“Take it.”
The woman hesitated. All at once she extended her hand, took the coin, threw him a gruff and difficult look without murmuring a word. He saw her go off, looking at her with decisiveness and pleasure, with penetrating strength and deep internal laughter — flinging a scream of triumph flapping his wings over the victim. Night was gradually falling. On the narrow, closed door the sign was almost sparkling: Sete & Snabb — Forwarding Agents. A skinny girl appeared on a corner and like a flash disappeared into the black interior of a house. He stared indecisively at the deserted street. Rute, Rute, he murmured in a dry sob. The shadows of closed warehouses were crossing the pale ground, stretching along the road, reaching the other sidewalk. He was hesitating. And then kept walking setting out in the twilight like a vampire.
It wasn’t just from Daniel that she was finding herself distanced. In her absence the little daily facts that she knew nothing about went erecting themselves into a barrier and she was feeling excluded from the family’s mystery. In between the conversations the instants of silence kept filling with reserve and vague disapproval. They were seeming to blame her for not staying gone, for having lived with them her childhood and youth. As if defending themselves from an accusation that in reality she wouldn’t know how to make.
“What good things happened?” she’d ask smiling fakely.
It was so hard to tell what had happened during the separation . . . everything escaping words.
“Well, everything went along just the same as always,” they’d finally say annoyed.
They were feeling stuck to one another and their eyes would shine irritated when they’d then speak. Really what had happened: they’d experienced a certain day-to-day calm pleasure in having lunch and dinner together, meeting in the hallways running into one another, communicating through small odd words. They went on living together as if in order to be together still at the moment of death — together, if one of them died, all would be less afraid to die. The friction in every minute, the breathing of the same air would give rise to whatever in them was fastest and they’d exchange brief words. Conversation would shed light on objects, questions of household management and the stationer’s. Habit would allow them to swap impressions with a quick glance, with a half-smile that would never penetrate the depths of the day. Maybe each of them knew that they could only free themselves through solitude, creating their own intimate and renovated thoughts; yet that individual salvation would be everyone’s perdition. As now they were avoiding a more awakened sensation because they couldn’t transmit it. And to keep possessing that scared security, which they didn’t realize they didn’t need, they would come together sullen, unaware.
Virgínia was trying to speak with Esmeralda; she wanted to tell her what Vicente — a boy — had said to her. Since it was hard to repeat a compliment and since she’d been ashamed in the face of her sister’s keen, hard gaze, she added hurriedly with displeasure: well, I’m just repeating what was said . . . Esmeralda agreed quickly, impatient and curious: of course, you’re just being sincere . . . Despite her heightened awareness of her own movements, Virgínia agreed with a humble gesture of modesty that immediately squeezed her astonished heart with the cold fingers of irony. Later it wasn’t possible to keep talking because, while her words were stumbling forward, she was still rigidly bad to herself, still attached to the ridiculousness of that intimate and servile movement. As if it were Esmeralda’s fault, she avoided her for the rest of the day with repugnance and unease. At night she was awakened by strange noises coming from the kitchen. She got up, went down the stairs. Esmeralda was boiling water, with a hot-water bottle in her hand.
“Mama?” asked Virgínia buttoning her robe.
“No.”
“So you’re the one feeling something?”
Esmeralda didn’t answer right away, she puckered her mouth in a repressed cringe of irritation as if Virgínia were forcing her to respond.
“It’s nothing, a trifling pain,” she said grudgingly, dry.
Virgínia was looking at her with coldness. She wanted to ask again but was reluctant. Esmeralda had always liked to seem pushed around by others. She was already leaving when she saw her sister, almost in a cry for help, twist her head, purse her lips averting her eyes — and thereby giving Virgínia the chance to see how she was suffering.
“But what’s going on?” Virgínia inquired.
Esmeralda opened her eyes, stared at her with sullen rage:
“To hell with it, it’s nothing.”
Thus Virgínia felt she’d entered the family. She sighed.
“Well if you’re practically crying . . . ,” she said.
