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Gruner looked at me as though I were insane. I whispered, “She isn’t singing. They are speaking. Listen.” We turned around. She was sitting on top of the table. Her voice soared out beyond the balcony doors. The cries outside seemed to answer her song. The lighthouse’s beams revealed nothing more than snowflakes spiralling down from the sky. I entered the room. She hushed as I drew close to the table. The forest also fell silent. That dialogue still echoed in my ears. My only certainty was that some phrases had been repeated more often than others. A word that more or less sounded like “Sitauca”, and above all, “Aneris”, or something of that sort. But any attempt to transcribe those tones was doomed to failure. It was an abandoned score. My vocal cords had as much in common with theirs as the bristles of a brush with a violin. Nevertheless, after summoning a large dose of imagination, I attempted a pathetic imitation: “Aneris.” Our eyes met. That look was enough for me to venture, “Gruner, they call themselves Sitauca,” in a very free interpretation of those sounds. “And her name is Aneris. They have a name, she has a name. The woman you make love to every night is called Aneris.” My voice lowered as I concluded, “Her name is Aneris. A very pretty name, I might add.” Gruner had reduced them to an anonymous horde. I thought naming the creatures might alter his views about them. It made no difference if it was “Sitauca” or “Aneris.” The practically invented words I formed were just a muddled reflection of the sounds they produced. Gruner exploded. “You wish to speak the toads’ language? Is that it? Well, here is their dictionary!” and he roughly tossed a Remington at me. The rifle spanned the distance between us. “Do you have any idea how little ammunition we have left? Do you? They are outside and we are here within. Leave the confines of the lighthouse and hand them the rifle. I should like to see how you do it. Yes. I’d like to see you converse with the toads!” I said nothing, it would only have instigated him more. He shook his fist. “Out, friend, you blasted milksop! Take up your post!” I had never seen him in such a state before. Gruner was every bit as frenzied as if we were in the midst of one of the bloodiest battles on the balcony. He looked at me for an instant as if I were one of his hateful toads. I stared him down for a few moments. Then I decided to cut the conversation short. He was not listening. I left the room. The rest of the evening was uneventful. Squinting through the peephole in the door, I spotted a few beasts dodging the beams. Gruner shot at them from up above, cursing in his German dialect. He was visibly agitated. Unnecessary purple flares blazed through the air. But what good would such a show of pyrotechnics do? Gruner gradually grew ever more taciturn. He shunned my presence. When we were thrown together by the evening vigils, he spoke without really saying anything. Gruner prattled as never before. His words clogged our nights with chat, strangling all conversation so as to avoid the one topic worth discussing. I tried to show as much tolerance as possible. I needed to believe that, sooner or later, he would give way. As I could by no means count on his help, I determined to take my own initiative. I would have liked him to have taken part in the endeavour. But he could not be coaxed over to my side. The irony is that it was Gruner himself who gave me the idea. During an argument, he mentioned the insane possibility of handing our rifles over to the Sitaucas. That is precisely what I did. We had long since run out of ammunition for Gruner’s old shotgun; it had been rendered useless. A practical fellow like him would never regret its loss. I headed toward the beach that had witnessed my arrival. From experience, I knew they often used the spot to come and go. I drove the shotgun deeply into the sand and surrounded it with a circle of hefty stones. It was a crude ploy, but it made my intentions known. Hopefully, my message would be understood. At any rate, we had nothing to lose. Three more days dragged by and Gruner never tried to come between Aneris and me. Our coexistence, and the simple fact that I was better read, had made him consider me some sort of wayward librarian. Gruner shared the commonly held belief that books are a sort of antidote against the temptations of the flesh. He was convinced that we had no common ground. It must have been most disconcerting to him that I never questioned his ownership of Aneris. I posed a far greater threat by suggesting that our enemies were not fiends. A brighter man would have considered this a most dangerous idea as it inevitably brought me closer to Aneris. Not him. Even Gruner’s rudimentary logic should have succumbed under the weight of the evidence. Instead, the man broke down rather than accept the truth. Since he denied the entire theory, he was unable to face up to the particulars. His solution was to look the other way and feign ignorance. In fact, Gruner was being besieged twice over. Now he was being attacked outside the lighthouse and in. It was not that Gruner was incapable of grasping reality. The question was whether, once inside the lighthouse, one felt obliged to find some meaning in the madness. He chose to mull away the nights and shun the days. He turned the adversaries into savages, transforming a conflict into barbarity, the antagonist into fiend. The paradox was that this reasoning could only be upheld thanks to his inconsistencies. All was utterly consumed by his struggle for survival. The enormity of our peril was such that all discussions were postponed, as if he considered them absurd. And once he was protected behind the barricade of his logic, any further aggression simply confirmed his views. His fear of the Sitauca was the man’s one true ally. The closer the Sitauca got to the lighthouse, the more vindicated Gruner felt. And the harsher the attack, the less Gruner would reflect on his own depravity. But I was under no obligation to follow suit. The lighthouse had spared me this last human liberty. And if it was proved that they were not in fact monsters, Gruner’s world would implode with the force of all the arsenals in Europe. I was to come to that realisation later. At the time, I merely saw Gruner as obtuse.