Work Text:
SEHNSUCHT
"Over there I glimpse pretty hills,
ever young and ever green!
If I had flight, if I had wings,
I would float over to those hills.
Harmonies I hear tinkling,
tones of sweet, heavenly peace;
and light winds bring
to me the scent of balsam."
(Friedrich von Schiller, "Sehnsuch")
Dear Scarlett, so she began her letter. Dear Scarlett. My dear. My dearest. Darling. Scarlett darling.
(oh)
There is something here, flying through the air like soft, white fragments of cotton, something taking hold of Melanie and leaving her even more naked than when, years earlier, that Yankee man was bleeding on Tara's floor and Scarlett had asked for her shirt to wrap around his head, from which streams of crimson were running. All around her, these soft particles undulate and flutter, product of the South, wealth of the South, decay of the South, all at once as time has passed and the world has changed, as the country has been transformed inside and out, rebuilt on other foundations, more or less the same, yet different in their essence, in their smells and their material
Sitting at her desk, bent over her sheet of paper, feather in hand, Melanie has already crossed out four times the first words of her letter.
Scarlett is visiting New Orleans on her honeymoon, and now bears the name of Mrs. Butler, after having been successively Hamilton and Kennedy. Within her is a strange hint of affliction that remembers how much she loved the time when Scarlett still answered to her family's surname. Melanie Hamilton. Charles Hamilton. Scarlett Hamilton. Not that she felt any resentment towards Captain Butler, when her beloved Ashley owed his life to him and he had always been immensely courteous and respectful to her, had come to their aid so many times.
Surely not, it would be unseemly and cruel to express any bitterness towards him.
Besides, Melanie is not made that way. To harbor a grudge requires a strength, a temper, an energy she knows she doesn't have at her disposal, unlike Scarlett. The fragility of her physical condition, a family legacy she cannot disregard, hardly allows her such volcanic outbursts as those of her sister-in-law, and even less such well-asserted hatred.
Thus, Melanie likes to think that Scarlett, like a mad horse rearing to throw off its rider, gets inflamed for two.
She likes to admire her angers, to contemplate the spectacular thunderbolts of her wrath, to understand them in order to feel them in herself as well, but carefully kept on a leash, at the risk of hurting herself. She has always found Scarlett ravishing, and who wouldn't think so, because one would have to be blind not to marvel at her cotton white skin, her long ebony hair, her superb neck, her slender waist, her eyes so magnificently green like two immense fertile meadows, but Melanie never finds her as sumptuous as when she rants and rages: then she radiates a power Melanie could get drunk on until she forgot her own name, and in those moments of fury Scarlett is stronger than anyone else, braver than any soldier on a battlefield, more lethal even than a gun aimed at an enemy's forehead.
My very dear Scarlett, she writes at last, dissatisfied though she is with her formulation, but not daring to surrender to the others arising in the quiverings of her heart, for there are appellations in this abstract place which she suspects she should reserve only for Ashley, but cannot hold back from the moment some of them rush to Scarlett's image and cling to it, even more than the Southerners did to their traditions of life when the Yankees came.
Melanie pauses in her writing, thinks of Beau, her adorable little boy, of Scarlett shouting at her to push through the din of the taking of Atlanta, whispering to Captain Butler, "Ashley's picture and Charles's sword, she wants to bring them," understanding her without a word and showing a care to which Melanie has remained sensitive, putting a hand around her shoulders to help her cling to Captain Butler and thus flee the ransacked city. Melanie had no doubt that if Scarlett had been strong enough, she herself would have carried her to the carriage and taken them away from Atlanta.
No one has ever been so strong for her, protected her like that, not even Ashley.
(you love Ashley with all your heart)
(with all your heart)
(but)
Melanie is prone to long reflections, intense moments of study and self-examination, because like Ashley, she is more inward and spiritually oriented than towards the rest of the world. Many times she lost her way on roads where, for the first time, she set foot, but without fearing them, because they were fresh and bright, moving away from the darkness of war and the abyss of death walking close to her and Scarlett, on each of the paths traced in the soft and cozy earth of the country by the hooves of horses and the wheels of carriages, by the boots of travelers.
All these paths led her irrevocably to the same place, to the Twelve Oaks on the day of the last picnic before the conflict with the Yankees broke out, and to her meeting with the Scarlett of that time, captivating in her green dress, so lively, so witty, so full of passion, a ball of free, independent cotton as Melanie had never seen before. They were so different, all the men were infatuated with Scarlett without fail, because how could they do otherwise, after all, in front of so much will to live, of warmth, of joy? She swept them all away like a tornado, but with much more charm and amiability.
Melanie knew Ashley was as powerless as the others to resist her.
She knew it all the more because she herself had been drawn in from the very first moments.
There was too much fire in Scarlett for it not to touch Melanie, and not to awake in her feelings of such nature.
She knew Ashley still had desire for her, even though he would deny it with all his soul. She knew him too well, and knew herself too well, not to admit she was in the same situation. Perhaps he was even aware of his wife's deep inclination for Scarlett. Melanie would not have been surprised if he had been, for she suspected he was sensitive to her moods and affections, and saw into her the way she read into him.
However, both of them would not say anything about it, would never tell the other, would keep the secret buried deep down, would not do anything with it.
For Ashley, it was a matter of honor.
For Melanie, it was a multitude of other difficulties that held her back, and the awareness that the world would not want to see such tenderness displayed in broad daylight, much less by a woman like her, who was called a noble lady and held in such high esteem.
Thus, silence, but also sometimes fantasies, imagination.
One night, Melanie dreamed of Scarlett wearing men's pants and shirts, with her hair pulled back under a large felt hat, and, returning from a horseback ride in the vicinity of a Tara restored to its golden age, she climbed the steps of the stoop four by four to kiss her on the lips and slip an arm around her waist, calling her "my darling," while stroking Beau's hair.
He was kind of theirs, if Melanie thought about it, since Scarlett had delivered him to the world and watched over him in Ashley's place, while he was fighting in the war.
She had awakened from that dream with a sweet ache in her heart, and had turned her gaze to her husband, still asleep, the warmth of his body close to hers, but Scarlett's kiss still voluptuous on her lips.
It had once seemed to her she had kissed her that way, while they were in Tara and Melanie was still resting from childbirth, too weak to move, but as the years passed, Melanie had concluded her mind had most certainly been playing tricks on her, and that the fever had perhaps fueled an affectionate delirium.
She looks down at her letter, rereads the four introductory words, hears a soft knock on the study door.
"Melly? Is everything all right?"
Ashley's voice, quiet, as peaceful as a stream, the opposite of Scarlett's, in which the ardor of her personality and the brilliance of her vigor vibrated.
Ashley dear, Melanie thinks, and then, as it is always the case, follows a second call, a second melody.
(Scarlett dear)