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past, transmitting the rich sediments into the present, projecting them
into the future.
    In watching the moon she acquired the certainty
of the expansion of time, by depth of emotion, range and infinite multiplicity
of experience.
    It was this flame which began to burn in her,
in her eyes and skin, like a secret fever, and her mother looked at her in
anger and said: “You look like a consumptive.” The flame of accelerated living
by fever glowed in her and drew people to her as the lights of night life drew
passersby out of the darkness of empty streets.
    When she did finally fall asleep it was the
restless sleep of the night watchman continuously aware of danger and of the
treacheries of time seeking to cheat her by permitting clocks to strike the
passing hours when she was not awake to grasp their contents.

    She watched Alan closing the windows, watched
him light the lamps and fasten the lock on the door which led to the porch. All
the sweet enclosures, and yet Sabina, instead of slipping languorously into the
warmth and gentleness, felt a sudden restlessness like that of a ship pulling
against its moorings.
    The image of the ship’s cracking, restless
bones arrived on the waves of Debussy’s “Ile Joyeuse ”
which wove around her all the mists and dissolutions of remote islands. The
notes arrived charged like a caravan of spices, gold mitres , ciboriums and chalices bearing messages of delight
setting the honey flowing between the thighs, erecting sensual minarets on
men’s bodies as they lay flat on the sand. Debris of stained glass wafted up by
the seas, splintered by the radium shafts of the sun and the waves and tides of
sensuality covered their bodies, desires folding in every lapping wave like an
accordion of aurora borealis in the blood. She saw an unreachable dance at
which men and women were dressed in rutilant colors,
she saw their gaiety, their relations to each other as unparalleled in
splendor.
    By wishing to be there where it was more
marvelous she made the near, the palpable seem like an obstruction, a delay to
the more luminous life awaiting her, the incandescent personages kept waiting.
    The present—Alan, with his wrists hidden in
silky brown hair, his long neck always bending towards her like a very tree of
faithfulness—was murdered by the insistent, whispering, interfering dream, a
compass pointing to mirages flowing in the music of Debussy like an endless
beckoning, alluring, its voices growing fainter if she did not listen with her
whole being, its steps lighter if she did not follow, its promises, its sighs
of pleasure growing clearer as they penetrated deeper regions of her body
directly through the senses bearing on airy canopies all the fluttering banners
of gondolas and divertissements.
    Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” shone on other
cities… She wanted to be in Paris, the city propitious to lovers, where pcemen smiled absolution and taxi drivers never interrupted
a kiss…
    Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” shone upon many
stranger’s faces, upon many Iles Joyeuses , music
festivals in the Black Forest, marimbas praying at the feet of smoking
volcanoes, frenzied intoxicating dances in Haiti, and she was not there. She
was lying in a room with closed windows under a lamplight.
    The music grew weary of calling her, the black
notes bowed to her inertia ironically in the form of a pavanne for a defunct infanta , and dissolved. All she could
hear now were the fog horns on the Hudson from ships she would never be able to
board.

    Sabina emerged a week later dressed in purple
and waited for one of the Fifth Avenue buses which allowed smoking. Once seated
she opened an overfull handbag and brought out a Hindu ring with minuscule
bells on it, and slipped it on in place of her wedding ring. The wedding ring
was pushed to the bottom of the bag. Each gesture she made was now accompanied
by the tinkling of bells.
    At Sixty-Fourth Street she leaped out of the
bus before it had entirely stopped and