I knew it was her, even when she was just a figure on the horizon, a bug, because I could make out those familiar, ample hips like an amphora vase where I’d laid my hands and my body; to the left, on the hill, were two Ionic columns, of course I knew they were really the towers from my window, but the painter who’d created this scene, who paints dreams, had transformed these towers into two Ionic columns, and little by little, getting closer, her legs also seemed like two columns, and a delicate vine climbed up to cover her pubis, and he wondered if she hadn’t become a tree, though the tree was moving, he was in his shroud, in the middle of this room that was flung wide open to the countryside, it was an idea of a room and inside this idea of a room was an olive grove that could only be the grove of Delphi, because the trunks were so gnarled and ancient, they could only be those of Delphi, the places they’d passed through in their life dancing dances with immemorial movements though not a trace remains, to the sound of a reed flute that we never hear, that guides our dancing, he hummed “Tha Xanarthis,” and she peeked out from behind an olive tree and said, of course I’m back, I had to come back, my darling Tristano, I thought you were dead, I looked all over the islands for you, I wrote you a letter, then let the wind take it, then a firefly wandering in a field of reaped wheat told me you were here, Tristano, and so I came. It’s true, he said, Mavri, my love, the wheat’s been threshed and the sheaves are yellowing in the fields, but it’s never too late to revive the stalks. Saying this, he lifted his shroud, she was very close now and with his head bowed, he whispered, do you see? — my leg’s being devoured by gangrene, the flesh is rotten and the worm is in the fruit; it’s so bad, the worm is in the fruit. He was naked, with just a kerchief around his neck like the reapers wear in the field. Tristano, she said, I can still see your cock, so you’re not completely rotten yet, maybe there’s still a little time. Daphne, he said, how notarial our life is, I’m here in articulo mortis. Well, I like you all the same, she said, even if your legs are full of maggots: your trunk is healthy, and that is where your heart is beating. Then they lay down, and the countryside around them turned into a hot, wide-open plain; over the hills the orange light of the setting sun sent the shadow of the Ionic temple all the way down to Daphne’s belly. You know, Daphne, he said, I forgot about backlighting, about the candle I always kept lit in a house on the shore, and one night you walked by in the frame of the window as though you were walking on air, that’s the most important memory of my whole life, and I was about to forget it, do you remember that house we once lived in, the empty rooms, the piano on the ground floor, the sound of the surf, the smell of algae that I called the smell of aldae because the woman who came to clean for us was named Alda? She didn’t answer, her breath came rushing in his ear, like panting, here I am, she breathed like she did at certain moments, here I am, Tristano, hold me tight, and just then the beacon light came on from down the coast, the plain was dark by then, but luckily the beacon light was on, and there was nothing to be afraid of.
… Do you know that poem where a mother dressed in black is crying over the body of her son killed in the square? Or did I already ask you? Frau read it to me the other day … you left one morning in May, it goes, and now the fountain is dry, I wish you water forever … and then it goes on to say that she unties her white hair and covers that withered flower of a face … half past midnight, the hours go by quickly, even if it isn’t half past midnight, that’s what I’m guessing, Frau turned on the lamp at nine, I’ve been here, not moving, not talking, and who would I talk to? — I’m alone in this house now … did you notice how nicely that poem works for me?… seems like it was written just for me, like the writer knew … but it’s not true that I don’t have anyone now, I can talk to you, even if all you do is listen, that’s something, that’s plenty … Thank you.
Writer, you see how I go back and forth in time, I wander, can’t tell now from then, can’t separate the two, which brings Papee to mind — but who was Papee? — did I ever meet him? Maybe he was a character in some novel I read once, a nice boy who fought for his country’s freedom, Burundi, or somewhere like that, and the memory sweeps everything along with it, into the same water, but you have an advantage: I’m teaching you that a clock’s time doesn’t run at the same pace as a lifetime, and any time you’ll have to discuss this, you can say you learned it from an old man about to croak who went back and forth in time as he pleased, and there will be those who think this is a trick of some kind, because they don’t care if they understand, they’ll think it’s all a trick, and that memory … There are so few memories remaining to us, writer: Caesar’s commentaries, Augustine’s confessions, certain de profundis, like Molly’s, a de profundis of the womb, though a man wrote it, and mine too is a de profundis … you know, writer, I’d really like to have a womb, to be a woman now, a beautiful, ripe young woman, the sap circulating in my body, how beautiful … lifted by the moon like the tides, a woman who was the origin of the world, and here I am instead, my two dried-up balls being devoured by gangrene, while I lie here blowing a bunch of hot air.
… Rosamunda, Rosamunda, on such a lovely evening, I truly am believing it’s fairy dust I’m breathing, a thousand voices, thousand choices, thousand hearts are all rejoicing, such happiness is ours, such joy beneath the stars … Oh, wri-ter, all of my love is for you, oh, wri-ter, I’m thinking only of you … You know, it’s really strange: I called you and I was only thinking about myself, I really wasn’t thinking about you, and since you’ve been here, even though you haven’t said a word, I’ve started thinking about you. For one reason: you’re writing me. And at times, you seem to be me a little, and so I ask myself if what I’m telling you is mine because I’m telling it, or is it yours because you’re writing it … Do things belong to those who say them or to those who write them? What do you think? Think it over — what’s it matter to me — why should I give a damn at this point?