Jack Kerouac: [A brunette of eternity]

[...]
For now I want Mardou - she just told me that six months ago a disease took root deeply in her soul, and forever now - doesn't this make her more beautiful? - But I want Mardou - because I see her standing, with her black velvet shacks, handsapockets, thin, slouched, cig hanging from lips, the smoke itself curling up, her little black back hairs of short haircut combed down fine and sleek, her lipstick, pale brown skin, dark eyes, the way shadows play on her high cheekbones, the nose, the little soft shape of chin to neck, the little Adam's apple, so hip, so cool, so beautiful, so modern, so new, so unattainable to sad bagpands me in my shack in the middle of the woods - I want her because of the way she imitated Jack Steen that time on the street and it amazed me so much but Adam Moorad was solemn watching the imitation as if perhaps engrossed in the thing itself, or just skeptical, but she disengaged herself from the two men she was walking with and went ahead of them showing the walk (among crowds) the soft swing of arms, the long cool strides, the stop on the corner to hang and softly face up to birds with like as I say Viennese philosopher - but to see her do it, and to a T, (as I'd seen his walk indeed across the park), the fact of her - I love her but this song is... broken - but in French now... in French I can sing her on and on...
Our little pleasures at home at night, she eats an orange, she makes a lot of noise sucking it -
When I laugh she looks at me with little round black eyes that hide themselves in her lids because she laughs hard (contoring all her face, showing the little teeth, making lights everywhere) (the first time I saw her, at Larry O'Harras's, in the corner, I remember, I'd put my face close to hers to talk about books, she'd turned her face to me close, it was an ocean of melting things and drowning, I could have swimmed in it, I was afraid of that richness and looked away)-
With her rose bandana she always puts on for the pleasures of the bed, like a gypsy, rose, and then later the purple one, and the little hairs falling black from the phosphorescent purple in her brow as brown as wood-
Her little eyes moving like cats-
We play Gerry Mulligan loud when he arrives in the night, she listens and chews her fingernails, her head moves slowly side like a nun in profound prayer-
When she smokes she raises the cigarette to her mouth and slits her eyes-
She reads till gray dawn, head in one arm, Don Quixote, Proust, anything-
We lie down, look at each other seriously saying nothing, head to head on the pillow-
Sometimes when she speaks and I have my head under hers on the pillow and I see her jaw the dimple the woman in her neck, I see her deeply, richly, the neck, the deep chin, I know she's one of the most enwomaned women I've seen, a brunette of eternity incomprehensibly beautiful and for always sad, profound, calm-
When I catch her in the house, small, squeeze her, she yells out, tickles me furiously, I laugh, she laughs, her eyes shine, she punches me, she wants to beat me with a switch, she says she likes me-
I'm hiding with her in the secret house of the night-
Dawn finds us mystical in our shrouds, heart to heart-
"My sister!" I'd thought suddenly the first time I saw her-
The light is out.
[...]


THE SUBTERRANEANS