Triptych

John L. Emerson

The ghost of a Paris moon —a stone against the sky—diffused its spectral light in the west; in the east dawn cracked with a crescendo of thunderclaps, as though God were rattling his teacups!  Storm clouds rolled across the sky like tumbleweed across an open desert, but no rain fell.  The long night’s pageantry had at long last concluded, and soon the sky resumed its normal appearance.

 Monsieur Grillet, slumped like a sack of dirty laundry in an unmarked doorway on rue Lapic [Montmartre] scratches his head, beard [et cetera] and rubs the sleep from his eyes.  “Hell of a place to wake up,” he thinks to himself, endeavoring, with considerable application, to resurrect himself to at least the semblance of a standing posture.  This accomplished [more or less] and now leaning heavily against the scripted glass of a locked door, he hawks up a gob of god only knows what, lights a somewhat crumpled cheroot, and, through squinting eyes and a haze of bluish smoke, surveys the attendant landscape with its cluster of low buildings and colorful storefronts.  The morning air is filled with a ragout of strange and wonderful sounds and smells; indeed, Paris seems to purr in the still pale light, its streets slowly filling with odd and whimsical creatures, at once fleeting, blurred, individual, and all wriggling about like figures of fantasy to provoke blasphemies addressed to a barbaric god.  And what do you know, but M. Grillet appears to be quite enthralled by all this general turmoil and hum of the city: the whir of metallic traffic; the toot-toot-toot of small motor-horns; the shouting; the shuddering; the marching of feet; the crossing of bridges; the rushing towards punctuality; the rush of hours; the moans of the overworked; the banter; the quarrels; the crowded disorder; the scrubbing of tables and floors; the sweeping of sidewalks; the reading of newspapers; the coming and going; the hanging about; the slamming of doors; the minding of ways; the shaving of beards; the cutting of bread; the sorting of fish and fruit; the fetching of meals; the clinking of coffee cups; the night-watchmen going home to bed; the long and short rings of doorbells; the minding of machines; the clamor of service lifts; the pulling out of drawers; the pulling of teeth; the looking up at chimneys erupting like volcanoes; the paying of hotel bills; the pawning of household effects; the drudgery of existence; the perpetuating of the species; the cultivating of opinions; the corrupting of innocence; the inimical denouncing of foreigners; the struggling like a madman to gain a hold on life; the ringing of church bells across Paris summoning the faithful to morning Mass, induc-ing communicants to sing the antiphon, and to bow their heads in sotto voce commune with the allegorical muse.  It was all there, all just beginning: a brand new day, like every other brand new day there had ever been, only newer.
            Across the way, sitting alone in a café [a café longer than it is wide] M. Grillet’s eye is caught by a gentleman who somewhat resembles a hammerhead shark, as this gentleman [perhaps a Looney!] is wearing a rather conspicuous bicorn hat; the very same sort of bicorn hat that the famous Napoleon famously wore, which gives the gentleman’s head a pronounced T-square construct.  On the small table before this gentleman there is a steaming bowl of [what is very likely] stew or soup, which the gentleman eats with the aid of a large metal spoon, carefully blowing on each spoonful before putting it into his mouth.
            As M. Grillet is observing the bicorn-endowed-soup-eater, the pitch-perfect harmonies of an overheard two-part invention of words draw his attention to two figures standing front side of a barber shop. 
            The first, a priest [judging from the way he is twigged-out]; the second, the rather conspicuous form of a tall and well endowed woman, wearing a large, floppy straw hat.
            The priest [who appears to be slightly befuddled], his head engulfed in an opaque tobacco haze of cigarette fog, is engaged in a seemingly pestered and disordered discourse with then, who, ever so cutely, and with a goo-goo smile of coquettish blush, casually brushes the fallen smut of cigarette ash from the good father’s dickey, provoking a sort of girlish, woozy giggle from the priest.
            Presently an elderly man [with disordered and thinning white hair accentuating an infelicitous physiognomy] seats himself on a wooden bench.  In his left hand he carries a battered traveling case; under his right arm a folded newspaper.  Placing the battered traveling case on the bench to his left, he crosses one leg over the other, opens the aforementioned newspaper, and begins to read. 
