PART I

CHAPTER ONE

The building is shaped like a fat cross. The air, of course, is warm and moist. It is night. A river is nearby, and a jungle. The women cross the field between the river and the northern extension of the building. Have we said the building is arranged in the cardinal directions? The trunk is aligned north and south, the arms east and west. The precision of this alignment suggests careful planning. It is the eastern arm which has suffered the most damage. The wooden rafters are charred and much of the roof has collapsed. This wing is rather like the decayed corpse of an animal whose blackened ribs stick into the air. There is about this wing the odors of liquids long stagnant, of creatures breeding and dying in corners too dark to see, of rot and fungi and ancient mildew. Deathwatch beetles click in their wooden burrows. Larvae swell, casting shadows which seem curiously alive. The moonlight is as thick as honey. The women walk on their chopines through monocotyledonous plants with parallel-veined leaves and spikelike inflorescences. Insects are everywhere, as are small mammals and various winged predators. The ground is muddy from the afternoon’s rain. The grass susurrates around the women; the passage of the women on their chopines is marked by sighs, by whispers. Some of the women are nearly naked. Their arms rattle bracelets. Jewelry drapes from necks around breasts which sway as the women walk. There are red bands around faces, black stripes along bodies. A plump woman has shaved her hair back from her forehead. A tall woman is cinched into a corset. Some of the women are led single file. They are hand-in-hand. These women suffer from night-blindness. They are led by L’alba, whose vision is acute. L’alba has a hawklike face: a prominent nose and thin lips. Her hair is turning gray. It is drawn into a bun at the back of her head. She uses little makeup, unlike the other women. Her dress is a black sheath with buttons down the front. Her large, globular breasts swing loosely back and forth as she walks. Elsewhere she is quite skinny. Her feet are long, bony, tinged with yellow. Later we will watch while an act of sexual congress is achieved with her. On her hands and knees she will be penetrated from behind. Her globular breasts will sway, hanging some distance from her chest. We will have to imagine the sensation of those breasts hanging there, at times flailing violently from side to side, loose and heavy, while a man's sexual organ probes stiffly into her body. Yes, her thin lips, even now, turn into a secret smile, a smile whose significance we will never discover....