Bloom - The Bright Book of Life: Novels to Read and Reread

H E SAID THAT THE STORY WAS NOT HIS. Whose was it, then? I never could ask, because he spoke it like a torrent. After a time I lost the words and heard only their sound and tumult.

It seemed like a dream narrative, spasmodic and flickering, yet a miracle of coloring, as though erotic beckoning were its only substance. I knew him well enough to find no relevance to his personality as it rocketed along. His was a dry soul, a limp leaf waiting for combustion.

He dreamed of a Western gate with vine leaves crimson on the wall. They whispered to him, and some seemed flying words that meant to strike him.

I gave up listening and walked away. Directions have always been preternaturally hard for me. Rarely can I tell east from west. When I was younger, hiking was a burden, as I always got lost.

Hopelessly I wandered on. And then I tripped and fell downward into what seemed a darkening hall. Landing on my feet was painful but not disabling. A lover of Cervantes, like everyone else, retrospectively I realized I was imitating Don Quixotes descent into the Cave of Montesinos (Part 2, Chapters XXIIXXIII). Cervantes was parodying the epic journeys to Hades by Odysseus and Aeneas, though the Sorrowful Countenance is let down by a rope that is tied around him and then is hauled back up after rather less than an hour. He returns in what seems deep sleep and with his usual passionate conviction says that he has been below for several days. The Knight describes a crystal palace created by Merlin the wicked enchanter:

With no less pleasure do I recount it, responded Don Quixote. And so I say that the venerable Montesinos led me into the crystalline palace, where, in a downstairs chamber that was exceptionally cool and made all of alabaster, there was a marble sepulcher crafted with great skill, and on it I saw a knight stretched out to his full length, and made not of bronze, or marble, or jasper, as is usual on other sepulchers, but of pure flesh and pure bone. His right hand, which seemed somewhat hairy and sinewy to me, a sign that its owner was very strong, lay over his heart, and before I could ask anything of Montesinos, who saw me looking with wonder at the figure on the sepulcher, he said:

This is my friend Durandarte, the flower and model of enamored and valiant knights of his time; here he lies, enchanted, as I and many others are enchanted, by Merlin, the French enchanter who was, people say, the son of the devil; and what I believe is that he was not the son of the devil but knew, as they say, a point or two more than the devil. How and why he enchanted us no one knows, but that will be revealed with the passage of time, and is not too far off now, I imagine. What astonishes me is that I know, as well as I know that it is day, that Durandarte ended the days of his life in my arms, and that when he was dead I removed his heart with my own hands; and the truth is that it must have weighed two pounds, because according to naturalists, the man who has a larger heart has greater courage than the man whose heart is small. If this is the case, and if this knight really died, why does he now moan and sigh from time to time, as if he were alive?

(trans. Edith Grossman)

This being Cervantes, the delight of absurdity is mixed with the Hispanic sublime. Durandarte is both dead and noisily alive. Belerma, his true love, keeps marching by, holding his heart in her hands. A young peasant girl, a friend of the immortal Dulcinea of Toboso, approaches Don Quixote with a new cotton underskirt as security for a loan of a half-dozen reales that Dulcinea desperately requires. The noble Knight declines the security and empties his pockets to find no more than four reales, which he swiftly gives.

I cannot say that I found Durandarte, let alone Dulcinea, but my dream returned to one of Ursula K. Le Guins realms. Surrounded by shadowy forms, I strained to hear the voice of a woman chanting: