explodes across my cheek, and I lose my balance and topple into the wall.\n\n_She slapped me._ I cup the left side of my face, water welling in my eyes as I glare at her. My breaths are loud and shallow, and my vision grows red.\n\nAs Mom glowers back at me, a feral expression comes over her face that I've seen before. On the day the Maw bit Stanton. It's how she looked an instant before she destroyed it.\n\n\"I was wrong about you,\" I say between breaths. \"You _are_ capable of motherly love. I guess it was just _me_ who never inspired it in you.\"\n\nHer eyes grow icy, and even the temperature in the room seems to cool. We stand in silence for a moment, until she finally speaks.\n\n\"You were never mine to love.\" Her tone is surgical and direct, just like the militant mother I remember.\n\n\"It was always my purpose to deliver you to the stars.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen I leave Mom's room, I don't know where I'm going.\n\nMy old childhood nightmare keeps replaying in my mind: The Maw that bit my brother bites me instead, and Mom never swims fast enough to save me. Every time, I'd wake up right after the monster's red eyes turned icy blue, but it's only now I understand why.\n\nMom rescued Stan from his fate that day, but she couldn't rescue me from mine. In fact, she built me for it. Like an animal bred for slaughter.\n\nMy whole life I assumed _she_ was the problem, but what if I was wrong? What if it was me?\n\nMom loved Stan, she loved Dad, she even loves this Gamba girl. But my own mother couldn't love me. Even when I was just a baby, she understood that loving me could only lead to suffering.\n\nAfter all, loving me got Stan killed. Loving me got Mathias captured. Loving me got Hysan jailed. Loving me got Nishi Sumbered\u2014\n\n\"There you are!\"\n\nI turn at the sound of Blaze's voice, and I realize I've no idea where I am. \"Hurry\u2014there's a news transmission coming in that Aquarius wants you to see.\"\n\nI let him pull me forward, and we cut across to the ship's west wing, where we enter some kind of briefing room where the Original Guardian is standing with a few of the Party members I met last night. At first I'm relieved Imogen isn't here, but then I see who's on the screen.\n\nHysan is broadcasting from Phaet with a wall of a dozen Zodai\u2014 including Eurek, Mathias, and Pandora\u2014behind him.\n\n\"My name is Hysan Dax,\" he says, \"and I am the true Lord of House Libra.\"\n\nMy mouth is arid and my knees start shaking. I feel Blaze's arm on my lower back, and I vaguely realize that he's helping me stay upright.\n\n\"Lord Neith is an android I built with my predecessor, Lord Vaz, because I became Guardian at eleven years old. I always knew there would be a day when I would share my story with you, but I hoped it would be in a time of peace, not war. I'm sorry for lying, and I will give you all the answers you deserve, but first we must _survive_.\"\n\nSince I avoided looking directly at Hysan's hologram earlier, I didn't notice that a layer of stubble has crept across his face again. His golden locks look messy and unwashed, like he's been running his fingers through them often.\n\n\"None of us can escape the truth any longer,\" he goes on, his voice gaining volume. \"The Zodiac is in danger. I understand you'd rather be living your daily lives and pretending the threat isn't real because it hasn't touched you yet, but believe me, this darkness will spread. If you choose to remain ignorant and uninvolved, you may be kissing your kids goodnight before a morning that never dawns.\"\n\nHe pauses, and the passion that infected him earlier flickers for a moment. But when he speaks again, he sounds as determined as before.\n\n\"Now I have a second confession to make: I broke the Taboo.\"\n\nI'm definitely not holding myself up anymore, but Blaze doesn't complain as I shift all my weight to him.\n\n\"Wandering Star Rhoma Grace and I have been romantically involved since she became Holy Mother. I know her better than anyone. Which is why you have to believe me when I tell you that _she has been compromised_.\"\n\nMy head is buzzing and my body grows feverish. I barely feel conscious as Hysan says his final words:\n\n\"Rho Grace is working with Ophiuchus and his master. _She is a traitor to the Zodiac._ \"\n\n# 26\n\n\"SHUT IT OFF,\" COMMANDS AQUARIUS.\n\nI lost them all.\n\nThey hate me.\n\n_I_ hate me.\n\n\"Leave us.\"\n\nI'm somewhat aware of everyone exiting the room and Blaze gently depositing me in a chair.\n\n\"You're not alone, Rho,\" says Aquarius, reading my soul as he sits beside me. \"Letting go of yesterday is the most painful part of today. I don't blame your friends for wanting to hold on to what they've always known, nor should you. But you've evolved past them now.\"\n\nPart of me is listening, but most of me isn't even here. It feels strangely freeing to be abandoned by everyone and everything I've ever loved, and I wonder how it will feel to die. Will Aquarius kill me himself when he learns I'm a double agent, or will he order Blaze to do it?\n\n\"Don't give up,\" he says softly. \"You're in the embrace of a new family now. All you have to do is embrace us back. And if you'd like, your mother and the new Luminary can come with us.\"\n\nI've rescued Nishi, I've cut ties with my friends, and now I have one final task. I have to uncover Aquarius's plans and feed them back to Hysan. Then he can save the Zodiac, and I can finally let go.\n\n\"Come with us _where_ , exactly?\" I ask, trying to pull myself together for one final push. \"You keep talking about this portal through Helios, but we don't even know where it leads or that we won't get burned for flying too close to the sun. So if I'm going to go with you, I need to hear an actual _plan_.\"\n\n\"I understand. You proved your loyalty to me by giving up the location of the Zodai's resistance, and now it's my turn to be completely open with you.\" His pink eyes are glassy and clear, his voice velvety soft. \"After the original earthlings settled the Aquarian constellation, I hid their spaceships and had them stored on planet XDZ5709.\"\n\n\"Black Moon?\"\n\nHe nods. \"That's why I needed the permit of exploration from the Plenum. I've been sending teams of engineers to upgrade those ships for centuries, but with all the attacks lately, my shipments from various Houses were starting to attract too much attention.\"\n\n\"Why not build new vessels?\"\n\n\"Because I know nothing of the tunnel through Helios save for the fact that _these_ ships made it through. I've outfitted them with the latest technology, and we have a full fleet ready to go. But on our way to Black Moon, you and I will make a pit stop to activate the portal.\"\n\n_\"Where?\"_\n\n\"The Thirteenth House.\"\n\nI blink. I'm certain I didn't hear him correctly.\n\n\"Opening the portal requires an enormous release of energy,\" he explains. \"The death of a star. Ophiuchus must be killed on his own soil.\"\n\n_Ochus knew._\n\nHe told me on the way here that Aquarius would sacrifice him.\n\nHow much more has he been keeping from me?\n\n\"You know everything now,\" says Aquarius, offering me the one thing I could never get from Hysan or Ophiuchus or Kassandra: _transparency._\n\nNow I understand how Traxon must have felt when Blaze approached him at the royal palace and offered to tell him the truth, just moments after I refused to open up to him.\n\n\"Rho, I believe you're ready, the Tomorrow Party believes you're ready, so the last person you have to convince is yourself. You're no good to any of us if you give up or give in. I want you to want this the way you wanted to stop Ophiuchus months ago.\"\n\nAquarius's eyes glow like the holographic globes from last night's party, and I see a new universe of worlds swirling in their depths. \"I want you to believe in yourself and in your species' future. I want you to care about what lies beyond that portal, to be excited to discover what kind of planets we'll find.\" Even his skin is blazing with light, and more than ever he looks like the fallen star he is. \"Will they be ruled by scientific laws we've never heard of? Will we meet new life forms? Will there be colors and dimensions and substances we've never seen before? Will we find the answers to existence's deepest questions?\n\n\"I know you feel finished,\" he says, his voice becoming more Crompton-ish than godlike. \"But if you're willing to depart from the mortal plane, then you've already abandoned your friends. So don't hold yourself back on their account.\"\n\n_Abandon._ That word has always tugged at me, ever since childhood. But that's not what I'm doing. I'm helping them. I'm here gaining Aquarius's trust so I can relay his plans to them.\n\nI've given up on myself, but not on my friends\u2014I will always root for them.\n\n\"Death is a given, Rho,\" he says soothingly. \"It will happen whether you race into its arms or inch toward it slowly. It's waiting for you, and it's forever. Even _I_ cannot hope to grasp eternity.\n\n\"You have all of existence to spend in Empyrean\u2014so why hasten to get there? It's coming no matter what. Life is like a candle's flame: It waxes and wanes until the wick is devoured, and then it's gone. You have so much more light to give; don't extinguish yourself.\"\n\nI don't say anything, but I don't get the sense he expects me to.\n\n\"I have to take a trip to planet XDZ5709 to inspect our fleet for the final time, and then the Party will commence shuttling passengers over while I come back for you and Ophiuchus. Once the portal's been activated, we'll regroup with the others, and at the end of the seventh day we'll be on the first ship through Helios.\"\n\nThis is it.\n\nHe's leaving, and I know his plan. It's my chance to let Hysan and the others know what's going on.\n\nAnd yet, instead of feeling energized for this last act of my life's story, I feel less sure of myself than ever. I've been pretending to be on so many sides that I'm not sure which one I'm really on anymore. Just like the artists of Artistry, I can't tell where my performance ends and the real me begins.\n\n\"Rho, this is the only chance humanity has. I know you want to believe the whole universe can be saved, but it can't, and I'd rather _some_ survive than none at all.\"\n\n_What if he's right?_ asks a small voice in my head.\n\nI may disagree with the violence of his methods, and I may regret the fact that he didn't warn us sooner so that we could have saved more people, but does that mean that everyone in the Zodiac should die just because Aquarius handled things poorly?\n\nEven after I relay this information to the Zodai, I still don't see how they will be able to stop him\u2014the master is too smart, and he's been planning this for too long. But maybe I can at least try to convince them to listen to Aquarius and give him a chance.\n\nIt has to be worth a shot.\n\n\"I know I'm asking more from you than anyone else,\" he goes on, \"but I wouldn't ask if I didn't believe in you. Time is running out, and I need to know where you stand.\"\n\nI feel like a once-finished puzzle that's just been disassembled into thousands of tiny pieces. I used to be so sure of what was right and what was wrong . . . and now I don't even know who I am.\n\n\"Okay,\" I say at last, and I know as I speak the words that I'm no longer acting. \"I'll go with you.\"\n\nHe knows it, too, because the light in his eyes blazes back, full blast. \"Then I'll see you in three days, and we'll set out for the Thirteenth House.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\n_\"Wake up.\"_\n\nI'd just fallen asleep when I'm shaken awake. The sun isn't even up yet, so my room is in complete darkness as I shove someone's fingers off my arm.\n\n\"Get off me!\" I wave my hand over my head, in front of the bed's headboard, and it lights up revealing a teen girl with a mahogany face and a head full of braids.\n\n\"What did you do?\" demands Ezra. _\"What did you tell him?\"_\n\n\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"I haven't been able to reach Hysan since I led you to his hologram\u2014our signal's jammed. Did you tell Aquarius anything about Gyzer and me?\"\n\n\"Of course not. Hysan probably cut off communications after his broadcast as a precaution. Calm down.\"\n\nShe glares at me. \"Gyzer was so certain you were just playing Aquarius. He insisted you'd turn around and come back to us the moment you learned his secrets. But looking at you now, you seem just as brainwashed as all the other elitists here.\"\n\n\"You don't know anything about me,\" I growl. Just like Traxon and Skarlet, Ezra is able to bring my anger out better than most people, and before I can think anything through I command, \"Go commandeer us a bullet-ship.\"\n\nEzra crosses her arms defiantly. \"What for?\"\n\n\"What do you think for? We're getting off this planet.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nJust minutes later, Ezra and I meet Gyzer in the hangar deck, and we board one of the Party's black bullet-ships. They're a third the size of _'Nox_ and so dark that they probably blend in perfectly with Space.\n\n\"It's one of Aquarius's own designs,\" Gyzer says as we climb onboard. \"It's the fastest interplanetary vessel in the Zodiac. We'll make it to Aries in just about fifteen galactic hours.\"\n\n_Hysan would probably flip for this ship,_ I think, and then my gut clenches at the thought of facing him.\n\nThe spacecraft's interior is as black as its exterior, and it has no cabins\u2014just two individual sleep capsules built into the concave walls.\n\nEven though we encountered no obstacles leaving, we're quiet until we've crossed the atmospheric barrier, which takes an alarmingly short amount of time. The three of us stay seated in the front of the ship, in a forced silence, until Gyzer finally turns from the control helm and clasps his soulful eyes on me. \"Are you lost?\"\n\n\"Aquarius confided his plans to me, and now I'm going to let the Guardians know . . . like I always planned to do,\" I say, sounding defensive even to myself.\n\n\"But you're no longer on our side.\" Though he phrases it like a statement, it sounds like a question.\n\n\"It's not about sides,\" I say, shrugging. \"It's about _truth_.\"\n\n\"And you believe the Last Prophecy is unavoidable?\"\n\n\"Can you prove that it's not?\"\n\n\"I think you're brainwashed,\" says Ezra, doubling down on her accusation.\n\nI wait to hear what Gyzer thinks, but he doesn't offer anything more on the subject.\n\n\"I just hope they don't shoot us down when they see we're escorting a _traitor_ ,\" Ezra goes on goadingly. \"You _really_ pissed Hysan off. I didn't know Librans could even get that angry\u2014\"\n\n\"That's _enough_ ,\" I say, glaring at her.\n\n\"Says the double-crosser,\" she snaps.\n\n\"Silence.\" Gyzer's mournful voice fills up the small space. He looks from Ezra to me and says, \"Infighting is _not_ productive.\"\n\n_\"Gy\u2014\"_\n\n\"Don't,\" he warns Ezra, cutting her off midwhine. \"If we can't unite now, we'll fail. If you can't rise above your anger, you're choosing death for all of us.\"\n\nEzra looks genuinely shamed, and her eyes roll down to the floor as fire torches her cheeks. Gyzer turns back to the controls, and a heavy silence swaddles us until Ezra looks at me and says in a much lighter tone, \"So Hysan's Guardian of Libra and Lord Neith is an android?\" She shakes her braids in awe and leans in. \"Show me the Ephemeris that Saw _that_ twist coming.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nIt's bright out on Phaet when we near The Bellow, the red sun barely visible at this time of day. \"Something looks wrong,\" says Gyzer as we descend toward the landing pad\u2014which is full of identical black bullet-ships.\n\n\" _You_ ,\" says Ezra, turning to me with fire in her eyes. \"You told him the camp's location!\"\n\nAquarius lied to me.\n\nHe brought a whole fleet of ships here, and they never left.\n\nWhat if the Marad arrested everyone? What if they forced Hysan to give that broadcast? What if something's happened to him or Nishi or Mathias or Pandora or\u2014\n\n\"You're _landing_?\" asks Ezra, rounding on Gyzer in shock. \"What the hell are we going to tell them?\"\n\n\"That we're here on Aquarius's orders,\" I hear myself say. \"I'll tell them he sent me here to try to recruit my friends.\"\n\nNeither Ezra nor Gyzer disagrees with my plan, so we land. As soon as we disembark, half a dozen Marad soldiers approach us. When they see me, they pause.\n\n\"We're here on Aquarius's orders,\" I say disdainfully, and I keep walking purposefully toward the entrance into the mountain. Ezra and Gyzer keep back a respectful distance, playing the role of my Tomorrow Party guards.\n\nInside the mountain, there's no flurry of activity, no healers or Majors going about their work. The silence and emptiness is gloomy, and my blood chills with every step. When I eventually manage to find my way to the central area with offshoots to the hospital and The Bellow, I follow the scent of fresh air toward the smallest of the tunnels, the one that leads to Phaet's secret golden forest.\n\nI unlock the door, and we step into a cool, sunny day. Ezra and Gyzer survey the view around us in awe\u2014since they've been with the Party this whole time, they haven't seen this camp yet\u2014but I hurry down the stone ramp, horrified by what I might have done.\n\nEverything looks too still, and I scan the three fortresses ahead, wondering where my friends are.\n\n\"Which of the three holds the greatest power?\" asks Gyzer, coming up beside me and staring at the same view.\n\n\"The first one has a communal reading room\u2014\"\n\n\"But barely anyone is getting visions these days,\" Ezra interrupts.\n\n\"The second one has our arsenal of weapons,\" I say nervously.\n\n\"But Aquarius already has weapons, and his are more destructive,\" says Gyzer.\n\n\"The third one is intelligence.\"\n\nWe look at each other, and immediately we head in the direction of the final Fort.\n\n\"We have no idea how many of Aquarius's people are in there,\" I say as we run. \"We need a strategy to take back control of the camp.\"\n\n\"We can start a fire,\" suggests Ezra.\n\n\"A fire?\"\n\n\"That will probably give us all the time we need,\" says Gyzer approvingly.\n\n\"Time for what? What are you guys talking about?\"\n\n\"Just distract people,\" Ezra tells me. \"When they're not looking, we'll do the rest.\"\n\nThere's no one guarding the fortress's front doors, and the planet's emptiness is becoming disturbing\u2014but then I step into the large entrance hall full of semiprivate cubicles, and a Party member I vaguely recognize freezes.\n\n\"Oh\u2014I didn't realize he'd sent you!\" she says, seeming reassured by the sight of Ezra and Gyzer with me. \"This way.\" She waves for us to follow.\n\nWe head down a passage that spills into a large room with a high-arched ceiling and so many windows that sunlight illuminates every corner. A dozen Marad soldiers outline the perimeter, surrounding thirteen people seated around a massive wooden table.\n\nMy heart punches my chest, and I'm as shocked to hear it as I am to see the sight before me.\n\nHysan, Nishi, Mathias, Pandora, Skarlet, and Eurek occupy half the seats. The other half are taken up by six Party members. The woman in the thirteenth chair has her back to me, but I recognize her sultry voice.\n\n\"We really need to get going, so for the last time: Agree to join us, or we'll lock you up along with everyone else on this planet. You have right _now_ to decide.\"\n\n\"Captain,\" interrupts the Party member who escorted us. \"We have a very important visitor.\"\n\nImogen turns around slowly, and when she sees me, her glossy red mouth curves into a smile. Then she spots Ezra and Gyzer behind me, and her smirk widens.\n\n_\"I knew it!\"_\n\n# 27\n\n\"KNEW WHAT?\" I ASK AS dryly as I can, hating that my heart has chosen this moment to resurface when now, more than ever, I need to be cool and calculating. \"Aquarius sent me here to try to convince them. He had a feeling you'd fail.\"\n\n\"Right,\" she says, standing on her spindly heels, her red lips still stretched in a too-confident smirk. \"And you just happened to come with two of your former generals?\"\n\n\" _You_ were my former general,\" I say, softening my voice to try a gentler approach. \"If your devotion to the cause is complete, why distrust ours?\"\n\n\"Because Aquarius has no idea you're here,\" she says, resting her hands on her waist, near where she holsters her Sumber. \"If he did, I would have had warning of your arrival. I have a big imagination, but even I have a hard time believing you've changed sides.\"\n\n\"I'm here to convince them to join us,\" I say, trying to keep my disdain for her out of my tone. \"Whether or not you trust me makes no difference\u2014we both still want the same thing.\"\n\nHer copper-flecked eyes narrow shrewdly, and then her hands drop down at her sides. \"Okay . . . go ahead.\"\n\nShe grips the back of her chair and pulls it out for me. _\"Convince them.\"_\n\nI have no idea what Ezra's plan is or how soon from now it will take effect, so I just have to keep everyone interested. I sit down and for the first time make eye contact with my friends.\n\nNishi glares at me, and she looks as livid as the two Arieans beside her. Mathias is stoic and Pandora is concerned, but I only glance at them peripherally. It's Hysan my gaze locks on to.\n\nHis features are as unreadable as Mathias's, but where the latter's face is more of a familiar military mask, Hysan's is almost expressionless. His hair is scruffy, his cheeks look sunken in, and his lively eyes have dulled, like his inner sun has set for good. Yet his shoulders are squared and his jaw is hard.\n\nI suck in a deep breath, trying to call up my words from the place behind my booming heart. All thoughts of what I would say abandoned me as soon as I saw I'd have a Tomorrow Party audience. But I also didn't realize how hard it would be to sit across from the family I deceived\u2014and the Guardian whose secret I revealed.\n\nEven though I'm not looking at him, I can feel Eurek's furious scowl burning into my head, like his ember eyes might have real firepower. It seems the Guardians are all in support of making sacrifices for the greater good, just as long as it's not _their_ House doing the sacrificing.\n\n\"This isn't about sides,\" I begin, wishing I possessed some of Aquarius's or Blaze's magnetism. \" _This is about our species' survival._\n\n\"Our ancestors came through a portal to get to the Zodiac because they, too, had a difficult decision to make, and the fact we're here at all is a testament to their strength.\"\n\nHysan looks unmoved, and I swallow and try again. \"Aquarius is offering us a way out of this galaxy because Dark Matter will soon swallow our sun. I don't like the way he's gone about this any better than you\u2014let's not forget that Pisces and Cancer sacrificed more than any other House,\" I add, and I venture a look at Eurek. His jaw stays clenched, but his eyes dial down their flames a little.\n\n\"Right now what matters is that we not spend this time fighting but communicating. We have to face the reality we have, not the one we want\u2014\"\n\n\"Do you really think he's working this hard to convince us to come along because we'd make a fine addition to his Zodai collection?\" Hysan's voice is so soft, it's more of a murmur, and yet every word is perfectly audible.\n\n\"The six people you're closest to on this base also happen to be the Tomorrow Party's only recruitment priorities. Doesn't that strike you as strange?\"\n\nSkarlet pipes up. \"I'm not close to her\u2014\"\n\nBut Hysan continues speaking in his low voice, cutting her off. \"He wants _us_ because he needs a way to control _you_.\"\n\nImogen cackles and perches on the table in front of me. She looks at me and says, \"Now I'm not even sure _you_ know what side you're on!\"\n\n\"Look who's talking!\" snaps Nishi, panning her scorching amber gaze to Imogen. \"Aren't you the same person who came to Centaurion pledging to help defend Sagittarius from terrorists, before joining those same terrorists and shooting me into a world of my _nightmares_?\"\n\n\"You broke into Blaze's files and planned to betray us,\" says Imogen. \"But I didn't kill you, and I spared you from worse pain.\"\n\n_\"Worse pain?\"_ Nishi's face is red with outrage, and she looks at me then back at Imogen. _\"Do you understand what those nightmares were like\u2014\"_\n\n\"The other pellet would have been worse,\" says the Geminin, and for the first time she doesn't seem to be toying with us. \"To dream of everything and everyone you long for . . . only to lose it all. Again. And again. And again . . . Trust me, that takes longer to recover from.\"\n\n\"You're right, I really should be _thanking_ you,\" snarls Nishi as she shoots to her feet. Only now she's directing her anger at me.\n\n\" _What's wrong with you_? Don't you realize that if Aquarius really cared about us, he would have warned the Zodiac of this danger ages ago, so we could have had time to prepare? He's only kept it to himself because _he's_ the one causing the Last Prophecy\u2014he's choosing who's worthy of survival and dooming the rest of our species!\"\n\n\"He's saving us!\" interjects Imogen. \"He's doing what natural selection would do on its own\u2014he's just expediting it.\"\n\n\"And you're fine with that justification for mass extermination?\" Nishi is still looking at me.\n\n\"He doesn't have to justify himself!\" shouts Imogen, at last losing her cool and leaning forward on the table toward Nishi. \"We don't question the stars, _Stargazer_. We _obey_ them\u2014\"\n\nA bullet suddenly whizzes between Imogen and Nishi and hits the middle of the table, bursting into flame on contact with the wood.\n\nEveryone dives away, and as I drop to the ground, I look up at Ezra and Gyzer. They're standing back to back with their wrists raised and Arclights aimed at the soldiers. Within seconds, they've systematically taken out every single Marad member in the room before the soldiers could even fire their Murmurs. I remember them being the best shots of anyone on Centaurion, but this is on another level\u2014I've never seen anyone shoot like that.\n\nSomeone yells for them to stop, but I don't know who it is. Across from me, Mathias has also dropped to the floor, and he's shielding Pandora's and Nishi's bodies with his own.\n\nWhen the sound of scuffling behind me cuts out, I finally sit up and look back: Eurek has single-handedly disarmed the six Tomorrow Party members, and Skarlet has Imogen in a headlock.\n\nI hear a hissing sound and I whip around to see Hysan using a fire freezer\u2014a small silver gun that turns the flames on the table to icy curls of smoke.\n\n\"You're going to love The Bellow,\" says Skarlet into Imogen's hair. \"It's the perfect place to spend the Zodiac's last days.\"\n\nShe and Eurek tie up the Party members, including a now-speechless Imogen, but Hysan is stalking over, looking furious.\n\nI brace myself for his words\u2014\n\n\"You killed them!\" he shouts at Ezra and Gyzer. \"You shot the Marad soldiers dead!\"\n\n\"Yes, and we saved your asses!\" Ezra shouts back. I'm surprised she's glaring back at him just as furiously, since she usually idolizes him, but then I recognize her expression as the same one Brynda wore on Pisces. Ezra's hurt by Hysan's secrets.\n\nAfter his broadcast, everyone who ever thought they were Hysan's friends realized they were wrong.\n\n\"So Party members get rounded up and arrested, but Marad soldiers get a bullet to the head? Does that sound like justice to you?\" he demands. \"I gave you weapons that aren't lethal, and I know you have Tasers\u2014\"\n\n\"There's no room for second-guessing in war,\" says Eurek, cutting off Hysan's outrage. \"We need to free our camp from the Marad soldiers holding our Zodai hostage in the other fortresses. Once we've rounded up all the prisoners and locked them up in The Bellow, we'll address next steps.\"\n\nHis gaze stops on me and hardens. For a moment I think he's going to recommend locking me up in The Bellow, too, but suddenly Pandora comes over and links her arm with mine. \"Where should we meet you?\" she asks Eurek.\n\n\"My chambers. I'll arrange an urgent holo-meet with the other Guardians so we can debrief them.\" He looks to Skarlet, Ezra, and Gyzer. \"We'll either have to take out one Fort after the other, or we can split up into two teams of two.\"\n\n\"I have another idea,\" says Hysan, and they grudgingly look to him. \"You can access the central air cooling systems in the main halls of both structures, where I planted Bind bombs weeks ago, in case we ever needed them.\" He ignores the way the air tenses when he admits to more secrecy. \"They'll disperse through the air in seconds, and everyone in both fortresses will fall asleep. Then we can arrest the Marad soldiers and explain everything to the Zodai when they wake up.\"\n\nBind is House Libra's signature weapon: a wispy white powder made from ground-up minerals found deep within Kythera's core that seeps quickly into a person's muscular system and puts the body into a deep sleep. Librans are immune to small doses of the powder from breathing in trace amounts of it every day.\n\nEurek finally nods. \"That's a better plan,\" he says, biting off each word like it's bothering him. \"How do we set them off?\"\n\n\"I'll go with you\u2014\"\n\n\"I know how to activate them,\" Ezra cuts in. \"You stay here and sort this shit out.\" She waves between Hysan and me.\n\n\"Let's go,\" says Eurek, marching out with his team, and then I'm left alone with Hysan, Nishi, Mathias, and Pandora.\n\nWith the others gone, Pandora lets go of my arm and returns to Mathias's side.\n\nOnly Nishi meets my gaze, and I almost wish she wouldn't. There's so much disappointment on her face that I flash back to the day at the International Village after I was stripped of my Guardianship\u2014the day the Zodiac turned against me. Only this time, it's the people I love most looking at me like I'm worthless.\n\n\"I understand if you want to lock me up in The Bellow,\" I say, and at this, Mathias's indigo blue eyes shoot up to mine. He doesn't look stoic anymore . . . he looks sad.\n\n\"I came back because I don't want you guys to die,\" I say, realizing I'm speaking the absolute truth for the first time in a while. \"If you choose death, then I'll die with you. But I'm begging you to reconsider, for your sakes.\"\n\nNishi blows out an exasperated breath and brings her hands up to her face. \"You are so infuriating, Rho. You sold your soul to save my life\u2014did you seriously think I would thank you for it? You really think I could live with that price?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Nish\u2014I just couldn't bear the thought of you in there another moment\u2014\"\n\n\" _You_ couldn't bear it. Because it was something you had the power to fix! I was someone you could still save, unlike Stan.\"\n\nThe air blows out of my lungs, but new oxygen doesn't replace it. \"I know I could have handled things better, but that doesn't matter now, because I brought you the information you're looking for.\"\n\nMathias and Nishi's expressions shift from upset to curious, and they edge closer. \"You know how he's going to open the portal?\" asks Nishi, and I nod. _\"How?\"_\n\n\"He's\u2014\"\n\n\"Why tell us if you think Aquarius is right?\"\n\nHysan is still speaking in a low voice, the facial hair swallowing his usual glow.\n\n\"Because you have the right to decide your own fate.\"\n\n\"I don't want you to tell us,\" he says resolutely, crossing his arms. \"Not unless you're with us again.\"\n\n_\"Hysan\u2014\"_ starts Nishi.\n\nBut to my shock, it's Mathias who rests a hand on her shoulder and says, \"Let him talk.\"\n\nHysan's green gaze locks onto mine like a lie detector. \"Why did he attack your House and Virgo and Gemini?\"\n\n\"To redirect the Dark Matter that was being disturbed by Guardians Origene, Moira, and Caasy's experiments.\"\n\n\"That's not true,\" says Pandora, stepping forward. \"We worked it out. We believe it was to destabilize the Psy.\"\n\nI turn to Hysan questioningly, and he explains. \"Aquarius's plans were too close to fruition to risk the Zodai foreseeing them. So to disrupt the Psy, he had to take out its anchors\u2014today's greatest seers. Since a Guardian's strength comes from their Psynergetic connection to their world and their people, he had to take out chunks of these worlds' populations to truly weaken the Psy's pillars.\"\n\n\"But the Dark Matter\u2014\"\n\n\"Is only a threat because Aquarius is a threat,\" says Hysan. \"The signs he's been seeing started showing up the moment he set on this idea and began taking steps toward it.\"\n\nI look to Mathias, who's nodding in agreement with Hysan, and I remember what he told me when he taught me about the Collective Conscious: _In the brain, everything is relative. Most of us don't intentionally try to misrepresent anything\u2014but the lies we tell ourselves, the truths we repress, the things we conceal in the physical realm . . . they inform reality in the Psy. Even in an abstract dimension, ideas built on flawed foundations will fail._\n\n\"Aquarius is the one bringing the Zodiac down,\" says Nishi. \"He's a star with free will\u2014that gives him too much power.\"\n\nEverything I've learned over the past few days starts to connect in my mind, forming a new constellation of facts. Ophiuchus was meant for that role because he was Unity: It went against his very nature to think of just himself. The other Guardians weren't offered the same power because it would have had a corrosive effect\u2014they weren't meant to hold it. By interfering, Aquarius has distorted the astral plane.\n\nHe may be all knowing, but Nishi's right: He's not just a star\u2014he's a star with _free will_. And he keeps making the same choice as the humans he looks down on: He can't let go.\n\nHe's created his own darkness.\n\n\" _Which came first: fate or free will?_ \" I say softly, quoting Aquarius. Mallie said she joined him because she Saw herself joining the Party. But who sent her that vision?\n\n_He manipulates the Psy by creating the visions he needs,_ Hysan said when Crompton revealed himself as the master in the Cathedral. He's been recruiting people for his plan by altering their destinies.\n\n\"I say free will,\" says Nishi, and the anger in her face is gone, like a candle that's been blown out. \"What do you say?\"\n\n\"Aquarius is going to open the portal by sacrificing Ophiuchus on his own soil,\" I blurt out.\n\nAll four of them stare at me in awe.\n\n\"We have to go back for him,\" I say. To save the Zodiac, we have to save Ophiuchus.\n\n# 28\n\nI SPEND THE REST OF the day repeating everything I learned from both Ophiuchus and Aquarius over and over and over again.\n\nHysan creates a fake hologram of Imogen to field any incoming calls from Blaze or Aquarius. Funny how identity forgery used to be our greatest threat, and now it's a survival strategy. The five of us spend the rest of the day in meetings with the Zodai teams on Phaet, and the other Guardians drop in holographically at various times, until everyone has been filled in.\n\nThe plan is for a small team to fly to Artistry on _'Nox_ and rescue Ophiuchus and Mom and Gamba before Aquarius returns from Black Moon\u2014which means we have to go immediately.\n\nIt turns out Ezra already sent Hysan the blueprints for the black bullet-ships, and he upgraded _'Nox_ 's engine to equal their speed\u2014plus, given that the Libran Talisman is built into its brain, _Equinox_ has the only Psy shield that stands a chance against Aquarius. Hysan shared the master's engine designs with every House, so hopefully our whole fleet will be able to match the Marad's speed. Once we have Ophiuchus, we'll Veil from the Psy and hide him on _Equinox_ until the Zodai have defeated Aquarius.\n\nHysan, Mathias, Nishi, Pandora, Skarlet, Ezra, Gyzer, and I board _'Nox_. Since we'll be leaving Leo with three more people onboard, we're pushing _'Nox_ 's oxygen limits, but Hysan assured us that it would be okay. I go straight to my usual cabin, but I stop before turning the handle. Last time I slept in there, Stan was with me.\n\nI look down the hall to see that Nishi is doing the same thing. Her old room is haunted by Deke's holo-ghost.\n\nMathias and Hysan are watching us.\n\n\"Why don't you both take my cabin?\" says Hysan, and without waiting for our answer, he carries his things into the last and smallest room, the one near the storage hold, and shuts his door.\n\nNishi and I look at each other, and we wordlessly slip inside the main cabin. When we're alone, she just stares at me. Even though she's furious, I can't help feeling relieved that she looks so much more like herself now than she did on Leo.\n\n\"You Cancrians will be the end of me.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, Nish.\"\n\nShe shakes her head and exhales. \"The Marad soldiers let me call my parents from the ship, as long as I didn't disclose any details of what had happened. I figured they must have been going through their own nightmares over my disappearance. But when my mom answered, she and my dad were wasted at some party on Taurus. They thought I was traveling and had no idea anything was wrong.\"\n\nShe rests a hand on my shoulder and squeezes me hard. \"I hate what you did, Rho. But I love _why_ you did it.\"\n\nI pull her into a hug, and as I hold her tightly to me, I'm just happy for this moment to be with her. I have no idea what will happen when we try to break out Ophiuchus. Nor do I know how we're going to keep him hidden from Aquarius now that I've given up the only secret location in the Zodiac. But I can't take another breath without her forgiveness.\n\n\"I'm so sorry, Nishi,\" I repeat.\n\n\"I know,\" she says as we pull away, and our fingers link together. \"But I almost lost you.\"\n\n\"I almost lost me, too.\"\n\nThe ship begins its ascent, and we lie back on the bed, still holding hands, and stare up at the ceiling as we exit Phaet's atmosphere. From our silence and labored breathing, I know we're both thinking of the last time we did this, with Deke, right after he asked Nishi to marry him.\n\n\"I miss him, Rho.\"\n\n\"Me too.\" I squeeze her hand, and we don't say anything for a long time.\n\nUnsurprisingly, Nishi breaks the silence with an annoying question. \"So what's going on with you and Hysan?\"\n\n\"Nothing.\"\n\n\"He seems heartbroken.\"\n\nSkarlet's face flashes in my mind, and I wonder if even now, in a different cabin, she's making her move. \"He'll find someone new.\"\n\n\"So you're over him?\" She rolls onto her side to face me, and half her face is buried in the mattress. All I can see is one slanted amber eye and strands of dark hair.\n\n\"I can't think about him right now,\" I say, rolling to my side to face her, too. \"I just want to focus on saving the universe.\"\n\nHer lips curl into a smirk, and her eye grows smaller. \"That should be your anthem. _Introducing the Zodiac's Wandering Star_ \"\u2014her voice goes higher and becomes musical\u2014\" _She's not here to date, she's here to save the Zod-i-ac!_ \"\n\nI shrug. \"I kind of prefer _Trust in Guardian Rho_.\"\n\nHer gaze is glassy and her smile wilts. \"I wrote the new lyrics the same night you took off to Gemini to warn them about Ophiuchus, right after that meeting with your Advisors.\"\n\n\"What happened afterwards?\" I whisper.\n\n\"A lot seemed to happen simultaneously. As soon as the song and your story got out, we received requests from schools _everywhere_ asking us to come perform. We jumped on the chance to take a chartered trip to the Zodai University on Capricorn because its students have the highest test scores of any school in the Zodiac, so I figured they'd lend us the most credibility.\"\n\n\"I remember seeing something about it in the newsfeeds on Virgo.\"\n\nNishi smiles again, but this time the good humor doesn't reach her eyes. \"Drowning Diamonds' first and last tour.\"\n\n\"And you went without your drummer,\" I say, trying to lighten the mood.\n\nHer gaze is distant, like she's reliving the trip, and she says, \"That was when Deke finally confessed his feelings.\"\n\n\"Tell me about it,\" I say softly.\n\n\"After playing the song onstage, I told the students the lyrics were real. I warned what happened to Cancer would spread unless we came together now, behind you and House Cancer, and united as one Zodiac. The school administration ushered us off the stage pretty fast after that.\"\n\nHer voice is low and musical. \"Kai went to bed early, but Deke and I decided to explore Tierre's terrain, and we hiked up a mountain peak where we could see the most varied tapestry of topographies we'd ever seen. The whole horizon was silver, and we took turns pointing out volcanoes and jungles and oceans. Then we lay back and stared up at the stars, and I just knew we were going to sleep out there and not go back to the room, and in that moment I decided that if he didn't finally own his feelings, I would just kiss him and see what happened. That's when he said, _I'm in love with you, Nish._ \"\n\n\"What?\" I ask, my eyes going wide.\n\n\"It gets better. Then, he told me that when he watched me speaking in defense of Cancer onstage, he realized how ridiculous he'd been to ever care about our Houses. He said even though we'd been born on different planets, the stars had always meant for us to find each other\u2014that was why they'd given us each one half of the same soul.\"\n\nShe can't speak for a while, and neither can I. \"I just remember this amazing rush of happiness,\" she whispers, \"like every House in the Zodiac could explode, and the darkness still wouldn't be able to touch me. And the thing that scares me most now is never feeling that way again.\"\n\n\"You will\u2014\"\n\nBut I give up my weak reassurance when she narrows her eye. We both know the truth. Neither of us will ever be that happy again because that universe is gone.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI wake up holding Nishi's hand. I only slept a little\u2014the flight time on the wallscreen says we've been traveling for just six hours. But it's more sleep than I've gotten since the Sumber. It's the first time I've felt safe in too long.\n\nNow that I'm up, I'm afraid to close my eyes again, so I decide to stroll through the ship. Everyone is probably still sleeping, so it's the perfect time to stretch my limbs.\n\nAs soon as I'm in the hall, I hear retching. It sounds like a girl, so it's Ezra or Pandora or Skarlet. Hoping above all that it's not the Ariean, I knock on the cabin door. \"Are you okay?\" I call softly.\n\nNo one answers, and I try the handle, which is unlocked, so I peek inside. There's nobody in the bed, but the lavatory door is open. On the floor is Ezra, curled around the toilet.\n\nI shut the door behind me and come over to her. The lavatories don't fit two people, so I sit down in the doorway and ask, \"What's going on?\"\n\nShe groans, and an empty glass bottle rolls away from her on the floor. I pick it up and sniff the lingering licorice scent. \"I didn't think Abyssthe had the same hangover symptoms as alcohol.\"\n\n\"I always have a . . . reaction to it,\" she mumbles into the cold ground.\n\n\"Can I get you anything?\"\n\nHer groan sounds a lot like the word _go_.\n\nI keep expecting my feet to push up from the floor and carry me out of the room, but there's no pull on my muscles to move. \"If you've got the hangover part covered, maybe I could help with whatever the original problem was\u2014since Abyssthe seems to have failed you?\"\n\n\"Get out,\" she moans, more clearly now.\n\n\"Should I call Gyzer instead?\"\n\nHer head jerks up, and she winces in pain from the movement. \" _No_ ,\" she says, more pleading than threatening. \"Don't tell him.\"\n\n\"Okay, but if you're not going to talk to him about it, then I think you should talk to me. You don't even want to be my friend anymore, so why should you care what I think? Just use me to extract whatever poison is eating at you because you're no good to this army if you fall apart.\"\n\n\"You really have . . . a way with words,\" she says, taking a breath midsentence.\n\n\"If you're too nauseous to talk, I'll wait with you.\"\n\nI lean back against the doorframe and shut my eyes, nerves suddenly fluttering in my own belly. We've made the calculations, and we'll be arriving the evening of the third day. Aquarius could be back at any moment.\n\nThe plan is for me to return to the Mothership with Ezra and Gyzer by my side and tell Blaze we went to visit my friends so I could convince them, but they wouldn't budge. I'll act put out that he and Aquarius never told me Imogen would be taking over the camp, but since I also think my friends are headed to their deaths, I'm probably less angry and more sad. If Blaze wants to verify my story with Imogen, he'll have to communicate holographically since they have a Psy shield up at the camp, and our fake Imogen will confirm my report.\n\n\"I never killed anyone before.\"\n\nEzra's words hit me like a bullet, and my eyes fly open. Not just from pity, but shock that I didn't pick up on her pain earlier.\n\nShe can't be older than sixteen. Of course she's never shot a person.\n\nI edge closer and carefully brush her braids away from her face. There are tears on her mahogany cheek, and I reach up into the wall dispenser for a fresh, warm face towel. When it comes out, I wait for it to cool a little, and then I gently mop up her skin and neck, which is drenched with sweat.\n\n\"I didn't even think of them as human,\" she says softly. \"I just pictured monsters behind the masks.\" Her brown eye rolls up to meet mine. _\"Risers.\"_\n\nI nod without saying anything so I don't interrupt her confession.\n\n\"Hysan was right. I didn't think they were worth saving.\" She hinges her elbow beneath her to rise to a sitting position, and I slide back a little to give her space.\n\n\"They looked exactly like the targets in the holo-games. . . . They didn't feel real. I didn't touch them.\"\n\nTears roll down her cheeks again, and I offer her the towel. She takes it from me and blows her nose. We sit in more silence, until she says, \"I thought being a double agent sounded like a dream. Hysan asked me to really think through what this would be like, but I ignored him. I thought I could pretend to be a Party member without losing myself, only . . . now that I've killed people, who am I?\"\n\nI sigh and say, \"I wish I could be helpful, but as you yourself pointed out on the way to Phaet, I don't have a clue who I am anymore either. I think Eurek was right that we can't second-guess our choices in war. We have to stay present and keep moving forward. Our worlds may have raised us to think of Risers this way, but it's now up to us to change the narrative.\"\n\n\"But the Party members have been able to justify so much death, and I thought\u2014it didn't seem like it could be that difficult, since they're not all bad people. A few of them I'm even friends with. How can they be okay with this?\"\n\n\"I don't think anyone's okay with this,\" I say, suddenly feeling exhausted and ready to go back to sleep. I stand up and reach down to pull Ezra to her feet, and I help her into bed. As I'm zipping up her cocoon, I whisper, \"I think win or lose, war makes victims of us all.\"\n\n# 29\n\nI WAKE UP STARVING.\n\nNishi's eyes open a moment after mine do and she says, \"I'm hungry.\" Someone's stomach rumbles, and I can't tell if it's hers or mine.\n\nWe head to the galley to hunt for food or anything that resembles it, and we find Skarlet and Gyzer at the table. A plate stacked with what looks like sheets of brown levlan sits beside them, but they're completely engrossed in their arm wrestling match. Their faces are tight with concentration, foreheads shiny with sweat, uniform sleeves bulging with muscles.\n\nSkarlet wins.\n\n\"Best two out of three?\" he asks.\n\nBut she looks to me in the entryway and says, \"Maybe later.\" Then she rises from her seat in one sinuous movement and knocks her rock-hard arm into mine as she edges past. I bite down on my lip to keep quiet.\n\nNishi approaches the levlan-like food and sniffs it. \"What is it?\" she asks Gyzer.\n\n\"Dried Ram meat. An ancient warrior recipe that Majors would take with them to battle. It's good,\" he adds, seeing Nishi's suspicious expression.\n\nShe lifts a sheet with both hands and brings a corner to her mouth and nibbles it. She chews a few times, frowns, swallows, and then her eyes grow wide. \"Mmmm!\"\n\nShe bites into it more eagerly now, and I reach for a square of my own. It has a hard, rubbery texture, and a smoky, spicy taste, and it's absolutely delicious.\n\n\"I'm going to check on Ezra,\" says Gyzer, standing up.\n\n\"Is she okay?\" I ask, wiping my mouth with the back of my wrist.\n\n\"She had a headache last night, so she didn't sleep much. Going to see if she liked the Ariean food.\"\n\nWhen he leaves, Pandora strides in. \"Mathias has just taken over the controls, so Hysan returned to his cabin,\" she says, like it's a normal way to greet people.\n\n\"Great,\" I say, shrugging and ripping off another bite.\n\n\"Hysan is alone,\" Pandora goes on, sitting across from me and picking up a sheet for herself. \"Maybe you want to talk to him and clear the air?\"\n\nNishi frowns at her. \"Hey, lavender eyes\u2014if I thought being direct would work, don't you think I would have tried it?\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" says Pandora, daintily covering her mouth with a hand as she chews.\n\n\"I've known her for a third of our lives, so take it from me,\" Nishi goes on, still talking about me like I'm not here. \"She has to choose to leave her shell on her own\u2014if you try to reach inside to pull her out, she'll only burrow deeper.\"\n\n\"Since you clearly don't need me here for this conversation, I'm going to wash up,\" I say, stuffing what's left of my meal into my mouth and heading out into the hall. But rather than tunneling to the back of the ship, where I could run into Hysan, I visit the nose.\n\nMathias must hear my footsteps when I cross into the front of the ship, because he looks back from the control helm and catches my eye.\n\n\"Rho.\" His voice is musical, and since he seems pleased to see me, my stomach relaxes. \"How are you?\"\n\n\"Finally slept,\" I say, sitting next to him at the helm and trying not to think of all the previous pilots I've sat beside in this chair.\n\n\"I'm glad,\" he says warmly, but his kindness only makes my guilt feel more pronounced.\n\n\"Mathias . . . aren't you mad at me? I betrayed you and everyone else who believed in me. I broke out Ochus, I didn't trust you guys with my plans, I even changed allegiances\u2014\"\n\n\"But look at where you're sitting now,\" he says, his baritone voice as soothing as ever. \"Whatever happened, whatever you did\u2014you never gave up on us. Even when you thought you'd changed sides, you still came back for us.\"\n\n\"But I\u2014I gave up an ancient Ariean secret, I traded Gamba for Nishi, I\u2014\"\n\n\"You made sacrifices for us, ones that only you could make,\" he says, his tone still lacking judgment. \"No one in Zodiac history has ever been put in a position remotely similar to yours, so none of us can know what it's like to be you. It wouldn't be right to judge.\"\n\nSomething shifts in my chest, and I have to open my mouth to pull in air. \"How is it you can always forgive me?\" I breathe.\n\nFor shutting the airlock door. For choosing Hysan. For keeping secrets.\n\n\"Because by now I've accepted that I'm just stuck with you in my life,\" he says, and when I meet his gaze again, I see that he's smiling.\n\n\"I think that's the second joke I've ever heard you make.\"\n\nHis brow wings up. \"You're keeping count?\" he teases.\n\nI give him a small grin, and I notice the line that cuts down his neck and disappears beneath his collar is less striking. It seems to have faded a little. The sight of his scar sends me plummeting back to the Sumber, and my grin starts to feel forced as I remember the Mathias I met in my nightmares. \"So when did you and Hysan start getting along so well?\"\n\n\"It was something your brother told us on the way to Pisces,\" he says, his expression dampening. \"He told me and Hysan that if we really cared about you, we'd put the petty stuff aside and get along.\"\n\nI don't tell him I overheard that conversation because the wall of ice in my chest seems to be shifting further, but I still manage to say, \"I'm sorry about your sister. I didn't understand before, but I get it now.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, too,\" he says, his voice low. He looks down, and I realize I've just made him relive those awful emotions. Sadness makes him seem younger, and I can't help but think of the Cancrian boy with turquoise eyes and sandy hair who helped me through my heartache once.\n\n\"You know . . . we could be substitute siblings,\" I say, channeling Deke's spirit.\n\nMathias's midnight eyes meet mine again. \"You're already my family, Rho.\"\n\nHe pulls me into his chest for a hug, and even as my frozen heart welcomes his warmth, part of me wants to push him away for fear of my glacier melting. Mathias lets go suddenly, and I worry he feels the chill in my chest, but he's staring past me. I twist around and see Hysan watching us.\n\nHe turns back the way he came, and I chase after him.\n\n\"Hysan, wait,\" I call out, but he doesn't slow down until he gets to his cabin, and I hurry in after him before he shuts the door on me.\n\n\"I didn't mean to come between you two,\" he says, jaw clenched. He turns his back to me as he leans over a small desk and starts tinkering with one of his devices. There's barely enough space for one person in this tiny cabin, and my lungs feel like they're working extra hard to pull in oxygen.\n\n\"I want to apologize,\" I say, clearing my throat. \"I know what I did on Phaet, how I betrayed you, it was\u2014\"\n\n\"The worst thing anyone's ever done to me,\" he finishes, twisting to meet my stare. \"But at least now you can understand why I find it so hard to trust people.\"\n\nHis lips curve into a colder version of his centaur smile, and it seems more like the cruel smirk of the Hysan from my nightmares.\n\nThe powerlessness I felt in his presence then fuels my outrage now, and I snap, \"Maybe if you'd been honest with me from the start instead of lying about the master's location, I could have trusted you with _my_ plan! Did you think I wanted to do this alone? To go against my friends? If I'd thought any of you would have trusted my idea, I would have confided in you!\"\n\n\"You're right, Rho.\" Hysan straightens and fully faces me, and I have to tilt my head up to look at him. \"We've made hard choices, and maybe some of them were mistakes. But we can't judge that right now.\"\n\nHis leaf-green eyes pierce into mine. \"Some decisions can't be evaluated on their own because they form part of a larger design. On Libra we have a saying about people who can't get past a single bad choice in their lives: _They can't see the constellation for its stars._ \"\n\n\"But\u2014aren't you mad at me?\"\n\n\"Of course I'm mad!\" He's so close that his breath tickles my face, and his gaze locks on to mine with an intensity that makes it impossible to pull away. \"I'm mad because this isn't you. I don't think you ever woke up from that Sumber, and every day I feel you slipping further away. And the worst part is you're not even _trying_ to come back to us.\"\n\nWith half a step, he bridges the small space between us, his voice dropping with every word. \"I know this feels easier for you, but we need you here.\" I can almost sense the glow of his golden skin and smell the cedary scent of his hair when he says, \" _I need you here_.\"\n\nHis mouth moves in close enough to raise my body temperature. Only the heat doesn't warm me\u2014it _burns_.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I whisper, stepping back lest the fissure in my glacier expand and expose me. \"I just don't feel the same way anymore.\"\n\nHysan flinches, like my words have physically hurt him. \"I'll leave you alone then.\"\n\nAnd just like that, we're through.\n\n# 30\n\nWE ENTER LEO'S ATMOSPHERE VEILED from the Psy and hidden from view.\n\nThe plan is for Hysan to keep _'Nox_ aloft while the rest of us pile into the two small black bullet-ships we tugged with us from Aries. There's one on either side of _Equinox_. Ezra, Gyzer, and I will take one, while Nishi, Skarlet, and Mathias take the other. Pandora will stay on the ship with Hysan. She's our _designated survivor_.\n\nIf all fails, and Hysan has to land, she'll eject in the escape capsule into the arms of the Zodai fleet that followed us from Aries and is waiting out of sight. They're our Plan B. I wanted Nishi to be the designated survivor, but the look she gave me when I suggested it made me shut up.\n\nThanks to Ezra's spying on Aquarius's technology, we know we can't use Veil collars on the Mothership because we'd still trigger motion sensors. So Mathias, Nishi, and Skarlet dress up in Marad uniforms we stripped off the dead soldiers. Since we still don't know how to remove the masks, even in death, the Dreamcasters on Phaet spent the day creating convincing replicas\u2014they look just like the real thing. It's strange seeing the three all-white uniforms and knowing that behind those porcelain masks are people I love.\n\nWell, technically two people I love and one person I tolerate.\n\nEzra winces when she looks at them, and Gyzer rests an understanding arm around her.\n\nOur fake soldiers are going to rescue Mom and Gamba\u2014since they won't look conspicuous transporting prisoners\u2014while I get Ophiuchus. He and I, on the other hand, are bound to stick out, so if we get caught, we're counting on Ophiuchus's superstrength to help us like it did on Aries.\n\nHysan explained that Aquarius has been on the mortal plane for three millennia, so his body is human. But Ophiuchus has spent millennia amassing Psynergy in the astral plane, and now he's more star than man. He's become a kind of hybrid who attracts too much Psynergy\u2014half the time it strengthens him, and the other half it leaves him drained.\n\nWe're going to be too many people to pack into the tiny bullet-ships, so Hysan will have to land _'Nox_ in the hangar deck to pick us up. By then, our cover will be blown, but hopefully it won't matter because we'll be back in the air.\n\nWe have exactly forty-five minutes to pull everything off. Hysan handed out yellow wristbands that will buzz once when there's fifteen minutes left, twice when there's five minutes left, and three times when he's here. Anyone who doesn't make it to the hangar deck in time will have to find another way off the planet.\n\nOur team of Marad soldiers lands first; Ezra and Gyzer gave them directions where to go, and since Mathias is familiar with the Mothership, he shouldn't have trouble navigating it. Once Ezra, Gyzer, and I land, we dart indoors and cut across the Family Room to the south wing's spiral staircase.\n\n\"I was beginning to worry you'd changed your mind.\"\n\nI turn around, and when I see Blaze I cross my arms like I'm irked. \"And I was beginning to trust you\u2014I guess we were both wrong.\"\n\nHe frowns as he strides over from the pale blue couch where he'd been sitting in wait. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"Ezra and Gyzer flew me to Aries so we could try convincing our old friends to join us. Only someone beat me to it.\"\n\nBlaze exhales heavily and stuffs his hands in his white suit pockets. \"Imogen is there for the same purpose as you. She's a little more forceful about it, but her goal is the same as yours or mine\u2014we just want to save Zodai lives. Aquarius told her she couldn't force them to come.\"\n\nI let sadness fall over me, willing water to fill my eyes, but it doesn't work. I've spent my whole life crying over everything, and the one time I need my tears, they won't come. Still, the expression must be convincing enough without the waterworks, because Blaze sighs. \"They said no?\"\n\nI nod.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Rho.\"\n\nI shrug. \"It's their choice. I'm done thinking about it. I just want to sleep.\" Then I widen my eyes, like I've thought of something better. \"Is Aquarius back? I'd put off sleep to chat with him if he's around,\" I lie.\n\n\"Is that why you were headed to the south wing?\" he asks curiously, and I force myself to nod. \"Well, he's not here, but he should be returning any moment. I'll let him know you're looking for him. But for now, sleep is a good idea\u2014since we're leaving tonight.\"\n\n\" _Tonight_?\" I echo in shock, and Ezra and Gyzer come closer.\n\n\"Aquarius says we're ready,\" says Blaze, his russet eyes bright.\n\nI don't bother trying to return his smile because I know I would fail. So instead I frown and say, \"I'll believe it when it happens. _Trust Only What You Can Touch_.\"\n\nBlaze nods approvingly. \"Always.\"\n\nEzra, Gyzer, and I climb up the east staircase instead, like we're heading toward my room. Once we've put enough space between us and Blaze, we cut across to the south side of the ship, toward Ophiuchus's cell.\n\nI try to ignore the squirming in my stomach. I know this feeling because I've already done this so many times before: thrown myself at the stars' mercy by embarking on a life-or-death adventure.\n\nOnly this time is different. My pulse isn't racing, nor am I clinging to memories of my loved ones or fantasies of my future. Instead, I'm feeling the anticipation of a spectator who's watching someone else's life unfold and wondering how it will end.\n\nAs for myself, I feel _finished_.\n\nI want my friends to survive, and I want the Zodiac to see tomorrow\u2014I'm just not sure I want to stick around for it.\n\nEzra and Gyzer wordlessly point out Ophiuchus's door, and then they speed away to help the others. Since I don't see any special technology keeping him caged in, I try twisting the handle. It's unlocked.\n\nThe Thirteenth Guardian's suite is bigger than mine. The luminous, windowed space I walk into seems to be some kind of antechamber, and there's a colorful spread of food on a glass table. I thought he'd be in a jail cell, but here he is, sitting on a cerulean throw rug, deep in meditation, his radiant snakeskin glowing with health.\n\nHis muscles bulge through the lightweight white suit he's been given to wear, and his body looks more powerful than I've seen it, like he's had plenty of time and space to recover his strength. He isn't trapped, because Aquarius knows he's not going anywhere: Ophiuchus has no intention of stopping the Last Prophecy\u2014if anything, he's come to see it through.\n\n\"This whole time, you never really chose a side,\" I say, shutting the door behind me. \"You've been playing us both.\"\n\nHe opens his starlit eyes. \"I see you've chosen yours.\"\n\n\"You were protecting him.\" I lean against the wall and cross my arms, squinting into the reddening light of the sunset streaming through the windows. \"Even after all he did to you and your people.\"\n\n\"I was protecting you, too.\" His voice is so deep that it rumbles through me like thunder.\n\n\"You lied to me,\" I say, glaring at him. \"You knew exactly how he'd activate the portal. You knew he needed to bring your House back to do it. Then you willingly traveled here to be sacrificed. And in all the conversations we've had in the Psy the past few months, you never said a word about any of this.\"\n\n\"Stars exist to illuminate your path. Not to tell you why you're on it.\" His inky-black hair is like an oppressive cloud of Dark Matter pressing down on his youthful face.\n\n\"Or maybe you just couldn't See which side would win.\"\n\nOphiuchus plants a clawed foot on the ground and rises to his full height, towering a few heads over me. \"Is that what you think I was doing?\" he asks, his voice booming through the room.\n\nI straighten and drop my arms to my sides. \"Just tell me the truth for once. _What is it you want_?\"\n\n\"Same thing I've always wanted.\"\n\n_\"Unity_?\" I ask, scoffing. \"Your beloved Aquarius destroyed any semblance of unity we ever had\u2014\"\n\n\"And you humans are so much better?\" he growls, and the glass windows tremble. \"I've watched you from the beginning. Why is your species so deserving of a tomorrow? What have you learned? How have you grown? You're still the same petty, greedy creatures you've always been.\"\n\n\"Maybe we could have aspired to more if our stars hadn't failed us!\"\n\nHis murderous eyes flash to mine, and I hear my heart starting up. \"You let Aquarius get the best of you, and you were too weak to even accuse him.\" My pulse pounds harder with every word, so I throw everything I have at him. \"You're pathetic! What kind of _god_ lets his power get taken from him and dooms his people to suffer a maniac's twisted rule just because he's too scared to get his heart broken\u2014\"\n\nMy lungs run out of air as Ophiuchus lifts me off my feet and shoves me into the wall, pinning my shoulders there with his fists. His mouth is inches from mine as he says in a low voice, \"I know what you want from me. I know who you need me to be. But have you even considered what it's doing to me to treat you this way?\"\n\n\"You've done far worse,\" I say, my breathing choppy. \"And why should you care? You only needed me around to end your despair, and now you have Aquarius for that.\"\n\n\"You've made bad choices,\" he whispers, his cold breath blowing on my face. \"You are not the first. But you can still make new ones.\"\n\n\"And what\u2014what if I just wanted it to end?\"\n\nMy mouth is dry and I can barely believe I'm saying the words out loud. \"Would you offer me the same courtesy I once offered you?\"\n\nEven though I'm literally in his hands, he looks at me helplessly, like I'm beyond his reach. His voice dips, and he speaks in the same intimate tone I heard him use with Aquarius\u2014like we're equals. \"I need to know you can come back from this.\"\n\nBefore I can stop it, I feel the revulsion showing on my face, and I spit, _\"You want me to forgive myself because you want to be forgiven, too_.\"\n\nI sound aghast _._ \"You really think you can come back from all you've done? Because you can't.\" His eyes widen slightly, like some part of him actually thought he stood a chance of being forgiven. \"You've murdered whole worlds\u2014don't you get that? You're a _monster_!\"\n\nHis knuckles press into my shoulders with such force that I'm certain bruises are blossoming beneath my tunic. His starry eyes go supernova and his snakeskin darkens until even the room seems to dim, and he looks like the monster every child in the Zodiac was raised to fear. _The darkness we created._\n\nTerror makes my heart beat faster until it's all I hear, and I feel Death's presence like a shadow that's just entered the room.\n\n\" _Tempting_ ,\" he growls, \"but I would hate to end your torment prematurely. Not when you have so much more suffering to endure.\"\n\nThe pressure in his grip eases a little, and at last I see his threats for what they've always been\u2014 _empty_. He's not going to end me. I'm still too powerful a game piece to trade amongst him and Aquarius and the Zodai.\n\nI sigh in resignation and ask, \"What was it about Aquarius you loved?\"\n\n\"His light.\" Ophiuchus's answer is so quick that it's more reflex than reflection. \"I fed his fire because I longed to see how brilliant he could burn. I tried to check his flames to keep them from consuming him, but I didn't condemn his thirst for power. . . . I was too in love with his blaze.\"\n\nOphiuchus lets go of me, and my feet slide back down to the ground.\n\n\"I can't force you to leave this place with me,\" I say, glancing at the yellow wristband which hasn't buzzed yet. \"But if you stay, the whole Zodiac dies. Are you really going to let your world disappear a second time?\"\n\n\"Aquarius promised to return my descendants to my House. My people may be gone, but he's Seen that my planet has been protected by the Dark Matter, and it will continue to endure after Helios goes dark. _The Thirteenth House is the only world that will survive the Zodiac's apocalypse_.\"\n\nThat's why Ophiuchus came so willingly.\n\nHis House was never in any danger. Which means I have zero leverage to convince him to betray Aquarius.\n\n\"So you're going to let him annihilate the Zodiac?\"\n\nA shadow crosses his snakeskin face. \"I didn't see any of the other Houses rushing to help _my_ people when we were destroyed.\"\n\n\"And your solution is to let the star you claim to love become the universe's ultimate monster?\" I ask, grasping for anything that might make him reconsider. \"Is that what you want for him?\"\n\nIt's obvious from his hesitation that this isn't what he wants.\n\nAnd as I study Ophiuchus's expression closely, I recognize a feeling that's completely out of place in our current predicament. It's _hope_.\n\n\" _Holy Helios_ ,\" I breathe, my eyes widening as I finally understand his behavior. \"You still believe he can change,\" I say incredulously. \"You think you can actually save him. _You're insane_!\"\n\nOphiuchus drops his gaze, and after a moment he says, \"I'll go with you.\"\n\nI can hardly believe it, and every cell in my body exhales with relief. I have no idea why he's helping me, but I just want to get going before he changes his mind again. \"Great! Let's\u2014\"\n\n\"But not without my Star Stone.\"\n\nI stare at him in utter bewilderment. \" _You're joking._ Aquarius probably took it with him\u2014\"\n\n\"I can feel its presence. I was never meant to meet a true death, so to die properly I must destroy it.\"\n\nMy wristband buzzes\u2014we have fifteen minutes left before Hysan lands. \"Okay, fine, but we have to hurry.\"\n\nOphiuchus leads us out of the room, and I keep close to him as we meander through the Mothership. I hear Party members talking and dragging luggage as they outfit ships for tonight's takeoff, yet somehow we manage to avoid running into any of them. I wonder if the reason we're taking such a roundabout path is that Ophiuchus can sense their Psynergy signatures.\n\nWe end up on the ship's top level in the Holy Mother's reading room, the round hall with crystal windows where we met Aquarius when we first arrived. \"It's in here?\" I ask, staring skeptically at the open space. I don't see anywhere to store anything like a Talisman.\n\nOphiuchus closes his eyes and concentrates, like he's trying to pick up his Stone's scent. Outside, the smaller Leonine sun is already out of sight, and Helios has mostly set, so the skyline is tinged with pinks and purples. The blue sea beneath us is dark and still, and the horizon is flat on every side.\n\nAquarius could return at any moment. The Mothership is already crawling with Party members making preparations. And Hysan is going to land in the hangar in under fifteen minutes.\n\nSuccess is sounding less and less probable by the second.\n\n\" _Where is it_?\" I demand impatiently, glancing at my wristband in anticipation of the five-minute warning. \"We have to get going!\"\n\nOphiuchus's eyes open, and he looks deliberately behind me like he's spotted the Talisman. I turn to follow his gaze, and I see it, too.\n\nNestled in Aquarius's hand.\n\n# 31\n\n\"RHO, PLEASE GO TO THE hangar deck and board our ship with Blaze,\" says the master in a parental tone. \"Ophiuchus and I will join you soon.\"\n\n_How will Hysan land if the Tomorrow Party ships are already here?_\n\nA pair of Marad soldiers marches into the hall to escort me, but Ophiuchus says, \"She's part of this now.\"\n\nHe stares down the masked Risers\u2014 _his people_ \u2014and they stop moving. They look from one Original Guardian to the other, and then they leave the room without me, apparently obeying their true master.\n\nAquarius looks impressed, and I'm reminded of the way he and Ophiuchus used to take pride in each other's victories. \"It appears you are ready to return to your world.\"\n\nNow Ophiuchus directs his stony stare at him. \"I have been waiting in the room where you left me for a week, and you have yet to come see me.\"\n\n\"I've been busy.\"\n\n\"Will you speak to me now, or did you only bring me back to life to murder me again?\"\n\nAquarius's expression is pleasant, but a muscle quivers in his cheek. \"We have a long trip to your House\u2014why don't we speak on the way?\"\n\nBut Ophiuchus moves toward him, and as I watch his powerful strides I wonder how Aquarius intends to see his plans through since the Thirteenth Guardian physically outmatches any mortal I've ever met.\n\n\"After you and the other Guardians assassinated me, my Talisman alone wasn't enough to retain my essence. Especially not when most of my people were gone and the whole Zodiac had forgotten me. I knew someone powerful had to be anchoring my soul.\"\n\nHe stops when he's face-to-face with Aquarius. \"The only reason I didn't completely lose myself was the hope that you couldn't let me go. But it was your pragmatism, not your heart, that held on to me.\"\n\n\"All this time and you still try to attach sentimentality to my motives,\" says Aquarius in a pitying tone. \"I may have lived among humans for millennia, but I am not one of them. If I were, I would be unable to push forward with the plan you thwarted three millennia ago.\"\n\n\"That's because you have never given people a chance. You never let anyone in. It's why you have followers but no friends: You can't trust anyone who isn't you. Not even your _soul mate_.\"\n\nThe term seems to anger Aquarius because his velvety voice unsheathes a sharp edge. \"I know you want to think you operate from a place of moral supremacy, but let's not forget that you were always guaranteed immortality. You knew the rest of us would perish and you alone would live on, and you were fine with that. It's easy to be grandiose when you have nothing to risk.\"\n\nMy wristband buzzes with Hysan's five-minute warning, but before I can tell Ophiuchus, his booming voice cuts through the air.\n\n\"It took me just as long as the rest of you to uncover the secrets of my Talisman!\" His words make the crystal walls around us quiver. \"When I learned of this power and my ultimate purpose, I immediately set to work trying to harness it to share with others. Had you ever known me to think only of myself?\"\n\nAquarius shakes his head resignedly, like he doesn't want to argue. \"Why do you insist on the past so much when it's just dead time? Even _we_ do not possess the power to change it.\"\n\n\"If the past poses no threat, why do you refuse to look back?\" asks the Thirteenth Guardian, still staring at him intensely.\n\n\"Because the present is all that matters. I don't concern myself with anything beyond my control\u2014it's just a distraction.\"\n\n\"If that were true, moments wouldn't leave imprints. Our minds wouldn't make memories.\"\n\n\"Careful, you're starting to sound like an old man,\" Aquarius cautions him. \"Memories are all mortals have left in the end, so they _have_ to assign them importance. Otherwise, they'd have to face the futility of their lives and how truly meaningless they are.\"\n\n\"Yet memories were all I had for millennia,\" says Ophiuchus softly. \"And I found them to be loopholes in the construct of time. We can't change the past, but we can relive it. Memories store the answers to the riddles of the present. It's just as the wisest of us, Capricorn, always said.\"\n\n\"House Capricorn's obsession with the past will cost them the future,\" says Aquarius disdainfully. \"It's how I've kept Sage Ferez distracted for months\u2014I made him think I stole a Snow Globe from one of his precious Membrexes so he'd be so focused on uncovering what it was that he'd disregard the present.\"\n\nI gasp.\n\n_He tricked Ferez._\n\n\"Would the mere memory of me have sufficed for you?\" Aquarius asks Ophiuchus, and for the first time the master sounds as breakable as the rest of us. \"When we passed on and you remained with the humans, would remembering me have been enough?\"\n\nOphiuchus moves closer, leaving too little space between them, and though he's physically superior, I'm scared for him. No one in the Zodiac has managed to outwit Aquarius in the history of humanity; I wouldn't get that close to him if I were the Thirteenth Guardian.\n\nYet the latter seems willing to accept any destiny Aquarius wants to deal him. The original Ophiuchus would probably be appalled by the new him. How far I\u2014\n\nHow far _he's_ fallen.\n\n\"I would never have abandoned you,\" the Thirteenth Guardian murmurs.\n\nAquarius raises his hand, and I'm certain he's about to strike\u2014but then the room blackens, and I realize what's happening. He's cueing a memory.\n\nWhen the darkness lifts, we're in a hall with sandstone walls that seems familiar . . . the Aquarian royal palace. A holographic solar system orbits us, and it's so detailed that it must be projected by a Talisman.\n\nI stare at the brightest blue light that was the crown jewel of the Zodiac, and when I pull my gaze away from home, I notice there's something different about the constellations. There's a large gap between Houses Scorpio and Sagittarius . . . and as I look closer, I see the Dark Matter. It's not near Pisces the way it is now.\n\nDoes that mean the Thirteenth House wasn't really number _thirteen_? Was it actually located between the Eighth and Ninth Houses, like this Ephemeris shows?\n\nBeneath the star map is a round table, where fourteen people are gathered. Two of them are identical, so they must be the Geminin Twins. Everyone here looks human, which means this is after the Original Guardians died out.\n\nI scan the faces until I spot an Aquarian with long platinum hair and pink eyes.\n\n\"Wandering Star,\" says the Guardian dressed in red, \"we must have your tie-breaking vote. Prophet Draema has foreseen a threat to our galactic sun, and she believes we must create a commission of Zodai from across our worlds to investigate the Dead Zone between Scorpio and Sagittarius and see what we can learn. She thinks they might be connected.\"\n\n\"What's the argument against?\" asks Aquarius\u2014and with a jolt, I realize he's this era's Wandering Star.\n\n\"The Stridents who've studied that area have discovered a destructive substance they've been calling Dark Matter, and it seems to have latched on to a planet and consumed it,\" says the Ariean General. \"Supreme Guardian Forsythe has foreseen that our team of Zodai will accidentally trigger the Dark Matter's spread and cause the sun's darkening that we're trying to avoid. So, the question is\u2014would investigating it save us or damn us?\"\n\nAquarius nods, his eyebrows pulling together like he's deep in thought. There's no doubt in my mind that he sent his House's Guardian that vision of doom. After a long moment of consideration he says, \"I have always believed free will sets fate in motion, so I must vote against.\"\n\n\"Then the matter is settled.\"\n\nWe fast-forward in time, and now the same group is meeting in a different location, and once more the spectral star map hangs over them. I gasp as I take in the deep blue lapis lazuli walls around me\u2014they look like water that's fossilized into stone\u2014and I know where we are.\n\n_Cancer._\n\nThere's no roof over our heads, just the infinite blue sky I grew up staring at, and I could cry from happiness to be seeing it again.\n\n\"This is the first year that the Helios's Halo effect has stopped happening,\" says a gray-clad woman with delicate features. \"It's a sign of the prophecy I've Seen. We _must_ investigate,\" insists Prophet Draema.\n\nA small voice a couple seats over says, \"I've Seen something, too.\"\n\nEveryone looks at the Guardian in olive green\u2014the youngest of them by far\u2014and I get the impression she doesn't speak often. Her brown skin pales as all eyes focus on her. \"I think the Dark Matter is connected to a vision I had\u2014\"\n\n\"Speak up, honey, we're not all twenty,\" says an old man in black. Nice to know Scorps have always been charmers.\n\nThe Taurian looks like she's not going to finish her sentence, but then the Cancrian Guardian\u2014a stunningly beautiful woman who looks familiar\u2014leans into the table and says to the Scorp Chieftain, \"If you're going deaf, maybe you should build yourself a better hearing aid.\"\n\nThen she looks down the table to the Taurian and says, \"Take your time, and speak at any volume you'd like, Vecily.\"\n\n_Vecily Matador._\n\nI ogle at the short-haired, almond-eyed Taurian, and then I swing my gaze to the Cancrian beauty I should have instantly recognized. _Brianella Amarise_ \u2014the Guardian who led our House into the Trinary Axis.\n\nShe's just as breathtaking as history says\u2014her long blue-black curls cascade down to her waist, and her dark skin holds hints of light, making me think of the black opal Talisman. But most striking of all are her crystal blue eyes, which are spiderwebbed with faint lines, like fractured crystals.\n\nI look one seat over to the Leonine man beside Brianella\u2014 _Blazon Logax_. He has a square jaw and facial hair, and his arms are covered in tattoos. He looks more like a musician than a politician.\n\n\"I've Seen that a Guardian from the past has betrayed us all, and we won't escape darkness until their treachery is brought to light.\" Vecily says it all in one long whoosh, and from her insecure delivery it's clear that no one at the table takes her vision seriously.\n\nExcept Aquarius. He's staring at her through murderous pink eyes.\n\n\"Is there anything else before we close this session?\" asks the Ariean General, dismissing Vecily completely.\n\nI look to see if Brianella will defend her again, but she's gazing adoringly at Blazon, who's edged his chair closer to hers.\n\n\"I'd like to introduce a motion,\" says Aquarius, and I notice he's watching the Cancrian and Leonine Guardians, too.\n\nEveryone looks to the Ariean General questioningly, and I realize it's probably taboo for the Wandering Star to propose something. When he nods, Aquarius says, \"I've come across texts saying the first Aquarian Guardian believed we should each live on our own House, among our own people, so we could focus our efforts on designing our worlds and evolving to suit our environments. But it's now been two millennia and our worlds are developed, each House with its own sense of identity\u2014so isn't it time we came together and lifted the ban on inter-House marriage?\"\n\nAnd there it is.\n\nThe seed for the Trinary Axis.\n\nFire ignites in Blazon and Brianella's eyes, and the flames look like they come from the Everblaze\u2014the kind of blaze that can't be stomped out. With a few words Aquarius got the entire universe to look down instead of up.\n\nArguing breaks out immediately.\n\nIt's obvious he's not the first to consider this measure, but he is the first to say it out loud in this official forum. Everyone is shouting over each other, and there's no hope of shutting this down. And as the whole meeting devolves into chaos, Aquarius quietly slips out the diamond-bright Talisman under the table and closes his eyes.\n\nSuddenly, every Guardian keels forward, squeezing their heads like they're hearing the screeching noise of Psynergy. A vein is popping in Aquarius's forehead, and it looks like whatever he's doing is costing him every ounce of life force, and as I look around I notice a shifting in the stars.\n\nThe holographic map is shaking, like the very galaxy is becoming unstable, and it seems like what happened at the Piscene Cathedral is about to take place, as lighting streaks across the galaxy. Only instead of uncovering the Ophiuchan constellation, the Dark Matter begins to drift away until it's at the edge of our solar system, just beyond Pisces.\n\nWhen it's over, everyone slumps forward, unconscious. But Aquarius rises. He eagerly looks around the room, like he's expecting to see someone, and then he stares up at the stars\u2014and cries out in horror.\n\nHe rushes to the place where the Dark Matter has strayed, at the very edge of our universe. \"I'm so sorry,\" he whispers to the stars, tears rolling down his cheeks. \"I thought I could bring you back to have a life together . . . but I have to wait for the portal. There's no other way.\"\n\nI watch Aquarius's grieving face until the emotion recedes from his eyes, and I realize he probably designed this particular body for this life cycle because he thought he'd be reunited with Ophiuchus.\n\nHe wanted to wear his original eyes.\n\nWatching him I understand what's happening: His window for love has just passed. The next time he sees Ophiuchus will be to kill him so he can open the portal. I see the emotions sliding down until they're so deep within him that he can only access his mind, not his heart.\n\nI know the look.\n\nIt's the face of letting go.\n\n# 32\n\nWHEN THE MEMORY IS OVER, it takes me a moment to readjust to the Mothership's crystal-walled reading room.\n\nBy now the sky has cooled to a dusky violet, and silver stars are starting to peek out overhead. Panic snakes through my insides as I realize too much time has passed. Hysan must have taken off by now.\n\nI turn to Ophiuchus in alarm\u2014and I gasp.\n\nThe Thirteenth Guardian is curled into himself on the floor, looking ancient and near death, like his lifeforce was just sucked out of him.\n\nNo, not sucked.\n\n_Psyphoned._\n\nAquarius didn't pull on the Unity Talisman's Psynergy, or even his own, to play us these memories. He distracted us with the past so he could steal Ophiuchus's power in the present.\n\n_Life is a dance of illusions_ , he said to me at the Cathedral. _With the right distraction, you can make a person believe anything._ It's always the same trick, and we're always falling for it.\n\nI glower at Aquarius, only he's also looking down at Ophiuchus, and something in his face has shifted. Seeing the Thirteenth Guardian reduced to this half-dead state, and knowing he's the one who's caused his condition . . . He's not as indifferent as he'd like to think.\n\nI decide to drop all the acts I've been balancing and just go back to what I know best\u2014 _honesty_.\n\n\"Please don't do this to him,\" I say softly. \"Hasn't he been through enough?\"\n\n\"I told myself I wouldn't go through with this plan if humanity proved itself worthy,\" says Aquarius, still staring at Ophiuchus while speaking to me. \"If you evolved, if you were a species worth saving . . . But I've watched you since the beginning, and you're _not_.\n\n\"Just like your predecessors, you can't come together for the greater good. Even in your ancestors' world, humans have always needed tragedy and violence to learn their lessons. Your species doesn't do subtle.\"\n\n\"Please,\" I beg, moving closer to him. \"I know you want to see what's beyond that portal, but how much more do you need? You've been a _star_ in the _sky_. You've been immortal for millennia. Please don't take more from us. We can be better, I know we can.\"\n\nHe finally looks at me, and I notice the star-kissed glow of his skin has dampened. He looks less like Aquarius and more like Crompton. \"You still don't understand,\" he says sadly. \"I'm not doing this for myself anymore. . . . I'm doing it for _you_.\"\n\nHis eyes beam at me, cutting a pink path through the darkening air. \"This whole time you've managed to see how special everyone around you is, but the only person you've never seen is yourself. Do you know how many events had to play out just so for you to be here, before me, burning brightly despite everything?\"\n\n\"You're right,\" I say, once I manage to find my voice again. \"I don't understand.\"\n\nHe walks up to the crystal wall and stares out at the purpling horizon. \"I found you the first time you Saw Dark Matter. I _felt_ it. At the time you didn't know you were Seeing it, but I've been using much of my Psynergy to veil the Thirteenth House from the Psy, so when you Saw through it . . . I couldn't believe a human was capable of that.\"\n\nHe turns to me with a warm smile, and he seems like a proud parent. \"When I looked into you, I learned that you were different. You didn't show your work at the Academy when you made your predictions. Your mediocre instructors faulted you for this, but they were the ones in the wrong.\"\n\nI can't help flashing to one of Mom's favorite phrases from my childhood\u2014 _Your teachers are wrong._\n\n\"In fact,\" he goes on, \"you've always been the perfect student: You learn from everyone and every situation. You _remember_ things because you're _paying attention_. You strive to be better because you respect the people and the world around you.\"\n\nHe starts striding toward me, his eyes bright and his voice gentle. \"In a school that was almost entirely Cancrian, you chose a Sagittarian for your best friend. Of all the potential love interests available, you chose the top-ranked university student to admire and live up to.\" His voice dips with heaviness as he says, \"I felt you through the Psy when you fought with your friends on Elara and nearly suffocated on the moon's surface minutes before curfew. I was moved by your resourcefulness and heart and drive to survive.\"\n\nOnce he's standing right in front of me he says, \"I protected the crystal dome from the power outage when your House fell so that your story wouldn't end on Elara. I have always been with you, Rho.\"\n\nI can't even blink. Or breathe. Or think.\n\n\"I now see that your Cancrian and Ophiuchan heritage\u2014Unity through Nurture\u2014made you uniquely qualified to bind us together,\" he goes on, not realizing that I'm barely digesting any of this. \"But ultimately, it was your choices that cemented your worthiness. You're not the first person to have a militant mom\u2014but rather than rebel, you opted to excel at her teachings, and later you continued your own training. When you faced Ophiuchus and he threatened to kill you if you spoke of him, you chose to warn the other Houses anyway. When the Plenum laughed in your face, you chose to go before them again. And again. And again. And now, when the Zodiac has shunned you, when you've lost everything that matters to you and I offer to take you to a new universe and give you a supreme amount of power no man has ever had\u2014you choose to save everyone else rather than seize it.\"\n\n\"I . . . I can't,\" I sputter, only now fully appreciating how insane Aquarius is.\n\n\"When you're as large as I am, Rho, you realize attaching too much meaning to individual members of a species is a downfall. It's tragic to send so many people to Empyrean so soon, I know, but they're sacrifices for the evolution of your race. They will all die anyway\u2014we're just moving up their time lines. The earthlings who settled the Zodiac also left most of their people behind on a dying Earth, and aren't you better off for it?\"\n\nHe cups my cheek in his palm for an instant, and I feel the same buzz I've felt every time I've touched him and Morscerta. It's not the Barer's electricity\u2014it's his Psynergy I've always been able to sense.\n\n\"The irony is,\" he says, his pink eyes bright with warmth, \"now at the end of the worlds, I finally love a human. I haven't felt this way since . . .\" He clears his throat but doesn't look at Ophiuchus. \"You are the child I always hoped to lead, but this galaxy can't appreciate your light. I want to gift you a universe that's worthy of you.\"\n\nMy brain is completely blank. Aquarius is out of his mind, and Ophiuchus is dying at my feet. No one is coming to rescue me.\n\nIt's up to me now to save them.\n\nI can't stop Aquarius with violence, which means meeting him on his own playing field. I have to use my _words_.\n\n\"You say it's weak of me to attach so much meaning to individual members of my species, but do you know what I find most amazing about humans?\"\n\nHe quirks his head curiously at my question, and I answer, \"How at times a single person, or small group of people, can lift our entire species onto a new rung of evolution. How a single achievement can thrust us all forward in time, and all of a sudden what was unknown is known, and we're ready for what's next.\n\n\"Like Galileo Sprock's creation of the first holographic communication, or Tinga Baron's invention of Abyssthe. Or think of the first Wave, the first Zodai Ring, the first Ephemeris. The social impact of visionaries like Empress Wen, who came up with the axiom _Trust Only What You Can Touch_ ; or Sage Huxler, who was the first to coax the other Houses into sharing their secrets with the Zodiax. Sometimes something as seemingly small as a single individual can change the entire course of a species' future. And that means within each of us lies the potential to be infinite.\"\n\nAquarius is nodding vigorously. \"That's beautiful, Rho. It's exactly how a leader ought to feel about her people. And that's why you deserve this.\"\n\n\"You're not hearing me,\" I say, my tone growing exasperated. \"At the Tomorrow Party's ball, you said change is the universe's only currency and that it's human hubris holding us back\u2014Plenum politicians who won't let go of their power. But the flaw you're most passionately set against in _us_ is the one you're blind to in yourself. _You_ aren't growing or evolving because you won't give up your immortality. You won't follow your own advice and _let go_.\n\n\"You think you're the exception to the rule because humanity needs you, and your mission matters so much that you have to stick around to lead us. I bet you even think you're coming from an altruistic place. But your naked need to survive and see more is as human as it gets. It's _greed._ Or do you honestly believe in your heart that you've been a better Guardian for us than Ophiuchus might have been?\"\n\nIn my peripheral vision, I notice the Thirteenth Guardian twisting around to look at us. He seems so pathetically weak that I don't return his stare. I've failed us. I've failed the Zodiac.\n\nI drop my gaze to the floor. \"You said once that I was only good to you if I wanted this,\" I say softly, \"and I don't. So if you're going to force me like you did Ophiuchus, just know you've killed us both. I won't be that leader you admire anymore, and my light will go out.\"\n\nAquarius is silent for so long that I make myself meet his eyes, and I'm startled by the change that's come over him.\n\nHe looks as defeated as Ophiuchus, his hair less silver than gray, his features sunken in. \"Of course,\" he says to himself, and his mouth curves into a sad smile. \"The right person would refuse, wouldn't she?\"\n\nHis gaze pans from me to the Thirteenth Guardian, and he seems to be seeing his legacy in one shining moment of lucidity. \"Your parents couldn't appreciate you or raise you right,\" he says to me suddenly, \"because you're a child of the stars. But I'm going to love you the way you deserve.\"\n\nHe kneels down beside Ophiuchus. \"You were right, my love. I couldn't kill you then. And I can't kill you now.\"\n\nAll the air rushes out of me in relief.\n\nI can hardly believe it.\n\nI stopped Aquarius with my _words_.\n\nHe leans over and presses a kiss on Ophiuchus's forehead, and he stays there a moment, like he's giving him a blessing. \"I'm sorry I was blind,\" he says gently. \"You were always the star for this job. Unite this species. Take them to new worlds. Give them the hope I couldn't bring.\"\n\nHe stands up and faces me. \"Killing Ophiuchus on his planet was only the plan because you're right\u2014I am greedy. I believed humanity would need me forever, so I planned on taking his Star Stone with me through the portal. Only you've given me a greater purpose to serve.\"\n\nHe bends down and presses a kiss on my forehead, and I feel tingly Psynergy come over me, like the stars of the Zodiac have just blessed me.\n\n\"I'm doing this for you, Rho. I'm so proud of you, and based on everything I just heard I know more than ever that you will be a great leader who will heal humanity's wounds. Remember me, and I will always be with you.\"\n\nHe takes out the Unity Talisman and wraps his hands around it.\n\nHis forehead suddenly begins to bulge, and his glow grows so bright that I have to fall back a few paces and shield my eyes.\n\nThen Aquarius falls, his body limp and lifeless, and the Stone explodes into a massive cloud of Psynergy.\n\nThe molecules of air around me start jittering, and the whole world seems to be undergoing a metaphysical earthquake. I can hardly catch my breath. The sky outside lights up with small flashes, like a whole galaxy of shooting stars, and some part of me feels Aquarius's soul returning to its rightful place among the stars.\n\n_It's over._\n\nOphiuchus gasps, and I kneel down beside him. \"He's gone,\" I say, my eyes shiny and wide. \"We're okay.\"\n\n\"No,\" he manages to get out. \"He just activated the portal.\"\n\n# 33\n\nWHITE MIST FROM THE TALISMAN'S explosion hangs in the air, turning the room into an Aquarian thought tunnel, and I watch someone's silhouette charge inside.\n\nA Marad soldier armed with a Murmur.\n\nI don't shield myself or bother fighting now that I know I've failed us. In seven days the portal will be fully open, and as soon as the first ship goes through, the Zodiac will be undone.\n\nThe soldier rips off their mask.\n\n_\"Nishi!\"_ I run over and crush her to me in an embrace. \"What are you still doing here?\"\n\n\"I'm not leaving without you,\" she says when we pull apart.\n\n\"It's too late!\" I say, shaking my head. \"He's done it\u2014Aquarius killed himself with Ophiuchus's Talisman and activated the portal.\" Her face pales, and her eyes grow glassy. \" _It's over_ \u2014\"\n\n\"No, it isn't,\" she says, hope coursing through her voice. \"We'll find a way to close it. We _always_ find a way. But we have to get out of here now, before Blaze\u2014\"\n\n\"What about me?\" asks the white-haired Leonine, cutting through the rapidly dissipating mist. \"Nice outfit,\" he tells Nishi, a sardonic smile on his face. \"I didn't think you wore anything that wasn't couture\u2014\"\n\nHe notices Aquarius's body lying beside Ophiuchus.\n\n\"What\u2014\"\n\nHe runs over to Aquarius's side, shaking him. \"No, no, no,\" he moans, and soon sobs choke his words. \"How\u2014why\u2014 _what happened_?\"\n\nHe whirls on me, and Nishi instinctively raises her Murmur and points it at his chest.\n\n\"He killed himself,\" I say, \"and he activated the portal. Blaze, if you know how to undo it, you have to tell us.\"\n\nBut he doesn't seem to be listening. \"He . . . he killed himself?\"\n\nThe Leonine's explosive russet eyes are far from the conversation, far from logical thought. \"Then it was a _sacrifice. . . ._ He did it for a reason.\"\n\nHe focuses on me again, and a new emotion begins to line his face. It looks a lot like hate.\n\n\" _You._ This is _your_ fault. I did everything he wanted, I'm a better speaker than you, I'm much more like him\u2014and yet he chose _you_.\"\n\n\"Blaze, whatever he made you think or feel, it wasn't real,\" I say, too ashamed to admit that I'll miss the way he made me feel sometimes, too.\n\n\"Let's go, Rho,\" says Nishi, but I'm looking at the Thirteenth Guardian, who is too weak to move on his own. Do I abandon him here?\n\nBlaze turns his back to us, and he drops down beside Aquarius again. Since he doesn't seem intent on stopping us, I say, \"Let's grab Ophiuchus. We can carry him out together.\"\n\n\"You can leave alone, right now, with your lives,\" warns Blaze, twisting his neck to look up at us, \"but if you try to take Ophiuchus, this place will be surrounded by Marad in seconds, and you'll never make it out.\"\n\n\"Fine,\" I say, eager to get Nishi out of here. My only priority is that she survives. \"We're going.\" I grab her arm and pull, but she doesn't budge.\n\n_\"No.\"_\n\nI turn to her in alarm. \"Nish, come on!\"\n\nBut she's watching Blaze with a calculating look. \"The portal's already open. Why do you need Ophiuchus?\"\n\n\"I'm going to count to ten,\" says Blaze steadily, taking a step closer to us even though Nishi's still pointing her Murmur at him. \"If you're not gone, I will sound the alarm through the Psy, and you'll never get out again.\"\n\nMy heart catapults into my throat. \"Nish, please, let's go, we'll worry about him later\u2014\"\n\n\" _He's_ how we close the portal, isn't he?\" she asks Blaze, her reasoning outspeeding mine as usual. \"If it takes a star to open it, then logically it must take a star to close it.\"\n\nI look at Blaze's hands\u2014he's not wearing his Ring. Aquarius was careful about limiting access to the Psy from his stronghold. \"I think you're bluffing,\" I say, now taking Nishi's side. \"I don't think you have a way of calling out to everyone. And since the plan was for you guys to take off now to Black Moon, I'm fairly certain most people are already on their way\u2014\"\n\nBlaze lunges at Nishi, knocking the Murmur from her grip. They both fall to the ground, and the cylindrical weapon clatters away from them. His hands wrap around Nishi's neck, and I grab his shoulder and try pulling him off my best friend, but he's too strong.\n\nI run for the weapon instead, and then I swing it across his head. There's a loud _thwack_ as it cracks against his skull, and he instantly crumbles into a heap on the floor.\n\nI help Nishi to her feet. \" _Stellar_ ,\" she says, breathless but smiling.\n\nI return the grin, and we run to Ophiuchus, who seems to be regaining some of his energy. We each lift one of his arms and manage to pull him to his feet.\n\n\"Where do we go?\" I ask.\n\nJust then, an engine's deafening roar rumbles through the crystal room, and Nishi and I duck to the ground, dropping Ophiuchus with us, and we cover our faces as the wall farthest from us shatters. When we look up again, the nose of a familiar bullet-ship has blasted through it.\n\n_Equinox_ can't fit inside the hall, but a round escape capsule disengages from its side and shoots inside, hovering beside Nishi and me. Hysan must be controlling its flight.\n\nGusts of wind blow more shards of crystal into the air, and I shout at Nishi, \"Get in!\"\n\n\"Ophiuchus first!\" she shouts back, and we each pull one of his arms around our shoulders and drag him into the capsule. It looks like it'll barely fit the three of us, but we'll make it work. He seems to be growing heavier as I shove him through the opening, but I push harder, using all my strength, until he's in. Then I wheel around to tell Nishi she's next.\n\nBut Blaze has her in a one-armed headlock, one side of his head bleeding.\n\nHis other hand is holding the Murmur.\n\n\"Step inside that pod, and she dies.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I say, walking away from the capsule. \"I'll go with you anywhere you want. Just let her go.\"\n\n\"I don't want _you_ ,\" he spits out. \"Or _her_. I want _him_. Bring him out of there, and you two can go.\"\n\n\"Rho, _DON'T DO IT_!\" cries Nishi. \"Remember, this isn't about _us_ , it's about the _Zodiac_ \u2014\"\n\nBlaze's hand muffles Nishi's mouth, cutting off the rest of her words. \"What's it going to be, Rho?\"\n\n\"I'll do it!\" I say, my heart going too fast to give me any space to think or breathe. \"I'll get him out! Just, please\u2014don't hurt her. You can have Ophiuchus, okay?\" I look into Nishi's sparkling amber eyes. \"Nish, it's going to be fine. We'll find another way. I promise.\"\n\nI poke my head inside the capsule. \"Get out here,\" I command Ophiuchus, but he doesn't move. I can't even tell if he's conscious anymore. So I step into the pod and go around him to shove him out\u2014but the moment I cross the threshold, a glass door comes crashing down, sealing me inside and muffling every sound.\n\n\" _NO_!\" I shout, pounding on the glass, my voice too loud in this small chamber. \"Let me out! _HYSAN, LET ME OUT_!\"\n\nBlaze throws Nishi away from him, and she stumbles to the floor. Then he raises the Murmur at me and shoots blue light at the ship, but it does nothing.\n\nThe pod begins to rise into the air, and I'm pounding desperately against the glass, my throat raw, my fingers clawing at every button to try to open the door again. But the capsule just keeps going higher, and I look down in despair as my best friend watches me go.\n\n_Maybe Blaze won't hurt her. After all, she's his only leverage. Maybe he'll reach out and offer a trade._\n\nI'm still hitting every button in sight, and suddenly, the glass door slides down.\n\nI shout in triumph. \"Blaze, it worked! Don't hurt her!\"\n\n\"Push him out!\" he demands.\n\nThe pod is hovering in midair, but Ophiuchus is tall enough that it's just a small jump for him. I turn and tug on his arm. \"Please, you have to go,\" I beg him.\n\n\"Rho.\"\n\nI look down to see Nishi staring up at me, with Blaze behind her, his weapon aimed at her head, executioner-style.\n\n\"This is my choice,\" she says, tears streaming down her cheeks. \"You risked the Zodiac's fate for me once already. Don't put that on me again.\"\n\n\"Nishi, _please_ \u2014I can't live without you,\" I say, yanking again on Ophiuchus's arm. But he's as immovable as stone.\n\n\"You're better than this,\" she says strongly, fighting against her tears. \"I told the Zodiac to _Trust in Guardian Rho_. Don't make me a liar.\"\n\nFor a second that feels timeless, we watch each other, and deep down I know it's the last time I'm seeing my sister. And I hate them all for making me choose a murderer over an angel. None of their souls are worth this price. She's too good for us.\n\nThough my throat's shrinking, I get out my last words to her. \"You're my everything, Nish.\"\n\nAnd despite the terror in her amber eyes, she manages a small smile. \"I'll save you a seat in Empyrean.\"\n\nThen she spins around to face Blaze, who's just realized what's happening. He swings the Murmur from her to me, but before he can shoot, she tackles him.\n\n\"NISHI!\" I scream, but the glass door is closing again on its own, and the capsule is rising once more.\n\nI watch them struggle, but Blaze easily overpowers her, pinning her beneath him. Nishi knees him between the legs, and he cries out in pain and falls off her as she stumbles to her feet and starts racing out the hall.\n\nBut Blaze springs up too fast and aims the Murmur.\n\nHe fires.\n\nShe falls.\n\n# 34\n\nIT'S BEEN FIVE GALACTIC HOURS and three galactic minutes since we left House Leo. Since Aquarius activated the portal. _Since Nishi\u2014_\n\nI'm still in the escape pod, even though it's docked on _'Nox_. When the metal door to the ship slid open, I let the others remove Ophiuchus, and I told them the portal was triggered and will be active in seven days unless we can shut it down\u2014and that the Thirteenth Guardian is the only one who can tell us how. \"Hysan can figure out a plan,\" was the last thing I said.\n\nThen I shut the pod's glass door and stayed inside.\n\nHysan deactivated all the controls so I can't shoot myself away\u2014not that I have anywhere to go. I've been watching the holographic numbers of the flight time ever since we left. My leg has a cramp, and I've had to pee for two hours and eighteen minutes, but I'm dreading going inside that ship.\n\nI don't want to lead anyone.\n\nI don't want to do anything.\n\nAt five hours and thirty-three minutes, the pain in my bladder becomes unbearable, and I finally follow the instructions Hysan gave me to open the door. I slip into the nearest lavatory, and when I'm back in the hallway, I hear Ophiuchus's deep voice coming from the front of the ship.\n\n\"Without my Talisman, it will take more time to locate where I first crashed as a star, and Aquarius's army will be waiting to stop you. They know they just have to hold us off until the seventh day.\" I walk into the nose and find Ophiuchus sitting on the floor, facing an audience made up of Hysan, Mathias, Pandora, Skarlet, Gamba, and my mother.\n\nEveryone turns to me at once, but I survey the Thirteenth Guardian. There's something different about him. He's still the same stature, but he seems diminished somehow.\n\n\"What's happened to Ezra and Gyzer?\" I ask, anticipating the worst.\n\n\"They took one of the Tomorrow Party's ships and regrouped with the rest of our fleet,\" says Hysan, rising from his pilot's chair and offering it to me.\n\nI don't take it. \"What's the plan?\"\n\n\"We're meeting all the Guardians and our full Zodai army on Libra, where we'll refuel before flying to the Thirteenth House,\" he reports. \"With all the travel time taken into account, we'll have exactly two galactic days to close the portal once we land. Ophiuchus knows what to do, but first we need to find the place where he first landed as a star. Without his House's Talisman, we'll need to track the trail of Psynergy.\"\n\nI study Ophiuchus again, trying to pinpoint what's different.\n\n\"The division of Psynergy between my Talisman and my soul is what made me unstable, giving me superstrength and superspeed part of the time, and weakening me the rest of the time,\" he says, answering my unasked question. \"Now I am . . . normal.\"\n\nIt sounds like a joke, since there's nothing normal about him, but I nod. \"Sounds like you have everything covered. I'm going to sleep.\"\n\nNo one objects as I turn and tunnel deeper into the ship, but after a few steps I realize I don't know where to go. I can't bear to return to the main cabin where Nishi and I spent her last night alive.\n\n\"You're in the room to your right.\"\n\nI don't turn around at the sound of my mother's voice. I just open the door she referenced, and the first thing I see is my traveling bag on the floor. When I go to shut the door, she sticks her boot in the threshold and forces it open.\n\nReacting would be giving her what she wants, so I just cocoon myself inside the bed and stare up at the ceiling. In my periphery I see her pull down on the seat that hinges from the wall.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Rho,\" she says, not sounding sorry at all.\n\nI'm not sure I'm going to answer, but then I hear myself ask, \"For abandoning me? Replacing me? Slapping me? You'll have to be more specific.\"\n\nIn a voice almost too low to hear, she says, \"For everything.\"\n\nI roll my head to the side to see if the emotion in her words is real or fabricated, but her bottomless blue eyes look like they've hit bottom at last. She seems to have shed all her layers, and I'm staring at what's left of her.\n\n\"I'm sorry about your friend.\"\n\nMy insides harden, and I face the ceiling again.\n\n_My friend._ She can't even bring herself to use Nishi's name. She never even met my best friend, I realize. _My sister._ She has no idea who I am. She may be my biological parent, but Aquarius knew me better and had more compassion toward me than she's ever been able to show.\n\n\"I know you're hurting, but you can't fall apart.\" Her voice grows familiarly businesslike. \"You need to pull yourself together, because now is when the Zodiac needs you most\u2014\"\n\n\"Screw the Zodiac,\" I say tonelessly, turning to look at her again. \"And _screw_ _you_.\"\n\nHer face becomes a military mask, only I realize now it's not a mask\u2014this is her real face. It takes more effort for her to show emotion than to conceal it. She really isn't Cancrian at all. She never belonged on our House, just like she never belonged in our home. Our family was just one of her masks.\n\n\"Rho, this person you're becoming,\" she says, attempting a softer tone that doesn't suit her, \"she isn't you.\"\n\n\"How the hell would you know?\"\n\n\"I know I've failed as your mother, but blaming me isn't going to do anything for you.\" An old darkness infects her words, the same iciness she would use to frighten me into cooperating when I was just a small child.\n\nI unzip the cocoon because my body feels too hot, and I sit up and finally say the words I've always dreamt of saying to her.\n\n\"You're a _bitch_.\"\n\nWithout missing a beat, she retorts, \"I guess that's where you get it from.\"\n\nI'm relieved she's fighting back. Because now I can tell her _everything_ I think.\n\n\"You ruin everyone you touch,\" I say, the blackness within me rising to my surface, like it's eager to come up and breathe fresh air. \"You think _I_ had the worst of it? I _lived_ \u2014I moved to the moon, I made best friends, I became Holy Mother of a House I've always loved and belonged to. But what about Dad and Stan?\"\n\nHer face looks like it did the first time I brought up Gamba. Like I've found another of her weaknesses.\n\n\" _You ruined their lives._ Neither one of them ever got over your abandonment. You forced Stan to grow up too soon by making _him_ head of the house, and you left Dad in a stunted state he never shook off. And now they're both dead, and they never even got to live for themselves, and that's on _you_.\"\n\nI missed this anger. It swirls in my chest like a tonic to numb my pain, and it hardens every part of me until I don't have to feel anything else. I'll do whatever I have to do to keep it in place. I'll stay angry forever if that's what it takes.\n\n\"You're right,\" she says, her face pale and blue eyes overly bright. \"I have a lot to answer for, but those are _my_ sins to carry\u2014not yours.\"\n\nShe reminds me of Hysan. No one can ever get to know either of them because they're ensconced in secrets, and they refuse to see how the things they keep hidden affect those around them.\n\n\"I know our relationship is beyond repair,\" she says, standing up. \"Even if you forgive me\u2014and whatever your feelings on the matter at this moment, I know your heart, and I know you won't hold on to this anger forever\u2014I still doubt you would _like_ me. We're very different people, you and I. That indestructible heart of yours will beat again, and it will lead you to true happiness, something I myself will probably never experience.\"\n\nIf this were a holo-show, she and I would probably be crying and forgiving each other by now, like we started to do on Pisces. But real life isn't scripted by writers\u2014it's written by _us_. And our own conclusions are far less satisfying.\n\nStan died before he got to live for himself.\n\nDeke and Nishi died before they got to live for each other.\n\nAnd in seven days, when the first ship goes through the portal, the whole Zodiac is going to die\u2014unless we can find the exact spot where Ophiuchus crashed to mortality more than three millennia ago, on a planet no one has ever seen and that might be completely uninhabitable.\n\n\"I'm so grateful you're nothing like me,\" she says, coming closer, \"because even if you don't believe me, I will always care for you and want what's best for you.\"\n\nShe stops when she's standing over me. \"This blessing is overdue, as you outgrew your childhood long ago. But despite all my failings, I am still your mother, and you are still Cancrian, so I owe you at least this much.\"\n\nShe closes her eyes and touches my forehead, just as Agatha did the day of my swearing-in ceremony as Holy Mother.\n\n_\"May you remember the worlds of yesterday, may you transform the worlds of tomorrow, and may you unite our worlds_ today _.\"_\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen we enter the atmosphere of Libra's lemon-yellow planet, Kythera, we land on the smallest of the floating silver bubbles, the one that houses the International Village.\n\nWe dock on the rooftop landing pad of the Libran embassy. I don't see Hysan again until we disembark, and then I do a double take.\n\nHe's shaved his face and brushed his hair back, and there's a bitter determination on his face that reminds me of when he stood up to Aquarius in the Cathedral.\n\nWe follow him down an elevator to the hotel's black-and-white lobby. The place is startlingly empty, and the few Librans who are here all glare at Hysan, their expressions ranging from distrusting to disdainful. Yet Hysan holds his head high and meets their eyes. I wonder how soon before they strip him of his Guardianship.\n\nThe next person the Librans' eyes jump to is Ophiuchus, whose height eclipses every human in sight. He might be less powerful now, but he'll always be undoubtedly supernatural.\n\nHysan guides us to the exit, and as soon as we step outside, I stop moving.\n\nThere must be at least ten thousand Zodai gathered here, donning their House uniforms. There's no weather inside Libra's flying cities, so the Plenum meets outside, on an elevated stage, in the center of the round village\u2014and atop the elevated platform are all the House Guardians and Plenum Ambassadors.\n\nI finally force myself forward on the cushiony, plexifoam ground, and this time Hysan falls back, along with the rest of my friends, leaving me in the lead.\n\nThe clouds above look woolly green through the city's transparent skin. A path parts for us in the crowd, and hands reach out to touch me as I go; I think we could all use the tactile reassurance that this moment is really happening.\n\nThe scene around me isn't color coded: Zodai aren't standing in front of their own embassies, among their own people\u2014they're intermixed, like a tapestry woven with rainbow threads.\n\nOnce we're closer to the stage, I spot Ezra and Gyzer standing by the steps, awaiting us. I'm relieved to see they look unharmed and resolute. Gyzer steadies me as I climb up the stairs, and it's only when I feel his firm grip on my elbow that I realize I'm trembling.\n\nHe lets go when I get to the stage because Brynda and Rubi engulf me in their arms, and I'm grateful for their armor. When they pull back to look at me, Brynda's amber eyes and cinnamon skin remind me so much of Nishi that I can't catch my breath.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she says, and tears skate down her face. \"I'm so sorry.\"\n\n\"Me, too,\" says Rubi, and when I turn to look at her, I'm stunned to see how much more she's aged since I last saw her. She still has a prepubescent figure, but her features have grown lined and heavy, reflecting the truth: She's an elderly woman in a child's body.\n\nTime seems to be speeding up for her, probably because she's no longer undergoing the cell regeneration procedures. And I recognize the look in her deep, tunnel-like eyes: After over three centuries here, she's ready to join her brother in Empyrean.\n\n\"I know it feels like you've lost him,\" she says, squeezing my hand, \"but he's part of you. And when it gets so loud here that you can't hear his voice, just do what I do . . . visit the stars. He's up there, you know.\"\n\nEven her voice and demeanor seem to have matured, and I nod in acknowledgment because it's the most I'm capable of doing right now.\n\nNext to greet me is Sage Ferez. His hundred years of life make him look as frail as he is wise, and I can't help hoping that he isn't planning on coming with us.\n\n\"Some fights are worth fighting at any age,\" he says to me, his inky-black eyes bright as we trade the hand touch.\n\nHysan is behind me, and the three Guardians I just greeted greet him just as warmly as they did me. Yet as we continue down the line, the rest of our worlds' leaders don't seem as ready to acknowledge his place in their ranks. Chieftain Skiff won't even look at him; but as he bumps fists with me, the red-eyed Guardian dips his head a fraction and says, \"If we're still here tomorrow, you're welcome on Scorpio any time.\"\n\nFrom Ferez's awed expression, I think it must be the highest compliment the Scorp has ever given.\n\nThe Guardian of Taurus shakes my hand next, and she flashes me a rare smile. \"I see I'm not alone with my Riser parentage,\" says Fernanda in a conspiratorial tone. \"I knew there was something I liked about you.\"\n\nAgatha is beside her, and she eagerly wraps me in a warm embrace that's more motherly than any hug I've had in my seventeen years.\n\n\"I've never been prouder of anyone in my life,\" she says in my ear, and when we pull away, her misty gray-green eyes have filled with water. Sirna stands at her side, and when I look into her sea-blue gaze, there's so much I want to say. But we trade the hand touch silently because I can't speak.\n\nHouse Aquarius has named a new Supreme Advisor, and when I turn to greet him, I recognize his face.\n\n_\"Revelough.\"_ It's the first word I've spoken since setting foot on Libra.\n\nHis eyebrows rise to his hairline. \"You do me the greatest honor by remembering my name, Wandering Star,\" he says, bowing. He was the only Elder who stood up to Pollus when the latter gave permission for me to speak to Crompton as they were escorting him to the dungeons. _Your lack of subtletly, Revelough, is what keeps you from moving up the ranks_ , Pollus said to him then.\n\nHouse Aquarius is changing. _Politics_ are changing. If those who didn't want to play the game, people who spoke up and spoke out\u2014like Revelough and me\u2014are becoming the new leaders, maybe Aquarius was wrong. Maybe we _can_ do better. Maybe there is hope for the Zodiac.\n\n_. . . If we survive._\n\nAfter I've greeted the remaining Guardians, General Eurek steps forward and addresses the crowd, a black volumizer floating around his head.\n\n\"The end of the Zodiac is upon us.\"\n\nThe whole village goes deathly silent.\n\n\"You are here today because you have chosen to fight for our very existence. You are also here because after we defeat our enemies once and for all, you are not ready to go back to the way things were before. But above all, you are here today because many months ago a girl raised her voice to call for unity, and you listened.\"\n\nClapping breaks out, and someone squeezes my arm, but I don't even turn to see who. My gaze is unfocused, and all I can concentrate on are Eurek's words.\n\n\"Prophet Marinda is too ill to make this journey, but she is watching us from Pisces. There were very few Piscenes off-world when the plague hit their constellation, and we've been protecting them on our various Houses, as they are the last of their people. But I want the whole solar system to know that every last one of those Piscenes chose to come here today. Even though their House rarely takes sides in times of war, they are here to make their final stand alongside us, for they know that sometimes neutrality _is_ a side and cannot be endured.\"\n\nThe whole village breaks into applause again, and as my vision begins to focus on the crowd, I spy a small group of Piscenes in the front. Hexel and Jox from Centaurion are here, and I'm relieved to know they're okay. My gaze drifts past them, and I see Mathias's parents, and Strident Engle from Scorpio, and Arcadia from Taurus who took me to see Vecily's house, and the Cancrian Candela who on Centaurion reminded me what we're fighting for, and Qima of Virgo, and Numen of Libra, and others. I almost gasp when I notice the red-haired sisters, Lola and Leyla, sitting at the end of the row.\n\nAll the faces from my travels have come. Every person I'm still fighting for is gathered here.\n\n\"You'll notice an unfamiliar presence on this stage,\" Eurek goes on, once the clapping ends. \"A Thirteenth Guardian.\"\n\nI turn to see Ophiuchus, who stands at the far end of the platform like he's just as uncomfortable as I am with the attention.\n\n\" _Ophiuchus is real_ ,\" Eurek says loudly, his voice echoing through the silence. \"Tonight, we set off for that world. That House our ancestors betrayed and abandoned is where the Zodiac will make its final stand. And now I will turn things over to the commander of our army, the leader whose voice has brought us all together, whose courage is unmatched and whose spirit is unbreakable\u2014our one and only Wandering Star Rhoma Grace.\"\n\nThe crowd breaks into rousing roars of applause, but it's Agatha who steps forward instead of me, leaning heavily on her cane. They quiet down again.\n\n\"I would like to add one more title to Eurek's beautiful words.\" She turns and bestows on me a loving smile as she pulls out the black opal Talisman and offers it to me. _\"_ Welcome home, _Holy Mother_.\"\n\nAll at once, every Guardian and Ambassador onstage bows\u2014including Brynda, whose people bow to no one. My gaze pans over the crowd, and everyone else is bowing, too, even the Sagittarians.\n\nThe volumizer zips over to me, like even the device knows it's my turn to speak. As heads pop back up, everyone is watching me with hope shining in their eyes, and the dignitaries beside me all step back, leaving me alone as they await my speech.\n\nI clear my throat, but I can only think of one thing to say.\n\n\"I'm sorry. I can't lead you _._ \"\n\nAnd I turn and leave the stage.\n\n# 35\n\nI FLEE TO THE CANCRIAN embassy, and duty bound to me once more, Sirna follows.\n\nI cross the plank and enter the second bungalow, and then I climb up the stairs until I'm on the rooftop with the aquarium beneath me. I try not to think of how much Stan would have loved to see it.\n\n\"Rho.\"\n\n\"Don't lecture me,\" I snap, whirling on Sirna. \"You know I'm doing the right thing. You saw through me from the start. You always knew I didn't have what it takes to be Holy Mother, but I was too na\u00efve to listen. You were right: I was unprepared, I was selfish, and I took everything personally. I was wrong for this role since the first day, and deep down, I knew it.\"\n\n\"You're right,\" she says, and I savor her honesty the way a parched person savors water. \"I thought you were a fame-seeking child who would only manage to alienate our House from the rest of the Zodiac at a time when we needed the others' help more than ever.\"\n\nShe gestures to the people in the center of the village. \"But one look at what's happening down there is all it takes to prove how wrong I was.\"\n\n\"They're not here for me. They're here because they don't want to die\u2014\"\n\n\"They're here to _fight._ And you're the one they're asking to lead them.\"\n\n\"Well it's just as crazy as when they asked me to lead the armada. They should be looking to Eurek or Ferez or Hysan\u2014\"\n\n\"Who told us about the Dark Matter?\" she demands. \"Who told us about Ophiuchus? Who told us about the master?\"\n\n\"If not me, someone else would have uncovered this stuff\u2014\"\n\n\"But it _was_ you, Rho.\" Sirna's ebony face fills with light, and I've never seen her look so hopeful.\n\n\"And to be clear, I saw how wrong I was about you two minutes into our first conversation.\"\n\nI frown. \"That's not true\u2014\"\n\n\"It is. We were in my office, and I'd just told you that your dad and brother were lost again. Then I cruelly pressed on with the political agenda, and I waited for you to fall apart so I could be proven right in time to spare Cancer the humiliation of you standing on that podium and name-dropping Ochus. I remember you shut your eyes, and I was sure you would break down. But when you opened them again, I didn't see a girl in pain. I saw a Guardian.\"\n\nHer eyes are still bright as she rests a hand on my shoulder and brings her face so close that I feel her warm breath on my skin. \"You plowed forward with our agenda, and in your voice I heard Holy Mother Origene's resolve. And I knew then that you would always protect us, even when you had nothing left for yourself.\n\n\"I may not have agreed with all your choices, and I will probably continue to disagree with you from time to time. But I had the same relationship with Mother Origene\u2014as you've seen, I'm not one to keep my doubts to myself.\" She allows herself a small smile, and it makes her look so much younger. \"But I have no doubts you're our true Holy Mother, Rho. And neither should you.\"\n\nAs if to prove it, she takes something out of her pocket.\n\nIt's the Cancrian Star Stone.\n\n\"This belongs to you now.\"\n\nI don't want to accept it, and yet just like the first time I laid eyes on it, I can't help myself from wanting to touch it. She sets the smooth black opal in my hand, and goose bumps race across my arm.\n\nIt feels fated to be standing here, having my Guardianship restored in the same spot where it was once stripped from me. After all, every Holy Mother's ceremony must be blessed by the Cancer Sea.\n\n\"We leave for planet Ophiuchus tonight, and we're counting on the Thirteenth Guardian to close the portal,\" she says, reverting to her all-business demeanor. \"We anticipate the enemy knows our plan and will do whatever they can to stop us. Ophiuchus has the strength of a mortal now, so if they kill him, it's over. We need you in this fight.\"\n\n\"I'm not a fighter, Sirna.\"\n\n\"No, but you're our best _seer_. And when we get to that world, we're going to need our Guardians to work together to pick up the Psynergy trail to Ophiuchus's crash site.\"\n\n\"I haven't accessed the Psy in a long while,\" I admit.\n\n\"Then I suggest you use this time wisely and go square things up with the stars.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nBlack opal in hand, I visit the reading room on the top floor of the third bungalow, where I helped Mathias find his Center again after his capture.\n\nI feel along the Talisman's ridges to unscramble the constellation puzzle and unlock it.\n\nThe Archer. _Sagittarius._\n\nNishi drowns my thoughts, and I immediately descend to my Center. I didn't think it'd be this easy, but at the mere thought of my best friend, it's practically unavoidable. She _is_ my soul.\n\nNow that Aquarius is gone, I'm not afraid to enter the astral plane\u2014but the Psynergy is still erratic. I have a feeling the only way to heal the Psy is to heal ourselves.\n\nI stare at the stars and try pushing down my pain so I can See something. Only instead of my eyes registering movement, it's my ears that hear a sound. It's indistinct muttering . . . and it's coming from Helios.\n\nAs I approach the holographic sun, I flash back to when I met Ophiuchus in the slipstream and I hesitate. But curiosity gets the best of me, and I reach out to touch it.\n\nThe reading room disappears, and I'm transported to a vast, grassy field that extends endlessly in every direction. I take a few befuddled steps forward and gaze in awe at the greenery around me.\n\n_No time to dawdle, we don't have long._\n\nI spin around to see a familiar wizened face.\n\n_Moira!_\n\n_You sure took your time finding me. I don't know how much longer I could have held on._\n\n_But you're\u2014_\n\n_In a coma, yes, but my spirit is free in the astral plane._ It's strange seeing her without her Perfectionary in hand. _Before I move on to Empyrean, I have a message for you from the Luminaries, and I don't have long._\n\n_There are Luminaries with me,_ I cut in, frowning. _Why couldn't they tell me?_\n\n_Because they don't know this information, and if you continue interrupting me, you won't either._ She knits her eyebrows, adding more wrinkles to her olive face, and I determine the best course of action is to stay quiet.\n\n_The Luminaries were formed by Empress Virgo, my House's Original Guardian_. _She Saw the Last Prophecy, and she suspected one of her brethren to be behind the vision, so she couldn't confide in any of them. Instead, she broke off a piece of her Talisman and gave it to her most trusted Advisor and instructed her to form the Luminaries._\n\n_The Virgo Star Stone contains a true Psy Veil, so the person using it can enter the Psy invisibly, without being seen by anyone\u2014including Aquarius. That's how the Luminaries have kept their location secret this whole time._\n\nMoira's mossy eyes fix on mine with deadly focus, and since she's usually a multitasker, it feels like a lot of pressure to hold her full attention.\n\n_We are the last outpost of the astral plane_ , she says heavily _. We're why the Last Prophecy vision has never gone away. As long as we've been here to anchor the Psy, he couldn't twist it too far. That's why it's imperative no one ever know where we are\u2014we are the only safety net the astral plane has. Of course, it's all moot if the Zodiac dies._\n\nRemembering what Aquarius wanted from them, I ask, _Where does the portal lead?_\n\nMoira dismisses my question with a curt wave of her hand. _The stars of the Zodiac cannot See beyond their own existence._\n\n_But Aquarius said the Luminaries were hiding a prophecy from him\u2014_\n\n_That's because we wanted him to think that,_ she says with a note of pride.\n\n_You were baiting him?_ I ask, staring at her in shock.\n\n_The Luminaries have always hoped to prevent the Last Prophecy by uncovering the Guardian's identity before he could set it in motion, so we tried luring him out. But when he realized we were searching for him as hard as he was searching for us, he stopped chasing our fake vision, and\u2014_\n\nShe seems to sense something in the air because she starts speaking faster than usual. _You need to know that it will take the same amount of energy to close the portal as to open it. So without the Unity Talisman, you must find the spot where Ophiuchus crashed onto his planet, as the soil there will still retain remnants of his Star Stone\u2014_\n\n_We already know all this,_ I say, and then I inhale sharply as the greenery around us flickers. _What was that?_\n\n_The portal's activation is accelerating the Psy's instability_. Moira is still speaking too quickly _. The Psynergy being Psyphoned from Pisces has opened a doorway through the Dark Matter. If you can release that energy back to Pisces, it will restore that House, and that act will balance out Aquarius's death._\n\n_Can Ophiuchus do that?_\n\nThe ground beneath our feet starts quaking violently, and Moira has to raise her voice over the noise. _He has a role to play, but yours is more important._\n\n_Mine?_ I shout back as the shaking grows deafening.\n\n_Ophiuchus will serve as a conduit for absorbing the excess Psynergy\u2014but as there is no Talisman to destroy, you'll need to do the Psyphoning._\n\nI feel my presence in this dimension fading, like the Psynergy is trying to buck me off, and I struggle to cling to my Center. _But I've never\u2014_\n\n_Psyphoned? Why do you think I've been waiting around all this time? The ritual requires someone strong enough in the Psy who can pull on Psynergy from the whole Zodiac_ , she explains _. But if the process kills you, all will be lost. You must survive it._\n\n_And how exactly do I do that?_ I call back over the noise.\n\n_You'll need an anchor. Something in this world with a strong enough pull on your soul to ground you here. Someone worth coming back for._\n\nThe one thing I don't have.\n\nShe seems to know that already because she comes closer and says, _If you want to save the Zodiac, you have to jumpstart that oversized Cancrian heart._\n\n# 36\n\nWHEN I LEAVE THE ASTRAL plane, I set out for the Libran embassy. There's no judge or jury in the courtroom, so I go straight through to the hotel, which is equally void of people. The emptiness is becoming disturbing, and as I cut across the dichromatic lobby with white marble walls and black floors, a wallscreen catches my eye.\n\nHysan is addressing a crowd of Librans somewhere in this hotel, and from the ticker text scrolling beneath the footage, it seems like his message is being broadcast through his whole House. I move closer, and once I step within the radius of light on the floor, the audio pops on.\n\n\"My story begins with two Knights in the service of Lord Vaz's Royal Guard. Their names were Helen and Horace Dax.\"\n\nHysan is standing in front of a golden wall designed to look like the Libran flag, his voice as somber as his expression. \"My parents died before my first birthday, and they left me in the care of an android into whom they'd programmed all their teachings. I followed in my inventor father's footsteps, and it was one of my designs that caught Lord Vaz's eye at the Pursuit of Justice Symposium when I was nine. I received private tutoring from him until the day he confided in me that he had Seen his death and planned to name me his successor. Only he didn't believe anyone would willingly follow an eleven-year-old boy, and he needed his jury to approve of his selection. So we created Lord Neith.\"\n\nHysan pauses and his chin tilts down a fraction, his gaze dropping to the floor for a few breaths. It's the first time he doesn't seem cool and in control in front of a crowd, and I realize this is probably the hardest thing he's ever done. By exposing all the secrets that have defined him, his old way of life is lost to him forever.\n\n_His nest is gone._\n\n\"We each view the universe through our own telescope, so I don't expect any of you to see this from my perspective,\" he says, lifting his eyes to the crowd again. \"I only hope you will try to understand it.\n\n\"Until recently, I didn't think there was anything wrong with my keeping this secret from you. I thought that as long as I protected my House and my people, as long as you were well taken care of, it didn't matter who the man was behind the android. I guess you can say that mindset is a product of how I was raised. But over the past few months, my eyes have been opened to how wrong that was, and how unjust I have been to you. _I should have trusted you_.\"\n\nEven though he's addressing his House, I can't help feeling like he's speaking directly to me. Then again, probably every friend of his watching this feels that way. It's part of Hysan's charm.\n\n\"In a few hours, we will embark on a journey that could either be the end of the Zodiac or a new beginning for all of us. There isn't time to go through a proper trial or cross-examination now, but if we survive, I vow to submit to any fate I am sentenced to. I am profoundly sorry for deceiving you. It has been an honor to serve you these past seven years, and whatever happens next, I will always be proud to be a Libran Knight.\"\n\nAs I watch him up there in his golden suit, his gaze focused and his jaw set, I no longer see the cocky teen Guardian with mysterious eyes and a mischievous smile.\n\nI see a man.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI take the elevator up to the penthouse suite even though I know he's not there yet, and I prepare myself to wait. But as soon as I lean against the wall, the door swings open.\n\n\"Lord Neith!\" Without thinking I wrap my arms around the android, and I'm surprised when I feel him hugging me back.\n\n\"Lady Rho, what an honor it is to see you again.\"\n\nWe pull away, and I see actual tear tracks on his Kartex cheeks. I'd always wondered if he could cry.\n\n\"You were watching Hysan's speech?\" I ask as I follow him into the workspace.\n\n\"Every word.\"\n\n\"I'm so relieved you're okay,\" I say as I walk through the holographic facts and figures floating in the air. \"You had us worried back on Pisces.\"\n\n\"Hysan could not risk reactivating me while Aquarius was alive. Lady Rho, I must apologize to you for how I behaved the last time you saw me\u2014\"\n\n\"You weren't yourself,\" I say quickly. \"It's not your fault.\"\n\nThe door opens, and I spin to see Hysan entering the penthouse. His head hangs down and his hair falls over his face, and he looks despondent\u2014then he glances up and sees me.\n\nHis shoulders roll back, and light flashes in his eyes. \"My lady.\"\n\n\"I must recharge,\" says Lord Neith, and he goes up to Hysan and lays a hand on his shoulder. \"I've never been prouder of you,\" he says in an undertone. \"I know Lord Vaz feels the same way, for much of my personality was molded after his. Right now he would be saying: _You are a true Lord and Knight_.\"\n\nHysan's ears go pink, and I look down so I won't intrude. Then he and I wind around the worktables and enter the main suite. \"May I offer you anything?\" he asks once we're in the living room.\n\nI shake my head and say, \"I just spoke with Empress Moira.\"\n\nHis brow wedges with concern. \"In the astral plane?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" We're standing behind a levlan couch that looks a lot like the one from the suite on Aries where I first kissed him. I angle myself away from it.\n\n\"She told me how to close the portal. It's a ritual that takes place in the Psy, so Ophiuchus and I will need to be protected while we perform it.\"\n\nHe nods, and the green of his gaze fades like he's multitasking. He's probably inwardly accessing his Scan. \"Would you like to select the members of your regiment, or would you rather General Eurek assign his best Majors?\"\n\n\"I . . . there's something else,\" I say, steeling myself for what I came here to tell him. \"I think you should lead us.\"\n\n\"And why is that?\" he asks, his tone tensing.\n\n\"You're smarter than me,\" I say, not meeting his eyes, \"and you're better at telling people what they need to hear.\" Since he doesn't disagree, I go on. \"You know every world almost as well as your own. You had the best strategy for taking back our camp on Aries. You figured out Aquarius's plan before anyone else\u2014\"\n\n\"So use me.\"\n\nIn my shock I look up. His green gaze is electric.\n\n\"If I'm such a good strategist, use my mind to strategize,\" he clarifies, but I can't escape the feeling that there was an accusation in his words. _Use me._\n\nHave I used Hysan?\n\n\"But I still haven't heard a single good reason why I should lead over you,\" he finishes, crossing his arms and leaning on the couch's backrest.\n\n\"Then tell Eurek to lead,\" I say, suddenly wishing I hadn't come here. \"I'll play my part with Ophiuchus and do what Moira asked of me, but I won't be placed in charge of an army against my will again.\"\n\nThe last part comes off sharp and accusatory, and I bite my lip to shut myself up and keep from wreaking more damage.\n\n\"My turn to make my case for your leadership?\" he asks, and I shrug to avoid arguing. \"You inspired me to trust others and let go of my secrets. You inspired Mathias to be more open-minded and let go of what's past. You inspired Pandora to speak up and let go of her fear. You inspired Nishi to fight the system and let go of her personal pain\u2014\"\n\n\"Stop!\" The anger comes with such force that I feel something in my chest fracturing. \"It's _you_ all who inspired _me\u2014_ Nishi gave me confidence, Mathias gave me strength, you gave me hope\u2014\"\n\n_\"Exactly.\"_ Hysan moves closer so I'll look at him, but when I don't lift my gaze, he lowers his voice and murmurs, \"You inspired us all, and we inspired you back. Each of us let you in, but you let _all_ of us in. That's why it has to be you, Rho\u2014because inside that beautiful Cancrian heart, you carry a piece of all of us.\"\n\n_My heart._\n\nEverything keeps coming back to that: A dead organ that can't find its beat.\n\nThe anger rushes to my chest again, like it's determined to punch through my glacier. \"How can my heart stand up against their hate?\" I ask, my voice rising until I'm shouting. \"Pretty words are nothing next to the Marad's weapons! A Murmur murdered Deke. A Murmur murdered Stan. A Murmur murdered Nishi. I loved them more than the Zodiac, and my _heart_ failed to protect them.\" I'm yelling at the wall, the floor, the couch, at anything but him.\n\n\"How the hell can you still believe in me?\" I demand, sucking in a raking breath. \"How have you always been so sure my light can stop any of this darkness?\"\n\nHe's quiet as he bridges the small space between us and gently cups my cheek with his hand. \"Violence isn't an ending\u2014it's a cycle. Someone will always build a bigger weapon: I can design a device more powerful than a Murmur, but tomorrow our enemies will design something even deadlier, and on and on we'll go until we end up here, on the brink of our mutual destruction. You don't fight fire with fire, Rho,\" he says, his voice husky. \"You quell it with water.\"\n\nHis mouth is close enough to kiss, and I finally look into his vibrant eyes. The golden star of his right iris sparkles, and I try calling up some of the magic I once felt when I looked at him. But the ice in my chest is too cold for love's warmth.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Hysan,\" I say, falling back a step. \"You mean a lot to me, and I wouldn't have made it this far without you, but I'm not the same person you knew. And the truth is\"\u2014I suck in a quick breath because the fissure in my chest is widening again\u2014\"I'm not in love with you anymore.\"\n\nI'm too much of a coward to look into his eyes when I say it, so my gaze finds the marble floor. My gut churns from how much I hate hurting him, but I don't have the energy to keep playing games. I just want to do my part to close the portal and then disappear.\n\n\"I had amazing parents who raised me,\" he says unexpectedly.\n\nI wrinkle my brow and look up.\n\n\"Only problem is they weren't real. They were androids.\" He sounds less sad and more somber, the way he did when he addressed his House. \"My family was a lie, and I couldn't escape the knowledge of that because I was the forger. For most of my life, everything has been under my control: My House, my home, my heart. Until I fell for you.\"\n\n\"Hysan, stop,\" I say, drawing back, away from him. \"You can't charm me into feeling something that I don't.\" I stand against the far wall and cross my arms over my chest. \"I just need you to be my _friend_ \u2014\"\n\n\"I can't,\" he says, and his voice breaks on the word. \"I can't give up on you.\"\n\nThere's a shine in his eyes that robs me of speech.\n\n\"When everything in your life is fake, you know something real when you find it.\" His green gaze smolders as he strides over, and I try to move but my legs won't work. \"So if you think I'm just letting you go, then as you Cancrians would say, _you're dreaming_.\"\n\nMy pulse leaps to action, and I say, \"Hysan, _don't_ \u2014\"\n\nBut his fingers dig into my curls and he pulls my face into his, and before I can push him off, his lips part mine.\n\nThe Abyssthe-like rush of his kiss fills my mind with buzzing, and his hand cradles my head protectively as he pushes me into the wall, the warmth of his touch igniting my skin too fast, like a fire that's been fed an accelerant\u2014\n\nAnd I gasp as the glacier in my chest bursts.\n\n# 37\n\nMY GUARD COMES CRASHING DOWN, and flames engulf my insides until I can't breathe through the flood of feelings surging through me.\n\nHysan's kiss lifts my curse, and all the pain I'd been stockpiling rushes to the surface, and for the first time since the Sumber, I break down in horrible, soul-scratching sobs.\n\n_Stan and Nishi are gone._\n\nHysan scoops me up in his arms and carries me into a bedroom, depositing me on the bed. Then he presses me into his chest and kisses my hair as I cry hysterically, his hand caressing my back gently as he whispers, \"You're not alone, Rho. I'm here. You're loved, and I'm not going anywhere.\"\n\nI can't breathe. I lost Stan. My brother isn't here because Aryll killed him\u2014the traitor Hysan warned us about but we refused to see. \" _Stan_ ,\" I groan between sobs, and Hysan tightens his hold, his heart racing faster in my ear.\n\nHe kisses my head again and whispers, \"I'm so sorry, Rho.\"\n\n\"I abandoned Nishi,\" I choke out. I lost my brother and my sister, the only family I had left, my best friends and the best people I've ever known. Everything in me has shattered, and just gasping for breath scrapes my throat.\n\nI can barely see through my puffy eyes, and the knot in my chest won't loosen, until my heart feels like it will give out and my limbs start shivering uncontrollably. \"I c\u2014can't stop shaking,\" I stammer, and Hysan rubs my back and arms to generate heat.\n\n\"It's okay, Rho,\" he says soothingly. \"You've never abandoned anyone.\"\n\n\"I\u2014I became a monster,\" I say, fighting down more sobs. \"I'm no better than Aquarius. When I had to, I betrayed Risers. I turned over Gamba, I _tortured_ Corinthe\u2014\"\n\n\"Shhh,\" says Hysan, and he takes my chin in his hands to look at me. My eyes are so weighed down with tears that his face looks like a low-resolution hologram. \"You're not perfect. None of us are. But you have to forgive yourself right now because you're our leader, and we'll follow your example. If you hold back, so will we.\"\n\n\"Hysan\u2014I've just lost my family,\" I say, scowling at him. _\"I can't lead this army.\"_\n\nHe wipes the wetness off my face with his fingers. \"You're this army's leader whether you acknowledge it or not. Even if you stand in the background, every Zodai here will still look to you for their cues. You've been a leader from the moment you left the Crab constellation against your Advisors' wishes, so forget the titles you've worn; they're just words. Whatever you call yourself, it will never change what you are.\"\n\nI shake my head in defeat. \"And what am I?\"\n\nHe plants a soft kiss on my cheek, near my ear. \"You're the brightest star in the Zodiac. _Hope_.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nMy eyes are still red and puffy when we board _Equinox_ just a couple of hours later, and then our army of over twelve thousand Zodai takes off for House Ophiuchus.\n\n_'Nox_ is in the lead, and behind us flies the rest of our fleet. Most of the Tomorrow Party members aren't fighters, so we're counting on them being busy boarding the ships on Black Moon in anticipation of going through the portal. But the Marad was promised their planet back, and they're not going to want us anywhere near it.\n\nAfter everything the Zodai have put Risers through, this is their chance to make us feel as homeless and desperate and unwanted as they've felt for three millennia. And from the intelligence the Zodai gathered on Phaet, there are at least a hundred thousand soldiers.\n\nOur only advantage is that imbalanced Risers can't Center themselves. They won't be able to sense the Psynergy, so they won't know what part of the planet to protect. Whereas we have Ophiuchus, and his close connection to his home should enable him to pick up on that Psynergy so we can land in the general vicinity of what's left of his Star Stone.\n\nOur army will have to fend off the Marad while Ophiuchus and I go seal the portal.\n\nI spend my first day on _'Nox_ training with Mathias in the storage hold, the largest private space on the ship, so that I can learn to shield myself from the Murmur with my Barer. The Zodai believe these shields are our best chance against the Marad since they render the Murmurs useless.\n\n\"The trick is coating the blue energy with Psynergy and bonding both elements,\" he says in a deep, meditative voice, our eyes closed as we slowly cycle through Yarrot. \"Let the electric tingling in your skin match the buzzing of your blood, until there's a balance between your inner and outer selves, your physical and metaphysical states. . . .\"\n\nBy our second day of training, I can shield myself at a moment's notice, and we turn the room over to Ezra and Gyzer, who have also been using it to train, while Mathias goes to take his turn at the helm.\n\nI dart to the main cabin, which I'm sharing with Hysan, to avoid running into anyone; Ophiuchus, Gamba, Pandora, and my mother have taken over the front of the ship, where they're meditating and trying to locate the Talisman.\n\n\"Why am I here?\"\n\nSkarlet's statuesque figure steps into my path right before I reach my room, her arms crossed and brow puckered.\n\n\"You'll have to ask your parents\u2014\"\n\n_\"Answer me, crab_ ,\" she demands, blocking my body with hers as I try to go around.\n\n\"Don't you want to be here?\" I snap, frowning up at her. \" _You're_ the one who's always going on about how you're a leader and deserve to be treated as one.\"\n\n\"I could be on General Eurek's ship.\"\n\n\"Then why aren't you?\"\n\nHer shoulders pull back with a pride she can't repress. \"Hysan said you invited me to be in your party.\"\n\n\"And you accepted. So what's the problem, _ram_?\"\n\nShe swallows down her attitude and says in a slightly less entitled tone, \"I just want to know why.\"\n\nSince she's trying to be sincere, I decide to answer with the truth. \"Because you're one of the most physically powerful warriors in our army, yet your weapon of choice is your voice.\" My face heating up a little, I add, \"And for the record, if I were Hysan, I would have picked you.\"\n\nI leave her standing dumbstruck in the hallway and slip inside the cabin. But as soon as I do, I see Nishi again. She's all I ever see in here.\n\nI approach the bed slowly, looking at the space where her body lay beside mine as we slept, hands clasped together. For all my pain, I know her death hasn't fully hit me yet. Nor has Stan's. I haven't had the luxury to grieve them right.\n\nAnd I'm not sure if I'm more afraid of feeling those feelings or dying.\n\nI get the sense the experiences won't be very different.\n\nI switch on the black opal and try to push those emotions back so I can See. The room is drowned in stars, and I orbit the lights, searching for a sign of what's coming. Since I let the Zodai down on Libra, I want to at least be useful in some way. And contributing from in here, alone, is far preferable to doing so out there, with the others.\n\nThough I know I should be focusing on the Dark Matter by the Thirteenth House, I suddenly feel a pull toward Cancer that I can't ignore. The beautiful blue of our world is barely visible through the belt of broken moons that engulfs it, and I long to see it again the way it looked in Aquarius's memories.\n\nA bright light abruptly blazes above the Crab constellation, and I feel a familiar presence in the Psy.\n\nI know it's crazy and it can't be real, but I think my brother is trying to talk to me.\n\nI close my eyes to tunnel deeper into my Center\u2014and as soon as the holographic stars disappear, there he is.\n\nStanton stands before me in a Cancrian blue uniform, like a vision that's been waiting just behind my eyelids.\n\nHis pale green eyes are luminous, his curls are bouncy, and his aura is glowing. _Stan?_\n\n_Hey, sis_.\n\nAt the sound of his comforting voice, every other concern in the Zodiac melts away. _But\u2014how? Is this real?_\n\nI leap up to hug him, but my hands go right through his body, like he's a hologram.\n\n_You'll have to redefine real,_ he says with his goofy grin. _But I think so._\n\n_Are you in Empyrean?_\n\nHis radiant eyes dim a little. _Not yet. Not until I know you're okay._\n\nI can hardly breathe. Cancrians believe those who pass on with unsettled souls become constellations in the sky and eventually return to life to complete their unfinished business. Could it be that Stan might come back?\n\n_I don't think so,_ he says sadly. _And yes, I can read your thoughts in here._\n\nI shake my head in utter bewilderment. _But then why haven't you moved on yet?_\n\n_I think because I can't let go. Not until I know you've got this._\n\n_Well I don't want you to go, so I'll be a perpetual wreck if that's what it takes\u2014_\n\n_Rho._ His voice grows parental, and I miss it so much that I'm torn between smiling and crying. _Do you remember the story I told you about the girl who was swept away from her planet and landed on a feathery world with a talking bird?_\n\nI nod and it doesn't surprise me he's brought it up, as I've been thinking a lot about that tale.\n\n_In the story, little Rho had a choice to be sad about the past or to exist in the present\u2014to smile or frown. It's the lesson of your favorite Stantonism:_ Don't fear what you can't touch.\n\n_It was a na\u00efve lesson,_ I can't help saying _._\n\n_Then you misunderstood it_ , he says, and his face is so close that it's like some new form of torture to be unable to feel him _. What little Rho can touch is the grass beneath her feet. What she can't touch is her home. She's creating a fear that doesn't exist\u2014her home is fine without her\u2014and what's worse is that fear isn't doing her any good._\n\nHe looks so young and healthy, and he sounds so sure of himself that it seems impossible he's really gone.\n\n_When you awoke from the Sumber,_ he says gently, _you couldn't get past every second of Nishi's suffering enough to focus on the present. And now, you can't get over Nishi's and my passing\u2014but I'm not gone yet, Rho. I continue to exist, but only if you do._\n\nHe reaches out with his hand, and I can almost feel his skin stroking my cheek. _If you fade, you erase me, too. And Nishi. And Deke. And Dad. But if you let us in and let us become part of your light\u2014if our memory shines through your words and your actions\u2014then you honor us, and we're not gone. Don't doom us to the darkness. Bring us into the light with you._\n\nTears streak down my face, and I'm not sure how much more crying my eyes can take. _But what if this conversation is only happening in my head?_\n\n_It is, and you're doing it again: You're looking for reasons to frown instead of smile._\n\n_But what if I'm scripting your words even now?_\n\n_So typical of you to take credit for my brilliance. You can't let me have anything, can you? Not even this last moment to shine._\n\nI laugh for the first time in months, and the change is startling. The reaction loosens my chest, and it's only through this flicker of levity that I register the weight of everything I've been carrying.\n\nBut my relief doesn't last long because just like when I spoke with Moira, my session in the Psy is cut short as the ground starts shaking.\n\nStan raises his voice over all the noise. _Rho, forget the past for now, and don't fret about the future! Remember that every second is a choice you make._\n\n_I love you so much, Stan!_ I cry out as his image starts flickering, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm certain I heard him say _I love you, too._\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nI race to the control helm, where Hysan and Mathias are laughing about something. They both grow alert the moment they see me. \"What is it?\" asks Hysan.\n\nI look from one to the other.\n\n\"I'm ready.\"\n\n# 38\n\nI STAND IN THE NOSE, nerves buzzing in my stomach, as Hysan cues up the transmission. He contacted every ship in our fleet so they'll broadcast my message.\n\nEveryone on _'Nox_ has gathered around to watch, and even Ophiuchus leaves his Center to be present. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hoping I'll see Stan behind my eyelids again. But even though he's not there, I still feel his presence.\n\nRubi was right. Our brothers never leave us.\n\nI take another moment for myself, and then I open my eyes and nod at Hysan to begin the broadcast.\n\n\"I stand before you,\" I start, \"not as some shining beacon of perfection, but as the most flawed among you.\"\n\nI look away from the recording device and let my gaze trail across my friends. \"I've hurt the people I love most,\" I say, gazing from Hysan to Mathias. \"I've led an armada of Zodai right into the enemy's hands,\" I say, looking into Pandora's amethyst eyes. \"I've betrayed my family\"\u2014I stare at Mom and Gamba, then Gyzer and Ezra\u2014\"and my friends. I fell so far that I even became the monsters I was trying to defeat,\" I say, thinking of Corinthe.\n\n\"And I broke the Taboo.\" My gaze returns to Hysan's, and he's watching me with such fierce love in his eyes that I feel my inner flame growing to new heights.\n\n\"Yet, whether or not I deserve it, you have all found enough love in your hearts to forgive me, and I'm so grateful. But now I want you to do something infinitely harder\u2014I want you to forgive yourselves.\"\n\nI stare into Ophiuchus's starlit eyes.\n\n\"The past is important only insofar as it informs the present\u2014but when memories grow so powerful that they drag us back rather than propel us forward, they're not worth lugging with us anymore.\" Looking into the device again, I speak to the whole fleet. \"If you can absolve someone who's sinned as much as I have, you can absolve yourselves.\"\n\nI can't help pausing and looking at Mom. I think she was right: We'll never have the mother-daughter relationship I longed for as a child. . . . But I'm no longer that child.\n\nMy nest is gone because I don't need it anymore.\n\nThanks to Stan, I can fly.\n\n\"Leave your guilt and your self-doubt and your fears on these ships,\" I say, my voice gathering strength, \"because when we land on the Thirteenth House, we can't carry them with us. For too long we have been leading with our fear and not our faith, because no matter how unfulfilled we feel today, we worry tomorrow could be worse. We are an army of seers, yet we've become so blind that none of us knows what tomorrow will bring, or if it will even dawn at all.\n\n\"This whole time it's not the stars who have been our enemies\u2014not even Aquarius or Ophiuchus. It's been _us_. The master's plans only worked because we let them. Our distrust broke our Unity, and then he slipped in through the cracks. And just like in the Libran alphabet story, we were too busy pointing fingers at each other\u2014our fellow letters\u2014to look up and notice the eraser.\n\n\"We've defeated ourselves by forgetting the lessons of our past. Our choices have led us to this fate, not the stars\u2014but that means our choices can also bring us to a new fate. Only our _true_ survival depends on whether we learn anything from what we've survived.\n\n\"Will we continue to define ourselves by where we're born? Will we continue to distrust those who look or act differently from us? Will we continue to be a tribal species that's only comfortable living among others who are genetically like us? Or will we finally be ready to admit that there aren't twelve or even thirteen types of humans in the Zodiac?\"\n\nI cast a glance at Mathias, who looks just as proud as Hysan, and as I'm watching, he takes Pandora's hand and her face lights up like a sun.\n\n_\"We are one people.\"_ I look at Mom and Gamba, Risers and yet also my family. \"Risers are not abominations\u2014they are descendants of House Ophiuchus. They are members of a repressed race, and our ignorance has created their condition. _We_ are doing this to them by putting so much value on fate and not enough on free will\u2014but Risers are the future,\" I say, thinking of the prophesy Ferez once shared with me and understanding at last what it means.\n\n\"None of us can truly be defined as _one_ thing. We are all born as curious creatures with boundless imaginations. We are all seekers of justice and wisdom. We are all at times passionate and philosophical and nurturing and industrious and innovative. We all have a spiritual side that connects us to the stars, and we are all charged with the stewardship and protection of our land and environment. We are all warriors, especially today. And that means _we are all Risers._\n\n\"What we're missing is the glue that gels together all these pieces of us: _Unity_. The only way we will save the Zodiac is together. So don't spend the rest of the flight reviewing strategy or anticipating our fate. Spend it getting to know the Zodai next to you. Forget whom we're fighting against and instead focus on whom we're fighting for\u2014because the most important weapon we can bring to the field of battle isn't the one we can touch. _It's hope_.\"\n\nHysan shuts off the broadcast and pulls me into his arms, lifting me off my feet with his kiss. Mathias hugs me next, and then Pandora, Ezra, and Gyzer come over to congratulate me. Even Skarlet bumps fists with me.\n\nOphiuchus goes back to meditating, but I didn't really expect him to do anything else.\n\nMom and Gamba approach me last, and the others busy themselves with other things to give us some semblance of privacy.\n\n\"Did you really mean what you said about forgiveness?\" asks Mom.\n\n\"Yes,\" I say softly, thinking of Stan and what he would want for us. \"I forgive you, and I also release you. You don't owe me anything. Just _be happy_.\"\n\nShe stays silent, and I read it as just part of her stoicism, but then Gamba rests a hand on her lower back, and I realize Mom's moved. I guess it'll take some time to get to know the real Kassandra.\n\nBut at least I'll have that chance.\n\nI look into Gamba's tourmaline eyes next, knowing now it's my turn to ask for forgiveness. \"Gamba, I'm\u2014\"\n\n\"Forgiven,\" she says simply, and there's no rancor in her voice. \"I know I'm a stranger to you, and we look nothing alike, but I would really like to be your sister, if you'll let me.\"\n\nI consider the three of us\u2014a Cancrian, an Aquarian, and a Capricorn\u2014and my lips stretch into a smile: We're the family of the future. \"I'd love that.\"\n\nGamba grins, her white teeth bright against her dark skin, and even Mom's mouth curves into a small smile. The first real smile I ever remember seeing on her face.\n\nAnd I wonder if she might be feeling her first flicker of happiness.\n\n\"Rho, I think you have some admirers to greet,\" says Mathias, and I turn to see Pandora smiling beside him. \"There's a cue of calls coming in from every ship\u2014should I patch the first one through?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nAfter fielding congratulatory calls from every Guardian, I cast my gaze around for Hysan and realize he's not in the nose anymore. Mathias is in the pilot's chair, and Pandora sits beside him. I go check out the galley, but I only see Skarlet, Ezra, and Gyzer. The Ariean is arm wrestling Gyzer again, and Ezra is refereeing.\n\nI crack open the door to the largest cabin, and I find Hysan sitting cross-legged on the bed, beaming out a series of screens from his Scan. His hair is as long as when we first met, but he seems larger now, like he takes up more space than I remember. Or maybe the room has just grown smaller.\n\nI slip inside and lock the door behind me.\n\n\"Just checked on Neith, and he's almost at full charge,\" he says without looking away from the holograms he's scanning. Neith is plugged into the ship, since Hysan thinks he can be a useful warrior with his super strength and speed. \"I just had this idea for upgrading the\u2014\"\n\nI place my hand under his chin and tip his face up. \"You're defying my orders, Lord Hysan. I said no more strategizing.\"\n\nIf I'm going to follow Moira's instructions, I need to ground myself in the present. I need to remember how good love can feel. I need Hysan's sunlight to take on so much darkness.\n\nHe blinks, and all the screens vanish at once. \"Apologies, my Zodiac Queen.\"\n\nI smirk and swing a leg around him, pulling myself onto the bed by straddling him. He hooks his hands on my hips and slowly slides them up to my waist.\n\n\"When I spoke to Moira,\" I whisper, his touch making my breaths shallow, \"she said that to tether myself strongly to this plane, I'll need an anchor.\"\n\nHis hands stop at the small of my back, and he frowns a little. \"Rho, you still haven't given me any details about that ritual.\"\n\n\"You don't have to worry. I know what to do.\" I cross my legs behind him and pull myself all the way forward, until my chest is pressed against his and our faces are touching. I feel his body harden beneath me as I whisper, \"You just have to give me a reason to return.\"\n\nHis lips lock with mine, and we rest there. Then his hand hugs my head, and his mouth trails down my chin and neck, his touch igniting my skin. I moan softly, and his mouth meets mine again. He kisses me gently, like he's savoring my taste, the way he did the night I lost my virginity to him.\n\nHis tenderness only makes me want him more, and I slam both hands onto his chest and push him down on the bed. I lean over and kiss him savagely, and his hands reach up to pull off my blue tunic as my fingers work to free him of his golden suit. We're down to our underwear in seconds.\n\nHysan wraps a hand around my lower back and tries to flip me over so he's on top, but I pin his biceps to the bed. \"It's _my_ turn at the helm.\"\n\nDimples dig into his cheeks. \"You sure you can handle this engine?\"\n\nWe both burst into laughter, and when I see his ears are pink with embarrassment, I lean down and kiss him. \"Hmmm . . . maybe just a test ride then,\" I whisper in his ear in a seductive voice, and then my mouth travels slowly down his jawline and neck.\n\nHis body tenses at my touch, his breathing growing labored. I spy his fingers twitching with the itch to take over, but I trust him not to touch me until I've given my consent. And now I'd like for him to trust me back just as completely.\n\n\"You're cruel,\" he groans as I inch my way even more leisurely down the smooth skin of his chest, and the ripples of his abs, and the lower I go, the more I feel his muscles submitting to me, until\u2014\n\nSomeone pounds loudly on the cabin door.\n\nI fall off Hysan and burrow beneath the sheets, my heart racing, and Mathias shouts, \"Hysan! Why is your door locked? We need you up front _now_!\"\n\nHysan curses under his breath.\n\n\" _Are you listening_?\" demands Mathias, who's still hammering on the door. \"Why aren't you answering on your Ring?\"\n\n\"He'll be there!\" I call out.\n\nHysan suddenly rolls on top of me, his body stiff against mine, his green eyes ravenous as they gaze into me. He kisses me with such force that my mouth opens fully for him, and every clenched muscle loosens until I feel like I've dissolved to a puddle of seawater.\n\nAs he pulls away, he says huskily, \"You better come back from all this and finish what you started.\"\n\n# 39\n\n\"WHAT IS THAT?\" I ASK as soon as Hysan and I enter the nose, short of breath and with our suits disheveled. Everyone else is already gathered, and they're staring wide-eyed at the streaks of lightning flashing through the glass\u2014except for Mathias, who's looking back at me.\n\nHis midnight eyes are soft, and his face is paler than usual, and I understand what he's feeling because watching the early stages of his romance with Pandora has hurt me, too. Even if I don't want to admit it.\n\nWe may not be able to affect the past, but the past can still affect us. Mathias and I may have made our choices weeks ago, but our hearts haven't finished paying the price.\n\n\"It's Dark Matter,\" says Hysan, taking over the control screens from him. \"We can't see it, but according to our coordinates, we've just entered the Thirteenth constellation.\"\n\n\"I will guide us,\" says Ophiuchus, leaning forward from his spot on the floor, and I hear a new energy in his deep voice.\n\n\"Mathias, send a message to the other ships to form a line behind us,\" instructs Hysan. \"Tell them they'll need to stick to our exact flight path so we don't risk hitting anything our sensors can't pick up.\"\n\nHysan buries his face in the controls as Ophiuchus provides directions, and Mathias leaves to pass on Hysan's message to the fleet. Pandora is glued to the window, same as Gyzer, Ezra, Skarlet, Gamba, and Mom, so I slip away and follow Mathias out.\n\nHe opens his Wave and transmits the data to all our ships at once, and when he turns to return to the nose, he sees me.\n\nNeither of us says anything, but before it's too late, I break our silence.\n\n\"What do you imagine would have happened if we'd spoken that last morning in the solarium?\" I ask, repeating the question he once asked me.\n\nHis indigo blue irises swirl like whirlpools of the Cancer Sea, and he murmurs, \"Maybe I would have asked you for your name.\"\n\n\"And I would have said, _I'm Rho_.\" I hold out my hand for the Cancrian greeting.\n\n\"Nice to meet you, Rho,\" he says musically as we bump fists. \"I'm Mathias.\"\n\nHis fingers wrap around my hand, and he holds on to it. \"This might sound strange,\" he says, his baritone voice deepening, \"but I've really enjoyed sharing these mornings with you. More than I ever realized.\"\n\nWarmth tickles my face as I channel the girl I was then, and it feels good to finally give her what she most wanted. \"Being around you,\" I whisper, \"makes me feel safe. Your dedication to your routine, the peaceful aura around you, the way you're so comfortable with silence . . . you remind me of home.\"\n\nHis face softens, and he interlocks his fingers with mine. \"Today is my last day of university,\" he says, \"but would it be too forward to ask for your information so we can keep in touch?\"\n\n\"I'd love that,\" I say, and though my face is still warm from the interaction, I feel tears forming in the corners of my eyes.\n\n\"I would have Waved you every day,\" he breathes, his thumb drawing small circles on my hand. \"And as soon as I got to know you, I would have fallen irreversibly in love, and I would have never let you go.\" His midnight eyes are glassy and bright. \"Hysan wouldn't have stood a chance. By the time you met him, our bond would have been unbreakable.\"\n\n_And neither of us would have fallen in love with someone from another House_ , I realize. We would have clung closer to Cancer, and we wouldn't have opened our minds to the change we needed. Our hearts would have stayed strictly Cancrian, rather than expanding to encompass the whole Zodiac.\n\nMathias and I had to fall in love with people different from us to understand that, deep down, we're all the same.\n\nMy eyes fill with so much water that his face blurs. \"You still would have doubted Ophiuchus's existence, while Hysan would have supported me,\" I say with a small laugh, blinking to clear my view. Tears streak down my cheeks. \"And I still would have shut the airlock door to try to protect you,\" I say more seriously. \"Pandora still would have saved you.\"\n\nHis gaze grows distant, and I see the events playing out in his eyes; when he focuses on me again, I know from his defeated expression that my math was right. Whatever we do, we always end up back here.\n\nIt's just our nature.\n\nHe drops my hand, and the warmth in my skin recedes, like the sea's tide pulling away from the shore.\n\nAnd now that it's gone, I identify the feeling.\n\nIt's closure.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nThe Thirteenth House is completely covered in Dark Matter, but Ophiuchus guides us through the pathway created by the Piscenes' Psynergy. He seems to be the only one who can See through the darkness, though I'm willing to wager Aquarius's technology can navigate it.\n\nOur whole fleet lands in the same area because it's where the Thirteenth Guardian directs us to go.\n\n\"The Marad may already have us in its sights,\" says Hysan before we disembark. \"Everyone has to be armed and ready.\"\n\nEvery ship brought stores of Barers and pistols with them, in addition to their House's signature weapon. I stick with just my Barer, and Ophiuchus is the only one who doesn't take any weapon at all.\n\nWhen I step off _'Nox_ , I join thousands of other Zodai who are looking up in bewilderment. The Dark Matter in the atmosphere completely blocks out the sun's rays, so the planet is shrouded in eternal night. The small hole in the atmosphere through which we flew in is the only place where silver starlight is visible, and every now and then it sends tendrils of lightning streaking through the sky.\n\nScientifically, life shouldn't even be possible here\u2014yet the temperature is balmy, and we're breathing fresh air. Only the oxygen tastes slightly different . . . almost like Abyssthe.\n\n_Licorice-flavored air._\n\nSince there's barely any light coming through the blanket of blackness above, this world's illumination comes from the plant life.\n\nWe're surrounded by a massive and seemingly impassable swamp. The wild and overgrown trees are tall and spindly, their limbs crisscrossing with each other, and their leaves glow with silver light, like Ophiuchus's eyes.\n\nThey look like stars hanging from tree trunks.\n\nJust like its Guardian, this planet never died. It got caught between states\u2014not quite part of this world, and not quite part of the next.\n\nWhile the other ships find places to land and more Zodai disembark, I glance at Hysan, who's ogling at everything and for once looking just as mesmerized as the rest of us. \"Guess I finally brought you somewhere you've never been before,\" I say.\n\nHis lips hitch into his centaur smile, and it's like a small sunrise in the midst of an everlasting night.\n\nThen I notice Ophiuchus.\n\nHis wide eyes are taking up his whole face, and he looks smaller somehow. He drops to the earth and touches the loamy soil with his bare hands, the way one would caress a long-lost lover. I feel like I'm intruding, so I turn away to let him have his moment.\n\nIf I had the chance to return to Cancer, I would be on my knees, too.\n\nAs the rest of the army joins us, I notice most people are in their Zodai suits, but some are donning their House's actual warrior uniforms, like the ones worn during the Trinary Axis.\n\nThe Arieans' armor is a bloodred fireproof fabric made from the wool of their House's Rams. It's woven so tightly as to be as impenetrable as the toughest of metals. But the most striking part of their getup are their metal helmets, which have Ram horns sticking out from either side\u2014when coupled with their huge bodies, they look terrifying.\n\nThe helmet is Aries's signature weapon. It's called the Helm, and it provides a polarized, panoramic view of the battlefield and alerts them of incoming attacks or problematic vitals.\n\nA different herd of horned beasts emerges from the swamp, and after a moment I realize it's the Taurians, who are dressed in their own fearsome battlefield regalia. The House's Promisaries wear formfitting olive green uniforms adorned with shoulder epaulets that resemble the horns of a Bull.\n\nI quit scoping out the Houses' getups when General Eurek says, \"We should assemble the Guardians quickly, before the Marad catches up with us.\"\n\nI search for Ophiuchus, and when I spot him tenderly touching a silver leaf, I call out, \"Can you feel the presence of your original crash site?\"\n\nHe turns and strides over to us. \"The whole place is buzzing with Psynergy. It's too busy to locate a particular place.\"\n\nHysan comes closer, frowning, and before he says anything, I say, \"We need to find Sage Ferez. I think I have an idea.\"\n\nEurek dispatches a Major to fetch Ferez from his ship, and when the Capricorn Guardian joins us, I don't waste any time. \"You once told us that uniting the four Cardinal Stones might lead us to the Unity Talisman\u2014but do you think it could also lead us to the Talisman's original landing place?\"\n\n\"A wise theory,\" says the Sage, nodding.\n\n\"My Talisman is built into my ship, so we'll need to do this from _'Nox_.\"\n\nWe follow Hysan inside, and he activates his Stone's Ephemeris in the ship's nose. I switch on the black opal next, and then Eurek and Ferez do the same with theirs. Four star maps overlap with each other, and the four of us close our eyes to Center ourselves, creating a Quorum. Ophiuchus stands in the middle of our group, and we channel his Psynergy to help reconnect him with his birthplace.\n\nAt first I don't sense anything, but then a light begins to glow inside me, like I'm carrying new life in my womb. I feel overwhelmed with compassion and care and concern, like a new mother, and as my body swells, so does my heart, and I realize I'm embodying _Nurture_.\n\nI can sense the presence of Wisdom and Justice and Military might nearby, and as our energies combine, our individual essences are united into a single purpose.\n\n\"I know,\" says Ophiuchus, and I open my eyes. He's staring directly at me. \"I know where we have to go.\"\n\nWe regroup with all the Guardians while the commanders of every troop gather their Zodai. \"Ophiuchus has located his crash site,\" announces Eurek once the Guardians are assembled. \"Report your findings.\"\n\nNeith joins our group and stands by Hysan's side, and the other leaders stare at him.\n\n\"Most weapons won't function here due to this world's different scientific and metaphysical laws,\" says Ferez, breaking the uncomfortable silence. \"We've tested the Shrill, and it won't sound in this air.\"\n\n\"Bind won't disburse properly in this atmosphere,\" says Hysan, and he directs himself to the Leonine and Scorp Guardians, who are scowling at him.\n\n\"Our Veils aren't camouflaging us here,\" says the interim Virgo Guardian. \"This air won't accommodate invisibility collars.\"\n\nVirgos fight with the Veil and Thorn: They vanish and sneak up on their targets with an elegant and small-but-deadly dagger called a Thorn. It's often dipped in poison, sometimes meant to paralyze and sometimes to kill.\n\n\"The Scarabs work just fine,\" says Skiff proudly.\n\n\"Our Swaths won't function without solar energy,\" adds the Guardian of Leo, Holy Leader Aurelius. Their weapon is a sword with a handle covered in microscopic mirrors that traps rays from the sun and produces a focused beam of solar energy that consumes whatever it passes through.\n\n\"The Tremble can't produce earthquakes in this soil,\" reports Fernanda. \"So what does that leave us with for protection?\"\n\n\"Everyone has been trained using a Barer.\" I turn to look at Rubi and Brynda, who are standing beside me. \"Gemini and Sagittarius's weapons will also be fine. We'll have to defend ourselves with what we can.\"\n\n\"Remember that if we're encountering technology constraints, odds are so are they,\" Hysan points out. \"Aquarius's technique was sophisticated, but this place is primal and untamed, down to the very particles of air. Their Veils likely won't work here either, and the Marad will be limited to their Murmurs, which we can fend off with the shield produced by our Barers.\"\n\nBrynda faces me. \"Rho, do you know where you're going and what you have to do when you get there?\"\n\nI nod and look to Eurek. \"Should the whole army march there as one?\"\n\n\"We'd be leading the Marad right to you,\" he counters. \"The best strategy is to split up into factions so they don't know where you are. Remember they're only here to get Ophiuchus\u2014and they win by either taking him away from us or waiting out two more days until the portal fully opens. The more confusion we create, the better.\"\n\n\"Then we'll divide into teams,\" I say, \"and we'll stay in contact through our Rings. If anyone needs reinforcements, just call out to the Collective Conscious. And if we close the portal, we'll send the alert to the rest of you so we can regroup and get out of here.\"\n\n\"I'm on Rho's team,\" says Rubi, but Eurek shakes his head.\n\n\"Guardians are all targets. We should split up.\"\n\nHysan takes my hand, and I know he's coming with me no matter what the Ariean General has to say about it.\n\nWe disband to regroup with our teams, but before we can do anything, an army ten times larger than ours creeps out from the swamp's trees, like they've been waiting for us to corral ourselves.\n\nThey're all in white with porcelain masks, and they move with a confidence that feels like they're already native to this land. Their Murmurs are trained on us, and even though our Zodai shout and lift their weapons, nobody shoots. The standoff seems to be because the Marad is expecting something. Or someone.\n\nAnd then a figure in all white steps forward through their ranks, the only one not wearing a mask.\n\nIt's _Blaze_.\n\n# 40\n\nHIS FACE IS A KNIFE blade to my gut.\n\nHysan's hand squeezes mine, but I can't focus on anything but Nishi's killer.\n\n\"My name is Blaze Jansun, and I am the leader of the Tomorrow Party,\" he says, his voice amplified. \"I've come to bring you _hope_. If you let down your weapons and join us, we will not harm you, and you may come with us through the portal to discover a new universe.\"\n\nSilence meets his words, and a few more people in white, also without masks, come up beside him, and I see Traxon and Mallie and Barg and Geneva and June in her hover-chair\u2014all the people I met and liked from his Party. Blaze learned well from Aquarius: He's baiting me with empathy.\n\n\"All we ask is that you hand Ophiuchus over to us,\" he goes on, \"and you will be saved.\"\n\nThe Thirteenth Guardian is surrounded by a platoon of Arieans, but I can see his face through their ranks, and he looks like he's resigned to any fate. Just as he struggled between his conscience and his love for Aquarius, I wonder if now his loyalty to his people will keep him from saving the Zodiac.\n\nIt seems impossible to ever know what side he's on.\n\nAs I pan across the familiar faces next to Blaze's, I know that just like all the Zodai here, these teens don't deserve to die. They've been manipulated\u2014we all have. But there's a better weapon than violence for undercutting lies.\n\nTraxon was right.\n\nIt's time we told the truth.\n\nI let go of Hysan's hand and step forward into the empty space between our army and Blaze's. \"The sun going dark isn't inevitable!\" I shout to them.\n\nMy voice isn't amplified but it's still strong, and the Party members look to me. \"Trax, Mallie, Barg, Geneva, June\u2014you guys aren't fighting for our universe's survival but its destruction. I know you're afraid to trust that because Aquarius was so convincing and you're afraid of staying and dying, but if you don't believe me, you'll be wiping out our entire solar system!\"\n\nHysan is already next to me again, a pistol in his hand, and Mathias and Pandora come up on my other side with their blue-bladed Barer swords out. The three of them scan everyone around us like they're ready to defend my life with their own.\n\n\"You have a choice,\" I go on, avoiding Blaze and addressing the Marad soldiers and Party members. \"You can trust your fear, or you can have some faith. As someone who's trusted her fears her whole life, I can tell you it doesn't lead anywhere good. To the Marad soldiers, I myself hail from your lineage. My mother is a Riser. My mother's mother was an imbalanced Riser. Ophiuchus, your own Guardian, stands with us. I know you've been wronged, but you don't have to do this\u2014we can choose to be better than the generations that came before us.\"\n\nThe same silence that met Blaze's words meets mine, and my shoulders slump in defeat. But then the guy next to Blaze begins to move forward.\n\nTrax, with his shaggy mane of hair and pierced eyebrows, steps across the divide. When he's in front of me, he says, \"I'm sorry. I was just tired of the lies . . . and I thought I was finally hearing some truth.\"\n\n\"I understand,\" I say, and he hands me something small and shaped like a scorpion. The Echo Stan stole from Link on Scorpio.\n\nI take the device in my hand, and it reminds me of my brother's pluck and protection and sacrifice. And touching this piece of proof that he lived and fought once makes me feel stronger. \"Thank you,\" I whisper.\n\nHe nods and stands beside Hysan, who rests a comforting hand on the Leonine's shoulder. Traxon's face immediately burns bright red.\n\nI look over to the other Party members beside Blaze, hoping they'll follow Trax's lead. But no one else comes over.\n\nOn our side, people from every House have now stepped up beside me. Brynda, Rubi, Eurek, Fernanda, Ezra, Gyzer, Mom, Gamba, Skarlet, Engle, Numen, Qima, Hexel, Jox, and more, until we're one indivisible, colorful mass of Zodai from across the universe. And from this gesture, it's clear that everyone in our army is willing to give their life for the Zodiac.\n\nJust as Nishi did.\n\nThis isn't hate: We're fighting with _love_.\n\n\"Rho, this is silly,\" says Blaze, like we're old friends having a private conversation and not enemy generals meeting on the battlefield. \"You're going to get everyone here killed. We outnumber you ten to one. You can at least save these people\u2014it'd be such a waste to let these Zodai die just because you can't let go of the past.\"\n\nOne of the Marad soldiers steps up and rips off his mask, revealing yellow eyes I'll never forget.\n\nMy brother's murderer.\n\n\"You're testing our patience,\" he says, only he's talking to Blaze. \"This is our home now. That was the deal we struck with Aquarius. Whether you people make it through your portal isn't our concern\u2014this planet will survive, and so will we. We want you _all_ off our land, same way you wanted Risers off yours. So get your guy and screw off.\"\n\nAryll doesn't even care enough for his own Guardian to use his name. Then he turns to me, but he doesn't raise his Murmur yet. He doesn't have to\u2014not when his brethren are already pointing theirs.\n\n_\"But Rho is mine.\"_\n\nHysan and Mathias block me from view with their bodies, and it looks like things are about to get violent\u2014when suddenly, there's a shuffling noise on both sides of our armies, and we all turn to look.\n\nA collection of strange creatures slithers out from the swamp. They walk on four legs and make raspy sounds that almost seem like part of a language, except it's unintelligible. There are enough of them that they surround both our armies, and the Marad doesn't seem quite as sure what to do\u2014some aim their Murmurs at them and some keep them pointed at us.\n\n\"What are those?\" I hear Brynda ask.\n\nA few of the creatures start rising up on their hind legs, revealing humanlike bodies, and they lift their faces to stare at us. They have skin just like Ophiuchus.\n\n_Holy Helios._\n\nThis world's population didn't die out\u2014it mutated over the millennia.\n\n_These are the last Ophiuchans._\n\nAt the sight of his people, Ophiuchus springs out from his hiding place amid the Ariean Majors and moves desperately toward the creatures.\n\n\"KILL HIM!\" Blaze shouts, and every Murmur suddenly points to him. Then everything descends into chaos.\n\nI'm jostled among the Zodai as both armies start shooting at each other, and the Ophiuchan creatures jump into the fray, attacking with their sharp jaws and claws. Zodai or Marad, we all look like threats to them, and they don't differentiate.\n\nI feel Hysan pulling me with him, and I realize Eurek, Neith, Mathias, Skarlet, and Gyzer are ahead of us, and they're pushing a heavy weight in front of them. It's Ophiuchus\u2014they need their combined strength to force him away from the creatures he's so desperate to touch.\n\nPandora appears on my other side, and she's already glowing with the blue shield from her Barer. I don't see many others shielding themselves\u2014most of our Zodai probably don't have enough focus to pull it on while they fight.\n\n\"Rho, raise your shield,\" Hysan instructs me, and I reach down for the electricity in my hand and the Psynergy in the air, and I breathe in deeply as I bind them together in my mind. Then I pull the energy across my body. I'm sure I'm leaving some holes, but it's the best I can do.\n\nBrynda suddenly joins us, her wrist raised as she walks backwards, shooting at the soldiers coming after our group. Bodies are dropping so quickly that I sway, dizzy amid so much death, and Hysan holds me tighter.\n\nRubi and Ezra and Engle and other Zodai join Brynda, until there's a wall of people protecting Ophiuchus and me from the Marad as we run to put an end to this.\n\nA loud explosion distracts everyone as an Ariean ship is blown up. \"Duck!\" shouts Brynda, and we all hit the ground as flaming pieces of metal fly everywhere\u2014but the flames die quickly; whatever brand of oxygen this is can't sustain fire for long.\n\nHysan pulls me to my feet right as a maskless Marad soldier breaks through the mob, gunning for us at top speed.\n\nAryll goes straight for Brynda, who's causing the most damage to his ranks. She raises her Arclight, but she's out of bullets, and without giving her time to reload, he tackles her.\n\nHe loses his Murmur as they roll on the ground, and Hysan and I tear through the throng of fighters to reach her. Hysan shouts at the top of his lungs to all the Zodai nearby: _\"Help Brynda NOW!\"_\n\nBut even as we sprint, I know we're not going to make it. Brynda looks like she's been dazed by the fall, because when Aryll lifts his head, she doesn't get up. Rubi is closest to them, and she's running with her Barer's shield on.\n\nThe Geminin Guardian is still a few feet away when she raises her gun to shoot Aryll, but he yanks down on a masked soldier's sleeve, using him as a human shield, and the bullet lodges in the soldier's chest.\n\nAryll tosses the dead Marad soldier at Rubi, and then he draws a dagger from his waistband and turns to stab Brynda.\n\nBut Rubi easily dodges the body, and she uses her suit's levitation boots to launch herself at Aryll's head. She yanks on his hair, and he shrieks and raises his blade to stab her, but she flies off him too quickly.\n\nWhile the diminutive Guardian buzzes around Aryll and distracts him, Hysan, Pandora, and I drag Brynda away from the chaos. I've no idea where Mathias and the others have taken Ophiuchus, but I hope they're safe. Once we get away from Aryll, we'll locate them.\n\nEzra charges toward her Guardian, leading a platoon of Sagittarians, and she shouts to us, \"Go! We've got her!\"\n\nRelieved, I turn around to help Rubi, who's half running, half flying toward us, her copper curls bouncing wildly. I don't see Aryll, but there's no time to stick around and search for him.\n\n\"Rubi!\" I call when she's within shouting distance. \"The Sagittarians will protect Brynda, but we have to go\u2014\"\n\nHer eyes grow wide, like she's seeing a threat behind us, and I wheel around in fear of what I'll find. But when I hear Hysan shouting \" _NO_!\" I realize what's happening.\n\nI turn back just as Rubi falls, the dagger's black handle sticking out from her back.\n\n# 41\n\n\"RUBI, NO!\" I CRY OUT, my voice breaking as blood spreads through her orange fabric like spilled paint.\n\nAryll stands too far away, and through the smoke and bodies and flashes of blue light, I see he's smiling. Then he melts into the mob behind him, growing more dangerous by his disappearance.\n\nA swarm of Dreamcasters descends on their fallen Guardian, and I take one last longing look at Rubi\u2014who gave her life to spare Brynda's\u2014and as tears spill from my eyes, Hysan and Pandora take my arms and pull me away.\n\nThe three of us are shielded as we dodge the chaos of fighters, and I'm startled by the viciousness of the Ophiuchan creatures, who are taking down people in packs and eviscerating them with their ferocious jaws. The corpses of Zodai and Marad Risers lie side by side on the battlefield.\n\nFear must be the most destructive power in the universe.\n\nIt births monsters.\n\nHysan uses his Scan to illuminate a pathway through the tangled trees, and their branches scratch at our uniforms as we burrow as deep as we can into the silvery swamp. When the noise of the violence fades, new sounds take over.\n\nThe high-pitched buzzing and chirping of unknown insects is underscored by the drone of deep and unfamiliar animal calls, all of it muffled and echoing, like we're underwater. I touch one of the large silver tree leaves, and it's the strangest texture I've ever felt: It feels like water, but it's a solid, and when I dip my finger in it, my Ring buzzes. This whole planet is living, breathing Psynergy.\n\n_Rho? Are you safe?_\n\nI touch my Ring at the sound of Mathias's voice.\n\n_We're in the swamp, and we're fine. Pandora is with me,_ I add quickly, to ease his mind. _So is Hysan. How are you?_\n\n_We're safe, too. We have Ophiuchus, but it's proving difficult to get him to stay with us\u2014he's desperate to reconnect with his people, and I'm worried they'll kill him if he gets too close._\n\n_How will we find each other?_ I ask.\n\n_Meet me in the Collective Conscious, and I'll guide you to us, the way I came to you in the Aquarian palace._\n\nI turn to Hysan to let him know the plan. His brow is furrowed, and I realize he's also in conversation with someone. When his gaze refocuses, his eyes look pitifully sad. \"We've lost two thousand already.\"\n\nPandora and I hang our heads for a moment in respect of the fallen. Hysan had the idea to create necklaces with trackers, like the one Sirna gave me, to keep track of our soldiers. Only in place of a pink nar-clam pearl, Hysan's version holds a pulse reader that transmits Zodai's vitals to the people we left behind at the International Village.\n\n\"Mathias and the others are safe,\" I say, breaking the silence, and I see Pandora exhale. \"We need to get to Ophiuchus so we can end this. Mathias is going to guide me to his location through the Psy, so follow me.\"\n\nI shut my eyes and twist my Ring, and I enter the solar system of souls. I see a light a great distance away, and instead of moving toward it, I feel like the world is moving around me.\n\nWhen the light jolts into me, I open my eyes with a gasp\u2014and I see Mathias's face in front of me, his blue eyes like twin midnight skies.\n\nI reach out and touch his cheek, which has a bloody scratch on it. \"Is this real?\" I whisper breathlessly.\n\n\"I'm here,\" he whispers back, resting his hand over mine.\n\nI hear movement behind me, and I turn to see a panting Hysan and Pandora surfacing from the swamp, and I realize we're standing in some kind of crater that looks like it was once a body of water.\n\nMathias dashes over to Pandora and wraps her in his arms, while Hysan comes up to me. \"I've never seen anyone but Neith run that fast,\" he says, his voice choppy.\n\n\"I was running?\" I ask in awe. \"I didn't feel anything!\"\n\n\"Your connection to the stars is so strong that when you gave yourself over to Mathias's Psynergy, it pulled you forward at such a brisk pace that Pandora and I could barely keep up.\"\n\n\" _Where is the location where you first fell_?\" I hear Eurek shouting.\n\nHysan and I run over to where the Ariean Guardian and Ophiuchus are facing off. Gathered in a protective circle around them are Neith, Gyzer, Gamba, Mom, Skarlet, Traxon, Engle, Numen, Qima, and half a dozen other Zodai I don't know.\n\n\"Ezra isn't answering me!\" says Gyzer the instant he sees me.\n\n\"She's fine, she's with Brynda,\" I say quickly, and his whole face slackens with relief. \"What's happening here?\" I demand, looking from Ophiuchus to Eurek.\n\n\"He won't tell us where to go,\" says Eurek angrily. \"We're running out of time and Zodai, and he still hasn't made up his damn mind what side he's on!\"\n\nOphiuchus glares defiantly at me, like he's bracing himself for my outburst. But I don't say anything. I just approach him slowly, the way one would a wild animal, and I lay a gentle hand on his arm. Then I close my eyes, and I channel the Psynergy surrounding us until I've penetrated his consciousness.\n\n_You may be a star,_ I whisper into his mind, _but like Aquarius, you've been given the power of choice: You can be our light or our darkness. You can save the Zodiac or doom it. You can be the monster the Original Guardians invented . . . or you can reclaim your place as the Guardian of Unity and teach us what it means to stand together_.\n\nWhen I pull away from him, he opens his eyes, and his starlight bathes my face as he whispers, \"This is the place.\"\n\nSo he did bring us to the right location.\n\nHe rests a hand on my arm now, and my heart is suddenly infused with emotions that aren't my own. My eyes shut, and I see how ever since the armada he's been helping us, even though his heart has questioned his actions. He's acted on his faith in Unity, though his fear has made him doubt his path. His fear of us and how hateful we can be as a species.\n\nBut for the first time, seeing new generations of Zodai from across the Houses come together like this, he has hope.\n\n\"Spread out,\" commands Eurek to the others. \"Rho and Ophiuchus are going to enter the astral plane and close the portal. We need to buy them all the time necessary.\"\n\nHysan turns to me, and he cups my face in his hands. \"You're my hero,\" he says, and he kisses me gently\u2014like it's only a short goodbye and I'll be right back.\n\nBut when it's over, his lips linger on mine for a moment, and he breathes, \"I'm so proud of you, Rho. Come back to me, please.\"\n\nI circle my arms around his neck and hug him, holding him close to me, and I whisper, \"Meeting you is the best thing that's ever happened to me. And I'm not saying that because I'm not coming back\u2014I'm saying it because I am. We have too much unfinished business.\"\n\nWhen we let go, I turn to face Ophiuchus. I don't say bye to Mom or Mathias because I intend to come back. I refuse to let this be the end of the Zodiac.\n\nOphiuchus walks away to the center of the crater, and I understand this wasn't a body of water\u2014this is where he crashed as a star when he landed on this planet. When he gets to what could be the midpoint, he digs into the moist soil with his bare hands, until I hear his nails scrape against something solid.\n\nThen he closes his eyes to Center himself, and standing across from him I do the same. Within seconds, I feel my soul completely leaving my body and accessing the astral plane. Only when I open my eyes, I'm still standing in the same place.\n\nI watch Ophiuchus step out of his skin, like a hologram, and I leave my physical shell, too. I turn around and scan everyone around us\u2014they don't seem to see our ghosts. They're still staring between our frozen bodies and our surroundings, making sure no one finds us.\n\nThe Thirteenth Guardian's skin alternates from dark to light as he comes closer, his Dark Matter hair falling into his panoramic eyes, the silver irises bright and alive. _Are you ready?_\n\nI nod.\n\nHe closes his eyes in concentration, and he begins to tug on the Psynergy from his land. I feel the pull immediately, and I see that Hysan and Eurek do, too, because they clutch their chests. After a while, Mom and Gamba do the same, until all the Zodai around us can feel the yank on the Psynergy they're breathing.\n\nThe air molecules start shaking around us, like an earthquake in the sky, and I hold tightly to my own Psynergy so I don't lose my Center.\n\nSuddenly I hear scratching noises, and I look around to see the Ophiuchans crawling out from the swamp and approaching us slowly. My friends all gather closer to our bodies, facing the creatures with their Barers out, their bodies curved inward from the pain in their chests.\n\nBut the Ophiuchans keep slithering forward until they're standing next to the Zodai, watching us. And all at once, they close their eyes.\n\nSuddenly I feel an influx of Psynergy in the astral plane that blows me back a few steps. Ophiuchus opens his eyes and sees his people, who've come to donate their Psynergy to him.\n\nI'm shocked to see tears streaming down Ophiuchus's snakeskin cheeks, and I feel him growing stronger in the Psy, until the Psynergy swirls around us like a hurricane, and at last he begins to glow like a true star.\n\nThis is where my part comes in.\n\nI take a deep breath and step forward. Then I take his hand, and I begin to pull in his Psynergy. Once it filters through me, the Psynergy is no longer trapped on Ophiuchus, and it's free to return to Pisces.\n\nIt feels like I'm overdosing on Abyssthe.\n\nFeelings and sensations that have nothing to do with the present begin to pass through me, and my mind is hit again and again and again with pieces of people's lives, like I've inhaled the stardust that makes up existence, and now the whole universe is being processed through my brain. If not for Hysan anchoring me\u2014if not for my longing for a life with him and my hope to see him again\u2014I don't know that I could hang on.\n\nI think only of his golden face as I'm racked with phantom pains and emotions, and I try to hang on to who I am while the energy of others stampedes through me.\n\nThe transferring process seems to be speeding up, and the whirring of Psynergy grows too intense until I can't catch my breath, and my heart is beating too fast, and I fall forward to my knees.\n\nOphiuchus draws his hand away from mine, and as the dizziness ends, I open my eyes.\n\n_Did . . . did we finish?_ I ask, breathless.\n\n_Almost,_ he says, his eyes shining brighter than I've ever seen them, like pure starlight.\n\nI look up, but the Dark Matter is still in the sky, and the Psynergy is swirling around us. _It's not working_.\n\n_Because there's one step left,_ he says, and then he falls to his knees, too, and looks at me, his whole being glowing with beautiful silver light.\n\nDread fills me so that I can't even speak. I've suspected this, but Moira didn't say, and I was hoping it wouldn't come to it.\n\n_Rho, you must kill me._\n\n_No_ , I say, and I get up and take a step back.\n\n_It's the only way. The death of a star opens the portal, and the death of a star closes it. The same release of energy. You must do it now\u2014it must be timed with the release of Psynergy._\n\n_I\u2014I can't. I've never killed anyone\u2014_\n\n_Please. You promised me._\n\n_But when I promised, I hated you. I blamed you for the deaths of my dad and Mathias, and now I know the truth._\n\nIt's more than that, though. Ophiuchus is the only person who truly knows me. He's seen all of me, my soul and my darkness. He understands both because he's made of light and shadow. And he started out just like me\u2014hopeful and warm, a champion of Unity among the earthlings. He deserves a chance to live among his people. A chance to tell his tale to the worlds. A chance to redeem himself.\n\n_Don't you care what this will do to me?_ I ask, echoing his old question.\n\n_It will keep you honest,_ he says gently. _I'm helping you keep your word to the stars. There's no other way, and we're out of time._\n\nI close my eyes and fall out of my Center.\n\nWhen I open them again, I'm standing in front of Ophiuchus, and he's on his knees before me, just as he was in the astral plane. Only now we're back on reality.\n\nWith everyone watching us, I make a fist and activate my Barer. An aqua blade shoots out from the handle, and I choke as I whisper, \"I promise the Zodiac will know your story . . . and your people will never be abandoned again.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" he says softly, and then I steel my muscles, fighting against the nausea and clamminess trying to take me over.\n\nAnd I plunge the sword into his heart.\n\n# 42\n\nTHE ZODAI AROUND US GASP as Ophiuchus falls forward, and Traxon cries out in horror to see his beloved Thirteenth Guardian vanquished once and for all. I drop to my knees, sobs erupting from deep within me, because something inside me just died, too.\n\nHysan's arms are the only thing tethering me to life. He kisses my hair, my forehead, my wet cheeks, but I can't stop crying. \"I'm so sorry,\" he whispers, understanding better than probably any other Zodai here how much this act of violence just shredded my soul.\n\nThe Dark Matter begins to grow less opaque, like a day that's dawning in extreme slow motion, and we know it worked.\n\nThe portal's window has closed, and the darkness that stained the Zodiac millennia ago, with Ophiuchus's betrayal, is receding. The Thirteenth House is back\u2014and that means the Psynergy is being returned to Pisces, renewing that world, as well.\n\nThe Zodiac lives to see another day.\n\nSuddenly everyone starts cheering, the delayed reaction unanimous, and Hysan and I stand up. I watch as Mathias hugs Pandora, and Skarlet hugs Eurek, and Quima hugs Numen, and Mom hugs Gamba. The Ophiuchans are watching the lightening sky overhead like they've never seen anything like it; then, without warning, they scatter back to the swamp's darkness, like the light is a threat to them.\n\n\"This change will affect this species and this world's topography,\" I say, sniffling. \"They'll need our help.\"\n\n\"And they'll get it,\" says Hysan, wiping my tears with his thumbs.\n\n\"It's over,\" says Eurek, his white smile bright against the dark air. \"Wandering Star, it was an honor\u2014\"\n\n\"Are we celebrating something?\"\n\nI spin to see Aryll strutting over from the swamp. \"Why wasn't I invited?\"\n\nBefore his question is even out, a swarm of Marad soldiers charge at my friends, and Eurek shouts, \"Activate your shields!\" right as the Murmurs begin shooting blue light. He, Mathias, Skarlet, and Gyzer rush forward to meet the soldiers, and soon almost everyone is battling someone\u2014but not Hysan and me.\n\nNobody interferes with us as Aryll casually saunters over, and Hysan grips my hand in anticipation.\n\nThen Blaze comes roaring into the clearing, his eyes rimmed red and his face set in a scowl. \"WHAT DID YOU DO?\" he booms at me. \"YOU'VE RUINED OUR ONLY CHANCE!\"\n\n\"It's over,\" says Hysan as his former friend joins Aryll.\n\n\"It's not over until that bitch is dead,\" says Blaze, glaring at me.\n\n\"You're not touching her.\" Hysan's voice is low and deadly, a darkness rising in him that I've only glimpsed a few times before.\n\n\"He doesn't have to,\" says Aryll merrily. \"That's what this is for.\"\n\nHe raises his wrist, and I recognize the black band\u2014it's a Scarab. \"I got this especially for Rho, so she can experience the pain she put me through.\"\n\nHysan tugs on my arm, and we start running. I try to concentrate on keeping my shield up, even though it won't protect me against the Scarab's poison\u2014the Barer can only deflect technological attacks.\n\nSomething white suddenly collides with Hysan, and we drop each other's hands as we fall to the ground. I look up to see a Marad soldier wrestling with him, and as they struggle, Blaze rushes over, lacking his usual swagger.\n\nI have no time to defend myself as his hand closes around my neck, and he lifts me off the dirt. But before he can shatter my throat, a fist blows into the side of his head.\n\nBlaze is blasted back ten feet, and I drop to the ground.\n\n\"Are you okay, Rho?\" asks Neith, offering me a hand and pulling me up.\n\n\"Now I am,\" I say, my throat sore. I search for Hysan. He's fighting off two Marad soldiers at once, and I start to run to him, but Neith won't let go of my arm.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Rho, but I've been programmed to protect you and Ophiuchus at all costs. Even if the price is Hysan's life.\"\n\n\" _What_?\" I whirl around to look at him, and I see tears in his eyes. He's struggling against the directive, but he can't defy it. He's a machine.\n\nPandora runs over to me, still shielded by her Barer. \"Mathias is helping,\" she assures me, and sure enough I look over to see that Mathias has materialized at Hysan's side, and when they've fought off the soldiers, they run over to us.\n\n\"Hysan, order Neith to stop protecting me!\" I demand.\n\n\"Rho, I can't\u2014\"\n\n\"Hysan, _please_! We're all putting our lives on the line here. He deserves to make his own choices. You can't control all our destinies.\"\n\nHe sighs and looks into Neith's eyes, beaming something out from his Scan. After a moment, the android's shoulders sag with relief. \"Thank you,\" he says to me.\n\n\"We have to help,\" I say, seeing some of my friends battling up to three Marad soldiers at a time. Mom, Gyzer, Skarlet, and Eurek can hold their own, but Engle, Gamba, Qima, and Numen are struggling.\n\nI run into the fray, and the others follow. The Marad are no longer fighting with their Murmurs because the Zodai are all shielded, so most have resorted to hand-to-hand combat, though some carry daggers or pistols.\n\nI force a shield around me, and I make a fist until I've grown a set of electric brass knuckles, and then I come up behind one of the soldiers fighting with Gamba and land an electric blow into his unprotected neck. He falls immediately.\n\nI run and do the same with one of the three soldiers Engle is fending off, and when I turn, I'm face-to-face with Mallie of Aquarius.\n\nShe raises a pistol.\n\n\"Mallie, do you even know what you're fighting for?\" I ask as she cocks the gun.\n\nHer eyes look glassy and lost, and her suit is covered in dirt and blood. She has no idea what she's doing, but she's given up so much of her soul to this cause that she can't stop now.\n\n\"Sorry,\" she says, a tear falling from her eye, and she fires.\n\nMy whole body hits the ground, and it takes me a moment to realize I wasn't shot\u2014I was shoved. I look up to see a dark-skinned woman wearing Cancrian blue disarming Mallie and knocking her out with the butt of her own gun. Then Sirna turns and offers me a hand.\n\n\"You sure took your time getting here,\" I say, grinning as she pulls me up.\n\n\"Mind if I apologize later, Holy Mother?\" she asks as bullets sail over our heads.\n\n\"Sounds good!\"\n\nWe race through the chaos, and I'm relieved to see only a few Marad soldiers are still fighting\u2014we've beaten most of them back . . . or worse. Then I see the fallen Zodai on the ground. Numen. Qima. _Traxon._\n\nBefore I can mourn their deaths, I notice that Mom and Gamba are outnumbered, and I point them out to Sirna. \"Can you help my family?\"\n\nShe nods and immediately goes, while I look around to see who else needs help, and I spy Hysan's golden figure racing over. \"Are you okay?\" he asks, and I nod, pulling him into a tight hug.\n\n\"We need to get back to the ships,\" I say.\n\n\"Let's get\u2014\"\n\n\"Now where were we before that rude interruption?\"\n\nAryll appears behind us, the Scarab on his wrist aimed at me. \"I believe I was going to share some empathy with Rho. But I had a better thought.\"\n\nHysan shields my body with his, and Aryll laughs. \"You really are a mind reader! That's exactly what I was thinking. To kill a Cancrian properly, first you must take out her heart.\"\n\n_He's going to shoot Hysan._\n\nI wrap my arms around him and try to push him out of the way, but Hysan is too strong, and he won't let me. \"I'm sorry, Rho,\" he says, blocking me from Aryll's view.\n\nThen he turns his head slightly in my direction and shouts one final word at me: _\"RUN!\"_\n\n\"NO!\" I hug him tightly as Aryll presses down to shoot\u2014but something huge soars in front of Hysan right as the poisonous dart flies out.\n\n\"NEITH!\" shouts Hysan as the android falls before us.\n\n\"He's okay\u2014\" I start to say, then I remember Scarab poison renders technology useless. Neith's mouth is open, his eye twitches, and smoke comes off his Kartex skin.\n\nI fix my eyes on Aryll and start walking toward him. \"You're dead,\" I growl, but he doesn't bother to raise his Scarab. He doesn't look scared at all. He looks amused.\n\n\"Oh, Rho,\" he says when I'm just a few feet away. \"You're just so . . . adorable.\"\n\nI raise my Barer in the shape of a sword.\n\nHysan springs over, and even though his expression is broken, I can see that he won't let Aryll hurt me.\n\n_\"Mathias!\"_\n\nAt the sound of Pandora's piercing scream, Hysan and I look away. A Marad soldier has injured Mathias's right arm, and he can't raise his Barer. Pandora leaps in front of him, and I turn to Hysan desperately. \"GO!\"\n\nHe looks from me to Aryll like he's going to disagree, and I say, \"Hysan, _trust me_!\"\n\nAnd he does.\n\nWhen he runs to help Mathias, I face Aryll again.\n\n\"That is some impressive pet training,\" he says, his yellow eyes dancing. \"You'll have to show me that trick sometime.\"\n\nI raise my electric sword. \"Let's do this.\"\n\n\"You think you're so dark!\" Aryll laughs at me as I approach. \"All because you lost some people and had a few nightmares?\"\n\nHe pulls out a dagger that looks like the one he used to kill Rubi. \"You're not dark, Rho. You only dream of darkness.\" His voice drops to a whisper, like he's sharing a secret. \"True dark dwellers dream of _light_.\"\n\nHe raises his dagger to stab me, but I dodge him. Then I shove my sword forward, but he dodges it, too.\n\n\"Your real name is Grey Gowan,\" I say as we circle each other. \"You were born on Capricorn. You had pale skin and black eyes and you were thirteen when you started shifting for the first time.\"\n\n\"That's a pretty story,\" he says, flashing his sharp teeth in a cruel smirk. \"But do you really think you can play on emotions that aren't there?\"\n\n\"You left behind a Snow Globe for your family, and Ferez found it. That's why you didn't like being on Capricorn when we were there. Some part of you realized you were home.\"\n\n\"I'm home _now_ ,\" he says, and there's an edge in his voice that proves he's not as indifferent as he claims. \"And I'd say it's time you went home, too\u2014and reunited with your brother.\"\n\nHe raises the dagger just as a flash of blond hair comes up behind him, and Aryll freezes as Mom presses a pistol to his temple.\n\n\"A family reunion!\" he says gleefully. \"Too bad there are no Grace men left to rescue you\u2014\"\n\nMom fires.\n\nBlood gushes everywhere as Aryll's head explodes. I recoil in shock as blood sprays my face and uniform, and I stare at Mom aghast.\n\nThere's no emotion or hesitation on her face. There's only the feral look she wore when she killed the Maw that attacked Stanton. And now she's taken out the beast that murdered him.\n\n\" _Mom_ ,\" I gasp, my hand clutching my chest. \"Thank you.\"\n\nHer face softens. \"Rho\u2014\"\n\nA blade suddenly bursts through her chest.\n\n\"MOM!\" I shout as her eyes fly open in horror. The metal withdraws, and she falls into my arms, blood spurting out of her wound.\n\nWe drop to the ground, and I stare into her pallid face, her bottomless blue eyes fading fast. \"No, please, hang on,\" I say, my tears dropping onto her. \"Please don't go, _please. . . .\"_\n\nBut her death is instantaneous\u2014the blade went right through her heart\u2014and I look up to see Blaze holding the bloody sword that killed her.\n\n\"Oh, Rho,\" he says, his face pinched in faux pain. \"My _deepest_ condolences about your mom.\"\n\n# 43\n\nTHE BLOODY POINT OF BLAZE'S sword slides under my chin and tips my face up. \"On your feet,\" he commands, and I rest Mom on the ground and rise.\n\nI can barely see Blaze through the field of red that fills my vision. He's murdered my mother and Nishi. I don't care what Hysan would say\u2014Blaze doesn't deserve my mercy.\n\nHe deserves death.\n\n\"I'm not sure what I want to do with you,\" he says, tilting his head, the cold metal still touching my chin. \"You monopolized Aquarius's attention. You impeded my plans to leave this universe. And now you've stolen my power.\"\n\n\"Sounds to me like you're a sore loser.\"\n\n\"Well I'm still standing, so it sounds to me like the game isn't over.\"\n\n\"Put down your sword, Blaze.\"\n\nHysan's voice is void of light. He strides over to us and stands beside me, equally covered in blood and dirt and gashes. \"It's over.\"\n\nMathias comes, too, Pandora propping him up since he's injured. Sirna also approaches, and then Eurek and Gyzer and Skarlet and Engle, and other Zodai I don't know. They all form a circle around Blaze, whose sword is still touching my chin.\n\nIn the distance, I hear a girl's voice calling out for her mother, but I ignore it.\n\n\"Put down your sword,\" commands Eurek.\n\nBlaze looks desperate but unwilling to submit.\n\n\"You're all fools! You know the Zodiac won't change. It'll be just like after the Trinary Axis\u2014this will be another war for the history texts that will start out as a cautionary tale until someone gets the itch for some excitement and starts riling people up again. Aquarius was a visionary\u2014he understood that we need to start anew! You're just recycling the same bad foundation\u2014\"\n\n\"Drop your weapon,\" Hysan repeats, and there's so much strength and power in his voice that Blaze stops speaking.\n\nHis head hinges down, and to my surprise he drops the sword tip to the ground. And I hear the girl again, calling my mom's name.\n\nI start to turn to go to her, right as Blaze raises the sword again and moves in to drive it into my heart. I have no time to run or defend myself as the blade flies toward me\u2014\n\nA metal dart shoots into Blaze's throat.\n\nBeside me, Hysan is holding the small golden gun he used to stop Neith on Pisces. Blood fountains from the Leonine's neck as he falls facedown on the ground, the sword still in his hand.\n\n_It's finished._\n\n\" _MOM_!\" calls Gamba for the third time, and I turn to see her flipping over bodies, searching for our mother's face. She's probably already glanced this way and seen that Mom isn't one of the people standing here\u2014what she can't see is her body because it's lying on the floor beside Blaze, inside the circle.\n\nI move toward her, and when Gamba sees me, she freezes.\n\n\"No,\" she says, stepping back from the truth she reads on my face. \"No, she can't\u2014she's not\u2014\"\n\nShe tries fighting me off, but I pull her to my chest and hold her there as she breaks down into sobs. We cry together, both of us sisters, both of us orphans, and we don't stop until hands pull us apart. Hysan helps me to my feet, and I see that the Zodai have started gathering all those who have fallen on both sides.\n\nThe Dark Matter has thinned even more, and the sky looks like a gray dusk. More silver stars are visible as the hole in the blanket of blackness expands. We carry as many corpses between us as we can to the ships, where we find the rest of the Zodai survivors.\n\n_\"Gy!\"_\n\nEzra comes running, and Gyzer drops the body he's carrying to catch her as she leaps into his arms. When he sets her down, she turns to all of us, and without anyone having to ask she says, \"Once the portal closed, those Ophiuchan creatures slipped away, and most of the Marad went with them. They just . . . stopped fighting us.\"\n\nWe regroup with the rest of our fleet\u2014which has been cut in half\u2014and we begin to sort through the fallen bodies as every House claims their dead to send to Empyrean through their own customs. We position the fallen Marad soldiers against the tree line so their brethren can decide how to lay them to rest.\n\nEvery Tomorrow Party member Blaze brought with him died in battle. My gaze lingers on Mallie, and for some reason I think of the young girl in the pink spacesuit who froze to death on Elara. Both senseless deaths, yet the Cancrian has been cast as a victim and Mallie a villain. But Mallie was a victim, too.\n\nSuddenly the whole camp falls silent, and I look up from Mallie's pallid face to a solitary Marad soldier who's just stepped out of the swamp.\n\nThe Zodai point their weapons, but since she's not holding a Murmur, nobody shoots. Then she rips off her mask, revealing a snakeskin face and lime-green eyes that are looking right at me.\n\n\"We outnumber you,\" she says in a raspy voice. \"You either agree to leave this planet and never return, or we'll finish off what's left of you.\"\n\nI step forward. \"We're sorry for the way Risers have been treated, and we want to offer you a place in the Zodiac.\"\n\n\"You may feel that way, but the rest of the universe doesn't. We don't want your help. And we never want you coming back.\"\n\n\"You have the technology to reach us if you ever need anything,\" I say. \"We _will_ come if you call.\"\n\nShe nods and retreats into the swamp. After a moment's delay, activity resumes, and I hear a familiar voice that makes me ache with relief.\n\n\"You're not touching me with that needle!\"\n\nI jog over to the makeshift medical area, where Brynda is sitting on a fallen tree trunk and being treated by an Ariean healer. \"Don't be a baby,\" says the fiery-haired woman.\n\n\"You have a great bedside manner,\" snarls Brynda. \"I bet everyone raves about it.\"\n\n\"No one's complained about my manners in bed before,\" says Kenza, shrugging. I recognize her from when I awoke from the Sumber.\n\n\"That's not what I said, _Red_.\"\n\nSince Brynda's expression is looking lethal, I jump in and say, \"Hey, Brynda! You okay?\"\n\n\"Rho!\" she immediately turns away from Kenza and surveys me with her amber eyes, and once she's sure I'm unharmed, she smiles. \"I'm glad you're okay. I'd be much better off if I had a proper healer\u2014 _OW_!\"\n\nKenza used my distraction to stab Brynda's arm with a needle, and as the Sagittarian Guardian raises her wrist like she's going to fire a bullet from her Arclight, the Ariean flashes her an annoyingly antagonizing smile and darts off.\n\n\"You're totally marrying her,\" I say, and Brynda shoots me a glacial glare that has me walking my words back. \"Sorry,\" I say quickly, and I sit down beside her on the log.\n\n\"Hysan told me about your mom,\" she says, her face and voice softening. \"I'm sorry, Rho.\"\n\n\"We've all lost people,\" I murmur. I'm not ready to process it yet.\n\n\"I know . . . but sometimes it feels like the stars are picking on you the most. You've given up so much more than the rest of us.\"\n\nHome. Dad. Deke. Stan. Nishi. Mom. It's hard to argue with her, so I don't. \"I'm sorry about Rubi. I know you two were close.\"\n\nShe looks down at the marshy ground. \"She was always doing something stupid\u2014like dying to save my life. I wish I could yell at her for it.\" When she lifts her gaze again, there are tears in her eyes.\n\n\"I know how you feel,\" I say, thinking of Nishi. \"We were lucky . . . to have friends like them.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nMost ships have already taken off to their home worlds, but the Arieans, Scorps, and Librans remain, overseeing the last of the cleanup.\n\n\"Wandering Star,\" says General Eurek. \"We've just heard from Prophet Marinda, whose health is improving by the minute. She reports that most Piscenes are coming out of their comas.\"\n\nI feel my face glowing with delight. \"Thank you so much for telling me.\"\n\n\"Thank _you_ ,\" he says, and he offers his hand for the greeting. I reach out to bump fists with him, but he takes my fingers in his, and he plants a kiss on my skin.\n\nNow my face begins to burn, but he spares me the struggle of speaking by saying, \"It has been an honor to serve with you.\" His orange-red eyes simmer with emotion as he adds, \"You will always be welcome on House Aries.\"\n\nWhen he turns to go, I see Skarlet behind him, hidden by his burl and bulk. Even the cuts on her forehead and cheeks do nothing to mar her beauty or dampen the shimmer of her bronze brown skin.\n\n\"I'm going to hitch a ride back on an Ariean ship,\" she says. \"I just wanted to say I'm sorry for being a bitch.\"\n\n\"Not your fault,\" I say with a sly smile. \"You can't fight what you are.\"\n\nHer cat-eyes widen in shock\u2014and then we both burst into sudden laughter, and when we try to stop, our gazes cross and we start up again, until we're both clutching our stomachs and gasping for air.\n\nOnce I've calmed down enough to speak, I say, \"I'm sorry, too.\"\n\n\"I was thinking we could combine forces to see what we can do for Risers,\" she says tentatively, \"and try to make some changes in the Zodiac.\"\n\n\"I'd like that.\"\n\nShe nods, and we bump fists before she turns to go. But she's only taken a step when she spins around and says, \"For the record, I think Hysan made the perfect choice.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nWhen most of the Zodai have cleared out, I spy a glimmer of gold, and I see Hysan on the ground, tending to someone. As I move closer, I recognize Lord Neith.\n\nThe android's nose is tipped open, and Hysan is uselessly trying to spark the Guardian back to life, but nothing is happening. Before I can say anything, Strident Engle comes over and rests a hand on Hysan's shoulder.\n\n\"The Scarab's poison can't be extracted from a machine,\" he says softly. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nHysan doesn't answer him, and he keeps trying to revive Neith, like a healer who won't give up on his patient.\n\nEngle spots me and he comes over, his red eyes mournful. The sky is dark enough on this planet that he doesn't need to wear sunglasses. \"I'm sorry about Skiff,\" I say.\n\nI saw Sage Ferez earlier, and he told me the Scorp Guardian went down fighting. The only reason the Capricorn centenarian survived is because Skiff had him locked up on one of his House's ships to keep him safe. He was a loyal friend to the end.\n\n\"So am I,\" says Engle sadly.\n\nI look at Hysan again, who's now reviewing information from his Scan and still refusing to resign. \"I don't understand,\" I say, speaking softly and hanging far enough back that Hysan can't hear me. \"He synced Neith with his ship on our way here\u2014can't he just download the data into a new body?\"\n\nEngle shakes his head. \"That's not how his artificial intelligence works. He could create a new Neith that has the same knowledge as this one\u2014but it would never possess the same subtleties or . . . for lack of a better word, _emotions_.\"\n\n\"So he's . . . _gone_?\" I ask incredulously, my heart plummeting for Hysan.\n\nEngle frowns and nods. \"I'm sorry, Rho.\"\n\n\"I need to go to him, but I'll be in touch soon,\" I say, thinking of what Skarlet said about getting organized. Engle would make a good addition to our team\u2014as would a lot of the Zodai here.\n\nKneeling next to Hysan I say, \"I'm so sorry.\" When he turns to me, there are tears in his eyes.\n\nI'm so startled that I reach out and envelop him in a hug, the way he'd do for me.\n\n\"You were right,\" he says when he pulls away, his green eyes so bright they glow. \"What you said to me on Aries\u2014I've never lost anyone before. I've never felt . . . _this_.\"\n\nHe suddenly sits up, like he's remembering something, and his eyes widen. \"I should be comforting you, Rho. You lost your _mom_ \u2014\"\n\nI rest a hand on his cheek. \"Don't worry about me. Take care of yourself,\" I whisper, and I hear Nishi speaking through me as I repeat what she once said to me. \" _It's okay to feel your pain before walling it off_.\"\n\nHe kisses the inside of my palm, and I lean into his chest and keep him company as we stare down at Neith in silence. In the distance, I spot Gamba digging a shallow hole in the ground that's the length of . . . _Mom_.\n\n\"Go to her,\" says Hysan, who's following my gaze. \"She needs you.\"\n\nI press a kiss on his lips, and they taste salty. \"I'll be quick.\"\n\nGamba must have seen me coming, because when I'm just a few feet away she says, \"I told Mom once how on Virgo they don't launch their dead to Space\u2014they bury them in the ground to become part of the soil.\" She doesn't look up from her work while she talks. \"She told me that's what she wanted when she went.\"\n\n\"Can I help?\"\n\n\"I'm done,\" she says, standing up and wiping her hands on her pants. \"Pretty sure it's not deep enough, but she'll decompose anyway.\"\n\nShe kneels and lifts Mom's corpse by the shoulders, and I pick up her feet to help her. We gently deposit her body in the hole, and then we look at her for a long moment. \"I didn't mean to take her from you,\" says Gamba, her voice tight.\n\n\"You didn't,\" I say, fighting back my own tears. \"I think you saved her.\"\n\nGamba turns and starts shoving the soil over Mom, and I help her until her whole body is covered. Wiping my hands on my suit I ask, \"Ready to get going?\"\n\nShe finally meets my gaze. \"I'm staying.\"\n\n_\"What?\"_\n\nShe sighs. \"I may not be imbalanced like the Marad members, but I am a Riser, which means I hail from this world, and I clearly had a strong enough pull to it to change Houses. I've left the Luminaries, which means I can't go back . . . I don't belong anywhere else.\"\n\n\"You belong with _me_ ,\" I say, and the words come out almost angry. \"We're sisters.\"\n\nShe looks at me and smiles, and a tear spills over her eye. \"I guess that means I'll have a place to crash when I'm ready to leave this world.\"\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nSince Ezra and Gyzer left with the Sagittarians, it's just Hysan, Mathias, Pandora, and me on _Equinox_.\n\nWe're going back to Libra, and I'm excited at the thought of seeing Hysan's home for the first time. None of us are sure what we'll do tomorrow, but I'm not thinking about that. I'm still too caught up in yesterday.\n\nHysan is manning the helm, and Mathias and Pandora are in a cabin as I roam the ship, missing Nishi and Stan and Deke, who by all rights should be here with us.\n\nAnd yet I know they are. Because I can feel them. It's like Stan said\u2014they're in my heart, feeding my light, making me who I am.\n\nI watch the mythical House Ophiuchus recede through the glass, and so much of the Dark Matter is gone by now that it must be visible to astronomers and seers alike. There won't be any denying its existence anymore\u2014but we'll have to make sure no one disturbs the Ophiuchans as they rebuild their home.\n\nThe greatest danger now is forgetting.\n\nI slip into the seat beside Hysan, whose furrowed brow tells me he's still thinking of Neith, the only true friend he had his whole life. I plant a kiss on his cheek, and he turns to me, and his mouth curves into that irresistible centaur smile.\n\n\"I love you,\" I say.\n\n\"I love you more than everything, Rho.\"\n\nAs we soar through Space, I think about Ophiuchus and Aquarius, and I wonder if they're watching us now and guiding our destinies. And even though I've always loved reading the stars, I no longer think their visions are all that important.\n\nProphecies are helpful, but they're not real. What's real are the people we surround ourselves with, the ones we love and admire and rely on. The stars do what they can, but ultimately, we have to trust only what we can touch.\n\nAn Ephemeris can show us a million different futures, but the only one that counts is the one we make for ourselves.\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\nTHE END\n\n\u2022 \u2022 \u2022\n\n# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\n_THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU._\n\nWriting this series has been _the most rewarding experience of my life, and I will be forever grateful to everyone who's been a part of it._\n\nTo every single reader who's stuck by Rho through all four books _\u2014in any language\u2014_ I am beyond mind-blown that you've taken this trip to the Zodiac with me. Hearing from you guys has brought me so much joy and love and laughter, and I am so grateful for your support. I'm always happy to answer your questions about the series, just find me on social media.\n\nMarissa Grossman, thank you for guiding me through this darkest part of Rho's journey and for shining your brilliant light whenever I couldn't find my way.\n\nBen Schrank and Casey McIntyre, thank you for taking this chance on me and making my dreams come true.\n\nVanessa Han, thank you for a fourth fabulous cover and for designing the best-looking series I've ever seen!\n\nLaura Rennert, thank you for fighting for me and for believing in me and for _always_ being there.\n\nMorgan Rhodes, thank you for your beautiful blurb\u2014I've loved seeing it on every Z cover!\n\nThank you to the stellar teams at Penguin Random House, Del Nuevo Extremo, Oceano M\u00e9xico, Ediciones Urano Colombia, Michel Lafon, Piper Verlag, Pegasus, AST Mainstream, Karakter, Grupa Wydawnicza Foksal, and Alpha Books Company.\n\nThank you to the booksellers and librarians and educators and bloggers and reviewers and everyone else who spends any part of their day promoting reading to teens. You are my heroes.\n\nThank you to all the local LA authors and aspiring authors I've met along the way\u2014I've learned so much from you, and I love being part of such an active and caring community.\n\nThank you to all my friends and family who have been so supportive of me the past few years. Now that I'm back from the Zodiac, I hope to see more of you!\n\nIn particular, I need to name-drop a few friends who got me through the end of this series (in alphabetical order because I'm a Virgo): Tomi Adeyemi, Lizzie Andrews, Caden Armstrong, Jay Asher, Russell Chadwick, Aurora Lydia Dominguez, Corinne Farkash, Vane Florio, Will Frank, Aditi Khorana, Tom\u00e1s Lambr\u00e9, Nicole Maggi, Ashley Moore, Robin Potts, Robin Reul, Luli Sulichin, and of course, Liz Tingue, whose faith changed my stars.\n\n_Fanny, te adoro. Brillas m\u00e1s que Helios. Gracias por compartir tu luz tan especial con todos los que te rodeamos._\n\n_Baba y Bebo, los mejores abuelos del mundo, los extra\u00f1o todos los d\u00edas._\n\n_Pa, Ma, Meli, y Andy\u2014Los adoro. Me pone tan feliz poder compartir esta aventura con ustedes. Son lo que m\u00e1s quiero en el universo y son mi inspiraci\u00f3n en todo lo que hago. Gracias por ser mis mejores amigos._\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nRomina Russell is a Los Angeles based author who originally hails from Buenos Aires, Argentina. As a teen, Romina landed her first writing gig\u2014College She Wrote, a weekly Sunday column for the Miami Herald that was later picked up for national syndication\u2014and she hasn't stopped writing since. When she's not working on the Zodiac series, Romina can be found producing movie trailers, taking photographs, or daydreaming about buying a new drum set. She is a graduate of Harvard College and a Virgo to the core.\n\nFind her on Twitter:\n\n@RominaRussell\n\n# _What's next on  \nyour reading list?_\n\n[Discover your next  \ngreat read!](http:\/\/links.penguinrandomhouse.com\/type\/prhebooklanding\/isbn\/9780448493572\/display\/1)\n\n* * *\n\nGet personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.\n\nSign up now.\n\n## Contents\n\n  1. Cover\n  2. Title Page\n  3. Copyright\n  4. Dedication\n  5. Contents\n  6. Map\n  7. The Houses of the Zodiac Galaxy\n  8. Prologue\n  9. Chapter 1\n  10. Chapter 2\n  11. Chapter 3\n  12. Chapter 4\n  13. Chapter 5\n  14. Chapter 6\n  15. Chapter 7\n  16. Chapter 8\n  17. Chapter 9\n  18. Chapter 10\n  19. Chapter 11\n  20. Chapter 12\n  21. Chapter 13\n  22. Chapter 14\n  23. Chapter 15\n  24. Chapter 16\n  25. Chapter 17\n  26. Chapter 18\n  27. Chapter 19\n  28. Chapter 20\n  29. Chapter 21\n  30. Chapter 22\n  31. Chapter 23\n  32. Chapter 24\n  33. Chapter 25\n  34. Chapter 26\n  35. Chapter 27\n  36. Chapter 28\n  37. Chapter 29\n  38. Chapter 30\n  39. Chapter 31\n  40. Chapter 32\n  41. Chapter 33\n  42. Chapter 34\n  43. Chapter 35\n  44. Chapter 36\n  45. Chapter 37\n  46. Chapter 38\n  47. Chapter 39\n  48. Chapter 40\n  49. Chapter 41\n  50. Chapter 42\n  51. Chapter 43\n  52. Acknowledgments\n  53. About the Author\n\n  1. Contents\n  2. Cover\n  3. Start\n\n  1. iii\n  2. v\n  3. viii\n  4. ix\n  5. x\n  6. xi\n  7. xii\n  8. xiv\n  9. xv\n  10. xvi\n  11. xvii\n  12. \n  13. \n  14. \n  15. \n  16. \n  17. \n  18. \n  19. \n  20. \n  21. \n  22. \n  23. \n  24. \n  25. \n  26. \n  27. \n  28. \n  29. \n  30. \n  31. \n  32. \n  33. \n  34. \n  35. \n  36. \n  37. \n  38. \n  39. \n  40. \n  41. \n  42. \n  43. \n  44. \n  45. \n  46. \n  47. \n  48. \n  49. \n  50. \n  51. \n  52. \n  53. \n  54. \n  55. \n  56. \n  57. \n  58. \n  59. \n  60. \n  61. \n  62. \n  63. \n  64. \n  65. \n  66. \n  67. \n  68. \n  69. \n  70. \n  71. \n  72. \n  73. \n  74. \n  75. \n  76. \n  77. \n  78. \n  79. \n  80. \n  81. \n  82. \n  83. \n  84. \n  85. \n  86. \n  87. \n  88. \n  89. \n  90. \n  91. \n  92. \n  93. \n  94. \n  95. \n  96. \n  97. \n  98. \n  99. \n  100. \n  101. \n  102. \n  103. \n  104. \n  105. \n  106. \n  107. \n  108. \n  109. \n  110. \n  111. \n  112. \n  113. \n  114. \n  115. \n  116. \n  117. \n  118. \n  119. \n  120. \n  121. \n  122. \n  123. \n  124. \n  125. \n  126. \n  127. \n  128. \n  129. \n  130. \n  131. \n  132. \n  133. \n  134. \n  135. \n  136. \n  137. \n  138. \n  139. \n  140. \n  141. \n  142. \n  143. \n  144. \n  145. \n  146. \n  147. \n  148. \n  149. \n  150. \n  151. \n  152. \n  153. \n  154. \n  155. \n  156. \n  157. \n  158. \n  159. \n  160. \n  161. \n  162. \n  163. \n  164. \n  165. \n  166. \n  167. \n  168. \n  169. \n  170. \n  171. \n  172. \n  173. \n  174. \n  175. \n  176. \n  177. \n  178. \n  179. \n  180. \n  181. \n  182. \n  183. \n  184. \n  185. \n  186. \n  187. \n  188. \n  189. \n  190. \n  191. \n  192. \n  193. \n  194. \n  195. \n  196. \n  197. \n  198. \n  199. \n  200. \n  201. \n  202. \n  203. \n  204. \n  205. \n  206. \n  207. \n  208. \n  209. \n  210. \n  211. \n  212. \n  213. \n  214. \n  215. \n  216. \n  217. \n  218. \n  219. \n  220. \n  221. \n  222. \n  223. \n  224. \n  225. \n  226. \n  227. \n  228. \n  229. \n  230. \n  231. \n  232. \n  233. \n  234. \n  235. \n  236. \n  237. \n  238. \n  239. \n  240. \n  241. \n  242. \n  243. \n  244. \n  245. \n  246. \n  247. \n  248. \n  249. \n  250. \n  251. \n  252. \n  253. \n  254. \n  255. \n  256. \n  257. \n  258. \n  259. \n  260. \n  261. \n  262. \n  263. \n  264. \n  265. \n  266. \n  267. \n  268. \n  269. \n  270. \n  271. \n  272. \n  273. \n  274. \n  275. \n  276. \n  277. \n  278. \n  279. \n  280. \n  281. \n  282. \n  283. \n  284. \n  285. \n  286. \n  287. \n  288. \n  289. \n  290. \n  291. \n  292. \n  293. \n  294. \n  295. \n  296. \n  297. \n  298. \n  299. \n  300. \n  301. \n  302. \n  303. \n  304. \n  305. \n  306. \n  307. \n  308. \n  309. \n  310. \n  311. \n  312. \n  313. \n  314. \n  315. \n  316. \n  317. \n  318. \n  319. \n  320. \n  321. \n  322. \n  323. \n  324. \n  325. \n  326. \n  327. \n  328. \n  329. \n  330. \n  331. \n  332. \n  333. \n  334. \n  335. \n  336. \n  337. \n  338. \n  339. \n  340. \n  341. \n  342. \n  343. \n  344.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2013 by Jennifer duBois\n\nAll rights reserved.\n\nPublished in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company.\n\nRANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data  \nduBois, Jennifer  \nCartwheel: a novel\/Jennifer duBois.  \npages cm  \neISBN: 978-0-8129-9587-9  \n1. Women college students\u2014Fiction. 2. Americans\u2014Argentina\u2014Fiction. 3. Murder\u2014Investigation\u2014Fiction. 4. Psychological fiction. I. Title.  \nPS3604.U258C37 2013  \n813\u2032.6\u2014dc23  \n2013016952\n\nwww.atrandom.com\n\nJacket design: Lynn Buckley\n\nv3.1\n\n# Contents\n\n_Cover_\n\n_Title Page_\n\n_Copyright_\n\n_Epigraph_\n\nPart I\n\nChapter One\n\nChapter Two\n\nChapter Three\n\nChapter Four\n\nChapter Five\n\nChapter Six\n\nChapter Seven\n\nChapter Eight\n\nChapter Nine\n\nChapter Ten\n\nChapter Eleven\n\nChapter Twelve\n\nChapter Thirteen\n\nChapter Fourteen\n\nPart II\n\nChapter Fifteen\n\nChapter Sixteen\n\nChapter Seventeen\n\nChapter Eighteen\n\nChapter Nineteen\n\n_Author's Note_\n\n_Dedication_\n\n_Acknowledgments_\n\n_Other Books by This Author_\n\n_About the Author_\nAlthough the themes of this book were loosely inspired by the story of Amanda Knox, this is entirely a work of fiction. None of the characters are real. None of the events ever happened. Nothing in the book should be read as a factual statement about real-life events or people.\n\n#\n\nI was the shadow of the waxwing slain  \nBy the false azure in the windowpane\n\n_\u2014Pale Fire_ , Vladimir Nabokov\n\n# PART I\n# CHAPTER ONE\n\n## February\n\nAndrew's plane landed at EZE, as promised, at seven a.m. local time. Outside the window, the sun was a hideous orb, bleeding orange light through wavering heat. Andrew was still woozy from his two Valiums and two glasses of wine, the bare minimum that he needed to fly these days\u2014to anywhere, for anything, though especially for here, for this. The irony of being a professor of international relations who was terrified of international travel was not lost on him (no irony was lost on him, ever), but it could not be helped. Neither could it be mitigated by the knowledge\u2014always understood but now finally believed\u2014that the things that go wrong are rarely the things you've thought to worry about.\n\nAndrew patted Anna on the shoulder and she roused herself. He watched her forget and then remember what was happening. He was glad he didn't have to remind her. She pulled her iPod headphones out of her ears, and Andrew caught snatches of some ambient, low-key music\u2014the music of the day was so bloodless, he often thought: Didn't these kids _want_ anything, and weren't they _mad_ at anybody?\u2014before she thumbed it quiet. Anna had endured the trip reasonably well\u2014her sensible hair was limp in a ponytail; her nautical stripes, so favored by his students these days, were barely creased. She wore her competence lightly. She didn't know how terrifying it was to him.\n\n\"Dad,\" she said. \"You need to blink.\"\n\nAndrew blinked, painfully.\n\n\"Does your corneal abrasion hurt?\" she said.\n\n\"No,\" he said. It always hurt. He had poked himself in the eye during class one day\u2014while making a particularly vigorous point about Russian cyber-terrorism in Estonia\u2014and he'd had to go to the ER for a local eyeball anesthetic. Now his eye hurt every morning, every flight, every time he was tired or stressed, which he always would be, now, for the foreseeable future.\n\n\"Will we see Lily today?\" said Anna.\n\nAndrew licked his lips. His eyeballs were so dry that he thought they might tear. The Argentina flights from the East Coast went only once a day, and only from D.C., and it was impossible to get to D.C. in less than seven hours, no matter how you looked at it. Andrew could not, he reminded himself, have gotten here any earlier. \"Probably not today,\" he said.\n\n\"Will Mom see her when she comes?\"\n\n\"Hopefully.\" Andrew's voice cracked, and Anna looked at him, alarmed. \"Hopefully,\" he said again, to show her that the crack had been fatigue, not emotion.\n\nOutside, it was summer, as Andrew had known\u2014but secretly not entirely believed\u2014that it would be. Anna shimmied out of her jacket, her nose crinkling at the smell of gasoline. Inside the airport, the terminal thrummed with travelers. Andrew offered to buy Anna a soda, then rescinded this offer when he spotted the newspaper outside the kiosk\u2014he didn't have much Spanish beyond what one absorbed through cultural osmosis and a general familiarity with Latinate words, but it was uncomfortably easy to get the gist of the headlines, whether he wanted to or not. Andrew wished desperately to keep Anna away from the newspapers. She knew the contours of the accusation, of course, but Andrew had managed\u2014or thought he'd managed\u2014to protect her from the worst of it. The coverage was only just beginning to leak over to the United States, anyway, and Andrew had spent long hours on the Internet looking for the stories: the depictions of Lily as hypersexual, unstable, amoral; the lurid intimations about her romantic jealousy and rage; the accounts of her smug and towering atheism. The fact that she hadn't cried\u2014not after Katy was killed and not during the interrogations, either (the Internet had harped on this so much that Andrew had found himself shouting _\"She's not a crier! She's just not a fucking crier!\"_ into the computer). And finally, the worst, most militantly misunderstood information of all: the fact that a delivery truck driver had seen Lily running from the house with blood on her face the day after the murder. No matter that she'd been the one to find Katy; no matter that she'd been the one to kneel over her and try to administer brave and futile CPR. The news reporters weren't bothering with that information, and Andrew didn't expect them to start. He was beginning to understand what story they were trying to tell.\n\nAnnouncing that the sodas would be better outside the airport, Andrew maneuvered Anna (rather deftly, he thought) toward baggage claim, where they waited for fifteen minutes in silence. In wrestling the suitcase off the conveyer belt, Andrew accidentally stomped on the foot of an androgynous teenager.\n\n\"Permiso,\" he muttered to the teenager, who was wearing a T-shirt that said SORRY FOR PARTYING. Beside him, Andrew could feel Anna stiffen; Andrew liked to at least know how to apologize wherever he went, but Anna hated it when he tried to speak any language other than English. Two summers ago, in a different lifetime, Andrew had spent three months doing research in Bratislava\u2014his area was emerging post-Soviet democracies, though his job got a little less interesting the more fully the democracies emerged\u2014and afterward the girls had met him in Prague for a week of castles and bridges and beer. Anna had flinched every time he opened his mouth to deploy some phrase he remembered from his three semesters of college Czech. \"Dad,\" she'd said. \"They speak English.\" \"Well, I speak Czech.\" \"No. You don't.\" \"It's polite to address people in the local language.\" \"No. It's not.\" And so on. Lily, on the other hand, had made him teach her as much Czech as he could, and had then thrown it around willy-nilly\u2014mispronounced, absurd, chirping informal greetings at storekeepers who tended to smile at her, even though she was basically insulting them, because she was so obviously well-intentioned. Andrew used to imagine that Lily's general goodwill, the buoyancy with which she addressed her life, was easily detectable by all people of the world, and that it would protect her. It seemed now that this was not the case.\n\nIn the taxi, Andrew and Anna passed fruit stands, dingy-looking bars, backfiring motorcycles. Through the hazy heat, Andrew saw barrios with squat, intersecting systems of housing; clotheslines shimmering with brightly colored clothes; the occasional corrugated tin roof winking astral-bright in the sun. The roads were medium-good; the infrastructure in general seemed decent. Out the window, Andrew saw satellite dishes wedged improbably between houses, looking like the detritus of abandoned spaceships. He saw a large compound, walled and razor-wired, manned by two security guards with walkie-talkies. He craned his neck to see if it was the prison, but it turned out to only be a housing development.\n\n\"Nothing's open,\" said Anna. She was looking out her own window and did not turn around.\n\n\"It's Sunday,\" said Andrew. \"Very Catholic country.\"\n\n\"It's too bad that Latin America isn't your area.\"\n\nAndrew stared at the back of Anna's head. She had lately taken to making inscrutable declarative statements in studied neutral tones. Andrew desperately hoped that this was not the onset of irony.\n\n\"You might get some work done, I mean,\" she said.\n\n\"I don't know about that.\" Andrew was suddenly nauseous, awash with their strange new calamity. There was, of course, no possibility that Lily had actually been involved in any of this; Andrew's confidence on that point was part of what had made the situation seem, initially, not catastrophic. The accusation was so ghastly and so wild and so patently, transparently, ludicrous that he'd nearly laughed when he first heard of it. Not that there weren't a few things he could imagine Lily getting justly arrested for. Before she had left, he and Maureen had had a series of sober conversations with her\u2014about the harshness of Latin American drug laws, mostly, as well as the laxity of Latin American sexual safety standards. They'd sent her off with an enormous box of Trojans\u2014industrial-sized, Andrew thought, issued for health clinics or music festivals, no doubt; a box that size could not possibly be intended for the use of a single human being. Andrew reeled to think of how much sex his daughter would have to have to run through all of them. Nevertheless, he had bravely and maturely had the conversation, alongside Maureen (such was their commitment to pragmatism! such was their commitment to co-parenting!), and then bravely and maturely sent Lily off with the box. And Andrew had worried about Lily constantly\u2014he worried about her being kidnapped, trafficked, impregnated, sexually assaulted, afflicted with some horrible STD, arrested for marijuana use, converted to Catholicism, wooed by a long-lashed man with a Vespa. He worried she'd make too few friends, then he worried she'd make too many. He worried that her GPA would suffer. He worried about her bug bites. He worried so much that when there came a call from Maureen\u2014on his work phone in the middle of the day, her voicemail left in a strangled half whisper\u2014Andrew could taste metal in his mouth, so certain was he that something life altering had happened. And when he heard Lily was in jail, his mind flooded with grim visions of drug use and anti-Americanism and political points to be scored. He could imagine how she'd look to everyone (na\u00efve, and entitled, no doubt), and he could easily imagine the incentive for punishing her harshly.\n\nSo when the accusation turned out not to be drugs\u2014not drugs, or fare jumping on the metro (did Buenos Aires even have a metro?), or trespassing through someone's field while looking at the stars, or any one of the countless thoughtless crimes that he could believe his daughter might have committed\u2014Andrew was mostly relieved. An accusation of murder was outrageous to the point of being comic, and thus was no great threat.\n\nAndrew had tried to communicate some of this feeling to Lily on the telephone, when she'd finally, finally, been allowed to call. \"Don't worry,\" he had said, over the terrible connection. It seemed absolutely vital that Lily know she did not have to tell them she had not done it; her innocence and eventual acquittal must be the unspoken premises of all their interactions\u2014to be referenced in passing, perhaps, but never formally declared. \"I know,\" he'd said. \"We all know.\" Mordantly, from a great distance, she'd said, \"Know what?\"\n\nBut now, in the overheated taxicab, with fragments of Buenos Aires flashing through the window, Andrew was beginning to wonder. He was beginning to wonder if this was indeed a catastrophe on the order of the others; he was beginning to wonder if it might join them, making a triad that would hold up his life like Roman columns. First\u2014most importantly, most irreducibly\u2014there was the death of Janie, their first daughter, at two and a half, from aplastic anemia. This was the tragedy that made all other tragedies pale, the template onto which all other grief was mapped. The divorce, comparatively, was a minor hiccup. Nobody had been surprised\u2014not even he and Maureen had been surprised\u2014though they had been disappointed, certainly, in their own lack of originality. And now there was this. It was all, Andrew thought, a little much for one lifetime\u2014though he had to weigh it against his socioeconomic privilege, health, maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, American citizenship, etc., etc.; he'd been in academia long enough to know how far the scales were tipped in his favor, and how strenuously he must try at all times to acknowledge this, and how earnestly he must attempt to make his life an apology for its central accidents\u2014and yet, and yet.\n\n\"Look,\" said Anna. She pointed to a mansion\u2014enormous, drowning in its own decadence, already receding behind them. \"Is that where _he_ lives, do you think?\"\n\nAndrew was not quite sure who _he_ was\u2014the rich boy with whom Lily had conducted a five-week-long romance, presumably\u2014but he was resolved to answer firmly anyway. \"No,\" he said, tapping Anna's shoulder and frowning at its boniness. He tapped his own for comparison. \"How are you holding up, Old Sport?\" he said. He'd started calling Anna \"Old Sport\" sometime during her adolescence, when it became quietly clear to him that she was his least favorite daughter.\n\n\"Okay,\" she said dully. \"I'm tired.\"\n\n\"You can conk out at the hotel.\"\n\n\"I have to run at the hotel.\"\n\n\"Oh. Right.\"\n\nAnna was on the cross-country team at Colby\u2014she wasn't a star, but was known for her diligence\u2014and she'd gone running every day for two years straight, even on holidays, even with the flu. There had been a local newspaper article about it. She had almost cried\u2014and it was the only time she'd almost cried\u2014when Andrew had told her that there was no fucking way she was going to be allowed to run outside on their trip. \"Your sister is locked up for life, and you're worried about getting your exercise? Priorities, please.\" He had shouted it. It had been a terrible day with Peter Sulzicki, the lawyer. \"You think you're going to run through the streets of that city? You'll be kidnapped in five seconds flat. I don't need another daughter arrested or dead.\" Andrew wished immediately that he had not said this. To make it up to Anna, he had promised to find a hotel with a gym. But Andrew knew that this trip would break her streak, one way or another.\n\nPoor Anna. She loved Lily, but she must have had the sense that Lily was always the one to be involved in spectacles, that Lily was the one for whom the rules were always bent. It was all the more unfair, then, that Andrew loved Lily more. Not much more\u2014but no difference could be truly negligible when it came to the love of your children, since what it really meant was that he loved Anna less. This was only because Anna had such tough competition: Janie, precious Janie, was a tragedy, and Lily, cherished Lily, was a miracle. Anna, to her enduring misfortune, had only ever been a child.\n\nStill, Andrew was filled with a lunge of tenderness for her now. \"Hey,\" he said, pulling at her ponytail.\n\n\"Dad, stop it.\"\n\n\"I'll order us some room service for when you get back. Something special. What's the thing here? Steak?\"\n\nAnna gave him a flat stare. How could Andrew have produced a child whose face was unreadable to him? He'd _made_ that face. \"Well,\" she said. \"Since we're going to be flying back and forth between here and home like every week for who knows how long, maybe you should be trying to save your money?\"\n\nShe wasn't wrong. Andrew tried not to think about how long all of the trouble with Lily might last, but he wasn't kidding himself\u2014even under the best of circumstances, it was probably going to last a very, very long time, and Andrew would no doubt be burning through his retirement fund to finance it. Though it was true he'd never particularly looked forward to retirement, especially now that he was alone: He imagined himself scraping along, scrambling eggs in his undershirt (he'd never learned to cook, and now he realized what an optimistic thing that was\u2014it meant that he'd secretly believed he'd always be too busy to bother), watching the BBC at all hours of the day and night. This, exactly this, was what a life of the mind got you, give or take a 401(k) and some unnatural disasters.\n\nAt least Andrew could be grateful that he and Maureen had already spoken, and that they had agreed on so much. They had agreed that they would alert the State Department and contact the media; they had agreed that they would start a website and accept donations of frequent flier miles and, if it came to it, money. They had agreed to remortgage the house, though they had also agreed that they would most likely need to sell it eventually. (They had been keeping it ostensibly to minimize the disruptions in the lives of Anna and Lily, but for reasons both dreadful and benign this was a ship that had, decidedly, sailed.) They had also agreed that only one of them should go to Buenos Aires first: They both wanted to be there, of course, but it was wise to plan for the long term, and if they switched off weeks, Lily could always have a visitor. Andrew had insisted on going first because he knew that if Maureen did, Lily would want her to stay and stay. Maureen, in an act of extreme kindness, had agreed. The unspoken concession on Andrew's part had been bringing Anna along. It was these sorts of small, practical generosities that had made the final eight benumbing years of their marriage endurable\u2014when they'd soldiered on, producing Lily and Anna in rapid succession, insisting on each other's survival. Their marriage had run on the inertia that keeps a moving object in motion, at least until the girls were in school. Then came a sense of sputtering, of hopeless decline, and Andrew had had the image\u2014inapt, but recurring and intrusive\u2014of a headless chicken that runs around for a bit before falling down dead.\n\nAndrew swallowed and tried to smile at Anna. \"I think we can spring for it just this once, Old Sport,\" he said.\n\nAt the hotel, Anna took a shower and went off to run with wet hair. Andrew lay on the bed for seven minutes\u2014he counted\u2014and then sat up, opened his laptop, and began looking again through the photos Lily had sent him before all of this began. She'd taken a lot of pictures of fruit: guavas and bananas and weird melons that looked like hedgehogs. There was a picture of Lily standing in front of a church, and Andrew grimaced again at what she was wearing: a low-cut top, one of those cheap, flimsy things she bought at deep-discount clothes warehouses. All the women around her were dressed conservatively. Had she really not noticed? There was also a picture of Lily and the dead girl, Katy, who was as strikingly lovely here as everywhere\u2014she was extraordinary, really, with ash blond hair and strangely depthless eyes. Her beauty was, of course, terrible news. (\"This does not help,\" Peter Sulzicki had said, tapping Katy's face in the photograph. \"This does not help at all.\") In the picture, Katy and Lily are laughing, drinking beers at a bar somewhere. They look friendly enough. But Andrew cringed when he thought of Lily's emails and the things she'd written in them about Katy. _\"Katy thinks that punning is the highest form of humor.\" \"Everything about Katy is perfectly average, except her teeth.\" \"Can we talk about her name? Katy Kellers. What were her parents thinking? Was their dearest ambition that their daughter grow up to be a local TV anchorwoman?\"_ The emails were already out there, of course\u2014they'd been published in the local tabloids and helpfully reposted by what seemed like every blogger in the universe\u2014and Andrew knew how bad they sounded. The dismissiveness and condescension wasn't even the worst of it\u2014the worst was the implied assertion that Lily must not be average if she could muster such disdain for the average. The irony of that was that Lily was indeed average, more or less\u2014bright, of course, and curious, and a bit reckless, and possessed of an annoying tendency to try to bring philosophy to bear on daily life in rather purist and militant ways\u2014but all that this added up to, essentially, was average for a decent young student at a decent New England college. Lily bounced through life with the sense she was discovering everything that existed for the first time\u2014Nietzsche, or sex, or the possibility of a godless universe, or the entire continent of South America\u2014and all that was _fine_ , of course: She was twenty-one; she was allowed. It was maddening, then, the narrative that Lily somehow deviated so egregiously from the norm. She was typical, she was aggressively typical\u2014all the more so if she didn't quite know it yet.\n\nIn one photo, Lily licks salt from her hand; in the next, she sucks on a lime. In another, she has climbed a hill somewhere and is making a gesture of mock victory. The next picture is of a three-legged dog. The next is a terrible shot of the dome of a cathedral, from straight below: White rays lace through the architecture; the cupola is ablaze with light. How could a twenty-one-year-old girl _not_ take this photo? All of these photos. Andrew's heart broke on their banality.\n\nHe closed the computer and thought about what he needed to do next. Maureen would be calling soon. Tomorrow was the first meeting with the new lawyers. And at some point, Andrew wanted to go talk to Lily's rich friend\u2014Andrew recoiled from his own use of the term \"friend\" here. It was a euphemism borrowed from Maureen: She had insisted on introducing one of Lily's unfortunate college boyfriends as her \"friend,\" over and over, until Lily finally flounced dramatically and said, right in front of a dinner party, \"Mom, he's my _lover_.\" The guy here was named Sebastien LeCompte, which sounded to Andrew like the name of a high-end suit store\u2014though he knew he shouldn't complain: If the name hadn't been exotic Lily would never have written it out in its entirety. And silly name or not, Sebastien LeCompte was the single most important person in the universe: He was the person Lily had been with on the night Katy Kellers was killed. Andrew needed to know exactly what he was planning on saying about that. Sebastien LeCompte himself had not been arrested\u2014though perhaps he might still be, of course\u2014and Maureen and Andrew careened around this fact obsessively, with little sense of how they should regard it. In various lights, it could appear promising (if Lily had been with this guy and the police weren't even bothering to arrest him, perhaps they knew that the case was weak?) or terrifying (what might have he told the cops in order to avoid arrest?) or patently good (no sense in two innocent kids being thrown in jail?) or baldly unfair (if one innocent kid had to be thrown in jail, why the hell wasn't it this asshole instead of their daughter?). Andrew needed the answers to these questions, and he needed them as soon as possible, and he was going to go find Sebastien LeCompte and get them.\n\nAndrew did not plan on mentioning any of this to Peter Sulzicki, the lawyer\u2014although, to be technical, the only people he had specifically prohibited Andrew from contacting were the Kellerses. On this point, Peter Sulzicki had been emphatic. This was painful for Andrew, because he understood what the Kellerses were going through; he knew that losing a child was the single worst experience that life had to offer. Andrew did not know, of course, which way was harder\u2014whether it was worse to lose a child when she was far away and you were sleeping, or when you were cupping her tiny head and feeling her delicate pulse go quiet. Not that Andrew had ever given up on working through the hierarchies of pain, teasing out the taxonomies of grief; he scorned people who were untouched by death, and he _loathed_ people who shared experiences about their dying parents when he spoke of Janie ( _Who cares_? he wanted to shout. _This is the way of things!_ ). The only people he truly respected were the ones whose pain was objectively, empirically, worse than his. There was a man in Connecticut, for example, who'd lost his entire family\u2014wife and two daughters\u2014in a home invasion. They were raped and set on fire. Andrew felt sorry for this man.\n\nAnd the Kellerses: Despite the details, their loss was, fundamentally, his. It pained him not to send a card, at the very least. And not reaching out to them would be even harder on Maureen, he knew; she had always been very into sending sympathy cards. _It's the ritual_ , she was always saying, swirling her cursive into a note destined for some barely known neighbor or long-forgotten aunt. _It's the acknowledgment. Love is expressed through pragmatism. It may be just a card, but it's also the objective correlative of their loss_.\n\n_The objective correlative?_ Andrew would say. Maureen taught high school English. _I thought we said not to take work home_.\n\nThe phone rang and Andrew put the computer on the floor. \"Hey,\" he said.\n\n\"You made it,\" said Maureen.\n\n\"So it would seem.\"\n\n\"How's Anna?\"\n\n\"Running.\"\n\n\"Outside?\"\n\n\"Of course not.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nTalking to Maureen tended to lift Andrew's spirits\u2014this was not the typical experience of men speaking to their ex-wives, he realized, but then theirs had not been a typical divorce. In a way, Andrew often thought, the divorce had actually been deeply optimistic. Right after Janie died, all they'd cared about was stanching the hemorrhaging hole in the center of their lives; romantic love, or any of its shadowy iterations, was no longer a concern. So the fact that they realized, almost a decade on, that they _weren't_ dead to the world, that their sexual selves still existed, that the notion of an adult relationship that wasn't irredeemably destroyed actually held appeal for both of them\u2014well, this was a sign of progress, in a way. It was probably the most hopeful thing they'd done since having Lily; it gestured toward the idea that things could be better for them both. Though it was true that nobody else saw it that way, and that all of their mutual friends tended to treat Andrew like Oedipus with his eyes clawed out\u2014his situation no less distressing just because fate had ordained it.\n\n\"So,\" said Maureen. \"I have some not great news.\"\n\n\"Oh, Christ,\" said Andrew. Maureen was notoriously understated.\n\n\"It looks like they were maybe sleeping with the same man.\" Maureen inhaled; it sounded like she was breathing through her teeth. \"And that maybe they had a fight about it.\"\n\n\"What?\" Andrew stood up. \"Who? That Sebastien character?\"\n\n\"It seems so.\"\n\nAndrew walked into the bathroom and turned on the light. In the mirror, he looked abominable\u2014flyaway hair, leaking red eyes. Coffee on his collar, though he couldn't remember when he'd last had any. It seemed to Andrew that his eyes were sinking into his face; receding, somehow, like his hairline. Was this normal? His eye sockets were twin apses now, overshadowed by the dome of his forehead. \"And they fought about it?\" he said.\n\nMaureen coughed. \"Yes,\" she said. \"Or anyway, they fought about something.\"\n\n\"How did they, ah, establish this?\"\n\n\"The fight? They've got half a dozen witnesses. It happened at that bar she worked at.\"\n\n\"And the other thing?\"\n\n\"Emails.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Andrew's eyeball was throbbing. He took a tissue and dabbed at it. He didn't know why his eyes were seeping quite so much; maybe he was having an allergic response to some South American tree, the relentless fecundity of this awful city. He wasn't crying. Like his daughters, he was not a crier. \"Was there anyone else?\"\n\n\"Down there, you mean?\"\n\n\"Yes. Or, I mean, at home, too. How many total, do you think?\"\n\n\"You're asking me how many men did our daughter sleep with?\"\n\n\"Trust me. It will be relevant.\"\n\n\"Andrew. I don't know.\"\n\n\"You really don't know?\"\n\n\"I really do not know. You know how Lily is. I mean, there was this guy, obviously.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Andrew approached the mirror and put his eye right up against it. Up close his eye was comical and a bit spooky, with cirrus strands of bloodshot threading out from the pupil. He could see no clear evidence of damage. He could not believe that something invisible could hurt so much.\n\n\"And the economist from Middlebury, of course.\"\n\n\"The economist?\"\n\n\"Andrew. You met him.\"\n\n\"Did I?\" Andrew turned on the faucet and ran his hands under the water. He splashed his face. He slapped himself on the cheeks, lightly.\n\n\"They dated for months. We had lunch at the Impudent Oyster. What are you _doing_ over there?\"\n\n\"The _Impotent_ Oyster? What a name for a restaurant.\"\n\n\"Impudent. Andrew. Don't you remember? It was tremendously awkward for all of us.\"\n\nA vague, repressed memory came to Andrew. Maureen had insisted on arguing with no one about IMF loans to Peru; she had jabbed her fork in the air to make a point. What lifetime was this, when they had all met prospective suitors together for lunch? When the biggest challenge was presenting a sufficiently united front? \"Okay,\" said Andrew. \"Okay. So that's two. And anyone else?\"\n\nAndrew could hear Maureen thinking for a moment. \"I imagine there were a few others,\" she said finally.\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"I mean, nothing outrageous, I'm sure.\"\n\n\"What's outrageous?\"\n\n\"I just mean, she's, you know. She's of her generation. They have different ideas about sex.\"\n\n\"I thought our generation invented all the different ideas about sex,\" said Andrew. He didn't know if he really thought this, but it sounded like the kind of thing he might once have thought.\n\n\"Well, sure,\" said Maureen. \"I just mean, you know. The girls now are like the boys. They sleep around. They expect not to be judged. I'm not saying I think it's the right thing for her. I'm just saying it's normal now.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Andrew flipped off the bathroom light.\n\n\"Not that the norm is what matters. I mean she could sleep with a hundred guys and it doesn't mean she did this, right?\"\n\n\"Right.\" Andrew walked to the bedroom and drew the curtains. He sat heavily on the bed.\n\n\"Not that she slept with a hundred guys.\"\n\n\"What\u2014fifty?\"\n\n\"Andrew!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Don't be absurd.\"\n\n\"I have absolutely no idea what's absurd.\"\n\n\"No. No. Of course not, no. Like, ten maybe. Like ten would be a very, very liberal estimate.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Andrew sighed. \"Didn't you ever talk to her about this stuff?\"\n\n\"About sex? What do you mean? We both did.\"\n\n\"Well, I mean. About, I don't know. About not having quite so much of it.\"\n\nThere was a dark pause. \"Would you have talked to a son about that?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Andrew reasonably. \"Realistically, no. But then it matters more for her, doesn't it? It doesn't help our case.\"\n\n\"Well, yeah, her entire personality doesn't help our case. It doesn't mean I wish she didn't have one.\"\n\nAndrew closed his eyes. He didn't understand why he couldn't see it, the wound: why it didn't appear against the backdrop of his swollen eyelid, lightning shaped, blood colored. \"I really cannot believe this,\" he said. He kept his eyes closed, afraid that if he opened them, he'd somehow see Maureen's face. \"Can you?\"\n\n\"Yes, actually,\" said Maureen. All of a sudden, she sounded old. \"You know, I'm not sure anything could ever really surprise me again.\"\n\nAndrew spent the first full day in Buenos Aires learning that he could not see Lily until Thursday. On this, everyone\u2014the police, the lawyer, the Internet\u2014was firm. He could not see her until Thursday, and there was nothing to be done, even when Andrew snarled at the diplomatic representative from the U.S. embassy over the phone.\n\n\"I need to see her today,\" he said. He felt that if he spoke very slowly and clearly, this would be believed. He understood faintly that this was making him sound nearly sarcastic, but he did not care. Anna was taking a shower. She had spent the first twenty-four hours in Argentina showering, or running, or stretching mutely before that car-sized television, her face bruise colored and alien in its light. Andrew was trying to have all the worst phone conversations while she was gone.\n\n\"I do understand, sir,\" said the woman on the phone. She was professionally trained not to hear hostility. She also sounded about fourteen\u2014Andrew pictured braces, he pictured a unicorn sweatshirt\u2014and yet it was she, not Andrew, who had already visited Lily and was likely to visit her once more within the week. \"But there's nothing I can do.\"\n\n\" _You_ personally, maybe. Sure. Maybe there's nothing you personally can do.\" Andrew was picturing an international embargo, a land invasion. He was picturing a coup d'\u00e9tat.\n\n\"There is nothing more that the embassy can do, at this juncture,\" said the woman. She was professionally trained to be firm. In theory, she was saying, the embassy was supposed to have been notified when Lily was detained, but in practice they often weren't notified until the detainee was transferred to a prison. In this case, they'd been notified when Mr. Hayes's wife\u2014his ex-wife? excuse me, ex-wife\u2014had called, the moment their offices opened, the morning after Lily's arrest. The woman assured Andrew that nothing had been lost in this delay. Andrew thought he could detect a slight lisp in her speech, something a little messy around the sibilants; she had a voice, at any rate, that was altogether too sweetly girlish to be relaying such information. Lily was still in the police holding cell, the woman was explaining. The protocol was to move a detainee after forty-eight hours, but in practice detainees often stayed in the holding cells for months. The prisons were sometimes too crowded for a timely transfer, as was now the case.\n\n\"How does she seem?\" Andrew said.\n\n\"She's well.\" The woman sounded careful. \"Quite well.\"\n\nInstead of yelling that \"well\" was a fucking relative term, Andrew let the woman explain to him that it usually took six to fourteen months for a trial to be arranged. Andrew had had this number quoted at him before, but he knew from Janie that getting mired in statistics, in averages, was the fastest way to despair. He also knew that there were plenty of slower ways.\n\n\"She's seen a lawyer?\" said Andrew.\n\n\"We understand that she declined public representation.\"\n\n\"She _what_?\"\n\nThe representative, accustomed to rhetorical questions, said nothing. Andrew felt a compression in his chest that he feared might be clinical. In the shower, he heard Anna drop the shampoo.\n\n\"You're sure she was offered one?\" he said. Maybe she wasn't, and maybe that was the best of all possible news. Or the worst. It was very hard to say.\n\n\"We are told that she was,\" said the woman. He thought she might be chewing gum. He was going to file some kind of formal complaint if she was chewing gum.\n\n\"Told by whom?\"\n\n\"The police.\"\n\n\"This is unbelievable. It is fucking unbelievable.\" Andrew paused to try to catch the woman in her gum chewing, but heard nothing\u2014only the low-grade bureaucratic snufflings of some terrible office. \"Did they offer her a lawyer in English?\"\n\n\"That I don't know, sir, though they usually have to bring in external translators. You've hired a private penal specialist, I understand?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"The public legal representatives are generally quite good.\"\n\n\"We're hiring a private representative.\" The shower turned off, and Andrew could hear the wet slap of Anna's inelegant distance-runner feet against the linoleum. Something was occurring to him, something so obvious that he was almost embarrassed to let himself think it for the very first time. \"Did they interrogate her in Spanish?\"\n\n\"She addressed them in Spanish.\"\n\nAndrew closed his eyes. Lily was vain\u2014obnoxious, really\u2014about her Spanish; you simply could not take the child to a Mexican restaurant. But it was college Spanish, suitable for verb conjugation quizzes, nothing worse. \"I see,\" he said. \"Without a lawyer?\"\n\nThe representative, unwilling to repeat herself, said nothing.\n\nThat afternoon, out of desperation, Andrew took Anna sightseeing. Buenos Aires, they both immediately agreed, was overrated; it had the sprawl and grunge of a major city, but none of the European charm he'd been promised nor\u2014frankly\u2014any of the high-spiritedness he'd imagined. Andrew had thought it might be like Barcelona\u2014parties in the streets all night long, big tree-lined boulevards tumbling to the sea, generic Latin fun on every corner\u2014but it was mostly just hot, and dusty, and people sweated through their synthetic fibers, and always looked like they were on their way to work.\n\nAt La Recoleta Cemetery, Andrew and Anna walked desultorily among the tombs. They stared at Eva Per\u00f3n's grave, with its chintzy flowers, its interminable fleurs-de-lis, dizzying in the broad daylight. Nearby, bleached angels held eternally theatrical poses. Anna snapped some pictures. Off in the distance were small trees, stark and terrible as crosses, but Anna didn't take pictures of those.\n\nAfterward they sat at an outdoor caf\u00e9 and drank beers, even though it was only three o'clock. Andrew read aloud from Eva Per\u00f3n's _Wikipedia_ entry, which he'd printed out and brought along, for edification.\n\n\"She was born out of wedlock in the village of Los Toldos in rural Buenos Aires in 1919, the fourth of five children,\" he said.\n\nAnna stared dourly into her beer and did not speak.\n\n\"In 1951,\" Andrew announced, \"Eva Per\u00f3n renounced the Peronist nomination for the office of Vice President of Argentina.\"\n\n\"Dad,\" said Anna. She touched him lightly on the hand. \"You don't need to do that.\"\n\nAndrew folded up the pages and put them under his empty plate. They hadn't ordered any food. \"How are you doing, Old Sport?\" he said. He kept forgetting to ask. \"Are you hanging in there?\"\n\nAnna shrugged. \"I'm tired. I'm hot.\"\n\n\"How are you doing, you know, emotionally?\" Anna had a tendency to respond to queries about her well-being in only the most literal terms. Try as he might to dig into her inner life, she usually only offered him reports about new records broken, or shin splints suffered, or exams taken\u2014as though this would tell him all he needed to know.\n\n\"I want to see Lily.\" Anna squeezed her lemon into her beer, even though she'd already drunk most of it, and then stared at it, blinking. \"What do you think it's like there?\"\n\n\"It's probably not so bad, Old Sport,\" said Andrew, which he hoped was reasonably true. Lily's holding cell wasn't really equipped for long-term detention\u2014there was no exercise yard, Lily had told Maureen, and no separate quarters for women, and the guards could see her when she peed (she apparently returned to this issue frequently)\u2014but then this wasn't going to be a long-term detention. And a little compromised privacy was a worthy trade, Andrew felt, considering what he'd read about the prisons\u2014about the open sewage, the meningitis, the tendency of prisoners to burn themselves in order to get medical attention. \"I mean, it's probably not the Ritz or anything,\" said Andrew. \"Not a five-star hotel situation. But probably not so bad.\"\n\nThe reason Andrew did not know more was that he had spoken to Lily only once on the phone. She was allowed to make fifteen-minute calls once a day with her own phone card, and someone\u2014some guy, Andrew figured\u2014had brought her a whole bunch. Still, she had called Andrew only once, thirty-six hours after her arrest and twelve hours before his flight. Every other time, she had called Maureen.\n\n\"Lily said it was okay on the phone,\" said Andrew. \"She said it was manageable.\" What she'd actually said was \"endurable,\" but \"manageable\" seemed to convey the same thought without the troubling connotation. Andrew did not mind his child managing, not really. After all, everyone had to manage.\n\n\"Dad.\" Anna was shaking her head, looking amazed at Andrew's stupidity. Her lemon was a little yellow buoy in her beer. \"Don't you know that she'll say anything?\"\n\nThey left the caf\u00e9, and Andrew, not ready to return to the hotel, cajoled Anna into going to the modern art museum, where they walked with joyless thoroughness\u2014Anna squinting gravely at the art, Andrew squinting gravely at Anna. He couldn't understand any of the art. He was too old for all of this; everything challenging was for the young. He sat down on a bench in the middle of the room. He could see the bobbing of Anna's scapula through her T-shirt when she adjusted her purse; running had made her wiry in a feral cat kind of way. What, he wondered, would this moment come to mean to Anna? Maybe it would become merely one episode in her crazy sister's crazy life\u2014something to talk about in bars, on dates, or to tell Lily's wide-eyed, ruddy-haired children one day (\"Your mother,\" she might say, \"was _wild_ \"). Maybe this hour at the modern art museum would be merely one of the narrative's many surreal asterisks, something decorative that did not appear in every single telling. Or maybe, Andrew thought, this moment would become something else. Maybe Anna would remember it as the very last second that they were still trying to pretend that their whole lives hadn't gone fully to shit. Maybe she would talk about it in therapy one day\u2014recalling how they'd gone through the sad little self-conscious motions of enjoying the city, as though they were on fucking vacation, and how this was the _exact_ kind of pathological WASP repression that had motored them all through everything, always. Which story were they in right now? Andrew was not sure he wanted to know.\n\nOn the taxi ride back to the hotel, Andrew and Anna gazed out separate windows and did not speak. Every few blocks, they passed graffiti in support of Cristina Fern\u00e1ndez\u2014newly beloved in the wake of her husband's death, newly forgiven for raising the taxes on soybeans\u2014and Andrew experienced a minor stab of satisfaction. Encountering something in the world that confirmed what he'd learned of it always gave him a nice solid sense of existing in an actual universe\u2014a reassuring feeling, and one that had been slipping away from him, faster and faster, in recent years. Even before Lily's arrest, Andrew had felt untethered\u2014like his life had come undone in big sloppy pieces, and nothing had held together long enough to really count. Sometimes it seemed to Andrew that the meaning of his existence had been like a rare gas in a bottle he'd mistakenly uncorked\u2014it was still out there somewhere, presumably, but was now so diffuse as to be undetectable.\n\nAndrew had not slept with anyone since Maureen. He rarely put it in a sentence like that, but there it was. Of course, there had been chances\u2014graduate students: ambitious and\/or working out father issues and\/or bored and drunk\u2014but he had never taken any of them. The closest call had been an ABD named Karen, who had sleek hair and a creamy avian face and glasses that offset her unruffled beauty in a way that made her look like a porn star playing a librarian\u2014there was no way, there was just _no way_ , that those things actually had corrective lenses in them. Her area was Central Asian republics, and she'd spent an entire summer in Almaty trying to quiz Kazakhs on their feelings, their actual feelings, about Nursultan Nazarbayev. And there'd been one night when she and Andrew had had too much wine and too much high-spirited talk about whether the revolution in Egypt was best compared to the Eastern bloc countries in 1989 or to Iran in 1979 or to Iran in 2009, which had gotten them onto the CIA's overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953, and this had led them into dark cynical snorting about U.S. involvement in Afghanistan in the '80s, and then the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud two days before September 11th, and then they'd gotten onto rogue intelligence services generally, and conspiracy theories they'd never articulate in the classroom\u2014he spoke of the ISI and Benazir Bhutto, she spoke of the FSB and Lech Kaczy\u0144ski's death in that weird plane crash, which, Andrew had to admit, was admirably, almost sexily, audacious. And maybe there was a moment when he'd looked at her mouth\u2014not something you usually do, he realized, unless you've got some ideas\u2014but then he'd backed away, and scratched his neck, and went off to get some cheese cut into cubes which, as Karen pointed out, was not really the best way to maximize the surface area of cheese.\n\nAndrew did not know what Karen had wanted from him. There was nothing he could really do for her, he didn't think, besides write her the glowing recommendation she was already going to get. But there must be something\u2014some power he had that he hadn't yet unpacked\u2014because there was no way she'd be talking to him if it weren't strategic. She was a student of Kissinger, after all, a believer in realpolitik. And though there might be permanent interests, there were no permanent allies.\n\nIn the taxi, Anna was still staring out the window. \"Hey,\" said Andrew. He pulled on her ponytail and she shook it away from him. \"What do you think of the city?\"\n\n\"I don't like it,\" said Anna, still looking out the window. Outside, the midafternoon light was coming down in great golden bars, like some kind of ancient currency.\n\n\"Do you think you'd like it here if this weren't happening?\" said Andrew.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Anna. There was a long pause, and then she said, \"No.\"\n\nOn Tuesday, Andrew left Anna at the hotel and went to Tribunales to meet with the lawyers. There were only two of them\u2014Franco Ojeda and Leo Velazquez\u2014but Andrew couldn't help but think of them as a phalanx; they were mercenaries, it seemed to him, come to fight for pay. The conference room where Andrew met them was wood paneled and high ceilinged; it reminded Andrew of 1987, a terrible year. Ojeda was very fat and Velazquez was very bald; the overhead light caught his pate in a complicated, adamantine shine. Ojeda offered water, which Andrew declined, and Velazquez pulled down the blinds, which Andrew did not understand. And then, with the help of audiovisual supplements, the lawyers laid out the criminal case against Andrew's oldest living daughter.\n\n\"First,\" said Ojeda. His English was only very lightly accented; Andrew cringed at how much this surprised him. \"The emails.\"\n\nThe emails\u2014which the lawyers had helpfully printed out, color coded by date and arranged in a binder\u2014had emerged almost immediately after Lily's arrest; Andrew could only assume Lily had accidentally left herself logged in on one of the school computers, which was the kind of thing she would do. Andrew had read them over and over already, and they never sounded any less damning; this time, he closed one eye and half-skimmed, not wanting to look at them straight. Lily really could sound awful if you didn't know her.\n\n\"Second,\" said Velazquez, opening a new binder. \"The love triangle.\"\n\nThe lawyers had produced pictures of all three of them, somehow\u2014Andrew recognized Lily's picture from her Facebook page\u2014and with their images all lined up like that, Andrew saw something important that the lawyers were not saying. Lily's looks did not help. She was pretty, but it was a sloppy sort of prettiness, suggesting carelessness, sensuality, unearned privilege. Her breasts were, to her eternal chagrin, her mother's. \"I have the breasts of a medieval peasant!\" she'd shouted as a teenager once. Andrew had been waiting in the foyer to pick the girls up for the weekend; he'd gazed at the ceiling and pretended not to hear. \"What the hell do I need them for?\"\n\n\"You'll like them one day,\" he'd heard Maureen say.\n\n\"I won't,\" said Lily miserably. \"I got a 2300 on the SAT. I am never going to like them.\"\n\n\"You got a 2280,\" said Maureen.\n\nLily dressed them with varying degrees of success; in the heat, she tended to dress them very inadequately indeed. In the Facebook picture, she was wearing something ridiculous\u2014some spaghetti strap thing, Andrew didn't know what to call it\u2014and they (the breasts) were simply not battened down in any serious way at all. Andrew blamed Maureen for this, somehow; some important, delicate conversation had been missed, somewhere along the line, and now here they all were, staring at this photo, which contrasted so starkly with Katy's neat hair and sparkling teeth and compact body\u2014all of it somehow virginal, somehow the particular beauty of an innocent.\n\nBetween Lily and Katy was a picture of Sebastien LeCompte\u2014that name! In the photo, he appeared young, foppish, with overlong hair that reminded Andrew of some kind of ornithological plumage. The idea of this boy inspiring murderous lust was absolutely comic. Andrew was going to actually laugh about it, in fact, just as soon as he got out of this office.\n\n\"I'm sorry, but this guy?\" Andrew tapped the photo. \"Really? You're expecting me to believe those two girls were fighting over this guy?\"\n\n\"We're not expecting you to believe anything,\" said Ojeda. \"But it's what the prosecution will assert, and we have to assume that the panel will believe it.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"There is some evidence,\" said Velazquez. \"A few emails the deceased wrote, indicating a new romance that she needed to hide from your daughter. And Carlos Carrizo\u2014that's the host family father\u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Andrew.\n\n\"\u2014Has grudgingly admitted to seeing the deceased return from LeCompte's house late one evening. But in terms of the trial, what your daughter believed to be the case is more important than what was actually the case, as I'm sure you understand. And your daughter believed that the deceased and Sebastien LeCompte were romantically involved. She said as much in her initial interrogation.\"\n\n\"Are these really the concerns of law enforcement, though?\" Andrew sat back heavily in his chair. \"I mean, it all seems a little\u2014tawdry. And, frankly, trivial.\"\n\nOjeda blinked, impassive. \"Your daughter's emails characterize her relationship with the deceased as fraught, at best,\" he said. \"The love triangle element establishes a motive. And then there's the question of your daughter's behavior on the day of the murder.\"\n\n\"You mean, trying to administer CPR to a dead body and then calling the police?\" said Andrew. \"You mean, doing exactly what she was supposed to do?\"\n\n\"We're not as concerned about the blood the truck driver saw on Lily's face,\" said Ojeda. \"Lily found the body of the deceased, as you say, and we have every confidence that the DNA report will support that story. What's somewhat more worrying for our case, actually, are the reports from the initial interrogation of your daughter's rather... subdued... reaction to Katy's death. And in conjunction with the cartwheel, of course, that looks a little strange.\"\n\nAndrew felt his tongue freeze momentarily in his mouth. \"What cartwheel?\" he said.\n\nThe lawyers exchanged another glance. \"You didn't know about the cartwheel?\" said Velazquez.\n\n\"She did a cartwheel?\"\n\n\"During the interrogation.\"\n\n\" _During_ the interrogation?\"\n\n\"Afterward. Right after the first interrogation, when they left her alone.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Andrew, his tongue unfreezing. \"Well. That's odd, I suppose. But I don't really know what it has to do with anything. I mean, maybe she just wanted to stretch? Maybe she hadn't moved in a while? At any rate, I just don't see how it matters at all.\"\n\nBut he did, and the lawyers could see that he did, and that they did not need to explain.\n\n\"Finally,\" said Ojeda apologetically. \"There's this.\" He clicked a remote at the TV, summoning a black-and-white image of Lily and Sebastien LeCompte, who appeared to be shopping at some kind of Walmart-type store.\n\n\"What is this?\" said Andrew.\n\n\"Security footage. From the day of the murder.\"\n\n\"Why are we watching this?\"\n\n\"You'll see.\"\n\nOn the screen, Lily and Sebastien were grainy and grim, moving in that strange halting way\u2014disappearing and suddenly rematerializing three feet away\u2014that was particular to people on security tapes. Andrew leaned forward. They looked guilty, and why was that? He realized it was because you only ever saw people on security footage when they were suspected of a crime; the way they dropped out of sight and then popped back up began to seem intentional, furtive. On the screen, Lily and Sebastien looked ghostly and very young. They moved through the store picking out basic, sensible things\u2014a toothbrush, some toothpaste, the necessities for a person locked out of a house. At the end of one aisle, Lily lingered and, incredibly, produced a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She put one in her mouth without lighting it. Andrew felt a muted, faraway surprise that he knew, under any other circumstances, would be much larger\u2014he had never known his daughter to smoke. On the screen, Lily turned to look at Sebastien and nodded toward the shelf behind her\u2014which, Andrew could see now, was lined entirely with condoms. She raised an eyebrow and Ojeda paused the tape, freezing Lily's face into an expression of strange, nearly vulpine suggestiveness.\n\n\"That,\" said Velazquez, pointing, \"is what they're going to play.\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"The television.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"That she gave him this provocative look with the condoms.\"\n\n\"I wouldn't really say it's provocative,\" said Andrew, even though he knew it didn't matter. He was beginning to see how this was going to go. \"I mean, it's not like she bought them, right? It's just kind of silly, I think.\"\n\n\"You have to understand, this is five hours after she's learned of Katy's death,\" said Velazquez.\n\n\"She's just making a joke,\" said Andrew.\n\nAnd Velazquez looked at Andrew blankly and said that that's exactly what he meant.\n\nOn Thursday, Andrew and Anna took a taxi to Lomas de Zamora police station.\n\n\"Aren't you hot?\" said Andrew. He had told Anna to wear something modest, and now she was wearing a high-necked sweater and he worried she was hot. He was hot.\n\n\"No,\" said Anna. She was resting her head on the window. Andrew managed not to comment on this, though he flinched every time they hit a bump. He had to figure that she'd quit it if she wanted to quit it.\n\nFrom the outside, the police station looked normal enough\u2014like a place you might voluntarily go, certainly, if you were in some kind of trouble. Andrew reminded himself for the hundredth time that this wasn't Russia: This was a country where you were encouraged, on balance, to find the police if you had a problem. Inside, Andrew and Anna were conducted through a multi-phased entrance; they relinquished their documents to a man in a lucent box and were ushered into a small waiting room. Andrew was again relieved: The walls were papered with flyers for social service programs, and there wasn't a single festering wound or homicidal gang in sight. The huge light on the ceiling was spackled with the desiccated bodies of a few electrocuted flies, some of them still twitching; in the corner of the room lurked an enormous spindly-legged bug, as grand and improbable looking as a lobster; the smell of cloying disinfectant half-obscured the smell of something heavily organic. But in general, the room looked okay\u2014like a place where petty obligations were fulfilled. A DMV, perhaps. Though Andrew saw how this place's innocuousness could be dangerous; maybe it was why Lily had not realized the threat she was under\u2014letting things go on in Spanish, failing to ask for a lawyer. He could scarcely believe it about the lawyer. Hadn't she watched enough TV growing up to know to reflexively demand one, no matter what? Perhaps she actually hadn't\u2014they'd been stingy with TV, allowing only the most tedious and high-minded of programming, protecting their daughters from exposure to the mind-coarsening and the lurid. How funny that the most important thing Lily would wind up needing to know would be, essentially, a clich\u00e9, a little beat of verisimilitude in the preordained rhythm of a crime drama. How darkly hilarious, that this would turn out to be what they'd most needed to teach her. But instead they had raised an unworldly daughter; a child so confident in her language skills (a 5 on the AP exam, after all!), and so proud of the sophistication of her reasoning abilities (those papers on Quine!), and so assured of the infallibility of her innocence (!) that she assumed, wrongly and bravely, that her rational goodness could prevent disaster\u2014even though the thesis of all of their lives had been that this was not so. How strangely funny that was. Andrew was going to laugh about that. Andrew was going to laugh about all of it, just as soon as he got out of this jail.\n\n\"Okay,\" said the man in the box. \"You can come in now.\"\n\nAndrew squeezed Anna's shoulder, and they walked through another set of metal detectors and down a long hall of blue doors. The light was dimmer here, and Andrew had trouble telling if the clots of darkness in the corners were dirt or only shadows. The blue doors ended and a glass-walled room began and there, sitting at a table, fingers spread out before her with an odd, unsettling sort of precision, was Lily.\n\nHer head was bent forward. Her hair, Andrew could see, was very dirty. He couldn't remember the last time Lily's hair had been really dirty\u2014maybe that time she'd had pneumonia for ten days when she was seven. She looked sallow, bony\u2014a little Third World, Andrew couldn't help thinking, though this was no longer a relevant term, post\u2013Cold War. He could feel Anna startle against him, and he pressed his hand to her wrist. It was very important that neither of them seem startled.\n\nThe guard fumbled with his keys, rattling them. Lily still did not look up, and Andrew realized she couldn't hear them. But she knew they were coming; shouldn't she have been waiting, head raised, face expectant? The fact that she wasn't seemed another bad sign, alongside the hair and that awful thing she was doing with her fingers.\n\nThe guard opened the door, and Lily finally looked up. The skin underneath her eyes was dark and dingy; her lips were very dry. Andrew flashed to an image of Janie\u2014unconscious, intubated, her little macerated mouth a gaudy red, too gaudy for a two-year-old. The paleness of Lily's skin now reminded him of the paleness of Janie's skin then: It was the color of absence or impending departure. Andrew had expected Lily to stand, maybe even jump up, but she didn't\u2014she just smiled a sickly smile and waited for them to come to her.\n\n\"Dad,\" she said. Andrew went to her and hugged her, taking some basic inventory as he did so. Up close she seemed about the right size, he supposed, like the same essentially sturdy child she'd always been (he remembered a picture of her on her fifth birthday, wearing some goofy little red jumper that Maureen had bought and that Anna wore later, her calf muscles straining as she stood on tiptoe to give a kiss to a man in an enormous Winnie-the-Pooh suit whom Maureen had hired for the occasion). Andrew grazed his hand along Lily's forehead\u2014her temperature seemed normal\u2014and he squeezed her fingertips\u2014like her mother, her circulation sucked, and her extremities were always getting too cold\u2014but they seemed okay, just chilly, not frozen. He cupped the back of her head with his hand, a gesture that he knew was self-consciously maternal, that he knew he was copying from Maureen. It occurred to him briefly that it had been years since Lily would have allowed him such familiarities; since college began she'd become physically curt, a giver of hugs that seemed to communicate her general displeasure with the overall project of hugging. Andrew lingered for a moment with his hand on Lily's head, just because he could. Then he stepped away so Anna could hug her\u2014fiercely but swiftly, pulling away after a moment to stare at her feet.\n\nAndrew sat. He left his hand in the center of the table, in case Lily wanted to hold it at any point. \"Sweetheart,\" he said. \"How are you doing?\"\n\nLily blinked, and Andrew could see shivering blue capillaries on her eyelids. Were they always like that? They were probably always like that. \"When's Mom coming?\" she said.\n\n\"Next week,\" said Andrew. \"She'll be here for your next visit. On Thursday.\"\n\n\"Why isn't she here now?\"\n\n\"We're going to trade off weeks, sweetheart.\" Andrew was going to have to stop saying \"sweetheart\" with such frequency, he knew. Lily was not likely to tolerate it for long, and he did not want to know what it would mean if she did. \"So you'll always have a visitor. Every Thursday.\" Lily's innocence was implicit. It was implicit. Andrew would ask questions that reflected that. \"How are you being treated?\" he said, in the same moment as Anna leaned forward and said, urgently, \"Lily. Are you okay?\"\n\nAndrew saw a momentary sardonic flash in Lily's eyes\u2014encouraging because it was so characteristic\u2014but then it went away and Lily said, \"I'm okay.\" And Andrew knew then that she was protecting them, and he was afraid.\n\nLily stood up. \"Dad,\" she said. There was a wavering note of hysteria in her voice. She began to pace. \"I have to tell you what happened.\"\n\nAndrew had never seen anyone pace before, and it was distressing. She really did look like one of those caged animals\u2014her body seemed to register, at the edge of each cycle, that there was no place left to go; and she was doing something with her head that looked nearly equine\u2014and he said, \"Lily, do you want to sit down?\"\n\n\"No,\" she said. Andrew could hear something toddleresque in the dismissal\u2014in the jejune thrill at having something to reject\u2014and he realized that this was a small thing they could give her.\n\n\"Okay,\" he said soothingly. \"You don't have to sit down.\"\n\n\"Dad, I have to tell you.\" Lily's gaze was narrowing, and Andrew felt that she was on the verge of some kind of change in pitch.\n\n\"Lily,\" he said quickly. \"You don't need to tell us anything.\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\nAndrew leaned forward and gestured to the ceiling. \"Lily. You understand, right? You don't need to tell us anything, if you don't think you should.\"\n\nLily looked at Andrew then with the most open and wrecked expression he had ever seen; it was an expression that was shattered, that was nearly autopsied. \"Dad,\" she said, close to sobbing. \"Of course I should. What the hell do you think? Of _course_ I should.\"\n\n\"Okay, okay.\"\n\nAnna was silent: hands folded, face terrified.\n\n\"I was staying over at Sebastien's,\" said Lily.\n\nAndrew nodded. \"Sebastien is your boyfriend?\"\n\nLily looked at him dimly. There was a time when she would have quibbled with this formulation; she would have said \"lover\" or maybe even \"paramour,\" or told him not to be so conventional, or asked him to remind her what century this was. Now she just shook her head and said, \"No, I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Andrew, \"but so, you were staying over there.\"\n\n\"The Carrizos were gone for the weekend. That's why I was staying over.\"\n\n\"What did you do there?\"\n\n\"Dad.\"\n\n\"Okay.\" Andrew hadn't meant to ask any questions, but he did not know what he would say if he didn't. \"When did you get back?\"\n\n\"Like, maybe, eleven? I went to the bathroom to shower. Someone hadn't flushed the toilet, which I thought was weird. It wasn't like Katy. She's a very neat girl.\"\n\nAndrew could hear Lily struggling to manage her mouth here\u2014the juggling act of teeth and tongue and saliva seemed to be eluding her, and there was a faint breathiness in her voice.\n\n\"There was,\" she said. \"There was also. I can't see.\"\n\n\"Put your head between your knees,\" said Anna.\n\n\"Yeah,\" said Lily, and did. She stayed there for thirty seconds, then carefully brought her head back up. \"There was also some blood on the floor.\"\n\n\"Some blood?\" said Andrew casually. \"Like, how much?\" He wanted to stop with the questions, but he could not. At any rate, Lily seemed to be used to them.\n\n\"Like, not very much,\" said Lily. \"I thought maybe she'd cut herself. Or had her period and bled coming out of the shower or something. It wasn't like her not to notice, though.\"\n\n\"But you didn't see her?\"\n\n\"The door was closed. I thought she was still asleep. I went and got some cheese from the fridge and sat on the couch for a few hours watching some game show. I was pretty hungover, to be honest. I fell asleep for a while. When I woke up, it was much later\u2014like maybe almost four. Excuse me.\" She put her head down again. Andrew went to her and tried to wrap his arm awkwardly around her shoulder, but she shook him off. Anna tried, and Lily accepted this.\n\n\"I just keep thinking about her lying there, while I was napping on the couch.\"\n\n\"Don't think about it,\" said Anna.\n\n\"You try it,\" said Lily. She sounded like herself, almost. She sat up. \"So I got up. I felt really weird. Like, massively thirsty, but also weirdly emotionally, like, fragile. It wasn't getting dark at all yet, but I just felt this kind of permanent emptiness in the house. I don't know. I went down to the bedroom. I wanted to find Katy. I wanted to see if she wanted to go for a walk or something. Get out of that house. The door was still closed. And outside the door, there was a blood footprint. It seemed enormous, like it was from some kind of monster. And it was so detailed on the white carpet. Like, you could see each ridge on the sole of the sneaker. I screamed and ran into the room. She was lying in the middle of the floor with a towel over her head. I think I knew she was dead. I went over to her and pulled the towel off. Her face was turned to the side. Her lips were blue. I tried to give her CPR for like one second and her lips were so cold and I got her blood on my face.\"\n\nLily was shaking so hard that she was moving Anna's arm along with her shoulders. Andrew tried putting his arm around her again, and this time, she allowed it.\n\n\"I was totally bawling by this point. I ran out of there and over to Sebastien's and then we called the police. Then the cops came and we were locked out of the house. The Carrizos couldn't get a flight until the next day. I called Mom. Sebastien took me to buy a toothbrush. He was going to let me stay with him. I spent the whole night puking, I don't know why. And then the next day they came for me and brought me here.\"\n\nOutside the door, the guard was telling them two minutes, which was unbelievable. Andrew hadn't done anything yet, and he especially hadn't done the most crucial thing.\n\n\"Lily.\" He grabbed her hands so hard that he could feel the slight accordioning of her bones. What he wanted to say was _Wait a minute. Just wait one goddamn minute here_. As though the issue was only that things were going too fast. As though he could manage it, no problem, if he just had thirty seconds to sit still and really think about it. \"How are they treating you?\"\n\n\"I don't know if I should say.\"\n\n\"Tell me.\"\n\n\"I have to pee in front of the guards.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"There's no trash can. There's no running water except the shower. There's no fork. The toothpaste doesn't work.\"\n\n\"It doesn't _work_?\" said Andrew.\n\n\"We'll get you real toothpaste,\" said Anna.\n\n\"Can you get me real tampons?\"\n\n\" _Real_ tampons?\" said Andrew.\n\nThe guard had entered the room and was standing, with quiet obtrusiveness, in the corner.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Anna, emphatically.\n\n\"What are real tampons?\"\n\n\"Dad.\"\n\n\"The shower is freezing,\" said Lily. \"I mean, _freezing_. I swear they're doing it on purpose.\"\n\nThe guard was upon her, and he stood her up\u2014not roughly, but in a way that left no ambiguity as to what she was going to do. Andrew wanted to punch the guy in the face. He wanted to hold Lily and Anna and let them weep into his shoulders and tell them he would protect them always. But he knew he couldn't. And he knew that a scene like that would terrify all of them. It would feel like a goodbye, which this certainly was not. They would see Lily very soon. Hysteria invited hysteria. There was nothing to be gained from it.\n\n\"We'll see you in seven days,\" said Andrew. He gave Lily a hug that was warm, but without any undertones of apocalyptic clinging. \"Your mother will be here.\"\n\n\"I love you,\" she said.\n\n\"We love you,\" they said.\n\nThey walked out into the hallway, leaving Lily behind them. When Andrew turned back to look at her, her head was down again, her long greasy hair obscuring her face. And she didn't look back up at them, even though they waved to her all the way down the hall.\n\n# CHAPTER TWO\n\n## February\n\nEduardo Campos was not sure until he saw the pictures. Later, people would ask him\u2014informally, socially\u2014when he knew. Be honest with us, they'd say. We won't tell. We knew when we heard about her Facebook page. We knew when we heard about her cartwheel. We knew when we saw the footage of her with the condoms\u2014that cold, seductive look she gave the boy, and only hours after that poor other girl was knifed to death. That's when we knew Lily Hayes was guilty. When did you know? And Eduardo would laugh and say that of course he never knew, that he still didn't know. His job was just to make the case for the state, and the state's case, one had to admit, was ironclad. But the truth was he did know, and he had first known when the judicial police brought him Lily Hayes's camera.\n\nThe crime scene had not surprised him. Nothing surprised him, really, though there was certainly an incongruity between the upscale neighborhood and the well-kept house and the young American woman dead in a vast swamp of her own blood. It had taken Eduardo years to get used to how much blood one body could produce. But he was used to it now, and he studied the scene with his practiced dissociative attitude, reminding himself that the best way to help this young woman now was to pay very close attention.\n\nShe was lying on her stomach with her face to the side, hunched in the characteristic awkwardness of the dead. There was substantial bruising along her inner thighs. It was overwhelmingly likely that she had been sexually assaulted.\n\nEduardo followed the police with his notepad. He did not touch anything. In the kitchen, they found a knife, which was collected. In the victim's drawer, they found a half-empty packet of Skin Skin condoms, which was also collected. In the bathroom, they found three discrete spots of blood and an unflushed toilet, all of which were photographed, then sampled. In the garden, they found Lily Hayes, who had discovered the body (according to her) moments before running across the lawn with blood on her face (according to the driver who was now shakily smoking a cigarette in front of his delivery truck). Lily Hayes was white, late teens or early twenties, with a squarish jaw and auburn hair and high, vaguely witchy eyebrows; she appeared to have already washed all of the blood off her face. She was standing morosely next to a very young man in suspenders. Behind them, the bald double pates of San Telmo Pedro gleamed in the distance. Lily Hayes was not crying. She was pale, but perhaps she was always pale. She kissed the boy once, somewhat chastely, and then again, a little less chastely. She looked, Eduardo decided, harassed. Inconvenienced. If she looked anything at all. There was a stillness to her face that would probably seem perverse under any circumstances, but especially these circumstances, and which could only be intentional. Eduardo let himself think the thought, and then he let it pass. He'd been at this long enough to know that you couldn't scour yourself entirely clean of hunches and biases and premonitions; lurking suspicions; kneejerk reactions. You couldn't help but know some things without knowing why you knew them.\n\nBut at that point he did not know; he was not sure. He wasn't sure that afternoon, when he went home to drink two tumblers of whiskey and take ibuprofen for his costochondritis (an inflamed chest wall, his doctor had told him, though he knew that it was actually the somatic manifestation of loneliness, that his heart was finally quitting in protest). He wasn't sure that night, when he was still awake past three, walking heel to toe through his living room, the apartment so empty around him that he could hear the sonic groans of his own intestines, like whale song. And he wasn't sure the next day, when the police brought him the transcript of their initial conversation with Lily Hayes.\n\nThere were a lot of transcripts\u2014the police's first talks with the neighbors, the vendors, the traumatized American study-abroad students, the family who'd been hosting both girls, the improbably named boy who had been kissing Lily Hayes in the garden. But the conversation with Lily Hayes stood out, and not only because there was no sign of a break-in and she was the only person in a hundred kilometers who'd had a house key. Eduardo read the transcript in his apartment with the shades drawn, while the sky outside his window stayed maddeningly light well past eight o'clock. In the transcript, of course, it was difficult to ascertain exactly what Lily Hayes's tone had been as she answered questions about Katy Kellers's short life and violent death. But Eduardo detected a cold current, a psychological dislocation, that made him read and reread the interview\u2014though, for obvious reasons, Lily Hayes was not likely to have been the sole perpetrator of the crime.\n\n\"You say you saw some blood in the bathroom,\" said the interviewing officer.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Lily.\n\n\"How much blood was there, exactly?\"\n\n\"Not much,\" she said\u2014and Eduardo could feel the pause there, the implied flippancy. At one point, the transcript remarked flatly that Lily Hayes, left briefly alone but for the watchful gaze of the security camera, had done a cartwheel. Eduardo turned this image over in his mind. He regarded it without judgment. He was surer, but he was not yet sure. And it was very important to be sure, because once he was sure, he was never wrong.\n\nThe next morning, Eduardo arose before dawn to run through the darkness. He was sweating by the end of the block; he was, as usual, overdressed for the weather. He could never believe that the world outside was so much warmer than it looked.\n\nThe running was new, though the general ritualized masochism was not. Whenever Eduardo felt it coming back again, he commenced a series of steps, a sequence arrived at through guessing and testing and the emergence of a grim, white-knuckled will. First, he assessed all the things in life that would make him feel worse. You won't feel any better if you get fat, he'd tell himself, while jogging. You won't feel any better if you get gingivitis, he'd tell himself, while flossing. The corollary\u2014which was intrusive and unarticulated and omnipresent\u2014was that he wouldn't feel any better either way. It never worked, of course. But it did make Eduardo feel as though he had tried. If Eduardo did anything, it was try. And, after all, it had been only two months since Maria left.\n\nMaria\u2014Eduardo would be the first to admit\u2014had crashed into his existence, unearned, unwarranted. They'd been married for three years, and during that time Eduardo had never entirely gotten used to the idea. So when she left him\u2014for a Brazilian opera singer, he'd heard\u2014who was Eduardo to say she was not making the right decision? He had felt, somewhere in his devastation, that the universe was actually righting itself, and that resenting this was irrational. And if Eduardo was anything, it was rational.\n\nAround him, Belgrano's streets were rain-slicked and silver. Eduardo tried to breathe evenly. He thought about all the cigarettes he hadn't smoked in the fifteen years since he'd quit. Could he feel the difference in his breathing? He was not sure. Sun split the clouds, startling a flock of birds off their telephone line. Eduardo could not feel a difference, he decided. But he did feel a little stab of virtue every time he wanted and did not allow himself a cigarette, which was still a few times a day, every day, even now. Sometimes it seemed to Eduardo that his whole life was only a collection of small impulses denied. The birds flew over his head, casting chevrons of shadow on the concrete.\n\nAt least, Eduardo knew, his work would not suffer. In the very precise triage system he'd set up within his life, work was the most critical priority. And on his better depressed days, Eduardo didn't so much as snap out of his sadness as sink into it\u2014it contracted in his chest like a heart, giving him some propulsive force as he moved through an investigation. This compulsion to work could sometimes feel congenital, genetic\u2014though, in fact, Eduardo had not originally wanted to be a lawyer. He had studied piano as a teenager and had hoped to continue in college, right up until the day he watched Julio C\u00e9sar Strassera deliver closing remarks in the Trial of the Juntas. It was 1985 and Eduardo was sixteen. He'd been practicing Mozart's Sonata in F Major for a school recital that would later be canceled due to bomb threats, and his time with the school's piano was limited, but still he went to the cervecer\u00eda across the street to watch. Never again, said Strassera. The television cut to footage of the Mothers, testifying. The bar around Eduardo smelled sour, and a man next to him was crying. One of the Mothers looked straight into the camera. \"What has happened cannot be fixed,\" she said. \"It can only be told.\" On her face was an expression of righteous sadness, a grief well beyond weeping. And suddenly Eduardo understood\u2014with shocking and fatal clarity\u2014that she was not trying to get her child back. This thought had never really occurred to him before. \"They have to be dead,\" the woman was saying, \"but they are only truly desaparecido if we turn away. They are only really gone once we stop looking for them.\"\n\nStanding before the television, Mozart's allegro still throbbing in his fingertips, Eduardo had felt himself rising to a grave and difficult understanding. Perhaps this was only because he'd been looking for one\u2014he was, after all, sixteen. But whatever the reason, he'd known that he was seeing something he could not forget: He was learning that goodness could not be goodness if it was dimensionless and passive; he was beginning to believe that there was a compassion beyond compassion. Eduardo looked at the Mother's face, and he saw that forgiveness without justice was not Christ's forgiveness, or any other kind worth extending. He walked out into the blazing sun and did not return to the piano that day, though he could not now remember where he went.\n\nEduardo, it turned out, was suited to studying law. He had always been diligent and high scoring, but he did not have that easygoing sheen that made people want to think well or expect much of him; he had never managed to effortlessly inspire confidence or lust. There was something about him that was too solicitous\u2014it was subtle as a pheromone and just as permanent; it made people understand that they could ignore him and get away with it. Eduardo's freakishly good memory did not help matters. Growing up, he had often surprised peers he barely knew by revealing his shockingly accurate retention of any scrap of information they'd volunteered the first time they'd met him, which occasion they invariably could not recall. Children reacted to this party trick with some bemusement, since their worldviews were not really at odds with the notion that everyone around them might somehow know who they were. As he grew older, however, Eduardo learned that mature narcissism responded with more suspicion: People tended to assume that Eduardo's attention was particular to them, and he watched as their eyes narrowed and they wondered, visibly unnerved, just what exactly he might be after.\n\nStill, Eduardo excelled in the clean realms\u2014standardized testing, blind admissions, paper applications\u2014where personality was scoured away; where memory was a strength, not a weakness. And it was these successes that delivered him to the University of Buenos Aires School of Law, where he finally learned\u2014not in the classroom, but the bars\u2014how to effectively wield his memory. Women, he learned, could be made to feel that Eduardo had a depth and singularity of feeling for them, whether he did or not. Men, as long as Eduardo used the right tone, could be made to feel quietly flattered and impressive. No matter how people felt about Eduardo, they usually left Eduardo's company feeling faintly good about themselves. And Eduardo quickly saw that this was what mattered\u2014that that slight untraceable rosy glow was the important emotional takeaway, even if it had nothing to do with Eduardo at all. He would never be particularly attractive or charismatic or possessed of the kind of authority that commanded attention. But he could make anybody he met feel that _they_ were. And this, Eduardo saw, could leverage a power that was subtler and, depending on the situation, more potent than what was lost.\n\nAfter graduation, Eduardo began clerking in C\u00f3rdoba. Around him, Kirchner was repaying the IMF loan; privatization was peeling away every expectation the people had ever had for anything beyond themselves in this world. Shared Dreams was investigated for corruption and the economy exploded overnight. Forgiveness was work, Eduardo told victims' families\u2014but so, then, was love, and deciding what was right, and defending it. Recusing yourself from judgment so you won't be tainted by the aggressor's sin is the same as turning away from empathy so you won't be touched by the victim's pain. And God did not shrink from either task, Eduardo often thought\u2014though he didn't say this to anyone. Eduardo would never have been fool enough to try to persuade anybody of the existence of God, just as he would never have been fool enough to try to persuade anybody of the existence of his own consciousness. No one can ever really prove their sentience externally\u2014there's no argument or syllogism that gets you there: The systems of measurement are too fatally implicated in the thing they're trying to measure\u2014and God, Eduardo thought, presented the same sort of mess. It was, at heart, a kind of epistemological Heisenberg uncertainty principle problem. But Eduardo's morality did not require a belief in God. If anything, man's compassionate justice was even more necessary in a secular universe. Because if not now, after all, then when? If not for this, after all, then for what?\n\nAfter a few years, Eduardo was appointed the fiscal de c\u00e1mara for Buenos Aires Province. Forgiveness is admirable, he told the judicial panels, but not when it is automatic; not when it is done because it's the easy way to stay shallowly blameless. Eduardo developed instincts of great accuracy and precision about suspects, and these instincts led him to a streak of notable and just convictions. Standing outside the courtroom after one of them, he posed a question to the assembled press: What does it mean for a killer to deserve our empathy if a victim does not? It just means that we are lazy. It just means we want to be left alone.\n\nBut Eduardo did not want to be left alone; instead, he wanted to work, and to try. Trying was a modest thing to have at the center of one's life. Nevertheless, it was going to save him. He wanted to try, and he wanted to keep trying\u2014even now, with Maria gone. This meant he was not suicidal. He knew because he had looked it up.\n\nEduardo turned back toward his apartment building. He could still see it, all those blocks down the street, looking hazy and insubstantial in the mist. A mile away, Eduardo figured, the rain must be starting again.\n\nThat day, the emails were subpoenaed.\n\nLily Hayes and Katy Kellers were, it turned out, voluminous correspondents\u2014they both kept track of the minute contours of their emotional lives, and this careful accounting produced several salient facts. First, it seemed that Lily had not much cared for Katy\u2014in two emails and one Facebook message, all sent in early January, she had gone to some lengths to support her thesis that Katy was a \"bore.\" Second, it seemed that Katy and Lily had had a fight, or possibly several fights, toward the middle or at the end of February. This fact was not mentioned in Lily's exchanges, but was described by Katy in a Google Chat exchange with one friend from home (who, alas, seemed already familiar with the situation, rendering the narrative fairly sketchy) and possibly referenced in a conversation with another (Sara Perkins-Lieberman: How are things with the roomie?? Katy Kellers: Ugggggggh :\/). Finally, the third and most interesting piece of information revealed in the emails was that Katy, apparently, had been in a relationship. In an email written to that same Sara Perkins-Lieberman, she'd said: _I've met someone. It feels kind of crazy.... We're sort of sneaking around because I don't think Lily would like it very much (she's kind of histrionic), though maybe partly it just makes things more fun? I don't know. I didn't think I was really ready for anything yet, but now I sort of wonder_. This revelation, of course, explained the condoms. And it seemed that Katy had indeed kept the relationship from Lily: In all of her extensive narrative journalism about their lives in Buenos Aires (which continued to cover Katy throughout the rest of February, though in increasingly fond terms), Lily never mentioned it. Katy's relationship, apparently, really had stayed a secret. At least for a while.\n\nIn the afternoon, over coffee, Eduardo Googled \"Lily Hayes.\" It was a common name in the United States, it turned out, though it struck Eduardo as fussy and prim, an odd moniker for Me Generation parents to give to a child. Nonetheless, \"Lily Hayes+Middlebury\" yielded several hits. There was Lily Hayes dressed up as a green pepper for some children's theater troupe, and there was Lily Hayes raving about the generosity of alumni donations in the school magazine, and there was Lily Hayes arguing in the Middlebury _Campus_ \u2014with a blend of self-righteousness and world vision totally unsullied by reality\u2014for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Next, Eduardo found Lily on Facebook: a Moli\u00e8re quote, a variety of subsexual poses, a loving catalog of reasonably challenging fiction. He scrolled down. He saw stern admonishments to sign petitions, flirtations with bearded and bespectacled young men, birthday wishes sent and received. It was certainly not the kind of trail that most of Eduardo's suspects left in their wake. Eduardo did not believe that crime\u2014murder, in particular\u2014was ever inevitable. But with most defendants, you could track the way each misfortune had impelled the next; you could look at their lives and nearly reach out to trace the filigreed twists and turns that had deposited them, with shaking hands, before their victims and their fates. Most defendants Eduardo saw were broken. Lily Hayes\u2014if she was guilty\u2014had never been whole.\n\nEduardo scrolled down further. A few months back, Lily Hayes had posted a link to a blog. \"I wrote a piece for my Intermediate Creative Writing class, imagining a crime,\" she wrote, and fourteen people had \"Liked\" this statement, for reasons Eduardo could not fathom. He clicked on the link, which took him to what looked to be a mostly abandoned blog\u2014 _Reveries_ , it was called, and underneath it were the words \"feminist,\" \"artist,\" \"dreamer,\" and \"explorer\"\u2014and the top post was her imagined crime, creatively written, apparently, for a college course. The piece seemed to revolve around a jilted lover who goes back into the house of the woman who has betrayed him to steal an expensive necklace he has given her. Eduardo read with keen attention, feeling that he was watching a thing in the distance assume its shape. Underneath the florid writing, the girlish overreliance on adverbs, there was something troubling and emotionally askew\u2014the same thing, he was almost sure, that he'd detected in the transcript from her interview. He read the piece's ending. Then he read it again.\n\n_In my ire and haste, I have tripped the alarm. I must move with alacrity now. I grab the necklace swiftly. It is so beautiful. Its varicolored hues glitter dazzlingly in the light. I look at her sleeping peacefully there. I admire her swanlike neck of ivory. It is so innocent, so unsuspecting. I raise my knife in murderous wrath, but do not strike_.\n\nEduardo printed out the story with the benumbed feeling of encountering astonishing good luck. It was significantly less than a written confession, of course, though it was hard to think of anything much closer.\n\nBut still, he was not sure.\n\nThursday was the judicial interrogation, to which Lily Hayes had submitted without a lawyer. Her father would be coming, apparently, and a U.S. consultant to the Argentine defense team and various private defense attorneys were being hired; these people, it was clear, had some money. Eduardo did not know why Lily had rejected the offers of a state-appointed lawyer. Perhaps it was due to a low opinion of the quality of Argentine state defenders, or a foolish calculation that this would make her look innocent, or an unusual though by no means unheard-of indifference to her own fate. Eduardo felt some sympathy for her. But he wasn't going to talk her out of making her own strategic mistakes, if she wanted to make them.\n\nIn the interrogation room, Lily Hayes looked even paler than the day Eduardo first saw her; her fingers were spread out on the table in a gesture of bald terror, and her hair did not appear to be entirely clean. She did seem very young\u2014but Katy Kellers had been young, too, and Eduardo's empathy for her was not contingent on age. Neither was it contingent on her guilt or innocence. He was going to be as clear and kind as the situation allowed. This was only humane. He sat down.\n\n\"Quien es usted?\" she said.\n\n_\"Eduardo Campos,\"_ he said. He did not extend his hand, because he didn't want to be patronizing. For the same reason, he did not switch to English. \"I'm the fiscal de c\u00e1mara, a representative of the investigative magistrate. My job is to help decide whether there's enough evidence against you to bring you to a criminal trial. I have ten days to make that determination, starting from today. I'll make my assessment and issue a recommendation to the instructor judge as to whether we should continue our case against you. In the eventuality that your case is brought before the criminal court, I'll argue the state's case alongside the instructor judge. It will be heard by a panel of three judges, who will determine your guilt or innocence. Has all of this been explained to you?\"\n\nHe saw her pause, unsure whether to admit she had no idea what was going on.\n\n\"Yes,\" she said carefully.\n\n\"This is your judicial interrogation. You understand that you don't have to talk to me?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she said, more confidently. Eduardo flashed to an image of the unthinkable cartwheel this girl had done during her initial questioning; he saw her starfishing her way across the interrogation room under the cold light of the camera. \"Why can't my dad bail me out?\" she said.\n\n\"Bail has to do with the seriousness of the crime, not the evidence against the accused. Do you have any other questions for me?\"\n\nShe did not, but Eduardo had a few for her. He spent the first twenty minutes asking for factual information he already knew\u2014Lily Hayes's full name, her date of birth, her reason for being in Buenos Aires. (\"I thought it would be an interesting place to study abroad,\" she'd said. \"And has it been?\" She'd laughed a harsh, unbecoming laugh.) These were the equivalent of lie tests on a psych battery or polygraph. He asked her to go through the day of the murder minute by minute, in order to catch deviations from the account she gave to police; he then asked her to repeat it four more times, in order to catch variations between accounts. Certain variations were suspicious, of course, but then so was no variation at all. Lily Hayes was chewing a strand of hair, he noted, which was intriguing. It was a strange, careless thing to do\u2014it was vulgar, really, and he wasn't sure he could remember seeing anybody over the age of about seven do it\u2014and it was interesting to him that she felt comfortable engaging in such an activity in this, one of the most important formal conversations of her life. At the forty-five-minute mark, Eduardo began asking the real questions.\n\n\"So,\" he said. \"I understand you felt that Katy was insipid.\"\n\nAt this, Lily looked green and appalled. \"Where did you hear that?\"\n\nSome prosecutors wouldn't tell her, in order to make her wonder who among her friends might not be on her side. They'd want to make her understand that the days when she could expect answers were over; that avenues to comprehension were charities now, to be dispensed or withheld at their whim. These kinds of prosecutors would want to build up the breathy edginess of paranoia, that bewildered lost-in-the-woods-at-night disorientation that makes someone look for any sort of beacon or semaphore. Paranoia in a defendant was a great asset for a prosecutor, it was generally thought. But Eduardo did not like to withhold answers. Partly, it offended his sense of fair play. And partly, he disagreed with the strategy. He felt that giving defendants a false sense of marginal competence\u2014a slight idea of where they stood in relation to the world\u2014made them relax just enough to make a mistake, if there were any mistakes to be made (which, of course, he never assumed that there were).\n\n\"An email you wrote,\" he said.\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"Do you remember who you wrote that email to?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"So it could have been any number of people, then?\"\n\nLily said nothing. Eduardo pretended to look at his notes. \"When you said she was insipid,\" said Eduardo, \"did you mean she was 'lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate, or challenge'?\"\n\n\"I mean\u2014yes, I suppose so. Yeah.\"\n\n\"Was there anything in particular you found especially insipid about the victim?\"\n\nThere was really no need to refer to Katy as the \"victim\" just now\u2014though it was how Eduardo would refer to her in court, of course, to remind the three judges (over and over and over) that the dead girl, in stark contrast to the living girl in front of them, was dead. But it was best to get in the habit early.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Lily.\n\n\"Her reading tastes, perhaps? Her vocabulary?\"\n\n\"I guess so.\"\n\n\"Do you consider yourself a smart woman?\" said Eduardo. This language, too, was intentional. In public, in the courts, Eduardo would refer to Katy as a \"girl\" and Lily as a \"woman,\" whenever he wasn't referring to them as \"victim\" and \"defendant,\" even though Lily was, in fact, three and a half months younger than Katy had been when she died. This was, again, just good sense. You could subtly direct the judges toward the truth through small adornments and pressures and omissions; Eduardo would never deviate from the facts, of course, but there was nothing wrong with using words with slightly different connotations in order to illuminate the reality of a situation. Who could deny that the differing designations reflected an emotional veracity, if not a biological one? You looked at Lily\u2014leaving aside questions of guilt or innocence\u2014and you saw her callousness, and her emotional remoteness, and her sexual experience, and you knew you were dealing with an adult. And then there was the small matter that Lily would grow up, in prison or out, and Katy would always be a girl and would always be dead.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"It's a simple question.\"\n\n\"I don't understand what you're asking.\"\n\n\"Is it fair to say you thought were you smarter than the victim?\"\n\n\"Is it fair to say you think you're smarter than me?\"\n\nEduardo put down his notepad and raised his eyebrows. Lily's face was flushed; he could tell that she was slightly surprised, but also slightly pleased, at what she had said.\n\n\"I would not presume that,\" he said firmly, and lifted his notepad again. \"Insipidness aside, there were a lot of other things you didn't like about Katy Kellers.\"\n\n\"That's not true.\"\n\n\"Let me remind you of some of the things you didn't like about her, according to emails you sent during the month of January alone: her hair, her name, her teeth\u2014\"\n\n\"I loved her teeth!\"\n\n\" 'They were not the teeth of a serious person,' according to a Facebook message you wrote to your friend Callie Meyers on January seventeenth, 2011.\"\n\n\"I liked her teeth. I wanted teeth like that.\"\n\n\"Do you think Katy ever had to have braces?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"She never had braces. They were just naturally straight.\"\n\nLily stared at him.\n\n\"You had to have braces, didn't you?\" said Eduardo. \"I understand you had them into college. I understand you had to visit home on weekends for orthodontic follow-up.\"\n\n\"I don't see what this has to do with anything.\"\n\n\"We'll move on. Tell me about your relationship with Sebastien LeCompte.\"\n\n\"We were friends.\"\n\n\"You had a sexual relationship?\"\n\nLily turned her face to the side. \"Briefly.\"\n\n\"Were you aware that the victim was also having a sexual relationship with Sebastien LeCompte?\" This query contained a bluff, as well as a fairly obvious supposition\u2014but, being a question, it was not exactly a lie. And at any rate, the reality of Sebastien LeCompte's involvement with Katy Kellers did not matter half as much as whatever Lily had believed that reality to be.\n\n\"I wouldn't necessarily have called it a relationship.\"\n\n\"You were aware of it, though?\"\n\n\"I mean, I certainly wondered.\"\n\n\"What made you wonder?\"\n\n\"I'm not stupid.\"\n\nEduardo pretended to make a note of this, though he wasn't really writing anything.\n\nLily shifted in her seat. \"I just mean, I could tell. They weren't as careful as they thought they were.\"\n\n\"And how did you feel about it?\"\n\n\"Not much.\"\n\n\"Really? You weren't angry?\"\n\n\"Not really. We weren't in love or anything.\"\n\nDuring his seventh week with Maria, Eduardo had whispered into her ear while she was sleeping: \"Tell me who you are, because I love you already and I want to know who I love.\"\n\n\"I mean,\" said Lily, uncertain about what to do with his silence. \"Sebastien and I weren't, like, a couple.\"\n\n\"But you were sleeping together.\"\n\nLily looked pensive; the light through the bars made long tapering wicks on her face. \"I don't think I want to talk to you anymore today,\" she said.\n\nEduardo nodded. \"That's your right,\" he said. He snapped his notebook shut in order to convey a sense of finality, of satisfaction. \"This has been a good conversation. You can go have your medical exam now.\"\n\nThough he would never let it matter, it was true that something about Lily Hayes reminded Eduardo of Maria. What was it, exactly? The breeziness of a person to whom nothing was ever denied? But in Maria this quality had been charming and elfin, and in Lily it was, assuredly, only obnoxious. And at any rate, Eduardo knew that there was something sinister about Lily that went well beyond impulsivity.\n\nTake, for example, the cartwheel. Eduardo had worked enough high-profile cases to know how the cartwheel would play, what binary of accusation and defense would grow in its wake. For the prosecution, by way of the media, an argument would be made that the cartwheel was callous, flippant, reflective of the same kind of bottomless disregard that could, given the right circumstances and drugs, disregard another human life. The counterargument, obviously, would assert that the cartwheel was whimsical and guileless; an exuberant outburst that was now being willfully misunderstood by the old and the humorless and the agenda having. Indeed, the defense might say, if the cartwheel was evidence of anything it was evidence of innocence: How could someone guilty, someone who wanted to look _not_ guilty, do something like that? Only a person who knew that she was innocent and was too young to know that this might not matter would ever, ever do a cartwheel in an interrogation room.\n\nBut Eduardo knew better, because he had spent years studying an impulsive woman. Maria sometimes did things that were crazy or ill-advised, Eduardo would be the first to admit\u2014though more commonly she did things that were merely strange: He'd once found her in the living room at three a.m. staring at a red umbrella she'd lit up with a flashlight, and more than once he'd passed by the closed bathroom door and heard her murmuring to herself in the claw-footed tub. One time she'd hung up a paper moon in a tree, where it shone through the branches like an illuminated coin.