Short prose about M. from house of days

Getting Ready to Leave

A strong wind is blowing, lifting coins, but who looks for them? Who is ready to leave?

Faust is--Goethe, seeking the intermaxilary bone of love. The Wandering Jew is--the stray dog and a stray bone; he goes wandering in circles. He's not a partner. Both Don Juan and his sex bustle about. Let him go to the hellish wine cellar. This is a Spanish version.

Those three are dreams, which makes them humane.

The growth of an alien seed in the belly of a woman before coming into the world--such humiliation drives women mad. They give birth and go crazy from childbirth. Why? Almost all the mothers of poets went mad: for example, J. Byron, O. Balzac, H. de Maupasant, E. A. Poe, J. J. Rousseau, K. Batyushkov, R. Akutagawa, and so forth.

To carry a fetus, with its ambiguous rhythm, with the puttering about... After giving birth, a woman feels free. She is intuitive: she needs the one, who is ready to leave, and they meet halfway, and here exactly is the stone of love. And there's nothing but a motion around the stone.

The daydreaming of a man is the daydream of death.

Sea and lion have identical hides--those thousands of lions hurl themselves on a woman. Thousands !--in her imagination. But in reality there aren't even two (items), for example, in the USSR. One who hurls himself? Chemical water, soapy with filth. And so Martha washes the foot of Jesus, while Maria wipes it with her hair. Martha- and-Maria--for them it is a method of pausing. But He is unresponsive to their numerous efforts. The lion is a rose in bloom; Christ is a pear of a man with the little feet of a woman's, and over him a sword, and he waves it. But who needs his looks? He's unmoved by gold and birds. He was ready to leave. And he's not a favorite in the women's district.

The one who's ready to leave doesn't go to the sea, but if he goes, he will return, shallow, the sun not round, no storm emerging from under his pen, the days like nets, old ladies with nights reflected on their faces. You go out and away, having sharpened your rims in vain.

The whales are gliding.

So where are the same people? Are they stuffing bales in Finland? And what's in the bales--shag tobacco? Lines of soldiers walk along the highway, carrying tarred ammunition on their necks. We'll still show them! On no, when they change water supply pipes, akin to children's labor. M. was 21, in print chintz. Let's return to the sea. Again the descendents of the seagulls that flew 26 years ago are flying into the camera lens. Let's return to the picnic! So what did we eat?--cold smoked sea perch, strong vodka, onion, hard salami, cod liver in oil, salmon wrapped in paper, red caviar in a paper bag, anise-flavored vodka, Chartreuse, Hungarian bacon strips, cold potatoes, an iron kettle--post-Stalinism, ominous times, Khrushchev-time, voluntarism. With our gold rings falling in the sea, we didn't seek them, let them loaf at the bottom. I cast picture frames from silver. It's now that we have neither drunkards, nor lower depths of life. But then there was no death, erroneously. That's exactly at the dunes, at th e sea, that M. flew, petal-like, rose-colored and in a floating porcelain-like dress. She met the one who was ready to leave--I, He. His words were being caught on the fly, and Olympic discuses were blown out of them. But only she departed life, and he's still hanging around. It's too bright, the gulls on the sand like eggs--of Satan.

I don't love literature, I don't!

At 21 M. said: I will die at 40, more than that is a disgrace. She was 15 days shy of 41. But still, at 40! Complete readiness. But she couldn't endure 15 days more; her plan would have been ruined. And so she takes her vial and drinks poison. By 40 she's ready.

Life burns you, but not like gunpowder; she is a scalpel in wine sauce!

Cattle linger longer, but when ready for departure, they will not scatter. Along this bony dessert! What's the difference if the sea is there? What's up heart, what's up?

There is a road, yes there is--and it is the end of the road.

--No way! --sings the bird.

Oh, and a new bird, with the name No Way, flies into a new world past this one. Passed this built-in world there is another, with a bird No Way, and the sinner shouts to it:

--FIERY!

Were You to Die, Of Course

"It's not because you're not right--you're always right--but because you convinced yourself so, from the moment you perceived God bestowed a gift on you. But you're not right from the human point of view. I will attempt to explain to you why you're mistaken. Again, from the human point of view. You are free to do whatever you want; you have the right to act as you see fit. You are the crown of creation. I say this without irony.

"But you don't have the right to permit yourself to be seen as an intimate human being in an inhuman guise.

"Again, the age-old question for me is: why did you allow this to happen and not leave? And the dumb doctors will add: 'So young and pretty.' And they will also say that her whole life lay before her. Without you. I'm not sure there could be a life for me without you.