Chapter three
“One by one the secrets of his life sent him their sign, he had only to unravel the mystery of the dead soul that wandered round the ancient threshing floor, perhaps tonight it would give him a sign, if it is not a hallucination, he reflected, as soon as night fell he looked for the storm-lamp but could find it nowhere; he took with him matches and a candle and set off. He had figured on being there near midnight because he knew now that was a sensitive hour that made the earthly space more conquerable, more fragile, so that the equilibrium of silence vibrated, creating invisible fissures in the other space of mystery.
He stood on the hill with the live oaks and saw the valley spread out, calm; the moon, rising red like blood and moist, lent a supernatural glow to the landscape, made it throb and ring, or so it seemed to him. Tonight was the night of the sign and he would not leave that spot without knowing”.
Chapter four
He lit a cigarette and stood bihind the dull glass. He resded his gaze, as when he was a child, and looked at the landscape shrouded in fog. What he was seeing appeared to him a mere fraction of the reality it concealed; what was not visible contained the greater part of truth, and he remembered the word of Elia, “souls are like the other “souls”, the chrysalids… if they burst, no sound is heard.
Suddenly he felt as if he was created for only one summer, and he was trapped behind the glass watching the season not meant for him.
He shuddered. This thought gave him a reference to what he was seeing there, on the threshing floor, beyond his terrestrial senses, and he felt for the first time that he was the itermediary in the enigma that flutters between God and the world.
With the storm-lamp in hand he set off; it was the first time he felt so calm, almost joyful; he, too, was an enchanted one and there was nothing more powerful than the emotions he derived from all these experiences of his.
From afar he saw two huge motionless eyes that shone in the moist darkness.
The black dog was there, awaiting him.
Chapter eight
Avra’s body shone and he wondered. It was as if that glow of death flowed over her, a corpse white like an infant’s and clean, with the wounds healed and the breasts brimming with milk that flowed sweetly redolent.
He bent over and placed his lips on her nipple, and she shuddered.
Her milk had the same aroma as anise and tree-bark in the rain and juices of milky flowers, and it was sweet, and the tears flowed from his eyes.
All night he held her in his arms. The blood of their child had united them, the child that departed so naked, so alone to the upper world, and he thought “Fortunately, I was in time to see it, fortunately…” not even knowing why that was so omportant, but needing it – it was his sign, the spring water dyed with his blood, that the child took with him and had now to search for in the other world.
Chapter nine
In the deseted wintly landscape where only the young seagulls flew frightened and the waves rippled amourousaly, kissing the feet of the god, Samuel felt to the depths of his being the heart-bear of the invisible world, the miracle and the mystery in all its godly splendor. And he fell upon the moist sand, as he did once on the dirty floor of his cell, after the rebellion of the convicts – he fell there, feet and hands outstretched in the shape of the cross, he was a living cross, yes, that bore from the abysses of time the miracles of myth and the unfathomable mystery, the one which brought him, asleep or awake, to the source of the other truth.
Thalassinos arrived with the wagon and the blanket, and in a short time the beautiful magnificent god was in the hall of the little house, next to the cupboard where the silver box was concealed.