Читать книгу Geography of Rebels Trilogy - Maria Gabriela Llansol - Страница 10

Place 1 —

in that place there was a woman who did not want to have children from her womb. She asked the men to bring her their wives’ children so she could educate them in a large house with only one room and only one window; she wore a black shawl close to her face; she had a distant way of making love: with her eyes and with her speech. Also with time, for since the days of her great-grandmother, going back to any era was always possible. Moving, she sometimes looked intently at a place the most beautiful in her house the whole house

because the whole house was beautiful and in that look began either the time of children, or the time of men. Women, there was no other, aside from her, never passed beyond the entrance, which led to the land, land with a garden where they could walk. The men were content because every time she said it isn’t you I care about, it’s the next. So they convinced themselves that, in the moment before, they had been the next. She sat in her room (everywhere) and picked up words on a lightly curved forefinger, as if she served herself an aperitif or a fish. She never thought that perhaps she was situated in the fragment of a cooled star or that she could, with a powerful plant, poison

but, there being no other woman in the house, there were many voices which, from different corners, all seemed to turn toward her

body and did not quiet when she spoke

there was a curtain in the window

which served as a place of spiritual retreat for the children who, at times, wished to leave for the woman, in turn, to receive new lovers there they copied the Ascent of Mount Carmel, by Saint John of the Cross, they laughed, they listened to the voice that slowly read what they had written and, in the end, even imitated their laughter you must know that a soul laughter must generally pass first through two nights that the mystics call purgations laughter or purifications of the soul and that we here will call nights laughter

because the soul walks as if at night, and in darkness; you must know that for these children this laughter did not signify derision; out of pure and extreme ignorance, other children invented that there was a chair in this room with torn stuffing where the sea could be heard, as soon as we put our ear there; now, the springs are damaged the housecat came in you live in the alternative of being a real cat or a royal object and the papers slipped to the ground without her caring: papers, children, lovers, there would always be Saint John of the Cross: when she stood up because a child called her to the locutory in the garden behind one of the house’s walls, she already knew the girl wanted to speak to her; she listened so raptly to what she revealed that, after two hours, she felt an ache in the nape of her neck and also in her skull; it seemed to her, as always when she spoke for a long time, that the words fell into her eyes, dilated and sunk them; the girl wanted an answer and she remembered that no precedents existed; despite this, she was going to think on it, to be with a few children and the papers, and perhaps Saint John of the Cross, whom she would find in any place.

Covered by the table and always ready to write, she dreamed about a group of men and Saint John of the Cross, discalced carmelite, sitting in front of an oven, roasting mutton; his forehead began to darken, red, between waves of scent; she understood, by the fixity of his expression, that he had entered the dark night and that either his book, or his hands, or his feet were now lying on the rack and they traversed flames and circumstances with unforeseeable results. And that he did not write: he had gathered his right fist inside his sleeve and because of the cloth’s transparency only the image

of those who asked for the prisoner to be received could be recognized; sleepreading in the chair, tobacco smoke rose between his fingers, while the woman twisted her bracelet on her wrist:

never again bring me a message that doesn’t know how to tell me what I want. The door closed with a soft

disturbance of air

which agitated the scarf

which 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 time being, is only space crossed by air with 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, I held my severed hand to my chest; Saint John of the Cross, or my son, they write in vain on the blank page. Always blank there was no writing: he then lay down upon the paper, his body taking on the proportions of a newly born child. I looked, ignoring. Nothing happened, only a wail was heard, between the table and the ceiling. Eyes closed, or open, I did not sleep; he disappeared on the page, and: where is my mother?

The rumble of the storm comes from the south of Fontiveros. It has certainly already crossed Úbeda and, before Segovia, will not find rest. We will keep each other company; I feel no pain, and John cannot be born from any part of my body; I have seen the leaves of Fontiveros in autumn, they are red or yellow and resonate through the streets when the air is charged with electricity or when he passes by with his hand writing

leaving the streets,

he found himself in the middle of the countryside.

Around one o’clock in the afternoon, the community returned and recited an antiphon; all of them, affectionately, kissed his feet and hands. It rained

when I was, by chance, sitting on the bank of the river, all I had to do was look at him for things to change by force of circumstances. In the countryside, I have to walk to be able to describe this path. I turn back to be able to begin and notice the leaves decaying from the dampness, which still hide the ground covered in herbs; to my right is a dense line of pine trees and a few buds rise up in bare shrubbery.

Those present wanted to cut a lock of his hair, a piece of his habit, and I saw there were some who bit his ulcerous leg

when the path descends, precisely at the place where the sun is reflected, my leaves are drier; the brightness is tenuous, it disappeared when I raised my eyes and the leaves resonate for having aged and shriveled; most of the trees are bare, it is a winter landscape.

What had belonged to him was distributed as relics: habit, cingulum, cilice, breviary

but the ivy remains as it was and I sit down on a stone in front of the low sun, as if it were summer

There were some who pulled the nails from his toes, there were some who wanted to cut off a finger fier I have been here for a few moments, I begin to smell the variety of plants and herbs, the vegetal species are indescribable. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for

Born without agony, John’s face was full of peace and contentment, of a particular beauty which isn’t that of a cadaver, he who had a face ;

as in dreams, he must actually be eaten

and that was how he had been born, I put my hands on my temples and, in the mirror, saw that they had whitened

I spent a restless night, waiting for the moment when I will return to this path; I could leave, but now it is night and I want to walk it precisely at the same hour.

First homily:

it is the following day, but I believe the seasons are going to change. I picked up a small branch and held it against the sun: it is speckled with frost. The sun is still high in the pine trees, it casts a cold shadow on the soil’s tangled vegetation; my feet freeze and I see the nearly dry herbs framed by a gleamless white, absent any light; it cannot be the same hour as yesterday. In the middle of the path, a woodcutter has piled up logs cut from trees; I do not know if I will continue or turn around, but I cannot stop making my way along the path I walked; now the sun hits the full height of every pine tree, from the bottom of the trunk, and there is even a place that shines, on the ground. Shrubs different from the pine trees seem covered with dry leaves that do not fall because no one touches them; a log was covered in moss where the axe’s blade passed, but I don’t want to sit down on that green bench shining with the same frost; I am about to arrive close to the sun which, at my right, illuminates all the foliage lying on the ground beneath a pine tree; in my left hand the branch is still white and dusted in rime because the cold is glacial, and they still haven’t changed. I reached the point in the path where there are more rotted leaves; then the frost reappears descending toward the village streets and I turn around with the sun rising behind me wanting to lie down here forever as you hear

Second homily:

always the same cold, delicate and intense. The outlying fields have been covered in frost: it is the early hours of the morning. At night I did not feel my usual desire to return to travel this path; but before I arrived I was filled with sadness; the frost increasingly thick and, gradually, the leaves are all white and a mineral whisper beneath my feet.

It is an illusion to believe that,

on either side of the path,

the branches were moving closer. It must be the shadow’s effect. The logs from yesterday no longer fearfully obstruct; some of them rest along the sides, beneath the branches; I sat back on my heels. Someone approached and passes by, without wondering whether I am there; the brightness continues on the ground, it is very warm and makes the vanishing frost green again and leaves the grass bare. The sun moved toward the pine trees and no longer returns to illuminate sections of the descent. A few of the shrubs’ stalks are red and they remind me of our umbilical cord: I remove a branch from the middle of the path because it moves me to sorrow

Saint John of the Cross looked at the candle as if to ask it what, next, he was going to write: the wick was not at the center of the flame and the wax, luminous at its base, reminded him of sperm deposited in his mother’s womb, his mother of the book; there were two shorter candles propped against the burning candle and the pages of the open book were connected by a furrow.

