Chapters (20)
- by
- Preface
- Ladders to Fire
- Main Characters
- Publishing History
- Prologue
- This Hunger
- Bread and the Wafer
- Children of the Albatross
- Main Characters
- Introduction
- The Sealed Room
- The Café
- The Four-Chambered Heart
- Beginning
- A Spy in the House of Love
- Publishing History
- Seduction of the Minotaur
- About the Author
- More Titles from Sky Blue Press
...the organ grinder will play all the time but it will not always seem like a tragic accompaniment to separations...
...the organ grinder will play all the time but the images will change, as the feelings will change, Rango's gestures will seem less violent, and sorrows will fall off like leaves to fecundate the heart for a new love...
...the organ grinder will accelerate his rhythm into arabesques of delight to match the vendor's cries: "Mimosa! mimosa!" to the tune of Brahm's "Lullaby."... "Couteaux! couteaux à aiguiser!" to the tune from Madame Butterfly... "Pommes de terre! pommes de terre!" to the tune from Ravel's Boléro.
..."Bouteilles! bouteilles!" to the tune from Tristan and Isolde.
She laughed.
...tomorrow the city would ferment with new disasters, the paper vendors would raise their voices to the pitch of hysteria, the crowds would gather to discuss the news, the trains would carry away the cowards...
...the cowards...
...floating down the river...
...with the barge that had been intended not only to house a single love but as a refuge for faith...
...she was sinking a faith...
...instead of solidifying the floating kingdom with its cargo of eternal values…
("An individually perfect world," said Rango, "is destroyed by reality, war, revolutions.")
"Rango, wake up wake up wake up, there's a leak!"
He was slow in awakening, his dreams of greatness and magnificence were heavy on his body like royal garments, but the face he opened to the dawn was the face of innocence, as every man presents innocence to the new day. Djuna read on it what she had refused to see, the other face of Rango the child lodged in a big man's body by a merry freak.
It had been a game: "Djuna, you stand there and watch while I am the king and savior. You will admire me when I give the cue." She will now laugh and say: "But actually, you know, I prefer a hobo who plays the guitar."
She will laugh when he refuses to see Zora's madness, because it was like her refusal to see his madness, his impersonations, his fictions, his illusions...
In the face of death the barge was smaller, Rango did not loom so immense, Zora had shrunk...