I don’t know if you have ever taken part in a kwak race. Maybe yes, maybe no. I think probably no. Since I’ve taken the floor, I’m going to speak a little about it. Once a year, when three red moons have followed three milky moons, the race is organized in the estuary. Red flags are slung along the docks; crepe stars, tinsel, and slogans are hung. Volunteers bustle about. People like you and me who work for the pleasure of helping out, not for dollars.
Dollars! As if dollars were a reward!
At one time a woman named Soraya Kabouki believed she had done the right thing by inventing one-dollar bills and one-thousand-dollar bills. She came with a cashbox, and whenever someone climbed a streetlight to attach decorations or a banner, she offered them a dollar or a thousand dollars, depending on the stack she drew from. Everyone was happy, then someone asked her to lend a hand instead of spending the day opening and closing the cashbox. She joined in, and we used the top of her cashbox to rubber-band bundles of flowers together. As for the bills, a traveling salesman salvaged them. Since he didn’t know what to do with them, he distributed them as napkins.
But back to the kwak. The race takes place once a year. It could attract more people, but, since inhabitants of the city are increasingly rare, it is less and less successful. Racers aren’t exactly clamoring to sign up. They gather on the pier, west of the port, and divide up the numbered bibs. When there aren’t enough, a number is written on their face. Last year, I had a figure eight winding between my brow and my chin. It’s not that I love this number—generally I prefer seven—but, since I was the eighth to present myself and the organizers had only three numbered bibs, I didn’t argue. Not the slightest grunt of protest. It was Lili Tchikagoo who operated the brush, and when someone like Lili Tchikagoo paints your muzzle, you don’t feel like being grouchy, even if, deep down, you hate the number eight.
Lili Tchikagoo belongs to the fly orchestra in which my dog Djinn played the nanoctiluphe. She was a little intermiteiary with golden feathers, so fluttery and irresistible that she turned the heads of all the orchestral flies, which really complicated the melody during concerts. When the orchestra disbanded, Lili Tchikagoo tried to retrain as a maker of disposable nanoctiluphes, but since she didn’t do well in this new field, she devoted herself to organizing the kwak race. She is still covered with sparkling feathers, still fluttery and irresistible from head to toe. Now it’s the racers’ heads she turns.
“You’re going to be eight,” she told me.
“Okay,” I said.
“I know that you don’t like that number, but it’s fate,” she added.
Sometimes, we don’t really know what it is, destiny, but I understood very well: fate is when you would prefer to have a number with several digits, and also a numbered bib in place of an inscription in ink, but there isn’t a numbered bib, and a cute intermiteiary with golden feathers smears an eight between the top of your eyebrows and the bottom of your mouth.
“Go for the eight,” I giggled, because the brush tickled my cheeks.
Lili Tchikagoo leaned over me. I had a good excuse to contemplate up close the shiny feathers surrounding her very round black eyes, the little golden-orange, golden-yellow, and golden-bronze plumules that made her fluttery and irresistible. I looked at Lili and hardly thought about my number.
The tattoo on my face immediately melted in the water. If I had won, the jury would have scrutinized my face and been unable to announce the results. But I’m never likely to win the kwak race: first of all, I am not very good at the sport, but mainly, as an assistant of the organizers, I am ineligible. I start the race, admittedly, but not to conquer. When I set forth, it’s to escort the pack, so the onlookers don’t disturb it with their front row capers and antics. I am given this task because I have ties with the police, even though I specialized in bizarre cases and was incompetent in policing. But no matter. My work during the race doesn’t demand special skills. It is peaceful. You don’t encounter any onlookers near the racers. Not a single enthusiast damages the event’s smooth running. No curious person applauds us. Then again, it doesn’t fascinate too many people, this kwak race. We go ahead with it out of habit, but if it is ever canceled, nobody will notice.
After several meters, my eight was diluted. Ink had run into my eyes, and for a moment I had to stop to rub them. Due to this, and the ink floating in front of me, I didn’t see who took the lead. My friend Big Katz the wooly crab perhaps, or the kwak himself—because there is always a kwak in the race, who wears the number one bib and wins the race regardless of the other competitors.
The time wasted wringing out my pupils was enough to separate me from the others, who dashed forward at full speed. Disoriented, outdistanced, I stuck my head out.
The surface of the water didn’t have one wrinkle.
In this season, in the middle of summer when three red moons have followed three milky moons, the sea ice retreats several hundred meters, and the sea is always calm. It might seem like a lake. At the mouth of the estuary, the waves roll, crunchy with ice, foamy and loud. But here, nothing was moving. The other racers must have been far away already, or must have chosen to swim deep.
I had the impression of being all alone. On the bank, in the shade beneath a red flag, I glimpsed Lili Tchikagoo. Her feathers sparkled like flames, especially those surrounding her eyes and navel. She was in the middle of eating cherries. Arctic cherries, lustrous with a carmine cast which made you want to bite into them.
“Hey, Lili!” I shouted. “Has the race started?”
“Bobby!” she exclaimed while spitting out a pit. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I was blinded,” I hollered.
