Daniel had taken Rute to Upper Marsh and they married there. Virgínia hadn’t gone to the wedding; simply, without a fuss, she told Daniel without looking him straight in the face, she’d understood that she didn’t need to go and had stayed in the city not like someone saying: I’m staying; she’d remained behind without remembering to go or stay. Father knew she was studying; and who knows? she might find a husband. But she didn’t know anyone besides the old cousins, Vicente barely existed, she’d stayed in the city alone, in the bedroom suspended on a third floor. That had been when she’d gone through a period, yes, you certainly could call it very sad. Suddenly like a vein that starts to pulse she’d started living the reality of the apartment abandoned by Daniel and as if empty of herself because her narrow movements and her frayed life weren’t enough to fill the quarters with noise and confusion. Until she had the recollection to accept living with the two cousins. On that morning she got ready, washed, packed her suitcases with the dark permission to enter at last the boarding school with which they’d threaten her when she was small. She hired a taxi and blowing her nose cast one more look toward the square, bright, and old building where she and Daniel had for the last time been brother and sister. The car was bouncing, the suitcases were threatening to fall on her and injure her — she was thinking about how she’d taken care of the apartment for Daniel, of how she would wait for him for supper, of how that memory now had strangeness and little familiarity and how she now was rushing into some thing so new like a new body and where she wasn’t feeling she would exist for much time. With secret horror, pensive, she was seeing herself more and more similar in a certain way to Esmeralda — imitating the destiny of their mother; the old car was finally entering the dusty street. Morning was rising. Soon she’d see that poor house that she had only visited quickly afraid it was contagious, just twice in all the time she’d been in the city. It was one of those houses where you’d try to sit on the edge of the chair, where you’d catch yourself trying not to touch the flower vases and drinking carefully a glass of water only halfway to the bottom. There was in the somber and by no means extraordinary rooms something that would stand out and alarm because it contained an involving and unfamiliar intimacy — like a strangers’ dirty bathtub where you had to strip and abruptly place yourself in contact. Her cousins Arlete and Henriqueta increasingly seemed to her an error and a lie — now that she was getting so close to their reality. Poverty and age. She rang the bell as if arriving from a long journey. Good, now the fun was over — that was her feeling and she was surprised because it had been so long since she’d stopped feeling things as such. Her father should be happy to know that at least part of the family had a house big enough to house his daughter, let her get to know the relatives close up — “and have no reason to be ashamed of them”; how did he know so much about the truth? even without a reason the very beginning of getting closer to relatives was confusedly her shame and dread. Cousin Henriqueta opened the door and seemed to hesitate in the brightness.
“Yes?” she asked with her face tilted in expectation and vague distress, “yes?”
“I . . . ,” Virgínia attempted.
“Yes?” — but suddenly the old lady’s eyes lit up and in a little muffled shout she flinched: “come in, come in, your suitcases! ah, the man with the car has to be paid, come in Virgínia, come in, your suitcases, right? Arlete . . . ,” she said turning toward the dark and silent interior, “Arlete, our cousin is here . . .”
Her voice had changed imperceptibly and through it Virgínia penetrated into the relationship between the two old maids. Nobody answered from within and the two women were standing for an instant in the doorway waiting. Henriqueta suddenly approved with her head as if she’d heard some answer.
“Come in, my child,” she said with more resolve. — And as Virgínia was moving ahead she seemed to remember in a fright, stopped short, extended an arm halting her with haste and unexpected power, murmured blinking her eyes with difficulty and trying to repeat: “you have to pay the car, you have to pay the car . . . the luggage charge too . . . the expense was yours . . .”
“Yes . . . ,” Virgínia stammered.
