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recommendations. ‘If you hear any shots, if… if…’ She nods and that is all. We go our different ways, Lolo and I uptown, Mother towards the crowded suburb where Aunt Sylvanie lives.
    Aunt Sylvanie’s neighbourhood is on the edge of an even poorer area – on this island, poverty has no limits. The deeper you dig, the more you will find poverty even greater than your own. And so, between Sylvanie and that which doesn’t yet have a name there is merely a small area of trapped water, full of silt and mud, enough to turn your stomach. Over there, on the other side, is the place where lives are held in balance between the peelings of everything that can be eaten, animal carcases, the incontinence of the old folk, children’s faces grimed with snot and that bitter water rejected even by starving stomachs. Alongside the dogs and the pigs, sinister shadows often emerge. Backs bent, they blend in with the animals. When they are not fighting them for the scraps, they are furtively rooting in the stinking, rotten rubbish on either side. I would often find myself leaning forward, eyelids half-closed, hand on my forehead to get a better view and convince myself that those creatures were not dogs, nor pigs, but human beings like you or me; men, women, children, old people who have no choice but to get up in the morning, live, eat, make babies and see to their needs. Hundreds and thousands of souls come to the city as if to paradise, only to find nothing but this hell under an open sky. Ti Louze can consider herself lucky to have found us. If God created this world, I hope he is tortured by remorse.
    From the other bank I often look across at this world like someone who, in the midst of battle, just escaped by means of a well-sharpened machete blade or a hail of bullets from a submachine gun, and is now unable to believe their luck. Anyone who once sets foot in that district will from that moment know why the streets sometimes spread their legs for the highest bidder or shed blood with the calendars. It’s impossible not to know, impossible!
    The night was punctured by the crackling of gunfire. The city, pregnant with a hideous beast, fought an insidious war. On the orders of the boss of the Démunis, armed bands in the outlying districts blended in with the forces of order, once more to take hold of the city and liquidate the insurgents one after the other. They are tracked down street by street, alley by alley. The more fortunate ones might come away riddled with bullets. They behead the less fortunate ones, showing off the heads at arm’s length or on the end of a pole, burning them like torches or mutilating them and feeding them to the pigs.
    Why did Fignolé underline Martissant in red? Why is Ismona’s name written in capital letters? And that telephone number? And why these lines of verse? What is the connection between them? The connection with the rest of it? A long day awaits…

NINE
    I continue my shift as if nothing has happened. I administer drops, distribute tablets, instruct the auxiliaries to change dressings. One of them, taken on just a week ago, can hardly tell left from right, so I have to oversee everything. Taking blood samples, wielding thermometer and syringes. This morning I am unlikely to be vigilant enough. I’m too worried about Fignolé. I’m concerned for Mother.
    Despite our warnings, she wanted to consult Aunt Sylvanie. ‘No-one and nothing can stop me.’
    As recently as last week she sat herself on the back of a moto-taxi and sped off, heading alone across that part of the city where thousands of bodies mill about in a mix of bustle and lethargy between the pavements and the road, defying the tap-taps and bus traffic forging ahead at full speed in an earsplitting racket. You would run away without hesitation if you didn’t fear the crowded pavements with their risk of entangling your feet in other calloused feet, the feet of