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Everything dressed in flesh can yield a dizzying beauty if you concentrate on it long enough, and his beauty leapt out without apology.
“You know, when you think of it,” I said, turning away, so I wouldn’t see the dress in his hand, “there’s no good reason under God for little girls and little boys. Think of it, the other tender issue of mammals. Among puppies or kittens or colts, does one find gender? It’s never an issue. The half-grown fragile thing is sexless. There is no determination.
Strident perfume rose from the gardens right and left, from purple Four O’Clocks, as mortals call them here, a rampant flower like unto weed, but infinitely sweet, and the wild irises stabbing upwards like blades out of the black mud, throaty petals monstrously big, battering themselves on old walls and concrete steps, and then as always there were roses, roses of old women and roses of the young, roses too whole for the tropical night, roses coated with poison.
Several times I resolved to pray. But I discovered I couldn’t remember the words. Even the images were indistinct. Lights had gone out forever which had guided me through all my years.
I didn’t choose to starve. I simply couldn’t do anything to keep myself alive. I knew I was going home. I was going home.
“I carry time now,” I whispered in Greek, looking to my friends. “Amadeo,” said Riccardo. “Count the hours for me.” I wanted to say that this prodigious discovery meant something, something personal. It was a message to me from some other too hastily and perilously forgotten world. Time was not time anymore and never would be. The day was not the day, nor the night the night.
Yet all pleasure to me was suspect. I was dazzled when I could not give in, and overcome when I did surrender, and as the days followed I surrendered with ever greater ease all the time.
Christianity is a religion based on the notion that we are living in the Last Days! It’s a religion fueled by the ability of men to forget all the blunders of the past, and get dressed once more for the Last Days.”
If or when she wants to rise in “fortune and men’s eyes,” I’ll clear the way for her. If or when she wants to be alone, she will not see or hear me. If or when she wants anything, I will get it for her. And if or when she loves a mortal man or mortal woman, I’ll do what she wants me to do. I can live in the shadows. Doting on her, I can live forever in gloom because there is no gloom when I am near her.
