Julio Cortazar

Blow-Upby Julio Cortázar “Blow-Up” was first published in Argentina in 1964 in the collection Final del juego. It was translated into English and published in the United States in 1967. The story inspired Michelangelo Antonioni to co-write the screenplay for Blow-Up, which he also directed; the film is now considered a cult classic. It starred Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Verushka, Jane Birkin, and Peter Bowles, and featured a soundtrack by Herbie Hancock and the Yardbirds.When Blow-Up was released in 1967, it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was nominated for Academy Awards in Directing and Writing.Story is originally titled: Las Babas del Diablo(literally, “The Droolings of the Devil”, an Argentine expression for the long threads some spiders and other insects leave hanging between the trees).~ It’ll never be known how this has to be told, in the first person or in the second, using the third person plural or continually inventing modes that will serve for nothing. If one might say: I will see the moon rose, or: we hurt me at the back of my eyes, and especially: you the blonde womanwas the clouds that race before my your his our yours their faces.

What the hell.Seated ready to tell it, if one might go to drink a bock over there, and the typewriter continue byitself (because I use the machine), that would be perfection. And that’s not just a manner of speaking. Perfection, yes, because here is the aperture which must be counted also as a machine(of another sort, a Contax 1.1.2) and it is possible that one machine may know more about another machine than I, you, she–the blonde–and the clouds. But I have the dumb luck to know that if I go this Remington will sit turned to stone on top of the table with the air of being twice as quiet that mobile things have when they are not moving. So, I have to write. One of us all has to write, if this is going to get told. Better that it be me who am dead, for I’m less compromisedthan the rest; I who see only the clouds and can think without being distracted, write withoutbeing distracted (there goes another, with a grey edge) and remember without being distracted, Iwho am dead (and I’m alive, I’m not trying to fool anybody, you’ll see when we get to themoment, because I have to begin some way and I’ve begun with this period, the last one back, theone at the beginning, which in the end is the best of the periods when you want to tellsomething.)

All of a sudden I wonder why I have to tell this, but if one begins to wonder why he does all hedoes do, if one wonders why he accepts an invitation to lunch (now a pigeon’s flying by and itseems to me a sparrow), or why when someone has told us a good joke immediately there startsup something like a tickling in the stomach and we are not at peace until we’ve gone into theoffice across the hall and told the joke over again; then it feels good immediately, one is fine,happy, and can get back to work. For I imagine that no one has explained this, that really the bestthing is to put aside all decorum and tell it, because, after all’s done, nobody is ashamed of breathing or of putting on his shoes; they’re things that you do, and when something weird happens, when you find a spider in your shoe or if you take a breath and feel like a brokenwindow, then you have to tell what’s happening, tell it to the guys at the office or to the doctor.

Oh, doctor, every time I take a breath…. Always tell it, always get rid of that tickle in thestomach that bothers you. And now that we’re finally going to tell it, let’s put things a little bit inorder, we’d be walking down the staircase in this house as far as Sunday, November 7, just amonth back. One goes down five floors and stands then in the Sunday in the sun one would nothave suspected of Paris in November, with a large appetite to walk around, to see things, to takephotos (because we were photographers, I’m a photographer). I know that the most difficult thingis going to be finding a way to tell it, and I’m not afraid of repeating myself. It’s going to bedifficult because nobody really knows who it is telling it, if I am I or what actually occurred or what I’m seeing (clouds, and once in a while a pigeon) or if, simply, I’m telling a truth which isonly my truth, and then is the truth only for my stomach, for this impulse to go running out andto finish up in some manner with, this, whatever it is.We’re going to tell it slowly, what happens in the middle of what I’m writing is coming already.

If they replace me, if, so soon, I don’t know what to say, if the clouds stop coming and somethingelse starts (because it’s impossible that this keep coming, clouds passing continually andoccasionally a pigeon), if something out of all this…. And after the “if” what am I going to put if I’m going to close the sentence structure correctly? But if I begin to ask questions, I’ll never tellanything, maybe to tell would be like an answer, at least for someone who’s reading it. Roberto Michel, French-Chilean, translator and in his spare time an amateur photographer, left number 11,rue Monsieur-lePrince Sunday, November 7 of the current year (now there’re two small ones passing, with silver linings). He had spent three weeks working on the French version of at reatise on challenges and appeals by José Norberto Allende, professor at the University of Santiago. It’s rare that there’s wind in Paris, and even less seldom a wind like this that swirled around corners and rose up to whip at old wooden venetian blinds behind which astonished ladies commented variously on how unreliable the weather had been these last few years.

But the sun was out also, riding the wind and friend of the cats, so there was nothing that would keep me from taking photos of the Conservatoire and Sainte-Chapelle. It was hardly ten o’clock, and I figured that by eleven the light would be good, the best you can get in the fall; to kill some time I detoured around by the Isle Saint-Louis and started to walk along the quai D’Anjou, I stared for a bit at the hôtel de Lauzun, I recited bits from Apollinaire which always get into my head whenever I pass in front of the hotel de Lauzun (and at that I ought to be remembering the other poet, but Michel is an obstinate beggar), and when the wind stopped all at once and the sun came out at least twice as hard (I mean warmer, but really it’s the same thing), I sat down on the parapet and felt terribly happy in the Sunday morning.One of the many ways of contesting level-zero, and one of the best, is to take photographs, an activity in which one should start becoming an adept very early in life, teach it to children since it requires discipline, aesthetic education, a good eye, and steady fingers.

I’m not talking aboutwaylaying the lie like any old reporter, snapping the stupid silhouette of the VIP leaving Number 10 Downing Street, but in all ways when one is walking about with a camera, one has almost aduty to be attentive, to not lose that abrupt and happy rebound of sun’s rays off an old stone, or the pigtails-flying run of a small girl going home with a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk. Michelknew that the photographer always worked as a permutation of his personal way of seeing theworld as other than the camera insidiously imposed upon it (now a large cloud is going by, almost black), but he lacked no confidence in himself, knowing that he had only to go outwithout the Contax to recover the keynote of distraction, the sight without a frame around it,light without the diaphragm aperture or 1/250 sec. Right now (what a word, now, what a dumblie) I was able to sit quietly on the railing overlooking the river watching the red and black motorboats passing below without it occurring to me to think photographically of the scenes,nothing more than

letting myself go in the letting go of objects, running immobile in the streamof time. And then the wind was not blowing.After, I wandered down the quai de Bourbon until getting to the end of the isle where theintimate square was (intimate because it was small, not that it was hidden, it offered its wholebreast to the river and the sky), I enjoyed it, a lot. Nothing there but a couple and, of course,pigeons; maybe even some of those which are flying past now so that I’m seeing them. A leap upand I settled on the wall, and let myself turn about and be caught and fixed by the sun, giving itmy face and ears and hands (I kept my gloves in my pocket). I had no desire to shoot pictures,and lit a cigarette to be doing something; I think it was that moment when the match was aboutto touch the tobacco that I saw the young boy for the first time.What I’d thought was a couple seemed much more now a boy with his mother, although at thesame time I realized that it was not a kid and his mother, and that it was a couple in the sense thatwe always gravitate to couples when we see them leaning up against the parapets or embracingon the benches in the squares.

As I had nothing else to do, I had more than enough time to wonder why the boy was so nervous, like a young colt or a hare, sticking his hands into his pockets, taking them out immediately, one after the other, running his fingers through his hair,changing his stance, and especially why was he afraid, well, you could guess that from every gesture, a fear suffocated by his shyness, an impulse to step backwards which he telegraphed, his body standing as if it were on the edge of flight, holding itself back in a final, pitiful decorum.All this was so clear, ten feet away–and we were alone against the parapet at the tip of the island–that at the beginning the boy’s fright didn’t let me see the blonde very well. Now, thinking back on it, I see her much better at that first second when I read her face (she’d turned around suddenly, swinging like a metal weathercock, and the eyes, the eyes were there), when I vaguely understood what might have been occurring to the boy and figured it would be worth the trouble to stay and watch (the wind was blowing their words away and they were speaking in a low murmur).