We were far from one another. You had to yell to make yourself heard. She answered something and gestured in a reassuring manner. She continued to eat cherries. I believe she had advised me not to lose time. I waved my hand and sprinted to keep myself busy policing the race.
The estuary was a superb, nontransparent dark green. When you’re on the ocean’s surface, you feel a little emotional. You think that the world is very flat and very beautiful, like you have been inserted somewhere in an image of unforgettable beauty. You’re not wrong. Above me, upon a motionless expanse, arched a pearl-gray sky.
A pearl gray of unforgettable beauty.
Aloft hovered a solitary, very-white seagull. I recognized her. She was called Nadiya Wong. She lived for a long time in an RER station, but after a rain of meteorites that reduced the concourse to ashes, she moved out, and I hadn’t seen her since.
From above, she waved. I responded by throwing out friendly splashes around me.
“Come on, number eight!” she shouted.
“I’m doing my best!” I said. “But I had a bad start!”
“Don’t get discouraged, number eight!” she shouted. “You still have a shot!”
I refocused on the race. You’ve understood, of course, the kwak race doesn’t take place on dry land. The kwak is a high seas fish which, after three milky moons and three red moons, swims back up the estuary’s very green waters. It is given bib number one, and you try to follow it to the place where it chooses to lay its eggs. The race is not rigged, but the kwak always wins. Nevertheless, the participants throw themselves furiously into the race and, drunk on the atmosphere of competition, convince themselves that they will succeed in swimming back up the estuary more quickly than the kwak and that they will be able to drop their eggs off first at the finish line.
However, the place the kwak selects is not always the same. That’s what makes the race difficult: it’s the kwak who determines the finish line. Sometimes it lays in the kelp forest blanketing the bottom of the river; sometimes it lays across from the Jumble, near the jetty for canoes and kayaks; sometimes it leaves the water to make a surprise visit to one of its friends. It might drop in on Mimi Yourakane, an old lady who lives in the workshop where she manufactured anthills with human faces back when they didn’t know how to manufacture themselves. Mimi Yourakane’s workshop still smells very strongly of ant and human face, but the kwak doesn’t mind. When it goes down there to lay, it doesn’t stand on ceremony; it lays.
The competitors swim with zeal, forgetting that to be declared winner you have to prove that you laid the eggs of the kwak at the place chosen that year by the kwak. Only the kwak can win the kwak race; those are the rules.
Last year, though, it wasn’t the kwak who won the race but someone named Alfons Tchop. It isn’t spoken about on television or elsewhere because it doesn’t interest anybody. But a police file was opened.
The telephone rang while I was in the shower.
“I would like you to stop by the mini-mart,” Lili Nebraska said to me.
She sounded worried. I put the handset back down and dried myself off. It was a little cold. The towel squeaked. On my skin, there were as many ice crystals as drops of water.
In the fruits and vegetables aisle of the mini-mart, Lili Nebraska was pulling up the mushrooms that had grown on the crates of boreal pears, on old cardboard, on walls. Some were as big as her. I recognized snowball agarics, mammoth-bristle clitocybes, glaciary boletes.
“They’re taking up all the space,” complained Lili Nebraska as soon as she saw me.
“They arrived with the last rain of falling stars,” I said. “It’s an invasion at my house too. There’s plenty all through the building.”
I drew closer to Lili Nebraska and kissed her tenderly on the patterns around her cheeks and around her navel, then I helped pull up mushrooms. They let it happen in broad daylight. At night, they are more resistant.
We heaped the mushroom pieces behind a wall in the parking lot.
When we came back, Lili Nebraska addressed the Alfons Tchop case.
“You have to handle it,” said Lili.
“I’ve been feeling a little tired since the case of the green gulls,” I announced. “I would like to be excused from the police until I get myself together.”
“Listen, Bobby,” said Lili. “Bizarre things are happening these days. People are disappearing, and the rest are losing their memory. Mushrooms think they can get away with anything, meteors fall on the city and cause fires. This is not the moment for you to stand us up.”
I looked at Lili Nebraska, her pretty black pupils, the adorable patterns embellishing her face and the rim of her navel—anthracite commas, jet spirals, speck constellations the color of night.
“I’m not quite myself,” I continued. “Too many people called me Mickey. For a while, I thought I might be a green gull. That upset me.”
“Forget all that, my Bobby,” said Lili Nebraska, covering me with sweet kisses and friendly caresses.
I really like Lily Nebraska. When she takes me in her arms, I lose all desire to protest.
“You are the only one capable of leading the investigation,” insisted Lili Nebraska. “Besides you were present the day of the race. Perhaps you remember some unusual detail?”
“What detail?”
“I don’t know,” Lili Nebraska wavered.
“I’ve forgotten everything,” I wavered in turn. “I noticed nothing.”
“Whether you do or don’t have specific memories, the police entrusted you with the Alfons Tchop case,” said Lili Nebraska. End of discussion.
In the city, people are increasingly absent-minded. Lili Nebraska isn’t the first to notice. They forget everything. Sometimes important things, sometimes details. When you try to remind them, they make a little disinterested grimace. They contort their muzzle or bill when they have a muzzle or a bill. They pout when they have a mouth. Or they pass their tongue over their honker when they have a honker, like my dog Djinn. It’s all the same now, whether you have memories or not. They neither panic nor grieve. They claim that it is better than before, that they feel more lighthearted the moment they disappear.
