breasts, and says no matter what, she loves you. Her murmuring and her breathing are right by your ear.
You open the curtains to another day. Afterward, at a cafe, you are sitting outside under a big umbrella. It is a Sunday, and the afternoon sun is a golden yellow. She came especially to see your play but has to rush back to Paris for the opening of her boyfriend's exhibition at six o'clock. She says she has to be loyal to him, but she also loves you. You're happy, put your hand into the sun, say you can catch a handful of sunlight. You tell her to have a go, but she throws back her head and laughs. The waiter comes out, apologizes, lunch finished some time ago, and the cook's gone. Then what is there to eat? Only ham and eggs. Then ham and eggs it is!
You say you want to write about all this, and she says it will be very beautiful. You say it was she who had given you these feelings and had helped you to turn suffering into something beautiful, all of this had weighed heavily on you. She says after suffering has passed, it, too, can become beautiful. You say she's a genuine French filly. A woman! She says this both as a correction and an affirmation. You say she's also a witch. She says she probably is. She wants you to discharge all your suffering, so that you will be a wiser person. Yes, you feel purified inside and outside, as if you've been washed and scrubbed right through. She says she wants you to have exactly this feeling, don't you think it's something very precious? You say this feeling is what she's given you, she says what she wants is you as a person and not your lust. You say you really want to rip her apart and swallow her. Then I'd no longer exist, she says, and don't you think that would be a pity?
You go with her to the railway station, and she holds your arm.
You say you love her, and she says she loves you too. You say you love her very much and she says it's the same with her. Life is worthwhile, you say. Now pay attention, you're going to sing! She laughs so hard that she doubles over. She says come on the train with her! You say there is still another performance in the evening, and you can't just abandon the actors, you do have that amount of responsibility. She says she knows, not to listen to her, she just had to say it. The carriage door closes, and, as the train moves off, she mouths three words: I love you. You know she's just saying this, and, as she says, she has to stay loyal to her boyfriend. You truly love her, but you can still love other women.
You're light, and float up as if you're weightless. You wander from country to country, city to city, woman to woman, but don't think of finding a place that is home. You drift along, engrossed in savoring the taste of the written language, and, like ejaculating, leave behind some traces of your life. You achieve nothing and no longer concern yourself with things in life and in afterlife. As your life was plucked back from death, why should you be concerned? You simply live in this instant, like a leaf on the brink of falling from a tree. Is it a tallow tree, a white birch, or a linden? Anyway, it's a leaf, and, sooner or later, it has to fall, but while it's fluttering in the breeze, it must strive for freedom. You are, after all, the irredeemable prodigal son of a family that was destined for destruction. You want to be free of the ties, complications, perplexities, anxieties of ancestors, wife, and memories, and to be like music, like the jazz of that black man: 'They say that falling in love is wonderful, it's wonderful…'
The plastic leg bearing your signature what in the old picture frame slowly rises on the stage. In the midst of singing, an old man with a sunken mouth is hoisting it up on a rope, solemnly, just like raising a flag. Your actress, a young Japanese performer, is standing elegantly at the front of the stage. She is very solemn, and presents a rose on a broken stem in both hands to the audience. Then, parting her lips, she erupts into laughter, revealing a mouth full of black teeth. This is wonderful, so wonderful!
You have already played around with revolutionary art and revolutionary people, and even if you were to play around more with them, you would not be able to come up with anything new. The world is like an unfurled, worn-out flag. In the early hours of the morning, while you are traveling by car from Provence to the Alps, a gentle stretch of mist comes toward you. You become formless and weightless, and, while mocking others and yourself, you vanish with the wind…
You're just a melancholic piece of jazz, greedy and insatiable in that moist, dark cavern between a woman's thighs. So, why is this pitiful little bird of yours complaining?
You're a saxophone, moaning when you want and shouting when you want. Ah, you have said farewell to revolution! If you think crying will make you feel better, you have a good cry. You're not afraid of losing anything. If there's nothing to lose, then you're free, like a wisp of smoke, like the pure fragrance of marijuana mixed with the fishy smell of stinkweed. So, why are you still worried? Why are you still afraid? When you disappear, you will disappear. But disappearing between the voluptuous, moist thighs of a woman is wonderful and is to understand fully what is known as life. You don't need to be sad or begrudging, you can squander everything, and this is wonderful!
Tough reeds blowing in the wind. The wind on the North Sea coast of Denmark is strong, but among the clumps of reeds on the undulating sand dunes is a circle of reeds moving against the wind. You think it is a pair of wild geese, but, coming closer, see that it is a naked couple, a man and a woman. You turn to leave, and hear them laughing behind you. Beyond the desolate beach, on the dark-green sea, white-crested waves tumble as they charge toward the seaweed-covered concrete bunker left from the Nazi occupation.
You want to cry, to throw yourself onto her firm breasts wet with perspiration and smeared with semen, and to cry uncontrollably, like a child needing the warmth of his mother. You don't just enjoy yourself with women, but also seek their warmth, forgiveness, and acceptance.
Your mother was the first woman you saw naked, through the half-closed door of her lighted room. You were sleeping in the dark on the cool bamboo bed, heard the splashing water, and wanted to take a proper look. When you propped yourself up on your elbows, your bed creaked. Your mother, with soap all over her body, came out, and you quickly lay down and hid your face, pretending to be asleep. She went back to the tub, but the door was left open, and you stealthily looked at the breasts that had fed you, and the black bushy place from which you had emerged. At first, you held your breath, then your breathing quickened, and after that you fell asleep in a state of stirring lust and confusion.
She said you were just a child, and, instantly, your lust settled. Contented and sleepy, you were her obedient child. She gently stroked you, and you placidly allowed her to examine you all over with the palm of her hand. That shriveled thing between your legs, she called it her little bird. Her eyes were gentle as she stroked your head, and, deeply moved, you wanted to nestle against her, nestle against this woman who had given you life, happiness, and comfort.
You equated this with love, equated this with sex, equated this with sadness, equated this with unsettling lust, and equated this with language. The need to express and narrate is a form of joy in pouring out, has no connotations of morality, and contains nothing hypocritical. It is a soaking deluge that totally cleanses you, so that you are transparent, like a thread of meaning in life, like light from behind a door behind which there is nothing, like a hazy surge of moonlight behind the clouds. You hear seagulls flapping their wings in the night sky, and see, from the depths of the darkness, the sea surging up into a line of white foam on the tide. In Italy, at Viareggio, the sea is flooded with searchlights, but the beach is deserted. You stand there, motionless, for a long time in front of the red-and-white-striped beach umbrellas.
However, at present, on this night in New York, the icy snow on the pavement is dirty and slushy. This is citizen-conscious New York, garbage-strewn New York, New York soaring into the clouds on its accumulated wealth, breathtaking New York, New York where people have to stand on the street in the cold to smoke a cigarette. The performance has ended, and you come out with her to look for a bar where you can smoke and have some drinks. She is the Japanese performer who, without speaking a word on stage, has just performed several roles in your play: a young girl just becoming sexually awakened, a dissolute woman, the mother's corpse, a nun, and a female ghost.
Walking from Eighth or Ninth Street in Manhattan to some streets past Thirtieth Street, finally, at Third, or Fifth, or maybe even Sixth Avenue -you can never remember numbers-you find a Brazilian or Mexican bar. It has a good atmosphere, and there are candles on the table, but the rock'n'roll music is too loud and not conducive to flirting. You have to shout across the table to hear what the other is saying, as you talk about art, serious art. She says she is really happy to have been able to play so many roles in one play, it was a satisfying experience, and the play seemed to have been written just for her. You curse the New York Times. The theater publicity person told you repeatedly that a reporter would definitely be coming, but no one had turned up even by the end of the performance. She says that with off-Broadway theaters it's always like that, it's very hard to get into their pages.