The Living Flame was not written indifferently, says the Prologue. If the words have a meaning: it exceeds all that could be conceived and splinters anything in which we would want to enclose it

He had crossed his legs beneath his habit and wrote between his eyes and his knees; Quasimodo’s Sunday Mass was being sung by the Community and fine voices followed the movement of the pencil as his teeth chewed on it. He saw his mother at the peak of ecstasy and thought, without writing it down, about a boat or a mirror at the top of a wave; the page about his eyes was in the center of the wall and was a hundred times larger than his body. Then he was scared and the pencil seemed to him to be the tip of a breast, which he brought to his mouth. Ana de Peñalosa was suspended over the page, and he on her lap. She rocked him, but the amplitude of her voice was that of a chorus and in the shadow she began to perceive the different physiognomies of the brothers who were singing you are looking for me, but I am looking for you all the more

Everything is being said and the rest of the commentary will not describe a moment in history. He hid his face in his hands, always watched by Ana de Peñalosa, and he perceived, within the closed book, the fire’s speaking color.

Since the candle had gone out, he told his mother to bring him another candle tomorrow; he plunged into the darkness of the blind, into the silence where admiration becomes lost.

Place 5 —

While he waited, John, always at the center of darkness, sat down, and had a dream that, sleeping, he traveled the three paths simultaneously: the way of the river, the way of the pine trees, and the candlelight the flame lit, he half-closed his eyes against the cloud of smoke and concentrated on listening to the river passing by: it had a feminine voice, shrouded with murmurs that could only be heard once. He made an effort to deprive himself of the pleasure and sweetness of memory but it brightened without, however, the sun emerging or the candle going out; the boat remains 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; but I found myself, by chance, on the bank of the 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

but the ivy remains as it was and I sit down on a stone in front of the low sun, as if it were summer (“I do not know how many days I will stay here because they threaten me, from Baeza, that it won’t be very long. I am well, without knowing anything, and the desert life is admirable”). The sun is still high in the pine trees, it casts a cold shadow on the soil’s tangled vegetation; my feet freeze and I see the nearly dry herbs framed by a gleamless white, absent any light; it shouldn’t be the same hour as yesterday. In the middle of the path, a woodcutter has piled up logs cut from trees; I do not know if I will continue or turn around, but I cannot stop making my way along the path I walked

The lit wick, as I watched over it, filled the candle with wax. A dog, or another animal, came over to me and left its skin on the ground. I looked at its bare body and, with my hand, caressed my mother. The parted skin and body brought me joy and sorrow and the animal, which could have also been a wolf or a bear, began to emit a melodious and powerful voice. I lay down on the skin and the fur, soft and manifold,

turned me into morning. He went over to the brazier and the heat of the flame beat at his chest. Hanging above the flame was the portrait of Ana de Peñalosa

(even though I would be happier here, I will leave when you ask me to) to which he then saw was Ana de Peñalosa herself; he wanted to enter the portrait and the fire. He pushed his mother’s knees apart; the early morning seemed to him to be the silk fabric of her dress and the lips that had torn the silk savored, singing, the marvelous food that would guide him on his journey. He picked up the book but, when he went to cross through the opening, he realized they both could not pass; so he left it on the table, open to the place where, for the last time, he had slept. The homily resonated in his ears from the entrance, the shadows of the trees cast on the walls reminded him of the fear of becoming lost. He then raised his hand like a torch and ordered, turning around: to follow me.

The scent of the herbs that were meant to carpet the opening spread through the air; rosemary and mint burned on the ground and, among them all, the feminine voice of the homily stretched out.

ANA DE JESUS

(in her room she opened the window and, to keep from falling asleep, welcomed the cold, particularly on her chin and her hand; she was bending over the paper, which she had divided into three columns; the smell of the food, rising from the kitchens, made the air delicious and bearable.

A bit of snow

but I do not close the window so it can be near, without the glass; in the meadow at the center of the cloister there is also a bird that runs and stops (disappears). The air is clean and the brightness begins to hit the furniture in the room, inviting us for a portrait.

I now watch the path advancing toward the main road, between two ruts: it is a path of grass; all is meadow.

It troubles me that I must abandon this place. — What will I do, really, away from here,

where night and day are so important? — They speak, expressing themselves through delicate changes in light. — I’m going to close the window because my throat’s already hurting: a response to the cold. The weather has changed so many times and I haven’t been interested in anything else )

SHE HAD COME TO VISIT HIM. With her, she had brought her dog. She asked him about the book, where he was in the text: John of the Cross told her that he was going to die to be able to describe the moment of death; but, rather than looking at her, he looked at the dog, its eyes prominent and closed.

Ana de Jesus’s voice had picked up speed. He did not understand why she spoke to him; he saw many trees and horses pass through the dog’s eyes, a few of the horses stopped close to the trees and shook their manes, nostrils smoking. Dark birds flying low, and even imitating terrestrial animals, crossed the meadow, surprised. And, as the movement brought him a turmoil of ideas, among which that of death had taken form, he lay down on the pallet and communicated to Ana de Jesus that he was going to arrive.

The dog went over and stood beside him, stretched out over the stone; Ana de Jesus found that she was talking to herself or, then, to Ana de Peñalosa who, in the meantime, had come and sat down in front of the text.

— What is he writing? — asked Ana de Jesus

— He is writing me — replied Ana de Peñalosa, and

she entered the maternal bed hearing the canticles, unable to fix her feet to the ground. Walking amidst quicksand, the introduction to those new surroundings did not end; she responded to all the doubts briefly because she had little time (she could not delay any longer). But the book had become precious, she had used it so many times that it was now impossible to close it completely. It lay on the work table with small gaps between the pages, its front and back covers turned inside out; her desire to sleep was constant, although she could not give into it because she had to keep watch over the canticles with open eyes and on feet that, enormous from writing, hesitated; she heard, as she reflected, a loud whisper, “greater than language can express and feeling imagine”; Ana de Peñalosa and Ana de Jesus took him by the hand, clasped their fifteen fingers and three palms tightly; as the crowd advanced to surround someone, who fled; their hands undulated over the sheet and the bed and Ana de Jesus said, secretly, to Ana de Peñalosa — ...it must be experienced.

Next to the body of the dog lying on the ground appeared the body of the one they pursued; the room’s walls receded within a dense fog:

I am not born, but

the book lay on the work table; raindrops came in through the window and spread across the words he had written for the Prologue of the Living Flame

O most noble and pious Lady,

it was difficult

to do as you asked:

no one can speak

of the depths of the spirit,

unless they have a spirit

of fathomless depths. In the meadow at the center of the cloister there is a bird and a dog and, between them, I worked the miracle of hiding the body of the one they pursued:

(Ana de Peñalosa said, “he entered into ecstasy”)

I, Thomas Müntzer, reduced to a child’s body, whose size does not exceed that of my severed head after the battle of Frankenhausen;

I, Thomas Müntzer of Stolberg,

making the air’s clear trumpets resound with a new canticle, attest that, above all my contemporaries, I have consecrated myself, with ardent zeal, to become worthy of acquiring a most rare and perfect science.

