wrote to look for the book; a short phrase, once found, was lost again; she raised her hand to ask a question, already forgotten; they looked in opposite directions, the question arose in the woman in the form of a smile; she hesitated on the s, as if she were going to write Saint; from the canonized body of Saint John of the Cross rose smoke and the question, the girl’s sweet fire. He lay his hair against the back of the chair, looking up, and when he distinguished ahead he tapped his fingers through a long path of obscure contemplation and aridity; he had to go through many lines until he found it in the middle of the page after a horizontal white space that seemed another margin there on the page.
Place 2 —
“that you pierce the substance of my soul so intimately and tenderly and glorify it with your glorious ardor so that from now on, in your great kindness, you show me how much you wish to give yourself to me as in eternal life; if, before, my prayers did not reach you — when with the anxieties and exhaustions of love in which my spirit and my feeling suffered
My name is Ana del Mercado y Peñalosa. When I go out, I tie a velvet ribbon around my neck. I am hopelessly devoted to writing (and to disappearing in writing) I do not like to read. I like to listen to music as if I myself had written it.
From this day forward, I can no longer separate reading from writing; (if I could see the text being produced, I would return to reading once again).
I was born in Segovia where I have many possessions, I was widowed by Don Juan de Guevara.
Undressed, I pick up the deck because of my cowardice and my great impurity and the weakness of my love, I asked you to kidnap me and take me with you as my soul ardently wished it because the impatience of love did not allow me to conform myself to the conditions of life in which you still want me to live, for some time yet; and, if the old forays of love, lacking the necessary quality to attain the effects of my desire, were not sufficient, now, when I feel so strong in love that not only do my spirit and senses not grow weary in you, but, to the contrary, my heart and flesh rejoice in the living God sustained by You in a great conformity of both parts of cards that I put on one of my knees and say diamonds or spades, red or black. If it’s diamonds or hearts I will make love immediately. If it’s spades or clubs I must wait five minutes looking intensely at an object that I myself choose, which could be a pillow, a lamp, a portrait, or one of the bouquets of flowers replaced every day by one of the tallest children who will succeed me indeterminately.
The time of hemorrhoids, or rather, the time of illness, the time of time: I always write with the notebook open on top of the book, which lets me compare the writing that comes from the deck of cards with that already printed. Eating afterward with half-closed eyes and listening to music give me great pleasure.
The children believe that memory rejuvenates me and Saint John of the Cross had a vision that I am the frame of a family portrait. — which causes me to ask you what you want me to ask and not to ask you what you don’t want me to ask, and I couldn’t even ask it, nor does it even occur to me to ask it — as for the future, my requests are more effective and valuable in your eyes, as they come from You who impels me to make them, I beseech you with pleasure and joy (my judgment depends upon your countenance from this day forth — which happens when you receive and hear my prayers): tear the delicate fabric of this life.”
Place 3 —
We always let night fall, before turning on the lights. Slowly, everything disappears in the place where it was, the children play games, calling him and calling each other. At that hour they are completely blind, they move between the pieces of furniture without knocking them over or touching any of them; they can also remain quiet at my side without me knowing and feeling myself alone awaiting a visitor
on the day I was suffering from hemorrhoids, I stayed in bed all morning: I dreamed that I was where, in fact, I was: in the atmosphere of my room; topless, I looked in the mirror, which I chose to be an oval to remind me of a face and I asked it who it would liberate; in front of me, my body was very beautiful and I wanted to be photographed within the frame; I also wanted to masturbate in front of that body, I was somewhat aroused by my lover’s slipper lying flat on the carpet. My hemorrhoids cause the pain of a shaft being driven through my body. This happened with lightness and brevity, I reached the end, I looked for the notebook and the pen on the bed and I wrote on the day I was suffering from hemorrhoids
I had then a mirror vertigo in which the mirror, being always mirror, appeared to me as a bier, a sick person in their bed, more precisely, Saint John of the Cross, dying in Úbeda. But it was impossible that he was dying because he wrote at my side and the pages of his complete works fell, retroactively, around the mirror while everything happened with lightness and brevity: I dreamed that, in my room, he was beginning to write what he had already written.
I sat down at his side saying what I write, I write for the first time. My observation did not interest him. He lay down on my bed which had become a spare cot and began to die his death of Úbeda, believing I would be capable of taking it as it had been
we three wrote leaning against the railing, dying on our feet, not knowing whose mouth articulated what we said. Saint John of the Cross, fearful to suddenly begin levitating, leave our company, and, not least, become ridiculous because at that time all my lovers walked in the oratory, or rather, the great entrance to the garden.
Ana de Peñalosa was still telling her story
the death of my only daughter, my second mourning
Don Luis del Mercado entrusted me with the education of my niece Inés
it has been three years since I last abandoned my oratory
between me and he who began to detach himself from the ground
“a castle made entirely of diamond or a very transparent crystal where there are countless rooms, as there are many mansions in heaven: some above, others below, others on the sides; and in the center, in the midst of them all, is the most important one, which is the one where things of great secrecy take place”: there was, then, the second space in the house, the ceiling space, where Saint John of the Cross went when he levitated: a subsequent mirror announced itself slowly: a few wrinkles and white hairs, tender text and hard text; I no longer ask for the youth of his face but for that of his writing: an admirable woman is a bad mother: on that day she was the victim of two small deceits that led her to pick up the pen and the book
she was listening to kyrie eleison, Christe audi nos, Christe exaudi nos when, looking at the dresser miserere nobis she had the impression that on top of it, behind a glass, there was another candle miserere nobis; she wondered in astonishment miserere nobis
how it could be possible; she realized it was a flask of beauty cream made from plants miserere nobis the other illusion miserere nobis was that she, in bed, went to close the door to the room overlooking the great hall so they wouldn’t be able to see her through the window miserere nobis: but, once she was lying down, she saw that the window wasn’t actually in front of the bed miserere nobis.
There was yet a small incident:
she was so absorbed that her cigarette went out in her hand and, wanting to relight it to swallow its smoke with the kyries, she remembered that she had left the matches where Saint John of the Cross was, near the ceiling or in the Chapel. She then concentrated on the writing and, suddenly, at the top of the page, scratching at it with her fingers, she found a match that she used to light the candle of an oratory, a table, and a few abandoned images: she spent some hours there, in either an intense or a vague sensation of writing: the house, the true and subsequent house, had yet to be made; changing rooms, another part will be completed; I stop at the entrance to the new room which, for the
