I'm writing down, almost carving into the paper: "They are two creatures who meet, who hold each other in the suburbs of time, in the shadowy corner of a vision." And I can see them clearly in the gloom of my room. The vision does not give me time to pass the rocker blotter onto the ink. The mosquito blood begins to moisten the letters “s” or “c,” or maybe both. Certainty and disdain confound me for an instant. The past and the future met casually in my pen, and this story hit me as though I had dreamed it on my own.
And Fernanda goes up slowly, fugitively the stairs of this suburban mansion. It is time for her to light the candles but I no longer care about her messy curls or the scent of her springtime shoulders nor her dress sweated by her lover.
I just want to react to this phantom in which I see myself, the heart beating madly within my chest, stunned by this guy in a red poncho who turned on Rivadavia street. Three or four or six cars surround me, honking their horns in a hysterical reproach. It was an impossible crash, an inconceivable braking, a wound in the groin, a thought that makes me escape.
It is the inevitable surprise of seeing a strange man in a strange vehicle, looking at me with familiar eyes, though I had never seen them before. The man appeared suddenly out of darkness in the street with a bright yellow glow. And the fright stretches my tendons, makes me shout out a thousand names and invoke the name of my Lady, the untouchable one. Was it a savage apparition?
Farther, Fernanda, with a shriek in her feet, is coming to light up my dusky room. And farther off, a traffic jam and blood, a heartbeat and a sudden oblivion of a betrayed woman who, perhaps, is waiting down South. And even farther off, an unfathomable hole; an anxious heartbeat; an imprecise, blurred, ghostly boundary. An unknown world, like an ancient whip, or a thought of suffocation, a rendezvous with life. The South. Perhaps.
| LADY ARAGUEN’S LOOKOUT |
Within me is all that I wish:
my richness impoverishes me.
OVID, Metamorphoses, III-466
It is not easy to be a foreigner in southern lands. Here everything is about to happen, yet there floats in the air the melancholy of a long-lived nation. But in these regions in fact, everything is new, dubious, perhaps precarious. I must learn to love these lands, including that rancid air which seems very like a Springtime which resists getting started.
I arrived in the Spring. I still detect the yellow vibration of the sun above the open path on the hill, the trees, deformed from abundance and exploding in greenery. When I arrived on my way I just debarked the boat; anybody might have heard my steps crunching along the pebbles, but I know very well that any resident, accustomed to the site, would not perceive, as I did, the thundrous murmur of silence.
The young man with the wide nose and straw-like hair passed by me and from horseback greeted me with a nod of the head. I answered the greeting with my recently learned Spanish from boats and postings; between the gurgle of wine in urgent glasses and the ladies with the sweat of other men. The young man departed at a gallop as he left a dust devil in his wake, which I ate, a little amused as I remembered the salty moistness of ladies and sweat. I put my hand in my pocket and took out a scissors. What is this scissor doing in my pocket? I walked on.
That afternoon the atmosphere was not all dry. I think I mentioned it was Spring. The trees were lazy in growing as cool foliage and the air was stirring my contours. I think I heard tolling of some far-off bells wafted nearer by the wind. As I walked down the path which welcomed me, it came to my mind Blodwen's face on the farewell day, when we all promised to return. Who knows? It is possible that my lineage may have been founded on trips and exile, in hopping boats which leave ports to discover worlds and mix their sperm in the waves of unknown shores.
Perhaps I was returning at that moment as I walked the path of that county in South America. Blodwen... I suddenly remembered the last time I had pronounced out loud that familiar name of Blodwen... and since then the sound remained bouncing around like a whisper inside me. It had been a long time since I had pronounced out loud the acquaintance name of Blodwen. It took the same time to try to return somewhere that, at first, I did not recognize.