            A common enough scenario, to be sure, yet a burst of burning fear suddenly zigzags down M. Grillet’s spine.  For there, in close proximity to the bench where the white-haired gentleman sits reading his newspaper, conspicuously nailed to a charming maple leaf plane tree, there is a Pasquinades Avis: a police Wanted poster illustrated with a meticulously sketched representation of a man resembling our hero, M. Grillet.

Now, bearing SE and 775.25 miles [or 1247.61 kilometers] away  to an analogous scene in Budapest, Hungary, we find Anna [a.k.a “Aniko"], a pretty, and down on herself thirty-four year old midwife third class, who, because of a butterfingered delivery [which, sadly, resulted in the tragic death of a newborn girl] is on a binge of self-pity and self-inflicted castigation.  Indeed, the spirit of lost hope has blown its breath upon her, and Anna has responded by taking to the streets, brooding and meditative, and deep in the throes of the profoundest shame imaginable. 
            Anna is to be found on the Szechenyi Chain Bridge, walking barefoot past stone lions lying on stone blocks, past postcard views, in the direction of Adam Clark Square and Buda Castle; behind her is Roosevelt Square and the Gresham Palace; below, the mighty Danube river where, even at this early hour, there is already heavy barge traffic.  On the further shore, toward which Anna is walking, amongst the broad expanses of greenery, a lone fisherman [wearing yellow spectacles and blue rubber boots up to his knees] is casting and recasting his line into the dark waters.  “Yes, he, too, is lonely,” Anna thinks, and is somewhat comforted by this emotional transference. 
            Anna lifts and shades her eyes to gaze at the infinitely distant sun, still low on the horizon; a sun which looks quizzically back at her.  From a pocket of her light jacket she removes and opens a tin of sardines [stolen the day before].  As she eats [tiny drops of oil anointing her chin, throat, and fingers] she stares wide-eyed at the gaggles of low-flying birds circling the passing sea-bound barges laden with great mounds of fermenting rubbish.  Now and then, one or two of these birds hovers and calls out to Anna, no doubt hoping for a little charity.  But these entreaties Anna uncharitably ignores, choosing instead to feed her own intense hunger.  From a second pocket of her light jacket, Anna now procures a bottle of palinka brandy [also stolen].  The brandy burns her throat, and tastes of autumn peaches.            
            “EGE’SE’GEDRE!” she shouts [perhaps toasting an invisible specter or diety(?)], and then completely drains the bottle of its sweet liqueur.
            Her courage, her sense of daring thus bolstered, her brain burning with fever, Anna suddenly climbs up onto the narrow rail of the bridge’s pedestrian walkway, oh so precariously high above the dark Danube monster below.  With her arms outstretched for balance, she begins to dance a wobbly tiptoe ballet: bird-like, she flaps her arms, and even wiggles her tail feathers a bit; while below the Danube monster licks its lips and opens wide its jaws in anticipation of this human hor d’oeuvre.  But Anna only teases, and dances to seduce the monster, and to entice it to grant her a vision of heaven.
            But the monster, with typical circuitousness, its breath pungent with the reek of dead sailors and suicides, says to Anna: “Ah, but I am only a river after all, and my powers are limited.  But do come to me, my sweet, and we shall see what we shall see.”
            But Anna is not listening.

M. Grillet tries blinking and rubbing his eyes, and then, bracing for the worse, looks at the poster yet again.  No, he was not mistaken; the sketch, nailed to the side of the tree, next to the bench where the white haired gent sits reading his newspaper, is indeed his own unmistakable likeness. 
