Frustrated hope begot fury; grief and longing transformed into a grand accusation of the entire “male species”. The Siren shows an alternative truth, but the Woman won’t listen. Now, she is howling, roaring, rumbling and booming. In the background, the strings make a polyphonic, multiplied “wave” alike the first part: the intervals increase and decrease from a halftone to a sixth, this time going up and down from d as the starting point. The saxophone and the guitar return with a Colus-like series also symmetrically developing up and down around G-sharp. The series reveals itself in a chaotic manner; it is ragged. It only becomes full at the moment of the culmination, when it resounds in its own mirror reflection.

 

WOMAN

Why did he leave? What did he desire?

Wealth? Fame? Power?

Why did he abandon me?

 

SEA / SIREN

You use too many words to name one thing.

Fame brings wealth; wealth brings power; and power brings fame.

 

WOMAN

I named it might. He desired might.

 

SEA / SIREN

Things have little to do with names, yet this word is as good as any other.

 

WOMAN

Why was he always asking what was best for the human being?

I called it sickness, an all-consuming sickness.

 

SEA / SIREN

Yet he is not sick.

 

WOMAN

From his lustful sickness emerged all evil of the world, all sin.

 

SEA / SIREN

I do not know what sin is; I only know actions.

I can hear you falling down onto my cold bosom, apologising

Needlessly.

 

WOMAN

All the evil is due to his desire for power;

that desire led to death and suffering.

He is to blame.

 

Fury gradually fades into resignation. All is calming down a little.

 

WOMAN

I begged him not to sail away, to stay;

I begged him to leave his sword aside, to give up the endeavour.

We needed no trophies, nor did we need regatta cups;

We could make a living out of what the soil, even barren, yields.

Thanks to the work of the two of us together.

 

SEA / SIREN

You are afflicted by the same disease.

You are not free from it.

This is the nature of you both.

Together, you inhabit the earth and wipe out those who lived here before.

 

What appeared in the interlude is back: the tranquil sea/ empty space/ distant horizon/ silence/ twilight, or whatever you can see or hear. Sniffing animals are back, too. This time, there are saltwater crocodiles – gigantic, primeval sea monsters that devour everything in their reach. The Woman knows that it is – and has to be – this way, in an analogous yet contrary way to the Man, who did not know and, thus, he asked.

 

SEA / SIREN

Saltwater crocodiles devour your bodies one by one,

when your proas with crab claw sail get trapped by the tide in the mangroves.

You can see their nostrils and eyes as they approach you, waiting.

 

WOMAN

Yet I knew it had to be this way. It had to be this way.

 

Part two, again roughly 20-minute-long, is finished. I am exhausted, to the point of feeling physically sore. It happens to me quite often while composing a bigger piece; moreover, the current general situation – difficult and depressing in many respects – is hardly restful. It resembles a hanging storm cloud that is suffocating me. However, navigare necesse est.

The final part awaits me. I feel it will be, or even must be, distinct. Like a recap that somehow stands on its own. Finally, there will be a reunion. Although a real reunion is impossible and never comes to be. Yet only the idea of a reunion, or the hope that there is someone else out there, makes any sense. 

 

(transl. Zuzanna Wnuk)