Jane, the Sea

I found myself in prison some twelve years for a crime I could never remember. Yet it must’ve been serious, since the Men in charge of my rehabilitation put me in perfect, absolute isolation. They chose a gray, dilapidated, desolate building—more like a pile of ashes than a House of Spiritual Rehabilitation—just for me. But they’d chosen it, so I had to respect it. They’d brought me here one night when I was still a girl, blindfolded so I knew nothing of what lay outside its walls. I didn’t know if the Building stood by a shore, or in a big city, or on a mountaintop. The inside, however, I knew too well. Four enormous walls—so high, spectral, bare, and windowless they were more like mountains—framed a vast square courtyard, where every day a uniform gray light shone down from a sky perpetually covered by winter clouds, the desert dawn’s bruise. I never saw a shade of red or blue, nor the slightest trace of a tree or flower, around that well run dry—the only place I was allowed to walk.

The courtyard should’ve had a mournful statue to Repentance reaching up to the sky, or so my wounded mind strove to imagine. Instead there lay a well, surrounded by a low wall, where I caught my breath on lonely walks when my heart’s crazed beating threatened to suffocate me. As I bent over that lifeless water, I regained a certain calm and felt my anxiety mysteriously eased. I liked to lean over the well and call out my own name. And—often, but not always—never right away, but after a few moments—a weak, frightened voice answered me from the depths, as if whomever I’d called would have had to climb past brutal obstacles to reach me. Then I’d see two bright eyes in that black water. Terrified, I covered my own. The Men had let me choose my room from the Prison’s thousand, and I had taken a room on the top floor, perhaps because I’d hoped unconsciously (my entire spiritual life had been a blend of unconsciousness, horror, and melancholy) to see the sky. Yet even the room’s window—through which I’d hoped to see the world—had been completely bricked up. Still, some nights when I lay, eyes wide open, on my pallet, I heard a sweet, steady sound, majestic yet secret, like distant sighs from a marvelous Beast, a Beast that rolled and rushed under the sun and moon. It was the Sea. Bit by bit I grew sure of it. It was the blue Jungle, the holy Nature, joy, liberty, and life. Humanity’s unbending justice had barred it from me, yet I felt mysteriously near it. These absurd fantasies brought me peace. I dreamt of finding myself, by some sorcery, outside that inhuman Building, with its silhouette of gallows far behind me. I was running barefoot along the beach, up the blue water’s glorious, cool edge, then throwing myself headlong into its waves. The water rose and solemnly soaked me, took me in its arms, kissed my parched skin, raised me up deliciously on dazzling foam, and carried me away.

How many times did I dream of that Sea I’d never seen, so near and so far, immensely strong and sweet! I dreamt that it carried me far away. And then I woke again, with tears of wonder on my face! I had other dreams on that pallet: I dreamt I heard a murmur, like branches shaking in a warm wind, that purred somber and happy at once. I opened my eyes and found myself lying in a blessed green garden, where grass caressed my skin, with wildflowers as my pillows. I no longer felt cold or afraid…. Around me, through plants lit by the morning sun, I glimpsed kind, noble human figures passing by and casting affectionate smiles my way. I heard singing…so calm and sweet, tender and faithful, with neither lust nor anger nor greed…how beautiful! My humiliated heart and wounded mind swelled up with tears and shook. I covered my mouth and sobbed. I knew it was a dream. I knew the lights, songs, passersby, garden, birds, goodness, and the sea were only delusions. I knew I had to pay the Penalty for that shame, that crime that I absolutely could not remember. Waking from those dreams made me very sad. To avoid them, I forced myself to stay awake. I stared all night with patient horror at the cell’s blank walls, my arms folded across my chest, trying to plunge my thoughts into nothing or stamp the prisoner’s meager reserve of somber happiness onto them.

So many times in my slow, horrendous, sub-human life, I feared I’d go mad! Sometimes I heard voices and steps, even a whisper calling my name. I answered eagerly, only to realize that nothing and no one had called me, that I was alone, and the large House remained stubbornly silent and deserted. My thoughts began to run, to bump into each other, to overlap at high speed until they filled me back up with confusion, with orgasm. Or they vanished abruptly and left me stunned and trembling on the floor, like a tortured animal.

I believe that the threat of madness, of losing control of the one thing I had—loneliness—may have been what the Men most wanted when they chose this penalty for me. But I don’t dare guess beyond that because even now their memory looms over me, making me tremble.

Around my eighth year in that deathly Home, in that tomb where I had to make my soul worthy of God and mankind, some books appeared in front of my cell. One morning I found them neatly lined up on the floor and wondered in vain who’d brought them there and how. The door was locked as always. Minute, elegant letters on a flame-colored card (signed by the Men) advised me I might find comfort—and even a path to freedom—in those books.

