As night fell, Charles became a vampire. He stared at the full moon. His figure was outlined like a black shrub against the high walls, and the shadows formed by his limbs and his trunk were moving over the rocky path that snaked its way toward hell. He has given up on the idea of kissing Esther, of holding her in his arms; he has given up on the idea of mingling his warm marrow with the shivering plant offering itself up to his mouth. Once again he tightly clenched his jaws on the resentment, on the bitterness. He is now ready to spit it back out, to throw it up. He chooses to wander, alone, in the darkness of the step path from which he can only glimpse the distant lights of the frantic race toward the animated bedroom still containing couples, the hope which he, this deeply wounded man, will never again experience in the slightest, even as an illusion. He has killed her.

Esther would have taken everything from him; she was ravenous.

He is at the breaking point. He is freeing himself from the clutches of the past. He aches, he suffers, but since the woman does not allow him to be human, then let him be inhuman! Let cruelty be his solace! May he no longer be the animal that she fastened to herself with their spittle, with their maceration, sticky, gluey, sickening like milk and yet so sweet, and he so enamored of the saltiness of her breasts, the warmth inside her skin. Oh! if only she would disintegrate in him, today and forever! If only there was nothing left in him of the one he loves, nothing left of this fusion and its heaven. Henceforth he would know nothing but the devil, evil, hate—all that prolongs indefinitely the torture of no longer being together, being bound, by lips and breath, one to the other, by the flesh.

Spirit of holiness, Spirit of light, Spirit of fire! Come kiss me, Spirit of joy! Turning away from here, will he understand the infinite mystery of the father’s mercy, if the holy word enters his perverted and suffering heart, if he, the murderer, recognizes God, if the sacred word transfigures fasting, violence, and death? Ever since the murder, Our Lady of Silence has been watching over him, over his retreat. He can get ready, he has help, he is entering the kingdom, he is entering a state of meditation. He is touched by the Holy Spirit, by a passage from the homily that he in interpreting, adopting into his prayer, by this psalm on human misery, these sentences with which the Lord wants to shape his heart, although Charles resists the temptation with all his might. His fear is strong. He is changing, he is wary of this woman, of the other love. He is as pure as a priest; and out of obedience he goes toward the Hebraic poetry of twenty-five hundred, three thousand years ago, toward these psalms which triumph over the flesh, toward this reading which overwhelms him. There is nothing like the beauty of eternity, the deliverance which rids us of our sinful ways, which paralyzes the Holy Spirit; there is nothing like this thirst for the word of God, which, alone, can overcome the bitterness of love. Then the man rises and the word becomes light. “Alleluia,” the man thinks. His word becomes his wisdom. Alleluia, his word becomes tenderness. Alleluia, his word becomes life. Alleluia. The word of the Lord is sharp, say the Scriptures. I saw that it was burning hot and sharp, the man whispers, and that it was cleansing me and I saw love flow out, depart from all my limbs and being, and I triumphed over this beloved, hated woman; I ripped her open like a dog that gets run over on the road at night. I am finished.

I could no longer love her, no longer look at her, no longer sit next to her, no longer eat, no longer hold her close. I could no longer read, no longer write, no longer even drink a glass of water; I could taste my saliva, my tongue; I was smothering; I could remember her kisses; I was drained; I would get dizzy spells; I would hide alone deep under the covers of my bed and tell the image of this beloved and hated woman, hated because too beloved, “All I have left is your image and you are taking it away from me.” And words came out of my mouth: “For me, to live would be to die.” I realized that I no longer loved her, that I hated her. It was no longer her. It was no longer her body that oppressed me. Holy Jesus entered. You do not love Jesus for himself but for the comfort that he brings you. You no longer love this woman. You thought you loved her for herself but that was not true. “One must love the God of gifts more than the gift of God,” said Saint Francis of Sales. One must love the God who gives more than what God gives. One must love God more than woman; the Lord taught me that from now on I will love him beyond this woman, beyond the unholy love of a man for a woman. Now it is you I love—praise be yours, Lord! Lord Eternal, your word is worthy, your word echoes in fraternal reunion. God of love, take me away from the other, from my flesh, from my penis, from my murder. Heal me of the beloved and hated woman—hated because so cherished—heal me of her. I implore you, the man convulsively whispers, eyes sparkling, teeth locked tight on the pain that is burning within him.

Charles was prowling through the ruins, through the rubble of his love for Esther. Those nights were very black, a little bewitched. Rage was driving him to climb the steep slope toward the fallen rocks from which he would contemplate the view of a disenchanted world, devastated by the blackness. An abyss of walls! A swarming of sadism! A haunt of impassible stones and bars. His own heart frightened him. He was imprisoned by relentless spite. Many lives, many reincarnations would not be enough to take revenge upon the one who had given him everything and taken everything back in the ferocious hand-to-hand combat during which Charles’s moon had collapsed.