The men who had held power until now converse coldly

between the pages appeared the manuscript of a text that Saint John

of the Cross had neither written, nor ever seen

it was only a voice in which a voice was imagined

before nightfall, covered in a cursive handwriting, illuminated by the red lamp that Teresa de Ávila hung from her throat

she is seated, reflected in the mirror and the silk of the dress she removed;

on her naked lap,

the head of the day

which is unimaginable

radiates,

without annulling

the terrible voices

and descriptions

of the nocturnal

itinerary:

I spent the afternoon and early hours of the evening wanting,

still on that day

and before

it became morning,

to open the window over the river with the impression that I had slept in the river

and had just arrived there:

there was a brightness so intense that none could bear it, unless it were veiled; the bridge would come from above, overlying the sun. The birds flew within the water (to the depths), the boat sailed seemingly empty, although hands grasped the oars, which did not move; an even more intense light accompanied the boat, like a fountain born in the middle of the water; and, at times, words and phrases were inscribed in the birth of that light, which tumbled down to the place where Thomas Müntzer was going, his ears and his mouth.

From the banks, the crowd continued to loose expletives; but the Living Flame, falling flame after flame, covered the body: the ululating voices lowered their tone, only the green of the meadows where there were many white and yellow flowers followed the boat

it stopped in front of the window where Saint John of the Cross wrote; Thomas Müntzer raised his chest dewed with water; the shouting became singular, irresistibly drawing the current; a bird, emerging from the river’s depths, landed on his chest; the boat continued to glide alone, but traversed by flames:

Saint John of the Cross looked at the spiderwebs which, on the ceiling, edged the pale blue of the cornice and, at that moment, in the boat that was always descending the river (although always in the same place), Thomas Müntzer noticed that a horse swam nearby and that the crowd, reflected in its lustrous neck, had become a peaceful mirror.

Saint John of the Cross, turning to lower his eyes toward the page, as he had seen and not seen the ululating crowd, picked up Ana de Peñalosa’s hand, which she had abandoned on the table, put the pen between her fingers (although I ignore where you are) and wrote:

“among all three there were three people and one beloved being.”

He hid himself to write; but, first, he began by reading the book that held his infinite happiness

he remained at the beginning, but it had no beginning; it was its own beginning and, accordingly, there was no beginning; one in the other was like the beloved in their friend; and this love uniting them has the same value in them both, the same equality

as he was reading, he realized that he read standing, in front of his bookshelf

the art of fasting

distracted,

he looked at his ring finger on which Thomas Müntzer, while he had been headless on the boat, had placed a ring whose stone was his head to how could he hide himself to write

we will let him write, said the horse. We, John of the Cross and I, left for the river and the forest, on a morning of clouded sun; the horse wanted to go with us and we climbed up on its back; John of the Cross had several hands, the reins, and his hand on the horse’s neck. It whinnied a few times: we put a garland of flowers on its head. We immediately saw Thomas Müntzer lying in the boat, his severed head appeared in front of us,

the darkness hung

we moved toward the atrium of the house where we could only arrive at night, after many hours of river and forest and always on the back of the horse that, trotting, whinnied words

we, felt the heat of its blood under our legs, and the wide house was already nearing

on the first night, we would camp in front of it without going in, awaiting the boat in which Thomas Müntzer’s body traveled

we would find the summer house uninhabited, the lights on in Ana de Peñalosa’s room

on the other side of the bank would be the desert, the river, and the forest.

Late in the evening:

— The boat still hasn’t come. A pallet made of logs has arrived — In the place for his head lies a wreath of clovers.

He did not stop, nor the horse at his side.

— We passed in front of the house longingly, reading, throughout, by the light of the river, the writing made by the horse’s hooves — Saint John of the Cross’s feet left his sandals, rose up into the air — A woman in a large vestment appeared to us, the sun enveloped her and twelve stars crowned her head. She shouted painfully when a second sign covered the sky: an enormous dragon, red as fire, with ten horns on each of its seven heads, its entirety ornamented with a diadem; its tail lashed the stars and plunged them to earth; we returned to the horse’s back. Thomas Müntzer went on foot and we held his hands as if they were reins. We shuddered at the idea of entering the desert where the river and the forest — …before we came, they were already there. — (Ana de Jesus, in the laundry, ironed, the embers, lucidly, crackled. From time to time she read a few lines of the manuscript left in front of her atop the peaches. She heard them move away without opening the door to the courtyard or running to the window but, in thought, she began to accompany them, to go to their meeting, or even overtake them on the desert path; she folded the clothing, as “with this positive hope that descended on them from above, the nausea of work diminished,” or a mantle of sand, the noise she heard was that of footsteps approaching or moving away, she realized she was ironing with Thomas Müntzer’s head, his eye sockets burning. She read without stopping, confused by the book the earth began to surround her, she breathed in the fire with delight, lions, prayers, and crowds lingered in Thomas Müntzer’s skull, which he kept in his hand and on the ironing board.)

The boat finally moored and, from within, Thomas Müntzer’s body emerged. He went over to Saint John of the Cross, who was a man of moderate stature, face grave, venerable, burnished and attractive. On this bank of the river he was sitting by the water’s edge. A shadow drew the rest of the body he lacked, so they could talk:

— Nothing satisfies me when I am far from your company. — He put his hand in the water, which was then two hands seemingly severed at the wrists; he wanted to meet Thomas Müntzer — all he had to do was turn his head to see him. — Today, nothing satisfies me when I am far from your company. I went out to the island any number of times until I remained in this place. The crowd has moved away and no one will be able to prevent us from writing, we will penetrate further into the depths. — He had a pleasant manner and conversation. That same day he had reentered the community, after escaping from the prisons of Toledo where he had absconded down a rope.

— In this strange privation I have fallen into… — But when he saw Ana de Jesus leave the house through the trees with his skull in her hands and close to her mouth, and approach him, he leaned over in the position of someone reading:

— Those who feel weak should write to me with friendship; I, in response, will console them. If I make an error, I will abide by a friendly reprimand, in broad daylight and in front of a community, provided they do not subject me to force. But, under no circumstances, will I accept being criticized or judged without sufficient testimony, behind closed doors. Through my actions, I intend to improve the teaching of the evangelical preachers, as well as not scorn our brethren from the Church of Rome who are heavily burdened.

I want to demonstrate the justice of my principles; it would please me, if in your ignorance it does not seem ridiculous to you, it would please me, then, to be publicly confronted by my adversaries in front of men of all countries and all beliefs.

That’s what I was like — said Thomas Müntzer. The weather had changed so completely that they seemed to be in another day; fog had fallen over the river, although without obscuring the visibility of the banks; it was cold but did not raise goosebumps, Thomas Müntzer studied Saint John of the Cross’s face through the fog, his face moved smiling and uneven in the mist. — “But it is night.” — No, it isn’t night — replied Thomas Müntzer who had never read what Saint John of the Cross had written. — It is only the weather, which has changed unexpectedly: the temperature fell and condensation hovers over the river, rising over the mountaintops. My battle is already lost, I can throw my severed head into the river. — They watched Thomas Müntzer’s head glide in the water; fish described swift circuits around it, the shadow had been completely lost when the sun went away; its motion produced a white foam that, at a certain point, taken by the wind, fell onto the banks of the river, disappearing in the place where it is said what the dark night consists of and how necessary it is to pass through it.

