You like it? I thought about it all night, rewrote it in my head, word for word, but I’m sure you’ll improve it once you write it down; make it poignant, if you can … I’m not much good at heartbreak, but that’s exactly what this calls for, because this is a letter that truly came out of nowhere … Who wrote that letter to Tristano, and from what depths did it emerge, like a relentless sea-bass pushing up in time from the bottom of the ocean until one day it breaks the surface of the water? Was she still living, that woman searching for his grave? — and why — to dig her own beside it? Daphne was no longer there, but her voice remained, so her search for him remained as well. Can we survive ourselves? Who can say … Eyes wide-open in the dog days of August, with words from a letter but no letter in his hand, the air thick with viscous remorse, like ammoniac gas leaking from a punctured pipe, Tristano stood there, frozen in the blinding midday sun, naked as the day he was born, as he’d fled from the house, fled from voices invoking spirits that were invoking him … his hanging, flaccid member, a useless compass needle, indicating a non-cardinal point that he knew to be the ground, and more than the ground, the bottom, and more than the bottom, the pit, and eternity … and the slight kiss of light on his body turned to shadow, blinding shadow that swallowed all … He raised his arms, groping, and he felt he inhabited nothing, was made of nothing, too. Was he already dead? Who could say, who could say … No one can say, writer, I’m the only one who knows, and maybe I don’t know, either, because you don’t just die on the outside, you die on the inside even more.
I’ll be honest, before you came I thought I’d tell you everything about Mavri Elià, no one’s ever mentioned her, and luckily, you ignored her in your book as well … I told myself that I’d make things right again. How foolish, as if things could be made right in this life … but I don’t feel like it anymore, Mavri Elià is Tristano’s and his alone, why should I give her to you, you don’t deserve her … at most, I’ll give you a few of the essential details, limit myself to the so-called facts. But what do facts mean?… the facts … let’s say this … the facts … when she disappeared, for instance … when she passed away, like someone might say who uses expressions like, it is my obligation to, and, my condolences. So stupid, people don’t die, it is my obligation to be precise, they’re only under a spell … a writer you must be familiar with said we’re under the spell of those who love us — I mean those who really really love us — and we wind up floating off the ground, like balloons, though no one sees, the only ones who see are those who love us, those who really really love us, and they rise up on tiptoe, give a little hop, just a bounce, and grab hold of our legs, which at this point have turned to air, and they pull us down, keep hold of us, otherwise we’d start flying again, rising again, but they link their arm in ours, holding us down, down with them, as if nothing had occurred, as we do with certain pretenses in our life, a matter of social convention, so we won’t look bad in front of the shopkeeper or the tobacco-store owner who’s known you forever and might say, but look at that strange guy arm-in-arm with his wife who’s floating right off the ground … and that’s what happened to him, to Tristano, it was Sunday, and even if it wasn’t, make it Sunday, because I’ve decided that everything important to Tristano happened on a Sunday, and if you write it this way in your book, what you write will become true, because when things are written down they become true … and it was August, because I’ve decided all the important things in Tristano’s life happened on a Sunday in August, and if you write it this way, then it will become true as well, you’ll see … he wandered around empty Plaka and thought about how sad she looked at times, and about some sad evenings at Malafrasca, Daphne, pensive, staring out the open windows toward the plains, the gas lamps, and her saying in her Crete accent, Tristano, if there’s one thing I want, it’s not to be buried out there when I die, in that cemetery covered by fog, take me home and have me cremated, and scatter my ashes in my sea, around my Aegean islands, but nothing dramatic, please, something simple, just wander here and there, go from one island to the next, borrow a little fishing boat, take it a little ways out from shore, not too far, at Sifnos, Naxos, Paros, and throw a pinch here, a pinch there, and also, please lie naked in the bottom of the boat, like when we made those trips because you got it into your head to fish for gambusinen, but you never did fish for them, and we’d wind up making love, the boat rocking crazily and you shouting, shipwrecked once more!.. Tristano stopped at the men’s shop in Plaka, she was lying in the Byzantine chapel nearby, it was so hot … and he thought the shopkeeper might find a way to get her back because he’d known her since she was a girl, but the shopkeeper didn’t remember her, then Tristano went to the snack kiosk and asked the little man if he remembered a woman who bought candies there as a girl, her name’s Daphne, Phine, her friends always called her Phine, she’s lying in a coffin in the chapel close by, on the square, if you remember her, could you give her back to me? I’ve heard about these magic spells, and I’m trying … But the little man at the kiosk didn’t remember Daphne, sorry, he said, but Greece is filled with Daphnes … and then Tristano turned to the legless woman selling violets, and the legless woman selling violets remembered her at once, of course, of course, she said, that girl with eyes like two black olives, it was a long time ago, but I remember her very well, look, she hasn’t just vanished into thin air, she’s right there beside you, up by that orange tree, just grab her legs and pull her down … Spells are strange, writer, because just like that, Tristano swung round and there was Mavri Elià floating by an orange tree, and he told her, how silly, I’m old and must be going blind, you were right there behind me and I didn’t even notice, thank god for the lady selling violets who made me see you were only under a spell … Thank you, ma’am, he said to the legless woman selling violets, and he pulled Daphne down from the tree and they started strolling around Plaka, but it wasn’t as he thought, it was a winter day, and Daphne was saying, come inside the door, they’re shooting — it’s dangerous — and you’ve killed a German officer.
Ferruccio said that lesser organisms have greater vitality than those that are more evolved. That’s the theory of someone who died young, people who think like that have to die young, just to be consistent … I’d tell you a story, a nice little tidbit, something no one really suspects, but I’m tired now, it must be getting late, I need to sleep … I’ll say it briefly, and you’ll have to do some embellishing, because it’s not all that exciting … but right now I really need to sleep, I can’t hold out any longer. Tomorrow, please come early, at dawn even, I’ll be awake then, there’s not much time left, I want to die before the end of August, and September’s knocking at the door, I can hear it.