Eric Chevillard - Palafox

The chaos is indescribable — if you’ve skimmed no more than two books you know that this formula I’ve used trumpets a particular state of affairs, scenes of meticulously described disaster, an inventory of broken or scattered objects and live reports of the crowd’s movements: Palafox runs on the long buffet table, does some gardening in the salad bowls, tastes all the dishes, bouquets, worse, cuts the carotid artery of genies Algernon bottled forty years earlier, unstable and aggressive in their time, improved by the humid straw of his cellar, each day gaining in respectability, to finish thus, trickling around shards of broken glass, drowning in their own blood. Palafox drinks from the puddle. Now he takes the opportunity to throw fruit, pastries, whatever he gets his mitts on, glasses, knives, ashtrays, our guests protect themselves as best they can, those who brought their mothers use them as human shields. Palafox’s behavior does not augur well the outcome of the war. Laugh if you want to, professor Zeiger continues, but without horuspication the Roman Empire wouldn’t have spread past its seven hills. Priests read birds’ flights, appetites, songs. No general would go into battle without consulting a bird. They would wait if necessary, this one buffing his shield, the other sharpening his double-edged sword, waiting for a more propitious hour to take flight. They triumphed without encountering resistance, they met no match, undone their enemies capitulated, they dominated the Occident for five centuries. Horuspication also directed matters of the state. A cock picked the successor to emperor Valens, in 379. An alphabet had been drawn on the ground, a grain of wheat placed on every letter, then let the bird go. t,h,e,o,d, he pecked without hesitation. They bowed. It was done according to avian will and Theodosius, first named co-emperor of the Orient, became in 394 the single sovereign of the empire. He recognized the authority of the bishop of Rome, guardian of the true faith, and was also on this occasion the first to speak the word ‘pope,’ as if by chance, because it all fits together, which is also the common name of a bird, the whitethroat with brightly colored plumage, I will stop my lesson there since you seem convinced. Palafox’s behavior, believe me, augurs nothing good, it would be better to cease maneuvers.

A chase scene in the salon. Algernon and Chancelade were on the hunt. Blinded by the electric light, the animal begins to fly headfirst into the walls; beneath the dress of Madame Fontechevade where he hides, cave dwelling creature accustomed to dark and to lichen-roughened walls, Palafox gets around far better, digs into the calf and thigh of the general’s wife, spreads vermillion in the shadowy lace, and let us note that he has already lost his pursuers long ago. When he reaches her navel, that most ancient of scars — where surgeons may one day succeed in screwing a lecherous eye — waiting wide for visitors — Palafox hesitates to make contact, and then no, his path is chosen, he will follow the crease in her belly to the side, the dorsal spine to the nape, in the wake of shivers find himself on the bare shoulder, uncovered, and from there, secreting his liana, reach the ground, and from there the wall, which he scales, then the ceiling, where he catches his breath. Madame Fontechevade twists in her armchair, occasionally a little nervous laugh escapes her lips, a long moan, then the cries begin again. She would no better and to no clearer end negotiate in hell. She puts her hands under her dress; clawed fingers, fists clenched that no longer recognize the damage they are doing to her own body, all the blows land, and in her distraction, Madame Fontechevade believes she has the horrible beast, of which she refuses to be anything less than unforgiving, rousing more screams from him, tearing him to pieces, turning him to gruel, and the more her pain increases the harder she tries, while Palafox, suspended from a nearly invisible silky thread oscillates gently above her head as if to tell us that were we to drill there we would find a well.

