Rikki Ducornet's seventh novel, Gazelle, was published in cloth by Knopf in 2003 and in paperback by Anchor in 2004. She is currently working on a series of paintings inspired by alchemy and collections cabinets, as well as writing a novel about the Algerian War. She recently received the Lannan Award for Fiction (2004). On the Hottest of Afternoons Rikki Ducornet for R.P. We came wanting the ‘marvelous knowledge’ the blue evening eggs, radiant desirable as alphabets beginning and ending with the letter ‘A.’ The eggs. Prodigious. Round as the sphere of the moon. And everywhere the air amethyst with pollen tusked with wings. In our dream of the past a cheetah is trained to hunt gazelles. She comes when called. She lets fall the body at her master’s feet where it lies spread out like a wing. The trees studded with eggs. Glowing like the heart. Keeping their immense secret. Their simple faces directed towards the sky. The vigorous, the joyful, the voluptuous eggs lit up like candles as flammable as parrots waiting for the breeze their feet nailed to the uncertain weather. Silent, the eggs bring to mind those vowels that by their very nature are silent. Somewhere between sunlight and shade such vowels are said to be hidden. ‘To vanish’ in a forest without rain. Like the forest itself, the alphabet we wanted was called ‘complete.’ There are letters as round as planets, coiled knotted into fists, similar to crystals, and like embers glowing from within. Called ‘hot.’ Others feed upon the ambient light. Named ‘catastrophic.’ Purposefully inaccessible. Some letters are slightly bent or ‘beaked.’ Said to ‘tear the air.’ Others resemble a fly, a spider, a ‘bee.’ Sweet on the tongue. Named irresistible. Sticky with seeds. The cherry-colored vowels of ecstatic pleasure painted to the skin of the throat and tasted. In this way embodied. We came eager to see the ladder of nature bright as glass. A wing rising to the moon. The parrots hanging like fruit from the branches. The jaguars no bigger than a flame. To see the cheetah, the neck of the gazelle held between her teeth like a sacred letter. The fleshy, the flamboyant eggs. Blue as thunder. Fluid as syllables sitting on a branch said to fly off 'with a clatter.' Were there a place to fly on the hottest of afternoons. The eggs. Vigorous. Thrilling. Flammable. The Byzantine air bright with man-made molecules. But all things are the same to fire. Sawdust rising from her nostrils the cheetah sits on her hands. Their feet tied with string, the macaws are as silent as anchovies. The fair, foul-weather eggs, one hundred million or more crammed into one cubic mile detonating like gunfire. Beneath the painted ceiling, love’s seven names melt like candles. Cherubs soar without a body. The sacred, we were told, needs no body. And the vines! The vines climbing to the sun as though their lives depended on it.