The Fata Morgana Books by Jonathan Littell, Charlotte Mandell

unable to find its way, neither toward life, nor toward death. When at the end of this centuries-long journey I opened my eyes, the tarp had disappeared; I was lying beneath a thick comforter wrapped in a beige cover, completely soaked with my sweat. I turned over and examined the room: all the tarps had been removed, the floor was covered in a thick sky-blue carpet spotted with dark blue patterns, everything looked crisp and clean, the colorful toy was still resting on the stool. Against the wall stood a tall rectangular mirror, set in a thin orange frame: I looked for my reflection in it, but could only see that of the toy, which looked bigger and more elaborate than the one I remembered, as if it had grown during the long night. I heard a door open under the loft, I had never noticed there was one, and the girl appeared on the blue carpet. This time, she wore a lightweight pair of dark-brown pants and a red tank top with a large black circle across the chest. “That’s better, isn’t it?” she said, raising her head toward me and smiling widely. “You should knock down the wall, or at least put in a double door, that would give you more space.” I didn’t have the strength to tell her to keep her advice to herself and I closed my eyes, rolling onto my back and stretching my aching legs. My clothes, I noticed only then, had disappeared along with the tarps, I was lying naked under the comforter, and I felt a sudden shame at this, as if I had been turned into a plucked bird, bristling and scared. “Where are my clothes?” I asked in a murmur, but if she heard me, she didn’t reply, she had disappeared again. A vague sound of water reached me, she was probably running a bath, on the other side; all of a sudden, the sound became clearer, and even before she reappeared I understood that the mysterious door must communicate with the bathroom, allowing passage between the two contiguous rooms. This time, she was holding a green apple, which she brought to her nose before biting into it. She held out to me another one which she had kept hidden behind her back: “Here, take it.” Since I didn’t react, she insisted, shaking the apple almost in front of my face: “Go on, it’ll do you good.” I didn’t move and she bit again into her own apple, chewing slowly and carefully as she slipped the other one into her pants pocket. “The bath will be ready. Are you coming?” I couldn’t take my eyes away from the round ball on her hip; finally, I raised my eyes to the mirror, which reflected in its orange frame the long supple line of her body. “Where are my clothes?”—“Oh, what a pain you can be!” she laughed. “They’re here, on a chair. I added some clean underwear, you hadn’t put any on.” She went back under the loft and closed the door. I listened to her busying herself behind the wall, she had turned off the water and must have been undressing, then I heard her body slide into the bath. She kept eating her apple; the water made little lapping sounds. Then I squirmed out from under the comforter and managed with difficulty to reach the ladder, which creaked beneath my weight as I somehow descended, holding on with all my strength so as not to fall. My clothes were indeed where she had said; but my hat was still in the other room, along with my jacket, wallet, and cigarettes. Yet passing through this bathroom, which I imagined completely overflowing with this girl’s excess of life, was beyond me, and the key to the hallway door was precisely still in my jacket pocket. I tried to consider my situation, but my thoughts, foggy, kept shredding apart and contradicting one another in turn; the rain, still drumming in the air shaft, complicated things even more, since going out in the downpour in just a shirt was unthinkable, but as for confronting this impossible girl once again, I was incapable of it, and no other options presented themselves to me for the moment. I could have stayed there for a long time