Daylight puts dreams to sleep ... The past is just a dream. I can think of nothing, for that matter, that isn’t a dream ... If I look closely at the present, it seems to have already moved on ... What is anything? How does it move on from one moment to the next? How does it inwardly move on? ... Oh let’s talk, sisters, let’s talk all together in a loud voice ... Silence is beginning to take shape, to be a thing ... I feel it wrapping me like a mist ... Ah, talk, talk! ...

 

SECOND WATCHER What for? ... I stare at you both and don’t see you right away ... Chasms seem to have opened between us ... To be able to see you I have to wear out the idea that I can see you ... This warm air feels cold inside, in the part that touches my soul... Right now I should be feeling impossible hands running through my hair—that’s the image people use when talking about mermaids... (Pauses, crossing her hands on her knees.) Just now, when I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was thinking about my past.

 

FIRST WATCHER And I must have been thinking about mine ...

 

THIRD WATCHER I don’t know what I was thinking about... Perhaps about the past of others..., the past of wondrous people who never existed ... Not far from my mother’s house flowed a stream. Why did it flow, and why didn’t it flow farther away, or nearer? ... Is there any reason for anything being what it is? Is there any reason that’s true and real like my hands? ...

 

SECOND WATCHER Our hands are not true or real. They’re mysteries that inhabit our life ... Sometimes, staring at my hands, I fear God ... No wind makes the candles flutter, but look: they flutter. Toward what? ... What a pity if someone could answer! ... I feel like listening to exotic melodies which at this very moment are surely playing in palaces on other continents ... In my heart everything is always far away ... Perhaps because I chased the waves at the seashore when I was a child. I led life by the hand among the rocks at low tide, when the ocean seems to have crossed its hands on its chest and fallen asleep, like the statue of an angel, so that no one will ever look at it again ...

 

THIRD WATCHER Your words remind me of my soul ...

 

SECOND WATCHER Perhaps because they’re not true ... I hardly realize. Im saying them.