With this dream, I bring to a close the story of my soul in its abstract aspect, in order to recount now the advent of The One for whom I write these lines, and to whom the following paragraphs will be dedicated, as the dawn is to the day or the flower to the fruit.
VIII
It was springtime in Buenos Aires the day and the hour when she first appeared to me; her real name will not be written in these pages, since it was given her at birth by men and women who knew not how to name her in a suitably loving idiom. While I dare not declare that at the hour of our meeting the wisteria and the peach tree at her house were in bloom only for her and me, I shall nevertheless sing praises to the Great Harmony that brings together in a single chord the grace of a woman and the beauty of the earth on the day men call their first, according to the numbers of love.
As I recall, I was in the garden at Saavedra, in the company of the friend who had introduced me, and of the women of the house, all young and of gracious aspect. My friend was talking with the women in one of those Buenos Aires conversations in which clever words are used to both hide and reveal all.5 And I remained silent, smiling at my interlocutors, but in reality given over to the magic of the garden, within whose confines the afternoon and the silence were one and the same person. And there I was, at once distant and near the friendly voices, when the extraordinary creature of my tale appeared on the path of the mimosas: she was approaching as if tarrying, so slow was her gait at that moment precious to memory. But her smile went before her like an emissary. Since her dress was the colour of azure, dissipating in the subtle air, it is no surprise that I took her for a vision and wondered if the afternoon had not been personified in that exceedingly sweet womanly figure. Hearing my name from her sister, she inclined her brow and lowered her eyes in greeting. So absorbed was I in the task of admiring her, and so unusual was the commotion her presence caused in my spirit, that I was incapable of response. However, though my tongue was mute, a familiar voice now rose above the new tumult in my heart; as if finally to answer the vital question my being had been circling for some time, the voice seemed to exclaim: “There is the wing’s direction and the polestar of the dove!”
Fearful that people might notice my confusion, I then made an effort to follow what my friend and the women were saying in conversation. But my eyes could not leave The One (who shall henceforth thus be named). She was smiling in silence, as though she did not yet dare let her voice rise among the mature voices of her sisters; and her regard was turned earthward, a felicitous circumstance that allowed me discreetly to gaze upon her in rapt contemplation, my eyes now seeming to discover their true métier. Her youth was not yet in full flower, but rather the whole of her, in my eyes, hinted at a dawn comparable to the moment of first light hesitating at the brink of day. Space was ecstatic in her body’s three dimensions, time delighted in every beat of her heart, and light found sublimation in her entirety. Seeing her, I could not discern what substantial form or what adorable number of creative power had been incarnated in her fragile clay, but I did understand that it was a number brimming over, a form transcending or overflowing into a kind of beauty whose splendour, uncontainable, preceded her like a messenger, followed her like a shadow, and flanked her on the right as her lance, on the left as her shield. Tall and straight beneath the airy dress concealing her, her form seemed ready to sprout, painfully, like the bud of a leaf that swells and breaks and ventures a new lobe. And as I observed that lifeward tension in her being, along with the stature of her grace, I recalled the friend’s poem, which begins thus:
Tall among women now, the girl
wants the name Wind…6
So well did my friend’s image fit her that, never ceasing to look at her, I repeated in mente the two lines of verse, marvelling at how their meaning was only just then revealed to me. For, if Wind was the name that suited her, so then would her foot be wind and so her hand, when it would eventually rise and come down upon the flower of the soul. And at that thought, my soul quaked, as if intuiting in the woman a new heartache, the prelude of another war.
As the happy rhythm of the tertulia intensifed, so did the tumult in my being. And with my attention divided between the voices coming from outside me and the restless and unsettled voices within me, I resolved to get away from there, wishing to measure in solitude the proportions of that new conflict. So I left the house in Saavedra, and, as in a dream, I covered the distance separating that house from my cloister, its habitual four walls. Immediately upon arrival, my soul, secluded in her intimacy, began to reconstruct the image of The One in all her lines, weights, and colours. So perfect was the reconstruction that my soul again trembled in wonder before the image alone; aware of the nature of her excitation, my soul became fearful because she believed she had already lived it to the point of disillusionment, so that now, rearmed within immobility, she might be free of any new anxiety. That is why my soul pulled back for a moment from the sweetness of that new summons and began to reproach herself for her fragility: “What? After such a long journey, you are going to plunge back into the deceitful river of creatures? Will you again descend into the finitude and danger of earthly love, after having attained the notion of an infinite love?” But the voices of alarm could not gainsay the enchanted vision she bore within her. Instead, revolving around that image, she realized that the more she gazed at it, the more completely her will would surrender to it. Meanwhile, night had fallen upon the earth and was peopling my room with shadows. As I remember, I then opened the two shutters of my window, fell back into an armchair, and began to contemplate the vault of the starry sky, where a crescent moon pretended to sail above the little clouds of silver. The springtime night, its air humid and fragrant as a girl’s breath, brought forth a long-forgotten tremor within me, freshening in some ineffable way the dryness of my soul, as if suddenly inviting her to put forth new buds. From the suburban street a chorus of childish voices wafted up:
Between Saint Peter and Saint John
they built a new boat:
the sails were of silver,
the oars were of steel…7
Allowing my eyes to wander over the field of stars, I noticed a tenderness from bygone days stealing back into my heart, nudging it along broad roads to benevolence. And on that memorable night so much mercy seemed to rain down from on high that my eyes suddenly filled with tears, not of anguish, as was usually the case, but tears of relief at the peace brought me by the night sky. Attributing such salutary effects to the revelation of The One, I then turned again in imagination to contemplate her; and resuming my soliloquy, I wondered what might be in store for me, what goodness I would find in that mysterious figure of girlhood.