their fragility, even the obnoxious and the rich ones, the ones I can’t stand, the ones who eat too much and wear too many rings.
I shouldn’t have written you about my hand. I wonder if you found that poem you spoke of when you were here, the one you felt you could wander in forever. The one the woman wove for her husband.
My garden is doing well.
Your Friend,
My Friend, each time I translate a prescription from the Dream of the Red Chamber I think of you. These prescriptions that mostly sound crazy but seduce me all the same with their promises of improvement or cure (I think of your hand now and wonder how you are).
But Zhuangzi didn’t speak of cures. He said destroy, said throw away, said dispense with, break, cut off the finger of the deft, glue up the eyes, destroy and throw away. He didn’t say mend or heal or repair or build or straighten. He didn’t say make orderly or clean or
I can’t write this to you. Can’t write anything to you.
“Destroy quadrants and yard-measures, throw away compasses and squares.”
Destroy and throw away. Glue up the eyes. (but beneath my shut eyes your scarred face) (your scarred face still with me even if you need to turn away)
and destroy and destroy
TRANSLATION NOTES FOR THE PRESCRIPTION EXPLAINED BY BAOCHAI TO MRS. ZHOU IN CHAPTER 7
“You must take 12 drams (?) of rain gathered only on the day called Rain Begins.” (I think this is February 20th, must check)
“But what if it doesn’t rain on that day?” Mrs. Zhou asked.
“Then you just have to wait. You must try the next year or the next.”
My Friend, the day’s over and I haven’t written to you. I don’t even know if you’re alive. You write of tenderness, of fragility, of sewn eyelids, blinded eyes. Of the Mass of Separation, and of walls. I, too, sometimes dream of a clapper and a hood. I haven’t told you of all the hands on Beggar’s Bridge. You write of Virgil’s tender gesture. Of Dante and Virgil walking together. I imagine us walking like they did. Where would we go? Would we speak or walk in silence, or both? I’m used to my straw bed now. I remember the narrow winding lane that leads to your house with its tower and garden. I remember how you said you never touched the flowers you’d sometimes leave for the man who delivered your packages, fearing you might contaminate him, but held them only between scissors, then dropped them onto paper laid out on the stone steps.
I think of you—
Your Friend,
Clerval
I’m thinking about how Clerval’s friend in Aosta dreamed he didn’t want to be healed, didn’t stay on his knees but got up and walked away. And for a moment—but why?—your face loses its power in my mind.
Each day I wait for Clerval, fear what I would be without this watching, my eyes emptied of his tired face, his hands, fingers gently smoothing his friend’s letters.
He picks up another letter. It’s late, he’s worked all day turning characters into words. Shan is mountain, the surname bao means “to carry in the arms.” There are so many nuances, complex histories, allusions—how can he ever get them right? Qiao means happy coincidence. Ge is boy. “Doesn’t grass turn into glow-worms?” Daiyu asks, and he notes that she’s referring to the Book of Rites which says, “Rotting grass turns into glow-worms.” And what is this thing called The Beauty in the Snow?—it’s a painting by Qiu Ying. So much to know and he knows so very little. I can see from his notes that often he considers giving up. But what would his days be without Baoyu and Daiyu, their pavilions, flowers, glowing lanterns, the many secret dramas, the servants who don’t own their own lives, the meddling Lady Dowager, the decline of families and empire, scandals, thwarted loves, the prescriptions that make him think of his friend in Aosta? He knows he won’t stop, that tomorrow he’ll get up and look at the black and red characters in vertical lines down the page, and his hand will move slowly, horizontally, until his own page is filled, and then he’ll move on to the next. All day until nightfall, and all the days he can envision after that.
Aosta, June 26
My Friend,
Do I write to you because you’re at a safe remove from me? Because I know I’ll never hear from you or see you? I’ve lived for decades with the