Place 6 —

Müntzer (Thomas), founder of the Anabaptist sect, born in Stolberg, beheaded in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, following the Battle of Frankenhausen (1490-1525), at the age of thirty-five, he took his place in the procession. He had lost sight of Saint John of the Cross, and everyone was speaking softly.

At the door to the house, Ana de Jesus kept her hands on her dress and tried to listen to the rustling of the voices which moved away. Abruptly, the continuation of the river and the boat — the desert, no one knew what it was: desert, that which pertains to the desert, that which has the characteristics of the desert.

Uninhabited, arid place, deserted, abandoned, desolate stopovers; lowlands, inaccessible to the damp winds blowing in from the sea and subjected to a perpetual drought. Resulting in the total absence of trees and other plants and a drift that forms according to the nature of the winds and erosion (rocky dunes and slopes). A climate subject to sudden changes in temperature, absolute solitude, except in the oases and on the fringes of the desert regions.

Place 7 —

Thomas Müntzer stopped below the balcony where Saint John of the Cross was writing, remembering that it was time to leave. Ana de Jesus closed all the doors and windows, except the one where he was, unmoored the boat tied to the tree, ready to drag it by its towline throughout the unknown length of the journey. John of the Cross sketched a gesture of farewell and stood beside Thomas Müntzer. They looked back and also saw him at the window, arranging several precious objects on the table, including the inkwell and Müntzer’s head. Müntzer turned around to say goodbye or retrieve his head. He appeared at the threshold of the door, brought by Ana de Peñalosa.

But John, sleeping or in ecstasy, had fallen onto the table, the threshold of the door had become impassible. He made a movement of farewell and the procession departed, lamenting the one who was absent.

Place 8 —

Always on the verge of writing, Saint John of the Cross walked with them for days and days, without having time to sit down on the ground and write. The place they passed through had been taken by a progressive dryness and the light had acquired the quality of

Bluish light, reminiscence. They hadn’t even opened the sacks of provisions, fearing the path would become immobile or dissipate. Before long there was nothing to see, they followed only the horse in front of them and within him John’s desire

Always on the verge of writing

he was a desert horse,

Pegasus.

Flying over the sand, and the oases, no other living being was there, aside from him; he moved quickly across the vast yellow expanse, he sought its bounds; but his own velocity seemed to create space and he had never put his hooves down where the desert ends. He knew he had hooves, a muzzle, eyes, a tail; but he had also never seen his entire body. In the desert, the rain that fell was immediately absorbed. To survive, he had learned to drink in the air, away from the seeps of water that did not exist and in which he could not see himself.

Nonetheless,

he had often witnessed the violent atmospheric disturbances

storm,

thunderbolt,

roaring,

lightning

always lying down in the same place: close to the dunes, drifts formed according to the nature of erosion and the winds. He was lying on the sand, a persistent order spoke to him about his closed wings:

— Try and keep in mind that even though visions or words brought by the storm may be true, they can, despite everything, deceive.

During the storm, a woman and living being sat down on the sandy ground behind the horse; the whole length of her legs was covered by a long skirt, her bust on a pedestal of black or slate stone. With the first flash of lightning, her skirt opened up into a rose: the petals multiplied, as numerous as the grains of sand in the desert. Man must relinquish power and woman must relinquish man, thought the woman who was cooking on the sand and was a master in the art of thinking; a thought that passed through the head of the horse who impatiently awaited the storm’s manifestations.

The smell of the woman’s cooking began to spread out through the space to the fringes of the desert. Teas, vegetables, grains, charred meats.

As she cooked on the grill, the master in the art of thinking experienced the feeling of being a rose, of continually opening up into petals and perfumes, of being the lady where the monstrous hunger ends, and of the ability to quickly bear children, take them out from under her skirt, only a moment between making love and producing children.

It is a mirage, was the idea that came into the horse’s forehead. But when a thunderclap echoed, as if his hooves were pounding in the distance, the woman continued to disassemble into roses. Made only of petals, her skirt had an impressive color and a desert perfume. The horse, when the lightning bolt that burned the petals struck, called the lady the lady of the roses, the perfume the desert perfume, and the food that the woman prepared everything and nothing.

Giving them these names was a way to traverse the sky.

Wind rose up, which the woman found very aggressive; night was slow to come, the closed darkness she would like to walk in at the horse’s side; she had not anticipated what the desert night would be like, if there would be stars, whispers, perfumes, any brightness. Since the sand wasn’t fragrant, she imagined the perfumes of Pegasus’s body, especially those exuded by his hooves, which surpassed anything she might presume of flowers.

When night fell, the woman walked at the horse’s side, Müntzer and Saint John of the Cross were near but invisible. The woman was sweet but tough.

— Think — Pegasus said to the woman. — So that I always know where you are. — The woman lowered her eyes. According to the mirage, the horse was submerged in the water interrogating his hooves and, when he lifted his white muzzle, He remembered a text written on a yellowed paper according to the mirage. The woman understood that she could see the horse’s thoughts, other thoughts, and she lowered her eyes until they closed:

supper

is the end

of the day’s

work

and the beginning

of the night’s

rest.

Houseless,

Saint John of the Cross

and Thomas Müntzer

ate

in the middle of the desert.

They knew

there was going to be

a battle.

The horse

had already reached

their side.

Full of life, he ran around them. Always surrounding them, he placed his hooves firmly on the ground, lifted up into the air. Thus flying, Pegasus slept, his horse’s eyes closed.

Saint John of the Cross,

eating what Ana de Jesus had prepared,

looked at his dream in the nearby oasis,

the place of the book. He had nothing to write with, the words moved in front of his hand (they did not pass to the paper). He made an impatient movement on the sand, closed his fist. The shadow lowered over Thomas Müntzer’s body

the sleeping horse had become completely immobile in the air. John wrote upon the sand, kneeling, his body facing forward, four hooves and his hand writing

That night,

as was its habit,

the nearest oasis

slowly cooled off; the fire of the book hovered over sand’s surface, the hooves of battle horses, brothers to Pegasus, could be heard, if anyone wanted to apply an ear. Pegasus was still sleeping in the dream although he was actually keeping watch over John and Thomas Müntzer and that very secret.

But John of the Cross wrote without hands, without a pen, and without a book, his severed finger touching every flame; the trotting of the horses interrupted Thomas Müntzer’s dinner

the shadow of his head meditated

(in the place where she had prepared the food, the woman’s face was full of tears; she had seen Pegasus wake up and, suspended at the point where he had risen up to guard the writing of memory; he ate time, finished the dinner Thomas Müntzer had interrupted).

Ana de Jesus had opened her eyes in astonishment.

Pegasus, the horse, buried himself in the sand, waiting for someone who knew how to write to come and watch over him. While he had been suspended and moved through the air he had felt a blow on his neck, on his right side, beneath his mane; he certainly wasn’t going to die but he sensed that immobility, contact with the sand, and the book’s living flame could, before the following morning, cure him.

The writing

was the voices

in chorus

of thirty thousand peasants

who after abolishing the judges

made their way toward the massacre of Frankenhausen

and whose footprints were lost in the desert

A polar cold had invaded the battlefield; the peasants advanced slowly, their hands frozen on the tools they usually used to work the earth. A rider suddenly appeared among them, announced the defeat and the massacre telling them that, with such cold weather, those sitting in the middle of the horses’ blood would win

the text immersed in the horses’ blood tells of the adventure in the desert and how it liberated the mind from all spiritual imperfections and all earthly desires. It entered into that inner darkness where sensitive and invisible things can be penetrated through the snow, supported only by the ascent and ascending.

