Free Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi Page A

inevitable? Is she happy that she’s been finished off? Does she think of me in her final moments? Does she ask me, why aren’t you there?
    On a table, somewhere, under a harsh light, her body waits to be decoded. To reveal what? Signs of death? There’s no need to open her up to figure that out. Remnants, traces, incriminating liquids? And what about me? Will they find traces of me on her, traces of my hands, my lips, my pleasure? What will the autopsy say about her? Be your silence, Savita. They don’t deserve anything more.
    Outside, electricity crackles. More than Savita’s death, the police presence strips bare the cables of tension crisscrossing the city. I feel like, now that she’s left, I’m the only one facing the horde. Everybody’s looking right at me. As if I’d broken the laws. I had disturbed the pattern, changed the space, broken open the locked doors. I sow discord. I give off a smell of greasy soot. I’m the fallen angel of the neighborhood, its ripped-out soul.
    I’m so convinced of it that I start to doze off in exhaustion.
    I grab the edge of a sheet and pull it over my face like a shroud. My body is so flat it’s barely an eddy in the small ocean of the bed. My eyes are open beneath the shroud. I try to see the world through this soft grille, this mesh. What would I do if I had to hide from everybody? How would I live as a ghost? Or does invisibility free us from our fears?
    I slip into a half-sleep under my shroud, looking at a white world. Soon, everything slackens. Even my breath, the rhythm of a broken pendulum, subsides.

CLÉLIO
    There was no getting away from it. I was the first one to be questioned. The first suspect. Nobody said anything, of course. But there are plenty of ways to say something without saying anything. The old guys are just waiting for that. These kids are more or less okay, they say, but, sure, there’s a couple of bad apples in there. One of them’s been in prison, he’s always looking for trouble. You know, if their hearts are black, there’s nothing you can do. Ki pu fer, ena, zott finn ne kum sa . That’s just how they were born, rotten to the core.
    Fuck it, I’m not that shitty! Those men are the shitheads. Nobody says my name, but I feel like I’m hearing it everywhere, in the air, in the church bells tolling Sunday Mass, in the car tires screeching. Even my first name doesn’t come out right when anyone says it. But the policemen aren’t all idiots. They’re doing their job. If one of us has been in prison, that simplifies things. What were you doing last night? Last night? Nothing. Nothing? Nothing at all. You didn’t have anything to do? No, there are times when I don’t do anything. Where were you? On my apartment roof. Who saw you? Well, the birds flying over my head, I don’t know if they were finches or cape canaries or cardinals, and then there are bats flying around as soon as it’s dark out. Stop messing with us!
    If they’re looking for proof, they’ll find it in their little folders. Your honor, this boy is a repeat offender. Society has done all it can to rehabilitate him, but there are people who just can’t be redeemed, Your honor, and the judge will look at me solemnlyand he will ask, in English, Are you beyond redemption? as if he were asking that question of himself, but I’ll tell him, Oui, je suis au-delà de la rédemption , because I don’t want to be redeemed or rehabilitated, and I haven’t committed the crimes you’re imputing to me, as they say in their legal jargon, I haven’t done anything at all, other people committed the worst crimes, but the police won’t dare to arrest these guys, or if they have to, it’ll be with velvet gloves and they’ll say excuse me, Monsieur, before locking them up and they won’t lay hands on those guys, they’ll smell as crisp and fresh as the millions of