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 quietly return late at night to their immense villa in its grounds, to a low white room where a long, black and glistening grand piano stands, holding all of its strings perfectly still, and 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 bird cherry from every vase and utensil, over the cool linen of the white beds — then disquiet and attentiveness runs through the great and sleepless night, and the heart talks in its sleep, flies, trips and sobs through an immense and dewy night swarming with moths, bitter with bird cherry, 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 for a moment on some border in the clouds, on some thinnest of edges; but from that unending pale night an ever more pale and intangible night develops, 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 the indefatigable heart now weaves through its dream again, 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.
Oh, those abductions and chases of that night — the treasons and the whispers, the Negroes and the steersmen, the balcony posts and the night-time Venetian blinds, the muslin dresses and the 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 everyone’s long bated breath is exhaled there, and passes calmly across the whole span of that scene, and the daybreak silently builds its faraway, pink and white cities in the immense and serene sky, its bright, distended pagodas and minarets.
> -IX- >