a few openings of sun and the rest rain, humidity, cold because the climate is not Atlantic like that of the house I left, moderately sweet and bitter; I sit down to the time without movements and I become a faint apparition until a new cell of the new house is written — it must be a cell with a tomb built upon the place where I sat, a tomb of evident and aromatic dream where I see you in many people and many moments of your life. Through the small opening in the attic tomb overlooking the garden, voices could be heard and the beating of oars announcing that Saint John of the Cross was going to arrive. John’s name furrowed the water and the boat’s keel penetrated each letter as he conversed with the book, the book open on his knees being born from his mouth and covered by a particular quality of sun; voices could be heard and the beating of oars, his lowered eyelids still allowed him to utter his dreamed writing. When he put his feet on land I said to him
good morning, actor of speech
and he answered me:
good morning, mother: next to the river was a courtyard surrounded by windows; the ground, washed by you morning and afternoon, was always shining, although one day I noticed the brightness had diminished and the plants lacked the just-watered splendor you gave them, I sat down with my white sheets of paper between my hands, meditating on the enigma, and I ended up writing that you would be in the moment of absenting yourself, almost opening the door, in the most remote room of the house, although you constantly desire to be hospitable. For three centuries, your courtyard influenced the lifestyle of the brothers and sisters who form the community: our rules encompassed the novitiate, the prayers, the style of dress, the slumber, the journeys, the silence, and the utterance of speech. The fast is not from meat, but from movement. At certain hours of the day, when all the sand fell in the clepsydra, those who are part of the community should become immobile and look attentively at the position in which they found themselves; when I stopped in the left wing of the house I thought, since Ana de Peñalosa had left, that all her rooms would be closed. But, obeying the rules, the door had been left completely open and two small birds listened to a mandolin from the old round birdcage; in the dresser drawers she left the clothing she wears to sleep at night; her day dresses hang from pegs placed at the entrance to the next room where there is a work table and a skull, eye sockets wound in ivy. The bed seems that of a young woman, with room for a single body, at its foot hung an engraving of a placenta enclosing a fetus only a short time before birth. The dresses are different colors, short and long, and one has the impression that they seem to describe her. I imagine her in the middle of the carpet, welcoming me, and say: good night, mother. We cannot run to each other because it’s time to follow one of the rules. The light goes on in the birdcage and I make out my open book on her work table, underlined at the beginning of the Living Flame, her hand abandoned in it; I am fascinated by the stillness in the room and I notice that a single ring occupies her hand in the same way her hand occupies the page; I take her hand, infringing on the rules, and her hand contains a word with which she, also infringing on the rules
I did not descend the river by boat to attend your death
but I found myself, by chance, on the bank of a river and, when the last memory of all of you blurred, I noticed the day and the greenery which, from the earth, penetrated the water; the blue boat oscillated toward the tree it had been tied to, and also oscillated toward the mouth of the river, and I then began to accumulate memories of the future in a great meditation; the river seemed to me to be the walls of this house which were sailing and each part, with its own function, was present but dissolved in the water, running. My habitual somnolence had abandoned me, waiting to see the gliding of the water, I felt I would be awake forever. But this state was more restful than sleep, without any of the dreams I did not want to have. It is the future, I thought. The river runs very fast, and what I was thinking transformed over time, which is shadowed and full of whispers, close to my feet; once in a while, the blue boat tied to the tree stretches the whole length of its chain and bends toward the bank covered in green plants where a salutary dampness begins to descend. Do you know this unforgettable place? The wind picked up and blows over me and through the tree, which lost the brightness I remembered; it became colder and I think only of the torrent whose speed is always increasing; at a certain point, as there is a small island in the middle of this turmoil, I begin to believe that, in the other branch of the river, the waters rise toward the source. Today the weather still hasn’t changed and, within a few days, I will return. I don’t know if you will be able to see me right away; it’s better for you to busy yourself writing, even in my room because for some nights yet I will live in the garden and look at your illuminated windows; I will call them illuminated leaves. If you find a cradle in my room
I spent the night on the bank of the river, for nowhere else do I sleep with such serenity. The boat is still tied to the tree and I know it is morning by the sound of the water, by the hasty passage of the current, shadowed but without storm; the low tree trunks formed a kind of cavern; and the noise, beginning there, disappears at a distance, in the middle of the mass of water.
voices of your brothers
To find a place called Fontiveros, remember that I will be there, within a few days; I will get up and follow the river, leaving the garden. Knowing you well, I believe you will begin to descend the river, rigid as you are. The infantile
His waning face fought the current and it seemed as if he fled when, in fact, he left for the meeting he had arranged. A powerful sound came out of the water and commanded him to immobility. He knocked on the door and the midwife said to them: — Enter, please. — He sat down at the table and raised his head toward the ceiling, eyes closed. Ana de Peñalosa sat down as well, identical to her son. The lamplight fell on her hand and Saint John of the Cross’s face rose, studying all the corners of the room. It seemed to Ana de Peñalosa that her illuminated hand had trembled and that her fingers had become light and tapered; her wrist, lying on the table, beat. It is the water’s current, she thought. But she felt her fingers to be increasingly tenuous in such a way that when Saint John of the Cross lowered his head, her hand had disappeared, severed at the wrist, and in its place, lying flat, was the page: “There I told you I wanted to remain in this desert of Peñuela — six leagues before Baeza — where I arrived nine days ago. I am well, and in very good health, because the enormous expanse of desert is beneficial for body and spirit.”
He leaned against the wall, retreating. In an instant, he crossed the place of Fontiveros, where the houses are a lime white that ; at the same instant, in the garden of Peñuela, he remained in prayer all night and, in the morning, they saw him rise up from the earth the top of the table was rectangular yellow, the predominant color of the air in Fontiveros and, when it was made into water, it became, in the second layer, mirror; a wind like that from the river passed by, a wave rose up, a candle was lit within it (the room’s lamp was extinguished, the daylight disappeared): in the candlelight, our faces and handwritings intertwine; they lay in shadow, our severed left hands of Ana de Peñalosa, and they replace the duplicate pages: the second layer broken, they both appeared in a fetal position, mouths dirty with the milk of words; raised in the air, the candle went out, the room’s lamp was extinguished, the daylight disappeared.
Place 4 —
when the weather began to darken, this river flowed vertically. As it fell in the courtyard, it provoked a shudder in the layer of water already there. Alongside the drain form bubbles. Driven by the remaining water, they cut across the corner in a rapid movement that, gradually, decreases and stops; the bubbles now moved in a circular pattern and the noise of the rain, isolated in one or another drop, can be discerned, above all, at the height of the roof. I let out a sigh and the time it takes the isolated drops to fall became, each time, less brief. It brightened without, however, the sun emerging or the candle going out. Afterward, in the courtyard, it seems that someone is drinking water and that the sound is amplified, writing
John’s overwhelming desire.
The midwife tells me she is going to sleep, that the wait has been greatly prolonged. I smile; and, having found it underneath the page,
