I went downstairs in a daze, and the avid streets welcomed me back into their dusty monotony.
Summer had filled the park, trees, and air with a chaos reminiscent of a madman’s drawing, its hot, heavy breath monstrously swelling the already thick, exuberant foliage. The park seemed to be flowing, like a lava bed, its every stone red hot. My hands were red as well, and heavy.
In my soft, scorching seclusion I kept passing Edda’s image before my eyes, multiplying it over and over into ten, a hundred, a thousand Eddas, one beside the other in the summer heat — identical, haunting statues.
There was a brutal yet lucid despair in everything I saw and felt. Parallel to my simple, elementary life a phantasmagorical internal leprosy of seething, secret, and much cherished intimacies. I would compose imaginary scenes with the most minute details. I pictured myself in hotel rooms with Edda lying at my side while the twilight filtered in through thick curtains, their fine shadows tracing a circular pattern on her sleeping face. I saw the pattern of the carpet where she had left her slipper, a corner of her handkerchief protruding from a half open reticule on the table, the mirror in the wardrobe door reflecting half the bed and the painting of flowers on the wall. It left quite a bitter taste in my mouth.
In the park I would trail women I did not know, following at their heels until they arrived home, where I stood staring at the closed door, broken and despondent. One evening I ended up at a door separated from the street by a small garden feebly lit by a single bulb. On a sudden impulse — I did not know I had in me — I pushed open the gate and slipped into the garden. In the meantime the woman had entered the house without having noticed me, and I was left on my own. Then a strange idea came into my head.
In the middle of the garden there was a round bed of flowers. On the spur of the moment I knelt at its center and placed my hand on my heart as if in prayer. My intention was to remain there as long as possible, immobile, a monument in stone. For a long time I had been plagued by a desire to commit an absurd act in a totally strange place, and here the opportunity had presented itself spontaneously, without effort, a true windfall. I felt an enormous satisfaction at having taken so courageous a decision and, as the evening hummed warmly about me, I resolved not to move an inch, unless forced to do so, until the next morning. Slowly I felt my arms and legs stiffen and my inner world take on a shell of infinite calm and serenity.
How long did I remain thus? At one point I heard a commotion in the house and the outside light went off. The darkness made me more aware of the evening breeze and my isolation in the garden of a strange house. Several minutes later the light went on, then off again. Someone in the house had turned it on and off to observe the effect on me. I remained motionless, my hand on my heart, my knees on the ground. I was determined to confront reactions more drastic than the light game.
Suddenly the door opened and a figure appeared in the garden, while a coarse voice inside called out, “Let him be! Leave him in peace and he’ll go away by himself!” The woman I was following came up to me. She was now wearing a dressing gown and slippers, and her hair was down. She looked me in the eye for a few seconds and said nothing. We were both silent. Finally she placed her hand on my shoulder and said gently, “That’s enough now,” as if wishing to show me she had understood my gesture and had waited a while in silence to let it play itself out.
Her insight disarmed me. I rose and brushed the dirt off my trousers.
“Don’t your legs hurt?” she asked. “I’d never be able to kneel for so long.”
I wanted to say something, but succeeded only in muttering “Good night,” and departed in haste.
Once more all my miseries took to howling inside me.
Chapter Ten
I was tall, thin, and pale. My spindly neck rose awkwardly out of my tunic. My long arms hung from my sleeves like newly skinned animals. My pockets so bulged with papers and objects that I could scarcely extract a handkerchief to wipe the dust off my shoes when I came back from the “city center.”
The simple, elementary things in life were taking place all around me. If a pig scratched itself against a fence, I would stop and stare: nothing could surpass the grate of the bristles against the wood; I found something immensely satisfying in it, a calming assurance that life went on.
I would also spend a good deal of time in a folk sculpture studio in an outlying street. It was filled with a myriad of flat white objects in the midst of the curly shavings that fell from the plane, filling the room with their stiff, resinous foam. As the pieces of wood beneath the tool grew thinner and paler, their veins appeared clearly and well defined as beneath a woman’s skin.
On a nearby table there were balls made of wood, stolid, heavy balls that filled every inch of my hands with their smooth, ineffable weight. Then there were the chess pieces redolent of fresh varnish and the walls covered with flowers and angels. At times the materials revealed sublime eczemas with lacey painted or sculpted suppurations.
In winter, the heavy water turned into long, slender icicles; in summer, flowers gushed forth in thousands of tiny explosions, their petals flames of red, blue, and orange. And throughout the year the master carpenter with the monocle extracted smoke rings and Indian arrows, conches and ferns, peacock feathers and human ears from his supply of wood.
In vain did I follow his painstaking work to catch the moment when the wet and jagged block of wood was reborn as a rose; in vain did I attempt to work such miracles myself. I would begin with a rough-hewn chunk of fir, splintery and hard as a rock, and what emerged from under the plane was something slippery and limp.
Perhaps the moment I started fashioning the wood, I would fall into a deep sleep and extraordinary tentacular forces would fill the air, entering the wood and causing the cataclysm. Perhaps everyone closed down at that moment and lost track of time passing. Yes, the master carpenter must have been in a deep sleep when he sculpted the lilies on the wall and the voluted violins.
When I awoke, the wood would show me the lines of its age, as a palm shows the lines of its destiny, and I would pick up one object after another, dazed by their diversity. I would pick up a ball and slowly run my fingers around it, rub it against my cheek, spin it, and let it roll. In vain, in vain. It was of no interest.
I was surrounded by hard, fixed matter on all sides — here in the form of balls and sculptures, outside in the form of trees, houses, and stone. Vast and willful, it held me in its thrall from head to foot. No matter where my thoughts led me, I was surrounded by matter, from my clothes to streams in the woods running through walls, rocks, glass. .
From every nook and every cranny the lava of matter flowed out of the earth, taking shape upon contact with the air, turning into houses with windows, into branches reaching upward to prick the void, flowers filling curved volumes of space with their fragility and color, churches urging their cupolas higher and higher to the thin cross on top, where matter, powerless to proceed, is forced into submission. Everywhere it had infested the atmosphere, erupting and populating it with the encysted abscesses of its rocks, the wounded hollows of its trees. .
Things I saw that were destined not to escape drove me mad. Yet in my wanderings I did occasionally come across an isolated spot where I could find repose, and when I did I would regain my balance and calm down. I once discovered such a refuge in the strangest and most inauspicious part of the city. So strange that I never would have dreamed it would make the perfect hideaway. What led to the adventure was an ardent desire to fill the void of my days.