photo by Σπύρος-Ίωνας Μαρκάτης
There’s a door ajar at the end of the corridor. I reach it. I tentatively touch the wooden surface and the door inches open with a horrible creak… I’m bathed in a beam of light and wake with a scream.
What a dream…
I actually am in a house resembling an old villa. Halls lined with bookcases constantly intersect my footsteps. There are so many books that those there’s no room for on the walls are hosted in small niches under the ceiling. Some are lined up neatly next to one another, while others lean their weighty wisdom against the spines of their neighbours, looking indolent and of dubious moral character.
Little booklets scrawled with notes rest on the low tables near the wing chairs. They’re well-travelled… some are from Madrid, others from Rome… They are my small appetizers before the main course that awaits me in my office. Yes… it sounds a bit odd, but I “eat” books. I don’t devour them. I’m not a book-gobbler, nor a bookworm. I reverently eat the letters first, then the words, and for dessert I eat entire sentences. I never put on weight. This sort of knowledge is ultra-dietary and fortifies both my soul and my body.
So I “eat” words, then. Words are the ingredients for writing this odd meal. Spicy imaginary, briny symbolic and raw real. A book is a meal fresh out of the oven’s mouth, hot and savoury. It’s so delicious you lick down to the last joint of your pinky, i.e. theology. She’s the marrow, the crème de la crème of the unconscious. But what happens if it sticks in your throat? You choke; as simple as that!
Oh, yes… I mustn’t forget… oddest of all is my name: Ezekiel Query. My friends call me Jacques Query. Jacques Lacan follows me like an echo, then, at every summons. But it’s my surname that reflects my true trait, to be honest: to ask questions…
Not rhetorical questions, sitting all nice and snug in my armchair, but practical questions. Besides, a question is always a question of life and death…
But where was I? Oh, yes… I remember… to inquire, to decipher, to analyse and to solve mystery cases. I’m a psychoanalyst. A distant descendant of Freud and Lacan and amateur detective, lover of enigmatic mysteries…
An anxious, trembling hand knocks persistently at the door; Mr. Query puts aside his autobiography and readily hastens to open. Terror lurks at the threshold: An adult tiger, hidden in the fearful pupil of a child’s gaze, looks him straight in the eyes…
