to trust my crew about whom I knew nothing except that they were not the scum of the earth, they were the scum of the now scum-filled seas.
And the next day, when the ship stopped near a shore on which a bordello was stretching out its claws, I jumped ship. A cock cried on the top of a hill. Roosters’ red crests jumped through the weighted-down grasses. A guard and his heavy gun descended. I hid from him.
Where there were buildings huge trees had showered dew on to their red roofs. My fear dried up my throat. My hands lay over my stomach for protection.
The sun …
Fear disintegrated my throat …
Stunned …
I woke. I was no longer free. Words woke me. ‘It’s me, Xaintrilles. This afternoon the General Staff’ll interrogate you. Good luck ’n all that. I’m leaving for Ait Saada.’
I didn’t speak.
Xaintrilles squatted down on his haunches and looked at the bars. He saw a young man spread flat on the floor, still, his knees apart, a sackcloth jacket over only part of his stomach. ‘Thivai, aren’t you listening to me? Maybe you can’t hear anymore?’
I recognized despair enough to open my senses only inside me. Lice gnawed my cropped head. Xaintrilles carried this body inside, chafed hands and knees.
In the deep river firemen and convoy soldiers washed themselves. Mud scintillated around the decaying bath-house.
I lovingly rubbed my skull, the light wounds the hair-chopper had made. ‘Shave me. To the flesh,’ I said.
The gentle hair-cutter, as soon as his officer had left, positioned the straight razor at the front of the forehead. ‘Thivai, I can’t. There’s not enough left.’
Upon returning, the officer looked at the prisoner and ordered the barber to shave him totally.
I smiled, I lowered my head, the barber trembled, my flesh peeled off my head and the tip of my ear, the officer by his red leather boot crushed my shoeless foot; the cutter wiped his fingers on the linen knotted around my neck. Then he went back to his cutting. My hairs dropped off like flies. As they were cut, they brushed by the ears, the holes of the nostrils, caught in the eyebrows, mommy, I only went to the hairdresser to cut off a lock of hair, my matchstick, mommy’s sitting in the armchair, mommy’s holding my knee, mommy’s picking up a magazine, mommy puts it on her knees. Véronique’s behind the mirror. Véronique stands upright. Then the hairdresser pushes her down while Véronique makes signs which the mirror reflects. The cut hairs brush past the beehive I’ve hidden in my shirt; mommy leaves, forgetting her purse. She walks through the rain along the river. Am I dreaming? The haircutter looks around him, he puts his hand on the hot flannel of my pants, his hand climbs up my thigh, I look at Véronique, it’s she who’s raping me it’s she who’s touching me, mommy’s screaming out loud and crying in the rain. Dock workers drag barbed wire sheets through the slush. Mommy bites her soaked scarf The haircutter’s hand sinks between my knees; again I push it away; his other hand travels down my stomach; my knees hit the marble washbasin which nevertheless maintains its balance; the haircutter’s hand rests openly on my obviously palpitating stomach. The hairdresser looks behind him.
Under the door, mommy’s drying her shoes. She enters the room. Night fell. Her wet hands hold my small ones, I fall into the armchair; mommy pays the hairdresser; he presses me against the door.
Mommy drags me out, down black streets until we reach the river. The dock workers’re trying to warm themselves by standing as close as possible to a fire made out of charcoal dust. Mommy, holding me in her arms, jumps into the thicker mist. She mounts the jetty and runs over the rocks. Snow is covering the rocks. I try to writhe myself away, but she’s pressing me into her hips. So I bite her hand, while a tug-boat whose bright port dead-lights are throwing glimmers on a black oily sea, moves down the estuary; mommy throws herself, …, I bite her hand, as her arms let go, I fall down the rocks, rolling down the rocks, mommy falls into the sea (my mother’s suicide), the foam finds and recovers her, I twist my body round toward the rocks. There a wave carries my mother’s head. Her palms slide along a sleek, slightly glittering rock. The tug-boat bears the other way, then stops; a sailor runs on to a bridge; he unfastens a yawl, runs back on board; they row toward the jetty. Between the clouds the stars’re shining. My head’s bathing in a small abandoned puddle. A sailor jumps on to the jetty, lifts me in his strong arms, up, and strokes my forehead and left cheek. The other sailors ship their oars and, lifting up my mother’s body, bear it over a huge flat rock. The sailor puts me to bed. From the tip of the tent’s main peg a lantern was barely balancing. My blood flowed into my hands. The sailors telephoned, held my hands in theirs, covered my face, They tore the khaki posters and bills open …
After the jeeps and the lorries left, wounded on the forehead now by the rising sun, I placed my sackcloth jacket over my face. The rest was naked. The flies in the toilet and the wine-press the soldiers had for their own convenience were gnawing at the barrier wires’ edges; they darted forward, leapt over my cock, sunk into the mop of hair below, scurted over the curly locks, so I trembled, opened my thighs. The morning breeze cooled down the thighs and the sexual mass. The flies stole …
Again Véronique tosses her hairs behind her; I take hold of this hair and throw my face into it; Véronique turns around and places my head in her hands:
‘Xaintrilles wet-kissed me in the garden.’
I throw my arms around her waist, then I eat at her mouth; revolving her thighs rub and press themselves against my stomach; though she’s pushing back my arms, I kiss her eyelids; her hand rubs my back my waist; her eyelids taste of mud; the sweat wets my opened shirt.
As soon as she laughs, I turn her over under me on the armchair.
The wind bangs the books on the table shut. My hand burrows like a mole in her clothes. Over a teat. Trembles. Under my hand the teat is hot. I stroke the other teat. With the second hand I unhook the dress. And tongue the teat’s tip. ‘And me,’ she pants. She crushes my mouth by her breast. Wide open the windows look over the park. Xaintrilles walks through the thick grass, his gun erect.
‘Don’t be so hard,’ he tells me. ‘You’re breaking my legs.’
I crawl over him. Sirens stain the distance.
Today there’s no more pirates therefore I can’t be a pirate. I know I can’t be a pirate because there’re no more pirate ships.
In 1574 there were pirate ships.
By that time the total halt of legal, or national, European wars forced the French and German soldiers either to disappear or to become illegal – pirates. Being free of both nationalistic and religious concerns and restrictions, privateering’s only limitation was economic. Piracy was the most anarchic form of private enterprise.
Thus, at that time, in one sense, the modern economic world began. In anarchic times, when anyone could become any one and thing, corsairs, free enterprisers roamed everywhere more and more …
Murderers killed murderers …
Human beings are good by nature. This is the credo of those who are liberals, even pacifists, during times of national and nationalistic wars.
But in 1574, when regular, regulated war, that is, national war, which the nations involved had maintained at huge expense only via authoritarian expansion, ceased: the sailors
