Giovanni's Room

I look at my sex, my troubling sex, and wonder how it can be redeemed, how I can save it from the knife.

"what is this thing about time? Why is it better to be late than early? People are always saying, we must wait, we must wait. What are they waiting for?"

"You are how old? Twenty-six or seven? l am nearly twice that and, let me tell you, you are lucky. You are lucky that what is happening to you now is happening now and not when you are forty, or something like that, when there would be no hope for you and would simply be destroyed."

I SCARCELY KNOW HOW to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. I did not really stay there very long we mer before the spring began and I left there during the summerbut it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I Say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there.

I SCARCELY KNOW How to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. I did not really stay there very long we met before the spring began and I left there during the summerbut it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there.

I SCARCELY KNOW How to describe that room. It became, in a way, every room I had ever been in and every room I find myself in hereafter will remind me of Giovanni's room. I did not really stay there very long we met before the spring began and I left there during the summerbut it still seems to me that I spent a lifetime there. Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there.

And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. And, watching his face, I realized that it meant much to me that I could make his face so bright. I saw that I might be willing to give a great deal not to lose that power.

‘Take off your shoes. Take off your socks. Look at my books - I often wonder what I’d do if there weren’t any books in the world.’

I ached, abruptly, intolerably, with a longing to go home… to things and people I knew and understood; to those things, those places, those people which I would always helplessly, and in whatever bitterness of spirit, love above all else. I had never relized such a sentiment in myslef before, and it frightened me. I saw myself, sharply, as a wanderer, an adventurer, rocking through the world, unanchored.

I don't believe in this nonsense about time. Time is just common, it's like water for a fish. Everybody's in this water, nobody gets out of it, or ifhe does the same thing happens to him that happens to the fish, he dies. And you know what happens in this water, time? The big fish eat the little fish. That's all. The big fish eat the little fish and the ocean doesn't care.

"People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self- deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all-a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named-but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not."

"It takes strength to remember, it takes another kind of strength to forget, it takes a hero to do both. People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence: and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget. Heroes are rare "

...for nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

"And this was perhaps the first time in my life that death occurred to me as a reality. I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it-it, the physical act. I had thought of suicide when I was much younger, as, possibly, we all have, but then it would have been for revenge, it would have been my way of informing the world how awfully it had made me suffer. But the silence of the evening, as I wandered home, had nothing to do with that storm, that far off boy. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine,"

"Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it,."

I had loved her once and I made myself believe it. But I wonder if I had.

“Giovanni,” I said, helplessly, “be careful. Please be careful.”

He gave me an ironical smile. “Thank you,” he said. “You should have given me that advice the night we met.”

“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”

“I have never reached you,” said Giovanni. “You have never really been here. I do not think you have ever lied to me, but I know that you have never told me the truth—why? Sometimes you were here all day long and you read or you opened the window or you cooked something—and I watched you—and you never said anything—and you looked at me with such eyes, as though you did not see me. All day, while I worked, to make this room for you.”

“You smell of wine,” said Giovanni, then.

“I haven’t been drinking wine. Is that what frightened you? Is that why you are crying?”

“No.”

“What is the matter?”

“Why have you gone away from me?”

“If I am not here” said Giovanni, both vindictive and near tears, “by the time you come back again, I will be at home. You remember where that is—? It is near a zoo.”

But with the look he gave me then my anger left me and I wanted to cry. “You are not nice,” he said.

I was guilty and irritated and full of love and pain. I wanted to kick him and I wanted to take him in my arms.

I was the only person on God’s cold, green earth who cared about him, who knew his speech and silence, knew his arms, and did not carry a knife. The burden of his salvation seemed to be on me and I could not endure it.