tough and sure, both a weapon of liberation and a love poem.
–—Jean Genet

APPROACHING A PRISON, a warder's eye is caught by the sight of a bouquet of blossom being repeatedly swung from one cell window toward another, where a hand reaches for it but fails to grasp it. He goes to investigate, and, peeping into a series of half a dozen cells, each holding a single male prisoner, he sees a different erotic spectacle in each. The warder's excited eye fixes on the mute dialogue between a young murderer—identified as such by a sign above his door—and an older North African man. They communicate through