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search for the secret language – this is the only place it can be heard! These words are not the rantings of a madman! Just give me a month or two, another two hundred hours of simultaneous translation with five booths, and I’ll give you proof I’m not talking nonsense. That’s where it is – the language mankind has forgotten! Just forget rules and regulations for a moment. Use your head, for God’s sake – you’re still capable of it. Remember that a functionary in an international institution is working for the good of all mankind, and not for some bureaucracy!’
    I was beginning to get worried: that man might become dangerous. I even thought of going to the police. Nor could I understand why, of all the people who had signed the request for his dismissal, I was the only one he was so doggedly pursuing: perhaps because I had been the last to sign? Or because I was the only one who would agree to see him?
    One evening I came across him in the road, at the gate to the park I walked through on my way home. It was raining heavily; the lights of the cars turning off along the lake were catching the tops of the trees, which were tossing in the wind. I was hesitating as to whether to carry on by foot, and was about to go down the avenue to the tram stop when I heard hurried footsteps between the hedges of the gravel path. Thinking it might be some ne’er-do-well, I went towards the gate and turned round defensively, my umbrella at the ready in the dark. And there he was again, pale, shaking, hollow-eyed, mouth agape. He gestured to me, then set off in the direction of the lake. Some obscure force caused me to follow him, and I walked along beside him in the darkness, punctuated occasionally by a flash of yellow headlight. I peered at him out of the corner of my eye, trying to remember what I could of that ever-changing face. Then, looking around the park with its bluish shadows, I felt a sudden pang of fear. That man was mad, he might attack me, even kill me; yet I walked on by his side. There was some unresolved business between us which I simply had to conclude once and for all, and I felt that now was the time. When we came to the lake he stopped and turned towards me. I took a few steps back from the black water – the rain was still hammering down – and took up a position a few steps away from him. He stayed where he was for a few moments, head bowed, then took his hands out of his pockets and lifted his chin. He made an elaborate and completely senseless movement in the air, and it occurred to me that even his gestures were fatuous, deformed by the power of a will which had gone awry. He spoke in the hoarse, rasping voice of a man who has been shouting for too long.
    ‘Not many people understand what I am searching for. Mankind is troubled by the very idea that the earth might have a secret language, and that this language lies hidden within each of our ruptured words, unsettled by the thought that it lives in objects, in animals, within these trees, even in stones, and that the planets speak to each other using it. Mankind refuses to believe it can understand the ancient language of Eden, the one in which the serpent spoke to Adam!’
    A gust of wind carried his voice away amidst the rustling of the leaves and the pounding rain. I could no longer hear his words, so I took a few cautious steps towards him as he stood on the gravel of the bank, legs apart, shouting and gesticulating wildly. It was then that I realised that he was no longer talking in French, or not in French alone. Other sounds with which I was unfamiliar were creeping into his speech. I moved a little nearer: now I could understand again, or at least grasp some phrases.
    ‘You won’t be seeing me again, I promise you. I’ll keep out of your way – forever. But I’d like you to know that your imperviousness to my pleading means that you carry a burden of guilt. By being so obtuse, you are doing violence to your own intelligence. You are