Spring: -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-
XVIII
AND WHEN they silenty return late at night to their immense villa amid its grounds, to a low white room where a long, black and glistening grand piano stands, holding all of its strings perfectly still, and when, through a great glass wall as if through the panes of an orangery, the whole spring night, pale and drizzling with stars, bitterly stirs the aroma of hagberry from every vase and utensil, over the cool linen of a white bed — then disquiet and attentiveness runs through the great and sleepless night, and the heart talks in its sleep — it flies, it trips and sobs, through an immense and dewy night swarming with moths, bitter with cherry blossom, and luminous...
Ah, it is that bitter bird cherry that so expands the abysmal night. And the heart, worn out by its flights, abandoning its merry pursuits, would like to go to sleep now, only for a moment on some border in the clouds, some thinnest of edges. But out of that unending pale night there develops an ever more pale and intangible night, over and over again, scratched in luminous lines and zigzags, in astral spirals and pale flights, pricked a thousandfold by the proboscides of invisible mosquitoes, soundless, and sweetened by the blood of girls. And now, once more, the indefatigable heart weaves through its dream, maddened, embroiled in starlit and intricate scandals, in breathless hastes, lunar panics, rapturous and repeated a hundredfold, plaited in pale fascinations, in numb, somnambulistic dreams and lethargic shudders.
Ah, those abductions and chases of that night — the treasons and the whispers, the Negroes and the steersmen, the balcony posts and night-time Venetian blinds, the muslin dresses and veils, billowing in a breathless escape! Until at last, in a sudden darkening, a black and muted pause, the moment arrives — all the puppets are lying in their boxes, all the curtains are drawn, and every long bated breath is now exhaled there, passing calmly across the whole span of that scene, and in the immense and serene sky, the daybreak silently builds its faraway pink and white cities, its bright, distended pagodas and minarets.
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