walnut tree, no movement of a hand across a page. No album, no leper’s dress, no marginalia, no red mourning, no name.
Aosta, Jan 3
My Friend,
XXX but nothing can prevent XXXX XX and I’m glad you can’t see me, that I don’t have to deal with your kindness or pity or whatever you might feel XXX atropine sulphate distilled water XXX when they first brought us here from Moncaliere I was frightened. I believe she was too. First our father died, then our mother and brothers. Just the two of us left and I forbid you henceforth to go out without your leper’s dress XXX Do you think, there’s a place of calm in the skin no matter what, something inviolable, untouched, and nothing can despoil it? So many years of not speaking The mid-day bells at 11, not 12, as is the custom. Her footsteps on stone. My fear I would somehow make her worse. In the study, pieces of mica and gneiss from the hills. I lined them up on the table, pulled back the curtains, watched them glint. XXX But I was unable to XX and ever afterward XXX from the beginning they kept our names secret XXX packages of books and food on the doorstep XXX “should not be in proximity to towns” “water supply should be adequate” XXX “tenderness of nerves/presence of bacilli” XXX I watched the unchanging gray in the distance: slate, gneiss, serpentine, schist XXX
Mourning the Red Studio The Stone’s Story Story of the
Stone Mourning the Red Dream
WORKING NOTES FOR DRC:
“zhengmian” indicates the “surface of the text” while “fanmian” indicates the “meaning underneath,” but why believe the two are separable or even distinguishable from each other?
Red Inkstone: “It’s true my commentary is unsystematic. I’m sure many of my comments contradict others I’ve made in the past.”
Red Inkstone: “Reading this, I’m reminded of the painter’s technique known as ‘bemian fufen’—whitening the background to bring out the foreground.”
Red Inkstone: “Cao Xueqin, are you the stone? Are you transcribing the text that was written on your body in script so minute no one could see it?”
My Friend,
If I could reach you … Baoyu’s mind is traveling… When he comes back to the world he knows what he must do. All thought is approximate at best, he can see this. Yet he studies his books day and night, readies himself for the imperial exam. He remains in his “quiet room.” He “never leaves the compound.” (I think of you in your stone tower, alone.)
“Today is the first time you’ll be entirely on your own,” his mother says as he and his nephew leave for the exam. “Come back as soon as you’re done and set my mind at rest.” But even as she’s talking, Baoyu’s remembering a line from a poem: “He breaks through the first door of his cage.” Then he wonders, How many doors does a cage even have? Do the first, second and third look just the same? Why would a cage need more than one door?
Yesterday I touched the barred doors of your letters, wondering how many. Wondering, are you nameless to me now or not, is your name in fact Guasco, was she truly your sister? Did you come “with her from Moncaliere, and the others died, was that family you wrote of really your family or is your mind in some kind of fever?
So many cage doors: “from the beginning they kept our names secret,” “my fear I would somehow,” “something inviolable, untouched.” The light’s dimming fast, it’s too late to continue—I’ll tell you more about Baoyu tomorrow—
aosta jan?/march/?june?
her face on the other side of the trellis. How does a face bring harm to another what can it possibly inflict on another why did I think, that even a look from me would hurt her that the touch of my skin the thought of my skin on her skin could make her worse? Have I told you her lesions were mostly internal? Some on her torso and arms but almost none on her face. What is silence what is fear? Every now and then words from a song we’d learned as children XXX her eyes always lowered so why did I worry why did I need to turn away XXX she lived as though alone as though she’d never had a brother and shall not and shall not nor shall they betray or utter She in her part of the house I in mine or in the garden. In her notebook: “In