The Death of Virgil

by Hermann Broch

  "And the mountains bore the echo unto heaven" added a soft voice from an echoing distance, itself an echo, mirroring the vanished voice of the boy.

  The sounds rose upward toward the echoing heaven and they were the sounds of the day, the sounds of diligence, the bustle of a thousand work-shops, a thousand households, a thousand stores, the fusing, swelling city-noises, merged and rife with all the smells of the city, rising from it to heaven, the floating rubble of day which harbored as little anxiety as did the cooing of doves or the chirping of sparrows with which it was mingled. The tile roofs, black striped or entirely black, were filmed in a thin, quivering layer of smoke, glints of copper and lead, glints of iron were to be seen here and there, shining under the rays of the now paler day-star, and in the glare of noon the heaven had become faded; without a cloud, its paler azure spread out over the flickering mid-day world.

  Should he worry the doctor once again by asking after the star which had vanished into the invisible transparency? Un-losable, even if not to be espied the star drew on toward the east; it traveled the width of the sky, yet at the same time passing through a region beyond the sky's last dome, submerged in that oceanic mirror in whose abysmal depths the echo of skies and more skies were assembled forever. A drifting star binding the spheres together. Undiscoverable, light's radiant roots were reaching down through every language, undiscoverable, the branchings of vision were groping up through every language, yet with this piercing ray penetrating man more and more infinitely, he must return with his eyes and more than his eyes, to his profoundest depths in order to reach the oceanic abyss of echo from which his image will be flashed back to heaven, aye, farther than to heaven, to the eye of the god. Was his labor, which he pursued bent toward the ground, and which he must pursue in humility, already an espial of the depths, was it that searching care which willed to find the higher image? did man with his earth-bent labors reach unto the endless depths lying beneath those of the underworld, which are at once those of the highest heaven? or must he wait until the god pierce him mortally with light's ultimate ray, the death-dealing ultimate, the god himself entering him, so that with his echo in man, man might be taken back into his divine being, sinking upward over the majestic steps of the aeons, sinking upward to the opened spaces? Oh, where had the star wandered, the star which showed the way?

  Tucked into the arm-chair he blinked up into the colorless flicker, he did it cautiously as though it were something forbidden. And in this blinking, painful yet compelling, in this blinking, at once passive and active, there emerged, strangely distorted and yet sharply contoured,—was it here? was it there? —an image such as had appeared in the mirror, repelling, many-layered, a palimpsest of a face, despite that not a completed face, the refraction of a reflection, rising like a shadow on the deepest surface of the mirror, on the remotest depths of its abyss. Verily, it had not been carried thither over the steps of the ae6ns, far rather it seemed to have slunk in through the smallest, meanest door in the background, squinting up like a bad conscience, ah, truly not beaming up.

  Then the slave, having relieved him of the bowl and disposed of it, remarked: "Sir, protect your eyes, the sun is strong."

  "Leave that to me," he was reproved by the doctor who turned thereupon to the group of his assistants: "Has the vinegar-water been warmed yet?"

  "Certainly, Master," came the reply from the darkness of the chamber.

  And so at a nod from the master he was being carried back again into the shadows and put to bed on the couch. But his glance remained fixed on the patch of sky in the window-frame, so irresistibly attracted by the brightness that the accompanying words came to him without effort: "He who gazes aloft toward the heaven of day from the depths of a well-pit sees it as dark, and he is able to see the stars in it."

  Immediately the doctor was at his side: "Have you some trouble with your eye-sight, Virgil? you need not be uneasy about it, that is not unusual . . ."

  "No, I have no difficulty in seeing." How blind this court-physician must be not to know that one who is in blindness, awaiting a superior blindness, can have no eye trouble.

  "You said something about stars."

  "Stars? oh yes ... I should like to see them once more."

  "You shall see them still many times ... I vouch for that, I, Charondas from Kos."

  "Ah, really, Charondas? the desire of a patient could hardly go beyond that."

  "Oh, do not be so very modest, I can promise you still more than that with an easy conscience ... as, for instance, that in a few days, yes, I might almost say in a few hours, you will feel entirely well, for after a crisis such as you seem to have passed through last night, and evidently in a most violent fashion, it is customary for a most tempestuous recovery to set in . .. actually we doctors cannot ask for anything better than such a crisis, and in my judgment—which however is not shared by the whole profession, and which, though I am not annoyed by it, has earned me the reputation of an outsider—it is absolutely advisable under certain circumstances to bring about such a crisis by artificial means . . ."

