Rango’s protest was to set out to deny and destroy the enemy. He set out to deny clock time and he would miss, first of all, all that he reached for. He would make such detours to obey his own rhythm and not the city’s that the simplest act of shaving and buying a steak would take hours, and the vitally important letter would never be written. If he passed a cigar store, his habit of counter-discipline would be stronger than his own needs and he would forget to buy the cigarettes he craved, but later when about to reach the house of a friend for lunch he would make a long detour for cigarettes and arrive too late for lunch, to find his angry friend gone, and thus once more the rhythm and pattern of the city were destroyed, the order broken, and Rango with it, Rango left without lunch.
He might try to reach the friend by going to the cafe, would find someone else and fall into talk about bookbinding and meanwhile another friend was waiting for Rango at the Guatemalan Embassy, waiting for his help, his introduction, and Rango never appeared, while Zora waited for him at the hospital, and Djuna waited for him in the barge, while the dinner she had made spoiled on the fire.
At this moment Rango was standing looking at a print on the bookstalls, or throwing dice over a cafe counter to gamble for a drink, and now that the city’s pattern had been destroyed, lay in shambles, he returned and said to Djuna: “I am tired.” And laid a despondent, a heavy head on her breasts, his heavy body on her bed, and all his unfulfilled desires, his aborted moments, lay downwith him like stones in his pockets, weighing him down, so that the bed creaked with the inertia of his words: “I wanted to do this, I wanted to do that, I want to change the world, I want to go and fight, I want…”
But it is night already, the day has fallen apart, disintegrated in his hands. Rango is tired, he will take another drink from the little barrel, eat a banana, and start to talk about his childhood, about the bread tree, the tree of the meadows that kill, the death of the little Negro boy his father had given him for his birthday, a little Negro boy who had been born the same day as Rango, but in the jungle, and who would be his companion on hunting trips, but who died almost immediately from the cold up in the mountains.
Thus at twilight when Rango had destroyed all order of the city because the city destroyed his body, and the day lay like a cemetery of negations, of rebellions and abortions, lay like a giant network in which he had tangled himself as a child tangles himself in an order he cannot understand, and is in danger of strangling himself…then Djuna, fearing he might suffocate, or be crushed, would tenderly seek to unwind him, just as she picked up the pieces of his broken glasses to have them made again…
They had reached a perfect moment of human love. They had created a moment of perfect understanding and accord. This highest moment would now remain as a point of comparison to torment them later on when all natural imperfections would disintegrate it.
The dislocations were at first subtle and held no warning of future destruction. At first the vision was clear, like a perfect crystal. Each act, each word would be imprinted on it to shed light and warmth on the growing roots of love, or to distort it slowly and corrode its expansion.
Rango lighting the lantern for her arrival, for her to see the red light from afar, to be reassured, incited to walk faster, elated by this symbol of his presence and his fervor. His preparing the fire to warm her… These rituals Rango could not sustain, for he could not maintain the effort to arrive on time since his lifelong habit had created the opposite habit: to elude, to avoid, to disappoint every expectation of others, every commitment, every promise, every crystallization.
The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds—all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes.
The importance of rhythm in Djuna was so strong that no matter where she was, even without a watch, she sensed the approach of midnight and would climb on a bus, so instinctively accurate that very often as she stepped off the bus the twelve loud gongs of midnight would be striking at the large station clock.
This obedience to timing was her awareness of the rarity of unity between human beings. She was fully, painfully aware that very rarely did midnight strike in two hearts at once, very rarely did midnight arouse two equal desires, and that any dislocation in this, any indifference, was an indication of disunity, of the difficulties, the impossibilities of fusion between human beings.
Her own lightness, her freedom of movement, her habit of sudden vanishings made her escapes more possible, whereas Rango, on the contrary, had never been known to leave except when the bottles, the people, the night, the cafe, the streets were utterly empty.
But for her, his inability to overcome the obstacles which delayed him lessened the power of his love.
Little by little, she became aware that he had two fires to light, one at home for Zora, and one on the barge. When he arrived late and wet, she was moved by his tiredness and her awareness of his burdens at home, and she began to light the fire for him.
He loved to sleep late, while she would be awakened by the passing of coal barges, by foghorns, and by the heavy traffic over the bridge. So she would dress quietly and she would run to the cafe at the corner and return with coffee and buns to surprise him on awakening.
“How human you are, Djuna, how warm and human…”
“But what did you expect me to be?”
“Oh, you look as if the very day you were born you took one look at the world and decided to live in some region between heaven and earth which the Chinese called the Wise Place.”
The immense clock on the Quai d’Orsay station which sent people traveling, showed such an enormous, reproachful face in the morning: it is time to take care of Zora, it is time to take care of your father, it is time to return to the world, time time time…
As she knew how much she had loved to see the red lantern gleaming behind the window of the barge as she walked toward it, when Rango fell back into his habit of lateness, it was she who lit the lantern for him, mastering her fear of the dark barge, the drunken watchman, the hobos asleep, the moving figures behind the trees.
When she discovered how strong was his need of wine, she never said: don’t drink. She bought a small barrel at the flea market, had it filled with red wine, and placed it at the head of the bed within reach of his hand, having faith that their life together, their adventures together, and the stories they told each other to pass the time, would soon take the place of the wine. Having faith that their warmth together would take the place of the warmth of the wine, believing that all the natural intoxications of caresses would flow from her and not the barrel…
Then one day he arrived with a pair of scissors in his pocket. Zora was in the hospital for a few days. It was she who always cut his hair. He hated barbers. Would Djuna like to cut his hair?
His heavy, his brilliant, his curling black hair, which neither water nor oil could tame. She cut it as he wished, and felt, for a moment, like his true wife.
Then Zora returned home, and resumed her care of Rango’s hair.
And Djuna wept for the first time, and Rango did not understand why she wept.
“I would like to be the one to cut your hair.”