Slowly, looking, fainting, grasping, breathing, waiting, she would start connecting more deeply with whatever existed and having pleasure. Slowly without words she was subcomprehending things. Without knowing why, she was understanding; and the intimate sensation was one of contact, of existence looking and being looked at. It was from that time that something of an indecipherable brightness would survive. And where was it coming from that perhaps everything deserved the perfection of itself? And where was that inclination coming from that was almost like: connecting yourself to the next day through a desire. Where had it arisen? but she almost didn’t have desires . . . She almost didn’t have desires, she almost didn’t possess strength, she was living at the end of herself and at the beginning of something that already no longer was, finding her balance in the indistinct. In her state of weak resistance she was receiving in herself something that would be excessively fragile in order to fight and conquer any power of body or soul. She was too dumb to have difficulties, Daniel would repeat.
Then the lost time — he would move away, moving through mists and returning more elongated, more brutish, more sad and more innocent, yet impassable. His life was getting more and more stubborn. She had also isolated herself through fatigue, a bit of insomnia but had soon shown herself even and calm again, her skin taut, her legs scratched by branches, one eye more tired than the other. That was the time that Daniel had said to her for the first time, almost for no particular reason:
“By God and the Devil . . .”
She’d stopped short. A great silence had followed. She’d looked at him and discovered in his trembling victory the same disturbance. He had timidly brought her a scream. They stared at each other for an instant and everything was indecisive, fragile, so new and nascent. And everything was so dangerous and agitated that both looked away almost abruptly. But there was some enchanted thing between them at that moment. Though she never truly worried about God and rarely prayed. Before the idea of Him she would stay surprisingly calm and innocent, without so much as a thought. Daniel was moving off. Around that time he had started to think and say difficult things with zest and love. She would listen uneasy. He’d pace back and forth through the shadowy hallways of the mansion with his arms crossed, engrossed. Virgínia would uselessly scrutinize his face with his closed mouth, his dark indecisive eyes, that near-ugliness that was getting worse with age, suffering, and pride.
“What are you thinking?” she couldn’t contain herself sweetening her voice, effacing herself with humility.
“Nothing,” he’d answer.
And if she would dare ask again she’d get an answer that disturbed her even more because of its mystery and because of the jealousy it would awake in her.
“I’m thinking about God.”
“But what about God?” she’d inquire with effort, in a low and ingratiating voice.
“I don’t know!” he’d scream with brutality, irritated as if she were accusing him. “Even you are so stupid that you’d die before you understood” — and he’d keep pacing through the hallways, as if walking cleared his thoughts. The most she could manage was for him to let her accompany him back and forth, back and forth, hurrying if he was hurrying, staying anxious and quiet at a certain distance if he would halt. Daniel would talk too much about his own future. She didn’t want, didn’t want . . . as if advancing to the middle of the world would mean losing his own footsteps. But out of love she wanted to understand him, falsely happy she invented that new intelligence of Daniel’s that was changing him as much as it would change someone’s life to know how to handle lace-making needles. She’d persist in treating him like an equal, respect him as if he were made of the soft dough of flowers. Though he was sometimes so rude that with one gesture he could wipe out a girl. She’d grow pale and giddy among the offended instants. And loving him as much as she could ever love.
Had it been because of the drowned man that the Society of Shadows was born? They had foreseen the charmed and dangerous beginning of the unknown, the momentum that came from fear. Daniel said to her:
“Let us create the Society of Shadows.”
Even before learning what it was about Virgínia had already confusedly understood with her body and consented. The Society of Shadows had strange and undefined objectives. They themselves did not know them and mixed its commands with an almost desperate ignorance. The Society of Shadows must explore the forest. Yes, yes. But why? Near the mansion there was an almost-closed path and along it you could reach the darkness. Yes, the darkness, but why?
“Because solitude . . . Solitude — is the motto of the Society,” Daniel ordered.
“What?” Virgínia was having trouble understanding.
“Everything that frightens because it leaves us alone is what we must seek,” he was hesitating.
He would hover for an instant, drifting, his thinking intersecting with hers like the bow over the violin string, light sparks of insight and surprise unmaking themselves in the air. Days would go by without a single word being added about the Society, without either daring to touch that living, shapeless matter. But they hadn’t forgotten: they had to be quiet in order to create a pause in the dread that was already dominating them. And in the happiness that would make Virgínia shake, her eyes undemonstrative. The Society of Shadows was bringing her so close to Daniel! he would allow her to be with him every day. Even she loved secrets with ferocity as if they were of her own kind.
“And truth?” she was asking.
“What truth?”
“Another motto should be: Truth.”
“Yes,” Daniel would get annoyed, it was so hard for him to be directed even a single time by Virgínia.
In the beginning they’d agreed that there would be a meeting on Saturdays, in the first clearing on the path that branched off from the fence. It was a stopping place where everything that had to happen in somebody’s life hurried up and happened, they’d figured out. If you have to die in girlhood, you go there and die, Daniel was explaining. It was really the worst clearing, damp, shaded, closed in by tall, thin trees; among odorless parasites and dangling vines the branches would sway; dark, large swallows would fly vertically as if they’d never dare free themselves. The earth was black and wet; between rains the small puddles would mirror branches and shadows without the sun exhausting them.
