The exterior, the gate, the columns, between two columns pass as one says it’s hot, takes out of his pocket a miniature object, small fan like a razor, refuses to see himself offering, proposes to offer to the other, fan in hand all at the start the action with the ringing begins. A fan echoes, with its vibration, the electric razor: it is a motor question. The interior, telephone cabins, benches, a balustrade, as one of them says, need a bit of fresh air and while miming the breeze, stirring with the hand the fresh air that eludes him, palpates him while the other fans, telephoning. With him, the activation is not mechanical, manual: reject the pocket fan and optimal use of his notebook, that’s what distinguishes him from the other. At the true rapid movement of all the orders noted calmly by imperturbale man, slow, leaning over his notebook all around orders, to his arms waving, to an overexcited state, to more rapid movements, to exchanges shouts, to murmurs to one, to movement shoves. The question is of movement and of stopping time, of a time that accelerates, takes off, rushes, from the too soon or the too late as the fall multiplies, doesn’t catch up. A clock date and hour, a bell rings, a signal crowd, the men wipe their foreheads, the men come to blows to one who seems wounded, the others stare at the board. The board of mobile values to the men who bustle beneath, become passionate, is a divine figure, a stasis by time on, is a figure of time, a mechanical countdown impossible to ignore. The exterior, a table, to her who behind him, holds still, rises up for, observes what he is writing or actually is drawing, that the waiter blocks, that he rips from the notebook to leave on the table that she then takes away with her, looks in all directions, amazed by this gesture. To the flowers drawn reply the fossil flowers bought the night before in the same place as the drama say that everything decomposes, through proximity, in a Vanity. (Translated by Carrie Noland)