TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Jean Teulé slaked lime, the infant rocks in the undrinkable water. His limbs twirl about as if he were dancing. He tumbles, rolls amongst the polluted swirls, spinning around before flowing downstream. His begetter turns around. Everything is said for her. An unfortunate veil without a compass, without a guiding star, loses herself in an isolated alleyway where misery cries, finding herself next below the diocese’s flag hung in front of the bishop’s extravagant private abode. The back-and-forth of heavy bells strikes noon at the cathedral, the highest building in the West. The woman who’d just thrownherchild into thewater raises her head. Acloud passes over. The sun’s glare conceals itself so that shadows roll over the sculptures around the building’s façade—representations of saints and prophets, vices overcome by virtues, wise virgins, and other madwomen. The statues, integrated into the architecture and merged into the stone, seem to leap out and come alive from one foot to the other. The sculpted, pink-sandstone bodies appear to move around the colorful stained-glass windows of the immense rose window. Infanticide becomes child’s play on rue du Jeu-des-Enfants. Underneath a timeworn logo where Au Coupeau de Bois can still be deciphered in the Germanic language ( Holzspäne ). It’s decorated with an enlarged reproduction of a piece of pine tree. The beautiful, freckled woman opens the door of an engraver’s atelier, smelling pinewood and printer’s ink. To her right, a young artist around her age in front of a board that he’s hollowing out on an inclined desk sits down his chisel and turns toward her:

“Did you do it?”

“Yes.”

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