I think that I know how to look, if it’s something I know, and also that every looking oozes with mendacity, because it’s that which expels us furthest outside ourselves, without the least guarantee, whereas to smell, or (but Michel rambles on to himself easily enough, there’s no need to let him harangue on this way). In any case, if the likely inaccuracy can be seen beforehand, it becomes possible again to look; perhaps it suffices to choose between looking and the reality looked at, to strip things of all their unnecessary clothing. And surely all that isdifficult besides.As for the boy I remember the image before his actual body (that will clear itself up later), whilenow I am sure that I remember the woman’s body much better than the image. She was thin and willowy, two unfair words to describe what she was, and was wearing an almost-black fur coat,almost long, almost handsome.

All the morning’s wind (now it was hardly a breeze and it wasn’t cold) had blown through her blonde hair which pared away her white, bleak face–two unfair words–and put the world at her feet and horribly alone in front of her dark eyes, her eyes fell onthings like two eagles, two leaps into nothingness, two puffs of green slime. I’m not describing it.And I said two puffs of green slime.Let’s be fair, the boy was well enough dressed and was sporting yellow gloves which I wouldhave sworn belonged to his older brother, a student of law or sociology; it was pleasant to see thefingers of the gloves sticking out of his jacket pocket. For a long time I didn’t see his face, barelya profile, not stupid–a terrified bird, a Fra Filippo angel, rice pudding with milk–and the back of an adolescent who wants to take up judo and has had a scuffle or two in defense of an idea or hissister. Turning fourteen, perhaps fifteen, one would guess that he was dressed and fed by hisparents but without a nickel in his pocket, having to debate with his buddies before making uphis mind to buy a coffee, a cognac, a pack of cigarettes. He’d walk through the streets thinking of the girls in his class, about how good it would be to go to the movies and see the latest film, or tobuy novels or neckties or bottles of liquor with green and white labels on them.

At home (itwould be a respectable home, lunch at noon and romantic landscapes on the walls, with a dark entryway and a mahogany umbrella stand inside the door) there’d be the slow rain of time, for studying, for being mama’s hope, for looking like dad, for writing to his aunt in Avignon. So thatthere was a lot of walking the streets, the whole of the river for him (but without a nickel) andthe mysterious city of fifteen-year-olds with its signs in doorways, it’s terrifying cats, a paper of fried potatoes for thirty francs, the pornographic magazine folded four ways, a solitude like theemptiness of his pockets, the eagerness for so much that was incomprehensible but illumined bya total love, by the availability analogous to the wind and the streets.This biography was of the boy and of any boy whatsoever, but this particular one now, you couldsee he was insular, surrounded solely by the blonde’s presence as she continued talking with him.(I’m tired of insisting, but two long ragged ones just went by. That morning I don’t think I lookedat the sky once, because what was happening with the boy and the woman appeared so soon Icould do nothing but look at them and wait, look at them and…)

To cut it short, the boy wasagitated and one could guess without too much trouble what had just occurred a few minutesbefore, at most half-an-hour. The boy had come onto the tip of the island, seen the woman andthought her marvelous. The woman was waiting for that because she was there waiting for that,or maybe the boy arrived before her and she saw him from one of the balconies or from a car andgot out to meet him, starting the conversation with whatever, from the beginning she was surethat he was going to be afraid and want to run off, and that, naturally, he’d stay, stiff and sullen,pretending experience and the pleasure of the adventure. The rest was easy because it washappening ten feet away from me, and anyone could have gauged the stages of the game, thederisive, competitive fencing; its major attraction was not that it was happening but in foreseeingits denouement.

