Eric Chevillard - Palafox

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

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

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

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

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