Giannina Braschi - Empire of Dreams

I am the magician. Back away! Here is the trick. You see it from a distance because you can’t see it up close. Come closer. You look for it in my hands and the trick escapes between my legs. Don’t look at my legs. The trick isn’t on the stairs. The trick is that flying bird. The spectators stood up hoping to see the flight and see the magician on the stairs. Suddenly ten firemen arrive with their big slickers and hoses. Back away! Back away! Come closer! Come closer! The trick was that flying bird, and the spectators stood up and asked: What’s going on? No one answered them. Then they saw that the bird had already left. And they asked again: What returns? Then there was a fire and the magician vanished. When the lights blacked out, then, and only then, the bird with a fallen wing came forward to the edge of the stage and cried out: Victory! Victory! I have burned the spectators.

We’ll play another theatrical scene. It consists of one act, divided into three parts. We: leading actor. You: stage director. I’m the audience. Open curtain: four chairs and a ladder lost in the dark. The ladder, the ladder, says the director. The chair, the chair, breaks in the leading actor. The curtain falls. The lights go out. The curtain rises again. One can be in the front of this theater listening and laughing: I am, we are, all laughing. And the curtain falls on this play. And the desert, I’m thirsty, I forgot the words. Please don’t tear silence from me. Let me escape quietly. The lights have stopped looking at me. I feel like setting myself on fire. Firemen of the night, get me out of here. Cut, cut, said the director. Let’s wind it up.

Adventurous and silent actor, filling himself with mouths and faces, with an absent-minded look, open hands, double-dealing anger, lies and shams in just one secret, intrigue of a handkerchief, with fewer dreams, checking his hat for the trick with the scarecrow and the mirror. And parting with everything that cuts, cutting his orange in halves, lifting his head, doubling his fracas, looking for his return and hiding from the world, emerging and exposing his whole body, cut between hand and foot, cut between night and morning, with a closed fist and a grain of mustard, filling himself with stars, cutting corners, with his hands on night, and his mouth in sorrow, in the station of the port, in the house of the world, in the tree of the hand, in the fist of the sand.

I want to be rid of this corpse that murders my soul. I have other things to say. Get away from me. Leave me alone. I request another name, another clown. Too many buffoons, too many dead dwarves. I want a giant. Get out of my body. Don’t take the corpse from me, let it walk away. Swing with the trapeze, glide. Make me a shoe or nail the sole into me. Become a sock and wear me. I have a nickel for the dance and the comedy. You see, that’s just what I was telling you. I have no comedies. Kill me if you want. But do for me the black, the white, the void. Absence, as though it were the death of absence. As though absence could drop dead, dead. Of course, the corpse is a stick that walks. Of course, the stick gives you a blow on the head. Of course, you should never play with death.

With both lined up four abreast, she read me the cards. Poor drunkard of the tale. Two fortune-tellers dead. And a room full of bottles. The clown is drunk. And the cards of death wait on him. His snout is blue, and he looks like a bear. And the rag doll of death — you can’t love him like this — with the clown flinging him by the arm — madness. Because he is drunk and has no river or breakdown. Because they cork him in, unable to love him. Because stars no longer love him.

I’m sitting on this page, between one line and another, between a buffoon and another clown, between two syllables, and I jump up, and touch the page with the tip of my finger, and throw it into the basket. And I look at it, and become a basket, and repent. And I start to cough, and throw the ball, and pick it up. And I kiss the sky, lifting my arm to fall to the floor, torn, and to rise and cry out. And I’m restless. I need to throw the ball away, so I can lose the page, and then I can laugh or cry. Whatever happens, nothing matters. Because I sleep, dream, awaken, weep, kiss your left cheek, and walk slow, walk fast, where are you, I call you and hide and find you and knock you to the ground, we undress and backtrack, it’s the safest way, the star is waking, and the moon is crying to the earth that constantly watches her. Because the sun won’t come out, there is no noon, and the orange is locked in its rind, and the snail tucks into its shell, and the world stays inside its house. And we look at one another, sad, mad, and we don’t know what to say. Later Mom will come to wake us. Brother, quiet, quiet. The earth yawns because it isn’t sleepy.

