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March 20, 2007
Herewith: The Reason Why I'm Mad for the Salter
I wake in the darkness and lie there. The aftertaste is not bitter. I know, just as in dreams, I will die, like every living thing, many of them more noble and important, trees, lakes, great fish that have lived for a hundred years. We live in the consciousness of a single self, but in nature there seems to be something else, the consciousness of many, of all, the herds and schools, the colonies and hives with myriads lacking in what we call ego but otherwise perfect, responsive only to instinct. Our own lives lack this harmony. We are each of us an eventual tragedy. Perhaps this is why I am in the country, to be close to my final companions. Perhaps it is only that winter is coming on.
One night in the darkness, outside, listening to the distant booming surf, "Isn't it strange," I say, "how you want different things at different times? Now all I want is a house by the sea. Hawaii was like this, still empty then, still beautiful. We used to make love in the cane fields."
"Who? Who did you do it with?"
"A naval officer's wife, I remember. Her name was Sis Chandler."
"Whew! That's a hot name. She must have been something. Was she blonde?"
"No."
In fact I could not recall what she looked like, but I remembered her and one or two things she said. It was her name that mattered, especially after so long a time. Pronouncing it had made me feel a long-vanished warmth towards her.
I have not forgotten those days, I have only
Forgotten how simply they seemed to occur...
It was difficult to write. The heart for it was faint. It was useless, as in Chekhov's crushing story, to try and tell someone of my child's death. I could hardly bring myself to mention it. You must remember, but it was precisely that which was terrible. In reality I tried to forget her and what had happened.
In a jeweler's window off Bond Street I had once seen an antique gold box about the size of a box of matches. It had a small drawer in which lay half a dozen ivory strips upon which riddles or questions were written in black enamel. Inserted in a slot they produced an answer in a narrow window on top of the box. Qui nous console - who consoles us - was one of the riddles. Le temps was the answer, a word which can mean either weather or time.
In the country there was both.
Posted by Bree at March 20, 2007 04:42 PM