The first time you heard the Prelude to Tristan und Isolde you wondered if you ought to kill yourself then and there. This Wagner fellow had figured out everything about your life, so what was the point in going on living? After some consideration you decided it would be bad form to commit suicide in a packed opera house, so you resolved to save it for after the intermission. Then--no, you wanted to stay for the second act. Perhaps until the end of the third. Then you would certainly do it. Would it be better, you mused, eyes inscrutable behind your fan, to wait until you got home, write a note, and then elegantly slit your wrists in the tub? Or to be spontaneous about it and just jump off the bridge into the Rhine? Which would leave a prettier corpse?
As it happened, you didn't get to decide. Before you had even left the opera house, still shouldering on your mantle, he--you know of whom I speak--burst into the cloakroom and shot you dead in a frenzy of love frustrated. Such is the way of the world.
You kill each other. In every lifetime, you kill each other. In cold blood or in a fit of passion, with bare hands or with a death warrant, you always kill each other. That's what everyone gets wrong about the legend; you are star-crossed lovers, yes, there's no denying that--but it's less a tragedy of two innocents caught in fate's crossfire and more a duel to the death on the deck of a sinking ship. Still, you don't begrudge the poets their flights of fancy.
You have a vivid memory of lying next to him in a field in the swan song of summer, your white dress stained with grass and his blood. He lay with his head on a tree root; you watched his labored breathing, his white face, still a sparkle of light in his pale blue eyes. The spear in his stomach rose and fell with each breath. Afternoon sun glinted off his armor. To pass the time you read to him from an epic that had been written about the two of you.
And when Tristan espied the black sails on the horizon,
he wept most piteously and his heart broke in twain
for he knew his Isolde had turned traitor.
Alas, deceived, deceived! When at last the princess alighted
on the far shore--aye, she it was, for no traitor
was Isolde--she saw only the corpse of her beloved,
murther'd by very grief. And as the tide caresses
the rocky beach, she draped herself over his body,
yet warm but still as a stone, and herself of anguish died.
A wry smile spread across his face. He tried to laugh, but all he could manage was a sigh. Wordlessly you mimicked your own gesture in the poem--you crawled over and lay on top of him (as well as you could, with the spear in the way). Touched his hot, sweaty cheek. He made a little noise, of pain or pleasure you couldn't tell. And then he closed his eyes and died. Centuries later, the first notes of the Prelude will bring this memory back like a knife to the chest--and all the other memories you have of him dying, too. Like everyone else Wagner got the story all wrong. But he got the pain right. That's what matters. That's worth slitting your wrists for.
Isolde, Isolde, what will you do when you go down to the grave for the last time? Will you sleep peacefully then? I can't imagine it. I just can't picture you ever settling down--not in the country, not in the city, not in the cold dark earth. Quietness eludes you. Woman or man, princess or saint or beggar or soldier, all your life is a chase, a wild flight. Time slips like sand through your fingers but you keep on digging for more. Moth to flame, hand to fire. Wings and fingertips singed. There's no excuse for it anymore; the potion's long since worn off, centuries and centuries ago. What's left can, I suppose, be called true love.
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