silence. The bare feet on the carpet are quite noiseless. They advance, accompanied by the luminous circle before them created by the flashlight held at arm's length and pointed toward the floor. The bare feet, the luminous circle move on to the middle of the room and stop there. Suddenly the flashlight, raised in our direction, projects a blinding beam that moves horizontally, slowly, from right to left, left to right and finally settles on us, as if arrested by its discovery: four women sitting side by side on a black couch, motionless, silent, four women wearing long black dresses and high-heeled shoes, also black. The women do not have faces: they are wearing four identical white masks, expressionless ones, with the unseeing eyes of ancient statues. They all have the same closed, white lips, the same great vacant eyes; their calm features, rounded foreheads, perfectly oval cheeks all have the same waxy pallor. Four funereal mannequins with faces of the dead have sprung forth from the night.
The two in the middle are holding hands, resting them on their closed knees. The two others at the ends of the couch, each with an arm extended over an armrest, lean a little, in a less rigid posture. Not one of them moves. The beam of light itself remains fixed on the frozen apparitions. It takes a while... It seems to take a long time. As if brought to life by the insistent light, one hand moves imperceptibly; without warning, another beam of light, as powerful as the first, suddenly strikes Sebastian's face. Drowned in that intense, unbearable brightness, the apparitions fade away.
The initial beam, useless now, is turned down toward the floor and extinguished.
Behind their masks, the false dead have sharp eyes: a tribunal of phantoms, they now want to examine their prey, standing naked before them in the center of the room as if scorched by the cone of light that envelops and blinds him. Passed from hand to hand, the flashlight is pointed four times in succession at the long, muscular legs, the exposed penis below its blond fleece, the wide shoulders pulled back by the position of the forearms crossed behind the back at waist-level, the black velvet ribbon â at this large, well-made body that looks even larger lit up this way in the darkness, and virile enough to dispel any sense of blond insipidness.
He does not look like a native of these parts but rather like someone from a Germanic region. I have already described his features of an archangel: without softness, without fuzzy shadows â a strong-boned nose, firmly drawn lips. And it is quite amazing to scrutinize them here and now, in their unarmed nudity, and to think about other times when they would have been the features of a seductive SS man, cruel and dominating, whom it would have been a pleasure to kill.
Sebastian does not like that image superimposed on himself. Nevertheless, it sticks in my mind and is indestructible. In spite of you, in spite of me, you're wearing a black uniform and looking superb as you straddle a powerful motorcycle and with an impassive face control the huge roaring machine. Black archangel, steel horseman, you are a lovely object...
His eyes, no doubt suffering from the brightness, remain wide open and fixed at a spot behind us, beyond the heads of those who contemplate him.
Not a sound, not even whispers.
Now the Black who has stood by his side all this time places the satin mask over his face: its eyeholes have been covered with two pieces of fabric the color of his own irises: a hard blue.
Then the second flashlight is switched off. In the renewed darkness, one can hear the fading noise of a motorcycle driving away, then, again, nothing. Again, silence.
***
All the lamps in the room come on, almost simultaneously, with a series of little clicks: the largest lamp on a stand close to the couch, one with a Chinese porcelain base on the piano, another on the nest of tables, and others... The red salon is bathed in light. All
The two in the middle are holding hands, resting them on their closed knees. The two others at the ends of the couch, each with an arm extended over an armrest, lean a little, in a less rigid posture. Not one of them moves. The beam of light itself remains fixed on the frozen apparitions. It takes a while... It seems to take a long time. As if brought to life by the insistent light, one hand moves imperceptibly; without warning, another beam of light, as powerful as the first, suddenly strikes Sebastian's face. Drowned in that intense, unbearable brightness, the apparitions fade away.
The initial beam, useless now, is turned down toward the floor and extinguished.
Behind their masks, the false dead have sharp eyes: a tribunal of phantoms, they now want to examine their prey, standing naked before them in the center of the room as if scorched by the cone of light that envelops and blinds him. Passed from hand to hand, the flashlight is pointed four times in succession at the long, muscular legs, the exposed penis below its blond fleece, the wide shoulders pulled back by the position of the forearms crossed behind the back at waist-level, the black velvet ribbon â at this large, well-made body that looks even larger lit up this way in the darkness, and virile enough to dispel any sense of blond insipidness.
He does not look like a native of these parts but rather like someone from a Germanic region. I have already described his features of an archangel: without softness, without fuzzy shadows â a strong-boned nose, firmly drawn lips. And it is quite amazing to scrutinize them here and now, in their unarmed nudity, and to think about other times when they would have been the features of a seductive SS man, cruel and dominating, whom it would have been a pleasure to kill.
Sebastian does not like that image superimposed on himself. Nevertheless, it sticks in my mind and is indestructible. In spite of you, in spite of me, you're wearing a black uniform and looking superb as you straddle a powerful motorcycle and with an impassive face control the huge roaring machine. Black archangel, steel horseman, you are a lovely object...
His eyes, no doubt suffering from the brightness, remain wide open and fixed at a spot behind us, beyond the heads of those who contemplate him.
Not a sound, not even whispers.
Now the Black who has stood by his side all this time places the satin mask over his face: its eyeholes have been covered with two pieces of fabric the color of his own irises: a hard blue.
Then the second flashlight is switched off. In the renewed darkness, one can hear the fading noise of a motorcycle driving away, then, again, nothing. Again, silence.
***
All the lamps in the room come on, almost simultaneously, with a series of little clicks: the largest lamp on a stand close to the couch, one with a Chinese porcelain base on the piano, another on the nest of tables, and others... The red salon is bathed in light. All
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