Editorial of june 2001

Oration for a fox

When you was born, you was a fox. A fox-man. In your childhood you had already your long-pointed nose, your sharp and malicious eyes, glowing like embers, your arrowed-slenderness and lithness, an alert fragility that, in the eyes of men, marked you definitively as a prey destined for flight.

You are a fox, always pursued by men s' packs. Some want to slash you, these are dogs-men. Some other want to lock up and then exhibit you, as a beast subdued by collar, flame for ever in cage.

You have fled, always, for being free. Your life is a long hatched run, forked, with turnings and tricks, for escaping to collars and dogs. As a fox cub, for a long time you did not realized your nature, then you was fox cub in a world of pup dogs. You fought like them, and still more than them you always fought and you was beaten, in the country, in the town, at school, you was always beaten and punished.

One day, you understood. You discovered the defences of a fox in a world of men and dogs : flight and ruse. It was no use to say "no", they were so such more numerous and stronger than you. You was alone, they were everybody. Your family wanted you became rich while you were already a poet. They told you "you will be an engineer, my son". You did not refuse, you have learned that you could not tell no, it was not your nature, your fangs of Foxy. Dogs growl, fight and finally submit. But you smiled and you let them lead you to the town with docility. Until the last time you smiled to them, you smiled, and with your honey-smile you fooled them, you did not registered where they whished. You learnt to be a poet, and when they howled you kept silence, you ran away, never facing dogs.

You grew up and you did what you liked and you was a young man with great promise. So they wanted to marry you ; "you will be a man, my son", and the new collar that threatened you than, it was that : wife, children, crying, squalling, money, dresses, jewells, debts, children again, marriages to arrange, and the family in background, as a giant and secular octopus, with tentacles everywhere.

Then you fled again. You entered in the Party. Inside, there was no family, no future, no wife, no children. There were different rules, so strict, which through you had to pass again. A totalitarian world where domestic moanings "my son, my husband, my mother, my father !" were absent but replaced by others : "oppressed masses, oppressed women, valiant martyrs, braves guerilleros !" You had saved your body and then you cared to save your mind : totalitarian coshing, lies, denoucement, constant watch, each one being an ennemy for others, self-criticism, crushing of souls, and what is soul, in fact, there is nothing, we are the depersonalized instruments of the revolution and liberation of masses.

You did not lost your soul. You smiled, you tricked, tacked, you was bright, suspected, elusive, in and against the system, in the highest circles of the Party but an eternal denier too, Foxy making a fool of King Leo, always near to the fangs of dogs in the Court, but always so quick for avoiding them, with one jump.

Then the Party collapsed, turned against itself, threats, purges, popular tribunals, dogs were eating each others. You, Foxy, you smiled so kindly, you were so docile, so gentle, with your honey-smile, and at the last moment, you gave them the slip.

You was alone and the run began to be long. You was no more a young healthy fox. You grew old and you was ill. You was famished, homeless, careless. So, because you was surrounded a family sheltered you, a family that was the Family, tentacular, international, the Mafia of families, females' Mafia, mothers' Mafia, whimpering girls' Mafia, moaning Mafia that never gives something freely and where men are nothing but jumping jacsk and cash-desks, paying for everything, and you will pay for ever, and they repeat it to you, they like you, it's for your own good, you are no more errant, stop to hurt your family, you fled so young but they catch you again Foxy, and the collar is not far from you : it is no more possible to be free, they tell you, for you are alone and they are everybody.

Sandrine Alexie

Summary