A wild animal remains a wild animal, Algernon, he must be slaughtered. Franc-Nohain shares the general’s opinion, a wild animal remains a wild animal, and we are not going to cut to the story of his head-to-head with a crazy loner, the year before, but I hit him twice, without carefully aiming at first, my buckshot had about as much effect on him as a bucketful of confetti, he bowled the dogs over, I knelt to aim, he rushed at me, I shouldered the gun — the president’s hunting exploits prompt admiration, but his presence among us gets in the way of the dramatic progression of the story, as we are able to divine that the writer whose autobiography weighs on our knees will not die of the whooping cough he contracts at the end of chapter one, despite the talent with which he describes his agony for us and the anguish of his family it is clear that Franc-Nohain will win the day, if not we would all be there listening to the wild boar, I rushed at him, he aimed, his second shot went into the branches, I was on him already, tearing his chest and sides, he resisted, I crushed his nose into his cheeks, he fell silent, I tore out his liver, spleen, intestine, intestines, large and small, Messieurs-dames, your winding intestines, so many unnecessary detours, the itinerary of some gold convoy for routine cargo, with all due respect, we see straight away that this sort of installation wasn’t put in yesterday, I got tangled up in these guts, I dragged the cadaver of the president for several meters before becoming untangled — the second shot hit him in the jaw without slowing him down, he pushed straight ahead, his fur stiff and vermillion, like the bloody mane of a cannonball which has just removed eighteen heads and continues on its path, I had just the time to pull my knife, he was on me already, tearing my chest and sides, three times I sunk the blade into his throat, he collapsed. I was a bit sad at first not to be able to keep his bloody head, at the very least to put it in a bottle, but it would have spoiled the collection of trophies that decorate the walls of my library, tiger heads, elk, swordfish, in addition to the death mask of my poor mother, whose every feature we knew, she who was peacefully extinguished and whose smile I am not ready to forget, thanks to this mold, the pretty smile she had when she came to kiss me goodnight and, before leaving my room, was willing to check under my bed to see if a wolf was hiding there, and kissed me again, then, before leaving the room, was willing to check again, ready to face this wolf barehanded, if he had been there, and perhaps she would have won, so give me his head, huh mom? For my collection. All the same I kept a souvenir of the boar in question, instead of his head, his gut, which I inflate from time to time to amuse my grandchildren, when I’m out of balloons.

But Palafox has his defenders, among whom is Madame Swanscombe, a bit intimidated though she may be to grab the reins of the narrative so late in our journey, but whose voice grows stronger with each word she now speaks, aren’t you afraid of committing a sacrilegious act by executing Palafox? I have skimmed the preceding pages, and it occurs to me that you haven’t bothered to consider for one moment the significance of his presence among us. Do you have any idea what you are on the brink of destroying? You believe you are dealing with crude and chaotic stuff, and yet you aren’t the least surprised to hear the beast whimper in his sleep. This living room’s upheaval is a devastated corner of the world, you would see the cyclone responsible punished, you refuse to admit that he belongs here, that we in fact are the undesirables, the vandals, the troublemakers, with our flower arrangements, our peach preserves, our mahogany end tables, our walnut drawers, our screens, our umbrellas, our parasols, all our artifices of shadow and light, can’t you see that Palafox is only here to treat wood as wood, glass like sand, the only one in this wax-polished room to think about the bees that burnished it. Madame Swanscombe grows bolder. She strides the length of the room descanting her text and punctuating her words with one unwavering gesture: the dagger she draws from her belt transforms into a silk fan above her head, then the arm falls and tightens, the hand opening and shaking it off. All this apostolic rhetoric is only suggestive of course, but little by little we are swayed by our friend’s conviction, threat and charm work their magic, the old accomplices that serve our idols and their makers, recruiting hearts and minds, that root the idea of God in a pebble and bring to power an athletic tyrant, blonde and bright-eyed whose political program would be contained in this inadmissible proposition, eliminate from the surface of the Earth all men neither short nor weak, dark, with slanting forelocks and straight mustaches. But our charming and threatening friend is only trying to save Palafox. She mentions people of high culture who keep pandas, cows or crocodiles as sacred and woe betide the malefactor who spills their blood. Haven’t you already seen Palafox or any old ladybug rebel against their fate and dispute the universe? They behave like creatures, they have no pretensions of changing the earth beneath their feet, to conquer outer space, nor that of measuring time, they scrape together seconds, they are the true owners of this world, the legitimate tenants, God’s true champions.