\n\n\"It's beautiful,\" he'd said, assuming Maria had wanted to do something beautiful.\n\n\"Oh, is it?\" she'd said distractedly, as he wrapped his arms around her.\n\n\"I just wanted it to be interesting.\"\n\n\"It is,\" said Eduardo. He could hear the sticky note of pleading in his own voice. He so wanted to see whatever it was she wanted him to see.\n\n\"No,\" said Maria, looking at him calmly. \"Nothing beautiful is really interesting.\" She'd torn it down then, though not angrily\u2014just methodically, thoroughly, as though correcting a mistake she now saw that she'd made.\n\nThere were difficulties, too, of course. Maria had a tendency to internalize free-floating stress from the universe, though her life was not, as far as Eduardo could discern, at all stressful. This knotty, inaccessible melancholy of hers was so different from his own; whatever went on with Maria was always some strange iteration away from sense. She'd fall into black spells, growing monosyllabic and morose, speaking in a kind of halting iambic pentameter. She'd disappear into the bathroom to sob (and how she sobbed\u2014these choking, wretched sobs that somehow came at exactly even intervals, so that they seemed almost like some kind of biological or geologic process). One winter she even went a little bald; Eduardo came upon a collapsed black octopus of hair in the shower drain, looking like the remnant of a massacre.\n\nAnd there were times\u2014rarely, but memorably\u2014when she could be cruel. The first time he'd really seen it was the night he'd been appointed fiscal de c\u00e1mara. Maria had organized a celebration for him at a restaurant, though he realized later that every night with Maria was a kind of complicated, triple-edged celebration\u2014like the wedding of an old lover, or the birthday party of an old enemy. There was always a manic sheen of strenuously sought and hard-won fun and an underlying sense of deep and growing trouble. The night of the promotion, Eduardo had felt humble and serene and pleased with himself for the first time in he didn't know how long. Their friends were laughing and drinking and having a great time until Maria clinked her glass for a toast. Everybody stopped speaking and stared at her happily, and Eduardo felt grateful and honored\u2014because she was so beautiful, because he was so lucky\u2014as he waited to hear what she would say about him.\n\n\"Eduardo,\" said Maria. She was smiling. She was radiant. \"I always knew you'd excel at this job. You were born for it, weren't you? You were born to be a prosecutor. Or maybe a prison guard.\"\n\nEduardo could feel his smile freeze. \"I don't know what you mean,\" he'd said, trying to keep the bleakness out of his voice. Truth be told, he rarely knew exactly what she meant.\n\n\"Oh, Eduardo,\" said Maria, and the strangest thing was how much genuine affection was still in her face, her voice. \"The reason you're a genius at your job is because you love to punish people. You love to make sure everyone's having as little fun as you are.\"\n\nPeople never actually put down their forks when these things get said in public. They gather themselves further into the small tasks of eating; they busy themselves with spoons. Eduardo tilted his head back and laughed. This was what he'd learned to do whenever Maria said something like this; everyone was long accustomed to understanding nothing of the romantic relationships of others, and so they could accept anything as a sort of baffling in-joke, if that's how Eduardo treated it.\n\n\"I'm having fun.\" Eduardo laughed again. \"I am having fun.\"\n\nAfter Maria left, it had been occasionally suggested to Eduardo that she might have been a bit selfish. It had been once proposed that she might, in fact, have had a diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder. \"Garden-variety crazy,\" his friends had said, \"just your typical crazy-woman crazy,\" but Eduardo could never agree. Maria was crazy, perhaps, but she was not typical; her lunacy was the blue electricity running through a more finely wired system. And though it might be a kind of madness, it was also a kind of rare brilliance, a rare honesty.\n\nAnd so Eduardo could easily imagine Maria cartwheeling from joy in any number of odd places, and in any number of inappropriate situations, where others might prefer that she not. But it was the joy that was the key; nobody cartwheels when they're paralyzed with grief. And so Lily's cartwheel wasn't damning because it was quirky, as a small but self-righteous vanguard of quirkiness defenders the world over seemed to believe. Lily's cartwheel was damning because it was, like Lily herself, indifferent. Lily's cartwheel could not tell you that she was guilty. It could only tell you that\u2014during that interrogation, not twenty hours after her roommate's death\u2014she had not been sad.\n\nNevertheless, of course, Eduardo was not sure.\n\nOn Tuesday, Eduardo met with Beatriz Carrizo.\n\n\"I'm so sorry for what you've been through,\" he said, pouring her a glass of water.\n\nThey were sitting in his office with the shades drawn. Beatriz Carrizo's hair was heavy and shiny; she wore a stretchy shirt with a pattern of beige-and-red florets. A gold cross glittered between her breasts. \"Why can't my husband be here?\" she said.\n\n\"I need to interview you separately,\" said Eduardo. Beatriz's eyes widened. \"I don't mean to alarm you. You're not suspects.\" This was true. They'd been away that weekend, at a nephew's baptism in the north. \"But I am interested in hearing your independent impressions of Lily Hayes. Separately.\"\n\nBeatriz nodded. \"Now.\" Eduardo shuffled his papers, to create an aura of shifting gears. \"What can you tell me about her?\"\n\nBeatriz Carrizo shook her head. \"I don't know,\" she said. \"I really didn't know her very long.\"\n\n\"Just your overall impressions would be helpful.\"\n\nBeatriz took a long gulp of water, then stared out the window with a queasy, unresolved expression. \"Well,\" she said finally. \"She was an odd girl, I'll say that.\"\n\n\"Odd, how?\"\n\n\"She was cold. A little deceptive, maybe. She hung around with that boy next door at all hours of the day and night.\" Beatriz pursed her lips momentarily as if wanting to stop herself, then unpursed them and went on. \"I know she stayed over there when we were out of the house. Also, she was arrogant. She was always telling us things she'd learned about the city, as if we didn't already know them. It was nice she was interested, I suppose. But it was also so silly. She just didn't think about other people, that's all.\"\n\nEduardo nodded. This was his impression, too, though, of course, he would not say so. \"And what was Katy like?\" he said.\n\n\"She was a sweet girl. Quiet. We didn't know her that well, either. It's absolutely horrific, what happened to her. Is that your wife?\" Beatriz was looking at the picture of Maria on Eduardo's desk\u2014one of the two framed ones he'd allowed himself to keep. It was taken four years ago, at a beach, and she was doing a handstand. Her hair was whipping around her face and she was smiling, her mouth like a peony. She was the only adult Eduardo had ever known who could do a handstand.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said, because he always said yes.\n\n\"She's beautiful.\"\n\nHe looked up at Beatriz quickly. \"Did you have any difficulties with Lily?\"\n\n\"Difficulties?\"\n\n\"She was obedient? She was respectful? She followed the rules?\"\n\n\"Difficulties. Well. I suppose there were a few.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Well, I caught her going through our papers.\"\n\n\"When was this?\"\n\n\"Maybe two weeks,\" said Beatriz. \"I mean, maybe two weeks before.\"\n\nEduardo nodded. \"And you confronted her?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And how did she react?\"\n\n\"Well, she was not sorry, I'll tell you that. She didn't even pretend to be sorry.\"\n\nEduardo made a note on his pad. \"And what else?\"\n\n\"And then she took that awful job at the club, meeting God knows what sorts of people. She started coming back even later. I'd lie awake waiting to hear her come in. I was so afraid of having to call her parents and say that something had happened to her. Funny, I never worried about anything happening to Katy.\" A little fork of wrinkles appeared on Beatriz's chin. \"And then she got fired from her job and lied about it.\"\n\n\"She did?\"\n\nBeatriz nodded and bit her lip. The fork on her chin deepened.\n\n\"Do you know why she was fired?\" said Eduardo.\n\n\"No, but I also can't imagine why they hired her in the first place. She could barely find the kitchen sink at our house.\"\n\n\"That's very helpful,\" said Eduardo, making a note on his pad. \"Was there anything else?\"\n\nBeatriz covered her mouth and nodded.\n\n\"What happened?\" said Eduardo. Between them, the air felt heavy, salt rimmed; Eduardo could smell the cilantro edge of her sweat, the tang of an insistent perfume. He should not be attracted to her, of course, given his role and hers. What was troubling was that he actually wasn't.\n\n\"She\u2014laughed\u2014at my husband's depression,\" said Beatriz finally.\n\n\"She laughed at it?\" Eduardo did not blink. His own depression was a thing with claws and teeth and eyes, its own set of tics and preoccupations and prejudices, its own entire integrated personality. The trick to not killing yourself was to convince yourself, every single day, that your departure from the world would have a devastating effect on absolutely everyone around you, despite consistent evidence to the contrary.\n\n\"Yes. She'd seen my husband in a state of extreme\u2014depression\u2014\" Beatriz looked at her lap. \"He was drunk, I mean. And when I spoke to Lily about it, she laughed.\"\n\nEduardo nodded again. \"Nervously, perhaps?\"\n\n\"That was another thing about her. She was never nervous. She was oddly flat. Her\u2014what?\"\n\n\"Her affect?\"\n\n\"Right. Her affect was flat.\"\n\nEduardo leaned forward. \"This next question I'm going to ask you is not the most important question,\" he said. \"Even though I'm asking it last.\"\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\n\"Did you ever think she could do something like this?\"\n\nBeatriz frowned. \"Well, no,\" she said finally. \"I have to say no. I didn't.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Se\u00f1ora,\" said Eduardo. \"This has been very helpful.\"\n\nBeatriz looked up, and Eduardo saw that she was tearful. \"Should we move?\" she said.\n\n\"I'm sorry?\"\n\n\"How long are the police going to need the house?\"\n\nEduardo poured her another glass of water. \"You'd want to ask the police about that. Quite a while, I should think.\"\n\n\"People drive by and honk at all hours of the night. It's awful. I don't know how we're going to live there again.\"\n\n\"Maybe you can't.\"\n\n\"But we'll never be able to sell it.\"\n\nEduardo pressed his thumb against his glass. \"This case is probably going to get quite a bit of attention, you know,\" he said. \"If Lily Hayes is formally charged. That will help with the sale.\"\n\nBeatriz gaped. \"You mean, you think someone is going to want to buy the house _because_ of what happened?\"\n\nEduardo looked at her wearily. \"I have seen it happen before, Se\u00f1ora.\"\n\nBeatriz shook her head. Behind her, the light coming through the window was hemorrhagic. The little gold cross on her chest winked in the sun. \"I can't imagine anyone would be horrible enough to do that,\" she said.\n\nAnd Eduardo told her that, in his professional experience, there was someone horrible enough to do almost anything.\n\nOn Friday, the police brought in Lily Hayes's camera. And finally, Eduardo was sure.\n\nEverything he really needed to know was in the pictures. In the pictures, the ease with which Lily Hayes floated through the universe was ruinously apparent; there simply was not a frisson of friction between her desires and their arrival. _Arise, world!_ she seemed to say. _Part, seas! Reveal yourself, Buenos Aires, and let me take your picture!_ On the camera was a picture of a woman with a blood-colored lesion on her face, clearly taken on the sly. There was a picture of a tiny pantsless boy. There was a picture of Lily Hayes herself, giving an exaggerated thumbs-up as she points to her bug bites. Here, Eduardo saw, was a person without humility. And Eduardo believed that humility, more than anything, was the basis for morality. Goodness begins when the Buberian I\/it shifts to the ethically accountable I\/thou; it begins with the belief that you do not have a monopoly on consciousness\u2014that you are not, in fact, the only person who exists. And here is Lily Hayes, standing in front of the Bas\u00edlica Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de Luj\u00e1n, her prodigious bosom spilling out over a too-tight tank top. She is nearly aglow with the light of her narcissism. Does she notice that all the other women are modestly dressed, that their heads are covered? She either does not notice, or she does not care. A person who does not notice is silly. A person who does not care is dangerous. And when Eduardo looked at Lily Hayes's photos, he could see which kind of person she was. For whatever other qualities she had, Lily Hayes was not unobservant. She noticed everything; the pictures attested to this. Here she is noticing the wings of a dragonfly, and here she is noticing the dew on a guava fruit, and here she is noticing the hilarious discrepancy between an enormous sign advertising COMIDA VEGETARIANA alongside the butchered hide of some unfortunate ungulate, glistening in the sun. What Lily Hayes noticed was gratingly predictable, perhaps, but she did notice. So Eduardo had to conclude\u2014tentatively, of course\u2014that what she didn't do was care.\n\nThat afternoon, Eduardo submitted his request to schedule the hearing before the instructor judge. He felt he had enough to say.\n\n# CHAPTER THREE\n\n## January\n\nLily had lately come to two conclusions: one, we will all be dead one day; and two, we are not dead yet.\n\nIt was possible she had always known the first thing. In Lily's family, the winter\u2014all winter, every winter, even these twenty-four years later\u2014was hallowed, depressive ground, everyone tiptoeing around the memory of Janie, the daughter who had died in the winter two years before Lily was born. In the photo on the mantel, Janie was square jawed and sensible faced, like Lily and Anna; you could tell she would have grown up passably pretty if she'd ever learned not to look so severe. But in the picture Janie is only two years old, and riding a rocking horse is taking all of her attention, and anyway she will be dead in a year so you can't blame the kid for not having a sense of humor. Lily had looked at that picture countless times, and more than wishing that Janie had lived\u2014though she wished that, too, of course she wished that\u2014she wished that Janie had been a boy, or that she herself had been a boy, because losing that first daughter had really ruined her parents for daughters.\n\nLily's childhood had been, accordingly, criminally tedious: all happiness scrupulously prescreened, all sorrow decidedly offstage. She and Anna had coasted along, passively reactive to the most benign of benign stimuli\u2014roller-skating parties, two trips to Disney World, craft projects at their school (which was a public school but was in a terrific neighborhood and thus tremendously well resourced). Visits to Janie's grave were firmly linked to holidays, primarily oriented around all of the objects involved (the selection of flowers, the placement of balloons, the clearing away of dead grass), and always felt about as scripted and dispassionate as a congressional filibuster. Perhaps not coincidentally, Andrew and Maureen's divorce, when it finally came, achieved what must have been a level of truly world-record-shattering tepidness: After years of existing in a collective state of medicated and vacant life-tolerance, they merely drifted off into separate ethers, and that was that. They were, essentially, zombies. Both Anna and Lily agreed on this\u2014though Anna tended to think their zombie state was forgivable and understandable and Lily tended to think that life was short and that, yes, a terrible thing had happened, but that terrible thing had happened long, long ago and one day everyone would be dead and nobody would get any extra points for having hated life so much. Because Andrew and Maureen did hate life, really: They were just always very polite to it.\n\nSo yes, Lily was familiar with the concept of mortality. What was newer, maybe, was this acute sense of awareness, of aliveness, of gratitude. It was Argentina that had given it to her. The feeling had started on the airplane, when the rust-colored light wheeled through the windows, illuminating the blond hairs on the arm of the flight attendant as she poured the wine, and Lily felt her life beginning to open. She'd grinned idiotically right through losing money at a criminal exchange rate at EZE, right through a startlingly pungent Subte ride, and right through the first day and a half with the host family, the Carrizos. The Carrizos were perfect: Carlos was in real estate and Beatriz stayed at home, though she dressed well and always seemed busy, and they were both charming and, crucially, gently incurious about Lily's whereabouts. They understood English, but Beatriz pretended not to, so Lily got to practice her Spanish whenever they spoke, which she loved. She loved, as it happened, almost everything. She loved her room, which was small and sunny, even though it was in the basement, and had a bunk bed with bright green sheets. She loved the huge, sagging house next door, which just had to be haunted. She loved the chorizo sandwich\u2014with its smoky-tasting egg and salty, seeping cheese\u2014that you could buy and eat on the street. She loved her academic schedule\u2014a Wednesday morning political philosophy seminar, a creative writing independent study project, and a midday Spanish-language class that was widely viewed as optional. And most of all, maybe, she loved how close the Carrizos lived to Avenida Cabildo, where you could catch a bus to anywhere in the city. Already, Lily could feel herself expanding to fill the new space the world had afforded her; already, Middlebury was turning back into the collection of catalog snapshots it once had been\u2014explosively autumnal trees, international relations textbooks, laughing groups of friends of improbable and, as it turned out, wholly unrepresentative racial compositions. Everything about Lily's life there\u2014Harold the economist, and those awful Hawaiian parties thrown by the coed social houses, and the hissing of the radiator in her formal logic class, and her articulate, bespectacled women's studies classmates, doomed to eternally debate gender versus equity feminism\u2014began to seem less real. All of that was the detritus of a shallow, conscripted life; all of that had merely been preparation for this: getting off a plane in a new country, in a new hemisphere, and emerging from the chrysalis of academia to fly off into the bald, stunning sky of reality. For a day and a half, Lily was thrilled. For a day and a half, Lily was free. And then Katy arrived.\n\nKaty was Katy Kellers, the roommate. The informational email Lily had received from the program in December had revealed only that Katy attended UCLA and studied international finance, and this second fact, in particular, had left Lily unprepared for how distressingly beautiful Katy would be. Katy Kellers, it turned out, had dusky blond hair and preposterously even teeth and eyes that seemed somehow more dimensional than was normal. The day she arrived she wore a tight-fitting brown turtleneck\u2014the kind of thing that could only flatter someone who ran very long distances recreationally (Lily had gone shopping with Anna often enough to know)\u2014and, even after fourteen hours on a plane, did not appear to be the slightest bit tired.\n\n\"You're Katy?\" said Lily, holding out her hand.\n\nKaty's hand felt exactly like it looked. \"And you're Lily,\" she said, and smiled. Those teeth! Lily was going to have a hard time getting over those teeth. Lily's own mangled teeth had been hammered into relative normalcy by a series of truly gruesome procedures during high school (this was why she'd experimented sexually so much early in college, she'd explained to Anna once\u2014because her teeth had been so bad for so long that her self-esteem had taken a while to iron itself out). Lily's teeth were fine now, but not like Katy's. Katy's teeth were like the Platonic ideal of teeth.\n\nKaty bent to unzip her suitcase and began rifling through a polychrome array of sweaters. The most feminine muscles Lily had ever seen toggled in her arms.\n\n\"So,\" said Lily, climbing to the top of the bunk bed. \"What brings you here?\"\n\n\"Here?\"\n\nLily swung her legs out over the side. \"To Buenos Aires.\"\n\nKaty shrugged. \"I wanted to go to Barcelona\u2014actually, I was supposed to go with my boyfriend, we were supposed to go together, but then\u2014\"\n\n\"You broke up?\"\n\nKaty bit her lip\u2014actually bit her lip! \"We broke up, right, and so I decided to go somewhere else.\"\n\n\"And by then all the other programs were full.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Katy. \"Not exactly. I could have gone to Senegal.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Lily.\n\nKaty brushed her bangs with her fingers, even though they didn't really need brushing.\n\n\"Yeah,\" said Lily. \"I mean, I think that's why it's hard to really commit to one person at our age. I was seeing a couple of people last semester, but nothing really serious, so I was sort of free to do whatever I wanted.\"\n\nLily had made a philosophical decision during sophomore year to refer to her dates in gender-neutral pronouns as much as possible, in solidarity with the gay rights movement. As it happened, all of her sexual partners (four to eight, depending on how conventionally one was defining the act) had thus far been male, but she wasn't narrow-minded. She'd always imagined she might kiss a girl before college was out. She knew it was clich\u00e9, but one couldn't always avoid being clich\u00e9. She was twenty, she was a double major in philosophy and women's studies, and this much she'd learned the hard way.\n\n\"Right,\" said Katy vaguely.\n\n\"Well, one person, mostly,\" said Lily. \"His name was Harold. He studied economics. I can't believe I dated someone named Harold. I had sexual _intercourse_ with someone named Harold. He's twenty-one years old, can you imagine?\" Katy's eyes were flattening, maybe, a little. She zipped her suitcase back up, even though she hadn't finished unpacking. \"What was your boyfriend's name?\" said Lily.\n\n\"Anton.\"\n\n\"Anton, see?\" Lily sat on the bed. \"Now that's a name.\"\n\n\"I really loved him.\" Katy breathed in quickly, and Lily was afraid, for a brief, harrowing moment, that she might cry. It was too soon, it was far too soon, for this conversation.\n\n\"Well, sure,\" said Lily soothingly. She swung her feet back onto the bed and tucked them under herself. \"Are you guys still friends?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Katy uncomprehendingly. \"We'll never be friends.\"\n\n\"No?\" This was a matter of some interest to Lily; when she and Harold had broken up, they had solemnly vowed to stay friends. And why wouldn't they? They were both young and resilient and had had their hearts broken two or three times already. But soon he'd taken up with a new girl\u2014an accounting major, please!\u2014who'd forbidden him ever to speak to Lily again. This she found crushing; she had very much wanted to stay friends with him, partly because being friends with ex-lovers seemed sophisticated and mature and continental, and partly because it seemed humane, and partly because she harbored a catastrophic fear of losing touch with anyone. It reminded her of death, and she was too easily reminded of death already. Then again, she knew that she had a more acute sense of the passage of time in general\u2014and the swiftness of life, in particular\u2014because of her dead sister, or almost-sister, or whatever. So she'd learned to forgive people their shortsightedness, and be happy for them that they'd lived the kinds of lives that would allow it.\n\n\"He cheated on me at a substance-free house party,\" said Katy.\n\n\"Oh geez.\" Lily whistled. \"That's bad. You definitely want substances involved in infidelity.\"\n\nKaty looked stricken. \"I don't know,\" she said doubtfully. \"I'm not sure that really matters.\"\n\nLily tried to backpedal. \"No, of course,\" she said. \"But I mean, I don't know. I don't really think monogamy is natural for people our age, do you?\"\n\nKaty scratched her nose. Somehow this, even this, looked delicate, preordained. \"Well,\" she said. \"I think maybe you can decide it is.\"\n\nOverall, Lily knew, the roommate situation could have been a whole lot worse. Katy was neat and polite and she quickly acquired a collection of reasonable girl friends with flatironed hair\u2014none of whom were as beautiful as she was, but all of whom seemed about as nice\u2014and went out with them almost every afternoon. Still, Lily couldn't shake a feeling of deflating uneasiness\u2014a kind of awkwardness, but with harder edges\u2014whenever she was around Katy. Lily spent hours after classes ended drinking wine in caf\u00e9s and reading Borges in Spanish, circling all the words she didn't know, and when she returned to the Carrizos' house at night\u2014unhinged and awestruck, rapturous over the scope and beauty of the world\u2014she'd sit down at the dinner table and Katy would say something like, \"Lily, you have wine on your teeth.\" And that would be that.\n\nStill, Lily loved Buenos Aires; she loved to think of the vast meat of the world\u2014ocean and Amazon and rain forests and drug wars\u2014that separated her from everyone she had ever known. She couldn't help but feel a little sorry for all of them, now that she was so happy. In her psychology class at Middlebury, Lily had once been assigned to write about birth order in her family and how she felt that she did or did not conform to the postulated birth order personality types discussed in class. Lily had written about how she was technically the oldest, and in some ways she felt like the oldest\u2014she was maybe more adventurous than Anna\u2014but in other ways, she felt like the middle child, because she certainly was lost in the shuffle between the needy poles of Anna (the baby) and dead Janie (also, perpetually, the baby), but in _other_ ways, absent Janie only reconfirmed Lily's status as oldest, because no first-time parents could be as paranoid or restrictive or dictatorial as second-time parents who'd lost their first. And Lily, of course, had had to break them down, remind them that not all colds were terminal illnesses, and not all broken curfews were catastrophes, and not all boys were rapists\u2014you're welcome, Anna!\u2014and eventually they'd come to some mutual uncomfortable agreement that they were willing to let Lily have something like a life, though they didn't have to like it.\n\nShe'd gotten an A on the paper.\n\nBut in Buenos Aires, for the first time, Lily felt herself stepping out of those roles; she felt herself finally filling out the template of her own autonomous selfhood that she now knew she'd been mapping\u2014in secret, on her own time\u2014for her entire life. Each day after classes\u2014which were academically comical, everybody dead-eyed and hungover, the teachers bored, the classrooms too hot, the city shimmering right outside the window\u2014Lily went wandering out into the enormous afternoons. She took epic, dusty walks around the city, to San Telmo and La Boca and Palermo, hopping in cabs to skirt the bad streets. She spent an afternoon trying to photograph a certain beam of light on the obelisk. She spent a day taking the train out to the basilica in Luj\u00e1n to try to see what all the Catholic fuss was about. She sat in bars drinking Quilmes and trying to look mysterious; she sat in caf\u00e9s eating alfajors and licking powdered sugar off her fingers and not minding that she looked silly.\n\nShe would be dead one day, but she was not dead yet.\n\nAround her, the air was humid, languid; it made all the other air she had ever known feel thin. Something about the lushness of the city made Lily think of prehistoric times\u2014she half-expected to see a dinosaur with mossy teeth emerge from a swamp. The mosquito bites gave her enormous welts because she wasn't used to Argentinean mosquitoes; they rose and grew and burst, volcanically, horrifyingly, and then healed into thumb-sized dust-colored scars. Lily documented this entire process on her camera, using American coins for scale. The bugs here were ridiculous, but everything here was ridiculous. The exchange rate was ridiculous. The fruit was ridiculous. Lily took pictures of the bugs and the fruit. She took pictures of the people, too, and sent them back to Anna.\n\n\"Do people mind you taking pictures of them?\" said Katy.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Lily. \"I didn't ask.\"\n\nFor the most part, Lily loved the Carrizos, too. She got along very well with Carlos: The two of them drank the most at dinner, and got into good-natured rollicking screeds about George W. Bush during which they congratulated each other on a series of ever-more-implausible theories and opinions. Beatriz was sweet, in a no-nonsense sort of way\u2014and, though she was possessed of a clear preference for Katy, Lily did not like Beatriz any less just because she liked Katy better. It was fine to have each host parent prefer a different study-abroad student. It made them all feel like a convincing temporary family.\n\nOn Sundays, Lily and Katy attended church with the Carrizos. Though Lily scorned church with her own family\u2014Maureen attended a milquetoast Unitarian institution where all possible modes of being were enthusiastically and cloyingly _affirmed_ \u2014she felt that church in a foreign country was a different matter altogether, more along the lines of an anthropological investigation, even if it was uncomfortably situated, broadly, within her own abandoned tradition. After all, she wouldn't _not_ go to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, she wouldn't _not_ go to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, just because she didn't believe these sites were actually sacred. In church, of course, she didn't cross herself and didn't take Communion, but this was, in fact, a reflection of her profound respect for the religious beliefs of others. Lily tried to explain all of this to Katy on their second Sunday in Buenos Aires.\n\n\"I'm just saying,\" said Katy. \"A bite of toast, a swallow of wine, and they're happy. Who cares?\"\n\nThey were standing over the sink in the bathroom, and Lily was trying to somehow pluck her eyebrows without seeing Katy's image in the mirror next to hers. Lily and Katy didn't usually wash up together, but it was the first night they were alone in the house\u2014Carlos was out with his friends, and Beatriz was visiting her sister\u2014and a temporary, lukewarm camaraderie seemed to have grown between them.\n\n\"But do you believe that stuff?\" said Lily.\n\nKaty made a face and spat a mass of mint toothpaste into the sink. Somehow she did this, as all things, daintily. Lily could not get used to the way Katy seemed to move through the physical world while remaining utterly untouched by it: her hair never discernibly disturbed by wind, her lips never discernibly stained by wine, her clothes never discernibly wrinkled by any amount of movement or exertion. \"That's not even the point,\" Katy said. \"It costs you nothing.\"\n\n\"I think it's really despicable to pretend to believe in it if you don't.\"\n\n\"But if you don't believe it, why do you care? If there is no God, it's not like He's gonna know.\"\n\n\"But _you're_ gonna know,\" said Lily. She rapped her tweezers against the sink conclusively and then went to stand at the window. All the windows in the basement looked out at ground level, which made Lily feel like she lived in the steerage section of a ship. She looked up and across the yard. Next door, all the lights in the mansion were out. \"Do you know who lives over there?\"\n\n\"A young guy. Our age.\" Katy joined Lily at the window. Lily could smell her citrus shampoo. \"Haven't you seen him?\"\n\n\"No.\" Lily squinted. \"His lights are never on, are they?\"\n\n\"You'd think he could afford lights. Beatriz says he's very rich.\"\n\nLily was about to ask _how_ rich, exactly, when a spectacular crash\u2014echoing, multidimensional, seeming to involve many kinds of different materials\u2014issued from somewhere upstairs.\n\n\"Jesus,\" said Katy.\n\n\"Is it a robbery?\"\n\n\"Did you lock the door when you came in?\"\n\n\"Shit.\"\n\n\"Did you?\"\n\n\"We should go up there.\"\n\nThey crept upstairs, their cell phones casting neon squares of light onto the stairs. Lily tapped Katy on the shoulder and pointed questioningly to the light switch; Katy shook her head. When they reached the top of the stairs, Lily flung the door open, ready to scream. But in the living room, it was only Carlos, and he was, it seemed, only drunk: He was staggering about, his center of gravity askew, pantomiming the kind of exaggerated inebriation that would be comic in a movie but was somehow frightening\u2014then sad, then frightening once more\u2014in real life. In the corner of the room, one of Beatriz's potted plants had been knocked over, leaving an escarpment of dirt on the rug.\n\n\"Girls,\" said Carlos, issuing a bipolar laugh that turned into the first fragment of a sob. He grabbed at the wall, and one of the framed photographs\u2014of Beatriz in a graduation gown\u2014fell to the ground and shattered. \"Girls.\"\n\n\"What should we do?\" hissed Katy.\n\n\"What do you mean, 'do'?\" said Lily.\n\n\"Should we call someone?\"\n\n\"Call someone, please. We should go back to our room.\"\n\n\"What if he hits his head or something?\"\n\n\"He's not going to.\"\n\n\"What are we going to tell Beatriz?\"\n\n\"We're not going to tell her anything.\"\n\n\"What about the picture?\"\n\n\"What about it?\"\n\n\"Should we try to fix it, or what?\"\n\n\"Just leave it.\"\n\nThey went back downstairs, the crashing continuing above them. Lily felt a minor, untraceable thrill with every bang, but Katy seemed not to want to listen. Instead, she pulled out her iPod and sanctimoniously turned up the volume until the bass lines began rattling around the room, like the skeletons of songs. Lily, who could never bear to tell anyone to turn down music, said nothing.\n\nAfter a while, the sounds stopped, and Katy got up and produced some Neutrogena from her bag, even though Lily could have sworn she'd already washed her face. \"You need to remember to lock that door,\" she said on her way out of the room. Lily stared at her: She was standing in a bedroom doorway, holding a domestic object, and issuing a directive. Did she not realize how weirdly old, how fussily maternal, she seemed?\n\n\"It was only Carlos!\" said Lily. \"He lives here!\"\n\nThe next day over breakfast, Carlos was swollen-eyed and chagrined; Katy chattered about her classes, her voice a half an octave higher than normal, until he went to work early. Beatriz had not emerged by the time Lily left for class. But when Lily came back to the house at lunch, she was standing in the kitchen, as though she'd been lying in wait.\n\n\"Lily,\" said Beatriz. She looked serious, but then she always looked serious. \"I want to talk to you about last night.\"\n\n\"It's okay.\" Lily laughed\u2014an indulgent, knowing sort of chuckle\u2014to show Beatriz that it was not a big deal. \"Don't worry about it at all.\"\n\n\"Lily,\" said Beatriz. She wasn't smiling. \"Do you understand the word 'depressed'?\"\n\nLily felt a sliver of cold in her sternum. She was doing the wrong thing, the exact wrong thing, by laughing. \"Oh. Yes,\" she said. \"I'm sorry. Yes.\"\n\n\"Do you understand?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry. I do understand. Yes.\"\n\nBeatriz nodded as though an agreement had been reached, then bent and began unloading the dishwasher. \"We'd like to have a dinner Friday night,\" she said. \"To welcome you girls properly. We thought maybe you'd like to invite the boy next door? Katy was asking about him.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Lily. \"I suppose so, sure.\"\n\nBeatriz frowned. \"We've been meaning to ask him around since we moved here. But it'll be more fun for him, anyway, now that we've got young people around.\"\n\nLater, in the bunk beds, Lily asked Katy if she thought the dinner offer was an attempt to get them not to tell the program about Carlos's drunkenness. Katy was reading some punishing textbook by flashlight; outside, Lily could hear people laughing on the street. They were probably headed out to dinner. It was only eleven o'clock.\n\n\"Like a bribe,\" said Lily. \"Maybe.\"\n\n\"No,\" said Katy. \"I think they're probably just trying to be nice.\"\n\n\"It's odd timing, though, don't you think?\"\n\n\"You're so conspiracy minded.\"\n\nA bar of weak light flashed up the wall and onto Lily's comforter. She could hear the whisk of Katy's pages, the efficient squeak of her pen.\n\n\"I had no idea this was going on with Carlos,\" said Lily a little while later. \"I mean, they seemed so happy. Their lives seemed really perfect.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Katy. \"I guess we don't really know that much about them.\"\n\nLily went over to the mansion the next afternoon, right after classes ended. The path to the house was overgrown with some kind of scrubby grass that looked potentially poisonous. The knocker was heavy and shaped like the head of a mythical beast that Lily couldn't identify. She stood back a few feet away from the door and waited for the rich boy, he of the perpetual darkness, to emerge.\n\nThe door opened, and an implausibly young-looking person appeared. His eyes were beautiful in an obnoxious sort of way, and he had freckles, which made him seem tremendously unserious.\n\n\"Hi,\" said Lily in Spanish. \"I'm Lily. I'm staying next door with the Carrizos, and I'm supposed to invite you over for dinner.\"\n\n\"Are you?\" The boy answered in English. It was flat, American English, not the vaguely British kind that most people who learned English as a second language seemed to sport (as if it weren't enough to speak a second language fluently, you had to speak the classier version, too). \"Well, go ahead then.\"\n\n\"You're invited for dinner,\" said Lily dumbly.\n\n\"What a delightful surprise.\"\n\nThose eyes! You got annoyed at him just for having them. Lily knew that it was technically her turn to speak again. \"I didn't know anyone lived here,\" she said.\n\n\"Well, someone does. After a fashion.\"\n\nIn addition to being beautiful, the boy's eyes were extremely, outlandishly tired. Lily was not sure she'd ever seen a young person look as exhausted as this boy; everything he said seemed all the more impressive because he appeared to be on the verge of narcolepsy or coma. Lily wanted to be rude to him, a little, just to wake him up. \"How old are you?\" she demanded.\n\n\"One never asks a lady her age. How old are you?\"\n\n\"Twenty. You live here by yourself?\"\n\nHe mimed looking around. \"It would seem so.\"\n\n\"How long have you lived here?\"\n\n\"Excuse me, how long have _you_ lived here?\"\n\n\"You speak English very well.\"\n\n\"Yours is tolerable.\"\n\nSuddenly, Lily felt exhausted, too; you couldn't talk to someone who wanted to win every single piece of dialogue. Maybe that's why he looked that way; the horrendous drain of being the funniest person in the room, in every room, in this enormous horrifying house. \"Seven o'clock, tomorrow,\" she said. \"If you want.\"\n\n# CHAPTER FOUR\n\n## January\n\nThe house next door had been dark like Sebastien's until the Carrizos moved in. They came in March, during his second year alone, though he tried never to think about those years in term of years. When the Carrizos came, the evenings got brighter, and Sebastien sat watching their yellow kitchen lights and the soft blinkered hysteria of their television; the house was ablaze, like a forest fire on a hill. People don't think about how much you can see through a window at night in a house that's very well lit\u2014this was not why Sebastien kept his so dark, though it was certainly an auxiliary benefit. He tried not to stare at the Carrizos' house once they moved in. But it was impossible sometimes not to gaze a little longingly at all that light.\n\nSometimes he imagined that they could see him, too. This fantasy kept him busy and decent, dressed, up at reasonable hours, engaged in activities that were arguably fruitful. He had employed a similar strategy toward his parents, back when they were recently dead and he was first learning how to live this way. He'd imagined that they were watching him\u2014stern, censorious, though not entirely without sympathy for his plight\u2014and this had saved him, he was sure, to the extent that he could be said to have been saved at all. He realized he was inventing gods for himself\u2014false gods, at that\u2014but he also knew he was not above it. Though he hoped to take the secret to his grave, he really was a pragmatist at heart. And it could be argued that pretend-believing in the occasional surveillance of the neighbors\u2014the indubitably literal neighbors, with their gleaming car and their showy appliances and their honorable recycling habits\u2014was marginally healthier than pretend-believing in the constant surveillance of ghosts. At any rate, it seemed to have some of the same salutary effects. In the backyard, Sebastien grew flowers, effeminate hobby though it was. On the Internet, he watched his investments go up and down; he followed every twitch and flutter of the New York Stock Exchange, and London, and Tokyo; he was a compulsive reader of the news. It was not impossible, after all, to still be witness to the world. He played online poker, too, which would be a vice, he knew, for a person with less money and time. As it was, both money and time were abstract curses, and Sebastien could not reproach himself much for a habit that squandered either of them.\n\nHe thought often of selling the things. The house was overrun with expensive and oppressive objects\u2014his mother's jewelry, his father's antique weapons, all manner of treasures plundered from all corners of the globe\u2014and it would not have been hard to get rid of them. He could have sold them online\u2014Sebastien vacillated between an intense solitude-compounded agoraphobia and a loneliness so clawing and vast that it was like vertigo\u2014and he could have donated the proceeds, of course. (He could not bear the thought of acquiring any more money; he'd never live long enough, or have enough of a populated life, to spend what he had already, and this felt like a particular brand of bitter reproach in a newly capitalist society.) But somehow he never got around to it, just like he never got around to going over to the Carrizos' house and introducing himself. The objects kept sitting there, accruing talismanic qualities and dust, and Sebastien himself kept sitting there, accruing only dust.\n\nIn spite of his close observation of the Carrizos, the arrival of Katy and Lily was a surprise\u2014and perhaps it was the fact of the surprise that moved Sebastien more than the girls themselves, at first. Though he'd barely met the Carrizos, he had not expected them to make any sudden moves; he'd known when they were going to buy the new car, for example, and he had not been shocked when the rumors emerged of Carlos's shady business dealings (you had to only look at the man's leisurely hours and unlikely acquisition of exponentially more expensive household goods to know that something was amiss). But the girls\u2014one light haired and delicate, as lovingly formed as a deer, the other pale and inquisitive looking in a way Sebastien rather liked\u2014were a mystery. Were they far-flung\u2014and hopefully wayward\u2014young cousins? But then, they looked too different to be related, and their closeness in age could not be entirely coincidental. They were foreigners, it was clear, though they were both lacking the slouchy sexuality of the European girls he had known; they were attractive, but there was a frankness and\u2014he thought at first, before he knew them both and before he loved one of them\u2014a kind of dumbness to their beauty: It was so sincere, so unreconstructed, so unapologetic. It was being subverted by nothing. It was just there, flapping about in the wind, like a flag.\n\nBasic questioning of the women at Pan y Vino bodega revealed that the girls were Katy Kellers and Lily Hayes\u2014what a fussy, old-fashioned, Edith Whartonish name that was!\u2014and that they were study-abroad students from the States. Sebastien watched them for a few days\u2014their comings and goings, their outings, and occasionally, though not often, their evenings\u2014against the shining backdrop of their breathtakingly well-lit house. He found himself continuing to like Lily the better of the two, though not for her appearance, particularly. She was pretty enough\u2014with reddish hair and high-arched eyebrows that made her look _extremely_ wide-awake\u2014but pretty girls were like flowers: astonishing and utterly common, both. Instead, what drew him to Lily was what appeared, at least from a distance, to be her strange solitude\u2014a solitude much less complete but, he had to assume, far more elective, than his own.\n\nIt had been a long time since Sebastien had had a crush on an actual girl. He watched a lot of pornography, though he didn't really like things quite so mechanized and denuded; there was something about the clinical insertions and withdrawals that always reminded him a bit of the dentist. He was aesthetically though not ethically opposed to prostitution. There were women at Pan y Vino, where he went to buy his toilet paper and cereal and shittiest wine (almost everything else was ordered from online gourmet shops, though he bought mostly condiments and liqueurs and actually, he realized, ate very little by modern standards). But those women were purely no-nonsense (how he longed for some nonsense!), and rough with him in a way that suggested vast reservoirs of matronly concern. They often stuck extra candies in his bag, as though he needed them. As though, really, he needed anything.\n\nHe could hardly believe it, then, the day that Lily showed up at his doorstep. Nobody ever came to his door anymore; even the Jehovah's Witnesses were sick of him, having learned long ago that he'd do absolutely anything to detain them (he told himself that this was due to high-minded social experimentation, and not grave and crushing loneliness). So when Sebastien heard a knock at his door he initially thought he was hallucinating. But then it came again\u2014stubborn and, he thought, just the tiniest bit harassed. He could still hope for a snake-oil salesman, he supposed; he could hope for some scam designed to bleed him dry on behalf of a fictional broken-down child or old person or car. He was up for it, he thought, as he walked to the door. He was up for anything. He peered out through the huge, baroque keyhole. There, framed by its jagged silhouette, was the unmistakable Lily Hayes from next door, her face like the sunny pistil in some strange-petaled flower. Sebastien opened the door.\n\n\"Hi,\" she said, extending her hand. \"I'm Lily. I'm staying next door with the Carrizos, and I'm supposed to invite you over for dinner.\"\n\n\"Are you?\" he said. \"Well, go ahead then.\"\n\nAs it happened, he had no other plans. The night of the dinner, he was ready by six-thirty, wilting in his suit, one of his father's better clarets\u2014a 1996 Ch\u00e2teau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac\u2014liberated from the cellar and cradled in his arms like a doll. At seven of seven he began the walk across the yard and down to the Carrizos', taking stock for the first time in a long time of what his house might look like through the eyes of another person. The weeds were scabby and tall and vaguely lethal looking. He should get them taken care of, he knew; he had no excuse not to; he could certainly afford it. Why had he never bothered? Maybe he'd liked the idea of the weeds conveying some kind of desperation and disorder within; maybe, he realized with a flicker of self-disgust, they were meant to be a kind of cry for help. He comforted himself briefly with the thought that nobody would notice such a gesture, even if he were inclined to make one. But then he looked at the well-lit house at the end of the path, and he wondered grimly if perhaps somebody already had.\n\nHe reached the Carrizos' porch at 6:56, then had to decide whether it was worse to be early or to stand creepily on the porch for no reason. After a moment or two of what he hoped was semi-plausible fiddling with his hair and tie, he rang the doorbell. It was 6:57.\n\nBeatriz Carrizo appeared at the door, her d\u00e9colletage glimmering with tan and sweat and good health, her black hair pulled back into a heavy braid. \"Oh! Hello!\" she said. She sounded surprised, although he did not know why she would be surprised. \"You must be Sebastien!\"\n\nHis initial reaction\u2014 _Must I be?_ \u2014ran through his head, before he reminded himself to try, really try, not to be maddening.\n\n\"Guilty as charged, I'm afraid.\" He flashed a smile that he hoped was winning. He'd been thought winning once, in some misty past\u2014he'd been considered precocious, and charming, and all the young female teachers at Andover had touched their hair a lot when they called on him in class. But those days were over, and now he could only meekly hope that he was vaguely fit for the company of normal people. \"You must be Se\u00f1ora Carrizo,\" he said.\n\nShe smiled warmly. \"Come in.\"\n\nIn the modern light of the well-appointed kitchen, Sebastien felt ridiculous. Around him, the monstrous refrigerator buzzed and all the surfaces gleamed brutally white. Everything was new and shiny and unobtrusive, and Sebastien was ancient and absurd. Why had he worn a suit? He looked like he was dressed for a costume party.\n\nPanicked, Sebastien handed Beatriz the wine. \"I brought this,\" he said. It was far too expensive, of course, and the wrong thing entirely, and Sebastien was struck by the realization, like a physical convulsion, that the evening was going to go very badly.\n\n\"I'll open it,\" said Beatriz, getting a corkscrew. Sebastien wanted to tell her she didn't have to open it now\u2014that she could save it for a better and worthier occasion\u2014but that seemed potentially obnoxious, and Sebastien only liked being obnoxious deliberately. Mercifully, it was clear that Beatriz had no idea how expensive the wine was; she opened it and spilled a little on the linoleum and poured five glasses and took a sip of hers without even letting it breathe. Sebastien was relieved that this particular mistake of his had not been noticed. Others certainly would be. He was far too warm in his suit, and he began to feel feverish and anxious. He tried to remember the last time he'd worn it. It must have been in his final year of Andover, not long before the plane crash, when he was visiting Boston for an accepted students' dinner at Harvard. He remembered being hot in it then, too\u2014it had been unseasonably warm for May in New England, and the subways were coughing up that particular smell of theirs, that strange blend of steam and chalk\u2014but there'd also been a lightness all around him, and a sense of life unfolding satisfyingly along its intended trajectory. Now, in Beatriz Carrizo's terrifyingly clean kitchen, Sebastien almost thought that if he buried his head into his overdressed arm he might smell Boston, and his father's borrowed cologne, and his own youthful sweat, full of frightened happiness.\n\nBeatriz was looking at him with concern. \"Are you all right?\" she said.\n\nHe flashed another diamond smile. \"I simply could not fathom being any better.\"\n\n\"Would you like to sit down?\" said Beatriz.\n\nSebastien swallowed. \"Sitting down is one of my favorite things to do, if you can believe it.\"\n\nIn the dining room, Lily was already at the table and Sebastien gave her a courtly, overstated nod. She was pale in the bluish wash of the evening light; her dark eyebrows were slender isthmuses against the milky sea of her forehead. Next to her sat Katy Kellers: beech-colored hair; marble, nearly kaleidoscopic eyes; small, symmetrical features etched with what seemed like obsessive fineness. Lily watched Sebastien watching Katy and gave him an appraising look.\n\n\"You made it,\" she said flatly, and shot him a dubious smile that somehow employed exactly one-half of her mouth. Her eyebrows, it seemed, were eternally convex, giving her an expectant sort of look that could seem intelligent or erotic\u2014or both, Sebastien figured\u2014depending on your prejudices.\n\n\"Last-minute cancellation,\" he said. \"Though the commute was atrocious.\" Sebastien waited to be introduced to Katy. When nobody ventured to do this, he introduced himself.\n\n\"Hello,\" he said, reaching his hand across the table and being careful not to disturb the butter dish. \"I don't believe we've met.\"\n\nKaty nodded. \"Katy Kellers,\" she said. Sebastien wasn't used to women who said only their names by way of introduction\u2014but then, he reminded himself, he wasn't used to women in general, or people in general, for that matter, anymore.\n\n\"Sebastien LeCompte,\" he said.\n\nKaty nodded. \"I've heard.\"\n\nSilence ballooned between the three of them then, punctuated only by the sounds of Beatriz bustling in the kitchen. Sebastien was tempted to remark on the bustling\u2014how the sound of high-quality bustling was really the _capstone_ achievement in the domestic arts, or something\u2014but he forced himself to stay quiet. The tense energy between Lily and Katy felt like some kind of subverbal bristling; Sebastien did not flatter himself that he was the cause of whatever this was, but he did ruefully see that neither Lily nor Katy was interested in making the evening any easier on anyone. It was apparent, then, that Sebastien was going to have to be the one to break the silence. Since he wanted to say something to Lily, he decided to speak to Katy. \"Katy Kellers,\" he said. \"Where are you from?\"\n\nShe waited a beat too long to answer, as though she'd had trouble registering that he was actually talking to her. \"Los Angeles,\" she said.\n\nSebastien glanced at Lily. She was looking out the window, and he felt a throb of bittersweet attraction. She did not look back.\n\n\"I wouldn't have thought,\" he said to Katy.\n\n\"Nobody ever thinks.\"\n\nThis line of conversation was mercifully euthanized by the appearance of Carlos in the doorway.\n\n\"Good evening, girls,\" he said, and looked at Sebastien, who felt suddenly overwhelmed by the tedium of having to keep reconfirming his own identity. \"You must be Sebastien.\"\n\nYes, he thought, a thousand times yes! \"Yes,\" he said.\n\nThe evening disintegrated predictably from there. Over dinner, Sebastien forced himself to ask questions for which he already had all the answers\u2014how long have you lived here, how long have you been married, and what did you do, and when precisely did the lovely young ladies arrive? He ran out of pretend questions halfway through dessert. Then the questions started coming at him from all quarters\u2014though not, notably, from Lily's.\n\n\"Where are you from originally, Sebastien?\" said Beatriz, stealthily trying to foist a second piece of cake onto his plate.\n\n\"Here. Oh, no, thank you, I simply couldn't. It's been so long since I had such a fine meal. I fear another bite would put me in the hospital.\"\n\n\"Buenos Aires?\" said Carlos.\n\n\"Here, precisely.\" Sebastien pointed out the window and across the lawn, toward his moldering house. \"There. Since I was four, anyway. And I'm told that before that I wasn't terribly interesting.\"\n\n\"You were born in the States?\" said Beatriz kindly.\n\n\"In the awful state of Virginia, according to my biographers.\"\n\n\"And you went to school there, too?\"\n\nSebastien shifted in his seat. \"Prep school,\" he said lightly. \"In Massachusetts.\"\n\n\"Did it prepare you?\" said Lily, rousing herself momentarily.\n\n\"It did. For unemployment, principally, and drinking during the day.\" Sebastien kept his eyes on Lily in the hope that she'd say something in response, but instead she busied herself with pouring a grotesque amount of milk into her instant coffee.\n\n\"When were you there for school?\" said Beatriz.\n\nSebastien squinted. \"It's very hard to say,\" he said. Could it really have been five years ago? That was simultaneously preposterously long ago and bafflingly recent; no amount of linear time, small or vast, could properly capture the experience of moving from then to now. It was a lateral skitter across the universe, a drop into a rabbit hole or acid trip or nightmare. Talking about time, in a conventional sense, was really not relevant in this case. \"I mean,\" he said. \"It just seems like a very long time ago now.\"\n\nLily's face, Sebastien noticed, was squinched into a sour contraction of disapproval, and everyone else was looking nonplussed. Sebastien would, he knew, have to try to be more normal. He was just about to begin, but Beatriz immediately followed up by asking him if he'd liked living in the States\u2014and this, it turned out, was another very difficult question. It often seemed to Sebastien that the entirety of his actual existence had already taken place, and he was now living in a dull and fitful afterlife\u2014that he had not been damned so much as completely forgotten. The time in the States had belonged to his life, and so it was wholly incomparable to anything afterward\u2014it was a qualitative, not quantitative difference\u2014and this made it impossible to talk about the AP classes and the cocaine in the dorm bathrooms and the sleeplessness and the way the snow caught red streetlights when he was up late and lonely, and certainly it made it impossible to talk about the political implications of living in a capitalist and corrupt society, an empire reaching the edge of itself, whatever. It had been reality, merely, and as such it was both more complicated and vastly simpler than anything language could capture. There was no way to properly answer this question; he could only answer it improperly. This was why he was so often insufferable, he knew: The real answers were unutterable and strange and upsetting, so he had no choice but to give fake ones. He issued a jaunty smile.\n\n\"As much as one can be expected to like anything, I suppose,\" he said.\n\n\"Well,\" said Beatriz brightly. \"Let me wrap up some leftovers for you.\"\n\nMoments later\u2014after giving Lily a painfully abstruse hug and passing her his business card, both of which moves had seemed like better ideas in his head\u2014Sebastien stood on the Carrizos' porch and tried to get his bearings. The night had been, quite obviously, a disaster. The only question was whether this spoke to the overarching futility of ever interacting with other people again, or whether the trouble was specific to these people. To Lily, more precisely. The smell of smoke billowed suddenly from behind him.\n\n\"Is that you, Satan, come for me at last?\" said Sebastien, turning around. But it was only Katy, pinching a cigarette between her forefinger and thumb. The moonlight caught the flat edge of her bare shoulder.\n\n\"Well, you were very rude,\" she said.\n\nSebastien was clinically incapable of taking any real offense at anything, and he usually staved off the strangeness of this by often feigning vague offense at everything. But tonight, he found he could not summon the energy. \"I didn't know you smoked,\" he said wearily.\n\n\"Why would you know I smoked?\"\n\n\"I wasn't being rude,\" he said. \"That's just how I talk.\"\n\n\"Well, how you talk is rude.\" Katy ashed her cigarette off the porch. \"Have you ever considered that?\"\n\n\"I am almost wholly unsocialized.\"\n\n\"That is quite obviously untrue. You are socialized half out of your mind.\"\n\nSebastien wished Katy would offer him a cigarette so that he could grandly decline it, but she did not. \"It was a lovely dinner,\" he said, nodding to the house. \"Is that a pretty typical meal?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"They manage to feed you two well, in spite of their troubles?\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"Nothing, nothing. Neighborhood gossip, that's all. I'm afraid I can't repeat it. Rumors of a lawsuit or some such. It would be wrong of me to spread them.\"\n\nKaty rolled her eyes, then shook her head. \"You like Lily,\" she said sternly.\n\n\"What an accusation.\" Normally, he would have said more\u2014something about the insubstantiality of affection, the transience of love, _et al., ad infinitum_ \u2014but his mouth felt cottony and he was suddenly exhausted. He did not want to talk any more tonight.\n\n\"She's young, you know,\" said Katy.\n\n\"She's your age.\"\n\n\"Obviously that's irrelevant.\"\n\nSebastien had to concede it was; time, he knew better than anyone, was a myth. \"Well,\" he said. \"I'm not plotting anything.\"\n\n\"But she is.\"\n\nSebastien could not bring himself to summon the depths of banality that were required here; to fearfully ask in a halting, tremulous voice, _Has she\u2014has she said something about me?_ The wine eddied around his head; Katy's cigarette smelled rich and sapid. Sebastien shrugged and pointed to it. \"Won't they smell that out here?\"\n\nKaty looked back at him blankly. \"I don't think it's really some big secret.\"\n\nHalfway across the lawn, Sebastien turned to look back at the Carrizos'. Behind him, their house was like an enormous ship at sea, flooded with light. Did they know that they were shadow puppets in there? Did they know how vividly the details of their lives were conveyed? It was like staring into a stained-glass window; it was like staring into a Faberg\u00e9 egg. What invincibility one must feel to offer oneself up to the night like that. Sebastien shuddered to think about their electricity bills. One of these days, he thought, jimmying his key savagely into the lock, those people were going to get robbed.\n\nIn the living room, Sebastien lit a candle. The smell of smoke always made his house feel churchlike and consecrated; he thought often of the Catholic cathedrals in western Europe that he'd visited with his parents on various trips. It had been a good life they had given him, if a brief one. One of the most consoling thoughts Sebastien could produce\u2014and, during those first few months when he was alone in the house, pinioned by grief, it was nearly the only one\u2014was that his parents must have thought very highly of him in order to have left him the way they did. At some point in the course of his childhood, they must have turned to each other and agreed that he could afford to lose them. They must have decided that he was strong and brave enough to endure it. And even though he knew now that they had misjudged him, he took a certain pride in their mistake.\n\nSebastien went to the mantel, to the picture of him and his father with the downed tapir. He'd been fifteen when it was taken, hunting for the first time at some awful Brazilian big-game preserve that his father had frequented. In the picture, Sebastien is wearing a wobbly, cross-stitched smile. He remembered that day and how scared he'd been. He remembered the strange elated revulsion of standing so close to a dead animal.\n\n\"This is something you need to know,\" his father had said, pointing to the tapir. Sebastien still didn't know what he'd meant by that. Maybe, in that sentence, his father had been lamenting all the things he could not tell his son. But maybe not. Maybe, after all, that moment with the tapir really _was_ all there was to say, and see: white belly bleeding out, blood black as an inkblot, eyes blanking from one kind of indifference to another.\n\n\"Dad,\" Sebastien said to the picture. \"I think I met a girl.\"\n\nHe'd just begun summer orientation when the plane had crashed. His French aunt Madeleine called him at four in the morning. It was the middle of a heat wave; even the wood floor of his dorm room had been warm. He stood listening in the dark and then threw up into the fireplace. The smell of vomit mixed with the smell of dead ash from fabulous parties long ago.\n\nSebastien had known what his parents did for as long as he'd thought to be interested, which was admittedly not that long. It was probably sometime during his early adolescence that the long-standing patterns of their lives\u2014the house, the vague explanations about his parents' work, the suddenness of their move to Buenos Aires in 1994, right after the Jewish community center bombing\u2014resolved into some kind of understanding. By then he'd been embarrassed to acknowledge he'd ever not known (and indeed, on some level, he surely always had). So the realization itself was layered under other information that was new and, at the time, more compelling\u2014mostly about sex, of course. And, like sex, his parents' work became a topic that was unmentionable among sophisticated people, among whose number Sebastien had counted himself back then.\n\nNow he kept the secret for reasons both practical and personal. As a practical matter, Sebastien felt protective toward those Argentine nationals with whom his parents had had dealings. Naturally, he had no idea who any of them were, and naturally the fact of his parents' death meant that somebody else\u2014somebody important enough to crash a plane\u2014already did. Nevertheless, Sebastien didn't want the neighborhood knowing, if they didn't already, and he didn't want life to be any harder for the people who his parents had worked with, assuming any of them were still alive.\n\nUnderneath this, though, was something far less explicable: the sense that keeping a secret for the dead was a way of keeping a promise to the dead, and that keeping a promise to the dead meant allowing them to assert a claim on you, and that anything that came with obligations of that sort was still a kind of relationship. Somehow, Sebastien felt that his parents were a little less dead every time he was coy to a stranger in conversation.\n\n\"A girl, huh?\" he imagined his father saying. \"Well, what's she like?\"\n\n\"She's really something,\" he imagined saying back. \"She's really something.\"\n\nWas she, though? It was a reasonable question. Sebastien felt his broken and rococo heart crawling out to Lily Hayes, throwing itself around her in joy and relief, but why? She was, after all, only a parochial sort of beauty (curious-faced, slightly snub-nosed, pale almost to translucence), and she could veer in a sentence from beautiful to practical\u2014bordering on plain, really, compared with the impeccable girls Sebastien had known at Andover, with their sleek hair and bubblegum-colored fingernails and outlandishly perfect bodies (the kind of perfect bodies that, forget genetics, could really come only with narcissism and money). You looked at those girls and felt that it was entirely possible to do everything in life very, very well. You looked at those girls and felt that there was plenty of time to get it all right. But nevertheless, Sebastien was still thinking of Lily Hayes: her angular expression, the way she'd looked out the window every time he spoke. The way she made it seem as though she had better things to be thinking about, and the way he was almost\u2014almost\u2014inclined to believe her.\n\nSebastien went to the computer and logged on to Facebook. He had a lot of Facebook friends somehow\u2014almost all from Andover, almost all now off living on the distant planets of Ivy League education or corporate law indentured servitude or trophy wifedom\u2014and every year on Sebastien's birthday they enthusiastically wished him well. This was the weird prolonged false intimacy that the Internet created: These people\u2014who mostly did not know that his parents had died and that he'd never gone to Harvard and that he'd retreated back to Buenos Aires to live in a falling-down mansion, and that there were termites coming through the floors and sapphire earrings rotting in the upstairs bedroom\u2014these people (bless them!) all pretended to have actually remembered his birthday.\n\nBut then, the Internet was good for a lot of things. He typed in \"Lily Hayes.\" There were, predictably, hundreds of Lily Hayeses, almost all white and middle- to upper-middle-class, their lives lovingly Instagrammed. But he finally found her, his Lily Hayes: Her picture was of sun-flecked feet in strappy sandals, her profile was set to the insubstantial privacy settings characteristic of very young people of goodwill. This girl, thought Sebastien. He could write to her right now. Phenomenal. He hovered his mouse over the message box, came to his senses, closed it. He got up to fix himself a drink.\n\nWhen he sat back down, to keep himself from logging back into Facebook, he went to vagrantorscenester.com. This was a dull website, briefly popular in the mid-aughts, where players were invited to judge pictures of people snapped anonymously on the street. Sebastien hated this game, and the reason he hated it so much was that he'd actually invented it, back when he was in the ninth grade at Andover. He'd arrived there scrawny, young, and\u2014having skipped a year\u2014already living under a cloud of presumed academic earnestness. All of this had required Sebastien to pioneer brand-new methods of social cruelty in order to survive; his primary tactic\u2014then and now\u2014was to make remarks that sounded cutting but that nobody could ever be totally sure they understood. Adolescent Sebastien had never bothered with mocking his peers for the usual reasons (you were fat, you were or seemed unattractively sincere or striving, you were or seemed gay). Those were the vulnerabilities that children knew they had and had properly strategized for. Instead, Sebastien invented entirely new categories of social evaluation, and soon found that by referring to these categories, he could actually erect them. (He remembered this now through the prism of Hannah Arendt's observation about totalitarianism: Convincing people things are true is much more difficult than simply behaving as though they are.) Young Sebastien could crack his classmates open like lobsters, it turned out, revealing new areas of self-loathing they didn't even know they had yet. The sociopathic Vagrant or Scenester game was part of all of this, though back then it was called Cool or Crazy (by the other kids\u2014even as a child, Sebastien had found alliteration tiresome). Sebastien had invented it during his first term at Andover. He'd usually played it with CJ Kimball and Byron \"The Box\" Buford on Saturday outings to Harvard Square, chaperoned by noticeably resentful intern teachers, in those first few yellow, surreal, cinematic weeks after September 11th. U.S. flags were everywhere, even in Cambridge; at home, Sebastien's parents told him, everything was in economic and political chaos\u2014inflation was in the double digits, there was a looming default on some important loan. All of it was terribly dry to Sebastien then\u2014and anyway, he was usually too busy to talk for long, run ragged, as he was, by the demands of mocking Harvard students and homeless people in a judicious 1:1 ratio. That's how he'd actually thought of it then: as equal opportunity derision. As though he were extending some important leveling force. As though he were animated by the spirit of blindfolded lady justice. If he'd been left unmolested on the trajectory he was on then, Sebastien saw now, he probably would have wound up heading straight for the editorial page of some conservative college newspaper to write portentous, bloviating opinion articles he could never disown because they would live forever on the Internet. Maybe it was just as well, then, that he'd never gone to college. Sebastien laughed and took another sip of his drink.\n\nThe way CJ and Byron played Cool or Crazy was straightforwardly, unimaginatively sarcastic: guessing Cool for a muttering, emaciated woman with meth-brown teeth, Crazy for a college boy with expensive jeans and exquisitely mussed hair. But Sebastien had never played that way; instead, he'd always picked less obvious targets and designations. A middle-aged woman in a gray sweatshirt drinking straight from a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew was deemed Cool, a well-muscled young man wearing a Puka shell necklace was pronounced Crazy. Sebastien never tired of how nervous these pronouncements made CJ and The Box; when they asked for explanations, Sebastien always told them that the game was an art, not a science, and that he had the soul of an artist, and that that's why he always won.\n\nAnd now here was his beautiful, idiot game, all grown up and online. Sebastien liked to check on it sometimes, in much the same way he liked to check on the Facebook profiles of half-remembered classmates from grade school; he liked to know that it was basically doing okay. It was, after all, his brainchild\u2014in a more reductive and palatable form, admittedly, though was this not the universal fate of the ideas of great thinkers? Truly, Sebastien had always had his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist. He laughed again and hiccupped and got up to pour himself another drink. When he sat back down at the computer he found that he was once again, somehow, on Lily Hayes's Facebook page.\n\nSebastien stared at her sandals, her toes. This girl. What would become of her? He hovered his mouse again over the message box. This girl. Were people really this open? Were their lives really this lucky? He opened the message box. He hesitated. But then: really. What did he have to lose? He had literally nothing to lose. Few people experienced the pure liberation of having absolutely nothing to lose, but Sebastien had the particular blessing and curse of this kind of freedom\u2014he had zero claims on the attention of anyone, anywhere; he had the totally unsullied indifference of the universe. He could crawl into the bathtub and slit his wrists and nobody would care. He could torch this entire house and all of its treasures and nobody would care. He could certainly message this girl and confidently expect that nobody would care about that, either.\n\n\"Gilded Lily,\" he began.\n\n# CHAPTER FIVE\n\n## January\n\nThe day after the dinner, a message from Sebastien LeCompte popped up in Lily's in-box. \"Gilded Lily,\" it began, and things went downhill from there.\n\nLily was surprised. Sebastien LeCompte was not the kind of boy\u2014Lily could not think of him as a \"man,\" really, and certainly not as a garden-variety \"guy\"\u2014who usually liked her. Over dinner, it had become clear that Sebastien had lived in that mansion for most of his life, that his parents had been American diplomats (this explained the accent) who died in a plane crash when he was seventeen, and that he was fabulously wealthy. He didn't say this last part, but it was apparent: There were references to playing polo, attending Harvard, summering in the Alps\u2014things that Lily had never fully realized that actual people actually did out in the actual world. If Sebastien was going to like anyone, Lily figured it would have been Katy. He'd spent several minutes talking to her on the porch after dinner, when he'd only passed Lily a business card\u2014an actual business card!\u2014that read SEBASTIEN LECOMPTE, SLOTH, in both English and Spanish.\n\n\"Are you going to write him back?\" said Katy, while Lily was brushing her barely adequate teeth.\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\n\"Even though he lives next door?\"\n\n\"Maybe. Do you think his parents really were diplomats?\"\n\n\"Sure,\" said Katy. \"Why not?\" There was a minty bubble at the corner of her mouth, which somehow made Lily feel inordinately relieved.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Lily. \"The plane crash sort of makes you wonder.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"If they were CIA.\"\n\n\"You're _so_ conspiracy minded.\"\n\n\"I get it from my dad,\" said Lily. \"Anyway, I have never in my life even heard of a real person playing polo. Shouldn't he be at Oxford by now, or something?\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Katy, sounding doubtful. \"I guess you would sort of think.\"\n\nLily waited three days to write back. When she did, she tried to ape Sebastien's tone and style: employing absurdly inflated language she never used in real life, invoking belabored extended metaphors. Sebastien responded by inserting random French phrases into his emails, so Lily started doing the same\u2014though he had to know that this did not count as sophistication, since, of course, you could Google anything you wanted to say. He moved on to Italian; she saw his Italian, and raised him Hungarian\u2014the one phrase she actually did know: _Nem beszelek magyarul_ , I do not speak Hungarian\u2014but this, it seemed, was enough. He asked her to dinner.\n\n\"You have a date already?\" said Katy.\n\n\"What do you mean, 'already'?\" Lily was wearing a ruched floral shirt that she'd decided communicated a sense of general fun, and plastering makeup on her face with both hands. She was afraid that her emails might have given Sebastien the wrong idea.\n\n\"Well,\" said Katy. \"I just mean, we just got here.\"\n\n\"We've been here two weeks.\"\n\n\"I just wonder if it's going to be a problem with Carlos and Beatriz.\"\n\n\"It's a host family, not a juvenile detention center.\"\n\n\"They're conservative, I think.\"\n\nLily leaned toward the mirror and embarked on the project of eyeliner. \"I don't think we can assume that. Carlos seems to know how to have a good time, at least.\"\n\n\"There are crosses everywhere.\"\n\n\"It's dinner. Does the Vatican have a policy on dinner?\"\n\n\"Don't be sarcastic.\"\n\n\"No, I am actually asking. I mean, they actually really might, for all I know.\"\n\nKaty climbed into her bed then and began to read. She'd managed to enroll in the only rigorous class on offer\u2014something about economics in the post-Peronist era\u2014and it seemed to require a vast amount of studying and note-taking and highlighting with markers in three different colors.\n\n\"I think it's so cool that you're taking a real class here,\" said Lily, to apologize. \"Everyone else has basically just dropped out of school for the semester.\"\n\nKaty studied her for a moment to see if she was serious, then seemed to decide she was. \"I just think it makes sense to learn a little bit about the country we're in, you know?\"\n\nLily nodded vigorously. \"Totally.\"\n\nKaty smiled. \"You look nice. Don't be nervous.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" said Lily. \"I'm not.\"\n\nAt five past eight Lily once again walked up the winding path to Sebastien LeCompte's mansion, which, in the falling light, suddenly looked dilapidated and underwhelming. Lily had told Katy she wasn't nervous. But she was. For one thing, she was nervously wondering if she should have brought a condom. She didn't know if that would have projected some kind of unsexy premeditation, or else some kind of unattractive feminine wiliness, or else some kind of massively inflated sense of her own charms. She then remembered that she wasn't supposed to care. Her parents had given her an enormous box of Trojans before she came here, alongside an earnest discussion about _making smart choices_. Poor old Andrew had blinked compulsively throughout the entire conversation; he'd poked himself in the eye (actually poked himself in the eye!) once, and his eyeball, he reminded everyone all the time, had simply never been the same. The condom box they'd given Lily was appalling, mortifying, industrial-sized\u2014for cults, maybe, or university women's centers. Lily was vaguely flattered, and then vaguely insulted, when she thought of how much sex her parents must think she was having. She was then vaguely disgusted to think that her parents thought about this at all.\n\nSuddenly, Lily was on the porch. She knocked the weird knocker (what the hell was that thing, anyway?), and Sebastien answered immediately, as though he'd been standing there, right on the other side of the door, waiting for her\u2014which, for all she knew, he had. He was wearing a jacket, even though it was about a thousand degrees out, and probably even warmer inside.\n\n\"Dearest Lily,\" he said. \"Do come in.\"\n\n\"Hi,\" said Lily. \"How's it going?\" She knew she wasn't going to be able to keep up the email tone in person, and he might as well know it now. She followed Sebastien into the house. Inside, the living room was dusty and ornate, dominated by an enormous grandfather clock and some kind of ancient painted cloth on the wall. At the center of the room stood a grand piano that Lily felt sure was woefully out of tune.\n\n\"Pretty piano,\" she said. \"Do you play?\"\n\n\"Only 'Chopsticks,' \" said Sebastien. \"Would you care for a glass of wine?\" He handed her one before she could answer. SORBONNE 1967 was etched, in flamboyant swirls, on the glass.\n\n\"Oh, thanks,\" said Lily. \"I can't drink out of anything from a state school.\" With the first sip of wine pain flooded her mandible. She swallowed hard. On the mantel, there was a picture of Sebastien and an older man with a smallish hoofed animal that looked like a first draft of a zebra. She pointed.\n\n\"You killed that?\"\n\n\"I had to, sadly.\" Sebastien stood behind her. \"It owed me money.\"\n\nLily looked more closely at the picture. The man Sebastien was standing with looked exactly like him; he had greenish eyes and wavy brown hair and a jauntily cocked head. The animal's neck appeared broken; it was twisted at an odd angle that made it seem as though more violence had been done to it than was strictly necessary. Its belly was white and looked soft. \"Where was that?\" she said.\n\n\"A resort in Brazil. You pay to enjoy your dominion over the beasts.\"\n\nLily wondered what it would have felt like to kill that thing. As a child, she and her good friend Leah had once murdered a banana slug. They had found it in the tree house\u2014Andrew had built Lily and Anna a tree house because Janie had died, which was also why their parents had sent them to art camp, and given them music lessons, and allowed them to be far too present and assertive at adult dinner parties\u2014and she and Leah (who had grown up to be a lesbian at NYU, and who even as a kid had always wanted to play the boy) had taken a fist-sized piece of basalt to it just to see what would happen. They'd been learning about the scientific process together in the second grade\u2014about making observations, and recording data, and making hypotheses, and forming theories\u2014and Lily had convinced Leah, or Leah had convinced Lily, that this was science. There'd been an underwhelming squish; the slug had oozed, relinquished a yellow substance that neither Leah nor Lily could identify, and then died, silently. And Lily had felt something odd then, a guilty but nearly gleeful sort of power\u2014an edginess, somewhere between nausea and euphoria\u2014and of course she'd gone to her mother later, and of course she'd cried, but it had been a complicated sort of cry.\n\nShe turned to Sebastien. \"Why do you have a French name?\"\n\n_\"Pourquoi pas?\"_\n\n\"How many languages do you speak?\"\n\n\"I don't remember.\"\n\n\"You're boring, you know.\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows. \"Am I?\"\n\n\"You are.\"\n\n\"Say a little more about that,\" he said, refilling her glass.\n\nLily took another sip. \"You're boring because I know exactly how you're going to react to every single thing I say. You're going to look for the least sincere response possible, every time. You're like an algorithm.\" Sebastien gave her a look of incredulous amusement. \"So all I would suggest\u2014if you're open to suggestions\u2014\"\n\n\"Please. Humility is a virtue.\"\n\n\"I would suggest that you mix it up a little. You should occasionally say things that have an unexpected relationship to reality. You could even throw in some things you mean, from time to time. Nobody's going to know. It will make you more interesting.\"\n\nSebastien's eyebrows were still raised. He did have beautiful eyes\u2014so green and humane and, weirdly, so expressive. He'd get far with those eyes, she thought. Then she told him so. Then he kissed her.\n\nHis kiss was more vigorous than Lily would have expected\u2014not that she'd expected him to kiss her, necessarily, though then again here she was, drinking wine, in his house, so really, what did she think? She was grateful for the swiftness of his approach; she thought with chagrin of many an awkward windup, staggeringly embarrassing advance-and-retreats, faces too close to do anything else, and then not quite, and then finally the clink of tooth on tooth, the tepid warmth of another person's mouth. Awful. She felt confident enough once the whole business was under way, but the first kiss gave her pause. It was just so odd, when you really thought about it.\n\nSebastien pulled back and looked at her gravely. \"Thank you for the suggestions,\" he said.\n\n\"See?\" said Lily. \"You're doing it. I have no idea what you mean. You're more interesting already.\" She'd meant it teasingly, but it came out a little flat, a little mean, she thought, though Sebastien didn't seem to care. He smiled.\n\n\"That roommate of yours,\" he said.\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"She's quite pretty.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" Lily giggled, then hiccupped. \"She has a face you sort of want to keep looking at. I think she's really insipid, though.\"\n\n\"Insipid?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" said Lily severely.\n\n\"But she's your friend, isn't she?\"\n\n\"My friend? My friend. Well, sure.\"\n\nSebastien kissed her again. \"You're a wicked woman.\"\n\nAnd because she wasn't wicked\u2014because she wasn't wicked at all, in fact, she didn't think\u2014but it was terrific to make someone wonder, she said, \"Maybe so. Maybe so.\"\n\nSebastien hurried along the aisles of Pan y Vino bodega. From behind the checkout, the cashier eyed him with amusement; it was obvious that she suspected from what he was buying that he was going to try to _cook_ , and he understood why such a prospect might seem hilarious. As it happened, he was _not_ going to try to cook. He was going to try to order Ethiopian takeout and then arrange the spices from the store in such a way that it looked like he had cooked. He wasn't going to pretend he'd cooked, necessarily. But he did want to present the _feeling_ of having cooked; he wanted to fill up the house with a sense of domesticity and competence; he wanted to give the impression of being someone who lived an actual life\u2014with ups and downs and commitments, with a vocation and an avocation or two, and a population, and some kind of a cosmic deadline. And all of this was because Lily Hayes was, somehow, coming over for dinner tonight. Again.\n\nSebastien was surprised she was willing to repeat the experiment; their first evening together had not gone entirely smoothly. An hour before she'd been due to arrive, Sebastien had made the fatal mistake of idly considering what his house might look like to a stranger, and the deeply vexing results of this exercise had thrown him into a panicked despair. He was already bewildered that Lily was coming at all. It was scarcely believable that\u2014through some arbitrary and uncharacteristically magnanimous intervention of the deities\u2014she hadn't been terrified by his original message, or by the epistolary theatrics that followed; that she'd been willing to treat familiarity with idioms in a variety of languages as some kind of sophistication\u2014even though, after the Internet, familiarity with anything at all could be faked and did not really count; that she'd put up with a week of this nonsense before Sebastien could find the courage to ask her over and had actually said yes when he did. All of it, all of it, was astonishingly good luck.\n\nBut an hour before the appointed time, Sebastien saw that his luck had run out: The house would never, never do. Suddenly he could see how odd and empty it looked; how loneliness seemed to clutter around the corners of the rooms, how desperation was a thing you could almost smell. The house was a monstrosity. The house was a horror. And Lily Hayes, he'd realized with startling and growing anguish, was going to see it in an hour.\n\nHe was going to have to torch the place, he'd decided. He was going to have to make it look like arson. But no, no. He'd looked at the clock sorrowfully. He had no time for that. Instead, he was going to have to try to clean it. Sebastien never really cleaned in earnest (though neither did he engage in the activities that necessitated the most cleaning\u2014cooking, child rearing, hosting other human beings). Nevertheless, he'd spent an anxious and sickening twenty minutes making ill-advised attempts at tidying. He'd swiped limply at the tables and mantel; he'd found some candles in a cupboard in the kitchen. Lighting them, he'd hoped, would make the place look romantic and European\u2014tragic in the way of widowers and heirs to mysterious fortunes, and not in the way of serial killers or animal hoarders or the mentally touched. He'd wasted a quarter of an hour considering the picture of the felled tapir. His parents had put up the picture\u2014maybe, he thought now, because he and his father looked so very much alike in it\u2014and Sebastien had never really thought about what having it on display might say about his character (to whom? being the salient question, of course). But suddenly Sebastien saw that a stranger would think he'd selected the photo with solemn care\u2014as the representative image of his time with his parents (bad) or else the proudest triumph of his short and underwhelming life (worse). He'd considered hiding it, but he worried about the time, as well as what unspeakable horrors he might find behind the picture if he moved it. Instead, he'd reached behind the grandfather clock and dislodged a nest of dark gray dust. He did not know why he was doing this; he did not think Lily was likely to inspect behind the clock. Perhaps he had seen the overarching futility of the project and was willfully undermining himself. It wouldn't be the first time, he'd thought, as he went to light the candles.\n\nShe'd shown up right on time, dressed in some kind of straightforward floral getup that was exactly the outfit Sebastien himself would have picked if he'd been told to dress up as an American girl for a costume party. In the frantic cleaning, Sebastien had forgotten that he'd planned to elaborately hand Lily an already poured glass of wine; instead, he'd had to grab the first glass that was handy, which turned out, horribly, to have SORBONNE 1967 etched into it. It wasn't long after that that Lily had accused Sebastien of being boring. This was not an assessment that Sebastien necessarily disagreed with; nevertheless, he'd felt that the best approach was to treat it as an accusation so ludicrous that he could react only with benign and divested curiosity\u2014which meant, of course, that he'd wound up sounding more boring still. To keep himself from talking, Sebastien had then kissed Lily. It had been a long time since he'd kissed anyone\u2014years, in fact: long enough for him to have nearly forgotten the strange alchemy that brought one pair of lips to another. But in the moment, he wasn't thinking of that; he was thinking only of the endless and undeniable whorls of Lily's mouth. She had the most utterly perfect mouth he had ever encountered, of that he was sure; an entire planetarium moved through his head as they kissed. When he pulled back, however, he saw that it had not been the same for her; he saw that she had been oblivious\u2014and this, childishly, had made him want to be cruel in a way that would make him seem oblivious, too. He'd groped madly for some kind of blunt object and landed on a remark about Katy's attractiveness, which had prompted Lily to observe that Katy was \"insipid,\" which had led Sebastien to reflexively counterobserve that he'd thought she and Katy were friends. In fact, he'd had no opinion on the matter\u2014surely modern relations weren't mapped by such metrics?\u2014and he'd been sure that Lily would see how desperate this was. Instead, she'd seemed to take the question seriously; her face darkened, and Sebastien could see the lengthening shadows of New England guilt, the heartrending consideration of the most middle-class of values and virtues. \"My friend,\" she'd said. \"Well, sure.\"\n\nSebastien had kissed her again then. \"You're a wicked woman,\" he'd said. He did not mean it. He did not mean anything, ever, and especially, maybe, he did not mean this.\n\nHe had not expected to see her again after that. And yet, _mirabile dictu_ , she had texted the next day, and come back again a day after that, and now he'd seen her a half dozen times, perhaps, in ten nights. That morning, for the first time, she had actually called him.\n\n\"Do you know who this is?\" she'd said. She had a certain quality to her voice\u2014it was a bit raspy, a bit out of breath\u2014that made her always sound like she'd just come from doing something wholesome and outdoorsy.\n\n\"I know who I hope it is,\" he'd said.\n\n\"It's not Beatriz Carrizo.\"\n\n_\"H\u00e9las.\"_\n\n\"What are you doing tonight?\"\n\nSebastien swallowed. \"It so happens that my schedule just cleared.\"\n\nAnd now, racing up and down the aisles of Pan y Vino, Sebastien felt a sense of quickening, enlivening. He should not, he knew, be allowing himself to get quite so worked up about things. He should not be thinking of his and Lily's as some kind of world-historical romance; it was not, he realized, even a terribly original one. The evenings they had spent together so far had all been the same: French kissing, Italian cinema, talk of the most sophomoric and navel-gazing variety before retiring to the bed to paw at each other up to a point of stasis. Sebastien wasn't sure of Lily's history in this realm, though it was a pretty safe bet that she was overestimating his own. The bulk of Sebastien's sexual experience came from one drunken evening with an anorexic premed during his Harvard accepted students' weekend; her arms had been covered in silken hair, and their union had been perfunctory and un-memorable. Despite this early adventure, the years of solitude since had contributed to a sense of renewed virginity. Sex belonged to the world, to the living, if anything did, and Sebastien never felt this more acutely than on his nights in bed with Lily, when matters escalated to a certain pitch and then some decision\u2014not discussed, and not mutual\u2014was made, and she rolled over and thrust the cupola of her ass into his thighs and Sebastien, mute with cathectic longing, abandoned her to her even breathing and faraway thoughts.\n\nAnd yet in a fundamental way it seemed to Sebastien that Lily had dragged him, just a little, back into the world with her. Isolation and proximity to mortality had made his life feel oddly timeless; it stretched out before him, flat and featureless as the African savannah. But tonight Lily was coming over, and Sebastien had to buy these things now to have them ready. There was a satisfying urgency to this\u2014even if it was, as he realized, truly the most basic contour of a typical life. Tonight, he would try to find a tablecloth. He would bring up one of the better wines from the cellar. And he would also, he'd decided, try to give Lily a bracelet.\n\nSebastien was not sure how this was going to go. He did not want it to seem grasping or desperate or, far more devastatingly, like some sort of bribe. And yet he had so many things he could not use, so many things he would very much like to give to her. He had spent the afternoon going through his mother's jewelry\u2014touching her emerald brooch, holding her sapphire necklace up to the light and letting it splash cerulean on the floor. He tried to imagine the parties where she must have worn these things. As a child, Sebastien had been patient with his questions, certain that all the answers would someday be forthcoming. And now he was grown up, and he looked back and found all the questions right there where he'd left them: gathering dust, perhaps, but remarkably well preserved. The questions were more durable than anything, really\u2014the questions and the objects. Everything else trended toward annihilation. Sitting on the floor, Sebastien had fingered his mother's diamond bracelet; the opal ring that she'd always been superstitious about wearing, though he'd never known why. He imagined all of them transformed by proximity to Lily, and to life.\n\nThat night, Lily didn't show up until nine, a bit later than she'd said she'd be.\n\n\"Hey,\" she said, when Sebastien opened the door. She was wearing long and overly involved earrings. Her hair was slightly damp and brushed back behind her ears.\n\n\"Dear Lily,\" said Sebastien, and kissed her. He could smell the implausible scent of her down-market perfume\u2014freesia, wisteria, cyanide, whatever\u2014that she'd probably bought at a pharmacy somewhere. When he pulled away, he saw that she was looking at him patiently. He glanced over at the table, where an oily epidermis was growing across the top of the mauve casserole and bleeding out onto the paper plates. He had set the food out too early.\n\n\"Sit down,\" he said. The words came out too soft: Somewhere during the kiss his voice had dissipated along his sternum, it seemed, and become a kind of effervescent fizz. \"Sit down,\" he said, more loudly. \"I have something for you.\"\n\n\"You do?\" She sat.\n\n\"Here,\" said Sebastien, producing the bracelet from behind a lamp and dangling it before her. It was heavier than it looked. He had not wrapped it because he did not want Lily to feel that she could not decline it. \"Do you want this?\" There was more Sebastien might have said, but he had vowed to talk less.\n\n\"What is it?\" said Lily. Her eyes widened, so he knew she already knew.\n\n\"A bracelet.\" Sebastien's mouth was so dry that he was sure Lily would be able to hear something wrong in the way he was talking, but she didn't seem to notice.\n\n\"I see that. Is it real?\"\n\nAt this, Sebastien felt something within him collapse; something fragile that was holding back a floodgate. She was being crass. She was being, he thought grimly, American. Did she think he would try to give her some sort of toy jewelry? How little she must think of him. How little she must think he thought of her. He cocked his head to the side and laughed. \"Oh, I don't know,\" he said. \"Is anything?\"\n\n\"Where did you get it?\"\n\n\"It was my mother's, if you really want to know.\"\n\n\"You can't give me something of your mother's.\"\n\n\"She hasn't registered any protest, actually.\" Sebastien's despair was a rhizomatic root now, digging its stems into his heart. He would manage not to show it. He would manage to keep his gaze even.\n\n\"You can't,\" said Lily. \"I won't take it. I'm sorry, thank you, but you can't.\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Sebastien. He took it back. What did she think he was going to do\u2014beg her to accept an heirloom? Even his devotion had its limits. \"All right. I've got all kinds of this stuff lying around. And it doesn't look like much on me\u2014my wrists just aren't delicate enough. But all right.\"\n\nLily looked stricken and sorry, which Sebastien loathed. He had a vertiginous sense of observing this tableau from the outside in, and he could imagine how pitiful it would look.\n\n\"You don't have anyone else to give it to?\" said Lily.\n\n\"Apparently not,\" said Sebastien. \"I mean, there are elderly aunts off _en France_ somewhere, but I wouldn't want to give them heart attacks. I suppose there's always eBay.\"\n\n\"No one helped you clean out the house? No one came for you when they died?\"\n\nSebastien took a deep breath. He did not deserve to be angry that this had not occurred to her already. She did not owe him this kind of consideration. She did not owe him, in the end, anything at all.\n\nCarefully, lightly, he said, \"Who would possibly have come?\"\n\nSomehow, when Lily wasn't looking, Buenos Aires had become ugly.\n\nThe change had been gradual but unmistakable, she decided, as she walked back across the lawn from Sebastien's house. The city's light, previously so luxurious and elevating, had become brittle and harsh. Her bug bites had healed but had not disappeared, and she was beginning to fear she might be scarred for life. The wine made her sluggish; she struggled to stay awake in classes, she dragged her feet through ever-longer afternoons. So many thoughts in her head these days were \"I feel\" statements\u2014actually phrased that way, _I feel tired, I feel lonely, I feel dusty_ , little declarative sentences, like her own consciousness was some kind of barely mastered second language.\n\nAnd this night with Sebastien\u2014with that awful, incomprehensible offer of the bracelet\u2014seemed to confirm Lily's worst suspicions somehow. Over the past couple of weeks, Sebastien had developed an interest in Lily that was sustained and unlikely and, entirely possibly, completely faked. He texted her almost every night now to invite her over for \"nightcaps\"; about half the time she went, and they'd banter twitchily on the couch for a bit before making out in the dark. It was always dark in that house, no matter the time of day. The living room had French windows overlooking a mangy overgrown garden, but what little light came through them was somehow always dusty; the clock and collectibles cast strange shadows, even during the afternoons. Sebastien LeCompte, it seemed, had a very tenuous relationship with lightbulbs. _I feel sorry_ , Lily thought. She could hear the dry grass snap underneath her feet. _I feel bored_.\n\nShe was back at the Carrizos' at five past midnight, which was, she thought, a depressingly reasonable hour to be home on a Friday night. But when Lily walked into the kitchen, she found Beatriz sitting at the counter, reading a women's magazine and looking annoyed. Katy was already downstairs\u2014studying beatifically before a wholesome eight-hour sleep, no doubt\u2014and Lily knew, with a vestigial childhood certainty, that she was in trouble.\n\n\"No more of this, okay, Lily?\" Beatriz sounded tired, even though she was still dressed. Lily remembered how early Beatriz got up\u2014around five, to make Carlos breakfast before he commuted to the City Porte\u00f1a\u2014and Lily realized she'd been waiting up for her, and she was sorry. Still, Lily wished that it were Carlos, not Beatriz, who was waiting up. He'd probably wink at her about the late return. Beatriz was not the winking type. \"You don't know that boy very well,\" she said.\n\n\"He's my friend.\"\n\n\"He's your friend? You've known him two weeks. We brought him over here two weeks ago, exactly.\"\n\n\"I think he's lonely.\" Lily said it as an excuse but realized immediately that of course it must be very true.\n\n\"Well, sometimes people are lonely for a reason,\" said Beatriz. \"And anyway, I can't imagine your parents would like to think of you sneaking out nights to spend time with a boy.\"\n\n\"They wouldn't mind. My parents respect my autonomy.\"\n\n\"When we invited him over, we just thought it might be nice for you to know someone young. We thought you all might be friends. The three of you.\" Beatriz nodded her head toward the bedroom, where Katy was likely now dreaming of sustainable microloans.\n\n\"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"And you need to remember to lock the door when you come back in the house. Other people live here, too.\"\n\n\"Okay. I'm really sorry.\"\n\n\"Don't be sorry. Just stop it. Okay?\"\n\nLily was surprised that Beatriz was going to make her lie. \"Okay,\" she said.\n\nIn the bedroom, Katy was still up reading. She looked up when Lily walked in. \"Hey,\" she said.\n\n\"Hey,\" said Lily, sitting heavily on the floor.\n\n\"Are you in trouble?\"\n\nLily maneuvered her right sneaker off with her heel. \"A little, I guess.\"\n\nKaty sat up and stretched. \"Hope he's worth it.\" She ran her fingers through her hair\u2014her sun-dappled hair, Lily couldn't help thinking, though on anyone else it would have just been dirty blond. What was it about Katy that made you search for lyric descriptions?\n\n\"Well,\" said Lily, wiggling her toes. They were spectacularly, bafflingly dirty and she had no idea why. \"He's interesting, anyway.\"\n\n\"You think so? I think he's hideously boring.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Lily had told Sebastien he was boring on their first date, though, of course, she didn't actually mean it. He was, quite tragically, possibly the most interesting person Lily had ever met; he was so interesting that she'd figured that accusations of tedium could only goad him into being more interesting still. Lily didn't necessarily want to sleep with Sebastien; she did not think her fascination with him was sexual as much as anthropological, maybe, or zoological\u2014but there was certainly no question that it was a fascination of some kind. And yet here was Katy, dullest of all possible humans, living at the precise center of all of the world's modest expectations for her, moving in confident strides toward the exact mean of her upper-middle-class life, saying that the most interesting boy in the world was boring.\n\n\"Of course he's boring,\" Katy was saying. She got out of bed and adopted a yoga pose on the linoleum\u2014it was the archer, the bow, something or other. Lily didn't want to ask. \"You didn't know boys like that in school?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Lily. \"An orphaned trillionaire in a haunted mansion? No. Did you?\"\n\n\"I mean, you know he's just a hipster, right? You know he didn't invent sneering? If he lived in the U.S. he'd probably be a music blogger.\"\n\n\"Katy, his parents were _spies_.\"\n\n\"I'm sure he likes to tell you they were.\"\n\nLily was agog; she had never heard Katy talk like this. \"Isn't your head starting to feel weird like that?\" she said.\n\n\"Yeah, actually, it is.\" Katy dropped the pose, then erupted into a startling backward arch. Her T-shirt rode up, revealing the demure mollusk of a perfect in-betweenie belly button. Lily averted her eyes. \"So what are you going to do about Beatriz and Carlos?\" said Katy.\n\n\"I'm just surprised they care so much,\" said Lily.\n\n\"Well, I mean, they are getting paid to make sure we don't get killed.\"\n\n\"Who's going to kill me? Sebastien? I'd like to see him try.\"\n\n\"Or pregnant.\"\n\n\"Again, I'd like to see him try.\"\n\nKaty laughed, and Lily felt a warmth with a sourness underneath. She didn't know when she'd started to worry about whether Katy thought she was funny. But it was true that she'd always been willing to be a mercenary in conversation; she had never been enough in love to refuse to trade on a man's quirks for good-natured laughs, and she was not, in this case, at all in love.\n\n\"He tried to give me a bracelet,\" said Lily. She remembered how Sebastien had handled it\u2014with a light disregard, like it was something somebody had asked him to hold for a moment. \"A diamond bracelet.\"\n\n\"He didn't,\" said Katy.\n\n\"He did.\"\n\n\"A real one?\"\n\n\"I didn't let him do it.\" Lily had been a little surprised, actually, at how quickly he'd taken it back. She'd expected more of a fight; she'd already been formulating the opening chords of a generous and reasonable speech in which she would gently, with exquisite care and responsibility, turn him down.\n\n\"Very noble of you.\"\n\n\"I mean, I couldn't. It was his dead mother's or something.\" Lily remembered the blank expression on Sebastien's face when she'd asked about what had happened when his parents had died. She'd said \"died\" as a courtesy to him\u2014nobody in her family could stand people who said \"passed away\"\u2014but as soon as the word was out of her mouth it had hung heavily in the air, like a slur.\n\n\"Yeah,\" said Katy, \"but he probably had a bunch. Of bracelets, I mean.\"\n\n\"Even so.\"\n\n\"Man,\" said Katy. \"I wouldn't have turned down a present like that. That boy picked the wrong girl.\"\n\nThe remark echoed for a moment, and even though she knew Katy didn't really mean it, Lily found herself wanting to rotate the conversation somehow. \"What did you love so much about Anton?\" she said.\n\nKaty maintained her pose a moment longer, then toppled. Even her toppling was graceful. \"The thing that I loved the most about Anton,\" said Katy, and Lily could tell that she'd already thought a lot about it. \"Was the way he made everything bigger.\"\n\n\"That sounds exhausting,\" said Lily. She felt firmly that things were already big enough; she certainly didn't need things to be any bigger.\n\n\"It was, sometimes,\" said Katy.\n\n\"So are you ever glad to have him gone?\"\n\nLily expected Katy to pause and then say yes, sometimes, but instead she shook her head and shot Lily a terrible look\u2014of generosity born of cosmic and enduring pity\u2014from her spot on the floor. \"No,\" she said.\n\n\"Do you think you should get over it, though? I mean, life is short.\"\n\n\"It's not short,\" said Katy. \"It's terrifyingly long.\" Katy got up and cracked her back. Lily could hear the delicate pincer sounds of each of her vertebrae aligning themselves. \"And for me at least, it just got a lot longer.\"\n\nOne night late in January, Sebastien awoke to a knock at the door.\n\nHe had been sound asleep, and he was surprised at how quickly he was flooded with joy\u2014joy at the thought that Lily had been so eager to see him, that she'd been so bold on his behalf. Perhaps they had moved past the horrid bracelet debacle after all, he thought, as he staggered down the stairs in his boxers. It was this, exactly this, that was wonderful about having a person in one's life: As sociologists could attest, there was simply no knowing what people might do. Before Lily, Sebastien's days had been mired in reticulated sameness\u2014he could just as easily find himself eating expired canned spaghetti at four a.m. as four p.m.; he might be asleep at three in the afternoon or drunk at nine in the morning; he might go out for walks in the middle of the night or he might not leave the house for a week. But now there was Lily, and she might (who knows!) show up at his house at any hour of the day or night, gloriously unannounced.\n\nBut when Sebastien opened the door, he could see\u2014even in shadow, even in silhouette\u2014that it wasn't Lily. It was Katy.\n\nHe was so surprised that he forgot to be ironic. \"What are you doing here?\" he said.\n\n\"I need to talk to you.\" In the dark, Katy's face was luminous. Sebastien could never quite shake the feeling that her eyes were somehow medically too big for the rest of her body.\n\n\"Does Lily know you're here?\"\n\n\"Why should Lily know I'm here?\"\n\n\"Okay, then. Fine.\" It was only when his heart began to slow down that Sebastien realized it had been racing. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"I have a question for you.\"\n\n\"There are telephones, you know. There's the Internet. There's the daytime.\" Sebastien's mouth felt swampy, his mind still solidly lodged in some uneasy dreamscape, but he was beginning to wonder if it was perhaps earlier than he'd first thought. He ran his tongue along his teeth. It was, he realized shamefully, perhaps as early as midnight.\n\nKaty cocked her head. \"I need to know what's going on with Carlos.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" Sebastien leaned against the doorframe, suddenly aware of the cool night air and his boxer shorts. Well, and what should he be ashamed of? If Katy Kellers didn't want to see a sybaritic young gentleman with pale and blue-veined bare legs in his nightclothes, then she should have called ahead.\n\n\"He's in some kind of financial trouble, isn't he?\" said Katy. \"Isn't that what you said?\"\n\n\"Is this a matter of some urgency? Are you being struck mad or insomniac by curiosity? Some of us have work in the mornings, you know. Not me, of course, but some people.\"\n\n\"I didn't want anyone to know I was over here.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't see how it's any of your concern what's going on with the Carrizos.\" Sebastien sounded cross, and he was further cross with himself for caring\u2014privacy was such a bourgeois value, after all. \"And I also don't know why you think I'd know.\"\n\n\"Of course you know. What else do you do besides sit there and watch everybody all day long? And there's that thing you said at the dinner.\"\n\n\"What thing?\"\n\n\"About whether they were feeding us well. About the lawsuit.\"\n\n\"That was just a joke.\"\n\n\"I know Lily thinks that everything you say is a joke, but I don't think anything you say is really a joke. So\u2014what, the Carrizos are being sued? Why?\"\n\nSebastien rubbed his hair fretfully. \"Something untoward with money,\" he said. \"I think. Why does anybody get sued?\"\n\n\"How do you know that?\"\n\n\"I just told you I don't know that.\"\n\nKaty looked at him sharply. \"How do you _think_ you know it?\"\n\n\"It's gossip and hearsay,\" said Sebastien. \"Truly mediocre intelligence. Do with it what you will. Which will hopefully be nothing.\"\n\n\"What could I possibly do with it?\"\n\n\"I'm sure I don't know. I haven't had even a glimmer of imagination since approximately 1996.\"\n\n\"You're a strange boy.\"\n\nSebastien only hoped that the blankness on his face communicated the resounding unoriginality of this observation.\n\n\"I should be getting back,\" said Katy.\n\n\"So soon? A pity.\"\n\nKaty retreated down the steps. Her beauty was so austere, so forbidding; there was something hard about it, as though she'd been chiseled from some rare mineral\u2014whereas Lily seemed somehow organic, naturally arising.\n\n\"Might I ask,\" he said, as Katy was walking away, \"whether you're going to tell Lily you came over here?\"\n\n\"Why? Afraid it'll give her the wrong impression?\" Katy turned her head away from him and kept walking. \"Don't worry. There's a lot I don't tell Lily.\"\n\nOne day while Lily was out walking in San Telmo, a woman with a collapsing face shrieked at her.\n\nThe woman came from nowhere. Lily had been listening to her iPod, and all of a sudden the woman was right in front of her, yelling in Spanish too fast and distorted for comprehension. Lily tried to listen and pick out words even as she walked away\u2014faster and faster, though she was careful not to break into a run\u2014but it was useless: Listening to the woman was like listening to somebody talk in a dream, or through aphasia. Lily retreated into a doorway. The woman followed her there, still shouting. Her skin was leathery, and something about her eyes seemed wrong\u2014the ratio of whites to iris was off somehow, maybe. She reached out and Lily fumbled in her pockets for coins. But when she looked down she saw that the woman wasn't holding her hands out to receive something; instead she was pointing at Lily, her hands like twin claws, and Lily was reduced to saying she did not understand, she was sorry, she was sorry, she did not understand. At this, the woman\u2014seeming somehow satisfied, though Lily could not guess why\u2014turned and dematerialized into an alleyway.\n\nA moment passed, and Lily stepped gingerly into the street. With the woman gone the square was quiet, the sunbeams gathering into little pools on the concrete. A diagonal slash of light in front of Lily was bristling with dust motes, moving in a silent frenzy. Across the square, two young guys were drinking beers at a cervecer\u00eda; they looked at Lily and laughed, and one of them raised his glass in a toast. Lily suddenly noticed an eggy wetness on her cheek, which, she knew immediately, was spit. That woman's spit was on her cheek. Lily wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweater\u2014once, twice, many times\u2014and she was halfway back to the Carrizos', still wiping, before she understood that that part of her face was just going to feel weird for a while.\n\nFor the rest of the afternoon, Lily felt the edgy weariness of ambient guilt. This had been coming in waves, between the Borges and the wine\u2014the worrisome knowledge that she was basically on vacation in a country that was basically poor, at least by U.S. standards. She could not figure out how to regard her presence here. Was it good that she was in Buenos Aires, pumping her modest summer savings into the ridiculous exchange rate and coming out wealthy and dropping money into the economy? And trying\u2014you could not deny that she was trying, and certainly she was trying harder than Katy\u2014to learn the language, and make international connections, and foster cross-cultural understanding, and all that? She should be volunteering somewhere, perhaps. She should be suffering somehow. But then that seemed like it might be shallow, too, and maybe even worse, in a way that she had trouble unraveling. The whole study-abroad program had gone to an orphanage for an afternoon of work, and it had been so painfully clear how useless they all were\u2014that small surmountable problems were being made for them to overcome, that tiny doable tasks were being left undone so that they might all line up and do them. And that everything was going more slowly because of all the translating and the extra explaining. That they'd basically made these people's jobs harder by their presence. That the real favor would have been to stay home. There was a particular kind of uneasiness that came from recognizing the profundity of your own uselessness. It was all so morally exhausting. Lily worried about it, and then forgot to worry about it, and then worried about the fact that she'd forgotten. She recognized this as perhaps the second stage of culture shock, after elation.\n\nBack at the house, Katy wasn't home, so Lily dug out her international calling card. She wanted to talk to someone about these things, and if that meant talking to a member of her own family, then so be it. Lily tried Maureen first, but she wasn't home. She could call Anna, she supposed, but she never called Anna. She honestly forgot about Anna sometimes\u2014not the fact of her, of course, nor her role in almost all of Lily's childhood memories. But sometimes, it was true, the idea that Anna was living her own life at Colby felt less than totally real to Lily. This feeling was compounded by the legendarily ascetic hours Anna kept\u2014going to bed and arising incomprehensibly early, which had always seemed to Lily like a conscious rejection of the world and its inhabitants. Sometimes at Middlebury Lily had woken up at one p.m. in time for her first class and thought of the terrifying fact that Anna had been awake for six and a half hours already, and the even more terrifying fact that this was nearly all Lily knew about her life. The things that Lily did _not_ know about Anna's life were legion. Most important, perhaps, Lily did not know whether Anna was still a virgin. Worse, she did not expect to be apprised of any developments on that score, when and if they occurred. Lily had told Anna about her own first time, of course, and Anna had seemed both grossed out, which Lily understood, and also uninterested, which Lily did not understand\u2014not only because sex was an objectively interesting subject, but also because Lily found it unfathomable to be repulsed by something and not also fundamentally curious about it. To Lily, those were essentially the same feelings. With Anna, it was not so. When it came to conversations about the really compelling, vulgar, transfixing realities of life, Anna was maddeningly equanimous; neither overtly interested, nor so prudishly avoidant as to acknowledge those subjects' power. She would talk about such matters when it was necessary, and what she would say about them then was inevitably practical. When Lily had told her about losing her virginity, for example, Anna had immediately asked if Lily was going to get on birth control.\n\n\"Really, Anna,\" Lily had said. She'd been trying to sound knowing and world-weary, but the truth was she hadn't given the matter much thought. She hadn't necessarily considered that sex was something she was going to keep doing; she'd been focused entirely on the hurdle of virginity loss, and being questioned about birth control now felt like being immediately grilled about postgraduation plans when you'd just come running into the room with a college acceptance letter. \"If you are going to have any fun in college, Anna-Banana,\" said Lily, \"you are going to have to learn to relax.\"\n\nShe and Anna had been closer when they were small\u2014back then, at least, they had shared a serious interest. Like all children, Lily and Anna were generally bored by things that had happened before they were born\u2014but the subject of Janie was, of course, the great exception, and it consumed them with a curiosity that was terrible and electric and shameful and insatiable. It was also, Lily realized now, probably normal, though they hadn't known that then. All they'd known at the time was that their inquisitiveness came out as cruelty. Lily had learned this the hard way when, at the age of four or five, she'd asked Maureen something horrifically blunt about Janie\u2014something about the fate of her dead body, she thought, though she was not totally sure now and shrank from trying very hard to remember. The visceral, involuntary pain on Maureen's face in that moment had shocked Lily, as had the awful curdled quality of her voice as she answered, and Lily had suddenly realized that Maureen was very, very sad and was trying not to blame her for it. Lily could still remember the desolation of wondering\u2014for the first of many, many times\u2014if everything was more complicated than it seemed.\n\nAnd so, because they loved their parents and did not want to hurt them, Lily and Anna had stopped asking questions. But their natural-born preadolescent morbidity\u2014squashed and suppressed as it was\u2014could not disappear entirely, and sometimes it came out in strange ways.\n\n\"We could die,\" Lily had whispered to Anna late one night. She was seven and Anna was five. It was the summer Lily slept in her Mulan sleeping bag every single night and pretended to camp. \"Either of us. Don't you know that?\"\n\n\"No, we couldn't.\"\n\n\"Janie died. We could die any time.\"\n\n\"Janie was very sick,\" said Anna sternly. This was the family's compulsively repeated mantra\u2014to this day, Lily could hear it recited in an eerie, almost singsong chorus: _Janie was very sick, Janie was very sick\u2014_ and Anna was prone to slavishly parroting whatever Maureen and Andrew said, which Lily found annoying even when they were very small.\n\n\"Either of us could _get_ sick, though,\" said Lily.\n\n\"Shut up,\" said Anna, her voice quavery. Even when they were little, Lily hadn't really known what would upset Anna. She had actually envied other girls who seemed to know exactly what would make their sisters sad, and what would make them angry, and what would make them tattle, and what would overwhelmingly gross them out. Lily didn't know those things; Anna was like an egg on a spoon that she was always dropping, even when she didn't mean to.\n\n\"We won't get sick,\" Anna had repeated fiercely, over and over, that night and many nights after. \"We won't. We won't.\"\n\nAnd she was right. They had not.\n\nLily squinted at the phone. The basement's artificial light was somehow shriller than usual, and she found herself dialing Andrew's number. Her father was either in on a Saturday evening or he was out, and either possibility had vaguely gruesome implications. Lily waited. An interminable row of numbers would be popping up on her father's caller ID. Lily could still feel dregs of the woman's spit on her cheek, though, of course, that was impossible. Andrew picked up the phone.\n\n\"Lily!\"\n\n\"Hello, Father.\"\n\n\"To what do I owe the honor?\"\n\n\"Just thought I'd check in on you.\" Lily had called him, but now she had to pretend that the calling was for reasons of business, not pleasure. \"Make sure you weren't having too much fun without me.\"\n\n\"Clearly you needn't worry. What about you? Shouldn't you be out with that guy?\"\n\nSebastien. Lily had mentioned him in a postcard ten days ago, feeling the thrill of the unconventional spelling and capitalization, giddy with the sophisticated joy of sending little stamps of excitement into the dull slog of the lives of the people she'd left behind. Now she wished she hadn't said anything.\n\n\"Do you think it's morally problematic to be on study abroad in Argentina?\" said Lily.\n\n\"Ah, talk to your mom about this,\" said Andrew. \"You know she's the only real Marxist in the family.\"\n\nThe fondness in Andrew's voice as he said this made Lily wonder, for the trillionth time, why her parents had split up\u2014though she had to marvel over their inability to do anything, even divorce, with any real verve. It was very hard to tell how bad their marriage had been, exactly, as it was staggering around its terminal lap. It was certainly true that, for all their espoused progressivism, the family seemed to adhere basically to the national statistics about labor divisions in housework: Andrew seemed to make everything marginally dingier and dirtier without really trying as he moved about the house; Maureen swept quietly along behind him with a similarly effortless-seeming tidiness and order. But Lily knew it couldn't be that simple. There was a story that Maureen and Andrew told\u2014sometimes separately, sometimes jointly, but always in a tone suggesting profound symbolic content\u2014that Lily thought might contain some clues: Toward the end of Janie's life, apparently, the next-door hippie neighbors had brought over some crystals, and had stood on the porch (in Maureen's telling), smug, serene, beaming with the beautiful obviousness of the solution. Over the years, the crystals had become some strange and dark and utterly unfunny inside joke between Maureen and Andrew; whenever one of them turned to the other and said, emphatically, those _crystals_ , it was clear that something tedious and adult was going to go sailing right over the heads of Lily and Anna, who knew better than to try to really probe the matter.\n\n\"I tried,\" said Lily. \"She wasn't home. I'm stuck with you.\"\n\n\"Go dig latrines in Mongolia after you graduate,\" said Andrew. \"What the hell else are you going to do anyway? You're a philosophy major.\"\n\n\"And women's studies.\"\n\n\"They're still regarding that as an area of academic inquiry?\"\n\n\"I feel so useless.\"\n\n\"Well, you are useless, Lil. But the Peace Corps will still be there later. You might as well have fun now. Are you having fun?\"\n\nLily felt deflated at the use of this word, \"fun.\" She hadn't thought of Buenos Aires in terms of \"fun\"; she'd thought of it in terms of \"transformative purity.\" But she realized now with a minor shock that it had been fun\u2014the exploring, the psychic revelation of language acquisition, the drinking, the literary preening, the growing sense of herself as a fashionable waif in a foreign film. It had all been very fun until, somehow, it wasn't.\n\n\"Fun has been had,\" she said sadly.\n\n\"Well. Don't let mistakes get made. Listen, I've got to run. Garry Kasparov is on CNN in a minute.\"\n\n\"You love that guy.\"\n\n\"I _love_ that guy. But listen\u2014you're doing all right? Everything's fine?\"\n\n\"Everything's all right, everything's fine. Blow Garry a kiss for me.\"\n\nAndrew was gone, but Lily kept holding the phone to her ear, listening to the particular silence of a concluded phone call, staring right into the light above her until she saw black striations in her vision. She thought about the shrieking woman in the doorway. She tried to play back in her head what the woman had said, tried to retroactively unravel and translate it, but it was no use. The woman had been indecipherable, and would be incomprehensible now, always. Lily hung up the phone.\n\nThat night, Lily was on her best behavior with the Carrizos. She showed up to dinner early, asking Beatriz if she needed help with anything\u2014though she was sure Beatriz could see her visibly hoping that help would not be needed\u2014and decided to make a particular point to be more gracious to Katy. With Carlos, she knew, it would be easy: All she had to do to make him like her even better was to talk even more\u2014about the plotting of multinational corporations, the undeniably imperialistic ambitions of the United States, the dastardly scheming of the IMF. Lily was dimly aware that she did not strictly believe all of this stuff\u2014a lot of it was the kind of talk you engage in to socialize, to announce your well-honed moral identity\u2014but she was certainly not going to quibble with an actual citizen of a developing economy about the intentions of the IMF. And at any rate, Lily was not wholly sure that Carlos really believed in all of it entirely, either. He regarded conversation as sport, and Lily loved anyone who regarded anything in life as sport (except for actual sports).\n\n\"Nobody even believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,\" she said to Carlos, to start things off. She poured herself a glass of wine.\n\n\"Nobody,\" he said forcefully. \"That's the big deception. Now everyone knows they were wrong, but what nobody understands is that even _they_ never thought they were right.\"\n\nLily nodded cheerfully. Maybe you could see Carlos's depression underneath it all, though it was so different from the resigned white-knuckled terminal WASP depression of her own family. Carlo's sadness wasn't the grim death march of Maureen's\u2014who had basically made a studied and understated decision to simply never enjoy anything again, ever. Instead, it seemed to push Carlos toward a fatal indifference that almost seemed like a kind of freedom. He probably laughed as much as he did anything.\n\n\"George W. Bush's unresolved daddy issues are the only reason you guys were even there,\" Carlos was saying.\n\nKaty and Beatriz stayed mostly quiet when politics was discussed, which it always was. This made Lily vacillate between the dark suspicion that Katy was politically ignorant and the even darker suspicion that she might be politically moderate. Beatriz, she figured, was just bored of Carlos, which Lily could understand.\n\n\"The felling of the Twin Towers was a symbolic castration of America,\" said Lily. \"That's why the U.S. took it so hard.\" Somehow the mood at the table was darkening. Beatriz was grimacing into her steak with slightly more than her usual amount of exasperated chagrin. Lily looked at Katy for backup, but Katy stared at her levelly with what Lily thought might be some degree of tired amusement. Lily was alone.\n\nThe conversation bobbled onward, and Lily found herself issuing ever less provocative assertions and ever more lukewarm assents until she noticed that Beatriz had cleared the table and Katy had left the room and all that was left in the wine bottle was a few grainy ruby-red drips.\n\nAfterward Lily found Katy on the bunk bed, reading. Lily stared at her for a moment, wondering what kind of perfect thoughtlessness could buy you such serenity. \"What's that about?\" she said.\n\n\"Governmental secrecy about inflation rates,\" said Katy, not looking up.\n\nLily didn't mean to say anything, and then she did. \"Why don't you ever talk?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Why don't you ever say anything at dinner? Don't you have any opinions on anything?\"\n\nKaty put down the article. \"You're not serious.\"\n\n\"How would I know if you did? How would I know if you had a single opinion in your head?\"\n\n\"There is no possible way you want me in that conversation.\"\n\n\"Of course I do.\"\n\n\"No. You don't.\"\n\n\"You're never going to change anyone's mind by sitting there and rolling your eyes.\"\n\n\"I wasn't rolling my eyes.\"\n\n\"You were. You were rolling your eyes as far back in your head as they would go.\" Lily could feel the wine sluicing somewhere back in her skull. She hiccupped. \"I think you never want to say anything because you just can't stand to have someone mad at you. You just want to make sure everyone likes you. That's all you care about.\"\n\n\"Better than just wanting to feel right all the time, even if you're not actually doing anything to fix anything.\"\n\n\"I was the vice president of Amnesty International!\" said Lily, throwing her shoe at Katy. It missed her by a wide margin. \"I organized three petitions for a Free Palestine!\"\n\nKaty looked at the flip-flop appraisingly, then picked it up and handed it to Lily. \"Calm down,\" said Katy. \"We don't need to fight about it.\"\n\nThere was a pause. Lily hoped she looked less angry than she actually was.\n\n\"Maybe you're right,\" said Katy soothingly. \"It's just\u2014I don't know. I don't think they're good conversations. I don't think they're good for Carlos. He gets so drunk. He's so depressed.\"\n\n\"I am so sick of everyone being so depressed,\" said Lily. She was. Good Lord, how she was. Sometimes she felt like her own family was essentially the world's most passive suicide cult. Couldn't her host family at least have a different set of problems? \"Doesn't anyone understand that you have to _try_ not to be depressed?\" said Lily. \"You have to make it a marginal priority? You can't just get a free pass on your whole reality because you're so depressed? We're all going to be dead one day. We're all in the same boat.\"\n\nKaty let this pass, and Lily could hear what she'd said swirl around the room in widening loops. She felt suddenly wretched and childish. She felt, suddenly and for the first time, like she wanted to go home.\n\n\"Why is he so depressed, though?\" Lily said after a while.\n\nKaty gave her a marveling look. \"They're being sued,\" she said. \"He's losing the business. Don't you pay attention to anything?\"\n\n# CHAPTER SIX\n\n## February\n\nThe night after visiting the jail, Andrew dreamed of Lily. In his dream she was swaddled in an incubator, with tubes running in and out of her ears and eyes and nose. She was soft featured and infantile, yet the size of his adult daughter, and when she spoke\u2014although Andrew could not understand what she said\u2014she spoke with his adult Lily's low voice, clear and pleading, until he woke up.\n\nAndrew was disappointed with himself. His whole life, his dreams had been dispiritingly common, crudely metaphorical, and always right on schedule: He'd dreamed of falling, he'd dreamed of unnoticed nakedness, he'd dreamed of forgetting about a class he was signed up to take, and later, to teach. He would have liked to at least be a little more original in a crisis.\n\nAndrew got up and went to the bathroom. He turned on the light and watched himself appear, paunchy and red-eyed, in the mirror. Andrew had spent the last few years tracking his own aging through Maureen\u2014both in how she looked and in how she looked at him\u2014each time he saw her. The last time, at Christmas, Andrew had realized that Maureen had dimmed into typicality: There were feathery wrinkles around her eyes and a persistent plummy color underneath; her hair was never quite as red as he remembered. It had finally happened: The best things about Maureen no longer showed. A stranger passing her on the street would never guess that she'd once jumped onto a train in Austria, or that she'd smoked dope in her closet and fallen down laughing into a pile of skirts, long before things happened that had made her fearful, that would make anybody in the world fearful. Joyous openness was, after all, a luxury. And sometimes Andrew was glad that Lily had somehow emerged from their lives carefree enough to do all the things she wanted to do. Other young girls felt this way, after all, and they went off on study abroad, and then after a semester they came home, behaving exactly as Lily would have: pretending to slip into Spanish or French by accident, ostentatiously mourning some newly beloved street food, telling stories they hoped would make other people admire their intrepidness as much as they themselves did. That's what Lily should have been doing in three months' time\u2014she should have been out with her friends, all of them recently returned from different places, all of them exclaiming over how strange and light and leathery American dollars now seemed. But she would not be. Lily might be home in three months\u2014but even if she was, she would no longer be a child, and she would not be saying the things that children say. And sometimes\u2014especially now, when he thought of her sleeping in that cell, curled into herself for warmth\u2014Andrew was not glad that she had had a chance to feel free and lucky in the world. Not even for a moment, not even if she deserved it. Because, really, who were they kidding? Their family had never been lucky. And Andrew and Maureen had failed Lily\u2014failed her utterly\u2014if they'd ever let her forget it.\n\nAndrew tiptoed back to bed. Across the room, Anna seemed to be radiating resentful wakefulness, though she was very still; he feared that Anna was growing into the kind of daughter who would never tell him that he snored. Andrew lay back down. A line ran through his head: _There is no other life but the one we have_. This had been something of a mantra of his after Janie died: There was never anything more to her life in the world, he told himself, than the two and a half years she spent here. There are no other drafts, and no alternate endings. There is not a single day that rightfully belongs to our lives except for those that actually compose it.\n\nLying in bed, Andrew listened to the faint crepitation of a leaf against the window. He admired the recalcitrant light of the already diminishing moon. It was, after all, a very beautiful world.\n\nEvery morning at dawn, Anna donned her workout clothes and went off to run. She'd return silently, an hour or more later, and then sit in front of the mirror and pull the Band-Aids off her scabby heels while Andrew watched. At some point during her first year of college, she had turned into one long flank of muscle. In the afternoons, Andrew would make her go out with him somewhere\u2014usually to the corner store, where he'd try to make desperate sport of all the exotic artificial flavors. Anna trailed behind him, suddenly lazy, her expression like a chunk of basalt.\n\n\"Chestnut-flavored yogurt?\" Andrew would say, pointing. \"Would you ever have thought?\"\n\n\"There are a lot of things lately that I never would have thought.\"\n\nAndrew did not blame her; she was doing her best. Learning to be an adult was learning that your best was rarely quite enough.\n\n\"Fig-flavored soda?\" he'd say. \"Bet you haven't had that before.\"\n\n\"I've never done a lot of this before.\"\n\nOn the third day after visiting Lily, while Anna was at the gym, Andrew went walking. He walked to bone-white cathedrals; he walked past houses with shrubbery growing onto them like stubble. There was dog shit everywhere, absolutely everywhere, and Andrew was impressed by the blithe acceptance of such\u2014as though everyone had tacitly agreed that this was what the city was actually for. The sky was a pious robin's-egg blue. Andrew thought of what it would be like to be dropped live out of an airplane, and then fall streaking through this gorgeous sky, the color of a bluebird or a crayon. He thought of what it might be like to be too terrified to scream.\n\nAndrew would have liked to be able to tell himself that they had all survived before, but the truth was, they hadn't. Lily's problem, he tried to remind himself, was entirely different from Janie's\u2014Lily's situation was merely a function of a failure of rationality, a failure of communication. If Andrew could explain everything very slowly and carefully then all would be clear, and everyone would see that a mistake had been made. He didn't have to stop an oncoming tsunami or apocalypse or terminal illness; he didn't have to attract the attention or favor of a deity. All he had to do was describe, very clearly and persuasively, a true fact about the world: that his daughter had not killed anybody. Andrew was a professional explainer. To save Lily, he needed only to do better what he already did well. What could be simpler? What, in the end, could be easier? He should be glad to have such problems! There was no tumor in this daughter's body, no knife against this daughter's throat\u2014only a handful of incorrect impressions deep in the minds of a few reactionary people. As threats go, these were not the worst.\n\nAndrew walked past another church. Etched into its exterior were saints, forever without perspective, their halos gleaming like pennies. The church was closed. Andrew stood outside the elaborate wrought-iron gates and held on.\n\nAnna came back at eleven and took a shower. In the afternoon, Andrew left her eating a room service sandwich and watching _Sex and the City 2_ on HBO, which he'd ordered for her even though she told him she'd already seen it and that it had made her a worse and more stupid person. Andrew had the hotel call him a taxi and gave the driver the address of Lily's host family in Palermo. Sebastien LeCompte's house, Lily's emails had suggested, was right next door and enormous, and Andrew was hoping he wouldn't be able to miss it.\n\nSome of the streets on the way to Palermo were questionable\u2014Andrew saw jigsaw structures made of plywood; shifty-looking men wearing only their undershirts; shredded hunks of pork, roasting on spits in the sun and attracting bevies of jewel-winged flies\u2014but after they crossed Figueroa Alcorta, he relaxed. Out one window loomed some sort of museum, ornate as a cupcake, and the houses grew bigger and better until they were garish and tacky and tricked out in the taste of the full-blown nouveau riche. Things got calmer and cleaner once the taxi crossed into Barrio Parque; Andrew began to feel that he was in a neighborhood inhabited by men who'd made modest fortunes honestly. Finally the taxi rounded a dusty corner and onto Lily's street\u2014Lily's former street\u2014and Andrew was once again relieved. The house that must be Sebastien LeCompte's was unmistakable: It was right next door to the Carrizos', and was, as promised, huge and shambling and unkempt, visibly driving down the prices of all the other real estate.\n\nAndrew couldn't help craning his neck to look at Lily's former house. It was nice, he was glad to see\u2014he'd imagined open sewage, chickens in the yard, God knew what. Even so, what the lawyers had told him about the Carrizos did not sound reassuring. The Carrizos had certain attitudes about Lily, apparently\u2014certain prejudices and suspicions\u2014and Andrew certainly knew how grating she could be to people who didn't already love her. He glanced again at the house, trying to see into the courtyard, then shivered and admonished himself for being ghoulish enough to look. He averted his gaze and pointed to Sebastien LeCompte's mansion. The taxi driver eyed it skeptically.\n\nThe house was indeed immense: For once in her life, Lily had not been hyperbolic in a postcard. Three stories of mullioned windows squatted beneath a roof that seemed to sag on one side, giving the whole house the look of a shrugging person in a buttoned waistcoat. A winding path led to an enormous door that, Andrew saw when he reached it, was carved and expensive but missing a doorknob. The knocker was a snarling stone creature; Andrew found himself involuntarily snarling right back at it. He could have put his fist through the door and into the house's creepy interior. He did not do this. Instead, he knocked and took a few steps back. He was sweating. A warm and paltry wind kicked up and made him even warmer. He waited.\n\nThe door opened, at long last, and a thin, extremely young man appeared. He had brown hair and startling eyes and was dressed in a garment Andrew couldn't quite make sense of\u2014was it a robe of some kind? A smoking jacket? Maybe, Andrew thought darkly, this boy was behind Lily's smoking. \"Buenos dias,\" said Andrew, because he figured that this was the best way to start.\n\nSebastien LeCompte did not appear surprised. He only smiled a distant smile, revealing a set of teeth that must have been very expensive. \"Why, _good day_ to you, too, sir,\" he said. His accent was not what Andrew was expecting\u2014it was nasally and harsh; the accent of British actors playing American. It did not match the outfit. \"And what might you be selling?\"\n\n\"You speak English?\"\n\n\"I flatter myself that I do.\"\n\n\"Are you Sebastien LeCompte?\"\n\n\"I flatter myself that I am.\"\n\nIn her emails, Lily had referred to Sebastien LeCompte as a \"man\" she was \"seeing,\" phrasing that had seemed comical to Andrew at the time but that he'd clung to after her arrest\u2014perhaps she _was_ dating an adult, for once, someone who was reasonable and mature, someone who might actually be of some assistance to them now. This hope had diminished when he'd seen the security footage, and now, staring at Sebastien LeCompte in the flesh, Andrew could feel it almost disappear. What he was dealing with here was a boy: rail-thin, floppy-haired, tepid in his every gesture and glance, reflexively sardonic in his every utterance, the physical instantiation of his generation's taste in music. _Grow pulses, children!_ Andrew wanted to yell, but he did not. The world was lucky Andrew didn't do half the things he thought of doing. Instead, Andrew extended his hand. He had to try\u2014it was imperative that he try\u2014to find out if there was any chance this boy could help them, in spite of himself.\n\n\"I'm Andrew Hayes,\" he said.\n\nAt this, something happened to the kid's face\u2014he tilted it upward, and his eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly. His nostrils flared. \"Lily's father.\"\n\n\"Yes. Lily's father.\" Andrew paused. He tried to take the edge off his voice, just in case. \"You've heard about Lily, I'm sure?\"\n\nHere, the kid seemed to recover himself. \"Indeed,\" he said, snapping upright. \"Most improbable. Though our children do have a way of surprising us, don't they?\"\n\nAndrew did not know quite what to make of this, but he knew he did not like it. He took a step backward. \"Who's 'us'?\" he said.\n\n\"No, no. I jest. I don't think your lovely Lily had a hand in the slaying.\"\n\nAndrew dragged his fingers through his hair, feeling the resolute stubbornness of his own skull. \"I am hoping,\" he said carefully, \"that you can help me.\"\n\nSebastien looked at Andrew with placid eyes. \"I am truly very sorry to hear that,\" he said. Andrew couldn't quite parse this one, either, but before he could ask for clarification Sebastien cleared his throat. \"May I ask,\" he said. The jaunty spin had dropped out of his voice. \"How Lily is faring?\"\n\nAndrew squinted. It seemed that the boy actually wanted to know. \"Could I come in, maybe, and we could talk a bit?\"\n\n\"Where are my manners?\" Sebastien stepped backward into the shadows of the house and gestured, with elaborate gallantry, for Andrew to join him.\n\n\"Lily is horrible,\" said Andrew, stepping inside. \"Thanks for asking. She's absolutely horrible.\"\n\nSebastien's reaction to this was obscured by the house's strange endemic darkness. Andrew blinked and a labyrinthine, anachronistic living room appeared\u2014there was an arabesque clock on the mantel; an ancient piano teetering nearby; several sheet-covered mounds that Andrew fervently hoped were furniture. In the corner, a multicolored, very outdated map covered a window; a ray of sunlight illuminated a bright green nonaligned India. Andrew pointed to it.\n\n\"I thought the Soviet Union was done now,\" he said.\n\n\"Oh?\" said Sebastien. \"I hadn't heard.\"\n\nHe sounded truly bereft. This interview, it was becoming clear, was going to demand a different kind of patience than Andrew had thought to bring. \"It was in all the papers,\" he said.\n\nSebastien nodded gravely. \"My decorating scheme is very pass\u00e9, I'm afraid. If you don't move things, it turns out, they don't tend to move themselves. I suspect that's why we still have all those Roman fora lying around willy-nilly.\"\n\nAndrew half-nodded. He was faintly aware that it was probably unwise to keep obviously marveling at the house, but he couldn't quite bring himself to stop. This was where his daughter's boyfriend lived, and there was a cluster of chandelier pendants hanging from the ceiling, and Andrew was somehow positive that the entire room was cobwebby. On the mantel, Andrew could make out a collection of ancient liqueurs, a giant book that could only be the Bible, a vase with some flowers that looked like they had probably always been dead. On one wall was a tapestry\u2014an actual tapestry, like something out of the national museum of a minor eastern European country. It was threadbare, of course, and depicting a hunt, of course: blue dogs harassing a red deer with anthropomorphic viciousness, the deer's eyes white with terror. Good God, the morbid pageantry of it all! How had the world ever produced a person like this? Had he been left alone for his entire childhood in this collapsing house with nothing but Evelyn Waugh books to read? And why, oh why, had Lily slept with him? Now Andrew had to worry about her self-esteem, on top of everything else.\n\n\"Where are your parents?\" Andrew found himself saying.\n\n\"Well, that's truly the question at the heart of all human endeavor, isn't it?\" said Sebastien gaily. \"Where, indeed. You're a great thinker of our time\u2014you tell me.\"\n\nAndrew spent a moment in incomprehension, then felt a dull club of remorse. \"Oh,\" he said. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\" _Pas du tout_. Can I get you a drink?\"\n\n\"No, thank you.\"\n\n\"I trust you don't object if I indulge?\"\n\nAndrew waved his hand in a vague gesture of permission giving and Sebastien LeCompte bowed his way into the kitchen. Andrew went to examine the mantel more closely. Next to the clock, in an odd thematic parallel to the tapestry, was a photograph of Sebastien with a murdered beast of some kind. Whatever it was had been shot near the heart, its wound wreathed by a ring of poppy-red blood. In the photo, Sebastien was even younger than he was now; his father\u2014identical to Sebastien, theatrically swathed in various beige garments with compartments and buttons and bolts\u2014had his arm around his son.\n\n\"You're sure?\" said Sebastien, returning with a greenish glass of something that could only be absinthe. \"I could even pop over to the corner store and get\u2014what? Beer?\"\n\nAndrew shook his head.\n\n\"So,\" said Sebastien, sitting on one of the mounds and motioning to Andrew to do the same. \"What was it that you wanted to discuss?\"\n\nAndrew selected a mound of his own. \"Well,\" he said, tentatively descending. \"I understand that you and Lily were\u2014friends.\"\n\nAndrew watched Sebastien fleetingly consider, and then reject, a sarcastic response. Instead, he looked at the ceiling and seemed to actually ponder the question for several long moments. \"Yes,\" he said finally. \"I think that we probably were.\"\n\n\"And you also knew the, ah. The deceased roommate. Katy.\"\n\n\"Briefly.\"\n\nAndrew felt a contraction in his throat. \"I am hoping you might help me understand what all of this is about. Why this is happening. Why they imagine Lily did this thing. Because it is outrageous, objectively. As I'm sure you agree. Objectively outrageous and unbelievable.\"\n\nSebastien stood and went to the mantel. He traced his finger along the photograph, making a curlicue in the dust, then regarded his finger distastefully and wiped it on his trousers. \"Well, Lily didn't very much care for Katy, as I'm sure you've been made aware,\" he said flatly.\n\n\"I wouldn't say that,\" said Andrew. He swallowed, trying to unclench his throat. \"They weren't close, maybe, but I don't think there was any particular hostility there.\"\n\n\"I trust you've read the emails? Or hasn't cable news reached America yet? Anyway, they were quite a spectacle down here.\"\n\nSuddenly, Andrew wanted to snap this kid's skinny neck; suddenly, Andrew thought he understood homicidal rage. \"I think 'spectacle' is probably overstating it,\" he said. \"And, anyway, that's just how she talked. It's how many people talk. Many, many people say uncivil things about their friends in emails, and they are not arrested for it, because it's not actually illegal\u2014not even here, in fact: I've checked. Whatever she wrote about Katy, she didn't mean anything by it. If you really spent any time with her, you'd know that.\"\n\nSebastien tilted his head to one side. \"She did have a very particular idiolect, of course.\"\n\n\"Okay, look,\" said Andrew, standing up. He had had enough of this. His family needed him\u2014again? or finally? either way\u2014and he was not going to let this cartoonish Cheshire cat of a child stop him from helping them. \"Listen. You are going to tell me some things.\"\n\nSebastien stared, and Andrew wondered how long it had been since he had received direct instructions of any sort.\n\n\"Tell me about the night Katy died,\" Andrew ordered. \"Lily was with you.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"And you've talked to the police about this?\"\n\n\"Briefly.\"\n\n\"Do they think you might be involved?\"\n\n\"Probably.\"\n\n\"Why haven't they arrested you?\"\n\n\"I was not actually involved.\" Sebastien looked down, and Andrew charitably allowed himself to consider the possibility that he might actually feel sorry for what he'd just said. Perhaps as penance, Sebastien continued\u2014his voice a bit lower, a bit less theatrical, than it had been before. \"There's nothing to tell you about that night. Truly. Lily was here. We talked and had some cocktails. We went to sleep around two. She went back to the Carrizos' in the morning. She came back over here after finding Katy. Then she called the police.\"\n\nIt was strange to listen to the boy speak so frankly\u2014recalling events comprehensibly, constructing a linear narrative. The sun shifted, and two strips of cadmium midafternoon light fell onto the floor and across Sebastien's face, catching his freckles and making him look innocent and heartbreakingly young.\n\n\"The police came pretty quickly and cordoned off the house,\" said Sebastien. \"They arrested her the next morning. I don't have anything else I can tell you. I'm sorry.\" He looked at his hands for a moment and then said, very quickly, \"Do you think I could see her?\"\n\nFor a moment, Andrew had wanted very much to suspect this boy. It was as though the universe was shoving Sebastien at him\u2014here was a man, involved with two women, living right next door to both of them\u2014and what a gift it would have been to have such an obvious answer. But now Andrew was confronted with the reality that believing in Sebastien's guilt would mean the beginning of believing in Lily's. And that was unthinkable.\n\n\"I can't imagine they'll allow that,\" Andrew said gently.\n\n\"Could I write her a letter?\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\nThere was a silence. \"I'm sorry,\" Sebastien said finally, in that harsh, too-flat voice, and then he said it again. And then Andrew's feeling flipped over again, and he wondered, with a judder of suspicion that made all other suspicions seem shallow, just what it was that Sebastien was so sorry for.\n\n\"For what?\" said Andrew. He looked around the place\u2014its garish loneliness, its ghoulish ornateness\u2014and he looked again at Sebastien: that goofy hair, that unreasonable outfit, that too-young face that shifted from guile to guilelessness with the movement of the sun. Andrew did not know why Lily liked Sebastien LeCompte, but he had to accept that she did\u2014perhaps she even loved him. And one explanation for all of this trouble was that Lily was protecting this boy, against all reason, out of some strange sense of martyrdom or infallibility or perhaps something else altogether that Andrew might never begin to guess.\n\n\"What are you so sorry for?\" said Andrew again meanly.\n\n\"I am sorry,\" said Sebastien, \"for your absolutely abominable luck.\"\n\nWhen Andrew returned to the hotel, Anna was staring listlessly out the window. The movie had ended and the screen had become a vivid aquarium blue, but she hadn't turned it off.\n\n\"Whatcha up to, Old Sport?\" said Andrew.\n\nAnna stared at him dully, unsurprised, though she'd made no move when he entered the room. Andrew suddenly wanted to go to her and take her bony shoulders in his arms. He wanted to curl up around her body and whisper \"Hush,\" even though it was unlikely that Anna would ever require anyone to tell her to hush.\n\n\"Dad,\" she said. Even the way she said \"Dad\" sounded to Andrew like a kind of grudging concession. \"Is Lily going to be okay?\"\n\nAndrew sat down on the edge of the bed and patted Anna's shoulder. \"We are going to do everything we can for her.\"\n\n\"Jesus.\" Anna's voice was astringent. She stood up. \" 'We're going to do everything we can for her'? You're such an irredeemable pessimist.\"\n\nFrom the mouth of someone so young, the phrase \"irredeemable pessimist\" sounded rehearsed, obsessed over. Possibly, Andrew thought nervously, inherited. Or even worse, therapeutically processed. Andrew gave Anna what he hoped was an encouraging smile.\n\n\"I think she's got as good a shot as we could hope for,\" he said. Andrew had watched his child die. He was well beyond considerations of pessimism or optimism. But he did not want Anna to be, and he did not want her to have to understand. \"I think the lawyers are terrific,\" he said. \"And, of course, she's innocent. So we've got that going for us.\"\n\nA shiver went across Anna's jaw. \"Of course,\" she said. Her eyes were like bolts. She hated that he'd said it, maybe because it was so obvious. But then, Andrew wasn't above stating the obvious. He was the parent. More than anything, perhaps, that was his job.\n\n\"Once,\" said Anna, \"just once, could you tell me that everything is going to be okay?\"\n\nAndrew nodded. \"I could. I could tell you that. And it might be. That's certainly what we all are hoping and working for. But you're an adult now. And this might be a very long haul. And I want you to be prepared for anything.\"\n\n\"Do we? Do we eternally have to be prepared for anything?\"\n\n\"It seems that we do, often enough.\"\n\nAnna turned and faced the window. The light caught her flyaway hair, and she looked frenzied and, Andrew thought, angelic. His daughter. His one daughter, living and free. \"I'm sorry, Old Sport,\" he said.\n\n\"I hate that you call me that, you know.\"\n\n\"I\u2014you what? I didn't know that.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't have.\"\n\n\"You really hate it? It makes me feel ironical and literary.\"\n\n\"That is _exactly_ why.\"\n\nAndrew felt stung in a nearly physical way. He thought inexplicably of those furry little creatures in Australia, the ones with the vestigial, frighteningly nonmammalian stingers. \"You could have told me,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, I just did.\" Anna stomped over to her suitcase and produced a plastic bag. Platypuses, that was what those animals were. \"I bought these things for Lily,\" she said, pulling out soap, toilet paper, tampons. Shampoo with cursive writing on it. A razor.\n\n\"Where did you get all that stuff?\" said Andrew. \"Did you go out?\"\n\n\"For Christ's sake, Dad. No. I went to the little store in the lobby.\"\n\n\"They're not going to let her have the razor.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Anna, putting the razor back in the bag. \"Fine. But we need to get her these other things. She needs them.\"\n\n\"We can't get back there until Thursday, sweetie.\" Was he going to have to call her \"sweetie\" from now on? Surely that was worse.\n\n\"She needs them,\" Anna said again.\n\n\"I know,\" said Andrew. \"But she'll manage. She's been managing already.\" He heard his own voice and realized he was angry. He wished he had gotten the things for Lily himself\u2014even though it did not matter, not really. They could not see her until Thursday, anyway, and so it could not make a difference whether the things were purchased today or three days from now. And yet there was something galling about Anna having done it; Andrew imagined her walking into that lobby, flushed with exercise, meting out her foreign currency (saved from her various jobs, and then exchanged at a loss in the airport), and then selecting the best versions of whatever it was she thought Lily might need. All of this, all of this, was the job of a parent. In its unsentimental practicality it was, perhaps, the job of a father. It did not matter\u2014of course it did not matter. And yet there was so little that could be done for Lily. Andrew couldn't help but feel it was ungenerous of Anna to do it all herself.\n\n\"You don't understand,\" said Anna, and Andrew heard the strange timbre in her voice that used to mean tears. She coughed herself into a more serious register. \"You don't understand anything about it.\"\n\nAbout what? he wanted to ask. About not being able to get what you wanted? Even the narrow-minded narcissism of children should be able to accommodate enough generosity toward their parents for Anna to understand that this was not true\u2014probably not in anyone's case, and certainly not in his.\n\n\"We'll get her the things she needs, Anna,\" he said. The things you need and do not get and nevertheless manage to survive without\u2014were those things ever really _needs_? If somebody's need was vast, and eternally unmet, and nonfatal, had what seemed necessary really only been desirous? After Janie died, everyone was always asking Andrew if he was okay, and he never knew what to say. Because what, really, was on the other side of okay? When you stopped being okay, you were just okay in a worse and different way.\n\n\"We'll get them to her just as soon as we can,\" he said.\n\nAnna nodded seriously.\n\n\"You were very good to think of them,\" said Andrew. He hoped he sounded as tired as he felt.\n\n\"Well,\" said Anna, and her voice was stronger, the voice of an adult or a pragmatist. \"It was the least I could do.\"\n\nThe next morning Maureen arrived.\n\nAndrew had tracked her flight online in the hotel's business center, calculating how long it would take her to find her luggage and hail a taxi and traverse the city's allegedly Parisian boulevards. He waited until he thought she'd probably checked in to the hotel, then forced himself to wait ninety minutes more. Finally, he got in the elevator and rode down a floor\u2014to room 408, which was, he figured, nearly directly below his own\u2014and knocked on her door.\n\nShe appeared after a moment. \"Hello, Maureen,\" said Andrew. He wanted to tell her she looked great, though the tone seemed off, and, anyway, she didn't. Her hair was messy\u2014probably from sleeping thrashily on the plane\u2014and under her eyes were two bluish pits of exhaustion. He tried to detect if she was thinner than usual; he couldn't tell.\n\n\"Hello, dear,\" said Maureen. She always called him something sweet and absolving and fond, and he always called her \"Maureen.\" Andrew wasn't sure what this meant about who wanted or expected more from their postdivorce relationship, or who'd summoned greater depths of humanity or charity in their dealings, but he suspected that they'd both staked some kind of bet on their own way of doing things and he now felt fully committed to his own. They hugged with elaborate formality, which they always did, although Andrew never quite knew why. After everything they had been through together, they should slump against each other now like brothers, or puppies, or soldiers, or mental patients; the proximity of their bodies should be utterly meaningless. And yet a crisp distance had grown up between them, vinelike and intricate, and when Andrew touched Maureen, feeling the forbidding landscape of her clavicle through her T-shirt, he sensed the assertion of a new strangeness. She smelled like the airplane, vaguely clinical and foreign, nothing like her smell from their marriage\u2014he remembered the faint chivelike scent of her body underneath some rose perfume she had that always made him sneeze.\n\nMaureen pulled away and patted him neutrally on the shoulder. \"How are you holding up?\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Andrew. \"You know.\"\n\nMaureen nodded and gave him that rueful look of hers he sometimes found so annoying\u2014there was something about it that reminded him faintly of an expression of reproach, as though Andrew had failed her terribly but she was going to be a tremendous good sport about it. Maybe that was the problem with this family\u2014they were all in direct competition with one another to see who could bend over backward the farthest, who could suffer the most. But then, Andrew reminded himself, he and Maureen had unlinked themselves in order to disrupt these precise dynamics. They were not a family anymore; they were only old friends, and pretty decent ones at that.\n\n\"How is she?\" said Maureen.\n\n\"She seems okay,\" said Andrew. \"She's holding up.\"\n\nMaureen raised an eyebrow, but Andrew already knew that this answer was insufficient. Over the brief years of Janie's life and death, he and Maureen had developed an involved shorthand, rife with pseudonyms and talismans and symbols, complete with its own vocabulary and syntax and etiquette. Certain euphemisms were encouraged; others were scorned. Referencing the possibility of Janie's death was unacceptable, but it was also unacceptable to use the phrase \"passed away\" to refer to the deaths of the other children on the ward\u2014and the other children died, too; they died horribly and they died quietly and their deaths were the deaths that prophesied Janie's death, that made it thinkable though, of course, not endurable, and certainly never mentionable. When Andrew and Maureen were forced to mark the fact of the other children's deaths, they did not say that those children had passed away. They said that they had died. They understood\u2014they had tacitly agreed\u2014that anything evasive was disrespectful. _She's holding up_ was, Andrew knew, just about the worst thing he could say to Maureen.\n\nMaureen pursed her lips. \"How does she look?\"\n\n\"The same. Mostly.\"\n\n\"Did she seem upset?\"\n\n\"I mean, not visibly.\"\n\n\"What do you mean, 'not visibly'?\"\n\nAndrew squirmed. \"I mean\u2014she wasn't crying or anything.\"\n\n\"She stopped crying already?\"\n\n\"Had she been?\" In every conversation Andrew had had with her, Lily had seemed tired but brave, determined to show him that she was as tough as they'd always told her she was. Andrew thought of her now\u2014crying and concealing this in order to protect him\u2014and he knew that this was a bigger and worse kind of trouble.\n\nMaureen's face was crumpling into an expression of terrible kindness. \"Do you want to come in and sit for a bit?\"\n\nIn the room, Maureen's clothes were spread across the bed, delicate cardigans and wool pants, things that looked all wrong for the weather. Maureen always dressed cartoonishly warmly, because she was always cold.\n\n\"It occurs to me that I don't have anything to offer you that you don't already have in your own room,\" she said, peering into the mini-fridge. \"You want a soda? Granola bar? Shot and a half of vodka?\"\n\n\"I'm okay,\" said Andrew, sitting heavily on the bed.\n\n\"Did you get her those things she wanted?\" said Maureen. She was still bent over the mini-fridge. \"The tampons and the shampoo and whatnot?\"\n\n\"Anna got them.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\nThere was nothing fraught about this \"oh\"\u2014no hint of surprise or guilt-tripping, just the monosyllabic acknowledgment of information received\u2014but it made Andrew defensive nonetheless. \"You probably know better how she's doing than I do, you know,\" he said. \"I mean, obviously.\"\n\n\"I'm sure that's not true,\" said Maureen, standing up. \"It's just that she talks to me. She's a girl.\"\n\n\"They were all girls,\" said Andrew darkly. He wondered if Maureen had known about Lily's smoking, but he was afraid to ask; he felt that it would be understood to be his fault somehow\u2014perhaps because he'd discovered it, perhaps because of some kind of labor division he'd never been briefed on (Maureen handles the sex, Andrew handles the carcinogens?)\u2014and that he'd be revealed as a fool for not knowing why.\n\n\"They were all girls,\" said Maureen. \"But you really can't blame me for that.\"\n\nAndrew nodded, though part of him vaguely suspected that he could, a little. It wasn't that he didn't love his daughters\u2014and yes, in a way, he still loved Maureen, with a strange and calcified love. But the fact of their united femininity could sometimes seem a bit prosecutorial.\n\nSuddenly, a whip-crack sound issued from outside. \"Jesus.\" Andrew hurried to the window. \"Is that a gun?\"\n\nMaureen joined him. Across the street, in a small park, two young men were indeed holding guns, though nobody around seemed particularly nervous, besides a flock of scattering birds.\n\n\"I think they're just trying to spook the pigeons,\" said Maureen. She had not jumped when the gun went off. It was admirable and also suspicious, this tendency of hers not to jump.\n\n\"I wonder why,\" said Andrew, though he wasn't really wondering. He went back to sit on the bed.\n\nMaureen lingered a moment, staring into the gathering darkness. \"What did you think of the lawyers?\" she said, turning around.\n\n\"They seem competent,\" said Andrew. This was a keyword from assessing Janie's doctors in the days before the Internet\u2014when, after poring over medical texts at the library, after seeking third and fourth opinions, Andrew and Maureen had had to basically guess at who was right and what was true. The sheen of competence had always impressed them. It seemed possible to smell bullshit, and fear, even if you didn't know all the details.\n\n\"Good,\" said Maureen, coming to join Andrew on the bed. She squeezed his hand dryly, asexually. Andrew looked down at hers\u2014it was sturdy and unadorned, slightly shaky from the effects of the terrifying boatloads of caffeine she must have consumed. He knew she was letting him off the hook\u2014that it was understood that there was more to say, but that, for now, she was going to pretend that he had said enough. \"Well,\" she said. \"I think you know what we could really use about now.\"\n\n\"Some crystals,\" said Andrew automatically. \"Maybe in a pendant or something.\" It was generous of her to give him the punch line to this most ancient and exclusive of in-jokes\u2014dating back to the day during the darkest season of Janie's illness when the hippie neighbors had called and invited Andrew and Maureen meaningfully over for tea and then had clutched their hands and given them a pile of greasy crystals instead. Maureen had laughed-choked-cried afterward: _Crystals? They schedule a fucking appointment like that and then they give us fucking crystals? Crystals? Crystals?_ She'd said \"crystals\" over and over, with slightly varied intonations and ever more absurd facial expressions, until they were both laughing, laughing a complicated and manic and dangerous laugh on the floor, letting their aging bones hit hard against each other's, commenting on the amount of grime that had been allowed to grow on the linoleum. It was the grime of people on the edge, said Maureen, and then they'd laughed some more, but not because it wasn't true. In those days, Andrew had been closer to Maureen than he could have imagined being to anybody else\u2014they'd had a closeness that was stranger and more frightening and more desperately necessary than anything he'd felt during the early days of their love. Maureen was the only one who could possibly understand the central fact and premise of his life; speaking to anyone else began to feel like a theatrical performance in which Andrew was increasingly badly cast. But this kind of closeness could go on only so long. After everything was over, they'd had absolutely nothing left to say to each other.\n\n\"A crystal pendant would be nice,\" said Maureen. \"Though I'm thinking this situation might require more serious crystal intervention.\" She lay back in a chaste and exhausted heap, and Andrew followed her.\n\n\"Can you mainline crystals, I wonder?\"\n\n\"Oh, that's an idea,\" said Maureen. \"Maybe you can ask your students?\" She was quiet for a moment, and Andrew imagined what the two of them would look like from above. They were two terrified teenagers in a foxhole, two infant children terminally conjoined at the cranium.\n\n\"I can't believe she did a cartwheel,\" said Maureen, not opening her eyes. \"I mean, who knew she could even still do one?\"\n\n\"Well, we spent enough on gymnastics.\"\n\n\"Christ, did we,\" said Maureen. \"So many lessons.\"\n\nSo many lessons, it was true: art and music and ice-skating; Lily's every fleeting interest enthusiastically, abundantly indulged. Not to mention the many more practical investments\u2014chemistry tutoring when she struggled, English enrichment when she excelled, SAT courses to propel her to the school and then, presumably, the career of her dreams. What costs had been sunk, what objections had been suppressed, to deliver their daughter into the open and waiting arms of her beautiful life.\n\n\"Whatever happened to her oboe?\" said Andrew.\n\n\"That poor oboe. It suffered so much.\"\n\n\"Remember _Oklahoma!_ \"\n\nDuring Lily's rendition of \"People Will Say We're in Love,\" Maureen had leaned over to Andrew and remarked on how very much their daughter sounded like a Canada goose, which had made them both laugh hard enough to be shushed by other parents.\n\n\"God,\" said Maureen, laughing. \"What a terrible mother I was.\"\n\n\"Speaking of terrible parents,\" said Andrew. \"I went to see Sebastien LeCompte.\"\n\n\"Did you really?\" Maureen's voice was hoarse, and Andrew thought of how tired she must be. \"What's he like?\"\n\n\"He's absurd. Affected. He looks like a homosexual pirate.\"\n\nMaureen moved her head in the way she did when she was acknowledging that what you'd said was funny, and that she would laugh if she had the energy. \"Well,\" she said, \"she inherited her mother's taste in men, didn't she?\"\n\n\"He looks like a postapocalyptic butler.\"\n\n\"A butler _and_ a pirate? Astonishing.\"\n\n\"But he believes her.\"\n\n\"Of course he believes her. Why wouldn't he?\"\n\n\"A reasonable question.\"\n\n\"I'm always reasonable.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Andrew, a little testily. It was true: Maureen always had been reasonable. He was starting to wonder if all this reasonableness was maybe part of the problem.\n\n\"I want to say we should have never let her come here, but that's stupid,\" Maureen was saying. \"This could have happened anywhere.\"\n\nMaybe all the reasonableness\u2014the latitude, the lessons, the open avenues of communication, the _floods_ of communication!\u2014was exactly their mistake. Lily had learned the oboe, sort of\u2014but she had somehow never learned that the universe needed no excuse to fuck with you, no excuse at all, so you sure as hell better not give it one.\n\n\"It could have happened anywhere,\" said Andrew. \"But it happened here.\" Lily. Dear Lily Pad. For the first two years of her life, she'd been their \"only living daughter,\" their \"sole surviving child\"; she had been their gem\u2014hard-won, hard-edged. They had harnessed their sadness in order to raise her, like rivers diverted to run beneath a city. After all of that, how could they not have told her everything she needed to know?\n\n\"Did we do this wrong?\" he said.\n\nMaureen was silent for a long while, and Andrew wondered if perhaps she had fallen asleep. But finally, just as he was about to tiptoe out of the room, she spoke.\n\n\"We may have to consider,\" she said, \"that we have done a few things wrong.\"\n\n# CHAPTER SEVEN\n\n## February\n\nOn Monday morning, Eduardo went to the office an hour early. He had a meeting with Katy Kellers's family.\n\nAbove him, the sky was perfect, smugly blue, with a few blushes of clouds off in the west. On Mondays, Avenida Cabildo was covered with the weekend remnants of Universidad de Belgrano students' cavorting, and Eduardo kicked aside beer cans as he walked to the car. At nights he could always hear the young people laughing and roaring. They were, it seemed, a sentimental generation; they loved Cristina Fern\u00e1ndez now that she was a widow and a populist. These students were so different from the students of a decade ago, when Eduardo had first moved to Belgrano\u2014those kids had been broadly antipolitical, eternally unsatisfied, forever shouting Que se vayan todos! in the streets\u2014but one thing the students seemed to share was a need for everyone to hear them, no matter what they were saying. Lying in bed at night, Eduardo would catch snatches of their conversations, the sonar rise and fall of their voices. The politics changed, but the talk stayed the same\u2014always performative, always self-impressed, whether they were debating a debt default or complaining about a recession or adopting that tone of awful jokey charisma they thought might (finally!) get them laid. Eduardo could only figure that they talked so loudly because they thought they were brilliant and hilarious and that they were doing everybody in the neighborhood a favor by making them listen. Eduardo could not ever remember feeling that way; as a student, he had been cowed and chagrined. Though he did think he could remember\u2014even now, as he dodged a patch of pink vomit, state funded, student produced\u2014how the city had seemed grand to him once, how it had once had a certain clarity. When you're young you think it's the clarity that's intoxicating; later you realize you were only ever drunk on your own vision. Perhaps Lily Hayes, when she'd first come to Buenos Aires, had felt something similar.\n\nOn Eduardo's desk was a note from the secretary saying that the Kellerses were going to be late. Eduardo sat and called down for the newspaper. When it arrived, he was not surprised to find a grainy Lily Hayes staring back at him from the front page. The picture was a still from the Changomas security videotape; in it, Lily's face was tense, her expression suggestive, Eduardo thought, of some kind of barely subdued rage. Inside the paper, the story of Katy Kellers's murder was described in lurid fonts and blaring tones. Eduardo read with mild interest. The media was usually, though not always, a help to the prosecution. This made sense, in a way: After all, the media wasn't some abstract monolith; it was composed of people, people who\u2014like everyone else\u2014wanted a story they could believe. And by the time a defendant made it into the news, there was a high likelihood that that defendant was, in fact, guilty; the state had already applied its considerable resources toward establishing that truth. This presumption of guilt bled into the reporting, of course, and the handling of Lily Hayes's case was no exception: The media had managed to unearth everything she had ever written online (the coarse and callow emails, the narcissistic and weirdly long-winded diary entries on publicly viewable journals, the Facebook status updates that had endured out in the ether, long after she'd forgotten them) as well as everything anyone had ever written about her (her childhood friends had some interesting stories). Eduardo was aware that all of this gave him an unfair advantage. Nevertheless, he could not bring himself to regret it. He was glad to live in a nation that spent some amount of attention on the victims of crimes. How could a country like Argentina be otherwise? You brutalize a people for long enough, and they start paying pretty close attention to brutality.\n\nThe Kellerses were announced, and moments later they appeared\u2014mother, father, and remaining daughter, all huddled in a little unit.\n\n\"I am so sorry for your loss,\" said Eduardo, extending his hand to Mr. Kellers. This was the truest thing, and the most important thing to say, and so it came first.\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Mr. Kellers. He took Eduardo's hand slowly, as though he were moving through water, though his handshake, when it finally came, was firm. His wife and daughter hung behind him. They were small and fair and wore expensive-looking yoga clothes\u2014soft gray workout pullovers that looked like they were made of cashmere, form-fitting black breathable fabrics that clung to their shapely hindquarters. The whole family gave off some kind of sleek Los Angeles glamour even though, as Eduardo kept having to remind people, none of them were in the movie business. Glamour must have been in the air out in California; at a certain point, one absorbed and internalized and metabolized it. And Eduardo could see how telegenic this family would be, how tearful and wholesome; he could see how, in their press conferences, they would almost certainly say the right things. It was not cynical to notice this. It was Eduardo's job to notice this. And the only way he could help the Kellerses now was by doing his job very, very well.\n\nEduardo ushered the family into chairs and offered them glasses of water. They responded with syncopated thank-yous, vacant and reflexive. When you looked at them more closely, the wages of their grief became more apparent. The sister's lips were so dry they looked nearly shattered. The mother's hair, pulled back tight into a ponytail, had clearly gone without its touch-up dye job for longer than was typical; a few stray hairs, white and brittle, fanned out from the part in her hair, where Eduardo could see a few blushes of skull, pink as the interior of a seashell.\n\nHis heart broke for all of them.\n\nAs quickly as possible, Eduardo explained to them the contours of the case\u2014his belief in Lily Hayes's involvement, the certainty of another person's, his confidence that he was on the verge of putting the entire puzzle together. The Kellerses nodded in staggered nods, baffled and bereft.\n\nAfter he had explained everything he could, Eduardo attempted a few forays at small talk (how had their flight been, and what arrangements had been made, and could they tell him a little bit about Katy\u2014this last elicited such a soul-rending whimper from the mother that Eduardo found himself leaning away from her, as though he could somehow physically retract the question). At a certain point, Katy's sister began crying quietly, and the way her mother comforted her\u2014giving half-conscious strokes that disowned with every gesture the idea that any of this could actually be made survivable, while quietly beginning to cry herself\u2014made it clear to Eduardo that this was a scene that had been repeated many times already, and would continue long after they were back in Los Angeles and their part here had been concluded.\n\nOn their way out the door, Mr. Kellers paused. \"How long have you been doing this work?\" It did not sound challenging. He was just trying to keep track of all the new realities. That was his job.\n\n\"Seven years,\" said Eduardo.\n\n\"Do you get a lot of convictions?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nMr. Kellers nodded crisply, as though pleased with a purchase, though both he and Eduardo knew that he had no choice about Eduardo.\n\n\"We'll meet in a few days,\" said Eduardo. \"Once you've all settled in and have had a chance to process things a bit.\"\n\nThey nodded. Eduardo walked them out to their rental car. Mrs. Kellers produced sunglasses from her bag; they were huge and ornate, a throwback to less utilitarian times than these. The sister did not have any, and she looked painfully away\u2014Eduardo had to think on purpose\u2014into the sun's wretched brightness.\n\nBy the time Eduardo got home that night, a storm was starting. It was only seven o'clock, and he peered warily into the yawning maw of the evening; he could feel the black edge of depression clamping down on his shoulders already. Sometimes he thought of it as weather, and sometimes as a wild beast. Most often he thought of it as the lid of an enormous pot in which he was being set to boil; sometimes\u2014like tonight\u2014he could almost hear it clattering above him.\n\nThe wind was making heaving sounds, shuddery and mechanical, and the air smelled vaguely brackish. Eduardo gazed out the window into the rapidly descending darkness. He suddenly felt that he was staring into, or out of, a great shroud. He shivered and went upstairs to turn on the television. There was a thumping sound from somewhere downstairs, and he congratulated himself for not jumping. He went to close the windows in the bedroom. There was another thumping sound, this one undeniable. Perhaps the house was being robbed; perhaps a disgruntled former defendant had come back, finally, to kill him. Eduardo considered this possibility with abstract interest, then went downstairs.\n\nStanding just outside the open door, her hair streaming wet, was Maria.\n\n\"Can I come in?\" she said. Her face was electric, aflame within the wild dendrites of her hair. Eduardo felt as though he'd been slammed into a wall. He stepped away from the door to let her inside.\n\n\"I'm sorry. I still had a key,\" she said irrelevantly, holding it up and then falling into Eduardo's arms. He held her numbly. Because of the rain on her face, it was very hard to tell if she'd been crying.\n\n\"What's happened?\" he said. \"Are you okay?\"\n\nShe looked up at him and laughed a little. \"I'm sorry,\" she said. Her mouth was full and dark. \"Do you mind if I take off my shoes? They're wet.\"\n\n\"Everything you're wearing is wet.\"\n\n\"You're so literal.\"\n\nMaria kicked off her shoes and padded barefoot to the window. Her dress was plastered to her body. She was dripping on the carpet but did not seem to notice.\n\n\"What's wrong?\" said Eduardo. She needed money, probably. If she did, he would not need or want to ask why. If she said she needed it, he would believe her. Everybody should have someone whose belief in them is unwavering, unconditional, always. \"Do you need money?\" he said. \"Is that it?\"\n\nMaria shimmied her head in a gesture that was neither affirmative nor negative\u2014it was more like she was shaking water out of her ear, or a thought out of her head. She turned and stared out the window for a moment, and by the time she turned back her mood seemed to have already shifted. Eduardo knew better than to be surprised.\n\n\"Doesn't it look like magic outside?\" she said.\n\n\"It looks like a storm outside.\"\n\nEduardo had never believed in Maria's sign reading and portents and impulses; toward the end, he had stopped pretending to try, and most of the time statements of this kind provoked something terribly decretory and disappointed from her. But this time she just looked at him and clapped her hands and said, \"Oh, but storms _are_ magic!\"\n\nEduardo shook his head. Either everything was magical or nothing was. \"Do you want to take a shower or something?\" he said. \"You must be freezing.\"\n\nMaria ignored this and turned back to the window. \"I hear you've got a big case,\" she said. \"That murderer of yours is gorgeous. Don't you think so?\"\n\nEduardo shrugged. He had never found Lily Hayes beautiful, particularly, though he respected her alleged beauty's effect on the case: If she was thought to be beautiful, then indeed she was. \"Is that why you're back?\" he said.\n\nIt had crossed his mind once or twice, it was true\u2014the acclaim that might come with a conviction, the way it might hoist him up in Maria's esteem. The way it might make her see, finally\u2014but then, he did not know, really, what it was he thought she'd see.\n\nHer face froze for a moment, and then she pouted and smiled. \"Aren't you glad I'm back?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Are you going to stay?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"Did that girl do it?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I think so, too,\" she said with sudden fervor. \"Girls are strange.\" Her eyes were like black little embers now, bright and fierce. She laughed once, manically, girlishly. \"But then again,\" she said, \"maybe not. Maybe she really didn't do it. Do you ever think about that, Eduardo? About what if she didn't do it?\"\n\nShe shimmered over to him and began nibbling his ear. Eduardo felt a sickening sense of suspension. \"Maybe she didn't, Eduardo. Wouldn't that be tragic?\"\n\nHe should not, and yet it did not matter if he did. He'd only be left with his own solitary ruined heart either way. \"It would certainly be tragic if she didn't do it,\" said Eduardo formally. He covered his ear protectively so that she would stop nibbling it. \"But I assure you that it's also very, very unlikely.\"\n\n\"She fulfills a certain role, though, don't you think?\" Maria moved away from him and crossed her arms. \"She's got a symbolic function. She animates certain feelings. She's like the sacrificial virgin. Or the sacrificial whore.\"\n\n\"You're not talking seriously,\" said Eduardo. \"I understand what you're saying, but you're not being serious. You're not really talking about this particular girl. You're speaking very abstractly right now.\"\n\nMaria sighed, delicately and emphatically. \"I'm just musing, of course. You're probably right. I'm sure you're right, Eduardo. I have never known a man of as much generosity as you.\"\n\nEduardo knew in his heart that this could not be true. And yet, here she was. She was here. Her face was sweet and even. How could he not almost believe it was true? It took so much strength not to believe it.\n\n\"I've missed you,\" she said, and he gathered her into his arms. Her smell was heart piercing; it did violence to all other memories. She kissed him on the neck. Perhaps this was manipulation, but Eduardo did not want to be cynical enough to be sure. He was open to being wounded. He was willing to be wrong. This was, he thought, the cost of being alive.\n\n\"You're so good to me,\" said Maria, as he carried her up the stairs to the bedroom. She sighed. \"I don't know what I would do without you,\" she said, as he turned out the light.\n\nHe could have left it there\u2014he could have backed out of the room and tiptoed down the stairs to pour a tumbler of whiskey and marvel at the stunning luck of his own life\u2014but he did not. He waited for a moment in the darkness. He wavered.\n\n\"Maria,\" he said finally. \"How much is it that you need?\"\n\nShe sighed again. \"Oh, Eduardo,\" she said. He could hear her burrowing further into the sheets. \"It's kind of a lot.\"\n\nThe next day, Eduardo awoke to even breathing. Beside him, Maria was a hummock of sheet crowned by a spray of dark hair. Strips of light from the window, fat and white as candles, were flattening themselves on the floor. And Eduardo felt a quiet elation that quickly turned to energy. He wanted to go to work.\n\nHe would not have expected this from himself. He would not have imagined that, having somehow conjured Maria's return, he would be willing to even momentarily leave her again\u2014let alone that he would actually _want_ to go back to the jail to listen to the tearful exegesis of a murderous postadolescent's life. Eduardo's work was performed from love, but it was a very abstract love; he would have predicted that, blessed once more with a love that was concrete\u2014that was sleeping right beside him\u2014he would retreat, immediately and gratefully, into happy selfishness. He would have expected himself to want only to lie here now, lazy with his own luck, and let himself forget about the dead.\n\nBut he didn't. Eduardo looked at Maria, and now, more than ever, he wanted to help them. Ever since he'd met her, of course, Maria had been the compass he followed when charting paths to unimaginable sorrow. He'd known that it was important to have some emotional access point when dealing with victims' families, and so when he talked with them, he'd often spent a moment or two (a moment or two was all he could stand) contemplating what it would be like to lose Maria to violence. He had imagined the phone call, the terrible certainty he was somehow terribly certain he would somehow feel. But then she had left him, and now she was back, and the miracle of her return made more vivid to Eduardo, somehow, the unfathomability of her permanent disappearance. He thought of his grief over the past months, and he saw how shallow it had really been; now when he thought of the Kellerses\u2014the father's slumped shoulders, the mother's shattered face\u2014he could suddenly imagine, more acutely than ever before, a sadness that would truly be unending. He could imagine their unendurable rage, and the way they'd have to live in that rage in order to live at all. And he could imagine\u2014finally, fully, with a terrible clarity\u2014their need to have all of this witnessed. Eduardo had always known that victims' families were not motivated by revenge\u2014some kind of biblical, primordial desire for hurt to accompany hurt\u2014and he had always believed that society was built on a question of witness. But never before now\u2014as he sat gazing at his sleeping Maria\u2014had he felt so fully the power of a love that kept looking. All these years later, the Mothers still congregated daily at the Plaza del Mayo, wearing their white shawls. This is what Maria would teach him.\n\nEduardo rose and went to the kitchen. He left out some fruit and instant coffee alongside a note saying that he would be back that evening. He was halfway out the door before he turned around and went back upstairs, pulled out his wedding ring from the box where he'd kept it, and put it on.\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nAt the jail, Lily Hayes looked worse already, somehow. Her hair was duller, her eyes more glassine; there were pockets of gray underneath them, as though she'd been stroked lightly by ash. Grimy yellow light from the window cut strange angles on her face. Whether or not Lily Hayes had ever been beautiful, there was no denying the swiftness of her unraveling: She was simply no longer the girl who'd stood in front of the Bas\u00edlica Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de Luj\u00e1n, wearing nothing, inebriated with her own youth. Eduardo was always amazed at how contingent good health and looks and spirits were; most people tended to look terrible and act even worse after just a few days in a jail, and Eduardo routinely left his interviews deeply unsure of the durability of character. The truth was, he did not know how he'd fare in Lily's shoes. The other truth was, he did not want to know. The final truth was, he would never do anything that would force him to find out, and this ignorance was the reward\u2014and maybe the only sure reward\u2014of virtue.\n\nNevertheless, it was impossible not to feel some pity for Lily Hayes now, so Eduardo let himself feel it. This was the worst she'd ever had it, and things were likely to get a whole lot worse. And it was possible, of course, that she didn't even believe she'd done it; it was possible, after all, that she had galloping undiagnosed autism or some kind of horrific chemical imbalance or that she had been sexually abused as a child. Most defendants Eduardo saw had had lives that were hard from the start, lives that would have required enormous effort and luck and preternatural goodness just to properly begin. Eduardo did not think that Lily's life had been like that, but still, he had to acknowledge that it might have been. And even if it had not, she still might not know, not really, what she had done. Eduardo had encountered cases like that\u2014when the perpetrator took a while to fully believe it\u2014and he could imagine few things worse than enduring such a realization. A person who had murdered had ventured onto unmapped territories; he could not put his trouble into any kind of redeeming context, or situate it within any kind of myth; there was no consolation in the universality or inevitability of the thing. It was irreducible, and the suffering a person must feel in such times went so far beyond the pale of normal human suffering\u2014so far beyond the natural landscapes of grief and loss and heartbreak\u2014that only generosity could be extended to him. He was utterly alone in what he'd done. All that was left was for the details of his interminable aloneness to be codified and solidified, made formal in court. For a man like Eduardo, who feared loneliness so mightily, this fate seemed worse than any.\n\n\"Can I have a glass of water?\" said Lily. Her voice was froggish and lower than the last time he'd heard it.\n\n\"Later,\" said Eduardo, spreading his papers out on the table. He always made an elaborate show of doing this, as though the papers belonged in a very particular order. \"I have a couple of questions for you first.\"\n\n\"You're wearing a wedding ring today.\"\n\nEduardo felt an instinctive pull to put his hand under the table, but he resisted it. \"That's so,\" he said.\n\nLily tilted her head back to straight. \"Perhaps congratulations are in order.\"\n\nEduardo leaned back. \"We're not here to talk about me.\"\n\n\"What's that, some kind of therapy talk?\"\n\nEduardo smiled benignly. \"It's just a reality.\"\n\nThe bottom line was that whatever might be wrong with Lily Hayes was not what really mattered: Justice was on behalf of the dead, and on behalf of those who remembered the dead. It was on behalf of the notion that lives, even mortal lives, mattered.\n\n\"Tell me about your life here,\" said Eduardo.\n\nLily looked at him evenly and licked her lips. \"It's pretty dull, actually.\" Her voice cracked slightly, and Eduardo realized that, of course, she had not spoken all day. \"You're probably the highlight.\"\n\nEduardo was glad she could still make a joke, though he did not smile at it. \"Here in Buenos Aires,\" he said. \"Before all of this.\"\n\n\"I've told you everything already.\"\n\n\"Tell me again.\"\n\n\"Tell you what?\"\n\n\"You lived with the Carrizos?\"\n\n\"You know I lived with the Carrizos.\"\n\n\"And you liked them?\"\n\n\"I like them.\"\n\n\"Tell me again about the night Katy was killed.\"\n\n\"I've told you already.\"\n\n\"Tell me again.\"\n\n\"I went over to Sebastien's. We had a few drinks.\"\n\n\"How many drinks?\"\n\n\"I don't know. A few.\"\n\n\"Three?\"\n\n\"Maybe more.\"\n\n\"Maybe four?\"\n\n\"Maybe five.\"\n\n\"Maybe five. Okay. And you smoked some marijuana.\"\n\n\"We smoked some marijuana, yes.\"\n\n\"And where did you get this marijuana?\"\n\nLily hesitated.\n\n\"I can absolutely assure you,\" said Eduardo, \"that this is the very least of your problems.\"\n\n\"Katy gave it to me,\" she said.\n\nEduardo raised his eyebrows. \"Did she?\"\n\n\"Yes. I don't know where she got it.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Eduardo. She was obviously lying about the marijuana\u2014most likely trying to protect some idiotic study-abroad friend of hers from getting thrown in prison; even Eduardo occasionally found his nation's drug policy somewhat overwrought\u2014but it probably wouldn't matter. And if it did, Eduardo would remember. \"And what time did you and Sebastien go to sleep?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Four in the morning, maybe.\"\n\n\"Four in the morning, you say. Okay.\" If Eduardo had worn glasses, he would have taken them off now. Instead, he squeezed the bridge of his nose. \"But you're a relatively petite woman, and you'd had five drinks, as well as some unknown quantity of marijuana. Can you really be sure of what time you went to bed?\"\n\n\"I don't know. It was late.\"\n\n\"Can you really be sure of anything that happened that night, for that matter? After so much alcohol and marijuana?\"\n\n\"I mean, it wasn't LSD.\"\n\n\"I'll make a note of that.\" Eduardo made the note sardonically. He wouldn't have had to make the note even if she'd said something real, of course. But he had found that the churning muscle of his memory was most formidable when he kept it a secret.\n\n\"I know I didn't kill anyone,\" said Lily. \"And I know we went to bed late, anyway. It was late.\"\n\n\"And you didn't hear or see anything suspicious that night?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"But again, you wouldn't necessarily remember.\"\n\n\"I'm pretty sure I would remember hearing someone get killed, actually.\" Lily was becoming agitated, though this wasn't overt in her mannerisms yet; her distress was only faintly roiling her expression, like an animal ascending to the water's surface from its depths. \"I think it would probably make a real impression on me, in fact.\"\n\n\"Lily,\" said Eduardo, leaning forward. \"I'm going to ask you to imagine something. If you had done this thing, why would you have done it?\"\n\n\"I didn't.\"\n\n\"Let's leave that aside for now. I'm just trying to get a sense of how this could have happened. I know you want to help Katy. I know you would have wanted to help Katy. Do you have any idea why someone might have done this to her?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Lily. \"I didn't do it and I would never have done it and I can never, never imagine why anybody would. And you can't make me say that I can.\"\n\nEduardo leaned back. \"Okay, Lily. You didn't do it, okay. But you have to admit that you might have.\"\n\n\"I did _not_. I might _not_ have.\"\n\n\"What does that mean?\"\n\n\"You're trying to trick me. You must think I'm really unbelievably stupid.\"\n\n\"Nobody's trying to trick you, Lily,\" said Eduardo. Saying \"nobody\" rendered specific accusations vague while making the accuser sound slightly schizophrenic. \"It really is a very simple question.\"\n\n\"For Christ's sake,\" Lily snapped. \"If I'd done it, I would have had the sense to flush the fucking toilet.\"\n\nEduardo raised his eyebrows and opened his notebook. _If I'd done it_ , she'd said. And even though Eduardo would have no trouble remembering it, this was one thing that he actually did write down.\n\n\"Okay, Lily,\" he said. \"You're right. Enough speculation. I'm going to ask you a very frank question now. Forget _why_ someone might have done this. Can you imagine _who_ might have?\"\n\nShe shook her head, her dirty ponytail swaying thickly. What insouciance that might have communicated in better times! \"No,\" she said.\n\n\"No, really? No, you can't imagine a single other person who might have possibly done it? In the whole city? In the entire time you've been here?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What about Carlos? I understand he has a drinking problem.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"No, he doesn't have a drinking problem?\"\n\n\"No, he couldn't have done it.\"\n\n\"What about Beatriz?\"\n\nLily laughed joylessly. \"No.\"\n\n\"Sebastien?\"\n\nShe glared at him. _\"No.\"_\n\n\"Why are you so sure?\"\n\nLily Hayes was not alone in her sureness: The police had not arrested Sebastien LeCompte after his initial interrogation, and in his gut, Eduardo did not believe that Sebastien had been present at the murder. Nevertheless, it seemed to Eduardo that Sebastien LeCompte was somehow the crime's original mover, standing off in the shadows, beyond the particulars of the evening; the ultimate cause behind all of the proximate ones. Since Lily's arrest, Eduardo had gone three times to Sebastien LeCompte's mansion to try to speak with him. Each time, Sebastien LeCompte had seemed not to be at home\u2014though this was unlikely, since every report about the kid suggested that he had neither friends nor gainful employment nor romantic involvements beyond Lily and possibly Katy, who were now respectively imprisoned and dead. It was much likelier that Sebastien LeCompte was hiding. But he could not hide forever.\n\n\"I know Sebastien,\" said Lily.\n\n\"Do you? How well?\"\n\n\"Well enough.\"\n\n\"Not well enough to love him, though. So maybe well enough to know not to?\"\n\nLily glowered.\n\n\"How do you think your friend Sebastien felt about Katy Kellers?\" said Eduardo.\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"But if you had to guess.\"\n\n\"I guess he probably liked her.\"\n\n\"You said they were sleeping together.\"\n\nLily looked at him witheringly. \" _You_ said that.\"\n\n\"You mentioned in your initial conversation with the police that Katy had learned about the lawsuit against Carlos Carrizo from Sebastien.\"\n\n\"She said she had.\"\n\n\"Do you know why the two of them might have had occasion to see each other?\"\n\n\"He did live next door.\"\n\n\"Do you think they saw much of each other?\"\n\n\"I have no idea.\"\n\n\"But if you had to guess.\"\n\nLily sat back in her chair. \"This conversation is getting a little boring, you know?\" She cocked her head to one side. This was not, in fact, an original pose for a young person in custody. Defendants might not always be so direct, but Eduardo had seen the rest of it often enough\u2014the attitude, the facial expression, the body language, all of it designed to say: _I've got bigger problems than you_. But they didn't. Lily Hayes certainly didn't. Lily Hayes had never had a bigger problem than this one. It was quite possible that, before this, she'd never had any real problems at all.\n\n\"Boring?\" said Eduardo. \"This conversation that is trying to establish your guilt or innocence in the question of the murder of your roommate? These questions that are designed to get us closer to knowing who killed her? They bore you?\"\n\nLily drooped her head and said nothing. Her ponytail looked deflated. \"Can I have some water?\" she said.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I have a right to water.\"\n\n\"I have some emails I'd like to read you first.\"\n\nLily paled. \"No,\" she said.\n\nEduardo did not like doing this. Lily Hayes was young and she was lost and she'd done the most horrific thing imaginable, for reasons that were probably inscrutable even to her. She was in a strange country and she was probably never going home. Eduardo had not planned on reading her the emails today. But if she was already going to be combative, then he would have to be, too. He would have had to do it sooner or later, anyway, and one could even argue that it was better to get it over with. Fulfilling the inevitable early was often\u2014although, of course, not always\u2014a kind of mercy.\n\nEduardo cleared his throat and flipped to the most important email: a missive Lily had written to her father her first week in Buenos Aires. It was something of an introduction to Lily's world; as such, it would serve as a natural introduction to the state's case, and Eduardo would likely quote it during his opening remarks.\n\n\" 'The roommate,' \" Eduardo read aloud in English, \" 'is Katy. She spends a lot of time reading her economics textbooks. She's brokenhearted from the recent departure of her boyfriend\u2014right in time for junior-year study abroad, and she's surprised!' \" Eduardo delivered all of this deadpan. In another context, he thought, this might be hilarious\u2014his ponderous voice with its notable accent reading the words of a simpering, self-righteous young girl. \" 'You'd think she never watched a CW teen soap growing up,' \" he continued. \" 'Then again, neither did I\u2014you wouldn't let me!\u2014but I turned out reasonably savvy, I like to think.' \"\n\nEduardo glanced up at Lily. Her face was stony. If anything was breaking anywhere within her, he could not see it. He hadn't been sure he was going to continue, but now he decided he would, because he could see that Lily did not remember what was coming next.\n\n\" 'She's probably the most typical person I've ever met,' \" he went on. \" 'Her life has been really easy. You can just tell. She is from California, after all.' \" Eduardo put down the paper. Lily's face was implacable and still. Perhaps there was the faintest suggestion of something unearthing itself, but whether this was fear or anger or self-pity or true and genuine remorse, it was very hard to say. \"You thought Katy's life was easy?\" he said.\n\nLily nodded shakily.\n\n\"Do you still think Katy's life was easy?\"\n\nAt this, Lily began to cry. Eduardo did not like to do it, but he pressed on.\n\n\"Should I read to you from the autopsy report? And then we can talk about whether Katy's life was easy?\"\n\n\"No. Stop. Please stop.\" Lily's face was flushed and patchy. In spite of everything, Eduardo did not like to make her cry. This wrenching and diabolical thing that she had done would be with her forever; it would cast itself backward into her past; she would have to understand\u2014and everyone else would have to understand\u2014that it had actually been with her all along. Her parents would remember her as the addled, orthodontiaed teenager she had once been, and it would be there. They'd remember her as a quick-witted preadolescent and a chubby-limbed toddler and a squalling, wrinkled infant, and it would be there; her mother would remember her pregnancy\u2014the minor lightning of the child quickening, gathering itself into its life\u2014and would find that it had been there, too. What Lily had done to Katy would blacken Lily's whole life\u2014its singular irreducibility would stain every soccer game and family outing and first kiss\u2014just as it would elevate Katy's whole life, transforming every moment, no matter how small-minded or mundane, into something fated and futile and grand. Everything for both of them had been straining toward this dreadful black horizon; it had been everywhere, it had been everything, even if neither of them had known it.\n\nEduardo put the email down. \"Lily,\" he said gently. \"You're in trouble. You're scared. You're confused. Of course you are. Who wouldn't be? That's natural. And I don't know exactly what happened that night. But the best thing you can do for yourself now\u2014and the best thing you can do for Katy\u2014is to be completely honest. That's the best way. I've seen lots of young people in trouble like you, and I can tell you\u2014and I'm telling you this in all sincerity\u2014that nobody ever improved their situation by lying.\"\n\nThis statement itself sounded like a lie, Eduardo knew, but actually it was, in his experience, generally true. The sooner a person admitted to what had happened, the sooner they could begin the long hard work of living with themselves. Something like what Lily had done could never be made right, of course; it could not necessarily ever be made much better. But it could be made varying degrees of worse, and Eduardo believed that honesty was the way to avoid that. And one thing was certainly clear: Lily Hayes had not done this alone. And the best way to learn who she had done it with, for now, was by letting Lily externalize the scene; allowing her to watch it from a distance, as though it had happened in a movie, or to somebody else entirely. Once she could see it that way, they could work on getting her to pull back the curtain and see herself there, too, standing in the corner.\n\nEduardo put his hands on the folder, palms up, in a gesture he knew to be subtly imploring. \"Did Katy have a lot of friends in the city?\"\n\n\"Just from the program,\" said Lily quietly. \"And just girls.\"\n\nJust girls. As though your gender could absolve you. Was this cleverness, or was this denial? Eduardo turned his hands palms down. \"Is there anybody else she knew?\" he said. \"Anybody you can think of? Anybody who had a problem with Katy, or anybody she had some odd dealings with?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"It's a big city. It's a dangerous city, to be frank.\"\n\n\"No.\" Lily's voice was shakier.\n\n\"Any boyfriends, other than Sebastien LeCompte?\"\n\nEarlier in the week, Lily might have told him derisively that Sebastien LeCompte was _not_ Katy's boyfriend. But now she just shook her head weakly.\n\n\"You must have known somebody,\" said Eduardo. \"You've been in town six weeks. You had the job at Fuego. You knew so much about the city.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"The only way you can help yourself now is to think of someone. That's the only way you can help Katy.\"\n\nLily shook her head, but Eduardo could see that she'd thought of who she would say, if she had to say someone.\n\n\"Just one name,\" he said. \"Just one name, and we'll check it out.\"\n\nShe closed her eyes. The hollows under her eyes had turned the color of eggplant. \"Maybe Javier,\" her eyes still closed.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Javier.\" She opened one eye.\n\n\"Javier Aguirre? Your boss at Fuego?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"You think he could have done this?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"But it's possible.\"\n\n\"Anything is possible.\"\n\nIt was true. Anything was possible. Maria had left once, and then she had come back again. Anything was possible, unthinkable beauty and unthinkable horror, both. The sooner Lily saw that the impossible was possible, the better it would be for everyone.\n\n\"Thank you, Lily. That's very good. Now. Can I get you a glass of water?\"\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHT\n\n## January\n\nBecause she could not bear to ask Katy about the lawsuit, Lily began looking around the house for clues. She tiptoed past the Carrizos' bedroom and paused there, listening for revealing snatches of conversation, but somehow only ever heard the TV. She gazed at Carlos's face searchingly during dinner; she tried to use words like \"corruption\" and \"fraud\" and \"disaster\" to see if any of them stuck. She realized that she was half-hoping to be able to bring some kind of treasured bit of information back to Katy\u2014to drop some spectacular revelation casually into conversation as though it were common knowledge and then widen her eyes in shock when Katy expressed surprise. _\"What?\"_ she'd squeal gleefully. \"You didn't _know_?\" But in spite of her best efforts, often enough Lily forgot to spy and missed the best opportunities\u2014when the mail came in, when the phone rang, when Beatriz and Carlos spoke in hushed murmurs in the kitchen.\n\nAround Lily, the city flashed from spectacular to hideous to ordinary, like a sky in a fast-motion video. In a strange inversion of what she'd experienced when she first arrived in Buenos Aires, Lily found herself lost in extended reveries about New England. She remembered the brutal wheels of white light coming off the rivers; the snarl of lemon-colored leaves in the fall, making crisp fragile sounds like dead insects underfoot. She remembered the celestial whiteness of winter mornings, the clean searing smell of apocalypse. She remembered the languor and contingency and drama of the summer: the heavy sulfur smell before thunderstorms; the understated nodding of the leaves, like they were acquiescing or drifting off to sleep. She remembered the way the light tongued the bark of the trees on summer late afternoons, the heartbreaking sense of time passing, time passing, time passed.\n\nShe had been away, she realized, only a month.\n\nAnd when she turned her thoughts back to Buenos Aires, Lily found that the city no longer seemed so exotic. She caught herself effortlessly riding the Subte, confident in all transactions and maneuvers, without secretly feeling very independent and proud. She knew which restaurants were overpriced and which buses had pickpockets and how to avoid them both. She knew to expect sloppy cheek kisses from perfect strangers, and she had learned, finally, not to look so surprised when they came. On the weekends, she watched the tourists carrying around their cameras, timid and admiring, and felt a certain scorn. Lily was different from them now, and better; she had more in common with the porte\u00f1os than the tourists. And when she saw a HELP WANTED sign at a Belgrano caf\u00e9\/club called Fuego, she felt breezy enough to go in and apply even though she didn't have a work visa. She walked out fifteen minutes later with a job.\n\nLily's boss at the caf\u00e9 was Javier Aguirre, a Brazilian with incredibly black skin. Lily was not sure she'd ever seen a person with skin so black\u2014there was almost a purity to it, she thought: This was how people were supposed to look, before they began migrating north to snowy climes and growing pale and dumpy. Lily broke a wineglass her first night on the job and her drawer came up short the second\u2014but Javier seemed to believe that this was a failure of competence, not of honesty, and he kept her on. Both times, Ignacio the weeknight bartender gave Lily cigarettes and told her dirty jokes to cheer her up afterward.\n\n\"What do you want a job for?\" Beatriz said one night, rinsing cucumbers at the sink. \"Don't we feed you enough?\"\n\nLily frowned. She didn't know how to explain it. \"Of course you do,\" she said. \"This is just for spending money.\"\n\nBut it wasn't, really. Lily actually liked working at Fuego. She liked the banter with the waiters and the customers, and she liked the happy noises a table made when she brought them a tray of drinks, and she liked watching the strange people she would never otherwise meet\u2014Javier, with his impish, impossibly white grin; Ignacio the bartender, with his sleepy eyes and his face like a tortoiseshell; one very fat regular who came in with a rotating array of very thin girlfriends. It was hard work, and Lily always felt harried\u2014but she found she sort of _liked_ feeling harried: Sometimes she caught glimpses of herself in the bathroom mirror, looking young and tired and put-upon, and was surprised at how satisfied she was with the sight. She didn't look her most attractive in these moments, certainly. But she did look the least like herself she ever had in her life.\n\n\"For the weekends,\" Lily added.\n\nBeatriz shook her head. \"God knows what kind of characters you'll meet.\"\n\nShe was imagining alcohol consumption, no doubt, illicit drug use, various unnamable and unknowable extravagances at the home of Sebastien LeCompte. And so Lily added, \"This is just for extra money. For books. For travel,\" even though it hadn't occurred to her until that very moment to travel anywhere farther than she'd already gone.\n\nAfter starting at Fuego, Lily began to see less of Sebastien. He often texted her in the evenings\u2014oblique and faux-literary missives that seemed to always begin mid-conversation\u2014and she'd glance at them while working and somehow feel that she'd already responded even when she hadn't. After coming home late she'd scroll through all the communiqu\u00e9s she'd missed, shielding the light from Katy's sleeping face, and resolve firmly to answer them the next day. But in the morning she'd be racing to her classes, guzzling the dregs of the instant coffee that Katy had made, and she would forget again. Finally, one Friday night\u2014after some negotiating and bidding and counterbidding\u2014Lily agreed to go over to Sebastien's for a drink. It had been nearly a week since she'd last seen him.\n\nThey had planned for ten, but Lily did not begin walking across the lawn until ten-thirty. Underneath her flip-flops, the grass smelled vernal and sweet. She knew Sebastien would never mention her lateness, and she took a terrible delight in knowing this fact and exploiting it. It was the kind of thing a boy would do.\n\nAt the house, Lily knocked on the door with her knuckle\u2014using that gargoyle thing seemed to be a concession to affectation that she did not wish to make\u2014and Sebastien opened the door quickly. Behind him, the house smelled musty, and Lily wondered when he had last left it. The must, the dark, the unnerving declivity to the floors\u2014why had all of this seemed so tragically romantic once?\n\n\"Well, _hello_ ,\" said Sebastien. \"You're a vision for sore eyes.\"\n\n\"You look nice,\" said Lily. He did. He was wearing a jacket. And sometimes Lily liked to irk Sebastien by saying dull things. It was a habit she found herself falling into\u2014the more he wanted to talk in the abstract, the more she found herself commenting on the softness of his hair, the radiant greenness of the trees. Was she trying to get him to like her less? She had to wonder.\n\nBut to her surprise, Sebastien actually blushed lightly and tugged at the ends of his coat. \"Well. I do try. And how have you been filling the many hours since I saw you last?\"\n\n\"Oh, you know,\" Lily said, wrinkling her nose and stepping into the house. \"This and that.\"\n\n\"The rigorous demands of the intellectual life, I suppose.\"\n\n\"Yes.\" Lily leaned in and kissed him, feeling the warmth of his cheek, the sturdiness of his clavicle. He would be so lovely if only he would stop talking. \"It's all very draining. As you yourself know, of course.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Sebastien. He retreated to the kitchen, returning a moment later with two glasses of something amber.\n\n\"And as it happens,\" Lily said brightly, taking her glass, \"I got a job.\"\n\n\"A job!\" Sebastien set down his drink. \"How adorably plebeian of you!\"\n\nFor some reason, Lily had not wanted to tell Sebastien about Fuego. She'd thought he might see through it somehow; after all, a person as fake as Sebastien had to have some otherworldly insight into other people's vagaries. But as soon as Lily walked in the house she'd realized, with a gnawing anxiety, that she had not thought to generate any backup topics of conversation, and could not quite think what else they would manage to discuss.\n\n\"A job!\" said Sebastien again, clinking his glass against Lily's. \"Workers of the world, unite!\"\n\nLily had known he would react this way; provoking this exact mockery was the conversational favor she was doing for both of them, and the fact that it had worked made her both pleased and sad.\n\n\"It seemed like a good way to get to know the city better,\" she said, taking a sip of her drink. Whatever it was made her feel like a very old man.\n\n\"A plucky young lass, just trying to make her way in the world?\"\n\n\"Something like that.\"\n\n\"I certainly hope you haven't resorted to selling your rare charms on the street.\"\n\n\"I'm a hostess at Fuego.\"\n\n\"How very prerevolutionary France of you!\"\n\n\"I think they'll make me a waitress after a bit.\"\n\n\"Well, shoot for the moon and you'll land amongst the stars, you know. People were always telling me that in high school, and just look at me now. Am I not a truly serious and substantive adult?\"\n\nLily kissed him again, just to make him stop talking. His mouth tasted clean. \"No,\" she said. \"Even if we are drinking brandy. Are you trying to be?\"\n\n\"Not often,\" he said, and kissed her back, more earnestly. Sometimes Lily could almost feel his heart beating through a kiss, though that was probably impossible. She pulled away and stuck out her tongue at him.\n\n\"Do you even know what you mean half the time?\" she said.\n\n\"I do not,\" he said regally. \"And that, I like to think, is part of my own rare charm.\" This made Lily kiss him one more time and take his hand\u2014which was rough and boyish and vaguely callused, though she couldn't think what he might possibly do to make it feel that way\u2014and lead him toward the bed. She suddenly knew that now they would sleep together. She had never decided to, exactly, but she had also never decided not to, which was, under the circumstances, a kind of decision. And he was, after all, a very dear boy, if only he wouldn't say so much nonsense.\n\nOn the bed, they wrestled for a bit until the moment came when Lily usually put the brakes on things; this time, she did not, and Sebastien pulled her hand to him. She gave a tentative stroke. She always forgot how hard these things were, and how quickly they got that way\u2014she felt a little startled, every single time. She was still holding her brandy with the other hand. She put that down. Her heart was hammering out its fear now\u2014forget the bravado, okay, she admitted it, she still got nervous about this stuff. This was going to happen, she realized. She was young and single and living in Latin America, and she had an outstanding collection of condoms. This is what she was here for. Her teeth were nearly chattering. Sebastien was kissing her. He took off his pants and his shirt and he started in on hers, all the while looking deeply grave. Lily wished he knew that he didn't have to look that way. He was on top of her, then inside her. His entry was unremarkable. Afterward he looked at her with that wondering, faltering gaze of his and said, \"I love you.\"\n\nLily had been weaving her fingers through his chest hair\u2014she secretly liked it, though she knew she had to pretend to other girls that she didn't\u2014but now she stopped. This theater\u2014this feigned vulnerability of his\u2014made something within Lily go stony and sour. She did not want or expect him to love her, of course, but she did not understand the use of this phrase as performance art, either; it made her feel uneasy and a little insulted, though she could not think quite why.\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" she said. \"I'm sure.\" She laughed wryly to give herself a moment to figure out what to say next. She would have to settle for something idiotic. \"So.\" She sat up and began twisting her hair into a ponytail. \"I've been meaning to ask you. Why is your house like this?\"\n\n\"Like what?\" said Sebastien. Lily was not looking at him\u2014she was busying herself with her hair\u2014but she could hear in his voice an emptiness, an echoing distance, like he was speaking from the bottom of a canyon.\n\n\"You know.\" Lily shrugged, trying to think of the right word. She couldn't. \"Huge.\"\n\n\"It was the ambassador's quarters.\"\n\n\"Your father was the ambassador?\"\n\n\"You and your internalized misogyny.\"\n\n\"Okay. Your mother was the ambassador?\"\n\n\"No, I don't think either of them were, as a matter of fact.\"\n\n\"You don't _think_ either of them were?\"\n\n\"But they were building a new ambassador's house, I believe, and the ambassador at the time didn't have a family.\"\n\n\"Wow,\" said Lily. It was strange to think of Sebastien in the context of a family\u2014a little solemn, towheaded boy, world-weary at the age of three. \"That must have made your parents pretty happy.\"\n\n\"Happy! What a bourgeois concept. I can see why old Andrew and Maureen are so badly off, if that's the standard they're holding themselves to.\"\n\nSebastien knew Lily's parents' first names because that's what Lily called them, but she realized now\u2014too late\u2014that she didn't much care for his using them. \"And they let you keep the house?\" she said.\n\n\"As it happens, yes, they did. In their enduring gratitude to my parents' ultimate sacrifice. _Dulce et decorum est_ , and all. There are rumors, it's true, that they were building a new house and this one was going to be condemned anyway. But I'm not sure I believe it, since I try never to believe in metaphors.\"\n\n\"What were they like?\"\n\n\"The metaphors?\"\n\n\"Your parents.\"\n\n\"It's very hard to say for sure,\" said Sebastien after a moment. \"I don't think we actually got the chance to know each other all that well.\"\n\n\"That's\u2014wow,\" said Lily again, and cringed. She could not believe she had said \"wow\" twice in the space of a minute, but there was nothing she could do about that now. \"That's hard to imagine. I know my parents too well. There's nothing they do or say or think that wasn't prophesied by Freud a hundred years ago.\"\n\nSebastien was silent, and something about what Lily had just said started to sound wrong to her.\n\n\"I'm really sorry about your parents, you know,\" she said gently. She really was. Maybe she should have said that earlier, but there was never a normal time to say something like that. \"That whole thing must have been so shocking for you.\"\n\n\"Shocking?\" said Sebastien. \"Well, it wasn't philosophically shocking, of course.\" His tone was didactic. \"When you're this rich you're smart to expect some catastrophe. Have I mentioned to you how absurdly rich I am?\"\n\nLily blinked. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Oh, surely you know. If the universe grants you some favor, it's going to remember it and eventually make you pay it back. With interest. With criminally predatory interest, quite often. You don't believe that?\"\n\n\"Of course not,\" said Lily, trying to sound soothing. She had the feeling Sebastien was angry with her, though perhaps it was only grief that she was hearing in his voice. Grief, she knew all too well, could make people savage. \"I just think there's good luck and bad luck and that's it.\"\n\n\"I suppose you're better off not believing it,\" said Sebastien dryly. \"You'd probably have a lot to worry about if you did.\"\n\n\"Well, I don't know,\" said Lily. She was trying not to sound offended. \"My family had a baby die before I was born, and then they were basically grumpy paranoiacs for my entire childhood, and then they got divorced, so I guess if I subscribed to your totally unsupportable worldview, which I don't, I'd feel like now nothing really awful is in the offing.\"\n\n\"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure,\" said Sebastien. \"I mean, that's pretty small potatoes, don't you think? No offense, as the kids say. But you didn't actually know the baby in question, correct? No offense, again, _il va sans dire_.\"\n\nLily thought of Janie's scowling face, the grim determination of her rocking-horse rocking in the photo above the mantel. \"Correct,\" she said hesitantly.\n\n\"And your parents getting divorced, I mean, that's just statistics. Nobody's going to even buy you a sandwich over that one.\"\n\n\"I suppose not.\"\n\n\"And that's it? No other calamities, no other disasters?\"\n\n\"Well, my grandfather\u2014\"\n\n\"Please.\"\n\n\"Okay. No. No other calamities.\"\n\n\"And none of the things that have happened to your family were in the context of an elaborate system of morally redeeming societal oppression?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014no. No oppression.\"\n\nSebastien frowned like a doctor about to deliver terrible news. \"Then I'd say you've got at least one relatively dreadful thing ahead of you.\"\n\n\"Do I?\"\n\n\"Some sort of medium catastrophe in your future, if my powers of prognostication do not deceive me.\"\n\n\"Like what?\"\n\n\"Well, maybe your husband will have an affair, but not just any affair. He'll be a very public official and have a very public affair and you'll have to stand with him in the rain at a press conference.\"\n\n\"Okay, I can handle that,\" said Lily, then shook herself. \"I mean, what? No. I'm never attending some douchewad's press conference.\"\n\n\"Or you'll contract some kind of cancer that's eventually curable but permanently disfiguring.\"\n\n\"That would be sad.\"\n\n\"But you'd feel lucky to be alive.\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\n\"Of course. Your type of person is always so embarrassingly glad to be alive.\"\n\n\"What type of person is that?\"\n\n\"I mean, really, what's in it for you? That's my question.\"\n\nLily stood up and grabbed her tank top and her skirt. She faced the wall as she put them on, then sat back on the bed.\n\n\"Or maybe you'll have a child who will be limited in some emotionally and financially exhausting way,\" said Sebastien. \"Profoundly disturbed, you know.\"\n\nLily was suddenly seething with a palsied rage. She was sick of her parents' pain, but she was also defensive of it, and she hated that it was regarded as so morally neutral, so meaningless. They had been lucky in a lot of ways, of course. But it was one thing to know that your privilege was unearned; it was another thing entirely to feel that your sadness was, too\u2014to have to be so pitifully glad, so pitifully sorry, for the modest perks of a dull and diligent middle-class life (TV, and Target candles, and a trip to Six Flags every year). Maybe that's why the whole family was so repressed. Maybe deep down they believed\u2014as Sebastien apparently did\u2014that, on some level, at the end of the day, they'd had it coming.\n\n\"This is depressing,\" she said to Sebastien, putting on her shoes.\n\n\"Get used to it, is all I'm saying.\"\n\n\"I am used to it. I am used to nothing else.\"\n\n\"I can't imagine,\" he said. \"My life's been a laugh a minute.\"\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nBack at the Carrizos', light was still coming from underneath the basement bedroom door. Lily glanced at her phone\u2014it wasn't even midnight. She opened the door.\n\n\"Hey,\" she said cheerfully. She felt sure her face was still flushed, and she did not really want to talk about it. \"What are you reading?\"\n\n\"A chapter about resurgent protectionism,\" said Katy. \"Did you know that every year there are four million tons of maize that farmers can't sell either here or abroad?\"\n\n\"I did not,\" said Lily. For some reason, this came out in an overly jaunty, Sebastien LeCompte type of voice.\n\nKaty looked up. \"You slept with him!\"\n\nFor some reason, Lily felt a momentary gaiety\u2014she wanted to shriek, _I did not!_ , like Anna might have done as a child in the face of a true accusation\u2014but she forced herself to remain calm. \"I guess I did,\" she said. \"It was fast enough that it's a little hard to say for sure.\"\n\n\"You harlot.\"\n\nLily laughed mirthlessly. \"I suppose.\" The flash of gaiety was gone, and she felt a strange numbness in her chest, a mournful aching under her left flank. Perhaps she was developing pancreatitis from all the wine. Perhaps service industry work was disagreeing with her. Perhaps she was finally getting old, as everyone had always assured her she one day would.\n\n\"So,\" said Katy, closing her book with a decisive thump. \"How was it?\"\n\n\"Okay, I guess. We got into a weird fight afterward.\" Lily patted her hip bones through her thin skirt; they seemed to fit awkwardly into their sockets now, like jigsaw pieces put in wrong. \"And he told me he loved me.\"\n\nKaty's perfect mouth fell open. \"No,\" she said. \"He did _not_.\"\n\n\"He did.\"\n\n\"Holy shit.\"\n\nLily sighed. \"I just wish he knew he didn't have to try so hard.\"\n\n\"Is that what your fight was about?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What was it about?\"\n\n\"Luck,\" said Lily. \"I think.\"\n\n\"So, I mean, what did you say?\"\n\nLily exhaled heavily. She was sobering up, which made her realize she'd been a little drunk. She wanted to hang on to the plucky sense of savvy she'd had when she'd responded to Sebastien's declaration. She'd had things figured out then\u2014only an hour ago\u2014and Katy was mucking things up with her na\u00efvet\u00e9.\n\n\"I mean, what was I supposed to say?\" said Lily. \"I said, like, 'Oh yeah, uh-huh, I'm sure.' Or something like that.\"\n\n\"Lily!\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You didn't.\"\n\n\"I mean, _really_ ,\" said Lily. \"He doesn't mean it. You've met the guy: He never means anything.\" Lily already wished she hadn't told Katy. It was so tiresome having to explain everything to her all the time. \"Anyway, I'm not an idiot. I'm just kind of disappointed that he thinks I am.\"\n\n\"I don't know, Lily.\" Katy blew on her bangs; they puffed out like an animal projecting aggression. \"What if he really does?\"\n\n\"Ugh, you're such a romantic.\"\n\n\"Maybe. But we're twenty-one! We're supposed to be romantics. Who wants to be so cynical at our age? There's something wrong with you if you're so cynical at twenty-one.\"\n\n\"I'm twenty. I'm twenty-one at the end of the month.\"\n\n\"So there you go. That's even worse.\"\n\nLily turned her back to Katy and began to undress. Normally she was pretty immodest\u2014not because she thought so much of her body, but because she thought so little of it (what kind of vanity was required to think your body was so special it had to be protected from sight, when billions, literally _billions_ of people, were built exactly like you?)\u2014but it seemed strange to undress in front of Katy now, when she'd been with Sebastien only a few moments ago. She thought it might invite a new kind of evaluative scrutiny she didn't care to consider too fully.\n\n\"So what are you going to do for your birthday, do you think?\" said Katy.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You just said you're turning twenty-one soon.\"\n\n\"Oh. Yeah. On the seventeenth. I don't know. Nothing. Go out somewhere, I guess.\"\n\n\"You should see if your boss will let you have a room at Fuego.\"\n\n\"He won't,\" said Lily. In the low light, she could see the fans of blue veins skirting her upper thighs. She had a hard time believing she was actually warm-blooded sometimes\u2014her blood was just so visibly _blue;_ it looked Arctic in origin. She could feel the vaguely unpleasant dampness and stinging from where Sebastien had been. Her face was slightly raw from his; Lily always felt that she was being vigorously _sanded down_ when she kissed a man.\n\n\"You never know,\" Katy was saying.\n\n\"Sometimes you do. My boss doesn't like me that much. I drop things and my drawer comes up short.\"\n\n\"You drop things?\"\n\n\"Well, I dropped one thing. A glass. Not like a whole platter of things. But trust me, is the point, about the party idea. It's not going to happen.\"\n\n\"Fine.\" Katy took out her textbook again. \"You're awfully dour.\"\n\n\"I'm not dour,\" said Lily, wincing at how much she sounded like her parents. \"I'm just a realist.\"\n\n# CHAPTER NINE\n\n## February\n\nOne night, amid all the rolling around, it finally happened. That beat of lulled momentum\u2014the point at which Lily usually turned over, or lightly took Sebastien's hand, or asked him some jejune question, or got up to get a glass of water\u2014came and went, and she continued to kiss him, with more urgency than she ever had before. In Sebastien's head, constellations, luminous and slow moving, were created and destroyed. His hand crept slowly, and then faster, to the side table to produce an atavistic condom. Afterward he said, \"I love you,\" matter-of-factly. He meant it. He did not mean anything, but he meant this.\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" said Lily. She was trying to sound savvy and cold, or maybe she really was. Years of reflexive mordancy had left Sebastien with few tools to assess other people's emotional states. All communication was maneuver. And he felt oddly alone in the bed afterward, with the sheets now twisted into knots and the room growing dark in the evening chill, and Lily only a foot away from him.\n\nThen she'd asked him something about his parents. (What kind of criminally banal pillow talk this was! He blamed the American movies.) She'd said that she was sorry about them\u2014and she did look sorry, though frankly she also looked a little annoyed at having to be sorry\u2014and remarked that the loss must have been \"shocking.\" And this\u2014not earlier, let the record show, not out of any sense that he was entitled to love (hers or anyone's), and not from any wounded pride (he had no pride to wound)\u2014was when Sebastien had become angry. Shocking? His parents' deaths were _shocking_? Yes, shocking, of course, though expectations being wildly subverted was not, in the end, the most challenging aspect of that whole ordeal. He'd thought of the picture of his father on the mantel; his father had been young in that photo, Sebastien realized, only a little over forty. Surely one still wanted things at forty. Shocking? Sure. But primarily devastating, shattering. Life ending, as Lily surely had noticed. The wrongness of the word made Sebastien bellicose, and he'd led them into a stupid fight\u2014transparent, pitiful, composed of serious nonsense\u2014in which he condescended and dismissed, offering dark prophecies about Lily's future and his own. He monologued about all the bad luck she would one day have, all the medium-sized difficulties that would one day befall her. He didn't really believe any of it, of course\u2014he didn't really believe anything\u2014and he could feel the mood in the room darken: first with Lily's anger, then with her pedestrian defensiveness, her need to let him know that she had suffered enough already. That's all anybody wanted anyone to know about them\u2014how hard it all had been, how valiantly they had tried, how much unseen credit they were due. Sebastien was tired of it. Sebastien was tired of everything. With every twist, Sebastien could feel the conversation taking him further away from Lily, but still he could not stop. He could have reached out then and touched her, he knew, except somehow it wouldn't have mattered. It would have been the same as not touching her. It would have been the same as getting up and closing the door and never touching her again.\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nSomehow, Lily's days were beginning to trace the same emotional arc, over and over again. She'd wake up in the mornings feeling jaunty and electrified, thrilled by her own life. She was young and nothing was really nailed down yet: It was true she was no longer a virgin; it was true she was no longer undeclared\u2014but really, in the broadest sense, anything was still possible, and what a wonder that was. She walked around the city in the afternoons, watching herself in the third person\u2014alone at caf\u00e9s, at museums\u2014and she mostly saw the person she had always wanted to watch herself be; a person for whom all the best things were still ahead. This feeling came back to her at nights, as she walked back to the Carrizos' from Fuego or from Sebastien's, the lights of the city shimmery and seductive all around her. There was absolutely nothing like a city at night. It was so easy to believe that everything that could possibly happen was happening somewhere right around her\u2014just behind a closed door, just beyond her field of vision. And for all she knew, it was.\n\nBut between the mornings and the evenings, something was going wrong. A feeling came pricking at Lily in the late afternoons, when the sun turned a certain sickening rubescent color, casting light that made all the buildings look like glowing cinders. In those hours, Lily felt that she was kidding herself\u2014that some central fiction of her life was growing worn with overuse, and that one day it would tear through completely. She would fall into a shaky melancholy then, as though coming down with a strange late-in-the-day hangover, and would have to go somewhere bright and capitalist and unreal to try to cheer herself up. Sometimes she'd find herself at a Changomas, staring at the children's cereal, or at the movies, watching dubbed American films that seemed to always use the same voice-over actors. She generally tried to stay away from email\u2014it made her life in Argentina feel contingent and small and less urgent somehow; she was on the other end of the world, and she wanted to feel like it\u2014but sometimes in these afternoon moods she'd succumb to a kiosko, where she'd spend a couple of hours reading blogs devoted to badly written expressions of widely held opinions. She'd watch the irradiated lobes of the computers grow brighter and brighter against the falling darkness.\n\nThen evening would come, and she would walk out into the streets and gulp the still-warm air. She'd remember that she was so far away from home that she could actually wear a tank top in February. She'd take off the sweater she'd worn against the air-conditioning in the kiosko or the theater or the store. There would be a mild breeze against her shoulders, and she would feel it creakily cantilever her into the evening. Her old innate optimism would return. She would sense, with the tender and turbulent joy of a granted reprieve, that her life was not yet over. And she would begin to feel much better.\n\nSebastien did not see Lily again for a time. She began to bob maddeningly in and out of availability: Texts went unanswered for days; plans were made and canceled and made yet again. When she did materialize, she was abstracted, distant, always smelling slightly of burned chorizo. All of this, she fervently attested, was due to that infernal newly acquired job of hers. She would have Sebastien believe, apparently, that she had truly become absorbed to distraction in the minutiae of utensils and tips and the wrangling of emotionally abusive customers. She would have Sebastien think, apparently, that his palpably diminishing relative claim on her attention meant nothing.\n\nOne Sunday night, after watching an Antonioni film they'd both pretended to like, Sebastien and Lily lay together in silence. Lily's head was on his torso and he was stroking a strand of her hair with his thumb, admiring its multidimensional shininess. He was acutely aware of the rising and falling of his chest.\n\n\"So,\" said Lily abruptly. \"What are you going to do?\"\n\nSebastien kept trying to slow his heartbeat down and found it galloping ever faster nonetheless. \"When, my peach?\" he said.\n\n\"Now.\"\n\nThrough the window, Sebastien could see the gathering blueness of late twilight. He hadn't yet thought to get up and light candles. \"Likely kiss you some more,\" he said. \"If you're amenable.\"\n\n\"In general, I mean.\" Lily rolled over onto her back. Sebastien could see a cuneate piece of flattish pale stomach right above her jeans; he could see the knobby handle of her hip bone. \"In your life.\"\n\n\"I can't imagine what you're talking about,\" said Sebastien, even though he could.\n\n\"I mean, are you just going to stay here forever?\" Lily stretched elaborately. Sebastien could not get over the outrageous, unfussy healthfulness of her body. You could just see her frolicking in some creek somewhere; catching little frogs and crayfish and things with her bare hands because she hadn't yet been socialized to think those things were disgusting.\n\n\"You've got all this money,\" she was saying. \"I mean, what do you want to do with it?\"\n\nSebastien had known this would come eventually, but he was sorry it was coming already. \"Support a revolving cast of lovely women, I suppose,\" he said. \"Until I age into impotence, at least.\"\n\n\"No, really,\" said Lily. \"You're a smart guy.\" Sebastien winced at this. Nobody felt the need to remark upon intelligence that they actually believed in. \"You've got to go back to school at some point, right?\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"You could get a job, you know. Have you ever thought of that? I mean, I know you don't need to. I know you don't need the money. But it might be good for you. It might be good for you to get out once in a while.\"\n\n\"I've been out plenty. I'm retired now.\"\n\n\"It might make you less depressed.\"\n\nSebastien turned his back to her and stared at the cracks in the wall. Maybe, in a way, this bossiness was a good sign\u2014maybe instead of reflecting grievous disappointment, it suggested a certain proprietary concern. \"Who's depressed?\" he said. \"Depression is for the middle class. I'm having the time of my life.\"\n\n\"So you're just going to sit here and rot then?\"\n\n\"Well, I've got to sit somewhere and rot. It might as well be here.\"\n\n\"That's awful.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said, and stood up. He could hear his knees crack, and it made him feel old. You had to live so terribly long to actually _be_ old, but Sebastien was starting to wonder if people began to feel that way quite a bit earlier, and spent their lives waiting for their bodies to match their souls. \"Could you tell me more specifically what you're imagining? Some kind of a start-up? Socially conscious investments? Venture capitalism? Get involved in the what\u2014dot-com boom? I assume that's still happening? Or maybe it's not too late to cash in on the tail end of the Gold Rush.\" Lily was visibly waiting for Sebastien to stop talking, but he could not. \"Or should I set my sights lower, perhaps? Start taking in washing from the neighborhood? What are we thinking here? You tell me.\"\n\n\"You mean to say your plan is seriously to just sit here and order takeout until the day you die.\"\n\n\"This is everyone's plan, broadly.\"\n\n\"You're just like my family.\"\n\n\"I have to suspect that's meant unkindly.\"\n\nThere was a long pause in which Sebastien could sense Lily circling around what she wanted to say, thinking better of it and then veering back toward it again, each time getting a little closer. \"You just want to wallow\u2014\" she finally began.\n\n\"Wallow! Who _doesn't_ want a good wallow?\"\n\n\"You want to wallow in the passive acceptance of death.\"\n\n\"As opposed to what? The active rejection of death? Or the active acceptance of death?\" Sebastien grinned to show her that it was not too late for them to stop it. \"The passive rejection of death, perhaps?\"\n\nLily laughed a little. \"You're impossible.\"\n\n\"I just want to know what my options are here.\"\n\n\"You are. Impossible.\" She kissed him again then, hard, but it was a complicated kind of kiss, a little bit vicious and fierce, and when he peeked halfway through he saw that her eyes were still open.\n\nHer second weekend at Fuego, Lily picked up an extra shift and forgot to call Carlos and Beatriz to tell them. Halfway through the second shift she remembered, but the club was slammed, and she didn't even have time to pee until her break. At ten-thirty, as she maneuvered a tray of cocktails over to a tableful of Belgians, Lily spotted Katy standing at the bar near the door. It was strange to see Katy here. From a distance, she looked shy and beautiful and wide-eyed\u2014like some sort of nocturnal jungle creature, a baby ocelot or something\u2014and Lily could see that she'd already attracted the vulture-like attentions of several tables' worth of inebriated young men, as well as Ignacio, the tortoise-faced bartender. Katy did not seem to notice any of this. Lily looked down at her hands, bald and raw from the scalding hot water, smelling like the stewed detritus of the sink where she had, moments ago, despaired of ever dislodging an especially despicable layer of grime from a pan. Looking at Katy, Lily realized that she felt strangely self-conscious, as though Katy had caught her wearing a costume for a performance she'd hoped would stay a secret. Once Lily had been cleaning up puke in the men's room and a man had come in and smirked at her and said, in English, \"I bet you wish you'd gone to college.\" And along with her indignation, Lily had experienced a sliver of pleasure at being mistaken in this way. This _was_ a costume, of course. She didn't really need this job.\n\nNow Katy was talking to Ignacio the bartender, who was pointing to the alcove where Lily was standing. She looked down and busied herself with some silverware until she felt a tap on her shoulder.\n\n_\"Oh, hey,\"_ she shouted at Katy, trying to look surprised. _\"What are you doing here?\"_\n\nKaty shouted something back.\n\n\"What?\" said Lily. She really couldn't hear over the music. _Me gustamarihuana, me gustas t\u00fa_, sang somebody or other. The song was pretty old. Lily thought she'd heard it first in college, freshman year, at a frat party. Middlebury didn't admit to having frats, but they did, and it was a frat where she first heard this song. Lily glanced around the club and noticed Ignacio staring at Katy with a frankly hungry look. When Lily caught his gaze he raised his eyebrows at her inquisitively and nodded his head in Katy's direction. Lily made a face at him and pulled Katy farther into the alcove, where they were partially obscured. Katy said something else that Lily couldn't hear.\n\n\"What?\" Lily hollered again.\n\n_\"I said, what?\"_\n\n\"The bartender is checking you out.\"\n\nKaty looked quizzical. Lily cocked her head in Ignacio's direction and gave a cartoon leer. Katy peered around the corner and waggled her hand in a semi-thumbs-up.\n\n\"Ew,\" said Lily, wrinkling her nose. \"Really?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n_\"You are late,\"_ shouted Katy. _\"Come home.\"_\n\n_\"I can't,\"_ shouted Lily. _\"I am working till two.\"_\n\nJavier came over then, suave in a blue tie, and pointed at Katy. _\"Your friend can't be back here,\"_ he shouted to Lily. _\"Unless she wants to put on an apron.\"_\n\n_\"Two,\"_ said Lily again, holding up two greasy index fingers. Katy turned to go, and Lily noticed Ignacio's noticing her leaving. There was something strange about a look of such appetite on a face so reptilian\u2014though, of course, poor Ignacio couldn't help his face. Still, Lily felt a cold paranoia cauliflower along her spine for a moment before Javier clapped her on the back and suggested that now would be a good time for her to think about trying to at least pretend to do her job.\n\nThat night, Sebastien sent a text at four a.m. and Lily woke up to read it but forgot to answer. She forgot the next day, too, and the next day, and by the third day responding seemed fake and forced, but she made herself do it, and she tried to sound as unself-conscious and breezy as possible\u2014\"Hey SLC, sorry I've been MIA, wanna hang out tonight?\"\u2014as though she was a very popular girl and he was one of her many, many, many friends, no less precious to her because he was one of so many. His response came a day later, flinty and stiff\u2014\"I'd hardly noticed. You know where to find me\"\u2014and Lily knew that she'd done the wrong thing again, that she always did the wrong thing. Sometimes Lily wished she could float along in the kind of lighthearted solipsism that prevented grudges and bad feelings and lingering entanglements, that made it impossible to take anything too hard. But things in Lily's life never worked out this way. Sebastien's attempted gift of the bracelet weighed on her heavily, as did the sex, though she hated to admit it. She felt somehow obligated to him now; she felt that she'd treated him carelessly, and though she knew she'd treated him no differently from the way that many boys had treated her\u2014no differently from the way that Sebastien himself would likely have treated her, if she'd let him\u2014she still couldn't shake the acrid feeling behind her heart, the queasy sense of revolving guilt.\n\nShe called Sebastien the next morning and proposed dinner. She would bring it, she said. Her treat. He assented.\n\nAt least, Lily told herself, Sebastien was unlikely to bring up her recent absence. That was something she liked about him. Stoicism was not valued at Middlebury, where everyone wanted to endlessly talk and process and expurgate every little thing. If you hooked up with a boy he seemed to feel he owed you a real-time narration of his entire life, a live-blogging of his every emotional memory. If Sebastien LeCompte had been a Middlebury boy, he and Lily would already have agonized ceaselessly over the nature of their relationship, the question of monogamy, the issue of forward momentum, the prospect of looming distance and separation, the meaning of things, the meaningless of things. What a relief it was to be excused from all of that, anyway.\n\n\"I think old Sebastien's mad at me,\" Lily said to Katy that afternoon. She and Katy talked about Sebastien a lot, partly because they couldn't find much else to talk about. Katy's family, apparently, was too loving and functional to merit discussion. On the question of politics, Lily sensed a level of conflict aversion in Katy that suggested that there might be conflict to be had if Lily pushed it, which, of course, she tried very hard to do\u2014making flamboyant assertions, quoting outrageous statistics. But Katy proved impossible to rouse; she never agreed nor disagreed, only asked questions aimed at making Lily clarify whatever she'd just said. So Katy and Lily spoke most often of men, and they spoke of Sebastien most often of all.\n\n\"Oh?\" said Katy. She was sitting on her bed and rubbing silver-dollar-sized globs of sunscreen around her eyes and chin and onto her breastbone. The smell of coconut filled the room. \"And why's that?\"\n\nLily shrugged. \"I think he's on his period.\"\n\nKaty nodded. \"How's the sex these days?\"\n\nLily was surprised that Katy would ask, but did not want to seem surprised. She wobbled her hand. \"So-so,\" she said. \"Are you going to the beach or something?\"\n\nKaty looked embarrassed. \"It prevents wrinkles.\"\n\n\"Aren't you twenty-one?\"\n\nKaty hung her head. \"I'm paranoid.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Lily. \"Can I have some?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" She tossed the bottle to Lily. \"You want to do your hands, too.\"\n\nObediently, Lily rubbed the lotion into her hands.\n\n\"Do you think you guys will keep up after you leave?\" said Katy, and Lily felt the flicker of nervousness that always came when Katy was inquisitive about Sebastien. It was possible that Katy still felt bad about calling Sebastien a bore, now that it was clear that Lily was going to keep seeing him. But somehow Lily suspected that there was more to it than that\u2014that these conversations were Katy's way of being elaborately careful with her, as though Katy had decided that Lily was a person who required special handling, or special patience\u2014and Lily did not like the thought of this one bit.\n\n\"Oh, who knows,\" said Lily. \"Probably not, I guess.\"\n\nAbove them, Lily could hear the satisfying whir of Beatriz running the vacuum cleaner. This was one of Lily's favorite sounds of domestic life, alongside the sound of coffee brewing: It made her think of mornings, of getting the house ready for company. She closed her eyes for a moment to listen.\n\n\"No?\" said Katy.\n\nLily opened her eyes. \"I mean, let's be realistic.\"\n\nUpstairs, the phone rang.\n\n\"He could visit you,\" said Katy. \"It's not like he can't afford it.\"\n\nLily shrugged and scrunched her nose. The phone rang again. \"I think I'll grab that,\" she said. She ran up the stairs, Katy following behind her.\n\nUpstairs, the living room was flooded with light; the red curtains were waving slightly in the breeze, revealing and then obscuring a faint weal of cloud in the sky. The vacuum cleaner stopped, and Lily heard the distant, plangent sound of cathedral bells. The life these people had! She could stay here forever. She took a breath. The phone rang a third time.\n\n\"S\u00ed?\" said Lily, nearly breathless.\n\nThere was a pause.\n\n\"Ah, is Carlos Carrizo available?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, he's not here right now,\" said Lily. \"May I take a message?\"\n\nThere was another pause, and Lily reached down to the side table drawer to find a pen. When she opened it, she saw an ominous pile of paper: heavy documents and folders covered in what looked like some tedious bureaucratese. She didn't recognize the words, but something about them seemed heavy, resonant. Spanish, she decided, was too lovely a language for such matters. She shrugged the phone into the crook of her neck and motioned for Katy to come look.\n\n\"What?\" Katy mouthed, but she didn't come over.\n\nThe man on the phone was giving his name and number, and Lily scrambled to grab a pen. She was writing the number on her hand as Beatriz appeared at the top of the stairs, a basket of laundry on her hip. The man hung up.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" said Beatriz. Her face was frozen, her eyes lightless, her hair pulled back very tight. Lily was still holding the phone, and she placed it back in its receiver overly carefully, as though she might now earn some belated credit for conscientiousness.\n\n\"I was just taking a message for you,\" she said.\n\nBeatriz began to descend the stairs slowly, and Lily knew that the coming conversation was not going to be a good one. She wanted to turn around and catch Katy's eye, but she was somehow afraid; there was something so uniquely awful about the anger of an adult you did not know well. When did adult strangers ever get mad at you? Never in real life\u2014only on the road or on the Internet. Lily flashed to an image of herself as a small child, being yelled at by a friend's mother for some infraction that was too abstract to be comprehended at the time. She remembered her terror; her strange distorting sense that the universe was actually aligned against her, and that maybe it always had been and she just hadn't noticed until then. Beatriz reached the bottom of the stairs and put down the laundry basket.\n\n\"Why did you answer our phone?\" she said. She was not yelling.\n\n\"You weren't answering it.\"\n\n\"I was vacuuming.\"\n\n\"I was just taking a message for you.\"\n\n\"Do not answer our phone in the future. Do you understand? I assure you, the calls coming in are not for you.\"\n\nLily felt the strange cresting behind her nose that sometimes meant she was about to cry. \"I didn't think they were,\" she whispered. She didn't understand why she felt so terrible. She hadn't done anything wrong. \"I was only trying to help.\"\n\n\"And those?\" Beatriz pointed to the disordered documents, still poking out of the open drawer. \"What did you think you were doing with those? Helping?\"\n\n\"Nothing!\" Lily slammed the drawer shut. \"I was just looking for some paper. I didn't see anything, I promise.\"\n\nBeatriz moved back a step and took a deep breath. Lily could tell from her expression that she must look terrified, and she watched Beatriz decide to take things down a notch.\n\n\"In the future, please be respectful of our privacy and our home.\" Beatriz's voice was softer now, but Lily could hear how hard she was trying to make it that way, which was almost worse than if she'd sounded as angry as she actually was. Lily finally turned and looked at Katy for backup, but Katy's face remained open and neutral, ready to believe and be believed. If Beatriz had come down thirty seconds later, she would have found both of them looking at those papers. Katy would have come over to look. She would have. Lily was sure of it.\n\n\"You have a very lovely room downstairs,\" said Beatriz, picking up the laundry basket. \"You should have everything there that you need. If you require something else, please ask me first.\"\n\nWith that, Beatriz took the basket down to the basement, and in a moment Lily could hear the washing machine.\n\nKaty made a whistling sound. \"Yikes,\" she said. \"That was bad luck.\"\n\nLily dragged her thumb along the table near the phone. She wished there was some dust to pretend to brush off, some minor disorganization to feign absorption in, but the Carrizo house was always so spotless.\n\n\"What did those papers say?\" said Katy after a moment.\n\n\"That's the thing,\" Lily said. \"I don't even know.\"\n\nBy the time Lily hurried up the path to Sebastien's that night, pizza wedged on her forearm, she was already in a terrible mood. She had disappointed Beatriz, and now she was bound to disappoint Sebastien. It was a simple inevitability. She rang the doorbell and waited.\n\nBut really, she told herself, it was okay to try a little less hard for a boy. Sometimes when she thought about all the work she'd done in her life to make sure the men she knew were having a comfortable enough time\u2014the vast amounts of effort she'd spent on this!\u2014she had to cringe. With boys who were particularly recalcitrant on the phone, she'd sometimes actually written out questions to ask them before calling them up. Had anyone ever gone to such lengths for her? Would she have even wanted them to? Lily had earned a certain amount of disregard, she figured, and now was the time to extend it.\n\nSebastien appeared at the door after a moment. He was wearing a chestnut-colored waistcoat, the kind of thing you saw on academics in movies though never, in Lily's experience, in real life. His hair was appealingly mussed\u2014it was growing out a little, which she loved, though she didn't dare tell him that for fear he would cut it out of spite. She smiled her friendliest smile. \"Hello,\" she said. \"Aren't you warm in that coat?\"\n\n\"It's the mythical Lily Hayes! Goodness gracious!\" he said, throwing his arms up and pretending to fan himself. \"To what do I owe this rare honor?\"\n\n\"I brought pizza,\" said Lily, still smiling. \"Do you like pizza? You were an American teenager once.\"\n\n\"I was never an American. Nor, in the strictest sense, a teenager.\"\n\nLily gritted her teeth. \"Can you forgive me nonetheless? And could you let me in, maybe? I want to set this down.\"\n\n\"Forgiveness is tedious,\" said Sebastien, ushering her through the door. Inside, the house was sweltering, lit by a bunch of candles that seemed now to have mostly burned down, making the room look wavering and medieval. Lily set the pizza on the dining table.\n\n\"You and your proto-Christianity, your Neoplatonism,\" Sebastien was saying. He opened the box and eyed the pepperoni skeptically. \"Ah, and your pork products. Well, I guess living in a constant state of smug forgiveness is fair compensation for the freedom to consume unclean animals on your pizza. That's the great and central trade-off of the Abrahamic faiths, I've always thought.\"\n\n\"We can pick them off if you don't like them. And I already know you're angry with me, so you don't have to make quite so many allusions. And, I mean, you're not even making sense, even in terms of just your own internal logic, right now.\"\n\n\"Angry with you, my jonquil! Perish the thought.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry I was so out of touch this week,\" said Lily carefully. \"I was busy.\"\n\n\"I understand. I've been swamped with a million and ten things myself. The kids and their interminable soccer practices, don't you know.\"\n\n\"Sebastien. I said I was sorry.\"\n\n\"And I said I was indifferent.\"\n\nFor some reason, Lily didn't want Sebastien to know how tiresome she was beginning to find him. She didn't want to admit it entirely to herself, either; she felt premature nostalgia (already!) for the way she'd felt about him in those first few weeks, and she still held out some slim hope that the feeling might return. There were moments, after all\u2014there was a certain way Sebastien had of looking at her when she first arrived at his house, his face open and unguarded and so beautiful in its architecture and its youth\u2014that still made her stomach flip. But then he'd begin to talk; invariably at length, invariably ironically, and Lily would feel herself drifting off somewhere. One time Katy had compared Sebastien to a dead fly frozen in the amber of his house, and this image, worryingly, had stuck with Lily.\n\nShe found two dusty plates in the cabinet, rinsed them, and put them down on the table. She put slices of pizza on each of their plates, then took a bite of hers. Sebastien did not.\n\n\"Are you on a hunger strike?\" she said. He looked shiny and a little unwell, and Lily felt\u2014acutely, momentarily, and for the very first time\u2014the paucity of her attraction to him. \"Would you care to state your demands?\"\n\nFor once, Sebastien LeCompte said nothing.\n\nLater, after a fitful and underwhelming round of intercourse, Lily was restless. She sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from Sebastien, and put on her bra. It was still early; the stars were dim topazes in the sky, only beginning to leak their modest light. The fight with Beatriz crouched on Lily's sternum like the pressure of an oncoming heart attack. She sighed heavily. Sebastien said nothing. Lily wanted to go somewhere. They never went anywhere. She sighed again.\n\n\"Something troubling you, my sweet?\"\n\n\"I'm bored,\" said Lily, ferreting into her tank top. \"Can we go out?\"\n\n\"Where would you like to go?\" Sebastien was lying on the bed, still naked. He was exotically non-shy about nudity. Before sex, Lily always liked this quite a lot about him; afterward, she liked it a little less.\n\n\"I don't know.\" Lily rotated her shoulders in their sockets. They cracked audibly, and she was glad when Sebastien flinched. \"Just somewhere. Out. You pick.\"\n\nSebastien sat up and looked at her with an expression of intense mock-seriousness. \"Lily Hayes, are you perhaps not your very best self tonight?\"\n\nShe spun her shoulders again, though this time they didn't crack. \"Maybe not,\" she said.\n\nSebastien sat up. \"What's wrong?\"\n\nThe straightforwardness of this took Lily by surprise\u2014she'd expected him to maintain his usual tone\u2014and made it seem possible, all of a sudden, to tell him what had happened. Not that it could help\u2014you might as well talk to a Magic 8 Ball about your problems. But she supposed it couldn't hurt much, either.\n\n\"I got in trouble with Beatriz,\" she said.\n\n\"Again?\"\n\n\"Yes, again.\" The situation seemed monstrously unfair somehow\u2014bigger and more serious than a mere misunderstanding\u2014though Lily still couldn't quite pinpoint why. Sebastien stood up, put on his boxers\u2014finally!\u2014and came to sit next to her, resting his head on her shoulder. Lily knew he meant it ironically\u2014it was a commentary on, a parody of, such gestures\u2014but his hair was soft, and his skin was warm, and she hoped that he would stay there for a minute, anyway.\n\n\"I certainly hope _I_ wasn't responsible,\" he said.\n\n\"Not this time, you'll be relieved to know.\" Lily's fingers wound their way into Sebastien's hair and stroked his skull lightly\u2014he was so well made, really. \"She freaked out because I answered their telephone.\"\n\n\"The gall!\"\n\n\"I know! I mean, in general, I understand why Katy never gets in trouble. Katy never sneaks out at night, for one thing.\"\n\nSebastien's eyes flickered lightly. \"Doesn't she?\" he said, and Lily felt again the fleeting, uncomfortable suspicion that everyone around her knew more than she did.\n\n\"Well,\" she said. \"I guess I don't know. I mean, I do sleep in the same room as her, though. She'd have to be a pretty good sneaker to sneak out all the time. And she doesn't really seem like the sneaking type.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" said Sebastien. Lily stopped stroking his hair and patted his shoulder so that he'd sit up.\n\n\"But I mean, getting in trouble for stuff I actually do wrong is one thing. Getting in trouble for something like that while Katy is standing _right there_ is just dumb.\"\n\n\"It's the principle of the thing, you're saying? Abstract notions of justice and right?\"\n\n\"It's that Beatriz just hates me no matter what I do. It's like, if Katy and I are both doing the _exact_ same thing, Beatriz attributes benign intentions to Katy and malign ones to me. But maybe I have benign intentions, too. Sometimes, at least.\"\n\nSebastien pulled her to him then. He smelled slightly oniony, which Lily sort of liked; she found herself pleasantly surprised by his moments of undeniable masculinity, and the way they offset his light eyes and freckles and cerebralism. Sometimes she wished she could tell him this; so many times when he went on and on and on she'd wanted to take his hand or grab his thigh and tell him, _Stop it. Just stop it. I was impressed already_. But she felt that this would disappoint him somehow; that it would be vulgar; that it would be conventional. And sometimes Lily wondered if maybe she wasn't the person he was actually trying to impress, anyhow.\n\n\"Benign intentions?\" said Sebastien, kissing her temple. \"I thought you were a wicked woman.\"\n\n\"I guess maybe I am,\" Lily said glumly. \"I mean, that seems to be the prevailing assessment.\"\n\n\"All right, my sulking salmon,\" said Sebastien, clapping her fraternally on the shoulders. \"Let's go out. I'll grab my walking stick.\"\n\nOutside, the moon was huge and cantaloupe colored, looking too heavy for the sky. Lily had thought the walking stick thing was a joke, but Sebastien had indeed produced one from one of the cavernous back rooms and now carried it majestically, tapping on the ground from time to time. His parents had bought it in Fiji, he said. It had chips of abalone shell that glowed like the eyes of something nocturnal, and Lily gave it a wide distance as they ventured through a thin woods and over a small hill toward where Sebastien had said there was a river.\n\nLily wanted to frolic. The creepiness of the walking stick made her nervous in a giddy, childish, not entirely unpleasant way. And outside, in this soft summery evening, the trouble with Beatriz did not seem so important. You could not get everyone to like you; you could waste your whole life trying, and still it would not work. Lily did a cartwheel. Sebastien held the walking stick in the crook of his elbow and golf clapped. She did another\u2014passably, she thought. They were pretty hard to do now; she had no idea when they'd become so difficult. But this was like a lot of things, she supposed\u2014you wandered away from something for what felt like a minute and by the time you thought to come back to it, it had already been gone for a very long time.\n\nLily had only three months left in Argentina.\n\nThey walked until they reached the river. Above it, the sky was clear, and the moon was so big that Lily could see its whorls; it looked like a chalky thumbprint in the sky. The moment might have been romantic\u2014Lily could feel Sebastien gearing up to take her hand, to kiss her\u2014but she wanted to shake off the feeling. She felt mischievous, scheming; she wanted to make Sebastien do something frivolous, something that he simply could not look cool while doing. She didn't know why she hadn't thought to take him out earlier. It had always seemed too egregiously typical, she supposed. But now she saw that being in the world had wrong-footed Sebastien in a way she rather liked; she felt that she was now on a sort of home field advantage.\n\n\"Do you want to play Pooh sticks?\" she said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Like in _Winnie-the-Pooh_?\"\n\n\"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar.\"\n\n\"You never read _Winnie-the-Pooh_?\"\n\n\"My parents' tastes skewed more continental, I'm afraid.\"\n\n\"You drop a stick in the water and see whose stick gets to the other side of the bridge first.\"\n\n\"It sounds like a thrill.\"\n\n\"Well, it was a game for fictional stuffed animals, so yeah. It's dumb. Let's play. Find a stick.\" Lily had never thought to do this before, either\u2014to just go ahead and tell Sebastien to do something. She was forever being deferential, forever letting him set the terms of their conversations, forever allowing him to lure her farther and farther into swampy and sardonic terrain on which she'd never have a hope of standing upright. But now they were outside, and the sound of the river was making it hard to banter, and Lily knew that Sebastien would do whatever she told him to do.\n\n\"What?\" he said.\n\n\"Go find a stick,\" she said severely. \"Make sure it's a good one.\"\n\nSebastien gave her a baleful look and walked off into the woods. Lily ran off into some scrubby weeds and found a twig. She ran back, breathless. Her hands were dirty. This was friendship; this was the stuff of memory and future nostalgia. They reconvened on the bridge.\n\n\"Okay,\" she said, peering into the water. Below them, the river was roiling obsidian; the reflection cast by the moon was shaky and insubstantial. \"Let go.\"\n\nThey let go. Lily grabbed Sebastien and pulled him to the other side. A stick emerged a moment later, and then another. \"I can't tell which is which,\" said Lily. She was laughing a bit more buoyantly than she ordinarily might. This was her little impulsive adventure, after all, and she knew she had to make it feel as though they were having joyful and terrifically arbitrary fun. In the modern world, this was usually the girl's job. She'd seen enough movies to know.\n\n\"It's mine,\" said Sebastien. \"I'd recognize it anywhere. Mine won.\"\n\n\"You cheated!\" said Lily. She hit him. She'd been planning on accusing him of cheating all along, no matter what happened.\n\n\"You let me win!\" he said.\n\nLily spanked him playfully and then grabbed his hands and pulled him to the ground. She was trying to be a spritely elf of high spirits and curiosity. She was trying to be a person who might cause trouble sometimes\u2014but only because she was so lively and nonconformist, only because she was so special, and not because she ever meant any harm.\n\nLily strung her fingers through Sebastien's. They lay in the grass for a long time and Sebastien told her many things about the constellations. And although Lily knew for a fact that at least some of the things he was saying were wrong, she decided to pretend that she did not.\n\nThat night, lying in bed\u2014after taking off her shoes in the entrance, carefully picking her way across the linoleum, and closing the door to the basement with the most exquisitely gentle of clicks\u2014Lily could not sleep. Within her, a tremendous sea of unease was twisting into a cyclone; the dreamy magic of the evening was over, and she was left with a stark and uncomfortable fact: Beatriz hated her. Beatriz _hated_ her. And not just for things she did, but for things she had not done. Katy managed to fly below the radar, and why was that? Was it only because her face was so pretty, and so pretty in such a sweet way? Was it because she never ventured an opinion at dinner? Or was there something she was actually doing right, something that Lily could actually learn from? Was it true that Katy was somehow paying more attention?\n\nLily sat bolt upright. \"How did you know they were being sued?\" she said.\n\nIt was possible that Katy was asleep\u2014it was late, the lights were out, and Katy had not spoken when Lily had entered and climbed the ladder to the top bunk, her toes painfully monkeying around one rung and then the next\u2014but somehow, Lily did not think so: The room vibrated with some other awareness, and Lily suddenly felt sure that Katy had been waiting for her.\n\nThere was silence. Lily felt the minor heave of Katy rolling over. \"Sebastien told me,\" she said at last.\n\nAt this, Lily nearly bonked her head on the ceiling. \"Sebastien told you? How?\"\n\n\"I went over there to ask him.\"\n\nLily lay back down. Her heart was pounding. She tried to keep her voice steady and light. \"I didn't know you guys were friends.\"\n\nLily could feel Katy shrug. \"We're not, really.\"\n\nNot really friends, as Lily well knew, could mean any number of things. It could mean enemies, or frenemies, or fuck buddies, or fuck frenemies, or any countless variations thereof. It would be far too horrid to ask for clarification, of course, so Lily did not. \"I thought you couldn't stand him,\" she said instead.\n\n\"Well, I said we _weren't_ really friends. And anyway, no, I can totally stand him.\"\n\nA realization was opening up in Lily, a knowledge of galactic vastness and obviousness. Of course. She thought of the way Katy always steered the conversation toward Sebastien\u2014who really cared that much about some other girl's sex life? She remembered the night after that first dinner, when Sebastien and Katy had stood on the porch together\u2014Sebastien looking flustered, Katy smoking a cigarette (who would have thought?). Lily had seen them from the basement bathroom window, though she hadn't cared enough to really think about it at the time. But she saw now that Sebastien had probably preferred Katy from the start and had settled for Lily only as a consolation prize. And perhaps the two of them had had some ongoing whatever\u2014attraction or flirtation or fling\u2014its exact nature did not really matter; it did not really change anything. Sebastien might even really love Lily, for all she knew, with a sort of diffuse, redirected, anonymous love. That's how most boys were, in her experience; they could love with real tenderness, but their love was almost always aimed at a woman's most generic qualities\u2014her sweetness or softness or relative beauty, her archetypal feminine characteristics, whatever Freudian maternal shadows she cast\u2014and so it was fungible, nonspecific. Empty, finally, even if it was technically real. Just look at Harold and the accounting major! Lily had been wise to practice a strategy of passive resistance, of conscientious objection, throughout that entire relationship. Boys were all the same, even Sebastien, who had seemed so promisingly weird. All he really wanted was a woman (any woman!) who was sweet and reasonable and attractive. And Katy was all of these things\u2014she was, in fact, more of these things\u2014than Lily would ever be.\n\n\"Anyway, he may not be my favorite person in the world,\" Katy was saying. \"But it's very obvious he's totally nuts about you.\"\n\nTo this, Lily said nothing. She rolled over. She stared at the ceiling for a long while. She did not sleep. And this time, she was positively sure that Katy was not sleeping, either.\n\n# CHAPTER TEN\n\n## March\n\nOn Wednesday, the DNA results came in.\n\nAs Eduardo had expected, there was nothing of Sebastien LeCompte anywhere in the house. As Eduardo had also expected, there was nothing of Javier Aguirre, the nightclub owner whom Lily had named. What was more, Aguirre had supplied an ironclad alibi\u2014a night at a strip club, complete with security footage you did not want to see and bookended by ATM withdrawals. The DNA that was all over the crime scene\u2014in the semen in Katy's body, in the spots of blood on the carpet, in the contents of the astonishingly unflushed toilet bowl\u2014derived from a man named Ignacio Toledo, who'd been a sometime bartender at Fuego and had apparently not shown up to work since Katy was killed.\n\nToledo had been arrested twice before\u2014once for possessing paco cocaine and once for vandalizing a car, though what he'd really been trying to do, no doubt, was steal it. He'd testified against his friends both times and had spent eighteen months in Villa Concepci\u00f3n for the second conviction. He didn't have a history of violence, at least not that the state had noted, but that did not matter. We all create our histories as we live them; every killer had once lived many years as an innocent. And if there were two great democratizers of violence, in Eduardo's experience, they were prison time and paco cocaine.\n\nAs Eduardo had further expected, there were also several substantial signs of Lily Hayes at the scene of the crime\u2014on Katy's mouth (the defense would try to explain this via the improbable CPR), on one of Katy's bras (Eduardo couldn't quite imagine what they would come up with for that one), and, most incriminatingly, on the knife. Eduardo knew what the defense would say about that: It was a kitchen knife, after all, to which the whole household had had access. In the interviews Eduardo had conducted, neither Beatriz nor Carlos Carrizo could summon a single memory of Lily cooking anything, ever; furthermore, Lily herself had never once mentioned cooking in Eduardo's previous conversations with her, during which he'd established an extensive accounting of all the usual aspects of her daily life. Still, the panel would likely find it perfectly plausible that Lily _might_ have handled the kitchen knife at some point during her stay with the Carrizos\u2014and really, who could be perfectly sure that she had not? In the end, in fact, it was the bra clasp that was murkier\u2014and in some ways, more important. Here was an object that Lily should have had no occasion to handle, and here was proof that she had.\n\n\"Why did you tell us that Javier Aguirre did this?\" Eduardo asked Lily. She was flanked by her two lawyers, who had been hired days ago by the Hayes family but only recently become cognizant, it seemed, of their client's ongoing propensity for unsupervised chats with the prosecution. Eduardo knew both of them slightly: Velazquez, whose bald head gleamed so forcefully it looked spackled, and Ojeda, who was so fat that you had the sense that, if you were very, very quiet, you might actually be able to hear him getting fatter. Ojeda was good at his job\u2014he was brilliant and ruthless and clinically efficient\u2014and he deployed his fat, Eduardo was sure, as a method of getting people to underestimate his capabilities. Eduardo couldn't help but feel a grim admiration for this tactic, as well as a certain affinity with it. Velazquez and Ojeda would forbid Lily, of course, from speaking with Eduardo in any more conversations pertaining to her role as a defendant. But her mention of Javier Aguirre as a possible suspect meant that any hypothetical prosecution of him would mean Eduardo's calling Lily as one of his own witnesses, and even Lily's lawyers could not stop him from speaking with her about that.\n\n\"I didn't,\" said Lily.\n\n\"You could be charged with slander, you know. There could be a civil case.\"\n\n\"I didn't tell you that he did it.\"\n\n\"Do you want me to read you the transcript?\"\n\n\"You forced me to say someone!\"\n\nEduardo pretzeled his face into an expression of bewilderment. \"How did I force you? Were you threatened? Were you in any manner physically coerced?\"\n\nLily looked down. Her unwashed hair made heavy curtains around her face; behind it, her eyes were quartzitic and glittering. She did not answer.\n\nEduardo leaned forward. \"Why, Lily? Why did you name Javier? Did you have problems with Javier? Problems at work?\"\n\nLily shook her head. \"I never had a problem with Javier.\"\n\n\"He did fire you, though.\"\n\n\"For the party, yes.\"\n\n\"I've heard you were having problems before that.\"\n\nLily bolted upright. \"Who said that?\" she said. It would have been touching were it not so perverse: She actually still cared about how her job performance had been perceived.\n\n\"You dropped things, I understand. Your drawer came up short.\"\n\n\"I was new!\"\n\n\"You gave us this name, Javier Aguirre, and that has led us down the wrong track.\"\n\n\"I didn't mean to.\"\n\n\"But we've been on the right track all along, haven't we, Lily?\"\n\n\"All right,\" said Velazquez, standing up. \"That's enough of this.\"\n\nAt night, Eduardo listened to the recordings of his interviews with Lily, hoping to hear something new. It seemed to him that time had forked lately, that his life was running on parallel tracks. In every moment there was Maria: her smooth back, the aquiline sweep of her nose, the perfect and enduring certainty of her sleep. And in every moment, simultaneously, there was Lily; fragments of Eduardo's conversations with her coursed through his consciousness likes tides.\n\n_You slept all day, you're saying? And you didn't think it was odd that Katy didn't appear? Not even once? You didn't think to look for her?_\n\n_I did look for her. Jesus Christ. I found her!_\n\nAgain and again, Eduardo listened. Again he pressed play, and again he was walking into the jail, his dress shoes squeaking against the floors, the sense of obdurate underlying filth everywhere made more potent by the astringent smell of cleanser all around him. In every moment, it seemed, he was staring at those same taupe walls, the light through the high windows above them alternately gray and dull or yolky and rapturous, depending on the time of day. In every moment, it seemed, he was standing underneath the enormous PROHIBIDO FUMAR sign, wishing he could have a cigarette, his head growing marginally lighter with either fury or discouragement or settled, piercing clarity.\n\n_But you didn't think to look for her earlier_.\n\n_I thought she was asleep_.\n\nOn the tapes, Lily's voice had a slight elusive lisp that Eduardo had never noticed in real life. And the tapes had other, less trivial secrets to reveal. Slowly, Lily's connection to Ignacio Toledo was taking shape in Eduardo's mind. At first, Ignacio Toledo did not seem to fit into Lily's life. But once you looked closer\u2014once you knew Lily Hayes like Eduardo did\u2014you saw that, in fact, he did.\n\nMost important, perhaps, he was the opposite of Sebastien LeCompte. Sebastien LeCompte was handsome, for a particular taste, as well as wealthy beyond imagining. But he was also, by all accounts, impossible: sphinxlike, maddeningly detached, forever circling around life and speech, both, in half-ironic, riddle-filled whirlpools. What better rebellion for someone like Lily than a night with a man who was none of these things\u2014a man who was uncomplicatedly masculine, straightforwardly working class? This was the girl, after all, who'd taken photos of a pantsless boy, a deformed woman: a girl on a quest for authentic Argentinean grotesqueries, things she could do and see so that later she could tell about having seen and done them. Next to Sebastien LeCompte, Ignacio Toledo would seem completely real and more than a little dangerous.\n\nLily would not have known how dangerous, of course, when their night began. But then, she would begin the night not knowing how dangerous she herself could be. And so the evening would begin with a minor cruelty: her rage at the breakup with Sebastien and his involvement with Katy would lacquer over her smaller rage at being fired from Fuego, and she would go there to find Ignacio Toledo, the one person with whom she could exact revenge on everyone\u2014Sebastien and Katy, Javier, even Beatriz Carrizo (who would surely have blanched at the thought of such a man in her house for tea, let alone for homicide)\u2014all at once. It was masterfully efficient, really, even if Lily had not been entirely aware of what was impelling her moves that night, as Eduardo presumed she had not been\u2014her motives were massed within the mammoth blue iceberg of her subconscious, looming undetected below the blind, white fragment of her thoughts. And so Lily would go to the club as it was closing, perhaps not quite knowing why, but feeling reckless and competent and bold. You look upset, Ignacio Toledo might say to her, and offer her a drink on the house. I'm not supposed to be here, she might say. He would raise his eyebrow and press a finger to his lips and say, I won't tell.\n\nFrom then on they would be coconspirators\u2014first in a second drink, maybe, and then a third. Afterward they would leave the club, and at some point Toledo would produce the paco\u2014and although Lily did not take it (her drug tests revealed only marijuana), its nearness would give her a proxy shot of adrenaline, a mutinous thrill at witnessing something so much closer to real subversion than whatever was voguish among the high-achieving white children of Vermont. Eventually Ignacio Toledo would propose some plan for the evening, and Lily would agree to it. She probably hadn't known him well\u2014that much was probably true. But she'd wanted to have an adventure; she'd wanted to go out and explore the dark corners of the city. And, at this point in the evening, Ignacio Toledo probably still felt like something of a chaperone.\n\nEduardo did not doubt that they had not planned to kill Katy. The unflushed toilet alone made this clear. But they'd gone back to the house\u2014drunk and high and wanting something from Katy that she would not give, or perhaps trying to give something to her that she would not take: drugs or sex or money (hers or, perhaps, the Carrizos') or some combination thereof. And perhaps Katy had threatened to call the Carrizos, or perhaps the cops, and suddenly Lily\u2014her aggression deformed by drugs, her inhibitions shattered by alcohol\u2014felt all of her resentments surge forth into a rage. This violence was not inevitable for her; she was not a person who would have killed somebody eventually anyway, no matter what course her life took. But she had always been a person who _could_ have killed somebody\u2014as, in Eduardo's experience, a terrifying number of people were. It was this potential, ultimately, that she'd brought to the crime. Ignacio Toledo brought the drugs, the criminal history\u2014maybe even the idea, the initial spark of brutality that set that whole room ablaze. But Lily had brought the template: the latent sociopathy, the entitlement. And, in the end, she'd brought the opportunity. After all, she had provided the house\u2014there was no sign of a break-in\u2014and, in doing so, she had provided Katy.\n\nAgain and again, the tapes ended; again and again, Eduardo climbed into bed next to Maria. It was her return, he knew, that had enabled him to see the truth in Lily\u2014that had given him the courage to keep looking until he saw it\u2014without being blinded by the wrong stories or paralyzed by their repetition. The television people were obsessed with Lily Hayes, as well as entirely convinced of her guilt. But it had become clear to Eduardo over the weeks that they were convinced for all the wrong reasons; their certainty might be correct, but it was essentially reactionary, unearned. The world did not know Lily like he did. Stills from the security footage were paraded alongside pictures from Lily's own camera, and the TV was forever running images that were widely thought the worst: There was Lily at the church, her bosom spilling wildly; and there she was mid-kiss with Sebastien on the day of Katy's death; and there she was in front of a condom display, her eyebrow raised into a bemused isosceles triangle, only a few hours later. Those photos were bad, of course. But, Eduardo thought, they were not as bad as the others, the ones that didn't feature Lily herself\u2014the woman with the blood blister, the small naked boy. That's where the real Lily Hayes was\u2014not as a subject of the photographs, but as their merciless off-stage director. It was too bad, Eduardo often thought, that the TV didn't run _those_ photos. But expecting the media to realize their significance would be like expecting a dog to look where you were pointing, instead of at your finger.\n\nWhatever the quality of the world's certainty, Eduardo still liked to imagine delivering the justice that it wanted\u2014this was, of course, only human. And he knew that if Maria hadn't returned to him, he could have drowned in the potential consequences of success, as well as the potential costs of failure. It was true that Eduardo had failed before. Not often, but occasionally\u2014once quite notably, when an accused murderer and rapist, fully prosecuted in the media, had been let off because a junior policeman had behaved cavalierly with the crime scene semen. This had not been enough to disqualify the case in and of itself, but the fervor\u2014the \"zealotry,\" a stern TV commentator had said\u2014with which the DNA had been collected had meant that the most important piece of evidence had been disallowed in court. Eduardo's arguments were worth nothing then. After the verdict, he had walked out of the courtroom and into a cluster of journalists punching away on their obnoxious little BlackBerrys, which they'd all managed to buy before the shortage. Eduardo had been all over town looking for one\u2014to Movistar in Palermo, to Claro in Recoleta\u2014but to no avail, and so he had to walk all the way back to the office to begin sending the necessary apologetic emails.\n\nAnd if Maria had not returned to him, Eduardo could imagine losing himself now under the weight of his fears, the shadow corollaries of his each and every hope. If she had never left him, in fact\u2014if Eduardo had never known the pain of that loss\u2014things could be even worse than that: He might have become consumed with worldly ambition, the wish to have this success propel him solidly into the professional realm he deserved to inhabit\u2014the realm she deserved to have him inhabit\u2014so that their lives might thrum, at last, to some sort of hazy, satisfying conclusion. But losing Maria and then getting her back again had given Eduardo a deeper vision of loss, just as Dostoyevsky's mock executioners must have given him\u2014as he rose, shaking, to find himself still alive\u2014a keener understanding of the resurrection. Eduardo was wiser now, and he was able to look, and listen, and be ready for whatever he might learn.\n\n_All day? You thought she was asleep all day?_\n\n_I was asleep_.\n\nEduardo's certainty was no longer growing. But it was moving. It was shifting from his cerebellum to his gut: His hair pricked now when he heard Lily's voice on the tapes. He did not yet know how the killing had transpired, exactly, or what strange combination of drugs and lust had fueled it. But now\u2014when he looked at pictures of Lily's oddly faraway expression, that strange flatness around her eyes\u2014he was beginning to understand, more viscerally than he ever had before, that she really had done the thing he was saying she had.\n\n_You were asleep, or you thought she was asleep?_\n\n_I don't know. Both_.\n\n_You were simultaneously asleep and under the impression that Katy was asleep?_\n\nTheir conversations threaded around so much that Eduardo would sometimes grow confused by their redundancies, their repetitions, their minor adjustments in syntax; he'd feel himself getting lost in the sifting of relevant and irrelevant changes.\n\n_And then you attempted CPR_.\n\n_Yes_.\n\n_Had you ever performed CPR before?_\n\n_No_.\n\n_Had you ever taken a class on how to perform CPR?_\n\n_No_.\n\n_So tell me again exactly what you were trying to do?_\n\nAnd yet Eduardo persisted, letting Lily's voice echo within him as he got ready in the mornings\u2014staring into the chrome mirror with one eye closed, shaving incipient whiskers off his chin. Every day Eduardo looked the same, and yet there was a part of him that believed he was watching himself grow better, and that one day all of this virtue would suddenly reveal itself somehow.\n\n_Tell me about Sebastien LeCompte_.\n\n_I have told you everything I know_.\n\n_Remind me_.\n\n_Literally everything. I have told you things I don't even know_.\n\n_You've told me things you don't know?_\n\n_Because you made me guess_.\n\n_You've lied to me, you're saying_.\n\n_No!_\n\nEduardo knew he should never be grateful for his work, since having work to do meant that evil had been done, and that suffering had occurred. And so he tried not to think of this new momentum as a kind of happiness, though of course that's what it was.\n\n_You didn't like Katy. There's no crime in that_.\n\n_I did like Katy_.\n\n_You didn't_.\n\n_And even if I hadn't\u2014_\n\n_Even if you hadn't, what?_\n\nThe truth would emerge, like secrets rising out of the sea, like fossils stepping out of their clay, like everything that makes us understand our world and, at long last, ourselves.\n\n_But you were nice to Katy, nonetheless_.\n\n_Yes_.\n\n_Nonetheless what?_\n\n_What?_\n\n_You just said you were nice to Katy nonetheless_.\n\nYou _said that_.\n\nIn every moment, Eduardo was tiptoeing into the bedroom; in every moment, Maria was putting down her book in a hurry. She was fiercely private about what she read for reasons she would never discuss. Eduardo had learned long ago that Maria's secrecy could hurt him if he let it, and that ignoring this secrecy was his only armor, inadequate though it was.\n\n\"What does she say?\" Maria would ask, putting down her delicate gold-chained bifocals, hiding her book underneath the sheets. Her toenails were buffed to opaline; her skin was nearly translucent. In the light of the reading lamp, she seemed to glow from within.\n\n\"I can't tell you that,\" Eduardo would say.\n\n\"She isn't saying anything. I can tell.\"\n\n\"She's not saying anything she hasn't said already. I'm listening to tapes.\"\n\nBut this wasn't entirely true. Lily may not have said anything new, but Maria had taught Eduardo to listen to her anew\u2014and upon reflection, he had realized that the most damning thing that Lily had said in the interviews was not something that either of them had even realized was damning at the time. Argentina had always felt like a dream, she'd said. Nothing that had happened to her there had ever seemed totally real. And the night she killed Katy, Eduardo now saw, must have seemed the least real thing of all\u2014merely the part of the dream that curdles into nightmare in the final dark moments of the night. It must have seemed as bad as that, and nothing worse. It was Maria who had taught Eduardo to see this; it was Maria who had taught him to look beyond the signifier to the signified. He would tell her some of these things one day. He would thank her for them.\n\n\"Patience, mi amor,\" Maria would whisper, patting him fondly on the thigh. \"She will say something soon.\"\n\nOn Wednesday, Andrew took Anna out to Tigre, north of the city, to see the ocean.\n\n\"It's not really the ocean,\" Anna said, looking up from the pamphlet she was reading. She was sprawled over a handrail because there was only standing room on the train. Andrew was trying to ignore the public service signs above her head, obviously warning against malarial mosquitoes. They were both wearing splashily patterned shorts and flip-flops, packed in some fit of optimism or delusion he could not now fathom.\n\n\"It's just a delta,\" said Anna.\n\nAndrew shrugged. \"It will still be fun.\"\n\nWhen they were little, Lily and Anna had loved the sea. Andrew and Maureen had usually taken them in the summers\u2014going early to beat the heat, piling into the car with Cokes wilting in the back, sometimes getting there before the sun had even burned off the dew, while the fog still rolled in like tulle. Andrew would read _The Economist_ while the girls buried and unburied him. Sometimes they'd go in the winter, when the weeds were scraggly and the snow stretched out like sand and the water was a dimpled sterling. Andrew and Maureen would fill a thermos with hot cocoa and get the girls comically bundled in brand-new pastel snowsuits. When she was pregnant with Lily, Maureen had wanted to keep some of Janie's things for the next baby. But Andrew could not abide the thought of seeing another toddler in Janie's clothes\u2014it felt too nightmarish to contemplate\u2014and so Maureen had conceded the point, because in those days there'd actually been a very simple rule about who conceded what: Whenever there was a way for one of them to ease the other's pain in any way, they did. And so the new snowsuits had been bought, along with the new diaper bags and the new toddler shoes and a new arsenal of stuffed dogs and bears. Andrew had repainted the nursery. The Beatrix Potter d\u00e9cor was changed to Winnie-the-Pooh.\n\n\"What about it is going to be fun, exactly?\" said Anna.\n\n\"We'll rent a canoe,\" said Andrew. In the pamphlet, Tigre was brimming with nuclear families paddling happily in red kayaks. It was strange to Andrew that other people came to this country for vacation. \"We'll ride on a boat. Don't you still like boats?\"\n\nThe train stopped and the doors opened. Anna was backlit by sun and Andrew had to squint to see her. \"Tomorrow,\" she said. \"I want to go with you to meet with the lawyers.\"\n\nTomorrow, Andrew and Maureen would be meeting the lawyers to discuss the DNA findings. Lily's DNA, it seemed, had appeared on Katy's mouth\u2014which was not surprising, considering her CPR attempt\u2014as well as on the murder weapon\u2014which was actually not surprising, either, considering the murder weapon was a kitchen knife belonging to the Carrizos. Lily's DNA had also appeared, a bit oddly, on one of Katy's bras. Reassuringly, most of the DNA collected near Katy's body was from someone else. All Andrew knew about this person was that he was a man, and already in the system, both of which facts were suspicious, and thus encouraging. After hanging up the phone, Maureen had stared at Andrew emptily and said, \"Well, you might as well take Anna somewhere, since there's nothing else we can do today.\" He'd been glad for the chance. In the days since Maureen had arrived, Anna had moved mostly into Maureen's hotel room, and the two of them had spent their evenings together, whispering and watching telenovelas and, Andrew realized once when he picked them up for breakfast, drinking their way through the minibar. This made Andrew feel strangely frustrated; it wasn't that Andrew was the bad cop and Maureen was the good one, it was just that Maureen was both. Andrew could no more let Anna drink something out of the minibar than he could stop her from doing so, right in front of him, if she decided she wanted to. The fact that she didn't was, he understood, a courtesy that she extended to him\u2014like still calling him \"Dad\" and Maureen \"Mom,\" when Lily had long ago begun addressing them by their first names.\n\n\"It's going to be boring, sweetie,\" said Andrew, ushering Anna out of the train and into the depot, which smelled oppressively of pastries. All around were kiosks selling gum and soda and tabloids. Andrew tried hard not to look at the headlines.\n\n\"Boring?\" said Anna. \"Are you kidding me?\"\n\n\"Excuse me, do you speak English?\" A worried-looking couple with a map was standing in front of them.\n\n\"No,\" said Andrew, hurrying Anna out of the depot. Outside, the sky was blazingly blue, the palm trees obnoxious.\n\n\"Dad, what the hell are you doing? They were just trying to ask directions.\"\n\n\"Well, we can't exactly give them directions, can we? Now, will you look at this?\" Andrew gestured grandly. Before them, beer-colored delta water lapped desultorily against the hulls of rental boats. Nearby, a man was giving a bikinied woman a piggyback ride. Andrew could not understand what would impel an adult woman to allow herself to be carried like that. The entire town seemed to smell of coconut sun-block and Quilmes. Andrew could hear the woman's thighs slapping against the man's back.\n\n\"Dad,\" said Anna. \"I'm trying to talk to you.\"\n\n\"Listen, sweetie\u2014oh, shit.\" A mosquito was buzzing menacingly close to Anna; Andrew bent to swat it away from her leg\u2014which was denuded and well moisturized, he noticed: How did she possibly have the energy to keep shaving her legs?\u2014and then stood back up. \"It's going to be a big conversation.\"\n\n\"I know it's a big conversation,\" said Anna. \"That's exactly why I want to be there.\" Another mosquito veered brazenly toward her other leg, and Andrew waved that one away, too\u2014though this, he saw, was perhaps a lost cause. He couldn't really protect Anna from malaria, or a lingering death, or an interminable unjust detention. But it had to be better to keep pretending that he could.\n\n\"Dad,\" said Anna, \"you have to stop that.\"\n\nAndrew stood. Across the street, he could see, was a little stand selling ice creams and Cokes. \"Do you want an ice cream?\"\n\n\"Jesus Christ, Dad. You're trying to ply me with ice cream? I'm not nine.\"\n\n\"Anna, I'm sorry. You can't go to the meeting. They only want to talk to me and your mom, anyway.\" This was not technically true. Andrew marched Anna across the street to the ice cream stand. \"Uno helado, por favor,\" he said to the vendor, smiling brightly.\n\n\"What flavor?\"\n\n\"Um. Chocolate, please.\"\n\n\"Why don't you want me there, Dad?\" said Anna. \"Seriously. Tell me. Do you think you're going to hear something you don't want to in that conversation?\"\n\n\"Well, of course we will.\" Andrew lowered his voice. He wished he didn't have to know that the ice cream vendor spoke English. \"It's a gruesome thing that's happened, and we're going to hear all about it. And it's happened to a girl only a few years older than you. Which is part of why it's not a good idea for you to come along. This trip is upsetting enough for you already.\" Andrew rifled in his pocket for change.\n\n\"I know all that, Dad,\" said Anna. \"That's not what I'm wondering.\"\n\n\"What then?\" Andrew handed her the ice cream and was relieved when she took it.\n\n\"I'm wondering if there's something else we might hear that we don't want to.\" Anna sounded careful, and Andrew wondered fleetingly, uncomprehendingly, if she was talking about Lily's sex life.\n\n\"I don't know, sweetie,\" he said. He saw now that it was a mistake to have brought Anna here. It was too much; she was too young; her just-begun life with all of its own rich dramas and disappointments was being put completely on hold, and for what? \"But please don't worry.\" He pulled Anna to him, and she allowed this, barely, holding her ice cream away from her body with exaggerated awkwardness. Andrew could never get over how tall Anna was, how substantial and lanky; her body had grown into its own authoritative spin on his genetics, like she was the product of some kind of unholy tinkering with recombinant DNA. The possibility that a child of his could grow to nearly his height, could one day live to outlive him, was nearly as unthinkable as the fact that such a creature could ever die. It was possible, Andrew realized with terror, that he needed Anna here. She had, after all, already done more for Lily than he, or anyone else, had been able to. But none of that was any excuse to let her stay.\n\n\"Anna,\" said Andrew, \"do you think you'd like to go home?\"\n\n\"What?\" She wriggled out of his embrace. Andrew had meant it as an offer, but he realized it had come out as a kind of threat.\n\n\"We could get Uncle Phil to pick you up at the airport and drive you back up to Colby.\"\n\n\"I don't want to go back.\"\n\n\"You'll need to go back eventually.\"\n\n\"When Lily's free. She needs me here now.\"\n\n\"Anna, look.\" Maybe Andrew would just be honest. Maybe, for the first time in a long time, he'd just be direct. \"I need you here. Lily needs you here. Your mom needs you here. But just because we all need you here does not mean you have to be here. And while we figure all of this out, Maureen and I need to be your parents. We are still your parents.\"\n\nAnna was letting the ice cream melt onto her hand now, in a show of indifference either authentic or feigned. Andrew tugged off his backpack and started rummaging through it for the antibacterial hand wipes that he knew Maureen would have packed.\n\n\"Do you understand, Anna?\" Andrew found the wipes and marveled\u2014for the millionth time\u2014at Maureen's somber resourcefulness, her capacity to predict and prepare for all manner of future disasters, large and small. \"I want you here. I need you here. But there have to be limits. We have to protect Lily. We have to protect you. And what we need from you tomorrow is to stay in the hotel.\"\n\nThere was a sort of solar wavering in Anna's expression, but then it seemed to downshift and she smiled. Andrew handed her the wipes and she licked the melted ice cream off her wrist. \"Okay, Dad,\" she said.\n\n\"Okay?\"\n\n\"Yes. Okay. Now, do you want to see about renting a kayak?\"\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nThe next day, Maureen and Andrew rode in silence to Lomas de Zamora. Andrew clutched a paper bag with an egg sandwich for Lily; he'd just bought it and already it was leaking, turning the paper oily and translucent. At the jail, Maureen paid the driver with a twentypeso bill and Andrew was sure she'd get her change back in counterfeits, but he didn't have the heart to comment on either of these things.\n\nIn the waiting room, they sat. Maureen hadn't been to the jail before, and Andrew was glad that he was able to direct her through the metal detector, to point her toward the bathroom, to show her that things were not as awful as she might have imagined they would be. They waited. Maureen pawed through her bag and produced her wallet. Poking out of the billfold, alongside receipts and her United Airlines boarding pass, Andrew saw the blue tip of her passport. He nudged her.\n\n\"You shouldn't carry that around,\" he whispered.\n\n\"I know,\" she said apologetically.\n\nThis was where Lily got it, no doubt\u2014Andrew had never realized it before, but now it seemed obvious. Maureen had lost one child to death and another to incarceration, and yet here she was, breezing around town with her passport in her bag and accepting back fistfuls of cash as change without even holding them up to the light.\n\n\"Do you want to read something that will break your heart?\" said Maureen.\n\n\"No,\" said Andrew, because he was a little angry with her. \"Not really.\"\n\nMaureen ignored this\u2014she understood that Andrew did want to see the thing that would break his heart, that he couldn't bear not to see it now that it was on offer. She produced a journal from her overstuffed bag.\n\n\"Flip to the page that's paper-clipped,\" she said, handing it to him.\n\nThe paper inside the journal was creamy and expensive and lined with Lily's handwriting, and Andrew realized with an anguished stab that Maureen (or Anna) had thought to buy Lily a notebook and a pen and had figured out how to get it to her. He read.\n\nThings I Will Do At Home:\n\n\u2014eat a steak\n\n\u2014volunteer at a nursing home\n\n\u2014practice the oboe\n\n\u2014get up early enough to watch the sunrise 4 x per year (one per season)\n\n\u2014be nice to everyone\n\n\u2014set up a fundraiser for Katy\n\n\u2014apologize to Harold\n\n\u2014apologize to Sebastien\n\n\u2014apologize to Mom and Dad\n\nAndrew stared at the sheet\u2014the clean white paper, the handwriting shaky (from what? he wondered. From malnutrition or terror? Or merely from years of Internet use?)\u2014and his eyes filled with tears. He knew from much practice that the best thing to do now was to keep his eyes down and to open them very wide so as to prevent spillover. It was the line about being nice to everyone that really got to him. To Lily, this whole disaster must indeed seem the result of not being nice enough. She hadn't killed anyone, but she'd written a few mean-spirited emails. And now she was in jail, those emails paraded around everywhere as evidence of her depravity. Of course she was promising to be good, promising to be a lamb, promising never to think a mean thought, or any thought, ever again, if only they would let her out.\n\n\" 'Mom and Dad'?\" said Andrew.\n\n\"I know. Who knew?\"\n\n\"Where did you get it?\"\n\n\"She had the lawyers mail it.\"\n\nAndrew stared again at Lily's handwriting. Something about it made him afraid of what she might look like this week; he didn't like to admit it to himself, but he had some doubts about her internal resiliency. She wasn't the fussiest of all possible middle-class children, of course. She'd always worked in college; in the summers, she worked more than full-time, refusing offers of financial help\u2014this stemmed from some kind of confused and contradictory sense of self-sufficiency that accepted sizable government loans and even more sizable parental tuition payments and rejected all other forms of charity\u2014and it was clear that she actually enjoyed reveling in temporary, self-imposed poverty. Toward the end of her paycheck, Andrew knew, she ate mostly popcorn and hot dogs from her movie theater job. But all of this, of course, was because she'd had a childhood characterized by neither deprivation nor ostentatious wealth: a childhood in which modest desires were firmly affixed to what was actually possible. She did not know to regard the absence of comfort with fear\u2014partly because she wasn't particularly materialistic or entitled, but partly because she did not believe, not really, that such a state could ever truly be permanent. And that _was_ entitled, Andrew saw now\u2014that expectation of the universe's benignity. Lily felt she did no wrong, and that this demanded that no wrong be done unto her. The simplicity of this thinking beggared belief. It was almost too perilously sad for Andrew to contemplate.\n\nA security guard finally appeared and led them down the hall, Maureen clutching Andrew's hand. In the visiting room, Lily was sitting with her head down just where Andrew had left her the last time. He fought the image of her sitting there all week long, waiting for their return.\n\nMaureen went to Lily and gathered her up into her arms. \"Mom,\" Lily hiccupped, bending her head into Maureen's lap. Andrew leaned over both of them and pecked Lily on the cheek. Her hair was in clumps, and she smelled of oil and dirty laundry. Andrew did not know whether this was defiance or despair, or which would be worse.\n\n\"Sweetheart,\" said Maureen. She gently cupped Lily's head, as though she were a newborn\u2014fragile, tender-fontanelled. \"I love you, I love you, I love you.\"\n\nThis should have been the first thing Andrew had said when he'd visited. This should have been the first thing, not the last. Andrew patted Lily's shoulder, then reached into his bag for the sandwich. \"We brought you this,\" he said. It was chorizo with egg\u2014she'd loved this sandwich so much that she'd actually written home about it\u2014and it had been Andrew's idea to bring it to her. Lily lifted her head now and stared at the sandwich plaintively, as though she could not remember what one was supposed to do with such a thing.\n\n\"Aren't you hungry?\" said Maureen.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Lily.\n\n\"Why don't you take a bite, and maybe you'll find out that you are?\" said Maureen. This was a trick of hers that Andrew remembered from when the girls were little and prone to low blood sugar\u2014they'd run around and forget to eat and then they'd cry, and Maureen would have to coax them into taking bites of grilled cheese until they calmed down. Now Maureen handed Lily the sandwich, which she held limply for a moment before taking a tentative bite. She chewed for a very long time, as though she wasn't producing enough saliva to get the job done. She held her hand over her mouth daintily\u2014a strange affectation she'd picked up from someone at college, made odder now by her grubby hair and oily skin, as though she were some _Grey Gardens\u2013_ style fallen aristocrat. She'd never been a vain child, their Lily\u2014she always had a grass stain on her overalls or an eyelash on her cheek or a bit of cookie in the corner of her mouth; she was forever picking up cats and dogs against their will and getting animal hair all over her clothes. But she'd always been basically clean, basically presentable. The way she looked now was not entirely like herself.\n\nMaureen must have been thinking the same thing, because she said, \"Sweetie, here,\" and began rummaging once more through her enormous bag. \"I brought you a brush.\"\n\nLily stopped chewing but didn't swallow. \"Are you serious?\"\n\n\"I think it'd be a good idea to try to clean up a bit for the lawyers,\" said Maureen.\n\n\"Are you fucking serious?\" There was a flaky bit of egg on Lily's lip, or maybe it was a piece of dry skin. \"You want me to brush my fucking hair? _That's_ what you're worried about? That's what your priorities are?\"\n\nAndrew looked at Maureen. In the old days, Maureen had been very, very strict about language\u2014one time Lily had sworn at her when she was on the phone with one of her friends, and Maureen had calmly unplugged it\u2014but now her expression was pleading and subordinate. \"Sweetheart,\" she said.\n\n\"Stop calling me that, okay? Just stop it. I'm an adult. If you're old enough to have everyone think you killed someone, you're old enough to have your fucking parents stop calling you fucking sweetheart.\"\n\n\"Everyone doesn't think you killed someone,\" said Maureen. \"We all know you didn't kill anyone. I just think it would be a very good idea for you to look like you haven't. And like you haven't given up on yourself entirely, either.\"\n\n\"Well, what if I have?\" Lily snarled.\n\n\"This is part of the problem,\" Andrew ventured, and both Lily and Maureen turned to look at him like they were surprised he was still in the room.\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" said Lily. She didn't even sound angry. He wasn't the parent worth her anger.\n\n\"Impressions matter, is all I'm saying, sweetheart.\"\n\nAndrew was only reiterating what Maureen had literally just said, and so he could not understand why Lily and Maureen were both looking at him like he'd just now revealed himself to be the cruel man they'd always suspected he might be.\n\n\"Are you joking?\" Lily said, turning back to Maureen. \"Are you two joking? Because you never used to have senses of humor.\"\n\n\"Okay, Lily,\" said Maureen. \"Okay.\" She was making gentle curlicues on Lily's back now, and somehow Lily was allowing this. Andrew flashed to an image of Lily at age three or four\u2014it was summer, and she was sprawled out on the couch in tiny shorts, licking a bright blue Popsicle and singing along to the theme song of some wretchedly long-running soap opera while Maureen traced letters through her T-shirt. The light of that long-ago late afternoon was silvery through the picture windows; in the corner, the monitor crackled with the sounds of baby Anna, sighing in her red inscrutable dreams, and maybe all of them had thought for a moment then that their lives would turn out to be tolerable after all. _I love you_ , Maureen wrote, over and over, long before Lily could know what the shapes she was making meant. _I love you, I love you_.\n\n\"Okay, okay,\" said Maureen, and Andrew saw that she was leaning over with the brush and taking it gently to Lily's hair, and that Lily was not resisting. Andrew expected Maureen to say something\u2014to coo a little, or offer something comforting, or in some way acknowledge that Lily was submitting where before she had defied\u2014but she did not. She just kept brushing with one hand and stroking Lily's back with the other, and slowly Lily's hair returned to normalcy, and she began to look like a regular girl on a particularly bad day, but not necessarily in a particularly bad lifetime.\n\nVelazquez and Ojeda entered the room, and Maureen and Andrew stood up to greet them. Lily remained seated. Andrew did not like this new passivity of hers, this tolerance of manhandling and ordering and planning by others. The lawyers sat and spread manila folders out on the table. They did not coddle Lily, or tsk over her, or offer expressions of sympathy to anyone. Maybe this was because her situation was not as bad as some they'd seen, or maybe it was because it was much worse and they'd already entirely given up. Or maybe\u2014and, Andrew had to think, most probably\u2014it was just because the lawyers were absorbed in the particular details of their own lives, and were already looking forward to the dinners that waited for them at home.\n\n\"Well,\" said Ojeda. He was already sweating; his tie was tied too tightly and had the look of a purple silken snake throttling him about the neck. \"The bottom line is that the DNA results are fairly good for us. First and most importantly, there's DNA everywhere from a man\u2014a man with a criminal record\u2014who will now become the prosecution's central suspect. He's been arrested twice\u2014once for drugs, once for trying to steal a car\u2014and served nearly two years in prison. This is the man who committed this crime, and we can't stress how significant it is to have him already identified.\"\n\nMaureen and Andrew nodded. Lily's head listed to the side, her expression grave and still.\n\n\"Lily's DNA was present in three places, however,\" said Velazquez. \"On the victim's mouth, on a bra which may have belonged to the victim, and on the knife. Our first concern is with the knife.\"\n\n\"When you say 'the knife,' \" said Maureen, \"you mean the one that was\u2014used\u2014in the crime?\"\n\n\"The murder weapon, yes.\"\n\n\"My DNA is on that?\" said Lily in a small voice.\n\n\"Well, it was a knife from the kitchen,\" said Velazquez. He was looking at Maureen. \"It was a _communal_ knife. Beatriz Carrizo's DNA is on it, too. And Lily surely had occasion to use it for cooking. Didn't you, Lily?\"\n\n\"Sure.\" Lily nodded and clasped her hands in her lap\u2014a little prissily, Andrew thought. \"I'm sure I did.\"\n\n\"Can you think of a specific time you might have used that knife for cooking?\" said Ojeda.\n\n\"In particular, can you think of a time when somebody might have _seen_ you use that knife for cooking?\" said Velazquez.\n\nLily's face paled, suddenly looking as fragile and ovoid as an egg. Andrew struggled to produce a memory, any memory, of Lily cooking anything, but he could not. Lily was notoriously and stridently indifferent to cooking. On Thanksgiving she'd stand around holding forth and drinking wine while Maureen basted the turkey, Maureen mashed the potatoes, Maureen chopped the squash. Maybe Lily would be given the occasional minor task\u2014ferrying something from the counter to the table, polishing a glass, finding a ladle\u2014but Andrew had never seen her voluntarily reach for a cooking gadget of any sort, and he seriously doubted she had recently taken an interest.\n\n\"Well,\" said Ojeda, \"you don't have to remember right this second.\"\n\n\"As for the victim's body,\" said Velazquez, \"the fact that your DNA was on her mouth fits with your account of attempting CPR.\"\n\nAndrew cleared his throat, and the whole table turned to peer at him. \"Excuse me,\" he said. \"But shouldn't that be pretty fatal to the prosecution's case? That there's DNA evidence that Lily tried to save Katy, just like she said she did?\"\n\nOjeda looked at Andrew evenly. \"It fits with our narrative, yes,\" he said. \"But the prosecution will find a narrative that also fits.\"\n\nAndrew opened his mouth and then closed it again.\n\n\"Finally,\" said Velazquez, opening another folder. \"The bra clasp. This, too, could be easy to explain. Lily did live there. The bra might have even belonged to her, for all we know.\" He produced a picture from the envelope and pushed it across the table to her. Andrew leaned over. The photograph was of a white bra with a tiny blue flower at the clasp. \"Lily, did this bra belong to you?\"\n\nLily frowned. \"I don't know,\" she said. \"It might have.\"\n\nVelazquez glanced at Ojeda. \"You don't know?\"\n\n\"Sweetie,\" said Maureen.\n\n\"No,\" said Lily, looking quickly away from the picture. \"It wasn't mine.\"\n\n\"Did you and Katy ever share clothes?\" said Ojeda.\n\n\"No,\" said Lily faintly. \"I mean not that I know of. She wasn't really my size.\"\n\n\"No matter, no matter,\" said Ojeda, making a note on his pad. \"You might have picked it up sometime. Your laundry might have gotten mixed up. You lived together\u2014anything is possible. It's not surprising that your DNA is on some of her things. And there were irregularities with the evidence collection, anyway. None of the DNA results have been obtained or handled with the rigor they should\u2014that's not unusual, sadly. Establishing that lack of rigor will be our approach for any results we can't otherwise work with. But you don't need to worry about any of that now, Lily.\"\n\nVelazquez leaned forward. \"The real question here, Lily, is the other suspect. This is the person who committed this murder\u2014that much we know, and the prosecution knows it, too. So what they're going to try to do is place you there with him. And in order to do that, they're going to have to say you knew him. In fact, they're going to want to say you had some kind of a relationship with him.\"\n\nIn an earlier lifetime\u2014in an earlier week\u2014Lily might have said, \"But I didn't,\" as though this counted for something. But now she stayed quiet and nodded somberly, accepting this latest outrage without comment.\n\n\"So it's very important that you tell us now if you knew him, and if you did, what exactly your acquaintance with him was.\" Velazquez pushed forward another picture\u2014this one of a leathery-skinned man with a sleepy gaze\u2014and Lily leaned forward to look. Her expression was open and a bit curious, as though she thought it was possible that perhaps she'd known him after all, that perhaps they'd slept together, that perhaps she'd actually done all the things they said she had, and had somehow forgotten.\n\n\"Oh. Yeah. That's Ignacio. He works at Fuego.\" Lily looked up, her eyes wide. \"They think he did this?\"\n\nOjeda and Velazquez exchanged another glance. \"What were your experiences with him?\" said Velazquez.\n\n\"None,\" said Lily. \"I mean, hardly any.\"\n\n\"It's important that you try to remember this very carefully,\" said Ojeda. \"If you say you never spent any time with him, never spoke with him, and the prosecution finds evidence that you did\u2014even once\u2014that will be very, very bad for us. I'm sorry, Lily, but that's the reality.\"\n\nLily looked more closely, and a new faltering look came over her face\u2014whether it was recognition or invention, Andrew couldn't be sure. \"I don't know,\" she said. \"He worked there on weeknights, I think. We talked sometimes, I guess. Not very much.\"\n\nOjeda nodded. \"I see,\" he said. \"And was there anything else? Any other particular exchanges with this man? Any other dealings with him?\"\n\nLily shook her head.\n\n\"And I'm sorry, Lily, but we have to ask: Did you have any romantic or sexual involvement with him? Anything whatsoever?\"\n\n\"We can ask your parents to step out for a moment here, Lily, if you'd prefer.\"\n\nLily shook her head again. \"No,\" she said. \"They can stay. There wasn't anything like that. Like I said, I knew him from work. Just a little.\" She put her head in her hands. \"Jesus. I remember him staring at her that night.\"\n\n\"Which night?\" said Velazquez sharply.\n\n\"The night Katy came to see me at work.\"\n\n\"When was that?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\" Lily bit her lip. \"A week before my birthday, maybe?\"\n\n\"A date would be more helpful.\"\n\n\"Maybe the tenth?\" she said hesitantly. \"The tenth of February? Around then. And I saw them kissing. Well, I think I did. At my birthday party. On the seventeenth. I think.\"\n\nThis time, Ojeda and Velazquez did not exchange a glance; perhaps, this time, they did not need to. Velazquez leaned forward. \"Lily,\" he said. \"We will talk about all of that at length, and very soon. But first, I need to ask you another question, and it is very important that you tell us the truth. Do you understand?\"\n\nLily's eyes grew even larger. \"Yes,\" she said.\n\n\"Did Ignacio Toledo ever sell you drugs?\"\n\n\"Think carefully, Lily,\" said Ojeda quickly. \"It would not be a good idea for you to get this answer wrong.\"\n\nLily exhaled heavily, and Andrew could tell that she had been holding her breath. \"Yes,\" she said.\n\nMaureen drew back, as though recoiling from a gunshot.\n\n\"Just weed,\" said Lily. \"And just once.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Velazquez. \"And when was this?\"\n\n\"This was the day I was fired.\"\n\n\"Again, a date please.\"\n\n\"Maybe the eighteenth.\"\n\n\"Katy Kellers, you'll recall, was killed on the twentieth. So this was two days before that?\"\n\n\"I guess so,\" said Lily. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"And Lily, I'm sorry, but I have to clarify: The marijuana that Toledo sold you\u2014was that in addition to the marijuana that you told the prosecution you got from Katy?\"\n\n\"What?\" said Maureen. She turned to Lily. \"What are they talking about?\"\n\n\"Lily,\" said Ojeda urgently. \"We are not going to scold you. We are here to help you. But in order to let us do that, you need to tell us the truth.\"\n\nLily stared at the table, her eyes wide. \"No,\" she said. \"I mean, no, I never got any from Katy. Just Ignacio. I lied about that before.\"\n\nThe lawyers looked at each other and nodded. She had gotten this answer right. And Andrew saw how Lily could be persuaded to change her mind. He saw how she could be persuaded to say anything at all.\n\n# CHAPTER ELEVEN\n\n## February\n\nWhen Lily awoke it was late, the sun streaming in dusty and luxuriant chords through the window. Below her, Katy's bed was empty and neatly made, and Lily's suspicions of the night before seemed unwarranted, possibly paranoid. After all, anything that happened with Katy and Sebastien was really none of Lily's business. She was young, she was open-minded, she was philosophically opposed to reflexive monogamy, and if Katy and Sebastien had had a flirtation\u2014or more\u2014it had nothing to do with her. She was free to go find flirtations\u2014and more!\u2014herself, and maybe she would. Maybe she just would.\n\nAnd over the next few days, Lily was generally friendlier to both Katy and Sebastien than she'd ever been before. Being warm toward them was actually a relief from the elaborate invisibility campaign she was conducting at home\u2014the only way to avoid inadvertently provoking Beatriz's wrath again, Lily figured, was to stay far, far out of sight. She stopped watching television with the Carrizos in the evenings, she excused herself from dinners early, she tried to stay out of the house as much as possible. Housework was a difficult negotiation; Lily was afraid of seeming entitled and equally afraid of seeming presumptuous, and so she found herself striking odd balances\u2014like washing her own plates to sparkling by hand and then leaving them near the dishwasher for Beatriz to load with the rest of the family's. She even began eating less, as though to say that she could not be sure anymore that food was not also begrudged her. She knew that it was all a little much\u2014she remembered adopting similar poses in moments of aggrieved chagrin in childhood, performing ornate shows of brave despondency in the face of such grave injustices as bedtime, and she knew that she should not be acting this way as an adult. But she could not help herself. And at any rate, if Beatriz noticed\u2014or if she felt at all sorry for the way she had spoken to Lily\u2014she did not show it.\n\nAt school, Lily skipped more and more of her classes. All the rumors about study abroad were true, it turned out\u2014you really only had to show up for the tests. At Fuego, she was learning how to be more authoritative in her movements and more efficient with the dishware. Her Spanish vocabulary relating to food and beverages was expanding exponentially. She started jutting out her hip while taking orders, and she began taking smoke breaks with the kitchen staff, for which occasions (and these occasions only) she purchased her first pack of cigarettes. On these breaks, everyone stood around sounding very, very bored with Fuego, and Lily tried to sound bored, too. Feigning this boredom was one of the many minor thrills that, in aggregate, made the job one of the top thrills of Lily's life.\n\nIn bed, on nights when she bailed on Sebastien, Lily found herself making mental lists of all the things that she would do when she got home. She would eat all the American brands that she barely ever actually ate but suddenly acutely missed: banana-flavored Laffy Taffy, Skippy peanut butter, Coffee-mate creamer in decadent seasonal flavors. She would follow the news more carefully so that she could talk about it with Andrew. Most important, she would go outside more. The hills around Middlebury were so lovely\u2014purple in the fall, apple green in the summers\u2014and they seemed so close that you could walk up one. And maybe you could\u2014she had never tried! Why had she never tried? She would do that when she got back. She would walk in the woods with the faintly heaving shadows. She would call her friends\u2014especially the ones from high school, the ones who'd disappeared into a seemingly endless array of second-tier liberal arts colleges in upstate New York\u2014and ask them about their lives. She would be a better sister to Anna. Instead of text messages, she'd send her care packages, full of items responsive to the needs of a long-distance runner. She'd think later about what those might be. And, maybe most important, Lily would reconnect with her parents. She imagined going to long languorous brunches with her mother, long sunset walks with her dad\u2014why was there somehow never any time or appeal for these things when they were actually available? She blamed the Internet, somehow. But no matter. Buenos Aires was making her a better and wiser person. She would be twenty-one in a few days. And when she got back, things would be different. She would go camping. She would walk through slow-moving autumns. She would get up early and watch frosty New England sunrises.\n\nThe night of her birthday, Lily pre-gamed with Katy in the bedroom. They traded sips from a bottle of vodka that\u2014along with a plastic water gun shaped like a shark, a pretty rainbow-colored Buenos Aires shot glass, and an enormous and yolky chorizo egg sandwich that was still warm when unwrapped\u2014had been Katy's birthday present to Lily. For a moment, staring at the sandwich, Lily had felt a flicker of suspicion\u2014Was Katy trying to suck up? Was she trying to beg forgiveness? Was she trying to be funny?\u2014before she told herself to quit it.\n\n\"Thanks so much!\" she said, waving the sandwich. \"You know I love these.\"\n\n\"Yay!\" said Katy, giving Lily a hug. \"This is going to be such a fun night!\"\n\nLily boisterously agreed that it _was_ going to be a fun night. At Katy's urging, Lily had asked Javier about celebrating her birthday at the club and, to Lily's surprise, he had agreed. Now Lily watched as Katy dressed\u2014in tight jeans that Lily had never seen before and a shiny black shirt that looked wet and metallic in the light\u2014while listening to Beyonc\u00e9. Katy bopped and bounced and shook her finger, acting out the dance from the video.\n\n\"I think this song has really changed gender relations in our generation,\" said Katy, still bouncing. She was already a little drunk. Lily cocked her head. Normally she was the one to make grand pronouncements, espouse sweeping theories. But tonight she didn't really feel like speculating on anything bigger than her own life. \"Don't you think so?\" said Katy.\n\n\"I guess,\" said Lily. Katy's high spirits were making her edgy; she would have liked Katy to be in a somewhat less good mood. \"Did you bring those from home?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"The jeans.\"\n\n\"Oh. No. I bought them here.\" Katy switched to \"Alejandro\" by Lady Gaga, then spun around and tried to check out her own derriere, which was so much smaller and shapelier than Lily's as to be unrecognizable as the same body part. \"They're so tight I think they're going to give me a urinary tract infection.\"\n\nLily nodded but didn't laugh.\n\nKaty put on her best Gaga face. _\"I know that we are young and I know that you may love me...\"_ She giggled. \"Ugh. I shouldn't have eaten so much cake.\"\n\nLily nodded again and took a swig from the bottle. Beatriz had indeed made a homemade cake\u2014pink frosting, a swirling and calligraphic Feliz cumplea\u00f1os!, the works\u2014but Lily hadn't been able to enjoy it. She still felt bad about the incident with the phone call, as well as preemptively guilty for however she would be getting in trouble tonight. Somehow, Lily knew, Katy and Lily would both come home late and drunk, but Lily would be the one to get a lecture from Beatriz tomorrow\u2014Lily would cough, or trip, or break something coming in the door, or leave a telltale receipt behind somewhere. And Beatriz would wind up yelling at Lily while Katy slept, or highlighted her economics textbook, or watched the whole scene, innocent and mute. Lily was fairly resigned to this sequence of events, but she was not exactly looking forward to them.\n\n\"This song is just that Ace of Base song,\" said Katy. \" 'Don't Turn Around'? It's the same tune. Don't you think?\"\n\n\"I did in 2009,\" said Lily. She walked to the mirror and leaned toward it, mouth wide open, to apply some eyeliner.\n\n\"Is Sebastien coming tonight?\" said Katy.\n\nLily turned to do the other eye. This time her jaw cracked when she opened it. \"No,\" she said. She could feel the shot she had taken; she was enjoying the sense of life opening up. In the mirror, she dusted her freckles into oblivion; she made her expression hawkish and sharp. What did Sebastien know? He didn't know anything about her. He didn't even know it was her birthday. This thought gave Lily such a delicious stab of privacy that she started chanting it in her head as a kind of incantation while she did the rest of her face: _He doesn't know it's my birthday, he doesn't know it's my birthday_. In the mirror, Lily painted her cheeks mauve, her eyes purple, her lips a severe and sexual red. She was becostumed, she was bewitching. She hiccupped. She was buzzed.\n\n\"Why not?\" Katy said, and Lily could tell she'd already said it once.\n\n\"I didn't invite him.\"\n\n\"You didn't _invite_ him?\"\n\nLily shrugged. She liked the disturbing concavity of her clavicle when she shrugged; it was the only time she really looked skinny. \"I just don't think he'd have a very good time,\" she said, in a voice that was higher than her own.\n\nThis was true\u2014Lily did not think that Sebastien would have a very good time, but that was because she planned to have the kind of night he would not have a good time witnessing. If Sebastien liked Katy more than Lily\u2014still or originally\u2014then fine. That was only reasonable. That was, in fact, only right! But Lily was a modern woman, and men at the club hit on her sometimes, and tonight it was her birthday. Once she made out with someone else, everything would be even again between Katy and Sebastien and her: They'd all be equally progressive people with an equal number of fantastic possibilities before them. There were no hard feelings. All was fair in love and war, and this was neither.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Katy. \"I bet he'd want to be invited.\"\n\n\"Eh,\" said Lily, and shrugged again. \"Maybe it's time to meet someone new.\"\n\nKaty frowned a moment, and Lily saw her sober self\u2014endlessly concerned with feelings and appropriateness, Lily had always thought, though now she had to wonder\u2014shine through for a moment. But then Katy smiled and said, \"Well, maybe. You do look hot.\"\n\nLily made herself laugh and wiggle along to the song. \"You think so?\" She twirled around and then slapped Katy lightly on the arm. \"And how about you, missy? Ready to put down your widow's weeds and have some fun?\"\n\nKaty blushed\u2014blushing always made Lily look like she'd just had some kind of fit, but it made Katy look tawny and healthy and shining. \"Maybe,\" she said.\n\n\"Maybe!