That is why I call it a stairway and secret because its steps and articles are secret, hidden to all sensitivity and understanding. That is why he says he went in disguise the bear was born from the snow, from a drop of blood that fell from the neck of Pegasus the horse. In the white and blue reflection he walked fearfully, but with apparent calm; it is a voice, nothing more than a voice, but he heard Müntzer preach; he wanted to look for the writing to know exactly what was in his preaching. He ended up writing on the page of the manuscript, the bear attentive and sitting at his side. Saint John of the Cross’s heart transcended the text, was buried in the fur of the bear

who said

this is the month I most love; it is the last month of the year. I wanted to write the Rules

there are four yellowed pages

at my side

on a tiny branch

the paper was lying on Saint John of the Cross’s open book

the Living Flame and I read, in the middle of the page, that union is predicated on likeness

those who resemble one another come together

like is known by like.

I continue,

looking around

what I just read

and the moment arrives when I say

the fecundity of the gift is the gift’s only retribution

it seems to me, before anything else, that the rules should rest on their own

that is

that is

that they should be able to remain sleeping,

and be taken as a dream. Watched by Saint John of the Cross, Heart of the Bear sat down on the ice. He was only a drop of blood from Pegasus the horse and he became larger than him, heavier. He was and was not related to him, he who haunted the polar and desert regions; all the animals stopped walking, a great silence spread out through the cold areas and invaded their ears. (The battle came, was coming.) He ended up choosing the ice, leaving through the sand to call Pegasus. He hoped to be able to cross the river that had also frozen. But the crowd of indistinct forms assembled in front of him did not move. Much time passed and they were still in the same place; fascinated by the ground that had opened up cracks from which murmurs emerged. He then made a detour and advancing between trees and walls that were also frozen, at a certain point he did not know where he was and he clawed at his forehead to remember.

When he reached the polar regions he lay down on the snow and, the next morning, was born there; he was large, heavy as a heart without a body and soon the hunters and other animals gave him the name Heart of the Bear. Knowing he had to live in the ice and water, he made a tall man of petrified snow and, for the top, chose a scarecrow; he borrowed wholly from his fur and from colors that scarcely existed; but he learned to work with them in such a way that the rainbow and, more than anything, the color green, could be glimpsed within the white.

Thomas Müntzer did not lose sight of him lest the river melt, summer returned; seen from a distance he seemed to be the polar expanse itself; he smiled at everything and everyone and his ferocity only became terrible when he was hungry and his smile hung from his tongue; at that moment he spoke, rose up, swung his tail and paws; a shadow was cast in front of him and he ate it; it could’ve been a dog, a wolf, the head of Thomas Müntzer who had not lost sight of him lest the river melt, summer returned; he fed, he continued smiling and walking rhythmically. Everywhere he walked, he wrested power which was the temperature rising,

and which was the greatest danger

for the frozen regions.

On the night he was going to eat the shadow of Müntzer’s head, he smiled enigmatically, and howled with hunger all night.

Place 9 —

As the bear intoned the Rules’ adumbrations, Ana de Jesus, in his arms, thought about Pegasus, Copernicus, and Giordano Bruno. She dreamed: through the half-open door, she had caught Copernicus meditating. It was the end of the day, the sun had come in through the window and through the window it had left. “And the Sun lies in the middle of it all,” thought Copernicus. She dreamed; she knew it was so but, at that moment, she saw it was so; it made itself known to her tentatively, as if the ideas had slipped inside the house and were the last light crowning the furniture; she did not take her eyes off the jar of water sitting on the windowsill; it seemed as if everything revolved around the Sun, bright open heart; when she came back to herself, the soup was steaming on the plate and the monks were silent with their clasped hands resting on the tray.

Place 10 —

She had let herself be taken by sleep, the hot wind of the desert had put out the fire

the stars rose in flight over the frozen expanse

Ana de Jesus lost herself in Giordano Bruno, and in the infinity of space.

Giordano Bruno, he of prodigious memory, saw his forehead reflected in the fire and remembered all the seconds, all the minutes, all the hours, all the years of his life; even more intensely, he remembered the texts he had read and the authors who had granted him that pleasure; then he sensed a rising flame would split his forehead in two

but in both parts he remembered that the universe is infinite, populated by thousands of systems with their planets and their sun.

Place 11 —

If she dreamed, she dreamed of forests, and houses born from forests; and shaped like forests. The cities had been destroyed or perhaps had never existed. Heart of the Bear became a permanent place of representations, sensations, perceptions, images, icons, and myths; she had become accustomed to reading texts and seeing animals in him. His enormous, fragile paw had eyes and claws when he wrote on the ground or on paper. A great pleasure rose up from the battle and he followed it with his writing, watching.

What he most loved was the death of the peasants whom he buried every night in solitary places; separating the words

mountains

and rivers

and heads

and punishments.

Upon each grave Heart of the Bear placed a stone where John of the

Cross wrote the epitaph:

this is me, and I am him.

Opening the book, seeing the blank page, picking up any instrument that writes is a great consolation. I believe there is snow under the page, and the heat of the desert hovers around, the sand falls in the clepsydra without the end of this day even being visible or predicted from afar; I gather an infinite sadness from the dead, I collect and arrange its members, and gather them. From a distance I see Saint John of the Cross meditating, the Sun of Copernicus striking his eyes and capturing Müntzer’s head between its hands. From time to time Saint John of the Cross kisses his mouth with the lips he uses to pray and I sense that one of his words will slide down the throat of Müntzer who, in this battle, became dust.

Place 12 —

As he became dust, Thomas Müntzer heard the trampling of the horses farther and farther away. He had never died before. He was aware that Pegasus was moving away.

Neither John of the Cross nor Ana de Peñalosa stopped him, grasping his white mane. He turned toward Heart of the Bear but Pegasus’s longing was so acute that the bear remained what at the beginning he had always been — an animal that had come from the polar regions. John of the Cross, motionless, continued meditating.

He seemed so absent, with his hand fallen onto the sand,

so absent trying to perceive the voices to which he was listening for the book, so absent with his closed eyes open,

so absent with his mouth penetrated by silence

that Müntzer forgot his own name, when he had been born and, worst of all, the reason he was going to die.

But John of the Cross appeared to be sleeping (he had never been absent). He began to write the bear, walking around him, and the last words he said

take him in your paws

let us go into exile.

Ana de Peñalosa and Ana de Jesus did not sleep for a moment that night. They wore the dresses that best expressed them; they waited sitting down, facing one another, always seeing what happened in the same mirror. They had the impression of walking through time, space was nothing; they left the house, the window, the river, the desert, the forest, the polar regions, and concentrated on the word.

Heart of the Bear illuminated the way, in front of them, always with Thomas Müntzer lying across his paws.

Ageless,

Ana de Peñalosa,

grew to be very old.

She was astonished by the dust

that the bear carried

in his arms,

she did not know

which side

his hands,

his arms,

or his head were on;

she wanted

to give birth to

an entire body

and asked her son,

John,

to let her stop.

Her son,

John,

did not wonder

at her request

and,

one night,

Ana de Peñalosa

gathered the dust

of Müntzer’s body.

