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off-the-cuff lecture does not have as its sole aim the clarification of the meaning of my trade, nor is it intended as proof of my credentials in the matter; its main purpose is rather the additional reprieve it allows me by justifying my reticence to get down to work, on the one hand, and, on the other, by making me temporarily unavailable by the very fact that it keeps me so very busy and does not leave me theleisure to carry out my duties. Nonetheless, this additional reprieve will be short – Professor Glatt was very clear on this, I have delayed long enough: the reopening of the site can no longer be put off.
    Closed due to death . The day after Boborikine died the sign was hung on the gate, what am I saying, on the heavy gate – because the epithet was melted, forged, welded, coated with minium and painted green, and so were the bars, the thick bars that seal the sole entrance to the cave. Visitors are said to have banged their heads against them; perhaps they thought the death notice referred to the creators of the cave paintings inside, whom they had believed already dead for quite some time, years and years; so you see it is best not to tread on the grave diggers’ turf and leave them to bury the mortals themselves when the time comes. And the visitors will have gone back home meditating on this lesson; perhaps along the way they mentioned the analogous, not unusual case of the writer who, famous in his youth, chooses nevertheless to withdraw from the literary scene; we lose track of him but his previous work is still impressive and in print, others are inspired by him, he is quoted, annotated, no one knows how he died, or where, or precisely when. Legends abound, perhaps it was suicide, or an airplane crash in the mountains, the Mexican border, until the day the octogenarian who has calmly lived out his life catches cold on his doorstep and finally dies for the last time, in his bed.
    Boborikine’s death has gone on long enough. It is now time to open the cave to the public. Not that, mind you, Boborikine’s death is no longer a sad reality, quite the contrary, it has been confirmed. Boborikine died three months ago and he has not stopped being dead ever since; his death continuesas if it will never belong to the past, it is perpetuated in the present, daily, ceaselessly, impossible to see how it will ever end. It is only as an active cause governing the cave’s closing that Boborikine’s death is considered finished, past, of no consequence, with no effect, no tomorrow. In this regard mourning is finito . We can reopen.
    Professor Glatt gave me the clef that opens the gate, for I am not a man to write clé when it is possible to write clef , even if in so doing I compel the translators of my tale to slow down – and I trust they see no malevolence where none intended; I would gladly let them have a full page to express this slight difference in leisurely, creative circumambages that will even further delay my taking up my post * and so I shall wait until they have surmounted the difficulty, there’s no bad faith on my part this time, it’s simply a matter of a force majeure, which, by definition, cannot be imputed to me, pace Professor Glatt; my conscience is clear, I didn’t invent writing and when given thechoice between two spellings, I always, because I am an honest sort, opt for the one that serves my thought or intention better – a clef is heavy in the hand, it is dotted with rust, worn on one’s belt, unlike a clé , what I understand in any case by clé : its clink-clink like small change deep within your pocket. Likewise, the ornithologist who is also an etymologist will write pic-vert , whereas a bird-watcher who doesn’t give a hoot will write pivert , the way it’s pronounced. I had nothing to do with it.
     
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    * Professor Glatt then placed in our narrator’s hand the key that opens the heavy grate, for I am not a woman to write gate when it is possible to write grate , even if this