\" squealed Lily. She was not naturally a squealer, and she didn't much care for the voices she found herself employing when she was trying to be friendly to other women. But this was, like many things in life, a necessary evil. \"Listen to you. What, do you like someone?\"\n\nKaty blushed even deeper. \"Maybe,\" she said. \"Not yet.\"\n\nAt Fuego, Lily quickly saw how much she was going to enjoy knowing people that Katy did not know. She found herself waving manically at coworkers she didn't usually talk to, using first names more than was usual or required, making reference to fairly mundane incidents as though they were in-jokes (\"Hopefully no more guys ordering Patr\u00f3n tonight, right, Roderigo?\" she said; Roderigo looked confused). \"Oi, Hector!\" she shouted at Hector. \"Can we get a couple of vodka tonics?\" She handed Katy her drink with theatrical magnanimousness, as though Fuego were her home and Katy her guest. Katy accepted her drink happily, then handed it back to Lily almost immediately and went off to find a bathroom.\n\nLily made her way to an unobtrusive corner and gulped her own drink, nodding her head along to the music. She could feel the beat in her chest, more insistent than her own heart. She nodded at some coworkers, but they were all working. She made small talk with a couple of kids from the program who had wandered into the club in the hopes of free drinks. She began sipping Katy's drink. She experienced a flush of awkwardness at standing alone, then a surge of liberated spunky indifference, then a second wave of chilling and recalcitrant discomfort. She finished Katy's drink and headed back to the bar. As she was paying\u2014because it was understood that you didn't take more than one round for free\u2014she saw Ignacio the Tortoise out of the corner of her eye. He was in the back alcove, near the kitchen, and he was with a woman. Lily squinted. The woman was Katy. The woman was Katy, and Ignacio was grabbing her ass with two hands. Lily did a double take. When she turned back, they were just talking. Did Katy look upset? Did she look traumatized? It was hard to say. Around her, the club was a wavery, hilarious smear, and Lily felt very far away from everything. She grabbed her drink and marched over.\n\n\"I need you to come with me,\" she said, pulling Katy's arm. She tried to look distressed so that Ignacio would assume some dull girl problem was at hand, but then she felt actual distress breaking through on her face, and she realized there was no need to pretend.\n\n\"What?\" said Ignacio. \"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"Come with me,\" said Lily. She pointed to the bathroom and spilled her drink a little on the floor. Katy shrugged apologetically at Ignacio the Tortoise and followed Lily to the women's room. In the tawdry bathroom light, she looked at Lily hard, one hand on her hip.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" she said.\n\n\"Are _you_ okay?\" said Lily. \"That's the question.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about?\"\n\nSomehow Lily couldn't remember exactly why she'd brought Katy into the bathroom, but she knew there was something important they needed to discuss. \"We need to talk,\" she said.\n\nKaty looked solemn. \"Okay,\" she said.\n\n\"We really need to talk,\" Lily said, and then stopped. She careened around her own brain for a moment before tripping on the sharpest object. Suddenly she was filled with the piercing confidence that comes from unraveling a conspiracy. \"Why didn't you defend me?\" she said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nThe toilet flushed and a girl came out, staggering and fawnlike on her high heels, and washed her hands without using soap. Out of a strange retroactive sense of propriety, Lily waited until she left to continue.\n\n\"From Beatriz.\"\n\n\"What? When?\"\n\n\"When she found me looking at that paper.\" Yes, that was what it all came down to. Katy had betrayed her, and now it was time they finally discussed it.\n\n\"Defend you? I don't know what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"Beatriz just doesn't like me,\" said Lily. \"That's all. It's just not fair.\"\n\n\"Well, Carlos likes you,\" said Katy. Lily knew then that Katy was a little drunk too.\n\n\"Carlos likes everybody,\" said Lily.\n\n\"No. He doesn't like me. He thinks I'm boring because I'm quiet.\"\n\n\"He doesn't.\"\n\n\"Isn't that what you think, too?\"\n\nLily mulled this. It was so obviously true that she did not know what to say. She'd thought this was the kind of truth that had been so thoroughly tacitly acknowledged as to be well beyond mention\u2014like when a thin girl complains ceaselessly about her body to a fat friend, and the flagrant cruelty of this is both mutually understood and mutually unspeakable.\n\n\"Did you ever think about how it might make Beatriz feel that Carlos likes you so much?\" said Katy.\n\nLily felt a blank cotton taste in her mouth. \"It's not like that,\" she said.\n\n\"I know it's not. But don't you think it might feel like that to Beatriz? All the drinking and laughing and debating? And you're so young and gorgeous?\"\n\nLily shook her head. Katy should really not have said \"gorgeous.\" She really should have opted for a smaller word. Lily's mouth was twitching with real heft and persistence now; she kept waiting to lose it entirely and begin crying, and she kept not quite doing this\u2014but neither could she get the twitching under control, and she knew she must look like a waiter trying so comically hard not to drop a platter of dishware that you just wish he'd go ahead and throw the whole thing on the floor.\n\n\"I'm not saying she thinks anything's happening,\" said Katy, who was watching Lily's face with some alarm. \"Of course not. I just think that if you want Beatriz to like you better you might think about toning it down some with Carlos.\"\n\n\"Toning _what_ down?\" Lily nearly wailed. She could not figure out what Katy was referring to. It wasn't how she dressed. It wasn't what she and Carlos talked about. It certainly wasn't the way she acted\u2014she did not touch Carlos's arm, she did not bat her eyelashes coquettishly, she did not tilt her head back and laugh, she did not twirl her hair. She knew she didn't; she wouldn't like herself if she did.\n\n\"Just,\" said Katy. She bit her lip. \"Your personality.\"\n\n\"My personality?\"\n\n\"Just, you know. The things you do.\"\n\n\" _What_ things?\"\n\n\"Well, like, answering the phone is a perfect example.\"\n\n\"That was only polite! What are you talking about! You wouldn't have answered the phone?\"\n\n\"Well, think about it. They have an answering machine, right? So it's not like they're going to miss this once-in-a-lifetime phone call telling them they've won the lottery and never find out.\"\n\nLily gaped. Another gaggle of girls\u2014shiny-shirted, shiny-haired\u2014entered the bathroom and spilled together into one stall, where there was shuffling and shushing and sniffing and then, finally, giggling.\n\nKaty lowered her voice. \"Then also, Carlos is running a business, right?\" she said. \"And you know they're having legal troubles\u2014\"\n\n\"As if I even care about whatever is going on with that stuff! As if I could even _fathom_ anything more boring!\"\n\n\"So a message anyone might give would probably be pretty technical. And you know, your Spanish isn't that good\u2014\"\n\n\"It is good! I understand everything they say!\"\n\n\"They talk slower to us. They talk way slower to us. Do you understand everything strangers say? And on the phone you can't see the person, which makes it a ton harder.\"\n\nThe shiny girls exited the stall, wiped their noses, straightened their hair in the mirror, and left.\n\n\"And then,\" Katy went on, \"what do you think it seems like for some random young girl to be answering the phone at their house in the middle of the day? Do you think it might seem strange to someone? Do you think it might be the kind of thing that could make Beatriz a little bit embarrassed or uncomfortable?\"\n\nLily's lip was quivering again.\n\n\"And then, finally, you're so upset that Beatriz is mad at you, you're creeping around the house all the time seeming _so_ sorry, but did you ever actually tell her you were sorry? I mean, you explained, but did you ever actually apologize?\"\n\nLily was silent. She had not.\n\n\"See, it's not that you're actually _doing_ anything,\" concluded Katy, with the air of finally finishing a speech she'd long been anxious to deliver. \"It's just that you don't think about these things.\"\n\nKaty was right. Lily didn't think about these things. She didn't want to have to. She didn't want to tiptoe through her life\u2014she wanted to act impulsively; she wanted to be understood and, if need be, forgiven. She wanted everyone to know that she meant well. She wanted everyone to fucking _relax_. Her ears were ringing, her nostrils filled with a lethal silver smell, and for a moment she thought she might pass out. But then she recovered, and refocused, and straightened her shoulders. She was going to be herself, and she was going to say what she meant, and she did not care what anyone else thought about it.\n\n\"I don't mind about you and Sebastien,\" said Lily. \"Whatever it is.\"\n\nKaty took a step back, her eyes wide. \"There's nothing with Sebastien.\"\n\n\"Ignacio, though, is _seriously_ gross. Really, you could do better than either of them.\"\n\n\"What are you talking about? There's nothing with Sebastien. You're being nuts.\"\n\n\"No, I really don't care.\"\n\n\"There's nothing to care about. You want to call him and ask?\"\n\n\"Exactly.\" Lily felt a strange twisting despair, an aloneness shocking in its completeness and profundity. She wondered if this was because she was drunk or if she sort of always felt this way but was so repressed that being drunk was the only thing that could bring it forth. \"I'm sorry,\" she said, lunging at Katy with a sloppy, ill-advised hug, and not at all sure what she was sorry for. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and saw that her eye makeup had smeared. She licked her lips and tasted the sodium of her sweat alongside the blunt chalky taste of her makeup.\n\n\"That's okay,\" said Katy, patting Lily's shoulder, obviously surprised at the shape the evening had taken. In the mirror, Lily looked garish, cartoonish. What the hell was she trying to prove? Who the hell was this for? Sebastien wasn't even here. She had the kind of headache that came from crying, even though she hadn't been. And Sebastien wasn't even here. Sebastien didn't even know it was her birthday.\n\n# CHAPTER TWELVE\n\n## March\n\nWhen Eduardo went to Sebastien LeCompte's house again, it seemed as abandoned as it had on his earlier visits. For the fourth time, Eduardo walked up the dusty unkempt path, for the fourth time he knocked the heavy knocker, for the fourth time he brushed away cobwebs from one of the first-story windows and squinted into the house's interior. It was mostly dark, as usual, but this time Eduardo could see what he thought were candelabras in the corner, partially obscuring an uncurtained western window, casting hand-shaped shadows on the floor. The furniture was draped in white sheets, looking like sand dunes.\n\nIt was strange to Eduardo that a house like this could exist in Buenos Aires\u2014or, really, anywhere. It was so glaringly a relic of another time\u2014a time when dapper intelligence men in other parts of the world spent their time warring with their counterparts over cocktails and tennis, though down here they were mostly focused on making inadvisable military hardware sales\u2014and if it had been cared for, it would have been lovely. It had fallen apart through neglect, though, and Eduardo could not fathom why a boy with so many other options would want to stay in it\u2014or, for that matter, why a house like this had been relinquished to the ownership of a spoiled teenager in the first place. Eduardo could only assume it was a murky form of payoff for whatever unpleasantness had befallen Sebastien LeCompte's parents; and perhaps, after all, this was a fair trade.\n\nEduardo walked to the side of the house and tried to peer in the windows there, but those, arbitrarily, were hung with heavy green velvet curtains. He walked around to the back of the house and stared into the copse of woods behind it; he had not gone there on his previous visits. He was about to turn around and investigate the undefended back window when his eye landed on a small patch of feverish green. A garden. Eduardo moved closer. He saw sprigs of plant life, newly watered, alongside the hanging bulbs of some kind of vegetable Eduardo did not recognize. Could this be the work of Sebastien LeCompte, playboy and layabout? Perhaps the house had squatters.\n\nEduardo made another lap, banging on every window, saying loudly and methodically, \"I know you're in there. I know that you are in there.\" When he rounded the corner to try the front door a final time, there, standing barefoot on the footpath, was a disheveled postadolescent in striped pajamas.\n\n\"Hello,\" said Eduardo. \"You must be Sebastien LeCompte. I'm Eduardo Campos.\" He produced and flashed his ID, but the boy was not looking. \"I work for the state.\"\n\n\"You're finally here,\" said Sebastien. \"I've had the table set for days.\" There was a frisson of domestic haranguing in his voice, which Eduardo took to be some kind of grim joke. But then the boy gestured into the house, and through the open door Eduardo could see that the table was indeed dustily arranged\u2014arrayed with plates and knives and dull pewter goblets, place settings for a family of depressed ghosts.\n\n\"I want to talk with you about Katy Kellers,\" said Eduardo, pocketing his ID. \"Might I come in?\"\n\n\"What kind of a host would I be if I said no?\"\n\nInside, the room was populated with perhaps a half dozen large objects\u2014more than Eduardo had been able to see from outside\u2014all obscured by muslin sheets, making the house feel like a winter residence of a rich family away at the shore. On the mantel crouched a wizened, arabesqued clock that had stopped working some late afternoon\u2014or early morning\u2014a very long time ago. Eduardo was somehow quite sure that it had been a very long time ago. Next to the clock was a photo of a young Sebastien, standing next to a man who was obviously his father, presiding over a dead tapir. In the center of the room was a teetering, moldering Steinway. Here, indisputably, was true status wastefulness; it was too bad the eternally shouting students weren't around anymore to shout about this.\n\n\"Care to sit down?\" said Sebastien. He pulled a sheet off of one of the objects, and looked surprised when it turned out to be a sofa. He patted it invitingly for Eduardo, then unveiled a different couch for himself. Eduardo sat.\n\nEduardo pointed to the piano. \"That looks like it used to be expensive.\"\n\nSebastien turned to it with an expression of mild interest, as though being directed to remark on a minor museum piece. \"Oh, appallingly so, I should think,\" he said.\n\n\"Do you play?\"\n\n\"Yes. I'm fabulously talented but, alas, intensely private and protective of my gift. Do you? You really ought to favor us with a number.\"\n\n\"Another time, perhaps.\"\n\n\"I'd offer it to you as a present if I didn't fear it might feel a _tad_ too snug in your car.\"\n\nEduardo ignored this. He pointed to the picture of Sebastien and the tapir on the mantel. \"He's a beauty,\" he said. \"You shoot that fellow yourself?\"\n\nSebastien turned around to look at the picture. \"That? Oh, that's not me.\"\n\nEduardo looked again. The older man was exactly identical to the person Eduardo was currently sitting across from; the child had his every feature in miniature. \"Your brother, then?\" he said.\n\n\"No relation. I picked the thing up from a flea market. Why, you think you see a resemblance? How strange\u2014I never noticed.\"\n\nAt this, Eduardo made a pretend note on his pad. It was curious that Sebastien would lie so early, and for so little. Often people who knew they were planning to lie tried to establish as much credibility as possible ahead of time: They volunteered extensive and accurate information about themselves, they made disclosures, they answered the vast bulk of verifiable questions with showy and elaborate detail, they readily admitted ambiguity wherever they could spare it\u2014as though any of this mattered in the slightest. As though the law had come to investigate their general characterological deceitfulness, not the very specific issue at hand\u2014what they saw, where they were, what they did, on a very particular day or night. Given this widespread tendency, Eduardo normally commenced interviews with a series of straightforward questions to which he already knew the answers and to which most people were more than willing to truthfully respond\u2014name, age, occupation, various other publicly available contours of their lives\u2014in order to establish a pattern and a rapport and, sometimes, to allow the person to relax. An interviewee's relaxation tended to work in Eduardo's favor, though few people understood this. A person who was terrified throughout an entire lie detector test\u2014for the true statements as well as the lies\u2014would be impossible to read; it was the relative relaxation that provided the gauge, which was why Eduardo usually tried to create it in his interviews.\n\nBut the usual approach, Eduardo saw, would not work with Sebastien LeCompte, and would only bore them both. He feigned another note on his pad. \"You knew Lily Hayes how long?\" he said, not looking up.\n\nEduardo could hear Sebastien drumming his fingers softly on the muslin. \"I already gave a statement to the police.\"\n\n\"Jog my memory,\" said Eduardo, looking up. \"We're starting over. You knew Lily Hayes how long?\"\n\n\"About a month.\"\n\n\"And how did you meet?\"\n\n\"The Carrizos invited me over for dinner. We struck up an acquaintance.\"\n\n\"And how would you characterize your relationship with her?\"\n\n\"Mind-bogglingly sexual.\"\n\nOn the whole, Eduardo would have preferred talking to almost any of his usual characters\u2014a small-time drug dealer with oily facial hair, a clinical sociopath, a burbling schizophrenic\u2014to talking to Sebastien LeCompte. It was important that Sebastien not see this. \"You were close, then?\" said Eduardo.\n\nSebastien leaned back and crossed his arms and appeared to cogitate. \"Might we define our terms here?\"\n\nEduardo folded his hands neatly in his lap. Indulging some stalling only underscored its futility.\n\n\"When we say 'close,' what do we mean?\" said Sebastien. \"I mean, in a sense, we were as close as two people can possibly be, and in another sense, we knew each other not at all.\"\n\n\"Could you be more specific?\"\n\n\"Probably not.\"\n\n\"You were sleeping together?\"\n\nSebastien's jaw dropped open theatrically. \"Truly, you push my chivalry to its limits. How is one to answer such questions and remain a gentleman?\"\n\n\"You were having a romantic relationship with Lily?\"\n\n\"I was trying to, certainly.\"\n\n\"Tell me about the night Katy died.\"\n\n\"I think if you'll refer to your file, you'll see you have the whole sordid tale right there.\"\n\nEduardo could feel the dull blade of a headache beginning to saw against his temple; he fervently wished he could tell this child to quit wasting both of their intelligence on such small battles. \"You know,\" he said, wedging his voice into its most avuncular tone. \"You're really not helping Lily this way. Maybe you're not trying to. I wouldn't want to presume. I understand you're a legendarily unknowable fellow. But if you want to be helping Lily, you should probably understand that you aren't.\"\n\nSebastien's face was blank. A breeze blew through the window, making a faint rustling sound in the curtains.\n\nEduardo leaned forward. \"Tell me about the night Katy Kellers died.\"\n\n\"Lily and I spent the night here. As I have frequently said.\"\n\n\"And what did you do?\"\n\n\"We watched a movie.\"\n\n\"What movie?\"\n\n\"Are there no limits to your sadism? You people are really going to make me admit to this again?\"\n\n\"What movie?\"\n\n\" _Lost in Translation_. We watched _Lost in Translation_. If I'd known you were going to be locking her up the next day, if I'd known I would have to tell so many strangers about it, I would have been sure it was something more obscure.\"\n\n\"And you fell asleep when?\"\n\n\"Probably around four.\"\n\n\"And you woke up when?\"\n\n\"Around eleven.\"\n\n\"And Lily was with you the whole time?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"You're sure of that?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Might she not have stepped out while you were asleep?\"\n\n\"Not possible.\"\n\n\"How do you know?\"\n\n\"We sleep tangled in each other's arms. Shared lucid dreams, sex every hour on the hour. Truly a cosmic connection we have.\"\n\n\"I see.\" Eduardo made another note, his pen scratching dryly. \"And, given that connection, how do you imagine Lily felt about your liaison with Katy Kellers?\"\n\nSebastien made a guttural sound, the dregs of what was probably supposed to be a disbelieving laugh. \"Liaison?\" he said. \"Is that what they're calling such things these days?\"\n\nEduardo gritted his teeth but was careful to keep his lips slack. \"Something shorter? A onetime incident, perhaps?\"\n\n\"I suppose you'd call it a zero-time incident, if you're really interested in crunching the numbers.\" Sebastien's voice now was something well beyond flat\u2014it was polished, it was Simonized.\n\n\"You are saying you did not sleep with Katy Kellers?\" said Eduardo.\n\n\"Goodness, you're tedious.\"\n\n\"Not once? That's your statement?\"\n\n\"Not once. Never. I am fairly sure I'd remember.\"\n\n\"That's not what Lily Hayes reported.\"\n\n\"On this, and on this alone, I fear Lily Hayes is mistaken.\"\n\nEduardo's headache was moving from the flanks of his head into its center; it was burrowing down, settling into itself, getting ready for the long haul. Eduardo would not let it bleed onto his face. \"You don't have to lie to me,\" he said, because of the headache. It was his first misstep.\n\nSebastien scoffed. \"If I had anything to lie about, I would absolutely have to lie to you,\" he said. \"But as it happens, I don't. And I did not have any kind of conjugal relations with the deceased. And I'm frankly appalled you'd even ask such a vulgar question.\"\n\nEduardo pressed on. \"Lily and Katy,\" he said, \"were seen having a fight at Fuego on the night of Lily's birthday.\"\n\nAt this, there was some little sub-physical twitch in Sebastien's face, some kind of barely suppressed psychomotor agitation. Eduardo stared at Sebastien long enough to let him know he had seen it. He never commented on changes in facial expression during interviews\u2014if he did, it would become clear to the interviewee how ephemeral such things were, how easy it was to dispute another person's perception, how quickly two people's interpretations of an event became equal and opposing forces and canceled each other out. Leaving facial clues obviously registered and pointedly unremarked upon made people feel that they had revealed something significant but as yet unutilized. This threw them off and edged them closer to actually saying something valuable, which, of course, was all that could ever actually matter.\n\n\"You're telling me that it wasn't you they were fighting about?\" said Eduardo.\n\n\"I assure you it was not,\" said Sebastien, recovering mastery over his face.\n\n\"What, then?\"\n\n\"I don't know. What do women fight about? Bra size? Sexual dominance? Competing predictions about the likely consequences of Mercosur's limits on trade restrictions? I don't know.\"\n\n\"Tell me what you heard of it. Maybe the two of us can piece it together.\"\n\n\"I don't know. I wasn't there.\"\n\n\"You weren't at Fuego that night?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You are telling me that you did not attend your own girlfriend's birthday party?\"\n\n\"As it happens, no.\"\n\n\"We can check that, you know.\"\n\n\"Modern police work is becoming so terrifyingly good.\"\n\n\"Why did you stay away? Because it didn't seem like a good idea to have to deal with Lily and Katy in the same room?\"\n\nSebastien LeCompte raised his head. \"I stayed away because I was not invited.\" His voice had to be some new category of deadpan; it was his singular invention in this life, his sole contribution to this world.\n\n\"It doesn't do you any good to lie to me about these sorts of things,\" said Eduardo. This was actually true. The little lies could not possibly help.\n\n\"I marvel at your continued insistence on this point.\"\n\n\"Why wouldn't Lily Hayes\u2014your girlfriend, the girl you were sleeping with\u2014have invited you to her birthday party?\"\n\n\"I think that's probably a better question for Lily. Do let me know what you hear.\" There was a fibrousness in Sebastien's voice now, and Eduardo suddenly understood that he was not lying about this\u2014and, though it might not be the only true thing he had said so far, it was the only true thing that actually meant anything to him. As such, it was a detail that would now need to be energetically pursued.\n\n\"That's a pretty aggressive thing to do, wouldn't you say?\" said Eduardo. \"To not invite your own boyfriend to your birthday?\"\n\n\"Well, I might not say aggressive. It was certainly very _emancipated_ of her. These twenty-first-century women, right?\"\n\nEduardo knew by now that there was no tonal variation between sincerity and irony when Sebastien LeCompte talked, and he could tell that this strange speech characteristic\u2014this sort of semantic monotone\u2014was deep and ubiquitous and actually authentic to him, though, of course, perhaps somewhat amplified by the context of the interview. The implication of this was that even if Sebastien LeCompte was rarely serious, he was not absolutely always joking. Eduardo decided to try something new.\n\nHe leaned forward, then pulled back and shook his head a little and leaned forward again. \"You know,\" said Eduardo, making his voice sound confiding, conspiratorial, as though he were an actor who was tired of being in the same bad play as Sebastien and it wouldn't hurt if they took a cigarette break backstage for a moment. \"My wife is rather erratic, too.\"\n\nSebastien's eyebrows rose in studied amusement, but he said nothing.\n\n\"She gets angry at me every other day, and to be honest? I have no fucking clue what it's about half the time. I truly do not. It's a giant guessing game. Did you find that with Lily sometimes? No, it's okay, you don't have to answer that. Of course you did.\" Eduardo almost added something like _We've all seen her Facebook posts, after all_ , but he decided against it. Alluding to some widely known fact about Lily here might not be a bad idea\u2014it might actually induce Sebastien to chuckle ruefully, naughtily\u2014but referencing material that had been acquired in the course of the investigation could only snap Sebastien back away from Eduardo. If he'd bent to him at all already. Which, it was quite possible, he had not.\n\n\"But you know, Sebastien, the thing is, when my wife is angry with me and I have no fucking clue why and I have to guess\u2014the thing is, sometimes I do actually guess right. If I really, really think about it. Maybe only a quarter of the time, but still, that's not statistically insignificant, you know? So tell me. If you had to hazard a _guess_ , why do you think Lily might have been angry with you that night?\"\n\nStill, Sebastien said nothing; his face was so blank that it did not even look like a blankness that was orchestrated to conceal. Eduardo would not have thought it was, if he hadn't known better.\n\n\"And, of course, Lily was angry with you and Katy both,\" said Eduardo. \"We know that much. So that's probably a clue. What might have made Lily angry with you and Katy at the same time?\"\n\nStill, on Sebastien's face, an expression of total noninvolvement. It was not blatantly evasive\u2014he did not look down, he did not look away, he did not fidget or blink too much or touch his hair. He sat with his hands curled lightly at his lap; his pose was one of total calm and attention and patience, as though he were the one awaiting the answers, not the other way around. He was pretty good at this, Eduardo thought. Maybe he should have gone into the family business.\n\n\"Well,\" said Eduardo, standing up and handing Sebastien his card. \"Think about it. Don't worry. Sometimes it takes me a while to get it, too. But do get back to me with whatever you come up with.\"\n\nAnd at this, Sebastien\u2014finally rousing from his fugue state and showing Eduardo to the door\u2014responded that he assuredly, enthusiastically would.\n\nAndrew and Maureen stood drinking on the hotel balcony and did not speak. A floor above them, in Andrew's room, Anna was sleeping. Three miles away from them, in jail, Lily was waiting. Andrew and Maureen were sipping mini-bottles of vodka straight, letting the alcohol macerate their mouths. Across the street was an office building, dark except for a single room that glowed like an illuminated postage stamp. Above it, the stars were opalescent pinpricks, looking so cold and distant that Andrew couldn't quite believe they were fire. It was not right that he could stand here and see these things when Lily could not. Once, years ago, while flying over the North Atlantic, Andrew had spotted an eerie pale dot in the black ocean below him. It had reminded him of that famous picture of the earth from space\u2014tiny and luminous, like a glowing pearl in the void\u2014which everyone had thought, for about thirty seconds, might bring world peace. Squinting at the dot, Andrew had thought it was an iceberg, or the reflection of the moon on a whale, or some heretofore undiscovered Arctic bioluminescence. Or maybe, he'd thought, just maybe, it was something else. Andrew was surprised at how ready he was to believe it might be something else\u2014how ready he was, also, to keep quiet about it, to make it a secret between him and the universe. He'd been almost all the way to England before he realized it was only the reflection of the airplane.\n\nThe rest of the interview with the lawyers that afternoon had been repetitive and interminable. Andrew had tried to take notes but had eventually fallen into a fretful underlining of the notes he'd already taken. After the revelation of Lily's drug purchase from Ignacio Toledo, nothing new was revealed; she'd stuck faithfully and reassuringly to her story about the day of the crime, and in its repeated tellings the narrative seemed to move from the specific to the archetypal\u2014like a Bible verse or a Beatles song, it became too familiar to actually hear. Lily told the story so many times that Andrew nearly felt he was watching it unfold before him: He could almost see the ghostly shadow of stoned Sebastien LeCompte, he could almost hear the coppery yelping of the game shows that Lily had watched while Katy's undiscovered body\u2014good God\u2014lay a floor below her in the basement.\n\nBy the time the lawyers finally left, Andrew and Maureen's visit was over. Maureen had tried to persuade Lily to eat the rest of her sandwich, but she did not; they'd left it on a crusty pile on the table, even though Lily said that the guards would probably make her throw it away. Then they'd both kissed her on the cheek, and she'd clung to Maureen for longer than the security guards had liked, and then it was time\u2014again\u2014for them to leave her.\n\n\"Come on,\" said Maureen, tugging on Andrew's wrist. \"Let's go inside.\"\n\nAndrew followed her into the room, vodka between his forefinger and thumb, and shoved aside a pile of newspaper clippings so that he could sit on the bed. In the corner of one of the articles, he could see the edge of that awful picture of Lily from her own camera, standing in front of the church with the immodest d\u00e9colletage and the too-bright smile. Andrew turned the newspaper over, and Maureen joined him on the bed. She smelled like moss and cedar and some new late-in-life perfume. She smelled mostly like a stranger.\n\nMaureen sighed. \"I can't believe she lied about the drugs.\"\n\n\"Well, she didn't lie, I don't think,\" said Andrew. \"Not really. She just didn't volunteer that information.\"\n\n\"She should have known better.\"\n\n\"She's scared. She's with lawyers. She doesn't know what to say.\" Andrew ran his hand through his hair. \"Anyway, it was just a little dope.\"\n\n\"Just a little dope? Down here? Jesus Christ. Just a little dope would have been a big enough problem, even if she hadn't happened to manage to buy it from a murderer.\" Maureen sighed again and shook her head. \"God. You know, I can't even really let myself think about it, but it could have been her. It so, so easily could have been her, instead of Katy.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Andrew. It was true. It could have been her. It _had_ been her once. It had been Janie.\n\nMaureen traced her pinkie along the rim of her vodka, then put it in her mouth. \"Do you think I was unreasonable about her hair?\"\n\n\"You weren't wrong.\"\n\n\"But do you think I was unreasonable?\"\n\nAndrew flashed again to that photo\u2014the forbidding sobriety of the church, Lily's bosom spilling out of that ridiculous tank top, which had probably cost her less than the equivalent of three U.S. dollars somewhere. Could she not afford a shirt containing enough fabric to actually cover herself? They would have bought her one! Didn't she know that? Is that all it would have taken? Andrew shook his head. \"It just might have been a little late, you know?\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\" Maureen's voice was vinegary.\n\n\"I just mean,\" Andrew said slowly. \"It seems like there are things we should have talked to her about. In terms of how she presents herself. Probably a while ago.\"\n\n\"Me, you mean.\" Maureen was chewing audibly on her nail. The physiology of her anxiety was like a childhood language Andrew hadn't known he still remembered until now.\n\n\"Us, I mean.\"\n\nAndrew did not know if this was really what they had done wrong\u2014but clearly, they had done something wrong. And really, how could they not have? They had just been trying to keep it together, and Andrew was still proud of them\u2014he would never stop being proud of them\u2014for having managed as long as they had; in situations like theirs, it was usual to divorce much earlier. Right after Janie had died, of course, there'd been a moment when they'd teetered. Maureen's mother had come to stay; she was rigid and humorless even under the best of circumstances, her face flat and white as a Japanese empress's. The three of them moved through those days with the insensate numbness of creatures of the very deep sea: They were little translucent crabs scrabbling along near the volcanic vents, they were blind and mute and looming dumbo octopi. Maureen walked around with an expression of enduring, ferocious blankness, and Andrew had known she would not have noticed then if he'd let her drift away, or if he'd drifted away himself: into the geriatric Peace Corps, perhaps (they had a branch, he knew, for sufferers of late-onset idealism), or the arms of a younger, undestroyed woman. It was nearly unbelievable to Andrew now that they'd even bothered to bathe and dress, let alone hang on to their marriage for a time. He could see how an outsider might think they'd been saints, though, of course, that wasn't true at all\u2014they had, in fact, been utterly devoid of compassion for anyone besides Janie and each other (and, for a brief time right before the death, only Janie; and, for a brief time afterward, only themselves). Janie's death was the monstrous planet around which everything else orbited. Even the other children at the hospital lived and died merely in relation to Janie; viewed in one light, the death of another child could seem like a harbinger of Janie's departure, the hideous reality that made the more hideous potentiality more real; viewed in another, it could feel like dodging a bullet (and, as Churchill had said, there's nothing so exhilarating as being shot at without result). And if only a certain percentage of children with X were doomed, and if child Y died, would that mean it was statistically more or less likely for Janie to die, too? Andrew and Maureen would actually talk about this. Maureen would point out that they were conflating probability with odds. Neither of them would point out that in the narcissism of their grief they had forgotten the other child, forgotten the other family\u2014who were somewhere weeping, picking out a tiny gold-limned coffin. There was no other family, there were no other children. There was only Janie and Maureen and Andrew, at sea on a little boat, and all the continents of the world submerged.\n\nHow did they love each other again after that? How did they even look at each other? But they did, somehow they did, and there were the years of Lily and Anna: chubby hands, dandelion-down hair, adorable little pets\u2014a tuxedo kitten who eventually grew to a murderous twenty pounds, a precious lop-eared dwarf bunny who transformed into a sexual predator overnight\u2014and life had been livable, at least until the girls went to school. But once they did, the show was over: The stage lights dimmed, the orchestra was dismantled; the audience, drunk on their own lives, disappeared into the night. And Maureen and Andrew found themselves staring at each other, alone together at last.\n\nAndrew nearly wanted to say some of these things to Maureen, but he looked down and found her in a shallow and hard-earned sleep. He rose, careful not to crinkle the newspapers, and turned out the light.\n\nAndrew rode the elevator up one floor, then stood for a moment in the harsh yellow light of the soda dispenser, listening to the snorkeling of the ice machine, before walking back to his room. He dipped his key and watched the console flash green and opened the door.\n\nAnna was not in the room.\n\nShe was not in the closet, not in either bedroom, not in the bathroom. Not, when Andrew went downstairs to check, at the gym. She had not been seen by the hotel concierge. Andrew headed back toward his room to put on his sneakers. He was not about to rouse Maureen from sleep to confess that he'd lost another daughter.\n\nThis time when he opened the door, Anna was sitting in the corner on the floor, long legs folded up around her as though she were a piece of obsolete video equipment. Andrew wavered in the doorway. \"Where were you?\" he said.\n\n\"Have you been drinking?\" said Anna. In the moonlight, her hair looked nearly gray, and Andrew thought he could almost see her as she would someday look\u2014in some future unimaginably far, that Andrew would never live to witness.\n\n\"Excuse me, have _you_ been drinking?\" he said. \"Just where the hell have you been?\"\n\n\"I'm nineteen years old,\" said Anna, standing up. She was shorter than Andrew by a good three inches, but her litheness and youth conspired to make him feel towered over. \"You can't keep me locked up here. I'm not the one in jail.\" She hiccupped.\n\n\"You can't just take off like that. This is a dangerous city.\" Andrew's voice was shaking. \"Do you know how worried I was?\"\n\n\"Afraid someone will kill me?\"\n\n\"Christ, Anna. Yes. Obviously. Among other things.\" Andrew wanted to go to her and take her in his arms, but he could not bear the thought of her shrugging him off.\n\n\"Other things? What other things?\" said Anna. \"Like that I'll kill someone, maybe?\"\n\n\"Stop it,\" said Andrew, with volume. Anna looked surprised. Because Andrew normally spoke so gently, nobody ever remembered that he had a voice that carried when he wanted it to.\n\n\"Dad.\" Anna wobbled again. \"Would you still love her if she did it?\"\n\n\"Stop it,\" said Andrew again. \"Sit down.\"\n\nShe did.\n\n\"Take off your shoes,\" said Andrew, even though he didn't know why he was telling her to do this. She wouldn't run off again without her shoes, maybe. Or maybe she would. Maybe he had no idea what his daughters would or wouldn't do. Maybe Andrew just wanted to tell Anna to do something and watch her actually do it. \"Hand them to me,\" he ordered.\n\nShe did. Andrew was feeling marginally more under control. \"Okay then,\" he said. \"I'm going to get us some water.\"\n\nAndrew went to the bathroom and ran the water until it was cold. In the mirror, the skin around his eyes and mouth were furrowed; his teeth, he could see, were yellowing by the day. It was very clear to Andrew that he was older now than he had ever, ever been before; worse, he strongly suspected that, from now on, he was only going to get older still.\n\nBack in the room, Anna was sitting on the bed. Andrew handed her a glass of water, then drank his own in one gulp. He wiped his mouth. \"She didn't do it,\" he said.\n\n\"I know.\" Anna looked into her water balefully. \"But what if she had?\"\n\n\"That's not a useful thing to think about.\"\n\n\"Everything's useful to think about. That's a direct quote from you. You have actually literally said that.\"\n\n\"Well, not this.\"\n\n\"Hypotheticals. You always say you truck in hypotheticals.\"\n\n\"Anna\u2014\"\n\n\"Counterfactuals, right? That's your word. So what if she did it? What if she had done it?\"\n\n\"Stop it.\"\n\n\"Or what if I did? What if I did something terrible?\"\n\nAndrew squinted into his glass. He remembered when Anna and Lily were small and terrified of their nightmares and would come crawling into bed with Andrew and Maureen to make them promise not to die. Andrew had never been inclined to promise this, since, in fact, he and Maureen _would_ someday die, and the best of all possible outcomes was that Anna and Lily would have to watch them do it. And Andrew had imagined some future reckoning, some kind of confrontation (though when this would occur exactly, he was unclear) when Anna and Lily would point at him with accusing fingers and go back to the videotape and say _Look, you promised not to die, and look, you did die. You promised not to and you did_. Lying to them about this most irreducible fact seemed to Andrew an unforgivable deceit\u2014he was giving them the wrong idea about absolutely everything if he gave them the wrong idea about this.\n\nBut Maureen had not agreed. She felt that the children were children, and that they needed a promise in order to sleep at night\u2014on this one particular night, the wind shivering through the white pine trees outside their windows, their sheets vaguely redolent of lavender\u2014and that by the time Maureen and Andrew died the children would be grown and with children of their own and they would understand the lie, and would look back and forgive them.\n\nAnd so Andrew and Maureen had promised: They had looked their two living children in the eyes and promised not to die. And Andrew remembered how this had assuaged Anna\u2014how, sleepy with relief, she had tugged at her ear and grabbed her stuffed rabbit, Honey Bunny, by one felt foot and dragged him up the stairs\u2014but how Lily had remained awake, staring at them with her fierce agate eyes, saying, \"That's not true. I know that you can't promise that. I know that that isn't true.\"\n\nAndrew made a decision. \"You wouldn't do something terrible,\" he said to Anna. \"You couldn't do something terrible. But if you did, I'd always love you. That's our job.\" Probably, this wasn't a lie. Probably, he would still love her. This was the elasticity and permanence of parental love; everything vile about your children was to some degree something vile about yourself, and disowning your child for their failings could only compound your own.\n\nAnna looked at him hard, and for a moment Andrew saw her as a child, yawning and pacified, swinging her rabbit from her hand, turning around to pad up the stairs. And then the look changed, hardening into something brittle and unyielding and wise, something that could know things that Andrew didn't know, that Andrew might never know.\n\n\"No,\" she said finally. \"You wouldn't.\"\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\n## February\n\nThe day after her birthday, Lily awoke to a bright dawn. Preposterously pink light streamed in through the windows; it was like waking up in the middle of a conch shell, and Lily felt a sense of emergency\u2014apocalypse, war, alien invasion\u2014before realizing that this was only a sunrise. This happened every morning; every morning she was bathed briefly in this otherworldly light, and she was never even awake for it. She propped herself up on her elbows. It was strange, maybe a little violating, that the room could turn this color without her noticing. She popped her head over the side of the bed to look at Katy, feeling, as she did so, the first ominous heave of what she knew would be a daylong hangover. Below her, Katy was composed, even in sleep. At the sight of her, the whole of the previous evening came back to Lily, and she remembered that she was going to have to break up with Sebastien. She lay back down.\n\nLily was sorry she had to end things with Sebastien, but she saw no alternative; she was outmaneuvered, and to do nothing now would only make her a chump. Lily didn't know how she'd gotten herself into a situation where being a chump was even possible\u2014being, as she was, about as committed to transparency and low-stress, drama-free entanglements as a person could be\u2014but there it was. Lily hadn't asked anything from Sebastien\u2014she hadn't even wanted anything, really: She hadn't required him to make any promises, she hadn't put him in a position where he'd need to tell her any lies. The fact that he'd treated her poorly anyway could only mean that he'd wanted to.\n\nLily rolled over and stifled a groan. She'd been childish, she saw now; she'd wanted everyone to be liberated and generous with one another, and somewhere along the way, she'd started believing that that meant people actually would be. Why had she believed this? Was it because she'd watched too many reruns of _Friends_ growing up? In which everyone jumped in and out of bed with one another but no one got hurt and the truly sacred, eponymous relationship\u2014friendship\u2014remained intact? Or maybe Lily's problem was her parents' fault; perhaps it was some kind of inherited na\u00efvet\u00e9. Maybe it stemmed from Maureen and Andrew's allegedly hippie-ish youth (though the only supporting evidence for this characterization was Maureen's claim that she'd gone barefoot for the entire summer of 1971), or maybe it somehow came from Andrew's outmoded, overly sanguine scholarly worldview\u2014all the end-of-history-Francis-Fukuyama shit he'd committed to twenty years ago and now had to wearily, disingenuously maintain in article after article. Lily did not know. All she knew was that she was going to admit it when she was wrong. It was true that in her generation people didn't have to be cruel and deceitful in order to get what they wanted\u2014unless being cruel and deceitful _was_ what they wanted, in which case they had a whole new vista of opportunity to be that way. Whenever Lily herself had juggled dates, she had done it because she really _liked_ a few men at once\u2014she wanted to talk about politics with one of them and she wanted to talk about music with another and with a third she wanted to go on playful midnight adventures to search for free furniture on the street when the first of the month came and everybody moved out of their apartments. And in this spirit, Lily had done new things: She went to a rally for a union, even though she'd always found labor issues terribly dull; she found a child's abandoned skunk pi\u00f1ata on the street and kept it in her dorm for half a year; she attended a concert of an intolerable band whose music was like the forceful overthrowing of the concept of music, and after a while she found herself dancing, actually dancing, even though she still didn't like the songs. The reason Lily didn't want a boyfriend was because she actually cared for all of these men. They were all her friends, and Lily's friends mattered to her; she was not in love with any of them, but she would have given any one of them a kidney. She understood now that this was not how Sebastien felt about her. A situation like theirs arose not because a man liked too many women, but because he hated too many.\n\nLily was, she realized, monstrously thirsty. She padded down the ladder and went to the bathroom to guzzle water directly from the faucet. When she stood up, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and startled. What was wrong with her face? Her eyes were raccooned with makeup, of course, but that wasn't it. Last night Lily had thought she looked a bit fierce\u2014masquerading semi-convincingly as the kind of girl that she was secretly intimidated by\u2014and normally in the mornings after a night out she just looked goofy, like a person whose Halloween costume had fallen apart because they were having too much fun at the party. What was it that looked different now? Lily leaned closer and studied her face. Recently, faint sickle-shaped lines had appeared around her mouth; Lily had known, on some level, that these were wrinkles\u2014fetal wrinkles, proto-wrinkles, whatever\u2014but still she'd regarded them up until now as temporary blemishes, something she might yet grow out of, like acne. She pulled away from the mirror. The lines were barely visible, but they were there, and they were, she realized, part of the reason she looked different: She looked older. Not old, of course\u2014but old enough to seem a little less victorious in sloppiness, like a person whose immaculate beauty has faded enough that their stern glasses finally really do look dowdy. In the morning light\u2014makeup smeared, hair disastrous\u2014Lily didn't seem like a person whose costume was unimportant. She seemed like a person whose costume was very important indeed. Lily bent and scrubbed her face, leaving black streaks on the hand towel, then furiously scrubbed at that until the motion stopped her. She threw the towel helplessly in the hamper, trying not to think about who might find it, and retreated back down the hallway.\n\nThe sun was still coiling around the bedroom, gathering itself up into corners, as Lily climbed back into bed. There was a ray of light on her pillow. Maybe it wasn't violating at all, the way the light snuck in like this\u2014maybe it was lovely. It meant that there could be beauty, benevolent and unasked for and all around you, even if you didn't know it. There was something bittersweet about this, but perhaps there was also something hopeful. Soon enough, Lily would be on the other side of breaking up with Sebastien. And soon enough, Lily would be awake early enough for this light; she vowed to remember it, to set an alarm to gratefully greet it. But not today. Today, she was tired. And so Lily lay back down\u2014deliciously, guiltily, with the decadent weariness of the newly old\u2014and sank back into sleep.\n\nWhen Lily woke again, it was ludicrously late, the light outside her window already aging. Sleeping into the afternoon always gave Lily a dreadful feeling\u2014as though she'd wasted an entire life, not only part of a day\u2014and she bolted upright. She looked at the clock and scoffed. It was almost three-thirty. There was a real possibility she was going to be late for work.\n\nTen minutes later Lily was racing along Avenida Cabildo; above her, the skies were opening up into an uncharacteristic late afternoon rain, contributing to her general sense of persecution. She arrived at Fuego soaking wet but only five minutes late. Javier was sitting at the end of the bar poring over some papers. He shot Lily a subtle smirk. She ducked her head and hurried to grab her apron, trying to look diligent and humble. But when she glanced back in Javier's direction, she saw that he was motioning her over to him. This felt ominous, though Lily reminded herself that absolutely everything today felt ominous. She walked to the end of the bar.\n\n\"Hey, Javier,\" she said. \"What's up?\"\n\n\"Feeling okay today, Lily?\"\n\nShe laughed ruefully and bobbled her hand back and forth. \"Not too bad. A little tired.\"\n\n\"Well, don't worry about that. You can go home now.\"\n\n\"What?\" Lily gestured toward the break room, where the schedule was posted on the wall. \"I'm on the schedule for tonight.\"\n\n\"I know, Lily,\" said Javier. \"But it's not working out.\"\n\n\"What?\" Lily felt like she'd bitten on a blade. \"Why?\"\n\n\"I expect my customers to make scenes, not my waitresses.\"\n\n\"What?\" Had Lily made a scene? Maybe, by very, very puritan standards, she had. \"But it was my birthday,\" she said, inanely.\n\n\"Well, your birthday present is you got to make a scene,\" said Javier. \"Happy birthday. Now you're fired.\"\n\n\"But I mean, I wasn't even working. I mean, I was off the clock.\"\n\n\"Yes. It was a favor for you.\"\n\n\"Doesn't that mean I was just a customer? So I get to make a scene, too?\" Lily laughed lightly, but Javier did not.\n\n\"Really, Lily, did you actually like this job? Did you think you were any good at it?\"\n\nActually, yes: Lily had thought she was good at it. She'd thought she was okay at it, at any rate, and getting better. She'd thought that the customers and the other staff liked her. They laughed and jovially caroused whenever she came around, anyway, and she'd always thought that this was good-natured, maybe even fond. But just like things with Beatriz, and Sebastien, and all men, and possibly all things and all people, Lily saw now that perhaps there had been a different, more menacing undercurrent to all of this teasing\u2014something she hadn't detected, or had willfully mistranslated, in order to be happy. \"I did like this job,\" said Lily. \"I do like it.\"\n\nJavier's face softened a bit, and he said, \"Well, I'm sorry, Lily. But I know you don't actually need this job.\"\n\n\"I've never been fired before.\"\n\n\"Have you ever worked before?\"\n\nAt this, shamefully, Lily's eyes filled with tears. Why did everybody always want to think the worst of her? \"Of course,\" she said emphatically, and waited a moment to see if this might earn her a reprieve. When she saw it wasn't going to, she told Javier she'd go clean out her locker.\n\nA few minutes later, armed with her water bottle, book, and street shoes, Lily walked out into the already diminishing day. The rain had stopped. She really never had been fired before; it had been years and years, in fact, since she'd been in any kind of trouble at all, if you didn't count Beatriz's scoldings. She was still shaky from the conversation's blunt smash of adrenaline\u2014so much like the brief narcotizing energy that comes, when you're hurt, just fractionally earlier than pain.\n\n\"Hey.\"\n\nLily turned. It was Ignacio the Tortoise, leaning up against the side of a dumpster. Lily flashed to the image she'd seen\u2014or thought she'd seen\u2014of Ignacio and Katy, his hands on her ass, flashing in the strobe lights. Lily had wanted to ask Katy about it last night, but she'd been so drunk that she couldn't be certain, and now that she and Katy had finally fought and reached a delicate, tentative peace, she wasn't sure she'd want to reopen the issue.\n\n\"Hey,\" said Lily. \"I just got fired.\"\n\nIgnacio shook his head. \"Bad luck,\" he said. Lily could smell the pungent stink of weed. He must have just been smoking.\n\n\"I guess. Hey.\" Lily felt suddenly bold. She was already a derelict employee\u2014she might as well be a minor criminal, too. \"Can I buy any of that from you?\"\n\nIgnacio raised his eyebrows in an expression of amusement. \"Of course,\" he said. \"You want a baggie?\"\n\n\"Um, I guess so.\"\n\nIgnacio began reaching into his backpack.\n\n\"Oh, now?\" said Lily.\n\nIgnacio looked around the empty alleyway. \"You want to do it later?\"\n\n\"No, no,\" said Lily. \"Now is great.\"\n\nIgnacio nodded and produced a small plastic bag with a few black rosettes in it. \"For you, forty pesos,\" he said. Lily was hoping he would hurry. \"A discount. Since you've had a rough day.\"\n\nLily found a damp fifty-peso bill in her purse, then handed it to Ignacio and grabbed the baggie. Sweat was breaking out on her back, and she scurried away from him without taking any of the change. \"Thanks,\" she called behind her, as she walked out of the alleyway and into the street.\n\n\"Hey,\" said Ignacio. \"Anytime.\"\n\nLily turned onto the street and immediately nearly ran into a woman with an army of tiny dogs trotting alongside her. The dogs were so small that their heads bobbed savagely at the pace they were going; the smallest dog's eyes were white with cataracts that shone like mother-of-pearl.\n\n\"Permiso,\" Lily muttered. The woman gave her a look and walked away.\n\nLily would not tell Sebastien about the firing, she decided, as she headed toward the Subte. She would not tell Sebastien, or Katy, or Beatriz, or anyone. She could not bear to. And anyway, she could probably find a use for the freedom of nights with nowhere to go and no one to answer to. Lily's awareness of the baggie in her purse was contracting and relenting like a pulse. She had nothing in mind, particularly; no plans or schemes or mischief or, beyond Katy and Sebastien, really any friends. But whatever you did was simply more your own when no one else knew you were doing it. In front of Lily, a scarp of periwinkle dusk was falling over the streets. Around her, the bars were just beginning to rouse to life. And out in the city she might find anything, anything at all, except someone who was waiting for her.\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nLily was careful to stay out of the house until her usual hour. When she returned, she found Katy in the living room, watching cartoons. Lily halted at the door and considered turning around\u2014but then she'd be out later than Beatriz expected her to be, and she didn't want to risk that. Instead, she paused in front of the living room.\n\n\"Hey,\" she said. \"What are you watching?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Katy. Next to her sat an economics textbook with an uncapped pen as a bookmark. \"It's totally surreal. I turned it on like an hour ago and I can't turn away. How was work?\"\n\nLily had been anxious about seeing Katy and had expected to feel something moving gingerly between them now, but Katy sounded nonchalant.\n\n\"Fine,\" said Lily. \"You know.\" On the screen, a talking rodent with crazed eyes was doing somersaults. \"This is a weird show.\"\n\n\"Yeah. It kind of makes me wonder why I ever stopped watching cartoons. I guess because I went to middle school.\"\n\n\"Age is really no object.\" Lily walked over to the sofa, still holding her purse. She didn't want to leave it unattended in the house\u2014Beatriz probably had drug-sniffing dogs in her employ. \"A lot of my friends watch them all the time.\"\n\n\"Like, currently?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Lily, sitting down. \"They think it's hilarious.\"\n\n\"Our generation has such a weird thing with little-kid stuff,\" said Katy after a moment.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Like coloring books and ironic T-shirts with dinosaurs and stuff\"\n\n\"I guess. It's premature nostalgia.\"\n\n\"Do you ever feel that way, though?\"\n\n\"What way?\"\n\n\"Like you could go back to some time that's passed? Like you catch yourself thinking, why don't I go there anymore, and why don't I see those people and attend those parties, and then you remember it's because that life is gone? And that you can't?\"\n\nLily nodded, even though she wasn't sure she ever did feel that way, exactly. Under the regime of Maureen and Andrew, there had been no confusion about which way life was headed, or what its ultimate destination would be. Still, Lily had never heard Katy say anything like this before, and she wanted to offer something in return.\n\n\"Maybe it's because when we're kids we don't really believe time only moves forward,\" she said. \"And then you learn it does, but you never really get your head around it.\"\n\n\"You think that's it?\" said Katy.\n\n\"Yeah.\" The red muskrat bopped manically on the screen. \"Maybe.\" It sounded like it could be true, and so maybe it was. After all, you hadn't told a child a story until you had retold a child that story; children awoke to sentience in their lives with fables and fairy tales already familiar, and maybe this meant that the first stories they heard never felt like linear narratives at all\u2014maybe they were more like rituals, passion plays, establishing a sense of life as recurrent and recursive, a sense that everything that happens is somehow always happening. \"Like you know how when you're a little kid you really think you live in a story?\" said Lily.\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Katy doubtfully. \"I don't think so.\"\n\n\"Oh, man,\" said Lily. \"I really, really felt that way. I totally thought I lived in a story. I was really pretty confused about it, actually. I was always thinking, here's the part where _this_ happens.\"\n\n\"Where what happens?\"\n\n\"Well, like.\" Lily thought for a moment. \"Like this time that my parents got a man to dress up as Winnie-the-Pooh and show up on the porch for my fifth birthday, for example.\"\n\n\"That sounds terrifying.\"\n\n\"It wasn't, though! That's the thing\u2014I wasn't terrified at all. I think I'd seen so many movies about ordinary children's lives turning magical that I saw it as basically my birthright.\" It was true: Lily remembered it vividly. When she'd seen Pooh coming up the walkway, she'd clasped her hands together in a gesture of such hushed, old lady-ish happiness that Andrew and Maureen had laughed and taken her picture. \"Who's that?\" Maureen had said, her voice suspiciously girlish, the way it always was when she was telling children lies\u2014it was a tone that Lily had half-noticed even then, though she'd merely registered it as the voice that Maureen used when something incredibly special was happening. But what Maureen and Andrew hadn't known\u2014what they never had known\u2014was that Lily was not actually surprised. She wasn't surprised at all. In that picture, what she was thinking was: This is it. It's finally happening. This is the part where the magic starts.\n\n\"It sounds like you've got really good parents,\" said Katy.\n\n\"I do,\" said Lily, surprising herself with the force of her sincerity. \"I really, really do.\"\n\nThe next day, Lily left the house at the usual time. She had promised herself she would end things with Sebastien that day, but she found she was stalling\u2014watching the shifting trapezoids of birds against the sky, feeling a pleasantly lonesome wanderlust. The rain had left the chestnut smell of waterlogged leaves in the air. Lily was enjoying this brief purgatorial reprieve; she could afford, she figured, one more day of it. And so she rode the Subte to the end of the line and back; she stalked the parameters of the zoo, which was closed since it was a Sunday. No matter, thought Lily; after all, half the fun of a zoo was smelling it! She laughed out loud, rounded a corner, and saw a booth with a fat red pay phone at its center.\n\nShe flitted her fingers through her pockets and smiled when she found coins. Who would she call? Maybe Anna. As soon as she thought of her sister, Lily felt a violent longing, which was weird, and she actually dialed most of Anna's number before hanging up. Anna was busy, after all; Anna wasn't good on the telephone; Anna, it went without saying, would never have lost a job of any sort, even one as dumb as Lily's. Most of all, maybe, Anna was a grown-up, and sometimes Lily wished she weren't. But there was nothing to be done about it: Anna simply wasn't the same little girl who'd helped Lily try to contact Janie's ghost on a Ouija board\u2014a plan endlessly discussed and then, finally, one summer night, thick with humidity and black magic, attempted\u2014and who had, when the indicator began to move, wet her pants.\n\nBefore she'd decided whether she wanted to talk to him, Lily found she'd called Andrew. The phone rang three, four, five times, and Lily was surprised by how relieved she felt when he finally answered. \"Hello?\" he said.\n\n\"Hey, Andrew. It's me.\"\n\n\"Thank God. You see that many digits, you have to assume it's Interpol.\"\n\nLily paused to let him know that, if they were in the same room, she'd be rolling her eyes.\n\n\"How's it going down there, kid?\" he said.\n\n\"Pretty good,\" said Lily. \"But listen, I have a serious question for you.\" Now she would have to think of one.\n\n\"Oh, Jesus.\"\n\n\"Not that serious. Don't worry.\" Lily tapped her thumb against the bottom of the phone. \"Do you like your job?\" she said finally.\n\n\"What a question,\" said Andrew. \"What's with these getting-to-know-your-parents probes lately? Is my dean hiring you to spy on me? Have you joined a twelve-step program of some kind?\"\n\n\"Not yet!\" said Lily. \"Well, do you?\"\n\nAndrew exhaled heavily. \"I suppose,\" he said. \"It's interesting, anyway.\"\n\n\"Is it, though?\" said Lily, finding an angle. \"Is it still interesting? I mean, do you still feel like you learn things from it?\"\n\nOn the other end of the line, Lily could hear Andrew consider; one thing that was nice about old Andrew was that he actually thought about it when you asked him a question.\n\n\"Well,\" he said finally. \"I learn what your generation thinks about things, anyway. And I do like watching them learn, which I guess is a kind of learning.\"\n\nLily sighed. She felt bad for her parents sometimes; everything good that would ever happen to them pretty much already had. The arithmetic of their lives was complete. It was wonderful, of course, to have things to lose\u2014but from now on, that was all they would ever do.\n\n\"You're always telling me how great your generation is,\" Andrew was saying. \"Tell me one great thing.\"\n\n\"We're better with technology.\"\n\n\"Well, hallelujah.\"\n\n\"We're less racist.\"\n\n\"Okay, I'll give you that one.\" Andrew paused. \"Lily Pad? Are you all right?\"\n\nAndrew hadn't called her Lily Pad in forever; it was a name dating back to her cradle years, when he'd made up nonsense songs for her: _Lily Pad, Lily Pad, stop your crying, don't be sad! Lily Pad, Lily Pad, go to sleep, don't make Mom mad! Lily Pad, Lily Pad, cease to fuss, be kind to Dad!_ Lily had liked the nickname when she was very small. But it had turned mortifying in her preadolescent years, when the word \"pad\"\u2014along with most other words, people, and events\u2014could send her into paroxysms of humiliation, and she had begged Andrew to abandon it.\n\n\"I'm all right,\" she said, hoping she sounded stoic.\n\n\"You sound down. You sound like your mother.\"\n\n\"Do I? Nah. Just a little tired.\"\n\n\"Well, get some sleep, why don't you?\" There was a momentary lilt in Andrew's voice, and Lily thought for a fraction of a moment that he might actually be about to sing to her. It seemed possible, at least, that he was considering it. If he was, however, he must also have been considering how viciously Lily was likely to mock him for it, and so he restrained himself. Lily had trained him well. There was something a little sad about that, maybe.\n\n\"I love you, Dad,\" said Lily, with feeling.\n\n\"I love you, Lily!\" said Andrew, sounding startled. \"I love you very, very much.\"\n\nLily returned to the Carrizos' house at her usual hour and caught herself half-hoping to find Katy watching television when she got there. Lily could almost imagine this becoming a nightly ritual\u2014something sweet and arbitrary and inexplicable, something she'd remember fondly in the years to come. But tonight, Katy was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was Beatriz, sitting at the kitchen counter with a glass of water and a newspaper, and when Lily walked through the door she looked up, her mouth already forming that most beloved phrase of hers. \"Where were you?\" she said.\n\n\"At my job,\" said Lily wonderingly. She set down her bag slowly and stretched, hoping she looked appropriately tired.\n\n\"I thought you lost your job.\"\n\n\"What?\" Lily found herself picking her bag back up, perhaps out of a sense that she might need to be prepared to flee at any moment.\n\n\"I thought you were fired,\" said Beatriz.\n\n\"Where did you hear that?\" Lily was mystified. Had Javier Aguirre called up the Carrizos to tattle on her? What would possibly provoke him to do that?\n\n\"I'm not trying to make you feel bad about the job, Lily.\" Beatriz began folding up the newspaper. Lily could not believe that there were still people who knew how to do this. \"But I do need to know where you are, especially at night, and I can't have you lying to me about it. I am responsible for you.\"\n\nNo, it could not have been Javier. He didn't have the Carrizos' number; Lily didn't think she'd ever even mentioned their names to him; and anyway, it would make no sense for him to do something like that\u2014it was too overly vindictive, too overly engaged. Too overly concerned, in a way. So how did they know? Did they have eyes and ears all over town? Who were these people, anyway?\n\nBeatriz put her hand on Lily's shoulder. \"Lily,\" she said. \"Look. I understand that you're embarrassed.\"\n\nThis was something that Lily herself might have admitted if Beatriz had waited a moment longer. But it was unendurable to be told you'd embarrassed yourself; there was something too presumptuous about having your shame taken for granted. And so Lily found herself ducking Beatriz's hand and running to her room, where she lay on the bed and, horrifyingly, began to sob. She told herself to stop it immediately. She told herself that in acting this way she was losing her grip on all the finely threaded claims on adulthood she'd only just begun to establish. But this thought only made her sob harder, and eventually Lily gave in to the sobbing, and\u2014out of the same impulse that made you want to wreck something completely once it was wrecked only a little\u2014she let it get louder and messier than even she felt was really necessary.\n\nThe next day, the Carrizos left for their nephew's baptism, and Katy went off somewhere with her even-tempered lady friends. To celebrate, Lily cut her classes and spent the day skulking around the house. Beyond opening one of Katy's drawers to check her bra size (32B\u2014Lily was not sure what she was going to do with this information), Lily behaved herself. She flopped carelessly on the sofa just because she could. She picked up the phone's receiver and then set it back down. She rifled through the kitchen cabinets and inspected Beatriz's incomprehensible cooking gadgets. But she opened no private drawers belonging to the Carrizos\u2014Beatriz probably had everything booby-trapped, anyhow\u2014nor did she brook the grim border of their bedroom door. She enjoyed only the meager proprietary feeling that came from washing her own dish, from changing the television to a new channel. Left to her own devices, Lily actually was fairly trustworthy\u2014but, she thought bitterly, nobody would ever know it.\n\nWhen evening fell, Lily began the walk across the driveway toward Sebastien's, dragging her feet on the grass. She had told him she'd be over at seven-thirty and was already late; she could not possibly put it off any longer, she knew. And anyway, the anticipation was always worse than the thing itself\u2014the anticipation and the memory, of course. And the anticipation of the memory was maybe the worst part of all, at least for Lily. In her life so far, Lily had managed to remember with stunning clarity every truly painful conversation she had ever had; they ran through her head like incantations, like important speeches memorized during childhood (Lily wished she could still remember speeches\u2014why was it that nothing could be tattooed onto your brain like something written there against your will when you were young?). The coming conversation with Sebastien would be no different, Lily knew, and she did not relish the thought of it replaying in her head for a lifetime\u2014the scene made somehow grimmer and more ludicrous, both, by its setting in that ridiculous room, before that awful tapestry, which, she now thought meanly, Sebastien had probably commissioned to be made to look threadbare.\n\nAcross the yard, Sebastien's house grew larger and larger, and then it was upon her. Lily stood for a moment on the porch, feeling, over her sadness, that strange flutter of excitement that often came to her in darker moments. It was a sense of detached curiosity and potential energy; a feeling that here before her was an important event she might witness, an important mystery she might solve, an important challenge she might rise to meet. This sensation had been with Lily from the first missteps of her childhood\u2014she remembered it from the time she'd killed the banana slug, and the time she'd accidentally made Maureen cry over Janie\u2014but it had had more sinister incarnations, too. It had been with Lily the time Anna had broken her ankle doing gymnastics in the living room; it had been there when she sat in her sixth-grade classroom and listened to the teacher try to explain what had just happened to the buildings in New York City.\n\nLily raised her hand to the knocker. Standing here now, undeniably, it was with her again\u2014the same feeling as when she'd sat among her subdued classmates (sixth graders being too young to know what to be scared of or sad for and too old to fall into reflexive hysterics regardless); the same feeling as when she'd raced up the stairs and into the hallway and dialed 911 while Anna screamed in the background. Alongside the terror and the rabid sort of mania there was also something like elation. It was the elation of jumping off a bridge, perhaps\u2014the momentary delirium you'd feel in the free fall\u2014but whatever it was, it was with her now, as she knocked on Sebastien LeCompte's door for the last time and heard him moving toward the door. _Here we go. This is it_. Lily closed her eyes. _Someday we'll all be dead, but we are not dead yet_. She held her breath. _And something is finally happening_.\n\n# CHAPTER FOURTEEN\n\n## February\n\nBy the last night, the night Katy died, Sebastien already knew it was over.\n\nLily appeared at his door at nearly eight o'clock\u2014late\u2014and he took her coolly into his arms. He could smell the baseness of bleach, the dried beer spilled on her shoes, something skunk-cabbagey in her hair\u2014now that she worked, Lily always smelled like the world. She submitted to his embrace with the resignation of a person who has already planned to take away something enormous, and so has no trouble giving something trifling.\n\n\"Sorry I'm late,\" she said, even though she must have known that he would never have remarked on it. She sounded too careful, too kind; he could hear in her voice the magnanimousness of the already decided. Sebastien had so little of her, he knew; he always had. Still, what could he do? He had to proceed as usual. He had to act as though what was clearly happening was not.\n\n\"Are you?\" Sebastien was exhausting even himself now. \"I never notice Newtonian time, myself.\"\n\nLily nodded vacantly\u2014he had to think: tolerantly\u2014and wiggled away from him, kicking off her shoes. Sebastien would not fritter their last moments with indignity and anxiety, he decided. He would not paw at her and beg for her love and stroke her hair and say, What's wrong, my love, what's wrong, what's wrong? He was his parents' son, after all. If there was anything he could endure, it was solitude. If there was anything he could endure, it was abandonment. If there was anything he could endure, it was everything.\n\n\"Do you mind if I pour myself a drink?\" said Lily.\n\nShe had never asked this before. \"I'll pour one for you,\" said Sebastien. \"Did you eat at home?\"\n\n\"They're out of town,\" she said, padding off to the bathroom. \"Beatriz left us some leftovers.\"\n\nShe closed the door and turned on the water, and in a moment Sebastien could hear the beeping of her phone. He was not surprised. This was the way of things. She was young, and she was alive, and she belonged in the land of the living. Sebastien would not try to strongarm her into this sarcophagus of a house, to lie with him in his postmortal life for all eternity.\n\nLily came back from the bathroom and mustered a smile.\n\n\"Do you want to watch a movie?\" said Sebastien. He'd meant to say, \"Would the lady care to indulge in some of the more mediocre of our cinematic arts?\"\u2014but, for some reason, everything sardonic was curdling somewhere in the back of his throat. He felt himself regressing, turning into someone young and uncomplicated, someone who had never had to be brave.\n\n\"I guess,\" Lily said dully. She was tugging at her split ends with the fretfulness of a trauma victim. Maybe, after all, she was not so special\u2014just a pretty girl, a little less than conventionally gorgeous, a little more than conventionally bright, affixed with all the conventional scraps of luck that came with a conventionally privileged life. Maybe, Sebastien told himself, she would be easier to forget than he was imagining.\n\nSebastien put _Lost in Translation_ into the DVD player and turned off the lights. Lily produced a joint, lit it, then passed it to him wordlessly. Sebastien was surprised but was not going to ask; instead he took a long drag, hoping for some kind of emotional blunting. On the screen, a mute Scarlett Johansson moved through a frenetic Tokyo. Sebastien began to feel the waves of weed, its surges of calm and twists of paranoia. Time passed. He did not touch Lily, and she did not touch him. The movie ended. Sebastien looked at Lily, who was still staring at the darkened screen. He was not ready for it, but he also knew he never would be.\n\n\"Let's skip the histrionics, shall we?\" he said.\n\n\"What histrionics?\" said Lily. Her pupils were enormous from the weed and the dark.\n\n\"Please don't insult my intelligence,\" said Sebastien. He realized immediately that the \"please\" made it sound like a request, not a demand.\n\n\"I have no idea what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"We're done here, aren't we?\" Sebastien hated, absolutely hated, what this new energy of hers was doing to him: rendering him silent, monosyllabic, ordinary. If he could have been angry with her for anything\u2014which he couldn't yet\u2014it would have been for this.\n\n\"Sebastien.\" Lily turned her head away from him\u2014whether in bafflement or sadness or anger, he was not sure. \"I don't mind about you and Katy, you know.\"\n\nA new sense of doom was dawning in the back of Sebastien's head, but he felt too stupid now to comprehend it. His tongue was thick and ungainly. \"Me and Katy what?\"\n\n\"I don't mind. Really. I know it has nothing to do with us. I'm not possessive.\"\n\nSebastien was trying very, very hard to understand, but the weed made it impossible to follow a sentence from its beginning to its end. Lily looked sad.\n\n\"But I do think that maybe we should probably spend less time together,\" she said.\n\nTo this, Sebastien said nothing. He could think of absolutely nothing to say.\n\n\"I'm going to take a walk,\" said Lily, standing up. \"I need some air.\"\n\n\"I'll come with you.\" Sebastien scrabbled upright. He was not at all sure, in that moment, how he might go about executing the physical act of walking, if Lily had assented. But he also knew that she would not.\n\n\"No,\" she said. \"I want to be alone. We'll talk about it in the morning.\"\n\n\"As you wish,\" said Sebastien, and gave half a sloppy bow for aesthetics.\n\nShe was gone for a long while. Later Sebastien would try to remember exactly how long, but it was hard to say precisely; the weed had made his relationship to time somewhat suspect, and all the minutes she was gone felt longer and harder and more robust than they possibly could have been. He remembered that he stared out the window at the Carrizos' house for a time. Across the yard, all the lights were off. Later, Sebastien would spend endless nights wishing he'd been watching the garden, wishing he'd been attentive to the shifting of any shadows that might have been moving there. But he'd spent so much time watching the house for its light that all he would ever remember of that night was its darkness.\n\nSebastien was never really sure if Lily ever came back. He dreamed of her all night\u2014he dreamed that they spoke, he dreamed that they kissed, he dreamed of her returning, again and again and again. And somewhere in the sea of his dreaming, he thought that she actually did return, at some point, and lay beside him, at least for a while. But he could not be totally certain, because he went back to sleep very quickly. He wanted to be with the Lily who loved him.\n\nIn the morning, when Sebastien woke, she was gone. Golden bars of light illuminated the map on the wall\u2014all the places he had either already gone or would never go. There was nowhere on that map that he hadn't been yet but would one day see, he remembered thinking. In the bed next to him, the sheets were still slightly damp and sweet with that adolescent perfume that Lily wore. She was gone, and Sebastien thought\u2014dramatically, implausibly\u2014that he might never see her again.\n\nBut he did. She was back again that afternoon, running up the steps, her face sheet white except for a bright red spot on her cheek, and she was crying with a wild and ragged and frightening abandon, crying like she never cried afterward, crying like nobody else ever saw her cry, throughout the entire thing. Her hair was streaming all around her. And Sebastien stood on the stoop in terror thinking, _What's wrong, what's wrong, my love, what's wrong?_\n\n# PART II\n# CHAPTER FIFTEEN\n\n## February\n\nThe next morning, a pair of police officers showed up at Sebastien's door. After a surreal, hallucinatory trip to the store to buy a toothbrush, Lily and Sebastien had retreated back to his house. Lily had spent the night weeping and throwing up\u2014sometimes simultaneously\u2014while Sebastien brought offerings that grew increasingly outlandish over the hours: water, then toast, then some restorative fried eggs at four a.m., then some fortifying vodka at seven. She refused all of it. At some point Sebastien slept a bit, he thought\u2014at any rate he collapsed on one of the sofas for a while\u2014but one channel of his consciousness seemed to remain on all night, and when a knock on the door finally came the next morning, he did not really feel that it had woken him up.\n\nSebastien went to the kitchen sink and ran a wet comb through his hair. He was still wearing yesterday's clothes. Another knock came, more aggressive than the first. He went to the bathroom and opened the door, where Lily was sitting with her back against the porcelain flank of the bathtub. She looked up. Her face was clayey and blanched, like she was a victim of internal hemorrhage. \"Is someone here?\" she said.\n\nSebastien extended his hand to her. \"Come on,\" he said.\n\nThey opened the door to a pair of police officers, young and vigorously well groomed, and Sebastien made an elaborate show of offering to make them some coffee. This was a bluff\u2014he did not have any coffee\u2014but the officers weren't interested, anyway. They told Sebastien and Lily that they'd like to take them down to the station. They wanted, they said, to have a conversation.\n\nIn the car, Sebastien was relieved that the police did not make Lily or him wear handcuffs\u2014Sebastien was given to understand that agents of law enforcement were always on the hunt for opportunities to practice needless barbarism. Having his hands free meant that he could rest one of them lightly on Lily's\u2014not quite holding it, just floating on it\u2014in a gesture that he hoped seemed present, not proprietary. He had to assume that they were still broken up.\n\nThe word \"conversation\" had made Sebastien think that he and Lily would be speaking together with the police, but this, it seemed, was not the case. They were split up almost immediately: Sebastien led down one dark hallway and Lily down another, into conversations that were separate\u2014and, as it turned out, very, very long.\n\nSebastien was interviewed first by one of the officers who had come to the door. The questions he posed were straightforward, and for once Sebastien didn't embellish his answers\u2014even though, after years of conducting all conversations as though they were being recorded, he knew that this one actually was.\n\n\"How did you spend the evening?\" asked the officer.\n\n\"Watching a movie,\" said Sebastien.\n\n\"All evening?\"\n\n\"Mostly.\"\n\n\"What else?\"\n\nSebastien did not know what Lily was saying to her interrogators, or if she was saying anything at all, though he almost felt that he'd be able to detect her answers\u2014that he'd be able to sense them through some kind of magnetic shifting out in the universe\u2014if only the cop would stop talking to him for a moment and just let him pay attention.\n\n\"We talked,\" said Sebastien. He felt a poisonous sense of decay alongside a vile clenching feeling. He realized that he'd been gearing up to lie long before he knew that he would have to.\n\n\"You were together all evening?\"\n\n_I am going for a walk_ , Lily had said. It would be hard to make someone believe that he had not asked where, but truly, he had not. The only thing that had mattered then was her impending departure; the destination or even the duration of her leaving seemed, in that moment, beside the point. Through heavy marijuana-befogged lids, Sebastien had watched her walk out the door. And somewhere in that moment\u2014or somewhere a bit before it, or a bit after\u2014Sebastien had felt all causality in the universe collapse. The only thing that had seemed thinkable then was staring at the blue menu screen of the DVD player\u2014it was transfixing, bewitching. He'd felt himself drifting ominously close to the ceiling; he had actually tugged at the bedspread to keep himself from hitting it. He'd thought he might be dying; he'd reminded himself he was not. He'd felt a coldness billowing up from somewhere deep inside him, like a vent blowing caustic air from a subway, or a spring bleeding water from some vast subterranean aquifer, or an oil rig spewing its cobalt bile from the earth. He had lingered on each image as it came to him, forgetting for long moments what feeling he was trying to figuratively capture. But then the vicious internal chill would remind him, and he'd fear that he was learning something about himself\u2014something terrible, something that he could never unlearn.\n\nHe had been very, very stoned.\n\n\"Yes,\" said Sebastien.\n\n\"You were together _all_ evening?\"\n\nBut who was to say Lily hadn't been beside him the whole time? It had seemed as though she'd been gone a long while, but perhaps she had not been. It had seemed as though she was leaving the house, but maybe she never had. And once Sebastien had told the first lie, it was easy to tell the second.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said again.\n\nWhen the first officer left, the second officer appeared and conducted the same interview over again; somehow Sebastien understood\u2014though he didn't know why\u2014that this switching off meant that all of these conversations were merely the preliminaries. The second officer had the kind of face one wanted very much to lie to, but Sebastien resisted the impulse to introduce any new deceits. Instead, he stuck to his first set of answers, and this time he felt\u2014and, he was sure, sounded\u2014much more certain of them than before.\n\nAfterward, the police drove Sebastien home. It was dark outside, which meant it had to be very late. They dropped him at his house, and he went inside to wait for Lily to come meet him. A week later, he was still waiting.\n\nSlowly, it became clear to Sebastien that they were not going to let him see Lily\u2014though he went every day (rather gallantly, he thought) and asked. Only family was allowed to see her, they said, and only on Thursdays. They did let him leave her things: notes, phone cards, and, in a fit of inspiration and bribery, a journal and pen. But they never let him in, and Lily's father\u2014who had appeared at Sebastien's door one day, bristling with the politest rage Sebastien had ever seen, and clearly half-expecting to find Sebastien in the midst of committing a homicide in the foyer\u2014said that they were unlikely even to allow Sebastien to call her.\n\nSebastien had expected to encounter some opposition in going to the jail\u2014enough, at least, so that he might feel that he was suffering along with Lily on some small level. Beyond submitting his DNA sample\u2014a terrible indignity made endurable only by the thought that he was doing it for her\u2014nothing much had been asked of Sebastien; he wished he could throw himself into the awful place where Lily was, beat his fist against its walls, demand that it hurt him, too. But everyone at the jail was maddeningly polite, even apologetic, when they told Sebastien, for the fifth or seventh or tenth time, that no, he could not see her. When he argued, they shrugged the divested shrugs of people who are enacting a script they did not write and did not necessarily even think was very good. One of the security officers\u2014a woman, blinking down at Sebastien from behind bulletproof glass\u2014even seemed to find his situation somewhat sweetly amusing, and eventually Sebastien began to understand that she would actually have _liked_ to let him see Lily, if she could have. But she couldn't. When Sebastien realized that he wasn't up against anything he could actually see, he grew exhausted. He stopped going to the jail for a few days. And then\u2014finally, lamentably\u2014he bought a television.\n\nThe television, in general, proved to be a bad idea. When the Telecom man arrived to install it\u2014surprised not to be replacing or supplementing another set\u2014Sebastien explained that he was looking to get information about a particular story in the news. He could not have fathomed then how much information he would get. The daytime news channels, in particular, seemed to cater exclusively to people exactly like Sebastien\u2014people without work or diversions, people who had nothing to do but sit around, underdressed and agape, and obsess over every single detail of the case of the murdered Katy Kellers and the accused Lily Hayes. The reporting was speculative and circular and redundant and endless, and Sebastien found himself disappearing into it for many strange, amnesiac hours. After a day with the television, Sebastien had seen the news cycles begin and end and begin anew; he had witnessed each anchor repeat him- or herself nearly verbatim several times over. The anchors' surprise never diminished with repetition\u2014the fact that Lily had apparently done a cartwheel during her interrogation, for example, was marveled at with an astonishment that seemed to grow only more vigorous over the hours. By the end of the first day, Sebastien suspected all of the anchors of traumatic brain injury. By the end of the second day, he suspected them all of genius. He tried to track the variance in tone and emphasis, the subtle shifts in syntax, the inversions of word order, as they recounted the same news item again and again; it occurred to Sebastien that they might be speaking in a code too sophisticated and nuanced for the crude instruments of quotidian comprehension. After all, _wasn't_ there something fundamentally different about the meaning of _Lily Hayes was widely known for her erratic behavior_ and _Lily Hayes's erratic behavior was widely known_? After two days with the television, Sebastien began to feel that there was.\n\nFrom what Sebastien could gather, the television's suspicion of Lily seemed to hinge partly on the order in which she had done certain things on the day after the murder. The most damning fact, it seemed, was that a delivery truck driver had seen Lily running across the lawn with blood on her face before she called the police at Sebastien's. On TV, this point wound up yielding two different insinuating questions, asked over and over by a rotating handful of commentators\u2014though always in the same tone of energetic inquiry that invited viewers to believe that these important queries had only just occurred to them (the commentators), and that they (the viewers) were watching substantive thinking in real time on live television and that this was why it was worth paying for cable.\n\nThe questions were these: 1. Why, the pundits asked, had Lily not called the police first before running to Sebastien's? (Unless, of course, she was running away in guilt, trying desperately to leave the scene before the law arrived.) 2. And _why_ , pondered the pundits, had she stayed at Sebastien's that night\u2014mere steps from where Katy was slain\u2014since she could not know that the killer would not return to the neighborhood? (Unless, of course, she knew precisely who the killer or killers were, and exactly how afraid of them she really needed to be.) The suppressed premises of these questions seemed contradictory to Sebastien but, apparently, to no one else; they were always paraded out together and were often mentioned in nearly the same breath, as though the one compounded the other instead of substantially subverting it.\n\nThough the bulk of the information was repetitive, every day the TV unearthed some new bit of trivia: Here was Lily's report card (she'd only been making Bs in Spanish!); and here was a picture of Lily as a child in a school play (dressed as a green pepper and clearly overacting); and here was an unkind Facebook message exchange Lily had had with a friend about a third girl (whose name was redacted but who was, in Lily's estimation, \"just unfuckingbelievable\"). Sebastien would catch himself feeling fascinated by and a little grateful for the information the TV dug up for segments about Lily's online persona\u2014at the end of the day, _is_ this the social network profile of a killer?\u2014before remembering to feel horrified and then ashamed. He'd vow to guard against this curiosity, though he did not turn off the TV. Somewhere along the line he had convinced himself that if information was power, then rapt information gathering was loyalty.\n\nIn odd moments Sebastien would startle to see an image of himself on the screen\u2014though he shut his eyes whenever they showed that episode near the Changomas condom shelf or the shot of him and Lily kissing, mouths visibly open, the police tape flapping behind them. (One of the lesser tragedies from this great tragedy, Sebastien figured, was that he would never be able to kiss anybody ever again.) He began to imagine what his whole life might look like as told through security camera videotape: Here he is jubilantly pouring coffee at a Cambridge 7-Eleven during that Harvard admitted students' visiting weekend; here he is hunting for a suit to wear to his parents' funeral, his face oyster-gray and formless; here he is shopping for cereal at his corner bodega, again and again and again, alone. All of these images existed somewhere out in the universe, Sebastien now realized, and they would show a version of his biography if somebody ever decided to collect and arrange them. And Sebastien saw how convincing the security tape telling of his life would be\u2014to the average viewer, or even to him\u2014no matter how many other true things were missing.\n\nThe worst was when they ran images of Katy\u2014which they did, at cruelly frequent intervals, nearly as much as they ran pictures of Lily; often, they showed their pictures side by side. Katy's image filled Sebastien with a sort of mental vertigo every time it appeared; he could not yet make his brain automatically register her as dead. Her deadness simply did not seem intuitive\u2014maybe because the deadness of vague acquaintances felt uncomfortably similar to their aliveness. Sebastien had glimpsed Katy occasionally in real life, and now he glimpsed her occasionally on television; she was still beautiful, still remote, still a person he did not really know. No matter how hard he tried, Sebastien could not make her seem as dead as she actually was, and always would be. He badly wished he could do this; not managing it seemed disrespectful, somehow. And each time Katy's image appeared, before Sebastien fully remembered what had happened, he experienced a momentary anxious feeling\u2014fractional, subconscious, pre-lingual\u2014that she was a person he had been charged with protecting and had somehow forgotten.\n\nAnd those moments forced Sebastien to consider a question he'd been trying hard to avoid: Why, he wondered, had he not been arrested along with Lily? Sebastien went back to that day again and again. Already his memory was shrinking from looking at it straight; the day was saturated in a blinding, otherworldly light, beginning with the moment he saw Lily come running across the lawn. Sebastien hadn't known yet what was happening, and for an instant he'd thought she was coming back to apologize\u2014he'd imagined she was weeping with the fear that she'd created irrevocable damage between them; he'd hoped she was finally revealing that, like him, she'd had a frangible and hidden heart all along. Was there a moment, when she buried her head in his shoulder and sobbed, when Sebastien was glad she'd been returned to him this way\u2014glad that she'd been returned to him any way at all? There was not. But Sebastien had also congratulated himself momentarily, retroactively, for this virtue\u2014and that, he knew, was just as bad or worse.\n\nIf they were handing out prison terms for murky moral impulses, Sebastien figured, he might as well go ahead and turn himself in.\n\nEvery day, Sebastien watched for developments at the Carrizos'. They'd been summoned back suddenly from their trip (to witness the baptism of some northern nephew, according to the women at Pan y Vino and the news), and at first Sebastien thought they were staying sequestered in the house, though he did not see them. Teenagers drove by at night honking and yelling, but Carlos never emerged to shoo them away. The car was sometimes there and sometimes not; its comings and goings, along with the illuminations and cessations of the lights in the house, seemed to reject all logic. But this, in a way, made sense to Sebastien. Normalcy and sanity had been suspended, after all. Katy was dead. Lily was in jail. The Carrizos' car, unsurprisingly, was no longer adhering to a regular schedule.\n\nIt took Sebastien a week to understand that the Carrizos weren't living in the house anymore. He'd been staring dumbly out the window, wearing his overly warm smoking jacket, at two in the afternoon, and he actually slapped himself on the forehead when he realized it. The Carrizos weren't living there anymore. Of course they weren't. Who could stand to live there anymore? The house was haunted, it was horrifying. And, no less important, it was a crime scene. The Carrizos weren't living there anymore. They were just coming and going to pick up their things.\n\nIt took Sebastien nearly another day to fully register that this meant he'd been living all alone on the hill\u2014all alone truly, for the first time in his life\u2014ever since Katy had been killed.\n\nAnd still\u2014out of the force of habit, or the force of something else\u2014Sebastien kept watching the Carrizos' house, feeling a strange revulsion every time he glanced across the yard. The sun was the wrong intensity these days, always too weak or too brutal. The grass was the wrong color, too\u2014it had begun to turn a rusty red, the symbolism of which Sebastien noted with no small amount of superstitious horror before realizing it just meant the Carrizos had stopped watering the lawn. In the late afternoons the house cast long shadows that didn't just move toward the street\u2014they seemed to _creep_ , Sebastien couldn't help but feel, with sneakiness and intentionality. The days were beginning to last forever. In the hideous and unrelenting evening light, Sebastien drew sheets around the windows.\n\nHe forgot to be afraid of the killer, though he knew that he should be. Believing that Lily had not killed Katy\u2014and this he believed utterly\u2014had somehow made it difficult to fully believe that Katy had been killed at all. But indeed she had been, and Sebastien tried to imagine the person who had done it. He summoned an image of a man\u2014lurking around, staking out both houses, perhaps, maybe entering the Carrizos' by accident; after all, there was far more to steal at Sebastien's. Maybe the murderer had killed Katy by mistake. Maybe it was Sebastien he should have killed, if he was going to absolutely insist on killing someone. Or maybe the killer had been looking for Lily\u2014perhaps he'd known her from that awful club where she worked, where boys with popped collars and Euro-lascivious hair went to preen and overpay for cocktails. Perhaps he was one of those, or perhaps he was not one of those and wanted to be. Or maybe it really _had_ been Katy the killer was after, for reasons that Sebastien did not expect ever to fathom. Each theory was disturbing in a different way, though they shared one disturbing element: that the killer, whatever his plan, had seemed to know that Sebastien presented no threat. The killer had somehow surmised, correctly, that Sebastien was not a person to worry about\u2014that he'd probably be too cowardly to do anything should he hear the screams, and that he'd probably be too stoned and inert (and blasting Air, as it happened) to even hear them in the first place.\n\nAnd so, out of respect, Sebastien tried to be afraid. He should be thinking about moving, he knew. He should, at the very least, be thinking about putting real locks on the doors. But he wasn't afraid, not really. When his parents died, he'd been afraid\u2014and not merely afraid, but deeply paranoid in a way that felt final, and somehow true. This feeling had reached its apex two days after the crash, the day of Sebastien's own flight back to Argentina, when he'd been completely convinced that whoever had killed his parents had followed him right through the post-9\/11 security performance art and into Logan International Airport to finish the job; every single person Sebastien saw that day seemed to him to have been cast in his own story\u2014a story that had always been straining, it turned out, toward this single, terrible ending, all along. Sebastien tried to invoke some of that fear now, sitting alone on the hill. But he could not. He did not feel afraid, exactly. Instead, what he felt was a surreal, disowned dread; he kept having dreams where he'd remember with a sickening feeling that he'd been entrusted with the care of something\u2014once an infant, once a puppy, once a small furry invented creature that looked a bit like a guinea pig\u2014and had forgotten it for far too long, and went hurrying back, frantic, knowing it was already too late. A fear so abstract and metaphysical could drive a person crazy, Sebastien saw. And after a while, he began to feel that it might be an odd sort of relief to have an actual murderer show up\u2014so dissolute was his anxiety, so vast was his longing for a horror he could actually see.\n\nThe 911 call itself was finally produced, as Sebastien had known it eventually would be. He had not been there when Lily made it\u2014he'd been sprinting across the lawn to be ready to direct the police to the basement\u2014but this became hard for Sebastien to remember as he listened to the recording, over and over and over again, along with the rest of the world. On television, the tape opened up new landscapes of syntactical and tonal speculation, previously unplumbed depths of slander, entire undiscovered universes of improvisation; the news channels reacted to its emergence with unrestrained\u2014and, Sebastien felt, unseemly\u2014glee. At one point, Sebastien happened across a show where a \"vocal analyst\" was offering his expert opinion on what Lily's speech patterns revealed about her psychological makeup\u2014even though Sebastien felt that the vocal analyst, in addition to being a charlatan, was possessed of a very unrepresentative sample of Lily's voice: On the 911 tape, she simply did not sound like herself. (Sebastien was not entirely convinced that it was Lily's voice at all, in fact, and he had half an idea to call up the vocal analyst\u2014maybe the next time he did a call-in show, maybe at home in the middle of the night\u2014and tell him this.) Instead of sounding breathless, as she often did, the Lily on the tape sounded somehow the opposite; she sounded as though she had only breath and could not remember what she was supposed to do with it, or what it had ever been for.\n\nSebastien came to hear the tape so many times that it became impossible not to think of it as a loop or a cycle, or as a kind of mythic event that was somehow always occurring because it never had; like literature or drama or sacred texts, the tape seemed to demand the present tense. On the tape, Lily's voice sounds like it's being removed from her body with pliers. She gives the Carrizos' address before she says anything else. Throughout the call, she speaks English to the dispatcher and never seems to notice. _Qu\u00e9 es su emergencia? She's dead, she's dead, oh my God, oh my God, please hurry, oh my God, she's dead. Qui\u00e9n? Katy. My roommate. God, please hurry_.\n\nAll of this, of course, gave the anchors their new favorite question. If Lily was so sure that Katy was dead, they asked\u2014breathlessly, delightedly\u2014then why had she so valiantly attempted CPR? _I don't know_ , Lily said miserably, according to the leaked police report that ran without ceasing. _I guess I thought maybe she wasn't dead at first. But then by the time I made the call I just knew that she was. I just knew_.\n\nAnd this was another thing Sebastien wished he could tell the television, or at least tell someone: He had known it, too, somehow, as he stood holding Lily outside the Carrizos' house. He had known that Katy Kellers was dead. It was a certainty as distinct and undeniable as a physical sensation, though somehow deeper than that\u2014not like the chill of the sun moving behind a cloud, but like the particular sense of forsakenness this brings. The police were fanning into the house, and Sebastien was standing behind Lily, holding her by the shoulders, then the elbows, feeling her heartbeat rattle in her body. She was clenching her hands so hard that her whole body shook. This ferocity scared Sebastien; it suggested a wretchedness that he would not have been able to bear in anybody, but especially, especially, could not bear in her. This was why he had kissed her\u2014first lightly, and then a second time more forcefully. It certainly wasn't lust driving him to do it; it wasn't even tenderness, quite. His only thought, really, was to distract her, to make her hands unfreeze from the terrifying shape they were taking.\n\nThe cameras never caught any of this, though. Instead, they showed Sebastien leaning into Lily. They showed Lily's face, strangely slack and empty and looking, the commentators said, nearly bored. And they showed Sebastien kissing her and kissing her again, while the men outside the house rolled the police tape, drawing a line between Katy and everyone else.\n\n# CHAPTER SIXTEEN\n\n## March\n\nAt ten a.m. on Thursday, a taxi arrived to take Andrew, Anna, and Maureen back to Lomas de Zamora.\n\nAnna sat wedged between Andrew and Maureen, whose hair was still wet from the shower; Andrew could see several wiry, lunar-white strands near her temple. The violently familiar smell of her shampoo filled the cab, casting Andrew uneasily back into the unplaceable past\u2014he felt as though he'd awoken in some unknown, long-ago year of his life and had no idea whether great joy or great sorrow awaited him. Andrew's sense of time was jostling; he simply could not believe how much of it had gone by\u2014not the years since he'd last regularly ridden in cars with Maureen and Anna together, not the week since he'd seen Lily\u2014and how little of it seemed to have properly passed. So much seemed entirely elided over somehow, like the hours lost to anesthesia.\n\nAt the jail, they were ushered in quickly. Andrew let Maureen and Anna walk ahead, not wanting to deny Lily one instant of her mother. And so he was trailing behind, unable to see anything, when he heard Maureen breathe in sharply and say, \"Oh my God.\"\n\n\"What? What's happened?\" said Andrew, hurrying into the room. Over Maureen's shoulder, he could see that Lily was sitting in her usual spot, in her usual position, except that this time, she was bald.\n\n\"Oh my God,\" said Maureen again. \"What did they do to you?\"\n\nLily had her hands spread out on the table again. Andrew had so hoped to find her in a different position this time. \"I got lice,\" she said.\n\nMaureen cupped Lily's head in her hands. Her face was concave with horror, and Andrew knew that part of what she was imagining was how Lily would now look on TV. \"How did you get lice?\"\n\n\"Everyone has lice.\"\n\n\"They couldn't have given you a special shampoo?\"\n\n\"Mom,\" said Anna.\n\n\"Mom, seriously?\" said Lily, ducking away from Maureen. \"There's no shampoo. There's definitely no _special_ shampoo. We barely have soap.\" The weary condescension in her voice was strangely, momentarily, consoling; Lily had used this voice many, many times, after all, for many, many occasions. A line ran through Andrew's head, possibly remembered, possibly imagined: _Mom, it's college, of course they have coed bathrooms!_ But as soon as Andrew summoned that line he realized there was something different\u2014something troublingly different\u2014about Lily's tone now; he recognized it after a moment as the complete absence of triumphalism. For years, Lily had thought that she knew more about the world than Andrew and Maureen did, and for years, she had been wrong. Now she was finally right, and she did not want to be.\n\nAndrew looked again at Lily's baldness. Her hair wasn't actually entirely gone, he saw now; it was chopped off in pieces on one side, messy and askew, and shaved to a smooth bulb only near the top. It was the kind of thing she might have done to herself, actually, under different circumstances. Andrew flashed to an image of a different kind of Lily\u2014rebelling and experimenting and trying out new identities; adopting lesbianism, briefly or permanently, at one of the Seven Sisters schools; coming home with a shaved head the Thanksgiving of her freshman year and saying _you don't understand, you don't understand, you just don't understand_ , no matter how strenuously Maureen and Andrew assured her that they did, they did, they absolutely did. This image flipped to a more frightening one: a different Lily, in a different sort of wayward twenties, as a cult member or religious supplicant; her hair, in a gesture to humility, arranged into the tonsure of some sort of Eastern monasticism; saying to Andrew and Maureen _you don't understand, you don't understand, you just don't understand_ , and this time it being true. That picture dissolved, and finally Andrew was struck with the one that would stay with him, no matter how he tried to shake it: the stunning, horrifying image of a Lily condemned. He saw a bald Lily burned for witchcraft, a bald Lily enduring the Spanish Inquisition, a bald Lily loaded onto a cattle car headed east. Andrew knew these comparisons were inapt; he knew that in invoking them he was hysterically overstating his daughter's trouble while diminishing the suffering of history's real victims, and that this was as disrespectful as it was useless. But Andrew couldn't stop seeing those other Lilys, and his knees nearly buckled when he thought of them: all young and bald and innocent; all beyond the reach of his help, or anyone's; all eternally living out stories with endings that the world now knew.\n\n\"It's okay, Mom,\" said Lily. Maureen was standing beside her, trying not to cry. Lily reached out and patted her in an odd swiping motion; the gesture was unnatural, as though Lily had read a manual on touching someone you loved but had never seen it done. \"Don't cry. It's just hair.\"\n\n\"I know,\" said Maureen. \"I'm not crying.\" But it was clear that she was, or that she would be, though there were no tears. Maureen had the ability to visibly defer crying, if it was not a good time to cry. This was something Andrew had seen her do many, many times.\n\n\"It's okay, Mom,\" said Lily again. \"It's okay. I'm okay.\"\n\nMaureen's face continued its silent internal collapsing. Watching this was far more excruciating, always, than her actual crying would have been. It meant that something had happened that she could not endure, and that she would not endure\u2014just as soon as she endured it a little longer.\n\nIn the taxi on the way back to the hotel, Maureen stroked Anna's head. \"I know it's not what's important,\" said Maureen. \"But her hair was just so pretty.\"\n\nThe rest of their time with Lily had been halting and quiet\u2014with the urgency of the first visits over, a strange sharp-edged shyness had overtaken all of them. In an especially painful moment, Lily had actually resorted to giving them listless recommendations about what to see in the city. Perhaps this terrible new awkwardness was because of Lily's baldness.\n\n\"We always wanted red hair,\" Anna said to Maureen. \"I mean, really red hair. Like yours.\"\n\nOr perhaps it was merely the oddness of the four of them, alone together in a room\u2014though they'd congregated with some regularity after the divorce, it had usually been at holidays or weddings or funerals or other special occasions, in the presence of relatives or mutual friends or one of Lily's beleaguered suitors.\n\n\"Blame your father and his dominant genes,\" said Maureen.\n\nBut probably, after all, the strangeness hadn't been because of Lily's hair or the posthumous assemblage of their nuclear family. Probably it was because Lily was in jail, and after an hour the three of them would be leaving without her. And even if Lily knew rationally that there was nothing Andrew and Maureen could do about it, how could this abandonment not feel to her like a betrayal? After all, when the time was up and the security guards arrived, did Andrew or Maureen physically fight them? Did they grab Lily and try to make a break for it? Did they throw themselves in front of her and tell the guards that they could take them but they could not, could absolutely not, take their daughter? They didn't. Instead, they rose and hugged Lily and whispered promises and encouragement and then, at the appointed time, they left, widening the new, terrifying chasm between Lily and everyone else. Andrew could almost hear it happening. He'd certainly heard it in Lily's voice\u2014 _We barely have soap_ , she'd said, and in that \"we,\" it seemed to Andrew, she had signified allegiance to a different realm. In some very fundamental respects, and through no fault of her own, Lily now had more in common with the worst people in the entire world than with her own family.\n\n\"Really, it was so beautiful,\" said Maureen. \"Like yours.\"\n\n\"It wasn't beautiful,\" said Anna. \"Mine's not, either. Like Lily said, it's just hair.\" But she did not shrink away from Maureen; in fact, Andrew thought, she settled in closer to her.\n\nThat night, Andrew dreamed of flying away. When he woke, he stared at the ceiling fan above him, waiting for the sedative effects of its cyclonic whir. In three days, he was supposed to be leaving Buenos Aires. His plane ticket was already booked.\n\nAndrew had had the flying dream often when Janie was sick. In the dream, there was no question as to whether he was flying away for good\u2014he knew that he was delirious with the wickedness of precisely this\u2014though he was always unable to make his way through the elusive dream-memory and figure out how he had ever let it happen in the first place. All he could really remember was the exhilaration: In the dreams he flew low enough for a detailed aerial view of the world; for some reason he seemed always to be headed north (to Canada, perhaps\u2014like an escaped slave? Or like a draft dodger?), and whatever had allowed him to leave in the first place was already far, far behind him, and he could not account for it. This wasn't so different from the way it must feel to do inconceivable things in real life, Andrew thought. There wasn't a single cell in our bodies that was the same as the day we were born, and yet we were still held responsible for everything all of our former selves had ever done.\n\nNevertheless, after the dreams Andrew had always felt a guilt that was nearly tactile\u2014not unlike the guilt he used to feel after the occasional sex dream (about old lovers, or old almost lovers, or students) back when he and Maureen were first married. Andrew could scarcely believe now that such trivialities had ever mattered so much to him. There had been great stretches of sexlessness between him and Maureen during those dark barren months when Janie was dying, and touching each other seemed unthinkable (not forbidden and thus alluring, but beyond comprehension, outside the realm of possible occurrences, something belonging to paraphysics or myth), and Maureen had even told him once that she did not care if he slept with someone else. Andrew's actually acting on this was, as Maureen surely knew, implausible (who would he possibly have slept with?) and yet he did not take her offer as a dare, or as a taunt, or as a trap. When Maureen said she would not care, Andrew really believed her. During that time, and exactly as psychology predicted, Andrew was dreaming of losing his teeth.\n\nAndrew got up and put on his bathrobe. He switched on the light. Outside, a cadaverous alley cat was mewling at a garbage can. He opened the door to the living room and jumped. Anna was sitting on the edge of the couch, watching the television with almost no sound.\n\n\"Hey,\" said Andrew. His voice was craggy. \"Why are you up?\"\n\n\"Why are you?\"\n\nAndrew shrugged and began rifling for coffee filters. He opened the mini-fridge and stared into it dumbly. \"Do you want a yogurt?\" he said. Anna pointed to the yogurt she was already holding. Andrew closed the refrigerator.\n\nWhen he went home, the idea was that he would try to resume his life. He would meet with Peter Sulzicki, the lawyer; he would meet with the accountant; he would, perhaps, make an appearance at his classes. From now on, he and Maureen would alternate weeks in Buenos Aires\u2014a jointly devised plan that Andrew knew he couldn't postpone forever. Trading weeks meant that Lily would always have a visitor, and that Andrew and Maureen would each be able to keep a foot\u2014or at least a toenail, as Maureen had said\u2014in their former lives. It was understood that they would have to do this because they'd need the money and small interim scraps of sanity their jobs afforded them. It was also understood, though never mentioned\u2014much like the possibility of Janie's death was never mentioned until it was already a reality, already in the past, already an event they were moving further away from with every second that passed\u2014that they might never get out of this thing. They might, in fact, be in it for the long haul, and they had to try to keep now whatever they would need for the duration. Andrew had discussed this explicitly with his dean, who had listened with tented fingers and uncharacteristic generosity. He had a full beard and seemed to know how much everyone expected him to stroke it; Andrew suspected that he did not do this out of spite. Even so, he had been kind. An extra TA had been assigned to Andrew's class. A grading schedule had been worked out.\n\nAndrew poured himself a coffee and padded over to the couch. On the TV, a reporter was interviewing an athlete. \"Who is that?\" said Andrew.\n\n\"A tennis player,\" said Anna.\n\n\"Oh.\" Why didn't Andrew ever think to turn on the TV? It was such a friendly presence. He cocked his head to one side and let the Spanish slip around him; it was a uniquely tantalizing feeling\u2014that sensation of something eddying just beyond your comprehension. \"I didn't know they did tennis here,\" he said.\n\n\"He won the U.S. Open.\"\n\n\"Oh.\"\n\n\"Is he saying anything interesting?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I mean, I guess probably not.\"\n\nAndrew rose and went to the window. He leaned his head against the glass. Outside, the light was sepulchral and thin, and Andrew remembered the light from his dreams: the sun tilting through the clouds, casting vast lattices of shadow on the ground; Andrew, above it all, skimming over stands of majestic northern firs, great meadows of allium flowers, rattling trains on trestle bridges. In the dream, Andrew was always struck by how easy it was to do all of this. He was always amazed that he had not done it earlier.\n\nAndrew turned back around and found that Anna was frowning at him. \"Am I supposed to ask you if you're okay?\" she said.\n\nThis, Andrew knew, was not an expression of genuine concern. It was a tactic of confrontation, inherited from Maureen and based on the premise that the speaker had silently suffered more than you had\u2014more than you could ever even imagine someone suffering\u2014and that condescending to deal with your weakness now was merely the latest trial to be endured with superior resilience and grace.\n\n\"I am okay,\" said Andrew. \"Of course I'm okay. Obviously, it's probably not great about your sister's hair.\"\n\n\"Well, I mean, it's the kind of thing she probably would have done to herself anyway.\" Anna grabbed the remote and turned up the volume on the TV. \"She's always been weird.\"\n\nAndrew considered this. Had Lily been weird? She was high-spirited, certainly, and maybe there were times when that had put her out of sync with her peers in various small ways. It was true she hadn't worn a bra until a bit later than she should have\u2014this had been a point of principle, and she'd been earnest and humorless on the matter\u2014and there had been something a little strange, and more than a little funny, about a child so young fighting a battle so old and so lost. But that only meant that she had ideas of her own. Andrew, through his squeamishness, had even been a little proud of her. \"Weird?\" he said. \"You think so?\"\n\nAnna raised her eyebrows and said nothing.\n\n\"How do you mean, 'weird'?\" said Andrew. Lily was a little socially awkward, maybe; it was possible that she wasn't quite as naturally intuitive about other people as girls were usually expected to be. He remembered a phone call from her sometime during her freshman year in which she'd complained about an entry-level political science class. She couldn't do it, she said, because she couldn't figure out what worked for people\u2014why were certain slogans effective and others ineffective, why were some unguarded moments seen as winningly humanizing and others as gaffes, why did people trust certain politicians and mistrust other ones? Why, she wondered, had \"It's the economy, stupid\" resonated so widely as a phrase?\n\n\"Well,\" Andrew had said, \"I suppose because it _was_ the economy, stupid.\"\n\n\"That doesn't really matter with that stuff, though,\" said Lily. \"It was just some magic formula or something.\"\n\n\"Is that the kind of thing they're teaching you there?\" he'd said worriedly.\n\n\"I don't know how you do it,\" she'd said. \"How do you ever guess what people are after?\"\n\n\"I don't,\" he'd said. \"I guess what states are after. Much easier. They behave like cue balls.\"\n\nOn the TV, the show had gone to a commercial, and Anna's eyebrows were floating farther and farther toward her hairline. \"Never mind, Dad,\" she said. \"If you guys never saw it, I'm not going to be the one to tell you.\"\n\n\"Anna,\" Andrew said sternly. \"You are clearly trying to say something. I would like to know what it is.\" Lily was maybe a tad socially inept\u2014but that wasn't \"weird,\" per se, as Anna so uncharitably put it. And she was maybe a tad smarter than the bunch, which made the bunch a bit inaccessible to her\u2014but that was certainly not an extraordinary state of things. And anyway, the gulf between Lily and most people was very, very slim: She was smart, but she was not as smart as she thought she was. A slight overestimation of one's intellect was a useful sort of self-deception, Andrew thought; it pushed a person toward confidence and risk taking and high standards. This was a quality that Andrew had seen countless times in his boy students and almost never in the girls, and so he couldn't help but find it somewhat endearing in a daughter.\n\nAnna stared at the television. If she did not want to answer, Andrew had no idea how he was going to make her. But then she turned to him, her eyes full of a terrible adult patience that he had never seen before. \"Do you remember,\" she said, \"when Lily killed that animal?\"\n\nAndrew began to laugh, but he could hear that his laugh sounded frightened. \"No,\" he said.\n\n\"It was a banana slug or something. You really don't remember?\"\n\n\"A slug? Why would I remember something like that?\"\n\n\"She and her friend killed it.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\n\"They found it in the backyard. She was seven, I think.\"\n\n\"And this slug,\" said Andrew. \"Its significance was what, precisely? Was it a special pet of ours? A work colleague of your mother's?\"\n\n\"It was Lily's idea. She kind of goaded her friend into it. It was pretty disturbing.\"\n\n\"Disturbing? Come on, Anna. If she was seven, you were what, five? I'm not sure your concept of disturbing was at its most sophisticated.\"\n\nAnna shrugged. \"She liked killing it. You could tell.\"\n\nAndrew could hear how little Anna expected him to believe her, and how little she cared that he wouldn't, and he felt, suddenly, an overwhelming, choking sadness that turned to anger in his voice. \"Oh, and what?\" he said. \"You're going to tell me next she was wetting the bed and setting fires while I wasn't looking, too? It was a slug, Anna. Put it in perspective. Killing a slug is not torturing a puppy.\"\n\n\"I don't think you would have noticed if she was doing that, either.\"\n\n\"Jesus Christ!\"\n\n\"I'm not saying she was doing that,\" said Anna. \"She wasn't. I know that because I know what she was doing and I know what she was like.\"\n\n\"Have you been feeling unattended to lately, Anna?\" said Andrew. \"Are you maybe a little jealous of your sister right now?\" He knew this could not be a useful thing to say, but he was angry, and he had long ago decided never to yell or raise his voice when angry. Losing your temper never made your case for you; it only made you sound foolish and sputtering and inarticulate\u2014whenever Andrew heard people bellowing sloppily into their cell phones he couldn't help but think how much more serious their anger would seem if they could keep it calm and well reasoned and under control. When Andrew was angry, he tried to be communicative and nondefensive, to explain intentions and interpretations, to make \"I\" statements. He tried never to let aggression bleed into unsullied areas; he tried to keep hostility quarantined, the better to effect its excision. But not even Andrew could be calm all of the time, and when he felt himself becoming too angry to stay that way, he had a signature tactic of his own: attempting to ascertain the true origins of his opponent's behavior. This move had the benefit of seeming completely high-minded (nearly academic, even), communicating how completely irrational he found the other person's behavior (so totally beyond the pale of comprehension that he could only assume\u2014indeed, he _had_ to assume\u2014that there were other dark forces at work within them), and being, of course, impossibly maddening, all at the same time.\n\n\"I'm sure this trip has been hard on you,\" said Andrew. _At least you're not unjustly detained in a foreign country!_ he wanted to scream. _At least you're not dead! Because it could be a whole lot worse than this, Anna, Old Sport_. \"I know we've been very focused on Lily. And maybe you're not getting what you need from us right now. But, sweetheart, this is not the right way to act out. This is not the right thing to do with those feelings. This is not a good way to get attention.\"\n\nAnna was seething. \"You're being a fucking asshole, Dad.\"\n\n\"Okay. You got me. I'm an asshole. We're all down here trying to help your sister hang on to her life just to torment you. Because it's my idea of a good time. Because I'm an asshole.\"\n\n\"You know that isn't what I mean.\"\n\n\"Well, what do you mean, exactly? Please elaborate. We've got all the time in the world, Anna. We certainly don't have any bigger concerns right now.\"\n\nAnna screamed at him then, swore and screamed like she never did during her adolescence, though Lily sometimes had, and then slammed out of the room. And Andrew sat on the bed for a time, patting himself on the chest, as though he could smooth over the divots that had lately been gouged into his heart.\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nAndrew went downstairs a few hours later, ready to broker some kind of stopgap peace. He knocked on Maureen's door and she appeared.\n\n\"Hi,\" she said.\n\nSomething about seeing Maureen when he'd expected Anna made Andrew consider her face anew: the fractal lines around her eyes, woven like bits of tapestry; the way they somehow made her eyes seem brighter by contrast. He was relieved to see that she had not been crying, at least not recently.\n\n\"I can't leave,\" said Andrew, surprising himself. It was not at all what he'd thought he was going to say.\n\n\"What?\" Maureen held open the door. Andrew stepped over a pile of Anna's gym clothes and into the room.\n\n\"I just can't,\" he said.\n\n\"Because she cut her hair? We've got bigger problems than that.\" Maureen went to the window and opened the curtain. In the gray wash of light, Andrew wasn't sure whether he could actually see the red in Maureen's hair. Maybe he only sensed it, like a pentimento from an abandoned painting.\n\n\"Anyway, we've talked about this,\" said Maureen. \"You have to go back. That's where your life is.\"\n\n\"Is it?\" said Andrew fretfully. \"I don't know. It keeps moving around.\"\n\n\"Maybe you're just misplacing it.\" Maureen sat on the unmade bed. \"The wages of age, you know.\"\n\n\"It wouldn't be the only thing, these days.\" Andrew joined Maureen on the bed. He rocked his shoulders through their sockets. \"Your daughter's mad at me,\" he said after a moment.\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"I see,\" said Andrew grumpily. \"She said something?\"\n\n\"What was it about?\"\n\n\"Surely you already know that, too.\"\n\n\"I don't. Really.\"\n\nAndrew stared into the silent television screen. There was something oddly comforting about this; he felt a sudden, unreasonable hope that it might materialize into an oracle and offer up a prophecy. \"She said something about Lily,\" said Andrew. \"She said something about her killing an animal.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Maureen mildly. \"Did she mean the slug?\"\n\n\"What?\" said Andrew. \"Yes. Why didn't I know this?\"\n\n\"I don't know.\"\n\n\"I mean, why does absolutely everyone else know this? It is not an exaggeration to say that this has probably been _literally_ on the evening news. I don't understand why I didn't know this.\"\n\n\"Me, neither. She cried about it for, like, a week.\"\n\n\"Why did she do it, then?\"\n\n\"I have no idea.\"\n\n\"Well, anyway,\" said Andrew darkly after a moment. \"A slug isn't really an animal.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I actually think it's pretty misleading of Anna to characterize a slug as an animal.\" Andrew closed his eyes. \"I have to wonder if she's actually pretty angry at Lily.\"\n\n\"I'm sure she is,\" said Maureen. \"I mean, aren't you?\"\n\n\"Mad at her? No. Why would I be?\"\n\n\"Well, she's made some pretty dumb decisions.\"\n\n\"She's a kid.\"\n\n\"She's made some pretty dumb decisions even for a kid. She's done things we wouldn't have done at her age. She's done things Anna wouldn't have done.\"\n\n\"I suppose.\"\n\nMaureen sighed. \"It's just\u2014you really do want them to turn out to be smarter than you.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" said Andrew mournfully. \"I mean, what's the point otherwise? That's the whole thing. Just saying, okay. We've tried, we've done our best with ourselves and our lives, we've done all right. But the best hope is that something else might do better.\"\n\n\"You cede your competence to its next incarnation,\" said Maureen. \"That's why it's so terrible and astonishing.\"\n\n\"And boring,\" said Andrew. \"With Lily, at least.\"\n\n\"It was boring! She was _such_ a boring baby, wasn't she?\" Maureen laughed. \"Why was that? Is that an awful thing to say?\"\n\n\"Babies are boring when you're not terrified, I guess,\" said Andrew. It was true. Janie had probably been boring, too, but they'd been too scared to notice. \"Being mortally terrified will make anything interesting. Bet you're not bored now, are you?\"\n\n\"Nope! Riveted!\" Maureen laughed again. \"Oh, we don't have the best luck, do we?\"\n\n\"Not the absolute best.\" Andrew was saying, \"One could imagine better\"\u2014but then he stopped talking because he and Maureen were kissing. He had not noticed that they were going to kiss. Perhaps there had been a brief fillip of intention\u2014perhaps his hand had been on her face momentarily\u2014before it happened. But it would be impossible to say for sure whose fault it was; they both maintained plausible deniability, he felt, throughout. The rest was muscle memory; a routine so routine that it was elevated nearly to ritual. All the thousands of times they had done this. It was strange the things you still remembered, whether you wanted to or not. They were like aging dancers performing the first ballet of their youth, just to see if they still knew how.\n\nAfterward, they slept. For the first time since arriving in Buenos Aires, Andrew did not dream.\n\nOn Thursday, Ignacio Toledo was apprehended in Ciudad Oculta.\n\nHe was not the kind of person Eduardo had been expecting. It was difficult, in fact, to tell what kind of person he was at all. Toledo appeared in Eduardo's office wearing a heavy brown coat that he declined to remove, even though the air was stifling. Unlike most paco fiends Eduardo had known, he was not jangling with the twitchiness of a nervous system with broken shocks, nor was he particularly derelict; it was hard to imagine him standing around a prison yard, cooking kerosene and sulfuric acid on a spoon. In one light, in fact, Ignacio Toledo actually seemed to possess an odd sort of charisma: He had lazy half-open eyes and the kind of carved, rugged features that seemed to speak of great masculine stoicism. When you first glanced at him, you saw a person who might have been a lover to Katy, or to Lily, or to both; a person who might even\u2014maybe\u2014have inspired lethal passions in one of them.\n\nBut then you blinked, and when you looked at Ignacio Toledo again, you saw something else. You noticed that he had bags under his eyes the shape and color of fire bellows, that his teeth looked like they were older than he was; you noticed that his gaze was somehow jumpy and leering simultaneously. Or was it? Eduardo was not sure. Uncharacteristically, when it came to Ignacio Toledo, Eduardo was not quite sure about anything. Even Toledo's appearance without a state-appointed lawyer was difficult to unpack. With Lily, that decision had been born of a na\u00efvet\u00e9 that was arrogant to the point of suicide, and maybe something similar was at work here. Or maybe it was more calculated with Toledo\u2014perhaps this decision arose from the idea that accepting a lawyer was a tacit admission of guilt. But this was only a different kind of na\u00efvet\u00e9, ultimately, and there were moments when Eduardo wondered if Ignacio Toledo was purposefully inviting Eduardo to believe in either kind. Eduardo did not know and was not moving toward knowing; every time he found himself approaching a sense of Ignacio Toledo, something about him shifted\u2014so subtly, so apparently guilelessly, that Eduardo could never be totally sure that there'd been any change at all. It was like catching a fractional glimpse of a fish through the reeds, turning back only in time to be sure of the motion\u2014which may have been, after all, only your own shadow on the water.\n\n\"Look,\" said Eduardo. He squinted, as if this could somehow correct for the strange psychic parallax that seemed to be at work here. Out the window behind Toledo, the sun was a garish pumpkiny orange. Eduardo was already frustrated and had had to pee for an hour. He should have seated Toledo facing the window, but now it was too late to change places.\n\n\"You've got nothing to lose now,\" said Eduardo. \"We know you were there. Your DNA is absolutely everywhere.\"\n\nWhen Eduardo had said this to Lily, it had been a bluff\u2014but this time it was true, and it was maddening that Toledo was acting as though they were playing some game of strategy at which Eduardo might yet be outsmarted. What did he hope to gain from this? Could he be dumb enough to believe that Lily was the one they were completely sure of, and that admitting to having had any dealings with her would be a fatal mistake? Eduardo was not sure he believed in a stupidity so vast. After all, Ignacio Toledo must _know_ that his DNA was everywhere; he must _know_ that his own involvement was so well established that he should be willing to implicate absolutely anyone\u2014including Lily Hayes\u2014for exactly as long as Eduardo would let him try. But instead, Toledo had remained mostly silent, while Eduardo thought with increasing longing of the urinal.\n\n\"I wasn't,\" said Toledo.\n\nEduardo held up his hand. He was trying to stop Toledo whenever he began obviously to lie. \"Absolutely _everywhere_ ,\" said Eduardo severely. \"We know you were there. This is not a question.\"\n\nNow Toledo was wringing his hands in a way that seemed nearly animalistic one moment and just generically distressed the next. Perhaps he was thinking of faking an insanity defense; if so, it was a very, very subtle performance. Nevertheless, any such attempt would be problematic, since it would naturally cast suspicion on anything Ignacio Toledo might be persuaded to say about Lily Hayes, which Eduardo still hoped would be plenty.\n\n\"What _is_ a question,\" said Eduardo, \"is exactly what Lily Hayes's involvement was. Her DNA was also at the scene of the crime, and we're trying to figure out why. Do you understand?\"\n\nEduardo was beginning to consider the possibility that Ignacio Toledo did not really believe in DNA; it was, after all, very hard to imagine someone so divorced from the modern world that they'd literally leave their shit in a toilet at a crime scene. Eduardo felt slightly deflated at this prospect. It was so cheap to catch a man like this\u2014like winning at a game of football because the other team suddenly picked up the ball and ran.\n\n\"This is Lily Hayes,\" said Eduardo, pushing her picture across the table. \"I'm sure you recognize her.\" Eduardo tapped on Lily's face but did not look at it. He did not like looking at the photo; he did not want to see again the gestures of mortality underneath Lily's relative youth and health\u2014the gray below her eyes, like thumbprints of news script; the teeth already yellowing, like a sepia photo fading into age. The Lily in the picture thinks she's escaped the confines of childhood and eluded the claims of adulthood, but she is wrong. Consequence, like mortality, is after her already; it is just over her left shoulder\u2014even though she doesn't know it, even though she doesn't feel it, even though it doesn't yet cast a shadow.\n\nEduardo leaned forward. He thought he caught a whiff of something vaguely briny, subaquatic, on Toledo, but then it disappeared. \"I understand you spent ninety-seven days in jail last year for vandalism.\"\n\nToledo shrugged. \"You seem like you'd know better than I would.\"\n\n\"You must have enjoyed your time there,\" said Eduardo. He leaned back and his chair skittered sideways on a broken caster. A faint look of disgust either did or did not flicker across Ignacio Toledo's face. He yawned, revealing teeth that were strangely small and sharp, like little broken buttons.\n\n\"Excuse me, hello?\" said Eduardo, rapping on the table. He bit the inside of his lip, willing himself to attention. \"Listen. The only thing you can do now is help us understand how Lily Hayes was involved. This isn't only the best thing you can do for your case at this point. It's also basically the _only_ thing you can do for your case. This is it. Do you understand? This is the last choice you'll get to make in all of this. This, really, is the only one.\"\n\nAt this, something decisive seemed to flash in Toledo's face\u2014the whites of his eyes grew momentarily larger, perhaps, or then again maybe they didn't\u2014and Eduardo felt a queasiness that he recognized as the onset of unwanted certainty.\n\n\"Do you not believe me?\" said Eduardo. \"Go ahead and get yourself a lawyer. He's going to tell you exactly the same thing. I assure you.\"\n\nThere was another freighted silence. Eduardo tried to breathe shallowly so as not to jostle the mounting pressure in his bladder. And then\u2014finally\u2014Ignacio Toledo began to speak.\n\n\"Yeah, I knew her.\" Toledo sighed with unexpected theatricality. \"We talked sometimes and I sold her some weed once. The night it happened she came by really upset just as my shift was ending. She'd been fired a few days before and I didn't want Javier to see her and get even angrier, and she seemed to really need to talk to someone, so I offered to buy her a beer. So we went out and, well, it turned into a pretty crazy night.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Eduardo. \"That's helpful. Thank you. Did anyone besides you see Lily come by Fuego that night?\"\n\n\"I don't think so.\" Now Toledo seemed to be working something around the corner of his mouth, though Eduardo couldn't quite catch sight of it properly\u2014every time he looked at Toledo straight on, he stopped. \"I mean, I saw her in the back alley, and I tried to sort of hustle her away. Because like I said, I didn't want Javier to find out she was there.\"\n\n\"I see. And then what happened?\"\n\n\"Well, we went out\u2014\"\n\n\"Where?\"\n\nToledo looked down and squinted into his lap. When people were lying, they usually rolled their eyes upward\u2014but then again this was widely known by anyone who had regular occasion to lie or be lied to. \"I don't remember,\" he said. \"A place on Juramento. I can check.\"\n\n\"That would certainly be helpful. Did anyone see you there?\"\n\nToledo shrugged. \"I don't know. I mean, it was really crowded\u2014like completely packed\u2014so I'm sure people saw us, but I don't know if anyone would really remember us.\"\n\n\"I see. And you didn't happen to make any of your purchases with a credit card that night?\"\n\nToledo shook his head.\n\n\"Of course not. Go on.\"\n\n\"Well, anyway, we got really drunk, and then. Well. I know this part isn't going to make me look so good, but I guess I should probably tell you the whole story.\"\n\n\"That would indeed be wise.\"\n\n\"Well, then we smoked some weed and took some paco. And anyway, all this time, Lily was telling me all these crazy stories about Katy, about the kinds of insane sex stuff Katy was into. I mean, I'd seen the girl around a few times myself and that was definitely the vibe I got from her. And somehow we got it into our heads that we should go back to the house and try to get something going with her. The two of us. It was Lily's idea, really, but I'd seen Katy around a few times and thought she was pretty hot, so I was game. We got there and she was up for it, and things got started. But at a certain point Katy just started freaking out\u2014\"\n\n\"Slow down. Freaking out how?\"\n\n\"Threatening to call the people whose house it was, threatening to call the cops. Lily started screaming back at Katy, and then I slapped her, just sort of to calm her down, get her to snap out of it. Then Lily hit her and Katy sort of tried to hit her back, and I was thinking this was maybe still part of the sex stuff, like maybe they did this all the time. I mean, I guess they'd had a pretty crazy fight at Fuego just a couple of nights earlier. I didn't see all of it, but that's what I heard. So anyway then Katy came swinging at me and I got in there, too, and, anyway, it was really fast, and like I said\u2014\"\n\n\"And when did the knife come in?\" Eduardo said this dispassionately. One could not let emotion corrode these things. He had to think of what it would be like to lose Maria. He had to believe that somebody\u2014somebody rational and humane\u2014would go about the careful business of doing all of this when he was unable to; he had to believe that somebody would stand back from the mosaic and try to make sense of the whole.\n\n\"I honestly don't even know,\" said Toledo. \"I was really drunk and frankly pretty high. Maybe Lily grabbed it, or maybe I did. Or maybe even Katy did. I mean, I'm sure your tests will show what happened, but I honestly don't know. It was a mess. And in what seemed like a minute Katy was on the ground, and it seemed like she was hurt pretty bad. I asked Lily if maybe we needed to take her to the hospital but Lily said no, it was her problem, she would take care of it and would keep an eye on her and would call for help if she needed it. So anyway, naturally I left then. I definitely didn't think Katy was dead at the time. It never would have occurred to me that she could be. I thought she was like, passed out. Every night at Fuego some girl or five passes out. I didn't know that Katy had died until I saw it on TV the next day. And I had no idea what the hell had happened, or what had happened after I left, so I figured it was best to just lie low and see what happened next.\" He shook his head. \"It's horrible. It's absolutely horrible. I really can't believe it at all.\"\n\n\"Thank you,\" said Eduardo. \"I do appreciate your being so forthcoming.\"\n\nToledo shook his head. \"I just wish I'd known what Lily was really like, you know?\" he said. \"Then maybe I could have stopped it.\"\n\nThat day, Eduardo left work early. Outside, the evening was balmy, the light still dripping off the buildings like icicles. He had decided he would walk home.\n\nEduardo was, overall, very satisfied with Toledo's confession. In a broad sense, of course, no murder confession could ever be truly satisfying, because you could not hope for a real answer to the fundamental question of _why_ one person murdered another. That question was on the order of cosmic questions about meaning and love and mortality, and it was not the job of a newspaper or a court to unravel it. In most cases\u2014and this case, it seemed, was no different\u2014there was no answer that could ever make a normal person understand.\n\nAcross the street from Eduardo, a small protest was beginning. The students were yelling _Putos Peronistas!_ this year, but they were yelling something every year. Eduardo stopped for a moment and marveled. All that vanity and self-congratulation, and all for not being dead or old yet. As though this, in and of itself, was some kind of accomplishment. Eduardo kept walking.\n\nBut even without a satisfying answer to that most elemental question\u2014the question of why\u2014Toledo's story made sense. The story did not need to force a jurist or a prosecutor or an average person to empathize his way into comprehension, after all. It did not need to make them see how an event like this could happen; it needed only to convince them that it had. And on that score, the confession worked. Significantly, it drew a narrative line between the triplicate data points of Lily's DNA: on the knife, on Katy's mouth, and on the bra. The defense could tell a heroic story about CPR to explain the mouth, but that story would not explain the bra, and Ignacio Toledo's story explained both. It further explained the hours between when Katy Kellers died, according to the pathologist, and when Lily Hayes was seen streaking across the yard with blood on her face: If she and Toledo had not realized that Katy was mortally wounded, then Lily probably _was_ surprised to find her dead. And all of this fit with the fact that clearly neither Lily nor Ignacio Toledo had expected the night to turn out the way it had; even before it was tested, the visible presence of DNA at the crime scene had strongly suggested that Katy's murder had not been premeditated\u2014had perhaps not even been entirely intentional.\n\nToledo's story made sense of all of this, too. And more important still, from the panelists' perspective, it was unlikely that Toledo could know that it did. Realizing that Toledo had an incentive to lie about Lily's involvement was one thing, after all\u2014believing that he'd had the foresight to craft such a comprehensive, multivariable lie was quite another. And most crucially, perhaps, Toledo's story was really only a continuation of the stories the judge panelists would have already heard from Lily herself: her suspicions about Sebastien and Katy leading to the fight with Katy at Fuego leading to Lily's firing leading, finally, to this. The alcohol, the proximity to drugs, made more explicable the gulf between Lily's past behavior and her behavior on this night. And although it would have been better if Ignacio Toledo and Lily had been seen together, they had both independently supplied reasons why they might have tried hard not to be: Toledo wanted to keep Lily out of sight of Javier Aguirre; and Lily had, by her own belated admission, purchased illegal drugs from Toledo\u2014which must have seemed like a pretty serious problem, before Lily learned just how serious problems could be.\n\nIt was true, of course, that Eduardo did not need Lily any longer to successfully prosecute the case. He had Ignacio Toledo\u2014both his story and his DNA\u2014and there were prosecutors, Eduardo knew, who would now begin to see Lily Hayes as a murky distraction, a person whose guilt was quickly becoming inconvenient. There were prosecutors who would want to edit her out of the narrative in order to tell the jurist panelists a cleaner, less subtle story\u2014a story in which all the victims and villains looked the way they usually did, and all the motives were fairy-tale clear\u2014and, depending on how much they thought it would strengthen the state's overall case, there were prosecutors who might even offer Ignacio Toledo a modest deal in exchange for excising Lily from his confession. A deal of that sort could be breathtakingly, vanishingly modest\u2014since Ignacio Toledo had absolutely nothing to lose\u2014and there were prosecutors who would see all of this as an overarching win: one small moral concession for a broader moral victory, an indisputably pragmatic trade-off. There were prosecutors who would shrug and send Lily off into her life, keeping her guilt a secret between them. They would console themselves with the thought that she was very unlikely to do anything violent ever again. And they would tell themselves that\u2014either way\u2014the prosecution of Lily Hayes, as that of all people everywhere, was ultimately in the hands of God.\n\nBut Eduardo could do none of this. He had heard a line once that had stayed with him, both for its elegance and its wrongness: _It is thefinal proof of God's omnipotence that He need not exist in order to save us_. Where had Eduardo heard that quote? He did not know, but he knew he did not believe it. The way to assure morality on Earth was not to behave as though there was a God, even if there wasn't\u2014it was to behave as though there was no God, even if there was. We must act as though ours is all the judgment and forgiveness that is ever forthcoming, if we want any hope of getting anything right. Maria was a living reminder of that charter, if Eduardo could have ever forgotten it. Human love meant the witness of human lives, and Maria was witnessing Eduardo's, even if no one else was. And dropping Lily's prosecution would be a rejection of the single mission that was, whether divinely charged or not, the only mission men are tasked with. In the end, it would be an act of moral violence done not only to Katy Kellers, but to Lily Hayes, as well, and even, in a small way, to Eduardo himself: It would be a denial of all of their humanity. The difference, really, was only a matter of degree.\n\nEduardo stepped into the street, and a motorcycle whizzed by him. He leaped out of the way, swearing, and fell sideways onto his knee.\n\n\"Cabeza de pija!\" he bellowed. The kid was already half a block away and did not turn around\u2014only dug his knee into the bike, as though it were a sentient creature that could actually respond to him. Eduardo hated, hated, the motorcycles. Syncopated waves of new objects were always flooding the country, responsive to the lifting of this or that trade restriction\u2014Eduardo woke up one day and everyone suddenly had a BlackBerry, or were standing in lines that snaked around corners in order to buy a flat-screen TV, or had a fucking motorcycle. Sometimes Eduardo could understand the appeal of living in a closed neighborhood\u2014just pulling your arms over your head and trying to wave away history's vicissitudes. He straightened out his knee. It was decidedly\u2014perhaps a bit disappointingly\u2014undamaged. He stood up. He could feel his whole body shaking. The rest of the walk home, he favored his knee a bit more than he really had to, for the benefit of anyone who might have been watching.\n\nWhen Eduardo reached the apartment, he stood in the doorway for a moment. Since Maria's return, he had become accustomed to taking the temperature of a room before he entered it; today, he could feel the low ebb of the apartment's energy. The kitchen was mostly dark. In the few strands of vermiculated light coming through the window, he could see that the small mess from breakfast was still sitting on the table; the coffee was still stewing, now cold, in its pot.\n\nThe one remaining problem with the case, as Eduardo saw it, was Sebastien LeCompte. The alibi he provided for Lily was deeply nebulous, and he was not a person any judge would be inclined to trust, even with a far better story. Nevertheless, Toledo's account\u2014with its multiple acts and multiple locations\u2014would be harder to square with Sebastien LeCompte's testimony than a simpler narrative might have been. It was easy enough to believe that Lily had left Sebastien for an hour or two without his knowledge; four or five hours\u2014which is what Eduardo feared Toledo's story implied\u2014would mean that the panelists would be forced to decide that either Sebastien LeCompte was lying or Ignacio Toledo was. And LeCompte and Toledo struck Eduardo as about equally disingenuous seeming; really, you might as well flip a coin between them. Eduardo switched on the light.\n\n\"Hello,\" said Maria. She'd been sitting on the couch, perfectly still, and had not spoken when he entered the room. \"Did I startle you?\"\n\n\"No.\" She had, but Eduardo never physically startled.\n\n\"I went to church today,\" said Maria. \"I wanted to visit your pal.\" She meant Jesus. Eduardo was wary of this topic of discussion. Maria's firmest and lowest opinion of Eduardo centered on the myth of his blind religiosity and\u2014in part because she seemed to enjoy it so much\u2014he had long since given up trying to explain his actual feelings on the matter.\n\n\"I hope you communicated my regards,\" said Eduardo, pouring out the coffee. He flexed his knee again and felt a vaguely satisfying pulse of pain. Those fucking kids.\n\n\"Oh, I didn't have to,\" said Maria.\n\nEduardo turned on the faucet. He believed in God in the same way he believed in his own consciousness; Eduardo would no more have tried to prove that he actually felt God's presence in his life than he would have tried to convince someone that he actually heard his own inner monologue running through his head. He would have liked to explain some of this to Maria, but she was not a very good listener when it came to such things.\n\n\"He knew all about your regards already,\" said Maria, in case Eduardo hadn't gotten it. \"I mean, obviously.\"\n\nEduardo dislodged a plate from its swamp of waterlogged rice. He was glad that Maria had left the dishes; he could pretend not to hear her when the water was running.\n\n\"It's funny,\" said Maria, \"that people talk to God so much, when He's the one person who you shouldn't have to explain anything to.\"\n\n\"Mmm,\" Eduardo said. He was trying very hard not to argue. It was atheists, he often thought, who were the true fundamentalists\u2014forever trapped within their own limited circuit, utterly without humility, smug in the laughable confidence that the universe was somehow specifically set up for human understanding, like an algebra problem designed to be challenging but reasonable for a particular age group. How did that idea not undercut its own argument, while being hopelessly unimaginative and narcissistic at the same time? But there was no point in saying any of this. When Maria got in this mood, there was no point in saying much of anything.\n\n\"People think that's true of lovers,\" said Maria, \"but it's not. Right, Eduardo?\"\n\nHe turned off the water and grabbed a dish towel. There were a few options before him now, and he ran through them. He could remain silent, which would only provoke Maria to keep talking. He could say something conciliatory, which would have no effect, or something withering, which would either sate or excite her. Or he could gamble on something silly\u2014make a joke, flick water at her, try to create a hallucinatory, wavering moment in which she might still decide she didn't feel like fighting.\n\n\"But people like to tell God everything,\" said Maria. \"He must get bored listening to all of those thoughts.\"\n\nEduardo handed her a dish to dry.\n\n\"Even yours, Eduardo,\" she said, swiping at it feebly. \"Do you think you're ever boring our Lord? Do you think He's ever just pretending to listen? Just trying to be polite?\"\n\nEduardo had decided what to do. \"Not everyone can be as patient as you are,\" he said. He kissed her on the forehead for good measure\u2014once begun, it was important to really commit to appeasement\u2014and was relieved when Maria laughed merrily. It had worked.\n\n\"Oh, Eduardo,\" she said, drawing her hand to her cheek. \"I'm a nightmare. I don't know why you put up with me. Oh!\" She clapped her hands and went to the couch. \"Did you know you were in _Clar\u00edn_ today?\" She produced the paper from the sofa cushions and handed it to him. The article was a profile. It had been written and researched months ago, its publication endlessly deferred. But now here it was, resurrected at last, occupying a respectable square chunk of the page. Eduardo glanced at the photograph accompanying the article. Through some strange newspaper sorcery, it made Eduardo appear far more handsome than he was in real life.\n\n\"Did you read it?\" said Maria.\n\n\"Not yet.\" Eduardo stared at the photograph. It was a weird trick of angling or light, he thought; it gave the completely wrong impression of his face. And in giving the wrong impression of his face, it seemed to give a wrong impression of his entire life\u2014nobody with that face could ever be as lonely and as heartbroken as Eduardo had so often been.\n\n\"They make you sound so smart,\" said Maria. Like all of her compliments, this one was slightly askew and, like all of her compliments, Eduardo was happy to have it.\n\n\"Thanks,\" he said, giving the photograph one last look. It felt fraudulent, embarrassing, somehow, to see it. He almost wanted to ask the newspaper to issue a retraction.\n\n\"That really looks nothing like you,\" said Maria, hovering over his shoulder.\n\nEduardo kissed her on the cheek this time, hoping she'd take weariness for tenderness. \"No,\" he said. \"I guess it doesn't.\"\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nThat night, Eduardo stayed up in his office. He folded the newspaper to his picture and set it on the desk, then took out the picture of Lily Hayes\u2014the one he normally did not like to look at, the one taken before she was guilty but when she was already the person who eventually would be\u2014and set them side by side. Pictures were so deceptive, he thought, pressing his thumb into Lily's face. What had she known about herself then? What had the people who loved her known? Perhaps they'd felt a difference in her somehow but had had no vocabulary to name it. Maybe this had been something like the color blindness of the ancient Greeks, before words had ushered in vision\u2014we do not see that which we have no language to understand. Or maybe Eduardo had misunderstood that entire concept entirely. Maybe he'd been getting it wrong all along.\n\nHe went to the kitchen and turned on the coffeepot. It hissed and sputtered like a roused animal, and he hoped Maria could hear it. He padded back into the office and opened the window. Outside, it was raining an invisible nocturnal rain. He sat back down and put his cheek to the table. He stared at the photograph of Lily Hayes. Her prosecution was something that was owed to her\u2014just as much as, if not more than, it was owed to Katy Kellers. In his head, Eduardo spoke to Lily: _We must act as though our understanding, as limited as it might be, is the most panoramic and complete understanding possible. We must act as though everything in this life counts; as though we have only one shot to get things right. We must act as though nobody would see the truth if we did not see the truth_.\n\nHe would tell Maria some of these things someday, he thought.\n\nEduardo opened his eyes. Outside, somehow, the sky was already, relentlessly, brightening to the color of tallow. The rain had stopped. It was possible that Eduardo had slept.\n\n# CHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n\n## March\n\nIt was ten days before Sebastien finally saw Beatriz Carrizo again.\n\nHe'd been staring at the computer for nearly an hour, trying to decide whether to buy lightbulbs online. Leaving the house was beginning to feel impossible. The women at Pan y Vino went silent now whenever Sebastien came in\u2014though whether from hostility or sympathy or politeness (since, like everyone else, they were doubtlessly spending most of their waking hours talking about the trial), he did not know. But whatever the case, Sebastien's going anywhere or doing anything had come to seem like an elaborate imposition on everybody else, when before it had seemed like an imposition only on Sebastien himself. He certainly hadn't been in the market for yet another reason to stay indoors. And he found that there was something strangely anxiety producing about not being able to leave the house without ruining someone's day (and he reminded himself that he'd managed to ruin Andrew's without even doing that much); it seemed to consign him to the realm of the mythic and the monstrous and the deformed\u2014and was, perhaps, the reason he was waffling so much over ordering the lightbulbs online. To do so would be a concession to a new, more disfiguring reclusiveness. After that, it would be only a matter of time before mothers started warning their children about him to get them to behave. Sebastien shook his head and closed the Amazon lightbulb page. He glanced out the window. And that's when he saw a bent figure moving hurriedly across the yard.\n\nSebastien jumped. The fact that he had not noticed Beatriz until she was already halfway between her car and the house made him uneasy, as did the strange tension in her gait. She had always been elegant, regal in a way that seemed beyond considerations of age. Now her walk was a sort of scurrying, and it made her look like an old person or a criminal or an animal\u2014something that had long stopped caring, if it ever had, about what anyone watching might see.\n\nSebastien hurried to put on his slippers and opened the door. Outside it was gaspingly hot. A current of pre-storm wind was beginning to pick up; the trees were relinquishing their leaves as though they were shedding armor; the sky was gray and laden, threaded with rays of black rain clouds that reminded Sebastien of blood poisoning. He ran across the yard, his slippers whisking against the grass. No amount of wind could touch the heat\u2014the heat was virtuosic, it was unimpeachable. Sebastien wanted to catch Beatriz before she went too much farther; he was not superstitious, but neither was he interested in going anywhere near that house. He got close enough to her to shout.\n\n\"Se\u00f1ora Carrizo,\" he said, waving.\n\nShe froze in place and looked at him, eyes wide. It was possible she did not recognize him from the distance. He should not have startled her. He ran closer. It was beginning to rain.\n\n\"Hello? Se\u00f1ora Carrizo?\" Sebastien waved his arms. He was aware that he probably did not look his best, running across the yard in the rain, gesticulating like a person with some kind of neurological disorder. \"It's me!\" he yelled, stupidly. \"Sebastien.\"\n\nBut Beatriz Carrizo was backing away from him, slowly at first, then a bit faster, in a mad and socially inept sort of scramble.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said. \"I don't want to talk to you.\" Sebastien could see that she would have liked very much to turn her back on him and run away, though she was unwilling to actually do this.\n\n\"Please,\" he said, coming closer.\n\n\"No,\" she shouted, putting up her hands as though feigning entombment in a box. \"Stay back.\"\n\n\"It's me, Sebastien,\" he said. Maybe she really couldn't see him. Maybe her eyes were bad. \"Your neighbor?\" He pointed ineffectually back at his house, to remind her.\n\n\"Don't come any closer,\" she said, and Sebastien heard the flickering arpeggio of fear in her voice, and finally he understood, and stopped running.\n\nThe rain was coming harder now, flattening Sebastien's hair against his head. He raised his arms in a gesture of defeat, of meaning no harm. \"I just want to talk to you,\" he said.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" said Beatriz again, before hurrying up the steps to her house\u2014her former house\u2014and slamming the door.\n\nAfter that, for the first time, Sebastien felt that the Carrizos' house was actually watching him back. The lights still went on and off, the car came and went at strange hours, and though he did not see the Carrizos\u2014and though now he knew better than to try to go over there to speak with them, even if he had\u2014he could somehow feel their wariness; he could sense them turning their attention to his house and finally considering, with elevated heart rates and shortened breaths, who might actually live there. Sebastien still could not quite bring himself to fear the murderer returning to the hill. But he could feel the Carrizos' fear and it worked on him like a contact high, making him edgy in moments when he was thinking of something else and not remembering that he was the person the Carrizos were afraid of. It was such a strange injustice, to watch a woman skitter away from you in terror. Though in a way, that moment had made Sebastien feel closer to Lily; he liked sharing the plague of suspicion with her\u2014even if it was only in miniature, even if it did not count for anything, even if he could not have told her about it, anyway.\n\nIt was a few days before Carlos came to the door. Sebastien watched him approach but believed until the very last moment that Carlos must have other business somewhere\u2014maybe he had something to say to the garden flowers, maybe there was something on the porch he wanted to vandalize\u2014and, even after hearing steps on the front walk, Sebastien still jumped to hear the querulous sound of the knocker.\n\nHe went to the door, and Carlos was standing on the porch, gaze cast downward, looking as though, had he been a person who was inclined to wear hats, he'd be wringing one in his hands right now.\n\n\"Yes?\" said Sebastien.\n\n\"Yes, hello,\" said Carlos. Sebastien felt a current of mutual embarrassment flash between them\u2014embarrassment that such a thing as a murder had occurred, and that they both knew it had occurred, and that it had occurred somehow on their shared watch, as well as embarrassment at the abject, frenzied hysteria the situation now necessitated (anything less than that would, after all, be inhumane), as well as embarrassment at their joint failure to completely participate in it. Carlos laughed apologetically. \"I was just admiring this knocker you've got here. What is that?\"\n\n\"It's a bust of my grandfather,\" Sebastien said automatically.\n\n\"Ah.\" Carlos looked down quickly and cleared his throat. \"Well. I'm sorry if Beatriz was rude to you the other day. She's sorry, too.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Sebastien, fixing his eyes on Carlos's shoulder. He could not guess what was expected of him here. _Please, Carlos, don't think of it for a moment! What's a suspicion of murder between neighbors? I certainly hope Beatriz hasn't been fretting over it_. \"All right,\" he said.\n\n\"You know, it's a difficult time right now,\" said Carlos regretfully. \"She's scared. You can imagine.\"\n\n\"It's an unspeakably dreadful thing, what's happened,\" said Sebastien. It came out with more intensity than he'd meant it to.\n\nCarlos squinted, even though the light was behind him. \"Yes,\" he said. \"Katy was a very sweet girl.\"\n\n\"It must be an absolutely terrible time for you,\" said Sebastien. He meant it. He did not mean anything, ever, but he meant this.\n\nCarlos inclined his head and looked at Sebastien directly for the first time. \"For you, too, I'd imagine.\"\n\n\"Worse for you, I'm sure,\" said Sebastien. \"It was your house. And, really, I didn't know Katy that well.\"\n\nSebastien had meant this as a kindness\u2014an acknowledgment of the magnitude of the Carrizos' pain, a deferral to their closeness to the situation\u2014but it seemed to hit Carlos wrong somehow, and his expression changed, and there was a creeping feeling along Sebastien's neck.\n\n\"You knew Lily well, though,\" said Carlos.\n\nSebastien recognized Carlos's new expression as one of suspicion. And\u2014perhaps because this time he was, on some level, expecting it\u2014Sebastien found himself looking at Carlos with frank suspicion right back. \"You know she didn't do it, right?\" he said.\n\nCarlos retreated by a step. \"Beatriz is just shaken up.\"\n\n\"But you do know that, right? You really know that?\"\n\nAt this, Carlos shook his head slightly. \"I've recently realized I'm too old to think I really know anything.\"\n\nThat night, Sebastien sat up donating anonymously to Lily's parents' travel fund.\n\nHe'd found the site immediately after its conception. It had clearly been erected by one of Andrew or Maureen's baby boomer friends\u2014its pleas for money or frequent-flier miles were written in outlandish, early Internet fonts, floating above family pictures of the Hayes family at wholesome New England destinations. On top of Mount Washington, Maureen, Lily, and Anna bend against the wind, matching red hoodies pulled tight around their faces; Lily pretends to hold on to a railing for dear life. After each donation, Sebastien felt a brief sense of calm; he was glad to finally have found some way to spend money that didn't make him feel wretched. He would make a great philanthropist yet, he thought, after completing his fifth donation. He laughed and got up to fix himself a drink.\n\nWhen he sat back down, he Googled the word \"suicide.\" A toll-free hotline number popped up above the search results, and Sebastien felt the hairs on his arms stand up, just as they always did. Sebastien had discovered this search engine curiosity right after his return to Buenos Aires. NEED HELP? the message above the number said, a question that Sebastien found oddly, overwhelmingly touching, though he did not know what entity could be said to be asking it. The computer? The aggregated information of the Internet? The kind person in Mountain View, California, who had thought of this idea in the first place? The anti-suicide lobbying group that had demanded it? Sebastien did not know, but still the message had made him cry the first time he saw it\u2014for the impersonality of the algorithm that was behind it, and for the pure indifferent public-spiritedness that was behind _that_. He took a sip of absinthe. It almost did not matter, he realized, what the intelligence generating the message was\u2014whether it was conscious or unconscious, singular or plural, animate or inanimate. The message was simply concern cast out into the universe\u2014toward him or anyone or no one. No matter what it was, it had helped him once, and no matter what it was, it could not know that it had.\n\nSebastien palmed his cheek, then clicked back over to Lily's travel fund website. He zoomed in on the picture of Lily on Mount Washington. He touched her hood, putting his finger directly on the computer screen. Lily's face was scrunched and red, her eyes wet with tears from wind or laughter. Sebastien clicked on the Donate button. He was about to click again when he heard a knock on the door.\n\nHe startled and looked at the clock. Somehow, it was already eleven a.m. The knock came again, and Sebastien scurried to the bathroom to swallow some toothpaste and run a comb through his hair. There was a third knock, and Sebastien ran to the door\u2014tripping over the leg of a piano bench and swearing loudly\u2014and opened it.\n\nOn his stoop was a girl\u2014young and reddish haired and wiry, like a vehicle built for efficiency.\n\n\"Hi,\" she said. \"I'm Anna.\"\n\nSebastien was stupefied. He tried to summon Lily's description of her sister but could produce nothing specific; Anna had floated around the edges of Lily's anecdotes, a pixelated smudge of sidekick, consigned to the modal past tense\u2014 _Anna and I always used to do this, Anna and I would always go there_ \u2014and listening to the stories it would have been easy to think, to the extent one thought about it at all, that Anna was still six years old somewhere, pigtailed, mischievous (though not quite as mischievous as Lily), eternally trailing after the shadow of her older sister. Sebastien had detected no animosity in these narratives, only the profoundly tangential nature of Anna's role in Lily's world today. What could you say about someone like Anna? You were children together, that's all. But now here was an adult Anna, standing on Sebastien's porch and, presumably, in the very center of her own life.\n\n\"Don't tell me I look like her,\" she said. \"I already know.\"\n\nShe did not, in fact, look all that much like Lily, in Sebastien's estimation. Their features were similar, but Anna seemed mad about it, somehow\u2014as though her face was just a mask of Lily's face that had been foisted upon her against her will and that the cruel townspeople were now forcing her to parade around the square in.\n\n\"That's an interesting knocker you have,\" she said.\n\n\"I got it at a rummage sale,\" said Sebastien, unfreezing. Why weren't her parents watching her? he caught himself thinking, then could not believe he was thinking it.\n\nAnna frowned and leaned closer to it. \"It's a griffin, right?\"\n\n\"I'm sure I never asked it such a personal question,\" said Sebastien. It came out snappish. He didn't want to seem surprised that Anna had known, but he was, a little, and he saw that she could tell.\n\n\"Lily always did have weird taste in boys,\" Anna murmured, as if confiding in the griffin. She stood back up. \"I'm a classics major.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" said Sebastien. \"Lily didn't tell me that.\"\n\n\"Oh, yeah? What major did she say I was?\"\n\nLily hadn't mentioned it, of course\u2014though Sebastien would have imagined (had he been forced to imagine) that Anna might have been studying business, or finance, or some other soulless discipline of the sort pursued by compulsive exercisers. \"Lily didn't talk about you very much, I'm afraid,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not Lily, am I?\" Anna gazed sourly past Sebastien's shoulder and into the house. \"Could I come in, do you think?\"\n\nSebastien gestured an elaborate _by all means_. Anna walked inside, squinting against the room's patchy light and nodding faintly, as though confirming to her own silent satisfaction that everything was exactly as she'd thought it would be. Sebastien was irritated. _You try having lights under the circumstances_ , he wanted to say. _You try having furniture_. At least there was a sheet over the television; Sebastien still could not bear the thought of anyone\u2014even a stranger, and even now\u2014knowing that he owned one.\n\n\"Forgive me for asking,\" said Sebastien, \"but why are you here?\" He'd been planning to offer Anna a drink but now he wanted her out of the house; the expression on her face was too much like the one he'd been afraid Lily would have the first time she came over, and on the whole, this encounter with Anna was starting to feel too much like an alternate, wholly unpleasant version of the inaugural one with Lily.\n\n\"Shouldn't you be asking how you can help me?\" said Anna.\n\n\"I'm afraid I presumed you would not hesitate to tell me.\"\n\n\"I have to ask you a question.\"\n\nSebastien mimed loading and firing a gun.\n\nAnna nodded again, as though Sebastien had just done something that she'd been assured many times that he would. \"My sister dumped you, right?\"\n\n\"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"Would this be less weird if we were sitting down?\"\n\nSebastien waved at one of the sheeted lumps. He wished Anna would remark on the lumps\u2014it would be much better if she would\u2014but she did not. Instead, she lifted the sheet to look under it\u2014it turned out to be an oak bench\u2014before sitting down.\n\n\"I wouldn't feel bad about it,\" she said. \"My sister dumps a lot of guys. She even dumps guys she's not even really dating. It's sort of a hobby of hers.\"\n\n\"We all need to pass the hours somehow.\"\n\n\"But I guess what I'm wondering is, did she do something particularly awful to you? Or did you guys do something awful together?\"\n\n\"Forgive me,\" said Sebastien. \"But I am really struggling to imagine how you're seeing any of this as your concern.\"\n\n\"The night Katy died, I mean. I don't want to know about anything awful that happened any other night. That really wouldn't be any of my concern, you're right.\"\n\nSebastien could feel angry horror rising through him, and he was beginning to be unable to bear the sight of Anna's face. He closed his eyes. \"Did I sell out your sister for revenge, is what you're here to inquire?\"\n\nAnna gave him a flat look. \"I just think it's strange that she's in trouble and you're not, that's all.\"\n\n\"Is that a question?\" said Sebastien. \"Or is this morning's program only going to involve a lecture segment? What a thrill it is to be the recipient of personal disquisitions from _both_ Miss Hayes the Younger _and_ the estimable Andrew Hayes, PhD. Of course, it's true that a less easygoing fellow might start to find all this a tad pedantic.\"\n\nAnna raised her eyebrows. They were high arched, like Lily's, which made her look even more surprised than she probably was. \"My father came to see you?\"\n\n\"He did indeed.\"\n\n\"I didn't know that.\"\n\n\"To live is to learn. Your father came here, and we had a truly unendurable conversation, and I am starting get an unhappy picture of the Hayes family's manners, particularly as they pertain to _barging in_. It's a miracle Lily is as affable as she is.\"\n\nAnna's forehead was still slightly unsettled; Sebastien could see that this revelation had thrown her off, and that it was time to capitalize on this. \"Speaking of your Andrew,\" he said, \"does he know you're here? Or does Maureen?\"\n\n\"Do Andrew and Maureen know I'm here?\" Anna's face clenched\u2014this was a sort of airless, noiseless laugh, Sebastien supposed, though it looked strikingly like some kind of medical problem. \"No. They don't keep terrifically careful track of me.\"\n\n\"That seems odd, considering.\"\n\n\"Not really.\"\n\n\"Why's that?\"\n\n\"They've never been overly interested in me. They really only had me because they thought I'd be important for Lily's psychological development. I was like a kiddie Mozart CD for her. Or didn't she tell you that either?\"\n\nSebastien looked at his feet. \"Lily's take on it, I think,\" he said carefully, \"was that you both felt a bit extraneous to Janie. That was her name, right?\" Even though he already knew.\n\nAnna nodded, then shook her head. \"They would have had Lily anyway, though. No one ever talks about that. Janie and Lily, that was supposed to be their family. Two kids. I was just the sub, and no one seems excessively happy that I got off the bench. To use an American sports metaphor that, I'm sure, seems pretty vulgar to you. But all of that can be a good thing sometimes. It means I can do stuff I might not be able to otherwise. Like come here and talk to you, for example.\"\n\nSebastien flashed, suddenly, to a memory of his father. Growing up, Sebastien had noticed\u2014first vaguely, then with growing attentiveness\u2014the way his parents lied about their work. Their strategy seemed mostly to involve making their jobs sound very, very boring, and the more Sebastien understood how interesting their jobs really were, the more he marveled over the fact that this approach was actually effective. When Sebastien's parents were queried about their profession, they gave breezy, dismissive, self-deprecating answers, countered the question with a question, and\u2014just like that\u2014the subject was changed. Invariably, whomever they'd been speaking with was only too happy to do the talking; invariably, it was what they had really wanted to do all along. Sebastien had asked his father about this once, in one of their only direct conversations about such matters. Sebastien was always trying to find the right questions\u2014questions based on tacit mutual understanding, questions that did not demand any concrete answers\u2014and this question, it turned out, was one of them. His father had even looked a little bit pleased that he'd asked it.\n\n\"That's an applicable life lesson, my boy,\" he'd said. \"Nobody is really paying attention to you. Most people don't really get this. They think they must count more to other people than other people count to them. They can't believe the disregard could truly be mutual. But it's a useful thing to learn, you know, if you can manage not to feel too sorry about it.\"\n\nSebastien had listened and nodded gravely. It was thrilling and terrifying, realizing how easy it was to hide\u2014how unlikely it was that anyone would come looking for you if you did.\n\n\"I understand,\" he said to Anna.\n\nThe light through the window shifted, and Anna turned to look. Sebastien followed her gaze. Outside, feathery clouds sculpted the sky. When she turned back to him, her face was sharp again. \"I want to know why you weren't arrested,\" she said. \"Especially considering you were sleeping with Katy.\"\n\nAt this, Sebastien could feel his heart seize, then begin to race. He spent a moment trying to calm it down before he spoke. \"Why does everyone think this?\" he said.\n\n\"Well, who _was_ she sleeping with, then? She was involved with someone, apparently.\"\n\n\"I don't know. 'It isn't any of my business'\u2014is that the charmingly late-capitalist phrase one hears? But I am certain it wasn't me. I do believe I'd remember.\" A wretched thought came to him. \"Is that what Lily thinks?\"\n\nAnna said nothing.\n\n\"I wasn't. Tell her.\"\n\n\"Whatever.\" Anna waved her hand, as though trying to decline something Sebastien was physically offering her. \"The point is, everyone thinks you were, so, given that, why weren't you arrested?\"\n\n\"You want my own opinion on why I wasn't arrested?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It's an honor to be consulted.\"\n\n\"Please don't be a shit.\"\n\nSebastien ignored this. \"In my opinion\u2014hubristic and limited and self-serving as it is\u2014I suppose I was not arrested because they can confidently rule me out.\"\n\n\"And why is that?\"\n\nSebastien opened his eyes wide, hoping to give the impression of marveling over the fact that Anna was going to make him explain this. \"Well,\" he said slowly. \"They know a fellow was involved, and they know that that fellow was not me. I don't want to go into the gruesome reasons why they know these things, but I'm assured yours is an unprecedentedly indelicate generation. You've seen _Law and Order_ , I trust?\"\n\n\"You could have both been involved. That happens all the time.\"\n\n\"Well, yes,\" said Sebastien. \"But they know that only one gentleman had a biological role in the events, which would make my role\u2014what, exactly? Aesthetic? Spiritual? Light direction? Was I the key grip? It's all a little narratively awkward, even for that horrid prosecutor's crazed imagination.\"\n\nAt this, Anna's face seemed to close, and Sebastien knew he'd made a mistake. What was he doing? He was joking, perversely, horribly. How could he ever go testify on a stand in front of normal people? He couldn't even talk to Lily's sister without convincing her of his total unsoundness, if not his actual guilt.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said. \"But you understand what I'm saying. You're a reasonable person. I apologize for my flippant tone. One gets a little defensive in emergencies, as I'm sure you've noticed in your sister.\"\n\n\"This is true,\" said Anna coldly. \"Though my sister doesn't exactly need an emergency to be defensive, does she?\"\n\nSebastien hadn't meant to be digging for information here, particularly, but still he felt a shameful welling of hope at the thought that he might have found some. \"What do you mean?\" he said.\n\n\"Well,\" said Anna. \"She's got something of a persecution complex, right? Thinks the whole world revolves around the gaping vacuum of her needs? Thinks she's the only one in the universe for whom pragmatism is a major crisis of the soul?\"\n\nSebastien was stunned. He opened his mouth and closed it again. His teeth clacked together audibly.\n\n\"Haven't noticed any of this?\" said Anna. \"No, I suppose you wouldn't. Someone who thinks their need is the vortex of reality can make anyone attending to those needs feel pretty central, too.\"\n\nSebastien would put away these claims; he would save them for later review. At some point, he knew, he would greedily consume them; he would be willing to consider their every angle, as well as their possible truth. But for now, Anna had said an incredibly uncharitable thing about a person she was supposed to love\u2014a person Sebastien himself loved\u2014and who was, at this very moment, defenseless, in every possible sense of the word.\n\n\"My heavens,\" said Sebastien. Chivalry, regretfully, demanded bitchiness. \"And Lily said you didn't have an original thought in your head.\"\n\n\"Ha,\" said Anna. \"I don't, of course. But in my family, knowing that _is_ the original thought.\"\n\nSebastien blinked. \"Lily loves you,\" he said. \"For whatever it's worth. And she has absolutely no idea that you hate her.\"\n\n\"I don't hate her.\" Anna shook her head vigorously. \"I love her. How could I not? I mean, everyone wants to love Lily. That's the whole thing. Everyone wants to love her, everyone wants to think she means well. And it's not that she doesn't. It's just that she can't see how much it matters whether people _want_ to give you a break. That's why she's in this mess. It's because for her whole life, she's been playing by different rules from everyone else.\"\n\n\"Rules!\" Sebastien scoffed. \"Pah! What rules? It's anarchy and lawlessness all the way down.\"\n\n\"That's not true,\" said Anna. \"There are rules for people, and there are different rules for Lily. Or there were, anyway. And she never knew it, which is why she's in so much trouble now. Because she couldn't stop herself from doing that cartwheel, or from talking to that asshole prosecutor without a lawyer, or all these other dumb things. Because she never had to learn to live in a world that didn't necessarily _want_ to go easy on her.\" Anna stood. You really could tell that she was an athlete\u2014her posture was impeccable, nearly militaristic, reflecting more alertness than Sebastien could ever remember feeling in his life. \"Anyway,\" she said. \"Okay. This has been less than totally illuminating, but I guess I believe that you didn't consciously screw my sister over.\"\n\n\"How flattering.\"\n\n\"Well, that's definitely what I'm going for, so.\" Anna shook her head, and when she spoke again, her voice had softened. \"No, I mean, I know you care about her. I can tell. You know there's a site where you can donate? For my parents' travel and stuff.\" She opened her bag and produced a pen and paper\u2014Sebastien was relieved he was not going to be summoned to locate these objects in his own house\u2014and scribbled the address of the website. She was, he noticed with mildly senseless surprise, left-handed. \"If you really do want to help. That's how you could help.\"\n\n\"I'll do that.\"\n\n\"Maybe you will.\"\n\nAnna turned to leave. In profile, she looked more like Lily than she had from the front.\n\n\"Tell her that I didn't sleep with Katy,\" said Sebastien. \"Please.\"\n\n\"I don't know that that's true.\"\n\n\"Tell her that I said it, anyway. Put it in scare quotes. Do an impression, if you have to. Adopt a funny voice. Say it's an unconfirmed report. But tell her I said it.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Anna. \"I will.\"\n\nShe was out the door, and Sebastien spent a moment walking aimlessly around the room. He stared at the ingots of light coming in from the windows; he stared at the bleached humps of his furniture and tried to see what Anna would have seen. Then he padded back into the kitchen and heard the strangely sickening crunch of wheels on gravel. He opened the door just in time to see Anna get into a car with Eduardo Campos and drive away.\n\nEduardo had driven out to Palermo on something like a whim. He'd been short-tempered all morning at the office, and had no meetings scheduled for the afternoon. When he walked outside at noon, he found that the sky above him was pearlescent, like the interior of a clamshell, and that he did not wish to head straight home. Maria might call him at the office, of course, and be surprised to find him gone\u2014but it would not kill her, Eduardo decided, to have to wonder about his impetuousness for once. It would not destroy her to have to sit for a moment with the fact that she did not know where he was, and that there was nothing she could do about it. And in light of Ignacio Toledo's confession, it was time\u2014high time\u2014that Eduardo paid Sebastien LeCompte another visit.\n\nWhen he turned up the hill toward the mansion, Eduardo found himself involuntarily glancing over at the Carrizos' house, then scolded himself for doing it. It was, after all, just a house. And this case was, after all, just a case\u2014even if it had consumed the city, then the country, then decent chunks of the world; even if it had animated innumerable listless attention spans; even if it had brought teenagers out at night to honk and yell. Eduardo reached the top of the hill and killed the engine. At the Carrizos', all the lights were out. What was the lurid appeal of this place, really? Murder was incomprehensible, yes\u2014but when you got right down to it, so was almost everything people did. Eduardo got out of the car. He endured a brief, ghostly longing for a cigarette, like a twinge from a phantom limb. And then Sebastien LeCompte's door opened and Lily Hayes walked out of the house.\n\nEduardo felt a surge of adrenaline. He looked again. But no, of course it was not Lily. Of course, it was the sister. He'd seen the girls' resemblance in family photos\u2014their matching quadrilateral faces, bracketing the redheaded mother and the mild-eyed father (who appeared, at least in pictures, to be constitutionally incapable of any sort of combativeness). But the sisters were, apparently, much more alike in real life. They were not exactly identical\u2014this one was more compact and her skin looked better, though Eduardo couldn't tell whether this was due to a bit less living or a lot more attention\u2014but these differences seemed circumstantial, especially now. This girl\u2014who had still not seen Eduardo\u2014was just a Lily who exercised and wore sunscreen. And Eduardo was struck now by the unnerving sense that these girls were not different people at all, but just the same girl in different lives.\n\n\"Hello,\" he called jovially, in English. \"You're Anna.\"\n\nThe girl froze. Eduardo would have expected her to jump. \"I know who you are,\" she said, squinting at him. \"And I'm not talking to you.\"\n\nThis was just like Lily\u2014to tell him something in the act of declaring that she would tell him nothing at all. \"How was your conversation with the young gentleman?\" Eduardo nodded his head toward the house. He was grateful for the extra layer of formality that speaking English granted his diction. \"I was about to go in there, myself, but I find I need a moment to prepare myself mentally. He is a maddening person to speak with. As perhaps you have already found.\"\n\nAnna scoffed. \"You're not going to make friends with me by doing that,\" she said. Her voice was exactly like Lily's; Eduardo could have closed his eyes and heard the voice from the tapes. \"In fact, you're not going to make friends with me at all. I'm not an idiot.\"\n\nShe probably thought that by putting her refusal up front, she was making it clear that she was savvy and severe, a person Eduardo would really have to contend with. Nonetheless, it was another revealing disclosure. Anna would not talk to him because Anna was not an idiot, and the corollary of this, obviously, was that Lily _was_ an idiot: Lily had talked to Eduardo\u2014unwisely, idiotically\u2014and now they were all here dealing with her mess. There was judgment in this, and resentment. And Anna, Eduardo was realizing, might not know that yet.\n\n\"Look, I'll be honest with you,\" said Eduardo, running his hands through his hair. There was no use in playing on Anna's resentment directly. No matter how she felt about Lily, surely her moral self-concept hinged on ignoring these feelings\u2014surely, if she knew she might be letting those feelings reign now, when Lily was at her most vulnerable, she would never, ever forgive herself. \"The truth,\" said Eduardo, \"is that I'm not at all sure about this.\"\n\nAnna cocked her head to one side and stared at Eduardo with an expression that she must have thought looked like disbelief.\n\n\"Your sister is a strange girl,\" Eduardo continued. \"As I'm sure you know. She's said and done some pretty erratic, pretty incriminating, things. It's very hard to know what to make of it all.\" Eduardo looked at the ground and bit his lip. He wanted to seem as though he was struggling to decide whether to say what he really wanted to say. \"But I'm not sure,\" he said again, finally. \"And I certainly don't want to waste the state's resources if I'm wrong.\"\n\nHe looked back up at Anna, whose expression of feigned shock was already fading. The only way that she would speak to him would be if she felt she was helping\u2014by being cool-headed and wise enough to explain her sister, who could no longer be trusted to safely explain herself. Even if somewhere deep down Anna knew that speaking to Eduardo must be a very, very dangerous prospect\u2014even if somewhere even deeper down she knew that this was part of why she wanted to do it\u2014she would need to believe, always and utterly, that she'd truly thought she was extending herself on Lily's behalf.\n\n\"The charges can always be dropped,\" said Eduardo. \"But only if I can find another way to make sense of all of these things. I haven't been able to, so far. Your perspective might be helpful.\" Anna dipped her head. \"I'd ask your parents,\" Eduardo added, \"but I'm not sure they'd be willing to talk to me.\"\n\nAnna snorted. She even snorted like her sister. \"I doubt they'd be very helpful,\" she said. \"They don't exactly know Lily very well.\"\n\nEduardo nodded evenly. \"Well, I guess that's pretty common with parents.\"\n\nAnna\u2014torn, Eduardo suspected, between wanting to withhold the acceptance that would come with agreement and avoid the engagement that would come with dispute\u2014said nothing.\n\n\"Look,\" said Eduardo. \"How's this? We go get a cup of coffee. I won't ask you anything about that night.\" He would not say \"Katy.\" He would not say \"death.\" He would certainly not say \"murder.\" \"We'll pretend it never happened. If I bring it up, you can go ahead and leave. But maybe you can tell me a few things about your sister. Maybe you can translate a couple of things for me. Or whatever else you want to tell me. Whatever you think I should know. You talk, I listen. You're in charge. You want to leave, you leave. Does that sound fair?\"\n\nIt was worth trying, but, of course, Eduardo did not expect it to work. This meant that he had to be careful not to show his surprise when, as he turned back toward his car, Anna Hayes actually followed him.\n\n\"I talk, you listen,\" she said, as she got into the passenger's side.\n\nEduardo nodded and, to show Anna how literally he was taking the rule, said nothing.\n\nAt the caf\u00e9, Anna sat with her arms crossed and pointedly refused to look at her menu. \"I hate what you do for a living,\" she said.\n\nEduardo laughed. \"Me, too, some days.\"\n\nThey had driven to the caf\u00e9 in silence. If Eduardo had asked her anything in the car, she could still have demanded that he take her back, which, of course, he would have. But now that they were at a caf\u00e9 and had ordered coffee there was a trip wire of courtesy encircling their conversation\u2014even if Anna became angry and wanted to leave, she would understand that Eduardo would need to get the check and pay before he could drive her home (this was, after all, just reality), and this would give him some extra time to work with. He was betting that Anna was afflicted with the same learned courtesy as Lily, and that\u2014as he had with Lily\u2014Eduardo could use it to his advantage. So he was surprised when Anna leaned back and looked him right in the eye and told him, in a mature and well-considered voice, that she thought he was a monster.\n\n\"Really,\" she said again. \"A monster.\" So here, Eduardo saw, Anna's similarities with her sister ended. Lily's commitment to politeness had rarely wavered in their interviews, not really, no matter how angry and exhausted and terrified she was. She had tried to revoke it a few times\u2014tried to walk back to the position she'd held before she'd been so faultlessly polite, as though he might forget\u2014and occasionally she'd even attempted to insult him. But she was too awkward at this to ever seem truly venomous; she always reminded Eduardo of the infant pit viper he and Maria had come across once\u2014it had been tiny, furious, hissing with such comic valiance that they'd stopped whatever fight they were having and laughed. But Anna, Eduardo was seeing, was different.\n\n\"A monster?\" he said. \"Really? How so?\"\n\nThe waitress brought their coffees, and Anna waited for her to leave before she answered. \"You're a person with no empathy,\" she said.\n\nEduardo took a sip of his coffee and leaned back. \"For Lily, you mean.\"\n\n\"For anyone.\"\n\n\"Do you think you're a person with empathy?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nIt was what anyone\u2014anyone in the world\u2014would say, but Anna's response did not sound reflexive. It sounded like she had actually, at some point, considered the question\u2014which, of course, meant that, at some point, she had actually wondered. \"Do you have empathy for Katy?\" said Eduardo.\n\n\"What would that mean at this point?\" said Anna. Her voice was harsh. If this was a painful question, it did not show on her face. \"I didn't know her, and now she's dead. I'm sorry for her family, but she never existed for me, so I don't feel anything for her. You don't, either.\"\n\n\"I don't?\" Eduardo had expected Anna to say\u2014emphatically, emotionally\u2014that she did have empathy for Katy. He was glad that he never sounded surprised, even when he was.\n\n\"No,\" said Anna. \"You're not really interested in Katy. That's not what you're in it for.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said Eduardo. \"I suppose if I was really interested in Katy, instead of the law, then I'd be a much bigger monster than even you think I am.\" He put his hands faceup on the table and stared at the radial symmetry of his palms. He was always struck by the recurrences of shapes in nature\u2014by the clean economical indifference of recycling the same structure for a feather, and a leaf, and a heart. \"If Lily had committed this crime,\" he said without looking up, \"what do you think would be the most empathetic way to treat her?\"\n\n\"She didn't do it.\"\n\n\"I understand you think that.\"\n\n\"She didn't.\"\n\nEduardo looked up. \"We're speaking abstractly. I'm just shifting your premise to ask you if it changes your conclusion about my sense of empathy.\"\n\n\"I am not shifting my premise.\" Anna sounded disgusted. Perhaps she was starting to believe that this was all Lily would have had to do. \"My sister is a good person. She is a wonderful person. She didn't do it, and you don't understand a thing about her.\"\n\nEduardo nodded quickly. \"I think that's true. I think I don't understand her very well at all.\" He trilled his fingers lightly on the table.\n\n\"I'm not saying she's, like, beyond comprehension. She's not even that unusual. It's just that you, personally, don't understand her.\"\n\n\"I certainly don't understand why she did what she did.\"\n\n\"She didn't do what she did. I mean, she didn't do it at all.\"\n\n\"Can I ask you a hypothetical question?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"What do you think would have made Lily act like she wasn't herself?\"\n\n\"You're just going to ask me the question anyway? Doesn't that mean your first question was hypothetical?\"\n\n\"I think it means it was rhetorical.\"\n\n\"You want me to tell you what imaginary circumstances could have made Lily commit a crime that she did not commit in real life. For our imaginations.\"\n\n\"We can speak more broadly than that.\"\n\n\"You're unreal. Are you actually any good at this job?\"\n\n\"Maybe not.\" Eduardo traced his coffee's meniscus with his spoon. \"But that's why we're here, isn't it? Because I'm doing my job badly and you are going to help me do it better by telling me where I'm going wrong? So, I'm listening. What would you like me to know?\"\n\nAnna was silent. She'd spread her fingers out on the table, stretching them slightly beyond their natural extension, in a gesture Eduardo recognized from Lily. He wondered if this was a shared long-standing habit, or something new that Anna had unconsciously adopted only after seeing her sister in captivity.\n\n\"Because I certainly have plenty of questions I could ask you, if you don't feel like you have any,\" said Eduardo. \"Really, it's your decision.\"\n\n\"She didn't do it.\"\n\n\"Yes. You've expressed that opinion.\" Eduardo put down his spoon and flipped open his notepad, landing on a grocery list written in Maria's loopy script. He squinted, pretending to study it. \"Okay. Here's one. Was Lily much of a gymnast?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nEduardo put down the list. \"She did a cartwheel when she was first interviewed. Did you know that?\" Of course Anna knew this. Everyone knew this. If a random consumer of news anywhere in the world knew two things about Lily Hayes, the first was that she had murdered Katy Kellers, and the second was that she had done a cartwheel the very next day.\n\nAnna glared. \"You'd probably want to move around, too, if you'd been cooped up for hours and hours.\"\n\n\"It was a pretty good one, actually,\" said Eduardo. \"Was she a very talented gymnast, growing up?\"\n\n\"A lot of girls can do cartwheels.\"\n\n\"You look like you're both pretty athletic.\" They weren't. Anna was the only athlete in the family. Eduardo tapped his spoon against his cup. \"But still. You'd think she'd realize that it looked a little odd. A little heartless. Given the circumstances. I mean, she's a very smart girl, right? This is what I'm discerning from her academic history, at any rate\u2014good grades, a 2300 on the SAT.\" It had been a 2280, and he took a sip of coffee to give Anna a chance to correct him. To her credit, she did not.\n\n\"She's just na\u00efve,\" said Anna. \"She just had no idea that anyone was going to hold any of this stuff against her.\"\n\n\"And why was that, do you think?\" said Eduardo. \"Was she not accustomed to people holding anything she did against her?\"\n\nAnna slammed her eyes to the ground. Eduardo took another sip of his coffee, letting the silence between them sit. \"I understand Lily's nickname used to be 'Lil the Pill,' \" he said at last.\n\n\"You've got to be kidding.\"\n\n\"Am I right that, in English, 'pill' is slang for a 'tiresomely disagreeable person'?\" It had been her nickname as a child, a fact that the press had decided to willfully misinterpret\u2014suggesting that the word \"pill\" might connote trouble of a particularly sexual variety, or be a reference to a drug habit of some kind. Eduardo had uncovered no evidence to support either of these conclusions.\n\n\"It was from when she was a kid,\" said Anna. \"You cannot possibly be serious.\"\n\n\"Did she earn the nickname by being a tiresomely disagreeable person?\"\n\n\"What are you talking about? She was a kid. This is ridiculous.\"\n\n\"You find this irrelevant?\"\n\n\"I don't _find_ it irrelevant. It _is_ irrelevant.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Eduardo, closing his notepad with a thump. \"Maybe you're right. Here's a question that you may find more relevant. I understand your sister had a history of killing animals?\"\n\nAnna blanched and looked down at the table, but seemed quickly to realize that she'd need to look Eduardo in the eye in order to answer. She raised her head and locked eyes with him. He could feel how uncomfortable this was for her, and not just because of who he was and what they were discussing. In her gaze was a bone-deep, lifelong discomfort with eye contact in general\u2014Eduardo should know\u2014and yet she did it anyway. \"That's not true,\" she said.\n\n\"No?\" said Eduardo. \"She never killed an animal?\"\n\n\"No,\" said Anna. There was a wavering in her face, but not her voice.\n\n\"Not one?\"\n\n\"No.\" This time she sounded angry. \"She hated people hurting animals. She hated aggression of all sorts. She was a vegetarian in high school. She hated that picture of Sebastien and that dead animal. She even talked about it after she dumped him.\"\n\n_After she dumped him_. There was a millisecond-long flicker in Anna's eyes as she heard her sentence land. And Eduardo understood, all at once, that Anna had made a mistake, and that she knew it was a mistake, and that she could not tell whether Eduardo had noticed it, or whether it mattered if he had. Lily and Sebastien had broken up the night Katy died. And Lily had spoken with Anna, apparently, that same night. Eduardo took a sip of his coffee, finally letting Anna look away.\n\n\"I've seen that picture of his,\" said Eduardo. \"Gruesome.\" He opened a sugar packet with his thumbnail and took some time shaking it sloppily into his cup. \"What did you say to Lily about it?\" He would not ask her to report what Lily had said, only to reflect on what she, Anna, had advised. He would not let her know what kind of a mistake it was\u2014he would show her neither its nature nor its size.\n\n\"Well,\" said Anna carefully. \"I didn't actually talk to her.\"\n\n\"Ah.\" Eduardo nodded. It was a voicemail, then. Lily's emails had been scoured, of course, along with the calls she'd made from her cell phone; all of that was chronicled and accounted for, and there was no communication to Anna and the United States on the night Katy Kellers was killed. But it would seem Lily had called Anna from somewhere else\u2014Sebastien's landline, perhaps\u2014and, unbelievably, it would seem she had left a message. Eduardo felt a flutter in his chest, a little scherzo of near laughter. He clenched it back. \"So why did she call you, do you think?\" he said lazily, stirring his coffee. His best maneuver, now as always, was projecting a sense that his grip on facts was vague.\n\n\"She was upset,\" said Anna.\n\nEduardo probed his spoon further into the cup, scraping it against the granular sludge of sugar on the bottom. It made sharp little belllike sounds against the porcelain, which seemed somehow louder than they should have in the empty caf\u00e9. \"She seems like she'd be a tough person to console,\" Eduardo said to his coffee. \"Under any circumstances.\"\n\n\"I guess that's why I didn't answer,\" said Anna. She blinked when the spoon hit the cup.\n\n\"Well, that's understandable,\" said Eduardo, motioning to the waitress for the check. \"To tell you the truth,\" he said, and this time he actually was, \"I'm not sure I would have, either.\"\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n\n## March\n\nAndrew awoke to Maureen's lunging toward a ringing phone.\n\n\"Hello?\" she said. She'd been startled into the gulping shock that always accompanied her sudden awakenings, and hadn't yet managed to sand down the rough edges of panic in her voice. This, Andrew knew, had nothing to do with Lily's situation; this was long-standing, possibly endemic. Maureen would sound this way at home, at one p.m., on a Sunday, with a telemarketer.\n\n\"Lawyer,\" she mouthed. She'd become comically disheveled during their nap, another classic characteristic. _I want to know where you went and what you did and whether you took pictures_ , Andrew used to say to her in the mornings. It was one of the many small things about her that Andrew had neither particularly treasured nor particularly disliked and so had not, until this moment, particularly remembered.\n\n\"I see,\" said Maureen. Her face, Andrew noticed, was blanking. \"Oh, God.\" Andrew raised his eyebrows. \"Okay. Yes. We'll be there. We're on our way.\" She hung up.\n\n\"What?\" he said.\n\nShe shook her head. \"Lily has done something incredibly stupid.\"\n\n_Oh, something else?_ Andrew wanted to say. His mood was still fossilized from the mirth of the morning; he sat up straighter in order to shake it off. He said, again, \"What?\"\n\nMaureen ran her fingers through her hair. \"She's said some really stupid, incriminating things.\"\n\n\"What things? To whom?\"\n\n\"To Anna, I guess. On the phone. There was a voicemail.\"\n\n\"What? When?\"\n\n\"That night. There was a voicemail. We need to get Anna.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" said Andrew. He stood up, pulled on his pants, and began walking to the closed door of the other bedroom.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" said Maureen, as he knocked. \"She's in your room,\" she said, as he said, \"Isn't she in here?\" Maureen's look was floundering, and Andrew could see that Maureen knew Anna was not there but was willing to check anyway, because she would not want to be too confident about what was or was not possible anymore.\n\n\"I mean, isn't she in your room?\" said Maureen.\n\nAnd instead of saying no, Andrew said, \"We'll go look.\"\n\nOutside, the sky was high domed, impossibly distant. Andrew had an image of it floating farther and farther away from them\u2014perhaps in forgetfulness, perhaps in disgust, perhaps in total indifference. The sky seemed suddenly like a child's balloon, like something you could lose if you weren't careful or weren't paying attention.\n\nAnna had not been in the room.\n\nIn the taxi, Andrew squeezed Maureen's hand lightly, and she squeezed back. Their refusal to console each other was their way of offering consolation; they were so far past reassurances. For this, and maybe for only this, Andrew was grateful.\n\nWhen they reached Tribunales, Ojeda and Velazquez were already standing outside the office building, waiting. Andrew could see the flare of one of their cigarettes and he wondered pointlessly which one of them smoked. Behind them was another figure\u2014Andrew saw a sheet of russet hair, the severe right angle of a substantial jaw, looking like cast silver in the early afternoon light.\n\n\"Oh my God,\" Maureen breathed, and he knew that she was seeing Lily. The possibility that this person actually was Lily was low\u2014for one thing, Andrew realized, this person had hair\u2014and yet it held them there for a moment, as they rose and got out of the car, seeming to move against some sort of aquatic resistance, like the density that fills the atmosphere when you're running from terror in a dream.\n\n\"It's Anna,\" said Andrew.\n\n\"Of course it is,\" said Maureen. And Andrew knew, with a seam of certainty that opened within him like an old scar, that they were doomed, once again.\n\nAnna began running toward them. \"Mom,\" she said. \"Dad.\" Her running was smooth and intentional and competent, even though she was crying\u2014truly, she was her mother's daughter. Even so, Andrew could feel the doom in the air around him. He could have reached out, he was sure, and fluttered his fingers through it. \"I'm sorry,\" said Anna. \"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.\"\n\n_Sebastien is sleeping_ , said Lily's voice on the tape. Eduardo could hear in her voice a desperate treble\u2014something he wasn't sure he'd ever heard in their conversations, or even in any of the other recordings.\n\n_I just came back_ , she said. _I just\u2014what's wrong with me?_\n\nAnna's iPhone was, of course, subpoenaed; the relevant message was, of course, retrieved. This only took half an afternoon, since the voicemail, though deleted, had been helpfully stored in the iPhone's deleted messages vault. Eduardo listened to it over and over, of course\u2014first alone, many times, and then with the person who would need to try to explain it.\n\n_Jesus. I don't know what I did_.\n\nLily sounded hazy on the tape; altered, no doubt. But this line meant she'd been in possession of her faculties, mental and moral, and that she'd known she'd committed a hideous wrong. She'd known it enough, after all, to call her sister and sob about it. And you could hear in her voice that she really was sorry for whatever it was she had done. Nothing, nothing, could be more damning than that.\n\nOnce more, Eduardo restarted the message; once more, Lily's voice filled the room. Once more, she said, _Sebastien is sleeping_.\n\nEduardo looked across the table at Sebastien LeCompte. His face was ashen. Eduardo glanced down at his notepad and began to form the obvious questions.\n\nSebastien sat across from Eduardo Campos, waiting to be made to listen again to Lily's voicemail. Its content, as Campos was once more explaining, had raised some new issues.\n\n\"Lily says quite clearly that you are sleeping in the other room,\" said Campos. \"As you can hear.\"\n\nAll around Sebastien, everything was white and unreal. He swallowed.\n\n\"You told me that you were with Lily all night,\" said Campos. His hair was glistening with an indecipherable sheen\u2014either sweat or gel, Sebastien couldn't tell. \"But the tape tells me that, in fact, she left. You'd lied about that.\"\n\nThis was true, and yet Sebastien felt his brain cleave with a dizzying shock at the accusation. Why? It must be because he'd told the story so many times that he'd begun to remember it the way he told it. This had happened to him sometimes as a child\u2014he'd embellish a story slightly and then eventually lose track of which narrative zigzags were real and which had been added later for flourish. Now\u2014confronted with the evidence of Lily's departure, bludgeoned by the memory of that night\u2014Sebastien felt almost as surprised as he would have if he'd been told something he actually hadn't known.\n\n\"I don't think so, no,\" he said shakily.\n\n\"That's all on tape, too, as, of course, you realize. This isn't a question of you convincing me my memory is fuzzy. It isn't, as it happens, but you don't have to take my word for it. You can take your own.\"\n\nCampos hit a button, and now Sebastien's own awful voice filled the room, telling of how he had spent the entire night with Lily, how she had stayed beside him, how he was sure of it. Sebastien felt a surge of distaste for the person speaking\u2014it was automatic and instantaneous, like a bias he knew better than to indulge but could not help feeling, for a brief panicked second, before his superego roused itself for policing. Who was that person? Did he think he sounded unconcerned? Did he think he sounded _relaxed_? Did he think he sounded like he had any control over the situation\u2014any control, even, over himself? Sebastien was sad for that kid. He was disgusted with that kid. Most of all, he was very sorry that he was now going to have to clean up that kid's mistakes.\n\n\"But it was only a moment,\" said Sebastien. His guilt was unending, stereoscopic. His guilt was like a pain so great that you stop believing it's coming from you at all and start believing that it's coming from the universe; it was no longer within him, it was around him. You knew this, he told himself. Remember? You knew all of this already.\n\n\"I mean, I'm not a mathematician,\" said Sebastien. \"I'm not Euclid.\" Even as he spoke, he could hear the weakness of what he was saying\u2014he could hear the shrillness of his indignation, the overstatement of his scoffing. \"But that voicemail is, what? Thirty seconds? Are you saying she was, like, stabbing Katy while she was listening to Anna's outgoing message? Or, like, in between sentences? Or what?\"\n\nEduardo Campos leaned forward. He smelled medicinal, so it must be gel in his hair. Sebastien didn't really need to have it explained to him, but still Eduardo did\u2014more patiently than Sebastien himself would have, if their places had been reversed. \"The problem,\" he said\u2014and he really made it sound like a problem, he made it sound like it was both of their problems, like it was everyone's problem\u2014\"is that there's nothing besides you accounting for Lily that night. Your word is all we have.\"\n\nSebastien's word, Campos did not seem to think he needed to mention again, was already dubious. And with the voicemail, it had been rendered null in its entirety.\n\n\"Okay, yes. As we've both learned, I was wrong.\" Sebastien bent his head slightly, giving Campos a moment to appreciate this concession. \"But that's not really the question. The question you're really after has nothing to do with whether I was right or wrong about that one particular moment. The question is what she did when she was out of the house. What, realistically, she could have done. If she even left the house at all. And so you're going to tell people that she stepped out for a brief midnight murder, as one does, and then slipped back in to call her sister back in college before climbing into bed and _sleeping_ the rest of the night next to me? Because I woke up at some point in the early morning and she was asleep next to me. And, okay, I get that you're thinking that I'm not trustworthy and so who cares. But without showering? She didn't use the shower. She came back from a little light impulsive murder spree and didn't even shower? Don't you have a way of checking that?\"\n\n\"We do.\" Now Campos's expression was actually gentle. Sebastien could see that he had begun to understand that Sebastien's confusion wasn't genuine\u2014that it was desperate, delusional, that he was constructing the kind of convoluted narrative people invented to make the real seem less real. \"And we could have,\" said Campos, \"if you'd been honest with us from the beginning. But, as you undoubtedly realized even as you were speaking, we cannot now go back in time and establish whether Lily Hayes took a shower in your house several weeks ago. Alas.\"\n\nSebastien's mouth flooded with a tannic taste. He was beginning to realize how minor the points of dispute here were; he was beginning to see that you did not build up good credit by getting most of the story right. And, frankly, he did not question the correctness of this. It didn't matter whether he was a liar in general, or whether the bulk of what he'd told everybody had been true. At the end of the day, he'd lied for Lily, which meant he was willing to lie for Lily, which was the only relevant fact about him in relation to this case, and possibly the only relevant fact about him in general.\n\n\"She broke up with me that night, you know. That could have been what she was talking to Anna about.\"\n\n\"When?\"\n\n\"When she talks about the mistake.\"\n\n\"It could have been,\" said Eduardo agreeably. \"But we certainly have no reason to think that. Did she seem to feel that breaking up with you had been a terrible mistake?\"\n\nSebastien said nothing.\n\n\"Look,\" said Eduardo, putting his hands on the table in that oddly supplicating gesture of his. \"I'm not going to tell you that being honest is your best way to help Lily. I know I've been saying that to you for a while, and whether you believed it or not, it was once actually true. But I'm not going to say it now, because I'm not convinced that it's true anymore. I don't think you can help Lily at this point. All I know for sure is that you can still hurt her. You have hurt her with this lie. You have hurt her as much as Lily has hurt herself. Because now we do not know anything with certainty.\"\n\nAnd then Sebastien listened while Campos listed all the things that they could no longer know with certainty. Had Lily and Sebastien actually smoked weed together? (Because she had smoked weed with somebody.) Had they actually watched _Lost in Translation_? It was baffling to Sebastien, this extension of rigorous skepticism toward all the mundane things\u2014was this the kind of movie Sebastien usually watched, and was this the amount of alcohol that Lily usually drank, and why would she have come over and spent so much time with him anyway if she was only planning on ending things afterward? Come to think of it, had Lily really even been there at all that night? As Sebastien listened, he could feel the entirety of the night unravel\u2014he watched it erase, all the mistakes disappearing, beginning with Katy's death and ending with Lily's breaking up with him, or maybe the two things vanishing simultaneously, until none of it had ever happened, none of it had ever happened at all.\n\nOr maybe, Sebastien thought, this was too ambitious. Maybe he needed a more modest request; maybe he needed only to erase Anna. He imagined Anna not coming to see him. In his mind, he unspoke their conversation, unknocked the door, undrove the taxi back to the hotel where Lily and Anna's parents were sleeping, then woke them up.\n\nEduardo Campos had stopped speaking. Sebastien felt a great cistern of grief inside him. It would swallow him whole one day; one day, he knew, he would drown in it. Sometimes he wished he could walk toward it with stones in his pockets and get the whole thing over with.\n\n\"Here,\" said Campos, handing Sebastien a telephone. \"I assume your parents had a lawyer.\"\n\n\"Seriously, what the fuck?\" Andrew said to Maureen on the drive back to the hotel. It was evening, and the taxi's headlights briefly spangled the wall of the jail. Anna had had to stay behind to talk to the lawyers.\n\n\"Maybe we should all just go home.\"\n\nMaureen did not answer.\n\nAnna's iPhone had been subpoenaed that afternoon; the incriminating voicemail had been produced. Anna had deleted it but apparently not deleted it enough somehow, a fact that Andrew vacillated between attributing to Anna's technological ineptitude and to some subconscious desire of hers to do violence to her sister. He could not bear to think seriously about which was really likelier. On the message, Lily's voice had been strange\u2014though not strange in the same way as on the 911 call, which she would make only twelve hours later. In her call to Anna, Lily's voice was faraway and hoarse, and too relaxed somehow. It was almost unrecognizable to Andrew, and he'd nearly said this\u2014he'd nearly challenged the idea that it was Lily's voice at all\u2014but then he'd stopped himself. He was learning.\n\nIn the message, Lily sobbed weakly. She lamented the fate of the dead animal in Sebastien's picture; she warbled about a mistake she had made. It was not a confession, of course\u2014it meant nothing, less than nothing. The mistakes Lily had made in her life were so heartbreakingly minor that Andrew was not sure she would even remember them when she grew up. And yet the time of the call was within the span during which the pathologists posited that Katy had died, and Anna\u2014curiously\u2014had seen fit to withhold the message. It was not certain that the fact of the withholding, per se, would be allowed in court. But it was certain that Anna would now have to testify\u2014about what she'd felt when she first heard the message, and about what she'd later feared it might have meant.\n\nThere was something else wrong with the message, though it took Andrew a while to figure it out. He'd heard the story of the night Katy died so many times that it was like an incantation, like a children's song predating language or memory. Hearing the story on the voicemail was disorienting, like walking into a room with the furniture moved; every time he listened to the message, the version he'd heard before momentarily superimposed itself over this new one. Until, after a few listens, he'd caught it.\n\n_I went to the river_ , Lily had said. Most people's voices seemed higher when recorded, but hers had sounded lower. _I went to the river_. In the stories Lily had told of that night, she had not mentioned a river. And _I_ went to the river, she'd said. I, not we. What had happened at the river? Nothing had happened at the river. What did it mean that she'd gone to the river? It meant nothing that she'd gone to the river. And yet in the previous tellings of the story, there had never been a river.\n\nOut the taxi window, the moon was a glowing auricle in the sky. The light it cast made Maureen's face look angular and not quite realistic, as though she'd stepped out of a painting from one of those movements that sought to portray people not as they appeared but as they actually were.\n\nAndrew rolled down the window and let the air rush in at him. He thought of his Lily, alone at night, leaving Sebastien LeCompte's house and going outside\u2014for her own reasons, innocent and unknowable, both. It was terrifying to think of Lily doing anything alone at night. It was more terrifying\u2014much more\u2014to think of her never doing anything alone ever again.\n\nAndrew thought of the phantom river with his phantom daughter beside it. It would have looked icy, probably, in the moonlight. Lily had merely done what Andrew had dreamed of doing so many times when Janie was sick, so many times since then: Without telling anyone, without asking anyone, she had opened a door and walked away.\n\n\"Andrew,\" said Maureen. He could feel her looking at him in the darkness, and he turned his face to meet her gaze.\n\n\"Yes.\" Out of the vast thicket of preexisting worries and sorrows that Andrew knew intimately, a new unnameable fear was seizing him. It released him and then seized him again, a clonic coursing, gripping and then relenting.\n\n\"You watched that security footage of her at the store?\" said Maureen. \"With Sebastien?\"\n\n\"A few times, yeah.\"\n\n\"Me, too.\" The taxi rounded the corner to their hotel. Maureen turned back to the window. And she was still looking away from Andrew when she said, \"Did you ever know that she smoked?\"\n\n# CHAPTER NINETEEN\n\n## July\n\nSebastien went to court every day for three weeks before Lily finally took the stand.\n\nIt was obvious as she testified that she'd been told to speak clearly and slowly; it was obvious that she'd been told to make eye contact. It was a mercy that nobody had told her to smile\u2014that this was a performance that did not require cheer\u2014because the smile she gave in pictures, Sebastien thought, really could make someone wonder about her. Her Spanish was much better now. Her hair was growing in, but its shortness made her face more severe, more frank, than it usually was. She wore an array of mock turtlenecks, often in pale pink\u2014which struck Sebastien as so bizarre, so clearly not a choice she'd made; they reminded him of a picture he'd once seen of a skinny African child wearing a donated vanity T-shirt designed for some family's 1993 reunion barbecue. The incongruousness of Lily's shirt had to have been part of the strategy, Sebastien figured. It must have been chosen not only for its modesty, its subdued femininity, but also for the way it showed the world that Lily was a captive now\u2014that she was a prisoner, that she would take whatever shirt you gave her and wear it gratefully, that she was sorry, that she had not killed Katy Kellers but she was still sorry for everything else, she was sorry for the way she was and what she had and who she'd been, and that she had learned her lesson, and that the world could afford to forgive her.\n\nSitting in the courtroom, Sebastien listened to Lily explain the cartwheel\u2014slowly and carefully, while making forced eye contact with a different arbitrary stranger every few seconds. She had done the cartwheel, she said, not to mock or disdain Katy's death, and not to try to seem defiant or brave. She had done it, she said, simply because she'd felt helpless. She'd wanted to show herself that she could still do this one small thing. Maybe she couldn't do anything else, but she could still do this.\n\nAnd then, sitting in the courtroom, Sebastien listened\u2014again\u2014to the voicemail. The sound of Lily's recorded crying filled the room. Sebastien still wanted to believe that that voice was crying over him. But he knew better now than to let himself believe something he so badly wanted to.\n\nIn the end, it was a relatively quick trial.\n\nBy the time Eduardo and Adelmo Benitez, the instructor judge, brought the case before the court, the story was neat and compelling. The DNA evidence had Lily handling the murder weapon; the delivery truck driver had her present and bloodied at the scene of the crime; her ruined alibi left Ignacio Toledo's confession essentially unchallenged and unchallengeable. All that was left to do was stand back and watch motives orbit Lily like planets around a star.\n\nFirst, Katy weighed in from the beyond, with her cryptic message about the new romance in her life, the one she was afraid would upset Lily terribly. Next was Beatriz Carrizo, shaking more from holy anger than from nervousness, describing how Lily had spied and snooped and snuck out and been fired from her job, how not one week had gone by\u2014literally not one week\u2014when she hadn't been in some kind of trouble or another. But really, the bulk of the work was done by Lily herself\u2014bit by bit and word by word, in the emails, the voicemail, the fight, the lies\u2014making Eduardo's case more convincingly than even he could have done, long before she ever took the stand.\n\nNext came Lily herself, speaking first for the defense. By now her Spanish was excellent, newly and finally fluid. She'd learned idioms and slang. She had, you could be sure, learned swears. Her Spanish now was the kind of thing you could dream in and rely on, and Eduardo was sure that she was sure that if she could have had the chance to do everything over\u2014if she could have dubbed the last few months into _this_ Spanish\u2014that none of it would have happened. But, of course, it would have, and anyone could have seen it; her perverse callousness toward Katy required no articulation, and thus no translation. If anything, Lily came across worse in this improved Spanish than she had before. The newly jovial emphasis in her speech\u2014her unself-conscious willingness to really commit to the accent\u2014clashed strangely with her dispassionate account of Katy Kellers's life and death. When her Spanish had been broken, limited, there was a sense that perhaps the nuance of her experience and perception was being lost; that perhaps a fuller, more sympathetic picture existed just on the other side of fluency. But now when Lily spoke you could be sure she knew what she was saying; and so when she issued some gigglingly inappropriate non sequitur about the quality of Katy Kellers's orthodontia, one of the judges frowned and removed his bifocals and made a note of it, sure that whatever he was hearing was exactly what was meant.\n\nAccordingly, in his examination of Lily, Eduardo could afford to be low-key. He spoke to her quietly, gently, and delivered only one serious jab. He needed only one.\n\n\"You say that you performed CPR on the victim when you found her body?\"\n\n\"That's right.\"\n\n\"Lily, could you tell the panelists here the steps of CPR?\"\n\nShe could not.\n\nThe impact statement came next. This was delivered by Mr. Kellers, eloquently and poignantly, the remaining members of his beautiful family making a tragic tableau behind the prosecution desk.\n\nThen there was Anna: poised and self-contained; speaking crisply, with the terse composure of a law enforcement official, about all of Lily's many fine qualities; and giving very good answers to all of Eduardo's questions but one.\n\n\"I just didn't think Lily would have wanted anyone to hear that message,\" she said.\n\nEduardo tilted his head and furrowed his brows. \"But why would you have worried about anyone else ever hearing it?\"\n\nNext came Sebastien LeCompte. He spoke tenderly of Lily when questioned by Ojeda, but even the mitigating assertions that he made about her\u2014even the ones that Eduardo knew for a fact were true\u2014wound up sounding somehow sneering and false. Perhaps this was due to stage fright. Perhaps it was due to the difficulty of entering an arena with one's credibility already compromised, and the automatic inauthenticity that came with overcompensation (Eduardo remembered this from his own early attempts to network at law school, when he'd been so unpracticed and reluctant that he wound up coming across as even more transparently craven than his colleagues). Or perhaps, Eduardo thought, Sebastien LeCompte had actually forgotten how to mean anything. Perhaps he had never known.\n\nIn any case, there was no denying that Sebastien LeCompte had, like Lily, contributed to the obstruction of justice. Eduardo could have highlighted this fact in his questioning\u2014he could have leaned on it, made Sebastien feel its threat, made the panelist judges see its import. But in the end Eduardo decided on a different approach, for its efficacy as much as for its humanity. At heart, after all, Eduardo did not believe Sebastien LeCompte was really dangerous to anybody, or that the mistakes he'd made were likely to be repeated outside of his own life. So the kid had lied to protect his girlfriend: This only showed that he had enough sense to see that she was guilty and enough loyalty to love her anyway. And, at any rate, it was abundantly clear that Sebastien LeCompte already had a prison.\n\nAnd so instead of pursuing Sebastien's deceitfulness, Eduardo chased his ignorance. What had Lily's birthday party been like? he asked. Sebastien had not been there. Why had Sebastien not been there? Because he had not been invited. And how did Lily feel after having been fired? Sebastien did not know. And why didn't Sebastien know? Because Lily had never discussed it with him.\n\nIt was in these faltering moments of admitting his own agnosticism\u2014and in these moments alone\u2014that Sebastien LeCompte finally sounded like he was telling the truth.\n\nLast came Ignacio Toledo. It was hard for Eduardo to confidently guess how he was coming across to the judges; in certain moments he struck Eduardo as evidently self-serving, and Eduardo was not at all convinced that the panelist judges were convinced that he was telling the whole story. But they were even less convinced that Lily was, after all that they had heard. And\u2014since Ignacio Toledo's testimony involved a lot more self-recrimination than Lily's did\u2014perhaps it seemed to them intuitive to split the difference. Ignacio Toledo was sentenced to fifty years in prison. Lily Hayes was sentenced to twenty-five.\n\nAfterward, the camera crews mobbed Lily Hayes's family on the courthouse steps.\n\n\"Were you surprised at the outcome?\" they asked.\n\nAnd Andrew Hayes looked wearily at the camera and said that at this point in his life he was fairly sure that nothing could ever surprise him again.\n\nLily wrote to Sebastien only once during the trial. It was an odd letter, formal and paranoid and strangely anonymous, as though she'd written it without knowing who, if anyone, would ever read it. It was mostly about her parents: about how their visits were still at the center of her life, the thing that pinned her entire mind to the wall, but how every time they came she became obsessed with their leaving, consumed by thoughts of the minutes that had already passed, terrified of not feeling what she wanted to feel and not saying what she wanted to say during the time she had left with them. She wrote that she had to funnel her whole life, her whole secret heart, into these few moments, and that then they'd come and go and she'd spend the whole week worrying that she hadn't gotten the visit right and vowing to do better the next time. But she didn't, she said. She always found herself growing somehow abstracted, her attention half-deflected toward their departure. She wanted the visits to be something solid, she wrote, something she could fully get her arms around. But instead they were like everything else: They were diffuse, spurious things, like atoms, like seconds, like all the stuff you had to depend on but could never really trust.\n\nThe night of the sentencing, Eduardo took Maria out to dinner. At the restaurant, they were overly polite, like strangers who'd each been told that the other was freakishly given to offense. Eduardo knew he was being superstitious in not inviting anyone else out with them\u2014he knew that he was trying to avoid an outburst of the sort that had happened after his promotion all those years ago. And though he was disappointed in his own childishness, he was far more disappointed that it did not seem to be working. Lately, their relationship had seemed to Eduardo like a coin spinning ever slower, far past the point at which you think it must surely, surely land.\n\nThat night, next to him in bed, Maria whispered a question into his ear when he was nearly asleep.\n\n\"Would you still love me if I killed someone?\" she said.\n\nThe question crawled into Eduardo's ear and hooked him out of his sleep, and it echoed within him for a moment, like something from a dream, before he realized it was real. \"Did you say something?\" he said.\n\n\"Well, would you?\" Maria was on her side, head propped up on elbow, ear cupped in her hand. Eduardo had the impression that she had been staring at him for a while.\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" He sat up. \"That's ridiculous. You'd never kill someone.\"\n\n\"But would you love me if I did?\"\n\n\"But you wouldn't.\" He turned on the bedside lamp. Maria looked up at him, her face owlish and expectant. She did not sit up. \"You wouldn't be yourself if you did.\"\n\n\"You get so philosophical sometimes.\"\n\n\"No, really. You wouldn't. There would be no 'you' to love.\"\n\n\"But what if you don't know that? What if I already have killed someone? Would I still be me? And if I'm not me, who am I?\"\n\n\"You haven't killed anyone.\"\n\n\"You're right. But what if someday I will?\"\n\n\"Don't be morbid. You won't. Do you need me to promise you you won't so we can go to sleep?\"\n\nShe smiled. \"You don't know I won't. You don't know me that well, really, after all.\" Her face was strangely serene, and she seemed to be speaking almost to herself. She flipped onto her back and scrunched down into the sheets. \"Somebody probably still loves that girl. Even if she did do it.\"\n\n\"I'm sure somebody thinks they do,\" Eduardo said testily. \"And she did do it.\"\n\n\"Somebody thought they knew her, too.\"\n\n\"That I don't doubt.\" Suddenly, Eduardo had the sensation that he had been in this moment for as long as he could remember\u2014not this exact conversation, perhaps, but in some version thereof, some dialogue in which Maria wanted something from him that he could not, and would never be able to, discern. She knew\u2014she must know\u2014that he would have given her anything she needed. Not telling him what she needed was her way of forcing him to fail her, which she knew\u2014she must know\u2014was the most hurtful thing she could do to him. Eduardo could see this kind of moment stretch out forever around him. It was ahead of him and behind him. It was beyond him and within him. It was, perhaps, the dark matter of the universe, and all the astronomers could stop looking.\n\n\"You don't really love me,\" said Maria, blinking slowly. She said it as though it was a realization she had just made but did not really mind very much.\n\n\"My God\" Eduardo shoved off the covers. He was blind with anger, shaken by the violence of its eruption. He had not even known how angry he could be about anything until now. \"My every move, my every _thought_ , is for you. This whole fucking case is for you. My whole life is for you. What more do you want from me?\"\n\n\"It's not about what I want. It's not even about what you feel. It's about who I am. And you don't know that.\"\n\nEduardo threw the bedclothes on the floor, and then he hit the wall open-handed, with some force. Maria looked at the sheets in mild surprise. She never really had to register his physical strength, because Eduardo let her forget it; every time he touched her\u2014every single time\u2014it was with gentleness, restraint. But he was much, much stronger than she was, and he realized that in this moment he was reminding her of that\u2014not because he was threatening her, but because he was demanding she take his proper measure.\n\nMaria, however, did not seem troubled by this outburst. She just looked at the sheets, and then at him, with an expression of patient interest, as though she was an incredibly intelligent lamb. \"I hate this about you, you know,\" she said.\n\nEduardo didn't know whether she meant his job, or his temper, or something else altogether, but he realized\u2014finally, with great certainty and relief\u2014that it did not matter. \"Yes,\" he said. \"I know.\" He got out of bed and stood. On the carpeting in front of him was a pale demilune, cast by the streetlight outside the window. \"Why did you come back?\" he said. \"Really.\"\n\nMaria rolled onto her back and put her hands over her eyes. \"Because I had a dream.\"\n\n\"You had a dream.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"I dreamed you turned into a flower and I forgot to water you and you died.\"\n\nEduardo snorted. He was appalled.\n\n\"If you want the truth,\" Maria said from underneath the covers. \"I think that poor girl is probably innocent.\"\n\nEduardo turned to the window. Outside, the sky was growing lighter and somehow pellucid, suggesting rain in its mood if not quite in its color. Soon it would be morning again. It was always almost morning again.\n\n\"What,\" he said. \"Did you have a dream about that, too?\"\n\nAt night, Sebastien kept up the anonymous donations. He gave money to Lily's parents' travel fund, and then he kept on giving. He gave money to Amnesty International, for Lily. He gave money to victims' advocacy groups, for Katy. He gave money to the Space Foundation for the stars (if ever there was a project that could swallow up any fortune, any lifetime). The Space Foundation sent him maps of constellations. He put them on the walls; he put them over the photo of his tapir. It wasn't actually his tapir: His father had shot it for him because he couldn't do it and had let him stand in the picture anyway. Now Sebastien's cowardly, adolescent feet poked out from underneath the purplish, smoky corona of a rotating galaxy. He put a map over the tapestry, partially obscuring it. Now the dogs chased streaky comets, the alluvial silt of the farthest stars. He put maps on the ceiling, making celestial clerestories. He realized he had never, in his entire life, slept outside.\n\nHe Googled \"suicide\" again and again, allowing himself each time to be moved anew by the automatic, impersonal concern of the Internet. It was so perfect in its abstraction, Sebastien thought. It was something like the Kantian categorical imperative, or the awesome callousness of nature, or the sort of nostalgic, flamboyant kindnesses that the United States very occasionally extended to its enemies: rebuilding postwar Germany, giving Osama bin Laden an Islamic ceremony before tossing his body into the sea.\n\nIn a way, Eduardo was surprised to find, losing Maria again turned out to feel almost natural. Eduardo had known that after the case was over he would have a feeling of having reached the peak of his life, of looking over its edge, of knowing that soon night would fall, and that even sooner it would be time to turn around. Now that Maria was gone again, he found himself heading back down already\u2014and it seemed a less frightening journey, somehow, though he did have to marvel at its swiftness.\n\nHer departure had been a catastrophe Eduardo had been drilling for most of his adult life. Her return had been, in the end, merely a kind of caesura between miseries. Or maybe not even that.\n\nAnd yet it was true that Eduardo had been sure about her once\u2014surer than he had ever been about anything else, before or since.\n\nOver the months, Eduardo thought often of Lily Hayes's time in prison\u2014of how difficult it must be to be there after a life as short and easy as hers. She'd have to recall memories that she'd barely been present for at the time; she'd have to turn them over and over again in her mind, looking for new details and complexities. It would be like scrambling for the crumbs of meals you'd consumed without knowing you'd need to ration them. It would be like craning your neck to try to see something beyond a picture's frame.\n\nA year after the conviction, Eduardo read in the paper that Sebastien LeCompte was having an estate sale, and he hired a man to go to it and buy the Steinway. All told, the purchase was approximately what he'd made on Lily Hayes's conviction. He saw how this could be viewed as a kind of revenge, but really he meant it as a kind of penance\u2014though not penance for the chance that he'd been wrong about Lily. Eduardo felt humility before that possibility, as before all other possibilities. He had done his best. He had made a good faith attempt at agency in this lifetime. This, and only this, was all that any of us could really do or know that we had done. Conceding the fallibility of your knowledge was only the first step: Given that, you had to proceed, you had to discern, you had to assess and evaluate and distinguish right from wrong, you had to sort out truth from falsehood (people might say they weren't doing this, but, of course, they were doing this; they were acting on many layers of unexamined belief with every breath they took, with every moment they lived). And then, whatever you decided you believed, you had to act as though you really believed it. If you did not do this, you weren't just a coward. If you did not do this, you were forfeiting something far bigger than bravery.\n\nAfter Lily's sentencing, Sebastien was finally allowed to visit her in prison. He arrived to find her sitting at a table, smoking. Her hair was longer and seemed a different color\u2014not just dirtier, but actually darker, somehow.\n\n\"They say that stuff will kill you,\" he said feebly.\n\n\"God,\" she said. \"I hope something else gets to it first.\"\n\n\"Is your hair a different color?\"\n\nShe shrugged. \"I don't know. Maybe.\"\n\n\"They say Marie Antoinette's hair went white the night before she was executed.\"\n\nLily had once told Sebastien that he didn't know what he meant when he talked, but this was not an accurate diagnosis. Usually he just didn't care\u2014he only wanted to sound clever, and there was a crystalline simplicity and directness in this, really, when you thought about it. But now he felt like he did care, he cared very much\u2014he just didn't know what he was trying to say. Whatever that was was off in some other galaxy, the kind that was so far away that by the time you got there you'd be dead.\n\nLily shook her head. \"That's not how it works. It's just that all her brown hair fell out.\" She took a puff of her cigarette. There was an intense agitation in her movements now that Sebastien hadn't noticed at the trial. \"I can't believe they let you in here.\"\n\n\"Well, at this point it's the least they could do.\"\n\nShe gave him an unbelieving look. \"I mean, I just can't believe they think I'm so dumb that I would say anything to you.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"They're recording this, you realize?\" she said. \"They're trying to entrap me. They think you might help them do that.\"\n\nSebastien was not sure what his face was doing. Lily must understand that he'd lied for her, and been caught in that lie; she must understand that he had had no choice. But perhaps she loathed him for the lying anyway. Perhaps she thought he'd lied because he'd believed it was possible she had done it, or because he'd believed that other people would believe that it was possible. Perhaps she saw both of these things as betrayals. Or perhaps\u2014and as soon as Sebastien thought of this possibility he felt its truth, like a truncheon to the soul\u2014she really had no opinion on any of this.\n\n\"Well not, you know, intentionally,\" said Lily. There was a fluttery breathiness in her voice. \"I don't mean that. I just mean they think I'll lose my head and forget where I am and suddenly remember I did things I didn't do.\"\n\nShe was afraid to even name those things, Sebastien saw. She didn't want to even give them a phrase, a recording of her voice stringing certain words together in a certain order, regardless of the context\u2014such was the level of her distrust. Was this savviness (finally, belatedly)? Or just paranoia? Sebastien couldn't tell. But either way, who could blame her? He remembered his paranoia the day he'd flown back to Buenos Aires after his parents' death. His fear that day had not been limited to the plane ride; instead, his fear had extended nonsensically, ludicrously, both forward and backward in time, like some strange ivy that would climb toward either darkness or light. The fear had crept back into his trip's beginnings: It was waiting for him behind a newspaper in South Station, where the clean sheets of light falling through the window always felt somehow Atlantic, oceanic, and the ashen seagulls outside made smudges against the concrete and the sky. And the fear had crept forward to the rest of the day: If the fear did not crash his plane, then it would follow him through security\u2014after he disembarked and hailed a taxi and rode through his streets, his former streets\u2014and into his childhood home, and into the rest of his life. The fear could be patient, after all. The fear had all the time in the world.\n\n\"Are you losing it, Lily?\" said Sebastien.\n\nThere was a flash of reactionary, automatic hostility on her face that faded into pensiveness. \"How would I know?\" she said.\n\n\"You don't have to worry about it,\" said Sebastien. \"For obvious reasons, I'm not one to judge.\" He put his hand on the table, making it available for her to hold. Lily stared at it emptily, with an expression of incurious incomprehension, and made no move to take it. And suddenly Sebastien could see how Lily's sentence would go: how her previous life would turn to red, fetal memories; how her personality would liquidate. Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years. She would become obsessed with her cigarettes, with her minor grievances and feuds. Maureen and Andrew would keep coming, though less and less, and then they would die, one after another. Anna would keep coming, twice a year, at least; she would work for two years as an i-banker (there was no way that girl wasn't heading for an MBA, classics major or no) until she married another i-banker and they would produce two long-limbed children back-to-back. She would never give up distance running, and she would never give up sending Lily the necessaries\u2014even as the necessaries changed, year to year, and even as there were less and less of them.\n\nIt would not matter. None of it would matter. Lily's spirit would not be able to stop its own decay any more than her body would one day.\n\n\"I'm sorry, you know,\" Sebastien said with feeling. \"I'm so, so sorry.\"\n\nLily looked at him neutrally. \"For what?\"\n\n\u00b7 \u00b7 \u00b7\n\nIt was two years before the appeal went to court. When the decision came, the murder conviction was overturned; the obstruction of justice conviction\u2014resulting from Lily's lie about the marijuana\u2014stood, with the sentence reduced to time served. On television, Andrew Hayes said, \"Two years is a lifetime at her age. It's a lifetime.\" He looked drawn and aged. \"She's already missed being an entire person she would have been. That person is dead, just like Katy Kellers.\"\n\nHe got shit for the comparison, of course. Yet Eduardo thought that it probably was true\u2014though he did not know for sure, since he had not argued the case. In fact, he had taken an extended sabbatical from the law. He went to Ravenna, Italy, to see the early Christian mosaics there, in indigo and jade. He admired the vivid simplicity of their colors, their ethics. Afterward, he walked outside and the moon above him was like a single opal in the sky.\n\nIt was possible, of course, that Lily Hayes had been innocent. Of course it was possible; anything was possible. Embracing the chance of being right was incurring the risk of being wrong. Eduardo had accepted the same stakes as the soldier, the revolutionary, the reformer. He had known that any attempt at heroism may, in retrospect, be revealed to be villainous.\n\nHe had gambled on virtue. He was at peace. He went to the karstic caves of Slovenia. He stood in ancient churches and listened for what he might hear.\n\nSebastien began going outside.\n\nFirst, he went down to the river to think about the stars. He tilted his head back to look at the sky. He tried to see it the way Lily might see it, or the way she might have seen it once.\n\nWe all had life sentences: You spent yours inside or out, but you had to spend it somewhere.\n\nAbove him, Sebastien could almost see the slit eyes of lenticular galaxies. That sense of being observed\u2014it was why people invented their gods. It was why he'd invented the Carrizos. And maybe this was all he'd be allowed to keep from Lily: a sense of her gaze, a slightly softer, more sympathetic one, following him through the years, her lids lowering and lowering until, finally, they closed.\n\nHe would write her a letter one day, a long time from now, when everybody else had forgotten. _I still know you didn't do it_ , it would say. _I know that. I know that. I know_.\n\nAnd Lily would write back and say, _I'm glad you know it. But you should also know this: I did not do it, but I might have. I did not do it, but I could have. I did not do it, but perhaps, in another lifetime, I did_.\n\n# AUTHOR'S NOTE\n\nIn some of its themes, _Cartwheel_ draws inspiration from the case of Amanda Knox, the American foreign exchange student accused, convicted, and acquitted of murdering her roommate in Italy. I was fascinated by the idea of writing about a fictional character who serves as a blank slate onto which an array of interpretations\u2014often inflected by issues of class and privilege, gender and religion, American entitlement and anti-American resentment\u2014tend to be projected. The fictional Lily Hayes shares these broad and nebulous qualities with Amanda Knox; their similarities lie in the contradictory but confident judgments they animate in others.\n\nThe eponymous cartwheel serves as a good example of the novel's intention, as well as its relationship to reality. In the book, some view Lily Hayes's interrogation room gymnastics as callous, others as benign, others as suspicious. These divided perceptions were initially inspired by the response to the cartwheel Amanda Knox was widely reported to have done during her interrogation\u2014a cartwheel that, we now know, never actually occurred. This episode, I think, illustrates some of the central questions I wanted to explore in this novel\u2014questions about how we decide what to believe, and what to keep believing\u2014while also demonstrating part of why I needed a totally fictional realm to do this.\n\nIn contemplating the possibility that this book could be mistaken as a narrative about\u2014and judgment on\u2014real-life people and events, I've come to appreciate how entirely my view of writing and reading fiction is based on a single moral premise: that the act of imagining the experiences of fictional people develops our sense of empathy, as well as our sense of humility, in regarding the experiences of real ones. To me, the fictional barrier around the characters in this book isn't just a necessary prerequisite for trying (or even wanting) to write a novel about the fallibility of perception\u2014it's also fundamental to my notion of fiction's ethical possibilities in the world. And so it is as a person, even more than as an author, that I ask readers to have no doubt as to whose story this is. In the real universe is a girl who never did a cartwheel. This novel is the story of a girl who did.\n_To Justin_\n\n# ACKNOWLEDGMENTS\n\nThanks to the Iowa Writers' Workshop and Stanford University's Stegner Fellowship program\u2014for the time, the life-changing sense of possibility, and most of all, the people, I will be forever grateful. For their feedback on this book, I am particularly indebted to my incredible teachers at Stanford, Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tobias Wolff, as well as my tireless comrades-in-workshop: Josh Foster, Jon Hickey, Dana Kletter, Ryan McIlvain, Nina Schloesser, Maggie Shipstead, Justin Torres, Kirstin Valdez Quade, and some other guy I can't remember. Many thanks also to Kate Sachs for the eventful early recon trip, as well as Adam Krause, Keija Kaarina Parssinen, and all of the terrifyingly smart members of the No-Name Writing Group for their incisive comments.\n\nThanks to my wonderful agent, Henry Dunow, who is as indefatigable as he is patient. Thanks also to everyone at Random House: Susan Kamil, Laura Goldin, Erika Greber, and Caitlin McKenna; confirmed publicity sorceress Maria Braeckel; and especially my editor, David Ebershoff, for his remarkable insight and dedication.\n\nMost of all, thanks to Carolyn du Bois, for teaching me to see that truth is often complicated, and to Justin Perry, for making me believe that, once in a while, it is not.\n\n# By Jennifer duBois\n\n_Cartwheel_  \n _A Partial History of Lost Causes_\n\n# ABOUT THE AUTHOR\n\nJENNIFER DUBOIS'S _A Partial History of Lost Causes_ was one of the most acclaimed debuts of recent years. It was a finalist for the PEN\/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction and the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and _O: The Oprah Magazine_ chose it as one of the ten best books of the year. DuBois was also named one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 authors. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, duBois recently completed a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Originally from Massachusetts, she now lives in Texas.\n\njennifer-dubois.com\n\n@jennifer_dubois\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \nDu m\u00eame auteur\n\n _Aux m\u00eames \u00e9ditions_\n\nPartition rouge\n\n _(en collaboration avec Florence Delay), 1988_\n\n'Le grand incendie de Londres'\n\nR\u00e9cits, avec incises et bifurcations, 1985-1987\n\n _1989_\n\n _Aux \u00e9ditions Gallimard_\n\nSigne d'appartenance, _1967_\n\nLe Sentiment des choses, _1970_\n\nTrente et un au cube, _1973_\n\nGraal Fiction, _1978_\n\nQuelque chose noir, _1986_\n\n _Aux \u00e9ditions Seghers_\n\nLa Belle Hortense, _1985, 1989_\n\nL'Enl\u00e8vement d'Hortense, _1987_\n\nL'Exil d'Hortense, _1990_\n\nLa Biblioth\u00e8que oulipienne\n\n _(en collaboration), 3 vol., 1987, 1990_\nCOLLECTION \u00ab FICTION & CIE \u00bb  \nDIRIG\u00c9E PAR DENIS ROCHE\n\nISBN : 978-2-02-117847-0\n\n\u00a9 \u00c9ditions du Seuil, f\u00e9vrier 1993\n\n_Cet ouvrage a \u00e9t\u00e9 num\u00e9ris\u00e9 en partenariat avec le Centre National du Livre._\n\n_Ce document num\u00e9rique a \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9alis\u00e9 parNord Compo._\n\u00ab Il serait difficile, m\u00eame pour un saint, de r\u00eaver d'avant sa naissance. \u00bb\nTABLE DES MATI\u00c8RES\n\nCouverture\n\nDu m\u00eame auteur\n\nCopyright\n\nR\u00e9cit\n\nChapitre 1 - Fleur inverse\n\n1 Pendant la nuit, sur les vitres,\n\n2 Comme le monde du sceptique\n\n3 Ma fr\u00e9quentation de cette image\n\n4 Le bleu-noir de la nuit\n\n5 Les parcours de m\u00e9moire sont r\u00e9versibles.\n\n6 A l'air froid, le nuage n\u00e9 du souffle,\n\n7 Dans cette poign\u00e9e d'images d'enfance\n\n8 Chaque fois que je sors, au pr\u00e9sent, de la chambre du gel,\n\n9 Ce souvenir est sans tristesse,\n\nChapitre 2 - Le Figuier\n\n10 A la No\u00ebl de 1942 mon p\u00e8re m'emmena \u00e0 Toulon, chez son oncle Roubaud.\n\n11 Je ne connaissais pas la mer.\n\n12 Il n'avait pas, en tout cas, converti sa propre famille.\n\n13 Sur l'arri\u00e8re de la maison, le figuier.\n\n14 Un jour des ann\u00e9es cinquante, au repas du soir,\n\n15 La chute du mur de Berlin m'a pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 dans ce chapitre\n\n16 Le jour de No\u00ebl nous avons travers\u00e9 le port sur le petit bateau des promenades.\n\n17 Pour un enfant, le cercle familial est un syst\u00e8me plan\u00e9taire d'avant la r\u00e9volution copernicienne\n\n18 Parmi quelques rares papiers surnag\u00e9s des d\u00e9sordres et des d\u00e9sastres\n\nChapitre 3 - Rue d'Assas\n\n19 Le jardin \u00e9tait ferm\u00e9 de murs.\n\n20 Si je me place, mentalement, en situation de souvenir volontaire\n\n21 La difficult\u00e9 principale pour le guetteur\n\n22 A genoux devant le banc vert, les genoux nus\n\n23 \u00ab Jamais l'aube \u00e0 grands cris bleuissant les lavoirs \u00bb\n\n24 des fleurs, des fruits, des feuilles et des branches\n\n25 La semi-fraternit\u00e9 des enfants et des animaux familiers incite \u00e0 une interpr\u00e9tation fictive de la fascination qu'exercent certaines l\u00e9gendes comme celle de saint Nicolas.\n\n26 \u00ab Mon grand p\u00e8re avait l'habitude de dire :\n\n27 Dans ce jardin, je n'\u00e9tais pas seul.\n\n28 Le temps ayant pass\u00e9, l'in\u00e9vitable en vint \u00e0 ne plus pouvoir \u00eatre \u00e9vit\u00e9\n\n29 Je sors du jardin dans la rue, vers l'Aude\n\nChapitre 4 - Parc Sauvage\n\n30 Devant cette maison, tout pr\u00e8s, s'\u00e9tendait le Parc Sauvage\n\n31 Je ne sais pas de quel arbre, de quels arbres, vers le fond du parc\n\n32 Ma vision passe sans explication ni transition aucune\n\n33 Je suis rest\u00e9, dans cette description, enti\u00e8rement en dehors.\n\n34 De la Rue d'Assas (Carcassonne) \u00e0 Sainte-Lucie\n\n35 Sainte-Lucie appartenait \u00e0 Camille Boer.\n\nChapitre 5 - Place Davila\n\n36 La forme d'une ville\n\n37 La place Davila \u00e9tait la station centrale d'un trajet mille fois fray\u00e9\n\n38 Cet au-del\u00e0 \u00e9tait un s\u00e9jour de dieux sans ombres,\n\n39 Saint-Jean mil neuf cent trente-neuf\n\n40 Comme une alimentation convenable en laitages \u00e9tait impossible,\n\n41 Sur le mur de la salle de classe\n\nChapitre 6 - H\u00f4tel Lutetia\n\n42 \u00ab Le soleil se l\u00e8ve \u00e0 l'ouest, le dimanche \u00bb\n\n43 Deux documents :\n\n44 Je remarque avec une certaine satisfaction, dans cette lettre,\n\n45 Lyon extraordinairement belle en septembre 44.\n\n46 Questionnaire :\n\n47 Nomm\u00e9, au titre du Mouvement de lib\u00e9ration nationale,\n\n48 La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de cette loi de l'\u00e2me.\n\n49 L'an se rajeunissait\n\n50 Une, deux, trois ou quatre fois l'an je pose ma valise\n\nInsertions - incises\n\n(du chapitre 1)\n\n51 (\u00a7 1) un r\u00e9seau v\u00e9g\u00e9tal tout en nervures, une v\u00e9g\u00e9tation de surface, une poign\u00e9e de foug\u00e8res plates... La carte, le r\u00e9seau sensible des lignes de la main ne s'y imprimait pas.\n\n52 (\u00a7 2) des phrases comme \u00ab je pensais que... \u00bb, \u00ab je croyais que... \u00bb (si elles se pr\u00e9sentent comme imm\u00e9diates) me repoussent.\n\n53 (\u00a7 52) un tr\u00e8s jeune enfant dont un adulte, par jeu, pr\u00e9tend rev\u00eatir par erreur le manteau au lieu du sien\n\n54 (\u00a7 53) les objets qui font partie de mon corps, comme ce manteau, comme mon \u00ab double \u00bb tot\u00e9mique en peluche.\n\n55 (suite du \u00a7 54) Je donnerai le nom g\u00e9n\u00e9rique de gniengnien\n\n56 (seconde suite du \u00a7 54) Pendant un long moment, j'ai caress\u00e9 l'id\u00e9e d'une \u00e9tude\n\n57 (derni\u00e8re suite au \u00a7 54) Juliette, comme tout inventeur de gniengnien,\n\n58 (\u00a7 3) La Voie de la Double N\u00e9gation qui a ses variantes philosophiques, th\u00e9ologiques et m\u00eame logiques\n\n59 (\u00a7 3) De cette floraison \u00ab hirsute \u00bb, \u00e0 l'\u00e9vocation vibratoire du vers\n\n60 (\u00a7 4) Le futur, qui est futur ant\u00e9rieur sans cesse\n\n61 (suite du \u00a7 60) \u00ab La couleur des yeux de la femme de Goodman \u00bb\n\n62 (suite 2 du \u00a7 60) Le paradoxe de Goodman est un paradoxe de sceptique\n\n63 (suite 3 du \u00a7 60) Longtemps, toutes les ann\u00e9es paralys\u00e9es du premier deuil,\n\n64 (\u00a7 5) Les recettes des Arts de la M\u00e9moire que le Moyen \u00c2ge, puis la Renaissance, invent\u00e8rent\n\n65 (\u00a7 6) La course inverse du train vers Castelnaudary\n\n66 (\u00a7 7) Le r\u00e9cit du souvenir aurait un besoin in\u00e9puisable des ressources d'une rh\u00e9torique hermog\u00e9nienne (la vitesse est un concept central du trait\u00e9 hell\u00e9nistique d\u00fb \u00e0 cet auteur)\n\n67 (\u00a7 8) quelque chose comme le paradoxe d'Olbers\n\n(du chapitre 2)\n\n68 (\u00a7 10) Je vois aussi des m\u00fbriers, aux fruits rouges explos\u00e9s sur le sol, comme de vin, de sang\n\n69 (\u00a7 68) Je les ai toutes \u00e9crites en m\u00eame temps que la cha\u00eene de d\u00e9duction fictive qui \u00ab commen\u00e7a \u00bb mon Projet : \u00e0 l'automne de 1980, il y a neuf ans.\n\n70 (\u00a7 68) ce sont des images dites, des \u00ab pictions \u00bb\n\n71 (\u00a7 10) une lign\u00e9e r\u00e9publicaine avec une certaine propension aux positions minoritaires\n\n72 (\u00a7 10) ils d\u00e9terminent d\u00e9cisivement notre \u00e9thos\n\n73 (\u00a7 11) Je sais que je l'avais d\u00e9j\u00e0 vue, quatre ans plus t\u00f4t, mais je l'avais oubli\u00e9e\n\n74 (\u00a7 11) Mon p\u00e8re a r\u00e9ussi presque enti\u00e8rement la conversion de ma m\u00e8re, sans toutefois obtenir une adh\u00e9sion vraiment franche \u00e0 la moule et \u00e0 la sardine\n\n75 (\u00a7 12) (il y eut, ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne exceptionnel pour l'\u00e9poque, trois demoiselles rue d'Ulm cette ann\u00e9e-l\u00e0)\n\n76 (\u00a7 13) Les r\u00e9cits parentaux de l'\u00ab avant-guerre \u00bb comportaient la description r\u00e9clam\u00e9e et r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9e des nourritures qui avaient disparu de l'horizon de la France urbaine, d\u00e8s l'hiver 40\n\n77 (\u00a7 15) A quai, s'allongeait un train de p\u00e9niches, charg\u00e9es jusqu'au bord de charbon : de la lignite brune\n\n78 (\u00a7 15) ma\u00eetriser la s\u00e9quence d'images d'enfance que j'avais entrepris d'\u00e9lucider (toujours sous la vision de la grande \u00ab feuille \u00bb de prose qui noircit ligne \u00e0 ligne)\n\n79 (\u00a7 15) la vue de la semi-ruine est-berlinoise m'a restitu\u00e9 toute la violence des visions de la guerre\n\n80 (\u00a7 17) mon p\u00e8re n'a jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab disciple \u00bb de personne\n\n81 (\u00a7 18) des absences \u00e9num\u00e9r\u00e9es, comme autant de pierres tombales, par des noms\n\n(du chapitre 3)\n\n82 (\u00a7 19) un parcours de m\u00e9moire, mais parcours labyrinthique\n\n83 (\u00a7 19) J'ouvre les portes de chaque pi\u00e8ce, une \u00e0 une, j'entre : j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 l\u00e0.\n\n84 (\u00a7 83) Cela (cette nouvelle aventure) devrait appara\u00eetre (mais beaucoup plus tard dans le livre), ainsi :\n\n85 (\u00a7 84, suite)\n\n86 (\u00a7 84, deuxi\u00e8me suite)\n\n87 (\u00a7 84, troisi\u00e8me suite)\n\n88 (\u00a7 20) selon la hi\u00e9rarchie d'une m\u00e9ditation des cinq sens\n\n89 (\u00a7 20) Ces dispositions ne me seraient pas apparues comme convenables par fantaisie, elles \u00e9taient n\u00e9cessaires. Elles faisaient partie des conditions initiales de la m\u00e9moire, depuis son origine.\n\n90 (suite du \u00a7 89) Et j'ai demand\u00e9 alors \u00e0 Charlotte\n\n91 (\u00a7 22 & \u00a7 23) Je me serais, je crois, tr\u00e8s bien converti \u00e0 un alignement du mouvement des aiguilles sur celui d'un vecteur tournant dans le sens \u00ab positif \u00bb.\n\n92 (\u00a7 24) Brigitte Bardot, cet ex-symbole \u00e9rotique de cin\u00e9matographe pour les m\u00e2les de ma g\u00e9n\u00e9ration, devenue protectrice gaga-g\u00e2teau des b\u00e9b\u00e9s-phoques\n\n93 (\u00a7 24) je peux quasiment suivre \u00e0 l'\u0153il (int\u00e9rieur) la maturation d'une tomate sous ses feuilles,\n\n94 (suite du \u00a7 93) Le jardin \u00e9tait plant\u00e9 de la plus grande vari\u00e9t\u00e9 possible d'esp\u00e8ces v\u00e9g\u00e9tales comestibles compatibles avec le climat.\n\n95 (\u00a7 94) L'eau aussit\u00f4t aval\u00e9e par un sol avide au pied des plants de tomates,\n\n96 (\u00a7 24) Les clapiers, demeures des tranquilles et sympathiques lapins\n\n\u00a7 97 (\u00a7 25) Un jeune et mince cochon vint donc s'\u00e9tablir en secret dans l'appentis\n\n98 (\u00a7 26) Les petits palmiers du jardin avaient pour feuillage des palmes, longues feuilles au bout d'une tige solide et souple (propri\u00e9t\u00e9 qui nous int\u00e9ressera \u00e9galement)\n\n99 (\u00a7 28) Nous passions pr\u00e8s d'elle \u00e0 toute allure sur nos bicyclettes ou tricycles\n\n100 (\u00a7 29) Hors-jeu, face au banc, au centre d'une tr\u00e8s grande multiplicit\u00e9 de souvenirs r\u00e9els,\n\n(du chapitre 4)\n\n101 (\u00a7 30) fruits de l'if \u00e0 la couleur rouge sombre ; sur l'arbre luisants avec \u00e9clat sombre, grave\n\n102 (\u00a7 33 & suite du \u00a7 101) Images qui sont intenses, mais fixes ; mais quasiment isol\u00e9es\n\n103 (\u00a7 33 & \u00a7 34) Je ne suis pas entr\u00e9 dans la maison. Je ne la vois que dans un contexte hivernal, de froid relatif, je ne m'en souviens que dans un autre monde\n\n104 (suite du \u00a7 103) L'immense salle \u00e0 manger \u00e9tait le plus souvent d\u00e9serte quand j'y p\u00e9n\u00e9trais, t\u00f4t le matin\n\n105 (\u00a7 34) Les ann\u00e9es 40-45 furent des ann\u00e9es b\u00e9nies pour le v\u00e9lo\n\n(\u00a7 34) Le v\u00e9lo pos\u00e9 contre un muret, en haut de la c\u00f4te ; arr\u00eat, prolongement naturel de l'instant de suspension, \u00e0 vitesse nulle, avant l'ivresse de la descente\n\n(du chapitre 5)\n\n106 (\u00a7 36) A la fin de l'\u00e2ge mythique j'ai donn\u00e9 \u00e0 mes dieux une langue, le P\u00e9ruviaque\n\n107 (\u00a7 39) C'est ce que j'appellerais le confort autobiographique. Il resurgit sans aucun contr\u00f4le chez le romancier.\n\n108 (\u00a7 39) Dans les villes, \u00e0 Carcassonne en particulier, on eut tr\u00e8s faim\n\n109 (\u00a7 39) Je me consacrai \u00e0 ma vocation po\u00e9tique avec plus de constance, de concentration et de conviction qu'\u00e0 l'\u00e9tude\n\n110 (\u00a7 39) Nous participions avec componction \u00e0 la c\u00e9r\u00e9monie trimestrielle de la mesure\n\n111 (\u00a7 40) Mon p\u00e8re avait pour nous, je ne dirais pas des ambitions olympiques, du moins l'espoir de nous voir r\u00e9ussir honorablement dans les disciplines de l'athl\u00e9tisme\n\n112 (\u00a7 40) Voil\u00e0 ce qui arriverait \u00e0 leurs filles si elles continuaient \u00e0 pr\u00e9tendre faire de la course \u00e0 pied\n\n113 (\u00a7 40) Un accord plus profond avec son corps, avec soi-m\u00eame\n\n114 (\u00a7 41) Les nouvelles lointaines de la guerre\n\n(du chapitre 6)\n\n115 (\u00a7 42) Mais d\u00e8s le lendemain du 6 juin il \u00e9tait sur les routes (\u00e0 v\u00e9lo)\n\n116 (\u00a7 44) Je ne suis pas m\u00e9content de voir la certitude interne de ma constance num\u00e9rologique, elle aussi, confirm\u00e9e\n\n117 (suite in \u00a7 116) Les villes n'ont pas, de mani\u00e8re naturelle, de bornes signal\u00e9tiques\n\n118 (seconde suite in \u00a7 116) Dans les villes comme sur les routes mon ennemie intime est l'automobile\n\n119 (\u00a7 44) Je poss\u00e8de quelque part le \u00ab cadre \u00bb chronologique de ces images,\n\n120 (\u00a7 45) il m'emmenait brusquement vers un autre, dont il avait (signe de pr\u00e9m\u00e9ditation ?) not\u00e9 aussi les horaires.\n\n121 (\u00a7 47) Cela parut \u00e0 mon p\u00e8re insupportable et impardonnable (suite du \u00a7 115 : un t\u00e9moignage de mon p\u00e8re)\n\n122 (\u00a7 47) Fragments d'un Trait\u00e9 des Disputes (De Querelis) de 1946.\n\n123 (suite \u00a7 122) Plan g\u00e9n\u00e9ral : 26 janvier\n\n124 (seconde suite du \u00a7 122) Je dois marquer ici, bien s\u00fbr, un trait r\u00e9current et fatal de mon autoportrait,\n\n125 (\u00a7 48) Ces baisers ne cessaient d'enflammer mon imagination\n\n126 (\u00a7 49) Le tome X de l'\u00e9dition chronologique monumentale \u00ab Laumonier \u00bb, o\u00f9 il figure, au second livre des Meslanges, \u00e0 la date de 1559\n\n127 (suite du \u00a7 126) \u00ab Elle \u00e9tait d\u00e9chauss\u00e9e \u00bb\n\n128 (\u00a7 49) Les Sempourgogniques\n\n129 (suite in \u00a7 128) Les incidents de la deuxi\u00e8me section ne sont gu\u00e8re m\u00e9morables\n\n130 (in \u00a7 50) Leningrad, Stalingrad, Orel, Koursk, Velikie-Louki, Briansk\n\n131 (\u00a7 50) J'avais admir\u00e9 les manifestants antip\u00e9tainistes de 1942\n\nbifurcations\n\nBifurcation A - Le Monstre de Strasbourg\n\n132 (\u00a7 9) Je vois ce titre immense, Le Monstre de Strasbourg, sur un fond cin\u00e9matographique de toits \u00e0 chemin\u00e9es,\n\n133 J'ouvre la porte au fond de la chambre\n\n134 Ici, il s'offre trois voies.\n\n135 Deuxi\u00e8me p\u00f4le magn\u00e9tique du bureau (lieu) : l'oreiller \u00e0 la t\u00eate du divan\n\n136 Il me semble avoir acquis l\u00e0 trois passions : la passion des nombres, celle de la po\u00e9sie ; celle des livres.\n\n137 Je n'ai pas mis ici la po\u00e9sie en premi\u00e8re passion, mais apr\u00e8s celle des nombres,\n\n138 Je vois un livre : un atlas\n\n139 La salle \u00e0 manger du rez-de-chauss\u00e9e \u00e9tait tranquille et sombre,\n\n140 Par la fen\u00eatre, assis sur le tabouret du piano, je vois les pins dominicaux agit\u00e9s d'un vent l\u00e9ger,\n\n141 Dans cette pi\u00e8ce peupl\u00e9e de voix, de voix musicales surtout, je peux entrer infailliblement\n\n142 La position de la cuisine, derni\u00e8re des six pi\u00e8ces, est ais\u00e9ment d\u00e9ductible du reste de la description,\n\n143 je me laisse cette fois ouvrir la porte donnant sur le balcon\n\n144 Rocambole, on s'en souvient sans doute, se fait passer pour un vicomte,\n\n145 car l'eau refroidissante dans la nuit sib\u00e9rienne va bient\u00f4t geler\n\nBifurcation B - Avant-vie\n\n146 Je marque une fronti\u00e8re dans la dur\u00e9e, je pense le d\u00e9but de ma vie :\n\n147 Mes grands-parents s'install\u00e8rent \u00e0 Caluire quand mon grand-p\u00e8re fut nomm\u00e9 inspecteur primaire\n\n148 Je prends une autre photographie, dont le \u00ab sujet \u00bb est moi-m\u00eame :\n\n149 Les images de mon avant-vie sont en nombre infime.\n\n150 Je regarde de l'herbe dans le jardin du 21 rue de l'Orangerie (du 21 cette fois),\n\nBifurcation C - Des nuages\n\n151 Au rez-de-chauss\u00e9e de la maison, une fen\u00eatre regardait vers l'ext\u00e9rieur.\n\n152 dans la cour nous jouions \u00e0 des jeux de la guerre\n\n153 Pendant ces ann\u00e9es b\u00e9nies,\n\n154 Tout autre \u00e9tait l'encre, le sang des m\u00fbres de ronce,\n\n155 Guetteur \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre de l'Enclos du Luxembourg, je vois la ville comme une amplification du jardin,\n\n156 Par la rue d'Assas, aussi, on rejoint l'Aude,\n\n157 Il y a onze ans, j'ai achev\u00e9 un livre de po\u00e8mes par un \u00ab chant \u00bb, emprunt\u00e9 aux Indiens chippewas,\n\n158 Entre Villegly et Sall\u00e8les, dans le Minervois, un peu au nord, nord-ouest de Carcassonne,\n\n159 Nous vivions \u00e0 Carcassonne, comme j'ai dit\n\n160 Avec l'Oncle, avec Marie, avec Dick l'\u00e9pagneul, avec des paniers d'osier aux fonds couverts de feuilles de vigne,\n\n161 Je les encourageais un moment dans l'illusion de la s\u00e9curit\u00e9\n\n162 L'heure \u00e9tait celle de midi, un jour d'\u00e9t\u00e9,\n\n163 Aujourd'hui, je ne m'\u00e9loigne plus que tr\u00e8s rarement de la vall\u00e9e du barrage\n\n164 Ce soir-l\u00e0, j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 m'asseoir sous les pins, face \u00e0 Sall\u00e8les\n\nBifurcation D - Mont\u00e9e de la Boucle\n\n165 la gare Perrache tendait un pi\u00e8ge aux voyageurs\n\n166 Et cependant\n\n167 Peu de temps avant sa mort ma grand-m\u00e8re,\n\n168 Suivons donc la jeune fille sur la route\n\n169 Notre d\u00e9ception fut s\u00e9v\u00e8re.\n\n170 Il y a eu de tr\u00e8s nombreux instituteurs dans ma famille\n\n171 Mon arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re Robert Molino fut chef de gare \u00e0 Poli\u00e9na.\n\n172 la dissym\u00e9trie frappante entre les r\u00e9actions de mes grands-parents devant les maladies\n\n173 De leur maison de Caluire (qui n'\u00e9tait encore que le 21 bis de la rue de l'Orangerie,\n\n174 La maison du 21, o\u00f9 j'arrivai enfin apr\u00e8s ma longue errance\n\n175 Si famili\u00e8re odeur de p\u00e9nombre qu'elle se m\u00eale de cire,\n\n176 Elles auraient d\u00fb tenir compte (par anticipation), pour leur recherche, du fameux argument chomskyen\n\n177 Mon grand-p\u00e8re estimait la temp\u00e9rature de sa cave id\u00e9ale\n\n178 L'heure de ma grand-m\u00e8re \u00e9tait au contraire, aussi \u00e9loign\u00e9e que possible de l'aube, celle du th\u00e9\n\n179 Tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t, dans les mois qui suivirent l'effervescence de la Lib\u00e9ration\n\n180 Je vois dans le jardin, au c\u0153ur de son immensit\u00e9 luxueuse.\n\n181 En m'immergeant dans le jardin, en me tournant depuis les m\u00fbriers, vers la maison,\n\nBifurcation E - Enfance de la prose\n\n182 Tout au long de l'\u00e9criture de cette branche et jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui,\n\nBifurcation F - Boulevard Truph\u00e8me\n\n183 Saint-F\u00e9lix le dix huit d\u00e9cembre La partie droite de la maison est \u00e0 la promri\u00e9taireMadame\n\n184 Peu de temps avant de renoncer d\u00e9finitivement \u00e0 sa machine \u00e0 \u00e9crire\n\n185 Campagne Jolie,feuille I. Pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9e de : Mon premier souvenir octobre mil neuf cent dix\n\n186 Feuille II\n\n187 Feuille III\n\n188 Campagne Jolie (deuxi\u00e8me version), feuille III bis\n\n189 Le Canet II \u2013 Bd Truph\u00e8me\n\n190 Nous prenons des le\u00e7ons de piano \u00e0 domicile\n\n191 P\u00e2ques mil neuf cent seize D\u00e9part pour Digne\n\n192 C est un endroit enchanteur\n\n193 Ici le gardin est enti\u00e8rement clos de murs\n\n194 \u00e0 gauche de la cl\u00e9matite le mur du fond\n\n195 Comment ai-je pu oublier les bambous\n\n196 Le dix-neuf avril de cette ann\u00e9e (1992)\n\nIndex des principaux termes figurant dans la Table descriptive\n\n# R\u00c9CIT\n\n* * *\n\n* * *\n\n# CHAPITRE 1\n\n# Fleur inverse\n\n* * *\n\n## 1 Pendant la nuit, sur les vitres,\n\nPendant la nuit, sur les vitres, le gel avait saisi la bu\u00e9e. **Je vois qu'il faisait nuit encore, six heures et demie, sept heures ; en hiver donc, dehors noir ; sans d\u00e9tails, noir ; la vitre couverte des dessins du gel \u00e0 la bu\u00e9e ; sur la vitre la plus basse, \u00e0 la gauche de la fen\u00eatre, \u00e0 hauteur du regard, dans la lumi\u00e8re ; d'une ampoule \u00e9lectrique, de l'ampoule jaune ; jaune contre le noir intense, opaque, hivernal, la bu\u00e9e s'interposant ; pas une bu\u00e9e uniforme, comme \u00e0 la pluie, mais une gel\u00e9e presque transparente au contraire, dessinant ; un lacis de dessins translucides, ayant de l'\u00e9paisseur, une petite \u00e9paisseur de gel, variable, et parce que d'\u00e9paisseur variable dessinant sur la vitre, par ces variations minuscules, comme un r\u00e9seau v\u00e9g\u00e9tal, tout en nervures, une v\u00e9g\u00e9tation de surface, une poign\u00e9e de foug\u00e8res plates ; ou une fleur.**\n\n **De l'ongle, je grattais cette neige, cette fausse neige : ni blanche ni cotonneuse ; pas la neige fondante non plus, mais la neige \u00e9vanouissante, printani\u00e8re et sale, qui persiste sur les trottoirs, sous les buis ; de la glace pil\u00e9e plut\u00f4t, r\u00e2p\u00e9e, poudreuse, incolore, \u00e9ph\u00e9m\u00e8re ; l'ongle tra\u00e7ait un chemin sur la vitre, et le pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 de bu\u00e9e s'amassait en arri\u00e8re, contre le doigt, devenant eau \u00e0 la chaleur du doigt, disparaissant tr\u00e8s vite en ruisseaux infimes, s'\u00e9vaporant en froideur humide, sur le doigt gourd ; ou bien, la paume \u00e0 plat sur le verre, et \u00e0 sa pression le grumeau de gel devenait une plaque de glace vitreuse, laissant apercevoir soudain la nuit presque attentive,** **proche ; toute la v\u00e9g\u00e9tation de traces froides effac\u00e9e, avec ses imaginaires p\u00e9tales, \u00e9tamines et corolles ; comme vitre sur vitre, lisse : car la carte, le r\u00e9seau sensible des lignes de la main ne s'y imprimait pas.**\n\n **De l'ongle encore, pr\u00e9cautionneusement, je pouvais faire glisser ces lames de glace sur la surface du verre, vers le bas, les disposant l'une \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'autre, en figures polygonales, en rectangles fractur\u00e9s ; la moiti\u00e9 sup\u00e9rieure de la vitre apparaissait alors un moment nue, imm\u00e9diatement adjacente \u00e0 la nuit, contigu\u00eb \u00e0 cette masse toujours imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable et bleue, sombre ; un moment seulement, car la bu\u00e9e aussit\u00f4t la couvrait : une bu\u00e9e fine, impartiale, isolante ; cette bu\u00e9e m\u00eame qui flottait dans l'air en nuage, n\u00e9e de la respiration ; le souffle fait bu\u00e9e repoussait le dehors nocturne, toujours ; aussit\u00f4t reform\u00e9 si je le frottais du coude, de la manche du pyjama.** De tout ce buisson d'images, on pourrait d\u00e9duire qu'il faisait, aussi, froid dans la chambre, peut-\u00eatre un peu moins froid qu'au-dehors, pour que la bu\u00e9e colle \u00e0 la vitre, mais assez pour qu'en l'air se condensent **(je les vois)** , comme tomb\u00e9s d'une parole silencieuse, ces vocables gel\u00e9s.\n\nMais ce serait se livrer \u00e0 un exercice de d\u00e9duction superflu, puisque, au moment m\u00eame de le dire, avant de le dire, je le sais ; mon souvenir le sait, et il ne ment pas. Je ne veux pas dire qu'un souvenir est, ou n'est pas, sinc\u00e8re, seulement que, tel un chien, il ne peut pas mentir (sans doute le mensonge n'est-il qu'un dire, une parole tourn\u00e9e vers l'ext\u00e9rieur). Il appara\u00eet tel vraiment, en cette image ; et toute image est ind\u00e9niable. Le souvenir, mon souvenir, sait qu'il en \u00e9tait ainsi : **Il faisait nuit, et c'\u00e9tait l'hiver ; il faisait froid ; froid dehors, froid dans la chambre ; je grattais de l'ongle, je laissais s'accumuler contre mon ongle le _granito_ des cristaux en brouillard de la bu\u00e9e, j'appuyais ma main sur la vitre, je la pressais de mon visage, de mon souffle.** Pourtant, la moindre ligne du r\u00e9cit de ce souvenir contient une \u00e9norme quantit\u00e9 de conclusions implicites. Et c'est l\u00e0 que l'erreur, s'il y a erreur, partout me guette. Car dans le souvenir, dans mon souvenir (je ne parle que pour moi) il n'y a que du voir. M\u00eame le toucher est \u00ab incolore \u00bb, anesth\u00e9si\u00e9. Je n'ai pas d'autres adjectifs pour identifier cette appr\u00e9hension des choses mat\u00e9rielles par la pens\u00e9e seule, sans forme ni qualit\u00e9s sensuelles, comme elles surgissent, grises, faites d'une p\u00e2te \u00e0 modeler conceptuelle, selon certaines des premi\u00e8res th\u00e9ories de l'Antiquit\u00e9. Je ne sens pas, m'en souvenant, que mon doigt est froid, ni l'asp\u00e9rit\u00e9 douce, \u00e9vanouissante, de la poussi\u00e8re racl\u00e9e gel\u00e9e. Je sais, parce que c'est un savoir commun, et universel, qu'il y a le gel, que ce mode d'existence physique de l'eau est froid, qu'il fait froid donc, et tout ce qui s'ensuit. Et je me rappelle le savoir d'exp\u00e9rience, comme on dit. Mais l'image que je restitue en ce moment est insensible \u00e0 ce savoir, indiff\u00e9rente.\n\n\u00c9crire sur le verre est comme \u00e9crire sur l'eau : quoi que l'on tente d'y inscrire, c'est aussi une m\u00e9taphore de l'\u00e9ph\u00e9m\u00e8re nature de tout, qu'une fiction mythifiante a pu parfois changer en son contraire ; inventant un message grav\u00e9 sur des glaciers \u00e9ternels, dans les neiges, uniform\u00e9ment d\u00e9fendues par leur blancheur, du p\u00f4le, un graffiti immense (de pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence, oui, de dimensions colossales), dans une langue pr\u00e9f\u00e9rablement incompr\u00e9hensible, donc immortelle, offrant une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 \u00e0 la fois capitale et ind\u00e9chiffrable. D\u00e8s qu'on ma\u00eetrise les gestes d'\u00e9crire, et pour certains, vraisemblablement, jusqu'\u00e0 ce que la main cesse, vient le d\u00e9sir, m\u00e9lang\u00e9 d'angoisse, d'\u00e9crire des mots, des signes, imm\u00e9diatement effa\u00e7ables : par la vague, dans le sable, par les pas, dans la poussi\u00e8re, au crayon, sous la gomme, l'eau, les pluies, les heures ou les larmes brouillant l'encre.\n\nC'\u00e9tait l'hiver, un hiver de guerre, vraisemblablement : 1938-1939, au plus t\u00f4t, 1944-1945, au plus tard. Avant, comme apr\u00e8s, je n'aurais pas pu \u00eatre dans cette chambre. C'\u00e9tait la fin d'une nuit, puisque la bu\u00e9e avait gel\u00e9. Une nuit tr\u00e8s froide, esp\u00e8ce rare. Il ne g\u00e8le pas souvent dans l'Aude. Je cherche un hiver tr\u00e8s froid : 1940 ? 1942 ? Il y a eu au moins un hiver tr\u00e8s froid, pendant cette guerre-l\u00e0. Il demeura longtemps dans toutes les m\u00e9moires, dans la mienne, d'autant plus m\u00e9morable qu'on ne chauffait pas, en tout cas pas chez nous. Notre chambre n'\u00e9tait pas chauff\u00e9e. Si cette image est juste, et pure, si elle n'est pas troubl\u00e9e, m\u00e9lang\u00e9e d'autres, par ressemblance, confusion, par simple r\u00e9p\u00e9tition, si c'est bien le carreau inf\u00e9rieur de la fen\u00eatre que je vois, ce devait \u00eatre le plus ancien, le premier hiver possible. Mais toutes les images, tous les souvenirs, d\u00e8s qu'on souffle dessus, se couvrent de telles bu\u00e9es, se r\u00e9v\u00e8lent p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9s partout d'impr\u00e9cision. Autour est le pass\u00e9 qui est, comme la nuit de cet hiver-l\u00e0, imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable.\n\n **A gauche de la fen\u00eatre, je vois mon lit :** c'est une autre image, un autre moment, ou le m\u00eame ? Je ne sais pas. **Je ressens le cube de la chambre autour de moi, le lit en angle contre deux murs, le long de moi, derri\u00e8re ma t\u00eate ; plus loin, la porte s'ouvre, est ouverte** (cet \u00ab autour \u00bb appartient \u00e0 la vision qui, comme la lumi\u00e8re, est parfois capable de \u00ab tourner les coins \u00bb). De certaines chambres, lits, je ne peux \u00e9voquer qu'une seule image qui demeure toujours la m\u00eame, et tout ce qui ne s'y trouve pas me reste herm\u00e9tiquement ferm\u00e9. Mais j'ai de cette chambre ancienne une vision multiple quoique unifi\u00e9e, faite d'un collage, de la superposition puis de la fusion de tr\u00e8s nombreuses visions s\u00e9par\u00e9es, devenues alors indiscernables, \u00e0 partir d'un point, celui d'o\u00f9 \u00ab cela \u00bb se regarde, un point central, en haut du lit, presque en coin. Il y a un \u00ab haut \u00bb et un \u00ab bas \u00bb du lit, comme si, couch\u00e9, on s'imaginait encore vertical, le \u00ab point \u00bb de la vision en haut de \u00ab page \u00bb. C'est l\u00e0 que, dans une lettre, on met l'adresse de l'exp\u00e9diteur. Pas de couleurs, non, pas de couleurs. Voir ainsi ensemble toutes les autres images surgies de ce m\u00eame lieu, l'ongle sur la vitre gel\u00e9e, les carreaux de nuit, ce que le jour dans les vitres fera para\u00eetre, suppose des yeux multiples, des mains innombrables, \u00ab pleines de doigts \u00bb. Qui se souvient est \u00e0 la fois un Argus, un \u00eatre \u00e0 cent yeux, et une pieuvre, \u00eatre \u00e0 cent bras.\n\n **Dans le froid, mon lit avait des r\u00e9gions, chaudes ou froides ; le froid y voisinait intens\u00e9ment avec le chaud ; pin\u00e7ait les oreilles, le nez.** Voil\u00e0, n'est-ce pas, le vrai \u00ab incontournable \u00bb, la banalit\u00e9 m\u00eame de la temp\u00e9rature. On conquiert, le soir, autant de territoires qu'il est possible sur le froid, livrant l'analogue des batailles d'une campagne de Russie, qui proposait un mod\u00e8le strat\u00e9gique au jeu de cette conqu\u00eate, nuit apr\u00e8s nuit renouvel\u00e9e (je ne parle pas de l'historique, la d\u00e9sastreuse, la napol\u00e9onienne, mais de celle qui se d\u00e9roulait alors dans les lits immenses de l'Ukraine, contemporainement, et qui nous \u00e9tait d\u00e9voil\u00e9e chaque soir \u00e0 la radio de Londres, les victoires \u00ab alli\u00e9es \u00bb confirm\u00e9es, avec retard, par l'annonce de nouveaux \u00ab replis \u00e9lastiques \u00bb allemands, \u00e0 celle de Paris occup\u00e9). **Restaient r\u00e9fractaires \u00e0 la douceur, toujours, les sib\u00e9riennes r\u00e9gions des trois bords, entre les parois verticales du matelas et les couvertures, qui s'enfoncent loin sous lui ; au matin, la chaleur diffuse du corps dormant avait r\u00e9duit les poches de r\u00e9sistance, Stalingrad des arm\u00e9es du gel.**\n\n **Il y avait, je les vois, deux autres lits, dans la chambre ; de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la fen\u00eatre, celui de ma s\u0153ur Denise ; au fond (si je regarde encore du m\u00eame point) celui de mon fr\u00e8re Pierre, \u00e0 la gauche de la porte ; vue depuis la porte, au contraire, cette disposition d'origine parentale (je veux dire d\u00e9finie par les parents) organisait l'espace de la chambre suivant l'\u00e2ge de ses occupants** (si on saisit cet espace dans le mouvement de la vue, comme j'ai l'habitude de le faire, et comme si la surface plane du monde, et pas seulement celle du lit, \u00e9tait devenue verticale, telle, aussi, une page : de gauche \u00e0 droite, et de haut en bas). **Il me semble que la lumi\u00e8re, spartiate, venait bien d'une ampoule nue, au plafond ; \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s tout le reste a disparu.**\n\n## 2 Comme le monde du sceptique\n\nComme le monde du sceptique de Russell, l'univers qui contient une image du pass\u00e9 vient juste de na\u00eetre, et il cessera avec elle, c'est-\u00e0-dire presque instantan\u00e9ment. L'image du pass\u00e9 (et, en fait, toute image est du pass\u00e9), dite souvenir, n'a pas de dur\u00e9e. Elle vient au monde, elle devient monde, sans l\u00e9gende, sans mode d'emploi, sans explications. Elle implique beaucoup, mais n'offre aucune garantie, aucune justification de son existence. D\u00e8s qu'on s'arr\u00eate un peu sur elle, au lieu de l'accueillir sans h\u00e9sitation, comme disant le vrai du pass\u00e9, comme nous apportant un savoir sur le pass\u00e9 qui commanderait une croyance raisonnable en lui, et qu'on s'interroge sur cette non-dur\u00e9e du souvenir, on ne peut qu'\u00eatre saisi de doute.\n\nEt pourtant la certitude (dont je ne pr\u00e9tends donc pas qu'elle est raisonnablement fond\u00e9e) est toujours l\u00e0 : dans cette chambre je p\u00e9n\u00e8tre, au pr\u00e9sent, apr\u00e8s presque un demi-si\u00e8cle d'\u00e9loignement, et je m'habille, face \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre, face \u00e0 la nuit gel\u00e9e, de ce regard. **Je vois, intens\u00e9ment je vois, le chemin de vitre appara\u00eetre crissant sous mon ongle, et les copeaux de glace sans couleur s'accumuler sur la phalange de mon doigt.** L'intensit\u00e9, la proximit\u00e9 physique du monde sont deux des traits essentiels de ce souvenir : cette nuit est si proche au regard qu'elle ne peut qu'\u00eatre r\u00e9elle, que montrer du r\u00e9el, qu'avoir \u00e9t\u00e9.\n\nMais comment se fait-il que je m'habille aujourd'hui de ce regard, projetant un morceau de monde sur une ancienne \u00e9chelle de vision, o\u00f9 la fen\u00eatre est haute, le lit vaste ? C'est un miracle qui me laisserait incr\u00e9dule, si je n'avais pas l'habitude de le constater, comme chacun sans doute, sans discussion. J'investis \u2013 et si je dis **\u00ab je \u00bb** il s'agit de \u00ab moi, ici et maintenant \u00bb, de \u00ab moi pr\u00e9sent \u00bb \u2013 j'envahis le centre de la vue, le lieu int\u00e9rieur \u00e0 un corps o\u00f9 se forment les images (le \u00ab centre imaginaire de soi \u00bb, le point par rapport auquel celui qui voit situe le monde, et sa vision : je n'affirme rien de plus ; rien en particulier sur un quelconque support physique des images et leur localisation \u00e9ventuelle dans le cerveau ; je laisse ces suppositions aux p\u00e9remptoires \u00ab cogniticiens \u00bb). Et ce corps est celui d'un \u00eatre depuis un demi-si\u00e8cle disparu. On ne peut pas, dit le sens commun, se voir soi-m\u00eame. Non seulement on ne peut pas, dirais-je, se voir soi hors de soi, maintenant. Mais on ne peut pas non plus se voir soi-m\u00eame au pass\u00e9. On ne peut pas, dit-on encore, \u00ab \u00eatre et avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00bb. On ne peut pas, dirais-je, en aucun moment ne pas \u00eatre, c'est-\u00e0-dire qu'on ne peut jamais avoir la preuve, int\u00e9rieure, \u00ab d'avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00bb. Ce qui continue jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui, de cette chambre, de cette nuit n'est pas \u00ab moi \u00bb, mais un monde.\n\nDe ces r\u00e9flexions, expression d'un scepticisme, somme toute, mod\u00e9r\u00e9 (quoique orient\u00e9 dans une direction peut-\u00eatre inhabituelle), je tire l'explication du sentiment de g\u00eane qui m'a toujours saisi \u00e0 la lecture des \u00ab souvenirs d'enfance \u00bb, ind\u00e9pendamment de leur efficacit\u00e9 de r\u00e9cits, de descriptions, de conviction politique ou morale, particuli\u00e8rement de ceux qui tentent, na\u00efvement (je crois), et sinc\u00e8rement (j'esp\u00e8re), de r\u00e9duire, d'effacer m\u00eame, d'annuler la distance entre le \u00ab moi \u00bb pr\u00e9sent du narrateur et son hypoth\u00e9tique \u00ab moi \u00bb ancien, sa \u00ab personne \u00bb enfantine. Des phrases comme \u00ab je pensais que... \u00bb, \u00ab je croyais que... \u00bb, si elles se pr\u00e9sentent comme imm\u00e9diates, et non comme indirectement d\u00e9duites d'autres consid\u00e9rations (des documents \u00e9crits, des lettres, un \u00ab journal \u00bb par exemple, qui sont des \u00e9vidences physiques constatables au pr\u00e9sent), me repoussent. Certes, plus on se rapproche, \u00e0 reculons dans le temps, de l'instant de notre naissance (et certainement si on recule jusqu'\u00e0 la fin de notre deuxi\u00e8me ann\u00e9e, fin de la v\u00e9ritable \u00ab \u00e9cole maternelle \u00bb de chacun), ces tentatives de reconstruction sont, le plus souvent, invraisemblables (m'apparaissent telles). (La plupart d'entre nous, pourtant, aspirant \u00e0 l'immortalit\u00e9 dans les deux sens, s'efforcent, avec une touchante obstination, de placer le plus pr\u00e8s possible de leur naissance l'instant de leur \u00ab premier souvenir \u00bb.)\n\nMais mon incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9 est beaucoup plus \u00e9tendue, et beaucoup plus radicale. La c\u00e9l\u00e8bre \u00ab _willing suspension of disbelief \u00bb_ de Coleridge r\u00e9clame du lecteur (je me limite ici au lecteur) l'interruption momentan\u00e9e et volontaire d'un scepticisme tout naturel face \u00e0 l'impossibilit\u00e9 de croire vrai ce qui est racont\u00e9 dans la fiction. J'interpr\u00e8te ainsi la formule : comme un d\u00e9tournement et une particularisation implicite de l'axiome mill\u00e9naire, sceptique lui aussi, de \u00ab suspension du jugement \u00bb, donc comme r\u00e9clamant la \u00ab suspension d'un jugement, pourtant in\u00e9vitable, d'impossibilit\u00e9 \u00bb. On l'applique g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement au roman seul : mais elle me semble, en fait, devoir \u00eatre invoqu\u00e9e avec beaucoup plus de force encore dans le contexte du r\u00e9cit autobiographique ; que je placerai donc, sur une \u00e9chelle d'invraisemblance, \u00e0 la m\u00eame hauteur que le roman historique, et presque aussi haut que la \u00ab science-fiction \u00bb. Quant \u00e0 moi, il m'est pratiquement impossible d'y parvenir.\n\nJ'insiste encore : ce que je viens d'\u00e9crire n'aspire \u00e0 aucune pertinence physiologique, neurologique, psychologique, cognitive, ou philosophique. Pourquoi ? parce que ceci, offert \u00e0 votre lecture, n'est rien d'autre qu'un r\u00e9cit : le commencement de ce que je nomme une branche (c'est la deuxi\u00e8me) d'une prose (c'est la deuxi\u00e8me, elle en suit donc une autre, comme elle d'une certaine \u00e9tendue (mais il n'est pas n\u00e9cessaire cependant d'avoir lu la premi\u00e8re pour aborder la seconde, ni les suivantes, s'il en vient d'autres)), prose que je qualifie, faute d'avoir trouv\u00e9 un terme g\u00e9n\u00e9rique plus particulier, et plus proche de mon intention, de r\u00e9cit. Les choses qui s'y disent sont dites au pr\u00e9sent du r\u00e9cit, \u00e0 mesure que le r\u00e9cit avance, et telles qu'elles se pr\u00e9sentent pour \u00eatre racont\u00e9es par moi, \u00e0 chaque ligne s'inscrivant en \u00ab New York 12 points \u00bb, sur mon \u00e9cran. Elles n'en sont pas d\u00e9tachables, elles ne peuvent en aucune fa\u00e7on pr\u00e9tendre au statut de v\u00e9rit\u00e9s, pas m\u00eame \u00e0 celui de \u00ab possibilit\u00e9s de monades \u00e0 poser sur les \u00e9tag\u00e8res de l'essence \u00bb.\n\nJ'ai \u00e9tendu sur l'immobilit\u00e9 (d'un \u00e9cran, puis d'un papier) une image : une image de mon pass\u00e9, qui m'appara\u00eet \u00eatre l'une des plus anciennes (j'ai la conviction de son anciennet\u00e9). La difficult\u00e9 de la description ne me vient pas seulement du fait de toutes les conclusions implicites que je tire (et \u00ab force \u00bb, en quelque sorte, \u00e0 p\u00e9n\u00e9trer l'image elle-m\u00eame) de ce que je sais, ou m'imagine savoir, des circonstances de la cr\u00e9ation de l'image, ni d'ailleurs du fait qu'elle n'est, dans ce cas pr\u00e9cis, vraisemblablement pas unique, mais r\u00e9it\u00e9r\u00e9e, mais compos\u00e9e, composite. La difficult\u00e9 tient \u00e0 son instantan\u00e9it\u00e9. Aussit\u00f4t apparue, l'image dispara\u00eet : pour la d\u00e9crire, je dois la r\u00e9p\u00e9ter, l'invoquer, l'appeler, selon les modes exp\u00e9rimentaux, que chacun construit pour lui-m\u00eame, du souvenir volontaire. En la faisant de nouveau appara\u00eetre, je l'affaiblis. M\u00eame cette image-l\u00e0, premi\u00e8re du r\u00e9cit, si intense, si \u00ab premi\u00e8re \u00bb que je la sente (et intense parce que \u00ab premi\u00e8re \u00bb) s'affaiblit en ce moment o\u00f9 je la sollicite pour la description. En la r\u00e9p\u00e9tant je la brouille, je la d\u00e9forme, je la d\u00e9colore.\n\nBref, je la d\u00e9truis. Peut-\u00eatre pas tout de suite, mais \u00e0 terme. Je la d\u00e9truis en ce sens que, devenant plus faible, et plus p\u00e2le, elle tend moins \u00e0 dispara\u00eetre qu'\u00e0 n'\u00eatre plus \u00e9voquable, \u00e0 n'\u00eatre plus r\u00e9surgente que comme souvenir second, souvenir d'elle-m\u00eame, et de tous les moments de mon insistance \u00e0 la contempler pendant le temps consacr\u00e9 \u00e0 sa **description** , sous l'effet des mots, des pens\u00e9es suscit\u00e9es par la **description.** (Ce sont surtout les mots de la description qui produisent cette **destruction,** qui en viennent \u00e0 substituer \u00e0 elle une autre image, une image n\u00e9e, elle, de mots. Ce sont les mots qui la rendent irr\u00e9m\u00e9diablement ce qu'elle devient : un souvenir devenu ext\u00e9rieur.) Mais aussi parce que l'arr\u00eat sur l'image lui donne un statut autre, qui est tr\u00e8s semblable \u00e0 celui d'une photographie. La photographie a chang\u00e9 profond\u00e9ment la perception du souvenir d'enfance (de tous les souvenirs, mais surtout du souvenir d'enfance : l'enfance et la photographie ont maintenant un lien presque consubstantiel : \u00ab Toutes les photographies, a-t-on pu \u00e9crire, sont des photographies d'enfance. \u00bb J'ajouterai : et tous les souvenirs d'enfance sont vus comme des photographies (ou plus contemporainement encore : des \u00ab images-vid\u00e9o \u00bb)). Elle l'a fait prolif\u00e9rer dans le monde, comme \u00ab album de moments anciens \u00bb. Mais elle lui a aussi donn\u00e9 un mod\u00e8le, auquel toutes les images du souvenir tentent d\u00e9sormais de se conformer : et ce mod\u00e8le, tout d'immobilit\u00e9, d'\u00ab oisivet\u00e9 \u00bb, d'unicit\u00e9, de fixit\u00e9, est \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9, est faux.\n\nCe n'est pas tout : dans ce cas pr\u00e9cis (qui n'est pas celui de toutes les images), l'image ne reste pas isol\u00e9e, m\u00eame br\u00e8ve, m\u00eame mouvement\u00e9e. Elle ne s'\u00e9l\u00e8ve pas comme un monument dans un paysage polaire. Je ne peux pas lui imposer de limites, un cadre. Quand l'image cesse, la vitre gel\u00e9e ne sort pas du champ de ma vision, telle une B\u00e9r\u00e9nice d'alexandrins quittant un racinien Titus sur la sc\u00e8ne du Th\u00e9\u00e2tre-Fran\u00e7ais. Quand une image cesse, elle cesse le plus souvent en d'autres, elle change. Elle va ailleurs, tr\u00e8s vite, tr\u00e8s loin (en temps et lieux), et n'importe o\u00f9 (\u00e0 ce que, parfois, il semble). Regarder une image du pass\u00e9, c'est \u00eatre Argus, disais-je. Certes, mais c'est \u00eatre Argus s'effor\u00e7ant \u00e0 la capture de Prot\u00e9e.\n\n## 3 Ma fr\u00e9quentation de cette image\n\nMa fr\u00e9quentation de cette image est, elle-m\u00eame, d\u00e9j\u00e0 ancienne : quand je pense le pass\u00e9, le pass\u00e9 le plus \u00e9loign\u00e9 (selon les rep\u00e8res chronologiques dont je dispose), elle m'appara\u00eet parmi les premi\u00e8res : par le moment, hypoth\u00e9tique, de sa trace, tout autant que par sa rapidit\u00e9 \u00e0 m'appara\u00eetre. Elle est une des visions les plus significatives de l'enfance. Elle est intense, importante, charg\u00e9e d'\u00e9motion. C'est une image des d\u00e9buts du temps. J'ai l'habitude de voir sa vitre nocturne, couverte des fleurs du gel. Elle m'est famili\u00e8re. Et elle m'appara\u00eet aussi parfois d'elle-m\u00eame, sans l'introduction de la pens\u00e9e du souvenir, au hasard, absente de son cadre naturel. Mais je la reconnais aussit\u00f4t, elle ne peut m'\u00e9chapper, car elle se ressemble. C'est l\u00e0, \u00e9galement, une caract\u00e9ristique \u00ab photographique \u00bb des souvenirs d\u00e9j\u00e0 surgis, et r\u00e9currents. En fait, il y a plus qu'un air de famille entre les images de deux moments o\u00f9 je rappelle ce souvenir. La conviction d'une r\u00e9p\u00e9tition identique est irr\u00e9sistible.\n\nMais un jour (que je ne peux dater avec pr\u00e9cision, sinon qu'il remonte \u00e0 plus de vingt ans sans doute, et en tout cas ne peut qu'\u00eatre post\u00e9rieur au r\u00eave qui fut la cause lointaine de toute cette \u00e9criture, de cette entreprise qui, depuis maintenant quatre ans, d\u00e9vore les premi\u00e8res heures, nocturnes, de mes journ\u00e9e), un jour j'ai associ\u00e9 cette image \u00e0 une parole, une parole de po\u00e9sie (si j'admets pour un moment que la po\u00e9sie est parole, une \u00ab musique de bouche prof\u00e9rant paroles m\u00e9trifi\u00e9es \u00bb, comme disait Eustache Deschamps), une parole donc, d\u00e9pos\u00e9e sur un papier il y a des si\u00e8cles, et prise, sur ce papier, entre les blancs, les \u00ab bords \u00bb qui d\u00e9finissent un vers :\n\n ** _Er resplan la flors enversa_**\n\nCes mots emplissent, sans fractures, le premier vers d'une _canso_ (une \u00ab chanson \u00bb, un po\u00e8me-musique) du troubadour Raimbaut d'Orange, compos\u00e9e il y a plus de huit si\u00e8cles, dans une langue aujourd'hui quasi morte mais qui est pour moi la langue-origine de la po\u00e9sie, le \u00ab proven\u00e7al \u00bb : \u00ab Maintenant brille (resplendit) la fleur inverse. \u00bb Je la nomme dans ce r\u00e9cit \u00ab proven\u00e7al \u00bb, plut\u00f4t qu'occitan ou _lemozi_ comme la d\u00e9signaient jadis les Catalans : ces autres d\u00e9signations ouvrent \u00e0 des imaginations diff\u00e9rentes, et pour moi moins \u00e9mouvantes, de cette po\u00e9sie. Pour choisir la premi\u00e8re, j'ai mes raisons. Raimbaut d'Orange ne laisse pas longtemps ignorer le sens premier de ce groupement \u00e9trange : \u00ab **quais flors** \u00bb dit-il (\u00ab quelle fleur ? \u00bb). Et il se r\u00e9pond \u00e0 lui-m\u00eame, rench\u00e9rissant sur le solipsisme spontan\u00e9, absolu, de tout vers : **\u00ab neus gels e conglapis \u00bb** (neige, gel et \u00ab conglapi \u00bb), pr\u00e9sentant en ce dernier vocable, si rare qu'il n'appara\u00eet que l\u00e0, on ne sait exactement quoi de gel\u00e9, mais que je d\u00e9cide de comprendre, pour les besoins de ma composition, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment comme la conjonction vitrifi\u00e9e de _neus_ (neige) et de _gels_ , comme la condensation d'un bruit-bu\u00e9e et d'une froide substance, embl\u00e9matique du froid m\u00eame, entendant en lui tout un \u00ab glapissement \u00bb, et le crissement des copeaux du froid, transparents, glissant et criant sous l'ongle :\n\n ** _Er resplan la flors enversa_**\n\n ** _Pels trencans rancx e pels tertres._**\n\n ** _Quais flors neus gels e conglapis_**\n\n ** _Que cotz e destrenh e trenca_.**\n\n(Alors brille la fleur inverse\n\nentre falaises tranchantes et collines.\n\nquelle fleur ? neige gel et glace\n\nqui coupe et tourmente et tranche.)\n\nOr toute aube est un printemps, m\u00eame une aube de gel. Et dans ce d\u00e9but paradoxal d'une _canso_ amoureuse Raimbaut d'Orange, au lieu de laisser retentir, comme le veut la tradition, les chants doux et didactiques d'amour des instituteurs-oiseaux, les _essenhadors del chan_ , fait parler des rossignols abstraits (l'expression \u00ab enseignants du chant \u00bb est d'un autre troubadour, Jaufre Rudel : les oiseaux sont ceux qui \u00ab enseignent le chant \u00bb dans la \u00ab douce saison suave \u00bb, \u00ab enseigner \u00bb devant \u00eatre compris ici \u00e0 la mani\u00e8re languedocienne d'aujourd'hui, comme \u00ab apprendre \u00e0 trouver \u00bb : **\u00ab je t'enseignerai la li\u00e8vre \u00bb disait, et je l'entends dans mon oreille apr\u00e8s cinquante ann\u00e9es, un chasseur \u00e0 un chasseur** ). Il met des gla\u00e7ons \u00e0 la place des gorges rouges-absentes, des gosiers transis de loriots ou d'alouettes, de leur chant mort de froid :\n\n ** _Vey mortz quils critz brays siscles_**\n\n(je vois morts appels, cris, bruits, sifflets)\n\nInvoquer le grand froid aviaire des collines saisies de gel (le froid semble plus absolu dans les paysages qui n'en ont pas l'habitude), c'est pour Raimbaut donner plus d'\u00e9clat encore \u00e0 la fleur triple-une du chant, de la po\u00e9sie et de l'amour, la fleur inverse, absente de tous bouquets (ici d'une double absence). Quand j'ai lu cette image, quand je me suis trouv\u00e9 saisi, transi de ces mots-l\u00e0, **flors enversa,** je les ai reconnus comme miens (c'\u00e9tait presque au d\u00e9but de ma lecture des Troubadours, je ne savais pour ainsi dire rien d'eux encore), et je me suis sentimentalement et spontan\u00e9ment plac\u00e9, sans m'en rendre d'abord compte, implicitement dans le camp de ceux qui suivent l'une des deux voies \u00e0 la fois antagonistes et inextricablement entrelac\u00e9es de l'art des Troubadours, le **trobar**. Raimbaut d'Orange est sans doute le premier repr\u00e9sentant accompli, sinon l'inventeur, le \u00ab trouveur \u00bb de l'une de ces voies, ant\u00e9rieurement et plus parfaitement que son disciple le plus connu, choisi, destin\u00e9 par Dante \u00e0 repr\u00e9senter cette mani\u00e8re et id\u00e9e de la po\u00e9sie, Arnaut Daniel.\n\nCar il ne s'agit pas l\u00e0 simplement d'une m\u00e9tamorphose insolente de la m\u00e9taphore \u00ab printani\u00e8re \u00bb de la tradition (les commencements du chant de po\u00e9sie, au printemps, identifi\u00e9s au chant amoureux des oiseaux), mais aussi de l'affirmation d'une fa\u00e7on de dire en po\u00e9sie, qui se prolonge bien au-del\u00e0 du moment privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 de la d\u00e9couverte des fleurs chantantes du gel. On pourrait la d\u00e9finir comme \u00e9tant la **Voie de la double n\u00e9gation** (qui a ses versions parentes et parall\u00e8les, philosophiques, th\u00e9ologiques, et m\u00eame logiques) : le gel nie la fleur et le chant. Mais dans le d\u00e9sert du gel fleurit une fleur paradoxale, dans son silence r\u00e9sonne une insistante disharmonie, et de cette floraison \u00ab hirsute \u00bb, comme de cette atonalit\u00e9 polaire, renaissent, \u00e0 l'\u00e9vocation vibratoire du vers, simultan\u00e9ment la musique heureuse et sa disparition d\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9e.\n\nJ'ai reconnu, dis-je, tout de suite cette voie, cette _via negativa_ comme la mienne. Mais reconnu aussi qu'il ne s'agissait pas seulement de po\u00e9sie : ce que je voyais, sentais et entendais en \u00ab neige, gel et \"conglapi\" \u00bb c'\u00e9tait, d\u00e9sormais ins\u00e9parablement, l'image d'enfance de la vitre recouverte de sa gel\u00e9e hivernale, et le parcours crissant de l'ongle devenant accompagnement int\u00e9rieur, cach\u00e9 sous la vision, du d\u00e9roulement, fractur\u00e9 d'obstacles consonantiques, des vers de la _canso_ , cette marque caract\u00e9ristique de la \u00ab po\u00e9tique n\u00e9gative \u00bb de Raimbaut. Sous la voix, comme sous le gel de la vitre, il y a le n\u00e9ant nocturne des choses p\u00e9rissables et disparues. La voie, dite \u00ab obscure \u00bb et \u00ab ferm\u00e9e \u00bb, de la po\u00e9sie selon Raimbaut d'Orange et Arnaut Daniel n'oublie jamais que, sous la plus grande \u00ab joie \u00bb d'amour, le \u00ab joi \u00bb, guette le gel de l'accomplissement, la f\u00e9rocit\u00e9 du r\u00e9el m\u00e9lang\u00e9 de mort. Il y a l'envers de la fleur d'amour, mais aussi celui des enfances : enfances de la chair mortelle, de la prose, le \u00ab roman \u00bb. Ou des langues.\n\nC'est pourquoi, m\u00eame s'il n'\u00e9tait pas en mon pouvoir de rompre cette association d'une image d'enfance \u00e0 un fragment de po\u00e9sie, je ne l'ai \u00e0 aucun moment refus\u00e9e. A mesure que je progressais (un peu) dans la connaissance du _trobar_ , que je m'en faisais une id\u00e9e plus claire, peut-\u00eatre inexacte, mais conforme aux exigences de mon **Projet** , que les Troubadours, et Raimbaut sans doute plus que tout autre, ont influenc\u00e9 d\u00e9cisivement, elle devenait plus profonde et plus n\u00e9cessaire encore, perdant le caract\u00e8re soudain, fortuit et arbitraire de ses d\u00e9buts. L'image en souvenir du carreau enfum\u00e9 de gel, la nuit qu'elle cache et qui se r\u00e9v\u00e8le, la chambre, en ont acquis une plus grande force de conviction (la conviction d'\u00eatre une r\u00e9v\u00e9lation authentique et signifiante du pass\u00e9) et une plus grande l\u00e9gitimit\u00e9, en devenant le lieu o\u00f9, \u00e0 l'\u00e9vidence, je devais commencer de rechercher les parcours \u00ab ant\u00e9rieurs \u00bb de mon **Projet** , tout ce qui a rendu possible sa conception (c'est \u00e0 cela, **l'Avant-Projet** , que je vais m'attacher en cette branche). Lieu et parcours qui contiennent en m\u00eame temps, comme un germe second, comme une autre \u00ab fleur inverse \u00bb, son \u00e9chec.\n\n## 4 Le bleu-noir de la nuit\n\n **Le bleu-noir profond de la nuit \u00e9tait derri\u00e8re la vitre, il n'\u00e9tait pas r\u00e9pandu sur elle**. Or en ces temps-l\u00e0, on avait ordonn\u00e9 de couvrir les fen\u00eatres d'une nuit peinte. Ainsi, esp\u00e9rait-on, des maisons de la ville aucune lumi\u00e8re ne s'\u00e9chappant, elles, et la ville avec elles demeureraient invisibles, soustraites simplement d'elles-m\u00eames, par ce peu de couleur (mais r\u00e9solue), comme celles de la _Phyllide_ de Calvino, aux regards hostiles venus des hauteurs de l'air. Ainsi, avait-on d\u00e9cid\u00e9, le grondement des avions, le sifflement des bombes les \u00e9pargneraient. On avait appel\u00e9 cela D\u00e9fense passive. Quels avions, descendus comme des nuages de la Montagne noire un jour de _cers_ , le mistral de ces r\u00e9gions, craignait-on ici ? J'en suis aujourd'hui perplexe.\n\nEn fait, la France enti\u00e8re, qui aurait d\u00fb, par la simple vertu de ce stratag\u00e8me pictural (nouvelle version du \u00ab camouflage \u00bb que Picasso, selon Gertrude Stein, pr\u00e9tendait inspir\u00e9 du cubisme) se fermer, imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable, sous les couches dissimulantes de peinture couleur de nuit, n'ayant plus dans la nuit qu'un manteau teint de murailles, s'arr\u00eatant m\u00eame de respirer, de produire du bruit apr\u00e8s les sir\u00e8nes des alertes, s'\u00e9tait r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9e brusquement \u00e9trangement visible au contraire, s'\u00e9tait mu\u00e9e en quelques semaines \u00e0 peine au printemps de 1940 (ce \u00ab mai qui fut sans nuage \u00bb) en une immense ville ouverte, et parfaitement passive (la D\u00e9fense passive n'ayant ainsi \u00e9t\u00e9 qu'une pr\u00e9figuration de la passivit\u00e9 nationale). Et les peintures des carreaux \u00e9taient rapidement devenues encore plus ridicules, dans ce d\u00e9partement si \u00e9loign\u00e9 du front, comme des t\u00e9moignages d'un \u00e9tat illusoire, d'espoirs que la D\u00e9faite, cet \u00e9v\u00e9nement que l'emploi de la majuscule d\u00e9signait comme \u00e9v\u00e9nement plus moral encore que militaire, avait tristement d\u00e9mentis. On les avait alors le plus souvent gratt\u00e9es pour rendre les vitres \u00e0 leur transparence premi\u00e8re. Plus tard, apr\u00e8s El Alamein et Stalingrad, les pinceaux auraient d\u00fb reprendre du service, contre la menace d'autres avions (et j'imagine qu'il en fut ainsi ailleurs, au Havre par exemple). Mais notre ville ne se redonna pas cette peine, par lassitude, je pense, plus que par insubordination. Peut-\u00eatre tout simplement n'y avait-il plus de peinture, parce qu'elle avait \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab r\u00e9quisitionn\u00e9e \u00bb pour recouvrir les vitres autrement pr\u00e9caires de la Ruhr, ou de Dresde. Chez nous, dans notre maison, il n'en restait, ici ou l\u00e0, que des traces o\u00f9 j'exer\u00e7ais aussi, comme sur la bu\u00e9e du gel, mais diff\u00e9remment, mes ongles. Et le seul lieu ainsi durablement \u00ab prot\u00e9g\u00e9 \u00bb des regards ext\u00e9rieurs \u00e9tait celui qu'on appelait, en ce temps, \u00ab les cabinets \u00bb. \u00c9tant donn\u00e9 son insertion tr\u00e8s particuli\u00e8re dans la \u00ab topologie \u00bb de la maison, le maintien de la peinture passive avait peut-\u00eatre r\u00e9pondu l\u00e0 \u00e0 de tout autres exigences que celle de la D\u00e9fense.\n\n(Il y a une autre mani\u00e8re pour les maisons, dans la nuit noire, de garder leur silence visuel, leur incognito. Pour ne pas laisser \u00e9chapper de lueur r\u00e9v\u00e9latrice, on peut imaginer de n'en produire aucune. Les fen\u00eatres, alors, sont des yeux aveugles de chouette, les maisons sont comme abandonn\u00e9es \u00e0 la nuit. La ville ne se cache pas, elle retourne \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat de ces huttes de pierre pr\u00e9historiques adopt\u00e9es par les bergers, les \u00ab bories \u00bb, qui datent peut-\u00eatre d'avant l'invention du feu. Je n'ai pas souvenir de telles obscurit\u00e9s, sinon pendant des orages, des \u00ab pannes \u00bb ou des coupures d'\u00e9lectricit\u00e9 (celles de l'hiver 1944-1945 firent merveille : _je me souviens_ d'un dessin de \u00ab jean effel \u00bb, et de sa l\u00e9gende : \u00ab elle appara\u00eet, elle dispara\u00eet, c'est la f\u00e9e \u00c9lectricit\u00e9 \u00bb. Mais je n'\u00e9tais d\u00e9j\u00e0 plus dans la m\u00eame maison, ni dans la m\u00eame ville). Il est vrai que le plus souvent, les nuits, mes fr\u00e8res-et-s\u0153ur et moi, nous dormions.)\n\nJ'ai choisi de suivre, \u00e0 la poursuite des m\u00e9tamorphoses de l'image du miroir gel\u00e9 sur le tain de nuit que l'\u00e9criture de l'ongle r\u00e9v\u00e8le, un parcours parmi beaucoup. Je n'ai pas adopt\u00e9, pour ce faire (mais le fallait-il ?), un principe g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, contraignant, perceptible, d'organisation. Et quel aurait-il \u00e9t\u00e9 ? La chronologie, la succession marqu\u00e9e, mesur\u00e9e, conventionnelle, des moments ? Le temps int\u00e9rieur, s'il est un tel autre temps, un temps qui ne serait pas le support d'une chronologie, parce qu'alors d\u00e9sordonn\u00e9, lacunaire, variable dans la vitesse de son \u00e9puisement ? Les images-souvenirs s'y soumettent assez mal, en admettant m\u00eame qu'on puisse jamais les situer pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment sur de tels axes. Il y a presque toujours, il me semble, dans le pr\u00e9sent perp\u00e9tuel du souvenir, lieu de la trinit\u00e9 augustinienne \u00ab pr\u00e9sent du pass\u00e9, pr\u00e9sent du pr\u00e9sent, pr\u00e9sent du futur \u00bb (le futur est avant tout une r\u00e9miniscence, ou m\u00eame simplement un souvenir), une incertitude irr\u00e9ductible sur les positions respectives de l'\u00ab avant \u00bb et de l'\u00ab apr\u00e8s \u00bb. Et m\u00eame si cela m'avait \u00e9t\u00e9 possible, ce n'est pas ainsi que j'ai con\u00e7u, d\u00e8s son origine, mon r\u00e9cit, d\u00e8s le moment, proche de son d\u00e9but, mais nullement ant\u00e9rieur \u00e0 lui, o\u00f9 j'ai enfin su de mani\u00e8re claire ce qu'il serait. En suivant le temps, le temps physique (m\u00eame int\u00e9rioris\u00e9), je serais pass\u00e9 \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de ce que je cherche, toujours.\n\nC'est que les s\u00e9quences significatives pour la m\u00e9moire ne se d\u00e9couvrent pas de cette fa\u00e7on. Il y a, pour commencer, au souvenir, autant d'anticipations que de d\u00e9rivations. Non seulement les notions de l'\u00ab avant \u00bb et de l'\u00ab apr\u00e8s \u00bb ne sont pas nettes, mais elles sont obligatoirement contradictoires. Je ne veux pas dire qu'un temps externe, in\u00e9vitablement, ne les entra\u00eene, unidimensionnel et irr\u00e9versible (un peu comme un support vide, ou un \u00e9ther de temps, associ\u00e9 \u00e0 un espace abstrait, vide lui-m\u00eame). Mais le temps qui m'occupe, celui de la **m\u00e9moire** , que je traque, est n\u00e9cessairement, lui, \u00e0 deux directions, et \u00e0 deux directions au moins. Chaque souvenir, m\u00eame plac\u00e9 pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment dans l'espace et dans le temps, regarde vers l'autrefois autant que vers le futur (et le futur est, lui, futur ant\u00e9rieur, sans cesse). Si je gratte le gel sur la vitre, c'est peut-\u00eatre parce que j'ai, auparavant, bleui mes ongles \u00e0 la peinture de nuit, ou le contraire. Mais c'est, surtout, le d\u00e9clic indispensable \u00e0 l'ouverture d'une porte dans la m\u00e9moire, vers d'autres fen\u00eatres (une surtout, _before, behind, between, above, below_ ) (en avant, en arri\u00e8re, entre, dessus, dessous).\n\nJ'ai toujours, aussi loin que je remonte dans cette perception des choses, \u00e9t\u00e9 attir\u00e9 par la nuit pr\u00e9matinale : je n'aime pas m'\u00e9veiller dans le jour. Il y a des nuits buissonnantes, travers\u00e9es de lueurs, de lune, de lampes, d'\u00e9toiles, d'\u00ab obscure clart\u00e9 \u00bb, comme on lit dans un alexandrin aussi c\u00e9l\u00e8bre que banal, rendu banal, sinon ridicule, de toute l'admiration scolaire autrefois d\u00e9vers\u00e9e sur lui. Il y a des nuits noires et blanches, noires et grises. Mais surtout il y a des nuits enti\u00e8res, compactes, imp\u00e9n\u00e9trables, opposant au jaune des lampes quelque chose comme leur propre rayonnement noir. Cette \u00ab beaut\u00e9 du noir \u00bb, qui rend le monde incompr\u00e9hensible et inexplicable, qui m'assure que le monde est et restera incompr\u00e9hensible et inexplicable, cette \u00ab noirceur invariable \u00e0 la vue \u00bb (c'est le monde, le monde qui se retire en soi-m\u00eame avec d\u00e9dain) m'attire, me tient serr\u00e9 contre les vitres, sans bouger, regardant.\n\nMais je ne veux pas regarder en aveugle. Et le noir, ce noir-l\u00e0, ext\u00e9rieur, a besoin de la lumi\u00e8re pour \u00eatre, absolu comme je le d\u00e9sire, proche, touchant mes yeux, mais ne les recouvrant pas. Si la chambre est \u00e9teinte, elle est plus noire que la nuit du dehors, la nuit en devient claire, pleine de formes vagues, se pr\u00e9parant \u00e0 \u00eatre d\u00e9finies par le jour. De faibles lueurs y tra\u00eenent. Heureusement ma lampe, en br\u00fblant, ne leur permet pas d'approcher. Elle prot\u00e8ge ma fen\u00eatre du jour, le jour du pr\u00e9sent froid, du futur gel\u00e9. Et la fen\u00eatre, en ses carreaux rigides, est comme peinte, peinte au noir.\n\nJe me suis habitu\u00e9 ainsi \u00e0 la nuit, \u00e0 sa mani\u00e8re noire, mais pas pour y vivre. La nuit, quand je le peux, je dors. J'ai besoin seulement de la nuit finissante, pr\u00e9caire, celle qui n'est \u00e0 personne (car la fin de nuit, dans le monde urbain des ann\u00e9es quatre-vingt-dix du XXe si\u00e8cle, est de plus en plus vide : la vie \u00e9veill\u00e9e des villes occupe de plus en plus profond\u00e9ment la nuit, mais en l'envahissant par l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9). Je recherche cette forme de la nuit qui, puisque j'y suis seul, m'appartient en propre. Dans la maison o\u00f9 j'\u00e9cris ces lignes, grises plus que noires, aucune fen\u00eatre en ce moment ne brille. J'appuie sur les signes du clavier qui composent les mots \u00ab j'\u00e9cris \u00bb, mais en fait ils ne font qu'appara\u00eetre sur l'\u00e9cran vertical qui me fait face, \u00ab \u00e9criture \u00bb \u00e9lectronique d'aujourd'hui, encore plus pr\u00e9caire que celle du crayon ou de l'encre sur des papiers, d'une pr\u00e9carit\u00e9 fascinante, qui provoque une ivresse d''\u00e9crire', que la commande \u00ab _couper_ \u00bb peut (ivresse suppl\u00e9mentaire qui transcende celle de la gomme) \u00e0 tout moment condamner \u00e0 l'an\u00e9antissement. Dehors (la cour de l'immeuble) est noir, aussi noir qu'il peut l'\u00eatre dans cette ville mang\u00e9e de lumi\u00e8res : Paris.\n\nAinsi, au d\u00e9but d'un parcours multiple de m\u00e9moire, ce livre, mon souvenir a fait appara\u00eetre une nuit pleine, rendue plus imp\u00e9n\u00e9trablement noire par la distance, par les ann\u00e9es, par l'hiver, par la guerre. Mon souvenir s'est dirig\u00e9 (je pourrais croire infailliblement, sans t\u00e2tonnements comme sans volont\u00e9) vers une sorte de maximum de nuit, comme si quelque chose de la nuit-en-soi avait \u00e9t\u00e9 l\u00e0, \u00e0 m'attendre, comme si l'ongle enfantin n'avait entam\u00e9, gratt\u00e9 le gel que pour cette restitution.\n\n## 5 Les parcours de m\u00e9moire sont r\u00e9versibles.\n\nLes parcours de m\u00e9moire ont une \u00e9trange r\u00e9versibilit\u00e9 (au sein m\u00eame de leur indirection g\u00e9n\u00e9rale). Ayant commenc\u00e9 celui-ci en un endroit impr\u00e9cis du temps, sur une image qui est pour ainsi dire de nul moment, parce qu'elle pourrait venir d'une multitude d'entre eux, je lui fais succ\u00e9der une autre qu'elle appelle en apparence spontan\u00e9ment, comme venant apr\u00e8s, celle des carreaux peints non de nuit mais d' _ersatz_ -nuit, la peinture sombre de la guerre. Mais si, au contraire, j'\u00e9voque d'abord ces fen\u00eatres peintes, je vais, tout aussi spontan\u00e9ment, par le chemin du souvenir d\u00e9j\u00e0 tant de fois fray\u00e9, partir dans l'autre sens, vers le carreau gel\u00e9 de ma chambre enfantine. La position respective, chronologiquement, des deux images m'\u00e9chappe. Mais m\u00eame si je parvenais \u00e0 les dater exactement je pourrais facilement suivre la piste dans les deux sens.\n\nIl en est ainsi dans les **Arts de la M\u00e9moire** : d\u00e8s le r\u00e9cit de leur fondation, imm\u00e9diatement apr\u00e8s celui du **Conte** qui leur sert de porche, de pr\u00e9ambule, l'aventure arriv\u00e9e \u00e0 leur inventeur, leur \u00ab trouveur \u00bb, le po\u00e8te Simonide de C\u00e9os, \u00ab inspir\u00e9 \u00bb par les deux jumeaux c\u00e9lestes, Castor ou Pollux (par l'un, ou les deux ? si l'un, je ne sais lequel, et il m'importerait assez de le savoir, puisque l'un est divin \u00e0 l'origine, l'autre terrestre, avant leur union \u00e9ternelle et sid\u00e9rale en une unique constellation, et, selon qu'on choisit l'un ou l'autre ou les deux comme \u00ab saint(s) patron(s) \u00bb de la m\u00e9moire, on a affaire \u00e0 des th\u00e9ories fort divergentes de cette facult\u00e9), on nous raconte l'exploit de cet autre po\u00e8te de l'Antiquit\u00e9 qui pouvait, arm\u00e9 de son entra\u00eenement \u00e0 cet art, r\u00e9citer _L'Odyss\u00e9e_ enti\u00e8re \u00e0 l'endroit et \u00e0 l'envers (exploit qui dans mon esprit s'apparente irr\u00e9sistiblement \u00e0 celui du saut \u00e0 la corde des petites filles ou encore \u00e0 des prodiges de tricot). (Je n'ignore pas que les textes disent qu'il s'agit de _L'Iliade_ , mais je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re de beaucoup, je trouve plus satisfaisant, et plus conforme, qu'il s'agisse des errances de l'artificieux Ulysse. Et je peux me permettre un tel glissement, sans rompre un engagement unilat\u00e9ral de v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 pris autrefois, dans la premi\u00e8re branche de mon livre, puisque je le fais sans omettre cet aveu qui signale que je ne d\u00e9sire pas tromper mon lecteur, et puisque je compose ici un r\u00e9cit, non un \u00ab m\u00e9moire \u00bb acad\u00e9mique.)\n\nAssocier, de la mani\u00e8re la plus frappante et la plus contraignante possible ce dont on veut se souvenir, discours, arguments, vers d'un po\u00e8me, \u00e0 un parcours arbitrairement choisi (le conte des _Arts de la M\u00e9moire_ insiste sur cet arbitraire du signe m\u00e9moriel), dans un lieu familier au souvenir (et c'est bien en un lieu familier qu'ici moi aussi je commence, dans une chambre o\u00f9 j'ai dormi, d'une maison qui fut sept ans la mienne, de ma cinqui\u00e8me \u00e0 ma douzi\u00e8me ann\u00e9e), cela n'est en fait que mimer, et rendre volontaire, r\u00e9gl\u00e9, le fonctionnement spontan\u00e9 et universel des souvenirs. Les m\u00e9thodes, les recettes, qu'\u00e0 partir des indications \u00e9nigmatiques, fragmentaires, \u00e9nervantes dans leur impr\u00e9cision, de Cic\u00e9ron ou de Quintilien, le Moyen \u00c2ge, puis la Renaissance invent\u00e8rent, je les d\u00e9tourne \u00e0 mes propres fins, pour imiter, r\u00e9gler et rendre descriptibles les choses qu'il faut que j'apprenne \u00e0 disposer dans mon souvenir, puisque ce sont celles dont, chaotiquement, je me souviens \u00e0 l'occasion de la composition de cette branche. (L'intention de ma narration, non dite, les suscite, toujours sous-jacente, m\u00eame si elle ne les pr\u00e9d\u00e9termine pas.)\n\nC'est, l\u00e0 encore, en ce renversement, une mise en \u0153uvre de la po\u00e9tique n\u00e9gative, avec sa strat\u00e9gie de Double N\u00e9gation, dont j'ai parl\u00e9 \u00e0 propos de Raimbaut d'Orange. Revivre, au moins sur des \u00ab \u00e9pisodes \u00bb, des segments limit\u00e9s du pass\u00e9 (et peut-\u00eatre aussi \u00e0 une plus grande \u00e9chelle), r\u00e9versiblement, l'odyss\u00e9e (sans majuscule) qu'est une vie (n'importe quelle vie, la mienne, qui est aussi, comme celle d'Ulysse, la vie de \u00ab personne \u00bb), c'est ce que nous faisons quotidiennement dans le sommeil (r\u00eavant), ou dans l'\u00e9tat de veille (nous souvenant). Le sens de ces parcours de m\u00e9moire ne peut \u00eatre appr\u00e9hend\u00e9 que par le recours au double sens, dont les _Arts de la M\u00e9moire_ fournissent quelques figures r\u00e9gl\u00e9es.\n\nA la diff\u00e9rence des d\u00e9monstrations de la math\u00e9matique, strictement orient\u00e9es (bien que, remarquons-le, la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 d'une proposition ne se comprenne qu'\u00e0 rebours, en remontant aux pr\u00e9misses), les d\u00e9ductions de la m\u00e9moire diff\u00e8rent sensiblement selon la direction choisie pour les exhiber. Et la compr\u00e9hension du moindre souvenir est \u00e0 ce prix. Ainsi, tout simplement, dans un voyage, le paysage du retour n'est pas, pour celui qui l'accomplit, identique \u00e0 celui de l'aller. Ce qui demeure invariant n'est pas le paysage mais le lieu, l'espace, fait & tissu, pour qui ne le p\u00e9n\u00e8tre pas, d'une ind\u00e9termination fort peu discernable du vide.\n\nUne des raisons principales de cette non-\u00e9quivalence en m\u00eame temps que non-indiff\u00e9rence des sens de parcours est que ce qui va appara\u00eetre apr\u00e8s n'est, et ne reste jamais semblable \u00e0 soi-m\u00eame, d\u00e8s que l'on change de direction. (Et on n'y rencontre pas, non plus, l'impossibilit\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9rale du palindrome en temps r\u00e9el (en temps v\u00e9cu) si difficile, si \u00ab \u00e9tranger \u00bb dans la langue, particuli\u00e8rement dans la cha\u00eene parl\u00e9e.) Cela se passe \u00e0 chaque instant. A chaque instant, quelque chose surgit qui est au-del\u00e0 de ce qui vient d'\u00eatre vu, et ce quelque chose diff\u00e8re n\u00e9cessairement en \u00ab allant \u00bb et en \u00ab revenant \u00bb. Dans tout parcours, l'instant ne prend son sens que de ce qu'il anticipe. Car un instant n'est pas un \u00ab maintenant \u00bb mais, selon une th\u00e9orie du temps que j'affectionne, \u00ab ce qui aura \u00e9t\u00e9 un \"maintenant\" \u00bb. **Grattant le gel sur la vitre, je vois bleuir mes ongles de la peinture,** et j'entre dans les ann\u00e9es de guerre ; **puis, derri\u00e8re la peinture qui me dissimule l'ext\u00e9rieur de la fen\u00eatre, je vois la nuit audoise qui p\u00e8se contre la vitre gel\u00e9e.**\n\nLe parcours inverse suit le parcours direct comme son ombre, son fant\u00f4me. Ainsi, regardant, par la fen\u00eatre d'un train \u00e0 grande vitesse, on voit bouger les tranches fuyantes, fondantes, du paysage, fuir vers l'arri\u00e8re les maisons, les arbres, les personnages muets des rues, les champs de colza, les rivi\u00e8res, et derri\u00e8re, des collines ocre, ou vert sombre, des automobiles sur des routes, des trains de nuages qui de nouveau vont dans le m\u00eame sens que nous, plus lents seulement, comme s'ils \u00e9taient retenus, coll\u00e9s, alourdis par la terre, saisis d'une h\u00e9sitation \u00e0 rester l\u00e0, puis \u00e0 dispara\u00eetre. Et ainsi de suite : les tranches successives, de plus en plus physiquement \u00e9loign\u00e9es, \u00e9changent les directions de leur mouvement apparent, avec de plus en plus de vague, de lourdeur, et de lenteur.\n\nChaque image du pass\u00e9 est donc un double, r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9 par le mouvement qui l'entra\u00eene, qui sera seulement arbitrairement arr\u00eat\u00e9 par la mise en mots. La seule restitution (partielle) possible est alors de d\u00e9placer la vision successivement dans les deux sens. D'ailleurs la progression n'est jamais selon une ligne, comme dans la lecture ordinaire d'un livre, mais elle est \u00e0 la fois buissonnante et discontinue, donnant la conviction int\u00e9rieure de l'existence d'atomes, ins\u00e9cables et non mesurables, de temps, puisque selon chaque d\u00e9placement, sans cesse, les possibilit\u00e9s divergentes de l'apr\u00e8s m'apparaissent. Une m\u00e9taphore simplifi\u00e9e l\u00e9g\u00e8rement de cette situation m'est venue, une nuit, en Am\u00e9rique (comme on dit chez nous, pour d\u00e9signer les USA) :\n\nJe m'approchais, en voiture, d'une ville (Seattle, sur la c\u00f4te du Pacifique), venant de l'a\u00e9roport. La route de l'a\u00e9roport s'approchait, lentement, d'une autoroute situ\u00e9e en contrebas, une \u00ab voie express \u00bb le long de laquelle on devait passer, pour atteindre le centre, visible assez longtemps, de loin. C'\u00e9tait une heure d\u00e9j\u00e0 nocturne, mais la circulation \u00e9tait encore intense (c'\u00e9tait octobre, le bel octobre, plus rouge que roux, du Nouveau Monde), et les deux files de voitures, dans les deux sens, coulaient contin\u00fbment, rivi\u00e8res lumineuses. En outre, il y avait des \u00ab sorties \u00bb, d'o\u00f9 s'\u00e9chappaient des ruisseaux de chacune des deux rivi\u00e8res de v\u00e9hicules, et ce n'\u00e9taient \u00e9videmment pas les m\u00eames dans les deux sens : ces \u00ab ruisseaux \u00bb ruisselaient \u00e0 sens unique. Ainsi font les chemins d'eau. C'\u00e9tait la nuit, et les feux de toutes les voitures \u00e9taient allum\u00e9s. Mais des voitures qui s'\u00e9loignaient de moi je ne voyais que les feux arri\u00e8re, rouges, et des voitures qui venaient vers moi les phares, jaunes. Des ruisseaux rouges fuyaient vers la droite et vers l'avant, des ruisseaux jaunes parall\u00e8les vers la gauche, et vers l'arri\u00e8re. La hauteur, la distance, donnaient au champ de cette vision s\u00e9r\u00e9nit\u00e9 et ampleur, et permettaient de saisir simultan\u00e9ment par la pens\u00e9e comme continus les deux rubans, les deux fleuves de couleur mouvante.\n\n## 6 A l'air froid, le nuage n\u00e9 du souffle,\n\n **Dans l'air froid, le nuage de bu\u00e9e n\u00e9 du souffle rencontrait la vitre, s'y posait.** Souffler de la bu\u00e9e sur le verre fait de la surface transparente une page encore, inscriptible en signes, en mots qui restituent localement la transparence. Puis le souffle, la bu\u00e9e, de nouveau servent de gomme. Cette \u00e9criture est sans taches, elle n'a pas l'irr\u00e9versibilit\u00e9 de l'encre, elle s'apparente plut\u00f4t \u00e0 d'autres traces enfantines, comme l'encre de sureau (encre \u00ab sympathique \u00bb, encre d'espion ?). Elle est \u00e9ph\u00e9m\u00e8re, ce qui n'est pas n\u00e9cessairement un manque ni un d\u00e9faut. Je me retrouve (au pass\u00e9) sans cesse \u00e9crivant sur le verre des carreaux, pas toujours \u00e0 la bu\u00e9e, qui exige le froid, trop exceptionnel, ou la pluie ext\u00e9rieure (rare aussi). Mais on peut compter sur la poussi\u00e8re qui neige dans les greniers, les mansardes, les remises, sur les vitraux de cette \u00e9trange fleur lexicale, la \u00ab buanderie \u00bb (ses carreaux poussi\u00e9reux sont des vitraux la\u00efques), sur la poussi\u00e8re et la fum\u00e9e.\n\nEn ces ann\u00e9es, **des locomotives, une \u00e9paisse fum\u00e9e charbonneuse, grise, sale, s'\u00e9levait lourdement dans les gares, au long des voies, s'attardait, couvrait inexorablement d'une suie, grasse, irr\u00e9sistible, les fen\u00eatres des compartiments**. Les trains \u00e9taient lents, tra\u00eenards, s'arr\u00eataient inexplicablement sur des voies de garage, attendaient, repartaient en silence, sans pr\u00e9venir. **Mon regard cherche, encore une fois, la nuit ext\u00e9rieure, comme dans la chambre hivernale, et comme dans la chambre, ne distingue rien, ou presque ; dans ce souvenir je vois** (dans cette famille de souvenirs composites, empi\u00e9tant les uns sur les autres, se confondant) **le coin de la fen\u00eatre d'un compartiment** (c'est le nom, aussi, de la place : \u00ab coin fen\u00eatre \u00bb), **\u00e0 hauteur de mon doigt, le m\u00eame doigt qui grattait la glace, qui se couvre maintenant de la suie salissante, tenace, crayonneuse, de la fum\u00e9e des locomotives** (tel le charbon d'une mine de crayon, telle l'encre \u00e9paisse qui recouvrait jadis les plombs d'imprimerie).\n\nNous allions, une fois par mois, \u00e0 Toulouse par le train. C'\u00e9tait le dimanche, car l'\u00e9cole absorbait les six autres jours de la semaine, et pleinement. Ma m\u00e8re nous emmenait, ma s\u0153ur et moi, v\u00e9rifier nos progr\u00e8s pianistiques aupr\u00e8s de Mme Vidal, qui tenait l'\u00e9cole patronn\u00e9e par Marguerite Long (la \u00ab grande pianiste \u00bb m'inspecta un jour, haute figure s\u00e9v\u00e8re, anguleuse, imposante, peu complimenteuse, aux doigts immenses et immens\u00e9ment rapides, pour les d\u00e9monstrations, les corrections de doigt\u00e9 **(un grand nez oblique ; une main \u00e0 bagues, sur la mienne, quelques secondes)).** Nous partions le matin, tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t (je ne vois que de la nuit). On s'arr\u00eatait \u00e0 Bram, \u00e0 Castelnaudary, \u00e0 Villefranche-de-Lauragais ; on arrivait \u00e0 la gare Matabiau. Nous pr\u00e9sentions nos \u00ab morceaux \u00bb : des Clementi, des K\u00fchlau surtout, un peu de Mozart. Vers la fin j'ai jou\u00e9 aussi des mazurkas, des polonaises de Chopin, extravagantes aux doigts. Nous revenions la nuit tomb\u00e9e.\n\nMon p\u00e8re nous accompagnait, retrouver et bavarder avec Canguilhem, son vieil ami d'\u00c9cole (l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure), passer le moment de notre le\u00e7on \u00e0 la librairie Trentin (nous allions le rechercher l\u00e0, parfois), pour d'autres retrouvailles, et conversations d'un autre type dont je n'ai saisi que plus tard (apr\u00e8s 1944) la v\u00e9ritable signification. Nous d\u00e9jeunions chez les Canguilhem dont les deux a\u00een\u00e9s, Bernard et Francette (\u00ab C\u00e9cette \u00bb) avaient \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s nos \u00e2ges. La c\u00e9r\u00e9monie du d\u00e9jeuner \u00e9tait impressionnante, les mani\u00e8res de table s\u00e9v\u00e8res (tout \u00e0 fait inhabituelles pour nous). Car les enfants n'y parlaient pas entre eux, ne se m\u00ealaient pas de la conversation des adultes, gardaient leurs deux mains sur la table, tenaient leurs ustensiles de la main qu'il fallait. L'axiome anglican _(\u00ab children should be seen, not heard \u00bb)_ leur \u00e9tait appliqu\u00e9 avec une rigueur toute calviniste.\n\nMais ils se rattrapaient d\u00e8s la disparition des parents dans d'autres r\u00e9gions de l'appartement sombre **(je le vois sombre) :** je n'ai jamais entendu en si peu de temps autant de mots \u00ab interdits \u00bb (d'inspiration essentiellement scatologique. Il me semble que nous ignorions enti\u00e8rement le registre sexuel (ou bien, c'est fort possible, la censure adulte s'est impos\u00e9e \u00e0 ma m\u00e9moire, je ne sais)) que dans la bouche de ces deux enfants si bien \u00e9lev\u00e9s d'un d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9minent philosophe aux cheveux tr\u00e8s noirs et aux sourcils tr\u00e8s noirs aussi, tr\u00e8s \u00e9pais.\n\n(Ma s\u0153ur Denise, g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement farouche, avait fait sensation, lors de la premi\u00e8re visite de Georges Canguilhem dans notre jardin, en montant spontan\u00e9ment sur ses genoux : j'ignore si c'\u00e9tait de sa part exorcisme ou intuition de la nature r\u00e9ellement essentiellement indulgente et bonne de cet \u00e9pist\u00e9mologue s\u00e9v\u00e8re pour les concepts (et les enseignants de philosophie qu'il inspecta longtemps) et bourru. Il ne devait pas non plus impressionner exag\u00e9r\u00e9ment mes cousins, mes fr\u00e8res et moi-m\u00eame puisque nous avions l'habitude de saluer son arriv\u00e9e par un chant de guerre \u00e0 rythme ascendant, sp\u00e9cialement compos\u00e9 \u00e0 son intention : \u00ab M\u00e9chant Can ! m\u00e9chant Cangui ! m\u00e9chant Canguilhem ! \u00bb J'\u00e9prouve quelque satisfaction tardivement enfantine (il y a presque un demi-si\u00e8cle de cela !), pendant que je me pr\u00e9pare, ces temps-ci, avec une institution pour laquelle je travaille, le Coll\u00e8ge international de philosophie, \u00e0 lui rendre hommage, \u00e0 me souvenir de la d\u00e9sinvolture avec laquelle nous traitions alors l'\u00e9minent auteur de l' _Essai sur quelques probl\u00e8mes concernant la fronti\u00e8re entre le normal et le pathologique_ , qui a \u00e9t\u00e9 (est encore) d'une importance consid\u00e9rable pour la philosophie fran\u00e7aise, et dont un exemplaire d\u00e9dicac\u00e9 se trouvait dans la biblioth\u00e8que de mes parents. Il est vrai que la philosophie, occupation professionnelle paternelle, n'a jamais cess\u00e9 de m'impressionner.)\n\nNous revenions dans la nuit. Tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t nous colonisions un compartiment du train attendant, obscur, sur un quai de la gare Matabiau. Le train restait non \u00e9clair\u00e9 pratiquement jusqu'au d\u00e9part, et pendant sa course inverse vers Villefranche-de-Lauragais, Castelnaudary, Bram, Carcassonne enfin. La tr\u00e8s faible lumi\u00e8re (d'une veilleuse : D\u00e9fense passive ?) donnait au voyage un caract\u00e8re vesp\u00e9ral alternativement, pour moi, soporifique et exaltant. Une heure de coucher plus tardive que d'habitude, la tension surmont\u00e9e de l'\u00e9preuve du piano (bien que Mme Vidal ait \u00e9t\u00e9 calme, maternelle, peu s\u00e9v\u00e8re) donnait aux retours de ces dimanches leur couleur aventureuse, dont l'attraction la plus grande \u00e9tait le train. J'avais, d\u00e9j\u00e0, h\u00e9rit\u00e9 (de mon grand-p\u00e8re sans doute) une grande passion ferroviaire.