_from_ O

In a court masque from the seventeenth century, twelve Ethiopian nymphs travel to beg for a favor from the river god Okeanos: they want him to wash them white. The ladies of the court, who portray the nymphs, diligently smear their hands and faces with black paint. They are now the river god Niger’s daughters. Over their elbows: gloves made of snow are another tragedy.

There’s something womanly about water. It enfolds and dissolves, it attracts and repulses in equal measure. When the world’s very first woman explored the garden, she leaned over a green pond and saw herself emerge from it; she fell in love. The twelve black nymphs see themselves in their father’s mirror and weep, sob, dissolve back into water.

O watches the masque with a vacant expression. Her mind is elsewhere. Her red dress exposes her left breast. SUSAN SONTAG: It is easy to think of death in Venice. O wouldn’t know; she’s never been to Venice. NIGER: “As one of Phaëton, that fired the world / And that, before his heedless flames were hurl’d / About the globe, the Aethiops were as fair / As other dames; now black, with black despair.”

The last time O thought about death she told herself: “One day I will bury my mother in this soil.” Out loud she said: “I will never bury my mother in this soil.” There is black despair in water.

 

     *   *   *


When O gets home she tries to recount the play from her scattered notes. O reads:

At first there’s a sketch of a landscape
     Small woods and void places
     Resembling an artificial hunt
     The waves break the billows break
     Almost as if rushing forth
     Aside from their skin and hair
     Their temperament is human
     The orderly order
     Music rushes in from the sea
     In shape and cast a daughter
     For variation’s sugarcane
     The shadow of an ornate mantle
     Encircled by black backs
     His hair markedly kinky
     The top of his head a radiant light
     Niger is a daughter

     *   *   *


     The sea might rush forth
     As if flowing
     An artificial temperament
     Murex snails and radiating
     Various shapes and expressions
     Encircled by black daughters
     Others’ faces various ways
     The torch-bearers have various ways
     Some backs were seen from the side
     Forehead, ear, wrists
     Best set off against the black
     Best set off against the black
     Present the players

     *   *   *


     Waves seem to move
     Imitating disorder
     Upper parts human
     Save their skin
     In shape and cast nymphs
     The head turned to the side
     They’re seated one above another
     Decorated with bulrush
     Presenting shimmering
     Carefully selected
     Niger’s daughters are best set off
     Algae and red seagrass
     All were alike
     All were artificial

     *   *   *


To start with, a sketch of a landscape. I wish for an orderly disorder. I wish for a mantle of rain. I wish for a harmless sea that billows and breaks; I wish for scrolls of taffeta and mother-of-pearl. Blue hair. Blue skin. An Ethiopian in shape and disposition. When they carry the torch, a glorious light, I wish nothing were human. Multi-colored and wreathed with bulrush. I wish for a harmless sea. I wish for a different temperament. When the forehead, ear, neck, and wrist are set off I wish nothing were nature. Ornate in shape and disposition.   

                                                                 *

The two figures are, for the sake of variation, choice pearls set off against the black. Differences borne on their backs. Water to touch the face, azure and silver, my hands break. Everybody’s hair was on fire. If Ethiopians were commonly found in nature their desinent parts would’ve been human, their necks mother-of-pearl, their heads attractive dressings of feathers. The stage is built from snowfall. He turned to me on the train and said: You all are Niger’s daughters. When we present the players it will be in the regular disorder.

                                                                 *

Turn the other cheek to better set it off against the black. Behind these were extravagant, artificial daughters. They were bearing light. From the underpass streamed airy pieces of taffeta, blue light, a stench of urine and the scream traveling sideways. Others’ faces are shimmering, singing pearls; mine is an excited dance. Present me, the player, and I’ll give you sea monsters. The hunt dominates the void places. It is not hard to raise the world above your head and let it fall. Imagine having a human form.

                                                                 *

“O, the more angel she, and you the blacker devil!” O yells at herself in the bus shelter before she hides behind a trash can, howling with laughter. Afterward she buys a bag of banana gummies; they swell in the mouth.

O’s task is simple: to carve out so much of herself that an audience can fit inside her. The audience is not black; the court calls it a refinement process. When she goes to see the alchemists they turn up her palms, pinch her thighs, and conclude that it’s going to require both time and patience. But it is possible. O: “Is’t possible?”

     *   *   *


     Where common landscapes
     That light befits
     Press an ear
     Pressed against the shell
     Which wasn’t blue
     What, then, do you hear
     A red pearl
     Be identical
     Be honest
     Be fine hands
     Ornate heads
     Homelands
     Shimmering black
     Braided
     Back to back

     *   *   *


     A parted light
     Can make it seem
     In one part
     Like a partial account
     One over another
     For my part
     I have tried
     I have trained as
     Painted moon
     It streams behind
     Practice different
     Angels and angles

     *   *   *


People like to take an interest in the subversive potential of the hybrid. O is, in some ways, a hybrid. But in discussing hybridity we indicate simultaneously a closeness to power and a distance from the other, from that which is much too foreign, that which cannot be embraced and neutralized. What happens to the other when we center the hybrid? In some ways, O assumes, it’s that same old debate about reform or revolution. She’s snuck backstage and is silently watching the ladies of the court wash off their dark color into silver bowls. Their scoured skin is so red that they must paint it white again: they smear themselves with amber, powder their faces with crushed alabaster, almonds, they paint thin blue veins over their decolletages.

O squeezes her exposed breast. Is it full of milk, white milk, is it good enough to feed their children? Or is that dark ink, leaking out of her and into their pens?

 

     *   *   *


“It is not words that shake me thus,” O explains. During a private language lesson she looks with surprise at the notebook beneath her damp hand. She reads:

Lay down close to the pain
But not so close
That the contours of the wound
Are too obvious.

Don’t be inscrutable.
Who are you running from?
You’re the only one here:
Your hair’s round shadow.

                          Translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson