My own recollection is fuzzy at around that moment. I've written of this experience, of the swelling light and noise as the play of the table consumes me. I have still in the clear vision of the moment prior to my collapse. All this, but nothing remains of the world about me in these memories. I know nothing of the room, its people or history. They simply all bleed together in the approach of the moment. And even before they are meaningless window dressing, a babbling cacophony. It does not surprise me that even Mariana would remain simply an element of the mise en scene.
I do not, however, recall the champagne. It is as if I were drunk before even partaking in it. Marianna saw me stand in the midst of my final bet. I knocked against the patrons next to me. I dashed several drinks from the cart behind me. I careened downwards toward the floor, carts and stairs crashing with me. Some of the players must have laughed at the comical drunk. Some ticked their tongues in disapproval. But I was not drunk. Or, if drunk, that was not the cause. I have, I am victim of, the falling sickness.
Marianna had me taken back to my rooms and has kept watch over me since. Once I was able to rise she set me down at my little table and made us tea in the samovar. We sat together for quite some time silently. She judges me is all my mind can tell me. And yet when she does speak it is only to comfort to me, to make me forget to fit and the fever that proceeded it. Tho it is hot here, the tea is a comfort that reminds me of our old lives, of quiet rooms and the daily motions that propelled us through them. Marianna talks of our middle west town, reminds me of my mother, long dead but always near, as Marianna says.
...{more}
It is only late in the day that she can no longer keep from me the rest of the night's events. How easily she recruited others to help return me to my room. How I was still to have a room destitute as I am. How she has provide me such fine tea and biscuits. My spin had won. And I had not fainted at that moment, but bet again the same. And spun again. And once and twice more still. And each had won until a fifth spin still the double zeroes. It was then that my faint came upon me. All those spins I had been within a vacuum, that pulsing breath of one or two zeroes, lost in their blur. I had, in that time, staked my life five times and each time been given it back. But none was enough to convince me in that mad state. None until my very body refused more. I went to ground. And Marianna had me brought to safety.
All this day with me and not a word. Not a single sigh to tell me that I was a rich man, that she was the aide of a wealthy man. No. Just her humble being. The same girl form the town that had always been somewhere around to help my mother nurse me through these fits. What miracle this? She must be a saint. And I must be some more sinner tested, but still protected.
_______________________
Having rested the whole day only to find out that I had thousands awaiting me, I was brimming with energy. The world became a frantic rush of exuberance. My body, however, was still weak from my fit.
"Marianna! My dove, we must get out into the night. We shouldn't waste a minute more here in this shack. My angel!"
"You amaze me. Minutes ago you were in your sick bed, a puddle of a man."
"So I was. But I've been made anew by your care, by your words! We must not tattle on any longer. There is a world out there for us seize. We must accept what life has set before us and exalt in this moment. Come, out we go. If the night is cold for you, we will buy you furs! If our hearts remain cold, we'll drink champagne!"
"Please, we can't. You need your rest. We cannot simply return to that world which has caused you so much ill. I cannot come with you if it is just going to be the same scene again and again."
"Marianna! You must come. You have nursed me from the brink. My sweet village angel. You must. You have bound yourself to me in your love, your care. You must have finery. A night's escapade. You must live with me here. We will remake this town in a single night. No longer a burglar of sad souls, but a carnival to fete the lightest of souls!"
"I will come, but only to keep watch on you. Only for a meal."
But already I was scurrying her out of the room and into the night. The night which was indeed too cold with cold clarity of light which only the still desert can bring. A silence too. We were at an outpost at the edge of nowhere, far from the slowly growing villages of our middle western home. Had I brought Marianna out to this desert with my magnetic force? Had a coaxed a simple angel to this deadly edge of the world?
The sound of the casino sat emergent in the distance, a small patch of light at the end of a well trod path. Its pulsation caught my eye, seemed ripe for the fresh made carnival I wished to force upon the world. No, not force. Simply show. Embody. Become. My love could open up the latent possibility of this joy. Like an earthquake pulling apart the dust below us and easily immersing us in the life that waits just below our feet, always eager to come upon us.
For now, we will eschew the casino. Marianna's concern ruins it to joy. She cannot see how all the joyful engergy could come to be out of just a pit of sorrow. But the two are brethren! They are of the same nature one gone good, the other bad. For now, however, I must show her what I mean, I must show her the joy this fortune can make of the world.
