I don’t know if what I experienced that day may be called pleasure, I was still little. I visited the spot where she had lifted her skirts; I went to the spot where the carriage had stopped, the little consecrated place where I calculated that the prince had been; I looked at the edge of the woods, the exact tree underneath which the girl had pissed for her prince. I lowered what I could imagine of a white hand, I said aloud the word used for the lowest whores; I tapped my two fingers. In this light the trees were immense, numerous, tireless. So we are made that here, in this light, flesh takes on a greater weight. God, who sees everything with an even eye — we do not envy such even sight; we envy the sight of those who pause patiently to consider what they will soon devour, while all around them the world explodes. Sitting there on that road in the bright sunshine, where a prince who perhaps had been only a marquis had, for a moment, smiled, I began to cry, loudly, in great sobs. I would rather have burned. An insane elation took hold of me that perhaps was pain, anger, or the disturbed laughter of those who suddenly find God along a road. It was the future, without question, this bucket of tears. Just as easily, it was God, in his curious fashion.
I had observed the nudity of many other women. I also knew the improvident use they made of it, moving beneath men, so deeply present but with all their strength withdrawn, fighting with this nothing that fulfills them. But as beautiful as they sometimes were, the ones I had seen busy at such enterprise had neither the white legs nor the great braids, and the dresses beneath which the cowhands had their fun were made of the shoddy stuff in which the better-born wrap what they eat and discard, but not right away, and not quite the same way, our grain or our women, our three ecus, our dead, our cheese. Above all, these women had seemed ashamed, and they hadn’t known what to do about it, perhaps because they believed their shame concealed nothing; and how would they have been able to marvel at and abandon themselves to the clandestine filth that fills us and out of which perhaps we’re made, they for whom filth was the norm, was like a second skin, like the air they breathed in the flocks and the decaying earth that spurted onto the nettles in the cowsheds, and the smell of sheep that was a permanent part of their low, laboring bodies that always toil, disconnected, screaming, always seem to be at work; and so always reek. To piss somberly, you need clean hands. Yes, this was some other flesh, another species altogether. And that species had appeared before me, evidently; I had had my Visitation; a celestial maiden of lace and azure had descended from one of those carriages out of some grand parade, had walked gracefully toward me under the trees on the satin of her little shoes, in all her finery had hitched up her skirts, trembling with the knowledge that she was profaning herself, had lightly splashed the satin of those little shoes. I would have given my life to see that again, but this time not while hiding beneath the trees. No, from the other side. Not as a coachman at his wit’s end, inert, forced to look where his desires were not, and to see it all out of the corner of his eye for an instant all the same, seeing all that he won’t have. No, from the other side completely, as daylight sees the earth, gives it rain or drought as it wills. I wanted to be the one who got to see this miracle every day, at every hour of the day, just for the tapping of two fingers; I wanted to be the one at whom the sacrosanct in all her profaned pomp would look, he whom she would await; that somber man who, with a lump in his throat, dares to smile, to make some remark, to decorate a crouching beauty with scathing little names meant for tarts. I called that a prince, in my high youth.
MY PARENTS WERE POOR DEVILS, without means and doubtless without wisdom, for which they didn’t have the time. I think I loved them. They rented out their arms and mine, those of my brothers, to the fat farmers throughout the Castelli, farmers who themselves had only the barest grain in reserve, a bit of pork on the table, and on their straw mattresses, if they wanted them, young, heavyset girls smelling of sheep, with neither azure around their necks nor lace about their thighs: they were poor devils, they too. Me, I looked after pigs and sheep, sheep that are even dumber than pigs, and cows that are pitiful, inanimate. And so from flock to flock I was rented, the next season to Tivoli, on the grassy slopes presided over by palaces, palaces put there to justify and sustain such reigns with heaps of meat, leather, mounts: to such ends, shacks line the slopes, shacks in which beasts are left to guard other beasts. I was one of them. I didn’t go into the palace, but I grazed my flocks the length of the roads that rise to meet them; many carriages passed by in which I could see monsignori in red and lace, captains with polished blades and lace, gentlemen with soft gloves, soft boots, soft silk doublets and lace, all with one Visitation or another facing them, these azure bawds, like the clumsy coachmen outside had horses before them. These emblazoned boxes passed through the villa roundabouts, slowly, like a mass, awkwardly, like hay wagons, brutally, like whips, climbing up the steep sandy slopes finer than flour, and the din of the wheels and the whips disappeared into the more massive din of waters falling from the muzzles of lions, the nostrils of cattle, the urns of old bearded gods and women leaning unfatigued, the fountains with a thousand faces that all these powerful men are crazy about. And I saw, flight after flight on the stairs high above, dresses twirling across the terraces, stirring slightly with breeze, entering the high buildings in which they are kept; a monsignore lagged a bit behind, was hanging back beneath the tall trees, all in red and as powerful as the trees, as visible, dreaming or perhaps praying, because God is as tall as the trees, because the trees make one raise an eye to God— and eventually he put a foot to the last step, more slowly, all in scarlet, entering the henhouse where one pecks at these azure birds, plucks them, eats them.
For the rest of the afternoon there was nothing else, the tall trees indefatigably rustled through the emptiness of the world, the splattering fountains flowed on as if unseen by passing armies, seasons. Cows were dreaming in the shade, I had made a little whistle out of bark into which I blew a single note till nightfall. Up above, little changed as the evening cooled, the doves that had been plucked had like phoenixes been reborn, redressing for a little meal, the tireless monsignori still hungry. We stared up at the long tables of people attended by a thousand footmen under the elms. I took my pigs to trough.
THERE WERE ALSO HORSEMEN.
Not the sort of horsemen who parade alongside coaches to stir the sweet hearts of women within, these young prelates or marquises, all the kings men: they remained on the road, only leaping into the fields to grab a gallop that would make certain hearts beat faster and my uncertain beasts run away, quickly returning to the road, trotting their horses close to the doors and chatting up those behind them; they only dismounted when they arrived up above, to the thunderous, hydraulic accompaniment of a fugue of fountains. The horsemen I mean were more reserved, they too liked to play around but they did so without pretense, since they weren’t trying to land azure prey; there were no women with them, they were more enigmatic. They weren’t boors but, out of bravado, they had taken on all the trappings of boors, their horses and their soft boots, though their boots weren’t as soft as those of all the king’s men, and, tacked on to this style borrowed from boors, they added the smiles of king’s men, borrowed as well. This shocked me. They would go into the palaces, and the lackeys they passed would have their indifferent air, bestial, that they would affect when princes passed. And almost every day a few of them would ride into my meadows, putting their feet to the ground; they’d make some pleasantry, and I would run off to crouch a little farther afield, and there I’d pester them with my whistle. I’d spy on them between the leaves. Unhurried, they would settle in, lifting their heads, breathing the air, taking in the horizon with a neutral glance, the footpaths retreating through the fields, the herds; they might exchange a few words, hesitating or disagreeing, and then they’d make some sudden, grand gesture toward something that seemed to be wildly interesting to them down there, toward a meagre stand with a little waterfall, at the edge of a wood where day and night seemed to be fighting over the foliage like they do all summer long, a struggle yielding nothing more than leaves: so they pointed at various things, each showing the others, and even I looked, opening my eyes wide to better see what was so shocking down there, perhaps a beautiful woman sleeping in those woods, or why not pissing, or a real Visitation rising into the sky, but there was nothing but leaves and water, sky. I blew my whistle. Their ludicrous ecstasy soon abated, and from their holsters they took little things, their papers and leads, and settled in, standing tall in their boots or sitting on an embankment, endlessly making little drawings. But of course— these were the painters.