\n\n **Mon occupation pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e** (quand l'\u00e9criture \u00e0 la suie sur les fen\u00eatres, d\u00e9couverte, m'\u00e9tait inexorablement interdite) **\u00e9tait, je m'y vois, de me suspendre, dans le couloir du wagon, \u00e0 la barre transversale de cuivre qui tranchait horizontalement la vitre \u00e0 sa mi-hauteur** (c'est une mesure de la taille qui devait \u00eatre la mienne, alors, que la simple possibilit\u00e9 d'une telle position). **Escaladant le rebord, me tenant par les mains, et accroch\u00e9 \u00e9galement \u00e0 la barre des deux pieds, j'imitais** (je me repr\u00e9sentais vraisemblablement \u00e9tant) **l'animal qu'on nomme paresseux** (c'est un animal de la famille du tatou, comme l'indique le dicton mn\u00e9motechnique des naturalistes (un cadeau de mon fr\u00e8re) : T'as tout l'air d'un pangolin paresseux). **Je m'essayais** \u00e0 **l'immobilit\u00e9 r\u00eaveuse de cet animal, ne pouvant, malheureusement pas cependant, me gaver comme lui d'un \u00ab m\u00e2chon \u00bb de feuilles d'eucalyptus** (qui sont, il me semble, le r\u00e9gime exclusif des \u00ab paresseux \u00bb ; \u00e0 moins que je ne les confonde avec les koalas).\n\n **Ensuite nous rentrions, soudain pleins d'une immense fatigue, par la nuit claire ou voil\u00e9e, sous les \u00e9toiles poignantes de** **l'hiver, d'abord traversant le canal, puis par les \u00ab all\u00e9es \u00bb, et la place Davila, la rue Dugommier, notre rue enfin, la rue d'Assas, le long du haut mur de la caserne, jusqu'au plus grand pin, la porte d'entr\u00e9e, la maison obscure, endormie ; et le silence, ce sommeil.**\n\n## 7 Dans cette poign\u00e9e d'images d'enfance\n\nDans toute cette poign\u00e9e d'images d'enfance je d\u00e9couvre un trait commun : la raret\u00e9 des ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes naturels (ou non) qui les suscitent. Je veux dire raret\u00e9 en ce qui concerne le lieu de leur production, mais raret\u00e9 aussi pour le regard qui les absorbe. Plus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment : le froid de l'hiver, le gel sont rares dans le d\u00e9partement de l'Aude. La peinture bleue, camouflage des vitres pendant la guerre est un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne exceptionnel. La nuit enfin, pour un \u00e9colier de 1940, n'\u00e9tait pas la condition habituelle de sa vie. La nuit, alors, enfant, on \u00e9tait dans son lit et le plus souvent endormi. (Les enfants avaient leur vie ainsi strictement r\u00e9gl\u00e9e, \u00e9tant les derniers survivants (involontaires) des anc\u00eatres paysans de chacun. Il y a une dualit\u00e9 entre philogen\u00e8se et ontogen\u00e8se dans les m\u0153urs comme dans la physiologie des esp\u00e8ces.) (Mais c'\u00e9tait l\u00e0 peut-\u00eatre seulement, si j'en juge par la Catalogne, ou l'Italie, une habitude familiale, plus dauphinoise ou pi\u00e9montaise que m\u00e9diterran\u00e9enne ; renforc\u00e9e par les convictions \u00ab hygi\u00e9niques \u00bb des instituteurs de la Troisi\u00e8me R\u00e9publique (dont mes grands-parents maternels \u00e9taient des repr\u00e9sentants typiques, et d'in\u00e9branlables convaincus), et les horaires scolaires, qui ouvraient les classes tous les matins, en toutes saisons, en tous lieux, par tous les temps et en toutes circonstances, \u00e0 huit heures, depuis Jules Ferry. Tous ces facteurs se conjuguaient pour faire de la lumi\u00e8re solaire la constante la plus assur\u00e9e d'une vie enfantine ; et son absence, l'obscurit\u00e9, l'exception.)\n\nCe n'est pas que ces images soient les seules qui me restent. Mais ma m\u00e9moire, spontan\u00e9ment, les cherche, et les suscite avant toutes les autres. Leur irruption est la preuve d'une insistance n\u00e9gative, en des temps \u00ab historiques \u00bb eux-m\u00eames exceptionnels (o\u00f9 la vertu, la _virt\u00f9_ machiavellienne dont firent preuve Canguilhem, et mon p\u00e8re, et leurs myst\u00e9rieux amis, \u00e9tait d'\u00eatre de ceux, longtemps plut\u00f4t rares en ce pays, qui disaient non), d'une attraction ancienne, esth\u00e9tique au premier degr\u00e9, mais secondairement et ins\u00e9parablement en m\u00eame temps \u00e9thique, et longtemps en moi non d\u00e9mentie, pour ce qui n'est pas habituel, conforme, ordinaire (plus justement d'ailleurs sur ce qu'il n'est pas habituel, ordinaire, de traiter de mani\u00e8re conforme). La bu\u00e9e gel\u00e9e sur la vitre, la lumi\u00e8re \u00e9lectrique gel\u00e9e par la peinture bleu nuit, le train attendant obscur\u00e9ment sur la voie, sont des visions, et des circonstances certainement \u00ab originales \u00bb pendant les douze premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de ma vie. Et quand ma m\u00e9moire les retrouve, quelque chose d'une exaltation \u00ab originelle \u00bb demeure, les accompagnant.\n\nElles s'entourent d'une sorte d'aur\u00e9ole de bonheur s\u00e9v\u00e8re, qui ne provient pas d'un bien-\u00eatre, mais d'une joie-lumi\u00e8re concentr\u00e9e, absorb\u00e9e. Comme si, au lieu de me placer d'en bas pour regarder un souvenir, d'en bas o\u00f9 la lumi\u00e8re la plus manifeste serait la plus particularis\u00e9e, la plus affaiblie, la plus obscure, je me situais au contraire, dans la position s\u00e9raphinique du contemplateur, o\u00f9 la lumi\u00e8re, donc, est contract\u00e9e, simple, universelle, garde le mieux l'unit\u00e9, la vigueur et l'\u00e9clat de la source. Le climat de ces images est alors celui de la contemplation. Elles sont des images contemplatives. Leur insistance, leur persistance, les apparentent, en d\u00e9pit du statut essentiellement non photographique de tout ce que j'appelle ici **image** , aux photographies souvent interrog\u00e9es des moments pour nous signifiants du pass\u00e9. Elles sont comme des images suscit\u00e9es autant que restitu\u00e9es par la contemplation \u00e9mue de photographies. Et elles d\u00e9tiennent de la lumi\u00e8re, car elles ne poss\u00e8dent pas de couleur (seule la photographie en \u00ab couleurs noir et blanc \u00bb poss\u00e8de, et offre, la lumi\u00e8re). Une fois pos\u00e9es \u00e0 mon regard, elles le retiennent. Je vais de l'une \u00e0 l'autre, je tourne dans le cercle o\u00f9 s'inscrit leur triangle, sans d\u00e9sir d'en sortir.\n\nElles ont, pourtant, particuli\u00e8rement la premi\u00e8re, celle de la fleur inverse du gel, un dehors, un \u00ab **hors-l\u00e0** \u00bb. Curieusement, je peux venir assez ais\u00e9ment \u00e0 ce dehors, mais en quelque sorte \u00e0 reculons : c'est-\u00e0-dire venir du dehors pour me retrouver, \u00e0 nouveau, dans l'int\u00e9rieur hivernal de la chambre, devant la vitre, par une succession rapide d'images qui implique bien une sortie au jour (ou \u00e0 la nuit) et un retour, mais dont pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment le moment initial me manque, comme s'il s'\u00e9tait infiniment \u00e9cart\u00e9 \u00e0 cause de l'\u00e9loignement, ou d'un exc\u00e8s de transitions (tel le li\u00e8vre du paradoxe, mon regard oblig\u00e9 de passer l\u00e0, puis encore l\u00e0, qui est \u00e0 peine plus loin que l\u00e0, et ainsi de suite, est d\u00e9bord\u00e9 par une in\u00e9puisable et simple \u00ab \u00e9num\u00e9ration \u00bb de points).\n\nUne des propri\u00e9t\u00e9s les plus \u00e9vanouissantes des souvenirs, peut-\u00eatre origine de quelques-unes des \u00ab solutions \u00bb les plus \u00e9tranges \u00e0 la question du temps, aussi ancienne que la pens\u00e9e m\u00eame, est en effet la vitesse. Au paradoxe premier de la course dans l'espace, celle de l'obligation de franchir une infinit\u00e9 au moins de points \u00e9pelables (potentiellement), on est tent\u00e9 de \u00ab r\u00e9pondre \u00bb en ajoutant un second paradoxe, celui non seulement d'une infinit\u00e9 aval\u00e9e d'instants (qui ne r\u00e9soudrait rien (on ne r\u00e9sout rien non plus en fait par le second paradoxe, mais on peut en avoir au moins l'illusion) mais celle d'une domination des franchissements temporels sur les distances spatiales, plus mat\u00e9riellement inertes, en un mot, par une suffisante vitesse : le souvenir absorbe l'infinit\u00e9 des points visibles en se donnant (en disposant de) une infinit\u00e9 plus grande, multiplicativement plus grande pourrait-on dire, d'instants infiniment courts.\n\nIl s'ensuit que le r\u00e9cit du souvenir, pour \u00eatre fid\u00e8le, aurait un besoin in\u00e9puisable des ressources d'une rh\u00e9torique hermog\u00e9nienne, puisque la vitesse est un concept, je dirai m\u00eame le concept central du trait\u00e9 hell\u00e9nistique d\u00fb \u00e0 cet auteur. Il s'ensuit encore qu'il n'en est nullement ainsi dans la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 des r\u00e9cits existants, et que ce fait contribue aussi, pour moi, au sentiment de \u00ab trahison \u00bb du r\u00e9el qu'ils me donnent. Il est vrai qu'il n'y a pas de solution vraiment satisfaisante \u00e0 ce probl\u00e8me, l'\u00e9crit ne pouvant mettre en application l'arithm\u00e9tique infinitiste et contradictoire (vraisemblablement) dont je viens de parler, et qu'on ne peut imaginer que des strat\u00e9gies analogiques, la plus naturelle \u00e9tant celle de la discontinuit\u00e9 (appuy\u00e9e, en somme, sur l'hypoth\u00e8se de _quanta_ de temps, d\u00e9j\u00e0 envisag\u00e9s par la philosophie antique). Il ne m'appara\u00eet pas qu'elle ait jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 tent\u00e9e.\n\n(Une autre serait de montrer la vitesse par contraste : une tentative de description exhaustive des parcours fournirait la d\u00e9monstration indirecte de l'exc\u00e8s jamais r\u00e9ductible de l'accomplissement sur la prof\u00e9ration. (La naissance de Tristram Shandy, en somme, interpr\u00e9t\u00e9e comme m\u00e9taphore de la \u00ab conception \u00bb de l'\u00e9crit autobiographique.) L'accumulation scrupuleuse des d\u00e9tails montrerait son impuissance \u00e0 rendre compte de la simultan\u00e9it\u00e9 de leur surgissement \u00e0 la vue.)\n\nQuoi qu'il en soit, la vitesse de d\u00e9placement de la m\u00e9moire se saisissant des souvenirs un \u00e0 un est un fait, et il n'est nullement \u00e9vident que l'organisation que nous choisissons le plus souvent pour raconter ne la trahisse que par sa lenteur. Sa rapidit\u00e9 est celle d'une illumination. Dans les territoires fractur\u00e9s du pass\u00e9, dans ses milieux inhomog\u00e8nes, par r\u00e9flexions et r\u00e9fractions elle va, fouillant du bout de son b\u00e2ton \u00e0 la fois rigide et bris\u00e9 (perceptuellement bris\u00e9).\n\n(Mais les modes habituels de la narration du pass\u00e9 s'apparentent plus \u00e0 l'imposition d'un ordre artificiel, provenant d'id\u00e9es ext\u00e9rieures au fait brut du souvenir : ils offrent leur reconstitution \u00e0 partir de _snapshots_ immobiles.)\n\n## 8 Chaque fois que je sors, au pr\u00e9sent, de la chambre du gel,\n\n **Chaque fois que je sors, dans l'hiver du souvenir, de la chambre du gel aux fleurs inverses sur la vitre ; chaque fois que je sors, au pr\u00e9sent, au pr\u00e9sent du pass\u00e9** (puisque le pr\u00e9sent est le mode essentiel de la po\u00e9sie, le mien, puisque de tout po\u00e8me il faut dire : il est de \u00ab maintenant \u00bb), **je trouve et vois la neige ;** **dehors est blanc ; dehors est un jardin recouvert de neige, d\u00e9couvert \u00e0 la neige, une neige fra\u00eechement tomb\u00e9e, dans le silence de la nuit, comme une surprise de la nuit, que rien encore, aucun pas, n'a pu brouiller, d\u00e9fricher, vieillir ; dehors dort sous un blanc manteau, sous de grands \u00e9dredons ; blanc ; blanc d'un blanc qui n'est que cela : \u00e0 ce blanc ne s'associe aucune id\u00e9e de froid, aucune rigueur : tout le gel est dedans, dans la chambre, sur la vitre ; mais le blanc du dehors est un blanc d'une douceur substantielle, calme ; blanc pur.**\n\nDu blanc de la neige sort la lumi\u00e8re. La lumi\u00e8re sort pr\u00e9sente, c'est-\u00e0-dire venue \u00e0 moi apr\u00e8s les ann\u00e9es-lumi\u00e8re quasi infinies du pass\u00e9. Mais, \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence des lumi\u00e8res d'\u00e9toiles venues de leurs propres distances quasi infinies (paroles d'astres t\u00e9moins de leur pass\u00e9 singulier d'astres, \u00e0 leur vitesse constante ind\u00e9passable, ind\u00e9passable aussi en la monotonie des constantes universelles, vitesse \u00e9norme mais malgr\u00e9 tout minuscule pour de tels \u00e9loignements), la lumi\u00e8re de neige de cette image, dehors, est pr\u00e9sente, se r\u00e9it\u00e8re sans cesse, sans cesse sort des coussins de la neige, des formes de la neige couvrant les formes des sols, des arbres, des murs. C'est une lumi\u00e8re neige, o\u00f9 je sors (mais qui sort ?), o\u00f9 je me trouve un voyant, voyant non \u00e9bloui, non aveugle par \u00e9blouissement.\n\nEt si la neige est lumi\u00e8re-substance, sans cesse pr\u00e9sente, et sans cesse d'elle-m\u00eame redite, r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9e, quelque chose comme le paradoxe d'Olbers est en acte dans ce souvenir : comme l'infini suppos\u00e9 du temps, de l'\u00e9tendue et des \u00e9toiles peuplant l'infini espace avec constance, homog\u00e9n\u00e9it\u00e9 et immobilit\u00e9 (avant l'invention de leur mouvement de fuite par Hubble) devrait faire du ciel de nuit une sph\u00e8re autour de nous enti\u00e8rement gonfl\u00e9e d'une lumi\u00e8re d'intensit\u00e9 infinie, rendant le noir de la nuit impossible, ainsi la blancheur lumi\u00e8re de cette neige d'autrefois, du dehors d'autrefois, emplit la vitre, la fen\u00eatre, le dehors jardin de la fen\u00eatre, et mes yeux, de son jour omnipr\u00e9sent. **Cette neige est enti\u00e8rement densit\u00e9 lumineuse, enti\u00e8rement pr\u00e9sente, dans une blancheur douce, pleine et sans aucune nuit.**\n\nChaque fois que je sors de la chambre nocturne du souvenir premier, je trouve la neige. Je passe du noir au blanc. Tout ceci est sans couleur. Ce n'est pas seulement qu'il n'y a pas de couleur dans ce souvenir (les couleurs de mes souvenirs ne sont, sauf sans doute le noir et le blanc, que des couleurs nomm\u00e9es, des couleurs de langue), mais plus intrins\u00e8quement que le moment du monde que je restitue met la couleur au second plan, pour ne garder que la lumi\u00e8re, et la non-lumi\u00e8re de la nuit. Ou c'est, si l'on veut, qu'il s'agit d'un temps-souvenir en un lexique de couleurs qui ne poss\u00e9derait (comme il arrive dans certaines langues) que le \u00ab noir \u00bb et le \u00ab blanc \u00bb. Tout ce qui se passe, tout ce qui est d\u00e9ductible de ce qui se passe est d\u00e9fini par la lumi\u00e8re, ou par son absence : de la lumi\u00e8re, ou non-lumi\u00e8re de ceci on peut d\u00e9duire, lumi\u00e8re ou non-lumi\u00e8re, cela. Le total de la lumi\u00e8re est **ce** monde.\n\nJe sors toujours, \u00e0 mon souvenir, vers de la neige. Aussi bien d'ailleurs si je retrouve le souvenir de la fleur de gel sur la vitre, que si je restitue celui de la vitre peinte au bleu-noir de nuit : **je gratte dans l'ombre l'incolore foug\u00e8re du gel, ou bien le bleu de la sombre peinture de la D\u00e9fense passive, et dehors est la neige sur le jardin ; la neige tomb\u00e9e pendant la nuit, toute p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9e de silence, de tranquille silence et d'une absence totale des qualit\u00e9s premi\u00e8res des substances, \u00e0 l'exception de la luminosit\u00e9 qui sort d'elle, et des formes, elles aussi lumineusement d\u00e9finies ; ce sont les formes du jardin, le jardin de la maison o\u00f9 je suis, o\u00f9 j'ai habit\u00e9 en ces ann\u00e9es, rue d'Assas, \u00e0 Carcassonne, dans l'Aude ; il y a de hauts murs contre la rue, une ruelle, une autre maison, d'autres jardins qui descendent, jardins et jardins, vers la rivi\u00e8re.**\n\n **La lumi\u00e8re sort de la neige, s'\u00e9l\u00e8ve de la neige, plut\u00f4t qu'elle ne tombe du soleil pourtant pr\u00e9sent dans le ciel : un soleil blanc.** J'aime ce paradoxe ultime du blanc et du noir : je ne vois pas le Soleil Noir, cachant la lumi\u00e8re, la retenant en son sein par d\u00e9dain, par \u00e9nigme, ou jetant \u00e0 profusion la lumi\u00e8re noire de la nuit, de la nuit noire de l'\u00e2me (le Soleil Noir est la nuit noire de l'Ame du Monde, le signe d'une m\u00e9lancolie d'astre, du macrocosme d\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9 de d\u00e9couvrir la privation du Dieu). Je vois un **soleil blanc** (sans la majuscule du nom propre et sans article d\u00e9fini) ; lumineux sans lumi\u00e8re, la recevant au lieu de la donner, figure d'un autre mode de la Double N\u00e9gation constitutrice de ma m\u00e9moire d'enfance. Je passe du blanc au noir, puis de nouveau au blanc, mais \u00e0 un blanc qui a les propri\u00e9t\u00e9s d'une chute, d'une privation : **je vois un soleil neige.**\n\nTout se passe comme si le d\u00e9placement d'int\u00e9rieur \u00e0 ext\u00e9rieur, le franchissement de l'espace transparent de la vitre par la vision, s'accompagnait d'une r\u00e9fraction temporelle : **l'instant o\u00f9 je vois dans la chambre, contre le gel, est un instant nuit ; il fait nuit dehors, nuit tr\u00e8s noire, sans lumi\u00e8re de lune, ou d'\u00e9toiles (les \u00e9toiles se sont interrompues),** mais l'instant suivant du souvenir est **dans le plein jour neigeux, le soleil pr\u00e9sent ; un soleil d'hiver certes, mais d\u00e9j\u00e0 haut, dans le ciel blanc lui-m\u00eame, d'un blanc moins intense que celui du sol livr\u00e9 \u00e0 la neige, un blanc second ; la trajectoire du temps s'est bris\u00e9e, et le passage lent de la nuit au jour, l'aube hivernale, l'\u00e9mergence du soleil en sa paresse, a \u00e9t\u00e9 gomm\u00e9 ; d'ailleurs le soleil lui-m\u00eame est l\u00e0, mais comme absent de son r\u00f4le d'astre p\u00e8re des jours.**\n\n **Le soleil s'est lev\u00e9 et a disparu, non dans la nuit mais dans le blanc lumineux de la neige ; c'est un soleil vide.** La blancheur de page de la neige est, elle, au contraire, pleine. Elle est pleine de lumi\u00e8re comme le serait une peinture blanc sur blanc (mais comme une peinture blanc sur blanc qui ne serait pas suscit\u00e9e, \u00e0 la Lars Fredrikson, par l'immensit\u00e9 des r\u00e9gions neigeuses o\u00f9 la neige est la r\u00e8gle, o\u00f9 elle dit le droit du paysage : cette neige-l\u00e0 me repousse, m'inqui\u00e8te, m'indispose. C'est une neige \u00e0 la Jack London, ou bien faite pour des r\u00e9cits de conqu\u00eate de l'Himalaya, une neige de \u00ab y\u00e9ti \u00bb. Elle n'est pour moi que de la neige de fiction). La neige pleine du souvenir, dehors, restitue une lumi\u00e8re qui lui appartient en propre, qui est mue, inspir\u00e9e par la blancheur, sa consistance, son \u00e9paisseur, son souffle.\n\nDe plus cette vision n'a rien de nostalgique. Cette neige n'est pas mortelle (comme elle l'est dans les nouvelles de Jack London), cette lumi\u00e8re n'est pas non plus indiff\u00e9rente, neutre. Elle repr\u00e9sente une v\u00e9ritable sortie au jour, un \u00e9merveillement. La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 du jardin s'y r\u00e9v\u00e8le, sa nature, d\u00e9gag\u00e9e de la valeur d'usage comme de la valeur \u00ab austenienne \u00bb ou \u00ab reptonienne \u00bb du jardin moralis\u00e9, au profit d'une nettet\u00e9 axiomatique : la pr\u00e9cision du bois, la g\u00e9om\u00e9trie sentimentale des all\u00e9es, des buis, des carr\u00e9s de dahlias et tomates (mais sans tomates ni fleurs r\u00e9elles : c'est l'hiver). **Je vois des mouvements de pies (noires et blanches), de corneilles (noires et noires)** ; les corneilles sont le prolongement de la chambre, de la nuit, par d'autres moyens (aviaires) ; **je ne les entends pas (je n'entends rien), mais elles criaillent, je le sais.**\n\n## 9 Ce souvenir est sans tristesse,\n\nCe souvenir, donc, est sans tristesse, ce jardin d'hiver sans d\u00e9solation. Le climat mental dans lequel je plonge est celui d'une illumination. Mais il n'y a pas non plus en lui de joie : \u00e9merveillement plut\u00f4t, \u00e0 peine surprise. L'image produit \u00e0 profusion de la lumi\u00e8re de neige, une nu\u00e9e envahit le ciel, fait reculer le soleil blanc. **De loin en loin** (dans les instants s\u00e9par\u00e9s du souvenir r\u00e9it\u00e9rant l'image) **viennent les corneilles, les mouvements noirs des corneilles avec leurs cris inaudibles, tournoyant sur la neige, puis disparaissant en s\u00e9quences, en messages morses par-dessus le mur du jardin, plus loin encore, par-dessus le mur de la caserne qui borde l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la rue d'Assas ; elles vont vers la Cit\u00e9, pour des congr\u00e8s perp\u00e9tuels, des colloques th\u00e9ologiques f\u00e9roces ; oiseaux de prose m\u00e9di\u00e9vale, d'annonces myst\u00e9rieuses ; les pies, elles, restent dans les grands pins.**\n\nLa s\u00e9lection par la m\u00e9moire d'un paysage d'hiver, et dans l'hiver, d'un moment de neige, pour d\u00e9signer par la m\u00e9tonymie de la r\u00e9flexion en \u00e9tendue (la neige est une partie de la lumi\u00e8re) la lumi\u00e8re la plus ancienne, celle qui contient le tout de l'enfance, s'inscrit encore dans le m\u00eame paradoxe que je poursuis depuis le commencement de cette **branche** seconde de mon r\u00e9cit (scell\u00e9e dans le titre de son premier chapitre, non encore enti\u00e8rement expliqu\u00e9) : ce n'est pas la lumi\u00e8re profuse, incessante, in\u00e9vitable, de la quasi-totalit\u00e9 des jours, dans cette ville m\u00e9diterran\u00e9enne, qui est, sans que je puisse en d\u00e9cider, choisie. Car la lumi\u00e8re qui me saisit n'est pas celle qui inspire touristes et vacanciers venus du nord, mais au contraire celle qui souligne la tristesse, le sentiment de l'irr\u00e9m\u00e9diable, du r\u00e9volu, du d\u00e9sol\u00e9. La lumi\u00e8re habituelle d'un climat presque sans nuages, sans pluies, pendant des semaines, des mois d'\u00e9t\u00e9, la lumi\u00e8re abusive du soleil ostensible est enti\u00e8rement pour moi sans attirance (je ne suis pas un Franc, je ne suis pas un Helv\u00e8te, ni un Viking, ni un Teuton). Le souvenir ici l'\u00e9carte sans h\u00e9siter, pour faire revenir la lumi\u00e8re plus rare, rare comme la denr\u00e9e \u00e0 laquelle elle s'identifie, la douce, la souple, l'inhabituelle, la surprenante neige du jardin.\n\nIl me semble avoir retenu tous les moments de neige de ces ann\u00e9es, tant ils \u00e9taient exceptionnels, m\u00e9morables. Un jour, lisant pour la premi\u00e8re fois les po\u00e8mes de Guido Cavalcanti, j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab transperc\u00e9 \u00bb (tel un saint S\u00e9bastien dans le jardin des d\u00e9lices de la po\u00e9sie (d\u00e9lices et supplices : \u00ab exquis \u00bb, au sens anglais d' _exquisite_ que l'on trouve dans l'expression _exquisite pain_ ) par deux vers (ils seront suivis de deux autres, qu'un paysage d\u00e9ductif lie pour moi) :\n\n ** _aria serena quand' apar l'albore_**\n\n ** _e bianca neve scender senza venti_**\n\nLa tranquillit\u00e9 soudaine, la \u00ab s\u00e9r\u00e9nit\u00e9 \u00bb de l'air quand vient l'aube, la \u00ab neige blanche descendue sans vent \u00bb : dans ces vers, v\u00eatus de lumi\u00e8re en hend\u00e9casyllabes italiens du XIIIe si\u00e8cle, avec toute l'\u00e9vidence et la soudaine nouveaut\u00e9 d'une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 du monde en ses esp\u00e8ces naturelles apparaissant \u00e0 l'aube (m\u00e9taphorique) du lyrisme occidental en langue vernaculaire, je vois se lever l'explication de la neige de mon souvenir, de son \u00ab aura \u00bb, de son non-non-froid \u00e9blouissant, puisque c'est la neige qui, en tombant, adoucit le grand froid nocturne, abat le vent, se fait protection du sol, de l'air, des \u00eatres vivants, de la **m\u00e9moire.**\n\nDe tels moments sont infiniment rares dans la po\u00e9sie, dans toute po\u00e9sie : en \u00e9quilibre miraculeux entre le d\u00e9tail aigu des notations particuli\u00e8res (o\u00f9 se manifeste l'\u00eatre m\u00eame, en tant que singulier et se r\u00e9v\u00e9lant lui-m\u00eame en son _haecceitas_ , que Hopkins appelle l' _inscape_ d'une, de chaque chose), et le vague g\u00e9n\u00e9ralisant de la plupart des propositions descriptives (\u00ab il a neig\u00e9 \u00bb ; \u00ab le vent tombe \u00bb), il semble qu'ils ne peuvent gu\u00e8re \u00eatre dits qu'une seule fois. Et les po\u00e8mes o\u00f9 ils viennent occupent alors une place dans la po\u00e9sie d'une langue (ou m\u00eame d'une famille de langues) dont il n'est plus possible de les d\u00e9loger.\n\nDans mon oreille, j'entendis aussi la fusion dans la langue de deux antonymes, aube et cr\u00e9puscule : l'aube y \u00e9tait repr\u00e9sent\u00e9e par son nom propre, _albore_ , proche de l' _alba_ proven\u00e7ale, qui d\u00e9signe une variante du chant d'amour, celui de la s\u00e9paration des amants \u00e0 l'aube (qui est de toutes les po\u00e9sies). Et le cr\u00e9puscule faisait ombre \u00e0 travers le mot _serena_ , qui m'\u00e9voque le personnage espagnol m\u00e9di\u00e9val du _sereno_ , le guetteur et protecteur des nuits urbaines.\n\nLa neige cavalcantienne ne tombe pas, elle descend, avec une lenteur infinie, blancheur sans air, sans vent. Traduisant le deuxi\u00e8me vers, celui de la neige (ou plut\u00f4t me l'appropriant, pour un po\u00e8me), dans l'atmosph\u00e8re de l'image \u00e9voqu\u00e9e, celle du jardin d'aube hivernale pris de neige, j'en fis ceci : \u00ab _La neige blanche descendue sans vent. \u00bb_ Je voyais, autant que le mouvement de la neige s'\u00e9tablissant avec la lenteur d'un long d\u00e9casyllabe (pour lequel il m'avait paru n\u00e9cessaire, afin d'en marquer l'origine linguistique, de me servir de ce que la terminologie des manuels de versification, la \u00ab seconde rh\u00e9torique \u00bb, appelle \u00ab c\u00e9sure italienne \u00bb, tr\u00e8s peu repr\u00e9sent\u00e9e dans la po\u00e9sie en langue fran\u00e7aise), **la blancheur atteinte du sol, son repos silencieux et sourd ; il y a de la lumi\u00e8re \u00e0 l'int\u00e9rieur de cette neige, et elle illumine le vers entier ; neige et lumi\u00e8re viennent ensemble.**\n\n ** _Chi \u00e8 questa che v\u00e8n, ch'ogn'om la mira,_**\n\n ** _e fa tremar di claritate l'\u00e2re_**\n\ndit le deuxi\u00e8me couple de vers cavalcantiens que j'associe, en une fl\u00e8che unique, dans ma \u00ab conception \u00bb (\u00ab quelle est celle qui vient, que tous regardent \/ qui fait trembler l'air de clart\u00e9 \u00bb).\n\nLe deuxi\u00e8me de ces vers faisait trembler Ezra Pound. Dans le sonnet (c'est un sonnet) la r\u00e9ponse \u00e0 la question est \u00e9vidente : celle qui vient est la \u00ab dame \u00bb, la _donna_. Mais la fl\u00e8che que j'en re\u00e7us, po\u00e9tiquement (on dit, dans le discours math\u00e9matique dont j'ai l'habitude, la \u00ab source \u00bb d'une fl\u00e8che, et son \u00ab but \u00bb) avait aussi sa source dans la neige d'aube, au c\u0153ur de la neige blanche descendue sans vent sur le jardin, en cette neige.\n\nLa clart\u00e9 vibrante qu'elle portait \u00e9tait son nom : la **M\u00e9moire.**\n\n# CHAPITRE 2\n\n# Le Figuier\n\n* * *\n\n## 10 A la No\u00ebl de 1942 mon p\u00e8re m'emmena \u00e0 Toulon, chez son oncle Roubaud.\n\nA la No\u00ebl de 1942 mon p\u00e8re m'emmena \u00e0 Toulon, chez son oncle Roubaud. C'\u00e9tait \u00e0 Saint-Jean-du-Var, alors faubourg vivant sur la route d'Hy\u00e8res, enti\u00e8rement absorb\u00e9 par la ville maintenant, au 7 impasse des M\u00fbriers, o\u00f9 habitaient les trois seuls survivants de sa famille : un oncle, une tante, et une cousine (la cousine Laure). La maison est aujourd'hui encore en sa possession (pour peu de temps sans doute). J'\u00e9cris \u00ab **Saint-Jean-du-Var \u00bb, \u00ab impasse des M\u00fbriers \u00bb, et il se produit devant mes yeux une fuite de plumages gris tach\u00e9s de blanc, un mouvement de pintades ; en un m\u00eame instant s'\u00e9l\u00e8ve leur cri mouvement de pintades ; en un m\u00eame instant s'\u00e9l\u00e8ve leur cri mouvement\u00e9, semblable \u00e0 une cha\u00eene de puits rouill\u00e9e ; l'\u00e9parpillement confus, affol\u00e9, des volailles grises, leurs cris rouille, distants d'un demi-si\u00e8cle se r\u00e9pandent, ins\u00e9parablement cousus \u00e0 ces mots, lib\u00e9r\u00e9s par eux : \u00ab Saint-Jean-du-Var ; 7 impasse des M\u00fbriers \u00bb ; je vois aussi un poulailler, des lauriers, une all\u00e9e \u00e9troite.**\n\n **murmurants vers \u00e0 soie, \u00e0 fruits blancs ; et d'autres m\u00fbriers, aux fruits rouges explos\u00e9s sur le sol, comme de vin, comme de sang.** Mais je sais qu'ils n'ont rien \u00e0 faire l\u00e0. Je ne les refuse pas, cela m'est impossible, je ne peux pas les exciser de l'image pour les \u00ab adresser \u00bb ailleurs, dans le \u00ab fichier \u00bb mental auquel ils appartiennent raisonnablement, le fichier \u00ab Orangerie \u00bb (pour les m\u00fbriers blancs), le fichier \u00ab Delphes \u00bb (pour les rouges), par l'op\u00e9ration d'un _couper-coller_ de \u00ab traitement de texte \u00bb, pas plus que je ne peux retenir, immobiliser son mouvement-cri, infiniment plus rapide que l'\u00e9chapp\u00e9e originale des pintades dans l'all\u00e9e. **Elles jaillissent, se d\u00e9sordonnent, disparaissent ; et jaillissent, et crient, et disparaissent,** du puits de dix mille jours, de mon temps rouill\u00e9.\n\nL'oncle Roubaud, mon grand-oncle, avait un menton tr\u00e8s pointu, des poils de barbe blancs, piquants ; il s'appelait Denis. Denis est mon deuxi\u00e8me pr\u00e9nom. J'ai oubli\u00e9 celui de ma grand-tante. Je l'ai su, mais je l'ai oubli\u00e9. Les choses qui nous sont dites mais qui ne font pas partie de nous sont plus vite que les autres oubli\u00e9es. Il faudrait en garder une trace documentaire. En outre, depuis que j'ai commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 \u00e9roder mes souvenirs en les interrogeant pour les faire servir \u00e0 ce r\u00e9cit, il me semble que ma m\u00e9moire s'en trouve affect\u00e9e plus loin, plus profond\u00e9ment que je ne l'avais pr\u00e9vu. La mise en mots, m\u00eame rare, m\u00eame prudente et avare, de moments du pass\u00e9, qui les trouble, les d\u00e9forme, les gomme, agit aussi sur d'autres qui leur \u00e9taient, sans qu'on s'en rende compte, solidaires. J'aimais beaucoup la tante de Toulon, mais j'ai oubli\u00e9 son pr\u00e9nom.\n\nMon p\u00e8re fut, tr\u00e8s jeune, orphelin. Voil\u00e0 un mot qu'on n'emploie pour ainsi dire plus, un mot de \u00ab roman de gare \u00bb aux temps de Gambetta, de Clemenceau : orphelin de p\u00e8re et de m\u00e8re. Son p\u00e8re mourut quand il avait deux semaines. Il ne s'en souvient \u00e9videmment pas. Son p\u00e8re \u00e9tait postier & courait beaucoup. Les deux choses semblent li\u00e9es, et li\u00e9es, pas tout \u00e0 fait causalement, mais presque, au fait primordial, celui de la mort de son p\u00e8re, dans les r\u00e9cits du mien. Sa m\u00e8re \u00e9tait institutrice. Elle \u00e9tait n\u00e9e Garnier et mourut quand il avait cinq ans. Il vivait alors avec elle et avec sa grand-m\u00e8re Ciamponcin ; ou Chiamponcin, on ne sait. L'incertitude des noms a toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 pour mon p\u00e8re embl\u00e9matique de son \u00e9tat d'orphelin. Il revenait sans cesse en nous parlant sur ces figures devenues purement nominales, et m\u00eame pour la nomination, incertaines. Elles disparues, il alla vivre chez son grand-p\u00e8re Auguste ou Gustave Roubaud, le fr\u00e8re a\u00een\u00e9 de l'oncle, \u00e0 Saint-Jean-du-Var d\u00e9j\u00e0, sur la route de La Farl\u00e8de.\n\nL'incertitude onomastique, dans ce cas, se r\u00e9sout d'une mani\u00e8re tr\u00e8s particuli\u00e8re, qui est comme la signature de ce personnage original, mon arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re Roubaud : par un pr\u00e9nom-valise. Selon mon p\u00e8re, en effet, le p\u00e8re de son grand-p\u00e8re (il s'agit donc de la droite ligne paternelle), allant d\u00e9clarer la naissance de son fils \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat civil de Soli\u00e8s (Soli\u00e8s, le vrai village des cerises et des hauteurs, pas le plat Soli\u00e8s-ville, ni le Soli\u00e8s-pont de la vall\u00e9e) et se rendant compte brusquement qu'il avait omis de r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir \u00e0 la question du pr\u00e9nom, aurait r\u00e9pondu \u00e0 l'interrogation de l'employ\u00e9, apr\u00e8s s'\u00eatre gratt\u00e9 la t\u00eate : \u00ab Oh, Gustave ! \u00bb, ce que l'\u00e9criture administratrice et monumentaire aurait interpr\u00e9t\u00e9, \u00ab \u00e0 la lettre \u00bb de l'oralit\u00e9, en Augustave. Mon arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re ne s'appelait donc ni Auguste ni Gustave mais Augustave Roubaud.\n\nMa g\u00e9n\u00e9alogie directement transmise ne remonte pas plus loin, de ce c\u00f4t\u00e9-l\u00e0. Et de ce vigneron distrait et non conformiste des collines proven\u00e7ales, je \u00ab sais \u00bb seulement aussi qu'il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 le seul de son village, en 1852, \u00e0 voter contre les ambitions imp\u00e9riales du prince Louis-Napol\u00e9on, inaugurant ainsi une lign\u00e9e, qui est maintenant la mienne, r\u00e9publicaine avec une certaine propension aux positions minoritaires. Que mon p\u00e8re ait re\u00e7u, et s\u00e9lectionn\u00e9 pour nous \u00eatre dits ces deux \u00ab faits \u00bb, et ces deux faits seulement (et que je les aie retenus, moi, au d\u00e9triment de tant d'autres choses) pour en \u00e9laborer une \u00ab vie br\u00e8ve \u00bb de son arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re \u00e0 lui, pos\u00e9 \u00e0 l'origine t\u00eatue de sa branche familiale propre, pr\u00e9sente en raccourci une illustration mod\u00e8le de \u00ab rapport didactique \u00bb entre g\u00e9n\u00e9rations. D'une influence au moins \u00e9gale \u00e0 celle du patrimoine g\u00e9n\u00e9tique, ces r\u00e9cits d\u00e9terminent d\u00e9cisivement notre vision morale, et si j'en juge par mon exp\u00e9rience propre, ils influencent aussi notre parole, \u00e0 son tour transmise (et devenant une composante, par exemple, de l'\u00e9thos du **'grand incendie de Londres')**.\n\nD'une naissance aussi d\u00e9sinvolte et d'une h\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9 morale aussi peu inclin\u00e9e \u00e0 l'ob\u00e9issance, Augustave Roubaud s'\u00e9tait construit une vie rude : il \u00e9tait entr\u00e9 dans la marine de guerre et avait servi comme quartier-ma\u00eetre m\u00e9canicien sous l'amiral Courbet. Il \u00e9tait titulaire d'un exploit h\u00e9ro\u00efque, \u00e9tant rest\u00e9 seul et obstin\u00e9 avec ses machines dans son navire coul\u00e9 au canon, pr\u00eat \u00e0 exploser, dans l'eau jusqu'\u00e0 la poitrine, l'ayant ramen\u00e9, \u00e0 l'\u00e9tonnement g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, au port. Cela avait \u00e9t\u00e9 le moment \u00e0 la fois le plus glorieux et le plus amer de sa vie : f\u00e9licit\u00e9 et m\u00e9daill\u00e9 pour son courage, bl\u00e2m\u00e9 pour sa d\u00e9sob\u00e9issance (son refus d'ob\u00e9ir \u00e0 l'ordre d'\u00e9vacuation), son m\u00e9pris pour la hi\u00e9rarchie militaire en \u00e9tait rest\u00e9 absolu. Il n'a pas manqu\u00e9 de le transmettre \u00e0 sa descendance, avec d'innombrables ramifications et extensions.\n\nMon p\u00e8re passa en sa compagnie les ann\u00e9es de la Premi\u00e8re Guerre mondiale. Ce fut alors la seule pr\u00e9sence adulte dans sa vie : ses autres compagnons \u00e9taient les \u00e9coliers de sa bande, sa \u00ab raille \u00bb, comme on disait (le sens du mot \u00ab raille \u00bb \u00e9clair\u00e9 par la comptine : \u00ab cent dix-huit, cent dix-neuf \/ la raille, la raille, la raille \/ cent dix-huit, cent dix-neuf \/ la raille du cul du b\u0153uf \u00bb). Et Saint-Jean-du-Var n'\u00e9tait pas, mais pas du tout, un faubourg de bonne compagnie. Le grand-p\u00e8re \u00e9tait retrait\u00e9. Ses \u00e9conomies fondaient dans les achats gouvernementaux de canons pour combattre le \u00ab boche \u00bb. Sa retraite aussi se d\u00e9pr\u00e9ciait \u00e0 mesure que les tranch\u00e9es se creusaient dans le sol crayeux de la Champagne pouilleuse. Il allumait sa pipe avec de l'Emprunt russe et des bons Panama, tout en jardinant ses melons et ses tomates. Il ne discutait gu\u00e8re, n'intervenait pas beaucoup, brandissait parfois sa canne avec col\u00e8re en pr\u00e9sence de quelque insolence \u00e9norme de son petit-fils. Mais mon p\u00e8re courait vite. Il v\u00e9cut des ann\u00e9es de libert\u00e9 absolue, anarchique. Peu de v\u00eatements, peu de livres, peu de nourritures, peu d'affection, mais la mer.\n\nDe la rade au Mont-Faron s'\u00e9tendait un espace de rochers, d'\u00e9boulis, de sables, de rochers, de sentiers de douanier, de crevasses, de barques, d'\u00e9cume. On ne peut s'en faire aujourd'hui la moindre id\u00e9e, tant il \u00e9touffe d'autoroutes et de r\u00e9sidences secondaires. Pas \u00e0 pas, pendant ces jours d'avant le d\u00e9but de l'an 1943, j'ai parcouru ces traces, j'ai vu, entendu, ou r\u00eav\u00e9 le conte des moules, des filets de p\u00eacheurs, des poulpes, des crabes, des \u00ab arap\u00e8des \u00bb. J'ai entendu la l\u00e9gende des congres, des mur\u00e8nes, des loups, des m\u00e9duses, des dorades, des anchois, des sardines, des hu\u00eetres. Et surtout j'ai go\u00fbt\u00e9, mordu au diamant des coquillages, au concentr\u00e9 de l'\u00e2me d'iode des mers, l'invraisemblable, tourment\u00e9 et biscornu violet, dont la chair est de couleur jaune \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s tendre mais dont la saveur m'appara\u00eet bleue, violente, celui que personne ou presque ne mange tant son go\u00fbt est \u00e9trange, le pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 de mon p\u00e8re (les Catalans l'appellent bugnols, le \u00ab beignet \u00bb). Avec la guerre, la seconde, la pauvret\u00e9 de famine et de silence induite par la guerre, le paysage proven\u00e7al avait r\u00e9gress\u00e9 de trente ans en arri\u00e8re, et je voyais, pour une le\u00e7on parfaite, ces lieux presque semblables \u00e0 ce qu'ils avaient, pour lui, \u00e9t\u00e9.\n\n## 11 Je ne connaissais pas la mer.\n\nJe ne connaissais pas la mer. Je sais que je l'avais d\u00e9j\u00e0 vue, quatre ans plus t\u00f4t, mais je l'avais presque oubli\u00e9e. **Il faisait soleil, assez froid ; jours de l'hiver proven\u00e7al, ciel bleu tendre, pas trop de mistral, un tout petit nuage blanc, parfois, se penchant \u00e0 la gauche du mont Faron, timide, vite disparu ; la mer \u00e9tait plate ; c'\u00e9tait elle, c'\u00e9tait la mer ; je ne l'ai pas touch\u00e9e, pas vraiment ; de la main seulement, du pied ; froide.** En \u00ab excursion \u00bb, aux \u00ab Sablettes \u00bb, avec l'oncle, la tante, & cousine Laure, **un long moment je fus, je suis, allong\u00e9 sur le c\u00f4t\u00e9, une main entre joue et pierre froide (une jet\u00e9e ?), parall\u00e8lement \u00e0 l'eau, yeux ferm\u00e9s sous le poids du soleil doux dominical d'hiver, yeux ouverts, voyant ; \u00e0 la jointure de l'air et de la mer je vois la lumi\u00e8re bondissante de l'eau \u00e0 peine boug\u00e9e, de plus en plus loin l'eau toujours lumineuse, seulement lumineuse, saupoudr\u00e9e d'\u00e9tincelles, rien que surface \u00e9blouissante, r\u00e9it\u00e9r\u00e9e comme spontan\u00e9ment sous les paupi\u00e8res de nouveau ferm\u00e9es.** (\u00ab Le Soleil \u2013 a-t-on \u00e9crit il y a vingt-cinq si\u00e8cles : un feu intelligent qui s'allume de la mer. \u00bb)\n\nDu haut du mont Faron, la mer \u00e9tait immens\u00e9ment plate, joyeusement, somptueusement r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissante. J'ai eu plus tard, en Catalogne, \u00e0 Roda de Barra, en Italie, \u00e0 Ponza, de semblables visions de M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e quasi immobile, comme \u00e9mettant de la lumi\u00e8re vers un soleil ind\u00e9pendant de sa lueur, r\u00e9duit \u00e0 n'\u00eatre qu'une source seconde de rayons, moins universelle, moins exub\u00e9rante. Je n'ai pas conserv\u00e9 d'alors, de Toulon, de ce moment-l\u00e0, une \u00e9pure certaine de sa platitude incandescente. Mais l'image fut l\u00e0, sans doute. Avec elle chaque fois j'ai ressenti le d\u00e9sir intense d'une r\u00e9ciprocit\u00e9, d'effectuer le parcours inverse de la lumi\u00e8re et de voir, \u00e0 mon tour, depuis la mer r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissante, les plages, le mont, les collines : \u00eatre \u00e0 plat dans la mer, h\u00e9berg\u00e9 dans la distance.\n\nCette connaissance-l\u00e0 de la mer, qui na\u00eet de la nage loin, au large, m'appartient en propre. Je l'ai acquise bien plus tard, et je ne la dois \u00e0 personne. Mais l' **id\u00e9e de mer** , la nostalgie de la mer, m'est venue de mon p\u00e8re. Il l'a quitt\u00e9e \u00e0 vingt ans, quand il est arriv\u00e9 \u00e0 Paris, \u00e0 l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure, rue d'Ulm. Il n'y est presque jamais retourn\u00e9. Et, de toute fa\u00e7on, c'est pr\u00e9f\u00e9rable, si on pense \u00e0 ce que Toulon est devenu. La valorisation de la mer, et hi\u00e9rarchiquement de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e avant toute autre mer, avant les oc\u00e9ans, est en moi un de ces chromosomes \u00e9thiques h\u00e9rit\u00e9 de la branche g\u00e9n\u00e9alogique strictement paternelle, son \u00ab caract\u00e8re acquis \u00bb fix\u00e9 par l'arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re Augustave, puisque c'est lui qui descendit des collines, quittant le Soli\u00e8s des hauteurs, non pour s'\u00e9tablir dans une m\u00e9diocre petite plaine (Soli\u00e8s-pont !), mais pour conqu\u00e9rir l'unique plaine vraiment \u00ab pontique \u00bb, La Farl\u00e8de au nom de d\u00e9ferlement \u2013 la Mer. On dit la \u00ab Mar \u00bb. La voix toulonnaise prononce **\u00ab Marrr \u00bb** avec un \u00ab r \u00bb multiple projet\u00e9 sur la caverne d'ombres de la gorge, et la dire ainsi semble in\u00e9vitable, tant la c\u00f4te des Maures est rocheuse.\n\nDans son \u00e9chelle des valeurs culinaires, les \u00ab biens de la mer \u00bb l'emportent, et de tr\u00e8s loin. S'il appr\u00e9cia presque toutes les nourritures, \u00e9tendant, quand il en eut l'occasion, ses connaissances et ses app\u00e9tits dans le domaine des vins et fromages (surtout), s'il adopta r\u00e9solument la viande rouge, et m\u00eame la crue (effort indiscutable pour un M\u00e9diterran\u00e9en), s'il montra constamment de la curiosit\u00e9 pour les saveurs \u00e9tranges et \u00e9trang\u00e8res, ce fut, comme pour la philosophie et la litt\u00e9rature, une conqu\u00eate intellectuelle et culturelle, et aussi un effet de ses amiti\u00e9s normaliennes (son meilleur ami d'\u00c9cole \u00e9tait normand, dont la femme fut mon agnostique marraine). Mais la trinit\u00e9 supr\u00eame des poissons, des crustac\u00e9s et des coquillages resta souveraine pour lui. Et parmi eux on pourrait encore isoler et dessiner un blason en forme d'hexagramme, compos\u00e9 des tout premiers \u00eatres comestibles marins (premiers dans le temps des d\u00e9couvertes de l'enfance, aux ann\u00e9es quatorze), de ceux qu'il avait appris \u00e0 capturer ou pr\u00e9parer lui-m\u00eame, \u00e0 la main, au couteau, au feu : l'hu\u00eetre, la moule et le violet, le poulpe, l'anchois et la sardine.\n\nToutes ces nourritures \u00e9taient \u00ab peuple \u00bb, aux temps o\u00f9 cette distinction \u00e9tait nette (\u00ab peuple \u00bb ou aristocratiques : c'est un domaine o\u00f9, assez souvent, les go\u00fbts des extr\u00eames sociaux pouvaient se rejoindre). L'oncle, la tante et la cousine n'avaient gu\u00e8re de sympathie pour la sardine, dont l'imp\u00e9rialisme olfactif est insupportable \u00e0 toute m\u00e9nag\u00e8re bien ordonn\u00e9e. Ils \u00e9taient, de mani\u00e8res comme d'habitudes et de convictions, des petits-bourgeois toulonnais assez pauvres et immobiles, mais infiniment g\u00e9n\u00e9reux et sympathiques, en contradiction perp\u00e9tuelle avec leurs modes de vie et de pens\u00e9e. Ils adoraient et admiraient mon p\u00e8re ; et je les aimais. Mais en ce qui concerne la sardine et le poulpe (dont les mouvements les terrorisaient), ils rest\u00e8rent intransigeants.\n\nEn p\u00e9n\u00e9trant dans la famille de ma m\u00e8re (ce fut bien plus tard, et il \u00e9tait encore le quasi-voyou de Saint-Jean-du-Var, toujours assez impr\u00e9sentable : mais il \u00e9tait l'ami de Frantz, le fils, ce qui leva bien des obstacles), mon p\u00e8re dut livrer, au moins verbalement, une nouvelle fois la \u00ab lutte de classe culinaire \u00bb commenc\u00e9e avec sa tante, cette fois avec ses beaux-parents. On ne connaissait gu\u00e8re, dans la famille Molino, les nourritures marines que sous les esp\u00e8ces de la limande et du colin, qui plus est trait\u00e9es par long et consciencieux affadissement dans la casserole, \u00e0 l'eau bouillante. Ce sont des poissons, certes, qui peuvent \u00eatre gustativement estimables, mais arrang\u00e9s de cette fa\u00e7on, ils atteignent au comble de la fadeur et sont \u00e0 la sardine ce que l'endive est \u00e0 la salade, du point de vue du teint. Les coquillages \u00e9taient totalement inconnus ou bannis, les crustac\u00e9s hors de port\u00e9e des bourses d'instituteurs, les crabes innommables.\n\nDeux s\u00e9ries de causes se conjuguaient donc pour un refus bien \u00e9tabli :\n\n\u2013 la modestie des ressources financi\u00e8res familiales par rapport au co\u00fbt de la nourriture (il y a eu, on le sait, un changement consid\u00e9rable dans la r\u00e9partition des d\u00e9penses des m\u00e9nages en France, comme on dit sociologiquement : mes grands-parents n'auraient certes pas pu, sans de grands sacrifices, se payer, m\u00eame rarement, du homard ; en revanche, personne aujourd'hui dans la fonction publique, m\u00eame au plus haut de l'\u00e9chelle, ne pourrait se permettre le loyer actuel d'une maison telle que celle qu'ils habitaient) ;\n\n\u2013 l'id\u00e9ologie de l'hygi\u00e8ne et ses \u00ab raisonnements \u00bb di\u00e9t\u00e9tiques : toutes les denr\u00e9es maritimes (\u00e0 l'exception du colin et de la limande, d\u00e9j\u00e0 nomm\u00e9s (et de la sole, un luxe)) \u00e9taient, pour mes grands-parents, dangereuses. Ils n'avaient pas, \u00e0 vrai dire, enti\u00e8rement tort. En l'absence de moyens de r\u00e9frig\u00e9ration efficaces, les poissons circulaient encore assez mal, et la famille habitait \u00e0 Lyon. (En partie pour une raison semblable, la Provence ne connaissait alors que la viande tr\u00e8s cuite.) Il reste que la phobie de la moule, par exemple, dont le toucher, \u00e0 lui seul presque semblait-il, pouvait provoquer la typho\u00efde, allait bien au-del\u00e0 de ces simples consid\u00e9rations s\u00e9curitaires.\n\nLa moule, la sardine, \u00e9taient des nourritures excessives, impudentes & impolies. C'est face \u00e0 elles que se manifestait un vestige d\u00e9tourn\u00e9 de la peur dix-neuvi\u00e9miste des \u00ab classes dangereuses \u00bb, peur que, par ailleurs, mes grands-parents, aux id\u00e9es \u00ab avanc\u00e9es \u00bb, r\u00e9cusaient avec sinc\u00e9rit\u00e9 et \u00e9nergie, sans avoir pour autant des positions politiques r\u00e9volutionnaires. Et la sardine, au fond, peut \u00eatre consid\u00e9r\u00e9e comme l'extr\u00eame gauche des poissons. Pour justifier leur d\u00e9go\u00fbt ils ne s'abritaient que derri\u00e8re la pure raison hygi\u00e9nique. D'ailleurs, dans le cas de la sardine, la friture, tradition culinaire proven\u00e7ale, faisait intervenir l'huile, l'huile d'olive. Or l'huile d'olive \u00e9tait class\u00e9e par Raspail, un ma\u00eetre \u00e0 penser de mon grand-p\u00e8re, dans la cat\u00e9gorie des nourritures \u00ab lourdes \u00bb, s'opposant en cela strictement au beurre, dont la \u00ab l\u00e9g\u00e8ret\u00e9 \u00bb avait une saintet\u00e9 presque m\u00e9dicale. C'\u00e9tait une raison suppl\u00e9mentaire d'abstention. A ces deux raisons universelles et anonymes s'ajoutaient en outre :\n\n\u2013 pour ma grand-m\u00e8re les ordres imp\u00e9rieux de son \u00ab foie \u00bb (organe d'invention fran\u00e7aise) ;\n\n\u2013 pour mon grand-p\u00e8re les imp\u00e9ratifs d'une \u00e9ducation maternelle savoyarde qui avait d\u00e9finitivement orient\u00e9 ses pr\u00e9f\u00e9rences vers \u00ab le \u00bb plat supr\u00eame : le gratin dauphinois.\n\nMon p\u00e8re a r\u00e9ussi presque enti\u00e8rement la conversion de ma m\u00e8re, sans toutefois obtenir d'elle une adh\u00e9sion vraiment franche \u00e0 la moule et \u00e0 la sardine. C'est cependant l\u00e0 un r\u00e9sultat remarquable si l'on songe \u00e0 quel point les go\u00fbts culinaires sont difficiles \u00e0 bouger apr\u00e8s l'enfance, particuli\u00e8rement les d\u00e9go\u00fbts qui reposent sur la peur. Je crois bien qu'\u00e0 vingt ans ma m\u00e8re n'avait jamais m\u00eame aper\u00e7u une hu\u00eetre ouverte dans une assiette.\n\n## 12 Il n'avait pas, en tout cas, converti sa propre famille.\n\nIl n'avait pas, en tout cas, converti sa propre famille. Il la traitait avec une affection un peu ironique, la trace de forts d\u00e9saccords anciens visible sous la pol\u00e9mique enjou\u00e9e concernant les dangereux \u00ab fruits de mer \u00bb. Cela n'avait sans aucun doute pas \u00e9t\u00e9 de tout repos pour eux d'accueillir, \u00e0 la mort du grand-p\u00e8re Roubaud, ce gar\u00e7on violent, habitu\u00e9 \u00e0 n'en faire qu'\u00e0 sa t\u00eate, \u00e0 tirer les sonnettes, \u00e0 mettre des anguilles, des grenouilles ou m\u00eame des crabes dans les bo\u00eetes aux lettres des bonnes dames d\u00e9votes de Saint-Jean-du-Var (il avait douze ans), presque un \u00ab voyou \u00bb en somme, pour employer le vocabulaire de l'\u00e9poque. Et l'irruption de cet \u00e9l\u00e9ment perturbateur dans leur vie bien r\u00e9gl\u00e9e avait d\u00fb leur para\u00eetre d'autant plus inqui\u00e9tante qu'il y avait la cousine Laure, qui \u00e9tait \u00e9lev\u00e9e, elle, selon les meilleurs pr\u00e9ceptes, et pour laquelle on pouvait craindre la contagion.\n\nLe hasard, selon lui, a seul fait que mon p\u00e8re n'a pas opt\u00e9 pour l'autre voie qui se pr\u00e9sentait, et que choisirent les plus vifs, les plus d\u00e9lur\u00e9s de ses camarades d'\u00e9cole ou de jeu : celle de la d\u00e9linquance (une troisi\u00e8me \u00e9tant celle de la marine militaire : un de ses camarades de lyc\u00e9e \u00ab finit \u00bb amiral). Ce n'est pas la peur qui aurait pu le retenir, ni une soumission apprise aux r\u00e8gles de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9. Mais l'exemple autant que les discours sarcastiques de son grand-p\u00e8re s'unirent \u00e0 l'influence d'un instituteur qui d\u00e9cida de le pr\u00e9senter au concours des \u00ab Bourses \u00bb, qui lui permettait de faire des \u00e9tudes secondaires sans co\u00fbter excessivement d'argent \u00e0 une famille qui n'en avait pas beaucoup. C'\u00e9tait un bon calcul. D'ailleurs mon p\u00e8re n'aimait pas perdre. Il fut re\u00e7u, et alla au lyc\u00e9e.\n\nCousine Laure ne r\u00e9pondait pas aux attentes (d'inspiration po\u00e9tique) qu'aurait pu susciter son pr\u00e9nom. Elle \u00e9tait, quand je la connus, plus tr\u00e8s jeune, un peu d\u00e9\u00e7ue et r\u00e9sign\u00e9e, un peu moustachue aussi (elle ne fut jamais tr\u00e8s belle). Elle ne d\u00e9passa pas le \u00ab certificat d'\u00e9tudes \u00bb, n'alla jamais au lyc\u00e9e (o\u00f9 les filles n'imaginaient m\u00eame pas pouvoir se rendre), n'apprit aucun m\u00e9tier. Elle eut en revanche une s\u00e9rieuse \u00e9ducation en couture et en cuisine proven\u00e7ale par sa m\u00e8re (selon les pr\u00e9ceptes du grand Reboul). Et son p\u00e8re, mon grand-oncle, lui paya d'indispensables le\u00e7ons de piano. Puis elle grandit et attendit, vivant toujours chez ses parents, sortant peu, sans grandes vell\u00e9it\u00e9s d'ind\u00e9pendance. Elle lut les romans de Georges Ohnet, & _La Petite Illustration_. Le temps passa.\n\nLe temps passa mais l'unique issue, le mariage, ne vint point. Ses parents vieillirent, puis moururent. Leurs \u00e9conomies s'\u00e9taient d\u00e9valu\u00e9es. Elle dut chercher du travail. Elle le trouva dans une garderie d'enfants. Elle y fut, somme toute, assez heureuse : les petits l'aimaient, car elle \u00e9tait douce, calme, et les aimait en retour. Elle loua les \u00e9tages sup\u00e9rieurs de la maison du 7 impasse des M\u00fbriers \u00e0 des demoiselles d'\u00e2ge moyen, des coll\u00e8gues c\u00e9libataires comme elle, prit sa retraite dans la m\u00eame maison, acquit une t\u00e9l\u00e9vision. Ses anciennes locataires y sont encore (elle est morte \u00e0 son tour), et payent aujourd'hui \u00e0 mon p\u00e8re un loyer \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s inchang\u00e9 depuis 1960.\n\nA la mort de cousine Laure, mon p\u00e8re a retrouv\u00e9 les quelques \u00ab effets \u00bb survivants de son grand-p\u00e8re, son h\u00e9ritage, en somme : il y a quelques papiers, qu'il m'a remis l'ann\u00e9e derni\u00e8re : le \u00ab livret militaire \u00bb avec toutes les \u00ab campagnes \u00bb du vieux marin Augustave, principalement (c'est bien ainsi qu'on l'appelait, je l'ai lu !) et les volumes de l' _Histoire socialiste_ de Jean Jaur\u00e8s. C'\u00e9tait un \u00ab rouge \u00bb, comme son p\u00e8re \u00e0 lui. J'ai beaucoup aim\u00e9 cousine Laure, et la Tante, et l'Oncle, m\u00eame si je n'ai pas \u00e9t\u00e9 souvent les voir \u00e0 Toulon : je les ai aim\u00e9s moins que mon grand-p\u00e8re maternel sans doute, mais plus que ma grand-m\u00e8re, certainement. A la No\u00ebl de 1942, j'\u00e9tais heureux et curieux de les rencontrer. La maison m'enchanta, **l'\u00e9parpillement enrou\u00e9 des pintades, le mont Faron, les rochers, le scintillement lointain du soleil au large, et partout la mer, ses eaux immenses, lumineuses, et vertes ; bleues, vertes.**\n\nLa suite de l'histoire de mon p\u00e8re me semble comporter une large dose d'in\u00e9vitabilit\u00e9. Une fois engag\u00e9 dans la voie des \u00e9tudes la seule v\u00e9ritable issue \u00e9tait, cette fois, de les poursuivre. Le m\u00eame hasard providentiel et r\u00e9publicain se reproduisit apr\u00e8s le baccalaur\u00e9at. Pr\u00eat \u00e0 entrer dans la vie active sur les traces de son propre p\u00e8re, par le \u00ab concours des Postes \u00bb, il obtint, comme la premi\u00e8re fois, une bourse : elle l'envoya \u00e0 Marseille, dans une classe dite de \u00ab premi\u00e8re sup\u00e9rieure \u00bb, ou encore, plus famili\u00e8rement, \u00ab hypokh\u00e2gne \u00bb. Il entra trois ans plus tard, en 1927, apr\u00e8s un premier \u00e9chec, \u00e0 l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure, rue d'Ulm. Ma m\u00e8re, venue de la m\u00eame \u00ab hypokhagne \u00bb marseillaise (elle alla en \u00ab kh\u00e2gne \u00bb \u00e0 Lyon, au lyc\u00e9e du Parc), fut re\u00e7ue au m\u00eame concours que lui. (Il y eut, ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne exceptionnel pour l'\u00e9poque, trois demoiselles rue d'Ulm cette ann\u00e9e-l\u00e0.)\n\nS'il avait, depuis la mort de son grand-p\u00e8re, beaucoup progress\u00e9 dans les \u00e9tudes, appris du latin, des math\u00e9matiques, de la philosophie m\u00eame, il ne devait pas avoir \u00e9norm\u00e9ment vari\u00e9 dans son caract\u00e8re. Et tel il a \u00e9t\u00e9 toute sa vie : violent, ind\u00e9pendant, difficile, audacieux, intransigeant, ironique, obstin\u00e9, raisonneur, supportant difficilement la contradiction, peu influen\u00e7able, ne reconnaissant aucune autorit\u00e9 autre qu'intellectuelle. D\u00e9barquant du train gare de Lyon pour passer l'oral du concours d'entr\u00e9e \u00e0 \u00ab l'\u00c9cole \u00bb, il fut dans l'impossibilit\u00e9 de se faire comprendre des autochtones auxquels il demanda son chemin, tant son accent, l'accent faubourien du Toulon des ann\u00e9es quinze, aussi rude, \u00ab hirsute \u00bb et d'arri\u00e8re-gorge que le pur accent proven\u00e7al d'Arles (qui \u00e9tait celui de son ami Paul Geniet, par exemple) est, au contraire, clair, \u00ab peign\u00e9 \u00bb. Et il dit avoir adopt\u00e9 alors, pour toutes les interrogations du concours, une tactique presque d\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9e : l'imitation de la voix d'un camarade lyonnais de sa classe qui lui avait sembl\u00e9 pendant l'ann\u00e9e scolaire ridicule et \u00ab pointue \u00bb au possible, mais mieux accessible sans doute aux barbares parisiens.\n\nS'il transigea ainsi, peu \u00e0 peu, sur la violence de son accent (il lui revenait toujours, plus tard, quand il \u00e9tait en col\u00e8re), il n'abandonna aucune autre de ses caract\u00e9ristiques. Et les autorit\u00e9s de l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure, puis les autorit\u00e9s militaires et les jurys d'agr\u00e9gation entr\u00e8rent en conflit avec lui \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s aussi souvent, je pense, que les professeurs, censeurs ou surveillants d'\u00e9tude du lyc\u00e9e de Toulon puis de celui de Marseille. La lutte contre les Allemands travestis en nazis fut, en un sens, simplement la forme la plus pouss\u00e9e de cet esprit de contradiction. L'enjeu \u00e9tait plus \u00e9lev\u00e9, moins strictement personnel sans doute, mais la disposition d'esprit \u00e9tait la m\u00eame.\n\nIl n'\u00e9tait pourtant pas un r\u00e9volt\u00e9 solitaire. Il fut, d\u00e8s son plus jeune \u00e2ge, un supporter assidu de l'\u00e9quipe de rugby de Toulon (il l'est encore). Ce fut pour lui le jeu par excellence, qu'il pratiqua avec constance, m\u00eame dans un environnement aussi peu favorable que la rue d'Ulm (il y jouait encore pendant la guerre avec ses \u00e9l\u00e8ves du lyc\u00e9e de Carcassonne). Il avait r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 susciter la cr\u00e9ation d'une \u00e9quipe de l'\u00c9cole, qu'il anima plusieurs ann\u00e9es, b\u00e2tissant parfois ses m\u00eal\u00e9es pour la satisfaction de contraintes d'une nature que je qualifierai de pr\u00e9-oulipienne : un jour il disposait une troisi\u00e8me ligne compos\u00e9e uniquement de chauves, par exemple, ou bien il choisissait deux \u00ab piliers \u00bb nomm\u00e9s respectivement B\u00e9lier et Taureau. Son estime pour Samuel Beckett n'attendit pas la gloire de l'auteur de _En attendant Godot_ , mais eut pour origine les remarquables qualit\u00e9s de demi de m\u00eal\u00e9e dont celui-ci fit preuve, \u00ab lecteur \u00bb irlandais \u00e0 l'ENS, enr\u00f4l\u00e9 par mon p\u00e8re dans l'\u00e9quipe normalienne, lors d'un match difficile contre l'AS Police de Paris. Ce match fut si terrible (les policiers \u00e9taient \u00e0 la fois plus entra\u00een\u00e9s et s\u00e9rieusement brutaux) que S.B. sortit du terrain boueux l\u00e9g\u00e8rement \u00ab sonn\u00e9 \u00bb, secouant la t\u00eate et disant avec conviction : \u00ab _Never again ! never again ! \u00bb_ \u00ab Quel dommage ! \u00bb ajouta mon p\u00e8re quand il nous fit le r\u00e9cit de ce match : \u00ab Il avait la _vista_ ! \u00bb (Je suis tr\u00e8s heureux de pouvoir, par ce r\u00e9cit, ajouter ma pierre (une v\u00e9ritable pierre d'angle selon moi) \u00e0 l'\u00e9difice majestueux de la critique beckettienne.)\n\n## 13 Sur l'arri\u00e8re de la maison, le figuier.\n\n **Sur l'arri\u00e8re de la maison, il y avait une courette, minuscule, o\u00f9 je n'aper\u00e7ois rien que le ciel tr\u00e8s bleu (il m'appara\u00eet noir), et un figuier ; la courette regardant l'int\u00e9rieur de la maison par une fen\u00eatre basse** (tr\u00e8s basse sans doute, puisque je la vois telle) **\u00e9clairait la cuisine, et sur le sol, les tomettes octogonales, leur pavage irr\u00e9gulier, et surtout fractur\u00e9, rompu ; car le figuier, qui \u00e9tait comme adoss\u00e9 au mur, l'embrassait avec une fougue telle qu'il en** **disjoignait** **les pierres du mur et que ses racines s'\u00e9taient fray\u00e9 un chemin jusqu'au v\u00eatement color\u00e9 du sol ; une atmosph\u00e8re particuli\u00e8re entoure cette image : fascination, incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9, presque peur ; qu'un arbre ait une telle force, une telle obstination, un tel pouvoir de destruction de ce qui est le plus solide, le mur d'une maison, son sol couvert de la belle g\u00e9om\u00e9trie ordonn\u00e9e, vernie, rouge, des tomettes.**\n\n **Ce figuier \u00e9tait un beau figuier ; je vois ses larges feuilles \u00e9paisses, leur vert sombre, mat, nervures vein\u00e9es.** Car le figuier est un bel arbre. Je l'aime. Bien souvent ainsi en Provence, dans l'Aude, on le plante adoss\u00e9 aux murs, tout pr\u00e8s (\u00e0 la Tuilerie, chez mes parents, un figuier \u00e9tait \u00e9tabli \u00e0 droite de la porte d'entr\u00e9e, celle qui donnait sur la route, que l'explosion de la circulation automobile sur la Route minervoise a condamn\u00e9e, et du m\u00eame coup l'arbre, qui en est mort). **J'ai en moi l'id\u00e9e de son odeur, l'odeur de ses larges feuilles : ni agr\u00e9able (parfum), ni d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able, en aucune fa\u00e7on repoussante ; mais une odeur cependant \u00e9vidente, tenace, corporelle.** Le figuier est un corps vivant. Le mouvement invisible qui le faisait forcer son entr\u00e9e dans la cuisine, de dessous la terre, lui donnait \u00e0 mes yeux une animation vitale, une v\u00e9ritable \u00e2me animale. C'est d'elle qu'il tenait son pouvoir de disjonction.\n\nCar la place qu'il occupe ainsi (qu'on lui choisit) est presque une place d'animal familier : de chien ou de chat, proche des nourritures, de la cuisine, du foyer, proche du puits aussi, autrefois : entre le feu et l'eau. Familier, il prot\u00e8ge, mais en m\u00eame temps menace : le mur de destruction, de l\u00e9zardes (il y a des l\u00e9zards aussi dans ces murs), le sol d'effondrement, de d\u00e9sordre (les fourmis avancent en \u00ab cinqui\u00e8me colonne \u00bb dans les sillons des tomettes fractur\u00e9es). Ses intentions sont incertaines : tant\u00f4t b\u00e9n\u00e9fiques, tant\u00f4t, les apr\u00e8s-midi d'orage par exemple, sinistres, pr\u00e9monitoires : d'une ambigu\u00eft\u00e9 divine, en somme. D'o\u00f9 lui vient cette force, cet _impetus_ ligneux, la pression comme consciente, irr\u00e9sistible, qu'il exerce sur les pierres, sur leur coh\u00e9sion, sur le liant de la ma\u00e7onnerie ? Quel est le sens de cette impulsion d\u00e9rangeante et pourquoi, dans ces conditions, l'avait-on mis pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment l\u00e0 ? Quel d\u00e9mon l'habitait, d\u00e9guis\u00e9 en Dieu lare ?\n\nEntre le feu (le soleil, le ciel) et l'eau (le puits, la mer), entre la flamme et la vague, par la vitre (de la fen\u00eatre, basse, sur l'arri\u00e8re de la cuisine), l'image-odeur-menace du figuier est entr\u00e9e, alors, brusquement, dans ma \u00ab d\u00e9duction \u00bb \u00e0 partir du r\u00eave, angoisseuse et attirante, caract\u00e9ristique d'un des dix styles qui partagent mes mots, le \u00ab style pour dompter les d\u00e9mons \u00bb, le _rakki tai_. Le **figuier** montrait, dans ce style, une maison, la maison de l'impasse des M\u00fbriers, la maison qui \u00e9tait ma maison paternelle (et qui, cependant, ne lui appartenait pas). (Elle est \u00e0 lui aujourd'hui, par l'h\u00e9ritage de cousine Laure. Et c'est pourquoi, peut-\u00eatre, je ne peux me r\u00e9soudre \u00e0 mettre en \u0153uvre la d\u00e9cision de la vendre, rendue n\u00e9cessaire par la menace de ruine des b\u00e2timents inoccup\u00e9s qui p\u00e8se sur la Tuilerie.)\n\nLe figuier (image) s'entrelace \u00e0 l'image du **r\u00eave** dans la d\u00e9duction fictive qui organise toute ma narration. Le figuier (r\u00e9el, r\u00e9volu) s'enchev\u00eatrait, lui, au mur de la cuisine. L'image d'enfance de ce figuier en suscite plusieurs autres, rejoint, par une cha\u00eene que je d\u00e9fais ici en moments distincts, l'image nodale qui donne sens et nom \u00e0 une **image-foyer** de la branche pr\u00e9sente : une nomination, l'invention, ancienne, enfantine, d'un mot, **\u00ab oranjeaunie \u00bb** , qui n'est pas dans la langue, que j'impose \u00e0 la langue, que je lui ai impos\u00e9 : elle est contemporaine de la cha\u00eene des souvenirs. Dans la d\u00e9duction, elle appara\u00eet, une autre fois, explicitement, \u00e0 la suite d'un progr\u00e8s de la d\u00e9duction dans son sens direct, li\u00e9e \u00e0 ce qui en est un des trois **n\u0153uds** , une d\u00e9cision, la d\u00e9cision (les deux autres \u00e9tant le r\u00eave, et le **Projet** ). Parce que la d\u00e9cision elle-m\u00eame est dans le \u00ab style du _rakki tai_ \u00bb, est destin\u00e9e \u00e0 la lutte contre les d\u00e9mons. Mais je ne peux pas encore ici d\u00e9senchev\u00eatrer cette image plus avant.\n\nLa part b\u00e9n\u00e9fique, ordinaire et rassurante, du figuier est aussi celle du fruit. En des temps vou\u00e9s \u00e0 la faim, la figue, qui \u00e9chappait au registre sinistre des \u00ab cartes de rationnement \u00bb, \u00e9tait une source merveilleuse de sucre, comme un condens\u00e9 d'une qualit\u00e9 alors essentielle au prestige du sucre : sa raret\u00e9, qu'il partageait avec les \u00ab mati\u00e8res grasses \u00bb ; l'indication accompagnant les bo\u00eetes de fromage ou de petits suisses : _20 %, 40 % de mati\u00e8res grasses_ , qui aujourd'hui est destin\u00e9e \u00e0 valoriser les petits chiffres (arguments de vente en faveur des \u00ab r\u00e9gimes \u00bb, le chiffre supr\u00eame \u00e9tant 0 %) n'est apparue qu'\u00e0 la sortie de la guerre et, les premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, avant le retour \u00e0 l'abondance, donnait l'avantage commercial au contraire \u00e0 la quantit\u00e9. Les r\u00e9cits parentaux de \u00ab l'avant-guerre \u00bb, dont nous \u00e9tions si avides, comportaient la description r\u00e9clam\u00e9e et r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9e des nourritures qui avaient disparu de l'horizon de la France urbaine, d\u00e8s l'hiver 40. Particuli\u00e8rement favoris \u00e9taient le beurre et les desserts. Or les figuiers promettaient, comme tous les fruits, du sucre, du sucre savoureux.\n\nEt, \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence de fruits alors strictement mythiques comme l'orange, ou la banane, ou d'autres quasiment absents des r\u00e9gions audoises, comme la pomme ou la framboise (les myrtilles si sombres des Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es, si bleues, comme couvertes d'une bu\u00e9e de bleu, avaient aussi cette qualit\u00e9-l\u00e0 : \u00eatre fruits exotiques, \u00eatre sucre), le figuier, comme la vigne, \u00e9tait sucre \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat libre, sans contraintes administratives, sans intervention aucune des \u00ab Autorit\u00e9s d'occupation \u00bb. De plus la figue, dont la p\u00e9riode ordinaire est de quelques semaines ant\u00e9rieure aux vendanges, se prolonge \u00e0 d'autres moments de l'ann\u00e9e, soit par la figue de grenier, qui s\u00e8che sur des \u00ab claies \u00bb, sur la paille, soit, plus attrayante encore, sur l'arbre m\u00eame, par cette invention de la part bienveillante dans la nature figui\u00e8re, la figue-fleur. Comme le figuier est un arbre pauvre, sans distinction, poussant sur les _restanques_ , au bord des chemins, les figues noires, les figues vertes, n'\u00e9taient pas aussi surveill\u00e9es que les cerises et \u00e9taient assez accessibles \u00e0 des enfants un peu d\u00e9gourdis.\n\nOn aurait pu penser aussi aux confitures. Pendant les premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de notre installation dans le Minervois, quand le \u00ab pur sucre \u00bb comme le \u00ab 100 % de mati\u00e8res grasses \u00bb restait l'id\u00e9al culinaire de notre g\u00e9n\u00e9ration, nous nous sommes livr\u00e9s \u00e0 de v\u00e9ritables orgies de confiture. Et parmi elles, pour des raisons \u00e0 la fois intrins\u00e8ques (j'aime ce go\u00fbt) et externes, obliques, pour tout ce que l'id\u00e9e de figuier implique, que je dis pr\u00e9sentement, r\u00e9gnait la confiture de figues enti\u00e8res. Chaque fruit y \u00e9tait transform\u00e9 en un cristal de confiture, et il se d\u00e9vorait entier (propri\u00e9t\u00e9 partag\u00e9e par sa rivale, la confiture de tomates vertes qui avait, elle, l'originalit\u00e9 de n'\u00eatre pas redondance, insistance sur la nature sucr\u00e9e du fruit, mais paradoxe, puisque la tomate vivante ne se mange pas ainsi). H\u00e9las, la confiture de figues n'\u00e9tait pas possible alors : car pour la confiture, il faut du sucre. Et les essais de substitution, au sucre de raisin, ne r\u00e9ussirent jamais.\n\nMais je ne connaissais pas encore, il me semble, la version maximale de l'excellence de la figue, qui \u00e9tait pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment une caract\u00e9ristique mille fois d\u00e9crite des merveilles de l'enfance de mon p\u00e8re, sur les pentes rocheuses du Faron (figues de maraude, bien \u00e9videmment, le plus souvent, mais pr\u00e9sente aussi au \u00ab jardin \u00bb du grand-p\u00e8re, \u00e0 La Farl\u00e8de, don de la terre familiale perdue) : j'ai nomm\u00e9 (je vais nommer, en fait : cette expression, qui anticipe la nomination, est bizarre), j'ai nomm\u00e9 la **figue penn\u00e8que**. Elle qui, confite sur l'arbre m\u00eame, dans la chaleur de fin ao\u00fbt ou du d\u00e9but de septembre, pr\u00e9sentant \u00e0 la fois la saveur vivante du fruit et l'extr\u00eame concentration de douceur de la confiture, est la figue m\u00eame, sa figure ang\u00e9lique, sa saintet\u00e9 gustative. Quand j'ai connu la figue penn\u00e8que, dans les Corbi\u00e8res, \u00e0 l'automne de 1943, je n'ai pas \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9\u00e7u.\n\n## 14 Un jour des ann\u00e9es cinquante, au repas du soir,\n\nUn jour des ann\u00e9es cinquante, au repas du soir, mon p\u00e8re nous fit le r\u00e9cit d'une rencontre surprenante, dont voici \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s la teneur : son amour non d\u00e9menti des choses de la mer donnait \u00e0 sa fr\u00e9quentation du march\u00e9 Secr\u00e9tan, dans le XIXe arrondissement de Paris (le plus proche de la rue Jean-Menans, o\u00f9 nous habitions) un point d'ancrage (si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi) privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 : la poissonnerie. Sa poissonnerie pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e \u00e9tait tenue par un couple de Bretons et mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tait g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement servi par l'\u00e9pouse, Mme La Ba\u00efs (je ne vous garantis pas l'orthographe du nom), qui \u00e9tait une encore assez jeune, forte (mais mince), blonde et vive femme, assez r\u00e9serv\u00e9e et surtout pr\u00e9cise dans son vocabulaire, et qui avait de l'estime pour mon p\u00e8re, \u00e0 la fois pour la fr\u00e9quence, l'abondance et la vari\u00e9t\u00e9 de ses achats sous les trois esp\u00e8ces (poissons, coquillages, crustac\u00e9s), mais aussi, d'une mani\u00e8re moins mercantile, pour sa comp\u00e9tence g\u00e9n\u00e9rale en ce qui concerne la mer. Ils avaient d'int\u00e9ressants \u00e9changes sur l'onomastique, sans oublier, bien s\u00fbr, les digressions sur la cuisine. (Les noms des esp\u00e8ces marines varient beaucoup, presque \u00e0 chaque tournant de cap oc\u00e9anique : mon p\u00e8re tenait fermement \u00e0 donner \u00e0 chaque poisson son nom v\u00e9ritable, presque un nom propre, c'est-\u00e0-dire celui qu'il portait dans ses eaux d'origine. Il se renseignait sur l'onomastique bretonne, et, l'ayant \u00e9claircie \u00e0 sa satisfaction, lui opposait celle, jamais oubli\u00e9e, de Toulon.)\n\nMme La Ba\u00efs avait une autre cliente, d'une large cinquantaine, qui se trouvait parfois devant l'\u00e9tal en m\u00eame temps que mon p\u00e8re et que celui-ci avait identifi\u00e9e comme Toulonnaise par son accent et son mode d'adresse \u00e0 la poissonni\u00e8re, qu'elle appelait \u00ab MaBelle \u00bb. Et c'est le surnom qui lui fut donn\u00e9 en retour, dans ma famille, \u00e0 la suite du m\u00e9morable incident que je vais, \u00e0 la suite de mon p\u00e8re, rapporter, \u00ab MaBelle \u00bb \u00e9tait unijambiste. Elle s'appuyait fortement sur sa jambe de bois pour soupeser longuement les dorades, en femme qui a depuis longtemps appris \u00e0 vivre avec son infirmit\u00e9, et qui a gard\u00e9, en d\u00e9pit d'elle, une robuste vision de l'existence. Ce jour-l\u00e0, il pleuvait tenacement, et \u00ab MaBelle \u00bb tint \u00e0 signaler l'effet qui en r\u00e9sultait pour elle dans la r\u00e9gion fronti\u00e8re entre sa chair propre et celle du bois, ce qu'elle confirma par une \u00ab monstration \u00bb \u00e0 l'intention de mon p\u00e8re, de Mme La Bais et des autres clients momentan\u00e9ment pr\u00e9sents, en soulevant une robe noire jusqu'\u00e0 la hauteur de sa cuisse, sectionn\u00e9e un peu au-dessus du genou.\n\nA ce moment il se fit dans l'esprit de mon p\u00e8re, c'est ainsi qu'il nous le pr\u00e9senta, une sorte d'illumination. Sans m\u00eame y r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir il dit \u00e0 \u00ab MaBelle \u00bb : \u00ab C'est en 1918, en essayant d'attraper le tramway, \u00e0 Toulon, que vous avez eu votre accident. \u00bb C'\u00e9tait exact. Il avait **vu** , \u00e0 cet instant, tr\u00e8s pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment la sc\u00e8ne, comment la jolie jeune fille d'alors \u00e9tait devenue toute rouge, mais n'avait pas dit un mot, pas pouss\u00e9 un cri, pendant qu'on se pr\u00e9cipitait autour d'elle, pour arr\u00eater le sang qui jaillissait. Par un cheminement obscur du souvenir, \u00e0 plus de trente ans de distance, l'identification invraisemblablement s'\u00e9tait faite : que ce f\u00fbt \u00e0 ce moment-l\u00e0 pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, voil\u00e0 ce qui nous stup\u00e9fia tous (il est vrai que, s'il s'\u00e9tait tromp\u00e9, rien de tout cela n'aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 surprenant, et il ne nous en aurait peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame pas parl\u00e9. Tel est le paradoxe des co\u00efncidences).\n\nCe qui l'avait \u00e9tonn\u00e9 peut-\u00eatre plus encore, c'est la mani\u00e8re dont MaBelle avait accueilli cette identification surprenante, version non orthodoxe de ce que le roman populaire d'autrefois appelait \u00ab la voix du sang \u00bb : par une absence totale de surprise. Elle s'\u00e9tait comport\u00e9e comme si rien n'\u00e9tait plus naturel, comme s'il \u00e9tait in\u00e9vitable que ce monsieur, qu'elle ne connaissait pas, ait eu un souvenir aussi net de cet \u00e9pisode de sa vie. Le moment de l'accident, qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 sans aucun doute un moment essentiel, tragique, bouleversant et inoubliable de son existence, faisait tellement partie d'elle-m\u00eame qu'il en excluait toute curiosit\u00e9 externe. Telle fut une des hypoth\u00e8ses que nous agit\u00e2mes pour nous expliquer son comportement, forme apr\u00e8s tout seulement extr\u00eame d'une disposition mentale assez r\u00e9pandue : il y a des gens, nous en connaissons tous, qui transportent d'une mani\u00e8re tellement solipsiste leur monde avec eux, qui sont si intimement et inconsciemment convaincus qu'il est le seul \u00ab monde possible \u00bb, qu'ils vous parlent, la premi\u00e8re fois qu'ils vous voient, alors que vous venez juste d'entrer dans leur champ de vision, comme si vous \u00e9tiez vous-m\u00eames inclus dans celui de toute leur vie, _ipso facto_ , en devenant objet proche, et par cons\u00e9quent devez conna\u00eetre dans tous leurs d\u00e9tails les circonstances des \u00e9v\u00e9nements dont ils vous parlent, les noms des personnages qui y sont mentionn\u00e9s, avec toutes leurs g\u00e9n\u00e9alogies. C'est ce que je proposerai d'appeler \u00ab l'esprit de clocher de soi-m\u00eame \u00bb.\n\nIl ne fut pas n\u00e9cessaire de rappeler, dans la discussion qui suivit, puisque nous le savions tous, que l'intensit\u00e9 du souvenir de l'accident dont mon p\u00e8re avait fait preuve, lui permettant de \u00ab reconna\u00eetre \u00bb instantan\u00e9ment, stimul\u00e9 par la vision de la cicatrice, en la truculente et presque sexag\u00e9naire MaBelle la jeune, jolie et courageuse Toulonnaise d'autrefois, n'\u00e9tait pas due seulement au fait que la sc\u00e8ne initiale s'\u00e9tait produite sous les yeux d'un enfant de onze ans, mais \u00e0 cet autre fait qu'il avait lui aussi, \u00e0 cette \u00e9poque, \u00e9t\u00e9 victime d'un accident, moins grave certes, mais dont le r\u00e9sultat avait \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9galement une amputation. Il est \u00e0 vrai dire presque miraculeux, \u00e9tant donn\u00e9 la vie \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s enti\u00e8rement autonome qu'il avait men\u00e9e en compagnie de son grand-p\u00e8re, que cet accident-l\u00e0 ait \u00e9t\u00e9 le seul :\n\nIl avait voulu fouiller sous une lourde pierre. La pierre \u00e9tait retomb\u00e9e et l'index de sa main droite avait \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9cras\u00e9 : il y manque depuis deux phalanges. **Je vois ce qui reste du doigt, court, arrondi et lisse ;** c'est une image certainement tr\u00e8s ancienne, et tr\u00e8s persistante dans son \u00e9tat d'origine, car j'ai toujours une l\u00e9g\u00e8re surprise de le revoir, en vrai, contemporainement, de dimensions r\u00e9elles beaucoup plus petites que je ne pensais, quand je le regarde aujourd'hui. (Je parlerai ailleurs de mon propre accident \u00e0 la main, \u00e0 la main droite \u00e9galement.) Quant \u00e0 la pierre coupable, c'est une pierre terrestre, j'en suis s\u00fbr. Je l'imagine \u00e9norme, en d\u00e9s\u00e9quilibre trompeur sur les pentes du Faron, cette montagne qui est une divinit\u00e9 toulonnaise \u00e0 la fois tut\u00e9laire et mal\u00e9fique, comme le figuier divin, comme toutes les divinit\u00e9s : capable de l\u00e9zards, de couleuvres, de p\u00eaches de vigne et de cerises, mais aussi de pi\u00e8ges, comme celui qui s'\u00e9tait referm\u00e9 sur le doigt de mon p\u00e8re.\n\nOn aurait pu s'attendre plut\u00f4t \u00e0 un accident maritime. Les criques rocheuses \u00e9taient habit\u00e9es d'une vie redoutable (elle m'apparaissait telle, \u00e0 moi qui ne connaissais des dessous de l'eau que ceux d'une rivi\u00e8re, l'Aude) : congres, mur\u00e8nes, crabes, poulpes (aux dimensions magnifi\u00e9es dans mon imagination par la lecture des _Travailleurs de la mer_ de Victor Hugo, o\u00f9 figure, sorte de _remake_ du po\u00e8me anglo-saxon, _\u00ab Beowulf \u00bb_ , une bataille \u00e9pique du h\u00e9ros avec un d\u00e9mon-pieuvre), ou encore l'embrassement urticant de la m\u00e9duse, son glissement sournois, iris\u00e9 comme un film d'essence \u00e0 la surface d'une eau dormante, sans omettre les risques des plong\u00e9es, de la perfide \u00ab ivresse des profondeurs \u00bb, ou ceux de la vague subite que la temp\u00eate lance dans la grotte o\u00f9 le nageur inconscient s'est aventur\u00e9. La chute de la pierre ne fut-elle pas la revanche in\u00e9luctable de la montagne ancestrale (Soli\u00e8s) pour son abandon par la tribu ?\n\nJe ne sais plus ce qu'il esp\u00e9rait trouver sous cette pierre (des crabes peut-\u00eatre) si m\u00eame il s'en souvenait. Les effets de l'accident en tout cas ne se limit\u00e8rent pas \u00e0 la perte du doigt, en tout cas pas dans le r\u00e9cit qui l'accompagne. Pour mon p\u00e8re ce fut la cause indiscutable d'une allergie qui se manifesta, disait-il, peu de temps apr\u00e8s : il devint incapable de supporter le miel. La manifestation de cette intol\u00e9rance punitive n'\u00e9tait pas une phobie, un d\u00e9go\u00fbt insurmontable. Mais toute tentative de passer outre \u00e0 l'injonction \u00ab tu ne mangeras plus de miel ! \u00bb \u00e9tait accompagn\u00e9e presque instantan\u00e9ment de terribles br\u00fblures d'estomac ; comme si sous la pierre s'\u00e9tait trouv\u00e9 l'enfer, et que l'enfer \u00e9tait pav\u00e9 de miel.\n\nApr\u00e8s la guerre, je l'ai entendu plaisanter avec son ami Albert Piccolo, revenu de Buchenwald. Albert Piccolo \u00e9tait affect\u00e9, depuis toujours, d'une phobie alimentaire, d'une esp\u00e8ce autrefois assez r\u00e9pandue : il ne supportait pas le fromage. Le fromage le d\u00e9go\u00fbtait, et sa vue le mettait presque en fureur. \u00ab Qu'aurais-tu fait, lui disait mon p\u00e8re, si les nazis, au camp, t'avaient forc\u00e9 \u00e0 manger un camembert, ou un brie bien leste ? \u00bb Ils riaient tous deux.\n\n## 15 La chute du mur de Berlin m'a pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 dans ce chapitre\n\nC'est la chute du mur de Berlin qui m'a pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 dans ce chapitre, qui lui a donn\u00e9 son urgence \u00e0 s'\u00e9crire, \u00e0 cette place, et selon ces modalit\u00e9s : quand la Maison des \u00e9crivains, ayant d\u00e9cid\u00e9 d'envoyer, pour qu'ils regardent et racontent, une douzaine d'\u00e9crivains dans les pays o\u00f9 s'effondrait le socialisme dit jadis \u00ab r\u00e9ellement existant \u00bb (comme c'est d\u00e9j\u00e0 loin, tout \u00e7a !), me proposa d'en faire partie, je dis oui et mon choix, sans m\u00eame y r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir, se porta sur ce semi-pays qu'on appelait la RDA. Je m'en allai donc \u00e0 Berlin-Est. C'\u00e9tait aux derniers jours de f\u00e9vrier 1990, il faisait froid, gris, neigeux. J'avais fui tr\u00e8s vite la salle du petit d\u00e9jeuner de l'h\u00f4tel M\u00e9tropole, envahie d\u00e8s sept heures par d'impatients hommes d'affaires Kohlo-nippons, soucieux de ne pas perdre une seconde des journ\u00e9es, tant ils avaient faim : de terres, d'usines, de main-d'\u0153uvre reconnaissante, pauvre, modeste, germanophone et qualifi\u00e9e.\n\nLa Spree, en cet endroit o\u00f9 je marchais, avait b\u00e2ti une \u00eele. J'en faisais le tour, pour voir. Car j'\u00e9tais venu pour cela : voir. Il faisait d\u00e9j\u00e0 jour. A l'extr\u00eame-orient du m\u00eame fuseau horaire que Paris, il fait jour beaucoup plus t\u00f4t. Des Berlinois de l'Est (il en existait encore, contrairement \u00e0 ce que j'avais cru comprendre \u00e0 la lecture des journaux parisiens, ils ne s'\u00e9taient pas tous pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9s dans les ambassades, ou de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 du Mur) promenaient leurs chiens dans un jardin d'enfants hideux, \u00ab \u00e0 la Chirac \u00bb. Le ciel s'emplissait de nuages virulents, pouss\u00e9s par la temp\u00eate en un _Drang nach Osten_ (une ru\u00e9e vers l'est) tumultueux et noir : eux aussi, me disais-je.\n\nUn vent violent rendait les mouettes silencieuses, les canards noirs au bec blanc timides sous les ponts, \u00e0 moins que la censure n'e\u00fbt pas encore \u00e9t\u00e9 abolie dans le r\u00e8gne animal. Je marchais librement dans le matin gris le long de la Spree. Comme autrefois, au d\u00e9but des ann\u00e9es soixante, j'avais march\u00e9 le long du canal de l'Ourcq, avant que les exigences de la modernisation ne rendent cette activit\u00e9 priv\u00e9e-l\u00e0 impossible (\u00e0 Toulon, aujourd'hui, comme \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s partout au bord de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e, c'est pire : la libert\u00e9 de construire priv\u00e9ment, comme la libert\u00e9 des automobiles, rend la libert\u00e9 de marcher si pr\u00e9caire qu'il n'est plus possible de l'exercer). A quai, s'allongeait un train de p\u00e9niches, charg\u00e9es jusqu'au bord de charbon : de la lignite brune.\n\nEt je lisais sur toutes les fa\u00e7ades les traces de la guerre ancienne, des \u00e9claboussures de balles : ce sont les cartes parlantes de l'histoire des murs. Sur les b\u00e2timents officiels on avait ravaud\u00e9 l'\u00e9toffe de pierre avec des pi\u00e8ces bien propres, en reprises correctement rectangulaires. Sur quelques fa\u00e7ades un peu plus modestes, les trous avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 bouch\u00e9s au mortier, par de simples pellet\u00e9es de ciment gris qui d\u00e9bordaient de la surface, telles des d\u00e9jections grumeleuses de pigeons \u00e9normes. Mais presque partout ailleurs les trous \u00e9taient rest\u00e9s tels qu'au moment de l'impact, et dans une des maisons de l'\u00eele les moineaux s'enfon\u00e7aient par dizaines, comme les rafales d'une mitrailleuse aviaire. Chacun de ces trous sans doute, en avril-mai 45, avait ainsi d\u00e9sign\u00e9, sans fleurs, son mort nazi, son mort sovi\u00e9tique.\n\nC'est \u00e0 ce moment que s'est projet\u00e9e, dans mon souvenir, une image brusque, brusquement renaissante d'un oubli de quarante-cinq ann\u00e9es. **J'ai vu** , se superposant \u00e0 la fa\u00e7ade trou\u00e9e dans l'\u00eele berlinoise, **le mur cribl\u00e9 de trous** semblables **du palais du Luxembourg, un jour extr\u00eamement froid de janvier 1945 (m\u00eame les fontaines du jardin avaient gel\u00e9). J'accompagnais mon p\u00e8re,** qui se rendait au S\u00e9nat, o\u00f9 logeait alors la premi\u00e8re assembl\u00e9e de l'apr\u00e8s-guerre, l'Assembl\u00e9e consultative r\u00e9unie par le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral de Gaulle pour pr\u00e9parer le retour de la France \u00e0 la normalit\u00e9 r\u00e9publicaine. **Je peux situer assez exactement cette fa\u00e7ade et le geste, dans mon image, de mon p\u00e8re d\u00e9signant le mur trou\u00e9, comme de nids d'oiseaux noirs sinistres, \u00e0 la M\u00e9ryon : face aux arcades, qui \u00e0 la droite du haut de la rue Garanci\u00e8re abritent encore, sous les arcades elles-m\u00eames, cette personnalit\u00e9 parisienne peu connue, une copie horizontale de monsieur le M\u00e8tre \u00e9talon,** celui dont les \u00e9coliers autrefois (avant sa d\u00e9ch\u00e9ance au profit d'une simple et immat\u00e9rielle longueur d'onde) apprenaient \u00e0 r\u00e9v\u00e9rer l'adresse prestigieuse, le \u00ab Pavillon de Breteuil \u00bb.\n\nTelles sont les circonstances. Mais il est clair qu'il n'y a pas, dans ce retour d'image enfouie, qu'une simple superposition suscit\u00e9e par la ressemblance. Ces blessures des murs sont parentes : elles r\u00e9sultent de la m\u00eame guerre, et c'est de cette guerre que le geste de mon p\u00e8re vers la fa\u00e7ade me parle, m'invite \u00e0 me souvenir. J'ai pass\u00e9 depuis d'innombrables fois devant elles, dans la rue de Vaugirard. Leur trace, longtemps, n'\u00e9tait pas invisible, o\u00f9 les pansements de la pierre, soign\u00e9s, \u00e9taient encore identifiables pour ce qu'ils \u00e9taient (il n'en est pas de m\u00eame aujourd'hui, \u00e0 l'endroit de mon image int\u00e9rieure : le \u00ab ravalement \u00bb auquel se sont livr\u00e9s les s\u00e9nateurs le camoufle, comme d'un _lifting_ , embl\u00e8me des efforts de rajeunissement de cette \u00ab chambre vieillarde \u00bb, au peu reluisant visage de d\u00e9mocratie limit\u00e9e). Mais la vue de la semi-ruine est-berlinoise a comme annul\u00e9 d'un coup ces parcours adoucissants, m'a restitu\u00e9 toute la violence de la vision initiale (\u00e0 moi qui n'avais pas connu directement, de la guerre, la langue de balles et d'explosions). On s'\u00e9tait battu dans l'\u00eele de la Spree, on s'\u00e9tait battu \u00e0 Paris quelques mois plus t\u00f4t, devant les jardins du Luxembourg. Les mitrailleuses avaient \u00ab arros\u00e9 \u00bb les maisons, trou\u00e9 les fen\u00eatres, tu\u00e9. A Paris, dans ces m\u00eames rues, les bouquets de fleurs \u00e9taient encore vivaces en 1945, l\u00e0 o\u00f9 quelqu'un \u00e9tait tomb\u00e9.\n\nTout se passait comme si \u00ab l'erreur archa\u00efsante \u00bb, le \u00ab socialisme \u00bb stalinien d'Ulbricht et Honecker, en disparaissant brusquement, avait restitu\u00e9 le paysage allemand, et partant le paysage fran\u00e7ais, en l'\u00e9tat o\u00f9 il se trouvait le 8 mai 1945, quand les armes s'\u00e9taient tues : ainsi, sous les couches aveugles des s\u00e9diments g\u00e9ologiques, on retrouve, soudain, apr\u00e8s quelque catastrophe sismique, l'empreinte laiss\u00e9e dans la vase fluviale par un animal pr\u00e9historique dont l'esp\u00e8ce m\u00eame s'est evanouie \u00e0 jamais. Or, si cette image s'\u00e9tait repr\u00e9sent\u00e9e \u00e0 moi avec cette force, c'est qu'elle touchait de tr\u00e8s pr\u00e8s \u00e0 mon enfance politique.\n\nPlus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment encore : l'impulsion imm\u00e9diate qui m'avait faire dire oui sans r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir \u00e0 la proposition de Martine Segonds-Bauer transmise par Mich\u00e8le Ignazi, et aussi imm\u00e9diatement choisir de venir ici, \u00e0 Berlin, o\u00f9 avaient eu lieu les derniers sauvages combats de la guerre, ne venait pas que du d\u00e9sir, sans doute inconsciemment profond, de repenser ce temps qui fut pour moi d\u00e9cisif, mais certainement aussi du besoin, moins conscient encore et se saisissant d'une indirecte justification, pour ma\u00eetriser la s\u00e9quence d'images d'enfance que j'avais entrepris d'\u00e9lucider (toujours sous la vision de la grande \u00ab feuille \u00bb de prose que je noircis ligne \u00e0 ligne), \u00e0 parler de mon p\u00e8re.\n\nEt c'\u00e9tait un moment unique : une sorte de _no man's land_ historique, le r\u00e8gne des vaincus ayant cess\u00e9, celui des vainqueurs, dont je voyais les avant-gardes se presser, fr\u00e9n\u00e9tiquement, avidement, dans le hall de l'h\u00f4tel, pas encore \u00e9tabli. C'\u00e9tait un moment de suspension, presque de futur ant\u00e9rieur. Illumin\u00e9 de cette compr\u00e9hension, il m'\u00e9tait possible, seulement alors possible, de remonter \u00e0 l'image, jamais perdue elle, et ant\u00e9rieure de deux ans \u00e0 celle des murs cribl\u00e9s, celle vers laquelle je me dirige depuis les premi\u00e8res lignes de ce chapitre. La filiation est assez \u00e9vidente, comme on verra. J'ai compris cela, et je suis revenu \u00e0 l'h\u00f4tel par la Planckstrasse, fier d'honorer, par ce geste nominatif, en l'inventeur de la th\u00e9orie des quanta, une moins inqui\u00e9tante Allemagne.\n\n## 16 Le jour de No\u00ebl nous avons travers\u00e9 le port sur le petit bateau des promenades.\n\nLe jour de No\u00ebl nous sommes mont\u00e9s sur le petit bateau des promenades qui emmenait encore, comme avant 1940, dans un effort m\u00e9ritoire d'imitation de la normalit\u00e9, amoureux et enfants pour l'excursion traditionnelle des Toulonnais, aux \u00ab Sablettes \u00bb. Mais il fallait traverser le port, sortir de la rade. **Le bateau \u00e9tait \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s vide, nous y \u00e9tions presque seuls ; c'\u00e9tait une matin\u00e9e claire, silencieuse (je la vois telle, pleine d'une clart\u00e9 un peu solennelle, sans bruits autres que du glissement sur l'eau) ; l'eau \u00e9tait partout verte sous le soleil ; le petit bateau avan\u00e7ait le long des grands navires abattus, renvers\u00e9s, inclin\u00e9s, avachis dans la rade ; ils d\u00e9passaient \u00e0 peine de la surface de l'eau, certains enti\u00e8rement recouverts, les plus grands pench\u00e9s sur le c\u00f4t\u00e9, vides : une escadre de vaisseaux fant\u00f4mes.**\n\nLa plus grande partie des b\u00e2timents de la marine de guerre fran\u00e7aise \u00e9taient l\u00e0. C'\u00e9tait peu apr\u00e8s le \u00ab sabordage \u00bb de la flotte de guerre, qui ne s\u00fbt se r\u00e9soudre ni \u00e0 se livrer aux Allemands, ni \u00e0 rejoindre, de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e, les FFL, les Forces fran\u00e7aises libres du g\u00e9n\u00e9ral de Gaulle. **Le visage de mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tait tendu, s\u00e9v\u00e8re, plein de cette fureur silencieuse que je lui connaissais bien.** Je ne crois pas qu'il ait prononc\u00e9 un seul mot. Non par prudence, ni pour me tenir \u00e0 l'\u00e9cart de ses pens\u00e9es, car nos parents ne se cachaient pas devant nous de souhaiter (pour paraphraser et renverser une phrase terrible de Pierre Laval) la victoire de l'Angleterre (et plus r\u00e9cemment de l'Union sovi\u00e9tique et des USA : il y avait eu Pearl Harbor, c'\u00e9tait l'hiver apr\u00e8s celui de Stalingrad), mais parce qu'il n'y avait, en effet, rien \u00e0 dire.\n\nJe comprends tr\u00e8s clairement aujourd'hui que la visite que nous avons alors rendue \u00e0 l'impasse des M\u00fbriers n'\u00e9tait pas destin\u00e9e seulement \u00e0 la rencontre de son reste de famille avec l'a\u00een\u00e9 de ses enfants, moi, mais au moins autant \u00e0 cette constatation silencieuse, une v\u00e9rification du d\u00e9sastre de ces grands navires impeccablement neufs, m\u00eame pas engloutis mais affaiss\u00e9s \u00e7\u00e0 et l\u00e0 dans la magnifique rade, sans dignit\u00e9 aucune, sans avoir m\u00eame un instant combattu. Il renouait, au moins mentalement avec son grand-p\u00e8re, rest\u00e9 autrefois seul dans la salle des machines de son navire atteint et abandonn\u00e9, et son jugement int\u00e9rieurement prononc\u00e9 \u00e9tait certainement le m\u00eame : une condamnation sans appel, pour l\u00e2chet\u00e9.\n\nMon p\u00e8re, ce jour de No\u00ebl, \u00e9tait \u00e0 deux jours de son trente-sixi\u00e8me anniversaire. Il avait donc l'\u00e2ge qui \u00e9tait le mien au moment des \u00ab \u00e9v\u00e9nements \u00bb de 1968 (je me livre souvent \u00e0 de telles comparaisons num\u00e9riques). Il n'\u00e9tait pas encore, il me semble, \u00ab entr\u00e9 \u00bb dans la R\u00e9sistance active (l'occasion, un appel de Londres, devait lui faire franchir ce pas peu de temps apr\u00e8s). J'en conclus que notre voyage \u00e9tait, aussi, l'occasion de v\u00e9rifier la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 d'une d\u00e9cision grave, et proche. S'il m'avait amen\u00e9 avec lui, et je suis certain que certaines des cons\u00e9quences possibles de la d\u00e9cision \u00e9taient parfaitement pr\u00e9sentes \u00e0 son esprit (il m'a confi\u00e9 plus tard qu'il en avait longuement parl\u00e9 avec ma m\u00e8re. Il est clair qu'elles nous engageaient implicitement aussi, mes fr\u00e8res, ma s\u0153ur et moi-m\u00eame, mais il \u00e9tait impossible d'en parler de mani\u00e8re ouverte), c'\u00e9tait, en pr\u00e9vision d'un avenir peut-\u00eatre tragique (o\u00f9 nous nous serions, par exemple, retrouv\u00e9s dans la situation d'orphelin qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 la sienne), pour une le\u00e7on de nature politique.\n\nJe ne suis pas nationaliste. Mais j'ai appris alors, de mon p\u00e8re, ce que je nommerai de ce mot peu appr\u00e9ci\u00e9 aujourd'hui, le patriotisme. Et je suis rest\u00e9, dans une certaine mesure, patriote, je dirai de mani\u00e8re latente : mon d\u00e9go\u00fbt profond du racisme, de la x\u00e9nophobie, du \u00ab lep\u00e9nisme \u00bb, ma honte d'un certain \u00e9tat actuel de la France a certainement au moins en partie cette raison-l\u00e0. J'entends cette distinction-opposition comme une transposition de celle propos\u00e9e par Sloterdijk dans son _Trait\u00e9 de la raison cynique_ entre le cynisme proprement dit et ce qu'il appelle le \u00ab kunisme \u00bb, c'est-\u00e0-dire, au plus court, entre ce qui s'exerce de haut en bas et ce qui, au contraire, regarde de bas en haut. Je tiens le patriotisme n\u00e9cessaire dans une nation quand elle est opprim\u00e9e par une autre. Et telle \u00e9tait bien alors, avec une \u00e9vidence assez aveuglante, pour mon p\u00e8re et ses amis, comme pour le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral de Gaulle (mais les officiers de marine \u00e0 Toulon ne l'avaient pas vu clairement ainsi), la situation de la France qui venait d'\u00eatre enti\u00e8rement occup\u00e9e. Mais je tiens le nationalisme pour insupportable quand il s'exerce dans l'autre sens. Et les nations moyennes ou petites, h\u00e9las, sont souvent, au regard de leurs propres minorit\u00e9s, et sans m\u00eame s'en rendre compte, simultan\u00e9ment dans ces deux dispositions d'esprit.\n\nAvant toute autre consid\u00e9ration (l'antifascisme, l'antiracisme par exemple) mon p\u00e8re s'est engag\u00e9 par patriotisme. Et il ne l'a pas fait \u00e0 moiti\u00e9. Le disciple d'Alain, l'\u00e9tudiant pacifiste, antimilitariste des ann\u00e9es vingt, qui avait refus\u00e9 (comme ses amis d'alors) la Pr\u00e9paration militaire sup\u00e9rieure et avait fait son service militaire, volontairement, comme simple soldat, se mit, en 43, au service d'un g\u00e9n\u00e9ral dont il ne partageait gu\u00e8re les convictions politiques ou religieuses (et il se s\u00e9para de lui la guerre finie, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment pour cette raison-l\u00e0 : leur unique point commun fut de ne pas accepter l'avilissement national que repr\u00e9sentaient l'armistice, le r\u00e8gne des Allemands et de leurs disciples fran\u00e7ais, les \u00ab collaborateurs \u00bb).\n\nLe fait politique d\u00e9cisif de sa vie a \u00e9t\u00e9 le 10 mai 1940. Dans les mois qui suivirent la d\u00e9faite (je conserve ici volontairement la d\u00e9signation, une expression \u00ab dat\u00e9e \u00bb, de l'effondrement militaire de la lamentable arm\u00e9e fran\u00e7aise devant l'offensive nazie, l'aboutissement de ces ann\u00e9es trente que le po\u00e8te anglais Auden a appel\u00e9, dans son po\u00e8me sur la mort de Freud \u00ab _a low, dishonest decade_ \u00bb, la d\u00e9cennie de l' _appeasement_ , de la \u00ab non-intervention \u00bb, de Munich), au hasard des rencontres, des visites ou des correspondances, il fit le tour et la r\u00e9vision de ses amiti\u00e9s. Et le clivage fut d\u00e9finitif. Il ne r\u00e9visa jamais le jugement qu'il dut, de ce point de vue, porter sur certains de ceux qui lui avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 proches.\n\nIl ne revit Guy Harnois, son meilleur ami, qu'apr\u00e8s la Lib\u00e9ration. Harnois avait \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9sistant. Mon p\u00e8re n'en avait jamais dout\u00e9. Il a souvent racont\u00e9 comment, retrouvant sur un quai de gare Paul Geniet, qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 les m\u00eames ann\u00e9es que lui au lyc\u00e9e de Marseille (mon p\u00e8re en \u00ab kh\u00e2gne \u00bb et Geniet en \u00ab taupe \u00bb, avant d'entrer \u00e0 l'\u00e9cole des Ponts et Chauss\u00e9es. Ils ne se connaissaient pas beaucoup alors), ils s'\u00e9taient reconnus en quelques phrases, comme \u00ab du m\u00eame c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00bb. Et ils sont rest\u00e9s li\u00e9s toujours. A l'int\u00e9rieur du m\u00eame camp, il s'op\u00e9ra pour lui un second partage, moins grave mais pas moins net : entre ceux qui furent favorables, mais sans agir selon cette conviction, aux Alli\u00e9s, et ceux qui prirent le risque de la lutte.\n\nLa R\u00e9sistance fut le moment de sa libert\u00e9. Tout ce qui se produisit ensuite fut non seulement d\u00e9ception mais, plus d\u00e9cisivement encore, un \u00ab anticlimax \u00bb (Paul B\u00e9nichou, mon premier beau-p\u00e8re, dont le destin politique propre et l'\u00e9volution furent fort divergents, m'a dit un jour, et cela m'a frapp\u00e9, que mon p\u00e8re, au fond, \u00e9tait ce qu'on appelait jadis un \u00ab homme d'action \u00bb \u00e9gar\u00e9 dans la philosophie et que c'\u00e9tait un vrai malheur historique (dont il bl\u00e2mait d'ailleurs essentiellement Staline (je ne le suivrai pas enti\u00e8rement sur ce terrain)) d'avoir rendu, pour des gens comme lui, apr\u00e8s la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la pratique politique impossible. C'est de cela dans sa vie, il est vrai, que moi, son fils, suis le plus fier. Mais je n'ai jamais eu le moindre de ces r\u00eaves de rivalit\u00e9 ou d'\u00e9mulation qui, en de tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rentes circonstances historiques, inspir\u00e8rent (et parfois tragiquement) d'autres fils (plus jeunes de quelques ann\u00e9es) de la g\u00e9n\u00e9ration \u00ab r\u00e9sistante \u00bb.\n\n## 17 Pour un enfant, le cercle familial est un syst\u00e8me plan\u00e9taire d'avant la r\u00e9volution copernicienne\n\nPour un enfant, le cercle familial est un syst\u00e8me plan\u00e9taire d'avant la r\u00e9volution copernicienne, r\u00e9volution dont le r\u00e9sultat, chez l'adulte m\u00e9lancolique, est souvent de laisser au centre du monde un soleil absent, qui est la mort. C'est tout particuli\u00e8rement le cas dans les familles, comme \u00e9tait la n\u00f4tre, dites \u00ab nombreuses \u00bb (la construction de cette expression langagi\u00e8re, quand j'eus \u00e9tudi\u00e9 la \u00ab grammaire \u00bb, me laissa un moment stup\u00e9fait). Inutile de pr\u00e9ciser les r\u00f4les relatifs de chacun dans cette repr\u00e9sentation. Ce ciel-l\u00e0 s'emplit de toutes sortes d'objets \u00ab c\u00e9lestes \u00bb, les amis et connaissances des parents, dont les relations r\u00e9ciproques demeurent longtemps obscures. (L'identification des liens respectifs entre les deux \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9s \u00bb de son microcosme, dans l'\u0153uvre du m\u00e9morialiste Marcel Proust, s'apparente \u00e0 celle des rapports entre l'indistinction cosmologique et la s\u00e9paration nominale des deux \u00e9toiles, Hesperus et Phosphorus, dont la distinction apparente et l'indistinction r\u00e9elle fascin\u00e8rent les astronomes et les philosophes de l'Antiquit\u00e9 et agitent encore tant depuis le d\u00e9but du si\u00e8cle les logiciens.) Les positions respectives de ces \u00e9toiles fixes, l'anciennet\u00e9 relative de leurs lumi\u00e8res, exigent des hypoth\u00e8ses cosmogoniques, qui peut-\u00eatre ne seront jamais, dans la suite de l'existence, soumises \u00e0 v\u00e9rification.\n\nJ'en suis venu, avec les ann\u00e9es, \u00e0 reconna\u00eetre, dans le ciel paternel, plusieurs telles configurations. Canguilhem (on m'excusera cette nomination courte qui peut para\u00eetre, ne d\u00e9signant pas le savant mais l'homme, excessivement famili\u00e8re, mais il m'est difficile, sans hypocrisie, de faire comme si telle n'\u00e9tait pas la mani\u00e8re dont j'entendis, dans mon enfance, parler de lui. Et j'ai d\u00e9j\u00e0 dit qu'il nous arrivait de lui donner un nom plus familier encore), Canguilhem appartenait \u00e0 un premier cercle, le plus ancien, constitu\u00e9 de ceux des camarades de l'\u00c9cole normale avec lesquels mes parents \u00e9taient rest\u00e9s en relation, cercle qui est all\u00e9, comme il est in\u00e9vitable, s'amenuisant avec le passage du temps (mais, ce qui est sans doute remarquable, au contraire, c'est qu'aujourd'hui, \u00e0 plus de quatre-vingts ans, mon p\u00e8re est encore tr\u00e8s proche d'au moins deux ou trois d'entre eux).\n\nLa mort a \u00e9cart\u00e9 le premier mon oncle Frantz, en 1938. Ce geste de la mort a eu, sur notre famille, des cons\u00e9quences \u00e9normes, que je n'affronterai pas directement dans ces pages. Je ne dirai qu'une autre mort encore, celle de Simone Weil, \u00e0 Londres, pendant l'Occupation. Un peu avant de quitter la France pour l'Angleterre, par l'Espagne, elle nous rendit visite \u00e0 Carcassonne. Je m'en souviens : elle m'a offert un jeu de quilles. Si je cherche \u00e0 identifier ce qui unissait, en ce qui semble bien avoir constitu\u00e9 une sorte de groupe, ou de bande, et en dehors de l'appartenance commune, et contemporaine \u00e0 la \u00ab Rue d'Ulm \u00bb, ou des effets impond\u00e9rables et ind\u00e9chiffrables de la dilection (les \u00e9l\u00e9ments communs que je vais dire, qui sont de nature intellectuelle, \u00e9thique et politique, se retrouvaient plus ou moins associ\u00e9s aussi chez d'autres, qui n'\u00e9taient pas de leurs amis), je trouve ceci : ils \u00e9taient tous des \u00ab litt\u00e9raires \u00bb (ce qui veut simplement dire \u00ab \u00c9l\u00e8ves de l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure, section des Lettres \u00bb). Ils \u00e9taient tous pacifistes, antimilitaristes ; et, plus ou moins directement (indirectement dans le cas de mon p\u00e8re, qui n'a jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab disciple \u00bb de personne) des \u00e9l\u00e8ves du \u00ab philosophe \u00bb Alain.\n\nLe pacifisme antimilitariste \u00ab alainiste \u00bb, par exemple, a laiss\u00e9 quelques traces \u00e9crites qui ont trouv\u00e9 place dans un livre (sur lequel ma s\u0153ur et moi nous sommes pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9s d\u00e8s sa parution : _G\u00e9n\u00e9ration intellectuelle_ , de Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Sirinelli). D'une p\u00e9tition de 1928 en faveur du philosophe Alain attaqu\u00e9 par la future droite collaboratrice, je recopie ces phrases : \u00ab Jugeant que la pens\u00e9e se trahit lorsqu'elle accepte une autre loi que celle de l'objet m\u00eame qu'elle s'est donn\u00e9 ; approuvent ceux qui recherchent selon la bonne foi les causes de la grande Guerre ; bl\u00e2ment ceux qui voudraient \u00e9touffer et m\u00eame \"d\u00e9shonorer\" le libre examen \u00e0 ce sujet, \u00e0 seule fin de conserver des id\u00e9es qui n'ont \u00e9t\u00e9 admises que pour leur utilit\u00e9, d'ailleurs locale et provisoire. \u00bb Et dans la liste des signataires qui suit, je retrouve la plupart des noms qui constituent le \u00ab cercle \u00bb premier que j'\u00e9voque.\n\nLes d\u00e9m\u00eal\u00e9s des normaliens pacifistes avec la direction de l'\u00c9cole et les autorit\u00e9s militaires \u00e0 l'occasion de la PMS (Pr\u00e9paration militaire sup\u00e9rieure) sont longuement d\u00e9crits dans le livre de Sirinelli. Mon p\u00e8re a souvent \u00e9voqu\u00e9 la r\u00e9ussite de Canguilhem, renversant comme sans le faire expr\u00e8s, lors d'une inspection, une lourde mitrailleuse sur les pieds d'un colonel. Je ne r\u00e9siste pas au plaisir de citer ici un incident caract\u00e9ristique de l'insolence du \u00ab style \u00bb de mon p\u00e8re, qu'il n'abandonna jamais, parce qu'elle n'\u00e9tait que la continuation, affin\u00e9e par les \u00e9tudes, de celle de l'enfant faubourien de Saint-Jean-du-Var : \u00ab Citons (\u00e9crit Sirinelli) (...) Frantz Molino (1904-1938), fils d'un inspecteur primaire, ancien kh\u00e2gneux du lyc\u00e9e du Parc, normalien en 1926, agr\u00e9g\u00e9 des lettres en 1930, ou son futur beau-fr\u00e8re, Lucien Roubaud, de la promotion suivante, qui sera, comme Camille Marcoux, d\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 devant le conseil de discipline en juillet 1929.\n\nSi Frantz Molino, exempt\u00e9 du service militaire, n'a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 concern\u00e9 par le probl\u00e8me de la pr\u00e9paration militaire, Lucien Roubaud (...) se montra fort peu assidu aux s\u00e9ances de la PMS : en 1928-1929, par exemple, il est (...) douze fois absent et, somm\u00e9 de s'expliquer par le directeur de l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure, il se justifiera en ces termes :\n\n\"Monsieur,\n\nJ'ai estim\u00e9 qu'il \u00e9tait vraiment trop inutile pour moi, et pour les autres, de m'adonner \u00e0 la pr\u00e9paration intensive d'un examen dont le r\u00e9sultat, en ce qui me concerne, est d\u00e9j\u00e0 d\u00e9cid\u00e9. J'ajoute que je n'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 emp\u00each\u00e9 de prendre part aux s\u00e9ances de Romainville, o\u00f9 j'avais cependant l'intention d'aller, que par la pens\u00e9e des _perturbations que mon inexp\u00e9rience ne pourrait manquer de jeter dans les man\u0153uvres_. Veuillez croire, Monsieur, \u00e0 ma consid\u00e9ration.\" (J.-F.S. ajoute en note : \u00ab Arch. Nat. 61 AJ 198 \u00bb. Le passage en italique \u00e9tait soulign\u00e9 par le destinataire, avec, en marge, cette appr\u00e9ciation : \u00ab raison inadmissible \u00bb.)\n\nLe resserrement progressif de son cercle (je veux marquer l'affaiblissement des liens n'ayant pas pour cause l'intervention accidentelle, directe ou indirecte, mais toujours radicale, de la mort) a eu pour origine essentielle l'Histoire (et c'est, je crois, un trait de ce terrible \u00ab premier XXe si\u00e8cle \u00bb, qui va d'ao\u00fbt 14 jusqu'\u00e0 la mort de Joseph Staline en 1953, qu'il en soit ainsi). Car les \u00e9vidences partag\u00e9es par tous autour de 1930 se sont heurt\u00e9es \u00e0 deux traumatismes successifs que je nommerai, comme tout le monde, l'un Occupation et l'autre Guerre froide. Je dois constater, et je ne porte pas l\u00e0 un jugement de valeur, que mon p\u00e8re n'a gard\u00e9 de relations enti\u00e8rement confiantes et \u00e9troites qu'avec ceux qui ont pris, dans le premier cas le m\u00eame parti que lui, dans le second cas un parti non antagoniste au sien.\n\nMais peut-\u00eatre, sans faire une \u00ab lecture \u00bb surtout politique de son itin\u00e9raire aurais-je d\u00fb, tout simplement, ajouter une particularisation suppl\u00e9mentaire, un param\u00e8tre cach\u00e9, l'amour du rugby ? Dans les derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de sa vie de professeur de philosophie, au lyc\u00e9e Voltaire, attendant impatiemment la retraite pour pouvoir se livrer enfin \u00e0 sa passion du jardinage et \u00e0 ses exp\u00e9riences sur les melons, les tomates et les fraises, mon p\u00e8re r\u00e9unissait autour de son poste de t\u00e9l\u00e9vision, \u00e0 l'occasion des matchs du Tournoi des Cinq Nations, trois des amis de ce temps, Marcoux (le \u00ab Camille Marcoux \u00bb que mentionne Sirinelli), Rolland et Harnois en un quatuor de _old boys_ (comme les d\u00e9signait ma s\u0153ur), dont la passion experte et la haute technicit\u00e9 m'impressionnaient grandement, quand par hasard il m'arrivait de regarder une mi-temps d'un \u00ab France-Galles \u00bb en leur compagnie.\n\nIl y avait, en tout cas, dans l'enseignement \u00ab alainiste \u00bb un ingr\u00e9dient qui se retrouve chez tous ceux qui n'ont pas cess\u00e9 d'\u00eatre de ses amis : le d\u00e9dain de l'argent, des honneurs, des carri\u00e8res. L'\u00c9cole, par le concours d'agr\u00e9gation, conduisait \u00e0 l'enseignement ; et il ne s'agissait pas alors de l'Enseignement sup\u00e9rieur, mais de celui des classes de lyc\u00e9e. Et ce n'\u00e9tait pas pour eux un pis-aller que de se trouver devant une classe, dans l'attente d'autre chose de plus noble (intellectuellement) et de plus r\u00e9mun\u00e9rateur. C'\u00e9tait un choix d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9, marque d'une vocation r\u00e9elle. Mon p\u00e8re fut, jusqu'\u00e0 son entr\u00e9e dans la clandestinit\u00e9, un enseignant convaincu et passionn\u00e9 (ma m\u00e8re l'est rest\u00e9e toute sa vie). La coupure de la guerre, prolong\u00e9e par son s\u00e9jour \u00e0 l'Assembl\u00e9e consultative gaullienne, puis par de nombreuses et de plus en plus d\u00e9cevantes ann\u00e9es \u00e0 l'Inspection g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des sports o\u00f9 l'avait entra\u00een\u00e9, dans l'euphorie r\u00e9formatrice de l'apr\u00e8s-Lib\u00e9ration, le recteur Sarrailh (cependant que Georges Canguilhem devenait un inspecteur g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, aim\u00e9 et redout\u00e9 \u00e0 la fois, des enseignants de philosophie), fit qu'il retrouva sans aucun plaisir le lyc\u00e9e, quand l'\u00e9volution politique l'y ramena.\n\nLe refus patriotique qui fut le sien en 1940 se transforma, apr\u00e8s la chute de l'hitl\u00e9risme, en un autre refus : celui de l'affairisme politicien qu'il vit na\u00eetre, d\u00e8s les premiers jours de l'\u00e8re nouvelle, et bient\u00f4t triompher des espoirs (qu'il est de bon ton de qualifier d'utopistes) de la g\u00e9n\u00e9ration r\u00e9sistante, la sienne. Mais il n'y avait pas d'autre voie possible que ce refus, en tout cas pour lui.\n\n## 18 Parmi quelques rares papiers surnag\u00e9s des d\u00e9sordres et des d\u00e9sastres\n\nParmi quelques rares papiers familiaux surnag\u00e9s des d\u00e9sordres et des d\u00e9sastres de dizaines d'ann\u00e9es, un nom un jour le frappa : Catherine Argentin. Il ne retrouvait pas ce nom dans sa m\u00e9moire g\u00e9n\u00e9alogique directe. Et cette tache aveugle de ses souvenirs \u00e9tait comme la marque d'une amputation sans rem\u00e8de : la mort pr\u00e9matur\u00e9e de ses parents. Ce nom f\u00e9minin inconnu occupa d'autant plus ais\u00e9ment une telle place qu'il lui \u00e9tait (et est encore en 1990) constamment rappel\u00e9 par une homonymie : son int\u00e9r\u00eat pour les sports l'amenant \u00e0 suivre \u00e0 la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision et dans les rubriques sportives des journaux la carri\u00e8re d'un coureur cycliste italien nomm\u00e9, aussi, Argentin.\n\nJ'entends cette insistance. Je la retrouve, en y r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissant, tr\u00e8s loin en arri\u00e8re dans mes ann\u00e9es. Elle marque, \u00e0 sa mani\u00e8re, une essentielle dissym\u00e9trie parentale : car ma famille maternelle (les \u00ab Molino \u00bb) \u00e9tait omnipr\u00e9sente dans notre vie (et les deuils, qui l'ont durement affront\u00e9e, proches, avant de devenir contemporains). Mais de l'autre \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00bb il n'y avait que des absences, \u00e9num\u00e9r\u00e9es, comme autant de pierres tombales, par des noms.\n\nJe n'ai pas de curiosit\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9alogique. Une vogue r\u00e9cente a jet\u00e9 ces derniers temps des centaines de chefs de famille sur les traces plus ou moins bien enfouies de leurs anc\u00eatres. Les mairies sont inond\u00e9es de demandes d'extraits de naissance, les \u00e9glises de certificats de bapt\u00eame. On publie m\u00eame des guides pour ce nouveau type de chercheurs d'or. Certains se lancent dans la qu\u00eate dans l'espoir de d\u00e9couvrir parmi leurs ascendants quelque nom fameux, ou simplement notoire du pass\u00e9 (peu importe la raison, m\u00eame inf\u00e2me, de cette survie dans les corridors de la post\u00e9rit\u00e9), leur permettant de partager, ne serait-ce que dans le cercle de leurs connaissances, quelque apparence de ressemblance avec les vraies gloires modernes, les vedettes de la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision.\n\nD'autres encore esp\u00e8rent (stimul\u00e9s par quelque histoire de ce genre parue dans les journaux) identifier un grand-grand-oncle d'Am\u00e9rique dont le fabuleux h\u00e9ritage, laiss\u00e9 en jach\u00e8re (le grand-grand-oncle n'ayant jamais pu, pressentant ce qui se passerait, se r\u00e9soudre \u00e0 \u00e9pouser une \u00e9trang\u00e8re et \u00e9tant mort \u00ab intestat \u00bb, comme disent les notaires de romans policiers), se trouverait ainsi en mesure de tomber, enfin, dans leurs mains l\u00e9gitimes. La plupart, bien s\u00fbr, le font par simple curiosit\u00e9 moutonni\u00e8re (c'est une \u00ab chose qui se fait \u00bb, comme dit Fran\u00e7oise Rosay \u00e0 Michel Simon dans _Dr\u00f4le de drame_ ).\n\nJ'ai ainsi re\u00e7u, il y a peu, une lettre d'un Roubaud de Nice, qui avait vu mon nom dans _T\u00e9l\u00e9rama_ (pas parce que je suis une vedette de la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision, mais \u00e0 l'occasion d'une \u00e9mission sur Raymond Queneau, mon ma\u00eetre v\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9), et qui m'envoyait son \u00ab arbre \u00bb, pour savoir si, par hasard, nous n'\u00e9tions pas \u00ab cousins \u00bb quelque part. Si j'avais r\u00e9pondu, j'aurais r\u00e9pondu que non, pas \u00e0 ma connaissance. J'aurais ajout\u00e9 que Roubaud n'est pas un nom bien rare en Provence. Il y en a trente-trois dans l'\u00e9dition 1987 de l'annuaire t\u00e9l\u00e9phonique de Paris. Il y a m\u00eame un vin du Gard qui s'appelle le ch\u00e2teau-roubaud qui fait de temps \u00e0 autre des efforts m\u00e9ritoires de publicit\u00e9, mais n'a pas encore r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 se hisser \u00e0 un tr\u00e8s haut niveau dans la hi\u00e9rarchie vinicole. Et il y a, surtout, entre la c\u00f4te et Porquerolles, parmi les \u00eeles d'Hy\u00e8res, deux \u00eelots assez dangereux nomm\u00e9s \u00eele du Grand (resp. Petit) Roubaud (que les cartes s'obstinent \u00e0 appeler \u00ab Ribaud \u00bb, comme me le fait remarquer Pierre Oster). J'abandonnerai volontiers le vin \u00e0 mon \u00ab coll\u00e8gue \u00bb ni\u00e7ois, s'il consent \u00e0 me laisser ces r\u00e9cifs comme cousins. Je les trouve d'excellents candidats au r\u00f4le d'anc\u00eatres \u00e9ponymes de mon p\u00e8re.\n\nIl me semble que cette brusque flamb\u00e9e d'int\u00e9r\u00eat pour les anc\u00eatres est en fait un signe, entre autres, d'un inint\u00e9r\u00eat g\u00e9n\u00e9ral pour le pass\u00e9 vivant, celui qui est tiss\u00e9 par la transmission directe, de g\u00e9n\u00e9ration \u00e0 g\u00e9n\u00e9ration, des gestes, des souvenirs, des r\u00e9cits. La g\u00e9n\u00e9alogie de papier, de nature essentiellement archivale, conduit uniquement \u00e0 imiter, \u00e0 l'\u00e9chelle individuelle, la repr\u00e9sentation de l'histoire que donnent les revues et livres \u00e0 grand tirage, et qui se substitue au \u00ab savoir \u00bb scolaire unanimement m\u00e9pris\u00e9 (de m\u00eame que la participation, active ou passive (devant l'\u00e9cran) aux \u00ab championnats de France d'orthographe \u00bb dispense de conna\u00eetre la langue, de la parler autrement que comme les pr\u00e9sentateurs du \u00ab journal de vingt heures \u00bb, de lire ses litt\u00e9ratures en reconnaissant la diff\u00e9rence entre celle qui l'\u00e9l\u00e8ve et celle qui l'avilit).\n\nMais, dans le m\u00eame moment, la m\u00e9moire individuelle est devenue infiniment sourde et courte. Les souvenirs et les curiosit\u00e9s sont frapp\u00e9s d'une obsolescence de plus en plus rapide, d'une \u00ab rotation des stocks \u00bb qui n'affecte pas que les livres dans les librairies, les films dans les salles obscures et les musiques dans les \u00ab Walkmans \u00bb, mais au moins aussi rapidement les marques de yaourts, les id\u00e9es, opinions et convictions, les th\u00e9ories scientifiques, les esp\u00e8ces animales, les amiti\u00e9s, les amours. La plupart de ces arbres g\u00e9n\u00e9alogiques rejoindront dans les poubelles surcharg\u00e9es des villes les t\u00e9moins d'autres vogues aussi passag\u00e8res quand ceux qui les avaient \u00e9tablis (presque tous gens du \u00ab troisi\u00e8me \u00e2ge \u00bb plus ou moins confus\u00e9ment sensibles aux effets peu exaltants de l'acc\u00e9l\u00e9ration des \u00ab mouvements de soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00bb) auront perdu de leur ardeur (en passant au \u00ab quatri\u00e8me \u00e2ge \u00bb, puis au cinqui\u00e8me et dernier, celui du tombeau). Il y a vingt-cinq ans ainsi, on d\u00e9couvrit la disparition proche des langues minoritaires, notablement l'occitan (qui est toujours pour moi le proven\u00e7al). Il s'ensuivit une sorte de floraison tardive, bien vite, h\u00e9las, pass\u00e9e.\n\nC'est pourquoi, ne voulant en aucune mani\u00e8re me laisser aller \u00e0 cette pente g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, je m'inqui\u00e8te de l'incertitude que je d\u00e9couvre en moi, en faisant surgir (et en d\u00e9truisant, en br\u00fblant) l'image centrale du figuier de Toulon, qui a suscit\u00e9 cette \u00ab esquisse d'un portrait de mon p\u00e8re \u00bb, sur tous ces noms qu'il a voulu pr\u00e9server de l'oubli, et transmettre. D'autant plus que je m'aper\u00e7ois qu'en fait ma s\u0153ur et mon fr\u00e8re en ont retenu encore moins que moi, comme si c'\u00e9tait implicitement moi qui \u00e9tais charg\u00e9 de la transmission, et que je m'en montrais peu digne. Il n'est peut-\u00eatre pas trop tard.\n\nLe **Projet** qui \u00e9tait le mien, et son double, **Le Grand Incendie de Londres** (pas celui que je pousse maintenant, ligne \u00e0 ligne et jour apr\u00e8s jour, mais un ambitieux roman abandonn\u00e9), en rencontrant, doublement donc, \u00e0 la fois m\u00e9taphoriquement et directement, et narrativement, autant que rythmiquement abstrait et transform\u00e9, le figuier-image, en lui faisant subir une mutation formelle qui le dispersait puis l'entrela\u00e7ait \u00e0 leurs architectures propres, \u00e9taient d\u00e9termin\u00e9s aussi, sans que j'en reconnaisse, comme aujourd'hui, l'\u00e9vidence (mais il a fallu, sans doute, qu'ils s'effondrent pour que je le comprenne), par l'obscure, l'odorante, la b\u00e9n\u00e9fique-mal\u00e9fique ombre du **figuier** o\u00f9 bougeait, enferm\u00e9e, mon avant-vie.\n\n# CHAPITRE 3\n\n# Rue d'Assas\n\n* * *\n\n## 19 Le jardin \u00e9tait ferm\u00e9 de murs.\n\n **Le jardin \u00e9tait ferm\u00e9 de murs. En chaque endroit de ce lieu,** de ce territoire, de cette possession, **presque en chacun de ses points,** pendant plus de six ann\u00e9es, plus de deux mille jours, **j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9** : de ciel \u00e0 terre, de soleil \u00e0 pluie, de jour \u00e0 nuit, d'hiver \u00e0 automne, dans son plein espace, dans son volume clos, crois\u00e9 et recrois\u00e9 par les mouvements du corps, par le regard, le regard sans cesse boug\u00e9, d\u00e9plac\u00e9, mouvant ou immobile, attentif ou distrait. Atomes du regard, en son mouvement brownien, en son agitation thermique, heurtant les murs, parois de cet espace : un monde dans le monde. Petit monde. **Vers lui je vais, d'une chambre nocturne \u00e0 un jardin ; jardin ensoleill\u00e9, mais jardin ferm\u00e9, _hortus conclusus_ , selon un parcours de m\u00e9moire \u00e0 partir d'un centre ; parcours, mais parcours labyrinthique.** Je tire le fil, mais le fil **est** le labyrinthe.\n\nComment atteindre ce lieu, depuis la vitre froide abandonn\u00e9e aux derni\u00e8res lignes de mon chapitre premier ? d'o\u00f9 s'immerger pour le dire ? Or il y a deux voies :\n\n\u2013 La premi\u00e8re : passer le carreau de la fen\u00eatre, sortir de la chambre, au deuxi\u00e8me \u00e9tage de la maison : c'est un jour ordinaire, dans le soleil ordinaire. D\u00e9crire ? Mais de l\u00e0-haut on ne voyait pas tout le jardin ; et on voyait plus que le jardin. **Je voyais bien au-del\u00e0, par-dessus les murs, vers d'autres jardins, une pente, qui bient\u00f4t s'accentuait, jusqu'\u00e0 l'Aude.** Descendre, alors, en l'air jusqu'au sol, par les airs, et changeant de direction, pour tourner le mur, regardant autour de soi ; parcours impossible, d'un \u00eatre impossible ? J'ai le souvenir, en v\u00e9rit\u00e9, d'une telle l\u00e9vitation, souvenir de ces miracles imaginaires et r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9s : multiplication des points de regard, nage dans l'air brusquement porteur, maritime.\n\n\u2013 Ou bien tourner le dos \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre (seconde voie), sortir de la chambre, descendre les escaliers. Voil\u00e0 ce qui est pour mon r\u00e9cit l'endroit embl\u00e9matique d'une h\u00e9sitation, par cons\u00e9quent d'un choix. Car je peux \u00ab me \u00bb suivre, selon un chemin, ou l'autre. Or je veux suivre les deux. J'ai choisi de commencer ce chapitre selon la premi\u00e8re voie ; mais je suivrai \u00e9galement l'autre, et je l'offrirai, dans ce livre \u00e9galement, comme un parcours de lecture alternatif, comme une insertion dans le r\u00e9cit, pas une insertion br\u00e8ve, momentan\u00e9e, une incise mais une seconde esp\u00e8ce d'insertion, que je nomme bifurcations. Les deux chemins diff\u00e8rent radicalement : car le premier, celui que je choisis ici, est non seulement imaginaire mais quasi instantan\u00e9 : je sortirais de la vitre, je bondirais en l'air, je flotterais, je tournerais le coin de la fa\u00e7ade, je me poserais, je me pose. Dans le second parcours, j'ouvrais la porte au fond de la chambre, je sortais, je descendais l'escalier, je traversais la maison, de haut en bas. J'\u00e9tais inclus dans le temps, je prenais le temps n\u00e9cessaire. J'ouvrais les portes de chaque pi\u00e8ce, une \u00e0 une, j'entrais : **j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 l\u00e0.**\n\nUne fois dans le jardin, comment me d\u00e9placer ? Suivre les limites, de l'int\u00e9rieur du territoire (les murs, la maison, le portail), les toucher, v\u00e9rifier le r\u00e9el de mon enfermement dans le lieu, le r\u00e9el des pierres, r\u00e9el parce que solide, de la persistance protonique de la mati\u00e8re, aussi durable que l'univers : avancer d'un mouvement circulaire, dans un sens, ou l'autre, faire le tour, revenir vers le centre, mais quel centre ? Or il y avait un centre ; je m'en souviens maintenant. Je peux partir de l\u00e0. Parce que je m'identifie comme situ\u00e9 en ce centre, spontan\u00e9ment, au moment m\u00eame o\u00f9 je me demande d'o\u00f9 partir, pour d\u00e9crire le jardin, c'est-\u00e0-dire au moment o\u00f9 je fais appara\u00eetre sur l'\u00e9cran les lignes de cette interrogation, contemporaines de l'interrogation m\u00eame. (Et j'agis selon une r\u00e8gle explicite de la composition de mon r\u00e9cit, respect\u00e9e d\u00e8s son premier moment : inclure les circonstances de sa composition)\n\n **Ce centre \u00e9tait un lieu d'espace r\u00e9volu occup\u00e9 par le corps immobile ; la position du corps (le mien) y \u00e9tait la suivante : genoux contre le sol, o\u00f9 s'incrustaient les petits cailloux du sol, m\u00eal\u00e9s \u00e0 la rugueuse poussi\u00e8re ; coudes sur la surface horizontale du banc, mains sur les yeux ; et les mains appuyaient sur les yeux ; de la paume de chaque main j'appuyais sur mes yeux qui s'emplissaient de lumi\u00e8re, d'une sorte de _piezo_ -lumi\u00e8re travers\u00e9e d'\u00e9clairs et de couleurs au sein d'une obscurit\u00e9 momentan\u00e9e et voulue.** Centre donc, mais centre aveugle. Pour voir, il fallait retirer les mains de devant les yeux, apr\u00e8s un intervalle de temps r\u00e9gl\u00e9 par un compte, un compte \u00e0 haute voix. (C'est la r\u00e8gle d'un jeu. C'\u00e9tait le centre d'un jeu.) (Mais maintenant je n'entends rien : la voix, ma voix s'en est \u00e9vapor\u00e9e.)\n\nR\u00e8gles simples de ce jeu : le guetteur \u00e9tait dans la position que j'ai d\u00e9crite (le guetteur \u00e9tait moi, moi ou un autre : un de mes fr\u00e8res, ou ma s\u0153ur, un de mes cousins, ou ma cousine, des camarades de nos classes respectives, un des enfants Picolo, des visiteurs...). Pendant le temps du compte, o\u00f9 les yeux du guetteur restaient voil\u00e9s par ses mains et ferm\u00e9s (s'il ne trichait pas), les autres joueurs se pla\u00e7aient en un endroit de leur choix, dissimul\u00e9 et plus ou moins lointain : \u00eatre proche \u00e9tait avantageux, comme la suite de la r\u00e8gle le montre, mais plein de dangers. On peut \u00eatre invisible loin. Mais on est loin. Tel \u00e9tait le dilemme du joueur. Le nom de ce jeu (que serait-il sans une nomination ?) \u00e9tait, est :\n\n**S'avancer-en-rampant.**\n\nR\u00e8gle (suite). Au bout du compte (disons 33, par exemple), le guetteur enlevait sa ou ses mains de devant ses yeux, les ouvrait, et s'effor\u00e7ait d'apercevoir les joueurs : ou ils se cachaient, o\u00f9 ils bougeaient. Les joueurs bougeaient : ils pouvaient rester cach\u00e9s, invisibles. Mais alors, s'ils ne pouvaient perdre, ils ne pouvaient gagner. Il s'ensuit qu'ils perdaient. Le guetteur devait **voir** les joueurs, ses adversaires, et le dire. Ce **dire** \u00e9tait rituel, faisait partie de la r\u00e8gle. On disait : \u00ab X \u00e0 tel endroit \u00bb : \u00ab derri\u00e8re le pin ! \u00bb, \u00ab dans le lavoir ! \u00bb, \u00ab derri\u00e8re l'abricotier ! \u00bb.... Si la d\u00e9claration \u00e9tait exacte, le joueur d\u00e9sign\u00e9 \u00e9tait aussit\u00f4t **hors-jeu** , avait perdu. Les autres continuaient.\n\nLe guetteur pouvait se tromper de deux mani\u00e8res :\n\n\u2013 Il n'y avait personne \u00e0 l'endroit d\u00e9sign\u00e9, qu'une ombre, qu'une branche boug\u00e9e par le vent. Personne alors ne sortait de la cachette.\n\n\u2013 Ou bien celui qui s'y cachait n'\u00e9tait pas X, mais Y. Y ne bougeait pas. Et le guetteur, m\u00eame s'il comprenait alors qu'il s'agissait d'Y, ne pouvait r\u00e9p\u00e9ter son annonce en changeant de nom. Enum\u00e9rer simplement les joueurs aurait rendu le jeu impossible. (Il \u00e9tait s\u00fbr pourtant qu'il y avait bien l\u00e0 quelqu'un.)\n\nR\u00e8gle (fin). D'ailleurs il n'en avait gu\u00e8re le temps : le but du jeu \u00e9tait d'atteindre le banc sans avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 vu, mais surtout sans avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9nonc\u00e9 vu. Aussi tous avan\u00e7aient, tentaient d'avancer, en \u00e9chappant au regard. Ils rampaient sur les cailloux, sur les aiguilles de pin, ils bondissaient, couraient d'un couvert \u00e0 un autre, par les buissons, les arbres. Ils franchissaient les distances. Et parfois le guetteur n'avait m\u00eame pas \u00e0 dire o\u00f9 se trouvait X, qu'il d\u00e9signait, car X \u00e9tait surpris en mouvement, \u00e0 d\u00e9couvert, sans que nul obstacle ne s'oppose au regard du guetteur, et la rencontre ind\u00e9niable des regards, la loi du \u00ab retour inverse des regards \u00bb \u00e9tait, d'un accord commun, preuve de son exactitude : le guetteur et X se voyaient. Donc X \u00e9tait vu. Mais m\u00eame si X \u00e9tait vu et le savait, s'il \u00e9tait vu voyant et courant vers le banc, d'une proche cachette, cela ne suffisait pas cependant pour le renvoyer parmi les vaincus. Car le guetteur devait dire non seulement qu'il voyait, mais qui il voyait. Et s'il apercevait X se pr\u00e9cipitant vers lui, il pouvait en \u00eatre surpris (il s'\u00e9tait attendu \u00e0 voir Y, et non X, il avait, par d\u00e9duction ou intuition, devin\u00e9 Y derri\u00e8re les buis, le lavoir), h\u00e9siter, h\u00e9siter trop. Et X alors avait le temps d'atteindre le banc, de le toucher. Et s'il touchait le banc, il \u00e9tait trop tard pour le guetteur. C'est lui qui avait perdu, et devait c\u00e9der la place. (L'instant de ce toucher, de la main sur le bois du banc, son ant\u00e9riorit\u00e9 par rapport \u00e0 la nomination, voil\u00e0 des sources nombreuses de contestation, de disputes. Et pourtant le jeu r\u00e9ussissait \u00e0 surmonter ces obstacles.)\n\nLes autres joueurs alors sortaient de leur derni\u00e8re cachette : ils \u00e9taient donc l\u00e0 !. Le guetteur avait bien vu bouger \u00e0 gauche, mais il ne pensait pas que c'\u00e9tait..., il croyait plut\u00f4t que c'\u00e9tait..., Chaque joueur avait ses itin\u00e9raires. Mais il lui fallait les varier, et dissimuler les particularit\u00e9s r\u00e9v\u00e9latrices de ses v\u00eatements, changer sans cesse d'habitudes. Les coalitions n'\u00e9taient pas encourag\u00e9es par la r\u00e8gle. Cependant elles n'\u00e9taient gu\u00e8re prouvables. Mais peu importe, car elles n'\u00e9taient pas utiles, puisqu'il n'y avait qu'un vainqueur. On pouvait, par exemple (et cela se produisait de toute fa\u00e7on tr\u00e8s naturellement, sans desseins pr\u00e9alables, sans alliances) parvenir \u00e0 deux ou trois assez pr\u00e8s pour bondir, se pr\u00e9cipiter ensemble, submerger le guetteur qui ne pouvait pas r\u00e9pondre assez vite, d\u00e9signer chacun. Et que faire si deux joueurs touchaient le banc au m\u00eame instant ? ; qui gagnait alors ? Je ne sais plus. Mais cela a d\u00fb arriver, sans doute.\n\n## 20 Si je me place, mentalement, en situation de souvenir volontaire\n\nSi je me place, mentalement, en situation de regard volontaire, et si je me pense existant en ce jardin, **je me retrouve \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s invariablement en ce m\u00eame point : \u00e0 genoux sur le sol caillouteux, au milieu du banc, les coudes appuy\u00e9s sur le banc, les yeux ferm\u00e9s, dans la position de guetteur du jeu ; entre toutes les localisations possibles de mon corps jouant, mon souvenir choisit de pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence \u00e0 toute autre celle-l\u00e0 (je sais que je ne peux me trouver l\u00e0 que pour cela : jouer \u00e0 \u00ab S'avancer-en-rampant \u00bb) ; je n'atteins, spontan\u00e9ment, aucune des cachettes ordinaires d'un joueur en mouvement** (qui furent pourtant souvent les miennes) ; une sorte de pilote automatique de la vision se met en marche, qui me dirige vers le banc.\n\nOr je ressens, et je d\u00e9cris ceci comme une **image,** image rendue interne de ce que je vois quand mes yeux sont ouverts (mais ils sont ferm\u00e9s), image donc d'une sc\u00e8ne que je ne vois pas, de quelque chose que le joueur que j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 ne voyait pas, ne devait pas voir, sinon int\u00e9rieurement, se concentrant sur l'anticipation de l'instant qui allait suivre la fin du compte, et int\u00e9rieurement voyant parfaitement le sol et le banc, de les avoir tant de fois vus, en des circonstances identiques. (Elles ont favoris\u00e9, sans doute, la nettet\u00e9, et l'insistance de mon image actuelle. Cette nettet\u00e9, cette intensit\u00e9 de l'image est indiscutable puisque, selon la hi\u00e9rarchie, conforme \u00e0 mon exp\u00e9rience, d'une **m\u00e9ditation des cinq sens** , elle va jusqu'\u00e0 me restituer aussi quelque impression du toucher : la rugosit\u00e9 de la terre s\u00e8che.)\n\nJe suis devant le banc en aveugle, et cependant **je vois ; je vois et sens le sol sur mes genoux, le bois du banc sous mes coudes, et la pression de ma main sur mes yeux ; je vois,** si je le veux, **en m\u00eame temps les lieux focaux du jeu, les cachettes possibles des joueurs, leurs itin\u00e9raires, leurs visages (je les reconnais toutes, et tous)**. Si voir est toujours un savoir imm\u00e9diat de la m\u00e9moire, si le souvenir me restitue toujours en position de voir me souvenant, ici simultan\u00e9ment je suis en mesure de voir avant de revoir, de voir ce qui allait \u00eatre vu. Je ne suis pas pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment surpris d'un tel d\u00e9doublement du voyeur (paradoxal seulement pour la conception \u00ab naturaliste \u00bb du souvenir), mais plus de ce que la r\u00e9flexion alors appelle.\n\n **Car l'image initiale du r\u00e9cit de cette branche** pr\u00e9sente une analogie substantielle avec la situation du guetteur dans le jeu : je suis, alors, face \u00e0 la vitre couverte de la respiration du gel, \u00e0 la nuit, aveugle \u00e0 ce qui se trouve de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la vitre, que pourtant je peux voir, dehors dans la hauteur, dans l'air hivernal, au-dessus du jardin neigeux. L'image du jeu n'est cependant pas une **image premi\u00e8re**. L'image premi\u00e8re est celle de la vitre, pas seulement parce que je l'ai pos\u00e9e telle dans le r\u00e9cit. M\u00eame si elle ne se situe pas n\u00e9cessairement avant les autres (l'image de la vitre peinte de la D\u00e9fense passive, par exemple, ou l'image de la vitre de train couverte d'un noir de fum\u00e9e (et ces images elles-m\u00eames pr\u00e9sentent \u00e9galement ce caract\u00e8re de \u00ab vue aveugl\u00e9e \u00bb)), m\u00eame si je peux aller vers elle \u00e0 partir d'autres visions, dans un parcours de m\u00e9moire indiff\u00e9rent en fait \u00e0 la chronologie, elle est celle qui surgit premi\u00e8rement quand je pense ce pass\u00e9, celle qui a surgi, effectivement premi\u00e8re, quand j'ai commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 l'\u00e9crire, **pour** que je commence \u00e0 \u00e9crire.\n\nMettant en relation, en une certaine abstraction, tous ces exemples (il s'agit d'une mise en relation, par ressemblance, non des choses vues, mais de quelques \u00e9l\u00e9ments significatifs dans les situations respectives du voyeur), je ne manque pas d'y discerner une ressemblance plus vaste : car chaque fois que je m'efforce de faire avancer ce \u00ab trait\u00e9 de m\u00e9moire \u00bb (comme j'ai, ailleurs, d\u00e9sign\u00e9 **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** , et il est cela, au moins en partie), il m'est pratiquement impossible de le faire en dehors de conditions mat\u00e9rielles pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment \u00e9trangement semblables (du point de vue de la m\u00eame abstraction) \u00e0 celles qui accompagnent toutes les images en question : il faut que je me trouve, physiquement, dans une avant-nuit, l'obscurit\u00e9 r\u00e9gnant au-del\u00e0 des vitres (en ce moment, au pr\u00e9sent qui entoure ces mots, il fait nuit \u00e0 ma droite. Les seules lumi\u00e8res qui m'atteignent sont celles de la lueur minimale de la lampe pr\u00e8s du lit (elle a deux intensit\u00e9s possibles, et j'ai laiss\u00e9 se r\u00e9pandre celle de la veilleuse, la plus faible), et celle de l'\u00e9cran du Macintosh Plus o\u00f9 je fais surgir ma narration).\n\nCe n'est pas l'obscurit\u00e9 totale, r\u00e9ellement effective (ce serait stupide) mais une obscurit\u00e9 aussi profonde que possible et surtout m\u00e9taphorique, all\u00e9gorique peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame de l'ensemble de mon entreprise (dans cet aspect-l\u00e0 tout au moins). Ce qui fait d'ailleurs que, r\u00e9versiblement, le noir pr\u00e9matinal o\u00f9 je m'exerce \u00e0 la prose a peut-\u00eatre produit, en une sorte de r\u00e9verb\u00e9ration, la s\u00e9lection narrative de ces images-l\u00e0 avant toutes les autres (contemporaines d'un r\u00eave et de la s\u00e9quence pseudo-axiomatique qui suit sa d\u00e9position en prose : les fragments singularis\u00e9s dans l'\u00e9criture macintoshienne **\u00ab en gras \u00bb** sont des descriptions d' **images pures** , ou de courtes s\u00e9quences d'images, dont le d\u00e9p\u00f4t est contemporain de la cha\u00eene de d\u00e9ductions fictives pos\u00e9es en \u00e9lucidation du r\u00eave de la branche un, chapitre 5).\n\nComme j'avance tr\u00e8s difficilement, d\u00e9sesp\u00e9r\u00e9ment lentement dans ce chapitre, en ces premiers jours de juillet 1990, rue d'Amsterdam, j'ai essay\u00e9 de me persuader que la raison, toute simple, de mon quasi-surplace \u00e9tait, plus que la fatigue et saturation d'une ann\u00e9e universitaire finissante et l\u00e9g\u00e8rement dispers\u00e9e par toutes sortes de labeurs, une difficult\u00e9 d'ordre climatique, qu'il faisait jour trop t\u00f4t, tout bonnement, et qu'ainsi l'irruption intempestive du jour dans la pi\u00e8ce (je ne dis pas la chambre, puisque je vis maintenant dans une pi\u00e8ce unique, o\u00f9 je ne fais pas que dormir) et plus encore la certitude de cette irruption ne me laissant que peu d'heures apr\u00e8s mon r\u00e9veil, constituait \u00e0 elle seule une excellente cause de mes h\u00e9sitations, une justification, donc, de mon \u00ab retard \u00bb.\n\nMais la situation analogique que je viens de d\u00e9couvrir conduit \u00e0 une hypoth\u00e8se narrativement plus satisfaisante (sinon plus vraisemblable) : qu'il s'agit d'une r\u00e9sistance profonde au d\u00e9voilement (par la mise en rapport avec les images-souvenirs) d'un fonctionnement plus profond, plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralis\u00e9 de ce qui ne m'apparaissait pr\u00e9c\u00e9demment que comme une pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence contingente absolument pour certaines bizarres conditions de travail. (En t\u00e9moigne, au chapitre 1, pour rappeler cette particularit\u00e9 de la composition de mon livre, le vocabulaire de la dilection (en des mots qui eux-m\u00eames r\u00e9p\u00e8tent \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s des mots semblables de la branche un) : \u00ab je n'aime pas... m'\u00e9veiller dans le jour \u00bb, \u00ab j'ai besoin de la nuit finissante, pr\u00e9caire, celle qui n'est \u00e0 personne... \u00bb))\n\nIl s'agirait, dans ce cas, d'une r\u00e9p\u00e9tition oblig\u00e9e. Je n'aurais pas, en somme, choisi ces dispositions ; elles ne me seraient pas apparues comme convenables par fantaisie, elles n'auraient pas \u00e9t\u00e9 renforc\u00e9es, elles ne seraient pas devenues indispensables par une tr\u00e8s longue pratique, par habitude. Elles \u00e9taient n\u00e9cessaires. Elles faisaient partie des conditions initiales de ma m\u00e9moire, depuis son origine. L'hypoth\u00e8se englobe alors un autre \u00e9l\u00e9ment circonstanciel, que je retrouve aussi dans les alentours de chacune des images concern\u00e9es : le sentiment de protection. (Branche un, chapitre 1, \u00a7 1 : \u00ab j'ai besoin d'\u00eatre dans la nuit finissante mais profonde pour trouver le courage minimal d'avancer, m\u00eame inutilement, ceci \u00bb). L'obscurit\u00e9 externe me garantit d'une menace impr\u00e9cise, ind\u00e9chiffrable. Telle l'autruche de la \u00ab sagesse des nations \u00bb, je plonge la t\u00eate dans le sable de la nuit, r\u00e9elle ou invent\u00e9e (je trouve un mot entre tous les mots, je le choisis et l'exhibe : _sable_ , parce que le mot \u00ab sable \u00bb tel qu'on l'emploie dans les blasons d\u00e9signe la couleur des nuits). Je m'enferme dans la nuit (Emp\u00e9docle prudent : une l\u00e9gende, qui fait de lui, plut\u00f4t que Simonide de C\u00e9os, l'inventeur des Arts de la M\u00e9moire, pr\u00e9tend qu'il s'\u00e9tait crev\u00e9 les yeux, pour ne pas \u00eatre aveugl\u00e9 par les images du pr\u00e9sent). Je m'enferme dans la nuit : pour **voir**.\n\n## 21 La difficult\u00e9 principale pour le guetteur\n\nLa difficult\u00e9 principale pour le guetteur du jeu \u00e9tait que le lieu du guet, le banc, le centre du jeu, \u00e9tait un centre : ce qui veut dire qu'il y avait de l'espace, une aire de jardin, autour, tout autour. Il fallait surveiller un horizon entier, en tous ses 360 degr\u00e9s. Mais voir partout \u00e0 la fois est impossible : il faudrait non seulement avoir cent yeux, comme Argus, mais il faudrait avoir des yeux derri\u00e8re la t\u00eate (propri\u00e9t\u00e9 cependant accept\u00e9e comme toute naturelle par les \u00ab guetteurs des souvenirs \u00bb). Je sens en ce moment m\u00eame derri\u00e8re ma t\u00eate (en ce moment de \u00ab diction \u00bb), inconfortablement, la menace d'une brusque \u00ab attaque \u00bb impr\u00e9vue d'un joueur enfantin, j'anticipe le sursaut d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able au contact d'une main pos\u00e9e brusquement sur mon \u00e9paule.\n\nUne telle \u00e9ventualit\u00e9, pourtant, dans les conditions r\u00e9elles du jeu, \u00e9tait peu vraisemblable. Car le banc, parall\u00e8le \u00e0 la fa\u00e7ade principale de la maison, \u00e9tait s\u00e9par\u00e9 d'elle par une terrasse en contrebas (d'une soixantaine de centim\u00e8tres, en trois marches, il me semble). Et la bordure de brique (?) (de faux marbre ? de ciment ?) de cette terrasse, rev\u00eatue de carreaux rouges (?) et surmont\u00e9e de pots de fleurs, laissait entre elle et lui une petite all\u00e9e. A moins de se glisser sans \u00eatre vu au moment d'y p\u00e9n\u00e9trer, ou de s'y \u00eatre install\u00e9 pendant les secondes aveugles du guetteur, ce qui pouvait \u00eatre per\u00e7u au son des pas ne s'\u00e9loignant que peu, descendant, il \u00e9tait pratiquement impossible d'arriver, de l\u00e0, au banc, en escaladant le rebord entre les pots de fleurs, et m\u00eame dans ce cas l'assaut ne pouvait \u00eatre directement vers l'arri\u00e8re de la t\u00eate veilleuse, puisqu'il y avait l\u00e0 le **puits**. Il aurait donc fallu monter au pas de course les quelques marches en l'un des deux acc\u00e8s, \u00e0 droite et \u00e0 gauche du banc ; et dans ce cas on n'y serait pas parvenu par l'arri\u00e8re, mais par un c\u00f4t\u00e9, dans le plein champ d'une vision non paradoxale du guetteur, comme dans la plupart des cas ordinaires.\n\nEn outre, cette issue, arri\u00e8re gauche par rapport au banc, \u00e9tait la plus distante, et tr\u00e8s \u00e0 d\u00e9couvert. Quant \u00e0 l'acc\u00e8s \u00e0 la terrasse sur le flanc droit du banc, il se faisait par un troisi\u00e8me syst\u00e8me de marches descendantes aboutissant, lui, depuis la partie \u00ab potager \u00bb et \u00ab agr\u00e9mentale \u00bb du jardin (celle que dominait la chambre d'o\u00f9 je me suis, fictivement, \u00e9lanc\u00e9, pour une l\u00e9vitation tournante, au d\u00e9but de ce chapitre). Elle \u00e9tait v\u00e9ritablement peu propice \u00e0 la dissimulation. Le guetteur pouvait donc \u00eatre \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s certain de n'avoir rien \u00e0 craindre d'une attaque surprise \u00e0 partir de ces r\u00e9gions. Pourtant, je viens de l'\u00e9prouver, l'appr\u00e9hension demeure, apr\u00e8s tant d'ann\u00e9es. Peut-\u00eatre est-ce de la maison, obscure et silencieuse, que me vient la vague menace, une superstition d'ombres ? ou bien du puits, s\u00e9jour mythique de la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 ? ombre, mais de quelle v\u00e9rit\u00e9 ?\n\nAyant choisi le banc comme centre (ou ayant \u00e9t\u00e9 plac\u00e9, sans l'avoir r\u00e9ellement choisi, en ce centre de la m\u00e9moire), je vois le jardin. **Je vois le jardin** d'une mani\u00e8re plus enti\u00e8re que, je le sais, je ne pouvais le voir effectivement : un rayon visuel multiple \u00ab tourne le coin \u00bb des arbres, des murs, des feuillages (\u00ab passe \u00bb les feuillages comme s'ils \u00e9taient transparents. Et ils l'\u00e9taient, en effet, par absence, en hiver). Mais cette vision est plus encore diff\u00e9rente de la vision r\u00e9elle, possible selon l'optique et le raisonnement. Car selon elle le jardin n'est pas ce morceau d'espace euclidien amorphe, immobile, peupl\u00e9 d'objets eux-m\u00eames stables, tranquilles, tel qu'une (ou une famille de) \u00ab **piction(s)** \u00bb exacte(s) (aquarelle(s), photographie(s)) le \u00ab pr\u00e9senterai(en)t \u00bb au regard d'aujourd'hui, et tel qu'on se persuaderait volontiers alors, devant l'\u00e9vidence, le revoir, le reconna\u00eetre, falsifiant en fait paresseusement le surgissement bien plus \u00e9trange, bien plus \u00ab tordu \u00bb, des souvenirs.\n\nDans l'\u0153il du jeu les **points vifs** du paysage \u00e9taient tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rents : c'\u00e9taient ceux o\u00f9 il se passait, o\u00f9 il pouvait se passer, s'\u00eatre pass\u00e9, quelque chose de significatif, ludiquement parlant. Ces points marqu\u00e9s, au sens d'une Th\u00e9orie du Rythme \u00ab \u00e9tendue \u00bb, imaginairement, \u00e0 l'espace, aux espaces (cachettes, \u00e9lans surprise grav\u00e9s en images, d\u00e9couvertes soudain), semblables \u00e0 des \u00e9toiles de magnitude \u00e9lev\u00e9e et variable dans un ciel d'observatoire nocturne, \u00e9taient ceux qui se trouvaient \u00e0 la fois plus vraisemblablement et plus rapidement rejoints par le regard que les autres (il y a m\u00eame des zones v\u00e9ritablement quasi d\u00e9sertes dans cette \u00ab carte \u00bb du jardin, partant presque infiniment \u00e9loign\u00e9es (\u00e9loign\u00e9es, on peut le dire, comme \u00e0 l'infini d\u00e8s lors que le retour au pass\u00e9 ne les retrouve pas, \u00ab puits \u00bb contenant de l'inconnu, dont la lumi\u00e8re-souvenir ne peut pas sortir)).\n\nD'o\u00f9 il r\u00e9sulte que les trajets du regard pour les atteindre \u00e9taient mentalement plus courts que ceux qui le conduisaient \u00e0 des points indiff\u00e9rents, \u00e0 des points de moindre poids ludique pourtant beaucoup plus proches, selon la conception physique ordinaire des distances. D'une mani\u00e8re l\u00e9g\u00e8rement p\u00e9dante je dirais que la m\u00e9trique du jardin, vu selon le jeu, n'\u00e9tait pas la m\u00e9trique habituelle, qu'on appelle euclidienne ; et qu'une carte du jardin \u00e9tablie selon cette neuve m\u00e9trique appara\u00eetrait tr\u00e8s d\u00e9form\u00e9e, confront\u00e9e \u00e0 celle d'un relev\u00e9 topographique. (Mais, j'y songe, les principes de ces m\u00e9triques-l\u00e0 ne sont, au fond, peut-\u00eatre pas si \u00e9sot\u00e9riques.\n\nUn journal du matin a, en effet, r\u00e9cemment publi\u00e9 une carte d'Europe selon un principe voisin (quoique d'inspiration apparemment moins subjective) : les grandes villes de cette entit\u00e9 g\u00e9ographique \u00e9taient repr\u00e9sent\u00e9es de mani\u00e8re \u00e0 ce que leurs distances respectives sur le papier ne soient pas les bonnes vieilles distances kilom\u00e9triques d'atlas fournies par le sol, celles qui nous viennent des approximations de la g\u00e9ologie, mais celles qui r\u00e9sultent de leur \u00ab temps d'acc\u00e8s \u00bb depuis un centre, en l'occurrence Paris, par les Trains \u00e0 Grande Vitesse, tels qu'ils existeront sans doute \u00e0 l'aube du troisi\u00e8me mill\u00e9naire (si les mill\u00e9naires ont des aubes). On obtenait ainsi la \u00ab vision \u00bb assez \u00e9trange d'un continent reconnaissable selon nos habitudes des cartes, mais d\u00e9form\u00e9, comme si on nous invitait \u00e0 une plong\u00e9e dans un \u00e2ge r\u00e9volu de la Terre (dans ce cas, au contraire, futur), avant ou apr\u00e8s forte d\u00e9rive de plaques tectoniques, ou, plus ressemblante encore, d'une de ces cartes m\u00e9di\u00e9vales construites peut-\u00eatre implicitement selon des contraintes topologiques semblables (les distances associ\u00e9es aux dur\u00e9es des voyages). (Si on avait tenu compte des autres villes, celles absentes du r\u00e9seau, o\u00f9 ne s'arr\u00eateraient pas les Trains \u00e0 Grande Vitesse, la \u00ab figure \u00bb de l'Europe ainsi construite aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 plus \u00e9trange encore, irrepr\u00e9sentable en fait dans un plan, et plus proche de celle qui est la mienne dans le jardin.))\n\nMais la distance \u00e0 l'\u0153il n'est pas le seul param\u00e8tre affect\u00e9 dans la vision du jardin (ce que je dis l\u00e0, bien s\u00fbr, est en fait largement g\u00e9n\u00e9ralisable. Je prends cet exemple parce qu'il est non seulement tr\u00e8s net, mais aussi parce que le jeu et le lieu dont je parle ont un r\u00f4le m\u00e9taphorique-all\u00e9gorique dans mon pseudo-roman, que vous lisez, **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** ). Une sorte de renversement des zones lumineuses et sombres se produit (ce que mon manuel \u00ab Macintosh \u00bb appellerait un passage vid\u00e9o-inverse) : car les endroits marqu\u00e9s pour le jeu sont surtout ceux qui \u00e9taient cach\u00e9s au regard, qui dissimulaient les joueurs. Et les endroits ensoleill\u00e9s au contraire \u00e9taient presque sans importance. Le regard du guetteur ne les percevait pour ainsi dire pas.\n\nIl y a ainsi des r\u00e9gions \u00ab blanches \u00bb de la carte (r\u00e9gions de t\u00e9n\u00e8bres au souvenir), de celles qu'autrefois, dans les atlas Vidal-Lablache, on signalait comme inexplor\u00e9es, _terra incognita_. Et il y a, plus exceptionnels encore (et la comparaison, l\u00e0, doit de nouveau recourir aux cartes du ciel), de v\u00e9ritables \u00ab trous noirs \u00bb. Un troisi\u00e8me param\u00e8tre, pr\u00e9sent au jeu, mais le d\u00e9bordant largement, et venu du \u00ab jeu \u00bb central de la vie, un param\u00e8tre \u00e9motionnel, rend quelques-uns de ces lieux comme \u00ab interdits \u00bb \u00e0 la contemplation. Il en est un particuli\u00e8rement, un lieu occup\u00e9 d'une lumi\u00e8re intense d'\u00e9t\u00e9, mais devenu de \u00ab lumi\u00e8re noire \u00bb \u00e0 ma m\u00e9moire. Il se situe \u00e0 gauche, \u00e0 quelques pas et un peu en arri\u00e8re du banc. Je ne l'affronterai pas maintenant du regard (et en tout cas pas dans cette branche-ci).\n\n## 22 A genoux devant le banc vert, les genoux nus\n\n **A genoux devant le banc vert** (je ne le vois pas vert, je ne vois pas de couleur, mais je le sais (?) vert, et ainsi le d\u00e9signe vert), **les genoux nus** (puisque je sens le sol, sol de terre et de cailloux), **entre les lattes de bois du banc je voyais les feuilles vertes, plus vertes, plus sombres que le bois peint griff\u00e9, \u00e9caill\u00e9, du banc, les feuilles en coquilles des buis, les feuilles vernies des fusains, du haut massif de fusains dress\u00e9 devant le banc parall\u00e8lement \u00e0 la terrasse, parall\u00e8lement \u00e9lev\u00e9 tout contre le banc, entre les deux all\u00e9es.** (J'\u00e9cris \u00ab haut \u00bb mais tout cela \u00e9tait de dimensions r\u00e9elles n\u00e9cessairement beaucoup plus modestes que celles d'une vision rest\u00e9e fig\u00e9e dans un corps enfantin. De plus, je ne vois pas \u00e0 proprement parler le banc, je ne parviens pas \u00e0 me reculer suffisamment pour le voir entier. Le moment g\u00e9n\u00e9rique du guet, concentr\u00e9 d'innombrables moments effectifs en cette position, attire et absorbe la vue. Et comme la couleur physique \u00e9chappe \u00e0 l'image, le mot \u00ab vert \u00bb ajout\u00e9 \u00e0 \u00ab banc \u00bb me para\u00eet coll\u00e9 sur lui, tel une \u00e9tiquette.)\n\nPendant le jeu, la masse serr\u00e9e des fusains faisait obstacle \u00e0 la vue du guetteur : un mur trou\u00e9, peu opaque, insuffisamment opaque pour dissimuler les mouvements, assez pour ralentir l'identification des contours, des silhouettes, des visages, fait pour le jeu. A l'exception des territoires l\u00e9gumiers, fruitiers, floraux ou animaux (lapins, cochon) de la moiti\u00e9 droite du jardin strictement interdits (en principe), ou (partie gauche) de la terrasse, du lavoir ou du \u00ab garage \u00bb (sans voiture) en partie partag\u00e9s avec des adultes (aux conceptions plus limit\u00e9es, plus utilitaires, de l'emploi des lieux), le territoire entier, entre les murs (tout \u00e9tait entre murs), du sol aux derni\u00e8res branches accessibles des pins, \u00e9tait **en jeu**. Le, les jeux d\u00e9cident des chemins de ma reconnaissance, aujourd'hui.\n\nDans le temps du jeu, spontan\u00e9ment, **je regardais d'abord \u00e0 gauche ; j'enlevais les mains de devant mes yeux, j'ouvrais les yeux depuis le banc, je parcourais l'espace circulaire d'un regard, rapide mais continu,** en un mouvement que je dirai \u00ab temporel \u00bb (au rebours du sens dit \u00ab trigonom\u00e9trique \u00bb qui me para\u00eet cependant, par longue habitude math\u00e9matique, plus \u00ab naturel \u00bb. Je comprends bien que les exigences m\u00e9caniques aient jadis \u00ab forc\u00e9 \u00bb la traduction spatiale du temps mesur\u00e9 dans les horloges par un mouvement circulaire de balayage, d'avalement-effacement sans cesse recommenc\u00e9 des minutes et des heures, et que le mod\u00e8le du mouvement choisi ait \u00e9t\u00e9 celui, apparent, de l'ombre sur les cadrans solaires, mais je me serais, je crois, tr\u00e8s bien converti \u00e0 un alignement du mouvement des aiguilles sur celui d'un vecteur tournant dans le sens math\u00e9matiquement dit \u00ab positif \u00bb).\n\n **A gauche, une all\u00e9e ; de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'all\u00e9e, un autre massif v\u00e9g\u00e9tal ; comme le massif \u00e0 bordure de fusains qui faisait face au banc** (mais le banc, en fait, lui tournait le dos, c'est dans le jeu seulement que les fusains et le banc se faisaient face), **il ne venait pas, il ne descendait pas jusqu'\u00e0 la terrasse (toutes les r\u00e9gions plant\u00e9es de buissons et d'arbres \u00e9taient des collines (modestes)) ; \u00e0 son bord inf\u00e9rieur gauche** (pensez-le dessin\u00e9 sur un plan), **\u00e0 la limite du mur, contre lequel \u00e9taient les arbres les plus hauts, plus hauts que le mur, il parvenait jusqu'au figuier (le figuier, gr\u00e2ce auquel on sortait de la maison sans passer par la porte, n'en fait pas partie) ; son bord est (l'all\u00e9e centrale) \u00e9tait marqu\u00e9 par des _pulumussiers_** (\u00eatres v\u00e9g\u00e9taux en buissons semi-sph\u00e9riques d'une esp\u00e8ce v\u00e9g\u00e9tale d'importance suffisante pour avoir m\u00e9rit\u00e9 un nom autre que leur nom commun dans la langue, que d'ailleurs je ne parviens pas \u00e0 retenir).\n\nL'all\u00e9e centrale le contournait, \u00e0 sa limite \u00ab nord \u00bb le s\u00e9parant de l'autre \u00ab colline \u00bb, \u00e0 la latitude du rond-point central. Il y avait quelques marches, pour s'\u00e9lever jusqu'\u00e0 une premi\u00e8re \u00ab station \u00bb du regard : le bassin adoss\u00e9 au mur, ferm\u00e9 d'une paroi mince, en forme d'om\u00e9ga adouci. (On y parvenait, alternativement, \u00e0 travers la jungle v\u00e9g\u00e9tale, **sombre des arbres et du mur, sombre de feuilles vernies au vert tach\u00e9 de blanc, comme marbr\u00e9, sombre surtout du noyer dont l'ombre \u00e9tait humide, et noire, et am\u00e8re,** par un sentier certainement non pr\u00e9vu \u00e0 l'origine (il fallait s'y baisser)) ; **le fond du bassin \u00e9tait habill\u00e9 de feuilles mortes ; je peux y faire jaillir de l'eau, depuis le mur, \u00e9claboussant les feuilles.**\n\nSi, du banc, mon regard va d'un seul coup jusqu'\u00e0 ce bassin (par l'un, ou l'autre des chemins : contournant le massif, ou le traversant, inclin\u00e9 sous les branches des grands arbres) c'est, bien s\u00fbr, que le souvenir du jeu favorise un endroit o\u00f9 on pouvait, ais\u00e9ment, se dissimuler (mon regard, aujourd'hui, accompagne volontiers ce d\u00e9placement imagin\u00e9, **voit le bassin, voit le fond du bassin, tremp\u00e9 et ocre de feuilles mortes, d'aiguilles de pin).** C'est un point fixe, un point vivant sur la carte du jardin, selon le jeu. Mais il y a d'autres jeux, qui animent d'autres points, ou les m\u00eames, diff\u00e9remment. Et ce point-l\u00e0 est le lieu unique d'un autre jeu, un jeu de point fixe, un jeu de l'immobilit\u00e9.\n\n **Le bord du bassin \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s \u00e9troit mais on pouvait, avec une adresse minimale, l'escalader, et s'y tenir debout ; j'avais invent\u00e9 de m'y tenir ainsi : debout, et immobile, d'une immobilit\u00e9 absolue, comme si j'\u00e9tais devenu une pierre, une statue, semblable \u00e0 une de ces statues qui ornent les fontaines des jardins ornementaux, leurs bassins ; je me tenais sur le bord \u00e9troit de la pierre, et je m'effor\u00e7ais d'atteindre \u00e0 la rectitude interne du non-vivant, \u00e0 la fixit\u00e9 sectaire des figures min\u00e9rales ; je me livrais avec fanatisme \u00e0 cette immobilit\u00e9.** On plonge bient\u00f4t (je m'en souviens) dans une ivresse vide, dans une exaltation d\u00e9sertique, une catatonie jubilatoire.\n\nMa premi\u00e8re exp\u00e9rience de statue, certainement celle qui signa l'invention de ce jeu (je ne la retrouve pas telle, mais je la d\u00e9duis de ses cons\u00e9quences) produisit, en se prolongeant (la longue dur\u00e9e en est la contrainte essentielle) un effet tel sur ses spectateurs (mes fr\u00e8res et s\u0153ur, plus jeunes que moi) qu'ils s'en all\u00e8rent faire part \u00e0 nos parents de l'inqui\u00e9tude r\u00e9sultant de cette subite apparente privation de mes facult\u00e9s locomotrices (cet \u00e9v\u00e9nement devint, ensuite, un r\u00e9cit : \u00ab ainsi, comme on dit dans le _Lancelot en prose_ , ainsi le savons-nous encore \u00bb). Le plus insolite, certainement, dans cette p\u00e9trification, tenait \u00e0 l'\u00e9tranget\u00e9 inconfortable de la position. Ce n'est pas ainsi qu'on dort, et le sommeil est la seule immobilit\u00e9 naturelle (on ferme les yeux du mort pour qu'il dorme, en un simili-sommeil on le naturalise). D'ailleurs, le joueur-statue devait garder les yeux ouverts.\n\nL'imitation de l'immobilit\u00e9 fait partie de l'art du mime. Au coin de rues tr\u00e8s passantes, sur des places de march\u00e9, de temps en temps, de loin en loin, des mimes grim\u00e9s en figures de cire, en personnages de mus\u00e9e Gr\u00e9vin, de \u00ab Mme Tussaud \u00bb (sur les march\u00e9s aux puces londoniens) resurgissent, fascinant les promeneurs cr\u00e9dules. Mais mon jeu n'\u00e9tait pas celui-l\u00e0 : pas un jeu de d\u00e9guisement, de \u00ab singerie \u00bb plut\u00f4t une profession de foi, l'affirmation d'une vocation \u00e9r\u00e9mitique momentan\u00e9e. En lisant, plus tard, la description des \u00ab stylites \u00bb, ces ermites ornementaux du d\u00e9sert alexandrin s'immobilisant en statues de sel de la contemplation, j'ai reconnu une intention confus\u00e9ment voisine. Cependant, s'ils se donnaient, eux, ainsi en spectacle, c'\u00e9tait pour un spectateur unique mais int\u00e9rieur-ext\u00e9rieur, Dieu. Nous ne jouions, nous, que pour nous-m\u00eames.\n\n## 23 \u00ab Jamais l'aube \u00e0 grands cris bleuissant les lavoirs \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Jamais l'aube \u00e0 grands cris bleuissant les lavoirs \/ L'aube, savon perdu dans l'eau des fleuves noirs... \u00bb Avec ces deux alexandrins de Robert Desnos me viennent, en foule dense des images. Ces vers sont de souverains effecteurs de m\u00e9moire ; (et je les ai d\u00e9j\u00e0 d'ailleurs cit\u00e9s, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment comme li\u00e9s \u00e0 la m\u00eame famille d'images, \u00e0 la branche 1, \u00a7 142, en commentaire au \u00ab savoir du r\u00eave \u00bb (une incise du \u00a7 60 de cette m\u00eame branche, dont ceci est donc une \u00ab variante \u00bb) (une nouvelle vari\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab th\u00e9orique \u00bb de prose se r\u00e9v\u00e8le ici !) (mais c'est peut-\u00eatre, plut\u00f4t qu'une variante, une \u00ab expansion \u00bb) (je ferai, ailleurs, la \u00ab th\u00e9orie \u00bb, ou plus exactement ce que j'appelle la fiction th\u00e9orique de ces entit\u00e9s). Pourquoi ? (et pourquoi \u00e0 plusieurs ann\u00e9es de distance, de mani\u00e8re quasi semblable ?) peut-\u00eatre parce que ce sont des vers. Peut-\u00eatre parce que je les ai appris, par c\u0153ur, et retenus, parce que je les ai appris tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t, parce qu'ils sont de Desnos, un des po\u00e8tes que j'ai aim\u00e9 il y a longtemps, et continue \u00e0 pr\u00e9f\u00e9rer parmi les surr\u00e9alistes, peut-\u00eatre encore parce que, parmi les tr\u00e8s nombreux alexandrins de Desnos que je connais, ils ont une rapidit\u00e9 particuli\u00e8re (v\u00e9ritablement \u00ab hermog\u00e9nienne \u00bb) qui suscite d'autant plus efficacement le tourbillon d'images irr\u00e9sistibles que leur sens d\u00e9clar\u00e9 appelle directement, peut-\u00eatre enfin parce qu'ils commencent cette prolif\u00e9ration d'images sans l'achever vraiment, parce que les deux autres vers du quatrain affaiblissent pour moi son d\u00e9but, particuli\u00e8rement le dernier (\u00ab L'aube ne blanchira sur cette nuit livide \/ Ni sur nos doigts tremblants, ni sur nos verres vides \u00bb (je n'ai jamais les doigts tremblants \u00e0 la fin d'une nuit, et je ne vois certainement pas l'aube blanchir sur un verre vide)). Ils laissent (dans ma vision interne du quatrain) les deux premiers en suspens, sur une \u00e9l\u00e9vation de la voix, annon\u00e7ant d'autres continuations myst\u00e9rieuses, po\u00e9tiquement plus justes, mais qui ne seront jamais \u00e9crites.\n\nParmi ces images il y a, extricable et identifiable, celle du lavoir : le lavoir de ce jardin de la rue d'Assas o\u00f9 je \u00ab suis \u00bb en ce moment, par le souvenir. Sur le cadran d'horloge de la repr\u00e9sentation mentale du jardin, que je parcours en pens\u00e9e selon le sens temporel, celui \u00ab des aiguilles d'une montre \u00bb, il est midi au lavoir (il pourrait \u00eatre minuit, puisque les horloges identifient, absurdement, en un seul apog\u00e9e, les deux moments extr\u00eames, antith\u00e9tiques, des r\u00e9volutions solaires, le blanc et le noir. Mais je pense plut\u00f4t \u00e0 midi). (Il aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 alors, au cadran fictif, six heures du matin pour le guetteur, dans la poussi\u00e8re au pied du banc, et neuf heures pour le \u00ab stylite \u00bb pr\u00e9cairement debout sur le rebord \u00e9troit du bassin, p\u00e9trifi\u00e9 au pass\u00e9 dans son jeu de l'immobilit\u00e9.)\n\n **La lumi\u00e8re** , r\u00e9fl\u00e9chie int\u00e9rieurement et d\u00e9vers\u00e9e sur ce lieu par le souvenir (une bien \u00e9trange lumi\u00e8re que celle-l\u00e0 !) **fond incessante dans l'eau bougeante, comme un savon noir** ; (cette assimilation est presque absurde, je le sais, mais je ne cherche pas ici un effet stylistique particulier, et certainement pas un effet \u00ab po\u00e9tique \u00bb) **je vois le nuage de lumi\u00e8re envahir l'eau, l'\u00e9clairer troublement ; je le vois comme une sorte de lumi\u00e8re mat\u00e9riellement incarn\u00e9e, coagul\u00e9e en la substance d'un savon, un savon brun noir translucide qui en fondant, en se d\u00e9litant, bleuissait l'eau du premier des deux bassins (bacs) dont se composait le lavoir.**\n\n **Le lavoir \u00e9tait fait d'une substance grise, d'un pseudo** **marbre mat, luisant, poli par l'eau et les savons ; sur la surface l\u00e9g\u00e8rement en pente de ses bords us\u00e9s par les lavages, par les coups** (les \u00ab cris \u00bb du po\u00e8me ?) **des battoirs en bois sur le linge ; l'eau d\u00e9bordante, perp\u00e9tuellement en course, venait prendre la lumi\u00e8re et la plonger en elle, fondante, comme n\u00e9e du savon, de l'aube, fra\u00eeche plus que froide ; l'eau froide et vive, sur la surface glissante de savon des bords du lavoir, je sais que je la sens sur ma main quand je la trempe, les doigts gourds, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 du bruit du linge plong\u00e9, tordu, retir\u00e9, battu, replong\u00e9, rinc\u00e9 ruisselant ; ce sont les \u00ab grands cris \u00bb du linge, des draps blancs au jour surgissant de la nuit savonneuse noire ; l'eau en devient bleue.**\n\nLe lavoir \u00e9tait au bout et \u00e0 gauche de l'all\u00e9e centrale, qui s\u00e9parait la moiti\u00e9 droite utile du jardin (celle des l\u00e9gumes, des fruits et des animaux comestibles) de sa moiti\u00e9 gauche, autrefois \u00ab jardin d'agr\u00e9ment \u00bb, abandonn\u00e9e ensuite \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s sans r\u00e9serve aux barbarismes enfantins (la premi\u00e8re occupant le demi-plan d'abscisses \u00ab positives \u00bb, dans la repr\u00e9sentation \u00ab cart\u00e9sienne \u00bb, la seconde \u00e0 premi\u00e8res coordonn\u00e9es \u00ab n\u00e9gatives \u00bb, selon la m\u00eame r\u00e9partition). La moiti\u00e9 ludique \u00e9tait elle-m\u00eame divis\u00e9e en quatre par des all\u00e9es en forme de croix. Le lavoir \u00e9tait construit en bordure d'une petite \u00ab colline \u00bb, semblable \u00e0 celle, encore plus basse, qui \u00e9tait plac\u00e9e devant le banc, semblable aussi \u00e0 celle qui s\u00e9parait le figuier du bassin (au-dessus du bassin (\u00ab plus haut \u00bb, ou \u00ab plus au nord \u00bb, selon la repr\u00e9sentation choisie), on voit la quatri\u00e8me colline, la plus marqu\u00e9e), derri\u00e8re lui le mur, puis, derri\u00e8re le mur, la rue, la rue d'Assas.\n\n **Dans l'eau je vois le ciel, malgr\u00e9 le toit ; un ciel parsem\u00e9 de flocons de nuages ; dans l'eau \u00e9galement les bourgeons violets, l\u00e9g\u00e8rement sucr\u00e9s, qui tombent de l'arbre de Jud\u00e9e ; je vois l'escadre fragile de bateaux de papier : feuilles de cahier arrach\u00e9es, copies d'anciens devoirs (exercices d'anglais, dissertations philosophiques not\u00e9es, annot\u00e9es, p\u00e9rim\u00e9es) ; demi-feuilles, quart de feuilles pli\u00e9es selon une proc\u00e9dure immuable** (les premiers gestes du pliage des feuilles sont communs \u00e0 la fabrication des navires de papier et \u00e0 celle des pseudo-moteurs d'avions) ; **journaux r\u00e9quisitionn\u00e9s pour la construction des** **grands \u00ab cuirassiers \u00bb lourds, bient\u00f4t imbib\u00e9s d'eau, prenant l'eau, effondr\u00e9s en masses molles, gluantes, informes, de papier \u00e0 mauvaise odeur de mauvais papier de mauvaise imprimerie de guerre, o\u00f9 les marques d'identification majuscules des \u00ab b\u00e2timents \u00bb d'une flotte guerri\u00e8re disparaissaient, brouill\u00e9es, bues par le papier, ruin\u00e9es par l'eau des lessives, par les \u00e9claboussures de l'eau tombant avec violence dans les bassins, par les bombardements all\u00e9goriques des canonni\u00e8res imaginaires dispos\u00e9es sur leurs bords savonneux.**\n\nLa pr\u00e9sence d'un toit, la certitude de l'existence pr\u00e9sente d'un toit sur le lavoir rend la vision des nuages dans l'eau douteuse, mais cette vision n'est pas moins certaine. En fait la position respective des deux m'\u00e9chappe. Il ne s'agit pas, de toute fa\u00e7on, d'un b\u00e2timent-lavoir, comme sur des places m\u00e9diterran\u00e9ennes de village, mais d'un simple abri, contre la pluie, pour le s\u00e9chage du linge. Je ne sais pas exactement \u00ab o\u00f9 le mettre \u00bb. Il me semble qu'il s'appuyait, sur un de ses c\u00f4t\u00e9s, contre le mur de la rue. Et il ne couvrait peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame pas enti\u00e8rement le lavoir proprement dit.\n\nMa vision qui ressuscite est non seulement composite, mais s\u00e9lective. Bien que je m'imagine, comme j'ai dit, contre toute vraisemblance physique, avoir une vue \u00ab a\u00e9rienne \u00bb d'ensemble du jardin (et dans ce cas une reconstitution par d\u00e9duction g\u00e9om\u00e9trique place le centre de cette vue en l'air, au-dessus du \u00ab potager \u00bb, quelque part entre la fen\u00eatre de notre chambre et le sol, et plus bizarrement encore oblige l'\u0153il qui \u00ab voit \u00bb \u00e0 se mettre devant une surface qui serait presque \u00ab debout \u00bb, comme en un de ces moments de voyage a\u00e9rien o\u00f9 l'avion s'incline et tourne, avant de descendre sur la piste), la compl\u00e9tude \u00ab photographique \u00bb d'une telle vue est largement fallacieuse, car en fait la moindre attention arr\u00eat\u00e9e sur un \u00ab d\u00e9tail \u00bb fait appara\u00eetre des manques, des vagues, de v\u00e9ritables \u00ab trous \u00bb, combl\u00e9s seulement par le travail mental d'une suture grise, d'une grise mati\u00e8re \u00ab philosophique \u00bb, sans le moindre \u00ab accident \u00bb pr\u00e9cis. (J'\u00e9carte, pour le confort du r\u00e9cit (mais, bien s\u00fbr, je ne pourrais, s'il s'agissait d'un exercice \u00ab s\u00e9rieux \u00bb d'introspection, \u00e9liminer cette hypoth\u00e8se), le soup\u00e7on que la vision de mes, de nos navires de papier dans l'eau bleuissante vient d'ailleurs, d'un autre endroit d'espace-temps, et s'est introduite ici sous un faux pr\u00e9texte m\u00e9moriel.)\n\n **L'eau disparaissait par la bonde, engloutie dans un tourbillon s'engloutissant lui-m\u00eame pour laisser enfin les bateaux \u00e9chou\u00e9s sur le fond ; je guettais l'instant d'apparition de ce \u00ab maelstr\u00f6m \u00bb miniature** (dont la contemplation, par l'imagination d'un changement \u00e9norme d'\u00e9chelle, \u00e9tait capable de provoquer, en \u00ab sympathie \u00bb, une identification frissonnante avec les h\u00e9ros de la nouvelle de Poe, _Une descente dans le Maelstr\u00f6m_ ), **j'attendais l'instant o\u00f9 l'eau se creusait en un sphincter vertigineux** (\u00e0 volont\u00e9 effa\u00e7able), **l'h\u00e9sitation \u00e0 son bord des \u00ab navires \u00bb, des morceaux de bois, des coques creuses v\u00e9g\u00e9tales plant\u00e9es d'une brindille-drapeau** (catalpas), **des insectes, des fleurs \u00e9parpill\u00e9es ; les blancs nuages du ciel l\u00e9ger eux-m\u00eames semblaient devoir s'\u00e9vanouir ainsi ; je les suivais jusqu'\u00e0 la seconde finale du mirage de leur disparition, pour les retrouver l'instant suivant, imm\u00e9diats, intacts et tremblants au plus profond de l'image in\u00e9lastique, inabsorbable, du ciel.**\n\n## 24 des fleurs, des fruits, des feuilles et des branches\n\n\u00ab Voici des fleurs, des fruits, des feuilles et des branches \u00bb (dit le po\u00e8te (comme on \u00e9crivait jadis scolairement et parenth\u00e9tiquement quand on citait des vers)), des l\u00e9gumes surtout (en y incluant les fruits assimilables aux l\u00e9gumes par leur mode de production, comme les fraises et les melons), dans le rectangle utilitaire et en grande partie \u00ab r\u00e9serv\u00e9 \u00bb (c'est-\u00e0-dire interdit aux incursions enfantines), constituant la moiti\u00e9 droite du cadran (le jardin \u00e0 la droite du banc), grand rectangle divis\u00e9 en plus petits (comme pour un dessin didactique, expliquant une \u00ab sommation \u00bb en vue du calcul d'une \u00ab int\u00e9grale de Riemann \u00bb). Ce sont les \u00ab planches \u00bb l\u00e9gumi\u00e8res, elles-m\u00eames tir\u00e9es, creus\u00e9es de lignes droites o\u00f9 se d\u00e9versaient en chuintant doucement les eaux d'arrosage, qui noircissaient la terre jamais rassasi\u00e9e (la terre de l'Aude est s\u00e8che. Il ne pleut pas beaucoup, pas souvent dans les zones fronti\u00e8res de ce paysage, proche de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e).\n\nJe ressuscite ais\u00e9ment une vision de petits pois, de haricots verts ou blancs (apparent\u00e9s aux petits pois par le r\u00e9ceptacle), de tomates, de melons, de courges \u00e9normes, de fraises : leur maturation, leur survie, leur abondance \u00e9taient des affaires sinon vitales, du moins de grande importance dans l'ordinaire d'une famille qui en avait, comme tant d'autres, besoin. Ces ann\u00e9es furent des ann\u00e9es de faim, aux hivers d'autant plus redoutables que la terre n'y produit pas. Chaque esp\u00e8ce-l\u00e9gume cr\u00e9e un foyer de vision conserv\u00e9e intense, accompagn\u00e9e de couleurs et presque d'odeurs ; je peux quasiment suivre \u00e0 l'\u0153il (int\u00e9rieur) la maturation d'une tomate sous ses feuilles, du vert au rouge volumique par le rose et le jaune, parfois, en un \u00e9talement du spectre color\u00e9 qui donne \u00e0 chaque teinte une taille propre, croissante, et un poids. La dimension m\u00eame des plants et des fruits (excessive selon une mesure actuelle), les environs variables mais identifiables de la vision (le lavoir \u00e0 gauche, ou une all\u00e9e, l'abricotier, ou la treille de vigne) placent et datent cette sorte de \u00ab film \u00bb acc\u00e9l\u00e9r\u00e9 et discontinu. Je peux m\u00eame porter le panier, le poser sur la table, prendre une tomate, la mordre.\n\nSym\u00e9triquement, le peu de souvenir que j'ai des fleurs (pourtant tr\u00e8s pr\u00e9sentes) a peut-\u00eatre pour origine la m\u00eame cause : les roses sont, mais ne se mangent pas. En particulier, je ne vois pas de roses. Pire : j'ai l'intuition de la non-existence des roses. Et comme la rose est une denr\u00e9e fran\u00e7aise (je veux dire \u00ab rose \u00bb, dans la langue, donc dans la po\u00e9sie de cette langue, le fran\u00e7ais, \u00ab rose \u00bb est une denr\u00e9e fran\u00e7aise, telle que Dominique Fourcade nous l'a montr\u00e9, et il ne s'agit pas de _\u00ab rose \u00bb_ , syllabe autrement prise dans la langue anglaise, qui est, elle, une denr\u00e9e po\u00e9tiquement anglaise, comme l'a d\u00e9clar\u00e9 d\u00e9finitivement Gertrude Stein). Je suis, j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 un enfant sans roses, c'est-\u00e0-dire un mauvais petit Fran\u00e7ais, po\u00e9tiquement parlant. Il me faudra en parler. (Les fleurs de l'arbre de Jud\u00e9e, en revanche, me suivent encore, comestibles, sucr\u00e9es, pendant leur enfance de bourgeons.) Je ne vois que les dahlias (et je les vois semblables aux t\u00eates plumeaux, aux t\u00eates \u00ab balais O'Cedar \u00bb de certaines jeunes filles \u00ab punk \u00bb). Et il me semble, qui plus est, que je ne vois les dahlias que pour une raison \u00ab parasite \u00bb, qui tient \u00e0 ma rencontre avec une des marques les plus caract\u00e9ristiques de la singularit\u00e9 du vers dans la langue. Le mot \u00ab dahlia \u00bb est en effet, pour moi, un \u00e9ponyme de la di\u00e9r\u00e8se. Je m'explique : il y a deux sortes de \u00ab dahlias \u00bb ; les uns sont les noms de ces fleurs que je vois dans le jardin, vers 1940, les autres occupent la premi\u00e8re moiti\u00e9 d'un vers de Max Jacob : \u00ab Dahlias, dahlias, que Dalila lia. \u00bb Ces seconds \u00ab dahlias \u00bb sont trisyllabiques (\u00ab dah-li-a \u00bb) et les premiers sont des disyllabes seulement. Ce n'est qu'en un vers aussi convaincant que celui-l\u00e0 que Dalila (sp\u00e9cialiste, on le sait, des bouquets, t\u00e9moin celui, c\u00e9l\u00e8bre, qu'elle composa avec la chevelure de Samson) peut lier ensemble, subliminalement, les deux syllabes de \u00ab li-a \u00bb pour en faire ces fleurs, les seules que je n'ai pas oubli\u00e9es.\n\n\u00ab Jardin potager \u00bb, \u00ab le potager \u00bb \u00e9tait le nom du rectangle de terrain, plus allong\u00e9 que l'autre, quasi carr\u00e9, qui \u00e9tait celui du jeu. Il se poursuivait le long de la fa\u00e7ade de la maison o\u00f9 \u00e9tait la chambre, apr\u00e8s la \u00ab serre \u00bb (vitr\u00e9e, comme la \u00ab v\u00e9randa \u00bb de la maison de mes grands-parents, \u00e0 Lyon). De ce c\u00f4t\u00e9-l\u00e0 (un c\u00f4t\u00e9 court du rectangle) un mur, pas tr\u00e8s haut, mais suffisamment pour interrompre la vue, s\u00e9parait d'autres jardins. Derri\u00e8re l'autre mur il y avait la rue. Une all\u00e9e principale m\u00e9diane (dans le sens de la longueur) ; deux all\u00e9es aux pieds des murs, une troisi\u00e8me, plus large, parall\u00e8le, descendait par des marches (trois ?) jusqu'\u00e0 la terrasse en contrebas, devant la fa\u00e7ade principale de la maison. C'est au long de cette all\u00e9e-l\u00e0 que se dressaient deux rideaux de vigne, charg\u00e9s, \u00e0 la fin d'ao\u00fbt, en septembre, d'une cargaison infiniment pr\u00e9cieuse de grappes \u00e0 grains lourds.\n\nReste \u00e0 \u00e9lever un dernier mur, pour clore enti\u00e8rement de mots le jardin, comme il l'\u00e9tait r\u00e9ellement, d'un bord de page en pierre. (Je pense ici (c'est-\u00e0-dire en ce point de la prose et en cet instant de composition) qu'il serait bon d'achever ce chapitre, si je parviens \u00e0 l'amener \u00ab hors les murs \u00bb, ce que j'esp\u00e8re, d'un plan du lieu, qui permettrait \u00e0 la fois au lecteur de se reconna\u00eetre dans ce qui n'est, au fond, qu'une tr\u00e8s longue description (la description n'est aucunement une photographie mais une narration topologique), et \u00e0 moi de v\u00e9rifier si les omissions (les \u00ab blancs \u00bb de la description par rapport au r\u00e9el r\u00e9volu mais plein) volontaires et involontaires sont bien ad\u00e9quates aux myst\u00e8res que la m\u00e9moire y a m\u00e9nag\u00e9s. (Une telle \u00ab carte \u00bb offerte au lecteur s'apparente d'une part \u00e0 celles des \u00ab utopies \u00bb, des contr\u00e9es imaginaires de la fiction, et de l'autre \u00e0 celles (en fait parentes) des romans policiers \u00e0 \u00ab \u00e9nigmes \u00bb de la tradition anglaise de l'entre-deux-guerres.)\n\nLe long de ce mur \u00e9tait le \u00ab poulailler \u00bb. Il \u00e9tait g\u00e9n\u00e9riquement et pragmatiquement destin\u00e9 aux poules, engeance que nous consid\u00e9rions comme fort peu sympathique (que je consid\u00e8re toujours comme tr\u00e8s peu sympathique) malgr\u00e9 son \u00e9vidente utilit\u00e9. Mais sa vertu principale \u00e0 mes yeux \u00e9tait de contenir aussi les clapiers, demeures des tranquilles et sympathiques lapins. Notre anthropomorphisme enfantin spontan\u00e9 assimilait tous les animaux, plus ou moins (aussi bien les \u00ab parents \u00bb animaux que leurs enfants) \u00e0 des individus de notre \u00e2ge (d\u00e9pendants, eux aussi, des humains adultes. La diff\u00e9rence la plus indiscutable entre eux et nous \u00e9tant que le pouvoir parental sur eux comportait le droit de vie et de mort). Nous les soumettions du coup, et sans h\u00e9sitation, \u00e0 des jugements de valeur aussi bien intellectuels que moraux. Les poules \u00e9taient b\u00eates et m\u00e9chantes. Les lapins sympathiques, sinon tr\u00e8s dou\u00e9s pour le calcul. (Cette pr\u00e9disposition, r\u00e9sistante \u00e0 toute scolarit\u00e9, et fortement encourag\u00e9e aujourd'hui par diff\u00e9rentes publications ou \u00e9missions t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9es, persiste volontiers dans l'\u00e2ge adulte, se d\u00e9naturant parfois (g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement avec les premi\u00e8res atteintes du troisi\u00e8me \u00e2ge) jusqu'\u00e0 des extr\u00e9mit\u00e9s redoutables. Elle s\u00e9vit chez les \u00e9lectrices parisiennes de monsieur Chirac, par exemple, atteintes de cette maladie de l'\u00e2me qu'on pourrait appeler le \u00ab syndrome Brigitte Bardot \u00bb, du nom de cet ex-symbole \u00e9rotique de cin\u00e9matographe pour les m\u00e2les de ma g\u00e9n\u00e9ration (\u00ab mademoiselle Bardot \u00bb, comme dit Jean-Claude Milner) devenue, elle qui fut \u00e9rotiquement \u00ab BB \u00bb, une fois retrait\u00e9e des \u00e9crans, \u00ab M\u00e8re Teresa \u00bb protectrice gaga-g\u00e2teau des b\u00e9b\u00e9s-phoques.)\n\nNous avions une passion sentimentale, immod\u00e9r\u00e9e, pour les lapins. Leur fourrure beige, ou grise, grise-rousse, \u00e9paisse, chaude, fr\u00e9missante sous les moustaches, n'y \u00e9tait pas pour peu. **Nous collions notre visage aux grillages du clapier** (je dis \u00ab nous \u00bb parce que dans l'image qui m'en vient je vois, p\u00e9riph\u00e9riquement, que je ne suis pas seul) **jusqu'\u00e0 sentir sur le nez les museaux familiers, le doux mouvement perp\u00e9tuel de leur incessant et innocent froncement ; impossible, malgr\u00e9 tous nos efforts, de remuer le n\u00f4tre aussi vite ; ou bien, de la main, offrir une tige verte de buis, de fusain** (ces fusains aux feuilles tr\u00e8s sombres qui \u00e9taient plant\u00e9s juste devant le banc du jeu), **jusqu'\u00e0 ce que les dents, en rongeant, viennent saisir le doigt ; les dents des lapins d\u00e9pouillaient prestement les tiges de leur enveloppe verte, humide, fra\u00eeche, laissant le bois blanc humide aussi, luisant de s\u00e8ve.** (Mais l'\u00e9clat mouill\u00e9 des tiges blanches ne durait pas, elles ternissaient et jaunissaient tr\u00e8s vite en s\u00e9chant, comme les galets blancs translucides, sortis de l'eau de mer, ternissent en se rev\u00eatant d'un film de sel.) Elles cr\u00e9aient cependant un moment de fascinantes sculptures lapini\u00e8res sur bois. (Mon p\u00e8re, transposant, comme je m'en suis plus tard aper\u00e7u, la baudelairienne _Invitation au voyage_ , avait compos\u00e9 un po\u00e8me familial \u00e0 notre intention dont j'ai retenu ces vers qui me restituent instantan\u00e9ment et tr\u00e8s exactement cette vision tactile, sensuelle :\n\nDes meubles luisants\n\nPolis par les dents\n\nD\u00e9coreraient notre chambre)\n\nJ'ai mentionn\u00e9 le \u00ab droit de vie et de mort \u00bb que les parents poss\u00e9daient sur les animaux. Ce n'\u00e9tait pas du tout une simple mani\u00e8re de parler. Les lapins sympathiques, autant que les poules qui ne l'\u00e9taient point, \u00e9taient \u00e9lev\u00e9s pour \u00eatre mang\u00e9s. Non seulement les civets qui apparaissaient parfois sur la table de la salle \u00e0 manger ne laissaient aucun doute \u00e0 ce sujet, mais de plus mon p\u00e8re n'encourageait gu\u00e8re, du moins en ce qui me concerne (moi, l'a\u00een\u00e9) l'oubli sentimental et ambigu des circonstances qui \u00e9taient \u00e0 l'origine d'une telle transformation. Il \u00e9tait l'ex\u00e9cuteur des lapins. Il les tuait d'un coup sec sur la nuque, pendant que je leur maintenais les pattes pendant les convulsions. (Et c'\u00e9tait moi qui devait l'assister dans cette t\u00e2che, parce que ni ma m\u00e8re ni Marie ne r\u00e9sistaient, physiologiquement, \u00e0 la vue du sang.)\n\nIl les saignait ensuite (le sang coulant dans une assiette creuse, le soir m\u00eame cuit en \u00ab sanguette \u00bb, pour \u00eatre mang\u00e9 avec du persil et du sel). Il coupait d'abord la t\u00eate aux belles oreilles soyeuses, cisaillait la peau juste au-dessus des pattes, d\u00e9tachait d'un seul coup la fourrure, ouvrait le cadavre. Le ventre maintenant \u00e0 nu, gonfl\u00e9, vein\u00e9 (comme un beau mollet de femme un peu lac\u00e9 de bleu) fumait l\u00e9g\u00e8rement en perdant sa chaleur. Mon p\u00e8re vidait les entrailles, isolait avec soin le fiel vert amer, s\u00e9parait le foie, le c\u0153ur et les rognons, d\u00e9coupait le reste en morceaux qui prenaient place dans la bassine, derni\u00e8re \u00e9tape avant quelque proven\u00e7ale cuisson (pour laquelle le thym, les herbes, certes, ne manquaient pas). Je ne peux m'emp\u00eacher aujourd'hui d'associer, en une d\u00e9duction-comparaison visuelle, les fusains d\u00e9v\u00eatus par les dents de leur peau humide et vivante et ces lapins morts, chauds encore, vaporeux et p\u00e2les sur la table de la cuisine, en 1942 ou 43.\n\n## 25 La semi-fraternit\u00e9 des enfants et des animaux familiers incite \u00e0 une interpr\u00e9tation fictive de la fascination qu'exercent certaines l\u00e9gendes comme celle de saint Nicolas.\n\nLa semi-fraternit\u00e9, dans la fr\u00e9quentation quotidienne, des enfants et des animaux familiers, incite \u00e0 une interpr\u00e9tation fictive (que je trouve s\u00e9duisante) de la peur d\u00e9licieuse, de la fascination qu'exercent certains contes cruels, certaines l\u00e9gendes, comme celle de saint Nicolas ou celle de l'Ogre et du Petit Poucet. Entre les animaux compagnons mais comestibles et les enfants, se situent, dans l'\u00e9chelle des \u00eatres ceux, comme chiens et chats, qui ne sont pas naturellement destin\u00e9s \u00e0 \u00eatre mang\u00e9s. Je dis \u00ab pas naturellement \u00bb car, au moins en ce qui concerne les chats, il me semble qu'ils s'\u00e9taient singuli\u00e8rement rar\u00e9fi\u00e9s dans le paysage urbain, \u00e0 cette \u00e9poque. En tout cas, nous n'en avions pas chez nous. (Nous n'avions pas de chiens non plus, m\u00eame pas un chien de chasse.) Or, le sort ultime, tragique et n\u00e9cessaire, des lapins, nourrissait (si j'ose dire) (en m\u00eame temps que les bruits qui couraient sur les disparitions trop explicables de certains chats) une inqui\u00e9tude latente et informul\u00e9e, jamais amen\u00e9e \u00e0 la surface ailleurs que dans l'identification pleine d'\u00e9motion avec les enfants de la l\u00e9gende, d'\u00eatre, \u00e0 notre tour, victimes d'un cannibalisme impos\u00e9 par la dure Loi de la Survie (et la pure m\u00e9chancet\u00e9 du monde).\n\nDans la \u00ab chanson de saint Nicolas \u00bb (souvenez-vous : \u00ab Ils \u00e9taient trois petits enfants \/ qui s'en allaient glaner aux champs... \u00bb ; ma grand-m\u00e8re chantait volontiers cette chanson) j'ai particuli\u00e8rement retenu le visage (pr\u00e9sent sur une illustration patibulaire) du \u00ab... boucher m\u00e9chant \/ qui tient dans sa main le couteau tranchant \u00bb. Avant la fin heureuse, sur intervention du _sanctus ex machina_ qui ressuscite les ch\u00e8res t\u00eates blondes, l'aventure cathartique n\u00e9cessite leur passage (transitoire, certes, mais quand m\u00eame !) par le saloir, \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat de jambon (roses, frais parfum\u00e9s y sont les jambons, comme les chairs des enfants). (En plus, de jambons nous ne rencontrions gu\u00e8re.)\n\nUn \u00e9pisode de ces ann\u00e9es, \u00e0 d\u00e9nouement heureux (pas pour tous les protagonistes) et culinaire, se pr\u00e9sente alors, illustr\u00e9 d'un local voisin du poulailler, un appentis (c'est bien la premi\u00e8re fois, il me semble, que j'ai jamais employ\u00e9 ce mot, qui m'est venu tout naturellement, mais dont j'ai d\u00fb v\u00e9rifier l'orthographe et la d\u00e9finition, pour \u00eatre s\u00fbr qu'il convenait. Et il convient en effet, dans son sens second qui est, selon le \u00ab petit Robert \u00bb : petit b\u00e2timent adoss\u00e9 \u00e0 un grand, et servant de hangar, ou de remise (j'ai failli mettre qu'il convenait \u00ab presque \u00bb, car il \u00e9tait \u00ab adoss\u00e9 \u00bb seulement au mur du jardin. Mais en fait il me semble (mais en fait je suis s\u00fbr) que le mur, l\u00e0, \u00e9tait un mur de la maison voisine)), o\u00f9 se d\u00e9roula la saga du cochon.\n\nLes menaces sans cesse r\u00e9surgentes de famine familiale incit\u00e8rent un beau jour mes parents \u00e0 franchir les fronti\u00e8res de la l\u00e9galit\u00e9 (l\u00e9galit\u00e9 vichyssoise moralement r\u00e9cus\u00e9e mais d'autant plus redoutable) pour une action clandestine (peu dangereuse en principe (ils n'\u00e9taient pas les seuls dans le quartier) mais indirectement plus risqu\u00e9e dans leur cas, puisqu'ils \u00e9taient au m\u00eame moment engag\u00e9s dans une beaucoup plus s\u00e9rieuse clandestinit\u00e9), en achetant et en entreprenant d'\u00e9lever un cochon. Un jeune et mince cochon (une cochonne en fait, du beau nom de Gagnoune : mais c'est l\u00e0 un pur hasard, nullement le signe d'une quelconque \u00ab misotruie \u00bb) vint donc s'\u00e9tablir en secret dans l'appentis, l'emplissant de son odeur acide, de sa pateaugeante bouillaque et de ses grognements caract\u00e9ristiques (bien que relativement \u00e0 l'abri des regards, nez et oreilles indiscr\u00e8tes). Il fallut alors s'efforcer de r\u00e9duire sa minceur et de l'amener, au contraire, en un temps raisonnable, \u00e0 un raisonnable \u00ab poids de forme \u00bb qui permettrait de le (la) convertir avec profit, comme fait des trois petits enfants le boucher de la chanson de saint Nicolas, en cochonnailles diverses.\n\nC'\u00e9tait une entreprise plus facile \u00e0 concevoir qu'\u00e0 mener \u00e0 bien. S'il y avait tr\u00e8s peu \u00e0 manger pour les humains, il n'y avait gu\u00e8re \u00e0 manger non plus pour les animaux. La cochonne eut droit \u00e0 un r\u00e9gime tr\u00e8s largement feuillu et herbu, avec pour plats de r\u00e9sistance les seaux d'\u00e9pluchures (de pommes de terre, fanes de carottes, trognons de choux...) en provenance du jardin potager. Elle avalait tout. Mais peut-\u00eatre ce r\u00e9gime la laissait-elle sur sa faim, car elle accueillait ma m\u00e8re, quand elle lui amenait sa \u00ab portion \u00bb, avec une formidable imp\u00e9tuosit\u00e9 agressive. Nous restions prudemment \u00e0 distance pendant que notre m\u00e8re, ouvrant puis refermant derri\u00e8re elle la porte de l'enclos grillag\u00e9 qui englobait l'appentis (un sas de s\u00e9curit\u00e9 contre les tentatives d'\u00e9vasion) se pr\u00e9parait, tel le tor\u00e9ador dans l'ar\u00e8ne, et tenant le seau de nourriture le plus \u00e9loign\u00e9 possible de son corps, \u00e0 la charge grognante du rose animal. La cochonne avait en effet, il me semble, au-dessus de son groin, la paire de petits yeux enfonc\u00e9s les plus porcins et les moins am\u00e8nes qui aient jamais \u00e9chu \u00e0 un cochon ; et ma m\u00e8re a toujours affirm\u00e9 que cette b\u00eate lui en voulait, \u00e0 elle personnellement, et qu'elle se montrait au contraire toute sucre et toute miel avec mon p\u00e8re quand il allait, lui, la nourrir, ou bien quand il la douchait au tuyau d'arrosage pour la d\u00e9caper de la bouillaque dont elle se salissait porcinement avec abondance et d\u00e9lectation, et dont elle souillait constamment sa liti\u00e8re, son auge et sa mangeoire. Le rose cochon de sa couenne n'\u00e9tait qu'alors, apr\u00e8s s\u00e9v\u00e8re immersion, et dans toute sa pleine candeur de b\u00e9b\u00e9, visible.\n\nGagnoune, la cochonne, en d\u00e9pit de son app\u00e9tit f\u00e9roce (elle \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s consciencieusement cochonne, il faut le reconna\u00eetre) n'atteignit jamais un poids \u00e9norme (j'ai retenu le chiffre de 80 kilos. Avec une alimentation normale, elle aurait certainement fait beaucoup mieux). Elle prosp\u00e9ra cependant raisonnablement et le jour arriva enfin de son ex\u00e9cution tant salivairement attendue. Je dis le jour mais ce fut, en fait, une nuit. Car la clandestinit\u00e9 de son s\u00e9jour dans notre jardin impliquait n\u00e9cessairement celle de sa mise \u00e0 mort. Et pour cette besogne il fallait un vrai professionnel. Il en vint donc un, escort\u00e9 de voisines r\u00e9quisitionn\u00e9es pour toutes les t\u00e2ches annexes, expertes au traitement traditionnel des diff\u00e9rents morceaux. Le bourreau op\u00e9ra donc vers minuit, apr\u00e8s n\u00e9gociations serr\u00e9es sur le paiement de ses \u00ab honoraires \u00bb (en nature \u00e9videmment). Le cri de mort de Gagnoune s'entendit jusqu'\u00e0 Limoux.\n\nLa premi\u00e8re \u00ab pr\u00e9paration \u00bb des cochonnailles dura jusqu'au matin. Bient\u00f4t \u00e9merg\u00e8rent rituellement, de l'affairement et des conversations anim\u00e9es d'un laboratoire bavard, des chaudrons, des cuissons, des bassines, les boudins et saucisses, les _cansalades_ et fritons et gratons, les bocaux de graisse, les c\u00f4tes et c\u00f4telettes, les pures tranches blanches de lard. Vinrent les jambons enfin, fortement sal\u00e9s et poivr\u00e9s pour r\u00e9sister aux attaques humides du vent dit \u00ab marin \u00bb. A presque cinquante ans de distance, le simple surgissement immat\u00e9riel de ces vocables sur mon \u00e9cran me donne faim. Pas une faim assouvissable, une pure faim \u00e9vocatoire, r\u00e9miniscente. Tr\u00e8s longtemps apr\u00e8s la fin de la guerre, contre toute \u00e9vidence gustative, j'ai continu\u00e9 \u00e0 me jeter avec voracit\u00e9 sur le porc, en toutes ses formes, et je n'ai qu'avec r\u00e9ticence et tr\u00e8s lentement reconnu, in\u00e9luctable, la disparition de son go\u00fbt ancien, cons\u00e9quence d\u00e9sastreuse de l'\u00e9levage industriel. C\u00f4te de porc-pur\u00e9e \u2013 tel \u00e9tait le menu (de choix ?) qu'invariablement j'offrais \u00e0 ma fille Laurence, en ses premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, quand nous d\u00eenions seuls ensemble.\n\nJe suis sorti de l'enfance avec la conviction de la perfection absolue du porc, en tant qu'animal int\u00e9gralement transformable en produits utiles \u00e0 l'humanit\u00e9 : car j'avais appris que non seulement il \u00e9tait en tr\u00e8s grande partie comestible (jusqu'\u00e0 ses os rong\u00e9s par les chiens) mais que de ses soies naissaient des brosses, de sa dure peau de souples sacs, bourses et bagages ; bref que ma passion alimentaire pouvait se soutenir d'une bonne conscience humaniste. Je n'ai appris qu'assez tard l'existence des tabous religieux qui le frappent. Et je me suis alors senti (pour donner \u00e0 mon tour \u00e0 ma pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence une justification \u00ab th\u00e9ologique \u00bb) en assez grande affinit\u00e9 pa\u00efenne avec les Celtes qui avaient, dit-on, le cochon en tr\u00e8s grande estime. Le fondateur l\u00e9gendaire de l'abbaye de Glastonbury n'avait-il pas choisi ce lieu en l'honneur de sa victoire sur un cochon fabuleux (une truie !) ? Et comment oublierais-je de saluer en cette page le grand sanglier mystique Twrch Trwyth, h\u00e9ros des _mabinogion_ gallois ?\n\nC'est peut-\u00eatre une r\u00e9sonance, lointaine, de cet \u00e9v\u00e9nement marquant de notre enfance qui a inspir\u00e9 chez ma s\u0153ur Denise un d\u00e9sir de possession, qu'elle a assouvi une ou deux ann\u00e9es : r\u00eave de la possession d'un cochon, \u00ab son \u00bb cochon. Ce ne fut qu'un demi-cochon seulement puisque, ne vivant pas dans le Minervois, elle en a partag\u00e9 la propri\u00e9t\u00e9 avec G\u00e9rard et Marie-C\u00e9cile. Mais elle n'a pas manqu\u00e9 de se rendre sur place au moment d\u00e9cisif de la transformation en saucisses et jambons, ex\u00e9cut\u00e9e selon les meilleures traditions locales, \u00e0 Moussoulens.\n\n## 26 \u00ab Mon grand p\u00e8re avait l'habitude de dire :\n\n\u00ab Mon grand p\u00e8re avait l'habitude de dire : \"Il faut arriver \u00e0 temps dans une gare, pour rater le train pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent.\" \u00bb En commen\u00e7ant par cette citation, apocryphe je l'avoue, un \u00ab moment de repos en prose \u00bb (le premier) d'un livre de po\u00e8mes intitul\u00e9 _Autobiographie, chapitre dix_ , je rendais en fait un double hommage \u00e0 mon grand-p\u00e8re, \u00e0 travers deux des traits caract\u00e9ristiques de sa vision du monde que je lui ai emprunt\u00e9s : la difficult\u00e9 \u00e0 \u00eatre en retard, et la passion ferroviaire. La maxime ci-dessus frapp\u00e9e les unit, et il m'arrive souvent de l'appliquer \u00e0 la lettre (sp\u00e9cialement gare Saint-Lazare, o\u00f9 je vais prendre le train qui m'am\u00e8ne \u00e0 mon lieu de travail, station \u00ab Nanterre-Universit\u00e9 \u00bb).\n\nOr dans notre jardin, rue d'Assas, poussaient de nombreux palmiers, de taille modeste (et non producteurs, h\u00e9las, de dattes), r\u00e9partis \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s \u00e9galement sur les quatre \u00ab collines \u00bb plant\u00e9es de buissons et d'arbres que d\u00e9limitait la croix des all\u00e9es. M\u00eame r\u00e9unis par un \u00ab or \u00bb, ces deux \u00ab instants \u00bb imm\u00e9diatement cons\u00e9cutifs de prose que vous lisez ne semblent pas avoir entre eux de rapport tr\u00e8s \u00e9vident. C'est vrai. Mais permettez-moi de prendre un peu de temps pour en \u00e9tablir un. Or, dis-je, les petits palmiers du jardin avaient pour feuillage des palmes (ce qui pour une fois est conforme aux d\u00e9ductions que l'on peut faire du nom) en \u00e9ventail de longues feuilles au bout d'une tige solide et souple (propri\u00e9t\u00e9 qui nous int\u00e9ressera \u00e9galement). Chaque vaste feuille, d'un vert assez sombre, \u00e9tait elle-m\u00eame articul\u00e9e en deux longues lamelles partiellement repli\u00e9es autour d'une tige personnelle, subdivision de la tige principale, mais plus mince.\n\nOr, il n'\u00e9tait pas difficile de d\u00e9tacher les palmes les plus basses du tronc velu et ocre-roux de l'arbre, d'en arracher ou d\u00e9couper une \u00e0 une les doubles feuilles, d'y s\u00e9parer de leur tige chaque moiti\u00e9, et d'obtenir ainsi une quantit\u00e9 fort raisonnable d'assez longues lani\u00e8res (de trente centim\u00e8tres \u00e0 un m\u00e8tre de longueur) qui, assez ais\u00e9ment nou\u00e9es l'une \u00e0 l'autre par des n\u0153uds r\u00e9sistants, donnaient naissance \u00e0 de tr\u00e8s satisfaisantes cordes v\u00e9g\u00e9tales ponctu\u00e9es de n\u0153uds. De ces m\u00e9trages de cordes, en les suspendant par de convenables accrochages aux branches des pins, aux poteaux des fils de fer en bordure des all\u00e9es potag\u00e8res, ou \u00e0 ceux des fils de s\u00e9chage du linge, je cr\u00e9ais (avec l'aide d'une main-d'\u0153uvre fraternelle et sororale efficace) un r\u00e9seau quadrillant l'espace polygonal du jardin.\n\nC'est l\u00e0 que je rejoins l'introduction en apparence tout \u00e0 fait arbitraire \u00e0 ce d\u00e9veloppement. Car, sur une feuille de cahier symbolisant la surface du jardin, en dressant la carte des lignes palmi\u00e8res effectuant des liaisons entre des lieux choisis, et d\u00e9sign\u00e9s par des noms invent\u00e9s \u00e0 cette occasion, j'obtenais une assez bonne approximation de ces autres cartes qui figuraient, fascinantes pour tout amateur de trains, sur les premi\u00e8res pages des \u00ab Indicateurs de chemin de fer \u00bb les \u00ab Chaix \u00bb, et que je retrouvais \u00e9galement lors de nos voyages hebdomadaires \u00e0 Toulouse, \u00e0 l'extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 des wagons, sur le mur en face des W.-C. On y lisait les noms des villes \u00ab desservies \u00bb par la SNCF, les lignes principales y \u00e9taient figur\u00e9es par des traits, et les lignes secondaires en traits moins \u00e9pais, avec leur num\u00e9ro de ligne, qui permettait de les identifier ensuite dans les pages de l'Indicateur.\n\nLa g\u00e9ographie ferroviaire ainsi cr\u00e9\u00e9e (gr\u00e2ce aux palmiers) et transport\u00e9e sur le papier \u00e0 la satisfaction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, je pouvais entreprendre avec les meilleures chances de succ\u00e8s la deuxi\u00e8me \u00e9tape, qui consistait \u00e0 \u00e9tablir les horaires des trains fictifs (\u00e0 mat\u00e9rialisation le long des lignes essentiellement mentale, je ne cherchais pas \u00e0 imiter les trains concrets) qui allaient parcourir, en rapides, express ou omnibus, munis chacun d'un num\u00e9ro d'ordre, mon r\u00e9seau fictif. Arm\u00e9 d'un vieux \u00ab Chaix \u00bb grand-paternel (il en avait toujours un dans ses bagages, et j'en poss\u00e9dais, offert par lui, un p\u00e9rim\u00e9), ayant attribu\u00e9 des distances kilom\u00e9triques suffisantes aux m\u00e8tres du terrain o\u00f9 op\u00e9rait ma \u00ab compagnie \u00bb, je combinais des heures d'arriv\u00e9e et de d\u00e9part, et surtout d'innombrables \u00ab correspondances \u00bb (dont l'importance vitale dans l'organisation d'un bon r\u00e9seau n'a pas besoin d'\u00eatre soulign\u00e9e).\n\nJe constituais ainsi, \u00e0 l'usage des diff\u00e9rents utilisateurs (peu nombreux, certes, mais de qualit\u00e9), un v\u00e9ritable \u00ab Chaix de jardin \u00bb : un rapide parti, mettons \u00e0 6 heures 53 du matin de \u00ab Lavoiro Salo \u00bb (tel \u00e9tait le nom, je m'en souviens (c'est le seul qui m'est rest\u00e9) attribu\u00e9 \u00e0 la gare dont le lieu \u00e9tait le bassin o\u00f9 se passait le \u00ab jeu de l'immobilit\u00e9 \u00bb) et en direction de la buanderie, pouvait, par exemple, au moyen d'un changement confortable au Pin Parasol et d'un second, plus acrobatique, dans l'all\u00e9e centrale, permettre d'atteindre, \u00e0 14 heures 19, par un omnibus \u00e0 l'itin\u00e9raire signal\u00e9 en plus petits caract\u00e8res, la station \u00ab l'Abricotier \u00bb. (\u00ab Le train rapide 101 en provenance de Lavoiro Salo et se dirigeant vers la Buanderie entre en gare au quai no 6. Retirez-vous de la bordure du quai, s'il vous pla\u00eet. Correspondance pour l'Abricotier \u00e0 11 heures 14 quai no 9 ; ce train desservira les gares de... \u00bb)\n\nLe banc du jeu principal, \u00ab **S'avancer-en-rampant** \u00bb, \u00e9tait bien entendu un \u00ab n\u0153ud ferroviaire \u00bb important dans cette organisation nouvelle de l'espace du jardin. Mais, selon la Th\u00e9orie du Rythme (en fait, comme il s'agit non d'une s\u00e9quence, mais d'une surface, il faut envisager une extension de cette th\u00e9orie \u00e0 un espace \u00ab multilignes \u00bb, au moyen, par exemple, de la \u00ab th\u00e9orie des ondelettes \u00bb (elle-m\u00eame convenablement g\u00e9n\u00e9ralis\u00e9e), cela cr\u00e9ait malgr\u00e9 tout une repr\u00e9sentation imaginaire tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rente du lieu. Car les points fortement marqu\u00e9s d'int\u00e9r\u00eat, les points vifs, n'y \u00e9taient pas forc\u00e9ment les m\u00eames que dans les autres jeux. Le temps de passage d'un point \u00e0 un autre changeait aussi, d\u00e9termin\u00e9, non par le regard, mais par des mouvements corporels (beaucoup plus lents, m\u00eame s'ils \u00e9taient fortement acc\u00e9l\u00e9r\u00e9s par la m\u00e9galomanie irr\u00e9sistible d'une identification \u00e0 la locomotive ; et surtout non discontinus).\n\nLa pertinence de l'indicateur ne durait pas. Car il y avait, d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la comparaison, le fait que les horaires changeaient (horaires d'hiver et horaires d'\u00e9t\u00e9, par exemple, ce qui n\u00e9cessitait la confection d'un nouveau \u00ab Chaix \u00bb). Mais aussi, de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9, cet autre fait que les cordes de palmier mat\u00e9rialisant les lignes vieillissaient rapidement : elles jaunissaient, se d\u00e9faisaient, \u00e9taient rompues par des accidents ext\u00e9rieurs... Et le jeu lui-m\u00eame lassait vite, comme tous les jeux. Il \u00e9tait oubli\u00e9 brusquement, des bribes v\u00e9g\u00e9tales de corde continuaient \u00e0 pendre \u00e7\u00e0 et l\u00e0, lamentables. Jusqu'au moment d'une nouvelle r\u00e9surgence (\u00e0 la suite d'un s\u00e9jour de vacances, par exemple, qui avait remis les trains \u00e0 l'ordre du jour).\n\nVoil\u00e0, j'esp\u00e8re, pleinement justifi\u00e9 le lien entre chemins de fer et palmiers dont j'\u00e9tais parti. Il reste que ce lien \u00e9tait assez abstrait. (Les jeux enfantins le sont plus souvent qu'on ne pense, encore plus que strictement imaginaires.) Le r\u00e9seau des cordes suspendues pouvait servir aussi de fa\u00e7on beaucoup plus directe, et concr\u00e8te. Tout simplement en devenant support d'une transmission de messages, selon un code. Aux derniers temps de notre s\u00e9jour dans la maison, le t\u00e9l\u00e9phone apparut, susceptible d'une interpr\u00e9tation tr\u00e8s simple en termes palmistes, et partant pr\u00e9texte \u00e0 annuaire (sym\u00e9trique d'un indicateur de trains). Mais je n'eus pas le temps d'apprivoiser vraiment ce nouveau concept avant notre d\u00e9part \u00e0 Paris. En fait, je n'y suis jamais compl\u00e8tement parvenu. Et c'est pourquoi je n'aime toujours pas le t\u00e9l\u00e9phone.\n\n## 27 Dans ce jardin, je n'\u00e9tais pas seul.\n\nDans ce jardin, je n'\u00e9tais pas seul. Pourtant, ma description dans ce chapitre ne sort pas des r\u00e8gnes min\u00e9ral, v\u00e9g\u00e9tal et animal. Et les humains, les humains enfants ? Ces ombres de joueurs qui sont l\u00e0, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de moi, \u00e0 chaque moment ou presque, devant le banc, le lavoir, le grillage des cages \u00e0 lapins ? Je n'en parle que de mani\u00e8re tr\u00e8s indirecte. Mon semi-silence, cependant, n'est pas un solipsisme. Mais en dire plus se heurte \u00e0 deux difficult\u00e9s : la premi\u00e8re est que ce territoire partag\u00e9 du pass\u00e9 n'est \u00e9videmment plus commun, aujourd'hui. Les souvenirs des uns, n\u00e9cessairement et de plus en plus, divergent de ceux des autres. J'essaye de rester, autant que possible, par discr\u00e9tion autant que par incapacit\u00e9, ext\u00e9rieur \u00e0 ces autres visions. La seconde raison est beaucoup plus forte, agit sur la totalit\u00e9 de ce que j'\u00e9cris : une absence, un absent. (J'\u00e9cris \u00ab raisons \u00bb : mais ce ne sont pas des raisons, des constatations tout au plus. Les difficult\u00e9s sont r\u00e9elles : la premi\u00e8re n'est sans doute qu'un masque de la seconde.) Je resterai donc encore ici avec les animaux.\n\nLes poules et poulets, les lapins, le cochon \u00e9taient enferm\u00e9s. Ils n'avaient pas la libert\u00e9 de circulation dans le jardin. Mais la famille de canards qui vint brusquement partager notre existence ne fut pas, elle (je ne sais pas d'ailleurs pourquoi), soumise \u00e0 cette restriction. De ce seul fait d\u00e9coulait d\u00e9j\u00e0 la plus grande \u00e9l\u00e9vation des canards dans l'\u00e9chelle des \u00eatres : leur sup\u00e9riorit\u00e9, en tant qu'esp\u00e8ce, sur les poules et cochons, et m\u00eame sur les lapins. J'ai acquis, alors, cette intime conviction. Et je la conserve encore, int\u00e9rieurement, au moins sous une forme ludique : j'aime et estime les canards. Je ne manque pas une occasion de faire leur \u00e9loge, oral, po\u00e9tique, ou fictionnel.\n\nAcquisition fut donc faite d'une famille de canards : des canards sans p\u00e8re. Au d\u00e9but, d'ailleurs, ce n'\u00e9tait qu'une famille potentielle : une cane vint dans un panier, accompagn\u00e9e de ses enfants futurs, sept \u0153ufs \u00e0 couver, et \u00e0 \u00e9clore. La finalit\u00e9 nutritive de cette acquisition \u00e9tait comme celle des lapins, et de la cochonne, sans aucune ambigu\u00eft\u00e9. La cane mettrait au monde ses sept petits, les \u00e9l\u00e8verait avec soin (les canards \u00e9l\u00e8vent leurs petits avec le plus grand soin), jusqu'\u00e0 ce qu'ils atteignent leur poids comestible. Elle-m\u00eame ensuite pondrait des \u0153ufs, jusqu'\u00e0 sa fin pr\u00e9vue \u00e9galement dans une casserole. Mais il n'en alla pas tout \u00e0 fait ainsi.\n\nRemarquons pour commencer que **Bacadette** , m\u00e8re cane et h\u00e9ro\u00efne principale de cette aventure, appartenait \u00e0 l'une des deux esp\u00e8ces de canards qui habitent le Carcass\u00e8s (principalement la r\u00e9gion de Castelnaudary, patrie d'une des trois versions concurrentes du \u00ab cassoulet \u00bb) : les \u00ab mulards \u00bb et les \u00ab musqu\u00e9s \u00bb. Les _mulards_ sont les plus gros, les plus gras, de plumage terne. Leur go\u00fbt n'est pas extr\u00eamement raffin\u00e9. Leur voix est criarde, leur allure pataude, m\u00eame sur l'eau. Les _musqu\u00e9s_ au contraire sont plus minces, plus fins de bec, plus \u00e9l\u00e9gants d'allure et de plumage et de couleurs (vert et noir), parlent peu et \u00e0 voix douce (\u00ab musqu\u00e9 \u00bb veut dire, selon mon souvenir ancien, non v\u00e9rifi\u00e9, \u00ab muet \u00bb), sont d'une virtuosit\u00e9 extr\u00eame dans l'eau, et intellectuellement beaucoup plus vifs (tel est mon jugement, partial). Une cane mularde aurait certainement offert l'esp\u00e9rance d'une quantit\u00e9 plus substantielle de chair. Pourtant, on le devine, Bacadette \u00e9tait une \u00ab musquette \u00bb.\n\nOn installa la future m\u00e8re dans la \u00ab serre \u00bb, o\u00f9 nous allions la voir, d\u00e9j\u00e0 dans l'admiration de ses mani\u00e8res, de sa discr\u00e9tion, de son plumage, de son bec : sentir le bec d'un canard qui saisit un grain de ma\u00efs ou une miette de pain dans la paume, quel chatouillement d\u00e9licieux ! Si chaud, si doux \u00e9tait le duvet de son ventre, quand on la soulevait pour v\u00e9rifier l'\u00e9tat d'avancement de la couv\u00e9e. Les enfants naquirent, minuscules, h\u00e9sitants, p\u00e9piants, attendrissants, jaunes et noirs. La question onomastique se posa imm\u00e9diatement, que mon p\u00e8re (dont c'\u00e9tait la pr\u00e9rogative : le pouvoir de nomination) r\u00e9solut sur-le-champ : ils \u00e9taient sept, mais ils ne resteraient pas nains. Ils s'appelleraient donc respectivement **Lundi, Mardi, Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi, Samedi** et **Dimanche.**\n\nRespectivement, certes, mais qui s'appellerait comment ? Et comment les distinguerait-on ? (Rien ne ressemble autant \u00e0 un b\u00e9b\u00e9 canard qu'un autre b\u00e9b\u00e9 canard.) Apr\u00e8s une p\u00e9riode de flottement et d'observation, o\u00f9 nous scrut\u00e2mes la petite troupe tremblante sur ses petites palmes pour tenter d'identifier les signes physiques distinctifs et (Lavaters du d\u00e9partement de l'Aude) les indices physiognomoniques de leurs caract\u00e8res futurs, les petits enfants canards furent baptis\u00e9s, et entreprirent de ressembler le plus possible \u00e0 leur patronyme. Et c'est ainsi que les plus beaux, les plus entreprenants, les plus brillants furent (conform\u00e9ment aux pr\u00e9f\u00e9rences des \u00e9coliers) **Jeudi** (alors jour de repos des classes, comme l'est aujourd'hui mercredi) et **Dimanche** (notre famille \u00e9tait la\u00efque, et le dimanche n'\u00e9tait pas chez nous un jour triste, \u00e0 l'anglaise, ni exag\u00e9r\u00e9ment familial ou th\u00e9ologique. C'\u00e9tait par excellence le jour ludique).\n\nMais les maladies infantiles, qui affectent les canards comme les humains, mena\u00e7aient. Malgr\u00e9 les soins, certains moururent : **Mercredi** et **Samedi** assez jeunes, il me semble. Bacadette accueillit leur mort avec sto\u00efcisme (selon notre interpr\u00e9tation, qui r\u00e9cusa avec indignation l'accusation d'indiff\u00e9rence). Les autres surv\u00e9curent, quoique in\u00e9galement : **Mardi** \u00e9tait assez disgraci\u00e9, un peu boiteux. Quant \u00e0 **Lundi,** il resta, malgr\u00e9 tous nos efforts, minuscule, myst\u00e8re d'un v\u00e9ritable canard bonsa\u00ef (car il se nourrissait avec autant d'enthousiasme que ses fr\u00e8res). Je n'ai pas conserv\u00e9 de souvenir tr\u00e8s net de **Vendredi. Jeudi** et **Dimanche,** je l'ai dit, \u00e9taient les ph\u00e9nix de cette splendide famille, avec peut-\u00eatre une l\u00e9g\u00e8re sup\u00e9riorit\u00e9, dans l'ensemble, et c'est dans l'ordre, pour **Dimanche.**\n\nPendant toute leur enfance et adolescence, la question de leur sort final ne venant pas explicitement \u00e0 d\u00e9couvert, beaucoup plus que Bacadette, assez r\u00e9serv\u00e9e face \u00e0 l'affection exub\u00e9rante de la horde enfantine, les petits \u00ab musqu\u00e9s \u00bb furent de merveilleux compagnons de jeu ; courant bec en avant sur la terrasse, sautant les escaliers, nageant souverainement, sous la conduite de leur m\u00e8re, dans le lavoir, puis sortant, en file s\u00e9v\u00e8rement et maternellement contr\u00f4l\u00e9e, secouer leurs plumes et se s\u00e9cher dans les all\u00e9es ensoleill\u00e9es, bavardant du bec. Quel progr\u00e8s sur les bateaux en papier que ces barques vivantes, leurs coups de pattes palm\u00e9es plus puissantes que des rames, les fines t\u00eates astucieuses qui plongeaient et ressortaient ruisselantes mais pas mouill\u00e9es, les mouvements et claquements des becs qui buvaient, les couleurs iris\u00e9es \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re vive (vert sombre, un peu violet, du soleil sur les plumes).\n\nNous avions (nous \u00e9tions quatre) chacun le \u00ab n\u00f4tre \u00bb, notre fr\u00e8re parmi les survivants (je ne dirai pas lesquels). Nous discutions avec v\u00e9h\u00e9mence de leurs exploits, de leurs m\u00e9rites respectifs, de leur d\u00e9veloppement physique et sentimental. Nous \u00e9tions ins\u00e9parables. Nous leur offrions des friandises (des vers de terre captur\u00e9s dans les mottes b\u00each\u00e9es, par exemple, des limaces d'apr\u00e8s les pluies). Nous les embrassions sur le bec, sur leurs tout petits yeux, sur leur plumage. Nous imitions leurs courses comiques vers la p\u00e2t\u00e9e, vers le lavoir. Nous les prenions sur nos genoux. Ils \u00e9taient gais, remuants, familiers, imperm\u00e9ables. Le temps passa.\n\n## 28 Le temps ayant pass\u00e9, l'in\u00e9vitable en vint \u00e0 ne plus pouvoir \u00eatre \u00e9vit\u00e9\n\nEt, le temps ayant pass\u00e9, l'in\u00e9vitable en vint \u00e0 ne plus pouvoir \u00eatre \u00e9vit\u00e9 ni retard\u00e9. Les canards \u00e9taient destin\u00e9s \u00e0 \u00eatre mang\u00e9s, et ils furent mang\u00e9s (ce r\u00e9cit n'est pas un conte de f\u00e9es). Je me souviens des assiettes contenant **Jeudi** (les morceaux s\u00e9par\u00e9s et r\u00f4tis de **Jeudi**. Pourquoi lui particuli\u00e8rement ? peut-\u00eatre parce que son \u00ab jour \u00bb est aussi le jour dont les \u00e9coliers pleurent (pleuraient) le plus la mort), et des larmes de Jean-Ren\u00e9, notre plus jeune fr\u00e8re. Peut-\u00eatre pleurions-nous aussi. Nous pleurions et mangions. Nouveaux et diminutifs Gargantuas, nous pleurions en mangeant et mangions en pleurant. Telle fut la fin de la **Semaine de canards.**\n\nBacadette resta seule \u00e0 repr\u00e9senter chez nous le peuple canard. Une sorte de componction un peu m\u00e9lancolique, une composante de tristesse noble dans son d\u00e9hanchement sur palmes, une propension certaine \u00e0 \u00e9viter d'\u00eatre m\u00eal\u00e9e \u00e0 nos jeux les plus hurlants et les plus d\u00e9sordonn\u00e9s, firent rapidement d'elle une figure respectable mais un peu lointaine de la famille (un peu comme une cousine des parents, r\u00e9fugi\u00e9e apr\u00e8s quelque deuil, en ayant rev\u00eatu les couleurs invariables). **Je la vois (je la vois bien), le jour souvent immobile au soleil sur la terrasse, dans une all\u00e9e, les pattes disparues sous elle, le plumage vert sombre et lisse, les petits yeux calmes, pos\u00e9e comme une barque, sans h\u00e2te, confortablement sur le sol empoussi\u00e9r\u00e9.**\n\nElle avait pris du go\u00fbt pour l'int\u00e9rieur sombre du rez-de-chauss\u00e9e, pour la salle \u00e0 manger surtout au moment des repas, entrant silencieusement et sans h\u00e9sitation dans la pi\u00e8ce et se hissant sur le fauteuil, o\u00f9 elle s'installait placidement, jouissant avec une \u00e9vidente bienveillance de notre turbulente compagnie, ainsi que de la douceur des coussins. Elle semblait \u00e9couter avec soin la radio (on disait la TSF), peser le pour et le contre (il y avait Radio Paris, mais il y avait aussi, \u00e9coute clandestine, \u00ab Londres \u00bb), sans indiquer clairement ses pr\u00e9f\u00e9rences. Mais un jour, alors que r\u00e9sonnait dans la pi\u00e8ce la voix s\u00e9nile et sinistre du mar\u00e9chal P\u00e9tain, elle descendit dignement de son fauteuil et se dirigea vers la porte laissant, au moment de sortir, s'\u00e9chapper de dessous sa queue agit\u00e9e d'un coup d'\u00e9ventail rapide une large crotte liquide, brune, glaireuse, en guise de commentaire.\n\nLa t\u00e2che essentielle de Bacadette, qui absorbait une grande partie de son \u00e9nergie interne (et, nous allons le voir, \u00e9tait aussi le motif de ses pr\u00e9occupations) \u00e9tait de pondre. Elle pondait chaque jour un et parfois deux de ces \u0153ufs lourds, pr\u00e9cieux, riches, savoureux, infiniment \u00e0 nos yeux plus savoureux que les \u0153ufs uniquement utilitaires des imb\u00e9ciles poules, par la couleur, la forme, la taille, la densit\u00e9 du jaune plus sombre et plus intense, du blanc plus compact. Aussi chaque \u0153uf de Bacadette \u00e9tait-il un troph\u00e9e, destin\u00e9 en principe \u00e0 la consommation seulement en une circonstance exceptionnelle (f\u00eate, maladie, r\u00e9compense, anniversaire).\n\nOr Bacadette ne pondait pas, b\u00eatement, monotonement, tous ses \u0153ufs au m\u00eame endroit, ni \u00e0 la m\u00eame heure du jour. Elle ne les mettait pas tous dans le m\u00eame panier. Elle s'effor\u00e7ait, au contraire, de les placer sans cesse dans des lieux diff\u00e9rents, et m\u00eame, en fait, de les dissimuler. Je ne sais si ses tentatives de d\u00e9rober ses productions \u00e0 nos investigations avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 la r\u00e8gle d\u00e8s le d\u00e9but ou si elle avait r\u00e9agi \u00e0 notre irr\u00e9pressible indiscr\u00e9tion (d\u00e9sirant pondre tranquillement, \u00e0 son heure, consid\u00e9rant la ponte comme une affaire s\u00e9rieuse, et priv\u00e9e, qui n'avait aucun besoin de nos regards). Quoi qu'il en soit, elle prit l'habitude de pondre de plus en plus t\u00f4t dans la journ\u00e9e, et de changer le plus souvent possible de cachette. Il y avait l\u00e0, on s'en doute, tous les ingr\u00e9dients voulus pour un jeu.\n\nLe but du jeu \u00e9tait, bien s\u00fbr, de d\u00e9couvrir l'\u0153uf de Bacadette, et de le poser sur la table de la cuisine, avant l'heure du petit d\u00e9jeuner. Le jeu, alors, se subdivisait en deux sous-jeux. Le premier \u00e9tait celui qui nous divisait en deux \u00e9quipes : Bacadette _versus_ tous les enfants. Bacadette cachait, les enfants cherchaient. Le deuxi\u00e8me sous-jeu \u00e9tait celui qui opposait chacun de nous aux autres : \u00eatre le premier \u00e0 apporter le tr\u00e9sor enfoui, l'or de l'\u0153uf, l'\u0153uf d'or. J'avais un certain avantage : d'une part j'\u00e9tais l'a\u00een\u00e9. De plus, je me levais facilement tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t (\u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence de ma s\u0153ur Denise). Une situation vexante \u00e9tait celle o\u00f9, non seulement je ne d\u00e9couvrais pas l'\u0153uf, mais o\u00f9 il tombait par hasard, plus tard dans la journ\u00e9e, un autre jour m\u00eame, entre les mains de mon p\u00e8re ou de ma m\u00e8re au cours d'une op\u00e9ration jardini\u00e8re, par exemple, sous une courge, au pied d'un dahlia. Le triomphe, au contraire, \u00e9tait de d\u00e9couvrir Bacadette en train de pondre, et de saisir l'\u0153uf tout chaud, directement sorti du four (si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi). Elle fut une fois, au tout petit jour, tellement prise par surprise qu'elle se mit aussit\u00f4t en fuyant \u00e0 pondre un deuxi\u00e8me \u0153uf, pas encore vraiment pr\u00eat, dont la coquille \u00e9tait toute molle encore.\n\nMais il fallait le plus souvent pour d\u00e9couvrir l'\u0153uf cach\u00e9 une tr\u00e8s longue qu\u00eate. Bacadette \u00e9tait d'une ing\u00e9niosit\u00e9 prodigieuse (c'est \u00e0 l'\u00e9chafaudage de strat\u00e9gies nouvelles de dissimulation, soyons-en s\u00fbrs, qu'elle se livrait, en une concentration acharn\u00e9e, les apr\u00e8s-midi, pos\u00e9e au beau milieu d'une all\u00e9e, le bec sur la poitrine, sans m\u00eame bouger quand nous passions pr\u00e8s d'elle \u00e0 toute allure sur nos bicyclettes ou tricycles). La serre, le potager, les buissons, la buanderie, les plants de tomates, le toit du lavoir permettaient une large gamme de variations, et elle ne r\u00e9p\u00e9tait jamais le m\u00eame choix \u00e0 des intervalles rapproch\u00e9s. Dans un tout petit r\u00e9duit, un ancien placard \u00e0 outils de jardins d\u00e9saffect\u00e9 situ\u00e9 derri\u00e8re un pin dans le coin gauche du mur d'enceinte (coin de la rue d'Assas et de l'\u00ab enclos du Luxembourg \u00bb, \u00e0 midi moins dix environ sur l'horloge spatiale que j'ai imagin\u00e9e pour la description), elle n'\u00ab inventa \u00bb ainsi pas moins de douze cachettes distinctes (ce qui supposait de sa part un grand r\u00e9servoir de \u00ab lieux de m\u00e9moire \u00bb pour \u00e9viter de se r\u00e9p\u00e9ter \u00e0 intervalles trop rapproch\u00e9s).\n\nCependant son exploit le plus spectaculaire fut d'une grande simplicit\u00e9 : une aube d'\u00e9t\u00e9, s'introduisant dans la maison par la porte que j'avais laiss\u00e9e ouverte en me glissant sans bruit dans le jardin pour la surprendre, elle s'en vint pondre son \u0153uf sur le fauteuil de la salle \u00e0 manger, o\u00f9 Marie ne le d\u00e9couvrit pas avant le milieu de la matin\u00e9e (nous tous partis \u00e0 l'\u00e9cole et nos parents au lyc\u00e9e). Je demeure persuad\u00e9 qu'elle avait lu, dans l'\u00e9dition cartonn\u00e9e vert-gris des \u0153uvres de Charles Baudelaire, et s\u00e9rieusement m\u00e9dit\u00e9, ce jour-l\u00e0, la le\u00e7on de _La Lettre vol\u00e9e_.\n\nBacadette fut-elle finalement, comme elle aurait d\u00fb l'\u00eatre, et comme le furent ses enfants, mang\u00e9e ? Je r\u00e9pondrai en temps utile \u00e0 cette angoissante question.\n\n## 29 Je sors du jardin dans la rue, vers l'Aude\n\n **Je sors du jardin dans la rue, vers la droite, vers l'Aude ; je ne sors pas par le portail, au bout de l'all\u00e9e principale de la partie \u00ab ludique \u00bb du territoire ; il est toujours ferm\u00e9, sous le grand pin parasol o\u00f9 guettent et se moquent les pies ; je sors dans la rue par la porte ouverte du \u00ab garage \u00bb, de la buanderie, ombreuse, pleine de bois, de charbon** ; (l'anthracite en boules ovales, qui nourrit le po\u00eale, l'hiver. Ce n'est pas l'hiver, mais mon parcours est, dans une simultan\u00e9it\u00e9 absolue, construit d'images n\u00e9es en plusieurs saisons), **je sors sous le grand soleil plat, dans la nappe \u00e9blouissante du toujours silencieux soleil sur la rue vide ; un peu de goudron a fondu ; j'y trempe un doigt de pied (je suis pieds nus, la corne sous mes pieds est une dure semelle, je ne sens pas les piq\u00fbres du gravier) ; la lumi\u00e8re est forte ; comme la lumi\u00e8re est forte ! et r\u00e9elle !**\n\nCette lumi\u00e8re vient de plus loin que toutes les galaxies. La lumi\u00e8re qui nous arrive, celle qui excite les astronomes, venue des plus lointaines galaxies, est partie depuis infiniment plus longtemps que cette lumi\u00e8re-l\u00e0, c'est vrai. Mais je ne l'ai pas vue s'en aller, d'une \u00e9toile, d'un soleil, d'une nova. Personne ne l'a vue, ne la verra partir. La lumi\u00e8re d'enfance, elle, continue \u00e0 partir, part et repart toujours, toujours : jadis, hier, maintenant. Quand je la pense, elle part, \u00e9blouit la rue, la rue d'Assas qui descend vers l'Aude, **mon pied nu touchant le goudron br\u00fblant, le gravier sem\u00e9 sur la surface fra\u00eechement goudronn\u00e9e, le caniveau de ciment, le trottoir. Elle vient, puis cesse**. Quand je la pense, je la vois. Puis elle cesse.\n\nLa lumi\u00e8re, le soleil dans le ciel ne trompent pas. Il fait chaud. La rue descend raidement sur la droite (quand on sort de la buanderie). En face, un mur haut et aveugle, continu jusqu'en bas, le mur de la caserne. A droite quelques maisons, mais je suis plac\u00e9 de telle sorte que je ne les regarde pas, que je ne les vois pas. Il n'y a personne dans la chaleur, de d\u00e9but d'apr\u00e8s-midi, de sieste d'\u00e9t\u00e9. (En \u00e9crivant cela, brusquement, \u00ab j'entends \u00bb une radio \u00e0 droite, mais sa voix est purement juxtapos\u00e9e au silence, \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re insistante, o\u00f9 je suis seul.) Il est dans la nature du r\u00e9cit que je sorte ainsi dans une rue vide, inoccup\u00e9e, solaire. \u00catre hors-les-murs c'est \u00eatre dans un puits de solitude. Au bas de la rue, une bifurcation. D'un c\u00f4t\u00e9, \u00e0 gauche, la rue d'Assas (peut-\u00eatre sous un autre nom, je ne sais plus) remonte aussi brusquement qu'elle est descendue. A droite, par des escaliers envahis d'herbes, d'orties, de gramin\u00e9es on descend vers un sentier, vers la rivi\u00e8re. Je n'irai pas maintenant.\n\n **La solitude, dans la lumi\u00e8re palpable, sous le soleil \u00e9clatant, consid\u00e9rable, est sans menace (de la dur\u00e9e, du d\u00e9part) ; ni joyeuse ni triste ; ni myst\u00e8re ni m\u00e9lancolie d'une rue ; l'ombre qui viendra sera celle du soir, pas l'ombre ni l'ombre de l'ombre tombant sur les marches de l'escalier, pas l'ombre noire en carr\u00e9s aveugles, ni l'Ombre qui sur tout est par l'\u00e9tat du monde ; une ombre premi\u00e8re simplement, le soir qui s'avance en rampant ; quand le soleil devient ocre, le ciel vert aux hanches des maisons, quand la poussi\u00e8re blanchit, quand le goudron se fige ; quand il fait plus frais.**\n\nDerri\u00e8re le banc vert, au milieu de la bordure de la terrasse, entre les deux acc\u00e8s aux all\u00e9es, le **puits** condamn\u00e9 offrait le myst\u00e8re de sa margelle, de sa nappe d'eau invisible, de son odeur d'ombre humide, fra\u00eeche, dangereuse. Dans un puits un peu profond on peut, en se penchant au bord, apercevoir, tr\u00e8s loin, son visage comme d\u00e9coup\u00e9 sur le ciel et, l'eau troubl\u00e9e d'un caillou d\u00e9rangeant le silence caverneux de son \u00e9cho, se voir soudain osciller avec le retour pendulaire de petites vagues, d'ondelettes lentement assoupies **(il y avait un puits semblable, \u00e0 ciel ouvert, au \u00ab jardin \u00bb d'Antoine, \u00e0 Villegly ; un autre au bas d'une vigne de garrigue, \u00e0 \u00ab Carri\u00e8re Blanche \u00bb ; l\u00e0, comme sur l'arri\u00e8re de la cuisine de la maison de l'oncle, \u00e0 Saint-Jean-du-Var se levait un figuier, arbre de ma m\u00e9moire, arbre de ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9 ; mais il n'y en avait pas aux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de ce puits-l\u00e0, dans le jardin, pr\u00e8s du banc).**\n\nDans un po\u00e8me m\u00e9di\u00e9val au titre myst\u00e9rieux, le \u00ab **Lai de l'Ombre** \u00bb (que je ne peux pas me redire sans penser entendre son titre autrement \u00e9crit, \u00ab Lait de l'ombre \u00bb, combinaison de mots qui en redouble l'\u00e9tranget\u00e9), l'image dans l'eau de l'anneau que tient l'amoureux assis sur la margelle vient brusquement se placer comme d'elle-m\u00eame au doigt de reflet de la dame, pour annoncer que le monde, impossible ici, de l'amour, est au contraire r\u00e9el dans l'au-del\u00e0 du miroir de l'eau. Et toujours, en ouvrant le livre qui contient ce po\u00e8me (une \u00e9dition c\u00e9l\u00e8bre de Joseph B\u00e9dier, intitul\u00e9e _La Tradition manuscrite du Lai de l'Ombre_ , dont la finalit\u00e9 n'est pas la restitution du texte, mais une interrogation sur les principes m\u00eames de toute restitution), je me suis trouv\u00e9 malgr\u00e9 moi face \u00e0 l'image invent\u00e9e par ma m\u00e9moire du puits ouvert, regardant. (Et parfois je me demande, si peut-\u00eatre, aux premiers jours de notre arriv\u00e9e \u00e0 Carcassonne, le puits n'avait pas \u00e9t\u00e9, en fait, ouvert, et ferm\u00e9 ensuite par prudence par mon p\u00e8re, pour en an\u00e9antir les dangers.)\n\n **Je regarde dans le puits et j'y vois l'ombre enti\u00e8re de la maison, devant moi** (dans la position qui serait alors la mienne, je tournerais cette fois le dos au banc, qui serait juste derri\u00e8re moi, comme si, d\u00e9laissant le jeu, j'avais effectu\u00e9, toujours \u00e0 genoux, un demi-tour, pour m'accouder au rebord, tr\u00e8s bas, du puits) **; je vois le toit et les fen\u00eatres ; je vois le long balcon \u00e0 droite et, se penchant sur mon \u00e9paule, remuant de quelque souffle ti\u00e8de de vent, je vois les pins emplir l'eau de leur feuillage, et les tr\u00e8s sombres fusains.**\n\nC'est une image sans inqui\u00e9tude, tranquille. Est-ce parce que je la pense invent\u00e9e (retravaill\u00e9e d'autres regards dans l'eau d'un puits dont je n'identifie plus la position ?) que je me sens comme d\u00e9tach\u00e9 d'elle, inconcern\u00e9, comme \u00ab en tiers \u00bb dans sa vision ; ni vraiment derri\u00e8re mon visage d'autrefois ni m\u00eal\u00e9 \u00e0 son reflet ? Alors que toujours, au centre du jeu, mais hors-jeu, face au banc, au centre d'une tr\u00e8s grande multiplicit\u00e9 de souvenirs r\u00e9els, je ressens l'appr\u00e9hension irraisonn\u00e9e d'une vague menace, de \u00ab quelque chose \u00bb qui me ferait, soudainement, sursauter.\n\nMais pourquoi ?\n\n **un** **plan du lieu,** **qui permettra au lecteur de se reconna\u00eetre dans ce chapitre qui n'est, au fond, qu'une tr\u00e8s longue** **description**\n\n# CHAPITRE 4\n\n# Parc Sauvage\n\n* * *\n\n## 30 Devant cette maison, tout pr\u00e8s, s'\u00e9tendait le Parc Sauvage\n\nDevant la maison, tout pr\u00e8s, s'\u00e9tendait le **Parc Sauvage**. Je donne \u00e0 chacun de ces deux mots une majuscule, comme s'il s'agissait d'un nom propre, d'un nom de personne (nom+pr\u00e9nom : nom : \u00ab Parc \u00bb, pr\u00e9nom : \u00ab Sauvage \u00bb). Un peu aussi comme si je d\u00e9signais de cette expression un \u00ab lieu-dit \u00bb, un lieu de cet endroit des Corbi\u00e8res, qui aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 dit \u00ab Parc Sauvage \u00bb. Et dans ce cas la forme linguistique marquerait simplement une distinction accord\u00e9e \u00e0 un nom commun (un groupement commun : nom+adjectif), par cette d\u00e9signation transpos\u00e9 en nom propre. Mais il serait le b\u00e9n\u00e9ficiaire d'une nomination priv\u00e9e, absente de toute carte. Dans la sph\u00e8re priv\u00e9e des nominations, cette portion d'une propri\u00e9t\u00e9 des Corbi\u00e8res, dont le nom public \u00e9tait Sainte-Lucie, aurait re\u00e7u un nom : **Parc sauvage** (avait re\u00e7u : le conditionnel porte sur le statut de la nomination, non sur sa mat\u00e9rialit\u00e9. Je ne l'invente pas aujourd'hui, comme nom propre d'un territoire de souvenirs. Ma m\u00e9moire en h\u00e9rite).\n\nJ'ai \u00e9crit cette fois l'adjectif \u00ab sauvage \u00bb sans majuscule. La caract\u00e9ristique de mon appropriation du lieu pourrait \u00eatre alors celle-l\u00e0 : une \u00ab promotion \u00bb de l'adjectif. (Faudrait-il cr\u00e9er dans un tel cas une cat\u00e9gorie grammaticale encore inconnue, celle de \u00ab l'adjectif propre \u00bb, \u00e0 l'imitation de celle du \u00ab nom propre \u00bb ?) Cette nomination, Parc sauvage (avec s minuscule), purement descriptive \u00e0 l'origine, partag\u00e9e et reconnue entre les quelques personnes appartenant en ces ann\u00e9es \u00e0 la sph\u00e8re priv\u00e9e des habitants de Sainte-Lucie, dans les Corbi\u00e8res, je l'avais re\u00e7ue (oralement), en venant dans ce lieu. Je l'avais adopt\u00e9e et transform\u00e9e pour moi-m\u00eame, priv\u00e9ment aussi, mais cette fois dans un espace priv\u00e9 absolu, purement individuel. Je l'avais transmu\u00e9e d'abord pour mes jeux, puis dans mes souvenirs, enfin pour la m\u00e9moire, en un Nom : **Parc Sauvage**. De telles nominations laissent des traces momentan\u00e9es chez un petit nombre, traversent des r\u00e9cits oraux, figurent dans des correspondances, puis disparaissent. Je l'offrirais ici, nom propre de ces souvenirs, contre l'oubli. Cette interpr\u00e9tation n'est pas fausse.\n\nPourtant, je ressens ce nom comme plus et autre qu'un nom propre. Ou encore : je voudrais lui donner un statut linguistique (fictif) particulier, supposer qu'il constitue un \u00e9l\u00e9ment essentiel dans la construction d'un langage impossible, un langage absolument priv\u00e9 (celui qu'un seul individu aurait en lui, langage solipsiste le plus souvent et parfois, dans la situation utopique id\u00e9ale de la cr\u00e9ation d'un monde amoureux possible, \u00ab biipsiste \u00bb (ce sont de tels \u00ab mots \u00bb qu'on d\u00e9sire donner \u00e0 qui on aime)). Ce serait dans ce cas non pas un \u00ab surnom \u00bb (le n\u00e9ologisme \u00ab surnom \u00bb \u00e9tant ici inutilisable, non seulement parce que trop voisin du mot non coup\u00e9 \u00ab surnom \u00bb, qui est indisponible parce qu'il a d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9t\u00e9 invent\u00e9, et a, dans ses emplois courants, gliss\u00e9 sur une pente p\u00e9jorative (il devrait \u00eatre plut\u00f4t qualifi\u00e9 de \u00ab sous-nom \u00bb), mais aussi parce que la surcharge affective et s\u00e9mantique que je cherche \u00e0 marquer porte plut\u00f4t sur le deuxi\u00e8me terme, \u00ab propre \u00bb, du terme \u00ab nom propre \u00bb), non un \u00ab surnom \u00bb, donc, mais un \u00ab nom surpropre \u00bb. C'est pour cette raison que je lui r\u00e9serve un r\u00f4le narratif qui exc\u00e8de les exigences de la simple pr\u00e9servation d'un souvenir heureux et marquant.\n\nOn arrivait par la **grande all\u00e9e de cypr\u00e8s et de pins majestueux ; de tr\u00e8s grands pins, immenses ; plus immenses encore et plus larges \u00e9taient les pins-parasols (pins \u00e0 \u00ab pignes \u00bb et partant \u00e0 pignons) ; all\u00e9e jonch\u00e9e d'aiguilles de pin, de pommes de pin (pignes) ; leur tapis brun, un peu rouille, d'aiguilles de pin sous les roues des v\u00e9los ; j'entends tout un chuchotement de roues**. L'all\u00e9e s'ouvrait \u00e0 un bout sur la route, une route des Corbi\u00e8res, vers un village, Saint-Andr\u00e9-de-Roquelongue (\u00e0 gauche quand on sortait, sur une route descendante, le village \u00e0 un kilom\u00e8tre environ), \u00e0 l'autre extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 sur la cour, une grande cour devant l'entr\u00e9e principale de la maison, celle qui \u00e9tait tourn\u00e9e vers l'ext\u00e9rieur, vers la route : Sainte-Lucie.\n\nDu c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'entr\u00e9e principale de la grande maison, dans la cour, il y avait g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement toute l'animation d'une \u00ab propri\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00bb faite de vignes, d'arbres fruitiers, d'animaux domestiques (des poules, des canards, des pintades... des chiens et chats). Il y avait une fontaine dans la cour, autour de laquelle s'affairaient les volailles et les seaux. Et une pente descendait, tr\u00e8s loin (vastes \u00e9taient les terres de Sainte-Lucie) vers **un ruisseau \u00ab frontalier \u00bb, souvent \u00e0 sec, comme tous les ruisseaux m\u00e9diterran\u00e9ens, ruisseau bord\u00e9 d'une plantation de tomates, d'aubergines, de poivrons (grosses tomates extr\u00eamement rouges ; petites tomates ovales rouges ou jaunes : des \u00ab olivettes \u00bb)**. Nous n'y allions pas souvent. Il y avait l\u00e0 pour notre sauvagerie propre toujours trop de monde, connus ou inconnus. Mais il n'y avait jamais personne dans le **Parc Sauvage**.\n\n **Une all\u00e9e ensabl\u00e9e, bord\u00e9e d'ifs : ifs tr\u00e8s sombres comme pour une \u00e9vocation de deuil anglais ; ifs aux minuscules feuilles elliptiques, tr\u00e8s \u00e9pais de feuilles, droits ; rectitude s\u00e9v\u00e8re, calviniste, fun\u00e8bre, des ifs ; et les boules rouges de leurs fruits bougies, comme bougies dans un arbre d'anniversaire ; ce sont des fruits qui ne sont pas des sph\u00e8res, plut\u00f4t des manchons cylindriques, \u00e0 peu de substance autour d'un noyau dur ; fruits tentants mais interdits de consommation (\u00ab poison ! \u00bb nous disait-on des fruits de ces arbres mortels) ; fruits de l'if tr\u00e8s peu durs, et si \u00e9cras\u00e9s entre les doigts laissant sur les doigts leur substance translucide, visqueuse ; fruits de l'if \u00e0 la couleur rouge sombre ; sur l'arbre luisants avec un \u00e9clat sombre, grave mais, une fois cueillis, vite ternis, impossibles \u00e0 conserver tels, frais et luisants, car ils se ratatinaient presque aussit\u00f4t, rid\u00e9s, ternes**.\n\n **L'all\u00e9e des ifs \u00e9tait la plus \u00e0 gauche, perpendiculaire \u00e0 la fa\u00e7ade priv\u00e9e de la maison, qui ne s'ouvrait pas sur la cour ; l'all\u00e9e \u00e9tait donc parall\u00e8le \u00e0 l'all\u00e9e ornementale qui servait d'entr\u00e9e majestueuse depuis la route ; et les ifs \u00e9pais, sur son** **bord gauche (contre une grille ? un mur ? la grande all\u00e9e en contrebas ?), isolaient le** **Parc Sauvage** **; il commen\u00e7ait l\u00e0, touffu, serr\u00e9, \u00e0 quelques m\u00e8tres seulement de la maison ; entre le parc et la maison, je vois une \u00e9tendue de gravier ; je vois une autre all\u00e9e \u00e0 droite, parall\u00e8le \u00e0 la premi\u00e8re, contre un mur, un assez haut mur**. (Derri\u00e8re ce mur il y avait une vigne, qui \u00e9tait une vigne pour raisins, pas pour le vin.) (Par la succession \u00e9num\u00e9rative sans verbes, et le maintien d'une particularit\u00e9 de ponctuation, je \u00ab soutiens \u00bb (et parfois remplace) les occurrences r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9es de \u00ab je vois \u00bb, le \u00ab signe \u00bb que j'ai choisi (accompagn\u00e9, \u00e0 l'\u00e9cran, d'un mode particulier d'expression des caract\u00e8res) pour manifestation d'une famille d'images-m\u00e9moire.)\n\n **Dans l'all\u00e9e, dans le sable ensoleill\u00e9, au pied d'un if, le plus sombre, une colonne de fourmis noires ; avec un petit seau d'eau, un seau \u00e0 sable de plage, et de l'eau prise dans la cour, \u00e0 la fontaine, l'obstacle d'une flaque interrompait les lignes militaires de transport des fourmis ; je troublais, nous troublions l'affairement des fourmis transporteuses de graines, les fourmis des r\u00e9giments d'un \u00ab g\u00e9nie fourmilier \u00bb, pontonni\u00e8res en brindilles ; mouvement perp\u00e9tuel de circulation fourmili\u00e8re dans les deux sens ; croisements, mots de passe, reconnaissance d'antennes ; concentrations, coagulations noires autour d'une \u00e9norme gu\u00eape morte (comme des lilliputiens autour du g\u00e9ant entrav\u00e9, Gulliver)**. Cette image a un nom : l' **If aux Fourmis**. Elle a produit une provision d'images-fourmis pour toute mon existence.\n\nOr j'avais choisi cette image-l\u00e0 pour une image de d\u00e9but, au cours d'une premi\u00e8re tentative d'\u00e9criture du **Grand Incendie de Londres** (roman). Mais, conform\u00e9ment \u00e0 ce qui me paraissait \u00eatre l'un des plus stricts principes de la transposition romanesque d'\u00e9v\u00e9nements appartenant au r\u00e9el biographique d'un auteur, j'avais pr\u00eat\u00e9 cette vision \u00e0 un personnage diff\u00e9rent de celui qui devait \u00eatre envahi par le \u00ab moi fictif \u00bb du romancier, dont cette version (que je d\u00e9cidai ensuite, apr\u00e8s l'avoir abandonn\u00e9e, \u00ab na\u00efve \u00bb) \u00e9tait encombr\u00e9e. Il y avait une \u00ab raison \u00bb strat\u00e9gique, tr\u00e8s consciente, \u00e0 ce d\u00e9placement. Mais les r\u00e9percussions de plus en plus nombreuses et de plus en plus lointaines de mon choix, les cercles concentriques des r\u00e9verb\u00e9rations de cette grosse chute de pierre dans l'eau mentale, se r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e8rent assez vite d\u00e9rangeantes. Mon \u00ab moi romanesque \u00bb s'en trouva, peu \u00e0 peu, d\u00e9sar\u00e7onn\u00e9.\n\n## 31 Je ne sais pas de quel arbre, de quels arbres, vers le fond du parc\n\nJe ne sais pas de quel arbre, de quels arbres, vers le fond du parc (d'une esp\u00e8ce de conif\u00e8re certainement, pin certainement pas, mais sapin, m\u00e9l\u00e8ze ou \u00ab spruce \u00bb, \u00e9pic\u00e9a ? je ne les \u00ab vois \u00bb plus. Je les ai cherch\u00e9s, je ne les ai jamais retrouv\u00e9s, jamais nulle part reconnus : ou bien il s'agissait d'une esp\u00e8ce rare, ou bien, plus vraisemblablement, mon esprit a effectu\u00e9 une telle translation, et m\u00e9tamorphose de la vision, du go\u00fbt, irr\u00e9versiblement, que la cons\u00e9quence en a \u00e9t\u00e9 en fait la perte de toute reproductibilit\u00e9 r\u00e9elle de l'exp\u00e9rience de cette image, dont l'attribut essentiel \u00e9tait attach\u00e9 en fait \u00e0 un seul sens, peu fiable dans mon cas, celui du go\u00fbt), je ne sais de quel arbre les aiguilles avaient une saveur enchanteresse, impr\u00e9vue. J'en avais fait la d\u00e9couverte, au fond solitaire et cach\u00e9 du **Parc Sauvage** , et je lui avais donn\u00e9 un nom, un nom propre : **Oranjeaunie**.\n\nC'\u00e9tait le nom que je m'\u00e9tais choisi pour ces aiguilles, et c'\u00e9tait surtout le nom de leur saveur. **Oranjeaunie** n'\u00e9tait pas l'aiguille tout enti\u00e8re, en fait, pas toutes les aiguilles de ce, de ces arbres ; mais **des aiguilles les plus r\u00e9centes, jeunes, tir\u00e9es de leur fourreau r\u00e9sineux et m\u00e2ch\u00e9es, seule comptait la partie profonde, cach\u00e9e, seule leur couleur, un jaune p\u00e2le, et leur go\u00fbt, un go\u00fbt d'orange ; oranjeaunie ; Oranjeaunie**. Il est vrai que je ne sais pas si leur go\u00fbt \u00e9tait, vraiment, proche de celui de l'orange. Mon cr\u00e2ne ne conserve pas l'image de cette saveur. Sans aucun doute, l'imagination d'une telle parent\u00e9 fut \u00e0 la source de mon \u00ab invention \u00bb linguistique. Le germe tendre et secret de ces aiguilles avait un go\u00fbt d'orange, mais pas la couleur. J'avais invent\u00e9 un mot-valise, conflagration d'une saveur (orange) et d'une couleur (le jaune).\n\nMais si je n'ai retrouv\u00e9 plus tard, en aucun conif\u00e8re, la moindre trace de ma r\u00e9v\u00e9lation, est-ce seulement parce que mon souvenir s'en est perturb\u00e9 au point de ne plus permettre la reconnaissance ? Ce n'est pas s\u00fbr. Car il est clair que l'identification conduisant \u00e0 la nomination, \u00e0 l'occasion d'un quelconque des essais de saveurs auxquels nous nous livrions sur toutes esp\u00e8ces v\u00e9g\u00e9tales, \u00e0 l'exception des quelques rares identifi\u00e9es apr\u00e8s avertissements de parents ou d'instituteurs comme dangereuses (\u00e0 tort ou \u00e0 raison : \u00e9tait-ce le cas des baies de l'if ? \u00e9tait-ce le cas de l' **Oranjeaunie** elle-m\u00eame, poison personnel, et secret imprudent ? Je ne le savais pas mais je gardai ce possible, cette menace, dans le jeu), l'identification reposait sur une imagination-souvenir de ce qu'\u00e9tait une orange. Et l'orange \u00e9tait un fruit qui avait totalement disparu de mon exp\u00e9rience gustative depuis, au plus tard, l'automne de 1940. La stabilit\u00e9 d'une telle m\u00e9moire des saveurs peut \u00eatre mise en doute.\n\nPlus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, m\u00eame si mon identification d'une parent\u00e9 entre le go\u00fbt de la racine d'aiguille et l'agrume avait quelque chose de l\u00e9gitime, alors, il n'est pas du tout certain que cette parent\u00e9-l\u00e0 ait pu \u00eatre pr\u00e9serv\u00e9e, apr\u00e8s des ann\u00e9es, avec continuit\u00e9. En premier lieu parce qu'il m'aurait fallu, entre tous les essais de bouts d'aiguilles auxquels je me livrai assez syst\u00e9matiquement pour retrouver l' **Oranjeaunie** (surtout aux premiers moments du **Projet** et du **roman** , parce que je d\u00e9sirais lui donner un grand r\u00f4le), et c'\u00e9tait donc bien longtemps apr\u00e8s la fin de la guerre, s\u00e9parer de fa\u00e7on irr\u00e9futable cette affinit\u00e9 partielle, peut-\u00eatre \u00e0 l'origine d\u00e9j\u00e0 assez distante et fragile, entre \u00ab orange \u00bb et miette v\u00e9g\u00e9tale (dont la consistance, de toute fa\u00e7on, \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s \u00e9loign\u00e9e de celle d'un fruit), de cette autre, beaucoup plus \u00e9vidente, qu'entretiennent, dans l'\u00e2cret\u00e9, toutes les aiguilles de conif\u00e8res entre elles. De plus, je n'\u00e9tais pas pr\u00e9par\u00e9 \u00e0 faire ce genre d'exp\u00e9riences, n'ayant aucun entra\u00eenement au sens du go\u00fbt comme en ont, par exemple, les d\u00e9gustateurs de vins.\n\nEn second lieu parce que, quand je me suis avis\u00e9 de tenter, pour les besoins de la prose de roman et simultan\u00e9ment comme stimulus de compositions po\u00e9tiques, de retrouver l'arbre de l' **Oranjeaunie** , je me guidai tout naturellement sur l'exp\u00e9rience de l'orange-fruit, redevenu depuis longtemps abondant, et m\u00eame banal (je ne tiens pas compte, ici, de sa chute de qualit\u00e9 due \u00e0 la commercialisation quasi industrielle, dont j'ai pu constater, par contraste, l'ampleur quand nous avons, Alix et moi, rendu visite \u00e0 ses parents \u00e0 la No\u00ebl de 1981, en Tunisie o\u00f9 les avaient conduits les hasards administratifs de la diplomatie canadienne). Or l' **orange** introduite par effraction dans l' **Oranjeaunie** n'\u00e9tait, elle-m\u00eame, qu'une orange de m\u00e9moire, et, plus significativement encore, quand elle nous \u00e9tait pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e dans les r\u00e9cits de ma grand-m\u00e8re, un symbole. Elle \u00e9tait, majuscul\u00e9e, l' **Orange** , \u00e0 la fois le symbole de l'abondance perdue, celle de l'avant-guerre, et celui de l'abondance future esp\u00e9r\u00e9e dans la libert\u00e9, incarn\u00e9e par l'Am\u00e9rique (une Am\u00e9rique d'ailleurs elle-m\u00eame racont\u00e9e), o\u00f9 elle nous serait de nouveau offerte, fruit ruisselant de la paix, luxe aigu de la soif.\n\n **Dans chaque aiguille pr\u00e9cautionneusement tir\u00e9e de sa base r\u00e9sineuse, j'isolais le tout d\u00e9but tendre et p\u00e2le,** **cela** **, une \u00ab oranjeaunie \u00bb, et je le mordais, en prenant bien soin de ne pas empi\u00e9ter sur la partie verte et proprement conif\u00e9rienne dont l'\u00e2pret\u00e9 aurait enti\u00e8rement oblit\u00e9r\u00e9 l'essence subtile, \u00e9mouvante, l'\u00ab esprit \u00bb orang\u00e9 sur ma langue ; la moindre erreur \u00e9tait fatale, et je ne pouvais alors retrouver le go\u00fbt d'Oranjeaunie qu'apr\u00e8s m'\u00eatre d\u00e9barrass\u00e9 de celui, pas d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able mais diff\u00e9rent, trop puissant, tenace, de sapin** (j'\u00e9cris \u00ab sapin \u00bb par abus de langage, puisque il ne s'agit sans doute pas d'un sapin, mais la saveur est \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s la m\u00eame dans toute cette famille v\u00e9g\u00e9tale).\n\nDu c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'autre extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 de l' **Oranjeaunie** (en tant que r\u00e9el physique), de son immersion dans le corps de l'arbre, il y avait une autre substance \u00e0 \u00e9viter, la r\u00e9sine. La moindre trace de r\u00e9sine devait \u00eatre, dans l' **Oranjeaunie** , aussi imp\u00e9rativement absente que la moindre parcelle de vert v\u00e9g\u00e9tal. Car la r\u00e9sine n'\u00e9tait pas plus \u00ab orange \u00bb que le vert de l'aiguille, et son go\u00fbt pas moins dominateur. Or j'avais une attirance violente pour la r\u00e9sine. J'aurais voulu passionn\u00e9ment qu'elle f\u00fbt aussi comestible qu'\u00e9tait saisissante son odeur, transparent et lucide son surgissement naissant d'une blessure des branches, du tronc, \u00e9trange son durcissement-assombrissement en un ruisseau fig\u00e9, puis en gouttes de gomme brunes que je grattais de l'ongle sous l'\u00e9corce. Pourquoi ? parce que la famille des r\u00e9sines avait une parent\u00e9 de consistance, de luminosit\u00e9, d'\u00e9coulement lent r\u00e9ticent avec une autre denr\u00e9e pr\u00e9cieuse disparue aussi depuis les temps de l'abondance : le miel. Il y avait, en arri\u00e8re-plan de la parent\u00e9 **orange-Oranjeaunie** une autre assimilation, de m\u00eame nature \u00e9motionnelle, une \u00e9quation **r\u00e9sine = miel,** qui ajoutait \u00e0 son intensit\u00e9 m\u00e9taphorique. (Je ne dis pas du tout que cela avait jou\u00e9, de mani\u00e8re consciente, dans mon invention langagi\u00e8re. Je pense cette correspondance maintenant, \u00e9crivant.) (Si aucune exp\u00e9rience d'orange n'a \u00e9t\u00e9 contemporaine de mes recherches sur l' **Oranjeaunie** , j'ai eu, en revanche, une rencontre que je dirais extr\u00eame, avec le miel, dans le refuge d'espace-temps qu'entoure et symbolise le **Parc Sauvage.)**\n\nPlus tard, pendant les ann\u00e9es qui me parurent d'exil, \u00e0 Paris en 1945, \u00e0 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, puis de nouveau \u00e0 Paris, dans le XIXe arrondissement, c'est-\u00e0-dire avant que la notion m\u00eame d'exil ach\u00e8ve d'\u00eatre caduque, quand il fut clair qu'il n'y aurait jamais pour moi d'autre condition, qu'il n'y aurait donc pas de \u00ab retour d'exil \u00bb, le **Parc Sauvage** devint, par m\u00e9tonymie, le lieu de l'enfance. L' **Oranjeaunie** , alors, en m\u00eame temps qu'un tr\u00e9sor cach\u00e9, en fut le nom, le nom propre, le titre. Au d\u00e9but du **Projet** , j'avais pens\u00e9 \u00e0 prendre ce mot comme titre pour le livre de po\u00e8mes que j'ai achev\u00e9 et publi\u00e9 sous un autre (le \u00ab _livre dont le titre est le signe d'appartenance \u00bb)_. Mais j'h\u00e9sitai, penchant plut\u00f4t finalement pour son emploi dans une des parties du roman, **Le Grand Incendie de Londres** : je n'aurais pas, dans le roman, directement \u00e9lucid\u00e9 le mot. Il aurait fait partie des myst\u00e8res romanesques qui seraient n\u00e9s par la \u00ab chute \u00bb de ce qui devait \u00eatre l'\u00e9nigme constitutive du **Projet**. L'image de l' **Oranjeaunie** et l'image des fourmis dans l'all\u00e9e des ifs en route vers la masse obscure d'une porte (images qui devaient se trouver associ\u00e9es dans la constitution de ces myst\u00e8res) s'y seraient trouv\u00e9es toutes deux occuper les foyers d'une ellipse narrative, \u00e0 centre absent.\n\nPlus r\u00e9cemment, quand j'ai entrepris, ayant renonc\u00e9 au **Projet** et au roman, ce qui est maintenant ce commencement d'une for\u00eat interminable de pages que j'\u00e9cris, j'ai de nouveau \u00e9t\u00e9 tent\u00e9 de nommer **Oranjeaunie** une branche de mon livre, puis, abandonnant aussi cette id\u00e9e, un seul chapitre, ce chapitre. Mais je n'ai m\u00eame pas \u00e9t\u00e9 capable de maintenir cette intention. (Je laisse ici cette \u00ab impuissance \u00bb sans explication. Toutefois je me promets d'y rem\u00e9dier, comme d'habitude, plus tard (je ne suis pas avare de promesses narratives).)\n\n## 32 Ma vision passe sans explication ni transition aucune\n\nMa vision passe alors sans explication ni transition aucune de l' **Oranjeaunie** au **Vieux Bassin**. Elle franchit, mais tr\u00e8s difficilement toutefois (et uniquement \u00e0 l'aide de la d\u00e9signation : c'est un passage d\u00e9ductif de terme \u00e0 terme) un foss\u00e9 de pur oubli. C'est un passage qui est comme une esquive. Ce temps, sa r\u00e9sine, sa glu, me r\u00e9sistent. Je sais (mais comment ?), que le **Vieux Bassin** se trouve au-del\u00e0 du fond du **Parc Sauvage** , et la g\u00e9om\u00e9trie naturelle du monde suppos\u00e9 euclidien m'enseigne qu'il devait se situer aussi en de\u00e7\u00e0 de la route descendante, celle qui conduisait \u00e0 Saint-Andr\u00e9-de-Roquelongue. Mais je le vois enti\u00e8rement isol\u00e9, sans qu'aucun de ses acc\u00e8s ait en apparence laiss\u00e9 en moi le plus modeste point de p\u00e9n\u00e9tration. Je n'arrive pas \u00e0 recomposer la moindre bribe d'un \u00ab entre-deux \u00bb. Le **Vieux Bassin** est un monde dans le monde du **Parc Sauvage** , mais autonome, comme plus \u00e9loign\u00e9 encore dans le temps que le parc lui-m\u00eame. En plus, je le vois de l'int\u00e9rieur. **Je suis** au fond du **Vieux Bassin** , depuis tr\u00e8s longtemps sans eau, puisque envahi d'une v\u00e9g\u00e9tation effervescente, sa ma\u00e7onnerie crev\u00e9e, ruin\u00e9e.\n\nOr la responsabilit\u00e9 de cette destruction m'appara\u00eet devoir \u00eatre enti\u00e8rement assum\u00e9e par les figuiers. **De grands figuiers sur les bords du bassin ; un figuier m\u00eame a pouss\u00e9 au fond,** **dans un coin** (si ma vision est exacte, cela signifie que le **Vieux Bassin** est depuis tr\u00e8s longtemps \u00e0 l'abandon). C'est l\u00e0 que l'instant p\u00e9r\u00e9nnis\u00e9 de l'image rejoint celui, non moins fig\u00e9 dans son illusoire identit\u00e9 \u00e9ternelle, du figuier de Saint-Jean-du-Var. **Des grands figuiers au bord du bassin br\u00fblant tombent les figues brunies de soleil, les figues resserr\u00e9es sur elles-m\u00eames autour du sucre et du soleil, les figues** **penn\u00e8ques** **de septembre**.\n\nEt la figue penn\u00e8que est l'aboutissement parfait du fruit. C'est l\u00e0 une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 que je re\u00e7us de mon p\u00e8re \u00e0 Toulon en 1942, une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 familiale donc, \u00e0 laquelle mon go\u00fbt adh\u00e9ra sans r\u00e9ticence, enti\u00e8rement et d\u00e9finitivement (j'ai abandonn\u00e9 bien des croyances, que je croyais raisonnables, pas celle-l\u00e0). Les figues penn\u00e8ques au fond du bassin de Sainte-Lucie, dans les Corbi\u00e8res, en septembre de 1943, constitu\u00e8rent la v\u00e9rification exp\u00e9rimentale de cette v\u00e9rit\u00e9. La figue est par excellence un fruit intransportable, presque ins\u00e9parable de l'arbre. On ne peut la plupart du temps le manger qu'imm\u00e9diatement cueilli. Rien n'est plus \u00e9loign\u00e9 du fruit r\u00e9el, rien n'est plus pitoyable qu'une \u00ab barquette \u00bb de figues offertes \u00e0 des na\u00effs sur un march\u00e9 parisien. Encore peut-on envisager (et cela se rencontre effectivement) de mettre de telles choses fades en vente (elles trouvent m\u00eame de malheureux acheteurs, qui ne se doutent de rien). Mais je n'ai jamais vu nulle part vendre de figues penn\u00e8ques. Il s'agit bien l\u00e0 d'une singularit\u00e9 irr\u00e9ductible (plus infranchissable encore que celle de la m\u00fbre de ronces, qui partage pourtant avec elle le trait de non-rentabilit\u00e9 (on \u00e9l\u00e8ve, on vend des m\u00fbres d'\u00e9levage, qui ont de la fadeur et surtout, symboliquement, poussent sur des ronces \u00ab sans \u00e9pines \u00bb !), qui \u00e0 mes yeux en fait un fruit symbole de la saveur intransmissible du pass\u00e9. (Le seul devenir parall\u00e8le de la figue est la figue s\u00e8che, qui constitue (comme l'est la datte telle que nous la connaissons) une mise en \u00ab herbier \u00bb de la saveur : brune comme la datte, \u00e0 m\u00eame distance qu'elle du fruit, de teinte grise-brune \u00e0 l'oppos\u00e9 de la figue vraie, \u00ab blanche \u00bb ou noire, tels le coquelicot noir ou le bleuet fan\u00e9 entre les pages d'un cahier. Mais la _penn\u00e9quisation_ est de beaucoup sup\u00e9rieure \u00e0 l'ass\u00e8chement, parce qu'elle conserve plus d'humidit\u00e9, et la consistance vivante du fruit, toujours fragile, mais plus fragile encore dans la proximit\u00e9 de la dissolution.)\n\n **Comme \u00e9chapp\u00e9s des larges feuilles vert sombre des figuiers, ou comme issus par g\u00e9n\u00e9ration spontan\u00e9e des crevasses du sol et des parois du Vieux Bassin, de grands l\u00e9zards vert violent, abasourdis de chaleur et de lumi\u00e8re, r\u00e9gnaient sans concurrence, m\u00eame pas effray\u00e9s par ma pr\u00e9sence, qui restait prudemment distante, \u00e0 cause de leur r\u00e9putation (peut-\u00eatre imm\u00e9rit\u00e9e) de combattants aux morsures redoutables ; l'un d'eux me regardait ; il me regardait, il me regarde, se secoue un peu de sa torpeur, et s'enfonce dans la t\u00e9n\u00e8bre ma\u00e7onni\u00e8re, ou dispara\u00eet vers le haut, vers la jungle de ronces, de gramin\u00e9es et de fenouils o\u00f9 se d\u00e9coupait le Vieux Bassin ; dans chaque fissure plus petite, l\u00e8vres minces dans la ma\u00e7onnerie, un r\u00e9giment de petits l\u00e9zards gris espi\u00e8gles et une cohorte de couleuvres ; aux bords des rides de fissures, les petits l\u00e9zards vifs et gris me regardaient, me regardent, la gorge palpitante, p\u00e2le, curieux. Les couleuvres glissent, chuintent**.\n\n **Parc Sauvage, Oranjeaunie, Vieux Bassin** , dessinent un triangle onomastique o\u00f9 chaque mot majuscule est \u00e0 fonction symbolique, presque all\u00e9gorique (\u00ab Vieux \u00bb dans Vieux Bassin n'est peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame pas un antonyme de \u00ab nouveau \u00bb, par exemple. Je n'identifie, dans le monde r\u00e9volu du Parc Sauvage, aucun autre bassin, aucun \u00ab nouveau bassin \u00bb ayant remplac\u00e9 celui-l\u00e0, pour r\u00e9serve d'eau et arrosage) : all\u00e9gorie de l'enfance, de l'enfance dans l'enfance, enfance absolue. Car tout ici est plus rare, plus parfait, et plus parfaitement pass\u00e9 qu'ailleurs : la \u00ab campagne \u00bb autour du **Parc Sauvage** (on nomme ainsi, dans l'Aude, ce qui ailleurs est dit \u00ab ferme \u00bb), la dur\u00e9e (quelques semaines en peu de s\u00e9jours, des vacances, que pour les besoins du r\u00e9cit, mais pas seulement, je condense ici en un seul, une fin d'\u00e9t\u00e9, un d\u00e9but d'automne), la surabondance ivre de libert\u00e9, de soleil (dans les Corbi\u00e8res encore presque inhabit\u00e9es : un contraste avec la ville), le grand myst\u00e8re aventureux de l'endroit.\n\nJ'avais peupl\u00e9 le **Vieux Bassin** , le territoire le plus secret du **Parc Sauvage** , plut\u00f4t que de la luxuriance totalement inimaginable dans le d\u00e9cor s\u00e9v\u00e8re des Corbi\u00e8res du _Livre de la Jungle_ de Kipling (il ne m'a jamais persuad\u00e9, avec ses boas et panth\u00e8res aux dimensions excessives, ses _bandarlogs_ bavards, et son ridicule et inepte enfant sauvage, Mowgli), du danger imaginaire des cobras (dont le r\u00f4le pouvait \u00eatre facilement tenu par les pourtant inoffensives et tr\u00e8s timides couleuvres), et de leur ennemi mortel, le h\u00e9ros d'une de mes nouvelles pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9es : _Rikki-Tikki-Tavvi_ (pour ce r\u00f4le j'avais choisi un grand l\u00e9zard vert \u00e0 l'allure d\u00e9cid\u00e9e, baptis\u00e9, au moyen d'une distorsion beaucoup plus grande, mangouste). Je faisais vivre le drame, jusqu'\u00e0 ce que l'exc\u00e8s de soleil et de figues me chasse, vers l'ombre des ifs, ou les raisins.\n\nSainte-Lucie avait d\u00fb \u00eatre ant\u00e9rieurement une propri\u00e9t\u00e9 plus vaste, mieux entretenue, plus riche. Le **Parc Sauvage** , et le **Vieux Bassin** \u00e9taient sans doute les vestiges d'un \u00ab jardin d'agr\u00e9ment \u00bb et de l'eau avait probablement autrefois rempli le bassin, aliment\u00e9e par un savant syst\u00e8me de captation des sources et pluies, des rigoles et des inclinaisons de dalles de pierre s\u00e8che dans les chemins y persuadant toutes les eaux de ruissellement (comme il en existait un peu partout, en Provence, en Catalogne, en Languedoc, avant les ruines successives et conjugu\u00e9es du d\u00e9peuplement rural, du tourisme et des \u00ab demeures secondaires \u00bb, ce cancer dans l'art de la m\u00e9moire des paysages). Il y avait aussi, s\u00e9par\u00e9e des autres par sa topographie (entre l'arri\u00e8re de la maison, le Parc et un petit bois de pins), une vigne de dimensions modestes mais enti\u00e8rement plant\u00e9e de ceps producteurs de raisins nobles, des raisins \u00e9lev\u00e9s non pour le vin, mais, selon l'expression consacr\u00e9e, pour la table. C'\u00e9tait, pour nous, **La Vigne** (\u00ab La \u00bb, article-adjectif, mieux, article-propre, troisi\u00e8me terme de mon invention linguistique, n\u00e9cessaire pour la \u00ab lecture \u00bb de la langue dans la po\u00e9sie).\n\nElle suffisait, presque seule, avec les figuiers, \u00e0 nous nourrir. Car, en dehors des tomates et de quelques autres fruits, quelle autre nourriture aurions-nous pu trouver en abondance que le raisin ? Il \u00e9tait notre sucre, nos vitamines. Il comblait l'insistante faim laiss\u00e9e par les \u00ab rations \u00bb insuffisantes, par les trop rares volailles, l'absence presque absolue de viande, le mauvais pain. **Tels des moineaux, telles des grives nous allions plonger nos visages sous les feuilles, cueillir, ou mordre \u00e0 m\u00eame les** **grappes, allonger nos jambes nues couleur de terre sur la terre s\u00e8che, br\u00fbl\u00e9e, des sillons entre les ceps, et manger, jusqu'\u00e0 plus soif, jusqu'\u00e0 l'ivresse, les raisins chauds, sucr\u00e9s, liquoreux, lourds ;**\n\n **triangle de couleurs des grappes : muscats ; muscats noirs, muscats blancs, aramons roux ; \u00ab olivettes \u00bb blanches presque vertes au go\u00fbt \u00e9nervant, accrocheur ; nouveaux** **jeux** **: \u00e9grener la grappe ; prendre tous les grains d'une lourde grappe dans les mains, les frotter de la poussi\u00e8re, les faire briller, billes, luire ; peler les grains un \u00e0 un avec soin, les \u00e9p\u00e9piner des dents sans d\u00e9truire la consistance du raisin, cracher les p\u00e9pins, laisser couler le jus sur la langue, avec une lenteur f\u00e9brile, une lenteur d'animal du d\u00e9sert, de gerboise, manger la chair, mais garder la peau de chaque grain dans un coin de la bouche, dans la joue, comme font les hamsters ; conserver dix, vingt, cinquante peaux de grains de raisin ; r\u00e9sister au d\u00e9sir, au besoin de les manger ; puis les manger d'un seul coup**. Enfin.\n\n## 33 Je suis rest\u00e9, dans cette description, enti\u00e8rement en dehors.\n\nJe suis rest\u00e9, dans cette description, uniquement attach\u00e9 \u00e0 quelques lieux, et enti\u00e8rement **en dehors**. Je ne suis pas entr\u00e9, par exemple, dans la maison. Je ne vois la maison, d'ailleurs, que dans un contexte hivernal, de froid relatif, parce que l'hiver m'y enfermait, parce que je ne pouvais pas, alors, faire autrement, par d\u00e9faut en somme. Je ne m'en souviens que comme partie d'un autre monde, qui n'est plus celui du **Parc Sauvage**. Comme si j'\u00e9tablissais spontan\u00e9ment, en retrouvant les ann\u00e9es, une cloison entre int\u00e9rieur et ext\u00e9rieur (parall\u00e8le \u00e0 celle qui existe dans la m\u00e9moire) qui bornerait aussi des pays saisonniers, aux communications rares.\n\nMais c'est, plus d\u00e9cisivement encore, qu'en fait mon souvenir est presque enti\u00e8rement enferm\u00e9 dans les quelques images que j'ai d\u00e9crites (et de tr\u00e8s rares autres dont je vais parler dans les prochains \u00ab moments \u00bb de ce chapitre). Elles sont intenses, mais fixes, mais quasiment isol\u00e9es, chacune d'elles strictement autonome, li\u00e9e seulement aux autres par un effort volontaire, actuel, de connexion narrative, non par les sauts in\u00e9vitables d'un cheminement spontan\u00e9 dans le labyrinthe des souvenirs.\n\nLe contraste est absolu avec l'image de la fleur de gel qui commence mon chapitre premier : l'image, dans ce cas, ne \u00ab reste pas en place \u00bb ; elle suscite une arborescence profuse d'autres visions, dont j'ai choisi de ne d\u00e9crire, alors, qu'une tr\u00e8s petite partie.\n\nPlus net encore est le contraste avec un territoire au moins superficiellement comparable, celui du jardin qui est le d\u00e9cor unique du chapitre 3. Le jardin n'a pas de nom \u00ab propre \u00bb, mais je peux le \u00ab voir \u00bb dans son ensemble (m\u00eame si cette vue est n\u00e9cessairement fictive, physiquement une impossibilit\u00e9). Je n'ai au contraire aucune vue g\u00e9n\u00e9rale du **Parc Sauvage ;** mais uniquement de sa lisi\u00e8re, des ifs...\n\nEst-ce parce que la totalit\u00e9 de ces souvenirs est rest\u00e9e enfouie sous leurs noms, **Parc Sauvage, Oranjeaunie... ?** simplement parce qu'ils avaient re\u00e7u des noms ? parce que l'attribution de noms les fixait, mais les isolait en m\u00eame temps les uns des autres ? et tranchait dans le mouvement continu qui, dans le jardin de la rue d'Assas ou dans ma chambre hivernale, par exemple, m'envoyait sans cesse \u00ab ailleurs \u00bb ?\n\nJe m'objecte aussit\u00f4t que dans le chapitre du jardin j'ai eu affaire aussi \u00e0 des noms, et surtout \u00e0 celui d'un jeu, **S'avancer-en-rampant** , qui appelle la vision du banc (vision \u00e0 la fois \u00ab aveugle \u00bb et voyante !). Mais la situation est diff\u00e9rente. Le nom du jeu n'est pas celui d'un endroit. Il suppose m\u00eame au contraire une multiplicit\u00e9 d'endroits, et une multiplicit\u00e9 de d\u00e9placements entre eux. La singularit\u00e9 du **Parc Sauvage** demeure.\n\nIl n'est pas impossible non plus, et ce serait en accord avec mon \u00ab hypoth\u00e8se \u00bb de l'affaiblissement, puis de la destruction-reconstruction des souvenirs par l'\u00e9vocation et encore plus par la fixation sur le papier, que je l'avais presque oblit\u00e9r\u00e9 d\u00e9j\u00e0 dans ma m\u00e9moire quand j'ai tent\u00e9, \u00e0 plusieurs reprises, de faire servir ces images au roman et aux po\u00e8mes du **Projet**. C'est cela qui a eu \u00e9galement pour effet d'effacer (ou de rendre momentan\u00e9ment inaccessibles, sans \u00ab s\u00e9same \u00bb) les autres images, voisines (peut-\u00eatre pas aussi nombreuses que dans le cas du jardin pour des raisons tenant aux dur\u00e9es in\u00e9gales des s\u00e9jours respectifs, mais certainement pr\u00e9sentes, et vari\u00e9es, \u00e0 l'origine), en rompant les liens d'association.\n\nIl reste cependant (en contradiction nette avec l'hypoth\u00e8se d'affaiblissement) que ces images sont rest\u00e9es tr\u00e8s fortes. Je peux supposer (position sceptique spontan\u00e9e) que cette intensit\u00e9 est illusoire, qu'elle tient \u00e0 l'intensit\u00e9 d'autres moments, ceux de la composition po\u00e9tique o\u00f9 l' **Oranjeaunie** , par exemple, autrefois, devait, magnifi\u00e9e, symbolique, iconique, appara\u00eetre. Je ne l'exclus pas.\n\nJe pr\u00e9f\u00e8re cependant une autre interpr\u00e9tation, qui est bien mieux en accord avec la direction g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de ce chapitre : que la force initiale de ces visions \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s grande ; qu'elles restent donc intenses encore aujourd'hui. Et j'y vois pour \u00ab preuve \u00bb l'intervention des sens, pour moi, rarement r\u00e9\u00e9vocables intacts dans le temps : le toucher, le go\u00fbt. Et la pr\u00e9sence vive des couleurs : couleurs propres.\n\n## 34 De la Rue d'Assas (Carcassonne) \u00e0 Sainte-Lucie\n\nDe la Rue d'Assas (Carcassonne) \u00e0 Sainte-Lucie (nom \u00ab public \u00bb de ce qui \u00e9tait pour moi, avant tout, le **Parc Sauvage** ), la distance par la route, \u00e0 v\u00e9lo, \u00e9tait d'une cinquantaine de kilom\u00e8tres. Faire le m\u00eame parcours par le m\u00eame moyen serait, aujourd'hui, un v\u00e9ritable supplice, et une exp\u00e9rience dangereuse, en tout cas pendant toute la premi\u00e8re partie du trajet qui suivait, par Tr\u00e8bes, Capendu, Barbaira, Moux, la \u00ab Nationale \u00bb (qui ensuite s'en va vers L\u00e9zignan-Corbi\u00e8res, et plus loin encore, Narbonne). On bifurquait sur la droite, on traversait Fabrezan (village natal de Charles Cros : l'Aude est un d\u00e9partement de po\u00e8tes : Reverdy (Narbonne), Anne-Marie Albiach (Moux)). C'\u00e9tait la plaine fluviale encore. Mais tr\u00e8s vite la route entrait dans les vraies Corbi\u00e8res, avec cons\u00e9quences imm\u00e9diates et perceptibles pour le cycliste : on montait.\n\nLes ann\u00e9es 40-45 furent des ann\u00e9es b\u00e9nies pour le v\u00e9lo. Les routes \u00e9taient presque enti\u00e8rement libres de voitures. Notre premi\u00e8re visite \u00e0 Sainte-Lucie eut lieu pendant les vacances scolaires de 1940 ou 1941. J'avais juste huit (ou neuf) ans, mais je trouvais naturel de faire ces quelques dizaines de kilom\u00e8tres sur les routes en d\u00e9pla\u00e7ant une machine plut\u00f4t rudimentaire (les \u00ab changements de vitesse \u00bb, par exemple, lui \u00e9taient inconnus. Je ne parle pas de son poids ! N'importe qui, aujourd'hui peut commander \u00e0 un v\u00e9lo \u00e0 peine plus lourd qu'un paquet de cigarettes, qui se met en mouvement, semble-t-il, sur une simple pouss\u00e9e du doigt et roule presque sans contribution aucune des muscles), pour un trajet \u00e0 peine plus long que celui que je parcourais parfois, en croisant et recroisant dans les all\u00e9es du jardin, rue d'Assas.\n\nIl y avait malgr\u00e9 tout, une fois entr\u00e9s vraiment dans les Corbi\u00e8res, quelques mont\u00e9es redoutables. Des moments d'arr\u00eat, de repos apr\u00e8s efforts intenses, peut-\u00eatre, m'en ont pr\u00e9serv\u00e9 trois visions, dans chaque cas peut-\u00eatre aussi le contraste brusque de leurs images avec le d\u00e9cor habituel et attendu au d\u00e9roulement de la route. Pour la premi\u00e8re certainement l'\u00e9tranget\u00e9, la sauvagerie de l'endroit. Sauvagerie qui a facilit\u00e9 l'annexion de cette image \u00e0 l'ensemble de celles, distantes de plusieurs kilom\u00e8tres selon la topographie r\u00e9elle, qui constituent la configuration dans ma m\u00e9moire de ce que j'ai nomm\u00e9 **Parc Sauvage**. L'\u00ab adjectif propre \u00bb, le sur-adjectif, **\u00ab Sauvage \u00bb** , unifie (l'oubli ayant englouti presque enti\u00e8rement les paysages interm\u00e9diaires de vignes, trop familiers), \u00ab raboute \u00bb ainsi des lieux \u00e9loign\u00e9s, supprime toute discontinuit\u00e9, impose un espace connexe de souvenirs, et une autre continuit\u00e9, une autre topologie (comme les jeux agissant sur celle du jardin).\n\nPremi\u00e8rement donc **un village, le nom d'un village : Ville-rouge-la-Cr\u00e9made ; un arr\u00eat de fin de matin\u00e9e sous un ciel couvert (raret\u00e9 d'un ciel bas dans les Corbi\u00e8res) presque froid ; quelques maisons ; partout l'argile ; argile rouge ; le rouge propre, rouge m\u00eame, vraie couleur ; quelques maisons en bord** **de route, en pente brusque ; le v\u00e9lo pos\u00e9 contre un muret, en haut de la c\u00f4te ; arr\u00eat, prolongement naturel de l'instant de suspension, \u00e0 vitesse nulle, avant l'ivresse de la descente, \u00e0 l'air abandonn\u00e9, ruin\u00e9, s\u00e9v\u00e8re, nullement paisible ; silence sans soulagement ; Villerouge la \u00ab br\u00fbl\u00e9e \u00bb ; priv\u00e9 de sa violente lumi\u00e8re ordinaire, d\u00e9sert, l'instant du pass\u00e9 semble d'apr\u00e8s incendie ; et rien ne le repeuplera**.\n\nJe l'ai, longtemps, mise au centre d'imaginations fictives \u00ab stevensoniennes \u00bb (le Stevenson s\u00e9v\u00e8re qui \u00e9crivit _Le Ma\u00eetre de Ballantrae_ , pas celui, plus s\u00e9duisant, de _L'Ile au tr\u00e9sor_ ), nourries du r\u00e9cit des grands bandits, Mandrin, Cartouche, Rocambole. _L'Auberge rouge_ , c'\u00e9tait l\u00e0 (j'en demande pardon \u00e0 ses honorables pacifiques vignerons habitants d'autrefois, et d'aujourd'hui, s'il en reste). Le rouge de Villerouge \u00e9tait un rouge sombre, sanglant, comme d'un sang vers\u00e9, ancien, bruni, comme l'argile venue d'une saign\u00e9e de la terre, dans l'orage, et p\u00e9trie et calcin\u00e9e pour en faire ces murs quasiment sans ouvertures, sans yeux bleus.\n\nJe m'\u00e9loigne encore et **je vois** , en une deuxi\u00e8me vision, **je ne sais quand ni par quel chemin, \u00e0 grande distance, depuis la hauteur, la mer (** **La Mer** **)** (avec article-adjectif, qui est son \u00ab article propre \u00bb, v\u00e9ritable m\u00eame cette fois) ; **comme une \u00ab \u00e9cume bleue \u00bb son scintillement lointain dans le soleil immat\u00e9riel, retrouv\u00e9, incessant**. La mer inaccessible, mais esp\u00e9r\u00e9e pour plus tard, \u00ab apr\u00e8s la guerre \u00bb **; je ne vois qu'une goutte \u00e9troite de mer, une goutte bougeante, petite, \u00e9cumeuse et bleue ; elle est \u00e0 peine une discontinuit\u00e9 scintillante dans l'oc\u00e9an de l'horizon, l'oc\u00e9an-ciel, presque imperceptible entre les rochers, les collines chutant l'une sur l'autre jusqu'\u00e0 l'impr\u00e9cision due \u00e0 l'air, \u00e0 l'air trop clair, au soleil-brume**. Le futur alors, la paix, \u00e9taient ainsi.\n\nPaix enfin, paix absolue du troisi\u00e8me de ces moments, dans l' **abbaye de Fontfroide** dont je demeure encore, aujourd'hui, voyant : ces trois visions ont une communaut\u00e9 d'approche, le mouvement du v\u00e9lo dont l'allure n'est ni celle de la marche qui laisse trop de temps pour s'habituer, qui att\u00e9nue la surprise, ni l'exc\u00e8s de rapidit\u00e9 de l'automobile, instrument de la boulimie touristique aveugle, qui troue l'\u00e9toffe des paysages, d\u00e9chire les lieux de leurs abords (d'o\u00f9 quelque chose non d'une d\u00e9ception mais du sentiment d'un manque de transition quand pour la premi\u00e8re fois dans l'apr\u00e8s-guerre je repassai par Fontfroide, en route vers Agde, avec les Harnois, c'\u00e9tait l'\u00e9t\u00e9 de la mort de Staline, nous avons appris sur la route l'arrestation du sinistre Beria).\n\n **Oasis de fra\u00eecheur r\u00e9elle** , mais au moins autant suscit\u00e9e par le nom, par l'appel d'eau de \u00ab Font- \u00bb, qui est \u00ab fontaine \u00bb, et par l'offre d'une d\u00e9livrance de la canicule que promet \u00ab froide \u00bb, mot non \u00ab valise \u00bb mais de fusion, **Fontfroide ; fontaine de silence dans l'assourdissement des cigales, des criquets, des pneus de v\u00e9lo crissant de freins sur le chemin tournant, descendant, poussi\u00e9reux, dans la lumi\u00e8re poussi\u00e9reuse et bruyante d'ao\u00fbt ; ombres m\u00e9di\u00e9vales invisibles \u00e0 d\u00e9ambulation rectangulaire, ombres silencieuses prot\u00e9g\u00e9es par la pierre, par le tr\u00e9sor de l'eau nourrice de paix, par la pierre vertueuse protectrice des contemplations muettes**.\n\n **Et les murs entiers du quadrangle int\u00e9rieur, de l'espace g\u00e9om\u00e9trique r\u00e9serv\u00e9 \u00e0 la lente s\u00e9culaire circulation m\u00e9ditative \u00e9taient couverts de glycines ; un parfum invraisemblablement intense rayonnait de leurs grandes grappes bleues ; pas le bleu de la mer** tel qu'en ma deuxi\u00e8me vision, **un bleu plus clair ; ni le bleu un peu violet des iris, mais un bleu boucl\u00e9, l\u00e9ger et froid comme une eau sortie en mousse d'une bouche de fontaine (parfum comme charg\u00e9 du sucre enclos dans le nom mouvant de la plante qui rampait sur les murs, qui se faisait robe des murs, \u00e0 grappes d'un raisin de fleurs** , hors du pass\u00e9 glauque, **glycine)**.\n\nJ'avais gard\u00e9 ces trois visions parce qu'elles faisaient partie \u00e9vidente du **Parc Sauvage** , parce qu'elles s'ajoutaient par la menace d\u00e9sol\u00e9e, terrible, ou bien l'espoir, ou l'enchantement, \u00e0 la d\u00e9couverte secr\u00e8te de l' **Oranjeaunie** (et chacune en \u00e9tait comme une face, un d\u00e9ploiement de possibles associ\u00e9s \u00e0 mon invention). Elles ont fait partie, je le vois, du monde, du mien mais, dirais-je, elles ont plus \u00e9t\u00e9 monde que le monde m\u00eame, Elles me pr\u00e9sentaient, m\u00eame si je ne le savais pas, tout ce que le monde tenait pour moi en r\u00e9serve de merveilleux, de rare et, ins\u00e9parablement, d'inqui\u00e9tant.\n\n## 35 Sainte-Lucie appartenait \u00e0 Camille Boer.\n\nSainte-Lucie appartenait \u00e0 Camille Boer. L'emploi de Camille, comme pr\u00e9nom masculin (c'est aussi le deuxi\u00e8me pr\u00e9nom de mon p\u00e8re) est, je crois, plut\u00f4t une caract\u00e9ristique m\u00e9ridionale en France, et dat\u00e9e. Je vois, dans sa \u00ab romanit\u00e9 \u00bb un des poteaux-fronti\u00e8res entre l'oc et l'o\u00efl, pas tellement que le nom soit si souvent donn\u00e9 aux filles, dans les pays au nord de la Loire, aujourd'hui (je ne l'ai jamais rencontr\u00e9 chez mes \u00e9tudiantes de Nanterre : je regarde toujours l'\u00e9volution g\u00e9n\u00e9rationnelle des pr\u00e9noms, ann\u00e9e par ann\u00e9e, en corrigeant mes copies de \u00ab partiels \u00bb), mais \u00e0 cause d'une d\u00e9licieuse chanson du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle, que j'ai apprise enfant (et je ressens le XVIIIe si\u00e8cle, je ne sais pourquoi, comme embl\u00e9matique de l'irr\u00e9ductible \u00e9tranget\u00e9 en moi du \u00ab fran\u00e7ais \u00bb) : \u00ab Camille, un jour \u00e0 son amant \/ Qu'elle adorait \u00e0 la foli i i i yeu \/ Donna un rendez-vous galant \/ pour satisfaire son envi i i yeu\/... \u00bb\n\nEn fait, Camille Boer \u00e9tait catalan. Il avait, avant la guerre (la guerre d'Espagne), poss\u00e9d\u00e9 une petite industrie d'instruments orthop\u00e9diques (h\u00e9rit\u00e9e ?), et quelque fortune. Anarchiste, comme on croit que le sont volontiers les Catalans, m\u00eame quand ils ne le sont pas, il avait consacr\u00e9 la totalit\u00e9 de ses ressources catalanes \u00e0 financer l'achat d'avions de combat pour la R\u00e9publique, en pure perte d'ailleurs, \u00e0 cause de l'inf\u00e2me \u00ab non-intervention \u00bb qui les avait bloqu\u00e9s \u00e0 la fronti\u00e8re. Il racontait son entrevue avec L\u00e9on Blum, qui refusait obstin\u00e9ment de les laisser partir clandestinement, disant, d'apr\u00e8s lui \u00ab je ne peux pas ! je ne peux pas ! \u00bb, pleurant presque (et le r\u00e9publicain Boer racontait cette sc\u00e8ne avec indignation et m\u00e9pris, comme preuve d'une l\u00e2chet\u00e9 et veulerie invraisemblable chez un Premier ministre du Front populaire, r\u00e9cit qui me fit une impression d'autant plus forte que ce n'\u00e9tait pas, mais pas du tout son habitude de porter de tels jugements sur les \u00eatres humains (je n'en excepte m\u00eame pas les franquistes et les nazis, car il croyait \u00e0 l'humanit\u00e9 des humains, en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral)). En 1939, il s'\u00e9tait r\u00e9fugi\u00e9 de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la fronti\u00e8re, dans cette \u00ab campagne \u00bb qui \u00e9tait \u00e0 lui par sa femme, Laurentine, une Narbonnaise. Il avait d'abondants cheveux blancs dans un visage tr\u00e8s brun, tr\u00e8s rond et il \u00e9tait donc grand-p\u00e8re, un grand-p\u00e8re jeune, enthousiaste. Nous l'appelions, comme ses petits-enfants, comme tout le monde parmi ses proches, Camillou.\n\nSainte-Lucie, je m'en rends compte en raisonnant mes souvenirs (l'existence m\u00eame du **Parc Sauvage** , du **Bassin** , de **La Vigne** , et l'ampleur des b\u00e2timents, l'\u00e9tendue des terrains plant\u00e9s en vignes, les dimensions de la cour centrale, le nombre des personnes qui travaillaient et logeaient sur place) avait \u00e9t\u00e9, et \u00e9tait encore une \u00ab grande propri\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00bb. Camillou y avait recueilli et y employait des ouvriers agricoles, pour la plupart catalans et anarchistes comme lui (les hommes petits, br\u00fbl\u00e9s, sauvages, leurs femmes ou amies petites, br\u00fbl\u00e9es, sauvages, \u00e0 la voix rauque, avec d'extraordinaires pr\u00e9noms bien peu anarchistes parfois : Concepcion, Esperanza, Incarnacion !), et il faut bien dire que la situation de \u00ab patron \u00bb ne lui convenait pas du tout, ni id\u00e9ologiquement, ni humainement, ni moralement, ni pratiquement. Mais dans les conditions pr\u00e9caires, autarciques et fam\u00e9liques de la guerre, l'arrangement \u00ab fonctionnait \u00bb tant bien que mal. (Et pour nous, enfants citadins livr\u00e9s \u00e0 cette bienheureuse atmosph\u00e8re, invraisemblablement bien.)\n\nSainte-Lucie ne surv\u00e9cut pas longtemps \u00e0 la Lib\u00e9ration. Camillou dut vendre, tenter sa chance dans de nouvelles \u00ab affaires \u00bb, o\u00f9 sa croyance jamais d\u00e9mentie, \u00ab rousseauiste \u00bb au sens banal du mot, en la bont\u00e9 intrins\u00e8que de la nature humaine, jusques et y compris (ce qui est plus difficile encore \u00e0 soutenir) et \u00e0 de tr\u00e8s rares exceptions (toujours les franquistes et nazis, et jamais individuellement) incarn\u00e9e en des \u00eatres humains r\u00e9ellement existants (comme on parlait, il y a encore peu d'ann\u00e9es, de \u00ab socialisme r\u00e9ellement existant \u00bb), lui valut d'innombrables et sans cesse renouvel\u00e9es d\u00e9sillusions. Il eut confiance en des mines de soufre (trop longtemps), en l'am\u00e9nagement du Languedoc (trop t\u00f4t) dont plus tard se fit gloire son \u00ab ami \u00bb Philippe Lamour. Il vivait alors \u00e0 Toulouse, venait parfois nous rendre visite \u00e0 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, o\u00f9 nous allions dans le jardin \u00e0 sa rencontre avec les cris d'une joie non feinte : \u00ab Camillou ! Camillou ! \u00bb Comment dire ? Si sa croyance au bien dans le monde peut para\u00eetre, sous l'\u00e9clairage de la raison, ind\u00e9fendable et na\u00efve, il y avait au moins un \u00eatre au monde pour la justifier par l'exemple : lui-m\u00eame. Il \u00e9tait bon.\n\nSa bont\u00e9 n'avait pas seulement le fondement th\u00e9orique d'une mise en conformit\u00e9 de sa vie avec sa pens\u00e9e. Elle coulait de source. La bont\u00e9 \u00e9tait en son \u00eatre, en chacune de ses attitudes, de ses comportements. Et cela \u00e9tait particuli\u00e8rement visible dans ses rapports avec les enfants. (Je me demande aujourd'hui, bien s\u00fbr, si l'aspect essentiellement b\u00e9n\u00e9fique d'une telle unit\u00e9 morale n'\u00e9tait pas en partie limit\u00e9 \u00e0 ses \u00e9changes avec l'enfance.) Les enfants l'adoraient : ses petits-enfants, d'abord, les fils de sa fille No\u00eblle, \u00ab petit Jean \u00bb et \u00ab les jumeaux \u00bb. Et nous, mes fr\u00e8res, ma s\u0153ur, et moi, bien s\u00fbr, d\u00e8s l'instant o\u00f9 nous l'avons connu. Son indulgence \u00e9tait tellement peu d\u00e9magogique que nul n'en abusait. Il \u00e9tait naturellement et sans h\u00e9sitation de plain-pied avec les enfants comme avec tout \u00eatre. Et les enfants s'approchaient de lui avec une confiance imm\u00e9diate, instinctive, animale.\n\nQuand il arrivait, revenait dans la voiture \u00e0 gazog\u00e8ne (l'invraisemblable ersatz de l'essence \u00ab r\u00e9quisitionn\u00e9e \u00bb), c'\u00e9tait imm\u00e9diatement la joie et la f\u00eate. Il arrivait avec des cadeaux, ou il arrivait sans cadeaux, mais la joie \u00e9tait toujours la m\u00eame, cris, rires, embrassades, danses. A l'un de mes derniers s\u00e9jours \u00e0 Sainte-Lucie, en 44 vraisemblablement, il m'emmena un jour avec lui \u00e0 Narbonne. Nous sommes revenus avec des hu\u00eetres, d'incomparables hu\u00eetres, comme \u00e0 Saint-Jean-du-Var. Nous avons ouvert des hu\u00eetres dans l'immense salle \u00e0 manger froide, dans la lumi\u00e8re blanche de l'hiver.\n\nQuand la question du destin ultime de notre cane, Bacadette, se posa, quand il devint clair pour tous qu'il serait impossible, faim ou pas faim, de l'immoler (et quand par ailleurs, notre d\u00e9part de Carcassonne s'annon\u00e7ant, il apparut qu'il ne serait pas envisageable (nous l'envisagions tr\u00e8s bien, nous !) non plus de l'emmener avec toute la famille \u00e0 Paris), la solution se pr\u00e9senta d'elle-m\u00eame : Sainte-Lucie. Mon p\u00e8re prit son v\u00e9lo, mit Bacadette dans un panier sur le porte-bagages, nous embrass\u00e2mes avec ferveur, avec \u00e9motion, le bec, le cou, les palmes, les douces plumes du dos, le duvet du ventre, les grandes plumes du gouvernail arri\u00e8re de notre vieille amie, et elle partit pour sa retraite, parmi d'autres canards, canetons, poules et poulets, dindes et dindons, pintades et pintadeaux de ce refuge, o\u00f9 nous la laiss\u00e2mes aller en toute confiance, puisqu'elle s'y trouverait sous la protection de notre ami, en qui nous avions enti\u00e8re foi, Camillou. Un an plus tard, en effet, mon p\u00e8re rendant visite, toujours \u00e0 v\u00e9lo, \u00e0 ses amis Laurentine et Camille (aux derniers temps de leur s\u00e9jour), descendit de sa machine dans la cour devant l'entr\u00e9e de la maison, d\u00e9fit les pinces au bas de son pantalon, posa la bicyclette contre le mur et sentit un bec lui saisir la cheville, comme une petite pince : C'\u00e9tait Bacadette, accourue de la troupe des canards, qui le saluait ainsi.\n\nJ'arrive ainsi \u00e0 la derni\u00e8re image de ce chapitre, la derni\u00e8re qui s'attache, se fond dans le territoire \u00e0 la fois vrai et utopique du **Parc Sauvage** (qui est \u00e0 la fois lui-m\u00eame et par lui-m\u00eame une image concr\u00e8te, une, unique, mais aussi la mutiplicit\u00e9 des autres images que son nom appelle, qui ne se comprennent et ne se justifient que de lui. Je les \u00e9num\u00e8re encore, sept jusqu'ici (qui font huit) : L' **If aux Fourmis** , l' **Oranjeaunie** , le **Bassin, La Vigne, Villerouge-la-Cr\u00e9made, La Mer \u00e0 Leucate, Fontfroide)**. Cette derni\u00e8re, ultime image, je la nomme aussi. Je la nomme : **Cingle**. Et voil\u00e0 achev\u00e9 un monde entier, construit de neuf images en tout et pour tout. J'en prends ici cong\u00e9.\n\nLe **Cingle** \u00e9tait une autre \u00ab campagne \u00bb des Corbi\u00e8res, dans un endroit plus lointain encore, plus sauvage si possible, plus \u00e9lev\u00e9, propri\u00e9t\u00e9 d'une amie des Boer, des terres que Camillou aidait \u00e0 cultiver. Je ne pourrais aujourd'hui la situer sur une carte (c'est peut-\u00eatre de l\u00e0, de ces hauteurs que j'ai vu, tr\u00e8s loin, cette goutte d'eau bleue \u00e9cumeuse que j'ai nomm\u00e9e **La Mer** , sans doute du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de Leucate). Avant d'entrer au **Cingle** nous avons long\u00e9, Camillou, mon p\u00e8re et moi, **un champ sem\u00e9 de plantes rugueuses \u00e0 fleurs bleues, mais d'un bleu humide, un bleu de montagne d\u00e9j\u00e0 ;** quel \u00e9tait le nom de cette plante ? bourrache. C'\u00e9tait de la bourrache que j'avais devant les yeux ; **je voyais une pente livr\u00e9e \u00e0 la luzerne et \u00e0 la bourrache ; plante r\u00eache et raide ; r\u00eache et bleue**.\n\n **Nous sommes entr\u00e9s. Sur une table de bois, on m'a servi du miel dans une assiette, du miel comme je n'en avais jamais vu** , comme je n'en verrai jamais plus, **le miel du** **Cingle** **, liquide et transparent, intens\u00e9ment savoureux, glissant sur le disque de l'assiette inclin\u00e9e sans se plisser, sans se presser**.\n\n **Il y avait l\u00e0 aussi une petite fille blonde**.\n\n# CHAPITRE 5\n\n# Place Davila\n\n* * *\n\n## 36 La forme d'une ville\n\n\u00ab... la forme d'une ville \/ Change plus vite, h\u00e9las, que le c\u0153ur d'un mortel\/... \u00bb Si le jardin de la rue d'Assas me reste prot\u00e9g\u00e9 int\u00e9rieurement, dans une relation d'identit\u00e9 profonde avec lui-m\u00eame entre ses murs, parce que je n'y aurai plus jamais acc\u00e8s (je ne p\u00e9n\u00e9trerai plus dans l'espace qu'il continue pourtant \u00e0 occuper, contemporainement (car la maison, et le jardin apparemment, existaient encore la derni\u00e8re fois que j'y suis pass\u00e9, il y a trois ans)), il n'en est pas de m\u00eame de la plupart des lieux publics carcassonnais. La **place Davila** porte toujours le m\u00eame nom, mais je me refuse \u00e0 le lui reconna\u00eetre. J'ai essay\u00e9, mais je n'ai pas pu. Ce n'est pas seulement de bouleversements horizontaux et verticaux qu'elle a souffert. Son individualit\u00e9 sonore, \u00ab g\u00e9nie \u00bb du lieu, a \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9truite. Les quatre vents (le _cers_ surtout, leur \u00ab ma\u00efstre \u00bb, comme le mistral l'est des vents proven\u00e7aux (c'est \u00ab ma\u00eetre \u00bb que veut dire son nom)) ont beau s'y engouffrer de partout comme autrefois, du canal, des \u00ab all\u00e9es \u00bb, de la grille orthonorm\u00e9e des rues centrales, froisser l'air tel un \u00e9norme papier, leur voix d\u00e9su\u00e8te, pass\u00e9iste, pa\u00efenne, est couverte, ridiculis\u00e9e par la grosse pr\u00e9dication hyst\u00e9rique automobile. Ils ne s'entendent plus souffler. Et seule une esp\u00e9rance mill\u00e9nariste, que je n'ai pas, pourrait me laisser croire que \u00ab Le temps va ramener l'ordre des anciens jours \u00bb ou que \u00ab La terre a tressailli d'un souffle proph\u00e9tique \u00bb. Je passe sur le trottoir, je me bouche les yeux et les oreilles, je restitue un moment, contre la \u00ab m\u00e9taphore \u00bb des camions, les oracles de mes dieux anciens.\n\nC'est l\u00e0, au bord de la place, qu'ils r\u00e9gnaient. Il y avait un marchand de pommes de terre (entre autres denr\u00e9es ? Mais **je ne vois, aujourd'hui, que les sacs de jute brune, bistre, r\u00eache, sur un sol de terre battue**. Il y a vingt-cinq ans ma m\u00e9moire y engrangeait, aussi, des \u00e9pices. Une tramontane d'oubli, depuis, a souffl\u00e9 sur la cannelle, sur le safran). C'\u00e9tait la \u00ab maison \u00bb Gleize (disparue quelque temps apr\u00e8s la guerre. En 1967 le po\u00e8te des cypr\u00e8s, Jean Lebrau, de Moux, s'en souvenait). J'en avais fait, \u00e0 mon usage strictement personnel, un Had\u00e8s, au-del\u00e0 de ses portes invent\u00e9 un antre obscur peupl\u00e9 d'Esprits, de Formes, d'Id\u00e9es, d'Anges, d'Archontes (dirais-je aujourd'hui), mais qui \u00e9taient alors, plus simplement, plus purement, des Noms. Un souterrain communiquait par des voies fray\u00e9es, instaur\u00e9es de mani\u00e8re uniquement prescriptive, avec l'\u00e9tablissement de mon ami M. Dupuis, le tonnelier de la rue d'Assas. Je ne les ai identifi\u00e9s que tardivement comme \u00e9tant des Dieux (apr\u00e8s d\u00e9couverte livresque de l'Olympe). Mais Dieux ils \u00e9taient, sans aucun doute : dieux nominaux cependant, priv\u00e9s de tout sauf de l'\u00eatre, de la singularit\u00e9 et de la r\u00e9sidence, \u00e9tants d'un \u00ab \u00eatre-l\u00e0 \u00bb seulement, d\u00e9gag\u00e9s de toute intention b\u00e9n\u00e9fique ou mal\u00e9fique, sans pouvoirs, sans figures, ontologie, philog\u00e9nie, transcendance, essence. Sauf qu'ils \u00e9taient. Ils \u00e9taient, voil\u00e0 tout. S'il est un, ou des Dieux, je serais tent\u00e9 de ne r\u00e9clamer de Lui, d'eux, que cela.\n\nCertains de leurs Noms \u00e9taient secrets. Secrets, ils \u00e9taient impronon\u00e7ables, tant et si bien que je les ai oubli\u00e9s. Je les savais encore il y a dix ans. Je sais que je les savais encore il y a dix ans. Je pouvais les dire. Je me souviens de cela. Mais aujourd'hui leurs Noms, non, je ne les sais plus. Selon El\u00e9azar de Worms, quand le nouveau-n\u00e9 vient au monde, son ange gardien lui flanque une baffe sur l'aile du nez, et il oublie tout : tout ce que son \u00e2me \u00e9ternelle \u00e9tait \u00e0 m\u00eame de savoir et dont il ne retrouvera ensuite, pendant son s\u00e9jour sur terre, par _anamn\u00e8se_ , que des bribes, des fragments, des lueurs. Et pourquoi l'ange se comporte-t-il ainsi ? parce que sans ce geste \u00ab compassionnel \u00bb l'enfant verrait ce qui l'attend ici-bas et il refuserait de souffler son premier souffle, de pousser son premier cri. Mais peut-\u00eatre faut-il supposer aussi qu'\u00e0 tout moment de naissance au cours de notre vie (de re-naissance apr\u00e8s quelque esp\u00e8ce de mort, en nous-m\u00eames, mort d'un espoir, de quelqu'un), notre ange gardien intervient \u00e0 nouveau, pour nous faire oublier un savoir de prescience qui rendrait le futur trop insupportable.\n\nIl y avait bien une vingtaine de ces dieux, mais il n'en est surv\u00e9cu qu'une demi-douzaine. Et un seul conserve quelque consistance. C'\u00e9tait le plus grand de tous (il y avait entre mes Noms divins une certaine hi\u00e9rarchie). Et c'\u00e9tait peut-\u00eatre un dieu chasseur : Son Nom \u00e9tait Garenne. Son Nom \u00e0 lui, je pouvais le prononcer (il semble que je ne m'en privais pas). Et lui-m\u00eame poss\u00e9dait des paroles, que pour simplifier (et sous l'influence \u00ab fenimorienne \u00bb du _Dernier des Mohicans)_ j'assimilais \u00e0 des cris de guerre, mais qui \u00e9taient seulement un appel, une injonction \u00e0 des dieux inf\u00e9rieurs. Ainsi : \u00ab Trougoudou ! Manana ! Aganu ! Agana ! \u00bb (dans cet ordre). (Je marque les syllabes initiales de ce qui \u00e9tait donc un t\u00e9tram\u00e8tre dactylique, mais composant aussi un alexandrin \u00e0 rime int\u00e9rieure, ou deux hexasyllabes rimants, conjonction harmonieuse et spontan\u00e9e de la m\u00e9trique fran\u00e7aise et du paganisme grec.)\n\nPour mon entr\u00e9e au s\u00e9jour des dieux (dont le nectar devait \u00eatre la douce \u00ab patate \u00bb, si rare alors), je leur fournissais (par t\u00e9l\u00e9pathie) un mot de passe : \u00ab Gl\u00e8zundown \u00bb (je m'efforce de noter le son de ce que j'\u00ab image \u00bb dans mon souvenir, et cela implique un net \u00ab anglicisme \u00bb phonique, qui laisse entrevoir le s\u00e9jour g\u00e9ographiquement vraisemblable de ces \u00ab Champs-\u00e9lys\u00e9ens \u00bb : l'\u00eele Angleterre, m\u00e8re de la R\u00e9sistance \u00e0 Hitler. Mais je ne l'avais pas, alors, reconnu ainsi, encore moins d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9ment cr\u00e9\u00e9 cette association).\n\nA la fin de l'\u00e2ge des contes, dit \u00e2ge mythique, j'ai donn\u00e9 \u00e0 mes dieux une langue, le P\u00e9ruviaque. C'\u00e9tait une langue dont la morphologie souffrait d'une hypertrophie formelle de la flexion des substantifs et adjectifs. Les \u00ab cas \u00bb s'y multipliaient comme des petits pains, et il y avait au moins neuf d\u00e9clinaisons ! En revanche le syst\u00e8me du verbe y \u00e9tait assez peu imaginatif, souffrant sans doute de venir, dans l'expos\u00e9 syst\u00e9matique de \u00ab grammaire p\u00e9ruviaque \u00bb que j'entrepris un peu avant de quitter Carcassonne et qui resta tristement inachev\u00e9, apr\u00e8s le nom et l'adjectif dans l'ordre raisonn\u00e9 des \u00ab mati\u00e8res \u00bb (il fut priv\u00e9 en outre de son pendant indispensable et annonc\u00e9 comme tel dans mon cahier, l' _\u00e9pitom\u00e9_ des textes fondamentaux de la litt\u00e9rature d'inspiration divine, tant en po\u00e8mes qu'en r\u00e9cits mythiques (n'a surv\u00e9cu qu'un fragment d'une \u00ab Gen\u00e8se \u00bb plus cosmogonique, h\u00e9siodique, \u00e9num\u00e9rative que biblique, et largement incompr\u00e9hensible, car le lexique associ\u00e9 a disparu)).\n\nDe l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la place vivait quelqu'un, qui \u00e9tait jeune homme quand j'\u00e9tais enfant, que je n'ai pas rencontr\u00e9 souvent, qui avait quelque lien de parent\u00e9 (disparu de ma t\u00eate) avec quelqu'un qui nous \u00e9tait proche (je ne sais plus qui), que j'ai oubli\u00e9 et que je ne reconna\u00eetrais pas. Mais je me souviens de son nom. Il s'appelait Prudent Padieu. Il me para\u00eet aujourd'hui difficile d'imaginer que ce nom, que j'ai retenu, n'a pas jou\u00e9 d\u00e9cisivement dans la r\u00e9v\u00e9lation des pr\u00e9sences divines de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9, dans le temple des pommes de terre, situ\u00e9 l\u00e0 o\u00f9 n'habitait pas la famille Padieu. Puisque du \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9 Gleize \u00bb ne se trouvait pas Padieu, je ne peux \u00e9viter d'en d\u00e9duire aussit\u00f4t, avec toute l'irresponsabilit\u00e9 dans le maniement des d\u00e9monstrations que je m'autorise de l'int\u00e9rieur de l'activit\u00e9 narrative (ici plus proche du conte que du roman) \u00e0 ma prescience enfantine de la logique intuitionniste : je n'aurais donc pas cherch\u00e9 la Voie de la Double N\u00e9gation si je ne l'avais pas d\u00e9j\u00e0, autrefois, trouv\u00e9e !\n\n **Je vois la place Davila. Je ne vois aucun v\u00e9hicule sur la place. Seuls les vents, le soleil, le vent, le soleil, le vent. Je me tiens debout, sous le soleil, entour\u00e9 de vent, pris dans l'enveloppe du vent. Les portes de la \u00ab maison \u00bb Gleize sont ouvertes. De cette bouche d'ombre sort l'odeur du s\u00e9jour des dieux, une odeur de terre et de pommes, s'\u00e9chappe la couleur de t\u00e9n\u00e8bre, et la parole des dieux, qui toujours parlent d'ombre, de t\u00e9n\u00e8bre, d'oubli**.\n\n **\u00ab** **Trou** **goudou !** **Ma** **nana !** **A** **ganu !** **A** **gana ! \u00bb**\n\nJ'en fis (qu'en faire d'autre ?) un po\u00e8me (1963)\n\nSur la place vivait\n\no\u00f9 ? Prudent qu'emport\u00e8rent\n\nvers les pommes de terre (?)\n\nses dieux moi j'esquivais\n\nles grands tambours crev\u00e9s\n\n(car vingt vents les heurt\u00e8rent)\n\nplume ! un hiver de guerre\n\no\u00f9 ? vaguant je r\u00eavais\n\ndissipant buissonneur\n\nplus aux ronciers qu'aux heures\n\nplus qu'aux bancs aux prunelles !\n\nle ciel v\u00e9lin vola\n\nvers tes murs de cannelle\n\n\u00f4 place Davila !\n\n(J'ai rassembl\u00e9 en ce \u00ab moment de prose \u00bb de quoi \u00ab \u00e9claircir \u00bb ce sonnet de mon premier livre (ou l'obscurcir d\u00e9finitivement).)\n\n## 37 La place Davila \u00e9tait la station centrale d'un trajet mille fois fray\u00e9\n\nOr la place Davila \u00e9tait la station centrale d'un trajet mille fois fray\u00e9 par la marche dans la ville, ponctu\u00e9 de tels lieux m\u00e9moriels, d'o\u00f9 viennent aujourd'hui les ondes mn\u00e9moniques que je capte pour la description. (L'expression \u00ab onde mn\u00e9monique \u00bb est d'Aby Warburg, pour caract\u00e9riser les foyers iconologiques d\u00e9couverts par lui (en eux les ondes se concentrent), protecteurs de la survivance des dieux antiques. Il les avait assembl\u00e9s en quelque \u00ab mille et trois \u00bb images rayonnantes, sur une grande toile noire, cl\u00e9s de cette biblioth\u00e8que de m\u00e9moire rest\u00e9e \u00e0 jamais inachev\u00e9e, \u00e0 la fois personnelle et collective, qu'il nommait **Mn\u00e9mosyne.)**\n\nA un bout la porte d'entr\u00e9e de notre maison, \u00e0 l'autre la librairie Breithaupt, rue de la Gare, temple de la lecture, sanctuaire dispensateur de livres (je les lisais pendant le trajet du retour). En sortant, \u00e0 droite le long du mur du jardin, puis \u00e0 gauche dans la rue d'Assas (bord\u00e9e de la caserne), j'arrivais \u00e0 ma premi\u00e8re station, le palais du tonneau. M. Dupuis, le tonnelier, \u00e9tait mon ami. Je dirai d'abord ceci de son nom : que je n'en ai jamais su l'orthographe, ne l'ayant recueilli que par voie orale, et ne m'\u00e9tant jamais occup\u00e9 de l'\u00e9crire avant aujourd'hui. Peut-\u00eatre \u00e9tait-ce Dupuy, ou quelque autre variante. Mais l'association la plus imm\u00e9diate que suscitent ces deux syllabes est : \u00ab du puits \u00bb. Comme le puits du jardin, comme la maison des pommes de terre sur la place, la tonnellerie Dupuis \u00e9tait une porte s'ouvrant sur le territoire obscur et bachique des dieux, dont il \u00e9tait quelque chose comme le Vulcain bonhomme, l'H\u00e9pha\u00efstos inoffensif.\n\nIl \u00e9tait de taille r\u00e9duite, peu bavard, de bonne humeur, rond par ressemblance naturelle, par imitation inconsciente, par assimilation (\u00e0 mes yeux), le visage rougi int\u00e9rieurement et ext\u00e9rieurement par l'\u00e9l\u00e9ment vineux. Nous n'\u00e9changions jamais beaucoup plus de quatre mots. Mais il \u00e9tait mon ami, parce qu'il me laissait regarder, silencieusement, les op\u00e9rations tonneli\u00e8res, dont l'importance ne m'\u00e9chappait pas (l'Aude est un d\u00e9partement viticole). Tous les enfants de notre rue et des rues voisines avaient droit \u00e0 cette m\u00eame faveur, et il y en avait toujours une demi-douzaine agglutin\u00e9s devant son autel. Entre ses mains les formes des tonneaux se d\u00e9faisaient, se reconstituaient, se construisaient, r\u00e9v\u00e9lant et enrichissant sans cesse l'Id\u00e9e de Tonneau qui ne se confond avec aucun tonneau concret, mais les transcende tous.\n\nCe que j'aimais le plus, c'\u00e9tait les soins qu'il apportait \u00e0 un tonneau vivant, mais malade. La bonde encore humide retir\u00e9e, l'odeur sombre, rouge sombre, autobiographique et adulte du tonneau se r\u00e9pandait dans la p\u00e9nombre, un esprit de vin, une \u00e2me. M. Dupuis desserrait lentement, avec d'infinies pr\u00e9cautions mais autorit\u00e9, les ceintures de fer, le grand cercle \u00e9quatorial, les moindres cercles tropicaux, les inspectait pour d\u00e9celer la rouille, la f\u00ealure, l'imperfection cong\u00e9nitale. Les lames de bois constitutives du corps du tonneau se s\u00e9paraient alors, s'\u00e9vadaient de leur conjointure aussi forc\u00e9e, compress\u00e9e que la poitrine d'une \u00ab beaut\u00e9 \u00bb 1900 dans un corset, et gisaient \u00e9parses sur le sol de terre imbib\u00e9e de vin (libation divine), telles les tranches d'une orange pel\u00e9e, puis d\u00e9faite sur une assiette.\n\nUn instant, avant qu'il s\u00e9pare les divers membres de ce corps pour inspection et \u00e9valuation, la forme restait implicitement inscrite dans les constituants, avec son syst\u00e8me de coordonn\u00e9es curvilignes, l'\u0153il mental supposant la transformation topologiquement r\u00e9versible et rhabillant, de ses v\u00eatements tomb\u00e9s (comme ceux laiss\u00e9s aux pieds de la beaut\u00e9 1900 l\u00e9ch\u00e9e rose dans les cartes postales \u00e9rotiques) la nudit\u00e9 de la masse absente du vin. Sous le m\u00e9tal, une tache laide devenue visible r\u00e9v\u00e9lait la morsure d'une d\u00e9composition fongique. Il hochait la t\u00eate, hippocratiquement. La courbure interne des m\u00e9ridiens de bois montrait la couleur vineuse, trace du gonflement intime par le liquide qui maintient l'\u00e9tanch\u00e9it\u00e9 du tonneau, invention celte.\n\nLa rue \u00e9tait en pente et le caniveau-ruisseau n'\u00e9tait presque jamais \u00e0 sec, apportant, les jours de pluie, un affluent d'eau rougie aux fleuves sableux et boueux qui d\u00e9valaient torrentiellement vers le carrefour pour contribuer enfin, beaucoup plus loin, au d\u00e9bit de la rivi\u00e8re vraie, l'Aude. J'\u00e9tais particuli\u00e8rement attentif \u00e0 la r\u00e9sistance \u00e0 l'assimilation du ruisseau, rendue perceptible par ce \u00ab marqueur \u00bb qu'\u00e9tait le vin. Oblig\u00e9 par l'action conjugu\u00e9e de la gravit\u00e9 et des services de la voierie de se m\u00ealer aux eaux dominantes d'une rue plus puissante (une avenue m\u00eame), il refusait le plus longtemps possible d'abandonner son identit\u00e9, gardant quelque temps son autonomie de veine rouge avant de se dissoudre d\u00e9finitivement dans le flot sans retour. Je sympathisais avec son effort et je disposais parfois des obstacles (des b\u00e2tons, des cailloux, mon soulier m\u00eame) au confluent des deux branches, infl\u00e9chissant leur cours, et prolongeant ainsi de quelques m\u00e8tres son souvenir color\u00e9. Puis je revenais en arri\u00e8re car ce n'\u00e9tait pas mon chemin.\n\nEn bas de la rue je tournais \u00e0 droite, dans la plus grande rue montante puis, face \u00e0 la grille de la caserne, ou \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s, de nouveau \u00e0 gauche, apr\u00e8s l'\u00e9picerie Agrifoul, dans la rue Dugommier. De la caserne, apr\u00e8s l'Occupation, \u00e0 la fin de 1942, de la zone dite \u00ab libre \u00bb, sortaient r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement, au chant de \u00ab A ! i ! a ! o ! \u00bb, des compagnies verd\u00e2tres de soldats allemands \u00e0 l'exercice. Ils s'en allaient vers le bas, comme les eaux de la pluie, vers quelque champ de man\u0153uvre en dehors de la ville. C'\u00e9taient des Allemands, des ennemis donc, je le savais, et je savais aussi qu'un jour ils ne seraient plus l\u00e0. Je ne leur pr\u00eatais gu\u00e8re d'attention.\n\nDans la rue Dugommier habitaient, avec leur m\u00e8re, Tante Jeanne, nos trois cousins : Jean Molino (\u00ab Jeannot \u00bb, mon a\u00een\u00e9 d'un an), Juliette, ma quasi-contemporaine, et Pierre, qui avait \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s l'\u00e2ge de Denise, ma s\u0153ur (\u00ab Pierrot Molino \u00bb, disions-nous, pour le distinguer de mon fr\u00e8re, dont le pr\u00e9nom est Pierre \u00e9galement). Nous parcourions souvent ce court trajet, dans les deux sens.\n\nJe me d\u00e9place mentalement tout au long de cet itin\u00e9raire, de point d'arr\u00eat \u00e0 point d'arr\u00eat : la porte d'entr\u00e9e, le tonnelier, le coin au bas de la rue d'Assas (les ruisseaux), l'\u00e9picerie, le 20 de la rue Dugommier, et je le reconnais contin\u00fbment, particuli\u00e8rement en surface, \u00e0 ras du sol, comme si je marchais les yeux baiss\u00e9s, pour ramasser un papier, une brindille, un sou. Il est vrai que le plus souvent possible j'allais pieds nus (enlevant, au besoin mes souliers en chemin pour les remettre au moment d'entrer dans les r\u00e9gions surveill\u00e9es et civilis\u00e9es (c'est la m\u00eame chose) de l'\u00e9cole, du lyc\u00e9e). La \u00ab texture \u00bb du sol, alors, est de premi\u00e8re importance. Il faut reconna\u00eetre et \u00e9viter :\n\n\u2013 les r\u00e9gions r\u00e9cemment sem\u00e9es de petit gravier,\n\n\u2013 les \u00e9tendues de goudron mou et br\u00fblant,\n\n\u2013 les flaques de boue.\n\nAu contraire rechercher les passages de terre meuble, de sable, les longues plaques de rev\u00eatement propre, les dalles d'ombre, fra\u00eeches, les tapis d'aiguilles tendres sous les pins, les touffes d'herbe qui essuient, les fontaines. J'ai emport\u00e9 ma patrie d'enfance \u00e0 la semelle, non de mes souliers, mais de la corne qui aguerrissait la plante de mes pieds.\n\n## 38 Cet au-del\u00e0 \u00e9tait un s\u00e9jour de dieux sans ombres,\n\nJ'ai d\u00e9crit deux portes de l'au-del\u00e0 (et ce faisant identifi\u00e9 telle une troisi\u00e8me, le puits du jardin derri\u00e8re le banc), mais cet au-del\u00e0 \u00e9tait un s\u00e9jour de dieux sans ombres, de divinit\u00e9s sans foudre, sans miracles, sans culte. Elles n'avaient pas figure humaine. Je ne les avais pas invent\u00e9es ou d\u00e9couvertes \u00e0 mon image, \u00e0 l'image de personnes, de personne. Elles n'avaient pas d'ic\u00f4nes, ni aucun territoire sp\u00e9cifique dans le gouvernement des forces naturelles (quand j'ai connu l'Olympe j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 incapable de la moindre transposition, fonction par fonction, \u00e0 mon \u00e9quipe de Dieux. Les miens \u00e9taient plut\u00f4t \u00ab tous-terrains \u00bb ou, mieux m\u00eame, n'avaient pas de terrain propre du tout). Dieux et d\u00e9esses ne poss\u00e9daient que des noms, une langue, des cris. Ils n'avaient pas affaire avec la mort. Car je n'avais pas affaire personnelle avec la mort, qui, pourtant, \u00e9tait omnipr\u00e9sente : dans les conversations des hommes, dans les voix venues d'outre-Manche, volets et portes ferm\u00e9s pour qu'elles ne s'\u00e9chappent pas vers l'ext\u00e9rieur (\u00ab D\u00e9fense passive \u00bb contre la propagande allemande), entre les lignes des journaux aux dimensions rabougries, \u00e0 la langue mensong\u00e8re, morte, entre les mains des soldats \u00e0 l'exercice que je croisais, chantant, sur ma route de lyc\u00e9en. Pourtant c'est l\u00e0, sur la place, que je l'ai rencontr\u00e9e : une mort civile, non guerri\u00e8re, une mort semblable aux morts ordinaires de l'avant-guerre, ou de l'apr\u00e8s.\n\nAu bout de la rue Dugommier je tournais de nouveau \u00e0 droite, d\u00e9passais la pharmacie Picolo, et tout au bout \u00e9tait la place, qui recevait avenues et vents de tous les c\u00f4t\u00e9s. Elle se tournait un peu pour les accueillir, se penchait, et \u00e0 l'extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 basse s'ouvrait sur la rue de Verdun, \u00e9troite, qui \u00e9tait celle du lyc\u00e9e. C'\u00e9tait un jour d'hiver tr\u00e8s froid, de l'hiver le plus froid de la guerre, qui fut si dur. C'\u00e9tait le matin, avant le d\u00e9but des classes, et **la place \u00e9tait quasiment vide dans le jour brumeux de froid, \u00e0 peine commen\u00e7ant, les r\u00e9verb\u00e8res encore allum\u00e9s ;** **presque vide car j'\u00e9tais, comme toujours dans ma vie, en avance, et plus encore en avance que d'habitude \u00e0 cause du gel ; et j'avan\u00e7ais prudemment sur le sol glissant d'une eau de pluie ancienne devenue glace, en \u00e9tendues menteuses recouvertes de poussi\u00e8res, de graviers, ray\u00e9es de pas, bleues, solides, mais fausses**.\n\n **Contre le mur nu \u00e0 droite de la premi\u00e8re maison de la rue il y avait une \u00e9chelle, et sur l'\u00e9chelle deux hommes, des couvreurs de toit, qui montaient ; j'ai vu alors l'\u00e9chelle bouger lentement, j'ai vu le haut de l'\u00e9chelle glisser lat\u00e9ralement contre le haut du mur, et ils sont tomb\u00e9s ; celui qui \u00e9tait le plus bas sur l'\u00e9chelle, \u00e0 mi-hauteur, s'est relev\u00e9, puis est retomb\u00e9 d'un coup, puis s'est assis en se tenant la jambe droite ; mais celui qui \u00e9tait le plus haut est tomb\u00e9 en arri\u00e8re, quatre, cinq m\u00e8tres devant moi ; il est tomb\u00e9 en arri\u00e8re sur le sol gel\u00e9 (** **il tombe en arri\u00e8re sur le sol gel\u00e9, je le vois** **), il a comme boug\u00e9, trembl\u00e9, et j'ai vu, et je vois, ses yeux devenir vagues, brumeux, gel\u00e9s ; un homme, un passant \u00e0 bicyclette \u00e9tait arriv\u00e9 sur la place presque en m\u00eame temps que moi, il s'est pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 vers eux, il m'a cri\u00e9 de rester l\u00e0, de l'attendre et il est parti en courant dans la rue ; le bless\u00e9 \u00e9tait toujours assis, et r\u00e9p\u00e9tait \u00ab oh la la, oh la la \u00bb ; ensuite d'autres passants se sont arr\u00eat\u00e9s, d'autres gens sont venus, et je suis parti**.\n\nJ'ai vu la mort, si voir mourir un vivant est voir la mort, mais je ne me le suis dit que plus tard, ailleurs, quand je l'ai reconnue. Personne, alors, sur la place Davila glaciaire, ni le premier passant \u00e0 bicyclette, ni son compagnon bless\u00e9, ni ceux qui sont venus au secours, avec des brancards, personne n'a dit, ne m'a dit, \u00ab il est mort \u00bb, \u00ab la mort est venue et elle avait ces yeux \u00bb. Mais je l'ai su. Et je ne l'ai plus oubli\u00e9.\n\nEt voil\u00e0 que par une co\u00efncidence \u00ab g\u00e9ographique \u00bb, que la m\u00e9moire rend aussi temporelle, j'associe \u00e0 cette chute mortelle en silence (ils sont tomb\u00e9s, **ils retombent dans ma t\u00eate, en silence, sur le sol gel\u00e9** ) une vision. C'est une vision plus tardive (1944) que je dirai \u00ab notoire \u00bb, car je l'ai partag\u00e9e sans doute avec des centaines de milliers d'autres, peut-\u00eatre des millions. Aragon en a fait un po\u00e8me, et de ce po\u00e8me on a fait une chanson. Sur un mur de la place on avait coll\u00e9 cette affiche inf\u00e2me, l'Affiche rouge, o\u00f9 des visages de \u00ab terroristes \u00bb aux noms inhabituels pour les provinces \u00e9taient projet\u00e9s aux regards des passants avec haine, avec violence, pour une intimidation. J'ai vu, comme les autres, cette affiche, et si je lui ai donn\u00e9 un sens, c'est celui que, s'arr\u00eatant avec moi devant elle, mon p\u00e8re lui a donn\u00e9 pour moi. Je n'en ai pas retenu les termes mais je n'ai pas oubli\u00e9 son expression.\n\nIl y a peu d'ann\u00e9es (en 1987 il me semble) j'ai particip\u00e9, \u00e0 Milan, au nom de l'Oulipo, \u00e0 un hommage \u00e0 l'un de ses membres, Italo Calvino. L'occasion en \u00e9tait la publication, h\u00e9las posthume, de la traduction italienne du \u00ab Chant du styr\u00e8ne \u00bb de Raymond Queneau, po\u00e8me \u00e0 la gloire de la chimie, dont Calvino avait fait, en accord avec l'inspiration \u00ab Renaissance \u00bb du texte, une _canzone_. Ce jour-l\u00e0, pour la premi\u00e8re et derni\u00e8re fois, j'ai rencontr\u00e9 Primo Levi.\n\nJe parle ici de Primo Levi parce que le \u00ab moment \u00bb de cette rencontre, et la forte impression qu'elle m'a laiss\u00e9e se sont pr\u00e9sent\u00e9s on ne peut plus naturellement \u00e0 mon esprit quand ma m\u00e9moire, et mes doigts lui ob\u00e9issant sur le clavier, ont r\u00e9uni brusquement ces deux visions irr\u00e9ductibles de la mort, l'une concr\u00e8te et \u00ab apolitique \u00bb, celle du couvreur pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 sur le sol gel\u00e9 par le hasard sans responsabilit\u00e9 d'une chute, et l'autre, abstraite et politique au plus haut point des r\u00e9sistants antinazis et \u00ab apatrides \u00bb sur l'affiche placard\u00e9e aux murs de la place Davila. Spontan\u00e9ment, le nom de Primo Levi est venu \u00e9tablir un autre lien que celui de la quasi-co\u00efncidence temporelle et spatiale entre ces deux visions. Je n'ai pas eu de mal \u00e0 retrouver lequel.\n\nCar Primo Levi, le chimiste, n'est pas seulement celui qui, avec Robert Antelme et Fran\u00e7ois Le Lionnais, m'a donn\u00e9 le moyen du peu de compr\u00e9hension que j'ai pu acqu\u00e9rir, depuis ma douzi\u00e8me ann\u00e9e, de l'incompr\u00e9hensible horreur des \u00ab camps \u00bb nazis et de cette sorte d'esp\u00e9rance collective, limit\u00e9e, fragile, mais r\u00e9elle qu'ils s'efforc\u00e8rent de transmettre, chacun \u00e0 sa mani\u00e8re, par leurs r\u00e9cits. Il est aussi l'auteur d'un tout autre livre (tout autre au moins en apparence), d'une esp\u00e8ce au moins aussi rare, dont l'autre mort, inexorablement singuli\u00e8re, celle du couvreur, a pu malgr\u00e9 tout recevoir \u00e0 mes yeux un d\u00e9but de sens. Le titre en est, dans la traduction fran\u00e7aise, _La Cl\u00e9 \u00e0 molette_ , et c'est un r\u00e9cit qui parle du travail de l'homme, je veux dire du travail manuel (infiniment plus \u00ab tabou \u00bb dans la litt\u00e9rature que n'importe quelle autre activit\u00e9).\n\nEt, bien s\u00fbr, et finalement, c'est la mort volontaire de Primo Levi lui-m\u00eame, qu'il est difficile de ne pas recevoir aujourd'hui \u00e0 la fois comme signe, comme commentaire, et comme pressentiment, qui m\u00eale \u00e0 nouveau et \u00ab tort \u00bb ensemble, inextricables, ces morts anciennes, ces instants morts de ma vie, en ce lieu consacr\u00e9 \u00e0 mes dieux p\u00e9rissables, dans le bleu, le gel, et les vents. J'ai lu qu'en une interview publi\u00e9e quelque temps avant sa disparition Primo Levi avait racont\u00e9 comment, parlant devant des \u00e9coliers de son exp\u00e9rience de la guerre, cette vieille guerre de sa g\u00e9n\u00e9ration, il s'\u00e9tait trouv\u00e9 face \u00e0 une incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9 inattendue et enti\u00e8re : ses auditeurs ne mettaient pas en doute l'existence des camps, la m\u00e9chancet\u00e9 des nazis. Ce qu'ils ne comprenaient pas, ne parvenaient pas \u00e0 comprendre c'\u00e9tait comment, face au mal, il n'avait pas \u00e9t\u00e9 capable, lui et les siens, de prendre sa mitrailleuse t\u00e9l\u00e9visuelle et de tirer dans le tas de ces sous-hommes, de ces monstres, bref de suivre l'exemple d'un quelconque Rambo.\n\n## 39 Saint-Jean mil neuf cent trente-neuf\n\nSaint-Jean mil neuf cent trente-neuf\n\nSaint-Jean verveine \u00e0 travers la couronne rouge\n\nnul jamais plus ne bondira nul ne verra\n\nni l'\u0153il-de-fum\u00e9e ni l'\u0153il-de-buis n'entendra\n\nen aucune ann\u00e9e les flammes du plus long jour\n\nce qui vivait \u00e0 l'envers du cercle de flammes\n\navec l'ordre des flammes bougeant dans le noir\n\nce qui tremblait chaque ann\u00e9e (une marque ? l'espoir ?)\n\nceci a cess\u00e9 qui fut le possible la\n\nmoins lointaine prochaine nuit quand tous les feux\n\nvacillaient et le sombre cercle des chants dis\n\nait : hier \u00f4 hier \u00e0 la cr\u00eate chaude des jeux\n\n(lyre charbonneuse des braises qui se brisent)\n\net l'ongle du ciel en nous touchant dans la rue\n\nnous couvrait d'\u00e9toiles sur la cour blanche et brune\n\nUn po\u00e8me (un sonnet compos\u00e9 en 1962) qui provient d'une image-m\u00e9moire et reste associ\u00e9 \u00e0 elle : mais je parviens mal \u00e0 \u00ab extriquer \u00bb le moment de cette image (\u00e0 ma satisfaction, en respectant les exigences d'un r\u00e9cit) pour une mise en mots prosa\u00efque. Je vois cette image, j'identifie son point de vue (la fen\u00eatre ouvrant sur l'enclos du Luxembourg), je ne peux pas la redire seule, ind\u00e9pendamment des autres images en autres mots qui s'entrelacent \u00e0 elle dans le po\u00e8me. Je d\u00e9coupe, au mieux, une s\u00e9quence, ceci :\n\nSaint-Jean\n\n\u00e0 travers la couronne rouge bondir\n\nverra (voir) l'\u0153il-de-fum\u00e9e\n\nles flammes du plus long jour\n\nenvers du cercle de flammes\n\nflammes bougeant dans le noir\n\nles feux vacillaient (vacillent)\n\nsombre cercle des chants cr\u00eate\n\nchaude des jeux\n\ncharbon des braises qui se brisent\n\nongle du ciel couvrant d'\u00e9toiles\n\nla cour blanche et brune.\n\n(r\u00e9sultat : une prosification quasi t\u00e9l\u00e9graphique, comme dans les premi\u00e8res \u00e9critures m\u00e9sopotamiques).\n\nL'\u00e9t\u00e9 de 1939 commen\u00e7ait. Peu apr\u00e8s (deux mois) ce fut la guerre. Le \u00ab moment \u00bb de la guerre fut la d\u00e9claration conjointe des gouvernements \u00ab alli\u00e9s \u00bb (France et Angleterre), r\u00e9pondant \u00e0 l'envahissement hitl\u00e9rien de la Pologne (j'\u00e9cris cela et c'est Hitler en personne qui envahit. **Je le vois sortir d'un cin\u00e9ma de Varsovie, un Hitler \u00ab compos\u00e9 \u00bb de Charlot (celui du _Dictateur)_ et de l'acteur vedette du _To be or not to be_ de Lubitsch)**. La guerre commence aussi pour moi ce m\u00eame jour, devant notre poste de radio, la TSF. C'est le soir ; **je vois tr\u00e8s distinctement et le poste, et Hitler entrant \u00e0 Varsovie** (mon souvenir est aussi tranquillement anachronique qu'une reconstitution d'historien). Si j'ai retenu l'importance de ce moment, c'est qu'elle nous (me) fut signal\u00e9e. Mon p\u00e8re le commenta pour nous (c'est-\u00e0-dire, en fait, seulement pour lui-m\u00eame, pour Marie et pour moi, qui avais presque sept ans). Il dit que c'\u00e9tait bien. Il fallait arr\u00eater Hitler (je pense qu'il ne se doutait pas de ce qui allait suivre). J'ai retenu cela. J'ai retenu surtout l'intervention de l'Angleterre. Autrement dit, apr\u00e8s coup, de temps \u00e0 autre, maintenant, j'ai marqu\u00e9, je marque dans mon souvenir, l'entr\u00e9e en guerre de l'Angleterre. Mon \u00ab anglomanie \u00bb colore ce souvenir qui, vraisemblablement, a \u00e9t\u00e9 un facteur contribuant de cette m\u00eame anglomanie. Si je n'avais pas appris \u00e0 me m\u00e9fier (sous le regard de la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9) de tels aller-retour du pass\u00e9 au pr\u00e9sent, de cet empilement d'instants futurs s'agglutinant sur n'importe quel instant pass\u00e9, le d\u00e9finissant comme changeant (c'est ce que j'appellerais le confort autobiographique. Il resurgit sans aucun contr\u00f4le chez le romancier), je crois que j'aurais pu me laisser aller \u00e0 sinc\u00e8rement \u00e9crire : ce jour-l\u00e0 j'entendis la voix de Winston Churchill et j'en ai \u00e9t\u00e9 transform\u00e9 pour le restant de mes jours.\n\nL'ann\u00e9e sans doute la plus dure de la guerre fut l'ann\u00e9e scolaire 41-42 (pour l'\u00e9colier, pour l'\u00e9tudiant, pour l'enseignant encore, le temps des calendriers est sans cesse syncop\u00e9 : l'ann\u00e9e civile et l'ann\u00e9e didactique ne co\u00efncident pas). Car un triple fardeau pesait sur elle :\n\n\u2013 c'\u00e9tait ma premi\u00e8re ann\u00e9e de lyc\u00e9e, autrement dit celle d'un arrachement (pr\u00e9matur\u00e9 peut-\u00eatre : j'avais moins de neuf ans !) au confort de l'\u00e9cole, quasiment \u00ab arcadienne \u00bb, o\u00f9 j'avais pass\u00e9 quatre ann\u00e9es ;\n\n\u2013 c'\u00e9tait l'ann\u00e9e en apparence la plus favorable \u00e0 Hitler (en apparence seulement, car Moscou n'avait pas \u00e9t\u00e9 prise, et l'Angleterre, \u00ab mon \u00bb Angleterre, n'avait pas \u00e9t\u00e9 envahie). Tout espoir semblait vain (je n'\u00e9tais certainement pas en mesure de penser cela, mais l'atmosph\u00e8re g\u00e9n\u00e9rale \u00e9tait lugubre) ;\n\n\u2013 c'\u00e9tait l'ann\u00e9e o\u00f9 la faim fut la plus palpablement pr\u00e9sente.\n\nLa faim de la guerre passa en effet cette ann\u00e9e-l\u00e0 par une sorte de maximum. Il y avait eu d'abord la rar\u00e9faction des denr\u00e9es, le rationnement : lentement mais s\u00fbrement s'\u00e9taient fait sentir les effets du pillage allemand (qui ne cessa de s'acc\u00e9l\u00e9rer ensuite avec les difficult\u00e9s rencontr\u00e9es par les arm\u00e9es hitl\u00e9riennes), de la production alimentaire diminu\u00e9e, des \u00e9changes r\u00e9duits entre r\u00e9gions. La th\u00e9orie \u00ab provincialiste \u00bb vichyssoise, m\u00e8re de la d\u00e9centralisation (dite aujourd'hui \u00ab d\u00e9localisation \u00bb) et des bavardages \u00ab antijacobins \u00bb des ann\u00e9es quatre-vingt, voulait que chacune de ces entit\u00e9s historiquement v\u00e9n\u00e9rables, les vieilles nobles provinces fran\u00e7aises d'avant 1789, d'avant les horreurs r\u00e9publicaines et r\u00e9volutionnaires, se suffise \u00e0 elle-m\u00eame (et c'\u00e9tait une sorte d'expiation pour les p\u00e9ch\u00e9s de la France, la punition de son \u00ab h\u00e9donisme \u00bb, de sa mollesse, de sa paresse, de son irrespect, de son irr\u00e9ligion, de son abandon des \u00ab vraies valeurs \u00bb sous l'influence d\u00e9l\u00e9t\u00e8re des instituteurs la\u00efques, d\u00e9sign\u00e9s comme responsables (je n'invente rien) de la D\u00e9faite). Mais bien peu de choses poussent spontan\u00e9ment dans l'Aude. Il en r\u00e9sulte que dans les villes, \u00e0 Carcassonne en particulier, on eut tr\u00e8s faim.\n\nSous l'action simultan\u00e9e de toutes ces causes, et sp\u00e9cialement de la derni\u00e8re, aux cons\u00e9quences physiologiques directes (dirais-je dans un roman dont je serais personnage, ou, ce qui revient au m\u00eame, dans une autobiographie, genre qui est un des derniers refuges du d\u00e9terminisme m\u00e9caniste), je me consacrai \u00e0 ma vocation po\u00e9tique avec plus de constance, de concentration et de conviction qu'\u00e0 l'\u00e9tude : La folie de la po\u00e9sie (n'est-ce pas une folie ?), folie \u00ab douce \u00bb et plut\u00f4t inoffensive (dans mon cas), comment ne pas la supposer n\u00e9e d'un d\u00e9rangement du cerveau, d'une an\u00e9mie du \u00ab principe de r\u00e9alit\u00e9 \u00bb suscit\u00e9e par une carence de l'organisme manquant de quelques nourritures min\u00e9rales essentielles, de quelques prot\u00e9ines animales, ou enzymes ?\n\nMon p\u00e8re, en tout cas, sensible aux risques de la sous-alimentation pour notre avenir physique, guid\u00e9 par l'analogie entre enfants et plantes (pour ne pas dire l\u00e9gumes qui pourrait sembler p\u00e9joratif) dont le parler ordinaire porte la trace (on parle de \u00ab croissance \u00bb, de \u00ab belle plante \u00bb ou, au contraire, d'\u00eatres rabougris), s'effor\u00e7ait de rem\u00e9dier au vide des boucheries et des march\u00e9s par l'arrosage du potager et l'\u00e9levage clandestin autant que par des exp\u00e9ditions v\u00e9locip\u00e9diques dites de \u00ab ravitaillement \u00bb dans les r\u00e9gions les mieux fournies en haricots secs, pommes de terre et \u0153ufs de l'Aude pyr\u00e9n\u00e9enne et m\u00eame de l'Ari\u00e8ge (il s'en servit aussi, d\u00e8s 1943, comme \u00ab couverture \u00bb d'autres activit\u00e9s).\n\nIl \u00e9tait particuli\u00e8rement attentif, dans cet homomorphisme structurel de plante \u00e0 enfant au transform\u00e9 de la tige, du tronc, des branches, c'est-\u00e0-dire au squelette (comme le faisait d'ailleurs la tradition langagi\u00e8re m\u00e9dicale parlant, par exemple, de \u00ab fracture en bois vert \u00bb). Malheureusement, l'\u00e9l\u00e9ment consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme essentiel \u00e0 la constitution du squelette enfantin, le lait, manquait presque absolument. Et il n'\u00e9tait pas possible d'abriter, incognito, comme la \u00ab cochonne \u00bb, une vache dans notre poulailler. L'inqui\u00e9tude parentale, palpable, face \u00e0 la friabilit\u00e9 suppos\u00e9e in\u00e9vitable de nos jambes et bras (qui fut confirm\u00e9e par les deux fractures du poignet que je m'empressai de r\u00e9ussir, par respect filial, et dont la responsabilit\u00e9 fut attribu\u00e9e \u00e0 un d\u00e9ficit en laitages et fromages), donnait au lait frais, plein, non \u00e9cr\u00e9m\u00e9, une vertu quasi mystique. Grand-maman, en nous d\u00e9crivant, \u00e0 son retour du Massachusetts, l'ice-cream am\u00e9ricain comme totalement exempt de la moindre mol\u00e9cule d'eau, enleva au sorbet tout prestige, et je n'ai jamais pu le prendre le moins du monde au s\u00e9rieux.\n\nNous grandissions cependant, animaux physiologiquement optimistes, en d\u00e9pit de tous les obstacles de la privation. Sur le montant de la porte de notre salle \u00e0 manger, au rez-de-chauss\u00e9e de la maison, des traits horizontaux au crayon, accompagn\u00e9s de dates et d'initiales, mesuraient nos progr\u00e8s v\u00e9g\u00e9tatifs. Les talons joints, le dos droit, un dictionnaire horizontalement r\u00e9duisant l'\u00e9l\u00e9vation trompeuse des cheveux, nous participions avec componction \u00e0 la c\u00e9r\u00e9monie trimestrielle de la mesure et contemplions ensuite, \u00e9bahis (et assez fiers) les effets d'une accumulation de modifications journali\u00e8res imperceptibles de notre corps (dans cette dimension-l\u00e0 au moins), et presque incroyables, tant profonde \u00e9tait la conviction spontan\u00e9e intime de notre (de mon) identit\u00e9 persistante inchang\u00e9e et absolue.\n\n## 40 Comme une alimentation convenable en laitages \u00e9tait impossible,\n\nComme une alimentation convenable en laitages \u00e9tait impossible, mon p\u00e8re se rabattit sur le deuxi\u00e8me pilier du mod\u00e8le scandinave. Le mod\u00e8le scandinave, su\u00e9dois ou finlandais, dans les derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de l'avant-Seconde Guerre mondiale, n'\u00e9tait pas, comme on pourrait, anachroniquement le croire, un \u00ab mod\u00e8le de soci\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00bb, ce capitalisme temp\u00e9r\u00e9 de trade-unionisme qui fut longtemps la r\u00e9f\u00e9rence (ou l'alibi) des partis sociaux-d\u00e9mocrates europ\u00e9ens dans leur longue querelle avec les communistes et les diff\u00e9rentes vari\u00e9t\u00e9s d'extr\u00eame gauche. C'\u00e9tait un mod\u00e8le \u00ab hygi\u00e9nique \u00bb. Il prolongeait \u00e0 sa mani\u00e8re, moderne, l'id\u00e9al non moins hygi\u00e9nique de mes grands-parents instituteurs.\n\nMais il s'en s\u00e9parait sur un point, que mon p\u00e8re jugeait essentiel. L'\u00e9cole primaire (et ensuite le lyc\u00e9e) r\u00e9publicaine et la\u00efque avait beaucoup trop n\u00e9glig\u00e9, selon lui, l'\u00e9ducation physique, le sport. Trop pr\u00e9occup\u00e9e d'alimentation saine, non \u00ab \u00e9chauffante \u00bb d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9, de grammaire et de calcul de l'autre, elle avait n\u00e9glig\u00e9 les stades. Or, et c'\u00e9tait l\u00e0 tout le \u00ab n\u0153ud \u00bb de l'affaire, le \u00ab mod\u00e8le \u00bb su\u00e9dois unissait en une conjonction physico-esth\u00e9tico-morale \u00e9blouissante de blondeur neigeuse (et non nazie, ce qui ne g\u00e2tait rien) le lait et le sport. Nous n'avions plus de lait, il nous restait le sport.\n\nPour mon p\u00e8re, que tous les sports int\u00e9ressaient, le sport collectif par excellence \u00e9tait le rugby, le sommet des sports individuels \u00e9tait l'athl\u00e9tisme (suivi de peu par la natation). Le rugby (si on en juge par le r\u00e9gime des grands rugbymen des \u00e9quipes de Toulon ou de Toulouse) n'avait gu\u00e8re affaire avec l'hygi\u00e8ne ni avec la croissance des enfants. Mais il se trouvait que le mod\u00e8le su\u00e9dois, soutenu de laitages et de courses de fond avait eu deux effets spectaculaires que mon p\u00e8re ne manquait pas de rapprocher, didactiquement, pour nous exhorter. Le premier \u00e9tait que la taille moyenne des jeunes Su\u00e9dois et Su\u00e9doises (ainsi que celle des Hollandais et Hollandaises, des Danois et des Danoises, des Norv\u00e9giens et Norv\u00e9giennes (ces derniers et derni\u00e8res infiniment sympathiques en 1941 pour des raisons non toutes hygi\u00e9niques (les Finlandais-Finlandaises du mar\u00e9chal pro-allemand Mannerheim \u00e9taient plus douteux))), soumis \u00e0 ce double r\u00e9gime, avait spectaculairement cr\u00fb en moyenne en une g\u00e9n\u00e9ration. Et mon p\u00e8re souhaitait \u00e9videmment, en patriote, pour la France lib\u00e9r\u00e9e, un progr\u00e8s de m\u00eame nature (en d\u00e9pit des difficult\u00e9s en apparence insurmontables, mises sur notre route physiologique par la guerre, nous lui avons donn\u00e9 sur ce point (celui de la taille) toute satisfaction, mes neveux et ni\u00e8ces (les enfants de mon fr\u00e8re Pierre surtout) rench\u00e9rissant encore, jusqu'\u00e0 des hauteurs hyper-scandinaves, au point d'inqui\u00e9ter ma m\u00e8re).\n\nMais surtout, comme les derniers jeux Olympiques des ann\u00e9es de la paix (ceux qui s'\u00e9taient tenus, honteusement, \u00e0 Berlin) l'avaient prouv\u00e9, il avait permis \u00e0 ces petits pays une \u00ab perc\u00e9e \u00bb spectaculaire dans les courses \u00e0 pied, dans les plus a\u00e9riennes des \u00e9preuves, le demi-fond (800 et 1 500 m\u00e8tres), le fond (5 000 et 10 000) (et le lancer du javelot). Mon p\u00e8re avait pour nous, je ne dirais pas des ambitions olympiques, du moins l'espoir de nous voir r\u00e9ussir honorablement dans les disciplines de l'athl\u00e9tisme. Il nous emmenait aux matchs de rugby mais aussi aux \u00ab r\u00e9unions d'athl\u00e9tisme \u00bb (d'athl\u00e9tisme uniquement, car l'absence g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de piscines avant les ann\u00e9es cinquante ne permettait pas \u00e0 la natation de faire, collectivement, le moindre progr\u00e8s. C'est dans l'Aude que nous avons appris \u00e0 nager).\n\nJe me souviens du luxueux volume comm\u00e9moratif des Jeux de Berlin, avec ces photographies des moments les plus significatifs des \u00e9preuves (et surtout les r\u00e9sultats chiffr\u00e9s, qui m'offraient des occasions sp\u00e9culatives innombrables pour des jeux imaginaires avec \u00e9liminatoires, quarts et demi-finales, et finales \u00e0 m\u00e9dailles enfin) (on y voyait l'admirable Jesse Owens, vainqueur de trois \u00e9preuves, 100, 200 m\u00e8tres et longueur (avec un bond de plus de huit m\u00e8tres), auquel Hitler refusa de serrer la main parce qu'il \u00e9tait noir).\n\nMon p\u00e8re racontait les exploits de Ladoum\u00e8gue, de Nurmi. Aucune \u00ab discipline \u00bb ne lui \u00e9tait indiff\u00e9rente, ni le triple saut, ni le marteau, ni le _steeple_. Il voyait avec la plus grande faveur les pr\u00e9mices, encore timides, de l'athl\u00e9tisme f\u00e9minin. La _vox populi_ audoise \u00e9tait nettement plus r\u00e9serv\u00e9e. Quand une des premi\u00e8res championnes de course \u00e0 pied, \u00ab Claire \u00bb Bressolles (qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 dans la classe d'anglais de ma m\u00e8re) se d\u00e9couvrit, un peu tardivement, gar\u00e7on, les m\u00e9nag\u00e8res, au march\u00e9, \u00e0 l'\u00e9picerie Agrifoul, \u00e0 la boucherie Safon, hoch\u00e8rent la t\u00eate d'un air entendu. C'\u00e9tait un avertissement \u00e0 toutes les m\u00e8res de famille : voil\u00e0 ce qui arriverait \u00e0 leurs filles qui continueraient \u00e0 pr\u00e9tendre faire de la course \u00e0 pied.\n\nPuisque le lait nous \u00e9tait quasiment interdit, nous devions redoubler d'efforts athl\u00e9tiques, par compensation. Il \u00e9tait \u00e0 peine n\u00e9cessaire de nous recommander de courir. Courir, nous n'arr\u00eations pas de le faire. Nous allions \u00e0 l'\u00e9cole en courant, nous courions et sautions dans le jardin, dans la rue, dans la cour de l'\u00e9cole, puis du lyc\u00e9e, dans les vignes, dans les foss\u00e9s de la Cit\u00e9, dans les bois. L'ivresse du \u00ab second souffle \u00bb ne nous \u00e9tait pas inconnue. Les tours de stade n'\u00e9taient que des friandises. La course, dans ce pays rendu aux pi\u00e9tons et aux cyclistes par la guerre, \u00e9tait un mode naturel d'expression de notre libert\u00e9 enfantine. On courait partout, sans entraves.\n\nEn se guidant sur l'exemple des enfants et des animaux, certains th\u00e9oriciens de l'athl\u00e9tisme accordaient une valeur particuli\u00e8re \u00e0 des \u00e9preuves qu'ils consid\u00e9raient comme \u00ab phylog\u00e9niquement \u00bb pures (inscrites dans l'histoire de l'esp\u00e8ce, dont l'enfant, selon eux, retrouve spontan\u00e9ment les le\u00e7ons) : le saut \u00e0 pieds joints, sans \u00e9lan (en hauteur comme en longueur), mesures de la d\u00e9tente absolue, sans aide de la vitesse, une qualit\u00e9 intrins\u00e8que du corps jeune qu'il partage avec le chat, ou le chien. Et, plus originalement encore, ils plaidaient pour la course \u00e0 quatre pattes. Mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s favorable \u00e0 ces innovations (qui ne se sont jamais impos\u00e9es, il faut le dire). Nous \u00e9tions d'excellents performers \u00e0 quatre pattes.\n\nToujours dans la perspective d'un d\u00e9veloppement harmonieux et compensatoire des privations de notre \u00eatre physique, il mettait par-dessus toutes les \u00e9preuves d'athl\u00e9tisme celle du d\u00e9cathlon, avec son \u00ab panach\u00e9 \u00bb de courses, de sauts et de lancers, et ses tables subtiles d'\u00e9quivalences entre des dimensions apparemment incommensurables (dix secondes au cent m\u00e8tres \u00ab valant \u00bb, par exemple, huit m\u00e8tres en longueur). Cela supposait qu'aux qualit\u00e9s intrins\u00e8ques, naturelles, de l'athl\u00e8te (m\u00e9lange d'h\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9 et de pr\u00e9dilection) devaient s'ajouter les rigueurs de l'entra\u00eenement, l'acquisition de techniques qui ne permettaient pas seulement de se surpasser (sauter plus haut, lancer plus loin, courir plus vite) (la technique est indispensable car, comme chante justement Brassens : sans technique un don n'est rien qu'un' sal' manie) mais aussi, mais surtout d'acqu\u00e9rir une ma\u00eetrise plus grande de ses mouvements, une plus grande r\u00e9sistance (que l'histoire humaine pourrait rendre bien utile), un accord plus profond avec son corps, avec soi-m\u00eame.\n\n## 41 Sur le mur de la salle de classe\n\n **Sur le mur de la salle de classe, au fond de la salle, \u00e0 ma gauche et derri\u00e8re moi** (une salle de premier \u00e9tage, un cours de math\u00e9matiques, et je m'\u00e9tais tourn\u00e9 en partie vers le mur, cessant d'\u00e9couter), **un soleil p\u00e2le** (c'\u00e9tait l'hiver) **\u00e9clairait la surface tourment\u00e9e du mur o\u00f9 je lisais, dans la torpeur chaude du radiateur tout proche de moi, de semaine en semaine, toujours la m\u00eame carte de l'Union sovi\u00e9tique, anim\u00e9e de la rumeur des batailles dont l'air bruissait partout**.\n\n **Puis l'air chaud, le ronronnement de la voix professorale \u00e0** **ses raisonnements alg\u00e9briques ou g\u00e9om\u00e9triques, les r\u00eaveries h\u00e9ro\u00efques n\u00e9es des configurations imaginaires du mur et des syllabes slaves des combats terrestres lointains transport\u00e9es entre les brouillages par les radios allemandes, italiennes, fran\u00e7aises, par la BBC, me plongeaient dans un engourdissement optique ; alors je voyais couler le long du mur mais de bas en haut comme une fontaine inverse l'air en veine fluide, en volutes liquoreuses ; j'\u00e9tais b\u00e9ni d'une vision** (vision de ce que la po\u00e9sie japonaise nomme _kagero_ , l'effet de vitre interne des diff\u00e9rences de temp\u00e9rature qui met l'air en mouvement, mouvement visible, reflet de soi-m\u00eame) ; **l'air chaud grimpait sur la paroi de la salle de classe et la voix didactique ne me parvenait plus que de loin, comme un murmure venu de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 d'une cascade \u00e9tourdissante**.\n\nCe fut une \u00e9poque h\u00e9ro\u00efque, simplement et purement h\u00e9ro\u00efque peut-\u00eatre pour ceux-l\u00e0 seuls, enfants comme moi, qui en recevaient le murmure \u00e0 travers la fontaine impalpable d'air chaud des imaginations, derri\u00e8re le miroir d'air sur air coulant \u00e0 l'inverse de la gravit\u00e9 du r\u00e9el r\u00e9ellement dangereux, irr\u00e9versiblement mortel. Je savais, et je ne savais pas, ce que les adultes de mon entourage faisaient, qui avait affaire avec les nouvelles lointaines de la guerre, avec Stalingrad, avec la faim, avec les bombardements de Londres, avec les tanks de Rommel dans le d\u00e9sert de Libye, avec les soldats allemands sortant de la caserne en chantant \u00ab A ! i ! a ! o ! \u00bb. Je savais, tout en ne sachant pas, et je ne peux me souvenir aujourd'hui comment, que ceux que la radio et les journaux de Vichy appelaient des \u00ab terroristes \u00bb \u00e9taient, selon une alchimie myst\u00e9rieuse, de nos amis. Ma repr\u00e9sentation h\u00e9ro\u00efque de l'histoire avait plut\u00f4t pour mod\u00e8les Walter Scott ( _Quentin Durward_ ) ou Fenimore Cooper ( _Le Dernier des Mohicans_ ).\n\nMais cette identification pressentie de ma famille \u00e0 la R\u00e9sistance (et confirm\u00e9e, sans surprise excessive, quelques semaines avant la Lib\u00e9ration) ne m'emp\u00eacha pas (ne nous emp\u00eacha pas, mais la cr\u00e9dulit\u00e9 de mes fr\u00e8res et s\u0153ur, beaucoup plus jeunes, n'a rien d'\u00e9tonnant) d'accepter sans la moindre difficult\u00e9 les explications invraisemblablement tir\u00e9es par les cheveux (je les ai totalement oubli\u00e9es) qui nous furent donn\u00e9es d'incidents parfaitement inexplicables en dehors d'un contexte de clandestinit\u00e9. Je s\u00e9lectionne, pour le r\u00e9cit, deux \u00ab sc\u00e8nes \u00bb images significatives (qui de plus font intervenir dans des r\u00f4les fort diff\u00e9rents, mon grand-p\u00e8re et ma grand-m\u00e8re), mais je les retranche de la **s\u00e9quence des images-souvenirs** constitutives de ma **m\u00e9moire** que je commente dans cette **branche** (c'est la raison d'\u00eatre de cette branche, qui s'inscrit dans un mouvement de plus d'ampleur). Car leur d\u00e9pendance de l'\u00ab apr\u00e8s-coup \u00bb, de leur futur ant\u00e9rieur (narr\u00e9) y est, l\u00e0, enti\u00e8rement explicite (elle est toujours pr\u00e9sente, et toujours mouvante, mais dans les autres images-souvenirs elle est rest\u00e9e voil\u00e9e, et permet la d\u00e9duction narrative).\n\nNous \u00e9tions, un jour, \u00e0 d\u00e9jeuner, dans notre salle \u00e0 manger, rue d'Assas. Il y avait l\u00e0 mes parents, Marie, nous quatre (les enfants), et deux invit\u00e9s, si familiers qu'ils faisaient partie, comme Bacadette, de la configuration familiale : Georges (Morguleff) et Nina, sa s\u0153ur. Georges et Nina \u00e9taient l\u00e0 en clandestins (doublement dissimul\u00e9s des polices, puisqu'ils \u00e9taient recherch\u00e9s comme juifs, et comme r\u00e9sistants). Cela, bien s\u00fbr, ni moi, ni mes fr\u00e8res, ni ma s\u0153ur, ni les canards, ne le savions. Ils \u00e9taient l\u00e0, ils d\u00e9jeunaient, ils parlaient avec mes parents, ils partageaient notre repas presque inexistant, ils jouaient avec nous, ils \u00e9taient de la famille. On frappa un coup \u00e0 la porte.\n\nAlors nous avons vu ces jeunes gens de bonne famille, distingu\u00e9s, d'une politesse exquise et russe d'ancien r\u00e9gime, jamais \u00e9nerv\u00e9s, souriants, toujours calmes, se lever d'un bond, courir dans le jardin et sauter par-dessus le mur avec une agilit\u00e9 admirable mais totalement incompr\u00e9hensible pour nous. Cependant le coup de sonnette imp\u00e9rieux qui avait retenti n'\u00e9tait nullement celui qui annon\u00e7ait la catastrophe toujours redout\u00e9e d'une invasion polici\u00e8re mais provenait plus banalement de mon grand-p\u00e8re, revenu de sa visite \u00e0 nos cousins de la rue Dugommier et qui, en proie \u00e0 un acc\u00e8s de sa distraction coutumi\u00e8re (g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement associ\u00e9e \u00e0 une inspiration d'inventeur), avait oubli\u00e9 de signaler sa pr\u00e9sence selon le code convenu.\n\nQuelque temps auparavant (ce devait \u00eatre avant, puisque la pr\u00e9sence de Nina chez nous \u00e9tait obligatoirement post\u00e9rieure \u00e0 son d\u00e9part de Lyon, suivant l'arrestation de Marc Bloch), sortant du lyc\u00e9e et descendant la rue de Verdun, j'avais rencontr\u00e9 inopin\u00e9ment dans la rue ma grand-m\u00e8re : une rencontre, certes, banale, mais qui aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9ellement banale si je n'avais pas \u00e9t\u00e9 dans l'ignorance la plus absolue (jusqu'\u00e0 l'instant de notre rencontre) de la pr\u00e9sence de ma grand-m\u00e8re dans notre ville. Elle n'\u00e9tait pas descendue chez nous, elle n'\u00e9tait pas non plus chez Tante Jeanne, o\u00f9 j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 la veille. Bref, je fus plut\u00f4t surpris de la rencontrer l\u00e0. Mais je conclus aussit\u00f4t (ce qu'elle s'empressa de confirmer) qu'elle venait d'arriver de Lyon, par le train. C'\u00e9tait l'hypoth\u00e8se la plus vraisemblable. Sans doute (mais je n'y fis pas attention) il \u00e9tait curieux qu'elle soit l\u00e0, dans la pleine matin\u00e9e, rue de Verdun, sans la moindre valise, sans ma m\u00e8re, que personne (et en particulier aucun de nous, ses petits-enfants des deux maisons) n'ait \u00e9t\u00e9 l'attendre \u00e0 la gare. Je proposai de l'accompagner chez nous, pour leur faire la surprise. Mais elle r\u00e9pondit que non, elle n'allait pas habiter chez nous, ni d'ailleurs chez nos cousins, mais chez une amie, parce qu'elle devait se reposer. Elle viendrait plus tard. Et tout cela me sembla (m'est apparu, \u00e0 ce que le r\u00e9cit post\u00e9rieur, d'apr\u00e8s la guerre, en rapporte), parfaitement naturel.\n\nMa m\u00e8re, bien s\u00fbr, n'ignorait rien de la pr\u00e9sence de la sienne en ces murs. L'arrestation de Marc Bloch \u00e0 Caluire avait men\u00e9 tout droit la Gestapo au 21 rue de l'Orangerie, o\u00f9 habitaient mes grands-parents. Ils ne l'avaient pas attendue. Ma grand-tante Jeanne, s\u0153ur de ma grand-m\u00e8re, avait aussit\u00f4t pr\u00e9venu par t\u00e9l\u00e9gramme l\u00e9g\u00e8rement sibyllin, o\u00f9 les pr\u00e9noms de mes grands-parents se trouvaient d\u00e9guis\u00e9s \u00e0 peine : \u00ab Amis sont venus chercher Albert et Ang\u00e9line \u2013 stop \u2013 Ont promis de les rejoindre bient\u00f4t \u2013 stop. \u00bb Ma m\u00e8re logea sa m\u00e8re chez une vieille amie anglophile, Mlle Miailhe, d'o\u00f9 elle \u00e9tait sortie, au m\u00e9pris de toute prudence, le jour o\u00f9 je la rencontrai. (Mais o\u00f9 \u00e9tait donc mon grand-p\u00e8re, pendant ce temps ? je ne sais plus, je ne sais pas. Peu importe.)\n\nEn inscrivant le nom de Mlle Miailhe dans ce r\u00e9cit, il me revient brusquement qu'elle \u00e9tait parente de ce jeune homme qui habitait sur la place et s'appelait Prudent Padieu : dernier cadeau au souvenir de mon dieu de guerre, Garenne, avant que je referme \u00e0 jamais la porte pour lui ouverte sur la place qui fut hospitali\u00e8re \u00e0 mes divinit\u00e9s.\n\n# CHAPITRE 6\n\n# H\u00f4tel Lutetia\n\n* * *\n\n## 42 \u00ab Le soleil se l\u00e8ve \u00e0 l'ouest, le dimanche \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Le soleil se l\u00e8ve \u00e0 l'ouest, le dimanche. \u00bb \u00ab Je r\u00e9p\u00e8te : Le soleil se l\u00e8ve \u00e0 l'ouest, le dimanche. \u00bb Comme des pluies d'\u00e9toiles filantes, les \u00ab messages personnels \u00bb se mutipliaient, pendant les premiers jours de juin 44, apr\u00e8s les \u00ab informations \u00bb de plus en plus triomphales, \u00e0 la radio de Londres. Paroles et \u00e9num\u00e9rations \u00e9nigmatiques, sentences aphoristiques sans r\u00e9f\u00e9rences, charg\u00e9es d'un sens imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable \u00e0 presque tous, elles \u00e9taient l'exemple m\u00eame de cette \u00ab po\u00e9sie en actes \u00bb r\u00eav\u00e9e par les surr\u00e9alistes, qui en avaient \u00e9t\u00e9, comme les cubistes du camouflage selon Picasso les \u00ab plagiaires par anticipation \u00bb. Et ce message-l\u00e0, que mon p\u00e8re avait choisi et transmis \u00e0 Londres, \u00e9tait celui qu'en retour il re\u00e7ut, deux ou trois soirs de suite avant le 6 juin : il annon\u00e7ait l'ouverture tant attendue du \u00ab second front \u00bb, le d\u00e9barquement des Alli\u00e9s sur la c\u00f4te normande. L'atmosph\u00e8re de f\u00eate \u00e9tait palpable (nous en ignorions, nous, enfants, les raisons). Mais d\u00e8s le lendemain mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tait parti sur les routes (\u00e0 v\u00e9lo) et nous, nous \u00e9tions, par prudence, exp\u00e9di\u00e9s chez Marie, \u00e0 Villegly, dans le Minervois. D'ailleurs je m'\u00e9tais cass\u00e9 le bras en sautant en hauteur dans la cour du lyc\u00e9e, et l'ann\u00e9e scolaire \u00e9tait de toute fa\u00e7on pratiquement finie.\n\nDeux mois plus tard la plaine comme la ville, et la Route minervoise, tous les itin\u00e9raires de passage des arm\u00e9es allemandes en retraite apparurent \u00e0 leur tour aussi dangereux que la ville. Nous nous m\u00eemes donc en route, grands-parents, m\u00e8re et enfants (mon p\u00e8re avait disparu, sans explications : c'\u00e9tait un de ces faits \u00e9tranges dont l'\u00e9poque \u00e9tait prodigue, dont le sens pressenti mais encore vague \u00e9tait maintenant en cours de justification). Je laisse ici \u00e9crire mon grand-p\u00e8re (souvenir externe) :\n\nD\u00e9part pour l'Aveyron Nombreuses valises et paquets car la dur\u00e9e de notre s\u00e9jour qui d\u00e9pend des \u00e9v\u00e9nements militaires pourra \u00eatre assez longue.\n\nVoyage du jeudi 10 au samedi 12 ao\u00fbt\n\nDe Carcassonne \u00e0 Laissac.\n\nV\u00e9ritable petite Odyss\u00e9e ! d'abord 7 h d'attente \u00e0 la Gare (joli record). Arriv\u00e9e \u00e0 Beziers \u00e0 20 h 30. Coucher \u00e0 l'h\u00f4tel du Midi.