my sleep I hear myself laughing, and the laughter grows redder and redder, a fire made of sound, and spreading.”
Clerval writes quickly these days. Though he’s thin and frail-looking, his hand seems vigorous, the one part of him that isn’t withering. As if his hand’s a mind and that mind is traveling, filled with a secret, mysterious determination like Baoyu’s.
zhengmian, the surface of the text,
he writes. Then,
fanmian, the meaning underneath. Inseparable, yes, that’s how it is.
Then:
Her face, her red laughter, but how will I ever understand? Do I need to understand, do I even have the right to?
TRANSLATION OF CAO Xueqin’s 12th note:
Red Inkstone would chastise me for dreaming of him. “Too many dreams in your book,” he always says, though we haven’t seen each other in months. But maybe this is my way of drawing him close. Or is he here and it’s just that I can’t see him through my fever? Am I ill at all? I don’t know if I get up each day and work and write or if I’m sick in bed and only dreaming that I’m working. In my latest dream he’s wearing a green silk robe like Baoyu’s, but the cloth’s turned into pages. I don’t know if I’m Baoyu, Daiyu, Red Inkstone, or myself, or all of us at once. I don’t know if the monk ever came and handed me a sheaf of pages. I’m struggling to read Red Inkstone’s robe, I need to put the pages in some order. But the characters keep changing, moving insect-like in circles, then they’re still as twigs, then withering, blooming.
My Friend,
Baoyu’s arrived at the examination hall, determined to do well for the sake of his family The narrator says, “Let us leave Baoyu and his cousin Jia Lan for the time being.” So we don’t see him take the exam; we don’t know how long it lasts, what he’s asked or what he’s thinking. This is how I often feel with you—I’m almost with you but a fissure opens up and I see nothing. Still, I write to you of doors and cages. And though there’s a wall of time and space between us, it’s a peculiar wall that attacks itself at its core.
XXXXXX XXXXX
XXX The characters for “fake wall” are “jia qiang”
XXXXX The Emperor Yuandi was told “Once you build a wall behind yourself all will be well.” But a wise man said to him, “Your wall can never be solid enough.”
Aosta, Jan 15
My f Friend,
I’m very weak. now.
She wrote in her notebook, “What am I if I can’t be of use?”
“all these years behind walls” ”but what am I if I stay here useless?”
Wrote, “as if I myself am a wall and crumbling. No, I’m not a wall at all. I’m so tired of being kept behind these walls. How can he love his walled garden, how can he stand to walk there, does he walk and tell himself stories, pretend that he’s free?”
Wrote, “The red laughter’s come back again. A whole night of it spreading.”
It’s harder to get to her room now. Th My legs increasingly distant from my mind. I tell them “move” or “feel” and sometimes they do, but from a place unknown to me and to which I have no definable access.
She wrote in her notebook, “He keeps planting and transplanting. Some days I think I’ll go mad.”
Wrote, “His hands among the flowers. My skin as if pressed to a wall and eroding When I walk the wall walks with me. When I sleep it sleeps with me.”
“Is there some way to be of use? If not, then what am I?”
Sometimes I hear Claire’s voice in the shore’s stunted trees:
“Mary says she’s a shadow now.” “The hazard of my eyes.”
The wind stopped as if suddenly blinded. Seabirds. Rain.
I touch:
ulceration, magnesium sulphate, trophic disturbance,
a hurt, unclosing eye. Touch:
“my legs increasingly distant from my mind.”
The sister feels each wall move with her.
Allegra was surrounded by walls. And Claire and the sister touched so many walls.
And shall not and shall not and your leper’s dress… must not utter … must not betray …
“There is no settled version.”
I wonder how many times she heard the red laughter.
My Friend,
Baoyu’s done “with the exam but no one can find him. Not even his nephew, “In the hostel we ate and slept beside each other. At the examination grounds our cells were close by. We even came out of the exam together. But I lost him in the crowd at Dragon Gate.” And your sister