Planus by Blaise Cendrars

orders, his secret intriguing. In the evening they carried him into a wineshop a few steps away. So that was the old Marquis, the leper, the King of la Salita! And since Pasquale had told me who he was, I had carried off my mother's opera-glasses and stationed myself on a high point of the wall, a death-trap but well concealed, and I had trained the glasses on the monstrous face of this frightening old man, adjusting the focus so as to see him as large and as close as possible, right up close to me, blotting out the universe, until I was giddy with the sight of him.
    And one day the leper opened his eyes and saw me, as I saw him, and he raised his head and pointed me out with his two stumps, and he must have said something aloud, for I saw his tongue and his glottis move at the bottom of the hole, and the whole buccal cavity filled with thick mucus in the effort he was making to speak, and he fell backwards, and all the heads of the jackals and hyenas, all the unspeakable heads of his courtiers turned towards me, and I was seized with such terror that I fell back heavily, as one falls to the bottom of a chasm in a dream, from which one wakes heavily, not understanding what has happened.
    Oh, that heavy look the old leper threw at me, as heavy as a malediction! All the pain of living. . ..
    Is this the Wheel of Things to which Man is tied, sowing Evil, according to the old lama who taught Kim, this wheel whose hub is the brutish eye of suffering, the pain of living, this hypnosis?
    'No, II Domatore is not dead,' said Pasquale, 'two or three years after their devils' kitchen was demolished, he made his first reappearance in la Salita, and afterwards he came back regularly every Leap Year, and the proof that it is really him is that, as long as he is here, the King of la Salita never leaves his den in the wineshop, and his followers keep him shut up an,d mount guard over the old leper. It's a battle for power between father and son, and who knows what might happen if those two antichrists met face to face one day? The young Marquis takes advantage of the situation and, all the time he is here, you will see him stationed in front of the statue of the Madonna, in his father's very spot, turning and turning the handle of his hurdy-gurdy. It's a unique instrument, antique old-fashioned, dilapidated, and it gives out the most heart-rending shrill cries and, as the flutes are made of glass and many of them are cracked, it jumps some notes and it makes sounds like moaning or the wind blowing, stifled breath or sobs and sighs, and, at th next turn, a sharp cry escapes, followed by a rattle or a mocking triplet, and the impassive Domatore turns the handle as if nothing were wrong with it, grinding and grinding out the notes, and people come running from every nook and cranny of the quarter an stand round that diabolical musician dressed like an Armenian with a wizard's cloak and a square cap on his head, his tow-coloured hair flowing on his shoulders, and, as the instrument plays ancient melodies, especially minuets, people remember, they fall a prey to nostalgia and melancholy and follow him everywhere, and when the villain disappears, which he does twice every seven years, there, are always local people missing, young men and women who have gone off with him, an,d they are never heard of again, and people wonder if the Devil's musician hasn't led them all straight to Hell? Anyway, you needn't go so far away nowadays, the rampa itself ; is a veritable hell! Believe me, it wasn't always so, once upon a time, the suburb of San-Martino was peaceful and almost countrified. But it's all changed now, and since your father started building! even on the Vomero itself, well, it's the end of the world for us,; Naples is damned and la Salita is a sink of iniquity and horrors with? out name since the old prelate and king of thieves came to settle here; the Monsignore has spread his infection just like his son, who has perverted everyone and thrown