            “Now suppose I were to sit down beside that old gentleman,” ruminates M. Grillet.  “Would he [as would be only natural] turn to see and to know who it was sitting down next to him?  And by turning to see, would he then notice and recognize me from the poster nailed to that there tree?  And might he then [oh so nonchalantly of course] fold and put away his newspaper, tucking it back under his arm, then rise slowly in his old age, perhaps even sounding his unwiped posterior trumpet [as old men are wont to do] before taking a moment to stretch and to unbend his crooked body, before tottering off, all mercurial and sublimated, full of humors and dispositions, to fetch the gendarme?  And who would blame him if he did, poor old geezer that he is, what with trying to live on a meager government pension for the rest of his miserable days, I wouldn’t wonder.  And besides, you don’t have to be an Archimedes to put two and two together here, especially if you stop to consider the mathematical likelihood, that is to say, the likelihood expressed as the ratio of the number of probabilities divided by the total number of possibilities that some kind of reward is being offered for my capture.  If only I might make out better the precise wording on that poster.  Here, I’ll try squinting again.  Nope, still doesn’t do a thing.  Eyes aren’t what they used to be, I’m afraid; going to need reading glasses any day now at this rate.  Anyway, I should probably move in for a closer look.  I’ll just act cool, lackadaisical even, smile and greet the old gentleman, perhaps offer him a hit off of my cheroot.  Fuck, it’s gone out again!  And that was my last match, too.  Oh, well.  Save it for later.  Right.  So, what was it I was about to do?  Ah yes, I was going to move in for a closer peek at that poster.  But wait, let’s hold them horses now, ‘cause, come to think of it, moving in closer might only serve to draw the old geezer’s attention to the poster [assuming, for the time being, that he hasn’t already seen it].  And who the fuck knows what sort of hornet’s nest that might stir up.  Besides, why bother taking such an unnecessary risk?  I’m no dummy.  Better to beat it instead.  Simply slink away unnoticed.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
            And with that resolute resolution, M. Grillet promptly sets off for the just around the corner Blanche Metro, where, shielded by the hustle and bustle and common clay of men and women, he quickly disappears underground.

In Cairo, Egypt a ten year old Zabbaleen boy [Ramadan] carries a load of cardboard on his back.  This cardboard will be recycled, or used to line the shabby walls of the shack Ramadan and his father, mother, and eighteen-year-old sister [Mina] live in.  There had been a younger sister [Lucina], but she died.  Some of the cardboard may also be burned for fuel. 
            Ramadan and his family live in a Zabbaleen community of Coptic Christians on the cliffs between the eastern autostrada and the Muqattam hills.  “Zabbaleen” means “garbage people”.  The Zabbaleen are scavengers by trade, and used to raise pigs; but then, fearing an outbreak of swine flu, the government had all the pigs slaughtered: some forty thousand in all. 
            Little Ramadan used to go to school, but since his father became too ill to work [chronic hepatitis “A”] the boy has had to leave school [temporarily he hopes – though time will tell] and take on the responsibilities of a job [delivering groceries for a supermarket] to help support his family.  However, Ramadan is by no means illiterate.  He can read and write, add and subtract, recite the Lord’s Prayer and several of the Psalms of David.  He is a clever boy, this Ramadan.
            Next to where Ramadan and his family live there is an ancient cemetery.  A long, garbage-cluttered pathway [where the grass will no longer grow] leads to the cemetery’s gated entrance.  To the right of this gated entrance, on a moss and vine covered red brick wall, there is a sort of makeshift shrine where someone [perhaps an angel] has painted an almost photographic image of the Holy Mother.  Ramadan’s sickly old father visits this shrine every morning, come rain or come shine.  He talks [prays] to the image, and says that he is sick because he believes that his soul must have wandered off, and he now fears that it has been captured by malevolent spirits.  He asks that the Holy Mother negotiate on his behalf for the return of his soul.   

Anna, like a dancer on a tightrope, takes several artful steps, accompanied by an occasional half-jump and squat.  And as she bounces along, to the tuba notes of the passing barges below, she engages in an extemporized singsong intonation [a habit from childhood] enunciated with a staccato cadence:
            For want of a tune
            the song was lost
            For want of a song
            the singer was lost
            For want of a libretto
            the opera was lost
            For want of an actor
            the play was lost
            For want of a bullet
            the gun was lost
            For want of a chisel
            the sculpture was lost
            For want of a cane
            the blind man was lost
            For want of a lace
            the shoe was lost
            For want of a teacher
            the child was lost
            For want of a cure
            the patient was lost
            For want of wanting
            desire was lost
            For want of God
            mankind was lost
           Then, suddenly, with a deep-throated gasp, and the most god-awful scream imaginable [inducing frightened winos to dive into trash cans and pull the lids down over them; a street performing fire-eater to accidentally set himself on fire; dogs to cover their ears with their paws; and at least one episode of premature ejaculation—this according to the wife of one Joseph Bardou, a Brasserie Lipp waiter] Anna falls [jumps?] through the gauze of morning mist, into the receiving gullet of the Danube monster waiting to gobble her up.

