PAZZERELLA

There was once a woman, and some golden hair is all the
incognito I shall allow her.

In her boudoir, where I found myself by chance, the long
windows opened on to a garden so overloaded with foliage that the
infrequent flowers seemed to invite reproof for being gaudy. This
Pazzerella, for so I have named her, succeeded in diffusing in
the atmosphere a vague evaporative quality so illusively irritating
that it exasperated me as nothing had ever done before.

Surrounded by fading colors and clouded mirrors, seated
before the tarnished gilding of a delapidated clavichord, She let
her idle fingers under their crepuscular jewels crawl over the keys,
evoking tired melodies that sobbed and slipped into the silence
without defining their complaint.

When she was unoccupied she was just as disturbing. Her
eyes resembled two bewildered swallows flown by accident into her
face and caught in lines of suffering as yet undefined. Eyes that,

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being lost, had become fixed in patient expectation of clairvoyance,
neglecting the present to search for the unknown. There was some-
thing about her of a plant that has matured in a cellar as though
she had had to draw her alimentary light from an enduring twilight.

She spoke but little, replying to the remarks addressed
to her with a desperate finality as if for some inscrutable reason
she had been forbidden to speak.

The indiscernable traces of agony predicted on her youthful
face provoked my ire-- I was spurred by a desire to see them de-
fined. Her unrevealing conversation filled me with a wild
necessity to silence her, once and for all.

Her fragile body, whose voluptuous frustration seemed to
evoke the couplings of butterflies and reptiles, rather than seduce
the full-blooded male, forbidding in advance any possible illusion
of satiety, congealed my veins in a glacial passion.

I approached her with the full intention of throwing
myself upon her, when in the nick of time I recovered my reason.
One possesses a woman out of desire; there is no known biological

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law that forces a civilized man to exterminate a perfectly amiable
hostess for the sake of a couple of musical grimaces between two
cups of tea.

I launched myself on a philosophical argument to thaw my
arteries, which my companion punctuated with occasional gleams of
intelligence, and little by little I began to feel safe in my
superior acumen and the abvious appreciation of my audience.

My fantastic fury died down as I entrenched myself in my
lucidity. It seemed as if, after all, there were definite points
of contact between myself and this disquieting person. The butterfly
fluttered away, the reptile undulated into oblivion, and I was
beginning to feel quite at ease with her when, after apparently
listening to all I had to say, she suddenly exclaimed, "But
whatever *is* philosophy, and why do your eyes strike off such icy
green sparks?"

Ah, then there was no withholding myself, and I did throw
myself upon her. In a sadistic delirium of destruction I determined
to put an end to her. When I regained my calm, I found I had only
possessed her.

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"I am so fond of you," she sighed.

"The worse for you."

"But My affection---"

"But are you mad?"

"I am a woman."

I lifted up her face to take a good look at it. The prognostics of sorrow were effaced, the resuscitated roses of her lips bloomed in a contemptible beatitude-- and God! how she chattered.

Evidently her impact with the male had shattered her silence. She flooded me with universal tritialities pouring from her cerebral confusion into an indefinite concept she reverently referred to as 'love.'

I rose to depart. But Pazzerella entreated me to stay, drawing me after her by my two hands, with the air of leading me on in some portentious expedition which made me sufficiently curious to let her have her way.

Graciously she led me through her apartment where an intrinsic sense of void produced an impression of vastness, and

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solemnly she would stop before the door of each chamber, whose furniture seemed to haunt its pitiable emptiness, and on entering each one with me, embraced me ceremoniously as if she desired to obtain a 'fixation' of our presence 'together' in every desolate enclosure of her home.

This sort of procession intrigued me immensely. I could not catch its significance until all at once the Pascal Benediction recurred to my mind-- The Parish Priest accompanied by his accolyte visiting the houses of the devout at Eastertide to asperse their rooms with holy water. Was my passing intended to bless those vacuous lairs of my guide? Their solitude seemed hardly prepared for a blessing-- it must be for an exorcism that my services were required. An involuntary shudder ran through me-- how fearful must be the blank expanses of time shut into those charming rooms, that this living enigma had the pretension to be rid of in consecrating them to a man who had just raped her.

