18
PARTISAN REVIEW
eyes toward the Fetish, I had ceased laughing. I knew that I was
now consecrated to him to serve him, adore him, no, I was not
laughing any more, fear and pain stifled me. And there, in that
white house, between those walls that the sun was assiduously burn–
ing on the outside, my face taut, my memory exhausted, yes, I tried
to pray to the Fetish, he was all there was and even his horrible face
was less horrible than the rest of the world. Then it was that my
ankles were tied with a cord that permitted just one step, they
danced again, but this time in front of the Fetish, the masters went
out one by one.
The door once closed behind them, the music again, and the
Sorcerer lighted a bark-fire around which he pranced, his long silhou–
ette broke on the angles of the white walls, fluttered on the flat
surfaces, filled the room with dancing shadows. He traced a rectangle
in a corner to which the women dragged me, I felt their dry and
gentle hands, they set before me a bowl of water and a little pile
of grain and pointed to the Fetish, I grasped that I was to keep
my eyes fixed on him. Then the Sorcerer called them one after
the other over to the fire, he beat some of them who moaned and
who then went and prostrated themselves before the Fetish my god,
while the Sorcerer kept on dancing and he made them all leave the
room until only one was left, quite young, squatting near the musi–
cians and not yet beaten. He held her by a shock of hair which he
kept twisting around
his
wrist, she dropped backward with eyes
popping until she finally fell on her back. Dropping her, the Sorcerer
screamed, the musicians turned to the wall, while behind the square–
eyed mask the scream rose to an impossible pitch, and the woman
rolled on the ground in a sort of fit and, at last on all fours, her
head hidden in her locked arms, she too screamed, but with a hollow,
muffled sound, and in this position, without ceasing to scream and
to look at the Fetish, the Sorcerer took her nimbly and nastily, with–
out the woman's face being visible, for it was covered with the heavy
folds of her garment. And, wild as a result of the solitude,
I
scream~d
too, yes, howled with fright toward the Fetish until a kick hurled
me against the wall, biting the salt as I am biting this rock today
with my tongueless mouth, while waiting for the man I must kill.
Now the sun has gone a little beyond the middle of the sky.
Through the breaks in the rock, I can see the hole it makes in the