As I insisted on remembering Blodwen’s sinuosity and skin I saw the white large house that seemed to throb in the center of this open landscape at the South end of the world. I continued my path following the rhythm of my feet on the pebbles. Before arriving at the front door, I saw a horse tied to its post resting in the shade of the column. I saw the young man with the straw hair scraping the sole of his sandals on the tall grass at the side of the road. When the young man saw me, he lifted a hand to greet me. His gesture was accompanied with a friendly smile and I was obliged to do exactly the same. He is a son of this land and he greets me.
I was now inside the domain of this house. It was apparent the owners were rich, powerful landowners judging by the size of the property. I coninued walking toward the white large house. I imagined removing my walking boots and relaxing beside a pitcher of house wine. Perhaps I would stay a few days. I would learn the news from the locals. Possibly someone would give me a job. Maybe even the owner of the house would give me a job. But hadn't I arrived along with companions? Where were my countrymen? The sudden memory made me stop. We had come for founding a settlement at this place. But I was walking alone now, and I couldn't explain how I had arrived there.
So, near the road toward the mansion’s entrance, beside the cistern, I saw the black-haired young woman, whose skin was as white as her dress. She was trying to pull out a pail full of water and twice had to make sudden movements to keep from falling into the well, pail and all. When I realized what she needed I approached rapidly to help her with her task. I didn’t say a word. I just grabbed the pail and emptied the water into the pitcher the young lady had left on the ground beside the cistern.
“Thank you, sir,” she said and I saw a dimple buried beside her mouth.
“There is no need,” I answered and I think she caught my foreign accent.
The young lady looked at me for a few seconds. She smiled with an intense, electric expression. I noted her fine features, her small mouth, accustomed to pronouncing words without pretentiousness. She took the pitcher and walked toward the wooden door of the big house but stopped right before entering.
“You are welcome,” she said, this time with a wider smile. And she entered.
I did not know why, but I felt welcome that day.
I had barely entered when I saw many folks in this large dining room. They were all chatting in small groups. Nobody seemed surprised at my entrance. Some gave me friendly looks, but continued their conversations. Over their heads was a tenuous, fragrant haze. Then came the young man with the straw-like hair. He stopped right by my side as though he was gathering courage to enter. We nearly brushed against each other. I noted his skin was much darker and half his body was covered with an animal skin.
“You also come to consult The Lady,” he said barely looking at me
"The Lady?" I repeated, without noticing that the lad had stepped away and already seated at a table among some others like him.
At that moment, I observed that the young lady I had encountered at the cistern was looking at me with a certain impish light in her eyes. She was serving diners a liquid from a pitcher as she observed me. She approached me, took my arm and invited me pleasantly to sit on a tall bench which was in front of a kind of counter. Without saying anything, but smiling, she served me water in a wooden cup. I hadn’t noticed up to then but I was very thirsty. I drank in one gulp what I had been served. She left and I didn’t see her again in that dining room.
I thought about how strange all that was. And I again took the scissors out from my jacket. What did this mean in my pocket? I saw my own tiny, fluttering reflection on the burnished bronze surface of the tool's eyes. It seemed to me a wondrous trick of the light. I guessed that it belonged to a professional tailor but I could not figure yet what the scissors did in my jacket.
“Lady
Araguen is a very pleasant foreigner.”
The youngster's voice came from somewhere beside me. It surprised me indeed, though I even expected that intervention from the straw-like haired lad, whose path had crossed mine. I didn't answer him, I stood looking at him wordlessly.
"Have you already taken a peek into this place?" the lad continued. "They say one returns firstly to the place we dreamed of last time. You get what I mean?"
I didn't get what he was saying. It wasn't his strange way of speaking, with guttural sounds full of sudden stops in the prosody ...
“But you also speak a language with sounds coming from the throat,” he said without apparently having the opportunity to know the nature of my thoughts.
I also did not respond that time since everything was so strange that it seemed familiar. Instead, I laughed heartily. That young man was right. We both laughed.
“Who is Lady Araguen?” I finally asked.
“The one who will remind you of the last place you dreamed of.”
