V

I have had the sensation of death.

Not in the instant of dying; that is still a part of life; but in the
instant after death.

I had gone to the end of the pier, where the water lashes incessantly
and regularly, and seated myself facing the open sea. To right and left
the green shore curved and the fir-trees ran down toward the sea to
hold in the pale sandy strip edged with foam. Over my head the
procession of clouds.

Sunday morning. The voice of the chimes from the old church, buried in
the heart of the island, was music sent by the air and tinted blue by
the waters. At each stroke you expected to see space divided in two.

The sea was smooth and sleek with dark, wide, winding oily tracks, which
looked like roadways traced by the sure finger of God.

Looking down at my feet I saw a sparkling play of meshes of rainbow
light. The iris fragments dented the surface, formed into chains, made a
covering of diamond facets, and drew downward full rainbows resting on
myriads of arches. It was an incessant disappearance and reappearance.

It was fascinating to watch. The only thing that distracted me was a
swarm of miniature fish darting under the pier more lightly than
insects. For a moment they showed dove-colored, then orange; then they
melted away. You tried to fasten your eyes upon one of the cells of
water, just one. You had it, but no, it was another one.

The sun was so hot you couldn't lift your head. A broad sunbeam falling
perpendicularly on the hard surface of the sea cut it in a blinding
fissure, which attached the foot of the pier to the horizon.

Caught between the heat pouring down from the heavens and the freshness
rising from the water, my body lost its sense of weight, form,
equilibrium, and even of breathing. Every bit of feeling was gone from
my legs, my neck was burning. My soul and eyes existed for nothing
except the stable yet ever-changing mosaic which laughed a thousand
laughs at the face of the sky.

There was nothing but light. Substance, eyes, body, memories, all seemed
to be losing themselves and making a plunge into light.

There really was one moment in which I ceased to be. My existence
underwent a momentary eclipse. I was no longer some one obstinately
facing a realm of infinity in order to measure its limits, a very small
creature who wanted to add herself to nature. I was the immense,
permeating idea of the ocean, the sun and the sky.

It was between the singing ether a