spear and shield. Her back is straight but not rigid, her elongated neck gently curved. She’s wholly focused on one thing only, that the olive oil in the vase be brought to the one who waits but can’t see her. Neither is able to glimpse, for one second, the other. As if all knowing were quiet, sealed off, all attachment quiet.
I suspect in writing to you now of this graceful vase, I’m swerving away from some violence in myself (think of the clapper, the hood, the ruins of the Roman road). I write of my eyes but then don’t want to think about my eyes. Yet the scene on the vase is mournful, so maybe I’m circling what I feel, trying out what I might feel…
The olive oil would be unmixed, maybe scented with perfume from irises.
Should I rip up this page or should I let your hand touch this page? I wonder which way will win out?
When I sleep I don’t see, I don’t know my eyes are open.
Your Friend,
It’s not even the end of his workday, but already Clerval opens a new letter, leaves the rough twine untied in its snake-curve on the table. This letter’s different from the others—there’s writing on both sides, and on one a slash mark through all of it. He starts reading the slashed words, then turns the page over, touches the words “Aosta” and “My Friend.” Did his friend forget he’d written on the other side? Or did he want to send what he’d slashed but couldn’t bear to say, the way I wrote my dream for you, though I wouldn’t claim I wanted you to see it.
My Friend,
I had a few feverish days but I’m better. I think it was my thoughts that made me sick. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I must look like when I sleep, each blank and staring eye wide open. Maybe I wanted to hurt myself in that way, focusing as I did on what seemed to me a horrible sight. At least no one can see me. But I see myself in my own mind, and what am I to do about that?
I think about how the cornea is meant to be protected. How, like the mind, the body needs a way to close itself off. These visible or secret shelters of ourselves …
I’m still too tired to write much. I’ve traveled far, but I’ve gone nowhere. I think, of Polo, of the soldiers on the Roman road. The world remakes itself in strangeness. Unshelters itself always. Even in my garden, my tower, even here.
Maybe this is why the brother and sister who lived here before me couldn’t bear to look upon each other’s face. They would have seen how far they had traveled from what they’d thought of as themselves, each other, the world.
Have you seen the elaborate temples carved into stone cliffs, and the many decorated statues inside them? Is it true that, unlike them, the Confucian temples are stark and nearly bare? I think I would like those best of all, though I know some call them cold.
I must stop now.
As Ever, Your Friend,
Cao Xueqin, I picture you and Red Inkstone, two friends hunched over a manuscript, looking into each other’s eyes. Once he signs himself “Winter Night,” I don’t know why. But my friend in Aosta can’t close his eyes, can’t… and I’m far away from him. If I knocked on his door he wouldn’t let me in
Working notes
Guanyin is the Goddess of Mercy Goddess of the hood and clapper Goddess of eyesight Goddess of Lekythos and Issogne Goddess of locked doors
X
XX
Baoyu says odd things yet I find this makes him all the more believable.
Says, “Last night I dreamed the spirit of the apricot tree came to me to ask for a string of white paper money.”
I wonder if Red Inkstone wanted this small dream taken out. Too many dreams in this book, he said.
XX
Goddess of the lame Goddess of fires
My Friend, What words aren’t weak and unconvincing against affliction? What intricacies or plainness of argument don’t falter and collapse? I think of your eyes and XXX cannot XXX and now lost XXX each locked window bolted door
XX
Cao Xueqin writes of Baoyu: “His cheek was badly blistered but luckily no damage had been done to his eyes.”
When Daiyu is ill she grows ashamed and wants no one to see her, turns her face to the wall.
I close my eyes and obliterate the smoke trees on the hillside. Open them, bring