The Kindly Ones

These disjointed thoughts, this frantic exhaustion of all possibilities, had replaced my sense of time. Sunrises, sunsets, only marked out the rhythm, like hunger or thirst or natural needs, like sleep that rose up at any time to engulf me, restore my strength, and return me to the wretchedness of my body. Sometimes I put on some clothes and went out walking. It was almost hot out, the abandoned fields beyond the Drage had become heavy, slippery, their crumbling soil stuck to my feet and forced me to walk around them. During these walks I saw no one. In the forest, a breath of wind was enough to drive me into a frenzy, I lowered my pants and pulled up my shirt and lay down on the hard, cold ground covered with pine needles that pricked my rear end. In the dense woods beyond the bridge over the Drage, I stripped completely naked, except for my shoes, which I kept on, and began running, as when I was a kid, through branches that scratched my skin. Finally I stopped against a tree and turned around, both hands behind me clutching the trunk, to rub my anus slowly against the bark. But that didn’t satisfy me. One day I found a tree lying down, overturned by a storm, with a broken branch on the top of the trunk, and with a pocket knife I shortened this branch some more, removed its bark and smoothed the wood, carefully rounding out the tip. Then, soaking it copiously in saliva, I straddled the trunk and, leaning on my hands, slowly buried this branch inside me, all the way. It gave me an immense pleasure, and all this time, my eyes closed, my penis forgotten, I imagined my sister doing the same thing, making love in front of me like a lustful dryad with the trees of her forest, using her vagina as well as her anus to take an infinitely more terrifying pleasure than my own. I came in huge disordered spasms, tearing myself away from the stained branch, falling to the side and backward onto a dead branch that made a deep gash in my back, a raw, adorable pain on which I remained for several minutes leaning with the weight of my almost fainting body. Finally I rolled over onto my side, blood flowing freely from my wound, dead leaves and needles sticking to my fingers; I got up, my legs trembling with pleasure, and began running between the trees. Farther on, the woods grew wet, a fine mud dampened the earth, patches of moss covered the driest places, I slipped in the mud and fell onto my side, panting. The cry of a buzzard echoed through the undergrowth. I got up and went down to the Drage, took off my shoes and dove into icy water that shocked my lungs, to wash off the mud and the still-flowing blood, mixed, when I got out, with the cold water streaming down my back. Once dry, I felt revived, the air on my skin was warm and gentle. I would have liked to cut down some branches, build a hut that I’d have carpeted with moss, and spend the night there, naked; but it was still too cold out, and also there was no Iseult to share it with me, no King Mark either to chase us from the castle. Instead I tried to lose myself in the woods, first with a childlike joy, then almost with despair, for it was impossible, I always stumbled onto a path or else a field, all ways led me to known landmarks, whatever direction I chose.