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refusing to understand: you could see through this darkness, yet you choose to remain blind. Yet you’re complicit in my discovery whether you like it or not, and what you refuse to know will dog you always! All your life you will continue to wonder what I was looking for, and whether I found it. Like me, you know the secret mankind is not yet ready to receive and, like me, you will not be spared. This is the poisonous knowledge I bequeath you! So here they are, the sounds that will torment you from this day forward! Listen! You will hear them in your sleep, they will taint your words, they will pursue you in your loneliness each time the hollow human voices around you become stilled, because these sounds…’
    His speech was borne off on another gust of wind. But when the branches stopped creaking and the leaves fell silent in a temporary lull, it was then, with my own eyes and my own ears – I swear to God – that I witnessed the ghastly scene of that man’s metamorphosis, one in which all the awful power of creation was at work. His eyes were raised towards the dismal sky, his mouth agape; drawing his stomach in, he began to hiss, emitting a sound like a liquid whistle, which his palate was trying to restrain but which then sank down into his throat and mingled with a raucous vibration of his vocal cords. Between a series of fitful spasms which caused him to seize up, as though in a fit of retching, the mysterious sound gurgled out from behind his glottis to become a muffled whimper, then rose again like overflowing liquid, then exploded into the hollow of his mouth in meaningless, truncated words, apparently uttered by someone else. A prey to uncontrollable grimaces, he nonetheless seemed to embrace the trauma with which he was bedevilled, as though almost welcoming those violent gulps and hiccups into his racked frame. He was grinding his teeth, his eyes were almost out of their sockets, his lips were stretched into a fearful gape which at times resembled a smile. Animal cries, strident braying, harsh-sounding meaningless words which could belong to no human tongue poured forth, apparently at random. His face too had become transformed, taking on the appearance of a bird, his nose now resembling a beak, his eyes like sightless bubbles of glass; he was waving his arms around in the air like the talons of a bird of prey, and by so doing he seemed to have stirred up the very elements, which now started to whirl around again as though in sympathy. Behind his back, the water was heaving and roiling, as though the sounds he was uttering were striking deep into its dark depths, awakening chill lake monsters from their age-old sleep as they heard his voice from where they lurked in the slime, and rose clumsily to the surface to see who on earth could be calling them.
    Aghast at the sight of that fearful vision, I took a step backwards, stumbled through the trees, emerged onto the muddy grass and carried on running until I reached the lighted road.

II
    The summer went by like a fit of fever; the offices emptied out, the corridors now peopled only by the odd dead-eyed caretaker. The endless papers which, until a few days ago, had been whirling around on my desk, suddenly calmed down and became silent. The lake was alive with sailing boats, leaving foaming ripples in their wake. A persistent festive buzz came from its glittering shore, though without ever reaching the city, which lay silent and crushed beneath the sun’s resolute glare. I sought shelter from all this intrusive brightness by burrowing into my solitude, surprised to discover how deep I could dig; I came upon caves of fear and silence where time oozed forth in slow and heavy drops. I cowered there, anxious to emerge yet drawn to their chill depths. By day I wandered through the half-empty city with the excuse of making pointless purchases; I would buy bread which would then harden, forgotten on my desk, fruit which would moulder and rot in the plastic bag.