The boy would try to end it by pretending a date, an obligation, whatever, and would go stumbling off disconcerted, wishing he were walking with some assurance, but naked under the mocking glance which would follow him until he was out of sight. Or rather, he would stay there, fascinated or simply incapable of taking the initiative, and the woman would begin to touch his face gently, muss his hair, still talking to him voicelessly, and soon would take him by the arm to lead him off, unless he, with an uneasiness beginning to tinge the edge of desire, even his stake in the adventure, would rouse himself to put his arm around her waist and to kiss her.Any of this could have happened, though it did not, and perversely Michel waited, sitting on the railing, making the settings almost without looking at the camera, ready to take a picturesque shot of a corner of the island with an uncommon couple talking and another looking at one another.

Strange how the scene (almost nothing: two figures there mismatched in their youth) was taking on a disquieting aura. I thought it was I imposing it, and that my photo, if I shot it, wouldreconstitute things in their true stupidity. I would have liked to know what he was thinking, aman in a grey hat sitting at the wheel of a car parked on the dock which led up to the footbridge,and whether he was reading the paper or asleep. I had just discovered him because people insidea parked car have a tendency to disappear, they get lost in that wretched, private cage stripped of the beauty that motion and danger give it. And nevertheless, the car had been there the wholetime, forming part (or deforming that part) of the isle. A car: like saying a lighted streetlamp, apark bench. Never like saying wind, sunlight, those elements always new to the skin and theeyes, and also the boy and the woman, unique, put there to change the island, to show it to me inanother way. Finally, it may have been that the man with the newspaper also because aware of what was happening and would, like me, feel that malicious sensation of waiting for everythingto happen.

Now the woman had swung around smoothly, putting the young boy between herself and the wall, I saw them almost in profile, and he was taller, though not much taller, and yet shedominated him, it seemed like she was hovering over him (her laugh, all at once, a whip of feathers), crushing him just by being there, smiling, one hand taking a stroll through the air. Whywait any longer? Aperture at sixteen, a sighting which would not include the horrible black car,but yes, that tree, necessary to break up too much grey space… . I raised the camera, pretended to study a focus which did not include them, and waited and watched closely, sure that I would finally catch the revealing expression, one that would sum it all up, life that is rhythmed by movement but which a stiff image destroys, taking time in cross section, if we do not choose the essential imperceptible fraction of it. I did not have to wait long.

The woman was getting on with the job of handcuffing the boy smoothly, stripping from him what was left of his freedom a hair at a time, in an incredibly slow an delicious torture. I imagined the possible endings (now a small fluffy cloud appears, almost alone in the sky), I saw their arrival at the house (a basement apartment probably, which she would have filled with large cushions and cats) and conjectured the boy’s terror and his desperate decision to play it cool and to be led off pretending there was nothing new in it for him. Closing my eyes, if I did in fact close my eyes, I set the scene: the teasing kisses, the woman mildly repelling the hands which were trying to undress her, like in novels, on a bed that would have a lilac-colored comforter, on the other hand she taking off his clothes, plainly mother and son under a milky yellow light, and everything would end up as usual, perhaps, but maybe everything would go otherwise, and the initiation of the adolescent would not happen, she would not let it happen, after a long prologue wherein the awkwardnesses,the exasperating caresses, the running of hands over bodies would be resolved in who knows what, in a separate and solitary pleasure, in a petulant denial mixed with the art of tiring and disconcerting so much poor innocence.