Place 13 —

I do not know, at this moment, why he would be called the Eudes Star; but, always thinking about Müntzer and the place his head left behind, I began to see him behind the page (I myself writing and burdened by the power of writing) with a star on top of his shoulders, or rather, with a source of divergent light atop the continuation of his neck. Now he walks with us always and the place where he can be found changes with the hours of the night, in the procession; strangely, he shines the most during the day, oscillating his profuse brightness. He leans over the bear’s shoulders and the star’s radiance is cast onto his claws, which hold Müntzer. Ana de Jesus worries because she still doesn’t know how he, with this featureless light, will eat and arrive at a precise point of exile.

(Where, writing the text, he landed, murmured to himself, “ora pro nobis.”)

He put the Living Flame on the Dark Night and the Dark Night on the Spiritual Canticle; he wrote Müntzer’s open letter, Müntzer who the bear, in front of him, carried in his paws; he wrote a new book, The Book of Communities, unknown in his Complete Works.

Müntzer praised the bear’s hands:

“hand of stone, meditative, you could belong to Saint John of the Cross”

he praised the night:

“it is at night that he makes contact with the light, when sleeping (deeply), he is dead to himself. But, awake and alive, he is in reach of that which dies, when he sleeps deeply. In wakefulness, he makes contact with that which is sleeping.”

Ana de Jesus, Ana de Peñalosa, Saint John of the Cross followed the bear; forced to walk upright because of Müntzer who, dead and sleeping, he carried in his paws, he looked at the trees laden with ice, at his height, and did not eat their bright fruit

abandoned text, he often picked it up.

Heart of the Bear now had hands

John of the Cross counted the crystal leaves.

They say this text

They say the bear

They say this text suffers for having been abandoned.

They say this text was not made,

they say this written text is abandoned.

They say it must be seen, it must be seen.

The text was not made, Saint John of the Cross’s face came to an end. Saint John of the Cross lifted his other face, sat down where there was room; he began to embroider words with his finger on Müntzer’s incomplete body.

Ana de Peñalosa looked at her two sons, read the writing that covered the back of the headless one. Rapid, astonished sounds came from his breathing, the wind that had accompanied them since the desert could be heard.

Ana de Peñalosa lay back, Müntzer’s head was born from her legs, adult, the eyes scarcely unclosed. Having been found, the body stood up and said goodbye to the bear who, like a bear, had moved far away. Ana de Peñalosa began to say in a melodic, enamored voice

—They cut off Thomas Müntzer’s head. My son, Thomas de Peñalosa. He may have been born in 1488 but I don’t remember how he was born. He was the founder of this socio-religious reform. His intellectual training was excellent. He studied the German mystics of the fourteenth century.

He followed Luther and abandoned him.

In Zwickau, where he was a minister, he met enlightened people, who did not acknowledge any differences between inspirations, prophecies, revelations, and the Scripture.

My son was very impressed. He became a good preacher. Peasants and artisans listened to him because the economic conditions had created a deep discontent. When he attacked the opulence of the Church and the rich, they cast him from his parish. He fled to Bohemia, where he published a Manifesto in which he considered himself an instrument to purify the earth and the Church.

But they were quick to cast him out of Prague as well. He wandered through central Germany for almost two years.

Then, for several months, he was the parish priest of Allstedt. At that time, he made several liturgical reforms. He wed.

In the winter of 1523-1524, he founded the League of the Elect, to carry out the program of the Prague Manifesto.

His preaching in the presence of Princes John and Frederick of Saxony provoked a tension so unbearable that, feeling himself in danger, he abandoned Allstedt. He returned to wandering for several months. He stopped in Mülhausen in February 1525. My son Thomas then devoted himself, with all his prestige, to the peasant revolt that spread through Thuringia. He drafted the Letter stating their demands.

During the battle of Frankenhausen, on May 15, 1525, the peasants were finally defeated by the Lords. My captured, imprisoned, and tortured son had to declare that he recognized the errors of which they accused him and he was beheaded on May 27, 1525.

The night of the desert ended (but had it really ended?), a long time passed (and even years) before the night of exile began. A period of calm interspersed with unexpectedly painful moments, which were like harbingers and messengers from the future night of the spirit.

Ana de Peñalosa returned to the house with only one room and only one window. Saint John of the Cross and Thomas Müntzer went into the shadows and abandoned her.

Place 14 —

But sometimes, brought by the river, they moored at the small harbor near the courtyard and she came to speak to them from inside the house, which had no interior, nor exterior.

what news of exile?

what atrocious marvels of the journey?

how had his preaching gone in the presence of Princes John and Frederick of Saxony?

how had he been captured, imprisoned, and tortured?

how had he escaped from the prisons of Toledo?

how goes the book?

how goes the battle?

had they staunched the blood of Pegasus the horse?

would Heart of the Bear return?

who will not be sad to have survived?

She laid her head on her arms, John and Thomas Müntzer put the same hand on her shoulder and their voices could be heard entering the house amidst the noise of the water oscillating around the boat.

The window of Ana de Peñalosa’s room was still illuminated; they raised their heads; they looked at the lamplight which could be seen, even though the sun was out; as was his habit, John of the Cross meditated that he was going describe it; that stopping, keeping his hand in exile, would be impossible.

He touched the nape of his neck fearfully. Ana de Peñalosa was certain that he, in the nape of his neck, had already guessed a word. He turned his body slightly, put his fingers flat on the page

John’s eyes filled ; where he saw the words: “Good morning, author of the battle,” for Müntzer was written: “Good morning, mother.”

She wanted to tell them how they had been born, but the afternoon had ended, time stopped on the boat.

Thomas Müntzer lowered his head

John of the Cross unmoored the boat

and she said how did his preaching go in the presence of Lords John and Frederick of Saxony?

Place 15 —

Following those unexpected visits, Ana de Peñalosa began to write a letter she called “Text Submitted to the Sun”; she wrote slowly, with a carefully drawn handwriting that was part of the square of writing. Of the text

bathed by the sun

because she dedicated herself to this work regularly, at the same time, in the same place, and in almost the same position, vocables and certain expressions began to stand out, which she questioned with her meditative thinking: “on the abandoned plain,” “blindly at the lost skies,” “only son.” She sounded out the text to herself, her mouth almost closed and, at times, lifted her head to the open window, believing that the beating of words and oars was approaching. She took a sip of water, returned to the vibration of her hushed murmur; and, as she felt an increasingly acute pain from not being able to accompany them into exile, she wrote to her interlocutor: “If I were to die now.” to Friedrich N. received the letter.

Place 16 —

Zarathustra was the place he inhabited and the cat he possessed. At the edge of the desk he had a book that loosed an anathema upon him, Friedrich N. He opened its pages and submerged his face. He also had Ana de Peñalosa’s writing and many more papers, among which it had been

said

that The Book of Communities

should include Nietzsche

but I believe that, in the future,

it will become difficult to write

because Nietzsche is a man

of the book. Black mustache,

hair. Those capillary adornments

stop me from proceeding.

I see his eyes smashed between

his mustache and his forehead.

I could only let myself be taken

by his eyes if they were

deep. Lewis Carroll.

I place my hand in his eye sockets.

My hand enters and floats:

it is the river that Saint John of

the Cross and Thomas Müntzer

descend in their boat.

N. calls them and they disappear,

meditative.

N. undresses, is nude, only

hair, mustache, pubic

hair. He receives a robe from

Ana de Peñalosa’s hands. He covers

himself with it. In front of the

mirror he submits to a

mustache trim and a haircut, they

pass a blade over his skull which

is now completely bald.

