Eric Chevillard - Palafox

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

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His somewhat unsophisticated manners may be a source of shock to Madame Franc-Nohain, the wife of the president having withdrawn from the world with her hairdresser, her doctor, her Scottish-terrier and a string-quartet, she only frequents her sycophantic courtiers, so reverential that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

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

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

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