to overcome that insistent vibration?
16. The night he’d felt that shameful fear he’d left the cave too quickly to know what it looked like. Judging by the sound, he was sure it was immense, and his imagination had done the rest. At first he pictured the cave as the entrance to an unknown subterranean village of which the hill and the island were merely the roof. But soon this theory seemed too basic to him. Before long he preferred thinking that the cave was simply the beginning of a path allowing you to travel to the center of the earth, and in reality the latter was only a superimposed infinity of worlds. A secret passage. The cave would have to go very deep and come out above the clouds of another world. Similarly, when his imagination rose above the clouds, it ended up encountering a vault that was nothing other than the floor of a new world. That idea pleased Niko and in these new universes he could let his imagination run wild. This elsewhere, which in his mind was fleshed out more every day, became so interesting in the end that he spent most of his time there. Nothing is more delightful, he’d say when he came back to himself, than living inside a universe you have created.
17. There was no light in the world whose entrance Niko was so happy to have discovered. Life was expressed in the form of vibrations that governed three different states: rest, action, and meditation. The beings living there were shaped like bubbles floating from one state to the next according to a spontaneously balanced distribution. Thus, everyone was always at ease.
Niko liked thinking he was one of those bubbles. Nothing is more delicious than being an element of a world you have invented yourself, he kept saying. Was it to escape from those who found his reveries too disquieting and to live fully inside his head that Niko had chosen to find refuge inside this cave?
18. If Niko were to hear the theories that explained his presence here he’d undoubtedly be embarrassed. He might even get angry. How can you not see the real reason for my withdrawal? he’d think. Do I have to unlock my breast so that what drove me here would be on display? Don’t you smell the odor that accuses me? And the sorrow that I breathe? To express all this he’d laugh in that peculiar way of his. He’d laugh without anything showing in his face, and that inner laughter would accompany a mirthless gaze.
19. Niko’s face is well proportioned and even graceful. Nevertheless, when it cracks into a smile, which hasn’t happened in a long time, it reveals dirty, crooked, and uneven teeth. Then a repulsive demon pierces his harmonious features. Niko knows it. That’s why his smile no longer passes beyond his innermost thoughts, the enclosed compound where he lives most of the time.
20. Before he became aware of the horror it stood for in the eyes of other people, Niko used to smile a lot.
21. Is it this smile that made them call him Niko the Monkey?
22. The day he felt the urge to come and live in the cave, Niko was afraid of two things: that they would try to prevent him, or that someone had the same idea before him and was already living there. But other than killing himself he had no further solution. To assure himself he hadn’t been followed or, more importantly, hadn’t been preceded, he spent some time in a eucalyptus tree overlooking the slope of the hill and consequently a good part of the island. From the height of this tree he was able to observe the shrub-covered ascent through which he’d come and the slender band of sand on which he’d landed. Farther in the distance the calm waters of the lake stretched out. Farther still, the greenery began again, in whose center he tried fruitlessly to make out some place he knew. He also surveyed the entrance to the cave, especially at night when light, noise, and smoke were easier to spot. After several days, when he still hadn’t noticed any sign of life either preceding or following him, Niko decided to come down from the tree and approach the cave.
23. The first time he came here, on that unfortunate night, he’d been obliged to hold his torch at ground level to see where to put his feet. He was in complete darkness as soon as he’d crossed the threshold of the cave. He seemed like a ghost floating in black water. Everything materialized at the last moment, just to scare him. He could see no further than his outstretched hands palpating the darkness around the luminous halo inside which he was moving.
24. This time Niko waited for the daylight. It ultimately changes nothing since the light abandons him as soon as he’s inside the cave, but he feels more secure. Knowing what to expect, he didn’t forget to bring a torch.
25. Since the day he should avoid thinking about for fear of feeling dreadfully ashamed, he has given up on various expressions that normally animate the human face. Gradually, he’s replaced them with a single expression that he now wears like a mask. Besides, to anyone not paying particular attention, Niko’s head would look like a real mask.
26. What is it that could have brought Niko to keep his face frozen in such an enigmatic contraction? Is it the same reason that led him to return to the cave?
27. The mask Niko displays as a face seems to be sculpted out of hard wood covered with a brownish, fairly uniform patina. It is topped with a rug of raffia fiber, surely meant to represent a head of hair. Wide, black eyes are outlined below a smooth forehead. One could assume that in the past they must each have been bejeweled with a diamond. From the center of these eyes juts out a long nose with small nostrils. The hollows of the mask’s cheeks emphasize the high cheekbones, each decorated with two prominent lines that suggest scarification. Finally, the sculpture displays a diamond-shaped mouth formed by thick lips surrounded by fine specks hinting at a beard. This mask is Niko’s face today. The rest of his body is wrapped in a bulky, grayish cape, from which protrude two slim, dry legs set upon large bare feet.
28. At the moment, the most noticeable difference between a mask and Niko’s face lies in the hunger, the exhaustion, and the guilt that cannot afflict a mere piece of wood with such intensity.
29. After his watch from the top of the tree, he assured himself that the cave was empty by pricking up his ears in front of the entrance and standing motionless longer than even the most seasoned hunter would have tolerated. All he heard or saw were insects, water, bats, and small animals that were probably rats or wild cats or both. But since his mind is not happy with the evidence, Niko decides to assume there must have been a monster, too, that had fled at his approach. If it’s true that monsters sense invisible things, as fables describe them, it’s normal that it would have frightened him. As always, Niko soon finds his first assumption too simplistic. In fact, when he starts to listen to the cave with complete attention he feels a breath. A breath that’s as light as it is regular. What if the island and the hill were only the projection of the nose of a giant who drowned in the lake? The shock of his head against the bottom of the lake could have knocked him unconscious without finishing him off. And what if in reality the two volcanoes in the distance were the feet of this same giant? And couldn’t the series of hills that rise from the lake here and there be the arms of the colossus? To end his description, he imagines that the head split by the shock must have dissolved in the lake, leaving only the nostril that stubbornly keeps breathing. It is this nostril that had shaped the cave in which he was going to seek refuge.
30. How is it possible to imagine that a hill and a cave forming an island in the middle of a lake are actually the remainders of a half-dissolved but still living giant? To Niko such a concept comes as naturally as thinking that two and two make four comes to others.
31. Convinced that he’s alone, is Niko really satisfied? Wouldn’t he like to meet the monster, of whose presence he has always been assured, so he can be devoured and finally relieved of the hunger, exhaustion, and above all the nausea that torture him?
The room is dark, yet welcoming: a strange mix between a place to live and a place to work. She holds herself rigidly, and one has to pay close attention to make sure that she’s not a mannequin. Sitting amidst a mound of papers, notebook and pencil in