Henriqueta was tall, ruddy, and slow. Her face of smooth very silky skin was stained with big, shiny freckles; her neck united itself to her body in curves as on a porcelain doll; she was bald, used a wispy toupee held in place by a ribbon, wore a skirt made of brown cloth turned black, long all the way to her swollen and freckled feet. She was moving slowly hesitating as if her thoughts were always being interrupted by new ideas and she were still mute and confused — but her face was made of surprise and goodness. They entered the long living room with wooden floorboards. In the near-darkness, at a large oval table, Arlete was sitting. She raised her head from her sewing, examined Virgínia with an attention that was trying hard to stay present.
“Good morning, Virgínia,” she said at last.
Arlete was small, her face narrowed into an attentive and distracted needle. Her back was broken, her chest was sticking out in a point beneath her tired and sickly eyes. She seemed weak and caustic, she sewed for children. Virgínia dragged her suitcases up the old stairs to the moldy attic. She halted an instant. Her appearance recalled dust that once shaken was slowly returning to its place. Through a single glazed window that couldn’t be opened gray and deaf light was entering, without shadows. She lay down for a bit on the hard bed, inhaling that indefinable smell of old age in which she’d been wrapped ever since she’d entered the small dry garden before ringing the bell. Her eyes burning and tired, she was feeling an unchangeable and calm pain in her chest as if she’d swallowed her own heart and could hardly stand it — she was pressing her fingers over the eyes that were stubbornly opening staring and absent, she managed to contain them, scrutinizing the small conquered darkness and as if she were connecting for a few instants to her so-disappeared self, to the secluded and watchful silence, she sighed at last and slowly, looking around wounded and pensive, began to live with the cousins.
The house was so old that its previous inhabitant had moved because he was afraid it would collapse. Below Virgínia’s attic, which topped the triangular construction, was a room where the cousins had installed the sewing atelier. This dark and dusty chamber seemed even more decayed than the rest of the house. The light came scant through a grated window almost flush to the roof. Because in the attic the wooden floorboards didn’t quite come together, Virgínia would crouch down, place one eye on the ground and see in a strange and deep tableau the two old maids sewing, the long naked table, the coffeepot beneath a quilted cosy, the dirt, the scattered cuttings — the sewing machine activated by Henriqueta’s sluggish foot would buzz in the air, seem to shake the dust and soft light all around it. Virgínia would get up in a thrust pressing her angry lips with the back of her hand and the room would ring out with the power of her steps. Henriqueta was shouting from downstairs in a voice that always seemed agitated by a constant tremor:
“The house is falling, Virgínia . . .”
One morning — the day had begun rainy and the drops of water were flowing behind the windowpane — she went down late for breakfast, pale and inexpressive, with that resigned and haughty look that the days with the cousins had lent her. Arlete looked at her for an instant. And suddenly for no reason as if with effort she’d hardly been able to contain herself, she said to her in a low voice, roughly:
“And why don’t you sew with us?”
Henriqueta stopped short, frightened, coffeepot in hand:
“Arlete, Arlete . . .”
Virgínia was looking at them mute . . . So . . . so . . . they . . . , she was saying to herself dizzy with rage, so they were wanting to drag her, subject her . . . wanting . . .
“I don’t know how to sew!” she shot at them with smothered violence.
Arlete and Henriqueta looked at each other with exaggerated surprise and immediately as if they couldn’t dis
guise how comical it was.
“But teach yourself!” screamed Arlete raising her crippled chest.
Virgínia went pale, narrowed her darkened eyes. My God, where was all that strength coming from, she’d always been calm . . . At that moment she was hating the two old ladies with such pleasure that submerged in a dark extraordinary sensation of profundity and sin she answered any old thing, yes, yes . . .
And so she was forced to sit and embroider with them. Her clumsy hands would attack the stitches crudely, eyes looking at the window. Henriqueta would tactfully undo her knots and give her the cloth again. Arlete would observe her with narrow eyes, her sickly face enlivened with joy. Even if Virgínia went pale from hunger lunch and dinnertime would not be altered. When the clock would strike one in the afternoon, Henriqueta would stand up, place her sewing on the chair and slowly set out for the tall cupboard that was lost in shadows. She would open its drawers and pull out some small foods, cold and odorless. Coffee was brought from the kitchen and smothered with a strange bonnet that seemed to look and smile, thick with dust. The sewing room itself smelled of wet dust, mold, new fabric, and coffee with cold sweet potato. Virgínia would get up from lunch starving and nauseated, feeling her uncontrollable and young body demanding full of outrage. Yet she was growing older, losing her colors, and was a woman.