He looks at me and tells me

I may begin to write. I thank him for

his compassion and sit down in

front of him studying the

robe, the white of the book and

the boundless white. I cannot imagine

the tone of his voice, nor the character

of his writing. That stiff body

is impenetrable and it will

ultimately repel me. I walk

around him, I greet him, I hit him in

the face. He takes me by the hand

unangered, unshakeable in his

compassion. He opens one of his

books and the two of us copy what

is written there, as if it were a text

still unwritten. I practice,

the heat of his hand doesn’t distract

me from what we’re doing. I stare

into his eyes and know I won’t be

able to even utter their color. I feel

powerful and, at the same time, sleepy.

I fall asleep on his hand, but in that

sleep I still feel its impetus,

searching for the place where

it is going

a cave with stained glass windows in the depths from which different sounds emerged and spread out

silence could be heard in contrast with the lapping water, the skeleton of a bird had landed on the boat’s stern and had immediately grown feathers and become the body of a living bird.

We began to look at him intently and I remembered to call him Friedrich N. so he wouldn’t abandon my sons. He lifted his wings and I saw his haughty eyes, which occupied his entire head, where there was no longer forehead. His cat was nearby, fur bristling, and its aureole of greenery rose into the air toward the cave’s entrance. I gazed at the bird’s eyes. I smiled. John leapt into the boat, began rowing with his hand immersed in the water. The bird took flight and swooped down over the bow, reuniting us for the birth of exile.

Place 17 —

When Ana de Peñalosa heard that Friedrich N. had received her letter she thought again about Saint John of the Cross and Thomas Müntzer.

The cat had lain down on her lap for a few moments because,

soon,

the fire of the day

would be consumed.

In the caves where they were living, Saint John of the Cross and Thomas Müntzer had become unaffected by the persecutions: water circulated at the opening and the boat moored to the rock plunged its seasoned hull into the vibrations of thought.

The bird circled around John. He landed on his hand and an intense cold rose in the water, covered it with frozen particles — the thicknesses of the texts were looking at one another.

It is a glacial day. We haven’t given up:

we are still alive. I must make

an effort to write. What pleasure

in our hands; we warm our fingers

to write.

This cold day can only be compared

to one other day.

Place 18 —

I read a text and I cover it with my own text, which I sketch at the top of the page but which casts its written shadow over the entire printed surface. This textual overlap comes from my eyes, it seems to me as though a thin cloth floats between my eyes and my hand and ends up covering like a net, a cloud, what has already been written. My text is completely transparent and I perceive the topography of the first words. I concentrate on Saint John of the Cross when the text speaks of Friedrich N.

he left the prow of the boat; his small body walks here; he pierces them with his bright-sharp eyes; he roams freely in the garden; he settles on the plants that Ana de Peñalosa watered this morning.

They then sat down near each other, a text on their knees, the breeze descended and impelled the words to the next body. Ana de Peñalosa did not have a book, she had thrust the needle into the fabric and contemplated the wandering of the fish

I embroider and think I know how to embroider; I don’t know how I made this association but shortly thereafter I reflect. Knowing and seeing. I can choose the colors, I chose the colors of the threads which are reddish-pink and red, and I chose the color of the fabric, brown — which, for me, is the color of the community’s reformulation. What I embroider is an insect, I feel the urge to classify it, know its name and I am, for a few moments, sojourning within in the vast animal kingdom. A finger on the thread, I also fasten my eyes upon the fabric; I find that I see an expansive panorama, my eyes fixed on the velvety brown seem to look all around; I lift the needle from the felt, to me the movement seems similar to that of writing, but inverse.

It was not I who traced this design I embroider but, making my way along it with the needle, I reconstruct the birth of the act of drawing; I lose the notion of time slightly as if my embroidery had come from an archive and was about to disappear within it. I situate myself historically alongside other hands that embroidered fabrics from another era. I wonder, when they find it, what meaning they will ascribe to the insect I encountered today. I pass from writing to embroidery, translating as if both were my speech; at times, I even forget I’m embroidering, in such a way that my fingers become dexterous and my thinking, reflected in the embroidery, a thought. With a book is written another book. As a book is vegetal.

When the clock at the entrance fell out of step and the golden box filled with hours and the shudderings of sound, I realize it is time to change colors on the surface where I’m working. My hands close to my eyes, I notice, for the first time, the skin resting on my bones. She asked herself: “Will they come with someone?” “Will they bring someone?” She was then certain that they would bring someone and she arranged her hair for Nietzsche.

Place 19 —

Resting at the edge of the lake, she ended up smiling; someone had passed by like an illusion, in a boat and rowing — a shadow still unmet; I heard the sound of the water and the oars thrusting. She startled, would it be Nietzsche?; the same boat passed by again. She looked forward at the shadow’s solidity, particularly his head, where only his hair could be made out. She heard the sound of his voice: “You the semi-living who surround me, and enclose me in a subterranean solitude, in the speechlessness and cold of the tomb; you, who condemn me to lead a life it would be better to call death, you will see me again, one day. After death I shall have my revenge: we know how to return, we, the premature. It is one of our secrets. I shall return alive, more alive than ever.”

She moved with him toward the house, through the thick silence that had followed. But it was a child’s shadow: — Where do you come from? From the body. From the place of memories and vibrations. — I don’t know what you mean — I have memories I don’t remember: they are the most beautiful ones; the vicissitudes of ideas and systems affect me more tragically than the vicissitudes of real life. — They sat down leaning against one another. Then, Friedrich N. lay down on Ana de Peñalosa’s lap, ready to fall sleep

(I speak to myself and hear my voice resonating like that of a moribund. With you, dear voice, whose breath delivers me the last memories of any human happiness, with you, let me speak a minute longer. Is it you I hear, my voice? My future, which I will reach if they give me enough time…)

for that night.

She did not marvel when she saw the child sputter fire. She left him to go make dinner. On her way, she lit all the lamps in the great hall. Leaning out the window, she looked at them in the courtyard. Without any light, they were still writing: “It is the radiant night. There will not be many nights like this.”

But those nights were repeated until her old age, which began on that day.

Place 20 —

To keep her company on the long nights when they did not come to see her, Ana de Peñalosa adopted a red and reddish-pink fish who retraced different paths in the water, already overcome by the spirit of dispossession in light of everything capable of disturbing his serenity. Ana de Peñalosa named him “reddish-pink fish,” or Suso. She examined him carefully during forgotten hours: his scales, the pink and the red. When she had spent a long time observing him and his itinerary, she saw the beginning of a line appear from his tail, like pearls. Like the beginning of a written work, she thought. But writing doesn’t let itself be characterized by only one comparison. This was what was written and quickly vanished: when, so many nights ago, I arrived at this house, I found a tomb covered with sage and other plants; here lies the friend of a man. Around the stone was a vast expanse of grass. Eckhart had not met Ana de Peñalosa. But Ana de Peñalosa had met him on the night when, embroidering next to Suso the fish, she had seen his sermons penetrate the water drop by drop, written in the undulations of the aquarium. It had been a cadenced writing, guided by the fish and the evolution of the shells: all living beings are pure nothingness.

Place 21 —

During the gentle time of her old age she had never forgotten

the portrait

of the adult

Friedrich Nietzsche

as a child.

His straight, receding hair was his forehead’s place of remembrance. Broad forehead, short, brushed hair, protruding cheekbones. His abundant mustache fallen, the odd cut of his face. His musical voice; his slow speech; his prudent and meditative walk. His intent eyes betrayed the painful work of his thinking. They were, at the same time, the eyes of a fanatic, a keen observer, and a posthumous.