Resurfacing out of Metro Saint Michel, M. Grillet walks east along Quai de Montebello looking about as unhappy as a melancholy Jesus on his way to Calvary.  The cadences of rush hour traffic thud noisily by as the murmurous undertones of early day ramblers strafe over and through the scrambling horde like gunfire:  Rat-a-tat-tat!  Bonjour!  Rat-a-tat-tat!  Ca va?  Ping-pang-ricochet!  And how are the wife and progeny? 
            Near the Left Bank bookshop Shakespeare and Company, M. Grillet comes upon two men [each on a pair of tall walking stilts] who are in the process of hanging a long banner, the color of an Oriental sapphire.  Giants they are, towering over the zig-zaggery of ordinary men and women scuttling below them like imperfect insects as their shadows crawl along beside them.  The banner reads: GUERRE OU PAIX?
             Crossing over the river Seine, to the swarming-with-tourist plaza in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, M. Grillet chances upon a potbellied man whose two eyes have been sewn shut.  He is a man of mature years [however many that might imply] quietly disposed in an attitude of one fully resigned to the gravity of his circumstance.  Beside him, teeter-tottering in place, is a seemingly nervous young girl who is constantly fidgeting with her dress and hair.
            “How pretty she is,” observes M. Grillet.  “A real cutie pie.   And judging by the relevant particulars of feminine form, perhaps all of fifteen; fifteen and already a right little cockteaser.  And who is it tucks her in at night, I wonder?  Such a graceful stride as she pirouettes around that blind man.  Yes, really quite delightful.  And that beautiful head of hair!  If I were a bird I would nest in that hair.
           “Ah, she sees me, the little sorceress.  Smiles.  All smiles, she is.  Half whispers an aside to the blind man.  And what now might the two of them be concocting?  Setting some sort of trap for yours truly?  The Calvary waiting out of sight, is it?  Any second now a hail of bullets coming at me like wasps out of hell?  A downright massacre.  Groans and howls.  Wiped out!  My corpse in the gutter, riddled with holes, like a Swiss cheese.  Yeah?  Well, we’ll just see about that now, won’t we!  What sort of fathead do they take me for?
            “And just what the fuck’s this blind roly-poly’s angle anyway?  That’s what I’d like to know.  Perhaps he’s her sugar daddy . . . or pimp!  Hell, call me a Nervous Jenny, but I’m beginning to smell a trap, I am; and it smells like P-U-S-S-Y!  Snapdragon pussy: one of the umpteen wonders of the world, and the oldest trap there is: plain old-fashioned debauchery.  So that’s their game is it?  Christ, I’d have to be a real dumb dope to fall for that old connivance now.  Well, phooey on them, I say!  Phooey!
            “And now just what do they think they’re doing?  Why look, the blind man’s tapping and gesticulating with what looks to be a tambourine.  Yup, that’s exactly what it is.  And now the girl is holding up a book and  . . . what’s this? . . . the two of them are  singing what sounds like a church hymn.  Well rub-a-dub-dub and blow the man down, but those two are just a pair of Salvation Army types.  What a dirty trick!  Sing the Te Deum.  Recite a paternoster.  And what with this goulash of traipsing passersby, with their grimaces, leers, and grins, and we’ve suddenly got us a goddamn hootenanny; only thing missing is the diddle-diddle of sweet violin music.  My stars!  Who would have thunk it?  And just as well, too, ‘cause I certainly don’t need any more goddamn trouble than I already seem to have.  No, sir!  Yesterday’s sticky situation is quite all the excitement I need, thank you very much!”

            YESTERDAY'S STICKY SITUATION. . . .

It is very late, the hour of crimes, and the after-dark creepers are all creeping about, their shadows creeping over M. Grillet as he wanders, without purpose or direction. 
            “Not altogether sure anymore of where I am,” he offhandedly confides to a gentleman with a corked mustache, who happens by.
            The gentleman acknowledges M. Grillet, places a coin into his hand, and says: “Listen, let me give you some advice . . .” This is followed by a quarter of an hour of moralizing witticisms and verses right out of Dante’s Divine Comedy. 
