III

The sun shone fiercely. Our man walked transparently around the town with silent footsteps and a nervous smile on his face. People drifted over the Place Ducale, the city’s far famed navel. Some enjoying a glass of wine and a smoke on a café terrace, talking to friends & relations. Others were just sitting there, coughing bits of sunlight slime from the deepest pits of their lungs. Centrally, the fountain of au non potable spouted. The inevitable carrousel spun merrily round, playing German songs for two or three passengers. Sometimes for no one. His eyes saw all, seated on a cast iron bench. He looked and thought while munching on a piece of baguette.

Round ‘n’ round ‘n’ round they go… Howl, horses of the Brandenburger Tor! Howl, horses of Guernica! It makes me vomit… Bugs! Bowing to food, fashion and gadgets, stinking up the place like an infestation of rats. Breeding new generations, frog leaping over each other, in perpetual motion, new fuel for the trenches… And in the process extinguishing the sun for plastic candle, Walhalla for a nuthouse, dollhouse world… The terror of the unimaginative, petty, half-sized lives and assimilated tribe. But who’s she? A nymph, an apparition…