Because not only do they become absent-minded. Many disappear as well.
This phenomenon has been observed since the last rain of shooting stars. They leave the city and never return. Some explain that they are bothered by the smell of the fires. Others that they’re making way for the mushrooms. Still others recount having had enough of shivering in terror every night, waiting for a meteorite to set fire to their district. They have all sorts of excuses, but they slide their key under the door and vanish into thin air. Well, they vanish after having stated that they’re going to move to the moon. The idea of leaving to settle on the moon has spread like wildfire. Someone told them to seek out the gray-beasts, that the gray-beasts possessed an infallible method for climbing up to the moon, effortlessly and without dizziness. They won’t let it go. However, I haven’t seen a single gray-beast so far. I am not even sure they exist.
Do you know what they are?
No? Neither does anybody else.
The police don’t open a dossier on it because the disappearances aren’t mysterious. When you enter an abandoned dwelling, you always find a reassuring little note signed by the missing person by hand, if before disappearing they had a hand, or by their paw, if they had a paw.
That much is clear.
But I confess they scare me a little, these people who slide their key under the door, and this less and less inhabited city.
In my building, my neighbors left behind several terse lines, something like:
NO LONGER LIVING HERE.
LEFT TO FIND THE GRAY-BEASTS.
IF THERE IS MAIL,
READ IT, OR ENTRUST IT
TO BOBBY POTEMKINE
WHO WILL FORWARD IT
Or:
LEFT TO FIND THE GRAY-BEASTS.
SOME COOKIES ARE LEFT
IN THE CUPBOARD.
EAT THEM OR GIVE THEM
TO BOBBY POTEMKINE.
Or, signed by Lily Yu, my next-door neighbor, a not very musical but very pretty thrush who wears on her brow a red and black scarf, in her ears copper loops, and nothing else:
BOBBY DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME.
I WILL BE AT THE GRAY-BEASTS
UNTIL AUTUMN,
THEN I WILL LEAVE FOR THE MOON.
Everyone is convinced that to settle on the moon, a visit to the gray-beasts is essential. A crucial stopover before the big journey. Maybe, maybe not. Either way, my neighbors never return. The building is empty. I am the last occupant, at the very top, on the seventh floor.
At night, the only sound is of the cats and tigers prowling the hallways. They come and go in the darkness, meowing, fighting, and spraying the landings and stairways with pee.
I don’t know how you would see things in my place, but all alone at the top of the house, I find there to be less ambience than before.
And I regret that.
Anyway, after the police entrusted me with the Alfons Tchop affair, I loitered in the vicinity of the mini-mart, petting the cats who let themselves be petted and playing with those who wanted to play. My investigation hadn’t produced anything, and I returned home defeated.
With effort, I pushed open the door. The mushrooms had gotten bigger since morning and propagated all over. Already I could no longer reach my armchair and the telephone. In the living room, I recognized kiss-footed corts, snowy-scented hygrophorus, shivering lepiotes, and pockmarked russula. I took a large Chinese cleaver from the kitchen and started using it like a machete in the equatorial forest back when there was still an equator, immense trees under warm rain, and lianas. Dusk was already declaring itself, and the mushrooms resisted. The closer night is, the more their flesh becomes sinewy and hard. I cleared a small space and picked up the handset.
“Hello?”
“Is that you, Bobby?” trumpeted Big Katz at the other end of the line.
“I’ve inherited a bizarre investigation,” I said. “Do you remember last year’s kwak race?”
“Not very well,” sputtered Big Katz. “I don’t remember anything. Remembering doesn’t interest me.”
“But you participated in that race. I’m certain of it.”
“It’s possible,” said Big Katz.
“Do you remember that it wasn’t the kwak who won?”
“Oh?” said the wooly crab, surprised. “And who did?”
“A certain Alfons Tchop, it seems.”
“Oh?” said Big Katz again, surprised.
“Doesn’t ring a bell?”
“No,” answered Big Katz. “All I know for sure is that it wasn’t me.”
“I know,” I said.
“And I regret it,” said Big Katz.
We started chatting about other topics. Big Katz has strange ideas these days, just like everybody else. He believes that the environment has deteriorated, and he has a great desire to move to the moon, whether it be full, red, or milky. But instead of dreaming of a journey that would unfold with the help of the gray-beasts, he decided to metamorphose into a moon on his own. He wishes to learn to float in the sky and light up the night with whitish or yellowish rays, depending on his mood. He doesn’t know how to achieve this result so is looking for a moon professor. That, in my opinion, is a really strange idea.
“Do you think the police could help me find one?” asked Big Katz.
“One what?” I said.
“A moon professor,” said Big Katz.
“The police no longer exist,” I reminded him with a sigh. “As you well know. They were abolished. When you need a sheriff, you have to climb onto the roof of the former police station and beat on a drum for days and days.”
“And he comes?” asked my friend the milky crab.
“Who?” I said.
“The sheriff.”