            M. Grillet is bedazzled.  Every which way he turns he is goaded by the paganism of  billboards with colorful hieroglyphics depicting young and magnificent patrons of the Khama Sutra; moreover, he is beguiled by the flitting flirtatiousness of extraordinarily fucksome young girls, their glorious faces winking of naughtiness. 
            A tootsy-wootsy [of the feminine persuasion] with a beer paunch and the arse of a bull propositions him: “Que voulez-vous, Monsieur?  Brouter le cresson?” says she, wriggling her colossal arse.
            “Uh, non merci, Madame . . . Mademoiselle,” he replies, smiling politely [while mentally dressing her in an Eskimo’s parka].
           “Suit yourself, dearie,” she sighs, pursing her lips, and giving her arse a slap and a wriggle, inadvertently knocking over a passing street vendor and his two-wheeled push-cart.   
            And now, adding to his misery, a lowering nimbus sky begins to piss and moan, spitting out a chilling light shower, inducing in M. Grillet a sense of vague sentimentality and poetic despair.  Flocks of raindrunk umbrellas and turned-up collars sashay through his field of vision like some sort of grotesque ballet.  A vagabond moth flutters past his head [or was it a bat?] causing him to suddenly bob and weave like a wound-up jack-in-the-box. 
            Turning his back on Notre Dame, M. Grillet suddenly quick-steps his way back to the Left Bank; to the ancient stones of rue St-Julien le Pauvre.  Just beyond a Romanesque church [bearing the same name as the street] he veers left onto rue Galande: a cobbled corridor, boundon either side by antique stone and wood walls.  No real light comes from the rows upon rows of windows, as all but one [on his right, second floor, above a boulangerie] are dark, resembling black holes, or tears, in the fabric of some trompe-l’oeil painting . 
            M. Grillet continues to move along at his usual moderate pace, employing his own particular way of walking: that is, alternately putting one foot a comfortable distance in front of the other, or sometimes behind, the other, each well-placed footstep inexorably reminiscent of the step that preceded it and producing an echo of metronomic regularity. 
            And perhaps it is this very echo that draws to the one window [the one over the boulangerie, from which there is a faintly luminous glow] the face of a young woman.

Ramadan’s older sister, Mina, has gone missing.  It is feared that she has been kidnapped, as it is not unusual for Coptic girls, of a certain age, to be abducted and forced to convert to Islam.  Indeed, Ramadan’s family has received a letter stating that Mina has eloped with a Muslim man, and the police have produced a declaration of conversion to Islam, allegedly signed by Mina.  Ramadan does not believe any of it, but what can he or anyone do? 
            A year ago the wife of a priest of the Coptic Orthodox church was kidnapped, and the police refused to do anything about it: They said that the woman had probably run away.  The police here are so dumb.  Their refusal to help brought about three days of public protest by clergy and lay members, with thousands of Coptic Christians taking to the streets.
             Muslim fundamentalists immediately retaliated, setting fire to Coptic homes and businesses. 
           A day or two thereafter a Muslim man, riding a Harley Davidson motorcycle, stabbed and ritually beheaded a Coptic merchant.  After the killing, the man rinsed off his knife with a hose his victim had been using, got back on his Harley, gunned the engine, and simply rode off. 
            Cairo is a dangerous place, full of fundamentalists.
            Here, again, Ramadan carries a load of cardboard on his back; cardboard to be recycled, or used to line the walls of the shack in which Ramadan’s family lives.  As he walks he must lean forward, his spine curved, his face toward the ground, careful of where he places each footstep.  Ramadan’s body is strong; his legs are as sturdy as steel posts.
            On a dirty street [where the stench of decay and death is overwhelming] he stops to rest, and to examine a graffiti script; words which someone has painted, or rather, stenciled, on the side of low building: AND GOD SAID: LET THERE BE LIGHT.  INDEED, LET THERE BE LIGHTBULBS, AND NOT MERELY LIGHTBULBS, BUT LET THERE BE FLOURESCENT LIGHTS, AND STROBE LIGHTS, AND MOOD LIGHTS, AND STREET LIGHTS, AND FLASHLIGHTS, AND TRAFFIC LIGHTS, TO GUIDE MAN’S WAY . . . AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS ALL GOOD!
            This makes Ramadan smile; a boy who ordinarily has so little so smile about.