Fever didn’t allow them so much time between meetings. They started to meet daily as soon as the sun had set. They were supposed to, according to the rules, take different paths to the clearing and return from there alone. As the days passed they couldn’t stand the solitary return. In the almost night terror gathered speed. The little birds were flying like blind men and hitting them in the cheeks. The leaves of the tall trees were thin and wide, the clearing’s trapped air was spinning, spinning, hitting the leaves and some thing like a breeze against glass bells was sounding in the same tone, lengthily, tranquilly. No, they wouldn’t be able to stand going back alone . . . They’d return together, falsely calm, pale. Nobody at home had noticed the anxiety in which they lived. And that was as if both were alone in the world. How scary and secret it was to belong to the Society of Shadows. Daniel, at its helm, was growing in power. Virgínia was plunging dangerously into her weak and rapt nature. And when Daniel would find her standing in the middle of the clearing, waiting with cold hands, with wide and blackened eyes, and ask her obeying one of the rules of the Society: what was the strongest thought she’d had today? she would go silent, scared, unable to explain to him that she’d lived a day of excessive inspiration, impossible to be directed by a single thought, just as the excess of light could impede vision — her soul exhausted, she was breathing in pure pleasure without a solution and feeling so alive that she could have died without realizing it. Daniel was getting angry, pushing her as he squeezed her arm, calling her a fool, threatening to dissolve the Society of Shadows, which terrorized her, more than his physical brutality. Daniel was w
orrying her: it was as if he’d degraded with the power acquired in the Society of Shadows; he’d hardened and never forgave. Virgínia was scared of him, yet it would never occur to her to escape his dominion. Even because she herself realized she was dumb and incapable. Daniel was strong. Before realizing what he wanted she’d already agreed, since:
“Virgínia, every day when you see milk and coffee you like milk and coffee. When you see Father you respect Father. When you scrape your leg you feel pain in your leg, do you see what I’m saying? You are common and stupid.” — Yes, by God she was — “So the Society of Shadows must perfect its members and orders you to do everything backwards. The Society of Shadows knows that you are common because you don’t think, as the saying goes, deeply, because you only know how to follow what you were taught, get it? The Society of Shadows commands you to go into the basement tomorrow, sit down and think a lot, a lot in order to figure out what is your own and what is stuff you’ve been taught. Tomorrow don’t bother with the family or the world! The Society of Shadows has spoken.”
She was secretly rejoicing: despite what Daniel had thought, she loved the basement and had never feared it. She said nothing however because if she confessed then the location for thinking deeply would be moved. She was trembling at the thought that Daniel could send her to think in the middle of the forest at nightfall. Not having a difficult task for the next day was like getting a holiday. Daniel scrutinized her a bit surprised that night, seeing her happy, talking almost by herself at the dinner table, and receiving without sadness a wallop from Father. Beyond the clearing though they couldn’t speak of the Society of Shadows and that way she was free, observing almost mischievous and happy Daniel’s uneasiness.
The next morning, since she wasn’t supposed to bother with the family, she made sure the family didn’t bother with her. So she didn’t avoid the habit of having breakfast with everyone and answering their questions. Obedient to Daniel, however, she was clenching her heart without rage and without glory, as in a sincere task, hiding it intact in a dark and quiet region. She had to take care not to mix, not to move anything around her with her thinking in order not to be imperceptibly moved. Distracted she was guessing: thinking deeply she’d find out what was hers like water mixed with river water and what wasn’t, like stones mixed with river water. Ah, she was understanding so much. She was sighing from joy and a sort of incomprehension. One day she might not show respect for her parents, the pleasure of strolling, the taste of coffee, the thought of liking blue, the pain of hurting her leg. Though that had never worried her. She walked to the basement slowly, pushed open its grate and dove into the cold smell of the half-light where washbasins, dusts, and old furniture were timidly living. She sat by the black clothes of an old bereavement. The waft of the trunks was wheezing, a smell of cemetery was rising from the slabs of the floor. She sat and waited. She clasped her thick dress against her chest every once in a while. The birds outside were singing but that was silence. In order to think deeply a person shouldn’t remember anything in particular. She purified herself of memories, stayed attentive. Since for her it was always easy to desire nothing, she remained frozen without even feeling the black shadows of the basement. She moved off as if on a journey. Slowly she started getting a thought without words, an ashen and vast sky, without volume or thickness, without surface, depth, or height. Sometimes, like light clouds released from the depth, the sky was crossed by the vague consciousness of experience and of the world outside of itself. The fear of disobeying Daniel — a fear that wasn’t a thought and didn’t disturb her thoughts — was assailing her and also a curiosity to go forward without interruptions, that made her move above her own knowledge. Without effort, without joy — as if not to linger in any defined feeling — she was pushing away perception and the sky was becoming pure again. Could she be thinking deeply? a separate consciousness was inquiring within her. Luminous lines, dry and fast, were scratching out her inner vision, without meaning, crawled out from some mysterious crevice and then, beyond their own place of birth, weak and dizzy. She could think in every direction; closing her eyes, she would direct inside her body a thought of