Collection 4: "The Night Face Up" by Julio Cortazar

His single solace was to hear someone else confirm that the lights indeed had been in his favor.

Completely lucid, but realizing that he was suffering the effects of a terrible shock, he gave his information to the officer riding in the ambulance with him.

Far off, probably on the other side of the big lake, they’d be lighting the bivouac fires; that part of the sky had a reddish glare.

Not a sound could be heard, but the fear was still following, as was the smell, that cloying incense of the war of the blossom.

He would have liked to have broken into a run, but the gurgling fens lapped on either side of him.

His arm, in a plaster cast, hung suspended from an apparatus with weights and pulleys.

He saw a little white pushcart come up beside the bed, a blond nurse rubbed
the front of his thigh with alcohol and stuck him with a fat needle connected to a tube which ran up to a bottle filled with a milky, opalescent liquid.

Night fell, and the fever went along dragging him down softly to a state in which things seemed embossed as through opera glasses, they were real and soft and, at the same time, vaguely distasteful; like sitting in a boring movie
and thinking that, well, still, it’d be worse out in the street, and staying.

Barely moving his lips, he mumbled the supplication of the corn which brings about the beneficent moons, and the prayer to Her Very Highness, to the distributor of all Motecan possessions.

Barely moving his lips, he mumbled the supplication of the corn which brings about the beneficent moons, and the prayer to Her Very Highness, to the distributor of all Motecan possessions.

But the number didn’t count, only the consecrated period.

Laid next to the night from which he came back, the tepid shadow of the ward seemed delicious to him.

With pain in the broken arm, blood from the split eyebrow, contusion on the knee; with all that, a relief in returning to daylight, to the day, and to feel sustained and attended.

Barely girdled by the ceremonial loincloths, the priests’ acolytes moved in his direction, looking at him with contempt.

Barely girdled by the ceremonial loincloths, the priests’ acolytes moved in his direction, looking at him with contempt.

The water in the bottle on the night table was somewhat bubbly, a translucent shape against the dark azure shadow of the windows.

The water in the bottle on the night table was somewhat bubbly, a translucent shape against the dark azure shadow of the windows.

He panted, looking for some relief for his lungs, oblivion for those images still glued to his eyelids.

He made one last effort, he sketched a gesture toward the bottle of water with his good hand and did not manage to reach it, his fingers closed again on a black emptiness, and the passageway went on endlessly, rock after rock, with momentary ruddy flares...

...and face up he choked out a dull moan because the roof was about to end, it rose, was opening like a mouth of shadow, and the acolytes straightened up, and from on high a waning moon fell on a face whose eyes wanted not to see it, were closing and opening desperately, trying to pass to the other side, to find again the bare, protecting ceiling of the ward.