There was a full moon. The town’s lights floated in an eerie fog resembling some alien galaxy. In spirit, Charles was traveling toward the celestial, ethereal ramparts, toward the lights emitted by the skyscrapers, the stars, the airplanes, and the satellites; in the black sky, they whirled around the hunted man, walled him in. He was set apart from the lives of others. He felt encircled inside himself, at the center of the earth, watched over by this faceless silence. High up on Europe’s mountain, amid the ruins of the fortified castle and its chapel, he would jump at each sound he heard. He would listen to the barn owls, in the undergrowth, among ghosts.

In this secluded corner of the Alps, he was mediating on the mockery of love. For weeks he had been visiting sickbeds, tombs, pebbles, all that self-disintegration which aims for eternity, which soars only to come crashing back down. What is left of an ideal then? Cemeteries, archaeological sites, museums? Nothing living.

At the thought of Esther, he would become uneasy, he was unable to continue walking, he no longer had the strength to live without her. He missed her too much. He misses her sticky love, the rich, bluish foam of the sperm frothing inside the softness of the woman lying wide open and moist. “Bestiality,” he concluded to himself. “Nothing but bestiality.”

He walked through the vineyards, through apricot orchards. The coolness of springs oozed out of the rock overlooking the valley. At night, Charles would stop at motels. He would pay for rooms he never even went into, unable to sleep between sheets, in beds which would have reminded him of pleasure since he was running away from his lost love. He did not think that he would ever feel alive again, and the he would ever again meet someone he would desire as madly as this divinity. He had a harsh radiance. He was powerful, virile, muscular in his will to tear himself away from any trace of sensual pleasure. He was finally separated from her. He was man and no longer woman.

Charles de Roquemont continued to climb toward the peaks, trampling the crumbling ground where archaeologists were still excavating in search of perforated bones, parts of knolls, large gold crowns, pieces of pilings and shells from the days when this valley and those mountains belonged to the sea and the archaic kelp and green water civilizations. Charles was treading on this female potter, on the powder of the ages, on the layers of broken glass, of ceramic, the dust from the crushed pillars and tools, on the high mountain trail where the wanderer, still in love, still in a state of shock, was guided toward the late twenty-first-century sky, toward the beginning of the second millennium, hounded by the currents, by dangers of absolute void.

At the foot of the mountains, the little village of Sion was bubbling and sparkling. The decomposing apricot-tree leaves released a carbonic gas into the late autumn, ruby red like a fruity wine. Charles took Rue du Tunnel, then Rue du Chanoine-Berchtold, then Rue des Fournaises to get to Tourbillons castle. He had with him a flask filled with melted snow. He also had his Bible and Schwyzerdütsch dictionary he used to learn the medieval dialect, descended from Latin and German, which, long ago, was the only language used in the area. Having reached the top of the rock, Charles stopped to regain his breath. Then, addressing the clouds like a community of ghosts, elves, or fairies, he composed a poem that he bellowed in his guttural voice. He was worn out, exhausted with anguish. The towers, the fortresses, the stairs surrounded him. As night fell, he came back by Rue des Fournaises, by La Promenade des Pêchuers, by Le Chemin du Calvaire, walked along the walls of Saint Francis House, followed the south wharf, pensively went down Rue du Vieux Collège again before returning, exhausted, to his hotel and ordering a beer.

He was losing weight, he looked emaciated. He decided, after a week of obsessions, to return to Montreux. He and Esther had spent a summer there, blue with sunshine. Once again he could see the mountains reflected in the high French windows that overlooked Lake Geneva. Esther, looking ghostly, facing the setting sun, had drunk hot chocolate, in the dark pink fading of the day.

In Montreux, Charles walked toward the Excelsior. He recognized the crystal chandeliers, the muted blues of the carpeting, the chairs, the sofas, the drapes. He went back to Vevey, to the Trois Couronnes Hotel. In the nineteenth century, Gogol and Tchaikovsky had stayed there. Esther and Charles had had tea there. He remembered those teas, those chocolates, those milks, those herbal teas, all those hot liquids which she drank, out of idleness, close to him as he silently adored her, as he ardently admired her eyes, her small, feminine hands. An hour later, she would get up, impatient. She would go to another tea shop. Charles, obediently, would follow Esther to avoid being separated, even for a moment, from his idol. She had turned him into a lady-in-waiting. But at night, oh at night, in their room, he would rediscover violence, he would leave this woman nothing of herself. There was nothing left in the softness of this pungent body that could resist him. “Where is the day, where is the night, where is my boy, no; my man, where is my man?” a song in the bar of the Trois Couronnes Hotel was asking. The day was waning, slowly, and out of this slowness modulating in the twilight, Charles’s memory was reborn. Everything that preceded the murder.