“What do you want? for me to laugh? Fine life I’ve got, don’t you think? it really does make you want to laugh” — with a hard smile she added — “Or do you want me to go listen to little idiot Vicentes? Fine life I’ve got . . .”
Virgínia blushed surprised, hesitated an instant.
“But who has a better life?” she said with unease, slightly vexed and suddenly sleepy.
“The bishop. Leave me alone, damn you.”
“And damn you too. You spend all your time eating yourself alive, you think I don’t know? that I’m blind? torturing poor Mama, other people, accusing, gnawing at yourself like a maggot . . . So you leave me alone too. I never had anything to do with your life. Nor you with mine.”
“Poor Mama . . . So you feel sorry for her?”
They exchanged a wordless glance, without translatable meaning. Of cold curiosity, of imminent hatred, of mutual support and pleasure.
“So much so that I sacrificed myself, this is my reward,” said Esmeralda.
“You sacrificed yourself because it’s your nature to sacrifice yourself, just like it’s mine and Daniel’s not to suffer. I never suffered because I didn’t want to. Because you want an excuse for your fear, that’s why . . .”
“And if it was how would that be my fault?” gushed Esmeralda’s voice violent and muffled.
“Please don’t scream and wake everybody up,” said Virgínia.
She left the kitchen: the clock in the little dark hallway was striking two. Yes, how would it be her fault? A slow and meditative feeling was seeming to overtake her for all time. How had she not foreseen everything that was creeping around the mansion? how could she have left the city? The weak light in the kitchen was still on; and Daniel still hadn’t returned. She was slowly climbing the stairs grasping the hem of her robe, stepping barefoot on the sleeping and silent velvet. At the top of the staircase she stopped and looked at the darkness of the room below. She waited an instant. Then she remembered: she used to cross the shadowy corridor feeling the carpet on her bare feet, her neck rigid with fear . . . with each step, the hand could grab her clothes, her hair; when she’d see from the top of the staircase the sultry brightness of the living room she’d fling herself uncontrollably down the black steps, her eyes scratched and dry; in the faltering and secluded light of the oil lamp she’d breathe softly, her heart beating wide, hollow, livid; she’d touch objects with light hands, seeking deeply their intimacy; Mother was sewing, Father was reading, Esmeralda sweeter back then was looking out the window at the half-brightness of the courtyard, Daniel was scratching in a notebook; the unoppressed living room; nobody was looking at her and that was the protection they could give; unnoticed, she was walking slowly among them, inhaling again the familiar and strange fluid, feeling that she was safe from the empty, black, and whispering countryside, from the hallway closed with darkness; behind the window the violet fireflies were lighting up and leaving no traces.
In an inexplicable desire she now wanted to go back down the staircase. She stretched out her hand in the dark and in contact with the cold banister almost took leave of whatever was natural in her decision; she hesitated for an instant as if awakened by the freezing marble; finally beneath her hot hand the banister was seeming to come to li
fe, she gathered with her other hand the skirt of her long dress; as she was going down the steps, she was unconsciously straightening her ample bosom in a majestic, slow posture, feeling inexpressibly like another person, someone indefinable yet extremely familiar like an old desire that no longer needs words in order to be renewed. A diffuse and vivid memory. She stopped for an instant. Then she clutched her robe, walked to her room.
The next day first thing in the morning she opened with seriousness and leisure the photo album. There were relatives with hats all the way down to their foreheads, deep dark eyes, affected poses, so difficult. And again ridiculousness would touch her, make her fall into a confused and sweet feeling that had perhaps always been the strongest one of her life. You couldn’t be ashamed to like family — that was the inexplicable sensation. She felt she was touching portraits of the dead and yet she was seeing her mother as a girl, her father with tense whiskers and a man’s face, her aunts still alive even now; her heart closed in an anxious and sad yearning. My loves, she was thinking with damp eyes, aware of the fakeness of the expression, deepening it still more with pleasure. A real love, painful and broad, was escaping her chest and she was smiling moved and benevolent with the power of her own feelings. Anyway life, she thought in a cheerful and shy burst, in a sigh. Now she was gazing without focus at the pictures where her mother in old, elegant clothes was revealing the dark rings under her eyes — she was feeling mixed and hopeful, her heart so bristling and tender as if the season had changed, as if suddenly she had begun to love for the first time a man.
