ABSTRACT
It all started at dawn. It was gray and bitter at six o’clock. I saw it as I was leaning against the morning window: a large black dead leaf caught in the lattice-work of the balcony, upright, its round head inert, its beak sunken in, its body obliterated-on second look I felt the force of this black inertia to be heavier, bulkier than that of a leaf, and then I saw: caught there by the network’s fine invisible pincers was a sort of bird stuck upright in the spaces. Oh no, I wished I hadn’t seen it. And now what should I do? Now I was trapped in the vision of that immobile thing in my lattice-work. Horrified. A dark, maddening dialogue started between me looking at the thing and its threatening strangeness. For it had thrown me instantaneously into a state of irresolution. What unimaginable accident might have
precipitated this presence which, as it was dying, wouldn’t let go of the lattice-work, as if, dying, it had refused with its last movement to fall into the void? And it had gotten its body stuck, with a kind of buoyancy, in between heaven and earth and death and demolition. Where did this apparition fall from? What might have crushed it? Another bird? A lightning bolt? And it stopped, for no reason, in the midst of its fall. For my torment. On my balcony. For now I had this big, heavy, somber thing, the size of my hand, caught in my breast like a ghoulish broach. And I thought of Thea. The problem was as follows: I had to get rid of the dead body before the cat had the chance of catching sight of it. Otherwise, the cat would naturally want to make its acquaintance and then… ; but as the bird was clinging to the outside of the lattice-work, Thea would want to pass over it, and that must not happen. From behind the window I couldn’t possibly imagine myself making the thing go away-its claws would be hardened, and I was going to have to struggle with death. My hands turned dry and cold up to the shoulder-I said no.