A lone fisherman has apparently hooked himself a pretty big fish, judging by the extent his pole is bent and violently quivering.  The fisherman [an old man with yellow spectacles and blue rubber boots that reach all the way up to his knees] is engaged in such a struggle that, several times, he has nearly been pulled into the Danube River.  Indeed, his struggle is such that the air around him has turned blue with his curses – curses that seem to fortify his resolve and to renew his strength. 
            Suddenly, a rolling wake [of a passing barge] lifts the fisherman’s catch, and gently surfs it in toward the embankment.  The old fisherman stands ready, poised with a hand-held net, waiting to scoop up this great fish he has caught. 
            But of course it is not a fish at all, but the lifeless body of the bridge dancer, Anna [now abandoned to oblivion].  Anna’s eyes are open, but unseeing, and are as black as the buttons on the old fisherman’s shiny raincoat.  Her long dark hair is floating about her head like great clumps of seaweed stirring in the swirling tide. 
           The old fisherman gently closes Anna’s eyes.  “Gosh, but she sure is a pretty thing,” he says aloud.  And in so saying, his words, like ringing bells, resound through his mind, like some holy mantra: sure is apretty thing . . . pretty thing . . . pretty, pretty, pretty thing . . .

M. Grillet smiles up at the woman in the window, and she shyly returns his smile.
            He raises a hand and waves, and she waves back.
            Feeling giddy, M. Grillet dances a little soft-shoe shuffle, and she laughs [covering her mouth with her hand].
            Thus emboldened, M. Grillet drops down on bended knee, spreads wide his two arms, [as if to catch a falling star] and calls up to the woman: “RAPUNZEL, RAPUNZEL, LET DOWN YOUR HAIR!”
            Just being silly; a silly serenade and prank. 
            But suddenly the window is thrust open, and M. Grillet can see that the woman has a dark, unrecognizable bundle cradled in her arms; this bundle, when tossed out of the open window, uncoils like a writhing snake, hitting the street just inches from where M. Grillet is standing, looking up at the window.  And it is only now that he sees that the bundle is, in fact, a fur-covered shroud of significant length, with one end affixed at the window above.  
           The woman at the window giggles.   And M. Grillet is at once possessed by an invention of fantasy, and the presentiment of possibilities. 
           As he grips the slippery fur of the shroud and struggles to pull himself, hand over hand, up to the second floor window, from somewhere behind him he thinks he can hear the anonymous words of whispered conversations, and a moment of doubt and sudden lassitude takes hold of him. 
            In another moment, however, he has climbed through the window, and is looking directly into the face of the woman he had viewed from the street. 
            And she, too, is looking back at him, appearing to study the boney planes of his profile: the sunken eyes; the emaciated cheeks; the thin, nearly bloodless lips; the sun and wind burned lines mapping his forehead, approximating the canals of Mars [as seen through a telescope]; indeed, the whole fragility of his appearance.  [And what woman could resist such a face, such masculine beauty?]
            The woman, as M. Grillet in turn accesses and evaluates, is perhaps not so young, or so pretty, as she had at first appeared to be; though it cannot not be said that she is not young, or even not pretty.  After all, she does not have a Medusa-head, or a jutting maxillary, or missing teeth, or even a copious nose; certainly not.  And the eyes that stare into M. Grillet’s own eyes are hardly the eyes of an evil sorceress.  No, she is, to speak plainly, perfectly normal: neither too small, too fat, nor too thin; she has a slightly freckled complexion, reddish brown hair [which reaches to the middle of her slender back]; and for this very special occasion she has put on a caca d'oie double-breasted, everyday silk georgette, very crisply tailored, and very fetching.   Indeed, M. Grillet [his head filling with unnecessary words] is momentarily tongue-tied and unable to speak. 
            But then, faster than one might put together a jigsaw puzzle of Picasso’s Guernica, they are together in bed.