When she sat for lunch with everyone, she who still hadn’t grown unused to eating alone, carefully with Vicente or with courteous strangers in restaurants — with a repressed shock saw, repeating the impression she’d had during the first lunch after her journey, the way they ate, chewing with open mouths, a look of undisguised pleasure; swallowing with gluttony, pushing away the empty plate with indifference and satiation. Esmeralda was leaning her arms halfway across the table; when something on their mother’s plate appealed to her she’d charge ahead without a word with her fork; their mother would consent with a quick grumble. With a certain revulsion she felt sharply moved, unable to swallow the food, tears in her eyes — she was so weak and aged by her recent time in the city, it was so horrible to see the family gathered having lunch silently and voraciously. That same night even she gave in and at the dinner table everyone looked alike. She looked at them and was now feeling united with them, knowing how to love them — so strong was the spirit of the house. There were times when the room and the bodies leaning toward the plates, that silence that came from the fields, the atmosphere that no particular feeling could designate, was by her intensely understood — she’d stop short with her fork in the air, looking at them contrite and happy. She was experiencing a kind of resignation that was like a slow step forward, noting with a gentle surprise that she could marry, get pregnant, deal with the children, cheerfully fail, move around a house embroidering linen towels, repeat, yes, repeat her mother’s own destiny.
And as if everyone understood that she’d finally come back, the dinners became calm and cheerful; they’d stay at the table talking, laughing, taking their leave late heading slowly to the bedrooms, faces still smiling and thoughtful. Only Daniel would leave earlier or even stop turning up at meals. The next day everyone would meet, laugh, live as if on shipboard. They’d ask her what she’d seen in the city; she and Esmeralda would chat crossing words that didn’t contradict one another. Esmeralda would lean her big breasts on the table and smile shaking them with kindness and sparkle; Father would chew without looking at them and yet would listen. The food was more abundant than in the past, there was talk of closing the stationer’s, of turning the Farm into a ranch for guests. Mother would listen while eating with pleasure, her eyes thinking about the idea; Daniel was cutting the meat with precision and indifference, Virgínia listening to their father in a silent distaste. All at once she’d looked at Esmeralda. Without realizing she was being observed, Esmeralda had broken off her meal, teeth closed, chin rudely pointed in a forced smile while her narrowed eyes were looking at no particular place, hard with hope, almost with revenge. Yes, guests, guests, guests — her full and excited bosom seemed to be saying. What can you tell us about the city? she was still asking. The two were still at table after everybody else had retired; they looked a bit alike, both were almost tall and large. What could she tell? — Virgínia was leaning her face on the back of another chair, remembering when she’d felt fever and nausea, the bedroom getting rough and her solitude growing with pain while she was leaning off the bed toward the ground looking vaguely at the scratches and dust on the floorboards, asking God to let her vomit at last. And if she spoke of love, what could she tell her? the sensation was that of having been abandoned while sleeping, she’d looked to the side, Vicente wasn’t there and still now her heart would clench in fright, regret, and astonishment: she’d overslept. Yes, she could tell about a woman she’d seen one day; she described to Esmeralda her clothes, just that, how luxurious she was. But she could never forget that woman she’d met on a bus — a true lady, Esmeralda — almost the strongest thing in the city. How lovely she was — Esmeralda was listening with an embittered face, her youth lost — how lovely she was. But she didn’t know how to say the rest. How to explain to her those lively and worried eyes, her keen mouth, her neck bent forward introducing a face that was horribly selfish and distracted from others. She’d come from the street — you could tell — was taking the bus home, lips hard with disappointment, but she didn’t want help, nobody could help her, she was despising everyone else with alarm. She had clearly come from a place important to her life. The hat covered with little black and soft feathers was ridiculously elegant. In her