\n\nLe lendemain \u00e0 6 h, d\u00e9part en camionnette. Arriv\u00e9e \u00e0 Ceilhes (gare) \u00e0 9 h \u2013 De nombreuses personnes, avec leurs bagages, attendent comme nous. La ligne de B\u00e9ziers est coup\u00e9e \u00e0 10 km au sud de Ceilhes. Elle l'est \u00e9galement entre Millau et S\u00e9verac ( _tunnel bloqu\u00e9 par une rame de wagons que les FFI ont fait d\u00e9railler_ ). [J'admire le changement d'\u00e9criture que mon grand-p\u00e8re introduit dans cette parenth\u00e8se. Le texte courant est \u00e9crit en lettres pench\u00e9es, et ce que je viens ici d'inscrire en italiques est chez lui en minuscules droites. La lisibilit\u00e9, inversement proportionnelle \u00e0 celle des missives de son \u00e9pouse, est toujours parfaite.]\n\nIl faut donc faire un transbordement par dessus le tunnel (dos d'\u00e2ne et chemin pierreux). Heureusement, des porteurs b\u00e9n\u00e9voles nous d\u00e9chargent d'une partie de nos colis (5 sur 9) [\u00ab 5 sur 9 \u00bb ! je ne doute pas qu'il y ait eu neuf colis et que cinq aient \u00e9t\u00e9 pris en charge par des mains charitables. Grand-papa, je t'adore !].\n\n **Je vois la mont\u00e9e au-dessus du tunnel, les voyageurs, la locomotive qui attend, en bas, de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9**.\n\nN\u00e9anmoins, les 800 m de trajet ont \u00e9t\u00e9 durs. Coucher \u00e0 S\u00e9verac. Pierrot, tjrs malade, salit ses draps \u2013 Petite mis\u00e8re. D\u00e9part \u00e0 8 h ; arriv\u00e9e \u00e0 Laissac \u00e0 9 h \u2013 Chaleur torride. Enfin, d\u00e9tente et repos \u2013 L'odyss\u00e9e se solde par ailleurs avec la perte d'une valise renfermant des v\u00eatements et des objets de toilette, en majorit\u00e9 \u00e0 Suzette. Elle prend ce petit malheur avec son courage habituel. Je me reproche de n'avoir pas assez surveill\u00e9 nos colis.\n\nS\u00e9jour \u00e0 Laissac.\n\nSuzette et les 4 enfants occupent 3 chambres au 2e \u00e9tage d'une villa \u00e0 500 m de l'h\u00f4tel o\u00f9 nous ne prenons que nos repas. Presque \u00e0 l'oppos\u00e9 du village, nous avons, maman et moi, chacun une chambre plus confortable que celle de Suz. \u00c9change impossible : notre proprio ne veut pas d'enfants.\n\nL'h\u00f4tel Salignac est tenu par une veuve et ses deux filles. Elles viennent de perdre leur unique gar\u00e7on (FFI de 20 ans), tu\u00e9 par les Allemands au moment o\u00f9 il n\u00e9gociait avec eux un \u00e9change de prisonniers. Nous admirons leur courage devant leurs obligations professionnelles.\n\nUne grande partie de la r\u00e9gion est contr\u00f4l\u00e9e par les FFI et il y a eu d\u00e9j\u00e0 de sanglantes \u00e9chauffour\u00e9es entre les envahisseurs et eux. [Contrairement aux pr\u00e9visions, une partie des troupes allemandes choisit de passer pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment par ces r\u00e9gions pour tenter de rejoindre la vall\u00e9e du Rh\u00f4ne. C'\u00e9taient des SS. Ils br\u00fbl\u00e8rent et tu\u00e8rent pas mal sur leur passage, mais ils choisirent une route \u00e0 trois kilom\u00e8tres plus au sud. Une journ\u00e9e enti\u00e8re cependant nous sommes tous partis dans les bois, en attendant que le danger soit pass\u00e9.]\n\nLa nourriture de l'h\u00f4tel est assez bonne mais trop carn\u00e9e. Maman et moi, nous serons vite oblig\u00e9s de laisser la viande du soir.\n\nL'eau est rare. Hier, fermeture soudaine des conduites \u00e0 19 h. Pas de boisson pour le souper, il nous a fallu courir les caf\u00e9s pour trouver \u00e0 grand peine, bi\u00e8re et limonade.\n\nLes journ\u00e9es sont torrides. L'Aveyron est bien \u00e0 2 km du village. Mais son eau est boueuse, herbeuse. On regrette l'Aude.\n\nLe 17 ao\u00fbt orage nocturne qui a bien rafra\u00eechi la tempre \u2013\n\nJ'ai retrouv\u00e9 des insomnies assez d\u00e9sagr\u00e9ables (de 2h 1\/2 \u00e0 5 h avant-hier) \u2013\n\n **La route montait en lacets dans les collines entre les ch\u00e2taigniers, et nous avancions sous elle dans les sous-bois en contrebas ; il y eut un bruit de moteurs et dans le tournant descendirent trois camions ouverts, des FFI avec des brassards tricolores et des mitraillettes ; ils chantaient ; nous sommes partis en courant vers le village, dans un grand \u00e9tat d'exaltation**.\n\nLe lendemain, **sur la place, les FFI \u00e9taient l\u00e0 et parmi eux, en uniforme, un capitaine de la RAF ; et mon p\u00e8re \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de lui**. Ce fut une r\u00e9v\u00e9lation : s'expliquaient soudain lumineusement (et glorieusement \u00e0 nos yeux) les disparitions et absences myst\u00e9rieuses dans notre entourage, les remuements nocturnes, les chuchotements et les r\u00e9ponses \u00e9vasives \u00e0 des questions bien innocentes : moment de pur ravissement et fiert\u00e9, hors de l'id\u00e9e m\u00eame de tout danger. Nous savions enfin. Et \u00eatre libre, c'est aussi savoir.\n\nOr, quand je rappelai un jour ce moment \u00e0 mon p\u00e8re, il me fit remarquer que le fringant capitaine anglais qui nous \u00e9merveillait tant sur la place de Laissac avait \u00e9t\u00e9 parachut\u00e9 par \u00ab Londres \u00bb (comme on disait) pour servir de liaison avec ces maquis que mon p\u00e8re, de mani\u00e8re co\u00efncidente, \u00e9tait en train de visiter. Et s'il portait son bel uniforme c'\u00e9tait pour se donner une chance (sans doute minime) de ne pas \u00eatre tout de suite, selon les conventions dites \u00ab de Gen\u00e8ve \u00bb, massacr\u00e9 par les Allemands au cas o\u00f9 il aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 fait prisonnier (ce n'est pas qu'il avait peur, il ne fallait pas manquer de courage pour \u00eatre arriv\u00e9 jusque-l\u00e0 : il avait des ordres, voil\u00e0 tout).\n\nMais en m\u00eame temps qu'il nous \u00e9blouissait et d\u00e9cha\u00eenait notre enthousiasme (renfor\u00e7ant brusquement notre prestige aupr\u00e8s de nos compagnons de jeux, estivants plus ou moins \u00ab ordinaires \u00bb), il rendait indiscutable aux yeux de tous les assistants sur la place de Laissac, par sa pr\u00e9sence, l'appartenance \u00e0 la R\u00e9sistance de ceux qui l'entouraient, et dont certains (dont mon p\u00e8re) devaient le jour m\u00eame repartir vers des r\u00e9gions d'o\u00f9 les occupants n'avaient pas encore \u00e9t\u00e9 chass\u00e9s (et quand on conna\u00eet l'enthousiasme d\u00e9nonciateur dont fit preuve alors une partie non n\u00e9gligeable de la population fran\u00e7aise, il y avait de quoi \u00eatre tr\u00e8s d\u00e9sagr\u00e9ablement surpris de cette initiative britannique). En cons\u00e9quence, la rencontre entre ces repr\u00e9sentants de conceptions guerri\u00e8res peu compatibles s'\u00e9tait relativement mal pass\u00e9e.\n\nJe comprends bien cela, et qu'il y avait de la m\u00e9fiance (pour n'employer qu'un mot assez prudent) de la part des \u00ab Alli\u00e9s \u00bb envers la R\u00e9sistance de l'int\u00e9rieur, m\u00e9fiance qui a \u00e9t\u00e9 en partie responsable du massacre des maquis du Vercors (o\u00f9 fut tu\u00e9 un autre normalien \u00e9l\u00e8ve d'Alain, l'\u00e9crivain Jean Pr\u00e9vost). Mais pour moi, ardent \u00ab churchillien \u00bb de onze ans que j'\u00e9tais, ce fut un moment pur, une joie sans m\u00e9lange et, beaucoup plus que l'effervescence chaotique, parfois trouble, qui suivit le d\u00e9part d\u00e9finitif des nazis, le signe sans ambigu\u00eft\u00e9 des temps nouveaux : la Lib\u00e9ration. Je le sens encore ainsi.\n\n## 43 Deux documents :\n\nDeux documents :\n\n### A) DU CARNET DE MON GRAND-P\u00c8RE (SUITE), SOUS LE TITRE G\u00c9N\u00c9RAL :\n\n _Notre vie familiale_\n\nNotes assez irr\u00e9guli\u00e8res prises pendant\n\nles ann\u00e9es 1942 \u00e0 1952.\n\n..................\n\n(1944, septembre)\n\nMaman et moi, nous d\u00e9sirons revenir \u00e0 Lyon. Mais les trains ne d\u00e9passent pas Beaucaire et Pont-St-Esprit.\n\nGrace \u00e0 Lucien, nous aurons le moyen de revenir par la route.\n\nLe 15 7bre, d\u00e9part en auto de Carc. \u00e0 Montp. o\u00f9 nous couchons.\n\nNous y trouvons M. Bellon qui dirige le journal : _Midi libre_ : organe des Comit\u00e9s de Lib\u00e9ration, install\u00e9 dans l'immeuble du Jl r\u00e9act. _L'\u00c9clair_. Il y m\u00e8ne une vie enfi\u00e9vr\u00e9e et \u00e9reintante (extinction de voix).\n\nMuni d'un ordre de mission, avec une auto du Journal, il nous m\u00e8ne, maman Jaqui et moi et 2 dames de ses amies qui rentrent dans le Doubs. Nous sommes bien serr\u00e9s, mais nous ne nous plaignons pas.\n\nLe 16 7bre Le temps est splendide. Le voyage sera fertile en incidents. On nous a conseill\u00e9 de ne pas suivre la vall\u00e9e du Rh\u00f4ne, mais de passer par le Puy et St-\u00c9tienne. Cet itin\u00e9raire doit nous \u00e9viter les coupures de routes. Pas tous, cependant, car au sud de Ruoms, nous voyons qu'un arche du pont sur l'Ard\u00e8che a saut\u00e9. Retour en arri\u00e8re par un mauvais chemin ou l'auto \u00e0 gazo se conduit magnifiquement.\n\nAssez bon d\u00e9jeuner dans une petite auberge au-del\u00e0 d'Aubenas.\n\nTravers\u00e9e du Puy vers 6h1\/2 du soir. On soupera \u00e0 Yssingeaux. Nous y trouvons un restaurant, mais aussi des FFI soup\u00e7onneux dont le lieutt \u00e9pluche nos papiers (on leur a signal\u00e9 des collabos dans une auto semblable \u00e0 la n\u00f4tre).\n\nNous r\u00e9ussissons enfin \u00e0 les convaincre et nous soupons de bon app\u00e9tit. Menu copieux : potage, truites, pommes de terre au gras, veau r\u00f4ti, omelette, fruits.\n\nNous repartons vers 22 h \u2013 encore trois rapides v\u00e9rifications par des FFI. Enfin, arriv\u00e9e \u00e0 Lyon par le pont de la Feuill\u00e9e. Nous sommes chez nous \u00e0 1 h 1\/2 du matin.\n\nL'auto et nous, nous sommes fourbus !\n\n### B) LETTRE DE L'AUTEUR \u00c0 SES PARENTS, DAT\u00c9E DU 18 SEPTEMBRE 44\n\n(page 1) cher papa, ch\u00e8re maman, je suis arriv\u00e9 \u00e0 Lyon depuis trois jours d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u2013 apr\u00e8s un voyage extr\u00eamement mouvement\u00e9. Nous sommes partis le jeudi matin \u00e0 six heures de Montpellier ; La veille je ne m'\u00e9tais couch\u00e9 qu'\u00e0 onze heures et demie ayant din\u00e9 \u00e0 la pr\u00e9fecture chez le pr\u00e9fet. Nous sommes donc partis dans (avec, barr\u00e9) un brouillard intense sur la route d'Al\u00e8s. Nous \u00e9tions sept. Monsieur Bellon, grand-papa, grand-maman, deux d\u00e2mes qui partaient retrouver leur famille dans la r\u00e9gion de Besan\u00e7on, le chauffeur, et moi. Nous n'avons pas suivi la vall\u00e9e du Rhone parceque n'\u00e9tant pas certains de pouvoir traverser le fleuve nous avons pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 monter par le Puy et St Etienne. Nous \u00e9tions surs de pouvoir arriver car m. Bellon avait vu quelqu'un qui arrivait de Lyon par cette voie. Cela ne nous a pas empech\u00e9 d'avoir beaucoup d'aventures pendant le chemin.\n\n(page 2) Nous sommes arriv\u00e9s \u00e0 Al\u00e9s vers 9 heures. Nous avons d\u00e9jeun\u00e9 et nous sommes repartis. Auparavant on nous a averti que nous allons avoir affaire \u00e0 deux s\u00e9rieuses difficult\u00e9s. Les ponts coup\u00e9s sont nombreux et nous allons avoir \u00e0 faire des d\u00e9tours. Enfin, nous partons nullement refroidis. Le voyage commence vraiment bien. Le soleil danse sur la route et nous discutons fermement. De temps \u00e0 autre un v\u00e9hicule d\u00e9truit git sur le bord de la route, a chaque village que nous rencontrons je bondis \u00e0 la portieres et je salues tout ce que je voies, hommes, femmes enfants, chevaux, poules, canards, etc. J'obtiens souvent des jeux de physionomie ebouriffant. pour l'instant tout s'est pass\u00e9 sans aucune anicroche. C'est vraiment trop beau voici un croisement. M. bellon consulte la carte. par ici. la voiture s'engage sur un pont. Nous filons sur St Jean de Maruejols. Tout \u00e0 coup, un croisement. Une des deux routes est barr\u00e9e. l'auto s'arr\u00eate. D'un cot\u00e9\n\n(page 3) c'est Uz\u00e8s de l'autre c'est St jean. Le chauffeur descend. Tout pr\u00e8s il y a un pont, celui de St. jean. Il est coup\u00e9. La voiture fait demi-tour. Nous repassons dans les m\u00eames villages, et nous voila sur la bonne route, cette fois. L'auto file maintenant vers Vallon, sur l'Ard\u00e8che. Avant d'entrer dans le village il y a un pont. Celui-ci est intact, para\u00eet-il. Un officier y est pass\u00e9 ce matin, la voiture s'approche. Des fils de fer barbel\u00e9s nous barrent la route, \u00e7a y est le pont est coup\u00e9. Inutile de temp\u00eater. Qu'allons nous faire. Vallons n'est qu'\u00e0 six ou sept kilom\u00e8tres de Ruoms, prochaine \u00e9tape o\u00f9 nous esp\u00e8rons manger et il est dix deux heures et demi. Nous consultons la carte Nous a Nouvelle d\u00e9ception. Le nouva second pont sur l'ard\u00e8che se trouve \u00e0 trois kilom\u00e8tres de l\u00e0, \u00e0 vol d'oiseau. Mais par la route il nous faut faire au moins quarante kilom\u00e8tres. Nous rebroussons chemin. Pour comble de malheur le chemin que nous\n\n(page 4) devons prendre et horriblement mauvais. Et il monte, monte terriblement. Et nous ne savons pas si l'autre pont est toujours solide. Apr\u00e8s la mont\u00e9e il y a la descente et celle-ci est encore moins commode que celle-l\u00e0. Un brave paysan que nous manquons d'\u00e9charper nous affirme que le pont est debout. Rassur\u00e9s nous repartons. Enfin nous retrouvons la bonne route, mais quelles angoisses quand nous passons un pont. C'est d'ailleur assez impressionnant, un pont par terre. D'habitude le pont n'est pas tout entier par terre mais c'est quand m\u00eame un spectacle que je n'aurais pas voulu manquer. Nous nous sommes arr\u00eat\u00e9s quelques minutes devant ce sale pont de Vallon et j'ai eu le temps de contempler les d\u00e9gats pour celui ci la cassure a \u00e9t\u00e9 nette. En bas, d'en l'ard\u00e8che c'est un chaos inextricable de pierres en bouillies des blocs de terre ont \u00e9t\u00e9 arrach\u00e9s et se sont pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 dans le fleuve [un peu de pr\u00e9cipitation dans l'\u00e9criture]. Une belle sc\u00e8ne, quoi ! Avant d'arriver \u00e0 Ruoms vers une\n\n(page 5) heure nous avons contempl\u00e9s les traces d'un bombardement. l'objectif devait \u00eatre une centrale \u00e9lectrique et un d\u00e9pot de charbon. Au centre de l'objectif, Un tas de pierres et un pan de mur qui avaient du etre une maison. A cot\u00e9 un enchev\u00eatrement de fils et un wagonnet renvers\u00e9 puis autour d'immenses entonnoirs. Il y avait partout des d\u00e9bris de fer calcin\u00e9s. Une heure dix, nous entrons \u00e0 Ruoms. Sur la place publique, deux Hotels. Dans aucun il n'y a \u00e0 manger. On nous indique toutefois un petit restaurant au bout du village. l'auto continue. Au tournant m. Bellon fait signe d'arr\u00e9ter la voiture. Il a aper\u00e7u un bureau de tabac. Il descend et s'y engouffre deux minutes. Trois minutes. Cinq minutes, pas de M. bellon. Enfin il sort une pile de journeaux sur les bras. On les distribue, les nouvelles sont bonnes. Pendant ce temps l'auto sort du village. Voici le restaurant. Il n'y a rien \u00e0 manger.\n\n(page 6) D\u00e9courag\u00e9s, nous continuons notre route. Et pourtant, nous avons bien faim. L'auto va s'engager sur un pont qui m\u00e8ne \u00e0 Aubenas. Tout \u00e0 coup, un homme sort d'une maison voisine et nous crie. Ne passez pas par l\u00e0 il y a des ponts coup\u00e9s, prenez la route de droite, plut\u00f4t. Nous remercions chaudement le bonhomme et nous continuons. Le paysage est tr\u00e8s beau, l'ard\u00e8che coule \u00e0 nos pieds nous roulons sous une voute de rochers, c'est le d\u00e9fil\u00e9s de Ruoms. Quelques minutes apr\u00e8s nous d\u00e9bouchions sur la place d'un hameau. Il \u00e9tait deux heures et quart. A notre droite il y avait une auberge, l'auto s'arr\u00e8ta et monsieur Bellon descendit. Peu de temps apr\u00e8s il revenait. Nous pouvions manger. Apr\u00e8s avoir d\u00e9vor\u00e9 \u00e0 belles dents l'auto nous montions dans l'auto et nous reprenions notre marche en avant Nous n'avions pas faits vingt m\u00e8tres que, crac !, l'auto s'arr\u00eatait. Un pneu crev\u00e9. Nous en n'avions pour vingt minutes. Aussit\u00f4t, comme il fait chaud tout le monde sort\n\n(page 7) de la voiture. M. Bellon qui a encore faim et encore soif d\u00e9cide de chercher un caf\u00e9 dans le village. Et il s'\u00e9loigne, accompagn\u00e9 d'une des deux dames qui voyagent avec nous. Grand-maman et l'autre dame discutent au pied d'un arbre, \u00e0 l'ombre. Quand \u00e0 moi je vais d'un cot\u00e9, de l'autre, sans but pr\u00e9cis. Tout en me promenant je calcule le nombre de v\u00e9hicules allemands d\u00e9truits que j'ai aper\u00e7us depuis Beziers. 127. Enfin, le pneu est r\u00e9par\u00e9 et nous montons dans la voiture. Nous pensons retrouver Monsieur Bellon et sa compagne en passant lentement. La voiture longe les maisons. Nulle trace de caf\u00e9. Nous sortons du village et nous faisons un km sur la route. Toujours rien. Nous rebroussons chemin, et les voil\u00e0 qui apparaissent, discutant tranquilement. Aussi\u00f4t une vive discussion s'engage. Et l'auto repart. N'ayant pas beaucoup dormi la nuit derni\u00e8re je somnole, sur les genoux de grand-papa. Aubenas. j'ouvre les yeux\n\n(page 8 et derni\u00e8re) la voiture s'engage dans une grande rue extr\u00eamement anim\u00e9e, plus que carcassonne. je salue des militaires, de temps \u00e0 autre. La foule d\u00e9croit, les maisons aussi et nous voila sur la route du Puy. Nous longeons lentement la vall\u00e9e de l'Ard\u00e8che. L'auto est engag\u00e9e dans une conversation anim\u00e9e. M. Bellon consulte la carte. L'auto monte maintenant sans arr\u00eat. La m\u00eame route en lacets qui d'un tournant \u00e0 l'autre ne semble pas grimper beaucoup... quand on est bas. Au pied du rocher grima\u00e7ant, la voiture s'arr\u00eate le chauffeur descend pour mettre du charbon. Puis nous repartons. La mont\u00e9e est interminable. mais enfin nous arrivons au bout un vent glacial nous accueille puis la voiture commence une descente rapide.\n\nLe Puy, 17 km. la borne passe rapidement devant mes yeux. Je suis attentivement, gris\u00e9 de vitesse la descente de l'auto vers le Puy. 16 km, 15 km ; 14 km. Nous avan\u00e7ons toujours La route se d\u00e9roule................. (La fin de la lettre manque.)\n\n## 44 Je remarque avec une certaine satisfaction, dans cette lettre,\n\nJe remarque, avec une petite satisfaction, dans cette lettre, des particularit\u00e9s orthographiques qui ne m'ont plus jamais abandonn\u00e9 : un certain d\u00e9sint\u00e9r\u00eat pour les majuscules au d\u00e9but des phrases (sans doute une pr\u00e9paration \u00e0 l'exercice de la po\u00e9sie moderne), un l\u00e9ger d\u00e9dain pour les r\u00e8gles les plus assur\u00e9es de la ponctuation acad\u00e9mique (je veux dire post\u00e9rieure au XVIe si\u00e8cle), une tendance tr\u00e8s nette \u00e0 distribuer ici ou l\u00e0 des accents circonflexes avec une g\u00e9n\u00e9rosit\u00e9 due \u00e0 l'incertitude sur leur position r\u00e9elle, par exemple. C'est l'omission d'un de ces beaux signes, si menac\u00e9s par les r\u00e9formateurs de l'orthographe, qui m'a valu la perte d'un (unique) quart de point (sur 10) \u00e0 la dict\u00e9e du \u00ab concours d'entr\u00e9e en 6e \u00bb, en 1941. Je m'empresse d'ajouter que je n'avais pas grand m\u00e9rite : l'examinateur \u00e9tait un homme charmant qui pronon\u00e7ait distinctement toutes les finales (\u00ab les faucheur-s fauchai-eu-n-t \u00bb) (il exag\u00e9rait simplement outrageusement une particularit\u00e9 carcassonnaise, que je m'amuse \u00e0 attribuer, en un raisonnement pseudo-linguistique, \u00e0 la proximit\u00e9 de la Catalogne : on ne dit pas la \u00ab nui \u00bb mais \u00ab la nuit \u00bb), et aplanissait ainsi pour nous, pauvres petits, la plupart des difficult\u00e9s. Mais il ne put rien faire pour me pr\u00e9venir de ce m\u00e9chant circonflexe, dont je n'avais pas la moindre id\u00e9e. C'est sans aucun doute, n'est-ce pas, \u00e0 partir de cette exp\u00e9rience traumatisante (la perte d'un quart de point \u00e0 l'examen d'entr\u00e9e en sixi\u00e8me) que je pris l'habitude, par compensation, de mettre des circonflexes en quelques endroits impr\u00e9vus (ainsi, plus haut, page 7 de ma lettre, sur \u00ab d\u00e2mes \u00bb). Cette stabilit\u00e9, sur un demi-si\u00e8cle, a je ne sais pourquoi quelque chose de rassurant : la persistance du \u00ab circonflexe flottant \u00bb est une assurance d'identit\u00e9 relative. Voil\u00e0 la preuve que je ne suis pas le couteau de Lichtenberg.\n\nJe remarque aussi que dans ces \u00e9critures mon int\u00e9r\u00eat est d\u00e9j\u00e0 marqu\u00e9 pour les d\u00e9nombrements, plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement pour toutes les indications chiffr\u00e9es que produit le monde \u00e0 nos yeux, l\u00e0 r\u00e9pandues sur les bornes, les poteaux, avec leurs distances kilom\u00e9triques. Je m'\u00e9tais ant\u00e9rieurement attribu\u00e9, dans un d\u00e9but d'autoportrait, la qualit\u00e9 caract\u00e9ristique \u00ab d'homme num\u00e9rique \u00bb, de \u00ab compteur \u00bb (trace d'une relative avance dans l'\u00e9chelle de l'hominisation, mais peut-\u00eatre n\u00e9anmoins archa\u00efque, insensible au progr\u00e8s de la m\u00e9canisation, puis de l'ordinateurisation qui rendent le maniement mental des nombres _obsolete_ ) et j'ai ici m\u00eame (plus loin dans le texte lin\u00e9aire) identifi\u00e9 imaginairement le lieu de ma d\u00e9couverte des nombres. J'avais donc la certitude interne de ma constance num\u00e9rologique, mais je ne suis pas m\u00e9content de la voir, elle aussi, confirm\u00e9e par un document \u00ab historique \u00bb, un objet du pr\u00e9sent qui ne parle que du pass\u00e9, et que rien de son futur ne p\u00e9n\u00e8tre. Ce n'est donc pas un trait que je me suis attribu\u00e9 apr\u00e8s coup, en reconstituant le pass\u00e9 \u00e0 l'aide du pr\u00e9sent : encore un \u00e9l\u00e9ment, minuscule mais indiscutable, de certitude.\n\nJe vois l\u00e0, ce qui para\u00eetra peut-\u00eatre \u00e9trange et confirmer l'adage des \u00ab raisins verts \u00bb (\u00ab Ils sont trop verts, et bons pour des goujats \u00bb, comme dit le renard de La Fontaine au pied de la treille inaccessible de muscats), je vois l\u00e0, dis-je, dans la perspective de cette branche de mon trait\u00e9, une raison pour ne pas aujourd'hui regretter l'absence de ces \u00ab journaux \u00bb que je n'ai jamais tenus (j'ai essay\u00e9 parfois, il me semble, mais je ne suis jamais all\u00e9 plus loin que ce _day-book_ de quatre-vingts pages, vers 1947, glorieusement inaugur\u00e9 par ce mot rest\u00e9 unique sur sa premi\u00e8re page, sans date : \u00ab Aujourd'hui \u00bb).\n\nCette lettre, les pages du carnet grand-paternel sont-ils effecteurs de m\u00e9moire ? pas vraiment. J'avais pris le soin de rassembler, en pens\u00e9e, j'ai not\u00e9 avant de lire la lettre et le carnet, mes souvenirs de ce voyage vers Lyon (et auparavant de celui de Laissac). Ils n'ont pas \u00e9t\u00e9 augment\u00e9s ni modifi\u00e9s par ma lecture, comme j'aurais pu l'esp\u00e9rer (ou le craindre).\n\n **Je vois une rivi\u00e8re avec des tanks calcin\u00e9s sur ses bords ; je vois un pont \u00e9croul\u00e9**.\n\n **Je vois grand-maman immobile, debout, au bord d'une route, entre des platanes, dans une longue robe noire, son \u00ab fichu \u00bb noir sur les \u00e9paules, d'autres silhouettes \u00e9loign\u00e9es, indistinctes ; et je vois, \u00e0 ma grande suprise, qu'elle est en train, ainsi, debout, de \u00ab faire pipi \u00bb** (c'est cette expression que j'aurais employ\u00e9e, alors, et c'est elle qui accompagne, spontan\u00e9ment, le souvenir).\n\nJe poss\u00e8de quelque part le \u00ab cadre \u00bb chronologique de ces images, assurant une transmission par \u00ab continuit\u00e9 \u00bb depuis ce temps-l\u00e0 (continuit\u00e9 de plus en plus \u00ab \u00e9rod\u00e9e \u00bb dans la dur\u00e9e, parce que la continuit\u00e9, elle, n'est pas renforc\u00e9e par la pens\u00e9e s'attachant au pass\u00e9 (il s'y introduit aussi des erreurs, mais, dans l'ensemble, avant de retrouver ces documents et de les lire je les situais assez bien)). Comme il s'agissait de jours qui furent marquants pour la collectivit\u00e9 tout enti\u00e8re, les \u00ab placer \u00bb n'\u00e9tait pas trop difficile. Cependant tout se passe comme si les deux \u00ab sources \u00bb de restauration partielle du pass\u00e9 que j'ai confront\u00e9es ici appartenaient \u00e0 deux mondes irr\u00e9ductibles l'un \u00e0 l'autre mais, en m\u00eame temps, non isol\u00e9s.\n\nUn autre \u00ab moment \u00bb du voyage m'est r\u00e9apparu, confus\u00e9ment, et j'ignore, bien s\u00fbr, s'il ne s'agit pas d'une reconstruction apr\u00e8s lecture : c'est celui de notre \u00ab arrestation \u00bb momentan\u00e9e par ces FFI soup\u00e7onneux (il est vrai que notre ami, \u00ab M. Bellon \u00bb (ce n'\u00e9tait pas son vrai nom) avait un accent qui pouvait passer pour \u00ab \u00e9tranger \u00bb). Nous f\u00fbmes donc soumis \u00e0 une \u00ab v\u00e9rification d'identit\u00e9 \u00bb par la R\u00e9sistance exactement comme, \u00e0 peine deux mois auparavant, nous aurions pu l'\u00eatre par la Milice vichyste, ou les Allemands. C'est que la mutation qui, en quelques journ\u00e9es, transforma la France officielle, vichyste, p\u00e9tainiste, en une France diff\u00e9rente, pas moins officielle, mais gaulliste, s'accompagna, presque du jour au lendemain, pour certains (assez peu nombreux : ceux qui s'engag\u00e8rent, en prenant des risques, dans un camp ou l'autre de cette lutte, ne furent jamais qu'une minorit\u00e9), d'un changement de r\u00f4les : les clandestins sortirent de l'ombre, les plus compromis (ou les moins prot\u00e9g\u00e9s) de leurs adversaires tent\u00e8rent de s'y plonger \u00e0 leur tour.\n\nOblig\u00e9, trois ou quatre jours avant la Lib\u00e9ration de Montpellier, d'effectuer un trajet de \u00ab liaison \u00bb en sens inverse du reflux des arm\u00e9es allemandes, mon p\u00e8re trouva un chauffeur volontaire dont l'audace lui plut. Car quelque part sur la route, entre P\u00e9zenas et B\u00e9ziers, ils crois\u00e8rent sur une dizaine de kilom\u00e8tres une colonne d'infanterie allemande non signal\u00e9e, sans doute \u00e9gar\u00e9e et pleine de lassitude, dont les soldats parfois, pour am\u00e9liorer leurs capacit\u00e9s de fuite, s'emparaient des rares v\u00e9hicules qu'ils rencontraient sur leur chemin. Ils faisaient signe \u00e0 la voiture de s'arr\u00eater et chaque fois le chauffeur, comme dans ces films de \u00ab gangsters \u00bb am\u00e9ricains qui allaient bient\u00f4t \u00eatre le symbole d'un envahissement d'un autre type, ralentissait comme pour ob\u00e9ir puis acc\u00e9l\u00e9rait de nouveau brusquement \u00e0 quelques m\u00e8tres des soldats, \u00e9chappant miraculeusement aux rafales de balles que, par acquit de conscience, ils se sentaient oblig\u00e9s de lui adresser.\n\nMais ce chauffeur h\u00e9ro\u00efque \u00e9tait, comme on le d\u00e9couvrit peu apr\u00e8s, un \u00ab collabo \u00bb, et pas des plus inoffensifs : c'\u00e9tait un tueur, un \u00ab milicien \u00bb qui avait fait ainsi, au dernier moment, une tentative audacieuse pour \u00e9chapper au sort qui l'attendait. Et tout, alors, devenait une question d'identit\u00e9. L'Occupation avait multipli\u00e9 les \u00ab papiers \u00bb de toutes sortes, et les contr\u00f4les incessants : cartes de rationnement, de \u00ab priorit\u00e9 \u00bb, laissez-passer, cartes d'identit\u00e9 surtout. Et les faux papiers s'\u00e9taient multipli\u00e9s aussi. Chaque r\u00e9sistant, chaque clandestin avait ainsi, successivement et parfois m\u00eame simultan\u00e9ment une, deux ou m\u00eame plus de deux fausses identit\u00e9s authentifi\u00e9es par de plus ou moins \u00ab vraies \u00bb fausses cartes (les \u00ab vraies-fausses \u00bb \u00e9tant celles qui \u00e9taient, le plus l\u00e9galement du monde, d\u00e9livr\u00e9es par des policiers r\u00e9sistants). Il fallait maintenant, au grand jour, proc\u00e9der \u00e0 la r\u00e9duction d'urgence de cette prolif\u00e9ration anti-occamiste de \u00ab nominaux \u00bb, autrement dit de noms, surnoms et pseudonymes : faire savoir que M. X, dit Y, \u00e9tait en r\u00e9alit\u00e9 M. Z, m\u00eame si les papiers en sa possession le pr\u00e9sentaient comme s'appelant T. Toujours dans mon \u00ab tiroir \u00e0 m\u00e9moire externe \u00bb, parmi mon lot de papiers et photos de toutes sortes j'en ai trouv\u00e9 un qui pr\u00e9sente, sous forme presque caricaturale, cette version particuli\u00e8re du vieux probl\u00e8me philosophique de la permanence des identit\u00e9s :\n\nIVe R\u00c9PUBLIQUE FRAN\u00c7AISE\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n\nLIBERT\u00c9 \u2014\u2014\u2014 \u00c9GALIT\u00c9 \u2014\u2014\u2014 FRATERNIT\u00c9\n\nCOMMISSARIAT DU LANGUEDOC-ROUSSILLON\n\nMonsieur ASTIER porteur de la carte d'identit\u00e9 N\u00b0 14606 au nom de BLANC Louis et de la carte d'identit\u00e9 de Fran\u00e7ais BR 56651 au nom de ROUBAUD Lucien est Pr\u00e9sident du Comit\u00e9 R\u00e9gional de Lib\u00e9ration du Languedoc-Roussillon. Les autorit\u00e9s civiles et militaires FFI lui doivent aide et protection.\n\nMontpellier, le 26 ao\u00fbt 1944.\n\nEt voil\u00e0 qu'en bas de page, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 du tampon du \u00ab Comit\u00e9 R\u00e9gional de Lib\u00e9ration du Languedoc \u00bb figurent, manuscrites (je reconnais l'\u00e9criture et la signature de mon p\u00e8re), ces mots :\n\nLe Pr\u00e9sident du Comit\u00e9 R\u00e9gional de Lib\u00e9ration  \nAstier.\n\n! ! !\n\n## 45 Lyon extraordinairement belle en septembre 44.\n\n(suite du carnet grand-paternel)\n\ndu 17 au 23 7bre. Nous parcourons Lyon avec sa nouvelle physionomie : tous les ponts du Rh\u00f4ne ont une arche d\u00e9molie par l'explosion des mines boches.\n\n30 000 m2 de vitres bris\u00e9es, 15 km de vitrines et de devantures d\u00e9molies.\n\nEn compensation, atmosph\u00e8re de d\u00e9tente, de libert\u00e9, d'espoir sur la fin prochaine de la guerre et le retour \u00e0 une vie normale.\n\nOn lit les journaux ; on \u00e9coute la Radio ; on se r\u00e9jouit des succ\u00e8s rapides des Alli\u00e9s, presque toute la France lib\u00e9r\u00e9e, les Russes sur la Vistule, et les Balkans.\n\nChaque jour, on publie de longues listes des martyrs de l'Occupation, la haine monte contre les Allemands et leurs aides f\u00e9lons, miliciens ou collabos.\n\nLyon \u00e9tait extraordinairement belle en septembre 1944. La beaut\u00e9 de cette ville est pour moi li\u00e9e \u00e0 ces semaines d'apr\u00e8s la Lib\u00e9ration. Sans doute l'eau sortait des robinets avec une odeur et un go\u00fbt de p\u00e9trole, sans doute il y avait les ruines, le Rh\u00f4ne, la Sa\u00f4ne \u00e9taient presque infranchissables. Mais les ruines m\u00eames \u00e9taient belles, et leur beaut\u00e9 venait des circonstances exceptionnelles, exaltantes, de leur apparition. Sans doute on mangeait peut-\u00eatre plus mal encore qu'avant. Mes grand-parents d\u00e9couvraient peu \u00e0 peu les morts, les fusillades, les disparitions, les trahisons, les d\u00e9portations (dont l'aboutissement sinistre n'\u00e9tait pas encore imagin\u00e9), tous les bouleversements survenus au sein de leurs relations depuis leur fuite devant la Gestapo en 43.\n\nMais tout cela me parvenait r\u00e9fract\u00e9, assourdi, transfigur\u00e9. Je n'entendais que le chant h\u00e9ro\u00efque, et je n'\u00e9prouvais que le sentiment de libert\u00e9 associ\u00e9 \u00e0 celui de vacances se prolongeant, dans la vacuit\u00e9 des rues encore chaudes, mais sans menaces, sans couvre-feu, sans la tension de vagues catastrophes (vagues pour une conscience enfantine) possibles et sans cesse auparavant redout\u00e9es (arrestations, bombardements).\n\nOr une des toutes premi\u00e8res conqu\u00eates de la Lib\u00e9ration fut... le western. Lyon n'\u00e9tait pas d\u00e9barrass\u00e9e depuis trois semaines de ses Panzers que les cin\u00e9mas rouverts autour de la place Bellecour affichaient d\u00e9j\u00e0 dans leurs programmes \u00ab permanents \u00bb quelques-uns de ces films de l\u00e9gende, au go\u00fbt \u00ab d'avant-guerre \u00bb, aux g\u00e9n\u00e9riques fabuleux.\n\nBien s\u00fbr, en septembre 44, le choix en \u00e9tait encore limit\u00e9, les copies (probablement pr\u00eat\u00e9es par l'arm\u00e9e am\u00e9ricaine) souvent interrompues par des pannes des appareils de projection ou des coupures de courant. Qu'importe ! je n'avais jamais vu spectacle plus \u00e9blouissant. J'en ai retenu un seul, comme \u00e9tant le premier de tous, mon premier western : _Pacific Express_ (de Cecil B. de Mille, 1938, d'apr\u00e8s le vieux _Dictionnaire des films_ de Georges Sadoul, avec Barbara Stanwyck, Joel Mc Crea et Akim Tamiroff). Il y avait l\u00e0 la Belle, le Bon et le M\u00e9chant.\n\nMais ce ne fut pas principalement pour eux que je m'enflammai. Car il y avait surtout, donnant son titre au film (et je ne revois presque plus que cela) une magnifique locomotive. (Au-dessus de mon \u00e9vier m\u00e9tallique aujourd'hui, sur le mur blanc, \u00e0 droite de la lampe, entre la lampe et le s\u00e8che-vaisselle suspendu en plastique, blanc aussi quoique un peu couvert de suie (je vois tout cela en ce moment, vous pouvez me croire), se trouve le portrait-affiche de celle qui fut, vers 1870, la \u00ab star \u00bb, la \u00ab Barbara Stanwyck \u00bb des locomotives sur les lignes anglaises Southern Railways, la Bournemouth Belle.\n\nNous descendions, mon grand-p\u00e8re et moi, vers le Rh\u00f4ne, prenant avant d'arriver aux quais du fleuve et au tramway par la Mont\u00e9e de la Boucle, le chemin des \u00ab traboules \u00bb, ces labyrinthiques tunnels et couloirs dans le ventre des maisons qui faisaient de tous les enfants lyonnais des \u00e9cureuils. Grand-papa, arm\u00e9 du journal, _Le Progr\u00e8s_ , consultait la courte liste des \u00ab programmes \u00bb. Nous choisissions.\n\nEt parfois, saisi d'une v\u00e9ritable ivresse, quand nous sortions d'un cin\u00e9ma de la rue de la R\u00e9publique, il m'emmenait brusquement vers un autre, dont il avait (signe de pr\u00e9m\u00e9ditation ?) not\u00e9 aussi les horaires.\n\nLe retour rue de l'Orangerie fut pour mon grand-p\u00e8re un v\u00e9ritable soulagement : c'\u00e9tait un homme paisible, pacifique, que les erreurs et horreurs du monde ne cess\u00e8rent pas d'\u00e9tonner et d'indigner, et il r\u00eava toujours de les voir annul\u00e9es par les efforts raisonnables d'hommes de bonne volont\u00e9 (en France, par exemple, par \u00ab l'Union de la Gauche sans exclusives \u00bb. Il n'arr\u00eate pas d'y r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir dans ses \u00ab carnets \u00bb). Dans sa maison enfin reconquise, il reprit possession de son atelier de menuiserie o\u00f9, entre autres inventions destin\u00e9es au concours L\u00e9pine, il se consacra de nouveau \u00e0 la qu\u00eate d'une perfection inatteignable, toujours esp\u00e9r\u00e9e, entr'aper\u00e7ue, mais \u00e9vanouissante comme un _boojum_ , le \u00ab graal \u00bb de la chaise longue inrenversable. (Pour le r\u00e9v\u00e9rend Milton, grand-p\u00e8re maternel d'un de mes romanciers pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9s, Anthony Trollope, le graal avait \u00e9t\u00e9 aussi \u00e9t\u00e9 un r\u00eave de stabilit\u00e9, celui de la diligence inrenversable.)\n\n## 46 Questionnaire :\n\n _Questionnaire :_\n\nYad Vashem, Institut de Comm\u00e9moration\n\ndes Martyrs et des H\u00e9ros\n\nB.P 84 \u2013 JERUSALEM\n\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n\nPRINCIPAUX D\u00c9TAILS DEVANT \u00caTRE COMPRIS DANS LE T\u00c9MOIGNAGE\n\n_A. Renseignements sur le t\u00e9moin, le sauveteur et la personne sauv\u00e9e_\n\n  * 1. Nom et pr\u00e9noms (en caract\u00e8res latins)\n\n  * 2. Age\n\n  * 3. Adresse actuelle\n\n  * 4. Occupation actuelle\n\n  * 5. Lieu d'habitation durant la guerre (en caract\u00e8res latins)\n\n  * 6. _Curriculum vit\u00e6_ durant la guerre (occupation, situation \u00e9conomique, ghettos, camps, exode, r\u00e9sistance, etc.)\n\n _B. Circonstances du sauvetage_\n\n  * 1. Comment fut \u00e9tabli le lien entre le sauveteur et le sauv\u00e9.\n\n  * 2. Description de l'action du sauveteur \u2013 caract\u00e8re g\u00e9n\u00e9ral de son action et d\u00e9tail des faits.\n\n  * 3. Mobiles du sauveteur (r\u00e9compense mat\u00e9rielle, amiti\u00e9, amour du prochain, etc.)\n\n  * 4. Dangers encourus par le sauveteur.\n\n  * 5. Conduite des membres de la famille du sauveteur (citer leurs noms).\n\n  * 6. Conditions sp\u00e9ciales et aspects caract\u00e9ristiques.\n\nLe t\u00e9moin a le choix d'\u00e9crire son t\u00e9moignage dans la langue qu'il manie le mieux. Il est important d'indiquer toujours dates et lieux exacts. Le t\u00e9moin est pri\u00e9 \u00e9galement de communiquer les nom et adresse d'autres t\u00e9moins pouvant certifier son t\u00e9moignage ou y ajouter. De m\u00eame, il est pri\u00e9 si possible de joindre des documents ou des photographies ayant trait au t\u00e9moignage ou bien de signaler le lieu o\u00f9 on peut les obtenir.\n\nD\u00e9partement des \u00ab Justes \u00bb.\n\nLe retour \u00e0 Lyon fut pour ma grand-m\u00e8re, au contraire, la fin d'une aventure, la fin de ce qui fut la p\u00e9riode la plus intens\u00e9ment \u00ab publique \u00bb de sa vie, plus exactement emplie du sentiment d'agir, et de mani\u00e8re juste, au sein d'une entreprise collective, la R\u00e9sistance. Car tel est le sens de la pr\u00e9sence dans mes papiers de ce \u00ab questionnaire \u00bb qui s'\u00e9claire de ceci que j'extrais du m\u00eame \u00ab dossier \u00bb : une Attestation (en fran\u00e7ais, et en h\u00e9breu, fran\u00e7ais \u00e0 gauche, h\u00e9breu \u00e0 droite. Je ne reproduis que le texte fran\u00e7ais)\n\nLe pr\u00e9sent Dipl\u00f4me atteste qu'en\/\n\nsa s\u00e9ance du 28 f\u00e9vrier 1967\/\n\nla Commission des Justes pr\u00e8s \/l'Institut\/\n\nComm\u00e9moratif des Martyrs et des H\u00e9ros Yad Va-\/\n\nshem a d\u00e9cid\u00e9, sur foi de t\u00e9moignages recueillis par elle, de rendre\/\n\nhommage \u00e0 d\u00e9funte\/BLANCHE MOLINO\/\n\nqui, au p\u00e9ril de sa vie, a sauv\u00e9\/\n\ndes Juifs pendant l'\u00e9poque d'ex-\/\n\ntermination, de Lui d\u00e9cerner la\/\n\nM\u00e9daille des Justes et\/\n\nd'autoriser (suscrit) les membres de sa famille \u00e0 planter un ar-\/\n\nbre en son nom dans l'All\u00e9e\/\n\ndes Justes sur le Mont du\/\n\nSouvenir \u00e0 J\u00e9rusalem.\/\n\nFait \u00e0 J\u00e9rusalem, Isra\u00ebl, le\/\n\n1er d\u00e9cembre 1967\/\n\nC'est l'aboutissement de ce qui fut certainement une longue proc\u00e9dure, \u00e0 l'initiative (malgr\u00e9 tout assez tardive, semble-t-il) de mon oncle Walter (je lis au bas de la copie d'une lettre de confirmation de J\u00e9rusalem, \u00e0 lui envoy\u00e9e et transmise \u00e0 ma m\u00e8re ces mots : \u00ab ch\u00e8re Suzette,\n\njust to let you know that our efforts for Bonne Maman were successful \u00bb) mais qui n'aurait sans doute pas pu \u00eatre envisag\u00e9e du vivant de ma grand-m\u00e8re. Cette reconnaissance me fait plaisir (je n'y suis pour rien bien entendu, mais cela m'a fait plaisir et m'a m\u00eame donn\u00e9, pourquoi pas, de la fiert\u00e9. Je le dis d'autant plus volontiers que je n'ai gard\u00e9 qu'une affection assez relative pour ma grand-m\u00e8re).\n\nJ'attribue cette d\u00e9marche de Walter comme \u00e9tant, de sa part, un cadeau \u00e0 sa femme, ma tante Ren\u00e9e, en m\u00eame temps qu'un hommage rendu \u00e0 celle qui lui sauva vraisemblablement la vie en 1940. Mais c'est aussi (il me semble que la date le montre) un acte qui n'est pas totalement ind\u00e9pendant des convictions sionistes de mon oncle, convictions qui ne sont \u00e9videmment pas les miennes. Pour grand-maman, en tout cas, la mani\u00e8re dont elle avait agi lui avait sembl\u00e9 toute naturelle, et il n'y avait rien de plus \u00e0 en dire, le danger pass\u00e9 et cette \u00e9poque sinistre r\u00e9volue d\u00e9finitivement (pensait-on) que pour le plaisir des r\u00e9cits, et la transmission, n\u00e9cessaire, de quelques id\u00e9es morales fortes \u00e0 ses descendants.\n\nAu moment o\u00f9 j'\u00e9cris, moi, ces phrases qui la concernent, il semble malheureusement redevenu n\u00e9cessaire d'affirmer la valeur des principes qui furent les siens, et avec quelque insistance. Car j'ai bien peur que le rappel de ces imp\u00e9ratifs \u00e9thiques ne soit loin d'\u00eatre d\u00e9suet, et pour longtemps, particuli\u00e8rement en France. (Dans le \u00ab long terme \u00bb des comportements collectifs, il est clair que le fait que les Fran\u00e7ais (\u00e0 la spectaculaire diff\u00e9rence des Danois, par exemple) aient \u00e9t\u00e9, non pas tous (je trouve la \u00ab th\u00e9orie \u00bb, fort r\u00e9pandue, qu'exprime l'aphorisme \u00ab tous des l\u00e2ches, tous des salauds \u00bb non seulement fausse, mais r\u00e9pugnante) mais majoritairement p\u00e9tainistes, et bien longtemps apr\u00e8s Stalingrad et Pearl Harbor (pr\u00eats, donc, un peu point majoritairement mais \u00e0 peine, \u00e0 admettre comme naturel l'antis\u00e9mitisme empress\u00e9 des autorit\u00e9s de Vichy), n'a pas cess\u00e9 de se \u00ab r\u00e9verb\u00e9rer \u00bb dans ce pays.)\n\nMa grand-m\u00e8re ne fut pas directement une combattante. Mais si elle choisit d'agir principalement pour arracher aux nazis leurs victimes d\u00e9sign\u00e9es, je remarquerai cependant que pour elle (comme pour mon grand-p\u00e8re qui, sans \u00eatre directement associ\u00e9 \u00e0 toute son action l'approuva (mes parents \u00e9taient aussi enti\u00e8rement et pleinement en accord (le probl\u00e8me de savoir qui devait dire quoi \u00e0 qui n'a jamais eu de solution facile))), il n'\u00e9tait pas question essentiellement d'amiti\u00e9 ou de charit\u00e9 (m\u00eame la\u00efque). Le \u00ab Questionnaire \u00bb que j'ai reproduit plus haut fait significativement le silence, parmi les raisons suppos\u00e9es des actions de ceux qui sont candidats au titre de \u00ab juste \u00bb, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment sur celle-l\u00e0 : r\u00e9sister. Il \u00ab tord \u00bb, ce faisant, la v\u00e9rit\u00e9. Grand-maman avait conserv\u00e9, cach\u00e9e au fond du jardin de la rue de l'Orangerie, parmi d'autres \u00ab t\u00e9moignages \u00bb, la carte d'identit\u00e9 du r\u00e9sistant Marc Bloch (elle disait parfois que, s'il avait choisi, le matin fatal de son arrestation, de descendre par les \u00ab traboules \u00bb au lieu de suivre le chemin ordinaire de la \u00ab Mont\u00e9e de la Boucle \u00bb, il aurait certainement \u00e9chapp\u00e9 \u00e0 la Gestapo). Je compl\u00e8te et j'\u00e9claire tout cela par un t\u00e9moignage (toujours pris dans le m\u00eame dossier assembl\u00e9 par mon oncle).\n\nRenseignements sur le t\u00e9moin\n\nMORGULEFF Nina\n\nn\u00e9e le 14 mars 1915 \u00e0 Leningrad\n\nHabitant actuellement 77 rue des Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es Paris 20e France\n\nProfession : Ing\u00e9nieur\n\nHabitant pendant la guerre principalement 21 rue de l'Orangerie Lyon France.\n\nRenseignements sur le sauveteur\n\nMme MOLINO Blanche, directrice d'\u00e9cole publique \u00e0 la retraite\n\nn\u00e9e le 25 avril 1880\n\nd\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9e le 22 septembre 1964\n\nhabitant pendant la guerre 21 rue de l'Orangerie \u00e0 Lyon\n\nou chez sa fille et son gendre M. et Mme Roubaud Lucien\n\n7 rue d'Assas Carcassonne Aude France.\n\naid\u00e9e par son mari M. MOLINO Ren\u00e9, inspecteur primaire retrait\u00e9\n\nn\u00e9 le 7 juin 1877\n\nm\u00eame adresse.\n\nJe soussign\u00e9e Morguleff Nina certifie exacts les faits suivants qui montrent le d\u00e9vouement envers mon fr\u00e8re et moi-m\u00eame de Mme Molino Blanche\n\nT\u00e9moignage :\n\nMon fr\u00e8re Georges, et moi-m\u00eame, habitions la banlieue de Lyon (Champagne) au d\u00e9but de la guerre. En ao\u00fbt 1942, lorsque les arrestations de Juifs ont commenc\u00e9 dans la r\u00e9gion lyonnaise, les gendarmes fran\u00e7ais du voisinage nous ayant pr\u00e9venus que nous courions un danger imm\u00e9diat, nous sommes venus nous r\u00e9fugier chez Mme Molino qui nous a recueillis dans sa maison.\n\nMme Molino essaya de nous faire passer en Suisse. Au cours de cette tentative une lettre ouverte par la censure amena au 21 de la rue de l'Orangerie une perquisition de la police fran\u00e7aise. Gr\u00e2ce au courage et la pr\u00e9sence d'esprit de Mme Molino, nous avons pu \u00e9chapper \u00e0 une arrestation certaine.\n\nLa perquisition n'ayant apport\u00e9 contre elle aucune preuve concluante Mme Molino a continu\u00e9 \u00e0 s'occuper de notre h\u00e9bergement, entre autres chez sa s\u0153ur \u00e0 Marseille, chez une amie \u00e0 Carpentras. Quand il n'y avait pas de danger imm\u00e9diat nous revenions tr\u00e8s fr\u00e9quemment rue de l'Orangerie quand nous ne savions pas o\u00f9 aller et Mme Molino n'a cess\u00e9 de nous soutenir de toutes les mani\u00e8res.\n\nEn liaison avec Mme Malien et son mari Me Malien, avou\u00e9, elle fournissait r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement des faux papiers (avec tous les risques que cela comportait pour elle), papiers qui ont sauv\u00e9 la vie \u00e0 de nombreux juifs. Je ne puis \u00e9videmment me rappeler le nom de tous, et certains m'\u00e9taient totalement inconnus, mais, parmi les plus marquants, je peux citer M. Ren\u00e9 Mayer, ancien pr\u00e9sident du Conseil, le Dr Caroli, actuellement m\u00e9decin \u00e0 l'H\u00f4pital Saint-Antoine, \u00e0 Paris, le professeur L\u00e9vy-Bruhl. En ce qui nous concerne, les premiers faux papiers qui nous ont permis de survivre ont \u00e9t\u00e9 fournis par elle en septembre 1942.\n\nPendant tous nos s\u00e9jours chez Mme Molino, nous avons \u00e9t\u00e9 constamment t\u00e9moins de l'aide apport\u00e9e par elle \u00e0 grand nombre de Juifs : aide dans la recherche de travail et de logements, secours en argent (gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 une collecte de fonds effectu\u00e9e par elle aux \u00c9tats-Unis lors d'un s\u00e9jour dans les milieux universitaires de Cambridge, Massachusetts, et de New York, pendant l'hiver de 1941). Je ne puis citer que les noms de ceux que nous avons connus directement : J.-Cl. Weill, C. Hagenauer, J.-G. Cahen, fusill\u00e9 par les Allemands \u00e0 Montluc au printemps 1944, M. et Mme Pavlovsky de Nancy.\n\nDes faux papiers qu'elle avait ainsi fournis \u00e0 une personne en danger ont amen\u00e9 chez elle une deuxi\u00e8me visite de la police fran\u00e7aise qui aurait immanquablement caus\u00e9 son arrestation si, par miracle, une complicit\u00e9 amicale dans la police ne l'avait sauv\u00e9e, elle et M. Molino.\n\nLorqu'en 1943 je suis devenue secr\u00e9taire du Pr Marc Bloch alors chef r\u00e9gional du Mouvement de r\u00e9sistance Franc-Tireur, j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 quotidiennement t\u00e9moin, puisque j'habitais chez elle, du soutien constant qu'elle lui a apport\u00e9 jusqu'au jour de son arrestation en mars 1944 (liaison \u00e9pistolaire avec sa famille habitant la Creuse, logement procur\u00e9 par elle dans la maison contigu\u00eb au 21 rue de l'Orangerie, repas pris ensemble, \u00e9coute de la radio, r\u00e9confort amical, etc.).\n\nC'est l'arrestation m\u00eame de Marc Bloch qui a d\u00e9clench\u00e9 une troisi\u00e8me perquisition polici\u00e8re, cette fois celle de la Gestapo \u00e0 la recherche de Mme Molino en personne. Heureusement elle venait juste de quitter la ville pour se rendre chez sa fille \u00e0 Carcassonne.\n\nJe t\u00e9moigne aussi que, pendant les nuits qui suivirent l'incendie de la Synagogue ou des Juifs avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 rassembl\u00e9s, plusieurs de ceux qui avaient r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 s'\u00e9chapper ont trouv\u00e9 refuge dans la maison de Mme Molino.\n\n## 47 Nomm\u00e9, au titre du Mouvement de lib\u00e9ration nationale,\n\nNomm\u00e9, au titre du MLN (Mouvement de lib\u00e9ration nationale), \u00e0 l'Assembl\u00e9e consultative provisoire institu\u00e9e par le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral de Gaulle, mon p\u00e8re dut s'installer \u00e0 Paris (et nous, sa famille, par la m\u00eame occasion). L'Assembl\u00e9e si\u00e9geait au Palais du Luxembourg (o\u00f9 se r\u00e9unit encore aujourd'hui, comme sous la Troisi\u00e8me R\u00e9publique, aussi poussi\u00e9reux qu'elle, le S\u00e9nat : le lourd manteau noir rugueux, vieux de naissance, qu'il acheta \u00e0 cette occasion fut aussit\u00f4t baptis\u00e9 \u00ab manteau de s\u00e9nateur \u00bb. Je l'ai port\u00e9 moi-m\u00eame plus tard, pendant mes hivers d'\u00e9tudiant, \u00e0 la Sorbonne puis \u00e0 l'Institut Henri-Poincar\u00e9). Sa d\u00e9ception politique fut imm\u00e9diate et intense, quand il se trouva en pr\u00e9sence de la morgue autoritariste du G\u00e9n\u00e9ral, de son \u00e9vident m\u00e9pris pour la R\u00e9sistance int\u00e9rieure (qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 men\u00e9e, pour l'essentiel, par des civils), et dans une certaine mesure, pour la forme r\u00e9publicaine de gouvernement du pays. Il n'avait pas d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9t\u00e9 facile pour un pacifiste antimilitariste de l'avant-38 (avant \u00ab Munich \u00bb) de s'engager dans la lutte (o\u00f9 le risque \u00e9tait mortel) sous une telle banni\u00e8re (celle d'un officier sup\u00e9rieur dont les id\u00e9es de \u00ab droite \u00bb \u00e9taient notoires). Mais d\u00e9couvrir, d\u00e8s son premier discours devant les d\u00e9put\u00e9s \u00ab consultants \u00bb qu'il \u00e9tait en apparence rest\u00e9 exactement tel qu'il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab avant \u00bb parut \u00e0 mon p\u00e8re insupportable et impardonnable. (Il lui a pardonn\u00e9, cependant je crois, mais bien plus tard, apr\u00e8s sa mort.)\n\nNous nous sommes install\u00e9s dans une rue homonyme de la pr\u00e9c\u00e9dente, rue d'Assas, dans le VIe arrondissement, non loin du S\u00e9nat. En sortant de la maison, et en traversant la rue, il y avait un jardin, le jardin du Luxembourg. C'est \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s tout ce que les deux lieux d'habitation avaient en commun : le nom de la rue, et la pr\u00e9sence d'un jardin. Mais dans la maison nous n'avions cette fois qu'un appartement, en \u00e9tage, et le jardin \u00e9tait un jardin public, ferm\u00e9 de grilles, ferm\u00e9 la nuit, qu'on partageait avec des inconnus, o\u00f9 on ne pouvait presque rien ramasser, to\u00fbcher, o\u00f9 des r\u00e9gions enti\u00e8res \u00e9taient interdites d'acc\u00e8s. Il n'\u00e9tait pas question d'y circuler pieds nus (d'ailleurs il y faisait, trop souvent, froid et mouill\u00e9). C'\u00e9tait un beau grand jardin, je n'en disconviens pas, mais il t\u00e9moignait d'une id\u00e9e de jardin inhabituelle pour nous, et peu sympathique. Je n'ai jamais pardonn\u00e9 au genre \u00ab jardin \u00e0 la fran\u00e7aise \u00bb cette mauvaise surprise initiale, ce d\u00e9sarroi.\n\nEt les arbres n'\u00e9taient pas les m\u00eames. Je n'y ai retrouv\u00e9, en abondance, que les catalpas (?) qui plus tard (au printemps) jonchaient le sol des all\u00e9es de ces coques l\u00e9g\u00e8res (pr\u00e9sentes aussi dans le jardin Canguilhem, \u00e0 Castelnaudary), qui avaient fourni tant de navires minuscules aux escadres de notre lavoir. Mais comment ressusciter ces flottilles hirsutes, essentiellement priv\u00e9es, dans le bassin du Luxembourg, parmi les navires jouets des enfants sages, bien peign\u00e9s, et d\u00e9daigneux ? La seule richesse nouvelle \u00e9tait celle des marrons d'Inde, \u00e0 l'automne, surtout ceux extraits, tout neufs, des bogues piquantes comme des h\u00e9rissons m\u00e9contents, pour la jouissance br\u00e8ve d'un \u00e9clatant vernis, semblable \u00e0 celui des bois cir\u00e9s de la rue de l'Orangerie, mais infiniment pr\u00e9caire, terni \u00e0 l'air avant m\u00eame le retour \u00e0 l'appartement.\n\nEn sortant dans cette nouvelle et m\u00e9diocre rue d'Assas, \u00e0 gauche, \u00e0 quelques pas commen\u00e7ait une petite rue, la rue Duguay-Trouin (elle y commence toujours). C'\u00e9tait une rue extraordinaire qui s'en allait d'abord droit devant elle, comme toutes les rues, mais qui brusquement changeait d'avis, tournait vers la droite de presque quatre-vingt-dix degr\u00e9s, sans changer d'identit\u00e9, d'\u00eatre, sans cesser d'\u00eatre la m\u00eame rue, et revenait rejoindre la rue d'Assas, dont elle \u00e9tait issue. C'est d'elle, de son caprice quasi londonien (les rues de Londres nous en font voir bien d'autres !), autant que l'invaisemblable longueur, r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9e par l'altitude atteinte dans sa num\u00e9rotation, d'une rue comme la rue Vaugirard (qui ne se rencontrait pas loin) qu'on prenait la mesure de la diff\u00e9rence de nature entre Carcassonne (o\u00f9 les rues, du moins dans la partie centrale, sont rectangulairement, sagement dispos\u00e9es, selon une grille rectangulaire, rectiligne), et Paris, la grande ville.\n\nCertes, il y avait le m\u00e9tro (le premier m\u00e9tro de ma collection int\u00e9rieure, presque cinquantenaire maintenant, de m\u00e9tros), et je ne peux cacher qu'il nous impressionna, lui, favorablement. Pour commencer, il avait \u00e9norm\u00e9ment de mal \u00e0 se mettre en marche, \u00e0 quitter les stations, tant ses rames \u00e9taient rares, h\u00e9sitantes, et bourr\u00e9es de voyageurs. Le \u00ab chef de train \u00bb alors, majestueux, responsable, souverain, las et blas\u00e9 sous sa casquette, descendait de son poste de commandement dans le premier wagon, s'approchait des portes d'o\u00f9 pendaient des membres, des paquets, des bas de robe, des parapluies, et poussait jovialement, pour les faire rentrer \u00e0 l'int\u00e9rieur du wagon, ces hernies intestinales de voyageurs. On partait. Devant moi, sur le haut de la porte, entre les t\u00eates adultes, j'apercevais le c\u00e9l\u00e8bre distique m\u00e9tropolitain, un alexandrin suivi d'un octosyllabe (disposition noble, puisqu'elle se rencontre dans les \u00ab stances \u00bb les plus \u00e9motionnelles des trag\u00e9dies classiques) dont la pertinence se trouvait v\u00e9rifi\u00e9e exp\u00e9rimentalement par les attentes avant chaque nouveau d\u00e9part :\n\n\u00ab Le train ne peut partir que les portes ferm\u00e9es.\n\nNe pas g\u00eaner leur fermeture. \u00bb\n\nIl y avait aussi que pas mal de stations, ferm\u00e9es pendant l'Occupation, n'avaient pas encore \u00e9t\u00e9 rouvertes (certaines ne devaient jamais l'\u00eatre !) et je regardais avec \u00e9merveillement, pendant le lent passage du m\u00e9tro le long de leurs quais abandonn\u00e9s, ces \u00eeles d\u00e9sertes aux noms prometteurs de myst\u00e8res \u00ab \u00e0 la Fant\u00f4mas \u00bb (auteur, vous ne l'ignorez pas j'esp\u00e8re, d'un spectaculaire vol de m\u00e9tro) : Cluny, Rennes, Croix-Rouge... Nous \u00ab prenions \u00bb le m\u00e9tro volontiers, seuls, pour le plaisir (et, je le crains, souvent sans ticket). Il semble que l'id\u00e9e d'ins\u00e9curit\u00e9 en \u00e9tait totalement absente (comme si la d\u00e9livrance du territoire national avait inaugur\u00e9 des temps de tranquillit\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, de concorde pacifique et absolue : \u00ab O patrie, \u00f4 concorde entre les citoyens \u00bb (Victor Hugo)). Mon plus jeune fr\u00e8re, Jean-Ren\u00e9, \u00ab Nanet \u00bb, y \u00e9tait particuli\u00e8rement adonn\u00e9. Et il n'avait pas six ans.\n\nNotre appartement, inoccup\u00e9 comme d'innombrables autres (qui le sont toujours : une grande proportion du Paris noble est vide) avait \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab r\u00e9quisitionn\u00e9 \u00bb, au nom des int\u00e9r\u00eats sup\u00e9rieurs de l'\u00c9tat r\u00e9publicain renaissant (la c\u00e9l\u00e8bre et interminable \u00ab crise du logement \u00bb commen\u00e7ait). Mes parents auraient pu y rester, jusqu'\u00e0 leur retraite. Mais, conform\u00e9ment \u00e0 des principes qu'ils estimaient \u00e9galement r\u00e9publicains (il y a l\u00e0 une ressemblance tr\u00e8s nette, malgr\u00e9 la diff\u00e9rence de g\u00e9n\u00e9ration, de mon p\u00e8re avec mon grand-p\u00e8re. Et Pagnol aurait pu leur dire, comme dans _Topaze :_ \u00ab D'o\u00f9 sortez-vous ? \u00bb \u00ab De l'universit\u00e9. \u00bb \u00ab J'aurais d\u00fb m'en douter. \u00bb), dirent \u00e0 la propri\u00e9taire, une dame bien mise et bien d\u00e9vote, comme il en pleut dans ces parages que, bien entendu, quand son fils, prisonnier en Allemagne, serait de retour et voudrait s'y installer, au bout d'un d\u00e9lai raisonnable (le temps de trouver autre chose), ils le lui restitueraient. (Bien entendu \u00e9galement, le fils ne vint aucunement y habiter et la dame loua aussit\u00f4t l'appartement, pr\u00e9levant au passage sur les finances du nouveau locataire ce qu'on appelait un \u00ab pas de porte \u00bb, une somme consid\u00e9rable pour l'\u00e9poque.)\n\nNotre d\u00e9part d\u00e9finitif de Carcassonne eut lieu \u00e0 la fronti\u00e8re des ann\u00e9es 44 et 45. Je ne crois pas, tant il y avait d'effervescente nouveaut\u00e9 dans ce d\u00e9part (la d\u00e9couverte du m\u00e9tro, par exemple, et la lecture du _Canard encha\u00een\u00e9_ , denr\u00e9e presque aussi mythique que les oranges de l'avant-guerre (attention : je ne suis pas en train de pr\u00e9parer le jeu de mots que vous craignez : \u00ab _Canard encha\u00een\u00e9..._ \u00e0 l'orange \u00bb)), que nous ayons pris tout de suite conscience de ce que nous perdions au change. (Plus tard, dans les ann\u00e9es embrouill\u00e9es de l'adolescence, la rue d'Assas (Carcassonne) devint la figure d'un paradis perdu, le vert paradis de l'enfance, et la rue d'Assas (Paris) celle d'un Purgatoire (on aurait difficilement pu la qualifier d'Enfer).)\n\nLa France \u00e9tait libre, mais nous, nous avions perdu une grande partie de l'immense libert\u00e9 dont nous avions profit\u00e9 dans les derniers mois de l'Occupation. Nous nous sommes trouv\u00e9s, par force, civilis\u00e9s en souliers, en horaires disciplin\u00e9s et scolaires (beaucoup plus anonymes, contraignants que ceux de nos \u00e9coles carcassonnaises). Il faisait froid. Il faisait toujours froid. De l'enfermement des classes nous sortions pour retrouver l'enfermement des pi\u00e8ces de l'appartement (d'o\u00f9 nul ne pouvait, en enjambant tout simplement un balcon, ou le rebord d'une fen\u00eatre, fuir, en se laissant glisser le long du figuier, vers l'am\u00e9nit\u00e9 v\u00e9g\u00e9tale d'un jardin familial prot\u00e9g\u00e9 ou, plus loin encore, se perdre entre les perdreaux dans les vignes, les thyms, les garrigues). Nous nous sentions perdus. Comme des animaux en pareil cas, bien entendu, nous nous sommes mis \u00e0 grogner, \u00e0 bouder, et \u00e0 mordre (m\u00e9taphoriquement, je le pr\u00e9cise). Je retrouve, et je cite en une incise quelques fragments d'un \u00ab Trait\u00e9 des disputes \u00bb que j'ai compos\u00e9, en quelques semaines, en f\u00e9vrier 46, avant notre d\u00e9part salvateur pour Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Son inspiration auto-th\u00e9rapeuthique est \u00e9vidente. Mais il montre, en m\u00eame temps, que ce souvenir d'une \u00e9poque d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able que j'ai conserv\u00e9 correspondait \u00e0 quelque r\u00e9alit\u00e9 contemporaine.\n\n## 48 La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de cette loi de l'\u00e2me.\n\nMais il y avait une autre raison encore, plus particuli\u00e8re, plus personnelle, \u00e0 mon d\u00e9senchantement (c'est bien d'un d\u00e9senchantement qu'il s'agit : l'exil hors d'un jardin, ensuite imagin\u00e9 \u00e9d\u00e9nique). D\u00e9crivant ma lecture avide de _Rocambole_ , et particuli\u00e8rement de la lettre d'amour re\u00e7ue par l'anti-h\u00e9ros, quelques semaines avant les \u00e9v\u00e9nements rapport\u00e9s ci-dessus, j'ai \u00e9crit (ou j'\u00e9crirai, cela d\u00e9pend du point de vue auquel on se place : l'\u00e9v\u00e9nement de lecture en question est ant\u00e9rieur, dans la chronologie \u00ab r\u00e9elle \u00bb du temps rapport\u00e9. Je l'ai d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9crit alors que j'\u00e9cris ceci. Il est toutefois post\u00e9rieur si on suit le d\u00e9roulement lin\u00e9aire du livre. Mais il est, en un autre sens encore, de nouveau ant\u00e9rieur, puisque la premi\u00e8re Bifurcation, o\u00f9 il figure, s'ins\u00e8re, dans ma composition narrative, entre les chapitres 1 et 2 de la partie \u00ab r\u00e9cit \u00bb. Enfin, il est ant\u00e9rieur ou post\u00e9rieur dans une autre lecture, la v\u00f4tre, selon le mode de parcours du livre que vous choisirez),\n\nj'ai donc \u00e9crit (pour prendre place dans cette Bifurcation) : \u00ab Je me p\u00e9n\u00e9trai avidement de cette loi de l'\u00e2me : \"six pages serr\u00e9es ! Elle m'aime !\", moi qui, bien qu'amoureux, n'\u00e9tais gu\u00e8re en mesure de recevoir de tels gages. \u00bb\n\nEn 1943 Marie (Noilhac), qui avait veill\u00e9 sur nous, enfants, depuis Tulle, \u00e9tait devenue (tout en restant toujours pour nous Marie) Mme Bonafous, s'\u00e9tant mari\u00e9e et \u00e9tant partie vivre dans le Minervois. Antoinette (Hernandez) la rempla\u00e7a. C'est d'elle que j'\u00e9tais, ou r\u00eavais d'\u00eatre (ce qui y ressemble beaucoup), amoureux. Elle n'avait pas vingt ans. Elle \u00e9tait venue \u00e0 Paris avec nous, mais pour peu de temps. Elle allait partir, car elle \u00e9tait fianc\u00e9e. Tel \u00e9tait le n\u0153ud fatal de mon drame int\u00e9rieur.\n\nIl y avait pire encore : la diminution s\u00e9v\u00e8re de notre espace vital qu'avait entra\u00een\u00e9e notre transfert de l'une des rues d'Assas \u00e0 l'autre avait eu pour cons\u00e9quence qu'il m'\u00e9tait devenu impossible, la nuit, de sortir de mon lit pour aller dans le sien, ce que je faisais on ne peut plus tranquillement \u00e0 Carcassonne, n'ayant pour cela qu'\u00e0 ouvrir la porte de la chambre et sortir sur le palier. Antoinette n'avait jamais eu dans sa famille de chambre \u00e0 elle et les t\u00e9n\u00e8bres sous le toit la trouvaient mod\u00e9r\u00e9ment rassur\u00e9e : des pies, des \u00e9cureuils marchaient parfois au-dessus de sa t\u00eate, je ne parle pas des orages galopants. Nous avions eu ainsi avantage \u00e0 ce partage, quoique dans des dispositions d'esprit fort diff\u00e9rentes.\n\nJe n'avais pas dissimul\u00e9 \u00e0 Antoinette l'intensit\u00e9 incandescente de mes sentiments, puisant chez Walter Scott, Hugo ou Th\u00e9ophile Gautier les modes d'expression indispensables, dans le registre stylistiquement \u00e9videmment le plus \u00e9lev\u00e9 et le plus vague, ce qui ne surprendra pas, \u00e9tant donn\u00e9 les mod\u00e8les \u00e0 ma disposition. Elle riait. Cela me vexait beaucoup. Mais j'avais onze ans, et elle riait. Je n'ignorais pas (apr\u00e8s discussions approfondies \u00e0 l'\u00e9cole ou au lyc\u00e9e avec des camarades qui \u00e9taient tous plus \u00e2g\u00e9s que moi) qu'il existait d'autres aspects, tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rents, des relations amoureuses. Mais mon peu d'ann\u00e9es et l'\u00e9tat pr\u00e9-matrimonial de l'objet de ma passion sentimentale m'interdisaient d'aspirer \u00e0 la plupart d'entre eux.\n\nIl me semble que je n'\u00e9tais pas jaloux du fianc\u00e9. Certes, c'\u00e9tait un Espagnol plut\u00f4t farouche et peu causant. Et comme nous allions tous les trois ensemble au cin\u00e9ma, les samedis ou dimanches apr\u00e8s-midi, je servais de petit fr\u00e8re de rechange et de chaperon, ce qui ne devait pas me rendre tr\u00e8s sympathique \u00e0 ses yeux. Antoinette s'asseyait entre nous. C'est elle qui choisissait les films. Ce furent les premi\u00e8res exp\u00e9riences cin\u00e9matographiques de mon existence. Son choix se portait invariablement sur des films sentimentaux, et dans ce registre sa pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence allait, non moins immanquablement aux triomphes de l'\u00e9poque, les grands \u00ab romans-photos \u00bb anim\u00e9s autour de chansons, les succ\u00e8s de Tino Rossi : j'ai vu _Marinella_ trois fois, et _Naples aux baisers de feu_ au moins quatre. J'entends fort bien \u00e0 cette minute l'imp\u00e9rissable voix sirupeuse glouglouter dans mon oreille : \u00ab Marinella, \/ reste encore dans mes bras \/ avec toi je veux jusqu'au jour \/ danser cette rumba d'amour\/... \u00bb. Ah Tino ! Ah la voix de Tino ! ses yeux de merlan frit ! sa voix couleur de gomina argentine !\n\nJe ne cacherai pas qu'une fr\u00e9quentation aussi assidue et \u00e0 mes yeux excessive des aventures tinorossiennes me posait quelques probl\u00e8mes esth\u00e9tiques (le fianc\u00e9 \u00e9tait, lui, carr\u00e9ment exasp\u00e9r\u00e9 et portait sur le chanteur des jugements qui, tout exprim\u00e9s en la langue espagnole qu'ils fussent, ne me paraissaient pas \u00e9chapper enti\u00e8rement au registre de la grossi\u00e8ret\u00e9, ce dont Antoinette le punissait en boudant et en me prenant par la main dans les all\u00e9es o\u00f9 nous marchions ensuite). Il y avait une nette distance entre la fl\u00fbte de la _Suite en si_ d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9 et \u00ab Elle n'a que seize ans mais \/ faut voir comme \/ elle affole d\u00e9j\u00e0 \/ tous les hommes \/ oh Catarinetta belle \/ tchi tchi... \u00bb, de l'autre. Je ne pouvais \u00e9viter de situer (adorable Antoinette ! _sed magis arnica veritas !)_ la voix du grand charmeur dans une cat\u00e9gorie musicale que mes parents d\u00e9signaient du terme de \u00ab d\u00e9gueulando \u00bb. (Ce qui ne m'emp\u00eachait pas d'avoir de l'indulgence attendrie pour les murmures _marshmallow_ des _whispering barytones_. Il est vrai qu'ils chantaient, eux, en anglais et qu'alors, pour moi, tout ce qui \u00e9tait britannique \u00e9tait sacr\u00e9.)\n\n(Mon d\u00e9dain s'\u00e9tendit d'ailleurs tr\u00e8s vite beaucoup plus loin, \u00e0 toutes les \u00ab chansons d'amour \u00bb du r\u00e9pertoire fran\u00e7ais (y compris donc, \u00e0 Charles Trenet, et je fus fort surpris plus tard de d\u00e9couvrir que les surr\u00e9alistes avaient de l'admiration pour lui.) C'est de ma part un jugement qui ne devait peut-\u00eatre pas tout \u00e0 l'influence parentale directe. On m'a rapport\u00e9 (souvenir externe donc) qu'\u00e0 quatre ou cinq ans, quand ma tante Ren\u00e9e (alors dans une p\u00e9riode adolescente et sentimentale) chantait, dans les intervalles oscillatoires entre son r\u00e9gime et ses chocolats, avec justesse mais conviction un air passablement dix-huiti\u00e8me dont les paroles commencent par \u00ab Au bord d'une fontaine \/ Tirsis br\u00fblan-ant d'amour \/ Contait ainsi sa pei-ei-neu \/ aux \u00e9chos d'a-a-lentour \/ F\u00e9licit\u00e9 pass\u00e9-\u00e9-eu \/ qui ne-eu-peu-eut revenir-eu \/ Tourment de ma pens\u00e9-\u00e9-\u00e9-eu \/ que n'ai-\u00ea-je en vou-ous perdant \/ perdu le sou-ouvenir ! \/ \u00bb, je ponctuais son ex\u00e9cution, infiniment convaincue et langoureuse, de deux miaulements hyperaigus, l'un \u00e0 la fin du deuxi\u00e8me vers, \u00ab br\u00fblant de miaou \u00bb et l'autre, redoubl\u00e9, \u00e0 la fin finale de la strophe \u00ab perdu le sou-ouve-miaou-miaou \u00bb, ce qui avait pour effet, sans doute recherch\u00e9, de torpiller son \u00e9lan (heureusement, car il y avait de nombreuses autres strophes dans la chanson).\n\nMais en 1944 je ne manquais pas une seconde des longs baisers \u00ab sur la bouche \u00bb qu'\u00e9changeaient, dans _Naples aux baisers de feu_ , Tino et la volcanique, tumultueuse Viviane Romance. Ils ne cessaient d'enflammer de leur lave mon imagination. Et voil\u00e0 que, dans le froid comprim\u00e9 de notre inhospitalier appartement, sous les cieux froids et lourds, sous le couvercle pluvieux des rues parisiennes, il me fallait dire adieu au soleil, \u00e0 Tino, \u00e0 Antoinette. J'avais le spleen.\n\n## 49 L'an se rajeunissait\n\nJe me souviens encore d'un sonnet de Ronsard, appris il y a tr\u00e8s longtemps. Je me le r\u00e9citais pendant l'hiver de 45-46, en traversant le jardin du Luxembourg. Il faisait froid, les fontaines m\u00eame avaient gel\u00e9. Je ne l'avais pas d\u00e9couvert moi-m\u00eame : nous \u00e9tudiions Ronsard dans ma classe de seconde du lyc\u00e9e Henri-IV, o\u00f9 Guy Harnois, le meilleur ami de mon p\u00e8re, \u00e9tait professeur de premi\u00e8re. Il m'avait fait lire ce po\u00e8me, et r\u00e9cita pour moi quelques vers d'un autre (ce n'\u00e9taient pas les premiers du po\u00e8me), ce qui fait que j'ai mis tr\u00e8s longtemps \u00e0 les retrouver, et \u00e0 comprendre pourquoi ils s'attachaient irr\u00e9sistiblement \u00e0 l'image du bassin du Luxembourg. Les voici :\n\nEt rompant leurs cheveux, frapp\u00e8rent leurs poitrines\n\nSur le haut d'H\u00e9licon languissantes d'\u00e9moi\n\nEt pleur\u00e8rent le jour qu'elles furent divines\n\nPour ne savoir mourir de douleur comme toi.\n\n(Tels il les disait, ou tels je crois me rappeler qu'il les disait.) Ils figurent dans l'\u00e9pitaphe d'une dame nomm\u00e9e Artuse, pr\u00e9nom que Ronsard associe \u00e0 la nymphe Ar\u00e9thuse, et le po\u00e8me commence ainsi : \u00ab Ci-g\u00eet, qui le croira, une morte fontaine... \u00bb. L\u00e0, vraisemblablement, est le pourquoi de mon association, face \u00e0 l'eau morte de la fontaine sous le gel.\n\nLe sonnet\n\nL'an se rajeunissait en sa verte jouvence\n\nQuand je m'\u00e9pris de vous ma Sinope cruelle\n\nSeize ans \u00e9taient la fleur de votre \u00e2ge nouvelle\n\nEt votre teint sentait encore son enfance.\n\nVous aviez d'une infante encor la contenance\n\nLa parole et le pas votre bouche \u00e9tait belle\n\nVotre front et vos mains dignes d'une immortelle\n\nEt votre, \u0153il, qui me fait tr\u00e9passer quand j'y pense.\n\nAmour qui ce jour-l\u00e0 si grandes beaut\u00e9s vit\n\nDans un marbre en mon c\u0153ur d'un trait les \u00e9crivit\n\nEt si pour le jour d'hui vos beaut\u00e9s si parfaites\n\nNe sont comme autrefois je n'en suis moins ravi\n\nCar je n'ai pas \u00e9gard \u00e0 cela que vous \u00eates\n\nMais au seul souvenir des beaut\u00e9s que je vis.\n\nJe le recopie ainsi dans un cahier o\u00f9 je l'ai retrouv\u00e9 r\u00e9cemment. Et c'est ainsi que je l'ai gard\u00e9 en m\u00e9moire. Je ne le pr\u00e9senterais pas aujourd'hui de cette fa\u00e7on. Je respecterais l'orthographe de l'original, je r\u00e9tablirais la ponctuation (je n'ai utilis\u00e9 que des points dans ma \u00ab version \u00bb, ou presque, en accord avec les habitudes de la po\u00e9sie dite \u00ab moderne \u00bb (\u00e0 l'exception des deux virgules du vers 8)), je supprimerais les blancs dix-neuvi\u00e9mistes entre les strophes et leurs alignements verticaux. J'ai devant moi le tome X de l'\u00e9dition chronologique monumentale \u00ab Laumonier \u00bb, o\u00f9 le sonnet appara\u00eet, au second livre des Meslanges, \u00e0 la date de 1559. Les vers 4 (\u00ab Et vostre teint... \u00bb) et 8 (\u00ab Et vostre \u0153il... \u00bb) sont des innovations de la version de 1560. Ce sont eux qui m'enthousiasmaient le plus \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque, peut-\u00eatre parce qu'il est possible de leur donner une coupe hugolienne, anachronique, que j'ai toujours adopt\u00e9e pour ma r\u00e9citation int\u00e9rieure : \u00ab Et votre teint \/ sentait encore \/ son enfance \u00bb. \u00ab Et votre \u0153il \/ qui me fait tr\u00e9passer \/ quand j'y pense \u00bb (d'o\u00f9 la notation des deux virgules qui constituent, en leur interpr\u00e9tation rythmique, une infraction, \u00e9galement moderniste, \u00e0 la loi s\u00e9v\u00e8re des c\u00e9sures). Hugo \u00e9tait alors ma r\u00e9f\u00e9rence presque unique.\n\nLe trajet le plus ordinaire de la rue d'Assas au Lyc\u00e9e, situ\u00e9 si noblement sur la montagne Sainte-Genevi\u00e8ve, derri\u00e8re le Panth\u00e9on, supposait la travers\u00e9e du Luxembourg. Imm\u00e9diatement \u00e0 droite dans l'all\u00e9e, apr\u00e8s la porte d'entr\u00e9e, se trouvait une petite cahute \u00e0 bricoles, qui vendait des cartes postales, des jouets minuscules, des babioles destin\u00e9es \u00e0 la population enfantine du jardin, et surtout, surtout des bonbons. C'\u00e9tait un lieu b\u00e9ni pour apaiser une faim irr\u00e9pressible de sucre, inassouvie pendant plus de quatre ans. **Je vois les bonbons aux fruits, translucides, parall\u00e9l\u00e9pip\u00e9diques, que je conservais comme un tr\u00e9sor dans mes poches, parfois s'incrustant de fragments de laine, et dont la carapace dure, cristallis\u00e9e, laissait en fondant la langue p\u00e9n\u00e9trer la masse interne douce, agglutinante, fruiti\u00e8re, sirupeuse**. C'\u00e9tait une sorte de protection enfantine contre la rudesse du climat lyc\u00e9en.\n\nEn ces ann\u00e9es, et dans cet environnement, o\u00f9 je ne connaissais personne, o\u00f9 l'esp\u00e8ce de famille \u00e9tendue qu'avait \u00e9t\u00e9 pour moi l'\u00c9cole annexe, ou m\u00eame les petites classes du lyc\u00e9e de Carcassonne ne me prot\u00e9geait plus, ma jeunesse excessive (j'avais deux \u00e0 trois ans de moins que la plupart de mes condisciples) devint brusquement d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able. Je me sentis \u00e0 part, \u00e9cart\u00e9, d\u00e9pass\u00e9, sans doute moins intellectuellement que socialement (je parle de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 lyc\u00e9enne). J'\u00e9tais isol\u00e9, je le restai, je me mis \u00e0 r\u00eaver d'un ailleurs, je me r\u00e9fugiai dans la lecture, je me persuadai du caract\u00e8re n\u00e9cessairement s\u00e9parant de la po\u00e9sie, que j'avais d\u00e9j\u00e0 choisie comme activit\u00e9, comme discipline, comme ambition, comme monde. Je me contentai d'une activit\u00e9 scolaire moyenne, sans efforts, sans brillant. Je devins incapable de travail efficace, soutenu, tenace (avant, jusqu'\u00e0 la classe de troisi\u00e8me, je n'en avais pas ressenti le besoin). Je ne fus pas un mauvais \u00e9l\u00e8ve (cela aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 une position trop d\u00e9pendante de l'institution elle-m\u00eame, g\u00e9n\u00e9ratrice de conflits innombrables, beaucoup trop absorbants), je fus plut\u00f4t un \u00e9l\u00e8ve indiff\u00e9rent.\n\nJe marque une exception notable \u00e0 cette r\u00e8gle du moindre effort (qui fut la mienne, h\u00e9las, tr\u00e8s, trop longtemps). Pendant quelques mois de l'ann\u00e9e scolaire 45-46 (ma premi\u00e8re classe de seconde, que mes parents me firent redoubler \u00e0 Saint-Germain-en-Laye, ayant r\u00e9fl\u00e9chi aux d\u00e9fauts de mon \u00ab avance \u00bb scolaire, voulant les corriger, mais ce fut sans grands effets b\u00e9n\u00e9fiques, car je m'ennuyai alors scolairement encore plus), je v\u00e9cus une exp\u00e9rience v\u00e9ritablement extraordinaire, due \u00e0 la personnalit\u00e9 exceptionnelle (et quasiment pathologique) d'un professeur de fran\u00e7ais-latin-grec. Il s'appelait Chauvelon. Son originalit\u00e9 spectaculaire \u00e9tait son attachement maniaque, sa passion d\u00e9bordante pour la t\u00e2che qui \u00e9tait la sienne, dont il comprenait les exigences bien au-del\u00e0 de ce que le plus fanatique des chefs d'\u00e9tablissement ou des inspecteurs g\u00e9n\u00e9raux aurait pu r\u00e9clamer de lui. Mais le mieux est que je d\u00e9crive, simplement, les m\u00e9canismes de sa m\u00e9thode, sur un exemple.\n\nIl nous donnait, disons, une version latine (en classe, un jour de composition, ou \u00e0 traduire \u00e0 la maison). Nous traduisions, nous remettions notre copie (nous devions remettre notre copie : si nous n'avions pas fini pour le jour pr\u00e9vu, qu'\u00e0 cela ne tienne, ce serait la fois suivante. Il l'attendait, et la r\u00e9clamait). Il corrigeait nos copies, nous les rendait avec la note, proposait, oralement une solution aux diff\u00e9rents probl\u00e8mes pos\u00e9s par le texte de C\u00e9sar, de Tite-Live, de Tacite m\u00eame. Rien, jusque-l\u00e0, ne s'\u00e9loignait du commun (sinon peut-\u00eatre, la fr\u00e9quence impressionnante des \u00e9preuves). Nous emportions nos copies et (c'est l\u00e0 que les choses commencent) nous devions ramener, une semaine plus tard par exemple, une nouvelle copie de la m\u00eame version, corrig\u00e9e au mieux de notre compr\u00e9hension de nos fautes, et de ses \u00e9claircissements. Il emportait cette nouvelle copie, la corrigeait, nous la rendait avec ses observations. Si l'\u00e9tat obtenu \u00e9tait jug\u00e9 par lui satisfaisant, parfait, ce travail-l\u00e0 \u00e9tait termin\u00e9. Sinon, eh bien, il fallait recommencer, recommencer encore. Il ne rel\u00e2chait jamais son attention. Il ne faisait gr\u00e2ce d'aucune \u00e9tape, d'aucun stade dans l'approximation sans cesse croissante de la perfection. Comme nous avions \u00e0 faire non seulement des versions, mais des th\u00e8mes, non seulement des versions et th\u00e8mes mais des dissertations fran\u00e7aises (pour lesquelles le \u00ab graal \u00bb de la perfection \u00e9tait encore plus insaisissable), on peut imaginer la somme d'efforts que cela pouvait repr\u00e9senter pour nous.\n\nIl appelait cela des \u00ab Petits Travaux \u00bb. Aucune tactique dilatoire (rendre la m\u00eame copie, donner des mots d'excuse, \u00eatre absent) ne le d\u00e9tournait de son but : nous obliger \u00e0 achever, au point voulu par lui, la mise en forme des \u00ab petits travaux \u00bb , de tous les \u00ab petits travaux \u00bb. Il venait en classe avec des valises, dans lesquelles chaque \u00e9preuve, chaque \u00e9tat individuel d'une \u00e9preuve \u00e9tait class\u00e9. Il n'oubliait aucune copie, il savait \u00e0 tout moment o\u00f9 exactement en \u00e9tait chacun de nous. Il relisait nos m\u00e9chantes \u00e9critures lentement, minutieusement. Il \u00e9tait fou. (J'ai su par notre ami Harnois, son coll\u00e8gue, qu'on le trouva un jour, en pleine nuit, \u00e9gar\u00e9 au milieu de ses \u00ab petits travaux \u00bb, ne s'y reconnaissant plus, et pleurant. Telle fut sa fin.)\n\nJe ne sais quelle fut son influence sur ma mani\u00e8re d'\u00e9crire, en prose fran\u00e7aise (je pense qu'elle fut maigre, que je suis rest\u00e9 r\u00e9fractaire \u00e0 son id\u00e9al stylistique, un peu brutal). Mais mes progr\u00e8s en latin furent prodigieux. Je ne vivais plus qu'en latin. Et un jour, pris d'une fr\u00e9n\u00e9sie passionn\u00e9e pour les tournures les plus compulsives du style de Tite-Live, j'entrepris de composer \u00e0 mon tour une \u00ab Histoire \u00bb, en latin, que j'ai encore (ou encor).\n\n## 50 Une, deux, trois ou quatre fois l'an je pose ma valise\n\nUne, deux, trois ou quatre fois l'an je pose ma valise dans la chambre haute, \u00e9troite, de cet h\u00f4tel de Londres, Cartwright Gardens, toujours le m\u00eame, et je regarde par la fen\u00eatre le demi-cercle de rue o\u00f9 le lendemain matin pendant une, deux ou trois semaines je passerai avec le _Times_ un, deux ou trois \u00e9tages plus bas, \u00e0 l'heure vide o\u00f9 les cartons de lait viennent d'\u00eatre d\u00e9pos\u00e9s devant la porte des maisons, des h\u00f4tels, de cet h\u00f4tel, toujours le m\u00eame, o\u00f9 je viens, quand je viens \u00e0 Londres. Dans la derni\u00e8re des rues que je prends, en revenant de la British Library, Marchmont Street, il y a un pub, le Lord John Russell. Il a des tables de bois sur le trottoir, un, deux ou trois verres de bi\u00e8re ti\u00e8de pas tout \u00e0 fait vides, abandonn\u00e9s sur les tables quelques minutes avant la fermeture, _closing time_ , des fauteuils bas, de tr\u00e8s basses banquettes crev\u00e9es o\u00f9 on s'assied entre les vieux gentlemen locaux presque inaudibles et quasi inarticul\u00e9s, et deux ou trois copines habill\u00e9es de verts et de roses inimaginables qui bavardent avec la serveuse dans le m\u00eame style. Je regarde la mousse grise et brune de la Guinness qui a coul\u00e9 sur la table basse, la couleur du bois est celle du _best bitter_ ou bien le _best bitter_ a donn\u00e9 au bois sa couleur de bi\u00e8re, semblable \u00e0 celle de deux ou trois _pennies_ rest\u00e9s sur la table. Je marche jusqu'\u00e0 la porte de l'h\u00f4tel dans la nuit ind\u00e9cise d'ao\u00fbt, sous les arbres feuillus et sombres.\n\nJe pose sur le lit \u00e9troit de la chambre haute, \u00e9troite, les sacs plastiques pleins de livres que je viens d'acheter, chez Dillon's, ou Waterstone, Books etc., ou Murder one, ou Foyle's, je sors un \u00e0 un les livres en m'allongeant, sur le lit, la t\u00eate sur l'unique oreiller \u00e9troit appuy\u00e9 verticalement contre le papier peint du mur, les livres dispos\u00e9s sur le sol au pied du lit bas juste devant la porte. J'\u00e9teins la lampe et je regarde le plafond \u00e0 la lueur du demi-cercle de nuit dans la chambre, dans la vacance et la vacuit\u00e9 paisible de la nuit j'entends la voix distante et pour moi seul de Big Ben, une, ou deux, ou trois, quatre fois ses quatre notes, une seule fois descendantes. Telle est, du moins, ma routine habituelle.\n\nMais hier au soir j'ai allum\u00e9 la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision, pr\u00e9sence nouvelle et innovation r\u00e9cente due aux ambitions dangereusement modernisantes de la jeune Mrs. Cockle qui dirige maintenant, en collaboration avec la propri\u00e9taire de toujours, Mrs. Bessolo, les destin\u00e9es du Crescent Hotel. J'ai allum\u00e9 la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision et j'ai regard\u00e9, sur le mouchoir de l'\u00e9cran, dans la nuit d'ao\u00fbt, une longue suite d'images-souvenirs, d'ersatz d'images cin\u00e9matographiques, presque toutes blanches et noires, et muettes : des bouts de films d'amateurs tourn\u00e9s par six soldats de la Wehrmacht pendant leur campagne de Russie, entre 1941 et 1944, conserv\u00e9s par eux dans leurs bo\u00eetes \u00e0 souvenirs pendant quarante et quelques ann\u00e9es, montr\u00e9s et comment\u00e9s par eux aujourd'hui devant les cam\u00e9ras discr\u00e8tes de la BBC. J'ai vu les lourds et vieux visages d'aujourd'hui devant les jeunes et ind\u00e9l\u00e9biles visages des vaincus et des vainqueurs, devant les ruines, les bl\u00e9s, les neiges, les fleuves, les canons, les nuages, les prisonniers, les trains de permissionnaires, les r\u00e9giments en marche sur les ponts, les chars incendi\u00e9s, les morts, la terre noire, et la boue, la boue, la boue. J'ai vu un avion russe tomber du ciel dans un champ resplendissant, ensoleill\u00e9, immobile. J'ai vu des jeunes hommes blonds s'\u00e9clabousser en riant dans la mer (Crim\u00e9e, 1942). J'ai vu des femmes vieilles et jeunes jeter cadavre apr\u00e8s cadavre dans une fosse, jeter des pellet\u00e9es de terre sur des cadavres de soldats russes, ukrainiens, sovi\u00e9tiques, leurs maris, leurs fr\u00e8res, leurs voisins, leurs amants, sans lever les yeux un seul instant, sans regarder vers nous, vers le devant de l'\u00e9cran color\u00e9 futur. J'ai vu le vieil homme dans son magasin de jouets, tranquille dans son fauteuil, aujourd'hui, qui avait film\u00e9, tranquillement, cela.\n\nUn de ces films \u00e9tait en couleurs : les couleurs \u00e9tranges d'une pellicule allemande de 1938, saisies par des cam\u00e9ras anglaises de 1987 filmant le film de l'hiver russe de 41-42, restitu\u00e9es sur un \u00e9cran de t\u00e9l\u00e9vision d'h\u00f4tel \u00e0 Londres en ao\u00fbt 1991. Et pourtant rien ne pourrait m'appara\u00eetre comme plus v\u00e9ridiquement peint des couleurs du pass\u00e9. Et des deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s d'une route d\u00e9serte on voyait, \u00e0 perte de vue une neige : \u00e9blouissante, cotonneuse, fumeuse, et jaune.\n\nDe cette image, de cette neige du fond de la guerre, \u00e0 la fois irr\u00e9elle et irr\u00e9cusable, je retourne \u00e0 celle, pas moins irr\u00e9cusable, pas moins irr\u00e9elle, enferm\u00e9e, contemporaine de l'autre, dans ma t\u00eate et rayonnant, arrosant de son incessante lumi\u00e8re, de son illumination ininterrompue le d\u00e9but de ce r\u00e9cit. Je mets ces neiges en parall\u00e8le. Le hasard essentiel cr\u00e9\u00e9 par MMrs. Cockle et Bessolo dans la chambre 37 du Crescent Hotel met ces deux neiges en parall\u00e8le. La neige paisible du jardin de guerre \u00e0 Carcassonne est-elle, comme la neige jaune du soldat, une neige-\u00e9cran, le masque d'autres souvenirs ? Je ne crois pas. Mais ce qui est l\u00e0, sans cesse, sous la lumi\u00e8re neigeuse de mon souvenir, quand je descends, par l\u00e9vitation, dans l'air pur et froid du jardin, depuis la chambre \u00e0 la vitre rev\u00eatue des fleurs du gel, c'est bien cette autre neige, la neige de guerre, mortelle et tremp\u00e9e de sang : celle de Leningrad, Stalingrad, Orel, Koursk, Velikie-Louki, Briansk.\n\nEt ce n'est donc pas seulement le d\u00e9part de Carcassonne, l'abandon de ce jardin qui d\u00e9finit pour moi les limites, les murs du th\u00e9\u00e2tre de ma m\u00e9moire enfantine, dont j'ai dispos\u00e9 ici les lieux. Quand de son arrangement de places et d'images j'ai b\u00e2ti autrefois l'architecture du **Projet** , je ne me suis pas arr\u00eat\u00e9 (chronologiquement) \u00e0 ce qui fut la cause directe de mon d\u00e9part, de mon exil, la Lib\u00e9ration, ni \u00e0 l'instant de ce d\u00e9part lui-m\u00eame, au dernier regard jet\u00e9 sur le portail referm\u00e9, sur le grand pin, mais je suis all\u00e9, comme je vais le faire dans ce r\u00e9cit, un peu plus loin, aux premiers jours de mai 1945. Le 8 mai 1945 est la date, conventionnellement choisie pour marquer la fin de la guerre. Mais ce n'est pas non plus l\u00e0 que je m'arr\u00eaterai.\n\nLe 1er mai de cette ann\u00e9e-l\u00e0 j'ai particip\u00e9 \u00e0 ma premi\u00e8re manifestation de rue. Ce n'\u00e9tait pas une manifestation protestataire, mais la marche d'une foule immense, joyeuse, inconsciente, de la place de la Concorde \u00e0 celle de la Nation : l'unique fois, sans doute, dans ce pays o\u00f9, \u00e0 cette date, comm\u00e9morative des luttes ouvri\u00e8res d'un autre si\u00e8cle, il fut donn\u00e9 un sens plus vaste (certains, dans cette foule, pensaient, illusoirement, que c'\u00e9tait le m\u00eame). Et ce fut comme la floraison ultime de l'id\u00e9e de \u00ab premier mai \u00bb (malgr\u00e9 le froid inhabituel : il tomba m\u00eame quelques flocons), avant que les m\u00e9tastases du cancer stalinien, lentement mais s\u00fbrement, n'ach\u00e8vent de le priver, peut-\u00eatre pour toujours, de tout sens. (C'est aussi pourquoi je m'arr\u00eate dans les environs de ces journ\u00e9es, que je ne poursuis pas jusqu'\u00e0 l'\u00e9clair terrible, les \u00ab mille soleils \u00bb d'Hiroshima, dernier acte de la guerre contre l'Axe, premier acte de la \u00ab guerre froide \u00bb, ni jusqu'au c\u00e9l\u00e8bre \u00ab Discours de Fulton \u00bb o\u00f9 Winston Churchill inventa la m\u00e9taphore, strat\u00e9giquement g\u00e9niale, du \u00ab Rideau de fer \u00bb.)\n\nC'\u00e9tait ma premi\u00e8re manifestation sur la voie publique, et on y conduisait les enfants. Nul ne s'y opposait. C'\u00e9tait la deuxi\u00e8me \u00e0 laquelle j'assistais. Mais je n'avais vu la premi\u00e8re, place Davila, que de loin, depuis les All\u00e9es. J'avais admir\u00e9 les manifestants antip\u00e9tainistes de 1942, devant le monument aux morts, bien moins nombreux, certes, que ceux du 1er mai d'apr\u00e8s la Lib\u00e9ration (et \u00e0 cette c\u00e9r\u00e9monie-l\u00e0 on n'avait pas amen\u00e9 les enfants) : une manifestation organis\u00e9e par notre ami Albert Picolo, qui lui avait valu d'\u00eatre arr\u00eat\u00e9 par la police vichyste et exil\u00e9, en r\u00e9sidence surveill\u00e9e (cette r\u00e9sistance, encore balbutiante, n'avait pas paru trop dangereuse). Mais il avait continu\u00e9 dans la m\u00eame voie. Et cette fois, ce furent les Allemands qui l'arr\u00eat\u00e8rent, et l'envoy\u00e8rent \u00e0 Buchenwald.\n\nEn avril 45, les premiers d\u00e9port\u00e9s survivants des camps nazis commenc\u00e8rent \u00e0 arriver. Et ceux qui \u00e9taient \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s capables de tenir debout \u00e9taient re\u00e7us \u00e0 l'h\u00f4tel Lutetia o\u00f9 leurs familles, ou leurs amis proches, venaient les reconna\u00eetre (il fallait, parfois, les reconna\u00eetre, comme on vient \u00e0 la morgue dire d'un noy\u00e9, d'un suicid\u00e9 : c'est lui), et les ramener parmi les vivants. Et c'est ainsi (et disons que c'\u00e9tait dans le beau mois de mai) qu'un jour mon p\u00e8re apprit qu'Albert Picolo \u00e9tait parmi ceux-l\u00e0. Il est all\u00e9 \u00e0 l'h\u00f4tel Lut\u00e9tia. Il m'a emmen\u00e9 avec lui. Il voulait que je voie. **J'ai vu**.\n\n# INSERTIONS\n\n* * *\n\n* * *\n\n# incises\n\n# (DU CHAPITRE 1)\n\n## 51 (\u00a7 1) un r\u00e9seau v\u00e9g\u00e9tal tout en nervures, une v\u00e9g\u00e9tation de surface, une poign\u00e9e de foug\u00e8res plates... La carte, le r\u00e9seau sensible des lignes de la main ne s'y imprimait pas.\n\nL'image appelait cette comparaison, image sur image, et je ne l'ai pas refus\u00e9e. Car la comparaison elle-m\u00eame appelle une autre branche de cet ouvrage, dont le titre g\u00e9n\u00e9ral est **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** (ce que vous lisez est la branche deuxi\u00e8me) : **\u00ab carte routi\u00e8re d'un pays..., r\u00e9seau hydrographique... squelette..., nervure dans la feuille verte \u00bb**. Dans ce contexte-l\u00e0, c'est une image, & aussi une imagination de l'ouvrage entier qui m'appara\u00eet, du **'grand incendie de Londres'** comme parcours dans le **Projet** (ce **Projet** dont la branche un entreprend de raconter, et raconte (en partie) la **destruction** ). Il me fallait le signaler ici, en vertu de cette sorte de pacte que j'ai sign\u00e9 (unilat\u00e9ralement, je l'avoue) avec mon lecteur. Mais comment ?\n\nLa branche un de mon livre s\u00e9parait du **r\u00e9cit** proprement dit deux esp\u00e8ces d' **insertions** : les **incises** , et les **bifurcations** (\u00ab chaque fois que je rencontre des voies divergentes (dans le r\u00e9cit), et une fois choisie la principale, celle le long de laquelle je vous conduirai d'abord sans interruption, je pr\u00e9pare... des insertions \u00bb) (j'en \u00e9tais venu, apr\u00e8s quelques h\u00e9sitations \u00e0 les nommer ainsi) (elles \u00e9taient typographiquement et g\u00e9ographiquement isol\u00e9es du r\u00e9cit lui-m\u00eame).\n\nMais ce que j'\u00e9cris maintenant peut-il \u00eatre une incise ? et si oui, o\u00f9 la placer ? si oui, elle devrait appara\u00eetre ici, bien s\u00fbr (et ce serait un fil \u00ab remontant \u00bb sur la tr\u00e8s grande feuille de papier mural o\u00f9 je vous invitais \u00e0 vous repr\u00e9senter **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** \u00e9crit en sa totalit\u00e9 (les **insertions** y \u00e9taient signal\u00e9es par des fils-fl\u00e8ches de couleur), mais aussi dans la branche un elle-m\u00eame (ce serait une insertion r\u00e9versible, une double fl\u00e8che), ce qui suppose (et vraisemblablement de plus en plus, \u00e0 mesure de l'avancement du r\u00e9cit) des additions \u00e0 la branche un (comme ensuite aux autres), contrairement \u00e0 l'affirmation (r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9e) de son \u00e9criture au pr\u00e9sent (sans pr\u00e9paration et sans repentirs), & donc de son ach\u00e8vement, puisqu'elle est maintenant, non seulement achev\u00e9e, mais publi\u00e9e (il en serait de m\u00eame des autres branches, d\u00e8s qu'elles seraient achev\u00e9es et publi\u00e9es)).\n\nIl est vrai qu'il s'agit d'une addition minimale (l'indication d'une incise nouvelle). Il est vrai aussi que cette contradiction est \u00e9galement potentiellement pr\u00e9sente dans la branche un, telle que je l'ai compos\u00e9e et publi\u00e9e, puisque j'annonce beaucoup plus d'insertions qu'il n'en appara\u00eet dans le volume. Je pourrais aussi, un peu sp\u00e9cieusement, d\u00e9cider que des additions minimales de ce genre (pourvues d'un renvoi chiffr\u00e9, indiquant une \u00ab adresse \u00bb dans le livre entier, o\u00f9 seraient toutes les branches) ne mettent pas en cause la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 de mon affirmation (je pr\u00e9tends, je le rappelle pour mes lecteurs anciens, je le signale pour mes lecteurs nouveaux, \u00e0 la contemporan\u00e9it\u00e9 du r\u00e9cit et de son \u00e9criture) (\u00e0 cela je pourrais aussi me r\u00e9signer). Mais en fait il me semble que je dois malgr\u00e9 tout, dans ce cas pr\u00e9cis (c'est le premier du genre) renoncer \u00e0 donner \u00e0 cette incise le statut, simultan\u00e9, d' **incise dans la branche un et dans la branche deux** (c'est une **incise** tout naturellement, dans la branche pr\u00e9sente, au pr\u00e9sent de la composition de cette branche, puisque je l'ai rencontr\u00e9e comme quelque chose que j'avais \u00e0 dire, quoique non principalement, \u00e0 cet endroit du texte) : car, dans ce moment-l\u00e0 du r\u00e9cit, elle \u00e9tait, et reste, en l'absence d'un d\u00e9veloppement explicatif qui est, tr\u00e8s pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, de ceux que je refuse (rien n'est \u00ab \u00e0 l'avance \u00bb, mais rien non plus n'est \u00ab apr\u00e8s coup \u00bb dans mon livre), quelque chose de surajout\u00e9.\n\nCela veut dire qu'il me faudra peut-\u00eatre introduire un troisi\u00e8me (ou quatri\u00e8me) type d'insertions : les **notes** (je n'aime pas beauoup employer un tel mot ici, car il s'agirait encore d'insertions, qui ne seraient donc nullement hors texte. Je choisis une d\u00e9signation provisoire). D'ailleurs, m\u00eame si je n'ai pas eu recours \u00e0 des notes dans la premi\u00e8re branche, j'ai parfois ressenti, sinon le manque de notes au sens ordinaire, qui ne racontent pas, mais informent, expliquent, pr\u00e9cisent (et sont donc hors r\u00e9cit, hors le temps du r\u00e9cit), du moins la vraisemblance de leur commodit\u00e9. Je v\u00e9rifie (en cet instant) que je n'ai pas, alors, exclu le recours \u00e0 d'autres esp\u00e8ces du genre \u00ab insertion \u00bb que les incises et bifurcations (branche un, \u00a7 14 : \u00ab Ces bonds continuels dans mon livre que repr\u00e9sentent virtuellement les bifurcations, les incises, toutes les esp\u00e8ces du genre insertion, sont l'\u00e9quivalent d'un des privil\u00e8ges absolus de la lecture : pouvoir, en ouvrant un livre, \u00eatre aussit\u00f4t n'importe o\u00f9... \u00bb). J'avais l\u00e0, sans trop y r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir, renonc\u00e9 \u00e0 l'emploi de notes, \u00e0 la fois pour ne pas ajouter \u00e0 la complexit\u00e9 de la composition du livre (puisque cette branche allait devenir livre), mais en m\u00eame temps pour ne pas risquer de gommer, en ayant recours \u00e0 un proc\u00e9d\u00e9 aussi traditionnel, le caract\u00e8re tr\u00e8s particulier des deux premiers types d'insertions (ce ne sont pas des notes. Ce ne sont pas non plus des gloses, des fragments, des variantes, ni des restes, ni des ruines, elles n'ont rien d'un _pan perdut_ de prose).\n\nA la **branche un** , dans le livre futur achev\u00e9, le d\u00e9veloppement pr\u00e9sent pourrait \u00eatre une note, apparaissant comme telle dans le texte, modifi\u00e9 et tr\u00e8s l\u00e9g\u00e8rement alourdi de tels renvois, si jamais d'autres branches que la branche un s'ach\u00e8vent, et si, achev\u00e9es, elles sont conduites jusqu'\u00e0 l'impression (cela reste aussi incertain que l'\u00e9tait la r\u00e9ponse \u00e0 la m\u00eame question en ce qui concerne la branche un elle-m\u00eame, pendant que je l'\u00e9crivais) (disant cela, je parle d'une incertitude plus profonde que celle, banale, qui tient au fait qu'avant de finir un livre, on ne l'a pas termin\u00e9, et qu'avant de le publier, il n'est pas paru : je n'avais pas d\u00e9cid\u00e9 de l'achever, encore moins de le publier, tout simplement parce que je ne savais pas (jusqu'au moment o\u00f9 cette d\u00e9cision fut prise, devenue \u00e9vidence \u00e0 un certain moment du r\u00e9cit (et cela \u00e9tait alors une cons\u00e9quence n\u00e9cessaire des \u00ab axiomes \u00bb de la composition) quelles devaient \u00eatre les conditions de son ach\u00e8vement)).\n\n## 52 (\u00a7 2) des phrases comme \u00ab je pensais que... \u00bb, \u00ab je croyais que... \u00bb (si elles se pr\u00e9sentent comme imm\u00e9diates) me repoussent.\n\nJ'ai plus de difficult\u00e9 encore \u00e0 comprendre ceux qui \u00e9crivent : \u00ab l'enfant pensait que... \u00bb, ou (ce qui me para\u00eet presque pire) \u00ab l'enfant pense que... \u00bb (au pr\u00e9sent). Loin de consolider l'effet de v\u00e9rit\u00e9, indispensable \u00e0 l'adh\u00e9sion du lecteur (ce qui semble \u00eatre l'intention de leurs auteurs), il me semble que de telles expressions le mettent brutalement en pr\u00e9sence d'un des proc\u00e9d\u00e9s les plus \u00e9cul\u00e9s de la fiction romanesque : inviter \u00e0 se glisser \u00ab dans la peau du personnage \u00bb. Et plus l'enfant est pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 comme jeune, plus l'impossibilit\u00e9 est manifeste. (Il y a, j'insiste, toujours impossibilit\u00e9. Mais le pacte fictionnel entre auteur et lecteur consiste pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment \u00e0 ruser avec des impossibilit\u00e9s, \u00e0 les rendre acceptables un moment, le temps de la lecture. L'efficacit\u00e9 de ces ruses varie notablement avec les \u00e9poques.) Un narrateur de cinquante ans, un lecteur d'\u00e2ge et de sexe quelconque s'installant dans le corps, \u00ab derri\u00e8re \u00bb les yeux d'un petit gar\u00e7on ou d'une petite fille de cinq ans, se superposant \u00e0 eux, quel encombrement invraisemblable ! D\u00e8s qu'une telle invitation m'est faite, je pense \u00e0 la panique qui saisit, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, un tr\u00e8s jeune enfant dont un adulte, par jeu, pr\u00e9tend, au moment de sortir dans la rue pour une promenade, rev\u00eatir par erreur le manteau au lieu du sien.\n\nIl ne s'agit l\u00e0, sans doute, que de la version \u00ab na\u00efve \u00bb de l'auteur de \u00ab m\u00e9moires \u00bb, romancier d'autant plus d\u00e9butant qu'il s'imagine n'avoir besoin d'aucun \u00ab savoir-faire \u00bb de la fiction. Mais bien des strat\u00e9gies d'apparence plus \u00ab sophistiqu\u00e9e \u00bb sont aussi insatisfaisantes : reconstituer, par exemple, un raisonnement tenu par l'enfant (et surtout par soi-m\u00eame, enfant) (je pense au Sartre des _Mots_ , \u00e0 Leiris) affronte un autre type, pas moins g\u00eanant pour moi, d'impossibilit\u00e9.\n\nSi j'interroge en effet mes souvenirs, je ne vois pas du tout comment un raisonnement quelconque peut sortir en aucune mani\u00e8re de son pr\u00e9sent. Toute cha\u00eene de d\u00e9ductions est pens\u00e9e, pens\u00e9e au pr\u00e9sent, toujours : parce qu'elle est, essentiellement, r\u00e9p\u00e9table \u00e0 l'identique. On ne peut pas, en vrai, penser un raisonnement ancien. Cette impossibilit\u00e9 est dissimul\u00e9e quand il s'agit d'un souvenir adulte, parce qu'on peut croire les fa\u00e7ons de d\u00e9duire stables. Et il y a du \u00ab vraisemblable \u00bb (pas plus, j'insiste) \u00e0 dire, dans ce cas : j'ai pens\u00e9 (il y a un mois, un an), j'ai raisonn\u00e9 ainsi. Mais la pens\u00e9e retrouv\u00e9e (soi-disant) d'un enfant, quelle chim\u00e8re !\n\nLes r\u00e9cits de souvenirs d'enfance s'apparentent au roman historique ; et, dirais-je, au roman historique sous sa forme historiquement commen\u00e7ante, la plus naturellement imprudente, celle de _Quentin Durward_ , des _Trois Mousquetaires_ ou du _Capitaine Fracasse_ (je ne mets pas en cause le charme, le tr\u00e8s grand charme de ces livres. Je les ai cit\u00e9s \u00e0 dessein). Si on les situe dans les rangs de la litt\u00e9rature dite \u00ab enfantine \u00bb, c'est, en fait, pour nous inviter, sans doute avec raison, \u00e0 \u00e9lever, pour eux, le seuil d'incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9. Leur invraisemblance (au regard du r\u00e9el de l'histoire) tient beaucoup moins \u00e0 leurs \u00ab aventures \u00bb qu'\u00e0 l'anachronisme criard de la langue dans laquelle ils sont \u00e9crits.\n\nLe pr\u00e9sent de la langue est inexorable. Les efforts pour introduire l'id\u00e9e de pass\u00e9 plus ou moins lointain (dans les vari\u00e9t\u00e9s premi\u00e8res de ces romans, auxquels appartiennent ceux que j'ai cit\u00e9s : le XVe si\u00e8cle pour Walter Scott, le XVIIe pour Dumas et Gautier) sont, comme ceux, \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s contemporains, de Viollet-le-Duc sur la cit\u00e9 de Carcassonne (ou des Pr\u00e9rapha\u00e9lites sur la B\u00e9atrice de Dante et la _Monna Vanna_ de Cavalcanti), essentiellement de nature \u00ab lexicale \u00bb : on puise dans un dictionnaire d'objets (ou de mots) anciens. Mais le pass\u00e9 dans la langue est au moins autant celui des phrases, des paragraphes, des encha\u00eenements, que celui des mots. Il s'ensuit que le roman historique est une litt\u00e9rature-mus\u00e9e (d'o\u00f9, peut-\u00eatre, son extraordinaire faveur pr\u00e9sente, parall\u00e8lement \u00e0 l'encombrement des lieux de vill\u00e9giature du regard que sont devenus les mus\u00e9es).\n\nSous une forme moins imm\u00e9diatement apparente mais pas moins r\u00e9elle, les \u00ab souvenirs \u00bb se heurtent \u00e0 un obstacle langagier du m\u00eame ordre. On ne parle pas, on n'est pas dans la langue aujourd'hui comme il y a cinquante, vingt, dix ans m\u00eame. La moindre phrase, la moindre pens\u00e9e (et les pens\u00e9es ne sont rien si elles ne traversent la vitre des phrases), le moindre raisonnement se trahit comme pr\u00e9sent, et s'il s'affirme pass\u00e9, est pur anachronisme. (Je ne parle m\u00eame pas des \u00ab discours enfantins \u00bb, proches le plus souvent de ceux de Tarzan ou d'Indiens de westerns.)\n\n## 53 (\u00a7 52) un tr\u00e8s jeune enfant dont un adulte, par jeu, pr\u00e9tend rev\u00eatir par erreur le manteau au lieu du sien\n\nDans le jeu, adulte, du souvenir, il y a quelque chose de cette violation, comme une vengeance contre l'\u00e9vanouissement du temps. Je n'oublie pas que la terreur de l'enfant confront\u00e9 \u00e0 cette plaisanterie, comme d'ailleurs l'impulsion, sym\u00e9triquement, de l'adulte, peut s'interpr\u00e9ter d'une autre mani\u00e8re, assez \u00e9vidente, assez banale (la fiction, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, d'un viol). Mais je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re en retenir une indication suppl\u00e9mentaire de la diff\u00e9rence, irr\u00e9ductible, entre les deux \u00e9tats d'une m\u00eame personne : donc entre \u00ab moi (maintenant) \u00bb et \u00ab moi (alors) \u00bb.\n\nLa crainte de la p\u00e9n\u00e9tration dans les manches du manteau, formul\u00e9e par exemple en : \u00ab non ! tu es trop grand \u00bb ou \u00ab non ! je suis trop petit (petite) \u00bb (et non \u00ab il est trop petit \u00bb) pourrait montrer, non pas une identification de soi \u00e0 l'objet ext\u00e9rieur (une analogie) (c'est ainsi qu'on raisonne habituellement), mais une conception diff\u00e9rente de ce que sont l'int\u00e9rieur et l'ext\u00e9rieur de soi : pas \u00ab le manteau est comme moi \u00bb, ni m\u00eame \u00ab le manteau c'est moi \u00bb mais \u00ab le manteau est non seulement \u00e0 moi, mais il est moi, il fait partie de moi \u00bb (voil\u00e0, direz-vous, que vous faites ce que vous reprochez aux autres, que vous raisonnez comme si vous \u00e9tiez cet enfant : non. Je ne pr\u00e9tends pas qu'il en est ainsi. Je raconte. Je ne reproche rien d'autre aux r\u00e9cits d'enfances que de ne pas avouer ou, avec assez d'ing\u00e9niosit\u00e9 dissimuler, leur caract\u00e8re fictif. N'\u00e9tant pas ici dans un r\u00f4le de romancier, je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re reconna\u00eetre tout de suite ma situation de fabuliste).\n\nJ'imagine, donc, chez le \u00ab moi \u00bb que je suis, enfant (et la peur de l'envahissement du trop petit manteau en sera un indice) une perception diff\u00e9rente de ce qu'est le corps, de ses limites, de ses surfaces, perception plus conforme \u00e0 la conception \u00e9picurienne du corps (au sens de la tradition philosophique, pas \u00e0 celui de la pol\u00e9mique chr\u00e9tienne pass\u00e9e dans le vocabulaire courant) qu'\u00e0 celle, apprise et \u00e9prouv\u00e9e, qui est la mienne maintenant. Il y a une limite vers laquelle je tends, de l'int\u00e9rieur de moi (je me situe au moment de l'invention d'un \u00ab moi \u00bb ancien, ancien aux deux sens du mot : dans l'avant de ma vie, et dans l'avant de l'humanit\u00e9 (\u00c9picure)), limite qui, franchie, me m\u00e8ne \u00e0 l'ext\u00e9rieur de mon corps. Mais cette \u00ab fronti\u00e8re du moi \u00bb, cette surface faite d'invisibles lignes sans \u00e9paisseur qui entoure mon corps, ne doit pas \u00eatre localis\u00e9e de mani\u00e8re pr\u00e9cise et stable (et en tout cas pas o\u00f9 elle est \u00e0 l'instant pr\u00e9sent).\n\nQui plus est, elle tend \u00e0 englober toutes mes \u00ab possessions \u00bb : mes v\u00eatements, mais aussi mes pens\u00e9es, mes \u00e9motions, mes r\u00eaves, mes souvenirs (qui sont inscrits, comme toute chose, dans l'espace). Loin d'\u00eatre (ou d'\u00eatre seulement) signe d'un narcissisme (les objets qui font partie de mon corps, comme ce manteau, comme mon \u00ab double \u00bb tot\u00e9mique en peluche, me les arracher c'est m'amputer, me couper d'une partie de moi), cette id\u00e9e interne du corps t\u00e9moigne d'un moi beaucoup plus central, beaucoup plus stable, assur\u00e9, qu'il ne le demeure apr\u00e8s les ann\u00e9es (et l'adoption de la th\u00e9orie consciente) : au plus intime de mon \u00eatre, il est la quatri\u00e8me substance, l'\u00e2me de l'\u00e2me, l' _akatonomaston_. Grandir, c'est le perdre, et partant, s'enfermer dans un corps d\u00e9sormais beaucoup plus strictement limit\u00e9.\n\nDans l'histoire de ma famille, dans sa tradition orale, s'est conserv\u00e9 un \u00ab mot \u00bb attribu\u00e9 \u00e0 ma ni\u00e8ce Marianne. Tr\u00e8s jeune, accueillie \u00e0 la table de ses grands-parents paternels (mon p\u00e8re et ma m\u00e8re), elle s'insurgea un jour contre une invitation \u00e0 s'asseoir offerte \u00e0 quelqu'un (un de ses fr\u00e8res peut-\u00eatre) par cette affirmation : \u00ab _Pas l\u00e0 ! c'est_ ** _montaplace_** _._ \u00bb L'histoire est toujours racont\u00e9e avec une majuscule (orale) sur \u00ab mon \u00bb : Montaplace ; et quelque temps le surnom de \u00ab **Mont** _aplace_ \u00bb (insistance et \u00e9l\u00e9vation de la voix sur le \u00ab mon \u00bb) fut, avec une tendresse admirative mais simultan\u00e9ment l\u00e9g\u00e8rement moralisatrice (trait familial omnipr\u00e9sent), attribu\u00e9 \u00e0 Marianne.\n\nMais il faudrait plut\u00f4t (dans la perspective de ce qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de, avec un d\u00e9placement d'accent) \u00ab entendre \u00bb : \u00ab mon \" **Taplace** \" \u00bb ; ce qui signifie : \u00ab Ce lieu est mien, comme \u00e9tant une partie de mon corps. Quand mon corps n'y est pas, il est, pourquoi pas, \"tien\". C'est \"Taplace\", quelque chose comme \"Paris\" ou \"le buffet\". \u00bb Il ne s'agit donc pas l\u00e0 d'une annexion, d'une n\u00e9gation des droits des autres corps, d'une incapacit\u00e9 \u00e0 reconna\u00eetre l'Autre qui, au contraire, est parfaitement reconnu, arm\u00e9 des m\u00eames droits : ce morceau de _lalangue_ , \u00ab taplace \u00bb, dans la bouche de Marianne, n'aurait pas d\u00fb \u00eatre interpr\u00e9t\u00e9, comme le fit le r\u00e9cit familial, en une simple citation d'un discours autre (fraternel ou grand-parental) mais comme la constatation d'une similitude et la revendication d'un droit des corps, justifi\u00e9 par le r\u00e9el physique : ils ne peuvent co\u00efncider \u00ab _at the same time in the same place \u00bb_.\n\n## 54 (\u00a7 53) les objets qui font partie de mon corps, comme ce manteau, comme mon \u00ab double \u00bb tot\u00e9mique en peluche.\n\nD'un corps discontinu, qui se rassemble au moment du sommeil, qui doit se r\u00e9unir pour franchir cette fronti\u00e8re incompr\u00e9hensible, le \u00ab nounours \u00bb traditionnel, dans ses diff\u00e9rentes incarnations, assume la repr\u00e9sentation : dans la journ\u00e9e ce morceau du moi, ce **faisant-fonction-de-moi** continue \u00e0 dormir, et ainsi assure ma continuit\u00e9 temporelle. Car les limites de \u00ab maintenant \u00bb sont aussi incertaines que celles de la chair. La nuit, avec son accompagnement de sommeil, para\u00eet un trou scandaleux dans la fabrique du monde, qui devrait co\u00efncider incessamment avec lui-m\u00eame. Il n'y a pas de temps puisqu'il n'y a que \u00ab moi \u00bb et un incertain \u00ab non-moi \u00bb, autour de moi, indistinctement encore s\u00e9par\u00e9 de moi dans l'espace. Mon \u00ab absence \u00bb momentan\u00e9e au monde alors ne m'effraiera plus, puisqu'elle en deviendra illusoire, puisqu'un morceau de moi sera rest\u00e9, le \u00ab morceau-ours \u00bb, pendant que le reste se laissait oublier, telle ma main gauche que j'ignore pendant qu'agit ma main droite. Quand je suis \u00e9veill\u00e9, il dort. Quand je dormirai, il veillera. Ainsi mon unit\u00e9 sera pr\u00e9serv\u00e9e. J'habite des r\u00e9gions alternatives de ce qui est, toujours, mon corps.\n\nC'est ici, sans doute, le lieu de faire une \u00ab th\u00e9orie \u00bb (c'est ce que depuis un moment je recherchais, \u00e0 la p\u00e9riph\u00e9rie de ma conscience de la prose : un \u00ab lieu d'insertion \u00bb pour quelque chose que je savais vouloir dire. Est-ce une vacillation dans ma soumission stricte \u00e0 la \u00ab m\u00e9thode \u00bb de ce livre ? une nouvelle variante de son fonctionnement ? je ne sais). Cette \u00ab th\u00e9orie \u00bb est la **Th\u00e9orie du gniengnien**.\n\nEn 1968, \u00e0 la suite d'\u00e9v\u00e9nements qui ne nous retiendront pas maintenant, j'habitais, dans la capitale burgonde, Dijon, une unique pi\u00e8ce minuscule, meubl\u00e9e d'un lit et d'une chaise en plastique jaune, au 11 de la rue de Fontaine. C'est une rue qui monte, pas trop loin de la gare, vers la commune limitrophe de Fontaine-l\u00e8s-Dijon. Sur le m\u00eame palier, un appartement de taille raisonnable abritait la famille Lusson. Cette famille, d\u00e9j\u00e0 compl\u00e8te (je parle par comparaison avec le moment de mon r\u00e9cit, l'automne de 1989) se composait de cinq personnes : les parents, Claire et Pierre, et trois enfants : Mathieu, l'a\u00een\u00e9, C\u00e9cile, et Juliette, la benjamine. Juliette, si je ne m'abuse, avait vers la fin de 1968, un peu moins de trois ans. Elle n'\u00e9tait donc alors pas, mais pas du tout, et d'aucune mani\u00e8re pr\u00e9visible devant devenir, l'apprentie biochimiste qu'elle est devenue depuis, \u00e0 l'indignation profonde quoique involontaire de ma m\u00e9moire, qui ne s'adapte qu'assez mal \u00e0 l'absence de stabilit\u00e9, de rigidit\u00e9 en son image, de la jeune femme autrefois b\u00e9b\u00e9 bien connu de moi (le \u00ab m\u00eame \u00bb moi qu'aujourd'hui !) que continue \u00e0 d\u00e9signer son nom.\n\n(Il n'y a pas bien longtemps t\u00e9l\u00e9phonant, un peu apr\u00e8s huit heures du matin, je fus surpris d'entendre sa voix me r\u00e9pondre et je lui dis : \u00ab Comment se fait-il que tu sois r\u00e9veill\u00e9e si t\u00f4t ? \u00bb (Le \u00ab non-lever-t\u00f4t \u00bb faisant partie de la d\u00e9finition, des caract\u00e9ristiques de la Juliette que je connais depuis toujours, d'o\u00f9 mon \u00e9tonnement, d'o\u00f9 ma question.) \u00ab J'\u00e9tais r\u00e9veill\u00e9e encore bien plus t\u00f4t, me dit-elle ; \u00e0 six heures du matin. J'arrive de Blanc-Mesnil. \u00bb \u00ab Comment, dis-je alors imprudemment et sans r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir, que faisais-tu \u00e0 une heure pareille \u00e0 Blanc-Mesnil ? \u00bb \u00ab Mais \u00e7a ne te regarde pas, Jacques Roubaud \u00bb, dit-elle. Et en effet, cela ne me regardait pas le moins du monde. Mais ma stup\u00e9faction s'exprimant de cette mani\u00e8re irr\u00e9fl\u00e9chie n'\u00e9tait que l'expression d'un \u00ab moi \u00bb d\u00e9sar\u00e7onn\u00e9, d'un \u00ab moi \u00bb gardien de ma conservation, garant du maintien intact de cet \u00eatre immobile, identique \u00e0 soi et paradoxal, celui qui, quinze ou vingt ans auparavant, se serait, en effet, \u00e9tonn\u00e9 \u00e0 bon droit de voir une petite fille de trois, quatre ou six ans arriver au matin dans la maison de ses parents, venant d'une lointaine banlieue.\n\nA premi\u00e8re vue, la r\u00e9action de Juliette semble, elle, parfaitement contemporaine de l'instant : il est tout \u00e0 fait normal qu'une jeune fille r\u00e9agisse avec vivacit\u00e9 \u00e0 ce qui ne peut manquer d'appara\u00eetre comme une curiosit\u00e9 d\u00e9plac\u00e9e \u00e0 l'\u00e9gard de ses faits, gestes et d\u00e9placements de la part, tout sp\u00e9cialement de la part d'un vieil ami de son p\u00e8re. J'ai \u00e9t\u00e9, comme on disait autrefois, \u00ab remis vertement \u00e0 ma place \u00bb et je n'ai plus jamais commis la m\u00eame erreur. Il me semble cependant que Juliette, la Juliette d'aujourd'hui, qui exprime, certes, avec une absence remarquable de r\u00e9ticences, sa pens\u00e9e \u00e0 qui que ce soit, \u00ab sans mettre de gants \u00bb, n'a pas l'habitude de me parler sur ce ton. Et ce ton, au contraire, est pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment celui qu'elle aurait ais\u00e9ment pris avec mon \u00ab moi \u00bb ancien, le \u00ab Jacques Roubaud \u00bb de 1968 ou 1969 qui, brusquement et intempestivement, se manifestait \u00e0 son oreille, et que la Juliette d'il y a vingt ans, tapie au fond d'elle comme \u00ab je \u00bb le suis en moi, reconnut spontan\u00e9ment. Tout cela constitue, en somme, une excellente \u00ab exp\u00e9rience de pens\u00e9e \u00bb (esp\u00e8ce ch\u00e8re aux philosophes et aux physiciens) (bien qu'il s'agisse plut\u00f4t, en l'occurrence, d'une exp\u00e9rience de non-pens\u00e9e)).\n\nMais je reviens au **gniengnien**. Le b\u00e9b\u00e9 Juliette avait en 1968-1969, en sa possession, un objet pr\u00e9cieux, un rose, un rosissime morceau d'\u00e9toffe qu'elle appelait son **GnienGnien** (majuscule sur chacun des \u00ab gnien \u00bb). C'\u00e9tait son tr\u00e9sor, la prunelle de ses yeux. Elle l'aimait comme \u00ab un autre soi-m\u00eame \u00bb. Elle ne s'endormait pas sans lui, se consolait en sa pr\u00e9sence, ne laissait personne s'en emparer, craignait que des brigands quelconques (fr\u00e8re-et-s\u0153ur, visiteurs, amis, p\u00e8re-et-m\u00e8re m\u00eame (p\u00e8re plut\u00f4t que m\u00e8re d'ailleurs, l'exception unique, il me semble, qui en \u00e9tait la protectrice en m\u00eame temps que l'intendante, la gardienne)) ne cherchent \u00e0 le lui d\u00e9rober. Bref, elle l'investissait d'une mani\u00e8re on ne peut plus nette, flagrante, absolue, de cette fonction de \u00ab repr\u00e9sentation de soi \u00bb que j'ai, dans un premier temps sommaire, accord\u00e9e au \u00ab nounours \u00bb. En fait, c'est le gniengnien, quand un enfant l'invente et le nomme (tous les enfants ne le font pas), qui, bien mieux que le \u00ab nounours \u00bb devient cette partie de son corps qui le d\u00e9fend, selon les modalit\u00e9s dont j'ai commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 parler un peu plus haut dans l'\u00e9chelle des insertions, des paradoxes spatio-temporels dont le monde menace son sens, tout leibnizien, de sa propre identit\u00e9 (\u00eatre, sans interruption, indiscernable de soi-m\u00eame, \u00eatre soi dans tous les mondes possibles, c'est-\u00e0-dire un seul, le sien).\n\n## 55 (suite du \u00a7 54) Je donnerai le nom g\u00e9n\u00e9rique de gniengnien\n\nJe donnerai le nom g\u00e9n\u00e9rique de gniengnien (la diff\u00e9rence avec la d\u00e9signation originelle, la suppression des deux majuscules indique le passage du particulier au g\u00e9n\u00e9ral) \u00e0 ce type d'objet qui se rencontre chez de nombreux enfants, et dont j'ai cherch\u00e9 avec quelque attention les propri\u00e9t\u00e9s en observant, exp\u00e9rimentalement m\u00eame, dirais-je, Juliette et son GnienGnien pendant quelques mois rue de Fontaine, un \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 Saint-F\u00e9lix, dans le Minervois, chez mes parents, puis \u00e0 Bourg-la-Reine quand Pierre Lusson, \u00e0 la faveur des \u00ab \u00e9v\u00e9nements \u00bb de 68 et de leurs effets universitaires eut r\u00e9ussi, quelque temps avant moi, son \u00ab retour d'exil \u00bb dans la r\u00e9gion parisienne.\n\nJ'avais d\u00e9couvert l'existence du \u00ab genre **gniengnien \u00bb** chez mes parents, en observant mon neveu Fran\u00e7ois et sa \u00ab **Keture** \u00bb. (Laurence, ma fille, n'avait pas, \u00e0 ma connaissance, d'objet semblable en sa possession.) La **Keture** de Fran\u00e7ois (le nom est une abr\u00e9viation de \u00ab couverture \u00bb, vraisemblablement, et indique l'origine lointaine de cet objet, devenu rapidement ind\u00e9finissable d'aspect) poss\u00e9dait une \u00ab partie active \u00bb un endroit particuli\u00e8rement pr\u00e9cieux dans ce tr\u00e9sor : c'\u00e9tait le reste soyeux d'un ruban, bord de l'\u00e9toffe. Dans la manipulation de, et la communion avec sa Keture, Fran\u00e7ois (qui n'avait pas encore, loin de l\u00e0, le m\u00e8tre quatre-vingt-dix-huit qui lui appartient en propre aujourd'hui, et n'\u00e9tudiait pas sur place \u00ab l'\u00e9conomie invisible \u00bb du tiers monde \u00e0 l'aide de son ordinateur Toshiba \u00e0 \u00e9cran pleine page portable), caressant d'une main le ruban, passait en m\u00eame temps un ou deux doigts de la m\u00eame main sur ses cils. (Juliette, elle, tenait son GnienGnien dans sa main gauche, su\u00e7ait son pouce, et passait un doigt m\u00e9ditatif sur son nez. Elle est encore parfaitement capable, aujourd'hui, m'a-t-elle confirm\u00e9 au t\u00e9l\u00e9phone il y a peu, de reproduire avec exactitude ces gestes.)\n\nC'\u00e9tait un rituel immuable, une pr\u00e9paration au sommeil ou un retour r\u00e9flexif sur soi apr\u00e8s la promenade, la nourriture, le jeu. Tout **gniengnien** (je parle maintenant de l'esp\u00e8ce) suppose de telles c\u00e9r\u00e9monies. Dans ces cas pr\u00e9cis c'est par le sens du toucher (la main, le doigt) qu'\u00e9tait assur\u00e9e la transition corporelle entre deux r\u00e9gions extr\u00eames et sensibles de l'\u00eatre, que passaient les messages de l'une \u00e0 l'autre, ce que j'appellerai le courant de l'identit\u00e9 : car c'est bien entre ces presqu'\u00eeles les plus nettement p\u00e9riph\u00e9riques du corps, cils, sourcils, cheveux, ongles d'une part (nez encore) et les artefacts du monde, d'origine humaine, et les moins \u00e9loign\u00e9s de lui, qui le couvrent, langes, draps, couvertures (plus tard linceul), v\u00eatements m\u00eame que, les uns d\u00e9tachables comme d\u00e9bris inertes, les autres redoublant, doublant et approchant, enveloppante, la peau, la conjointure semble le plus longtemps possible entre int\u00e9rieur et ext\u00e9rieur. Et elle est invoqu\u00e9e m\u00eame pour survivre \u00e0 la dissolution : les parents gardent, dans les ann\u00e9es sombres, la m\u00e8che \u00e0 l'odeur de miel de l'enfant disparu, l'amant la soie la plus intimement parfum\u00e9e de celle qu'il ne touchera plus jamais.\n\nDans un registre moins grave je voudrais \u00e9carter ici une premi\u00e8re voie sans issue de l'interpr\u00e9tation : certes, le rapport de l'enfant au **gniengnien** est tr\u00e8s marqu\u00e9 de sensualit\u00e9 (pour employer un mot quasiment disparu du vocabulaire courant). Le rituel de la Keture que je viens de d\u00e9crire aussi (et bien d'autres) ne laisse pas de doute \u00e0 ce sujet. Mais je ne crois pas pour autant \u00e0 une fonction principalement \u00e9rotique. La plupart des enfants sont, on le sait, comme les animaux, des explorateurs intr\u00e9pides, r\u00e9solus, et non dissimul\u00e9s de l'\u00e9ros. Qui n'a jamais vu, une fin d'apr\u00e8s-midi d'un dimanche d'hiver, dans une pi\u00e8ce familiale \u00ab conviviale \u00bb et chaude, pleine d'amis, de parents, d'enfants, de chats et de chiens, parmi le bruit des verres, des conversations, des jeux et disputes, une petite fille tranquillement, avec concentration, invention et subtilit\u00e9 (les chiens, eux, manquent r\u00e9solument de subtilit\u00e9 dans ce cas) se branler dans un fauteuil, sur le tapis, au pied d'une chaise, entre des coussins sur un divan ou sur des genoux accueillants, manque, comme l'immense majorit\u00e9 des adultes, singuli\u00e8rement d'esprit d'observation. Mais le **gniengnien** n'a pas de part \u00e0 ces jeux.\n\nUne autre erreur serait de le banaliser en le pr\u00e9sentant comme dispositif de protection : protection contre quoi ? contre les menaces impr\u00e9cises de la vie, qui est, comme nul ne l'ignore, _full of a number of things_ ? Mais alors, en quoi serait-ce une protection ? ou bien encore, serait-ce une pure protection symbolique ? symbolique de quoi ? Le g\u00e9nial auteur de _Peanuts_ \u00e0 qui nous devons, il me semble, la premi\u00e8re identification artistique du ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne du **gniengnien** tombe dans cette erreur \u00ab behaviouriste \u00bb tr\u00e8s am\u00e9ricaine en nommant celui d'un de ses h\u00e9ros, Linus, _security blanket_ (couverture de s\u00e9curit\u00e9) (il est vrai que c'est un nom visiblement d'origine \u00ab externe \u00bb, parentale, ou pire, fourni par un psychologue pour enfants !).\n\nNon, le **gniengnien** n'est pas cela ! Il est l'invention mat\u00e9rialis\u00e9e d'une premi\u00e8re th\u00e9orie, spontan\u00e9e, du corps et du monde, & peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame un trait sp\u00e9cifique de l'hominisation, d'importance et de g\u00e9n\u00e9ralit\u00e9 comparables au _factum loquendi_ , \u00e0 l'outil, \u00e0 la vie en soci\u00e9t\u00e9, au rire, \u00e0 la pens\u00e9e rationnelle, \u00e0 l'inconscient et \u00e0 la prohibition de l'inceste !\n\n## 56 (seconde suite du \u00a7 54) Pendant un long moment, j'ai caress\u00e9 l'id\u00e9e d'une \u00e9tude\n\nPendant quelque temps je caressai l'id\u00e9e d'une \u00e9tude du gniengnien, de ses modes, de sa gen\u00e8se, de sa signification profonde pour une histoire de l'humanit\u00e9 (les lueurs singuli\u00e8res qu'il projette sur l'ontogen\u00e8se et la phylogen\u00e8se, le mythe de son invention par une petite fille \u00ab cro-magnon \u00bb, qu'on appellerait une \u00ab cro-mignonne \u00bb). J'aurais recueilli des donn\u00e9es approfondies sur quelques cas, puis obtenu des cr\u00e9dits pour une enqu\u00eate scientifique, avec un questionnaire pr\u00e9cis, un protocole exp\u00e9rimental draconien permettant de trancher, en une floraison popp\u00e9rienne de \u00ab cas cruciaux \u00bb entre quelques sous-hypoth\u00e8ses d'abord ind\u00e9cises, puis de plus en plus nettes, & bien s\u00fbr falsifiables. J'aurais \u00e9tabli ensuite une typologie, selon la nature des objets repr\u00e9sentatifs, selon les rituels, les nominations. J'aurais distingu\u00e9 le gniengnien d'autres ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes cousins ou connexes : du nounours, du sucer le pouce, de l'ind\u00e9celabilit\u00e9 chez certains enfants d'aucune de ces trois fonctions. J'en aurais d\u00e9duit une classification pr\u00e9cieuse des caract\u00e8res enfantins, de leur persistance dans la vie adulte. Je serais devenu un nouveau Lavater. J'aurais rivalis\u00e9 avec Galien et la th\u00e9orie des humeurs. J'aurais ouvert des perspectives nouvelles \u00e0 la psychologie enfantine, r\u00e9volutionn\u00e9 bien des th\u00e9rapies... Je n'ai rien accompli de tout cela, bien entendu.\n\nMais je vous ferai cependant part de quelques-unes de mes observations. En dehors de l'emploi premier, fondateur en quelque sorte, celui de l'effacement du gouffre conceptuel et existentiel entre veille et sommeil (sans le gniengnien il est strictement impossible \u00e0 l'enfant de s'endormir), j'ai d\u00e9couvert qu'il y a un autre moment privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 du gniengnien, et je le nommerai **\u00ab moment de l'inspiration \u00bb :**\n\nC'est le soir, \u00e0 l'heure dite entre \u00ab chien et loup \u00bb, l'heure des chats gris et des m\u00e9lancolies cr\u00e9pusculaires. La petite fille (disons que c'est une petite fille (j'ai une pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence \u00ab carrollienne \u00bb pour les petites filles)) a pris son bain. Elle a embrass\u00e9 son p\u00e8re, revenu des exploits essentiels accomplis au- \u00ab dehors \u00bb. Sa m\u00e8re s'affaire dans la cuisine. Le chien s'emm\u00eale \u00e0 ses jambes. Ses \u00ab fr\u00e8re-et-s\u0153ur \u00bb s'affairent \u00e0 leurs devoirs. La chatte est \u00e9tendue sur la plaque de protection du radiateur. Chacun attend l'annonce du d\u00eener. Elle, entre les fen\u00eatres \u00e0 rideaux, les fauteuils et les chaises, parle. Elle parle pour elle-m\u00eame, elle parle \u00e0 son gniengnien, c'est-\u00e0-dire \u00e0 elle-m\u00eame, elle raconte, elle invente, elle r\u00e9primande, elle commente, elle interroge, elle improvise : une des sources majeures de la po\u00e9sie orale narrative, \u00e9pique ou lyrique, est l\u00e0.\n\nIl m'a \u00e9t\u00e9 donn\u00e9 plusieurs fois dans ma vie d'assister, discret, ignor\u00e9, invisible, silencieux, \u00e9bloui, \u00e0 de semblables \u00ab s\u00e9ances \u00bb inspir\u00e9es. Je me souviens de Jacinta, la fille de Merche, oscillant autour d'elle-m\u00eame debout, tel un derviche tourneur, sur un fauteuil, et, semblable au po\u00e8te-radio transmettant les messages des Martiens que d\u00e9crit Jack Spicer, ou \u00e0 Michele M\u00e9tail \u00ab performant \u00bb une des sections les plus rapides de son immense po\u00e8me \u00ab Compl\u00e9ments de noms \u00bb, ou encore \u00e0 Tom Raworth lisant \u00e0 Cambridge, elle \u00e9mettait une stup\u00e9fiante po\u00e9sie ininterrompue sur les m\u00e8res, les fen\u00eatres peintes et les fleurs, en un r\u00e9citatif profond, un andalouisant _Sprechgesang_ , pendant que l'air du soir, dans la pi\u00e8ce, s'assombrissait lentement autour de sa silhouette \u00e0 la Mir\u00f3.\n\nIl s'agissait bien plus dans ce cas d'une danse que d'une m\u00e9ditation en dialogue avec le gniengnien, mais le principe est essentiellement le m\u00eame : le gniengnien est un catalyseur de l'inspiration, dont le moment est celui de la disparition du jour, de la chute de lumi\u00e8re, la nuit et le sommeil dangereux approchant. Le po\u00e8me oral shamanique qu'il suscite et approuve est le r\u00e9sultat d'une hallucination sans hallucinog\u00e8nes, dont Jacinta obtenait l'\u00e9quivalent par une ivresse de toupie lanc\u00e9e autour de soi.\n\nLes quelques r\u00e9cits-po\u00e8mes de Juliette que j'ai entendus \u00e9taient, eux, sans la moindre extravagance verbale. Ils \u00e9taient pr\u00e9cis, nets, r\u00e9p\u00e9titifs, fortement moraux. Ce serait, bien s\u00fbr, ici que je devrais pr\u00e9voir et d\u00e9duire la future vocation scientifique de leur auteur, mais je vous \u00e9pargnerai cette \u00e9preuve.\n\n## 57 (derni\u00e8re suite au \u00a7 54) Juliette, comme tout inventeur de gniengnien,\n\nJuliette, comme tout inventeur de gniengnien, y tenait beaucoup. C'est peu dire. Il \u00e9tait litt\u00e9ralement impossible de l'en d\u00e9tacher (sinon au prix d'un coup de force qui aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 une v\u00e9ritable amputation). Pour mesurer l'intensit\u00e9 de son attachement (toujours dans la perspective, comparative, de mon GTg (Grand Trait\u00e9 du gniengnien)) j'avais essay\u00e9, \u00e0 maintes reprises, de solliciter d'elle un pr\u00eat, momentan\u00e9, de son GnienGnien. Ce fut en vain. En d\u00e9pit des relations amicales et confiantes qui \u00e9taient les n\u00f4tres, elle se montra sur ce point intraitable : pas de gniengnien pour Jacques Roubaud.\n\nJ'essayai la ruse, les promesses bonbonni\u00e8res, le raisonnement, le chantage sentimental (que ne ferait-on pour la science !), elle fut intraitable, ferme, tranquille, m\u00eame pas inqui\u00e8te, encore moins troubl\u00e9e : c'\u00e9tait non !. Mais un jour (un jour de vacances, \u00e0 Saint-F\u00e9lix, chez mes parents), en une inspiration foudroyante, elle mit un point final \u00e0 mes tentatives. J'avais expliqu\u00e9 \u00e0 ma m\u00e8re, et \u00e0 tous ceux qui se trouvaient dans la grande pi\u00e8ce (je l'ai d\u00e9crite en la branche un du pr\u00e9sent trait\u00e9) l'\u00e9tat de mes recherches sur le gniengnien (je n'avais encore aucune explication des faits, je me contentais de la collecte des exemples). Et j'essayai de nouveau, \u00e0 l'appui de ma d\u00e9monstration, de persuader Juliette, pr\u00e9sente \u00e0 la discussion avec son cher GnienGnien, de me le confier.\n\nComme d'habitude, elle refusait. Mais soudain, avec un sourire ang\u00e9lique et blond, retirant son pouce de sa bouche, elle tendit son GnienGnien \u00e0 ma m\u00e8re.\n\nTelle fut la fin honteuse de mon Grand Trait\u00e9. J'en rougis encore.\n\n(Donn\u00e9es recueillies au t\u00e9l\u00e9phone le 12 d\u00e9cembre 1989 : quelle fut la fin du GnienGnien ? Une d\u00e9cision de destruction par moi-m\u00eame, dit Pierre L. \u00ab Je l'ai br\u00fbl\u00e9, inquiet de son infantile persistance. \u00bb \u00ab Mais pas du tout ! \u00bb dit Juliette intervenant indign\u00e9e dans la conversation. \u00ab Il l'a mis \u00e0 la poubelle un jour de vacances \u00e0 Foix (c'est pendant ces m\u00eames vacances que j'ai appris \u00e0 lacer mes souliers), mais j'ai tellement hurl\u00e9 qu'il a \u00e9t\u00e9 oblig\u00e9 de le ressortir de la poubelle. On l'a lav\u00e9 (il en avait de toute fa\u00e7on bien besoin). Je l'ai abandonn\u00e9 volontairement un an plus tard. Mais on ne l'a pas jet\u00e9. Il \u00e9tait encore l\u00e0, \u00e0 Bourg-la-Reine, au moment du d\u00e9m\u00e9nagement, mais il a disparu pendant l'\u00e9pisode Plessis-Robinson. \u00bb\n\nPuis, pendant que je dialogue t\u00e9l\u00e9phoniquement, avec P. L., sur les incertitudes de nos souvenirs, j'entends Juliette dire : \u00ab Qu'il n'oublie pas que GnienGnien s'\u00e9crit en un seul mot, sans trait d'union ; j'y tiens. \u00bb **Voil\u00e0 le secret, pensai-je : le gniengnien, c'est l'organe primitif de lalangue**. Et je fus fier de cette d\u00e9couverte, pendant trente secondes au moins.)\n\n## 58 (\u00a7 3) La Voie de la Double N\u00e9gation qui a ses variantes philosophiques, th\u00e9ologiques et m\u00eame logiques\n\nLa voie logique, dite intuitionnisme, est r\u00e9cente. Mais j'ai eu le plaisir d'en d\u00e9couvrir un pr\u00e9curseur lointain : Nicolas de Cuse, en son _De Li non Aliud_. On peut penser son invention, la **\u00ab Voie de la Double N\u00e9gation \u00bb** comme une variante \u00ab radicale \u00bb de la _via negativa_ , issue elle-m\u00eame du Pseudo-Denys.\n\nComment traduire le titre ? par \u00ab **De Pas-Autre \u00bb** ou **\u00ab De Pas-Autre m\u00eame \u00bb**. \u00ab Li \u00bb est un article n\u00e9olatin pourvu d'un charme tout sp\u00e9cial qui, dans sa simplicit\u00e9 premi\u00e8re, repr\u00e9sente une introduction courtoise au mot qui le suit. Mais au contact anoblissant du myst\u00e9rieux **\u00ab Pas-Autre \u00bb** devient ce \u00ab m\u00eame \u00bb qui le redouble, devient \u00ab l'\u00eatre m\u00eame \u00bb de \u00ab Pas-Autre \u00bb, son Id\u00e9e, l'Ange de sa d\u00e9finition, ange noir invisible, mais infiniment proche, coll\u00e9 au visage du d\u00e9fini.\n\n_\u00ab_ _Nikolaus_ _:_\n\n _Ab te igitur in primis quaero : quid est quod nos apprime facit scire ?_\n\n _Ferdinand_ _:_\n\n _Definitio_.\n\n(Je te demande, avant toute chose, qu'est-ce qui, mieux que tout, nous donne la connaissance ? \u2013 Une d\u00e9finition.)\n\n _Nikolaus_ _:_\n\nTu r\u00e9ponds correctement, car une d\u00e9finition donne l'essence de l'id\u00e9e. Mais pourquoi une d\u00e9finition est-elle dite telle ?\n\n _Ferdinand_ _:_\n\nParce qu'elle d\u00e9finit, et il y a une d\u00e9finition de toute chose.\n\n _Nikolaus_ _:_\n\nParfaitement correct. Si une d\u00e9finition existe, qui d\u00e9finit toute chose, n'y a-t-il pas une d\u00e9finition de toute chose et de la d\u00e9finition elle-m\u00eame ?\n\n _Ferdinand_ _:_\n\nSans aucun doute.\n\n _Nikolaus_ _:_\n\nNe vois-tu pas, alors, que la d\u00e9finition qui d\u00e9finit toute chose, n'est \u00ab pas autre \u00bb que ce qu'elle d\u00e9finit ?\n\n _Ferdinand :_\n\nJe ne te comprends pas.\n\n _Nikolaus :_\n\nTourne l'acuit\u00e9 de ton regard vers \u00ab Li Non Aliud \u00bb, \u00ab le Pas-Autre \u00bb, et tu verras.\n\nAinsi le Cusain approche l'id\u00e9e de Dieu m\u00eame. Il montre qu'il est plus que non-non-p pour tout p (\u00ab p \u00bb d\u00e9signant une propri\u00e9t\u00e9 quelconque : \u00eatre beau, \u00eatre bon, grand, parfait...), non-non-p \u00e9tant diff\u00e9rent (sup\u00e9rieur), dans sa logique, de p.\n\nEst-il le ciel, le bien ? Il n'est pas le ciel, le bien, il est plus, il est surtout \u00ab autre \u00bb que cela qui n'est pas le ciel, le bien (et c'est pourquoi il est \u00ab le ciel m\u00eame \u00bb, \u00ab le bien m\u00eame \u00bb). Et ainsi de suite. On pourrait dire que Nikolaus se place dans une alg\u00e8bre de Heyting de propri\u00e9t\u00e9s et que Dieu y est la borne sup\u00e9rieure, le \u00ab sup \u00bb de tous les non-non-p associ\u00e9es \u00e0 tous les p, chacune de ces non-non-p n'\u00e9tant pas elle-m\u00eame p. Le Dieu du _De Li non Aliud_ est le premier dieu intuitionniste (j'extrapole pas mal : non seulement il ne peut s'agir que d'un pr\u00e9-intuitionnisme, pour des raisons \u00e9videntes, mais encore ce ne peut \u00eatre qu'un quasi-intuitionnisme. Car \u00ab Nikolaus-Cuse \u00bb ne dit pas : \u00ab non-non \u00bb, mais \u00ab non-aliud \u00bb. Cependant s'il y a \u00ab logique de la double n\u00e9gation \u00bb c'est bien d'une n\u00e9gation intuitionniste qu'il s'agit, car le \u00ab pas-autre \u00bb que le \u00ab pas-autre \u00bb est suppos\u00e9 implicitement identique au \u00ab pas-autre \u00bb lui-m\u00eame). C'est, en somme, un Dieu **Cat\u00e9gorique** (au sens math\u00e9matique du mot : situ\u00e9 dans la Th\u00e9orie des Cat\u00e9gories, \u00ab topossiste \u00bb), un Dieu des Preuves (selon la plus r\u00e9cente construction b\u00e9nabouiste) ou, pour rester plus proche du point de d\u00e9part de Nikolaus, un Dieu des D\u00e9finitions.\n\nCar si on revient au point de d\u00e9part du dialogue, on voit que le **\u00ab Pas-Autre \u00bb** , le **\u00ab Non-Non \u00bb** , Dieu en somme (un **\u00ab Dieu non-non \u00bb)** est d\u00e9fini comme ce qui par essence et excellence d\u00e9finit. Or le mouvement de toute d\u00e9finition (cusaine) d'une chose **d** est de se placer dans ce qui n'est pas le d\u00e9fini **d** et d'en ressortir par un mouvement second de n\u00e9gation : **d** n'est pas cela, qui n'est pas **d**. Mais, s'il s'agit d'une chose quelconque, on n'atteint jamais **d** ainsi, dans l'espace intuitionniste des preuves de la d\u00e9finition. On en vient \u00e0 presque- **d** , \u00e0 quasi- **d** peut-\u00eatre, mais pas \u00e0 **d m\u00eame**. Sauf dans le cas, unique, o\u00f9 d est la d\u00e9finition m\u00eame, **D. D, Dieu** , est la **preuve m\u00eame** de tout, l'absente de toute d\u00e9finition, de toute preuve : fleur inverse.\n\n## 59 (\u00a7 3) De cette floraison \u00ab hirsute \u00bb, \u00e0 l'\u00e9vocation vibratoire du vers\n\nL'adjectif, \u00ab hirsute \u00bb, vient de Dante, au _De Vulgari Eloquentia :_\n\n\u00ab _Pexa et irsuta sunt ille que vocamus grandiosa... et pexa vocamus illa que_. \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Les **peign\u00e9s** et les **hirsutes** sont ceux que nous appelons justement magnifiques... Et j'appelle **peign\u00e9s** ceux-l\u00e0 qui trisyllabes ou tout proches du nombre trisyllabique sans aspiration ni accent aigu ou circonflexe, sans lettres \u00e0 son double comme z ou x, sans liquides jumelles ou accol\u00e9es \u00e0 une muette mais en quelque sorte aplanies, quittant les l\u00e8vres avec une certaine douceur comme _amore, donna, disio, letitia, salute, securitate, difesa_.\n\nJ'appelle ensuite **hirsutes** ceux qui en plus de ceux que j'ai dits apparaissent n\u00e9cessaires au Vulgaire Illustre ne f\u00fbt-ce que pour l'orner. Et je dis n\u00e9cessaires en v\u00e9rit\u00e9 ceux que nous ne pouvons \u00e9viter comme certains monosyllabes, par exemple _si, no, me, te, s\u00e9, e, i, o, \u00f9'_ , & les interjections, & maint autre.\n\nJ'appelle mots d'ornement toutes les syllabes qui se m\u00ealent aux mots peign\u00e9s, font une belle harmonie en leur assemblage, encore qu'ils aient \u00e2pret\u00e9 d'aspiration et d'accents, de consonnes doubles, de liquides..., comme en _terra, speranza, impossibilit\u00e0, sonomagnificentissimament_ , lequel est hend\u00e9casyllabique. \u00bb\n\nDans tout r\u00e9cit, et particuli\u00e8rement dans une prose de m\u00e9moire, le courant suave et noble des mots peign\u00e9s a parfois besoin d'\u00eatre interrompu dans son \u00e9coulement plat quoique majestueux : il faut placer des pierres d'attente dans le fleuve rapide, afin de lui redonner quelque imp\u00e9tuosit\u00e9 et v\u00e9locit\u00e9, une \u00e9cume. Un exc\u00e8s de continuit\u00e9, de fluidit\u00e9, en fait immobilise. Il faut que les aiguilles coupantes du gel interrompent le cours suave du ruisseau.\n\nLa po\u00e9sie du **trobar clus** en avait fait un de ses principes formels majeurs, transposant dans les sons des rimes l'opposition des deux \u00e9tats de l'eau, liquide et glace. La fameuse _canso, L'Aura amara_ (le vent amer), d'Arnaut Daniel, double antonyme par anticipation des _canzone_ et sonnets peign\u00e9s de P\u00e9trarque \u00e0 Laura ( _L'Aura_ , Laure) accumule ainsi les hirsutes en sa grille rimique et rythmique :\n\n **L'aura amara \/ fa-Is bruoills brancutz \/ clarzir \/ que-1 doussa espeissa ab fuoills \/ e-ls letz \/ becs \/ dels auzels ramencs \/ ten balps e mutz \/ pars \/ e non pars**.\n\n(L'air amer.\/ fait les bois branchus \/ s'\u00e9claircir \/ que le doux \u00e9paissit de feuilles \/ et les joyeux \/ becs \/ des oiseaux rameux \/ rend balbutiants muets\/ en couples \/ et non couples.)\n\nLe premier torrent que j'ai connu \u00e9tait un ruisseau des Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es, dans la haute vall\u00e9e de l'Aude, pr\u00e8s du village de Camurac o\u00f9 j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9, quelques jours de 1942, \u00e0 neuf ans, dans un \u00ab camp d'\u00e9t\u00e9 \u00bb, sous la tente, amoureux \u00e9perdu de la belle Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, dite \u00ab R\u00ea \u00bb, notre \u00ab chef \u00bb (elle avait bien dix-huit ans ; elle \u00e9tait belle, et brune. Ses yeux \u00e9taient noirs). Il coulait en bas du pr\u00e9, avec gros bruit, des hauts pics hirsutes dans le lointain proche, limpide, glacial, liquoreux de froid. Les pieds tremp\u00e9s y devenaient \u00e9carlates, et les avant-bras, jusqu'au coude. Les doigts s'y engourdissaient.\n\nJe me souviens de myrtilles dans le sous-bois sombre, noires, yeux noirs : myrtilles : Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se.\n\nCet \u00e9t\u00e9-l\u00e0 je fis la rencontre, face \u00e0 face, et dans toute mon ignorance enfantine, de l'\u00e9ros m\u00e9lancolique. A quelque temps de la Lib\u00e9ration Marie-Th\u00e9r\u00e8se \u00e9pousa un Suisse. Elle vint nous voir (voir mes parents) une fois, avec son mari. Elle \u00e9tait devenue suisse, avec un passeport suisse, \u00ab bourgeoise \u00bb de son canton, par mariage, un canton d'alpes. Elle \u00e9tait encore plus belle, avec une peau de glaciers, caramel sombre. Lui avait l'air d'un bandit. J'entendis dire, \u00e0 un autre moment, que c'\u00e9tait un contrebandier. Ils se sont tu\u00e9s tous les deux, peu de temps apr\u00e8s, sur une route de montagne, en voiture.\n\n## 60 (\u00a7 4) Le futur, qui est futur ant\u00e9rieur sans cesse\n\nJ'enferme dans cette parenth\u00e8se, amplifi\u00e9e de cette incise, non pas une th\u00e9orie du temps, ce qui serait simplement ridicule, mais ce que j'appellerai une d\u00e9duction du temps, & ce sera une d\u00e9duction (comme mon \u00ab protocole \u00bb narratif me les autorise) sans responsabilit\u00e9 de v\u00e9rit\u00e9, une d\u00e9duction fictive : une mani\u00e8re toute \u00ab linguistique \u00bb, & tout individuelle, de r\u00e9soudre les paradoxes de l'instant, tels qu'ils se sont pr\u00e9sent\u00e9s \u00e0 tant de bons esprits d\u00e8s les d\u00e9buts de la philosophie et tels qu'ils l'accompagnent tout au long de son histoire, tra\u00eenant avec eux, comme les paquets luisants d'algues s'accrochant \u00e0 la barque qui descend le fleuve, leur cort\u00e8ge embrouill\u00e9 de \u00ab solutions \u00bb.\n\nLe paradoxe \u00ab g\u00e9n\u00e9rique \u00bb (en lequel tous les autres trouvent leur \u00ab germe \u00bb) est que l'instant n'est pas : car il diff\u00e8re contin\u00fbment de lui-m\u00eame, et il s'ensuit qu'on ne saurait dire quand il cesse d'exister : cela ne peut se produire pendant qu'il est, sous peine de contradiction. Cela ne peut d\u00e9j\u00e0 avoir eu lieu, & cela ne peut survenir en l'instant suivant, car deux instants ponctuels ne sont jamais strictement contigus. Il faudrait donc qu'il cesse \u00e0 quelque point marqu\u00e9 du futur, ce qui n'est pas moins impossible, car il devrait alors perdurer pendant une infinit\u00e9 (vraisemblablement non d\u00e9nombrable) d'instants. Ce paradoxe est du \u00ab pur Z\u00e9non \u00bb. Aristote en sa _Physique_ a dit tout cela mieux que je ne saurais le faire.\n\nMa \u00ab solution \u00bb a son histoire, que je rapporterai en quelques \u00ab moments \u00bb.\n\nA son commencement se trouve la discussion d'un autre paradoxe, celui-l\u00e0 r\u00e9cent, connu sous le nom de paradoxe de l'induction, ou **paradoxe de Goodman** , du nom de son \u00ab inventeur \u00bb, le \u00ab trouveur \u00bb logicien Nelson Goodman. Le temps est essentiel \u00e0 ce paradoxe, mais comme r\u00e9el non discut\u00e9, et ce n'est qu'apr\u00e8s beaucoup de d\u00e9tours que j'ai extrait de sa \u00ab solution fictive \u00bb ma d\u00e9duction du temps.\n\nA Manchester, en d\u00e9cembre de 1982, dans la John Rhylands Library (qui n'est pas la John Rhyland's Library, comme je l'ai \u00e9crit par erreur, \u00f4 honte !, quelque part dans la branche un), Alix me dit qu'elle savait comment on pouvait, au moins dans le discours, le dissoudre, & elle m'en exposa, en quelques phrases, la trajectoire imaginaire, sur l'exemple favori des empiristes, le lever renouvel\u00e9, matin apr\u00e8s matin, du soleil.\n\nJ'y vis une mani\u00e8re oblique de parler d'autre chose : il est parfois impossible de taire ce dont on ne peut parler, & quand on ne peut pas le montrer non plus, on peut essayer de parler ailleurs, par d\u00e9tours. Quelqu'un qui, frapp\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement d'insomnie m\u00e9lancolique, ne s'\u00e9veille pour ainsi dire jamais apr\u00e8s le lever du soleil, en ouvrant les yeux le voit l\u00e0, pr\u00e9sent. S'il, si elle, et tant qu'il, elle s'\u00e9veille. Deux ans plus tard, je l'ai \u00e9crit en une fiction : le paradoxe avait pris un nom, celui de son inventeur. J'ai fait de son nom le nom propre d'un personnage ; qui depuis m'accompagne ; c'est un personnage de prose, et un personnage temporel.\n\n## 61 (suite du \u00a7 60) \u00ab La couleur des yeux de la femme de Goodman \u00bb\n\nTel est le titre. Il y a aussi un sous-titre :\n\n**\u00ab On being grue \u00bb**\n\nGoodman avait eu une jeune femme, qu'il aimait beaucoup. Tous les matins en s'\u00e9veillant (il s'\u00e9veillait t\u00f4t) il la regardait dormir, et, plus tard, quand elle s'\u00e9veillait \u00e0 son tour, il lui disait : \u00ab Ce que j'aime par dessus tout ce sont tes yeux ; tes beaux yeux bruns. \u00bb Elle souriait et ne disait rien.\n\nUn matin, Goodman se sentit troubl\u00e9. Sa jeune femme dormait, sous ses paupi\u00e8res ses yeux n'\u00e9taient pas visibles et il se dit : \u00ab Et s'il se trouvait que ses yeux fussent verts, ou bleus, je ne pourrais le supporter. \u00bb Elle s'\u00e9veilla, lui sourit, ses yeux \u00e9taient bruns comme tous les autres matins, mais il ne fut pas rassur\u00e9.\n\n\u00ab Qu'as-tu ? \u00bb lui dit-elle \u00e0 quelque temps de l\u00e0 ; car le trouble de Goodman n'avait pas cess\u00e9 : il \u00e9tait devenu une angoisse qui ne lui laissait pas de repos.\n\n\u00ab Je t'aime, lui dit-il. J'aime particuli\u00e8rement tes yeux quand tu t'\u00e9veilles et que je les regarde pour la premi\u00e8re fois de la journ\u00e9e. J'aime tes yeux parce qu'ils sont bruns. Mais comment puis-je \u00eatre s\u00fbrs qu'ils le sont ? je n'aimerais pas d\u00e9couvrir qu'ils sont bleus, ou verts. \u00bb\n\n\u00ab J'\u00e9tais s\u00fbr, reprit Goodman, que tes yeux sont bruns parce que tous les matins, depuis que nous dormons ensemble, je les ai regard\u00e9s et ils ont \u00e9t\u00e9 bruns. Mais si **vreuse** \u00e9tait leur couleur ? \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Vreuse ? \u00bb dit-elle.\n\n\u00ab Je dirai que leur couleur est le **vreux** dans les deux cas suivants : il s'agit d'un matin pass\u00e9, o\u00f9 j'ai vu tes yeux, et c'est alors la couleur brune ; ou bien il s'agit de demain et c'est le vert, ou le bleu. Tous les jours jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui, plus d'un millier, tes yeux ont \u00e9t\u00e9 bruns, donc \"vreux\" : ils seront donc vreux encore demain ; c'est-\u00e0-dire verts, ou bleus. Je ne peux donc plus \u00eatre s\u00fbr de cela, leur couleur. Voil\u00e0 ce qui me trouble. \u00bb\n\nMme Goodman ne dit rien encore, mais cette nuit-l\u00e0, le regardant \u00e0 la d\u00e9rob\u00e9e, elle vit qu'il pleurait.\n\n\u00ab Mes yeux, lui dit-elle le lendemain au r\u00e9veil, chaque fois que tu les as regard\u00e9s, ont \u00e9t\u00e9 bruns ; tout ce qu'il te faut, tout ce dont tu as besoin d'\u00eatre certain, c'est que demain, quand tu les auras regard\u00e9s, ils auront \u00e9t\u00e9 bruns. Appelons **bbrune** , si tu le veux bien, cette qualit\u00e9 de mes yeux. Appelons **vvreuse** cette autre qualit\u00e9, celle que tu redoutes : que mes yeux ont \u00e9t\u00e9 bruns et que demain, quand tu les auras regard\u00e9s, ils auront \u00e9t\u00e9 verts, ou bleus. Mes yeux, tu en conviendras, ont toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 \"bbruns\". Ils le seront encore demain. Ils ont aussi \u00e9t\u00e9 \"vvreux\" ; ils le seront encore demain. Mais o\u00f9 est, pour toi, la diff\u00e9rence ? S'ils sont encore vvreux demain, cela veut dire que demain, quand tu les auras regard\u00e9s, ils auront \u00e9t\u00e9 bruns, et que le jour suivant, apr\u00e8s-demain, ils auront \u00e9t\u00e9 verts, ou bleus. Mais qu'importe ?\n\n\u00ab Mes yeux, peut-\u00eatre, quand je dors, sont bleus, ou verts, ou d'une autre couleur, ou d'aucune, comme les objets, qui sont apatrides. Mais, sois-en s\u00fbr, toujours, quand je m'\u00e9veillerai pour toi, quand tu auras regard\u00e9 mes yeux, ils auront \u00e9t\u00e9 bruns. \u00bb\n\nAinsi parla la femme de Goodman, n\u00e9e Hume.\n\nEt il en fut ainsi : tous les matins, tant qu'elle v\u00e9cut encore, il regarda ses yeux au moment de son r\u00e9veil, et ils furent bruns.\n\n## 62 (suite 2 du \u00a7 60) Le paradoxe de Goodman est un paradoxe de sceptique\n\nLe paradoxe de Goodman est un paradoxe de sceptique. Il utilise la certitude inscrite dans la langue pour la mettre en contradiction avec elle-m\u00eame. La \u00ab solution \u00bb, linguistique elle aussi, n'efface le doute qu'a _posteriori_ : jusqu'\u00e0 l'instant o\u00f9 les yeux s'ouvrent, ils peuvent encore \u00eatre \u00ab vreux \u00bb (donc, en ce cas, bleus) ou bruns, ou encore \u00ab bbruns \u00bb, ou encore \u00ab vvreux \u00bb. L'instant franchi, le vreux cesse d'\u00eatre possible. Le bbrun et le vvreux demeurent, mais restent toujours futurs. La r\u00e9futation est en fait une r\u00e9futation sceptique. Elle ne restitue nullement la certitude premi\u00e8re de l'induction, mais seulement une certitude \u00e0 **la Merlin** : la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de ses \u00ab obscures paroles \u00bb ne se conna\u00eet comme telle que quand les choses pr\u00e9dites sont \u00ab advenues \u00bb.\n\nIl faut remarquer que ce n'est que parce qu'elle introduit une dissym\u00e9trie entre les adjectifs qu'elle peut parvenir \u00e0 ses fins. Le paradoxe construit le vreux en parall\u00e8le avec le brun. Le **bbrun** est b\u00e2ti de m\u00eame : sont bbruns les yeux qui demain, v\u00e9rifi\u00e9s par le regard, auront \u00e9t\u00e9 **bruns**. Mais le **vvreux** , comment se dit-il ? Certainement pas comme la couleur d'yeux qui, une fois vus, auront \u00e9t\u00e9 **verts** , car cette couleur-l\u00e0 n'est jamais apparue, et l'induction ne peut la confirmer. Sont vvreux les yeux qui, demain, auront \u00e9t\u00e9 vreux. Et la certitude inductive de cette couleur-l\u00e0 est toujours rejet\u00e9e vers le futur. Les yeux, plus tard, auront \u00e9t\u00e9 vreux aussi.\n\nS'ils s'ouvrent encore.\n\nC'est d'un \u00e9clair goodmanien que Saul Kripke a re\u00e7u l'illumination qui l'a conduit \u00e0 sa tr\u00e8s personnelle interpr\u00e9tation du c\u00e9l\u00e8bre et difficile \u00a7 243 des Investigations philosophiques de Ludwig Wittgenstein ; connu comme introduisant \u00ab l'argument du langage priv\u00e9 \u00bb (c'est-\u00e0-dire l'affirmation que le langage priv\u00e9 est impossible). Selon Kripke, Wittgenstein est forc\u00e9 \u00e0 sa th\u00e8se pour s'\u00eatre heurt\u00e9 \u00e0 un \u00ab puzzle sceptique \u00bb.\n\nEt ce \u00ab puzzle \u00bb, c'est un doute surgi au sein de la certitude m\u00eame, c'est-\u00e0-dire atteignant l'op\u00e9ration math\u00e9matique par excellence, l'addition : quand je produis le r\u00e9sultat de la somme 53 + 20, dit Kripke, pourquoi \u00e9cris-je 73 ? Pourquoi pas 37, 37 \u00e9tant le r\u00e9sultat de l'op\u00e9ration de quaddition, qui co\u00efncide avec l'addition pour toutes les additions que j'ai effectu\u00e9es dans le pass\u00e9 mais donne, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment dans ce cas pr\u00e9sent non encore rencontr\u00e9, le r\u00e9sultat palindromique 37 ? (Je modifie, pour des raisons num\u00e9rologiques, l'exemple concret donn\u00e9 par Kripke.) Au lieu de \u00ab plus \u00bb j'utilise en fait \u00ab quus \u00bb. Le sceptique qui sommeille en chaque philosophe s'exprime en langue goodmanienne \u2013 la langue goodmanienne est fortement carrollienne, par son emploi constant du mot-valise (Kripke fait ici implicitement un _portemanteau word_ , \u00e0 l'aide, hommage discret, du patronyme de Quine).\n\nIl ne m'a pas fallu longtemps pour \u00e9tablir, \u00e0 la lecture de Kripke, entre Wittgenstein et Goodman un lien \u00e9motionnel beaucoup plus fort, pour moi, que celui, intellectuel, d'une interpr\u00e9tation de la strat\u00e9gie des _Investigations_ : car Wittgenstein \u00e9tait la lecture principale d'Alix, qui influen\u00e7ait, plus encore que sa parole volontiers nette, tr\u00e8s profond\u00e9ment la strat\u00e9gie de sa \u00ab monstration photographique \u00bb. C'est pourquoi, malgr\u00e9 la fureur r\u00e9futatoire des gardiens du temple wittgensteinien, les Tweedledum & Tweedledee d'Oxford, MMr. Hcker and Baker, j'ai conserv\u00e9 une adh\u00e9sion spontan\u00e9e \u00e0 l'hypoth\u00e8se kripk\u00e9enne. Et elle m'est apparue, au fond, comme une sorte de plagiat implicite d'Alix, une survie de sa parole dans quelque chose comme \u00ab un monde possible de pens\u00e9e \u00bb.\n\n## 63 (suite 3 du \u00a7 60) Longtemps, toutes les ann\u00e9es paralys\u00e9es du premier deuil,\n\nLongtemps, toutes les ann\u00e9es arr\u00eat\u00e9es du premier deuil, je suis rest\u00e9 sur la formulation fabuleuse du texte qui relate une \u00ab aventure de Mr. Goodman \u00bb. Je n'ai pas pens\u00e9 \u00e0 utiliser, ailleurs, le m\u00eame type de **d\u00e9duction fictive**. Et singuli\u00e8rement aux _Investigations_ elles-m\u00eames. La cause principale de cette omission est que je n'ai aucune aspiration \u00e0 penser philosophiquement.\n\nIl est vrai que j'ai d'abord \u00e9t\u00e9 malg\u00e9 tout impressionn\u00e9 par l'ardeur de MMr. Hacker et Baker, l'avalanche luxueuse de leurs citations du ma\u00eetre, prises aux \u0153uvres in\u00e9dites, au _Nachlass_ , autant qu'aux textes publi\u00e9s, & qui ne pouvaient manquer d'affaiblir la lueur initiale, \u00e9blouissante (et sans doute, me disais-je, simplificatrice) de l'interpr\u00e9tation kripk\u00e9enne. Leur accent de conviction indign\u00e9e, sans me convaincre tout \u00e0 fait, m'avait quand m\u00eame \u00e9branl\u00e9. Je me disais seulement que, malgr\u00e9 tout, l'hypoth\u00e8se d'un Wittgenstein troubl\u00e9 par le scepticisme restait s\u00e9duisante, et un irresponsable philosophique comme moi pouvait la conserver pour son charme, sinon pour sa v\u00e9rit\u00e9.\n\nJ'en suis rest\u00e9 l\u00e0 m\u00eame si, entre-temps, ma confiance (r\u00e9ticente et relative) en Hacker & Baker a \u00e9t\u00e9 fortement entam\u00e9e par d'autres d\u00e9veloppements troublants dans le microcosme du wittgensteinisme, sur lesquels mon attention fut attir\u00e9e, comme en bien d'autres circonstances, par la lecture attentive du _TLS_. J'achetai donc un jour \u00e0 Oxford, chez Blackwell (c'est-\u00e0-dire \u00e0 la source \u00e9ditoriale m\u00eame) un livre de S. Stephen Hilmy (l'abr\u00e9viation \u00ab S. \u00bb, non \u00ab r\u00e9solue \u00bb comme on dit dans les \u00e9ditions critiques de manuscrits m\u00e9di\u00e9vaux, m'est myst\u00e9rieuse, et je suis tent\u00e9, apr\u00e8s lecture du livre de la traduire en \u00ab Saint \u00bb), intitul\u00e9 _The Later Wittgenstein_.\n\nEt je d\u00e9couvris que les dogmes de l'\u00c9glise wittgensteinienne y \u00e9taient mis en cause par un \u00c9rasme du Nouveau Testament (les _Investigations_. Le _Tractatus_ repr\u00e9sentant l'Ancien, dont les carnapiens sont les cabbalistes), qui prenait m\u00eame \u00e0 l'occasion les accents d'un Luther. Le \u00ab retour au Big Tapuscrit \u00bb, dont les Ap\u00f4tres (sainte Anscombe, saint Von Wright et saint Rees) nous avaient \u00ab cach\u00e9 \u00bb non l'existence mais la d\u00e9cisive situation th\u00e9orique (et ils avaient, en plus, omis de le publier) bouleversait, selon saint Hilmy, le sens de l'ex\u00e9g\u00e8se. Je ne sais encore aujourd'hui (par paresse) ce que les cardinaux Hacker & Baker ont r\u00e9pondu ni quelle est, sur ce point la position de l'\u00c9glise gallicane (dont le primat est Bouveresse), mais je me suis senti, en somme, plus \u00e0 l'aise dans mes divagations. Ce qui me ram\u00e8ne, laissant la \u00ab quaddition \u00bb en repos, au futur ant\u00e9rieur.\n\nLe recours \u00e0 ce temps si \u00e9trange de la \u00ab conjugaison \u00bb permet d'enfermer d'un seul coup pass\u00e9 et futur dans un pr\u00e9sent de discours. Et on dispose pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment l\u00e0 d'un moyen tout simple de d\u00e9finir ce qui s'y trouve enclos, c'est-\u00e0-dire le **pr\u00e9sent**. Tel est le secret, tout \u00e0 fait modeste, de ma \u00ab d\u00e9couverte \u00bb. A vrai dire, je suis en train de glisser sur quelques difficult\u00e9s, par exemple sur la distinction, n\u00e9cessaire et difficile, entre instant et pr\u00e9sent ; mais je ne veux pas compliquer inutilement ma d\u00e9monstration pour le moment. Je suis parti du \u00ab paradoxe de l'instant pr\u00e9sent \u00bb, je m'y tiendrai.\n\n **L'instant pr\u00e9sent est celui qui aura \u00e9t\u00e9 tel instant pass\u00e9 \u00e0 tel instant futur**. C'est un \u00e9v\u00e9nement (je ne dis pas ici qu'il est \u00ab ponctuel \u00bb), dont un \u00e9v\u00e9nement futur strictement distinct aura gard\u00e9 la m\u00e9moire. (Ainsi ai-je r\u00e9gl\u00e9 son compte, \u00e0 ma propre satisfaction sinon \u00e0 la v\u00f4tre, au taraudant paradoxe de l'instant.)\n\n## 64 (\u00a7 5) Les recettes des Arts de la M\u00e9moire que le Moyen \u00c2ge, puis la Renaissance, invent\u00e8rent\n\nLa tradition s'en poursuivit bien au-del\u00e0 de la mort au feu de Giordano Bruno. On sait (par les savants travaux de M. Paolo Rossi & de Dame Frances Yates) que Leibniz adolescent y joua. Plus tard, rendues suspectes aux lettr\u00e9s par le triomphe des inventions ramusiennes (qui furent celles des \u00e9coles, imposant rigueur, syst\u00e8me et m\u00e9thode au lien entre m\u00e9moire et savoir, avant que la P\u00e9dagogie ne les d\u00e9truise \u00e0 son tour, au nom de la spontan\u00e9it\u00e9, pour pr\u00eacher, avec les r\u00e9sultats que l'on conna\u00eet, la libert\u00e9 du souvenir), elles entr\u00e8rent dans une sorte de clandestinit\u00e9, c\u00f4toyant la \u00ab magie \u00bb, les \u00ab tours de carte \u00bb et les \u00ab voyances \u00bb dans ces zones du petit commerce cr\u00e9pusculaire o\u00f9 la cr\u00e9dulit\u00e9 des uns rencontre la roublardise des autres (qui d'ailleurs, ce qui ne g\u00e2te rien, souvent eux-m\u00eames y croient).\n\nA pr\u00e8s de quatre-vingts ans mon grand-p\u00e8re, toujours d\u00e9sireux de s'instruire (ou peut-\u00eatre de lutter en lui-m\u00eame contre un affaiblissement, l\u00e9ger mais d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able, de ses pouvoirs de m\u00e9morisation) s'\u00e9tait ainsi enthousiasm\u00e9 pour une annonce, parue dans de nombreux journaux. Elle commen\u00e7ait par un r\u00e9cit digne de Simonide de C\u00e9os : on d\u00e9crivait la rencontre du t\u00e9moin et d'un noble et myst\u00e9rieux personnage, br\u00fblant de modestie et de fascination par le regard et par la barbe, dans un compartiment de chemin de fer (une _captatio benevolentiae_ terriblement efficace, quoique vraisemblablement involontaire, aupr\u00e8s de mon grand-p\u00e8re, grand amateur de d\u00e9placements ferroviaires). Empruntant, en guise d'entr\u00e9e en mati\u00e8re, le journal du voyageur qui lui faisait face, l'\u00e9nigmatique et bienveillant Scandinave (l'homme dont la science est venue du froid) y jetait un coup d'\u0153il rapide, \u00e0 la fois per\u00e7ant et n\u00e9gligent et, le lui rendant, en r\u00e9citait aussit\u00f4t l'\u00e9ditorial, \u00e0 l'endroit et \u00e0 l'envers. (\u00e0 l'envers surtout, c'est plus impressionnant).\n\nCar il y avait un Secret : que l'on pouvait se procurer en envoyant, le plus rapidement possible une somme, modeste, aux \u00e9ditions Aubanel, en Avignon. Ce que mon grand-p\u00e8re s'empressa de faire (il ne d\u00e9sirait pas ce secret seulement pour lui-m\u00eame mais aussi pour le partager avec nous, ses petits-enfants, variablement aux prises alors avec nos examens scolaires et universitaires respectifs). Il re\u00e7ut peu apr\u00e8s une brochure dans laquelle il se plongea avec avidit\u00e9. Mais sa d\u00e9ception fut vive : la M\u00e9thode secr\u00e8te, cette Voie d'acc\u00e8s au Graal de la M\u00e9moire, une fois r\u00e9duite \u00e0 ses fort rares indications pr\u00e9cises, n'\u00e9tait, en fait, qu'une variante ab\u00e2tardie de celle que j'ai d\u00e9sign\u00e9e comme \u00ab m\u00e9thode des parcours \u00bb.\n\nLe principe, on le sait, en est fort simple : associer \u00e0 chaque station, un lieu, d'un chemin familier (promenade dans un jardin, trajet dans sa propre maison, de la cave au grenier), des fragments des choses \u00e0 retenir (des textes, des raisonnements, des narrations, sous forme d'images visuelles), qui se trouvent ainsi comme pos\u00e9es sur des portemanteaux \u00e0 souvenirs. Il suffit alors, quand on en a besoin, de refaire le chemin et de prendre (par la pens\u00e9e) sur leurs pat\u00e8res ces manteaux d'id\u00e9es, ces parapluies-vers, ces \u00e9charpes-cartes g\u00e9ographiques, ces chapeaux-listes d'empereurs romains ou des petits-os-de-la main, qui attendent sagement, l\u00e0, le marcheur en son esprit. (Il n'est, bien entendu, au moins en principe, si on a mont\u00e9 l'escalier avec \u00ab Booz endormi \u00bb, pas beaucoup plus difficile de le redescendre en le r\u00e9citant, cette fois, \u00e0 l'envers.)\n\nJe ne dis pas que la m\u00e9thode est stupide ; ou inefficace. Mais elle demande, tout comme l'apprentissage du \u00ab par c\u0153ur \u00bb, un long entra\u00eenement, le recours \u00e0 des techniques particuli\u00e8res (pour s'assurer que les choses \u00e0 retenir vont bien rester, inalt\u00e9r\u00e9es, en le lieu choisi pour elles, ne vont pas s'envoler au vent de l'oubli), \u00e0 des exercices gradu\u00e9s, etc., que les virtuoses du XVIe si\u00e8cle poss\u00e9daient sans doute (Giordano Bruno certainement), mais dont le secret s'est perdu (comme celui des merveilleuses \u00ab bouffettes \u00bb de Mens (Is\u00e8re), ces friandises dauphinoises que nous apportait autrefois Jean Rolland, dont le dernier p\u00e2tissier possesseur refusa de se dessaisir et qu'il ne voulut pas transmettre avant sa mort).\n\nLe mage myst\u00e9rieux s\u00e9ducteur de grands-p\u00e8res avides de savoir, au nom de tennisman su\u00e9dois, n'en savait, sans doute, gu\u00e8re plus que ce que je viens d'en dire (et ignorait visiblement l'origine m\u00eame de cet \u00ab art \u00bb). La d\u00e9ception de mon grand-p\u00e8re fut vive, mais br\u00e8ve. Nous nous sommes moqu\u00e9s (gentiment, je pense) de lui et de nous-m\u00eames (son enthousiasme s'\u00e9tait montr\u00e9 contagieux). Il renon\u00e7a \u00e0 l'espoir de progr\u00e8s tardifs mais d\u00e9cisifs dans la connaissance de la Physique th\u00e9orique ou des Langues \u00e9trang\u00e8res et il se replongea dans une autre qu\u00eate beaucoup plus ancienne, et plus fondamentale pour lui, d'un tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rent Graal : la construction du prototype enfin parfait de **chaise longue inrenversable**.\n\n## 65 (\u00a7 6) La course inverse du train vers Castelnaudary\n\nOn s'arr\u00eatait parfois dans cette petite ville. Les parents Canguilhem y habitaient. Le p\u00e8re Canguilhem (comme disait le mien) \u00e9tait, je crois, tailleur. Peut-\u00eatre \u00e9tait-ce le jeune fr\u00e8re qui \u00e9tait tailleur, ou les deux, je ne sais plus. Quoi qu'il en soit, **il y avait un jardin, et dans ce jardin je vois un arbre que j'aimais immens\u00e9ment** (un catalpa ? on en trouve dans le jardin du Luxembourg) ; **apr\u00e8s les fleurs, apr\u00e8s les fruits de cet arbre, il restait en fin de printemps comme des demi-coquilles de noix vides, d'un brun assez clair, partag\u00e9es en deux par la ligne d'une \u00e9trave, qui se terminait d'un gouvernail pointu ; l\u00e9g\u00e8res, l\u00e9g\u00e8res ; et ce mode de description indique assez \u00e0 quelles fins je destinais ces coques-barques, dont je remplissais mes poches pour le retour : \u00eatre navires dans le lavoir de notre jardin ; escadres dans les caniveaux les jours de pluie, levant l'ancre pour d'imaginaires, exotiques et arcadiens Tropiques**.\n\nLes Canguilhem avaient une ferme ari\u00e9geoise (possession infiniment pr\u00e9cieuse en ces temps de faim extr\u00eame). Et un jour mon p\u00e8re m'y emmena pour \u00ab faire les battages \u00bb. Le bl\u00e9 moissonn\u00e9, on \u00ab battait \u00bb les \u00e9pis, et le grain tomb\u00e9 s'en allait, par pleins sacs, dans le grenier. Tel \u00e9tait le principe de l'op\u00e9ration qui, pour moi, repr\u00e9sentait surtout une longue succession de jeux dans les meules, les foins, les poussi\u00e8res de bl\u00e9, la fascination des ruisseaux c\u00e9r\u00e9aliers coulant sous la main, les chevaux, les roues de charrettes, les sommeils dans la paille. Des mois plus tard, \u00e0 l'automne, des \u00ab barbes \u00bb d'\u00e9pis, des pailles sortaient encore de la laine de mes pull-overs, de mani\u00e8re impr\u00e9visible, soudain, dans mon cou \u00e0 l'\u00e9cole, telle une restitution, involontaire et tardive, de souvenirs.\n\nEt le plus m\u00e9morable de ce s\u00e9jour, c'est qu'on mangeait. Jamais les paysans de ces r\u00e9gions ne se sont nourris aussi abondamment, ardemment, d\u00e9monstrativement, ostentatoirement, qu'en ces ann\u00e9es o\u00f9 les habitants des villes mouraient, eux, parfois litt\u00e9ralement, d'inanition. Je d\u00e9vore aujourd'hui encore le menu de ces vocables sensuels : \u00ab pain blanc \u00bb, \u00ab porc \u00bb, \u00ab haricots secs \u00bb, \u00ab lard d'oie \u00bb (image d'\u00e9paisses lani\u00e8res tr\u00e8s denses, tr\u00e8s blanches, supr\u00eamement savoureuses) : une grande table dans une salle basse, tous les \u00ab gens du battage \u00bb ensemble et la phrase du fermier \u00e0 la fin du repas, roul\u00e9e en lourdes syllabes occitanes mais d\u00e9j\u00e0 non m\u00e9diterran\u00e9ennes, retenue par mon p\u00e8re et souvent redite plus tard par lui, si bien que je pourrais me souvenir de l'avoir entendue : \u00ab Si \u00e7a continue comme \u00e7a, on va tous mourir de faim ! \u00bb\n\nJ'\u00e9prouve, venue de l'enfance, une fascination effray\u00e9e pour la philosophie. Canguilhem et mon p\u00e8re \u00e9taient probablement pour moi alors, non des philosophes (ce que mon p\u00e8re a toujours ni\u00e9 \u00eatre) (les philosophes appartenaient \u00e0 une autre \u00e9poque, ils \u00e9taient grecs, et morts depuis plus de deux mille ans : je raisonne par analogie avec cette lettre re\u00e7ue r\u00e9cemment d'un petit gar\u00e7on, o\u00f9 je prends ceci :\n\n\u00ab Bonjour Jacques Roubaud,\n\nJe m'appelle Etienne et j'apprend des po\u00e9sies de toi \u00e0 mon \u00e9cole. Nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 appris avec la ma\u00eetresse : Le poeme du chat, le rhinoc\u00e9ros, les dinosaures, l'escargot (un e, barr\u00e9), la marmotte et puis c'est tout.\n\nMon papa, la semaine derni\u00e8re m'a dit qu'il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 quelque part ou tu r\u00e9citais des po\u00e9mes avec ton ami Pierre l'artigue (c'est aussi son ami). Moi je croyais que tu vivais \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque de Victor Hugo, et je ne voulais pas le croire. \u00bb)\n\nNon des philosophes donc mais quelque chose de tr\u00e8s honorable et constamment v\u00e9rifiable : des professeurs de philosophie.\n\nLe moment de ce fragment de prose co\u00efncide, dans le temps ext\u00e9rieur, avec le projet, n\u00e9 au Coll\u00e8ge international de philosophie (o\u00f9 cette fascination m'a conduit cet automne de 1989, avec plus ou moins bonne conscience (je ne me sens pas plus philosophe qu'\u00e0 sept (je le sais, puisque c'est alors que j'ai d\u00e9cid\u00e9 d'\u00eatre po\u00e8te))), d'un hommage \u00e0 Canguilhem. J'ai vu avec amusement que ses plus respectables anciens \u00e9l\u00e8ves se demandaient, avec inqui\u00e9tude, comment \u00ab il \u00bb allait r\u00e9agir, et qui prendrait sur lui d'aborder le sujet.\n\n## 66 (\u00a7 7) Le r\u00e9cit du souvenir aurait un besoin in\u00e9puisable des ressources d'une rh\u00e9torique hermog\u00e9nienne (la vitesse est un concept central du trait\u00e9 hell\u00e9nistique d\u00fb \u00e0 cet auteur)\n\nLe conditionnel est trompeur ; car il est de fait que **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** , tel qu'il s'\u00e9crit, est fortement influenc\u00e9 par le _peri ideon_ d'Hermog\u00e8ne le Rh\u00e9teur. Il serait plus exact de dire que c'est moi qui ai choisi l'\u00ab Id\u00e9e \u00bb hermog\u00e9nienne de vitesse (aussi qualifi\u00e9e de \u00ab v\u00e9locit\u00e9 \u00bb, _\u00ab rapidity_ \u00bb, _\u00ab celeritas \u00bb_ , \u00ab vivacit\u00e9 \u00bb, ou _\u00ab prestezza \u00bb_ par les diff\u00e9rents commentateurs de la Renaissance), pour lui faire jouer un r\u00f4le central dans ma strat\u00e9gie rh\u00e9torique. En premier lieu, c'est vrai, par curiosit\u00e9, parce qu'elle est selon toute vraisemblance une innovation d'Hermog\u00e8ne, un de ses apports les plus marquants \u00e0 la tradition, ce qui lui donne l'attrait ind\u00e9niable de la raret\u00e9. Mais aussi, mais surtout parce qu'elle a \u00e9t\u00e9 sentie telle \u00e0 la Renaissance, dans la po\u00e9sie anglaise et italienne o\u00f9 j'ai d'abord (dans mon ignorance honteuse de l'Antiquit\u00e9 gr\u00e9co-latine) d\u00e9couvert son existence (et en premier chez Giulio Camillo Delminio, auteur d'un trait\u00e9 sur le \u00ab th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la m\u00e9moire \u00bb). La place de cette Id\u00e9e est d'ailleurs centrale aussi dans la g\u00e9om\u00e9trie de l'exposition rh\u00e9torique puisque, quatri\u00e8me des sept Id\u00e9es, elle est flanqu\u00e9e de deux triples : Clart\u00e9, Grandeur et Beaut\u00e9 \u00e0 l'avant \u2013 \u00c9thos, V\u00e9rit\u00e9, et Gravit\u00e9 en arri\u00e8re).\n\nUne \u00ab vie br\u00e8ve \u00bb et fabuleuse d'Hermog\u00e8ne (genre par excellence du style de la v\u00e9locit\u00e9), due \u00e0 Philostrate (que j'acc\u00e9l\u00e8re encore, et compactifie, tout en n\u00e9gligeant le fait qu'elle parle peut-\u00eatre d'un autre Hermog\u00e8ne, dit le Sophiste, que M. Patillon ne veut pas confondre avec le Rh\u00e9teur) constitue une illustration de cette interpr\u00e9tation, & pleine de \u00ab suavit\u00e9 \u00bb (ou \u00ab _dolcezza_ \u00bb, ou \u00ab saveur \u00bb : une autre belle \u00ab id\u00e9e \u00bb du _peri ideon_. Je m'autorise du trait\u00e9 pour la faire servir \u00e0 l' _\u00e9thos_ de mon ouvrage, comme \u00ab composant \u00bb de la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9) : \u00ab Hermog\u00e8ne, n\u00e9 \u00e0 Tarse, avait \u00e0 quinze ans une si grande r\u00e9putation de sophiste que l'empereur Marc-Aur\u00e8le se d\u00e9pla\u00e7a pour l'entendre. Mais \u00e0 vingt ans, il perdit d'un coup son don, en apparence de mani\u00e8re naturelle. \"O\u00f9 sont donc, lui disait-on, tous tes discours ail\u00e9s ? Ne se sont-ils pas envol\u00e9s de toi \u00e0 la vitesse des oiseaux ?\" Il mourut \u00e2g\u00e9, pauvre, inconnu, car on cessa de penser \u00e0 lui d\u00e8s que son art le quitta. Quand on ouvrit son cadavre, on vit qu'il avait le c\u0153ur plus gros que la normale, et couvert de poils. \u00bb\n\nSturm, traduisant Hermog\u00e8ne en latin en 1571, parle de l'id\u00e9e de vitesse en des termes qui \u00e9voquent le courant imp\u00e9tueux du fleuve, et ses eaux \u00ab roides \u00bb (comme on dit dans le \u00ab Lancelot en prose \u00bb). C'est une qualit\u00e9 qui rend vivantes les eaux de la parole qui sans elle se transformeraient en mare stagnante. Mais comme il suffit parfois de regarder fixement le fleuve pour emp\u00eacher son image de couler, comme le courant, m\u00eame rapide, fuyant trop lissement, \u00e0 la longue semble lent et presque immobile, il faut l'interrompre par quelque interpolation d'\u00ab hirsutes \u00bb, les mots et les sons par excellence de la _velocitas_.\n\nLe XVIe si\u00e8cle y a vu le style du temps. Minturno, dans son _Arte poetica_ cite un vers du \u00ab Triomphe du Temps \u00bb de P\u00e9trarque comme son embl\u00e8me, un vers qui, selon lui, dit avec une rapidit\u00e9 extr\u00eame la pr\u00e9cipitation irr\u00e9pressible de ce dont il parle : \u00ab _per la mirabil sua velocitate_ \u00bb. Andrew Marvell signale \u00e0 sa fuyante, r\u00e9ticente et phobique ma\u00eetresse, \u00ab _his coy mistresse_ \u00bb, le chariot pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 du temps, _\u00ab Time's winged charriot hurrying near_ \u00bb. Et plus intimement encore s'accorde \u00e0 l'esprit de l'Id\u00e9e hermog\u00e9nienne l'apostrophe du Faust de Marlowe aux chevaux de la nuit : \u00ab Lente, lente, currite noctis equi \u00bb (vers accentu\u00e9 et insist\u00e9 typographiquement ici ainsi que je l'entends). Chaque mot de ce vers est un mot de la vitesse, car dans la classification hermog\u00e9nienne le m\u00e8tre par excellence de cette Id\u00e9e est le troch\u00e9e, la succession trocha\u00efque (la dipodie trocha\u00efque particuli\u00e8rement) qui sans cesse tombe de son haut (ici d'une hauteur accentuelle : c'est un vers latin, lui-m\u00eame dit en anglais) et pr\u00e9cipite la voix. Mais le redoublement de l'effet, son acc\u00e9l\u00e9ration, r\u00e9sulte d'un pr\u00e9cipice s\u00e9mantique aux deux premiers pieds, o\u00f9 se r\u00e9p\u00e8te l'adverbe, comme express\u00e9ment invent\u00e9 pour un \u00ab paradoxe de Grelling \u00bb du temps : \u00ab _l_ ente \u00bb, \u00ab lente \u00bb. (Tout cela a un sens tr\u00e8s net en anglais o\u00f9 il s'agit de mettre en d\u00e9s\u00e9quilibre le d\u00e9roulement du vers par rapport \u00e0 l'environnement rythmique iambique ambiant. De la m\u00eame mani\u00e8re le \u00ab vers libre international \u00bb, le \u00ab vli \u00bb contemporain, pris aux Anglo-Saxons obtient l'effet voulu par enjambement perp\u00e9tuel (voyez l\u00e0 une hypoth\u00e8se sur l'origine du \u00ab vli \u00bb : importance de l'instabilit\u00e9 m\u00e9trique).)\n\nD'ailleurs tout dans la description du style v\u00e9loce (par M. Patillon d\u00e9cortiquant Hermog\u00e8ne et ses d\u00e9mosth\u00e9niens exemples) m'explique apr\u00e8s coup la s\u00e9duction que cette Id\u00e9e exer\u00e7a instantan\u00e9ment sur moi : pas de pens\u00e9e dans la vitesse ! Mots brefs, peu recherch\u00e9s, figures qui enl\u00e8vent la platitude : incises, ench\u00e2ssements ; & \u00ab l'incursive \u00bb, cette merveille, celle qui entra\u00eene (en cascade) d'autres \u00ab id\u00e9es \u00bb, les pr\u00e9cipitant sur une distribution de rochers-conjonctions (les _hirsuta_ de la syntaxe) ; commata en asynd\u00e8te (mais oui !) ; variantes accumul\u00e9es et rapproch\u00e9es, proximit\u00e9s des apodoses (pas d'inqui\u00e9tude \u00e0 avoir, cher lecteur : selon ce terme, il s'agit seulement d'assurer l'arriv\u00e9e imm\u00e9diate de \u00ab l'id\u00e9e qui doit suivre \u00bb), & les figures du discours concis mais qui ne le para\u00eet pas (constructions obliques, enclaves), & les figures du discours qui semble concis mais ne l'est pas (associations), et celles du discours concis et le paraissant (tout de m\u00eame !), _c\u00f4la_ brefs, pauses sans hiatus (pas de b\u00e9ances dans la voix) finissant sur une instabilit\u00e9, & la dipodie trocha\u00efque, bien s\u00fbr, _last but not least !_ La bri\u00e8vet\u00e9 des \u00e9l\u00e9ments, la rapidit\u00e9 des transitions inventent le mouvement _(kinei)_ , multiplient les passages _(metabasis)_. Sa n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 r\u00e9sulte de ce que \u00ab le discours morcel\u00e9, devenu plat, a besoin d'un correctif _(\u00e9panortosis)_ sous la forme d'une mise en perspective logique (figure incursive) ou m\u00e9talogique (remarque incidente). C'est ce que Hermog\u00e8ne appelle relever ( _orthoun_ ) la platitude et r\u00e9veiller ( _di\u00e9geirein_ ) le discours \u00bb. En effet.\n\nMais c'est bien l'\u00e9quation seizi\u00e9miste entre l'Id\u00e9e hermog\u00e9nienne et le topique du Temps qui lui donne sa n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 propre dans mon entreprise : car je me suis, en d\u00e9cidant d'\u00e9crire au pr\u00e9sent du r\u00e9cit, sans arr\u00eats et sans retours, dans un \u00ab maintenant \u00bb dont l'\u00e9paisseur est, nocturne, enferm\u00e9e en d'\u00e9troites limites horaires, vou\u00e9 \u00e0 l'angoisse de l'instant \u00e9vanouissant, dont je sais toujours quand il aura cess\u00e9 d'\u00eatre. Le salut (bien qu'illusoire) \u00e9tait dans la seule v\u00e9locit\u00e9.\n\n## 67 (\u00a7 8) quelque chose comme le paradoxe d'Olbers\n\nOlbers est l'astronome qui \u00ab d\u00e9couvrit \u00bb (dans les ann\u00e9es de gloire de la cosmologie newtonienne (c'\u00e9tait vers 1820)), que le ciel de la nuit ne devrait pas pouvoir \u00eatre noir. Bien au contraire, chaque point de l'univers centre d'un regard devrait \u00eatre \u00e9bloui d'une lumi\u00e8re infinie.\n\nJe m'imagine Olbers, d'apr\u00e8s les notices savantes : toute la partie sup\u00e9rieure de sa maison avait \u00e9t\u00e9 convertie en observatoire et il consacrait la plus grande partie de ses nuits \u00e0 l'astronomie, s'int\u00e9ressant particuli\u00e8rement aux com\u00e8tes et aux plan\u00e8tes mineures. Je le vois un peu comme un Mr. Pickwick danois (le h\u00e9ros du livre pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 de mon grand-p\u00e8re, qu'il relisait environ tous les deux ans), & un exemple parfait de ce que les Anglais appelaient autrefois un _natural philosopher_. Il devait n\u00e9cessairement se passionner, comme Goethe, pour la classification des nuages (et pour la comparaison des m\u00e9rites de celle de Lamarck avec celle qui est encore la n\u00f4tre, & qui nous vient du pharmacien quaker Luke Howard). Mais il r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissait surtout \u00e0 cette difficile question : pourquoi le ciel de la nuit est-il noir ?\n\nAdmettons le principe cosmologique, \u00e0 savoir que l'univers, \u00e0 l'exception d'irr\u00e9gularit\u00e9s purement locales, comme les galaxies, pr\u00e9sente partout le m\u00eame aspect. Consid\u00e9rons ensuite une tr\u00e8s grande coquille sph\u00e9rique de centre arbitraire, de rayon r et d'\u00e9paisseur dr (elle est pratiquement infiniment faible par rapport au rayon). Le volume de la sph\u00e8re (4 pi que multiplie r au carr\u00e9, que multiplie encore dr) sera suppos\u00e9 assez grand pour que la lumi\u00e8re \u00e9mise par les \u00e9toiles qu'elle contient soit \u00e9gale au produit de son volume (que je viens d'exprimer) par U, U \u00e9tant le produit du nombre moyen d'\u00e9toiles dans une unit\u00e9 de volume par la luminosit\u00e9 moyenne d'une d'entre elles (ces notions \u00ab moyennes \u00bb ayant un sens de par le principe cosmologique pourvu que tout soit consid\u00e9r\u00e9 \u00e0 suffisamment grande \u00e9chelle). Vous me suivez ?\n\nLe lecteur ( _natural philosopher_ lui-m\u00eame) :\n\nJe vous pr\u00e9c\u00e8de : l'intensit\u00e9 lumineuse due aux \u00e9toiles, au centre de la coquille d'univers que vous imaginez, cette terrasse par exemple, est par cons\u00e9quent Udr et est donc pratiquement ind\u00e9pendante du rayon de la sph\u00e8re.\n\nUn autre lecteur :\n\nVous supposez donc la condition suivante v\u00e9rifi\u00e9e :\n\n _condition i_ : La densit\u00e9 moyenne et la luminosit\u00e9 moyenne des \u00e9toiles ne varient pas dans le temps.\n\nPremier lecteur :\n\nEt la _condition ii_ : Les m\u00eames quantit\u00e9s ne varient pas dans le temps.\n\nMoi :\n\nOlbers admettait \u00e9galement (cela va sans dire, puisque Lobatchevski ni Bollya\u00ef n'avaient encore publi\u00e9 leurs hypoth\u00e8ses f\u00e9roces sur la g\u00e9om\u00e9trie, et Gauss les gardait dans ses tiroirs) :\n\n _condition iii_ : L'espace est euclidien.\n\nMais m\u00eame si on suppose l'espace lobatchevskien, le r\u00e9sultat n'en sera pas affect\u00e9, n'est-ce pas ?\n\nSecond lecteur :\n\nSi vous le dites...\n\nPremier lecteur :\n\nJe le crois \u00e9galement. Cependant la\n\n _condition iv_ s'impose :\n\nLes lois de la physique s'appliquent dans toutes les r\u00e9gions de l'espace, et pas seulement sur notre globe terraqu\u00e9. Dieu l'a voulu ainsi.\n\nSecond lecteur :\n\nMais ajoutons aussi la\n\n _condition v_ , indispensable au raisonnement de votre h\u00e9ros :\n\nIl n'y a pas de mouvement d'ensemble des \u00e9toiles.\n\nMoi :\n\nEn effet. Tout est l\u00e0.\n\nOn peut alors achever le raisonnement, jusqu'\u00e0 la conclusion troublante qui pr\u00e9occupa grandement Olbers : l'intensit\u00e9 lumineuse au centre, due aux \u00e9toiles int\u00e9rieures \u00e0 l'hypoth\u00e9tique coquille \u00e9tant fixe, entourons cette coquille, tel un oignon, par d'autres coquilles d'\u00e9gale \u00e9paisseur, concentriques \u00e0 la premi\u00e8re, la fronti\u00e8re ext\u00e9rieure de l'une \u00e9tant la face int\u00e9rieure de la suivante. Alors chaque coquille contribuera de la m\u00eame mani\u00e8re \u00e0 la radiation centrale. Comme on peut ajouter sans cesse des coquilles \u00e0 notre premi\u00e8re sph\u00e8re de pens\u00e9e, il s'ensuit que la densit\u00e9 de radiation ici m\u00eame devrait \u00eatre infinie. Le Ciel serait plein d'infinie lumi\u00e8re.\n\nPremier lecteur :\n\nNe pourrait-on supposer que la lumi\u00e8re est effectivement infinie sur nos yeux, mais que nous lui sommes presque enti\u00e8rement aveugles ?\n\nJacques Roubaud :\n\n?\n\nSecond lecteur :\n\nLa gloire \u00e9clairant toutes r\u00e9gions\n\nde l'int\u00e9rieur de l'esprit\n\ndivin la vue\n\ns'arr\u00eate \u00e0 l'enveloppe\n\net se retourne\n\nvainement\n\nvers l'int\u00e9rieur\n\nde soi.\n\nJacques Roubaud (moi) :\n\n? ? ? ?\n\nPremier lecteur :\n\nN'est-ce pas la preuve d'une intervention surnaturelle ?\n\nUn troisi\u00e8me lecteur :\n\nLa lumi\u00e8re infinie est, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, le noir.\n\nMoi :\n\nOlbers postula, plus prosa\u00efquement, un gaz t\u00e9nu absorbant les radiations, des cheveux d'ange flottant dans la gel\u00e9e de l'\u00e9ther.\n\nSecond lecteur :\n\nPourquoi ne pas laisser tomber la _condition iv_ : Les lois de la physique pourraient n'\u00eatre que locales.\n\nPremier lecteur :\n\nSoyons s\u00e9rieux !\n\nMoi :\n\nEn fait, si j'ai bien compris ce que dit l'astronomie moderne, on garde l'universalit\u00e9 des lois de la physique, et le principe cosmologique. La jeunesse de l'univers n'est pas non plus envisageable. Reste l'hypoth\u00e8se de Hubble, qui est, ou a \u00e9t\u00e9 de bien d'autres mani\u00e8res confirm\u00e9e depuis : la _condition v_ est en d\u00e9faut. L'univers est en expansion.\n\nJe pensais donc \u00e0 quelque infinitude paradoxale de la lumi\u00e8re de neige dans le jardin hivernal ; et ensuite, par association, me rappelant une image de biologiste comparant les souvenirs \u00e0 une neige tombant sans cesse, en couches cristallines, quelque part dans notre cerveau, \u00e0 un univers en expansion de la m\u00e9moire nous \u00e9vitant d'\u00eatre aveugl\u00e9s par l'infinitude des atomes de notre pass\u00e9, un mouvement qui aurait pour nom, dans l'univers provisoirement en expansion de notre existence : l' **Oubli**.\n\n# (DU CHAPITRE 2)\n\n## 68 (\u00a7 10) Je vois aussi des m\u00fbriers, aux fruits rouges explos\u00e9s sur le sol, comme de vin, de sang\n\nCe passage, comme plusieurs autres semblables dans le chapitre premier de cette branche (d'autres encore suivront, dans d'autres chapitres, des incises, des bifurcations, dans d'autres branches, & dans ce _no man's land_ de prose articul\u00e9e que j'appelle \u00ab entre-deux-branches \u00bb) est isol\u00e9 typographiquement du reste du texte, singularisation qui se retrouvera, d'une mani\u00e8re ou d'une autre, dans une hypoth\u00e9tique version imprim\u00e9e (j'obtiens pour le moment cette singularisation par une \u00ab s\u00e9lection \u00bb (en jargon macintoshien) du fragment, qui appara\u00eet alors en noir sur mon \u00e9cran. Je \u00ab clique \u00bb ensuite, dans la colonne \u00ab format \u00bb, sur l'indication \u00ab gras \u00bb qui, en vertu des redondances amicales de mon \u00ab traitement de texte \u00bb m'appara\u00eet pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment dou\u00e9e de cette caract\u00e9ristique \u00ab stylistique \u00bb, \u00eatre en gras. Le fragment ainsi isol\u00e9 prend aussit\u00f4t la qualit\u00e9 voulue : la m\u00eame). (Le jargon enfantino-franglais de ces machines a de quoi faire fr\u00e9mir d'horreur les amateurs de belle prose.)\n\nLe premier trait commun des fragments ainsi singularis\u00e9s est d'\u00eatre descriptions effectu\u00e9es, le plus scrupuleusement possible \u00e0 partir d'images pures ou de courtes s\u00e9quences d'images, caract\u00e9ris\u00e9es par un recours minimal \u00e0 de la recomposition d\u00e9ductive, et assignables par moi \u00e0 des moments de l'enfance (et en tout cas ant\u00e9rieures aux premiers mois de 1945, o\u00f9 se situe, sans que je puisse lui donner une date pr\u00e9cise, la derni\u00e8re d'entre elles, chronologiquement parlant). Je les introduis le plus souvent dans le texte par les mots **\u00ab je vois \u00bb** (j'emploie plus ou moins exactement ces mots, et ils ne sont pas n\u00e9cessairement les premiers du fragment), mots qui, selon l'interpr\u00e9tation que j'adopte de cette id\u00e9e de l'image, peuvent \u00eatre consid\u00e9r\u00e9s se substituant \u00e0 un impossible **\u00ab je me vois \u00bb** (je suis donc toujours \u00ab pr\u00e9sent \u00bb dans ces fragments attribu\u00e9s au pass\u00e9).\n\nLeur deuxi\u00e8me trait commun est le moment de leur d\u00e9p\u00f4t sur le papier (dans une forme l\u00e9g\u00e8rement diff\u00e9rente de celle qu'elles pr\u00e9sentent maintenant). Il est assez ancien. Je les ai toutes \u00e9crites en m\u00eame temps que la cha\u00eene de d\u00e9duction fictive reproduite (en un \u00ab double \u00bb palindromique) au chapitre 5 de la branche un, et compos\u00e9e des quatre-vingt-dix-neuf assertions pos\u00e9es en \u00e9lucidation du r\u00e9cit de r\u00eave qui \u00ab commen\u00e7a \u00bb mon **Projet** : \u00e0 l'automne de 1980, il y a neuf ans. Les assertions, je l'ai dit en son temps, \u00e9taient alors des \u00ab maximes \u00bb. ces images \u00e9taient alors des souvenirs. Assertions et images (maximes et souvenirs) s'entrelacent, entrelacement qui ne tient pas seulement \u00e0 la contemporan\u00e9it\u00e9 de leur r\u00e9daction. Certaines de ces images sont \u00ab cit\u00e9es \u00bb, sans commentaire, dans les assertions. Aussi leur restitution comblera-t-elle certains \u00ab trous \u00bb de la \u00ab d\u00e9duction \u00bb.\n\nLe troisi\u00e8me trait, qui est cons\u00e9quence des deux autres, est que, m\u00eame si d'une certaine mani\u00e8re je tente de les lier l'une \u00e0 l'autre par le r\u00e9cit, je ne peux en fait rien leur ajouter. Elles furent telles. Mon hypoth\u00e8se centrale sur la m\u00e9moire implique qu'elles ne sont plus, ou plus purement, pr\u00e9sentes dans mes souvenirs. Ce sont des images dites, et surtout ce que je nomme des **\u00ab pictions \u00bb**.\n\nIl existe un certain ordre, initial, de cette induction d'images, leur ordre d'extraction \u00e0 partir des souvenirs. Leur succession n'est pas indiff\u00e9rente. De l'exp\u00e9rience, intense, de notation de la m\u00e9moire qu'elles pr\u00e9sentent j'ai aliment\u00e9 ma r\u00e9flexion. Mais je n'ai pas conserv\u00e9 ici l'ordre de d\u00e9part. Je l'avais fait pour les assertions. La diff\u00e9rence ne tient pas tellement \u00e0 l'apparence de kyrielle de leur liste (l'allure parfois \u00ab marabout-bout de ficelle \u00bb de certaines concat\u00e9nations). Je viens d'employer, \u00e0 dessein, \u00e0 leur propos, l'expression \u00ab induction d'images \u00bb. Je veux dire que le d\u00e9p\u00f4t lin\u00e9aire des descriptions masque le caract\u00e8re combinatoire propre de la m\u00e9moire qui, non seulement n'est pas simplement \u00ab successive \u00bb (puisqu'elle l'est \u00ab dans les deux sens \u00bb), mais surtout est essentiellement intrication \u00e0 distance plut\u00f4t que juxtaposition (un trait dont se fondait une th\u00e9orie math\u00e9matique de la m\u00e9moire qui \u00ab accompagnait \u00bb **Le Grand Incendie de Londres** abandonn\u00e9. Elle faisait partie du **Projet** ). On reconna\u00eetra ici les hypoth\u00e8ses sous-jacentes \u00e0 ma \u00ab solution fictive \u00bb du paradoxe de Goodman, paradoxe logique de l'induction.\n\nLa discontinuit\u00e9 elliptique des assertions a bien, elle, au contraire, les caract\u00e8res reconnaissables d'une successivit\u00e9 terme \u00e0 terme n\u00e9cessaire. C'est le propre de toute \u00ab d\u00e9duction \u00bb. Cependant la \u00ab correspondance \u00bb qui les lie ne respecte pas strictement leurs ordres respectifs. De tout cela il r\u00e9sulte une mise en parall\u00e8le possible (partielle, mais possible) des deux premi\u00e8res **branches** de mon r\u00e9cit : la **branche un** est une (la ?) branche qui \u00ab \u00e9lucide \u00bb introduit, commente une cha\u00eene d\u00e9ductive (du r\u00eave, de la d\u00e9cision, du **Projet** , et de leur cons\u00e9quence, le roman non \u00e9crit, **Le Grand Incendie de Londres)**. La **branche deux** est construite comme l'\u00e9lucidation, le commentaire d'une s\u00e9quence inductive d' **images-m\u00e9moire**.\n\n## 69 (\u00a7 68) Je les ai toutes \u00e9crites en m\u00eame temps que la cha\u00eene de d\u00e9duction fictive qui \u00ab commen\u00e7a \u00bb mon Projet : \u00e0 l'automne de 1980, il y a neuf ans.\n\nEn 1980, \u00e0 l'automne, j'ai \u00e9crit cela : \u00ab A l'automne de mon mariage, j'\u00e9tais persuad\u00e9 d'avoir trouv\u00e9, enfin, des conditions satisfaisantes, un \u00e9quilibre raisonnable entre les t\u00e2ches de la quotidiennet\u00e9 et une prose sans obligations. \u00bb Ce n'est pas faux. Mais c'est \u00e9videmment insuffisant pour encha\u00eener, \u00e0 la mani\u00e8re dont **`Le grand incendie de Londres'** s'\u00e9crit maintenant, la forme tr\u00e8s particuli\u00e8re de ma tentative d'alors. Le \u00ab d\u00e9but \u00bb en \u00e9tait, apr\u00e8s l'Avertissement (le \u00a7 0 du tout, pr\u00e9c\u00e9dant le d\u00e9but de la branche un), le r\u00e9cit du r\u00eave (branche un, chapitre 5). Venait alors la mise en place des \u00ab maximes \u00bb (ce n'\u00e9tait que le mat\u00e9riau pr\u00e9paratoire. Je ne dis pas, je n'ai pas \u00e0 dire ce qu'\u00e9tait la prose r\u00e9elle, \u00e9crite, d\u00e9truite maintenant), suivie du registre des \u00ab souvenirs \u00bb. Leurs \u00ab points d'accrochage \u00bb, enfin.\n\nJe vois assez clairement aujourd'hui que le \u00ab double \u00bb aspect de cette mise en \u0153uvre, qui \u00e9tait destin\u00e9e initialement \u00e0 un lecteur unique, privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 (Alix, ma femme), avant tout autre lecteur \u00e9ventuel, \u00e9tait une r\u00e9ponse \u00e0 sa double nature (& le \u00ab moteur \u00bb de son propre \u00ab projet \u00bb) : de philosophie et de photographie.\n\nD\u00e9placement sur le terrain de la philosophie, mais sous forme fictive, que cet assemblage de \u00ab maximes \u00bb, donn\u00e9es \u00e0 lire \u00e0 une \u00ab wittgensteinienne \u00bb. Cette analogie est nette, et simple. Elle nourrit sa clart\u00e9 de la nettet\u00e9 hermog\u00e9nienne. Et elle \u00e9tait, alors, tout \u00e0 fait explicite : une rencontre, conjugale et ludique, de la math\u00e9matique et de la philosophie, sous le regard de la logique.\n\nMais translation aussi, simultan\u00e9ment, de la photographie \u00e0 la description des souvenirs (sous l'esth\u00e9tique & \u00e9thique steinienne de la description ( _An Acquaintance with Description_ est un titre de Gertrude Stein) qui est aussi conforme \u00e0 certaines maximes de Wittgenstein : ne pas expliquer, d\u00e9crire. Ne pas dire, montrer). Cela, je ne l'ai vu que bien plus tard.\n\nQuand j'ai \u00e9crit (plus haut) : l'enfance et la photographie ont un lien presque consubstantiel : \u00ab toutes les photographies, a-t-on pu \u00e9crire, sont des photographies d'enfance \u00bb, je n'ai pas dit que ce \u00ab on \u00bb \u00e9tait Alix (ce n'\u00e9tait pas alors mon propos). Mais j'ai offert, naturellement, \u00e0 ma femme, photographe, l'\u00e9criture photographique de ces souvenirs.\n\nJe cite : \u00ab Les seules vraies photographies sont des photographies d'enfance.\n\nLes photographies que nous avons de notre enfance sont toutes fascinantes. M\u00eame floues ; m\u00eame mal cadr\u00e9es ; m\u00eame \u00e0 peine visibles. Nous avons presque tous des photographies de nous enfants ; \u00e0 moins d'avoir grandi parmi des peintres, on n'a pas de tableaux, de peintures, de soi-m\u00eame enfant. Or la photographie de nous enfant nous fascine ; parce qu'elle nous montre une sc\u00e8ne o\u00f9 nous \u00e9tions pr\u00e9sents ; nous voyons que nous y \u00e9tions ; nous nous y reconnaissons ; or nous ne nous souvenons pas de cette sc\u00e8ne ; nous n'en n'avons rien vu. J'y \u00e9tais, pas de doute ; mais je n'ai rien vu ; tout ce que j'en vois, c'est une photographie. J'ai d\u00fb pourtant voir, j'avais des yeux ; j'en ai des souvenirs, dans le meilleur des cas ; j'ai aussi oubli\u00e9. La photographie me montre **la premi\u00e8re forme de l'invisible : celle de l'oubli. \u00bb**\n\n## 70 (\u00a7 68) ce sont des images dites, des \u00ab pictions \u00bb\n\nJe me suis empar\u00e9 pour **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** d'une distinction wittgensteinienne (entre Bild et Abbild en langue allemande ; traduite en _image_ et _picture_ en anglais). Mais je l'ai faite mienne en la d\u00e9formant (in\u00e9vitablement en la d\u00e9formant). C'est donc une distinction, qu'il faut attribuer non \u00e0 Wittgenstein lui-m\u00eame, mais \u00e0 un \u00ab pseudo-Wittgenstein \u00bb (comme, pour qualifier telle prose de l'\u00e9poque m\u00e9di\u00e9vale, on parle de la \u00ab chronique du \"pseudo-Turpin\" \u00bb), et en lui donnant un \u00ab spectre \u00bb d'illumination beaucoup plus large. Cette appropriation, je ne pense pas n\u00e9cessaire de la justifier (je lui donnerais, d'ailleurs, toujours la m\u00eame \u00ab excuse \u00bb, celle du fabricant de r\u00e9cits), mais j'en pr\u00e9ciserai un peu les modalit\u00e9s par la \u00ab d\u00e9duction fictive \u00bb suivante (qui pourrait prendre place, parmi d'autres, dans un livre, sous ce titre m\u00eame) et qui est une \u00ab d\u00e9duction du pseudo-Wittgenstein \u00bb. On reconna\u00eetra ais\u00e9ment ses \u00ab sources \u00bb.\n\ni Une **image** n'est pas une **piction.**\n\nii **L'image** de la douleur n'est pas une **piction,** et elle ne peut pas \u00eatre remplac\u00e9e dans un jeu de langage par quoi que ce soit qui puisse \u00eatre appel\u00e9 **piction.**\n\n **L'image** de la douleur entre certainement en un sens dans le jeu de langage, mais pas comme **piction.**\n\niii Je nomme une pierre, je nomme le soleil, alors que ces choses ne sont point pr\u00e9sentes elles-m\u00eames \u00e0 mes sens. Assur\u00e9ment, j'en ai **l'image** dans ma m\u00e9moire, \u00e0 ma disposition.\n\nJe nomme la douleur physique, je ne souffre pas. Elle n'est donc pas non plus pr\u00e9sente. Pourtant si son **image** n'\u00e9tait pas dans ma m\u00e9moire, je ne saurais pas ce que je dis.\n\nJe nomme les nombres, et les voil\u00e0 dans ma m\u00e9moire, non point leur **image,** mais eux-m\u00eames. Je nomme **l'image** du soleil, et ce n'est pas l' **image** d'une **image** que j'\u00e9voque, mais **l'image** elle-m\u00eame. C'est elle qui ob\u00e9it \u00e0 mon appel.\n\niv **L'image** est le changement en moi induit par un objet, par quelque chose du monde.\n\nv Une **image** n'a pas de lieu.\n\nvi Une **image** n'a pas de lieu ; pas de lieu, pas de dur\u00e9e.\n\nvii Il est clair que l'acte de former des **images** ne peut pas \u00eatre compar\u00e9 \u00e0 celui de d\u00e9placer un corps. En effet, quelqu'un d'autre que moi peut \u00eatre juge du fait qu'un mouvement a eu lieu, alors que dans le mouvement de mes **images,** il ne peut s'agir que de ce que moi, j'ai vu.\n\nviii Si quelqu'un me dit : mes **images** sont des **pictions** int\u00e9rieures, ressemblant \u00e0 mes impressions visuelles, mais soumises \u00e0 ma volont\u00e9, je dirai que cela n'a pas de sens.\n\nix Pourtant, il serait erron\u00e9 de dire que voir et former des **images** sont des activit\u00e9s essentiellement diff\u00e9rentes. Comme si on disait qu'aux \u00e9checs, jouer et perdre sont des activit\u00e9s diff\u00e9rentes.\n\nx Essayez de comparer **l'image** de la rage de dents de L. W. avec sa rage de dents. Autrement dit, nous avons l' **image** d'une douleur, mais nous ne pouvons pas la comparer \u00e0 la douleur comme nous comparons la **piction** d'un \u0153il noir avec son mod\u00e8le.\n\nxi Les **pictions** ne sont pas des **images** parce qu'elles sont oisives.\n\nxii La **piction** mentale est la **piction** d\u00e9crite quand quelqu'un d\u00e9crit ce qu'il imagine.\n\nxiii Les **images-m\u00e9moire** se distinguent des autres **images** par quelque caract\u00e9ristique sp\u00e9ciale.\n\nxiv **L'image** est plus semblable \u00e0 son objet que n'importe quelle **piction.** Car quel que soit le degr\u00e9 de similitude atteint par la **piction,** elle peut toujours \u00eatre **piction** de quelque chose d'autre. Mais il est essentiel pour l' **image** qu'elle soit **image** de cela et de rien d'autre. Ce qui fait qu'on pourrait imaginer que **l'image** est une sur-ressemblance.\n\nxv J'aimerais pouvoir dire : ce que la **piction** me dit c'est \u00ab elle-m\u00eame \u00bb, pas son objet : quelque chose qui est dans sa propre structure, ligne, couleur, sa forme...\n\nxvi Le souvenir d'une **image** ne peut pas \u00eatre repr\u00e9sent\u00e9 en \u00ab picturant \u00bb une **piction** de cette image avec des couleurs plus p\u00e2les. La p\u00e2leur du souvenir est quelque chose d'enti\u00e8rement diff\u00e9rent de la p\u00e2leur d'une couleur vue, et l'absence de clart\u00e9 de sa vision est d'une esp\u00e8ce enti\u00e8rement diff\u00e9rente, par nature, du vague d'un dessin impr\u00e9cis.\n\nxvii Imaginons une histoire compos\u00e9e de **pictions.** Il ne nous est pas n\u00e9cessaire de traduire ces **pictions** en repr\u00e9sentations r\u00e9alistes si nous voulons les comprendre. De la m\u00eame mani\u00e8re, nous n'avons pas besoin de traduire des photographies en peintures color\u00e9es. Et pourtant, des hommes et des plantes noir et blanc dans la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 nous sembleraient invraisemblablement \u00e9tranges et effrayants. Faut-il dire alors que quelque chose est une **piction** uniquement dans un **jeu de pictions ?**\n\nxviii Une phrase dans une histoire nous donne la m\u00eame satisfaction qu'une **piction.**\n\nxix Si on regarde une photographie avec des gens, des maisons et des arbres, on ne ressent pas le manque d'une troisi\u00e8me dimension. Et pourtant il ne serait pas facile de d\u00e9crire une photographie comme une collection de taches sur une surface plane.\n\nxx Nous voyons la photographie ou la peinture sur notre mur comme si c'\u00e9tait l'objet lui-m\u00eame (l'homme, le paysage, etc.). Mais cela aurait pu se passer d'une mani\u00e8re tout \u00e0 fait diff\u00e9rente. On pourrait par exemple imaginer une tribu qui n'aurait pas ce type de relation avec les **pictions,** o\u00f9 les gens seraient repouss\u00e9s par les photographies, et consid\u00e9reraient que les visages sans couleur ou m\u00eame les visages \u00e0 \u00e9chelle r\u00e9duite sont des choses inhumaines.\n\nxxi Je viens de prendre des pommes dans un sac de papier, o\u00f9 elles \u00e9taient rest\u00e9es assez longtemps. J'ai d\u00fb les couper en deux et en jeter la moiti\u00e9. Un peu plus tard, je recopiais une phrase dans mon cahier, et la fin de la phrase n'allait pas. Tout d'un coup j'ai vu cette phrase comme une pomme \u00e0 moiti\u00e9 pourrie. \u00c7a se passe toujours comme \u00e7a. Tout ce que je rencontre devient une **piction** mentale de ce que je suis en train de penser.\n\nxxii \u00ab Le style, c'est l'homme \u00bb ; \u00ab le style, c'est l'homme m\u00eame. \u00bb La premi\u00e8re expression est un court et m\u00e9diocre \u00e9pigramme. La deuxi\u00e8me version ouvre une perspective tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rente. Elle dit que le style d'un homme est une **piction** de cet homme.\n\nxxiii La **piction** d'un pommier, m\u00eame fid\u00e8le, est en un sens beaucoup moins proche de l'arbre qu'une p\u00e2querette.\n\nxxiv Peut-on nier une **piction** ? La r\u00e9ponse est non.\n\nxxv Ce que je regarde est pr\u00e9sent. Ce que je pr\u00e9vois est futur. Ce n'est pas que le soleil est futur, puisqu'il est d\u00e9j\u00e0, mais que son lever l'est, qui n'a pas encore eu lieu. Mais je ne pourrais pas pr\u00e9dire son lever, si je n'en avais **l'image** en moi. Aucune **piction** ne peut conduire \u00e0 une pr\u00e9diction.\n\nxxvi La **piction** est l\u00e0. Je ne discute pas son exactitude. Mais \u00e0 quoi s'applique-t-elle ? Faut-il penser une **piction** de la c\u00e9cit\u00e9 comme obscurit\u00e9 de l'\u00e2me, ou bien comme du noir dans la t\u00eate de l'aveugle ?\n\nxxvii Ce qui est **image** n'est pas dans le m\u00eame espace que ce qui est vu.\n\nxxviii On ne peut pas suivre une **image** avec attention.\n\nxxix L'attention ne produit pas d' **images**.\n\nxxx A ce moment, j'ai eu cette pens\u00e9e devant mes yeux :\n\n\u00ab Et comment cela ? \u00bb\n\n\u00ab J'avais cette **piction. \u00bb**\n\nLa **piction** \u00e9tait-elle la pens\u00e9e ? Non. Si je d\u00e9cris \u00e0 quelqu'un la **piction** , il ne lui viendra pas la pens\u00e9e.\n\nxxxi L'id\u00e9e de feuille n'est pas une **image** de la feuille. M\u00eame pas une **image** qui contiendrait seulement ce qui est commun \u00e0 toutes les feuilles. Le sens d'un mot n'est pas une **image.** Nous avons tendance \u00e0 regarder les mots comme s'ils \u00e9taient tous des noms propres. Et ensuite nous confondons le porteur du nom avec le sens du nom.\n\nxxxii L'ombre est une sorte de **piction.** Mais il est absolument essentiel qu'une **piction** que nous pr\u00e9sentons comme l'ombre de quelque chose ne soit pas ce que j'appellerai une **piction** par ressemblance. Je ne veux pas dire par l\u00e0 que c'est une **piction** semblable \u00e0 ce qu'elle repr\u00e9sente. Mais seulement qu'elle est correcte quand on y reconna\u00eet une similarit\u00e9. On pourrait dire que c'est une copie. _Grosso modo_ , on peut dire que les copies sont des pictions qu'on peut prendre pour ce qu'elles repr\u00e9sentent.\n\nxxxiii Il n'y a pas de portrait du rouge.\n\nxxxiv Les **pictions** sont toujours oisives.\n\nxxxv Pensons \u00e0 la **piction** d'un paysage. C'est un paysage imaginaire avec une maison. Quelqu'un demande : \u00ab Cette maison, elle est \u00e0 qui ? \u00bb La r\u00e9ponse pourrait \u00eatre : elle appartient au fermier qui est assis sur le banc, devant la maison. Mais c'est un fermier qui ne peut pas entrer dans sa maison.\n\nxxxvi Deux **pictions** d'une rose dans le noir. Dans une des deux **pictions** , il n'y a que du noir, la rose est invisible. Dans l'autre **piction** , la rose est repr\u00e9sent\u00e9e en d\u00e9tail, mais entour\u00e9e de noir. L'une des deux **pictions** est-elle juste et l'autre fausse ? Est-ce qu'on peut parler d'une rose rose dans le noir et d'une rose rouge dans le noir ? Est-ce qu'on peut dire, en m\u00eame temps, qu'on ne peut pas les s\u00e9parer dans le noir ? M\u00e9fiez-vous des roses noires.\n\nxxxvii Si nous comparons une proposition \u00e0 une **piction,** il faudrait savoir si nous la comparons \u00e0 un portrait ou \u00e0 une peinture de genre.\n\nLes deux se d\u00e9fendent.\n\n## 71 (\u00a7 10) une lign\u00e9e r\u00e9publicaine avec une certaine propension aux positions minoritaires\n\nLa reconstitution d'une telle \u00ab g\u00e9n\u00e9alogie morale \u00bb tient sans aucun doute \u00e0 l'orientation donn\u00e9e par mon p\u00e8re au r\u00e9cit des origines familiales, et lui-m\u00eame avait \u00e9t\u00e9 influenc\u00e9 sur ce point par son propre grand-p\u00e8re, le marin. Mais, en la reconnaissant comme mienne, j'effectue un choix, je me comporte comme si, tout en disposant \u00e0 mon gr\u00e9, librement, en sujet majeur et autonome, de mes jugements et comportements civiques, je d\u00e9couvrais que je n'avais pas \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 l'origine enti\u00e8rement libre de ne pas les adopter, comme s'ils comportaient une composante h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire, et encore qu'ils r\u00e9sultaient d'une instruction, \u00e0 laquelle j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 soumis dans la p\u00e9riode la plus mall\u00e9able de ma vie, celle de l'enfance, et sous la forme la plus difficile \u00e0 \u00e9viter, puisqu'elle s'\u00e9tait pr\u00e9sent\u00e9e \u00e0 moi non comme telle, mais dissimul\u00e9e insidieusement dans un r\u00e9cit. La transmission du \u00ab g\u00e8ne r\u00e9publicain \u00bb (\u00ab radical \u00bb m\u00eame, au sens anglo-saxon) en aurait \u00e9t\u00e9, in\u00e9vitablement, favoris\u00e9e.\n\nIl va de soi que je crois tr\u00e8s mod\u00e9r\u00e9ment \u00e0 l'h\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9 des caract\u00e8res politiques acquis, pas beaucoup plus, m\u00eame, en ce qui me concerne, \u00e0 leur d\u00e9termination enti\u00e8re par un \u00ab enseignement \u00bb indirectement ou directement re\u00e7u. La vision politique n'est pas la vision tout court. Dans le cas de cette facult\u00e9, la neurophysiologie semble bien avoir tranch\u00e9 (en ce qui concerne les jeunes chats, tout au moins, selon mon souvenir (mais je veux bien partager avec les f\u00e9lins ces propri\u00e9t\u00e9s)) : sans appareillage nerveux et c\u00e9r\u00e9bral h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire d'une part, et sans apprentissage aux tout premiers mois de la vie, la c\u00e9cit\u00e9 est certaine.\n\nEt il n'a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 n\u00e9cessaire pour arriver \u00e0 cette conclusion d'avoir recours \u00e0 la mise en \u0153uvre sur des \u00eatres humains de l'exp\u00e9rience de pens\u00e9e autrefois propos\u00e9e (au temps des \u00ab Lumi\u00e8res \u00bb, bien s\u00fbr) par Jean-Bernard M\u00e9rian : prendre quelques enfants d'homme, les \u00e9lever dans les meilleures conditions mat\u00e9rielles, intellectuelles et morales possible, mais dans l'obscurit\u00e9 totale, en l'absence de toute lueur naturelle ou artificielle, puis, \u00e0 vingt ans, les pr\u00e9senter d'un seul coup au regard du soleil. Il serait bien difficile aujourd'hui d'en imaginer la transposition au registre des id\u00e9es et opinions. (L'hypoth\u00e8se du \u00ab bon sauvage \u00bb la suppose cependant implicitement, qui choisit, en m\u00eame temps, la r\u00e9ponse.)\n\nMais je ne veux pas dire non plus que je m'imagine \u00e9chapper enti\u00e8rement \u00e0 ces deux d\u00e9terminations, et ne rien devoir qu'\u00e0 mes propres choix adultes & conscients. Et je ne veux pas dire enfin que la fiction g\u00e9n\u00e9alogique que je constitue ici me souvenant m'importe pour sa plus ou moins grande part de v\u00e9rit\u00e9. Si je l'incorpore \u00e0 mon r\u00e9cit c'est en vue d'une autre transposition, \u00e0 la fois analogique et diff\u00e9rentielle (l'interrogation d'une famille de ressemblances et de divergences), au syst\u00e8me constitutif de ce qui fut mon **Projet.**\n\nIl supposait en effet l'exercice de deux facult\u00e9s : la facult\u00e9 de math\u00e9matiser, et la facult\u00e9 de po\u00e9sie. Et si le **Projet** devait \u00eatre, comme il pr\u00e9tendait l'\u00eatre, **Projet de Math\u00e9matique et Projet de Po\u00e9sie,** dans quelle mesure sa possibilit\u00e9 m\u00eame (et son \u00e9chec) a-t-elle origine dans sa pr\u00e9histoire, dans mon histoire et pr\u00e9histoire familiales en particulier ?\n\nJe ne me demande pas si j'\u00e9tais capable ou incapable de ces facult\u00e9s : je tiens pour un axiome, narratif pour le moins, qu'\u00eatre capable de langage (ce qui est indispensable \u00e0 mon lecteur) implique \u00eatre capable de math\u00e9matique et de po\u00e9sie. Je m'efforce seulement d'en d\u00e9senlacer les commencements.\n\n## 72 (\u00a7 10) ils d\u00e9terminent d\u00e9cisivement notre _\u00e9thos_\n\nJe d\u00e9tourne, encore une fois, la rh\u00e9torique d'Hermog\u00e8ne \u00e0 mes propres fins. On m'explique, et je veux d'autant plus volontiers le croire que cela va tout \u00e0 fait dans mon sens, que l' _\u00e9thos_ , Id\u00e9e rh\u00e9torique d'Hermog\u00e8ne, plus \u00ab rh\u00e9th\u00e9orique \u00bb en fait que strictement pragmatique, n'est pas vraiment non plus une injonction \u00e9thique. Il serait \u00ab preuve technique \u00bb, \u00ab inh\u00e9rent au discours \u00bb et devant \u00ab donner de l'auteur une opinion qui le rende digne de foi \u00bb. C'est bien ainsi que je veux le prendre. Le portrait de l' _\u00e9thos_ hermog\u00e9nien le montre l'une des faces d'une double Id\u00e9e ; \u00ab _\u00e9thosaletheia \u00bb (aletheia : veritas, veritate, verity)_.\n\nOr j'envisage l' _aletheia_ exclusivement (narrativement) sous l'angle de la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 (la strat\u00e9gie de la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 a \u00e9t\u00e9 non pas la d\u00e9couverte, mais plus trivialement le choix d'un dispositif de protection, une condition de possibilit\u00e9 de cette prose). Il s'ensuit que _l'\u00e9thos_ de ma prose est, lui aussi, un _\u00e9thos_ de v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 : je raconte les choses qui se sont pass\u00e9es, ou se passent, dans leur nudit\u00e9, sans apparence de polissage ni de pr\u00e9paration. Mon _aletheia_ , dans son \u00e9tat de nature autoproclam\u00e9, n'a pas besoin d'\u00eatre surprise, d\u00e9busqu\u00e9e. Mais elle s'accompagne (voudrait s'accompagner) de toutes les qualit\u00e9s composantes qui lui sont spontan\u00e9ment propres : _glukutes_ (saveur, _sweetness ; suavitas, soave, dolcezza) \u2013 drimutes (subtlety_ (qui n'est parfois qu'un _acutum :_ pointe, piquant)) \u2013 _epieikeia_ (mod\u00e9ration et _modesty)_.\n\nLe rapport entre fiction et non-fiction dans cet _\u00e9thos_ est difficile, contrairement \u00e0 ce qu'on pourrait croire \u00e0 premi\u00e8re vue. A premi\u00e8re vue, rien n'est plus simple : la fiction y est impossible, puisqu'\u00e0 la fiction il est strictement impossible de croire, autrement que par un aveuglement momentan\u00e9 et volontaire. L' _aletheia_ de la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 (autant que celui de la v\u00e9rit\u00e9) est allergique \u00e0 la fiction, au roman. **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** est tout sauf un roman.\n\nMais sa v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 affich\u00e9e est exactement cela, affich\u00e9e : c'est une affirmation rh\u00e9torique de v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 (hermog\u00e9nienne autant qu'on voudra, rh\u00e9torique malgr\u00e9 tout), qui ne garantit aucunement une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 des choses dites, ext\u00e9rieure aux choses dites elles-m\u00eames. Sont propos\u00e9es des \u00ab preuves techniques \u00bb de la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9, c'est-\u00e0-dire des modes de d\u00e9ploiement du discours en prose permettant au lecteur d'ajouter foi \u00e0 ce que je dis, de se trouver persuad\u00e9 de mon _\u00e9thos_.\n\nIl se pourrait cependant que tout cela ne soit qu'une ruse de la fiction, se saisissant d'une confusion possible entre v\u00e9rit\u00e9 et d\u00e9monstrabilit\u00e9 (qu'il faut \u00e9videmment s\u00e9parer dans ce contexte, o\u00f9 n'a gu\u00e8re de sens l'illusion d'une \u00ab compl\u00e9tude \u00bb logique : un r\u00e9cit vrai n'est pas forc\u00e9ment v\u00e9rifiable (on peut m\u00eame dire qu'un r\u00e9cit v\u00e9rifiable n'est pas forc\u00e9ment vrai ; car qui proc\u00e9dera \u00e0 la v\u00e9rification ? et qui (paradoxe carrollien) v\u00e9rifiera les v\u00e9rificateurs ?)). L'affirmation de v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 ne serait alors que la mise en \u0153uvre d'une autre id\u00e9e hermog\u00e9nienne, celle de la complication.\n\nJ'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 frapp\u00e9 cependant par quelques r\u00e9actions de lecteurs \u00e0 la publication de la premi\u00e8re partie de mon ouvrage : qui non seulement ne mettaient pas en doute la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de ce que j'y avance mais semblaient en outre, contrairement \u00e0 mon affirmation d'une \u00e9criture au pr\u00e9sent des choses racont\u00e9es, qui implique qu'elles sont, une fois le livre imprim\u00e9, du pass\u00e9, et ont donc toutes chances de d\u00e9crire des \u00e9tats r\u00e9volus, persuad\u00e9s de leur permanence. Tel j'apparaissais dans ces pages, tel j'\u00e9tais. Et tel je devais \u00eatre encore. Ma strat\u00e9gie de l' _aletheia_ avait, \u00e0 leur \u00e9gard, r\u00e9ussi au-del\u00e0 de mes esp\u00e9rances !\n\n## 73 (\u00a7 11) Je sais que je l'avais d\u00e9j\u00e0 vue, quatre ans plus t\u00f4t, mais je l'avais oubli\u00e9e\n\nIl m'est impossible de r\u00e9tablir la moindre image proprement marine de ce premier s\u00e9jour. Je vais jusqu'au sable (je vois vraisemblablement du sable), mais pas plus loin. L'\u00e9t\u00e9 1938 fut le dernier \u00e9t\u00e9 ininterrompu de l'\u00ab entre-deux-guerres \u00bb, et l'Histoire a fait qu'il fut, pour mes parents et pour le reste de leur vie, l'unique et dernier \u00e9t\u00e9 de vraies vacances, c'est-\u00e0-dire sur les bords de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e. Ils avaient lou\u00e9 pr\u00e8s d'Hy\u00e8res une \u00ab villa \u00bb, \u00e0 deux s\u0153urs tr\u00e8s bourgeoises, terrifi\u00e9es de l'envahissement de la c\u00f4te par \u00ab ces cong\u00e9s pay\u00e9s \u00bb, et pour qui des familles d'universitaires, malgr\u00e9 leurs nombreux enfants et leurs id\u00e9es vraisemblablement \u00ab \u00e0 gauche \u00bb, avaient paru \u00eatre un moindre mal. Elles avaient fui, et la location n'\u00e9tait pas ch\u00e8re.\n\nIl y avait dans cette villa mes parents, mon oncle Frantz Molino (fr\u00e8re de ma m\u00e8re), sa jeune femme, Jeanne, et six enfants, dont moi : ma s\u0153ur Denise et mon fr\u00e8re Pierre, mon cousin Jean (mon a\u00een\u00e9 d'un an), ma cousine Juliette et l'autre Pierre (qui est pour nous, ses cousins, \u00ab Pierre Molino \u00bb).\n\n **C'est une villa immense que j'aper\u00e7ois (coin de fa\u00e7ade, fen\u00eatres) au-dessus de moi, de biais, par-dessus ou entre les intervalles de la rampe d'un escalier qui pourrait \u00eatre de marbre, ou de faux marbre ; cette image s'enfonce dans une lumi\u00e8re violente, violemment oppos\u00e9e \u00e0 une obscurit\u00e9 v\u00e9g\u00e9tale proche et intense ; isol\u00e9e, elle ne bouge pas d'autour de moi, ne m'entra\u00eene nulle part ailleurs** (une signature de son anciennet\u00e9).\n\nJ'ai appris \u00e0 reconna\u00eetre cet isolement intense d'une circonstance d' **image** comme la marque d'une virtuelle anciennet\u00e9. (Je dis \u00ab circonstance d'image \u00bb, parce que ce que je vois n'est pas d\u00e9tach\u00e9 de moi et pos\u00e9 sur le mur de ma vision. J'en fais partie. En toutes ces images que je dis, je suis). Une autre particularit\u00e9 \u00ab archa\u00efque \u00bb de ce souvenir est l'immensit\u00e9, et l'architecture proprement \u00ab palladienne \u00bb, de la villa. Mais sur les photographies familiales qui m'ont \u00ab plac\u00e9 \u00bb cette image, ses dimensions sont modestes, ordinaires.\n\nLa mer est toute proche. L'intensit\u00e9 lumineuse n'a rien d'exceptionnel. Mais l'image a gard\u00e9, elle, son \u00e9chelle premi\u00e8re. Elle n'a pas \u00e9t\u00e9 ajust\u00e9e par un raisonnement, inconscient, de vraisemblance g\u00e9om\u00e9trique, peut-\u00eatre parce que je ne l'ai jamais revue. Au-del\u00e0 du bord de l'image, mais dans l'invisible, dans ce que je ne peux p\u00e9n\u00e9trer, il y a un prolongement, un entourage, situ\u00e9 au sein de cette obscurit\u00e9 aussi violente que l'est la lumi\u00e8re qui \u00e9claire la villa, les marches. Il m'appara\u00eet ceci (mais ce sont des choses que je peux dire, pas voir, peut-\u00eatre le reste de quelque autre image plus grande, ou d\u00e9cal\u00e9e, qui s'\u00e9tait maintenue en moi, et que j'ai perdue depuis) :\n\n **\u00e0 droite, sous les marches, de grands alo\u00e8s, coupants, une odeur chaude, de v\u00e9g\u00e9tation m\u00e9diterran\u00e9enne, dans sa s\u00e9cheresse estivale, absolue.**\n\n## 74 (\u00a7 11) Mon p\u00e8re a r\u00e9ussi presque enti\u00e8rement la conversion de ma m\u00e8re, sans toutefois obtenir une adh\u00e9sion vraiment franche \u00e0 la moule et \u00e0 la sardine\n\nIl reste que des traces \u00e9videntes d'une certaine (ludique) \u00ab lutte des classes \u00bb dans la th\u00e9orie culinaire se sont perp\u00e9tu\u00e9es jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui. Le grand livre de r\u00e9f\u00e9rence, _La Cuisini\u00e8re proven\u00e7ale_ de Reboul, qui constituait le minimum vital des m\u00e9nag\u00e8res toulonnaises ou marseillaises du d\u00e9but du si\u00e8cle, ayant conquis une nouvelle jeunesse (prouv\u00e9e par d'innombrables r\u00e9\u00e9ditions) \u00e0 la faveur de l'envahissement du littoral m\u00e9diterran\u00e9en par les r\u00e9sidences secondaires, a aussit\u00f4t nourri une pol\u00e9mique, sans cesse renaissante, entre mes parents.\n\nMon p\u00e8re affecte d'y voir une parfaite illustration du point de vue \u00ab bourgeois \u00bb dans la cuisine, avec son m\u00e9pris non dissimul\u00e9 du peuple, sa pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence pour les nourritures nobles et co\u00fbteuses (accompagn\u00e9 d'une admiration suspecte pour le beurre et la cr\u00e8me normande), sa condescendance envers les recettes des gens simples et pauvres, \u00e9videmment d\u00e9crites en ses pages comme simplistes et non raffin\u00e9es. Ma m\u00e8re d\u00e9fend Reboul au nom de la fid\u00e9lit\u00e9 familiale (la m\u00e9moire de la grande cuisini\u00e8re que fut sa tante marseillaise Jeanne Thabot), et de l'ind\u00e9pendance du g\u00e9nie, qui transcende ces distinctions et mesquineries, somme toute secondaires.\n\nMon p\u00e8re \u00ab prouve \u00bb l'irr\u00e9futabilit\u00e9 de son jugement par deux exemples : l'escargot, le \u00ab lima\u00e7on \u00bb proven\u00e7al, trait\u00e9 selon lui, \u00ab pardessus la jambe \u00bb par Reboul, et la sardine, encore et toujours la sardine. Le sort fait \u00e0 la sardine (avec celui fait \u00e0 son cousin, l'anchois) est selon lui la pierre de touche d'une position correcte dans la gastronomie. Ma m\u00e8re fait observer que les recettes y sont. Mon p\u00e8re r\u00e9torque qu'\u00ab il \u00bb ne pouvait d\u00e9cemment pas les exclure mais que son d\u00e9dain pour elles \u00e9clate \u00e0 chaque ligne.\n\nUne pol\u00e9mique seconde se greffe alors sur la divergence centrale : c'est que Reboul est marseillais. Et mon p\u00e8re a une m\u00e9fiance instinctive et ancienne pour cette ville faussement proven\u00e7ale, qui fait de l'ombre \u00e0 Toulon (au Toulon d'autrefois), et qui d'ailleurs joue au football et pas au rugby, ce qui est tout dire. Ma m\u00e8re n'est pas particuli\u00e8rement marseillaise mais, ayant fait ses deux premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es d'\u00e9tudiante-lyc\u00e9enne (\u00ab hypokh\u00e2gne \u00bb et \u00ab kh\u00e2gne \u00bb) au lyc\u00e9e Thiers, et log\u00e9e alors chez Oncle Pierre et Tante Jeanne, des Marseillais de toujours, elle se trouve, de par sa d\u00e9fense de Reboul, et \u00e0 son corps d\u00e9fendant, plac\u00e9e automatiquement du c\u00f4t\u00e9 phoc\u00e9en de la barri\u00e8re.\n\nCe double jeu de langage, dans ce qu'il a de r\u00e9p\u00e9titif, presque de rituel, remplit aujourd'hui principalement un r\u00f4le d'effecteur de m\u00e9moire, puisqu'il permet de restituer, ne serait-ce qu'un moment, les alentours, dans le r\u00e9el r\u00e9volus, oblit\u00e9r\u00e9s par les ann\u00e9es, de la pr\u00e9paration des a\u00efolis, des grillades de sardines, des marinades d'anchois (pour mon p\u00e8re). Les \u00ab pieds et paquets \u00bb, les \u00ab daubes \u00bb, les \u00ab alouettes sans t\u00eate \u00bb, les \u00ab cannellonis \u00bb de Tante Jeanne sont invoqu\u00e9s par ma m\u00e8re, & mon p\u00e8re leur rend hommage.\n\nIl m'est arriv\u00e9 de tenter quelque diversion conciliatrice, en signalant l'union curieuse de l'anchois et de la po\u00e9sie dans l'\u0153uvre de C\u00e9sar Pellenc, le cuisinier aixois, en son recueil consid\u00e9rablement pr\u00e9reboulien, _Les Plaisirs de la Vie_ , de 1655, diversion destin\u00e9e \u00e0 montrer l'antiquit\u00e9 de la p\u00e9n\u00e9tration du registre \u00ab savant \u00bb par le \u00ab populaire \u00bb. Avec un succ\u00e8s mod\u00e9r\u00e9, reconnaissons-le :\n\nL'anchoye\n\nDauphin, l'on s\u00e7ait que tu te vantes\n\nD'estre Roy du vaste El\u00e9ment,\n\nMais il faut infailliblement\n\nQue tu resves, ou que tu mentes :\n\nEt quoy ! pour estre couronn\u00e9,\n\nCe rang peut-il estre donn\u00e9\n\nMalgr\u00e9 l'Anchoye qui le m\u00e9rite ?\n\nPrince poisson, tu ne tiens rien :\n\nCar il n'est ny pot ny marmite\n\nQui ne soit son sujet, et ne soit pas le tien.\n\n## 75 (\u00a7 12) (il y eut, ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne exceptionnel pour l'\u00e9poque, trois demoiselles rue d'Ulm cette ann\u00e9e-l\u00e0)\n\nUne administration prise par surprise dut se r\u00e9soudre, en 1926, \u00e0 admettre que rien n'interdisait aux \u00ab jeunes filles \u00bb, comme elle disait, de se pr\u00e9senter au concours des gar\u00e7ons et de devenir m\u00eame \u00e9l\u00e8ves, en cas de r\u00e9ussite, de la prestigieuse \u00c9cole. La premi\u00e8re demoiselle \u00e0 y parvenir, apr\u00e8s avoir obtenu, non sans mal, que son rang lui soit reconnu, \u00e9tait une scientifique, Marie-Louise Jacotin (qui termina sa carri\u00e8re de math\u00e9maticienne \u00e0 l'Institut Henri-Poincar\u00e9, o\u00f9 je suivis, une ou deux fois, son cours).\n\nEt l'ann\u00e9e suivante, 1927, fut celle des \u00ab Trois Glorieuses \u00bb, comme on les d\u00e9signa, non sans une ironie gu\u00e8re dissimul\u00e9e : Cl\u00e9mence Ramnoux \u00e9tait class\u00e9e 9e, Simone P\u00e9trement 12e, ma m\u00e8re, alors Suzanne Molino, 17e. (Simone Weil fut la seule re\u00e7ue de 1928.) Ce pur scandale, \u00e0 peine att\u00e9nu\u00e9 par l'obligation faite \u00e0 ces perturbatrices d'\u00eatre externes (ma m\u00e8re passa ses ann\u00e9es d'\u00c9cole \u00e0 la Cit\u00e9 universitaire, car ses parents habitaient Lyon) pour ne pas trop troubler l'atmosph\u00e8re pr\u00e9sum\u00e9e studieuse et monacale des lieux, ne dura \u00ab heureusement \u00bb que jusqu'\u00e0 la guerre. A la faveur d'une \u00ab r\u00e9organisation \u00bb de l'\u00c9cole de jeunes filles de S\u00e8vres, on se permit de r\u00e9tablir la n\u00e9cessaire s\u00e9paration des sexes. Elle dura longtemps et n'a succomb\u00e9 qu'il y a peu.\n\nLe titre d'ancienne \u00e9l\u00e8ve de l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure (rue d'Ulm) a donc \u00e9t\u00e9 d'une extr\u00eame raret\u00e9. Si ma m\u00e8re en fut fi\u00e8re, elle ne le laissa jamais para\u00eetre (elle ne se montra jamais fi\u00e8re de quoi que ce soit, je le crains). Toutes les \u00ab normaliennes \u00bb de cette bizarre cohorte n'ont pas fait preuve d'une modestie comparable.\n\nJ'ai lu ainsi, il n'y a pas si longtemps, avec d'abord de l'indignation (par orgueil familial), avec un certain amusement ensuite quand j'ai retrouv\u00e9 mon sang-froid, une interview de Mme de Romilly (promotion rue d'Ulm 1933) lors de son \u00e9lection \u00e0 l'Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise. L'interviewer, sans doute par ignorance (je l'esp\u00e8re) ayant mentionn\u00e9, parmi les innombrables titres de gloire de son interlocutrice (agr\u00e9gation, th\u00e8se, Coll\u00e8ge de France, et tout et tout), qu'elle avait \u00e9t\u00e9 la premi\u00e8re \u00ab \u00e9lue \u00bb du sexe f\u00e9minin \u00e0 la \u00ab Rue d'Ulm \u00bb, j'avais lu avec stupeur qu'elle laissait dire, et se gardait bien de rectifier (elle ne rectifia pas non plus les jours suivants. Ce fut un lecteur qui s'en chargea. Peut-\u00eatre souffre-t-elle de n'avoir pas \u00e9t\u00e9 la premi\u00e8re femme \u00e0 l'Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise).\n\nJ'ai \u00e9t\u00e9, tr\u00e8s peu de temps (juste avant son d\u00e9part \u00e0 la retraite) coll\u00e8gue \u00e0 l'Universit\u00e9 de Paris-X Nanterre de la premi\u00e8re des \u00ab Trois Glorieuses \u00bb (respectons l'ordre du classement !), Cl\u00e9mence Ramnoux, dont je n'avais devant les yeux qu'une lointaine et vague silhouette d'enfance, associ\u00e9e dans mon oreille au son de la voix de ma m\u00e8re disant \u00ab Elle s'appelle Cl\u00e9mence, Cl\u00e9mence Ramnoux, menou, menou, menou... \u00bb\n\nDans mon souvenir, la beaut\u00e9 douce de ce pr\u00e9nom (un de ceux que je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re) s'accordait \u00e0 merveille avec cette esp\u00e8ce de comptine. Aussi est-ce avec quelque curiosit\u00e9 que je confrontai l'\u00e9minente sp\u00e9cialiste des pr\u00e9socratiques \u00e0 son fant\u00f4me d'autrefois. Et telle elle \u00e9tait, strictement conforme \u00e0 mon attente, exactement \u00ab menou, menou, menou \u00bb. J'en fus \u00e9mu et enchant\u00e9. Elle me demanda des nouvelles de mes parents, et c'est alors que je vis, pendant qu'elle me parlait (c'\u00e9tait au cours d'une fort ennuyeuse commission de programmes de notre commune universit\u00e9) dans ces yeux philosophiques, que je n'avais pas, pour elle, beaucoup grandi. Je n'avais, toujours, pour elle, que quatre ans environ.\n\n## 76 (\u00a7 13) Les r\u00e9cits parentaux de l'\u00ab avant-guerre \u00bb comportaient la description r\u00e9clam\u00e9e et r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9e des nourritures qui avaient disparu de l'horizon de la France urbaine, d\u00e8s l'hiver 40\n\nJe pense, en fait, principalement aux r\u00e9cits de ma grand-m\u00e8re. Avec l'intr\u00e9pidit\u00e9 qui la caract\u00e9risait elle avait, en 1941, je crois, entrepris un invraisemblable et dangereux voyage \u00e0 travers l'Espagne et le Portugal pour rejoindre, bravant les p\u00e9rils oc\u00e9aniques du monde en guerre, sa plus jeune fille (Ren\u00e9e, la s\u0153ur de ma m\u00e8re) qui s'\u00e9tait install\u00e9e dans le Massachusetts. Les USA n'\u00e9taient pas alors \u00ab bellig\u00e9rants \u00bb et entretenaient des rapports ambigus et plut\u00f4t antipathiques avec le r\u00e9gime de Vichy, ce qui lui avait permis d'arracher une autorisation de d\u00e9part, et aussi de retour.\n\nC'\u00e9tait un conteur extraordinaire. Elle \u00e9tait revenue, de l'oc\u00e9an f\u00e9roce o\u00f9 r\u00f4daient les sous-marins, porteuse, non de denr\u00e9es pour nous inaccessibles, inconnues ou perdues, oubli\u00e9es m\u00eame, merveilleuses et p\u00e9rissables, mais de leur description, dont elle accompagnait pour ses auditeurs enfantins, assembl\u00e9s autour d'elle \u00e0 la table de la salle \u00e0 manger, les portraits de nourritures qui ornaient, comme autant d'images de l'Eldorado, les \u00ab magazines \u00bb de l'Am\u00e9rique en paix qu'elle avait ramen\u00e9s dans ses bagages : plus beaux que le palais enfantin de Dame Tartine, charg\u00e9s de plus d'art que le Louvre, les \u00ab banana split \u00bb, les \u00ab strawberry sundae \u00bb, les \u00ab milk-shakes, frappes & floats \u00bb, les \u00ab ice-cream sodas \u00bb, aux couleurs hyperr\u00e9alistes avant l'heure, s'animaient \u00e0 sa voix des promesses de miraculeuses et nourrissantes saveurs.\n\nSi l'\u00ab avant-guerre \u00bb repr\u00e9sentait pour nous le paradis perdu (comme le m\u00e9tro, et l'odeur \u00e9rotique des \u00ab premi\u00e8res \u00bb sur Mireille Balin, pour le Jean Gabin du film _P\u00e9p\u00e9 le Moko_ ), l'Am\u00e9rique, \u00e0 la voix de ma grand-m\u00e8re, devenait l'incarnation du mythe d'un \u00ab \u00e2ge d'or \u00bb, essentiellement culinaire et \u00e0 venir, dans cet \u00ab apr\u00e8s-guerre \u00bb de libert\u00e9 et d'abondance presque impossible \u00e0 imaginer alors, mais auquel, tout comme nos parents, elle croyait fermement, contre l'\u00e9vidence m\u00eame de 1941, au point d'agir, un peu plus tard et non sans risques, pour le faire advenir. Son h\u00e9ros \u00e9tait Franklin \u00bb. (pour Delano) Roosevelt. Il fut pour nous, enfants, celui qui viendrait nous d\u00e9livrer, l'ice-cream \u00e0 la main.\n\nMais l'image la plus efficace de ses contes, qui n'\u00e9tait accompagn\u00e9e d'aucun support \u00ab illustr\u00e9 \u00bb, tant le fruit qu'elle \u00e9voquait \u00e9tait d'une banalit\u00e9 extr\u00eame pour la riche Am\u00e9rique, et qui, pour cette raison m\u00eame, acquit un pouvoir plus extr\u00eame encore sur mon imagination, \u00e9tait celle de l' **orange.** Elle nous disait, et **je voyais, comment des globes de six fruits entiers le jus press\u00e9 s'\u00e9coulait, mousseux, odorant, dont s'emplissaient ensuite tour \u00e0 tour les verres des bienheureux ; je les voyais sortir de la caverne du froid, le fabuleux _refrigerator_ , sph\u00e8res silencieuses comblant les d\u00e9sirs et les soifs.**\n\nJ'ai peine \u00e0 associer l'orange industrielle des supermarch\u00e9s d'aujourd'hui, envelopp\u00e9e de ces papiers pelures espagnols ou marocains dont Marie fait collection, vendue par deux kilos dans des filets de fausse corde rouge (la couleur m\u00eame en semble artificielle, chimique, qui reste sur les doigts quand on s'ab\u00eeme l'ongle \u00e0 tenter de les peler sans qu'elles s'\u00e9corchent, se d\u00e9fassent), avec celle-l\u00e0, l' **orange m\u00eame** , que j'entendis, r\u00eavai et attendis pendant les ann\u00e9es de la privation. Il n'est pas possible qu'il s'agisse du m\u00eame fruit. Les deux me paraissent dans le m\u00eame rapport \u2013 identit\u00e9 de nomination et d\u00e9gradation de la r\u00e9f\u00e9rence \u2013 de d\u00e9sunion humiliante que je per\u00e7ois sous l'usage pr\u00e9sent, politicien, publicitaire ou journalistique du mot \u00ab surr\u00e9alisme \u00bb. De \u00ab l'amour fou \u00bb de l'orange \u00e0 \u00e7a, quelle chute !\n\nUn segment initial (phoniquement) du mot qui est le sous-titre cach\u00e9 de cette branche de mon livre, \u00ab oranjeaunie \u00bb, renvoie \u00e0, \u00e9voque cette orange-l\u00e0, la premi\u00e8re, \u00ab l'absente de tous paniers \u00bb, l'orange d'un conte, et pas \u00e0 ses r\u00e9centes contrefa\u00e7ons. J'ajoute que mes grands-parents vivaient \u00e0 Caluire, rue de l'Orangerie. Dans cette rue-l\u00e0 je suis n\u00e9.\n\n## 77 (\u00a7 15) A quai, s'allongeait un train de p\u00e9niches, charg\u00e9es jusqu'au bord de charbon : de la lignite brune\n\nTout dans ce voyage me renvoyait \u00e0 mon propre temps, \u00e0 ma propre histoire familiale, \u00e0 la guerre. Et ce n'\u00e9tait pas seulement \u00e0 cause des traces non effac\u00e9es de la lutte, mais parce que le peu de voitures des rues, la lenteur, le silence des passants, les maisons faiblement \u00e9clair\u00e9es, pauvres, les appartements sans luxe o\u00f9 les gens vous recevaient, vous parlaient, avaient du temps, tout cela aussi parlait comme dans les ann\u00e9es quarante et cinquante en France, \u00e0 Carcassonne, puis \u00e0 Saint-Germain-en-Laye puis \u00e0 Paris. Pour moi, cela ressemblait.\n\nJe le sentais, et voil\u00e0 que je l'ai su tout \u00e0 coup en voyant, sur le trottoir d'une rue de Prenzlauerberg, des flocons de neige tomber sur des tas de charbon. Ce n'\u00e9taient pas les boulets d'anthracite de mes souvenirs, mais les fragments, moins noirs, informes, les chemises brunes de cette lignite que j'avais vu la veille charger les p\u00e9niches sur les bords de la Spree. Cependant la parent\u00e9, \u00e0 la m\u00e9moire, \u00e9tait ind\u00e9niable. Ce peuple, aux premiers jours de 1990, se chauffait comme en 1945, en 1950, se chauffait le mien.\n\n **J'ai alors revu brusquement** (c'est le lien entre les deux moments, la condition de la restitution, \u00e9troitement d\u00e9pendant de la rapidit\u00e9 de la vision), au fond du jardin de la rue d'Assas, \u00e0 Carcassonne,\n\n **le tas de charbon sous un peu de neige ;**\n\n **les flocons paresseusement enveloppant la moiti\u00e9 sup\u00e9rieure des boulets ;**\n\n **il fallait les secouer de leur neige pour les jeter dans le seau noir.**\n\n## 78 (\u00a7 15) ma\u00eetriser la s\u00e9quence d'images d'enfance que j'avais entrepris d'\u00e9lucider (toujours sous la vision de la grande \u00ab feuille \u00bb de prose qui noircit ligne \u00e0 ligne)\n\nPresque au d\u00e9but de la composition de la branche un de ce r\u00e9cit, je m'\u00e9tais imagin\u00e9, scribe, calligraphiant les signes de la prose sur une grande, tr\u00e8s grande feuille de papier o\u00f9 chaque chapitre aurait occup\u00e9 une longue ligne : une unique ligne noire, \u00e9crite petit, mais lisiblement, les paragraphes dont se composent les chapitres s\u00e9par\u00e9s par des blancs visibles. A l'origine vraisemblable de cette \u00ab piction \u00bb mouvante (du mouvement d'envahissement du blanc par le noir) il y avait le mode particulier d'\u00e9criture que j'avais choisi, manuscrite sur un cahier, en lignes noires tr\u00e8s serr\u00e9es, d'un trac\u00e9 minuscule et presque illisibles, avan\u00e7ant r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement par tranches matinales autonomes de prose, sans repentirs, sans retours, et sans h\u00e9sitations, en bandes horizontales surmont\u00e9es d'un peu de rouge et de vert soulign\u00e9s de blanc.\n\nLe grand blanc mural imaginaire, ce lieu de m\u00e9moire dont l'encre mentale mordait peu \u00e0 peu le d\u00e9sert (Feuille mentale, ou Mod\u00e8le (FM)), comme projet\u00e9 depuis le cahier par quelque dispositif optique, donnait une dimension de la t\u00e2che \u00e0 accomplir. Il m'accompagne encore aujourd'hui, dans cette branche deux, bien que j'aie abandonn\u00e9 l'\u00e9criture manuscrite sur un cahier (d\u00e9chu au rang de carnet de notes pr\u00e9paratoires), au profit de l'\u00e9cran de Macintosh. Quand, au petit matin nocturne, je m'assieds \u00e0 ma table et que s'allume l'\u00e9cran, je me sens beaucoup plus proche de mon Mod\u00e8le qu'autrefois.\n\nMon imagination, cependant, le sc\u00e9nario de la Feuille mentale o\u00f9 je joue mon r\u00f4le de scribe-ermite, s'est enrichie, s'est compliqu\u00e9e : je vois le mur de la chambre de prose circulaire, comme en un donjon (o\u00f9 je suis prisonnier, peut-\u00eatre pas volontaire, cela d\u00e9pend). L'\u00e9criture, chapitre apr\u00e8s chapitre, de chaque branche s'effectue en spirale descendante ; c'est-\u00e0-dire que le r\u00e9cit proprement dit (les quatre-vingt-dix-huit moments en six chapitres de la branche un, par exemple) s'ach\u00e8ve, topologiquement, sur la m\u00eame verticale du cylindre qu'est la feuille, mais en dessous. Les bifurcations se situent \u00e0 leur place respective dans la succession circulaire, dans une progression descendante \u00e9galement. Les incises, enfin, sont encore plus bas.\n\nUn espace au moins \u00e9gal \u00e0 l'\u00e9paisseur d'\u00e9criture occup\u00e9e par l'ensemble des paragraphes de toute nature de la branche un la s\u00e9pare de la branche deux, qui s'\u00e9crit selon le m\u00eame principe, et il en est de m\u00eame entre la branche deux et la suivante, et pour la totalit\u00e9 des branches potentielles (en l'\u00e9tat d'avancement de l'imagination programmatique du **'grand incendie de Londres'** , que je me garderai, prudemment, de pr\u00e9ciser).\n\nDans cet espace je disposerai ce que je nomme **\u00ab premier entredeux-branches** \u00bb, un ensemble d'insertions (ne se confondant pas avec celles d\u00e9j\u00e0 publi\u00e9es) accroch\u00e9es \u00e0 des paragraphes de la branche un, rejoignant la branche deux, et peut-\u00eatre r\u00e9parties selon le graphe assez contraignant que m'a pr\u00e9par\u00e9 Mathieu Lusson (il satisfait \u00e0 certaines obligations num\u00e9rologiques qui seront d\u00e9voil\u00e9es ult\u00e9rieurement). Une partie de ces insertions nouvelles sont \u00e9crites (elles ont constitu\u00e9 l'essentiel de mon travail \u00ab mural \u00bb depuis la publication de la branche un, il y a un an). Je les \u00ab vois \u00bb invisibles, pr\u00e9sentes sur la feuille en \u00ab texte cach\u00e9 \u00bb. (J'utilise la terminologie de mon \u00ab traitement de texte \u00bb.) Ce sera l' **\u00ab entre-deux-branches 1-2 \u00bb.**\n\nJe pr\u00e9vois donc d'autres \u00ab **entre-deux-branches** \u00bb, puisque je pr\u00e9vois d'autres branches. L'obligation de conjoindre deux branches qui se d\u00e9roulent, chacune \u00e0 sa mani\u00e8re, selon la r\u00e8gle de progression narrative \u00ab au pr\u00e9sent \u00bb, \u00e0 laquelle je me tiens toujours, d\u00e9termine (c'est l'effet in\u00e9luctable d'une \u00e9criture sous contrainte) de nouveaux moments de prose, le \u00ab frayage \u00bb parfois difficile, de nouveaux chemins (faisant de temps \u00e0 autre resurgir (comme un peu plus haut dans le paragraphe dont provient cette incise) des images d'enfance (et autres) qui sans cela peut-\u00eatre seraient demeur\u00e9es enfouies).\n\n## 79 (\u00a7 15) la vue de la semi-ruine est-berlinoise m'a restitu\u00e9 toute la violence des visions de la guerre\n\nUn peu plus tard, au cours du m\u00eame voyage, \u00e0 Dresde, la nuit finissait de tomber, et le rendez-vous de ce soir-l\u00e0, la visite informative inscrite \u00e0 mon programme, se trouvait dans une rue nomm\u00e9e Papritzerstrasse. On cherchait donc la Papritzerstrasse dans la nuit. Et une Papritzerstrasse se trouvait bien sur la carte, dans le village de Papritz, en bord de la ville, sur la colline qui domine l'Elbe. Mais cette rue n'avait pour ainsi dire pas de maisons : que de la campagne, et pas de num\u00e9ro 13. De temps en temps, je descendais de la voiture, carte en main, essayant de d\u00e9chiffrer quelque indication sibylline dans le peu de lumi\u00e8re. Et c'est ainsi sans doute que j'ai perdu ma casquette, achet\u00e9e en 1985 \u00e0 Oxford.\n\nMais pourquoi \u00e9tais-je venu \u00e0 Dresde ? Je l'avais compris brusquement en arrivant, aux premi\u00e8res maisons de la ville, mon souvenir maintenant habitu\u00e9 \u00e0 la parent\u00e9 des ruines, telles que je les avais senties rena\u00eetre dans l'\u00eele de la Spree : c'est \u00e0 Dresde, en effet, qu'a eu lieu le plus grand bombardement terroriste de la Seconde Guerre mondiale (en dehors de ceux d'Hiroshima et Nagasaki, qui sont dans une classe \u00e0 part), sans justification militaire aucune, point douloureux de ma vieille admiration enfantine pour Winston Churchill. Et j'ai conclu que la perte de ma casquette \u00e9tait, en somme, un geste inconscient de \u00ab r\u00e9paration \u00bb.\n\nQuoi qu'il en soit, la Papritzerstrasse de Papritz s'acheva, imm\u00e9diatement continu\u00e9e par une autre rue de campagne, qui portait un autre nom. Et un vieil homme sur le pas de sa porte, interrog\u00e9, ne croyait pas m\u00eame \u00e0 l'existence d'une Papritzerstrasse (pourtant \u00e0 moins de cent m\u00e8tres de sa maison !) : non, disait-il, il n'y a pas de Papritzerstrasse par ici. La voiture, continuant son chemin, descendait vers le fleuve. Et la descente sur l'Elbe \u00e9tait comme la descente sur la Sa\u00f4ne \u00e0 Lyon, les lacets abrupts entre les maisons dormantes, et, en bas, au bord de l'eau, me rejetant de nouveau quarante, cinquante ans en arri\u00e8re, le chant oubli\u00e9-familier d'un tramway. (La Papritzerstrasse, la vraie, \u00e9tait tout pr\u00e8s de l'autre, mais dans Dresde, pas dans Papritz).\n\nLe lendemain, dans la fin d'apr\u00e8s-midi, la voiture cherchait l'Elbe \u00e0 travers une bourrasque de neige, dernier effet, vers l'est, de la temp\u00eate qui secouait l'Europe depuis le d\u00e9but de la semaine. Des nuages brusques, gris et noirs, comme des jets de fum\u00e9e charbonneuse, sales, crevaient blanc et la neige couvrait les rues, les vitres des automobiles, les arbres. Dans la fin de jour rendue sombre, les lumi\u00e8res s'allumaient, et soudain ce n'\u00e9taient pas des lumi\u00e8res \u00e9lectriques mais des becs de gaz au sens strict, comme si, \u00e0 tout moment, le r\u00e9el m'offrait un monde parall\u00e8le \u00e0 celui de mon souvenir.\n\nA Dresde, m'avait dit \u00e0 Berlin Elke Erb, allez voir Thomas Rosenl\u00f6cher. \u00ab Sa po\u00e9sie (disait-elle), c'est... c'est comme un \"p\u00e9piement ironique\". \u00bb La maison des Rosenl\u00f6cher \u00e9tait une maison splendide et d\u00e9labr\u00e9e, une splendeur ruin\u00e9e du XVIIIe : boiseries, balustrades, plafond peint, escalier de bois, bicyclettes, linge, berceaux, enfants. Thomas Rosenl\u00f4cher \u00e9tait \u00e0 Leipzig. Sa femme offrit le th\u00e9, des g\u00e2teaux. Il pleuvait dans la pi\u00e8ce \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9. La maison \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s proche de l'Elbe, juste en face de la r\u00e9sidence du duc Auguste le Fort, le Schloss, que ce venisiomane du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle ne quittait que pour se rendre \u00e0 son palais ducal, en gondole \u00e9videmment. En cet endroit, on traverse l'Elbe en ferry. Le ferry co\u00fbtait vingt pfennigs de l'Est (douze centimes en mars 1990) et, si on \u00e9tait g\u00e9n\u00e9reux, une nuit de lune (il va toute la nuit) on donnait un ostmark (soixante-dix centimes), et le passeur dessinait avec son bac des boucles sur le fleuve. Pr\u00e8s du bord, il y avait une cabane-buvette, qui vendait de la bi\u00e8re, m\u00eame dans le froid de l'hiver, la temp\u00eate. Et le titre du livre de po\u00e8mes de Thomas Rosenl\u00f4cher disait cela : _Schneebier_ , Bi\u00e8re de neige.\n\nAu retour, la neige d\u00e9j\u00e0 se dispersait dans les rues, sur les bords de l'Elbe, une neige de circonstance, interc\u00e9dant pour la restitution d'autres moments, d'autres hivers. Et j'entendais le p\u00e9piement ironique de lointaines ann\u00e9es sur d'autres neiges, \u00e9ph\u00e9m\u00e8res aussi, comme si toutes les neiges \u00e9taient d'une seule guerre, et d'enfance.\n\n## 80 (\u00a7 17) mon p\u00e8re n'a jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00ab disciple \u00bb de personne\n\nVoil\u00e0 encore un caract\u00e8re h\u00e9r\u00e9ditairement transmis. J'ai parl\u00e9, \u00e0 un autre endroit, de mon \u00ab ma\u00eetre \u00bb Raymond Queneau. Et si Queneau fut mon ma\u00eetre, c'est sans doute que je fus son disciple. Comment, alors, \u00eatre disciple sans l'\u00eatre ? Mais il n'y a pas l\u00e0 de v\u00e9ritable contradiction. D'une part parce que je ne me serais vraisemblablement pas reconnu comme disciple oulipien de Queneau s'il ne m'avait pas reconnu, lui, comme d\u00e9j\u00e0 oulipien sans le savoir quand je lui ai envoy\u00e9, au d\u00e9but de 1966, le manuscrit de mon premier livre de po\u00e8mes (je n'aurais pas cherch\u00e9 l'Oulipo si je ne l'avais pas d\u00e9j\u00e0 trouv\u00e9 !). Il ne me serait sans cela jamais venu \u00e0 l'id\u00e9e de choisir l'Oulipo comme mod\u00e8le, m\u00eame si j'en avais reconnu l'existence et la valeur.\n\nJ'ai d'ailleurs, pendant des ann\u00e9es, gard\u00e9 une r\u00e9serve profonde (et une incompr\u00e9hension partielle, qui en est la cons\u00e9quence) \u00e0 l'\u00e9gard des buts et des strat\u00e9gies oulipiennes, craignant pour mon ind\u00e9pendance po\u00e9tique, que j'ai toujours voulue absolue. (Et c'est vraisemblablement en partie pour cette raison que je n'ai pas \u00e9t\u00e9 un oulipien aussi cons\u00e9quent, aussi attentif (je ne dis pas inventif), que Georges Perec, qui choisit, lui, d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9ment, comme une v\u00e9ritable voie de salut, cette situation de disciple, en en faisant le moteur d'un _sorpasso_ g\u00e9nial.) Ce n'est qu'apr\u00e8s la mort de Queneau que je me suis affirm\u00e9 oulipien sans r\u00e9ticences. Raymond Queneau est mon ma\u00eetre, mais c'est moi qui d\u00e9cide et sais en quoi, comment et jusqu'o\u00f9.\n\nJ'ajouterai, parce que c'est l\u00e0 un trait essentiel de la conception m\u00eame de mon **Projet,** que j'ai adopt\u00e9, pour ce refus g\u00e9n\u00e9ral d'ob\u00e9issance, une strat\u00e9gie particuli\u00e8re, qui est celle, non de l'imitation du geste r\u00e9volutionnaire (le leurre mortel par excellence, en politique comme en art, est celui de la \u00ab table rase \u00bb), mais celle de la recherche, et du choix, d'une multiplicit\u00e9 de figures magistrales : Queneau donc, mais aussi Raimbaut d'Orange, et Cavalcanti, et Mallarm\u00e9, mais Gertrude Stein ; et Trollope, et Kamo no Chomei. Voil\u00e0 (et la liste n'est pas exhaustive) pour la po\u00e9sie, et la litt\u00e9rature. Mais il n'y a pas que la po\u00e9sie et la litt\u00e9rature. J'ai eu des ma\u00eetres en math\u00e9matiques (Claude Chevalley, Jean-Paul Benz\u00e9cri), et ailleurs, en chacune des disciplines que la mise en \u0153uvre du **Projet** supposait.\n\nDans chaque cas, le choix \u00e9tait autant le choix d'une \u00ab contre-ma\u00eetrise \u00bb que celui d'un exemple \u00e0 suivre sans restrictions. C'\u00e9tait Queneau contre le surr\u00e9alisme, Raimbaut d'Orange et Mallarm\u00e9 contre la conception chansonnette de la po\u00e9sie, Cavalcanti contre Dante, Gertrude contre Joyce, Benz\u00e9cri contre Bourbaki et Chevalley le bourbakiste contre Bourbaki m\u00eame. Dans un cas au moins (Trollope) le choix constituait un paradoxe, une provocation (n'\u00e9tait pas pris au s\u00e9rieux). Je me donnais des ma\u00eetres pour en refuser d'autres, que tout le monde acceptait.\n\nJe viens de dire que j'ai choisi Queneau contre le surr\u00e9alisme, mais en fait il faut mettre, \u00e0 la place de \u00ab surr\u00e9alisme \u00bb des noms, Aragon et Breton par exemple (et avant Queneau, Tzara, Desnos puis Bonnefoy jou\u00e8rent pour moi le m\u00eame r\u00f4le lib\u00e9rateur). Les combats qui se livrent sont autant des combats de figures que d'id\u00e9es, de th\u00e9ories. Bourbaki est un nom, un Auteur (un pseudonyme collectif non anonyme, comme l'est, \u00e0 son imitation, Oulipo). C'est une bataille de noms qui se livre, et je m'engage, en pr\u00e9sence d'arm\u00e9es antagonistes, sous la banni\u00e8re de ces g\u00e9n\u00e9raux qui n'apparaissent pas comme les vainqueurs. Mais je sais (ou m'imagine, peu importe) que l'avenir est pour eux. Cependant, de toute fa\u00e7on, moi, je reste, fondamentalement, un civil.\n\nEt je ne veux pas, \u00e0 mon tour, de disciples. Je ne me place pas au rang des ma\u00eetres possibles. De plus, si je n'aime pas ob\u00e9ir, il se trouve que cela implique que je n'aime pas non plus commander.\n\n## 81 (\u00a7 18) des absences \u00e9num\u00e9r\u00e9es, comme autant de pierres tombales, par des noms\n\nMais quelle identit\u00e9 cherche-t-on ainsi, qui survivrait \u00e0 la mort ? Les morts, selon certains, \u00ab sont \u00bb leur tombe, et son dedans, surmont\u00e9e de la pierre tombale, avec un nom. Mais cela n'est pas autre chose que dire : vivants, ils \u00ab \u00e9taient \u00bb leur corps, v\u00eatus et non v\u00eatus, ce corps qui contenait leur pens\u00e9e (ou leur \u00e2me). Et ce corps aussi portait un nom, le leur. L'identit\u00e9 ne persiste dans le monde que de cette analogie.\n\nIls sont, diront d'autres, tels que les restituent, dans leur souvenir, s'ils se souviennent, ceux qui les ont, ne serait-ce qu'un instant, connus. Ainsi ils \u00ab sont \u00bb mais d'une r\u00e9alit\u00e9 divis\u00e9e, changeante, contradictoire, d\u00e9pendante, par \u00e9clipses, et sans lieu. Et quand chacun de ceux qui se souviennent d'eux est mort, ils ne sont plus. Ou ne sont plus qu'au deuxi\u00e8me, puis \u00e9ni\u00e8me degr\u00e9 du souvenir, au long de cette cha\u00eene rapidement intransitive de la transmission d'\u00eatre \u00e0 \u00eatre, de g\u00e9n\u00e9ration \u00e0 g\u00e9n\u00e9ration. Sans doute, dans cette interpr\u00e9tation encore, l'id\u00e9e de survivance emprunte aux caract\u00e9ristiques m\u00eames du monde de la vie.\n\nTels sont les morts, nos morts, singuliers, priv\u00e9s et provisoires, qui n'appartiennent pas au registre monumentaire, historique, notarial, ni aux archives, ni aux \u0153uvres d'art. Car il s'agit, dans le cas contraire, de tout autre chose, comme d'une troisi\u00e8me esp\u00e8ce de morts (si l'on admet que les d\u00e9finitions pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes d\u00e9signent deux familles distinctes d'\u00eatres, parmi le peuple des absents de ce monde), \u00e0 laquelle parfois on peut \u00eatre tent\u00e9 de donner la pr\u00e9\u00e9minence, parce qu'ils semblent plus durables, plus stables, plus assur\u00e9s (r\u00eave de la p\u00e9rennit\u00e9 d'airain) : non seulement de par la stabilit\u00e9 des supports, des pierres et documents, des langues et syst\u00e8mes de repr\u00e9sentations o\u00f9 ils s'inscrivent, des civilisations qui les abritent (ici encore se transmettant \u00e0 d'autres, en une transitivit\u00e9 d'un autre genre, o\u00f9 jouent les hasards de la survivance physique et ceux des d\u00e9chiffrements), mais plus peut-\u00eatre du simple fait qu'ils appartiennent \u00e0 une collectivit\u00e9 et \u00e0 sa m\u00e9moire, et pas seulement \u00e0 leurs \u00ab proches \u00bb, qui en sont, ainsi, virtuellement d\u00e9poss\u00e9d\u00e9s. Les \u00ab Morts illustres \u00bb, en particulier, sont les plus visibles, mais en m\u00eame temps les moins diff\u00e9renci\u00e9s des morts ; car chacun peut les reconna\u00eetre, sans aucune n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 d'un lien avec leur \u00eatre-comme-ayant-\u00e9t\u00e9, en aucun de ses attributs de chair, de parole, de mouvement, de pr\u00e9sence. Et ils \u00ab existent \u00bb dans une passivit\u00e9 absolue, qu'impose l'absence de rapport ant\u00e9rieur avec ceux qui les d\u00e9finissent comme \u00ab \u00eatres \u00bb, comme \u00eatre-morts. Leur existence est terriblement impersonnelle. Elle n'entretient avec les vivants aucun rapport de r\u00e9ciprocit\u00e9. Et elle tend \u00e0 envahir le nom qui les d\u00e9signe, au d\u00e9triment de ces autres morts priv\u00e9s qui habitaient sous ce m\u00eame nom, ceux des cimeti\u00e8res comme ceux qui \u00e9taient enfouis, ensevelis dans les t\u00eates vivantes se souvenant.\n\nEt quand ce rite de passage se produit alors que les autres \u00eatres du mort, priv\u00e9s et pr\u00e9caires, n'ont pas encore disparu, c'est un \u00e9v\u00e9nement qui semble \u00e9trange, scandaleux m\u00eame, \u00e0 ceux qui les abritent en eux. Beaucoup, proches et parfois moins proches, ont ressenti un tel trouble \u00e0 la mort de Georges Perec. Comme si la gloire, l\u00e9gitime, de l'\u00e9crivain, privait ce mort de sa mort naturelle, qui parle \u00e0 chacun seul \u00e0 seul. Une famille, dans les temps et les lieux o\u00f9 sont conserv\u00e9es ces distinctions, est un espace particulier offert \u00e0 la mort, pour la cerner, la compl\u00e9ter, et non pour la nier, la rejeter, la dissoudre. Les vivants, ces non-morts momentan\u00e9s, y dessinent la partie pleine, opaque, d'une configuration dont les morts assurent la visibilit\u00e9, l'harmonie, l'\u00e9quilibre, entre des limites qui ne d\u00e9passent pas, en arri\u00e8re, trois g\u00e9n\u00e9rations, et ne pr\u00e9voient pas beaucoup plus d'une ou deux g\u00e9n\u00e9rations \u00e0 venir. Nous nous situons en elle. L'id\u00e9e d'absence pr\u00e9matur\u00e9e, d'incompl\u00e9tude, en r\u00e9sulte, et ses invisibles amputations.\n\nJe ne dissimulerai pas que l'image toulonnaise du **figuier** s'apparente dans mon esprit \u00e0 la m\u00e9taphore de l'arbre g\u00e9n\u00e9alogique familial. J'\u00e9pargnerai \u00e0 mon lecteur la banalit\u00e9 de commenter une telle d\u00e9couverte. Mais je voudrais poursuivre le parall\u00e9lisme un peu plus loin : la disruption des tomettes dans la cuisine par les racines du figuier (arch\u00e9ologiquement familiale pour moi) serait, dans cette \u00ab translation fictive \u00bb, li\u00e9e \u00e0 la prise de conscience de la dissym\u00e9trie, contingente mais lourde d'effets, de mon ascendance, due aux manques de la \u00ab branche \u00bb toulonnaise. Je veux dire que les morts sont comme ces racines, et qu'ils poussent dans une vie la bouleversent. Leur n\u00e9ant, m\u00e9lancolique, h\u00e9site entre deux formes :\n\n\u2013 Celui de n'\u00eatre que nomination, de n'avoir jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 que nomination, de n'\u00eatre plus que nomination.\n\n\u2013 Et l'autre visage possible des morts est de n'\u00eatre pas nommables (ou de ne l'\u00eatre que d'une mani\u00e8re diff\u00e9rente pour chacun de ceux qui gardent leur souvenir en eux), d'\u00eatre un \u00ab je ne sais quoi \u00bb, un \u00ab _no sai que s'es_ \u00bb (Raimbaut d'Orange), beaucoup plus encore qu'un \u00ab _non sai_ _qui s'es_ \u00bb (\u00ab je ne sais qui \u00bb : Guiraut de Borneil), ou qu'un \u00ab _no sai on_ \u00bb : \u00ab je ne sais o\u00f9 \u00bb (Bernart de Ventadorn).\n\nLes deux chapitres de mon r\u00e9cit, ici, se rejoignent, et **bouclent** par \u00ab conjointure \u00bb, comme disait Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes. Dans le souvenir, cette fleur inverse du n\u00e9ant.\n\n# (DU CHAPITRE 3)\n\n## 82 (\u00a7 19) un parcours de m\u00e9moire, mais parcours labyrinthique\n\nJ'avais \u00e9crit, puis biff\u00e9, puis r\u00e9crit, puis de nouveau biff\u00e9 \u00ab parcours m\u00e9taphorique \u00bb : et ensuite \u00ab parcours all\u00e9gorique \u00bb. J'h\u00e9sitais. (\u00ab J'ai \u00e9crit \u00bb \u00ab \u00e9crit \u00bb, \u00ab j'ai \u00e9crit \u00bb \u00ab biff\u00e9 \u00bb, mais en r\u00e9alit\u00e9 je n'ai fait que rendre momentan\u00e9ment visibles, sur un \u00e9cran, en lettres immat\u00e9rielles, les mots. Et ils disparaissent \u00e0 la commande, sans traces, laissant mon chemin de prose lisse, \u00e9gal, justifi\u00e9 \u00e0 droite, en \u00ab New York 10 points \u00bb, propre, sans les sutures qui signalaient ant\u00e9rieurement, dans le cahier, une h\u00e9sitation \u00e0 l'instant d'une incise, ou, plus lourdement, d'une bifurcation. Les h\u00e9sitations m\u00eame, ainsi, sont plus facilement gomm\u00e9es, trop peut-\u00eatre.) J'h\u00e9sitais \u00e0 inscrire les mots \u00ab m\u00e9taphore \u00bb, \u00ab all\u00e9gorie \u00bb, sans aucune explication. J'h\u00e9sitais, plus encore, sur la pertinence de leur intervention \u00e0 cet endroit.\n\nIl m'\u00e9tait apparu, simultan\u00e9ment, que l' **image** du jardin avec son centre (centre pour ma vision, dont je vais d\u00e9crire le d\u00e9placement, le \u00ab d\u00e9senchantement \u00bb, dans les paragraphes que ceci incise), \u00e9tait \u00e0 la fois m\u00e9taphore de la mise en \u0153uvre de la **m\u00e9moire,** moteur (car elle compte-conte, et ordonne) de mon r\u00e9cit, et all\u00e9gorie du **Projet.** (Mais instantan\u00e9ment j'avais mis en doute le bien-fond\u00e9 du \u00ab placement \u00bb de l'une, ou l'autre, de ces \u00ab r\u00e9v\u00e9lations \u00bb (d'o\u00f9 la \u00ab rature \u00bb) : c'est ainsi que les choses se passent dans mon livre, qui ne me laisse que peu de jeu pour la r\u00e9flexion, \u00e0 partir du moment o\u00f9 je me suis engag\u00e9 dans un paragraphe (ce continu de prose que je nomme un \u00ab moment \u00bb), dans une ligne qui suit une autre, m'\u00e9tant interdit tout retour.) (Et d'ailleurs, all\u00e9gories et m\u00e9taphores m\u00eame me paraissent plus des pictions que des **images.)**\n\nJe n'ai pas avanc\u00e9 assez encore pour \u00e9lucider plus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment en quoi. Mais je peux ici dire que l'irruption d'images \u00e0 fonction (additionnelle) all\u00e9gorique a d\u00e9j\u00e0 eu lieu, aura lieu, et de mani\u00e8re r\u00e9currente. Cela tient en grande partie au fait que mon \u00e9criture de prose est essentiellement m\u00e9di\u00e9vale d'esprit : le mod\u00e8le qui la guide est celui des _enfances de la prose_ , c'est-\u00e0-dire avant tout, pour moi qui compose en fran\u00e7ais, celle des romans en prose du Graal. Dans le _Lancelot en prose_ un r\u00eave figure, celui de Galehaut, le \u00ab fils de la belle g\u00e9ante \u00bb, qui est un r\u00eave d\u00e9chiffr\u00e9 comme all\u00e9gorie du destin d'un h\u00e9ros, h\u00e9ros atteint, mortellement, de la \u00ab maladie des h\u00e9ros \u00bb, _l'amor (h)ero(t)icus_ , l' **\u00e9ros m\u00e9lancolique**. Or, le **r\u00eave** du **'grand incendie de Londres'** (et tout **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** lui-m\u00eame peut-\u00eatre) s'inscrit dans cette m\u00eame tradition rh\u00e9torique, dans la m\u00eame ligne d'une fiction rh\u00e9torique.\n\nIl y a toutefois une diff\u00e9rence certaine : que le d\u00e9chiffrement all\u00e9gorique du r\u00eave n'est pas pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 de mani\u00e8re explicite (comme dans l' _exemplum_ cic\u00e9ronien du \u00ab r\u00eave de Scipion \u00bb), mais qu'il est sous-jacent. Le **r\u00eave** initial, initiateur du **'grand incendie de Londres'** est aussi annonce, vision, pr\u00e9diction, mais il ne parle pas qu'en clair. Il n'a pas la rationalit\u00e9 litt\u00e9raire, construite, du r\u00eave cic\u00e9ronien (tout en \u00e9tant un r\u00eave \u00e9crit, lui aussi). Il n'a pas l'incoh\u00e9rence apparente d'autres r\u00eaves \u00ab naturalistiquement \u00bb pris dans la \u00ab boutique obscure \u00bb des sommeils. Le r\u00eave annonce le **Projet** , le **roman** , mais il annonce en m\u00eame temps la **destruction** de ce qu'il annonce ainsi. Car il a sa duplicit\u00e9, \u00e9tant pass\u00e9 autant par la porte de corne (le vrai) que par la porte d'ivoire (le faux). Et il y a d'autres moments all\u00e9goriques dans le livre : all\u00e9gories dissimul\u00e9es plus ou moins \u00e9paissement, glissement de la pr\u00e9paration des gel\u00e9es d'azerole \u00e0 la composition de la prose, par exemple (dans ce cas le glissement vers l'all\u00e9gorie est dit : ----> branche un, chapitre 3, \u00a7 27-29. Mais c'est le cas aussi de l'ensemble des lois du croissant au beurre (qui pourraient appara\u00eetre comme mises en place de lois de la fiction (ce que je ne refuse pas)) ----> branche un, incises du chapitre 1, \u00a7 103.\n\nJ'ai donc choisi, repentir des doigts, l'adjectif \u00ab labyrinthique \u00bb : s'enfermer dans l'enfance, au jardin de l'enfance, se placer en aveugle au centre du jardin, centre du jeu. C'est le r\u00e9el, c'est le temps qui **s'avance en rampant** vers moi-guetteur. Je redeviens guetteur, guetteur m\u00e9lancolique. Le fil saisi, suivi par le regard, d\u00e9senchante le labyrinthe.\n\nMais comme en chaque point du lieu a \u00e9t\u00e9 le regard, en ses instants de vie, instants d'\u00eatre innombrables, la courbe de la m\u00e9moire est celle qu'on ne peut suivre comme ligne, qui emplit tout, o\u00f9 chaque endroit est fronti\u00e8re : parcours plein, comme la cantorienne page noircie d'encre de _Tristram Shandy_ (m\u00e9taphore certainement : du seul \u00ab r\u00e9cit complet \u00bb possible), seule \u00e9vasion concevable, \u00e0 dur\u00e9e irr\u00e9elle, non finie.\n\n## 83 (\u00a7 19) J'ouvre les portes de chaque pi\u00e8ce, une \u00e0 une, j'entre : j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 l\u00e0.\n\nDistribuer ainsi ces parcours particuliers de m\u00e9moire entre le **r\u00e9cit** et ses **bifurcations** est un coup de force de prose : car il est clair que mes souvenirs, sollicit\u00e9s ou non, sautent perp\u00e9tuellement de l'un \u00e0 l'autre (sans m\u00eame tenir compte de l'ind\u00e9cision des sens). Avec la multiplicit\u00e9 des choix grandit l'ind\u00e9cision. Confront\u00e9 \u00e0 ce probl\u00e8me (qui ne se limite pas \u00e0 mon trajet enfantin, qui est de tous les moments), je l'ai momentan\u00e9ment \u00e9cart\u00e9 en trouvant (c'est-\u00e0-dire en inventant) un nouveau type de fragments pour **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** que j'ai nomm\u00e9 **entre-deux-branches.** Mais leur fonction ne devrait pas \u00eatre seulement graphique, limit\u00e9e au remplissage harmonieux et contraint de l'espace imaginaire entre les branches sur la grande feuille de m\u00e9moire. ----> \u00a7 78, encore.\n\nLa r\u00e9flexion que je viens de faire \u00e0 ce sujet (au cours de la derni\u00e8re semaine, interrompant le **r\u00e9cit),** m'a amen\u00e9 \u00e0 les envisager d'une mani\u00e8re moins imag\u00e9e, mais plus \u00ab strat\u00e9gique \u00bb. Ce qui fait, par exemple, que ce que j'ai nomm\u00e9 **\u00ab premier entre-deux-branches** \u00bb puis **\u00ab entre-deux-branches 1-2 \u00bb** , ne devrait plus \u00eatre n\u00e9cessairement le premier (tout en conservant sa deuxi\u00e8me d\u00e9signation). D'o\u00f9 il r\u00e9sulte que j'ai entrepris (toujours au cours de la m\u00eame \u00ab fracture \u00bb du r\u00e9cit, pour occuper cette fracture, franchir cette \u00ab faille \u00bb (une difficult\u00e9 \u00e0 poursuivre dans une direction sans doute sentimentalement difficile, dangereuse, je l'avoue, plut\u00f4t qu'un arr\u00eat volontaire, r\u00e9fl\u00e9chi)) une esp\u00e8ce de description raisonn\u00e9e, pr\u00e9liminaire, anticipante, de ce que cela sera (ou serait).\n\nCela m'arrive assez souvent, depuis que j'ai commenc\u00e9 **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** et surtout depuis que j'ai r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 parvenir jusqu'\u00e0 ce point sans l'abandonner (ce qui n'aurait, d'ailleurs, je l'ai dit, pas eu pour cons\u00e9quence sa disparition). Souvent, en progressant, difficilement, p\u00e9niblement m\u00eame, il m'arrive ainsi de d\u00e9cider de nouveaux d\u00e9veloppements \u00e0 venir formels (ou autres), et par cons\u00e9quent inexistants \u00e0 l'instant de leur conception, les imaginant futurs. Et jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui j'ai, il me semble, \u00e9vit\u00e9 de donner \u00e0 ces pseudo-pr\u00e9dictions irresponsables le b\u00e9n\u00e9fice d'une transcription, afin de ne laisser transpara\u00eetre que ce qui s'\u00e9crit \u00e0 mesure. Mais il est clair aussi que ces effervescences et fantaisies d'un esprit (le mien) perp\u00e9tuellement en train de faire prolif\u00e9rer des plans d'\u0153uvres toujours futures, l\u00e9g\u00e8rement d\u00e9mentiels, et perp\u00e9tuellement d\u00e9mentis par le futur devenu pass\u00e9, font partie du pr\u00e9sent de la prose autant que le reste. Du moins puis-je en d\u00e9cider ainsi.\n\nD'o\u00f9 ce qui va suivre, \u00e0 l'occasion d'une amplification soudaine du r\u00f4le propos\u00e9 des **entre-deux-branches,** qui avaient commenc\u00e9 d'\u00ab \u00eatre \u00bb pour des raisons essentiellement pragmatiques et g\u00e9om\u00e9triques. Mais cette d\u00e9cision r\u00e9sulte d'autres consid\u00e9rations encore. Car je n'ai pas abandonn\u00e9 mon intention premi\u00e8re (premi\u00e8re dans les pages imprim\u00e9es), implicite dans l' **Avertissement** de mon livre, et qui est de dire, non seulement ce qu'\u00ab auraient pu \u00eatre \u00bb le **Projet** et le roman dont le titre aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 **Le Grand Incendie de Londres,** non seulement le **r\u00eave** qui les avait fait appara\u00eetre, non seulement les raisons formelles et conceptuelles de leur \u00e9chec, mais les modalit\u00e9s particuli\u00e8res, et paraissant en partie contingentes, de cet \u00e9chec (de la r\u00e9p\u00e9tition des \u00e9checs provisoires jusqu'\u00e0 l'\u00e9chec final).\n\nEt ces modalit\u00e9s, \u00e0 l'aide d'une transposition facile des circonstances, sont parfaitement lisibles dans cette incons\u00e9quence intellectuelle qui m'a toujours jet\u00e9, et me jette encore (bien qu'avec des cons\u00e9quences moins f\u00e2cheuses, devenues presque indiff\u00e9rentes par ma renonciation g\u00e9n\u00e9rale), en quelque instant d'euphorie irresponsable, vers des aventures de composition ou de recherche excessives, et tout \u00e0 fait en dehors de mes moyens. La simple addition des dur\u00e9es et des efforts qui seraient n\u00e9cessaires pour leur mise en \u0153uvre est g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement la premi\u00e8re difficult\u00e9 que m'oppose le monde, suffisante pour les ruiner. Cela, malheureusement, ne m'emp\u00eache pas de recommencer. Et de telles ambitions d\u00e9finitivement d\u00e9laiss\u00e9es (selon mes fermes et d\u00e9finitives r\u00e9solutions), ont de tristes pouvoirs de r\u00e9surrection. Combien de fois, tombant par hasard sur un bout de papier \u00e9gar\u00e9, porteur des traces crayonn\u00e9es d'un quelconque \u00ab programme \u00bb (math\u00e9matique, po\u00e9tique, oulipique ou th\u00e9orique (en m\u00e9trique ou po\u00e9tique), ou tout cela ensemble ; avec titres et \u00e9tapes dat\u00e9es, avec \u00e9valuation des heures \u00e0 consacrer !) vieux d'un, cinq, dix ans, mal effac\u00e9 (ayant \u00e9chapp\u00e9 \u00e0 la mise au panier de ces preuves de mes folies exponentielles, coup de balai salutaire que je d\u00e9cide, toujours rageusement, dans mes crises de lucidit\u00e9), je me suis pris (m\u00e9taphoriquement) la t\u00eate entre les mains, en jurant : \u00ab _Never again ! never again !_ \u00bb (pour recommencer presque aussit\u00f4t).\n\nPlus embarrassant encore (et c'est ce qui m'arrive en ce mois d'ao\u00fbt) est d'avoir, \u00e0 la suite de tels enthousiasmes de travail, accept\u00e9 des t\u00e2ches \u00e0 v\u00e9rification ext\u00e9rieure inexorable, articles, expos\u00e9s de s\u00e9minaire, livres m\u00eame. D\u00e8s que je me trouve d\u00e9bord\u00e9 et dans la quasi-impossibilit\u00e9 de r\u00e9pondre \u00e0 toutes les demandes (que j'ai accept\u00e9es), je suis pris d'une torpeur insurmontable, d'une paralysie \u00e0 la fois ridicule, factice (je sais qu'elle est sans cause honorable), et parfaitement insurmontable. Je cherche \u00e0 m'\u00e9vader de ce pi\u00e8ge h\u00e9autontimoroumenossien, je me persuade que mon incapacit\u00e9 r\u00e9sulte de l'urgence de t\u00e2ches plus importantes, plus nobles et totalement diff\u00e9rentes. Je renonce \u00e0 m'acquitter, je reviens sur mes engagements, j'envoie des lettres d'excuses, je rembourse des avances. _And so on_.\n\n## 84 (\u00a7 83) Cela (cette nouvelle aventure) devrait appara\u00eetre (mais beaucoup plus tard dans le livre), ainsi :\n\n **Entre-deux-branches**\n\nPremi\u00e8re Partie\n\n**Prologue \u00e9pist\u00e9mo-critique**\n\n **(alternativement : strat\u00e9gique et technique)**\n\n(\u00a7 1) **Au commencement de cette premi\u00e8re entre-deux-branches de mon livre**\n\nAu commencement de cette premi\u00e8re **entre-deux-branches** de mon livre en plusieurs parties, des **branches, 'Le grand incendie de Londres'** , intitul\u00e9e **entre-deux-branches, Prologue \u00e9pist\u00e9mo-critique,** je consid\u00e8re, en pr\u00e9fa\u00e7ant le texte de son premier paragraphe (moment) d'un num\u00e9ro d'ordre additionnel, xxxx, satisfaite l'hypoth\u00e8se suivante :\n\nles xxxx paragraphes suppos\u00e9s le pr\u00e9c\u00e9der sont d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9crits.\n\nAu moment o\u00f9 je compose ces lignes, **point** initial de son **moment** inaugural (je conserve la terminologie qui s'est peu \u00e0 peu impos\u00e9e \u00e0 moi au cours de la composition des **branches** pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes), ce n'est pas le cas. Au moment o\u00f9 elles seront publi\u00e9es (si elles le sont), il est n\u00e9cessaire qu'elle le soit. J'\u00e9cris donc comme si elle devait alors l'\u00eatre.\n\nJe me place, vis-\u00e0-vis de la succession lin\u00e9aire des diff\u00e9rentes parties de l'ouvrage, dans une situation d'anticipation : selon le programme de mon travail \u00e0 cette date (11 ao\u00fbt 1990, date de composition), ce **moment** vient apr\u00e8s six **branches** de \u00ab **r\u00e9cit avec incises et bifurcations** \u00bb ; chacune de ces branches se compose _(rait)_ , comme la premi\u00e8re **(Branche un : La Destruction),** seule aujourd'hui \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat de livre publi\u00e9 (la seconde, **Branche deux : la Boucle,** est \u00e0 moiti\u00e9 faite), de 196 **moments de prose** num\u00e9rot\u00e9s (toujours (?) dans le m\u00eame ordre de pr\u00e9sentation \u00e0 la lecture : **r\u00e9cit,** puis **insertions,** comprenant d'abord des **incises,** ensuite des **bifurcations** ). Il est donc pr\u00e9vu que ceci sera lu apr\u00e8s les **six branches,** corps principal du livre. (Qui sera _(it)_ alors presque enti\u00e8rement achev\u00e9, \u00e0 l'exception d'un **moment final,** un moment de r\u00e9v\u00e9lation, sym\u00e9trique du **moment initial,** ant\u00e9rieur (chronologiquement et typographiquement) \u00e0 la **Branche un,** que constitue l' **Avertissement** (et comme lui non pourvu d'un num\u00e9ro d'ordre). Le corps du **'grand incendie de Londres'** comportera _(it)_ donc xxxx + 2 paragraphes **(moments).)**\n\nJe pensais \u00e0 ce **moment** depuis assez longtemps d\u00e9j\u00e0. C'est en fait dans l'intervalle de temps, fort long, qui s'est \u00e9coul\u00e9 entre ma d\u00e9cision de publier la **branche un,** sous le titre g\u00e9n\u00e9ral de l'ensemble, **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** (\u00e0 l'automne de 1987) et le d\u00e9but du **r\u00e9cit** de la **branche deux** qui m'occupe maintenant (automne 89, quelques mois apr\u00e8s la parution de la branche un), que l'id\u00e9e de cette anticipation m'est venue, en m\u00eame temps que je me formulais l'hypoth\u00e8se \u00ab strat\u00e9gique \u00bb nouvelle des **entre-deux-branches** (que j'inaugure ici), de leur nombre, de leur r\u00f4le, et de leur encha\u00eenement. (Cette pr\u00e9vision-l\u00e0 \u00e9tant, elle (comme toutes les autres, et jusqu'\u00e0 l'instant de leur fixation en un lieu du livre), susceptible de r\u00e9vision, je n'en dirai rien.)\n\nPourquoi ?\n\n\u2013 Parce que, m\u00eame si je n'avais pas entrepris de branche nouvelle, je n'avais pas cess\u00e9 de composer de ces **moments de prose** dont **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** se constitue (la d\u00e9cision de soumettre la **branche un** \u00e0 la lecture m'emp\u00eachait, litt\u00e9ralement, d'entreprendre la branche suivante, mais je ne pouvais rester absent de la prose : il me fallait absolument continuer. Il fallait que le d\u00e9p\u00f4t de lignes noires, matin apr\u00e8s matin, demeur\u00e2t ininterrompu).\n\n\u2013 Parce que ces pages anarchiquement s'accumulaient, mois apr\u00e8s mois, alors que je ne parvenais toujours pas \u00e0 aborder la mise en mots de la **Branche deux.**\n\n\u2013 Enfin parce que certaines de ces pages ne pourraient de toute \u00e9vidence pas trouver naturellement place, selon mes pr\u00e9visions (et en aucun des \u00e9tats, changeants, de mes anticipations et pr\u00e9visions de la suite), dans les **branches** \u00e0 venir. Il \u00e9tait indispensable d'inventer autre chose. Or, si nombre de ces moments en suspension semblaient demeurer ind\u00e9pendants, d'autres, pas moins nombreux, apparaissaient de plus en plus comme des liens, des jalons, des \u00e9tapes, entre la **Branche un,** d\u00e9j\u00e0 constitu\u00e9e, et les lignes (encore imaginaires, mais de plus en plus nettes en mon imagination) des branches qui la suivraient.\n\nJe me suis donc repr\u00e9sent\u00e9 mentalement, de branche \u00e0 branche, ces parcours de liaison, de rapprochement, d'entrelacement, et gardant toujours pr\u00e9sente comme image programmatique la grande feuille de prose circulaire de mon donjon de m\u00e9moire o\u00f9 s'inscrirait **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** , j'ai postul\u00e9 ces **entre-deux-branches**. Il \u00e9tait assez imm\u00e9diatement clair que la r\u00e9partition des fragments d\u00e9j\u00e0 compos\u00e9s (et continuant \u00e0 \u00eatre compos\u00e9s m\u00eame apr\u00e8s la mise en route de la deuxi\u00e8me branche, puis des suivantes) entre les branches \u00e0 venir et les entre-deux-branches, \u00e0 venir \u00e9galement, ne pouvant en aucun cas \u00eatre d\u00e9cid\u00e9e \u00e0 l'avance de mani\u00e8re fixe (cela aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 en contradiction absolue avec un de mes principes, extr\u00eamement rigides, eux, de composition), les \u00ab entre-deux-branches \u00bb ne pouvaient appara\u00eetre qu'apr\u00e8s les branches (le choix de la **branche** qui servira (?), par exemple, de point de d\u00e9part \u00e0 la derni\u00e8re de ces parties de nouvelle esp\u00e8ce, la **Branche six,** et son \u00ab rattachement \u00bb \u00e0 la **Branche un,** appartient \u00e0 un autre ordre de consid\u00e9rations).\n\nMais il importait par ailleurs de mettre en route les **entredeux-branches** avant la fin de la r\u00e9daction des branches, sinon la strat\u00e9gie de r\u00e9partition entre les deux esp\u00e8ces aurait privil\u00e9gi\u00e9 abusivement les branches, et du coup aurait rigidifi\u00e9 leur d\u00e9roulement, ce que je ne voulais \u00e0 aucun prix (c'est l\u00e0, encore, un principe \u00e9tabli, explicitement, d\u00e8s mon d\u00e9but). Et les **entre-deux-branches,** elles, se seraient trouv\u00e9es h\u00e9riter des \u00ab laiss\u00e9s-pour-compte \u00bb des branches, ce qui aurait rendu leur organisation difficile, non naturelle, largement arbitraire finalement (ou bien j'aurais \u00e9t\u00e9 amen\u00e9 \u00e0 les enfler d\u00e9mesur\u00e9ment pour rem\u00e9dier aux difficult\u00e9s rencontr\u00e9es dans les encha\u00eenements, particuli\u00e8rement ceux provenant de leurs \u00e9poques de composition fort diff\u00e9rentes, puisque les plus anciennes appartiennent \u00e0 des ann\u00e9es \u00ab o\u00f9 j'\u00e9tais homme autre que je ne suis \u00bb). Il me reste, avant de d\u00e9finir un peu plus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment leur constitution g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, et m'engager plus directement dans le corps de ce prologue, \u00e0 dire pourquoi je commence maintenant.\n\n## 85 (\u00a7 84, suite)\n\n(\u00a7 2 du prologue) **j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 oblig\u00e9 d'attendre assez longtemps pour entreprendre cette \u00ab pr\u00e9sentation \u00bb qui servira de \u00ab prologue \u00bb (ou \u00ab pro\u00e8me \u00bb)**\n\nPourtant, m\u00eame persuad\u00e9 de la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 des **entre-deux-branches,** j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 oblig\u00e9 d'attendre assez longtemps avant d'entreprendre cette \u00ab pr\u00e9sentation \u00bb qui leur servira de \u00ab prologue \u00bb, un prologue qui sera en d\u00e9finitive, en cas de publication, s\u00e9par\u00e9 par un tr\u00e8s grand intervalle de temps du d\u00e9veloppement proprement dit de la derni\u00e8re **entre-deux-branches,** puisque je ne pourrai placer les **moments** qui constitueront celle-ci (sans parler des autres) qu'une fois les six branches enti\u00e8rement achev\u00e9es (dans le cas le plus \u00ab optimiste \u00bb je me contenterai d'\u00eatre arriv\u00e9 au bout du r\u00e9cit de la **Branche six** ). La raison est la m\u00eame que celle que j'exposais dans les commencements de la **branche un** : \u00ab J'ai une id\u00e9e un peu informe mais en fait assez stable de la masse d'\u00e9crit qui sera n\u00e9cessaire pour \u00eatre \"masse critique\", donc pour que **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** existe. \u00bb\n\nIl me fallait, pour que la **Branche un** aboutisse, assurant, comme corollaire de son existence, quoi qu'il arrive ensuite, celle du **'grand incendie de Londres'** tout entier, atteindre un \u00ab seuil quantitatif \u00bb, car, ce seuil quantitatif une fois atteint, les axiomes du livre sont tels qu'il sera n\u00e9cessairement achev\u00e9 m\u00eame si, pour une raison ou une autre, je dois m'interrompre. Dans le cas des **entre-deux-branches** (obligatoirement mises en route toutes ensembles), le seuil quantitatif, la masse critique que je me suis cette fois impos\u00e9e est _grosso modo_ \u00e9gale \u00e0 celle de la totalit\u00e9 de la **Branche un** achev\u00e9e et publi\u00e9e. Et ce seuil a \u00e9t\u00e9 atteint il y a deux mois, le 11 juin. Mais attention : si cette masse est suffisante pour que j'entreprenne la r\u00e9daction des **entre-deux-branches,** il n'assure aucunement qu'elles aboutiront, car dans ce cas, les conditions d'ach\u00e8vement sont fort diff\u00e9rentes de celles qui gouvernaient le r\u00e9cit.\n\nComme la **Branche six** (et les pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes) n'est pas faite, j'ignore quels sont les **moments** d\u00e9j\u00e0 compos\u00e9s qui sont attribuables \u00e0 telle ou telle **entre-deux-branches** (m\u00eame si je sais \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s lesquels de ces moments compos\u00e9s dans le _no man's land_ temporel de mon effort entre la premi\u00e8re et la deuxi\u00e8me branche, et depuis, seront des moments d'entre-deux-branches). De plus, m\u00eame si je le savais, j'ignore dans quel ordre ils seront pr\u00e9sent\u00e9s, puisque cela d\u00e9pend de la constitution des liens d'entrelacement qui uniront les branches concern\u00e9es (dans les deux sens, comme le nom des entre-deux-branches l'indiquera). Cela implique que, alors m\u00eame que j'ai entrepris la r\u00e9daction de ce **prologue,** j'ignore s'il ne restera pas \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat de pure anticipation d'une absence, ce qui est assez inconfortable. Auquel cas il vaudrait (vaudra) mieux consid\u00e9rer qu'il ne fait pas partie du **'grand incendie de Londres'** achev\u00e9. (Je pourrais m\u00eame le supprimer, ou ne pas l'achever, pour d'autres raisons que je ne peux discerner aujourd'hui.)\n\nCela \u00e9tant, il me faut affronter une interrogation plus pr\u00e9judiciable encore en apparence \u00e0 la mise en route, maintenant, de ces consid\u00e9rations. J'ai dit, d\u00e8s le d\u00e9but, et j'y ai insist\u00e9, avec variations, \u00e0 maintes reprises, que j'avan\u00e7ais dans la prose sans plan pr\u00e9\u00e9tabli, que je m'interdisais \u00ab la protection d'une construction r\u00e9fl\u00e9chie, d'une organisation \u00bb ant\u00e9rieure au livre, que le temps de la composition \u00e9tait celui o\u00f9 tout s'accomplissait, le \u00ab temps propre \u00bb de l'\u0153uvre, sans plans, sans matrice, sans \u00e9pures. N'y a-t-il pas l\u00e0 contradiction ? Je ne crois pas. L'\u00e9tat du livre, \u00e0 chaque instant, son pr\u00e9sent, est celui qui serait sa fin, son ach\u00e8vement (son tombeau) s'il venait, l\u00e0, \u00e0 s'interrompre. Tout ce qui est de lui \u00e9crit et plac\u00e9 en son lieu est son pass\u00e9, compt\u00e9 depuis son origine, l'Avertissement. Il n'est, aujourd'hui, rien d'autre.\n\nDans la mesure o\u00f9 il ne s'arr\u00eate pas aux derni\u00e8res des lignes de la **Branche deux** que j'ai \u00e9crites avant-hier (je n'y inclus pas celles-ci, ni celles du moment qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de, pour les raisons que je viens de dire plus haut), cet instant pr\u00e9sent du **'grand incendie de Londres'** n'est pas encore d\u00e9fini. Il n'est existant que de ce qu'il poss\u00e8de un futur. Car il est, comme tout instant, d\u00e9fini comme un futur ant\u00e9rieur, n\u00e9cessairement instable (c'est dans la nature de tous les futurs), en partie d\u00e9termin\u00e9, en partie contingent, et surtout non pr\u00e9visible. Mais ce fait ne m'interdit aucunement des pr\u00e9visions sp\u00e9culatives, m\u00e9lange d'imaginations, d'intentions (et ici, dans le cas des entre-deux-branches, de fragments \u00ab en attente \u00bb, pr\u00eats \u00e0 un devenir de prose, si jamais ils trouvent leur place dans la s\u00e9quence que je con\u00e7ois, par anticipation), de pr\u00e9parations formelles (contraintes ou, mieux et plus souplement, consignes que je me donne et que je m'efforce de respecter, quoique ne les figeant pas).\n\nL' **entre-deux-branches 1-2 & 2-1,** par exemple, sera, comme ses successeurs ou pr\u00e9d\u00e9cesseurs \u00e9ventuels, ce que dit son nom. Mais il ne le sera que s'il y a effectivement six branches achev\u00e9es avant lui, donc si je parviens \u00e0 les \u00e9crire toutes, et si je ne change pas leur nombre, leur nature, leur succession. J'ai d\u00e9j\u00e0 modifi\u00e9 un nombre consid\u00e9rable de fois ces annonces de d\u00e9veloppements \u00e0 venir, adress\u00e9es \u00e0 moi-m\u00eame. Je ne suis tenu aucunement de les respecter, \u00e0 condition de ne pas les avoir inscrites dans ce que j'ai d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9crit, dans ce qui fait d\u00e9j\u00e0 partie du pass\u00e9 non modifiable du livre (et m\u00eame dans ce cas, apr\u00e8s tout...). Il me faut cr\u00e9er un monde possible de prose, en ce sens, \u00e9viter les contradictions grossi\u00e8res. Je m'y tiens tant que je peux. Il est vrai que cette exigence restreint ma libert\u00e9 de mouvement, \u00e0 mesure que j'avance, \u00eatre physique, vers ma fin, mais n'en est-il de m\u00eame dans tout ce que je fais, dans tout ce que je vis ?\n\n## 86 (\u00a7 84, deuxi\u00e8me suite)\n\n(\u00a7 3 du prologue) **Selon cette conception, les positions relatives des deux lignes de temps principales de la prose sont renvers\u00e9es.**\n\nSelon cette conception de l'entre-deux-branches (dans son ensemble), les positions relatives des deux lignes de temps principales de la prose qui constituent le **double temps** du **'grand incendie de Londres'** , la ligne du temps de la narration, et celle du temps des choses que rapporte la narration, sont renvers\u00e9es. Dans les six branches, en effet, la narration (et je d\u00e9signe ainsi non seulement la partie intitul\u00e9e r\u00e9cit, mais \u00e9galement les bifurcations) appara\u00eet selon l'ordre s\u00e9quentiel de la composition : c'est le temps de la narration qui est suppos\u00e9 refl\u00e9t\u00e9 contin\u00fbment par l'\u00e9crit. Le temps des choses narr\u00e9es, lui, se trouve morcel\u00e9 par la narration, qui doit en indiquer, \u00e0 l'occasion, les rep\u00e8res. Le premier temps de ce double est continu, concat\u00e9nation de moments, le second discontinu, intriqu\u00e9. Mais dans les entredeux-branches proprement dites, il en ira autrement. Elles seront ordonn\u00e9es, largement apr\u00e8s coup, et ce qu'il me sera alors impos\u00e9, pour respecter les m\u00eames principes que dans la composition des branches, c'est de laisser des traces plus ou moins visibles de leur \u00ab moment \u00bb de pose sur l'\u00e9cran. Ainsi, par exemple, j'ai dat\u00e9, au 11 ao\u00fbt 1990 (avant-hier : je date aussi le pr\u00e9sent fragment), le premier des paragraphes de ce **prologue,** le \u00a7 xxxx + 1 de la num\u00e9rotation globale (c'est l\u00e0 la forme la plus \u00e9l\u00e9mentaire de la \u00ab trace chronologique \u00bb. J'en utiliserai de moins apparentes).\n\nMais quel pourra \u00eatre, dans ces conditions, le **double temps** propre \u00e0 cette partie ? Il ressemblera aux deux. Comme dans les branches qui la pr\u00e9c\u00e8dent il ira sans cesse vers l'avant, sans retours, \u00e0 mesure : le \u00a7 no x ne sera pas plac\u00e9 avant le paragraphe no y, si \u00ab y \u00bb est \u00e9crit avant \u00ab x \u00bb. Mais comme il ne racontera pas des choses du temps de la vie, son deuxi\u00e8me temps ne s'inscrira pas dans la chronologie biographique. Il aura son ordre propre, comme chacune des parties, les **entre-deux-branches** sp\u00e9cifiques, qui le suivront. Cependant le principe de cet ordre ne sera pas le m\u00eame que le leur, qui est d'\u00e9tablir l'entrelacement des deux branches entre lesquelles elles se posent. Et la succession de ses paragraphes ne sera pas celle d'un engendrement ligne \u00e0 ligne de la narration, comme dans les **branches,** mais une s\u00e9quentialit\u00e9 pure. La double ressemblance tient \u00e0 une relation d'abstraction.\n\nAbstraction : voil\u00e0 qui peut susciter de l'inqui\u00e9tude chez mon lecteur. Le cheminement dans ces pages risque d'appara\u00eetre ardu, pire qu'en certains passages (qui m'ont \u00e9t\u00e9 souvent reproch\u00e9s) du chapitre 5 de la **Branche un.** C'est tr\u00e8s possible. Mais s'il en est ainsi, il faudra que cela reste sans excuses. Car un motif secondaire, adventice, de cette partie est de prendre des distances encore plus grandes que pr\u00e9c\u00e9demment avec l'autobiographie. L'interpr\u00e9tation, la r\u00e9ception du **'grand incendie de Londres'** comme autobiographie s'est produite (et la **Branche deux** renforcera sans aucun doute cette interpr\u00e9tation). Elle \u00e9tait assez in\u00e9vitable, et je ne la r\u00e9cuse pas, bien que j'affirme que l'aspect autobiographique est enti\u00e8rement subordonn\u00e9 \u00e0 un autre qui gouverne, lui, chaque page et ligne et lettre du livre, est inscrit dans chacun de ses volumes comme la figure dans le tapis, choisissant chaque mot, pla\u00e7ant chaque virgule, mettant le point sur chacun des i, et r\u00e9sulte d'un principe de conformit\u00e9 \u00e0 une d\u00e9finition annonc\u00e9e et toujours non dite : **'Le grand incendie de Londres' est............ ........ .**\n\nOn pourrait par ailleurs dire que, s'il y a autobiographie, il s'agit d'une (auto)biographie du **Projet** et de son **double, Le Grand Incendie de Londres,** et par cons\u00e9quent, dans une large mesure, d'une autobiographie de personne. (Il en r\u00e9sulte, en m\u00eame temps, que les moments les plus strictement, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, concr\u00e8tement biographiques en re\u00e7oivent un \u00e9clairage qui les tire vers un essai d'autobiographie de tout le monde.) Mais de toute fa\u00e7on cette partie pr\u00e9sente ne pourra pas, il me semble, appara\u00eetre comme autobiographique, sinon tr\u00e8s indirectement, et alors en un sens suffisamment vague pour \u00eatre inop\u00e9rant. J'essaye, on le voit, de maintenir \u00e0 mon livre ce que j'imagine \u00eatre une certaine originalit\u00e9, au moins classificatoire. Il ne s'agit pas, \u00e0 l'\u00e9vidence, d'un roman, ni d'un conte, ni d'un essai. \u00c9carter l'hypoth\u00e8se d'une aspiration par le genre de l'autobiographie semble plus difficile.\n\nSi cette partie s'\u00e9loigne \u00e0 la fois et des branches et des autres entre-deux-branches, pourquoi l'avoir incorpor\u00e9e \u00e0 cette deuxi\u00e8me division d'ensemble ? Ne serait-il pas plus rationnel, si vraiment elle doit appara\u00eetre \u00e0 cette place, de la disposer de fa\u00e7on ind\u00e9pendante, de l'isoler ? La raison principale, je l'avoue un peu honteusement, est num\u00e9rologique. Et comme je ne dispose pas, et pour cause, de tout ce qui suit, ni m\u00eame, au moment o\u00f9 j'\u00e9cris, de la totalit\u00e9 de ce qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de (seul le nombre total des moments des six branches est d\u00e9cid\u00e9 (et non n\u00e9cessairement achev\u00e9 si vous lisez ceci, puisque j'en \u00ab incise \u00bb la **Branche deux** !)), je ne peux gu\u00e8re me lancer dans des explications convaincantes et surtout stables, c'est-\u00e0-dire non susceptibles d'\u00eatre d\u00e9menties par des \u00e9critures \u00e0 venir. La raison num\u00e9rologique appartient donc \u00e0 la famille des pr\u00e9visions formelles r\u00e9visables qui ne cessent de m'accompagner dans ma t\u00e2che (et sont loin de la faciliter, d'ailleurs, croyez-moi).\n\nMais le fait m\u00eame de cette raison num\u00e9rique, tout arbitraire et fantaisiste qu'elle soit, va avoir une influence sur le contenu. En effet, le **Prologue** \u00e0 la division intitul\u00e9e **entredeux-branches** ne pourra pas \u00eatre un \u00e9pilogue \u00e0 la division des six branches, ni une prose de transition entre les deux. De plus (puisque je dis, m\u00eame si ce n'est qu'implicitement pour vous, quelque chose du compte des parties tel que je l'envisage en ces commencements, cela m'obligera \u00e0 tenter de respecter les contraintes qui en d\u00e9coulent (elles sont explicites pour moi)), la mise en \u00e9chafaudages num\u00e9riques sp\u00e9cifiques va orienter vers une autre lecture, o\u00f9 les **entre-deux-branches** pr\u00e9c\u00e9deraient les **Branches,** et non seulement leur seraient mat\u00e9riellement ant\u00e9rieures, mais les annonceraient, les pr\u00e9voiraient).\n\n## 87 (\u00a7 84, troisi\u00e8me suite)\n\n(\u00a7 4 du prologue) **En repoussant la visibilit\u00e9 hypoth\u00e9tique de cette partie vers un futur obligatoirement tr\u00e8s lointain**\n\nEn repoussant la visibilit\u00e9 hypoth\u00e9tique de cette partie vers un futur obligatoirement tr\u00e8s lointain, je me donne un degr\u00e9 de libert\u00e9 suppl\u00e9mentaire. Car partout ailleurs p\u00e8se sur moi la possibilit\u00e9 d'une lecture proche, surtout depuis que j'ai franchi, non sans de longues h\u00e9sitations la fronti\u00e8re entre texte non publi\u00e9 et publi\u00e9, voici dix-huit mois (ce n'\u00e9tait pas une fronti\u00e8re priv\u00e9-public : **'Le grand incendie de Londres'** n'a jamais eu d'intention solipsiste). L'ach\u00e8vement d'une nouvelle partie, puisque j'ai r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 l'entreprendre, est envisageable dans un d\u00e9lai assez court, tr\u00e8s court en tout cas par rapport \u00e0 celui qui prot\u00e8ge non le \u00ab prologue \u00bb tout entier, puisque je place ici son d\u00e9but, mais sa totalit\u00e9 achev\u00e9e, et les entre-deux-branches.\n\nJ'ai maintenant moi-m\u00eame, moi-m\u00eame seul comme v\u00e9ritable lecteur, pour des ann\u00e9es (et peut-\u00eatre ind\u00e9finiment). De l\u00e0 mon sentiment de libert\u00e9. Je ne donne pas \u00e0 cette libert\u00e9 le sens d'une autorisation \u00e0 inscrire ici des r\u00e9v\u00e9lations d'ordre priv\u00e9. Je n'ai aucune r\u00e9v\u00e9lation \u00e0 faire, qui puisse avoir un int\u00e9r\u00eat quelconque pour ce livre. Et que pourrais-je me r\u00e9v\u00e9ler \u00e0 moi-m\u00eame que je ne sache, et qui vaille la peine d'\u00eatre dit ? Rien sans aucun doute (je ne me livrerai pas non plus \u00e0 un essai d'auto-analyse). Mais je me d\u00e9couvre libre en un tout autre sens : je peux ici prolonger des investigations abstraites et formelles (en rapport avec mon \u00ab sujet \u00bb) aussi loin que je l'estime utile, sans risquer l'incompr\u00e9hension, sans devoir \u00ab m\u00e9nager \u00bb les r\u00e9ticences \u00e0 l'effort de compr\u00e9hension de personne.\n\nDans un ouvrage propos\u00e9 \u00e0 la lecture pour d'autres motifs que ceux de la transmission d'un savoir, d'une d\u00e9couverte scientifique, philosophique, historique ou autre, les abstractions, les encha\u00eenements d'hypoth\u00e8ses, de raisonnements et de fins sont de v\u00e9ritables obsc\u00e9nit\u00e9s. Leur condamnation morale prend le masque de l'ennui. Certes, je n'ai jamais consid\u00e9r\u00e9 l'ennui comme un crit\u00e8re esth\u00e9tique. Sa force de dissuasion marchande (particuli\u00e8rement \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque contemporaine) est consid\u00e9rable, je n'en disconviens pas. Certains des dix styles qui se partagent les pages de cette tr\u00e8s longue prose sont particuli\u00e8rement aptes \u00e0 le provoquer. J'ai eu recours \u00e0 leur vertu de mani\u00e8re tout \u00e0 fait d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9e en au moins deux circonstances (je ne parle que du volume publi\u00e9 \u00e0 cette date) :\n\n\u2013 Dans le chapitre 5 de la branche un, avec sa pseudo-d\u00e9duction palindromique (scandale suppl\u00e9mentaire) bien \u00e9videmment (pr\u00e9venant, d'un geste un peu provocant, que leur omission \u00e0 la lecture \u00e9tait souhaitable).\n\n\u2013 Mais aussi tout \u00e0 fait au d\u00e9but, avec l'interminable description du double photographique _F\u00e8s_ , propre \u00e0 d\u00e9courager d'embl\u00e9e (puisque se produisant si pr\u00e8s du d\u00e9clenchement de la lutte, in\u00e9vitable en tout livre, entre auteur et lecteur) les regards rapides, impatients et non pr\u00e9venus. Cependant quelques centaines de pages dans ce registre, comme celles qui se pr\u00e9parent, sont autre chose. Et je ne pourrais pas m'y lancer si je n'\u00e9tais certain de n'avoir pas \u00e0 affronter le m\u00e9contentement d'un lecteur (se traduisant, de fa\u00e7on m\u00e9canique, en un m\u00e9contentement, beaucoup plus dangereux peut-\u00eatre, d'\u00e9diteur) avant tr\u00e8s, tr\u00e8s longtemps.\n\nEt je n'ai m\u00eame pas l'excuse de pouvoir revendiquer autrement cet ennui, en expliquant qu'il n'est que l'accompagnement in\u00e9vitable d'autres r\u00e9v\u00e9lations que biographiques : car ni la science, ni la philosophie, pour ne citer qu'elles, ne seront sollicit\u00e9es dans leur s\u00e9v\u00e9rit\u00e9 et aridit\u00e9 famili\u00e8re. Que reste-t-il alors ? Pas grand-chose apparemment (si on \u00e9limine aussi les vertus digressives & incantatoires de quelque pr\u00e9paration shand\u00e9enne). Tenons-nous-en pour le moment aux trois mots du titre (deux mots et demi, si je tiens compte du trait d'union, que je m'autorise encore, en ces temps de simplification orthographique (ceci est une indication \u00e9clairant la chronologie de composition de cette page)) : **Prologue \u00e9pist\u00e9mo-critique.** Sans autres explications.\n\nJe parle de ma nouvelle libert\u00e9 d'auteur, mais c'est une libert\u00e9, en somme, passablement illusoire : pas d'effervescence du style, de fantaisie de l'imagination. Il s'agira plut\u00f4t d'une extravagance formelle, car je ne vois gu\u00e8re d'autre issue, m'\u00e9tant bouch\u00e9 presque les autres voies. L'ennui didactique est rarement pardonnable ; mais l'ennui formel est plus impardonnable encore. Donc...\n\nIci s'interrompt, pour une dur\u00e9e ind\u00e9termin\u00e9e, mon \u00ab prologue \u00bb (la suite \u00e0 un prochain (?) moment-paragraphe).\n\n## 88 (\u00a7 20) selon la hi\u00e9rarchie d'une m\u00e9ditation des cinq sens\n\nDans la tradition m\u00e9ditative \u00ab ignatienne \u00bb de la Renaissance (inspir\u00e9e des _Exercices spirituels_ de Loyola) figure en bonne place une \u00ab m\u00e9ditation des cinq sens \u00bb. J'en choisis un exemple (plut\u00f4t d'ailleurs sc\u00e9nario d'une m\u00e9ditation, ou encore compte rendu d'une m\u00e9ditation que m\u00e9ditation proprement dite, puisque la m\u00e9ditation est affaire int\u00e9rieure, priv\u00e9e, non dite, non \u00e9crite), un sonnet espagnol compos\u00e9 vers 1570 par le \u00ab capitaine \u00bb Francisco de Aldana. Le th\u00e8me en est d'apparence profane, mais il s'agit bien d'une m\u00e9ditation d'essence et de finalit\u00e9 religieuse, tout \u00e0 fait conforme \u00e0 la \u00ab ligne ignatienne \u00bb, m\u00eame si, par ailleurs, elle t\u00e9moigne de ce qu'anachroniquement je qualifierai ici le \u00ab pacifisme \u00bb de son auteur. Le choix me semble appropri\u00e9 \u00e0 ce r\u00e9cit, qui apr\u00e8s tout, tout d'apparence idyllique qu'il soit (dans l'Arcadie de l'enfance), se situe pendant les ann\u00e9es d'une terrible guerre.\n\nAldana :\n\n _Otro aqu\u00ed no se ve que, frente a frente_ ,\n\n _animoso escuadr\u00f3n moverse guerra_ ,\n\n _sangriento humor tenir la verde tierra_\n\n _y, tras honroso fin, correr la gente ;_\n\n _este es el dulce son que aca se siente :_\n\n _\u00ab Espa\u00f1a, Santiago, cierra, cierra \u00bb_ ,\n\n _y por suave olor, que el aire aterra_ ,\n\n _humo de azufre dar con llama ardiente ;_\n\n _el gusto envuelto va tras corrompida_\n\n _agua y el tacto solo palpa y halla_\n\n _duro trofeo de acero ensangrentado_ ,\n\n _hueso en astilla, en \u00e9l carne molida_ ,\n\n _despedazado arn\u00e9s, rasgada malla :_\n\n _oh, solo de hombres digno y noble estado !_\n\n(version fran\u00e7aise purement informative :\n\n _Ici on ne voit rien d'autre que face \u00e0 face_\n\n _de vaillants escadrons s'\u00e9branler pour la guerre_ ,\n\n _l'humeur sanglante teindre la verte terre_\n\n _et vers une fin sanglante courir les gens ;_\n\n _voici la douce sonnerie qu'ici on entend :_\n\n _\u00ab Espa\u00f1a, Santiago ! A l'attaque ! A l'attaque ! \u00bb_ ,\n\n _et pour suave odeur qui terrifie l'air_\n\n _une fum\u00e9e de soufre cogne la flamme ardente ;_\n\n _le go\u00fbt perverti poursuit, corrompue_ ,\n\n _l'eau, et le toucher ne trouve et ne palpe_\n\n _qu'un dur troph\u00e9e d'acier ensanglant\u00e9_ ,\n\n _qu'\u00e9charde d'os, autour des chairs hach\u00e9es_ ,\n\n _harnais d\u00e9chiquet\u00e9s, mailles d\u00e9faites :_\n\n _\u00f4 seul m\u00e9tier de l'homme digne et noble !)_\n\nCette esp\u00e8ce de la m\u00e9ditation est une \u00ab descente \u00bb, descente aux enfers de la mort, par cinq \u00ab degr\u00e9s \u00bb, qui sont les degr\u00e9s des sens, hi\u00e9rarchis\u00e9s du plus noble au plus vil : vue, ou\u00efe, odorat, go\u00fbt et toucher. De la couleur et noblesse des escadrons lanc\u00e9s l'un contre l'autre on tombe, de la vision aux cris, des cris au soufre... ; et jusqu'\u00e0 l'horreur finale de ce \u00ab hamburger \u00bb de cadavres inertes. Car la vue, seule parmi les sens, assure l'unit\u00e9 de l'homme et du monde, qui est de l'\u00e2me. Mais le corps au contraire est rupture, \u00e9parpillement surtout, dispersion. Et le toucher est par excellence le sens du corps, de sa nature mortelle, de sa chute in\u00e9vitable dans ce que Jean de Sponde nomme \u00ab le gouffre de la pluralit\u00e9 \u00bb.\n\nOr je serais assez tent\u00e9 d'attribuer une hi\u00e9rarchie \u00ab homologue \u00bb aux r\u00f4les respectifs des sens dans le (dans mon) souvenir (soyons prudent). Il est assez naturel, dans ma perspective g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, de traiter la **m\u00e9ditation** comme une op\u00e9ration universelle de la pens\u00e9e, par cons\u00e9quent la m\u00e9ditation des cinq sens, avec son ordre descendant, comme un cas particulier in\u00e9vitable, refl\u00e9tant exactement une disposition ordinaire du fonctionnement de l'esprit, et le souvenir recherch\u00e9, conscient, m\u00e9ditation de la m\u00e9moire (qui est, dans la m\u00e9ditation ignatienne, m\u00e9moire du divin), subordonn\u00e9 lui aussi \u00e0 la m\u00eame \u00e9chelle des sens. (Sym\u00e9triquement les souvenirs involontaires, les r\u00eaveries, les r\u00eaves, \u00e9tant dans ce cas des m\u00e9ditations spontan\u00e9es.)\n\nC'est pourquoi dans le souvenir, dans mon souvenir (mettons, une fois encore, que je ne parle que pour moi), il y a avant tout du voir. Les autres sens, s'ils sont pr\u00e9sents, sont des fant\u00f4mes. Je remarquais \u2013 au chapitre 1, \u00a7 1 \u2013 que l'image de mon doigt faisant crisser la bu\u00e9e glac\u00e9e sur la vitre n'\u00e9tait accompagn\u00e9e d'aucun son, que mon doigt (mon doigt d'aujourd'hui, qui devrait \u00eatre le support du doigt du souvenir (mais est-ce si s\u00fbr ?)) ne ressentait pas le froid pourtant certain de ce moment. J'\u00e9crivais que je savais, \u00ab parce que c'est un savoir commun, et universel, qu'il y a le gel, et que ce mode d'existence physique de l'eau est froid \u00bb qu'il faisait froid dans la chambre, mais l'image que je restituais de ce moment \u00e9tait insensible \u00e0 ce savoir, indiff\u00e9rente. Le toucher y \u00e9tait \u00ab incolore \u00bb.\n\nC'est en vertu de ce \u00ab raisonnement \u00bb que j'en ai d\u00e9duit la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 d'une intensit\u00e9 particuli\u00e8re de mon souvenir de guetteur du jeu, S'avancer-en-rampant, puisque j'y retrouve la sensation, presque imm\u00e9diate, du sol au-dessous du banc, de petits cailloux aigus s'enfon\u00e7ant dans mes genoux nus. (Bien qu'aucune **image** en moi, pas plus celle-l\u00e0 qu'une autre, ne me donne jamais l'impression d'une pr\u00e9sence \u00ab r\u00e9elle \u00bb sensorielle d'autre chose qu'une vision. C'est une vision qui me montre que le toucher est n\u00e9cessairement impliqu\u00e9 dans les circonstances de l'image.)\n\n## 89 (\u00a7 20) Ces dispositions ne me seraient pas apparues comme convenables par fantaisie, elles \u00e9taient n\u00e9cessaires. Elles faisaient partie des conditions initiales de la m\u00e9moire, depuis son origine.\n\nD\u00e8s que j'ai d\u00e9couvert ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne de ma m\u00e9moire, j'ai imagin\u00e9, tel un _natural philosopher_ du XVIIe si\u00e8cle ou du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle, fils de Bacon, Hume, Locke, Descartes ou Newton (ignorons r\u00e9solument leurs divergences doctrinales : les _natural philosophers_ sont des personnages que j'aime beaucoup, et que je me repr\u00e9sente un peu sous les traits de mon grand-p\u00e8re, et un peu comme Mr. Pickwick (pour lequel, d'ailleurs, mon grand-p\u00e8re avait une secr\u00e8te sympathie. Les _Pickwick Papers_ \u00e9taient un livre qu'il relisait constamment, dans une vieille \u00e9dition NRF grand format)) une exp\u00e9rience de pens\u00e9e, propre \u00e0 v\u00e9rifier ou infirmer l'hypoth\u00e8se amorc\u00e9e dans le titre de cette insertion (pr\u00e9lev\u00e9, comme toujours, dans le contexte du r\u00e9cit, mais avec une modification importante, la r\u00e9\u00e9criture de **\u00ab** **ma** **m\u00e9moire \u00bb** en **\u00ab** **la** **m\u00e9moire \u00bb** ) :\n\n\u2013 que, nous souvenant d'un lieu ancien, et tr\u00e8s connu (une maison d'enfance, surtout, o\u00f9 nous avons longtemps v\u00e9cu, dont nous avons un souvenir assez pr\u00e9cis, assez intense au moins), que nous avons parcouru suivant une multiplicit\u00e9 (infinie pour toutes fins pratiques) de chemins et d'instants, chaque fois qu'y pensant, nous le p\u00e9n\u00e9trons de nouveau pour l'effraction du regard mis en mouvement par la m\u00e9moire, nous nous pla\u00e7ons automatiquement dans une position qui est toujours la m\u00eame, ou, \u00e0 d\u00e9faut,\n\n\u2013 dans l'une quelconque d'une famille de positions ayant en commun une certaine disposition topologique par rapport au volume du lieu, et\n\n\u2013 que (si j'extrapole encore plus \u00e0 partir de ma d\u00e9duction fictive), cette position (ou famille de positions) \u00e9claire une disposition stable de notre \u00ab moi \u00bb dans ses rapports avec le monde, dont on pourrait (ne reculant devant aucune hardiesse, tel un intr\u00e9pide _natural philosopher_ de la bonne \u00e9poque)\n\n\u2013 d\u00e9duire un portrait psychologique ;\n\n\u2013 et une classification des \u00eatres humains suivant une \u00ab physiognomonie du souvenir \u00bb dont ce serait le point nodal.\n\nJe suis, bien entendu, imm\u00e9diatement pass\u00e9 \u00e0 l'exp\u00e9rimentation, utilisant pour ce faire mon entourage imm\u00e9diat. C'\u00e9tait un dimanche, rue des Francs-Bourgeois, dans cet appartement o\u00f9 j'ai v\u00e9cu encore, jusqu'en 1985, avant de revenir rue d'Amsterdam, et qu'habitent aujourd'hui Marie, Charlotte et Oph\u00e9lie. C'\u00e9tait un dimanche, et nous achevions (Marie, Charlotte, Oph\u00e9lie et moi) un rose rosbif de saumon dominical entour\u00e9 d'herbes et sorti de son dispositif protecteur des sucs, en papier d'aluminium.\n\nOph\u00e9lie, prenant appui sur le dossier du fauteuil de Marie, sautant de l\u00e0 sur le haut du Frigidaire, du Frigidaire sur le tranchant sup\u00e9rieur de la porte de la cuisine, de l\u00e0 enfin sur le sommet du placard \u00e0 provisions (celui qui contient les \u00ab bo\u00eetes \u00e0 chat \u00bb et dont l'ouverture des portes la fait saliver), avait choisi l'une des \u00ab positions de chat \u00bb qu'elle adopte en cet endroit (il y en a plusieurs dizaines, et elle en invente sans cesse de nouvelles), et fermait \u00e0 demi les yeux de satisfaction temp\u00e9r\u00e9e de vigilance (elle est ainsi plac\u00e9e qu'elle peut voir tout ce qui se passe au-dessous d'elle et en particulier surveiller des arrivants, s'il s'en pr\u00e9sente dans l'entr\u00e9e).\n\nDans ces circonstances la table de la cuisine, pouss\u00e9e contre le mur, laisse trois places raisonnables pour le d\u00e9jeuner. Marie est assise dans le fauteuil, laid et gris, le dos au Frigidaire, regardant vers la fen\u00eatre qui donne sur la rue Vieille-du-Temple. Charlotte lui fait face et je suis sur le troisi\u00e8me c\u00f4t\u00e9, entre la table et l'\u00e9vier, flanqu\u00e9 de la machine \u00e0 laver la vaisselle (l'\u00e9vier, pas moi). La pendule ronde, \u00ab ann\u00e9es quarante \u00bb, \u00e9l\u00e9gante mais erratique (elle se remonte avec une cl\u00e9, et avance de dix minutes par heure, au moins), est \u00e0 gauche de la porte d'entr\u00e9e, qui est, elle, surmont\u00e9e d'une enseigne de _pub_ , ramen\u00e9e de Londres par Marie, du march\u00e9 de Portobello Road.\n\nJ'ai racont\u00e9 (pour ne pas influencer le t\u00e9moignage) non ma d\u00e9couverte, mais ma perplexit\u00e9 \u00e0 propos des souvenirs que l'on peut avoir d'une maison d'enfance (sans faire part, bien \u00e9videmment, de mon hypoth\u00e8se) disant, \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s que, si on y a v\u00e9cu assez longtemps, comme on s'y est trouv\u00e9 dans d'innombrables situations \u00ab g\u00e9ographiques \u00bb, & sans cesse changeantes, par quel miracle pouvait-on en avoir une vue d'ensemble (sachant, par exemple, qu'on est rarement, physiquement, au-dessus du toit de sa propre maison), si jamais on en avait une, ce qui n'est nullement certain.\n\n## 90 (suite du \u00a7 89) Et j'ai demand\u00e9 alors \u00e0 Charlotte\n\nEt j'ai demand\u00e9 alors \u00e0 Charlotte (avec toute l'habilet\u00e9 (?) dont j'\u00e9tais capable en tant que _natural philosopher_ ) de me dire comment, et d'o\u00f9 elle voyait, par exemple, sa maison de Nantes, ou celle de sa grand-m\u00e8re, \u00e0 Lyon. Elle est entr\u00e9e imm\u00e9diatement, avec vivacit\u00e9 et indulgence, bien volontiers dans ce jeu. Et sa r\u00e9ponse a, tr\u00e8s largement et \u00e0 ma grande satisfaction, confirm\u00e9 mes hypoth\u00e8ses.\n\nCar il y avait, effectivement, un trait commun \u00e0 toutes ses descriptions. La famille des positions rapport\u00e9es \u00e9tait, _unmistakably_ , de nature \u00ab oph\u00e9lienne \u00bb (de l'Oph\u00e9lie chatte dont j'ai suivi, au pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent paragraphe-moment, les mouvements) : elle se pla\u00e7ait, se d\u00e9crivant en train de voir, toujours, juch\u00e9e en hauteur, sans rien derri\u00e8re elle que des parois, des plafonds m\u00eame, pouvant par cons\u00e9quent surveiller les mouvements dans les pi\u00e8ces, les entr\u00e9es et sorties, les portes. Apparaissait alors le trait commun supput\u00e9 : la r\u00e9p\u00e9tition identique d'une localisation abstraite, propre \u00e0 la curiosit\u00e9 maximale, et d'une \u00e9vidente animalit\u00e9 enfantine (qu'on pourrait associer, dans la ligne d'une interpr\u00e9tation typologique du caract\u00e8re appuy\u00e9e sur ce crit\u00e8re, \u00e0 certain \u00ab totem \u00bb animal qui lui convient par ailleurs parfaitement. Et c'est bien celui-l\u00e0 qui m'\u00e9tait venu \u00e0 l'esprit, \u00e0 Cogolin, la premi\u00e8re fois que je l'ai vue).\n\n(\u00ab Tot\u00e9misation \u00bb qui fonctionne, nouvel exemple, selon un va-et-vient de double n\u00e9gation : attribuer \u00e0 tel animal des propri\u00e9t\u00e9s et caract\u00e8res qui l'\u00ab humanisent \u00bb, premi\u00e8re n\u00e9gation, n\u00e9gation de l'animalit\u00e9. Puis en d\u00e9duire, n\u00e9gation de la n\u00e9gation, pour tel \u00eatre humain, le mod\u00e8le ainsi construit de son animalit\u00e9.)\n\n(Le m\u00eame mouvement de va-et-vient, en fait, joue, sym\u00e9triquement, dans notre vision anthropomorphique des animaux familiers autant que pour l'animalisation des humains. Et elle est alors, in\u00e9vitablement autant que la premi\u00e8re, \u00e9thique. Car notre bestiaire est toujours un \u00ab bestiaire moralis\u00e9 \u00bb.)\n\nJe ne dispose pas aujourd'hui de beaucoup plus d'exemples pour fonder ma \u00ab th\u00e9orie des lieux centraux de la personnalit\u00e9 \u00bb (l'un d'eux au moins est ant\u00e9rieur \u00e0 elle. Car je l'extrais pour une r\u00e9interpr\u00e9tation des descriptions extr\u00eamement pr\u00e9cises d'Alix, quand nous nous sommes rencontr\u00e9s : maisons d'enfance et d'adolescence : \u00c9gypte, Afrique du Sud, Gr\u00e8ce, Ottawa, Aix enfin).\n\nJe serais en mesure, ainsi, d'ajouter selon ce mode d'interrogation une nouvelle composante \u00e0 mon autoportrait \u2013 entrepris dans la branche un, chapitre 4.\n\n## 91 (\u00a7 22 & \u00a7 23) Je me serais, je crois, tr\u00e8s bien converti \u00e0 un alignement du mouvement des aiguilles sur celui d'un vecteur tournant dans le sens \u00ab positif \u00bb.\n\nLa spatialisation du temps des horloges, imitant le cadran solaire, se conforme aussi aux hypoth\u00e8ses cosmiques de la conception ptol\u00e9ma\u00efque, et privil\u00e9gie donc le cercle, le parcours du soleil dans le ciel et son ombre port\u00e9e. Voil\u00e0 pour la g\u00e9om\u00e9trie. Le sens du parcours, lui, n'a pas subi de r\u00e9volution copernicienne. Cela me choque.\n\n(Mais si les horloges avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 invent\u00e9es apr\u00e8s Kepler, aurait-il fallu choisir l'ellipse ? Voil\u00e0 qui n'aurait pas \u00e9t\u00e9 un probl\u00e8me b\u00e9nin pour les horlogers, m\u00eame suisses.)\n\nCette interrogation sur la mesure du temps n'\u00e9puise pas la liste de mes \u00e9tonnements na\u00effs, de \u00ab philosophie naturelle \u00bb, aujourd'hui r\u00e9serv\u00e9s \u00e0 des rubriques de journaux. Par exemple : **les horloges identifient, absurdement, en un seul apog\u00e9e, les deux moments extr\u00eames, antith\u00e9tiques, des r\u00e9volutions solaires.** Autrement dit, pourquoi faut-il que midi soit minuit (et r\u00e9ciproquement) ?\n\nEt pourquoi douze ?\n\n **Sur le cadran d'horloge de la repr\u00e9sentation mentale du jardin, que je parcours en pens\u00e9e selon le sens temporel, celui \u00ab des aiguilles d'une montre \u00bb, il est midi au lavoir.** La repr\u00e9sentation du temps sur le cadran horloger est en fait la projection d'une h\u00e9lice. Comme si le temps \u00e9tait un mobile anim\u00e9-animal, un furet : il est pass\u00e9 par ici, il repassera par l\u00e0.\n\nOn ne suit qu'une ligne de temps. Mais l'inscription se faisant sur une surface, j'imagine que je pourrais donner un sens temporel aux autres points, inventer un temps bidimensionnel, une topologie du temps \u00e0 seconde composante imaginaire, faite de tous les temps possibles, des temps abandonn\u00e9s, innombrables, et non suivis.\n\n## 92 (\u00a7 24) Brigitte Bardot, cet ex-symbole \u00e9rotique de cin\u00e9matographe pour les m\u00e2les de ma g\u00e9n\u00e9ration, devenue protectrice gaga-g\u00e2teau des b\u00e9b\u00e9s-phoques\n\nLe hasard objectif donne \u00e0 cette incise la particularit\u00e9 d'\u00eatre doublement digressive. Au moment de la faire passer (comme ses voisines) de l'\u00e9tat quasi immat\u00e9riel de virtualit\u00e9 \u00e9cranique \u00e0 celui, \u00ab concret \u00bb, \u00ab de plein droit \u00bb, d'alignement de signes typographiques sur du papier au moyen de ma modeste imprimante ImageWriter II (ind\u00e9pendamment de ses charmes propres, cet \u00e9crit pourra t\u00e9moigner d'un \u00e9tat historiquement dat\u00e9 de la technologie des \u00ab \u00e9critures \u00bb chez un \u00e9crivain de ressources moyennes et moyennement passionn\u00e9 d'innovation dans ce domaine) je me suis aper\u00e7u (c'\u00e9tait hier, 10 mars 1992) qu'elle avait disparu.\n\nElle avait disparu du \u00ab document \u00bb qui devait la contenir dans le disque dur de mon Macintosh LC (auquel j'ai donn\u00e9 comme \u00e0 son pr\u00e9d\u00e9cesseur, un Macintosh Plus, & aussi affectueusement, le m\u00eame nom g\u00e9n\u00e9rique de \u00ab Miss Macintosh \u00bb), intitul\u00e9 **inc.3b.** Ce document, une fois \u00ab ouvert \u00bb pour impression, s'est r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9 en effet commencer, directement en haut de page par le \u00a7 93 (que vous lisez \u00e0 la suite de celui-ci), et le document pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent, que je venais d'imprimer, **inc.3a,** s'achevait sans aucun doute possible par le \u00a7 91 que vous venez peut-\u00eatre de lire, si du moins vous lisez selon la s\u00e9quence qui vous est num\u00e9riquement propos\u00e9e.\n\nEt la \u00ab disquette de sauvegarde \u00bb, nomm\u00e9e BOU-INC, laquelle j'introduisis aussit\u00f4t (sans grand espoir) apparut exactement conforme \u00e0 son mod\u00e8le, et par cons\u00e9quent pr\u00e9senter le m\u00eame fatal d\u00e9faut : l'absence du \u00a7 92, de l'incise consacr\u00e9e \u00e0 l'exploration du lien entre b\u00e9b\u00e9s-phoques et BB, au moyen de consid\u00e9rations d\u00e9j\u00e0 elles-m\u00eames sur-digressives puisqu'elles me faisaient sortir du cadre chronologique (g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement respect\u00e9 dans ces pages) que je m'\u00e9tais donn\u00e9 pour cette branche (je crois me souvenir assez pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment de ce que j'y avais mis (ci-apr\u00e8s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 t\u00e9l\u00e9graphiquement en six points) :\n\n\u2013 un souvenir de r\u00e9giment\n\n\u2013 un glissement analogique sur l'\u00e9rotisme, de b\u00e9b\u00e9 \u00e0 BB\n\n\u2013 l'\u00e9vocation d'une sc\u00e8ne justement fameuse du _M\u00e9pris_ de M. Jean-Luc Godard, ajoutant, \u00e0 la s\u00e9quence b\u00e9b\u00e9-BB un troisi\u00e8me terme, \u00ab fesses \u00bb\n\n\u2013 une incise interne \u00e0 l'incise \u00e0 propos d'un pull-over de M. Fritz Lang, qui fait, dans le m\u00eame film, une apparition non moins fameuse que le bardotien pas du tout obscur objet du d\u00e9sir ci-dessus d\u00e9sign\u00e9\n\n\u2013 une protestation (digression impos\u00e9e par le contexte) contre la p\u00e9dophilie (ou plut\u00f4t infantophilie) de certaines publicit\u00e9s t\u00e9l\u00e9vis\u00e9es entr'aper\u00e7ues dans le Minervois (pas au nom de la morale commune, mais en raison d'une co\u00efncidence peu plaisante : celle de l'\u00e9loge du papier hygi\u00e9nique avec la sortie de table d'un t\u00e9l\u00e9spectateur d\u00e9j\u00e0 r\u00e9ticent comme moi)\n\n\u2013 le souvenir, enfin, d'une s\u00e9ance de cin\u00e9matographie en plein air dans une banlieue d'Ath\u00e8nes pendant l'\u00e9t\u00e9 de 1959, culminant, si je puis dire, sur l'agitation concomitante (un vent l\u00e9ger agitait la toile rudimentaire de l'\u00e9cran) du m\u00eame objet pluriel (mais dans un autre, plus universellement fameux et pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent film) et des physionomies stup\u00e9faites des spectateurs hell\u00e8nes, tous m\u00e2les (\u00e0 l'exception de Sylvia, en compagnie de laquelle j'\u00e9tais venu voir ce film _starring_ MPIRIZIT MPARDO, que nous n'aurions pour rien au monde \u00e9t\u00e9 voir \u00e0 Paris)).\n\nJe me suis aussit\u00f4t rendu compte de ce qui s'\u00e9tait pass\u00e9, d\u00e9duction imm\u00e9diate \u00e0 partir du simple fait que les incises du chapitre 3, dont le \u00a7 92 fait partie, avaient \u00e9t\u00e9, dans l'organisation de mon disque dur partag\u00e9es (parall\u00e8lement au partage du chapitre 3 lui-m\u00eame en **\u00ab cap. 3a** \u00bb et \u00ab **cap. 3b** \u00bb) en deux \u00ab documents \u00bb (pour une meilleure maniabilit\u00e9 du texte \u00e0 l'\u00e9cran) : le \u00a7 92 qui, dans ce partage, aurait d\u00fb se trouver au d\u00e9but de la deuxi\u00e8me partie, avait \u00e9t\u00e9, par erreur, coup\u00e9.\n\nJ'ai eu tout d'abord un geste de d\u00e9couragement. La perspective de devoir reconstituer des lignes d\u00e9j\u00e0 anciennes, de mimer une humeur de prose d\u00e9j\u00e0 de longtemps pass\u00e9e, ne me souriait gu\u00e8re. J'ai \u00e9teint Miss Macintosh et j'ai essay\u00e9 de penser \u00e0 autre chose. Mais ce matin, au r\u00e9veil (il est maintenant cinq heures) la solution s'est impos\u00e9e d'elle-m\u00eame : de toute fa\u00e7on, selon la consigne que je me suis donn\u00e9e \u00e0 moi-m\u00eame, je ne pouvais pas, en tout cas, r\u00e9\u00e9crire ce moment, comme s'il n'avait pas disparu. Je ne peux qu'\u00e9crire ce que j'\u00e9cris au pr\u00e9sent, et le pr\u00e9sent est celui de la disparition. J'ai seulement marqu\u00e9 la circonstance, impr\u00e9vue, en changeant de caract\u00e8res. Cette incise, au moins sur mon \u00e9cran, est compos\u00e9e en Times.\n\n## 93 (\u00a7 24) je peux quasiment suivre \u00e0 l'\u0153il (int\u00e9rieur) la maturation d'une tomate sous ses feuilles,\n\nJe \u00ab place \u00bb aussi leur odeur. Mais les dimensions du fruit sont trop importantes pour donner \u00e0 la cueillette le coup de pouce d'int\u00e9r\u00eat pour moi indispensable qu'apportait la possibilit\u00e9 d'un d\u00e9nombrement. De ce point de vue la valeur du petit pois \u00e9tait bien plus grande. Non seulement les gousses elles-m\u00eames pouvaient \u00eatre nombr\u00e9es, atteignant rapidement plusieurs centaines pour la moindre r\u00e9colte, mais il y avait ensuite, en les ouvrant \u00e0 deux doigts, et en les faisant glisser et rouler de l'ongle dans la paume de la main, la constante \u00e9nigme du nombre des pois contenus par chacune, et comme corollaire la qu\u00eate d'un record (cela va de trois \u00e0 douze selon mon souvenir).\n\n(Dans les cas douteux, o\u00f9 quelques grains sont mal form\u00e9s, insuffisamment m\u00fbrs, ou minuscules, il est toujours possible de trancher simplement, en les mangeant : les pois les plus jeunes sont les plus tendres (de consistance comme de couleur), les plus sucr\u00e9s, pas encore menac\u00e9s par la maladie gustativement mortelle de cette esp\u00e8ce, le syndrome farineux, premier pas vers la d\u00e9ch\u00e9ance ultime, l'\u00e9tat de dur caillou gris-vert qui devient dans la casserole cet ennemi irr\u00e9ductible de l'enfant, le pois cass\u00e9.) Il va sans dire que, dans ces conditions, le plat pois gourmand ne pouvait m'appara\u00eetre que comme un hypocrite, et le mange-tout, dont on ne peut rien compter, qu'on jette in\u00e9coss\u00e9 dans l'eau bouillante, comme un tra\u00eetre.\n\nLe haricot vert, m\u00eame le \u00ab barraquet \u00bb audois, n'offre aucune perspective arithm\u00e9tique, cela va sans dire (le haricot blanc, \u00e0 la rigueur (et surtout le haricot roux, plus noble) mais sans pouvoir rivaliser avec le pois vert). Aussi l'\u00e9pluchage du haricot sur la table de la cuisine \u00e9tait \u00e0 \u00e9viter aussi longtemps que possible ; sauf dans un cas favorable, qui malheureusement devait \u00eatre regrett\u00e9 d'un autre point de vue. Je m'explique. De longs et un peu trop m\u00fbrs haricots de qualit\u00e9 incertaine ont la chance d'avoir des fils, suffisamment de fils durs, coriaces, pour qu'il soit n\u00e9cessaire de les enlever avec soin. Il importait alors (c'\u00e9tait le jeu) de parvenir \u00e0 extirper le fil d'un seul coup, d'une extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 \u00e0 l'autre, sans le rompre.\n\nMais, et c'est l\u00e0 l'envers de cette m\u00e9daille, ce que l'on gagnait \u00e0 l'\u00e9pluchage on risquait de le payer tr\u00e8s cher au moment du repas : car ces haricots, m\u00eame soigneusement d\u00e9fil\u00e9s, avaient les plus grandes chances d'\u00eatre fibreux, d'\u00eatre en fait tout entiers fils, immangeables. Pour toutes ces raisons, le petit pois restait pour moi sup\u00e9rieur au haricot. Selon le m\u00eame crit\u00e8re la citrouille, exemplaire g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement unique \u00e9norme dans une pr\u00e9paration de repas, \u00e9tait encore plus bas dans mon \u00e9chelle de valeurs (je laisse le haricot sec de c\u00f4t\u00e9, que l'honneur du cassoulet \u00e9l\u00e8ve, et la laitue, mais je ne l'ai appr\u00e9ci\u00e9e que beaucoup plus tard, quand l'huile d'olive l'a sauv\u00e9e de la fadeur. Quant \u00e0 la tomate, c'est un fruit : axiomatiquement, tous les fruits sont bons).\n\nAujourd'hui encore je n'ai de connaissance intime d'un l\u00e9gume que si son esp\u00e8ce \u00e9tait de celles que mon p\u00e8re cultivait dans le jardin. J'ai vu, & parfois mang\u00e9 des crones, des radis noirs, des cardes... mais je ne les connais pas en terre, ni \u00e0 la cueillette. Certains l\u00e9gumes \u00e9taient pires qu'inconnus : car on ne les connaissait que trop. Ce sont ceux qui s'offraient presque seuls sur les march\u00e9s dans les mois d'immense p\u00e9nurie hivernale, des \u00ab collabos \u00bb en somme. Ils sont rest\u00e9s marqu\u00e9s d'une charge n\u00e9gative quasi insurmontable, presque d'infamie, dans la m\u00e9moire collective, pendant de longues ann\u00e9es (ce n'est qu'assez r\u00e9cemment que j'ai vu proposer de nouveau \u00e0 un \u00e9tal des topinambours (et je dois dire que je n'ai pas eu la curiosit\u00e9 d'essayer de les go\u00fbter. On ne pardonne pas les injures gustatives)). Les rutabagas, eux, semblent bien avoir totalement disparu). (Inexorablement, les topinambours comme les rutabagas sont, aussi anciennement, associ\u00e9s, par un glissement d'origine inconnue \u00e0 une maladie : la tuberculose. Si j'entends \u00ab topinambour \u00bb ou \u00ab rutabaga \u00bb, j'entends aussit\u00f4t, quadrisyllabiquement, \u00ab tuberculose \u00bb. Je ne sais pas pourquoi ni comment, mais c'est ainsi.)\n\nLongtemps, d'ailleurs, le navet, le bon navet, si injustement d\u00e9cri\u00e9 par assimilation p\u00e9jorative aux mauvais films, m'a sembl\u00e9 trop cousin du topinambour pour \u00eatre honn\u00eate. Il a fallu mon amour du canard pour me r\u00e9concilier avec lui. Et j'ai m\u00eame adopt\u00e9 son cousin, si rare, la \u00ab boule d'or \u00bb. Quant \u00e0 la f\u00e8ve fra\u00eeche qui, jeune et tendre, \u00e0 la \u00ab croque au sel \u00bb, est d\u00e9licieuse, j'ai d\u00fb faire un effort consid\u00e9rable pour la dissocier de la bouillie inf\u00e2me de f\u00e9vettes qui fut notre ordinaire, pendant une des p\u00e9riodes les plus inqui\u00e9tantes de l'Occupation. Nous n'avions pour ainsi dire rien d'autre \u00e0 manger que ces m\u00e9diocres l\u00e9gumes secs, o\u00f9 de plus des insectes, des charen\u00e7ons, s'\u00e9taient mis. Il fallait, cependant, les manger. Mais s\u00e9parer les intrus minuscules de leurs h\u00f4tes \u00e9tait impossible. Ma m\u00e8re, alors, passait le tout, f\u00e9vettes et charen\u00e7ons, au moulin \u00e0 l\u00e9gumes ; selon le principe \u00e9picurien \u00ab rien ne se perd, rien ne se cr\u00e9e \u00bb. \u00ab La mati\u00e8re demeure et la forme se perd. \u00bb Le r\u00e9sultat \u00e9tait \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s nutritivement \u00e9quivalent \u00e0 la m\u00eame quantit\u00e9 de f\u00e9vettes, suppos\u00e9e sans charen\u00e7ons. Et nous mangions cette grise bouillaque, qui nous soulevait le c\u0153ur. Ayant reconquis la f\u00e8ve fra\u00eeche j'ai pu, ensuite reconna\u00eetre la f\u00e8ve comme digne cousine et m\u00eame anc\u00eatre du haricot, quand j'ai, \u00e0 Madrid, \u00e9t\u00e9 initi\u00e9 par Florence \u00e0 la _habada_ , antique et v\u00e9n\u00e9rable \u00ab cassoulet basque ( ?) \u00bb. (Je mets fin ici \u00e0 l'exploration de ce \u00ab potager moralis\u00e9 \u00bb et je vous \u00e9pargne pour l'instant l'\u00e9loge du pois chiche (il aura son heure, mais formellement justifi\u00e9e).)\n\n## 94 (suite du \u00a7 93) Le jardin \u00e9tait plant\u00e9 de la plus grande vari\u00e9t\u00e9 possible d'esp\u00e8ces v\u00e9g\u00e9tales comestibles compatibles avec le climat.\n\nLe jardin \u00e9tait plant\u00e9 de la plus grande vari\u00e9t\u00e9 possible d'esp\u00e8ces v\u00e9g\u00e9tales comestibles compatibles avec le climat. Ce n'\u00e9tait pas du tout de \u00ab l'art pour l'art \u00bb de jardinier. Mon p\u00e8re, inquiet du danger de carences alimentaires que le r\u00e9gime f\u00e9roce impos\u00e9 par les \u00ab restrictions \u00bb faisait courir \u00e0 des enfants en pleine \u00ab croissance \u00bb, s'effor\u00e7ait ainsi d'y rem\u00e9dier, au moins pendant les p\u00e9riodes favorables \u00e0 la v\u00e9g\u00e9tation. Son raisonnement \u00e9tait que la s\u00e9lection mara\u00eech\u00e8re op\u00e9r\u00e9e par les g\u00e9n\u00e9rations avait plac\u00e9 dans les l\u00e9gumes (et les fruits) (pourvu qu'on les soutienne parfois de quelque lapin (il n'\u00e9tait pas v\u00e9g\u00e9tarien)) \u00e0 peu de chose pr\u00e8s tout ce dont l'organisme humain pouvait avoir besoin, et surtout, surtout, les saintes vitamines.\n\nUne carte des vitamines tr\u00f4nait sur le mur de la salle \u00e0 manger. A chaque vitamine alors connue y \u00e9tait attribu\u00e9e une couleur, et chaque nourriture repr\u00e9sent\u00e9e sur la carte avait droit \u00e0 son \u00ab spectre \u00bb circulaire de vitamines, aux secteurs angulaires convenablement proportionn\u00e9s en chaque teinte. Une r\u00e9ticence au chou, par exemple (j'avais oubli\u00e9 le chou !), \u00e9tait combattue, devant la soupi\u00e8re puis l'assiette, non seulement par l'argument d'autorit\u00e9, mais aussi par le raisonnement di\u00e9t\u00e9tique. Le jardin contenait tout ce qu'il fallait, oseilles et salades, blettes (ou bettes), carottes et radis... Mais pendant les nombreux mois o\u00f9 il ne produisait rien, des d\u00e9ficits s\u00e9rieux risquaient de se produire dans nos organismes mal \u00ab arros\u00e9s \u00bb, tels des l\u00e9gumes n\u00e9glig\u00e9s, de nourritures diverses (sans oublier les manques de glucides, lipides ou protides, ainsi que les min\u00e9raux indispensables \u00e0 la fabrication et perfectionnement de notre squelette : scolioses, scolioses ! lordoses !).\n\nOr cette carte (d'avant-guerre) r\u00e9servait une place de choix aux agrumes, indispensables, selon des anecdotes scolaires fameuses, pour lutter contre le manque de vitamine C, et son corollaire, le scorbut. Mon p\u00e8re nous voyait, en des moments de pessimisme nocturne, tels de pauvres mousses enferm\u00e9s sur le navire en perdition de la France vichys\u00e9e et nazifi\u00e9e, en proie \u00e0 cette terrible maladie. Il se rassurait, sans doute, \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re du jour, en consid\u00e9rant que les populations languedociennes avaient pu, autrefois, tr\u00e8s bien vivre \u00e0 la fois sans oranges et sans scorbut. Nous y \u00e9chapp\u00e2mes en effet.\n\nMais je me souviens que, peu apr\u00e8s la Lib\u00e9ration, il s'\u00e9tait procur\u00e9 une de ces immenses bo\u00eetes qui faisaient partie de ce qu'on appelait les \u00ab surplus am\u00e9ricains \u00bb et qu'il nous distribuait \u00e0 chaque repas quelques-unes des pilules brunes et caoutchout\u00e9es, de la taille, de la couleur et presque de la forme d'un grain de caf\u00e9, qu'elle contenait, entre autres tr\u00e9sors. Coup\u00e9es d'un coup de dent brusque, ces pilules r\u00e9pandaient sur la langue une dose d'huile de foie de morue surconcentr\u00e9e en la pr\u00e9cieuse vitamine antiscorbutique. On m\u00e2chait ensuite l'enveloppe du liquide, sorte de caoutchouc fondant. Je trouvais leur go\u00fbt extr\u00eamement bizarre, mais d\u00e9licieux (je devais bien \u00eatre le seul).\n\nPour ce qui est des oranges et citrons, nous avons attendu bien longtemps leur retour, notre d\u00e9sir aiguis\u00e9 par les r\u00e9cits de ma grand-m\u00e8re qui racontait, apr\u00e8s son dernier voyage aux USA avant Pearl Harbor la merveille du jus d'orange matinal press\u00e9 et mousseux. J'en avais gard\u00e9 le souvenir depuis l'\u00ab avant-guerre \u00bb (\u00e9tant l'a\u00een\u00e9). Et nous en avions la repr\u00e9sentation color\u00e9e sur les \u00ab magazines \u00bb am\u00e9ricains ramen\u00e9s de la Nouvelle-Angleterre. Mais en 1945 encore, Jean-Ren\u00e9, qui \u00e9tait le plus jeune d'entre nous, interrog\u00e9 sur la couleur des citrons, r\u00e9pondit qu'ils \u00e9taient roses.\n\nDans le potager quadrill\u00e9 avec soin par les \u00ab rang\u00e9es \u00bb l\u00e9gumi\u00e8res dessin\u00e9es \u00e0 la corde, **\u00ab j'entends \u00bb le chuintement r\u00e9gulier du tuyau d'arrosage, parfois d\u00e9bordant en bout de ligne silencieusement dans l'all\u00e9e, je vois le brunissement de la terre s\u00e8che et claire p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9e par l'eau aussit\u00f4t aval\u00e9e par un sol avide au pied des plants de tomates, des haricots accroch\u00e9s \u00e0 leurs \u00ab tuteurs \u00bb, la flaque d'eau disparaissant et laissant une mousse, une \u00e9cume laiteuse, et le fond de la ligne creuse lisse, entre les grumeaux des monticules. C'est le soir.**\n\n## 95 (\u00a7 94) L'eau aussit\u00f4t aval\u00e9e par un sol avide au pied des plants de tomates,\n\nLa \u00ab v\u00e9rit\u00e9 \u00bb de mes images du jardin est solaire. Car le soleil \u00e9tait \u00ab presque partout \u00bb l\u00e0. La nuit, la pluie, pour des raisons diff\u00e9rentes, ont moins de \u00ab chances \u00bb de rencontrer mon regard cherchant, dans les lieux ind\u00e9finissables du souvenir, le lavoir, les all\u00e9es, les rang\u00e9es de tomates (je ne sais au sein de quel \u00ab monde possible \u00bb pourrait les mettre un \u00ab r\u00e9aliste modal \u00bb). Mes visions des nuits ne sont pas seulement plus vagues, plus parcellaires, elles apparaissent presque comme \u00e9tant d'un autre lieu. Il en est de m\u00eame pour celles du jardin sous la pluie. Et, \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence de l'image de neige, dont la raret\u00e9 extr\u00eame a, au contraire, assur\u00e9 la conservation avec \u00e9motion, l'image, les images de pluie sont ternes, et leur atmosph\u00e8re est plut\u00f4t d'ennui ; et m\u00eame de d\u00e9solation. **(L'abricotier ruisselant d'une averse de novembre, sans feuilles, l'odeur de mouill\u00e9 triste, les galoches, l'emp\u00eatrement de l'imperm\u00e9able, l'argile glissante sous les branches tristes** ; dans un po\u00e8me \u00e9crit avant mes dix ans, ceci : Les abricotiers sont sages.\/Il a plu\/.)\n\nLa s\u00e9paration tr\u00e8s nette qui se produit entre une vision, compos\u00e9e mais unique, unifi\u00e9e, du jardin, de jour, de toutes saisons, solaire, d'une part, et d'autres vues parcellaires, de moments nocturnes ou pluvieux, me r\u00e9v\u00e8le une composante pragmatique de ma difficult\u00e9 \u00e0 y placer d'autres \u00eatres vivants que ceux (animaux) qui n'en sont jamais sortis (\u2013 \u00a7 27 \u2013 : Et les humains, les humains enfants ? ces ombres de joueurs qui sont l\u00e0, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de moi, \u00e0 chaque moment ou presque, devant le banc, le lavoir, le grillage des cages \u00e0 lapins ? Je n'en parle que de mani\u00e8re tr\u00e8s indirecte) : tout simplement le fait que la continuit\u00e9 changeante des \u00eatres (particuli\u00e8rement les enfants, particuli\u00e8rement ceux que je n'ai pas cess\u00e9 de voir et d'identifier comme \u00e9tant, toujours, eux-m\u00eames) a rendu pour moi impossible la restitution de leur apparence d'alors. Je peux essayer de voir mes fr\u00e8res, en un moment de ces ann\u00e9es, mais ce que je \u00ab vois \u00bb alors n'est que la piction, immobile, d'une photographie, de celles que j'ai retrouv\u00e9es dans les albums et les bo\u00eetes en fer conserv\u00e9es dans ma chambre, \u00e0 Saint-F\u00e9lix. Elles ne peuvent pas \u00eatre plac\u00e9es dans un contexte v\u00e9g\u00e9tal anim\u00e9, mais seulement juxtapos\u00e9es arbitrairement au banc, aux pins, au puits, comme une couleur jet\u00e9e contre un mur.\n\nLes escargots nous r\u00e9conciliaient avec la pluie. Comme de multiples fils de ma m\u00e9moire, de mon **Projet,** de cette prose, qui ont leur origine l\u00e0, l\u00e0 aussi commence ma longue histoire commune avec les escargots (qui constituera \u00e9galement, cela s'impose, un fil dans ma narration, gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 la m\u00e9taphore de la trace, du sillage de bave argent\u00e9e). Je me suis tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t persuad\u00e9 que, comme moi, ils ne choisissaient pas de sortir \u00e0 la pluie, mais y \u00e9taient oblig\u00e9s par les circonstances (dans leur cas, les n\u00e9cessit\u00e9s imp\u00e9rieuses de l'alimentation, et la fatalit\u00e9 physiologique). S'il \u00e9tait vrai qu'ils aimaient tant l'eau, comme on le raconte, pourquoi choisissaient-ils de vivre dans un climat aussi sec ? Pourquoi n'allaient-ils pas, comme leurs cousins, dits \u00ab de Bourgogne \u00bb, ces grands veaux, patauger dans des prairies gorg\u00e9es d'eaux, dans des bocages satur\u00e9s, d\u00e9goulinants de crachins et d'averses ? Je dis \u00ab leurs cousins les \"Bourgogne\" \u00bb, car pour moi le seul escargot digne de ce nom est le \u00ab petit-gris \u00bb, \u00e9l\u00e9gant et d\u00e9gourdi, \u00e0 la coquille tigr\u00e9e, et son compagnon, \u00e0 la forme spirale plus plate, blanche, beige, ou m\u00eame jaune que l'on trouve surtout dans les sentiers au long des vignes, suspendu aux fenouils (et que les paysans proven\u00e7aux, m\u00e9prisant les donn\u00e9es exactes de l'histoire naturelle, prennent pour sa compagne, et nomment \u00ab femelle \u00bb).\n\nJ'avais donc imagin\u00e9 que le soleil \u00e9tait le r\u00eave inaccessible de l'escargot (son r\u00eave de jour. Son r\u00eave de nuit : les \u00e9toiles), qu'il ne pouvait jamais apercevoir qu'en de tr\u00e8s courts moments, quand cet astre sortait des nuages apr\u00e8s la pluie, ou paraissait sur la ros\u00e9e de l'aube, et qu'il ne s'attardait hors de ses demeures de pierres ou de ceps, au risque d'\u00eatre surpris par la paralysante chute hygrom\u00e9trique de la s\u00e9cheresse, que dans l'espoir de diriger vers lui ses humides et sensibles yeux p\u00e9donculaires, et de recevoir sa b\u00e9n\u00e9diction dangereuse un instant.\n\nNous rassemblions des escargots sur la terrasse mouill\u00e9e. Nous leur donnions pour horizon des feuilles de salades, des brins de fenouil, et nous les regardions \u00ab courir \u00bb (ces courses sont une tradition enfantine peut-\u00eatre plusieurs fois mill\u00e9naire, dont on aimerait avoir l'histoire, au moins autant que celle des courses de chevaux, ou de l\u00e9vriers). La tr\u00e8s grande lenteur proverbiale des escargots est un leurre. Ils sont comme les grands navires prenant leur \u00e9lan sur la mer. La coquille l\u00e9g\u00e8rement oscillante au moment o\u00f9 ils d\u00e9cident de leur direction, les cornes bien ajust\u00e9es au mouvement, les plus all\u00e8gres au contraire donnent une nette impression de rapidit\u00e9, ou plus intrins\u00e8quement peut-\u00eatre, pour \u00e9viter les comparaisons de vitesses absolues, d'une ma\u00eetrise parfaite du rapport entre distances et dur\u00e9es.\n\nJ'ai gard\u00e9 pour la fin le meilleur de la pluie, le rapport direct, voluptueux par excellence, avec les escargots bien r\u00e9veill\u00e9s, fr\u00e9missants et enthousiastes : les poser sur la main, sur le genou, et, s'immobilisant, sentir les doux glissements de leur humidit\u00e9 vivante sur sa peau.\n\n## 96 (\u00a7 24) Les clapiers, demeures des tranquilles et sympathiques lapins\n\nSympathiques et inoffensifs. J'ai tr\u00e8s peu de sympathie, en fait, pour les animaux dangereux. Les grands fauves ne m'attirent pas. Je ne r\u00eave pas de communiquer des pens\u00e9es profondes aux crocodiles ou aux scorpions. Il est vrai que cette notion de \u00ab dangereux \u00bb est relative. Le chat n'est certainement pas, intrins\u00e8quement, un animal inoffensif (comme l'est l'escargot, par exemple, ou le h\u00e9risson, deux de mes animaux pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9s). Mais il est en quelque sorte \u00ab sauv\u00e9 \u00bb par ses dimensions. Il me suffit, par la pens\u00e9e, d'effectuer une homoth\u00e9tie de rapport cinq ou six de la r\u00e9gion de l'espace occup\u00e9e par Oph\u00e9lie, pour imaginer que le bleu surinnocent de son regard pos\u00e9 sur moi changerait alors enti\u00e8rement de nature. Mais le film de terreur (am\u00e9ricain de s\u00e9rie \u00ab encore moins que B \u00bb) que nous avions vu un jour, Alix et moi, sur une quelconque t\u00e9l\u00e9vision anglaise nocturne, intitul\u00e9 quelque chose comme _La Nuit des lapins monstres_ ne pouvait, et ne put, que d\u00e9clencher le fou rire.\n\nLa lecture du merveilleux _Watership Down_ , par exemple, que je dois \u00e0 Marie, offre une vision socio-anthropomorphique de l'esp\u00e8ce lapin moins am\u00e8ne que la mienne, au fond demeur\u00e9e telle quelle depuis l'enfance. Je me souviens aussi de la reproduction, aper\u00e7ue sur la couverture d'un livre, dans une vitrine de la rue Jacob, d'un dessin allemand du XVIIe si\u00e8cle : il repr\u00e9sente un tr\u00e8s gros lapin dans toute la force de l'\u00e2ge, et rev\u00eatu aux recoins de sa fourrure luxueuse d'une expression d'extr\u00eame contentement de soi, visiblement d'origine sexuelle : un lapin \u00e0 bonnes fortunes lapines. J'en ai \u00e9t\u00e9 surpris. Ce n'est pas non plus ainsi que le lapin prototype, l'Id\u00e9e platonicienne de lapin s'offre \u00e0 moi, quand j'y pense. (J'ai m\u00eame connu, plus \u00e9loign\u00e9 encore de mon lapin id\u00e9al, un individu assez inqui\u00e9tant de cette esp\u00e8ce, nomm\u00e9 Staline.)\n\nUne publicit\u00e9 r\u00e9cente, celle du \u00ab lapin Cassegrain \u00bb, met en sc\u00e8ne un grand lapin blanc \u00e0 lunettes noires de mafioso hollywoodien. Il tient dans ses pattes cuill\u00e8re et fourchette, et se pr\u00e9pare \u00e0 attaquer des \u00ab petits l\u00e9gumes \u00bb. D\u00e8s que je l'ai vu \u00e0 la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision rue des Francs-Bourgeois, j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 enthousiasm\u00e9 par son expression. J'ai vu et revu la sc\u00e8ne, enregistr\u00e9e en vid\u00e9o par Charlotte, qui a \u00e9galement eu la bont\u00e9 de m'offrir une carte postale avec son portrait, que j'ai mise dans ma biblioth\u00e8que. Une f\u00e9rocit\u00e9 v\u00e9g\u00e9tarienne sied bien \u00e0 cette esp\u00e8ce. C'est en de tels divertissements que survit mon enfantine **\u00ab passion sentimentale, immod\u00e9r\u00e9e, pour les lapins \u00bb.**\n\nAinsi mon anthropomorphisme persistant reste purement ludique. Il \u00e9vite soigneusement tout glissement vers l'identification r\u00e9aliste, et enti\u00e8rement l'imagination tragique des r\u00e9cits londoniens (je veux dire ceux de Jack London). Ces animaux ne sont pas non plus des masques de personnages seulement humains. Le jeu (un jeu de langage, de r\u00e9cit) n'a de charme que si l'animal conserve l'essentiel des traits de sa nature propre, en coexistence plus ou moins comique avec des propri\u00e9t\u00e9s humaines (comportements, raisonnements, sentiments) enti\u00e8rement invent\u00e9es.\n\nMes mod\u00e8les constants, dans ces jeux, sont les livres de Milne _(Winnie the Pooh)_ ou de Kenneth Graham _(The Wind in the willows)_ , et, bien s\u00fbr, avant tout, ceux du monde \u00ab carrollien \u00bb (je pense, bien s\u00fbr, \u00e0 cette sc\u00e8ne de _Sylvie and Bruno_ , dans le chapitre \u00ab _A visit to Dogland_ \u00bb, qui fut la source d'un petit texte de mon ma\u00eetre Raymond Queneau (\u00ab Sur le langage chien dans _Sylvie et Bruno... \u00bb)_ , o\u00f9 le roi des Chiens, abandonnant un moment sa Cour pour faire un brin de conduite aux voyageurs, r\u00e9v\u00e8le, en demandant \u00e0 Sylvie de lui jeter un b\u00e2ton \u00e0 ramasser, son irr\u00e9pressible nature canine : \u00ab _His Majesty calmly wagged the Royal tail. \"It's quite a relief, he said, getting away from that Palace now and then ! Royal Dogs have a dull life of it, I can tell you. Would you mind (this to Sylvie in a low voice, and looking a little shy and embarrassed). Would you mind the trouble of just throwing that stick for me to fetch ?\" \u00bb_\n\nEn ces temps dont je parle, je r\u00eavais surtout de faire la connaissance d'autres lapins, les lapins libres de la garrigue, les \u00ab garennes \u00bb, dont les traces \u00e9taient visibles dans les vignes, autour de la Cit\u00e9 (monceaux de petites crottes dans les foss\u00e9s, entre les touffes de thym) ; mais toujours fuyant, inabordables malgr\u00e9 l'offrande de fenouils, friandises, de caresses, inattrapables \u00e0 la course, inapprochables sinon morts, sanglants, ramen\u00e9s par les chasseurs.\n\n## \u00a7 97 (\u00a7 25) Un jeune et mince cochon vint donc s'\u00e9tablir en secret dans l'appentis\n\nLe mod\u00e8le porcin r\u00eav\u00e9 par nos parents \u00e9tait selon toute vraisemblance le cochon corr\u00e9zien, tel qu'ils l'avaient d\u00e9couvert lors de leur s\u00e9jour d'avant Carcassonne, \u00e0 Tulle, d'o\u00f9 venait Marie (de Tulle ou presque : elle \u00e9tait de Souillac). Les privations de la guerre avaient fait d'un encore r\u00e9cent souvenir, celui de la foire de Tulle, comme l'adresse inaccessible d'un paradis perdu du cochon, d'un eldorado du jambon, presque aussi merveilleux et alors devenu malheureusement aussi \u00e9loign\u00e9 que le quasi mythique Yorkshire (avec lequel les porcs corr\u00e9ziens rivalisaient, disait-on, en saveurs et en encombrement).\n\nNos parents \u00e9num\u00e9raient avec insistance les termes techniques descriptifs, dans le vocabulaire cochonnier corr\u00e9zien, de l'\u00e9volution de ces admirables b\u00eates : d'abord enfants, \u00ab gorets \u00bb balbutiants nourris par les m\u00e8res truies, puis \u00ab chiens \u00bb gambadant dans les cours de ferme, puis \u00ab loups \u00bb adolescents fouisseurs nourris de ch\u00e2taignes dans les sous-bois, ils subissaient d'autres mutations onomastiques encore que je n'ai pas retenues, avant d'atteindre aux premiers degr\u00e9s s\u00e9rieux et strictement hi\u00e9rarchis\u00e9s de l'\u00e9chelle des poids, par immobilit\u00e9 concentr\u00e9e sur un r\u00e9gime de larges p\u00e2t\u00e9es c\u00e9r\u00e9ali\u00e8res, nutritives et app\u00e9tissantes, auxquelles le n\u00f4tre, le pauvre n\u00f4tre, h\u00e9las, ne put jamais pr\u00e9tendre. (Et pourtant, c'est bien ce mod\u00e8le qui lui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 propos\u00e9, puisque \u00ab gagnou \u00bb est le nom affectueux du cochon corr\u00e9zien, et qu'elle avait \u00e9t\u00e9 nomm\u00e9e, propitiatoirement, \u00ab Gagnoune \u00bb.)\n\nAussi n'atteignit-elle pas les performances des champions tullistes que nous aurions r\u00eav\u00e9es pour elle, les deux cents, trois cents, ou quatre cents kilos m\u00eame qui, para\u00eet-il, \u00e9taient monnaie courante chez ces animaux fabuleux. Ces poids, convertis en saucisses, lard, jambons, ou boudins, avaient de quoi faire d\u00e9faillir l'imagination gustative. Notre malheureuse cochonne en resta loin.\n\nCe n'\u00e9tait nullement par mauvaise volont\u00e9 de sa part. Si on lui avait laiss\u00e9 le temps, et surtout si on lui avait fourni les nourritures ad\u00e9quates, elle aurait certainement fait des merveilles sur la balance. Il y avait en elle une ambition certaine dans cette noble direction. Et ce n'\u00e9tait certes pas sa faute si le destin l'avait fait na\u00eetre en 1942 dans le d\u00e9partement de l'Aude, au beau milieu d'une guerre mondiale, et pas dans un paisible hameau du Yorkshire ou dans les environs d'Uzerche. Telle la bien-aim\u00e9e cochonne du duc Clarence, dans les romans de P. G. Wodehouse, _L'Imp\u00e9ratrice de Blandings_ , elle aurait pu alors triompher dans un concours agricole, au lieu de p\u00e9rir pr\u00e9matur\u00e9ment, encore quasi maigre, et dans la clandestinit\u00e9.\n\nLes incessantes sp\u00e9culations de notre famille sur l'\u00e9volution de son poids ne la priv\u00e8rent jamais d'un app\u00e9tit presque aussi f\u00e9roce que le n\u00f4tre et qui \u00e9tait rarement, il faut le dire, pas plus que le n\u00f4tre, satisfait. En somme, elle ne se doutait de rien. J'ai d\u00e9couvert depuis, dans un roman policier anglais dont j'ai oubli\u00e9 le titre (et l'auteur), un personnage de cochon qui repr\u00e9sentait son parfait antonyme, parce qu'il restait lui, perp\u00e9tuellement, proche mais en de\u00e7\u00e0 du poids minimal qui lui aurait valu son aller-simple de la ferme \u00e0 la charcuterie. Il mangeait, certes, mais il ne \u00ab profitait \u00bb pas. L'auteur rapportait l'\u00e9tonnement de la fermi\u00e8re devant ce ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne inhabituel dans l'esp\u00e8ce porcine, et l'interpr\u00e9tation psychologique volontariste qu'elle donnait de ce comportement de l'animal : c'\u00e9tait un _non-doing pig_. Et l'auteur du roman trouvait cette attitude astucieuse de la part du cochon, quelque chose comme une r\u00e9sistance passive au destin et \u00e0 l'oppression. Il en faisait presque un \u00ab soldat Schweik \u00bb cochon, qui n'\u00e9tait pas maigre au point de d\u00e9courager d\u00e9finitivement tous efforts d'engraissement, car cela aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 de sa part suicidaire, mais qui semblait constamment faire effort, \u00eatre pleine de bonne volont\u00e9 et n'\u00e9chouer qu'involontairement \u00e0 grossir.\n\nJe serai beaucoup plus s\u00e9v\u00e8re. Le cochon des _Contes du chat perch\u00e9_ , qui r\u00eave d'\u00eatre aussi beau que le paon, devient, lui aussi un moment, un _non-doing pig_ , quand il suit, fanatiquement, son dangereux r\u00e9gime journalier, en r\u00e9p\u00e9tant avec ferveur : \u00ab Un p\u00e9pin de pomme rainette, et une gorg\u00e9e d'eau fra\u00eeche. \u00bb J'ai toujours trouv\u00e9, quant \u00e0 moi, son attitude plus indigne encore que ridicule.\n\n## 98 (\u00a7 26) Les petits palmiers du jardin avaient pour feuillage des palmes, longues feuilles au bout d'une tige solide et souple (propri\u00e9t\u00e9 qui nous int\u00e9ressera \u00e9galement)\n\n **D\u00e9tach\u00e9es du tronc de l'arbre ces tiges, du moins les plus fortes, longues, rigides et \u00e9paisses d'entre elles, vertes, avec des bords l\u00e9g\u00e8rement dentel\u00e9s** (telles que que je peux maintenant les voir devant moi, comme si elles se trouvaient de nouveau dans mes mains, et presque sentir leurs bords rugueux) exigeaient litt\u00e9ralement un emploi, celui d' **arc : encoches \u00e0 chaque bout, corde tendue, fl\u00e8ches blanches de fusain, ou de sureau ( ?) ;**\n\n **tirer ; tirer vers le ciel bleu-noir, mang\u00e9 \u00e0 moiti\u00e9 par les pins, par le grand pin parasol du fond, le ciel vertical et plat comme le fond d'une cible, la t\u00eate rejet\u00e9e en arri\u00e8re pour viser, c'est ainsi que je vois ; la fl\u00e8che monter vers les hautes branches ; gravit\u00e9 des tr\u00e8s hautes branches, renvoyant les fl\u00e8ches vers le sol ; fl\u00e8ches happ\u00e9es par les branches, prisonni\u00e8res. Je les vois encore. L\u00e0.**\n\nNous fabriquions sans cesse de nouveaux arcs, stockions dans des endroits secrets des provisions de fl\u00e8ches. Stimul\u00e9s par la lecture du _Quentin Durward_ de Walter Scott (une source fort probable de mon amour de l'\u00c9cosse), nous ex\u00e9cutions des sc\u00e9narios complexes de batailles, de d\u00e9livrances, des concours chevaleresques, des exploits olympiques. J'ai failli ainsi, \u00e0 ce qu'on m'a dit (je n'en ai pas souvenir), y perdre un \u0153il, du tir involontaire d'une fl\u00e8che envoy\u00e9e par un petit gar\u00e7on en visite, un Espagnol dont je n'ai retenu que le nom : Luis Bardagil.