House of Incest Read Online Free PDF

and then I was told to walk, to live, to run.
I walked slowly at first, and the garden was very soft, and I felt the softness
of the garden so acutely, not on the surface of my body, but all through it,
the soft warm air and the perfumes penetrated me like needles through every
open bleeding pore. All the pores open and breathing the softness, the warmth,
and the smells. The whole body invaded, penetrated, responding, every tiny cell
and pore active and breathing and trembling and enjoying. I shrieked with pain.
I ran. And as I ran the wind lashed me, and then the voices of people like
whips on me. Being touched! Do you know what it is to be touched by a human
being!
    He wiped his face with his handkerchief.
    The paralytic sat still in the corner of the
room.
    You are fortunate, he said, you are fortunate
to feel so much; I wish I could feel all that. You are at least alive to pain,
whereas I…
    Then he turned his face away, and just before
he turned away I saw the veins on his forehead swelling, swelling with the
effort he made, the inner effort which neither his tongue nor his body, nor his
thoughts would obey.
    If only we could all escape from this house of
incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all
from yourselves, said the modern Christ.
    But none of us could bear to pass through the
tunnel which led from the house into the world on the other side of thewalls , where there were leaves on the trees, where water
ran beside the paths, where there was daylight and joy. We could not believe
that the tunnel would open on daylight: we feared to be trapped into darkness
again; we feared to return whence we had come, from darkness and night. The
tunnel would narrow and taper down as we walked; it would close around us, and
close tighter and tighter around us and stifle us. It would grow heavy and
narrow and suffocate us as we walked.
    Yet we knew that beyond the house of incest
there was daylight, and none of us could walk towards it.
    We all looked now at the dancer who stood at
the center of the room dancing the dance of the woman without arms. She danced
as if she were deaf and could not follow the rhythm of the music. She danced as
if she could not hear the sound of her castanets. Her dancing was isolated and
separated from music and from us and from the room and from life. The castanets
sounded like the steps of a ghost.
    She danced, laughing and sighing and breathing
all for herself. She danced her fears, stopping in the center of every dance to
listen to reproaches that we could not hear, or bowing to applause that we did
not make. She was listening to a music we could not hear, moved by
hallucinations we could not see.
    My arms were taken away from me, she sang. I
was punished for clinging. I clung. I clutched all those I loved; I clutched at
the lovely moments of life; my hands closed upon every full hour. My arms were always
tight and craving to embrace: I wanted to embrace and hold the light, the wind,
the sun, the night, the whole world. I wanted to caress, to heal, to rock, to
lull, to surround, to encompass. And I strained and I held so much that they
broke; they broke away from me. Everything eluded me then. I was condemned not
to hold.
    Trembling and shaking she stood looking at her
arms now stretched before her again.
    She looked at her hands tightly closed and
opened them slowly, opened them completely like Christ; she opened them in a
gesture of abandon and giving; she relinquished and forgave, opening her arms
and her hands, permitting all things to flow away and beyond her.
    I could not bear the passing of things. All
flowing, all passing, all movement choked me with anguish.
    And she danced; she danced with the music and
with the rhythm of earth’s circles; she turned with the earth turning, like a
disk, turning all faces to light and to darkness evenly, dancing towards
daylight.