On the quiet side of town we find a little parlour. Its men seem already to have word of me for better or ill. I sent the boy to find a furrier. And set the rest to work on a nice hearth fire and a large repast.
Simply my words sent the room scurrying, awoken to action. An exhilarating feeling. A great change from the shutter of loathing when you enter a room as a destitute man, that tensing of muscles that anticipates some dread interaction, some small but painful inconvenience. But ah! Reactions both. I see now the web of power between us all. The little strands to link us, good or ill, to all men. Like a pulsing change across a filament I felt my own effect in the room. These men, Marianna, this entire town were my community, my brethren. I owe more to them in this moment than I owe my younger self or any future version of myself I can predict. In every moment that passes we enact the continuance of this community. Simply by not killing each other, by not giving reign to our baser instincts, we have become a family. Tenuous tho it may be.
These revelations ignited excitement within me. I could scare remain in my seat. Marianna beside me looked tired.
"Champagne. We must have champagne. Marianna, you must celebrate with me. But no my dear, sweet angel, not what you think. You think me an excited plutocrat, revealing in his wealth, testing what new pleasures it will afford him. But no dearest one. I believe I finally understand you and your goodness. I believe I have been awoken to a true faith. To a love of man which can know no limits or bounds. It is our glorious connection in all things. These are my brothers. I don't command them as an emperor, but ask them to produce the marvelous world that can be between us."
She only canted her head at me like one would to a raving man. I was excited, that is true. I had stood up from my chair as I spoke. But now I kneeled before her and clasped her hands.
"Oh, Marianna. I know that I'm raving. But you know what I say is true. All my life I've scorned your kindness because I couldn't understand it." Weeping into her hands. I wanted to smother my face in those delicate hands.
"No. I must be honest. I hated her kindness. I hated it and feared it. You brought me to rage with those forgiving eyes, lingering on me in silence. Filled with forgiveness that could only speak to me as guilt and pity. But Marianna, that means I must have always understood you. I knew the power your forgiveness held and I couldn't accept it. But now, but now! Everything is so clear before me. We are all brothers! But Marianna. You sit there so silent and shocked. I know I rave, but this is revelation. For all your knowledge, for your pure knowledge of this love, you neglect one thing! This knowledge must open up the ground beneath the world. The world must shake and tremble with such knowledge! Men cannot be men as we know them. The world not the world. And this be true. How can you sit there with sad and loving eyes when you know such things?"
She spoke to me gently, but I cannot recall the words. The gentleness in her voice reaffirmed my knowledge ten fold, a hundred fold. Each word a cascade of exponential growth in my pure faith. And it was this purity that made clear to me the situation. I have been a monster my entire life. Marianna an angel. The purest good I have ever met. But such being can never be the instruments of revelation. They who know all can only transmit in these intimate settings. I. I, the transfigured one, malicious and cold, can feel the igniting spark of goodness so clearly. I can understand what full transformation must mean. I can tear the ground for revelation because I have experienced that shattering.
"...be calm." Her speech concluded. Having understood so clearly my purpose, I sat and composed myself.
"You are right Marianna. You have always been right. I am calm now. I had been caught off-guard by these understandings. I have let myself get too excited by them. Let us eat and celebrate the new world I feel opening before us. I can be a good man as I never thought possible. And I owe it, Marianna, all to you. We must celebrate tho. The beginning of this revelation is joy."
The boy had returned with an oversized seal fur coat proportioned for general, of some ancient slavic combat. I bade Marianna wear it anyways. Tho sheepish she accepted and looked a silly, tho much warmer girl. And so we were feasted in the warm light of a small wooden room with fire all around.
"To the transformation of wicked men, Marianna!"
______________
These rambling aren't incidental. I was greatly carried away from myself in those moments. And I must confess no less now as I write them. I feel each new revelation over again, alive with all that same power. But now each rings in my ears with shame and failure. I have looked deeply into the truth and have acted a fool before it. My face blushes to think of it. But I cannot quail from writing it. My current sorrow must tinge the telling.
As we ate our meal, Marianna tried repeatedly in delicate little ways to calm my wildest ecstasies. She quoted to me small fragments of scripture, spoke on the quiet soul in solitude. She tells me that what is a flood now must be tended on its ebb like a open candle frame. That the barest breeze might extinguish it later on.
