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I contribute to the general racket with a small noise. It’s the noise of my ribs and organs that are growing disproportionately, possessed by the fever of growth, willing to take over the superficial epidermic tissue that encases me. I have consulted the doctor about this strange malady, but I’ve had no luck; he told me to wait. I don’t know what to wait for, while everything inside me continues to grow inordinately, and some of my organs are poking their heads through lesions that they have opened in my skin. The bottom of my lung, for example, has begun to show through just above my waist, announcing its brown edge just at my midriff, and I’m not able to tighten my belt for fear of hurting it. One of my kidneys is also showing its head, round like a child’s, rhythmically striking against my back, like a pendulum placed there by a builder. The muscles break their tensors and I feel them rush along my skin as if sliding into a slippery valley, or onto a frozen runway, or sea landing, or moon landing. And all these selenauts are threatening to distort my movements, because I have not learned to control my new proportions. While my organs grow feverishly, they make music that joins the already existing noises, which together produce an unbearable gabble. What are they celebrating? What are these noises celebrating ? What is being celebrated? I’ve seen as many beggars as ever, as many children dying of hunger, as many unemployed, persecuted people; I have learned of a young fellow’s suicide in the Cathedral, which was a form of protest against the inhuman tortures he suffered, and according to what the doctor told me, many deaths by way of starvation have been recorded. Hospitals don’t have sheets or medicine for the ill. The schools are closed and the prisons are full. What then is the general noise celebrating? My crazy entrails are growing at full speed, like young people running away from war, from the hell of the city, so fast my skin doesn’t have time to stretch sufficiently. So it breaks, and my organs come rumbling through the apertures like patios and windows, gushing and smelling of rubber. —— 17 —— 11 The noise seems to descend from hell. My small noise, on the other hand, rises itself to the sky. I will die from growing, when the size of my body and skin will no longer contain my organs and the weight and length of my developed entrails. —— 18 —— ...

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