TE16 Turkish Delight

Mario Levi

17 A Song with Amalia

Now Amalia Rodrigues continued to sing that song of melancholy. His coffee had gone cold, he had only a few cigarettes until dawn. At that moment, he fostered the joy of being able to wake once more, and even more strongly than before, to the invitation of words. His masks, costumes, fantasies, allusions, dead ends, obsessions, punctuation, all that he hid in parentheses and between lines, all were ready once more. The game continued one way or another, in other words, it would inch along, however slowly, to wherever it was headed. He would try to relate this sentiment to his author as soon as he could. He would attempt to verbalize this sentiment, this surrender, his obligation to live, despite their many differences in opinion and life experiences. Imagining that, for his author, he was only a possibility beyond all familiar approaches, would lend this story a completely different meaning. After all, they both knew that they had merged together unexpectedly in the name of a silently established solidarity. Because of that, perhaps, it would be easier to bear this new journey. The habitat was open, should be open, to those willing to listen to it for better or for worse, to put it another way. That was a necessary belief, an inevitability as well, to ensure the continuation of the journey in the face of any and all delusions. That he was dreaming of a balmy, warming breeze on such an evening, that he was setting out on a brand-new voyage in the name of the possible lives on this island, with its flickering lights in the window of his room, were these things not the most telling proof? 46