Reader, imagine the hunger with which I threw myself into them. For days I forgot to eat or sleep. By day I brought them to the courtyard. By night I read them in my room, by light of an oil lamp that someone had set near my pallet. The books held sublime ascetic philosophy, the key to Morality, and the laws that Man must follow to achieve the Son’s beautiful dignity and enter the Garden of Heaven. As I read, I shook with the shame and pain of whatever awful deed I’d committed and forgotten. I told my blood to calm itself, begged my mind to kneel down and humbly learn the secret of that beautiful, forgotten dignity. My hope rising in a blend of sighs that only a fellow prisoner could understand, I understood that the day I finished reading all those books and committed their most important chapters to memory, the highest dictates would be crucified in my mind. I’d be ready to pass an exam on Morality and Reason, and then those Judges (whom I’d never seen) would throw the prison doors open. And I’d be free. I’d run to the Sea. I’d throw myself into its blue arms. The Sea, the Sea with its warm, tingling waves, with its soft, somber gaze, so mad and sweet with its hundred thousand blue eyes! This represented total freedom for me, whenever I invoked it. The Sea’s greatness, songs, tender murmurs, powerful arms.

The more I studied, the more I struggled to contain my joy. I told myself to stay calm and take it as an ordinary, even tiresome duty, like a bored student with exams. But I couldn’t. I thought only of the Sea, of freedom, for which all my blood pulsated with desire.

I took notes on those texts every night with a yellow pencil whose point never dulled (a clever gift on the Men’s part) in a black-bound graph-paper notebook that I’d found among those books. I filled the notebook, then the walls, with shaky, jagged writing. My notes were the humblest and most reverent imaginable, a mural diary drawn from a dark, agonizing obedience. Life’s pleasure lies only in the limits of duty… Nothing justly irritates God more than the grandeur of human desire… How will we find peace, if not by giving up joy and liberty? What is worth more than a cold peace? What is more dangerous than joy?… Behold, the tribute most pleasing to the Holy Spirit: a lifetime in Morality’s service and the heart’s never-ending mortification… Your mother, Nature, deserves the most open contempt, the most implacable hate. Crucify her, and you shall be saved!

I was still discovering the Church’s power, its audacity to add rehabilitation to a system of Shackles. Christian dignity, beauty’s danger, doubt’s infernal seduction, the flesh’s weakness. I admitted there was nothing more right and holy than selling love, as long as it was legal. Nothing higher and more legitimate than the right to property, above all when the property is Joy. Nothing more honest and necessary than parents’ right to watch and restrain their children’s sinful desires. Nothing greater than breaking their nightmares with wise words. I admitted the son of man is a lamb, whose greatness comes from his humility as he grazes in meadows, or waits for the knife to destroy him. I considered Nature a blind beast, lying in wait.

During the day I sat by the well and recited the sayings soberly. When they covered my cell walls, I judged that my exam must be soon. Soon the Men would come examine me, know my moral progress, then smile lovingly, and set me free.

I grew so impatient I couldn’t control myself. I no longer read nor studied. I closed my books and went to the well, crying with hope and joy.

I’d passed lonely years in those cold, sublime studies. I’d bettered myself. Maybe I’d even grown pale enough. My mind had purified itself, my blood had fallen silent.

I was like a larva and a stone.

One gray night during my twelfth spring in that House, the moon showed its biting, bloodless face of blinding light above the prison for the first time. It was so high up and far away, but its pale face was pure, and in a flash I knew it was an omen. Seeing another aspect of sublime Nature meant something great and good was about to happen.

I remember how I fell to my knees by the well and clasped my hands to where my heart should’ve been. Benediction, it was a benediction.

Pale gold rays fell on the well’s edge and on my hands. Like all that was young, pure, blessed!

I waited, holding my breath and tightening my fists until I thought they’d crack.

For the first time in all those years, I heard steady steps on the Building’s stones. An intoxicating song arose in my mind and ears. I wanted to run to that door, open it, peer into that hall…but I couldn’t move. Struck still by terror and ecstasy, by fear and the sweetest suspense for what was about to happen, I stared bewildered at the door, narrow and black like a coffin. After all, what lay behind it was so much like a grave. And behold, the steps stopped there. A key solemnly turned the lock. My ears could no longer make anything out. My eyes clouded over with haze.

The door opened slowly.

Was I dreaming?

In those moments, which seemed to last years, I felt joy so acute it hurt, the kind of joy that for years I’d both forgotten and hallucinated at the same time. I saw a blue, shining shape, immense yet gentle, dark yet illuminated, throbbing beyond that door: the sea—and nothing else—under the spring moon.

I glimpsed that beloved water for only a moment, but it lingers forever in my heart and memory. The door closed again. Meanwhile, twelve solemn Judges crossed that threshold and stared at me pointedly.

The Judges, clad in black, moved toward me slowly, without breaking their stare. I stayed in my humble, desperate, astonished pose.

A woman walked in front of them.

I don’t know how I knew her name and place in society. But her name was Jane. She was a foreigner who’d come to study our country’s ways of Justice and Punishment.

Simply by looking at her, I knew they all believed this. But I also knew it wasn’t true, and this false name masked something much more important. But I kept calling her Jane, and only Jane, in my heart, which to me meant: Rebellion.

Why did my eyes cling to her? Why did I watch her so intensely, ignoring the Men who’d come to test me? Why did she fascinate me?

