Children of the Albatross Read Free Page B

she would discover an entrance to it.
    In front of the house there was a basin which
had been filled, and a well which had been sealed up. Djuna set about restoring
the basin, excavated an old fountain and unsealed the well.
    Then it seemed to her that the house came
alive, the flow was re-established.
    The fountain was gay and sprightly, the well
deep.
    The front half of the garden was trim and
stylized like most French gardens, but the back of it some past owner had
allowed to grow wild and become a miniature jungle. The stream was almost
hidden by overgrown plants, and the small bridge seemed like a Japanese brige in
a glass-bowl garden.
    There was a huge tree of which she did not know
the name, but which she named the Ink Tree for its black and poisonous berries.
    One summer night she stood in the courtyard.
All the windows of the house were lighted.
    Then the image of the house with all its
windows lighted—all but one—she saw as the image of the self, of the being
divided into many cells. Action taking place in one room, now in another, was
the replica of experience taking place in one part of the being, now in another.
    The room of the heart in Chinese lacquer red,
the room of the mind in pale green or the brown of philosophy, the room of the
body in shell rose, the attic of memory with closets full of the musk of the
past.
    She saw the whole house on fire in the summer
night and it was like those moments of great passion and deep experience when
every cell of the self lighted simultaneously, a dream of fullness, and she
hungered for this that would set aflame every room of the house and of herself
at once!
    In herself there was one shuttered window.
    She did not sleep soundly in the old and
beautiful house.
    She was disturbed.
    She could hear voices in the dark, for it is
true that on days of clear audibility there are voices which come from within
and speak in multiple tongues contradicting each other. They speak out of the
past, out of the present, the voices of awareness—in dialogues with the self
which mark each step of living.
    There was the voice of the child in herself,
unburied, who had long ago insisted: I want only the marvelous.
    There was the low-toned and simple voice of the
human being Djuna saying: I want love.
    There was the voice of the artist in Djuna
saying: I will create the marvelous.
    Why should such wishes conflict with each
other, or annihilate each other?
    In the morning the human being Djuna sat on the
carpet before the fireplace and mended and folded her stockings into little
partitioned boxes, keeping the one perfect unmended pair for a day of high
living, partitioning at the same time events into little separate boxes in her
head, dividing (that was one of the great secrets against shattering sorrows),
allotting and rearranging under the heading of one word a constantly fluid,
mobile and protean universe whose multiple aspects were like quicksands.
    This exaggerated sense, for instance, of a
preparation for the love to come, like the extension of canopies, the unrolling
of ceremonial carpets, the belief in the state of grace, of a perfection
necessary to the advent of love.
    As if she must first of all create a marvelous
world in which to house it, thinking it befell her adequately to recee this
guest of honor.
    Wasn’t it too oriental, said a voice protesting
with mockery—such elaborate receptions, such costuming, as if love were such an
exigent guest?
    She was like a perpetual bride preparing a
trousseau. As other women sew and embroider, or curl their hair, she
embellished her cities of the interior, painted, decorated, prepared a great mise
en scene for a great love.
    It was in this mood of preparation that she
passed through her kingdom the house, painting here a wall through which the
stains of dampness showed, hanging a lamp where it would throw Balinese theater
shadows, draping a bed, placing logs in the fireplaces, wiping the dull-surfaced
furniture that it might shine.