“No, he’s not coming. He never comes. The police are over and done with, for real.”
“All the same, you must have one or two directories lying around your ruins,” remarked Big Katz. “If there is a moon professor somewhere out there, he may be in the directory.”
I jumped. “Of course! Thanks for the suggestion, Big Katz! I didn’t think about the old directories. Of course that’s where one has to start!”
“Start what?” asked the milky crab.
“My investigation into Alfons Tchop,” I said.
“You’re going to look for Alfons Tchop in the directory?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Don’t forget about the professor,” implored Big Katz.
I found myself in the dining room, next to the silent telephone. Night had fallen, the temperature fell. The walls creaked, and the windowpanes became covered with frost. The wind blew upon the dark city. The cats meowed in the hallways, the tigers yowled, and the mushrooms hardened to escape the bite of the cold. Shrinking, the mushrooms sighed and whistled in the darkness.
The moon appeared on the horizon, round and of a milky brilliance. I, too, was attracted by it; I, too, would have liked to move there. But I knew it was necessary to go through the intermediary of the gray-beasts, and this prospect did not delight me. I was lost in my thoughts when someone knocked on the door.
It was Lili Nebraska. I immediately knew her despite the darkness because of the violin she carried under her arm. She had a brown paper bag in her right hand.
“Lili!” I rejoiced. “The tigers didn’t claw you when you climbed the staircase?”
“No,” Lili said. “I know how to speak to them, and they know me. But they are increasingly tigery, increasingly gigantic, and they smell increasingly of pee.”
“Put your things down, get settled,” I said.
She sat in my armchair, near the telephone. There was the light of the moon to illuminate us. You could see Lili’s magnificent black patterns, her magnificent slightly sad black eyes.
“We had an all-out mushroom attack in the mini-mart,” said Lili Nebraska. “Polar girolles, very yellow. They stormed the fruits and vegetables aisle. They advanced so quickly, it was impossible to breathe. I was lucky to escape.”
“Listen, Lili,” I said, “all my neighbors have left. You could move the police onto the third floor. It’s clean, the doors close, there are cupboards with cookies. And we will be closer.”
“I want to,” said Lili.
We went to the windows to gaze out at the city under the moon. Behind us, the mushrooms sighed and exhaled gasses. The temperature decreased, and we cuddled to keep ourselves from trembling. When we were really too cold, Lili Nebraska went to look for her violin and played a sinfonietta in three movements, one of which was very slow, so melodious and moving that it gave one goosebumps. With the whistling of the mushrooms behind us and the moon lighting up the burned-down city, it made for an unforgettable image. Lili let me kiss her during the slow movement. We had been close before the police, but now that we are the only ones to worry about the bizarre things which occur in the universe, our friendship continues to grow.
After the music, we spoke a little about the kwak race, the case of Alfons Tchop, and the documentation that the police have on all topics and on everyone.
“I brought it with me,” said Lili. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to return to the mini-mart, so I relocated the archives.”
She opened her paper bag. It contained the police directory, a cheese sandwich, and musical scores. The police directory had thinned since people began abandoning the city. The list of identified inhabitants fit on fifteen or twenty pages.
We started by ensuring that we were listed, then we checked the names of our friends and acquaintances. The lunar luminosity made deciphering telephone numbers and addresses difficult. When the slightest cloud came in front of the moon, we could no longer make them out. We squinted our eyes above the unreadable lines, then Lili said she preferred to wait for daylight. She curled up in a ball in the armchair to sleep. I continued to leaf through the directory. I had the conviction that only luck would solve the investigation of the kwak race.
“You’re keeping me from sleeping, with your rustling papers,” Lili Nebraska said.
“I’m trying to move the investigation forward,” I apologized.
“What are you looking for, Bobby?”
“I no longer remember.”
“And if you looked for Lili Tchikagoo’s number?” suggested Lili. “She painted an eight on your face, therefore she witnessed the beginning of the race.”
“Lili Tchikagoo,” I said dreamily. “Her golden-orange feathers. . . . Her yellow-gold feathers. . . . Her golden-gray plumules. . . .”
“Look for her number,” insisted Lili Nebraska.
I found her number and reproduced it digit by digit on the dial of the telephone.
“Hello? Am I disturbing you?”
“Is that you, Mickey?” immediately responded Lili Tchikagoo.
“No,” I corrected after a surly silence. “Bobby Potemkine calling.”
“Bobby!” exclaimed Lili Tchikagoo. “Well, I never!”
“Were you sleeping?” I asked.
“You’re kidding, Bobby!” said Lili Tchikagoo. “The mushrooms whistle in my bedroom like kettles. Behind the door, the tigers meow and grumble. Who can sleep in these conditions?”
“I have a similar problem,” I said.
“Mushrooms?”
“Mushrooms, yes. And cats and tigers. And sleep, too.”
“Do you need me to sing you a lullaby, Bobby?”
“No,” I started to explain. “I’m calling about the kwak race.”
“The what race?” asked Lili Tchikagoo.
“Kwak,” I repeated.
“Never heard of it,” said Lili Tchikagoo.
“You were the volunteer organizer. You handed out the numbered bibs.”