large, slender ears, of a very washed brown color, were luxurious earrings surrounded by instantaneous rays of luster, and lending her whole face a harsh and menacing life. On her fingers the rich rings and the wedding band; she was sitting on the bus, shaking along with it, her hand firm on the back of the seat in front, her memory faraway, her face proud, serious, hard, and ardent but that would be brutally humble, violent, and disheveled for someone — for someone she was still looking for now. She was extending the hand with the wedding band and the rings thinking with her face that would know so well how to humiliate and that was in love; she was married and wounded, you could tell, you could tell. Esmeralda was listening, her eyes wandering while imagining, an acrid and intolerable envy drying out her lips. Virgínia was observing her, with surprise guessing to what extent both were made of something ingratiating, fearful, and low, how both in the end were sisters. With distaste and dismay she was changing the subject, telling her that her small apartment had its own staircase, that the general stairs also passed by her door, that all day long she’d hear the steps of people going up and down. She told her that one day, returning from somewhere at the hour when the city lights were going out . . . — Esmeralda interrupted her:
“How?”
Virgínia didn’t understand:
“How what?”
Esmeralda was saying almost upset and timid as if afraid to touch:
“What you said just now.”
Virgínia took a while to understand and finally disguising her surprise repeated:
“The city lights go out . . .”
“Yes, yes,” said Esmeralda with coldness, “go on.”
“You didn’t go to theaters?” she was asking her still.
“Not one,” Virgínia was saying.
She’d gone one night to a concert in the company of Vicente and Adriano; they’d had a light dinner at a small restaurant and she was feeling comfortable, simple, and cheerful. In the lobby of the theater she’d stopped short in the presence of the sultry furs, the noses silken with powder, a cold made of light, clean and frozen movements. The women were sparkling calmly amidst whispers. She herself was feeling grotesquely human with her blue woolen dr
ess and her cream shoes, her hair parted at the side and loose. In a small pocket mirror she was furtively observing her serious face, long, pale and large — a failed nun with hard and martyred eyes. The stuffy concert hall was panting and the piano notes were stumbling solitary amidst the hand-held fans. She couldn’t quite take pleasure in the music but was sheltering in the sound with a certain anguish, her white face leaning toward the distant stage, her body contained and still. While Adriano was losing himself in the depths of the loge, while Vicente was running his natural eyes over that superior world; of which nobody knew that she and Esmeralda could be raised to serve, with joy and curiosity.
“No, to almost none.”
“What did you talk about with people?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . Of course I didn’t talk to them the way I’m talking to you . . . You try to say pleasant things, show that you’re well-educated, that you know how things are done, the customs of other lands . . . Show that you’re not just anyone” — she was getting excited with moving eyes, the foam of saliva appearing in the corners of her mouth — “There in the city if you don’t stand up for yourself you get left behind . . . You think with all those people I’d speak the way I’m speaking now? No! try not to make mistakes, to say things . . .”
Esmeralda was agreeing. Whereas she, with her eyes still steady, was remembering herself threatening with a finger: if I ask for a cigarette don’t give it to me, okay? and then she’d ask, the person would decline, she’d ask, the person would decline, just like that, just like that — she glanced around slightly oppressed. Gradually however she reclaimed a smiling strength. Esmeralda was agreeing examining her with more interest.
“Did you date?”
“No,” said Virgínia — the two women looked at each other firmly in the eyes.
“Did you take walks by the sea?”
She told her about the sea, really thinking about Vicente, about his apartment. She might have been cold to men but how sensitive she was to the sea. Waves would form on the surface of the water without altering the hushed, thick mass — and that would stir in her a serious urge, dangerous. The bigger waves would burst salty smells of foam into the air. After the water would strike the rocks and return in a rapid reflux, a desert resonance would linger in her ears, a silence made of small words scratched and short, made of sands.