The Book
I
I SIMPLY call it The Book, with no qualifications or epithets, and in this abstinence and restraint there is a helpless sigh, silent capitulation to the immeasurableness of the transcendent, for no word, no allusion can glisten, scent the air, or drift with that shudder of terror, any inkling of that unnameable thing, the very first taste of which on the tip of the tongue surpasses the capacity of our rapture. For what can the pathos of adjectives or the haughtiness of epithets avail in the face of that measureless thing, that magnificence beyond reckoning? The reader, in any case, the true reader on whom this novel relies, will surely understand when I look deep into his eyes and shine there with that same radiance. In that short but forceful look, in that fleeting grip of the hand, he will apprehend, he will accept, and anticipate — and close his eyes in rapture at that profound recognition. For indeed, under the table that separates us, do we not all secretly hold one another by the hand?
The Book... Somewhere in the dawn of childhood, at the first daybreak of life, the horizon shone with its gentle light. It lay in its full glory on Father’s desk, whilst he, silently engrossed in it, patiently rubbed with a licked finger its ridge of decals, until the blank paper began to mist, to blur, to loom with blissful anticipation, and suddenly, shreds of tissue-paper began to peel away, and they disclosed a mascaraed, peacock-eye rim, and my swooning gaze fell into a virgin dawn of godly colours, into wonderful dampness of the purest azures.
Oh, the wearing away of that film. Oh, that invasion of splendour. Oh, blissful spring. Oh, Father...
At times, Father would rise from The Book and leave the room. Then I was left all alone with it, and a wind moved through its pages, and visions arose.
And as the wind silently turned those pages over, blowing the colours and figures away, a shudder ran through the columns of its text, releasing flocks of swallows and skylarks from among the letters. It rose into the air, scattering page after page, gently suffusing the landscape, which it saturated with colour. At times it slept, and the wind blew it quietly around like a cabbage rose. Its leaves parted, sheet after sheet, eyelid after eyelid, all of them blind, velvety and lulled to sleep, each concealing at its centre, deep within, an azure pupil, its peacock core, a screeching nest of humming-birds.
That was very long ago. Mother was not yet with us. I spent the days alone with Father in our room, as big as the world in those days.
Prismatic crystals, dangling from the lamp, filled the room with scattered colours, and a rainbow was dispersed over all the corners. And as the lamp turned on its chains, the whole room meandered in fragments of the rainbow, as if the spheres of the seven planets, spinning around, were passing each other by. I liked to stand between Father’s legs, clasping them like columns at either side. He would sometimes write letters. I sat on his desk and observed with rapture his flourishing signature, convoluted and swirling, like the trills of a coloratura soprano. Smiles budded in the wallpaper. Eyes hatched out. Somersaults turned. To amuse me, Father blew soap bubbles into the rainbow-hued space from a long straw. They bounced off the walls, and burst, leaving their colours in the air.
Then Mother arrived, and that bright, early idyll ended. Seduced by Mother’s caresses, I forgot about Father. My life trundled along a new and different track, one without holidays and without wonders, and I might have forgotten about The Book for ever, had it not been for that night and that dream.
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