human and wholly demented: beasts, birds, wide
circles and swift, flashing lines, wings^ and claws, a
goat's head, the head of a fish, inextricably tangled
with human bodies. Or perhaps he would seek to
humanize flowers, giving some flower the torso of a
woman — of a woman he could only have seen with
his mind, could only have visualized by instinct.
And men he would carve with the heads of trees:
'Look,5 he would babble, 'they have kind green heads;
they think kind green thoughts; they listen to birds
all day and all night, and the birds are wise, very
wise. . . .* And then he might start to whistle.
Sometimes he would fashion angular landscapes
having mountains that never rose on this planet,
having seas that never washed earthly shores, having
ships that never sailed earthly waters. And when he
did this his brown eyes would shine with a light that
seemed to proceed from the spirit, so that his face
became quite transformed by the rapture he felt at
his own imaginings:
'Look, look! little master, this is where I go when
I fly, when I fly away, little master. Farther and
farther to no one knows where but Anfos. . . .Beu
Dieu, and up ... up ... up!5 And then he would
make as though to fly, flapping his arms and his great
red hands, 'My feet are too heavy. . , .' he would
mutter.
Mad. Christophe knew that Anfos was mad these
days, that their trouble had tipped the scales, turning
the half-wit into a madman. Jouse would curse and
Marie would fret, observing that he grew always more
strange, but Christophe could probably have restrained
him. Yet he lacked the heart to forbid those wild
carvings, divining the longing from which they
sprang — the longing of one whose hope lay beyond,
whose fulfilment must be in another existence. Anfos
was mad with the pain of the world, with the pain of
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