It might go like that, it might very well go like that; thatwoman was not looking for the boy as a lover, and at the same time she was dominating himtoward some end impossible to understand if you do not imagine it as a cruel game, the desire todesire without satisfaction, to excite herself for someone else, someone who in no way could bethat kid.Michel is guilty of making literature, of indulging in fabricated unrealities. Nothing pleases himmore than to imagine exceptions to the rule, individuals outside the species, not-always repugnant monsters. But that woman invited speculation, perhaps giving clues enough for thefantasy to hit the bull’s-eye. Before she left, and now that she would fill my imaginings for several days, for I’m given to ruminating, I decided not to lose a moment more. I got it all intothe view-finder (with the tree, the railing, the eleven-o’clock sun) and took the shot. In time torealize that they both had noticed and stood there looking at me, the boy surprised and as thoughquestioning, but she was irritated, her face and body flat-footedly hostile, feeling robbed,ignominiously recorded on a small chemical image.

I might be able to tell it in much greater detail but it’s not worth the trouble. The woman said thatno one had the right to take a picture without permission, and demanded that I hand over thefilm. All this in a dry, clear voice with a good Parisian accent, which rose in color and tone withevery phrase. For my part, it hardly mattered whether she got the roll of film or not, but anyonewho knows me will tell you, if you want anything from me, ask nicely. With the result that Irestricted myself to formulating the opinion that not only was photography in public spaces notprohibited, but it was looked upon with decided favor, both private and official. And while thatwas getting said, I noticed on the sly how the boy was falling back, sort of actively backing upthrough without moving, and all at once (it seemed almost incredible) he turned and broke into arun, the poor kid, thinking that he was walking off and in fact in full flight, running past the sideof the car, disappearing like a gossamer filament of angel-spit in the morning air.But filaments of angel-spittle are also called devil-spit, and Michel had to endure rather particular curses, to hear himself called meddler and imbecile, taking great pains meanwhile tosmile and to abate with simple movements of his head such a hard sell.

As I was beginning to gettired, I heard the car door slam. The man in the grey hat was there, looking at us. It was only atthat point that I realized he was playing a part in the comedy.He began to walk toward us, carrying in his hand the paper he had been pretending to read. What I remember best is the grimace that twisted his mouth askew, it covered his face with wrinkles,changed somewha t both in location and shape because his lips trembled and the grimace went from one side of his mouth to the other as though it were on wheels, independent and involuntary. But the rest stayed fixed, a flour-powdered clown or bloodless man, dull dry skin,eyes deep set, the nostrils black and prominently visible, blacker than the eyebrows or hair or the black necktie. Walking cautiously as though the pavement hurt his feet; I saw patentleather shoes with such thin soles that he must have felt every roughness in the pavement. I don’t know why I got down off the railing, nor very well why I decided to not give them the photo, to refuse that demand in which I guessed at their fear and cowardice.

The clown and the woman consulted one another in silence: we made a perfect and unbearable triangle, something I felt compelled to break with a crack of a whip. I laughed in their faces and began to walk off, a little more slowly,I imagine, than the boy. At the level of the first houses, beside the iron footbridge, I turned around to look at them. They were not moving, but the man had dropped his newspaper; it seemed to me that the woman, her back to the parapet, ran her hands over the stone with the classical and absurd gesture of someone pursued looking for a way out.What happened after that happened here, almost just now, in a room on the fifth floor. Several days went by before Michel developed the photos he’d taken on Sunday; his shots of the Conservatoire and of Sainte-Chapelle were all they should be. Then he found two or three proof shots he’d forgotten, a poor attempt to catch a cat perched astonishingly on the roof of a rambling public urinal, and also the shot of the blonde and the kid.

The negative was so good that he madean enlargement; the enlargement was so good that he made one very much larger, almost the sizeof a poster. It did not occur to him (now one wonders and wonders) that only the shots of theConservatoire were worth so much work. Of the whole series, the snapshot of the tip of theisland was the only one which interested him; he tacked up the enlargement on one wall of theroom, and the first day he spent some time looking at it and remembering, that gloomy operationof comparing the memory with the gone reality; a frozen memory, like any photo, where nothingis missing, not even, and especially, nothingness, the true solidifier of the scene. There was thewoman, there was the boy, the tree rigid above their heads, the sky as sharp as the stone of theparapet, clouds and stones melded into a single substance and inseparable (now one with sharpedges is going by, like a thunderhead).