“It’s possible,” she considered, “but I no longer remember. I have big memory holes, lately.”
“You numbered me with a paintbrush. Do you remember?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Last year, it wasn’t the kwak who won the race.”
“Oh?”
“It was someone called Alfons Tchop.”
“That doesn’t ring a bell,” said Lili Tchikagoo.
We babbled away as if we had nothing better to do. The cold was intense. The rays of the moon sparkled on the film of ice adorning the heads of the mushrooms. Lili Nebraska dozed against me in the armchair. When Lili Tchikagoo stopped chatting, I heard the snarls of the tiger-striped cats prowling in front of the door. As soon as I put down the phone, I heard them wandering in the hallway, in the empty stairwells, from the first floor to the seventh, tirelessly.
After hanging up, I continued to consult the directory. Suddenly, I came across the name of Nadiya Wong, the very-white seagull. She had attended the kwak race, no question about that. I clearly remembered the encouraging words she had shouted to number eight, which is to say to myself. Perhaps she had noticed a bizarre detail about the race? Perhaps she could remember something? Perhaps, from her elevated position, she had spotted Alfons Tchop?
I needed to question Nadiya Wong.
She now lived in a ruined theater. No performance had ever taken place there, though disguised servants and ingenues prowled the grounds hoping someone would invent acting and give them a role. The theater had been struck by a meteorite, and the waves from high tide had finished it off. It was near the water, to the right after the avenue’s end, not far. Probably during the day Nadiya Wong would fly off out of reach and soar under the clouds. If I wanted to contact her, I had to catch her in the middle of the night.
“I’m going,” I awakened Lili Nebraska.
“Where to?” yawned Lili.
“I have to have a word with a person of interest. Nadiya Wong. She was flying above the competitors. In any case, above number eight.”
“It’s still the dead of night,” Lili warned me. “The tigers are going to tear you to shreds.”
“I’ll go down the facade,” I said.
I don’t know about you, but when it comes to being slashed or sprayed with pee by enormous cats, I prefer to leave by the window.
I slowly descended from the seventh floor. The wind was blowing, dark and cutting. I felt the nocturnal jellyfish grazing my cheeks, back, and legs. The moon had gone into hiding. The city was screaming. It made you tremble.
Between the fifth and the second floor, I became lost.
I know it’s hard to believe, but suddenly I could no longer find the way downward. I had let myself be guided by instinct and gravity, sometimes even letting go with both hands to see in which direction my body would go. I kept coming back to the fourth floor. Behind the windows, I could make out shadowy forms. The furniture was in disorder, the giant mushrooms emitting whistles and sighs. The polar girolles came and went from one room to another, swaying. Gasses hissed in abandoned apartments. The jellyfish frolicked in slow motion, and when they touched me, I shivered.
I wandered over the building’s facade, looking for the ground floor. I was ashamed of getting lost and I didn’t dare climb back up to the seventh, the window behind which Lili Nebraska snoozed. I didn’t want to bother the police for anything so frivolous.
Before dawn, the sky cleared up. I reoriented myself and could finally move in the right direction, which is to say down. I put my foot on the sidewalk. There were snowdrifts and frozen waves throughout the street. The sky darkened again. You almost couldn’t see again, though you realized daybreak would soon arrive.
I walked to the ruins of the theater.
It had been built near the estuary, with floodable basements in case someone invented nautical tragedies, but the deserted building had collapsed. During high tide, glacial waters rushed over what was left of the stage and performed without spectators. Loud slappings and solemn, bellowing backwashes. There was no more decor, only sections of wall and hollows.
Nadiya Wong nested in the wings. To enter, you had to step over stalagmites of ice. When it wasn’t solidified, the water must have beat against the entrance. But in this last moment of night, it hadn’t melted.
“Nadiya are you there?” I threw out.
Behind the stalagmites, there were mushrooms which kept to the gloom, compact and silent, morels and mousserons of the tundra. They had whistled all night, and now they had nothing more to expel from their spongy flesh. Behind the morels was Nadiya Wong. She was very white and very beautiful. Smoothing her feathers, she watched me come. Around her floated a smell of frost and gray clouds, a little lemony, with an agreeable touch of iodine, which encouraged one to get a little closer to her. I got closer.
“I’m on a mission,” I said. “I’m doing an investigation. Are you preparing to leave?”
On the kitchen table, Nadiya Wong had placed a piece of cardboard. On it, you could read:
LEFT FOR THE GRAY-BEASTS
IF NECESSARY,
USELESS TO BANG ON A DRUM,
LEFT TO NOT RETURN.
“Are you moving to the moon?” I asked.
Nadia Wong didn’t feel like talking. She continued to smooth her feathers. The first gleams of dawn tried to color her body light gray, bluish gray, but fell short. Nadiya Wong stayed impeccably white and very beautiful in the shifting penumbra. Her agreeable smell spread to me.
“You’re very beautiful,” I said, smiling. “Dawn suits you.”
“What do you want, Bobby?” Nadiya Wong asked.
“I’m looking into the last kwak race. I know you witnessed it from up in the sky. Do you remember who won?”
