Since Maria left me to go to another star – which one? Orion? Altair? Or you, green Venus? – I have always cherished solitude. What long days I spent alone with my cat. All alone I listen, without a material existence, and my cat is a mystical companion, a spirit. I may thus say that I spent long days alone with my cat, and, alone, with one of the final authors of the Latin decadence; since the white creature is no more, strangely and singularly I liked everything which is summarized in this word – fall. So this year, my favorite season, these are the last days made languid by the summer, immediately preceding the autumn and, during the day, the hour I walk is when the sun rests before fainting, with rays of yellow copper on the grey walls and red copper on the stone floors. Similarly, the literature which my spirit demands as a sensual delight will be the dying poetry of the last moments of Rome, since, however, it breathes not at all of the rejuvenating approach of the Barbarians and does not stutter like the childish Latin of the first Christian proses.

So I read one of these beloved poems (on which the patches of makeup have more charm for me than the rosiness of youth) and plunged a hand into the fur of the pure animal, when a barrel organ sang languidly and melancholily under my window. It played in the great row of poplars whose leaves seem bleak even in spring, since Maria passed there with candles, one last time. The instrument of the sad, yes, really: the piano sparkles, the violin gives the light to torn fibers, but the barrel organ, in the twilight of memory, made me dream desperately. Now it murmured a joyously vulgar air and it placed joy into the heart of the suburbs, an outmoded air, commonplace: how is it that its refrain could go to my soul and make me cry like a romantic ballad? I savored it slowly and I did not throw a penny through the window for fear of disturbing myself and realizing that the instrument did not sing alone.

04/03/2008