IV


1

The memory of a bewildering romance:
her tongue had turned white, the
ugly flight jacket bought the day
before had suffered a three cornered
tear. Her eye imposed the spectre
of a building upon a gap
in the city, but I found
nothing better to do than sketch
the map of mountains, fissures and
interconnected lakes which the action of
heat and sudden rain had developed
upon the path.

2

She gazed into the mirror treated
with seven excretions: ophidian skin, mottled
breasts and shoulders. The fumes settled
into the handsome animal mask of
my father, not as he was
in life, but as it had
proved convenient for me to represent
him to myself. By this time,
she was delusional, ransacking the house
in search of the one object
that caused her damage. I marked
a cross upon the tablecloth, then
added four dots at the intercardinal
points, connecting them with the looping
walls of that labyrinth through which
I follow him now.

3

She vanished among men of unguessable
temper, always older, who made no
remark about the tremble of the
skeleton at the foot of her
mattress.