“It wasn’t you?”
“No. And I regret that.”
“You were wearing number eight,” remembered Nadiya Wong. “Wasn’t it eight who won?”
“No,” I said. “From what people say, it was Alfons Tchop.”
“Are you sure?” she said uncertainly.
Since dawn was advancing, the crust of ice immobilizing several nearby waves cracked, and a great slapping was heard in the basements just below the stage.
“Oh, I’m not sure of anything,” I said. “Not long ago, I didn’t know if I was a green gull or not. So, I hesitate to assert anything at all. It seems to me it wasn’t the kwak that won, but someone named Alfons Tchop. I’m looking for witnesses who can enlighten me. I remember you were flying over the estuary. The water was an unforgettable green. You were alone beneath the clouds. You shouted. You were very white and very beautiful.”
Nadiya Wong blew softly on her shoulder feathers, on her chest feathers, then she came closer and hugged me.
“You’re sweet, Bobby Potemkine,” she said.
I was starting to feel embarrassed and turn red, but she continued: “Before my departure, I had planned to listen to the waves roar in the theater. You can sit down near the stage, where the acoustics are excellent. I expected to be alone, but I’m happy you are next to me.”
She led me to a crevice between collapsed walls, and we sat down. Mist surrounded us, but the light of day already illuminated the decor. The stage was chaotic, cluttered by blocks of ice and concrete slabs pointing in all directions. Beneath this entanglement, the sea started to rise. The waves murmured, then they roared. They seemed to sing in something like a language. From time to time, they pounded full force against the recesses of the basement and babbled oily, foaming phrases or fell silent.
We listened to this concert, Nadiya Wong and I. We were more than mere spectators. It was as if we played a nonspeaking role in a playlet for two characters and an ocean. We were both moved. We had sea spray on our cheeks. I softly wiped away the frost around her eyes and mine. Then Nadiya Wong told me to get going.
“I was happy you were next to me,” she said, “but now I prefer to be completely alone.”
“As you wish,” I said. “Perhaps we will see each other again at the gray-beasts or on the moon.”
“Perhaps,” she said.
I waved my hand at her and left the ruins of the theater. She was tiny at the center of the stones, a white spot with cheeks shining with frost. Then she became invisible.
The estuary was two steps away. The foam wet my feet. I remembered the day of the kwak race, the very small number of contestants, the lack of numbered bibs, the water an unforgettable green. The only way to reconstruct the sequence of the race was to dive into the waves and make like the kwak or one of the racers. It was now or never.
I turned one last time toward Nadiya Wong. She had hauled herself on top of a wall. I saw her anew, white and microscopic in the image of the theater, very beautiful.
“Come on, number eight!” she encouraged me. “You still have a shot!”
I dove into the agitated waters. Foam and gray ruled. Undulations swelled then flared out heavily. Beneath the surface floated ice chunks you had to push aside. The wind wasn’t very strong, but it skimmed the crest of the waves, and you felt its stinging breath when you brought your face out of the water. The sky promised a little snow. It wasn’t the season for the kwak race. On the docks, there weren’t any red flags, nor were there bouquets atop streetlights, no volunteers applauding the competitors or exchanging comments on the route of the kwak. Nadiya Wong wasn’t flying above the estuary. There wasn’t a bird under the clouds.
I swam imprecisely. I didn’t try to remember where I was in my investigation. My memory wavered, and, even if I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have been able to remember much.
The snow began to fall. That often happens in the middle of the morning at this time of year. It was only a light shower, but it was brutal. I could hardly see the shore. On the other side of the estuary, the Jumble had disappeared behind a curtain of snowflakes. I paddled here and there, waiting to find inspiration or encounter a lead. My movements resembled those that I had made during part of the night, when I couldn’t orient myself toward the ground floor, but here directions were even blurrier on account of the snow and ice I had to continuously bypass.
I don’t know how you would have swum in the midst of all this sea ice. After a moment I got discouraged. It was everywhere, far too much for my taste. I noticed a staircase on the waterfront, swerved toward the steps, and, eventually, emerged on the dock.
I found myself in front of the workshop where Mimi Yourakane once manufactured anthills with human faces before anthills with human faces knew how to manufacture themselves.
On the docks it had stopped snowing. The wind had blown away the crystals, and the light was a pretty gray. The workshop doors were wide open. Cold after my extended swim, I quickened my steps. At the entrance to the workshop was an old lady wearing a rather dirty felt hat and enveloped in an olive-green poncho edged with apple-green fringe. She watched me come. She had the appearance of a quite rumpled old grandmother, with eyes that were nearly colorless but piercing, ironic. I immediately understood that this was Mimi Yourakane.
“Bobby number eight!” she exclaimed when I was close. “You certainly took your time finishing the race!”
She was making fun of me. Gently, but she was making fun.
“Potemkine,” I corrected. “Bobby Potemkine.”
“You’ve been in the water since last year’s three red moons?” asked Mimi Yourakane without apologizing.
“No. Only since this morning. It’s for my investigation.”
“What investigation?” said the old lady, astonished.
“Regarding Alfons Tchop,” I explained.