  "I already feel entirely well."

  "So much the better, so much the better, my Virgil."

  Yes, he felt perfectly well; stretched out naked on the bed, his back supported by a few pillows which had been placed under him to retard his coughing, he was first being carefully washed with tepid vinegar and then gently dried with heated towels, and the longer this mild alternating game lasted the more he felt the fevered weariness vanishing from his body; he let his head fall backward over the edge of the pillow to present his chin and throat to the razors of the barbers working about his head, and this letting go came to be a gentle alleviation, became so as much with the soft, sure gliding of the razor over his stretched skin, as with the removal of the heating stubble of his beard, and with the rapid succession of hot and cold compresses which were applied afterwards to his cleanshaven face, this being more than an alleviation, even a pleasant stimulation. However, when this was done, and the barber wanted to attend to his hair he interrupted him: "First shorten the hair on my forehead."

  "Just as you please, Sir."

  The scissors clicked coolly about his forehead, they passed coolly with short, clicking cuts toward the temples, and besides this they clicked in mid air, because the hairdresser let them open and close with the tremolo of a virtuoso after each snap, and, as the aesthetic sense of the hair artist demanded symmetry, the crown and back of the head had to be trimmed before they could begin washing with an emulsion of oil and alkalines, culminating in oft-repeated rinsings with cool water, for which purpose a suitably shaped wash-basin had been slipped under his neck. And while this careful sequence was being followed out, the medical assistant busied himself with a careful and skillful massaging of his limbs, beginning with his toes.

  The head-washing was at an end, and the hairdresser asked: "Lily, rose or mignonette-scented pomade, Sir, or do you prefer amber?"

  "None of them; comb my hair, but do not use any pomade."

  " 'That woman smells good who smells of nothing,' said Cicero," remarked the Doctor, "although he said many blasphemous things in which he himself did not believe, and mignonette would be quite wholesome for you; mignonette has a soothing effect."

  "Just the same, Charondas, I should rather not have it."

  Outside the sparrows twittered, and a blue-gray, swelling dove walked along the window-sill, cooing and nodding in the radiance of the light-shedding heaven, opening up from the very core to the opened heavenly light.

  The doctor laughed: "If I had forbidden you to have cream you would certainly have demanded it; patients of your kind are no novelty for us, one has to know how to cope with you, and to speak frankly, I have had plenty and more than plenty of opportunity to learn how . . . you see I am a person who explains his tricks in advance so as to win in the end; incidentally you may have your way this time, for what you need fundamentally is not a soothing but rather a reviving of your animal spirits; and I am wondering
whether to let you drink a good strong aphrodisiac—yes, joking aside, I would almost recommend it in your case, considering that our courage to live, our desire to live, our animal spirits are animated, if not entirely, still very strongly and, I may say, more strongly than we wish or know, from the lower centers of our organism, from these often quite enjoyable lower centers, to which we doctors must assign a rather important role in the urge to recovery . . . but you probably know this as well as I, and I only wanted to say that a little more of the will to live and be healthy would do you no harm . . ."

  "I have no need of an aphrodisiac to strengthen my will to live, it is, I believe, quite strong enough in itself ... I love life intensely . . ."

  "Do you lack for reciprocal love? if so, you do not quite love enough!"

  "I am not complaining, Charondas."

  No, the will to live was in no need of an aphrodisiac; he who lies down to love closes his eyes, they are closed for him, even as for one who lies down to die, by a strange, familiar hand, but he who would live, standing up to life, holds his eyes wide open to the sky, to the opened light of heaven from which all desire and will to live is born: oh, to be allowed to see azure sky again and yet again, to see it tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, for many a year, and not have to lie here with broken closed eyes, laid out with a clay-brown, stiffened countenance, while outside stretched the bright arc of the azure sky that could no longer be seen, filled with the cooing of doves that had become inaudible. So had that day been, bright and blue, so had that day been on which his father had lain on his bier. Oh, to be allowed to live!

  The hairdresser came equipped with a mirror to let his finished handiwork be admired: "Are you satisfied with the cut, Sir?"

  "Entirely so ... I have confidence in you without further examination."

  "You look splendid now," commended the physician, Charondas, evidently highly pleased, tapping his fleshy left palm with three fingers of his right hand by way of applause, "most splendid, and I hope you feel much refreshed as well: for there is no better means of revitalizing the secretions and the pulse than by such a thoroughly careful and workmanlike kneading of the entire body; by rights you should already feel the wholesome effects, indeed I can already discern it!"

