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could manage was to grunt this anxious question:
    “Where are we?”
    “We just passed Eden.”
    “Fine. Let’s stop at Abraham’s tent.”
    “But we’re traveling backward!” my mount retorted mockingly.
    I was vexed and confused. The trip was beginning to seem tiresome and reckless, the cold was uncomfortable, the ride furious, and the result impalpable. And afterward—the cogitations of a sick man—if we did reach the indicated goal, it wasn’t impossible that the centuries, annoyed at having their origin infringed upon, would squash me between their fingers, which must have been as age-old as they. While I was thinking along those lines we were gobbling up the road and the plain flew under our feet until the animal became fatigued and I was able to look more calmly at my surroundings. Only look: I saw nothing except the vast whiteness of the snow, which by now had invaded the sky itself, blue up till then. Here and there a plant or two might appear, huge and brutish, the broad leaves waving in the wind. The silence of that region was like a tomb. It could be said that the life of things had become stupidity for man.
    Had it fallen out of the air? Detached itself from the earth? I don’t know. I do know that a huge shape, the figure of a woman, appeared to me then, staring at me with eyes that blazed like the sun. Everything about that figure had the vastness of wild forms and everything was beyond the comprehension of human gaze because the outlines were lost in the surroundings and what looked thick was often diaphanous. Stupefied, I didn’t say a word, I couldn’t even let out a cry, but after a time, which was brief, I asked who she was and what her name was: the curiosity of delirium.
    “Call me Nature or Pandora. I am your mother and your enemy.”
    When I heard that last word I drew back a little, overcome by fear. The figure let out a guffaw, which produced the effect of a typhoon around us; plants twisted and a long moan broke the silence of external things.
    “Don’t be frightened,” she said, “my enmity doesn’t kill, it’s confirmed most of all by life. You’re alive: that’s the only torment I want.”
    “I’m alive?” I asked, digging my nails into my hands as if to certify my existence.
    “Yes, worm, you’re alive. Don’t worry about losing those rags that are your pride, you’re still going to taste the bread of pain and the wine of misery for a few hours. You’re alive. Right now while you’re going crazy, you’re alive, and if your consciousness gets an instant of wisdom, you’ll say you want to live.”
    Saying that, the vision reached out her arm, grabbed me by the hair, and lifted me up as if I were a feather. Only then did I manage to get a close look at her face, which was enormous. Nothing more serene; noviolent contortion, no expression of hatred or ferocity. The only expression, general, complete, was that of selfish impassivity, that of eternal deafness, that of an immovable will. Wrath, if she had any, was buried in her heart. At the same time, in that face of glacial expression there was a look of youth and a blend of strength and vitality before which I felt the weakest and most decrepit of creatures.
    “Did you understand me?” she asked me after some time of mutual contemplation.
    “No,” I answered, “nor do I want to understand you. You’re an absurdity, you’re a fable. I’m dreaming most certainly or if it’s true that I went mad, you’re nothing but the conception of a lunatic. I mean a hollow thing that absent reason can’t control or touch. You Nature? The Nature I know is only mother and not enemy. She doesn’t make life a torment, nor does she, like you, carry a face that’s as indifferent as the tomb. And why Pandora?”
    “Because I carry good and evil in my bag and the greatest thing of all, hope, the consolation of mankind. Are you trembling?”
    “Yes, your gaze bewitches me.”
    “I should think so, I’m not only life, I’m