House of Incest Read Free Page B

belfry where I was alone with the deafening sound
of bells calling in iron voices, or in the cellar where I nibbled at the
candles and the incense stored away with the mice.
    I cannot be certain of any event or place, only
of my solitude. Tell me what the stars are saying about me. Does Saturn have
eyes made of onions which weep all the time? Has Mercury chicken feathers on
his heels, and does Mars wear a gas mask? Gemini, the evolved twins, do they
evolve all the time, turning on a spit, Gemini a la broche?
    There is a fissure in my vision and madness
will always rush through. Lean over me, at the bedside of my madness, and let
me stand without crutches.
    I am an insane woman for whom houses wink and
open their bellies. Significance stares at me from everywhere, like a gigantic
underlying ghostliness. Significance emerges out of dank alleys and sombre faces, leans out of the windows of strange houses. I
am constantly reconstructing a pattern of something forever lost and which I
cannot forget; I catch the odors of the past on street corners and I am aware
of the men who will be born tomorrow. Behind windows there are either enemies
or worshippers. Never neutrality or passivity. Always intention and
premeditation. Even stones have for me druidical expressions.
    I walk ahead of myself in perpetual expectancy
of miracles.
    I am enmeshed in my lies, and I want absolution.
I cannot tell the truth because I have felt the heads of men in my womb. The
truth would be death-dealing and I prefer fairy tales. I am wrapped in lies
which do not penetrate my soul. As if the lies I tell were like costumes. The
shell of mystery can break and grow again over night. But the moment I step
into the cavern of my lies I drop into darkness. I see a face which stares at
me like the glance of a cross-eyed man.
    I remember the cold on Jupiter freezing ammonia
and out of ammonia crystals came the angels. Bands of ammonia and methane
encircling Uranus. I remember the tornadoes of inflammable methane on Saturn. I
remember on Mars a vegetation like the tussock grasses of Peru and Patagonia,
an ochrous red, a rusty ore vegetation, mosses and
lichens. Iron bearing red clays and red sandstone. Light there had a sound and
sunlight was an orchestra.

    Dilated eyes, noble-raced profile, willful
mouth. Jeanne, all in fur, with fur eyelashes, walking with head carried high,
nose to the wind, eyes on the stars, walking imperiously, dragging her crippled
leg. Her eyes higher than the human level, her leg limping behind the tall
body, inert, like the chained ball of a prisoner.
    Prisoner on earth, against her will to die.
    Her leg dragging so that she might remain on
earth, a heavy dead leg which she carried like the ball and ain of a prisoner.
    Her pale, nerve-stained fingers tortured the
guitar, tormenting and twisting the strings with her timidity as her low voice
sang; and behind her song, her thirst, her hunger and her fears. As she turned
the keys of her guitar, fiercely tuning it, the string snapped and her eyes
were terror-stricken as by the snapping of her universe.
    She sang and she laughed: I love my brother.
    I love my brother. I want crusades and martyrdom.
I find the world too small.
    Salted tears of defeat crystallized in the
corners of her restless eyes.
    But I never weep.
    She picked up a mirror and looked at herself
with love.
    Narcisse gazing at
himself in Lanvin mirrors. The Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse riding through the Bois. Tragedy rolling on cord tires.
    The world is too small. I get tired of playing
the guitar, of knitting, and walking, and bearing children. Men are small, and
passions are short-lived. I get furious at stairways, furious at doors, at
walls, furious at everyday life which interferes with the continuity of
ecstasy.
    But there is a martyrdom of tenseness, of
fever, of living continuously like the firmament in full movement and in full
effulgence.
    You never saw the stars grow weary or dim. They
never sleep.
    She sat looking