20. Fountains

He believed, shielded by years of waiting and fire, that there were beings fragile due to their intricacy, a tangle of little cells, honeycombs, labyrinths, knotted partitions, and beating vessels the width of a hair, hands so very tiny, impassive as white insects but soft, incapable of holding anything of wood or metal, incapable of holding themselves if they fell, holding on to something and staying there; fragile bodies, brittle, and indecisive, not fully finished, imperfect and vacillating like shrill music or the dying flame of a candle that no longer gives light; bodies that enclose a thread of awareness, a stirring of reason that calls to the storm and desire like obsession, like the need of some long-legged insects to pose blind on a despotic arm, their dead fragments blemished. Impossible to know or even suspect what was schemed behind those eyes where orders ought to rebound, echo, and be obeyed. He had seen these ill-endowed beings, like a defective hand of cards that should be returned, in the rows of faces that passed for review, eyes opaque and buttons shining, and knew that something had to be taken from them, knew that they were going to sob and break but in the end he was going to obtain what he wanted, the perfect men whom their fathers had dreamed of upon engendering them because who and where was the man who did not carry that dream and release it at that moment, the vision of purity and perfection, a single back for all to receive the designation like a lashing with a single look, a single leap for the hero. He had known how to manage them but not now, now it was impossible to reckon hidden solidity because the shudder at what had dawned now filled him with the ardor of the desert sun, the torrent, the cavalry he charged against full force to conquer those things that had been impossible in the splendor of campaigns. Not anymore, so he had abandoned any attempt and merely looked, blind before weakness, an attempt like a light that swung a delicate body back and forth. Nonetheless he had not been able to ponder pearls because only by chance he had never gotten near hellebores or wildflowers, and these links to something greater than chance were precisely what had to be eliminated for victory. But in fact, as strange as it might seem, he had learned to be in the presence of things he had never expected: fountains, for example. Outside of his room in the boarding house on Scheller Street, the only things that had interested him were cleanliness, the sheen of pottery, the polish of marble, untainted plates, the shine of bronze, barely visible glass, and waxed wood: he had not known nor had wanted to know anything else, but ever since Madame Nashiru arrived at the house, he had been given to imagining within the wall what until then had been mute, fountains of soft porous material, viscous even beneath fingertips, and the satin feeling that slides all along rounded moldings. He had sunk to the point of keeping his hands in his pockets to avoid bas-reliefs, the eyes of unknown flowers touched by someone who with almost all certainty was not him, and water splashing a naked body that he wanted to correct into soldierly excellence, not the admixture of a confused novice, instead ready for the cruelest test. He was able to recall that in those cases water, the most innocent thing in the world, could become a condemnation, like salt or wood, and all in silence so as not to lose what little the victim was allowed to keep. Only then was it certain that a man was not going to retreat; only then was he sure about the echo and could give himself orders. Magnificent bodies that he supposed were gilt; black in death, it was true, but golden or ivory below rough clothing, gems and tight belts on the hips, slipping and colliding with each step or stride, not with dance, not with the footstep barely audible in the corridor when he was waiting, having returned to his room after breakfast. And in the street harder than sands or salt pans or mountainsides, at an indecent speed in the street, came the wonder of hidden feet that upon being placed bare in fountains would cloud the melting water: men submerged, motionless, gilt in freezing water, made of dangerous ivory, up to the belt without a moan, without a grimace, conquered like a trophy. The General did not like to shout, he would never gallop down the hills of the moon howling after stampeding herds. He lost the sight of the pale silhouette between the afternoon shadows, he strove to shorten his step like an offering, with the same unspeakable weight in his chest, cold sweat on his temples, and in the repertoire of never considered scenes, he finally imposed, as in his worst nights, the mastery with which he would use his hands, belts, and the innocence of water to create fragile strength. He heard screams because he would invoke screams, he had heard the injured scream and better yet the prisoners: screamed until they could scream no more, he would oversee it, screaming like the screams he now heard, yet as he turned the corner to Scheller Street, no, it was the children as they played who screamed when someone opened a door, when someone arrived, when a lamp was lit, when a coach came racing from the craters of the moon, orange-yellow sparks from the hoofs of the horses on the round, swollen cobblestones, like the marble rosettes of the fountains.