The dirigible disappeared. The steppe seemed to be rising imperceptibly: I began to tire, but forced myself to go on. My feet stumbled on clumps of dry grass. Panting, I reached the river; but I found myself, as I saw only then, at the top of a high steep cliff that overlooked it from about twenty meters up; down below, the water was flowing with a swift current; impossible to jump, impossible too to climb down this cliff. I should have landed on the other shore: there, the almost flat bank gently descended to the water. To my left, upriver, I saw the procession of boats arriving. Musicians wearing garlands, who were following the carved gondola carrying my sister, were playing shrill, solemn music on flutes, string instruments, and drums. I could clearly see my sister, haughty between the two creatures who were rowing; she sat cross-legged and her long black hair fell over her breasts. I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted her name, many times. She raised her head and looked at me, but without changing her expression or saying anything; her gaze was riveted on mine while the boat passed slowly by; I shouted her name like a madman, but she didn’t react; finally she turned away. The procession slowly drew away downstream, while I remained there, stunned. Then I tried to begin pursuing her; but at that moment violent stomach cramps seized me; feverishly, I undid my pants and squatted down; but instead of shit, living bees, spiders, and scorpions gushed out of my anus. It burned horribly, but they had to be evacuated; I strained, the spiders and scorpions scattered, running, the bees flew away, I had to clench my jaw not to shout with pain. I heard something and turned my head: two boys, identical twins, were looking at me in silence. Where in God’s name had they come from? I stood and pulled up my pants; but already they had done an about-face and were going away. I dashed after them, calling out to them. But I couldn’t catch up to them. I followed them for a long time.

In the steppe, there was another kurgan. The two boys climbed it and then went down its other side. I ran around it, but they had disappeared. “Where are you, boys?” I shouted. I realized that even from the top of the kurgan, I had lost sight of the river; the dull gray of the sky hid the sun, I didn’t know how to get my bearings; I had let myself get distracted, like an idiot! I had to find those boys again. I went around the kurgan again and discovered a depression: I felt around and a door appeared. I knocked, it opened and I went in; a long hallway stretched in front of me, with, at the end, another door. I knocked again and it opened too. There was a vast, high-ceilinged room, lit by oil lamps: from outside, though, the kurgan hadn’t seemed so large. In the back of the room stood a dais covered with rugs and cushions, with a potbellied dwarf playing a game; standing next to him was a tall, thin man with a black triangle over one eye; a wizened old woman in a scarf was stirring an immense ornamented cauldron hanging from the ceiling in a corner. Of the two children there wasn’t a trace. “Hello,” I said politely. “You haven’t seen two boys by any chance, have you? Twins,” I specified.—“Ah!” the dwarf shouted, “a visitor! Do you know how to play nardi?” I went up to the dais and saw that he was playing a game of backgammon, making his right hand play against his left hand: each took turns rolling the dice and then moved the pieces, red or white. “Actually,” I said, “I’m looking for my sister. A very beautiful young woman with black hair. They’re taking her away in a boat.” The dwarf, without stopping his game, looked at the one-eyed man, then turned back to me: “They’re bringing that girl here. We are going to marry her, my brother and I. I hope she is as beautiful as they say.” He leered lecherously and nimbly buried one hand in his pants. “If you are her brother, then we’ll be in-laws. Have a seat and drink some tea.” I sat down on a cushion, legs crossed, facing the game; the old woman brought me a bowl of good hot tea, real tea and not ersatz, which I drank with pleasure. “I would rather you didn’t marry her,” I said finally. The dwarf kept on playing one hand against the other. “If you don’t want us to marry her, play with me. No one wants to play with me.”—“Why not?”—“Because of my conditions.”—“And what are your conditions?” I asked amiably. “Tell me, I don’t know them.”—“If I win, I kill you, if I lose, I kill you.”—“Fine, that’s no problem, let’s play.” I watched how he was playing: it didn’t resemble any game of backgammon that I knew. In the beginning of the game, the pieces, instead of being arranged in columns of two, three, and five, were all placed at the ends of the board; and during the game, they couldn’t be removed, but blocked the place they occupied. “Those aren’t the rules for backgammon,” I pointed out.—“Listen, boy, you’re no longer in Munich, here.”—“I’m not from Munich.”—“Berlin, then. We’re playing nardi.” I looked again: the principle didn’t seem hard to grasp, but there must have been subtleties. “All right, let’s play, then.” In fact, it was more complicated than it seemed, but I learned quickly and won the game. The dwarf got up, took out a long knife and said: “All right, I’m going to kill you.”—“Calm down. If I had lost, you could have killed me, but I’ve won, so why should you kill me?” He thought a bit and sat back down: “You’re right. Let’s play again.” This time, it was the dwarf who won. “What do you say now? I’m going to kill you.”—“All right, I won’t say anything else, I lost, kill me. But don’t you think we should play a third game first to settle it?”—“You’re right.” We played one more time and I won. “Now,” I said, “you have to give me back my sister.” The dwarf got up in one bound, turned his back to me, leaned over, and let loose an enormous fart in my face. “But that’s disgusting!” I exclaimed. The dwarf was bounding up and down and letting off a fart at each leap, chanting: “I am a God, I do what I like, I am a God, I do what I like. Now,” he added interrupting himself, “I’m going to kill you.”—“Honestly, you’re incorrigible, you’re just too rude.” I got up, made an about-face, and went out. In the distance, I saw a large cloud of dust appearing. I climbed up onto the kurgan to see better: they were horsemen. They approached, divided themselves into two rows, and lined up, face-to-face, on either side of the kurgan to form a long walkway. I could see the closest ones clearly; the horses looked as if they were mounted on wheels. Looking more closely, I saw that they were impaled front to back on fat beams that rested on a wheeled platform; their feet dangled freely; and the horsemen too were impaled, I saw the points of the stakes coming out of their heads or mouths: a rather sloppy job, to tell the truth. Each chariot or framework was pushed by a few naked slaves who, when they had placed them in position, went to sit down in a group a little farther off. I stared at the horsemen and thought I recognized Möritz’s Ukrainians. Had they too gotten all the way here, and undergone the fate that was awaiting them? But maybe it was a wrong impression. The tall, thin one-eyed man had joined me. “It’s not proper,” I scolded him, “to say that whether you win or lose, you’ll kill everyone who plays with you.”—“You are right. The fact is that we don’t have many guests. But I’ll have my brother cease this practice.” A light wind had risen again and swept the dust raised by the chariots. “What are they?” I asked, pointing to them.—“That’s the honor guard. For our wedding.”—“Yes, but I won two games out of three. So you are going to give me my sister back.” The man stared at me sadly with his single eye: “You can never get your sister back.” An uneasy dread rose in my throat. “Why?” I cried out.—“It’s not proper,” he replied. In the distance, I saw some figures approaching on foot, raising a lot of dust, which was soon carried off by the wind. My sister was walking in the middle, still naked, escorted by the two awful creatures and the musicians. “Is it proper for her to walk like that, naked, in front of everyone?” I asked, enraged. His single eye never left me: “Why not? She’s no longer a virgin, after all. But we’ll take her all the same.” I wanted to run down the kurgan to join her but the two twins, who had reappeared, barred my path. I tried to go around them but they moved to prevent me. Overcome with anger, I raised my hand at them. “Don’t hit them!” the one-eyed man barked. I turned toward him, beside myself: “What are they to me, then?” I shouted furiously. He said nothing. At the end of the walkway, between the rows of horsemen impaled on their mounts, my sister was moving forward with an even tread.