Free The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag

widened. You don’t have to remember who you are.
    He is standing at the summit in the late afternoon. Watching the steady decline of the sun, ever larger, ever redder, more succulent, toward the sea. Waiting for the most beautiful moment, the one he would like to prolong, when the sun falls to the horizon, for a second sits on a pedestal of itself—before dropping with sickening finality behind the sea line. Around him the atrocious din of the volcano, preparing for the next eruption. Fantasies of omnipotence. To magnify this. To make that cease. To cut the sound. As in the rear of the orchestra, the timpanist, having drawn a roulade of booming sound from the two great drums before him, swiftly lays down his mallets and extinguishes the sound by putting his palms so lightly, so firmly, on the head of the drum, then lowers his ear to the drum to make sure it is still in tune (the delicacy of these gestures after the portentous motions of pounding and banging)—so one could silence a thought, a feeling, a fear.
    *   *   *
    The narrow street. A leper who lay in the sun. Whining dogs. Other visits to Efrosina Pumo in her lower room.
    The Cavaliere continued to surprise himself. He whom everyone, including himself, thought so sceptical—impervious, to Catherine’s despair, to any appeals of religion, an atheist by temperament as well as conviction—was the secret client of a vulgar soothsayer. It had to remain a secret because if he told anyone he would have to deride it. And then it would be nonsense. His words would slay the magic. But as long as his visits went unreported the experience could stay suspended in his mind. True as well as not true. Convincing as well as unconvincing.
    The Cavaliere relished having a secret, a little weakness he could indulge in himself, an endearing frailty. No one should be entirely consistent. Like his century, the Cavaliere was less rational than has been reported.
    The sleep of reason engenders mothers. This large-bosomed woman with cracked fingernails and a peculiar gaze teased him, amused him, challenged him. He enjoyed sparring with her.
    She spoke oracularly of her powers, she proclaimed her dual citizenship in the past and in the future. The future exists in the present, she said. The future, as she described it, seemed to be the present gone awry. A terrifying prospect, he thought. Luckily, I shall not see much of it. Then he recalled that she had prophesied for him another quarter of a century. May the future not arrive till after then!
    *   *   *
    On his third or fourth visit, she offered at last to read the cards for him.
    The boy brought over a wooden box. Efrosina opened the lid and took out the Tarot deck, which she placed, still wrapped in a square of purple silk, at the center of the table. (Anything precious must be stored wrapped, and unwrapped slowly, slowly.) After freeing the cards from their wrapper she spread the silk cloth across the table. (Anything precious must be shielded from contact with a vulgar surface.) She shuffled the cards, then handed them to the Cavaliere to reshuffle.
    They were greasy to his touch. And, unlike the beautiful hand-painted cards he had seen in the drawing rooms of noble families, these were printed from woodblocks, with crude, smudged colors.
    When she took them back, she caressed them into a fan shape, stared at them for a moment, then shut her eyes.
    I am making the colors bright in my mind, she murmured.
    Indeed, the Cavaliere said, the colors are faded.
    I’m imagining the characters, she said. I know them. They are starting to move. I am watching how they move, I see the breeze rustling their garments. I see the swish of the horse’s tail.
    Opening her eyes, she cocked her head. I smell the grass, I hear the forest birds, the sounds of water and moving feet.
    They are only pictures, said the Cavaliere, surprising himself by his impatience: with Efrosina? or with