  Outside the starless, opened brightness of heavenly blue was extending; oh, to be allowed to see it forever! even at the cost of enduring illness and fatigue! Oh, to be allowed to see! How was it that the garrulous physician, Charondas, could still expect an answer? All the same he had told the truth, for there really was some refreshment to be felt, even if it was only a kind of refreshed fatigue. It was like a release from fear. The tired limbs were refreshed, fear-freed of their separate existence, even though under the kneading grips they had become more aware, if that were possible; they had dropped off their ancient fear, as if it were no longer an experience, rather only the knowledge of one, something that had happened only in a spectacle, but was no longer in his own body. Withal this spectacle was again none other than the body itself, yes, the body was spectacle and mirror simultaneously, taking in not only the occurrence but the knowledge of it as well, so that it could be delivered of fear and yet remain in immediate physical proximity, unbroken, as a new, a physical awareness, unbroken, no matter how he, the one no longer aware, might lose or be losing himself in any un-nearness whatsoever; all was becoming soft, the world pulsed softly, inside and outside pulsing, the tides of day and night pulsing, as well as the great, gently-impetuous harmonic order of life, upon whose foundation even the tides flow into one another and are silenced; the bell-tone of night merged with the sunny storm of day, softly the breathing pulsed, and softly-quietly the breath passed into the rising and falling breast, relaxed and helped by the kneading strokes of a strange, invisible, soft hand; from suffering delivered, with suffering endowed, from awareness delivered, with awareness endowed, this was a re-experiencing of the physical being, enmeshed in a noiselessness which made it seem that of a spectacle seen in reflection—smooth and mute, as though transpiring in a mirror; the bustling went on everywhere in the room, directed by the now noiseless voice of the physician; noiselessly the slaves scurried in and out, strangely featherlight; a basket filled with linen had been brought in, and fresh bedclothes lay suddenly under the weightless, uplifted body, a fresh tunic enwrapped him; fresh flowers wreathed the candelabrum, and their scent mingled with the scent of vinegar, skimming along moist and serene, a trickling fragrance borne from the moist drizzle of the wall-fountain, the murmuring, falling drops of the soul. Strange that there was security, strange the way it unfolded. To be sure, his body on which such care had been lavished was the body of disintegration, but some knowledge of himself as a mirrored spectacle allowed him to preserve his contour, a loose and floating figure sheltered and floating between past and future, peacefully at one with both, itself a mirror, itself peace, airily identified with the present, held arrested on the breath, gazing at the open sky. And, moreover, it was as if all of this, everything that was happening here, all this fostering that was going on so noiselessly and swiftly, consisted only of an empty transparency, as though by this means alone a bright, airy, and trumpery structure of supports had been set up, a framework that no longer had to support anything except lightness itself, yes, it seemed as if there had been an exaggerated and almost ghostly expenditure that aimed only at producing a shelter for something which could no longer be sheltered, nothing that such sheltering could enfold, for what at most might be something very indistinct, very evanescent, perhaps the reflected image of a nonentity; but beyond that it seemed as if this mirrored blur and dissolution, as if this almost intangible, abandoned thing were, in spite of abandoning itself, still to be saved from disintegration and retained in itself at the last moment, saved, as though by a miracle, just as it strove to become separate; and it almost seemed as if it had received form and stature out of an awareness which, though it was only a reflected awareness, was still possessed of enough earthly strength to take the most transparent elusiveness into its sheltering care and, by virtue of this very sheltering, to transform it once more to reality; for even in its furthest reflection the deed of loving service had the power to establish reality; and even when, as in this case, it was manifested as a playful reflection, as a pretense of healing that was no longer healing, playfully approaching the portal of death, it was still the invisible substance of the world which creatively transformed knowing to knowledge, the sheltering into the sheltered, creating the enfolded by the strength of the enfolding; oh, so transformed, so brought back to earthly creation that this created world— permeated by a strange sort of accuracy, determined as much by the extraordinary as by the commonplace—became a reflection of this very self, that was at the same time a reflection of the human being, a reflection of the inner and outer selves. Was this still his own body that he felt? or was it rather the reflection of his body, or perhaps merely the reflection of his sensibility? In what lay the reality of this peaceful existence which surrounded him and which was himself? There was no answer to be imparted and none was imparted; but even the not-imparted answer was a constituent of this concord, as was everything that surrounded him, corporeal and incorporeal in a single breath, in a single pulse-beat, floating between original and semblance, touching neither one nor the other, but rather a symbol of both; floating between things remembered and things that could be seen, their common mirror, and peacefully reconciled to both, the ethereal present; and in the depth of the mirror, in the depth of the peace, deeply sunk into the present and into reality, shimmered the star on the far-dark ground of day's brightness.

