The Book of Heaven: A Novel (53 page)
The baby smiled a luminous and unending smile, at the gift they had brought him, this dedication of the most beautiful of human gestures, the exchange of life's breath, the consent of soul to body, of earth to Heaven, in the form of a kiss. They brought their gift to the newborn of what he, and they, had been born for.
He raised both his hands in a gesture of blessing that was both a joyful and a reverent benediction of human love, always hard wonâheroicâand divine.
It is a shame that the beautiful canvas that records this moment was stolen, and has yet to be recovered.
All marriages are arranged, except those in which the wife invents her husband, and the husband invents his wife.
We pretend love is inexplicable, because we fear its iron logic.
Those who love money will marry it.
The misogynist and misanthrope do not need the matchmaker's services.
Do we submit to God? Which partner dancing a pas de deux submits to the other?
Love is not submission. Love is improvisation.
God said: I have furnished you a world; now create it.
The master will always in the end desire to be dominated by his slave.
The desire to submit masquerades as the desire to dominate.
Torture is the weapon of the cosmically jealous: an attempt to destroy the capacity to love.
War is the master of the world; yet love outlives slaughter.
Thousands of years before we read and wrote; thousands more before we love.
More are deceived by the belief that they love than by the belief that they are loved.
Men have seized the privilege of naming the stars; but it was women who invented Heaven.
Heaven is not Heaven if Hell is Hell.
Weapons give men the illusion that they are not flesh.
In times of war, men's worth is measured by their bodies; in times of peace, by their souls.
Men have always feared the unarmed more than they fear armies.
What do men fear more than peace?
Wise love is possible, innocent love never.
The ascetic who starves herself for the love of the poor never asks how many of them must stand watch, exhausted, at her deathbed.
He who demands innocence in love is seeking something that he himself does not possess.
Only those ignorant of love believe it exists only to make children; in every true act of love, something is born.
We speak of Eros as an anarchic force, but his ungovernableness disguises his well-disciplined obedience to his mother.
Like Zeus, men pretend women are cows so that they can pretend to be gods.
Contempt for women is the expression of men's secret scorn for God.
The goddess of love is always described as the essence of desire; but her real power is far greater; she can feel with precision and think ecstatically.
The great art of love is to think and feel at the same time; love poem.
A good parent is one who refuses to be the fate of his child.
Those who seek to save themselves while the rest of the world is destroyed will never realize they themselves are drowned.
Love is the only way we can escape our fates.
Do not ask: Do you love me? Ask: Should you love me?
Love and Knowledge are aspects of each other: which is why lovemaking takes the form of a perpetual question perpetually answered.
Here is the most terrible secret: One way or another, love is always requited.
I am deeply grateful for the privilegeâand joyâof working with Erroll McDonald. I thank him for the brilliance, tact, freedom, and elegance of his reading, and for his enduring friendship.
I thank Lynn Nesbit profoundly for all she has done to sustain this book. Her wonderful letters always arrived at just the right moment, with just the right words of encouragement.
Mona Trad Dabaji's painting takes me every day into a world where beauty is an aspect of courage.
It is my loving obligation to thank Dan Rabinowitz, Ann Thomas, Prudence Crowther, Reem Abu J
aber, Sarah Kerr, Peter Devine, Nancy Devine, and Emily Flint, for everything.
I am one of many for whom Barbara Epstein is an irreplaceable loss and an undying presence. I thank her always.
This book came to life in three places: the Catalan coast, the Connecticut coast, and the Swiss canton of Vaud. In each, I have had the great good fortune, with my beloved, to catch a glimpse of heaven.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, and reared in Mobile, Alabama, Patricia Storace was educated at Columbia University and the University of Cambridge. She is the author of
Dinner with Persephone,
a travel memoir that won the Runciman Award;
Heredity,
a book of poems; and
Sugar Cane: A Caribbean Rapunzel,
a children's book. She received the Witter Bynner Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1993. She has been a frequent contributor to
The New York Review of Books
and
Condé Nast Traveler.
ALSO BY PATRICIA STORACE
Dinner with Persephone
Heredity
Sugar Cane: A Caribbean Rapunzel