Since my teeth were chattering, she handed me a woolen square, and I wrapped myself up. The blanket was dark red. At my feet, drops of water fell and were transformed into beads of ice. The wind blew through the factory, with moans resembling a nanoctiluphe accompaniment.
“There are drafts,” said Mimi Yourakane. “I open the doors so that the breeze rushes in. The factory has been abandoned for many blue balls but still smells just as strong.”
I sniffed the air whistling around us. The intense smell of ant and of human face must have soaked into the heart of the concrete. It was potent but not unpleasant. Under my nose, the blanket smelled of strands of wool, dust, and Mimi Yourakane’s hands. It formed a bizarre mixture.
She scrutinized me with her transparent old lady eyes. As I had sniffed repeatedly, I believe she was awaiting my opinion.
“In my building, it’s tiger pee that’s predominant,” I said.
“Tiger pee is persistent as an odor,” lamented Mimi Yourakane.
I looked at the immense empty factory where she lived. There weren’t any machines. I don’t know how one ever manufactured anthills with human faces. It’s a problem I’ve never studied. There were two of them in the workshop: she, Mimi Yourakane, and a strange jazz harpist named Manuela Draeger. How they managed it, I have no idea. Perhaps one of the two made the faces while the other fashioned anthills. Or vice versa, I don’t know.
“Are they difficult to make, anthills with human faces?” I asked.
“Not really, no. It’s enough to want to make them,” said Mimi Yourakane.
We stayed silent for three minutes. I warmed myself under the red wool. I inhaled and tried to remember what questions I needed to pose to Mimi Yourakane. I couldn’t remember.
Fortunately, Mimi Yourakane broke the silence. “Say, Bobby, weren’t you speaking about an investigation into Alfons Tchop?”
“Ah yes, the investigation! It slipped my mind.”
“It figures,” said Mimi Yourakane, “he’s always being accused of something, that one.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Alfons Tchop.”
“We want to know if he won the kwak race last year or not.”
“Who?” asked the old lady.
“Who what?” I said.
“Who wants to know that?”
“The police,” I shivered. “The office of bizarre cases.”
“The police? They no longer exist,” said the old lady.
“It’s true,” I confirmed. “The police have been abolished, but the office of bizarre cases is maintained.”
“And I don’t regret it,” said the old lady.
Since I was shivering under the blanket, Mimi Yourakane left to make tea. In the workshop, the mushrooms hadn’t invaded everything. There was an open kitchen and an area with cabinets and a mattress. The fire Mimi Yourakane used to heat the water was made of mushrooms, principally plush oyster mushrooms, arctic boletes, and craterellus. The old woman must have harvested them while cleaning the kitchen before or after having bathed. The boletes blackened flamelessly under the kettle. They gave off a scent of caramelizing undergrowth, which was superimposed over that of the anthills with human faces and that of the wool tickling my nostrils. It induced an impossible feeling of “déjà smelled,” of “déjà sniffed,” even though I knew I had never breathed in something like it. It was as if the memory of another world had awoken in me, a distant call I couldn’t truly hear or understand.
“You look thoughtful, Bobby,” Mimi Yourakane remarked.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” I said. “Something incomprehensible is whirling around in my head. I’m remembering smells from a vanished world.”
“Smells of human faces?” asked Mimi Yourakane.
“Smells, period,” I wavered.
“Don’t worry, number eight,” said Mimi Yourakane, holding out the cup of tea. “Smells are important, but we’re not in a story of smells. I know what’s worrying you. Strange memories, memory holes, people leaving forever, the changing atmosphere. We are all affected in the same way. We all feel it.”
“Where does it come from?” I asked.
“In my opinion, it’s because our world is disappearing.”
“Is it going to be wiped off the map?”
“Yes and no. The Jumble is going to spread everywhere and replace it. Soon, we will all live either in the Jumble or on the moon.”
I didn’t know how to react to what she was telling me, so I gave a slightly sad smile.
“Soon, we will be elsewhere,” continued Mimi Yourakane.
“And do you regret it?” I asked.
“No,” said Mimi Yourakane. “You never should regret being elsewhere.”
The tea was good. After having drunk it, I put down the cup. The air currents whistled in the workshop, but I was no longer cold. From time to time, Mimi Yourakane fixed her nearly transparent old grandmother’s gaze upon me. She no longer said anything. In her eyes, there was a teasing gleam, with rather severe flashes. When someone has dedicated their existence to fabricating anthills with human faces, you can’t expect a lot of indulgence. I felt a scathing commitment in her to silently make fun of me, but I couldn’t tell if her target was the office of bizarre cases or myself.
In any case, it wasn’t wildly delightful, as a sensation, to be fusilladed by jeering old lady eyes.
I decided it would be better to speak.
“I’m wondering how I’ll close my investigation into Alfons Tchop,” I said.
Mimi Yourakane squinted hard and suddenly laughed. Under her poncho, her hoary ancestor’s body was agitated by large noisy tremors, and her slouch hat slid backward to reveal her rather bald head, with a few fine whitish strands whipped up by the air. I stayed facing her, dancing from one foot to the other. I must have looked like an idiot. I think you would have looked the same, rocking yourself in front of someone without grasping what amuses them.