The first two days I accepted what I had done, from thephoto itself to the enlargement on the wall, and didn’t even question that every once in a while Iwould interrupt my translation of José Norberto Allende’s treatise to encounter once more thewoman’s face, the dark splotches on the railing. I’m such a jerk; it had never occurred to me thatwhen we look at a photo from the front, the eyes reproduce exactly the position and the vision of the lens; it’s these things that are taken for granted and it never occurs to anyone to think aboutthem. From my chair, with the typewriter directly in front of me, I looked at the photo ten feetaway, and then it occurred to me that I had hung it exactly at the point of view of the lens. Itlooked very good that way; no doubt, it was the best way to appreciate a photo, though the anglefrom the diagonal doubtless has its pleasures and might even divulge different aspects.

Everyfew minutes, for example when I was unable to find the way to say in good French what JoseNorberto Allende was saying in very good Spanish, I raised my eyes and looked at the photo;sometimes the woman would catch my eye, sometimes the boy, sometimes the pavement where adry leaf had fallen admirably situated to heighten a lateral section. Then I rested a bit from mylabors, and I enclosed myself again happily in that morning in which the photo was drenched, Irecalled ironically the angry picture of the woman demanding I give her the photograph, theboy’s pathetic and ridiculous flight, the entrance on the scene of the man with the white face.Basically, I was satisfied with myself; my part had not been too brilliant, and since the Frenchhave been given the gift of the sharp response, I did not see very well why I’d chosen to leavewithout a complete demonstration of the rights, privileges and prerogatives of citizens. Theimportant thing, the really important thing was having helped the kid to escape in time (this incase my theorizing was correct, which was not sufficiently proven, but the running away itself seemed to show it so).

Out of plain meddling, I had given him the opportunity finally to takeadvantage of his fright to do something useful; now he would be regretting it, feeling his honor impaired, his manhood diminished. That was better than the attentions of a woman capable of looking as she had looked at him on that island. Michel is something of a puritan at times, hebelieves that one should not seduce someone from a position of strength. In the last analysis,taking that photo had been a good act.Well, it wasn’t because of the good act that I looked at it between paragraphs while I wasworking. At that moment I didn’t know the reason, the reason I had tacked the enlargement ontothe wall; maybe all fatal acts happen that way, and that is the condition of their fulfillment. I don’t think the almostfurtive trembling of the leaves on the tree alarmed me, I was working on a sentence and rounded it out successfully.

Habits are like immense herbariums, in the end an enlargement of 32 X 28 looks like a movie screen, where, on the tip of the island, a woman is speaking with a boy and a tree is shaking its dry leaves over their heads.But her hands were just too much. I had just translated: “In that case, the second key resides inthe intrinsic nature of difficulties which societies…”–when I saw the woman’s hand beginning tostir slowly, finger by finger. There was nothing left of me, a phrase in French which I wouldnever have to finish, typewriter on the floor, a chair that squeaked and shook, fog. The kid hadducked his head like boxers do when they’ve done all they can and are waiting for the final blowto fall; he had turned up the collar of his overcoat and seemed more a prisoner than ever, theperfect victim helping promote the catastrophe. Now the woman was talking into his ear, and her hand opened again to lay itself against his cheekbone, to caress and caress it, burning it, takingher time. The kid

was less startled than he was suspicious, once or twice he poked his head over the woman’s shoulder and she continued talking, saying something that made him look back every few minutes toward that area where Michel knew the car was parked and the man in thegrey hat, carefully eliminated from the photo but present in the boy’s eyes (how doubt that now)in the words of the woman, in the woman’s hands, in the vicarious presence of the woman. WhenI saw the man come up, stop near them and look at them, his hands in his pockets and a stancesomewhere between disgusted and demanding, the master who is about to whistle in his dog after a frolic in the square, I understood, if that was to understand, what had to happen now, what hadto have happened then, what would have to happen at that moment, among these people, justwhere I had poked my nose in to upset an established order, interfering innocently in that whichhad not happened, but which was now going to happen, now was going to be fulfilled.