As she was cooking dinner, she meditated that she envisioned a living writing she could take for an encounter. Meditating, she justified her own desire for solitude

solitude is nothing more than the safeguard of writing when the desire arises.

Solitude is the defense of the text.

Sitting solitarily in front of Nietzsche, she observed him, at night: “It is night, the hour when all the welling springs speak more loudly.

It is night: the hour when all the songs of those who love awaken.

But being surrounded by the light is my solitude.

But I live in my own light, I drink the flames that escape from me.”

Place 22 —

Looking at the windowpane, she saw herself portrayed in it. Through an optical illusion, the two of them were outside the house; on the opposite side of the river, where there is a large knot of ancient, multicolored trees.

The one in the center stood out, red — amidst them all lay the red; then, sunken in a filigree of green foliage, a white shrub; and farther away, always among the multitonal green, pink and yellow shrubs.

— If you have come to die, come die in my room. — Entering into ecstasy the delicious mornings serenaded by the equilibrium of the mornings

it is a young woman’s bed

with room for

a single body;

it is the time of darkness:

all day the sun remains

beyond the horizon;

during that time,

the temperature falls

slowly,

without stopping.

If my sons come,

if I hear the beating of oars,

I will go down to the garden

and tell them:

someone is dying,

and doesn’t want to see anyone.

He had the habit, on his walks, of burning in a fragment of time. Stroking the tender shrubs — those that haven’t yet grown; when the wind blew and it was autumn, the leaves moved quickly, evoking the sound of footsteps, or an eagle. The cold in his hands always astonished him and he stopped to write a few aphorisms, as if he washed them; that morning (just before noon) he would take an unknown path. The sun, that sun, known, went away and came back. Shortsightedly, he was almost out of ink and he had to select and condense his thoughts. He stretched out on the ground, and a shaft of sun scorched him with its subdued brightness. The tops of the trees, always different, filtered the sharpness of the return.

Ana de Peñalosa had not stopped smiling — The Eternal Return — he heard her say without speaking.

But, at midmorning, there was a perfidious animal, with claws; it devoured the insects and the words, which it set down further away, unrecognizable and transformed; its language simulated a page covered with mysterious hieroglyphs constantly shifting sign and meaning. In its shadow, Nietzsche had been invaded by the terror of being another animal and he couldn’t get up from the ground, his spine immobilized — by the weight of the rings and the multiplicity of legs that he did not, logically, know how to use. A thick terror closed his eyes and his hand could not even find the remnants of the writing on the surface. The earth and the light decomposed, chewed by steely teeth lacking a face with a name.

— Is that Nietzsche? — The beast lay its head on her chest; their eyes were extremely close.

(Later, Ana de Peñalosa had completely forgotten what she thought she had seen in that gaze and not even the meditative silence of Saint John of the Cross had made her remember it. Vivid and imperceptible letters.)

— What keeps my sons on their islands? It is night. It is night. It is night.

Friedrich Nietzsche lying on my chest frightens me. The wind blows, the moon shines, O my distant, distant sons, why are you not here?

But today, loving Nietzsche so much, there is an obstacle to this evocation. The silence announces immobility and night, it does not obscure; I drift on a rhythm of texts,

my bare arm lying on the page,

dark and full,

still unaged.

Still unwritten is our future; in my arms, Nietzsche pierces our future with his blind eyes; he sees what is.

The fear that I would be unable to be alone, which threaded through all my Easter days and perverted their potential happiness, has disappeared. I feel as if I splinter melodiously in search of my multiple pleasures (the greatest one — that of the body’s sensitivity). It always begins in my eyes, which distribute subjects for meditation to the other senses.

As Friedrich Nietzsche dies, Suso the fish winds through my aquarium, the aquarium was uninhabited; half full of water; our thinking blew across the surface

my dear, distant sons, do not return while Friedrich Nietzsche does not die

Your mother, who also writes,

Ana de Peñalosa

I disappear from this place. My desires lead me to the new territory, to the house whose entrances have no doors, and the windows not even a pane of glass. A distinct brightness suffuses the entire space — in the most distant corner, shadow is still light.

I am merely a body disrobed. I turn to the aquarium where Suso the fish is

and where water, earth, fire, air cannot be distinguished.

(At the beginning of the fourteenth century a famous Dominican by the name of Suso lived in Suabia. He had a subtle intelligence like his Meister Eckhart of Cologne.)

I lower my eyes over Nietzsche’s mouth, which is still lying on my chest

it is the fish’s grave,

the fish will die at the bottom of the aquarium but the water and fire, dividing themselves, allowed me to see a space full of trees where his fins circulate through beds of leaves, dry branches, deeply marked stones.

He lives with his spirit and his solitude, of which he has not tired for ten years:

always walking, they stumbled upon a deep pit, a kind of amphitheater where young men and women were sitting. Among those who were naked there was a silken body, with gently sloping breasts that reminded him of a harp in full repose. The night, not yet fully ended, was reflected in the hole; gradually, they all undressed — Nietzsche, Saint John of the Cross, Thomas Müntzer, and she herself, Ana de Peñalosa. In their complete immobility, they began to hear the footsteps of those who were approaching. A sudden paralysis took hold of Nietzsche’s sex and heads lit up in the treetops. Truthfully, Ana de Peñalosa did not know what awaited her. The text had just been completed and had fallen at the feet of Saint John of the Cross. A drift of pigs advanced into the clearing, the bodies of the naked young women had taken on a precise luminosity. Where there was no longer any need for speech, Nietzsche agonized. Moved, Ana de Peñalosa touched a pig brought him home

to the place where she had slept

if she could be rhythm

she would leave home,

with the house,

tonight.

Tonight, the pig ate F. Nietzsche, contradicting “pearls should not be cast before swine.”

When he understood it was time to return, he raised his snout from Ana de Peñalosa’s lap,

over which he meditated

and asked

where to?

Nietzsche leaned over the river that ran incessantly with a vibrant appearance.

THERE, she answered him. If you dare.

where? repeated Nietzsche

acquainted with rivers, shadows, choirs, texts, courtyards, names, the geographical and genealogical particularities inhabiting Ana de Peñalosa’s house

THERE, repeated the writing that had been imprinted on the water with the back of a horse,

the paws of a bear,

large scales,

the smell of a pig,

and a delicious beating of oars

She moved all the books, notebooks, and papers to the right. She had never felt so quietly alone, it was strange that that strange Ana de Peñalosa had the monk Eckhart — the Pig — in her room. Not a compilation of the Sermons

Quasi stella matutina in medio

nebulae et quasi luna plena in

diebus suis lucet et quasi sol

refulgens, sic iste refulsit

not the Book of Consolation,

nor the Treatises,

but bear, woman, blood, rose

if I concentrate on a fragment of time

not today, or tomorrow

but if I concentrate on a fragment of time,

now,

that fragment will reveal all time.

Place 23 —

This was how Ana de Peñalosa read this writing and she could only see it through lace, viscera of her body; she had awoken at dawn; at that dawn’s first light she had had the following dream:

it was dawn, I left an immense unknown place with Sister Inés and

a very young daughter of mine, dressed in black (her face also hidden by a veil covered with precious stones. The two of us will lead the girl to a place) Sister Inés wept and said: This world is ending.

I tried to console her, saying certainly a new world is beginning.