\n\nMon amour du tir \u00e0 l'arc n'a pas surv\u00e9cu \u00e0 ces ann\u00e9es. M\u00eame au plus fort de ma passion pour la vieille po\u00e9sie japonaise, au temps de ma fr\u00e9quentation assidue du d\u00e9partement des Imprim\u00e9s orientaux de la Biblioth\u00e8que nationale, dans les ann\u00e9es 1965-1970, je ne me suis pas plong\u00e9 avec ravissement dans l'esth\u00e9tique-\u00e9thique \u00ab zen \u00bb ou \u00ab pseudo-zen \u00bb de cet art. Pourtant, par un de ces encha\u00eenements de hasards qui intimiderait certainement un romancier (et que je me trouve incapable de rejeter de mon r\u00e9cit, qui en est sans cesse envahi), c'est pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment du tir \u00e0 l'arc que je m'inspire en ce moment (indirectement sans doute, mais cependant \u00e0 partir de la vision m\u00eame d'enfance que je viens de restituer) pour la composition des 200 po\u00e8mes (\u00ab 200 fl\u00e8ches \u00bb sera le titre) qui seront ma contribution au grand livre mis en chantier par Micaela (cinq fois 200 po\u00e8mes, ou fragments, d'auteurs diff\u00e9rents, en deux langues, anglais et fran\u00e7ais (Jacques Derrida, Dominique Fourcade, Michael Palmer, Tom Raworth et moi-m\u00eame) accompagnant les rectangles verticaux de ses 1003 _(\u00ab mille et tre \u00bb)_ dessins).\n\nJ'ai choisi en effet, pour matrice formelle de cette composition (faite de \u00ab pseudo- _tankas_ \u00bb de cinq vers, r\u00e9partis en trois + deux), un ensemble de po\u00e8mes didactiques du XVIe si\u00e8cle japonais, qui \u00e9noncent les principes (\u00e0 la fois techniques (abstraits), et moraux) de cet art. Or, ces po\u00e8mes, je ne les ai pas recherch\u00e9s sp\u00e9cialement dans ce but. Ils me sont venus tout \u00e0 fait fortuitement, \u00e0 la suite d'un coup de t\u00e9l\u00e9phone inattendu de la belle Odile H., qui fut autrefois ma voisine ici, rue d'Amsterdam. Elle souhaitait mon aide pour mettre en forme ces textes (dont elle me fournit un mot \u00e0 mot comment\u00e9) pour le livre que va publier son ami, devenu ma\u00eetre fran\u00e7ais du tir \u00e0 l'arc, apr\u00e8s de longues ann\u00e9es d'\u00e9tude et de pratique au Japon.\n\nNe pas prononcer\n\nl'air transperc\u00e9 des palissades\n\natlantides\n\nC'est \u00e0 la fl\u00e8che de d\u00e9cider\n\nde son trop-plein de silence\n\nde ma toile de fl\u00e8ches\n\ncouvre-toi silence ainsi\n\nl'arc\n\nme parla et parlant\n\nvint se reposer sur mon bras\n\nVibres criaient-ils\n\nvibre\n\ngravit\u00e9 de tr\u00e8s hautes branches\n\ntr\u00e8s loin pesait la terre\n\nvibre criaient-ils dans le bas\n\n## 99 (\u00a7 28) Nous passions pr\u00e8s d'elle \u00e0 toute allure sur nos bicyclettes ou tricycles\n\nJ'ai ajout\u00e9 \u00ab tricycle \u00bb, et presque imm\u00e9diatement, \u00e0 la premi\u00e8re version spontan\u00e9e de cette phrase, o\u00f9 je n'avais mis que \u00ab bicyclettes \u00bb, en me rappelant brusquement que sur une des rares photographies conserv\u00e9es dans les vestiges de ce qui fut une collection documentaire beaucoup plus importante (la quasi-totalit\u00e9 se trouve maintenant dans le troisi\u00e8me tiroir de la commode de ma chambre \u00e0 Saint-F\u00e9lix, dans le Minervois (la \u00ab chambre au lit de cuivre \u00bb)), et parmi celles, encore plus rares, o\u00f9 l'on voit quelque chose des lieux o\u00f9 elles furent prises (j'ai longtemps maudit cette absence presque totale, en particulier d'une vue d'ensemble de la maison et du jardin de la rue d'Assas o\u00f9 je me suis narrativement plac\u00e9, d\u00e8s le chapitre premier de cette branche, mais en fait, j'en suis aujourd'hui presque heureux, parce que cela m'a oblig\u00e9 \u00e0 interroger sans tricherie mon souvenir), dans une de ces photographies, donc, on voit ma s\u0153ur Denise sur son tricycle, au milieu d'une des all\u00e9es de la partie potag\u00e8re, qui nous servaient de pistes et de terrain pour des comp\u00e9titions v\u00e9locyp\u00e9diques.\n\nIl y a en fait trois vues, tr\u00e8s semblables, contenues dans une enveloppe de photographe professionnel (\u00ab Photographie A. Gamonnet 86 Avenue de Saxe, LYON \u00bb), parmi une dizaine de n\u00e9gatifs, la plupart non tir\u00e9s. De la main de mon p\u00e8re, je lis : \u00ab Carcassonne, hiver 1937-38 : Denise tricycle \u00bb (pour une fois les renseignements minimaux sont l\u00e0). C'est l'hiver, en effet, si j'en juge par la v\u00e9g\u00e9tation d'absence, et la nudit\u00e9 des pots de fleur dans le _background_. L'arri\u00e8re-plan physique n'ajoute gu\u00e8re de donn\u00e9es \u00e0 ma description (sur l'une, dans le fond, je vois s\u00e9cher du linge sur des fils), et n'en infirme aucune. J'en tire seulement \u00ab tricycle \u00bb (la date est un peu ant\u00e9rieure \u00e0 celles des souvenirs que je raconte, mais je suppose que le tricycle a surv\u00e9cu pour servir aussi \u00e0 mes fr\u00e8res plus jeunes).\n\nDenise est parfaitement reconnaissable par moi sur ces pictions (surtout celle o\u00f9 elle regarde en face l'appareil), avec une expression plus am\u00e8ne, moins boudeuse que celle que la \u00ab tradition \u00bb lui reconna\u00eet dans de telles circonstances (j'emploie \u00e0 dessein le mot \u00ab pseudo-wittgensteinien \u00bb de piction parce que, conform\u00e9ment \u00e0 ma \u00ab th\u00e9orie \u00bb, si j'ose dire, des images, ces vues n'en suscitent pas dans mes souvenirs, restent externes, immobiles). Elle avait alors un peu plus de deux ans.\n\nJe ne me suis pas interdit (le premier chapitre de la branche un en t\u00e9moigne) d'avoir recours \u00e0 des photographies et \u00e0 leur description. Mais peu \u00e0 peu je me suis fait une r\u00e8gle de n'y avoir recours que dans des contextes strictement limit\u00e9s, ne risquant pas de fausser la v\u00e9ridicit\u00e9 (toutefois strictement inv\u00e9rifiable, je le sais) de mes souvenirs. Pour le dire un peu diff\u00e9remment, elles n'interviennent que dans certains \u00ab styles \u00bb de ma narration, parmi les dix que je me suis donn\u00e9s comme but (branche un, \u00a7 84). Et en tout cas pas dans les nombreux moments de cette branche pr\u00e9sente, o\u00f9 domine presque exclusivement un seul de ces styles, le style III (\u00ab style de Kamo no Chomei \u00bb) : les \u00ab vieilles paroles en des temps nouveaux \u00bb.\n\nEn sortant ces trois photographies de leur enveloppe, j'ai regard\u00e9 aussi les n\u00e9gatifs non tir\u00e9s \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re, nocturne (il est cinq heures), de mon \u00e9cran. Il y a d'autres personnages (mon fr\u00e8re Pierre et moi-m\u00eame, sans doute), et cet entrecroisement myst\u00e9rieux des branches nues des arbres que cr\u00e9e l'interversion du clair et du sombre sur les n\u00e9gatifs. Je ne sais pourquoi, le \u00ab sentiment du pass\u00e9 \u00bb m'y appara\u00eet plus \u00ab authentique \u00bb.\n\nNous parcourions sans cesse, avec \u00e9nergie, avec ardeur, le r\u00e9seau des all\u00e9es, rectangulaire d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9, incurv\u00e9 de l'autre, sur nos tricycles et bicyclettes, nous pr\u00e9cipitant avec enthousiasme (et souvent d\u00e9sastreusement) au bas des trois marches qui conduisaient \u00e0 la terrasse, au terme d'un parcours, d'un \u00ab circuit \u00bb de v\u00e9lodrome imaginaire. J'ai gard\u00e9 longtemps sur le dessus de la cheville une cicatrice elliptique due au frottement d'une p\u00e9dale sans doute fauss\u00e9e par une chute, et tordue dans une position assez invraisemblable, mais que la chaleur furieuse et anesth\u00e9sique de la course m'avait emp\u00each\u00e9 de sentir, pendant qu'elle mordait, \u00e0 chaque tour de roue, et jusqu'au sang, dans la chair.\n\n## 100 (\u00a7 29) Hors-jeu, face au banc, au centre d'une tr\u00e8s grande multiplicit\u00e9 de souvenirs r\u00e9els,\n\nMais qu'est-ce donc qu'\u00eatre \u00ab hors-jeu \u00bb ? Tous les jeux imagin\u00e9s dans ce jardin \u00e9taient des jeux de langage. Et le hors-jeu du langage, certainement, est un silence. Tous ces jeux, comme tous les jeux, comme tous les jeux de langage, \u00e9taient des modes de r\u00e9v\u00e9lation, des mises en paroles d'une forme de vie, et donc n\u00e9cessitaient le mouvement. Ainsi le hors-jeu \u00e9tait aussi arr\u00eat du mouvement (il est cela au rugby, o\u00f9 le sifflet de l'arbitre, qui le sanctionne, tue l'essor du mouvement qu'est, par excellence, l'attaque des trois-quarts). Le hors-jeu est une atteinte de l'immobilit\u00e9. Le silence, l'immobilit\u00e9. Mais n'y avait-il pas pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment parmi tous mes jeux un tel jeu, un jeu de point fixe, un jeu de l'immobilit\u00e9 : jeu de silence statuaire, jeu sans mouvement (\u00a7 22).\n\nEn fait, il ne s'agissait alors que de mimer le hors-jeu, afin de faire revenir le hors-jeu dans l'espace m\u00eame du jeu. L'identification aux statues, \u00e0 la paralysie muette des statues, n'avait de sens que si, tout autour, les assistants mobiles et loquaces, fr\u00e8res, amis, avant de se transformer en imitateurs, commentaient, s'inqui\u00e9taient, s'effrayaient (comme plus tard, r\u00e9p\u00e9tant \u00e0 Saint-Germain-en-Laye les m\u00eames jeux de l'immobilit\u00e9 muette, nous effrayions notre chien, Coqui, par une attitude soudaine et anormale de pseudo-cadavres. Il s'approchait aussit\u00f4t de nous, nous implorait tour \u00e0 tour, nous reniflait, mettait son museau contre notre visage, nous poussait de la patte, s'impatientait, s'effrayait, aboyait).\n\nCe n'\u00e9tait pas du tout non plus un hors-jeu par solitude, une r\u00e9invention de l'ermite, bien au contraire. C'\u00e9tait quelque chose de beaucoup plus proche de cette n\u00e9gation paradoxale du solitaire qu'\u00e9tait l'ermite du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle, l'ermite ornemental \u00e0 l'anglaise (dont un exemple sinistre est la pseudo-statue verte du film de Peter Greenaway, _The Draughtman's Contract (Meurtre dans un jardin anglais))_. L'ermite ornemental ne peut jouer le hors-jeu de solitude que parce qu'il a un public. (Une version ultime, extr\u00eame et sarcastique, me semble avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 celle, purement fictionnelle, du h\u00e9ros d'un court roman-fable de David Garnett : _The Man in the Zoo_ , qui s'offre, tel un chimpanz\u00e9 volontaire, \u00e0 vivre dans une cage du zoo de Londres, comme repr\u00e9sentant de l'esp\u00e8ce _homo sapiens.)_\n\nLa mise hors-jeu, en apparence, dans celui de S'avancer-en-rampant, aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 alors de renvoyer le joueur dans le camp de ceux qui regardaient, dans le \u00ab public \u00bb du jeu. Mais il n'en \u00e9tait rien. Si le joueur d\u00e9sign\u00e9 par le guetteur \u00e9tait aussit\u00f4t hors-jeu, avait perdu, il ne devenait pas pour autant \u00e9l\u00e9ment neutre d'une assistance (comme l'\u00e9tait, parfois, un adulte). Car il avait perdu.\n\nLe hors-jeu, donc, \u00e9tait une perte, une d\u00e9faite. Le toucher du joueur par l'appel de son nom \u00e9tait comme la fl\u00e8che qui transperce, comme le fleuret qui \u00e9limine, le KO qui met au tapis, comme la main qui renvoie, prisonnier, derri\u00e8re la ligne au jeu de barres.\n\nMais si je reviens finalement au banc, si je me place, comme je l'ai fait longuement dans ce chapitre, dans la position du guetteur du jeu, de \u00ab hors-jeu \u00bb (mais simplement \u00ab devant-le-jeu \u00bb), si je sens aujourd'hui le puits comme une pr\u00e9sence dangereuse derri\u00e8re moi, si je me sens, cette fois, vraiment \u00ab hors-jeu \u00bb, c'est \u00e0 cause d'une exclusion beaucoup plus radicale, celle du temps. Moi aussi, j'ai perdu.\n\n# (DU CHAPITRE 4)\n\n## 101 (\u00a7 30) fruits de l'if \u00e0 la couleur rouge sombre ; sur l'arbre luisants avec \u00e9clat sombre, grave\n\nEn retrouvant cette vision, en la notant, j'ai not\u00e9 aussi que j'ai pens\u00e9 : **enfant dans l'arbre.** La vision de l'enfant dans l'arbre se rencontre \u00e0 plusieurs reprises, sous plusieurs d\u00e9guisements, dans les romans du Graal. Ainsi :\n\nIl ne lui arriva aucune aventure, rien qui m\u00e9rite d'\u00eatre racont\u00e9, jusqu'\u00e0 ce qu'il se trouve \u00e0 l'entr\u00e9e d'un bois. Dans un arbre qui semblait tr\u00e8s grand, il vit un enfant sur une branche, si haut assis qu'une lance n'aurait pu l'atteindre. C'est la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 toute pure que je vous dis. Il tenait dans ses mains une pomme. Vous auriez pu aller jusqu'\u00e0 Rome, avant de rencontrer cr\u00e9ature mieux dessin\u00e9e. Il \u00e9tait v\u00eatu richement et ne semblait gu\u00e8re avoir plus de cinq ans.\n\nPerceval l'a regard\u00e9 un moment puis, arr\u00eatant son cheval sous l'arbre, l'a salu\u00e9. L'enfant lui a rendu son salut. \u00ab Descends de l\u00e0, lui dit Perceval. \u2013 Non, r\u00e9pondit l'enfant, je ne suis pas chevalier. Je ne tiens aucune terre de vous. Bien des paroles que j'ai entendues ont vol\u00e9 jusqu'\u00e0 mes oreilles et n'en sont pas redescendues, les v\u00f4tres ne feront gu\u00e8re plus. \u2013 Dis-moi au moins, je t'en prie, si je suis dans le droit chemin. \u00bb\n\nEt l'enfant r\u00e9pond : \u00ab C'est bien possible, je ne suis pas assez savant \u00e0 mon \u00e2ge pour vous le dire si je ne sais o\u00f9 vous allez. \u00bb Puis, se dressant debout sur la branche, il grimpa sans plus attendre sur la branche d'en dessus et sans s'arr\u00eater tant monta qu'il devint de plus en plus petit dans les hauteurs puis s'\u00e9vanouit, et Perceval ne vit plus rien que l'arbre qui semblait sans fin. Il n'entendit plus rien non plus.\n\nPlus tard, quand la lune fut lev\u00e9e la nuit resta si \u00e9pur\u00e9e, si suave et si suave et si sereine que chaque \u00e9toile apparaissait entre les arbres s\u00e9par\u00e9ment. Perceval chevauche en pensant \u00e0 la Lance qui Saigne, au Graal et \u00e0 la question qu'il poserait. Pendant qu'il va en ce penser, il voit loin un arbre ramu, sur l'arbre plus de mille chandelles, qu'il lui sembla allum\u00e9es comme des \u00e9toiles sur les branches des chandeliers. L'arbre en \u00e9tait tout enflamm\u00e9 mais, \u00e0 mesure qu'il approchait, la grande clart\u00e9 s'amenuisait et allait en d\u00e9clinant. Il n'atteignit qu'un arbre \u00e9teint.\n\nEnfant dans l'arbre, ifs, baies de l'if, bougies, illumination sombre, rouge : \u00e9toiles naines, arbre \u00e9teint.\n\n## 102 (\u00a7 33 & suite du \u00a7 101) Images qui sont intenses, mais fixes ; mais quasiment isol\u00e9es\n\nJe n'affirme nullement que cet isolement est r\u00e9ellement possible, ni que le mouvement perp\u00e9tuel du souvenir peut \u00eatre vraiment arr\u00eat\u00e9. Le choix d'un titre pour un souvenir est un essai d'immobilisation, n\u00e9cessairement inefficace dans l'absolu, mais dont la r\u00e9ussite peut \u00eatre relative. Il peut servir d'effecteur de m\u00e9moire, favoriser l'\u00e9vocation volontaire du souvenir. Et il peut aussi \u00ab couper \u00bb le souvenir de son environnement (c'est le cas dans les exemples que j'\u00e9voque ici).\n\nLa prolif\u00e9ration irr\u00e9pressible se produit alors d'une mani\u00e8re fort diff\u00e9rente, dont l'exemple pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent, \u00ab l'enfant dans l'arbre \u00bb, donne une illustration. Le \u00ab saut \u00bb de m\u00e9moire am\u00e8ne dans des r\u00e9gions totalement insoup\u00e7onn\u00e9es. (Cela se produit aussi, bien s\u00fbr, dans les cas \u00ab ordinaires \u00bb, mais les \u00e9tranget\u00e9s y attirent moins l'attention.)\n\nJ'ai reproduit, pour interpr\u00e9ter le passage soudain (\u00e0 travers le langage, en une image provenant d'un titre) des fruits-bougies de l'if aux \u00ab chandelles \u00bb du conte du Graal, un fragment de mon livre, _Graal-fiction_ , o\u00f9 j'ai rassembl\u00e9 plusieurs exemples de cette vision offerte \u00e0 Perceval, pendant son errance \u00e0 la recherche du ch\u00e2teau du Roi P\u00ea(\u00e9)cheur. Il y a quelque vraisemblance \u00e0 supposer que \u00ab l'enfant \u00bb du conte est un d\u00e9guisement (un des innombrables d\u00e9guisements) de Merlin. Il s'agit alors d'une vision pr\u00e9monitoire, d'une annonce, d'une de ces \u00ab choses obscures \u00bb et jamais \u00e0 temps d\u00e9chiffrables que l'enchanteur disperse sur les pas des \u00e9gar\u00e9s (elles ne sont d\u00e9chiffr\u00e9es, comme toutes les le\u00e7ons du pass\u00e9, qu'au futur ant\u00e9rieur : voil\u00e0 ce qui aura \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9 !).\n\nMais si j'essaye, \u00e0 mon tour, tel le lecteur du Graal, de d\u00e9chiffrer le sens de ce bond depuis l' **If aux Fourmis** jusqu'\u00e0 l'arbre de Merlin (qui ne para\u00eet pas \u00eatre un if) (et je me livre \u00e0 cet effort d\u00e9ductif sans pr\u00e9tendre aucunement \u00e0 une interpr\u00e9tation effective de ce \u00ab passage \u00bb, qu'on a le droit d'attribuer au simple hasard), je mets au jour un parall\u00e9lisme entre ma situation et celle de Perceval au moment de cette aventure.\n\n(Il cherche, il est entr\u00e9 en la \u00ab qu\u00eate \u00bb, parce qu'il n'a pas pos\u00e9 la question qui lui aurait donn\u00e9 le sens de la vision qui lui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 offerte au ch\u00e2teau du Roi-P\u00eacheur, celle du Graal, vision qui est, je le rappelle, tout impr\u00e9gn\u00e9e de lumi\u00e8re. La lumi\u00e8re du Graal \u00e9clipse celle des chandelles que portent les serviteurs du Roi. D\u00e8s qu'il para\u00eet, port\u00e9 par la Demoiselle, \u00ab une si granz clartez an vint\/ausi perdirent les chandoiles\/lor clart\u00e9 come les estoiles\/qant li solauz lieve, et la lune \u00bb. Tels sont les vers de Chr\u00e9tien de Troyes.) Je suis rest\u00e9 silencieux, moi aussi.\n\nJ'ai laiss\u00e9 muette, non dite, dans la sc\u00e8ne au pied des ifs une autre image. Et une autre encore, que celle-l\u00e0 appelle, o\u00f9 des fourmis s'enfoncent sous une porte de bois immense, pesante d'un \u00e9norme poids. Toute une circulation mentale, tout un \u00e9chafaudage d'explications internes s'\u00e9l\u00e8ve autour de ce silence ; les bougies rouges des fruits, l'arbre de deuil, les fourmis noires (autre couleur du deuil), l'enfant, l'enfant dans l'arbre.\n\n## 103 (\u00a7 33 & \u00a7 34) Je ne suis pas entr\u00e9 dans la maison. Je ne la vois que dans un contexte hivernal, de froid relatif, je ne m'en souviens que dans un autre monde\n\nOuvrant sur le Parc sauvage, qui ne commen\u00e7ait qu'\u00e0 une certaine distance (une transition de gravier et de sable m\u00e9nag\u00e9e dans l'espace ouvert du dehors, zone fronti\u00e8re plate que je sens aussi d'une parfaite platitude et neutralit\u00e9 \u00e9motionnelle), une immense grande salle de s\u00e9jour, avec chemin\u00e9e, contenait aussi un piano. Sur ce piano j'ai entendu jouer, avec beaucoup plus de virtuosit\u00e9 technique (je ne suis en fait pas certain qu'elle ait \u00e9t\u00e9 si remarquable, mais je me trompe sans doute) que je n'aurais jamais pu le faire, mais surtout avec infiniment plus d'\u00e2me, d'une longue chevelure d\u00e9sordonn\u00e9e descendue jusqu'aux doigts de l'ex\u00e9cutant, des pages et des pages de _Nocturnes_ de Chopin.\n\nJ'aimais bien Chopin, mais l'interpr\u00e9tation hyper-romantique qui coulait de ce front p\u00e2le, de cette chevelure et de ces doigts vers ce malheureux et assez mal accord\u00e9 piano \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s peu en harmonie esth\u00e9tique avec l'enseignement que je recevais de Marguerite Long, dont les le\u00e7ons (r\u00e9fract\u00e9es par Mme Vidal, \u00e0 Toulouse et les choix propres de ma m\u00e8re) privil\u00e9giaient franchement la sobri\u00e9t\u00e9 (j'esp\u00e8re que je ne vais pas choquer les admirateurs du pianiste, qui sont \u00e0 juste titre nombreux, bien que pas tous recrut\u00e9s parmi les amateurs de musique, comme on le verra dans un ou deux instants (de prose)), et cela aiguisait vivement mon sens du comique, que je faisais partager, h\u00e9las !, \u00e0 mes compagnons de jeu (fr\u00e8res et s\u0153ur, les \u00ab jumeaux \u00bb, \u00ab petit-Jean \u00bb).\n\n(Un sens du comique favoris\u00e9, il faut bien le dire, par les lectures auxquelles je me livrais pendant ce r\u00e9cital sans public : le pianiste jouait pour lui seul, dans la matin\u00e9e froide et vide, et il ne faisait pas attention \u00e0 ma pr\u00e9sence. J'ajouterai, pour faire preuve de plus d'honn\u00eatet\u00e9 encore et affaiblir la port\u00e9e r\u00e9elle de mes remarques, que j'aimais bien \u00eatre seul pour lire dans cette immense salle, et que Chopin, donc, m'y d\u00e9rangeait.)\n\nLe pianiste se nommait Vladimir Jank\u00e9l\u00e9vitch. Si je parle de lui ici d'une mani\u00e8re si irr\u00e9v\u00e9rencieuse, c'est pour les besoins de mon r\u00e9cit, et selon mon souvenir (la m\u00eame remarque vaut pour Georges Canguilhem). Je sais (mais je ne savais pas, et pour cause) que l'\u0153uvre de ce philosophe comporte en particulier des \u00e9tudes sur Chopin. Et je sais surtout (mais je ne savais pas, m\u00eame si je m'en doutais un peu) qu'il n'\u00e9tait l\u00e0 que parce que les circonstances historiques l'obligeaient \u00e0 chercher des refuges pour \u00e9chapper \u00e0 des ennemis fort peu romantiques.\n\nSainte-Lucie \u00e9tait un tel refuge. Notre amie Nina (qui fut \u00e0 Lyon, dans la R\u00e9sistance, secr\u00e9taire de Marc Bloch) y fut quelque temps, et brune (ce que je trouvai, quand je la revis, et ainsi color\u00e9e, une innovation assez m\u00e9diocre, presque une faute de go\u00fbt. J'ai toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 sensible au naturel des chevelures). Il faisait froid en hiver (on a vraiment froid en M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e, quand il fait froid, bien plus qu'en Norv\u00e8ge), d'autant plus froid qu'il n'y avait \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s rien \u00e0 manger.\n\nC'est pour rem\u00e9dier du m\u00eame coup, partiellement au moins, \u00e0 ces deux inconv\u00e9nients, que mon p\u00e8re demanda un jour \u00e0 \u00ab Camillou \u00bb, le ma\u00eetre des lieux, s'il n'avait pas quelque alcool dans un placard. Camillou ne buvait pas (tout cela, bien s\u00fbr, doit s'ajouter au portrait de Camillou, tel que je l'esquisse au \u00a7 34, mais en privil\u00e9giant, l\u00e0, le point de vue enfantin). Il finit par d\u00e9nicher une bouteille poussi\u00e9reuse, dont il versa deux larges verres \u00e0 ces h\u00f4tes. Mon p\u00e8re (il en faisait le r\u00e9cit) prit le sien, trempa ses l\u00e8vres, et le reposa aussit\u00f4t. C'\u00e9tait de l'alcool pur. Mais Nina l'avala d'un trait sans sourciller : preuve, ajoutait mon p\u00e8re, de son intr\u00e9pidit\u00e9. Mais elle pr\u00e9tendait, elle, que c'\u00e9tait un simple effet de son excellente \u00e9ducation.\n\n## 104 (suite du \u00a7 103) L'immense salle \u00e0 manger \u00e9tait le plus souvent d\u00e9serte quand j'y p\u00e9n\u00e9trais, t\u00f4t le matin\n\nL'immense salle \u00e0 manger \u00e9tait le plus souvent d\u00e9serte quand j'y p\u00e9n\u00e9trais, t\u00f4t le matin, d\u00e8s mon r\u00e9veil. J'y trouvais une vaste tranquillit\u00e9 confortable, pour lire. J'aime lire. J'aimais, d\u00e9j\u00e0, lire. Il y avait des livres, beaucoup de livres. C'\u00e9tait une maison \u00e0 livres. Je n'aime que les maisons \u00e0 livres. Une maison sans livres n'est qu'une ruine, ou une prison, une caserne, un monument, un mus\u00e9e.\n\nJe prenais un fauteuil pr\u00e8s du feu, le reste de feu de la nuit, odorant de fum\u00e9es, sarments et b\u00fbches, r\u00e9sines et braises (la braise a son odeur propre, qui lui vient du velours de sa couleur). Je montais sur le fauteuil, repliais mes jambes sous moi, et lisais.\n\nLes livres de la biblioth\u00e8que de Camillou \u00e9taient pour grande partie espagnols. Mais il y avait aussi des livres fran\u00e7ais, entre lesquels je pus choisir sans restriction. C'est l\u00e0 que j'ai fait la connaissance du grand _Quichotte_ illustr\u00e9 par Gustave Dor\u00e9 (et il ne m'a pas \u00e9chapp\u00e9 plus tard, que ce h\u00e9ros, dickensien et dosto\u00efevskien \u00e0 la fois, avait une parent\u00e9 certaine avec Camille Boer, ou bien que Camille Boer avait une composante \u00ab quichottesque \u00bb, pas tellement parce qu'il ne sut pas se \u00ab d\u00e9brouiller \u00bb dans le _struggle for life_ d'apr\u00e8s la Lib\u00e9ration, ce que j'entendis dire parfois de lui avec un attendrissement l\u00e9g\u00e8rement agac\u00e9, mais parce qu'il ne cessa de s'affronter aux g\u00e9ants et aux moulins de ce monde pour l'amour de l'esp\u00e8ce humaine, douteuse \u00ab Toboso \u00bb (les g\u00e9ants-moulins qu'affronte le h\u00e9ros sont parfaitement r\u00e9els, contrairement \u00e0 ce que la lecture usuelle, trop rapide, du _Quichotte_ pourrait laisser croire : \u00ab _Thejoke_ , comme on dit en anglais, _is on us_ \u00bb)).\n\nLa lecture du _Quichotte_ dans ce contexte \u00e9tait en somme quasiment impos\u00e9e. Mais je revois au m\u00eame endroit deux autres livres, aussi diff\u00e9rents l'un de l'autre que possible, auxquels l'espace solitaire de la lecture convenait parfaitement. Il s'agit en premier des _Contes_ d'Edgar Poe, dans la traduction de Baudelaire. (Je ne me souviens que de l'aspect physique du livre, ou plus exactement je ne vois plus que la couverture cartonn\u00e9e vert-gris de l'exemplaire qui se trouvait rue d'Assas, dans la biblioth\u00e8que de mes parents.)\n\nLes circonstances de la lecture font partie int\u00e9grante de la lecture : aussi bien le livre concret que son apparence, son format, son poids, sa typographie, que le volume d'espace r\u00e9el au sein duquel nous l'avons lu : un train, un lit, une herbe. Le livre, l'\u0153uvre, est cela pour nous. Il est tout autant que la lettre exacte de son texte, v\u00e9rifiable en le rouvrant (et pas toujours alors, compatible avec notre souvenir !), ce que nous en avons retenu (les \u00ab circonstances \u00bb en font partie). Tout autant que l'immobilit\u00e9 stable de ses mots, dans ses pages, l'allure de nos yeux sur ses lignes, l'intensit\u00e9 variable de notre regard.\n\nMais les livres que nous avons lu \u00ab colorent \u00bb en retour, d'une mani\u00e8re au moins aussi forte, les lieux et les circonstances o\u00f9 nous les avons ouverts. C'est pourquoi ni l'hiver, ni le vent d'hiver sous les portes, ni la solitude ne s'unissent avec les imaginations macabres de _La Chute de la maison Usher_ par exemple, pour faire de la grande salle de Sainte-Lucie un endroit \u00ab gothique \u00bb. L'impression principale qui m'en demeure aujourd'hui est comique : car c'est l\u00e0 que j'ai lu pour la premi\u00e8re fois _Trois Hommes dans un bateau_ de Jerome K. Jerome (et l'impression en a \u00e9t\u00e9 si forte que, contrairement \u00e0 mon habitude, je ne \u00ab sens \u00bb pas cette histoire en anglais, mais en fran\u00e7ais. Je ne pense pas \u00e0 _Three Men in a Boat_ (que j'ai lu aussi, que j'appr\u00e9cie, mais qui ne se substitue pas \u00e0 sa traduction) mais bien \u00e0 _Trois Hommes dans un bateau_ ). Je lisais : \u00ab Je n'ai jamais vu deux hommes faire tant de choses avec une livre de beurre \u00bb, ou encore : \u00ab Je n'avais pas \"l'\u00e9panchement de synovie\". Pourquoi n'avais-je pas l'\u00e9panchement de synovie ? \u00bb, et je riais. Je riais tout seul dans la grande pi\u00e8ce matinale, ti\u00e8de, prot\u00e9g\u00e9e ; et vide. Je prononce aujourd'hui ces phrases, et aussit\u00f4t j'y suis.\n\n## 105 (\u00a7 34) Les ann\u00e9es 40-45 furent des ann\u00e9es b\u00e9nies pour le v\u00e9lo\n\nM\u00eame en l'absence du Tour de France (dont la derni\u00e8re \u00ab \u00e9dition \u00bb de l'avant-guerre, en 1939, ne m'a pas marqu\u00e9 (celle de 1947 me passionna. Je vibrai pour Vietto qui, terminant deuxi\u00e8me mais plein d'avenir le dernier \u00ab Tour \u00bb avant la catastrophe, derri\u00e8re un Belge (Sylv\u00e8re Ma\u00ebs ?), perdit \u00e0 la derni\u00e8re \u00e9tape sa chance d'une \u00e9clatante revanche sur le sort)), le prestige du v\u00e9lo \u00e9tait chez nous consid\u00e9rable. Mon p\u00e8re sillonnait ainsi les routes de l'Aude, pour cause (ostensible mais pas exclusive) de ravitaillement.\n\nA son exemple et incitation nous avons tous \u00e9t\u00e9, nous aussi, d'ardents cyclistes : freins, chambres \u00e0 air, rustines, bulles d'air s'\u00e9levant dans une bassine remplie d'eau pour la d\u00e9tection des blessures d'un pneu crev\u00e9, lignes droites de routes entre platanes, descentes virtuoses \u00ab sans les mains \u00bb, \u00ab poivrage \u00bb caract\u00e9ristique de petits cailloux sur une cuisse sanglante apr\u00e8s un d\u00e9rapage excessif dans un virage, zig-zags d'un bord \u00e0 l'autre d'une \u00ab d\u00e9partementale \u00bb dans un \u00ab raidillon \u00bb, une \u00ab c\u00f4te \u00bb, un col (marqu\u00e9s respectivement d'un \u00ab < \u00bb ou m\u00eame d'un \u00ab << \u00bb sur la carte Michelin (les c\u00f4tes \u00e0 un ou deux chevrons, comme des soldats de 1re classe ou des caporaux du r\u00e9seau routier)), j'ai connu tout cela, sur de tr\u00e8s nombreuses routes de l'Aude.\n\nMais par un effet inverse de celui du manque alimentaire (porc, confitures et p\u00e2tisseries, beurre, oranges), l'orgie enfantine du v\u00e9lo a provoqu\u00e9 une saturation, presque un d\u00e9go\u00fbt, et je n'ai presque plus utilis\u00e9 ce moyen de locomotion apr\u00e8s vingt-cinq ans (d\u00e8s les premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es de notre installation estivale et vacanci\u00e8re, dans le Minervois). (J'ai mis longtemps \u00e0 m'en rendre compte, \u00e0 accepter que je n'aimais tout simplement plus le v\u00e9lo. J'accusais la m\u00e9canique, la longueur de mes jambes, ou la chaleur, ou la fatigue.)\n\n## (\u00a7 34) Le v\u00e9lo pos\u00e9 contre un muret, en haut de la c\u00f4te ; arr\u00eat, prolongement naturel de l'instant de suspension, \u00e0 vitesse nulle, avant l'ivresse de la descente\n\nL'\u00e9tat d'\u00e9quilibre des _maxima_ du relief engendre toute une famille de visions v\u00e9locyp\u00e9diques qui n'ont que cette circonstance en commun, et une parent\u00e9 de d\u00e9cors : la route, le goudron, les bornes hectom\u00e9triques blanches, les plus grosses bornes kilom\u00e9triques jaunes ou rouges.\n\nDu rouge sombre d\u00e9sol\u00e9 et hivernal de Villerouge-la-Cr\u00e9made je passe ainsi, dans un autre lieu sauvage, du Carcass\u00e8s cette fois, pr\u00e8s du village d'Aragon. **C'est le plein \u00e9t\u00e9, nous sommes arr\u00eat\u00e9s, mon p\u00e8re et moi, au sommet, et plus bas, sur la route, dans le goudron mou, br\u00fblant, ma m\u00e8re et Canguilhem ont mis pied \u00e0 terre, ils sont l\u00e0, cinquante m\u00e8tres plus bas, dans le tournant : la pente est trop raide, et surtout il fait trop chaud ; d'une chaleur sans vent, sous un soleil sans encombres ;**\n\n **le ciel d\u00e9borde de chaleur ; rien ne bouge ; que les sauterelles ; d'innombrables sauterelles, aux corps bruns, aux ailes rouges, aux ailes bleues ; dans la paume de la main, d'un doigt retenant le corps de l'insecte, je sens ses petites griffes, et les longues cuisses s'arc-bouter, pour le bond que j'entrave un moment ; je me penche jusqu'\u00e0 mettre mes yeux presque sur les siens, sur ses mandibules silencieuses, agit\u00e9es, furieuses ; je retire mon doigt, et la d\u00e9tente brusque de la sauterelle l'envoie \u00e0 cinq, dix m\u00e8tres, sur la route, le muret, les fenouils ; ailes bleues, ailes rouges.**\n\n# (DU CHAPITRE 5)\n\n## 106 (\u00a7 36) A la fin de l'\u00e2ge mythique j'ai donn\u00e9 \u00e0 mes dieux une langue, le P\u00e9ruviaque\n\nQuelques bribes lexicales survivent de cette langue des dieux. Le premier mot que je retrouve est d'interpr\u00e9tation simple, \u00e9tant un n\u00e9ologisme assez naturel (je le trouve tel) du fran\u00e7ais (peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame est-ce un mot de la langue fran\u00e7aise. Il n'appara\u00eet cependant pas dans le _Petit Robert_ que je viens de consulter). C'est le mot : bouillaque. Il d\u00e9signe cet amalgame suave de boue primordiale pr\u00e9-adamiste, incorporant eau (pipi si n\u00e9cessaire), sable, terre, quelques cailloux, brins d'herbe et brindilles, qui sert (chez tous les enfants non brim\u00e9s dans leurs aspirations artistiques) \u00e0 la construction, au modelage des statues, ou \u00e0 la communion intime avec la chair de la plan\u00e8te.\n\nL'adjectif substantiv\u00e9 p\u00e9ruviaque s'interpr\u00e8te alors (j'utilise la m\u00e9thode de Leiris) comme b\u00e2ti, \u00e0 l'aide du suffixe -aque qui donne son sens tellurique \u00e0 \u00ab bouillaque \u00bb, sur un substantif g\u00e9ographico-mystique (absent et restitu\u00e9) d\u00e9signant le pays des Dieux, o\u00f9 on retrouve, sous forme allusive, le grand myst\u00e8re inca. La langue invent\u00e9e all\u00e9gorise ainsi l'union difficile et provisoire des forces naturelles et transcendantales.\n\nJe commenterai trois mots. (Je n'en poss\u00e8de pas beaucoup d'autres, la plupart de ceux qui figurent dans la grammaire inachev\u00e9e \u00e9tant ind\u00e9chiffrables. Le p\u00e9ruviaque est ainsi proche du _cumbrique_ , cette langue celte disparue au VIIe si\u00e8cle dont il ne reste que six mots.) Desquels le premier est p\u00e9toule. On d\u00e9signe ainsi une potion plut\u00f4t magique, \u00e0 base d'essences v\u00e9g\u00e9tales et d'eau, qui sert de carburant aux dieux. (Le mot a quelque affinit\u00e9 sonore avec p\u00e9trole.) La recette, alchimique, de sa fabrication se trouve dans le document linguistique d\u00e9j\u00e0 mentionn\u00e9, autant dire qu'elle est perdue. Je me souviens de l'apparence du produit fini, un liquide trouble, un peu bouillaque, mais de couleur plus claire, un peu absinthe, \u00e0 la surface duquel je lisais, en ses irisations, un arc-en-ciel fugace, volatil, semblable, en plus l\u00e9ger, plus t\u00e9nu, \u00e0 ceux que je surprenais parfois, sur le chemin de l'\u00e9cole, charg\u00e9s d'odeurs narcotiques, dans les flaques abandonn\u00e9es par les automobiles, sur le sol du garage, \u00ab route de Limoux \u00bb.\n\nDans les deux autres cas il s'agit d'un fruit, de plantes sans doute connues en langue ordinaire sous d'autres appellations (les fruits eux-m\u00eames, dont l'inutilit\u00e9 est totale, n'en ont pas re\u00e7u, il me semble). La nomination, dans ce cas, \u00e9tait destin\u00e9e \u00e0 signifier le statut particulier, la dignit\u00e9 que conf\u00e9rait au fruit son r\u00f4le dans un rituel, dans les c\u00e9r\u00e9monies sacr\u00e9es du paganisme p\u00e9ruviaque. L'un d'eux \u00e9tait plein de vertus m\u00e9dicinales, mais essentiellement symboliques car, non comestible au sens usuel (et peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame poison), la prudence \u00e9l\u00e9mentaire recommandait de ne le consommer qu'en imagination. Il se parait, alors, surtout transform\u00e9, selon une pure th\u00e9orie, en une sorte de pur\u00e9e, ou de compote, des prestiges que l'Olympe accorde \u00e0 l'ambroisie. Son nom \u00e9tait l'Op-tida. C'est une petite boule orange, d'int\u00e9rieur farineux, qui pousse en grappes sur un arbre ornemental qu'on trouve un peu partout.\n\nLe second \u00e9tait le pulumusse, fruit du pulumussier : petite graine minuscule, de la taille et de l'apparence du p\u00e9pin de raisin, et disponible, selon le degr\u00e9 de maturation en plusieurs vari\u00e9t\u00e9s, s\u00e9parables par leur couleur : verte, bleue, et marron. Le pulumusse servait de projectile (lanc\u00e9 par poign\u00e9es, moins agressives que les boules de cypr\u00e8s, dans des batailles symboliques, ou dans un b\u00e9ret \u00e0 quelques pas, jeu d'adresse, semblable \u00e0 celui que les \u00e9l\u00e8ves des classes pr\u00e9paratoires aux grandes \u00e9coles jouaient autrefois avec des morceaux de craie \u00e0 projeter jusque dans la rigole \u00e0 poussi\u00e8res au bas des tableaux noirs), ou bien de menue monnaie, ou bien de repr\u00e9sentant de diverses denr\u00e9es n\u00e9cessaires pour certains jeux (l\u00e9gumes par exemple) mais dont la manipulation r\u00e9elle \u00e9tait impossible. Ses \u00ab muances \u00bb \u00e9taient donc multiples. C'\u00e9tait un petit objet prot\u00e9iforme, dont le nom tenait bien dans la bouche. Je continue \u00e0 l'employer.\n\nDes r\u00e9serves de pulumusses gonflaient mes poches, les tiroirs de mon petit bureau. Je les r\u00e9coltais patiemment. Je les d\u00e9nombrais. Ils \u00e9taient la preuve vivante d'une pr\u00e9sence r\u00e9elle, dans la nature sensible, de l'Id\u00e9e de Grand Nombre, Nombre Nuptial naturel plus directement appr\u00e9hendable par l'esprit que les grains de sable, les cailloux ou ces autres pulumusses, brillantes mais lointaines, impalpables, les graines du ciel nocturne \u00e9toil\u00e9.\n\n## 107 (\u00a7 39) C'est ce que j'appellerais le confort autobiographique. Il resurgit sans aucun contr\u00f4le chez le romancier.\n\nOn ouvre un roman. On y trouve presque imm\u00e9diatement un personnage qui pense \u00e0 un moment donn\u00e9 de son aventure. La page s'ouvre et il est l\u00e0, qui pense. L'imagination d'un \u00ab monde possible \u00bb du personnage constitue la justification g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement fournie de ces sp\u00e9culations peu vraisemblables. Elle a bon dos. Le point de vue externe du r\u00e9cit, externe au temps comme au lieu int\u00e9rieur d'une t\u00eate pensante rend impossible de \u00ab traiter \u00bb une telle sc\u00e8ne avec un minimum de coh\u00e9rence. Les tentatives de \u00ab p\u00e9n\u00e9tration \u00bb de la prose \u00ab psychologique \u00bb sont presque pires, car on s'y borne \u00e0 translater momentan\u00e9ment le m\u00eame point de fuite, en fait d'envoyer \u00e0 l'infini le regard int\u00e9rieur dont l'espace r\u00e9el a une g\u00e9om\u00e9trie fort diff\u00e9rente.\n\nOn ne peut pas non plus s'en tenir \u00e0 l'ext\u00e9riorit\u00e9 purement spatiale : d\u00e9crire la radio, la famille attabl\u00e9e au repas du soir, les enfants d\u00e9j\u00e0 sur le pas de la porte, pr\u00eats \u00e0 sortir jouer dans le jardin, la tension qui se r\u00e9verb\u00e8re dans la pi\u00e8ce. Marie pleure. On reproduit les paroles du p\u00e8re...\n\nJe ne veux pas affirmer que le romancier ne doit pas agir ainsi. Il fait ce qu'il veut. Mais peut-\u00eatre, parfois, on aimerait que la narration montre ne serait-ce qu'une petite inqui\u00e9tude sous-jacente, un pressentiment du probl\u00e8me de l'ad\u00e9quation des m\u00e9thodes de r\u00e9cit, des modes, des strat\u00e9gies de r\u00e9cit \u00e0 la possibilit\u00e9 m\u00eame minimale des mondes qu'elle nous invite \u00e0 consid\u00e9rer ainsi.\n\nCar le romancier est victime inconsciente d'une mutation historique : l'ext\u00e9riorisation du souvenir. La chute, au cours du XVIIe si\u00e8cle, de la tradition ancestrale des Arts de la M\u00e9moire a laiss\u00e9 la place \u00e0 la prolif\u00e9ration en prose des descriptions lentes et morcel\u00e9es d'objets du monde, si diff\u00e9rente de la vision globale des images-souvenirs dans le r\u00e9el int\u00e9rieur.\n\nC'est une \u00e9volution sans doute irr\u00e9versible. La prose ancienne, m\u00eame la prose de r\u00e9cit, n'a pratiquement jamais recours \u00e0 ces parcours \u00e0 images et multiplication de d\u00e9tails pr\u00e9lev\u00e9s cr\u00fbment dans le monde ext\u00e9rieur, \u00e0 ces immobilit\u00e9s strictement inscrites dans un espace sagement tridimensionnel.\n\nLe mode de fonctionnement des souvenirs, labyrinthique, arborescent, multidimensionnel, a \u00e9t\u00e9 oubli\u00e9 : leur vitesse, leur irr\u00e9solution, leurs ambigu\u00eft\u00e9s, ont cess\u00e9 d'\u00eatre comprises. Le r\u00e9cit ancien n'avait aucune pr\u00e9tention \u00e0 la restitution du ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne du monde. Et la po\u00e9sie ancienne ne mimait pas le souvenir. Elle le suscitait, elle l'effectuait.\n\n## 108 (\u00a7 39) Dans les villes, \u00e0 Carcassonne en particulier, on eut tr\u00e8s faim\n\nLes \u00ab autorit\u00e9s \u00bb (collaboratrices) avaient invent\u00e9 un jeu tr\u00e8s amusant : les jours de march\u00e9, d\u00e8s l'aube, d\u00e8s avant l'aube, les foules de m\u00e9nag\u00e8res (et de \u00ab m\u00e9nagers \u00bb) soucieuses d'\u00eatre parmi les premi\u00e8res devant les \u00e9talages de rares l\u00e9gumes et encore plus rares fruits, envahissaient l'\u00e9l\u00e9gante place rectangulaire \u00e0 platanes o\u00f9 tr\u00f4ne, ornement central, la fontaine du \u00ab Roi des Eaux \u00bb (un jour de d\u00e9cembre, en 1941, il n'y avait en tout et pour tout sur le march\u00e9 qu'une seule marchande, qui vendait des fanes de carottes : j'ai retenu ce d\u00e9tail g\u00e9n\u00e9rique du r\u00e9cit de ma m\u00e8re, et le mot \u00ab fanes \u00bb).\n\nOn avait donc barr\u00e9, polici\u00e8rement, soi-disant par souci de justice, l'acc\u00e8s au march\u00e9 par les rues confluentes. A l'heure dite (huit heures), une sonnerie retentissait, les barrages s'ouvraient et les candidats \u00e0 la nourriture se pr\u00e9cipitaient sur la place o\u00f9 les attendaient, vrais ma\u00eetres de l'heure, les mara\u00eechers. Il y eut des bousculades f\u00e9roces, une femme enceinte, raconte-t-on, fut pi\u00e9tin\u00e9e. La t\u00e9l\u00e9vision mondiale, depuis, nous a montr\u00e9, nous montre (pourrait nous montrer presque journellement) des sc\u00e8nes semblables, et infiniment plus tragiques. Mais c'\u00e9tait une \u00ab premi\u00e8re \u00bb, \u00e0 Carcassonne, en 1942.\n\nR\u00e9agissant aux protestations g\u00e9n\u00e9rales et avec leur souci bien connu de l'ordre et de l'humanisme \u00ab europ\u00e9en \u00bb, les \u00ab autorit\u00e9s \u00bb d\u00e9cid\u00e8rent ensuite de fractionner l'acc\u00e8s, toujours limit\u00e9 par des barrages, aux pr\u00e9cieuses denr\u00e9es, en r\u00e9partissant les femmes (consid\u00e9r\u00e9es comme seules investies de la responsabilit\u00e9 de l'alimentation familiale (Vichy avait fait sienne la devise allemande des devoirs de l'\u00e9pouse, les trois K ( _Kinder, Kirsche, K\u00fcsche_ (enfant, \u00e9glise et cuisine)))) en trois groupes (th\u00e9oriquement \u00e9gaux). Les premi\u00e8res \u00e9taient munies de cartes rouges, les deuxi\u00e8mes de cartes vertes, les troisi\u00e8mes de cartes bleues.\n\nIl y avait (il y a toujours) trois jours de march\u00e9 \u00e0 Carcassonne : mardi, jeudi, samedi. Mardi, donc, par exemple, \u00e9tait jour \u00ab rouge \u00bb. Ce jour-l\u00e0, les cartes rouges avaient les premi\u00e8res le droit d'entr\u00e9e \u00e0 huit heures, les cartes vertes suivaient \u00e0 neuf, et les cartes bleues \u00e0 dix (et elles pouvaient tout aussi bien rester chez elles ce jour-l\u00e0, car s'il restait quelque chose de comestible apr\u00e8s huit heures, la deuxi\u00e8me vague affam\u00e9e n'en aurait rien laiss\u00e9, sauf peut-\u00eatre les l\u00e9gumes \u00ab inf\u00e2mes \u00bb de ce temps, topinambours et rutabagas).\n\nMais, me direz-vous, et les malades, les femmes enceintes (l\u00e9gitimement), les m\u00e8res d'enfants en bas \u00e2ge ou de \u00ab familles nombreuses \u00bb (comme la n\u00f4tre) ? Eh bien, celles-l\u00e0 avaient des cartes sp\u00e9ciales (valables aussi chez le laitier, le boulanger ou le boucher), des rations sup\u00e9rieures (des \u00ab tickets \u00bb de pain, de viande, de lait), en un mot, des privil\u00e8ges. Et les m\u00eames m\u00e9nag\u00e8res qui bavaient d'\u00e9motion (quasi \u00e9rotique, voisine de l'\u00e9motion suscit\u00e9e plus tard, quoique pas chez les m\u00eames, par les fesses de Brigitte Bardot) \u00e0 la vue du visage de b\u00e9b\u00e9 rose du mar\u00e9chal P\u00e9tain (\u00ab Rose et frais, la jambe proprette\/Comme en r\u00eavent un les pr\u00e9f\u00e8tes\/Comme on les moule en chocolat\/ \u00bb) r\u00e9pandu sur tous les journaux ou sur les \u00ab actualit\u00e9s cin\u00e9matographiques \u00bb, se sentaient pousser des ailes revendicatrices devant cette in\u00e9galit\u00e9, cette injustice, ce scandale. On entendait dans les queues leurs murmures, on sentait leurs regards haineux : \u00ab Ces \"p\u00e9riorit\u00e9s\", disaient-elles, elles ont de tout ! \u00bb\n\nMardi, jeudi, samedi, jours de march\u00e9, les \u00ab cars \u00bb qui sillonnent le Carcass\u00e8s aujourd'hui, et dont la fonction principale est maintenant le ramassage scolaire (parfois l'hiver, quand je retourne \u00e0 Paris, dans la nuit de sept heures du matin, je monte \u00e0 l'arr\u00eat \u00ab gare de Bagnoles \u00bb (ainsi nomm\u00e9 parce qu'il y eut, passant par l\u00e0, autrefois un petit train) parmi des lyc\u00e9ens et lyc\u00e9ennes de Rieux-Minervois, de Peyriac, de Villegly, plut\u00f4t silencieux et endormis), ont un service suppl\u00e9mentaire aux alentours de neuf heures, et parfois aussi je me retrouve sur la place du \u00ab Roi des Eaux \u00bb, \u00e0 la terrasse du caf\u00e9 qui sert de point de rencontre familial, le caf\u00e9 du rugby, _Chez F\u00e9lix_. Je regarde l'abondance et je fais par la pens\u00e9e le vide sur les \u00e9talages, pour restituer (effort parfaitement vain, d'ailleurs) le souvenir des anciennes faims.\n\n## 109 (\u00a7 39) Je me consacrai \u00e0 ma vocation po\u00e9tique avec plus de constance, de concentration et de conviction qu'\u00e0 l'\u00e9tude\n\nPlus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment il m'arriva de consacrer \u00e0 l'activit\u00e9 essentiellement r\u00eaveuse et priv\u00e9e de la confection mentale de po\u00e8mes bien des heures qui auraient d\u00fb \u00eatre employ\u00e9es aux disciplines scolaires, les heures de cours ne faisant pas exception (et quand je ne jouais pas la po\u00e9sie, je me livrais \u00e0 un autre jeu de langage, mental lui aussi : de d\u00e9nombrements, de calculs). Je commen\u00e7ais ainsi un po\u00e8me pendant la classe de latin, de \u00ab fran\u00e7ais \u00bb ou de math\u00e9matiques, et je le terminais pendant le trajet du retour, sous la protection de mes dieux de vent, de feuilles et de ciel : activit\u00e9 m\u00e9trique et rimique bien plus que priv\u00e9e seulement, clandestine. C'\u00e9tait ma clandestinit\u00e9 \u00e0 moi.\n\nEn fait, c'\u00e9tait aussi une condition d'exercice de la solitude. Seul, je ne l'\u00e9tais pour ainsi dire jamais. Et j'avais assez naturellement choisi ces heures d'immobilisation forc\u00e9e (les heures du lyc\u00e9e, les heures pr\u00e9nocturnes des \u00ab devoirs \u00bb \u00e0 la maison) pour m'isoler int\u00e9rieurement. Cela me donnait (cela me donne) toutes les apparences de la distraction (la distraction au sens ordinaire m'\u00e9tait (m'est) par ailleurs habituelle, manifest\u00e9e par toutes sortes d'oublis). Je m'exer\u00e7ai ainsi, \u00e0 l'int\u00e9rieur du bruit, \u00e0 la concentration, \u00e0 la m\u00e9morisation (mais de nombres-chiffres, de syllabes, presque exclusivement : d'un monde ext\u00e9rieur de langue). Je touchais de cette fa\u00e7on, obliquement, au silence, un silence creus\u00e9 dans le non-silence ambiant (dont il m'arrivait d'\u00eatre brusquement extrait, fort d\u00e9sagr\u00e9ablement, par une interpellation professorale).\n\nJ'ai sans cesse depuis, volontairement ou non (comme soldat, par exemple), retrouv\u00e9, reconstitu\u00e9 m\u00eame cet \u00e9tat de pr\u00e9sence-absence, d'absence invisible, de camp retranch\u00e9 sans drapeau un peu partout, dans les caf\u00e9s, les rues passantes, les f\u00eates, les biblioth\u00e8ques. Il s'ensuit que la po\u00e9sie se trouvait \u00e0 la fois associ\u00e9e et tr\u00e8s peu participer \u00e0 l'institution scolaire. Je ne l'ai jamais consid\u00e9r\u00e9e (je veux dire de mani\u00e8re spontan\u00e9e, sans r\u00e9flexion) comme appartenant \u00e0 la \u00ab litt\u00e9rature \u00bb (que par ailleurs je ne rejetais pas plus que les autres \u00ab disciplines \u00bb de la scolarit\u00e9. Il ne s'agissait pas le moins du monde d'une r\u00e9volte, mais d'un d\u00e9tachement).\n\nJ'identifie une exception \u00e0 cette r\u00e8gle de ma scolarit\u00e9 \u00e0 \u00e9clipses (d'\u00e9migr\u00e9 vers l'int\u00e9rieur au sein de l'institution) : l'anglais. La langue anglaise avait toutes les raisons, sentimentales et politiques, de me plaire. J'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 relativement vite en mesure de lire en anglais (en tout cas d\u00e8s mon premier s\u00e9jour en \u00c9cosse, en 1947), et l'ouverture de cet immense continent de lecture a \u00e9t\u00e9 une merveille, plus corporelle m\u00eame qu'intellectuelle, et il n'y a gu\u00e8re de plaisir plus pur pour moi que d'acheter un livre dans une librairie de Londres, le tenir et le soupeser dans mes mains, en diff\u00e9rer l'ouverture pour une occasion propice : un dimanche, un voyage en train, un banc de parc, une table de caf\u00e9, une chambre d'h\u00f4tel. Je ne suis jamais parvenu \u00e0 ma\u00eetriser r\u00e9ellement la langue dans toutes ses fonctions (je suis, par exemple, rest\u00e9 tr\u00e8s loin de l'excellence, professionnelle diversement, de ma m\u00e8re, de ma s\u0153ur, et de ma ni\u00e8ce Anne) : ma prononciation de l'anglais est erratique (la ligne accentuelle m'\u00e9chappe souvent, ce qui est certainement un effet de mon absorption rythmique dans la langue de la po\u00e9sie), je ne l'\u00e9cris pas. Mais je la lis. Je lis m\u00eame plus volontiers en anglais qu'en fran\u00e7ais : dispositif de protection de la langue de po\u00e9sie, du m\u00eame ordre qu'autrefois le fut celui des bruits.\n\nJe me souviens de Pooh et de ses po\u00e8mes, qu'il appelle des \u00ab bourdonnements \u00bb, des \u00ab hums \u00bb (comme un bruit des abeilles du monde autour du miel de po\u00e9sie). Je me souviens du blaireau de _The Wind in the Willows_ (Mr. Badger), des jeunes h\u00e9rissons dans sa cuisine avec leurs petits foulards \u00e9cossais bien serr\u00e9s contre la neige de l'hiver (j'ai toujours eu une affection d\u00e9bordante pour les h\u00e9rissons), de son amie la taupe _(Mole)_ , qui m'inspira un conte pour mon auditoire fraternel (\u00ab La taupe qui voulait voir la mer \u00bb), et surtout un po\u00e8me, mon premier po\u00e8me en anglais, dont je n'ai retenu qu'une strophe de trois vers, sans doute \u00e0 cause de l'usage bizarre de la pr\u00e9position _among_ qu'ils contiennent : \u00ab _Far among\/ the wind's song\/is the Mole\/. \u00bb_\n\nMais j'entends surtout le _sing-song_ d'un po\u00e8me d'A. A. Milne (le cr\u00e9ateur de \u00ab Pooh \u00bb) caract\u00e9ristique d'une r\u00e9citation collective de classe :\n\n _Ti-mo-thy-Tim_ has-ten-pink-toes\n\nAnd ten pink toes has Timothy Tim\n\nThey go with him wherever he goes\n\nAnd wherever he goes they go with him.\n\nEnivrante \u00e9tait la houle des reprises de vers \u00e0 vers, la vague du nouveau vers pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9e depuis la cr\u00eate d'un _And_ , fascinantes les balles de mitrailleuse monosyllabiques de ses mots, \u00e9blouissants enfin les seuls non monosyllabes, les dactyles si peu fran\u00e7ais de _wherever_ et surtout, surtout de \u00ab Timothy \u00bb. Ses doigts de pied sont roses, mais ses yeux sont bleus : \u00ab _Timothy Tim has two blue eyes\/And two blue eyes has Timothy Tim_. \u00bb\n\n## 110 (\u00a7 39) Nous participions avec componction \u00e0 la c\u00e9r\u00e9monie trimestrielle de la mesure\n\nJe m'\u00e9tonne que mon p\u00e8re n'ait pas choisi, comme le faisaient d'autres p\u00e8res de famille, plut\u00f4t un arbre du jardin, un pin, ou l'abricotier : une incise dans l'\u00e9corce de l'arbre en aurait mieux encore conserv\u00e9 le souvenir, et accentu\u00e9 la m\u00e9taphore v\u00e9g\u00e9tale. Cette tradition-l\u00e0, apparemment, n'a pas disparu, si j'en juge par un merveilleux dessin de Philippe Gelluk dans son album _Le Quatri\u00e8me Chat_ o\u00f9 le h\u00e9ros, Le Chat soi-m\u00eame (\u00ab Le \u00bb, semble-t-il, est son pr\u00e9nom), mesure ainsi son fils au tronc d'un arbre, et constate avec stupeur que les marques pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes (implicitement pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes) sont au-dessus de la t\u00eate du jeune \u00ab Chat \u00bb. (On pourrait imaginer un arbre espi\u00e8gle, ayant grandi lui-m\u00eame pendant l'intervalle de deux mesures.)\n\nMais la c\u00e9r\u00e9monie de la mesure de nos tailles enfantines m'\u00e9voque surtout aujourd'hui mon vieil ami de la rue de Vaugirard, pr\u00e8s du Palais s\u00e9natorial du Luxembourg, **cette personnalit\u00e9 parisienne peu connue, une copie horizontale de Monsieur le m\u00e8tre \u00e9talon,** et le paradoxe qui menace toutes les unit\u00e9s de r\u00e9f\u00e9rence pour des mesures. Wittgenstein, en effet, dans les _Investigations philosophiques_ , affirme, elliptiquement et \u00e9nigmatiquement comme il lui arrive souvent, qu'on ne peut pas dire de lui qu'il a, ni qu'il n'a pas, un m\u00e8tre de long.\n\nKripke trouve que cette propri\u00e9t\u00e9 du m\u00e8tre \u00e9talon du pavillon de Breteuil (c'est de lui qu'il s'agit) est v\u00e9ritablement \u00ab extraordinaire \u00bb et il ajoute : \u00ab Je pense que Wittgenstein se trompe. \u00bb Je ne prendrai pas parti dans ce grave d\u00e9bat philosophique, longuement soupes\u00e9 par Nathan Salmon dans le vol. LXXXVIII des _Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society_ en 1988.\n\nPour Wittgenstein, semble-t-il, cette propri\u00e9t\u00e9 paradoxale, non du m\u00e8tre abstrait mais du m\u00e8tre \u00e9talon r\u00e9sulte de son r\u00f4le particulier dans le \u00ab jeu de langage \u00bb de la mesure : car tout objet a une longueur, mais une longueur mesur\u00e9e n'est \u00ab un m\u00e8tre \u00bb que par comparaison avec l'\u00e9talon. Dans ce cas (cousin donc du c\u00e9l\u00e8bre barbier de Lord Bertrand Russell qui rasait tous les hommes du village qui ne se rasaient pas eux-m\u00eames) l'\u00e9talon ne peut se mesurer lui-m\u00eame (et pourtant a une longueur, comme tout objet) (cette pr\u00e9sentation du paradoxe est l\u00e9g\u00e8rement diff\u00e9rente de celle de Wittgenstein : on ne peut ni dire ni ne pas dire que le m\u00e8tre \u00e9talon a un m\u00e8tre de longueur).\n\nMais qu'en est-il, alors, de la copie du m\u00e8tre, de \u00ab mon \u00bb m\u00e8tre ? Ne pourrait-on se servir de lui comme rempla\u00e7ant, comme substitut, comme double ? N'est-il pas plus fondamentalement de la longueur d'un m\u00e8tre que n'importe quel m\u00e8tre-ruban, que n'importe quelle toise ? Et ne pourrait-on, ayant v\u00e9rifi\u00e9 la perfection de sa longueur, lui demander son aide pour mesurer, \u00e0 son tour, le m\u00e8tre \u00e9talon ? (De m\u00eame que le barbier de Russell, se rasant face \u00e0 son miroir de barbier, rase son double.) Autrement dit, pour \u00e9viter toute difficult\u00e9 logique, les \u00e9talons de mesure ne devraient-ils pas \u00eatre, toujours, des \u00ab **doubles** \u00bb ?\n\nVoil\u00e0 ce que je pensais, l'autre jour, en remontant la rue Garanci\u00e8re, apr\u00e8s avoir \u00e9voqu\u00e9, dans ce chapitre, l'image-m\u00e9moire de l'acte de nos mensurations. Et je me demandais, m\u00e9lancoliquement r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissant sur la d\u00e9ch\u00e9ance de mon vieil ami, qui n'est plus que la copie d'un dieu d\u00e9chu, dont la longueur (qui n'est certainement plus d'un m\u00e8tre, de toute fa\u00e7on) n'est m\u00eame plus susceptible de paradoxe, puisqu'il a \u00e9t\u00e9 remplac\u00e9 par une longueur d'onde, si le m\u00e8tre, en changeant, en devenant raie lumineuse, n'avait pas seulement acquis une plus grande pr\u00e9cision et stabilit\u00e9, mais aussi un statut plus purement paradoxal, et sans rem\u00e8de : car la lumi\u00e8re n'est pas un artefact, n'a pas de double.\n\n## 111 (\u00a7 40) Mon p\u00e8re avait pour nous, je ne dirais pas des ambitions olympiques, du moins l'espoir de nous voir r\u00e9ussir honorablement dans les disciplines de l'athl\u00e9tisme\n\nJe fus sa premi\u00e8re d\u00e9ception. Mes d\u00e9buts avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 prometteurs : je courais bien et volontiers, \u00e0 la fois vite ou longtemps, je sautais avec quelque enthousiasme quoique peu techniquement (\u00ab mais sans technique un don n'est rien qu'un'sal'manie \u00bb dit le po\u00e8te). J'\u00e9tais surtout \u00e0 l'aise avec la course animale (quatre pattes), et le saut sans \u00e9lan, disciplines non reconnues par la FFA (F\u00e9d\u00e9ration fran\u00e7aise d'athl\u00e9tisme). Mais ni les dispositions ni le go\u00fbt de l'effort sportif ne surv\u00e9curent \u00e0 notre transplantation \u00e0 Paris. Et je n'eus jamais le loisir de devenir (malgr\u00e9 quelques essais en \u00ab scolaire \u00bb) un bon \u00ab trois-quarts aile \u00bb. Je me contentai (je me contente toujours) d'acqu\u00e9rir une certaine comp\u00e9tence num\u00e9rique des diverses sp\u00e9cialit\u00e9s olympiques et de me montrer un supporter r\u00e9solu de l'\u00e9quipe de Toulon (l'\u00e9quipe toujours soutenue par mon p\u00e8re) ainsi que de celles de Galles et d'\u00c9cosse (par sympathie pour les paysages du Fife ou de Carmarthen, comme pour la \u00ab mati\u00e8re de Bretagne \u00bb, les romans fabuleux m\u00e9di\u00e9vaux dont j'admets l'origine celte).\n\nLe relais du flambeau des ambitions paternelles ne put pas non plus \u00eatre confi\u00e9 \u00e0 ma s\u0153ur. Elle fit quelques essais, tr\u00e8s concluants, dans le saut en longueur, mais elle s'interrompit assez vite pour une raison assez sp\u00e9ciale : elle voulait bien participer \u00e0 des comp\u00e9titions (\u00e0 l'extr\u00eame rigueur) mais elle d\u00e9testait qu'on la regarde sauter. Il lui aurait fallu des \u00e9preuves sans public, sans arbitre, et des concurrentes qui d\u00e9tourneraient le regard au moment de ses \u00ab essais \u00bb. Elle profita un jour de l'effervescence qui entourait une championne (qui avait d\u00fb approcher ou m\u00eame d\u00e9passer six m\u00e8tres, performance assez rare dans les ann\u00e9es cinquante) pour tenter d'effectuer en quelque sorte clandestinement son propre saut. Elle se fit une entorse et abandonna la comp\u00e9tition.\n\nLe projecteur se d\u00e9pla\u00e7a alors vers mon fr\u00e8re Pierre, son cadet de quinze mois. C'\u00e9tait le moment o\u00f9, un peu partout, se mettaient (avec retard) \u00e0 fleurir les piscines (si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi). Et c'est dans cette direction toute nouvelle (familialement parlant) qu'il choisit de s'orienter. Ses progr\u00e8s furent rapides. Il parvint \u00e0 un \u00ab niveau \u00bb, comme on dit, scolaire et universitaire \u00ab national \u00bb, en crawl et encore plus brillamment en brasse. Cette fois, ce sont les exigences de l'entra\u00eenement moderne, peu compatibles avec des \u00e9tudes de biologie, aggrav\u00e9es de son appartenance \u00e0 la f\u00e9d\u00e9ration sportive concurrente (politiquement) de l'officielle, ce qui ne lui facilitait pas les choses, et du peu de sympathie qu'il ressentait pour les modes de pens\u00e9e et de vie des aspirants champions (on a vu mieux depuis !) qui entrav\u00e8rent sa marche (de toute fa\u00e7on incertaine) vers la gloire natatoire.\n\nSautons une g\u00e9n\u00e9ration. Ni ma fille Laurence, ni la plupart de mes neveux et ni\u00e8ces (mon neveu Vincent, qui est un enseignant des disciplines sportives n'est pas un sportif de comp\u00e9tition) n'ont \u00e9t\u00e9 tent\u00e9s d'incarner le m\u00eame r\u00eave, devenu cette fois grand-paternel (et, disons-le, un peu avunculaire aussi). A l'exception de mon neveu Fran\u00e7ois. Ayant d\u00e9pass\u00e9 son grand-p\u00e8re, son p\u00e8re, son oncle et sa tante, ainsi que son fr\u00e8re, ses s\u0153urs et ses cousines par la taille (1 m\u00e8tre 98 ou 99), il entreprit de nous surpasser tous en natation.\n\nIl fit mieux que son p\u00e8re, aussi bien en crawl qu'en brasse, fut champion de France universitaire, aurait pu tenter sa chance en \u00ab haute comp\u00e9tition \u00bb, comme on dit. Il s'arr\u00eata, pour des raisons \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s semblables (et l'atmosph\u00e8re, dans les r\u00e9gions de grandes performances, \u00e9tait devenue encore plus difficilement respirable que vingt ans auparavant. Comme le dit un jour l'entra\u00eeneur des \u00ab espoirs \u00bb fran\u00e7ais, dont il faisait partie (et qui entra\u00eenait encore l'\u00e9quipe de France aux jeux Olympiques de Barcelone) : \u00ab Roubaud, il ne continuera pas. Il est trop intelligent ! \u00bb). Il avait, de plus, une particularit\u00e9 assez handicapante pour un nageur de championnat : il d\u00e9testait les virages. Il refusa toujours d'apprendre \u00e0 les prendre selon les normes des r\u00e8glements de l'\u00e9poque (qui ont \u00e9t\u00e9 abrog\u00e9es depuis !), et perdait r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement une demi-seconde \u00e0 chaque fois. Je dus ainsi renoncer \u00e0 mon r\u00eave d'aller le soutenir aux jeux Olympiques, o\u00f9 je m'\u00e9tais promis de me rendre comme supporter familial, s'il \u00e9tait arriv\u00e9 jusque-l\u00e0.\n\nIl ne renon\u00e7a pas cependant \u00e0 toute comp\u00e9tition sportive, se tournant (avec succ\u00e8s), vers la boxe fran\u00e7aise. (Mon p\u00e8re a \u00e9t\u00e9 un grand amateur de boxe, dans les grandes ann\u00e9es de ce sport, qui vont de Carpentier \u00e0 Cerdan et de Jack Dempsey \u00e0 Ray \u00ab Sugar \u00bb Robinson.)\n\n## 112 (\u00a7 40) Voil\u00e0 ce qui arriverait \u00e0 leurs filles si elles continuaient \u00e0 pr\u00e9tendre faire de la course \u00e0 pied\n\nA cette \u00e9poque mon p\u00e8re jouait volontiers \u00e0 un petit jeu. Il demandait : Quel est, selon vous, le temps mis par un bon coureur pour franchir 100 m\u00e8tres ? Les \u00e9valuations propos\u00e9es allaient d'une seconde \u00e0 une minute. Particuli\u00e8rement frappant et surprenant pour lui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 le fait que notre amie Nina avait \u00e9t\u00e9 de celles (et ceux) qui avaient r\u00e9pondu \u00ab une minute \u00bb (ou \u00ab une seconde \u00bb, je ne sais), elle, disait mon p\u00e8re, qui comme scientifique, comme astrophysicienne, habitu\u00e9e par cons\u00e9quent aux \u00e9chelles de nombres et aux mesures, aurait d\u00fb \u00eatre plus \u00e0 m\u00eame d'en juger correctement\n\nMais bien au contraire, r\u00e9pondait en substance ma m\u00e8re qui n'avait jamais pu s'int\u00e9resser aux performances des jeux Olympiques (pas plus qu'\u00e0 celles des \u00e9quipes de rugby) (elle fit seulement, bien plus tard, un effort surhumain pour retenir celles, natatoires, de mon fr\u00e8re Pierre, puis celles, plus brillantes encore et toujours natatoires de son petit-fils Fran\u00e7ois, fils de son fils, et mon neveu), bien au contraire, disait \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s ma m\u00e8re, qu'est-ce qu'un 100 m\u00e8tres pour quelqu'un qui a l'habitude de compter en ann\u00e9es-lumi\u00e8re, de parcourir par la pens\u00e9e des galaxies ?\n\nMais quand m\u00eame ! r\u00e9p\u00e9tait mon p\u00e8re, courir un 100 m\u00e8tres en une seconde signifierait une vitesse de 360 kilom\u00e8tres \u00e0 l'heure, et le courir en une minute est quelque chose qu'on peut faire assez facilement en marchant. Sans aucun doute, r\u00e9pliquait ma m\u00e8re, mais pourquoi se fatiguer \u00e0 effectuer un tel calcul ? En effet, pourquoi ?\n\nJ'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 tr\u00e8s jeune de ceux qui connaissaient plut\u00f4t bien les limites spatiales ou temporelles atteintes par coureurs, sauteurs et lanceurs des diff\u00e9rents pays. J'ai vu tomber les \u00ab barri\u00e8res symboliques \u00bb, les 4 minutes au _mile_ , les 17 m\u00e8tres au triple saut, et m\u00eame les 6 m\u00e8tres \u00e0 la perche. Autant que la beaut\u00e9 des grandes courses, les fins de 800 m\u00e8tres de S\u00e9bastian Coe, les souffrances irr\u00e9sistibles de Zatopek, auxquelles j'ai rarement assist\u00e9 _in vivo_ , c'est la profusion enchanteresse des nombres (performances et classements) qui m'avait tout de suite attir\u00e9, et ce n'est que tout r\u00e9cemment que la perversion \u00e9vidente du \u00ab march\u00e9 \u00bb sportif, avec son cort\u00e8ge de dopages, de truquages et de sponsoring prenant le relais du gavage d'\u00c9tat, m'en a finalement d\u00e9tourn\u00e9.\n\nL'un de mes derniers \u00e9tonnements de spectateur a \u00e9t\u00e9 de voir une femme courir le 100 m\u00e8tres en moins de 11 secondes : je me suis souvenu en effet d'avoir assist\u00e9 (ce devait \u00eatre en 1943) \u00e0 une course disput\u00e9e sur le stade de Carcassonne (que je fr\u00e9quentais plus souvent pour les matches de rugby), dont le tr\u00e8s large vainqueur avait \u00e9t\u00e9 le champion de France de l'\u00e9poque, nomm\u00e9 Valmy (un nom fort symbolique pour un temps de guerre), et il avait couru (assez loin de son propre record (10 sec. 5), il est vrai) en 10 secondes et 9 dixi\u00e8mes.\n\nL'athl\u00e9tisme f\u00e9minin, on le sait, est parti \u00e0 la poursuite de celui des hommes, et l'\u00e9cart entre eux ne cesse de se r\u00e9duire (aujourd'hui le record f\u00e9minin du 100 m\u00e8tres, celui de Florence Griffith Joyner (\u00ab Flo Jo \u00bb) avec 10 secondes et 49 centi\u00e8mes vient juste de d\u00e9passer le record de France de Valmy, \u00e9tabli il y a un demi-si\u00e8cle). Ce qui a conduit certains chercheurs anglais \u00e0 annoncer, r\u00e9cemment, dans _Nature_ bien entendu, en extrapolant les courbes de progression des records depuis les origines qu'une femme battrait un record mondial masculin (je n'ai pas not\u00e9 dans quelle discipline, mais je crois qu'il s'agissait d'une course de fond, vraisemblablement le marathon) en 2028. J'aurais bien voulu voir \u00e7a, si cela doit se produire. Mais le commentateur du _Times_ \u00e9tait sceptique.\n\n## 113 (\u00a7 40) Un accord plus profond avec son corps, avec soi-m\u00eame\n\nJ'ai cru longtemps l'atteindre par la ma\u00eetrise du saut en hauteur. C'\u00e9tait ma discipline pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e, enfant. J'aspirais au don de d\u00e9tente pure des sauterelles, dont je sentais la pression anticipatrice dans ma paume quand je les retenais de force en appuyant, de mon doigt, sur leur corps brun. Je regardais l'\u00e9lastique oscillant entre les poteaux de fortune du stade \u00e0 1 m\u00e8tre 20, 1 m\u00e8tre 30 au-dessus de la fosse \u00e0 sable, et je me souvenais, au futur ant\u00e9rieur, du poids de mon corps dans ce sable, une fois l'obstacle franchi. J'\u00e9tais, alors, \u00ab athl\u00e8te dans ma t\u00eate \u00bb, comme dit mon ami oulipien Paul Fournel. Mais les \u00e9lytres bleus, rouges, me manquaient.\n\nEffet d'une sorte de punition des dieux, d'un exercice \u00e9l\u00e9mentaire de l'inventivit\u00e9 du destin, c'est pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment en sautant en hauteur que j'ai eu le deuxi\u00e8me accident corporel s\u00e9rieux de mon existence, parmi quatre ou cinq (l'h\u00e9sitation sur le nombre ne vient pas d'un oubli, mais d'une incertitude sur le statut du quatri\u00e8me d'entre eux). Le r\u00e9sultat en fut une fracture du poignet droit.\n\nJ'en vois tr\u00e8s nettement l'instant. Autrement dit je le construis avec une telle intensit\u00e9, une telle force de conviction int\u00e9rieure que je me dis \u00ab c'est l\u00e0 ! \u00bb, \u00ab voil\u00e0 ! \u00bb. Je vois la cin\u00e9matique terminale de l'\u00e9v\u00e9nement, bien que je ne ressente plus la douleur. Je lui attribue sans h\u00e9sitation son titre : fracture du poignet (droit).\n\nIl me faudrait plut\u00f4t \u00e9crire : deuxi\u00e8me fracture du poignet. Je ne vois pas cet instant d'ach\u00e8vement de la chute sans voir aussit\u00f4t lui succ\u00e9der cet autre moment, qui est aussi la fin d'un mouvement de pr\u00e9cipitation oblique vers le sol. **Je vois la terre proche, dans l'all\u00e9e du jardin qui s'approche du lavoir ; c'est l'all\u00e9e des iris ; des racines d'iris la bordent, \u00e9mergent durement du sol, et j'ach\u00e8ve sur l'une d'elles ma chute, apr\u00e8s un saut, ou apr\u00e8s avoir tr\u00e9buch\u00e9 en course ; je finis de tomber et je vois avec une extr\u00eame nettet\u00e9 le bras noueux et dur de la racine d'iris (je vois qu'il s'agit d'iris, c'est ainsi ; pourtant je ne vois aucune fleur) sur laquelle je vais tordre, fracturer mon poignet droit** (sur laquelle j'ai tordu, fractur\u00e9 mon poignet droit).\n\nNous sautions, pendant les heures \u00ab ordinaires \u00bb de \u00ab gymnastique \u00bb (distinctes des longues exp\u00e9ditions solennelles au stade, o\u00f9 le sautoir \u00e9tait pourvu de sable) dans la cour m\u00eame du lyc\u00e9e. L'installation \u00e9tait des plus rudimentaires, utilisant des poteaux m\u00e9talliques pr\u00e9sents l\u00e0 sans intention athl\u00e9tique aucune : la corde \u00e9lastique plac\u00e9e entre eux, on prenait un peu d'\u00e9lan, on courait, on sautait. On sautait \u00ab en ciseaux \u00bb. Le \u00ab rouleau californien \u00bb venait juste d'\u00eatre invent\u00e9, le \u00ab rouleau ventral \u00bb \u00e9tait inconnu, le _fosbury flop_ encore dans les limbes. D'ailleurs, aucune de ces techniques sophistiqu\u00e9es n'aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 envisageable dans cette cour : on prenait son \u00e9lan et on retombait sur du ciment.\n\nAinsi, ce jour-l\u00e0, j'ai saut\u00e9 et je suis retomb\u00e9, mal, sur le ciment. **Je le vois venir. Je vois venir le sol dur ray\u00e9 de craie. Je vois aussi, debout \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9** du poteau (c'est une image concomitante, mais s\u00e9par\u00e9e) **mon meilleur ami d'alors, Sicard, dit trois-demi,** que je n'ai jamais rencontr\u00e9 apr\u00e8s notre d\u00e9part de Carcassonne (il est mort, il est mort jeune, m'ont dit l'ann\u00e9e derni\u00e8re d'autres visages de ces ann\u00e9es, reconnaissables sur les photographies de classe, pas vraiment oubli\u00e9s, pas vraiment souvenus, en les voyant ressouvenus).\n\n## 114 (\u00a7 41) Les nouvelles lointaines de la guerre\n\nLointaine \u00e9tait la guerre, loin ses destructions, ses morts, les bombardements, les arrestations. Lointaine et proche, elle impr\u00e9gnait l'air et les esprits, les conversations, les silences, les voix elles-m\u00eames proches et lointaines, les voix lointaines surtout qui nous parvenaient d'elle, port\u00e9es par la radio. La musique embl\u00e9matique de la guerre \u00e9tait log\u00e9e dans ma t\u00eate : c'\u00e9tait l'indicatif de \u00ab Londres \u00bb (comme on disait), un long fragment m\u00e9lodique de la _Water Music_ de Haendel.\n\nJ'ignore si le choix de cette m\u00e9lodie avait ob\u00e9i \u00e0 l'intention qu'on pourrait \u00eatre tent\u00e9 de lui attribuer : celle d'unir, pour parler \u00e0 la France occup\u00e9e, l'Allemagne et l'Angleterre, l'Angleterre du non-renoncement, celle qui fut une longue ann\u00e9e seule \u00e0 s'interposer entre Hitler et sa victoire, et l'Allemagne civilis\u00e9e, momentan\u00e9ment r\u00e9duite au silence, en la figure d'un musicien allemand devenu anglais. (C'est en tout cas cette signification que j'ai retenue.) Je l'entendais, et la guerre \u00e9tait l\u00e0. La guerre me parvenait \u00e0 travers elle, et son futur, la paix, la paix libre. Car c'\u00e9tait une voix optimiste, joyeuse, proph\u00e9tique, qui annon\u00e7ait la Lib\u00e9ration et l'abondance, la fin de la faim.\n\nJe ne cessais pour ainsi dire jamais de l'entendre. Et je l'entendais de la mani\u00e8re la plus assur\u00e9e pour le souvenir, comme une voix int\u00e9rieure, qui n'avait pas besoin de hasard pour m'appara\u00eetre, que je n'avais pas \u00e0 chercher. Elle me chantait silencieusement le long des rues, de la maison au lyc\u00e9e, du lyc\u00e9e \u00e0 la maison, avec la basse continue des quatre vents s'agenouillant sur la place Davila.\n\nJe l'entendais silencieusement et silencieux, car il \u00e9tait bien entendu qu'il n'\u00e9tait pas question de chanter cet air-l\u00e0, de le siffler en dehors de nos murs. C'\u00e9tait un air interdit, une m\u00e9lodie clandestine qui devait \u00eatre camoufl\u00e9e. On peignait dessus elle la peinture bleu nuit du silence.\n\nElle m'accompagnait dans les rues encore noires et froides des hivers affam\u00e9s, voix de la Tamise \u00e0 Londres, voix de la Royal Navy, de la Royal Air Force, de la Manche infranchissable aux navires hitl\u00e9riens, comme elle l'avait autrefois \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e0 ceux de Napol\u00e9on (et je sentais que ce n'\u00e9tait pas par hasard que mon professeur d'anglais, le jovial Mr. Charles, nous avait propos\u00e9 pour un th\u00e8me un paragraphe o\u00f9 il \u00e9tait question de l'armada d'embarcations que l'empereur avait entass\u00e9es \u00e0 Boulogne en vue d'une invasion toujours envisag\u00e9e, toujours remise : des \u00ab p\u00e9niches \u00e0 fond plat \u00bb).\n\nParfois, quand les rues \u00e9taient vides, quand \u00e0 aucune fen\u00eatre des \u00ab oreilles ennemies \u00bb ne m'\u00e9coutaient, les mains dans les poches marchant (j'aimais marcher les mains dans les poches, ma \u00ab p\u00e8lerine \u00bb sur les \u00e9paules, mon b\u00e9ret sur la t\u00eate (quand je ne l'avais pas oubli\u00e9 \u00e0 la maison, ou au lyc\u00e9e)), je sifflais _Water Music_ et j'entendais, avec le frisson dorsal que donne parfois la musique quand elle se saisit des commandes de nos \u00e9motions : \u00ab Ici, Londres ! \u00bb\n\n# (DU CHAPITRE 6)\n\n## 115 (\u00a7 42) Mais d\u00e8s le lendemain du 6 juin il \u00e9tait sur les routes (\u00e0 v\u00e9lo)\n\n(D'un \u00ab t\u00e9moignage \u00bb de mon p\u00e8re, recueilli au magn\u00e9tophone le 26 ao\u00fbt 1976, \u00e0 la Tuilerie de Saint-F\u00e9lix.)\n\n\u2013 Je me souviens, j'avais rendez-vous du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de Quillan. J'\u00e9tais all\u00e9 d'abord \u00e0 Narbonne et j'ai fait le trajet en v\u00e9lo, sans prendre le temps de manger et sans m\u00eame trouver un verre de vin dans les Corbi\u00e8res. J'avais rendez-vous avec des responsables de maquis. J'\u00e9tais chez un royaliste qui m'h\u00e9bergeait, pr\u00e8s de la gare de Narbonne.\n\n _Qu. :_ Pourquoi n'y avait-il pas de vin ? Tout le monde arrosait le d\u00e9barquement.\n\n\u2013 Je voulais du vin parce que je crevais de faim. J'\u00e9tais parti le matin sans rien. J'avais \u00e0 faire soixante kilom\u00e8tres dans les montagnes, les Corbi\u00e8res, puis les Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es, avec des cols. Des gendarmes m'ont arr\u00eat\u00e9. Je me suis dit : ceux-l\u00e0, je les fais fusiller \u00e0 la Lib\u00e9ration, C'est une id\u00e9e qui m'est venue, je m'en souviens, parce que vous couper la cadence quand on monte un col ! Je n'avais rien dans le ventre, et dans un village o\u00f9 je m'\u00e9tais arr\u00eat\u00e9, je ne sais plus o\u00f9, rien, m\u00eame pas un verre de vin. On ne peut pas imaginer la p\u00e9nurie de ce Midi, sec. Il y a eu deux ann\u00e9es de s\u00e9cheresse, pire que cette ann\u00e9e. En 44 j'ai vu le bl\u00e9 haut comme \u00e7a, une touffe par-ci, une touffe par-l\u00e0.\n\nC'\u00e9tait apr\u00e8s le d\u00e9barquement, il y avait des parties de l'Auvergne qui \u00e9taient lib\u00e9r\u00e9es, Aurillac \u00e9tait aux mains des Allemands et des miliciens, Mauriac \u00e9tait lib\u00e9r\u00e9, le train circulait d'ailleurs, avec tout ce que \u00e7a pouvait donner comme provocateurs possibles, espions, etc.\n\nIl faut que je cite une chose qui visuellement m'est rest\u00e9e. Je suis dans un train de cette ligne. Je venais de v\u00e9rifier que telle ligne avait saut\u00e9, comme c'\u00e9tait prescrit. Il y avait des soldats allemands qui venaient de je ne sais o\u00f9. Sans doute du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'Italie pour aller vers le front de Normandie.\n\nJe suis dans un compartiment, appara\u00eet un magnifique Allemand, genre Beethoven. Il devait \u00eatre un peu grad\u00e9, mais pas officier. Il s'est mis \u00e0 nous adjurer de nous lever en masse pour lutter contre le capitalisme anglo-am\u00e9ricain. C'\u00e9tait absolument extraordinaire. (J'ai tout \u00e0 fait retrouv\u00e9 \u00e7a quand j'ai lu _Le Silence de la mer_ , de Vercors.)\n\nNous \u00e9tions huit. Personne ne regardait, comme s'il parlait dans le vide. Ensuite j'ai retrouv\u00e9 trois des personnes du compartiment. Elles \u00e9taient dans le coup. Lui \u00e9tait \u00e9mouvant, convaincu, un type magnifique. Et c'\u00e9tait vrai, le capitalisme anglo-am\u00e9ricain allait venir. Mais le nazisme, anticapitaliste ! Cette image, ce type avec sa t\u00eate noble nous adjurant de fa\u00e7on \u00e9mouvante, et les Fran\u00e7ais, disait-il, m\u00e9prisant les grandes causes et ne s'int\u00e9ressant qu'\u00e0 leurs petits probl\u00e8mes.\n\n## 116 (\u00a7 44) Je ne suis pas m\u00e9content de voir la certitude interne de ma constance num\u00e9rologique, elle aussi, confirm\u00e9e\n\nJe vois m\u00eame en germe les modalit\u00e9s ult\u00e9rieures les plus constantes de ses manifestations : je ne notais pas seulement, de la fen\u00eatre de la voiture, le nombre des tanks allemands d\u00e9truits rencontr\u00e9s dans notre progression cahotique vers Lyon, mais la distance aux villes en ce temps-l\u00e0 pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment rep\u00e9r\u00e9e par les bornes kilom\u00e9triques des nationales et des d\u00e9partementales (anticipant le \u00ab message \u00bb kilom\u00e9trique suivant \u00e0 l'aide des hectom\u00e9triques) (le fait que j'ai pu ainsi mesurer notre rapprochement de la ville du Puy indiquait que, sur cette route au moins du d\u00e9partement de la Haute-Loire, \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence d'autres r\u00e9gions (o\u00f9 les bornes, sur des d\u00e9partementales d\u00e9sh\u00e9rit\u00e9es, rest\u00e8rent muettes longtemps apr\u00e8s la fin de la guerre), on n'avait pas \u00ab camoufl\u00e9 \u00bb ces signes strat\u00e9giques capitaux au temps de la \u00ab dr\u00f4le de guerre \u00bb, mesure futile du m\u00eame type que celle de la peinture bleu nuit sur les carreaux des fen\u00eatres).\n\nJe n'ai pas cess\u00e9 depuis de m'int\u00e9resser \u00e0 ces ponctuations des paysages par ces \u00ab nombres concrets \u00bb, vigies des voyageurs, instruments de mesure, de rep\u00e9rage, de mise en ordre du monde, rassurants et familiers (sur les bonnes routes, o\u00f9 le goudron \u00e9tait sans failles, sans orni\u00e8res, la peinture noire de leur calligraphie uniforme \u00e9tait nette, lisible, propre : je dis \u00e0 dessein \u00ab \u00e9tait \u00bb car je vois bien qu'elles disparaissent. Elles vieillissent, elles tombent, d\u00e9chauss\u00e9es, dents salies aux racines terreuses des m\u00e2choires de routes. Elles disparaissent dans l'herbe, les foss\u00e9s, et ne sont pas remplac\u00e9es.\n\nElles t\u00e9moignaient d'un temps o\u00f9 l'usage des voies de communication n'\u00e9tait pas exclusivement r\u00e9serv\u00e9 \u00e0 un seul genre de v\u00e9hicules, o\u00f9 les beaux rubans noirs des chauss\u00e9es (luisantes, travers\u00e9es d'escargots \u00e0 la pluie, tremp\u00e9es de flaques mirages fuyantes dans la grande chaleur d'\u00e9t\u00e9) amoureusement soign\u00e9es, \u00ab \u00e9lev\u00e9es \u00bb par les Ponts et Chauss\u00e9es (dont Paul Geniet, notre ami, \u00e9tait ing\u00e9nieur) n'\u00e9taient pas, comme ils le sont aujourd'hui accapar\u00e9s par les seuls v\u00e9hicules \u00e0 moteur.\n\nC'\u00e9taient les pi\u00e9tons, les cyclistes, les charrettes mues par les chevaux, et les voitures automobiles m\u00eame, quand leurs conducteurs, pas encore pervertis par le pouvoir corrupteur que leur donne l'\u00e9conomie dite \u00ab de march\u00e9 \u00bb, avaient le sens du partage des routes (et la d\u00e9cence d'\u00e9viter les h\u00e9rissons), qui avaient besoin de ces pr\u00e9sences \u00e9pisodiques mais amicales, renforts et confirmations des cartes. Elles \u00e9taient con\u00e7ues \u00e0 hauteur d'homme, si je puis dire, c'est-\u00e0-dire d'abord pour l'homme \u00e0 pied (secondairement \u00e0 v\u00e9lo), qui pouvait seul appr\u00e9cier \u00e0 sa juste valeur le fait que Villegly \u00e9tait \u00e0 2 kilom\u00e8tres et 3 hectom\u00e8tres, ou Bagnoles \u00e0 0,625 kilom\u00e8tre (indication qui n'a disparu que tr\u00e8s r\u00e9cemment du panneau m\u00e9tallique bleu au carrefour) !\n\nEn haut de la c\u00f4te (prenons un exemple th\u00e9orique) le marcheur, ou le cycliste, posant ses pieds sur les gravillons du bord et sentant le sol soudain bizarrement immobile, s'asseyait sur le parapet \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la borne \u00e0 t\u00eate rouge (c'est elle qu'on apercevait, l\u00e0-haut, de lacet en lacet, pendant la mont\u00e9e). Et elle lui confiait (je refuse d'\u00e9crire \u00ab informer \u00bb, il s'agit de quelque chose de plus important, de plus intime qu'une simple information) que l'\u00e9glise du village, en bas, dans la vall\u00e9e, \u00e9tait \u00e0 3,4 kilom\u00e8tres, ce qui lui permettait d'\u00e9valuer justement le temps qui le s\u00e9parait encore du \u00ab demi-panach\u00e9 \u00bb pris sous le tilleul, \u00e0 la table m\u00e9tallique ronde du caf\u00e9. Mais tous ces exacts petits nombres d\u00e9cimaux sont inutiles, offensants m\u00eame pour des camions, des Mercedes ou des Volvos.\n\n(Sur les autoroutes une graduation sans gr\u00e2ce, technique, fonctionnelle, destin\u00e9e exclusivement \u00e0 l'information des policiers, des d\u00e9panneurs et des ambulances ne peut gu\u00e8re servir, pour un passager comme moi (quand par hasard j'y suis entra\u00een\u00e9 par la force des circonstances) qu'\u00e0 v\u00e9rifier du coin de l'\u0153il, en silence, les d\u00e9passements de la vitesse autoris\u00e9e par mon conducteur) (Highway 61, suivant laquelle j'ai descendu le Mississippi en 1976 n'a que de minuscules marques m\u00e9talliques vertes de mile en mile (on ne peut qualifier cela de bornes), et j'ai mis quelque temps \u00e0 m'y habituer (les premiers jours, le chemin me paraissait plus long qu'il ne l'\u00e9tait en r\u00e9alit\u00e9).)\n\n## 117 (suite in \u00a7 116) Les villes n'ont pas, de mani\u00e8re naturelle, de bornes signal\u00e9tiques\n\nLes villes n'ont pas, de mani\u00e8re naturelle, de bornes signal\u00e9tiques, sauf, et encore, le long des routes qui les traversent. Je pouvais suivre autrefois l'enfoncement des routes (route de Narbonne, de Toulouse, de Montr\u00e9al...) dans Carcassonne, et j'aimais particuli\u00e8rement celles o\u00f9 la ville prouvait son existence par l'affirmation d'une z\u00e9ro-distance \u00e0 elle-m\u00eame (preuve \u00e9galement de son importance, car elle \u00e9vitait l'humiliation des bourgs qui ne sont qu'une \u00e9tape hi\u00e9rarchiquement inf\u00e9rieure sur le trajet et qui disparaissent tout simplement des bornes quand ils ont \u00e9t\u00e9 travers\u00e9s). Elle n'\u00e9tait donc pas totalement isol\u00e9e, coup\u00e9e de ces itin\u00e9raires civilis\u00e9s dessin\u00e9s sur le visage du monde. Mais en 45 j'ai cherch\u00e9 vainement de tels signes rassurants dans Paris. Ce qui fait que j'ai d\u00fb inventer d'autres syst\u00e8mes de ponctuation rythmique de mes pas.\n\nDans les villes on peut suivre la num\u00e9rotation des maisons, les croissances diff\u00e9rentes des pairs et impairs. Il y a des rues minimales, telle la rue de l'Abb\u00e9-Migne qui n'a qu'un seul num\u00e9ro, celui de l'\u00e9glise des Blancs-Manteaux (existe-t-il des rues sans num\u00e9ro ? m\u00e9ritent-elles encore le nom de rues ?). D'autres, au contraire sont si longues qu'elles d\u00e9passent largement la centaine (la rue de Vaugirard fut la premi\u00e8re \u00e0 m'impressionner par son interminabilit\u00e9). C'est pour se reconna\u00eetre dans les rues longues, quand on d\u00e9sire se rendre \u00e0 un num\u00e9ro bien d\u00e9termin\u00e9, qu'il importe de conna\u00eetre la r\u00e8gle d'or de la num\u00e9rotation fran\u00e7aise (j'ai constat\u00e9 avec stup\u00e9faction que nombre de mes amis et connaissances l'ignoraient !) **; les num\u00e9ros impairs sont \u00e0 gauche en montant.** Cela veut dire que si on d\u00e9bouche, par une rue perpendiculaire X, sur le num\u00e9ro 101 de la rue Y, de laquelle on cherche le num\u00e9ro 37, par exemple (et si d'autres num\u00e9ros ne sont pas imm\u00e9diatement visibles), il faut se placer par la pens\u00e9e sur le trottoir du num\u00e9ro 101, le num\u00e9ro 101 \u00e0 sa gauche, et avancer \u00e0 reculons vers le num\u00e9ro 37 (ou bien se retourner et partir dans l'autre sens, si on ne veut pas attirer les regards et risquer des collisions).\n\n(Cette r\u00e8gle, que je tiens de mon grand-p\u00e8re, est bien plus s\u00fbre que celle qui dit que la num\u00e9rotation commence l\u00e0 o\u00f9 on est le plus pr\u00e8s de la Seine. Car la position relative de la Seine et de la rue n'est pas, disons-le, d'une clart\u00e9 g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement aveuglante. Qui plus est, ma r\u00e8gle est valable dans toutes les villes de France, m\u00eame celles o\u00f9 la Seine ne coule pas (je ne connais qu'une exception : celle de Caunes-Minervois, dans l'Aude, o\u00f9 une num\u00e9rotation unique court sur l'ensemble des maisons, ce qui est d'un grand int\u00e9r\u00eat. Heureusement pour le voyageur ou le postier d\u00e9butant, Caunes, c\u00e9l\u00e8bre par son marbre, plut\u00f4t de couleur et d'apparence mortadelle que de la blancheur \u00ab Carrare \u00bb, est de taille modeste). On pourra certes, critiquer l'uniformit\u00e9, le caract\u00e8re centralisateur, \u00ab jacobin \u00bb de ce syst\u00e8me, le comparer d\u00e9favorablement \u00e0 l'excentricit\u00e9 inventive bien connue des rues de Londres (dont je ne m\u00e9connais pas le charme).\n\nIl reste qu'il se pr\u00eate avantageusement \u00e0 des comparaisons num\u00e9rologiques, ce qui n'est pas \u00e0 n\u00e9gliger pour le pi\u00e9ton inv\u00e9t\u00e9r\u00e9 que je suis. Ma r\u00e8gle est simple \u00e0 retenir. Surtout si on prend garde au fait qu'elle repose sur l'association ancestrale, \u00e9tymologique et d\u00e9valorisante entre gauche (\u00ab maladroit \u00bb, \u00ab empot\u00e9 \u00bb, \u00ab sinistre \u00bb m\u00eame) et impair (qu'il ne faut pas commettre), s'opposant \u00e0 la droiture morale de droit, partenaire naturel du noble pair (\u00e0 prendre comme dans \u00ab pair de France \u00bb (plut\u00f4t que comme dans \u00ab jeune fille au pair \u00bb)). La num\u00e9rotation urbaine fran\u00e7aise (et europ\u00e9enne en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral) est, comme la ponctuation des routes par les bornes, humaniste, con\u00e7ue \u00e0 l'\u00e9chelle pi\u00e9tonne. Elle avance nombre \u00e0 nombre, maison \u00e0 maison (musardant m\u00eame parfois sur des \u00ab bis \u00bb et des \u00ab ter \u00bb (il ne me semble pas avoir jamais vu de \u00ab quarto \u00bb, ce qui est une preuve suppl\u00e9mentaire de la justesse de la TRA(M,m) (Th\u00e9orie du Rythme Abstrait (M\u00e9taphysique & math\u00e9matis\u00e9e) de Pierre Lusson, dont la pierre d'angle est la th\u00e9orie minimale, dite \u00ab th\u00e9orie 2-3 \u00bb) (dans certaines rues le remplacement des maisons anciennes par des appartements grand-standing ou des HLM selon le cas a parfois condens\u00e9 la num\u00e9rotation, cr\u00e9ant des \u00ab 10-18 \u00bb, des \u00ab 17-31 \u00bb ou des \u00ab 14-30 \u00bb du plus mauvais effet, \u00e0 mon avis)).\n\nElle n'atteint donc jamais, \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence de l'am\u00e9ricaine, la num\u00e9rotation par \u00ab blocks \u00bb, d'inspiration \u00ab automobiliste \u00bb (m\u00eame si elle existait avant l'automobile, ce que j'ignore. Si oui, je dirai qu'elle fut \u00ab automobiliste par anticipation \u00bb, ou m\u00eame, th\u00e9orie plus audacieuse, qu'elle fut responsable de l'automobilisation), aux chiffres pharamineux de Sunset Boulevard, par exemple, qui me stup\u00e9fi\u00e8rent en 1960 quand, Bernard Jaulin et moi-m\u00eame d\u00e9barqu\u00e9s \u00e0 Los Angeles pour une enqu\u00eate sur l'intelligence artificielle naissante, je me retrouvai dans un h\u00f4tel de Pacific Palisades, tout pr\u00e8s de l'oc\u00e9an et non \u00e0 Hollywood comme j'avais cru (de plus, pour atteindre le bord de l'eau, tout proche, il fallait prendre la voiture, car il \u00e9tait impossible de traverser la route \u00e0 cause de la circulation, ininterrompue, jamais arr\u00eat\u00e9e par le moindre feu rouge. Ce fut ce qu'on appelle un \u00ab choc culturel \u00bb).\n\nA l'extr\u00eame oppos\u00e9 du Nouveau Monde (car la maladie des num\u00e9rotations excessives est un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne \u00e9tendu \u00e0 tout le continent. Comme je l'ai su, non seulement par ma grand-m\u00e8re en 1942, mais un peu apr\u00e8s la guerre, en \u00e9crivant \u00e0 Sylvia en 1946 \u00e0 Buenos-Aires, o\u00f9 l'adresse \u00e9tait \u00ab Posadas 1415 \u00bb), j'ai d\u00e9couvert r\u00e9cemment, \u00e0 l'occasion d'un court s\u00e9jour \u00e0 Florence, un syst\u00e8me d'un grand int\u00e9r\u00eat et subtilit\u00e9 : c'est celui de la \u00ab double num\u00e9rotation \u00bb. Il y a des num\u00e9ros bleus (ceux des habitations, m'a-t-on dit) et des num\u00e9ros rouges (r\u00e9serv\u00e9s aux boutiques, aux lieux administratifs ( ?)). En pr\u00e9sence d'une telle richesse (source d'imaginations d\u00e9licieuses, d'\u00e9garements aventureux et de confusions), le plaisir de la d\u00e9ambulation redouble. Je verrais volontiers l'origine de cette distinction dans l'opposition, \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque de Savonarole, de Machiavel et des M\u00e9dicis, entre le \u00ab peuple menu \u00bb et le _popolo grasso_ , dont ce serait une trace \u00ab monumentaire \u00bb, au sens aujourd'hui oubli\u00e9.\n\n## 118 (seconde suite in \u00a7 116) Dans les villes comme sur les routes mon ennemie intime est l'automobile\n\nDans les villes comme sur les routes mon ennemie intime, l'adversaire de toute ma vie d'adulte pi\u00e9ton, est l'automobile : particuli\u00e8rement les v\u00e9hicules \u00e0 moteur de toutes esp\u00e8ces (sauf les autobus, que je v\u00e9n\u00e8re) qui encombrent Paris. Je n'ai pas beaucoup d'armes, il est vrai. Mais quels triomphes int\u00e9rieurs quand je contemple, me frayant un passage \u00e0 travers ces formes m\u00e9talliques sans gr\u00e2ce vautr\u00e9es avec d\u00e9sinvolture sur les trottoirs, les \u00e9normes embouteillages dont la capitale est si fi\u00e8re. Quelques id\u00e9es assez vagues de m\u00e9decine et de m\u00e9canique des fluides flottant dans mon cerveau, j'attends l'embolie des art\u00e8res parisiennes ou le grand gel absolu de la circulation (respectivement) que je pr\u00e9f\u00e9rerais voir se produire une fin d'apr\u00e8s-midi de printemps, car la sc\u00e8ne en serait plus agr\u00e9able pour les spectateurs.\n\nJe me contente d'ajouter de temps \u00e0 autre de nouveaux couplets \u00e0 une chanson de ma composition (elle se chante sur l'air populaire de _Buvons un coup, buvons en deux_ ). Voici le refrain de cet\n\nHymne des automobilistes parisiens\n\nBr\u00fblons un feu, br\u00fblons en deux\n\nPour n'pas rater les petits vieux\n\nA la sant\u00e9 des Pompes fun\u00e8bres\n\nEt merde pour ces cons de pi\u00e9tons\n\nA qui la guerre nous d\u00e9clarons !\n\nJe me sentais jusqu'\u00e0 tr\u00e8s r\u00e9cemment infiniment mieux \u00e0 Londres, o\u00f9 les automobilistes s'arr\u00eatent spontan\u00e9ment devant les passages prot\u00e9g\u00e9s des pi\u00e9tons (o\u00f9, \u00e0 l'usage des continentaux, on pr\u00e9cise la direction de l'arriv\u00e9e des voitures : _look right, look left_ (\u00ab pi\u00e9tons gardez-vous \u00e0 droite, pi\u00e9tons, gardez-vous \u00e0 gauche \u00bb)). Mais j'ai d\u00e9cel\u00e9, lors de mes derniers s\u00e9jours, des signes inqui\u00e9tants de contagion. Et que sera-ce quand, profitant, tel un virus grippal, de l'ouverture du catastrophique tunnel sous la Manche, les automobilistes parisiens d\u00e9ferleront dans l'\u00eele ?\n\nLors de notre voyage aux USA de l'\u00e9t\u00e9 87, nous avons vu \u00e0 l'\u0153uvre, Marie, Charlotte et moi, une autre tradition encore : la l\u00e9gendaire placidit\u00e9 courtoise de l'automobiliste californien du Sud. Charlotte avait quinze ans (comme c'est loin, tout \u00e7a !). Marie et elle montaient et descendaient dans l'ascenseur de l'h\u00f4tel Inn by the Sea, \u00e0 La Joya, un ascenseur \u00e0 paroi de verre piqu\u00e9e d'\u00e9toiles, commandaient des pancakes ou des jus d'orange \u00e0 toute heure par t\u00e9l\u00e9phone au _room service_ puis, quand elles consentaient \u00e0 d\u00e9laisser ces occupations exaltantes, m'entra\u00eenaient au bord du Pacifique pour quelques heures de _boogie board_. Allong\u00e9es en travers des planches aval\u00e9es, brass\u00e9es et renvoy\u00e9es d'une gifle assez douce par les vagues grises et si lasses de l'oc\u00e9an, qui ne consacrait, on le sentait, \u00e0 ces amusements qu'une part infime de sa puissance, elles ne se lassaient pas de cet exercice. (Je n'arrivais pas \u00e0 saisir le moindre point commun entre cette eau implicitement \u00e9norme et le scintillant \u0153il bleu-vert de ma M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e toulonnaise de 1942.) Pour atteindre la plage, Charlotte et Marie avaient invent\u00e9 un itin\u00e9raire qui impliquait un \u00ab raccourci \u00bb, une descente (et une remont\u00e9e !) par des escaliers inconfortables et surtout encombr\u00e9s des poubelles redoutables d'innombrables restaurants sur les arri\u00e8res desquels ils se trouvaient : j'appelai ce chemin le _stinking freeway_ (l'autoroute puante). Pour y acc\u00e9der, quittant l'h\u00f4tel, il fallait traverser l'avenue c\u00f4ti\u00e8re, rue principale de La Joya (l\u00e0 se trouvait la librairie o\u00f9 j'achetais les romans policiers que je lisais sur le sable br\u00fblant, la t\u00eate couverte d'une serviette de bain, pendant les heures de _boogie board)_. Charlotte, bronz\u00e9e dans son T-shirt et ses \u00e9l\u00e9gants bermudas blancs soyeux de Californienne provisoire, avait invent\u00e9 un jeu. C'est un jeu pour demoiselle et automobiles : elle s'engageait r\u00e9solument sur la chauss\u00e9e, faisant aussit\u00f4t stopper, selon la pure tradition courtoise, \u00e0 une distance d'au moins quatre pas, les immenses voitures qui avan\u00e7aient sur le \u00ab Boulevard \u00bb aussi puissamment, lentement et paresseusement que les vagues du Pacifique. Elle traversait alors tranquillement, souverainement en biais, puis, arriv\u00e9e de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9, recommen\u00e7ait dans l'autre sens, progressant ainsi en zig-zags jusqu'au _stinking stairway_ , avec arr\u00eats \u00e9ventuels pour des glaces ou des cartes postales, cisaillant de cette mani\u00e8re en biseau la paisible circulation estivale. Et nul ne lui aboyait au visage. (Cela me rappelait notre d\u00e9couverte (je dis \u00ab notre \u00bb mais il s'agit maintenant de mes fr\u00e8res et s\u0153ur et de moi-m\u00eame. Comme diraient Charlotte et Marie : \u00ab On n'\u00e9tait pas n\u00e9es ! \u00bb), en 1945, des escaliers m\u00e9caniques du m\u00e9tro, avec leur \u0153il rouge patient et placide, qu'il \u00e9tait si amusant de mettre et de remettre en marche, en tapant du pied (car nous n'avions pas encore saisi exactement le r\u00f4le de l'\u0153il \u00e9lectrique), tels des papillons de Kipling (relire \u00ab le papillon qui tapait du pied \u00bb dans les _Just so Stories (Les Histoires comme \u00e7a)_ ou Ali Baba devant sa caverne, aux heures de faible fr\u00e9quentation (du m\u00e9tro, pas de la caverne).)\n\nMais revenons au triste destin du pi\u00e9ton parisien. Pour exorciser la pr\u00e9sence d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able des voitures, pour les dominer magiquement, je me livre parfois (surtout dans les p\u00e9riodes de souci) \u00e0 des jeux num\u00e9rologiques. Cela m'oblige (une certaine \u00ab valeur d'usage \u00bb de cette monnaie de r\u00eaveries : la prudence) \u00e0 ne pas perdre de vue leur pr\u00e9sence, leurs mouvements erratiques et hostiles. Ces jeux portent sur les plaques min\u00e9ralogiques. Autrefois j'essayais par exemple de me rapprocher, dans une journ\u00e9e, le plus possible de la d\u00e9couverte du num\u00e9ro 9 999 (maximum) ou du num\u00e9ro 1 (minimum). Comme il fallait assez longtemps pour y parvenir (ce qu'un calcul statistique simple r\u00e9v\u00e8le), les num\u00e9ros situ\u00e9s dans les premi\u00e8res ou derni\u00e8res dizaines devaient \u00eatre consid\u00e9r\u00e9s comme des \u00ab performances \u00bb honorables. Mais la prolif\u00e9ration des immatriculations (un signe du progr\u00e8s de la m\u00e9tastase urbaine) a conduit, dans certains d\u00e9partements, et particuli\u00e8rement dans Paris (les plaques \u00ab 75 \u00bb) \u00e0 remplacer les deux lettres d'autrefois par trois, et simultan\u00e9ment diminuer le nombre des chiffres (sans doute, la psychologie exp\u00e9rimentale du XIXe si\u00e8cle ayant enseign\u00e9 qu'on ne retenait pas facilement des s\u00e9quences de plus de sept signes (le \u00ab 75 \u00bb \u00e9tant appr\u00e9hend\u00e9 globalement, comme un seul), pour permettre les identifications par les gendarmes ou les agents de la circulation, en cas de violation du code & recherche de v\u00e9hicules vol\u00e9s et\/ou abritant des bandits). Mais rechercher un 999 sur 1 000 num\u00e9ros possibles (ou un 1) est d'un int\u00e9r\u00eat m\u00e9diocre (tant on rencontre de voitures en un seul trajet du IXe arrondissement au IVe, par exemple).\n\nJe me suis donc orient\u00e9 vers un autre jeu, de principe assez diff\u00e9rent, plus proche de la \u00ab vie \u00bb : je guette maintenant, lors de mes d\u00e9placements, les immatriculations parisiennes les plus r\u00e9centes, ce qui me permet de suivre la progression fatale de l'envahissement des rues. (J'ai commenc\u00e9 en mars 1991, et le triplet de lettres alors atteint \u00e9tait JJJ. Aujourd'hui dix-neuf septembre mil neuf cent quatre-vingt-onze, date palindromique comme le remarque justement le _Times_ de ce jour, mon \u00ab record \u00bb est \u00ab 15 JNS 75 \u00bb (ce qui veut dire que plus de 100 000 voitures nouvelles ont \u00e9t\u00e9 vomies sur Paris depuis six mois (chaque progression de la troisi\u00e8me lettre repr\u00e9sente 1000 voitures ; chaque progression de la seconde 22 000 (22 000 et non 26 000, car les I et les O ne figurent pas parmi les triplets possibles, \u00e9tant des lettres-chiffres qui pr\u00eateraient \u00e0 confusion, ainsi que les Q et les U (comme me l'a fait remarquer Marie), mais je ne vois pas pourquoi) (le nombre de 22 000 est lui-m\u00eame approximatif, certains triplets de lettres pouvant \u00eatre \u00e9limin\u00e9s pour des raisons extra-num\u00e9riques : ainsi il n'aurait pas pu y avoir (m\u00eame si on avait utilis\u00e9 le U), il me semble, d'immatriculation faisant appara\u00eetre, \u00e0 l'arri\u00e8re d'une automobile le mot CUL, contrairement \u00e0 ce que laisse entendre une \u00ab pub \u00bb r\u00e9cente, dont la grossi\u00e8ret\u00e9 & veulerie est bien en accord avec l'\u00e9volution g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de ce que Renaud Camus appelle les \u00ab mani\u00e8res du temps \u00bb. (L'\u00e9limination du mot \u00ab CON \u00bb \u00e9tant assur\u00e9e par la r\u00e8gle de non-emploi du O et du I. Je ne sais s'il est d'autres \u00ab interdits \u00bb.)\n\n(Mon attention ayant \u00e9t\u00e9 ainsi dirig\u00e9e vers les groupements de lettres \u00ab ayant un sens \u00bb, j'ai con\u00e7u le projet d'une suite de films brefs (d'une minute au plus). Par exemple : une voiture s'arr\u00eate dans la cour d'une usine. Les lettres de son immatriculation sont montr\u00e9es. On lit : JAM. Puis on voit que l'usine est une fabrique de confitures. La voiture repart. Elle s'engage sur une autoroute et tombe dans un immense embouteillage, o\u00f9 tous les v\u00e9hicules portent le m\u00eame groupement, JAM. Cela ferait un jeu de mot visuel franco-anglais, sur _jam_ , confiture, et _jam_ embouteillage, du plus bel effet. (On pourrait aussi traiter le m\u00eame th\u00e8me comme un r\u00e9cit de r\u00eave, ou dans une nouvelle.)))))) (si je ne m'abuse, j'ai ouvert six parenth\u00e8ses embo\u00eet\u00e9es, que j'ai d\u00fb fermer d'un seul coup).\n\n## 119 (\u00a7 44) Je poss\u00e8de quelque part le \u00ab cadre \u00bb chronologique de ces images,\n\nBien s\u00fbr, ce sont des dates marquantes, dans la m\u00e9moire collective : 6 juin 1944, journ\u00e9es d'ao\u00fbt (Lib\u00e9ration de Paris, de Montpellier). Il ne m'\u00e9tait pas difficile, m\u00eame sans les carnets de mon grand-p\u00e8re et le peu de ma correspondance retrouv\u00e9e, de \u00ab placer \u00bb mes images-souvenirs du voyage, et de Lyon dans des \u00ab lieux de m\u00e9moire \u00bb assez pr\u00e9cis, dans l'ascenseur chronologique du pass\u00e9 que je poss\u00e8de quelque part (j'emploie ici une image emprunt\u00e9e \u00e0 un roman d'Asimov, _The End of Eternity_ : comme si elles poss\u00e9daient, en association myst\u00e9rieuse dans le cerveau, une sorte d'\u00e9criteau num\u00e9rique plus ou moins exact (c'est aussi ce que suppose Robert Hooke, dans sa belle imagination du m\u00e9canisme de la m\u00e9moire, vers 1680). (Les images les plus anciennes ne poss\u00e8dent presque jamais cette propri\u00e9t\u00e9.)))\n\nOn situe aussi assez facilement (s'ils ne sont pas trop \u00e9loign\u00e9s) les \u00e9v\u00e9nements ordinaires par rapport aux dates marquantes de notre propre vie (avec, parfois, de curieux d\u00e9placements). Il est clair que, pour moi, le d\u00e9part de la rue d'Assas est de ce type. Les ann\u00e9es de Carcassonne sont \u00e9closes dans une capsule temporelle, un compartiment de vie, strictement localis\u00e9 dans l'espace-temps : dans la coquille d'espace-temps qu'est une maison familiale nous sommes comme des escargots (et nous la transportons avec nous par la m\u00e9moire). (Mais nous sommes aussi parfois des bernard-l'hermite, nous installant dans une nouvelle demeure, comme vol\u00e9e \u00e0 ses habitants ant\u00e9rieurs (ainsi font les villes, les civilisations m\u00eame, se succ\u00e9dant aux m\u00eames points de la surface de la terre o\u00f9 elles se superposent comme des couches de papiers peints sur des murs). Voil\u00e0 qui va de soi.)\n\nMais on pourrait utiliser aussi des \u00e9v\u00e9nements moins marquants : ainsi le changement de formats de papier (le passage du 21 \u00d7 27 (format papetier fran\u00e7ais de ma jeunesse) au 21 \u00d7 29,7 (format am\u00e9ricain). Je l'ai ressenti comme un traumatisme d'\u00e9criture et, ayant d\u00e9couvert le format actuel plus \u00ab oblong \u00bb au cours de mon s\u00e9jour aux USA de 1970, je \u00ab date \u00bb ce passage, cette d\u00e9formation traumatisante de l'espace de la page, de mon retour \u00e0 Paris au mois de mai de cette ann\u00e9e-l\u00e0 (cela correspond ou non \u00e0 la r\u00e9alit\u00e9, peu importe. En tout cas, j'ai mis plusieurs ann\u00e9es \u00e0 me sentir de nouveau \u00e0 l'aise sur du papier (po\u00e9tique, non math\u00e9matique, la math\u00e9matique est peu affect\u00e9e par ces consid\u00e9rations), et le livre que j'ai \u00e9crit en 1972, _31 au cube_ est dans un \u00ab format \u00bb impossible, un format de compensation, qui force le po\u00e8me \u00e0 s'allonger horizontalement sur deux pages. Voil\u00e0 une justification de sa \u00ab m\u00e9trique \u00bb qui m'avait \u00e9chapp\u00e9, \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque).\n\nJ'ai d'autres exemples dans mon souvenir, que je mettrai en sc\u00e8ne \u00e0 leur heure. Mais il s'agit toujours, comme les \u00e9v\u00e9nements de l'Histoire, d'une scansion involontaire, contingente. Je me dis que j'aurais pu en noter d'autres, d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9ment, pour servir de ponctuation du temps, pour peupler le vaste th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la m\u00e9moire qu'est la vie (c'est sans doute bien tard, \u00e9tant donn\u00e9 mon \u00e2ge).\n\nJe tente aujourd'hui de le faire de mani\u00e8re d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9e : je note, et insiste mentalement par exemple sur le fait que je viens de d\u00e9couvrir brusquement que l'affranchissement des lettres ordinaires, apr\u00e8s le dernier changement de tarif, n\u00e9cessite un type enti\u00e8rement nouveau de timbres (provisoirement en tout cas) : ils valent 2 francs 50 mais la somme n'est plus signal\u00e9e sur le timbre comme elle l'\u00e9tait jusqu'ici. On lit seulement une lettre, un **D** (majuscule). (J'indique ces choses, d'\u00e9vidence au moment o\u00f9 j'\u00e9cris, mais que le futur rendra peut-\u00eatre obscures. Je le fais par politesse pour d'\u00e9ventuels lecteurs lointains.) Je donne \u00e0 ce fait une date, conventionnelle, facile \u00e0 retenir pour ma m\u00e9moire, la date palindromique du 19.9.1991. Il y aura, si tout se passe comme pr\u00e9vu, un \u00ab avant \u00bb et un \u00ab apr\u00e8s \u00bb cet \u00e9v\u00e9nement : l'apparition du timbre-poste au prix non marqu\u00e9. (On aura imit\u00e9 ainsi, par analogie, les tickets de m\u00e9tro. Le but, si cette mani\u00e8re de faire se continue, est vraisemblablement le m\u00eame : \u00e9viter d'avoir \u00e0 imprimer de nouveaux timbres \u00e0 chaque augmentation (on esp\u00e8re peut-\u00eatre les rendre moins visibles).) (S'il s'agit d'un exp\u00e9dient provisoire, ce qui est vraisemblable, j'en offre gratuitement l'id\u00e9e \u00e0 l'administration.)\n\nJe lui associe aussi, pour simplification et renforcement, une autre \u00ab innovation \u00bb : celle du timbre autocollant. Cela lui donne une l\u00e9g\u00e8re coloration nostalgique : la perte du charme des bordures dentel\u00e9es, qui furent en leur temps une innovation d\u00e9cisive, qui n'\u00e9tait pas apparue encore au temps du premier timbre de co\u00fbt marqu\u00e9, le timbre moderne par excellence (et l'histoire du timbre m'est ch\u00e8re, puisque elle est indissolublement li\u00e9e \u00e0 la vie d'un de mes romanciers favoris, Anthony Trollope) : j'ai nomm\u00e9 le \u00ab penny noir \u00bb \u00e0 l'effigie de la jeune reine Victoria, en 1839 (il vaut si cher que les contrefa\u00e7ons en sont innombrables. Le _Times_ a annonc\u00e9 r\u00e9cemment que, dans un esprit \u00ab europ\u00e9en \u00bb, pour faciliter l'abaissement proche des barri\u00e8res douani\u00e8res dans les pays de la CEE, il \u00e9tait d\u00e9sormais possible d'entrer en Angleterre en ayant sur soi, ou dans son v\u00e9hicule, de faux timbres. Voil\u00e0 qui est rassurant).\n\n## 120 (\u00a7 45) il m'emmenait brusquement vers un autre, dont il avait (signe de pr\u00e9m\u00e9ditation ?) not\u00e9 aussi les horaires.\n\nC'\u00e9tait un exc\u00e8s quasi orgiaque, une d\u00e9bauche apparemment non hygi\u00e9nique de films (pour l'appareil visuel, certainement mis en danger par la mauvaise qualit\u00e9 des images, leurs tremblements, leurs palpitations). Je dis \u00ab apparemment \u00bb non hygi\u00e9nique car mon grand-p\u00e8re avait une th\u00e9orie de l'exc\u00e8s n\u00e9cessaire, concept au r\u00f4le un peu semblable \u00e0 celui du _clinamen_ , violation rare et r\u00e9gl\u00e9e de la contrainte, dans la th\u00e9orie des \u00e9crits entrav\u00e9s axiomatiquement de l'Oulipo. Ainsi, apr\u00e8s avoir toute la semaine, quand il \u00e9tait seul, sagement cuit des pommes de terre \u00e0 l'eau avec un tout petit peu de beurre, il ouvrait le samedi une bo\u00eete de cassoulet ou de choucroute _William Saurin_ qu'il mangeait consciencieusement. (Cela fait toujours fr\u00e9mir mon p\u00e8re, rien que d'y repenser.) Son impatience \u00e0 se jeter dans les salles obscures \u00e9tait sans doute aussi l'effet d'un besoin de \u00ab rattrapage \u00bb, de mise \u00e0 profit de la libert\u00e9 retrouv\u00e9e pour effacer les privations cumul\u00e9es des derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es.\n\nPourtant son adh\u00e9sion au cin\u00e9ma avait \u00e9t\u00e9 lente. Il \u00e9tait un converti fort r\u00e9cent aux charmes du septi\u00e8me art. Longtemps, il avait oppos\u00e9 aux affirmations \u00ab modernistes \u00bb de mes parents, avec une conviction in\u00e9branlable et impeccablement raisonn\u00e9e, l'id\u00e9e qu'il ne s'agissait que d'un divertissement de seconde zone. Il opposait alors \u00e0 ces amateurs de nouveaut\u00e9 la hi\u00e9rarchie mill\u00e9naire et rationnelle des arts, avec autant de conviction que son p\u00e8re, autrefois (selon le r\u00e9cit malicieux de ma grand-m\u00e8re), frappant du poing sur la table et disant : \u00ab Non jamais l'homme ne volera ! Jamais le plus lourd que l'air ne vaincra la pesanteur ! \u00bb C'est Charles Chaplin (et plus que \u00ab Charlot \u00bb, le Chaplin des _Lumi\u00e8res de la ville_ , de la _Ru\u00e9e vers l'or_ , plus tard du _Dictateur)_ qui l'avait converti au cin\u00e9ma, et, par un glissement bien naturel, il en \u00e9tait venu \u00e0 prendre aussi plaisir aux \u00ab policiers \u00bb, aux \u00ab com\u00e9dies am\u00e9ricaines \u00bb, sans oublier, pour ma grande joie, les westerns.\n\nCe n'est que l'ann\u00e9e suivante, pendant l'\u00e9t\u00e9 de 1945 que, le choix filmique devenu plus abondant, j'ai fait enfin la connaissance des \u00ab com\u00e9dies am\u00e9ricaines \u00bb tant vant\u00e9es, nostalgiquement, par les adultes de mon entourage, admir\u00e9 Gary Cooper dans _La Huiti\u00e8me Femme de Barbe-Bleue_ ou _L'Extravagant Mr. Deeds_ (moins en joueur de tuba qu'en chercheur de rimes (preuve ind\u00e9niable d'extravagance, dont j'\u00e9tais moi-m\u00eame coupable) et par sympathie naturelle pour les deux vieilles demoiselles excentriques qui lui d\u00e9cernent (comme au reste de l'humanit\u00e9) l'excellent qualificatif de _pixillated_ (que le doublage traduisait, je ne sais trop pourquoi, par \u00ab pince-corn\u00e9 \u00bb)), commenc\u00e9 une longue histoire d'amour jamais interrompue avec Katharine Hepburn. Et d\u00e9j\u00e0, je choisissais moi-m\u00eame les programmes, et allais seul au cin\u00e9ma, habitude que je retrouvai (dangereuse pour les \u00e9tudes) plus tard, pendant mes ann\u00e9es d'\u00e9tudiant, quand la Cin\u00e9math\u00e8que logeait au Mus\u00e9e p\u00e9dagogique, rue d'Ulm, dangereusement proche de l'institut Henri-Poincar\u00e9.\n\nVoir Charles Chaplin sur l'\u00e9cran me fit l'effet d'un \u00ab d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu \u00bb (sans diminuer le plaisir de la vision). Car nous \u00ab savions \u00bb d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00ab par c\u0153ur \u00bb les grands moments sentimentaux du _Cirque_ ou des _Lumi\u00e8res de la ville_. Grand-maman \u00e9tait une chaplinesque de choc, \u00e0 la fois par conviction esth\u00e9tique, \u00e9thique et politique, mais aussi par sympathie spontan\u00e9e de conteuse, de mime. Je dois dire que ses morceaux choisis et de bravoure, comme ses imitations du d\u00e9part de \u00ab Charlot \u00bb un pied sur chaque fronti\u00e8re ou de ses d\u00e9m\u00eal\u00e9s de faux clergyman avec un vilain petit gar\u00e7on dans les bras de sa m\u00e8re nous sembl\u00e8rent presque meilleurs que les originaux.\n\nMais c'\u00e9taient surtout les moments qui touchaient de pr\u00e8s \u00e0 notre situation d'enfants dans la guerre et les privations qui m'ont le plus marqu\u00e9. Sans doute aussi parce qu'elle mettait \u00e0 les restituer une conviction plus assur\u00e9e encore que pour ceux de pur comique : la sc\u00e8ne des \u00ab spaghettis-lacets de soulier \u00bb suivie du \u00ab mirage du poulet r\u00f4ti \u00bb de _La Ru\u00e9e vers l'or_ , par exemple (avec l'avantage d'une r\u00e9p\u00e9tition fr\u00e9quente possible dont le cin\u00e9ma, proche en cela du th\u00e9\u00e2tre \u00e9tait quasiment incapable avant l'invention de la vid\u00e9o) (ce fut jusqu'\u00e0 tr\u00e8s r\u00e9cemment un des atouts majeurs de la lecture, h\u00e9las pour l'avenir du livre), ou encore celle de la lutte des si\u00e8ges vissables entre Hitler et Mussolini dans _Le Dictateur_ (qu'elle avait pu, inou\u00ef privil\u00e8ge, voir aux \u00c9tats-Unis).\n\nEn arrivant \u00e0 Paris nous avons d\u00e9couvert les extraordinaires \u00ab petits \u00bb Charlots, ces chefs-d'\u0153uvre de quelques minutes et cela dans des conditions de \u00ab spectateurs luxueux \u00bb que je n'ai jamais retrouv\u00e9es depuis (avant que la vid\u00e9o ne rende ce mode de vision banal. Mais j'en fais peu usage) : car notre ami Harnois, un vrai Parisien amateur d'innovations avait chez lui un appareil de projection, et poss\u00e9dait tous ces films : _Charlot policeman_ et _Charlot \u00e0 la cure_ bien s\u00fbr, mais aussi des \u00ab Buster Keaton \u00bb et, _last but not least_ (quoi qu'en pensent les puristes) un choix \u00e9tendu des aventures de Stan Laurel et Oliver Hardy.\n\n## 121 (\u00a7 47) Cela parut \u00e0 mon p\u00e8re insupportable et impardonnable (suite du \u00a7 115 : un t\u00e9moignage de mon p\u00e8re)\n\n _Qu_. : Quand on vous propose de passer \u00e0 l'Assembl\u00e9e consultative, on vous propose un poste plus politique, je ne dirai pas politicien. Quel d\u00e9bat se pose pour vous ?\n\n\u2013 Un d\u00e9bat tr\u00e8s court. J'ai dit \u00e0 Chambrun [Gilbert de Chambrun \u00e9tait le chef militaire de la R\u00e9gion Languedoc du MLN, dont mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tait le dirigeant \u00ab civil \u00bb] \u00ab Non c'est toi \u00bb. Il a dit : \u00ab Non c'est toi \u00bb, etc. Et comme il est plus tenace que moi et que d'autre part il avait la chance d'\u00eatre dans un truc militaire et qu'apr\u00e8s il allait \u00eatre d\u00e9put\u00e9, j'y suis all\u00e9.\n\n\u2013 \u00c7a vous ennuyait beaucoup ?\n\n\u2013 \u00c9norm\u00e9ment. J'ai vu la tactique de De Gaulle qui consistait \u00e0 diviser la R\u00e9sistance. Lui qui a soi-disant \u00e9t\u00e9 contre les partis un moment, il a fait ce qu'il a pu pour emp\u00eacher l'unit\u00e9 de la R\u00e9sistance. Et pourtant, dans la R\u00e9sistance, j'\u00e9tais tr\u00e8s gaulliste. Sans avoir jamais lu aucun livre de lui. C'est alors que j'ai lu des livres de De Gaulle, on m'a offert _Assembl\u00e9e consultative, Au fil de l'\u00e9p\u00e9e, Vers l'arm\u00e9e de m\u00e9tier_. Je ne suis pas d'un temp\u00e9rament placide. Quand j'ai vu l'apologie de gens qui avaient trouv\u00e9 assez de ressort pour \u00e9craser la Commune, mon grand-p\u00e8re a resurgi en moi.\n\nJ'ai failli d\u00e9missionner au bout de quelque temps, mais pas longtemps. On m'a fait valoir que j'allais \u00eatre remplac\u00e9 par un de la nouvelle majorit\u00e9 du MLN, un Baumel quelconque. Malraux s'est \u00e9croul\u00e9 d'un seul coup pour moi lorsque je l'ai vu intervenir, en politicien, dans un Comit\u00e9 directeur. La vie parlementaire \u00e9tait extr\u00eamement simple. Il n'y avait aucune intervention, c'\u00e9tait purement consultatif. J'ai tr\u00e8s vite compris que ce n'\u00e9tait qu'un trompe-l'\u0153il.\n\n\u2013 A la m\u00eame \u00e9poque vous \u00eates d\u00e9sign\u00e9 au titre de l'Assembl\u00e9e consultative, comme jur\u00e9 \u00e0 la Haute Cour ?\n\n\u2013 J'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9sign\u00e9 comme jur\u00e9 \u00e0 la Haute Cour pour le proc\u00e8s de l'amiral Esteva.\n\n\u2013 En action au proc\u00e8s Esteva et assistant au proc\u00e8s de P\u00e9tain.\n\n\u2013 J'avais une carte d'entr\u00e9e pour \u00eatre assis pour le proc\u00e8s P\u00e9tain.\n\n\u2013 Mais r\u00e9cus\u00e9 au proc\u00e8s P\u00e9tain ?\n\n\u2013 Oui, j'\u00e9tais jur\u00e9 au proc\u00e8s Esteva, on m'a dit apr\u00e8s non, vous n'\u00eates pas pris. J'ai su par je ne sais qui que j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9cus\u00e9.\n\nJ'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9c\u0153ur\u00e9 de la fa\u00e7on dont le proc\u00e8s P\u00e9tain a \u00e9t\u00e9 conduit. D'abord on l'a minimis\u00e9 le plus possible, en le mettant dans une toute petite salle, comme pour un incident de correctionnelle. On avait \u00ab fait \u00bb la salle tr\u00e8s probablement, je ne sais pas comment. Parmi les juges, il y avait un nomm\u00e9 Montgibeau qui faisait des effets de manches et qui s'arrangeait pour passer \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 des accusations les plus s\u00e9rieuses. Et puis, on ne laissait pas tellement la parole aux gens qui \u00e9taient interrog\u00e9s. Par exemple pour Darnand il y a eu un tour de passe-passe prodigieux. Darnand avait des choses \u00e0 dire, il en avait, Joseph Darnand. On l'a fait compara\u00eetre, et un des juges a dit aux jur\u00e9s : \u00ab C'est bien entendu, nous ne posons aucune question \u00e0 un tueur. \u00bb Alors les jur\u00e9s n'ont pas pos\u00e9 de question. [Je vois pourquoi mon p\u00e8re a \u00e9t\u00e9 r\u00e9cus\u00e9 pour ce proc\u00e8s-l\u00e0.]\n\nIls auraient pu poser des questions, mais il faut voir comme les juges man\u0153uvrent les gens. Je l'avais d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu au proc\u00e8s Esteva, il y a eu une majorit\u00e9 de jur\u00e9s pour dire : \u00ab Non, il ne faut pas condamner \u00e0 mort. C'est un bon chr\u00e9tien. \u00bb Moi, j'ai dit qu'on fusillait des gens qui avaient combattu les Fran\u00e7ais libres, et que je ne voyais pas pourquoi celui qui en avait donn\u00e9 l'ordre serait sauv\u00e9.\n\n## 122 (\u00a7 47) Fragments d'un Trait\u00e9 des Disputes (De Querelis) de 1946.\n\n25.1 (1) Une dispute est un mal.\n\n25.1 (2) Une dispute est d'autant plus violente que les torts sont plus partag\u00e9s.\n\n25.1 (3) Les disputes ne sortent pas du cadre de la famille.\n\n25.1 (4) Avec des \u00e9trangers elles sont toujours \u00ab enfantines \u00bb. On ne se conna\u00eet point.\n\n25.1 (5) Souvent on n'ose pas aller trop loin \u00e0 cause ou des parents ou du manque d'\u00ab autorit\u00e9s \u00bb pour juger le diff\u00e9rend.\n\n25.1 (6) Les diff\u00e9rends n'existent pas souvent ou alors ils sont r\u00e9gl\u00e9s \u00e0 l'amiable.\n\n25.1 (7) On n'a toujours des \u00e9gards pour les \u00e9trangers.\n\n25.1 (8) Ainsi nos disputes avec les gar\u00e7ons de la rue se r\u00e9glaient par des batailles avec de l'eau ou des pierres. Les disputes n'\u00e9taient pas profondes et mauvaises parce qu'il n'y avait pas de \u00ab discussion \u00bb.\n\n25.1 (9) Plus la discussion est fouill\u00e9e, mieux elle est aliment\u00e9e, plus la dispute est importante.\n\n(10) Les disputes r\u00e9sultent d'une connaissance + ou \u2013 approfondie chacun des autres. Elles nous servent \u00e0 nous conna\u00eetre et s'appuient sur cette connaissance.\n\n(11) Elles excitent en nous un instinct de mensonge et de dissimulation.\n\n(12) En effet, des fautes quelconques (vaisselle cass\u00e9e, pipi au lit, insolence envers les autorit\u00e9s, ftes de classe ou de la maison) peuvent \u00eatre aliment d'attaque contre nous, r\u00e9veiller de vieilles querelles.\n\n(13) Les disputes ne peuvent pas \u00eatre supprim\u00e9es. Une dispute non r\u00e9gl\u00e9e (et c'est le cas de 8 disputes sur 10) compl\u00e8tement, c'ad si le m\u00e9contentement n'est pas \u00e9touff\u00e9 des 2 c\u00f4t\u00e9s, en engendrera une autre, consciemment ou inconsciemment.\n\n(14) Or une dispute ne peut pas \u00eatre r\u00e9gl\u00e9e absolument.\n\n(15) Les torts sont tjs partag\u00e9s. Une enqu\u00eate donnant raison \u00e0 l'un, si la balance penche favorablement de son c\u00f4t\u00e9, le mettra sur un terrain extr\u00eamement instable. L'autre lui gardera rancune et se vengera t\u00f4t ou tard.\n\n(16) On a tjs qqch \u00e0 se reprocher.\n\n(17) On a tjs qq d\u00e9fauts marqu\u00e9s.\n\nSortes de disputes.\n\n(18) Les disputes comprennent des genres essentiellet vari\u00e9s. Il faut distinguer 1) nos disputes ; 2) les disputes avec les 1\/2 \u00e9trangers ; 3) avec les \u00e9trangers (voir 4 \u00e0 8).\n\n(19) \u00c9liminons les \u00e9trangers.\n\nLes disputes se bornent le + svt \u00e0 des coups ou \u00e0 des injures. Ces injures n'ont pas de port\u00e9e. Elles ne frappent pas l'amour-propre.\n\n(20) Dans une dispute, la discussion s'envenime quand l'amour-propre est touch\u00e9. C'est lui qui fait tt.\n\n(21) Je dirais m\u00eame, comme d\u00e9finition de \u00ab nos \u00bb disputes que dans chacune de celles-ci, chacun essaie de blesser l'autre.\n\n(22) Quand vous avez bless\u00e9 qqu'un, vous avez gagn\u00e9 une manche mais cette victoire se \u00ab paie cher \u00bb.\n\n(23) Un \u00ab disputeur \u00bb excit\u00e9 est + dangereux quand il dissimule que quand il se laisse aller \u00e0 des \u00e9clats.\n\n(24) Les disputes avec \u00e9trangers fr\u00f4lent mais ne touchent pas. Par exp\u00e9rience personnelle, je puis noter que sur 9 de ces disputes mon amour-propre n'a \u00e9t\u00e9 touch\u00e9 qu'1 fois.\n\nLes demi-\u00e9trangers.\n\n(25) Elles sont d\u00e9j\u00e0 + s\u00e9rieuses.\n\n(26) Un 1\/2 \u00e9tranger est un ami, un cousin ou un familier.\n\n(27) Ces disputes sont (je parle entre cousins de Carc.) bcp + s\u00e9rieuses.\n\n1) Nous avons + d'attaches. Ainsi \u00e0 Carc. nous nous voyons presque ts les jours\n\n2) Il en r\u00e9sulte que nous nous connaissions mieux ou croyons nous conna\u00eetre.\n\nLes m\u00eames injures qui (19) ne nous auraient pas frapp\u00e9s, touchent dans ce cas + et mieux.\n\n(28) Nous ne craignons pas qq'un, nous ne ns disputons pas avec lui quand nous croyons ou savons qu'il ne nous conna\u00eet pas.\n\n(29) Une injure venue d'1 familier est + intol\u00e9rable que venue d'un \u00e9tranger.\n\n(30) Avec un \u00e9tranger on rentre en soi, ds son incognito. On r\u00e9pond par les coups, le m\u00e9pris ou le silence. Avec un familier votre sensibilit\u00e9 est \u00e0 vif.\n\n(31) Nous ne voulons et ne pouvons r\u00e9gler nos luttes par des bagarres \u00e0 coup de poing.\n\n(31) bis Peut-\u00eatre parce que les diff\u00e9rences de force st trop grandes, ms surtout parce que la satisfaction est nulle, parce que nous craignons les punitions, que nous avons ts + ou \u2013 tort \u2013 aussi y a-t-il des bagarres \u00e0 coup de langue.\n\n(32) Les disputes entre ns et nos familiers portent + aussi parce que :\n\n3) (ce cas nous est particulier) il y va svt de notre prestige. Il se trouve que mon cousin Jean a 14 ans et moi 13, ma cousine Juliette 12 et ma s\u0153ur 10, Pierrot 10 et Pierrot R 9. Ns nous correspondons donc \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s par l'\u00e2ge, aussi nous nous opposons. Il y a une 4e raison.\n\n4) Mes cousins sont railleurs par naturel, nous susceptibles ; et c'est un terrain tt trouv\u00e9 pour la dispute.\n\nEnfin 5) Il existe des rivalit\u00e9s et des pr\u00e9f\u00e9rences entre ns. Il est tr\u00e8s svt arriv\u00e9, dans des disputes g\u00e9n\u00e9rales, que les gar\u00e7ons se trouvent en conflit avec les filles ou que les grands utilisent dans leurs conflits entre eux les petits en les soutenant dans leurs conflits, ce qui leur permettait de s'attaquer + facilement.\n\n(33) Pr moi j'ai surtout soutenu Nanet, Denise et P.M. au contraire Jeannot soutenant Nanet et Pierrot.\n\n(34) Cons\u00e9quences : ces disputes ont svt eu comme r\u00e9sultat des brouilles. En effet, oubliant nos querelles, sit\u00f4t nos cousins partis du jardin pr go\u00fbter, nous nous r\u00e9conciliions et donnions en tout tort \u00e0 ces derniers. Ils faisaient d'ailleurs de m\u00eame.\n\n(35) au (25) et (18) J'ajoute familiers \u00e0 1\/2 \u00e9trangers.\n\n## 123 (suite \u00a7 122) Plan g\u00e9n\u00e9ral : 26 janvier\n\n(47) Plan g\u00e9n\u00e9ral : 26 janvier\n\nLivre I : Querelles et disputes\n\nch.1 : Caract\u00e8res g\u00e9n\u00e9raux et luttes contre les \u00e9trangers\n\nch.2 : Les 1\/2 \u00e9trangers et les familiers\n\nch.3 : Causes de nos querelles\n\nch.4 : Diff\u00e9rents aspects des disputes\n\nch.5 : Caract\u00e8res et techniques\n\nch.6 : Cons\u00e9quences\n\nch.7 : Conclusion et principes g\u00e9n\u00e9raux\n\nch.8 : Les taquineries\n\nch.9 : R\u00e9actions apparentes de Pierrot, Denise et Nanet\n\nch.10 : \u00c9tude de moi-m\u00eame\n\nch.11 : Exemples et divers.\n\n(...)\n\n(70) Je vais maintenant aborder la principale partie de cet ouvrage : \u00ab Nos disputes \u00bb (voir (47)),\n\n(71) Nos disputes r\u00e9sultent souvent d'origines et de causes fondamentales.\n\n(72) Nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu (voir (13)) que les disputes ne pouvaient pas \u00eatre supprim\u00e9es. Cette impossibilit\u00e9 est donc 1re cause de leur existence.\n\n(73) Une 2e raison est (14) que l'on ne peut r\u00e9gler absolument une dispute. Une dispute en engendrera t\u00f4t ou tard une autre.\n\n(74) Comme 3e cause il y a nos incessants rapports. En effet, dans une journ\u00e9e nous sommes de 5 \u00e0 9 h ensemble. Combien de temps cela peut-il faire pour les disputes ?\n\n(75) 4e cause. Diff\u00e9rences d'\u00e2ge et de caract\u00e8res (voir ch. 9 et 10),\n\n(76) 5e cause. Les circonstances se sont de tous temps adapt\u00e9es avec les disputes et les ont favoris\u00e9es.\n\n(77) En effet les \u00e9vnmets ont tjs emp\u00each\u00e9 un pouvoir des parents solide qui permette une lutte contre ces disputes.\n\n(...)\n\n(79) A Carc, C'est le d\u00e9part de papa de la maison et le \u00ab surmenage \u00bb de maman.\n\n(80) Les circonstances s'y adaptent. 1) Papa est tr\u00e8s svt hors de la maison. 2) Maman est encore surmen\u00e9e. 3) L'habitude est prise.\n\n(81) Il y a aussi des circonstances sp\u00e9ciales : le froid et le manque de chauffage nous groupent dans une seule pi\u00e8ce. Quand nous ne travaillons plus, comment jouer, comment se d\u00e9tendre ? Et voil\u00e0 une nouvelle source de disputes.\n\n(82) L'ennui est source de querelles.\n\n(83) La vie en apartt aussi (besoin de d\u00e9tente).\n\n(84) Une 6e cause para\u00eet \u00e9vidente : c'est le nombre d'enfants. A 4, nous nous entendons diffcilt. Nous en avons souvent fait l'exp\u00e9rience. En effet, Pierrot et moi nous nous heurtons toujours en ce moment. A Carcassonne en janvier, quand nous \u00e9tions seuls, nous nous entendions parfaitement. Il en est de m\u00eame pour tous les tandems possibles : J-N, J-D, D-N, P-N, \u00e0 l'exception peut \u00eatre de P-N (j'en donnerai plus tard les raisons, voir ch. 9).\n\n(85) Une cause peut-\u00eatre plus accessoire est la jalousie de l'un \u00e0 l'\u00e9gard des autres d'entre nous. Y a-t-il une bonne chose \u00e0 manger ? Aussit\u00f4t de se pr\u00e9cipiter. \u00ab P. en a plus que moi, ce n'est pas juste. \u00bb R\u00e9ponse : \u00ab Ce n'est pas vrai. \u00bb Une dispute de plus. Une nouvelle source.\n\n(86) Cette jalousie, d'o\u00f9 vient-elle ? Malheureusement des restrictions. C'est la raret\u00e9 des bonnes choses qui l'a fait na\u00eetre, l'a fortifi\u00e9e et enracin\u00e9e.\n\n(...)\n\n(88) Je ne vois pas d'autre cause pour le moment. Mais pour l'instant je puis tirer certaines conclusions. La disparition des disputes ne peut pas \u00eatre compl\u00e8te. Cependant certaines de ces sources peuvent \u00eatre \u00e9vit\u00e9es. a) les circonstances ; b) l'ennui ; c) peut-\u00eatre aussi la jalousie. Pour cet espoir une seule r\u00e9alisation possible : St-Germain. Tous mes espoirs reposent sur St-Germain. Puissent-ils ne pas \u00eatre d\u00e9\u00e7us.\n\n(89) Malgr\u00e9 moi, je les encourage, les disputes. Je suis d\u00e9go\u00fbt\u00e9 de tout : du lyc\u00e9e, de la vie \u00e0 la maison, de tout. Je n'ai plus aucun entrain pour apprendre, m\u00eame pas pour lire, m\u00eame pas pour jouer. Je le sens sans pouvoir lutter. Je le veux, je n'en ai pas la force. Cela m'inqui\u00e8te.\n\n(90) Cette digression est un peu hors de mon th\u00e8me. Je m'\u00e9gare plut\u00f4t par licence que par m\u00e9garde. C'est quand m\u00eame toujours mon sujet. Les disputes et cet \u00e9tat d'\u00e2me sont \u00e9troitement li\u00e9s.\n\n(91) J'influe, j'ai beaucoup d'influence sur les disputes, parfois n\u00e9faste.\n\n## 124 (seconde suite du \u00a7 122) Je dois marquer ici, bien s\u00fbr, un trait r\u00e9current et fatal de mon autoportrait,\n\nJe dois marquer ici, bien s\u00fbr, comme un trait r\u00e9current et fatal de mon autoportrait, le peu de pers\u00e9v\u00e9rance que je montre dans ce genre d'entreprise de composition. J'ai \u00e0 peine commenc\u00e9 que d\u00e9j\u00e0 je me fatigue. Et toutes les modalit\u00e9s futures de cette maladie sont l\u00e0, clairement : d\u00e8s que mon enthousiasme pour un effort suivi faiblit, je tente d'y rem\u00e9dier en dressant des plans. Dans le cas de mon \u00ab trait\u00e9 \u00bb l'hypertrophie des buts fait d\u00e9j\u00e0 peser sa menace sur la suite, d\u00e8s le deuxi\u00e8me jour. C'est ce que je remarque moi-m\u00eame, alors. Mais la lucidit\u00e9 sur ce point ne m'a jamais gu\u00e9ri.\n\n(101) Enfin ne nous attardons pas. Revenons \u00e0 des \u00e9tudes plus terre \u00e0 terre.\n\n27 jan.\n\n(102) En r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissant au sujet j'ai trouv\u00e9 une nouvelle cause (voir (88)). Elle d\u00e9pend en grande partie de la 5e (voir 76-81). C'est peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame un \u00e9nonc\u00e9 diff\u00e9rent. De cette vie en appartement il r\u00e9sulte un \u00e9nervement g\u00e9n\u00e9ral. Donc l'\u00e9nervement est source de disputes.\n\n(103) Je m'aper\u00e7ois que pour plus de clart\u00e9 il me faudra faire un dictionnaire \u00ab technique \u00bb des disputes. Cela \u00e9vitera bien des confusions.\n\n(104) Les disputes ont une v\u00e9ritable histoire. Elles remontent \u00e0 tr\u00e8s loin. A partir de ce moment 27 janvier 10 h je noterai scrupuleusement et impartialement ttes les querelles pour pouvoir en avoir une vue g\u00e9n\u00e9rale et tirer d'elles des conclusions.\n\n(105) Je suis pour l'instant donc impuissant \u00e0 \u00e9crire cette histoire.\n\n(...)\n\n28 janvier\n\n(110) Certains actes m\u00eame souvent r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9s paraissent h\u00e9ro\u00efques avant l'ex\u00e9cution et faciles apr\u00e8s.\n\n(111) St-Germain, 1er contact. Le nouveau captive toujours. La maison est curieuse, le jardin pas mal. Je suis assez agr\u00e9ablt surpris.\n\n(...)\n\n(118) Hier j'ai eu une entrevue avec Denise. Quels renseignements en ai-je tir\u00e9 ? Pas de bien importants. Je sais que Denise fait un journal. Elle ne m'a pas cach\u00e9 certains d\u00e9tails, mais je ne peux pas voir le fond. J'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 moi-m\u00eame aussi tr\u00e8s\n\n(119) Un examen de soi-m\u00eame, une discussion intime incitent au bien.\n\n(120) Flamme qui ne dure pas longtemps.\n\n(...)\n\n29 janvier\n\n(125) Ce matin : 2 seuls incidents. Pierrot et Denise.\n\nThat's all. Et je ne pense pas que rien se soit perdu.\n\nJe marque encore, nouveau \u00ab trait \u00bb de caract\u00e8re en voie de d\u00e9veloppement, un go\u00fbt tr\u00e8s net de la mise en ordre, de la succession d'instants \u00e9crits signal\u00e9e de nombres. Il est l\u00e0, indiscutablement. Je m'\u00e9tais imagin\u00e9 que cette pr\u00e9dilection pour une progression par fragments num\u00e9rot\u00e9s me venait du trait\u00e9 de math\u00e9matiques s\u00e9v\u00e8res de Bourbaki, la passion de mes vingt ans, renforc\u00e9e un peu plus tard par la lecture du _Tractatus_. Mais il n'en est rien. C'est peut-\u00eatre l'histoire latine qui m'a servi de mod\u00e8le (encore heureux que mon incapacit\u00e9 \u00e0 me mettre s\u00e9rieusement au grec m'ait emp\u00each\u00e9 de conna\u00eetre alors Aristote, ou les Pr\u00e9socratiques).\n\nEn tant que \u00ab moraliste \u00bb, l'auteur de ce \u00ab Trait\u00e9 des Disputes \u00bb se situe dans la ligne descriptive, taxinomique, sans illusions. Il y a peu de \u00ab lait de la tendresse humaine \u00bb et de bont\u00e9 naturelle chez ces enfants querelleurs, dont je suis. Un roman anglais des ann\u00e9es vingt, le _High Wind in Jamaica (Cyclone \u00e0 la Jama\u00efque)_ de Richard Hughes (bien sup\u00e9rieur \u00e0 ce plagiat lourdingue et p\u00e2teusement symbolique qu'est le _Lord of the Flies_ de William Golding) a \u00e9t\u00e9 le premier, \u00e0 ma connaissance, \u00e0 pr\u00e9senter un portrait sans aur\u00e9ole ros\u00e9ol\u00e9e d'une soci\u00e9t\u00e9 enfantine. Je l'ai lu sans surprise.\n\nJe vois enfin que la nostalgie est d\u00e9j\u00e0 l\u00e0, implicite : plus jamais l'occasion de se disputer, donc de jouer dans le jardin de Carcassonne.\n\n## 125 (\u00a7 48) Ces baisers ne cessaient d'enflammer mon imagination\n\nCette incise n'est pas exactement semblable aux autres : ce n'est pas une simple digression dans le cours du r\u00e9cit. Elle est plut\u00f4t inflexive, corrective. La mani\u00e8re dont j'ai pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 nos positions respectives dans notre relation doit \u00eatre l\u00e9g\u00e8rement infl\u00e9chie. J'\u00e9tais un amoureux enfant (pr\u00e9-adolescent), essentiellement chaste, r\u00eaveur, et sans illusions, c'est vrai. Et Antoinette \u00e9tait fianc\u00e9e, amoureuse de son farouche Espagnol (qu'elle devait \u00e9pouser quelques mois plus tard. Elle doit \u00eatre aujourd'hui plusieurs fois grand-m\u00e8re). Je la faisais rire, c'est vrai, et elle ne prenait pas mes d\u00e9clarations enflamm\u00e9es, dans un style fort litt\u00e9raire, au s\u00e9rieux, c'est vrai aussi.\n\nIl reste qu'elle me laissait l'embrasser exactement comme Tino Rossi dans _Naples aux baisers de feu_ embrasse Viviane Romance (nous avions vu tant de fois ce m\u00eame film que j'avais eu le temps d'en \u00e9tudier les variations) et que je profitais le plus souvent possible de cette autorisation. Je me souviens qu'un jour, alors que je l'embrassais dans la buanderie (parmi les b\u00fbches), nous f\u00fbmes surpris par mon grand-p\u00e8re, qui ne fit aucun commentaire (se contentant, comme toujours devant un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne inordinaire, de hausser les \u00e9paules sous son chapeau), et autant que je puisse en juger, ne nous d\u00e9non\u00e7a pas. En tout cas, je n'en entendis jamais parler. Ni Antoinette, qui continua \u00e0 m'accorder l'insigne faveur de l'embrasser.\n\nMais ce n'est pas tout. J'ai dit que souvent, le soir, quand mon fr\u00e8re et ma s\u0153ur \u00e9taient endormis, je sortais de la chambre (la chambre du chapitre 1), allais dans la sienne, en face sur le palier du deuxi\u00e8me \u00e9tage, et me glissais dans son lit. Or l\u00e0 non seulement je l'embrassais encore, mais j'apprenais aussi \u00e0 l'embrasser sur les seins, dans sa chemise de nuit, ces seins dont les transformations \u00e0 ces moments m'\u00e9tonnaient fort. Ma curiosit\u00e9 se serait aussi volontiers orient\u00e9e vers d'autres r\u00e9gions mais elle me l'interdit toujours, gardant dans le lit sa culotte fort aust\u00e8re et r\u00e9pondant \u00e0 mes protestations v\u00e9h\u00e9mentes par ces mots : \u00ab On ne sait jamais. \u00bb\n\nCeci qui me laisse supposer, aujourd'hui, en y repensant, qu'elle ne devait pas avoir une id\u00e9e extr\u00eamement nette de certains ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes que les films de Tino laissaient dans l'ombre (elle ne voulut jamais \u00e9couter mes explications physiologiques, que je tenais des meilleures sources lyc\u00e9ennes, et qui devaient, selon moi, prouver ma parfaite innocuit\u00e9, la rassurer enti\u00e8rement, et la persuader de me permettre d'enti\u00e8res explorations). Je pense aussi qu'elle se trouvait, tant elle \u00e9tait surveill\u00e9e par sa famille et retenue par les r\u00e8gles rigides de conduite qui lui \u00e9taient impos\u00e9es, \u00e0 la fois dans l'impossibilit\u00e9 de se livrer aux joies du baiser romantique et amoureux avec son partenaire d\u00e9sign\u00e9, son fianc\u00e9, mais aussi, dans son ignorance, mod\u00e9r\u00e9ment attir\u00e9e par les perspectives physiques du mariage. J'\u00e9tais en somme, pour elle, une sorte de _sparring-partner_ de l'amour. Et je la faisais rire.\n\nA Paris, elle s'\u00e9tait li\u00e9e avec la \u00ab bonne \u00bb de l'appartement contigu (les portes de service s'ouvraient face \u00e0 face sur l'escalier du m\u00eame nom) qui avait quatre ou cinq ans de plus qu'elle, \u00e9tait une jolie personne qui n'ignorait pas les jupes courtes et le fard (elle en mettait m\u00eame autour des yeux) et \u00e9tait sans aucun doute parfaitement au courant de tous ces myst\u00e8res. Elle me regardait d'un air moqueur et Antoinette avait certainement d\u00fb lui faire des confidences. Elle me trouvait plus \u00ab gentil \u00bb que les gar\u00e7ons dont elle devait s'occuper chez ses patrons (\u00ab de gros idiots \u00bb, disait-elle). Elle \u00ab sortait \u00bb le soir danser avec des soldats am\u00e9ricains et essaya, en vain, de \u00ab d\u00e9gourdir \u00bb Antoinette et de l'amener s'amuser avec elle.\n\nJe me souviens d'un trajet en m\u00e9tro, un matin, avec Antoinette et elle, et d'un soldat am\u00e9ricain, un sergent, auquel elle avait sans doute donn\u00e9 l\u00e0 rendez-vous. Je ne sais pas trop o\u00f9 nous allions. Nous \u00e9tions dans le coin arri\u00e8re du wagon, \u00e0 l'oppos\u00e9 de la porte, et je voyais, pendant qu'ils se caressaient longuement l'un l'autre du regard, le soldat passer sa main sous sa jupe. Je n'en croyais pas mes yeux.\n\n## 126 (\u00a7 49) Le tome X de l'\u00e9dition chronologique monumentale \u00ab Laumonier \u00bb, o\u00f9 il figure, au second livre des Meslanges, \u00e0 la date de 1559\n\nAu dernier vers du sonnet, je le vois, Ronsard a v\u00e9ritablement \u00e9crit \u00ab doux souvenir \u00bb et non \u00ab seul souvenir \u00bb. Et Laumonier ne signale pas une telle variante, que je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re (peut-\u00eatre parce que ma m\u00e9moire s'est habitu\u00e9e \u00e0 elle) mais que j'ai vraisemblablement invent\u00e9e. Le vers 4, dans la premi\u00e8re version, \u00e9tait :\n\n\u00ab Et vos beaux yeux sentoient encore leur enfance. \u00bb\n\nQuant au vers 8, au m\u00eame moment, il se lisait :\n\n\u00ab Et vos cheveux faisoyent au soleil une offense. \u00bb\n\nCe n'\u00e9tait pas tr\u00e8s r\u00e9ussi.\n\nEn m\u00eame temps que du sonnet, je me souviens de trois choses, apprises contemporainement :\n\n\u2013 Je savais que ce sonnet \u00e9tait une \u00ab pi\u00e8ce retranch\u00e9e \u00bb, supprim\u00e9e par Ronsard lui-m\u00eame de ses _\u0152uvres_ , et restitu\u00e9e par la post\u00e9rit\u00e9, sauv\u00e9e d'un oubli voulu, par erreur ou sacrifice, par son auteur. (L'adjectif \u00ab retranch\u00e9e \u00bb apparentant la condamnation \u00e0 une ex\u00e9cution capitale, par l'action d'une \u00ab guillotine \u00bb esth\u00e9tique.) L'expression \u00ab pi\u00e8ce retranch\u00e9e \u00bb \u00e9tait devenue comme le titre du po\u00e8me, et participait au tremblement qu'il me donnait (cette esp\u00e8ce de frisson dorsal qui vous saisit \u00e0 la lecture de certains vers de Shelley par exemple).\n\n\u2013 Mais je m'imaginais comprendre pourquoi Ronsard avait guillotin\u00e9 cette pi\u00e8ce : \u00e0 cause, me disais-je, des six derniers vers qui sont particuli\u00e8rement \u00ab tartes \u00bb, quoique autant ronsardiens que les autres (on y reconna\u00eet (c'est mon jugement actuel) sa coutumi\u00e8re d\u00e9licatesse de sentiment : \u00ab et si pour le jour d'hui vos beaut\u00e9s si parfaictes \/ ne sont comme autrefois... \u00bb). Une telle faille souvent visible dans le g\u00e9nie d'un po\u00e8te dont les choix scolaires et l'enseignement de mes professeurs ne me pr\u00e9sentaient que les \u00ab chefs-d'\u0153uvre \u00bb, \u00e9tait simultan\u00e9ment scandaleuse et rassurante.\n\nJ'ai d\u00e9couvert, presque simultan\u00e9ment, gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 Baudelaire, la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 esth\u00e9tique de ce m\u00e9lange du \u00ab beau \u00bb et du \u00ab non-beau \u00bb dans un m\u00eame po\u00e8me (qui va, supr\u00eame raffinement \u00ab cusain \u00bb dans certains cas, jusqu'\u00e0 rendre essentiels \u00e0 un po\u00e8me des vers d\u00e9lib\u00e9r\u00e9ment compos\u00e9s pour \u00eatre des \u00ab contraires \u00bb de beaux vers : \u00ab C'est trop beau ! trop ! gardons notre silence ! \u00bb (Rimbaud)) : agacement fascinant semblable, pour les personnes de ma g\u00e9n\u00e9ration \u00e0 celui caus\u00e9 par deux bas fil\u00e9s jusqu'en haut de deux jambes f\u00e9minines tr\u00e8s belles :\n\n\u00ab Pendant que des mortels la multitude vile \u00bb\n\nsi pr\u00e8s de :\n\n\u00ab Sois sage \u00f4 ma douleur, et tiens-toi plus tranquille. \u00bb\n\nCar l'imperfection est indispensable \u00e0 la po\u00e9sie. (J'ai rencontr\u00e9, beaucoup plus tard encore, avec la po\u00e9sie japonaise ancienne, une tradition o\u00f9 cette coexistence des extr\u00eames esth\u00e9tiques, opposition de la trame et du dessin, est parfois mise au commencement m\u00eame de toute composition.)\n\n\u2013 J'\u00e9tais frapp\u00e9 enfin, et enchant\u00e9, du double emploi, au m\u00eame endroit du vers, et en deux vers cons\u00e9cutifs, par-dessus la fronti\u00e8re du quatrain, d'un m\u00eame mot en deux visages, qui \u00e9vitent la rime non-rime : \u00ab encore \u00bb, \u00ab encor \u00bb. La diff\u00e9rence entre les deux est minimale et n'est pas, c'est clair, principalement une diff\u00e9rence de prononciation. Mais c'est le signal, le plus \u00e9conomique possible, du r\u00f4le du \u00ab e \u00bb dit \u00ab muet \u00bb dans la prosodie de l'alexandrin. Il est compt\u00e9 qu'au premier de ces deux vers, il ne l'est pas dans le second. Il est en outre, m\u00eame compt\u00e9, toujours au \u00ab bord \u00bb de l'\u00e9vanouissement (certainement extr\u00eamement bas dans l'\u00e9chelle de r\u00e9alisation phonique des \u00ab e \u00bb selon Milner et Regnault). Le premier de ces \u00ab e muets \u00bb est dans un vers qu'il fait sonner comme un trim\u00e8tre, un vers du futur, un \u00ab plagiat par anticipation \u00bb de Hugo. L'absence du second est dans un vers mod\u00e8le d'alexandrin classique (et on \u00e9vite ainsi une treizi\u00e8me syllabe), avec une \u00ab infante \u00bb ant\u00e9pos\u00e9e \u00e0 l'h\u00e9mistiche. L'archa\u00efsme rencontre l'anticipation.\n\nJ'apprenais ce po\u00e8me, et j'avais douze ans. Sa nostalgie \u00e9tait particuli\u00e8rement pure, puisqu'elle se situait n\u00e9cessairement pour moi dans un temps non encore advenu.\n\n## 127 (suite du \u00a7 126) \u00ab Elle \u00e9tait d\u00e9chauss\u00e9e \u00bb\n\nLe m\u00eame hiver, j'ai appris et retenu jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui un autre po\u00e8me, fort connu celui-l\u00e0 des lecteurs de mon \u00e2ge. Il est de Victor Hugo, dans Les Contemplations :\n\nElle \u00e9tait d\u00e9chauss\u00e9e, elle \u00e9tait d\u00e9coiff\u00e9e,\n\nAssise, les pieds nus, parmi les joncs penchants :\n\nMoi qui passais par l\u00e0, je crus voir une f\u00e9e,\n\nEt je lui dis : \u00ab Veux-tu t'en venir dans les champs ? \u00bb\n\nElle me regarda de ce regard supr\u00eame\n\nQui reste \u00e0 la beaut\u00e9 quand nous en triomphons,\n\nEt je lui dis : \u00ab Veux-tu, c'est le mois o\u00f9 l'on aime,\n\nVeux-tu nous en aller sous les arbres profonds ? \u00bb\n\nElle essuya ses pieds \u00e0 l'herbe de la rive ;\n\nElle me regarda pour la seconde fois,\n\nEt la belle fol\u00e2tre alors devint pensive.\n\nO ! Comme les oiseaux chantaient au fond des bois !\n\nComme l'eau caressait doucement le rivage !\n\nJe vis venir \u00e0 moi, dans les grands roseaux verts,\n\nLa belle fille heureuse, effar\u00e9e et sauvage,\n\nSes cheveux dans ses yeux et riant au travers.\n\nMont.-l'Am., juin 183.\n\nLa grande \u00e9dition du Club Fran\u00e7ais du Livre note, avec une discr\u00e8te ironie, semble-t-il, la date suivante, sinon de composition du moins d'entr\u00e9e dans le manuscrit des Contemplations : \u00ab 12 avril 1853 \u2013 V. H. ne semble pas \u00eatre revenu \u00e0 Montfort-L'Amaury depuis 1825, sauf la premi\u00e8re semaine d'ao\u00fbt 1830 : la date fictive demeure obscure. \u00bb Sans doute. Pourtant, quelque chose en ces strophes d\u00e9signe, fictivement peut-\u00eatre, mais efficacement le pass\u00e9 du po\u00e8me : c'est la versification.\n\nIl n'y a dans ce po\u00e8me, ni enjambements, ni trim\u00e8tres romantiques, ni h\u00e9mistiches disloqu\u00e9s. Hugo y utilise l'alexandrin \u00ab niais \u00bb de sa jeunesse, celui par exemple qu'il emploie de mani\u00e8re constante dans les _Feuilles d'automne_ , qui sont de 1831. En cela, il s'agit bien d'une Vieille chanson du jeune temps, m\u00eame si la composition r\u00e9elle (ce que j'ignore) est plus tardive de beaucoup.\n\nLa prosodie po\u00e9tique signale son moment, son archa\u00efsme comme sa contemporan\u00e9it\u00e9 ou ses innovations par de nombreux signes, qu'un effort patient d'analyse peut permettre en partie d'identifier, et qui donnent au po\u00e8me une grande partie de ses couleurs comme de ses pouvoirs. La distance, consid\u00e9rable, entre l'alexandrin de ce po\u00e8me et celui qui est ordinairement employ\u00e9 dans Les Contemplations, celui de R\u00e9ponse \u00e0 un acte d'accusation, par exemple, ou, pour rester dans le registre lyrique, celui de A celle qui est rest\u00e9e en France, contribue de mani\u00e8re d\u00e9cisive \u00e0 son intention.\n\nLe vieil alexandrin marque la jeunesse perdue de l'instant. Et cela d'autant plus que, pour quelqu'un qui le lit beaucoup plus tard, apr\u00e8s plus de quarante ans de fr\u00e9quentation du vers qui s'est dit \u00ab libre \u00bb, le caract\u00e8re irr\u00e9m\u00e9diable du changement, du vieillissement (qui fut acc\u00e9l\u00e9r\u00e9 par Hugo lui-m\u00eame) dans la nature de l'alexandrin, ajoute son propre commentaire _a posteriori_ \u00e0 la nostalgie des vers :\n\n\u00ab Vos beaut\u00e9s si parfaites \/ Ne sont comme autrefois. \u00bb\n\n## 128 (\u00a7 49) Les Sempourgogniques\n\nLes Sempourgogniques\n\nDe l'ouvrage de M. P. Dataficus qui s'\u00e9tendait sur une p\u00e9riode de 107 ans il ne nous est parvenu que quelques fragments. Cet immense ouvrage \u00e9tait divis\u00e9 en neuf d\u00e9docies narrant chacune les \u00e9v\u00e9nements de douze ans et divis\u00e9es chacune en 9 livres. De ces quatre-vingt-un livres il ne nous reste plus que : les livres I, III, VII, IX de la premi\u00e8re d\u00e9docie et XII, XVI racontant la conqu\u00eate de la P\u00e9ruvie. Les livres XVII, XVIII, XX, XXX, onze chapitres du livre XXXII des 2e, 3e, et 4e d\u00e9docies, neuf chapitres du r\u00e9sum\u00e9 des 5e et 6e d\u00e9docies, les livres LV, LVI et LXI de la 7e, le livre LXVIII narrant le r\u00e8gne de Sempourgogne. Enfin le livre LXXIV du r\u00e8gne d'Ipir Ier et les trois derniers livres de l'ouvrage.\n\nNous citons ici des extraits des livres I, III, XVI, XXX, LXVIII, LXXIV, LXXX et LXXXI.\n\nLes Sempourgogniques parurent vaisemblablement en 126. Dataficus mourut en 134.\n\nLa Grandeur\n\nde\n\nSEMPOURGOGNE\n\nEmpereur et roi de P\u00e9ruvie, de\n\nl'an 22 de son \u00e8re jusqu'au 89e \u00e9t\u00e9 de son arriv\u00e9e,\n\nPar la gr\u00e2ce des dieux\n\nGarenne et Goguelu\n\n(Voil\u00e0 un de mes dieux, sans doute, de ceux que j'ai oubli\u00e9s.)\n\n _Ouvrage tr\u00e8s veridique et mirifique du Sieur_\n\n _Marcus Publius Dataficus_\n\n _Percepteur_ (sic) _du digne fils_\n\n _du seigneur comte, vicomte, duc et archiduc_\n\n _Johannus de Bessinguya_\n\nHUJUS MAGNI HEROIS\n\nNEPOS\n\nce 17 avril 126 \u00e0  \nLicoll.\n\nEVENTIS DE QUIBUS SECUTUS EST ADVENTUM IN PERUVIAM SEMPOURGOGNI MAGNI\n\n_I (1) A fortuna missus in Peruviam Sempourgognus Magnus, primo statim adventu illius populi_ _feros cultores_ _, quorum habitus ac lingua singularis erant, obstupefecit et cum e suis navibus, ubi praesidium collocaverat, egressus in superiore loco sua castra posuit, facilius sibi instantes hostes fortuitos sustinendos ; itaque ergo placide, ibi, pernoctavit_.\n\n(Sempourgogne le grand, envoy\u00e9 en P\u00e9ruvie par le ciel, \u00e9tonna d\u00e8s son arriv\u00e9e les habitants sauvages de cette r\u00e9gion dont les habitudes et le langage \u00e9taient singuliers. Et apr\u00e8s avoir quitt\u00e9 ses navires o\u00f9 il laissait une garnison, il \u00e9tablit son camp dans un lieu \u00e9lev\u00e9 pour pouvoir plus facilement repousser des ennemis \u00e9ventuels ; ainsi il passa tranquillement la nuit.)\n\n _(2) Deinde, ubi primum stellarum lanearum pallescit fulgor, dum superbi solis erumpit lux, tunc Sempourgognus Magnus, castris motis agmen suum in planum demittit, suumque caprafelem, cui animali nomen dederant Peruvii capracatem (quod erat fama a Garene generatum deo ac e cappelis felibus que fictum) equitat, donec ad utilem castris locum prevenitur_.\n\n _(3) Ibi, tum, non solum flumen sed castella duo quoque conspexerunt et manum eis quae incolis victus peterent atque commeatum misit Sempurgognus, sapienter, Magnus, ac autem prudenter, ipse, cum robore caprafelitorum_ _progressus [dum stabat agminis Gallorum_ _maxima pars]_ _, lenteque hanc manus insecutus_.\n\n _(4) Paulo post oratores, ad illum celticum ducem venerunt et, cum eos rogavisset benignissime id quod, ut victus, sibi concessurum possent, respondisse :_\n\n _(5) \u00ab Quis es ? unde venis ? quid agere vis ? o advena flava coma et ideo nobis similis, si tua bona erunt consilia tui amici erimus. Responde, o dux, dic nobis qui nomen sit tibo et quae acciderint. \u00bb His dictis tacent Peruviaci duces_.\n\n _(6) At ille : \u00ab O, jucundae hujus regionis..._\n\n(Ensuite, d\u00e8s que la lueur des \u00e9toiles laineuses a disparu, tandis que la lumi\u00e8re du soleil orgueilleux surgit, Sempourgogne le Grand ayant lev\u00e9 le camp conduit son arm\u00e9e dans la plaine et chevauche perch\u00e9 sur sa capraf\u00e8le (que les P\u00e9ruviaques appellent _ch\u00e8vrechat_ car elle a \u00e9t\u00e9 con\u00e7ue par le dieu Garenne d'un m\u00e9lange de ces deux animaux) jusqu'au moment o\u00f9 l'on arrive \u00e0 un lieu favorable \u00e0 l'\u00e9tablissement d'un camp.\n\nIls aper\u00e7urent l\u00e0 un fleuve et, de plus, deux bourgades o\u00f9 sagement Sempourgogne le Grand envoya chercher des vivres chez les habitants et un droit de passage. Cependant lui-m\u00eame, avec l'\u00e9lite des capraf\u00e9lites s'avance prudemment et tandis que la plus grande partie des Gaulois s'arr\u00eate il suit lentement cette troupe.\n\nPeu apr\u00e8s des ambassadeurs vinrent \u00e0 la rencontre de cet illustre chef celtique et comme celui-ci leur demandait ce qu'ils pourraient lui accorder comme vivres ils r\u00e9pondirent :\n\n\u00ab Qui es-tu ? d'o\u00f9 viens-tu ? que veux-tu faire ? O, \u00e9tranger \u00e0 la chevelure blonde et, en cela, semblable \u00e0 nous. Si tes intentions sont bonnes nous serons tes amis, r\u00e9ponds, chef, dis-nous ton nom et tes aventures. \u00bb Ceci dit, les chefs p\u00e9ruviaques se taisent.\n\nCelui-ci r\u00e9pondit : \u00ab O, chefs de ce beau pays \u00e9coutez-moi... \u00bb\n\nSempourgogne fournit alors un r\u00e9cit ultra court de ses aventures. Les P\u00e9ruviaques l'\u00e9coutent \u00ab comme \u00e9coutent les \u00e9l\u00e8ves leur ma\u00eetre \u00bb _(sicut discipuli magistrum attendunt)_ et selon que Sempourgogne le Grand parlait fortement ou faiblement, ils s'approchaient ou s'\u00e9loignaient de lui _(et utcumque Sempourgognus Magnus aut fortiter aut languide loquebatur, aut propinquabant aut discedebant)_ Le h\u00e9ros alors se tait et \u00ab la nature elle-m\u00eame augmente le silence \u00bb jusqu'\u00e0 ce que les chefs autochtones lui proposent de le conduire, lui et ses troupes, dans leur _oppidum_. On parvient jusqu'\u00e0 une muraille d'apparence infranchissable et les \u00ab Gaulois \u00bb ont peur d'\u00eatre tomb\u00e9s dans un pi\u00e8ge. Alors\n\n _(14) Sempourgognus tune Magnus alienum ducem adlocutus, saxumque invium ostendit et iter designare eum jussit. Statim Peruviacus saxo appropinquat, ac, lapide ingente diducto, exitum detexit qua mirati Galli conspexerunt mobile mare_.\n\n(Sempourgogne le Grand interpella alors le chef \u00e9tranger et, lui d\u00e9signant le rocher infranchissable, lui ordonna de montrer le chemin. Sur-le-champ le P\u00e9ruviaque s'approcha de la roche et, faisant tourner un immense rocher, d\u00e9couvrit une issue o\u00f9 les Gaulois \u00e9merveill\u00e9s aper\u00e7urent la mer mouvante.) Sur ce coup de th\u00e9\u00e2tre inspir\u00e9 des meilleurs auteurs, la section I du chapitre s'ach\u00e8ve.\n\n## 129 (suite in \u00a7 128) Les incidents de la deuxi\u00e8me section ne sont gu\u00e8re m\u00e9morables\n\nLes incidents de la deuxi\u00e8me section du chapitre, qui servent surtout de terrain d'entra\u00eenement \u00e0 certaines constructions syntaxiques difficiles (et sans doute d'acquisition r\u00e9cente chez l'auteur), ne sont gu\u00e8re m\u00e9morables. Passons donc d'embl\u00e9e \u00e0 la troisi\u00e8me, consacr\u00e9e essentiellement \u00e0 un portrait physique et moral des capraf\u00e8les, ces animaux-valises chers aux h\u00e9ros des _Sempourgogniques_.\n\n(...)\n\n _III (2) Peruviaci, maxime, caprafelibus detinebantur ; alii mulcebant earum mystaces, alii trahebant eas. Illae sinebant illos, benignissime_.\n\n(Les P\u00e9ruviaques s'occupaient surtout des capraf\u00e8les ; les uns caressaient leurs moustaches, les autres les tiraient. Celles-ci les laissaient faire, avec grandeur d'\u00e2me.)\n\n(3) Ces animaux ont, comme il se doit, des m\u0153urs singuli\u00e8res. Si la plupart des capraf\u00e8les ont quatre pieds, la taille d'une ch\u00e8vre et trois pieds qui touchent presque la terre, en revanche la capraf\u00e8le du Grand Sempourgogne, que les soldats appelaient la Sorci\u00e8re, avait la taille d'un homme et cinq pieds. Elle \u00e9tait ainsi par pur caprice.\n\n _(Quibus animalibus sunt, scilicet, singulares mores. Sicut caprafelibus plerumque quattuor pedes et caprae statura est, pedesque tria fere qui terram tangebant, ita capracati Magni Sempourgogni, cui nomen dederant milites Incantatrix, erat tamen hominis statura atque pedes quinque. Caprafelice ita fuisse dicebatur.)_\n\n(4) Toujours chez les capraf\u00e8les dont le corps est conforme \u00e0 l'usage, la queue et la t\u00eate sont de chat. La tradition veut cependant qu'une certaine capraf\u00e8le ait eu un nez de ch\u00e8vre. Du reste, les caprices et la perfidie qui appartiennent \u00e0 coup s\u00fbr aux femmes sont aussi des vices propres \u00e0 ces animaux.\n\n _(Capracatibus semper corporis convenientis habitu, cauda caputque felinum est. Fama, tamen, caprafeli cuidam nasum caprinum fuisse, est. Ceterum, ut libido ac perfidia certo mulieribus, ita, animalibus illis, ista vitia sunt.)_\n\n(5) C\u00e9sar en eut jadis une et l'on raconte qu'un jour o\u00f9 elle lui avait demand\u00e9 pourquoi il avait os\u00e9 vaincre les Gaulois et qu'il lui avait r\u00e9pondu que cela avait \u00e9t\u00e9 son devoir de Romain, elle lui avait dit qu'il \u00e9tait b\u00eate.\n\n _(Caesarem unam earum habuisse, atque quondam earn, cur ausum esset Gallos vincere, eum rogavisse et, cum illi respondisset officium fuisse Romanum, earn declaravisse Caesarem stupidum, aiunt.)_\n\n(6) (Ces b\u00eates sont en effet des femmes tr\u00e8s bavardes, punies par les dieux et qui ne peuvent plus parler que quand elles sont interrog\u00e9es.\n\n _(Nam bestiae eae mulieres garrulissim\u00e6 sunt quae deis punitae et ubi rogantur, loqui tantum possunt.)_\n\n(7) Mais de grandes qualit\u00e9s compensent leurs d\u00e9fauts. Elles s'attachent toujours \u00e0 de bons ma\u00eetres, r\u00e9sistent en outre \u00e0 la fatigue et si elles ne s'endorment pas facilement le soir, elles se r\u00e9veillent difficilement le matin.\n\n _(At quoque, magnae virtutes aequant earum vitia. Et ad bonos, semper, dominos se applicant, et, insuper, sudori cuilibet resistunt et, ut vespere somno haud facile connivent, ita, mane, haud facile excitari possunt.)_\n\n(8) C'est d'ailleurs pourquoi Sempourgogne le Grand envoyait, de bon matin, des d\u00e9l\u00e9gu\u00e9s officiels pour les r\u00e9veiller. Ces rites \u00e9taient appel\u00e9s le Grand Lever.\n\n _(Itaque mittebat semper, mane novo, legatos publicos qui eas expergefacerent, Sempourgognus magnus. Ritus illos, Surrectionem Magnam, vocari.)_\n\n(9) Les capraf\u00e8les ne sont pas d'humeur \u00e9gale le jour et la nuit. Elles mangent d'habitude beaucoup et bien. Elles broutent des bourgeons et des feuilles tendres, aiment l'acidit\u00e9 et non l'amertume. Pendant le repas elles sont tranquilles ou d\u00e9cha\u00een\u00e9es. Apr\u00e8s un bon d\u00e9jeuner elles sourient parfois. Mais le plus souvent, elles sont m\u00e9contentes du cuisinier et le poursuivent \u00e0 coups de pierres.\n\n _(Illae die noctuque non civiles. Multum esse soient beneque. Oculos pascunt ac tenera folia. Acrem sed non amaritudinem amant. Inter cenam aut placidae aut accensae sunt. Post jucundum cibum nonnunquam arrident. Saepe autem in coquo offenduntur brevique lapidibus eum appetunt.)_\n\n(10) Quoi qu'il en soit, les capraf\u00e8les \u00e9taient tr\u00e8s honor\u00e9es...\n\n _(Quamquam magnopere colebantur caprafeles...)_\n\n(Bien \u00e9videmment, le r\u00e9cit ne se poursuit gu\u00e8re au-del\u00e0 de ces quelques chapitres.)\n\n## 130 (in \u00a7 50) Leningrad, Stalingrad, Orel, Koursk, Velikie-Louki, Briansk\n\nCes noms ne changeront pas pour moi. Ils ne d\u00e9signent pas les villes actuelles, le Saint-P\u00e9tersbourg arch\u00e9o-r\u00e9tro d'apr\u00e8s ao\u00fbt 1991 (ah ! le bon vieux temps de la Sainte Russie : ses tsars, ses barines, ses moujiks, ses pogromes !), ni le ridicule Volgograd de l'\u00e8re Krouchtchev, mais les batailles qui s'y livr\u00e8rent (la d\u00e9faite de l'arm\u00e9e de Von Paulus, le si\u00e8ge terrible o\u00f9 mourut le po\u00e8te Kharms). Ce sont des lieux de m\u00e9moire, et il vaut mieux que les lieux vivants en soient distincts.\n\nSi je termine par \u00ab Briansk \u00bb cette \u00e9num\u00e9ration, c'est \u00e0 cause d'un souvenir \u00ab g\u00e9n\u00e9rique \u00bb des temps o\u00f9 le reflux d\u00e9cisif des arm\u00e9es hitl\u00e9riennes commen\u00e7a : j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 chez le coiffeur avec un livre et j'entendis \u00e0 la radio vichyste l'annonce d'un nouveau \u00ab repli \u00e9lastique \u00bb (r\u00e9jouissante expression des services de la \u00ab Propagande \u00bb allemande), l'\u00e9vacuation de Briansk, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, en un d\u00e9placement vers l'ouest sur \u00ab des positions pr\u00e9par\u00e9es \u00e0 l'avance \u00bb. Je m'empressai de rapporter la nouvelle \u00e0 la maison. Et cette fois, \u00ab Londres \u00bb \u00e9tait en retard, qui ne l'annon\u00e7a qu'au bulletin d'information du soir, \u00ab Les Fran\u00e7ais parlent aux Fran\u00e7ais \u00bb. Ce passage de la d\u00e9n\u00e9gation \u00e0 l'anticipation des reculs ennemis \u00e9tait d'excellent pronostic pour la suite.\n\n\u00ab Velikie Louki \u00bb est une ville bi\u00e9lo-russe, il me semble. Et le nom (russe) signifie \u00ab Hautes Prairies \u00bb. Le fr\u00e8re de Nina Morguleff (dont vous avez lu un peu plus haut le t\u00e9moignage), Georges, s'\u00e9tait \u00e9galement r\u00e9fugi\u00e9 dans la r\u00e9gion carcassonnaise et \u00e9tait \u00ab entr\u00e9 \u00bb dans la R\u00e9sistance, comme on disait.\n\n(Du t\u00e9moignage de mon p\u00e8re (\u00a7 115))\n\n _Qu. :_ Qui \u00e9tait Georges ?\n\n\u2013 Ses parents avaient \u00e9migr\u00e9 de Russie en Allemagne. Puis quand il y a eu le nazisme les parents ont dit : \u00ab Il faut aller en France. \u00bb Ils sont arriv\u00e9s en France, sa s\u0153ur et lui. Un type d'une intelligence prodigieuse, Georges Morguleff, au point que, nous l'avons su par des amis, au bout d'un an il \u00e9tait premier en fran\u00e7ais. Un type extr\u00eamement brillant.\n\nAu d\u00e9but de la guerre il \u00e9tait aspirant dans l'arm\u00e9e fran\u00e7aise. Il s'est cach\u00e9 dans le Tarn. Nous le connaissions par la famille de Lyon. Je l'ai fait revenir et il est devenu mon secr\u00e9taire. Finalement, quand Myriel a \u00e9t\u00e9 tu\u00e9 il est devenu commandant FFI de l'Aude. Sa s\u0153ur \u00e9tait la secr\u00e9taire de Marc Bloch qui \u00e9tait responsable des Francs tireurs de la R\u00e9gion lyonnaise.\n\n _Qu. :_ Il habite \u00e0 Paris maintenant ?\n\n\u2013 Georges ? oui, avec sa s\u0153ur. Elle a \u00e9t\u00e9 journaliste \u00e0 _Midi libre_ , apr\u00e8s. Elle est astrophysicienne.)\n\nGeorges et Nina essayaient de nous faire prononcer les invraisemblables liquides de ces deux mots. Nous n'y arrivions jamais. Pas plus qu'\u00e0 prononcer correctement le \u00ab r \u00bb et le \u00ab 1 \u00bb final de \u00ab Orel \u00bb, la ville dont le nom veut dire \u00ab aigle \u00bb.\n\n## 131 (\u00a7 50) J'avais admir\u00e9 les manifestants antip\u00e9tainistes de 1942\n\n(Toujours le t\u00e9moignage de mon p\u00e8re : \u00a7 115 et autres)\n\n\u2013 La premi\u00e8re organisation, c'est Picolo qui l'a mont\u00e9e.\n\n\u2013 Je passe sur les enfantillages. Au d\u00e9but nous faisions des plaisanteries qui consistaient \u00e0 partir avec un fusil de chasse rep\u00e9rer les endroits o\u00f9 \u00e9ventuellement on ferait des embuscades, des trucs comme \u00e7a.\n\n\u2013 Il connaissait beaucoup de gens. Sa pharmacie \u00e9tait un lieu de rendez-vous, un peu trop ouvert.\n\n\u2013 Il \u00e9tait pharmacien ?\n\n\u2013 Sa femme \u00e9tait pharmacienne, lui \u00e9tait professeur de physique au lyc\u00e9e de Carcassonne. On l'avait r\u00e9voqu\u00e9, il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 le candidat socialiste de la circonscription.\n\n\u2013 La premi\u00e8re organisation c'est lui qui l'a mont\u00e9e. Il y avait eu la visite de ce St\u00e9phane. Je lui ai dit : revenez demain.\n\n\u2013 C'\u00e9tait en 1941 ?\n\n\u2013 En 1941 oui, il avait l'air si myst\u00e9rieux. Je me suis m\u00e9fi\u00e9, il avait tous les noms inscrits sur un carnet. J'ai t\u00e9l\u00e9phon\u00e9 \u00e0 un ami qui m'a dit : \u00ab Tu es compl\u00e8tement fou. j'ai des r\u00e9fugi\u00e9s espagnols chez moi, nous sommes surveill\u00e9s depuis longtemps. \u00bb Picolo, lui, a pris contact. Et il a commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 organiser \u00ab Combat \u00bb, enfin quelque chose qui ensuite s'est appel\u00e9 Combat.\n\n\u2013 Il a fait un geste qui a fait du bruit dans Carcassonne. Il a arrach\u00e9 le bouquet de l'Allemand qui venait faire une conf\u00e9rence sur la collaboration culturelle, au th\u00e9\u00e2tre de Carcassonne. Dans la grande rue de Carcassonne, des gens lui avaient apport\u00e9 un bouquet, et Albert Picolo lui avait arrach\u00e9 le bouquet.\n\n\u2013 C'est vrai, l'organisation n'\u00e9tait pas structur\u00e9e, mais son influence \u00e9tait \u00e9tendue. Je pense au 14 juillet 1942, \u00e0 Barb\u00e8s. Armand Barb\u00e8s est une des gloires de la r\u00e9gion, un r\u00e9volutionnaire de 48. Il a son tombeau dans un bois tr\u00e8s beau, \u00e0 Villalier. C'est le village o\u00f9 est enterr\u00e9 Joe Bousquet. Barb\u00e8s avait sa statue sur une des grandes all\u00e9es de Carcassonne, le boulevard Barb\u00e8s. Elle \u00e9tait en bronze. Les Allemands l'ont enlev\u00e9e. Le lendemain, il y avait des inscriptions : \u00ab Barb\u00e8s nous te vengerons \u00bb ou quelque chose comme \u00e7a. Et le 14 juillet il y a eu une \u00e9norme manifestation, le 14 juillet 1942.\n\n\u2013 Albert n'\u00e9tait plus l\u00e0, on l'avait arr\u00eat\u00e9, puis il \u00e9tait parti en Loz\u00e8re. Le travail de bouche \u00e0 oreille avait \u00e9t\u00e9 bien fait. Je me souviens que nous \u00e9tions avec la femme d'Albert, Odette, dans le jardin, un certain nombre, nous sommes sortis pour y aller, nous ne pensions pas que ce serait si beau. Les all\u00e9es \u00e9taient compl\u00e8tement pleines. Il y avait m\u00eame des notables : le p\u00e8re Bruguier, le Dr Gout, le procureur Moreni. Moreni est mort en d\u00e9portation.\n\n\u2013 Quand le service d'ordre des l\u00e9gionnaires est venu, nous \u00e9tions nombreux. \u00c7a a chant\u00e9 _La Marseillaise_. Dans une rue parall\u00e8le, le p\u00e8re Bruguier, le Dr Gout et Moreni partaient de la manifestation, et \u00e0 ce moment-l\u00e0 les l\u00e9gionnaires ont voulu leur faire un mauvais parti. Les p\u00e9tainistes n'\u00e9taient pas nombreux mais ils \u00e9taient l\u00e0, en tenue. Le mot d'ordre est pass\u00e9, nous avons fil\u00e9 \u00e0 toute allure, il y a eu un face-\u00e0-face. Ils se sont d\u00e9gonfl\u00e9s.\n\nCe qui m'a amus\u00e9 dans cette histoire, c'est que nous avions fait un match de rugby, les professeurs du lyc\u00e9e contre une autre \u00e9quipe, et il y avait un gars un peu voyou, qui s'\u00e9tait bagarr\u00e9 avec un professeur, un pilier, et on s'est retrouv\u00e9 \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9. Il m'a dit : \u00ab Tiens, tu es l\u00e0, toi. \u00bb\n\n# bifurcations\n# BIFURCATION A\n\n# Le Monstre de Strasbourg\n\n* * *\n\n## 132 (\u00a7 9) Je vois ce titre immense, Le Monstre de Strasbourg, sur un fond cin\u00e9matographique de toits \u00e0 chemin\u00e9es,\n\n **Je vois ce titre immense,** **Le Monstre de Strasbourg** **, sur un fond cin\u00e9matographique** (anachronique ?) **de toits \u00e0 chemin\u00e9es, pentus excessivement, h\u00e9riss\u00e9s de cigognes : leurs nids contre les chemin\u00e9es, leurs longues plumes blanches ou roses m\u00eal\u00e9es de neige, leurs jambes interminables ; toits de plomb, couverts des plaques, des feuilles d'un \u00e9tain pluvieux et verdi ; un d\u00e9cor, une page de garde \u00e0 mouvement, \u00e0 transformations. Le \u00ab Monstre \u00bb indescriptible est certainement l\u00e0, derri\u00e8re les chemin\u00e9es ; c'est \u00e0 cause de lui que s'envolent les cigognes. Je vois son invisibilit\u00e9, je retrouve presque la peur qu'il suscite, la peur l\u00e9g\u00e8re induite par le conte dans la chambre d\u00e9j\u00e0 nocturne : dans une bulle de nuit, souffl\u00e9e par le conteur, moi, autour de la chambre, autour des trois lits, autour du mien ; autour des t\u00eates, de la mienne, dans la mienne ; contenant une lune.** (\u00ab _Quand les cigognes du ca\u00efstre \/ S'envolent au souffle des soirs \/ Quand la lune appara\u00eet sinistre \/ Derri\u00e8re les grands d\u00f4mes noirs_ \/ \u00bb (Hugo).)\n\n **Je reste dans la m\u00eame chambre d'enfance, \u00e0 Carcassonne, rue d'Assas, le soir : un soir de nuit tardive ; il s'agit d'une nuit d'\u00e9t\u00e9, ou de printemps finissant, ou de d\u00e9but d'automne, apr\u00e8s la rentr\u00e9e des classes ; dans la chambre sombre, le lit, les trois lits ; le ciel plus clair, par la fen\u00eatre ; un ciel de soir, presque de nuit.**\n\n **Allong\u00e9, les deux autres lits sont \u00e0 ma gauche** , comme j'ai dit \u2192 cap. 1. Je bifurque dans mon souvenir, je passe du matin au soir, de l'hiver \u00e0 l'\u00e9t\u00e9, encore un saut tout naturel, sans effort, d\u00e8s que me vient la vision de givre sur la vitre, son contact avec le doigt, d\u00e8s que je la laisse bouger. **En ce moment, qui devrait \u00eatre celui du sommeil, de la pr\u00e9paration au sommeil, je raconte**. C'est **un soir de r\u00e9cit**. Il est vrai que je ne me vois, ni ne m'entends, racontant. Je ne sais pas non plus quel est le r\u00e9cit. Mais le souvenir s'en est transmis, ext\u00e9rieurement \u00e0 moi. Les r\u00e9cits entendus ont \u00e9t\u00e9 longtemps retenus, sinon dans leurs d\u00e9tails, du moins dans leur atmosph\u00e8re. Le Monstre de Strasbourg \u00e9tait un r\u00e9cit, un r\u00e9cit fantastique, prolong\u00e9, \u00e0 \u00e9pisodes, un \u00ab feuilleton \u00bb, en somme.\n\nIl n'y a plus qu'un titre \u00e0 ce r\u00e9cit. Et ce titre, qui a effac\u00e9 presque tous les autres titres de r\u00e9cits de ces moments, de ces ann\u00e9es, est devenu aussi celui de cette famille de souvenirs, dans la chambre d'\u00e9t\u00e9, le soir : Le Monstre de Strasbourg. Un r\u00e9cit d'effroi gothique, nourri de _Notre-Dame de Paris_ par exemple, ou de _Quentin Durward, d'Ivanho\u00e9_ , des _H\u00e9ritiers d'Ellangowan_ , de _La Fianc\u00e9e de Lamermoor_ , d'un de ceux-l\u00e0 certainement (je ne risque pas de me tromper beaucoup : j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 un lecteur assidu des romans de Hugo et plus encore de ceux de Walter Scott). Pour la couleur locale \u00ab alsacienne \u00bb que suppose le \u00ab Strasbourg \u00bb du titre, il faudrait chercher du c\u00f4t\u00e9 d'Erckmann-Chatrian ( _Madame Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, Le Conscrit de 1813, L'Invasion)_ , pour le fantastique, chez Edgar Poe dans la version de Baudelaire _(Les Aventures d'Arthur Gordon Pym de Nantucket_ ?)... Il y a le choix.\n\nEt pour les \u00e9pisodes tardifs, si on les rejette jusqu'\u00e0 l'automne de 1943, il faudrait ajouter _Rocambole_ (\u00a7 144-145) (j'ai retenu, peut-\u00eatre parce qu'il mettait en sc\u00e8ne l'auteur de cet \u00e9norme feuilleton, et vraisemblablement pas tout \u00e0 fait par hasard, un \u00ab message personnel \u00bb insistant de la radio de Londres, une de ces phrases \u00e9nigmatiques et r\u00e9currentes aussi fascinantes que des proverbes, des leitmotivs, des citations. Nous les \u00e9coutions comme s'il s'agissait de voix po\u00e9tiques, ou proph\u00e9tiques (et elles l'\u00e9taient, en un sens qui nous \u00e9chappait), sans en comprendre les intentions : \u00ab _Ponson-du-Terrail fait fr\u00e9mir le quartier. Je r\u00e9p\u00e8te : Ponson-du-Terrail fait fr\u00e9mir le_ _quartier \u00bb_ J'ai appris plus tard que la voix annon\u00e7ait ainsi un parachutage d'armes, ou un bombardement : des affaires de \u00ab R\u00e9sistance \u00bb.\n\nMais ainsi reconstitu\u00e9, c'est un souvenir qui n'a, en fait, plus rien de \u00ab gothique \u00bb, plus rien de sinistre. Et il ne reste plus rien aujourd'hui, ou presque, de son \u00ab aura \u00bb de myst\u00e8res romanesques, jadis toujours pr\u00e9sente et sans cesse diff\u00e9r\u00e9e, suspendue, puis renouvel\u00e9e, dans l'attente soir apr\u00e8s soir, avec les rebondissements et les r\u00e9solutions, autour des \u00ab \u00e9pisodes \u00bb du r\u00e9cit. Je l'ai conserv\u00e9e longtemps, tel un \u00e9cho de ces ann\u00e9es, et un t\u00e9moignage assez irr\u00e9cusable (puisque je n'\u00e9tais pas seul \u00e0 m'en souvenir) d'un plaisir ancien \u00e0 raconter, avec une certaine efficacit\u00e9, des \u00ab histoires \u00bb. J'avouerai ici que j'aurais bien voulu, dans **Le Grand Incendie de Londres** , en restituer quelque chose : au moins une \u00ab valeur approch\u00e9e \u00bb.\n\nPourtant le halo de myst\u00e8re du monstre enfantin, terrible mais inoffensif, m'est un jour apparu beaucoup plus \u00e9trange, inqui\u00e9tant m\u00eame, comme si les **myst\u00e8res** divertissants du conte n'avaient fait que convertir une **\u00e9nigme** , dont la chute, avec le temps, apr\u00e8s des ann\u00e9es de dissimulation et d'h\u00e9sitation, \u00e9tait devenue, par une rencontre invraisemblable d'images, contingente, absurde, mais irr\u00e9cusable, ce qu'elle avait toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 v\u00e9ritablement : sombre. Cela commen\u00e7a un soir de 1983, quelque temps apr\u00e8s la mort d'Alix, et je m'\u00e9tais allong\u00e9 de nouveau sur son lit d\u00e9sert\u00e9, dans l'angle du mur, le long du pavage en fragments de miroir o\u00f9 elle avait voulu que se refl\u00e8tent le ciel, et les nuages. Les nuages, \u00e0 leur habitude, sortaient de rien, sortaient dans le silence de derri\u00e8re l'\u00e9glise des Blancs-Manteaux, dans le golfe de toits entre l'\u00e9glise et les maisons de la rue.\n\nLes nuages arrivaient lentement, porteurs du soir et de la lumi\u00e8re finissante, d\u00e9sol\u00e9e, sur les maisons, sur l'\u00e9glise, sur les arbres du square ; d\u00e9rivaient dans les fragments de miroir, s'en allaient, avec leur tranquillit\u00e9 muette, a\u00e9rienne, avec leur indiff\u00e9rence insupportable. Et je me d\u00e9testais d'\u00eatre l\u00e0 encore une fois, de n'avoir pu m'interdire d'\u00eatre l\u00e0, avec ma souffrance, avec l'abandon \u00e0 la souffrance absolue que signifiait \u00eatre l\u00e0, pendant que la lumi\u00e8re impardonn\u00e9e fuyait sous la porte, se retirait du parquet, des vitres, du plafond, des livres, de la chaise, de mes mains, de mes yeux, de toute mon attention au ciel, aux nuages, \u00e0 l'estuaire encore tr\u00e8s lumineux du jour entre les toits.\n\nDans le mouvement des nuages, alors, dans l'image m\u00eame du bord des toits de l'\u00e9glise o\u00f9 ils m'apparaissaient d'abord, dans la forme de la pierre, j'ai senti la pr\u00e9sence d'un monstre, que je sentais conna\u00eetre, mais que je n'identifiais pas, pas encore, venu de loin, de trop loin. Et ce n'est que plus tard encore que, montrant \u00e0 Marie, dans l'angle de la fen\u00eatre, ces nuages apparus surgissant de l'oubli, leur origine m'a \u00e9t\u00e9 restitu\u00e9e. Il n'y avait pas l\u00e0 un monstre, mais ce monstre, le **Monstre de Strasbourg** de mon enfance, l'invention soudain plus du tout aimable de mon imagination de conteur d\u00e9butant.\n\n## 133 J'ouvre la porte au fond de la chambre\n\n **J'ouvre la porte au fond de la chambre ; je l'ouvre dans le premier matin, d'une saison indistincte, quelconque, obscur au-dehors ; la chambre \u00e9tait \u00e9clair\u00e9e d'une ampoule nue, qui pendait du plafond, pas tout \u00e0 fait au centre de la pi\u00e8ce, plus pr\u00e8s de la porte ; la porte ouverte entra\u00eenait la jaune lumi\u00e8re de la chambre vers le dehors, annexait une partie de l'espace au-del\u00e0 de la porte, jusqu'\u00e0 celle qui lui fait face sur le palier ; que je n'ouvre pas ; image \u00e0 la Hopper ; par la lumi\u00e8re jaune d'une ampoule, la chambre sortait d'elle-m\u00eame, d\u00e9bordait de sa porte, de sa fen\u00eatre, emplissait une poche d'espace, d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9 suspendue en l'air du jardin, de l'autre comprim\u00e9e par le mur, par l'autre porte, et le sol qu'interrompait, incertaine, la derni\u00e8re marche de l'escalier.**\n\n **Je vais jusque-l\u00e0** ; je ne p\u00e9n\u00e8tre pas pour le moment dans l'autre chambre du deuxi\u00e8me \u00e9tage (face \u00e0 la premi\u00e8re, celle dont je viens de sortir). Ce fut la chambre de Marie (puis d'Antoinette, apr\u00e8s le mariage de Marie, et son d\u00e9part pour le Minervois, pour Villegly) ; **je m'arr\u00eate en haut de l'escalier. Je me penche sur l'obscurit\u00e9 de la cage d'escalier : au-dessous de moi un demi-si\u00e8cle, obscur.**\n\nJe suis en haut de l'escalier comme sur la margelle d'un puits, un autre puits que celui du jardin, condamn\u00e9, entre la terrasse et le banc. Je m'arr\u00eate. J'attends d'en voir surgir quelque v\u00e9rit\u00e9. Mais de quel ordre ? Pas une le\u00e7on, je ne suis \u00e0 la recherche d'aucune le\u00e7on. (Une morale ? \u00ab Et quelle morale ? Aucune. \u00bb) Je cherche une nouvelle continuit\u00e9 d'images pour avancer dans ce parcours, aboutir en cette bifurcation (j'ai un but). Je suis arriv\u00e9 assez facilement au point o\u00f9 je me penche sur l'obscurit\u00e9 ancienne de l'escalier. J'ai referm\u00e9 la porte derri\u00e8re moi. Aucune lumi\u00e8re ne m'\u00e9claire du ciel, aucune eau dans le fond d'un puits ne me renvoie mon visage (aucune eau d'aucun puits ne me renvoie jamais mon visage, au pass\u00e9). Je ne me heurte pas \u00e0 une obscurit\u00e9 imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable, immobile, mais \u00e0 une profusion. Comme si toutes les obscurit\u00e9s de tous les escaliers de toutes les maisons o\u00f9 j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 se pressaient ensemble, l\u00e0, s'y confondaient, et que d'elles montait un nuage, une fum\u00e9e de visions.\n\nJe dois faire un effort intense de s\u00e9paration raisonn\u00e9e : pas cette image parce qu'\u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 il y a cela, pas cette image parce que la rampe est en fer, celle-l\u00e0 parce que les marches sont en pierre, celle-l\u00e0 parce que la pente est droite. Il me faudrait voir du bois (rampe et marches) et une spirale. Je ne comprends (ou bien je comprends trop) ni cette r\u00e9sistance \u00e0 l'identification (persistante, cela fait trois matins que je m'acharne) ni la prolif\u00e9ration brouillonne qui constamment recouvre les bribes de vision certaine (certitude fond\u00e9e ou pas, peu importe), et m'exp\u00e9die jusque vers le haut (vertigineux) du Scott Monument \u00e0 Edimbourg, par exemple (c'est ce qui vient de m'arriver), au moins aussi facilement que dans les escaliers des autres maisons o\u00f9 j'ai v\u00e9cu.\n\nOr j'insiste, malgr\u00e9 la r\u00e9ticence involontaire mais tenace de mon cerveau, \u00e0 laquelle je ne peux trouver aucune justification externe. J'insiste, et ne m'accorde pas la licence d'accepter une quelconque des diversions qui s'offrent, de partir dans une nouvelle incise afin de revenir, sur une trajectoire oblique, au m\u00eame point de d\u00e9part. J'ai besoin de la spirale de l'escalier, parce qu'elle est semblable au trajet en l\u00e9vitation qui m'a conduit de la chambre au jardin, parce qu'elle est aussi boucle, parce que la descente de mon regard sur la discontinuit\u00e9 des marches, sur la continuit\u00e9 de la rampe, n'est en aucun cas une descente r\u00e9elle, ni dans l'espace ni dans la dur\u00e9e. Les points de d\u00e9part et d'aboutissement y sont les m\u00eames, comme deux levers de jour sont les m\u00eames, deux premiers jours de l'hiver, de l'ann\u00e9e, du printemps.\n\nJ'insiste (j'ai insist\u00e9 presque six mois : entre cet instant de prose et le pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent il y a une discontinuit\u00e9 de six mois. Mais il me fallait tout ce temps, comme si j'avais entrepris de creuser un tunnel avec une aiguille exacte), je m'acharne jusqu'\u00e0 recevoir la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de cette profusion : qu'en me penchant sur la spirale sombre de l'escalier, je plongeais mon regard dans un tourbillon, la vis sans fin d'un tourbillon, o\u00f9 la prolif\u00e9ration des images \u00e9tait la r\u00e8gle. Je ne devais pas chercher \u00e0 s\u00e9parer, distinguer, ordonner. Les images sans cesse ainsi \u00ab emp\u00e9gu\u00e9es \u00bb l'une sur l'autre me montraient une autre condition, une autre modalit\u00e9 du temps r\u00e9volu. Je ne devais pas la refuser.\n\n **Monter sur la rampe de bois, lisse ; glisser jusqu'en bas ; jusqu'au butoir ; remonter, glisser**. Un jeu. L'essence du jeu est d'\u00eatre absorb\u00e9 dans la spire du mouvement ; **la pression du bois, le moment de l'acc\u00e9l\u00e9ration sensible est l\u00e0 o\u00f9 l'escalier tourne, o\u00f9 le frottement commence \u00e0 chauffer les paumes, les cuisses ; une vitesse parfum\u00e9e de cire, centrifuge**.\n\nOu bien, autre jeu : **remonter sur la premi\u00e8re marche, sauter ; sauter de la deuxi\u00e8me, de la troisi\u00e8me marche ; plus haut, s'appuyer d'une main sur le mur, de l'autre sur la rampe ; aller chercher le plus bas possible le mur, la rampe ; glisser peu \u00e0 peu des mains vers le bas, prendre appui, \u00e9lan, des doigts de pied (nus ?) sur l'ar\u00eate de la neuvi\u00e8me, dixi\u00e8me marche, ramasser les jambes sous soi en bondissant ; d\u00e9passer l'angle du mur, jeter alors les jambes en avant du corps, pour que le bond le plus haut commence dans le tournant, pour que la fl\u00e8che de la chute tourne avant de se pr\u00e9cipiter vers sa cible invisible, le sol.**\n\nD'un double mouvement de jeux, discontinu-continu, mon corps franchit ainsi ais\u00e9ment la distance rest\u00e9e si longtemps imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable \u00e0 mon regard. J'accepte la le\u00e7on. Je ne recommencerai pas l'exp\u00e9rience, en arrivant sur le palier du premier \u00e9tage. Je risquerais d'y rester ind\u00e9finiment arr\u00eat\u00e9.\n\n## 134 Ici, il s'offre trois voies.\n\nIci, il s'offre trois voies. En face de moi sur le palier s'ouvre la porte du balcon, \u00e0 ma gauche la chambre de nos parents (je n'y entre pas). A droite, le \u00ab bureau \u00bb. Je commencerai l\u00e0. (La porte du balcon est une porte-fen\u00eatre. La lumi\u00e8re entre, beaucoup plus ais\u00e9ment qu'\u00e0 l'\u00e9tage du dessus. Pourtant l'escalier reste aussi peupl\u00e9 et imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable \u00e0 la fois, \u00ab un trou trofonien plein de nuage et d'ombre \u00bb, plein d'oubli.)\n\nDans le bureau (pi\u00e8ce) je vois le bureau (objet). Face \u00e0 la porte, entre les deux fen\u00eatres (la premi\u00e8re \u00e0 gauche, au-dessus de la terrasse, la seconde fait \u00e9galement face \u00e0 la porte, au-dessus de la \u00ab serre \u00bb & du \u00ab potager \u00bb). Sur le mur, entre les fen\u00eatres, les livres d'une biblioth\u00e8que, jusqu'au plafond. (Des livres aussi sur le mur \u00e0 gauche, entre la porte et la fen\u00eatre, mais pas jusqu'en haut.) Je vois de pr\u00e9f\u00e9rence depuis la \u00ab t\u00eate \u00bb du divan, contre le mur \u00e0 droite de la porte, ench\u00e2ss\u00e9 (sur deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s) dans le \u00ab cosy \u00bb.\n\n **Le bureau (objet) \u00e9tait massif, en bois lourd, si lourd qu'il paraissait fix\u00e9 au sol ; sa forme g\u00e9n\u00e9rale \u00e9tait celle d'un Arc de Triomphe, au-dessus plat, couvert d'une plaque de verre (sous laquelle, parfois \u00e9tait gliss\u00e9 un buvard ; rose, vert) ; chaque jambe, \u00e9l\u00e9phantesque, \u00e9tait creuse : celle de gauche avait une porte ; celle de droite trois tiroirs, presque impossibles \u00e0 bouger, \u00e0 tirer ; entre les deux \u00ab jambes \u00bb un autre tiroir encore ; la porte avait une serrure ; le tiroir m\u00e9dian aussi**. Le bureau (objet) \u00e9tait l'\u00eatre du bureau (lieu), le bureau en soi.\n\nIl fut un compagnon oblig\u00e9 des humains de la famille au cours de plusieurs d\u00e9m\u00e9nagements Pourtant je ne le revois ni \u00e0 Paris, rue d'Assas, ni rue Franklin \u00e0 Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Il ne refait surface visuelle, inchang\u00e9 quoique de proportions r\u00e9duites par l'\u00e2ge (le mien), que de nouveau \u00e0 Paris, rue Jean-Menans, o\u00f9 le hisser jusqu'au cinqui\u00e8me \u00e9tage serait, sans accessoires perfectionn\u00e9s, aujourd'hui un exploit : simple f\u00e9tu cependant pour une \u00e9quipe de la g\u00e9n\u00e9ration h\u00e9ro\u00efque des d\u00e9m\u00e9nageurs que je me repr\u00e9sente en blouse comme aux d\u00e9buts de la Troisi\u00e8me R\u00e9publique, et chantant en ch\u0153ur le refrain de Courteline : \u00ab Sur nos nuques et sur nos dos\/ Chargeons, messieurs, chargeons les lourds fardeaux. \/ \u00bb\n\nLe bureau n'alla pas, ensuite, \u00e0 Saint-F\u00e9lix pr\u00e8s Carcassonne mais, par piti\u00e9 pour la SNCF peut-\u00eatre, seulement jusqu'\u00e0 Villejuif, d'o\u00f9 il fut de nouveau extrait pour \u00eatre install\u00e9 dans ma chambre, au 51 de la rue des Francs-Bourgeois. A mon d\u00e9part, Charlotte voulut bien lui assurer une vieillesse digne (elle \u00e9tait attir\u00e9e aussi, je pense, par le luxe de profonds et secrets tiroirs). Puis il c\u00e9da la place \u00e0 un dispositif plus l\u00e9ger, plus moderne, plus en accord avec les exigences esth\u00e9tiques d'une jeune fille de seize ans.\n\nPour moi cependant, en 1940 et la suite, le bureau n'\u00e9tait v\u00e9ritablement aucune de ses parties solides et mat\u00e9rielles, mais l'espace, cubique \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s, qu'il d\u00e9limitait sous ses arches. S'\u00e9tait invent\u00e9e l\u00e0 une demeure, h\u00e9sitant entre cabane, palais et niche, qu'une serviette de toilette, une chemise ou quelques chiffons pouvait rendre inviolable au monde si le besoin se faisait sentir d'un climat d'obscurit\u00e9 chuchotante \u00e0 un ou plusieurs enfants (de faible encombrement individuel chacun). Les yeux l\u00e0, **je vois le dessous de la derni\u00e8re planche de biblioth\u00e8que, ses moutons de poussi\u00e8re, le bas du divan, de la porte, je sens le parquet aux rayures obliques sous mes genoux.**\n\nLes heures du bureau \u00e9taient celles de la fin d'apr\u00e8s-midi, avant le repas du soir, ou celles, plus longues, de dimanches pluvieux (et peut-\u00eatre m\u00eame pas pluvieux du tout : les dimanches soir pr\u00e9c\u00e8dent les lundis matin, derni\u00e8res chances des corrections tardives). Heures de correction de copies : devoirs d'anglais, pour ma m\u00e8re, pour mon p\u00e8re dissertations de philosophie. Pour moi, h\u00e9ritant de paquets anciens et d\u00e9saffect\u00e9s, \u00e9preuves de n'importe quelle mati\u00e8re convenable, r\u00e9elle ou invent\u00e9e.\n\nJe reprenais enti\u00e8rement et \u00e0 ma mani\u00e8re, \u00e0 l'int\u00e9rieur du cube prot\u00e9g\u00e9, sous le plafond de bois (les copies entass\u00e9es sur le sol), le probl\u00e8me des \u00e9valuations, des classements, des moyennes. Je surchargeais de mes propres commentaires les annotations marginales, les jugements finaux qui se placent en haut des copies, \u00e0 l'encre rouge, \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 des notes d\u00e9finitives (avec ma propre encre, faite de baies de sureau). Je tenais un grand compte de la longueur, de l'allure des signes \u00e9crits, des qualit\u00e9s onomastiques des \u00e9l\u00e8ves, de leurs pr\u00e9noms surtout. J'imaginais leurs apparences et leurs visages (j'eus quelques surprises \u00e0 les rencontrer en vrai (cela arrivait)). Ils ou elles me parurent parfois faux, des usurpateurs, ou au contraire pleinement conformes. Leurs notes s'en ressentirent).\n\nLa correction des copies, ainsi con\u00e7ue, n'\u00e9tait aucunement une corv\u00e9e, mais une v\u00e9ritable r\u00e9jouissance. A laquelle s'associaient des chansons, compositions originales ou adaptations dues \u00e0 mon p\u00e8re (vraisemblablement dans son cas plut\u00f4t de nature distractive, exhortative, ou encore destin\u00e9es \u00e0 saluer l'ach\u00e8vement d'une t\u00e2che indispensable mais en soi fort peu ludique). Ainsi :\n\n\u00ab Les cloches du grand S\u00e9minai-ai-re \/ m'appellent au pied des saints autels \/ C'est l\u00e0 que mon c\u0153ur \u00e0 la te-\u00ea-rre \/ fera ses adieux \u00e9ternels\/ les boucles de ma chevelure\/ ne tomberont plus sur mon front \/ et le ciel sera ma parure \/ et le ciel sera mes amours \/ tou-jours, tou-jours. \/ \u00bb\n\nOu encore, sur un c\u00e9l\u00e8bre air de chasse :\n\n\u00ab La calvitie pr\u00e9co-o-ce \/ de la reine d'\u00c9co-o-sse \/ la fait para\u00eetre ro-o-sse \/ les Z\u00e9cossais sont tous d\u00e9-concert\u00e9s ! \/ \u00bb\n\n## 135 Deuxi\u00e8me p\u00f4le magn\u00e9tique du bureau (lieu) : l'oreiller \u00e0 la t\u00eate du divan\n\nJe bouge jusqu'au deuxi\u00e8me p\u00f4le magn\u00e9tique du bureau (lieu) : l'oreiller \u00e0 la t\u00eate du divan. Son temps propre \u00e9tait celui des maladies : \u00e0 l'occasion de l'une quelconque des \u00ab pathologies \u00bb enfantines (grippe et angine, varicelle, rougeole, oreillons. Tous nous les contract\u00e2mes, toutes. C'\u00e9tait un rite oblig\u00e9 des enfances). Le placement du malade \u00e9tait fait d'office dans le divan du bureau, o\u00f9 il pouvait b\u00e9n\u00e9ficier de la solitude n\u00e9cessaire \u00e0 son \u00e9tat, \u00eatre secouru en h\u00e2te pendant les minuits de d\u00e9tresse et de fi\u00e8vre forte (et aussi, espoir d'ailleurs en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral parfaitement vain, \u00e9viter de r\u00e9pandre ses microbes dans les organismes trop r\u00e9ceptifs de ses fr\u00e8res et s\u0153ur). J'ai eu ma part de ces s\u00e9jours. Malgr\u00e9 leur relative raret\u00e9 ils ont laiss\u00e9 des traces, dont l'intensit\u00e9 est sans commune mesure avec leur dur\u00e9e. (Ainsi les temps de neige, fi\u00e8vres inverses du climat.)\n\nUn matin d'\u00e9t\u00e9 et de fi\u00e8vre tombante, ouvrant les yeux au soleil, par la fen\u00eatre ouverte entra le bruit des mouches et, la facult\u00e9 de langage et la fonction po\u00e9tique m\u00eame stimul\u00e9e par l'ivresse d'une fi\u00e8vre, je pronon\u00e7ai (m'a-t-on dit), comme une v\u00e9rit\u00e9 aphoristique, avec conviction et lenteur ces paroles : \u00ab Les premi\u00e8res mouches, les mouches retentissantes ! \u00bb\n\n **Les mouches entraient, avec l'air matinal d'\u00e9t\u00e9 et le soleil, bourdonnantes d'un affairement sans dignit\u00e9, volaient dans l'air lumineux entre les miettes de poussi\u00e8re selon d'irresponsables trajectoires browniennes, se posaient n'importe o\u00f9, marchaient gravement sur les pages d'un livre ouvert, sur les vitres ; les bras nus pos\u00e9s sur les draps, j'attendais le chatouillement \u00e9nervant des pattes de mouche remuant dans le duvet qui couvrait la peau, ou bien je guettais, des deux yeux louchant sur l'ar\u00eate de mon nez, leurs gros abdomens velus hypertrophi\u00e9s par la proximit\u00e9, ineptes ; sur ma main, une petite mouche grise et r\u00e9flexive soulevait deux pattes, les croisait, les frottait l'une contre l'autre machinalement ; je** **supportais le plus longtemps possible les chatouilles (\u00ab \u00c7a vous chatouille ou \u00e7a vous gratouille ? \u00bb) de leurs d\u00e9ambulations, puis je me secouais, je me grattais ; elles s'envolaient de nouveau vers le plafond, les murs ou, comme brusquement happ\u00e9es par la lumi\u00e8re, sortaient de la pi\u00e8ce, vers le jardin bruissant.**\n\nPendant les heures de fi\u00e8vre lourde, d'immobilit\u00e9 contemplative, involontaire et stup\u00e9faite, **je voyais, aviv\u00e9e par l'\u00e9clairage oblique de la lampe rest\u00e9e allum\u00e9e sur la plaque de verre du bureau, une g\u00e9ographie aust\u00e8re, faite de zones d'ombre, de fissures, de taches et de crevasses dans le blanc plat du plafond**. J'en ai gard\u00e9 un \u00ab sentiment g\u00e9ographique \u00bb qui n'est nullement une r\u00e9sultante de paysages, d'architectures, de troupeaux et de sols, mais de cartes, imaginaires ou r\u00e9elles, et d'une extr\u00eame abstraction.\n\n **J'identifiais des rivi\u00e8res, des fleuves et des oc\u00e9ans, des \u00eeles et des gouffres ; ou bien, \u00e0 partir des m\u00eames signes, mais en en renversant brusquement la r\u00e9f\u00e9rence imaginaire, des pays avec leurs fronti\u00e8res et leurs villes ; des pays en guerre o\u00f9 se heurtaient, en des chocs titanesques, de manich\u00e9ennes arm\u00e9es.** Le bien et le mal, alors, \u00e9taient ais\u00e9ment distribuables.\n\n **Profitant du calme ambiant, m\u00e9dicalement parfum\u00e9 de sirops et de tisanes, les araign\u00e9es affair\u00e9es, prudentes et s\u00e9rieuses sortaient de leurs retraites, traversaient avec d\u00e9cision et rapidit\u00e9 des verstes de plafond sovi\u00e9tique ou libyen et s'affairaient dans les coins et angles, strat\u00e9giquement recommand\u00e9s par quelque Clausewitz arachnide pour l'an\u00e9antissement patient des l\u00e9gions de mouches (elles avaient toute ma sympathie) ; je n'avais aucune peur, aucun d\u00e9go\u00fbt de leurs noirs hi\u00e9roglyphes, rarement anim\u00e9s ; ne bougeant pas beaucoup, je ne les d\u00e9rangeais pas.**\n\n **Et je guettais leur descente aussi parfaitement verticale que le fil \u00e0 plomb, le long de ces lignes d'acier biologique infiniment mince qu'elles extrayaient \u00e0 mesure d'elles-m\u00eames comme les cordes du ventre d'un yoyo (dispositif qui aurait convenu \u00e0 la perfection pour l'\u00e9vasion d'un prisonnier h\u00e9ro\u00efque), un micro-instant arr\u00eat\u00e9es \u00e0 quelque distance du sol comme pour reconna\u00eetre le terrain minutieusement (arr\u00eat dans** **la descente qu'un l\u00e9ger mouvement de l'observateur pouvait faire se prolonger en oscillations l\u00e9g\u00e8res, ou m\u00eame transformer brusquement en une remont\u00e9e vers l'origine, le plafond, comme un prisonnier qui serait brusquement remont\u00e9 dans sa cellule, r\u00e9enroulant sa corde \u00e0 mesure autour de lui).**\n\n **Une araign\u00e9e un soir est descendue au bord de mon bol de soupe, peut-\u00eatre pour y boire ; effray\u00e9e par l'ouverture brusque de la porte elle s'est cach\u00e9e dans le revers de ma veste de pyjama. Je cessai de bouger, m'imaginant ( ?) avec d\u00e9lectation immobilis\u00e9 sur mon lit sous les c\u00e2bles infimes mais innombrables d'une population de minuscules lilliputiens audois, et fier de cette marque insigne d'une confiance d'insecte. Au bout d'un moment, le calme s'\u00e9tant r\u00e9tabli, elle est sortie de son abri provisoire et gulliv\u00e9rien et, empruntant militairement le _thalweg_ d'un pli dans les couvertures, a disparu sous le \u00ab cosy \u00bb.**\n\nCe meuble d'un bois harmonieusement mari\u00e9 \u00e0 celui du bureau bordait rectangulairement le divan sur deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s et, ses compartiments suspendus \u00e0 hauteur convenable (\u00e0 portes rabattantes vers l'ext\u00e9rieur ; le secteur le plus proche de la porte enfermait des pelotes de laine et autres instruments de tricot), laissait entre le matelas, le sommier et le mur un espace qui \u00e9tait d'une inutilit\u00e9 pratique merveilleusement absolue, mais une cachette d'un format parfait. On y tenait \u00e0 deux ou trois confortablement assis, les genoux ramass\u00e9s, les bras autour des genoux, silencieusement, dans la demi-illusion d\u00e9licieuse d'\u00eatre ignor\u00e9s du monde, d'avoir disparu, de n'\u00eatre connus l\u00e0 par personne.\n\n## 136 Il me semble avoir acquis l\u00e0 trois passions : la passion des nombres, celle de la po\u00e9sie ; celle des livres.\n\nIl me semble avoir acquis l\u00e0, tr\u00e8s exactement l\u00e0, trois de mes principales passions, \u00ab passions fondamentales \u00bb qui ne m'ont plus jamais quitt\u00e9 : la passion des nombres, celle de la po\u00e9sie, celle des livres. Ce furent, ce sont trois passions mentales, et comme toutes passions elles ont deux versants : un versant de joie & d'absorption heureuse, un autre de souffrance ; une souffrance toujours cach\u00e9e, recouverte, fuie, oblit\u00e9r\u00e9e, n\u00e9e de l'effroi d'une autre passion qui est, elle, toute douleur, ou toute joie mauvaise, & torpeur, une autre passion philosophiquement fondamentale : l'ennui.\n\nJ'ai acquis ces trois passions dans la dur\u00e9e, retranch\u00e9e du temps ordinaire, des maladies. (Comme toutes les trinit\u00e9s, elles sont quatre. La passion de la solitude les accompagne. Elles ne s'en s\u00e9parent jamais.) Car dans le temps ordinaire (y compris celui de l'\u00e9cole) j'\u00e9tais en mouvement perp\u00e9tuel entre les choses et les \u00eatres du monde. Mon temps d'\u00eatre-au-monde \u00e9tait un temps moteur. Ce qui fait que l'immobilit\u00e9 impos\u00e9e aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 soumise \u00e0 l'axiome de l'ennui. Plus tard, confront\u00e9 \u00e0 l'aveu d'ennui chez les autres j'ai toujours pu avec sinc\u00e9rit\u00e9 affirmer : \u00ab Je ne m'ennuie jamais ! \u00bb En effet, quand l'ennui insidieux et laid s'offre, je peux toujours compter.\n\nEt c'est mon premier choix, une r\u00e9action automatique devant l'ennui possible (je mets donc cette passion-l\u00e0 en premier dans l'ordre de pr\u00e9sentation). Mon rapport avec le nombre se ressent de cette origine : c'est \u00e0 cause d'elle que je vois les nombres avant tout comme nombres entiers, et encore de taille pas trop excessive, que j'ai pris l'habitude de partager tant de moments de mon existence avec des populations d'entiers en activit\u00e9, en mouvement perp\u00e9tuel, mouvement inspir\u00e9 par les d\u00e9nombrements. Les nombres sont, tels que je les ai appris aux commencements et une fois devenus ma propri\u00e9t\u00e9, ins\u00e9parables de ces choses mentales habill\u00e9es de leurs robes de langage, les chiffres. Je sais la distinction entre nombre et chiffre, je l'ai apprise en \u00e9tudiant, mais elle ne me passionne pas. (Plus gravement : entre 4 (num\u00e9ration d\u00e9cimale) et 10 (num\u00e9ration binaire) il y a synonymie. Mais cette synonymie-l\u00e0 m'indiff\u00e8re. Je lui pr\u00e9f\u00e8re l'homonymie des deux interpr\u00e9tations du chiffre 10.)\n\nCe qui veut dire que je ne suis pas naturellement un arithm\u00e9ticien, encore moins naturellement un math\u00e9maticien. Mon effort de compr\u00e9hension et de contr\u00f4le d'une appropriation minimale (\u00e0 fins professionnelles) des math\u00e9matiques n'a \u00e9t\u00e9 qu'une superposition tardive et volontariste sur ce fond passionnel sans responsabilit\u00e9. J'aurais peut-\u00eatre pu \u00eatre r\u00e9ellement d\u00e9tourn\u00e9 vers la passion math\u00e9matique proprement dite comme je me suis tourn\u00e9, spontan\u00e9ment, vers la passion de la composition po\u00e9tique ou celle de la lecture, mais cela ne s'est pas trouv\u00e9. Sans doute parce qu'\u00eatre math\u00e9maticien n'est plus possible aujourd'hui qu'en relation avec l'institution scolaire, o\u00f9 je ne me suis jamais plac\u00e9 qu'avec r\u00e9ticence (la po\u00e9sie, au contraire, lui \u00e9chappe presque enti\u00e8rement).\n\nIl s'ensuit que les manipulations mentales d'objets-nombres (entiers dans leurs \u00e9critures d\u00e9cimales, et tr\u00e8s exceptionnellement fractions) auxquelles je me livre, aujourd'hui encore, presque aussi intens\u00e9ment qu'autrefois, sont celles qui me furent d'abord possibles, dans la t\u00eate, la t\u00eate sur l'oreiller du divan, dans le coude du \u00ab cosy \u00bb : d\u00e9nombrements, s\u00e9quences, op\u00e9rations \u00e9l\u00e9mentaires, sommations, comparaisons, divisibilit\u00e9s (avec une dilection particuli\u00e8re, qui en est la cons\u00e9quence, pour ces \u00ab originaux \u00bb, ces ermites de la division, les nombres premiers), explorations dans le calendrier (quel jour de la semaine sera le 20 f\u00e9vrier 2002 ?), toutes op\u00e9rations \u00ab orales internes \u00bb, sans papier, sinon quelquefois pour m\u00e9moire, pour un prolongement de jeux au-del\u00e0 de leur premier moment.\n\nAyant eu de la passion pour ces activit\u00e9s et y ayant consacr\u00e9 toutes les dur\u00e9es d'ennui possible (les occasions sont nombreuses), j'avais tout naturellement acquis tr\u00e8s jeune une certaine virtuosit\u00e9 de calculateur, dont j'ai encore aujourd'hui, bien que beaucoup plus lent et de plus en plus sujet \u00e0 erreur, quelques restes (ce qui fait que les personnes non averties acceptent volontiers, pour cette mauvaise raison, le fait que je suis un math\u00e9maticien). Mais cette capacit\u00e9 n'eut jamais rien d'exceptionnel.\n\nIl me semble aussi qu'en quittant Carcassonne, \u00e0 douze ans, j'avais d\u00e9j\u00e0 en ma possession tout le bagage arithm\u00e9tique qui m'a depuis servi. Une tr\u00e8s petite partie de mes connaissances math\u00e9matiques ult\u00e9rieurement acquises a trouv\u00e9 sa place dans mes jeux de nombres. (Par un \u00e9largissement de ma \u00ab famille num\u00e9rique \u00bb qui ne s'est produit qu'en deux occasions, mais d'une certaine importance pour mon propos, comme il appara\u00eetra en deux branches ult\u00e9rieures.)\n\nEt il s'agissait de nombres \u00ab vrais \u00bb, d'individus-nombres, connus, familiers, pas de groupes, d'esp\u00e8ces, de tribus de nombres. Je suis rest\u00e9, pour mon activit\u00e9 num\u00e9rique passionnelle, presque toujours au stade archa\u00efque de l'exclusive manipulation des exemples, \u00e0 l'\u00ab avant Vi\u00e8te \u00bb, \u00e0 la n\u00e9gligence, sinon au d\u00e9dain des notations litt\u00e9rales (sauf pour traiter, en une \u00ab Gematria \u00bb personnelle, les lettres comme des chiffres, ou comme des pseudonymes de nombres clandestins).\n\n **Je comptais les mouches, qui croisaient et recroisaient autour de la lampe, au plein soleil de la matin\u00e9e (heures oisives, sans \u00e9cole ; mouches oisives, soleil patient, calme, ti\u00e8de) ; je comptais les fissures g\u00e9ographiques du plafond dans la nuit, fi\u00e9vreuse ; les nombres d\u00e9bordaient de ma t\u00eate ; un matin j'ai dit : \u00ab J'ai mal \u00e0 mes chiffres. \u00bb**\n\n## 137 Je n'ai pas mis ici la po\u00e9sie en premi\u00e8re passion, mais apr\u00e8s celle des nombres,\n\nSi je n'ai pas mis ici la po\u00e9sie en premi\u00e8re passion, mais apr\u00e8s celle des nombres, c'est pour marquer une d\u00e9pendance chronologique (r\u00e9elle, puisque pour la po\u00e9sie il me fallait (il me faut toujours, je ne suis pas un po\u00e8te \u00ab libre \u00bb) compter). Et si je ne l'ai pas plac\u00e9e derni\u00e8re, apr\u00e8s la lecture, c'est pour marquer cette fois l'absence d'une d\u00e9pendance : je pense la passion de po\u00e9sie comme activit\u00e9, pas comme passion passive (la po\u00e9sie lue). Elle est affaire de m\u00e9moire, elle est _cosa mentale_ pure.\n\nJe dis activit\u00e9, certainement pas, alors, activit\u00e9 cr\u00e9atrice, si la moindre id\u00e9e de valeur esth\u00e9tique doit \u00eatre associ\u00e9e \u00e0 cet adjectif. En tant que \u00ab cr\u00e9ations \u00bb mes premi\u00e8res exp\u00e9riences de composition po\u00e9tique (qui malheureusement ont \u00e9t\u00e9 en grande partie conserv\u00e9es) sont \u00e9trangement semblables \u00e0 celles de tous, et ne m\u00e9ritent certainement pas d'\u00eatre mises sous la pompeuse rubrique de la cr\u00e9ation. La production langagi\u00e8re spontan\u00e9e de l'enfant s'exprimant dans les circonstances ordinaires de l'existence offre (dans une zone esth\u00e9tiquement incertaine, situ\u00e9e entre l'erreur insolite et la d\u00e9couverte involontaire) infiniment plus de satisfactions.\n\nLes pr\u00e9f\u00e9rences et les habitudes scolaires dominent au contraire les fabrications intentionnelles. On y v\u00e9rifie, au mieux, les progr\u00e8s de la ma\u00eetrise lexicale ou syntaxique. Rien n'est certes plus attendrissant, et peut-\u00eatre p\u00e9dagogiquement utile, que ces cahiers de po\u00e8mes d'\u00e9l\u00e8ves, suscit\u00e9s, recueillis et assembl\u00e9s par l'instituteur(-trice) dans sa classe. Rien n'est plus affligeant que de les voir pr\u00e9sent\u00e9s comme \u00ab mod\u00e8les \u00bb de ce que devrait \u00eatre la po\u00e9sie, de ce dont la \u00ab fonction po\u00e9tique \u00bb serait, nous dit-on, capable, quand elle n'a pas encore \u00e9t\u00e9 pervertie, fauss\u00e9e, \u00e9mouss\u00e9e par l'\u00e2ge et le savoir. La pure fontaine d'or limpide de la po\u00e9sie enfantine n'est qu'un mirage.\n\nAutant que je puisse en juger, j'ai adopt\u00e9 la po\u00e9sie, que les exemples qui m'\u00e9taient propos\u00e9s par l'exercice de la \u00ab r\u00e9citation \u00bb scolaire m'offraient, ins\u00e9parable absolument du vers strictement compt\u00e9 et rim\u00e9 selon la tradition du XIXe si\u00e8cle, comme un terrain d'application original, impr\u00e9vu, et parfois r\u00e9fractaire, de la facult\u00e9 num\u00e9rique. Ce fut bien, d'abord et longtemps, un jeu de nombres. (Ce l'est sans doute toujours.)\n\nJ'ai retenu, je ne sais pourquoi, ce que je \u00ab date \u00bb dans ma m\u00e9moire comme mes deux premiers po\u00e8mes, s\u00e9par\u00e9s l'un de l'autre par un intervalle d'une ann\u00e9e. Je devais avoir sept ou huit ans. Voici le plus ancien des deux, en son entier :\n\nLe petit lapin\n\nQui d'un air malin\n\nMange le matin\n\nUn peu de sainfoin\n\nSort le bout du nez\n\nDu petit terrier.\n\n(Je ne garantis pas l'orthographe. En fait, j'en suis \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s s\u00fbr, le manuscrit original de cette \u0153uvre (disparu) devait contenir quelques fautes impressionnantes.) Si ce remarquable texte est v\u00e9ritablement et exclusivement de mon invention (ce que je pense, mais je suis peut-\u00eatre trop pr\u00e9somptueux), il a une et une seule qualit\u00e9 ind\u00e9niable (\u00e9tant donn\u00e9 la pauvret\u00e9 des rimes) : il est compt\u00e9 juste. C'est un sizain de vers pentasyllabiques, et chaque vers a exactement cinq \u00ab syllabes \u00bb, selon le d\u00e9compte traditionnel. En particulier, le troisi\u00e8me vers parvient \u00e0 ce nombre au moyen d'un \u00ab e muet compt\u00e9 \u00bb, celui de \u00ab mange \u00bb, fait significatif, qui \u00e9tablit la ma\u00eetrise prosodique dont a fait preuve, indiscutablement, l'auteur du po\u00e8me.\n\nJe prendrai un point de comparaison (dans un registre esth\u00e9tiquement assez similaire). Il s'agit d'un po\u00e8me que je peux lire (passant par l\u00e0 assez souvent quand je vais, \u00e0 pied, de la rue d'Amsterdam o\u00f9 j'habite \u00e0 la rue des Francs-Bourgeois), en lettres grandes et fi\u00e8res, en fa\u00e7ade d'une boulangerie de la place des Petits-P\u00e8res (fond\u00e9e en 1902), pr\u00e8s de la Biblioth\u00e8que nationale (je l'aper\u00e7ois aussi \u00e0 travers la vitre de l'autobus 29, qui ensuite tourne autour de la place des Victoires, se dirigeant vers la porte de Montempoivre) :\n\nLe bon pain\n\nAu levain\n\nSe cuit toujours\n\nComme autrefois\n\nDans un four\n\nAu feu de bois.\n\nLe \u00ab po\u00e8me du levain \u00bb pr\u00e9sente, par rapport au \u00ab po\u00e8me du sainfoin \u00bb (le mien) la sup\u00e9riorit\u00e9 d'une formule de rimes plus sophistiqu\u00e9e, sur trois timbres (les deux sont des sizains, dans la grande tradition strophique fran\u00e7aise) : aabcbc. (C'est la \u00ab formule \u00bb conclusive d'une des deux variantes dominantes du \u00ab sonnet \u00e0 la fran\u00e7aise \u00bb, que j'ai nomm\u00e9e (dans un ouvrage consacr\u00e9 \u00e0 cette question), \u00ab formule Peletier \u00bb (du nom de son premier amateur, le math\u00e9maticien-po\u00e8te Jacques Peletier du Mans).) J'emploie, moi, une formule \u00ab maladroite \u00bb, sur deux rimes : aaaabb. La \u00ab qualit\u00e9 \u00bb des rimes (pauvres dans les deux cas) est comparable. Mais je soup\u00e7onne le po\u00e8te-boulanger d'une imparfaite ma\u00eetrise de la num\u00e9ricit\u00e9 du vers, et l'oscillation entre tri- et quadrisyllabes d'\u00eatre involontaire (il \u00e9vite soigneusement les \u00ab e \u00bb muets). Ce qui fait que, dans l'ensemble, la qualit\u00e9 technique des deux \u0153uvres me semble \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s \u00e9gale.\n\nSi je me tourne maintenant vers mon \u00ab opus 2 \u00bb en mati\u00e8re de po\u00e9sie, le progr\u00e8s est \u00e9vident (il ne s'agit nullement de progr\u00e8s de la \u00ab valeur po\u00e9tique \u00bb, toujours inexistante, mais de progr\u00e8s dans l'appropriation de la versification). Il se compose de deux quatrains, dont voici le premier :\n\nLettres d'or qui faites les mots\n\nVous qui rendez joyeux ou triste\n\nVous me soulagez de mes maux\n\nCar vous \u00eates des humoristes.\n\n(Progr\u00e8s, il est \u00e0 peine besoin de le souligner, sur tous les fronts \u00ab techniques \u00bb : passage \u00e0 l'octosyllabe, vers de plus grande ampleur, quatrain \u00ab crois\u00e9 \u00bb et non \u00ab plat \u00bb, rimes suffisantes et m\u00eame recherch\u00e9es (\u00ab mots \u00bb - \u00ab maux \u00bb).) Nourrie de Lamartine et de Victor Hugo, mon ambition, ensuite, ne pouvait que cro\u00eetre, jusqu'\u00e0 embrasser l'alexandrin, qui promettait de longues heures d'absorption interne, ainsi que des comptes pas uniquement arithm\u00e9tiques, et d'une diff\u00e9rente subtilit\u00e9. Il \u00e9tait de mon devoir d'en marquer ici les fort modestes d\u00e9buts.\n\n## 138 Je vois un livre : un atlas\n\n **Je vois un livre** , mais il s'ouvre pour une lecture d'avant-lire, tr\u00e8s ancienne donc (j'ai appris \u00e0 lire \u00e0 cinq ans, au plus tard) : **un atlas**. Ce n'est pas un atlas de g\u00e9ographe, mais un d\u00e9pliant de repr\u00e9sentations de lieux typiques, color\u00e9es. C'est un \u00ab multiptique \u00bb \u00e0 dix, douze panneaux, **le retable de la vie d'unfleuve, depuis sa source jusqu'\u00e0 sa dissolution enchant\u00e9e dans le bleu extr\u00eame d'une mer ;**\n\n **il na\u00eet comme une fontaine, entre deux rochers de hautes montagnes, gav\u00e9es de blanc comme des _ice-cream cones_ , immenses, intenses, trempant dans le ciel bleu tendre, complet, avec son rassurant soleil jaune ; autour du b\u00e9b\u00e9 fleuve, dans sa cr\u00e8che de cressons, de roseaux, non pas le b\u0153uf, ni l'\u00e2ne, mais une sorte de chamois h\u00e9sitant comme une feuille, et trois arbres, \u00e0 t\u00eate ronde, Rois Mages v\u00e9g\u00e9taux d'une nouvelle divinit\u00e9 : le Fleuve, sans doute, mais surtout, Dieu cach\u00e9 derri\u00e8re lui, le Livre ;**\n\n **le fleuve descendait ; il bondissait comme un torrent sur un deuxi\u00e8me panneau (pages de carton peintes \u00e0 vif), fortement inclin\u00e9 sur la ligne horizontale au d\u00e9but (haut** \u2192 **bas de la page ; gauche** \u2192 **droite) (pour terminer presque \u00e0 plat en approchant de son but, m\u00e9andrinement), son cours \u00e9troit, plein de traits fl\u00e8ches et de rochers sous lesquels des truites, ou des saumons surpris en vol inverse, remontant d'un saut ; il rencontrait des chaumi\u00e8res, des for\u00eats de sapins, des p\u00e2turages, des alpages, des labourages, des mammelages de vaches, des chiens de berger saisis au milieu d'aboiements virtuels, des p\u00e2querettes, des boutons d'or, des marguerites pour premi\u00e8res amours, pour des \u00ab un peu \u00bb (un p\u00e9tale), pour des \u00ab beaucoup \u00bb (un p\u00e9tale), des \u00ab \u00e9norm\u00e9ment \u00bb, des \u00ab passionn\u00e9ment \u00bb et des \u00ab pas du tout \u00bb ; des haies, des foss\u00e9s, des sentiers ; ses premiers villages, ses bourgs, leurs paysans en blouses, en chapeaux, en charrues, en charrettes ; des routes et leurs bornes kilom\u00e9triques \u00e0 t\u00eate rouge comme des bolets, jaunes comme des demi-lunes, blanches comme des sucres des dents de lait ou des parall\u00e9l\u00e9pip\u00e8des de craies lui tenaient compagnie, des locomotives tra\u00eenant des wagons aux voyageurs sagement rang\u00e9s sur des banquettes de bois ; il traversait des villes maintenant, il passait sous les ponts maintenant, recevait l'hommage et le tribut des affluents maintenant, des ruisseaux minces comme des aiguilles, des rivi\u00e8res modestes, vertes veines, il s'\u00e9largissait, s'\u00e9talait, devenait placide, majestueux, barbu de bancs de sable, d'\u00eeles, de saules, murmurant de peupliers, prenait la plaine \u00e0 plusieurs bras, tournait largement dans un coude de** **falaises, s'encombrait de p\u00e9niches, de barques, de voiles, de rameurs, de roue \u00e0 aubes, de vapeurs, entrait en l\u00e9thargie souveraine, puissante, h\u00e9sitait, h\u00e9sitait, jusqu'\u00e0 sa fin, enfin, la mer.**\n\nJ'ai sauv\u00e9, intense, la profusion de ce livre-image, et d'autant plus ancienne et pr\u00e9cieuse que, d\u00e8s que j'ai eu \u00e0 ma disposition l'arme des lettres (les \u00ab lettres d'or qui font les mots \u00bb) et une fois franchi le pas de la lecture autonome, du rapport personnel de l'\u0153il au livre, j'ai cess\u00e9 de m'int\u00e9resser aux images, j'ai cess\u00e9 de les rechercher, et de les retenir. L'atlas est donc rest\u00e9 le livre unique d'avant le livre, d'avant tous les livres. Comme son fleuve s'abandonne avec r\u00e9ticence \u00e0 la confusion de la mer, il se perd, lui, mais inoubli\u00e9, dans l'oc\u00e9an des livres qu'apr\u00e8s lui j'ai lus. A de tr\u00e8s rares exceptions je n'ai pas ressenti le besoin des \u00ab illustr\u00e9s \u00bb, je me suis absorb\u00e9 enti\u00e8rement dans les lettres, lignes et pages des lectures, et j'ai de certaines de ces pages un souvenir visuel aussi vif que celui du fleuve peint sans mots sur mon \u00ab atlas \u00bb.\n\nOn apprend \u00e0 lire, mais on n'apprend pas n\u00e9cessairement ensuite \u00e0 lire pour soi, pour son propre compte. Le franchissement de cette fronti\u00e8re, au-del\u00e0 de laquelle on se trouve dans un autre monde, sans retour, je l'associe au m\u00eame lieu, aux m\u00eames circonstances : le divan, la maladie et la convalescence, l'oisivet\u00e9 sous l'ombre de l'ennui. J'ai, bien plus tard, dans un po\u00e8me de Baudelaire, trouv\u00e9 une justification, une sorte de raison positive \u00e0 un engloutissement ainsi r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9 (o\u00f9 je n'ai cess\u00e9 de me replonger, sans h\u00e9sitation, pendant toute ma vie) d'innombrables heures dans les livres, sans aucun pr\u00e9texte d'\u00e9tude (ou pour des \u00e9tudes totalement \u00ab gratuites \u00bb, auxquelles rien ne m'obligeait) : \u00ab Et mon esprit subtil, que le roulis caresse \/ Saura vous retrouver, \u00f4 f\u00e9conde paresse \/ Infini bercement du loisir embaum\u00e9 \/ \u00bb) (je comprends dans ces vers le mot \u00ab loisir \u00bb comme celui de la lecture, interpr\u00e9tation que ne justifie pas, je le sais, l'original). Mais je ne crois pas \u00e0 la solidit\u00e9 de cette excuse. Je lis, c'est comme \u00e7a.\n\nD'ailleurs les lectures de ce temps qui me reviennent sont des lectures de romans. Et je lisais extr\u00eamement vite (habitude dont j'ai eu \u00e9norm\u00e9ment de mal \u00e0 me d\u00e9faire, quand j'ai commenc\u00e9 l'\u00e9tude s\u00e9rieuse des math\u00e9matiques). Comme je ne mis pas tr\u00e8s longtemps \u00e0 faire \u00ab sortir \u00bb mes passions de leur lieu d'origine, le \u00ab bureau \u00bb, ma consommation de livres grandit rapidement. Mes parents faisaient leurs achats dans \u00ab la \u00bb librairie de la ville o\u00f9 l'on pouvait alors trouver des livres (c'est-\u00e0-dire pas uniquement des livres de classe ou d'apparat). Et ils s'\u00e9taient li\u00e9s d'amiti\u00e9 avec les propri\u00e9taires, M. et Mme Breithaupt.\n\nJ'accompagnais souvent mon p\u00e8re \u00e0 la librairie Breithaupt-Cariven, et je choisissais un livre, g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement un roman de la Collection verte, cartonn\u00e9e (il y en avait une autre, j'ai oubli\u00e9 son nom, dont la couverture \u00e9tait de papier, s'ornait d'une image, mais dont la r\u00e9sistance aux manipulations s\u00e9v\u00e8res \u00e9tait moins grande). Le livre en ma possession, je restais debout \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de mon p\u00e8re, insensible \u00e0 ce qui se passait autour, ouvrais le volume, et lisais. Je lisais d\u00e8s le moment de l'achat dans la librairie, je continuais \u00e0 lire en marchant, dans la rue. Il m'arrivait d'achever le livre avant m\u00eame notre retour \u00e0 la maison.\n\nJe n'ai pas oubli\u00e9 beaucoup de ces livres : ni Jack London, ni James Oliver Curwood _(Le Grizzly)_ , ni Mayne Reid ni Jules Verne (qui n'\u00e9tait pas, je l'avoue, mon favori), ni Gautier (ah ! _Le Capitaine Fracasse_ ! ah ! _Avatar_ ! ah ! _Jettatura_ ! ah _Le Roman de la momie_ !), ni M\u00e9rim\u00e9e ( _Matteo Falcone_ plus que _Carmen_ dont je saisissais assez mal le \u00ab point \u00bb), ni Hugo (abr\u00e9g\u00e9, j'en ai peur), ni Edmond About _(L'Homme \u00e0 l'oreille cass\u00e9e, Le Nez d'un notaire_ ). Fenimore Cooper (ah ! _Le Dernier des Mohicans_ , et ses suites !). J'arr\u00eate l\u00e0 ; malgr\u00e9 ma passion pour la po\u00e9tique des listes, celle-l\u00e0, qui pourrait \u00eatre fort longue, est banale pour l'\u00e9poque. Je ne lisais gu\u00e8re \u00ab au-dessus de mon \u00e2ge \u00bb (comme on disait).\n\nJe ferai une exception pour Edgar Poe, dans la traduction de Baudelaire. C'\u00e9tait un livre \u00ab d'adultes \u00bb, qui se tenait avec d'autres volumes \u00ab pr\u00e9cieux \u00bb (de nombreuses \u0153uvres de Paul Val\u00e9ry ; _l'Ulysses_ de Joyce en version anglaise (\u00e0 couverture bleue) (une des premi\u00e8res \u00e9ditions) et dans la v\u00e9n\u00e9rable traduction Larbaud...) sur l'\u00e9tag\u00e8re sup\u00e9rieure (mais accessible) de la petite biblioth\u00e8que sise \u00e0 droite en entrant dans le bureau. **Je le vois, cartonn\u00e9 vert-de-gris, repos\u00e9 au-dessus du \u00ab cosy \u00bb, referm\u00e9 sur une nouvelle lecture** (je relisais beaucoup, ne serait-ce que par \u00e9puisement constant des stocks de nouveaut\u00e9s) **de _La Chute de la maison Usher, Le Puits et le Pendule_ et surtout, surtout, _Une descente dans le Maelstrom ;_ aussi forte que l'image du fleuve de l'Atlas je retrouve celle, construite en moi par la lecture, du gouffre tourbillonnaire blanc et noir, comme un lavoir gigantesque, comme un puits infini, comme un escalier, possesseur, pour toujours jaloux, du temps.**\n\n## 139 La salle \u00e0 manger du rez-de-chauss\u00e9e \u00e9tait tranquille et sombre,\n\nLa salle \u00e0 manger du rez-de-chauss\u00e9e \u00e9tait tranquille et sombre, d'une obscurit\u00e9 toute relative, accentu\u00e9e par la brillance presque constante du dehors, du jardin, sa situation en contrebas des pins, \u00e0 hauteur de la terrasse. Une fen\u00eatre ouvrait sur la terrasse, sur un second c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00e9tait la serre. En regardant la maison en face, comme si elle n'\u00e9tait qu'un visage tourn\u00e9 vers le regard, la salle \u00e0 manger \u00e9tait situ\u00e9e \u00e0 gauche, comme la chambre du second \u00e9tage, comme le bureau au premier. Dans cette bifurcation je n'ai entam\u00e9 encore (cannibalis\u00e9) que l'h\u00e9misph\u00e8re c\u00e9r\u00e9bral gauche de ma m\u00e9moire.\n\nEn \u00e9t\u00e9 c'\u00e9tait un endroit de fra\u00eecheur relative, en hiver de froid accentu\u00e9, aux premi\u00e8res heures du jour en tout cas, avant que br\u00fble le po\u00eale. **Le po\u00eale \u00e9tait rev\u00eatu d'une c\u00e9ramique brune, avec une vitre de mica ; en l'ouvrant, pour vider les cendres, le r\u00e9sidu non br\u00fbl\u00e9 du bois, les scories du charbon, l'odeur qui s'\u00e9chappait \u00e9tait l'odeur de la nuit, de la nuit d'hiver, l'odeur de froid ; le feu s'\u00e9tait \u00e9teint dans la nuit, son \u00e2me s'\u00e9tait envol\u00e9e autour de la minuit, et ce qui s'\u00e9chappait ainsi dans la pi\u00e8ce sombre \u00e9tait son fant\u00f4me.**\n\n **Mon p\u00e8re remplissait le ventre vide du po\u00eale : d'abord le** **papier par la vitre ouverte, les pages froiss\u00e9es en boule une \u00e0 une du journal, que je lui tendais ; le \u00ab petit bois \u00bb au-dessus, des brindilles de pin, des rameaux blancs des buis, des fusains sans leur \u00e9corce, rong\u00e9e par les lapins ; au-dessus encore, vers\u00e9 du haut, ensuite tombait le charbon ; les boulets d'anthracite qui avaient la forme d'ellipso\u00efdes noirs bagu\u00e9s d'une ligne dure, d'un renforcement continu, \u00e0 leur \u00e9quateur (selon la plus grande dimension) ;**\n\n **la pi\u00e8ce se remplissait de fum\u00e9e blanche ; \u00e0 la premi\u00e8re flamme, jaune, le faible premier jour hivernal reculait, c'\u00e9tait de nouveau la nuit, devant le feu seule lumi\u00e8re, son odeur de matin ;**\n\n **alors, la vitre de mica ferm\u00e9e, l'anthracite se mettait \u00e0 son tour \u00e0 br\u00fbler, chaque \u0153il de charbon incandescent un astre rouge, rouge blanc, rayonnant jusqu'au vertige, chaque ellipse une large goutte de feu \u00e9mettant sa lueur au-del\u00e0 de sa surface, l'entourant comme un velours ; le papier s'enflammait presque sans bruit ; quand le bois s'enflammait \u00e0 son tour, avait \u00ab pris \u00bb, parfois d'abord r\u00e9sistant, couvert d'une humidit\u00e9, d'une bave furieuse, c'\u00e9tait d'une voix violente, press\u00e9e, imp\u00e9rieuse, que la vitre referm\u00e9e rendait sourde, d'une fureur contenue ; mais le charbon, lui, ronronnait ; il n'apparaissait pas flamme, pas incandescence, \u00e0 travers la surface non vraiment transparente, seulement translucide du mica ; il \u00e9tait fourrure chaude.**\n\n **Aussi comprim\u00e9 qu'un boulet d'anthracite, serr\u00e9 pour avaler tout le chaud possible dans le fauteuil, face au feu rouge, face au feu blanc, j'entendais sortir du poste de radio, de \u00ab la TSF \u00bb la voix r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9e lointaine par ses affaiblissements, ses intermittences, ses explosions de clart\u00e9 suivies de brusques \u00e9vanouissements, la voix de \u00ab Londres \u00bb : \u00ab Les Fran\u00e7ais parlent aux Fran\u00e7ais \u00bb, disait-elle, me disait-elle. \u00ab Radio-Paris ment ! Radio-Paris ment ! \u00bb chantait-elle, sur cinq notes (trois horizontales, deux montantes). \u00ab Radio-Paris est all'mand ! \u00bb**\n\nElle, \u00e0 l'inverse, disait \u00e0 nos oreilles avides la v\u00e9rit\u00e9, la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de la guerre juste contre l'Allemagne nazie, contre ses amis fran\u00e7ais. Je n'avais pas le moindre doute \u00e0 ce sujet. La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 venait d'ailleurs, de l'Angleterre h\u00e9ro\u00efque, de l'Union sovi\u00e9tique et de l'Am\u00e9rique, ses alli\u00e9s, des Fran\u00e7ais que l'Angleterre avait recueillis, du G\u00e9n\u00e9ral et de Pierre Dac qui parlaient en leur nom. Mais elle venait surtout d'elle, de l'Angleterre churchillienne et d'une certaine mani\u00e8re maternelle (ma m\u00e8re enseignait l'anglais), parce que c'est de Londres que nous arrivaient toutes ces voix qui disaient le vrai de la guerre.\n\nJe l'entends aujourd'hui comme une voix optimiste, peut-\u00eatre parce que je n'ai vraiment commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 l'\u00e9couter, \u00e0 percevoir et discerner le sens de ce qu'elle disait qu'au moment o\u00f9, \u00e0 la suite de Stalingrad et d'El Alamein, elle n'a plus annonc\u00e9 que des victoires.\n\nD'innombrables fois, plusieurs milliers peut-\u00eatre, j'ai entendu l'indicatif haend\u00e9lien, la joyeuse et vertueuse m\u00e9lodie de _Water Music_ , confiante et insubmersible, pr\u00e9voir, de plus en plus certain et proche, le jour de f\u00eate de sa propre disparition.\n\n## 140 Par la fen\u00eatre, assis sur le tabouret du piano, je vois les pins dominicaux agit\u00e9s d'un vent l\u00e9ger,\n\n **Par la fen\u00eatre, assis sur le tabouret du piano, je vois les pins dominicaux agit\u00e9s d'un vent l\u00e9ger, l'air riant d'oiseaux, le plein espace impalpable du jeu**. Aucun regret ne s'y attache. Ou bien les vagues contradictoires de l'ennui pass\u00e9 et de la nostalgie pr\u00e9sente se sont annul\u00e9es l'une l'autre, et je vois cela comme puis\u00e9 dans une r\u00e9serve de la vue, avec neutralit\u00e9 (mais en fait, presque toutes les images que je restitue dans ce parcours sont sentimentalement neutres, au moins superficiellement (l'effort n\u00e9cessaire pour franchir certains seuils de visibilit\u00e9 montre que ce n'est certainement qu'une neutralit\u00e9 de surface)).\n\nJe m'exer\u00e7ais sur les dents blanches et noires du piano. Le piano, la musique ont fait partie de ma langue maternelle (du c\u00f4t\u00e9 paternel une autre musique, un autre exercice mais tout autant mental que corporel, celui de l'eau : la nage, la mer, la _mar_ proven\u00e7ale). Je n'ai pas connu, touch\u00e9 d'autre instrument : rien que le blanc et noir des notes d'ivoire, au-dessous du blanc et noir des port\u00e9es, des partitions.\n\nLa coupure des derniers mois de guerre, suivie de notre d\u00e9part, a r\u00e9serv\u00e9 le piano aux a\u00een\u00e9s de la famille, ma s\u0153ur et moi. Elle seule en joue encore. Je ne me suis pas arr\u00eat\u00e9 volontairement, mais j'ai renonc\u00e9, trahi par ma main droite, \u00e0 la suite d'un accident. Le hasard fut ainsi cr\u00e9ateur d'une transmission, d'une frappante sym\u00e9trie, puisque la mer avait autrefois \u00ab puni \u00bb mon p\u00e8re, en sa main droite \u00e9galement.\n\nLa musique \u00e0 entendre comme musique ne sortait pas des doigts au piano (je suis rarement parvenu \u00e0 jouer assez bien pour \u00e9couter r\u00e9ellement ce que je jouais) mais du \u00ab phonographe \u00bb, des disques tournant sur le \u00ab pick-up \u00bb \u00e0 droite du divan (\u00ab pick-up \u00bb : ancien nom du \u00ab tourne-disques \u00bb (ancien nom de la \u00ab cha\u00eene hi-fi \u00bb, dite aussi \u00ab zinzin \u00bb)) : violons, violoncelles, symphonies et voix (Marian Anderson dans une \u00ab sicilienne \u00bb de Haendel, airs de _Don Giovanni)_ , trios et quatuors mozartiens et beethov\u00e9niens, sonates, impromptus, clavecin (les tout premiers enregistrements de Wanda Landowska), _Brandebourgeois, Suite en si_.\n\n **Les yeux ferm\u00e9s, les mains l\u00e9g\u00e8rement appuy\u00e9es sur les oreilles, engonc\u00e9 dans le coin extr\u00eame du divan, sur son \u00ab dessus \u00bb rugueux gris-vert, contre le mur, j'entendais le chuintement r\u00e9gulier de l'aiguille spiralant la cire noire comme une basse continue au-dessous des architectures prodigieuses du quatorzi\u00e8me quatuor beethov\u00e9nien, des \u00e9vidences all\u00e8gres du rondo de la sonate Koechel 331, jusqu'au bruit du d\u00e9rapage final arr\u00eat\u00e9 _in extremis_ par la main de mon p\u00e8re soulevant le \u00ab bras \u00bb, le reposant, retournant le disque, puis de nouveau l'aiguille grattant sur quelques sillons pr\u00e9paratoires avant qu'enfin, et encore, la musique revienne, emplisse l'ombre sous mes paupi\u00e8res, mes doigts de compulsions rythmiques, ma t\u00eate d'un espoir sensuel en son inach\u00e8vement.**\n\nL'\u00e9tat technique des enregistrements de l'avant-guerre (toujours les m\u00eames, mais in\u00e9puisables en leurs effets) \u00e9tait tel que la continuit\u00e9 d'une \u0153uvre m'\u00e9chappait presque enti\u00e8rement (une \u00ab face \u00bb d'un \u00ab 78 tours \u00bb durait deux, trois minutes au plus) et je ne percevais presque que des \u00ab moments \u00bb musicaux autonomes (qui souvent ne recouvraient m\u00eame pas un \u00ab mouvement \u00bb de sonate dans son enti\u00e8ret\u00e9), ponctu\u00e9s par les rituels pr\u00e9paratoires ou conclusifs de l'installation ou respectivement enl\u00e8vement du disque sur (ou de) son pivot et son \u00ab plateau \u00bb couvert d'une \u00e9toffe, et l'\u00ab ouverture \u00bb (puis l'accord final) due \u00e0 l'entr\u00e9e sur la sc\u00e8ne sonore de l'aiguille, ponctuations parenth\u00e9sant de mani\u00e8re \u00e9tanche la dur\u00e9e musicale, et si ins\u00e9parablement associ\u00e9es \u00e0 elle qu'elles avaient fini (tels les applaudissements qui commencent _Momente_ de Stockhausen) par en faire int\u00e9gralement partie.\n\nAinsi strictement d\u00e9finis, clos, rendus membres d'une m\u00eame famille musicale par la ressemblance quasi parfaite de leurs dur\u00e9es, de leurs d\u00e9buts et de leurs fins, tous ces \u00e9v\u00e9nements de musique \u00e9taient pour moi des \u00ab maintenant \u00bb, saisis d'un seul coup par l'esprit intens\u00e9ment qui, certain de les poss\u00e9der en leur totalit\u00e9 par d'innombrables r\u00e9p\u00e9titions, venait par la m\u00e9moire anticipant et reculant depuis leur fin, sans cesse palindromiquement \u00e0 la rencontre de leur d\u00e9roulement. Je ne les ai jamais perdus.\n\nIl y avait d'autres disques, pas moins pr\u00e9cieux, mais d'un registre tr\u00e8s diff\u00e9rent. Pr\u00e9cieux parce que chantant anglais (ou am\u00e9ricain), ils appartenaient \u00e0 ce futur de libert\u00e9 r\u00eav\u00e9e qui devenait chaque jour plus proche (ils \u00e9taient pr\u00e9cieux aussi pour nos parents, pour une raison qui ne nous \u00e9chappait pas enti\u00e8rement, parce que repr\u00e9sentant un pass\u00e9 r\u00e9cent mais irr\u00e9m\u00e9diablement \u00e9loign\u00e9 par la guerre : celui des ann\u00e9es \u00ab avant nous \u00bb).\n\nCes disques-l\u00e0 ne s'\u00e9coutaient pas dans l'obscurit\u00e9 d'une intensit\u00e9 solipsiste. Ils \u00e9taient au contraire l'occasion d'accompagnements, de gesticulations fr\u00e9n\u00e9tiques, cabrioles sur le divan, de rires, d'imitations plus ou moins exactes, \u00e0 voix per\u00e7ante ou criarde.\n\nAinsi : \u00ab _There are no flies on Auntie \/ On Auntie \/ On Auntie \/\/ There are no flies on Auntie \/ And I will tell you why \/ She's not what you'd call hideous \/ But the flies are so fastidious \/\/. There are no flies on Auntie \/ And that's the reason why \/ Oh ! there are no flies on Auntie_ \/... \u00bb, une de mes chansons pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9es (et que je chante aujourd'hui avec un certain succ\u00e8s aupr\u00e8s des enfants de mon entourage).\n\nAinsi les _marshmallows_ sentimentaux des _Whispering Barytones : \u00ab She's got eyes of blue \/ Who ever heard of eyes of blue ? \/ But she's got eyes of blue \/ That's my weakness now ! \/... \u00bb_\n\nEt parfois j'\u00e9coutais r\u00eaveusement, avec comme une nostalgie anticip\u00e9e de l'Angleterre : \u00ab _The first week-end in June \/ A sentimental tune \/ Awa-a-kes in my heart \/... \/ The clouds are all past by \/ The sun is in the sky_ \/... \u00bb Car il s'agissait d'un autre soleil que le n\u00f4tre, plus doux, plus tendre, qui savait parler \u00e0 la lune _(And the sun will tell the moon \/ That the summer will be over \/ very soon \/...)_ au tr\u00e8fle ( _clover_ : c'est la rime), aux pelouses, aux roses, apr\u00e8s averses.\n\n## 141 Dans cette pi\u00e8ce peupl\u00e9e de voix, de voix musicales surtout, je peux entrer infailliblement\n\nDans cette pi\u00e8ce peupl\u00e9e de voix, de voix musicales surtout, je peux entrer infailliblement (et son image, quand je choisis ce chemin, semble presque indestructible) en \u00e9voquant (j'en suis ma\u00eetre) (mais parfois en entendant sans le vouloir, soudainement, n'importe o\u00f9, dans ma t\u00eate) une danse d'une suite anglaise de Jean-S\u00e9bastien Bach : pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment le premier \u00ab passepied en rondeau \u00bb de la suite no 5 en mi mineur, BWV 810.\n\nCette pr\u00e9cision musicologique est d'un int\u00e9r\u00eat tout relatif, en l'absence de la musique elle-m\u00eame, qu'il est assez difficile de faire entendre, autrement que par une d\u00e9signation, dans la prose \u00e9crite (ce serait plus simple au cours d'une \u00ab performance \u00bb orale de lecture, mais pas obligatoirement plus \u00e9clairant, sinon pour accentuer \u00ab l'effet de v\u00e9rit\u00e9 \u00bb de mon r\u00e9cit). J'ai pris cependant la peine d'une v\u00e9rification, en identifiant la position exacte de ce fragment dans les suites pour clavecin (j'h\u00e9sitais entre \u00ab suites fran\u00e7aises \u00bb et \u00ab suites anglaises \u00bb, et je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re que ce soit une suite anglaise) hier apr\u00e8s-midi, 8 juin, au 51 de la rue des Francs-Bourgeois.\n\nC'\u00e9tait l\u00e0, quelque part sur la derni\u00e8re face de l'enregistrement de Glenn Gould. Marie a arr\u00eat\u00e9 le disque, compt\u00e9 les \u00ab plages \u00bb l\u00e9g\u00e8rement discontinues de sillons \u00e0 la surface, et annonc\u00e9 que, juste avant la gigue finale, il s'agissait des \u00ab passepieds 1 et 2 \u00bb, renseignement que j'ai not\u00e9 aussit\u00f4t au crayon sur une demi-feuille de papier, entre quelques formules du calcul des propositions, solutions correctes d'un exercice d'algorithmique offert, pour leur deuxi\u00e8me \u00ab partiel \u00bb, \u00e0 mes (tr\u00e8s nombreux) \u00e9tudiants de \u00ab Langages formels \u00bb, dont j'achevais de corriger les copies. J'ai remarqu\u00e9 au m\u00eame moment, tout en essayant, sans y parvenir, de siffler les notes \u00e0 la vitesse gouldienne, que mon oreille changeait automatiquement de timbre : ce que j'entends, c'est toujours le clavecin d\u00e9suet de Wanda Landowska.\n\nIl m'a \u00e9t\u00e9 impossible de ne pas faire l'effort de cette v\u00e9rification, qui pourtant, d'une part me faisait sortir des limites horaires strictes que je me suis impos\u00e9es d\u00e8s mon commencement (et que j'ai indiqu\u00e9es, explicitement, dans la branche un chap. 1 \u00a7 5), allait d'autre part \u00e0 l'encontre d'une cons\u00e9quence presque oblig\u00e9e de mon principe d'\u00e9criture en \u00ab temps r\u00e9el \u00bb, sans pr\u00e9parations ni retours (d\u00e9viation que j'ai tent\u00e9 de \u00ab rattraper \u00bb imm\u00e9diatement en m'interrompant, hier, \u00e0 l'instant o\u00f9 j'\u00e9crivais \u00ab une danse d'une suite anglaise de Jean-S\u00e9bastien Bach : pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment... \u00bb et en encha\u00eenant aujourd'hui sur le r\u00e9cit des circonstances de mon identification) : ne pas chercher \u00e0 gommer les faiblesses de mes souvenirs.\n\nMais ce traitement exceptionnel est peut-\u00eatre appropri\u00e9 \u00e0 la nature, singuli\u00e8re elle-m\u00eame, du \u00ab cas \u00bb : qui appara\u00eet comme exception, contre-exemple si l'on veut, \u00e0 mon hypoth\u00e8se (narrative seulement certes, mais hypoth\u00e8se malgr\u00e9 tout \u00e9nonc\u00e9e avec conviction) de l'\u00e9vanouissement in\u00e9vitable et rapide de l'image des souvenirs d\u00e8s qu'ils sont \u00ab mis au jour \u00bb par la m\u00e9moire.\n\nCar d'innombrables fois j'ai entendu cette m\u00e9lodie (int\u00e9rieurement ou ext\u00e9rieurement, par le disque) (ou bien je l'ai siffl\u00e9e (mal)), et la restitution du lieu ancien (le divan, le disque, la position m\u00eame d'\u00e9coute) est toujours aussi imm\u00e9diate et absolue. Et je n'ai pas besoin d'entendre (ou de siffler) la totalit\u00e9 de la m\u00e9lodie, les six premi\u00e8res notes suffisent.\n\n(Je dis six notes par prudence. J'ai plusieurs \u00ab airs \u00bb en m\u00e9moire qui co\u00efncident avec celui-l\u00e0 sur les quatre premi\u00e8res notes (une sonate pour piano de Beethoven, par exemple.) En fait je pense qu'une seule, la premi\u00e8re, entendue accompagn\u00e9e de son timbre particulier (non seulement de clavecin mais de ce clavecin-l\u00e0), suffirait. Car l'\u00e9mergence int\u00e9rieure de ce \u00ab sol \u00bb (je dis \u00ab sol \u00bb mais il s'agit d'une attribution largement erron\u00e9e, \u00e0 cause du \u00ab d\u00e9saccord \u00bb irr\u00e9m\u00e9diablement fix\u00e9 dans mon oreille de notre piano carcassonnais) est alors le r\u00e9sultat d'une \u00e9coute ant\u00e9rieure rest\u00e9e silencieuse, quand la m\u00e9moire, comme je l'ai dit plus haut, anticipant et reculant depuis la fin de la m\u00e9lodie, sans cesse \u00e0 la rencontre de son d\u00e9roulement, devient disponible pour une r\u00e9p\u00e9tition explicite. La note initiale n'en est que la r\u00e9capitulation.)\n\nParmi toutes les musiques qui y survivent, pourquoi pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment celle-l\u00e0 ? pourquoi pas la _Suite en si_ de Bach ? une sonate de Mozart, de Beethoven ? une chanson anglaise ? airs que je peux retrouver aussi, et placer l\u00e0 ? Je ne sais pas. Je constate que l'effecteur essentiel de m\u00e9moire, dans ce cas, est une musique, et cette musique.\n\nL'infinit\u00e9simal d\u00e9cisif est peut-\u00eatre le clavecin (une cons\u00e9quence, de la dualit\u00e9 antagoniste clavecin-piano, et de l'interdit qui, apr\u00e8s mon accident \u00e0 la main, pesa pour moi sur le second ?).\n\n## 142 La position de la cuisine, derni\u00e8re des six pi\u00e8ces, est ais\u00e9ment d\u00e9ductible du reste de la description,\n\nLa position de la cuisine, derni\u00e8re des six pi\u00e8ces de la maison (l'envoi, la _tornada_ de ce chant de la maison d'enfance \u00e9tant une \u00ab pi\u00e8ce rapport\u00e9e \u00bb, la salle de bains externe), est ais\u00e9ment d\u00e9ductible du reste de la description, en deux moiti\u00e9s, h\u00e9misph\u00e8res c\u00e9r\u00e9braux de ma m\u00e9moire, comme j'ai dit, s\u00e9par\u00e9s par la faille de l'escalier, puisqu'\u00e0 droite, au premier et second \u00e9tage, j'ai laiss\u00e9 volontairement deux pi\u00e8ces vides : en face de la salle \u00e0 manger, au rez-de-chauss\u00e9e, avec une fen\u00eatre aussi sur la terrasse.\n\nLe mode d'entr\u00e9e \u00ab rationnel \u00bb, par le seuil, n'a, ici encore, rien \u00e0 voir avec le mode de restitution, de r\u00e9occupation de chacun de ces lieux par mon corps fant\u00f4me s'y pla\u00e7ant, en une multiplicit\u00e9 presque ubiquit\u00e9 de \u00ab points de vue \u00bb. (J'observe alors incidemment que ma pens\u00e9e des deux chambres o\u00f9 je ne p\u00e9n\u00e8tre pas en prose me pose, d'abord, devant leur porte, ext\u00e9rieurement.) Il s'agit toujours, bien s\u00fbr, d'une vue (m\u00eame sur le divan, \u00e0 l'\u00e9coute du clavecin, les yeux ferm\u00e9s, je vois), d'une famille mouvement\u00e9e de visions in\u00e9galement r\u00e9parties, in\u00e9galement dou\u00e9es de nettet\u00e9, de clart\u00e9, d'importance sentimentale ou sensuelle. Le sens de la vue commande ce monde, conform\u00e9ment \u00e0 la hi\u00e9rarchie m\u00e9ditative des cinq sens qui est la mienne.\n\nMais n\u00e9cessairement un autre sens l'accompagne (je prends conscience, en y r\u00e9fl\u00e9chissant pour la description, de l'intervention d'un autre sens. Les autres sens sont sans doute toujours pr\u00e9sents, mais d'habitude inaccessibles). C'est lui qui sert d'effecteur de m\u00e9moire (chaque image vue jouant elle-m\u00eame ce r\u00f4le par rapport aux autres images qu'elle suscite). Dans la chambre o\u00f9 je me suis abruptement trouv\u00e9 pour le commencement strict de cette branche, c'\u00e9tait le sens du toucher, souterrainement impliqu\u00e9 par le mat\u00e9riau du premier souvenir, le gel de bu\u00e9e sur la vitre.\n\nL'image initiale du bureau, qui n'est pas cette fois celle que j'ai mise en premier, mais qui est celle \u00e0 partir de laquelle je peux penser son espace, l'image introductrice \u00e0 la restitution du lieu (je n'en trouve, presque toujours, qu'une), est rendue effective par le bruit des trajectoires browniennes des mouches autour de l'ampoule du plafond, dans la lumi\u00e8re solaire et matinale, par le sens de l'ou\u00efe, donc, mon second sens. Et le timbre de la note de clavecin de la suite anglaise met encore en jeu l'ou\u00efe.\n\nCherchant plus loin, je trouve, en l' **Oranjeaunie du Parc** **sauvage,** en la figue penn\u00e8que du **Bassin** , une intervention du go\u00fbt. Mais nulle part, jusqu'ici, la moindre odeur (c'est mon sens le plus faible, aujourd'hui en tout cas). (Une telle constatation me satisfait, pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 une \u00ab justification th\u00e9orique \u00bb de l'\u00e9chelle des sens, au g\u00e9n\u00e9ral et au particulier.)\n\nJe me suis arr\u00eat\u00e9 pour cette br\u00e8ve enqu\u00eate parce qu'au moment de p\u00e9n\u00e9trer dans la cuisine je me suis heurt\u00e9 \u00e0 deux images quasiment simultan\u00e9es (plus exactement la r\u00e9it\u00e9ration de mon effort \u00e0 penser \u00e0 cette p\u00e9n\u00e9tration m'a plac\u00e9 alternativement en pr\u00e9sence de l'une ou l'autre de deux images ind\u00e9pendantes, sans que je puisse d\u00e9cider laquelle \u00e9tait \u00ab s\u00e9mantiquement \u00bb premi\u00e8re) : l'une de vue pure (en apparence), et l'autre au contraire extr\u00eamement marqu\u00e9e par une sensation tactile.\n\nJe n'avais pas rencontr\u00e9 jusqu'ici d'h\u00e9sitations, ou peut-\u00eatre je les avais \u00e9limin\u00e9es d'office comme adventices, ne m\u00e9ritant pas r\u00e9flexion, parce que j'\u00e9tais seulement pr\u00e9occup\u00e9 d'avancer sur mon chemin. Je constate d'ailleurs qu'elles posent un autre probl\u00e8me, que je me suis d\u00e9j\u00e0 pos\u00e9 dans une incise (\u00a7 90), le laissant l\u00e0 en suspension : celui de la nature (impr\u00e9visible, de hasard, ou pas) de la position initiale d'irruption dans une pi\u00e8ce, quand le regard, passe-muraille, s'y installe. Aucune hypoth\u00e8se ne surgit.\n\nJ'ai le choix entre deux positions :\n\n\u2013 **une baignoire occasionnelle et de fortune est plac\u00e9e au pied de la table de la cuisine ; le contact de l'eau chaude r\u00e9veille et apaise en m\u00eame temps la douleur des piq\u00fbres et griffures de ronces sur les jambes nues, acquisitions d'une journ\u00e9e de courses dans les chemins, les vignes, le \u00ab bois de Serres \u00bb ou \u00ab Gaja \u00bb, noms de deux \u00e9chapp\u00e9es ludiques vers l'ext\u00e9rieur de la ville. Pendant que l'eau, d'abord br\u00fblante, refroidit lentement, pendant que le bien-\u00eatre immense du bain m'envahit, je vois la peau des doigts de ma main se plisser rose, comme apr\u00e8s une longue immersion pour jeux maritimes dans le lavoir.**\n\n\u2013 **Une fen\u00eatre sur la rue regarde vers l'Enclos du Luxembourg ; d'autres enfants jouent ; des voitures rares passent.**\n\n## 143 je me laisse cette fois ouvrir la porte donnant sur le balcon\n\nRemontant jusqu'au palier du premier \u00e9tage, je me laisse cette fois ouvrir la porte donnant sur le balcon. Le balcon, le voici, qui se dirige vers la gauche, vers la salle de bains, une excroissance, une pi\u00e8ce rapport\u00e9e coll\u00e9e \u00e0 la maison \u00e0 cette hauteur, et support\u00e9e par le couloir d'entr\u00e9e dans le jardin. (L'entr\u00e9e r\u00e9elle, par la petite porte, dont le couloir s'ouvre sur la terrasse, pas l'entr\u00e9e officielle du \u00ab 7 rue d'Assas \u00bb, dont le portail est presque d\u00e9saffect\u00e9.)\n\nJe marche sur le balcon, et je le regarde en m\u00eame temps d'en bas. **Je vois, quasi simultan\u00e9ment de haut en bas le jardin (le banc, la terrasse, les quelques marches qui les joignent depuis la porte d'entr\u00e9e), de bas en haut le balcon.** Chacun de ces regards est imm\u00e9diatement r\u00e9versible.\n\nJe ne peux pas retrouver le balcon sans le voir, c'est-\u00e0-dire sans le regarder d'un autre lieu, qui est \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s exactement le sol nu du jardin, en haut des marches, au commencement de l'all\u00e9e centrale, entre les deux \u00ab collines \u00bb habit\u00e9es d'arbres (la partie du balcon qui est au centre de la vue est alors un peu \u00e0 droite de la porte, devant la premi\u00e8re fen\u00eatre), mais je ne peux pas \u00e9viter de voir aussit\u00f4t ce que je vois dans l'autre sens, vers le sol du jardin, vers les marches, les arbres de chaque c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'all\u00e9e, retour inverse impraticable en aucune dur\u00e9e r\u00e9elle, \u00e9change infiniment pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9 de points de vision qui se continue en oscillations, et se continuerait si tr\u00e8s vite la vision ne se brouillait, ne m'\u00e9chappait.\n\nOr, autour, **c'est l'\u00e9t\u00e9 ; la table est dress\u00e9e au-dehors ; de bas en haut, vers le balcon, vers les fen\u00eatres de la chambre derri\u00e8re ; \u00e0 la suite de quelque remue-m\u00e9nage enfantin, une voix interroge : \u00ab Tu dors ? \u00bb. Une voix na\u00efve r\u00e9pond : \u00ab Oui. \u00bb** J'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 si s\u00e9duit par ce pi\u00e8ge logique que je l'ai emport\u00e9, envelopp\u00e9 pr\u00e9cieusement avec la table ensoleill\u00e9e, sa nappe, ses verres, avec les rires, le silence des fen\u00eatres aux rideaux tir\u00e9s pour la sieste de mon plus jeune fr\u00e8re, Jean-Ren\u00e9.\n\nLa question pos\u00e9e au dormeur est une \u00e9nigme. Je ne peux pas dire : \u00ab Je dors. \u00bb Si je dis \u00ab je dors \u00bb sans mentir, c'est que je ne r\u00e9ponds que pour moi-m\u00eame, c'est que je r\u00eave. La question implicite que pose le r\u00eaveur est semblable : \u00ab Est-ce que je dors ? \u00bb C'est celle qui inqui\u00e8te et paralyse Perceval chez le Roi-P\u00eacheur, au ch\u00e2teau du Graal. Mais \u00e0 ces questions, il ne faut jamais essayer de r\u00e9pondre. Il ne faut jamais d\u00e9chiffrer les \u00e9nigmes. Il faut croire les dormeurs.\n\nLe balcon s'en allait vers la droite (vu du bas), pas contre les fen\u00eatres sur bureau. Et \u00e0 son extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 on descendait par deux marches dans la salle de bains, curieuse addition suspendue au b\u00e2timent principal. La baignoire \u00e9tait directement au pied des marches, le sol couvert d'un linol\u00e9um crevass\u00e9. Il y avait un lavabo et un miroir sur le mur d'en face, une fen\u00eatre \u00e0 droite, directement au-dessus de la terrasse.\n\nAu fond de la salle de bains, \u00e0 droite, dans une avanc\u00e9e architecturale encore plus audacieuse, \u00e9taient les \u00ab cabinets \u00bb, qui enfermaient des tr\u00e9sors de lecture. Une pile de livres en effet avait \u00e9t\u00e9 plac\u00e9e l\u00e0 et suppl\u00e9ait aux d\u00e9faillances de papier ad\u00e9quat \u00e0 ce genre de lieux (un effet parmi d'autres de la situation de g\u00e9n\u00e9rale p\u00e9nurie). La connaissance rapide et fragmentaire qu'on pouvait prendre (et rarement reprendre) de leur contenu \u00e9tait plut\u00f4t de nature tactile, s'apparentant \u00e0 une version extr\u00eame de la \u00ab vision paroptique \u00bb qui s\u00e9duisit jadis Jules Romains (et que _Le Canard encha\u00een\u00e9_ avait r\u00e9sum\u00e9 de fa\u00e7on lapidaire et imag\u00e9e en : \u00ab M. Jules Romains lit son journal en s'asseyant dessus, \u00bb). Le choix des livres ainsi promis \u00e0 une \u00ab fin boueuse \u00bb n'incitait le plus souvent pas \u00e0 s'attarder \u00e0 les lire.\n\n **Mais un jour de l'hiver de 1944 une couverture attira mon attention ; violemment, expressionnistement colori\u00e9e, elle repr\u00e9sentait une sorte de piscine (en fait je crois un r\u00e9servoir d'eau dans une cave ( ?), un ch\u00e2teau d'eau ( ?)) dont l'eau se teintait du rouge de victimes poignard\u00e9es par un criminel au rictus sardonique et subreptice saisi par le crayon du dessinateur au moment o\u00f9, son forfait accompli, il remontait par une \u00e9chelle de corde vers le monde des vivants (et la perp\u00e9tration de nouveaux crimes) ; une des victimes se soulevait encore \u00e0** **en un geste de surprise m\u00e2tin\u00e9e d'inutile supplication, cependant que les autres avaient d\u00e9j\u00e0 l'indiff\u00e9rence flottante de ceux qui sont \u00e0 la fois noy\u00e9s et vid\u00e9s de leur sang.**\n\nLa couverture m'ayant paru de bon augure, je me plongeai \u00e0 mon tour dans l'eau sanglante du r\u00e9cit, que j'entamai en son milieu, car une bonne moiti\u00e9 des pages en avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9j\u00e0 arrach\u00e9es. C'\u00e9tait un des volumes (et heureusement pas le seul) d'une \u00e9dition exhaustive du _Rocambole_ de Ponson du Terrail. **J'oubliai le froid ; tout commen\u00e7ait** (tout commen\u00e7ait dans ma lecture) **par une lettre.**\n\n## 144 Rocambole, on s'en souvient sans doute, se fait passer pour un vicomte,\n\nRocambole, on s'en souvient sans doute, se fait passer pour un vicomte, dont je ne retrouve pas le nom pr\u00e9sentement (je ne dois pas me laisser aller \u00e0 le confondre avec le duc de Ch\u00e2teau-Mailly, dont le criminel se d\u00e9barrassera dans quelques chapitres (c'est son rival aupr\u00e8s de la belle), en lui inoculant la maladie du \u00ab charbon \u00bb au moyen d'une piq\u00fbre d'aiguille convenablement plac\u00e9e dans la crini\u00e8re de son cheval favori : intelligent, n'est-ce pas ?), le vicomte, absent depuis de nombreuses ann\u00e9es (il est parti faire le tour du monde, apr\u00e8s un chagrin d'amour ? \u00e9vang\u00e9liser les tribus sauvages ? Il est mort, peut-\u00eatre ? tu\u00e9 par Rocambole, quand celui-ci s'est \u00e9vad\u00e9 du bagne, peut-\u00eatre ? il va revenir, peut-\u00eatre, d\u00e9noncer l'imposture (c'est bien ce qui se passe, il me semble, quelques centaines de pages plus loin)). Le vicomte, dis-je, pr\u00eate involontairement son identit\u00e9 \u00e0 Rocambole, qui prend ainsi pied dans la haute soci\u00e9t\u00e9 parisienne. Mais il voudrait mieux encore.\n\nEt il courtise donc la belle Concepcion de Sallandrera, fille d'un grand d'Espagne, lui-m\u00eame possesseur d'une quantit\u00e9 non sp\u00e9cifi\u00e9e mais consid\u00e9rable de tableaux de Zurbar\u00e1n. Rocambole est \u00e0 son club (il joue au whist peut-\u00eatre ? (un des jeux savour\u00e9s par mon grand-p\u00e8re, presque autant que la manille coinch\u00e9e, moins noble toutefois)) et voil\u00e0 qu'on lui apporte un \u00ab pli \u00bb. C'est une lettre, une lettre de Concepcion ! L'enveloppe est parfum\u00e9e, il la soup\u00e8se n\u00e9gligemment (il ne se presse pas), il ne l'ouvre pas tout de suite. Car, avant m\u00eame de lire les mots trac\u00e9s d'une main tremblante et virginale par la belle et fi\u00e8re jeune fille, il pense : \u00ab C'est une lettre de plusieurs pages ! Elle m'aime ! \u00bb\n\nJ'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 extr\u00eamement frapp\u00e9 de ce trait \u00e9tonnant de p\u00e9n\u00e9tration, allant jusqu'aux tr\u00e9fonds de la psychologie f\u00e9minine (aux lois de laquelle ne saurait \u00e9chapper aucune, pas m\u00eame la fille du hautain duc de Sallandrera) chez ce bandit, \u00e9lev\u00e9, si j'ose dire, parmi les \u00ab Apaches \u00bb de la \u00ab Barri\u00e8re \u00bb, qui s'est associ\u00e9 pour le crime \u00e0 l'ignoble Venture, \u00e0 la diabolique Baccarat. \u00ab Ah, les le\u00e7ons de Sir William ont port\u00e9 leurs fruits \u00bb, pensai-je, \u00e0 moins que Ponson du Terrail ne l'ait pens\u00e9 pour moi.\n\nMais \u00e0 vrai dire, au moins autant que d'admiration pour la preuve de divination psychologique que venait de me donner Rocambole, je me p\u00e9n\u00e9trai avidement de la v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de cette loi de l'\u00e2me : \u00ab Six pages serr\u00e9es ! Elle m'aime ! \u00bb, moi qui, bien qu'amoureux, n'\u00e9tais gu\u00e8re en mesure de recevoir de tels gages. Or c'\u00e9tait l'hiver de 1944, et j'avais la chance de pouvoir d\u00e9couvrir ces v\u00e9rit\u00e9s pr\u00e9cieuses dans un des gros volumes de l'\u00e9dition Fayard ( ?) et dans les \u00ab cabinets \u00bb o\u00f9 ils avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 rel\u00e9gu\u00e9s, pour cause d'indignit\u00e9 litt\u00e9raire sans doute, redoubl\u00e9e d'une p\u00e9nurie de papier.\n\n **La lumi\u00e8re, un gris apr\u00e8s-midi sans lyc\u00e9e, me parvenait par la petite fen\u00eatre lat\u00e9rale, o\u00f9 bougeaient les branches nues du figuier.** J'aurais bien souhait\u00e9 une chute amoureuse plus tangible de Concepcion de Sallandrera, qui aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 encore plus instructive, mais c'\u00e9tait une \u00e9ventualit\u00e9 que la pruderie superficielle g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de l'ouvrage ne laissait gu\u00e8re pr\u00e9voir (et d'ailleurs, tr\u00e8s moralement, Rocambole \u00e9choue dans sa m\u00e9galomane et titanesque entreprise).\n\nDe retour du bagne Rocambole, devenu bon (et simultan\u00e9ment fort ennuyeux, il faut bien le dire), aid\u00e9 de Wanda, la jeune Russe sa disciple (une sorte de nouvelle mouture de Baccarat, qui est indisponible depuis qu'elle est devenue la Comtesse Artoff) (je la voyais sous les traits de Nina, dont le nom hors clandestinit\u00e9 \u00e9tait Morguleff) d\u00e9joue les plans de quelques gredins, assez semblables, en plus ternes, \u00e0 ce qu'il \u00e9tait autrefois lui-m\u00eame.\n\nEt en cet hiver, le dernier de la guerre (o\u00f9 la salle de bains ne pouvait pas \u00eatre chauff\u00e9e) une autre sc\u00e8ne, infiniment plus _gruesome_ (horrible) que celle de la lettre de l'innocente Concepci\u00f9n mais \u00e9trangement appropri\u00e9e aux circonstances climatiques de la lecture me tenait grelottant quoique fascin\u00e9 : celle o\u00f9 Wanda, la belle et froide Russe, insult\u00e9e du d\u00e9sir bestial d'un mis\u00e9rable, l'intendant du domaine de X..., \u00e0 quelques verstes de Y..., je crois (h\u00e9las ! l'impr\u00e9cision, le vague de ces d\u00e9sirs ignobles !), ex\u00e9cute une terrible vengeance, digne de Sir William : faisant semblant d'acc\u00e9der aux demandes du mis\u00e9rable, elle lui donne rendez-vous au plus profond des terres, au fin fond d'un indispensable bassin d'arrosage. L\u00e0, elle s'\u00e9clipse un instant (pour se pr\u00e9parer, soi-disant, au pire ?) et l'enferme (c'est un b\u00e2timent couvert avec une seule porte, arm\u00e9e d'une serrure dont elle a subtilis\u00e9 la cl\u00e9). Puis elle ouvre les robinets.\n\nLe bassin se remplit d'une eau ti\u00e8de, qui monte doucement jusqu'aux \u00e9paules de l'intendant, mais jusqu'aux \u00e9paules seulement. Sa t\u00eate seule d\u00e9passe. Il a ri d'abord, puis s'est inqui\u00e9t\u00e9, a cru \u00e0 une erreur, a hurl\u00e9, temp\u00eat\u00e9, suppli\u00e9. Il se rassure un instant, quand l'eau s'arr\u00eate. Ce n'\u00e9tait qu'une mauvaise plaisanterie ! Il n'est pas destin\u00e9 \u00e0 mourir noy\u00e9 ! Or c'est l'hiver (l'hiver russe, que j'imaginais parfaitement, par extrapolation de la temp\u00e9rature qui r\u00e9gnait dans les cabinets et des nouvelles entendues \u00e0 la radio : l'Arm\u00e9e rouge \u00e9tait devant Budapest. Quelques photos du destin des soldats de Von Paulus devant Stalingrad avaient commenc\u00e9 \u00e0 appara\u00eetre dans les journaux). L'apr\u00e8s-midi rougeoyant s'ach\u00e8ve. L'eau refroidit. Les parois du bassin sont lisses, o\u00f9 le malheureux s'arrache vainement les ongles \u00e0 essayer de grimper pour \u00e9chapper \u00e0 ce carcan mortel.\n\n## 145 car l'eau refroidissante dans la nuit sib\u00e9rienne va bient\u00f4t geler\n\nMortel, car l'eau refroidissante dans la nuit sib\u00e9rienne va bient\u00f4t geler, et gelant (c'est une loi physique, qui fut, je ne l'ignore pas, d'un triste effet sur le _Titanic)_ va augmenter terriblement de volume, broyant l'homme de son \u00e9treinte purificatrice, en r\u00e9tribution horrible de la pens\u00e9e de celle \u00e0 laquelle il avait voulu soumettre Wanda (que je r\u00eavais succombant, dans l'eau ti\u00e8de, quand la nature s'y pr\u00eaterait, aux peu honorables miennes).\n\nIl me semble me souvenir que Wanda, de par quelque interstice ou vasistas russe dans le plafond (chaudement emmitoufl\u00e9e dans de superbes fourrures, au sein du froid cr\u00e9pusculaire de la steppe qui avive encore sa beaut\u00e9 blonde, glaciale, et slave), assiste \u00e0 l'agonie du criminel, mais ce n'est peut-\u00eatre qu'un raffinement de mes imaginations hivernales, incontestablement enflamm\u00e9es par cette sc\u00e8ne sublime que plus tard, quand j'ai offert \u00e0 Laurence la r\u00e9\u00e9dition en poche de l'\u0153uvre ponsonienne je n'ai pas, \u00e0 mon grand regret, r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 retrouver (mais j'ai essay\u00e9 mollement : cette relecture m'ennuyait).\n\nIl y en avait au moins dix volumes. Pour \u00e9viter la destruction pr\u00e9matur\u00e9e des _Rocamboles_ que je ne pouvais lire d'un seul coup, je les avais soigneusement replac\u00e9s en \u00ab seconde ligne \u00bb derri\u00e8re la cuvette, et leur avais substitu\u00e9 de vieux manuels de philosophie p\u00e9rim\u00e9s, dont les pouvoirs de \u00ab suspense \u00bb m'avaient paru nettement inf\u00e9rieurs, et qui pouvaient sans dommage \u00eatre sacrifi\u00e9s en premier. J'ai pu ainsi lire la plus grande partie des aventures, \u00e0 l'exception des tout d\u00e9buts, o\u00f9 r\u00e8gne le g\u00e9nie affreux, d\u00e9moniaque, de Sir William.\n\n(Mais je n'ai heureusement pas manqu\u00e9 la sc\u00e8ne o\u00f9 Rocambole, s\u00fbr de lui, ayant tout appris pense-t-il de son ma\u00eetre, maintenant aveugle, et r\u00e9duit \u00e0 la chaise roulante, le pr\u00e9cipite du haut d'une falaise pour s'en d\u00e9barrasser et voler de ses propres ailes, si je puis dire. Et \u00e0 ce moment (minuit, accompagn\u00e9 de tonnerres et d'\u00e9clairs), il se souvient, trop tard et en majuscules d'imprimerie, de l'avertissement de Sir William : JE SUIS TA BONNE \u00c9TOILE. LE JOUR O\u00d9 JE DISPARA\u00ceTRAI TA BONNE \u00c9TOILE S'\u00c9TEINDRA !\n\nLe mis\u00e9rable (je suis quasi s\u00fbr que Ponson du Terrail \u00e9crit l\u00e0 \u00ab le mis\u00e9rable \u00bb) alors tombe \u00e0 genoux au bord de l'\u00e9norme falaise (de la c\u00f4te de Cornouailles ? Je confonds peut-\u00eatre avec le \u00ab saut de Tristan \u00bb \u00e0 Tintagel) et dit : J'AI PEUR ! OH ! J'AI PEUR ! Il a bien raison de le dire. Apr\u00e8s, \u00e7a va mal pour lui.\n\nUne fois achev\u00e9e une de ces volumineuses aventures, j'abandonnais Rocambole, ses complices, ses diabolismes et infamies \u00e0 leur sort non moins inf\u00e2me.\n\nEt, sit\u00f4t repos\u00e9 le livre dont les pages se d\u00e9faisaient (promises \u00e0 une fin ignoble), je me hissais jusqu'au rebord de la petite fen\u00eatre de c\u00f4t\u00e9, l'enjambais, et me laissais glisser all\u00e9grement dans le jardin par les branches du figuier.\n\nLe figuier qui, \u00e0 l'horizontale du banc (dans le jeu de **S'avancer-en-rampant** ), et \u00e0 l'extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 gauche, apparaissait dans le champ de vision, au pied du mur.\n\net dont l'image introduira, si on adopte ce parcours de lecture, en s'engageant, \u00e0 la suite du premier chapitre dans cette bifurcation, au chapitre deux de la branche pr\u00e9sente, qui a pour titre, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, Le Figuier.\n\n# BIFURCATION B\n\n# Avant-vie\n\n* * *\n\n## 146 Je marque une fronti\u00e8re dans la dur\u00e9e, je pense le d\u00e9but de ma vie :\n\nJe dessine ici une fronti\u00e8re dans la dur\u00e9e, et je la pense, avec une certaine solennit\u00e9 comme marquant le d\u00e9but de ma vie : une image y joue le r\u00f4le de poteau-fronti\u00e8re. Dans cette image, **j'entre** (nous entrons tous les cinq) **dans le jardin de la rue d'Assas.** C'est bien le jardin de la rue d'Assas, je le reconnais, mais c'est un jardin o\u00f9 nous n'avons pas encore mis le pied, un lieu vierge de notre occupation. Cette affirmation r\u00e9sulte tr\u00e8s simplement du fait que **le sol des all\u00e9es est couvert de sable ; de sable fin, presque blanc** (l'image exag\u00e8re certainement la blancheur toute d'innocence de ce sable). Dans le temps, apr\u00e8s le franchissement de ce seuil, le sable a disparu. Le pi\u00e9tinement sourd des l\u00e9gions enfantines en marche, en courses, en v\u00e9los, leurs jeux, leurs seaux et pelles, leurs grattages, leurs arrosages, ont eu rapide raison de la couche mince de sable ornemental. Le sol v\u00e9ritable, rugueux, caillouteux et sec l'a engloutie. C'est l\u00e0, c'est de cela ( ?) qu'a commenc\u00e9 ma vie.\n\nJe ne suis certes pas n\u00e9 avec un \u00e2ge d\u00e9j\u00e0 compt\u00e9 (tel un nouveau Dr Faustroll), \u00e0 la fin de ma cinqui\u00e8me ann\u00e9e, en septembre 1937. Je ne suis pas n\u00e9 \u00e0 six ans (si je nous accorde les quelques mois n\u00e9cessaires \u00e0 la cr\u00e9ation, dans le jardin, du paysage nouveau par destruction de l'ancien). Mais la conviction int\u00e9rieure d'\u00eatre soi (l'imagination centrale de l'ego voyeur et sensuel ; l'enfant sensuel moyen) suppose, par retour inverse dans le temps, une continuit\u00e9 du souvenir, la **m\u00e9moire**. Et la mienne s'inaugure l\u00e0, sur le sable robinsonien. Car de la quasi-totalit\u00e9 de ce qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de la pose de mon pied nu dans ses all\u00e9es, je suis amn\u00e9sique. Tout ce qui lui est ant\u00e9rieur est comme un r\u00eave d'avant-naissance, ou comme une collection de r\u00e9miniscences, hors dur\u00e9e, discontinu, appartient \u00e0 mon **avant-m\u00e9moire.** Vivre, et vivre un, entier, exige la pens\u00e9e d'une continuit\u00e9 d'\u00eatre, la certitude (illusoire mais tenace) d'avoir v\u00e9cu sans interruption. Et cette certitude elle-m\u00eame r\u00e9clame un d\u00e9cor, un cadre, un _background_ g\u00e9om\u00e9trique, temporel, sans discontinuit\u00e9s. Pour un \u00ab moi \u00bb le v\u00e9ritable d\u00e9but de la vie n'est pas la naissance (strictement aussi impensable int\u00e9rieurement que la mort), est m\u00eame assez \u00e9loign\u00e9 de la naissance. Tout ce qui pr\u00e9c\u00e8de le d\u00e9but d'un temps parfait (au sens topologique : ferm\u00e9 sans point isol\u00e9) appartient \u00e0 une zone-fronti\u00e8re de l'existence, comme le sommeil, pas \u00e0 la vie (qui est un \u00ab ouvert \u00bb, topologiquement). Ainsi l'entr\u00e9e dans le jardin me d\u00e9signe la fin de mon **avant-vie.**\n\nLes ann\u00e9es ant\u00e9rieures, du 5 d\u00e9cembre 1932 \u00e0 septembre 1937, me sont, pour cette raison, ext\u00e9rieures. 1935, 1936 \u00ab ressemblent \u00bb plus \u00e0 1930 (o\u00f9 je n'existais pas) qu'\u00e0 1939. Je peux par cons\u00e9quent jeter sur ce temps pr\u00e9liminaire un regard presque \u00ab objectif \u00bb, par exemple photographique, avec beaucoup plus de tranquillit\u00e9, moins de m\u00e9fiance que sur ce qui suit : il n'y a pratiquement pas d'interf\u00e9rence possible avec la certitude de mon identit\u00e9. La rigueur de la contrainte narrative (que ma m\u00e9moire agisse, dans cette prose, autant que possible sans secours) ne risque pas d'en \u00eatre affaiblie.\n\nJe m'allonge sur mon lit avec le dossier gris o\u00f9 j'ai rassembl\u00e9, peu nombreuses, quelques lettres, et quelques photographies extraites de la masse, plus \u00e9tendue, de mes \u00ab archives familiales \u00bb (ce qui a surv\u00e9cu aux diverses destructions). Je garde l'ensemble dans ma chambre, la \u00ab chambre au lit de cuivre \u00bb, dans le Minervois (j'y restituerai le contenu du dossier, apr\u00e8s usage, ces documents sont \u00e0 la disposition de tous (n'attirent gu\u00e8re leur curiosit\u00e9, pour l'instant)). Je choisirai quelques photographies, une demi-douzaine au plus. Elles suffiront.\n\nJe les regarderai un peu longuement. Je ne les avais jamais regard\u00e9es longuement. Ce sont de vraies photographies d'enfance : leur charge \u00e9motionnelle est pure, d'ordre strictement priv\u00e9. Et leur banalit\u00e9 est parfaite : dimensions petites, papier ordinaire des tirages familiaux en noir et blanc des ann\u00e9es trente, les voil\u00e0, gliss\u00e9es (par hasard de r\u00e9partition) dans deux pochettes \u00e0 rabats jaune-beige (jaunies). Je lis sur la premi\u00e8re :\n\nPHOTOGRAPHIE\n\n **A. GAMMONET**\n\n86, Avenue de Saxe \u2013 LYON\n\nAu-dessus, un losange bleu sombre o\u00f9 est \u00e9crit, en lettres pseudo-manuscrites inclin\u00e9es :\n\n_Agfa_\n\nlosange surmont\u00e9 d'une figurine rouge : une jeune femme au visage rose, les cheveux invisibles enferm\u00e9s dans une toque de jeune femme de film ou revue de mode 1930, le bras droit r\u00e9publicain lev\u00e9, une \u00e9charpe rouge dress\u00e9e par le vent comme un bras gauche dessinant avec le premier (le vrai) un V de victoire, un foulard jaillissant du cou vers l'avant (toujours la brise optimiste) perpendiculairement au bras et \u00e0 l'\u00e9charpe (l'ensemble est semblable aux trois axes d'un rep\u00e8re orthonorm\u00e9 pour probl\u00e8me de cin\u00e9matique). Au-dessous du foulard appara\u00eet le second bras de la jeune personne all\u00e9gorique qui tient l'appareil photographique, rectangle noir d'o\u00f9 un \u0153il blanc nous contemple.\n\nA l'arri\u00e8re de la pochette, d'une encre noire, on a not\u00e9 le nom du client :\n\nNom : Molinaux _(sic_ , pour \u00ab Molino \u00bb, nom de mes grands-parents maternels)\n\nD\u00e9veloppements : | 1 | 2.40\n\n---|---|---\n\nImpressions : | 8 | 5.60\n\nAgrandissements :\n\n| |\n\nTotal \u00e0 payer :\n\n| |\n\n8.00\n\nTout \u00e0 fait en bas, en tr\u00e8s petits caract\u00e8res :\n\nPochettes BURLET 30 rue Saint-Merri Paris\n\nDans le rabattant int\u00e9rieur gauche de la pochette les tirages, \u00e0 droite les n\u00e9gatifs (certains, non tir\u00e9s, repr\u00e9sentent des variations, autant que je peux juger non significatives, des m\u00eames lieux). Le bord des papiers n'est pas droit mais l\u00e9g\u00e8rement ondul\u00e9 comme celui des timbres-poste (plus irr\u00e9guli\u00e8rement et plus rudement toutefois). J'en fais le tour avec le doigt.\n\nJe m'adosse aux quatre oreillers pos\u00e9s en haut de mon lit contre la biblioth\u00e8que, les pieds sous l'\u00e9dredon prot\u00e9iforme \u00e0 duvet de canard issu d'une commande faite par Marie \u00e0 la Camif (c'est juin, mais il ne fait pas si chaud que \u00e7a). Je sors les deux premi\u00e8res pictions, je les dispose devant moi. Je regarde, sur chacune, la fa\u00e7ade int\u00e9rieure (tourn\u00e9e vers le jardin) du 21 _bis_ rue de l'Orangerie, \u00e0 Caluire, o\u00f9 je suis n\u00e9.\n\n## 147 Mes grands-parents s'install\u00e8rent \u00e0 Caluire quand mon grand-p\u00e8re fut nomm\u00e9 inspecteur primaire\n\nMes grands-parents s'install\u00e8rent \u00e0 Caluire quand mon grand-p\u00e8re fut nomm\u00e9 inspecteur primaire (inspecteur des instituteurs) pour le d\u00e9partement de l'Is\u00e8re. Caluire touche \u00e0 Lyon, entre Rh\u00f4ne et Sa\u00f4ne. La rue de l'Orangerie est au sommet de la colline, au-dessus du Rh\u00f4ne. Adoss\u00e9s l'un \u00e0 l'autre (c'est le m\u00eame b\u00e2timent ( ?)) le 21 et le 21 _bis_ \u00e9taient de taille in\u00e9gale. Le 21 _bis_ \u00e9tait plus petit que le 21, ne poss\u00e9dait qu'un bout \u00e9troit, peu profond, de l'immense jardin, s\u00e9par\u00e9 du reste par une palissade en piquets de bois. D\u00e8s leur installation ma grand-m\u00e8re (qui avait quatre enfants en \u00e2ge d'\u00e9tudier) eut l'ambition de passer du 21 _bis_ au 21, plus vaste. Sa volont\u00e9 \u00e9tait peu r\u00e9sistible. Elle mit quelques ann\u00e9es \u00e0 convaincre le propri\u00e9taire, un rude Suisse, mais elle y parvint. Cependant cette conqu\u00eate d\u00e9cisive n'eut lieu qu'un peu apr\u00e8s ma naissance. Je suis n\u00e9 au 21 _bis_.\n\nMon p\u00e8re avait fait son service militaire de sursitaire dans les chasseurs alpins, puis avait commenc\u00e9 sa carri\u00e8re d'enseignant au coll\u00e8ge d'Arbois, patrie du \u00ab vin jaune \u00bb (dont je fus, m'a-t-il dit, \u00ab baptis\u00e9 \u00bb). Ma m\u00e8re, agr\u00e9g\u00e9e d'anglais \u00e0 son retour d'Oxford, avait d\u00e9but\u00e9 \u00e0 Bourg-en-Bresse. Elle s'y rendait chaque jour en train. Elle partait, toujours \u00e0 la derni\u00e8re minute, \u00e0 l'angoisse d\u00e9sapprobatrice de son p\u00e8re, fanatique de la ponctualit\u00e9, courait par la rue de l'Orangerie, puis par la longue rue de l'Oratoire, alors bord\u00e9e d'un tr\u00e8s long mur ininterrompu, rejoindre la petite gare de Cuire (la commune s'appelle Caluire-et-Cuire), o\u00f9 elle arrivait essouffl\u00e9e en m\u00eame temps que la locomotive, se pr\u00e9cipitait sur le quai par le passage \u00e0 niveau, et le chef de gare lui tendait son billet tout pr\u00eat, au dernier instant. J'attendais dans mon berceau, en compagnie de ma grand-m\u00e8re, et de ma tante Ren\u00e9e.\n\nLes \u00e9l\u00e9ments de cette description, concentr\u00e9 en peu de phrases des circonstances \u00ab entourant \u00bb ma naissance, je n'ai pas eu de mal \u00e0 les assembler. Je n'ai pas eu besoin de ce que j'appellerai des souvenirs externes, documents ou images fabriqu\u00e9es \u00e0 partir de r\u00e9cits : j'ai rapport\u00e9 succinctement ce qu'on m'a dit. De paroles diverses, entendues de personnes diverses \u00e0 divers moments, j'ai retenu cela. Mais je n'ai rien retenu des paroles elles-m\u00eames, ni des moments o\u00f9 je les ai entendues. Je sais tout cela de mani\u00e8re aussi impersonnelle que le bel alexandrin scolaire : \u00ab La Loire prend sa source au mont Gerbier-des-Joncs. \u00bb On appelle cela, dans la nouvelle \u00e9cole dite d' _ecological memory_ , \u00ab m\u00e9moire personnelle g\u00e9n\u00e9rique \u00bb. Selon ma m\u00e9moire personnelle g\u00e9n\u00e9rique, je me souviens que l'on m'a dit que je suis n\u00e9 l\u00e0.\n\nEt, bien s\u00fbr, je ne sais rien du tout de ces circonstances \u00ab par moi-m\u00eame \u00bb. Mon avant-vie m'est \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s enti\u00e8rement invisible et inaudible. Des paroles qui me disaient : \u00ab c'\u00e9tait l\u00e0 \u00bb, \u00ab c'est ainsi que cela s'est pass\u00e9 \u00bb, rien ne demeure non plus. Je les crois vraies (je crois vrai ce que j'en ai retenu), mais ni plus ni moins que celles qui m'ont appris, par exemple, catastrophe quasi contemporaine de ma naissance, le triomphe de Hitler en Allemagne.\n\nPlus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement, il me semble n'avoir aucun souvenir exact de choses dites. Pour emprunter de nouveau une comparaison avec les \u00ab traitements de texte \u00bb, je n'appr\u00e9hende pour ainsi dire jamais les \u00e9v\u00e9nements de langue en \u00ab mode image \u00bb, mais au contraire comme traces \u00ab num\u00e9ris\u00e9es \u00bb (il faudrait plut\u00f4t dire, \u00ab \u00e0 la Milner \u00bb, \u00ab litt\u00e9ralis\u00e9es \u00bb), c'est-\u00e0-dire recomposables, transformables \u00e0 volont\u00e9 en d'autres qui me sont propres, op\u00e9ratoires, calculables (pouvant \u00eatre soumises \u00e0 un \u00ab calcul \u00bb de l'esprit). (En moi, la langue n'est jamais \u00ab langage cuit \u00bb, sauf la langue de po\u00e9sie.) Toutes les images que je conserve sont donc en fait \u00ab hors-langue \u00bb. Tout ce que je sais (donc tout ce dont je me souviens, en ce sens) est \u00ab dans-la-langue \u00bb. Mes souvenirs internes (dans le \u00ab mode image \u00bb de ma m\u00e9moire) sont strictement distincts des autres, externes (en \u00ab mode litt\u00e9ral \u00bb).\n\nD\u00e8s qu'appara\u00eet, dans ma perception du pass\u00e9, le sens d'une continuit\u00e9 personnelle, je peux mettre les deux modes (et les mondes qu'ils composent en moi) en parall\u00e8le, les confronter (au d\u00e9triment in\u00e9vitable du premier, le monde-image : quand la langue s'empare des images, elle les d\u00e9fait, les recompose, les d\u00e9truit). Mais avant, il n'y a pratiquement aucun passage d'un mode \u00e0 l'autre : les visions, rares, semblent \u00ab hors-monde \u00bb, \u00e9tranges, insituables. Elles flottent, priv\u00e9es des secours d'une forme du monde, d'une g\u00e9om\u00e9trie, d'un axe de temps.\n\nLa maison Gammonet avait pr\u00e9par\u00e9 pour son client \u00ab Molinaux \u00bb huit tirages (qu'elle appelait \u00ab impressions \u00bb). J'ai devant les yeux le troisi\u00e8me et le sixi\u00e8me (si je me fie aux chiffres not\u00e9s derri\u00e8re, au crayon). Ils montrent tous les deux \u00ab le 21 _bis_ \u00bb (comme on disait chez nous), \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s sous le m\u00eame angle. Dans un cas, la vue est prise \u00e0 une certaine distance, depuis le jardin. On voit la porte d'entr\u00e9e, les deux \u00e9tages, le toit, on entrevoit la maison du no 21 sur la droite (mais on ne disait pas \u00ab le 21 \u00bb. On disait \u00ab le 21 _bis_ \u00bb, car il n'avait jamais \u00e9t\u00e9, pour ma grand-m\u00e8re, qu'un \u00ab _bis_ \u00bb, qu'un _ersatz_ ). A la fen\u00eatre la plus haute un visage, peut-\u00eatre celui de ma tante Ren\u00e9e, mais je ne le distingue pas bien.\n\nDans l'autre photographie, la fa\u00e7ade est coup\u00e9e juste au-dessus des fen\u00eatres du deuxi\u00e8me \u00e9tage. C'est cette vue que je regarde de plus pr\u00e8s, avec mes yeux de maintenant :\n\nla fen\u00eatre du premier y est ouverte, et sur le fond noir de la pi\u00e8ce je vois mes parents. Mon p\u00e8re est debout. Ma m\u00e8re, \u00e0 sa gauche, est accoud\u00e9e au rebord de la fen\u00eatre.\n\n## 148 Je prends une autre photographie, dont le \u00ab sujet \u00bb est moi-m\u00eame :\n\nJe prends maintenant dans la m\u00eame pochette une autre photographie (elle ne devrait pas se trouver l\u00e0, c'est une addition ult\u00e9rieure, parasite, \u00e0 son contenu initial), dont le \u00ab sujet \u00bb est moi-m\u00eame : dans une all\u00e9e l\u00e9gumi\u00e8re en pente, perch\u00e9 sur un tricycle, tourn\u00e9 \u00e0 demi vers le photographe. Le d\u00e9cor qui m'entoure est avare de d\u00e9tails, mais je sais cependant o\u00f9 je suis.\n\nA la fen\u00eatre du 21 _bis_ , rue de l'Orangerie, j'ai reconnu aussit\u00f4t mes parents (bien que les formes ne soient pas tr\u00e8s nettes, les dimensions petites et ma vue moins bonne qu'autrefois) : je ne suis pas orphelin, je n'ai jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 tr\u00e8s longtemps sans les voir, je vais les voir encore dans quelques jours. Je les reconnais sans aucune difficult\u00e9 \u00e0 cette fen\u00eatre de mon avant-vie, par extrapolation palindromique, en quelque sorte.\n\nMais comment se reconna\u00eet-on soi-m\u00eame ? Je ne suis pas du tout certain de ne pas devoir d\u00e9pendre, pour cette reconnaissance, de ces souvenirs externes que sont les photographies, de nombreuses photographies constituant une s\u00e9quence documentaire ordonn\u00e9e, ponctuation des ann\u00e9es \u00e0 intervalles pas trop \u00e9loign\u00e9s : t\u00e9moignages du temps plus stables, plus irr\u00e9cusables que les souvenirs int\u00e9rieurs, mais beaucoup plus indiff\u00e9rents. (Ind\u00e9pendamment du fait que la repr\u00e9sentation photographique regarde du dehors, et offre un visage diff\u00e9rent de celui qui se montre dans le miroir.)\n\nJe les trouve en fait \u00e0 la fois \u00e9tranges et peu convaincantes, dans leur espace sans vraisemblance, \u00e0 la g\u00e9om\u00e9trie sans gr\u00e2ce. Ma r\u00e9ticence spontan\u00e9e \u00e0 accueillir comme authentiques ces supports devenus conventionnels de l'identit\u00e9 ne va pas jusqu'\u00e0 la d\u00e9n\u00e9gation (il faut \u00eatre raisonnable, n'est-ce pas !), mais je les sens malgr\u00e9 tout comme \u00ab au-dehors \u00bb, artificiels, factices (et je pourrais facilement allonger cette liste de qualificatifs p\u00e9joratifs).\n\nCe n'est pas seulement qu'ils sont le plus souvent incapables de faciliter l'acc\u00e8s \u00e0 des images int\u00e9rieures (les souvenirs internes, les seuls \u00ab vrais \u00bb, selon une conviction sans r\u00e9flexion) : je les regarde, et l'apparition plate de cette forme qui est \u00ab moi \u00bb ne me dit rien, ne me donne acc\u00e8s \u00e0 aucun mouvement du pass\u00e9, \u00e0 aucune vision. Ils sont des preuves parfaites de l'oisivet\u00e9 des pictions, ersatz des images.\n\nC'est aussi, et plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement que, comme les paroles ou les \u00e9crits transmettant en nous un savoir de langue (autre famille de souvenirs externes), ils viennent, en devenant \u00e0 leur tour int\u00e9rieurs (on les regarde, on les a vus, on les m\u00e9morise involontairement), perturber nos autres souvenirs, se substituer \u00e0 eux. Bien souvent, cherchant \u00e0 \u00e9voquer un visage, je ne retrouve devant mes yeux qu'une photographie, que l'image, insatisfaisante, pauvre, d'une piction. (Et les progr\u00e8s du \u00ab mode image \u00bb, t\u00e9l\u00e9visuel, & de la \u00ab t\u00e9l\u00e9-existence \u00bb, rendront la m\u00e9moire plus artificielle encore, dans le futur dont je ne serai pas. Cette pauvret\u00e9 n'est pas due seulement au caract\u00e8re artificiel de telles images, mais \u00e0 ce que les images naturelles de nos souvenirs ont non seulement une g\u00e9om\u00e9trie beaucoup plus complexe, plus vaste, non limit\u00e9e aux trois dimensions conventionnelles, mais ne font pas intervenir comme sens unique la vue (m\u00eame additionn\u00e9e de sons, car les sons n'y sont que plaqu\u00e9s, comme une couleur coll\u00e9e sur un mur).)\n\nLe lieu d\u00e9sign\u00e9 par le rectangle de papier, cette fois, est Tulle. Quand mon p\u00e8re, apr\u00e8s plusieurs \u00e9checs dus \u00e0 l'extr\u00eame raret\u00e9 des postes mis au concours, ainsi qu'\u00e0 quelques d\u00e9m\u00eal\u00e9s conceptuels avec le jury encore compliqu\u00e9s de son ignorance persistante du grec, fut re\u00e7u \u00e0 l'agr\u00e9gation de philosophie, mes parents pr\u00e9tendirent \u00e0 ce luxe des couples d'enseignants : un poste double, c'est-\u00e0-dire une affectation dans la m\u00eame ville, o\u00f9 ils pourraient s'installer en famille autonome.\n\nMais les possibilit\u00e9s de choix, m\u00eame pour des agr\u00e9g\u00e9s issus de l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure, \u00e9taient maigres : le mouvement perp\u00e9tuel et pendulaire des politiques de recrutement dans notre pays, qui passent (g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement avec brusquerie) d'un malthusianisme f\u00e9roce \u00e0 un laxisme d\u00e9brid\u00e9, \u00e9tait alors (la \u00ab crise \u00bb mondiale aidant) arr\u00eat\u00e9 \u00e0 un niveau proche du z\u00e9ro.\n\nLes d\u00e9s administratifs jet\u00e9s les envoy\u00e8rent \u00e0 Tulle, Corr\u00e8ze : une petite ville estimable, n\u00e9anmoins climatiquement en fort contraste avec celles qui sont proches de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e. Mais rien ne s'offrait plus au sud. Ils y pass\u00e8rent cinq ans. Ma s\u0153ur Denise y est n\u00e9e en octobre 35, mon fr\u00e8re Pierre en janvier 37.\n\n## 149 Les images de mon avant-vie sont en nombre infime.\n\nLes images de mon avant-vie sont en nombre infime. Incroyablement rares, elles ne sortent qu'avec peine, avec douleur presque, de mon **avant-m\u00e9moire** , de son oubli peupl\u00e9. J'admire (avec une r\u00e9serve sceptique g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement silencieuse), ceux qui racontent des souvenirs de leurs deux, trois ans (certains m\u00eame pensent remonter \u00e0 la fin de leur premi\u00e8re ann\u00e9e, ou plus loin encore). Je suis persuad\u00e9 (extrapolant abusivement sans doute \u00e0 partir de mon cas particulier) que dans la plupart des cas ces sc\u00e8nes originelles ont leur source, composite, dans les r\u00e9cits des adultes, dans les albums de famille, quand elles ne sont pas tout simplement antidat\u00e9es, et mal situ\u00e9es dans l'espace. Ce sont des souvenirs externes int\u00e9rioris\u00e9s, ou des souvenirs ordinaires d\u00e9sorient\u00e9s, des \u00ab personnes d\u00e9plac\u00e9es \u00bb du souvenir.\n\nComme ils apparaissent en outre sans aides, c'est-\u00e0-dire la plupart du temps sans les objets, personnes ou paysages qui permettraient de les identifier \u00e0 coup s\u00fbr et de les dater non moins certainement, je ne suis m\u00eame pas s\u00fbr d'en poss\u00e9der vraiment un seul. Je n'entrerai donc pas dans la course au record du premier souvenir, auquel se livrent les autobiographes, depuis qu'un premier d'entre eux a pens\u00e9 \u00e0 lui, a pens\u00e9 qu'il poss\u00e9dait cette \u00ab chose \u00bb fabuleuse, un \u00ab premier souvenir \u00bb (je ne sais qui je ne sais quand : qui est donc l'auteur du \u00ab premier des premiers souvenirs \u00bb ? (\u00e9crits)) (Robert Graves regardant \u00e0 un an la reine Victoria, ou Tolsto\u00ef, \u00e0 deux ans, dans son baquet-baignoire, sont parmi les plus ridicules que j'aie jamais lus). Il se peut, inversement, que d'autres images, vives mais sans \u00ab adresses \u00bb indiscutables que je rencontre au cours de mes p\u00e9r\u00e9grinations m\u00e9morielles, appartiennent \u00e0 ces ann\u00e9es de Caluire ou de Tulle. Mais je ne parviens pas \u00e0 m'en assurer.\n\nIl est clair que la perfection (au sens topologique) d'un segment de pass\u00e9 nuit \u00e0 la restitution de moments singuliers, que leur isolement pr\u00e9serverait d'un brouillage par d'autres moments, \u00e0 la fois proches dans le temps et situ\u00e9s dans les m\u00eames lieux. Il se produit un ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne de \u00ab surimpression \u00bb. (seules l'in\u00e9galit\u00e9 \u00e9motionnelle, l'insistance s\u00e9lective sur quelques points focaux emp\u00eachent le tout de sombrer dans une neutralit\u00e9 floue).\n\nJ'ai remarqu\u00e9 aussi, en me livrant \u00e0 une tentative de ressuscitation de cette chambre o\u00f9 je suis aujourd'hui, o\u00f9 je fus pendant de nombreuses ann\u00e9es, et o\u00f9 je suis revenu apr\u00e8s d'autres ann\u00e9es d'interruption, que les d\u00e9tails, les endroits o\u00f9 je me retrouvais le mieux \u00e9taient ceux qui avaient le plus chang\u00e9 (le sol moquette brune transform\u00e9e en linol\u00e9um jaune, ou la position du lit, par exemple) mais aussi ceux qui n'avaient boug\u00e9 que tr\u00e8s peu, ou pas du tout : l'armoire, les fen\u00eatres bien s\u00fbr (mais dans ce cas je ne suis absolument pas assur\u00e9 de la justesse de mon \u00e9valuation temporelle).\n\n **Je m'\u00e9veille dans la p\u00e9nombre d'une chambre immense** (c'est la \u00ab preuve \u00bb perceptuelle de l'anciennet\u00e9, de l'archa\u00efsme de ce souvenir), **j'ouvre les yeux face \u00e0 deux \u00e9normes fen\u00eatres** (le fait que je les vois ainsi est un signe de la p\u00e9n\u00e9tration du souvenir ancien par son futur : je vois un fragment du pass\u00e9 avec mes yeux du pass\u00e9, mais je le juge, avec ceux d'aujourd'hui, ou d'un autre pass\u00e9, post\u00e9rieur. Je le regarde avec deux yeux, en somme, et je louche. Car dans cette \u00e9trange famille d'images, que nous avons tous, et qui donnent plus que d'autres le sentiment aigu de l'acc\u00e8s aux temps les plus recul\u00e9s de notre existence, la p\u00e9n\u00e9tration obligatoire du pass\u00e9 par le pr\u00e9sent est l\u00e0, montr\u00e9e par un changement d'\u00e9chelle qui t\u00e9moigne, pour nous, de ce qu'elles viennent du pays d'avant : mais pourquoi verrais-je les fen\u00eatres \u00ab \u00e9normes \u00bb si je ne les voyais, aussi, maintenant) ; **et \u00e0 l'instant o\u00f9 je les ouvre pour voir, les fen\u00eatres s'avancent brusquement jusqu'\u00e0 presque toucher mes yeux ; puis elles reculent, et je peux voir les rideaux sur les fen\u00eatres, dans une lumi\u00e8re faible, silencieuse, grise.**\n\nJe ne \u00ab poss\u00e8de \u00bb pas ce souvenir aussi librement que les autres (la plupart de ceux que j'entrelace dans cette branche, en une succession calcul\u00e9e). Il vient \u00e0 moi de mani\u00e8re r\u00e9currente, d'ann\u00e9e en ann\u00e9e, au r\u00e9veil d'un demi-sommeil, d'apr\u00e8s-midi le plus souvent. Mais il m'est impossible de le rappeler \u00e0 volont\u00e9.\n\nJ'en sais assez sur lui cependant pour pouvoir ainsi (succinctement) le d\u00e9crire, mais je ne peux y ajouter en le fixant et l'interrogeant, car il s'\u00e9vanouit toujours aussi vite quand je le rencontre (comme, dit-on, les images des r\u00eaves, ces r\u00eaves que je ne r\u00eave pas). Cependant c'est bien de lui qu'il s'agit toujours. Je vois les deux fen\u00eatres immenses en face de moi (m\u00eame si je n'ai alors devant moi, au pr\u00e9sent, qu'une seule fen\u00eatre de taille ordinaire, ou un mur). Je le reconnais.\n\nEt chaque fois qu'il se pr\u00e9sente j'ai la m\u00eame certitude de son anciennet\u00e9 et de son lieu : Tulle.\n\nJe l'ai choisi, arbitrairement au regard de la m\u00e9moire, n\u00e9cessairement au regard du r\u00e9cit, pour l'ins\u00e9rer dans ' **Le grand incendie de Londres** ', comme \u00e9tant mon premier souvenir, le plus ancien **signe-m\u00e9moire** de ce qui a \u00e9t\u00e9 oubli\u00e9.\n\n## 150 Je regarde de l'herbe dans le jardin du 21 rue de l'Orangerie (du 21 cette fois),\n\nJe regarde de l'herbe dans le jardin du 21 rue de l'Orangerie (du 21 maintenant). Elle pousse au premier plan d'une photographie, prise dans un temps que j'ai enti\u00e8rement oubli\u00e9, entre ma vie et mon avant-vie : une herbe rest\u00e9e s\u00e8che depuis l'\u00e9t\u00e9 de 1938, s\u00e8che, grise et blanche. C'est l'\u00e9t\u00e9, j'en suis certain : il fait beau, les v\u00eatements sont l\u00e9gers. C'est 1938, d'apr\u00e8s nos tailles respectives (mon fr\u00e8re Pierre, ma s\u0153ur Denise, moi). C'est 1938, puisque nous ne sommes que trois.\n\nMa m\u00e8re, \u00e0 gauche, tient mon fr\u00e8re par l'\u00e9paule. Il est debout, elle assise. Elle lui montre du doigt quelque chose qui ne peut \u00eatre que le photographe (qui est-ce ?) et son appareil. Mais il a les yeux baiss\u00e9s sous le trop de soleil. Mon p\u00e8re, assis \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de ma m\u00e8re, est tourn\u00e9 vers lui. Je vois qu'il commence \u00e0 perdre ses cheveux. Derri\u00e8re eux, une table basse, avec un plateau, une th\u00e9i\u00e8re, trois tasses visibles, et quelque chose qui est peut-\u00eatre un _tea-cosy_. Si c'\u00e9tait un tableau on pourrait l'intituler _Le Th\u00e9 sur l'herbe_.\n\nA l'extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 droite, dans une chaise longue, ma grand-m\u00e8re. Sa main sur le montant \u00ab pianote \u00bb nerveusement. Je ne vois, et pour cause, aucun mouvement de ses doigts, mais je le sais. Elle tient ma s\u0153ur sur ses genoux. Denise a un bandeau blanc dans ses cheveux. Elle regarde vers nous, avec une certaine circonspection. La chaise longue para\u00eet ferme & stable (il en manque juste un petit bout). Je ne sais si c'est un des prototypes inrenversables construits par mon grand-p\u00e8re. Comme \u00ab Chaise longue \u00bb et \u00ab grand-m\u00e8re \u00bb sont deux constantes associ\u00e9es de mes premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es, leur commune pr\u00e9sence donne au groupe de douze personnages pos\u00e9s sur l'herbe grise (huit au moins sont encore vivants aujourd'hui, cinquante-trois ans plus tard) une sorte de s\u00e9r\u00e9nit\u00e9.\n\nExactement au centre quelqu'un est debout, que je ne reconnais pas. C'est un homme d'une trentaine d'ann\u00e9es, la main gauche lev\u00e9e (qui tient peut-\u00eatre une cigarette), la main droite dans la poche de son pantalon. Je suis devant lui, \u00e0 cheval sur les \u00e9paules de mon oncle Frantz, lui aussi assis sur l'herbe, mes bras autour de son cou. J'ai les cheveux courts, et visiblement encore assez blonds.\n\nA notre droite mon grand-p\u00e8re. Il a d\u00e9j\u00e0 le visage maigre et long de vieil homme qu'il gardera encore presque trente ans (il vient d'en avoir soixante). Il a couvert d'un b\u00e9ret, contre le soleil, sa calvitie absolue, intransigeante. Il tient son poignet gauche avec sa main droite. Son expression est l\u00e9g\u00e8rement \u00e9tonn\u00e9e, ou r\u00e9flexive, ou tout simplement troubl\u00e9e par un exc\u00e8s de lumi\u00e8re. Je reconnais parfaitement cette expression.\n\nEntre ma grand-m\u00e8re et son fils Frantz, assez droite sur une chaise (on n'aper\u00e7oit que le haut du dossier), Mlle Chauvin, dite \u00ab Taia \u00bb, une vieille amie institutrice de la famille, un \u00eatre de bont\u00e9, d'infinie et modeste bont\u00e9. A ses pieds, c\u00f4te \u00e0 c\u00f4te, ma tante Ren\u00e9e et mon (alors futur) oncle Walter. Mon grand-p\u00e8re et lui sont les seuls \u00e0 porter une cravate. Tels sont les douze personnages de la photographie.\n\nElle me montre la premi\u00e8re forme de l'invisible : celle de l'oubli. Car je ne revois rien de ce moment d'apr\u00e8s-midi, au fond du jardin d'\u00e9t\u00e9, un an avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Je vois que j'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 l\u00e0, que j'ai regard\u00e9 moi aussi le photographe, et ces visages familiers, aim\u00e9s, disparus.\n\nEn lieu et place de ces visages, des herbes, des arbres sombres dans le fond du soleil, de la th\u00e9i\u00e8re, il y a aujourd'hui la cour, goudronn\u00e9e, d'une quelconque \u00ab R\u00e9sidence \u00bb. L'herbe n'y repoussera plus.\n\nJe restitue pourtant un moment tr\u00e8s proche, en un endroit tr\u00e8s proche. Mais alors j'y suis seul. **Je vois cette herbe ;** sinon cette herbe, une herbe fort semblable ; **entre les tiges j'aper\u00e7ois les mouvements affair\u00e9s, obstin\u00e9s, incessants des fourmis, escaladant les \u00e9chafaudages de gramin\u00e9es, les cath\u00e9drales de tr\u00e8fles ; \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 des fourmis ces autres insectes, rouges \u00e0 dessins noirs, qu'on appelle \u00ab b\u00eates du diable \u00bb** et que je nommais, m'a-t-on dit, plus bri\u00e8vement et plus g\u00e9n\u00e9riquement, _b\u00eatten_ , avec un fort accent trocha\u00efque sur le _\u00ea_. Et je les pr\u00e9tendais (passant imm\u00e9diatement \u00e0 l'action, \u00e0 l'horreur de ma grand-m\u00e8re) comestibles. **Je vois une fourmi s'arr\u00eater, h\u00e9siter au bout de mon doigt.**\n\n# BIFURCATION C\n\n# Des nuages\n\n* * *\n\n## 151 Au rez-de-chauss\u00e9e de la maison, une fen\u00eatre regardait vers l'ext\u00e9rieur.\n\nAu rez-de-chauss\u00e9e de la maison, rue d'Assas, une fen\u00eatre regardait vers l'ext\u00e9rieur. Une fen\u00eatre et moi regardions, dans cette image, vers l'ext\u00e9rieur : les vitres, le regard, ouvrant sur un espace descendant, non pav\u00e9, plus large qu'une rue, descendant vers une rue qui courait parall\u00e8le \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre : l'Enclos du Luxembourg. **Il pleuvait ; je regarde, et vois, l'eau ruisseler sur le sol, s'en aller dans la pente, suivre sa pente, comme toutes les eaux, toutes les pluies ; devant moi, sous la fen\u00eatre, une flaque ; et dans cette flaque d'eau de pluie, que la pluie pointille, crible, cr\u00e8ve de petit plomb, les nuages.**\n\n **Je m'appuie \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre et je regarde \u00e0 travers la vitre ;** et aussit\u00f4t l'image est p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9e de mots, devient une image \u00ab aurale \u00bb autant que visuelle ; **j'ai pos\u00e9 sur le rebord interne de la fen\u00eatre, et j'entends, en silence** au bord interne de l'image qui est en mon souvenir. Je n'entends rien de sp\u00e9cifique. Je ne peux pas dire : **j'entends** **cela** , mais seulement : **j'entends**. J'entends et ensuite seulement restitue un po\u00e8me, ou plus exactement je suis restitu\u00e9 \u00e0 des vers, de ces vers insipides dont, en mon obstination enfantine \u00e0 \u00ab \u00eatre po\u00e8te \u00bb, je couvrais en ces ann\u00e9es mes cahiers : **Je regarde couler un torrent de nuages \/ Dans l'infini des flaques d'eau.\/**\n\n(C'est le d\u00e9but de trois quatrains en mesure 12\/8, en alternance, puisant leur inspiration dans les _Stances classiques_ ?, du _Cid_ ?) ; et plus loin (dans le cahier), plus tard (dans mon oreille, aujourd'hui) : **Je n'ai** **qu'un horizon de fils t\u00e9l\u00e9graphiques \/ dans la lumi\u00e8re insipide des r\u00e9verb\u00e8res** \/ (mais ai-je vraiment \u00e9crit \u00ab insipide \u00bb ? ou bien est-ce un jugement d'insipidit\u00e9 du \u00ab moi \u00bb pr\u00e9sent qui substitue, comme il arrive si souvent dans la transmission orale, cet adjectif m\u00e9triquement quadrisyllabique \u00e0 un autre, de m\u00eame taille, perdu ?)\n\n **En face de moi, plus loin, plus loin que \u00ab l'enclos \u00bb terreux, argileux, caillouteux, mouill\u00e9, de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la rue, sur une fa\u00e7ade, je vois du vert, un vert un peu p\u00e2le, une enseigne qui n'\u00e9merge pas vraiment en image, mais avec quelque chose d'\u00e9crit ; quelque chose est l\u00e0 \u00e9crit, c'est s\u00fbr, sur cette fa\u00e7ade, quelque chose vert, \u00ab vert \u00bb exprim\u00e9 en un vert p\u00e2le ; en lequel je d\u00e9chiffre quelque chose comme \u00ab Ferrand \u00bb, avec quelque chose comme \u00ab marbre \u00bb ;** est-ce vrai ? Ou encore, est-ce vraisemblable ? Vraisemblable, certainement.\n\nMais ce qui est alors invraisemblable, dans cette m\u00eame image-m\u00e9moire c'est de **voir** , aussi, et m\u00eame plus distinctement, **sur le sol de terre pench\u00e9e de l'\u00ab enclos \u00bb non pav\u00e9, non goudronn\u00e9, entre les touffes d'herbe rare, de la bourrache, de la bourrache r\u00eache avec ses yeux bleus** , invraisemblance n\u00e9e d'un saut visuel du souvenir, sans aucun doute effectu\u00e9 depuis les Corbi\u00e8res (les Corbi\u00e8res de mon r\u00e9cit (chap. 4)), pour une vision totalement injustifiable dans ce souvenir, une plante parasite pouss\u00e9e soudainement dans cette terre.\n\nLe chemin que je me pr\u00e9pare \u00e0 suivre maintenant, dans lequel cette vision institu\u00e9e par quelques vieux po\u00e8mes m'entra\u00eene, ouvre \u00e0 un \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00bb de mon paysage de m\u00e9moire. De ce c\u00f4t\u00e9 se d\u00e9ploie un espace propre, tout entier contenu dans l'axe \u00ab gauche \u00bb de ma vision, de mon champ mn\u00e9monique (je le nomme \u00ab gauche \u00bb, mais \u00ab gauche \u00bb n'est qu'une nomination relative, pas la dimension subjective d'un demi-tri\u00e8dre oppos\u00e9, dans le champ, \u00e0 un espace \u00ab droit \u00bb). J'ouvre la porte d'un espace, qui est un espace en soi, largement ind\u00e9pendant.\n\n(L'autre \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00bb, le \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9 droit \u00bb, qui poss\u00e8de aussi la dimension d'un \u00ab apr\u00e8s \u00bb, et qui s'ouvre en d'autres ann\u00e9es, est celui que j'atteindrais, au bas de la m\u00eame pente, en tournant non \u00e0 gauche mais \u00e0 droite. En fait je ne peux pas tourner \u00e0 droite au bas de la pente, je ne peux plus le faire, car j'ai oubli\u00e9, et ne vois rien. Je n'atteins l'espace \u00ab droit \u00bb que par un autre itin\u00e9raire (il s'ouvre, dans la disposition de lecture que je vous offre, \u00e0 la fin de cette Bifurcation, dans le chapitre 5 du R\u00e9cit, dont le titre est **\u00ab Place Davila \u00bb** ).)\n\nSi je choisissais, pour nommer un tel espace de mon ciel de m\u00e9moire, une expression du type \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9 de X \u00bb, suivant l'exemple bien connu de M. Proust, ce serait le **c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'\u00c9cole**. Et l'opposition entre deux \u00ab c\u00f4t\u00e9s \u00bb, entre l'espace \u00ab gauche \u00bb et l'espace \u00ab droit \u00bb au bas de la fen\u00eatre est aussi une opposition sentimentale : entre \u00ab \u00e9cole \u00bb et \u00ab lyc\u00e9e \u00bb. L'\u00c9cole est fort diff\u00e9rente du Lyc\u00e9e (qui est dans l'espace droit, du \u00ab **c\u00f4t\u00e9 place Davila** \u00bb), parce qu'elle n'appara\u00eet pas le moins du monde comme le lieu d'un enfermement. Je ne la sens pas du tout de la m\u00eame famille de lieux que l'h\u00f4pital (dont j'ai l'exp\u00e9rience), la prison (que j'ignore, et imagine, assez pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment en ce moment dans les r\u00e9cits de Laurence, ma fille, qui fait un de ses stages d'internat \u00e0 l'h\u00f4pital de Fresnes). Ainsi, elle peut naturellement appara\u00eetre solidaire de l'espace du jardin, du mouvement, du dehors.\n\nEt avec les ann\u00e9es, elle m'est aussi apparue comme faisant partie d'un temps am\u00e8ne, heureux, animal, ins\u00e9parable du temps des jeux : des vacances. Pendant le temps de l'\u00c9cole, \u00ab du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'\u00e9cole \u00bb, ce n'est quasiment pas la guerre. Il n'y a pas d'inqui\u00e9tude, pas de privations. (J'\u00e9tais l\u00e0 pourtant aussi pendant la premi\u00e8re ann\u00e9e de l'Occupation, qui fut ma derni\u00e8re ann\u00e9e dans l'enseignement primaire. Mais je n'en sais plus rien, et n'en avais pas alors, il me semble, une r\u00e9elle perception.)\n\n## 152 dans la cour nous jouions \u00e0 des jeux de la guerre\n\nSinon que dans la cour nous jouions \u00e0 des jeux de la guerre. Comme les guerriers hell\u00e8nes de Giraudoux nous \u00e9changions non des coups, mais des \u00e9pith\u00e8tes. Nous nous r\u00e9unissions dans la cour de r\u00e9cr\u00e9ation et apr\u00e8s les jeux physiques et s\u00e9rieux de balles ou de \u00ab barres \u00bb, la t\u00eate ivre de courir, pour nous reposer nous parlions, agglutin\u00e9s comme sur une _agora_ carcassonnaise. Nous prononcions des discours rh\u00e9toriques et guerriers.\n\nIl y avait dans ce jeu de parole des r\u00f4les de soldats, et des r\u00f4les de chefs de guerre. Moi je jouais et parlais Churchill. C'\u00e9tait mon r\u00f4le attitr\u00e9. Je le revendiquais toujours et j'y avais droit, en vertu d'un accord tacite, en raison de mes convictions affich\u00e9es et de mon ascendance (puisque ma m\u00e8re \u00e9tait professeur d'anglais, je pouvais d\u00e9j\u00e0 prononcer quelques mots en cette langue. Et de plus les \u00ab opinions \u00bb de mes parents \u00e9taient connues comme peu favorables aux \u00ab Puissances de l'Axe \u00bb).\n\nJ'ai retenu aussi qu'il \u00e9tait tr\u00e8s difficile dans ce jeu de trouver des volontaires pour les r\u00f4les d'ennemis, ou de traitres : Hitler, Mussolini, Laval, P\u00e9tain. On devait les assigner d'office. De Gaulle et Staline ne nous \u00e9taient gu\u00e8re connus (ni les Japonais. Pourtant, l'empire du Levant devait bien surgir parfois dans l'air radiophonique, car nous, petits \u00e9l\u00e8ves, nous enchantions d'une phrase irr\u00e9sistiblement comique : \u00ab le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Yamamoto a \u00e9t\u00e9 mis \u00e0 pied \u00bb) (cela se passait au printemps de 41 sans doute. Je vois qu'il fait beau mais c'est un temps de classe encore. Les Allemands n'ont pas lanc\u00e9 l'\u00ab Op\u00e9ration Barbarossa \u00bb. Tout ce qui arrive alors dans la guerre est loin, et le conflit dresse l'Angleterre, mon Arcadie, contre \u00ab eux \u00bb, nos ennemis).\n\nDans notre \u00e9cole la non-collaboration (plut\u00f4t que la R\u00e9sistance, id\u00e9e qui \u00e9tait encore \u00e0 na\u00eetre) \u00e9tait \u00ab h\u00e9g\u00e9monique \u00bb. La peur de la d\u00e9nonciation, le silence recommand\u00e9 ou impos\u00e9 aux langues \u00e9taient encore \u00e0 venir. (D'une mani\u00e8re g\u00e9n\u00e9rale, les vignerons de l'Aude n'avaient pas beaucoup de sympathie pour Vichy. L'Aude \u00e9tait un d\u00e9partement \u00ab la\u00efque \u00bb, \u00ab radical-socialiste \u00bb avec une forte frange grondeuse et \u00ab rouge \u00bb, celle des h\u00e9ritiers de Marcellin Albert, du Dr Ferrouls, et des r\u00e9volt\u00e9s du d\u00e9but du si\u00e8cle (aux temps o\u00f9 on chantait : \u00ab Salut, salut \u00e0 vous, vaillants soldats du dix-septi\u00e8me ! \u00bb (ce r\u00e9giment de fils de vignerons qui n'avaient pas voulu tirer sur les leurs)).)\n\n(Mon p\u00e8re s'est ressouvenu brusquement il y a peu (la remont\u00e9e des vieux d\u00e9mons vichystes dans ce pays ram\u00e8ne ces temps \u00e0 la surface des pens\u00e9es) de la recommandation de son proviseur au lyc\u00e9e de Carcassonne o\u00f9 il enseignait la philosophie. On \u00e9tait en octobre de 1940. Les \u00ab autorit\u00e9s \u00bb nouvelles avaient r\u00e9clam\u00e9 du proviseur du lyc\u00e9e de \u00ab gar\u00e7ons \u00bb qu'il d\u00e9sign\u00e2t quelqu'un pour prononcer, devant les professeurs et \u00e9l\u00e8ves rassembl\u00e9s dans ce but le premier jour (en une sorte de \u00ab rentr\u00e9e solennelle \u00bb, comme l'Universit\u00e9 en connaissait autrefois) un discours, con\u00e7u, dans l'esprit vichyste, comme devant \u00eatre le \u00ab pendant \u00bb expiatoire des discours patriotiques de la pr\u00e9c\u00e9dente ann\u00e9e (celle de la \u00ab dr\u00f4le de guerre \u00bb), en une s\u00e9ance de \u00ab distribution de mauvais prix \u00bb nationaux, et le proviseur avait confi\u00e9 cette t\u00e2che \u00e0 mon p\u00e8re, en lui disant : \u00ab Avec vous au moins, je ne risque pas l'\u00e9loge de \"ceux-l\u00e0\" \u00bb.)\n\nJ'ai pass\u00e9 quatre ans \u00e0 l'\u00c9cole annexe. On appelait ainsi l'\u00e9cole plac\u00e9e en appendice \u00e0 l'\u00c9cole normale d'instituteurs (institution qui vient, plus que centenaire, de succomber aux coups d\u00e9sordonn\u00e9s des r\u00e9formateurs). Les \u00ab \u00e9l\u00e8ves-ma\u00eetres \u00bb, sous la direction d'un instituteur respect\u00e9, exp\u00e9riment\u00e9 et chevronn\u00e9, y faisaient leurs premi\u00e8res armes p\u00e9dagogiques sur de petites t\u00eates cobayes, dont je fus. Quand je l'ai quitt\u00e9e, non sans presque des larmes, en juillet 41, j'avais huit ans et demi.\n\n\u00catre \u00e9l\u00e8ve de l'\u00c9cole annexe \u00e9tait une situation didactiquement luxueuse. Nous \u00e9tions peu nombreux (il n'y avait en fait que deux classes : une classe de \u00ab petits \u00bb, et une classe de \u00ab grands \u00bb, parmi lesquels se trouvaient ceux qui n'allaient pas au lyc\u00e9e mais pr\u00e9paraient le certificat d'\u00e9tudes (obstacle impressionnant dans l'imaginaire de notre \u00e9cole, qu'entr\u00e9 trop t\u00f4t au lyc\u00e9e je n'ai jamais franchi, ce qui me laissa longtemps un sentiment diffus d'inad\u00e9quation, en tant que petit-fils d'instituteurs)). Nous apprenions, plus ou moins, la grammaire, l'orthographe, le calcul, l'histoire, la g\u00e9ographie. Nous \u00e9tions bien trait\u00e9s, contents (en tout cas je crois que je l'\u00e9tais).\n\nEn raison de mon int\u00e9r\u00eat soutenu pour la lecture et le calcul, particuli\u00e8rement sous cette forme prestigieuse chez les enfants scolaris\u00e9s qu'\u00e9tait alors le \u00ab calcul mental \u00bb (je me ressouviens, avec une \u00e9vidence imm\u00e9diate, en inscrivant cela, que mon meilleur ami avait un nom \u00ab num\u00e9trique \u00bb : il s'appelait Quintane), je ne restai pas longtemps dans la petite classe.\n\nNotre instituteur \u00e9tait M. Castel. C'\u00e9tait un instituteur de cette esp\u00e8ce qu'on qualifie aujourd'hui de \u00ab \u00e0 l'ancienne \u00bb, avec un m\u00e9lange de regret et de condescendance (\u00ab des gens qui croyaient \u00e0 ce qu'ils faisaient, pensez donc ! \u00bb). On en parle avec un ton de voix qui est celui qu'on emploie pour les bicyclettes (qui n'\u00e9taient pas encore des v\u00e9los), les r\u00e9clames (qui n'\u00e9taient pas encore des \u00ab pubs \u00bb) les brouettes et les charrettes, mais aussi (et avec envie cette fois) pour les fromages non pasteuris\u00e9s, le lait \u00ab cru \u00bb, les pommes reinettes (celles qui furent et ne sont plus, qui ne sont en tout cas ni les Golden fades et hypersaines \u00e0 l'am\u00e9ricaine ni les Granny Smith australiennes ( ?) \u00e0 la peau cir\u00e9e d'un vert chimique). Ils sont de la m\u00eame \u00e9poque que le pain \u00ab cuit au four \u00bb et au \u00ab feu de bois \u00bb (que l'on regrette et envie. Regret et envie qui ont valu \u00e0 une habile cha\u00eene industrielle, aux produits aussi strictement m\u00e9canis\u00e9s et instantan\u00e9s que le reste des productions alimentaires, et n'ayant qu'un tr\u00e8s lointain rapport avec les fabrications anciennes, un succ\u00e8s foudroyant, d'essence purement onomastique, en choisissant de se nommer, pour mieux vendre les _fast breads_ qu'elle propose, \u00ab Fournil de Pierre \u00bb). On ajoute que le moule o\u00f9 cuisaient ces enseignants artisanaux a \u00e9t\u00e9 bris\u00e9, et qu'on n'en fabriquera plus des \u00ab comme \u00e7a \u00bb. Il me suffira ici de dire que de cette esp\u00e8ce \u00e9tait M. Castel.\n\n## 153 Pendant ces ann\u00e9es b\u00e9nies,\n\nPendant ces ann\u00e9es b\u00e9nies, le \u00ab calcul \u00bb et la \u00ab r\u00e9citation \u00bb furent et rest\u00e8rent mes \u00ab points forts \u00bb. Je dus sans doute \u00e0 mes facilit\u00e9s arithm\u00e9tiques, autant qu'\u00e0 ma rapidit\u00e9 collat\u00e9rale d'appr\u00e9hension des vers par la m\u00e9moire (le \u00ab nombre \u00bb soutient le souvenir du vers), l'indulgence (peut-\u00eatre excessive) avec laquelle M. Castel traita (ou plut\u00f4t ne traita pas) ma d\u00e9ficience scolaire principale : le d\u00e9sordre paroxystique dans l'accomplissement et la pr\u00e9sentation des \u00e9critures.\n\n(Mon exp\u00e9rience ne m'a jamais mis en pr\u00e9sence de ces enseignants s\u00e9v\u00e8res dont la tradition litt\u00e9raire est encombr\u00e9e. Bien au contraire. Ainsi, mod\u00e8le d'instituteur que j'avais, pour ainsi dire, sous la main, mon grand-p\u00e8re \u00e9tait indulgent, d'une indulgence quasi proverbiale. Les erreurs le faisaient souffrir. Il se sentait tellement en \u00ab sympathie \u00bb avec l'\u00e9l\u00e8ve qui les prof\u00e9rait, qu'il avait toutes les peines du monde \u00e0 se retenir de fournir les bonnes r\u00e9ponses \u00e0 sa place. (Il t\u00e9moignait aussi parfois de la m\u00eame propension dans les conversations ordinaires avec les adultes, au d\u00e9sespoir de ses interlocuteurs.)\n\nJ'ai suivi, bien plus tard, au temps de mes \u00e9tudes de math\u00e9matiques \u00e0 l'Institut Henri-Poincar\u00e9, un cours d'arithm\u00e9tique du Pr Salem, qu'on disait ancien banquier converti un jour \u00e0 cette discipline abstruse, o\u00f9 on donne un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu des nombres (mon vieil ami Pierre Lusson, qui a oubli\u00e9 comme moi le pr\u00e9nom de Salem, que j'avais laiss\u00e9 en blanc pour compl\u00e9tion ult\u00e9rieure sur mon \u00e9cran, un peu g\u00ean\u00e9 de le d\u00e9signer ici de la nomination par trop famili\u00e8re, \u00ab Salem \u00bb, ne s'en souvient donc pas non plus, mais croit qu'il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 un des dirigeants de la Banque d'Indochine). Cet \u00e9minent math\u00e9maticien \u00e9tait litt\u00e9ralement incapable de \u00ab coller \u00bb un \u00e9tudiant \u00e0 un examen. On racontait \u00e0 son sujet l'histoire de l'interrogation d'un malheureux \u00e0 l'oral du certificat dit de \u00ab Math\u00e9matiques g\u00e9n\u00e9rales \u00bb, qui \u00e9tait rest\u00e9 totalement muet devant le tableau o\u00f9 \u00e9tait \u00e9crite l'\u00e9quation qu'on lui avait demand\u00e9 de r\u00e9soudre. Et Salem, avec d'infinies pr\u00e9cautions, parlant de sa voix douce faite encore plus douce pour ne pas l'effaroucher, lui disait : \u00ab Voyons, cette \u00e9quation, quelle est son esp\u00e8ce ? \u00bb Silence. \u00ab C'est une \u00e9quation, reprenait Salem de plus en plus doucement, une \u00e9quation diff... ? \u00bb Alors, brusquement illumin\u00e9 de compr\u00e9hension, l'\u00e9tudiant, disait la l\u00e9gende, avait compl\u00e9t\u00e9 le mot, non pas en l'adjectif, attendu, \u00ab diff\u00e9rentielle \u00bb, mais en \u00ab difficile \u00bb. \u00ab C'est une \u00e9quation difficile ! \u00bb avait dit l'\u00e9tudiant avec conviction. Et Salem, transport\u00e9 de bienveillance et de soulagement, lui disait : \u00ab C'est tr\u00e8s bien, tr\u00e8s bien, une \u00e9quation difficile. Voil\u00e0 qui est certain ! Vous \u00eates re\u00e7u. \u00bb)\n\nEcrire \u00e9tait pour moi un exercice infiniment d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able, presque un supplice. En ces temps-l\u00e0 encore on \u00e9crivait avec de l'encre externe et liquide, au moyen de porte-plume tremp\u00e9s dans un encrier. Chaque table d'\u00e9colier, chaque pupitre inclin\u00e9 de notre classe avait \u00e0 sa droite (\u00e9preuve suppl\u00e9mentaire pour mon \u00ab gauchisme \u00bb spontan\u00e9) un encrier de fa\u00efence blanche (dont la forme occupait, dans le champ des formes, une position interm\u00e9diaire entre le pot de fleurs et le pot de chambre (plut\u00f4t pot de fleurs par la g\u00e9om\u00e9trie, plut\u00f4t pot de chambre par la substance) rempli d'une encre violette ou noire redoutablement encrante, adh\u00e9sive, tenace, persistante, mouillante, tachante et virtuellement ineffa\u00e7able.\n\nOn y trempait une plume d'acier au bec aigu, redoutable, bleue ou blanche, apr\u00e8s l'avoir, difficilement (\u00f4 combien !), fix\u00e9e sur le porte-plume tir\u00e9 du plumier au couvercle coulissant, charg\u00e9 aussi de crayons m\u00e2ch\u00e9s et de gommes, et il m'\u00e9tait quasiment impossible d'effectuer sans pertes, \u00e9claboussements, d\u00e9bordements, \u00e9talements et autres \u00e9garements, le transfert indispensable d'une goutte d'encre de la plume \u00e0 la page de mon cahier.\n\nLes pointes du bec de la plume s'\u00e9cartaient, ou s'\u00e9garaient, se brisaient m\u00eame, s'engageaient sur la ligne qu'il ne fallait pas, l'encre refusait brusquement de couler, puis s'exasp\u00e9rait, la plume griffait, crachait, imbibait une in\u00e9galit\u00e9 du papier, confondait les lettres, les mots, les phrases. Mes doigts devenaient bleus, noirs, violets, mes buvards se saturaient, il y avait de l'encre sur mon tablier, sur mon livre de lecture, sur le cahier de mon voisin qui m'avait demand\u00e9 une aide de premi\u00e8re urgence pour une multiplication. Il y en avait sur mon tablier, sur mes genoux nus, sur mon nez, mes oreilles, dans mes cheveux, dans mes chaussettes.\n\nUn jour o\u00f9 j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 particuli\u00e8rement n\u00e9gligent dans la manipulation de cette encre la\u00efque, r\u00e9publicaine et obligatoire, M. Castel eut un rare mouvement d'humeur, et je subis une humiliation que je n'ai pas oubli\u00e9e. Il me tra\u00eena, sanglotant et d\u00e9grad\u00e9 devant tous, dans la classe des \u00ab petits \u00bb, o\u00f9 **je restai** (je le sens plus que je ne le vois) **toute une matin\u00e9e, p\u00e9trifi\u00e9 de honte, mes larmes couleur d'encre dissimul\u00e9es dans mon visage couvert de mon bras, le nez contre le bois rugueux de la table.**\n\nMes mouchoirs (que j'\u00e9garais constamment, comme mes b\u00e9rets, comme mes souliers ou sandales m\u00eame, que j'enlevais d\u00e8s que possible, une fois dehors, afin de marcher comme il est naturel qu'on marche, pieds nus), mes mouchoirs \u00e9taient parfaitement reconnaissables \u00e0 leurs taches d'encre. Car l'encre sans cesse coulait de moi, de cette partie de moi si inexplicablement rebelle \u00e0 ma volont\u00e9 qu'\u00e9tait mon porte-plume.\n\nJ'\u00e9tais d\u00e9sarm\u00e9 devant l'encre comme je l'\u00e9tais devant le sang qui tombait parfois verticalement et irr\u00e9pressiblement de mon nez heurt\u00e9 par un poing ou par un caillou. (Il m'est toujours aussi d\u00e9sagr\u00e9able, comme cela m'arrive parfois en automne, de me mettre \u00e0 saigner du nez dans le m\u00e9tro ou dans un autobus, et je me sens \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s aussi d\u00e9sarm\u00e9, honteux, g\u00ean\u00e9.) Le sang poisse comme l'encre ancienne sur les Kleenex-buvards.\n\n## 154 Tout autre \u00e9tait l'encre, le sang des m\u00fbres de ronce,\n\nMais tout autre \u00e9tait l'encre, le sang rouge clair des m\u00fbres de ronce, qui ne tachait que les doigts, les jambes, m\u00eal\u00e9e \u00e0 l'\u00e9criture \u00e9nigmatique du sang r\u00e9el noirci sur les \u00e9gratignures. C'est pour cela sans doute que j'affectionnais les fausses encres, par tasses de jus rouge extraites des grappes de sureau press\u00e9es entre les mains puis essuy\u00e9es sur les v\u00eatements. C'est l'encre de sureau que je choisissais pour la servitude volontaire d'autres \u00e9critures, secr\u00e8tes, po\u00e8mes et r\u00e9cits, bient\u00f4t p\u00e2lies, bient\u00f4t effac\u00e9es d'elles-m\u00eames sur les pages, alors que l'\u00e9criture \u00e0 l'encre scolaire paraissait \u00e9ternelle, \u00e9ternellement destin\u00e9e \u00e0 d\u00e9noncer mes fautes d'orthographe et les maladresses de ma main.\n\nCar, s\u00e8che sur le cahier, et comme \u00e9ternelle, l'encre scolaire perp\u00e9tuait, quasi illisible, l'infantilit\u00e9 irr\u00e9ductible de mon \u00e9criture, dont j'avais honte sans parvenir \u00e0 y rem\u00e9dier (honte surtout en pr\u00e9sence de mon grand-p\u00e8re, mon mod\u00e8le, \u00e0 la calligraphie parfaite, alors que l'illisibilit\u00e9 rapide et saccad\u00e9e \u00e9tait caract\u00e9ristique des lettres de ma grand-m\u00e8re, moins aim\u00e9e).\n\nMais parfois, **au pied d'un platane, le cahier jet\u00e9 ouvert sur le cartable, les larges gouttes d'une pluie subite et br\u00e8ve lui redonnant une fluidit\u00e9 provisoire je voyais** , dans ma fascination retardant le moment de soustraire, en refermant le cahier, les exercices de calcul ou de grammaire \u00e0 une dissolution pr\u00e9matur\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9ratrice de futurs d\u00e9sagr\u00e9ments familiaux ou scolaires, **la noirceur de l'encre bleuie, dilu\u00e9e d'eau, att\u00e9nu\u00e9e, se mettre en mouvement dans la page, jeter des passerelles de traces entre les lignes, annuler, confondre les jambages maladroits, les ratures, redonner aux mots, aux chiffres, en les m\u00ealant les uns avec les autres, les myst\u00e8res de l'indistinction.**\n\nNotre \u00e9cole avait une cour, cette cour un \/pr\u00e9au', un petit espace couvert mais ouvert.) J'enferme le mot pr\u00e9au (et quelques autres, pr\u00e9lev\u00e9s dans cette nappe du temps), entre deux ailes \u00e9crites, ainsi : \/' car il a (ils ont) presque rejoint dans les limbes de la langue les \u00e2mes mortes des mots morts, et par cette innovation typographique j'entends leur donner un statut \u00ab ang\u00e9lique \u00bb : innovation qu'en m\u00eame temps, pour la signaler d'une incise br\u00e8ve, j'\u00e9tends entre les deux signes ordinaires des incises, la parenth\u00e8se ouvrante, \u00ab ( \u00bb, et la parenth\u00e8se fermante, \u00ab ) \u00bb, les _lunulae_ , \u00ab petites lunes \u00bb, donc, cette invention d'\u00c9rasme, mais, autre innovation, je pose ici le couple des parenth\u00e8ses dans l'ordre inverse de l'ordre \u00e9rasmien, qui est associ\u00e9 \u00e0 celui des phases lunaires (et va d'ailleurs, je le remarque, \u00e9trangement il me semble, non comme le calendrier, du premier au dernier quartier, mais en sens inverse). Ainsi aimerais-je marquer, parfois, comme ici, en renversant le sens de parcours d'une parenth\u00e8se, le cheminement r\u00e9trograde du souvenir.(Et dans ce \/pr\u00e9au'nous accrochions nos \/p\u00e8lerines', nous suspendions nos \/b\u00e9rets'(objets qu'une fois sur deux j'oubliais en repartant).\n\n **Je vois octobre ; le sol est sign\u00e9 de feuilles rougissantes ; je vois l'air, je vois le fra\u00eechissement de quatre heures de l'air d'automne, l'insistance des arbres sur le ciel, l'apr\u00e8s-midi qui va devenir bleu, devenir soir, l'urgence de l'air bleuissant, du jeu** ; c'est un moment comme celui, sans cesse r\u00e9it\u00e9r\u00e9, qui identifie le jeu en train de se jouer, apr\u00e8s quatre heures, quatre heures d'octobre, dans la cour d'\u00e9cole : \/ **jeu de barres** ' ; un jeu de li\u00e8vres et tortues z\u00e9noniennes, mais o\u00f9 il y a plusieurs li\u00e8vres, plusieurs tortues, o\u00f9 il y a deux camps, mais pas un camp des li\u00e8vres et un camp des tortues, parce qu'on ne sait _\u00ab which is which \u00bb_ , parce que les li\u00e8vres et tortues de ce jeu n'ont pas leur r\u00f4le d\u00e9sign\u00e9 une fois pour toutes dans une g\u00e9om\u00e9trie de gestes r\u00e9gl\u00e9s, puisque li\u00e8vre est celui qui a quitt\u00e9 le dernier son camp, et que devient alors tortue le dernier li\u00e8vre.\n\n(N'est-ce pas ainsi que je joue dans ces pages ? j'y joue le \u00ab jeu de barres \u00bb z\u00e9nonien du souvenir. Des li\u00e8vres provisoires y rejoignent parfois des tortues provisoires, parfois pas. Mais ce qui est inachevable, proprement z\u00e9nonien, n'est pas leur course, c'est le geste, maintenant, de la poursuite, qui sans fin s'\u00e9puise, achev\u00e9 s'annule, sans fin se r\u00e9it\u00e8re, comme si une tortue carrollienne rattrap\u00e9e par un li\u00e8vre non moins carrollien r\u00e9clamait sans cesse, avant de conc\u00e9der sa d\u00e9faite, que soit une nouvelle fois projet\u00e9 le film de la course, et sa \u00ab photofinish \u00bb, pour v\u00e9rification, et v\u00e9rification de la v\u00e9rification, sans fin.)\n\nLe moment perp\u00e9tuel de l'\u00e9cole est ainsi son commencement : **apr\u00e8s le jeu venait un moment roux ; les bogues vertes, h\u00e9riss\u00e9es, h\u00e9rissons, des marrons d'Inde tomb\u00e9s des marronniers aux feuilles rousses rougissantes, le ciel tremp\u00e9, trembl\u00e9 de nuages, ombres rapides dans les flaques, barques cotonneuses, ciel cr\u00e9meux, couleur de boue ;**\n\n **un autre moment roux, identique ; les bogues vertes, h\u00e9riss\u00e9es, h\u00e9rissons, des marrons d'Inde tomb\u00e9s des marronniers aux feuilles rousses rougissantes, le ciel tremp\u00e9, trembl\u00e9 de nuages, ombres rapides dans les flaques, barques cotonneuses, ciel cr\u00e9meux, couleur de boue ;**\n\n **couleur de boue, ciel cr\u00e9meux, barques cotonneuses, ombres rapides dans les flaques, trembl\u00e9 de nuages le ciel tremp\u00e9, des marronniers aux feuilles rousses rougissantes, h\u00e9rissons, des marrons d'Inde tomb\u00e9s les bogues vertes, h\u00e9riss\u00e9es, un moment roux ;**\n\n## 155 Guetteur \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre de l'Enclos du Luxembourg, je vois la ville comme une amplification du jardin,\n\nGuetteur aux carreaux de la fen\u00eatre sur l'Enclos du Luxembourg, je vois la ville semblable \u00e0 une amplification du jardin, avec les rues-all\u00e9es, l'opacit\u00e9 des maisons-arbres, l'anticipation des parcours, une topologie lacunaire, en de grands cercles concentriques pour la d\u00e9ambulation du regard, de la marche, de la course. Du \u00ab C\u00f4t\u00e9 de l'\u00c9cole \u00bb on sort de la ville par deux \u00ab routes \u00bb, la route de Montr\u00e9al (o\u00f9 se trouve l'\u00e9cole), et la route de Limoux. En ce temps-l\u00e0 on sortait vite de la ville. Tr\u00e8s rapidement les maisons n'\u00e9taient plus des maisons de ville avec des num\u00e9ros de rue en fa\u00efence cr\u00e8me, jaune ou jaunie, peinte de bleu, ou en plaques \u00e9maill\u00e9es aux num\u00e9ros noirs, mais des \u00eeles : \u00eeles gard\u00e9es de murs, de murets. Les jardins et les maisons s'\u00e9cartaient, les vignes prenaient place.\n\nJe descendais la pente de l'enclos, tournais \u00e0 gauche, la rue descendait encore. Au point o\u00f9 les deux routes se s\u00e9parent, commencent, **il y a** , il y avait d\u00e9j\u00e0, un garage. Je regardais, **je regarde l'irisation narcotique de l'essence ruissel\u00e9e sur le sol de ciment, le r\u00e9glisse \u00e9cras\u00e9 du mazout**. La route de Limoux, comme on disait, rejoint bient\u00f4t l'Aude, qui coude \u00e0 Carcassonne, \u00e9tant descendue des Pyr\u00e9n\u00e9es vers le nord. Elle tourne \u00e0 droite, dans la direction de l'est, et s'en va finir dans la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e.\n\nEntre la route et la rivi\u00e8re il y avait des jardins mara\u00eechers, des rizi\u00e8res de melons, de tomates, des roseaux, des sentiers, des ronces. Tout cela a disparu. Ma vue s'insurge. Mais si rien, ou presque, n'avait chang\u00e9, serait-ce mieux ? Retourner affronte l'alternative de deux moments difficiles : tout est l\u00e0, reconnaissable, mais on n'y est plus. Ou bien : plus rien n'est l\u00e0 semblable au souvenir, et on est l\u00e0, soi-m\u00eame, encore.\n\nSur la route de Limoux, la ville presque quitt\u00e9e, avant le chemin qui nous amenait jusqu'au bord de la rivi\u00e8re, par des apr\u00e8s-midi de juin, de juillet, de septembre, chaudes, en des jours de vacances, en des jeudis sans classe, mon grand-p\u00e8re s'arr\u00eatait parfois au caf\u00e9, \u00e0 droite dans la longue ligne droite, avant le tournant, o\u00f9 la route quittait l'Aude (pour la retrouver beaucoup plus loin, vers \u00ab Madame \u00bb, mais hors de port\u00e9e, cette fois, de nos marches). On s'asseyait **sous la tonnelle, \u00e0 une table m\u00e9tallique blanche \u00ab de jardin \u00bb,** sur **des chaises \u00e0 lattes vertes, au vert d\u00e9cim\u00e9, us\u00e9**. On s'asseyait dans l' **ombre chaude travers\u00e9e de mouches, de papillons, de gu\u00eapes en ao\u00fbt, septembre attir\u00e9es par les raisins, travers\u00e9e du soleil rendant vifs les cailloux blancs du sol** , et mon grand-p\u00e8re commandait pour nous des limonades, pour lui un demi-panach\u00e9, \u00e0 la bi\u00e8re d'une marque carcassonnaise (Ruoms ? ou Fritz-Lauer ? deux des bi\u00e8res d'alors, les plus mauvaises du monde, si j'en crois un commentaire de mes parents).\n\nIl buvait le m\u00e9lange modestement moussu de limonade et de bi\u00e8re lentement, car il n'est pas prudent, il n'est pas hygi\u00e9nique de boire trop et trop vite quand on a chaud. C'est imprudent, et cela ne d\u00e9salt\u00e8re m\u00eame pas. Il buvait le **liquide jaune tr\u00e8s p\u00e2le dans le verre** (il y avait tr\u00e8s peu de cette bi\u00e8re presque sans alcool dans sa limonade). Il buvait lentement le liquide amer-sucr\u00e9, sa **canne pos\u00e9e \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 de lui contre la table, assis tr\u00e8s droit,** sans enlever **son canotier** de la t\u00eate sauf au moment de saluer le cafetier pour la commande, ou pour le resaluer au d\u00e9part, **apr\u00e8s avoir regard\u00e9 l'heure \u00e0 sa montre ronde de gousset, apr\u00e8s avoir sorti le porte-monnaie de la poche de son gilet, sorti les pi\u00e8ces du porte-monnaie et les avoir pos\u00e9es sur la table** , le montant exact compl\u00e9t\u00e9 d'un pourboire (mais seulement si nous n'avions pas \u00e9t\u00e9 servis par le patron).\n\nNous \u00e9tions assis sous les arbres, ou sous la vigne de la tonnelle, mais il ne retirait pas la protection quasi permanente de son cr\u00e2ne parfaitement priv\u00e9 de d\u00e9fenses naturelles contre les rayons du soleil, qu'il estimait capables de traverser l'\u00e9cran incertain des feuillages. D'ailleurs il gardait chez nous, il me semble, presque tout le temps son chapeau sur la t\u00eate, en Dauphinois rest\u00e9 m\u00e9fiant devant le sans-g\u00eane excessif du soleil m\u00e9diterran\u00e9en qui pouvait impr\u00e9gner m\u00eame l'air des int\u00e9rieurs.\n\n(Ce n'\u00e9tait pas, je crois, par coquetterie qu'il dissimulait ainsi sa calvitie absolue. Car chez lui, \u00e0 Caluire, dans son bureau, dans son atelier, et bien s\u00fbr dans la salle \u00e0 manger au moment des repas, il se montrait tranquillement d\u00e9v\u00eatu du dessus des sourcils.) La limonade piquait d\u00e9licieusement nos langues et parfois, remontant myst\u00e9rieusement par l'int\u00e9rieur jusqu'au-dessus de nos fronts, entre les deux yeux, venait picoter aussi dans nos cervelles, faux \u00ab rhume de cerveau \u00bb, comme il nous arrivait aussi parfois quand, la t\u00eate sous l'eau dans la rivi\u00e8re, nous laissions par erreur un peu de liquide entrer dans une narine.\n\nCar nous allions, dans ces promenades route de Limoux, jusqu'\u00e0 l'Aude pour nous baigner. C'\u00e9tait un endroit de petite chute, ou le courant \u00e9tait rapide mais l'eau peu profonde. Et d\u00e8s que mon p\u00e8re fut assur\u00e9 que nous \u00e9tions capables de brasse, et surtout de passer sous la surface de l'eau sans panique, les yeux ouverts, et d'y demeurer quelque temps, la rivi\u00e8re nous appartint. La pr\u00e9cipitation (relative) de l'eau entre les larges tables de pierre \u00e9tait un toboggan naturel qui nous lan\u00e7ait pieds ou t\u00eate en avant dans une clairi\u00e8re d'eau calme, d'o\u00f9 on s'extrayait sans peine en quelques brasses pour remonter, ruisselant, par la rive, jusqu'\u00e0 l'origine des \u00ab rapides \u00bb, tels que le Dernier des Mohicans n'en aurait pas rencontr\u00e9 de plus sauvages. Il y avait l\u00e0 comme un petit bois, des peupliers, des sureaux.\n\n **Les peupliers couvraient l'eau de leurs feuilles, impr\u00e9gnaient l'air de leur odeur personnelle, m\u00eal\u00e9e de miel.** Et surtout, des **minuscules capsules de leurs fruits** ( ?) s'\u00e9chappait, **neigeant sur la rivi\u00e8re, la bourre soyeuse, fine, brillante de leur \u00ab coton \u00bb** dont nous ramenions, avant qu'ils n'\u00e9clatent, dans nos poches, dans nos tabliers, dans le panier de Marie, de v\u00e9ritables r\u00e9coltes pour en r\u00e9pandre la l\u00e9g\u00e8ret\u00e9 fr\u00e9missante en l'air du jardin ou pour les th\u00e9sauriser au contraire, en vue de la fabrication d'un oreiller d'une douceur qui serait incomparable, projet exaltant mais qui resta chaque saison inabouti.\n\n## 156 Par la rue d'Assas, aussi, on rejoint l'Aude,\n\nPar la rue d'Assas, aussi, on rejoint l'Aude, comme par la route de Limoux. Une vision \u00ab restitutive \u00bb prend, de tr\u00e8s haut, en tenailles les jardins descendants imp\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9s, les maisons opaques entre les deux itin\u00e9raires de la vue, le premier sorti de la vitre dans la pluie sur l'Enclos, le second \u00e9chapp\u00e9 de la fra\u00eecheur estivale de la \u00ab buanderie \u00bb dans la chaleur du soleil d'apr\u00e8s-midi qui fait fondre le goudron piqu\u00e9 de gravier de la rue (\u00a7 29) (je \u00ab saute \u00bb aussi, directement du garage \u00e0 la rue, de mazout \u00e0 goudron, par le chemin du mot \u00ab r\u00e9glisse \u00bb).\n\nLes deux chemins se rejoignent, **je le vois ; la rue d'Assas descend assez brusque, dans l'apr\u00e8s-midi de sieste d'\u00e9t\u00e9, vide, \u00e0 la Chirico. A droite, vers la rivi\u00e8re, une cascade de marches, puis un sentier, un sentier chaud, bruissant et bruyant de lumi\u00e8re, de bourdonnements d'insectes, de pas dans la poussi\u00e8re sableuse le long des jardins l\u00e9gumiers ; l'Aude l\u00e0-bas, qui se rapproche ;**\n\n **un sentier bruissant d'herbes jamais fauch\u00e9es ; de longues gramin\u00e9es et de fausses avoines, d'orties ; des fenouils (tiges m\u00e2ch\u00e9es contre la soif, au go\u00fbt d'anis, de limonade) ; des \u00e9pis surtout, des \u00e9pis d'herbe, pas de bl\u00e9, des \u00e9pis sans grains ; on cherche les plus longs \u00e9pis, les plus longs mesur\u00e9s l'un contre l'autre gagnent, que l'on conserve pour \u00e9prouver leurs successeurs, plus tard ;**\n\n **cueillis verts, souples, doux, tendres, quand l'herbe est encore fra\u00eeche, sucr\u00e9e, ils jaunissent ensuite, durcissent dans les poches ; ils volent alors droit en l'air et se fichent profond\u00e9ment dans les chevelures, dans la laine des pull-overs, o\u00f9 ils s'accrochent, s'enfouissent, de plus en plus tenaces, tels des hame\u00e7ons, puis se d\u00e9font (car compos\u00e9s d'\u00e9l\u00e9ments s\u00e9parables, semblables aux \u00ab chevrons \u00bb qui d\u00e9signaient les \u00ab c\u00f4tes \u00bb plus ou moins s\u00e9v\u00e8res, gradu\u00e9es sur les cartes Michelin) dans la laine parfois \u00e9chappant au regard, et se manifestant plus tard,** **du c\u00f4t\u00e9 int\u00e9rieur du pull-over (d\u00e9j\u00e0 satur\u00e9 de \u00ab bardanes \u00bb, grattant la peau) ;**\n\n **l'humidit\u00e9 proche, souterraine, de la rivi\u00e8re, des jardins arros\u00e9s, nourrit les plus singuliers des fruits du sentier, des cucurbitac\u00e9s sauvages, vagabonds, voyous, minuscules au regard des courges ou des concombres (mais on sent, on d\u00e9duit qu'ils appartiennent \u00e0 la m\u00eame parent\u00e8le v\u00e9g\u00e9tale), vert sombre, ovales de rugby, velus & r\u00eaches, d'ext\u00e9rieur aussi sec que la poussi\u00e8re, et cependant charg\u00e9s d'eau et de graines, d'une intense pression de liquide, d'une compulsion, d'un _impetus_ h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire \u00e0 projeter leur profusion de graines, semences t\u00e9l\u00e9ologiquement invent\u00e9es par les anc\u00eatres pour la perp\u00e9tuation de la plante, une pression maintenue \u00e0 l'int\u00e9rieur des fruits dans une tension si acharn\u00e9e, si violente que serr\u00e9s fort entre les doigts ils \u00e9clatent, \u00e9claboussent jusqu'\u00e0 un, deux m\u00e8tres, obus merveilleusement con\u00e7us pour des escarmouches humides, des embuscades,**\n\n **ou pour la simple joie solitaire de provoquer le jaillissement soudain de leurs r\u00e9serves d'eau & de petites graines, surgies comme d'une volont\u00e9 art\u00e9sienne, comme vivante, animale, parente de la pression, de l'impulsion soudaine des minuscules griffes de sauterelles s'envolant de la paume vers le tremblant air chaud (ainsi du poing serr\u00e9 dans l'eau chaude du bain l'hiver s'\u00e9levait une fontaine verticale envelopp\u00e9e de vapeur (pour me borner \u00e0 cette unique et non biographiquement anachronique comparaison)) ; les plus m\u00fbrs de ces fruits ellipso\u00efdes, d\u00e8s qu'ils sont un peu jaunis, brunis sur place, avec leurs pointes comme de paille ou de papier d'avoine froiss\u00e9e, tiennent \u00e0 peine sur leur tige et tendent \u00e0 exploser d'eux-m\u00eames d\u00e8s qu'on les touche, touchait, grenades vertes d\u00e9goupill\u00e9es par le soleil.**\n\nOn les trouvait aussi dans les foss\u00e9s de la Cit\u00e9, avec les \u00e9pis, avec les boules accrocheuses des bardanes, au pied des tours Viollet-le-Duc pointues comme les souliers \u00e0 poulaines des personnages m\u00e9di\u00e9vaux de Samivel (dans ses illustrations du _Roman de Renart_ ). Ils faisaient l\u00e0 fonction d'obus toujours, mais cette fois tir\u00e9s de bombardes imaginaires, pour des sc\u00e9narios inspir\u00e9s de Walter Scott, o\u00f9 l'assaut pr\u00e9paratoire \u00e0 la d\u00e9livrance de prisonni\u00e8res et prisonniers de la Tour (de n'importe quelle tour) les accompagnait de fl\u00e8ches, tir\u00e9es haut de nos arcs de palmier vers le ciel d'ardoise au-dessus des toits de semblable couleur (qui donnent \u00e0 la Cit\u00e9 son allure exotique, d'implantation arbitraire, nordique et crois\u00e9e. Les ma\u00e7ons de l'Aude pr\u00e9f\u00e9raient jadis g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement la roseur ocre et arrondie des toits de tuile).\n\nUn sentier, un autre, s'\u00e9chappait des remparts vers le haut, vers le bois des excursions scolaires, **Gaja** , la Cit\u00e9 s'\u00e9loignant se ramassait, plus compr\u00e9hensible, plus vuln\u00e9rable \u00e0 hauteur et distance de collines, et en chemin **au bas des murets de pierres s\u00e8ches poussait une petite fleur \u00e0 grappes tr\u00e8s bleues, d'un bleu tr\u00e8s lourd, charg\u00e9es d'une odeur dense, et lourde elle-m\u00eame, et tenace, une odeur musqu\u00e9e comme le nom de la plante l'enferme,** **muscaris** **; je les froissais entre mes doigts ; j'emportais leur parfum jusque dans la nuit, dans la chambre ; il s'\u00e9levait dans l'air sombre, soulign\u00e9 de toutes les odeurs v\u00e9g\u00e9tales, feuillues et florales, des odeurs argileuses et min\u00e9rales, d\u00e9pos\u00e9es pendant le jour sur ma peau empoussi\u00e9r\u00e9e, \u00e9gratign\u00e9e, piqu\u00e9e de fourmis, caram\u00e9lis\u00e9e de soleil ; toutes odeurs qui r\u00e9sumaient le jour, composaient une m\u00e9lodie du jour lib\u00e9r\u00e9e par les membres nus entre les draps,**\n\n **et au-dessus du parfum des muscaris, au moment de saisir le sommeil dans l'oreiller, recommen\u00e7ait \u00e0 s'envoler dans l'air de la nuit le tourbillon criard, le foulard agit\u00e9 des noires corneilles sans cesse tournoyant leurs protestations v\u00e9h\u00e9mentes et factices, autour des t\u00eates-tours fich\u00e9es sur les \u00e9paules des remparts.**\n\n## 157 Il y a onze ans, j'ai achev\u00e9 un livre de po\u00e8mes par un \u00ab chant \u00bb, emprunt\u00e9 aux Indiens chippewas,\n\nIl y a onze ans, j'ai achev\u00e9 un livre de po\u00e8mes par un \u00ab chant \u00bb, emprunt\u00e9 aux Indiens chippewas, un de ces \u00ab chants pour \u00e9corce \u00bb qui sont pour moi des po\u00e8mes, selon l'id\u00e9e que je me fais de la po\u00e9sie. C'est un Chant des nuages, que je me suis appropri\u00e9 pour en faire le dernier et le plus court po\u00e8me de ce livre, dont le titre est _Dors_ , pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9 de _Dire la po\u00e9sie_ (c'est aussi le plus court po\u00e8me que j'aie jamais \u00e9crit). Il comporte trois mots, en deux vers s\u00e9par\u00e9s d'une ligne de blanc :\n\nChant des nuages\n\nLes nuages\n\nchangent\n\nMettre ces mots en po\u00e8me c'est, toujours selon l'id\u00e9e de la po\u00e9sie qui m'est propre, les disposer \u00ab **hors-temps** \u00bb, et \u00ab **hors-l\u00e0** \u00bb. C'est pour l'\u0153il, sur la page, en un volume d'air pour l'oreille int\u00e9rieure du lecteur ou auditeur de po\u00e9sie, les placer \u00ab **ici-maintenant** \u00bb. Et, peut-\u00eatre plus pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment encore je devrais \u00e9crire, marquant leur isolement dans la langue selon les conventions typographiques que j'ai invent\u00e9es plus haut pour certains vocables aux couleurs pass\u00e9es, afin de leur restituer un pr\u00e9sent, \/ **hors-temps', \/hors-l\u00e0', \/ici-maintenant'**.\n\n\u00ab Les nuages \u00bb, chantait l'\u00e9corce de bouleau chippewa quelque part sous la fronti\u00e8re canadienne, pour enregistrement sur les rouleaux de cire de Frances Densmore, vers la fin du si\u00e8cle dernier, \u00ab Les nuages \/ changent. \u00bb Ils changeaient, ils changent, sur les plaines du Minnesota couvertes de bisons comme sur la vall\u00e9e de l'Aude en 1941, mais ce que le po\u00e8me fait de ces mots est extr\u00eamement proche de dire, simplement en \u00e9tant devenu un po\u00e8me qui les englobe, qui les place, c'est **la permanence de leur changement**.\n\nUne d\u00e9finition semblable a \u00e9t\u00e9 propos\u00e9e pour la m\u00e9moire : \u00ab permanence du changement \u00bb. Et je serais assez proche d'y souscrire, en y ajoutant (c'est implicite) \u00ab en nous \u00bb, mais elle me para\u00eet cependant insuffisamment sp\u00e9cifique, car elle ne dit de nous rien de plus que le fait que nous sommes des objets du monde, et tous les objets du monde ont ceci en commun d'\u00eatre et de n'\u00eatre que la permanence provisoire de certains changements.\n\nLes nuages nous disent cela de la mani\u00e8re la plus pure, la plus sereine, la plus \u00e9prouvante. Telle est la source in\u00e9puisable de leur fascination. J'ai compris les Chippewas (j'ai fait le r\u00eave de les comprendre), je leur ai \u00e9t\u00e9 reconnaissant, au point de leur voler leurs paroles, d'avoir saisi cela comme le chant ultime des nuages, la persistance hypnotique de leurs changements, de leur continuit\u00e9 changeante, dans toute la g\u00e9n\u00e9ralit\u00e9 du ciel, au-dessus de l'oc\u00e9an des particularit\u00e9s, au-dessus des herbes, cailloux, fourmis, flaques de boue, lacs quintessenci\u00e9s de la pluie.\n\nCar c'est bien eux que je retrouve, les nuages, dans ces parcours de l'\u00e9cole \u00e0 la rivi\u00e8re, de la rivi\u00e8re \u00e0 la Cit\u00e9, de la Cit\u00e9 vers les collines. Ils m'accompagnent de toute leur indirection formelle, de leurs formes dont nul ne disait rien de stable, rien de pr\u00e9cis, nul ne pouvait rien dire avant que ne les classe, ne les nimbe, ne les stratifie, ne les cumule en leurs familles, vers 1800, le pharmacien quaker Luke Howard. (Mais la parole chippewa n'en devient pas caduque. Elle reste encore enti\u00e8rement juste : Les nuages \/ changent.)\n\nLes nu\u00e9es m'accompagnent dans ces territoires du dehors, envelopp\u00e9es, pr\u00e9serv\u00e9es par le vent, qui les pousse, les \u00e9miette, les soul\u00e8ve, les culbute, et sous elles, sous eux, nuages, sous eux seuls je peux \u00eatre assur\u00e9 de la proximit\u00e9 myope des ronces, des sureaux, des verres o\u00f9 montent les bulles, des marrons dans leurs bogues rousses, des pages \u00e0 l'encre bleue, et noire, et rouge et violette mouill\u00e9e, troubl\u00e9e, bleue et noire surtout des muscaris, des pies, des corneilles, images-m\u00e9moire intenses comme coll\u00e9es sur mes yeux. Sans les nuages coulant sur une table de ciel, pas de survie de ces souvenirs.\n\nAinsi je me les imagine pr\u00e9sents pour moi, gardiens de ma m\u00e9moire, garants de ma m\u00e9moire, m\u00eame s'il m'est impossible de placer l\u00e0, ou l\u00e0, pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, la moindre de leurs formes particuli\u00e8res : ni les mouchoirs ni les \u00e9charpes, ni les barques larges charg\u00e9es de gris, ni les \u00e9cumes, les flocons, les aiguilles, toutes variations de leurs \u00eatres m\u00eames, de leurs _inscapes_ , que j'ai \u00e0 un moment ou un autre en ces ann\u00e9es vues, absorb\u00e9es, reconnues, surprises, la t\u00eate en arri\u00e8re renvers\u00e9e dans la marche pour n'apercevoir que le ciel en eux, qu'eux dans le ciel, ou les mains aux tempes pour gommer de ma vision le sol, les maisons, les fils t\u00e9l\u00e9graphiques, pour ne fixer que leur passage rapide dans l'eau, dans l'eau d'une flaque, quelque part. Juste au pied de la fen\u00eatre sur l'Enclos du Luxembourg, peut-\u00eatre.\n\n## 158 Entre Villegly et Sall\u00e8les, dans le Minervois, un peu au nord, nord-ouest de Carcassonne,\n\nEntre Villegly et Sall\u00e8les, dans le Minervois, un peu au nord, nord-ouest de Carcassonne, un chemin non goudronn\u00e9 mais \u00ab carrossable \u00bb (o\u00f9 pouvaient passer les charrettes, o\u00f9 passent aujourd'hui, quoique rares, des voitures) traverse les garrigues le long d'une minuscule rivi\u00e8re, la C\u00e8ze, qui descend de la Montagne noire, irrigue Sall\u00e8les et va se jeter (si j'ose dire) \u00e0 Villegly, dans un \u00e0 peine plus imposant cours d'eau au fier nom de Clamous, lui m\u00eame tributaire de l'Aude.\n\nLa maison o\u00f9 se sont retir\u00e9s mes parents, \u00e0 leur retraite, qui est \u00e0 eux, \u00e0 nous, leurs enfants, depuis le d\u00e9but des ann\u00e9es cinquante, la Tuilerie de Saint-F\u00e9lix, une \u00ab campagne \u00bb sur la Route minervoise, pr\u00e8s d'un carrefour aux quatre directions nomm\u00e9es de quatre villages, \u00ab Conques-sur-Orbiel, Villalier, Villegly et Bagnoles, n'est pas loin.\n\n(Le carrefour fut longtemps connu sous le nom de \u00ab Gare de Bagnoles \u00bb, en souvenir d'un petit arr\u00eat ferroviaire (un train autrefois y passait, dont parle Gaston Bonheur dans ses _Souvenirs_. Nous ne l'avons pas connu en activit\u00e9, mais les rails en \u00e9taient encore visibles dans le goudron pendant quelques ann\u00e9es apr\u00e8s la guerre). Les plus jeunes chauffeurs des \u00ab cars \u00bb de ramassage scolaire o\u00f9 je monte parfois, tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t, l'hiver, pour aller prendre le train \u00e0 Carcassonne, ne la connaissent plus, et la derni\u00e8re trace onomastique du petit train du Minervois vient m\u00eame de dispara\u00eetre des \u00ab horaires \u00bb.)\n\nCe chemin, le beau village en pente de Sall\u00e8les (qui, apr\u00e8s avoir \u00e9t\u00e9 presque abandonn\u00e9 il y a dix ans, se convertit terriblement en r\u00e9sidences carcassonnaises secondaires), les garrigues des deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de la C\u00e8ze, face \u00e0 la Montagne noire \u00e0 laquelle Sall\u00e8les s'adosse et tourne le dos, voil\u00e0 des lieux que je connais depuis cinquante ans. J'y ai couru, saut\u00e9, grimp\u00e9, roul\u00e9, escalad\u00e9 enfant, j'y marche encore, avec plus de lenteur et de circonspection aujourd'hui, quand je viens \u00e0 la Tuilerie.\n\nDe chaque c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la vall\u00e9e les garrigues s'\u00e9l\u00e8vent assez haut (c'est une fin de garrigue, elles ont couru depuis l'H\u00e9rault et elles s'ach\u00e8vent l\u00e0, ou presque, interrompues ici sur leur flanc gauche (en regardant vers le nord) par la vall\u00e9e de l'Orbiel, de face par la bande \u00e9troite de terres basses \u00e0 vignes qui les s\u00e9pare partout de la Montagne noire puis de la frange inf\u00e9rieure du Massif central), et sur l'une ou l'autre de ces hauteurs j'ai l'habitude (presque lamartinienne : \u00ab Souvent, sur la colline, \u00e0 l'ombre du vieux ch\u00eane \u00bb (vers o\u00f9 il faudrait remplacer \u00ab ch\u00eane \u00bb par \u00ab pin \u00bb...) de m'asseoir sur une pierre plate ou un coussin d'aiguilles de pin (entre d\u00e9s ch\u00eanes qui n'ont pas d'ombre, qui ne sont que de tout petits ch\u00eanes-verts) pour regarder les nuages.\n\nJe viens l\u00e0, des jours de grand vent d'ouest, de _cers_ , surtout, mais de beau temps, pour une longue contemplation de nuages. J'ai plac\u00e9 l\u00e0 mon observatoire, mon centre de reconnaissance, de m\u00e9morisation de leurs formes, de leurs mouvements, de leurs changements. Je ne suis pas un savant de nuages, je connais mal leurs classes, leurs esp\u00e8ces, leurs genres, leurs vari\u00e9t\u00e9s, les catastrophes \u00ab thomistes \u00bb dont pourraient s'interpr\u00e9ter leurs mutations. La science n\u00e9buleuse est (ou du moins fut longtemps), comme l'astronomie, selon la distinction miln\u00e9rienne, une science \u00e0 \u00ab observatoire \u00bb, c'est-\u00e0-dire sans possible exp\u00e9rimentation. Les nuages, comme les astres, vont leur cours de nuages, sans interf\u00e9rences, sinon des aigles et des avions.\n\nEt je les vois surgir dans le ciel clair, l\u00e9ger, bleu, l\u00e9gers eux-m\u00eames, blancs, nets, cotonneux, souples, arrondis, pouss\u00e9s par le vent net, d\u00e9cid\u00e9. Ils apparaissent, pouss\u00e9s au bord de la Montagne noire, h\u00e9sitent, puis s'\u00e9lancent, tombent un peu, se jettent dans la cuve d'eau bleue du ciel. Et je les suis des yeux dans leur navigation continue, de la gauche \u00e0 la droite de la vue, jusqu'\u00e0 ce qu'ils disparaissent, \u00e0 ma droite, vers les lointains incertains de la M\u00e9diterran\u00e9e.\n\nJe laisse passer du temps et des nuages, comptant le temps non en minutes ou en heures, mais en unit\u00e9s de contemplation, les **nuheures** : une nuheure est le temps que met un nuage de r\u00e9f\u00e9rence pour traverser le ciel. Mon souvenir est plein de ces images. De tr\u00e8s loin du pass\u00e9 me parviennent, du m\u00eame point, dans les m\u00eames circonstances, ces images de la circulation lente des nuages sur l'horizon minervois : ils surgissent dans le ciel clair, l\u00e9ger, bleu, l\u00e9gers eux-m\u00eames, blancs, nets, cotonneux, souples, arrondis, pouss\u00e9s par le vent net, d\u00e9cid\u00e9. Ils apparaissent, **nuheure** apr\u00e8s **nuheure** , pouss\u00e9s au bord de la Montagne noire, h\u00e9sitent, puis s'\u00e9lancent, tombent un peu, se jettent dans la cuve d'eau bleue du ciel.\n\nEt parfois je me demande : si les nuages avaient subi, depuis les temps pass\u00e9s de ces images qui me parviennent, accentu\u00e9es de toute l'\u00e9motion du souvenir, une d\u00e9c\u00e9l\u00e9ration z\u00e9nonienne, si la distance qu'ils parcourent pendant la premi\u00e8re minute de temps ancien et r\u00e9el \u00e9tait la moiti\u00e9 de celles qu'il leur avait \u00e9t\u00e9 permis de franchir pendant la premi\u00e8re, et encore, pendant la deuxi\u00e8me minute, la moiti\u00e9 de la distance pr\u00e9c\u00e9dente, et ainsi s'allongeant ind\u00e9finiment le temps vrai d'une **nuheure** , ne me serais-je pas, ne suis-je pas, comme nous tous en nos m\u00e9moires, moi qui les regarde en ce moment, d'un regard int\u00e9rieur m'effor\u00e7ant \u00e0 la contemplation d'une limite, d'une origine, ne suis-je pas comme \u00e0 l'infini \u00e9loign\u00e9 ?\n\n## 159 Nous vivions \u00e0 Carcassonne, comme j'ai dit\n\nNous vivions \u00e0 Carcassonne, comme j'ai dit. En arrivant de Tulle avec leurs trois enfants \u00e0 l'automne de 1937, nomm\u00e9s dans un \u00ab poste double \u00bb, denr\u00e9e rare pour les couples d'enseignants \u00e0 cette \u00e9poque malthusienne de post-crise et de pr\u00e9-guerre, mon p\u00e8re \u00e0 la \u00ab chaire de philosophie \u00bb o\u00f9 il succ\u00e9dait \u00e0 l'\u00e9minent cart\u00e9sien Ferdinand Alquier, ma m\u00e8re comme professeur d'anglais, mes parents \u00e9taient aussi accompagn\u00e9s d'une jeune Corr\u00e9zienne (pas tellement jeune d'ailleurs car elle avait l'\u00e2ge de ma m\u00e8re, trente ans), Marie Noilhac, de Souillac, Corr\u00e8ze, mais pour nous et pour toujours, jusqu'\u00e0 sa mort l'ann\u00e9e derni\u00e8re, Marie.\n\nEn 1943, il me semble, Marie fit la connaissance, un dimanche, d'un vigneron de Villegly, dans le Minervois, Antoine Bonafous. Il \u00e9tait vigneron mais aussi un passionn\u00e9 de chevaux, avec lesquels il avait des relations confiantes, et qu'il accompagnait parfois dans leurs voyages, pour les guider et rassurer. Il n'\u00e9tait aucunement un maquignon, il ne les poss\u00e9dait pas, ne les vendait pas pour le profit, mais s'occupait d'eux, les nourrissait, les rassurait pendant leur p\u00e9riple en \u00ab chemin de fer \u00bb, pour une r\u00e9mun\u00e9ration modeste. Le reste du temps il \u00e9tait dans sa maison de Villegly, dans sa cave, dans son jardin au bord de la Clamous, dans ses vignes de garrigue.\n\nAntoine et Marie se parl\u00e8rent, je pense que ce fut sur la place d'armes, sur les all\u00e9es Barb\u00e8s, d'autres dimanches, quelques mois, en notre absence. Antoine la demanda en mariage, et elle accepta. Elle prit cong\u00e9 de mes parents, de nous enfants, de Jean-Ren\u00e9, \u00ab Nanet \u00bb, le plus jeune, qu'elle avait vu na\u00eetre, \u00e0 la Saint-Jean de 1939, son pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9 (partialit\u00e9 \u00e9vidente, spontan\u00e9e et sans malice, que personne ne songea jamais \u00e0 lui reprocher (t\u00e9moignage d'un petit papier secret de mon fr\u00e8re Pierre, \u00ab d\u00e9couvert \u00bb un jour derri\u00e8re le \u00ab cosy \u00bb du bureau lors d'un nettoyage : \u00ab Marie est une gentille, mais bien souvent elle me gronde, quand c'est Nanet qu'il faut gronder \u00bb (je note \u00ab de m\u00e9moire \u00bb comme on dit, c'est-\u00e0-dire que j'ai enti\u00e8rement oubli\u00e9 les invraisemblances orthographiques de l'original))).\n\nMarie \u00e9tait grande, tr\u00e8s droite, avec cette tenue de corps qui fait dire en Provence : c'est une \u00ab belle femme \u00bb. Elle \u00e9tait d'une famille paysanne corr\u00e9zienne, plut\u00f4t antipathique \u00e0 ce que j'ai cru comprendre, qu'elle avait abandonn\u00e9e aventureusement & sans regret pour suivre mes parents, et contre la volont\u00e9 des siens qui la tenaient dans une d\u00e9pendance presque esclavagiste, jusque dans l'Aude lointaine et louche. Elle ne renoua jamais vraiment avec eux.\n\nElle n'avait pas fait d'\u00e9tudes, lisait peu mais avait une sorte d'appr\u00e9hension esth\u00e9tique intense et spontan\u00e9e qui l'avait amen\u00e9e, la premi\u00e8re fois o\u00f9, du \u00ab pick-up \u00bb, s'\u00e9tait \u00e9lev\u00e9e la musique d'une sonate pour piano et violon de Mozart \u00e0 r\u00e9agir, en se pr\u00e9cipitant depuis la cuisine pour dire : \u00ab Oh que c'est beau ! \u00bb (semblable en cela \u00e0 certains Indiens (mythiques ?) de l'Amazone qu'on citait jadis dans les cours de psychologie (argument pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 na\u00efvement ( ?) en faveur de l'universalit\u00e9 d'une composante du \u00ab go\u00fbt \u00bb musical et partant, de la sup\u00e9riorit\u00e9 du classicisme tonal dans sa version mozartienne)).\n\nAinsi, en 1943, elle quitta la rue d'Assas pour s'installer en ma\u00eetresse de maison, dans la rue principale de Villegly, qui est tout simplement la Route minervoise. Antoine avait quelque ann\u00e9es de plus qu'elle, \u00e9tait veuf, et vivait avec un oncle de sa premi\u00e8re femme, l'Oncle, avec lequel Marie eut quelques disputes, mais pas longtemps, car c'\u00e9tait un vieil et brave homme, grincheux et bourru mais sans m\u00e9chancet\u00e9. Il nous offrait de trinquer avec lui et nous disions alors \u00e0 sa suite, \u00e0 voix haute, en levant nos verres, le n\u00f4tre de limonade, le sien de vin : \u00ab Dragons, frisez vos moustaches ! \u00bb\n\nCar la maison de Marie et d'Antoine devint en alternance (un peu jalouse) avec celle de mes grands-parents, rue de l'Orangerie \u00e0 Caluire, notre lieu de refuge et de vacances jusqu'au milieu des ann\u00e9es cinquante. La \u00ab Tuilerie \u00bb, o\u00f9 mes parents habitent maintenant a \u00e9t\u00e9 choisie par Antoine, et il en aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 le conseiller et le protecteur sans sa mort pr\u00e9matur\u00e9e. (Mais je ne \u00ab bifurquerai \u00bb pas de nouveau ici dans ma \u00ab r\u00e9collection \u00bb.)