And what I had imagined earlier was much less horrible than the reality, that woman, who was not there by herself, she was not caressing or propositioning or encouraging for her own pleasure, to lead the angel away with his tousled hair and play the tease with his terror and his eager grace.The real boss was waiting there, smiling petulantly, already certain of the business; he was not the first to send a woman in the vanguard, to bring him the prisoners manacled with flowers. The rest of it would be so simple, the car, some house or another, drinks, stimulating engravings,tardy tears, the awakening in hell. And there was nothing I could do, this time I could do absolutely nothing. My strength had been a photograph, that, there, where they were taking their revenge on me, demonstrating clearly what was going to happen. The photo had been taken, the time had run out, gone; we were so far from one another, the abusive act had certainly already taken place, the tears already shed, and the rest conjecture and sorrow.

All at once the order was inverted, they were alive, moving, they were deciding and had decided, they were going to their future; and I on this side, prisoner of another time, in a room on the fifth floor, to not know who they were, that woman, that man, and that boy, to be only the lens of my camera, something fixed, rigid, incapable of intervention. It was horrible, their mocking me, deciding it before my impotent eye, mocking me, for the boy again was looking at the flour-faced clown and I had to accept the fact that he was going to say yes, that the proposition carried money with it or a gimmick, and I couldn’t yell for him to run, or even open the road to him again with a new photo,a small and almost meek intervention which would ruin the framework of drool and perfume.Everything was going to resolve itself right there, at that moment; there was like an immense silence which had nothing to do with physical silence. It was stretching it out, setting itself up.

Ithink I screamed, I screamed terribly, and that at the exact second I realized that I was beginningto move toward them, four inches, a step, another step, the tree swung its branches rhythmicallyin the foreground, a place where the railing was tarnished emerged from the frame, the woman’s face turned toward me as though surprised, was enlarging, and then I turned a bit, I mean that the camera turned a little, and without losing sight of the woman, I began to close in on the man who was looking at me with the black holes he had in place of eyes, surprised and angered both, he looked, wanting to nail me onto the air, and at that instant I happened to see something like a large bird outside the focus that was flying in a single swoop in front of the picture, and I leaned up against the wall of my room and was happy because the boy had just managed to escape, I saw him running off, in focus again, sprinting with his hair flying in the wind, learning finally to fly across the island, to arrive at the footbridge, return to the city. For the second time he’d escaped them, for the second time I was helping him to escape, returning him to his precarious paradise.

Out of breath, I stood in front of them; no need to step closer, the game was played out.Of the woman you could see just maybe a shoulder and a bit of hair, brutally cut off by the frame of the picture; but the man was directly center, his mouth half open, you could see a shaking black tongue, and he lifted his hands slowly, bringing them into the foreground, an instant still in perfect focus, and then all of him a lump that blotted out the island, the tree, and I shut my eyes, I didn’t want to see any more, and I covered my face and broke into tears like an idiot.Now there’s a big white cloud, as on all these days, all this untellable time. What remains to be said is always a cloud, two clouds, or long hours of a sky perfectly clear, a very clean, clear rectangle tacked up with pins on the wall of my room.

That was what I saw when I opened my eyes and dried them with my fingers: the clear sky, and then a cloud that drifted in from the left,passed gracefully and slowly across and disappeared on the right. And then another, and for achange sometimes, everything gets grey, all one enormous cloud, and suddenly the splotches of rain cracking down, for a long spell you can see it raining over the picture, like a spell of weeping reversed, and little by little, the frame becomes clear, perhaps the sun comes out, andagain the clouds begin to come, two at a time, three at a time. And the pigeons once in awhile,and a sparrow or two.