418
PARTISAN REVIEW
stick and poked inside until I touched the corners, but the things did
not appear. Then somebody told my aunt that by burying I don't
know what very strange objects inside a bottle, at the end of the
patio, the creatures would disappear and she would sleep peacefully.
My aunt made fun of the advice, but I carried it out. In a room out
back, full of all kinds of objects, I looked for God knows what and
put them in a bottle, which I buried. I forgot the matter completely,
and sometime after I remembered and began to look for the place
where the bottle might be, but full of doubt because in the long run I
didn't know if it had really happened or I'd dreamed it.
The point is that I found the bottle and at the moment of open–
ing it I was very afraid because I didn't know what horrible things I'd
put in it. I then opened the part of me where oblivion and also
memory lay, and I let the things out. At that moment I seemed to see
that from the bottom of the bottle came some enormous black birds
with red eyes which stared at me, perhaps the same birds my aunt
had seen.
One of the things which came out of the bottle was the comet.
Until then, when my son denied anything I said, his denial made me
glad at heart: "He's a man," I thought. But at the matter of the comet
I was somewhat saddened for the first time, because it seemed to me
he believed none of the things I said. And it grieved me also because
when I talked about the comet, I did so handing on to him facts,
knowledge which I had looked up in the library precisely for him
when I wanted to protect him from everything which surrounded
him and sought laboriously in books (many of them recommended
by the lead drummer; I remember the beautiful bound volumes of
R eclus's
The Earth,
which had such an aura of mystery), among such
a quantity of books, security for that face I had thrust into the world.
I was already used to the fact that everything I did or said was a
mistake or defect, but the comet I hadn't invented; wise men who
had spent their lives studying the facts wrote of the comet. It was an
extremely calm night. You were already asleep - I think it was very
late. I had been copying musical scores. Through the window Var–
gas, the cornetist, struck his head and asked if I'd seen the comet. He
seemed frightened. I had heard about it, but I had not seen it yet. I
went out to the patio and there it was in the middle of the sky, with
its head and its immense tail giving off fire . I watched it an instant
and smiled, filled with an immense joy. Something I had read in
lifeless print was there , demonstrating truth. I intended to go wake
you immediately to show you that wonder and show you that what I