            She, at first, seems somewhat aloof.  But suddenly . . . suddenly she is talking nonstop, full of referencing narrations, citations, and meditations . . . ranting a blitzkrieg of words without commas, chanting, singing opera, speaking in tongues, foaming at the mouth, speechifying, reciting this, quoting that, extemporizing didactical essays and social diatribes; a woman possessed, she becomes a dancing dervish: Salome, Josephine Baker, and Gypsy Rose Lee . . . a star of the Folies Bergere and the Moulin Rouge; she does somersaults, cartwheels, back-flips, jumping-jacks, pushups, you name it!  And it requires absolutely every ounce of strength and stamina and sheer concentration he has for M. Grillet to keep up with her; in point of fact, by the time it’s all over this wretched wreck of a man is in a near coma, barely cognizant of whom or where he is [nor does he, by now, really much care].
            Not long thereafter, M. Grillet and the woman are lying quietly in bed, you know, catching their breath, smoking and sharing a joint . . . he tracing, with the index finger of his right hand, small concentric circles around each of her breasts; such lovely breasts.  When all of a sudden, from outside on rue Galande, there comes a raucous distraction in the form of a rowdy barroom song: FEE-FI-FO-FUM!  GRAB YOUR GIRLIE AND HAVE SOME FUN . . . with the second verse the same as the first, and ditto each subsequent verse, with all verses echoing off the close-in buildings like a volley of Ping-Pong balls.  All along the street lights are popping on, accompanied by the angry reverberations of windows being thrust or jerked opened, as well as a not very pleasant chorus of curses and threats directed down on the blustering busker below like a shower of hot tar.
            “AH, MERDE!” cries the woman, between clenched teeth.  IT’S MY STUPID HUSBAND!"
            M. Grillet is about to have an extreme anxiety attack [and why the hell not, what with adrenalin suddenly shooting through his body like a massive dose of opium].  Painfully cognizant, as he now is, that the initial nonchalance of his tryst with this woman has now quite altogether disappeared, M. Grillet is up and out of that adulterous bed in half-a-jiff, and jumping straight into his pants like a fireman going to a fire.  Then shoes [sans socks: “Fuck it!  No time for socks!”], shirt [inside out], jacket, etcetera, and he’s off like a bat out of hell, straight to the window of escape!
            At the window M. Grillet, already gasping for breath, turns to look one last time at the woman, and sees, to his utter astonishment, a .442 Webley revolver pointed directly at him.
           “I’m sorry,” she says, “but I have to do this; there’s just no other way.  You don’t know what he’s like . . . what he’ll do.  You just don’t know!”
            Swallowing the lump of cold fear that has lodged in his throat like a lump of oatmeal, he, hoarsely, manages to say: “Well, now, but this is certainly awkward.” 
            While to himself he is thinking: “And yet, looking on the bright side, what a unique experience this is.  After all, how often does a man find himself standing face to face with his own imminent death?  Still, oughtn’t I do something . . . say something?  A quick prayer?  A sinner’s psalm?  Ah, but what if God is merely a projection of man, having, as Feuerbach contends, no objective existence?   Well, in that case I’m damn well fucked, that’s what!  Oh well, if this is to be my life’s dénouement, then what else can I do, except throw up my arms, and prepare myself mentally for what is to come?” 
           Which is exactly what he does, throwing up his arms like a referee signaling that a field goal attempt is good.
            The din of FEE-FI-FO-FUM, and now the resounding thump of heavy footfalls mounting the stairs, is palpably louder, and drawing ever closer.
            And she, her eyes blazing, suddenly pans the barrel of the revolver to focus her unsteady aim, no longer on M. Grillet, but on the bedroom door: “SAKES ALIVE, PUT YOUR ARMS DOWN AND GET OUT, GET OUT . . . BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”
            But it is already too late!  The dreaded moment is suddenly upon them, as the unmistakable sound of the apartment door creaking open buggers their concentration; now only the bedroom door remains as a barrier between them and the other.
           And he: tripping over his own two left feet, makes a [shall we say] less than swashbuckling exit out of the window.  And like Jack descending the beanstalk, to escape the pursuing giant, M. Grillet begins, in haste, to slide down the slippery shroud.
           But no sooner has he started his descent, than he hears an earsplitting gunshot, and the woman screaming like a goosed soprano! 
            And whether the shroud he is clinging to tears free of its own accord, or is expressly set free by a sinister hand, the resulting consequence is the same, as M. Grillet suddenly finds himself in an all out freefall.
