"Perhaps he has come already.... Tell me ... do you hear him?"
XXI
How happy I was!... I listened without stirring to the deep throbbing of his life. I came to know him better through the regular pulsing of his neck, the twisting of his arms and the warmth that passed between us than through our past meetings. All the warm invisible things that work in the depths of a human being, the changing fate, the mystery circulating in the blood, were talking into my ears.
Here we were alongside each other, breathing in unison—can you have enough of such happiness? I entrusted my entire being to him; it was a pure, holy fulfilment.
There's no use trying to sum matters up differently. It may be that at death you find the higher expression, the illumination so sought for, but the living have no other way of saying the truth to each other than through the flesh.
You understand, don't you, that you have to rest from living? No longer to have this gaping heart, this pitiless, relentless love, but simply to lie stretched out close against him, so that the whole universe comes rushing to you, the mystery reveals itself, and life finds consolation.... Does God ever bestow greater charity?
I have just given him my life, my body, my very depths, and he is gone to sleep.