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| "The night surrounded me, a photograph unglued from its frame. The lining of a coat ripped open like the two shells of an oyster. The day and night unglued, and I falling in between not knowing on which layer I was resting, whether it was the cold upper leaf of dawn, or the dark layer of night." | |
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"Sabina's face was suspended in the darkness of the garden. From the eyes a simoun wind shrivelled the leaves and turned the earth over; all things which had run a vertical course now turned in circles, round the face, around HER. She stared with such an ancient stare, heavy luxurient centuries flickering in deep processions. From her nacreous skin perfumes spiralled like incense. Every gesture she made quickened the rhythm of the blood and aroused a beat chant like the beat of the heart of the desert, a chant which was the sound of her feet treading down into the blood the imprint of her face." p. 18ff. |
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"The muffled, close, half-talk of soft-fleshed women. The men she had embraced,
and the women, all washing against the resonance of my memory. Sound within
sound, scene within scene, woman within woman -- like acid revealing an
invisible script. One woman within another eternally, in a far-reaching
procession, shattering my mind into fragments, into quarter tones which no
orchestral baton can ever make whole again.
The luminous mask of her face, waxy, immobile, with eyes like sentinels.
Watching my sybaritic walk, and I the sibilance of her tongue. Deep into each
other we turned our harlot eyes. She was an idol in Byzance, an idol dancing
with legs parted, and I wrote with pollen and honey. The soft secret yielding
of woman I carved into men's brains with copper words; her image I tattooed in
their eyes. They were consumed by the fever of their entrails, the
indissoluble poison of legends. If the torrent failed to engulf them, or they
did extricate themselves, I haunted their memory with the tale they wished to
forget. All that was swift and malevolent in woman might be ruthlessly
destroyed, but who would destroy the illusion on which I laid her to sleep
each night?" |
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