            But do not fear for our hero, for as good luck would have it, as the shroud collapses, it quite naturally gathers into a thick, fuzzy pile, thus significantly lessening the force of his impact with the cobbled street.  Indeed, as M. Grillet hits the street, he ultimately bounces, flips, and rolls himself into a king-size fur ball: so massive a fur ball in fact that, in the dark, he might well be mistaken for an animal of some sort; his human moans and groans misinterpreted as animal grunts and growls. 
            Which is precisely what happens when a rumbustious gang of jackbooted youths who, having just rounded the corner from St-Julien le Pauvre onto rue Galande, come upon this frightening and unexpected mesomorph blocking their way, effecting at once a stumbling, tumbling, pathological panic of shrieking unanimity and frenetic attempts to kick and stomp the poop out of what they erroneously perceive to be a bear [or some other such man-eating monster], and subsequently a tandem flap of screaming meemies tearing off into the night shrieking, “AARRRGGGGHHHH!”
            As soon as he is confident that his attackers are gone, M. Grillet struggles to free himself from his furred cocoon, first rolling over on his back, in order to stanch the flow of blood that oozes from his nose.  His lungs are gasping, his ribs ache [though none seem to be broken], his mouth tingles with the taste of blood, and a persistent pain throbs in his left shoulder.  Yet, apart from these fairly minor annoyances he surmises that he is otherwise unhurt.
            And besides, the disconcerting wails of police sirens are now his most immediate concern. 
            No time to dawdle – that’s a given.  Yet fear menaces his resolve, hobbles him like a pebble in a shoe.  What to do?  What to do?  Oh, such a bewildering algebra of perplexities confronts him; and in the presence of such a coherence, one, in fact, fraught with  overwhelming and consequential significance, he can feel his already languishing sense of existence begin to ravel and unravel in an uncontrollable swoon of vertigo: On the one hand, he desires to do the right thing, to witness truthfully; but, on the other hand, would the cops be inclined to believe him?  No, he thinks not.  Therefore, he determines that a dodging exit represents the most prudent course of action.  Yes, he has conclusively made up his mind.
            Before him, a realm of darkness that stretches out seemingly into infinity.
            Limping badly he pushes on past salmon-colored doors . . . past humming electrical circuits [of a pair of brightly colored neon signs] . . . past milkmaids a milking [in a travel poster for the Netherlands] . . . past a fountain in the style of an Italian grotto
           . . . past an octagonal lake where a toy sailboat bobs like a wine cork on the water’s wind-blown surface . . . beneath dripping branches overhanging pebbly paths winding through the realm of the giant beetle, half hidden [and still in his nightshirt] sheltering beneath the moldering corpse of a snake in the grass whose life has come to a dead stop.  The intoxi-cation of fear is extreme, his torment limitless, yet he continues to creep along in the shadows, an invisible voyeur
            In just over an hour he finds himself in the northern part of the city, in Montmartre, on a darkened street with a side alley leading off into a sort of no man’s land.
            “Good spot for a manuring,” he decides, and after making sure that the coast is clear, he goes off into the alley, drops his breeches, and squats over a pile of rubbish.
            The alley is a quiet buffer against the wind and the droning hum of the city, yet he senses that vague alley creatures are crawling about watching him, and even thinks that he can hear the little ignoramuses murmuring in their assorted incomprehensible languages.  Are they questioning him?  Questioning his right to be there?   Do they find his presence threatening?  Do they find him sullen?
            But deciding that this is no concern of his, he wipes himself with several leaves of damp lettuce, and suddenly feels himself a new man.  And perhaps, too, his luck is also changing, for there, on the outer edge of the rubbish pile, he finds a perfectly good clump of radishes, a perfectly good stalk of celery, and a pretty good potato, with only a patina of corruption.  “Oh, well, waste not, want not” he says to himself [sotto voce], and, being half-starved, immediately tucks into this fine repast.
            On rue Lapic  [a street on which both Vincent van Gogh and Louis-Ferdinand Celine once lived] M. Grillet bums a cheroot from a benevolent passerby, and then settles down for the night in an unlit doorway where the ashes of time are heaped up in an accretion of dust, crumbs, litter, dead insects, and old cigarette butts.  Sitting in silence, and feeling himself to be teetering on the edge of a dark abyss, he pockets the cheroot, closes his eyes, and leans back into the benevolent arms of Morpheus.

THE END