w the assistants seeme

d to emerge from their inanimate state. First the man shook his head and struck the ground with the palms of his hands. The woman shook her back. Then the Priest spat; not saliva, but his breath. Noisily he expelled his breath between his teeth. Under the influence of this pulmonary vibration, the man and woman simultaneously came to life and rose to their feet. But from the way they stood facing each other, especially from the way each stood in space as they might have stood

in the pockets of the void and the cracks of the infinite, it was clear that it was no longer a man and a woman who were there but two principles: the male, mouth open, gums smacking, red, flaming, bloody,

as if lacerated by the roots of the teeth, which were translucent at that moment like tongues of command; the female, toothless larva, molars filed down, like a she-rat in its cage, imprisoned in her own heat, shifting and turning in front of the hirsute male; and it was also clear that they were going to collide, smash frantically into one another just as material things, after facing each other for a time and making war, finally inter

mingle bef

• ore the indiscreet a
• nd guilty eye of God
• , whom their action

will gradua

• lly replace. "For Cigur
• i," they say, "was MAN, MA