Chapter 1
And beneath the sky, a current of ash flued. . . and every chimney of the house stood as though it had been utterly scorched. “Oh, thus was everything from the clouds—which clouds were not, . . in do’o’or, yet rather in the rain. . . that which, . . prepareth itself. It smelleth.”
*
From that outermost verge still. . . of memory, the mist came crawling; mute, pre-mute (unto the eye,) expansive unto the forever, coiled (as it were a venomous serpent, unto the intrepid a balm. . .) , profound. . . and surging—yet everything even unto the closed palisades. . . and when the rain should drizzle like shattered thoughts, and sentiments. . . dissolved into feelings that tarry, widely scattered. . , then upon them the light of this mythical urbs would lie in wait, and through the dilution it would creep. , vastly yet immeasurably.
. . . and along that path,—“yet this they knew not”—unctuous, and peptic yet. . . purpureal. . .
A furious doll, . . (for such she was) — “psssht, invoke not Doctor Sicilianese (the neuropsychiatrist of whom they so oft were wont to speak—he availeth nothing here now)” , fashioned wholly of charcoal: is that perchance the raven hair, yet blacker still is the skirt, (. . . and the limbs bare, though nonetheless behind it all it seemed as if hose, nay, trousers she weareth—ahiii, . . and all was shadow, and the entire night as though it were a cellar. . . everything sank into the damp moisture) —“not unto the water mine eyes, oh, not unto the water” —a sable lock, a living strand which. . . the plashing of the drops doth not cause to tremble, . . yet, yet drop by drop, and. . . she essayed not so much as to disperse them with her breath upon her brow — “methought then the black ones, the ravens would flutter beneath. . . and who shall be there, . . yet w-h-h-h-o beneath the rain shall count them. . . ”
*
And the Ford-t34, beneath the elms. . . and the lights: its lanterns were as ones yonder through the alcohol, calligraphed New Year’s Eves, . . —kindled without clamor (yet with the rain they do not contend. . .). . . (and whose is that yonder, . . beneath the eaves a cigarette doth burn?). . . and only some distant, muffled. . . muffled grinding, as when a deep and preponderant metal scrapeth against such metal. . . and we all bide our time!
Within it, before all else, reared its height her piano. Therewith she healed herself of her own self. For she was the final scion of an ancient lineage older than a myriad of years, and it pleased her not that anyone should dispute her sovereignty.
*
She had spoken while yet within the hearth and home:
“The hour is late. . .”
“Forsooth, are fritters perchance kneaded of vanilla.” (—that was the very thing she wouldst never have uttered.)
They were bounden now to forsake that, their home here, the villa erected back in the epoch of the Sezession. For exceeding was the number of hotels reared in its purlieus, and they engendered an insufferable tumult within Her monstrous silence. And of pine it smelleth, of pine it smelt in the night. . .
They depart thither, . . to their now long-forgotten domain, in the immediate vicinity of that place, . . which in great measure evoketh Père-Lachaise.