\n\nLa porte de la maison s'ouvrait sur la rue-route ensoleill\u00e9e (qu'on traversait alors sans risques, tant les voitures \u00e9taient rares, pour rejoindre la \u00ab remise \u00bb, o\u00f9 \u00e9taient les chevaux, les lapins, le vin, les provisions), et c'\u00e9tait une porte de bois d\u00e9coup\u00e9e dans un grand portail en bois qui pouvait s'ouvrir lui-m\u00eame pour le passage de la charrette. L'escalier montait \u00e0 droite jusqu'aux \u00e9tages d'habitation.\n\n **Un peu de jour passait, vers le haut, dans l'intervalle du portail et du mur et, assis sur les marches de l'escalier, je regardais longuement, miracle de l'optique, les passants et les** **charrettes se refl\u00e9ter en silhouettes renvers\u00e9es sur le plafond, pendant que les voix, les pas, assourdis, indistincts et r\u00e9fract\u00e9s en traversant l'\u00e9paisseur du bois, soulignaient ces d\u00e9fil\u00e9s d'ombres.**\n\n## 160 Avec l'Oncle, avec Marie, avec Dick l'\u00e9pagneul, avec des paniers d'osier aux fonds couverts de feuilles de vigne,\n\nAvec l'Oncle, avec Marie, avec Dick l'\u00e9pagneul, avec des paniers d'osier aux fonds couverts de feuilles de vigne, pour les tomates, pour les fraises, pour les melons, nous allions, par la Route minervoise, au jardin, au \u00ab jardin d'Antoine \u00bb. La route \u00e9tait toujours quasi d\u00e9serte de voitures, et les rares voitures y \u00e9taient lentes, \u00ab gazog\u00e8nes \u00bb poussifs, presque aussi lentes que les charrettes tir\u00e9es par les chevaux raisonnables, et de rares cyclistes s'y hasardaient, sous le fort soleil de juin, visibles de loin quand ils arrivaient de l\u00e0-bas, de Villeneuve- (ou) Laure-Minervois, de Rieux ou Caunes.\n\nUn jour, remontant du jardin, nous avons aper\u00e7u dans la distance, contre le soleil \u00e9blouissant, un v\u00e9lo qui venait vers nous et mon fr\u00e8re Pierre aussit\u00f4t a dit : \u00ab Celui qui va si vite c'est papa ! \u00bb Il avait raison. Nous n'\u00e9tions pas autrement surpris. Mais lui ne s'attendait pas du tout \u00e0 nous voir. Il n'aurait pas d\u00fb \u00eatre l\u00e0 en juin 44, quelques jours apr\u00e8s le \u00ab d\u00e9barquement \u00bb de Normandie, mais ailleurs, rue d'Assas, ou dans sa classe par exemple. Cependant nous ne faisions aucunement attention \u00e0 de si flagrantes incoh\u00e9rences dans les r\u00e9cits adultes. Il \u00e9tait naturel de rencontrer notre p\u00e8re sur la Route minervoise. Car ce qui \u00e9tait important, c'est qu'il allait vite. C'est cela qui \u00e9tait dans l'ordre des choses. De toute fa\u00e7on Antoine et Marie qui pensaient la m\u00eame chose que lui de la guerre n'allaient pas non plus faire de commentaires \u00e9tonn\u00e9s sur cette apparition. Ils pensaient pareil, il n'y avait pas d'autre possibilit\u00e9. Et l'Oncle \u00e9galement, mais il avait tendance \u00e0 confondre tous les \u00ab boches \u00bb, pass\u00e9s et pr\u00e9sents dans la m\u00eame r\u00e9probation : \u00ab Dragons, frisez vos moustaches \u00bb, nous r\u00e9p\u00e9tait-il, en levant son verre \u00e0 l'invocation de la Victoire (pas de la Lib\u00e9ration). (Il gardait cach\u00e9 son fusil pour le moment propice. Le Minervois \u00e9tait fortement repr\u00e9sent\u00e9 dans les maquis de l'Aude.)\n\nLa Clamous (ou Clamoux) commen\u00e7ait l\u00e0, au jardin, et son territoire, son existence m\u00eame en ce qui nous concernait s'\u00e9tendait jusqu'au village puis au-del\u00e0 du village jusqu'\u00e0 l'entr\u00e9e du tr\u00e8s petit village voisin, Bagnoles : une toute petite rivi\u00e8re au nom triomphant, dont on se moque volontiers en temps ordinaire o\u00f9 la continuit\u00e9 de son cours dispara\u00eet presque de s\u00e9cheresse, mais que les orages emplissent parfois soudainement d'une violence quasi proven\u00e7ale. Elle fait alors, m\u00eame si ce n'est que pour peu de temps, pleinement honneur \u00e0 l'\u00eatre de son nom (qu'il faut alors dire \u00ab Clamou-ssss \u00bb, ou \u00ab Clamou-ks \u00bb). Au bord de la Clamous il y avait des peupliers, des saponaires et des ronces, donc des m\u00fbres. Et dans la Clamous les poissons.\n\nLa Clamous \u00e9tait peupl\u00e9e de son peuple, les poissons. Dans l'eau peu profonde, claire, nous les voyions d\u00e9ambuler, affair\u00e9s, fr\u00e9tillants ou importants, dispara\u00eetre effarouch\u00e9s par nos ombres sous les berges clapotantes, sous les pierres. Leur taille \u00e9tait \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s proportionnelle au volume du bassin qu'ils habitaient. Les plus gros avaient la longueur d'un _ell_ , cette mesure m\u00e9di\u00e9vale qui a la valeur de la distance du creux du coude \u00e0 l'extr\u00e9mit\u00e9 des doigts (un unit\u00e9 de mesure invent\u00e9e par des p\u00eacheurs comme nous, des p\u00eacheurs sans accessoires, c'est certain), mais c'\u00e9tait un _ell_ ad\u00e9quat \u00e0 la Clamous et \u00e0 mon \u00e2ge, un tout petit _ell_. Il y avait quand m\u00eame, dans des creux bien dissimul\u00e9s, quelques assez imposants cabots.\n\nLes p\u00eacheurs \u00e0 la ligne d\u00e9daignaient la Clamous, qui ne nourrissait pas de poissons nobles, comme les torrents de la Montagne noire (et la Clamous elle-m\u00eame, en sa jeunesse montagnarde), ni abondants suffisamment comme l'Aude, l'Orbiel ou le Canal du Midi. Petits et d\u00e9lur\u00e9s, ses poissons prosp\u00e9raient fr\u00e9missants, agiles. Il y avait aussi quelques rats d'eau, quelques \u00e9crevisses. Et j'ai vu, une seule fois h\u00e9las, dans un secteur de la rivi\u00e8re o\u00f9 nous n'allions presque jamais, en amont du jardin **une loutre** , animal britannique s'il en est un, sorti tout droit des nouvelles de Saki ou de _The Wind in the Willows_. Ce fut une vision br\u00e8ve, mais ineffa\u00e7able, th\u00e9sauris\u00e9e. **Elle \u00e9tait affal\u00e9e, sombre masse de cuir sur une large dalle ensoleill\u00e9e et j'eus \u00e0 peine le temps de la voir se glisser souplement dans la paume de l'eau, son royaume, et dispara\u00eetre \u00e0 jamais.** Et quand je l'ai revue, quand j'ai revu sa t\u00eate \u00e9tonn\u00e9e aux yeux ronds, ce fut \u00e0 Berlin, un Berlin de livre, dans _Enfance berlinoise_ de Walter Benjamin. Et je l'ai reconnue sans h\u00e9siter : c'\u00e9tait elle, la \u00ab bonne loutre vertueuse \/ qui r\u00e9siste \u00e0 tous les poisons \u00bb de l'oubli.\n\nJe ne sais comment j'ai con\u00e7u l'ambition de la p\u00eache, sans doute des r\u00e9cits de mon p\u00e8re pendant notre voyage \u00e0 Toulon. Et il n'y avait qu'un mode de p\u00eache possible : \u00e0 la main. J'ai p\u00each\u00e9. J'ai p\u00each\u00e9 des heures dans l'eau fra\u00eeche ou ti\u00e8de, sous l'ombre des peupliers, sous l'air br\u00fblant. Je ne p\u00eachais que des barbeaux, des barbeaux truit\u00e9s et des cabots (presque les seules esp\u00e8ces pr\u00e9sentes dans la Clamous. Les truites ne descendaient pas si bas). Mais ils n'\u00e9taient pas alors pour moi gibier, nourriture (comme nous les avons parfois trait\u00e9s plus tard, mon fr\u00e8re et moi, malgr\u00e9 le peu d'enthousiasme pour leur fadeur h\u00e9riss\u00e9e d'ar\u00eates dans les cuisines familiales et les assiettes). Ils \u00e9taient mes partenaires dans un jeu, au fond assez analogue au jeu de barres, \u00e0 \u00ab chat perch\u00e9 \u00bb et m\u00eame au jeu de S'avancer-en-rampant (avec cette diff\u00e9rence que les autres joueurs, les poissons, n'\u00e9taient pas, mais pas le moins du monde volontaires !).\n\nMon but \u00e9tait de les attraper, de les sortir de l'eau (et ensuite de les restituer \u00e0 leur \u00e9l\u00e9ment), le leur \u00e9tait de ne pas se laisser faire. Pour qui a jamais tent\u00e9 de saisir un poisson dans son \u00e9l\u00e9ment, cette ambition semblera insens\u00e9e. Et d'ailleurs, s'emparer d'un poisson dans un bassin de parois lisses est quasiment impossible (sauf en le faisant sauter sur la berge avec la \u00ab poign\u00e9e \u00bb d'eau qui le contient, exploit fort difficile (sauf pour les chats)). Mais la Clamous n'\u00e9tait pas une piscine. Il y avait des pierres, des rochers dans le courant. Et il y avait les berges.\n\nLa tactique des poissons \u00e9tait simple. D\u00e8s que ma main dans l'eau s'approchait d'eux, ils se r\u00e9fugiaient sous une roche, ou sous la rive terreuse, basse et lourde, enchev\u00eatr\u00e9e d'herbes, de racines. Ils se collaient contre la paroi de roche ou s'enfon\u00e7aient le plus possible dans la terre du bord, et ne bougeaient plus.\n\nMa tactique n'\u00e9tait pas moins simple. Je glissais une main doucement jusqu'\u00e0 les toucher, d\u00e9courageant de l'autre main si possible toute vell\u00e9it\u00e9 de leur part de tenter une sortie vers d'autres refuges de pierres, d'autres trous d'eau, vers l'abri d'autres racines. Je les touchais le plus l\u00e9g\u00e8rement possible, pour reconna\u00eetre leur taille, leur position. Tr\u00e8s doucement, du bout des doigts, pour ne pas les pousser aux actions d\u00e9sordonn\u00e9es que leur aurait sugg\u00e9r\u00e9es la panique, et qui de fait auraient \u00e9t\u00e9 le meilleur moyen pour eux de s'\u00e9chapper. Mais si mon approche \u00e9tait suffisamment discr\u00e8te, ils se persuadaient ais\u00e9ment (j'\u00e9tais persuad\u00e9 qu'ils pensaient ainsi) qu'ils \u00e9taient en s\u00fbret\u00e9, et que l'immobilit\u00e9 absolue \u00e9tait leur meilleure d\u00e9fense. Je les encourageais dans cette opinion.\n\n## 161 Je les encourageais un moment dans l'illusion de la s\u00e9curit\u00e9\n\nJe les encourageais un moment dans l'illusion de leur s\u00e9curit\u00e9 matricielle. Alors, toujours lentement, toujours prudemment, toujours l\u00e9g\u00e8rement, j'avan\u00e7ais ma main tout au long de leur corps, parall\u00e8lement \u00e0 leur corps \u00e9cailleux et lisse sans le toucher, en direction de leur t\u00eate. Le moment d\u00e9cisif, le \u00ab moment machiavellien \u00bb de la p\u00eache, approchait.\n\nIl n'y a qu'un moyen, un seul, d'attraper un poisson \u00e0 la main : c'est de le saisir par les ou\u00efes. Le saisir \u00e0 l'arri\u00e8re de la t\u00eate par les ou\u00efes, maintenir assur\u00e9e et ferme cette prise, contre toutes ses protestations indign\u00e9es, contre les coups de queue \u00e9nergiques par lesquels il tentera d'intimider et de se d\u00e9gager, coups de queue devenant particuli\u00e8rement violents et \u00e9nergiques quand il se sentira enfonc\u00e9 dans cet \u00e9l\u00e9ment \u00e9touffant qu'est pour lui l'air. Telle est la seule mani\u00e8re de parvenir \u00e0 la victoire.\n\nLes poissons de la Clamous \u00e9taient d'ardents, de valeureux combattants. Il me fallait d'immenses r\u00e9serves de patience pour sortir de leur cachette les plus obstin\u00e9s d'entre eux. Quand ma main se faisait plus proche de leur t\u00eate ils s'enfon\u00e7aient, eux, plus profond\u00e9ment dans l'enchev\u00eatrement de racines terreuses de la rive, \u00e9pousaient plus strictement encore la surface int\u00e9rieure du rocher creux et vo\u00fbt\u00e9. Parfois, s'il y avait encore un peu de jeu dans l'espace de son refuge, le cabot (l'adversaire le plus redoutable) glissait simplement de sa longueur et je devais recommencer depuis le d\u00e9but. S'il pouvait reculer, s'enfoncer encore, j'\u00e9tais perdu. D\u00e9j\u00e0, l'eau me l\u00e9chait le menton. Accul\u00e9 enfin, je le sentais tendu, pr\u00eat, contre son instinct, contre toutes les le\u00e7ons de ses parents et de ses anc\u00eatres, \u00e0 changer finalement de strat\u00e9gie et \u00e0 tenter de s'enfuir. C'est alors qu'il fallait agir vite, avec d\u00e9cision : saisir, sans se tromper, l'unique prise, serrer, tirer \u00e0 soi. Un vieux cabot, le plus gros de mon exp\u00e9rience, dans le plus gros trou d'eau de la rivi\u00e8re, me r\u00e9sista ainsi plus d'une heure. Mais j'eus raison de lui.\n\nLa truite, dit-on, disent les Anglais, est un _gentleman_. Ils l'inviteraient volontiers \u00e0 leur club. C'est l\u00e0 un propos de p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la ligne. Pour un p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main, il n'y a rien de plus ridicule qu'une truite. Elle est tellement snob et infatu\u00e9e d'elle-m\u00eame qu'elle n'imagine pas un instant que l'on puisse porter la main sur elle. Ce serait un crime de l\u00e8se-majest\u00e9 (elle se compare sans doute int\u00e9rieurement \u00e0 la reine). En fait, il n'y a qu'une seule chose qu'elle sache faire, hors relire son pedigree : r\u00e9sister \u00e0 la tentation d'avaler la mouche que lui a lanc\u00e9e le vieux _gentleman_ au visage de brique assis sur la berge avec sa pipe et un mouchoir sur le cr\u00e2ne contre les atteintes du soleil. J'ai d\u00e9couvert cette v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de \u00ab philosophie naturelle \u00bb en \u00c9cosse, en 1947. Ayant escalad\u00e9, avec George Lugton, une petite colline de bruy\u00e8res et myrtilles au-dessus d'un petit loch, un ruisseau passait l\u00e0 et saisissant, de mon \u0153il de p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main exerc\u00e9, la pr\u00e9sence de truites dans cette eau, j'entrepris aussit\u00f4t (malgr\u00e9 le froid saisissant de cette eau transparente et liquoreuse) d'en capturer une. Je m'attendais, connaissant la r\u00e9putation de la truite, \u00e0 une lutte s\u00e9v\u00e8re, \u00e0 des tr\u00e9sors d'astuce de sa part faisant appara\u00eetre les cabots et barbeaux de la Clamous comme des rustres in\u00e9duqu\u00e9s. Mais je n'eus pour ainsi dire qu'\u00e0 tendre la main. Et ma surprise fut si grande que je faillis l'\u00e9crabouiller en lui serrant le cou. Mon estime pour la truite tomba aussit\u00f4t \u00e0 z\u00e9ro. Elle ne s'est pas relev\u00e9e depuis.\n\nJe n'ai pas mentionn\u00e9 encore l'existence d'un autre habitant de la Clamous (et mon rival pour la capture des plus petits poissons) : la couleuvre. Je veux parler de la couleuvre d'eau, pas de la longue couleuvre gris-vert qui vit dans les murs en ruines et qu'on confond souvent \u00e0 sa grande honte avec sa cousine acari\u00e2tre, la vip\u00e8re. La couleuvre d'eau est courte, de la longueur approximative d'un _ell_. Elle zigzague \u00e0 la surface de l'eau, tirant une petite langue fourchue avec indignation quand on l'attrape pour l'enrouler autour du cou et la ramener au village effrayer Marie ou ses voisines (quand je pense au trajet que devaient ensuite parcourir ces malheureuses bestioles pour retrouver les rives de la Clamous, je rougis de honte r\u00e9trospective). On la capture sans peine : il suffit de la saisir, dans l'eau directement, avec prestesse et d\u00e9cision.\n\nApr\u00e8s la guerre, et surtout quand nous sommes revenus plus longtemps et plus r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement dans la r\u00e9gion apr\u00e8s l'achat de la Tuilerie, nous avons continu\u00e9, mon fr\u00e8re Pierre et moi-m\u00eame, \u00e0 p\u00eacher \u00e0 la main (nous avons p\u00each\u00e9 aussi dans l'Aude, o\u00f9 je fus rapidement surclass\u00e9, n'\u00e9tant pas aussi bon nageur, ni capable de rester aussi longtemps sous l'eau pour m'expliquer avec un poisson r\u00e9calcitrant (mon fr\u00e8re a m\u00eame r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 attraper, par deux fois, une anguille !)). Un jour, il n'y a pas loin de vingt ans, sentant d\u00e9j\u00e0 les ann\u00e9es s'accumuler sur mes \u00e9paules, je me suis dit qu'il \u00e9tait temps pour moi de songer \u00e0 transmettre mon savoir de p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main pour que la tradition ne s'en perde pas dans la famille. Et, selon l'exemple bien connu des romans m\u00e9di\u00e9vaux, c'est de l'oncle au neveu que ces le\u00e7ons doivent passer. Je priai donc, un apr\u00e8s-midi d'ao\u00fbt, mon neveu Fran\u00e7ois (qui avait alors l'\u00e2ge qui \u00e9tait le mien au moment de mon initiation \u00e0 cette c\u00e9r\u00e9monie rituelle et sacr\u00e9e) de m'accompagner \u00e0 la rivi\u00e8re. Je lui enseignai l'art du choix des pierres, celui de l'approche et celui de la saisie. Nous remontions lentement le cours de l'eau, tout au rapport didactique et \u00e0 la r\u00e9miniscence, et nous accumulions \u00e0 mesure nos prises dans un sac plastique de la librairie de la Cit\u00e9 (\u00e0 Carcassonne) afin d'en faire b\u00e9n\u00e9ficier ( ?) la famille au repas du soir, sur feu de sarments.\n\nL'action narrative se transporte alors, en un saut brusque et dramatique, dans la Tuilerie m\u00eame o\u00f9, raconta ma m\u00e8re, elle vit soudainement appara\u00eetre Fran\u00e7ois, p\u00e2le, \u00e9mu, essouffl\u00e9 (il avait couru) qui, sous le sceau du secret le plus absolu et refusant de donner ses raisons, lui r\u00e9clama la remise imm\u00e9diate de ma carte d'identit\u00e9 qui se trouvait dans le tiroir gauche de la table de ma chambre. J'en avais, dit Fran\u00e7ois avec myst\u00e8re, un besoin urgent.\n\nEn effet. Tout \u00e0 mon ardeur monstrative, j'avais oubli\u00e9 la premi\u00e8re r\u00e8gle, la r\u00e8gle d'or du p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main : ATTENTION AUX GENDARMES ! Et voil\u00e0 que, b\u00eatement, pour la premi\u00e8re fois dans une carri\u00e8re honorable de p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main de quelque trente ans, je m'\u00e9tais fait prendre. Car il n'y a pas de doute : la p\u00eache \u00e0 la main est strictement et absolument interdite (sauf pour quelques biologistes sp\u00e9cialistes, comme mon fr\u00e8re, des poissons), elle est assimil\u00e9e par la loi au braconnage, et les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s de p\u00eache sont partie civile dans les actions qu'elles m\u00e8nent, devant les tribunaux, indiff\u00e9remment et sans distinction, contre les dynamiteurs, les p\u00eacheurs \u00e0 la lampe, les empoisonneurs de rivi\u00e8res et autres d\u00e9poissonneurs, et les malheureux p\u00eacheurs \u00e0 la main. Deux agents stipendi\u00e9s de celle de l'Aude, plac\u00e9s l\u00e0 en embuscade (et ils attendaient, en fait, un autre gibier que moi), m'avaient suivi et captur\u00e9. Je dus payer une amende. Et \u00ab la correctionnelle \u00bb me fut promise si je r\u00e9cidivais. Je n'eus, dans mon humiliation (redoubl\u00e9e de la pr\u00e9sence de Fran\u00e7ois et quadrupl\u00e9e du fait que je n'avais \u00e0 m'en prendre qu'\u00e0 moi-m\u00eame), qu'une petite, toute petite consolation. Comme le sac o\u00f9 je consignais mes captures \u00e9tait l\u00e0 \u00e0 fins didactiques (j'avais pris des poissons de diff\u00e9rentes esp\u00e8ces et de diff\u00e9rentes tailles), j'y avais ajout\u00e9 une \u00e9crevisse ou deux et surtout, surtout, quelques couleuvres. Une des clauses de ma condamnation \u00e9tait, m'expliqu\u00e8rent les agents secrets de la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de p\u00eache de l'Aude, la confiscation des produits ill\u00e9galement acquis \u00e0 fins de remise \u00e0 une cantine d'orphelins ou de filles-m\u00e8res, je suppose. Or, ces messieurs, saisissant avidement le sac litigieux que je leur tendais avec un rictus amer, et l'ouvrant pour en inspecter le contenu (qui valait preuve du d\u00e9lit) recul\u00e8rent d'horreur et d'effroi devant les couleuvres m\u00e9contentes et agit\u00e9es qui manifestaient leur fureur en tirant des langues extr\u00eamement vip\u00e9rines. Je leur souris aimablement et pris une \u00e0 une les couleuvres, que je lib\u00e9rai, avec leur permission empress\u00e9e. Telle fut la fin honteuse de ma carri\u00e8re de p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main (officiellement au moins, je ne p\u00eache plus. Mais je ne suis pas s\u00fbr d'\u00eatre couvert par la prescription).\n\nQuelques ann\u00e9es plus tard, j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 invit\u00e9 \u00e0 une lecture de po\u00e8mes, \u00e0 la sortie d'un livre dont le titre est : _Les Animaux de tout le monde_. Cela se passait dans un \u00e9tablissement d'enseignement secondaire d'une banlieue, plut\u00f4t modeste (ce d\u00e9tail est important), de Roanne. L'assistance \u00e9tait compos\u00e9e de quelques classes de jeunes \u00e9l\u00e8ves (de la sixi\u00e8me \u00e0 la troisi\u00e8me, il me semble) accompagn\u00e9s de leurs professeurs. C'\u00e9tait, pour tous, une esp\u00e8ce de r\u00e9cr\u00e9ation et ils m'\u00e9coutaient donc avec bienveillance. Je lus, entre autres, un po\u00e8me plut\u00f4t moqueur sur la truite (La Truite : po\u00e8me fade. Le po\u00e8me commence ainsi : \u00ab La truite est un gentleman \/ \u00e0 ce que disent les Anglais\/ \u00bb). Et pour expliquer la mani\u00e8re d\u00e9sinvolte avec laquelle je parlais de ce noble poisson, je racontai succinctement, sur mon exp\u00e9rience de p\u00eache \u00e0 la main, ce que je viens plus longuement de dire ici. Et quand j'arrivai \u00e0 la \u00ab R\u00e8gle d'or du p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main \u00bb, je m'arr\u00eatai dans ma narration et j'interrogeai mon auditoire : \u00ab Qui peut me dire quelle est la r\u00e8gle d'or du p\u00eacheur \u00e0 la main ? \u00bb Une ignorance totale fut visible sur les traits des professeurs. Mais les \u00e9l\u00e8ves, eux, n'h\u00e9sit\u00e8rent pas trente secondes. D'o\u00f9 je conclus qu'il ne fallait pas perdre espoir en les g\u00e9n\u00e9rations futures.\n\n## 162 L'heure \u00e9tait celle de midi, un jour d'\u00e9t\u00e9,\n\n **L'heure \u00e9tait celle de midi, un jour d'\u00e9t\u00e9, et le seul choix de ces mots montre pour ainsi dire l'atmosph\u00e8re ardente que tant de lumi\u00e8re avait sublim\u00e9e de la pierre, du soleil presque \u00e9puis\u00e9, du mur blanc de la petite cabane de pierres s\u00e8ches, empoussi\u00e9r\u00e9, silencieux. La lune fondait dans le ciel comme un l\u00e9ger nuage.**\n\nLes \u00ab biens \u00bb d'Antoine \u00e9taient essentiellement, comme partout dans le Minervois, des vignes. Et comme partout ces vignes, par le jeu des partages familiaux, des \u00e9changes et rachats, \u00e9taient dispers\u00e9es un peu au hasard dans la garrigue.\n\nEntre deux ar\u00eates de garrigue, sur les pentes de chaque c\u00f4t\u00e9 de creux ravin\u00e9s par les orages, il y avait ainsi de petites vignes, toutes sur le m\u00eame mod\u00e8le, avec une cabane-abri au bas, un acc\u00e8s pour les charrettes, charrues, chevaux et comportes de vendangeurs, un chemin-veine bifurquant du r\u00e9seau capillaire des chemins de vigne. Chacune de ces vignes \u00e9tait d\u00e9sign\u00e9e par son appartenance \u00e0 un lieu-dit. Je me souviens de plusieurs, mais surtout, avec une acuit\u00e9 presque douloureuse d'une d'entre elles, et d'un moment en quelque sorte \u00ab g\u00e9n\u00e9rique \u00bb en un de ces lieux, la **Carri\u00e8re blanche.**\n\nDans la proximit\u00e9 d'\u00e9vidence de ce moment, je vois Antoine devant la charrue, et le cheval qui la tire. Au bas de la vigne en pente, il y avait un puits, une cabane en pierre, des figuiers, des p\u00eachers (de p\u00eaches de vigne), des cerisiers.\n\nIl y avait un grand cerisier \u00e0 grosses cerises blanc et rose, des bigarreaux. Entre la vigne et la vigne voisine, un petit mur, des ronces. Le cheval montait et descendait dans la vigne, nous \u00e9tions assis, autour du panier couvert d'un linge, abritant les bouteilles d'eau, les verres, autour de Marie.\n\nLe chien, Dick, \u00e9tait assis \u00e0 nos pieds, la langue pendante de chaleur, ses poils bruns boucl\u00e9s pleins d'\u00ab agafarots \u00bb (ces tr\u00e8s petites boules adh\u00e9sives qui se prennent par centaines dans les v\u00eatements, les poils) : sur le ventre, le dos, les longues oreilles pos\u00e9es en volets sur ses yeux.\n\nL'heure, dans ce souvenir, \u00e9tait midi, dans le plein \u00e9t\u00e9 incandescent, bruyant d'insectes et de chaleur intense. C'\u00e9tait midi, le plus haut du jour, et pourtant la lune paraissait dans le ciel. Une lune infiniment l\u00e9g\u00e8re, p\u00e2le, floconneuse, mince. Je n'arrivais pas y croire.\n\nLa lune s'\u00e9tait comme oubli\u00e9e dans le ciel au-dessus de la Carri\u00e8re blanche.\n\nElle n'en bougea plus.\n\n## 163 Aujourd'hui, je ne m'\u00e9loigne plus que tr\u00e8s rarement de la vall\u00e9e du barrage\n\nAujourd'hui, je ne m'\u00e9loigne plus que tr\u00e8s rarement de la vall\u00e9e entre les garrigues de Sall\u00e8les, la vall\u00e9e du barrage, autrefois si feuillue, si verte avant l'incendie qui a d\u00e9chiquet\u00e9 les pins. Il y a un demi-si\u00e8cle je ne craignais pas de traverser ici l'enchev\u00eatrement de roseaux et de ronces, qui cachait l'eau. Aujourd'hui je ne quitte pas le chemin. Mais les nuages n'ont pas chang\u00e9. T\u00eate renvers\u00e9e en arri\u00e8re en marchant, tels je les vois et revois, coulant \u00e0 la surface des eaux du ciel.\n\nJe n'ai presque jamais vu le petit \u00e9tang du barrage plein, et l'eau en d\u00e9bordant se pr\u00e9cipiter en cascade par-dessus son large parapet de pierre. Il devait recueillir autrefois non seulement l'eau menue de la C\u00e8ze mais celle de tous les ruissellements d'orage. Les dalles du barrage n'\u00e9taient pas, aux premiers temps, je m'en souviens, comme aujourd'hui disjointes. Mais d\u00e9j\u00e0, apr\u00e8s les premi\u00e8res semaines de l'\u00e9t\u00e9, il \u00e9tait presque \u00e0 sec.\n\nLe plus souvent, **le soleil pesait sur la surface d'eau r\u00e9tr\u00e9cie, refuge de carpes autant mythiques qu'antiques, l'eau presque invisible sous les roseaux ; et le fond, presque partout d\u00e9laiss\u00e9 et ass\u00e9ch\u00e9, s'\u00e9tait fendu en larges plaques d'argile recroquevil** **l\u00e9e ; il nous fallait des heures pour traverser, d'une garrigue \u00e0 l'autre, descendant des gradins de pierre de la hauteur et nous frayant un passage, jambes griff\u00e9es, \u00e0 coups d'\u00e9p\u00e9es-b\u00e2tons entre ronces et roseaux immenses pour nous, longues feuilles coupantes ; les couleuvres d'eau fuyaient en chuintant ; envols des grandes libellules aux yeux de diamant, perdreaux ou canards surpris partant \u00e0 ras des roseaux, gramin\u00e9es saupoudr\u00e9es de moucherons ; trembles, fr\u00eanes ; feuilles \u00e0 dessous presque blancs ; l'odeur des peupliers, l\u00e0, \u00e9tait de miel lourd ; ni le chemin ni la garrigue n'\u00e9taient plus visibles.** Nous appelions ce lieu d'\u00e9preuves, d'exploration : D\u00e9sert de Gobi.\n\nPlus loin, le chemin peu \u00e0 peu descendu vers le fond de la vall\u00e9e traverse l'eau, change de rive (et la C\u00e8ze n'est nulle part et jamais plus large qu'un ruisseau, contrairement \u00e0 ce que, de loin et de haut, la profusion d'arbres et d'herbes qui l'\u00e9touffe laisse entendre). Et l\u00e0, sous le chemin, **des arbres, renvers\u00e9s par le vent et consum\u00e9s de v\u00e9tust\u00e9, formaient une sorte de digue. Des aunes, des trembles et des peupliers y avaient pris racine ; mur vert, mur v\u00e9g\u00e9tal vert imp\u00e9n\u00e9trable ; cependant la** **C\u00e8ze** **filtrait \u00e0 travers ces d\u00e9bris ; elle en sortait toute meringu\u00e9e d'\u00e9cume, pour former un bassin naturel d'une grande puret\u00e9. La lumi\u00e8re y couchait un ciel presque noir, compliqu\u00e9 de petits nuages.**\n\nO\u00f9 la vall\u00e9e s'\u00e9largit, avant que commencent les vignes, que le chemin franchit pour rejoindre la route de Villeneuve qui passe au pied du village, Sall\u00e8les-Cabard\u00e8s, la garrigue, des deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s, est la plus haute. C'est \u00e0 son plus haut point que je me place pour regarder les nuages, l\u00e0 o\u00f9 le _cers_ , en d\u00e9cembre, quand il est fort, est le plus fort, et emplit la bouche avec un tel bruit qu'on peut \u00e0 peine avaler l'air.\n\nMais quand l'air d'ao\u00fbt est presque immobile, le ciel, la chaleur, le soleil, la s\u00e9cheresse ponctu\u00e9s d'insectes, de froissements de thyms, de l\u00e9zards, de rumeurs, je regarde, de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la C\u00e8ze, \u00e0 la fois distincte, visible, et distante, comme habitante d'un espace enti\u00e8rement autre que le mien, la grande ferme plac\u00e9e l\u00e0, sur la pente, \u00e0 la sortie de la vall\u00e9e. Je ne me suis jamais approch\u00e9 d'elle \u00e0 moins de cent, deux cents m\u00e8tres (la distance qui la s\u00e9pare du chemin) et d'ann\u00e9e en ann\u00e9e j'aper\u00e7ois, d'en haut, descendant devant elle, la m\u00eame nappe de terre labour\u00e9e, \u00e0 la couleur in\u00e9gale, o\u00f9 se dessine, en plus sombre, ce que j'imagine \u00eatre les contours d'une nappe d'eau profonde, mais n'est peut-\u00eatre que le signe, dans cette zone g\u00e9ologiquement fronti\u00e8re, d'une mutation des terrains.\n\nAu-dessous de moi le sol tombe brusquement et c'est l\u00e0, avant le petit bois de quelques pins il y a tr\u00e8s longtemps habit\u00e9 par une buse, que se trouvait **une saign\u00e9e de la pente, une coul\u00e9e presque verticale de pures argiles color\u00e9es ; c'\u00e9tait une cassate sicilienne d'argiles, leurs veines vertes, et jaunes, ocre, et rouges, affleurant de la profondeur de la garrigue en une sorte de cascade vive fig\u00e9e, \u00e0 trois \u00e9tages s\u00e9par\u00e9s par de courts paliers horizontaux, le premier presque vertical, les autres l\u00e9g\u00e8rement moins inclin\u00e9s.**\n\nNous y glissions, sur la semelle de nos sandales ou la corne de nos plantes de pied nues, de haut en bas, assis sur nos talons, bondissant \u00e0 chaque palier pour aborder la section suivante dans la m\u00eame position, freinant et tournant brusquement au bas de la derni\u00e8re pour \u00e9viter les rochers situ\u00e9s imm\u00e9diatement dessous. Arriv\u00e9s en bas, on secouait l'argile poudreuse de s\u00e9cheresse de nos mains, de nos jambes, de nos v\u00eatements et on escaladait de nouveau la pente par les c\u00f4t\u00e9s, accroch\u00e9s aux touffes rudes de thym, aux racines des petits ch\u00eanes-li\u00e8ges, des pins d\u00e9butants, avant de reprendre place, l'un apr\u00e8s l'autre, au sommet de ce toboggan en couleurs naturelles, pour un vertige de vitesse renouvel\u00e9.\n\nIl y a quelque temps, descendant prudemment la m\u00eame pente pour rejoindre plus rapidement le chemin (je m'\u00e9tais attard\u00e9 au sommet dans une contemplation de nuages, et le jour d\u00e9j\u00e0 diminuait), je n'ai pas \u00e9t\u00e9 surpris de trouver leurs couleurs plus ternes, et leur inclinaison affaiss\u00e9e. Je n'en ai pas \u00e9t\u00e9 surpris, mais je n'ai pas senti int\u00e9rieurement une minute que mon souvenir \u00e9tait erron\u00e9.\n\n## 164 Ce soir-l\u00e0, j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 m'asseoir sous les pins, face \u00e0 Sall\u00e8les\n\nCe soir-l\u00e0 (un soir d'\u00e9t\u00e9, il y a plus de deux ans) j'avais \u00e9t\u00e9 m'asseoir sous le pin de mon \u00ab observatoire \u00bb, face \u00e0 Sall\u00e8les : la soir\u00e9e \u00e9tait belle, l'air silencieux, calme, le couchant rouge, sans nuage. Tout paraissait fixe, \u00e9clair\u00e9, immobile. Et un moment, levant les yeux apr\u00e8s les avoir longtemps arr\u00eat\u00e9s sur l'entrecroisement d'aiguilles de pin qui me portait, j'eus l'illusion imposante d'une forme d\u00e9j\u00e0 autrefois per\u00e7ue, pendant l'enfance, dans le ciel.\n\nLes nuages sont de souverains conducteurs de m\u00e9moire. Leur abstraction est leur forme, car la l\u00e9g\u00e8ret\u00e9 invraisemblable de leur contenu ne lui donne aucune consistance. Au d\u00e9but de cet \u00e9t\u00e9-l\u00e0, mes journ\u00e9es \u00e9taient mal remplies. Elles satisfaisaient peu l'intelligence. Ce n'\u00e9tait pas seulement les t\u00e2ches promises et retard\u00e9es qui m'angoissaient et m'angoissant me paralysaient plus encore (\u00e9poques r\u00e9currentes dans toute ma vie). La simple r\u00e9flexion aurait demand\u00e9 un autre partage de mon temps. Mais les nuages contentaient le pr\u00e9sent, ils faisaient autorit\u00e9 dans le ciel, leur progression me s\u00e9duisait et m\u00eame, s'il le fallait, \u00e0 certains moments pouvaient changer pour moi, \u00e0 volont\u00e9, l'aspect du monde. C'est pourquoi, inlassablement, dans le soir chaud, je franchissais la distance qui me s\u00e9parait de la garrigue, je remontais sur l'\u00e9paule s\u00e8che de pierres, de ch\u00eanes verts, de gen\u00e9vriers et de pins et retrouvais le m\u00eame arbre, un pin-parasol. Il ne s'est jamais pass\u00e9 plus de six mois, depuis 1943, sans que je vienne m'asseoir sous lui, sur le tapis de ses aiguilles, pour me livrer \u00e0 la m\u00eame vide, paisible et bouleversante contemplation.\n\nChercher \u00e0 \u00e9teindre sa pens\u00e9e, se rapprocher de l'absence une et infaillible qui absorbe toute chose, ne serait-ce pas un titre pour participer \u00e0 la dur\u00e9e de l'ensemble des \u00eatres ? Insensiblement, pendant que je les fixais ainsi, plusieurs formes devenaient visibles dans la bousculade de l'indistinction, des combinaisons rapides, incalculables, trop t\u00f4t d\u00e9faites pour mon appr\u00e9hension restreinte, c\u0153ur serr\u00e9 par le soir.\n\nL'air sans \u00e9paisseurs, sans ombres, la solitude de pierres s\u00e8ches de toute cette pente au-dessous de moi m'arr\u00eatait. Elle s'inclinait, elle glissait en argiles, ocre, presque rouges, \u00e0 veines vertes (paradis des couleurs ruin\u00e9es). Je m'allongeais, la t\u00eate sur les touffes de thym, les fausses lavandes, les talons contre le haut d'une _restanque_ disjointe. Le ciel, ce soir-l\u00e0, \u00e9tait plein, parall\u00e8le, presque vertical, point\u00e9 d'un seul nuage, rond, blanc.\n\nLe lendemain, au contraire, le vent press\u00e9 les avait attir\u00e9s en foule au bord inf\u00e9rieur de la Montagne noire et ils descendaient de l\u00e0 sans h\u00e2te, comme se dirigeant vers moi qui m'effor\u00e7ais de les appr\u00e9hender, l'un apr\u00e8s l'autre, dans toute leur singularit\u00e9. \u00catres limit\u00e9s, je me r\u00e9p\u00e9tais qu'ils devaient n\u00e9cessairement diff\u00e9rer, par quelque indice formel, les uns des autres, puisque autrement ils n'auraient pas \u00e9t\u00e9 distincts. Et pourtant ils ne parvenaient pas \u00e0 former \u00e0 mes yeux autre chose qu'un tout, d\u00e8s l'instant, au moins, o\u00f9 je tentais de me d\u00e9prendre de leur m\u00e9lange pour acc\u00e9der \u00e0 une compr\u00e9hension. De temps \u00e0 autre je laissais alors bouger ma vue, bient\u00f4t vaincue par la courbure de la terre.\n\nJe cherchais, ma vue ayant toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 en possession de tous ces regards pos\u00e9s sur eux, presque du m\u00eame point, tant de jours de tant d'ann\u00e9es, \u00e0 reconna\u00eetre des classes de ces _equivalents_ dont la m\u00e9ditation photographique de Stieglitz, en une vie enti\u00e8re de visions, au Lake George, avait captur\u00e9 ces images qui m'avaient lanc\u00e9, par analogie sinon \u00e9mulation, dans cette activit\u00e9 consciente de contemplation. Je me disais que chacune de ces classes pourrait me servir de marque identitaire d'une r\u00e9gion autonome du pass\u00e9.\n\nEt sans cesse, quand de nouveau l'un d'eux se pr\u00e9sentait h\u00e9sitant dans mon champ de vision, j'avais le sentiment de le reconna\u00eetre. Une forme, une disposition de l'air qui, m\u00eame en se pr\u00e9sentant des centaines de fois, \u00e9tait rest\u00e9e enti\u00e8rement \u00e9trang\u00e8re \u00e0 ma r\u00e9flexion consciente, comment pouvait-elle avoir eu tant d'influence sur mes pens\u00e9es ? \u00c9taient-ils signes, chacun, d'un instant dont ma m\u00e9moire n'avait pas enti\u00e8rement r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 se dessaisir, ou seulement d'une humeur, d'un parfum \u00e9motionnel, du pass\u00e9 m\u00eame, que le hasard seul me permettait, dans ces soirs de journ\u00e9es \u00e0 l'abandon, oisivement d'atteindre ?\n\nLes nuages, cependant, m'offraient sans r\u00e9ticence leur vari\u00e9t\u00e9. Ils avaient ici un ciel libre \u00e0 parcourir. La solitude leur convenait. Ils n'\u00e9taient pas irr\u00e9solus \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard. Mais il est diff\u00e9rentes mani\u00e8res de glisser dans le ciel. Je n'aurais jamais pens\u00e9 que tant de douce concentration cotonneuse pouvait se concilier avec des g\u00e9om\u00e9tries aussi exigeantes. Les moins propices cependant \u00e9taient ceux de circulation basse, petits et monotones, \u00e0 la profusion si peu n\u00e9cessaire. Je les voyais venir avec inqui\u00e9tude. Mais je n'entendais bruire aucun torrent dans les cavernes imcompressibles de l'air : autrement dit, pas d'orage. Je n'assistais alors qu'\u00e0 un d\u00e9placement de plaines. Ils me sortaient du poing jusqu'\u00e0 l'infini, ajoutant \u00e0 l'anxi\u00e9t\u00e9 de mes journ\u00e9es pr\u00e9caires. M\u00eame quand leur ombre s'\u00e9tait arr\u00eat\u00e9e, accidentellement, contre le sol.\n\nAinsi, de soir en soir, je me retrouvais de nouveau sous ces pins face \u00e0 Sall\u00e8les, cible r\u00e9currente de ma tristesse locale. Ce n'\u00e9tait pas seulement _d'acedia_ que je souffrais, mais aussi d'avoir \u00e0 me souvenir, dans l'espace profond entre le ciel et la montagne qui \u00e9taient inond\u00e9s presque enti\u00e8rement de nuages. Cherchant \u00e0 \u00e9teindre ma pens\u00e9e, \u00e0 me rapprocher de leurs absences, je m'allongeais, la t\u00eate sur les touffes de thym. Et les nuages, toujours, ne parvenaient pas \u00e0 former \u00e0 mes yeux autre chose qu'un tout, o\u00f9 la lumi\u00e8re, comme autrefois au pied de la vigne, \u00e0 la Carri\u00e8re blanche, couchait devant moi un ciel presque noir.\n\n# BIFURCATION D\n\n# Mont\u00e9e de la Boucle\n\n* * *\n\n## 165 la gare Perrache tendait un pi\u00e8ge aux voyageurs\n\nA Lyon, la gare Perrache tendait un pi\u00e8ge aux voyageurs attendus par d'aimantes et anxieuses familles : elle avait deux sorties indiscernables, la sortie Nord et la sortie Sud, entre lesquelles la foule innombrable, le flot tumultueux de voyageurs, qui aurait ais\u00e9ment rempli au moins trois trains de l'avant-guerre, se divisait. Ceux-ci, mol\u00e9cules individuelles fatigu\u00e9es, \u00e9puis\u00e9s par la chaleur, salis par l'avoine noire des fum\u00e9es de la locomotive p\u00e9n\u00e9trant par les fen\u00eatres des compartiments, la cervelle embroussaill\u00e9e d'une longue et inconfortable nuit, meurtris par les valises de leurs voisins, \u00e9normes, incommodes, pleines d'angles aigus, se pr\u00e9cipitaient comme les moutons c\u00e9l\u00e8bres du marchand ennemi de Panurge, les uns derri\u00e8re les autres et se dirigeaient au hasard vers l'une quelconque des deux sorties, sans r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir.\n\nTels des \u00e9lectrons auxquels on pr\u00e9sente, dans une exp\u00e9rience c\u00e9l\u00e8bre, deux issues, deux minuscules trous sous surveillance, ils franchirent lentement, un \u00e0 un, les deux \u00e9troits contr\u00f4les respectifs des issues et se retrouv\u00e8rent dehors, les uns sortie Sud, les autres sortie Nord mais, comme les \u00e9lectrons au regard des observateurs, suivant une r\u00e9partition totalement impr\u00e9visible. J'avais huit ans, je les suivis.\n\nOn m'avait bien, au d\u00e9part de Carcassonne, averti de l'existence de deux chemins irr\u00e9conciliables, et indiqu\u00e9 que mon grand-p\u00e8re m'attendrait sortie Nord, \u00e0 moins que ce ne soit sortie Sud. Je ne sais plus. Mais j'avais oubli\u00e9 quelle \u00e9tait celle que je devais \u00ab emprunter \u00bb. H\u00e9sitant sur le quai avec ma petite valise, elles me parurent \u00e9trangement semblables, jumelles m\u00eame : l'une \u00e9tait pour moi Tweedledum et l'autre Tweedledee.\n\nCependant mon grand-p\u00e8re, descendu des hauteurs de Caluire avec sa canne et son canotier pour accueillir le fils a\u00een\u00e9 de sa fille a\u00een\u00e9e, et parvenu, selon son habitude, devant la gare Perrache une grande demi-heure avant l'heure pr\u00e9vue pour l'arriv\u00e9e du train, fut lui aussi, comme il l'avoua plus tard \u00e0 sa grande honte, un moment saisi d'une incertitude sym\u00e9trique \u00e0 la mienne. Puis il crut se rappeler distinctement qu'il devait aller sortie Nord (\u00e0 moins qu'il ne s'agisse de la sortie Sud). Bien entendu, ce n'\u00e9tait pas la bonne.\n\nMais entendons-nous bien. La sortie aux avant-postes de laquelle il se pla\u00e7a n'\u00e9tait pas la sortie \u00e0 laquelle il aurait d\u00fb aller m'attendre, selon les instructions de ma grand-m\u00e8re, instructions qu'elle avait par ailleurs transmises par lettre en temps utile \u00e0 ma m\u00e8re (le t\u00e9l\u00e9phone n'\u00e9tait encore, dans ma famille, qu'un objet futuriste pour com\u00e9dies am\u00e9ricaines film\u00e9es), Il fut oblig\u00e9 d'en convenir, lors de la discussion fort anim\u00e9e qui suivit son retour, et qui se poursuivit, sporadiquement, dans les semaines qui suivirent, \u00e0 sa grande vexation, car il se trompait tr\u00e8s rarement sur les donn\u00e9es imm\u00e9diates de la conscience et les algorithmes de la vie pratique et n'\u00e9tait pas, contrairement \u00e0 ma grand-m\u00e8re, ma m\u00e8re, et moi-m\u00eame, le moins du monde distrait.\n\nC'est \u00e0 ce point que les choses se compliquent. Ma m\u00e8re en effet, plus tard, quand elle apprit l'aventure, fit remarquer que la sortie indiqu\u00e9e par ma grand-m\u00e8re comme \u00e9tant celle o\u00f9 mon grand-p\u00e8re aurait d\u00fb se rendre pour r\u00e9ceptionner sans encombre son petit-fils (en admettant bien entendu que celui-ci soit pass\u00e9 par l\u00e0) n'\u00e9tait pas celle qu'elle avait lue sur la lettre qu'elle avait re\u00e7ue \u00e0 cette occasion. Or ma grand-m\u00e8re, comme je viens de le dire, \u00e9tait distraite, d'une distraction proprement extr\u00eame, dont j'aurai sans doute l'occasion et le plaisir de rapporter quelques exemples. Il \u00e9tait donc parfaitement envisageable, naturel, ordinaire m\u00eame, qu'elle ait dirig\u00e9 mon grand-p\u00e8re vers une sortie diff\u00e9rente de celle qu'elle avait pr\u00e9vue quelques jours auparavant, quand elle avait \u00e9crit sa lettre \u00e0 ma m\u00e8re.\n\nMon grand-p\u00e8re, agr\u00e9ablement surpris de ce retournement de situation inattendu, ne manqua pas de le relever avec vivacit\u00e9. A quoi il lui fut r\u00e9torqu\u00e9 que cela ne changeait strictement rien au fait qu'il s'\u00e9tait tromp\u00e9, lui, et que c'\u00e9tait par un pur hasard qu'il s'\u00e9tait donc trouv\u00e9 attendre \u00e0 la bonne sortie. \u00ab La bonne sortie ? \u00bb dit mon grand-p\u00e8re. \u00ab Mais quelle \u00e9tait donc la bonne sortie ? \u00bb demanda mon grand-p\u00e8re avec une l\u00e9g\u00e8re mauvaise foi. Cette interrogation (et surtout le ton de voix employ\u00e9 pour la formuler) fut jug\u00e9e sp\u00e9cieuse, sophistique, irrecevable et cr\u00e9atrice de confusion. On lui avait dit d'aller \u00e0 la sortie Nord (\u00e0 moins que ce ne soit la sortie Sud) et il \u00e9tait all\u00e9 attendre cet enfant (moi : on me montrait) \u00e0 la sortie Sud (respectivement Nord). Aucun raisonnement, aucune argutie ne pouvait changer ce fait. Mon grand-p\u00e8re, haussant les \u00e9paules, se rabattit alors sur cet autre fait, ind\u00e9niable selon lui, qu'il n'avait pas \u00e9t\u00e9 le seul \u00e0 se tromper : la part de responsabilit\u00e9 de ma grand-m\u00e8re \u00e9tait au moins \u00e9gale \u00e0 la sienne.\n\nMais \u00e9tait-ce si s\u00fbr ? Autrement dit, ma m\u00e8re avait-elle correctement lu ce que sa m\u00e8re lui avait \u00e9crit ? Les deux sorties \u00e9tant distingu\u00e9es par un mot unique et court (quatre lettres pour Nord, et trois pour Sud), avait-elle identifi\u00e9 le bon ? Une deuxi\u00e8me caract\u00e9ristique de ma grand-m\u00e8re explique la pertinence de cette interrogation : son \u00e9criture \u00e9tait quasiment illisible, bien pire que celle de son m\u00e9decin, le Dr Bouchut (qui a aujourd'hui sa rue \u00e0 Lyon, du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la nouvelle gare de la Part-Dieu). L'analyse critique du document ne permit pas de trancher. Ma m\u00e8re avait lu \u00ab Sud \u00bb (ou \u00ab Nord \u00bb) sans doute, mais ma grand-m\u00e8re avait-elle vraiment \u00e9crit \u00ab Sud \u00bb (ou \u00ab Nord \u00bb) ? Presque unique sp\u00e9cialiste de l'\u00e9criture de sa m\u00e8re (on avait toujours recours \u00e0 elle quand notre grand-m\u00e8re nous \u00e9crivait), ma m\u00e8re s'\u00e9tait fi\u00e9e \u00e0 sa longue exp\u00e9rience, et n'avait pas h\u00e9sit\u00e9.\n\nMais en y regardant de plus pr\u00e8s, \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re des \u00e9v\u00e9nements ult\u00e9rieurs, elle n'\u00e9tait plus aussi certaine de son interpr\u00e9tation. Le plus simple, dans ce cas, \u00e9tait de mettre la lettre sous les yeux de son auteur. Ma grand-m\u00e8re, ayant identifi\u00e9 (non sans mal, comme d'habitude) la place occup\u00e9e dans la maison par ses lunettes, les chaussa, regarda attentivement le passage incrimin\u00e9, et fut oblig\u00e9e de convenir qu'elle ne savait pas.\n\n## 166 Et cependant\n\nEt cependant (nous revenons de quelques jours en arri\u00e8re, au matin de la confusion), ayant franchi l'obstacle de la (en tout \u00e9tat de cause mauvaise) sortie, tendu mon billet, cherch\u00e9 du regard mon grand-p\u00e8re dans la foule, je constatai bient\u00f4t cette \u00e9vidence : il n'\u00e9tait pas l\u00e0. Je n'h\u00e9sitai pas. Je ne demanderais pas secours aux autorit\u00e9s ferroviaires. Je ne refuserais pas l'appel de l'aventure : je me rendrais au 21 rue de l'Orangerie par mes propres moyens.\n\nEntre les deux itin\u00e9raires qui se pr\u00e9sent\u00e8rent \u00e0 ma r\u00e9flexion je choisis (je ne sais pourquoi, peut-\u00eatre parce qu'il me parut moins compliqu\u00e9), non celui qui, par l'interm\u00e9diaire du tramway \u00ab 4 \u00bb m'am\u00e8nerait au bas de la mont\u00e9e de la Boucle (face au pont de m\u00eame nom) mais la combinaison alternative du \u00ab 8 \u00bb (par la Croix-Rousse) et de la rue de l'Oratoire. Je montai dans un 8, payai, m'assis fi\u00e8rement (j'\u00e9tais en train d'accomplir un exploit), et me mis \u00e0 absorber avec enthousiasme le paysage (j'adorais les tramways, ces chemins de fer de ville. Il n'y en avait pas \u00e0 Carcassonne). (La disparition des tramways, succombant \u00e0 l'assaut des hordes automobiles, a \u00e9t\u00e9 une de ces trag\u00e9dies urbaines du XXe si\u00e8cle, dont on commence enfin \u00e0 mesurer l'ampleur. Et on ne peut que saluer l'initiative de quelques villes pionni\u00e8res, comme Manchester, qui ont d\u00e9cid\u00e9 de les r\u00e9tablir. Je n'ai, h\u00e9las, pas pu m'y rendre, en ce d\u00e9but de 1992, pour assister sur place \u00e0 leur r\u00e9inauguration, un de ces \u00e9v\u00e9nements symboliques qui redonnent, modestement certes, mais tout de m\u00eame distinctement, foi en l'homme !)\n\nC'\u00e9tait le matin, un matin d'\u00e9t\u00e9, t\u00f4t. Il faisait encore frais. Le tram grimpa, s'engagea dans la grand-rue de la Croix-Rousse. Des voyageurs montaient, des voyageurs descendaient. Ma valise sur mes genoux, je regardais monter et descendre les voyageurs, appara\u00eetre puis s'\u00e9loigner les boutiques, les passants. De plus en plus de voyageurs descendaient et de moins en moins montaient. Le paysage devenait de moins en moins urbainement anim\u00e9. Je n'en fus pas inquiet au d\u00e9but, car l'arr\u00eat habituel au retour de \u00ab courses \u00bb \u00e0 la Croix-Rousse \u00e9tait quasiment d\u00e9sert. Cependant le tram \u00e9tait maintenant presque vide et rien de familier n'apparaissait dans le paysage. Je descendis au terminus (quelque part dans Cuire), et entrepris de refaire, \u00e0 pied, le chemin en sens inverse. Personne ne fit attention \u00e0 moi, personne ne s'\u00e9tonna de rencontrer ainsi un enfant de huit ans, seul avec une valise. Personne ne me demanda o\u00f9 j'allais, si j'\u00e9tais perdu. Il me semble qu'une telle aventure ne serait plus possible aujourd'hui.\n\nCette fois, en marchant, je retrouvai le chemin. Le soulagement, peut-\u00eatre, de ne plus \u00eatre \u00e9gar\u00e9, d'\u00eatre proche du but et du soulagement (j'avais faim, j'avais chaud, j'avais envie de pisser) a donn\u00e9 \u00e0 cette longue, longue rue de l'Oratoire une apparence indestructiblement joyeuse (qui ne pourra que surprendre ceux qui l'ont connue alors, dans toute son aust\u00e9rit\u00e9). Elle \u00e9tait vide (elle \u00e9tait presque toujours vide), et j'avan\u00e7ais sous le soleil entre les hauts murs \u00e0 peine coup\u00e9s de petites portes secr\u00e8tes ouvrant sur des jardins somptueux invisibles, ferm\u00e9es et verrouill\u00e9es, murs aux sommets sem\u00e9s de tessons de bouteille pour d\u00e9courager les maraudeurs (d\u00e9tail caract\u00e9ristique de cette ville supr\u00eamement close, involutive, aussi peu m\u00e9diterran\u00e9enne que possible, et o\u00f9 toute architecture est tourn\u00e9e vers l'int\u00e9rieur).\n\nAu bout de la rue est l'Oratoire (le couvent qui lui donne son nom). Elle s'arr\u00eate l\u00e0 brusquement en bord de pente, la pente abrupte qui tombe en bas, dans le Rh\u00f4ne. La rue de l'Orangerie finit l\u00e0 aussi, perpendiculairement \u00e0 elle. Encore quelques maisons sur ma droite, puis le 21 _bis_ , puis j'arrivai devant la petite porte de fer, \u00e0 droite du portail.\n\nMarchant dans la rue de l'Orangerie, on n'apercevait pas le Rh\u00f4ne. Comme dans la rue de l'Oratoire, un mur ininterrompu \u00e0 gauche (un jardin derri\u00e8re, en chute libre : vignes, arbres fruitiers, herbes sauvages, inculte) barrait la vue. Et plus loin, apr\u00e8s le 21, commen\u00e7aient les maisons modestes du Clos-Bissardon.\n\nMarchant dans la rue, sous le mur aveugle, on ne voyait rien de la pente pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9e, du Rh\u00f4ne en bas. Mais au-dessus du mur du 21, de l'autre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la terrasse ciment\u00e9e en dalles g\u00e9om\u00e9triquement sillonn\u00e9es de traits sur laquelle ouvrait le portail, il y avait une invraisemblable \u00ab pergola \u00bb juch\u00e9e en haut du rocher (esth\u00e9tiquement proche des sauvageries artificielles du jardin des Buttes-Chaumont, \u00e0 Paris), o\u00f9 on acc\u00e9dait par un escalier tordu dans la pierre (ou bien, pr\u00e9f\u00e9rablement, \u00e0 nos \u00e2ges, en escaladant la face tourment\u00e9e rev\u00eatue d'un lierre tombant et creus\u00e9e d'une fausse grotte \u00e0 fausse source suintant dans une vasque de ciment). Un petit parapet surplombait la rue et, de l\u00e0, la vue enfin franchissant l'obstacle de l'obstin\u00e9e r\u00e9tention lyonnaise, de sa passion fuyante et froide du secret, avait acc\u00e8s \u00e0 une lointaine Arcadie v\u00e9g\u00e9tale (je ne suis jamais entr\u00e9 dans ce jardin-l\u00e0), \u00e0 sa profusion d'arbres et de fleurs se ruant vers la brillance rapide du fleuve, l\u00e0-bas.\n\nJ'y ai pass\u00e9, plus tard, des heures d'\u00e9t\u00e9 vacantes \u00e0 lire, \u00e0 regarder le Rh\u00f4ne, et la pente peupl\u00e9e, bourdonnante d'insectes et de la rumeur montante de la ville, \u00e9tal\u00e9e au loin. C'\u00e9tait un lieu d'\u00ab extr\u00eame bonheur v\u00e9g\u00e9tal autorenouvel\u00e9 \u00bb _(\u00ab a self-renewing vegetable bliss \u00bb_ , comme dit William Herbert, Lord of Cherbury).\n\nUn fragment d'H\u00f4lderlin s'y attache irr\u00e9sistiblement, le r\u00e9v\u00e8le, l'arrache \u00e0 tout oubli : (je choisis, parce que je l'ai lu en cet endroit, mon souvenir de la traduction de Pierre-Jean Jouve).\n\nEt moi\n\nl'homme de nulle part\n\ndevrai \u00eatre enterr\u00e9\n\nl\u00e0\n\no\u00f9 la rue tourne\n\nau sentier des vignes\n\net r\u00e9sonnante au-dessous des pommiers\n\n## 167 Peu de temps avant sa mort ma grand-m\u00e8re,\n\nPeu de temps avant sa mort ma grand-m\u00e8re, alors \u00e2g\u00e9e de quatre-vingt-trois ans, \u00e9crivit et fit transcrire pour nous, ses six petits-enfants (trois de chacune des familles Roubaud et Molino respectivement) quelques-uns de ses souvenirs. Il y avait longtemps que tous ceux qui l'avaient, \u00e0 un moment ou un autre, entendue raconter, les lui r\u00e9clamaient. Le texte, dont j'ai un exemplaire (\u00e0 peine une quarantaine de pages dactylographi\u00e9es en violet sur une machine am\u00e9ricaine, o\u00f9 les accents ont \u00e9t\u00e9 rajout\u00e9s \u00e0 la main), a \u00e9t\u00e9 compos\u00e9 chez sa plus jeune fille, ma tante Ren\u00e9e, \u00e0 Cambridge (Massachusetts). En voici les premi\u00e8res pages (sans omissions ni corrections) :\n\nSOUVENIRS\n\n1900-1945\n\nMme B. Molino\n\nCambridge, d\u00e9cembre 1963\n\n\u00ab Ceci est \u00e9crit pour une jeune institutrice de l'an 2000 qui aura la curiosit\u00e9 du pass\u00e9 de sa profession et qui aura peut-\u00eatre lu _L'Histoire d'un sous-ma\u00eetre_ d'Erckmann Chatrian datant de 1816 _[sic]_ \u2013 en appr\u00e9ciant les progr\u00e8s.\n\nLe 11 octobre, une jeune fille de dix-neuf ans allait prendre le chemin de son premier poste d'institutrice. D'o\u00f9 venait-elle ? O\u00f9 allait-elle ?\n\nFille d'instituteur de Marseille, sa m\u00e8re \u00e9tant simple femme d'int\u00e9rieur, elle avait subi trois mois auparavant le concours d'entr\u00e9e \u00e0 l'\u00c9cole Normale d'institutrices d'Aix-en-Provence avec succ\u00e8s gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 des efforts s\u00e9rieux n\u00e9cessit\u00e9s par le nombre imposant de concurrentes (80 pour 8 places).\n\nElle ne connaissait que la grande ville de Marseille, qui l'avait surtout marqu\u00e9e par les promenades au bord de mer et les enviables parties de p\u00eache dont son p\u00e8re \u00e9tait passionn\u00e9, et l'\u00e9mouvante amiti\u00e9 d'un chien \u00e9lev\u00e9 en partie par ses soins.\n\nL'entr\u00e9 _[sic]_ \u00e0 l'\u00c9cole Normale, l'aust\u00e8re \u00e9difice et les aust\u00e8res r\u00e8gles de la maison ne lui avaient gu\u00e8re permis de connaitre et d'appr\u00e9cier les charmes de cette petite ville de province et ses ancestrales beaut\u00e9s. Les quelques promenades hors de la ville s'accompagnaient bien de quelques relachements de discipline, mais le hasard des rencontres dangereuses des internes masculins, en particulier les Normaliens ou les terribles \u00ab Arts \u00bb, faisaient reformer les impeccables rangs dans le digne silence de jeunes filles bien surveill\u00e9es. Pour cette bonne r\u00e9putation \u00ab extra muros \u00bb, il fallait m\u00eame se m\u00e9fier de quelques promeneurs isol\u00e9s. Le Recteur de l'Acad\u00e9mie, \u00e0 une de ces promenades, n'avait-il pas entendu quelques jeunes ind\u00e9pendantes ouvrant la route au chant de \u00ab Viens, Poupoule, viens ! \u00bb. Souvenir qui avait eu sa place dans le redoutable commentaire directorial du Dimanche matin.\n\nQu'on ne pense pas d'apr\u00e8s ces s\u00e9v\u00e9rit\u00e9s, ces r\u00e8gles desu\u00e8tes, que l'enseignement fut mortel ou extincteur. La jeune fille se souvient des excellents cours de professeurs titr\u00e9s, consciencieux, qui se donnaient \u00e0 leur t\u00e2che avec tout leur savoir, toute leur \u00e2me, l'une d'elles pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9e \u00e0 toutes, toutes observant un esprit de parfaite neutralit\u00e9 (libert\u00e9 pour les offices religieux).\n\nEn dehors de cette vie pleine, mais th\u00e9orique, que connaissait-elle de la vie r\u00e9elle, de celle qui l'attendait dans un village proven\u00e7al, de la campagne o\u00f9 elle n'avait fait que quelques tr\u00e8s brefs s\u00e9jours de vacances ? Son p\u00e8re, fervent r\u00e9publicain, mettait toute sa foi \u00e0 d\u00e9fendre le nouveau r\u00e9gime qu'il avait vu naitre et prosp\u00e9rer, et les \u00e9lections, les fastueux \u00ab 14 juillet \u00bb, avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 les points d'\u00e9clat dans sa jeunesse, que l'insouciance, par ailleurs, remplissait de tant d'int\u00e9r\u00eats divers.\n\n## 168 Suivons donc la jeune fille sur la route\n\nSuivons donc la jeune fille sur la route qui la conduisait \u00e0 son poste.\n\nArriv\u00e9e \u00e0 Salon-de-Provence, par le train, avec sa valise bourr\u00e9e des objets essentiels... et d'espoir, elle trouve le relais des diligences Miramas-Lancon. La diligence est l\u00e0, \u00e0 l'arr\u00eat, entour\u00e9e par des groupes de femmes charg\u00e9es de provisions de la ville, bourriches ou paniers recouverts de torchons nets. Salon est une capitale, la capitale des huiles. On gronde, on appelle le jeune conducteur, un beau gars de Provence qui allonge \u00e0 plaisir une conversation amoureuse avec celle qui deviendra sa femme peu apr\u00e8s.\n\nEnfin, on prend place. Sans nul doute, on a d\u00e9j\u00e0 distingu\u00e9 la jeune \u00e9trang\u00e8re qui, en s'asseyant, prie le conducteur de l'arr\u00eater pr\u00e8s des Ecoles. Ce renseignement confirme l'opinion g\u00e9n\u00e9rale des voyageurs la regardant \u00e0 la d\u00e9rob\u00e9e, se parlant en chuchotant et lui permettent d'entendre ces quelques mots : \u00ab Es ben junette ! \u00bb Fi\u00e8re jusqu'alors d'entrer en fonction avec toute la dignit\u00e9 qu'elle pensait imposer par sa personne, voila son assurance, ses espoirs d\u00e9j\u00e0 entam\u00e9s !\n\nLe gros Tintin le conducteur, toujours en retard pour les retours, et pour cause !, fouette ses chevaux, sans piti\u00e9. Les vitres de la voiture fr\u00e9missent tandis qu'au-dehors, les oliviers secou\u00e9s par le vent de la Crau d\u00e9filent dans un ondoiement de branches argent\u00e9es o\u00f9 l'on croit pouvoir distinguer quelques olives.\n\nLa diligence s'arr\u00eate devant un chemin pierreux, grimpant : c'est le chemin qui m\u00e8ne le plus directement aux \u00c9coles et la jeune institutrice, charg\u00e9e de sa valise, s'engage dans la mont\u00e9e, suivie tr\u00e8s curieusement par tous les voyageurs qui descendront, eux, en plein village, sans n\u00e9gliger de r\u00e9pandre la nouvelle.\n\nA c\u00f4t\u00e9 d'une petite maison, \u00e0 l'entr\u00e9e d'une rue montante, deux b\u00e2timents jumeaux devant une tr\u00e8s grande place herbue se signalent d'eux-m\u00eames \u00e0 la jeune fille, mais tout est clos, rien n'invite \u00e0 entrer. Fort heureusement, sur le seuil de la maison voisine, une femme l'invite du regard \u00e0 s'approcher. C'est elle qui d\u00e9tient les cl\u00e9s. Elle peut donner les renseignements urgents \u00e0 la premi\u00e8re arriv\u00e9e. Visage ouvert, assur\u00e9ment sympathisante au personnel enseignant (l'ancien personnel f\u00e9minin avait \u00e9t\u00e9 renouvel\u00e9 d'office pour manquement grave \u00e0 la fonction). [ ? J.R.]\n\nVoila donc la jeune institurice gagnant sa vie en toute ind\u00e9pendance, en plein \u00e9panouissement de ses jeunes ann\u00e9es, qui va prendre possession de son logement personnel.\n\nL'appartement est au premier \u00e9tage : une chambre et une cuisine. La jeune fille ouvre d'abord la fen\u00eatre de la cuisine qui donne sur le \u00ab Champ de Mars \u00bb au nom historique. Il est tr\u00e8s vaste et, \u00e0 travers les arbres assez espac\u00e9s, encore recouverts de leur parure automnale, on distingue une statue fortement vert-de-gris\u00e9e : celle du po\u00e8te Signoret, natif de Lan\u00e7on. Juste devant la fen\u00eatre, au-del\u00e0 du chemin, la fontaine laisse couler son eau que le vent, le terrible mistral, dirige \u00e0 son gr\u00e8. Dans la cuisine, un mince placard recevra les effets personnels, car la chambre \u00e0 la tapisserie fleurie n'en poss\u00e8de pas.\n\nApr\u00e8s cette longue station \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre face au \u00ab Champ de Mars \u00bb, au beau milieu de ses rangements, la jeune institutrice sursaute en entendant le heurtoir de la porte d'entr\u00e9e, au rez-de-chauss\u00e9e. La voil\u00e0 en face d'un homme jeune encore, plut\u00f4t petit et sec, au visage assez r\u00e9solu. Qu'est-ce \u00e0 dire ? la nouvelle de bouche \u00e0 oreille avait fait son tour de village et Monsieur le Maire se pr\u00e9sente. Aussit\u00f4t s'engagent les pr\u00e9sentations et compliments d'usage : souhaits de bonne adaptation, de bonne relations, avis que la nouvelle Directrice arrivera sous peu d'un hameau voisin rejoindre la jeune adjointe.\n\nMais la visite a un autre but pressant : c'est d'avertir que les \u00e9coles doivent \u00eatre pr\u00e9sentes le lendemain m\u00eame (un samedi) \u00e0 un enterrement. La jeune fille prend l'air constern\u00e9 que l'usage commande, et demande quelques d\u00e9tails sur ce deuil. Voila textuellement ce qui lui est annonc\u00e9 :\n\n\u00ab C'est la conduite au cimeti\u00e8re d'un enfant mort-n\u00e9 qui, s'il avait v\u00e9cu, aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9l\u00e8ve de l'\u00e9cole la\u00efque. On conna\u00eet la famille, il n'y a pas \u00e0 avoir de doute sur ce point. \u00bb\n\n## 169 Notre d\u00e9ception fut s\u00e9v\u00e8re.\n\nNotre d\u00e9ception fut s\u00e9v\u00e8re. Nous ne retrouvions pas dans ces pages, \u00e9crites dans le style des \u00ab Livres de lecture \u00bb des \u00e9coles la\u00efques du d\u00e9but du si\u00e8cle, serr\u00e9es dans le corset de leurs conventions narratives, la vivacit\u00e9, la spontan\u00e9it\u00e9, le comique irr\u00e9sistible des r\u00e9cits que nous avions si souvent entendus, r\u00e9clam\u00e9s. Le r\u00e9cit de \u00ab L'affaire de l'enterrement la\u00efque de l'enfant mort-n\u00e9 \u00bb, pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 l'affrontement finalement triomphal de notre grand-m\u00e8re avec les deux all\u00e9gories complices du sectarisme et de la bigoterie, avait pourtant \u00e9t\u00e9 un de ses succ\u00e8s les mieux assur\u00e9s.\n\n(Avec l'histoire du \u00ab mistral \u00bb et celle de \u00ab _ren que par aco rest'aqui !_ \u00bb, qui ne figurent pas dans les \u00ab Souvenirs \u00bb, peut-\u00eatre parce que n'offrant aucune prise \u00e0 une interpr\u00e9tation \u00ab id\u00e9ologique \u00bb. Car il y a deux parties dans ce texte. La premi\u00e8re exalte une conception \u00ab pure \u00bb, non politique, de la la\u00efcit\u00e9. La seconde est un \u00e9loge des luttes de la \u00ab R\u00e9sistance \u00bb, en lesquelles ma grand-m\u00e8re, quarante ans plus tard s'engagea avec une intr\u00e9pidit\u00e9 aussi caract\u00e9ristique que celle dont elle avait fait preuve, \u00e0 dix-neuf ans, face au maire politicien de Lan\u00e7on-de-Provence.)\n\nElle ne cessait de raconter. Elle racontait la vie \u00e0 mesure, passant de la plus r\u00e9cente incompr\u00e9hensible disparition de ses lunettes \u00e0 des sc\u00e8nes d'enfance. (A quatre ans, juch\u00e9e par son p\u00e8re sur la table \u00e0 la fin d'un repas dominical, elle avait chant\u00e9, avec un \u00e9norme succ\u00e8s aupr\u00e8s des convives : \u00ab Va petit mousse \/ Le ventre pousse \/... \u00bb)\n\nElle renouvela souvent ce succ\u00e8s aupr\u00e8s de nous, ses petits-enfants, soixante ans plus tard, en nous montrant, au besoin par l'interpr\u00e9tation d'autres chansons tr\u00e8s anciennes, comme \u00ab Au revoir bon voyage \/ ne sois pas triste ainsi \/... \/ Donne-moi un peu de courage \/ Pour rester seule au nid \/... \u00bb que son triomphe d'alors n'avait pas \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00fb aux qualit\u00e9s musicales, rest\u00e9es toujours m\u00e9diocres, de sa voix, mais \u00e0 l'erreur qu'elle avait na\u00efvement faite sur les paroles (\u00ab Le vent te pousse \u00bb), et que les applaudissements que lui avaient prodigu\u00e9s les adultes n'\u00e9taient que moquerie.\n\n(Elle aurait pu alors, et bien des autobiographes, comme Sartre ou Leiris, ne s'en seraient certainement pas priv\u00e9s, ins\u00e9rer dans le souvenir d'enfance le moment d'une d\u00e9cision consciente et r\u00e9fl\u00e9chie, d'une ferme r\u00e9solution de revanche sur ce mauvais coup paternel : devenir, en \u00ab embrassant \u00bb la carri\u00e8re d'institutrice, celle qui poss\u00e9derait le \u00ab vrai \u00bb de la langue, sa correction, et l'inculquerait aux enfants des g\u00e9n\u00e9rations suivantes afin qu'ils ne tombent pas dans de tels pi\u00e8ges. Mais ses \u00ab performances \u00bb orales n'avaient aucunement la coloration fortement morale (je dirais que la composante \u00e9thique de l'existence \u00e9tait chez elle hypertrophi\u00e9e) qui marquait, par ailleurs, ses actions et ses jugements. Elles \u00e9taient essentiellement plaisir du conte, repos ludique. Du moins est-ce ainsi que je les ai retenues.)\n\nCe sont de tels moments que nous nous attendions \u00e0 retrouver dans ses \u00ab m\u00e9moires \u00bb, et que, devenus adultes, nous r\u00e9clamions d'elle qu'elle les fix\u00e2t (le magn\u00e9tophone, h\u00e9las !, est venu trop tard, et surtout la vid\u00e9o). Un seul autre _exemplum_ figure dans le texte que j'ai sous les yeux (et peut donner une l\u00e9g\u00e8re id\u00e9e de la version \u00ab orale \u00bb) : la visite d'un inspecteur (je note cet \u00e9loge figurant dans le \u00ab rapport d'inspection \u00bb : \u00ab Satisfaisant. Les enfants regardent leur ma\u00eetresse droit dans les yeux. \u00bb).\n\n\u00ab L'inspecteur s'avan\u00e7ant devant les premiers bancs, l'institutrice reste \u00e0 son bureau. \"Voyons, demande-t-il \u00e0 toute la classe, quel est le premier des mammif\u00e8res ?\" Diverses r\u00e9ponses fusent, comme \"le loup, le chien, le cheval, le singe\". L'institutrice aux abois fait ce qu'elle peut pour sauver la situation. H\u00e9las !, rien ne vient ! L'inspecteur, pris subitement de col\u00e8re, s'\u00e9crie alors devant les enfants terrifi\u00e9s, en se tapant sur la poitrine : \"Et moi, je ne suis pas un mammif\u00e8re ?\" Toute la classe affol\u00e9e regarde sans y croire ce mammif\u00e8re riche en poils c'est vrai, mais dont la poitrine creuse ne donne aucun espoir d'allaitement. \u00bb\n\nElle arrivait de promenade, ou d'Am\u00e9rique, avec des sacs \u00e0 provisions, ou des valises de r\u00e9cits. Nous n'en attendions pas moins. Mais le reste du temps elle \u00e9tait absorb\u00e9e, distraite, dolente, silencieuse, absente. Sur la photographie dont la description termine le chapitre de mon \u00ab avant-vie \u00bb, elle est ainsi, ma s\u0153ur sur ses genoux, ne regardant personne, dans une chaise longue. Si je mets \u00e0 part les moments de r\u00e9cit, o\u00f9 elle semble presque \u00eatre une autre, c'est bien ainsi que je la revois, et sous trois modalit\u00e9s, \u00e0 savoir :\n\n\u2013 allong\u00e9e dans une chaise longue (ou dans le \u00ab rocking-chair \u00bb de la v\u00e9randa, \u00e0 Caluire) lisant, ou tricotant, ou pianotant r\u00eaveusement sur les bras d'un fauteuil ;\n\n\u2013 allant et venant toute seule dans la grande all\u00e9e du jardin entre les m\u00fbriers, une lettre \u00e0 la main, ou bien accompagn\u00e9e de ma m\u00e8re, ou encore de sa s\u0153ur Jeanne, ou le plus souvent de sa vieille amie (encore plus petite qu'elle), Mlle Chauvin, \u00ab Taia \u00bb (c'est elle qui parle. Taia hoche la t\u00eate, dit deux ou trois mots, opine) ;\n\n\u2013 allong\u00e9e sur son lit, la t\u00eate sur l'oreiller, dans la chambre obscure, aux rideaux lourds, \u00e0 l'odeur m\u00e9dicinale, o\u00f9 nous n'entrions que rarement, et ne parlions qu'en chuchotant.\n\n## 170 Il y a eu de tr\u00e8s nombreux instituteurs dans ma famille\n\nIl y a eu de tr\u00e8s nombreux instituteurs dans ma famille : essentiellement du c\u00f4t\u00e9 de ma m\u00e8re. Certes ma grand-m\u00e8re paternelle, que je n'ai pas connue, l'\u00e9tait aussi. Mais elle \u00e9tait la seule, dans cette branche-l\u00e0 de mon arbre g\u00e9n\u00e9alogique, et dans cette g\u00e9n\u00e9ration. Mon p\u00e8re a, d'une certaine mani\u00e8re, saut\u00e9 une \u00e9tape, qui est repr\u00e9sent\u00e9e de mani\u00e8re parfaite, typique, par la g\u00e9n\u00e9ration de mes grands-parents. Car notre famille est une v\u00e9ritable friandise pour sociologues.\n\nAu d\u00e9but, comme partout, on trouve la terre : les vignes de Soli\u00e8s ou de l'arri\u00e8re-pays nissard d'un c\u00f4t\u00e9, la Provence mistralienne ou le Pi\u00e9mont (Villanova d'Asti) et la Savoie de l'autre (je n'entre pas ici dans les d\u00e9tails). Mais ensuite il se produit une convergence quasi absolue. C'est-\u00e0-dire que le choix ( ?) n'est pas fait de l'enrichissement mat\u00e9riel : ni les terres, ni le commerce, ni les affaires. De tous les c\u00f4t\u00e9s on \u00e9vite (volontairement ou non) et l'immobilit\u00e9 et la voie d\u00e9crite par Charles Cros dans son po\u00e8me _Le Propri\u00e9taire :_\n\n\u00ab N\u00e9 dans quelque trou malsain \/ D'Auvergne ou du Limousin, \/ Il b\u00eache d'abord la terre. \/ Humble, sans d\u00e9sir, sans but, \/ C'est le modeste d\u00e9but \/ Du propri\u00e9taire. (...) D'abord pour gagner son pain \/ Il vend des peaux de lapin \/ Quoique ce commerce alt\u00e8re, \/ Il ne boit pas son argent \/ Car il est intelligent \/ Le propri\u00e9taire. \/ (...) Son magot d'abord petit \/ Tout doucement s'arrondit \/ Dans le calme et le myst\u00e8re, \/ Puis, d'accord avec la loi, \/ Son or le fait presque roi, Le propri\u00e9taire \/... \u00bb\n\n(L'environnement climatique est autre que dans le po\u00e8me, mais la trajectoire n'en d\u00e9pend pas.)\n\nLe p\u00e8re de ma grand-m\u00e8re, Paul Devaux, \u00e9tait donc instituteur. Sa m\u00e8re (n\u00e9e B\u0153uf : nous aimions beaucoup lire, quand elle nous le montrait en riant, sur un extrait de naissance de Blanche Molino, qu'elle \u00e9tait n\u00e9e fille de \u00ab... Devaux, n\u00e9e B\u0153uf \u00bb), sa m\u00e8re \u00e9tait \u00ab femme d'int\u00e9rieur \u00bb, comme on a vu. C'\u00e9tait une m\u00e9nag\u00e8re et cuisini\u00e8re marseillaise, experte en \u00ab pieds et paquets \u00bb, en \u00ab alouettes sans t\u00eate \u00bb, en \u00ab cannellonis \u00bb ou \u00ab raviolis \u00bb (\u00e0 la marseillaise !) et daubes qu'elle pr\u00e9parait pour son mari, tyran gourmet et irascible (se levant la nuit, tremblante, pour v\u00e9rifier l'\u00e9tat d'une tr\u00e8s longue, tr\u00e8s exacte, tr\u00e8s douce et tr\u00e8s difficile cuisson).\n\nMais, soit qu'elle ne f\u00fbt point si enti\u00e8rement tremblante et soumise que ne le laisse \u00e0 penser la tradition, soit qu'elle le f\u00fbt tellement qu'elle incita, vertu du contre-exemple, sa descendance (peu nombreuse) \u00e0 ne pas reproduire la m\u00eame configuration, ses deux filles, Jeanne l'a\u00een\u00e9e et Blanche la cadette, atteignirent toutes deux \u00e0 l'\u00e9mancipation de l'exclusif esclavage m\u00e9nager, en devenant, comme leur p\u00e8re, des institutrices, Ma grand-tante Jeanne h\u00e9rita des qualit\u00e9s culinaires (les ambitions de ma grand-m\u00e8re, dans ce domaine, au moins dans les ann\u00e9es o\u00f9 je l'ai connue, n'allaient gu\u00e8re au-del\u00e0 des \u0153ufs \u00e0 la coque et des casseroles de lait pour le th\u00e9, que d'ailleurs elle oubliait tr\u00e8s naturellement sur le feu et qui finissaient une fois sur deux carbonis\u00e9(e)s). Apr\u00e8s une jeunesse qui fut, selon ma m\u00e8re, assez orageuse et de longues ann\u00e9es \u00ab \u00e9mancip\u00e9es \u00bb comme vendeuse aux \u00ab Nouvelles Galeries \u00bb (c'est sa jeune s\u0153ur qui l'aida \u00e0 pr\u00e9parer son entr\u00e9e dans l'enseignement public), elle \u00e9pousa un instituteur aimant le calme, Pierre Thabot. Ils exerc\u00e8rent, v\u00e9curent, retrait\u00e8rent et moururent \u00e0 Marseille. Et ils n'eurent point d'enfants.\n\nCe qui n'\u00e9tait, pour sa s\u0153ur, qu'une solution douillette (Oncle Pierre \u00e9tait tout le contraire d'un tyran domestique) fut pour ma grand-m\u00e8re un choix autant th\u00e9orique, id\u00e9ologique que personnel, la forme \u00ab 1900 \u00bb d'un f\u00e9minisme qui ne se d\u00e9mentit jamais. Elle se maria (avec le fr\u00e8re d'une de ses camarades d'\u00c9cole normale), fut institutrice-adjointe, puis institutrice tout court, \u00e0 Lan\u00e7on, puis \u00e0 Fuveau o\u00f9 est n\u00e9e ma m\u00e8re, puis directrice d'\u00e9cole (\u00e0 Digne (d\u00e9partement des Basses-Alpes, comme on disait en ce temps-l\u00e0)). Elle \u00e9leva quatre enfants, deux gar\u00e7ons (mes oncles Maurice et Frantz) et deux filles (ma m\u00e8re Ad\u00e8le Suzette, n\u00e9e en avril 1907 et la benjamine, Ren\u00e9e, n\u00e9e nettement plus tard, pendant la Grande Guerre, apr\u00e8s la blessure salvatrice de mon grand-p\u00e8re, en 1916).\n\nJe viens d'\u00e9crire, et tout naturellement, sans y penser, \u00ab elle \u00e9leva \u00bb. Tout se passe en effet comme si le r\u00e9cit familial avait tendu \u00e0 translater tr\u00e8s l\u00e9g\u00e8rement et peu \u00e0 peu mon grand-p\u00e8re, \u00e0 le placer dans une position \u00ab \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 \u00bb, la responsabilit\u00e9 motrice des \u00e9v\u00e9nements \u00e9tant devenue (dans tous les domaines autres que l'\u00e9conomique, en particulier par l'oubli des am\u00e9liorations financi\u00e8res amen\u00e9es par la r\u00e9ussite de mon grand-p\u00e8re au concours d'inspecteur primaire) l'apanage exclusif de ma grand-m\u00e8re. Cet \u00e9clairage assez particulier du pass\u00e9, enti\u00e8rement adopt\u00e9 par ma m\u00e8re (je ne me prononce pas sur sa v\u00e9rit\u00e9, qui m'\u00e9chappe), je le retrouve, presque caricaturalement exprim\u00e9, dans le texte des \u00ab Souvenirs \u00bb (je souligne \u00e0 cet effet, dans ce nouvel extrait, l'emploi significatif des pronoms) :\n\n\u00ab... la vie de la m\u00e8re enseignante est illumin\u00e9e par la joie qu'une autorisation sp\u00e9ciale lui a \u00e9t\u00e9 donn\u00e9e : celle de pouvoir mettre au milieu d'une classe nombreuse de filles et, l'un apr\u00e8s l'autre, ses deux a\u00een\u00e9s, au plaisir naturel et peut-\u00eatre atavique s'ajoutant l'\u00e9lan qui parfait aupr\u00e8s d'eux son r\u00f4le d'\u00e9ducatrice. C'est cette pr\u00e9sence si ch\u00e8re qui anime et \u00e9claire souvent la le\u00e7on (...).\n\nA partir de ce moment la vie des enfants a pris une telle place dans l'existence quotidienne qu'elle porte naturellement \u00e0 l'emploi de nous, moi rempla\u00e7ant l'impersonnel. La carri\u00e8re enseignante nous emmenant \u00e0 Digne par le nouveau titre du p\u00e8re, me porte avec effroi \u00e0 la Direction d'une \u00c9cole maternelle \u00e0 Digne (Basses-Alpes) (...). \u00bb\n\n## 171 Mon arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re Robert Molino fut chef de gare \u00e0 Poli\u00e9na.\n\nMon arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re Robert Hyacinthe Molino (\u00ab n\u00e9 en 1840 (en fait 1835), mort en 1916 \u00bb, a \u00e9crit ma grand-m\u00e8re \u00e0 l'arri\u00e8re de son portrait en pied, barbe et casquette dor\u00e9e conserv\u00e9 dans le grand carton \u00e0 dessins plac\u00e9 \u00e0 droite de la commode de ma chambre du Minervois, entre la commode et le lit) fut chef de gare \u00e0 Poli\u00e9na. Les noix, m'a-t-on appris dans mon enfance, y sont les meilleures du monde. (Son p\u00e8re \u00e0 lui, mon arri\u00e8re-arri\u00e8re-grand-p\u00e8re Joseph (Giuseppe) Molino, carabinier puis voiturier, avait abandonn\u00e9 Villanova d'Asti, au Pi\u00e9mont, et franchi la fronti\u00e8re avec la Savoie (pas encore fran\u00e7aise) pour \u00e9pouser une demoiselle du village des Marches, mon arri\u00e8re-arri\u00e8re-grand-m\u00e8re Maurizia Bal, \u00ab ancienne institutrice qui faisait des journ\u00e9es \u00bb, une \u00ab marcherue \u00bb, donc.)\n\nC'est de la mairie des Marches (Savoie) que vient le plus ancien document familial en ma possession (je n'en ai en fait qu'une copie plus tardive) :\n\nExtrait de registres de l'\u00e9tat civil\n\nde la commune des Marches pour l'an 1839\n\nL'an mil huit cent trente-neuf et le douze du mois de septembre \u00e0 onze heures du matin en la paroisse des Marches, commune des Marches, a \u00e9t\u00e9 pr\u00e9sent\u00e9 \u00e0 l'\u00c9glise un enfant du sexe f\u00e9minin, n\u00e9e le onze septembre \u00e0 cinq heures apr\u00e8s midi en cette paroisse, fille de Maurice Bal, cultivateur de profession, demeurant aux Marches, et de Marguerite Ferreros, son \u00e9pouse en l\u00e9gitime mariage,______________________________\n\nL'enfant a \u00e9t\u00e9 baptis\u00e9 par moi, recteur soussign\u00e9, et a re\u00e7u le nom de Marie____________________________________________________\n\nOnt \u00e9t\u00e9 parrain Claude Ferreros, tuilier de profession demeurant aux Marches et marraine P\u00e9ronne Bal, ouvri\u00e8re, demeurant aux Marches.\n\nMarie Bal, fille de Maurice Bal (n\u00e9 en 1812, date extr\u00eame possible de cette remont\u00e9e g\u00e9n\u00e9alogique dans le temps, sans recours \u00e0 des recherches d'archives) et de Marguerite Ferreros (qui \u00e9tait sage-femme), ayant plus tard \u00e9pous\u00e9 son cousin Robert Hyacinthe Molino, fils de Giuseppe Molino et de Maurizia Bal, est mon arri\u00e8re-grand-m\u00e8re. Elle avait des cheveux tr\u00e8s longs, que son mari seul pouvait peigner.\n\nDans leur tr\u00e8s nombreuse famille, il y eut principalement des filles, qui toutes, sans exception (sauf la jumelle de mon grand-p\u00e8re, morte \u00e0 trois mois de coqueluche), devinrent institutrices. Toutes, sauf une, rest\u00e8rent c\u00e9libataires. Toutes, sauf une (la m\u00eame, Louise, \u00e9pouse Glodas) moururent de \u00ab consomption \u00bb (traduire : tuberculose). Jos\u00e9phine mourut la premi\u00e8re, \u00e0 dix-neuf ans, en 1900. Ad\u00e8le soigna Jos\u00e9phine, et en mourut \u00e0 son tour. Enfin Marie, l'a\u00een\u00e9e, succomba.\n\nEffet apparemment b\u00e9n\u00e9fique du mariage, les seuls survivants de cette h\u00e9catombe typiquement dix-neuvi\u00e9miste, furent les deux enfants mari\u00e9s : le r\u00f4le de garde-malade \u00e9tait impossible \u00e0 l'un, charg\u00e9 de famille ; et l'autre, ma grand-tante Louise, le refusa (par \u00ab \u00e9go\u00efsme \u00bb, selon la tradition familiale, volontiers spartiate et sacrificielle). (Mon grand-p\u00e8re franchit aussi l'obstacle de la guerre, avec une blessure relativement b\u00e9nigne \u00e0 la jambe en 1915, aggrav\u00e9e toutefois de la perte de sa premi\u00e8re montre et de son premier stylo.)\n\nLa menace morbide a pes\u00e9 de tout son poids sur l'enfance de ma m\u00e8re. C'\u00e9tait une sorte de mal\u00e9diction, dont l'origine \u00e9tait jug\u00e9e de nature h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire, cr\u00e9ant chez les g\u00e9n\u00e9rations successives une pr\u00e9disposition \u00e0 la maladie, une \u00ab fragilit\u00e9 de constitution \u00bb qui ne pouvait \u00eatre combattue que par la vigilance et l'hygi\u00e8ne (de propret\u00e9 comme de r\u00e9gime : une v\u00e9ritable passion la\u00efque), dont les pr\u00e9ceptes (pris dans la \u00ab Bible \u00bb des instituteurs du temps, les \u0153uvres \u00e0 la fois hippocratiques et \u00ab progressistes \u00bb du m\u00e9decin et r\u00e9publicain Raspail) furent suivis farouchement par mon grand-p\u00e8re jusqu'\u00e0 sa mort, dans sa quatre-vingt-onzi\u00e8me ann\u00e9e, aussi strictement que les r\u00e8gles de l'orthographe et de la syntaxe dite \u00ab logique \u00bb.\n\nMa grand-m\u00e8re demeura persuad\u00e9e toute sa vie du fait que ses enfants n'avaient surv\u00e9cu que par miracle. (Ses deux filles pourtant, ma m\u00e8re et ma tante, ont aujourd'hui respectivement 84 et 75 ans. Les deux a\u00een\u00e9s sont morts pr\u00e9matur\u00e9ment, mais de mani\u00e8re accidentelle.) Elle \u00e9crit ainsi, dans le texte de 1963 :\n\n\u00ab L'installation \u00e0 Marseille est marqu\u00e9e h\u00e9las ! par les tristes effets d'une \u00e9pid\u00e9mie de rougeole meurtri\u00e8re qui compromet gravement la sant\u00e9 de nos enfants, ce qui ajoute au travail quotidien, aux soucis du metier une angoisse chronique qui a jet\u00e9 sur la vie de famille, de la m\u00e8re surtout (c'est moi qui souligne) un voile attristant sa vie enti\u00e8re. \u00bb\n\nElle fut elle-m\u00eame, surtout apr\u00e8s 1938 (ann\u00e9e de l'accident mortel de mon oncle Frantz), une invalide chronique, dont les souffrances, physiquement bien r\u00e9elles selon la m\u00e9decine, \u00e9taient certainement redoubl\u00e9es par cet \u00e9tat de deuil permanent dont elle ne ressortit jamais.\n\n## 172 la dissym\u00e9trie frappante entre les r\u00e9actions de mes grands-parents devant les maladies\n\nC'est aussi que la dissym\u00e9trie frappante entre les r\u00e9actions de mes grands-parents devant les maladies ne tenait pas vraiment \u00e0 une plus grande r\u00e9ceptivit\u00e9 de ma grand-m\u00e8re \u00e0 l'appel des explications irrationnelles. Leur formation intellectuelle, positiviste, \u00e9tait semblable, leurs id\u00e9es g\u00e9n\u00e9rales tr\u00e8s proches. Mais le spectre de la fatalit\u00e9 morbide h\u00e9r\u00e9ditaire qui prenait pour lui le visage de la \u00ab consomption \u00bb qui avait frapp\u00e9 ses s\u0153urs avait pour elle un autre visage, plus obscur, plus terrible, plus cach\u00e9, le visage d'une mal\u00e9diction morale.\n\nCe n'est en effet qu'au moment des fian\u00e7ailles de ma m\u00e8re que ma grand-m\u00e8re se r\u00e9signa, par honn\u00eatet\u00e9, \u00e0 l'aveu d'un terrible secret, une honte qui de plus \u00e9tait une honte qu'elle consid\u00e9rait comme dangereuse : \u00e0 savoir que son p\u00e8re \u00e0 elle avait \u00e9t\u00e9 syphilitique (communiquant, conjugalement, un charmant _tab\u00e8s_ (maladie d'origine syphilitique, caract\u00e9ris\u00e9e notamment par une scl\u00e9rose des cordons post\u00e9rieurs de la moelle \u00e9pini\u00e8re, par des troubles de la motilit\u00e9 et l'abolition des r\u00e9flexes, comme dit le \u00ab petit Robert \u00bb) \u00e0 sa femme, mon arri\u00e8re-grand-m\u00e8re B\u0153uf, qui avait d\u00e9j\u00e0 eu le bonheur insigne d'\u00eatre fille d'une fille-m\u00e8re (le p\u00e8re \u00e9tait un \u00ab fils de famille \u00bb de Lan\u00e7on-Provence pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment, o\u00f9 ma grand-m\u00e8re ensuite, comme institutrice-adjointe, d\u00e9buta). (Je remarque d'ailleurs que, tout en plaisantant des craintes (mi-m\u00e9dicales mi-morales) de sa m\u00e8re, la mienne ne m'a \u00ab r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9 \u00bb ce fait que tr\u00e8s tardivement, et je ne sais m\u00eame pas si elle en a jamais parl\u00e9 \u00e0 mon fr\u00e8re et \u00e0 ma s\u0153ur)). Il est certain que ces craintes renforc\u00e8rent, dans la conduite de sa strat\u00e9gie \u00e9ducative, la dimension \u00e9thique autant que la prudence hygi\u00e9nique.\n\nElle soumit ses quatre enfants \u00e0 un programme d'\u00e9tudes s\u00e9v\u00e8re, qu'ils absorb\u00e8rent apparemment sans difficult\u00e9s. (J'adopte implicitement ici malgr\u00e9 mes doutes, la description familialement traditionnelle qui lui accorde la responsabilit\u00e9 de l'impulsion. Mon grand-p\u00e8re y participa certainement, mais son r\u00f4le est consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme ayant \u00e9t\u00e9 plus \u00ab technique \u00bb, et plus intermittent, ne serait-ce qu'\u00e0 cause de la guerre, puis des \u00ab tourn\u00e9es \u00bb d'inspection qui plus tard l'amen\u00e8rent souvent assez loin.)\n\nEt elle con\u00e7ut alors pour eux une ambition toute nouvelle, des buts et des horizons dont n'auraient m\u00eame pas eu l'id\u00e9e les g\u00e9n\u00e9rations pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes : elle avait \u00e9t\u00e9 institutrice, donc enseignante du primaire mais (\u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence de sa s\u0153ur a\u00een\u00e9e) en passant par la voie la plus difficile, la plus \u00ab \u00e9lev\u00e9e \u00bb, celle de l'\u00c9cole normale : ses enfants seraient professeurs, en passant par la voie la plus difficile, la plus \u00ab \u00e9lev\u00e9e \u00bb : celle de l'\u00c9cole normale sup\u00e9rieure. (Je mets, dans les deux cas, \u00ab \u00e9lev\u00e9e \u00bb entre guillemets car il ne s'agissait l\u00e0 pour elle que d'une hi\u00e9rarchie intellectuelle, li\u00e9e \u00e0 la difficult\u00e9 des \u00e9tudes et \u00e0 leur complexit\u00e9. L'\u00ab \u00e9l\u00e9vation \u00bb sociale qui en r\u00e9sulterait \u00e9ventuellement \u00e9tait \u00e0 ses yeux r\u00e9elle, estimable mais, il me semble, secondaire (elle ne la voyait cependant pas du tout ce qu'elle est apparue ensuite : illusoire, non seulement \u00e9conomiquement mais aussi symboliquement).)\n\nJe ne sais si ce \u00ab programme \u00bb fut con\u00e7u d'embl\u00e9e dans toute son ampleur. Mes oncles Maurice et Frantz \u00e9taient sans aucun doute des \u00e9l\u00e8ves brillants et leurs professeurs les encourag\u00e8rent vraisemblablement \u00e0 continuer en \u00ab kh\u00e2gne \u00bb, classe de pr\u00e9paration au concours de l'\u00c9cole normale de la rue d'Ulm, apr\u00e8s le baccalaur\u00e9at. Mais je crois qu'on peut sans risque d'erreur accorder \u00e0 ma grand-m\u00e8re, \u00e0 son f\u00e9minisme convaincu, l'id\u00e9e alors extr\u00eamement originale de permettre \u00e0 sa fille a\u00een\u00e9e (et plus tard, tout naturellement, aussi \u00e0 sa benjamine), d'en faire autant (et de viser non pas l'\u00e9cole de S\u00e8vres, r\u00e9serv\u00e9e aux filles, mais de rivaliser, sur leur propre terrain, avec les gar\u00e7ons). Envoyer tous ses enfants \u00e0 la \u00ab Rue d'Ulm \u00bb, tel fut son projet. Elle le con\u00e7ut comme son \u0153uvre, sa cr\u00e9ation. Elle y parvint presque enti\u00e8rement et en fut, ensuite, extr\u00eamement fi\u00e8re (elle me l'a dit, non sans attirer mon attention sur le risque de d\u00e9cadence familiale puisque deux seulement de ses petits-enfants sont parvenus \u00e0 ce m\u00eame r\u00e9sultat). (Et, je le crois, elle ressentit les deux trag\u00e9dies qui la frapp\u00e8rent \u00e0 quelques ann\u00e9es d'intervalle comme un retour de la fatalit\u00e9 ancestrale, comme une sorte de vengeance de la mort.)\n\nOn a peine \u00e0 imaginer \u00e0 quel point il \u00e9tait inhabituel pour une jeune fille, \u00e0 Digne, au d\u00e9but des ann\u00e9es vingt, de pr\u00e9tendre se pr\u00e9senter au baccalaur\u00e9at. Ma m\u00e8re y fut une des premi\u00e8res, en d\u00e9pit de toutes les r\u00e9ticences int\u00e9rieures et institutionnelles. Elle b\u00e9n\u00e9ficia des le\u00e7ons et de l'exemple de ses fr\u00e8res, ses proches a\u00een\u00e9s. Il est clair qu'elle les aimait et admirait \u00e9perdument. Elle se consid\u00e9rait, c'est clair aussi, comme intrins\u00e8quement inf\u00e9rieure \u00e0 eux. (Bien s\u00fbr, ils \u00e9taient ses a\u00een\u00e9s, et ils \u00e9taient loin d'\u00eatre idiots, ni laids, ni timides. Et elle se consid\u00e9rait b\u00eate, pas tr\u00e8s jolie et sans audace.)\n\nMais ce n'est pas la seule raison : l'id\u00e9e d'\u00e9galit\u00e9 des sexes a encore bien du chemin \u00e0 parcourir avant d'\u00eatre int\u00e9rieurement naturelle. Et il est non moins clair en particulier que ma grand-m\u00e8re, toute f\u00e9ministe qu'elle f\u00fbt, avait beaucoup, beaucoup d'amour et d'admiration pour ses fils (elle avait certes de l'amour pour ses filles, mais peut-\u00eatre moins d'admiration).\n\nCependant ce sentiment tr\u00e8s aigu de son inf\u00e9riorit\u00e9 n'eut pas, sur ma m\u00e8re, d'effet paralysant (il me semble qu'elle a toujours \u00e9t\u00e9 soutenue, comme par en dessous dirais-je, par le curieux m\u00e9lange d'un d\u00e9sir de bien faire et de ce que je ne saurais autrement caract\u00e9riser que comme un orgueil d'avoir raison). Elle fut re\u00e7ue au baccalaur\u00e9at, alla en \u00ab hypokh\u00e2gne \u00bb (surnom traditionnel de la classe de \u00ab Premi\u00e8re Sup\u00e9rieure \u00bb, premi\u00e8re ann\u00e9e des \u00ab pr\u00e9parations \u00bb litt\u00e9raires) \u00e0 Marseille puis en \u00ab kh\u00e2gne \u00bb \u00e0 Lyon, fut pr\u00e9par\u00e9e dans la maison m\u00eame de la rue de l'Orangerie au concours par ses fr\u00e8res, et fut re\u00e7ue, apr\u00e8s un premier \u00e9chec, comme je l'ai dit ailleurs, \u00e0 la Rue d'Ulm.\n\nMa tante Ren\u00e9e aurait sans doute pu suivre le m\u00eame chemin. Elle fut en effet proche d'y parvenir (obtenant, comme c'\u00e9tait la r\u00e8gle pour les premiers \u00ab coll\u00e9s \u00bb \u00e0 l'oral, une \u00ab bourse de licence \u00bb). Mais elle ne pers\u00e9v\u00e9ra pas. Il est vrai que l'\u00e9poque (c'\u00e9tait peu avant 1939) ne s'y pr\u00eatait plus gu\u00e8re.\n\n## 173 De leur maison de Caluire (qui n'\u00e9tait encore que le 21 _bis_ de la rue de l'Orangerie,\n\nDe leur maison de Caluire (qui n'\u00e9tait encore que le 21 _bis_ de la rue de l'Orangerie, la \u00ab conqu\u00eate \u00bb du 21 n'eut lieu qu'un peu apr\u00e8s ma naissance, et mon grand-p\u00e8re avait alors pris sa retraite (\u00e0 cinquante-cinq ans, privil\u00e8ge des \u00ab actifs \u00bb, avantage des instituteurs sur les professeurs qui indignait mon p\u00e8re)), l'inspecteur Molino partait visiter sa \u00ab circonscription \u00bb de l'Is\u00e8re, avec sa canne (sa blessure de guerre le faisait boiter l\u00e9g\u00e8rement) et son chapeau, se levant toujours assez t\u00f4t, m\u00eame en hiver, pour atteindre par surprise les \u00e9coles de montagne \u00e0 l'heure de l'ouverture des classes, huit heures pendant toute la dur\u00e9e de la Troisi\u00e8me R\u00e9publique, par tous les temps. Il ne le faisait pas par m\u00e9chancet\u00e9, pour d\u00e9sar\u00e7onner ses \u00ab administr\u00e9s \u00bb (il \u00e9tait strict, mais indulgent), mais par conviction absolue des vertus p\u00e9dagogiques de l'exemple (pas plus de \u00ab grasse matin\u00e9e \u00bb pour lui que pour les \u00ab ma\u00eetres \u00bb) et de la ponctualit\u00e9.\n\nMa grand-m\u00e8re, elle, avec l'esprit d'entreprise qui la caract\u00e9risait s'\u00e9tait comme on dirait aujourd'hui \u00ab reconvertie dans le priv\u00e9 \u00bb. Elle s'en explique ainsi dans son \u00ab m\u00e9moire \u00bb : \u00ab C'est \u00e0 Lyon que, soucieuse de mes devoirs aupr\u00e8s de nos adolescents devenus \u00e9tudiants avanc\u00e9s, j'ai cru devoir quitter l'enseignement d'\u00c9tat et, par go\u00fbt autant que par des n\u00e9cessit\u00e9s financi\u00e8res, faire des redressements scolaires ce qui m'a fait mesurer les responsabilit\u00e9s des parents trop \u00e9trangers \u00e0 leur t\u00e2che et mesurer aussi le pourcentage important des \u00e9l\u00e8ves qui, soutenus ou repris \u00e0 temps, peuvent arriver \u00e0 faire tr\u00e8s bonne figure dans leur classe, quelques-uns aussi bien que mes propres enfants qui, l\u00e0 aussi, \u00e9taient mon soutien et m'\u00e9levaient avec eux. \u00bb\n\nJe me suis parfois demand\u00e9, en pr\u00e9sence de quelques lignes manuscrites d'une illisibilit\u00e9 absolue, comment grand-maman (nous disions \u00ab grand-maman \u00bb et \u00ab grand-papa \u00bb, ce qui n'a rien d'original, mais nos cousins disaient \u00ab bonne-maman \u00bb et \u00ab bon-papa \u00bb, chaque famille s'assurant ainsi, au moins par l'onomastique, sa paire de grands-parents en toute propri\u00e9t\u00e9, sans partage), comment donc grand-maman avait pu apprendre \u00e0 \u00e9crire \u00e0 de jeunes enfants.\n\nSans doute s'agissait-il chez elle d'une d\u00e9t\u00e9rioration tardive, progressive, pr\u00e9cipit\u00e9e par l'\u00e2ge et le retrait de l'enseignement actif polyvalent (je ne vois pas sans cela comment elle aurait pu, si elle avait toujours calligraphi\u00e9 aussi mal, passer un concours comme celui de l'\u00c9cole normale d'instituteurs, et faire carri\u00e8re dans cet \u00ab ordre monastique la\u00efque \u00bb qu'\u00e9tait l'Enseignement primaire o\u00f9 la bonne formation des signes sur le papier \u00e9tait une composante indispensable de la vocation).\n\nIl me semble aussi qu'avec les ann\u00e9es s'\u00e9tait renforc\u00e9, sur ce point \u00e9galement, le contraste avec son mari, qui \u00e9tait, lui, un extraordinaire ma\u00eetre d'\u00e9criture la\u00efque et r\u00e9publicaine. (J'imagine avec quels haussements d'\u00e9paules exasp\u00e9r\u00e9s il devait recevoir et parcourir dans sa chambre du deuxi\u00e8me \u00e9tage, comme cela se produisait souvent \u00e0 la suite d'une de leurs pol\u00e9miques, disputes m\u00eame, une missive justificative et ind\u00e9chiffrable de grand-maman, la blessure esth\u00e9tique aggravant en lui le sentiment d'une incompatibilit\u00e9 logique entre leurs arguments.)\n\nAvec le soin millim\u00e9trique du menuisier, d'une plume infiniment soigneuse et pr\u00e9cise, aux encres vari\u00e9es (noires, rouges, vertes, bleues, violettes), il confectionnait dans son atelier (son bureau parfaitement rang\u00e9, dont les tiroirs \u00e9taient de v\u00e9ritables coffres-forts de crayons, de buvards, de plumes et plumiers, de papiers, carnets, et enveloppes) de petits cahiers d'\u00e9criture-lecture originaux, gradu\u00e9s selon les difficult\u00e9s de la graphie et de la prononciation, en triple version (majuscules, minuscules droites et pench\u00e9es), destin\u00e9s (et individualis\u00e9s) aux enfants confi\u00e9s \u00e0 ses soins, et en premier lieu \u00e0 ses petits-enfants.\n\nNous avons tous, je crois, appris \u00e0 lire selon ces \u00ab mod\u00e8les \u00bb pr\u00e9-oulipiens, o\u00f9 chaque lettre et chaque son avait droit tour \u00e0 tour \u00e0 un traitement de faveur, un texte lui assurant une pr\u00e9\u00e9minence quantitative (le nombre des mots le contenant) et qualitative (le choix d'une couleur sp\u00e9ciale, \u00e0 lui alors r\u00e9serv\u00e9e) :\n\n\u00ab TOTO PORTE LE POT. TOTO TOUCHE LE CHOU.\n\nToto porte le pot. Toto touche le chou.\n\n _Toto porte le pot. Toto touche le chou_.\n\nLili finit de lire le livre.\n\nJaja le chat marcha dans le plat... \u00bb\n\n(Il vint ainsi encore (ce devait \u00eatre en 1964, pas tr\u00e8s longtemps avant sa mort, il avait quatre-vingt-sept ans !) rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, proposer des le\u00e7ons d'\u00e9criture \u00e0 son arri\u00e8re-petite-fille Laurence, ma fille (qui, elle, avait tout juste quatre ans). Il avait, comme \u00e0 son habitude, b\u00e2ti un \u00ab livre d'\u00e9criture \u00bb sp\u00e9cialement pour elle, mais sa main n'\u00e9tait plus aussi s\u00fbre, son attention et son autorit\u00e9 suffisantes (je crois que Laurence (elle me l'a dit) avait un peu peur de ce tr\u00e8s vieil homme), et il dut renoncer, \u00e0 notre grande g\u00eane et tristesse, apr\u00e8s quelques tentatives infructueuses.)\n\nJe ne lui avais, je le crains, moi-m\u00eame pas fait grand honneur, n'ayant jamais r\u00e9ussi \u00e0 ma\u00eetriser encres, encriers ni plumes (ni plus tard les stylos, pour le maniement desquels j'\u00e9tais d'une maladresse insigne : ils se r\u00e9pandaient sur mes doigts, dans mes poches, sur les papiers, d'une mani\u00e8re chaque fois pour moi plus surprenante, impr\u00e9vue, exasp\u00e9rante. C'est l'arriv\u00e9e du \u00ab stylo-bille \u00bb, puis, beaucoup plus tard, des \u00ab feutres \u00bb qui m'a sauv\u00e9 de ce qui fut, pendant toute ma scolarit\u00e9, un supplice. Alors seulement, avant que je me mette \u00e0 la machine \u00e0 \u00e9crire, puis au Macintosh, j'ai fait, consciemment, et consciemment en son honneur, \u00e0 titre de r\u00e9paration, de grands efforts manuscrits. Mais aujourd'hui, de nouveau, mon \u00e9criture est redevenue comme aux premiers temps, dans mes cahiers, illisible).\n\n## 174 La maison du 21, o\u00f9 j'arrivai enfin apr\u00e8s ma longue errance\n\nLa maison du 21, o\u00f9 j'arrivai enfin apr\u00e8s ma longue errance depuis la gare Perrache en cet \u00e9t\u00e9 de 1941, je la vois presque mieux, plus distinctement bien que moins violemment pr\u00e9sente que celle de la rue d'Assas. Non pas r\u00e9ellement mieux, mais plus proche : c'est que mes s\u00e9jours s'y \u00e9tendent sur plus de trente ans. Elle n'a \u00e9t\u00e9 abandonn\u00e9e, vendue qu'\u00e0 la mort de mon grand-p\u00e8re, en 1967. (Comme je la regrette ! m\u00eame si elle avait \u00e9t\u00e9 d\u00e9j\u00e0 amput\u00e9e de l'\u00e9norme jardin, au d\u00e9sespoir, que je comprends, de ma grand-m\u00e8re.)\n\nJe l'ai donc vue pour la premi\u00e8re fois de mon berceau (si tant est que je percevais un objet de telles dimensions), en tout cas enfant, d'ann\u00e9e en ann\u00e9e, de vacances en vacances, puis dans l'adolescence, et quand j'y ai p\u00e9n\u00e9tr\u00e9 pour la derni\u00e8re fois j'avais plus de trente ans. (Je suis pass\u00e9 avec Marie, il y a cinq ans, dans la rue de l'Orangerie. La maison \u00e9tait toujours l\u00e0, superficiellement au moins inalt\u00e9r\u00e9e.)\n\nCela fait d'elle, au souvenir, la projection d'un solide non seulement quadridimensionnel, en mouvement temporel, mais \u00e0 la topologie bizarre : car plusieurs \u00ab m\u00e9triques \u00bb simultan\u00e9es contractent ou distendent les m\u00eames fragments d'espace, de tr\u00e8s nombreuses discontinuit\u00e9s le fracturent et la multiplicit\u00e9 des points de regard cr\u00e9e une g\u00e9om\u00e9trie aupr\u00e8s de laquelle une repr\u00e9sentation picturale cubiste appara\u00eetrait exag\u00e9r\u00e9ment \u00ab naturaliste \u00bb. (Au temps de mes ambitions romanesques, j'avais tent\u00e9 de m'en construire, pour y faire \u00e9voluer mes personnages, un mod\u00e8le appuy\u00e9 sur la th\u00e9orie des \u00ab immeubles \u00bb de Tits. Je le nommai \u00ab l'appartement de Coxeter \u00bb (branche un ; chap. 5, \u00a7 83).)\n\nContre la fa\u00e7ade, face au tertre rocailleux, sur un terrain ciment\u00e9, limit\u00e9 \u00e0 gauche par la terre du jardin commen\u00e7ant, \u00e0 droite par le portail et la petite porte, vers l'arri\u00e8re par le rocher, on jouait \u00e0 notre version particuli\u00e8re d'un \u00ab jeu de paume \u00bb que nous appelions \u00ab pelote basque \u00bb : une balle de tennis rebondissait sur le mur (qui tenait lieu de filet) (elle devait le frapper \u00e0 une hauteur miminale marqu\u00e9e par une division naturelle dans le rev\u00eatement du mur, ne pas bondir ensuite hors du terrain, limit\u00e9 en arri\u00e8re par une ligne parall\u00e8le au mur trac\u00e9e, sillon, dans le ciment), renvoy\u00e9e de la paume de la main alternativement par chacun des deux joueurs. **(Je sens la chaleur des chocs dans le creux de la main, je vois la peau,** **us\u00e9e, grise, d'une balle.)** On comptait, comme au tennis, comme mon p\u00e8re (admirateur des \u00ab trois mousquetaires \u00bb, Cochet, Lacoste et Borotra, de Tilden et Suzanne Lenglen) m'avait appris \u00e0 la faire : \u00ab 2-0 \u00bb, \u00ab 6-3 \u00bb \u00ab 40-15 \u00bb, \u00ab avantage ! \u00bb \u00ab avantage d\u00e9truit ! \u00bb \u00ab jeu ! \u00bb \u00ab balle de set ! \u00bb, \u00ab deuxi\u00e8me balle de match ! \u00bb...\n\nQuelque chose me frappe quand j'entre par la porte \u00e0 droite, \u00e0 droite de la toute petite fen\u00eatre du \u00ab cabinet \u00bb du rez-de-chauss\u00e9e, quand je \u00ab simule \u00bb une entr\u00e9e dans le vestibule, vers la cuisine en face, l'escalier aux marches cir\u00e9es \u00e0 droite apr\u00e8s la salle de bains, le grand bahut \u00e0 linge de table et vaisselle \u00e0 gauche de la porte de la cuisine, quand je m'autorise \u00e0 p\u00e9n\u00e9trer cette configuration si famili\u00e8re, si charg\u00e9e de ce que je serais tent\u00e9 de d\u00e9signer comme une odeur de p\u00e9nombre (rien n'y ouvre directement sur les lumi\u00e8res du jour ext\u00e9rieur) : tout ce que je vois, je le vois de tr\u00e8s bas, comme si j'avan\u00e7ais assis, ou \u00e0 genoux et sur les mains, ou rampant. J'avance dans la couche inf\u00e9rieure de cet espace, \u00e0 moins d'un m\u00e8tre au-dessus du sol.\n\nJe ne suis pas tent\u00e9 d'en conclure trop rapidement \u00e0 une ant\u00e9riorit\u00e9 pure de ma vision, \u00e0 un regard d'extr\u00eame ou de petite enfance. Cependant ma m\u00e9moire privil\u00e9gie ind\u00e9niablement une fa\u00e7on de me situer dans ces lieux qui serait tr\u00e8s peu naturelle s'il s'agissait d'une vision adulte, ou m\u00eame adolescente.\n\nLa ligne horizontale sur le mur qui servait de fronti\u00e8re entre le l\u00e9gal et l'ill\u00e9gal du jeu de paume \u00e9tait d\u00e9j\u00e0 excessivement haute, selon les m\u00eames crit\u00e8res (je peux m'en rendre compte car je poss\u00e8de, aussi, quoique moins naturellement, comme second choix, dirais-je, l'autre mani\u00e8re de voir, selon mes dimensions pr\u00e9sentes, mes yeux \u00e9tant \u00e0 une distance du sol qui n'a plus vari\u00e9 depuis, en gros, 1950).\n\nMais quand j'entre dans la maison, dans cette partie-l\u00e0 de la maison (je m'interdis pour le moment d'aller ailleurs), je \u00ab tombe \u00bb encore plus bas. Ce n'est pas, l\u00e0 encore, comme sur la terrasse, que je ne puisse y voir, aussi, \u00e0 hauteur raisonnable (c'est-\u00e0-dire comme je vois toutes choses, au pr\u00e9sent), mais d'une part ce n'est pas ainsi que je me place d'abord, sans r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir, d'autre part \u00ab debout \u00bb ou grandi je vois moins, moins nettement, ou encore (l'effet est le m\u00eame) je vois avec plus d'indiff\u00e9rence.\n\nIl me semble raisonnable de penser, dans ces conditions, que je poss\u00e8de l\u00e0 quelque chose comme la preuve, indirecte, d'une persistance g\u00e9om\u00e9trique de mon avant-vie, au sens o\u00f9 j'ai d\u00e9fini, ant\u00e9rieurement, cette expression. Mais je n'en retire qu'une satisfaction plut\u00f4t mod\u00e9r\u00e9e.\n\n## 175 Si famili\u00e8re odeur de p\u00e9nombre qu'elle se m\u00eale de cire,\n\n **Si famili\u00e8re odeur de p\u00e9nombre qu'elle se m\u00eale de cire, de la cire des premi\u00e8res marches, immenses, de l'escalier, comme si les carreaux de c\u00e9ramique fra\u00eeche du sol \u00e9taient cir\u00e9s eux-m\u00eames, cir\u00e9s, brillants et lisses, o\u00f9 glisser les pieds nus s'imbibant de fra\u00eecheur apr\u00e8s la canicule du dehors, de l'ao\u00fbt lyonnais \u00e9touffant ses rues, la place Bellecour, les quais du Rh\u00f4ne. Le dessin des carreaux m'\u00e9chappe, de rouge et de noir. Leur contact hors de l'oubli \u00e9veille le parfum cireux et la p\u00e9nombre,**\n\n **\u00e9veille le myst\u00e8re d'une d\u00e9clivit\u00e9 infiniment \u00e9mouvante entre vestibule et salle \u00e0 manger, un pan inclin\u00e9 insolite qui s'\u00e9l\u00e8ve dans le passage, sans interrompre le dessin du sol, sans fracturer les carreaux, les relevant seulement doucement en une pente l\u00e9g\u00e8re d'o\u00f9 roulaient les billes d'argile peinte rouges, vertes, bleues, ou les \u00ab agathes \u00bb vein\u00e9es de jaune spirale, de rouge, de bleu, jusqu'au bas de la premi\u00e8re marche de l'escalier,**\n\n **le myst\u00e8re surtout du passage dans l'autre pi\u00e8ce, la pi\u00e8ce-salon, par un \u00ab sas \u00bb entre deux portes lourdes, \u00e9pais d'obscurit\u00e9 enti\u00e8re et de manteaux suspendus dans les hauteurs fourr\u00e9es de bruissements : cachette, t\u00e9n\u00e8bre souple d'une solitude secr\u00e8te mais sans effroi, prot\u00e9g\u00e9e de toute la familia** **rit\u00e9 des bruits proches, remue-m\u00e9nage de vaisselle, empressement m\u00e9nager, les verres tintent, les voix s'assourdissent, les pas,**\n\n **l'horloge parle paisiblement. Je vois cela.** Je le vois, mais qu'est-ce au juste que je vois, les yeux dans l'obscurit\u00e9 arcadienne du \u00ab sas \u00bb entre les deux portes de boiseries lourdes et odorantes ? Ce n'est pas seulement l'interrogation sceptique wittgensteinienne que je me pose, qui vise aussi bien les formes que les couleurs (\u00a7 70 : Est-ce qu'on peut parler d'une rose rose dans le noir et d'une rose rouge dans le noir ?). C'est aussi celle de l'impr\u00e9cision du moment : l'image sans vision que je restitue, accompagn\u00e9e de fragments de pass\u00e9 visible, de bruits situ\u00e9s autour, \u00e9tait-elle d\u00e9j\u00e0 un tout, le tout de ce que j'imaginais alors, ou bien est-ce une construction contemporaine de mon esprit, associant des images de provenance largement \u00e9loign\u00e9es dans le temps ? Et quelles pourraient \u00eatre les exp\u00e9riences qui me permettraient de d\u00e9cider entre les deux explications ?\n\n **Dans la cuisine, je vais vers les deux fen\u00eatres qui, \u00e0 droite de l'entr\u00e9e, donnent sur la rue de l'Orangerie. La porte de la cave est \u00e0 gauche, dans le fond, la table en face de moi, une th\u00e9i\u00e8re sur la table. L'eau chauffe dans la bouilloire sur le feu bleu du gaz, entre la porte de la cave et l'\u00e9vier. Ma grand-m\u00e8re et son amie Taia sont debout devant la table, et discutent en attendant l'accomplissement des op\u00e9rations du th\u00e9. \u00ab Discutent \u00bb est beaucoup dire. Ma grand-m\u00e8re parle, raconte, Taia \u00e9coute, objecte, commente, ou interroge bri\u00e8vement.**\n\n\u00ab O\u00f9 ai-je bien pu encore mettre mes lunettes ? \u00bb dit ma grand-m\u00e8re. Elle s'interrompt brusquement au milieu d'un r\u00e9cit. La \u00ab question des lunettes \u00bb est une question primordiale, vexante, r\u00e9currente. La distraction de grand-maman est certes d'application quasi universelle, mais elle a un domaine d'intervention particuli\u00e8rement privil\u00e9gi\u00e9, celui des lunettes. Ses lunettes ne sont jamais l\u00e0 o\u00f9 elle pense les avoir mises. C'est dans ce domaine que sa cr\u00e9ativit\u00e9 distractive se montre active tout sp\u00e9cialement, n\u00e9cessitant de longues qu\u00eates, exasp\u00e9rantes sur le moment, source de fiert\u00e9 et de narration mim\u00e9es ensuite (grand-maman raconte comme un montreur de marionnettes, avec ses mains), quand le danger de la perte est pass\u00e9.\n\n\u00ab Ne nous \u00e9nervons pas, dit Taia. Elles ne peuvent pas \u00eatre bien loin. Proc\u00e9dons par m\u00e9thode. Vous les aviez quand nous sommes rentr\u00e9es du jardin, puisque vous m'avez lu la lettre de Ren\u00e9e. Vous avez d\u00fb les poser dans l'entr\u00e9e. \u00bb Mais elle sait, et elles savent, que la m\u00e9thode ne peut rien contre le d\u00e9mon de l'impr\u00e9visible. Les lunettes ne sont pas dans l'entr\u00e9e, o\u00f9 ma grand-m\u00e8re se souvient effectivement les avoir pos\u00e9es. Car son \u00ab malin g\u00e9nie \u00bb est beaucoup moins m\u00e9galomane que le malin g\u00e9nie de l'\u00ab exp\u00e9rience de pens\u00e9e \u00bb cart\u00e9sienne : il ne cherche pas du tout \u00e0 la persuader faussement de l'existence des objets du monde ext\u00e9rieur, il se contente de lui offrir une vision totalement erron\u00e9e de l'emplacement de ses lunettes. Cela suffit \u00e0 son contentement.\n\nLes lunettes n'\u00e9tant pas dans l'entr\u00e9e, grand-maman essaie de convaincre Taia du fait qu'elle doit se souvenir, elle, de l'endroit o\u00f9 elle, sa vieille amie, dont elle conna\u00eet la proverbiale distraction, les a pos\u00e9es. Taia ne se souvient de rien. Elle sait que le d\u00e9mon distracteur se rit de sa vigilance. Mieux vaut chercher syst\u00e9matiquement. Apr\u00e8s tout, remarque-t-elle, il n'y a pas tellement d'endroits dans la cuisine o\u00f9 \u00ab elles \u00bb peuvent se dissimuler. C'est l\u00e0 faire preuve d'optimisme. Mais Taia est g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement calme et optimiste. C'est pourquoi elles s'entendent si bien, et depuis si longtemps, ma grand-m\u00e8re n'\u00e9tant ni calme ni optimiste.\n\nLa recherche \u00ab syst\u00e9matique \u00bb consiste \u00e0 envisager tous les endroits o\u00f9 les lunettes se sont d\u00e9j\u00e0 trouv\u00e9es lors d'une de leurs escapades pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes. C'est une strat\u00e9gie erron\u00e9e. Elles devraient le savoir (je le sais, moi qui regarde la sc\u00e8ne, une sc\u00e8ne imaginaire cette fois s'il en fut, reconstitu\u00e9e de quelques moments r\u00e9els effectifs et des r\u00e9cits grand-maternels). Le lieu o\u00f9 se cachent les lunettes n'est pas d\u00e9ductible des lieux pr\u00e9c\u00e9dents. Il ne ressemble pas aux lieux ant\u00e9rieurs, et ce n'est pas un lieu habituel de d\u00e9p\u00f4t de lunettes en voie d'\u00e9garement. Ni l'habitude ni la ressemblance ne sont des concepts ad\u00e9quats pour rendre compte du libre exercice de la distraction chez Mme Blanche Molino, ma grand-m\u00e8re.\n\n## 176 Elles auraient d\u00fb tenir compte (par anticipation), pour leur recherche, du fameux argument chomskyen\n\nElles auraient d\u00fb tenir compte (par anticipation), pour leur recherche, de l'argument chomskyen en faveur de la cr\u00e9ativit\u00e9 de la fonction langagi\u00e8re chez l'homme : la probabilit\u00e9 qu'une phrase prononc\u00e9e par quelqu'un l'ait d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00e9t\u00e9 ant\u00e9rieurement par le m\u00eame, ou un autre, est quasi nulle. Ce n'est pas parce qu'une phrase ressemble \u00e0 une autre d\u00e9j\u00e0 entendue, ou qu'il est dans nos habitudes de la dire, que nous la sortons brusquement de nous-m\u00eames. Nous cr\u00e9ons les phrases, gr\u00e2ce \u00e0 un m\u00e9canisme implant\u00e9 ancestralement en l'humanit\u00e9, de l\u00e0 en nous, un mod\u00e8le syntaxique dont nous h\u00e9ritons et dont nous avons appris \u00e0 nous servir. Ainsi, la facult\u00e9 distractive, chez ma grand-m\u00e8re, \u00e9tait capable de cr\u00e9er en chaque circonstance des cachettes \u00e0 lunettes, inou\u00efes, neuves, inhabituelles, et ne ressemblant \u00e0 aucune de celles qui avaient \u00e9t\u00e9 pr\u00e9c\u00e9demment invent\u00e9es en elle (ma grand-m\u00e8re), par elle (la syntaxe distractive, mod\u00e8le en acte de la facult\u00e9 de distraction : quelle \u00e9tait la structure de ce mod\u00e8le, je ne saurais dire, mais il n'\u00e9tait certainement pas, pas plus que la syntaxe du langage ordinaire, ind\u00e9pendant du contexte vital, \u00ab context-free \u00bb).\n\nAyant fait le tour de la cuisine plusieurs fois, ouvert les placards, fouill\u00e9 dans la bo\u00eete \u00e0 sucre, dans le four (o\u00f9 s'\u00e9tait retrouv\u00e9, un jour, le portefeuille de grand-maman (mais jamais ses lunettes !)), dans le Frigidaire (je vois qu'elles fouillent dans le Frigidaire, derri\u00e8re le bac \u00e0 l\u00e9gumes, derri\u00e8re et dans le beurrier, ce qui prouve que la \u00ab sc\u00e8ne \u00bb ne saurait avoir eu lieu en 1941, au moment du s\u00e9jour qui commande cette bifurcation narrative), elles retourn\u00e8rent, un peu d\u00e9courag\u00e9es, \u00e0 leur point de d\u00e9part : jamais les lunettes n'avaient r\u00e9sist\u00e9 si longtemps (elles n'\u00e9taient cependant jamais enti\u00e8rement perdues).\n\nAlors j'entends Taia dire, de sa petite voix douce, jamais \u00e9nerv\u00e9e (c'\u00e9tait une des personnes les plus absolument bonnes, sans malice, que j'aie jamais connues) : \u00ab \u00c7a par exemple ! \u00bb \u00ab Quoi ? \u00bb dit grand-maman. \u00ab Mais vous les avez sur votre nez ! \u00bb\n\nCet \u00e9pisode repr\u00e9sente en quelque sorte le chef-d'\u0153uvre du \u00ab d\u00e9mon de la distraction \u00bb. Il s'est, ce jour-l\u00e0, tellement surpass\u00e9 lui-m\u00eame qu'il n'a jamais pu faire mieux (et il me dispense, par la m\u00eame occasion, de donner d'autres exemples de ses inventions) : dans l'ensemble, ordonn\u00e9 par \u00e9tranget\u00e9, des lieux d'\u00e9garement de cet accessoire pour la vue il s'agit, en somme, d'un \u00ab plus grand \u00e9l\u00e9ment \u00bb, d'une \u00ab borne sup\u00e9rieure interne \u00e0 l'ensemble \u00bb, comme on dit dans l'idiolecte de la th\u00e9orie \u00e9l\u00e9mentaire des ensembles ordonn\u00e9s. Ce d\u00e9mon avait peut-\u00eatre \u00e9t\u00e9 un lecteur d'Edgar Poe (et, en tant que d\u00e9mon, \u00e9chappant aux contraintes temporelles, lecteur aussi du Dr Lacan, ou m\u00eame de Jean-Claude Milner (qui, je le rappelle, a compos\u00e9 une merveilleuse \u00ab d\u00e9duction fictive \u00bb sur le conte de _La Lettre vol\u00e9e_ (ma grand-m\u00e8re \u00e9tait une grande lectrice d'Agatha Christie))). (On pourrait s'amuser de la r\u00e9partition des r\u00f4les dans cette analogie : le d\u00e9mon dans le r\u00f4le du ministre, Taia dans celui de Dupin !)\n\nUn incident contemporain (de la composition \u00e9cranique de ces lignes) m'a peut-\u00eatre lanc\u00e9 dans cette digression (je n'\u00e9tais pas parti pour m'occuper de lunettes, mais pour traverser la cuisine en direction de la cave de la rue de l'Orangerie, o\u00f9 je vais revenir) : je passais dans la cour du 82 rue d'Amsterdam, o\u00f9 j'habite, mon trousseau de cl\u00e9s \u00e0 la main (je le garde \u00e0 la main jusque dans la rue, afin d'\u00eatre s\u00fbr de ne pas l'oublier trop souvent sur la porte, ou dans la serrure de la bo\u00eete aux lettres), travers\u00e9e pr\u00e9alable \u00e0 la descente de la rue en direction de la gare Saint-Lazare d'o\u00f9 part le train de banlieue qui conduit \u00e0 la station Nanterre-Universit\u00e9, o\u00f9 je l'abandonne pour rejoindre le \u00ab d\u00e9partement de math\u00e9matiques \u00bb de mon \u00ab UFR \u00bb au quatri\u00e8me \u00e9tage du b\u00e2timent C. En dehors des heures de pointe ou de contrepointe (si j'ose m'exprimer ainsi, je veux parler des heures tardives), il y a quatre trains par heure en ce moment, \u00e0 04, 19, 34 et 49 apr\u00e8s chaque heure respectivement. Il me faut dix \u00e0 douze minutes pour atteindre le quai apr\u00e8s avoir achet\u00e9 le _Times_ du jour, et je pars donc \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s 25 minutes avant l'heure afin, c'est mon habitude, de \u00ab rater le train pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent \u00bb, conform\u00e9ment \u00e0 un pr\u00e9cepte de mon grand-p\u00e8re.\n\nDans la cour je croisai Mme Jacquet la concierge, que je saluai aimablement mais bri\u00e8vement, n'ayant pas le temps (j'\u00e9tais un peu en retard dans mon avance) d'engager l'une de nos conversations habituelles (\u00ab Est-ce qu'il va pleuvoir aujourd'hui ? \u00bb \u00ab Je vous dirai \u00e7a ce soir. \u00bb).\n\nOr Mme Jacquet, d'une mani\u00e8re tout \u00e0 fait non traditionnelle dans nos \u00e9changes de vues me dit, et cela m'arr\u00eata dans ma progression vers le porche d'entr\u00e9e : \u00ab Et o\u00f9 allez-vous comme \u00e7a, monsieur Roubaud ? \u00bb \u00ab Je vais faire mon cours \u00e0 l'universit\u00e9, et je suis en retard. \u00bb \u00ab Vous \u00eates s\u00fbr que vous voulez y aller comme \u00e7a ? \u00bb J'en \u00e9tais s\u00fbr, mais j'avais tort, car j'\u00e9tais en pantoufles.\n\nCette preuve de distraction, seulement peut-\u00eatre un petit peu plus extr\u00eame que d'habitude, n'a pas surpris Mme Jacquet (je suis math\u00e9maticien, n'est-ce pas ?), et elle ne saurait \u00eatre mise en comp\u00e9tition avec les distractions parfaites de ma grand-m\u00e8re.\n\nJe la rapporte, non seulement parce qu'elle a sans doute \u00e9t\u00e9 la cause indirecte de ma digression, mais parce qu'elle m'am\u00e8ne \u00e0 constater (ce qui ne me fait pas sp\u00e9cialement plaisir) que, mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tant peu distrait (ma m\u00e8re l'\u00e9tait un peu plus mais pas aussi spectaculairement) et mon grand-p\u00e8re ne l'ayant pas \u00e9t\u00e9, si on admet (hypoth\u00e8se, purement fictive, sur l'h\u00e9r\u00e9dit\u00e9 des caract\u00e8res) que le d\u00e9mon de la distraction, dans une famille, changeant d'h\u00f4te avec les g\u00e9n\u00e9rations (et souvent, comme d'autres, en sautant une \u00e9tape), c'est de ma grand-m\u00e8re que je tiens ce trait, alors que mon mod\u00e8le conscient et cultiv\u00e9 avec constance est, presque en tout son oppos\u00e9, mon grand-p\u00e8re !\n\n## 177 Mon grand-p\u00e8re estimait la temp\u00e9rature de sa cave id\u00e9ale\n\nMon grand-p\u00e8re jugeait sa cave id\u00e9ale en tout, en particulier par sa temp\u00e9rature, donc id\u00e9ale pour la conservation des aliments, et en cons\u00e9quence aussi pour le plaisir du palais, qui ne saurait se r\u00e9jouir que de ce qui n'est en rien extravagant. Les fruits, l'eau, les laitages ne pouvaient, selon lui, \u00eatre appr\u00e9ci\u00e9s qu'\u00e0 une temp\u00e9rature temp\u00e9r\u00e9e, qui \u00e9tait pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment celle dont sa cave \u00e9tait naturellement pourvue, et qu'elle conservait sans modifications notables toute l'ann\u00e9e.\n\nAussi \u00e9tait-elle fra\u00eeche en \u00e9t\u00e9, contre l'ao\u00fbt lyonnais souvent torride, et presque ti\u00e8de en hiver, quand il y descendait remplir le seau \u00e0 charbon pour nourrir, par devoir, les po\u00eales surchauff\u00e9s (\u00e9tablissant une temp\u00e9rature bien sup\u00e9rieure \u00e0 celle qu'il estimait hygi\u00e9nique, les quinze degr\u00e9s indiqu\u00e9s comme \u00ab temp\u00e9rature des appartements \u00bb sur les thermom\u00e8tres du XIXe si\u00e8cle. Mais sa femme, ma grand-m\u00e8re, avait toujours froid et s'emmitouflait dans sa robe de chambre, m\u00eame dans la cuisine. Il chargeait les po\u00eales jusqu'\u00e0 la gueule d'anthracite et ouvrait la fen\u00eatre de sa chambre). Il n'admit pas chez lui sans r\u00e9ticences l'invasion de la brutalit\u00e9 polaire du Frigidaire (qu'aurait-il pens\u00e9 du cong\u00e9lateur !), et maintint toujours, malgr\u00e9 sa pr\u00e9sence, quelques denr\u00e9es pr\u00e9cieuses dans le garde-manger, en bas.\n\n **Dans la cave o\u00f9 je le suis en pens\u00e9e je le vois, ce garde-manger grillag\u00e9 et le beurre, clair, ferme mais non polaire, dans une soucoupe, qui contient aussi un peu d'eau**. La temp\u00e9rature de la cave et le degr\u00e9 hygrom\u00e9trique assur\u00e9 par la vapeur d'eau maintenaient le beurre dans l'\u00e9tat le mieux propre \u00e0 une agr\u00e9able consommation. Du Frigidaire, au contraire, il ressort froid et dur, \u00e0 la fois impraticable au couteau et priv\u00e9 de toute saveur.\n\n(Mon p\u00e8re, r\u00e9cemment, retrouvant du go\u00fbt pour les achats sur catalogue (une fois surmont\u00e9e sa d\u00e9ception de la disparition de celui de Manufrance), a fait, en m\u00eame temps que d'une perceuse \u00e0 l'intention de Marie, en qui son \u0153il exerc\u00e9 a reconnu l'\u00e9t\u00e9 dernier, quand elle a entrepris la restauration des _restanques_ , une authentique bricoleuse (ce que je ne suis pas, ni ma s\u0153ur. Mon fr\u00e8re Pierre, lui, est, selon mon p\u00e8re, un bricoleur fantaisiste), capable de prendre sa rel\u00e8ve dans l'immense champ de bataille du domaine familial, Saint-F\u00e9lix, l'acquisition d'un \u00ab garde-beurre \u00bb b\u00e2ti sur le m\u00eame principe (proche, au fond, de celui de la terreuse et poreuse gargoulette, o\u00f9 l'eau de boisson se conservait fra\u00eeche autrefois).)\n\n **Je vois les \u00ab faisselles \u00bb achet\u00e9es chez le laitier du Clos-Bissardon, dans leurs formes m\u00e9talliques perc\u00e9es de trous qui gardaient en surface, une fois d\u00e9moul\u00e9es, de petites pointes fromag\u00e8res. La langue, avant la morsure dans leur chair blanche, dense et tremblante, en \u00e9prouvait, sous la pluie de sucre, d'abord blanche puis devenant transparente, comme de la neige allant fondre, lentement, la pr\u00e9sence physique, en anticipation du plaisir.** Elles disparurent avec les p\u00e9nuries de guerre, et ne r\u00e9apparurent pas avec l'abondance retrouv\u00e9e, frapp\u00e9es d'obsolescence par la modernisation et la mort des petits laitiers. Puis, sous l'effet d'une r\u00e9ponse commerciale \u00e0 la nostalgie, on les a vues revenir il y a peu, mais comme caricatures d'elles-m\u00eames, baignant dans le peu app\u00e9tissant plastique. Et lisses !\n\nLe garde-manger de la cave abritait aussi, en leur saison, les fruits, les fruits pr\u00e9f\u00e9r\u00e9s de mon grand-p\u00e8re : la pomme reinette, la p\u00eache et la poire (\u00ab P\u00e8le la poire \u00e0 ton ami, et la p\u00eache \u00e0 ton ennemi \u00bb disait-il, pour expliquer le traitement diff\u00e9rent qu'il faisait subir \u00e0 ces deux fruits). Pour les peler, pour les couper, comme pour \u00e9taler, en couche \u00e9gale et mod\u00e9r\u00e9e le beurre mall\u00e9able sur la tartine, il sortait son couteau suisse d'une poche de son gilet, faisait jaillir la lame ad\u00e9quate et l'essuyait longuement apr\u00e8s usage, avec de la mie de pain, ne la rentrant dans son encoche d'une nettet\u00e9 toute helv\u00e8te qu'une fois de nouveau impeccablement brillante, neuve, propre.\n\nPendant ces op\u00e9rations, comme dans toutes celles qui demandaient une certaine application manuelle, il proc\u00e9dait avec lenteur, avec un soin de calligraphe, de menuisier. Il tirait l\u00e9g\u00e8rement la langue en disposant les quartiers de p\u00eache autour de l'assiette, d\u00e9gag\u00e9s du noyau. Elles devaient, c'est clair, n'\u00eatre ni trop ni trop peu m\u00fbres, et pleines, saines, parfum\u00e9es. Celles que je vois sont des p\u00eaches du jardin, de vraies p\u00eaches d'autrefois, puis\u00e9es dans son inconcevable, prodigieuse, anachronique profusion.\n\nMais il laissait le noyau (et je le regrettais pour lui) abandonn\u00e9 dans l'assiette, encore attach\u00e9 \u00e0 un peu de chair juteuse, mais surtout envelopp\u00e9 et investi de ces nombreux filaments fruitiers accroch\u00e9s dans le d\u00e9dale du bois, qu'il aurait fallu, prolongeant le plaisir du fruit, le noyau maintenu dans la bouche ou tenu entre les doigts, de longues minutes \u00e0 d\u00e9busquer des dents, de la langue, de leurs circonvolutions ligneuses, avant de le rejeter p\u00e2le sous un m\u00fbrier, dans l'all\u00e9e. Mais pour les poires (et les pommes, qu'il pelait aussi), il proc\u00e9dait diff\u00e9remment, d\u00e9coupant des tranches dans le fruit et les mangeant aussit\u00f4t, afin qu'elles n'aient pas le temps de s'oxyder \u00e0 l'air, d'y rouiller. Avec la p\u00eache, il buvait un doigt de vin pur.\n\nMon grand-p\u00e8re n'avait pas la religion du pain frais. Il le pr\u00e9f\u00e9rait m\u00eame un peu rassis. Le pain et le beurre, \u00e0 consistance temp\u00e9r\u00e9e, en association mod\u00e9r\u00e9e avec un caf\u00e9 (de force mod\u00e9r\u00e9e (pour \u00e9viter l'abus des excitants)), temp\u00e9r\u00e9 d'un lait dos\u00e9 raisonnablement, \u00e9taient les constituants sobres de ses petits d\u00e9jeuners pr\u00e9coces, avant sept heures du matin, dans la cuisine, o\u00f9 il se livrait aussi, dans une tranquillit\u00e9 enti\u00e8re (puisque grand-maman, insomniaque, n'y p\u00e9n\u00e9trait que beaucoup plus tard), \u00e0 l'op\u00e9ration, somptueuse \u00e0 mes yeux, du rasage au \u00ab sabre \u00bb, devant un miroir rond \u00e0 pied, l\u00e9g\u00e8rement grossissant. Il rin\u00e7ait ensuite son visage \u00e0 l'\u00e9vier, l'essuyait, effa\u00e7ait toute trace de son passage, remettait son gilet et s'enfermait bient\u00f4t dans sa chambre, pour ses \u00ab travaux \u00bb de la matin\u00e9e. Lev\u00e9 t\u00f4t moi aussi, je le suivais des yeux, les coudes sur la table de la cuisine, silencieusement. Je ne le d\u00e9rangeais pas. Bien plus tard, j'ai con\u00e7u une admiration tr\u00e8s vive pour cette marque d'autonomie sans ostentation, faite d'ordre et d'habitudes. Alors, c'\u00e9tait simplement un fait, un de ces faits qui constituent le monde, et qui s'\u00e9noncent en calmes propositions.\n\n## 178 L'heure de ma grand-m\u00e8re \u00e9tait au contraire, aussi \u00e9loign\u00e9e que possible de l'aube, celle du th\u00e9\n\nL'heure de ma grand-m\u00e8re \u00e9tait au contraire celle, aussi \u00e9loign\u00e9e que possible de l'aube, des toasts, du th\u00e9, et des conversations. Je serais presque tent\u00e9 de lui attribuer le titre d'un roman de Christina Stead _A Little Tea, a Little Chat_ , sinon que la \u00ab conversation \u00bb, dans la pratique grand-maternelle, \u00e9tait le plus souvent _one-sided_ (\u00e0 sens unique), une occasion de narration, devant un petit auditoire. Mais la coloration anglo-saxonne du rituel, que marque le surgissement devant moi de cette d\u00e9signation \u00e9tait ind\u00e9niable. D'ailleurs mon oncle Maurice, en ses ann\u00e9es d'\u00c9cole normale avait \u00e9tudi\u00e9 \u00e0 Oxford (comme, un peu apr\u00e8s, ma m\u00e8re). J'\u00e9tais sur le point d'\u00e9mettre ici l'hypoth\u00e8se d'une influence qui se serait exerc\u00e9e des enfants sur leur m\u00e8re, en sens inverse du sens habituel.\n\nMais je me suis souvenu du r\u00e9cit d'un \u00e9pisode, plusieurs fois entendu et appr\u00e9ci\u00e9, jusqu'en ses variations \u00ab formula\u00efques \u00bb, un \u00ab chant \u00bb de l'\u00ab Odyss\u00e9e distraite \u00bb de grand-maman, dont elle \u00e9tait \u00e0 la fois l'Ulysse et l'Hom\u00e8re, qui d\u00e9montre indirectement l'anciennet\u00e9 du rituel.\n\nUn matin de 192 ?, \u00e0 Digne, elle avait \u00e9crit deux lettres (elle \u00e9tait une correspondante acharn\u00e9e, aux longues pages d'\u00e9criture trembl\u00e9e, tricot\u00e9e, presque ind\u00e9chiffrable) : la premi\u00e8re \u00e0 de vieux amis, les d'Argences, dans leur lointain exil \u00ab indochinois \u00bb, la seconde \u00e0 d'autres amis, dont je n'ai pas retenu le nom, les xxx (je ne suis pas certain de l'orthographe du premier nom, avec lequel je n'ai qu'une familiarit\u00e9 auditive, et que je confonds peut-\u00eatre, par contamination, avec celui de ce \u00ab polygraphe \u00bb du XVIIIe si\u00e8cle dont mon cousin et a\u00een\u00e9 Jean Molino a fait autrefois sa \u00ab th\u00e8se \u00bb, occasion pour lui d'un ensemble de monographies encyclop\u00e9diques sur le si\u00e8cle encyclop\u00e9dique par excellence).\n\nLes xxx, donc, furent un peu \u00e9tonn\u00e9s de recevoir, avec un tel luxe de d\u00e9tails, des nouvelles de toute une famille, habitant la m\u00eame ville qu'eux, et dont ils ne se croyaient pas si ignorants. Quant \u00e0 la missive \u00e9gar\u00e9e quelque part dans la mer de Chine c'\u00e9tait leur invitation \u00e0 prendre le th\u00e9, un jour qui aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 prochain (ce que les d'Argences en pens\u00e8rent, l'histoire ne le dit pas).\n\nLe traitement du beurre \u00e0 l'heure du th\u00e9 grand-maternel \u00e9tait d'une exub\u00e9rance en fort contraste avec la sobri\u00e9t\u00e9 presque jans\u00e9niste des tartines matinales de grand-papa ; attendant dans la soucoupe, et d\u00e9j\u00e0 s\u00e9rieusement amolli par la proximit\u00e9 des lames rougissantes du f\u00e9roce grille-pain, il perdait rapidement toute pr\u00e9tention \u00e0 l'\u00e9tat solide en rev\u00eatant les tartines-toasts qu'il imbibait de son jaune mou et luisant (les tartines pr\u00e9alablement gratt\u00e9es de leurs exc\u00e8s carbonif\u00e8res, car elles \u00e9taient r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement oubli\u00e9es \u00e0 l'int\u00e9rieur br\u00fblant de l'appareil, dont les avertissements pourtant p\u00e9remptoires ne parvenaient pas aux oreilles inattentives, oublieuses, de la conteuse, ou bien \u00e9taient consid\u00e9r\u00e9s comme n\u00e9gligeables face aux int\u00e9r\u00eats sup\u00e9rieurs d'un r\u00e9cit).\n\nAffect\u00e9es parfois d'une couche sup\u00e9rieure additive de miel cr\u00e9meux, ou de \u00ab marmelade \u00bb d'oranges am\u00e8res (anachroniquement j'y ajouterai le _lemon-curd_ , dont le go\u00fbt m'est venu en fait, beaucoup plus tard, de ma propre exp\u00e9rimentation des essais que ma m\u00e8re fut oblig\u00e9e de faire, apr\u00e8s nous avoir vant\u00e9 les merveilles de cette friandise, connue d'elle lors de ses s\u00e9jours oxoniens. Il ne figurait pas, il me semble, dans les th\u00e9s-go\u00fbters de la rue de l'Orangerie), je ne connaissais rien de plus savoureux, de plus luxueux que leurs bouch\u00e9es craquantes. Et les longues ann\u00e9es de p\u00e9nurie (d\u00e9bordant largement l'intervalle de la guerre, au-del\u00e0 m\u00eame du maintien des restrictions, tant elles \u00e9taient devenues mentalement habituelles) n'ont fait qu'ajouter \u00e0 leur prestige. **Dans les tasses, je regarde le lait envahir, comme un brouillard paresseux, le th\u00e9 p\u00e2le.**\n\nA l'extr\u00eame distance climatique, dans l'ao\u00fbt caniculaire, le beurre fondait enti\u00e8rement dans l'assiette puis, refroidi, coagulait en grumeaux \u00e9tranges. J'ai parfois cherch\u00e9 \u00e0 retrouver l'irr\u00e9ductible diff\u00e9rence de go\u00fbt qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 le r\u00e9sultat d'une semblable mutation physique, mais en vain. Il me manquait, r\u00e9volus, sans doute les n\u00e9cessaires harmoniques du lieu, les ombres, le goutte-\u00e0-goutte des voix dans la cuisine, ou le balancement du rocking-chair, dans la v\u00e9randa. Je n'ai pas eu beaucoup plus de succ\u00e8s dans mes tentatives de combiner, les matins, ces deux mod\u00e8les antagonistes de traitement du beurre. J'ai un grille-pain ici dans mon logement, rue d'Amsterdam. Mais je ne pense jamais \u00e0 m'en servir, quand je me l\u00e8ve, \u00e0 cinq heures du matin.\n\nLa v\u00e9randa \u00e9tait presque aussi constamment chaude que la cave \u00e9tait fra\u00eeche (j'aime cette sym\u00e9trie, d'ailleurs assez vraisemblable : le p\u00e2le soleil d'hiver \u00ab aidait \u00bb le ronflement du po\u00eale. L'\u00ab effet de serre \u00bb redoublait le soleil d'\u00e9t\u00e9). **Dans la v\u00e9randa le rocking-chair aux cannelures de paille oscille, d'un mouvement perp\u00e9tuel, accompagnant celui des doigts de grand-maman sur le bois brun de ses bras.**\n\n **Je sors de la cuisine, avance pieds nus sur les carreaux peints de l'entr\u00e9e, les carreaux s'\u00e9l\u00e8vent l\u00e9g\u00e8rement \u00e0 l'entr\u00e9e de la salle \u00e0 manger.** C'est une pi\u00e8ce c\u00e9r\u00e9monieuse. Je regarde, sans surprise, une fin de repas (le dessert, moment photographique oblig\u00e9 des r\u00e9unions familiales).\n\n## 179 Tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t, dans les mois qui suivirent l'effervescence de la Lib\u00e9ration\n\nTr\u00e8s t\u00f4t, dans les mois qui suivirent l'effervescence de la Lib\u00e9ration ma grand-m\u00e8re, forc\u00e9e \u00e0 un repos inactif pas enti\u00e8rement agr\u00e9able apr\u00e8s les angoisses, dangers, trag\u00e9dies mais aussi aventures de la guerre, parcourant de son pas distrait, ses lunettes \u00e0 la main et ses mains derri\u00e8re son dos les all\u00e9es d\u00e9sert\u00e9es de son immense jardin, le trouva, comme peut-\u00eatre elle ne l'avait jamais vu auparavant, invraisemblablement beau (ce qu'il \u00e9tait), pr\u00e9cieux, mais \u00e0 l'abandon. Je ne pense pas qu'elle ait alors senti la menace que pouvait faire peser sur lui le fait qu'elle n'\u00e9tait (qu'ils n'\u00e9taient, mon grand-p\u00e8re et elle), puisque locataire, qu'une occupante pr\u00e9caire de ce lieu miraculeux.\n\nLa guerre avait boulevers\u00e9 les vies, sem\u00e9 les morts et les destructions, exil\u00e9 et dispers\u00e9 les proches, mais que l'\u00e2ge \u00e0 venir allait \u00eatre celui des promoteurs et des propri\u00e9taires, de la rar\u00e9faction et du rench\u00e9rissement explosif des logements urbains, elle n'en eut, je le crains, aucune id\u00e9e. (C'est un fait qui n'\u00e9chappa pas \u00e0 mon oncle Walter, devenu chimiste prosp\u00e8re et citoyen du Massachusetts quand, les communications normales r\u00e9tablies entre les deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de l'Atlantique, et acc\u00e9l\u00e9r\u00e9es par les progr\u00e8s de l'aviation, il vint revoir les arbres sous lesquels il s'\u00e9tait fianc\u00e9 avec ma tante Ren\u00e9e (j'ai \u00e9tal\u00e9 sur mon bureau, \u00e0 la droite du Macintosh, quelques photographies du jardin, prises en divers endroits et divers moments, avec divers personnages, et sur l'une d'elles ils sont, assis sur un banc et tourn\u00e9s l'un vers l'autre, au soleil de 1939 qui illumine la barri\u00e8re de piquets, derri\u00e8re, entre le 21 et le 21 _bis_ , enfonc\u00e9 dans son ombre v\u00e9g\u00e9tale, comme le pass\u00e9). Malheureusement, il ne se trouva pas l\u00e0 au moment d\u00e9cisif.)\n\nMais, p\u00e9n\u00e9trant un jour dans le b\u00e2timent de bois \u00e0 l'abandon, qui avait \u00e9t\u00e9 autrefois l'orangerie \u00e0 oranges, quand la rue de l'Orangerie avait m\u00e9rit\u00e9 son nom, elle d\u00e9couvrit les vieux registres de ce qui avait d\u00fb \u00eatre, en des temps recul\u00e9s, une entreprise prosp\u00e8re de je ne sais trop quoi (il tra\u00eene dans ma t\u00eate qu'il s'agissait de soie, mais cela semble trop simple, et n'est peut-\u00eatre qu'une pseudo-d\u00e9duction inconsciente \u00e0 partir de la pr\u00e9sence majestueuse des m\u00fbriers). Et elle eut alors l'id\u00e9e, qui lui sembla on ne peut plus naturelle, d'en faire une entreprise dynamique, un verger producteur de fruits (dans une moiti\u00e9 seulement du jardin, apr\u00e8s les grands arbres, la plus \u00e9loign\u00e9e de la maison).\n\nJe fais donc l'hypoth\u00e8se suivante (les hypoth\u00e8ses ne me co\u00fbtent rien) : la d\u00e9couverte des registres, preuve de la prosp\u00e9rit\u00e9 ancienne et active de l'Orangerie (et en particulier d'une quantit\u00e9 non n\u00e9gligeable de grands registres vierges) fut l'impulsion d\u00e9cisive pour la cr\u00e9ation d'une association informelle (avec des statuts, certes, une pr\u00e9sidente et un bureau, mais je doute que tout cela ait jamais eu le moindre commencement d'existence l\u00e9gale, ait donn\u00e9 naissance \u00e0 une \u00ab association loi de 1901 \u00bb, d\u00e9pos\u00e9e \u00e0 la pr\u00e9fecture du Rh\u00f4ne, etc.), rassemblant autour d'elle quelques amies et amis, retrait\u00e9s et voisins, pour une nouvelle t\u00e2che \u00e9ducative, la maturation des fruits.\n\nLes s\u00e9ances de l'association se tenaient dans l'orangerie, \u00e9pousset\u00e9e, rapetass\u00e9e et pourvue de fauteuils de jardin. Je m'en souviens, je vois les gros registres. La question d\u00e9battue \u00e9tait ce jour-l\u00e0 : quels noms donner aux poiriers, quelles vari\u00e9t\u00e9s choisir, quels parrains pour les jeunes arbres ? J'ai \u00e9t\u00e9 l\u00e0. Et je l'ai \u00e9crit :\n\nASSEMBL\u00c9E NATIONALE\n\nCONSTITUANTE\n\nlyon, le 11 juillet 1946, 10 h\n\nch\u00e8re maman, ch\u00e8re Denise, je suis arriv\u00e9 hier \u00e0 5 H rue de l'orangerie apr\u00e8s un excellent voyage, \u00e0 partir de Dijon nous n'\u00e9tions plus que cinq dans le compartiment et le train est arriv\u00e9 \u00e0 l'heure. J'ai trouv\u00e9 grand-maman dans le jardin et elle m'a parl\u00e9 des transformations profondes qu'il allait subir. Le travail de la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des PPPCAFV a d'ailleurs commenc\u00e9 (devinez, s'il vous pla\u00eet, chers lecteurs ce que ce sigle veut dire, je n'en ai plus aucune id\u00e9e). Deux arbres inutiles ont \u00e9t\u00e9 abattus, le gazon a \u00e9t\u00e9 ratiss\u00e9 et l'all\u00e9e du milieu est d\u00e9licieusement verte. Des trous seront bient\u00f4t creus\u00e9 pour recevoir de nouveaux arbres : P.P.P.C.A.F.V.\n\nGrand maman m'a ensuite racont\u00e9 les d\u00e9bats de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 dans sa s\u00e9ance pl\u00e9ni\u00e8re qui a eu lieu il y a quelques jours. Raymonde et Emile Sermet doivent en r\u00e9diger le rapport et grand-maman m'a demand\u00e9 de faire de la propagande aupr\u00e8s de Madeleine, Armandou et cie... afin de recueillir quelques membres honoraires.\n\nMaintenant je demanderai \u00e0 Denise quel arbre lui convient le mieux car j'esp\u00e8re que l'\u00e9tat va souscrire pour un ou deux b\u00e9b\u00e9s au prix moyen de 150f. L'\u00e9tat a int\u00e9r\u00eat a les prendre car selon le r\u00e8glement de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9, la moiti\u00e9 des fruits nous reviendra pendant que l'autre moiti\u00e9 sera vendu par la PPPSAFV a des prix raisonnables pour combattre le march\u00e9 noir. Ainsi nous pourrons soit venir manger notre r\u00e9colte soit recueillir le produit de la vente.\n\nje vais tout \u00e0 l'heure faire ma gymnastique et Emile Sermet va examiner mes doigts.\n\n(...)\n\n(Je d\u00e9chiffre au bas de ma lettre quelques mots ajout\u00e9s par ma grand-m\u00e8re :\n\n\u00ab Jacqui (c'est moi) oublie de dire qu'il a d\u00e9j\u00e0 fait de l'allemand avec Holl, excellent dit-il pour l'accent. \u00bb)\n\nOui, en effet, avait \u00ab ratiss\u00e9 le gazon \u00bb, qui allait \u00ab creuser des trous pour de nouveaux arbres \u00bb ? Il fallait, bien s\u00fbr, un bras s\u00e9culier, un bras arm\u00e9 de b\u00eache et de r\u00e2teau \u00e0 cette \u00e9glise nouvelle des \u00e2mes fruiti\u00e8res. Or il y en avait un sur place, un Allemand, Ludwig Holl.\n\nHoll \u00e9tait un ouvrier de la Ruhr, un communiste allemand. Il s'\u00e9tait battu dans les rues contre les nazis en 1930, 31, 32, jusqu'au d\u00e9but de 1933. Alors, tout s'\u00e9tait effondr\u00e9 : \u00ab Personne n'a voulu lutter \u00bb, nous disait-il, dans son fran\u00e7ais h\u00e9sitant et rauque, quand nous allions nous asseoir autour de lui entre les sillons, sur la terre s\u00e8che, dans la fin d'apr\u00e8s-midi br\u00fblante. \u00ab Personne. Ils se sont tous ralli\u00e9s. Tous. \u00bb Lui avait fui en France. Lui avait combattu en Espagne, devant Madrid, \u00e0 Teruel. Il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 intern\u00e9 par Daladier, s'\u00e9tait \u00e9vad\u00e9, s'\u00e9tait cach\u00e9. Il avait \u00e9t\u00e9 pris dans un maquis en Savoie. Ses ennemis, ses compatriotes, ne l'avaient pas tu\u00e9 sur place, mais ramen\u00e9 \u00e0 Paris, jug\u00e9, condamn\u00e9 \u00e0 mort, graci\u00e9 : il \u00e9tait allemand, apr\u00e8s tout. On l'avait envoy\u00e9 \u00e0 Buchenwald, pour \u00eatre r\u00e9g\u00e9n\u00e9r\u00e9 par le travail. Il nous racontait tout \u00e7a, pas pour se vanter, mais pour que nous comprenions, pour que je comprenne, moi, l'a\u00een\u00e9. Est-ce que c'\u00e9tait fini ? Non, ce n'\u00e9tait pas fini, disait-il. A Buchenwald il entretenait les cl\u00f4tures \u00e9lectrifi\u00e9es du camp : l'\u00e9lectricit\u00e9, \u00e7a avait \u00e9t\u00e9 son m\u00e9tier, autrefois. Mais vers la fin, les Am\u00e9ricains approchant, il s'\u00e9tait laiss\u00e9 oublier l\u00e0 un soir, cach\u00e9 entre les grilles. Il y \u00e9tait rest\u00e9 deux semaines, se nourrissant d'escargots crus et d'herbe. Et il \u00e9tait revenu, pas en Allemagne, pas encore. A Lyon, l\u00e0.\n\nEt ma grand-m\u00e8re, comme elle avait cach\u00e9 pendant la guerre ceux qui se cachaient, apr\u00e8s la guerre avait accueilli Holl. Il logeait l\u00e0, mangeait l\u00e0, jardinait, participait au grand projet fruitier (qui le faisait rire), reprenant des forces. Il attendait. Quelques mois plus tard, il est reparti. Je n'ai jamais su o\u00f9, pour quelle vie, dans quelle Allemagne ? Mais en ce temps-l\u00e0, sous les m\u00fbriers de Caluire, le soir, il nous chantait :\n\n _Wir graben unsre Gr\u00e4ber_\n\n _Wir schaufeln selbst uns ein_\n\n _Wir m\u00fcssen Totengr\u00e4ber_\n\n _Und Leich in einem sein_\n\n(Nous creusons notre propre tombe \/ Nous nous ensevelissons nous-m\u00eames \/ Nous devons \u00eatre les cadavres \/ Et les fossoyeurs en m\u00eame temps \/.)\n\n(Aujourd'hui, parfois, de nouveau, j'entends sa voix lourde. Et je pense \u00e0 la dure ironie m\u00e9taphorique de ce chant de d\u00e9port\u00e9s.)\n\n## 180 Je vois dans le jardin, au c\u0153ur de son immensit\u00e9 luxueuse.\n\nJe vois **dans** le jardin, au c\u0153ur de son immensit\u00e9 luxueuse. Maintenant, maintenant qu'il a disparu de la surface de la terre, ne laissant comme d\u00e9pouilles que ces images que j'appelle en moi, et quelques pictions que j'\u00e9tale sur ma table, \u00e0 la droite de mon \u00e9cran, je le poss\u00e8de enfin sans partage, et parmi mes possessions imaginaires il occupe une place toute particuli\u00e8re, sans aucun \u00e9quivalent en d'autres lieux : ni dans la maison de la rue d'Assas, \u00e0 Carcassonne, ni impasse des M\u00fbriers \u00e0 Toulon, ni dans le Parc sauvage des Corbi\u00e8res, ni ailleurs (\u00e0 Villegly par exemple), ni \u00e0 plus forte raison dans aucun des lieux post\u00e9rieurs \u00e0 la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale.\n\nJ'ai le sentiment int\u00e9rieur de cette singularit\u00e9, voil\u00e0 qui est s\u00fbr. Et je ne r\u00e9siste pas \u00e0 en donner une interpr\u00e9tation : qu'au 21 _bis_ de la rue de l'Orangerie je suis n\u00e9, **\u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9** , dans un espace s\u00e9par\u00e9 mais contigu, que j'ai appris \u00e0 marcher dans ses all\u00e9es, sous ses arbres, que je me suis mis debout, que j'ai conquis la surface de la terre en m\u00eame temps que mes grands-parents s'emparaient de ce jardin, s'y installaient, y cr\u00e9aient le long moment d'une continuit\u00e9 familiale, qu'\u00e0 cause de cela les images que j'en mets au jour ne sont jamais seulement contemporaines du moment de leur perception mais viennent \u00e0 la suite d'une immensit\u00e9 continue d'instants enfouis, de visages, de gestes, qui tous ont eu lieu **l\u00e0**. Quand je m'y sens, quand je le vois, c'est que j'y ai toujours \u00e9t\u00e9.\n\nBien plus, l'identit\u00e9 locale des circonstances du souvenir et de l'avant-souvenir n'est pas, pour moi, divis\u00e9e, en particulier n'est pas partag\u00e9e en deux, n'a pas deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s : cela veut dire qu'elle impose ce que j'appellerai un matriarcat de la m\u00e9moire. Plus encore, comme l'invention, rapport\u00e9e ci-dessus de la \u00ab PPPSAFV \u00bb, le jardin \u00e9tait, par excellence, possession de ma grand-m\u00e8re (mon grand-p\u00e8re ne fut jamais convi\u00e9 aux r\u00e9unions de l'association. Il n'avait \u00e0 sa disposition, dans le jardin, que son atelier de menuiserie, \u00e0 l'abri de toute interf\u00e9rence et regards, tout \u00e0 fait de c\u00f4t\u00e9, sous le tertre). Ainsi le jardin, et mon enfance, sont dans une large mesure sous le signe d'un \u00ab grand-matriarcat \u00bb.\n\nDans les premi\u00e8res ann\u00e9es du Minervois, les ann\u00e9es cinquante, ma grand-m\u00e8re avait chez nous sa chambre, avec deux grands portraits photographiques sous verre de ses fils disparus, mon oncle Maurice et mon oncle Frantz. Un mauvais buste d'elle-m\u00eame en terre cuite ocre \u00e9tait exil\u00e9 en haut de l'armoire, et un mauvais tableau dans un cadre s'\u00e9talait sur le mur, un tableau de taille moyenne, repr\u00e9sentant un d\u00e9but du jardin, une vue tourn\u00e9e vers la maison, la terrasse, la v\u00e9randa, deux silhouettes mi\u00e8vres de jeunes filles assises sur un banc, \u00e0 mi-image, \u0153uvre (comme le buste, mais d'une \u00ab main \u00bb diff\u00e9rente) d'un artiste ayant b\u00e9n\u00e9fici\u00e9 l\u00e0 d'un refuge provisoire, vers 1942. (C'est le \u00ab tableau, repr\u00e9sentant un jardin de maison ancienne \u00e0 contre-jour \u00bb de la branche un, chap. 3 \u00a7 38.)\n\nTout cela fait que mon \u00ab immersion \u00bb dans l'immensit\u00e9 du jardin, \u00e9tant appuy\u00e9e, prot\u00e9g\u00e9e de temps familial, assure aux images que j'extrais une stabilit\u00e9, compacit\u00e9, autonomie inentamable par aucune piction. Sur les photographies, je reconnais qu'il s'agit du m\u00eame territoire, mais je le vois, moi, \u00e0 ma fa\u00e7on. Je ne leur dois rien.\n\nJe dispose des statues photographiques d'\u00e9poques variables abandonn\u00e9es un peu au hasard sur le sol :\n\n\u2013 Devant la barri\u00e8re \u00e0 claire-voie \u00e0 la fronti\u00e8re du 21 _bis_ , oncle Pierre (Pierre Thabot) et Tante Jeanne, lui debout, b\u00e9ret et moustache, elle assise. Leurs pieds, le sol, tout le devant est plus que flou, enti\u00e8rement effac\u00e9 pour ne laisser que du gris uni et un ovale blanc, le soleil.\n\nDevant la v\u00e9randa grand-maman, la main sur l'\u00e9paule de Taia, son amie, \u00e0 leurs pieds Coqui, le chien collie de mon fr\u00e8re : tr\u00e8s beau, tr\u00e8s noble, un peu apais\u00e9 par l'\u00e2ge. (Un moment tardif, donc).\n\n\u2013 Un peu plus loin dans l'all\u00e9e, et bien des ann\u00e9es avant, grand-maman toujours, Taia toujours \u00e0 sa droite, mais avec elles cette fois ma m\u00e8re, jeune.\n\n\u2013 Une table dress\u00e9e l'\u00e9t\u00e9 dans le jardin, plein soleil contre un mur de feuilles. C'est moment encore plus ancien, ma tante Ren\u00e9e n'a pas beaucoup plus de dix ans, mon grand-p\u00e8re a son chapeau sur la t\u00eate, ma grand-m\u00e8re soul\u00e8ve son assiette de la main gauche.\n\n\u2013 La maison derri\u00e8re les arbres l'hiver, les m\u00fbriers nus de feuilles.\n\n\u2013 Mon grand-p\u00e8re et moi assis au pied d'un arbre. Le soleil est violent. Grand-papa ferme les yeux. Je (sept, huit ans), dans une veste de tricot \u00e0 boutons, me suis tourn\u00e9 vers lui.\n\n## 181 En m'immergeant dans le jardin, en me tournant depuis les m\u00fbriers, vers la maison,\n\nEn m'immergeant dans le jardin, en me tournant depuis les m\u00fbriers, vers la maison, la terrasse, la v\u00e9randa, j'ai implicitement toute son immensit\u00e9 autour de moi, comme un v\u00eatement sur mes \u00e9paules. Je pense, et je vois les m\u00fbriers, v\u00e9ritablement \u00e9normes, vieillards v\u00e9n\u00e9rables de la forme de vie v\u00e9g\u00e9tale. Ils avaient tant v\u00e9cu que les blessures des orages, ou les explosions exag\u00e9r\u00e9es de s\u00e8ve, ou le simple poids de leur chevelure de larges feuilles vert sombre avaient fait \u00e9clater le tronc de certains d'entre eux, et on les avait affubl\u00e9s de pansements de ma\u00e7onnerie, de cataplasmes de ciment, de \u00ab bandes Velpeau \u00bb de pierre qui \u00e9trangement leur donnaient un air d'animaux immobiles plut\u00f4t que d'arbres. Ils \u00e9taient guetteurs dans l'all\u00e9e, jusqu'au milieu \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s de la dimension longue du jardin (107 m\u00e8tres sur 40), avant le verger qui avait engendr\u00e9 les r\u00eaves utopiques de grand-maman.\n\nC'\u00e9taient, comme il se doit dans cette ville (Caluire-et-Cuire touche \u00e0 la Croix-Rousse, o\u00f9 se r\u00e9volt\u00e8rent, au XIXe si\u00e8cle, les \u00ab canuts \u00bb (\u00ab Nous en tissons pour vous gens de la terre \/ et nous pauvres canuts sans drap on nous enterre \/... \u00bb) et o\u00f9 prosp\u00e9r\u00e8rent de plus belle ensuite les \u00ab soyeux \u00bb (\u00ab Nous n'avons plus d'argent pour enterrer nos morts \/ Le pr\u00eatre est l\u00e0, comptant le prix des fun\u00e9railles \/... \u00bb (Marceline Desbordes-Valmore))), des m\u00fbriers pour vers \u00e0 soie, leurs fruits ces m\u00fbres blanches, poilues, douce\u00e2tres qui, tomb\u00e9es, devenaient rouille sur le sol, imbib\u00e9es aussit\u00f4t de fourmis.\n\n(J'ai d\u00e9couvert plus tard les m\u00fbres rouges de Delphes, juteuses d'un vin rouge \u00e9clatant, qui laissaient en tombant des taches de sang sur les gradins du stade antique, comme des proph\u00e9ties silencieuses.)\n\nLe haut mur du fond s'ouvrait sur une autre rue \u00e9troite, par une petite porte, et tout de suite d'autres rues en pente raide, vers le grand pont de la Boucle, l'arr\u00eat du tram de Vaise, de chaque c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la porte un massif buissonnant, \u00e9pais, riche en lourds et lents escargots \u00ab bourguignons \u00bb, maladroits comme des tanks (bien inf\u00e9rieurs aux agiles \u00ab petit-gris \u00bb de la campagne carcassonnaise, au long de l'Aude, ou dans les foss\u00e9s de la Cit\u00e9).\n\nM. Nithard, le grincheux et suisse propri\u00e9taire, mourut au milieu des ann\u00e9es cinquante (ses locataires, \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque du 21 _bis_ , les Calame, les Pasquier, avant que grand-maman, par la seule autorit\u00e9 et insistance de son d\u00e9sir lui arrache notre \u00ab droit d'entr\u00e9e \u00bb au 21, avaient tous \u00e9t\u00e9, comme lui, des Helv\u00e8tes), et les h\u00e9ritiers, peu int\u00e9ress\u00e9s par Caluire, press\u00e9s de se partager l'h\u00e9ritage (ils ne s'entendaient pas) et semble-t-il au moins aussi indiff\u00e9rents (inconscience pr\u00e9visionnelle) \u00e0 l'avenir immobilier que mes grands-parents, offrirent la vente du tout, maison et jardin, pour une somme si ridicule que nous en rougissons encore.\n\nCertes mes grands-parents ne la poss\u00e9daient pas. Mais non moins certes ils auraient pu l'emprunter \u00e0 mon oncle Walter, qui n'aurait pas demand\u00e9 mieux et qui n'en aurait gu\u00e8re souffert, \u00e9tant donn\u00e9 le taux de change du dollar, \u00e0 l'\u00e9poque. Mais mon grand-p\u00e8re en d\u00e9cida autrement (il prit cette d\u00e9cision seul, unilat\u00e9ralement, faisant ainsi preuve d'une mentalit\u00e9 patriarcale dont il n'\u00e9tait pas coutumier en d'autres domaines). \u00ab Locataire il avait v\u00e9cu, locataire il resterait. \u00bb\n\nCertes (troisi\u00e8mement certes) je ne peux qu'admirer r\u00e9trospectivement la fermet\u00e9 de ses convictions (o\u00f9 se m\u00ealaient, peut-\u00eatre moins admirablement, une certaine propension \u00e0 \u00e9viter les changements d'habitude, apr\u00e8s les tumultes de la guerre, ainsi qu'une horreur d'\u00eatre endett\u00e9, de devoir quoi que ce soit \u00e0 autrui). Mais quand m\u00eame ! (Je comprends mal que grand-maman n'ait pas r\u00e9ussi cette fois \u00e0 passer outre. Peut-\u00eatre n'\u00e9tait-elle pas tout \u00e0 fait consciente de l'enjeu.)\n\nLes ann\u00e9es pass\u00e8rent. Et l'in\u00e9vitable arriva. Les Suisses vendirent. Ils n'offrirent m\u00eame pas cette fois \u00e0 mon grand-p\u00e8re d'acheter : le prix s'\u00e9tait mis au go\u00fbt du jour. Comme la \u00ab loi de 48 \u00bb prot\u00e9geait sp\u00e9cialement des locataires presque octog\u00e9naires (et qui louaient eux-m\u00eames une ou deux chambres, pour s\u00e9curit\u00e9 et pour trois fois rien), ils ne mirent en vente que le jardin. Et \u00e0 la place des m\u00fbriers s'\u00e9lev\u00e8rent des \u00ab r\u00e9sidences \u00bb, \u00e0 moins de vingt m\u00e8tres de la maison. Ce fut le premier coup.\n\nEt, peu de temps apr\u00e8s, la maison elle-m\u00eame, dont la fa\u00e7ade rend la rue de l'Orangerie particuli\u00e8rement \u00e9troite fut, comme on dit \u00ab frapp\u00e9e d'alignement \u00bb (on remarquera que, trente ans plus tard, elle est toujours l\u00e0). Pour \u00e9viter expulsion et relogement n'importe o\u00f9, il fallait en devenir propri\u00e9taire. Le prix n'\u00e9tait pas trop \u00e9lev\u00e9, et cette fois, mon oncle Walter fut autoris\u00e9 \u00e0 participer (largement) \u00e0 l'achat. (En 1967, \u00e0 la mort de grand-papa, je me souviens avoir tent\u00e9 d'emp\u00eacher qu'elle ne soit vendue, envisageant m\u00eame, un moment, de venir y habiter moi-m\u00eame (je venais d'\u00eatre, apr\u00e8s ma th\u00e8se, nomm\u00e9 \u00e0 Dijon). Ce fut en vain. Mais de toute fa\u00e7on, il n'y avait plus de jardin.)\n\n# BIFURCATION E\n\n# Enfance de la prose\n\n* * *\n\n## 182 Tout au long de l'\u00e9criture de cette branche et jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui,\n\nTout au long de la composition \u00ab \u00e9cranique \u00bb de cette **branche** , et jusqu'\u00e0 aujourd'hui, j'ai eu en t\u00eate la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 de cette **bifurcation** , \u00e0 laquelle je donnais pour mission \u00ab th\u00e9orique \u00bb, en son **moment** unique, de rassembler les \u00e9l\u00e9ments utiles \u00e0 l'\u00e9conomie g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de mon entreprise, les **images-m\u00e9moire** qui m'ont accompagn\u00e9 dans le r\u00e9cit (il ne s'agissait pas des images elles-m\u00eames bien s\u00fbr, mais de \u00ab pictions \u00bb de ces images, dispos\u00e9es en une succession descriptive), et de les mettre en parall\u00e8le avec les **assertions du chapitre 5 de la premi\u00e8re branche** , qui constituent une **d\u00e9duction fictive** de ce que \u00ab **Le grand incendie de Londres** \u00bb, entre autres choses, se trouve toujours en train de continuer \u00e0 raconter : issus de **l'axiome** d'un **r\u00eave** , un **Projet** et un **roman** , dont le titre aurait \u00e9t\u00e9 **Le Grand Incendie de Londres.** Je voulais aussi lui confier l'examen de la situation de ces images, de cette famille d'images li\u00e9es par \u00ab resssemblance familiale \u00bb dans le **Projet** pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment (qui \u00e9tait po\u00e9sie et math\u00e9matique) et cons\u00e9cutivement dans le roman.\n\nMais comme je me trouvais, sans cesse, un peu d\u00e9bord\u00e9 par la masse de ces mat\u00e9riaux et des \u00e9lucidations qu'ils semblaient, \u00e0 mesure, exiger, je n'ai jamais pu vraiment me \u00ab pr\u00e9parer \u00bb \u00e0 ce moment, qui risquerait par suite, si je m'en tenais \u00e0 mon but initial, d'\u00eatre de dimensions extravagantes (en comparaison des autres), une v\u00e9ritable \u00ab hernie th\u00e9orique \u00bb dans une continuit\u00e9 ailleurs dans l'ensemble num\u00e9riquement contr\u00f4l\u00e9e, et de plus de ne pas parvenir m\u00eame jusqu'au d\u00e9but de son \u00ab intention \u00bb, \u00e0 savoir fonder cette esp\u00e8ce de \u00ab correspondance \u00bb entre **assertions** et **images** qui constitue l'un des liens formels principaux entre les deux premi\u00e8res branches de mon m\u00e9moire. J'y ai donc renonc\u00e9 (ou plus exactement j'ai renvoy\u00e9 l'ensemble des divagations qui en r\u00e9sultent \u00e0 ce que j'ai appel\u00e9 plus haut **entre-deux-branches** ).\n\nIl reste que la \u00ab situation narrative \u00bb de cette cinqui\u00e8me bifurcation demeure excentrique. Mais cela n'a pas que des inconv\u00e9nients. Ce qui survit de la menace d'une \u00ab digression th\u00e9orique \u00bb para\u00eetra ainsi plus inoffensif, moins r\u00e9barbatif que son homologue, le chapitre 5 de la premi\u00e8re branche, \u00ab R\u00eave, d\u00e9cision, **Projet** \u00bb, qui m'a \u00e9t\u00e9 souvent reproch\u00e9 par certains de mes lecteurs. Sa place, avant-derni\u00e8re des Bifurcations, moins visible, permettra aussi beaucoup plus ais\u00e9ment cette \u00ab excision \u00bb \u00e0 la lecture que je recommandais alors (d'une mani\u00e8re qui pouvait para\u00eetre provocatrice). Sa disposition num\u00e9rique m\u00eame facilite son isolement. Ce n'est qu'un simple **moment** du texte, au sens que j'ai donn\u00e9 \u00e0 cet emploi du mot \u00ab moment \u00bb, mais, \u00e0 la diff\u00e9rence des autres, ce n'est pas un moment uniquement circonscrit temporellement de la composition du texte.\n\nJe maintiendrai ceci seulement : toutes les images constitutives de cette branche, des images-souvenirs devenant des **images-m\u00e9moire** du fait m\u00eame de leur insertion dans la continuit\u00e9 contructive de la narration, sont situ\u00e9es dans un pass\u00e9 ant\u00e9rieur au triple constitu\u00e9 du r\u00eave, de la d\u00e9cision et du **Projet** qui est au centre de la premi\u00e8re branche.\n\nJ'en viens maintenant \u00e0 la place de cette bifurcation, la cinqui\u00e8me. Elle est la suivante : elle commence, s'ins\u00e8re \u00e0 la fin du chapitre 3 ( **Rue d'Assas** ) et s'ach\u00e8ve au commencement du chapitre sixi\u00e8me et dernier ( **H\u00f4tel Lutetia** ). Si on se repr\u00e9sente les six chapitres de la partie intitul\u00e9e **r\u00e9cit** comme un chemin continu et rectiligne de prose, elle constitue donc une **\u00ab boucle \u00bb**. Il en est de m\u00eame pour les autres bifurcations : chacune d'elle constitue une boucle possible dans le r\u00e9cit, entre la fin d'un chapitre et le commencement d'un autre (le titre m\u00eame de la Branche pr\u00e9sente, **La Boucle** , se trouve ainsi partiellement expliqu\u00e9). La Bifurcation A, la premi\u00e8re \u00ab va \u00bb du chapitre 1 au chapitre 2, la Bifurcation B du chapitre 2 au chapitre 4, la Bifurcation C du chapitre 4 au chapitre 5, la Bif D de chap. 5 \u00e0 chap. 3, Bif E, comme je viens de le dire de chap. 3 \u00e0 chap. 6, et la derni\u00e8re, Bif F (qui se situe apr\u00e8s celle-ci dans le livre, et en ach\u00e8ve le d\u00e9roulement lin\u00e9aire) effectue une \u00ab boucle \u00bb finale en joignant la fin du chapitre 6 au tout d\u00e9but du premier. Je laisse le soin au lecteur de se repr\u00e9senter la \u00ab figure \u00bb g\u00e9om\u00e9trique sur laquelle ce chemin propos\u00e9 de prose peut \u00eatre trac\u00e9.\n\nCette branche, ai-je dit d\u00e8s son d\u00e9but, est un parcours dans mon **Avant-Projet**. Elle est aussi description de l'enfance, selon le mod\u00e8le du r\u00e9cit m\u00e9di\u00e9val, enfance de la prose. Et sa construction mime l'espace o\u00f9 je vivais alors. La topologie de cet espace (qui est aussi celle de la **m\u00e9moire** , comme je la con\u00e7ois dans ce livre) est assez \u00e9loign\u00e9e de celle au sein de laquelle nous nous imaginons vivre, une fois habitu\u00e9s \u00e0 la perception ordinaire et consensuelle du monde. Je l'\u00e9voquerai ici seulement par un fragment d'un texte d'Italo Calvino, _De l'opaque_ , dernier des six \u00ab exercices de m\u00e9moire \u00bb qui constituent le livre posthume paru en France sous le titre _La Route de San Giovanni :_\n\n\u00ab Si l'on m'avait (...) demand\u00e9 combien de dimensions a l'espace, si l'on demandait \u00e0 ce moi qui continue \u00e0 ne pas savoir les choses que l'on apprend afin d'avoir un code de conventions en commun avec les autres, et en premier (...) la convention selon laquelle chacun de nous se trouve au croisement de trois dimensions infinies, transperc\u00e9 par une dimension qui lui entre dans la poitrine et ressort dans le dos, par une autre qui passe d'une \u00e9paule \u00e0 l'autre, et par une troisi\u00e8me qui perce le cr\u00e2ne et sort par les pieds, id\u00e9e que l'on accepte apr\u00e8s beaucoup de r\u00e9sistances et de r\u00e9pulsions (...) si je devais r\u00e9pondre (...) sur ces trois dimensions qui, \u00e0 force de se trouver au milieu d'elles, deviennent six, avant arri\u00e8re dessus dessous droite gauche... \u00bb (c'est moi, J.R. qui souligne).\n\nDans la tradition des Arts de la M\u00e9moire un auteur au moins, du XVe si\u00e8cle, Lodovico da Pirano semble avoir eu une intuition semblable, organisant son espace mn\u00e9monique en huit dimensions associ\u00e9es deux \u00e0 deux sur des axes \u00e9clair\u00e9s chacun aux deux bouts par un soleil.\n\nEt c'est bien ainsi que je me repr\u00e9sente ici **voyant** enfant, le monde, centre d'une vue pour laquelle l'arri\u00e8re n'est pas le prolongement virtuel de l'avant mais une tout autre dimension, un autre \u00ab avant \u00bb enti\u00e8rement distinct du premier, auquel on acc\u00e8de par un retournement int\u00e9rieur (tel qu'il s'effectue ensuite tout naturellement, sans y penser, dans le souvenir), et ainsi du dessus et du dessous, de la droite et de la gauche et de l'avant comme de l'arri\u00e8re du temps pass\u00e9. J'ajoute qu'en chacune de ces huit dimensions l'espace int\u00e9rieur est double, se repliant sur lui-m\u00eame, par r\u00e9versibilit\u00e9.\n\nOn na\u00eet \u00e0 cet espace au moment o\u00f9, en m\u00eame temps que la langue, on acquiert le sens int\u00e9rieur de ces dimensions, ainsi que leur irr\u00e9ductible distinction. On l'oublie adulte (peut-\u00eatre jamais enti\u00e8rement).\n\nC'est cet espace v\u00e9cu que j'ai habit\u00e9 puis abandonn\u00e9 (pour ne le retrouver, comme imitation de lui-m\u00eame, qu'en espace mn\u00e9monique) en perdant le jardin de la rue d'Assas.\n\n# BIFURCATION F\n\n# Boulevard Truph\u00e8me\n\n* * *\n\n## 183 Saint-F\u00e9lix le dix huit d\u00e9cembre La partie droite de la maison est \u00e0 la promri\u00e9taireMadame\n\n _Saint-F\u00e9lix le dix huit d\u00e9cembre_\n\nLa partie droite de la maison est \u00e0 la promri\u00e9taireMadame\n\nAtjer je revois sa figuer flasque bouggie et\n\nblafarde Quand elle xxxxxx parle elle l\u00e8ve souvent les\n\nyeux au ciel et ses paupi\u00e8res clignotent Elle est veuve V\u00e8it\n\nseule et ne re\u00e7oit personne Elle veille jalousement \u00e0 ce que\n\n _Chers amis_\n\nnous n empi\u00e9tions pas sur son territoire Les jeux de balle\n\nsur la terrasse sont strictement contr\u00f4l\u00e9s\n\n _Les calissons d Arles sont arriv\u00e9s ce matin Bien \u00e0 temps p_\n\nNous avons l'eau sur l'\u00e9vier de la cuisine Pas de gaz\n\n _pour que nous les savourions avec deux des enfants et petits_\n\nd electricit\u00e9 Les repas sont pr\u00e9par\u00e9s au charbon de bois\n\n _enfants qui viendront \u00e0 nous ce No\u00ebl Merci pour eux et qui_\n\nsur le potager ou sur un r\u00e9chaud \u00e0 alcool Le soir on allume\n\n _pour nousPaul n est pas le seul \u00e0 apprecier les douceurs_\n\nla suspension dans la salle \u00e0 manger si l on y tient ce qui\n\n _Nous n aurons ici qu u ne fraction de la famille_\n\nest rare ou des lampes \u00e0 p\u00e9trole qui ne sentent pas bon\n\n _Anne d\u00e9bute toute seule jeudi Son s\u00e9jour ne durera que_\n\net se mettent rapidement \u00e0 fumer si l on ne contr\u00f4le pas la\n\n _jusqu au lendemain de No\u00ebl et elle montrera son go\u00fbt de_\n\nmont\u00e9e de la meche Le seul moyen de chauffage dont je\n\n _l ind\u00e9pendance en prenant le train pour Paris le jour m\u00eame_\n\nme souvienne est un r\u00e9chaud \u00e0 p\u00e9trole \u00e0 flamme bleue qui\n\n _o\u00f9 sa mere prendra cxxxxxxxxxx son train en sens inversex_\n\nsert surtout dans la chambre pour le coufher de FrantzMais je\n\n _Elles se croiseront dans la nuitDenise ne nous accordera que_\n\nn ai pas conscience d avoir jamais eu froid\n\n _la derniere semaine car elle ne veut pas laisser la grand_\n\nLes ceux chambres au premier et unique \u00e9tage sont\n\n _mere d Anne seule le jour de No\u00eblPierrot ne nous am\u00e8ne_\n\ndispos\u00e9es comme les pi\u00e8ces au rez de chauss\u00e9eJe me suis\n\n _que la moiti\u00e9 de saprogeniture Les deux absents seron_\n\nsouvent demand\u00e9 comment nous pouvions loger l\u00e0 \u00e0 quatre\n\n _Clairette et Vincent l une faisant un s\u00e9jour linguistique_\n\nd abord non \u00e0 cinq nous trois maman et grand maman Il devrait\n\n _dans une famille de RDA I autre se payant un sejour \u00e0 Marse ille_\n\ny avoir une troisieme pi\u00e8ce mais je ne la revois pasNous n\n\n _avec quelques copainsT ous c s jeunes ont drolement la xxxxxx_\n\n_______________________________________________________________\n\n_bougeotteFran\u00e7ois sera juste rentr\u00e9 d un sejour \u00e0 Londres_\n\nLa vie se passe \u00e0 l \u00e9cole de huit heures \u00e0 onze puis de une\n\n _pour descendre jusqu ici n voiture_\n\nheure \u00e0 six puisque nous restons \u00e0 l \u00e9tude du soir\n\n _paternelle pour raisons d economie_\n\nCette p\u00e9riode apr\u00e8s la libert\u00e9 de la ampagne\n\n _Nous avons pris le r\u00e9gime d hiver d autan plus aujourd_\n\nJolie me revient \u00e0 l esprit comme une\n\n _hui que le temps a fra\u00eechi consid\u00e9rablementDonc trois_\n\nprisonTout y est petit mesquin laid Le retour de l \u00e9cole les\n\n _sources de chaleurLes flamb\u00e9es dans la chemin\u00e9e sont ce_\n\nsoirs d hiver lapar le Bd lr est lugubreLes reverb\u00e8res \u00e0 gaz\n\n _qui nous est le plus agr\u00e9ableNous serons envore mieux_\n\nn eclairent gu\u00e8reJ y \u00e9prouve mes\n\n _prot\u00e9g\u00e9s du froid quand le ma\u00e7on aura fini de doubler_\n\npremi\u00e8res impressions de cafard et d oppression qui sont toutes\n\n _la toiture du grenier avec laine de verre et isorel_\n\ndoncens\u00e9e dans le cri du vendeur de Tout cau sortes de\n\n _Lucien s'est remis de sa lombo sciatique et ne souffre_\n\ngrepes \u00e0 la farine de ch\u00e2taigne suant l huile Le marchand\n\n _plus que de ses douleurs normales si l on peut dire_\n\nlance deux notes longues toujours les m\u00eames Fa mi\n\n _Je remplis les creux de mes journ\u00e9es dus \u00e0 l extr\u00eame indi_\n\ndescendante\n\n _gence de la radio par Il \u00e9coute des cassettes Barr\u00e8s m a_\n\nles seulxs \u00e9v\u00e8nements marquants sont les\n\n _offert avec Colette Baudoche un si parfait exemple du_\n\nbains de mer du jeudi au oucas lanc sur la orniche \u00e0\n\n _nationalisme revanchard et patriotard qui r \u00e9gnait avant_\n\nMarseilleBaignorre chauff\u00e9 l'hiver Toute l ann\u00e9e pour\n\n _quatorze que je n en ai support\u00e9 que le d\u00e9but et la finx_\n\nFrantz Pas pour Maurice et moi qui nous trempons dans la mer\n\n _J ai \u00e9galement cal\u00e9 devant un Samuel Beckett particuliere_\n\ndans l'espace prot\u00e9g\u00e9 par des cordes M apprend \u00e0\n\n _ment d\u00e9primant Nos amis rolland_\n\nnager moi pasNous rentrons \u00e0 pied par la Corniche et le\n\n _m ont mis en rapport avec une biblioth\u00e8que sonore de Grenoble_\n\nPrado jusqu'au premier tram\n\nMauvais souvenirs aussi les retours au anet le soir\n\napr \u00e8s les courses en ville dans le tramway vroyant et bond\u00e9\n\ndevant la fabrique de Gougies fournier sur le boulevard ext\u00e9\n\nrieur l air empeste Les gros camions \u00e0 chevaux charg\u00e9 de xx\n\nsoufre en b\u00e2tons font un bruit infernal sur les pav\u00e9s ix\n\nirr\u00e9guliers Des \u00e9tincelles partent sous les fers des chevaux\n\n## 184 Peu de temps avant de renoncer d\u00e9finitivement \u00e0 sa machine \u00e0 \u00e9crire\n\nPeu de temps avant de renoncer d\u00e9finitivement \u00e0 sa machine \u00e0 \u00e9crire (dont mon fr\u00e8re avait adapt\u00e9 les touches \u00e0 son toucher incertain d'aveugle) (quand elle devint persuad\u00e9e (\u00e0 tort) de l'illisibilit\u00e9 absolue de sa frappe), ma m\u00e8re entreprit (tentative hivernale prolong\u00e9e qui exigea d'elle beaucoup d'efforts) la restitution sur papier de quelques moments de son pass\u00e9. Ils vont (au moins dans les quelques feuilles que je poss\u00e8de) de ce qu'elle d\u00e9signe comme son premier souvenir (dat\u00e9 d'octobre 1910 : elle avait donc trois ans et demi) au printemps de 1916, en pleine guerre.\n\nEn abordant cette derni\u00e8re Bifurcation de mon livre, que je pensais, sans en avoir r\u00e9fl\u00e9chi autrement le contenu, devoir s'ins\u00e9rer entre le dernier chapitre de sa partie intitul\u00e9e R\u00e9cit et le chapitre premier de cette m\u00eame partie qui le commence (achevant ainsi, au moins en esprit, l'entrelacement de ces \u00ab boucles de la m\u00e9moire \u00bb qui le constituent par un retour \u00e0 son premier moment) j'ai ouvert le dossier \u00e0 carton rouge souple o\u00f9 j'avais plac\u00e9 ces \u00e9critures et j'ai rencontr\u00e9 cette page, ce m\u00e9lange de hasard entre une description de Marseille avant mil neuf cent quatorze et une lettre envoy\u00e9e, peu avant No\u00ebl d'une ann\u00e9e non pr\u00e9cis\u00e9e (qui est bien s\u00fbr celle o\u00f9 eut lieu la tentative de restitution par ma m\u00e8re de son enfance), \u00e0 nos amis Geniet, d'Arles.\n\nCherchant, pour \u00e9crire cette lettre, une feuille de papier dans un tiroir du petit bureau o\u00f9 se trouvait sa machine et se trompant, par distraction, de tiroir (c'est ainsi que j'interpr\u00e8te ce que je lis), elle avait pris une feuille d\u00e9j\u00e0 occup\u00e9e par une version, entre autres, d'une de ses descriptions de lieux (elle les reprenait sans cesse, toujours m\u00e9contente de leur style et de leurs lacunes) et avait superpos\u00e9, sans s'en rendre compte (et pour cause), les deux textes.\n\nMais, par hasard encore, le hasard de l'insertion du papier autour du rouleau cette fois, les lignes s'\u00e9taient trouv\u00e9es non strictement superpos\u00e9es, ce qui aurait rendu le tout illisible, mais l\u00e9g\u00e8rement d\u00e9cal\u00e9es les unes par rapport aux autres, et c'est ainsi que j'en ai reproduit le d\u00e9but. (L'alignement de mon \u00ab traitement de texte \u00bb est \u00e9videmment parfait, lui, parfaite \u00e9galement sera la disposition de la typographie, ce qui n'est pas le cas de l'original, o\u00f9 les lignes des deux textes, sans se chevaucher, ne sont pas exactement parall\u00e8les, et se mordent parfois un peu.)\n\nIl m'est apparu, alors, que je ne pouvais faire mieux que de restituer ici en partie cette tentative de ma m\u00e8re, de lui donner la parole apr\u00e8s avoir, dans d'autres pages, laiss\u00e9 aussi parler (m\u00eame s'il ne s'agit que d'un \u00ab parler-\u00e9crit \u00bb), et selon des modes chaque fois diff\u00e9rents, mon p\u00e8re et, de mes grands-parents, les deux seuls que j'ai connus, mes grands-parents maternels.\n\nCar cette conjonction tapuscrite involontaire de pass\u00e9 et de pr\u00e9sent \u00e9tait comme une image, brutalement simplifi\u00e9e, mais en m\u00eame temps r\u00e9v\u00e9latrice de ma propre tentative de d\u00e9chiffrement du souvenir (qui s'est, elle, poursuivie au long des pages de r\u00e9cit, incises et bifurcations dans des conditions de lisibilit\u00e9 bien plus incertaines, o\u00f9 les lignes de la vision non seulement s'entassent les unes sur les autres, se confondent, dirais-je pour prolonger cette comparaison, mais sont au moins autant lacunaires, et troubles, et brouill\u00e9es).\n\nIl y a trois parties, trois lieux \u00e9voqu\u00e9s dans ces souvenirs : \u00e0 Marseille, la Campagne Jolie puis le Boulevard Truph\u00e8me, \u00e0 Digne le Boulevard Thiers. Je n'ai pas corrig\u00e9 le texte. J'ai laiss\u00e9 toutes les fautes de frappe, les ratures, les omissions de lettres non r\u00e9par\u00e9es (parce que non senties, non vues, irr\u00e9parables, lettres oubli\u00e9es ou touches non assez appuy\u00e9es) (cependant l'omission des apostrophes, apr\u00e8s le \u00ab l \u00bb, ou le \u00ab n \u00bb, comme dans \u00ab l air \u00bb, est trop syst\u00e9matique pour ne pas laisser supposer ou bien une omission volontaire ou bien un lapsus de la vieille machine fatigu\u00e9e, plut\u00f4t qu'un oubli des doigts). J'ai conserv\u00e9 les irr\u00e9gularit\u00e9s du d\u00e9crochement des lignes, parfois tr\u00e8s t\u00f4t interrompues. Des mots parfois se sont perdus au contraire au-del\u00e0 de la feuille sur le rouleau (ou m\u00eame en bas de page). Cependant j'ai impos\u00e9 l'alignement \u00e0 gauche. J'ai maintenu aussi certains blancs excessifs entre mots. Je n'ai pas r\u00e9tabli la ponctuation, enti\u00e8rement absente. J'ai conserv\u00e9 aussi certaines redites, des faux d\u00e9parts, des contradictions. J'ai tranch\u00e9 dans quelques minuties et m\u00e9andres de la troisi\u00e8me partie, pour ne restituer, presque partout, que les visions. (J'ai sans doute, in\u00e9vitablement, ajout\u00e9 quelques erreurs de transcription.)\n\nToutes ces particularit\u00e9s du texte retardent sa lecture, font buter l'\u0153il, je le sais. Elles n'affectent pas la compr\u00e9hension (rares sont les mots enti\u00e8rement d\u00e9form\u00e9s). Mais je les laisse surtout parce qu'elles sont signe, signe persistant et que je ne veux pas omettre, des circonstances de la composition. Et de ce que toute vision du pass\u00e9 est d'aveugle.\n\n## 185 Campagne Jolie,feuille I. Pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9e de : Mon premier souvenir octobre mil neuf cent dix\n\nJe ne me rappelle rien de mon village natal Fuveau village de\n\nmineurs dans le bassin de Gardanne Rien non plus de cet immeuble\n\nsi laid b\u00e2tisse mod erne \u00e0 bo n march\u00e9 o\u00f9 mes parents ont occup\u00e9\n\nquelque temps le cinqi\u00e8me \u00e9tage lorsqu ils ont \u00e9t\u00e9 nomm\u00e9s\n\nau Canet banlieue ouvri\u00e8re au nord est de Marseille La legendr\n\nfamiliale a perp\u00e9u\u00e9 le mot de mon p\u00e8re Lors d un tremblement\n\nde terre qui a fait d importants d\u00e9g\u00e2ts en Provence la maison de\n\nla place Casemajou s est mise \u00e0 osciller tr\u00e8s sensiblement pendant\n\nla nuit A maman qui le secouait en lui criant La maison tremble il\n\na rpondu Eh bien Laisse trembler il s'est tourn\u00e9 et rendormi\n\nLa famille va quitter ce logement exigu pouf und mqixon\n\nsitu\u00e9e dans une immense campagne domine il y en avait encore \u00e0 cette\n\npoque aux portes de Marseille\n\nnous sommes debout \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre mes fr\u00e8res et moi sans doute\n\nmais je me rappelle seulement la pr\u00e9sence de maman Assez loin vers\n\nle nord est au milieu de pr\u00e8s et d arbres montent deux colonnes\n\nde fum\u00e9e Deux feux de feui les mortes Maman nous dit voyez\n\nl\u00e0 bas la maison o\u00f9 nous allons habiter C est peut \u00eatre la maisonn\n\nqui br\u00fble Nous rions\n\n**Le Canet La Campagne Jolie**\n\nDe Parseille on gagne le Canet par la rue d Aix bord\u00e9e de boutiqques\n\nde frippiers avec leurs habits accroch\u00e9s dehors en plein air lers \u00e9tala\n\nges de vieilles chaussures La rue mon e Puis la pxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\n\nporte d Aix une vaste place dont j ai ouvli\u00e9 le nom un large boulevard\n\naue l on prend \u00e0 angle droit sur la droite Il sent d\u00e9j\u00e0 la banlieue\n\nQuelque part par l\u00e0 uxxx la grande fabrique de bougies Fournier oLe\n\ntramway tourne \u00e0 fauche vers le nord est et monte par une rue irr\u00e9gu\n\nli\u00e8rement pav\u00e9e jusqu \u00e0 son terminus la place encore villageoise du Canet\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nl image s est toujours form \u00ab e dans ma t\u00eate du coude \u00e9largie ayant\n\nl air d un cul de sac om nous nous arr\u00eations devant une petite porte\n\n\u00e0 droite Ce n \u00e9tait pas un cul de sac puisque la ruelle se xxxxxxxxx\n\ncontinuait vers le petit chemin de fer lequel qui sortait d un tunnel\n\nau nord de la campagne et passait dans une profonde tranch\u00e9e qui me\n\nfaisait peur\n\nNous sommes devant la petite porte jamais x\n\nferm\u00e9e qu au loquet Du haut d un petit palier en pierre nous\n\ndescendons une vingtaine de marches \u00e9galement en pierre \u00e9galement\n\net sans rampe et nous d\u00e9bouchons sur une immense pe te un peu vallon\n\nn\u00e9e et toutes sorte d espaces de verdure\n\nLa maison est \u00e0 notre gauche tout \u00e0 fait en contre bas par rapport\n\no la traverse dont on peut encore apercevoir les xxx le sommet\n\ndes pins dans ce coude o\u00f9 le mistral souffle tant que nous 1\n\nappelons le P\u00f4le Nord\n\nla maison\n\nune sorte de vide sanitaire la s\u00e9pare au nord de la\n\ntraverse espace \u00e9troit noir humide o\u00f9 sont jet\u00e9s toutes sortes de x\n\nd\u00e9bris o\u00f9 nous jeterons mes poup\u00e9es celles que l on me donne pour\n\nd\u00e9vlopper en moi l instinct qui para\u00eet il me fxxxxxxtait d\u00e9faut x\n\nmes fr\u00e8res m aident \u00e0 les \u00e9carteler e c est dans cet espace quell\n\nfinissent\n\nLa maison n a sur cette fa\u00e7ade ouest de fen\u00eatre qu au\n\npremier En longeant le mur nous parvenons sur la terrasse plut\u00f4t\n\ngenre terre plein qui domaine les espaces ve ts de la campagne plus xx\n\nloin les toits de marseille puis la mer presque toujours voil\u00e9e par les\n\nfum\u00e9es des usines xxxxxx\n\nla fa\u00e7ade ud ne me laisse pas d ision pr\u00e9cise Autant qu il me sou\n\nvienne elle est cr\u00e9pie d un haune un peu sale ce qui m a vraiment\n\nfrapp\u00e9e c est l \u0153il de b\u0153uf \u00e0 son sommet Le mot lui m\u00eame me surpre\n\nnait comme la roudeur de cett overture Je ne sais pas sur quoi elle\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\n## 186 Feuille II\n\ndonnait je n ai jamais eu acc\u00e8s \u00e0 quoi que ce soit\n\nqui ressembl\u00e2t \u00e0 un grenier\n\nL int\u00e9rieur\n\nJen parle en premier parce que il est de loin eclips\u00e9 par les m\n\nmerveilles du dehors La disposition des i pi\u00e8ces est banale sembla\n\nble \u00e0 celle de beaucoup de maisons en Proven\u00e7ales C est aussi cxx\n\ncelle de St f\u00e9lix un petit perron de quelques marches Un couloir\n\ncentral A droite la salle \u00e0 manger en profondeur sas de qui est\n\nici le bouteiller je crois qu elle a deux fen\u00eatres une au sud 1\n\nautre xx \u00e0 l est A gquche ce qui aurait d\u00fb \u00eatre le salon Elle sert\n\nde d\u00e9barras Nous l appelons la slle de bains car on y a\n\nmis une baignoir en zinc o\u00f9 l o nous lave je n ai aucune id\u00e9e de\n\nla fa\u00e7on dont l eau est chauff\u00e9e ni par o\u00f9 elle s \u00e9coule\n\nJe me revois l\u00e0 devant un grand tableau repr\u00e9sentant les lettres\n\nde l alphabet avec des syllabes correspontantes Ma m\u00e8re me les\n\nd\u00e9signe du bout d un long bambou Elle me dit maintenant\n\ntu sais lire\n\nAu fond du couloir \u00e0gauche en\u00eatre \u00e0 l ouest Comme\n\nla maison est en contre bas la pi\u00e8ce est combre Une assez grande che\n\nmin\u00e9e dans laquelle on fait rarement du feu Campagnarde d allure Un\n\npotager \u00e0 c\u00f4t\u00e9 sur lequel miijotent parfois des po\u00ealon de terre sx\n\nsur des braises de charbon de bois plusieurs histoire paysannes des\n\ncontes de f\u00e9es s inscrivent naturellement dans ce cadre Notamment\n\nles trois souhaits Nous mangeons toujours \u00e0 la cuisine sauf lesxx\n\nrares cas o\u00f9 il y a des invit\u00e9s Nous y faisons ici nos devoirs et\n\nnotre toilette comment se fhauttait on je ne me souviens pas d y x\n\navoir eu jamais froidUn certain coin ou j \u00e9tais assise me ram\u00e8ne x\n\nvois voix de mon p\u00e8re pour l occasion basse et th\u00e9atrale lisant x\n\nune description des pyramides \u00e0 intention de mon fr\u00e8re a\u00een\u00e9 lyc\u00e9en\n\nde s xi\u00e8me J ai encore cette voix dans l oreille\n\nla salle \u00e0 manger est rest\u00e9e lonttemps presque vide\n\njusqu au jour o\u00f9 sont arriv\u00e9s des Nouvelles Galeries de Marseille\n\nl ensemble de meubles dont la servante dans le couloir du rez de\n\ndh *uzz\u00e9e \u00e0 st F\u00e9lix est le dernier survivant Buffet tarabiscot\u00e9 c\n\ncomme celui de Tante jeanne chez denise mais en bien moins luxueux\n\npourtant les six chaises cann\u00e9es au dossier raraviscot\u00e9 et le dessus\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nen marbre ultra brillant de la servant me paissent le comble du luxe\n\nQelques chaises de cet ensemble sont encore dispers\u00e9es en divers\n\npoints de la maison ici\n\nL escalier monte au fond du couloir et tourne \u00e0 gauche comme icixx\n\ntrois chambres \u00e0 l \u00e9tage Celle de mes parents me para\u00eet grande Frantz\n\ny couche parce qu il est si souvent malade depuis la rougeole broncho\n\npneuemonie wui avait emport\u00e9 presque neh enfants sur dix dans le\n\nquartier de la place Casemajou\n\nNous sommes souvent seuls Frantz et moi pendant que mes paretns et\n\nMaurice sont \u00e0 l \u00e9cole du Canet Il para\u00eet qu il y avait\n\ntoujours une femme pour nous garder mais elles n ont\n\naucune existence dans ma memoire Frantz est souvent couch\u00e9 Il est\n\ntoujours joyeux et chante dans son lit Un de nos jeux familers\n\nsonsiste pour lui \u00e0 rep\u00e9rer la marche de l escalier que j ai xx\n\nr\u00e9ussi \u00e0 atteindre en rampant depuis le bas aussi silencieusement\n\nque possible Ou bien dans la chambre arn\u00e9e aux fen\u00eatres de rideaux\n\nroses \u00e0 grands ramages riche don de ma tante Ad\u00e8le morte\n\nmorte avant ma naissance et \u00e0 quije dois mon vrai pr\u00e9nom donc dans\n\nla chambre nous lison ou il me lit des po\u00e8mes dans un rec\u00e9eil de\n\nmorceaux choisis de V Hugo\n\nson livre de chevet pendant des\n\nann\u00e9es plus tard maurice et moi nous couchons dans deux chambre x\n\nexigues que je ne peux pas situer par rapport \u00e0 la grande chambre\n\nmais il y a sur le lit un grand \u00e9dreon rouge genre brioche Nous\n\nl appelons d ailleurs la brioche Il me pla\u00eet de croire que sel ui\n\nde Saint-F\u00e9lix que les petits enfants se disputent est le m\u00eame\n\nCest \u00e0 l injt\u00e9rieur aussi que je place la m\u00e9morable arriv\u00e9e\n\ndes amis d Indochine les d Argence avec leurs cinq enfants \u00e0 **x**\n\npeu pr\u00e8s dans nos \u00e2ges et leur bonne annamite aux dents laqu\u00e9es\n\nde noir Des cadeaux orientaux sont arriv\u00e9s avec eux comme\n\nil en arrivera par la poste pendant de nombreuses ann\u00e9es Leur odeur\n\nest encore famili\u00e8re\n\nL ext\u00e9rieur\n\nLe lieu des merveilles il y fait toujours beau La grande terrasse\n\ndevant la maison est en plein soleil ombrag\u00e9e seulement xx c\u00f4t\u00e9 x\n\nmidi Elle surplo\u00f9be un grand bassin lavoir o\u00f9 j ai toujours plac\u00e9 par la suite\n\nmes probl\u00e8mes arithm\u00e9tiques de robinets Sur la murette au-dessus\n\nde lui ma m\u00e8re lave souvent la vaisselle dans grand tian verniss\u00e9\n\njaune paille je suis quelque fois admise \u00e0 cet honneur\n\n## 187 Feuille III\n\nc\u00f4t\u00e9 ouest nous sommes s\u00e9par\u00e9s de la campagne voisine par une hai\n\njqixxxxxxxuCdes ouvertures permettent de nous glisser Maurice et moi\n\npour aller marauder des fraises ce pour quoi nous sommes s\u00e9v\u00e8remeent\n\npunis ur un tas de sable tout pr\u00e8s je joue \u00e0 Lilliput en tra ant\n\ndes chemins et plantant des bout de branches en guise d arbres\n\nJe quitte la terrasse pour aller vers l est pr\u00e8s de la maison un x\n\ngrand poirier de la St Fean donne beaucoup de poires que nous\n\nn avons pas le droit de manger tomb\u00e9es \u00e0 terre Eooes donnent\n\nle chol\u00e9ra Bordant la large xxxxxall\u00e9e qui conduit aux maisons des\n\nmara\u00eechers ily a toute sortes de grands arbres L un d eux porte\n\nune balac\u00e7oire mes fr\u00e8res jouent \u00e0 me lancer le plushaut possible\n\nJe n'ai pas trop peur mais j ai le mal de mer quand je descendsLes\n\nlogements des mar\u00e2ches forment une maison basse qui comprend plu\n\nsieurs logements pas tous habit\u00e9s\n\nPar le large portail qui\n\nferme l all\u00e9e nousa vons vu un jour entrer une cal\u00e8che \u00e0 cheval c\n\nou chevaux blancs Elle amenait mes grands parents parernels qui o\n\nvenaient habiter dans le logement la plus proche de chez nousA la\n\nmort de mo n grand p\u00e8re\n\nGrand maman vient habiter chez nousElle est\n\ngrande et droite Ses cheveux blonds sans un cheveu blanc sont\n\npartag\u00e9s par **u** e raie au milieu et coiff\u00e9s en bandeaux plats Exx\n\nEllea les yeux noisette et les mommettes saillantes\n\nElle est tr\u00e8s\n\ndouce J aime aller jouer chez elle xxx dans la pi\u00e8ce du rez de\n\nchauss\u00e9e qui donne directement sur la terrasse La salle est sombre\n\net basse\n\nJe ne me rappelle plus o\u00f9 se trouve l horloge dont monxx\n\ngrand p\u00e8re a fabriqu\u00e9 la caisse en noyer de l 8s\u00e8re mais j en ai\n\nentend-les sonneries jusqu \u00e0 la rue de l Orangerie Mon grand p\u00e8re\n\npetit trapu nest pas aussi doux Il se moque de moi quand je\n\npleure\n\nAssise sur la murette qui part de notre terrasse et se continue\n\njusaue l\u00e0 je vois les grenadiers au milieu d un fou llis d autres\n\nesces Le rouge de leurs fleurs leurs)\u00e9tales un peu charnus \u00e0\n\nla base me donne une sensation extraordinaire En co tre bas xxx\n\ngrompons sur les oliviers Leurs branc hes inf\u00e9rieures sont facile\n\naccessibles Je grimpe d ailleurs aussi bien que mes fr\u00e8res\n\nLes jardins mara\u00eechers descendent vers la maison des propxxxxxx\n\npropri\u00e9raires les Villaldac A\u00e9 coin de la restague nous avons notre\n\ncagnard ensoleill\u00e9 bien \u00e0 l abri du mistral\n\nIl me semble que des\n\nouvriers jardiniers travaillent parfois dans les plates bandes\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\n## 188 Campagne Jolie (deuxi\u00e8me version), feuille III _bis_\n\nLes jardins\n\nJ'emploie le pluriel Il s'agit en r\u00e9alit\u00e9 d une tr\u00e8s faste propri\n\n\u00e9t\u00e9 comprenant all\u00e9es parc jardin maraichers larges pr\u00e9s en pente\n\npin\u00e8de bassins d arrosage fouillis de buissonsDans mon souvenir\n\nle tout est plus vaste que le jardin de l OrangeriejJ ai une vision\n\nde mon p\u00e8tre et ma m\u00e8re se promenant sur l all\u00e9e conduisnt dans l\n\nall\u00e9e conduisant au pavillon de chasse dans la pin\u00e8de Ils sont\n\nextraordinairment diminu\u00e9s \u00e0 mes yeux et je n arrive pas \u00e0 me rendre\n\ncompe s ils marchent\n\npartons de notre maison Faisant s \u00e0 l esplanade d\u00e9j\u00e0 d\u00e9crite part une\n\nlarge all\u00e9e entour\u00e9e \u00e0 gquche d espaces ombrag\u00e9s comme \u00e0 Lyon\n\nA\u00e8 coin de la maison un grand poirier de la St Fean dont il nous\n\nest d\u00e9fendu de manger les poires tomb\u00e9es qui nous dit on donnent le\n\nchol\u00e9ra Plus l in une balac\u00e7oire pendue aux branches d un des beaux\n\narbres je ne sais de quelle esp\u00e8ce\n\nPlusieurs magno\n\nlias Je me rappelle le touccher de leurs grosses fleurs leur p\u00e9talesx\n\n\u00e9pais qui se fanent en brun d\u00e8s qu on les froisse un peuEt cette odeur\n\nEntre le parc et notre terrasse il y a un grand bassin lavoir J y ai\n\ntoujours situ\u00e9 par la suite mes probl\u00e8mes de robinets Au d\u00e9bouch\u00e9 du\n\nparc aux endroits ensoleill\u00e9s des grenadiers sur la droite\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nCampagne Jolie \u2013 d\u00e9tails oubli\u00e9s\n\nComment on acc\u00e8de \u00e0 la campagne\n\nnous suivons u ne rue de banlieue qui se dirige plus\n\n\u00e0 l st que celle par o\u00f9 monte le tramway.En fait elle\n\ncontourne ou plut\u00f4t amorce le pourtour du vaste terrain\n\nvague auquel aboutira le bd Truph\u00e8me c\u00f4t\u00e9 ouestLes xxxx\n\nmaisons et les magasins assez piteux les uns et les autres\n\ns'interrompent Nous sommes sur un chemin Je ne saurais\n\npr\u00e9ciser \u00e0 quel moment ce chemin se change en Traverse\n\nC est le mot qui dans la banlieue marseillaise d\u00e9signe\n\nces ruelles tortueuses bord\u00e9es de grands murs coup\u00e9s\n\nseulement de loin en loin par des portes s ouvrant sur\n\nles vastes CAMPAGNES ce ne sont que de petites portes\n\nL entr\u00e9e principale doit \u00eatre situ\u00e9e ur n autre xx\n\nxxxxxx c\u00f4t\u00e9 Notre traverse s appelle La Traverse de la\n\nM\u00e8re de DieuElle est bien plus \u00e9troite que la rue de Mx\n\nMargnoles \u00e0 Caluire C est \u00e0 elle que j ai toujours pens\u00e9 x\n\nen lisant dans Les Mis\u00e9rables le chemin de Jean Valjean\n\net Cosette poursuivis par Javert dans le qu artier du xx\n\nPetit PicpusMais l\u00e0 p s d \u00e9clairage Les premiers temps\n\no\u00f9 nous l avons prise tous les soirs Pas nous tous xxx\n\nseuleme t Papa Maman et Maurice \u00e0 la sortie de l \u00e9tude\n\nvers six heures du s oir mon p\u00e8re avait ne lanter \u00e0\n\nune main et dans l autre un pist letLa tra erse s \u00e9tant\n\nr\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9e pis pacifique que ne le tr\u00e9tendait l habitants\n\ndu canet il n a plus \u00e9t\u00e9 question de ces deux objets que\n\nje ne me souviens pas d avoir jamais husMais l impression\n\nd ins\u00e9curit\u00e9 et l aspect sinistre de ces longs murs xxx\n\naveugles ne m a jamsi comp\u00e8tement quitt\u00e9eNous sommes tx\n\ntout pr\u00e8s de la maison quant \u00e0 un tournant le voyau \u00e9troit\n\ns \u00e9largit un moment pour se resserrer tout de suite apr\u00e8sx\n\nderri\u00e8re le mur de gauche le serrain doit \u00eatre plus lev\u00e9\n\ncar on aper\u00e7oit d \u00e9normes alo\u00e8s et de grands pinsCe coin\n\nc est ce que nous nommons le P\u00f4le Nord Les jours de Mistral\n\nle vent s y engouffre en tourbillons et le ciel bleu iontense\n\nest encore plus glac\u00e9 que partout ailleursNos p\u00e9lerines se\n\nsoul\u00e8vent sur nos jambes nues et l air nous g\u00e8le les cuisses\n\nMais une petite porte \u00e0 droite va nous conduire chez nous\n\nAu bas de l escalier de pierre nous sommes imm\u00e9diatement \u00e0\n\nl abri \u2013 Boir pages pr\u00e9c\u00e9dentes\n\nJe ne connais pas le nom des arbres qui forment le parcIls\n\nsont nombreux tr\u00e8s hauts et touffusTout le parc sent laxxx\n\nfra\u00eechehr et les feuilles pourrissantes Surtout par cxxxxxx\n\nontraste avec le oliviers align\u00e9s en dessousJe n ai jamais\n\npu grimper sur un arbre du parc mais les oliviers nous sont\n\ntout \u00e0 fait accessiblesFrantz tomb\u00e9 dxxx d une de leurs\n\nbranches semblait s \u00eatre fait une blessure sanguin lente \u00e0\n\nle t\u00eate C est moi m a t on dit qui avait ixxxxxxxxxx\n\nsugg\u00e9r\u00e9 qu il avait sans doute \u00e9cras\u00e9 une olive m\u00fbre\n\nLa prairie Plut\u00f4t le pr\u00e9 Il est immense d\u00e9valant en pente\n\nd abord abrupte puis plus douce jusqu au bas de la propri\u00e9t\u00e9\n\ntr s loin tr\u00e8s loinNous nous y roulo s en faisant les txxxxxxx\n\ntonneaux\n\nj ai toujours gard\u00e9 dans les yeux le vert de l herbe\n\nun matin de soleilo\u00f9 la couleur intense de l herbe des\n\nmarguerite et pissenlits me faisait mal aux yeux xxxx\n\npendant que nous chantions Une souris verte... etc\n\nDu haut des oliviers on peut voir le mer mais elle n a\n\njamais \u00e0 travers les jum\u00e9es qui montent de la ville cet\n\nextraordinaire bleu un peu violet presque solide que xx\n\nj ai aperc\u00e7u la premi\u00e8re fois o\u00f9 l on m a men\u00e9e faire le\n\ntour de la Corniche au moment o\u00f9 la remorque d\u00e9couverte qu\n\nles maisons et laisse voir la mer\n\nCe vert ce bleu c est \u00e0 l\u00e9poque de la Campagne Jolie\n\nque je les replace Comme aussi les grosses barres givr\u00e9\n\net translucides que des camions transportaient vers\n\nles caf\u00e9sCette premi\u00e8re notion visuelle de la r\u00e9feaction\n\nest associ e pour moi aux grains de tapioca dans le blanc du e\n\nla soupe\n\nMaladie\n\nj'ai je crois la varicelle On m isole de mes fr\u00e8res La maladie\n\nalors est aust\u00e8re ne pas sortir les bras du lit pour ne pas\n\nprendre froidPas de livres Pas de lecture des tisanesLa tapisserie\n\n\u00e0 petites fleurs n a aucune fantaisie j entends dans le\n\njardin un vruit d e grelots qui courent j imagine que mes\n\nparents ont adopt\u00e9 un chien J apprends que ce sont les relots\n\ndes huides qu on a offertes \u00e0 mes fr\u00e8res pour jouer au cheval\n\non chauffe la chambre de Frantz avec un r\u00e9chaud \u00e0 p\u00e9role qui fait\n\nune flamme bleue et ne sent pas bon\n\n## 189 Le Canet II \u2013 Bd Truph\u00e8me\n\nSi j'en crois la topographie mentale que j ai\n\ngard\u00e9e depuis cette \u00e9poque en venant du Vieux Port o\n\non prend la Rue d Aix La porte d Aix est au bout de c\n\ncette rue o\u00f9 avondent des frippiers Des b\u00eatements de\n\ntoute sorte pendent \u00e0 m\u00eame le rue Bd d Arenc On voit\n\nla fabrique de Bougies Cournier qui r\u00fbla au cours de\n\nces ann\u00e9es et souleva une grande \u00e9motion dans tout\n\nla quartier et laissa pendant pluseirs jours de fxx\n\nflocons de suie aux alentours On prend la rue qui monte\n\nvers Le Canet direction cord est je crois Elle est garnie\n\nde gros pav\u00e9s Gros charroi des camions \u00e0 che aux tr\u00e8s\n\nbuyants des \u00e9tincelles jaillissent sous les sabots des\n\nchevaux a la m nt\u00e9eDerri\u00e8re eux nous ramassons souvent du x\n\nsoufre sous forme de petits cones tro qu\u00e9s tomb\u00e9s des\n\ncamions Le tramway qui vient du Vieux port aboutit \u00e0 la place\n\ncentre du village et les habituels platanes ces place proven\n\nales Le Bd Truph\u00e8me est le dernier arr\u00eat arr\u00eat facultatif\n\navant le terminus\n\nD abord de chaque c\u00f4t\u00e9 de petites villas assez minables\n\ndans de tout petits jardinsPuis des deux c\u00f4t\u00e9s de longs murs\n\nsales qui cachent des usines ou des entrepots et des\n\nmaisons de plus en plus minables sauf \u00e0 l aubre bout o\u00f9 xxx\n\nrecommencent les maisonnettes o\u00f9 des immmeubles de rapport\n\no deux ou trois \u00e9tages Le grande \u00e9cole communale \u00c9cole la\u00eeque\n\nde filles est surla droitele\n\nBoulevard abouti et se perd dans un grand terrain vaque\n\nNotre maison est l ava t derni\u00e8re sur la fauche\n\nLa maison\n\nElle n a qu un \u00e9tage La porte d entr\u00e9e donne sur un\n\ncouloir avec l escalier du premier au fondM\u00eame disposition\n\nqu \u00e0 Toulon Le propirxxxxxxxxxx propri\u00e9taire occupe la\n\npartie droite Nous l autre Au rez de chauss\u00e9 sur la rue une\n\nsalle \u00e0 manger miniscule m\u00eame pour l enfant de sept ans\n\nque j \u00e9tais La cuisine donne sur ce qu on peut difficilement\n\nappeler un jardin moins grand que celui de Toulon\n\nAu fond \u00e0 gauche une cabane Les cabinets Il e semble pas qu\n\nil y ait des arbres C es laid et d\u00e9labr\u00e9 la seule verdure\n\nagr\u00e9able Une traille mais de\n\nquelle esp\u00e8ce S\u00fbrement pas de vigne ni de vigne vierge\n\nelle obscurcit la terrasse dur tout l arri\u00e8re de la maison\n\net le soleil p \u00e9n\u00eatre tr\u00e8s peu dans la cuisine qui est toujours\n\nobscure il fait clair sur le devant qui est je crois au midi\n\nAu premier \u00e9tage deux chambres M\u00eame disposition qu au rez de xx\n\nxhauss\u00e9eApr !s les espaces de la C pagne jolie nous nous\n\nsentons dans un clapier\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nFeuille II (autre version du Bd Truph\u00e8me)\n\nNotre maison est une des der i\u00e8res \u00e0 gauche un peu en contrebas puisque\n\nle voulevard est en pente l\u00e9g\u00e8re Nous sommes vraiment \u00e0 la limite de l\n\naglomeration habit\u00e9e comme tait la Cit\u00e9 Universitaire en vingt sept \u00e0\n\nla limite de la zone Nous remontions ou descendions ce lugubre bou\n\nvard pour aller \u00e0 l \u00e9cole ou \u00e0 la place du village nous y voyons les\n\nm\u00eames maisonssinistres des ruelles qui les oupent g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement\n\nbord\u00e9es d interminables murs d usines comme l usine Photos \u00e0 Lyon\n\nse r\u00e9p\u00e8te en noir sur fond gris sale D\u00e9fense d afficher le bas en est\n\nsouvent garni d ordures animales oui v\u00e9g\u00e9ralesA la tomb\u00e9e de la nuit on\n\nvoit arriver sur son v\u00e9lo ou \u00e0 pied l allumeur de reverb\u00e8res ave sa\n\nlongue perche C est une diversion toujours renouvel\u00e9e pour les gosses je\n\nne me rappe le plue comment il ouvre la porte en verre de la lanterne x\n\nmais au bout de sa perche jaillit l \u00e9tincelle qui allume la\n\nflamme bleue du gaz qui cesse d \u00eatre bleue pour jeter une lumi\u00e8re faible\n\njaune verd\u00e2tre qui n \u00e9claire pas tr\u00e8s loinDe ces soirs au retour de\n\nl \u00e9cole vers les six heures du soir car maman et moi nous restons \u00e0\n\nl \u00e9tude je garde u souvenir sinistre encore accru les oirs o\u00f9 passe le\n\nmarchand de Tou caou sorte de grosse cr\u00eape de farine de chata\u00eegne cuit \u00e0\n\nla po\u00eame et puissamment impip\u00e9e de graisse plus ou moins rance Son cri\n\nje l ai gard\u00e9 dans l oreill et sa tierce descendante sol fo mi chant\u00e9e d une\n\nvoix trainante renforce l aspe et lamentable de la rue\n\nce petit quartier ne m a laiss\u00e9 aucune impression de co leur que celle\n\ndu rideau rouge fortement \u00e9clair\u00e9 du dxxxxxxdedans et qui est celle\n\nde l autorit\u00e9 redoutable p\u00fbisque c est l\u00e0 que loge ma ma\u00eetresse\n\nMme Ricoud \u00e0 la face tougeaude et couperos\u00e9e d abord peu engageant\n\nL \u00e9cole o\u00f9 ma m\u00e8re me conduit et o\u00f9 elle enseigne se situe entre des\n\nmurs d usine un plus loin xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\n\nun peu plus haut que notre maisonElle est grande avec deux \u00e9tages et une\n\ndizaine d e classes Entre quatre et cinq heures pendant la r\u00e9cr\u00e9ation\n\ndu soir la cour et le pr\u00e9au dxxxxxxxxxxont des allures de coupe gorge\n\nNy mange mon goyter le plus souvent une oranhe et du paion L agaxxxx\n\nL avacement de l orange acide mang\u00e9e avec du pai me fait grincer\n\ndes dents quand j y pense\n\nles bons moments moments sont les jeudis o\u00f9 nous allons \u00e0 la mer pas\n\nles jours o\u00f9 on ne part que pour faire des courses. D\u00e8s qu on a gagn\u00e9 le\n\nVieux Port par la rue d Aix o\u00f9 s \u00e9talent de chaque c\u00f4t les v\u00eatement\n\nsuspendus par les frippiers le plaisir comence Nous assistons au\n\ndbarquement des balancelles charg\u00e9es d oranges en provenance d Espagne\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nFeuille III\n\nJe ne sais quand j ai vu pour la premi\u00e8re fois la mer maismais il me reste\n\nl apparition su ite d une \u00e9tendue d un bleu si intense que je l imagine\n\nfait d une mati\u00e8re presque solide t l odeurest l\u00e0 li\u00e9e invinciblement\n\nd\u00e9sormais \u00e0 celle du sac en toile cir\u00e9e noire qui contient nos\n\nmaillotsNous no s arr\u00eatons au Roucas Blanc Bains Publics Franz prend un\n\nvain d eau de mer chauff\u00e9e dans l \u00e9tablissement Maurice et moi\n\nnous nous trempons dans lespace de mer limit\u00e9 par des cordes au-dehors\n\nMaurice a appris \u00e0 nager tout seul je l admire ne me cramponnant aux c\n\ncordagesPres de moi une jeu e anglaise fait des mani\u00e8res pour entrer x\n\ndans l eau et j ai la r\u00e9v\u00e9lation des diphtongues nglaises en l en\n\ntendant prolonger le o de it is cold Comme la fleuristedudans\n\nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx\n\nen l entendant prolonger le o de it is cold comme la fleuriste au d\u00e9but\n\nde PygmalionApr\u00e8s le bain nous avons une faim de loup L unique pain au'\n\ncnocolat est exquis maiss bien minisculeNous rentrons rentrons en\n\nmarchant le long de la plage libre dans les paquets de varechet D\u00e9j\u00e0\n\ndes salet\u00e9s la gar nisse Nous tournons \u00e0 gauche par le pradoTout le\n\nlong Les belles maisons dans leurs jardi s les marroniers aux fleurs\n\nblanches ou rouges nous impressionnent par leur luxe et leur beaut\u00e9Le\n\nretour par le tram est moins dr\u00f4le celui du Canet est comble et il faaut\n\nse serrer sur la plateforme le Canet nous para\u00eet bien minable.\n\n## 190 Nous prenons des le\u00e7ons de piano \u00e0 domicile\n\nNous prenons des le\u00e7ons de piano \u00e0 domicile \u00e0 cause de Franz qui\n\nne peut gu\u00e8re sortirMaurice va tout seul chez son professeur Frantz et moi\n\nattendons \u00e0 la maison sur le table maman a pr\u00e9par\u00e9 un pla\n\nteau de verre trois verres en cristal orn\u00e9s d un oiseau dor\u00e9 et uxxxxx\n\ncarafon m\u00eame style plus une assiette de biscuits dits biscuits champagne\n\nMlle Balardini arrive tr\u00e8s \u00e9l\u00e9gante discr\u00e8tement parfum\u00e9e Elle boit un\n\npeu de malaga apr\u00e8s la le\u00e7on Je la raccompagne au tramCe qui me vaut\n\nle spectacle extraordinaire de sa mont\u00e9e dans la tramwaySa robe entrav\u00e9e\n\nc'est la mode en mil neuf cent quinze donc sa robe ne permet \u00e0 ses jambes\n\nde ne se mouvoir quand dans le m\u00eame plan verticalj'entends le froissement\n\nde ses mollets contre l \u00e9toffe \u00e9troite\n\nnous allons passer un mois de l \u00e9t\u00e9 quinze chez des amis\n\ni nstituteurs d Dauphin\u00e9 grand maman est malade Elle a un d\u00e9sir fou\n\nde retrouver son Dauphin\u00e9 presque natal Pour le voyage elle a gard\u00e9 sous\n\nsa longue jupe noire son tablier bleu de cuisine avec son couteau \u00e0\n\nl\u00e9gumes dans sa poche\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nLa propri\u00e9taire s appelle Mme Atger Elle occupe la partie droite\n\nde la maison exactement sym\u00e9trique de la n\u00f4tre Elle r\u00e8gne sur le\n\ntout M\u00eam quand on ne la voit pas on sait qu elle est l\u00e0 derri\u00e8re\n\nses volets toujours crois\u00e9s \u00e0 la mode ancienne de Provence On n'ose\n\ngu\u00e8re laisser le ballon rouler de son c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la terrasse et il\n\nn'est jamais agr\u00e9able de la rencontrer\n\nElle est veuve je me demande pourquoi je revoie si nettement son\n\nvisage au teint bl\u00eamegris Elle a la chair molle et pendante\n\ndes bajoues Quand elle parle elle cligne constamment des\n\nyeux et l\u00e8ve souvent les yeux au cielNous savons qu elle a deux\n\ncrapauds familiers dans le jardin et pour nous \u00e7a compl\u00e8te\n\nbien le personnage et les lieux o\u00f9 elle vit o\u00f9 nous\n\nvivons\n\nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx de P\u00e2ques quatorze\n\nBien qu elle n ait dur pour moi que d octobre quatorze \u00e0\n\nP\u00e2ques seize cette p\u00e9riode est associ\u00e9e dans mon souvenir\n\n\u00e0 une impression g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de tristesse d emprisonnement\n\nde laideur et de vie mesquine avec quelques moments de vrai\n\ncafard sp\u00e9cialement l hiver le soir entre six et sept \u00e0 la sortie\n\nde l'\u00e9tude les bec de gaz n \u00e9clairent gu\u00e8re il fait souvent\n\npresque nuit quand l'allumeur de r\u00e9verb\u00e8res passe pour les allumer\n\nau bout de sa longeu percheCertains jours\n\nm\u00eame impresion dans l \u00e9coleGrande\n\nb\u00e2tisse \u00e0 face plate pad de volets des\n\ns tores en lames de vois orientables La cour n est pas grande et\n\nle pr\u00e9au au fond avec ses colo es de fer et sa rang\u00e9e de\n\nlavabos est toujours sombre\n\nIl y a peu d'occasions de sortir de ce cadre Au printemps\n\nle terrain ague qui nou s\u00e9pare de notre Campagne Jolie a de\n\nl her be tr\u00e8s verte qui ne dure pas Les rues transversales sont\n\ngrises et sales long\u00e9es souvent de grands murs de fabrique D\u00e9fense\n\nd afficher loi du Peu de magasins et g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement\n\nminables comme la toute petite \u00e9picerie chez jacque assez\n\nsemblable aux Portepots du Clos Bissardon (\u00e0 Caluire) J y vais\n\nen grimpant la petite c\u00f4te presque en face de chez nous\n\nElle me plait surtout p r ses bocaux mode ancienne remplis de\n\nde bo bons d une esp\u00e8ce appel\u00e9e Mistralets \u00e0 caus de la\n\nfra\u00eecheur de la menthe.Ils ressemblent \u00e0 des pains \u00e0 cacheter\n\nbla cs ou rouges\n\nMaurice est au lyc\u00e9e et ne rentre que le soirFrantz reste\n\n\u00e0 la maison avec grand mamanLes orties dans arseille\n\narrivent que de loin en loin pour des courses press\u00e9es o\u00f9 xx\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nl on rentre pard dans le tramway bond\u00e9 du Canet\n\nsans doute l atmosph\u00e8re ce la guerre ajoute \u00e0 cette\n\ngrisaille mes compagnes en parlent \u00e0 l'\u00e9cole deux ma\u00eetresses\n\nont vu entrer dans la cour de l \u00e9cole les gendarmes qui venaient\n\nleur annoncer la mort de leur fils au front\n\nm ais apr\u00e8s ce purgatoire va commencer la p\u00e9riode b\u00e9nie du\n\nquatre Bd Thiers \u00e0 Digne Papa estbless\u00e9 au printemps quinze Txxx\n\nLe t\u00e9l\u00e9gramme ainsi con\u00e7uL\u00e9g\u00e9rement bless\u00e9 Hospitalis\u00e9\n\nAutun fait pleurer grand maman \u00e0 qui il faut expliquer\n\nque c est une bonne nouvelle xxx Un an plus tard nous quittons\n\nle Bd Truph\u00e8me\n\n## 191 P\u00e2ques mil neuf cent seize D\u00e9part pour Digne\n\nPapa bless\u00e9 eau printemps quinze d un \u00e9clat d obus \u00e0 la\n\ncuisse est gu\u00e9ri et peut marcher avec un soulier xrtho\n\northop dique Il est nomm\u00e9 inspecteur primaire \u00e0 castellane avec r\u00e9sidence \u00e0\n\nDigne Nous quittons Marseille et le Bd Truph\u00e8me\n\nLigne de Marseille aux Alpes Arr\u00eat \u00e0 St Auban laide\n\npetite gare empest\u00e9e par le chlore de l usine voisineLa xxxx\n\nv\u00e9g\u00e9ration alentour a \u00e9t\u00e9 tu\u00e9e Le peu qui en reste est\n\nraboutrie\n\nEmbranchement de Digne trois gares Malijai malemoisson\n\nchamptercie Digne est le terminus\n\ndevant la gare pas de taxis bien s\u00fbr mais les\n\nvoitures de deux h\u00f4tel le Boyer Mistre et le Grand Paris\n\nOn va \u00e0 pied vers laVil IleUn bon quart d heure de marche Un\n\nlong mur tr\u00e8s haut sur la gauche puis le chemin pierreux\n\nsur la hauche conduisant \u00e0 travers les oliviers et les\n\namandiers jusqu au hameau de Courbon \u00e0 mi hauteur de colline\n\nM aintenant on rejoint le cours de la Bl\u00e9one qu on remonte\n\njusqu au grand pont unique qui fait communiquer le quartier\n\nde la gare et la ville elle m\u00eamele pont para\u00eet tr\u00e8s long\n\nil l est effectivement pour enjamber le large lit de la\n\nBl\u00e9one qui peut couler \u00e0 ras bord les jours d orage\n\nAu d\u00e9bouch\u00e9 du pont on laisse \u00e0 gauche la place du\n\nTampinet en contre bas le long de la rivi\u00e8re le Bd Gassendi et\n\nses platanes Presque dans le prolongement du\n\npont c est le Bd Thiers\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nLe mur de notre jardin son grand portail\n\npresque toujours ouvert Le Nu m\u00e9ro quatre Notre maison\n\nDouble rang\u00e9e de platanes Espace d\u00e9couvert jusqu au parapet\n\nde la rivi\u00e8re des Eaux Chaudes \u00e9chapp\u00e9e vers le sud les arbres\n\ndu jardin publicLes grands b\u00e2timents gris du Lyc\u00e9e de\n\ngar\u00e7ons\n\nla colline de Caramentran sur les contre forts du Cousson un petit pont\n\nsur les Eaux Chaudes\n\napr\u00e8s le pont le oulevard se resserre\n\ndevient la Rue Pied de Ville la rue de l Hubac dans la\n\nville vieille.\n\nAu rez de chauss\u00e9 l \u00e9tude du notaire Pierrre\n\nMouraire notre propri\u00e9taire\n\nle mur du jardin son grand portail qui oubre\n\npresque en face une fontaine deau courante touj ours\n\nfra\u00eeche celle o\u00f9 Jean Valjean s est arr\u00eat\u00e9 pour boire\n\npas de heurtoir Il faut tirer une sonnette Un coup pour nous\n\ndeux coups pour le second \u00e9tageLa porte s ouvre d en f\n\nfaut un syst\u00e8me que j ai oubli\u00e9\n\nune cloison vitr\u00e9e Premi\u00e8re vol\u00e9e de marches larges douces \u00e0\n\nla mont\u00e9e premier palier sur le perron du jardin\n\nla superbe rampe en bois large et plat une moulure arrondie\n\nle bois un beau marron fonc\u00e9 un peu acajou rev\u00eatu d un\n\nvernis impecable sans \u00e9raflureOn le dirait\n\nvitrifi\u00e9Un seul inconv\u00e9nientle tournant rectangu\n\nlaire interdit la glissade ininterrompue jusqu au rez de xx\n\nchauss\u00e9e Il faut mettre pied \u00e0 terre au tournant\n\nToutes les fen\u00eatres huit donnent sur le boulevard\n\nsans vis \u00e0 vis sur la rivi\u00e8re des Eaux haudes les arbres du\n\njardin public sur un socle d un obscur bas loin\n\nl inscriptio A SOUSTRE les basses Alpes reconnaissantes\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nLa frand chambre de mes parents Une petit e\n\nchambre Le bureau de Monsieur l inspecteur notre p\u00e8re petite pi\u00e8ce\n\ns ouvrant directement sur l escalier\n\nle grand salon \u00e0 trois fen\u00eatres le pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent locataire\n\ndonnait des r\u00e9ceptions avec balAu\n\nplafond des anges moul\u00e9s en pl\u00e2tre\n\non peut entrer dans l cuisine par une sorte de vouloir\n\next\u00e9rieur faisant verandah Son toit de\n\nzinc r\u00e9sonne sous les puies d orage sous la gr\u00eale C est\n\nl\u00e0 que nous prenons nos bains de piedUne\n\npetite arri\u00e8re cuisine avec petit \u00e9cier et r\u00e9cha ud\n\n\u00e0 gazUn escalier d\u00e9rob\u00e9 permet de But of this later\n\ntout ceci confus Je m y d\u00e9place sans h\u00e9sitation xx\n\ndans mon souvenir Un plan serait facile mais\n\nla chemin\u00e9e de marbre est drap\u00e9e c \u00e9tait la mode d une sorte d\n\nde ch\u00e2le en soie brod\u00e9 de rubans je dis bien brod\u00e9 par tante J\n\njeanne Je m'extasie devant\n\nUne armoire \u00e0 glace \u00e0 une porte je crois bien que c est celle ci qui\n\naffreusement peinturlur\u00e9e en bleu par des locataires italiens de\n\nl orangerie est devenu ici l armoire \u00e0 confituresLe tiroir du\n\nbas s ouvre et se referme mal Je m irritais chaque fois que x\n\nj y cherchais une paire de chaussettes\n\nLa biblioth\u00e8que \u0153uvre de m n grand p\u00e8re qui a \u00e9\n\n\u00e9t\u00e9 jusqu \u00e0 cette ann \u00e9e dans le grenier vitres cass\u00e9es\n\nla grande horloge de grand papa donn\u00e9e\n\n\u00e0 Pierrot Molino\n\nle rocking chair\n\nj ai encore dans les narines l odeur qui flotte dans la salle \u00e0\n\nmanger je n en ai plus rencontr\u00e9 de semblable Elle est faite\n\nde vieux murs avec un fond de vernis usag\u00e9 l\u00e9g\u00e8rement\n\necc\u0153uran mais \u00e7a ne sent jamais le renferm\u00e9\n\nPapa y veille\n\n## 192 C est un endroit enchanteur\n\n(le cabinet) C est un endroit enchanteur Assis sur le si\u00e8ge par la\n\nfen\u00eatre \u00e0 droite noxxx on peut voir toute la verdure du j\n\njardin et plus loin sur la droite la vieille ville la xx\n\napp uy\u00e9e contre le rocher dit de neuf heures Classique xx\n\nfaute de traduction du provencal Toute lad\u00e9gringolade\n\ndes toits de xtxtuiles rondes couleur de pain peu cuit surx\n\nle clocher en fer forg\u00e9 de la cath\u00e9drale Pour\n\nxxxxxxxxxssssss Pour regarder cette vue merveilleuse pas\n\nbesoin d ouvrir la fen\u00eatre Nous avions n grattant de l ongle\n\nle papier vitrail o\u00f9 le rouge et le bleu dominent\n\nm\u00e9nag\u00e9 quelques ouvertures o\u00f9 le verre est \u00e0 nu\n\nla v\u00e9randa est par endroits couverte par la vigne vierge qui\n\nfait un toit de verdure au perron du jardin les tiges et les xx\n\nfeuilles dessinent des ombres sur le papier vitrail Ou si on\n\nouvre une ou deux ven\u00eatres le rideau de vigne vierge a para\u00eet\n\ndans les premiers temps un livre de Vies de Saints procurait\n\nle papier hygi\u00e9nique mais les feuilles en avaient \u00e9t\u00e9\n\nd\u00e9bit\u00e9es par les soins de papa et je n ai jamais pu reconstituer\n\nune vie de Saint dans sa totalit\u00e9 par la suite seuls les\n\njournaux p\u00e9dagogiques \u00e9taient l\u00e0 en usage j en trouvais la lecture\n\nplut\u00f4t assomante mais je lisais quand m\u00eame\n\nIl faisait d\u00e9licieusement frai s l \u00e9t\u00e9 mais l hiver mieux\n\nvalait ne pas s y attarder\n\nles jivers sont une \u00e9 oque glaciaire \u00e0 Digne Dans\n\nla cuisine o\u00f9 no us faisons nos devoirs il fait bon Le soir\n\non s assied en rond autour du po\u00eale de la s \u00e0 m Sur des chxx\n\nchaises Il n y a pas un seul fauteuil chez nousSur le po\u00eale\n\nchauffent les petis galets plats que nous somme all\u00e9s xxx\n\nramasser dans le lit de la rivi\u00e8re odeur du papier journal\n\nautour de la pierre br\u00fblante ans le lit il faut un bon moment\n\npour se d\u00e9cider \u00e0 allonger les pieds Seul le secteur autour\n\ndela pierre sonest uj p\u00eau chaud Il m est arriv\u00e9 de me r\u00e9veiller\n\nle matin les pieds glac\u00e9s comme au couch\n\nComme les ecoles primaires n ont vacance qu au\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nQu au trente jui llet nous passons \u00e0Digne ce mois qui\n\nest sec et tr\u00e8s chaud dans la ville encaiss\u00e9e entre ses\n\nmontagnesLafacade sud est au soleil tout le jour Mais il\n\ny a l ombre des platanes une partie du jourdans la sale\n\n\u00e0 manger les fen\u00eatres ouvertes font avec les escaliers\n\nde derri\u00e8re et la terrasse un agr\u00e9able cou nt d airEn\n\ny entrant on \u00e9prouve toujours une sensation de fra\u00eechehr\n\nrelative Les stores restent d\u00e9roul\u00e9s jusqu en baslls son\n\nfaits de fines baguettes de vois non colori\u00e9 il est aux\n\nv\u00f4t\u00e9c\u0153ur de bois frais la nuit m\u00eame les chambres du nord\n\nsont chaudes je me couche ventre nu sur les xxxxxxx max\n\nmallons froidsdehors dans les arbres du jardins les chxx\n\nchouetteslancent leurs deux notes tr\u00e8s fl\u00fbt\u00e9es On entend\n\ntr\u00e8s distinctement lxxxx l horloge de la cath\u00e9drale qui\n\nsonne les heures deux fois et les demies\n\nLa terrasse\n\nespos\u00e9e au nord et \u00e0 l ouest le mur arri\u00e8re du salon\n\nlui fait ombre au nord descendant en pente vers les\n\npremi\u00e8res ranches d un tilleul la cueillette des fleurs\n\npeut se faire en enjambant la balustrade en fer tant pis\n\nsi nous cassons quel ues tuiles rondes en marchant dessus\n\nLa terrasse est notre chemin le plus ordinaire pour descendre\n\nau jardin par le c\u00f4t\u00e9 ouestRien de plus facile puisque\n\nles fen\u00eatres du rez de chauss\u00e9e o\u00f9 est l'\u00e9tude sont\n\ngarnies de bar e de ferC est l\u00e0 que je fais ma chute\n\nm\u00e9morable l \u00e9t\u00e9 seizeAucun souvenir de douleur papa\n\nme ramasse \u00e0 une bonne dizaine de m\u00e8tresJe me r\u00e9veille sur\n\nle lit de mes parents \u00e0 peineendolorie\n\nmais depuis quel nez\n\nC est sur la terrasse que n ous mangeons notre dessert\n\nen jouant \u00e0 la marelle ou au ballon Non \u00e0 la balle Contre\n\nle mur jeu de fillePar terre Dans les mains Tourbillon\n\nSans parler Sans rire Sans montrer\n\nnotre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de la maison a des entraillesdans le deuxi\u00e8me\n\nvestibule de l entr\u00e9e une petite porte s ouvre xxxxxx\n\nsur la gauche Elle donne par un couloir \u00e9troit humide et\n\nsombre qui conduit \u00e0 une porte \u00e9galement petite\n\nqui s ouvre \u00e0 droite sur une longue pi\u00e8ce toute en prof ndeur\n\npar o\u00f9 on rejoint le jardin Elle servait d office aux\n\ndomestiques aux temps bourgeois de la maison o\u00f9\n\nlogeait le Tr\u00e9sorier Payeur G\u00e9n\u00e9ral Nous en avons jouissance\n\nmais nous n en faisons pas grand choseUn assez grand r\u00e9duit\n\nsous la toiture en pente qui descend de la terrasse vers le\n\ntilleulUne ouverture je peux difficilement dire une fen\u00eatre\n\nElle n a ni vitre ni volet je peux tout juste m y enfoncer et en me\n\ntortillant meglisser ma t\u00eate dehors passer le reste du\n\ncorps et sauter dans le jardin je l ai fait\n\nun jour \u00e0 sa demande devant la demoiselle propri\u00e9taire\n\nM ouraire Ang\u00e8lequi voulait me faire r\u00e9aliser cette performance\n\npour amuser une amiemais je pr\u00e9f\u00e8re gagner le jardin par d autres\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nun petit palier conduit \u00e0 une sorte de grand\n\nrecoin caverneux \u00e0 mi hauteur entre le premier et le\n\nrez de chauss\u00e9eCela devait servir de resserre \u00e0 provisions Noous\n\ny mettons la provision de pommes de terre qui se couvrent xx\n\nd une vraie chevelure de longues tiges bl\u00eames quand le printemps\n\narrive A nous la corv\u00e9e de faire tomber \u00e0 la main ces\n\nlongs germes qui laissent alors les pommes d e terre fl\u00e9tries\n\nrid\u00e9es et flasques\n\ndans cet office humide et sombre se fait de temps en\n\ntemps notre lessiveUn grand cuveau en bois perc\u00e9 d un trou \u00e0\n\nsa base est pos\u00e9 sur le potager On en recouvre le fond de cendrre\n\nde vois bien propre pas d \u00e9corces de ch\u00e2taignes pas de clous xx\n\nrouill\u00e9s Le linge sale est empil\u00e9 par coufhes bien pli\u00e9es\n\nxxxxxxx presque jusqu en haut On verse de leau sur le haut\n\nfroide d abord Elle s coule par le trou inf\u00e9rieur dans une xx\n\nbassine cette eau chauff\u00e9e progressivement et revers\u00e9e de plus\n\nen plus chaude sur le linge d\u00e9j\u00e0 savonn\u00e9 et devient le lessif\n\nligide trouble couleur jaune vert crasseux Il faut tout\n\nun apr\u00e8s midi pour uler la lessive J aide \u00e0 porter les corbeilles\n\nde linge fumant jusqu \u00e0 la rivi\u00e8re des Eaux Chaudeso\u00f9 la femme\n\nqui fait la lessive la rincera \u00e0 l eau courante les mois o\u00f9 il\n\ny a assez d eau qui descend de la grande barre\n\nde montagne la barre des Dourbes qu on voit boucher l hor\n\nizon \u00e0 l est tr\u00e8s loin\n\nTroisi\u00e8me \u00e9tage\n\ncar il y a encore un troisi\u00e8me niveau Outre le grenier xx\n\nproprement dit auquel nous allons rarement rarement\n\nsi ce n est pour y aller chercher les malles des vacances\n\nxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx dauphinoises nous jouissons encore\n\nd une chambre de bonne v\u00e9rit ble pi\u00e8ce non mansard\u00e9e Personne\n\nne l habite Elle sert de fruitier Dans un coin les ch\u00e2taignes\n\nentass\u00e9es \u00e0 m\u00eame le sol dans un autre le monceau de petites xx\n\npommes rouge d un c\u00f4t\u00e9 jaunes de l autre qu on croque ou qui\n\nsont cuites au four dela cuisin\u00e8res Egalement le tas de poires\n\nqui mijotent dans le sirop les mmmes appartiennent \u00e0 l esp\u00e8ce\n\ndite changarnier Mais quelle esp\u00e8ce pour les poiresCes fruits\n\nproviennent de divers coins des basses Alpes o\u00f9 au hasard\n\nde ses inspections P apa a eu l occasion de les commander\n\nJe suis souvent charg\u00e9e d aller chercher dans cette pi\u00e8ce la\n\nquantit\u00e9 n\u00e9cessaire \u00e0 la consommation du jour Vers la fin oxx\n\noctobre nous en descendons la grande marmite de ch\u00e2taignes p\n\npour la fr\u00eame de marrons fabrication familiale A pr\u00e8s le repas\n\nle jeudi toute la famille est r\u00e9quisitionn\u00e9e pour peler les\n\nchataignes br\u00fblantes et les d\u00e9pouiller de leur seconde peau\n\n## 193 Ici le gardin est enti\u00e8rement clos de murs\n\nIci le gardin est enti\u00e8rement clos de murs assez hauts\n\nmais qui limitent un espace trop vaste pour qu on s y sente enferm\u00e9\n\nOn est dans la bille mais \u00e0 l \u00e9cart Quelques pas on est \u00e0 la\n\nriv \u00e8re On entre On sort A l ouest la ville neuve et les\n\nmagasins du Bd Gassendi A l est la vieille ville qui monte vers la\n\ncath\u00e9drale avec son clocher en fer forg\u00e9 les toits de luiles\n\nromaines rose p\u00e2le s \u00e9tagent \u00e0 ses pieds avec le Rocher de\n\nNeuf heures qui merme l horizon au nord est la colline du Chevrier\n\nle Cousson dominent les vall e et la ille sans les\n\nemprisonnerEt vers le su ouest il y a l\u00e9chapp\u00e9e de la Bl\u00e9one x xx\n\nJ avais toujours l impression qe cet e vall\u00e9\u00e9 axxxxx allait\n\ns ouvrir sur la mer\n\nLe jardin a en gros la forme d un trap\u00e8ze re ctangle\n\ndont la base serait le bd ThiersJe ne peux pas chiffrer sa surface Je croix\n\navoir entendu r\u00e9p\u00e9ter qu elle \u00e9tait au moins gale \u00e0 celle du parc\n\nde l orangerie\n\nla sortie noble de la maison se fait par le perron\n\nNous pr\u00e9f\u00e9rons les autres sorties plus originales\n\npar la terrasse dont on engambe la\n\nbalustrade pour mettre le pied sur les barres de fer d es\n\nfen\u00eatres\n\nLe perron assombri en \u00e9t\u00e9 par l immmense vigne vierge rougue qui\n\ngrimpe sur le cabinet v\u00e9randa Cinq ou six marches et On met\n\nle pied sur le gravier qui entoure la maison\n\non peut prendre le chemin des communs des anciennes remises\n\net r duits \u00e0 charbon\n\noit l all\u00e9e centrale toute droite qui limite \u00e0 peu pr\u00e8s\n\nle c\u00f4t\u00e9 des Mouraire Une grande prairie rectanbulaire qui aboutit \u00e0\n\nun bouquet d arbres Un tr\u00e8s bieux et grand saule pleureur\n\nEn s agrippant \u00e0ses bra ches\n\nretombant jusqu \u00e0 terre on peut se balancer jusqu au mur du fond\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nsi bien que les rameaux sont presque constamment effeuill\u00e9s\n\n\u00e0 leur extr\u00e9mit\u00e9Nous n avons pas le droit de marcher sur le pr\u00e9 qxxx\n\nles groseillers que nous grapillons en cachette\n\nils ne sont pas \u00e0 nous commence n\u00f4tre c\u00f4t\u00e9 de beaucoup le\n\nplus grand et le plus beau vari\u00e9 feuillu pleine de\n\ncoinsComment d'autres que moi\n\nen recoller g\u00e9ographiquement les morceaux J y tourne\n\net m y retourne dans mo n souvenir\n\nles platanes Il y en a deux ils ombragent une sorte de\n\nplace de voilage proven\u00e7alSur le tron \u00e0 hauteur\n\nsuffisamment basse pour qu il soit possible d y grimper\n\npartent les grosses branches taill\u00e9es de facion \u00e0 s \u00e9taler\n\njorizontalement en rang\u00e9es supermos\u00e9es On y atteint des\n\nfourches faite pour xx s y asseoir admirablement\n\n\u00e0 califourchon au milieu des feuilles Excellent\n\npour lire ou de reposer\n\nAu pied des platanes pas dexx\n\nv\u00e9g\u00e9ration Un sol comme dans une cour d \u00e9cole pas de ciment\n\nUn portail ouvert au coin de la maison et du murPar l\u00e0\n\nrentrent les charges de bois qui seront sci\u00e9es dans cette cour\n\nle bosquet aux catalpas\n\nDes buissons enchev\u00e9tr\u00e9s eh se glissant par une ouverture dans\n\nles branches on acc\u00e8de \u00e0 un espace d\u00e9gag\u00e9 enti\u00e8rement recouvert\n\nd un plafond de feuillesNous y avons une table J y fais\n\ndes versions latines des feuilles tombent sur mon vieux dictionnaire\n\nQuicherat qui me suivra jusqu en Kh\u00e8gne Pour passer le temps\n\nj attrape les l ongs haricots bruns des catalpas qui dominent\n\nles buissons\n\nLe Marronier\n\nc est le centre du parc Il est tr\u00e8s gros difficile \u00e0 escalader\n\nUne grosse branche s allonge presque horizontalement\n\nOn y suspe d une lampe quand en \u00e9t\u00e9 on d\u00fbne sous ce\n\nmarronier entour\u00e9 d unxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx une xxxxxxx une\n\nclairi\u00e8re par terre du gravier Puis une tr\u00e8s large corbeille\n\ndu temps de l \u00e9pouse tu Tresorier Payeur G\u00e9n\u00e9ral et ses\n\nsplendeurs Elleest entour\u00e9e d une ceinture de pervenches\n\ntr\u00e8s serr\u00e9es Au printemps sortent encore de terre\n\ndes tulipes rouges et aunes une quantit\u00e9 de crocus\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nque les fleuristes vendent en pots et dont l odeur est\n\naffaiblie de m\u00eame que les clochette s\n\ntaravistot\u00e9es ont perdu lexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx sont la\n\ncaricature des minuscules clochettes sim pies chaque fois\n\ndonc qxx\n\nc est digne que je ressuscite\n\n## 194 \u00e0 gauche de la cl\u00e9matite le mur du fond\n\n\u00e0 gauche de la cl\u00e9matite le mur du fondDerri\u00e8re\n\nun peu enretrait le dos des maisons sur le Bd Gassendi Nous\n\nvoyons les fen\u00eatres \u00e9troites mais sous les arbres\n\npouvons ne pas \u00eatre vusCe sont tous des arbres sombres\n\nmon sapin tr\u00e8s haut aux branches\n\njorizontales qui font une \u00e9chelle tr\u00e8s commode\n\nj y grimpe souvent plus haut que mes fr\u00e8res A force de\n\nmonter presque jusqe au sommet je me suis m\u00e9nag\u00e9 un chemin\n\naccessible mais je m accroche tout de\n\nm\u00eame aux aiguilles qui restant encore pr\u00e8s du tronc et\n\nje redescends les mains et les cheveux toutpoiss\u00e9s de\n\nr\u00e9sine parfum tenace mais le txxxxxxxxxxxxxtaches\n\nne partent pas facilement et les m\u00e8ches restent coll\u00e9es\n\ndures \u00e0 d\u00e9m\u00ealer C est sur la branc de ce sapin dont\n\nles branches ne commencent qu \u00e0 hauteur d homme que j ai\n\ntent\u00e9 devant mes fr\u00e8res de d\u00e9montrer par la\n\npratique ma fameuse th\u00e9orie de l ascension perp\u00e9tuelle\n\n(La th\u00e9orie de la marche verticale de ma m\u00e8re : reconstitution)\n\nC'\u00e9tait tr\u00e8s simple. \u00ab J'ai r\u00e9fl\u00e9chi au probl\u00e8me de la\n\nmarche verticale et j'avais trouv\u00e9 une solution satisfaisante,\n\nleur disais-je. Quand nous marchons ordinairement nous\n\nproc\u00e9dons, vous le savez, de la mani\u00e8re suivante : nous\n\nposons un pied \u00e0 terre, le droit par exemple puis, quand\n\ncelui-ci est solidement install\u00e9 sur le sol, nous soulevons le\n\ndeuxi\u00e8me pied (le gauche dans l'exemple choisi) et le\n\nposons \u00e0 son tour un peu plus loin devant nous. Vous me suivez ? \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Oui \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Bien. Supposons que je veuille maintenant marcher sur\n\nle tronc du sapin qui est, lui, vertical. je pose mon pied gauche,\n\npar exemple, sur le tronc, comme ceci, puis je soul\u00e8ve, comme\n\ndans la marche, mon pied droit et... \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Et tu tombes par terre \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Et pourquoi est-ce que je tombe par terre ? A cause de la\n\ngravit\u00e9, qui tire mon pied gauche vers le bas. Il tombe, et\n\nje tombe avec lui. Vous me suivez toujours ? \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Oui, oui. \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Oui, mais supposons qu'avant que mon pied gauche\n\nait eu le temps de tomber, j'ai ramen\u00e9 prestement mon pied\n\ndroit d'en dessous, comme ceci, et que je le pose tr\u00e8s vite au-\n\ndessus du pied gauche sur l'arbre et qu'avant que celui-ci\n\n\u00e0 son tour ait eu le temps de tomber je fasse de m\u00eame avec\n\nl'autre pied, et ainsi de suite, qu'est-ce qui se passer ? \u00bb\n\n\u00ab Vas-y, dirent-ils. Montre-nous. \u00bb\n\nIls ont beaucoup ri.\n\ndans ce coin le sol est noir de l humus des fexxxxxlles\n\nsans herbes vertes dans les quelques trous un peu clairs\n\ndes ch\u00e9lidoines dibt ke kaut haune est cens\u00e9 gu\u00e9rir les\n\nverrues odeur de moisi d aiguilles pourrissanteslmpression\n\nvaguement insui\u00e9tante des nombreux moilages\n\nen pl\u00e2tres de dentiers que le pr\u00e9parateur dudentiste\n\nBesaudun oncle de m a camarade germaine Besaudun jette\n\npar la fen\u00eatre de son cabinetces moulages servent \u00e0\n\ndessiner des marelles sur la terrasse quand\n\non \u00e9merge de cette ombre on se retrouve dans la pleine\n\nlumi\u00e8re de la clairi\u00e8re\n\nles buissons aux boules blanches\n\nesp\u00e8ce de viornes dont j ignor le nom il y en a \u00e0\n\nSaint-F\u00e9lix mais plus maignres et rabougris que ceux de\n\nDigne Ils forment une sorte de haie \u00e0 hauteur d'\u00e9paules\n\nenfantinesmais laissent une entr\u00e9e libreLes boules blanches\n\nqui succ\u00e8dent aux petites fleurs roses sont frosses lisses\n\net juteuses Ils nous servent de projectiles pour\n\nl assaut au recoin de la buanderie miuniex d un \u00e9vier en\n\npierre et d un robinet les assi\u00e9geants lancent leurs boules\n\npar le petit f\u00e9nestron \u00ab troit comme une meurtri\u00e8re que je suis\n\nla seule \u00e0 pouvoir passer le d\u00e9fenseur lance par la meurtri\u00e8re\n\ndes casseroles d eau ou le jet\n\nobtenu \u00e0 partir du robinet partiellement bouch\u00e9 par un doigt\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nles pervenches\n\nleur bleu \u00e9tonnant La\n\nminuscule odeur jaune La corolle ronde dont tous les p\u00e9talesxxx\n\nfaite de p\u00e9tales dont le bord ext\u00e9rieur oblique ddans le m\u00eame sens\n\nPlusieurs tulipes Voloris rouge et jaune vifsxxxxxxxxxx Lx\n\nleurs p\u00e9tales luisants Leurs curieux pistils que je vois noirs\n\nPr\u00e8s des herbes blanches des pieds d alouett e bleus qui se\n\nress\u00e8ment tout seuls au hasard omme des ancolies roses\n\nmauves ou violettes leurs clochette carrs comme des\n\nlanternes avec de curieux cornets \u00e0 chaque coin\n\nDans la partie central couverte de gravier brusquement\n\net pour une r\u00eave p\u00e9riode sortent au raz du sol et\n\nentre les petits cailloux quantit\u00e9 de crocus jaunes et rouges je'\n\ncrois je n en suis pas s\u00fbre Peut \u00eatre aussi des mauves comme des\n\ncolchiques\n\npour le parfum seul le tilleul embaume\n\n## 195 Comment ai-je pu oublier les bambous\n\nComment ai-je pu oublier les bambousll y en a deux ou est ce\n\ntrois touffes extr\u00eamement serr\u00e9es Tiges noires\n\nou blanches j ai voulu essayer un jour d en offrir une\n\n\u00e0 Mlle Giraud proffesur principal de sixi\u00e8me pour\n\nses d\u00e9monstrations au tableau Impossible de tailler le vois\n\navec mon petit canif\n\nD\u00e8s les premiers jours secs et tout l \u00e9t\u00e9 durant la\n\nv\u00e9g\u00e9ration au ras du sol est dess\u00e9ch\u00e9e mais le jardin reste\n\nplein d ombre\n\n_____________________________________________________________________\n\nImpressions diverses\n\nJ en rassemble ici au hasard Peut \u00eatre en ai jed\u00e9j\u00e0\n\nfait mention ailleurs Tant pis si je me rem\u00e8te\n\nGourmandise\n\napr\u00e8s l orgie de douceurs que sont les treize desserts\n\nde No\u00ebl l aust\u00e9rit\u00e9 recommence Il reste quelques morceaux de\n\nla \u00ab pompe \u00bb proven\u00e7ale re\u00e7ue de Lan\u00e7on chaque ann\u00e9e R\u00e9gal du\n\npetit d\u00e9jeuner je chipe des cuiller\u00e9es de miel dans le grand pot\n\nnon le grand seau venu de Lambruisse Je ramasse \u00e0 la\n\ncuill\u00e8re juste ce qu il faut pour ne pas trop faire\n\ndiminuer la hauteur des confitures qui attendent d \u00eatre\n\nrecouvertes Difficile \u00e0 r\u00e9ussir quand il s agit\n\nde gel\u00e9e bien ferme\n\nLa saveur sucr\u00e9e acide des petites pommes rouges et\n\njaunes les changaillards que nous allons chercher dans\n\nla chambre du deux i\u00e8me \u00e9tage o\u00f9 il y en a tout un tas\n\nOn nous en donne une pour le go\u00fbter Cxxxxxxxxxxxxx\n\nApr\u00e8s la pomme chaque bouch\u00e9e que je mords dans le pain\n\nme fait grincer les fents\n\nLe march\u00e9\n\nJ aime aller au march\u00e9 qui se tient devant la cath\u00e9drale\n\net dans une rue assez large qui part de la placeles marchandes\n\nen noir ou en v\u00eatements sombres debout derri\u00e8re leurs panier\n\nDe petits panier Je me rappelle l ann\u00e9e o\u00f9 je vais r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement\n\navec la petite bonne Marie Jacob orpheline p\u00e2le et\n\nmalingre un fichu noir sur la t\u00eate Elle me semble adulte\n\nmais je crois qu'elle n a gu\u00e8re p lus de seize ans C est avec\n\nelle qu une paysanne nous vend en guise de poulettes\n\nfutures poxxxxx pondeuses un jeune coq et une\n\npoule aveugle je m explique apr\u00e8s coup le\n\nsourire malin qu elle avait eu uand je lui demandais si\n\nelles allaient pondre bient\u00f4t\n\nP\u00e2ques pluvieuses\n\ncette ann\u00e9e l\u00e0 je dois voir dans les douze ou treize\n\nans Nous attendons une bande d amis pour une grand apr\u00e8s midi\n\nde jeux dans le jardinle matin le ciel est parfaitement pur\n\nIl me tarde que la matin\u00e9e se passe je scrute le ciel vers onze\n\njeures le bout d un nuage pointe derri\u00e8re Caramentran et\n\nle Cousson venant de l est Je xxxsais cette menace mais je ne\n\nveux pas y croire je guette je guettele nuage a grossi Un autre\n\nle suit un autre et encore un autre le ciel est maintenant\n\ntout couvertPeu apr\u00e8s midi c est le d\u00e9luge\n\nla vraie pluie proven\u00e7ale qui tombe plusieurs jours\n\nde suite aux alentours de l'\u00e9quinoxe\n\nFroid\n\nLe froid dans la maison o\u00f9 on se serre les soirs autour de\n\nl unique po\u00eale rond dans la salle \u00e0 manger\n\nle froid pour entrer dans le lit dans l odeur du papier\n\njournal surchauff\u00e9 qui entoure les miniscules galets plats\n\nLeur chaleur ne d\u00e9passe pas l endroit \u00e0\u00f9 ilxx l unique galet\n\nque nous emportons avec nous pour nous coufher\n\ncette chaleur ne\n\nse r\u00e9pand qu \u00e0 quelques cmsll me faut un bon moment pour\n\nprendre le courage d allonger mes jambes dans les draps de toile\n\nLe froid \u00e0 la toilette du matin sur l \u00e9vier dans\n\nune petite cuvette d eau glac\u00e9e Engelures\n\nLe froid sur le chemin du coll\u00e8gemesxxxx bas de laine\n\nque je porte aux jours les plus froids n arrivent qu au-dessus\n\ndu genou et laissent les cuisses nues sous les\n\njupes et le manteau court Pas de gants La main qui\n\ntient le cartable est tellement engourdie qu il m est\n\narriv\u00e9 de pleurer au vestiaire quand le sang se remet \u00e0 circuler\n\ndans les doigts\n\nLibert\u00e9\n\nen dehors des jheures tr\u00e8s strictes chez nous pour les\n\nrepas et le travail s olaire pendant les vacances et le xx\n\njeudis et dimanches je suis libre de m occuper comme\n\nil me plait Jeux avec mes fr\u00e8res lectures \u00e0 haute vois Mais\n\nsurtout j entre et je sors je vagabonde mes parents ne\n\nsont pas timor\u00e9s et me laissent aller \u00e0 ma guiseHeureuse\n\n\u00e9poque je tourne et retourne \u00e0 v\u00e9l\u00e0 seule ou avec des\n\ncamarades de classe aux bords imm\u00e9diats beaucoup plus\n\nloin souvent et toute seuleA caramentran je f erborise Sur les\n\nroutes alors non goudronn es qui dexcendent la\n\nrive gauche de la Bleone je p\u00e9date ou mets pied \u00e0 terre\n\nrencontre a ec un troupeau transhumant qui va\n\nvers les Alpes les chiens Les cris des bergers la poussi\u00e8re\n\nje me serre vontre les ralus pour laisser passer le flot\n\nLibert\u00e9Libert\u00e9je sors sans m habiller sans chapeau chose xx\n\nhardie en ce temps l\u00e0 en simple petit tablier\n\n\u00e0 petits carreaux\n\nLe ciel\n\nLe ciel de Digne En dehors des pluies diluviennes \u00e0 l autonne\n\net au printemps il y a TOUJOURS des \u00e9toiles Et\n\nquelles \u00e9toilesLa grand Ourse et la petite ourse sont\n\ndessin\u00e9es si nettement que l'\u00e9toile polaire elle m\u00eame\n\nest toujours visibleEt les nuits d hiver surtout s il g\u00e8le\n\nferme ce qui arrive souvent \u00e7a brasille et fourmillePlus\n\njamais je n ai retrouv\u00e9 ces ciels \u00e0 la Booz endormi\n\nLa neige\n\nje renonce \u00e0 dire ma premi\u00e8re neige Je n en avais\n\njamais vu \u00e0 Marseille\n\nle jardin\n\nle jardin est une splendeur\n\n## 196 Le dix-neuf avril de cette ann\u00e9e (1992)\n\nLe dix-neuf avril de cette ann\u00e9e (1992) ma m\u00e8re f\u00eatera (f\u00eater est un bien grand mot) son quatre-vingt-cinqui\u00e8me anniversaire. Entre deux vendredis je ferai le voyage de Paris \u00e0 Carcassonne, par le train, puis de Carcassonne \u00e0 la Tuilerie dans un taxi. Il tournera, entre les cypr\u00e8s, dans le mauvais chemin un peu apr\u00e8s le \u00ab carrefour de Bagnoles \u00bb, s'arr\u00eatera devant le ponceau, au-dessus du bassin-piscine, face \u00e0 la fen\u00eatre de la \u00ab maison des vendangeurs \u00bb, qui sera habit\u00e9e d'hirondelles, je les vois.\n\nCe sera l'apr\u00e8s-midi. Mon p\u00e8re sera devant la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision, ou, la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision \u00e9teinte, dans son fauteuil de devant la t\u00e9l\u00e9vision avec un livre, ma m\u00e8re allong\u00e9e \u00e0 la droite de son lit avec sa radio-cassettes, entre deux de ses moments de marche de l'apr\u00e8s-midi, dans la grande pi\u00e8ce, autour de la table, aid\u00e9e, guid\u00e9e et soutenue dans cet exercice, plusieurs fois r\u00e9p\u00e9t\u00e9 avant le soir, prescrit pour lutter contre l'ankylose doucereuse de l'immobilit\u00e9.\n\nMon p\u00e8re me fera un signe, un bonjour de la main. Je poserai mon sac dans la chambre, la \u00ab chambre au lit de cuivre \u00bb, qui est la mienne. Je reviendrai dans la grande pi\u00e8ce, dans la chambre de mes parents. Couvrant le son de la musique, ou le d\u00e9versement continu et peu naturel des voix de la radio, j'annoncerai ma pr\u00e9sence. Je m'assi\u00e9rai sur une chaise, \u00e0 la t\u00eate du lit. J'embrasserai ma m\u00e8re sur le front, elle prendra ma main dans les siennes. Voil\u00e0.\n\nVoil\u00e0 que je d\u00e9cris au futur cette sc\u00e8ne, qui sera pass\u00e9e quand ces lignes, encore immat\u00e9rielles, se seront trac\u00e9es sur du papier. A l'instant o\u00f9, immat\u00e9riellement donc, je les compose (aux premiers jours de mars), \u00e0 cet instant, le temps verbal futur dont je l'habille lui donne une sorte de permanence, un simulacre de stabilit\u00e9, comme s'il se chargeait d'assurer la normalit\u00e9, la naturalit\u00e9 ind\u00e9finie de sa r\u00e9p\u00e9tition.\n\nCe n'est pas, il est vrai, la premi\u00e8re fois que je viendrai ainsi. Je viens ainsi de temps \u00e0 autre. Nous venons ainsi de temps \u00e0 autre tous les trois, ma s\u0153ur, mon fr\u00e8re, et moi, les survivants plus tr\u00e8s jeunes de cette g\u00e9n\u00e9ration. Cette fois, je viendrai avec ces pages, pour les lui lire, si elle le veut bien, ce que j'esp\u00e8re.\n\nEt s'il en est bien ainsi, confronter ce qui, dans ce livre, est restitution de souvenirs d'enfance (m\u00eame s'il n'est pas que cela, s'il n'est pas d'abord cela), en particulier d'\u00e9v\u00e9nements dont ma m\u00e8re (et mon p\u00e8re) furent t\u00e9moins adultes m'exposera, in\u00e9vitablement, \u00e0 la mise en \u00e9vidence d'inexactitudes, d'erreurs flagrantes m\u00eame, je le sais. Je ne les corrigerai pas. Ce n'est pas dans ce but que je viens.\n\nAlors pourquoi ? Parce que par le simple effet de ces images mises en paroles j'aurai, peut-\u00eatre, acc\u00e8s \u00e0 un regard autre sur leurs circonstances, exc\u00e9dant le mien, hors de cette vue du monde qui fut la mienne, mais en ayant \u00e9t\u00e9 proche, et non indiff\u00e9rent. J'entendrai que ceci n'\u00e9tait pas l\u00e0, ou pas ainsi, qu'il y avait encore l\u00e0 ceci, et que ceci s'est produit apr\u00e8s cela, que j'ignorais, ou que j'ai oubli\u00e9, ou que je n'ai jamais su. Et de tout cela je tirerai le\u00e7on r\u00e9flexive, peut-\u00eatre, pour la suite de ce que j'entreprends, pour la construction de ses chemins, pour ses enchev\u00eatrements. Pour cette raison, donc.\n\nMais aussi, mais autant, pour cette autre : parce que ce sera, au-del\u00e0 de toute n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 de justification, une mani\u00e8re de dire et une mani\u00e8re d'entendre, une mani\u00e8re d'\u00e9change, une mani\u00e8re de dialogue.\n\nJ'ouvrirai le dossier assez lourd (il contient beaucoup de pages) sur la couverture duquel j'ai \u00e9crit : GRIL II, La BOUCLE. J'en sortirai le premier chapitre, FLEUR INVERSE, je le poserai sur mes genoux. Je prendrai la premi\u00e8re feuille, je me pencherai un peu pour que ma voix soit assez proche, assez nette et je commencerai \u00e0 lire, ce par quoi j'ai commenc\u00e9 dans ce livre, cette premi\u00e8re **image-m\u00e9moire** d'il y a longtemps, entre toutes, pour moi, la premi\u00e8re. Je lirai\n\nceci : \u00ab Pendant la nuit, sur les vitres, le gel avait saisi la bu\u00e9e. **Je vois qu'il faisait nuit encore, six heures et demie, sept heures ; en hiver donc, dehors noir ; sans d\u00e9tails, noir ; la vitre couverte des dessins du gel \u00e0 la bu\u00e9e ; sur la vitre la plus basse, \u00e0 la gauche de la fen\u00eatre, \u00e0 hauteur du regard, dans la lumi\u00e8re ; d'une ampoule \u00e9lectrique, de l'ampoule jaune ; jaune contre le noir intense, opaque, hivernal, la bu\u00e9e s'interposant ; pas une bu\u00e9e uniforme, comme \u00e0 la pluie, mais une gel\u00e9e presque transparente au contraire, dessinant ; un lacis de dessins translucides, ayant de l'\u00e9paisseur, une petite \u00e9paisseur de gel, variable, et parce que d'\u00e9paisseur variable dessinant sur la vitre, par ces variations minuscules, comme un r\u00e9seau v\u00e9g\u00e9tal, tout en nervures, une v\u00e9g\u00e9tation de surface, une poign\u00e9e de foug\u00e8res plates ; ou une fleur. \u00bb**\n\n# Index des principaux termes figurant dans la Table descriptive\n\n* * *\n\n **Angleterre** , , anglophilie , ***Londres** , ici Londres .\n\n **arbre** , , , enfant dans l'\u2013 .\n\n **autobiographie** , \u2013 de personne , autoportrait .\n\n **bifurcation** , , , , , , , , bifurquer .\n\n **blanc** , pur , \u2013 sur blanc , grand \u2013 mural , Carri\u00e8re \u2013 , buisson aux boules \u2013 .\n\n **boucle** , , , pont de la \u2013 .\n\n **branche** , , , , , , , , gravit\u00e9 des tr\u00e8s hautes \u2013 , entre-deux \u2013 : , , , .\n\n **chapitre** , .\n\n **conjointure** , , conjoindre .\n\n **conte** , , , , ra \u2013 r .\n\n **contemplation** , , , .\n\n **d\u00e9mon** , \u2013 pieuvre , \u2013 distracteur , * rakki tai .\n\n **description** , , , , , .\n\n **destruction** , , .\n\n **double** , , , \u2013 temps , \u2013 photographique , \u2013 n\u00e9gation , , , \u2013 sens , *raffinement cusain , Dieu non non .\n\n **\u00e9lucidation** , .\n\n **enfance** , , , photographies d'\u2013 , petite \u2013 , \u2013 de la prose , ***gniengnien :** 54, th\u00e9orie du \u2013 , fin du \u2013 , *GnienGnien , *G.T.g. , *menou, menou, menou , *avant-vie .\n\n **\u00e9nigme** , .\n\n **entrelacer, entrelacement** , , 84, .\n\n **escargots** , , , *lima\u00e7ons .\n\n **faim** 24, , anciennes \u2013 s .\n\n **figue, figuier** , penn\u00e8que , .\n\n **fl\u00e8che** , , , .\n\n **fleur** , , inverse .\n\n **forme** , , , avenir formel , extravagance formelle , *\u00e9dredon prot\u00e9iforme , indirection formelle .\n\n **fourmis** 31, , , , , If aux \u2013 .\n\n **gel** , , , , , .\n\n **guerre** 39, , , chant de \u2013 , \u2013 Froide , nouvelles lointaines de la \u2013 , jeux de la \u2013 , *arm\u00e9es , , , *Churchill , *t\u00e9l\u00e9gramme , * d\u00e9barquement , Briansk, Velikie Louki , Buchenwald .\n\n **image** 2, , , , , , \u2013 foyer , premi\u00e8re , pure , circonstance d' \u2013 , \u2013 souvenirs , , , \u2013 m\u00e9moire 39, ,, .\n\n **incise** , , , inflexive .\n\n **inscape** , .\n\n **insertion** , , \u2013 r\u00e9versible .\n\n **jardin** , , , , , , , , , , \u2013 potager , chaix de \u2013 , \u2013 iers .\n\n **jeu** , , , hors- , , * S'avancer-en-rampant , , , \u2013 de l'immobilit\u00e9 , \u2013 de nombres , \u2013 de pictions , \u2013 de barres , \u2013 de paumes , \u2013 des plaques min\u00e9ralogiques , \u2013 de la guerre .\n\n **livre** (s) , , , objet- , \u2013 d'\u00e9criture .\n\n **locomotive** , , *passion ferroviaire , , *train .\n\n **lumi\u00e8re** , , , , , , , , , , neige et \u2013 , \u2013 infinie , Lumi\u00e8res , ann\u00e9es- .\n\n **maintenant** , , , ici- , *instants .\n\n **m\u00e9ditation** \u2013 des cinq sens , , \u2013 ignatienne , \u2013 de la m\u00e9moire .\n\n **m\u00e9moire** 4, , , , , , , , , Arts de la \u2013 , , , effecteur de \u2013 , , , , , , parcours multiple de la \u2013 , d\u00e9ductions de la \u2013 , tiroir \u00e0 \u2013 , \u2013 (s) , graal de la \u2013 , grande feuille de \u2013 , m\u00e9ditation de la \u2013 , th\u00e9\u00e2tre de la \u2013 , lieux de \u2013 , \u2013 personnelle g\u00e9n\u00e9rique , signe \u2013 , conducteur de \u2013 , boucles de \u2013 , *Mn\u00e9mosyne , *espace mn\u00e9monique .\n\n **mer** , , , , , , , id\u00e9e de \u2013 , silence de la \u2013 , bains de \u2013 , *-Marrr' .\n\n **Merlin** , , \u00e0 la \u2013 .\n\n **mesure** , *m\u00e8tre \u00e9talon , *paradoxe du m\u00e8tre \u00e9talon , * m\u00e9trique : , , *e muet ,* alexandrin niais , * sonnet \u00e0 la fran\u00e7aise .\n\n **moment** , , , , \u2013 de prose , , \u2013 de l'inspiration , \u2013 roux , \u2013 machiavellien , \u2013 musicaux , ***instant** : , , , tel \u2013 pass\u00e9 .\n\n **monde** , , , image-, hors- , calmes propositions du \u2013 .\n\n **mort** , , , cri de \u2013 , \u2013 singuliers , \u2013 n\u00e9 .\n\n **myst\u00e8re** , , .\n\n **neige** , , , , , , , , bi\u00e8re de \u2013 , *flocons .\n\n **noir, noire** , lumi\u00e8re \u2013 , seau \u2013 , fourmis \u2013 ,, penny \u2013 , baig \u2013 , encre \u2013 , ciel presque \u2013 .\n\n **nom** , , \u2013 g\u00e9n\u00e9rique , \u2013 sur-propre , * nominaux  *adjectif propre  * article propre .\n\n **nombres** , , \u2013 nuptial naturel , \u2013 entiers , individus- , raison num\u00e9rologique , *r\u00e8gle des num\u00e9ros impairs , *comp\u00e9tence num\u00e9rique .\n\n **nuage** , , , , , , , 195, chant des \u2013 , *equivalents 164, nuit , , , ersatz \u2013 , impossible \u2013 , demi-cercle de \u2013 , \u2013 des lapins monstres , bleue- du silence .\n\n **ombre(s)** 5, , , , renvers\u00e9es , p\u00e9nombre .\n\n **Oranjeaunie** , , , *orange , , *orange m\u00eame , *esprit orang\u00e9 , *orangerie , * oranhe .\n\n **oubli** , , , , , oubli\u00e9-familier .\n\n **palindrome** , * successivement dans les deux sens , dates palindromiques , pseudo-d\u00e9duction \u2013 , *retour inverse , extrapolation \u2013 .\n\n **pass\u00e9** 2, , tel instant du \u2013 , \u2013 pr\u00e9sent , sentiment du \u2013 .\n\n **photographie** , , \u2013 d'enfance , statues photographiques , regard \u2013 .\n\n **piction** , , , , , \u2013 mouvante , oisivet\u00e9 des \u2013 .\n\n **po\u00e9sie** , , , , , , \u2013 orale , projet de \u2013 , *andalouisant _Sprechgesang_.\n\n **Projet** , , , , , , , , avant- : , .\n\n **puits** 21, , , , *impetus art\u00e9sien .\n\n **r\u00e9cit** , , , , , strat\u00e9gies de \u2013 , -ation .\n\n **r\u00eave** , , .\n\n **rugby** , , .\n\n **Rythme,** th\u00e9orie du \u2013 , , * th\u00e9orie 2-3 : .\n\n **soleil** , , \u2013 blanc , \u2013 p\u00e2le .\n\n **solitude** , , , , *ermite ornemental , .\n\n **souvenir** , images- , premier \u2013 .\n\n **temps,** d\u00e9duction du \u2013 , lignes de \u2013 , double \u2013 , \u2013 bi-dimensionnel , vieilles paroles en des \u2013 nouveaux , \u2013 des jeux , hors-, , conversations avec le \u2013 , *horloges ptol\u00e9ma\u00efques , *nuheures , * pendule ronde .\n\n **vitesse** , , id\u00e9e de \u2013 , v\u00e9locit\u00e9 .\n\n **voir** , , , , , , , *vue , * vision , * yeux derri\u00e8re la t\u00eate , *guetteur , , *voyant .\n\n* * *\n\n.\n\nLes num\u00e9ros renvoient aux paragraphes.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n# Contents\n\nTitle Page\n\nAcknowledgements\n\nAuthor's Foreword\n\nIntroduction\n\nChapter 1 **History of the Clay Target Games**\n\nChapter 2 **Safety**\n\nChapter 3 **The Shotgun**\n\nChapter 4 **Targets, Chokes and Cartridges**\n\nChapter 5 **Equipment and Accessories**\n\nChapter 6 **Eye Dominance**\n\nChapter 7 **The Fundamentals of Shooting Straight**\n\nChapter 8 **Gun Fit**\n\nChapter 9 **The Basics of Straight Shooting**\n\nChapter 10 **Sporting Solutions**\n\nChapter 11 **Simplifying Skeet**\n\nChapter 12 **Touching on Trap**\n\nChapter 13 **Eyes and Vision**\n\nChapter 14 **The Mental Game**\n\nChapter 15 **Competition**\n\nChapter 16 **Fitness**\n\nChapter 17 **Ladies**\n\nChapter 18 **Young Guns**\n\nChapter 19 **Instruction**\n\nGoverning Bodies\n\nBibliography\n\nIndex\n\nCopyright\n\n# Acknowledgements\n\nMy grateful thanks go to the many editors, writers and authors (living and deceased) whose works have helped build the knowledge to write this book and to the fellow coaches and clients who have helped create the experience to know what works:\n\nCyril Adams, Dolph Adams, Bob Allen, Gil and Vicki Ash, Lionel Atwill, Lanny Bassam, Fred Baughan, Paul Bentley, John Bidwell, Bryan Bilinski, Stephen A. Blumenthal, Bruce Bowlen, Robert Braden, John Brindle, Bob Brister, Bruce Buck, Nash Buckingham, Louise Burke, Major Sir Gerald Burrard, Dan Carlisle, G.L. Carlisle, Robert Churchill, Charles Conger, George Conrad, Chris Craddock, Dr Debbie Crews, Milhaly Csikszentmihalyi, Fred Neal David, Ken Davies, Bob Decot, Steve Denny, Chuck DeVinne, George Digweed, Andy Duffy, George Evans, Julian Murray-Evans, Richard Faulds, Alister Ferguson, Marty Fischer, John Gosselin, Rob Gray, Les Greevy, John Gregson, B. C. Hartman, Robert R. Hartman, Macdonald Hastings, John Hawley, Arthur Hearn, Gene Hill, Roger Hill, Charles Hillman, Tony Hoare, Dave Holmes, Mick Howells, Susan Jackson, Christopher Janelle, Alan Jarrett, David Judah, Nick Karas, Michael Kayes, Bill Kempffer, John King, Mike King, Richard Alden Knight, Frank Kodl, Charles Lancaster, David Leathart, Ernie Lind, John R. Linn, Frank Little, David Lloyd, Tom Mack, Robin Marshall-Ball, Dr Wayne F. Martin, E.S. McCawley, Jr, Michael Mclntosh, Jerry Meyer, E. Migdalski, Tom Migdalski, Chris Miles, Brian Miller, Fred Missildene, Jack Mitchell, Peter Munday, Andrew A. Montague, Bob Nichols, Tony Norman, Steve Nutbeam, Jack O'Connor, George G. Orberfell, Michael Pearce, Tom Penman, Neal Phillips, Richard Rawlingson, Mike Reynolds, Michael Rose, Micky Rouse, Bob Rottella, Major J.E.M. Ruffer, Ed Scherer, Dan Schindler, Bruce Scott, Robin Scott, Roger Silcox, A.J. Smith, Ronald W. Stadt, Percy Stanbury, Jackie Stewart, Ralph Stuart, Dale Tate, Douglas Tate, John Taylor, Mark H. Taylor, Charles E. Thompson, John Topliss, David Trevallion, Vic Venters, Doug Vine, Billy Walker, Sam Wilkinson, Mike Williams, John Wooley, Mike Yardley, and Don Zutz.\n\nI am grateful for the help given to me by a number of people and companies in the writing of this book:\n\nMichael Brunton for his permission to use the original artwork illustrations from _Clay_ _Shooting_ magazine.\n\n_Black_ ' _s_ _Wing_ __ _and_ _Clay_ for their permission to use original artwork illustrations and tables from their publication.\n\nMike Barnes for his permission to use original artwork from _Pull_ magazine.\n\nRob Gray of _The_ _Shooting_ _Times_ and _Country_ _Magazine_ for his permission to use original artwork from the magazine.\n\nBeretta, Brownell's, Browning, Electronic Shooters Protection, Magna-port International, Promatic Traps, Ranger Shooting Glasses, White Flyer Targets, Winchester (Olin Corp) Inc for photographs and reference materials.\n\nThe CPSA and NSCA for the publication of their rules and regulations.\n\nSara Gump of Redfield & Associates for original photography and help and support \u2013 without her the book would never have been written.\n\nJohn Beaton for his editorial efforts in transforming my illegible scribbling into legible print.\n\nTrudy Abadie-Fail for her excellent work in transforming ordinary photographs into handsome photo-illustrations.\n\nGlyn Griffin, designer, and Rob Dixon, Production Manager, for their patience and dedication to creating an interesting and accessible layout and design.\n\nJeff Love, for his outstanding cover design.\n\nLouis LaSorsa and his team at Phoenix Colour Corporation for his extraordinary generosity and assistance in printing this book.\n\nAnd finally, my thanks go to Andrew Johnston of Quiller Publishing for his foresight and confidence in making the decision to publish _Breaking_ _Clays._\n\n# Author's Foreword\n\nI am a lucky man... I enjoy my work. When I am not coaching, I am shooting and shooting has been my life-long passion. I still feel the same sense of anticipation and excitement entering a competition today as I did twenty-plus years ago.\n\nMy passion for shooting has taken me all over the world, offering more fantastic experiences and long-lasting friendships than I could ever have dreamed of. I often reflect on how this all came about \u2013 it was not planned \u2013 I never woke up one morning and decided to become a shooting instructor. I had never even considered it, it just happened. On reflection, instructing evolved from my own shooting. Being limited by my budget, I wanted to shoot more and thought working at a shooting ground would give me the opportunity. Silly me! As it ended up, I shot less!\n\nI began by refereeing and helping with corporate entertainment and quickly recognised that there was a great deal of difference between being able to shoot a target and teaching someone else how to. Then I saw an announcement in the _Pull_ magazine for a CPSA One Day Coaches Course and thought that this would help me to help the corporate clients break a few more targets.\n\nI had opened 'Pandora's Box'! I am a competent shot, not a great shot. I can, more often than not, straight skeet and trap and average in the mid-eighties at sporting clays. This one day course taught me that I knew next to nothing about how I did it. I was intrigued, curious and wanted to learn more. I began to read everything I could on teaching shooting: books, magazines, videos \u2013 I bought and studied them all! At the same time, I continued to take CPSA coaching courses, one after another. These courses were held in the spring, followed by an examination in the autumn. The skills taught required practice to learn, so throughout the summers, I worked at any and every shooting ground or corporate entertainment company that I could.\n\nYou can learn any skill, but nothing teaches like experience. During the five years of courses that led to my receiving the CPSA Senior Coaches Award, I learned from every instructor I worked with, every client I coached, every article and book I read and every video I watched.\n\nThe contents of _Breaking_ _Clays_ are not only my thoughts and ideas but are a distillation of all that I have learned from these many sources. I would like nothing better than to list and credit each and every one, but it would take another book in its own right to do so! Just let me offer a very big 'Thank you' to you all and recognise that, if it were not for your willingness to share your knowledge, in person or on paper, I could not have written this book. I hope you may recognise a little of your input in my interpretation of how to break clays.\n\n# Introduction\n\nWhen asked to write this book, I had to make a decision as to its direction and content. During my life I have worked alongside many good instructors and shot in many competitions. Through these experiences I have had the opportunity to study the best shots in the world in action. I have always given special attention to anyone who had won two or more championships and observed the similarities among them in their approach to the game.\n\nMy intention is to share with you some of the secrets of successful clay shooting that I've learned from years of studying the best. I have focused most of my attention on the fundamentals for this is where you will see the greatest similarities among the best shooters...this is where you see what the top shots consistently do that the also-rans do not. Secondly, I decided it would be impossible to do justice to all the disciplines in one book so I have chosen to concentrate on the three main or domestic games \u2013 sporting clays, skeet and trap.\n\nThe difference between the disciplines is in the titles and rules, not in the actual shooting. In every game a target is thrown and needs to be broken to score. The technique used does not need to change because the name of the discipline being shot does. I accept that there are techniques, methods, guns and equipment which make the shooting of each more consistent, but the actual mechanics remain constant. It is the speed, angle and distance that determine the technique and the method best suited to breaking the target, not the title of the game.\n\nWhen you miss, it has little to do with the ballistics of the shotgun \u2013 choke and cartridges give you inches where you miss in feet. A miss is more often caused by a breakdown in the fundamentals. All the top competitors demonstrate consistent fundamentals that they have grooved and practised for so long that they have assigned them to their subconscious. As a result, he or she can be forgiven for not emphasising the importance of these fundamentals in their teaching, instead of focusing on the technique that made them a winner. However, co-ordination, reaction time, and visual acuity are individual skills and what works for one will not necessarily work for another. Techniques and methods will vary with the individual as well as the target being shot. Mastering the fundamentals and learning which technique works best for you is the key to successful shooting.\n\nThe real purpose of this book is to help you recognise where and why you miss and to give you the knowledge to make the changes necessary to correct your mistakes. 'Fault, Cause, Correction' is the primary focus.\n\nChapter by chapter, the contents will insure a sound start for the beginner, improved performance for the intermediate, and perhaps even provide a few insights to help the advanced shooter...beginning with the mechanical and progressing through to the visual and mental skills required to shoot straight in competition.\n\n_Breaking_ _Clays_ is intended to be used as a workbook that can be returned to time and time again to help with the 'falling off' of form and the correction of mistakes...to help you to become your own coach. To perform to the best of our ability in any activity requires knowledge, it is my hope that this book will go some way to increasing yours.\n\nCHAPTER 1\n\n# History of the Clay Target Games\n\nClay target games have their origins in live bird shooting, when wing shooters of the nineteenth century began to engage in games of chance shooting at live pigeons. That is why a clay pigeon is called a 'bird' and the electric trap that throws the clay is called a 'trap'.\n\nThe format was, at first, simple. A group of gentleman would gather, often at one of the their London clubs, of which the Hurlingham in Fulham was the most famous. They began by placing live pigeons under their hats on the ground in front of them. They then would stoop, pick up the hat, place it on their heads and, only then, shoot at the departing bird. As the shooters' skill increased, the birds were placed in 'traps', further from the guns. The 'trap' was a collapsible metal box with a release string attached, into which the live pigeon was placed, through a hole in the top. Five of these metal 'traps' would be placed in an arc facing the shooter. On the shooter's call of 'pull!', the 'trapper' would select a string at random and pull it firmly. This would 'spring' the box and it would collapse. The pigeon would explode out of the 'trap'. The shooter had to shoot and kill the bird so it dropped within a fenced area.\n\nThis became the fashionable sport of the era. It was so popular that the gunmakers of the time designed guns specifically for 'trap' shooting. Though still shot in many parts of the world today, live pigeon shooting was banned in Britain in 1921. In many countries, and in particular the United States, access to sufficient live pigeons for an event was often a problem, so enthusiasts began to experiment with a variety of inanimate targets. Glass balls filled with feathers and other imaginative 'birds' were tried.\n\nIt wasn't until 1880 that an American, George Ligowski, invented the now universally-accepted replacement for live birds \u2013 the clay target. Legend has it that Ligowski was skipping clamshells with his grandchildren at a lake and that he modelled his clay targets after the clamshells.\n\nOver the next few years, Ligowski's clay 'pigeon' improved and evolved. When the use of pitch replaced the more fragile clay, this 'bird' quickly became the standard, replacing the feather-filled balls, at that time, the only alternative to live birds. The clay target became so popular and was so practical, it slowly began to replace live pigeon shooting altogether.\n\n## Disciplines\n\nShooting clay targets led to the development of numerous games in their own right, with three distinct disciplines emerging: trap, skeet and sporting clays. The worldwide popularity of these target sports has resulted in further multiplication and diversification of the games. Attempting to classify and define the proper approaches to all these various disciplines in one book would do justice to none. I have, instead, chosen to stick to the original three, as these are still the most popular and widely-shot.\n\n### Trap\n\nTrap is the first clay pigeon game. Imitating live pigeon shooting, it had and still retains much of the original format in its setup and rules. It is called Trap after the devices, or traps, that were originally used to hold and release live birds.\n\nThe first US National Championship was held in 1885; and 'The Inanimate Bird Shooting Association' was formed in 1892 in Great Britain. The type of Trapshooting described herein is known as Down-the-Line. It is the oldest and most basic of all the trap disciplines. Down the Line is shot over one trap machine that has a fixed elevation but constantly changing angles. The clay target is thrown away from the shooter and must travel 55 yards. The height of the target is adjusted so that at a distance of 10 yards from the trap, its height will be 10 feet. The angles at which the targets are thrown, (to the left and right of the shooter), are constantly changing and the targets should appear random and unpredictable. The maximum target angle is normally 22 degrees either side of the centre of the trap house.\n\nA round of trap consists of twenty-five shots, with groups of five shots being taken from five shooting positions. The maximum of five people shooting per round is called a squad. Each shooter on the squad shoots five shots from each of the five shooting positions. The shooters take turns shooting: the first shooter will shoot one shot, the second shooter takes his shot, and so on, until all five shooters have shot five shots from a given shooting position. The shooters then rotate to the next shooting position and repeat the process. Most competitions consist of 100 targets or four rounds.\n\n### Skeet\n\nIn 1920, a group of American upland bird hunters got together to shoot clay targets as practice for their wing shooting. During their practice, competitions began among the wing shooters. Charles E. Davies of Andover, Massachusetts, generally acknowledged as the creator of the original game, set out rules establishing the order and number of shots that could be taken, so the competitions would be fair to all the participants...and Skeet was born.\n\nA competition was held to give the game a recognised title. Gertrude Hurlbutt of Dayton, Montana won the contest with her entry, 'Skeet', which comes from the Scandinavian word for 'shoot'. (The winner was chosen from thousands of suggestions; among the losing entries were 'Bye-Bye Blackbird' and 'Bang'!)\n\nAt first the game was shot from twelve stations set in a circle, using only one trap. This was referred to as Clock Shooting. These twelve stations gave the guns every conceivable angle of target flight. However, this setup took up a great deal of space and the decision was made to add an additional trap and, in effect, 'fold' the course in two, creating the same number and variety of targets but halving the space needed for shot fall out.\n\nLike Trap, Skeet is a game of twenty-five shots. There are two houses, one low and one high, set 44 yards apart. They each throw a standard single target 67 yards. The thrown targets must pass through a 3-foot hoop, 19 feet high, placed at the centre of the range, 22 yards from the seven stations.\n\nA squad of five shooters starts at Station 1, directly under the High House. Each person shoots one bird from the High House, then one bird from the Low House. Then a pair of birds is launched simultaneously, one bird from each house. Four targets are presented at Stations 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7. Singles, one each, high and low, are shot at Stations 3 and 5.\n\nIn the USA, there is no double on Station 4, so singles are shot at Stations 4 and 8. That adds up to only twenty-four shots, so the first missed shot is an option and can be retaken. If the competitor completes the round without missing, they can choose their last target to complete the round of twenty-five shots. Most competitions consist of one hundred targets or four rounds.\n\n### Sporting Clays\n\nIn America, birds were primarily shot for the table, whereas in England, birds were shot for sport. In the 1800s, being recognised as a good shot had great social impact on one's place in society, opening many doors and creating an equal number of invitations.\n\nThe gunmakers of the time were quick to recognise that, not only did they need to make guns for their clients, they also needed to teach their clients how to shoot. A number of shooting schools sprang up, quickly recognising the potential of Ligowski's clay pigeons. Initially designed to re-create the flight of the different game birds, this type of 'game' target shooting soon became a game unto itself, like Trap and Skeet.\n\n_Clay Pigeon and Glass Ball Traps_\n\nAt first, the Sporting Clays Competitions were rather simple affairs, locally organised and regionally shot. The first International Sporting Clays Tournament was held in Carlisle in 1925, between England and Scotland with the Scots emerging victorious. Over time, Sporting Clays has evolved into the present-day shooting game in which clay targets are presented to mirror the flight patterns of game birds, or, occasionally, rabbits, in their natural habitats.\n\nThe Sporting Clays course is laid out in Stations or stands, usually ten or more. At each Station, clay targets in varying sizes are thrown in pairs \u2013 five or so pairs to the station. The traps at each stand are set to represent the flight of one type of bird, a combination of two birds, or a rabbit and a bird. It is this great variety of trap positions, trap speeds, shooting positions, and flight paths of the different types of targets that makes this game so challenging. In the typical Sporting Clays Course, 100 birds will be presented, divided by the number of Stations and shots over the course.\n\n## Five Stand or Compact Sporting\n\nAll the major competitions feature side events, often referred to as Pool Shoots. Here a competitor can warm up for the main event and place a wager on his score to be the highest of the day or event. These so-called Five Stand events, because of land restrictions, are often overlaid on a Trap or Skeet field. Six to eight automatic traps throw a variety of targets, in varying degrees of difficulty, to be shot from the different stands. There is very little walking in a Five Stand event as shots are taken from a series of adjacent stands, similar to the FITASC parcours layouts.\n\nThese events have become very popular and as many shooting grounds added a Five Stand to their course, it was inevitable that specific competitions would evolve. Today, Five Stand has become a miniature Sporting Clays course, offering a wide range of targets in a compact area. There are three levels of difficulty in Five Stand target presentations:\n\n  1. Five single targets are thrown with full use of the gun for scoring.\n  2. Three single and a simultaneous pair are thrown.\n  3. One single and two simultaneous pairs are thrown.\n\nParticipants take turns shooting each of the Five Stands (hence the name). Various combinations of targets can be thrown from the traps; a 'menu card' at each stand describes the sequence of targets. Five Stand Sporting can be, and often is, referred to as Compact Sporting.\n\n## FITASC\n\nFederation Internationale de Tir aux Armes Sportives de Chasse or FITASC, was developed in France as practice for field shooting. Evolving from the same origins as Sporting Clays, FITASC is shot in squads of up to six, with a fixed order of stands ( _parcours_ __ in French) that are shot in strict rotation. A competition normally consists of 200 targets, shot over two days, in eight rounds of twenty-five. In each round of twenty-five, shots are taken from a minimum of three different stations.\n\nA gun mount is compulsory. The shooter is required to hold the butt of the gun below armpit level (the shooting vest is marked with a line) until the target is seen. The entire squad shoots single targets first, then, after the entire squad has completed the singles, combinations of singles are presented as doubles.\n\nThe variety of types and sizes of targets are thrown at longer ranges than in Sporting Clays and this plus the continuously changing speeds, angles and distances, make FITASC the most challenging of the Sporting Clay disciplines.\n\nCHAPTER 2\n\n# Safety\n\nClay pigeon shooting has one of the most enviable safety records of any sport, and it is important to maintain this high standard. When a newcomer is introduced to the sport, the first lesson should cover safety and gun handling. Because we use a shotgun in a recreational sport in the same manner as a golf club or tennis racquet, we must never forget its lethal qualities.\n\n## Carrying the Shotgun\n\nThere are only two ways in which a gun can be carried safely.\n\n  1. Unloaded, in a closed gun slip, where it is impossible to access the trigger. \n  2. Open and seen to be empty.\n\n_A_ _gun_ __ _is_ _safest_ _unloaded_ ___in_ _a_ _closed_ _gun_ __ _slip_\n\n___The_ _correct_ _technique_ _for_ _taking_ _a_ ___gun in and out of a gun slip___\n\n____\n\nThe open gun should be carried over the crook of the arm and not, as is too often seen, over the shoulder. Though it is comfortable and easy to carry a gun over the shoulder, there is every chance of striking a fellow competitor with the stock of the gun as you turn around. Never carry the gun with the barrels sticking back over your shoulders!\n\n_The_ _correct_ _technique_ _for_ _taking_ _a_ _gun_ _in_ _and_ _out_ _of_ _a_ _gun_ _slip_\n\n_An_ _open_ _gun_ _is_ _best_ _carried_ _over_ _the_ _crook_ _of_ _an_ _arm_\n\n_An_ _open_ _gun_ _carried_ _over_ _the_ _shoulder_ _is_ _comfortable,_ _but_ _beware_ _of_ _striking_ _a_ _fellow_ _competitor_ _with_ _the_ _stock_\n\nSemi-automatic shotguns that cannot be broken open should have a flag or a piece of cloth placed in the open breach to draw attention to the fact that the chamber is empty and a cartridge cannot be placed in it. The best way to carry a semi-automatic is with the stock placed in the pocket of your shooting vest, muzzles pointing up, with the open breech facing out. It is best to carry your shotgun from station to station in a gun slip. It is comfortable, easier to manage and the slip protects the gun in transit.\n\n_**Never** _ _carry_ _the_ _gun_ _with_ _the_ _barrels_ _pointing_ _backwards_ _over_ _your_ _shoulder_\n\n_The_ _semi-automatic_ _is_ _safest_ _carried_ _with_ _the_ _stock_ _in_ _your_ _shooting_ _vest_ _pocket,_ _barrel_ _pointing_ _up,_ _the_ _open_ _and_ _flagged_ _breech_ _facing_ _out_\n\n## General Shooting Ground Rules\n\nThe governing body rules for all disciplines are explicit in requiring that all shotguns be open and empty except when the competitor is on the shooting stand and the referee has given permission for shooting to commence. Ear and eye protection is compulsory when on the shooting ground. Never touch another person's gun without their knowledge and permission.\n\n__Ear_ __ _and_ _eye_ _protection_ _is_ _compulsory__\n\n## The Ten Commandments of Safety\n\n**1.** **Every** **gun** **should** **be** **considered loaded and treated** **with the utmost respect at all times** **.** There are only two safe guns: one that is broken and seen to be empty; one that is in a zipped and closed gun slip where access to the trigger is impossible. Treat every closed gun as if it were loaded and respect its lethal qualities.\n\n__A_ _gun_ __ _out_ __ _of_ _its_ _slip_ __ _should_ _always_ _be_ _open_ _and_ _empty__\n\n**2. When carrying a gun** **out** **of its** **slip,** **it should** **be** **open and visibly** **empty at all times** **.** Semi-automatic shotguns should be carried with the bolt back and the muzzles pointing up. A flag or other indicator should be placed in the chamber to help others recognise its safe condition.\n\n**3.** **Horse** **play** **is not tolerated and alcohol should** **never** **be** **consumed while shooting** **,** only after the event or practice is over and your gun is safely locked away.\n\n**4.** **Use only cartridges of the correct gauge and** **chamber-length** **to match the** **gun** **you are shooting** **.** Make sure you have the appropriate shot size for the target being shot. Never use shot sizes larger than No. 6 and never mix different gauge cartridges in your bag or pockets.\n\nA twenty-gauge cartridge can pass through the chamber of a twelve-gauge shotgun and lodge in the barrel, or even worse, allow a twelve-gauge cartridge to be loaded on top of it! The results can be disastrous!\n\n_Use_ _only_ _cartridges_ _of_ _the_ _correct_ _gauge_ _and_ _chamber_ _length_ _for_ _your_ _gun_\n\nCartridges of different gauges should be stored separately, both at home and on the shooting ground. With the exception of some foreign imports, all twenty-gauge cartridges are yellow with other gauges being assorted colours.\n\n_Mixing_ _cartridges_ _can_ _have_ _disastrous_ _results_\n\n**5.** **Check your** **gun** **to make** **sure** **that it is in** **safe** **and sound condition** **,** **** with no dents or pitting in the barrels; that it is in proof and has been nitro-proofed, and the correct cartridge is to be used.\n\nAll guns sold in the UK, by law, have to be submitted to proof-testing either by the London or Birmingham proof houses or their European counterparts. At the proof house, the guns are subjected to a pressure test and, if passed, stamped with the appropriate marks. Also the manufacturer will have engraved or stamped the chamber size and gauge on the gun.\n\nIf in any doubt regarding the above information, contact a reputable gun dealer who can give you a report on the condition and safety of your gun.\n\n__All_ _guns_ _should_ _be_ _proofed,_ _and_ _in_ _safe_ _and_ _sound_ _condition__\n\n**6.** **Never point or** **fire** **a** **gun** **at anything other than a** **clay** **pigeon** **.** Any violation of this rule will automatically lead to your expulsion from the shooting ground. There are no exceptions to this rule.\n\n**7.** **Always check that the** **gun** **is empty** **,** **pointing the muzzles** **up-range** before loading, when taking the gun from or replacing it in its slip or gun rack. Also, always check the barrels for obstructions. Any blockage, no matter how small, can cause pressure to be generated in the barrels, with potentially dangerous results.\n\n**8.** **Muzzles must** **be** ******kept** **pointing up the range at all times** and only when you have opened your gun and ensured that it is empty, may you turn and leave the firing point.\n\n**9.** **There are three** **gun** **malfunctions you should** **be** **aware of while shooting** **.**\n\n(1) Anytime you pull the trigger and the gun fails to discharge, do not instantly open the gun. Keep it closed and pointing down range for thirty seconds before opening the gun and safely disposing of the cartridge. This is referred to as a 'hang fire'. In the governing body rules if a gun fails to discharge, the referee is required to take the gun from you to be sure it is a malfunction and not operator error. If you open the gun yourself, you will lose a target and this could affect both your safety and your score.\n\n(2) You fire the gun and get a strange discharge, i.e., a soft 'ploof' sound instead of the normal loud crack. Stop and open the gun and check the barrels for blockage. The cartridge may have not had sufficient energy to push the wad clear of the muzzle. Both of these phenomena are, fortunately, rare occurrences with modern ammunition however you should be alert to them if they occur.\n\n(3) If a gun is in poor condition, badly maintained or has developed a fault, closing the gun may cause the hammer to fall, accidentally discharging the gun. If this should happen, it is important to have control of the gun. The best way to do this is to hold the gun stock on your hip, the right forearm hand gripping the stock, but your finger off the trigger. The barrels are then brought to the action.\n\nThis closing technique, with the gun down and pointed down-range, ensures that if the gun _should_ discharge, it will do so harmlessly, into the ground some two yards in front of you. This hip and hand grip allows you to keep control of the gun at all times \u2013 especially important if two cartridges are loaded.\n\nIn FITASC, where you may shoot from a hoop placed on the floor and not in a cage, this closing technique is required. If any accidental discharge occurs, the shot is safely controlled.\n\nWhen shooting in a stand, keep your muzzles pointed down range at all times until you have opened and emptied the gun. Then, and only then, you may turn around and leave the stand.\n\n**10.** **You are responsible for the** **safe** **handling of yourself and your** **gun** **at all** **times** **.** You are also responsible for the behaviour of any family, guests and animals when they are in your company.\n\n_Good_ _shooting_ _is_ _no_ _accident!_ _Let_ _us_ _all_ _try_ _to_ _do_ _our_ _bit_ _to_ _keep_ _it_ _that_ _way!_\n\n_The_ _correct_ _way_ _to_ _open_ _and_ _close_ _a_ _shotgun_\n\nChapter 3\n\n# The Shotgun\n\n## The Shotgun Defined\n\nThe shotgun is a smoothbored weapon with barrels of not less than 24 inches in length and an overall length of not less than 40 inches. It is the gun of choice for shooting a moving target because it fires a large number of projectiles (shot) instead of a single projectile (bullet). The shot pattern, created by the shot stream, gives a greater margin of error. The shot strings out and spreads as it leaves the barrel. The amount of spread is controlled by the degree of 'choke' at the muzzles. Choke is a variable constriction at the end of the barrel. The more choke, the longer the effective range of the shotgun.\n\n_Shotguns come in many shapes and sizes_\n\n## Types of Shotguns\n\n### Break Action\n\n_Side_ __ _by_ _Side_ __ \u2013 __ _Over_ _and_ _Under_\n\n### Fixed Action\n\n_Semi-Automatic_ __ \u2013 __ _Pump_\n\nAll types have their proponents, but for the clay shooter, there are advantages and disadvantages to the different types.\n\n### Disadvantages\n\n**The** **Side** **by** **Side** The broad barrel configuration of the side by side obstructs vision and the angled recoil and muzzle flip reduce control.\n\n**The** **Pump** The time taken in working the pump, and the movement of the action, takes the barrels off the target line.\n\n**The** **Semi-Automatic** The fixed action cannot readily be seen as unloaded and safe. Many find the mechanism movement in reloading distracting.\n\n### Advantages\n\n**The** **Semi-Automatic** Preferred for their light recoil and fast handling characteristics, the relatively low-cost of the semi-auto makes it an attractive choice for beginners, ladies and the young shooter.\n\n**The Over and Under** The single sight plane of the Over and Under complements our natural pointing ability, placing both hands in line, in synchronised movement to the target. The rigid barrels offer direct recoil and reduced muzzle flip. The break action is easily seen as safe from any distance.\n\nCompetitions are won by small margins \u2013 there is often only one target separating the winner from the pack. The inappropriate type of gun could cost you that one target. The only real choice for a competition gun is between the over and under and the semi-automatic.\n\n## Shotgun actions\n\nThere are three types of actions in a break-action sporting gun.\n\n### The Sidelock\n\nThe firing mechanism in the sidelock is on plates let into the head of the stock and action bar. This design offers superior trigger pulls and has the advantage of intercepting sears that prevent accidental and double discharges.\n\n_The_ _sidelock_ _(top)_ _and_ _the_ _boxlock_ _(bottom)_\n\n### The Boxlock\n\nThe over and under boxlock differs from the side by side in that the firing mechanism is between the top and bottom straps behind the action, concealed by the head of the stock.\n\n_The_ _removable_ _trigger_ _plate_ _action_ _allows_ _easy_ _cleaning_ _and_ _maintenance_\n\n### The Trigger Plate\n\nIn this design, the firing mechanism is fixed to the trigger plate and, by working a catch, can be released through the bottom of the action for cleaning or maintenance.\n\n## Buying a Shotgun\n\nYour biggest decision and investment in clay target shooting is the purchase of a shotgun. For the beginner, the choices are many and a little bewildering. You should take your time, and do some research. Read the gun reviews in the different magazines and on-line. Talk to more experienced shots and ask them their opinions and suggestions.\n\nVisit gun shops, examine and handle the guns that match your criteria to find the gun that feels right and seems to fit you well. The gun shop owner is usually an enthusiast and probably also shoots and can offer advice in the process. If the opportunity arises to shoot the chosen gun, then, by all means, do so. This advice also applies to the intermediate or advanced shot interested in upgrading his gun. Armed with the results of your research and enquiries, you should be able to begin to compile a short list of guns, by type and features, to match the discipline you intend to shoot. The list should also suit your budget parameters and physical requirements.\n\n### New or Second-Hand?\n\nTo buy new or second-hand is another decision. If you are buying a new gun, it will come with both a warranty and be in new condition. You can get a gun specifically designed for your discipline and some manufacturers offer a custom stock or some custom fitting options.\n\nIf, however, you are purchasing a second-hand gun, you should be aware that a gun is mechanical, like your car. Just as your car requires regular cleaning and maintenance, so does a gun. If this has been neglected, the gun could be in poor condition and, in extreme cases, not safe to shoot. A used trap gun is often a good choice. They are usually better priced and the money you save can be used to fit an adjustable comb, allowing some degree of custom-fitting.\n\nA registered dealer has both legal responsibilities and a reputation to maintain. So, buying a second-hand gun through a dealer allows you to purchase with confidence. If you consider purchasing a used gun from a private party, you must carefully examine the gun to check proof, safety and condition. If you are unsure of how to do this, ask a more experienced friend or a dealer.\n\n### Some Words of Advice\n\nYou will be spoiled for choice in gun selection. There are as many choices in guns as there are cars on the road! This is really a two-edged sword. Yes, there is a wide selection, but it is so wide, that it's as easy to make the wrong choice as the right one.\n\nMake haste slowly is the best advice! Take your time, don't be led by fashion. Make an informed decision. Make every attempt to 'try before you buy'. Ask friends if you can try their guns...use the club guns and, if possible, attend manufacturers' 'Have-A-Go' days.\n\nAvoid excesses. Too heavy a gun will cause fatigue, too light a gun will create excessive recoil. Try to achieve balance, not only in the gun's handling, but in its overall design, length, weight, fit and feel.\n\nAnalyse your personal requirements, both physically and mechanically. Too often we are drawn to the gun being shot by the current champion or the one tricked out with all of the 'bells and whistles', which sometimes little suits our own needs. The 'hot' gun of today can often cause a slump which, due to a stubborn belief in the gun's championship-winning pedigree, can be a long-lasting and frustrating slump as well.\n\nWhat makes a straight-shooting gun is a combination of elements-a harmonious balance. Once you have found the gun that best suits you, take the time to learn how it shoots, and when you have, stay with it.\n\n## Selecting the best gun for you\n\nThere are three requirements that a gun needs to fulfil. If you achieve all three, you will have a gun that works _with_ you rather than _against_ you. To find the right tool for the job for you, you need to first answer these questions:\n\n  1. Does the gun **fit** **your budget** **?**\n  2. Does it **fit** **the discipline** you intend to shoot? \n  3. Will the gun allow you to **shoot to your full potential** **?**\n\n### Fitting your Budget\n\nYou get what you pay for in life. Nowhere do these words ring more true than in selecting your first gun or trading up. Always try to buy the best gun your budget will allow. I urge you to consider that the difference between the entry grade and the top gun in any particular make is nothing more than better wood and elaborate engraving. Neither of these 'up-grades' will help you shoot one target more. It is better to buy a plain, quality gun at your entry level price, than an elaborately engraved shotgun of poorer quality. If you buy a gun that is made of quality components, it will give you years of good service, stand up to a lot of shooting, be better balanced, with improved trigger pulls and reliable ejectors. The multi-choked gun costs a little more and is an individual choice, though it most certainly gives greater flexibility, especially in the sporting disciplines.\n\nYou do not have to break the bank to be a successful shooter! More competitions are won with good quality, entry level guns than with the expensive custom-made variety. (I will take it for granted that any gun you purchase complies with the Rules of Competition.)\n\n### Fitting the Discipline\n\nIt is amazing how many people I see shooting with an inappropriate gun for the discipline being shot. Many of them are doing an adequate job of it, but I can only wonder how much better they might be with the right tool for the job. Different disciplines require different characteristics and performance in a gun. These can be broken down into three types:\n\n#### Trap\n\nIn Trap, the target is always at distance, rising and going away, so the classic Trap gun is high-stocked and often high-ribbed. The rising target needs a gun that prints its pattern a little high, building in lead, and allowing the target to be shot without being blocked out by the barrels. A 70 per cent over, 30 per cent under pattern placement is normal in Down the Line. In International Trap, because of the lower target presentations, competitors prefer their guns to shoot a little flatter at 60 per cent over, 40 per cent under.\n\n_Th_ _e_ __ _trap gun_\n\nThe average DTL gun weighs about 7\u00bd __ to 8 lb and has the longer, 30, 32, or 34 inch barrels. Most of these guns are choked modified and improved modified or fitted with multi-chokes. This ensures the steady handling characteristics perfect for the target presentations of DTL. The International disciplines will require a gun with more life and tighter chokes; improved, modified and full.\n\nThe majority of Trap guns are over and unders. In the USA, where single 16-yard and Handicap shooting replaces DTL, the single-barrelled gun, both adapted over and under and purpose-made, are used, as are the pump and semi-automatic. USA shooters also show a preference for heavier guns and 9 to 10 lb competition guns are not uncommon.\n\n#### Skeet\n\nWith its close targets, great variety of angles and number of stations, Skeet requires a gun that is far more dynamic than a Trap gun. In Trap, a gun is designed for inherent steadiness, the Skeet gun needs to have a combination of swift swinging characteristics and sufficient weight to control recoil. A good starting weight for a Skeet gun is around 7\u00bd __ lb, though I know of some top competitors who favour a 9 lb-plus gun.\n\n_The_ _skeet_ _gun_\n\nSkeet targets present a much flatter trajectory and the guns are set up to shoot a little flatter, with a 60 per cent over, 40 per cent under pattern. This allows the target to be kept in view, but the gun will still shoot to point of aim.\n\nBarrel lengths of 28, 30 and 32 inch are now, by far, the most common. Multi-chokes have given the shotgun such flexibility that the same gun can even be used for both Skeet and Sporting Clays by just opening the chokes for the close Skeet targets. In the Olympic disciplines, fixed chokes are still preferred, these are very open and highly specialised. Once again, over and unders are the main gun of choice. But semi-autos and, in the US, pumps are also widely used.\n\n#### Sporting Clays\n\nThis sport places the most demands on a competition shotgun because of the wide range of target presentations that are encountered. The type of targets thrown at sporting have evolved over the last two decades and have been very much influenced by the increased shooting skill of the competitors. Just look back at the scores that won the British Open in the seventies compared with the winning scores of today!\n\n_The_ _sporting_ _gun_\n\nShooting ground owners, club members and competitors now demand far more challenging target presentations. This situation has created an almost infinite variety of targets, many at the very limits of a shotgun's range. The average course today is, without a doubt, more demanding than it was thirty years ago. As target distances have increased, it is not uncommon to see competitors carrying two guns; a short-barrelled, fast-handling Skeet gun, open-choked for the close shots, and a long-barrelled Trap gun, tight-choked for the longer targets.\n\nIt was not long before a distinct hybrid emerged, about the same time the technique for fitting interchangeable chokes was refined. The multi-choked gun gives the shooter the flexibility to use one gun throughout a sporting course, without being at a disadvantage. The Sporter or Sporting Shotgun, as it is most commonly referred to, should have choke tubes of the extended type, with knurled ends to ease changes and a manual barrel selector.\n\nThe Sporter started out with 28 to 30 inch barrels, weighing around 7\u00bd __ lb. To keep within that optimum weight for the gun and to achieve that perfect combination of steadiness and dynamics, limited the length of the barrels. But with the introduction of cold-forged barrels, new steels and modern rib-less and vented construction, barrel weight was reduced to a point where it is now possible to find 34 inch Sporters, no heavier than older guns with the shorter barrels.\n\nAdvice on barrel lengths for Sporting Clays has made for interesting discussions over the years. You will receive as many opinions as there are barrel lengths. Only you can make the decision on the correct barrel length for you. But here is a list of opinions for and against the use of long barrels:\n\n#### For the Longer Barrels\n\n1. It is easier to point with a long gun than a short one.\n\n2. Once under way, the gun will hold its course and line, giving a good follow-through.\n\n3. The length and balance help control recoil and muzzle flip.\n\n4. It is well-suited to the FITASC discipline and the longer sporting targets.\n\n#### Against the Longer Barrels\n\n1. Overcoming the dead gun or inertia is required (slow to start).\n\n2. A deliberate timing of swing and trigger pull are required.\n\n3. The gun requires a more deliberate style and the lead pictures must be re-learned.\n\n4. At closer, incoming targets, as well as low driven presentations, the gun can be at a disadvantage and practice is required to overcome it.\n\nTiming and swing-speed are, indeed, subtleties in shooting Sporting Clays. Rhythm and coordination are essential. They must be applied with an understanding of and a familiarity with the gun's weight and dynamics. You must be able to shoot a gun without upsetting your timing, regardless of the gun's barrel-length. I believe that those who struggle with a longer-barrelled gun do so because of a lack of this understanding.\n\n## Shooting to your Full Potential\n\nIt must seem obvious that if you are a petite lady or slight of build, the choice of a heavy, long-barrelled gun would be inappropriate. Likewise, if you are a six foot-plus weightlifter, a light, fast short-barrelled gun will be an equal handicap.\n\nTry to find a gun that complements, rather than handicaps, your shooting. Choose a gun of a suitable length and weight to match your physical capabilities. 'A bad workman blames his tools' but if he does not have the correct tool for the job he cannot expect to do his best work.\n\nIf you shoot Trap, purchase a Trap gun, Skeet, a Skeet gun and Sporting Clays, a Sporting Clays gun. This may seem simplistically obvious, but the reality is: you will never shoot to your true potential in a given discipline, using a gun designed for another discipline. The improvements in the modern competition shotgun referred to earlier, have been mainly in the refinement of the gun for its particular discipline. The only proviso to this statement is the use of a suitable Trap gun for Sporting Clays; i.e., one that has been custom set-up for the Sporting discipline.\n\n### Barrel Length\n\nBarrel length is determined by your physical size and strength, not the target presentation. While long barrels might help on the long distance crosser, they are not going to help on the close, fast incomer. Improved control is worth more than length, any day.\n\n### Strength\n\nThe modern shotgun has improved immeasurably! They are 20 per cent better balanced, 30 per cent stronger and 40 per cent more reliable than the guns being made thirty years ago. Modern metallurgy and manufacturing techniques have created guns of maximum strength and superior shooting qualities. This has been achieved, not so much by reducing weight, but by better distribution of the weight throughout the whole shotgun.\n\nThe better barrels and actions, barrel-boring and the advances in chokes, together with improved cartridges have created guns that shoot impressive patterns, balanced with low recoil.\n\n### Mechanics and Ballistics\n\nThe mechanics comprise the components of the gun, the lock, the stock and the barrel, but it is the interaction between the barrel and the cartridge \u2013 the ballistics \u2013 that allows the consistent shooting of a moving target. Because a shotgun fires a large number of projectiles \u2013 the shot \u2013 instead of a single projectile \u2013 a bullet \u2013 the pattern created allows a larger margin for error.\n\nThe shot strings out and spreads as it leaves the barrel. The amount of spread is controlled by the degree of 'choke' at the muzzles. This is a variable constriction at the end of the barrel \u2013 the tighter the choke, the longer the effective range of the shotgun. The optimum degree of choke present in the gun depends on the type of target presentation being shot. You should purchase a gun with the correct choking for the targets you intend to shoot.\n\n### Velocity and Patterns\n\nIt is the long forcing cones, back-boring and choke-taper technology, combined with the choice of cartridge that creates the pattern, not the length of the barrels. All velocity is generated within a few inches of the chamber, and any increase as the charge progresses through the barrel, is minimal \u2013 at most, a foot-per-inch of the barrel length.\n\nThe pattern is regulated at the muzzle, independent of barrel length. It makes no difference if the gun has 26 or 34 inch barrels, the velocity is minimally affected and the pattern quality is regulated by the amount of choke present in the muzzles.\n\n### Ribs, Beads and Optical Illusions\n\nRibs and beads have a big impact on apparent barrel length; a narrow rib and small bead will make a short-barrelled gun look long when mounted, whereas a wide rib and large bead will make the long-barrelled gun look short. In fact, ribs and beads can create an optical illusion! They are a very personal addition, and you should experiment to find the combination that gives you good muzzle awareness while being minimally distracting when shooting.\n\n_There_ _are_ _as_ _many_ _combinations_ _of_ _ribs_ _and_ _beads_ _as_ _there_ _are_ _types_ _of_ _shotgun_\n\nThe rib's other purpose is to dissipate heat and avoid the 'mirage effect'. Ribs are cross-filed to reduce distracting reflection. One-eyed shooters who tend to be 'aimers', favour a narrower rib, while two-eyed shooters being pointers, prefer a wider rib. The tapered 8mm to 11mm rib seems to suit all.\n\n### Weight, Balance and Ease of Handling\n\nOnce the gun is mounted, it can be made to feel longer by moving the moment of inertia, or balance point, in front of the hinge pin. This makes the barrels feel a little heavier and swing more freely, controls muzzle flip and can help on second targets especially in true pairs and longer crossers. A smooth swing is more easily obtained when the point of balance is between the hands. A properly-balanced gun feels alive and much lighter than it actually is.\n\n_shotgun_ _rib_ _styles_\n\n### Triggers\n\nOften taken for granted, triggers are a very important part of the gun. Their importance and effect on timing is immense. Too light and there is every chance of accidental discharge, especially on cold days when gloves may be worn. Too heavy and the effort of pulling the trigger can cause loss of timing, the swing can check and the result is a miss behind.\n\n_The single selective trigger shown on a Beretta sporting clays gun_\n\nThe single selective trigger is a necessity in a Sporting Clays gun. Instant selection makes best use of the gun chokes for the different sequence in target presentations. Single triggers are complex in design. After __ the first shot, the trigger must be released to allow the engagement of the second lifter. This is referred to as the 'dead pull'. Without this 'dead pull', the recoil from the first shot would cause an involuntary firing of the second barrel.\n\nThis trigger release can cause some shooters to develop a twitch which can become a problem, causing a miss-fire of the second barrel. Correct regulation, with crisp pulls and the correct poundage will allow unconscious firing of the gun with minimum lock-time.\n\nWeights of trigger pulls are a personal choice, but I would never recommend a pull of less than 3\u00bd lb for the front trigger, with an additional \u00bd lb on the second trigger. That is my personal preference: 3\u00bd lb on the front and 4 lb on the back. The ideal trigger pull is like a stem of fine-spun glass snapping with no drag or sponginess.\n\nAdjustable triggers are a good addition to a gun. They can be adjusted to achieve proper grip and finger placement.\n\n### Stocks\n\nManufacturers differ greatly in their standard stock dimensions. You may be lucky and find one that fits, but the odds are against it. Many shooters struggle for years with a gun that does not properly fit. As far as the way a gun fits, all measurements are important but the drop at face (measured half-way between the drop at comb and heel) is critical to straight shooting. Too low a drop will cause cross dominance, too high a drop will cause misses over the target.\n\n_Stock dimensions vary greatly from one manufacturer to another_\n\nThe correct eye-rib alignment is essential. The comb, at face, should be as parallel as possible, negating the effect of involuntary head movement as the target elevations change. The Monte Carlo stock (it gets its name from the famous European city of Monaco, once the Mecca of live pigeon shooting) has a parallel comb. This is particularly advantageous to people with long necks. The adjustable comb serves the same purpose and allows an element of custom-fitting for cast and drop.\n\n### Grips\n\nThe shape of the grip on the stock and the fore-end needs careful consideration. They must be of a shape and size that gives a natural, relaxed hand position allowing full articulation throughout the shooting action. If the radius of the pistol grip is too sharp, it places the hand in an unnatural position \u2013 the hand is under tension and its movement is constricted.\n\n_Basic_ _shotgun_ _stock_ _grips_ _and_ _fore-end_ _styles_\n\nThe thickness of both grip and fore-end should be comfortable, put the hand in a good shooting position and enhance gun control. A palm swell is only required for people with very large hands. The distance between the comb nose and the breech is what matters in hand placement. If this distance is too small, it forces the hand into an unnatural position and, combined with a too-full grip, can be very bad indeed.\n\n### Recoil\n\nNewton's Third Law of Motion states: 'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'. So, in the shotgun, the rearward thrust of the gun equals the velocity of what goes out of the front.\n\n#### Recoil Type and Effect\n\nI personally believe that recoil has a greater impact on our shooting than we are aware of, perhaps even as much as impact as gunfit does. The right gun goes a long way to controlling recoil.\n\nThere are two types of recoil:\n\n  1. Conscious: where you feel it on every shot.\n  2. Subconscious: where you are _unaware_ of its impact.\n\nSubconscious recoil, even though you may not physically feel it, can affect your shooting by throwing off your timing, swing and rhythm.\n\n#### Recoil Cures\n\nIf we are suffering from conscious, or felt, recoil, we need to learn what alterations or additions can be made to the gun to minimize and control it. The first criteria is that the shotgun should fit not only your build and height, but also strength and reaction capabilities. The word that best sums up the cure for hidden or felt recoil is _balance._\n\nToo light or too heavy a gun can result in similar actions. Barrel length should be considered in this equation, as well. It is possible that a light gun with long barrels can have worse recoil characteristics than a heavier, short-barrelled gun.\n\nA longer-barrelled gun of the correct weight will always have the advantage of recoil control. Here you find the inertia of the longer, heavier barrels helps to minimize recoil as well as muzzle flip. A well-fitted gun is one of the best cures for excessive recoil. However, the good gun fit must be accompanied by a good gun mount. A poorly-mounted gun can negate even the best gun fit and increases felt recoil. There are many alterations and additions that can be done to a shotgun to reduce recoil. Be aware that while some of these changes can suppress recoil very well, they can also increase weight and affect balance.\n\n#### Factors that help control recoil:\n\n1. Individual physical build.\n\n2. Stance and posture.\n\n3. Grip or how we hold the gun.\n\n4. Cartridge load.\n\n5. Gun type.\n\n6. Noise.\n\n7. Gun fit.\n\n8. Balance of the gun.\n\n9. Barrel length.\n\n10. Forcing cones.\n\n11. Back-boring.\n\n12. Porting.\n\n_Mercury recoil reducer_\n\n#### Additions and Alterations for Recoil Control\n\nSpring recoil reducers and mercury recoil suppressors __ work by slowing the recoil force down but they can add 8 to 10 ounces-plus of weight which can affect or disturb balance and handling. __\n\n_Ported and multi-choked barrels_\n\n**Custom recoil reducers** Either spring, air or hydraulic, are fitted to the stock and then the recoil pad through a piston or plunger connection. They are adjustable and offer the most _effective_ recoil suppression and reduction. But most custom recoil reducers weigh, on average, 12 ounces. This extra weight affects balance and handling. It can actually be so effective in suppressing recoil that it causes the inertia single trigger to fail to pick up the second barrel.\n\n**Barrel porting** A series of holes are drilled, laser-cut or spark-eroded at angles and in shapes into the top half of the barrel or barrels, so that a percentage of gas is released, countering both recoil and muzzle flip. Ported barrels offer more benefit in controlling muzzle flip than recoil. With porting, noise is increased considerably. This has led to a ban on ported guns for use in competition by some clay shooting governing bodies.\n\n**Back boring** The barrel is over-bored from the normal 729. to between 735. and 739. This improves the patterns and helps reduce recoil. The increased nominal boring requires a cartridge with a plastic wad to create an effective seal in the barrel to avoid shot balling and deformity. Felt or fibre wads do not work well in a back-bored gun.\n\n**Forcing** **cone** **This** is a cone that forces the shot from the chamber into the barrel. Lengthening and polishing the forcing cone improves patterns and reduces recoil by easing the shot's transition from the shell into the slightly smaller barrel. The improved performance has the same effect as back boring \u2013 it reduces pressure and recoil. Every gun should be factory-fitted with lengthened forcing cones.\n\n**Trigger** Properly-regulated trigger pulls are very effective in reducing recoil. This is not a job for a machine in a factory, but should be done by hand by an expert.\n\n**Chokes** Long chokes that have a smooth parallel progression into the barrel restriction will improve patterns and reduce recoil.\n\n**Balance** Placing the moment of inertia between the hands creates balance. The combination of the gun's weight and the shape of the stock and fore-end allows correct placement of the hands. Good balance gives the hands a good grip and lets the arms act like a car's suspension, absorbing recoil. A well-balanced gun ensures a smooth and steady swing.\n\n**Recoil** **Pads** The traditional pads for reducing recoil come in many shapes, patterns and materials. The amount of recoil absorption the pad provides is in direct proportion to the material in the pad. Some rubber pads can be as hard as the wood itself and have little dampening effect on recoil. Other pads are too soft and can even be sticky, hanging up on clothing and making the gun mount difficult. A smooth, mid-way pad is the best choice.\n\n#### The Last Word on Recoil Reduction\n\nRecoil control is vital to straight shooting. The addition of any recoil reducer which adds weight to the gun will affect its balance and handling. It may be better to consider a combination of several recoil reducing methods which would work better and have less impact on balance and handling than one heavy, mechanical solution.\n\n## The Ideal Combination\n\nMy preference for the ideal Sporter would be a 7\u00bd __ lb gun with 30 to 34 inch barrels, back-bored to .735, with 3 inch, lengthened forcing cones, well-polished and extended chokes that exactly match the bore of the gun.\n\nTrigger interior parts should be polished and set to a crisp 3\u00bd __ to 4 lb with no creep or drag. The point of balance should be on, or fractionally in front of, the hinge pin. A \u215dth inch Kick Eez sporting pad rounds off the package. The butt of the stock should be fitted so that as much of the surface as possible is in contact with the shoulder, to spread and diminish the impact of recoil. Now you have a gun that is easy to mount, comfortable to shoot and not excessively heavy.\n\n## Keeping it Working\n\nYour shotgun represents a considerable investment and we take for granted that this investment, along with balanced handling, gives the reliability to deliver perfect function shot after shot, year after year. We are totally depending upon this reliability during a competition. Well, in the same manner that a car requires regular servicing to give reliable performance and decrease depreciation, so does your shotgun.\n\nA regular cleaning and maintenance regime takes little time and effort but will ensure the reliability, safe functioning and long life of your shotgun. There are two corrosive and damaging actions:\n\n#### 1. Fouling:\n\n(a) Every shot made creates an actual fire in the chamber, the resultant residue, no matter how clean burning the powder, fouls actions, chambers and bores, if allowed to accumulate will clog moving parts, cause corrosion affecting performance and safety.\n\n(b) Plastic wads leave residue in the barrels.\n\n(c) Lead shot can leave residue, particularly at the muzzle and, if allowed to accumulate, will affect choke and hence patterns.\n\n#### 2. Moisture:\n\n(a) Accumulated fouling left in the action, chambers and bores wicks moisture from the air.\n\n(b) Moving your gun from cold to warm air creates condensation.\n\nIt is the combination of the two, fouling and moisture, that causes the most corrosion, with rust beginning to form within 24 hours of contact with metal.\n\n**Shotgun Terms**\n\n_**action** _\u2013 the moving parts that allow you to load, fire and unload your shotgun. (See Breech, Chamber, Trigger)\n\n**_barrel_ _selector_** __ \u2013 __ detemines which barrel of a double barrel gun will fire first.\n\n**_blacking\/blueing_** __ \u2013 the blue coloration applied to protect gun barrels\n\n**_bore_** __ \u2013 __ in simple terms the interior diameter of a gun barrel, which will vary according to the gun's design and intended use. The size of the bore is indicated by the term gauge.\n\n**_box-lock_** __ \u2013 __ a type of gun action, often recognizeable by its squared appearance.\n\n_**breech** _\u2013 the end of the barrel nearest the stock.\n\n_broken_ **_gun_** __ \u2013 in a hinge type gun, where the barrels are dropped open and clear of the action, exposing the chambers to view.\n\n**_butt_** __ \u2013 the rear of the shoulder end of the gun's stock\n\n_**comb** _\u2013 the side of the stock that fits against your cheek.\n\n_**chamber** _\u2013 __ the part of the action, at the breech end of the barrel, into which the shot shell is placed.\n\n_**choke** _\u2013 the degree of narrowing or constriction of the bore at the muzzle end of the barrel, intended to increase the effective range of the gun. (See examples of chokes: Full, Modified, and Improved Cylinder)\n\n_**ejector** _\u2013 the mechanism on shotguns by which spent shot cases are automatically ejected from the gun when it is opened after firing.\n\n_**forearm** _\u2013 the part of the stock that lies under the barrel.\n\n**_full_ _choke_** __ \u2013 the tightest constriction or narrowing of the bore, producing the greatest effective range.\n\n_**grip** _\u2013 the narrow portion of the stock held with the trigger hand.\n\n_**gauge** _\u2013 the term used to describe the interior diameter of the bore. The smaller the gauge number, the larger the bore size. Modern shotguns are available in 10, 12, 16, 20 and 28 gauge. An exception is the 410 bore shotgun, which is actually a 67 gauge.\n\n_**hinge** _\u2013 a type of action in which a hinge mechanism separates the barrel from the standing breech block. providinq access to the chamber.\n\n**_improved_ **_**cylinder** _\u2013 less constructed than a modified or full choke \u2013 a good all around choke for sporting clays.\n\n**_modified_** _**choke** _\u2013 moderate constriction or narrowing of the bore.\n\n_**muzzle** _\u2013 __ the end of the barrel from which the shot exits.\n\n**_over-and-under_** __ \u2013 __ a two-barrelled shotgun with one barrel placed over the other. (The American version of the standard British game shooting gun.)\n\n**_pump_** __ \u2013 a type of action that loads and ejects shells by pumping the forearm of the stock back and forth.\n\n_**recoil** _\u2013 the force with which the gun moves backwards into the shoulder when fired.\n\n**_safety_** \u2013 __ a __ safety device that, in the \"on\" position, prevents the gun from firing. In many field guns the safety is automatically engaged when the gun is opened; in other guns, particularly competition grades, the safety must be manually engaged.\n\n**_semi_** __ _**automatic** _\u2013 a type of action in which gas from the burning gunpowder in the shell automatically ejects the spent shell and loads another. Semi-automatics are noted for minimal recoil.\n\n_**shot** _\u2013 round projectiles, usually of lead or steel. Depending on shot size and load, a shell can contain from 45 to 1,170 shot.\n\n**_shot_** _**pattern** _\u2013 the concentration of shot measured in a circle at a given range, usually 30 to 40 yards.\n\n**_side-by-side_** __ \u2013 __ a shotgun with two barrels sitting side by side. In Great Britain, the standard game shooting gun.\n\n_**stock** _\u2013 __ the \"handle\" of the shotgun, the part held to the shoulder, comprising the butt, comb, grip.\n\n**_shotshell_** __ _or_ _**shell** _\u2013 the ammunition fired by shotguns, consisting of five components: the case, primer, powder charge, wad, and shot.\n\n_**trigger** _\u2013 __ finger-pulled lever in single, double or trigger that drives the firing point forward and fires the gun.\n\nYou should clean your gun each and every time that you use it, if it is in storage it should be removed on a regular schedule and inspected and given a further application of oil. If a gun has been stored for a protracted period of time it should be thoroughly examined and cleaned before use.\n\nIf the gun is used in the rain, it should be wiped off and allowed to stand for several hours to allow any water to sweat out, before the normal cleaning regime is performed.\n\nNever leave guns for prolonged periods in fleece-lined gunslips and especially when wet.\n\nGun safes should have electric dehumidifiers fitted or a sack of silica crystals placed inside to remove any moisture created from condensation.\n\n#### Gun Cleaning Kit:\n\n1. Cleaning rod, bronze brush, jag, wool mop, patches of the correct bore size for the gun.\n\n2. Bore cleaning solvent.\n\n3. Gun oil, which has two roles \u2013 lubricant for moving parts and protective coating.\n\n4. Clean lint-free cloths.\n\n5. Small brush (toothbrush).\n\n6. Cotton buds or a feather.\n\n7. Kitchen roll.\n\n### Cleaning Sequence\n\nCheck that the gun is unloaded; dismantle it into its component parts of stock and action, barrels (remove multi-chokes if fitted) and fore-end. Either spray bore cleaner into the barrels or dip the brush in the solvent. Using the rod, run the brush through the barrels from the breech end to the muzzles several times. Next, using balled kitchen roll or patches with the jag, dry the bores, using clean material in each pass until they emerge clean. Multi-chokes are cleaned in the same manner; if badly fouled, they can be soaked in solvent to soften up residue. Taking a small brush or feather, clean all debris from between the ribs and in the action. Check all screws and fastenings to ensure tightness (they can become loose in use). Coat all metal surfaces including interior bores (rod and mop) with fine gun oil, multi-chokes require a smear of gun grease before reinstallation and a little grease should be used an all bearing parts of the action and fore-end.\n\nWoodwork should be wiped off and polished using one of the stock care products.\n\nThe gun can now be reassembled and safely stored.\n\n**Note:** **Before using** **,** **always run a** **rod** **and** **mop** **through the** **bore** **to remove** **oil** **residue** **.**\n\nIt is recommended that you should give your shotgun to a competent gunsmith once a year for a strip and clean, where the interior parts are inspected for both reliability and safety.\n\n### In Conclusion\n\nEveryone will change guns several times during their learning curve. As shooting skills and knowledge of the differences in guns improve, you will change guns to better match your current level. However, once you have found the gun that fits and functions well for you, keep it.\n\n_Targets_ _come_ _in_ _many_ _shapes_ _and_ _sizes._ _The_ _colour_ _is_ _chosen_ _to_ _make_ _the_ _target_ _stand_ _out_ _against_ _different_ _backgrounds._\nChapter 4\n\n# Targets, Chokes and Cartridges\n\nThe target's type and presentation determines the amount of choke and the size of the shot you need to break it. The correct combination of choke and cartridge is what produces hard-hitting patterns which translate into better-broken targets.\n\nAn understanding of the various types of targets used in the different disciplines will help you choose the best choke and cartridge combination to break them. We also will take a look at the best place to break those targets, as well as how they are thrown.\n\n## Targets\n\n### Target Types\n\nThere are six different target sizes and configurations:\n\n  1. **Standard** 4\u00bd __ inches in diameter and 1\u215b __ inches thick; dome shaped. Used in Skeet, Trap and the majority of Sporting Clays presentations. \n  2. **Midi** 3\u00bd __ inches in diameter, \u215e __ inch thick. Used in Sporting Clays. Its smaller size makes it appear farther away than it actually is; it retains its initial velocity longer than larger targets. \n  3. **Mini** 2\u215c __ inches in diameter, \u215d inch thick. Used in Sporting Clays. Very deceptive because its small size makes it appear to be moving faster than it actually is; slows equally quickly because it is so light. \n  4. **Rabbit** 4\u00bd __ inches in diameter; \u215d __ inch thick. Used in Sporting Clays. Rolls and bounces on the ground; thick rim density prevents it from shattering on the ground; often presented as a Chondel. \n  5. **Battue** 4\u00bd __ inches in diameter; \u215c __ inch thick. Used in Sporting Clays. Called the 'flying razor blade'; difficult to pick up edge-on; because of the lack of a dome is unstable in flight and rolls to show the full face to the gun. \n  6. **Rocket** 4\u00bd __ inches in diameter; \u215d __ inch thick. Used in Sporting Clays. Deceptive in flight, it appears to float, but retains far more velocity than the standard clay.\n\n### Colours\n\nStandard targets come in a variety of colours: orange, yellow, green, white and black. They are chosen based on their visibility against different backgrounds. The other target types are predominantly black.\n\n### Vulnerability\n\nThe target can be shown to the gun in three presentations, each offering a different degree of vulnerability. These are described in descending order of breaking difficulty:\n\n  1. **Shoulder** This is the thickest part of the clay and the hardest part to break. Added to this is the fact that it offers a very small target area. The target is spinning at many revolutions per second and the shoulder deflects the energy and direction of the shot from the strike point. The target shoulder requires a solid hit from multiple pellets to break it. \n  2. **Dome** This is the next thickest area, and offers a much larger target to the gun. At the dome, the spinning effect is reduced and the target will break from a strike by a moderate number of pellets. \n  3. **Belly** The underside offers the thinnest and largest target area. Its revolutions have little effect to the gun and only a few pellets are required to break it.\n\n____\n\n_Shoulder \u2013 hardest to break_\n\n_Dome \u2013 less hard to break_ __\n\n### Deceptive Targets\n\nThe course setter often sets the trap so that the target is changing flight at the place you are naturally inclined to shoot it. This transition can result in a target that deceptively shows a mixture of areas. For __ example, in a quartering-away shot, only half the dome will show. These targets are always best shot with the choke and cartridge best suited for the hardest part of the target.\n\n_Belly \u2013 easiest to break_ __\n\n### Traps\n\nThe target is, to all intents and purposes, a flying saucer. It sustains level flight through its speed, revolutions and shape, in the same manner that a frisbee does. It is thrown by a machine known as a trap and these can be manually or automatically operated.\n\nThe trap itself is simply a large spring and an arm; the target is placed on or against the arm. The spring is compressed and released, driving the arm at great speed and throwing the clay, like a discus thrower. The speed at which the clay leaves the trap is determined by the tension 'wound on' the spring.\n\n_Automatic trap_ __\n\nTrap settings are fully adjustable for distance, elevation, and angle and many can also be tilted. Course setters can offer as many different targets, in as many varied and challenging presentation as their imagination (and the shooters) will allow.\n\n## Chokes\n\n### Origin\n\nThe invention of the choke in 1866 is generally credited to an English gentleman, Mr W. R. Pape. There is additional evidence that Sylvester Roper, an American gunsmith, patented the invention of choked barrels in April of 1866, several weeks before Mr Pape received his patent. All this was contested by Fred Kimble, an American, who claimed to have invented choking in 1867. Then in 1874, W. W. Greener, another Englishman, researched and developed the concept even further. Whoever gets the ultimate credit, the choke has done more to increase the effective range of the shotgun than any other invention since!\n\n_Automatic rabbit or Chondel trap_ __\n\nThe early chokes increased the shotgun's range from 30 to 50 yards and subsequent refinements have extended the effective range even farther. Cartridge innovations, such as the addition of antimony to the lead shot, added buffers and coatings, plus the invention of the plastic wad and the star crimp, have all been factors in the shotgun's increased range. But without the presence of choke, cartridge improvements alone would have little impact.\n\n### How Choke Works\n\n'Choke' means to constrict \u2013 to create a tightening effect \u2013 and that is exactly what choke does in the barrel of a shotgun. The walls of the shotgun barrel are parallel from the chamber to the muzzles. The addition of choke gradually increases the wall thickness of the barrel, so gradually _decreases_ _or_ _constricts_ the inside diameter at the muzzles.\n\n_**DIAGRAM 1: An exaggerated diagram showing how choke works.**_\n\nThe amount of this constriction is measured in thousandths of an inch as added to the nominal boring of the barrel. Before the invention of choke, all barrels where simply straight tubes, hence the expression 'true cylinder'. (This is the most open barrel with '0', or no choke.) The amount of choke restriction is measured in increments of ten thousandths of an inch, with the tightest or 'Full' choke, measuring forty thousandths of an inch.\n\n**DIAGRAM 2:** **The difference in patterns achieved by different chokes at 25 yards.**\n\n### Terminology and Sizes\n\nDifferent countries have different terminology for the different amounts of choke: (measurement in thousandths of an inch)\n\nUK |  | Europe and America | Symbol  \n---|---|---|---  \nTrue Cylinder | 0 | True Cylinder | Cyl  \nQuarter | 10 | Improved Cylinder | ****  \nHalf | 20 | Modified | ***  \nThree Quarter | 30 | Improved Modified | **  \nFull | 40 | Full | *\n\nNote: There are choke constrictions designed specifically for Skeet. While manufacturers differ on this amount, it is typically five to eight thousandths of an inch. This is usually marked SKI and SK2. These marks are most often found on the barrel at the breech.\n\n### Range and Distance\n\nThe more choke present in the barrels, the greater the shotgun's effective range. This is achieved by holding the shot column together longer, so as it leaves the barrel it is narrower and more air resistant, reducing the amount of spread. The accepted Optimum Range of different chokes is:\n\n| 30-inch pattern at: |   \n---|---|---  \n| 40 yards | Full  \n| 35 yards  | Improved Modified or \u00be  \n| 30 yards  | Modified or \u00bd  \n| 25 yards | Improved Cylinder  \n| 20 yards | True Cylinder or Skeet\n\nYou can see that a cylinder choke would be of little use at 40 yards and, conversely, a full-choke, little use at 20 yards.\n\n### Further Choke Developments\n\nSince the discovery of chokes' major impact on the range of a shotgun, there have been many variations and permutations. Several different designs were patented by E. Field White, inventor of the Poly Choke, others by Col Cutts of the Cutts Compensator, and W.R. Weaver of the Weaver choke. Other manufacturers tried other choke designs: swaged, conical, recessed, cylindro-conical, bell, trumpet, retro, and Tula, among others.\n\n_Roper_ _'_ _s original mult-choke_\n\nBut the innovation destined to match the impact of the choke itself, was the Winchester Company's introduction of the first internal multi-choke, the Winchoke. This concept had been tried earlier by Sylvester Roper, but the Winchester multi-choke system would change the game of Sporting Clays shooting forever.\n\nDuring the 1960s and 70s, many Sporting Clays competitors carried two guns; a Trap gun with tight chokes for long shots and a Skeet gun with more open chokes for the close shots. This way, they could choose the gun best-choked for the target presentation. ____\n\nThe Winchester system was followed by the work of another American, Jess Briley of Houston, Texas. Briley refined the development of the screw-in choke. He created a system wherein any shotgun could have the barrels machined and threaded, and, by screwing in matched tubes, the _choke_ _could_ _be_ _adjusted_ _to_ _suit_ _the_ _target!_ This ultimately revolutionised the clay target gun.\n\nThis Briley System is now an industry standard and is factory-fitted in many shotguns. Other specialist companies also offer retro-fitting to a fixed-choked gun or they can adapt and install their own system to replace the manufacturer's. In the USA, Briley, Rhino, and Seminole are suppliers of these specialist choking services. In the UK, Nigel Teague has built a sterling reputation for his products.\n\nThese after-market installations have given greater flexibility to choke selection and many competitors today choose to install personalized degrees of choke to their guns such as Light Modified, which is fifteen thousandths of an inch and half-way between IC and Mod. This is a good selection for the semi-automatic single-barrel, as it is an extremely flexible choking.\n\nChoke works because of the difference in the diameter of the choke to the nominal boring of the barrel. This difference creates a problem: as the shot column is propelled down the barrel, it suddenly runs into a restriction to its passage. At this point, many of the pellets become crushed and deformed. This deformation means the pellets are slowed down and deflected off-path by the effects of air resistance (flyers). Every pellet crushed in this way fails to reach the target.\n\nIt was quickly learned that the more gradual the lead-in to the choke constriction, the fewer pellets were deformed. Today's specialist choke suppliers have refined their product to minimize the deformation of the shot charge. Modern chokes, whether parallel or gradually-tapered, are much longer than the early Victorian versions.\n\n### Multi-Choke Options\n\nMulti-chokes with interchangeable tubes are screwed into the muzzles of the shotgun, increasing the flexibility of choke options. These come in several types:\n\n**Flush-fitting** **chokes** have castellations in them to facilitate installation and removal with a key or wrench.\n\n**Extended** **tube** **chokes** are knurled and are put in and taken out by hand.\n\n**Wad-stripping** **chokes** are designed to strip off the wad. **Ported chokes** reduce muzzle flip and recoil.\n\nIt is very important that the multi-chokes match the nominal boring of the gun to accurately reflect the amount of choke present. The amount of choke in the tube is marked on its side. Because this is obscured when they are installed, they are either grooved around their top edge or colour-coded to tell you the degree of choke.\n\n### Multi-Choke Markings\n\n**Number of grooves**\n\n| None: | True Cylinder  \n---|---|---  \n| One: | Full  \n| Two: | Improved Modified  \n| Three: | Modified  \n| Four: | Improved Cylinder\n\n#### Written Markings:\n\nSK 1 & SK 2 Skeet\n\nSome of the extended multi-chokes have a colour-coding or the degree of constriction is written out on the choke.\n\n### Choke versus air resistance\n\nAs the shot leaves the barrel, it encounters air resistance. In fact the loud 'bang!' heard when a shot is fired, does not all come from the exploding powder, it is the sound of the shot stream breaking the sound barrier as it leaves the end of the gun!\n\nThis air resistance acts upon the shot charge, slowing it down and forcing the component pellets apart. The deformed pellets or 'flyers' peel away first. Then, in progressive erosion, the outer layer of pellets stretches out, forming the shot string. It is this string that gives a shotgun the margin for error that allows us to shoot a moving target. But this shot string needs to be balanced, if it is too thin, there are gaps big enough for the target to pass through untouched.\n\nIt is important to choose the appropriate choke for the distance at which the target will be broken. A slightly tighter choke than the distance might dictate will deliver a dense, accurate shot string, with breaking capabilities along its entire length. This is preferable to depending on a wider, longer shot string, full of gaps, to try to make the hit.\n\n## Cartridges\n\nChoke and its effectiveness can be very much affected by your choice of cartridge, and you can easily be overwhelmed by the number and variety of cartridges available on the market today. Each brand and formula promises better performance, more speed, improved patterns and harder shots. For the beginner and intermediate shooter, this can lead to constant experimentation, changing brands and loads, trying to find the cartridge solution to improve their performance. The reality is all cartridges contain the same components; the differences are in the type, amount and quality of those components, and how they are constructed, to achieve what level of performance. The component parts are the case, primer, powder, wad, shot and crimp.\n\nThe cartridge, when fired, acts like the plunger or piston in a bicycle pump. The primer is struck and ignites the powder, which creates combustion, similar to the fuel and air mixture in a petrol engine when ignited by the spark plug. This, combined with the crimp, or the way the cartridge is closed, creates the pressure that propels the shot charge along the barrel. At this point, the wad performs a very valuable task, both protecting the shot charge from the heat of the powder combustion and acting as the piston and seal to ensure that the best use is made of the pressure generated.\n\nAs the shot travels down the barrel at great speed and under high pressure, it is inevitable that there will be some shot deformity. The more deformity, the more 'flyers', and the poorer the pattern or 'string'. Passage through both the forcing cones and choke tubes creates many more deformed pellets or flyers. In fact, when choke was first used in shotguns, it actually resulted in worse patterns! The shot itself must be of sufficient hardness to resist deforming while being pushed through the barrel at several hundred miles per hour.\n\nIt was only with the discovery and introduction of antimony into the mixture of lead shot that it became hard enough to resist these damages. Like all things in life, the best costs more. Antinomy is ten times the price of lead. When you see a cartridge that has an antimony content of 5 per cent or more, that's the reason that cartridge is a little more expensive.\n\nThe high antinomy cartridges are the premier marques within every brand and, if the manufacturer elects to use high antinomy shot in a cartridge, they often use better quality components in the rest the cartridge. However, until you master the basics of shooting straight, there is little to be gained between buying the budget and the best.\n\n### Cartridge Components Impact Choice\n\nWhen choosing a cartridge, you should consider:\n\n  1. Wad.\n  2. Shot Size.\n  3. Recoil.\n\nTaking them in order:\n\n#### Wad\n\nThe wad is made from either felt or plastic. Some shooting grounds insist on bio-degradable felt wads for environmental reasons. However, from the shooter's stand point, the plastic wad will always be superior to the fibre. The plastic wad has a cup with a built-in seal and shock-absorbing piston to protect the shot on its journey down the barrel. There have, however, been many advances in the felt wad cartridge, including a small orbitrator or seal, so its performance is now only a small percentage short of the plastic wad cartridge.\n\n#### Shot Size\n\nThe main shot sizes used for clays include No. 9s, 8s and 7\u00bds _._ _The_ _larger_ _the_ _number,_ _the_ _smaller_ _the_ _diam_ _eter_ __ _of_ _the_ _individual_ _pellet_ _and_ _the_ _less_ _energy_ _is_ _generated_ _per_ _pellet._ If you cut open a cartridge of each size and micrometer the shot, you will find very little difference in the sizes of the pellets. As the No. 8 pellets are smaller in diameter, there are a greater number in a 28 gram load. But what you gain on the swings you inevitably loose on the roundabouts. If you shoot No.7\u00bds, __ yes, you have bigger shot and more striking power, but fewer pellets in the cartridge than if you shot No. 8s.\n\nA simple rule of thumb is out to 35 yards, use No. 8s. Past 35 yards, use No. 7\u00bds _._ __ Some competitors favour No.9s for wider, denser patterns at really close targets. But the main shot sizes used for clays, now that the compulsory use of No. 9s for Skeet has been removed, will be No. 8s and No. 7\u00bds.\n\n#### Recoil\n\nRecoil is a big factor in your personal choice of shell. Recoil is both fatigue-inducing and the cause of many second barrel misses. Comparing two shells with equal feet per second ratings, one can be smooth, with little recoil when fired, while the other can give you a punch of which a boxer would be proud.\n\nThis is due to the burning properties of the powder; one ignites in a steady, powerful progression, one simply explodes. The differences can be compared to the acceleration of a Rolls-Royce and a Hot Rod. Both get up to 60 miles per hour, the ride is just more comfortable in the Rolls. The powders that are capable of both speed and reasonable pressure are as in the automobile analogy: the smoother the recoil, the more expensive the cartridge.\n\n### Cartridge Speed's Affect on Lead\n\nCompare the average cartridge and the fastest cartridge on the market: the difference between the two in lead required to hit a target at 40 yards is but a few inches. When you consider a target travelling at forty miles per hour, at this distance, it would require nine feet of forward allowance! Surely the faster cartridge in and of itself would not give you any great advantage. It is better to find a cartridge that is comfortable to shoot and stick with it, rather than continuously experimenting with the 'rocket science' of velocity's small affect on lead.\n\n_Cartridge speed affects lead_\n\n### Flight Testing the Cartridge-Choke Combination\n\nThe only way to determine precisely how your cartridge-choke combination performs in your shotgun is at a patterning board. Here you can determine if you have the correct mix of choke and cartridge to match the target flight and distance of your chosen discipline. __\n\n## Pattern Plate\n\nThe 'pattern' is the distribution of the pellets shot onto a vertical surface. The pattern plate, usually a vertical steel plate that is painted or greased, is shot at from a set distance of 40 yards away. The resulting shot pattern reveals the interaction between your chosen choke and cartridge.\n\nThe pattern plate is used to check the following:\n\n  1. Point of impact\n  2. Choke and cartridge performance\n  3. Choke regulation\n  4. Barrel regulation\n  5. Gun mount\n  6. Gun fit\n\nIf your technique and gun fit are correct, poor ballistics can make or break the outcome of a competition. Consistency can only be achieved with a gun that throws good patterns, and which choke does so at set distances.\n\n### Traditional Patterning\n\nA typical pattern plate is usually a four foot square sheet of \u215b-inch-thick steel, with the centre eight feet above the ground. The surface is painted or greased, and is fired upon to determine the number of pellets hitting the target at specific yardages. Traditionally, the distance was 40 yards, but it is more useful to shoot at the yardage that suits the targets presented in your discipline.\n\nA 30-inch circle is drawn around the centre of the pattern and divided into four quarters. The number of pellet strikes in one quarter is counted and multiplied times four to determine the total number of pellets that hit the plate. The process is then repeated five times, painting the plate between shots. If you own a digital camera, take a picture of the five patterns, download them into a file on your computer and you can do the pellet count at home at your leisure.\n\nNext, several of the cartridges being tested need to be cut open, a tedious but necessary task, and the number of pellets counted in each cartridge. This will give you the average number of pellets per cartridge for that brand and load. That number of pellets in the cartridge is then compared to the number of pellets in the pattern. The number that hit the plate is expressed as a percentage of the number of pellets in the cartridge. That number determines the density of the pattern. Seventy to eighty per cent is considered a very good density.\n\nTo complete the evaluation, the pattern should be checked for evenness of pellet distribution. The pellet pattern should not be in one small bunch, but spread evenly across the 30-inch circle, with no holes or gaps.\n\n#### Analysing the Results\n\nArmed with the information gleaned from the pattern board, you can determine the following:\n\n  1. How good or bad any given cartridge patterns in your gun or guns; how the cartridge interacts with the choking present; or, if a multi-choke, which choke gives the best pattern. Ideally, you would see up to seventy per cent or more of the pellets from the cartridge evenly distributed over the 30-inch circle. \n  2. How the different degrees of choke correspond with the laid-down averages, which traditionally are as follows: cylinder forty per cent, half choke sixty per cent, full choke seventy per cent. This way you can determine the actual choking in a gun. If it is throwing sixty per cent, it is half choke, regardless of the degree of choke present at the muzzle.\n\n3. Regulation, which is accomplished by altering the degree of choke or cartridge used until you achieve the exact distribution desired for the target to be shot with a particular gun. For example, for Trap, sixty per cent in a 30-inch circle at 40 yards, regardless of the choke actually in the gun, would give the best results.\n\n#### Misleading Information\n\nThere are many things that can negatively impact your pattern testing and can result in misleading pellet counts and percentages. Be aware of the following:\n\n  1. Poor gun fit or inability to shoot straight.\n  2. Inaccurate pellet counts. Accurate pellet counts can only be obtained from cutting open several cartridges and physically counting the pellets. \n  3. Variation in cartridge performance. You should shoot more than once. A minimum of five patterns per choke and cartridge combination should be obtained. \n  4. Inaccurate pattern distances. Patterning is traditionally done at 40 yards, but patterns should be double checked at the ranges at which you actually shoot your targets. \n  5. Inaccurate chokes. Choke can only be measured by comparing the nominal boring to the restriction present. The advances in choke tapering technology, together with back boring and the lengthening of forcing cones can have Skeet choke throwing a modified pattern. \n  6. Cartridge variations. Cartridges of the same specifications but from different manufacturers can vary greatly. Find a brand that patterns well in your gun and stick with it.\n\n### Chokes and Cartridges in Trap and Skeet Guns\n\nI believe that you cannot discuss one separately from the other. In Trap and Skeet, the distances and angles that the targets are thrown are fixed. The guns for these disciplines should be choked and regulated to maximize the pattern at those set distances. For example, the close Skeet target is best shot with open chokes and smaller shot like No. 9s, where the distant Trap target requires tight chokes and a larger shot size like No.7\u00bds or No. 8s. Although many are, there is no requirement for Trap and Skeet guns to be multi-choked.\n\n### Chokes and Cartridges in Sporting Clays Guns\n\nSporting Clays does not have set angles or distances and presents an almost infinite variety of targets. Most often the targets are a combination of two presentations, one near and one far, and the degree of choke and shot size needs to be decided for each target. Because of this, the Sporting Clays gun needs to be flexible and should always be fitted with multi-chokes.\n\nAsk yourself the following questions:\n\n  1. Are your target breaks chips and edges?\n  2. Are they balls of dust?\n  3. If safe to do so, when you collect whole missed targets, are any holes in them?\n  4. Do you shoot different disciplines with the same gun?\n  5. Do you miss more than you hit?\n  6. Do you shoot a fixed-choke gun?\n\nIf you answer 'yes' to one or more of these questions, then a better understanding of choke and cartridge choice could definitely improve your scores.\n\nChapter 5\n\n# Equipment and Accessories\n\nLike any sport, you need the correct equipment to compete to the best of your ability. You will need to invest in a variety of items, and it is important that it is the right equipment as it can have considerable impact on your performance. It is well worth giving careful consideration to selecting the various items you will need. Equipment can be broken down into two categories: Essential and Recommended.\n\n## Essential Equipment\n\n### Shooting Glasses\n\nThe first and most essential piece of equipment is shooting glasses which perform three distinct functions.\n\n  1. Provide protection from the impact of a shotgun pellet and debris from broken targets. Clay target pieces can often fly in erratic paths; they are extremely sharp and you only need to take a look at the facing wall of the high house on a skeet field to see the scrapes and gouges caused from the pieces of broken targets. This positively demon __strates the requirement for eye protection. Even when the direction of shooting is strictly controlled, there is an inevitable, but minor, risk of being struck by a stray pellet or ricochet. ____\n  2. Targets come in many colours and are thrown against a variety of backgrounds in ever-changing light conditions. Shooting glasses with interchangeable lenses offer the distinct advantage of being able to put in the correct tint of lens to enhance target definition in any situation. \n  3. Clay shooting is an outdoor sport and protection for the eyes from the harmful UV rays in sunlight is a necessity.\n\n_Essential protection with the added benefit of improved target contrast_\n\n__\n\nIt should also be noted that shooting glasses have a large frameless lens that allows the eye to see the target without obstruction. If prescription lenses are required, they should be ordered in single vision, for distance, only. Bifocal, trifocal, or Varilux lenses can cause problems in seeing the target.\n\n### Hearing Protection\n\nThe second essential piece of equipment is hearing protection, and with the modern digital systems, this also can offer more than simple blockage of damaging noise.\n\n#### Basic Ear Protection\n\n1. The report of a shotgun, though just a milli-second in duration, is louder than a jet plane as it takes off. Repeated exposure to this level of noise will cause permanent hearing loss. You could compare this to a large rock under the constant drip of water \u2013 it may take years, but eventually the rock will be eroded away. Hearing damage is permanent and once sustained, can never be replaced. Simple foam plugs or ear-muffs, well-fitted and of good quality, should always be worn when shooting or even observing shooting.\n\n2. Anticipated recoil is greatly contributed to by the noise generated at the discharge of the gun, and good hearing protection helps eliminate this and the tendency to flinch.\n\n_Custom_ _electronic_\n\n#### Advanced Ear Protection\n\n3. The modern digital hearing protection allows full stereo input at all frequencies, but at any harmful noise above 0-82 decibels, has an automatic shut-off. This type of ear protection eliminates the blocked-up sensation created with ordinary plugs and ear muffs, often the reason ear protection is prematurely removed. Digital ear protection gives the further advantage of being able to hear the traps being released and the benefit of enhanced communication with the referee and other competitors, which can be of particular importance in FITASC. __\n\n### Head Protection\n\nA brimmed hat, be it a baseball cap or other design, is a simple piece of clothing that offers many benefits.\n\n  1. The extended brim covers the gap between your forehead and glasses offering essential protection from broken shards of clay which can potentially enter the eye area. \n  2. The brim helps by shading the eyes from strong sunlight, aiding your vision. It is always easier to look out from shade into light. The brim also helps keep the rain off your glasses. \n  3. In hot weather, a hat protects you from strong sunlight and a ventilated hat helps to dissipate heat. In the cold, a great deal of heat is lost through the top of the head, and a hat reduces this loss which can result in fatigue.\n\n## Recommended Equipment\n\n### Shooting Vest\n\nThe first recommendation is a shooting vest, and many would consider it an essential. The skeet or shooting vest is unique to the clay shooting games, and it fulfills several necessary functions.\n\n  1. A proper shooting vest should facilitate the smooth and consistent mounting of the gun. It is required to be cut to allow the unrestricted articulation of the shoulders, but it should not be so loose as to fold and cause the gun to snag or hang up. The waist should be adjustable so that any slack can be taken up and help when the pockets contain cartridges. Pockets should not move during the swing and mount. A leather or synthetic pad, fully extending from the shoulder to the pocket and stitched vertically every one inch, is the best design to promote a smooth gun mount. \n  2. Vests come with a variety of pockets, hooks, and compartments. The front two pockets are the only essential ones, and they should be of a bellows design, stitched and riveted and large enough to accommodate a box of shells. Some competitors like to carry everything they may need on their person, and the other pockets are merely for storage. \n  3. If the majority of your shooting is in hot weather, look for a vest with a ventilated back panel. Vests offer little weather protection and should your shooting be predominantly in the cold or wet, choose a shooting jacket of the same specifications instead. Be sure that it too has a bellows back and raglan-sleeve design to allow the arms ample freedom to swing.\n\n_Hot_ _weather_ _ventilated_ _vest_\n\n_Standard_ _international_ _skeet_ _vest_\n\n_Down_ _shooting_ _vest_\n\nSome who want only recoil protection, prefer a half-vest that comes to the waist with the option of carrying their ammunition in a pouch or 'shooting apron' fastened at the waist.\n\n### Shoes for Shooting\n\nThere is a considerable amount of walking and standing around during any competition, and this is more so in Sporting Clays. Here, instead of the concrete stations of the Skeet and Trap fields, you will be walking a wooded course that is often wet and slippery. I do not know of any shoes made specifically for shooting, but the following are my suggestions for choosing a pair of shooting shoes.\n\n_Cross_ _trainers_ _with_ _ankle_ _support_ _make_ _excellent_ _shooting_ _shoes_\n\n  1. They must be light and fit well, not too tight, but not so loose that they allow the feet to move around inside them. Cushioned insoles and padding at the ankles will help during a long day. They should have a little height at the heels so they encourage a good shooting posture with the weight forward on the balls of the feet. \n  2. Good gripping soles are essential, both for smooth concrete on a wet day, but even more so on a well-worn Sporting Clay station on the side of the hill. However, the sole of the shoe should not have such aggressive cleats that they could impede the movement of the feet when required, such as in FITASC. \n  3. From the list of requirements, you can see that the 'sports trainer' or light hiking boot is an excellent choice. I particularly like the all-terrain type that have a more rigid design offering greater stability and support of both foot and ankle.