Of course this sounded fantastic at the time. I could barely escape the roar of truth, let alone image it in wain. I laughed at her. A joyous laugh, but I laughed into her face, into her kindest sympathies, her sweetest attempts.
I had begun drinking champagne. I called the patron over to us and insisted he and his staff join us in, that he bring more drink for us all and cards. Soon, I know not how time began to sway and shimmy, we had transported not a small portion of the casino's life into this small tavern. I sat upon a dais to one side of the room with a small table one it and watched as the people I had called caroused around me. I felt in them all the glorious life and community I had imagined possible. But I was getting drunker. And soon I lost the tread of this idea and was simply awash in the celebration.
I began to stake on the cards more than I could have imagined having a night before. I was, however, also staking plenty for the hands I played against. The money leapt from me as it does for all who are not made for it. I was happy to dispense it around me, to watch the circuits of communal connection come alive in the transmission.
Feeling lusty and full of froth I called over one of the girls. She practically leapt up onto my arm and seated herself on my flank. The waves now were crashing around me. All were hearty and raucous. I soaked it all in from the center no longer sure of anything but that this immensity of energy was wonderful and awful.
For a moment only I remember Marianna and searched the room for her. She must, quite reasonably, have sunk away from the great debauch. Failing the find her, I returned to the girl on my arm, the game and threw myself headlong into the spree.
I had, however, already lost my head and could remember or control a thing. I must have spent my winnings twice over even before that moment. All those glorious filaments burning with filial connections, I was poisoning moment after moment. What I thought was building a faith between us, would turn only to enmity and death. It sprung all from only this chance winning and could have no life beyond it.
All this I couldn't know. But would strike me when I woke upon my floor still full in the middle of the night. My memory began to return shortly after waking. I'd made it back to my room, but not without dragging the fete in with me. The calm little room was destroyed. I could recall only that eruptions of violence had broken the game almost simultaneously. That I was pushed to the center of it all. Called upon at all angles to know what happened next, not resolve all troubles, to pay tabs. I was drug into the street. Throw, scorned, laughed at. The violence had not banished joy, but dyed it a new malicious shade. I was beat joyously. Stripped of anything valuable as a silly game. Eventually they moved off to the casino as a rabid pack of animals. With a thirst I had whet. With an evil, evil energy.
I too must have retained that dispirited essence. My room was in shambles. I must have entered it like the most violent fool. Whether ecstatic or wrathful I know not. But I had awoken on the couch, still dressed head pounding and heart aching. And still this witches' hour surrounds me.
I too must have retained that dispirited essence. My room was in shambles. I must have entered it like the most violent fool. Whether ecstatic or wrathful I know not. But I had awoken on the couch, still dressed head pounding and heart aching. And still this witches' hour surrounds me.
______________
And I am not a paranoid. There are indeed creditors and many. Each, I'm sure, dreaming of some special pain that can serve in place of unremunerated payment. But my own desire to punish myself causes me to doubt their logic. What could hurting me, even crippling me do to me? My own pain and suffering cannot by a measure replace any harm I have done. I know, for I suffer as much as possible already. And yet I am myself, this same stream of days that leads me endlessly into these sprees, to my every collapse in heat or passion or fright. Every new day perhaps I am set again before the altar of my own forgiveness. I am free to accept this unutterable freedom, to become something new entirely. I burn to be rid of these weights a tow and move off unhampered into that new day. I know my weights to be both dauntless and naught. I could drop them on an instant and run off to love Maria forevermore spotless.
And yet. Again the stagnant day buzzing with desert heat. Again I am before myself in the glass, my pale and scraggly face. I sit too still hoping to hold myself, but already I know I cannot go out to face that night. Out into the sport of it all, drinks, lights, women and most of all the tables. Each offerer my precisely what the day cannot: a chance to finally lose myself entirely. What in the day is a silent weight that I can float subtly above and yet am tethered to, in the night is raucous and careless stuff to be flung aside in one motion. But all that is lost to me now. All a thin illusion I can no longer grasp. I am too failed even for sin. There is no joy to sustain that fragile lie.
Perhaps I will loose it only in death. Perhaps the cliffs are the only portion which can meet my needs. Certainly not some creditors first. Certainly not a sister's scorn. Tho a duelists pistol shot has a certain elegance to it. Tho the ball could tear carelessly through non-integral flesh and leave me a sad and even weightier mess.
No, the cliffs are the things. The ocean's bigness.
