All night I tortured myself, wondering whether I should return to the cemetery or not. Then, in the early hours of morning, the cart of souls appeared. It was flying up to the moon, but the bad souls fell to the ground just as they were about to climb aboard. The good souls, however, immediately began grazing in the fields of the sky, eating the grass of the blessed, a wing over their foreheads.
I was ill in the morning, wandering mechanically about the house, not knowing what to do, not sure what I was searching for, what I wanted, the thread of memory enshrouded, lost. I went without lunch; I had burned it. I could no longer tolerate the battle with life, and when the hour of terror arrived, I left the house. Everything within me led me where I didn’t want to go. I walked quickly up the streets. Once, when I breathed in, the stink of tar filled my nasal cavities. Everything was so still I should have realized I was being followed. I didn’t hear the footsteps, but, oh yes, someone was following me. There were seven of them, all more or less the same size, with waxen faces and closed eyes. If I had stretched out my hand behind me I could have touched the one who was closest. It was me when I was seven years old, wearing an apron with pockets and black woolen stockings. Enveloped by silence, I stood in front of the cemetery and again breathed in, then out, my spirit and heart calmed.
You could see a light in the gravedigger’s house. The gate was half shut. Twisting my body to become as thin as possible, as if I were passing through a mangle, I slipped past and entered the cemetery. Instead of heading to the right, I went to the left. I would have to go the long way round, walking through the area where the rotting wreaths were piled, but I would avoid the avenue of cypress trees where the gravedigger could see me. There’s no telling what he might have said. I stopped beside the tomb. The creatures that had been following me had vanished. For a moment the terrible solitude was disturbing. Not a blade of grass moved, not one sad leaf. Everything seemed so tender my eyes couldn’t get enough of it. Finally, with my arms extended, I whispered — not addressing anyone — that it was all mine. The garden of the dead, from wall to wall, and far within, down to the deepest roots, the sky toppled so you never know where it begins or ends, with a sliver of moon dappling it with yellow near the sea. There was no trace of the chrysanthemums, but on the ground, embedded in a stone, something black gleamed, long and narrow as my arm. A feather. I was dying to touch it — it seemed so strange — but I didn’t dare, and it was so large that it frightened me. What wing, what tail could possibly have borne a feather like that? I leaned over breathlessly and stared till I couldn’t stop myself any longer. Then I ran my finger over it. It seemed like silk. “How beautiful you’ll look in a vase,” I said. When I was on the point of picking up the feather to take it home, a flapping of wings and a strong gust of wind thrust me against the olive tree. Everything had changed. The angel was there, tall and black, above the tomb. The branches, the leaves, the three-star sky were all from another world. The angel was so still that it didn’t seem real, till finally it leaned to the side, almost falling over, and very gently — was it to calm me? — it began to sway from side to side, side to side. Just when I thought it would never stop, suddenly, it fled upwards like a moan, slicing the air, then dropped to the ground, diaphanous. Right beside me. Help me, legs! I ran like mad, dodging tombs, stumbling into shrubs, doing my best not to scream. Once I was convinced that the angel had lost me, I stopped, my hands on my heart so it wouldn’t escape, but dear Jesus, there it was, standing before me, taller than night, made of cloud, its trembling wings the size of sails. I looked at it for the longest time and it at me, as if we were both under a spell. With my eyes trained on it, I stretched out an arm, but a flap of its wing made me draw back.”Go away!” cried a furious voice that I wasn’t sure was mine. Again I stretched out an arm, again the wing flapped furiously. I began to scream, as if I’d gone mad, “Go away, go away, go away!” The third time that I stretched out my arm, I bumped into some agaves. I don’t know how I managed, but I curled up behind them as fast as I could, certain that the angel hadn’t spotted me. The wedge of moon that was now in the center of the sky spat fire from the edges.
Lying on my stomach, using my elbows, I crawled along the ground like a worm; I got caught on everything, ripped my clothes on some kind of thorn. I wished I could just go to sleep forever on the bed of rustling leaves, not knowing where I would end up or if I would be able to leave the cemetery. With tremendous effort I finally reached the cypress trees. The bitter scent of sun-warmed mandarin flowers reached me. Where could it be coming from? It was making me dizzy. Keeping my eyes shut in order to kill the angel, I pushed aside the branches that kept scratching my arm and came to a halt by the nearest cypress. My arm hurt, and blood was oozing from my cheek where an agave spike had cut me. On the other side of the path, still as death and suffused with starlight, the angel was watching me. I didn’t move again. The exhaustion was more powerful than fear.
•
Was it midnight or was I dreaming that it was midnight? My poor dead man was weeping far away because I had forgotten him, but then a voice from behind a chalky, moon-like sun told me the angel was my dead man and nothing lay inside the tomb. No bones, no memory of the person at rest. There was no need for me to buy another flower, neither large nor small. Nor should I shed any more tears. I should only laugh till that hour when I too would be an angel. I wanted to shout loudly — so that my hidden voice could be heard — that I didn’t like wings or feathers and didn’t want to be an angel. But I couldn’t. My voice ordered me to look. A low-lying fog was spreading over the cemetery, like a sheet made of all the dead who lay there, and I was filled with a sense of well-being. Many scents reached me: honey, grass that grows only in starlight. I was no longer by the cypress tree but in a little square surrounded by tombs. The angel was sitting on a wooden bench, his wings stretched out on the ground, as if he had been waiting for me since the day I was born. I remember thinking, “If he drags his wings around like that, some of the feathers will come off, and they’ll get lost in the cemetery.” The fog grew whiter and thicker, causing my legs to freeze, moving forward. Not the fog, me. I was slipping down an incline of frost. Against my will, I drew nearer the angel, who never took his eyes off me. When I stood beside him, he rose suddenly into the air till his head touched the moon, and the scent of grass turned into the scent of good, black earth — the kind in which anything can grow — and the scent began to envelope me. You could hear the sound of water and see a gleaming thread of something coming from the tombs and the dead leaves, and the angel spread his wings wide, when he had me right beside him, when I could feel his sweetness blending with mine. . I’ll never understand why I needed to feel so protected, but the angel must have understood, for he wrapped me in his wings, but without squeezing me, and I, more dead than alive, stroked them, searching for the silk. I remained wrapped inside forever, as if I were nowhere. Imprisoned.