...of blind man's buff

At the fifth door, she finds herself in another room without any furniture, so that it is still not hers, yet which must be since it overlooks in the same way the courtyard surrounded with high fences of a girls' school, moreover the same one probably. The students are at recess; however there do not seem to be very many today: six in all, playing some kind of blind man's buff. These little girls - as usual, with rare exceptions - are all blacks, about twelve to fourteen years old. It is one of the youngest who is wearing the white silk bandage over her eyes and who moves about uncertainly, timidly, her arms extended in front of her, exploring the air like the antennae of a blind insect, and her lips parted. The other five who surround her are each furnished with a long steel T square which doubtless is part of a drawing-kit they must use to produce geometrical figures in their class notebooks. But their function her is actually that of banderilleros in the bull ring. As they advance and retreat to remain two or three steps away from their unarmed playmate, which is to say out of reach of her hands which are nonetheless timorous rather than threatening, they slowly perform around her a kind of wild dance, taking great silent steps, making broad gestures with their arms above their heads, sweeping and ceremonious salutations which, without any apparent or even symbolic meaning, seem nonetheless to belong to the ritual of some religious sacrifice. From time to time, one or the other comes up and roughly touches, with the end of her T square, the defenceless girl vulnerable to their blows, choosing the sensitive points carefully enough to make the victim stagger and even, on occasion, rub the wounded place as though to assuage the pain.

All this happens without outcry or turbulence of any kind: it is a mute, mild, almost muffled game, and the rubber-soled tennis shoes do not make the slightest sound on the cement of the courtyard, across which the group moves as it circles the victim.

[Project for a Revolution in New York, Robbe-Grillet, A.]