...And Dreams Are Dreams

I was delirious. I had lost control. I wanted her. I was convinced of that. I had matured. Rosa, with her sad gaze of joy, her beautiful face of sadness, Rosa with the body that magnetized, with the voice that tranquilized, Rosa by the fireplace, on the beach, with the seagulls, Rosa of midday, of nighttime, of dawn, Rosa of the disco, of long ago and far away, Rosa who was earth, sky, a comet passing by earth every seventy-six years and I, with my telescope, waiting for her to pass by with her peacock’s tail, waiting to respond to her deepest, most secret nature, Rosa, Rosa, don’t get hurt by the sun, leave me at least the black powder of your tail, my love, Rosa, Rosa, Rosa, Rosa, I write means I want you, I love you, I am here, I want you, yes, love, Rosa is here, she is waiting for me, here she is, yes, here she is….

— 4-

And the man went crazy. On his desk, in his small hotel room, the chambermaid found a strange piece of paper upon which he had written, like a broken record, the same phrase, over and over: “A Rosa is a Rosa is a Rosa is a Rosa is a Rosa is a Rosa…” as if the play on Gertrude Stein’s famous words were the key to an explanation.

After his unfortunate death (they found his body floating in the Tiber, like the corpses of the resistance fighters he used to see as a boy, washed up by the River Strymon, as he describes in his books), they brought me, the press attaché at the embassy in Rome, his papers and few belongings: his radio, his typewriter, and a couple of changes of underwear. I sent the lot to Rosa, whose telephone number was written across the title page of The Transplanted Heart. When, later on, while on leave in Athens, I got to meet her, she spoke to me the way you would speak to a stranger you trust because at a critical moment he had done the right thing: she had greatly appreciated the fact that I had sent the manuscript not to the publisher, but to her. After having told me all kinds of things about the novel, where she had discovered countless details of their love: phrases, words, favorite meals, she began to accuse herself indirectly of having behaved harshly.

She had not realized that Don Pacifico or, as he was known, Irineos, was nothing but an immature child. He had appeared to her so heavy with experience and knowledge that she had ignored his childish fragility. She had sensed it in the beginning, but finally she had told herself that she had been mistaken and so she chose to believe (she had been wrong of course, but it was all useless now, all useless) that she was dealing with a man who undoubtedly had many personal problems, problems that he was solving, or was trying to solve, through the sex act. And so Rosa, who had never had feelings of remorse or guilt, acquired them now.

“Why did I go and pull that stunt?” she asked, sobbing, as she told me of the time when their love had filled her completely. “Why did I have to hurt him too?” But it was too late for regrets. After all, she could have died after they had broken up; she had been beside herself, looking for something to hang onto so as not to repeat what she had done when she was younger, the scars of which were still on her wrists.

She could have, yes, that miserable summer when they had separated, when she herself had made the painful decision that they break up, because they just couldn’t go on anymore, asking of him only not to contact her.

She could have died then, and loaded him with the burden of sorrow and guilt. At least he had died happy, delirious, as his papers showed, because he had finally succeeded in falling in love, at the end of his life. He was seventy years old, you know. Old, but still capable of affecting a woman.

Afterward, Rosa wanted to enter a convent. She went through different phases, from Hinduism to Zen to the occult. She kept in touch with me. With time she got over it. Only those three flowers she had taken to his room still tormented her in her sleep. The three red roses, as scarlet as blood, that she herself had placed in the vase the chambermaid had brought her, after Rosa had given her a little something, in the hallway of the hotel, outside the door he had left unlocked, as always, because, he used to say: “Who would steal my manuscripts? Nobody reads Greek.” Those roses were like three characters in search of an author to sing their praises. And the author might no longer be alive, but those flowers lived on in her memory.

— 5-

That was the story I wanted to tell you, dear friends, and please forgive me any imperfections.

Nowadays, people telephone each other, telegraph each other, teleprompt each other, telelove each other.