Giving me your hand, you pick it up to frame it. Darting into the street, you’re run over by an oncoming car. Throwing myself into the basket, I turn into an ashtray and touch the cigarette. Collapsing into the tomb, I sleep, sleep. Opening the closets, I say enough, enough. Closing them, I’m left sad, sad in a closet. Opening the sadness of the closet, I lift four and I’m left with two. Even and uneven, brother, they’ll always be brothers. Widowers from the orphanage, the uneven, squared. The sled is triangular. The uneven say so. Heavens and stars repeat it. The worm and the snail and the tree shout it. The uneven is crying. Stars console him. Nights wake him. The piano destroys him: duende and mermaid, gnome and deer. Four, uneven: paired. I dive into the slide. And I grow and awaken. Five years, ten even, twelve tied. Three brothers.

I touch everything, to add it up, and subtract ten, four more. Five loners and ten kings, two swords. The fortune-teller and her wicked deck. Heavens and stars play solitaire. I know it, I’ll know how to say it. I’ll flip the cards, check them, and close my hands. Two swords cross the hand of the fortune-teller. And cards don’t lie. Widower, I will be, you will be, four stars and two cats fighting in every street, a worm. And a crystal ball, rolling luck, hitting the ball, ten blows, two falls. At night, in the streets of death, between the sun and the fortune-teller, ten cards, two lies. I understand, a blackened eye is worthless, and the stars pass and return regardless.

In all corners and squares and circles, just one heart, prophecy of five hearts and a loner on the road, and a drunkard without a bottle, sober from madness, solemn and hidden. Widower of two stars and a road. Three corners opening the drunkard’s eyes, stars and chimeras, and rivers of sadness. No one is laughing. The drunkard keeps him company, and the bottle heals his wounds. There is a square corner on the road of two. Looking for you in four, company, I am two. Corner of the third, I am another, less ten. I understand your fall, but I am five, not ten. Understand the hill, they are twenty, never two. I understand, a blackened eye is worthless, and the same stars pass and return regardless.

A mob of witches and killers. You look like an idiot, the hat doesn’t have ears, the street doesn’t have legs, buildings don’t walk, obscurities don’t talk. Idiot, you have a tongue, speak. You idiot, I was on the verge of speaking. I fell deaf — said the killer. Birds don’t sit, dogs don’t kneel, bats don’t shrug. Idiot, shoulders are shrugged. You idiot, I hope the witches destroy the fire. Killers have blocked my aqueducts. I speak for the killers, cops never ask anything. I raise the possibility of the question. You idiot, not even wolves howl. Ask Little Red Riding Hood, it was a flood of machine guns and rifles, she told me so. I thought they’d kill me. You idiot, not the killers, the cops. And I turned my back on them.

Treason, treason, treason. Death, death, death. Ecstatic bewitching throat, fire is blind, blind, blind. Vanish chimney. Smoke-filled eyes. Fire. Crime-covered hands. Duel of the godfather and the pirate. The sword, the dungeon. I see a beacon of black butterflies. The crime has vampire eyes. Cassandra conducts the orchestra. Joan, the mad witch, groans. Someone round has committed a crime. Someone perpendicular to the base of the triangle has emptied the stream. The prodigious crime has destroyed the stores. Omen! Omen! the witch cried out. Ecstasy, ecstasy, the comic tragedy. The earth quakes, the news, the omen, the prodigious crime. Dwarves of the prodigy, rabbits of the syringe nurse, ambulance of the dancing trapeze artist, fire of turtles, flash of pain, fencing duel, caveman, fireman, gas mask, bomb, pliers of the crab.