(I) -II- -III-
The Stamp Album: -IV- -V- -VI- -VII- -VIII- -IX- -X- -XI- -XII-
In the Municipal Park: -XIII- -XIV- -XV- -XVI-
Springtime Twilight: -XVII-
The Villa: -XVIII- -XIX- -XX- -XXI- -XXII- -XXIII- -XXIV- -XXV- -XXVI- -XXVII-
Bianka’s Lineage: -XXVIII- -XXIX- -XXX- -XXXI- -XXXII- -XXXIII-
Hiatus: -XXXIV- -XXXV- -XXXVI- -XXXVII-
Finale: -XXXVIII- -XXXIX- -XL-
Spring
I
THIS IS the story of a certain spring, a spring which was more real, more dazzling and vivid than the other springs, a spring which simply took its literal text seriously, that inspired manifesto written in the brightest festive red, the red of a wax seal and of the calendar, the red of a coloured pencil and the red of enthusiasm — an amaranth of timely telegrams from far away...
Every spring begins this way, from those enormous and astounding horoscopes, beyond the scale of a single season of the year; and in each one — let it be told at last — there is everything: endless processions and manifestations, revolutions and barricades — and at a certain moment, through each of them, the hot wind of remembrance blows, that boundlessness of sadness and intoxication searching in vain for the adequate in reality.
But then those exaggerations and those culminations, those accruals and those ecstasies come into bloom — they become part of the fluttering of the cool leafage, the springtime gardens stirred by the night, and the rustle absobs them. And in this way, one by one, springs betray themselves, submerged in the breathless rustle of the blossoming parks, their swelling and suffusion — they forget their promises; they let fall leaf after leaf from their testament.
This one spring had the courage to persevere, to remain faithful and to endure all. After so many unsuccessful attempts, ascents and incantations, it wanted at last to be really constituted — to explode upon the world, the universal and now definitive spring.
That gale of events, that hurricane of incidents: the happy coup d’état, those exalted, lofty and triumphal days! If only the pace of this story could capture their ravishing and inspired cadence, adopt the heroic tone of that epopee, keep time with its march to the rhythm of that springtime Marseillaise!
Spring’s horoscope is so measureless! Who can take amiss its intense scrutiny, reading it in any one of a hundred ways, contriving blindly and syllabising in all directions, lucky when anything at all can be deciphered among the misleading chatter of the birds? It reads that text forwards and backwards, losing the meaning and starting again at the beginning, in all of its versions, its thousand alternatives, its trills and twitters. For spring’s text is full of meaning in its implications and insinuations, in the ellipses dotted without letters in its empty blueness — and in the vacant gaps between the syllables the birds capriciously insert their own guesses and suppositions. This story, therefore, following the example of that text, will be drawn along many branching tracks, thoroughly intertwined with springtime dashes, sighs and dots.
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