  WHY should all this not remain forever? why should such effortless felicity change? And no change occurred. Indeed, one could have imagined that even the proceedings inside the room, though taking their course, were not subject to change. Nevertheless they became more significant, more and more extensive. Pregnant with the scent of flowers lifted on the odor of vinegar, the peaceful breath of being lingered on, yet at the same
time it was growing, and the harmonious order of the world came to be a whisper charged with warm freshness; this was consummation, and the wonder of it was only that it had ever been otherwise. Now everything was given its proper place, one that might well be retained forever. Impetuously though gently, room and landscape united, the flowers pushed up impetuously in the field, they grew higher than any house, piercing the tree-tops and embraced by their branches; human beings swarmed diminutively among the plants, camping in their shade, reclining against their stems, and were just as ineffably transparent, just as serene as they. The physician, Charondas, who was still standing in front of the window, he too could be seen yonder in the circle of the frolicking nymphs, as with a courteous, critical manner he continued to comb the blond beard of his obese face, keeping the mirror at hand to reflect everything: mossy springs that rose from an even softer sleep, the greening arbutus, which tremulously tinged the mossy moisture, glowing and drying in the noonday sun, all this was mirrored; the juniper as well as the chestnut tree heavy with shaggy fruit, and the tiny mirrors on the taut grapes that hung from the ripening wine-shoot, these too were mirrored—, oh, mirrored nearness, mirrored buoyance, oh, how easy it seemed in this reflecting reflection to become one of them, to be one of those yonder, helping to guard the herds, helping to tread the juice-filled grapes in the vaulted stone arbor. Oh, the transparent was becoming transparency, keeping withal its own existence; the skin and clothing of the people were indistinguishable, and the souls of the people participated in the outermost surface as well as in the most invisible, yet somehow visible home-depth of the human heart looking out from the pulsing infinity. Somewhere there was meeting, meeting without end, alluring by its tender, trepidant longing. The odors of laurel and of blossoms arched across the rivers and floated from grove to grove, carrying with them the gentle salutes of those who communed happily together; and the towns dimming in the distance of light had shed their names so that they were only softly palpitating air. Did the slave still have the milk at hand so that, as was proper, a cup of it might be sacrificed to the golden image of Priapus? Red-glowing gold dipped in milk, thus it appeared in reflection, surrounded by the river-hemming poplars dedicated to Alcides, by the bacchanalian vine, by the laurel of Apollo, and by the myrtle which is dear to Venus; but elms were bending over the stream and moistening the tips of their leaves, and from out one of their tree-trunks stepped Plotia and advanced across the bridge made by the bending boughs; she sauntered nearer with a light step amid a cloud of butterflies and noiselessly twittering birds; she strode through the surface of the hand-mirror, through the gold-gleaming arch of the rainbow, striding through its smoothness which opened and closed itself behind her, stepping along the ivory paths of milk, and stopped a short way off from him, who leaned against the elm-branches of the candelabrum.—"Plotia Hieria" he said with fitting courtesy as if he had not met her before. She held her head bent as if to greet him, in the dusk her hair shimmered bestrewn with stars, and despite the considerable distance which lay between them they clasped hands so closely and fervently that the stream of their joint lives flooded back and forth between them. However it might still be a delusion and it was essential to make sure: "Have you come this way by accident?" "No," she replied, "our destinies were united from the beginning." Their hands were joined, his laid in hers, hers in his, oh it could not be distinguished which were his and which were hers, but as he seemed to be as many-branched as the elm, being also able to clasp with playful fingers the flowers and the fruit which were sprouting from the tree, the answer was not quite satisfying and he had to question further: "But you were born from another tree and you had to come a very long way to reach this one."—"I went through the mirror," said she, and with this explanation he had to be content; yes, she had come through the mirror, she came through the mirror which doubled the light, and with double strength the beaming roots pierced down to the source of the destined unity, so that it might pulse up again from the source to a new and united diversity, to a new and manifold unity, to new creation. Oh, lovely surface of the earth! Yonder noon and evening seemed to hover simultaneously, the herds wandered with slow ambling tread; yonder stood the cattle with deeply sunken heads, muzzles and tongues dripping near the trickling water-hole, there under the lush willows, there among the rolling meadows, there in the region of cool springs, there would they wander, hand in hand: "Did you come, Plotia, to hear the poem again?" Now Plotia smiled a long slow smile, beginning in the eyes, gliding to the softly shining skin on her temples, as though the tender veins which showed beneath it must also share in smiling, and slowly, quite imperceptibly, it melted to the lips which trembled as if under a kiss before they opened to smile, disclosing the edge of the teeth, the edge of the skull-bone, the ivory-colored, rocky border of human existence. The smile hovered on, remaining in the countenance, the border-smile of the earth-bound, the border-smile of eternity, and the shimmering, silvery expanse of sunlit sea came by smiling to be the spoken word: "I want to stay with you always, world without end."