Read Online Augustino and the Choir of Destruction by Marie-Claire Blais - Free Book Online

hand, scarcely noticeable, a dream to be forgotten, except that the scene of the two gloves seemed bothersome, and Mélanie couldn’t manage to rid herself of it, why not wait for dawn and the arrival of the boats on calm waters with Chuan and her impetuous feelings of joy and astonishment, all these forebodings would vanish out there on the beach, face and hair wet with the salt and the air, how could Augustino be left out, transparent water at dawn, salt air, and Caroline said, thank you Désirée, I am finally comfortable here by the window with Charly’s cat on my knee, I don’t want him taken away, he’s fine here, affectionate creature, all that remains of Charly, I loved Charles too, when the man with thinning hair, whose name escapes me, still came to visit, till everyone began withdrawing from me, Charles who once confided in me, only you, dear Caroline, can understand me, he said, because you are a woman and a great spirit, shouldn’t I admit that this wonderful essence of a spirit, so great that nothing can quench it, was really more Charles’ than mine, noble ascetic of poetry that he was, perhaps he shared with me only that affinity, out of love, and he agreed to lose his soul, if soul is the flesh that submits to the tortures of love, if soul is also the body that marches on blindly, what do we really know, Charles had a loyal companion in Frédéric, with whom he shared a life in Greece whose splendours he praised in his books, already a distant happiness, so many books read and written, then suddenly those wrinkles at the corners of Frédéric’s mouth, his first dizzy-spells, his fall when he was smoking by the pool, Charles thought the grey curtain of mortality was descending on them without warning, he thought he could heal his reluctance to write in his room with the blinds drawn and through which the emanations of jasmine and acacia drifted when opened, but denser than these perfumes was the melancholy that gripped his chest, he thought he was doing the right thing by withdrawing, this time so inaccessible, the misanthropy of the unapproachable poet was well known, every year he left like this, all alone and no one knew where, Eduardo stood his green Sunday-outing bicycle against the fence, where it rusted while he did the gardening, Charles preferred to spend Sundays in the deserted town, going by in my car, I pretended not to recognize him by the water-line, though that neck and delicate man’s head were familiar to me, so often I had photographed them throughout Charles’ literary life, from its precocious beginnings, I knew him as well as if he had been my own child, a dreamed-of adolescent that time altered so very little, now so impenetrable that no one could find him out, he would go to India, an ashram in Delhi, and that would be his fortress where he could meditate and write. He didn’t know who was expecting him there, or under what sun he would melt, cook and be struck down, was he forgetting, in these spiritual shadows he looked for, the meditation, the going-beyond individual consciousness, a denatured mental concentration, how could Charles forget that, beyond this iron thought supported by pride, there was another Charles, still a man of the flesh, subject to temptation as others were. We never know when a star will detach itself from the vault of heaven and make us stumble. I can say that I knew nothing of it, yet love came easy to me, before I met the man whose ashes now sleep at the bottom of the sea, at that island no one owns, and as for Charly, you forbid me to speak her name, as if you had any right, Harriett, she phoned yesterday and asked to speak to me, didn’t she? Now why can’t I see her, you’re all plotting against me here, my hat and gloves, I want to go out, you say I might fall down in those rainy avenues with my dog, and I assure you it was the dog that got me lost that time, don’t give me any of that