At this moment the organ grinder changed his tune, and ceased to shower the profligacies of Carmen.

The laughter of Pagliacci bleached by city fumes, wailed like a loon out of the organ, so that the monkey cornered by a joviality which had neither a sound of man or monkey rattled his chains in greater desperation and saluted with his red Turkish hat every stranger who might deliver him from this loud-speaker tree to which he had been tied.

He danced a pleading dance to be delivered from this tree from which the twisting of a handle brought forth black birds of corrugated melodies.

But as the pennies fell he remembered his responsibilities, his prayer for silent trees vanished from his eyes as he attempted a gesture of gratitude with his red Turkish hat.

Djuna walked back again into her labyrinthian cities of the interior.

Where music bears no titles flowing like a subterranean river carrying all the moods, sensations and impressions into dissolutions forming and reforming a world in terms of flow...

where houses wear but façades exposed to easy entrances and exits

where streets do not bear a name because they are the streets of secret sorrows

where the birds who sing are the birds of peace, the birds of paradise, the colored birds of desire which appear in our dreams

there are those who feared to be lost in this voyage without compass, barometers, steering wheel or encyclopedias

but Djuna knew that at this surrender of the self began a sinking into deeper layers of awareness deeper and deeper starting at the topsoil of gaiety and descending through the geological stairways carrying only the delicate weighing machine of the heart to weigh the imponderable

through these streets of secret sorrows in which the music was anonymous and people lost their identities to better be carried and swept back and forth through the years to find only the points of ecstasy...

registering only the dates and titles of emotion which alone enter the flesh and lodge themselves against the flux and loss of memory

that only the important dates of deep feeling may recur again and again each time anew through the wells, fountains and rivers of music...

The Four-Chambered Heart

THE FOUR-CHAMBERED HEART

MAIN CHARACTERS

Djuna: Lover of Rango, who offers the chaos that she lacks and with whom she trysts on a houseboat; tries to drown Rango and herself; by dreaming, attempts to avoid harsh realities. Based on what Anaïs Nin called the “mystic Anaïs” (see Mirages).

Rango: Guatemalan guitarist married to Zora; jealous lover of Djuna; becomes an unsuccessful revolutionary. Based on Nin’s longtime lover, Gonzalo Moré (see Fire and Mirages).

Zora: Dancer who uses her illnesses to control Djuna and Rango, her husband; leads Rango to chaos and destruction; attempts to kill Djuna. Based on Helba Huara, Gonzalo Moré’s husband (see Fire and Mirages).