Notes

I live in an old house that seems like the shop of a second-hand dealer. It has collected so much dust over
countless years.
The perpetual twilight that oppresses the house has the same rigidness of a church. One is halted by the putrid
odor of old and decrepit furniture, which fill the house in excess. Countless pieces of torn and discolored
clothing adorn its interior, hung everywhere like window curtains and covers. I contribute myself to that smell,
as much as I can, with the plague of my intartered pipes. Only when I come in from outside do I begin to
realize that at my house one cannot breathe. But for people who live as I live…Enough, let’s go on.
The bedroom has a sort of private area on a shelf about two steps high, with the soffit on top and the
supporting molding above two square columns in the middle. There were curtains as well, to hide the bed,
placed sleekly on beams of brass behind the columns. The other half of the room serves as study space. Under
the pillars is a big couch, to say the truth very comfortable, with soft pillows and, in front of it, a massive table
that serves as a desk. To the left is a big fireplace that I never put on; on the opposite wall, between two little
windows, an aged bookshelf with stiff, rebound books, the parchment of which had turned yellow. On the
marble bookshelf, blackened by the fireplace, hangs a seventeenth century painting, also darkened by the
smoke. It portrays Mary Magdalene in Penitence, I am uncertain if it is a copy or the original version but, even
if a copy, it is not lacking any virtue. The figure, truly life-like in size, lays down prostrate inside a cave; with
her hand leaning on her elbow, in support of her head. Her lowered eyes are intent on reading a book that is
illumined by a lamp resting on the ground, next to a skull. Her face, with thick auburn hair flowing, one
shoulder and her chest unveiled, made warm by the light of the lamp, are all beautiful.
The house is mine, but it is not mine. It belongs, with all its furnishings, to a friend of mine who left it to me
three years ago as he left for America, in exchange for a large debt he had with me. This friend, obviously,
hasn’t appeared anymore, despite all the questioning and searching I have done. Still, however, I get not settle
in and truly make any of it my own, neither the house or that which is inside.

Now, a familiar antique shop dealer makes love with this Magdalene in Penitence and the other day he brought
into my house a man from out of town to show it to him.
The man, in his forties, tall, thin, and bald, was observing strict mourning, as is still custom in the small towns.
Strict mourning indeed, even his shirt. He even had impressed on his sunken face the markings of the
unfortunate ordeal he had recently undergone. Upon seeing the painting he seemingly transformed completely
and immediately covered his eyes with his hands, as the shop dealer asked him with strange satisfaction:
“Is it true? Is it true?”
The man, with his face still within his hands, signaled affirmatively to him. On his bald scalp his enlarged
veins seemed as if they were ready to burst. A black handkerchief fell out of his pocket and he brought it to his
eyes to stop the unceasing tears. His stomach trembled and he was sniffling heavily
All very exaggerated, as is typical of southern custom. Maybe it was a little sincere.
The antique seller had wanted to explain to me that since his childhood he knew the wife of this man, as she
was from his same town: “I can assure you that she was precisely the image of this Maddalena. I recalled this
yesterday, when my friend came to tell me that she had passed away, so young, only a month ago. You know
that I came just a while ago to see this frame.”
“Sure, but I…”
“Yes, you are telling me than that you cannot sell it.”
“And not even now.”
I felt the grip of that man on my arm, so much so that he threw himself on my chest to cry, begging me to give
it up to him, for any price: it was her, his wife, the same – completely -, and he alone, as her husband, could
have saw her so intimately (and, saying so, he was alluding to the nudity of her chest), he therefore could not
leave it there for me and for all eyes to see. I should have understood, now that I know this.
I looked at him, stunned and in a sort of pain, as one looks at a crazy person, still not seeming to believe that
someone could say such a thing so seriously. To imagine that something which was none other than a painting
that I never gave much thought could become, even for me, the portrait of a painting of his wife like so, with
her chest all covered. As if he was the only one who could have seen her in intimacy and therefore in such a
state that should not be left in the open for any stranger to see.

