In the morning, a thick fog had come and covered everything: from the bedroom, I couldn’t see the birch lane, or the forest, or even the end of the terrace. I opened the window, again I could hear the drops falling from the roof, the screech of a buzzard far off in the forest. Barefoot, I went downstairs and out onto the terrace. The snow on the flagstones was cold beneath my feet, the cool air made my skin bristle, I went over and leaned against the stone railing. When I turned around, I couldn’t even see the house anymore, the railing disappeared into the mist, I felt as if I were floating, isolated from everything. A shape under the snow in the garden, possibly the one I had glimpsed the day before, attracted my attention. I leaned over to see it better, the fog half veiled it, again it made me think of a body, but this time of the body of the young hanged woman in Kharkov, lying in the snow in the Trade Unions Park, her breast gnawed by dogs. I shivered, my skin tingled, the cold made it extraordinarily sensitive, my naked, shaved sex, the cold air, the fog enveloping me all gave me a wonderful feeling of nudity, an absolute, almost raw nudity. The shape had disappeared now, it must have been a dip in the land, I forgot it and leaned my body against the railing, letting my fingers wander over my skin. When my hand began rubbing my penis I scarcely noticed it, so little did it alter the sensations that were slowly peeling back my flesh, then thinning out my muscles, then removing my very bones, leaving only something nameless that, reflecting itself, gave itself pleasure as if to something identical yet slightly shifted, not opposite to it but merging with it in its oppositions. The orgasm thrust me backward like a discharge and sent me sprawling onto the snow-covered flagstones of the terrace where I remained in a stupor, all my limbs trembling. I thought I could see a shape lurking in the fog near me, a feminine form, I heard cries, they seemed far away but they must have been my own, and at the same time I knew that all this was happening in silence, and that not a sound came from my mouth to trouble this gray morning. The form detached itself from the fog and came to lie down on me. The cold of the snow bit into my bones. “It’s us,” I whispered into the labyrinth of its little round ear. “It’s us.” But the form remained mute and I knew it was still me, only me. I got up and went back into the house, I was trembling, I rolled on the carpets to dry myself out, breathing heavily. Then I went down into the basement. I pulled out bottles at random and blew on them to clear the labels, the clouds of dust made me sneeze. The cold and dank smell of this basement penetrated my nostrils, the soles of my feet enjoyed the cold, damp, almost slippery feeling of the hard earthen floor. I settled on a bottle and opened it with a corkscrew hanging from a string, I drank straight from the bottle, the wine ran from my lips onto my chin and my chest, I was getting hard again, now the shape was standing behind the shelves and swaying gently, I offered it wine but it didn’t move, then I lay down on the hard earth and it came to crouch over me, I kept drinking from the bottle as it used me, I spat some wine at it, but it didn’t take notice, it continued its disjointed movement. Each time, now, my orgasm came harsher, more acrid, even slightly acidic, the tiny stubble that was reappearing irritated my flesh and my penis, and when, immediately afterward, it went limp, the red, crumpled skin showed the thick jutting green veins, the network of purple venules. And yet I couldn’t rest, I ran heavily throughout the big house, into the bedrooms, the bathrooms, arousing myself every possible way but without coming, for I no longer could. I played at hide-and-seek, knowing there was no one to find me, I didn’t really know what I was doing anymore, I followed the impulses of my bewildered body, my mind remained clear and transparent but my body took refuge in its opacity and its weakness, the more I worked it, the less it served me as a passageway and the more it turned into an obstacle, I cursed it and also tried to outsmart this thickness, irritating and exciting it to the point of madness, but a cold excitation, almost sexless. I committed all sorts of infantile obscenities: in a maid’s room, I knelt on the narrow bed and stuck a candle into my anus, I lit it with difficulty and maneuvered it, letting big drops of hot wax fall onto my buttocks and the back of my testicles, I roared, my head crushed against the iron bedstead; afterward, I shat crouching on the Turkish-style toilets in the servants’ dark cubbyhole; I didn’t wipe myself, but jerked off standing in the service staircase, rubbing my shit-stained buttocks against the railing, the smell assaulting my nose and going to my head; and as I came, I almost fell down the stairs, I caught myself just in time, laughing, and looked at the traces of shit on the wood, which I carefully wiped off with a little lace tablecloth taken from the guest room. I grated my teeth, I could hardly bear to touch myself, I laughed like a madman, finally I fell asleep stretched out on the floor in the hallway. When I woke up I was famished, I devoured everything I could find and drank another bottle of wine. Outside, the fog veiled everything, it must still have been daytime, but it was impossible to guess the hour. I opened up the attic: it was dark, dusty, full of a musty odor, my feet left great tracks in the dust. I had taken some leather belts, which I threw over a beam, and I began showing the shape, which had discreetly followed me, how I hanged myself in the forest when I was little. The pressure on my neck made me hard again, it panicked me, to avoid suffocating I had to stand on tiptoe. I jerked off very quickly this way, just rubbing the glans coated with saliva, until the sperm spurted across the attic, a few drops only but projected with incredible force, I yielded to the orgasm with all my weight, if the shape hadn’t supported me I would really have hanged myself. Finally I unfastened myself and collapsed into the dust. The shape, on all fours, sniffed at my limp member like an avid little animal, raised its leg to expose its vulva to me, but avoided my hands when I reached out to it. I didn’t get hard quickly enough for it, and it strangled me with one of the belts; when my penis was finally erect, it freed my neck, tied my feet together, and impaled itself on me. “Your turn,” it said. “Squeeze my neck.” I took its neck in my hands and pressed with both thumbs as it raised its legs and, its feet on the floor, moved back and forth on my aching penis. Its breathing gushed from its lips in a high-pitched whistle, I pressed harder, its face swelled, flushed crimson, horrible to see, its body remained white, but its face was red as raw meat, its tongue stuck out from its teeth, it couldn’t even rattle, and when it came, burying its nails into my wrists, it emptied itself, and I began howling, bellowing and bashing my head against the floor, I was past all restraint, I bashed my head and sobbed, not out of horror, because this female form that would never remain my sister had pissed on me, it wasn’t that, but when I saw it come and piss, strangled, I saw the hanged women in Kharkov who as they suffocated emptied themselves over the passersby, I had seen that girl we had hanged one winter day in the park behind the statue of Shevchenko, a young and healthy girl bursting with life, had she too come when we hanged her and soiled her panties, when she fought and shuddered, strangled, was she coming, had she ever even come before, she was very young, had she experienced that before we hanged her, what right did we have to hang her, how could we hang this girl, and I sobbed endlessly, ravaged by her memory, my very own Our-Lady-of-the-Snows, it wasn’t remorse, I didn’t have remorse, I didn’t feel guilty, I didn’t think things could or should have been otherwise, yet I understood what it meant to hang a girl, we had hanged her the way a butcher slaughters a steer, without passion, because it had to be done, because she had done something stupid and had to pay for it with her life, that was the rule of the game, of our game, but the girl we had hanged wasn’t a pig or a steer that you kill without thinking about it because you want to eat its flesh, she was a young girl who had been a little girl who may have been happy and who was then just entering life, a life full of murderers whom she hadn’t been able to avoid, a girl like my sister in a way, someone’s sister, perhaps, as I too was someone’s brother, and such cruelty had no name, no matter how objectively necessary, it ruined everything, if one could do that, hang a girl like that, then one could do anything, nothing could be assured, my sister could be happily pissing in a toilet one day and the next day be emptying herself as she suffocated on the end of a rope, there was absolutely no sense to it, and that is why I wept, I didn’t understand anything anymore and I wanted to be alone to no longer understand anything.