On Sunday afternoon they didn’t work, the house would stay silent — Henriqueta would sit in the depths of the backyard, hands folded, resting. Virgínia had gone to the little garden. The wilted plants would remind her of the luxuriance of the Farm and she’d breathe deeply, her face turned toward a direction that seemed to her to be the way back. But the city . . . where was the city? She’d feel inside herself a kind of life that made her disgusted with herself, constant sighs of impatience and all that mixed with a real hunger that was more violence than hunger — she was thinking about food with a power that she would have liked to unleash on Arlete. Arlete . . . It sometimes seemed to her that Arlete was then her reason for waiting. There was a grudging union between them as if Virgínia too were a renovation for the old maid. Both spoke to each other with small words quick and oblique and were delighted, heads lowered hiding their eyes. Standing in the garden Virgínia would recall her dealings with Arlete and from her pleasure would be born the certainty of a growing decay of a depravation that in the end, beneath the warmth of the sun on her uncovered head and on the grayish plants, would come together in a movement of dismay in which hunger would break out again with a new urging. Bending over to pick up a dry stick she felt with a start that someone was lingering with indecision at the door to the house. She turned around quickly — Arlete. She laughed with triumph. The old maid was staring at her. Arlete!
“Come into the sun,” she said to her with a certain rudeness.
Arlete was leaning against the wall, her thin body beneath the black Sunday dress, washed, faded; talc stained her ashen and glum face — her thin hair was tied back in damp braids. And since she didn’t answer, her shining eyes looking at Virgínia with coldness, Virgínia didn’t hold back and in a voluptuous and daring movement murmured to her:
“You’re afraid you can’t stand . . .”
The other woman wasn’t answering. And since the situation had become very strange and a new and sincere reality was coming to the fore Virgínia added a bit frightened:
“It sure is hot out here . . .”
“Yes,” Arlete finally answered. “The plants got burned.”
“Look,” whispered Virgínia slow and pale, “I’m leaving, I’m hungry, you know what hungry means. I’ve paid my rent without fail and I haven’t seen food since I don’t know how long. That’s not right — just for the miserable attic to have to pay almost all the little money I have . . . And to top it off that rubbish about having to sew.”
Arlete wasn’t surprised.
“You came because you wanted to,” she said simply.
“And I’m leaving because I want to,” screamed Virgínia going up the cracked cement steps, going through the door and feeling on her arm for an instant Arlete’s hard body. When she was reaching trembling the middle of the room, near the stairs that would lead her to her room, she heard Arlete moan, turned around and saw her grabbing with both hands the ridiculous bulge in her chest as if she wounded:
“What happened,” asked Virgínia suddenly terrorized.
The other woman looked at her with attention and intensity.
“You hit me . . . You know that I’m weak and you hit me.”
Stupefied Virgínia looked at her. No one who saw them would suspect the ferocious understanding between them. The moment blew into her body a sure and dizzying drive to push her really and she closed her eyes getting a grip on herself. Another second and she’d do it. Her lips white and burning, she held herself back nevertheless because she realized that Daniel wouldn’t understand her and she wouldn’t know how to explain.
“You hit me,” the other was repeating in a rude victory.