"I have waited so long-- so long--"

"Why?"

"Just waiting," she murmured.

"For what," I insisted.

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"Ah, if only I knew. Probably I shall never find out
what I am waiting for, nevertheless I can make my choice."

"Oh-- then you believe in the Libre Arbitre?"

"No-- I merely choose. That is quite a different thing,
for the confirmation of my choice is beyond my power."

"And may I ask what it is you have chosen?"

"You," she cooed quite contentedly, and her face fell
onto my waistcoat.

"Evidently the Libre Arbitre dœsn't come in there."

"It is several years since I began to love you."

"But you didn't know me."

"I have never known you-- I shall never know you-- but
I have seen you."

"But-- ?"

"If you knew what countless numbers of my similes have
never even seen the man they love."

"You're only raking up a platitude 'In love with love'.
Where does a man come in?"

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could not understand that I, who in no way resemble other men, al-
though it was for that you loved me, is it not so? You could not
see that I loved you, nor understand that I, who am the man who
overturns everything, must overturn even love itself."

While I was saying this, I observed my prey with the
utmost attention. Pazzerella's face underwent an incredible
evolution on my first sentimental inflection. The drama of a
whole life took place in her eyes:- birth, hope, happiness,
disillusion, ire, shame, revenge, desperation, callousness, death--
purification, and as I drew her slowly towards me, she attained,
through this impassioned conflagration, to a virginity of spirit
that in her ignorant maidenhood she could never have approached. A
pitiful virginity offering its whitened pain to nothing.

"How could you bring yourself," implored my shaken voice,
"to betray me as you did?"

Pazzerella, petrified, listened to the useless echoes of
her aspiration in my reproaches.

"I do not reproach you," I went on. "You have taken
vengeance on yourself, outraging your true nature in the extremis.

["Pazzerella - 15", "what under heaven might have happened to you when the time came\nfor me to grow fond.", "\"Think-- in the theater of the flesh, how endless a\nromance would have been ours according to my program which eliminated\nany possible denouement.", "\"Imagine the role you would have played under my-- \"", "\"Geronimo!\" screamed Pazzerella, \"if you don't x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x_x

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wandered far out of the creaking city into the indelicate night,
where, finding myself alone with Nature, I asked her-- 'Why
Geronimo?'"

"And what did Nature answer?"

"It's useless addressing yourself to me," she grumbled.
"I'm _such_ a brute--."

"As far as you are concerned she has every right to be."

We had reached her house. Pazzerella closed the front
door and, all tremulous in the shadows, held up her face to mine.
Ah, the pleasure it would give me to suck away her entire life
through those _ requesting _ lips. It would be too acceptable an end
for her. I threw her off.

"Your kisses are too sensitive."

We entered the warm brightly lit room. I sank into an
armchair, and Pazzerella perched herself on the arm.

"Will you answer me one question frankly?"

"As far as frankness is concerned, I'm a fellow who
easily gets involved."

"Do try just this once."

"Well?"

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This time Pizzerella looked a trifle faded, laid out
on a sofa lapped in her silk/gown and propped up with cushions,
occupying herself as usual with her tea-things which were set on
a low table. This body gradually dessicating for want of carresses,
this potential mother empty of fruit, must necessarily continue
throughout her steady undoing to distribute her circles of amber
and sugar gewgaws. A woman resigned, who, while her life was
ebbing from her, seemed ceaselessly to be pouring it out from a
silver pot for casual callers with hands that were livid with calm.
What else was she likely to offer to Death when it should come but
a cup of tea.

I kissed her reverently, assured that, in spite of the
cataclysm of my presence and the wounds with which I should
lacerate her, in her conventional breeding, she would merely reply--
"Have another biscuit, caro?"

Certainly this was a day on which conversation was not
in order. Rather must I sustain a tacit expectancy of imminent
collaboration between us-- expression of eyes and inflection of
voice stressing the entente of accomplices.