A few days went by. I very soon became accustomed to those regions at the south of the world. To pass the time, I learned to cultivate Lady Araguen's lands. We didn't meet yet though I could imagine her to be a cold and aged person, like the estate she owned. Other people arrived; some others that I used to see were no longer there. Two or three times I ran into my young dark-skinned friend, always with a smiling face and pleasant words, despite his guttural accent. Until I stopped seeing him. Yet I had no time to miss him very much. One afternoon, as I was harvesting vegetables, spring, at last, overcame its resistance and it showed up as an overjoyed breath in a young woman's voice.
"It's about time we saw you!" said the voice, surprising me with its familiar silkiness.
The black-haired young woman gazed at me from under a parasol which she held gracefully. She took my arm, nearly as she had the very first day I arrived at the dining room. She walked by my side, holding my arm, according to a rhythmic swinging which reminded me of the cities so far-off from me at that time. We talked about many things on that stroll. She was quite interested, primarily, in me telling her details of the country I had come from. At some point, I realized she was leading me toward some place that I had never seen before. We entered a leafy, damp spot. I was struck by the scent of its vegetation.
Then she went a few steps away. She gazed at me intensely in a way I don't remember being looked at before. She unbuttoned her dress, which fell at her feet to me to admire her smooth white skin, her wise nudity, like everything which is nude. I felt a shivering in my body, a sudden emotion. That young woman was inviting me to go along with her into that thicket. And I went with her.
While we entered this world of trees and plants, I began to get naked. Then she lay down on the damp ground and invited me to love her. And I loved her, there in that place of that unexpected forest, so pervaded by me and her forever. As I sought within her my own body’s response, I saw my reflection in his eyes. I noticed the way her white skin was getting goosebumps, I felt how silky her black hair was. And there, suddenly, at the climax, they came to me sharp and silky pictures of my Blodwen, who I confounded with this young woman. I spilt myself over that memory, and I used myself up in a flow of tears.
The young girl got dressed, a little cold and distant. I remained exhausted on the green surface. I got dressed with what strength I had left. Then she took my arm again and led me back to the path. Something had changed in her or, perhaps, in me. We walked quite a long distance in silence until we came to a kind of clearing in the forest. There were some white-painted benches placed in a semicircle. We sat on one of them.
“I think your scent has now become mine,” she confessed, as she lay her head on my shoulder. “But I don’t have your name,” her voice replied.
We returned to silence. A certain vibration in the atmosphere offered me new confidence.
“Daffyd,” I said, finally.
“You remind me of a tailor who came here not long ago.”
Those were magic words which I related to the scissors I had found in my jacket. I was remembering.
“You were born far away,” said the young lady. “Right now, you are far away.”
“Am I dead?” I nearly stammered.
"What was the last thing you dreamed of?" she decided to say
I could not answer her question. The vibration in the air brought me a nostalgia for a distant spring. It seemed that someone was watching us from the trees.
“What is this place?” I dared to ask.
“Whatever you see in it, Daffyd.”
“I don’t understand.”
I looked at my companion and I saw the shadow of deception in her gaze.
“Take a look,” she said as she indicated a section of the woods not covered by the trees. “Look closely.”
And I looked, but I didn’t see anything more than trees and white benches and this clearing in the middle of the clearing. I didn’t understand this dark-haired young lady with skin as pale as the moon.
Then she suddenly arose. She caressed my face as though it were the last time. She kissed my lips with an unspeakable tenderness, for a while lingered in me the perfume of her silky hair, of her warm mouth that smelled of exquisite flowers. When she parted her lips from mine, she looked at me again with her distant yet abyssal eyes.
“Just look,” she said with a somewhat trembling voice, “and remember when you may.”
