Quai Quest (Bernard-Marie Koltès), 2006

In an abandoned quarter of a western port city, cut off from the city centre by a river, a disused warehouse.

At the start of a snow storm, two years before, Charles, on his return home by ferry, crossed paths with the now long gone dockers he saw every morning. They warned him of an unsettling presence by the outside wall of the warehouse. He went there and spotted some kind of mound, dark and immobile, half-covered by snow, looking vaguely like a dead or sleeping boar. He approached it. When he was two meters away, the form suddenly stood up, tall, large, trembling, bright-eyed and with a cap of snow on its head. It spoke a few unintelligible words, so unintelligible that they made Charles laugh. Charles caught the final sounds, probably English, possibly Arabic. A sound with which he temporarily baptized the animal. Then, because he was in an excellent mood, he took him by the arm and led him into the warehouse, and found a spot where the stranger could shelter from the snow. He arranged some cardboard boxes to keep him warm. After watching him burrow into them, emitting intense steam all along his entire body, Charles walked away whistling and returned home.