Anne Cars On(b. 1950)

The Beauty of the Husband

Rio, April 23

I don't understand this business of linguistics.

Make me cry.

Don't make me cry.

I cry. You cry. We make ourselves cry.

Travelling foolish work spending money is what I make myself do.

Carioca.6

I'm in an apartment in Rio with some Brazilians arguing over

how to make a washing machine work.

In half an hour they'll forget about it and go out for dinner

leaving the machine on fire.

They will come hack from dinner to find their clothes burned up,

slap each other on the headThey will come back from dinner to find their clothes burned up,

and decide they in fact bought

a dryer which they don't know how to operate.

I have just gone to look at this machine. It is indeed a washer on

fire.

So now what happens. You and I.

We have this deep sadness between us and its spells so habitual I

can't

tell it from love.

You want a clean life I live a dirty one old story. Well.

Not much use to you without you am I.

I still love you.

You make me cry.

There are three things to notice about this letter.

First

its symmetry:

Make me cry. . . . You make me cry.

Second

its casuistry:

cosmologicaP motifs, fire and water, placed right before talk of love

to ground it in associations of primordial eros and strife.

Third no return address.

I cannot answer. He wants no answer. W h a t does he want.

Four things.

But from the fourth I flee

chaste and craftily.

DANA G I O I A

b. 1950