After a moment, her laughter died, and she put her hand on her skull and fixed the poncho, her hair, the hat. Her eyes still flashed with joy.
“How do you expect to close an investigation into an egg, number eight? By breaking it?”
“What egg?” I replied.
I didn’t understand, and, after all the mirth, I felt a little offended.
“You were misinformed, Bobby number eight,” explained Mimi Yourakane. “The race proceeded as usual. The kwak won, as usual. It came here to lay its eggs. One was named Alfons Tchop. There’s not much else to say.”
I opened my eyes wide. My mouth was open. For an instant, it seemed to me I would never succeed in closing it again.
“He is still not hatched,” clarified Mimi Yourakane.
“Alfons Tchop is an egg?” I stammered.
“Yes,” said Mimi Yourakane.
“A kwak egg?”
I tried to digest the information and fought not to remain open-mouthed and with my lower lip hanging. And, therefore, I had to reacquaint my lips with pronouncing words.
“I don’t know why,” said Mimi Yourakane, “they indiscriminately accuse poor Tchop.”
Mimi Yourakane took up the vehement defense of Alfons Tchop. She repeated the unfair accusations one after the other. There were two of them. First, the police suspected Tchop of having won the kwak race, even though the police no longer existed and the suspect hadn’t even been laid yet. Second, the gray-beasts blamed Tchop for being involved with the moon without their authorization.
“The gray-beasts want to be the only ones arranging travel to the moon,” she said. “They are cantankerous and choleric. The slightest thing, and you’re walking on their flower beds.”
“What’s the link between Alfons Tchop and the moon?” I asked. “How can he be competition for them?”
“Once he hatches, he will be a moon professor,” explained Mimi Yourakane.
That reminded me of something, something I had forgotten and that yet was standing there, nearby, as if on the verge of reemerging. I searched my memory, knowing it was a memory that didn’t belong to another world. And, abruptly, I thought of my friend Big Katz. But of course! It was him, Big Katz, who needed a moon professor.
“I have a friend who will wait impatiently for this hatching,” I rejoiced. “A wooly crab. He’s called Big Katz.”
“No surprises there,” said Mimi Yourakane. “Wooly crabs are very gifted in moon.”
“I don’t know if this one is gifted,” I said. “But he has a serious professor problem.”
“And if we went to see him?” proposed Mimi Yourakane.
“Big Katz?”
“No. His professor. Alfons Tchop.”
She led me to the end of the workshop. Behind a bush of pinkish long-stemmed clavaria was an egg. For an egg, it had a corpulence that was excessive, but it was not weird for a moon professor. The shell was half red and half milky. It was thin but opaque. Mimi Yourakane looked at me, waiting for my reaction. She suddenly looked proud, as if it were she who had laid this professor.
“He doesn’t move,” I pointed out.
Mimi Yourakane shrugged. Perhaps she found my comment inappropriate. She approached Alfons Tchop and shouted: “Tchop, can you hear me? I’ve brought you a student!”
I protested. I reminded Mimi Yourakane I hadn’t come for a moon lesson but to close the investigation into the kwak race.
“Since you’re here, take a lesson,” she said. “It never hurts to learn something. And then, you’ll know enough to help your friend, later, when he does his drills.”
“Perhaps I could wait until he hatches,” I wavered.
“Who? Your friend?”
“No,” I said. “His professor.”
“No need to wait that long for a moon lesson,” said Mimi Yourakane.
She seemed to know what she was talking about.
She made me sit down one meter from the egg, in a place where the clavaria didn’t present any obstruction.
“Tchop, are you listening?” she asked the egg.
Tchop didn’t react.
“Your student is ready. “He’s called number eight!”
I remained facing Alfons Tchop. He was motionless. Since nobody gave me special instructions, I tried to obey my professor and do as he did. I imitated his absence of movement. It was difficult. I found it hard not to become distracted. The wind whistled around me, laden with the smell of ants and human faces. The mushrooms quivered constantly. I had to relax and think of nothing, I was constantly moving. Not a lot—a millimeter this way, by a tremor of the eyelashes that way—but I was moving.
After having watched me, pouting, Mimi Yourakane shook her head and sat down.
“Maybe in your case, number eight, you should wait until he hatches after all,” she murmured before leaving.
Had she meant to say that I was not good in moon? That I would have needed a professor out of the egg? Or that I should stay in front of Alfons Tchop until he cracked his shell?
“How long will the lesson last?” I asked.
She didn’t respond.
I started to concentrate again on my immobility.
The wind whistled in the empty building.
The light was grayish.
The clavaria quivered on their long pinkish stems.
The day slowly passed.
From time to time, Mimi Yourakane went to uproot one or two mushrooms that annoyed her but otherwise dozed in her armchair, in the air from the entryway and in the smells of anthills with human faces.
I stayed unmoving until evening. But since neither Mimi Yourakane nor Alfons Tchop seemed interested in speaking to me, I got up without saying a word, left the workshop, and went home.
The original work, La course au Kwak, by Manuela Draeger, was translated with permission. © 2004, L’école des loisirs.