Chapter 44: I did read your letter
hatred and violence. She could not keep pace with the angry pulse
of the world. She was engaged in a smaller cycle, the one opposite
to war. There were truths women had been given to protect while
the men went to war. When everything would be blown away, a
paper parasol would raise its head among the debris, and man
would be reminded of peace and tenderness.
Daniel always believed he was giving Serena pleasure when he took
her to the theatre, and at first her face was always illuminated with
suspense and curiosity. But inevitably she would grow restive and
tumultuous, chaotic and disturbed; she would even weep quietly in
the dark and disappear in between acts, so as not to expose a
ravaged face.
“What is it, what is it?” repeated Daniel patiently, suspecting her of
envy or jealousy of the roles given to others. “You could be the
most marvelous actress of our period if you wanted to give your
whole life to it, but you know how you feel about discipline and
monotony.”
“It isn’t that, no, it isn’t that,” and Serena would say no more.
To whom could she explain that what she envied in them was the
ease with which they would step out of their roles, wash themselves
of it after the play and return to their true selves. She would have
wanted these metamorphoses of her personality to take place on
the stage so that at a given signal she would know for certain they
were ended and she might return to a permanent immutable Serena.
But when she wished to end a role, to become herself again, the
other felt immensely betrayed, and not only fought the alteration but
became angered at her. Once a role was established in a
relationship, it was almost impossible to alter. And even if she
succeeded, when the time came to return to the original Serena,
where was she? If she rebelled against her role towards Donald, if
she turned on the “Firebird” record again, the drumming of the
senses, the tongues of fire, and denied her mother within her, was
she then returning to the true Serena?
When she replaced the needle on the record and set off on her first
assignation with desire was it not her father then walking within her,
directing her steps? Her father who, having fed on her mother’s
directing her steps? Her father who, having fed on her mother’s
artful cooking, having dressed in the shirt she had ironed, having
kissed her unbeautiful forehead damp from ironing, having allowed
her marred hands to tie his tie, proceeded to leave her mother and
Serena for his vainglorious walk down the streets of the
neighborhood who knew him for his handsomeness and his
wanderings?
How many times had a perfumed, a painted, a handsome woman
stopped her on the street to kiss her, caress her long hair and say:
“You’re Serena! You’re his daughter! I know your father so well.”
It was not the words, it was the intimate glance, the boudoir tone of
the voice which alarmed her. This knowledge of her father always
brought to women’s eyes a sparkle not there before, an intimation
of secret pleasures. Even as a child Serena could read their
messages. Serena was the daughter of delight born of his amorous
genius and they caressed her as another manifestation of a ritual she
sensed and from which her mother had been estranged forever.
“I knew your father so well!” Always the handsome women
bending over her, hateful with perfume one could not resist smelling,
with starched petticoats and provocative ankles. For all these
humiliations she would have wanted to punish her father, for all his
desecrations of multiple summer evenings of wanderings which gave
these women the right to admire her as another of his women. She
was also angry at her mother for not being angry, for preparing and
dressing him for these intruders.
Was it Serena now rushing into her own rituals of pleasure, or was it
her father within her, his blood guiding her into amorousness,
dictating her intrigues, he who was inexorably woven with her by
threads of inheritance she could never separate again to know
which one was Serena, which one her father whose role she had
assumed by alchemy of mimetic love.
Where was Serena?
She looked at the sky and she saw the face of John speeding in the
pursued clouds, his charm fading like smoke from celestial pyres;
she saw the soft night glow of Mambo’s eyes saying: “You don’t
love me,” while bearing down on her; and Philip laughing a
conqueror’s laugh, bearing down on her and his charm vanishing
too before the thoughtful, withdrawn face of Daniel. The entire sky a
warm blanket of eyes and mouths shining down on her, the air full of
voices now mucous from the sensual spasm, now gentle with
gratitude, now doubtful, and she was afraid because there was no
Serena, not ONE, but a multitude of Serenas lying down yielding
and being dismembered, constellating in all directions and breaking.
A small Serena who felt weak at the center carried on a giant wave
of dispersion. She looked at the sky arched overhead but it was not
a protective sky, not a cathedral vault, not a haven; it was a limitless
vastness to which she could not cling, and she was weeping:
“Someone hold me—hold me, so I will not continue to race from
one love to another, dispersing me, disrupting me… Hold me to
one…”
Leaning out of the window at dawn, pressing her breasts upon the
window sill, she still looked out of the window hoping to see what
she had failed to possess.