the kind that emerges from bottom to top or otherwise of the kind that rides running through open space — that was neither word nor content but the mode of thinking itself finding its bearings. Could that be what thinking deeply was — not having so much as a thought to bring to the surface . . . Silence would follow ashen and light. In the sky a hesitant clearing would open for a second, but she was confusedly discovering that the opening was that of her own concentration; and it remained dense, of a density without form or volume, the accumulation of a substance more impalpable than the air, of an element more vague than perfume through the air. For an instant she was rejoicing tenuously and sharply for having obtained — just an instant, light that goes on and off. Could she have been thinking more than deeply and already seeing nothing? she was thinking frightened. The sky was still going on monotonous, monotonous, rolling. Though it had no image on its surface, it was not immobile, its expanse-without-measure was being substituted continuously like the unfurling of the sea — always moving forward without ever leaving itself. She tried to transform it by moving the position of a body tired of existing with such brutality. She stretched out on a colorless sofa, head beneath her limbs, pale face expressionless. In an uncomfortable clairvoyance she was seeing black clothes hanging, piano bench, blackened basin, doll without legs, lamp, cup. Slowly, in a concentrated effort that was arising from the center of her body, she freed herself from the basement and could wait without sensations. The sky appeared to her again. Outside, on the weeds dried by the sun steps made a sound. They were moving off . . . And since she’d allowed herself to hear steps instead of not hearing them everything would now come together suddenly in an undeniable reality. She got up and still bothered by the low position of her head tried to free herself from the basement and its smell of suitcase. She pushed the stiff grate, cleaned the slime and the rust of the cold bars from her hand. With narrowed eyes and forehead furrowed, she left the earth toward the brightness with a mildly painful jolt, her face rambling in paleness. A subtle pulsing began on her cold forehead. The hazel air of the basement was extending outside green and pink. She smiled weakly. From the darkness to the light — this was one of the events that would most delight her, delight her, delight her . . . Deep down what made her happy was that the experiment hadn’t succeeded. Daniel would surely make her return the next day and again holidays . . . But she wasn’t strong enough to be happy. She’d tired herself out.
She walked toward the field slowly. Her forehead was now burning while her hard and frozen hands weren’t warming in the sun. Her head was starting to throb atop her weakness and she was shuddering at each breeze. She broke off her stroll and returned painfully home. Going up the stairs she felt someone moving on the landing, she saw Daniel spying on her; his eyes were dry, steady, they would never forgive her. What would she say to him that afternoon in the clearing? what thought would she bring him from the experiment? Fear roiled her in exhaustion. She entered the bedroom, curled up in bed. She was trembling from a cold that seemed to come from her bowels and from a tight and blackened heart, her head was still being hammered with a joyful accuracy. Am I mad? It occurred to her as if someone said it, but she couldn’t stop thinking. I should go to sleep in order to stop — but she couldn’t. What to say to Daniel? She no longer even knew if she’d seen the sky for herself like someone seeing something that exists or if she’d thought about sky and managed to invent it . . . She’d entered an unknown and crazy world, it seemed to her vaguely that the sky was existing in every instant like something always past, always present and quiet . . . and that atop it were floating her desires for things, her visions, memories, words . . . her life. And it was still the one who rose and loomed in moments of silence, giving her also a silence of thoughts . . . or was all that just one of her ideas, an invention? would seeing the truth be different from in
venting the truth? her head was cracking, growing rocking like a cold ball of fire. Would seeing the truth be different from inventing the truth? her thought was after all so strong that it didn’t seem to be surrounded by any other. In her near-delirium she kept on thinking: if that sky was a reality, she was observing, once reverting she nevertheless wouldn’t know how to reach another phase, the one prior to the sky, the higher one, through effort: her power to seek had worn itself out. No, she couldn’t. But with an inexplicable certainty of perfections, she was thinking that if she could reach whatever was beyond the sky then a moment would come when it would become clear that everything was free and that one wasn’t unavoidably connected to whatever existed. You wouldn’t have to respect Father, feel pain in your injured leg, get happy about happiness . . . Scared, in an agitation that was kindling the sensitivity of her head, she stood and walked to the window. That knowledge she was feeling, would escape undeniable reality yet was true. Now it was becoming clear: it was true! everything was existing so freely that she could even overturn the order of her feelings, not be afraid of death, fear life, desire hunger, hate happy things, laugh at tranquility . . . Yes, a little touch would be enough and with a light and easy daring she’d leap over inertia and reinvent life instant by instant. Instant by instant! thoughts of glass and sun were trembling inside her. I can renew everything with a gesture, she was bravely feeling, damp like a thing being born, but confusedly she was realizing that this thought was higher than her realization and was doing nothing perplexed and serene, no gesture. Then she would slowly sink into the beneficent darkness of fainting and of happy giving-up — some minutes were passing, the flies of the warm morning were flying around the room, landing on her calm body and leaving it in order to rest on the dry and shining windowpane. Slowly she returned to reality emerging peaceful and cold from the half-light.