24. Luduv

And in a poor imitation of girls’ sleep in winter when morning lies in wait and sleep holds on so the moment will not pass and doors open that were never there, Katja in her room, smaller than Lola’s due to hierarchy, where there are two beds because for a time Madame Helena thought to have two maids that slept in the house until the woman with the hats came to offer her niece and Madame fired Louise and took Wulda who worked harder and was stronger and quieter; this room that held the sweat of nightmares but not the rhythm of hours spent sewing or the labored silences of secrets, rocked a psalmody like a baby in a cradle for itself and no one else, apparently mute and secret; tasting all the letters of misery together while sighing, eyes closed, such a placid face, the chest of winged beings shaking inside her only for the mouth’s remembrance of the flavor of nuts on sultry afternoons, her body so unexpectedly flat beneath the blankets and everyone believed that tomorrow, yes, tomorrow she would wake as always and then, what a comfort, they could say it had been nothing, a scare, hitting her head like that when she fell, poor thing, a little sleep and convalescence but look at how well our Katja is again, how easily she comes down the stairs and how she smiles; meanwhile in the smoky whirlpool in her head, enclaves, profiles on lost coins, angular time standing still, alleyways, and the laughter when she began to be stuffed with images, dragged her inside herself, fishing for pearls in Saboga, and was finally running after Luduv to find him under the eaves and in the embrace of the household to look out for him, to move in space and time through everything: people, for example, clocks, little stories, wooden furniture, foam, pages, glass and ink, groaning illness, sad freedom, hands that work in the quarry, and the rain that improves your hair; how lovely your blond hair is hanging over your forehead, Luduv, how lovely your eyes, Luduv, these gray wheels with a thousand stripes and the little black points that devour me, where I reappear at the blink of an eye and I am someone else because who is not changed by your gaze, seed pearls in the line of your teeth that I see when I hear you although you have never said it so precisely when May arrived on the breath of the ram and two threads of honey, for I was filled to overflowing with iridescence and do not want the world that turns, and I see you, I see us leave everyone behind; when you left, when I was not there, when I could not clutch the tails of your shirt, shake you by the shoulders to wake you and make you stay, trip you, make you stumble and fall with our legs intertwined and ours is mine again, to see you turn when I called you, Luduv! I called you because I could not be there or anywhere else if you were not there, and to speak of you to others to tell them that it had been a privilege but also to frighten you away, and since I could not find you among others I called you, Luduv! and there you were so serious, waiting to see what I would say, what I would do, how I would look at you and how I would welcome you and then you would know the reason why I caught up with you, this time it was no game, just to show I meant it, and I did not even know that it lay within me like the meeting of two rivers, a friendly pond filled with warm water to wash injuries; but seeing me, seeing me gloomy with white fists, raised and exposed without protection in the gray plain, or beneath sunny racks of vines and withstanding it all, you knew then it was not so, what your sister had filled with words, she who saw us both, who tolerated the wind and proclamations, orders, who had such a weak hold on life, held by spider silk, the devil’s spit, the stigmata of a sliver, she was the one of the two who came down to this country, not sensitive to the cold there, deceptive and soft like betrayal, yet she was there and calling because she had lost everything when she lost you and I wept to see you and was left with nothing, the winged beings that used to come because you gave me back the threshing floor, the yoke, the warm manure on the black soil, they returned you and you gave me the echo of everything that has been said and sung and branches of coral, strings of pearls, strings of fish eggs, lianas, in a single presence the delirium of speech that has color and weight, the lime finally encrusted on the dinnerware, on the wall, in the clay baked in the back of the oven and tomorrow will be an eye as I will be the blue and gold world, I who delves, who announces, who lies, arc and oil lamp, and listen, she who sees you in the children’s corner although there are no children, in the hoofs of the horses enraptured by fire on the stones, the polished marble that will be the gravestone or cheek or rim for water greener than the green young branch, where the ghosts cannot see, she who finds you in the embers and in the obstinate frost on the shortest day of the year, Luduv, shadow of my eyelids, cup for my thirst, stanza sung by basil on the windowsill, Luduv the lamb, harmony of my lips in prayer, the rocking of my hands, island of my eyes, sparkle of my mirrors, watchtower, water changing direction, color of my blood, pebble in my mouth, Luduv luminous mark of day, the name of music, beat, sparkling crystal, mysterious word in books, first hint of light, brother better known and loved for me than I myself, rock and spring, now, never, and always, the whole world and time, the whole sky, the bees, the sickle, riverbed, ivory and gems that only existed so we could be together through the veins in geography, because I am eye and you have been word, smoke, and wind, hidden life, the bones of the thick earth when the floods recede and shoots begin to rise up, because my hair ties you and the roots of all the world’s trees rock us the way we rocked in our mother’s belly and we will return again and again, Luduv, to reflect the eyes of plants, sail into waterways to live in Casabermeja or Naumi-Velé, bury betrayal, singing, Luduv, as we run from the voices of deserted throats, break glasses, raise up sandstorms, frighten and batter death, Luduv, and name ourselves.