—he passed through her territory like the Tatar hordes—with wild whistle and howl scorching out from almost every recess of her memory, from all of its main repositories, that life-giving, secret, shimmering, loving moisture that the soul gathers for itself year after year, for the dry years: subterranean wellsprings, a constant and inaudible slurp and suck, tenacious putting down of tiny, hairy roots into the dark depths of the preconscious, into a corridor, which suddenly opens—into the open space of a memory: a little girl stands swooning in the middle of an autumn park walkway, feeling the drumbeat of the distant horizon for the first time, feeling the world calling her, promising to show her the way, everything begins with that little girl and no matter what else happens to you in your life—it is complete, it holds together for as long as you believe that little girl, as long as you can access the call that she heard way back then—because all those so-called youthful ideals—are nonsense, ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, “forget it,” they are brought in from the outside, that’s why only the very few, and rarely, are able to remain faithful to them, so hell with them, not a great loss, wipe up your snot, all you bearded sixties lefties, ravaged and crumpled by time, former hippies who never managed to get it together for your own bungalow in suburbia with a flower garden in the backyard and a two-car garage; and also all you who did get it together, shaved your beards and, unnoticed to yourselves, acquired a rich, glossy luster (like glaze on a ceramic mug) of a life stopped dead in its tracks in peace and prosperity; and all you Ukrainian rebels, once tossed into paddy wagons, pounded to pulp in cop stations and back alleys and now laureates of government prizes, your hands juicy and plump from too many state banquets and your so impressively broad backs corseted in Bloomingdale blazers—don’t dream of your wonderfully turbulent youth even should some losers try to shove it in your faces, all that is nonsense, I tell you this sincerely—it’s fallacy, delusion: truth is found only in childhood, only through it can we find the true measure of our lives, and if you have managed not to trample to death that little girl inside of you (or that little boy standing in the pasture with a stick in his hand, awestruck by the terrifying—because so beyond the human capacity to render—immensity of the multicolored symphony of fire of the setting sun)—then your life has not faltered, it has merely twisted and turned, no matter how difficult and painful the obstacles, in order to follow its own course, in other words,
it’s been real, and I offer you my congratulations—and love, ladies and gentlemen, true love—it can always see that hidden little boy (or little girl) in the other: “take me” always means: “take me together with my childhood” (“Over here,” she pointed, her dry voice faltering, as she leaned over in the passenger seat like a jockey on a racehorse—“this is where you turn into the courtyard, this building here”—it was the dead of night, three in the morning or so—he drove in under the arch, circled the car around, turned off the engine, “Those windows right there, can you see, where the balcony is, on the third floor? That’s where we lived”—that’s the moment he fell on top of her and with a long-repressed groan attached himself to her lips, his hands moving busily under her sweater, a little rapacious, but it was what it was, “Let’s go to your place… To the studio…”—it’s there still, somewhere, that courtyard, that balcony, that archway, and the old chestnut tree from thirty years ago still up on the hill—it’s just that the girl who once walked out of that building into a fog wet and heavy with a mysterious hollow din—that girl is no longer there). Not true, you’re still alive, she tries to persuade herself, massaging all the crevices of her memory the whole time, like a skilled surgeon with a body just pulled out of the rubble: what if I press here, can you feel that? what about here?—in fleeting glimpses, twitches of remaining reflexes, some things come forward from time to time—for example, yesterday when she walked out into the street came a painful recollection—a long, lightening-speed incision into the distant past—of the smell of autumn leaves, doesn’t matter what you call these trees—sycamore, Canadian maple—the smell was the same as back home, moist, the aching bitter scent of still-living (living out its last days) vegetation: the sun in the high, thinning treetops, the beginning of the school year, the walk to school through a brilliantly gold-lit park, a small band of adolescents in billowing white T-shirts with strangely articulated quacking (English!) laughter rumbled past—their youthful eyelashes squinting against the sun, their mealy ripe wheat-colored bare necks and swinging arms disheveled by the brisk walk flashed by like behind a glass pane—a thought flashed through her head: none of you puppies have yet been struck by real pain—and who knows, maybe some of you will be lucky and it will pass you by?—and settled on this side of the glass, holding back the sobs pushing up against her throat: God, is it all really over—did it all come to pass, all that was promised at the dawn of life by that advancing rumbling call that had spilled into the universe; had it merely swept by—blowing in her hair, brushing against her lips, without reaching deep inside and extracting the most important?… (how fiercely he had roared: “I’ll rip you to pieces!”—scooping her up under the knees and planting her on top of him—and in the end not a single orgasm, unless this excruciating pain of being ripped apart alive is also a kind of orgasm?).
Autumn. Early dusk.
Mire—and footsteps like rubber…
This love is not final,
You are wrong to think other)