And she left the circle of white benches. I hadn't the capacity to react. I was both stunned as well as curious. I looked through the space between the trees, trying to calm my nerves. There was still a feeling of being watched by someone among the trees. Some memories came back, just details of persons and things I thought I'd come across. Spring kept vibrating in the woods, as well as the crunchy sound of my footsteps from the day when I first stepped onto the pebbles of that hill. I realized I had never asked the young woman for her name. That notion took me by surprise.
And in that very moment, the unexpected happened. Those images, pale and still wrapped in a haze, began to appear in the space among the trees. Little by little, they were clearing up until they were perfectly visible as though they were right there, in the real world. And in that foggy apparition, I saw a boy holding on a young man, while the latter was holding on a mature man, who, in turn, held an old man on with an open cage and a bird about to escape.
I was impressed by that image because of the absurdity as well as of the disturbing and intimate truth displayed. Soon after I discovered that each one of those faces could have been my own at different times in my life. Even the wings of that bird were suspiciously familiar for me. I no longer thought about Blodwen, or the young dark-haired lady nor the wide-nosed lad. I felt they were inside me, that it was me who maybe they were observing at as an apparition in the clearing of the forest. And I do not know whether I got sleep or woke up but the truth is that the fog mirrored me in the middle of a street, or in a room where I was reading a book, like right now, upon these very letters and words; among regions of the mind whose stream allows me to see the eyes that are reading my tale, my latent hope in a zone of the world which resembles much to other worlds.
| VALPURGIS |
I did not realize it was you until it was too late. It was too weird to be true. And it was too perceptible to be a dream.
The night was cool. Too cool. And the moon was full, halo-surrounded. I was hanging my clothes on the line while thinking about round cakes and remembering teatimes. That’s when I saw you, though I did not realize it was you until it was too late. It was too weird for being true. And it was too perceptible for being a dream.
I pretended that I did not see you while I was hanging my bachelor clothes. But I was looking askance at you. You were betrayed by the moon-backlighting. And by your anxious panting. You were there, no doubt, crouching on the tile roof, watching me. They were your features, yet they were not. It was your smile, yet it was not. You were a demon, yet you were not. I was not looking a
t you, yet I was. And I was pained to see you so changed. You watched me hanging my clothes, I pretended that I did not see you.
But there you stayed, just as you were, smiling with your horrifying grin, barely the grimace of a star that fell on the night roof. A chilly night that makes to raise the hair on the nape and the arms, and the back. It was too weird to be true. And it was also too perceptible to be a dream
I understood that it would be hard for me to sleep or wake up that night and that you would be with me for the rest of time. I felt terror. And compassion. I couldn't deal against nostalgia, for I had loved you as an angel, yet you had hidden this night of your future or, perhaps, of your past inside the nails or the unexplored claws. But that night, when I was hanging my bachelor clothes, I realized that it was you but when it was too late.
| NOTOS’ REPORT |
Out of the texts of the Prior History, the so-called The Chronicles of Notos is one of the few testimonies of an underdeveloped and violent stage that reveals as much as it hides. Discovered, almost by happenstance, at the beginning of the current century among the ruins of the old region of Notos, it belongs to the personal-diary genre, which author remains hitherto unidentified. The text is slightly detailed though relates some firsthand experiences lived during the historical period known as "The Extirpation."
This is, in fact, the first part of this diary, quite fragmentary even in certain passages. The second part is no longer extant.[iii] The text was mostly written with blue or black resin, according to the ink availability over the years, on the sewn sheets formerly known as "notebook," already scarce by those days. The language is perfectly recognizable as the Spanish variant spoken throughout the ancient River Plate Area of early 23rd Century. Author's emotionality in many passages, as well as a lack of grammatical accuracy (likely a trait denoting the fundamental change that the language would receive during the above-mentioned period), are emphasized. Besides, the text is full of what a nowaday's reader would consider as archaisms, such as "intimacy" (a kind of private area of a person or group), "truth" (category of reality prone to be taken as a quite plausible fact,) or "home" (a type of steady receptacle in which individuals used to live with their parents), among many other examples.
The Unravelled Frames Page 6