chapter 4c

(Cyril Lavache's Nightmare)



Moïse Berri 

and the Reconstruction of the Haitian 

Space Agency

by Jude Jarda


4c 
Cyril Lavache's Nightmare

Cyril Lavache is the ruling monarch of an imaginary kingdom, in which gold covered houses and streets paved with precious stones abound. Peasants and nobles walk around with pride in their yellow leather buskins, wearing cyan blue gowns and magenta melon hats. Rivers carry honey instead of water; the trees are made of white chocolate and dark fudge. A legion of cyclops, mounted on three-legged transparent unicorns, invades that magnificent country as a sun made of jelly slowly rises above the horizon. The sound of their hooves provokes a movement of panic in the ranks of the king’s army. The troops are made of a division of macaws, four brigades of quetzalcóatl and a battalion of ignited phoenixes. The Major General is a one-eyed toucan; its chief of staff, a mandrill smoking a pipe. An evergreen forest is burning. The wind blows in circles and forms a column. Circus music comes from its center. The wildlife is petrified. All the drummer boys have prosthetic lower limbs. A sobbing clown waves the heraldic flag. A wingless cherub bleeding from the nose leads the first charge. Thunder and lightning strike the ground, as platinum shielded giant crabs fall from the clouds, some of them surfing on snowflakes the size of a man's head. Cyril Lavache wakes up in a start. The shoemaker is trembling. Is it happening again? Is the ground waving like a snake and killing everyone he loves? This is a reoccurring nightmare, but Cyril cannot afford a therapist or a hypnotist to help him forget. When the shoemaker realizes that he is back to the unbearable heaviness of reality, he smiles, thankful to the Almighty and relieved.