—"Stay with me, Plotia, I shall never desert you, I shall always take care of you." It was a plea, a vow of the heart, and, at the same time, fulfillment, for Plotia without having taken a single step had come a little nearer, and the outermost branches of the broad elm-tree were touching her shoulders. "Stay and rest, Plotia, rest in my shade,"—it is true this had formed in his mouth, had been uttered by him, and yet seemed to have been spoken from out the branches, conjured out of the branches which seemed to have been endowed with the gift of speech through contact with the woman. And so it was only right that she nestled her face in the leafy branches and murmured her answer to them: "You are home to me, and home your shadows, folding me in to rest."—"You are home to me, Plotia, and when I feel your repose, I feel I could rest in you eternally." She had sunk down on the manuscript-chest and, notwithstanding her fluid lightness under which the leather cover of the chest did not bend the fraction of an inch, her hands were so closely and physically linked with his that his fingers were blissfully able to feel her soft features, for she held her face buried in her hands, just as the boy had done. Thus she sat, shrouded in shadows, and a living communion was being bestowed on them, growing out of their hands, growing into something unalterable, though as yet only a sensing breath, anticipatory and rich. But although this communion was so physical, blood and breath melting together, their mutual existence melting into one, nevertheless the slave was able to walk through it, as if he himself, as if both their arms were nothing more than so much air—, did he want to part them from each other? a vain attempt; their hands remained placed one into the other, linked into one another, grown into one another, become one for evermore, and even the ring which was on Plotia's finger was the common property of the inseparable hand-unity. So it was necessary to rebuke the slave, and Plotia, again covered by his form, undertook to do it: "Take yourself off," said she, "go away from us, no death has the power to part us." However, the slave paid no attention to her and did not get out of the way, but instead stooped to the listening ear: "It is forbidden you to turn back; beware of the animals!" Which animals? Might it be the herds there near the springs? might it be the snowy bull, the luckless Pasiphae, who lingered there beside the cows? Or the bucks stirring about and mounting the she-goats? Pan's midday quiet lay soundlessly over the flowering groves and yet it was already evening, for the fauns had begun their gambols, stamping their hooves, their heavy phalluses stiffly erect. The distant sky over the dance-clearing was full of the clarity of evening, and the coolness of evening was wafted hither; stonily cool the moss-grown moisture trickled within the grottoes, the bushes at their entrance filled with nocturnal shadows and the cooing of doves, and over them fell the larger shadow from the mountains, larger and darker; evening, lovely and poignant in its sweetly-fatuous, sweetly-exalted simplicity; was this the reversion? was this the return? And again Plotia took over the answer: "I can never be a memory-image to you, Virgil, and though you recognize me, you are seeing m
e, even now, for the first time. Oh you are homecoming, turning home without turning back." "You will find homecoming only at the goal which you have still to reach," interrupted the slave, handing him the well-gnarled copper-studded traveler's staff, "it is not fitting for you to halt, and you are no longer permitted to remember; take your staff, grasp it in your fist and wander on!" This was a vigorous challenge, and had he taken it up he must have reached, staff in hand, the dark valley in the wilderness of which the golden bough was growing; it was a command of such force that it would have compelled obedience forthwith had not the staff remained most miraculously in the light hands of Plotia, out of reach of the slave, and this also was like the delight of a first memoryless recognition, it was like the first recognition by woman: "Oh Plotia, your destiny is mine, since you recognize me in it." "Falsehood," said the slave, sternly making a shadowy effort to wrest the staff from her, "it is falsehood; the fate of the woman lies in the past, but that of you, Virgil, lies in the future, and no one who is the prisoner of the past can ease it for you." The warning sounded serious, directed as it was against the caressing, flowerlike serenity of the incident, and it struck him to the depth of his heart: destiny of the future that was man's, destiny of the past that was woman's—, they had always been incompatible for him, notwithstanding all his