And although quite feeble and disillusioned, he felt a good, warm thrill upon gulping down a few of those still living memories, like a glass of fiery wine that had ripened in the sun, which had devoured his life; it was the kind of thrill that spring gives our convalescences and winter’s hearth our weaknesses. The feeling that his old, worn body had nevertheless blazed with similar flames—blazed with similar devouring flames—brought a renewal to his life. Then, musing that the things lying down full-length upon him were simply the enormous, moving shadows, which, elusive, alas, would all soon intermingle in the eternal night, he began weeping again.
And, while knowing that those were nothing but shadows, shadows of flames, which had hurried off to burn somewhere else, which he would never see again, he nevertheless started worshiping them, lending them a cherished existence that contrasted with imminent and absolute oblivion. And all those kisses and all that kissed hair and all those things made up of tears and lips, of caresses poured out like heady wine, of despairs gathering like music or like evening for the bliss of being infinitely permeated with mystery and destinies: the adored woman, who had possessed him so thoroughly that nothing had existed for him but whatever had served his adoration; she had possessed him so thoroughly and was now slipping away, so vague that he no longer held on to her, no longer held on to even the perfume wafting from the fleeing folds of her cloak.
He convulsively tried to revive all those things, resurrect them, and pin them like butterflies. And it grew more difficult each time. And he still had caught none of the butterflies; but each time, his fingers had rubbed off a smidgen of the glamour of their wings; or rather, he saw them in the mirror, he vainly banged on the mirror to touch them, but only dimmed it slightly more each time, and he saw the butterflies only as indistinct and less enchanting. And nothing could cleanse that tarnished mirror of his heart now that the purifying breath of youth or genius would no longer pass over it—by what unknown law of our seasons, what mysterious equinox of our autumn . . . ?
And each time, he felt less sorrow about losing them—those kisses on those lips, and those endless hours, and those fragrances that had once made him delirious.
And he sorrowed for sorrowing less, and then even that sorrow faded. Then all sorrows drifted away, all; he did not have to banish pleasures: clutching their flowering branches and without looking back, they had long since fled on their winged heels, fled this dwelling which was no longer young enough for them. Then, like all human beings, he died.
Relics
I have bought everything of hers that was for sale: I had wanted to be her lover, but she refused to even chat with me for an instant. I have the small deck of cards with which she amused herself every evening, her two marmosets, three novels bearing her coat-of-arms on their boards, and her dog. Oh, you delights, dear leisures of her life: without even relishing them as I would have done, without even desiring them, you had all her freest, most secret, and most inviolable hours; you did not feel your happiness and you cannot describe it.
Cards, which she handled every evening with her closest friends, which saw her bored or laughing, which witnessed the start of her romance and which she put down so as to kiss the man who came to play with her every evening after that; novels, which she opened or closed in bed at the whim of her fancy or fatigue, which she selected according to her momentary caprice or her dreams, novels, to which she confided her dreams, which mingled with the dreams they expressed, and which helped her to dream her own dreams better—have you retained nothing about her, and will you tell me nothing?
Novels, because she too imagined the lives of your characters and of your poet; cards, because in her own way she, together with you, felt the calm and sometimes the fever of vivid intimacy—novels, have you kept nothing of her mind, which you diverted or imbued, nothing of her heart, which you unburdened or consoled?
Cards, novels, which she held so often, which lay so long on her table; you queens, kings, or jacks, who were the motionless guests at her most reckless parties; you heroes and heroines of novels, who, near her bed and under the crossed lights of her lamp and her eyes, dreamed your dream, silent yet full of voices—you could not have allowed all the perfume to evaporate, all the fragrance with which you were permeated by the air in her room, the fabrics of her frocks, the touch of her hands or her knees.
You have preserved the creases inflicted on you by her joyful or nervous hand; and perhaps you still imprison the tears of grief induced by a book or by life; and the daylight that brightened or wounded her eyes gave you that warm color. I touch you all atremble, fearful of your revelations, worried by your silence. Alas! Perhaps, like you, bewitching and fragile beings, she was the indifferent and unconscious witness to her own grace. Her most genuine beauty may have been in my desire. She lived her life, but I may have been the only one to dream it.
Moonlight Sonata
ONE
More than by the fatiguing trip, I was exhausted by my memory and by frightened thoughts of my father’s demands, of Pia’s indifference, and of my enemies’ relentlessness. During the day, my mind had been diverted by Assunta’s company, her singing, her gentleness toward me, whom she barely knew, her white, brown, and rosy beauty, her fragrance persisting in the blusters of the ocean wind, the feather in her hat, the pearls around her neck.
But toward nine at night, feeling overwhelmed, I asked her to take the carriage back on her own and leave me to rest a bit in the fresh air. We had almost reached Honfleur; the place was well chosen: it was located against a wall, by the gateway to a double avenue lined with huge trees that shielded against the wind, and the air was mild. Assunta agreed and left. I stretched out on the grass, facing the gloomy sky; lulled by the murmuring sea, which I could hear behind me but not discern in the darkness, I shortly dozed off.
Soon I dreamed that in front of me the sunset was illuminating the distant sand and sea. Twilight was thickening, and it seemed to me that these were a sunset and a twilight like any twilight and any sunset. Then I was handed a letter; I tried to read it, but I was unable to make out anything. Only now did I realize it was very dark out despite the impression of intense and diffuse light. This sunset was extraordinarily pale, lustrous without brightness, and so much darkness gathered on the magically illuminated sand that I had to make an arduous effort merely to recognize a seashell. In this twilight, the kind special to dreams, the sun, ill and faded, appeared to be setting on a polar beach.
My distress had suddenly dissipated; my father’s decisions, Pia’s feelings, my enemies’ cunning still weighed on me but no longer crushed me: they were like a natural and irrelevant necessity. The contradiction of that dark resplendence, the miracle of that enchanted respite for my ills, inspired no defiance in me, no dread; instead I was swept up, deluged, inundated by a growing bliss and finally awakened by its delicious intensity. I opened my eyes. Splendid and pallid, my dream spread out all around me. The wall I was resting against was brightly lit, and the shadow of its ivy was as sharp as at four in the afternoon.
The leaves of a silver poplar glistened as they were turned over by a faint breeze. Whitecaps and white sails were visible on the water, the sky was clear, the moon had risen. For brief moments, wispy clouds drifted across the moon, where they were tinted with blue nuances, their pallor as deep as the jelly of a medusa or the heart of an opal. Brightness shone everywhere, but my eyes could not catch it. The darkness persisted even on the grass, which was glowing almost like a mirage. The woods and a trench were absolutely black. All at once, a slight rustle awakened slowly like a misgiving, then swelled quickly and seemed to roll over the forest. It was the shuddering of leaves crumpled by the breeze. One by one I heard them surging like waves against the vast silence of the entire night. Then the rustle itself waned and died out.
In the grassy strip running ahead of me between the two dense lines of oaks, a river of brightness appeared to flow, contained between those two embankments of gloom. The moonlight, conjuring up the gatekeeper’s lodge, the foliage, a sail from the night where they had been demolished, failed to arouse them. In this dreamlike hush, the moon illuminated only
