I remember, Id been watg a hawk. There was an immense sky of the most i blue, blue of a bowl from which a child might just have drunk its m milk a behind a few whitish traces of cloud around the rim, and, imprinted on this sky, a single point of perfect stillness -- a hawk over the ruins. A hawk so still he seemed the tral node of the sky and the source of the heavy silence which fell down on the ruins like invisible rain; an immobile hawk so high above the turning world that I was sure he would see a half rotating hemisphere below him; and, over this hemisphere, scampered the plump vole or delicious bunny that did not know it had been pinioned already by the eyebeam of its feathered, taloned fate immi in the air. M, silence, a hawk, his prey and ruins. If I try very hard, I also add to this landscape with my little tent, my half-trad, piece by piece, all my naturalists equipment. . . I must have go to collect samples of the desolate flora of this empty place. Above the green abando of the deserted city, where the little foxes played, a rapt hawk gathered to himself all its hauillness.
Hawk plummets. Hes unpremeditated and precise as Zen swordsmen, his fall subsumed to the aerial whizz of the rope that traps me.
I am sure of it -- beat me as much as you like; I remember it perfectly. Dont I?
The t sits in a hall hung with embroideries depig all the hierarchy of hell, a place, he claims, not uhe Scarlet House. Soon, everywhere will be like the Scarlet House. Chaos is ing, says the t, and giggles; the t ends all his letters "yours entropically" and signs them with the peacocks quill dipped in the blood of a human sacrifice. Why did you e to these abandoned regions, my dear, surely youd heard rumours that I and my fabulous retinue had already installed ourselves in the ruins, preparing chaos with the aid of a Tarot pack?
But I had no notion who the t was when his bodyguard captured me. They stood around me as I writhed on the ground and they showed their fangs at me; they all file their es to a point, it is a sign of machismo among them. They wore jackets of black leather brightly studded with cabbalistic patterns; tall boots; snug leggings of black leather; and slick black helmets that fitted closely over the head and over the mouth, too, leaving only their pale eyes visible. Their eyes glittered like pebbles in a brook. They were armed with hand-guns and their belts bristled with knives. Each carried a coil of rope. A silence so perfect that it might never have been broken resumed itself after the hawk fell.
They hauled me off at the end of the rope they tied to the back of one of their motorcycles and made me run, tumble, bounce behind them on my way to the Scarlet House, though I must admit they drove quite slowly, so I was not mujured. The Scarlet House was built of white crete and looked to me very much like a hospital, a large terminal ward. A few days ihere, and the gravel rash, the grazes and bruises healed.
I remember everything perfectly. I know the rui; at nights, I hear the foxes barking in New Bond Street. That sound firms the existence of the ruins though, of course, I see nothing from the windows.
Meanwhile, in this blind place, the t sults maps of the stars with the aid of his adviser, whose general efficy is hindered by the epileptic fits with which he is afflicted. Though at the best of times his wits are out of order; he drools, too. His star-spangled robes are dabbled wi