yearning for happiness, and again this incompatibility threatened to rise up as a barrier between Plotia and himself. Where lay reality? Was it with the slave, was it with Plotia? And Plotia said: "Take my destiny, Virgil, shape my past within you so that it may become our future." "Falsehood," repeated the slave, "you are a woman and you have followed after many a man limping on his staff." "Alas," sighed Plotia, overcome by such cruel severity, and this short relapse into gentle submissiveness was taken advantage of by the slave to seize the staff and to divide the tree-top with it so that the sunlight came in with the painful, hard glare of noon. To be sure by this means he also frightened off the monkeys, who up there in the foliage were carrying on their lewd game of self-satisfaction, and who now scurried away with shrill screams, which reestablished the day's good humor; everyone in the room laughed up at the monkeys, taken unawares, and the physician turned the hand-mirror towards them as if to catch again, or at least jeer at, those who had been frightened off by the light, for as the beasts made off through the air, he quoted: "Henceforth let it be the wolf who flees the sheep, let the rugged oak bear golden apples, let the narcissus blossom beamingly from the alder, amber ooze from the bark of the marshy thicket, and Tityrus be like Orpheus singing through the woods, be like Arion among the dolphins." By this time Plotia had also overcome her discouragement; she pressed herself more fervently into his hands, and her eyes turned upward toward the open light: "Along with the light I can hear your poem, Virgil."—"My poem? This also is a thing of the past."—"I hear the poem yet unsung."— "Oh Plotia, are you able to hear despair? Despairing is that which is unsung and undone, a mere searching without hope or goal, and its song is nothing but vanity."—"You search into your own darkness whose light is forming you, and hope such as this will never abandon you, it will always be fulfilled when you are near me." Instantly, fleetingly, the everlasting future was manifest there, instantly mirror's light dipped into mirror's light. His hands lay upon her breasts, the points of which became harder under his touch—had she guided his hands?—and captured by the soft texture of her body, he heard her say: "Beyond any poem is the unsung within you, greater than what is formed is that which forms; it forms you also, unattainably far from you, since it is your very self; yet when you draw near to me, you come near to this self and attain it." Not only her face, not only her breasts took shape in his hands, nay, also her unseen heart nestling into the caressing embrace did so, and he asked: "Are you the shape that I have become, the shape of my becoming?"—"I am in you and yet you penetrate within me; your destiny is growing in me and therefore I recognize you in the unsung future."—"Oh Plotia, you are the goal, unattainable."—"I am the darkness, I am the cave that receives you into the light."—"Homeland, that is what you are, undiscoverable homeland."—"My knowledge of your being awaits you; come, you are discovering me."—"In your knowledge reposes the undiscoverable, reposes the future."—"Tranquilly I carry your destiny, in my knowledge lies your goal."—"Then entrust me also with your future destiny, so that I may bear it with you."—"I have none."—"Tell me also your goal so that I may seek it with you."—"I have none."—"Plotia, oh Plotia, how shall I find you? Where, in the undiscoverable, shall I look for you?"— "Look not for my future, take my beginning upon yourself, know only that, and the reality of our present will come to be an ever-enduring future." Oh voice, oh speech! Were they still speaking? still whispering? or had the dialogue already become mute, more comprehensible to them in the transparency of their bodies, spellbound one into the other, their souls become one under the spell of transparency? Oh soul, living only for the sake of the undone and unsung, for the sake of that future form in which fate shall stamp you! Oh soul, shaping to immortality and to this end yearning for a mate in whom to recognize the goal! Oh, eternal timelessness of shared existence, enclosed within the linked hands! Softer became the drizzling waters, softer the fountain, and very softly there whispered in his soul, in his heart, in his breath, very softly there whispered within him and out of him, "I love you." "I love you," came back so inaudibly that it seemed only a mute pressure of their hands. And their hands clasped, their souls clasped, he reclining in the branches of the tree, she sitting on the chest; neither of them moved, neither moved the breadth of a finger from their places, and yet, for all that, they were being brought nearer to each other because a floating force was at work to diminish the distance between them, drawing together the elm-branches garlanded with the half-cut grapes to a narrowly closed leafy arbor, to a gold-green cave filled with light, and with barely enough space for anyone else: this was like a leafy semblance of the abysmal cave which had been prepared for the brief, oh, so brief, bliss of Dido and Aeneas. Ah, did it follow that the gold-green foliage was likewise an illusion? Was it to betray him? It shimmered golden, but naught could be seen of the golden bough, naught heard of a golden sound coming from the bush. Oh, only