daily knowledge of bodily contagion, but what of the contagion of the mind?—the danger of one voice answering another, contaminating, altering, needing another. Still, the recoil in oneself is inconstant, isn’t it?—it surges forth, then slackens, gains force again then goes etc.
Now that you know about my hand, that my condition is worsening, I don’t feel I need to hide things from you (though part of me still wants to) and I find that, at least at the moment, I don’t resent that you know. Maybe because you’re far away. Maybe because I know you can’t tell me what you think. I don’t need to live in fear of what you’d say. Nor can I be made uncomfortable by your possible desire to comfort me (which I would find painful and would very much dislike) if that were your impulse. Whatever your impulses are I cant know them. I comfort myself with this knowledge. So you see, my leper’s hood, my leper’s cloak, it’s not that I’ve taken them off, it’s not that I trust you or myself.
In any case, since I know you can picture my garden, let me tell you a little about my house. Though seeming completely isolated, it stands not too far from the Hospital of SS Maurice and Lazare and La Charité. I don’t know if you realized this. It was purchased by order of the king and turned into a sanctuary before I ever arrived. I know little of the people who lived here before me as it’s the custom to conceal their names, as my name is concealed. Some say they were a family by the name of Guasco, from the district of Nice. All of them afflicted with the same illness as mine. After the mother and youngest son died in Moncaliere, near Turin, the others were sent here. Soon there were only two survivors, a brother and sister. It’s said they barely saw each other. They couldn’t stand the sight of each other’s loathsome affliction. Do you remember the part of my garden where a trellis is covered with climbing vines? It’s said they met there from time to time, each on either side, to talk. The trellis kept them hidden from each other. Mostly the brother worked in the garden and walked on the terrace from which he could see distant glaciers, laborers in the fields. The sister mostly stayed in her room, or sat under the shade of the walnut tree when she believed her brother was indoors. It’s said she died first, that he lived on alone for many years. I don’t know if any of this is true.
In Aosta my tower is known as The Leper’s Tower. But this you probably know. The whole house was constructed from remnants of the old Roman wall.
Often I watch the distant glaciers. When I look up from the proper angle, I can see Mount Emilius and Mont Blanc. I wonder what you’re seeing now? Sometimes I imagine you hunched over your table, translating, in a house where you live all alone, and a feeling of tenderness comes over me, a feeling I don’t really want to feel. And yet I think of you with fondness. Of those hours we sat in my garden. Of the way you asked me to write to you, though you knew I would need, at least at first, to refuse.
Your Friend,
My Friend,
You write to me of your home and I wish that I could write to you of mine. But I’m not sure what my home is. Is it this mud-brick house in a dusty village half the world away from the place of my birth? Or is it, as I often think it is, this book, the Dream of the Red Chamber, which I live in day and night or so it seems. I move among its gardens, its pathways, intrigues, its many words and seasons. I listen to Baoyu and Daiyu, and to their relatives and servants as they go on with their lives. But really it’s all strange to me—I am, and will always remain, an outsider.
There’s a character in the book, Miaoyu, a young nun who calls herself “The One Outside the Threshold.” I find it very beautiful that she calls herself this. She lives in poverty in Green Lattice Nunnery and refuses to shave her head, though this is the required practice among nuns. She learns to read and write, teaches characters to the poor, but lives mostly in silence.