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Zerubbabel
    Doña Quixote, who was hanging half out of her window, reappeared completely in the room. I saw she had a pair of binoculars in her hand, and that she was for some reason agitated.
    ‘That’s what it is,’ she muttered. ‘Without a doubt.’
    She passed me the binoculars and said: ‘Look for yourself. There, there on the roof, do you see?’
    Even with the naked eye it was easy to see that, far away, two men were climbing on a red tile roof. To me it did not look at all unusual; after all, there are chimney-sweeps, roof-menders, snow-shifters.
    When I examined the two men through the binoculars, I saw they were connected by a long, pale rope, perhaps a measuring tape, which they were moving along the ridge of the roof.
    The sight did not agitate me.
    ‘It looks to me,’ I said to Doña Quixote, ‘as if they’re measuring something. Probably the roof will be replaced soon.’
    ‘Yes, they’re measuring,’ Doña Quixote conceded. ‘That’s exactly what they’re doing. But I know more. For I know the name of their measuring tape.’
    I was amazed.
    ‘Do you? How could you know that?’
    ‘Because I happened to read it this morning, just after I woke up. It is the measuring line of Zerubbabel.’
    She fetched a black book from her book-case and began to read:
    ‘And I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand!
    ‘Then I said, “Where are you going?” And he said to me, “To measure Jerusalem, to see what is its breadth and what is its length.”
    ‘And behold, the angel who talked with me came forward to meet him,
    ‘And said to him, “Run, say to that young man, ‘Jerusalem shall be inhabited as villages without walls, because of the multitude of men and cattle in it’.” ’
    She read in a deep, carrying voice, and whenever she wanted to give a word a particular emphasis, she gave me a sharp look.
    ‘ “For who has despised the day of small things? They shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. These seven are the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole of the earth.” ’
    She slammed the book shut.
    ‘What do you say?’
    ‘Well. It certainly is . . . ’
    ‘’’It certainly is, it certainly is,” she mimicked, ‘When will your ears open. And your eyes – ’
    ‘Is there something wrong with them, too?’
    ‘You look at me with sceptical and cold eyes,’ Doña Quixote said accusingly. ‘The eyes of the world. Where have you hidden your own?’
    ‘I don’t know, yet, which are my own, Doña Quixote,’ I said, a little ashamed. ‘There are so many eyes. Many more than seven.’
    ‘It is time to choose,’ she said slowly. ‘Truly, it is high time.’
    ‘And what’s more,’ she flared up once more, ‘don’t come and talk to me about eyes.’
    I fell silent.
    ‘Not eyes,’ she said, ‘not eyes, but the seeing gaze . . . ’
    Her eyelids closed.
    ‘How bright it is today! Today, today too, it is a day of small things . . . Look, can you still see Zerubbabel there?’
    I got up to peer out of the window.
    ‘No, he has gone.’
    And Doña Quixote refused to speak any more of Zerubbabel.
    When we went out to eat, it was already growing dark. In the last light, the light crescent moon was floating, and it had begun to freeze.
    On the street we walked along almost all the windows were lit, just as in the street that ran across it, and in the square where the street ended. It looked as if the entire city, encircled by darkness, had stayed at home that night.
    ‘There are so many people there, so many . . . ’ I seemed to hear Doña Quixote mutter as the ice on the puddles cracked under our shoes and one circle of light after another moved toward us.

TAINARON.
MAIL FROM ANOTHER CITY
    1985
    Translated by Hildi Hawkins
    You are not in a place; the place is in you.
    Angelus Silesius
    For Elias, J. H. Fabre and the house of the Queen Bee

The Meadow and the Honey Pattern
    the first