a moment of actual happiness had been bestowed on this heroic couple, only a single moment in which Dido's past destiny and Aeneas' future destiny had been allowed to coincide —faded the image of the past, the love of her youth, Sychaeus untimely dead, and faded too the image of the future, the mastery of Italy commanded by the fateful verdict of the gods —both of them re-formed and conformed to one another, to the immortal, momentary present of their union, their reality, that lasted only for the single moment, this moment, however, already overcast by the many-eyed, many-tongued, many-mouthed, many-winged, gigantic figure of Fama soaring across the night, the terrible figure which frightened lovers apart, and drove them into shame. Oh, would the same lot overtake them here? would this be allowed to happen? Were they not already too closely united, conformed to a last reality, for this to be possible? Ineffable was the smile of Plotia extending across the landscape, almost sad in its serene immobility, and the landscape, having become transparent through smiling, disclosed itself in its maturing, profound with its past, pregnant with its future, becoming ready for procreation, being born and giving birth. Foliage and blossom, fruit, bark and earth were touching his fingers, and it was always Plotia whom he touched, it was always Plotia's soul that smiled to him across the endless planes of the landscape. But from the treetops the voice of Lysanias was audible: "Return home into the smile of the beginning, return home into the smiling embrace where you found shelter of yore!"—"Do not turn back," came the slave's voice again in warning, and it was answered in an undertone by the physician, commanding quiet: "Hush, he is no longer able to turn around." And thereafter the landscape became somewhat darker though it lost little of its transparent serenity, and, not at all troubled by the slight gloom, Plotia's smile remained, infusing a tinge of sibylline smiling into her voice that came out of the landscape as
its own speech: "From the beginning I signified the goal to you, never the reversion; and you are nameless to me because I love you, nameless like a child are you to me, soul, about to be." —"Oh Plotia, you came to me by your name, and in loving you your existence became my resolution."—"Flee," warned the slave in a last, almost frightened importunity. But the branches had been so densely entwined with grapes, had closed to such a dark, shadowed grotto, that flight seemed utterly impossible, and indeed he had no wish to flee; indeed he would not have plucked the golden bough if the slave had shown it to him: it was satisfying to love Plotia, assuaging the nearness of her womanly nakedness, peaceful to send one's glance out across the branches there to the wood-bounded fields and flowery groves where no wolf lurks in wait for the herds, no trap is set for the deer, where Pan and the shepherds, where nymphs and dryads, are fulfilled in lilting joy, and where the heifer, fearful yet longing for the bull, sinks down beside the trickling brook, exhausted by longing. Nothing fearful, nothing fear-inspiring could be seen; even the head of the snake, coiled in green, shimmering rings about the tree trunk was gentle, and its golden glance, accompanied by the delicate darting of its tongue, was familiar and invited confidence. The life about one was sweet and drowsy —who would wish to flee! No, he did not want to escape, no, he had taken his resolve and it was the resolve called love, which was greater than the beloved creature, for it embraced and comprehended in her not only what was visible but what was invisible as well: "Never again shall I flee, never again shall I flee you, Plotia; nevermore shall I leave you." Now Plotia was nearer, and her breath was cool: "You are near me, you are the resolution, I await you." Yes, it was the resolution, and of a sudden Plotia's ring could be felt quite distinctly around his finger, perhaps it had been transferred to him automatically, perhaps put on secretly by her as a tie, a union of a sweetness which would never end. For past and future came together in the ring, to an unending present, to a constantly self-renewing knowledge of destiny, to a constantly self-renewing rebirth: "You are my reason for homecoming, Plotia, you came and made our present into an eternal homeland."—"Are you coming home to me, beloved?"—"You are home to me, the home to which I come back and enter."—"Yes,"—and it was like a sigh—"Yes, it is right for you to desire me." And though at first it seemed amazing that she should say this so baldly, it was still right that she did so, it had to be right, because in desire and its immediacy past and future counterbalanced each other,—the face itself extinguished in the great smile of love—because in this almost rigid immobility the transparent clarity of the unchangeable lapse was established, and because just this brought about a compulsion, aye, a decidedly sweet compulsion, to call things by their real names; the circumstance was defined by the extraordinary as well as by the commonplace; both were to be called from a veiled to an unveiled expression, and this applied to him as well: "The stream of your being flows to me, Plotia, timeless and eternal, and I desire you intensely." Like a veil she moved a little away from him, or rather she was wafted away. "Then send Alexis away." Alexis? in