Augustino and the Choir of Destruction by Marie-Claire Blais

one after another between those long fingers of his, I can’t stand the noise or the damage he does to himself with too much alcohol, women and boys, of course he did not actually write any of this, but I could read it in what his solitude left out, his disappointed tenderness, or maybe it was my own, I asked Charly, what is that you’re pouring into my glass and why? She would say, well, it’s to stop your migraines, you’ll see, you won’t feel a thing, and she was right, I gave in to the mysterious numbing of pain and slept better for it, all at once, I got a letter from Charles, Cyril was back from Delhi, and they were happy together, really, no lie, oh Charles, how could you have been touched by doubt, he reproached himself, Cyril had been hailed in London and Boston, what a gifted actor and friend, whether it was true or not, I believed it too, after all, Cyril could probably play any role, including the gigolo with a loving and unfathomable heart, or a character with more sophisticated inner disapproval, he was as stimulating on the stage as in life, awoke the sleeping flesh, and people threw themselves at his feet with gratitude, I dreamed around that time that a letter arrived from Charles in India, no words, just staples, needles and pins glittering like delicate silver signs on matte paper, my eyes burned to read these symbols, each one finely chiselled, was it my concession to Charly, or did I simply hear about it from Charles, like each one of his concessions to Cyril, an increasing number of them by both Charles and me, I don’t know how I ended up arguing with Charly, I think she had her eye on a piece of jewelry I could not give her, a family gift I held very dear, it was crazy, but all of sudden I dug my heels in and said to myself, no, not that, my fierce child, I’m not giving in to you, must you strip me of everything, well, what had I done for her to become violent like that, her hand on my face, I could have fired her on the spot, but I didn’t, I just locked myself in my room for days, although she begged forgiveness, seeing the mark on my face, I decided to stay there and not come out, after all, what would my friends say, Adrien, Suzanne, Chuan, Olivier and all the others, Charles hit his head accidentally against a tree during a race with Cyril, and both of us were degraded and humiliated, we were shot through with pins and needles as Charly had done many times to her voodoo dolls, so why didn’t I fire her then, and Charles wrote that what happened with Cyril was a little accident, you know, dear, how hopeless I am at sports racing, I should simply not have been so hardy, that’s all, young people are always right to be intrepid and daring, but us never, we’re going to Holland for a few days, Cyril and I, was it a mere accident or not, still I mustn’t see my friends like that, no matter how slight the mark, in fact under a wide straw hat it didn’t show at all, just vanity of course, but I got in the habit of not going out, not that Charly had to force me to it, that was what I wanted, or at least my will was like a flickering lamp, and thought about the time when my villa, with its gazebos and cottages, my house had welcomed all of glittering society, oh, it wasn’t like Mélanie and Daniel’s, which became a home for refugees like Julio, Jenny, Marie-Sylvie de la Toussaint, but I did host an intelligent elite with Charles, and Frédéric in my garden and around my pool, if I was a woman of the world, it was with artistic passion and the intention of photographing all those faces around me, I had the impression of being the architect of all this . . . I had retained something of my unused training in architecture, studies interrupted by the war, plunging into a first marriage, so many mistakes, I still had the feel and manual bent for plans, constructions, faces, and images of friends and people I knew less well, I felt like an