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of Father Caspar!
He decided to explore again his refuge to learn how long he could survive on board. The hens continued
laying their eggs, and a nest of baby chicks had been hatched. Of the col-lected vegetables not much was
left, they were now too dry, and he would have to use them as feed for the fowl. There were still a few
barrels of water, but if he collected rain, he could even do without them. And, finally, there was no
short-age of fish.
But then he considered that, eating no fresh vegetables, he would die of scurvy. There were those in the
greenhouse, but they would be naturally watered only if rain fell: if a long drought were to arrive, he
would have to water the plants with his supply of drinking water. And if there was a storm for days and
days, he would have water but would be unable to fish.
To allay his anxieties he went back to the water organ, which Father Caspar had taught him how to set
in motion: he heard always and only Daphne, because he had not learned how to change the cylinder;
but he was not sorry to listen hour after hour to the same tune. One day he identifiedDaphne, the ship,
with the body of his beloved Lady. Was not Daphne after all a creature who had been transformed into a
laurel an arboreal substance, thus with an affinity to that with which the ship had been made? The tune
hence sang to him of Lilia. Obviously, the chain of thought was entirely inconsequent but this is how
Roberto was thinking.
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He reproached himself for having allowed himself to be distracted by the arrival of Father Caspar, for
having followed him in his mechanical frenzies and having forgotten his own amorous vow. That one song,
whose words he did not know, if it ever had any, was being transformed into the prayer that he intended
to make the machine murmur every day: Daphne played by the water and wind in the recesses of the
Daphne, in memory of the ancient metamorphosis of a divine Daphne. Every evening, looking at the sky,
he hummed that melody softly, like a litany.
Then he went back to his table and resumed writing to Lilia.
In doing so he realized that he had passed the previous days outdoors and in daylight, and that he was
again seeking refuge in the semidarkness that had been his natural ambiance not only on theDaphne
before finding Father Caspar, but for more than ten years, since the days of the wound at Casale.
To tell the truth, I do not believe that during all that time Roberto lived, as he repeatedly suggests, only at
night. That he avoided the excesses of the blazing noonday sun is probable, but when he followed Lilia,
he did so during the day. I believe this infirmity was more an effect of black bile than a genuine
impairment of his vision: Roberto realized that the light made him suffer only in his most atrabiliar
moments, but when his mind was distracted by merrier thoughts, he paid no attention.
However it was or had been, that evening he found himself reflecting for the first time on the fascinations
of shadows. As he wrote, as he raised the pen to dip it into the inkwell, he saw the light either as a gilded
halo on the paper or as a waxen fringe, almost translucent, that defined the outline of his dark fingers. As
if the light dwelt within his hand and became man-ifest only at the edges. All around, he was enfolded by
the affectionate habit of a Capuchin, that is to say, by a certain hazel-brown glow that, touching the
shadows, died there.
He looked at the flame of the lamp, and he saw two fires born from it: a red flame, part of the consumed
matter, which, rising, turned a blinding white that shaded into periwinkle. Thus, he said to himself, his love
was fed by a body that was dying, and gave life to the celestial spirit of his beloved.
He wanted to celebrate, after some days of infidelity, his reconciliation with the dark, and he climbed
onto the deck as the shadows were spreading everywhere, on the ship, on the sea, on the Island, where
he could now see only the rapid darkening of the hills. Remembering his own countryside, he sought to
glimpse on the shore the presence of fireflies, live winged sparks wandering in the shadows of the hedges.
He did not see them, and pondered on the oxymorons of the antip-odes, where perhaps nightjars
appeared only at noon.
Then he lay down on the quarterdeck and began looking at the moon, letting the deck cradle him while
from the Island came the sound of the backwash, mixed with cries of crickets, or their equivalent in this
hemisphere.
He reflected that the beauty of day is like a blond beauty, while the beauty of night is a dark beauty. He
savored the contradiction of his love for a blonde goddess which consumed him in the darkness of the
night. Remembering the hair like ripe wheat, which annihilated all other light in the salon of Arthenice, he
would call the moon beautiful because it diluted, fading, the rays of a latent sun. He proposed to make
the reconquered day a new occasion for reading in the glints on the waves the encomium of the gold of
that hair and the blue of those eyes.
But he savored also the beauties of night, when all seems at rest, the stars move more silently than the
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