Empty

 

Sang Chaud could be, in his own way, Don Carotte’s brother. Both reject cliché and the obvious. One does not simply live here—he relives, one might say. The other speaks only by detaching himself from his own voice. They settle into a space of withdrawal, latency, wakefulness, where something like a subjectivity without image can finally come into being. This is what I call a true presence. A fragile, wavering, yet irreducible presence.

 

 

For many days now, Don Carotte has not appeared in Lucian’s office, both he and Félix being absorbed by the analysis of the images brought by Igniatius. One may ask a thousand questions about this… One may also wonder: why did Igniatius abandon Sang Chaud at the very moment when Don Carotte stood before the Leviathan? But before that, the reader might ask whether Sang Chaud can truly move beyond the classical role of the comic sidekick. Could he, through sheer will, impose himself as an essential figure in the novelistic reflection within the story of Don Carotte? To answer this, we might first show that Sang Chaud fulfils a function both comic and realistic, balancing the madness of Don Carotte, the mountless knight standing in the shadow of Igniatius, writer of the seventh day. We would then see that he can, depending on the circumstances, become a genuine philosophical counterpoint to Don Carotte, offering at times a form of wisdom… or a paradoxical folly. Finally, we shall attempt to show that he evolves to the point of becoming an autonomous character, bearer of a revelation, of that internal trembling not caused by digestion but by a deeper upheaval… an intimate insurrection.

 

 

 

 

Don Carotte searches between the pages for the friend the book has lost…

 

– Something is wrong. The world of words, usually so talkative, is breathing sideways. One of the wheels of fate is creaking. A shadow is missing in the sun.”

 

Don Carotte, alone, rides the words, upright, proud, visionary, yet the text around him, unbalanced and limping, drags itself from comma to comma… in poor condition.
He speaks. He exclaims. He admonishes the horizon. No tender, deep, familiar voice answers him.

No proverb rolls through the air like a noisy barrel.

Then, in a murmur written nowhere, Don Carotte asks:

– Where is Sang Chaud?
No one answers.
Igniatius becomes small, strangely mute.
Don Carotte questions the sky and drags his hoof.
Lucian, surprised to be consulted, freezes on the spot.

Don Carotte scans the embankments, the ocean, the shore, the sand, the dust, the clouds. He calls into the void of the text, into the silence of a blank page:

– Sang Chaud! My friend! My echo! My brother of the road! Where are you hiding?

 

A vast silence settles, like a sheet over death. Then Don Carotte, with the gravity of a lost prophet, declares:

– Someone is missing from this world… and this emptiness fills me.