The strangeness of such a request made me laugh involuntarily.
“But no, look, kind sir: I have never met your wife; I cannot therefore attach to this painting the thought which
you may suspect. There I see a frame with an image that….sure, displays…”
I should have never said it! He put himself in front of me, almost ready to jump on top of me, screaming:
“I will not let you look at it anymore, like this, in my presence!”
Luckily the antique dealer intervened, begging me to feel pity, to sympathize with the disillusioned man, who
had been on the verge of craziness and even jealous of his wife. She was loved possessively, abnormally, even
in her last moments. Then he turned to him and begged him to calm down, that it was quite stupid to speak to
me like this, to oblige me to give him this painting, upon considering such intimate things. He dared to even
prohibit me from looking at it? Was he crazy? And he pulled himself away, apologizing for the scene which
one was not expecting I would have to see.
I remained so fascinated by it that I dreamed of it that night.

The dream, to be most accurate, had to have come in the first hours of the morning e right at the moment when
all of a sudden there was a big racket at the entrance of the bedroom. A group of cats, maybe attracted by the
numerous mice inside, entered my house from who knows where and woke me up with a jolt.
The effects of such a violently interrupted dream were such that the fantasies of which, I mean that man
dressed in strict mourning and the image of that Magdalene who became his wife, maybe did not even have the
time to come back into me and so then remained outside, in the other part of the room beyond the columns,
where I had seen them in the dream; such that, when at the sound of the racket I sprang out of bed and with a
tug removed the bed curtains, I confusingly glimpsed the snarling of flesh and red drapes, and bices storming
about shelf of the fireplace to recollect themselves into the portrait. And on the couch, among all those
disorganized pillows, him, was that man, who laying down, got up to seat himself, no longer dressed in black
but now in pajamas of heavenly silk, lined with white and blue. At the light slowly growing larger from the
two little windows, he went along, disappearing into the same form and color of those cushions. Then he
vanished.
I don’t want to explain that which doesn’t require explanation. Nobody has ever been able to
understand the mystery of dreams. To say the truth, as I opened my eyes with agitation to look at
the painting again on the shelf of the fireplace, I clearly saw Maddalena’s eyes come to life. She
even raised her eyebrows from the book and gave me a life-like stare, accompanied by a seductive
and pernicious laughter. Maybe they were the eyes of the deceased wife of that man from out of
town, as if they had for a second come back to life within those in the painted portrait.
I couldn’t stay in the house anymore. I’m lucky that I even got dressed. Every few moments I would
give a quick look at those eyes. I kept finding them always intent and focused on the reading, just as
they are in the painting; but how could I tell now, that when I wasn’t looking they didn’t come to
life behind my shoulders to look at me, with that look of seductive pleasure.
I threw myself into the antique dealer’s store since it is just a few steps from the house. I told him
that, if I couldn’t sell that painting to his friend, I could still rent the house to him at a really
convenient price, with all its furnishings and the painting, of course.
“Even from today, if your friend so wishes.”
In my sudden request there was such anxiety and so much confusion that the antique dealer grew
curious about my motivations. I was ashamed to tell him. I wanted him to just accompany me right
away to the hotel where his friend was residing.
Imagine how I felt once I got there, when I saw him before me, just having awoken from bed, with
those same heavenly white and blue striped pajamas that I saw him wearing in the dream. How he
was surprised, in my room, as he arose to seat himself on the couch among the disheveled
cushions.
“You come back to my house,” I screamed to him, bothered. “You were at my house tonight.”
I saw him collapse onto a chair, terrorized and stuttering: oh God, right, at my house, in the dream,
you were truly there, and your wife…
“Right, exactly, your wife came out from the painting. I surprised her so much that she went back in.
And at the sight of the light, she disappeared from in front of me, there on the sofa. You’ll admit
that I could not have known, when I surprised her on the couch, that you would have had pajamas
just like these that you have on. Then it had to be you, in the dream, at my house; and your wife

truly came out of the painting, just as you had dreamed. Explain it how you want. Maybe the
meeting of my dream with yours. I don’t know. But I cannot stay any longer in that house, with you
coming to me in my dreams and your wife blinking at me from the frame. The reason I have for
being afraid, you could never have, because it regards yourself and your wife. So go get your
painting from my house! Now what? You don’t want it? Are you fainting?”
“Figments of your imagination, my friends, hallucinations!” exclaimed the antique dealer.

Aren’t these hard-headed men so dear, who when presented with a fact that cannot be explained,
immediately come up with a word that means nothing and in which they easily comfort themselves.