Nightwood by Djuna Barnes

Author:Djuna Barnes [Barnes, Djuna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Classics, Lesbian
ISBN: 9780811216715
Google: v6iZL5n5cLwC
Amazon: 0811216713
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2006-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

Where the Tree Falls

Baron Felix, who had given up his place in the bank, though not his connections with it, had been seen in many countries standing before that country’s palace gate, holding his gloved hands before him in the first unconcluded motion of submission; contemplating relics and parts, with a tension in his leg that took the step forward or back a little quicker than his fellow sightseer.

As at one time he had written to the press about this noble or that (and had never seen it in print), as he had sent letters to declining houses and never received an answer, he was now amassing a set of religious speculations that he eventually intended sending to the Pope. The reason for this was that as time passed it became increasingly evident that his child, if born to anything, had been born to holy decay. Mentally deficient and emotionally excessive, an addict to death; at ten, barely as tall as a child of six, wearing spectacles, stumbling when he tried to run, with cold hands and anxious face, he followed his father, trembling with an excitement that was a precocious ecstasy. Holding his father’s hand, he climbed palace and church steps with the tearing swing of the leg necessitated by a measure that had not taken a child into account; staring at paintings and wax reproductions of saints, watching the priests with the quickening of the breath of those in whom concentration must take the place of participation, as in the scar of a wounded animal will be seen the shudder of its recovery.

When Guido had first spoken of wishing to enter the church, Felix had been startled out of himself. He knew that Guido was not like other children, that he would always be too estranged to be argued with; in accepting his son the Baron saw that he must accept a demolition of his own life. The child would obviously never be able to cope with it. The Baron bought his boy a Virgin in metal, hanging from a red ribbon, and placed it about his neck, and in doing so, the slight neck, bent to take the ribbon, recalled to him Robin’s, as she stood back to him in the antique shop on the Seine.

So Felix began to look into the matter of the church. He searched the face of every priest he saw in the streets; he read litanies and examined chasubles and read the Credo; he inquired into the state of monasteries. He wrote, after much thought, to the Pope, a long disquisition on the state of the cloth. He touched on Franciscan monks and French priests, pointing out that any faith that could, in its profoundest unity, compose two such dissimilar types—one the Roman, shaved and expectant of what seemed, when one looked into his vacantly absorbed face, nothing more glorious than a muscular resurrection; and the other, the French priest, who seemed to be composite of husband and wife in conjunction with

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