Everything that I needed to know about life, by which I mean suffering, was taught to me in a single afternoon. It was summer, the heart of the rainy season the year I was nine. By the time those few hours had elapsed, I had abandoned childhood, I think, or else it had abandoned me. Unless, that is, I had simply abandoned the illusion that childhood cannot be monstrous and loathsome and sad in the way of adulthood, a stage I welcomed incidentally, when I came of age. And how quickly it showed me, as life always does, its most odious face, with detachment and ease, indifference almost. Still, I laugh. The tragedy has already been staged; every performance to come will operate, can only ever operate, in the comic mode. How sad. Still, I laugh. It suffices to take a closer look, though, because the two abandonments I mentioned above were one and the same. In any case, they had the same consequence: an unhealthy yet vital fascination with beaches.
After a few hours together, far from any houses, in a vacant lot where no one could hear us, we could imitate the sirens perfectly. Laay, Jaara, Aji, and me. We hadn’t needed to practice all that long. Soon enough we felt ready. Our desire to terrify supplanted talent and elevated us to collective perfection. We formed a chorus. Reproducing the wail of a police siren was the test to join the group, and I had succeeded on my first try. As soon as I arrived in the neighborhood, Laay had seen me for what I was: a stranger. A frightened creature begging to be accepted somewhere. I had practiced on my own for two nights in order to not be alone, and to learn the group’s secret, the secret they had promised they would reveal to me once I proved my ability to imitate the wail of a police siren. Then, when I presented the fruits of my efforts, they told me I was very skilled and that, thanks to me, their operation would be far more amusing because she would be even more afraid and her cries would be heard for miles and she would run like she had never run before and her pagne might
