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-
XXVII
I DID NOT HAVE the courage to circle around the villa to reach the other side. I would have surely been discovered. Why then, despite this, do I have the feeling that I have been there before, very long ago? Don’t we all, in fact, know in advance all the landscapes that we will encounter in our lifetime? Can anything at all new happen to us that we have not, in our deepest reserves, long foreseen? I know that some day, at some late hour, I will be standing on the threshold of those gardens, hand in hand with Bianka. We will enter those forgotten recesses where envenomed parks are shut in between old walls, those artificial paradises of Poe, full of cowbane, poppy seed and opiatic bindweed, burning under the dun sky of very old frescoes. We will rouse a white marble statue, sleeping with empty eyes in that marginal world, beyond the outskirts of a withered afternoon. We will startle its only beloved, a red vampire bat, asleep on its lap with folded wings. It will fly away soundlessly, soft, fluid and undulating, a flimsy, bodiless scrap of bright red without skeleton or substance. It will whirl, flutter here and there, and melt away without trace in the necrotic air. Through a little wicket gate, we will encroach on a totally empty glade. The vegetation there will be charred, like tobacco, like on a prarie in a late Indian summer. Perhaps it will be in the state of New Orleans, or Louisiana — countries are mere pretexts, after all. We will sit on the stone casing of a square pond, and Bianka will dip her white fingers into its warm water, covered with yellow leaves, and not raise her eyes. On its far side, a slim black figure will sit, completely veiled. I will ask about her in a whisper. But Bianka will shake her head and say quietly: ‘Don’t be afraid. She is not listening. It is my dead mother, who lives here.’ Then she will tell me the sweetest, quietest and saddest things. There will be no consolation now. Dusk will be falling...
> -XXVIII- >