\n\n### Shooting Gloves\n\nShooting gloves offer improved gripping control as well as protection from hot barrels. They should be of thin and supple leather and should fit closely. For hotter weather, the cut-a-way back and fingerless type, similar to a racing cyclist's, are a good choice.\n\n### Shooting Clothing\n\nClothing comes in two categories: good weather and bad weather.\n\n  1. Good Weather Clothing: Wear cotton and it should be loose-fitting and comfortable. The shirt, like the shooting vest, should allow good arm and shoulder articulation but not have so much slack as to impede the gun-mount. In very hot weather, wear shorts and ventilated shirts, and remember to carry a towel to wipe off perspiration. \n  2. Bad Weather Clothing: Many will choose to wear a waterproof overcoat and remove it before shooting at every station. I much prefer to wear layers, starting with thermal underwear. Over that wear regular loose and comfortable clothing, substituting a thin polo-neck sweater for the shirt, finishing with a rain-and waterproof 'golf suit'. These are cut to allow the freedom to swing a golf club and offer the same advantage of protection and movement to the shooter. I then wear my skeet vest over the top. A large golf umbrella to stand under while waiting to shoot and a towel to dry hands and equipment are sound additions. A second pair of shooting gloves to change into half-way around the course in poor weather is also advisable.\n\n_Cotton_ _or_ _natural_ _fabrics_ _for_ _fine_ _weather_ _shooting_\n\n_Weatherproof_ _Ventile_ _or_ _Gore-tex\u00ae_ _shooting_ _jacket_ _and_ _extra_ _layers_ _for_ _cold_ _weather_\n\n### The Gear Bag\n\nA gear bag allows you to have all of the equipment that you need or might need to be at hand during a competition. It also means that you can put the bag down and take only the essentials into the station that you are shooting. This eliminates any unnecessary weight that can interfere with your shooting action. A gear bag can be anything from a gym bag to a custom-designed tote bag with a reinforced bottom for carrying ammunition, with pockets for accessories. The bag must have a wide, padded shoulder strap and be comfortable to carry.\n\nThe following is a list of what you would find in the average competitors' bag, depending on the weather and the country where the competition is being held.\n\n_To carry everything including the kitchen sink_ _!_ __\n\nHearing protection\n\nShooting glasses and spare lenses\n\nHat\n\nAmmunition\n\nMulti-chokes and choke key for changing them\n\nWater or other drinks or snacks\n\nThe Leatherman or other multi-tool\n\nSun block\n\nInsect repellent\n\nPen and pencil\n\nTowels\n\nGloves\n\nThe list of equipment could go on, but beyond the essential and the recommended, there are a couple of additions that are popular, convenient, and useful.\n\n#### SHOE PROTECTORS\n\nLeather shoe protectors prevent wear on shooting shoes where the muzzles of the guns rest on the tops of the shoes. This is mainly a Trap and Skeet shooting accessory where an open over and under is often placed muzzle-down on the toe...a comfortable way to wait your turn to shoot.\n\n#### Equipment Carts\n\nThese carts, often called a gear caddies, are simply converted golf carts that allow all a shooter's equipment to be carried on two wheels, avoiding fatigue.\n\nLEFT: _Shoe_ __ _Protector_ __ __ RIGHT: _Cartridge_ _Pouch_\n\nChapter 6\n\n# Eye Dominance\n\n### Beginner\n\nThe essential test before beginning to learn to shoot is to establish which is your Master or Dominant Eye. This will determine the shoulder you will shoot off, the stance you will adopt, your clothing and equipment choices, and how you will have your gun fit.\n\n### Intermediate\n\nIt is incredible how many intermediate and even advanced shots have come for lessons and gun fittings with eye dominance conflicts. Often they are either totally unaware of any problems, or adamant that they are dominant in one eye or the other, often the wrong one.\n\n### Advanced\n\nThe failure of the advanced shooter or his instructor to diagnosis Eye Dominance at the beginning of his shooting career, has often resulted in frustration and dramatically impacted his progress. Helping a clay shooter to understand and correct the interaction between his eyes and the gun will improve where his shotgun points and throws its pattern, and will enable him to shoot better scores.\n\n### What is Eye Dominance?\n\nUnderstanding the impact of Eye Dominance and how to correctly diagnose the Dominant or Master Eye is the first essential to straight shooting.\n\nThe human being is designed with two eyes which can be compared to two television cameras, yet we have only one receiver or television screen. The brain knits these two independent camera pictures seamlessly together, allowing us to see one clear and sharp picture. The brain actually considers the two eyes to behave like a single 'Cyclopean' eye, but the images arrive into the brain separately, one fractionally in front of the other. The first registered image is the 'Dominant' or 'Master Eye'.\n\n_Left-handed shooter_ _,_ _right-eye dominant will miss to the right of the target_\n\nIt is this binocular vision, with both eyes open, (stereoscopic \u2013 three dimensional) that is perceived in the visual cortex of the brain where the focusing mechanisms of the two eyes are linked together. This gives us the ability to place objects in space by size and distance and is called Stereopis, __ or as it is more commonly known, Depth Perception. __\n\nIf you shoot off the shoulder opposite to the Dominant Eye, you disrupt the process of binocular vision, this causes confusion in the eye's focusing mechanisms. This usually results in a shot missed some six inches to four feet off-centre.\n\nIt is the master eye that decides which shoulder you should shoot off, not, as you would think, whether you are right or left-handed.\n\n### Diagnosing the Master Eye\n\nThere are many ways in which to determine your eye dominance. The simplest method is, with both eyes open, pick out an object in the distance. Raise your arm and point at it with your forefinger. Close first one eye, then the other. You will find that your finger will remain firmly pointing at the object with one eye (the Master Eye)and move off line with the other (Non-Master Eye). Occasionally, your finger will appear an equal distant on either side of the object. This is referred to as 'Central Vision', where there is no dominant eye. __\n\n_Left_ _eye_ _dominant_\n\n_Right_ _eye_ _dominant_\n\n_Central_ _vision_\n\n_A_ _tube_ _allows_ _for_ _more_ _accurate_ _diagnosis_\n\n_Another_ _method_ _of_ _diagnosis_\n\nAnother test is to use a piece of card with a hole pierced in it. Look through the hole to the distant object. Bring the card back towards the face. It will come to the Master Eye.\n\nThere are several variations on this theme, and all are useful. I personally prefer to use a used kitchen or toilet roll \u2013 this allows a more accurate diagnosis of the degree of dominance. Others choose to consult their optometrist to determine their Master Eye.\n\nEye dominance, however, is not cast in stone and is not affected by visual acuity. The Master Eye can often be the weakest eye when measured optically. Fluctuations in dominance can occur with fatigue and especially at the onset of middle age.\n\nIf you find that you can shoot straight on most targets but certain angles or directions cause you trouble, or if you inexplicably lose sight of the target or stop the gun on certain presentations, these may be the symptoms of dynamic or shifting dominance.\n\n#### Gun Interference\n\nThese tests do not allow for the visual interference created by the gun. Gun barrels, their configurations and rib design can greatly impact eye dominance and the initial Master Eye test results need to be rechecked with the gun correctly mounted on the shoulder. Please give consideration to the fact that at the most critical moment of taking the shot you are placing a three foot-long object directly between your eye and the point of focus (target). This can create a number of master eye conundrums, which, in the split second of taking the shot, often result in a miss.\n\n_Visual_ _interference_ _created_ _by_ _the_ _gun_ _impacts_ _on_ _eye_ _dominance_\n\n_The_ _barrels_ _should_ _be_ _a_ _subconscious_ _awareness_ _in_ _your_ _peripheral_ _vision_\n\nThough you should never be looking directly at the gun, your subconscious has to be aware of it in your peripheral vision to recognise where it is pointing. The various configurations of barrels and ribs can influence this by drawing the Non-Dominant Eye's attention away from the point of focus. This often is the explanation as to why you can shoot well with one gun but fail to do so with another gun of a different design.\n\n#### Pattern Plate\n\nThe pattern plate is a four-foot square steel plate which is greased or painted so when shot, shows the exact degree and impact of the eye-barrel alignment. It is only at the pattern plate that you can see the impact of your pattern and its relation to the target. Corrections needed to the interaction between eyes and gun can be determined at the pattern plate and the right adjustments can dramatically improve your scores.\n\n### Definitions, Faults and Fixes\n\n**True Dominance**\n\nYou are able to shoot with both eyes with all the benefits of full binocular vision.\n\n**True Cross Dominance**\n\nThe first and best option is to start off learning to shoot from the correct shoulder under the Master Eye. With a beginner who has no muscle memory established, this is easily achieved. But to switch to shoot from the opposite shoulder later in life requires great determination and diligent practise \u2013 retraining and grooving the mount, readjusting the swing and timing of each shot to reach previous levels of performance. It will take some time before the benefits of the shift to the dominant eye shoulder can be appreciated.\n\nThe Fix: Switch shoulders wherever possible or implement one of the solutions.\n\n### Central Vision\n\nWhere there is no dominant eye, one could be forgiven for thinking that this would be the perfect scenario. Unfortunately, though most people with central vision can shoot tolerably well, they are constantly making adjustments to do so. Their lead pictures are, in effect, doubled. Take Station Four in Skeet: the lead required on both the Low and High House is approximately four feet on both targets, but the person with central vision compensates by shooting two feet in front of one target and six feet in front of the other.\n\nThe Fix: Do not switch shoulders, but implement one of the solutions.\n\n#### Partial Dominance\n\nWith the onset of middle age, someone who has been True Dominant in one eye all of their life can experience an increased interference from the Non-Dominant Eye.\n\nThe Fix: Do not switch shoulders, but implement one of the solutions.\n\n#### Fluctuating or Shifting Dominance\n\nThese symptoms of eye dominance are difficult to detect. They can occur when you generally shoot well but have days where, for no explanation, you under-perform, especially on certain target presentations. It is caused by stress, fatigue or the inability or failure to maintain hard focus on the target.\n\nThe Fix: Do not switch shoulders, but implement one of the solutions.\n\n#### Solutions\n\nThe primary solution to eye dominance problems is to close, block or obscure the vision of the Master Eye to allow straight shooting off the opposite shoulder. This has drawbacks in that the binocular vision (stereoscopic \u2013 three dimensional), so valuable to shotgun shooting, is seriously disrupted.\n\n_Verious_ _methods_ _of_ _correcting_ _cross_ _dominance_\n\nThe closing or blocking of one eye completely is not the best option. The most simple and effective cure is the application of a small piece of opaque scotch tape (do not block the whole lens), cut in a triangular shape. This is placed on the lens of the shooting glass of the Dominant Eye, so that when the gun is correctly mounted, the head on the stock, ready to shoot, one of the corners of the tape is directly on the center of the pupil.\n\nThis solution means that until the shot is ready to be taken, the brain is receiving binocular signals, both central and peripheral, and can best coordinate the target acquisition. There are many alternatives to the tape: a patch, blinkers, a smear of ChapStick or Vaseline or proprietary products like the 'Magic-Dot' work equally well.\n\nWhen someone has had a stroke, their vision is often impaired. A series of lens coatings has been developed to help correct this problem. I have been experimenting with this system to see if it can be used to correct Dominant Eye problems. So far the tests have been very positive and the great strength of using the coated lens is that it allows the person to shoot with both eyes open.\n\n#### Blinking\n\nIf the dominance is central, partial or fluctuating, a technique can be learned whereby both eyes can be kept open during target acquisition (binocular) and initial movement to the target. Then the non-shooting eye is blinked on the completion of the gun mount and when the shot is being taken. This requires that the correct timing be learned as to the right time to blink the eye. This timing can be different on the various target presentations. Also, be aware that closing an eye can result in aiming.\n\n#### Cross Over Stocks\n\nIt is possible to have the stock of a gun shaped in such a way as to be able to shoot off the shoulder opposite the Dominant Eye. This requires a considerable degree of cast or bend in the stock so that the rib of the gun is placed in line with the Dominant Eye. The degree of this cast or bend depends entirely on the degree of dominance. In cases of Partial Dominance, a little extra cast can work wonders. Central Vision would require a semi-cross over stock and True Cross Dominance would need a full cross over stock. You should be aware that excessive cast creates more felt-recoil.\n\n_Cross_ _over_ _stock_\n\n#### Fibre Optic Sight\n\nThere are fibre optic rods now available that channel light down a narrow tube along the sight plane of the shotgun. When the gun is correctly mounted, a bright fluorescent red dot appears that can only be seen by the eye in line with the rib because of the tunnel effect created by the tubing. This 'sight' can allow Cross Dominant shooting.\n\n_Fibre_ _optic_ _sight_\n\n#### Shooting Glasses\n\nLike the ability to focus, there is much individual variation in perceived contrast and the amount of low light vision that enters the eye. A number of trap shooters have been experimenting with the control of eye dominance by fitting lenses of different colours and intensities to their shooting glasses. The most common combination is a dark lens (bronze or purple) over the Dominant Eye, and a light colour (vermillion, orange or yellow) over the eye in line with the gun.\n\n_Too much drop at comb will cause cross dominance_\n\n#### Gun Fit\n\nThe drop at comb (the height between the eye and rib alignment) is the most important aspect of a gun fit. If this is too low, it will cause the wrong eye to take over (Cross Dominance).\n\n#### Centreing\n\nDr Wayne M. Martin, author of _An_ _Insight_ _to_ _Sports,_ writes that Cross Dominance is caused by faulty movement in centreing and that we can learn, with either eye, to complement the hand and side chosen for shooting. His basic philosophy is that if golfers, tennis and baseball players have little, if any, problems with Cross Dominance, why should shotgun shooters? To understand his theory, you have to understand the basic actions of hand and eye coordination. These are three basic skills that compose good shooting vision:\n\n  1. Accommodation: Adjusting the eye's focus to see targets clearly at varying distances.\n  2. Convergence: Having two eyes fixed on the target at the same time to maintain a single image.\n  3. Centering: Intense focus on one part of an object without being distracted by peripheral images.\n\nHis advice is to centre our vision on the targets' primary zone to the exclusion of anything in the peripheral zone \u2013 in effect, suppressing the secondary or ghost image in the periphery of our vision. This takes great discipline and practice.\n\nThere are as many ideas for controlling Cross Dominancy as there are varying degrees of that dominancy. They range from the muscular, i.e. changing the shoulder shot off to simply blinking or closing the offending eye, to the mechanical, where stocks are bent and cast to extremes to compensate.\n\nProprietary and homemade obstructions which can correctly assist the centering of the eyes are another option. There is no one cure-all and you will need to experiment to find the single solution or combination of solutions that work for you. Then you must have the patience and the strength to practice until your solution fits your chosen discipline and personal shooting style.\n\nChapter 7\n\n# The Fundamentals of Shooting Straight\n\nThe components and quality of your starting position are the nuts and bolts of consistent and successful competition shooting. A proper set-up allows a smooth swing in the direction that the target is travelling and is the key to better scores.\n\n## Setting Up\n\nEstablishing a proper address to the target is the first thing that determines how easily you are able to build and repeat a sound swing. The body angles you create at your set-up determine the quality of your pivot. You should place your body in a position to rotate correctly around the constant axis created by your feet.\n\n## Correct Foot Position\n\nYou should address the target so you can start and complete the shot in balance. This begins with the feet.\n\nStand with your feet an armpit's-width apart and your belt buckle facing the break point of the target. Then simply turn forty-five degrees to your right (for the right handed, to your left for the left-handed).\n\nIf you visualise yourself standing in the centre of a clock, your leading or left foot would be pointing at the break point at just past twelve o'clock and your right foot would be pointing just short of the three o'clock mark, with six to eight inches between your heels. An imaginary line drawn from your right heel and passing though the big toe of the left foot would point directly at the break point of the target.\n\nThis position places the gun at a forty-five degree angle to the body and opens the shoulder pocket up nicely for an unimpeded gun mount. Too narrow a stance is far better than too wide. A wide-spread stance causes the shoulder nearest the direction of rotation to drop, resulting in the windscreen-wiper effect of rolling off the target line.\n\nIn FITASC and certain Sporting Clays presentations, some combinations of pairs will involve footwork; you will have to step from one target break-point to another. This should be practised in your gun mounting drills.\n\n_Gun_ _45\u00b0_ _to_ _body_ _following_ _balanced_ _rotation_ _of_ _torso_ _through_ _180\u00b0_ __\n\n### Correct Foot Position Benefits\n\n1. **Balanced Movement** **.** You can rotate, in balance, around the pivot of your leading leg through 180 degrees\u201390 degrees either side of the breakpoint of the target. This achieves the first basic requirement of a smooth swing: _balanced_ _movement_ , __ keeping the shoulders level with the target line, maintaining good head position and rotation.\n\n2. **Good** **Body** **Shape** **.** Proper foot position creates a good body shape and allows an unimpeded gun mount.\n\n## Correct Posture\n\nTo ensure the maximum mobility and control, the weight should be well-balanced and distributed seventy per cent on the ball of the front (left) foot and thirty per cent on the back foot. There should be a slight forward inclination of the body from the waist up, towards the target, like a boxer ready to throw a punch. The head should be slightly forward and to the right with the chin angled down. (For the right handed.)\n\nThis set-up ensures that the head is in the correct position to receive the comb and stock into the face without any head movement. It also has the advantage of keeping the head forward and down while taking the shot. This forward weight can be increased on those shots where head lifting is most prevalent, even slightly bending the knee of the front leg to keep the weight forward. This works well for shooting rabbits, targets beneath the feet and low, quartering targets.\n\nThere will be subtle differences in each individual's set-up to allow for the differences in physique and the specific demands of the discipline being shot.\n\n### Correct Posture Benefit\n\n**1. Good** **posture leads to a good** **gun** **mount**. The correct posture allows the gun to be mounted correctly to the cheek without any unnecessary and unwanted head or body movement.\n\nRichard Faulds, Olympic Gold Medallist, is an excellent example of stance and posture complementing each other to produce a consistently good gun mount and solid head position. Learn from the top shots by watching how they set up for a shot and begin to incorporate their methods into your own shooting practices.\n\n## Correct Hand Position\n\nThe position of your hands on the gun is an important consideration. To set up correctly, place your hands in position to take the target that requires the most gun movement: the high driven bird. Take up your stance and then mount the gun into your shoulder replicating the taking of the high overhead shot. Then adjust your left hand on the fore-end so that the angle between the wrist and fore-end is approximately forty-five to fifty degrees.\n\nThe stock and fore-end of the gun should allow the rear hand to sit well back, giving the first pad of the trigger finger correct placement on the trigger. The thumb should be rolled over the grip as if shaking hands with the gun to assure proper control. The fore-end should be laid diagonally across the palm of the left hand from the outside edge to the forefinger. The three fingers and thumb support and control the gun, while the extended forefinger is laid along the side of the fore-end accentuating our natural ability to point.\n\n_Place_ _the_ _gun_ _in_ _the_ _shoulder_ _one-handed..._\n\n### Correct Hand Position Benefit\n\nWorks for every target. With your hands in the correct position, you will always have enough movement to both control the gun and maintain a constant swing on any target presentation. __\n\n__... _take_ _your_ _grip_ _on_ _the_ _fore-end_ _creating_ _an_ _angle_ _of_ _45\u00b0_ _between_ _the_ _wrist_ _and_ _gun___\n\n## The Grip\n\nA sound grip makes a secure coupling between you and the gun, but your grip should be subtle and not too stiff. The wrists must be free to hinge without restriction to ensure a smooth-swinging motion. The hands must learn to work as a unit, joined together so they can swing with power and control.\n\nGrip pressure is important; the arms need to be relaxed to be able to move freely \u2013 this is affected by the pressure you apply in your grip. A too-tight grip will cause tension and create a muscle gridlock in your wrists, arms and shoulders.\n\n_Both_ _hands_ _should_ _be_ _in_ _a_ _single_ _plane_ _to_ _better_ _control_ _the_ _gun_\n\n_The_ _extended_ _forefinger_ _extenuates_ _your_ _natural_ _ability_ _to_ _point_\n\nTry this experiment to find the amount of pressure that works best for you. Grip the gun one hundred per cent, than back off to fifty per cent \u2013 how does that feel? Try a little more, then a little less until you find the amount of pressure that offers support and control without tension.\n\nAnother way to get a feel for the right amount of pressure is to imagine holding two raw eggs in your left hand. You want to hold them with enough pressure so you can turn them over and not drop them, but not so much that you crush them.\n\n_Correct_ _rear_ _hand_ _grip_ _is_ _with_ _the_ _thumb_ _wrapped_ _over_ _not_ _left_ _resting_ _on_ _the_ _safety_ __\n\n## Correct Head Position\n\nYour head position on the gun during the act of shooting has more of an effect on the successful outcome of a shot than almost any other factor. I have always found it somewhat amazing that more has not been written on this subject, given its pivotal role in consistently shooting good scores.\n\nTo emphasise the importance, I would ask you to carry out this experiment. Take up the correct foot position and posture, but with your arms hanging comfortably at your sides. Look across the room and pick out an object or mark. Using your leading arm (the one that grips the fore-end), bring the arm up, forefinger extended, and point at the object.\n\n_Poor_ _head_ _position_ _is_ _the_ _result_ _of_ _many_ _missed_ _shots_\n\nRight on the button! Try it again and again. Always the same result. Through the gift of hand and eye coordination, you will always be able to point accurately at any object you can see. This ability is what allows us to catch a ball or a shoot a clay pigeon.\n\nNow, I would like you to try the same experiment again, only this time, as your finger comes to the point, move your head, dip it down gently. Missed over the top? Try it again, lifting your head, or turning it left and right just as the finger reaches the mark. The result will always be the same \u2013 _you_ _will_ _always_ _be_ _off_ _the_ _mark_!\n\nFrom this experiment you should plainly see how head movement impacts your shooting. Even with the correct style, a well-fitted gun, mounted one hundred per cent perfectly every time and laser-like focus on the target, if you move your head, deliberately or involuntary, during the shot, you _will_ miss!\n\nThe head is a considerable amount of our total body weight. In addition to holding our 'on-board computer', it is also the chassis for our eyes. We are pre-programmed to follow the head's lead. For example, when you negotiate a bend in the road while riding a bike, your eyes look for the next exit. The head follows the path of the eyes and the body follows the head. You lean the bike the necessary amount to counter the centrifugal pull and ride through the bend without crashing. If you looked at the front wheel or to the right or left, you would fall off. We can all remember learning to ride and the all-too-frequent falls until we mastered balance by looking where we wanted to go.\n\nEvery sport or activity that we take part in is likewise dependent on the control of the head. Take the gymnast on the high beam \u2013 she will look straight ahead as she balances \u2013if she glanced at her feet, she would trip and fall.\n\nIn shooting, head movement negates gun fit and makes even the best-honed skills go awry. Great emphasis should be placed on the rigid maintenance of correct head position during a shot.\n\nThere is yet another factor that causes head movement while shooting. We sometimes forget that we are basically animals \u2013 sophisticated, yes \u2013 but, nonetheless, animals. The survival traits ingrained in our gene pool, oft forgotten, are always there. One that has a major impact on us while shooting is the 'alert reaction'.\n\nConsider the first thing you do when you hear a loud or unexpected noise. The crunch of metal from a car crash, the tinkle of breaking glass and more important to the shooter, the slap of the trap arm releasing... you _lift_ __ _your_ _head_! __ Why? Because that is what nature has pre-programmed us to do.\n\nIn any stress or danger situation, you will always first lift your head and then more often than not, turn it from side to side. This allows you to hear, see and smell better to be prepared to flee or fight, according to how you perceive that danger. To see this alert instinct in action, look at any animal in the wild \u2013 a deer is a good example \u2013 it will lift its head every time it hears any unusual sound.\n\n'Trouble with doubles' can usually find the root of the problem in head movement, rather than gun mount. It is the alert instinct that is to blame. One of the very best pieces of advice ever given to me was, see the first bird of a pair break before moving the gun to the second. After the incomplete gun mount, lifting the head to look for the second target before the first is broken, is the most frequent cause of missing the pair. How often have you had this scenario on a station? _Missed_ _and_ _hit_ __ _\u2013_ __ _hit_ __ _and_ _missed_ \u2013 __ _missed_ _the_ _pair._ This is more often caused by head movement than poor technique.\n\nOn the first bird you hear the slam of the trap arm and you lift your head to get a better look at the target. You start to move the gun before you have seen the target. Your eyes then pick up the target and coordination kicks in. You begin to swing the gun back towards the target. The target and barrels converge and the shot is made with your head off the stock. Then with the head still _off_ the __ stock, the second bird is also cleanly missed. This is a classic over-reaction to the alert instinct.\n\nAnother cause of head movement is an incomplete gun mount. This occurs when the comb of the gun, instead of being fully mounted into the cheek, stops on the jaw bone. So, to obtain correct eye-rib alignment, the head is subconsciously lowered to the comb. The result is you lose visual contact with the target for a split-second.\n\nThe domino effect begins: to re-establish focus on the target, you have to find and focus on the target twice during the taking of the shot. On a slow target presentation there may be time for you to recover focus on the target and make a successful shot. However, on the faster targets and particularly, the second bird of a pair, nine times out of ten, the miss-mount will result in a miss.\n\nIf you combine poor gun mount with the bad timing induced by your head-lifting alert instinct, your score cards will really begin to take on Picasso-like configuration of noughts and crosses, rather than the unbroken line of success we wish to see. The great advice 'Eye on the Rock \u2013 Head on the Stock' really sums it up. Learn to stay in the gun shot to shot for better success at doubles.\n\n_Correct_ _head_ __ _position_ _is_ _similar_ _to_ _a_ _boxer's_\n\nHow do we control this urge to get a better look at the bird? Like every other aspect of the game, you need to spend some time programming the brain to suppress this natural instinct and keep the head _still_ during the shot. This is learned in the same manner as all the fundamentals: by repetition. It is essential to teach the brain to feel the comb of the stock firmly and correctly cheeked, on the completion of the gun mount and throughout the shot until the target explodes into dust. Work at head position in your shooting practice and you will definitely see better scores and cleaner breaks.\n\nGood Head Position is achieved through the following:\n\n  1. Adopt a good stance and posture.\n  2. Check that your gun is well-fitted.\n  3. Practice your gun mount.\n  4. Maintain proper weight distribution on the shots conducive to head lifting. \n  5. Reinforce head position by creating an anchor of the cheek bone. \n  6. Create the 'trigger' of a repeated promise to 'Stay in the Gun' throughout the shot.\n\nThe most common denominator among the leading competitors is: _the_ _head_ _is_ _always_ _in_ _the_ _correct_ _position_ _on_ _the_ _stock._ This correct head position starts with the correct footwork and posture, and finishes with the head on the stock, in the right place to receive the well-mounted gun.\n\n_Ready position_\n\nLet us look at a step-by-step approach to achieving a good gun mount.\n\n## Components of a good gun mount\n\n1. Feet Position\n\n2. Stance\n\n3. Posture\n\n4. Head\n\n5. Start\n\n6. End\n\n7. Forend Hand Position __\n\n8. Hands Working Together\n\n_parallel mount_\n\n### Achieving a good gun mount\n\nTo repeat any act consistently, there must be some established constants: a _beginning_ and an _end._ A good gun mount begins with the heel of the stock held level with the armpit. If you cock your right arm and feel with your opposite hand, you will detect a tendon just under your arm. This is where the gun stock should always be held to begin practicing your gun mount. The muzzle of the gun should be on and just under the gun hold on the target's line of flight, with your eyes looking directly over the barrel.\n\nThe _end,_ __ or completion, of the gun mount is in the cheek After __ 11,000,000 years of evolution, the only purpose for the human cheek bone is as an anchor for the comb of the stock to ensure proper eye-rib alignment when mounting and shooting a shot gun. __\n\n_To the cheek not the shoulder_\n\nTake a second to reach up with your fingers and feel the part of your face where your teeth meet. Place your finger right under the cheekbone or the Zycomatic Process \u2013 this is where the stock arrives to finish a good gun mount \u2013 where the gun is brought correctly into position on the face without any head movement. When you have arrived at this position, pause for three seconds to let the 'Subconscious Feel It'.\n\nWhen you feel confident that the gun is being placed in the same place every time, you can begin to combine this exercise with a moving mount on a straight line. The emphasis must always be on feeling the comb of the stock firmly cheeked throughout the exercise and a three second pause before repeating. This way you will grove the subconscious to maintain that all-crucial spot-weld of cheek to comb throughout the shot.\n\n### Correct gun mount benefit\n\nA defined beginning and end to an action creates consistency. Having put these fundamentals in place, there is the simple action of lifting the gun from the ready position to the cheek. It is here that the eighty per cent of misses occur.\n\n### Gun mount faults\n\nThere are many reasons this simple lifting action goes awry:\n\n**1.** ******Poor** **Starting Position** **:** The gun is held too low or too far out from the body.\n\n**2.** **Flying the Elbow** **:** I see this more in the USA than in Europe and believe it stems from pre-mounting the gun in Skeet and Trap. When observed from behind, the elbows of a shooter with a well-mounted gun should form a forty-five degree angle to the body. By 'flying' or cocking the elbow of the trigger hand (I've seen it cocked up at ninety degrees or more) you close the shoulder pocket to the butt of the gun.  \nWith the elbow cocked up, the deltoid muscle rolls over towards the face, blocking off the area of the clavicle where the gun should be mounted. This means that the gun is mounted onto the rotator cuff or the arm and the gun mount cannot be completed. Inevitably, the head will need to be repositioned by dropping it to the stock to complete the mount. The result? A miss over and behind the target. If you suffer from sore arms or bruising after shooting, you need to fix your gun mount.\n\n**3.** **The** **See-Saw** **Mount** **:** The gun barrels, while being lifted to the face, rock and roll above and below the target line.\n\n**4** _._ ******__****The Incomplete Mount** **:** The gun stops short of the cheek.\n\n**5.** **The** **Pull-Back** **Mount** **:** The gun is pulled _back_ into the shoulder pocket, rather than lifted _up_ to the cheek and _out_ to the target.\n\n**6.** **The** **Mount-Then-Swing**\n\n**7.** **The Rushed Mount**\n\n_Incorrect_ _\u2013_ __ _weight_ _on_ _the_ _back_ _foot,_ _head_ __ _erect,_ _gun_ __ _too_ __ _low..._\n\n... _causes_ _gun_ __ _to_ _be_ _pulled_ _into_ _the_ _shoulder_ _creating_ _see-sawing_ __ _of_ _the_ _barrels_ _under_ _the_ _target_ _line..._\n\n... _the_ _barrels_ _to_ _be_ _brought_ _back_ _onto_ _the_ _line_ _of_ _the_ _target..._\n\n__... _and_ _the_ _head_ __ _to_ _drop_\n\n### Gun mount corrections\n\nHow do we cure these problems? First we need to re-educate the hands as to their proper role in the gun mount.\n\nConsider some of your everyday actions: eating, using the telephone or moving the computer mouse. You will inevitably use your right, or dominant, hand. Therefore, when mounting the shotgun, you are pre-disposed to lifting the gun with the right hand. This strong use of the right or dominant hand causes all of the above faults and makes the mount go wrong.\n\nThe following exercises will go a long way to re-training your hands to work together and improve your gun mount.\n\n#### Exercise 1\n\nThe place to practise this is in your home or garage, not the shooting grounds. Find a place where you can safely and comfortably mount the gun. Double-check that it is unloaded and safe.\n\nAdopt good stance, posture, hands and ready position (be sure to wear your usual shooting attire, including gloves, glasses and ear protection). Now, in the initial training, all of the exercises are performed very slowly in the same manner that the martial arts student learns his kata.\n\nTo the brain there is no difference in the muscle memory of an act whether it is performed slowly or quickly, but it learns these muscle memories far better when performed in slow motion. So just as the martial artist learns the punch slowly before attempting to break a board at full power, you need to learn the gun mount in the same manner, by slow repetition until you are able to introduce it into your practice at the shooting grounds.\n\n#### Exercise 2\n\nImagine that the part of the gun between your two hands is made of rubber. Apply gentle pressure to it by pulling the hands apart, almost as if trying to stretch the gun at this point. Now, begin your gun mount with the emphasis being on the front hand. You will find that because of the resistance created in the stretching exercise both hands will now work together, as a unit.\n\nThe left hand points and swings the gun to the target, in effect driving the gun, and the right hand mimics this action and pulls the trigger. If both hands are working in unison, the resulting gun mount will be smooth and correct.\n\n#### Exercise 3\n\nWhen you have mastered the first two drills, you can progress to a moving mount. Place a small Maglite in the end of your barrel and as you mount the gun, slowly trace up the vertical seam in the corner where two walls meet. Then, with the light, trace along the ceiling joint in one smooth motion. Repeat until you can do this to the left and to the right without any see-sawing or jerky movements. The light beam is a great aid, showing, by its path, just how smooth your mount is becoming. (There are also laser devices available specifically designed for this practice.)\n\n_Both_ _hands_ _should_ _work_ _together_ _as_ _a_ _unit_\n\nFind a room where a gun can be safely mounted and swung. Along one wall at the join of the ceiling, fix two aiming marks one third from each corner (bluetack is ideal for this purpose). Standing on the opposite side to the room take up your stance to break the second of the marks, address your muzzles to the corner of the room gun down and proceed to mount, making sure muzzles stay on line throughout without any see-sawing or dip \u2013 both hands work in unison to achieve this. Maintain the line of the ceiling with gun coming into the shoulder as the muzzles reach the first target; pull away to the second target, fire and follow through smoothly to the corner. Repeat this three or four times in each direction. Great emphasis should be put on target line, a smooth mount and that the trigger pull and follow through are one flowing action (snap caps are used so as to be able to fire the gun without damaging the firing pins).\n\n_Gun_ _mount_ _and_ _snap_ _cap_ _drills_\n\n#### Exercise 4\n\nAs you develop these new motor skills, introduce a snap cap to the Maglite exercise and dry-fire the gun on completion of the mount. Use markers on the wall to replicate visual holds, gun holds and break points so you can better set up and execute each practice correctly.\n\nYou will very soon be able to take your new gun mounting skills to the range. Do not rush! Remember, the first rule of gun mounting is 'Rushing Ruins Rhythm'. Choose targets that allow you ample time to complete a good, smooth gun mount on every shot. With proper practice, you will soon reap the benefit of better scores!\n\n_The_ _Maglite_ _or_ _laser_ _make_ _excellent_ _training_ _aids_\n\n### Gun Up or Gun Down\n\nIt is recognised that eighty per cent of all misses are caused by a poor or incorrect gun mount. So why, you might ask, does anyone shoot gun down at all? After all, there is nothing in the rule books with the exception of FITASC and International Skeet that says we have to call for targets with an unmounted gun.\n\nIf you took the top twenty performers in Sporting Clays from around the world, the majority, usually the winners, prefer to start shooting with the gun out of the shoulder for most targets. So, if starting with the gun down or out of the shoulder can cause misses, why do so many of the Master Class shooters choose to use what must be a flawed technique? Could they not shoot even better scores shooting all targets with a pre-mounted gun? The answer is complex and for every argument of 'no' you could find one for 'yes'.\n\nI am going to put the facts as I see them for both gun up or gun down, and I will leave you to make your own decision.\n\n#### The Dead Gun Effect\n\nLet's begin with an experiment. Take your gun, check to make absolutely sure it is unloaded, then mount it completely, pointing at a corner of the room at the junction of wall and ceiling. Swing the gun smoothly, keeping the muzzles on the line of the junction until you reach the far corner of the wall. Try it again, maintaining an emphasis on smoothness and control.\n\nNow, stop and consider what your first action needed to be. Try it again. Yes, you have discovered that there is no, or very little, arm movement available when shooting gun up. You are required to overcome the inertia, or dead gun effect, by using the rotation of the body. The heavier the gun, the more effort is required to overcome this inertia. This more often leads to the gun starting with a jerk, which can result in 'jumping' the target, causing you to lose the line or stopping to let the target catch up.\n\nAs you continue to swing the gun, you quickly begin to run out of turn or rotation. The arms cannot help...they are locked through the gun to the body, leaving only body rotation to keep the gun moving. Because you used up a considerable amount of available rotation getting the gun started, you will find that, two-thirds into the swing, you have run out of available movement.\n\nIf you attempted to push past this point, maintaining muzzle-target line alignment, you would fall over. But your subconscious will not allow this to happen. It sends a command to transfer weight from one foot to the other. This subconscious transference of weight results in the shoulders dropping or rolling and causes the muzzles to come off the target line.\n\n#### Negatives of Shooting Pre-Mounted\n\n1. Difficult to start the gun to overcome the dead gun effect smoothly.\n\n2. Little if any arm movement available.\n\n3. Involuntary transference of body weight and loss of balance.\n\n4. Only body rotation to drive the swing.\n\n5. Can result in aiming or gun watching.\n\n#### Positives of Shooting Pre-Mounted\n\n1. Removes the inconsistency created by an inability to mount the gun in sync with taking the shot.\n\n2. Well-suited for short window and quartering targets.\n\n3. Removes the necessity for a well-fitted gun as 'near enough is good enough' shooting pre mounted.\n\n### Skeet and Trap\n\nI am sure by now you are wondering, 'What about the stars of Skeet and Trap? Why do they choose to shoot gun up if it is such a negative to consistent shooting?'\n\n**It is simply a matter of** **:** ******'** **Maximum Efficiency for Minimum Effort** **.'**\n\nBoth Skeet and Trap are games of constants, their targets flying set distances, angles and heights. These can be, and usually are, learned by rote. It is therefore possible, with practice, to put in place the muscle memory for every shot. This includes the amount of effort required to overcome the inertia of a dead gun and perfect the timing of the swing.\n\nThe fundamentals of any pre-shot routine of visual hold, gun hold and break points are easily learned, as is the positioning of the body and the amount of effort needed to start the gun and smoothly shoot the target.\n\nThe ability to apply a 'robotic' approach to both Skeet and Trap has created a situation where perfect scores are common. Now, to make it more competitive, small gauge events in Skeet and handicap yardage in Trap have been introduced. With the necessity to shoot straights just to get into the shoot-offs, any variable that can have an impact on perfect scores is removed.\n\nIn either of these disciplines, it is rare to see any competitor call for a target with the gun out of the shoulder. I believe that both of these disciplines could be made more challenging, exciting and fun to watch if the gun down rule were introduced.\n\n### Sporting Clays\n\nThe origins of the sport were to practice for wing shooting. The early British shooting schools were built specifically for this. It was a good while before competitions shooting at inanimate objects became a regular event. However, once this occurred, particularly after the Second World War and into the 1950s, the sport developed rapidly. With more targets being shot, especially in a competitive environment, it was inevitable that skills would improve. This improvement has never stopped.\n\nI remember shooting my first British Open at the West London Shooting Grounds in the early 1970s and, if memory serves me right, it was won with a score in the low eighties. The once-undreamed of scores of ninety-plus in Sporting Clays are now being shot quite regularly and the unimaginable score of one hundred straight in major competition has happened on several occasions. I believe with the very high standards of marksmanship being shown today, combined with better ballistics and guns, that the one hundred straight in Sporting Clays will no longer be so rare.\n\n#### Course Setting\n\nAs a result of this increase in shooting ability, course builders have had to move away from targets that simply replicate game shooting scenarios. The modern course designer now looks for ways to 'beat the gun' using a variety of tools: landscape, angle, distance and trajectory, along with modern electric traps that throw the battue, looper and chondel. It is no wonder that we have witnessed such rapid growth in Sporting Clays. It is becoming more challenging, interesting and fun to shoot 'Golf with a Shotgun'. However, as _The_ _Eagles'_ song goes, '...every form of refuge has its price...'.\n\nConsider a hundred bird tournament, consisting of fourteen stations and twenty-eight varying target presentations, each with an individual flight line, distance and angle. Each target requires a different approach, even before we consider the variables created by true, following and report pairs. These variables are further compounded by the fact that no two courses or designers are the same.\n\nThe greater variety in targets requires a matching variety in technique and the gun mount is not exempt from this. You will witness many individual styles on the shooting circuit. With the gun mount, as in any aspect of the sport, there are different techniques and approaches to it. There will always be advocates for one method over another. I, however, am a great believer in flexibility and using the best technique to maximise your scores.\n\nI would compare the gun mount to the different shots and clubs in golf. If you are using the driver for a long shot, you open your stance and take a slow, big swing. If you need a short shot using a sand wedge, you take a small, quick swing. In the same way, your gun mount should be matched to the target's speed and angle. For those quartering targets, the short-window or trap-like shots, keep the gun mount short. For the long crosser and high driven targets where you have plenty of time, make a longer gun mount.\n\n_Small_ _window_ _shots,_ _keep_ _the_ _gun_ _mount_ _small_\n\nThe majority of top performers shooting both FITASC and English Sporting make the transition from pre-mounted shooting to gun down without conscious thought, because they use exactly the same gun mounting action at both disciplines, choosing to use a minimal gun mount movement where the rules will allow it.\n\nTo summarise:\n\n  1. For those short window quartering or trap-like shots, keep the gun mount short.\n  2. For the long crosser and high-driven targets with plenty of time, take a longer mount.\n\nAn easy rule of thumb is, the longer you can see the target, the longer the mount. The shorter time you can see it, the shorter your mount. Just apply the golf professionals' rule of the right stroke and swing for the shot.\n\n_Large_ _window_ _shots,_ _take_ _a_ _bigger_ _gun_ _mount_\n\nThat said, what successful Sporting Clays shooting requires is a far more flexible approach than that afforded by the pre-mounted gun. Putting aside for a moment the discussion of the appropriate techniques to apply, I will say that I consider shooting gun down is ultimately far more efficient and effective than shooting pre-mounted for the majority of Sporting Clays shots.\n\n#### Negatives of Shooting Gun Down\n\n1. A poor mount often results in a missed target.\n\n2. Requires diligent practice.\n\n3. Gun fit is far more important.\n\n4. Fragile when put under pressure by short window or quartering shots.\n\n#### Positives of Shooting Gun Down\n\n1. A shotgun is a dynamic weapon of movement and the gun mount maximises this advantage.\n\n2. Cures gun watching or aiming.\n\n3. Helps maintain balance throughout the shot.\n\n4. At its best on high and crossing targets.\n\nLooking at the mechanics of what makes a consistent gun mount, it is simply the ability to take the gun from a relaxed ready position, with the gun out of your shoulder, and bring it to the face in alignment with the eye. The final position is ultimately the same, whether shooting gun up or gun down. I believe that you will begin to shoot better scores when you can, with the confidence achieved by practice, call for the target gun down.\n\nChapter 8\n\n# Gun Fit\n\n**It Has to** **Fit** **to** **Hit**\n\nThe act of shooting is one of synchronised hand and eye coordination with the eyes totally focused on the target throughout the shot. To hit the target accurately, the gun needs to point where the eyes are focused. If you have to adapt yourself to the gun to get the proper eye-rib relationship, it breaks your connection with the target, ruins your natural rhythm and timing and causes a miss. The gun should fit your build, style and discipline because in the process of taking your shot, there just isn't time to adjust yourself to the wrong dimensions.\n\nIn the highly competitive world of clay shooting, the margin between winning and losing is very small. The difference between being a champion or an also-ran is often just one target. A proper gun fit can get you that one extra target.\n\n### When Near Enough is Good Enough\n\nWith the exception of ladies and youths, unless you are extremely tall or short, when starting out you can usually get along quite well with a gun in its original factory dimensions: 'Near enough is good enough'. Temporary alterations can be made with pads, comb raisers or moleskin to get a comfortable fit while you practise and perfect your gun mount. However, as you improve, there is no doubt that a well-fitted gun can make a dramatic and positive difference in your shooting performance.\n\nYou will be told time and again that the top competitors could all win a tournament with a gun, new, out of the box. Yes, they could, but I can guarantee that they are all shooting a custom-fitted gun. Sporting Clays, in particular, is so instinctual that any distraction that breaks the visual connection with the target will compromise a shooter's style and technique, and a poorly-fitted gun will do this.\n\n_There_ _are_ _as_ _many_ _differences_ _in_ _gun_ _stocks_ _as_ _there_ _are_ _in_ _individuals_\n\n### Individual Requirements\n\nWe are all built very differently. Take your first actions when getting into a new or strange car. First you move the seat and controls to fit so you can reach the pedals and operate the vehicle safely. You make adjustments for height, length of both legs and arms \u2013 mirrors are tilted to fit your natural eye alignment.\n\nAll of these personal alterations enable us to drive the car both comfortably and safely, giving our full attention to the road, without conscious thought given to the car's operation. This can be compared to gun-fitting, which, done correctly, allows us to concentrate on the target without checking our swing or adjusting our eye alignment.\n\n### Getting a Gunfit\n\nYou have decided to get a custom gunfit. Bring your eye and ear protection, a hat and the clothing you most typically wear when you shoot. If you do a lot of cold weather shooting, bring the jacket or vest you would use. The thickness of the material could make a difference in your dimensions. You may also want to bring several of your favourite guns, the ones you shoot the best, or want to shoot better.\n\nEvery gun fitting should begin with the analysis of eye dominance and the determination of the Master Eye. Any necessary correction for cross dominance should be made at this time. The next step is to mount the gun. _You_ _need_ _a_ _good_ _and_ _accurate_ _gun_ _mount_ _to_ _get_ _a_ _good_ _and_ _accurate_ _gunfit!_ Beginner or winner; you need to bring the sound fundamentals of stance, posture and a proper gun mount to the pattern plate. If not, it is all gunfit guesswork.\n\nThere are several key places where the gun must fit to you.\n\n#### Zycomatic Buttress\n\nThe first essential measurement is the distance at 'the face'. This is the place on the stock where, when the gun is correctly mounted, the cheek should be _spot-welded_ on every shot. This is the point at which height and width between the eye and the rib at 'face' are measured. A correct dimension here ensures that the gun will shoot to 'point of aim'. This 'ledge' on the face is known as the 'Zycomatic Buttress'.\n\n_Zyc_ _omatic_ _Buttress\u2013the_ __ _cheek_ _bone_ __ _just_ _below_ _the_ _eye_\n\nThis measurement at 'face' is achieved by the combination of the drop at comb and heel. You can have several combinations which will give the same measurement. The comb should be of such a shape that it presents a parallel and level surface for an inch or more at the face so when the gun moves back under the force of recoil, it does not rise up into the cheek bone. Also it makes allowance for the different head positions used when taking the various shots called for on a Sporting Clays course.\n\nWhen taking shots below foot level, such as a rabbit, your head will naturally creep back. When taking an overhead or passing shot, your head will tend to move forward. When shooting at eye level, the head will be in the middle position on the stock. So, having a parallel measurement at 'face' creates a single sight picture on every shot made.\n\n#### Eye Alignment\n\nMuch is made of the 'eye to rib' relationship, with different measurements touted for the different disciplines and the guns used to shoot them. These can only be a guide and allowances should always be made for impact, barrel regulation and pattern placement. Furthermore, for those who have to wear glasses requiring bifocal, trifocal or Varilux lenses, the refraction created by such glasses can dramatically alter the wearer's sight pictures.\n\nAnother facet of eye alignment is consideration for an individual's cache of sight pictures built over many years of shooting with a gun that might not have fit. They may have physically adapted to the gun to hit the target, perhaps shooting several inches under and to one side of the target. When given a gun that fits and shoots to 'point of aim', they are now required to relearn all of their sight pictures to be able to hit the targets.\n\nThe variety of angles and distances in Sporting Clays and Skeet requires a gun that shoots a pattern sixty per cent above and forty per cent below the horizontal of the rib. This allows the target to be kept in view throughout the shot by 'floating it' on the rib. In Trap, however, the target is rising and going away on the first barrel, so the Trap gun is better set up to shoot a pattern seventy per cent above\u2013thirty per cent below the horizontal of the rib. In this instance, because of the high comb-high rib configuration, a piece of daylight should be visible between the rib and the target.\n\nThere is a third school of thought that says because the majority of targets in Sporting Clays are dropping, a gun should be set up to shoot a pattern fifty per cent above\u2013fifty per cent below the rib-target alignment. I personally believe a fifty\u2013fifty set up increases head lifting and, in some situations, can result in cross dominance problems.\n\nThe preferred eye-rib alignments for guns in the three disciplines are illustrated here.\n\n**Sporting \u2013 60\/40%**\n\n**Skeet \u2013 60\/40%**\n\n**Trap \u201370\/30%**\n\nWhen the gunfitter is ready to begin the fitting process, he will be using an assortment of tools to take the seven dimensions required to fit your gun.\n\n### The Gunfitter's Measurements\n\n1. **Length of** **Pull:** This is the measurement taken from the trigger (the front trigger on a double triggered gun) to the end of the stock at heel, middle and toe. Length of Pull should always be the first consideration, with an allowance made for each individual's shooting stance and style. When the gun is correctly mounted there should be a space of between one and a quarter and one and three-quarter inches between the trigger hand and the nose. This should place the eye between two to three inches from the comb or two-thirds of the distance from the end of butt.   \nThere are various opinions when it comes to the preferred amount of length. The British have traditionally favoured longer Length of Pull than most American shooters. A longer length has the advantages of increased recoil control, both perceived and mechanical.   \nIt is critical to find the correct length for an individual. Too long a stock is difficult to mount and will often check half-way up the shoulder or, more painfully, be mounted onto the bicep or upper arm. A too-low mount causes the head to drop and the gun to shoot high. If the mount finishes on the arm instead of the shoulder, the gun will shoot to the side, left for the right-handed, right for the left-handed. Too short a stock creates an inconsistent gun mount, the incorrect extension of the arms and dramatically increases felt-recoil. Bruising the second finger of the trigger hand and the collision of the trigger hand and nose are also caused by a too-short stock.\n\n2. **Drop:** This measurement is taken from a parallel line from the rib of the gun to the stock at the comb, face and heel. This line determines the height at which the gun will place its pattern. Too little drop and the gun will shoot high, too much drop and the gun will shoot low, cause head lifting, or worse, cross dominance. Between the two, the higher relationship of the eye to the rib is always preferable. ****\n\n3. **Cast:** A vertical line is run through the centre of the heel of the stock and measured against a straight edge from the rib, at the heel and the toe. A special tool called a banjo is usually used for this important measurement. The proper cast ensures the correct alignment of the eye, directly along the rib. This is achieved by the shaping or bending of the stock to fit left or right handed shots.\n\n4. **Pitch** **:** **** This is the angle created by the butt of the stock and the rib of the gun. Pitch affects the 'standout' of the gun or how high or low it shoots. This measurement is often neglected and the amount of 'stand out' needs to be balanced against the necessity of placing the maximum area of the butt in contact with the shoulder pocket, which is essential to dispersing felt-recoil.\n\n5. **Grip:** The shape of the stock, as well as the grip and trigger placement are an important aspect of any gun fit. Straight, semi pistol and full pistol grips will all have a different length of pull. The radius, depth and thickness of the grip, combined with the position of the nose on the comb can often transform the performance of a gun. The size and length of the hand should be carefully calculated in these measurements.\n\n6. **Comb** **Thickness** **:** The thickness of the comb at the face is the last essential measurement. For example, if you were measured using a thick-combed 12 gauge Trap gun that was, say, an inch and a half thick at the face, it could require a quarter inch of cast. If you then purchased a 20 gauge field gun, with a comb that was one inch thick at the face, you would require a reduced amount of cast to compensate for the thinner stock.\n\n7. **Barrel** **Flip** **and Impact** **:** Before any alteration is done, the gun should be checked for its point of impact, to ensure both barrels shoot in the same place, and, particularly in the case of small bore guns, for the degree of barrel flip.\n\n### **The Try Gun**\n\nThe first try gun was invented by W.P.Jones in the nineteenth century. It is built with a fully-articulated stock, which can be adjusted for length, cast, drop and pitch. When the measurements are set up and it is shot at the pattern plate, the fitter can see where the adjustments need to be made to achieve perfect fit.\n\nIt is always essential to fire the try gun, to make allowance for the effects of recoil which can be a large factor in gun fit, in both comfort and second barrel target acquisition. Once the try gun fit is obtained at the pattern plate it can be proven on moving targets, and comfort and accuracy can be double-checked.\n\n#### Measurements\n\nWhen the accurate measurements are taken from the try gun, this 'prescription' can be used to order your new custom gun or make alterations to the guns you already own. A competent gunsmith can bend the gunstock up, down or sideways to achieve the desired shape, as well as adjust the length of the stock by adding or removing wood and fitting the appropriate pad.\n\nThe first part of your gun fit may take place away from the pattern plate. Your guns may be measured and then you will proceed to the next step.\n\n_A_ _variety_ _of_ _tools_ _are_ _required_ _for_ _precise_ _adjustments_ _and_ _accurate_ _measurements_\n\n_The_ _try_ _gun_ _must_ _articulate_ _for_ _length,_ _drop_ _and_ _cast_\n\n#### Dry Fit\n\nUsing the try gun, the gun fitter will set about doing the initial fit; referred to as a 'Dry Fit'. During this session the fundamentals of straight shooting and consistent gun mounting are checked. If you are unable to consistently mount the gun, it is difficult, if not impossible, to ensure an accurate gun fitting.\n\nStarting with length of pull, followed by alterations to the drop, cast and pitch, the fitter works to achieve a gun that is smooth to mount and that has the correct eye to gun rib relationship for the discipline being shot. I like to use a laser device at this stage to confirm my initial fitting. The laser light, shot at various points, allows me to double check both the fit and the probable impact.\n\n_Initial_ _fittings_ _can_ _accurately_ _be_ _confirmed_ _using_ _laser_ _light_ _technology_\n\nFinally, the fit needs to be confirmed with live firing on the pattern plate and at clay targets. Here the fit is really proven, for, when live firing, there are many movements both muscular and mechanical that are not apparent during the dry fitting and with the laser.\n\n### Pattern Plate\n\nThe pattern plate is used to check the point of impact of the shot pattern \u2013 the pellet distribution and position. The gun is fired at the steel plate from sixteen or thirty-two yards away.\n\nThe eye is, on average, three feet or one yard from the end of the barrel. If the plate is shot from the sixteen yard marker, the mathematics are: three feet into sixteen yards is a sixteen-to-one ratio. This translates to: two inches on the plate is an eighth of an inch adjustment on the gun. Thus, if you are a right-hander shooting four inches to the left of the aiming mark, you would require a quarter-inch cast-off to align the gun to your eye. This formula applies equally at thirty-two yards but here, four inches at the plate equals an eighth of an inch on the try gun.\n\n__The_ _final_ _fit_ _is_ _proved_ _at_ _the_ _pattern_ _plate__\n\nGroups of shots are made, usually four to six at the same mark. This allows for the inevitable flinch or bad gun mount that can happen when shooting a static target where both noise and recoil are greater than when shooting a moving target. From the placement of the pellets, the gun fitter can make the necessary adjustments to the try gun... 'dialing' it in to 'point of aim' and achieve a perfect gun fit.\n\n### Factory Fitting\n\nA good gun fit cannot be done in the shop, no matter the experience of the gun fitter. Accurate results can only be achieved by watching the person actually shoot. The reason for this is simple: the way a gun is dry mounted in the shop is very different from the way it would be mounted when live firing at a moving target.\n\nFurthermore, fitting a gun by measuring the length of forearm, chest and shoulder width is inaccurate and has little bearing on where the gun will actually shoot. Barrel flip, recoil and impact cannot be measured nor can the individual's personal style and technique be taken into account.\n\n### Do it Yourself or Trial and Error Fitting\n\nYou can, to some degree, achieve a reasonably good fit by personal trial and error. Use your club's pattern plate or make a temporary one out of cardboard. Enlist the help of an experienced friend. This is key, as most people who shoot well at Skeet and Trap or in the mid-eighties and higher at Sporting Clays, have more than enough understanding of gun fit and its requirements to assist and help you.\n\nIf your gun is too long and too high, try using a shotgun that is too short, has a good deal of drop and a neutral or straight cast. By using extension pads, comb raisers, blue tack and mole skin you can add and remove to the various dimensions. Double check your handiwork at the pattern plate until you are happy with the fit and comfort of the gun.\n\nThe cast requirement needs to be analysed from the pattern placement on the plate. Using the sixteen-to-one ratio, work out the amount of cast required.\n\nNext, you should shoot a few targets. This is where the input of your experienced friend is invaluable. He will be able to recognise, if you miss, whether it is gun fit or operator error. Once that is determined, you can correct your errors and proceed to the final step of measuring the gun. This can be done with a straight edge, a protractor, a ruler and a piece of string.\n\nUse these measurements on your gun for awhile. You can see if the measurements need a tweak or two before settling on the final dimensions. This method is often the choice of the top competitors. Finally, you can use the measurements to order a new gun or have your gun altered to them. The nice thing is, if your gun is bent, lengthened or shortened it can always be re-done if you did not get it one hundred per cent right the first time. In any case, you will have learned a lot about how you shoot and what you need and want in the size and shape of a gun that you can use to shoot to your best ability.\n\n_The_ _basic_ _equipment_ _needed_ _for_ _a_ _'do-it-yourself'_ __ _fitting_\n\nChapter 9\n\n# The Basics of Straight Shooting\n\nWinning scores are directly proportional to your mastery of the fundamentals, (Chapter 7) which must be consistently applied through Set Up and Technique. The failure to learn the fundamentals and understand their importance can prevent a competitor from ever reaching his full potential.\n\n### Time Management\n\nThe shooting action is in two distinct parts, the actions _before_ you call for the target, where you are in charge of time and _after_ , __ where the target's speed controls time. It is essential to take full advantage of the time given you _before_ you call for the target to properly prepare for the shot. This is referred to as the **Set** **Up** and maximises the time you have to apply the **Technique** to shoot the target.\n\n### Preparing for Action\n\nYou begin by _reading_ _the_ _target._ Everything that flies defines a line and, somewhere on that line, the target, for an instant, will appear sharper and slower. This is referred to as the 'sweet spot' \u2013 the optimum place to break the target. Establishing this point is the hinge pin around which every successful shot is made.\n\n### The Set Up\n\nA good set up is required to place your body in the correct position to rotate smoothly to the target. This _principle_ _of_ _proper_ _alignment_ _to_ _the_ _target_ is critical to straight shooting.\n\nThe principle of alignment can best be pictured this way: imagine a set of railway tracks leading from the station to the target break point. Now, adopt the correct foot position to point your gun along that track.\n\n#### Establishing the Break Point\n\n_No_ _matter_ _the_ _discipline,_ _there_ _will_ _always_ _be_ _an_ _optimum_ _place_ _to_ _break_ _the_ _target._ The ability to determine the target's break point is an essential skill in your pre-shot preparation. Get it wrong and you will miss. To shoot well consistently, you need to learn how to get the break point right every time. Establishing the break point requires careful observation of the target, not just looking at it from one angle, but studying it from several perspectives:\n\n**The** **Line** ******+** **Visual** **Hold** ******+** ******Gun** ******Hold** ******=** **Break Point**\n\nThis is a simple routine for finding the break point:\n\n#### _Hold_ _the_ _Line_\n\nThis is all important! Misses can occur 360 degrees around the target; you can miss above, below, in front or behind. But if you can maintain the muzzles on the target line throughout the shooting action, you cut your chances of missing by half! By reducing misses to _missed_ _behind_ or _missed_ _in_ _front,_ it is then easier to recognise the fault, analyse the cause and implement the correction.\n\n#### _Gun_ _Hold_\n\nThink of a strip of 8 mm cine-film...the human eye sees movement at the equivalent of sixteen frames per second, while clay targets leave the trap arm (house) at the equivalent of thirty-two frames per second. So at first, the target is seen only every other frame, and appears in a strobe effect or a blur. But as the target slows, it transitions from thirty-two to sixteen frames per second, and is transformed from a blur to a solid target. This transition point is the gun hold. The muzzles should be held at this transition point, fractionally under the target flight line.\n\n#### _Visual_ _Hold_\n\nOnce you have determined the gun hold, look halfway back between the muzzles and the trap house. This is your visual hold. Do not look into, or too close to, the trap. The target will be leaving the trap at such speed that you will instinctively react to the movement rather than the target, resulting in a 'poke and hope' shot.\n\n#### _Break_ _Point_\n\nThe ability of the hand and eye to accurately point at an object is phenomenal. We never miss! We have only to harness this natural ability to accurately establish the break point of any target. Pointing at the established gun hold and moving your eyes back to the visual hold, call for the target. Your eyes' natural saccadic and pursuit movements acquire the target as it reaches your finger. This subconscious reaction to movement will maintain the eye and hand connection throughout the target's flight. During this action, the eyes' pursuit movements will peak, hard focusing on the target, making it appear both sharper and slower. This is the break point.\n\n#### _Address_\n\nAddress this point with both stance and muzzles, placing the break point in the centre of your swing. Then simply turn back along the target line, taking the muzzles along the line towards the trap house to the gun hold and moving your eyes to the visual hold.\n\nNote: Proper set up allows a controlled swing, rotating through 180 degrees, like a tank turret. However at the outer limits, the swing begins to slow, effectively restricting the arc to 120 degrees. This is why it is essential to set up with the break point at the centre of your swing arc.\n\nThe fundamentals of good footwork, stance, and posture together with good head position, will ensure that the muzzles stay on the line throughout the shot. Maintaining this balance throughout the shot is essential.\n\n__Start_ _right_ _and_ _you_ _will_ _finish_ _right.__\n\n#### _You_ _are_ _now_ _ready_ _to_ _call_ _for_ _the_ _target._\n\n1. Address the target, not the trap. You call 'Pull' and as the target appears, you begin your move to it in one continuous, smooth movement. It should all be a seamless flow.\n\n2. Your eyes see the target and guide your hands to it, setting up a chain reaction of timing and tempo.\n\n3. Once you get the big muscles in your body turning, the gun mount is smooth and unhurried, everything turning together, muzzles moving with and locked onto the target.\n\n4. As the stock comes into the cheek, the shoulder rolls forward to complete the mount.\n\n5. Forward allowance (lead) is seen and the trigger is smoothly pulled.\n\n_This_ _is_ _the_ _complete_ _and_ _correct_ _sequence_ _in_ _which_ _to_ _make_ _a_ _successful_ _shot._\n\n### Tailoring your Technique\n\nWe are all distinctly individual. Just glance up and look around you at the difference in people's height, size, and weight. These differences also exist in the hidden internal workings of our personal coordination, reaction time and visual acuity.\n\nThe game of golf is, in many ways, comparable to shooting a round of Sporting Clays. Using golf as an analogy, an individual is required to negotiate a golf course in the least number of shots. The competitor is allowed fourteen clubs in his bag. This allows him to choose the right club to best tackle the variety of shots he will encounter during the game. No golfer would dream of starting a competition without the full complement of clubs. He will also have practised with and be able to use each and every one of them.\n\nInsertion point according to technique\n\nIn the same way, the clay competitor requires a similar 'bag of clubs' or variety of techniques: Swing Through, Pull Away, Maintained, Instinctive, and Spot Shooting. This 'bag of techniques' allows him to choose the best one for the target presentations he encounters. When the golfer begins the sport, he is shown the basics of stance, posture, head position and swing. He starts with a short swing, usually a seven iron. As the fundamentals are grooved and his skills increase, the rest of the clubs are introduced. Each club is designed for a specific shot, angle and distance and each requires a subtle difference in the swing used to play well with them.\n\nThe learning curve in the Shotgun Sports is exactly the same. As the beginner grooves the fundamentals, the various techniques are taught. The CPSA and NSCA quite sensibly encourage beginners to learn using the CPSA\u2013NSCA Method. It is a sound technique and provides the perfect platform on which to start a shooting career. It is straight forward, easy to digest and delivers a good understanding of what is required in order to break a target.\n\nBut to be successful and 'play the game' to a high standard, it may be necessary to apply _all_ of the techniques; to be able to recognise specific target's angles and distances and learn the best technique to adopt in different circumstances. As in golf, each target requires subtle differences in the swing used to shoot well with them.\n\nWatching a champion, it is not always easy to see precisely how they achieve such a high level of performance and consistency. All have developed such an effortless way of shooting it is difficult to pinpoint just why they are so good and exactly what technique they are using. However, certain fundamentals are always present \u2013 the difference between one and the other is the technique being used.\n\nMany top competitors are adamant that they shoot the same technique, regardless of the target presentation. Watch many top performers in various disciplines, yes, they do use one technique most of the time, but, whether they aware of it or not, all change, adapt and modify their first-choice technique on some target presentations. In fact, this micro-managing or adjusting of techniques occurs on every target they shoot. This can be best be seen when they miss (rarely), chip or are late on one of a pair of targets.\n\nThese adjustment actions are very subtle and probably totally unconscious (Unconsciously Competent). Their highly-programmed 'onboard computer' reacts to every target shot and alterations to technique and swing speed are adjusted constantly.\n\n_'I_ _never_ _worry_ _about_ _how_ __ _I_ _get_ __ _the_ _muzzles_ _in_ _front_ _of_ _the_ _target;_ _I_ _just_ _pull_ _the_ _trigger_ _when_ _the_ _picture_ _is_ _right'._\n\n#### Getting the Picture\n\nThe important part of this quote ' _is_ _when_ _the_ _picture_ _is_ _right_ ' _._ __ In any occupation, enough years of experience will help you learn from your mistakes and, hopefully, ensure you do not repeat them or, if you do so, not too often.\n\nOnce you have mastered the fundamentals and acquired a basic sound technique, the next step is to learn to blend the techniques to suit your own personal coordination, reaction time and visual acuity. Once you have established this 'personal blend', you will be able to 'pull the trigger when the picture is right'.\n\nWhat is the sole purpose of a technique? To be able to _get_ _the_ _muzzles_ _in_ _front_ _of_ _and_ _on_ _the_ _target_ _line_ _consistently._ Your technique will enable you to harness instinct and coordination into a sequence of preplanned movements _to_ and _in_ _front_ of the target.\n\nAll techniques need to deliver three things: Line, Speed of Flight and Gun Momentum. In a round of Sporting Clays, you may have only one or two stands that let you down. It could be that one target on each of these stands could make the difference of eight or ten targets to your score. Would you like to score eighty-five or seventy-five? A trick or two up your sleeve could make it possible.\n\n### Your Bag of Tricks\n\nThere are three mainstream methods: Swing Through, Pull Away and Maintained Lead. All achieve the essential requirement of placing the barrels in front of the target. However, some achieve this more easily and consistently than others. Some are more easily learned and applied, particularly by beginners. But each has an advantage on a particular target presentation. Just as the golfer has a favourite club, we all will have a favourite method, but you should be able to break targets using all of them. The following will explain the technique, its origins, strengths and weaknesses, together with the targets it is applied to most effectively. The basic target structures are constant \u2013 the only differences in each technique are in the muzzle hold points and insertion points.\n\n**_Set_** __ _**Up** **:** _ Visual Hold \u2013 Gun Hold \u2013 Break Point\n\n_Making_ _the_ **_Shot:_** __ Gun Mount \u2013 Insertion Point \u2013 Forward Allowance\n\n### Swing Through or Follow Through\n\n**Method**\n\nThe muzzles are inserted on the line of flight, just behind the target. The gun is than consciously accelerated through and past the target before pulling the trigger. It is this accelerating passage past the target that results in sufficient forward allowance to break the target.\n\n#### Disadvantages\n\nAchieving forward allowance by muzzle speed alone creates its own pitfalls. If the swing is too fast you will miss in front, too slow and you will miss behind. And that is presuming you are on the target's line and speed of flight. If the speed is misjudged, you need to rush to catch up and rushing results in loss of control. A swing too far in front will make you stop and attempt to ambush the target. Too slow a swing and you are unable to establish sufficient forward allowance. If the line is errant, then on a dropping target, you swing through the target and miss high and in front.\n\n#### Strengths\n\nIts greatest strength is in wing shooting. With the unpredictability of bird shooting, there can be no prior preparation for line, speed or lead and for movement to the bird and swinging-through, this is, by far, the most popular and successful field technique.\n\n#### History\n\nThis is one of the oldest shooting techniques. Gun maker Charles Lancaster wrote on the subject in the 1800s and it was taught by the legendry coach and champion shot, Percy Stanbury. Swing Through is still taught today at the West London Shooting School.\n\n### Pull Away\n\n**Method**\n\nThe muzzles are held on the line of flight and the target is never allowed to pass the muzzles. The gun is pointed at the leading edge of the target until the gun reaches the cheek. When the gun is fully-mounted, the muzzles should be on line and on the front edge of the target. It is then accelerated away from the target and the trigger is pulled. As in Swing-Through, it is this acceleration that achieves the forward allowance required to break the target. This technique falls half-way between Swing Through and Maintained Lead.\n\n#### Disadvantages\n\nThe most common faults in Pull Away are letting the target past the muzzles and reverting to Swing Through, and looking at the gun and 'measuring' to try to establish the forward allowance, which results in stopping the gun.\n\n#### Strengths\n\nIts advantages are that it gives both speed and line of flight and no other technique does this. It is a great technique for beginners and I would compare it to the golf pro's use of the seven iron to establish a smooth swing and groove sound fundamentals.\n\n#### History\n\nClarrie Wilson of the British Clay Pigeon Shooting Association pioneered the Pull Away technique in the 1960s and it is still the technique of choice for this organisation.\n\n### Maintained Lead\n\n**Method**\n\nThe muzzles are, first, held on the line of flight. The muzzles are then inserted in front of and stay in front of the target at the perceived correct amount of forward allowance, from the moment it is seen. The muzzles maintain this gap in front until the gun reaches the cheek. When the gun is fully-mounted, the muzzles should still be the same distance in front of the target when the trigger is pulled.\n\n#### Disadvantages\n\nIt is a technique dependent on very good hand and eye coordination to establish both line of flight and speed of target. Too far in front or checking the forward allowance will stop or slow the swing and result in a miss behind.\n\n#### Strengths\n\nIn Maintained Lead, the gun is in front of the target throughout the shot. This means that the gun moves at the same speed as the target, which, psychologically, makes you feel in control and a smoother movement results.\n\n#### History\n\nThe origins of Maintained Lead are in match and flintlock guns, where the slow percussion of black powder required a technique that kept the gun in front and on line while the combustion took place, after the trigger was pulled.\n\n### Instinctive or Churchill\n\n**Method**\n\nRobert Churchill's Instinctive Shooting method requires that the muzzles be held on the line of flight. By hard focusing on the target and moving the hands and body with it, the gun progresses to the cheek. When the mount is completed, the trigger is pulled. With the muzzles always pointed directly at the target, forward allowance is achieved from the speed of the target \u2013 the movement of the hands and eyes, coordinated by the target speed, automatically arrive in the correct position. The lapse between the time the trigger is pulled and the time that the shot leaves the barrel ensures that the muzzles are in front of the target when the shot leaves the barrel, though, if asked, the shooter would swear he shot directly at the target.\n\n#### Disadvantages\n\nThe Instinctive Technique depends entirely on gun speed, consistent and accurate gun mount and complete trust in your hands and eyes. There are no mental pictures based on previous trial and error for the brain to store where instinct can be moulded by previous successes. So, each and every shot at each and every target is a new challenge to your reactions.\n\n#### Strengths\n\nThis is the one technique where you will definitely not check your swing or stop the gun. After all, you are shooting directly at the target, exactly where your subconscious wants you to shoot.\n\n#### History\n\nThe Instinctive Technique, invented and pioneered by Robert Churchill, combined with his XXV short-barreled shotgun to create a revolution in British game shooting in the 1930s. His controversial position that there was no requirement to visually see daylight in front of a target to hit it, is still being argued today.\n\n### Move, Mount, Shoot\n\n**Method**\n\nA combination of Churchill Instinctive and Maintained Lead, this technique allows the sportsman to maintain the correct lead and line on a target using hand and eye coordination. The muzzles are on the line of flight and hard focus is used to synchronise the body and hands, placing the gun correctly in front of the target, and maintaining that position until the shot is taken.\n\n#### Disadvantages\n\nExactly the same as in Maintained Lead, judgement of line and lead is totally dependent on very good eye and hand coordination. Get the forward allowance wrong and a miss behind is certain, either from incorrect lead or stopping the gun.\n\n#### Strengths\n\nIt is a technique used by many top shooters. With the muzzles in front of the target throughout the shot, there is the opportunity for control and smooth shooting. The element of Churchill, where the hands and body pace and mirror the target throughout the shot, give it a definite advantage over the majority of sustained lead techniques.\n\n#### History\n\nThree times World FITASC Sporting Champion John Bidwell developed this technique to spectacular effect during his shooting career. In 1990 he wrote a book of the same title: _Move,_ __ _Mount_ _and_ _Shoot._\n\n### Spot or Ambush\n\n**Method**\n\nIt is possible to spot-shoot a target. This technique requires you to anticipate speed and line of flight, estimate the target's arrival at a specific point, insert the gun and precisely time the shot and 'spot-shoot' or 'ambush' the target at that point.\n\n#### Disadvantages\n\nThis is a technique that is used very little. I know of no top competitor who uses this method unless forced to by poor target presentations. The ultimate test of hand and eye co-ordination, spot-shooting might better be called 'poke and hope'.\n\n#### Strengths\n\nThere is one and only one strength. It can be used as a last ditch effort, where the target pick up was incorrect or visual contact is lost, i.e., a target passing in front of the sun, behind obstacles or the second of a pair \u2013 and there is no time to apply a more controlled technique.\n\n#### History\n\nThe technique of early wing shooters, a combination of rifling and sustained lead.\n\n### Technique to Target\n\nAsk any Skeet shooter 'what technique do you use?' and they will instantly reply 'Maintained Lead'. If you then ask, 'On every target?' The answer from the majority will be an affirmative. 'What about the second target of a pair?' Another affirmative.\n\nYet it is impossible to shoot the Maintained Lead technique for both targets for pairs in Skeet! You can maintain the lead on the first target, but you are forced to use swing-through on the second target of the pair. Because of the predetermined speed, angles and distances in the game, many learn the trick of spot-shooting or ambushing the second target. To the shooter, this may look and feel as if they maintained the lead on the second target, but it is simply an optical illusion.\n\nI make use of video analysis a great deal in my instruction, mainly to analyse flaws in the fundamentals and swing. But often it demonstrates exactly what technique a client is really using, not what they think they are. In frame-by-frame analysis they are often amazed to find that they jump the target and do so to such a degree that they need to slow or stop the gun and ambush the target when they judge the picture is correct. I will ask them which technique they used, and rarely, indeed, is it the one they think they are using.\n\n### One Man's Lead...\n\nIt is possible to work out the theoretical forward allowance for targets at various ranges; but, it is nearly impossible to apply these distances in practice. After all, one man's three feet is another man's five. While it may be impossible to judge a particular number of feet in front of the target mathematically, by practice, trial and error you can learn the 'gap' that works for you on any target at any given yardage.\n\nThis ability can be compared to the golfer who, after learning to hit the ball straight, learns to fade and drift the ball according to the obstacles on the course. He does not 'measure' but he has learned how much to open or close the face of the club and how much swing speed he needs to put the ball where he wants it.\n\n### Reactive Shooting\n\nWhere is this going? I believe that each and every one of us uses a variety of techniques while shooting, whether at Sporting Clays or wing shooting. We are often unaware of doing so and it is an unconscious decision as to which one we use, target to target.\n\nIt is a simple synapse in the brain where the information from the target, gathered by the eyes, guides and controls the body's movement to the target. The technique we use is entirely dependent on the target presentation and our individual reactions and visual acuity. This automatic response is what I consider 'reactive shooting'; the unconscious adjustment of technique, target to target. If you practise shooting each and every target presentation with all three of the major techniques, you will achieve two things.\n\nFirst, you will discover which technique best suits your individual style and timing for each target. Secondly, you will pre-programme your subconscious with muscle memory so when making a shot, you can do so with no conscious reference to method or technique. During this practice you will discover there is little difference in the techniques, simply differences in the gun insertion points.\n\n### Practical Application\n\nHow to apply this to your shooting? First, ask yourself another question, 'Which do I consider the single most important part of the shooting equation?' For me, it is the _line._\n\nMisses can occur 360 degrees around the target. You can miss above or below, in front or behind. If you can keep the muzzles on the line throughout the shot, you limit your misses to in front or behind. You instantly achieve a fifty per cent reduction in missing. You also gain a significant second benefit. As a competitor, if you miss, you need to know the fault or the cause and understand the correction. If you can stay on the line, it becomes easier to recognise the fault. You miss either in front or behind, now you can analyse the cause and apply the correction.\n\nYou can improve the odds even more. You can make sure that if you do miss, it is in front of the target. Consider this: if you miss behind, even by a micro-second, you can never hit the target because the target is flying away from the shot string. If you miss in front, even by a mile, there is always a chance that the target and shot string will connect as the target flies towards the pattern. _'They_ _don't_ _fly_ __ _backwards.'_ This simple fact has been recognised since the first attempts were made to shoot birds on the wing.\n\nSo, how best can you attempt to be on line and in front on the majority of shots? By learning to establish the line and speed of flight of the target. Programmed with this data, our 'on-board computer' can make the computation required to ensure target and shot string collide.\n\n### On Line and On Time\n\nThe core requirement of any shooting technique is to establish speed and line of flight. However, this cannot be achieved just by the application of the technique itself. Its success is dependent on several factors. These can be broken down into two parts.\n\n_The_ _need_ _to_ _'lead'_ _a_ _target_ _is_ _because_ _of_ _the_ _lag_ _in_ _pulling_ _the_ _trigger_ _and_ _ballistics_ _of_ _the_ _shotgun_\n\n  1. **Ballistic** **:** Before the bird flushes or you call 'pull'. \n  2. **Instinctive** **:** After the flush or call for the bird.\n\n**The Ballistic part of the** **equation is made up of** **:**\n\nA: Reading the Line\n\nB: Angle\/Speed\/Distance\n\nC: Visual Hold\/Gun Hold\/BreakPoint\n\nD: Foot Work\/Stance\/Posture\/Head Position\n\n**The Instinctive part includes** **:**\n\nA: Hard Focus\n\nB: Gun Mount\n\nC: Swing\n\nD: Muzzle Insertion\n\n#### Ballistic\n\n_A._ ******__ _Reading_ _the_ ****_Line_**\n\nWhere is the target first visible after launch? Try to pick out a feature such as a leaf, bush or branch.\n\n  1. Does the target appear instantly or after a short delay? If the latter, count to time it... One thousand and one, One thousand and two. \n  2. What type of target? Standard, Midi, Mini or Battue.\n  3. Is it rising or falling? Where in its flight is it most level and stable?\n  4. Does it pass any obstructions to interfere with sight or pattern?\n  5. Is the wind or landscape affecting its flight trajectory?\n  6. If one of a pair, where will the second bird be when you break the first?\n  7. Which target disappears or hits the ground first?\n\nReading targets is an acquired skill and you must constantly work on it to improve it. The top shots put as much time into this aspect of the game as they do the shooting.\n\n#### _B._ __ _Angle\/Speed\/Distance_ ****\n\nThe angle created by the intersection of the shot string and target line is the best indicator of the forward allowance the target will require. Remember, the smaller the angle, the smaller the lead, the larger the angle, the larger the lead.\n\nThe target's speed and distance will add to the amount of forward allowance required. Always try to ascertain the size of the target being thrown, is it a standard (110) or a midi (90)? The size of the target will affect its speed and the amount of lead it needs.\n\nJudging distance is a skill that is easily learned. When you are next outside, be it walking the dog or just in town, pick out an object and guess its yardage. Now count the number of paces it takes to reach that object, with one stride counting as one yard. Within a short period of time you will be able to accurately gauge distances. Computing the distance with the speed and angle of a target will help the subconscious apply the correct forward allowance.\n\n**C.** **and** **D.** **are covered earlier in this Chapter** **.**\n\n#### Instinctive\n\n_A._ ******__ ****_Hard_** __ _Focus_\n\nBeginning with the eyes, you need to capture and maintain hard focus on the target from beginning to end of the shot. A good tip to achieve this is to learn to open your eyes wide to allow the maximum amount of light in.\n\nLook beyond the line at the Visual Hold, soft focusing into infinity. As the muscles in the eyes are more efficient at coming down and in to an object than up and out, this focal point allows a faster and better acquisition of the target. Always attempt to maintain hard focus throughout the shot. Quitting the target is one of the major causes of missing. After all, we shoot them with our eyes.\n\n**B.** **and** **C.** **are covered earlier in this Chapter** **.**\n\n#### _D._ _Muzzle_ _Insertion_\n\nThe gun insertion point on the target determines the technique applied. Insert behind and you will Swing-Through; on it and you will Pull Away; in front and you will Maintain the Lead.\n\nThe biggest mistake that I see is the complete lack of connection between the gun and target at this crucial 'make or break' point in the shooting technique. The gun is often mounted, then swung, in two separate movements, and all relationship to the target is lost for a moment. The result is a chase to re-establish contact with the target and the technique used becomes a lottery.\n\n_The_ _swing_ and _the_ _mount_ should be _one_ _smooth_ _motion_...to wax lyrical, it should be 'a synergy of muscle, steel and walnut' linked and directed by the eyes to the target. The muzzles should never be inserted more than one or two inches in front or behind the target, regardless of the technique you use. When you insert the gun, it must be on, or close to, the target to establish and maintain those essential requirements of speed and line of flight.\n\n**1** ******-** **Swing** **Through** ******-** muzzle inserted behind the target, then swept through as shot is fired.\n\n**2** ******-** ******Pull** ******Away** ******-** insert is on the target then pulled in front as shot is fired.\n\n**3** ******-** **Sustained Lead** **-** muzzle is inserted in front of target and lead is maintained as the shot is fired.\n\n### Putting them Together\n\nIn your practice you should be able to demonstrate all of these techniques and apply the one that best suits you and the target presentation being shot. From this you will quickly discover a personal technique that is both simple and uncluttered. The signals received from the target should translate into a smooth sequence of muscular responses, allowing your body to coordinate with the target so the shot can be made with maximum effectiveness and control. You are, in effect, programming a bodily response to the target that can be relied on presentation-to-presentation, achieving that elusive consistency we so desire and which wins tournaments.\n\n### The Blend\n\nThose of you who imbibe the odd wee dram will be familiar with single malt whiskies. These are products of distilleries throughout the Highlands of Scotland. All have their own distinctive taste, some so strong they need to be diluted with a little spring water to make them more acceptable to the palate. Another method of softening the strong taste of peat and iodine is to age the whisky in old port and sherry barrels, adding both to their colour and taste. There is a third method where several single malts are blended together to create a smoother drink.\n\nIn this same way, I have blended together elements from several techniques to create a Blend Technique, designed to make a smoother shot. This combines the elements of several methods:\n\n  1. It emphasises hard focus on the target.\n  2. It incorporates Churchill's use of body rotation and the leading hand in mounting and guiding the gun.\n  3. It uses the establishment of speed and line of flight of Clarrie Wilson's Pull Away\n  4. It stresses the target control of Maintained Lead.\n  5. It includes the combination of mount and swing and its application to the target.\n\nThis is not a one hundred per cent solution to every target presentation, but the Blend Technique easily learned and applied, gives instant feedback in the result of a hit or a miss, the fault is readily identified and the required correction is simple to implement.\n\n### The Elements of Straight Shooting\n\n**Swing Speed**\n\nTo ensure that forward allowance is maintained, the gun needs to be moving faster than the target when the trigger is pulled. If it is not, then in the momentary lag after detonation, the target will close the established gap and a miss behind will result. Speed is, indeed, lead and lead is speed.\n\nChurchill made his controversial statement that there was no requirement for lead because of this. However, what worked for European-style driven wing shooting where a one-in-three average is considered good shooting, would win little in modern competition. That said there are components of the Churchill Technique that, when combined with a more modern approach, offer what I consider a solid Target Technique.\n\nIf you were to enter a race, would you prefer to be given a head start or to begin behind? I personally would choose the advantage of a head start, but you can make your own decision on this. When we are shooting, we are in a race with the target, so wouldn't the advantage of a head start work equally well? So, of the techniques we have examined, the one that gives us the most control and advantage must be Sustained Lead. But it does have one or two drawbacks, which, if corrected, could make it even better. On longer passing shots, the forward allowance that needs to be maintained can mean the loss of the all-important line, but the main disadvantage is sustaining the 'head start' gun speed.\n\n### Modified Churchill\n\nNash Buckingham used a combination of Churchill, Maintained Lead and Pull Away, referring to it as the 'Moving Spot Technique'. This utilised the strengths of the establishment of the line and flight from Churchill, the target control of Maintained Lead and the resulting gun speed gained from Pull Away. In the Moving Spot, you simply insert the gun a few inches in front of the target before opening the gap until your subconscious tells you the picture is right, then you pull the trigger. If the target is close, insert on the front of the target, at thirty yards, two feet in front and at forty yards, four feet in front.\n\nThe visual relationships between target and muzzles will vary with the shooting technique. I find that this method is easily learned and can be adapted target to target and gives each and every shot direction and control.\n\n_The_ _moving_ _spot_ __ _technique_\n\nThere are certain targets and times, pairs being the best example, where the second bird could be better tackled with another technique. But the core of this blend works just as well when combined with Swing Through or Pull Away.\n\nDue to the great variety of target presentations, the blend will not work on every shot, but the only aspect that needs to change is the insertion point on the target. Think of it as a structured approach, where the result will be smoother and more consistent shooting with more broken targets.\n\nWhile learning these techniques and in any competition, recognition of where you missed and why is essential to discovering which of the techniques works best for you. When you are practising, think through why a miss occurred and if it could have been hit using a different technique.\n\nAn _instinctive_ _shot_ is one made without conscious thought as to the technique used. To me, it would better be described as a _reactive_ _shot._ During any competition you will need to constantly adapt and correct your reactions to the various targets you encounter. This will result in your use of all of the techniques. So, the more they are grooved, the better you will apply them. The bulk of your shooting will be made with a method that suits your personal visual acuity and reaction times, but you will never be able to shoot to your full potential without mastering at least the three main techniques.\n\n### Forward Allowance\n\nFrom the earliest attempts to shoot birds on the wing, it was quickly discovered that to hit a moving target it was necessary to place the gun in front of its path so that the shot string intercepted the target along its flight line. After all, **'** **they don** **'** **t** **fly** **backwards'** , and, as yet, I have never seen a target that does. I consider the hardest-learned piece of the shooting jigsaw, to make a master class shot, is to educate the brain that you have **'** **to miss it** **,** **to** **hit** **it** **'**.\n\nIn life, being punctual and accurate are attributes that are highly regarded. We are often encouraged 'To Hit the Nail on the Head'. Well, to do so when clay target shooting is to ensure a miss behind. As an instructor, I witness many clients who straggle to apply forward allowance. Their conscious mind understands the concept, but their subconscious will not allow them to apply it. When shooting, they consistently miss behind.\n\nI refer to this conflict between the conscious and subconscious minds as Separation Anxiety where the struggle between the two concepts vacillates between action and paralysis. Experience plays a big part in this and the brain is capable of storing the equivalent of a photo album of mental pictures based on previous trial and error.\n\nThe top competitor has control over his subconscious mind and can override its command to 'pull the trigger', until the barrel-target relationship is right. By insight, understanding and repeated successful practice, these dedicated shotgunners train their subconscious to **Miss** **It to** **Hit** **It**.\n\n### The Need for Lead\n\nWhy is it necessary to have to shoot in front of the target to connect with it? After all, modern cartridges produce muzzle velocities in excess of 1,200 feet per second, or more than 700 miles per hour. This is faster than 'Mach One', and, indeed, the bulk of the report heard on firing the gun is the shot mass breaking the Sound Barrier.\n\nSo, in effect, we are firing a supersonic cloud of shot which is travelling at a clay target that is thrown at a maximum of 90 miles per hour, yet is quickly slowing, with the average speed of 60 miles per hour or 88 feet per second. Surely, with this incredible speed advantage, we should be able to shoot directly at the target and overcome it. If the target is going away from you, the shot cloud will quickly close the gap and crush the slowing target. But if the target is presented at an angle to you, there is a requirement for forward allowance, or lead. Why is this? After all the shot velocity and target speeds have remained constant. The answer for the most part, is your reaction time-the lag between deciding to pull the trigger and actually doing it. When shooting, we are practising hand-eye coordination, the same as in many ball games. Only with shooting, there are variables in 'bringing the bat to the ball'.\n\n_The need to_ _'_ _lead_ _'_ _a target is because of the lag in pulling the trigger and ballistics of the shotgun_\n\nWhen we swing to the target, there is a judgment of timing as to when to pull the trigger. We are, in fact, absorbing visual information in the form of light through the eye. This light passes through the iris to the macula and from there to the frontal lobes; which in turn stimulate it to travel down the middle of the cerebral corollas. These produce the neuro-messages that make the muscles contract and react to coordinate our movements to the target, which finish with the trigger being pulled.\n\nBut then, after the trigger is pulled, still more time passes. The hammer falls, detonating the cartridge (lock time), after which the shot is propelled towards the target (ignition and powder burn, barrel and flight times). In all, this combined action takes an average of one tenth of a second. Hardly worth consideration, when we are talking about the shot cloud travelling at more than 700 miles per hour, right? Well, in that one tenth of second, a target leaving at 60 miles per hour (88 feet or about 30 yards per second) moves approximately three feet. The farther the shot travels, the more it slows down. And the greater the distance the greater the lead required. At forty yards, you need to place the shot nine to twelve feet in front of the crossing target to intercept it!\n\n### Timing is Everything\n\nTime is the past, present and future regarded as a continuous whole. When attempting to shoot a moving target, we are, in fact, working against time in an effort to complete the shot in a limited period. It naturally follows that the core skill in our shooting is our timing \u2013 our ability to judge when to pull the trigger. The same applies to hitting a ball or playing an instrument in an orchestra. The top performers demonstrate an economy of movement, a _Maximum_ _Efficiency_ _for_ _Minimum_ _Effort._ When observed, they appear to have enhanced smoothness and more time to take their actions.\n\nWhen well-honed timing and technique skills are demonstrated in shotgunning, onlookers will comment that that these fine shots are 'naturals'. To some extent they are correct. There will always be a small percentage of participants in any activity who are 'quicker on the uptake' than their neighbours. Lead is very personal to the individual shooter. You need to learn the different pictures for yourself and as your experience expands, so will your ability to judge distance, angle and speed and you will have the confidence to let your 'on-board computer' do the rest \u2013 _after_ you have programmed in the correct information.\n\n### The Math of Gap Analysis\n\nIf we applied math to the question of lead, the formula would rely on the angle, distance and speed of the target, combined with the shooting technique used and the speed of the swing. But there are secondary factors that also affect lead, such as the velocity of the cartridge, the effect of choke on the pattern's width and density and a shooter's reaction time.\n\nSuch a formula could indicate the lead needed for a target that maintains a constant vertical or horizontal line. But many modern target presentations offer targets that are in transition, adding still another dimension to the equation: _multi-plane_ _lead,_ such as required on battues, chondels and even rabbits, all shot while transitioning between a horizontal and vertical line.\n\nWhat the shooter needs is to be a _magician_ _not_ _a_ _mathematician._ The latter would do his math and work out the precise lead required on any particular presentation, then attempt to apply it with slide rule precision. And he would fail. But if we apply a little mental magic and _trust_ our 'on board computer', we will always put the gun in the right place, in front of the target.\n\n### It's Just a Matter of Trust\n\nHow do we achieve this trust? As usual, through practice. The learning curve has three stages.\n\n  1. **Unconsciously Incompetent** \u2013 When you depend entirely on your instructor, you are shown an exercise and then have to replicate it. At this stage, you are required to think about every move before it is made. \n  2. **Consciously Competent** \u2013 When the exercise has been repeated until it becomes muscle memory. The 'on board computer' is recognisably programmed. \n  3. **Unconsciously Competent** \u2013 Now you have grooved the mechanics to the point that you can make the moves as subconsciously as riding a bicycle...if you thought about how to ride it, you would lose balance and fall off.\n\nMaster class shooters are unconsciously competent. This leaves their conscious mind free to lock on to only one thing \u2013 the target. There is a fourth stage, which is where peak performance occurs. It is better known as being _'in_ _the_ _Zone'._\n\nYou cannot hit targets consistently if you are thinking of the mechanics. The fundamentals must be practised and grooved to the point where they become autonomic and the movement to and in front of the target can be made without conscious thought.\n\n### The Autonomic Shot\n\nTo shoot your best, you need to concentrate totally on a single object: the target. The more intense the concentration, the better the outcome. With total autonomic concentration and focus on the target, you avoid destructive thoughts of mechanics or measured lead intruding into your consciousness.\n\nYou need to do more than just look at the whole target. You must single out the _leading_ _edge._ Intense concentration on a small part of the target blocks out negative thoughts and, effectively, causes the target to appear to become larger and slower.\n\nIn Sporting Clays, one-third of lost targets are missed in front, two-thirds are missed behind. The competitors  who miss out front are among the winners. My first rule to overcoming Separation Anxiety is to recognise that _'they_ _don't_ _fly_ __ _backwards',_ so if you are going to miss, which is inevitable, ' _miss_ _it_ _in_ _front'._\n\n### Blur that Barrel\n\nAre the majority of targets missed behind due to lack of lead, poor mechanics or an ineffective choke or load? Perhaps so, in the very early stages of the learning curve. But after the shotgunner has achieved some experience, the cause of many shooters' problems is quitting the target and _looking_ _at_ _the_ _gun._\n\nIt is important to see both the target and the gun, but how they should be seen in relation to each other is rarely explained. This ability to perceive two objects in two different fields of vision, is what marries together the mechanics and the mind and allows us to shoot a moving object.\n\nWe have two eyes but only one receiver, our brain, which joins these two individual pictures seamlessly together, allowing us to see one clear, sharp image. But this clear single image can only be seen in one field of vision at a time, either up close or at a distance. So the fields of vision opposite our point of focus, the peripheral vision, will always be made up of two blurred or double images.\n\nWhen we are shooting, if we hard focus on the target, the gun will be seen in the peripheral vision as a double blurred image of two gun barrels. If we attempt to place the bead at the end of the muzzle on the target, we are now looking at the gun, and the target is a blurred double image of two indistinct targets. Which one do we shoot?\n\n**Correct. Hard focus on the target. Gun is a blurred double image in peripheral vision.**\n\n**Incorrect. Looking at the gun. Target is a blurred double image.**\n\nTo consistently shoot well, we must learn to maintain hard focus on the target throughout the shot. The more forward allowance or lead required, the more important it is to keep our vision firmly locked on the target. If at any time we quit the target and look back to the barrel of the gun, the target will double and blur and we will stop or slow our swing and miss behind. This is literally using a scattergun approach. We have all, at some point, experienced the following:\n\n  1. Inability to know where a target is missed.\n  2. A stop-start stuttering swing.\n  3. Your instructor or shooting partner is forever saying 'You missed behind', when you could have sworn you had plenty of daylight between the barrel and the target when you pulled the trigger.\n\nLearn to recognise these symptoms and apply the cure: _reestablish_ _hard_ _focus_ _on_ _the_ _target!_\n\n### Barrel Awareness\n\nAny shooter must, of course, be _aware_ of the gun and the gap between the muzzle and the target. But as individuals we all see things differently. This is well demonstrated by the fact that one person sees inches of lead at the barrels while another sees feet at the target. _Individual_ _Lead_ is the lead we see between barrels and target when we pull the trigger. This is less than the _True_ _Lead_ at the target. True Lead is actually greater; because of the delay in pulling the trigger.\n\nFor any shot to be successful, the barrels must be moving faster than the target \u2013 regardless of the technique used. We all have individual swing speeds and reaction times. If you asked several competitors exiting any Sporting Clays station 'How much lead did you give them?' one might tell you he gave the crosser, two feet, and the other shooter will say six feet.\n\nThis phenomenon is why Churchill was so insistent that you could shoot directly at a target without visible lead. If the swing is fast enough, the lag between the time the trigger is pulled to when the shot leaves the barrel, would be enough to place barrel and hence the shot string, several feet in front of the target. But if asked, the shooter would insist that he shot directly at the target.\n\n### Prime your Peripheral Vision\n\nWe all must amass the set of timing and lead pictures that works for us. How do we do this? The difference between the average shot and the good shot is that the good shot learns to shoot using peripheral vision to position the gun.\n\nYou use this peripheral vision every day of your life. When you drive your car, you do not aim the emblem on the bonnet at the bumper of the car in front of you. You drive looking ten or twenty car lengths ahead. But if something should unexpectedly happen to the car directly in front of you, you react instantly, braking or swerving to avoid the danger. _We_ _are_ _gifted_ _with_ _peripheral_ _vision_ _so_ _we_ _can_ _see_ _in_ _two_ _places_ _at_ _once._\n\nAnother example: say you are serving in a tennis match \u2013 you toss the ball up to serve. If you then looked at your hand to check your grip on the racquet, the result would be a fluffed serve. Yet if you keep your eye firmly concentrated on the ball, you could hit it in the 'sweet spot' and serve an ace!\n\nYou drive a car and serve a tennis ball using both central and peripheral vision, _central_ to look ahead and navigate or see the ball, _peripheral_ to operate and control the car or see your racquet. It is exactly the same in shooting: you 'navigate' on the target with central vision and 'operate' the gun with peripheral. If you can see your barrels clearly, you have stopped the gun and missed behind.\n\nTo cure _Separation_ _Anxiety,_ you need to learn to drive or swing the gun with your peripheral vision, while remaining locked on the target with your central vision. You must develop ' _Awareness_ _of_ _the_ _Rib_ ' __ (Faint image in peripheral vision) along with _'Hard_ __ _Focus_ _on_ _the_ _Target_ ' __ (Leading edge in central vision).\n\n**Shooting straight requires sound fundamentals and a proper** **set** **up combined with hard focus and a** **sound technique** **.**\n\nChapter 10\n\n# Sporting Solutions\n\n### History\n\nSporting Clays, the most popular of the domestic disciplines, evolved in England as a means to practice for shooting driven game. In Skeet and Trap the speeds, distances and angles are fixed, and can even be challenged and checked before and during a tournament. Therefore, in both of those games, it is very easy to establish definite gun holds, focal points and break points, there being little, if any, difference between layouts.\n\nSporting Clays, however, is unique in its almost unlimited variety of target presentations. Course designers delight in setting targets to test your skills by presenting as many combinations of speeds, distances and angles as their terrain and traps will allow. As a result, a greater range of skills is required to match this variety and shoot competitively at this most testing of disciplines.\n\n### The Range\n\nThere are no laid down rules governing the size of a Sporting Clays course. The minimum requirement is that there be the correct safety allowance for shot fall in any direction shot. Unlike the regimented, manicured lines of Skeet and Trap fields, the ideal Sporting Clays course should offer a natural environment, haphazard and diverse in both vegetation and terrain, simulating the quarry's natural habitat. The course can consist of any number of Stations, but the average for registered competition is ten to fifteen Stations presenting 100 targets.\n\n__\n\n____FITASC_ _-_ _Sporting_ _International_ _Sporting__\n\n__\n\n__\n\n____5-Stand_ _Compact_ _Sporting__\n\n__\n\n__\n\n### The Sporting Clays Gun\n\nBecause of the unlimited variety of target presentations, the Sporting gun must be more flexible than the dedicated Trap or Skeet gun. The Sporting gun of choice is the over and under, but many favour the fast-handling semi-automatic; and some competitors opt for a converted Trap gun. Multi-chokes and barrel selectors are essential and the gun should have enough weight to control recoil without sacrificing balance and handling.\n\nThe weight should be 7\u00bd __ to 8 lbs, the barrel length between 30 and 34 inches. The pattern should be set up to print sixty per cent above and forty per cent below the horizontal of the rib. Lengthened forcing cones, back boring, long tapered chokes, regulated triggers and a quality recoil pad are performance enhancers worth considering.\n\n### Choke and Cartridge\n\nCartridges for registered competition in the UK are 1 oz or 28 grams, loaded with shot no bigger than No. 6 \u2013 in the USA, an ounce and an eighth or 30 grams loaded with shot no bigger than No.7\u00bd. The target dictates the choke and cartridge combination. For example, No. 9s and true cylinder for close targets and No.7\u00bds and modified for the distant targets.\n\n### The Rules of the Game\n\nThese basic rules are for UK Sporting Clays (see Appendix for other Governing Bodies):\n\n1. When calling for the target, gun position is optional. The shooter may start with a low gun hold or a pre-mounted gun.\n\n2. Only two shells may be loaded.\n\n3. A visible piece of the target must be broken off the target for a score.\n\n4. If the second target of a report pair is a 'no bird', the pair is repeated but the score from the first target is counted.\n\n5. If a pair is broken with one shot, both are counted as dead.\n\n6. Failure to remove the safety or load a shell is a lost target. In the case of a gun malfunction, the competitor should not open it, but remain in the station with the gun pointing down range until the referee examines the gun to determine the cause of the malfunction. If it is mechanical, and not 'operator error', the target can be retaken.\n\n7. If an event is not shot in the squad format, a competitor can shoot the stations in any order. After handing in his card, he will be called to shoot in turn.\n\n8. If there is no competitor in front of him, he is entitled to view a pair before shooting.\n\n### Targets\n\nShooting skills and equipment have improved significantly in the last twenty years and target presentations have had to change to match these improvements. There are no rules for target presentation in Sporting competitions. Targets can be thrown at any height, at any distance and in any combination of two. This can include any mixture of size and flight characteristics, the only requirement is that 'non standard' targets must not exceed thirty per cent of the total thrown.\n\nToday, the course designer is truly only limited by his imagination and experience. The best ones try to set a course that will challenge the Master Class as well as the casual club shooter, with a mix of tough and interesting targets. He achieves this by making the target transition at _the_ _exact_ _point_ _where_ _you,_ _ideally,_ _would_ _like_ _to_ _break_ _it._ These target transition permutations are endless and you must learn to read and analyse these presentations if you are to make progress in Sporting Clays.\n\n#### Target Combinations\n\nThe following are examples and explanations of some target tricks and combinations:\n\n**1.** _**Speed** _\u2013 __ This is decided by the tension of the trap spring and the size of target. Take a following pair, consisting of a standard target off one trap with the spring backed off and a midi off a second trap with the spring wound on. The standard target appears first, but as you make your move to it, it is overtaken by the faster midi. This overtaking manoeuvre causes confusion and fatal hesitation between shooting the two targets.\n\n**2.** ******_Type_** __ \u2013 __ A minimum of seventy per cent of the targets thrown in a competition are standards, but it is easy to mistake one of the non-standard targets for a standard. For example, a rocket looks like a standard, but the difference in forward allowance required because of its size and speed can cause you to miss behind.\n\n**3.** ****_**Mixture** _ \u2013 With an on-report pair \u2013 the first target a midi at thirty yards with the spring backed off and the second a standard at forty yards with the spring wound on \u2013 they look the same but are completely different, requiring different leads and timing. This can cause a very discombobulating effect on your swing and forward allowance picture.\n\n_A_ _mix_ _of_ _targets_ _requires_ _different_ _techniques_ _and_ _timing_ __\n\n**4.** ****_**Terrain** _ \u2013 A target thrown a long way, over ground that slopes away in the direction of flight, creates the optical illusion that the target stays level, when in reality, it is falling dramatically. This makes it very easy to miss over the top.\n\n**5.** ****_**Obstacles** _ \u2013 On an easy presentation, at the optimum place to break the target, it passes an obstacle. As a result it has to be shot earlier or later in its flight and requires a change in technique or method.\n\n__\n\n____Always_ _take_ _the_ _first_ _target_ _to_ _leave_ _your_ _muzzles_ _in_ _the_ _best_ _position_ _for_ _the_ _second_ _target__\n\n__\n\n__\n\n**6.** ****_**Colour** _ \u2013 Orange targets stand out better against certain backgrounds and can appear closer than they really are, especially when showing a little dome. When thrown in an on-report combination with a black target thrown first, the orange creates the optical illusion that the second target is closer, making it very easy to miss behind.\n\n**7.** ****_**Angle** _ \u2013 The clever use of angle can deceive you when you read the target. You analyse it as a crosser, but as it arrives at the break-point, it has transitioned into a straight-away and you over-lead and miss in front.\n\n**8.** ****_**Distance** _ \u2013 The combination of near and far catches even the best shots out. You need to change technique to hit the two targets at different distances.\n\n**9.** ****_**Sequence** _ _\u2013_ __ Two widely-angled targets create the need to move your feet through the shooting sequence. The course designer has a very difficult job \u2013 he must walk the fine line between the challenging and the impossible: challenging enough to test the best, but not so impossible to beat the rest. There needs to be a balance between the two. If he gets it right he is a hero, if he gets it wrong he is chastised as a villain.  \nThe correct numbers of left and right-handed targets together with the mix of standard and non-standard targets need to be factored into his design to make the course interesting and enjoyable for the mix of abilities shooting it. This often means combining a soft target with a hard one, to allow the beginner some success on each station but keeping the pressure on the top competitors to break them all. The true test of the course designer's success is the final scores. The game should be won with a score in the low 90s and each of the winning classes should be decided by scores on, or slightly above, the averages. The participants should feel challenged and intrigued by the targets, but happy with their score and the thought of 'if only I had not dropped...'\n\n#### Target Characteristics\n\n_Standard_ _clay_ _**targets** _ are what Sporting shooters will face on most stations. The standard measures 4\u00bc inch or 110mm across and is 1\u215b __ inches thick. When shot up close, say, within 30 yards, a standard target can be broken with open chokes and small shot. Past 30 yards, especially when only the target's profile is visible, increase the amount of choke and use No. 7\u00bd shot.\n\n**_Midi_** __ _clay_ _**targets** _ are 3\u00bd inches (90mm) across, about \u00be __ inch less than a standard and are only \u00be inch in height. The midi can be mistaken for a standard by beginners, so always ask what type of target you are shooting before stepping onto the station. Midis are the most aerodynamic of the domed clays and maintain their velocity and flight path better than the standard. However, they do slow later in flight and it is better to shoot them when they have lost some of their speed.\n\n**_Mini_** __ _clay_ _**targets** _ are the smallest of the clays. Often referred to as the 'flying aspirin', they are the same height as a midi \u2013 \u00be __ inch, but only 2\u215c __ inches (60mm) in diameter. Minis are easily broken with open chokes and small shot up to 30 yards, but it is best to choke-up past there. An on-edge mini can slip through an open-choked pattern at longer distances.\n\n_Rocket_ _**targets** _ measure 4\u00bc __ inches in diameter, have a flatter profile, only about \u215d __ in, or half the thickness of a standard. When thrown edge-on, the lower profile combined with its heavier weight make the rocket maintain its velocity longer into its flight. As a result, a good number are missed behind. For an edge-on rocket, choke-up and use No.7\u00bd shot.\n\n**_Battues_** __ are razor-thin and lack a dome, so they are aerodynamically unstable. A battue can also be thrown upside down, which makes its flight more consistent. As it reaches the zenith of its parabolic curve it rolls, showing its full face \u2013 this is the optimum time to break it. But remember, it is now accelerating into its descent, and on a windy day the position of the roll on its line of flight can be very inconsistent.\n\n_**Rabbits** _ can be traditionally presented or thrown as a chondel. Face-on they are easily broken with open chokes and No. 8 shot. For distance, maintain the shot size but choke-up. The outer rim of the rabbit is thick so it can withstand contact with the ground and is considerably tougher to break. If presented edge-on, use tight chokes and No. 7\u00bd __ shot.\n\n#### Target Sequences\n\nThe targets can be thrown is a variety of sequences. Learn to study the target from every possible angle it is safe to do so, not just from the shooting station. See what type and size the target is and, if you are not sure, ask the referee. What is it _really_ doing \u2013 is it _truly_ straight, curling, rising or dropping? Consider the second target of a pair \u2013 it should be given equal scrutiny. Ask yourself the following target questions:\n\n_Targets_ _come_ _in_ _all_ _shapes,_ _colours_ _and_ _sizes_ _with_ _flight_ _characteristics_ _to_ _match_\n\n  1. Where is it first visible after launch? Try to pick out a feature like a leaf, bush or branch to establish its line of flight. \n  2. Does it appear instantly or after a short delay. If there is a delay, count to time it... One thousand and one, One thousand and two... \n  3. What type of target is it? Standard, Midi, Mini or Battue etc. \n  4. Is it rising or falling? Where in its flight is it most level and stable? \n  5. Does it pass any obstructions that interfere with sight or have a pattern impact? __\n  6. Is the wind or landscape affecting its perceived flight trajectory?\n  7. If one of a pair, where will the second bird be when you break the first? Do you need to move your feet? \n  8. What choke and cartridge combination do the targets demand?\n\nArmed with this information, you can plan your strategy to best tackle the station. As always, begin with the fundamentals. Read the target, ascertaining gun hold, visual hold and break point. See where your muzzles should be to shoot the first target and be in the correct set up on the second and establish the correct holds and break points. Do you need to move your feet? Always practise a dry run of the shots to be taken. This rehearses the move to the target and pre-programmes mind and muscles for a smoother connection to the target.\n\n#### Target Angles\n\nThe analysis and application of the correct amount of lead in Sporting Clays is essential to straight shooting. We have discussed the components of lead in Chapter 7 and broken it down into speed, angle and distance. But it is the 'angle of dangle' that has the greatest impact on our perception of lead. You need to learn a simple and straightforward method of assessing the angle of a target.\n\nClay shooting is really a game of trigonometry \u2013 the amount of angle created by the interception of the shot string and target at the break-point is the best indicator of the amount of lead to apply.\n\nTry to visualise a triangle in which the three corners consist of your firing position, the trap and the target break-point. Now picture the shot string and its angle of intersection with the target break-point. If this angle is acute (narrow), you need little, if any, lead. If the angle is obtuse (wide), then lead is required.\n\nTo truly understand this, you need to conduct this exercise. On a Skeet range, shoot several targets from the Low House on Station 3. The angle at the interception of the shot string and the break-point is ninety degrees and the lead 3\u00bd __ to 4 feet. Now shoot several targets from the Low House on Station 7. Same target, same distance, same speed but the angle at the interception of the shot string and the break-point is 0 \u2013 you need to shoot directly at it to break it. Work your way back to Station 3, shooting Station by Station, through Low House 6, 5 and 4. This will clearly show you that it is the angle that has the biggest impact on perceived lead.\n\nTo establish the correct address to the target break-point, visualise yourself standing in the centre of a clock. (This visualisation of a clock face is also used for analysis of the targets' angles and transitions.)\n\nTo assess the angle (lead), use your imagination to overlay the shooting field horizontally on a clock face, with the break-point centered over the pivot point of the hands and the Station at six o'clock. Now picture the target's flight across the clock face. For example, if it enters at nine o'clock and leaves at three o'clock, the angle created to the gun would be ninety degrees, requiring a good amount of lead. If it enters at nine o'clock and leaves at twelve o'clock, the angle would be less and less lead would be needed. _Taking_ _the_ _target_ _earlier_ _or_ _later_ _in_ _its_ _flight_ _will_ _change_ _the_ _angle_ _and_ _the_ _lead_ _required._\n\nIncoming targets present an optical illusion. As they fly towards the Station they are getting bigger and slower. Psychologically, this affects swing speed and lead assessment. But if you visualise the target entering the clock at eleven o'clock and leaving at five o'clock, you can see that the angle created is obtuse and the target needs more lead than you might have originally considered.\n\n#### Target Transitions\n\nTo assess a target's transition, visualise the clock face, this time projecting it vertically onto the target itself. Once again, the break-point should be in the centre of the clock. Watch the target's flight through the clock face. If it enters at three o'clock and leaves at nine o'clock, it is a single plane target. But if it enters at three o'clock and leaves at seven o'clock, it is a multi-plane target and will require you to apply lead both in front and below.\n\nTargets are at their maximum speed when launched, but the speed quickly bleeds off and the target peaks and begins gradually to descend. This is referred to as a parabolic arc. Whenever possible, the target should be broken as it reaches the peak of the parabolic arc, before it begins its descent.\n\n#### Single Plane Lead\n\nRegardless of the name given to a target, if it is flying horizontally or vertically in one plane, there are only six presentations in Sporting Clays. All the other targets are variations of these six:\n\n  1. Outgoing\n  2. Incoming\n  3. Crossing\n  4. Quartering\n  5. Dropping\n  6. Rising\n\nThese targets are straightforward, and require lead in only one plane.\n\n#### Multi-Plane Lead\n\nTargets that are transitioning \u2013 moving from one plane (horizontal) to another (vertical) \u2013 require lead to be applied in two planes, to match their flight.\n\n  1. Battue\n  2. Chondel\n  3. Rabbit\n  4. Transitioning Targets\n  5. Looping Targets\n\n#### Target Tactics\n\n_Pairs_\n\nSporting Clays is a game of pairs. There are always two shots (with the exception of FITASC) and the targets are thrown in a variety of presentations and sequences.\n\n  1. True pair: both targets are launched simultaneously.\n  2. On-report pair: the second target is launched on the report of the shotgun shooting the first target.\n  3. Following pair: this can be presented in two different ways. From one trap, with the second target thrown from the same trap as quickly as it will cycle or from two traps, with a second trap in another location, and the second target thrown when the first is seen.\n\nThe course designer can use any and all combinations of different speeds and different targets thrown in different directions and can take any advantage to be had from terrain or natural obstacles to beat the competitor. He attempts to either create panic on the first shot or leave the gun out of position for the second. The following decisions need to be made on every presentation:\n\n  1. Which target to shoot first?\n  2. Where will the second target be when you have broken the first?\n  3. Is there enough time between the shots to move your feet?\n  4. Two targets means two visual holds, gun holds and break points \u2013 can you move the break point of the first target, to gain an advantage on the second shot? \n  5. Would a mixture of techniques work better?\n\nGather as many facts as possible: the target types, individual distances, trajectories, elevations and sequences. Take into account any obstructions. Determine which target will drop the quickest. This information will allow you to answer these questions and prepare your plan of attack.\n\n##### _Decide_ _which_ _target_ _to_ _shoot_ _first_\n\nThe best advice is to address the hardest target. If both are equally difficult, then a compromise position may need to be adopted. Can the second target be better addressed by moving your feet and does the presentation allow you time to do so? If not, you have a second decision, as to which target to favour.\n\n##### **_On-Report_** __ _and_ _Following_ _Pairs_\n\nAn on-report pair from the same trap is the simplest presentation to shoot. But beware! The second target will be launched _on_ _the_ _report_ of the shot and will be in at a different point along the flight line from the first, requiring a different gun and visual hold. If there is sufficient time, remount your gun between shots on a report pair. The second target of a following pair from the same trap requires similar adjustments to be made.\n\n__\n\n____You_ _should_ _always_ _move_ _your_ _feet_ __ _but_ _if_ _the_ _presentation_ __ _doesn_ _'_ _t_ __ _allow_ _always_ _favour_ _the_ _more_ _difficult_ _target__\n\n__\n\n##### **_True_** __ _Pairs_ ____\n\nWhen targets are thrown as true pairs, where the presentation will allow, always take the lower target of a pair first. This reduces panic and allows a smoother move to the second target. This keeps them both in view and keeps the barrel from obstructing the second target, if the higher target is shot first.\n\nAlso take the trailing target first. This allows your swing to continue unchecked to the second target. If the leading target is taken first, the swing will have to be checked and restarted, often causing a miss behind.\n\nThe target that will disappear behind an obstruction, fly out of range or hit the ground first must always be the first target of a pair.\n\nBe sure to see the first target break before moving to the second. If you miss the first shot, it is far better to stay with the same target for the second shot (unless it is an extremely difficult presentation).\n\nWith true pairs composed of a straight-away and a quartering target, the sequence is to always shoot the straight-away one first, then move to the quartering target.\n\nDriven pairs offer a very short window of time in which to shoot them. The first target should be taken well in front, creating more time for the second. Once again, always take the straight target first.\n\nWhen establishing both break-points, consider where your gun will be after breaking the first target. Decide whether taking the first target with a different technique or in a different place would help break the second.\n\n_Teke_ _the trailing target first to continue a smooth swing to the second target_\n\nOn a true pair, the left-hander should shoot the left target first before moving to the second and the right-hander should shoot the right. When the first target is taken this way, it allows better target acquisition of the second and helps prevent head lifting. Be prepared to move your feet, if required, on a widely-split pair to avoid running out of movement and having to check your swing.\n\n_The_ _more_ _shoulder_ _you_ _can_ _see_ _the_ _less_ _lead_ _required_\n\n#### Going Away Targets\n\n_Rising_ **_Away_** __ _In_ _Front_\n\nIn its simplest form, this is a straight, gently rising target requiring no lead. At the other end of the spectrum, it is a 100-foot high tower throwing a midi, which needs several feet of lead.\n\nA target rising and going away is one of the most straightforward presentations to hit, but is just as easily missed. It is first seen edge-on which always makes a target look farther away. Under full power, with its continual movement away, the quickly-reducing size is emphasised, and can create a rushed and panicked reaction.\n\nRushing translates into unwanted gun movement and can cause the gun to jump over the target. Remember, a couple of inches at the gun is a couple of feet at the target! Poor gun control can turn a straight-away target into a nightmare.\n\nMinimal movement is required for a rising-away target, very similar to a trap shot. Take a trap-like approach \u2013 pre-mount the gun and swing through smoothly. Lead is applied by moving the gun to and through the target, in a bayoneting-action. This counters the tendency to miss over. The shot should be taken sooner rather than later, to avoid the tendency to aim on this presentation.\n\n##### _Passing_ _Overhead_ _From_ _Behind_\n\nWhen the target comes from behind, keep your weight on your back foot and look for the target, leaning back slightly, tilting your head as far back as is comfortable. If you wait until it is over you to see it, you will panic and poke at it.\n\nThe gun hold should be with eyes looking straight up and the muzzles on the line of flight, where you expect the target to pass overhead. This position takes a little experimentation to get it right, but it allows you to see the target sooner. This gives you a greater opportunity to accurately estimate the speed and angle of the target. And when you can see it longer, the target will appear slower as it passes overhead.\n\nAs the target appears in your vision, you will begin a natural transfer of weight from your back to your leading foot, inserting and maintaining the gun in front of the target and firing without hesitation. If you are consistently behind or over this target, you will find that more emphasis on the front foot as the shot is taken can be a cure-all.\n\n_Weight_ _on_ _your_ _back_ _foot,_ _tilting_ _your_ _head_ _as_ _far_ _back_ _as_ _comforable,_ _allows_ _you_ _to_ _see_ _the_ _target_ _sooner_\n\n_It_ _is_ _a_ _mistake_ _to_ _look_ _back_ _to_ _the_ _trap._ _Turning_ _while_ _mounting_ _the_ _gun_ _is_ _too_ _complex_ _a_ _move_\n\nDo not fall into the habit of turning back to the trap! Trying to mount the gun while turning _and_ establishing the line and target angle it is too complex a move with such a fast target. Maintained Lead or Pull-Away are the applicable techniques for these targets. A strong extension of the left arm is essential to avoid see-sawing the gun mount.\n\nOn overhead pairs, take the first target as soon as possible! The longer you wait, the more difficult they are to break. Remember, as they fly directly over head, showing the maximum amount of 'soft under-belly', is when they are the most vulnerable to the shot charge. The farther the target gets away, the smaller the surface area becomes, leaving just the edge to shoot.\n\nIf one of the pair is straight and one is quartering, take the straight-away first. Similarly, the quick-dropper should always be the priority. If presented with a trailing pair, be sure to take the rear target first and follow-through to the second. The second shot requires an increase in choke and shot size.\n\n#### Incoming Targets\n\n_High_ _Driven,_ _Passing_ _Overhead_\n\nIf you have two targets, one that passes over the Station and one that falls short of the firing line, take them in order of presentation. The advantage of the target that passes over the Station is, it is still at speed and your only consideration is the lead required.\n\nThe ultimate incomer is, of course, the High Tower, especially when in excess of 100 feet. This is a target that has special requirements. Once you have read the target and established its speed and line of flight, you need to adjust your stance. If the clay is driven straight, the normal stance, facing forty-five degrees to the line of flight, is right. If driven to the left, then close or turn your stance to the left. If driven to the right, then open or turn to the right. The correct stance will allow you to keep your muzzles accurately on the target line and keep you from checking your swing, dropping your shoulder and coming off the line ('windscreen wiping').\n\nIn wing shooting, this shot was taught two ways: the Stanbury method, by stepping into the line of the target and maintaining the weight on the front foot throughout the shot, or the Churchill method, by lifting the heel opposite the target flight and transferring weight from one foot to the other. On straight driven targets, the weight is maintained on the back foot.\n\nThe arguments for and against Stanbury and Churchill have raged for over half a century. A point to note is that Stansbury was a tall bean-pole of a man whereas Churchill was short and squat. I, personally, think that their physical characteristics had a great bearing on their individual approach to the same problem. As for which method is the best, I will leave you to discover that for yourself.\n\nWhen clay shooting, we know the target's line and adjust our stance and body weight according to our method of choice. But, if there is time to move your feet, do so. I recommend taking the lower driven target early, with the weight firmly on the front foot, then taking the high target late, just short of vertical, transferring the weight to the back foot.\n\nAs always, your gun mount needs to be consistent; a low mount with the eye and muzzle in alignment on the line of the target. Start right, and you will inevitably finish right. The technique should be Pull-Away or Swing-Through, as both of these methods establish the line on every shot. There is no place for Maintained Lead on the High Tower. At 120 feet up, the wind can pull a target off line and, if you are to be consistent, there is a real need to lock _on_ _the_ _line,_ _every_ _shot._\n\nA __ word of caution on the Swing-Through technique: many people think that you let the target get well ahead of your barrels and then 'swing through'. This is a faulty approach that will lead to an inconsistent swing speed, a fault comparable to the wrong gun hold point on a teal target. The gun should be inserted on the rear of the target, followed by a gentle acceleration of the gun through and along the target line to establish forward allowance. This will give you more accuracy and control.\n\n_Stanbury_ _off_ _the_ _front_ _foot_\n\n_Churchill_ _off_ _the_ _back_ _foot_\n\n__\n\n_A low mount with the eye and muzzle in alignment_ _with_ _the_ _target_\n\nTargets against the sky will always appear farther away than those of the same distance against a background. The ability to judge range is a good skill to acquire for high-driven and long-crossing presentations. The target is at its most vulnerable and closest directly overhead and, ideally, should be broken at eighty to ninety degrees.\n\nThe position of your hand on the fore-end can cause you to pull off the target line. Practise mounting and swinging an empty gun, tracing a direct line across the ceiling. You will quickly see the importance of the leading hand to holding a straight line. There is a tendency to drift off the line to the left (for the right-handed, right for the left-handed). To counter this, hold the muzzles on the right (or left \u2013 see above) edge of the target. This gives a better move to the target and counters this tendency to drift off the line on overhead shots.\n\nIf the target quarters to the left or right of centre, you will need to deliberately roll your shoulder opposite the line of flight, placing the barrels flat on the line to match the target's angle, to avoid shooting low and behind.\n\nThe one-eyed shooter experiences the most difficulty with the direct-driven target. He loses the target behind the barrel, causing the gun to stop and miss. If the target is high enough and allows enough time, shoot it as a crosser. Be sure to turn onto the line so the gun is being _pulled_ _into_ the face, not _pushed_ _away_ (right to left for a right-hander).\n\n__\n\n____Incorrect_ _stance_ _will_ _check_ _your_ _swing_ _dropping_ _your_ _shoulder_ _and_ _coming_ _off_ _the_ _line_ _('windscreen_ _wiping')__\n\n__\n\n__\n\nSome shooters swing alongside the target, applying the lead before swerving onto the line as the shot is taken, in the same manner as overtaking a car on the motorway. Others learn to keep the gun moving even when the barrel has blocked the target from sight. The great strength of the Swing-Through technique is, the target is always in view until the move is made to shoot.\n\n##### **_Low_** __ _Driven,_ _Passing_ _Overhead_\n\nThe first in a pair of low driven targets needs to be taken well out in front. Its low trajectory and angle to the Station do not give you time to shoot both in the optimum position overhead. The first target needs to be attacked and Swing-Through is the method of choice. Insert on the back edge of the clay and brush through it. As the target is obscured, fire and follow through, continuing the move to the second target which will be shot overhead.\n\nDriven targets create a tendency to lift your head to keep eye contact with the target especially if it gets obscured by the barrels. Moving the head and leaving the gun behind is a miss behind! Accentuate keeping your head firmly 'spot-welded' to the stock on incomers and always take the straight bird first.\n\n##### _Stalling_ **_Incomer,_** __ _Falling_ _Short_ _of_ _the_ _Firing_ **_Line_**\n\nThe target that stalls short of the firing line is slowing and falling and it therefore needs lead in two planes.\n\nWherever the presentation allows, be bold! Take the target while it is still under power and maintaining a steady flight line. Do not rush, have patience, time the shot to break the target just before or at the peak of its flight. A low gun hold will prevent mounting the gun too soon and tracking the target, which leads to aiming.\n\nWhen the target can only be shot on its descent, you need a different approach. Read the target, visualise the line and flight in regard to its falling trajectory. Use the clock technique, determine the numeral the target enters by (i.e., two o'clock), and the numeral it leaves by (i.e., seven o'clock). From this, establish a juxtaposition of the barrel-to-target relationship; figure what the lead should be below and in front, taking into account that the farther a target falls, the faster it falls. When the target is accelerating, never let it drop beneath your barrels! Maintained Lead is the technique, keeping the target in view and gun movement to a minimum.\n\nAs always, when presented with true pairs, take the bird that is falling quickest or being lost behind obstacles or background first. If timing allows, take the rear target first to enable you to swing smoothly onto the second target.\n\nFloating targets are often missed behind. Because of the illusion of target pace, they look slow, so you swing slowly. But a forty-yard slow target still needs a considerable amount lead, and really, not much less than a fast one.\n\n#### Rabbits\n\nThe only predictable thing about the rabbit target is their unpredictability. No two targets are the same. As the target is bowled along the ground, every stone, dip and hollow has an impact on its course and trajectory, causing it to move and bounce this way and that. This erratic behaviour is further compounded by debris left from successfully broken targets and the shot string as it tears up the target's path.\n\nThe targets scurry along, bouncing and bobbing against the solid background, creating an optical illusion of speed. Rabbits look much quicker than they really are. As a result, they are often missed in front. A second optical illusion occurs when the slap of the shot on the ground is misinterpreted as a miss behind. The rabbit rolls over the bouncing shot, making it look like more lead needs to be applied, causing a miss in front.\n\nA Sporting shotgun is set up to shoot sixty per cent above and forty per cent below the horizontal of the rib. If you shoot at the body of the target, two-thirds of your shot load is wasted. Keep the clay rabbit sitting on the rib of the gun! This way, you strike the target with the majority of the pattern, with the added benefit that the lower third strikes the ground, ricocheting up, lifting debris into the pattern, and helping to break the target.\n\nTo take this shot, the muzzles must be kept under the target line, keeping the target in view at all times. This means you can break the target on the ground or, if it bounces, a simple lift of the muzzles will allow it to be broken in the air. Do not anticipate a bounce that may not happen, however, make best use of a bounce when it does occur. This is the point at which the rabbit is most predictable and vulnerable.\n\nWhen a rabbit target is presented beneath your feet, accentuate the hold beneath the line. With any target thrown beneath your feet, there is a tendency to miss over it; the reverse of the tendency shooters have to miss below on a high target.\n\nImagine the target is a real rabbit. Adopt a low gun mount where the muzzle, eye and line-of-run are one. As the rabbit appears, extend your leading hand and place the barrels on its 'feet'. Pull away to the 'front paw' as it stretches in its run, and fire without hesitation! On a left-to-right rabbit, imagine it is in the centre of the clock. Your muzzles should be at four o'clock.\n\nPull-Away or Swing-Through are the techniques for rabbit targets. They don't need much lead, but if the presentation is at thirty yards or more, take it late. Where the rabbit is slowing down, it will be more predictable. Just remember to expect the unexpected and shoot every rabbit as a single and individual target.\n\n#### Battues\n\nThe secret to consistency with the battue is to remember that they fly faster by half than a standard target. It is the failure to recognise or acknowledge their speed that causes battues to be missed behind.\n\nThis speed is most apparent in the first half of their flight. The slim profile and extra speed makes them hard to see, hard to hit and hard to break. Edge-on, they are so thin they can slip through the shot pattern. However, as they slow, their poor aerodynamics and unstable flight cause them to roll over, presenting their full face to the gun. At this point they are easy to see, easy to hit and easy to break.\n\nWhile the standard target is shot at the mid point of its flight, the battue is shot later, during the roll and presentation of its face. But once this roll has occurred, the target accelerates into its descent, requiring lead in two planes \u2013 in front and under.\n\nOnce again, visualise the target in the centre of a clock and see what time it entered. If it came in at eleven o'clock and will leave at five o'clock, this will give you a sense of how far in front and below you need to be. The technique to use is Pull-Away \u2013 the momentary contact of muzzle and target will account for any deviation in the target's flight path.\n\nBecause of their shape and light weight, battues are very susceptible to wind and are easily blown off course. A looping, wind-blown battue is not flying on a consistent line and Swing-Through won't work. Remember, the battue is much faster than the standard target. What you would consider the correct amount of lead on a standard, on a battue, you need to add half again as much. Battues are easily broken, and cylinder or Skeet chokes with No. 9 shot is the best combination.\n\nThe analysis of lead and technique for battues applies equally to chondels and loopers, but they do not have the speed or flight characteristics of the battue. They show their full face to the gun throughout their flight, so the break point can be established sooner.\n\n#### **Rockets**\n\nRockets are a rarely encountered target. They are the same size as a standard, but with a shallower dome of solid construction. Its denser, slimmer profile gives a rocket increased velocity. This is sustained for considerably longer than a standard, but it slows and drops quickly at the end of its flight. The slim profile creates the optical illusion that it is further away and flying more slowly than it really is. A competitor who has never encountered this type of target before can be forgiven for missing behind.\n\n_Rockets are easily mistaken for standard targets and missed consistently behind_\n\nRockets are easily mistaken for a standard target and missed even further behind. If there is ever any doubt as to the type of target being thrown, consult the referee. He will be more than pleased to advise you on the size and type of target being presented. This information is often displayed at the stand or in the course layout.\n\nOnce you know the target is a rocket, you can properly prepare to come to terms with it. Its extra speed means adjusting your gun and visual holds to match. Maintained Lead is the best technique for shooting the rocket and it must be exactly that. At no point can you allow the target to close the gap between itself and the gun.\n\nThe amount of lead will be more than you would expect because of this target's increased speed and illusion of slowness. Be prepared to add half again as much as you think might be correct. This target is rarely missed in front and needs to be attacked. Use No. 7\u00bd __ shot, with a degree more choke than you would for a standard at the same distance.\n\n#### Crossing Targets\n\nI consider the crossing presentation to be the most straightforward of all the Sporting Clays targets. It is easy to read and any technique can be used to break it. The ninety degree angle created by the axis of the target line and the shot string readily indicates that it will require lead, how much depends on how far and how fast it is thrown.\n\n_Learning_ _to_ _judge_ _target_ _distance_ _against_ _all_ _backgrounds_ _is_ _an_ _essential_ _skill_ _to_ _mastering_ _the_ _long_ _crossing_ _shot_\n\nDistance judgement is a valuable tool in the competitor's tool box. The correct 'guesstimate' of a target's range dictates technique, choke and cartridge choice, as well as which lead and how much to apply. The ability to analyse distances is a learned skill. One way to sharpen this skill is, when out walking, pick out a marker \u2013 a tree, lamppost, whatever \u2013 then walk towards it, mentally counting off the paces. You will learn quickly to judge accurately distances of target presentations. This will allow you to make the first analysis: how far away the target is at the optimum break point.\n\nHow fast the crosser is flying is ascertained from previous experience, target type and presentation, whether it is it edge-on or showing some dome, and the quality of your 'on-board computer'. This will tell you how fast the target is and, factoring in the distance, should give you a good idea of the lead required.\n\nA close target can be broken by gun speed alone and here the Swing-Through technique would work well. But a target at a distance will need visible lead and Pull-Away would work better.\n\nThe amount of time available on long crossers offers many choices as to where to pull the trigger and it can be difficult for beginners and experienced shots alike to get this timing right. This choice of lead can be further complicated by the target's direction. A right-to-left presentation will always be an easier shot for a right hander, with less lead required than the same target going left-to-right. When the target is travelling _with_ the natural swing rotation, the leading hand is pulling the gun to the left, keeping the gun in the face and ensuring the correct head and eye position on the stock.\n\nWhen a target is going to the right, against the right-hander's natural rotation, the gun is being pushed off the face. Pushing the gun is far less efficient than pulling it, like having a horse push a cart from behind, rather than pulling it from the front. This means that, for the right hander, left-to-right targets require more lead than right-to-left targets.\n\nWhen it comes to distance, what works at 25 yards will not work past 35 yards. To consistently break the long shots, everything has to be that little bit tighter, sharper and more focused. You can be off-line or miss-time your swing at closer targets and the shot string might 'save your bacon', but you will not get away with it at a distance. The need to see daylight between the target and the gun can cause a shooter to 'measure', looking from the muzzle to the target, trying to get the right amount of lead. This results in slowing or stopping the gun. Instead, hard focus on the target, keeping the barrels in your peripheral vision.\n\nProper address to the break point is essential. If you run out of rotation and shift your weight from one foot to the other, your shoulder will drop in the direction of rotation and you will 'windscreen wipe' the muzzles off the target line. The correct address and the Pull-Away technique will let you turn the target's flight and direction into your line and swing. This process starts with the eyes guiding the hands moving to the target, establishing the lead and making the shot without pause or hesitation.\n\nLong crossers require half-choke or more, with No. 7\u00bd __ shot. Just remember that you miss in feet and choke only gives you inches. Finding and holding the target line is the secret to breaking long crossers.\n\n#### Quartering Targets\n\nTargets that are neither crossing nor straight are referred to as quartering. This term covers many target presentations and the majority of targets in a competition could be placed in the quartering category. The amount of lead required on these targets can be difficult to recognise and careful assessment is required.\n\nThe quartering target can create optical illusions. For example, you read the target and assess the holds and break point. Where you visually pick up the target, the flight line tells you it's a crosser. Then as the shot develops, at the break point its angle has changed to a going-away target. But you are already committed to the lead and miss in front. Vice versa, the target that visually sets off as a straight-away shot is actually crossing at the break point. This would require more lead than you planned for and the result is a miss behind.\n\nProblems with quartering targets are caused by several factors: distance and angles, both in elevation and to the shooting station, as well as speed and size. They are particularly hard to read for beginners and average shots who tend to overestimate the required lead, have too much gun movement and take the target too late in its flight.\n\nThe quartering target requires little gun movement. The farther away, the less the gun should move. The angle created by the shot string and the target is very acute and requires hardly any lead. Unlike the crossing or driven target, the required lead by the quartering target does not significantly increase with distance.\n\nThe gun hold should be moved further along the line towards the break point to help control and minimise gun movement and the target should be taken as soon as reactions will allow. 'To wait is to miss' on the quartering target.\n\nChokes should be appropriate to distance and, combined with No. 7\u00bd __ shot, will give you the edge on quartering targets every time.\n\n#### Teal\n\nFirst, as always, read the target. Observe it not only from the front, but from the side, whenever possible, to establish if it is flying straight or at an angle. A true vertical teal will require lead in exactly the same way a driven or crossing bird does.\n\nThe only technique to use on a teal is Swing-Through, which allows the target to be kept in view while the shot is taken. The gun hold is half to two-thirds of the way along the target flight line; your visual hold is at the side of the barrels. Hold just to the right side of the target (for the right hander). As you watch the target roll up the side of the barrel, you time your move to it, and when the target comes on to the end of your barrel, you smoothly swing through the line, pulling the trigger just as your muzzles cover the target...like knocking an imaginary hat off the target.\n\n_More_ _dome,_ _more_ _lead._ _Full_ _face_ _on_ _means_ _obscuring_ _the_ _target_ _behind_ _the_ _barrels_\n\nThe most common fault in shooting teal is adopting too low a gun hold, some shooters even hold on the trap house. At this hold point, the target streaks past your barrel, your subconscious kicks in and you chase after it in a rushed swing, with little control. Then the fast-moving gun catches and passes the now slowing target, the swing doesn't match the target speed and the shot powers past the target, missing above.\n\nThe too-low gun hold also causes head-lifting which compounds the missing-over-the-target problem. A too-high gun hold is equally bad, resulting in poking or stabbing and missing below.\n\nWith edge-on targets, establish angle and line of flight, but also consider the amount of the clay you can see. The more rim the less lead it will require \u2013 it becomes, in effect, a trap bird \u2013 and you can shoot directly at it and through it. The gun hold and technique remain the same as with a face-on target.\n\nAvoid the dropping target! Wherever possible, shoot it on the rise or just as it peaks The dropping target is badly affected by wind and is accelerating and falling much quicker than it appears. The dropping target causes aiming and stopping the gun or 'spot-shooting' and should be avoided.\n\nWith true pairs, take the first target under power, firing as you blot it out, passing through it and smoothly moving to the second target, shooting its bottom edge just as it peaks. Once again, consider obstructions and think about which target will fall first. Where smaller targets are used, especially the midi, more lead is required than with the standard. Look out for combination pairs, like standards and rockets.\n\nEdge-on targets need half choke and No. 7\u00bd __ shot. With face-on teal, choke should be Skeet and No. 8 or 9 shot. You will need to adjust choke and cartridge combinations to match target distances.\n\n#### Below the Feet\n\nMany targets are thrown beneath your feet. These presentations require some changes to the basic set up to counter the tendency to miss over low targets. The best way to tackle a low target is to transfer more weight to the leading leg and bend forward from the hips. This will help keep the barrels under the line of the target, particularly on the crossing target, where the miss over the top is most pronounced. With the low, going-away target, the tendency to shoot high works to your advantage, building in lead on that shot.\n\n#### Head Movement\n\nTaking targets at different elevations can cause the head to move on the stock. If the target is high, the head tends to move forward. If the target is low, the head will inch back. The comb of the stock should, ideally, be parallel for about an inch at the face to allow for this movement. This will maintain the correct eye-rib alignment.\n\n_Summary_\n\n  1. Start your shooting movement with the leading hand.\n  2. Keep your head still.\n  3. Keep your eye on the target.\n  4. Move to your own timing and pace.\n\n### Take Time Out to Sharpen Your 'Axe'\n\nUnless there is a system to your practice, you will fail to improve your skills and cause more harm than good. Practice can become mind-numbingly boring and end up a waste of time, money and energy.\n\nTime spent working on the basics at home, however, is never wasted. Gun mounting and swinging drills are a must, and visual and mental rehearsals are also good practice techniques that can be honed at home. A combination of practices works to establish and reinforce muscle strength and memory. I like to practise using a small maglite inserted in the barrel of the gun. Used as a pointer, the beam is a visual reference and check. You can practise and perfect your gun mount and swing by using the maglite's beam to trace along the join of wall and ceiling as if it were a target's flight path.\n\nWhen it comes to live firing on the range, most shots consider practice to be simply shooting a fifty or a hundred bird round at their local club. The local club is where the bulk of their shooting takes place and they are familiar with the target presentations as the targets change very little visit to visit. Regardless of how they are shooting, they will top this off with a round of Skeet or 5-stand, perhaps even a second go-round the course. In effect, all they are achieving by this is subjecting themselves to a large dose of recoil with little, if any, learning content or improvement. Let me qualify this by saying that if you are going out to shoot for the enjoyment of it, then that is fine! After all, shooting is a hobby and you _should_ do it simply for the pleasure it gives you. However, please do not confuse shooting round after round with meaningful practice.\n\nThere are three accepted practice formats for you to consider.\n\n##### _The_ **_Basic_** __ _Score_ _Builder_\n\n1. Choose a particular target \u2013 it can be anything you like \u2013 a rabbit, teal, incomer or crosser.\n\n2. Address the target some 20 yards away and attempt to break it half a dozen times straight.\n\n3. If successful, move back 5 yards and carry out the same exercise.\n\n4. With success, add an extra 5 yards and continue to push the envelope of your shooting until you fail to shoot five in a row.\n\n5. If you should miss at any time, you have to start over at the 20 yard mark.\n\nThis drill teaches you to focus and concentrate on every shot. It is particularly effective when practised with a friend where a wager can introduce some pressure to your practice.\n\nThe full use of a skeet or trap field is perfect for this and one or two boxes of shells are a perfect number to practise with. The emphasis should be on crushing one bird at a time back to the 40 yard mark\n\n##### _The_ _Intermediate_ _Score_ _Builder_\n\n1. Once again select a suitable target, preferably one that you struggle with, let's say a rabbit directly crossing at about 25 to 30 yards. First, just shoot it in your usual style.\n\n2. When you are breaking half a dozen straight consistently, you should attempt to shoot the target with a different technique. If you are a Swing-Through shooter, try Pull-Away, if a Maintained Lead shot, then, Swing-Through.\n\nYou should be prepared to miss when you first attempt this. However, with practice over a few weeks, you will soon be able to tackle any target presentation with the best technique for a better score. This improved flexibility in your shooting will gain you extra targets.\n\nOnce again, one or two boxes of shells are all that is required once a week and the skeet range is great for this kind of shooting skills practice. I do not know of any top shooter who, when called on to do so by the target presentation, cannot shoot all three of the techniques, regardless of his chosen favourite. They read the targets, choose the technique and, as if changing gears, apply it.\n\nI would like to comment that _the_ _only_ _difference_ _in_ _technique_ _is_ _where_ _the_ _gun_ _muzzle_ _is_ _inserted_ _on_ _the_ _target._ Insert behind, and you will shoot Swing-Through, on it and you will shoot Pull-Away, in front and the result will be Maintained Lead. The basics are the same, regardless of technique chosen.\n\n##### _The_ _Advanced_ _Score_ _Builder:_ _The_ _Winning_ **_Edge_**\n\n1. Choke up! Yes, in your practice put full choke in both barrels. If you do not have full, then use the tightest choke available to you.\n\n2. Now you can shoot the hundred birder at your local course, a round of Skeet or 5-Stand and get some real benefit from it. Don't think about the distance from a target, be it 15 or 50 yards, just trust your ability.\n\n3. Don't rely on the mechanical safety net of open chokes. Don't fall into the trap of thinking how tight your pattern is; just shoot your normal game.\n\nLearn to trust your hand and eye co-ordination. Remember, _the_ _best_ _shots_ _in_ _the_ _world_ _shoot_ _tight_ _chokes_ _on_ _every_ _target._ This practice develops a belief in your own ability and gives you more confidence.\n\nOnce you have established a good foundation of the basics, good shooting is really a game of confidence. Even though your scores will suffer at first, the sight of clays being reduced to balls of smoke will do wonders for your confidence, _especially_ _when_ _you_ _open_ _your_ _chokes_ _back_ _up_ _for_ _your_ _next_ _competition!_\n\nIf you want to improve your shooting, you really do need to put some time into the dry mounting drills at home and give one of these three practices a try. What have you got to lose?\n\nI would like to recount a short story that might put practice into perspective. Every year in Canada there is the lumberjack tree-felling championships. The contestants enter the forest with nothing but an axe and, for over six hours, attempt to fell more trees than their competitors. The sponsorship within the industry is great and the prizes attract entrants from all over the world, in just the same manner as Sporting Clays.\n\nA whistle is blown to start the event and, once again, after six hours, to end it. On this occasion, the whistle blew and the contestants thundered into the forest and the thunk of metal on wood reverberated throughout the woods.\n\nThe judges were most surprised when, after an hour or so, one of the lumberjacks, Henry, emerged from the woods and sat down. His fellow competitors continued to chop away furiously. After ten minutes, the lumberjack arose and re-entered the woods. This anomaly continued to happen every hour on the hour throughout the day.\n\nWhen the six hours were up, the whistle was blown. The judges marked and counted the fallen timber and the contestants waited in a huddled group for the results. When the winner was announced, there was a stunned silence, both on the part of the judges and the contestants.\n\nThe winner was Henry! None other than the lumberjack who, throughout the day, insisted on taking ten-minute rests, every hour on the hour. The judges congratulated him, but felt duty-bound to ask how it was that he had won, even though he had rested for sixty minutes, in effect, only chopping wood for five hours instead of six, while the others kept on chopping.\n\nWhat had he been doing during those ten-minute breaks?\n\nHis reply was simple, 'I was sharpening my axe'.\n\nPractice is simply that: sharpening your skills and abilities to break more targets than your competitors.\n\nChapter 11\n\n# Simplifying Skeet\n\n## Skeet\n\nThe game of Skeet is one of the big three of Trap, Skeet and Sporting Clays. It began as practice for wing shooting and quickly evolved into one of the most popular disciplines. Shot worldwide, there are three distinct versions: English, American and Olympic. Once again, each discipline could fill a book in its own right so I have chosen to concentrate on the English version.\n\nEnglish Skeet is very close to the American discipline. The only exception is in the American version the pair on station four is replaced by shooting two singles on station eight. All other aspects of the field set-up and the game are the same.\n\nSkeet challenges the competitor with its great variety of target speed, angle and distance. Though the target's flight path and distance are constants, the progression through the shooting positions from stations one to seven constantly changes the competitor's angle to and perception of the target. Therefore a systematic approach to learning the fundamentals of Skeet is required. You learn your address to the target, your gun and visual holds together with the correct break points and lead pictures. This approach will enable you to shoot straight with greater success.\n\n### **Range**\n\nWhere possible, a Skeet field should be built facing north-east, to keep the sun behind the competitors' backs. The field consists of two houses, each containing one trap. One trap is set low, three feet from the ground and one is set 10 feet high.\n\n_English Skeet_\n\nThere are seven stations, (eight in American Skeet) arranged around segments of a twenty-one-yard circle. The base chord between the houses is exactly 40 yards and 9 inches. The stations are three-feet square and place the shooter 22 yards from the centre position between the two houses.\n\nEach trap is set to throw a target 65 yards. At the centre point it must pass through a three-foot diameter hoop, placed at the centre point between the two houses, 15 feet above the ground.\n\n_Olympic_ __ _Skeet_\n\n_American_ _Skeet_\n\n### **The Skeet** **Gun**\n\nThe best choice would be either an over and under or a semi-automatic, with a barrel length of 28 to 32 inches. It should weigh about 7\u00bd __ to 8 lbs. Because of the great variety of angles and distances shot in the game, the Skeet gun must have a combination of liveliness and steadiness, aiding a smooth swing. But it should not be so lively that it causes loss of control.\n\nThe weight should be well-balanced, with the moment of inertia between the hands for swift handling but dependable control. There are several pairs in a round of Skeet and second-phase recoil control is a must for good second barrel acquisition. A recoil pad and the weight of the gun should combine to achieve this. Trigger pulls should be crisp with no drag and set at 3\u00bd and 4 lbs.\n\nWith the exception of the Olympic discipline, a 'Sporting' shotgun with open chokes is perfect for Skeet. The sixty per cent above\/forty per cent below sight picture allows the target to be kept in view throughout the shot but places its pattern exactly where the eye is looking.\n\n### **Chokes and Cartridges**\n\nThough some top performers opt to use tighter chokes, an ideal Skeet gun should be choked Skeet 2 (eight thou) or Improved Cylinder (ten thou) in both barrels. If the gun is to be used solely for Skeet, there is little point in fitting it with a multi-choke system, though most new guns are set up that way. Fixed chokes, properly regulated and combined with lengthened and polished forcing cones, not only improve patterns but control and reduce recoil.\n\n### **Rules**\n\nIn Skeet, targets are released in a combination of singles and doubles from the High and Low trap houses on fixed trajectories and speeds. The targets add up to a total of twenty-five per round.\n\nSquads made up of five competitors shoot in order at the seven Stations in the following sequence.\n\n**Station one** Two singles high\/low and a double, High house first.\n\n**Station two** Two singles high\/low and a double, High house first.\n\n**Station three** Two singles high\/low.\n\n**Station four** Two singles high\/low and a double, with the competitor nominating which target he intends to take first. (In American Skeet there are only the two singles at station four with two singles shot at station eight instead.)\n\n**Station** **five** Two singles high\/low.\n\n**Station** **six** Two singles high\/low and a double, Low house first.\n\n**Station seven** Two singles low\/high and a double, Low house first.\n\nThe first single target shot on stations one through six will be the target from the High house, but on station seven, for safety reasons, the, Low house is shot first.\n\nThe first target shot in the doubles on stations one and two will be the High house and on stations six and seven, it will be the Low house target. On station four, the competitor nominates the target he will shoot first.\n\nEvery shooter will complete his shooting on each stand before leaving that stand. No one in the squad moves to the next stand before all those on the squad have completed the sequence on that stand.\n\nThe target or targets should be launched the instant they are called for.\n\nIf you hit every target in the round on stations one through seven, you have an 'option' \u2013 a single target shot from either the Low or the High house. Otherwise, the first target missed will be repeated and the outcome will be recorded as the twenty-fifth shot.\n\nTwo shells must be loaded for the singles on every station, with the exception of the 'option'.\n\nGun mount is optional in the UK. Many competitors shoot both Sporting Clays and Skeet, so there is a mixture of pre-mounted and gun down approaches to the targets, while in the USA most shoot with a pre-mounted gun.\n\n### **Fundamentals**\n\nFeet and failure both begin with an F! Your set-up governs your swing. Poor foot position creates an imbalance and impairs your ability to pivot through the target break point, without slowing or stopping. When the feet are truly misaligned to the target break point, you create sway and that transfer of weight results in dropping the shoulder, rolling the muzzles off the line and eradicates a smooth swing and follow-through.\n\n_Correct_ \u2013 _foot_ _position_ _for_ _the_ _right-handed_ __ _shot_ _would_ _mean_ __ _the_ _belt_ __ _buckle_ _facing_ _into_ _the_ _low_ __ _house_ _window_\n\nThe correct position is as follows: stand in the front and centre of the station. Address the break point of the clay, by pointing your belt buckle towards it. With your feet shoulder-width apart, take a quarter turn to the right.\n\nYou will find your gun pointed at the intended target break point and you will feel relaxed and comfortable. Picture an imaginary line running directly from the station to the break-point of the target. If your feet are correctly positioned, this line would pass through the heel of your rear foot and the big toe of your front foot out to the break point.\n\nYou will find this position promotes smoothness and consistency in your swing, and more targets will be broken. Another excellent rule of thumb is when you have adopted this address position to the target on stations one through six, your belt buckle will be pointing into the Low House window for the right-handed shooter and vice versa for the left-handed.\n\n_The correct posture, stance and head position ensures a good gun mount_\n\n### **Posture**\n\nThe correct posture should begin with your weight evenly distributed between your feet. Upon completion of your gun mount, whether pre-mounted or gun down, seventy per cent of your weight should be on the ball of your front foot. This balance promotes good head position, and enables you to make good forward movement towards the target. Positive aggression is needed in attacking the targets, particularly the doubles, which need a very positive approach. Other benefits of correct posture are improved rotation (pivot) over the front foot and assistance in keeping the head firmly on the stock.\n\n### **Gun** **Holds**\n\nThe tried and trusted formulas for breaking clays apply to your gun holds as well. You must watch the target to ascertain its transition point, when it changes from a blur to a solid object. This becomes your gun hold.\n\nIn Skeet, this transition point occurs one third of the way from the trap house towards the centre peg. Because of variations in our personal visual acuity and reaction times, individual adjustments will need to be made to this generic hold-point.\n\nTake two stacks of fifteen to twenty clays and place them on the target flight line, each positioned one third of the way from the Trap houses towards the centre peg. By reference to the stacks of clays, you can establish the correct gun hold. You will soon make adjustments, learning your personal gun hold for each Station. Remember, your muzzles should be just under the line of flight for every target so that the clay can be better seen.\n\n### **Visual Holds**\n\nThe correct visual hold should be halfway between the muzzles and the Trap house. The eyes should be relaxed and holding a soft focus. Some individual experimentation is required to find your exact visual holds. Your eyes should achieve hard focus just as the target reaches the muzzles at the gun hold, making a seamless hand-eye connection to the target.\n\n_Hold_ _points_ __\n\n___Place_ _two_ _stacks_ _of_ _15_ \u2013 _20_ __ _clays_ _on_ _the_ _target_ _flight_ _line,_ _positioned_ _one-third_ __ _of_ _the_ _way_ _from_ _the_ _trap_ _house_ _towards_ _the_ _centre_ _peg___\n\n__\n\n_Place_ _two_ _stacks_ _of_ _15_ \u2013 _20_ __ _clays_ _on_ _the_ _target_ _flight_ _line,_ _positioned_ _one-third_ __ _of_ _the_ _way_ _from_ _the_ _trap_ _house_ _towards_ _the_ _centre_ _peg_\n\nBeware of looking directly into the Trap house window! The eyes seem to be magically drawn to the window, but focussing there will cause the target to blur past your visual hold, you will jump at the target, rushing and shooting too soon. Avoid this 'poke and hope' technique!\n\n_Place a stack of 15\u201320 clays on the centre point of the target's flight path. Then place two more stacks 40 inches on either side of the first stack, also on the target's flight path_\n\n### **Lead**\n\nEven though the target trajectories and distances in Skeet are constant, the angle to the shooter changes constantly as the squad progresses around the stations. Angle, more than any other aspect of the target presentation, dramatically changes our perception of lead.\n\nFor example, shooting the Low house from station three, you will need to give the target three to four-and-a-half feet of forward allowance. Now go to station seven and shoot the Low house. Here you will shoot directly at the target with no lead at all.\n\nLead, or forward allowance, is a very personal perception. One man's two feet is another man's four feet. Attempts have been made to lay down computed measurements of lead for Skeet, but there are so many variables: the technique used, the weight of the gun, the speed of swing, is the shooter left or right-handed, an individual's perception of lead \u2013 all require that each person learn and understand his own personal lead pictures.\n\nThe accepted leads for starting out at Skeet are as follows:\n\n**Station one:** High house\u20130 lead, Low house\u2013l foot of lead\n\n**Station two** **:** High house\u20130 lead, Low house\u2013l to 1\u00bd __ feet of lead\n\n**Station three** **:** High house\u20133 to 4\u00bd __ feet of lead, Low house\u20133 to 4\u00bd __ feet of lead\n\n**Station four** **:** High house\u20133 to 4\u00bd feet of lead, Low house\u20133 to 4\u00bd __ feet of lead\n\n**Station** **five:** High house\u20133 to 4\u00bd __ feet of lead, Low house\u20133 to 4\u00bd __ feet lead\n\n**Station** **six:** High house\u2013l foot of lead, Low house\u20130 lead\n\n**Station seven** **:** High house\u20134 to 8 inches of lead, Low house\u20130 lead\n\n(In American Skeet **Station eight** **:** High house\u20130 lead, Low house\u20130 lead)\n\nA quick and easy way to learn the lead pictures is to places a stack of fifteen to twenty clay targets on the centre point of the target's flight path. Then place two more stacks three feet, four inches to either side of the first stack along the target flight lines.\n\nWhen practising on each station, you can reference these stacks of targets to get a visual awareness of what the approximate lead pictures should be. The lead for the Low house targets is the space between the centre stack and the stack on the Low house side of the field. The High house lead is the space between the centre stack and the stack on the High house side of the field.\n\n### **Practical Skeet Practice**\n\nThe first rule of successful Skeet shooting is to shoot the singles where you would shoot the doubles. This way, you only need to learn how to shoot fourteen targets, not twenty-five.\n\nBegin at Station one and systematically shoot all of the incomers through Station seven, using the markers for your hold points and lead pictures. Do not move to the next station until you can shoot five straight.\n\nConcentrate on being smooth and seeing the target clearly before moving. It may take several sessions before you can consistently break all of the soft targets. Do not rush, but concentrate on good fundamentals and building up your bank of lead pictures. When you have mastered the incomers, replicate the whole process with the going-away targets.\n\nIf you have applied the first rule, shooting the singles where you would the doubles, you will be in good shape to progress to the doubles.\n\nThe doubles create pressure and it is easy to lose the smoothness you have worked so hard to achieve with the singles. So when you first begin, shoot the doubles on report, i.e., instead of a true pair thrown simultaneously, the second target is released on the report of the first shot.\n\nWith practice, this delay can be gradually shortened until you are shooting a true pair. This method of practice encourages a smooth and successful progression from the singles to the doubles.\n\nStart practising the doubles on station seven and station one. Then, as you succeed, move to stations two and six, then to stations three and five, and finally, to station four. This will take several sessions, so be patient. If you struggle with the pairs, consider the following solutions:\n\n  1. Good balance is essential\u2013if you start right you will finish right.\n  2. The doubles present widely-angled targets...do not favour one target over another! Too much movement in one direction and there's no time to recover to shoot the second, more difficult target. \n  3. Be smooth: do not rush the first shot. On or just past the centre peg is the optimum place to take the target.\n  4. Create time by moving smoothly; remember _rushing_ _ruins_ _rhythm._ Do not 'poke and hope' at the second target. Make time to shoot it correctly. \n  5. Where the first target is taken impacts directly on the outcome of the second. If all of the above do not help, then experiment with taking the first target at different places.\n\nThe hard targets require accentuated concentration; this is where shooting straight happens. Here are a few tips and tricks that can help with the hard targets.\n\n#### _Station_ _one_\n\nThe High house can create difficulties, and there is nothing worse than missing the first bird at the beginning of a competition.\n\nCreate better visual pick up and time on this target by moving to the back of the station. By stepping back, you effectively see the bird three feet sooner! The gun hold should be just under the target line and a gentle push of the barrels into the departing target will see it broken over the centre peg.\n\nAvoid the common mistake of holding high and allowing the bird to pass and disappear behind your barrels! This can cause you to slash down blindly to catch up, with a reflexive 'poke and hope', when it suddenly reappears.\n\n_Create_ _better_ _visual_ _pick_ _up_ _at_ _High_ _house_ _station_ _one_ _by_ _moving_ _to_ _the_ _back_ _of_ _the_ _station_\n\n_______By_ _standing_ _at_ _the_ _front_ _of_ _the_ _station,_ _you_ _see_ _the_ _target_ _three_ _feet_ _later___ __\n\n#### _Station_ _two_\n\nThe High house. Moving to the left back corner on this station will also give you more time and a better view of the target. This target screams 'crosser' at the pick-up point, but by the time the shot is taken, it has turned into a straight away!\n\nMove your gun hold out a foot from the marker towards the centre peg and adjust your visual hold likewise. Also, you will find that this combination will work well if you just 'see bird-shoot bird'. A smooth swing _to_ and _through_ the target works every time on High house two.\n\n_Like_ _High_ _house_ _station_ _one,_ _moving_ _to_ _the_ _back_ _corner_ _of_ _High_ _house_ _station_ _two_ _will_ _give_ _you_ _more_ _time_ _and_ _a_ _better_ _view_ _of_ _the_ _target._\n\n#### _Stations_ _three,_ _four_ _and_ **_five_**\n\nThe lead required is the same for all three stations. Remember, if you are right-handed, the perceived lead on the High house targets is half again as much as on the Low house and vice versa for the left-handed. This is because the target is going _against_ or _away_ _from_ the direction of your natural swing rotation. The stock is, in effect, being pushed _off_ __ your face and your left hand is pushing instead of _pulling_ the gun.\n\n#### _Station_ _four_\n\nThe first target of the pair is nominated and can be shot in any order. However, there is a distinct advantage to shooting the High house target first.\n\nThe Low house target crosses the centre peg at the same height as the High house target. But then it flattens out and holds that line far better than the High target, offering a more constant second shot. If the wind is blowing or gusting, you may need to take the targets in reverse order. Shooting this pair in reverse order should be a part of your practice routine.\n\n#### _Station_ **_six_**\n\nThe Low house creates problems for some and is easily tamed if you adopt a gun hold ninety degrees to the base cord, flat on the line of the target. Do not look back for the target, but soft focus directly out past the gun to the target flight line. You will find that the bird will come into sharp focus as it passes the barrel and you will naturally pick it up and, with a smooth swing, shoot it in the same manner as the High house on station two.\n\n#### _Station_ _eight_\n\nFor the American Skeet shooter. Place the muzzles into the window of the Trap house. Point to the right side of the window and then to the top right hand corner, now move to the corner of the Trap house level with the top of the window.\n\nSoft focus on the left side of the barrels and call for the target. Once again, 'see bird\u2013shoot bird'. The lead is inches and your quick reaction to the speed of the target will create the lead, if hard visual contact is maintained throughout the shot. The Low house is shot with the same set up and technique.\n\n### **Leading Techniques**\n\nThough Maintained Lead is the method of choice in much of Skeet, the second target of the doubles is shot using the Swing-Through method.\n\n#### **Shifting Positions**\n\nMany people like to adopt one foot position for the High house target and another for the Low house. Consider that by constantly changing your feet, you are introducing several variables to gun and visual holds, as well as different swing timing and characteristics.\n\nWhen you shoot the doubles, you do not change stance for the different targets, it is far better to adopt a single, well-balanced stance which works well for both the singles and the doubles. This eliminates unnecessary cluttering of lead pictures and swing timing.\n\n#### **Consistency Counts**\n\nSkeet is a game of consistency. It requires great mental discipline to shoot straight. Consistency must be combined with flawless technique. The only way to achieve this is through structured practice.\n\nYou will never get past the doubles on station four or the 'bogie bird' of station two High house, by just shooting round after round! Keep a shooting log and record your performance in competitions. Look for patterns in any misses that occur and work to rectify these in your practice.\n\nChapter 12\n\n# Touching On Trap\n\n## Trap\n\nTrap is the oldest of the Clay Shooting disciplines, the historical aspects of which are covered in Chapter One. There are many Trap shooting games, but the most popular is Down the Line, the one I will be describing in this Chapter.\n\nIn the USA, Single Barrel, Handicap, Back-up, Double Rise, Automatic Ball or Wobble Trap are some of the other variations of the Trap games. Universal Trench and Olympic Trap are even more challenging and complex and if the reader is interested, the details of these other versions can be found in the books recommended in the Bibliography.\n\nThe popularity of Down the Line Trap is due, in no small part, to the fact that the inexperienced shooter can achieve some initial success rather rapidly yet there is enough of an on-going challenge for the experienced shot to keep him coming back for more.\n\n### **The Trap Range**\n\nDown the Line is shot over one trap machine that has a fixed elevation but random, constantly changing angles. The clay target is thrown away from the shooter and must travel between 50 and 55 yards. The height of the target is adjusted so that, at a distance of 10 yards from the trap, it will pass through a hoop at a height of between 8 and 10 feet.\n\n_Down the line range_\n\nThe angle at which the target is thrown, to the left and right of the shooter, is constantly changing and appears random and unpredictable. The maximum target angle is set at 22\u00bd degrees either side of the centre of the trap house. Shooting takes place from five stations, 3 feet by 3 feet square, placed in a semi-circle, 16 yards from the trap house.\n\n### **The Trap** **Gun**\n\nTrap is, without a doubt, shot at the quickest pace of all of the disciplines. As 100 cartridges are shot in swift succession, the ideal Trap gun should have enough weight to help absorb recoil. A gun weighing somewhere between 7\u00be and 8\u00be lbs is the accepted standard. It should also be well-balanced, with good handling and pointing capabilities.\n\nBecause the target is consistently rising and going away, another important requirement in a Trap gun is that it be conducive to smooth, controlled movements. The longer-barrelled guns, from 32 to 34 inches, deliver on this point. A minimum half-inch, file-cut rib, ventilated both top and centre, is the best choice for Trap.\n\nThe stock of the gun is designed to place the pattern high so the shooter can clearly see the target throughout the shot. Adjust the stock so the pattern shoots seventy per cent above and thirty per cent below, this builds in lead and eliminates the need to shoot above the fast-rising target. This set-up prevents the target from being blocked by the barrels as the shot is taken, a frequent cause of head-lifting.\n\nThe Trap gun should always have a full pistol grip and, often, a palm swell. A fully-rounded fore-end, with or without finger grooves, provides better control as well as heat protection for the leading hand. A quality recoil pad or recoil reduction system, capable of spreading and dissipating the effects of recoil, is a necessity. A crisp, well-regulated trigger pull, set around three-and-a-half to four pounds, completes the ideal Trap gun.\n\n### **Choke and Cartridge**\n\nThere is little requirement for multi-choking a Trap gun. The targets are shot at known, fixed distances, so this allows the shooter to take full advantage of the inherent certainty of the pattern produced by fixed chokes. Half (Modified) and three-quarters (Improved Modified) are my personal recommendation. The choke choice should be complemented by lengthened forcing cones (three inches), back-bored barrels and long lead-in tapered chokes.\n\nThe interaction of choke and cartridge requires serious consideration. I recommend that, once you have made a decision on the size of choke and a particular brand of cartridge, you take the time to pattern the combination at yardages you favour for your first and second barrels.\n\nWith regard to shot size, a combination of 8s in the first barrel and 7\u00bds __ in the second offer the best performance. A word on the care of cartridges: if you wish to obtain the best performance from them, store them at an ambient temperature of fifty-five to sixty-five degrees. If cartridges are allowed to get too cold, poor ignition and compression can result, causing reduced velocity. If allowed to get too hot, excessive pressures, increased recoil, more deformed pellets and inferior patterns can occur.\n\n### **Rules**\n\nA round of Trap consists of twenty-five shots, with groups of five shots taken from five shooting positions. A maximum of five people, or squad, shoot per round. Each shooter on the squad shoots five shots from each of the five shooting positions.\n\nThe shooters take turns shooting in order: the first shooter will shoot one shot...the second shooter takes their shot, etc. until all five shooters have shot five times at the first station. The shooters then rotate right to the next shooting position and repeat the process until all five stations have been shot. The gun is pre-mounted and the targets should be released immediately on the competitor's call.\n\nMost competitions consist of one hundred targets or four rounds. In the UK, two shots are allowed per station. A first barrel kill scores 3 points, a second barrel kill counts two. In the USA only one shot is allowed and a kill scores 1, a miss, 0.\n\n### **The Fundamentals**\n\n**Stance**\n\nPlacement of the feet in Trap is less complicated than in Sporting Clays and Skeet. First, there are only five stations and the target is always travelling away from the shooter. As a result, the range of body motion is greatly reduced, as very little rotation is required.\n\nAddressing the break point of the target doesn't work in Trap. Because of the random nature of the target, you don't know where the clay will be. So feet should be placed to favour the right hand target for the right-handed, left for the left-handed, while still permitting sufficient motion to cover the other angles presented.\n\nThe proper stance for the right-handed shooter is achieved by looking at the extreme left-hand angle boundary marker and visualising a line running straight from the marker, through the centre of the trap house and crossing the station. Place both toes, with feet shoulder-width apart, on this visualised line. This position will handle the hard right-angle target, while giving ample movement for the other angles.\n\nBecause of the changing angles on stations one through five, you will always be in a position to turn the hard right-hander into a straight-away shot.\n\n#### **Posture**\n\nYour weight should be evenly distributed between your feet, so that when the gun is pre-mounted and you adopt your gun hold position, there will a natural transference of weight over the front foot. This creates a natural head position, enabling you to swing the gun with your whole body and stay in the gun. In the exaggerated weight-forward, bent-knee position, you are forced to make the swing with your arms, where the tendency is to come out of the gun. The pre-mounted gun can cause the head to lower to the stock. This unnatural position creates tension, so when the shot is taken, a smooth swing is hindered and head-lifting occurs. Learning to mount the gun to a natural head position is an essential part of good posture in Trap shooting.\n\n_Mount the gun to a natural head position. It avoids tension that results in head-lifting_\n\n#### **Gun** **Holds**\n\nAs a general rule of thumb, the basic gun holds are the following:\n\n**Station one** Point at the front left corner of the Trap house.\n\n**Station two** Hold halfway between the corner and the centre of the front edge of the Trap house.\n\n**Station three** Point at the centre of the front edge of the Trap house.\n\n**Station four** Hold halfway between the centre and right front corner of the Trap house.\n\n**Station** **five** Point over the right hand corner of the Trap house. __\n\nA __ significant number of competitors find that these holds do not sufficiently favour the hard right-angle shot so they move their hold points out a little further to the right. Depending on your visual acuity and reaction time, you will need to experiment to find the best gun holds for you.\n\nUsing clay targets, you can place them on the Trap house to mark your gun holds for each station. With practice, you can find your correct hold points. Move the holds backward or forward of the recommended start positions, experimenting to improve personal smoothness and timing.\n\n_Use clay targets to mark your gun holds_\n\nAfter deciding on your horizontal holds, you need to give attention to your vertical holds, or the hold height. One-eyed shooters find it better to hold their muzzles along the front edge of the Trap house. This prevents the barrels from obscuring the target.\n\nThose with binocular vision prefer to adopt the more popular high-hold, pointing one to two feet above the Trap house, minimising gun movement. The two-eyed shooter can do this because they have increased peripheral vision and can see the target emerging under their barrel. You can add or remove targets on your hold markers, building them to the height that works best for you.\n\n#### **Visual Holds**\n\nIn every Clay target game, you need to ascertain the point in the target's flight off the trap arm where it transitions from a blur to a solid target. In Trap, as the target rises from the Trap house, you must look _up_ _and_ _out,_ past the barrels, into the space where this occurs. Adopt a soft focus, not concentrating on anything in particular. Allow your eyes to relax and maintain focus soft in the transition zone. When you visually acquire the target, let your eyes guide your hands to the target and take the shot without conscious thought... See 'bird\u2013shoot bird'.\n\n#### **Lead Pictures and Practices**\n\nTrap, with its narrow angles and fast targets, makes it difficult to 'blue print' the application of lead. Try to and you are guaranteed to stop the gun and miss behind. Good visual target acquisition and hard focus, combined with a smooth move to the target, will give you enough gun speed to apply the appropriate forward allowance.\n\nApply the basic rules of breaking clays, practise these exercises and you will quickly learn the correct lead pictures.\n\n  1. Start by locking off the trap oscillator so the trap throws a straight-away bird. Begin shooting from station three. When you can consistently hit this target, move to station two. This will change the angle and introduce lead. Repeat this process at station one, and repeat on stations four and five, adjusting your gun holds as you progress. \n  2. Practise shooting this target from all five stations for the next few sessions.\n  3. When you have become consistent on the locked-off target, have the oscillation turned back on, but set to minimum movement. Start again at station three, repeat the practice sequence. With success, work your way through all the stations. \n  4. Repeat this exercise with the trap set to full competition oscillation.\n  5. It may take several practice sessions to learn the leads required. When you are breaking the locked-off targets with consistency, turn the oscillator back on and shoot the random target presentations.\n\nYou should find your confidence and scores rising with every session. Finally, the oldest and still best tip for the Trap shooter is 'Keep Your Eye on the Rock and Your Head On the Stock'.\n\nChapter 13\n\n# Eyes and Vision\n\nEyesight is the most essential part of shooting. Your hands are controlled by the brain which receives its instruction from the eyes. As you make a shot, the brain is required to manage over one hundred billion neurons \u2013 these neural paths are controlled by your vision which in turn controls your arms and body. These paths remain organised for a very short window of opportunity and the shot must be taken when this process is at its peak. This is referred to as eye and hand coordination, but it is simply the interaction of the eyes and the hands as a single unit.\n\n_You can't hit it if you can't see it._\n\nIn our day-to-day life we have very little cause to 'hard focus' and our normal vision setting is 'panoramic', with no single object in mind. This is because we have no real need for concentrated focusing, which is hard work for both the eyes and the brain.\n\nTry a little experiment to demonstrate this: look up from this book and pick out an object on the opposite side of the room \u2013 the centre of a clock or the corner of a picture frame. Zero in on it and attempt to keep intense focus on it for the count of twenty. See? You have already quit and relaxed your vision!\n\nIt is extremely hard and sometimes uncomfortable to hold a 'hard focus' on an object for even a few seconds, yet this is the essential skill we need to master if we are to shoot clay targets with any consistency.\n\n### **Concentration**\n\nIt takes concentration to maintain focus on a moving target and 'hard focus' means keeping both eyes on the target without being distacted by background, peripheral images, shadows, colours or movement. This concentration is divided into two parts:\n\n  1. Saccadic which is the first visual reaction to a moving target; it locates the target by direction and speed. \n  2. Pursuit which is the second reaction: it centres in on the target.\n\nSaccadic and Pursuit work independently. Saccadic cannot centre and Pursuit cannot locate, so it is a balance between the two that is essentail to straight shooting. Once the target is centred, if you let your Pursuit reaction lapse into the Saccadic mode, the target becomes lost in your peripheral vision and vice versa.\n\nIf we stare at the visual pick-up point of the target in an attempt to centre on it, we reduce our peripheral awarness and the target literally gets the jump on us. Learning how to look for and at the target properly is one of the critical fundamentals of shooting well.\n\n_The_ _secret_ _to_ _centreing_ _on_ _a_ _target_ _is_ _to_ _know_ _where_ _to_ _look_ _and_ _why._\n\n#### **Optical Illusions**\n\nThe motion of a moving target is created by its passage against the background of trees or sky. From this, the eye gathers the information required to locate and centre on the target and the motion is always perceived to be behind the target. Until it has passed in front of a background or an object, the target is, in effect, stationary to the eye. The eyes are programmed to detect and react to movement\u2013a defence mechanism\u2013and therefore we naturally look at where the target has been, not where it is going.\n\n#### **Centreing**\n\nEarlier in the book I described how the shot column cloud disperses into a string stretching approximately five to eleven feet long. This shot-string is what gives us the margin for error in shooting a moving target. If our focus is on the rear of the target, this margin is considerably reduced because the target is moving _away_ from the shot-string.\n\nEven with the correct lead, you will always be hitting the back of the target. If we learn to centre on the leading edge of the target, we achieve two important benefits: first, the target will appear slower and second, it is now travelling _into_ the shot-string, maximising our chances of success and increasing margin for error.\n\nWhen you learn to concentrate on the _leading_ _edge_ of the target, you will feel more in charge, and you will feel that you have more time to take your shot. If you look at the back, or the 'wake' of the target, you will falter and fumble and miss behind.\n\n#### **Visual** **Hold**\n\nWe are pedestrians and have pedestrian-paced vision. If you can, visualise an 8mm film projector \u2013 the human eye sees the equivalent of sixteen frames per second. A target thrown at sixty miles per hour is initially moving at thirty-two frames per second. If we look in the wrong place, the target is seen only every other frame or as a blur. The wrong visual hold defeats the Saccadic process and slows the Pursuit mechanism.\n\nOn every target presentation, regardless of the discipline being shot, you need to observe keenly the target's flight line. As the initial velocity decreases, the bird will transition from thirty-two frames per second to our natural visual rhythm of sixteen frames.\n\nFrom this transition point, you need to look half-way back to the Trap house. This becomes your Visual Hold, the point at which you maximise your Saccadic reaction to the target and ensure swift Pursuit acquisition.\n\nDo not attempt to look hard for the target\u2013this restricts Saccadic movement. Instead, adopt a 'soft focus', looking at nothing in particular. Out past the visual pick-up, raise your eyebrows just before you call for the target. This simple action gives you a twenty per cent increase in light-gathering vision! Light reduction causes vision reduction and makes the target appear vague, fast flying with trailing comet-tails...the cause of many missed targets.\n\nOpening your eyes wide as you call for the bird will result in a marked improvement in your shooting performance.\n\n#### **Eyesight Fitness**\n\nThe eyesight standard of twenty\/twenty is what we see \u2013 vision is the process of _reacting_ to that which we see. When we are making a shot, the lens of the eye is flexing repeatedly (Accommodation) to maintain a sharp focus on the target and has to make many thousands of adjustments for depth, background and flight.\n\nThis is comparable to the lens on a motorised camera focussing back and forth to achieve a sharp picture. The eye is like any other muscle in the body and can be exercised to improve this skill. A few simple exercises each day can strengthen the lens' ability to flex so as to better locate and concentrate focus on a moving target, in the same manner you can increase the strength of your arms by exercising your biceps.\n\nThe muscles of the eyes can move the eye through 360 degree rotations \u2013 left to right, up and down. Though we may have become rather sophisticated animals, we are still, none the less, animals. We are omnivores or hunter-gatherers, in the main, gatherers. As such, our eyes are predisposed to look down and in. Most of our everyday activities take place _below_ the level of our eyes and the eye muscles for looking down and in are much stronger than those used for looking up and out.\n\n_Aerobics for the eyes_\n\nAny activity that requires the eyes to look up and out for any length of time, is extremely fatiguing. Take, for example, driving a car. This activity uses very similar eye action as is used when shooting. The modern car is effortless to drive and extremely comfortable, yet if you drive for an hour or more you quickly become tired. This is due to the on-going contest between the stronger lower eye muscles and the weaker upper eye muscles.\n\n#### **Eye-Vision** **Exercises**\n\nThese exercises are simple and the equipment needed is minimal. We begin with some stretching exercises for the eyes.\n\n  1. With your eyes closed but relaxed, start by rotating them up and around in a 360 degree circle, five full rotations, first to the right and then five full rotations to the left. Then with your eyes still shut, look up and down five times in each direction. Finally, roll your eyes five times fully left and right. At first you will find stretching exercises difficult to do, but with practice they become an excellent preliminary work out before further exercises or as a pre-match warm up. \n  2. Cord ball has long been an exercise in many hand and eye coordinated sports. You will need a ten feet length of butcher's string and three half-inch wooden balls of different colours (red, yellow and green) from a craft shop. Place the red ball in the middle of the cord, securing it with a knot. Tie the two remaining balls eight to ten inches from the ends of the cord in the same manner. You will need to secure one end to a wall so that when the cord is pulled taught it is fifteen inches above your line of sight. Place the loose end on the bridge of your nose and positon yourself so that the cord is pulled taut. Begin by focusing on the farthest ball. When you do so correctly, the string will form a 'Y' in your peripheral vision. Moving your point of focus back to the second ball will produce a 'X', and once again moving back to the third ball, will create another 'X'. At first this requires concentated focus but with practice, you can move your point of focus across the fields of vision at will. By altering the position of the balls on the string you can increase the range of your practice. \n  3. Take a straw and a toothpick and hold them horizontally at arm's length. Bring them together, inserting the toothpick into the straw. Do this twenty times, ten times holding the toothpick in your right hand, then ten times holding the toothpick in your left hand. \n  4. Thread a tennis ball on a piece of cord. Write four numbers on it with a black felt pen. Hang it from a beam or in a door frame. Take a yardstick or three feet dowel and start the ball in motion. Concentrate on one number and, with the stick at arm's length, touch it as it swings and rotates. You may have to start with just your finger and graduate to the stick as it is a lot more tricky than I have made it sound. \n  5. Take a pen and, holding it vertically at arm's length, look at and concentrate hard on an object aross the room. The pen will appear double in your near-sight (the pen and a ghost image). Now transfer your point of focus to the pen, concentrate hard and the object across the room will double (the original and a ghost image). Repeat as often as you feel comfortable doing so. At first it will only be a few times, but, with practice, you will be able to increase and decrease the separation of the object and the pen and increase the number of times you can perform the exercise. \n  6. Using a yardstick, put a mark in the middle at the 18 inch mark. Now hold it at this point with one hand and move it out at arm's length. Keeping your head locked rigid, move your eyes to the left and right as far as you can, seeing how far out you can read the numbers on the yardstick. With practice you will increase the range of eye movement to be able to read almost to the ends. \n  7. Take a dozen tennis balls and mark each one with a black felt tip with a single digit number, one through nine. Practice with a friend or friends standing 10 to 15 yards apart. Toss the tennis balls, underarm, to each other, and try to look past the actual ball and read the number on it, calling it out during its flight. \n  8. There are computer games specifically designed to improve eye and hand coordination. One in particular is called the 'Visual Edge'. You receive a pair of 3D glasses, a cord ball and CD. By following the prompts you will progress through a series of exercises that will increase your visual dexterity. \n  9. Take a blaze-orange clay target and with a black felt-tip pen place a dot on the dome and at the twelve o'clock, nine, six, and three o'clock points on the edge of the clay. Keep it on your desk or work top and, when possible, take a minute to look at the clay. _Really_ concentrate on the centre dot. Then relax your eyes and look at the whole clay before centreing on one of the dots on the edge. Repeat the exercise until you have hard focused on each dot in turn. At first you will find it hard to sustain this visual concentration for long, but with diligent practice your hard focusing ability will improve.\n\nThe emphasis of all these exercises is on flexible focus, both near and far. All will help improve **Accommodation** **,** **Focus and Centreing** **,** increasing your abilltiy to locate and shoot the target. We all have a given amount of eye and hand coordination \u2013 the better shots have, by natural acquisition or diligent practice, sharper visual acuity. The ability to focus sharply can be learned and mastered but it requires constant practice.\n\n### **Visual Enhancement**\n\nClay shooting takes place under varying light conditions and backgrounds. The target is in constant motion against this background and the fluctuating light and shadows make it difficult to maintain hard focus on the clay. This creates inaccurate information for the brain to process, and the result is often a missed target.\n\nIt has long been recognised that wearing shooting glass lenses in certain colours can enhance the target under specific light and background conditions. The right coloured lenses can make the difference between a hit and a miss. This is because the eye achieves better definition and depth perception when the pupil is constricted and maximum constriction is achieved by using the lightest colour lenses you have.\n\nFor example, vermillion-coloured lenses make orange targets stand out when thrown against a moderately bright background while yellow and orange tints work well in overcast or poor light. Brown tints in varying shades are very effective in bright sunshine. All tints offer enhanced contrast and definition, however, the choice is very subjective and often person-specific. Everyone has a degree of colour blindness and it is important to experiment to find the tints that work best for you in various light conditions and with different target colours.\n\nThe more light that enters the eye, the better the vison process and the better the hand coordination, as well. Any colour lenses that we use block some part of the light spectrum, actually reducing the amount of light available. You need to redress this by balancing any light loss with enhanced contrast, using the lightest tint possible.\n\nLenses for shooting glasses should be polarised for ultimate protection from ultraviolet radiation which contributes to the development of cataracts and has been shown to cause degeneration of the retinal pigment epithelium. It has also been discovered that exposure to harmful UV rays can accelerate age-related macular degeneration.\n\n_Always choose shooting glasses with interchangeable lenses_\n\n#### **Frames**\n\nRegular glasses are designed to place the lens centre directly in line with the pupil. When we lower our head into the correct shooting position, we end up looking off the optical __ centre of the ordinary spectacle lens. A further __ Problem is that everyday glasses are designed for fashion and looks rather than function, this often means that the frame iterferes or, in the worst case, obscures the vision.\n\n_Choose the lenses with the minimum tint for the light conditions, in a colour that gives the best target contrast_\n\nProperly-designed shooting glasses sit high up on the nose and have correctly placed optics so that when the head is lowered into the proper shooting position, the pupil is looking through the optical centre of the lens, slightly above the actual centre. Shooting glasses have lenses that are oversized and frameless, so there is no obstruction between the eyes and the target. The frame arms have padded, curved ear pieces and nose pads to stop the glasses from slipping or being knocked ajar by movement or recoil. This high fit means that they stand slightly off the face and air can freely flow between the lens and the eye, preventing fogging on wet and humid days. The lenses can also be polished with an anti-mist solution.\n\n### **Eye Sight Correction**\n\nThe choice of eyewear is very important. The type of lens, the frame design and fit all can contribute significantly to a shooter's performance. The lenses for shooting glasses are made from two materials, CR 39 plastic and polycarbonate. In terms of safety, polycarbonate is the best and most effective. The lenses are less than half the weight of glass lenses and polycarbonate has outstanding impact resistance. The polycarbonate lens requires careful processing and is prone to scratching when uncoated. It should always have an anti-scratch finish applied.\n\nA clear lens will only allow ninety per cent of the available light to pass through to the eye, with ten per cent being lost in reflection. Anti-glare coatings allow more light to reach the eye and allow you to see better, especially in poor conditions. Polarised lenses offer the ultimate in UV protection but eliminate reflections and glare.\n\nThe best shooting glasses should include a comfortable and durable frame, tinted and coated lenses, providing protection, increased visual acuity, better depth perception, improved vision and contrast and will help to control eye fatigue.\n\nIf you require corrective prescription lenses, have only single vision lenses fitted to your shooting glasses. Bi-and tri-focal lenses cause distortion and the graduated prescription or Varilux type cause even more visual problems: as the light passes through the lens it is bent or refracted when the head is in the correct shooting position.\n\nContact lenses offer distinct advantages compared to the prescription glasses. Contacts project a larger image on the back of the eye and eliminate spectacle distortion. This helps you see your targets sooner, sharper and bigger. Coated shooting glasses with appropriate coloured lenses further enhance your vision.\n\nA growing number of people are choosing laser corrective surgery. When doing so they often opt to have one eye fixed for long sight and one for short, to eliminate the requirement for glasses entirely. This is also done with contact lenses. If you choose to go this route be sure that the eye for long sight matches the shoulder you are shooting from.\n\n### **Target Taming** **Tips**\n\nOn sunny days, black clays will reflect light. This reflected light will appear as white dots on the clay. If you use your new visual concentration to hard focus on these spots, the clays will disappear in a ball of smoke.\n\nOn dull days, focus on reading the maker's brand mark on the clay. If you can, see the dome, or look hard at the shoulder, or even at the rings and dimples on the shoulder of the target.\n\nAt times we can all listen and not hear, touch and not feel, look without seeing; you must learn to maximise your visual stimulus on every target.\n\nThe eyes control the body, they synchronise the motor-muscular movements to the target, decide the timing of when to pull the trigger.\n\nMisses are a result of faulty visual perception caused by failure to centre on the target.\n\nLearn to zero in and remain locked onto the point of impact \u2013 the primary zone \u2013 of the target throughout the shooting action.\n\nThe primary zone of the target is always changing direction, speed, angle and distance and needs to be learned with instruction and practice.\n\nChapter 14\n\n# The Mental Game\n\nI am sure you have heard or read the following statement regarding the shooting learning curve. 'When you begin, it is ninety per cent mechanical and ten per cent mental, when you finish it is ten per cent mechanical and ninety per cent mental.'\n\nWhy do the majority of shooters tend to get just so good and no better? Well, it's more than muscles that make a champion. When we step out onto the field we each bring, not only our equipment and ability, but ourselves \u2013 our doubts, fears and frustrations \u2013 the internal conflicts that can destroy our 'concentration' and ultimately our game.\n\nThe word 'concentrate' as defined in the Oxford dictionary is 'to bring together at one point, the ability to employ one's full thoughts or efforts to increase strength'. To shoot straight, you need to develop your ability to 'concentrate' \u2013 to block out all distractions, both internal and external. Total concentration on each and every shot, as an entirely independent and all-important task, means breaking one target at a time until they are all broken. The ability to do this consistently is the major difference between the intermediate and the advanced shot.\n\nClay target shooting is different from other sports in that there is little physical activity to relieve stress build-up which increases incrementally as scores increase. How often have you flunked the first one or two stands in a competition and then shot straight? Or shot straight, only to throw it away on the last two stations? This is your way of relieving the stress caused by the pressure. There is no natural outlet such as the starter's gun for the sprinter where explosive action releases the built-up stress.\n\nHowever, in a sport that requires smooth, controlled movement stress can be destructive-it needs to be properly controlled. Too little stress will produce an indifferent performance \u2013 too much can cause one to choke. The top competitor finds the balance between the two extremes and manages and even uses performance stress to reach the height of his game.\n\n_Top competitors have learned to control unwanted brain activity that interferes with target focus_\n\nStress management is achieved through 'concentration' and its foundation starts in mastering the mechanical and visual skills. This chapter is not intended for the beginner, but for the B, A and AA-class competitor looking for that extra target or striving to move up in class.\n\nTo get the most from this chapter, all of your mechanical skills should be well-grooved and practised, visual acuity should be understood and the setup of your shots well-demonstrated. You should have a gun that fits and you should have a good understanding of targets, chokes and cartridges.\n\nWith all of the above in place, you are ready to learn the mental game. I urge you to take a long and honest look at your shooting \u2013 refer to the list above and address any of the weak or missing elements before looking for a quick fix here. The mental side of the equation will not help if you are still struggling to master the basic physical techniques. The key to consistent straight shooting and high scores is in sound basics. The mechanics must be mastered first or you will find the following difficult to implement and get little from it.\n\nBob Rotellas in his book _Golf_ _is_ _not_ _a_ _Game_ _of_ _Perfect,_ offers sound advice on the need to be mentally strong in sport. Mental control is, without a doubt, the final piece of the shooting jigsaw puzzle. The first step is to acknowledge that the mental skills must be learned and practised in just the same manner as the mechanical.\n\nThe mechanics are learned quicker than you think \u2013 once they are mastered, a miss is often not the result of a mechanical mistake, but a slip in 'concentration'. Try this exercise to determine if your missed targets are a result of mechanics or concentration:\n\n  1. When you are shooting at your best are you satisfied with your skill level? (The mental approach is not a substitute for poor mechanics.) \n  2. Are your misses random? Do they increase with pressure? Is there a predictable 'missing pattern'?\n  3. When missing, how do you feel? Are you confident or confused? Are you in control or rushing?\n  4. Is there more than one aspect of your shooting that results in missing? (Pressure creates stress that increases muscle tension and restricts movement which results in poor concentration and reduced visual acuity.)\n\nIf you answer yes to one or more of these questions, then you are ready to look at the mental approach to the game. You now need to learn:\n\nWhy do you choke when the pressure is on?\n\nWhy do you miss the easy shots so often?\n\nWhy do you make the same errors again and again?\n\nHow can you change all of this permanently?\n\nSwedish psychologist, Lars-Eric Unestahl has developed a concept called the 'Ideal Performance State' or IPS. His athletes report that being in IPS is like an altered state of consciousness \u2013 they often refer to it as being 'The Zone'. The athlete is intensely focused on a limited number of tasks, and removed from everything except those tasks, almost like being in a bubble. In 'The Zone', targets appear to be moving in slow motion and action is effortless. In this state, very little of the mechanical action can be recalled.\n\nUnestahl's training involves teaching the shooter how to:\n\n  1. Breathe and Relax\n  2. Control Anxiety and Arousal\n  3. Concentrate and Focus to Eliminate Distractions\n\nThese three skills, when learned, allow the shooter to enter 'The Zone' at will and produce the best performance of which they are capable.\n\n### **1.** **Breath and Relax**\n\nBreathing and relaxing are often referred to in the martial arts as Centreing. This is a process used to create feelings of being grounded, calm and relaxed. This is the opposite of being anxious.\n\nWhen you are centred, your muscles are loose and relaxed but ready for action. Your breathing is slow and deep, slower than normal. Foot position is your normal shooting stance with the legs relaxed, knees slightly flexed and the weight evenly distributed between your feet. This position results in a sense of being balanced, of being ready to move with purpose in any direction.\n\nLearning to centre is the keystone to performing well. To achieve this, you need to establish key words or phrases that you associate with being centered. These words will become your 'trigger' to peak performing in competition.\n\nOne word or phrase must reflect _physiological_ feelings, i.e., loose, relaxed balanced, strong, smooth. The other word or phrase should be perceptual and reflect a state of mind, i.e., controlled, powerful, calm and confident.\n\n_Physiological_ _Trigger_ _Words_ might be: 'Be smooth', 'Strong', 'OK' etc.\n\n_Perceptual_ _Trigger_ _Words_ might be: 'Can do', 'Still' 'See target' and so on.\n\n### **2.** **Control Anxiety and Arousal**\n\nAnxiety and arousal are often confused and thought to be the same, but really, they are different aspects of similar reactions. Arousal is being up and ready. Anxiety is nervousness or distress. This leads to trying too hard, creates tension, tightens muscles and reduces performance. Anxiety causes attention to stray from the target to interior focus.\n\nNervousness is normal and is necessary to achieve the optimum arousal levels, but by balancing or controlling Anxiety and Arousal you can reach 'The Zone'.\n\n### **3.** **Concentrate and Focus to Eliminate Distractions**\n\nWhen you are shooting you engage in four types of concentration:\n\n  1. Broad\n  2. Narrow\n  3. External\n  4. Internal\n\nYou use these in a combination of ways:\n\n  1. Broad internal, when you need to think, plan and analyse.\n  2. Broad external, to assess situations and conditions.\n  3. Narrow internal, to rehearse or visualise.\n  4. Narrow external, to react or perform.\n\nDuring the shooting sequence, you are required frequently to shift back and forth among these four types of concentration.\n\nArriving at a competition, you use broad external to determine the background, the sun's position, wind and terrain to evaluate what effect they will have on the targets. Broad internal is then used to analyse this information and plan the shoot. For example, you may wish to shoot certain stands first to avoid those times when the sun would distract from the target, or to choose the correct lens colour for your shooting glasses.\n\nNarrow internal is used to visualise your performance. Narrow external is for hard focus on the target and is used to actually perform.\n\nIn the stand, you will be mainly using external focus; broad for assessment between shots and shifting to narrow to actually shoot the target.\n\n'The Zone' is achieved when you can control these shifts and maintain focus on the target. This action requires almost entirely narrow external. (Target, Target, Target.)\n\n#### **Visualisation and Imagery**\n\nThese are two more aids to reaching the Improved Performance State.\n\nVisualisation is a cheap way to practise on non-shooting days. There are no clays or cartridges to be paid for and it is a very productive practice because you never miss. Visualisation builds confidence and experience. Remember, the body cannot tell the difference between imagined and real events, so every target you visualise calling for, shooting and breaking becomes another successful memory.\n\nImagery is the simple previewing of the intended outcome of impending action in the moments prior to shooting. You imagine the target breaking as preparation to call for the target. It focuses the conscious mind on the action and so keeps irrelevant thoughts from intruding as you make your shot. Both Visualisation and Imagery are improved by practice.\n\n#### **The Training Programme**\n\nThere are three levels of learning:\n\n  1. **Cognitive** **\u2013** **Unconsciously Incompetent** **:** where you are entirely dependent on the instructor to break a target. \n  2. **Over Learning** **\u2013** **Consciously Competent** **:** where you are capable of making a shot independently of an instructor's input. \n  3. **Autonomic** **\u2013** **Unconsciously Competent** **:** where you can make a shot without conscious thought.\n\nA training programme requires conscious planning and action, you are attempting to make things change and improve. By working through the three steps above, you are learning to think less and less and to remove task-irrelevant distractions from your thinking, replacing them with autonomic actions.\n\nYou start by breaking your concentration down into separate elements, practising and developing these elements, then putting them back together. Ultimately you will be able to perform the entire shooting sequence automatically and then you will have discovered 'The Zone'.\n\nClarify and identify your goals; they are the foundation for your shooting success.\n\n  1. Long term aims.\n  2. Shorter term objectives.\n  3. Intermediate goals.\n\nThese specific goals should be written down and your performance checked against them regularly. This exercise will ensure that you are on course and give you milestones of progress, encouraging you towards your ultimate goal.\n\n'The Zone' is the next level and can only be achieved by practising to reach that point where you can respond automatically or unconsciously instead of thinking about all of the things you have to do. In 'The Zone' you are simply allowing the shot to happen.\n\n### **The** **Zone** **Explained**\n\nYou will all be familiar with the expression 'Being in the Zone'. This is simply a state of relaxed concentration during which peak performance can occur. In Andrew Cooper's book _Playing_ _in_ _the_ _Zone,_ 'The Zone' is variously described by elite athletes:\n\nBy Billie Jean King, women's tennis player 'Violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity.'\n\nBy Bill Russell, NBA great 'Magical \u2013 profound joy, effortless action taking place in slow motion \u2013 self-transcendence.'\n\nMihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Susan Jackson in their book _Flow_ _in_ _Sports_ define 'The Zone' as 'A state of consciousness where one becomes totally absorbed in what one is doing to the exclusion of all other thoughts and emotions.'\n\nThe words of importance in this quote are 'to the exclusion of all other thoughts and emotions'.\n\nIn my opening words, I state the ninety\/ten per cent rule to optimum performance. After we have mastered the fundamentals, the next step is to learn to clear our mind of all of the self-doubt and clutter to allow our subconscious to make the perfect shot. This is the secret to the Mental Game. How do we achieve this? Well, read on.\n\nHow do the top competitors suppress these negative thoughts that we are all prone to? This is a question sports physiologists have been attempting to answer for years.\n\nA major break-through in this area has been achieved through the results of research carried out by Christopher Janelle, Assistant Professor at the University of Florida's Department of Exercise and Sports Science and Charles Hillman in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Illinois.\n\nThey discovered that top athletes in all major sports pause and dwell moments longer than the amateur when focusing on their target or visual cue. This 'pause and dwell' moment enables them to control and quiet the left side of their brain \u2013 the side which produces the analytical messages that interrupt deep concentration. In effect, they have learned to switch off the clutter.\n\nThis is a readily observable distinction between elite and novice shooters. The elite shooter is able to block out all outside influences and focus on the target or the appropriate visual cue for several seconds before initiating his shot.\n\nJanelle and Hillman have also discovered that they can dramatically improve a performer's ability to respond accurately through coordinating a period of intense concentration on the target visual hold. This visual cue and the extended duration they fixate on it before response to its flight, results in better coordination to the target, actually making it appear slower and bigger.\n\nShooting is self-paced and the timing derives from focus on the target. In Clay Target shooting this can be improved by the One-Two Punch of Focusing and Pausing.\n\nJanelle states 'This is not just about aiming; it's about giving yourself a better chance to respond correctly'. If you look and dwell at the visual hold longer, you can block out other mental reactions. This concept is referred to as the 'Quiet Eye Phenomenon'. It was introduced at the National Coaches College at the USA Olympic Training Centre in November of 2001.\n\nJanelle found that the more successful shooters focus longer on their targets. The top performers had much higher levels of alpha waves of the right side of the brain \u2013 that the unwanted analytical thought process of the left had temporarily been suppressed. This allows top shots to better focus on and coordinate to the target.\n\nAcross the various sports that have been tested, top performers have traditionally used a longer 'Quiet Eye' period. It is only with this research that this practice has been shown to produce favourable brain-wave characteristics.\n\nThe inability to suppress left brain activity is what leads to 'choking'. This is a condition in which even the top competitor can fail to shoot to his full potential. Dr Debbie Crews of Arizona State University was recently commissioned by the PGA to test this phenomenon under controlled laboratory conditions.\n\nDr Crews found that it is not the level of anxiety that determines performance, but how the brain processes the increase in activity. She found that the main reason for competitors 'choking' was, when competition pressure increased, they had the left side of the brain doing most of the work. The successful competitor had comparable increases in the brain's activity but that activity was spread evenly through both sides of the brain.\n\nSimply put, you need to increase the activity of the right side of the brain if you wish to avoid 'choking'. 'Imagery and target awareness are created in the right side of the brain', says Dr Crews.\n\nWhen the left brain is dominant, the competitor becomes self-aware. 'What am I doing?' 'Do I have the right lead?' 'I always miss teal.' It is this kind of thinking that results in 'choking'.\n\nDr Crews has developed a concept referred to as 'The Balanced Brain'. Balancing brain activity is essential to a good performance as a competitor. This is not something you can develop overnight. You need to apply pressure during your practice. It does not have to be extreme, even something as simple as a small wager with another shooter is enough to significantly increase brain activity.\n\nThe following is Dr Crews' recommended pre-shot routine to help balance brain activity and avoid 'choking':\n\nStart with a deep breath, always a simple but effective first step. One big inhale and exhale clears your mind and helps you to focus.\n\n  1. Visualise the shot\/target. (Imagery)\n  2. Recall a favourite song. (Rhythm and Timing)\n  3. Imagine a feeling of 'YES'. (The trigger to 'Yes, I can')\n  4. Picture a sense of 'Success'. (Accomplishment.)\n\nThe following word cues do not work:\n\n  1. 'Don't' (instead 'Do' or 'Can')\n  2. 'Should' (instead think 'Want')\n  3. 'Just' (instead of 'Just do it', think 'Do it!')\n\nThe following pre-shot steps are proven to energise both hemispheres of the brain to enhance performance:\n\n  1. Take a second longer to stare at your visual hold when preparing to make a shot. This will allow time for your subconscious to gather everything you need to create the correct movement to the target \u2013 Quiet Eye Phenomenon. Do not do anything conscious during this look, simply put your eyes on the visual hold, 'pause and dwell'. Ensure that the focal point is stable and not drifting about. This initiates the Quiet Eye Phenomenon. \n  2. As you go through your pre-shot routine, check out each part with a 'YES'. The 'YES' signifies that the action is done and there is no need to go back and check. When there is nothing left to check, call for the target and commence your swing. \n  3. Complete your imagery. This means not only seeing the target in the air, but sensing it flying. Break it, but follow the pieces to the ground. This helps complete the programming of the brain. \n  4. If you become distracted or lose focus during your routine, START OVER. Do not try to fix it. Stop and start again from the beginning.\n\nOf course, you cannot merely memorise these cues then hope to put them to use the next time you are under pressure. They must be practised to become automatic and that means creating pressure on the practice field. In reality, performing under pressure is just good stress management.\n\nTo achieve this, you need to find an exercise to reduce left brain analytical activity and increase right brain rhythm and motion. In effect, an ideal performance state is achieved when both hemispheres of the brain are in balance.\n\nA simple exercise for achieving this is to utilise a balancing board. This is simply a board that has a pivot or ball in the centre that creates a see-saw. To get the board to remain steady and horizontal while standing on it requires a combination of both muscular and mental balance. This balance board exercise is well known in sports therapy and rehabilitation. It is now being utilised to great benefit to enhance specific sports training. All of the professional sports that are using this simple device in their training regimes find that the players become better coordinated, faster and fitter after using the balancing board on a regular basis.\n\nIf you would like to imitate the actions of the champions, to see the target better, bigger, slower, make a more coordinated smooth, controlled and powerful swing to the target, then get balanced, both physically and mentally.\n\nThe Quiet Eye and Balanced Brain Phenomenon is an extraordinary concept. Beyond well-practiced mechanics, these are the next steps to achieving your peak performance.\n\nAny new skill takes practice. There is a need to develop muscle memory for the mechanical skills, allowing the subconscious to perform the act without input or conscious effort from ourselves. Learning to concentrate to the exclusion of all distractions is hard work. At this intensity, concentration can only be maintained for brief periods and you need to practise its management.\n\nFind the correct sequence to move from broad to narrow focus in the same manner. This training must involve actual shooting. Concentration is an essential part of straight shooting but is only that \u2013 a part. It must be learned and built into the overall shooting action and practised until the moves are made unconsciously.\n\nThe three domestic disciplines are one hundred target competitions, but Trap and Skeet have a natural rhythm which assists in switching concentration on and off. When it is your shot, you take it and then there is a paced time until you shoot again. This allows you to develop a routine where turning concentration on and off is more easily managed.\n\nRelax after your turn and then begin a gradual rebuilding of concentration. Watch the target immediately preceding your next shot. Your concentration should peak when your shot routine starts and relax once the shot has been taken.\n\nSporting Clays presents different challenges as there is little, if any, rhythm to the shooting. As stations are shot in multiple targets with the distance, speed and angle constantly changing, it is very easy to let your concentration drift from narrow to broad focus during the shooting.\n\nIf you treat a round as if it is a One Hundred\u2013One Bird Competition, each one a separate tournament, you will find that this is the best way to manage your concentration in the haphazard rhythm of Sporting Clays. And, after all, you can only break the targets one at time. There are a few states of mind that get in the way of concentration:\n\n_Over_ _confidence_ _results_ _in_ _carelessness._   \n_Superstition_ _and_ _rituals_ can be both negative and positive.   \nIf being the first in a squad is lucky for you, and you find yourself number three, it will be negative. If you have faith in a particular brand of shell it will be positive for you \u2013 if you run out, negative. These are both distractions \u2013 try to build your game without them \u2013 just concentrate on each and every shot as an entirely independent and all-important task.\n\nDevelop a positive outlook and concentrate: expect to 'see the target-break the target' \u2013 every time you call for one.\n\nThere is only one thing to beat: that is the target. You do not have to beat the other competitors. Their success or failure does not affect your own score. Only you can win or lose a competition.\n\n_The balance board, or pivot ball creates a combination of both muscular and mental balance_\n\nChapter 15\n\n# Competition\n\nThe human being is by nature competitive. The shooter who is beginning starts out happy to break more clays than he misses, but this soon evolves into a desire to break them all! The next step in the progression is an awareness of scores and comparing them to those of friends and other squad members. The urge to compete finally increases to the point that it can only be satisfied by testing one's ability against that of others in open competition. If you have reached this stage, you are ready to take part in competition! Whether it is your first or your twenty-first, it is hard to describe the incredible buzz of being in a competition \u2013 the anticipation in the lead-up to the event, the preparation, the new edge to practice and the big day itself.\n\nClay Shooting is unique \u2013 there is no other sport where the amateur club player can compete alongside the professionals. There are no special rules, no favouritism \u2013 it's the same targets, with a class or handicap system in place, that ensures the level playing field. Your scores will be compared against others of the same level of skill. It is not uncommon for a squad to be made up of a mixture of abilities and for a novice to be shooting in the same squad as a National or International champion.\n\nIn Clay Shooting of all disciplines there are four levels of competition:\n\n  1. Club\n  2. Local (County or State)\n  3. National\n  4. International\n\nAnd four Class Levels:\n\n  1. C\n  2. B\n  3. A\n  4. AA\n\nIn the USA they have a larger class system from E to AA including a Master Class. There are separate classes for Ladies, Veterans and Juniors.\n\nThere is a natural progression through the Class system. In the UK you start out unclassified, next you are placed in the Class appropriate to your annual averages. In the USA, progress is through a punch system. Winning or placing in your Class moves you up in Class and, as your skill increases, you progress through the ranks.\n\n### **Rules and Regulations**\n\nThere are many disciplines, each with a Governing Body that set the rules for each individual discipline. These rules vary from country to country and it would be too complex to try to describe all the rules and regulations of the numerous disciplines in this chapter. So, in the appendix you will find a list of the names and contact details of all of the relevant Governing Bodies.\n\n### **Let The Competition Begin** **!**\n\nWhen competition is the motivation for your practice; it sets the bar of your ability and provides the  challenges to improvement. There are three requirements to win a competition:\n\n  1. Attitude\n  2. Ability\n  3. Equipment\n\nOnce the decision is made to enter a competition, to do your best you need to properly prepare. The Army uses the training motto of the 5 Ps: 'Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance'. This should become your mantra on the lead up to all competitions. Nothing should be left to chance and everything should be double checked and in place. It is the only way you can concentrate on the real job at hand: breaking more targets than the next guy!\n\nThere is a natural sequence of events in the lead-up to a competition. The following is the sequence I recommend:\n\n  1. **Plan** **ahead**. Learn, and practise the Rules and regulations of your chosen discipline. You should know them as well, if not better than, the referee. \n  2. **Plan** **the annual events** you intend to compete in early. Book well in advance. The major competitions are usually over-subscribed and if you wait too late you will not get in. Can you imagine all that practice and hard work wasted? \n  3. **Plan** **your practice**. Work on your weaknesses (feedback from shooting log book) and be sure to include pressure situations (See Chapter 13). \n  4. **Seek** **help and advice** from more experienced friends and club members. It is amazing how much information they will have gleaned from competition. They may have shot the venue before and can advise you on travel and distances, accommodation, terrain, weather, the club facilities and share other valuable information. \n  5. **Have all necessary equipment** and make sure it is in good condition. If anything needs to be replaced, do so well before an event and use it in practice. Never introduce something new and untested on the day of a competition. \n  6. **Learn from every event** that you enter. Keep a log of the events you shoot, the conditions of the competition, your competitors and your scores. Experience and success will increase in proportion to the number of competitions entered. \n  7. **Prepare for** **any** **weather** **.** Cover every eventuality in clothing, footwear and accessories. \n  8. **Allow good time for travel.** Plan to arrive early and, if possible, walk the course. Shoot the side events. Relax and both loosen and sharpen up. Balance calmness and alertness to find your optimum performance state.\n\n### **Controlling Competition Stress**\n\nThere are two states of mind experienced in competition \u2013 anticipation and apprehension. Both are created by stress. The secret to successful competitive shooting is the ability to convert the 'stress negatives' into 'stress positives'.\n\nThere are techniques that can be learned to achieve this ability. These techniques are not unique to the top competitors \u2013 anyone can learn them. They can help control, choking, jitters, self-consciousness, anger, lack of confidence and all of the other emotions that can ruin a good performance.\n\nYou need to develop a 'Winning Attitude'. This is not simply an all-out determination to win... nine times out of ten the all-out attitude generates too much pressure and performances suffer. You will, naturally, be trying too hard.\n\nYou really need to learn to get out of your own way and let your training and preparation kick in and do the job for you. Too often we create unreasonable expectations for ourselves; this can crank up the pressure that causes stress. Learn there is only one person to compete against and that is: yourself!\n\nA major competition attracts hundreds of entries. If you set your goal to win it all, that is applying unreasonable expectations and pressure. If your goal is to shoot to the best of your ability \u2013 to beat your best ever score \u2013 that would be reasonable! And, you never know... your best might be good enough to win it all.\n\nI have seen friends and fellow-competitors create so much pressure for themselves with their unreasonable expectations, that on the first station they trembled so badly, they had trouble putting the shells in the gun! Pressure must be controlled and channeled \u2013 it is essential to 'getting us up'! It can actually sharpen our vision and reflexes. But this control only comes with experience. The more you compete, the better you become at controlling and channelling pressure. You should always attempt to complete a practice at a level above your ability. Your expectations will be less and the experience gained will be of immense benefit when you are in regular competition.\n\nThere is a fine line between anticipation and apprehension. Take, for example, a competitor who acts as if he doesn't care about the outcome \u2013 he even laughs when he misses. This is his way of deflecting or trying to remove the pressure of his fear of failure... and this causes him to lose.\n\nThe competitor who has learned to control pressure... to channel it, shoots with intent. He applies maximum effort on every shot, regardless of whether he is winning or losing. He never gives up! Each target is important \u2013 not his score or where he places. This attitude you should develop. Always shoot each target one at a time, station by station. By all means check your score card to ensure that the referee noted the correct score, but don't count the total as you go. Try to build the best personal score that you can, putting all thoughts of winning from your mind. Good scores are the direct result of the amount of effort you apply to your shooting. A mediocre effort will seldom win a competition whereas a gargantuan effort more often than not, will.\n\nEveryone attempts to win, however, it is recognised that, at different times, the same amount of effort can have different results. Why is it that trying your best can sometimes not be enough? Simply put, you have to harness both the mechanical and mental to perform your best. This is a demanding and tiring task. We are only capable of concentrating for short bursts of time. A more frequent cause of lost concentration is, that we try to concentrate for too long a period of time. For example, while waiting your turn you attempt to concentrate on every target thrown. By the time your turn comes, you are mentally exhausted! Your mind wanders and a poor performance is the result.\n\nYou must learn to isolate the things worth concentrating on and be able to switch off and relax between these bouts of mental exertion. Keep your thoughts to a minimum up to the act of shooting. It is impossible to think of everything and still shoot well. Apply your concentration to just one specific part of your shooting. Selectively directing your concentration will help you sustain a good performance throughout a competition. The set sequences in Trap and Skeet offer a natural rhythm which is conducive to concentration management; Sporting Clays' more discombobulated rhythms, break up concentration. Because of the large number of targets shot at one time and the down-time between stations, it is easy to let your concentration drift.\n\nFor example, in the time it takes to shoot ten singles or five pairs, unwanted thoughts can break into your concentration. 'I will straight the stand if I shoot this last pair.' Next thing you know, you have missed the last target! Or, with two stations to go, you add up your score and realise 'If I can run the last two stations, I could win'. You might as well just tear up your score card! Your concentration is lost and so is the competition!\n\nThere are many other scenarios on this theme and I'm sure you recognise these lapses that cause a miss. It is only by competing and understanding how they happen, that you can learn to control them.\n\n#### **Focusing Techniques**\n\nFinding a technique or rhythm to help maintain your focus through a one hundred bird competition is as essential as acquiring a gun.\n\n#### **Divide and Conquer**\n\nThe best advice I got a long time ago was to break the competition into smaller, equal parts: a one hundred-bird competition should be tackled as three thirty-bird shoots and a ten-bird Pool Shoot. Trap and Skeet should be shot as four twenty-five bird competitions.\n\nThis technique breaks the total into more psychology-manageable numbers for us to deal with. Consider how much easier it is to imagine shooting twenty-five straight, as opposed to one hundred straight. 'Divide and conquer' is one excellent way to maintain your concentration in competition.\n\n#### **The** **One-Bird** **Competition**\n\nMy approach is, they are all one-bird competitions. You should take each target one at time. See the target \u2013 break the target. Concentrate on each shot as an independent and all-important target and forget about everything else...especially your score!\n\n#### **The** **One-Man** **Competition**\n\nYou will miss. Accept it, and get over it. It is history. Nothing you can do will change the fact that you missed, but to dwell on it is to lose focus and miss again. Remember that what is happening to you is happening to everyone else. If the targets are tough, they are just as tough for them. If the wind is gusting and the rain pouring, they are standing in it too.\n\nIf you can learn to concentrate on your game, groove your routine. Work to develop a style where you relax between shots before you get ready for the next target. Give every shot your maximum attention. Regard each target as the first shot of the competition. Target by target is the secret to concentration.\n\nRemember, there is only one person to beat, and that is you! You do not have to beat the other competitors. Their success or failure matters not a jot to your own score. The best shot in the world can do no more than break the next target in front of him. If you can learn to keep breaking the next thrown for you, there will be no one who can beat you. Adopt the mindset that your best score is your competitor, not the imaginary score of your opponent.\n\nBeware of over confidence, it can result in carelessness!\n\n#### **The Fatigue Factor**\n\nFatigue can have a major impact on your ability to concentrate. Several fatigue factors are:\n\n  1. Travel time to competition.\n  2. Accommodations.\n  3. Gun and equipment.\n  4. Fitness.\n  5. Course terrain and distance.\n  6. Waiting or standing time.\n  7. Weather conditions.\n\n#### **Conserve Energy**\n\n1. Be sure to wear loose cotton fabrics, layers are better than bulk.\n\n2. Wear shoes or boots that offer good support and have good grip.\n\n3. Carry your shells and equipment in a tote bag. Only put enough shells in your pocket to shoot the station (three or four extra for no-birds).\n\n4. Place your gun in a rack or other safe location, whenever possible.\n\n5. Stay hydrated, carry plenty of fluids.\n\n6. Take along a couple of towels.\n\n7. Rest when ever the opportunity present its self, particularly between stations.\n\nConserve your energy. Should you get in a shoot-off at the end of a long competition, it will pay great dividends.\n\n#### **Avoiding the** **'Copy** ******Cat'** **Syndrome**\n\nWe are all prone to mimic or copy success. We imitate the leaders in any field of endeavour, hence the fashion trends in all aspects of our life from popular music, to clothing, cars or sports. The same is true in the shooting sports, but it is temptation to be avoided. You may copy the clothing or equipment of a top competitor, but when it comes to actually shooting the target, you copy them at your own risk. The visual acuity, timing and coordination of the shooting superstars are just that...super. You should trust your own instincts and shoot to your own best strengths.\n\n  1. Learn from the leader but do not just blindly follow. Work to your own game plan and strategy.\n  2. Break the target where it suits you, where you have chosen to break it in practice.\n  3. With pairs, consider the best sequence in which to take them.\n  4. Never ask, 'How much lead did you give that?' No two people will see the same lead picture.\n\n#### **Self-Analysis** **and** **Self-Correction**\n\nIt is against the rules for a competitor to receive coaching or instruction while shooting in a competition. Therefore, it is important that, if you do miss, you know _where_ you missed and why. It is essential to be able to self correct.\n\nFor example, if you missed high or over the top of the target: that is the FAULT. The CAUSE is coming out of the gun or head lifting. The CORRECTION is: remember to stay in the gun on the subsequent shots.\n\nWatch the champions. If they miss, they do not curse their luck, the referee and the Gods of Shooting. No, they dig in, and reassess the target presentation, what went wrong, what to put right and then start again at the next target with a clean break.\n\nNovice and club shooters just continue to shoot the station, missing the target in the same place every time, expecting a miracle to happen and the target to somehow break. Learning to self-analyse and self-correct is an essential competition skill. Learn this skill and when the inevitable miss happens, you can get yourself out of trouble.\n\nOf course, there will be times when you just cannot work it out. When this happens, don't despair, learn from it, and work it out in practice. You will be able to get yourself out of trouble on that target the next time you see it in competition.\n\n### **Analysing the Course**\n\n**Target Irregularities**\n\nThe targets thrown in Trap and Skeet are thrown to very rigid rules. Heights, angles and distances are established and must be adhered to exactly. To meet these requirements, the clay targets themselves must be manufactured to strict tolerances and consistent standards.\n\nIn Sporting Clays, there are guidelines for target size, but there are no rules for target presentations. They can be thrown at any speed, angle or distance. I personally believe that because of the randomness of the target presentations, clay manufacturers do not have to adhere to the same exacting standards demanded by the Trap and Skeet disciplines. This uneven quality often seen in Sporting Clay targets contributes to the randomness of trajectories and their occasional irregular flight paths.\n\nThe manual trap is quickly becoming obsolete. However, if a manual trap is operated by properly trained trappers, they can throw some excellent target presentations. If the trapper is inexperienced or rushed, they will sometimes fail to place the target against its stops and this can cause an irregular flight.\n\nThe automatic trap is not exempt from this problem either. Chipped or hairline-cracked targets or targets that have been incorrectly stored can all fly errant paths. Broken clay debris can mean that the target does not sit flush to the trap arm, further compounding the problem.\n\nThese irregular flight paths in Sporting Clays are often not recognised because of the non-conformity of target presentation. This is why each and every target path needs to be analysed and shot as a separate target. This can also explain the following situation: you are shooting well, on your way to straighting a station, you're into a groove...then one of these slightly 'off path and speed' targets gets thrown and you inexplicably miss! This is a scenario all-too-familiar to many competitors and one of the reasons why the perfect score of one hundred straight is so rare in major Sporting Clays competitions.\n\n### **Reading the Course**\n\nWith most competitions being shot over one hundred targets, you need to have a strategy to assist you in building a good score. It is not enough to just shoot the course station by station. If at all possible, walk the course before it is your time to shoot. Look at the position of traps and the stations...check the angles and distances of the targets to the gun at the break point.\n\nLook for the target setter's tricks, like making the target transition right where you would like to shoot it. These can be subtle adjustments, from the use of the terrain or the tilting of the trap, these can fool you into thinking a target is doing one thing when it is actually doing something completely different. You can use your gun as a level or plumb line, holding it against the background, to see what a target is really doing.\n\n### **Your** **Club** **versus their** **Club**\n\nYou have shot at your local club for years. You know the type of targets thrown and the tricks the terrain can play. Here you can shoot consistently good scores, and now you feel you are shooting the kind of scores to win your class. You enter a major competition. Suddenly nothing seems to go right! You just cannot find your club form and you post a really poor score.\n\nWhat occurred is not really a mystery. Consider your own course. It may be wooded with rolling hills and birds thrown at moderate ranges and you will have, unconsciously, adapted your technique to hit these target presentations. At the out-of-town competition, the course is set on a ground with little cover, as flat as a pancake, with targets at longer distances than you have ever shot.\n\nOf course, you do not have the skills or the technique to tackle these targets. You have to learn to shoot all kinds of courses and all kinds of targets, in all kinds of weather if you are going to win your class at a major competition.\n\n### **Competitors versus the Course**\n\nThe top competitors have put in their time. They have travelled to competitions domestically and internationally. They have learned from every event, how to travel, rest, prepare and compete. They have kept a shooting log, in which they make notes and they refer to them in practice. The next time a particular venue hosts a major competition, they can refer to their log.\n\nThe top shots are constantly on the move, both at home and abroad, shooting all kinds of courses of all types of contours, shapes and descriptions. They encounter every variety of course design and learn all the tricks and tactics of distance, angle, transition or target mix they use in setting targets to beat the competitors. The top shots have years of experience and practice reading a course and adapting their technique to its requirements. It is not by accident or magical fairy dust that they are so good.\n\n### **Reading the Stations**\n\nThe game of competitive shooting is ten per cent physical and ninety per cent mental, from the shoulders up. You must learn to think your way through every competition, station by station. Read the course; get to know the targets and conditions that can affect your performance. You need to learn to think on every shot, not just automatically shoot the course station by station.\n\nWhen you have the opportunity to watch a top competitor, try put yourself in his mind. Try to think _with_ him...why has he chosen that choke, cartridge, set up, technique and method? Watch the order in which he breaks the targets. Don't just copy, blindly imitating, but learn from his approach. Adapt the ideas that can be learned to complement your own style and strengths.\n\n### **Checks and Balances**\n\nA major competition is a complex mix of targets. The majority will be standards and midis. The specialty targets, the mini, battue, rocket, rabbit, chondel are used in the following combinations: on report and true pairs. These are set at a variety angles, speeds and distances.\n\nTarget presentations have now became a contest between the target setter and the top competitors and every Sporting Clays course will contain several targets designed to push shooting skills, both physical and ballistic, to the limit.\n\nRealistically, the course builder has to find a balance in his design to accommodate the recreational and\/or average competitor. So, an equal percentage of softer targets may be included with the tough ones, with the ideal course being won on, or just over, the class averages.\n\nThis should mean that not many targets are thrown farther than thirty yards. Twenty or twenty-five yards is more common; often there is a combination of targets thrown, with the softer bird as one of a pair. There will be another ten targets that are more difficult because of the target type and presentation, not because of the distance thrown. Once again, the tricky ones are usually combined with a more straight-forward target.\n\n### **Bankers and Bonuses**\n\nIn any competition, there is an average thirty\/thirty-five hard target to sixty-five\/seventy soft target distribution. The soft targets should be considered bankers and the hard targets, bonuses. You need to concentrate on breaking all of the soft targets. If there is a hard and soft target presentation and the soft target is the first of a pair, use both barrels to be sure you break the first target. Only move to the second target if you break the first with the first barrel.\n\nEvery hard target is a bonus, but the soft targets are where you build your score. It is all too easy to let your concentration slip on the soft targets. Believing they are so easy, you do not give them your full attention. You allow your mind to wander \u2013 to count scores, dream of winning or how 'so and so' is doing in your class.\n\nWe have to learn not to worry or pay so much attention to the long target that you end up missing what should have been a 'card-filler'. Failure to give the same attention to the banker shots that you would the hard targets, can cause an 'expensive' miss. Remember, your final score does not reflect the degree of the difficulty of the targets shot. One is just as valuable as another, point-wise, it was just easier to hit. Give these targets the same respect you would a forty-yard crosser...they are just as valuable.\n\nBreaking more targets is accomplished through consistency and making sure you hit the soft targets. Don't lose focus trying to think your way through the hard ones. You can't forget about the hard shots, just consider them a bonus. They are set to separate the winners from the losers among the top competitors.\n\nUntil you reach Master Class, good averages and more punches are to be found in breaking the softer targets.\n\n### **Straight the Station**\n\nThis is a method that is very helpful in negotiating a Sporting Clays course. It works for every class of competitor, gives structure to each station and alleviates a great deal of the angst and pressure on the hard shots.\n\nConsiderer an 'A' class competitor: he needs to break a minimum of eighty targets to be in contention. By breaking the course down into the number of stations and dividing it into his desired total, on a ten station course he would need to break a minimum of eight targets per station to be in the running. He doesn't want to, but he could actually afford to miss two targets per station. Now, if he treats each station as a separate competition, he can work hard on shooting just one station straight.\n\nSay at Station one he breaks nine targets. This means he has a one target credit on Station two. He could afford to miss three targets on Station two and still be on track for his desired minimum score. Then at Station two, he does straight the stand, now he can carry a credit of three targets to Station three, and so on. When he does come to a station that is particularly difficult, he hopefully has built up a sufficient number of credit points to make up for any shortcomings on the tough station.\n\nThis method of credits and debits removes a great deal of pressure, enabling you to confine your expectations to the far recesses of your mind, while systematically building a winning performance. Throughout the competition, you will be concentrating on hitting every soft target, building a credit to apply to the hard shots on the next station.\n\n### **Competition Conclusions**\n\nConcentration is easily broken: no-birds, late pulls, delays while traps are filled, back-ups on stands, breakdowns, a dozen fellow-competitors watching...all these distractions, combined with the inevitable fatigue and anxiety inherent in any competition, can cause you to lose focus.\n\nA one hundred bird competition in any discipline is extremely hard work...it can also be an exhilarating and rewarding endeavour. You can experience the satisfaction and enjoy the rewards that come from your steady improvement and growing confidence as a competitive clay shooter.\n\nRemember, success is forged in the furnace of experience and practice.\n\nChapter 16\n\n# Fitness\n\n_'Fatigue_ __ _Makes_ _Cowards_ _Of_ _Us_ __ _All'_   \n_Vincent_ _Lombardi_\n\nWhat would you consider the greatest cause of missed targets? Wrong choke choice? Poor gun mount, lack of lead, off the line, choking in the shoot off? The list is endless and I am sure you can add your own excuses to it. Well, like the monkey puzzle, you would be right and wrong at the same time. In my opinion, one of the greatest reasons for missing is fatigue.\n\nI have said many times that eighty per cent of all misses are caused by poor gun mount. Once the mechanics of the mount are learned and grooved, it is fatigue that is at the root of a poor gun mount. Fatigue can also be the source of many of the other causes of missing. I am not talking about the fatigue that arises from hard physical work or lack of sleep, but that creeping fatigue that, unnoticed, drains away the concentration and coordination that is a prerequisite to straight shooting. This gradual erosion of performance can be felt in:\n\n  1. Strength \u2013 muscular weakness.\n  2. Concentration \u2013 easily distracted.\n  3. Vision \u2013 unable to focus.\n  4. Hearing \u2013 prone to flinches.\n\n### **Strength and Conditioning**\n\nBoth our physical strength and our general conditioning affect our ability to maintain a correct stance and posture. The inability to maintain balance causes extra emphasis to be placed on the arms, with a corresponding sapping of strength. The arms get tired, and the gun mount, timing and reflexes all begin to suffer. Proper coordination comes from the ability of the hands to carry out the information transmitted from the eyes. The head is simply the chassis for the eyes (your cameras). If the neck is weak, the head will loll about. This, combined with impaired visual acuity, quickly makes it impossible to maintain hard focus on the target.\n\n### **Concentration**\n\nWith fatigue, a gradual decline in concentration will result in poor scores, this is most apparent when you travel to a competition.\n\n### **Vision**\n\nSharp eyesight is essential to good shooting. Fatigued eyes are a sure recipe for a poor performance. Be sure to give your eyes time to relax and recover, especially if you have to drive some distance to a competition.\n\n### **Hearing**\n\nFatigue can result in an increased sensitivity to loud noises. This can cause flinching and hesitancy, resulting in poor swing and timing. This problem can often be so subtle as to go unrecognised, with only unexplained poor scores to show for it.\n\n### **Fit** **to** **Hit**\n\nIn any squad of shooters of similar ability, those that are fit will out-shoot those who are not. Most top competitors consider a physical fitness regime to be a vital ingredient to their success. Next time you are at a major competition, look at the physiques and physical conditioning of the Top Guns. You will soon notice that they are almost all, _Fit_ _to_ _Hit._\n\nGood physical conditioning is as important as gunfit, technique, mental strength, visual acuity, gun or cartridge selections. You will never shoot to your full potential until your physical condition is such that you can complete a major competition with enough 'gas in the tank' for the shoot-off.\n\nConsider a major Sporting Clays championship contested over twelve to sixteen stations. It requires a piece of land some 150 acres to allow for safe shot fall-out zones and the adequate spacing of target presentations. The average competitor is required to walk at least one and a half miles, including walks to and from the car park and participation in the side events. Many like to walk the course to get a feel for the targets being presented. This adds up to an average of about three miles.\n\nI realise that many of you will have buggies or golf carts but they bring their own impact to the equation. With the necessity to climb in and out of the cart some thirty-plus times, you may not walk as far, but the fatigue factor is still there.\n\nLet's consider a worst-case scenario. You walk three miles over an average tournament time of four hours. The gun weighs eight pounds, add a bag containing a minimum of twenty pounds of shells, choke tubes, water, sun block, towel, gloves, glasses etc... So, let's say, thirty pounds carried, not in a well-designed and comfortable rucksack, but with one-third in a gun slip and two-thirds in a bag. Both have shoulder straps and the weight is badly distributed, unbalanced and inefficiently carried the three-plus miles. Then consider that all of this kit is put down and picked up thirty-two-plus times over the course of a four-hour event. Another big consideration is the standing-around time. Of the four hours, you will be standing and waiting your turn at the various stations most of the time. Ask anyone who stands all day on the job just how tiring it is.\n\nIn addition to all this activity, you will remove your gun from the rack or its slip and if you have a trial mount and swing before each shot, you will make over two hundred gun mounts and swings. With an eight pound gun that means lifting and swinging approximately 2,080 pounds or over one ton in weight!\n\nIf you take into account how far you travelled to the event, if you slept badly in a strange motel room, the event's duration, (maybe more than one day?) and the number of games you shot in the preliminary events, you can begin to see that Sporting Clays requires a high level of stamina and fitness. Ignore fitness and fatigue will set in and have a major impact on your performance.\n\nThe top competitors shoot every week, both in practice and competition. On their way to the top, they shoot many thousands of rounds per year. This, in its own way, is progressive resistance training. In effect, they shoot themselves into being fit. Many, however, still choose to supplement their shooting practice with an exercise regime to combat the fatigue inherent in major competition.\n\nThe average competitor cannot afford the time, targets, cartridges or competition fees to shoot themselves into fitness. But a simple exercise regime will definitely improve their scores. If put in place and stuck to, a fitness programme will reap dividends during next year's tournaments.\n\n### **Fitness and Conditioning**\n\nAre the world's top guns supermen? No, but they _have_ shot their way to the top. Consider how many thousands and thousands of times they have lifted and swung their guns in practice and competition. I know of top performers who in the early stages of their careers were shooting thirty thousand rounds a year in practice alone! By sheer frequency of practice, they gained the required stamina and fitness needed to win a major competition. If they had introduced a fitness regime into their training at the beginning of their shooting career, I personally believe they would have reached the top and won more majors shoots sooner.\n\nStrength and conditioning play a vital role in the physical and mental aspects of any sport, and shooting is no exception. The fundamentals of correct stance, posture and gun mount that place the bones and muscles in their optimum position for ease of speed and movement (bio-mechanically efficient) are a must, but muscles must be developed for strength and endurance. By strengthening the major muscle groups involved in shooting, the competitor will not so easily concede targets to the effects of Creeping Fatigue Syndrome.\n\nPhysical training on its own cannot make you a better shot, but combined with the proper mechanics of shooting, it can have significant impact on your progress and improvement.\n\n#### **The Benefits of Being** **Fit** **to** **Hit**\n\nThe Three Major Improvements:\n\n  1. Improves grip, hold and swing.\n  2. Improves endurance and fatigue resistance.\n  3. Improves relaxation and promotes a positive mental attitude.\n\nThese three improvements all increase your ability to hold and control a shotgun from the ready position through swing, mount and follow through. Your reaction times will become better coordinated and smoother. These benefits are especially important to the beginner, junior and female shooter.\n\n#### **The Eight Additional Benefits**\n\n  1. Increased energy.\n  2. Better stress management.\n  3. Improved confidence in yourself and your abilities.\n  4. Suppression of doubts and anxiety control.\n  5. Increased ability to relax and control tenseness.\n  6. Better sleep patterns.\n  7. Better muscle condition and endurance.\n  8. Better weight control.\n\nHaving recognised the improvements and benefits derived from introducing exercise into our training regime, we need to consider what form this training should take.\n\nThere are as many methods of cardiovascular training as there are opinions on the best ways to shoot a springing teal. All work, though some work better than others. There is the traditional weight lifting or Marine Corps resistance training and, of course, there is swimming, cycling, aerobics and jogging. All work well and will improve your physical fitness and well-being, however, they do not specifically target the particular fitness requirements of shotgun shooting.\n\n#### **Targeted Training**\n\nThe muscles used in mounting and swinging the gun, if performed correctly, are many. Starting with the feet, moving up through the legs to the hips, waist, torso, shoulders, and finishing with the arms, multiple muscle groups are used to get the gun comb to arrive at the correct position on the cheek, at the Zycomatic Process. The arms and hands play another vital role in the impact of recoil, absorbing much of this score-wrecking force.\n\n#### **The Shotgun Muscle Groups**\n\nWe need to recognise the muscles that we use in shooting, to better understand their action and impact on more efficient shooting. Shotgunning utilises more of the body's muscles than the other aiming sports like rifle, pistol and archery. When shooting the FITASC and International disciplines where the gun-down position is mandatory, even more muscle action is required. Muscles that are properly exercised react to stimuli very quickly and powerfully.\n\nThe perfect shooting action begins with the feet which instigate initial rotation, continues up through the legs, hips and torso and culminates with the arms and shoulders delivering the gun to the cheek where the neck supports the head in the optimum position to allow hard focus on the target. Let us consider each of these muscles groups in their order of action.\n\n  1. **Gastronemious** Location: calves and lower legs. Function: walking and lifting of the heels. Begin the rotation of the body. \n  2. **Biceps** **Femoris** Location: the hamstrings, rear of thighs. Function: lifting of lower leg while walking. Continue the rotation of the body. \n  3. **Quadriceps** Location: front of thighs. Function: support the upper body, while walking. Provide the drive and push to continue rotation of the body in the direction of the target. \n  4. **Erectors** Location: lower back. Function: maintain the body in an upright position. Give the whole shooting action stability. \n  5. **Obliques** Location: sides of the waist. Function: rotate the body at the waist. Impacts our ability to shoot crossing targets and maintain balance throughout the shooting action. \n  6. **Abdominals** Location: abdomen. Function: maintain the correct posture to mount the gun and aid the obliques in rotation. \n  7. **Lattissimus** ******Dorsi** Location: sides of upper back. Function: combined with the biceps, hold the gun into the body and bring the gun down from the shoulder position after firing. \n  8. **Trapezius** Location: between neck and shoulders. Function: shrug or lift the shoulders. Start the arms up and commence the gun mount. \n  9. **Deltoids** Location: side and front of the shoulders. Function: lift the arms, and maintain their position and that of the gun at the correct height \u2013 the major muscles in the gun mount and swing. \n  10. **Triceps** Location: rear of upper arm. Function: extend the arms, give the gun direction towards the target during the mount \u2013 major muscles in the gun mount and swing. \n  11. **Biceps** Location: front of upper arm. Function: working in opposition to the triceps, the biceps lift and hold the gun into the shoulder \u2013 major muscles in the gun mount and swing. \n  12. **Flexors** **and** **Extensors** Location: forearm, both under and over the lower arm. Function: work the hands, both gripping and extending. Grip gun and move it to the target, and absorb a good amount of recoil. \n  13. **Pectorals** Location: chest. Function: draw the arms together forming a proper frame for mounting the gun. \n  14. **Neck** Location: both front and rear of the neck. Function: to place the head in the correct position for the stock comb to be placed in the cheek at the Zycomatic process. Front muscles lean the head forward to the correct position while the back muscles stretch to help place and maintain this position. The head and neck should not move during the shooting action but should flow with the rest of the body's movements, ensuring that the eyes remain locked on the target. The neck muscles do not actually physically work, so they do not require resistance exercises, but stretching exercises are beneficial.\n\nWhen making a shot, if proper form is shown, nearly all of the muscle groups play their role in maintaining both balance and smoothness. This is visually evident in the action of the top performers. Their proper form is present from the first target to the last of a competition. The Top guns are truly 'Fit To Hit'.\n\nIf you are still doubtful of the necessity to be fit to shoot well, then please consider this: Tom Migdalski in his book, _The_ _Complete_ _Book_ _of_ _Shotgunning_ _Games,_ writes 'If increased strength and reduced fatigue impact only five per cent of your shooting success, are you that good that you can afford to miss five targets out of every one hundred?' Migdalski has far greater in-depth knowledge on the subjects of nutrition, strength and conditioning for the shooting games than I ever will. I urge anyone who is prompted to begin an exercise programme to improve their shooting, to get a copy of his book and read it cover to cover.\n\nWith our busy life styles, attempting to spend several hours a week in the gym is impractical, if not impossible, for most of us. What we need is a simple workout that increases our strength and endurance, without consuming an unmanageable amount of our time. The equipment should be compact, light and portable so that it may be included in your shooting kit when on the road. This rules out conventional resistance training tools such as free weights or machines.\n\nIn any muscle injury, low impact resistance training is a prerequisite to recuperation. A variety of equipment has been designed and used for this and has many advantages over more traditional methods. Many of these techniques have found their way into professional sports training, the balancing board and resistance ball being two of the better known.\n\nOne that lends itself perfectly to our requirements for shooting training is the rubber band resistance workout. A full kit is light and takes up little space on the road or at home. Because of their method of use, they allow us to use them to target specific muscle groups and work them in the action we use when shooting.\n\nUsing these rubber bands I have put together a simple, low impact resistance workout that takes only ten minutes and can be performed at home, in the office or on the road. If carried out three times per week, combined with a sensible diet and lifestyle, this workout will definitely add targets to your score, by making you 'Fit to Hit'.\n\nFollow these simple rules to achieve maximum benefit from your workout:\n\n  1. Muscles need oxygen, so breathe normally.\n  2. For maximum strength and flexibility be sure to use the full range of motion for each exercise.\n  3. Be smooth; use a steady, slow motion when performing each exercise.\n  4. Emphasise this smooth, slow motion on the lowering part of each exercise. A controlled pace is most efficient. \n  5. Always maintain good posture while performing the exercises as shown in the pictures.\n  6. As with any exercise programme, consult your physician before beginning.\n\nStart with one set of fifteen repetitions (Beginner).\n\nProgress to two sets of twelve repetitions (Intermediate).\n\nProgress to three sets of ten repetitions (Advanced).\n\nDo not progress to the next set of exercises until you can comfortably carry out the full routine of your current level.\n\nThis is my recommended basic training programme. The exercises and programme can be customised to fit your personal fitness goals. It is essential that you rest between sets to get the full benefits from this workout. Always space your workouts by one complete day, this will allow your muscle groups adequate time to rest and rebuild between workouts.\n\n#### **_Rear_** __ **_Deltoid_** __ **_Pull_**\n\nGrasp handles, hold in front of chest. Stretch hands out to sides, hold, and return to start then repeat.\n\n_Seated Rows_\n\n#### _Seated_ **_Rows_**\n\nSit on floor, extend legs, place one end of band around feet, grasp handles and extend arms over knees. Keep your back straight, pull handles to your chest, squeezing your shoulder blades. Return to start and repeat.\n\n_Bicep Curl_\n\n#### _Bicep_ **_Curl_**\n\nStand up, place one handle under your right foot, grip other in right hand, palm up, hand at thigh. Curl hand up to chest, squeeze and hold. Return to start and repeat. Switch hands after each set.\n\n#### **_Tricep_** __ _Kickback_\n\nIn lunge position, grasp handles in each hand. Left forearm above knee and right hand at right hip, palm back. Extend right arm straight back and hold. Return to start and repeat. Switch hands and sides after each set.\n\n_Rear Deltoid Pull_\n\n#### _Chest_ _Press_\n\nTwist the band once, place around back and grasp handles, hands to side of chest, elbows at ninety __ degrees, extend arms forward then pull back to start, squeezing chest.\n\n_Chest Press_\n\n#### _Squat_ _Thrust_\n\nStand in the middle of the training tube. With feet shoulder-width apart, bring handles up behind the arms and rest on shoulders. Maintaining a straight back and tight stomach, smoothly and slowly squat down until the thighs are parallel with the floor, making sure your knees do not extend over your toes. Return to start position and repeat.\n\n#### _Upright_ _Rowing_\n\nStand with the feet in the middle of the tube and hold handles in each hand. Start exercise with palms facing back towards your body. Pull upward with elbows out and handles up, close to your body, until the handles touch your chin and your elbows are level with your ears.\n\n#### **Specific** **Shooting-Specific** **Exercises**\n\n**_Opposing_ _Hand_ _Resistance_**\n\nHelps in the absorption of recoil through the hands and arms, an essential requirement in control and gun mounting. Take the training band and twist it double. Take one handle in each hand and adopt your shooting stance and posture with your hands positioned as if holding the gun. Now pull your hands apart while making a smooth gun mounting action.\n\n_Opposing_ _Hand_ _Resistance_\n\n#### _Rotation_ _and_ _Swing_ _Resistance_\n\nPlace your right foot in the loop and, taking the handle in your left hand, adopt your shooting stance, holding your hands in the gun mount position. Now, extend your left hand and make a practice mount, swinging to your left. Return to start position and repeat, swinging to your right. For the left-handed, please mirror the instructions.\n\n_Rotation_ _and_ _Swing_ _Resistance_\n\n#### **_Gun_** __ _Mount_ _Strength_ _Resistance_\n\nAttach two training tubes to the foot loop, place right foot in the loop, then take both handles and adopt your shooting stance with your hands in the gun mount position. Now make your gun mount and swing, keeping both hands working in unison, swinging to your left and bringing the hands fully to the mounted position. Return to the start position and repeat to the right. For the left-handed, please mirror the instructions.\n\n_Gun_ _Mount_ _Resistance_\n\nBe sure to perform all of these exercises slowly, smoothly and correctly. Pause at the peak of each movement and hold for a second before relaxing and repeating the exercise. This way you will achieve the maximum benefit from your Shooting Exercise Programme.\n\nChapter 17\n\n# Ladies\n\nBeing a female in a male-dominated sport can be intimidating. So it is refreshing that there has been a noticeable increase in the number of women taking up clay shooting. The introduction to this sport can be via encouragement from a parent, partner, or boyfriend, while others give shotgunning a try simply to join their partner at the gun club on weekends. What's important is that the first introduction to shooting is both enjoyable and educational.\n\n_More_ _and_ _more_ _women_ _are_ _discovering_ _the_ _challenge_ _of_ _breaking_ _clays_\n\nWhat Sporting Clays offers the lady shooter, either recreationally or competitively, is the opportunity to have fun, even giving the men a run for their money on even terms. It is not a matter of who can lift the most weight, run faster or jump higher \u2013 but just hand and eye coordination skills as in catching a ball. Given the right start with the right equipment, some practical instruction, and the determination to practice, there is no reason why women cannot compete on equal terms with men.\n\nIt is often the introduction to this sport that proves most difficult for women. Far too many ladies are put off by an unsuccessful or even painful start. This can easily be avoided with an understanding of the extra \u2013 or rather different \u2013 challenges the majority of women face at the outset and how to overcome them.\n\nThere are several areas that cause the initial introduction to shotgunning to be a make-or-break situation for women. Most boys, at some point, have had a toy gun. If from a shooting family, this would have been replaced, with age and responsibility, by an air gun and eventually, a small-gauge shotgun. This experience with guns gives men an advantage when they begin clay shooting because they are already familiar with the weight, handling and shooting of a shotgun.\n\nOnly a small percentage of women have had these opportunities, and most come to the sport in their late teens or older and have a natural apprehension of shotguns. Even if it is used recreationally in the same manner as a tennis racquet or golf club, it is still a lethal weapon. This unfamiliarity with guns is the first hurdle to jump, but approached correctly, the foundations can be laid for a smooth introduction and steady progression in the sport.\n\nClay target shooting is one of the warmest and friendliest of sports. Can you imagine walking into a golf club and announcing that you were a beginner and would like to play? You would not find many scratch players rushing to help. Not so at the clay club! You could be maimed in the stampede to help, particularly if you are a female. A lady may want to begin as a spectator, observing a competition. This would help in understanding the sport and its challenges as well as provide an opportunity to ask questions. With some experience as an observer, it is easier to see how instruction is designed to provide the tools to break clays.\n\n### **Women and Eye Dominance**\n\nWomen are multi-taskers, usually able to carry out several activities at one time. Nature pre-programmed them this way to be able to cope with nursing and raising children and still maintaining the 'flight or fight' survival awareness.\n\n_There is a higher incidence of cross-dominance in women than in men_\n\nIn the brain the _corpus_ _callosum_ is a network of nerves that transmits messages between the right and left halves of the brain. It is better integrated in women than in men, enabling women to use both sides of the brain at one time. However, this ability has a downside: almost ninety per cent of women are either cross-dominant or have central vision.\n\nEye dominance must be checked and if opposite the shoulder shot off, the options are to change shoulders or obscure the dominant eye.\n\nThe most simple and effective cure for cross-dominance is the application of a small piece of opaque tape cut in a triangular shape and placed on the lens of the shooting glasses over the dominant eye. So when the head is on the stock, ready to take the shot, the tape is directly in front of the centre of the pupil. The advantage is that until the shot is ready to be taken, the brain is receiving binocular signals and can better identify the target in space and distance.\n\nUnder supervision, with a known-to-be-unloaded shotgun, the lady shooter will learn its parts, their function, and how to open and close the gun. Next, she should move on to loading the shotgun using snap caps (dummy cartridges), then firing it, and unloading it. It is at this time that safety and the Rules of clay shooting are learned, along with the basic skills needed to shoot a simple target. This information will build confidence, familiarisation, and knowledge, helping to overcome the natural apprehension felt when first learning to shoot.\n\n### **Gun** ******Fit**\n\nOverall, gunstocks are built to fit men. Alteration is required to make them comfortable for most ladies to shoot. Stock fit for ladies is not simply a matter of a shorter stock as there are obvious differences in body shape between the sexes. Ladies have a different skeletal shape to men, lighter and more petite; everything is scaled down, including bone length and diameter and muscle mass. This means ladies move differently \u2013 compare the actions of a man and a woman throwing a ball.\n\nThese differences impact on a woman's choice of gun, its fit and the gun mounting action. High cheekbones and a long neck, requires a gun to have a high comb to achieve proper alignment of the eye and rib without having to drop or roll the head. With many women, a Monte Carlo stock works well.\n\nSmall hands mean that the thick grips and forward trigger placements of some modern competition guns are not suitable for ladies. A slimmer, semi-pistol grip is needed to give proper comfort and control, with a trigger that is adjustable forward or backward.\n\nThe shape and soft tissue of a woman's chest requires careful adjustment to the pitch (angle of the rear portion of the butt that contacts the shoulder) on the stock. Too much pitch and all of the recoil forces are concentrated through the toe (bottom of the butt) of the gun. Not only is this painful and bruising, but can result in twisting or canting the gun or, worse, placing the butt of the stock out onto the bicep. This fitting problem can be further compounded by the adjuster or buckle on the bra strap. This clip is often exactly where the toe of the gun rests, adding to the discomfort and bruising.\n\nA minimum of six to eight degrees of pitch is recommended, along with a sports bra with no strap adjustments and a KICK-EEZ recoil pad to further displace recoil. While it is not possible to lay down any hard and fast rules, years of gun fitting have given me these yardstick dimensions for the average lady shooter:\n\nLength of Pull: 12\u00be inches to 14\u00bd __ inches with negative pitch of six to eight degrees\n\nDrop: at precisely where the face contacts the top of the comb \u2013 1\u215d __ inches, give or take \u215b __ inch\n\nCast \u2013 \u215b inch at the heel, \u215c __ inch at the toe.\n\n### **Gun** **Weight**\n\n'It's so heavy!' is one of the most common comments I hear when ladies take part in a first lesson. Yes, the sporting shotgun is heavy, designed to be carried a little and shot a lot. The average of 7\u00bd __ to 8 lb, combined with what really is an unusual position to both hold and support weight \u2013 at arm's length \u2013 leads ladies to shoot off the back foot. Because of the weight of the gun, women and other shooters of small stature tend to lean backwards, pushing their hips forward, using their upper body to counter the gun's weight.\n\nThe length of the gun really impacts on its perceived weight. If the butt stop is too long, the gun is farther from the axis of the body, increasing this subconscious need to push the hips forward and transfer more weight to the back foot to counter-balance the weight of the gun.\n\nProper posture is required to absorb recoil, create better access to the cheekbone and create a good pocket for the gun in the shoulder. This calls for a slight inclination or angling of the body towards the target. Simply shifting the hips backward achieves this proper posture. Exercises may be required, aimed specifically at the shooting action. These will increase strength and teach the lady shooter to mount the gun firmly and consistently into the same proper place in her cheek and shoulder (see Chapter 16).\n\n### **Gun** **Selection**\n\nA lot can be achieved with proper gun selection. A twenty gauge semi-automatic shotgun, particularly with an alloy action, is a great choice for a lady, offering reduced weight and recoil.\n\nIf strength will allow, a light twelve gauge with a suitably light cartridge would really be my recommendation. The margin for error is so much more with a twelve gauge than a twenty gauge and success is so important for the beginner.\n\n_The_ _Beretta_ _AL391_ _youth_ _model_\n\n### **Cartridge**\n\nRecoil is controlled by the combination of the gun's weight and cartridge velocity. Use the heaviest gun that can be comfortably controlled with the softest-shooting cartridge.\n\n### **Recoil Reaction**\n\nRecoil anxiety is always an element of that first experience or lesson. The _anticipation_ of recoil can cause as many flinches and trigger freezes as the _actual_ recoil.\n\nThe control of recoil is achieved by a suitable gun that is properly fitted, lighter cartridge selection, good ear protection, correct posture, good positioning of the hands for control and grip, and a solid gun mount.\n\n_Today's_ _lady_ _shooter_ _has_ _a_ _wide_ _choice_ _of_ _equipment_\n\n### **Clothing and Accessories**\n\nMost shooting vests are designed to fit the male form, with ladies' models simply coming in smaller sizes and brighter colours. This makes no allowance for the fit required for women to be comfortable and to perform at their best. The typical cut of a vest: big in the shoulders, adequate across the chest, then falling straight to the hips, does not accommodate the shape of the female form.\n\nThis poor fit at the waist and torso means that surplus cloth is gathered under the armpits when a lady attempts to mount the gun, making it snag or hang up. This male orientation in design is apparent in guns, earmuffs, earplugs and shooting glasses too. However, there are now several companies that offer shooting clothing especially for women. They have recognised the different needs of the lady shooter. In a pinch, if you are good with a needle and thread, you can restyle an off-the-rack vest to fit better by removing the surplus material. Even a safety pin can work wonders.\n\nA simple pair of earplugs that fit can be difficult to find, earmuffs, gloves and shooting glasses equally so. Do not compromise on quality, but be sure to find those accessories that do fit. By trial and error, you can find the shooting equipment that offers the best fit and the most comfort.\n\n### **Lead**\n\nI cannot recall where I read it or who wrote it, but I remember this remark caused quite a debate among instructors. The statement was: 'women see target lead at the barrel, whereas men see it at the target'. There is no doubt that, regardless of gender, we each have our own individual perceptions of lead or forward allowance, and learning what it is for us is an essential ingredient of successful shooting. I cannot say that women see lead in a different way than men, but I have found that they need a little more help in understanding what they _are_ seeing.\n\nTrying to describe what you see to another person, particularly one just beginning to shoot, is tough. With ladies, I have found a simple method that appears to work and is easily understood.\n\nI start out working with a simple incoming target, like a low-house station two on a Skeet field. Now, I know the picture that breaks this target. I have the lady shoot the target and, regardless of the miss or hit, ask her what she saw. I do this while showing a to-scale target at the end of the muzzle. I then ask her to adjust the picture to match the one she saw. One or two shots in this way, and I know how she sees lead. Be it in inches or feet, this becomes her own individual unit of lead.\n\nI then ask if there is something in her everyday life that is comparable in length to what she perceived. This can be anything from a car to a half or full loaf of bread. From then on, simply helping the shooter to learn her individual picturing is easy. I just ask her to increase or decrease the forward allowance by her own perception of lead, such as 'give it two full loaves on the next shot', or 'reduce it to one on the next shot'.\n\n### **Gun** **Mount for Ladies**\n\nFinally, I offer two tips for the lady shotgunner looking for extra targets. Get a five-pound dumbbell and, holding it in your left hand (if you are a right-shoulder shooter), extend your arm to the natural shooting position and begin tracing lines and shapes until the muscles begin to complain.\n\nRepeat this exercise as often as you can. Keep one dumbbell in the office and another at home and whenever you have five minutes on the phone or are watching television, exercise. This will increase the strength in the leading hand, ensure a better gun mount, give you more control of the gun and develop the ability to establish the all-important eye-target relationship.\n\nThe second tip is, if shooting gun down, hold the gunstock in the ready position an inch or two off or away from your body. This way you will avoid hitting your chest and your mount will be unimpeded and much smoother.\n\n### **A Final** **Word** **for Ladies**\n\nThe requirements that let a lady compete on an even playing field with the men are a structured introduction, learning and understanding the fundamentals, the correct gun properly fitted, a soft-shooting cartridge, then exercising and shooting to learn a smooth and controlled move to the target.\n\nChapter 18\n\n# Young Guns\n\nEvery parent or grandparent knows the pleasure of sharing a hobby with their children or grandchildren. Spending time together, passing on experiences, is a gift that will last both adult and child a lifetime.\n\n_The big shot is a little shot who kept shooting_\n\nThe enthusiastic clay shooter is no different and is usually quick to encourage his children to join him in his favourite sport...and this is where it can all go wrong. Today with the multitude of recreational activities that children can participate in, from the Internet and video games to conventional sports, the child can be an unwilling participant. Sometimes they only participate to make or keep their parents happy.\n\nTo begin to teach a child to shoot, first be sure that your child really wants to learn to shoot. Please do not confuse this with simply letting them 'have a go' at it, which is an entirely different scenario. However, much of this advice is still applicable. Here I am addressing the introduction to the sport for a young gun who may intend to shoot competitively.\n\n### **Safety Comes First** **!**\n\nTeach them the safety rules and show them competent and correct gun handling. Never, ever leave them alone, even for a minute, while at the shooting grounds. There are dangerous out-of-bound areas and potentially dangerous mechanical equipment is everywhere. Keep them with you at all times!\n\n### **Equipment**\n\nJust like the lady shooters, young shots will have to experiment to find equipment that fits and works for them. Ear and eye protection is mandatory but much can be done to alter adult clothing to fit and function better for a young shooter.\n\n### **What Is the** **Best** ******Age** **to Start** **?**\n\nThis should be more accurately stated what is the best size to start shooting? Children need encouragement and progress \u2013 this comes from success. If they do not have sufficient strength to control and swing a gun consistently, they will not achieve this success. They will quickly become frustrated and disillusioned with the sport, usually going back to something at which they are already successful.\n\nRegardless of what age the child is, they should be a minimum of one hundred pounds to be able to properly control and swing a gun. I have had eight-year-olds who could do so and twelve-year-olds who could not. There are no hard and fast rules on age but there are definite criteria as to size and strength.\n\nThere is nothing worse than seeing a young person leaning back, trembling with effort, trying to support a too-heavy gun, attempting to shoot an unsuitable target. It is unfair and unkind to subject them to this. It is far better to allow them to accompany you as you shoot, learning safety, proper gun handling as well as the etiquette of the gun club and the rules of competition. Then, as they build their strength and practise correct gun handling, they can move on to learning the correct method of the mount and swing. Their progress, when they are strong enough to manoeuvre the gun, will be swift and enjoyable and they will be better shots, all for a little patience on the part of the enthusiastic parent.\n\n### **Which Is the** **Best** ******Gun** **for the Beginner** **?**\n\nThere is very little difference in the weight of guns and gauges of the .410, twenty-eight and twenty gauges, but there is a great difference in the pattern they throw. The twenty bore in this case is the best, offering the optimum weight-of-gun-to-pattern ratio. On the other hand, if the child is strong enough and can competently control and swing a twelve gauge, then let them do so as soon as possible. As progress is made, you will see that only one gauge is used in major competition and that is for good reason; the twelve gauge is king in range and pattern.\n\nRecoil is one of the biggest challenges that faces the young gun and recoil is controlled, not by shooting a small gauge, but by the cartridge selection, the type of gun and its fit.\n\nThe semi-automatic Berretta Urika 91 Youth Model in twenty bore, fitted with a KICK EEZ rubber recoil pad is the gun of choice. Combine this with a light load of 24 grams (7\/8 of an ounce) and, if possible, no more than 1,050 feet per second. This gives the beginner a gun with maximum recoil control and minimum weight, as well as a reduced grip and fore-end, which is excellent for small hands.\n\n_The_ _Beretta_ _AL391_ _Youth_ _Model_\n\n### **What About** **Gun** ******Fit?**\n\nWith regard to gun fit, there are no set parameters and all I can offer is general advice. Children grow at an alarming rate and their gun fit dimensions will be constantly changing. So at the start, the gun should be shortened to the correct length and the wood that is removed should be kept and cut into half-inch slices. This way, as the child grows and extra length is required, the slices can be replaced, one at a time, exactly matching the size and grain of the stock. The height and cast alterations are easily achieved and altered to match changing dimensions by using Beretta's easily-adjusted shim system.\n\n### **What is the** **Best** **Way to Practise** **?**\n\nPractise the fundamentals, emphasising footwork, stance, good posture and head position. Practise the gun mount and move to the target. Use a drawing board to explain the basics of hitting a moving target and, when understood, begin with easy targets.\n\nLow house one is an excellent place to start and, if you can wind the spring off and raise the elevation of the target, so much the better. Create visual prompts to emphasise the Visual Hold, the Gun Hold, and Break Points. This can be done with stacks of fifteen to twenty clays at these positions.\n\nConcentrate on good form \u2013 better to have three successful good shots than a box full of mediocre hits and misses. You are putting in place the building blocks of good technique. You do not need to shoot a great deal to do so. Little and often is the secret with young guns.\n\nKeep it fun \u2013 do not overload them with technicalities. They do not need to know about chokes and cartridges or other trivia, but they do need success. Keep lessons short and be ever watchful for fatigue, usually demonstrated by sloppy gun handling as muscles tire.\n\nBe sure to finish every session on success. I will often set several rabbit targets on edge at different ranges and start the beginner out with these stationary targets. If fatigue starts to set in, I will often finish a session with a wager...five straight at these targets for a soda or snack. This ensures that every session concludes with broken targets and a boost of confidence.\n\n_Better,_ _better,_ _best_ \u2013 __ _never_ _let_ _it_ _rest_\n\nChapter 19\n\n# Instruction\n\nThere is no such person as The Natural. I will allow that there are a few participants in any walk of life who can learn a motor skill quicker than the average person. But there is still a ceiling to their progress \u2013 they just reach it quicker. The learning curve of any activity is never a straight line; it consists of peaks and troughs and very often long plateaus of little progress.\n\nA book like this is never purchased by the Top Shots...they consider that they know everything there is to know on the subject. This is a book for the Beginner through C, B and A Class shooters \u2013 those looking for insight and ideas on how to improve and move up in class. Well, the AA and Master Class competitors were not born with their skills and knowledge, they acquired them over time and so can you.\n\n_Group_ _lessons_ _with_ _a_ _qualified_ _coach_ _are_ _a_ _good_ _way_ _to_ _learn_ _the_ _fundamentals_\n\nThere is not one top competitor in any discipline who has not sought advice or taken instruction. To achieve the high standards they display has taken years of dedicated practice and a great deal of hard work. I would compare it to the martial arts; they have successfully progressed through the belts to black. However, just like the martial artist, no matter how good you are there is always room for improvement. I can assure you the top shots are always looking for an insight or tip that can sharpen their skills and break bad habits.\n\n### **Getting Started** ****\n\nIf it is your intention to become the best you can be at breaking clays, you need to follow their example and recognise that the quickest way to make progress is to take instruction and practise the lessons learned.\n\nThere are two distinct introductions to clay shooting: the first is usually through friends or family who already shoot or by exposure from a 'have a go' day or corporate event. At first your only concern is to break a target, just one will do! Then as you choose a discipline, if you can break half the targets you shoot at, you are happy. But as skills increase, you start to make better scores. And when you come close to a straight or winning a class or event, the game has changed. Shooting goes from being a recreational sport where the scores where immaterial, to a competitive sport where good scores are imperative!\n\nIf only you could find that consistency on High house two at Skeet, the hard right-hander on Station five at Trap or beat the Battue in Sporting Clays! This is often the motivation for considering instruction or getting that placebo for all misses...a gunfit.\n\nThe problem is you now have established muscle memory. There is no such thing as bad muscle memory, but there is incorrect muscle memory. Often when you first take instruction, the coach is faced with a dilemma: you do not have the sound fundamentals in place for him to be able to teach you the correct technique and method to shoot your bogie target. So, he can either teach you a trick to do so \u2013 Quick Fix or Short-Term Coaching \u2013 or he can take you back to basics and help you to understand the fundamentals \u2013 Long Term Coaching.\n\n### **Short-Term** **Coaching or** **Long-Term** **Coaching**\n\n**The** **Short-Term** **Coach**\n\nTake a short-term coaching example: suppose you want some instruction on a long crossing target \u2013 they always give you trouble, they soften your scores in competition and have become the target you dread. The coach asks you to shoot a couple and instantly tells you, 'You're behind that'. Before that sentence is finished, he says 'Double your lead!' And if that is not successful, 'Treble it!'\n\nThis theme is continued until he 'dials' you in and you break the target. For the next hour you visit several stations presenting similar targets and the coach works his 'magic' for you every time. You leave, delighted with your progress, and looking forward with anticipation to the next competition.\n\nThe big day arrives; you are shooting well with renewed confidence. You get to the long crossing presentation... you enter the stand and begin to miss! The target is _still_ a mystery! You recall the coach's advice and double the lead, treble it and still you cannot connect. You blank the stand and as you leave the stand, you see a friend watching and ask 'Where was I on those?' His reply...'You missed them a mile in front!' How could that happen? You had an excellent lesson only last week where you were crushing them!\n\nWhat happened was, you received Quick Fix or Short-Term Coaching. When the coach stands behind you he sees where you are missing, but he does not look for the reason why. He puts you right by talking you into putting the gun in the right place, in effect, shooting the target for you. You may be pulling the trigger but he is the one calling the shot. Yes, it can be a very successful lesson, but when you are on your own without the coach there to correct your mistakes, you are back where you started!\n\n#### **The** **Long-Term** **Coach**\n\nA long-term coach will explain the importance of learning sound fundamentals and how to practise the moves until correct muscle memory is established. This ensures that your shooting skills will not break down under the pressure of competition. Lack of the key fundamental skills is usually the cause of missing.\n\nThe long-term coach, in contrast, will look for the cause of the miss, running through a check list of possible faults, starting from your feet up. When he has analysed the problem (or problems) he will explain them to you. It could be fundamentals, technique, method or set up. He will then explain the solutions, working with you to correct your problems to the point that you can shoot those 'problem shots' on your own. This may take one or several coaching sessions, but once these changes are grooved, they are permanent.\n\nAlways try to find a long-term coach who 'Looks for the fault, analyses the cause and offers the correction'. Find the right coach and he can improve your performance quickly, find the wrong one and he can set you back just as fast.\n\n#### **Fundamentals First**\n\nThe most important lessons are the first. If possible, try to begin your shooting career with a series of lessons from a long-term coach. You will learn the fundamentals of foot work, stance, posture and head position, gun mount, technique and methods, proper set up and address to the target, together with advice on equipment and gun fit.\n\nThis good beginning will instill the correct muscle memory and pay great dividends over the years. Future lessons can be targeted at specific problems in your chosen discipline. The top shots got where they are through instruction and practice...follow their lead and you can succeed as well.\n\n### **How** **Do You Find a Good Instructor** **?**\n\nTo find a good instructor, look in magazines and on the Internet, read articles, ask fellow shooters for recommendations and ask the winners who coached them. When you have made a couple of choices, ask the pertinent questions:\n\n  1. How long are the lessons? (One hour, two hours, half-day, full day?)\n  2. What is the cost of shooting instruction?\n  3. What is included? (Ammunition, cartridges, targets, gun club fees?)\n  4. Do the lessons include the use of a gun, as well as eye and hearing protection?\n\nThere are one and two day schools you can attend as well. When considering these, be sure to ask about accommodation and meals, the size of the class and the ability level of the students. Does the school include gun fitting?\n\n_There_ _is_ _not_ _a_ _top_ _competitor_ _who_ _has_ _not_ _sought_ _advice_ _or_ _taken_ _instruction_\n\n### **The Right Coach at the Right Time**\n\nWe are all different and receive and react to instruction in different ways, so finding the right instructor is very important. You should consider that one's personal interpretation of these instructions may not be in line with how they where meant to be acted upon. The experienced coach recognises this and if one instruction is not working, will try another.\n\nSometimes the coach may need to step back and consider if his instructions are being understood. Can he explain them in another way to help the pupil make the breakthrough they are looking for? If he is unable to, either through lack of experience or just not being able to communicate well with a particular student, he should recognise this and recommend the pupil to a colleague or peer.\n\nThis ability to recognise that we do not have all the answers is one of the gifts that the Master Coaches have. They recognise that another coach may be better able to communicate with or have the greater experience needed to bring out the best in a particular student. Students who seek instruction from a variety of coaches, in effect, ensure that they will find the coach that they can 'gel' with. If they can understand the coach's instructions and communicate with him, they can put those instructions in place.\n\nThe individual who does not find this personal relationship, however, can still derive great benefit from a variety of coaches' instruction. The student may have been told a thousand times not to do something by one coach and another coach may deliver the same message, using different words, and a mental light bulb turns on for the student.\n\nWas the second coach a better instructor? Not necessarily, but he benefited from all of his predecessors' hard work. He simply found the words that got the message through to that pupil.\n\nInstruction can be expensive. If the cost is temporarily out of your range, all is not lost! At your club look for the competitors who consistently shoot high scores, demonstrate good form and make their shooting look smooth and easy. When one of these good shooters has finished for the day, approach him and ask if he would have the time to work with you occasionally to help you get a grip on the basics. I am sure you will find one who would be delighted to do so. Be aware, however, that being a good shot does not guarantee being a good teacher. So keep the fundamentals in mind at all times.\n\n### **Coaching Qualifications**\n\nIn the UK the CPSA and in the USA the NSCA have Coaching Certification Programmes offering three levels of instructor qualifications:\n\nLevel 1: Qualified to provide instruction to the beginner or novice shooter.\n\nLevel 2: Qualified to provide instruction to intermediate shooters.\n\nLevel 3: Qualified to provide instruction to shooters of all levels.\n\nI would urge everyone who thinks about getting some instruction to do so, one lesson can save years of frustration. Try to find a coach with whom you feel comfortable and can readily communicate. As your skill increases, plan to spend time with several coaches, listening to their ideas. If you learn to take one extra target it will be money well spent.\n\n_Look_ _for_ _instructors_ _with_ _qualifications_ _from_ _the_ _governing_ _body_\n\n_Find a coach to match your abilities_\n\n# Governing Bodies\n\n#### **United Kingdom** **:**\n\n**Clay Pigeon Shooting Association** **(CPSA)**\n\nEdmonton House\n\nBisley Camp\n\nBrookwood\n\nWoking Surrey\n\nGU2 ONP \u2013 UK\n\nPhone: +44-(0) 1483-485400\n\nFax: +44-(0)1483-485410\n\ninfo@cpsa.co.uk\n\n**The** **British** **International Clay Target Shooting Federation** **(BICTSF)**\n\n11, Beech Crescent\n\nDarlington\n\nPontefract\n\nWest Yorkshire WF8 3 AD \u2013 UK\n\nPhone: +44-(0) 1977-791242\n\nEmail: bictsf@globalnet.co.uk\n\n**The Welsh** **CTSA**\n\n45, Picton Road\n\nHakin\n\nMilford Haven\n\nDyfed SA73 3DY \u2013 UK\n\nPhone: +44-(0)1646-693076\n\n**The** **Scottish** **Clay Target Association**\n\nBox 400\n\n24, Station Square\n\nInverness IV1 1LD\n\n**The** **Irish** **Clay Pigeon Shooting Association**\n\nKilsallagh\n\n65, Glendoher Drive\n\nRathfarnham\n\nDublin 16 Eire\n\n003531-4931484\n\n**The Institute of Clay Shooting Instructors** **(ICSI)**\n\nFairview\n\nChurch End\n\nMain Road\n\nParson Drove\n\nCambridge\n\nPE13 4LF\n\n#### **France:**\n\n**Federation Internationale** **de** ******Tir** ******aux** ******Armes** **Sportive** **de** ******Chasse** ******(FITASC)**\n\n10, rue de Lisbonne\n\nParis 75008\n\nFrance\n\nPhone: 00421-934053\n\nFax: 00421-935822\n\n**Federation** **Francaise** ******de** ******Balle** **Trap** **(FFBT)**\n\n20, Rue Thiers\n\n92100 Boulonge Billancourt\n\nFrance\n\nPhone: 0033-141410505\n\nwww.ffbt.assoc.fr\n\n#### **Germany:**\n\n**ISSF**\n\nBavariering 21\n\nD-80336 Munich 1\n\nGermany\n\nPhone: 004989-5443550\n\nFax: 004989-5435544\n\n#### **USA:**\n\n**National Sporting Clays Association** **(NSCA)** **&** **National Skeet Association** **(NSSA)**\n\n5931 Roft Road\n\nSan Antonio\n\nTexas 78253\n\nUSA\n\nPhone: 210-688-3371\n\nFax: 210-688-3014\n\n**Amateur Trapshooting Association** **(ATA)**\n\n601 W. National Road\n\nVandalia\n\nOhio 45377\n\nUSA\n\nPhone: 937-898-4638\n\nFax: 937-898-5472\n\n**Sporting Clays of** **America** ******(SCA)**\n\n9257 Buckeye Road\n\nSugar Grove\n\nOhio 43155-9632\n\nPhone: 740-746-8334\n\nFax: 740-746-8605\n\n**U.S.A.** **Shooting**\n\nOlympic Training Center\n\nOne Olympic Plaza\n\nColorado Springs\n\nColorado 80909-5762\n\nUSA\n\nPhone: 719-578-4883\n\n# Bibliography\n\nAdams, Cyril S., Adams and Braden, Robert S. _Lock_ _Stock_ _and_ _Barrel._ Long Beach: Safari Press, 1996.\n\n\u2014 _Clay_ _Pigeon_ _Shooting,_ Kaye & Ward Ltd, London 1973.\n\nAtwill, Lionel, _Sporting_ _Clays,_ An Orvis Guide, The Atlantic Monthly Press, NY, 1990.\n\nBarnes, Mike, compiler, _The_ _Complete_ _Clay_ _shot,_ David & Charles, Newton Abbot, Devon, 1993.\n\nBassam, Lanny, _With_ _Winning_ _In_ _Mind,_ Xpress Publications, San Antonio, TX, 1988.\n\nBentley, Paul, _Clay_ _Target_ _Shooting,_ A. & C. Black Ltd, London, 1987.\n\n\u2014 _Competitive_ _Clay_ _Target_ _Shooting,_ A. & C. Black Ltd London 1991.\n\n\u2014 _Clay_ _Shooting_ _with_ _the_ _Experts,_ B.T. Batsford Ltd, London 1994.\n\nBidwell, John, and Robin Scott, _Move:_ _Mount:_ _Shoot,_ The Crowood Press, Marlborough, Wiltshire, 1990.\n\n\u2014 _Black's_ _Wing_ _and_ _Clay,_ Ehlert Publishing Group Inc, Maple Grove, MN, 2004.\n\nBowlen, Bruce, _The_ _Orvis_ _Wing_ _Shooting_ _Handbook,_ Lyons & Burford, NY 1984.\n\nBrindle, J., _Shotguns_ _and_ _Shooting,_ Nimrod Book Services, 1984.\n\nBrister, Bob, _Shotgunning:_ _The_ _Art_ _and_ _Science,_ Winchester Press, Tulsa OK, 1976.\n\nBritish Proof Authorities. _Notes_ _on_ _the_ _Proof_ _of_ _Shotguns_ _and_ _Other_ _Small_ _Arms,_ The Worshipful Company of Gunmakers, of the City of London and the Guardians of the Birmingham Proof House, The Proof House, Commercial Rd, London, The Gun Barrel Proof House, Banbury Street, Birmingham.\n\nBuckingham, Nash, _Mr_ _Buck:_ _The_ _Autobiography_ _of_ _Nash_ _Buckingham,_ Dyrk Halstead and Steve Smith, Countrysport Press, Traverse City MI, 1990.\n\nBurrard, Maj. Sir Gerald, Bt, _In_ _the_ _Gunroom,_ Herbert Jenkins, London 1930.\n\nCarlisle, Dan, and Dolph Adams, _Taking_ _More_ _Birds:_ _A_ _Practical_ _Guide_ _to_ _Greater_ _Success_ _at_ _Sporting_ _Clays_ _and_ _Wing_ _Shooting,_ Lyons & Burford, NY 1993.\n\nChurchill, Robert, _Churchill's_ __ _Shotgun_ _Book,_ __ Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1955.\n\n\u2014 _Game_ _Shooting,_ Michael Joseph Ltd, London, 1955.\n\nClay Pigeon Shooting Association, _Safety_ _Officers_ _Manual,_ CPSA, Corby, Northamptonshire, c1998\n\n\u2014 _Senior_ _Coaches_ _Handbook,_ CPSA Buckhurst Hill Essex, 1990.\n\nCradock, Chris, _Cradock_ _on_ _Shotguns,_ B.T. Batsford Ltd London 1989.\n\n\u2014 _A_ _Manual_ _of_ _Clay_ _shooting,_ revised edn, B.T. Batsford, London 1988.\n\nCrews, Dr Debbie, _Balanced_ _Brain,_ Research Paper, Arizona State University, 1997.\n\nDavies, Ken, _The_ _Better_ _Shot,_ Quiller Press, London 1992.\n\nDeacot, Robert, _'Bud',_ _Writings,_ Decot-Hywyd, Phoenix, Arizona, 1996.\n\nEvans, George, _The_ _Best_ _of_ _Nash_ _Buckingham,_ Winchester Press, NY, 1973.\n\nGreevy, Les, _The_ _Mental_ _Game_ _of_ _Clay_ _Target_ _Shooting,_ Self Published, Williamsport, PA. 2001.\n\n\u2014 _Shooting_ _in_ _the_ _Zone,_ Self Published, Williamsport, PA, 2002.\n\nHartman, B. C, _Hartman_ _on_ _Skeet,_ McCelland and Stewart, Toronto, 1967.\n\nHastings, MacDonald, _How_ _to_ _Shoot_ _Straight,_ A., Barnes and Company, NJ, 1970.\n\nHawley, John and Louise Burke, _Peak_ _Performance,_ Allen and Unwin, St Leonards, NSW, 1998.\n\nHearn, Arthur, _Shooting_ _and_ _Gunfitting,_ Herbert Jenkins, London, 1930.\n\nHoare, Tony, _Successful_ _Clay_ _Pigeon_ _Shooting,_ The Crowood Press, Marlborough Wiltshire, 1991.\n\nJackson, Susan and Milhaly Csikszentmihalyi, _Flow_ _in_ _Sports,_ Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, 1999.\n\nJanelle, Christopher and Charles Hillman, _Quiet_ _Eye_ _Phenomenon,_ University of Florida and University of Illinois, Research Paper. 1996.\n\nJarett, Alan, _Shooting_ _at_ _Clays,_ Stanley Paul, London, 1991.\n\nKayes, Michael, _Mental_ _Training_ _for_ _the_ _Shotgun_ _Sports,_ Shotgun Sports, Auburn, CA, 1995.\n\nKing, John, _Clay_ _Pigeon_ _Shooting,_ The Sportsman's Press London 1991.\n\nKnight, Richard Alden, _Mastering_ _the_ _Shotgun,_ E.P. Dutton Co, NY, 1975.\n\nLancaster, Charles, _The_ _Art_ _of_ _Shooting,_ McCorquodale & Co, London, 1954.\n\nLind, Ernie, _The_ _Complete_ _Book_ _of_ _Trick_ _and_ _Fancy_ _Shooting,_ Citadel Press, Secaucus, 1972.\n\nLinn, John R. And Stephen A. Blumenthal, _Finding_ _the_ _Extra_ _Target,_ Shotgun Sports Magazine Book, Shotgun Sports Inc, Auburn CA, 1989.\n\nLittle, Frank, _The_ _Little_ _Trapshooting_ _Book,_ Shooting Sports Magazine Book, Futher Adventures Inc., Auburn, CA, 1994.\n\nMarshall-Ball, Robin, _The_ _Sporting_ _Shotgun:_ _A_ _User's_ _Handbook,_ Saiga Publishing Co, Surrey, England, 1982.\n\nMartin, Dr Wayne F., _An_ _Insight_ _to_ _Sports:_ _Featuring_ _Trap_ _Shooting_ _and_ _Golf,_ Sports Vision Inc., Seattle, WA, 1987.\n\nMcCawley, E.S., Jr. _Shotguns_ _& _ _Shooting,_ Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, NY, 1965.\n\nMeyer, Jerry, _The_ _Sporting_ _Clays_ _Handbook,_ Lyons & Burford, NY, 1990.\n\n\u2014 _The_ _Clay_ _Target_ _Handbook,_ Lyons Press, NY, 1992.\n\nMigdalski, E, _Clay_ _Target_ _Games,_ 1978,\n\nMigdalski, Tom, _The_ _Complete_ _Book_ _of_ _Shotgunning_ _Games,_ Masters Press, Indianapolis, IN, 1997.\n\nMiller, Brian, _Gold_ _Minds,_ Crowood Press, London, 1992.\n\nMissildine, Fred, with Nick Karas, _Score_ _Better_ _at_ _Trap,_ Winchester Press, NY, 1972.\n\n\u2014 _Score_ _Better_ _at_ _Skeet,_ Winchester Press, NY, 1972.\n\n\u2014 _Score_ _Better_ _at_ _Trap_ _and_ _Skeet,_ Winchester Press, NY 1971.\n\nMontague, A. Andrew, _Successful_ _Shotgun_ _Shooting,_ Winchester Press, NY, 1971.   \nThe Derrydale Press, Lanham, Maryland, 2000.\n\nNichols, Bob, _Skeet:_ _And_ _How_ _to_ _Shoot_ _It,_ G. P. Putnam's Sons, NY, 1947.\n\nOrberfell, George G. and Charles E. Thompson, _The_ _Mysteries_ _of_ _Shotgun_ _Patterns,_ Oklahoma State University Press, Stillwater OK, 1957.\n\nO'Connor, Jack, _Complete_ _Book_ _of_ _Shooting,_ Outdoor Life, NY, 1965.\n\nPearce, Michael, _Sporting_ _Clays,_ Stackpole Books, Harrisburg, PA, 1991.\n\nReynolds, Mike, with Mike Barnes, _Shooting_ _Made_ _Easy,_ The Crowood Press, Marlborough, Wiltshire, 1989.\n\nRose, Michael, _Guncraft:_ _Clay_ _and_ _Game_ _Shooting,_ Chancerel Publishers Ltd, London, 1978.\n\n\u2014 _The_ _Eley_ _Book_ _of_ _Shooting_ _Technique,_ Chancererel Publishers Ltd, London, 1978.\n\nRottella, Bob, _Golf_ _is_ _not_ _a_ _Game_ _of_ _Perfect,_ Simon & Schuster Inc, NY.\n\nRuffer, Maj. J. E. M., _The_ _Art_ _of_ _Good_ _Shooting,_ David & Charles Publishers Ltd, Newton Abbot, Devon, 1972.\n\nScherer, Ed, _Scherer_ __ _on_ _Skeet,_ Ed Scherer, Waukesha, WIS, 1991.\n\nSmith, A. J., _Sporting_ _Clays,_ Argus Books, Hemel Hempstead, 1989.\n\nSmith, A. J. and Tony Hoare, _A._ _J._ _Smiths_ _Sporting_ _Masterclass,_ Argus Books, Hemel Hempstead, 1991.\n\nStadt, Ronald W., _Winchester_ _Shotguns_ _and_ _Shotshells,_ Armory Publications, Tacoma, 1984.\n\nStanbury, Percy and G.L. Carlisle, _Shotgun_ _Marksmanship,_ Stanley Paul & Co. Ltd, London, 1986.\n\n\u2014 _Clay_ _Pigeon_ _Marksmanship,_ Herbert Jenkins Ltd, London 1982.\n\n\u2014 _Shotgun_ _and_ _Shooter,_ Barrie and Jenkins Ltd, London 1970\n\n\u2014 _Clay_ _Pigeon_ _Marksmanship,_ Barrie and Jenkins Ltd, London 1982.\n\nStewart, Jackie with Mike Barnes, _The_ _Jackie_ _Stewart_ _Book_ _of_ _Shooting,_ HarperCollins Publishers, London 1991.\n\nTaylor, John, _The_ _Shotgun_ _Encyclopedia,_ Safari Press Inc, Long Beach, CA, 2001.\n\n\u2014 _Shotshells_ _& _ _Ballistics,_ Safari Press Inc, Long Beach, CA, 2003.\n\nTaylor, Mark H., _Clay_ _Target_ _Shooting:_ _The_ _mental_ _game,_ STP Books, Tucson Arizona, 1997.\n\nYardley, Michael, _Gunfitting:_ _The_ _Quest_ _for_ _Perfection,_ The Sportsman's Press, London 1993.\n\n\u2014 _Positive_ _Shooting,_ The Crowood Press, Marlborough Wiltshire, 1994.\n\n\u2014 _The_ _Shotgun:_ _A_ _Shooting_ _Instructors_ _Handbook,_ The Sportsman's Press, 2001.\n\nZutz, Don, _Modern_ _Waterfowling,_ _Guns_ _and_ _Gunning,_ Stoeger, Publishing Co, South Hackensack,\n\nNJ, 1985.\n\n\u2014 _The_ _Double_ _Shotgun,_ Winchester Press, NY, 1985.\n\n\u2014 _Shotgunning:_ _Trend_ _in_ _Transition,_ Wolfe Publishing Co. Inc., Prescott, AR, 1989.\n\n\u2014 _Shotgun_ _Stuff,_ Shotgun Sports Inc, Auburn, CA, 1991.\n\n## Periodicals\n\n**_Clay_ _Shooting_ _Magazine_ _(UK)_**\n\nUK: Brunton Business Publications Ltd\n\nThruxton Down House\n\nThruxton Down, Andover\n\nHampshire, SP11 8PR\n\nEmail: info@clay-shooting.com\n\n**_Clay_ _Shooting_ _(USA)_ \u2013 _Incorporating_ _the_ _Clay_ _Pigeon_**\n\nUSA: Clay Shooting USA\n\n8535, Wurzbach, Suite, 203\n\nSan Antonio, Texas78240\n\nEmail: info@clay-shootingusa.com\n\n**_Pull_ _(UK)_**\n\nOfficial Magazine of the Clay Pigeon Shooting Association\n\nBourne Publishing Group\n\nRoebuck House\n\n33 Broad Street\n\nStamford\n\nLincolnshire\n\n**_Sporting_ _Clays_ _(USA)_**\n\n5211, South Washington Avenue\n\nTitusville\n\nFlorida 32780\n\nUSA\n\nwww.sportingclays.net\n\n**_Shotgun_ _Sports_ _(USA)_**\n\nPO Box 6810\n\nAuburn\n\nCalifornia 95604\n\nUSA\n\nwww.shotgunsports.com\n\n**_Sporting_ _Gun_**\n\nIPC Magazines Ltd\n\nKings Reach Tower\n\nStamford Street\n\nLondon SE1 9LS\n\n# Index\n\n  * ballistics \n  * barrel awareness \n  * barrel length \n  * batteries \n  * Bidwell, John \n  * boxlock \n  * break action shotguns (side by side and over and under) , \n  * break point\n\n  * carrying the shotgun \n  * cartridges , , \n  * centreing , \n  * chokes , \n  * Churchill method , \n  * Churchill, Robert \n  * cleaning (of guns) \n  * clothing \n  * coaching qualifications \n  * Compact Sporting see Five Stand competitions \n    * analysing the course \n    * controlling stress \n    * rules and regulations \n  * Cooper, Andrew \n  * course setting , \n  * Crews, Debbie \n  * crossing targets \n  * Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly\n\n  * equipment and accessories \n  * equipment carts \n  * eye alignment \n  * eye dominance \n  * eye exercises \n  * eye sight correction \n  * eyes and vision ,\n\n  * FITASC history \n  * fitness \n    * training programme \n  * Five Stand, history \n  * fixed action shotguns (semi\u2013automatic and pump) , \n  * foot positions \n  * fundamentals of shooting straight\n\n  * gear bag \n  * gloves \n  * governing bodies \n  * grip \n  * grips \n  * gun fit , \n  * gun mount\n\n  * hand position , \n  * head protection \n  * hearing \n  * hearing protection \n  * Hillman, Charles \n  * history (of breaking clays)\n\n  * instruction\n\n  * Jackson, Susan \n  * Janelle, Christopher\n\n  * King, Billie Jean\n\n  * ladies (shooting) \n    * clothing and accessories \n    * eye dominance \n    * gun fit \n    * gun mount \n    * gun selection\n\n  * maintained lead \n  * malfunctions \n  * mental game\n\n  * optical illusions \n  * over and under shotgun see break action\n\n  * pattern plate , , \n  * posture \n  * proof, proofing \n  * pull away \n  * pump action see fixed action\n\n  * quartering targets\n\n  * rabbits (targets) \n  * recoil , \n  * rib styles \n  * rockets (targets)\n\n  * safety \n  * semi\u2013automatic shotgun see fixed action\n  * shoe protectors \n  * shoes \n  * shooting glasses , \n  * shooting vest \n  * shotguns \n    * buying \n    * terms \n    * types \n  * shot size \n  * side by side shotgun see break action\n  * sidelock \n  * Skeet , , \n    * chokes and cartridges \n    * gun \n    * history of \n    * rules \n  * Sporting Clays , , \n    * gun \n    * history \n    * rules \n  * sporting solutions \n  * spot or ambush \n  * stocks \n  * swing through\n\n  * targets \n  * teal (target) \n  * Trap , \n    * chokes and cartridges \n    * fundamentals \n    * gun \n    * history \n    * range \n  * traps \n  * trigger plate \n  * triggers \n  * try gun\n\n  * wad\n\n  * young guns \n    * choice of gun \n    * gun fit\n\n  * 'Zone' the \n  * zycomatic buttress\n\n# Copyright\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2005 Chris Batha\n\nFirst published in the UK in 2005   \nby Swan Hill Press, an imprint of Quiller Publishing Ltd\n\nThis edition published by Quiller in 2011\n\n**British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data**   \nA catalogue record for this book   \nis available from the British Library\n\nISBN 978 1 84689 125 0\n\nThe information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. All recommendations are made without any guarantee on the part of the Publisher, who also disclaims any liability incurred in connection with the use of this data or specific details.\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.\n\n**Quiller**  \nAn imprint of Quiller Publishing Ltd   \nWykey House, Wykey, Shrewsbury, SY4 1JA   \nTel: 01939 261616 Fax: 01939 261606   \nE-mail: info@quillerbooks.com   \nWebsite: www.countrybooksdirect.com \n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}