I felt myself smile—wickedly, the way a girl shouldn’t—as I contemplated her white dress and fiery blue eyes calling me ardently in the evening shadow.

I had the vague, all-consuming impression that I’d seen her before, but I knew not how or when. I knew only that her eyes bore the gaze of the sea, of those blue waters, so infinite and triumphant, for which I’d shed so many tears of longing, of which I’d dreamt so feverishly. They had the sea’s soft, somber light, ambiguous laugh, and fierce call.

A stolen sweetness washed over me. It dissolved my every will, broke my every memory, clouded over my every thought with a beautiful cry.

I no longer knew where I was. I ignored the trial, instead gazing into Jane’s eyes.

I don’t think the Men noticed this. They sat calmly on the well’s edge and began questioning me. I don’t know the rest myself, I was in such a trance under Jane’s heavy gaze.

Someone in me, a stranger I’d never met, answered the Men warmly and readily. For my own part, I did nothing but watch Jane, mesmerized.

She was so pale, and so beautiful! The sea’s spiritual light, deep and holy, shone in her panther-like eyes.

Pleasure, strength, fire. Greatness and joy. Behold Jane’s eyes.

She sat on the well’s edge and stared at me. Those turquoise eyes, majestic and tingling, pensive and calm, swayed me like the sea: they weakened and exalted me, filled me with confusion and wild strength. I only wanted to kneel before her and feel her cool hands on my face.

The Justice and Punishment Commission abruptly moved to a corner of the courtyard to deliberate, their robes shining half-black, half-white in the moonlight. Then Jane came up to me, and I couldn’t see them anymore.

“Freedom!” her calm, intense voice spoke this unfamiliar word.

She took my face in her hands.

I couldn’t remember my suffering anymore. In fact, I couldn’t remember anything. It was like those horrible nightmares of lying in a garden under hazy lights and hearing voices.

Then it happened—what I’d longed for with all my soul.

Jane’s lips came near mine.

My body embraced hers, and something in me shouted up to the stars with joy. I sank into the sea, into its forbidden light, into a hell more splendid than heaven. I communicated with the earth, the winds, the water, and still all of this was Chaos, not Justice. It was born not from fear, but from Rebellion.

I was still and always I.

It was as if I’d finally fallen from my prison’s highest window into the sea, where my body blended into heaven’s elements, beyond any law, mercy, or memory. I was a spirit no more. At last, I was nothing but a fresh, vibrant plant.

I surfaced, floating on all this, to peer into Jane’s sad eyes.

I’d never seen eyes clearer, more pure and powerful. They burned like the morning star as it pales against dawn over the sea. In them lay life, with all its light, confusion, gentleness, and inspiring agony.

Before she found her words, which made no more noise than roses blooming, I noticed the moon had sunk and a bleak dawn kissed the Prison walls. The Examiners had gone, who knew how long ago, leaving paper scraps and pitch-black coats on the ground.

I knew they’d revoked my chance at mercy. My muddled mind, my stubborn blood, and my old spirit inclined to savage evil had all spoken for me while I reveled in sin. The Men had decreed no more atonement. Just an unlimited sentence, a lonely hell, in which my only delight would be the beauty found in hate itself.

I looked at Jane, the Sea, Jane, Rebellion, like a dying woman looks on her life. I was like the feverish sea, churning under the wind’s howling whip.

Now Jane’s eyes shone with pain and pity, like a silent scream—and I felt that this would’ve been enough forever, would’ve comforted my perpetual dying.

“Goodbye, beautiful eyes,” I said. “Goodbye, Jane.”

She took my head in her hands once more.

“I don’t want you to cry,” she said. “I’ll leave you my joy and freedom. Now you are free because you are damned. Now you are among the blessed because you are lost. The Laws are far away, the Examiners have caught the wind on their coats and taken off toward the horizon. Don’t worry: they’ll never return, they’ve forgotten you. Die in peace, dear.”

Once more her lips brushed mine. A drunkenness beyond words washed over me. I felt as if I were falling from my prison’s highest wall, into the sea’s goodness and light.

“Jane! Oh, Jane!” I moaned giddily.

So Jane vanished from my life as brutally as she’d illuminated it. She left like the wind, like the day’s fleeting beauty, like a storm’s lightning and power. In her place I watched my prison’s door close with a terrible calm.

But what could upset me more than how this goodbye tore me apart? What could it matter for a damned woman like me? An eternity of punishment for one dazzling, flickering memory! My life: a frightful heath, where one enchanted red rose bloomed! That rose would never die, like that heath would never end.

This is my hell and my paradise.

Now, back and forth through that House’s rooms, stairs, hallways, and courtyard. Within the Prison’s impenetrable walls, among the books I’ve torn up, notebook I’ve discarded, vile sayings I’ve forgotten, I think of Jane, I see her again, I pray to Jane, merciful Jane—sea wind nature flowers moonlit nights—I invite her, Jane, rebellion.

Anna Maria Ortese, “Jane, il mare” from L’Infanta sepolta. Milan: Milano sera Editrice, 1950.