like a vertical sky. I remember. I stretched out my arms and opened my hands. Something very soft trickled, drop by drop, along each finger. These are the remains, I thought, but, “the remains of what?” was the question that shook me awake.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Emma,” replied the young moon.
She turned away again, this time to look for something. I closed my eyes. When I reopened them, Emma had quietly returned to my side and her hand was already rubbing my shoulder with oil. Then I realized I was still naked. She too.
“Why are you naked?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
I drew her to me. She let it happen naturally. But the tenderness that touched me was less rousing than my sudden desire to speak to her.
“The difficulty,” I said. “The difficulty is in having no recollection, being ahead of one’s memory. I don’t know whether I’m coming or going…”
“Yes,” she nodded. “It’s the white shadow.”
“Why did you say that?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked at me closely, but there was nothing but abandonment in her eyes. Her warmth was slowly transferred to me. But I still wanted to speak, maybe to make up for all the time I had remained speechless. Yet as my lips half-opened, she cut me short.
“Sometimes,” she said, “I see words… then I say them.”
I was content just to watch her, before persevering with:
“The difficulty is to have done something, say, opened a door, then to realize that there was no door, and yet you’ve opened it…”
“You’re almost healed,” she said. “I love you.”
Slowly she withdrew from my arms, the tip of her breast brushing my shoulder as it passed. She straightened up on the bed, positioned herself facing me, sat back on her heels and looked at me. Suddenly she fell backwards, her two hands forming a crown for her sex, offering it to me. The pressure of her hands made her slit gape slightly.
“Come to me,” she said.
I obeyed, feeling the words I had not said return to my throat.
But Emma’s forthrightness was already rousing my flesh, the pleasure all at once driving me mad. She watched me with an upside-down smile that gave her appearance a dark side. I remember. I am on her and I lean forward. Slowly, I lean over further to butt against the tips of her breasts. She slides under me. Her skin, which is extremely smooth, feels good to my skin and hands. We are between two waters. I let her slide more quickly so as to seize her belly as it passes and bring my mouth to it. She swims desperately, but her every movement only increases the undulation of her sex against my lips. For a long time, a long time, this dance continues, before I climb back up along Emma and lie body to body. Then the night from within us escapes, scraping our teeth as it goes.
One morning, I feel renewed. I step outside and the whole village is at my door. They fete me, but silently – it is in the light on their faces. The leader steps forward to shake my hand. The others, nodding their heads, approve this gesture. I am no longer an outsider. Before long, each leaves for his work, but not before setting at my door an egg, a cheese or maybe some firewood. Emma and I tinker with these riches, and then we walk down towards the sea.
From then on I lived only for Emma. I loved her, in different ways – spread out in the water, spread out on the land and upright in the air. It seems we had no other activity than pleasure – or awaiting pleasure.
During that time I forgot the desert and the hereafter of a memory that I had intended to run through in my own. I was here, nowhere but here. That is to say, I was completely involved in Emma’s body. Now I search for words which might give me an illusion of that body, of her spontaneous alternation of sweetness and wildness. What else do I know? Simply that pleasure cannot be a memory. Yet, I remember. Sometimes my tongue slides out of my mouth to lick Emma’s absence. I remember: Emma seizes my sex and pushes it into her. Later, day has dawned. I watch. Emma has fallen on her back near the bottom of the bed. She sleeps, one leg thrown across me. Her fleece is tainted and wiry. Some sperm seeps from her slit, and the insides of her thighs are marked with large white patches. I sit up and slide my hand across the sticky flesh. The mucus covers my fingers and I notice a fine thread of blood. I push: it throbs, broadens, becomes deep and red. There is a sort of hiccup, and an overflow of spunk runs over the back of my hand. I observe it moving slowly down my wrist, and while it does so, something strange happens to me – something I would not know how to explain, for there is only the trickling and a voice in my head which says: life is transparent… life is transparent…
After that I know nothing more about the place, nor Emma, nor above all about myself. I fall. I feel happy. But naturally, before long, I want knowledge afresh, or rather, to recapture my knowledge. I row through time and secrete words.
Words? Always the same of course, but sex and its movement are always the same and yet always different. Speech too has its saliva. Words which speak, which do not speak, which are finally something other than memory, because before long they produce an image which is not recollection but the beginning of
“My vainglory my gem my finger my felon my sharp-pointed my snub my walnut my planting my balk my burrower my gourmand my gowk my stopple my dart my pillar my filthiness my stealer my stake my regiment my thief my wretch my stock my kingling my pointel my postel my orphan my imp my hungered my lance my jewel my settle my spur my celerity my pile my tunneller my dotard my mole my falchion my cockrow my skinful my pipe my diviner my glaive my stiff my cockle my ravisher my spear my weathercock my sparkling my jack my arrowhead…”
I remember. Like a heartbeat in my ear. But perhaps it is only my tongue beating hard against my teeth’s cage. Sometimes I am so hollow that you come inside and the shadow cries out for mercy. Then I stretch out my hand and there is a little reddened gold because night is drawing in. The room is a hole in the stone: an open tomb. You are no longer speaking to me. Your halo has also reddened. If I lift my hand slightly I do not know whether I am seeing the sky or the sea.
I remember. We are naked, stretched out on the white sheet, both motionless, waiting for night’s arrival to erase the = sign we form with our bodies. I closed my eyes a long time ago. I see bygone days falling like leaves. The breeze from that falling turns my seven skins one by one. I see the cells shit into my blood, the air carry that filth up to my throat and throw it out. Then night falls.
“Sweet,” I say. “Sweet.”
You do not reply. You are dark. My hand moves, moves slowly towards you. It runs a little way down your side and then suddenly accelerates and scales your thigh. It marks time there, as if to be forgotten, before it slides towards your abdomen and knots its fingers in your fleece. Another halt. You breathe against my fingertips. You wait and I wait. One of your hands has moved towards me, secretly. I feel it coming. I avoid it by arching my back. “Be good,” you murmur. Your hand touches me, climbs calmly onto my belly, runs to my thigh, drops down and slips under the fold of my buttock. You are there like a shadow that I cannot see in the shadow but know is there lying in wait for me. Suddenly I think: I love you. Your hand starts to caress while mine crosses the curly bush, lets itself slide along the outer labia, then slowly extends each finger to cover your whole sex. Listen. Don’t move. Wait. I see a millipede at the base of my abdomen and its feet become the lashes of a huge red eye. Your hand is under my balls. Your hand holds the reins. Not yet. Don’t get hard yet. A bubble of silence swells around us. You explore my buttocks and I imagine that I too have a large mouth there. Beneath my hand, you tremble, and a pulse blooms at my fingertips in reply to your palpitations. “Emma, Emma, Emma,” I say very quickly, feeling a liquid oozing from your labia. Your index finger pierces me: I am a ring of flesh that I squeeze and ease to play on your finger. You arch against my hand pushing harder. Its pressure is enough to open you. You have a moist slit. I love you. I touch your clit, you moan, roll against me and our deranged hands lose themselves on all the flesh that comes their way.
