I saw us as two good children, free to stroll through Heavenly sadness. We got along perfectly. We worked side by side, filled with emotion. But, after a penetrating caress, he said: ’How ridiculous all you’ve been through will seem when I’m no longer here. When you no longer have my arms beneath your neck, nor my heart to lie upon, nor my mouth upon your eyes. Because one day, I’ll go far away. I must make myself useful to others, too: it’s my duty. However unsavory this seems … dear heart …’ Immediately, in the wake of his absence, I felt both gripped by vertigo and thrown into the most unbearable darkness: death. I made him swear he wouldn’t leave me. He swore a lover’s promise twenty times over. It was as meaningless as when I said, ‘I understand you.’

“Oh, but I was never jealous of him! I don’t think he’ll ever really leave me. What would become of him? He hasn’t a friend in the world: and he won’t take a job. He wants to live the life of a sleepwalker. Can goodness and charity by themselves find him a place in the world? From time to time, I forget my pitiful circumstances and think: he’ll make me strong, we’ll explore together, we’ll hunt in deserts, we’ll sleep on the sidewalks of unknown cities, without worries, without sorrow. Or I’ll awake and find that his magical powers will have transformed all laws and customs, leaving the world intact; I’ll be left with my desires, joys, insouciance. Oh, give me this life of innocent adventure in return for the suffering I’ve endured. But he won’t. I can’t appreciate his ideals. He told me he has regrets, hopes: but they don’t concern me. Does he speak of God? Perhaps I should. I’m at the very bottom of the abyss, and I’ve forgotten how to pray.

“Were he to explain his sorrows, would I understand them better than his derision? He attacks me, spending hours making me feel guilty for everything that has ever meant anything to me in this life, and yet, he takes umbrage when I cry.

“ ‘—Do you see that dapper fellow, going into that lovely, little house: his name is Duval, Dufour, Armand, Maurice, something. And inside, some woman has devoted her life to loving that idiot: she’s probably dead, doubtless a saint in heaven. You’ll kill me as surely as he killed that woman. That’s what happens to people like us, we who are kind-hearted …’ Alas! There were days when he believed all mankind’s motions were dictated by some wholesale, grotesque delirium: and he’d laugh wretchedly, at length. —Then, like some sweet sister, his maternal impulses would return. Were he less of a savage, we’d be saved! But even his sweetness is mortal. Surrendered, I follow. —I’m insane!

“Perhaps one day he’ll miraculously disappear; but were he returned to heaven, I would need to know that I might glimpse my darling’s assumption.”

One strange couple.

DELIRIA

II
ALCHEMY OF THE WORD

My turn. A tale of one of my follies.

For some time, I’d boasted a mastery of every arena, and had found famous painters and poets ridiculous.

I preferred bad paintings: hanging above doors, on sets or carnival backdrops, billboards, cheap prints; and unfashionable literature, church Latin, barely literate erotica, novels beloved by grannies, fairy tales, children’s books, old operas, silly songs, simple scansions.

I dreamed crusades, unimagined journeys of discovery, invisible republics, failed religious wars, moral revolutions, racial and continental drift: I believed in every enchantment.

I invented colors for vowels! —Black A, white E, red I, blue O, green U.—I regulated the shape and movement of every consonant, and, based on an inner scansion, flattered myself with the belief I had invented a poetic language that, one day or another, would be understood by everyone, and that I alone would translate.

It started out as an exercise. I wrote silences; nights; I recorded the unnameable.