truth! : amidst the landscape, pranced about by the stiff-phallused satyrs, Alexis with his blond locks and white throat was standing near the window, he was standing there in a short tunic and dreaming out into the shimmer, dreaming across to the distant mountains, their peaks sailing about the sun-fog of the horizon, and a pink and white blossoming bough arched over his head. "Send him away," pleaded Plotia, "send him away, do not look in his direction, you are holding him with your eyes." Send him away? Could he send away anyone whose destiny, oh, whose future fate he had taken upon himself, and whom, for that reason, he loved? If so, he should also have to send away the amorous Cebes who had meant to be a poet—was such a thing permissible? did it not portend the degradation of human destiny to the level of accident? was it not a transforming of the future into the past? Certainly in the immediate naked reality of the occurrence there could be no halting deliberation and, with the same nakedly transparent immediacy, Plotia was urging: "Are not my breasts more desirable than yonder boy's buttocks?" Alexis, whose sentence was being passed upon him in this way, made no sort of movement, not even when he was softly twitted by the voice of the doctor: "Charming youth, rely not too much on your rosy coloring," even then he gave no indication that he had heard and understood; on the contrary, he gazed still further into the landscape, dreaming toward the flowery groves and the valley, shady in the mid-day heat, where a blessed shadow was cast by the branches of the holm-oaks, softening the air as with the cool of evening; the youth dreamed on into the serene and unmoving transparency, but when Plotia, as if in deep, tender affright, called to the beloved of her body and soul, when she cried "Virgil!"—a cry which despite its softness was one of terror and also of triumph—the form of the youth vanished as if absorbed by the sun, dissolved, transformed into ether, and Plotia with a smiling sigh of relief looked up: "Tarry no longer, my beloved."—"Oh, Plotia, oh, my love." As if at her behest, the branches had closed to an impenetrable, opaque thicket, and he, drawn by her hands, sank to his knees; he knelt, his hands in hers, kissing the points of her breasts. And floating together, lifted by a floating force, floating on those strong waves of light streaming from the eyes of one into the eyes of the other, they were carried away, lifted up and placed lightly upon the bed, and without having disrobed they were lying there, naked flesh to flesh, naked soul to soul, cleaving together along their quivering whole length, yet motionless with desire, while about them, soundless amidst the heaviness of stars although felt ever more strongly, the thunder of light rolled in, filling the world. Extinguished now the memory of the past and the future, sweetly extinguished to a chastity devoid of memory. Thus they lay there without stirring, mouth pressed to mouth, and her tongue wagged stiffly, like a tree-top in the wind; thus they lay until her lips, trembling within his, murmured: "We cannot; the doctor is observing us." So the denseness of the shrubbery did not protect them! How was it possible? How could a glance penetrate this thick shade?! And yet it was so! Without the green-dark foliage having cleared in the slightest, the bed was exposed on all sides and at the mercy of all glances; the glances were not to be warded off, nor were the scornfully outstretched fingers, most of them adorned with rings, pointing from all sides toward the couch; neither were the monkeys, grinning in wild glee and throwing down nuts upon them, nor the bleating goats eyeing them askance with looks merry and lewd, while over them floated the enormous shadow of a mocking bat; oh, not to be warded off this shadow of Fama, the shadow of her gigantic and terrible form who announced with malice and blinding contempt the things which had never happened as well as those which had: "They dare not fuck, they dare not, only Caesar may do so!" Oh, not to be warded off the noise, the blare of the many blinding planes of light; and before an explanation could be found for all this, aye, even before he could seek Plotia's glance or loosen his mouth from hers, she too had changed into laughter, gliding along him as stone-cool laughter, smooth as ivory, floating up like a leaf carried on a gust of light—and seated herself once more on the chest. Did she think by this to cancel the threat which was announced by the uproar? If so, she did not succeed—renunciation is not sacrifice enough —the uproar of light was not quelled, the thunder did not subside, on the contrary, it became more and more distinct, stormier and stormier, it filled the visible world, it filled grove and mountain, it filled the room and the waters, becoming so overpowering, so violent, that people interrupted their occupations, standing as though benumbed, even more, ranging themselves in rows as if it were impermissible for one to stand out from another in the face of this thunderous, approaching power—oh, terrible and overpowering the strain of its approach—and at last, oh, at last, the door to the landscape was pushed open, servants stood on guard at the two wings, and between them, awe-inspiring and yet human, dapper and at the same time majestic, the consecrated person of the Augustus stepped quickly into the room.