The Lute
from the collection Nessus Shirt

A tepid south wind is the only living thing keeping me company on my veranda this evening, here at the edge of town. A gentle, pleasant breeze sent my way by the wings of the windmills in the distant gardens. To my right, flanking the beach, date palms stand tall, a well-ordered line, raising high their holy indigenous banners. Behind them, over the tranquil sea, rises a huge southern moon, full of despair.

There's no one near, and this lute has betrayed me. Its strings emit discordant echoes as I hold it. I don't know what to do with it. It's just the same as it was back then, in that cold room: outside, depressing rain; on the wall a Byzantine icon of Christ, his face bitter; no votive candle. On the opposite wall, a dull brown woodcut. I used to measure the room's dimensions with my gaze, my imagination projecting shapes on the wooden ceiling. Then my eyes would track a buzzing gold-winged fly that circled round and round, filling me with sadness. When I reached out to the instrument and sought some comfort, it refused to obey unfamiliar hands.

I've been dragging it around with me from one rented room to the next, rooms that never reconcile themselves to you no matter how good your intentions. Usually it hangs on the wall - an old object, an antique.

Once upon a time it belonged to an old man who played at fairs. Wine would drip on it from the glasses of drunks, so a heavy smell still permeates the wood, a bit unpleasant, maybe a blend of wine-smell and the smell of the old man's flesh, since I never once saw him without his lute. Two things never left him: on his head, an old yellowed Panama hat with a dilapidated brim, and under his arm, the lute.

That's how I saw him one evening at twilight, making his way up the wide road that led to the village. He was hunched over, not in any hurry, nothing like us as we ran breathless, to see the destruction. Not that we didn't know what we would find. From the crest of a hill facing the village, we had just spent the night watching our houses catch on fire, one by one. We stood there at the summit and waited, each one of us pressed against the man beside him, seeking some consolation from the touch of his neighbor's elbow. I remember it was growing dark and no one spoke and every face was turned towards the fires that blazed up. Whenever someone saw the fire exploding suddenly out of the windows of his own house, he would withdraw quietly and stand alone, apart, and look the other way. In the end, all of us had moved off and turned away. The sky behind us was dyed red by the glow of the fire.

All night long, lying on the ground, on our backs, we tried to assimilate a foreign body that had invaded us and that we could feel rampaging through our veins. Every one of us an animal; infected with a toxin that permeated all its cells and made it sink into a kind of torpor.

Silence. At daybreak a man came from the village, his glance dark and his mouth hard. He stopped in front of us. We gathered round him, but still no one spoke. At long last, someone said: "They've left?"

He nodded. This was the sign we seemed to be waiting for. All at once we all poured into the road. Not that we had any doubts about the destruction: we knew that everything was over. But perhaps we wanted to step on the ashes, to grab a handful of ash, maybe to carry those ashes away in a funerary urn. The old man with the lute was making the climb with all the rest, but his steps were heavy and slow and we quickly left him behind.

When we reached the village, the beams no longer gave off smoke. Charred walls were resting after the night's orgies, empty windows everywhere, nightmarish - the same windows that used to reflect the sunset. We went into the ruins, let our eyes roam aimlessly over the walls, from the foundations to the roof. Children bent over, rummaging in the corner where their toys were hidden. Couples cast a sideways glance at what used to be the bedroom; it was nothing now, only ashes. The carved icon-stand too, nothing but ashes, where we used to light the votive cresset on Saturday nights. No hearth where people might gather for warmth. And the air heavy, drenched with a nauseating smell, the stench of burnt corpses. Five men with sticks, chasing a dog that had snatched its share of food, a scorched bone that used to be a human arm - maybe the old man's wife.

So we saw that we had nothing more to do there, and we set forth without a backward glance at sinless Sodom. We passed beneath the half-burnt trees that insisted on standing upright, naked and smoke-cured. As we went, we kept shaking off the ashes stuck to our shoes.

Suddenly we heard some disconnected notes, then nothing, We ran to the burnt tree. There was the old man, sitting with his legs crossed, the lute in his arms, His chest had come to rest lightly on the instrument and was motionless, and his old hat had tipped forward covering his eyes. I nudged him. Then he keeled over onto the scorched grass, and the strings let out a hoarse lament.

I took the lute from his hands. Ever since, Iíve been dragging it with me from one rented room to the next - rooms that resist being reconciled to you no matter how good your intentions - and I don't know what to do with it. That I keep it as a wall decoration, an antique - that, of course, is a plausible pretext.