The Ogre's wife
Translation by Leigh Hafrey, Grand Street 37, volume ten, number one, 1991
Grand Street, 135 Central Park West, New York 10023-2412

The Ogre's wife doesn't like preparing flesh, although she doesn't know it. Something comes over her when the smell fills the house and there isn't a pure breath of air to be had. She pulls out a haunch, dunks it in the fire, which hisses, she eats it, eats another, getting drunk on the smell of charred meat. Then the meat seems to swell up inside her; she feels it pressing against the walls of her stomach. It is as if a new, thick, stubborn life were taking shape in the ruins of that violated flesh, in the black depths of her intestines within her own frightened flesh.
The woman then goes out to the backyard, where she has piled the viscera and entrails by the dung heap. She looks at them, she gags, she vomits all the meat she has eaten in a tremor that resembles a sob.
Then she goes to the well, draws a pail of clear water, bathes her face, her eyes, and at the end cups her hands and drinks deeply. She feels the cool water sliding along the irritated walls of her stomach. The redness leaves her eyes, the nausea leaves her throat, the heavy throbbing leaves her temples. She takes a quick look around, and when she's certain there's nobody there she lifts her skirt and washes her legs, her genitals, and after that...

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