“But you . . . you . . . are a bitch!” she screamed at her, “a lying bitch!” — and that discharge as if faded away her fear and shame, a cold sweat wet her forehead, she felt the brutality of those terms that belonged to the Farm, to the open field but not to the city, she looked at the old lady, yes, the old lady at whom she’d thrown the insult and who was waiting openmouthed with surprise, yellow teeth on display . . . Biting her lips she ran up the stairs and the house trembled with her. She spent the night wide awake packing her suitcases, disguising a feeling of horror and fear that was rising in her chest and that was threatening to toss her outside of comprehension. The day had hardly dawned when she went down the staircase asleep, crossed the vacant unreal light of the living room waking up, opened the door, received the fresh morning wind; looked for a taxi as she hurried along, her eyes tired — it felt to her that she’d lied and finally woken up, freeing herself of her feelings. When she returned she found no one in the living room; yet she got the feeling that someone had messed with her things upstairs and that they knew she was leaving. With relief she wouldn’t have to say goodbye. She went down the stairs dragging her baggage, reached the front door without running into the old ladies, got into the taxi; when the small door closed and the car started to move she leaned her forehead onto her hands and shaken by a sob of joy kept repeating to herself strangely, she who’d never turned to her family: mother, mother, what has your daughter come to! that was calming her down. She entered a creamery with her suitcases, asked for a coffee, milk, cookies, cakes, she was eating eager and sensitive as after a punishment, eating and suffering stopping sometimes to hold back a kind of pain that was rising through her body up to her throat and that she was disguising with a smile, her eyes burning, dusky.
She’d moved to the boardinghouse; she was going through the dark, dirty, and vague memory of the boardinghouse while leaning against the wall, escaping, running with her heart pale from relief to take refuge in the memory of the apartment where she’d finally ended up. It was a new building, a narrow box of damp cement, thin and tall, with square windows. Yes, it had been a very sad period and without words, without friends, without anyone with whom she could exchange quick and friendly insights. The impression that she was alone in the world was so serious that she was afraid to go beyond her own understanding, to rush into what. It would be easy, with no one beside her and without a model of life and thought by which to guide herself. She discovered that she didn’t have good sense, that she wasn’t armed with any past and with any event that she could use as a beginning, she who had never been practical and had always lived improvising without a goal. Nothing of what had happened to her until now and not even any previous thought were committing her to a future, her freedom was growing, pensive, by the instant, cold air invading and sweeping an empty room. Her life was made of one day putting on her dress inside out and saying with curious surprise as if when hearing some news: wow, that hasn’t hap
pened to me for such a long time, wow. She wanted to stay busy with little things that would fill her days, she was seeking but had lost the lithe charm of childhood, she’d broken with her own secret. Yet she was getting more and more meticulous. Before putting out a cigarette she’d think about whether she should. Then she’d even feel the need to tell someone about it somehow and didn’t know how. It would seem to her then that she was swallowing the little fact but that it would never entirely dissolve inside her. She’d work at her day tolerating it deeply. One afternoon, when her money was starting to run out, she took a piece of cheese from a store without paying, without stealing — the cashier noticed nothing, she put the catch as if forgetfully into her red purse, walked out slowly, alone in the world, her heart beating hollow and clean inside her chest, a painful squeezing in her head, almost a thought. She got home, sat down, and remained motionless for a while. She wasn’t hungry. And the little money she had would allow for buying some groceries until her allowance came from her father. So why had she stolen? She was unwrapping the piece of cheese, starting by biting it slowly. The cheese was white, full of holes, and old, the kind that’s only good for grating and strewing over pasta, ah, the kind you use on pasta . . . She started to cry, her lips cold, without innocence. She went to the dresser, looked at herself in the mirror, saw her red face, anxious and sad. She started crying again then without thinking about the cheese, feeling herself profoundly silent, without managing to drag a single thought out of herself. Sitting, she was looking at the kettle. Her small kettle on the windowsill, shining where it met the dusty and opaque blinds; throughout the little room the muffled air was holding back the fire as when it’s sunny outside and someone closes himself up in the shade. A dark chair was reflected in the paunch of the kettle, convex, stretched, motionless. Virgínia kept looking at it. The kettle. The kettle. There it was shining, blind. Wanting to expel herself from the mute astonishment into which she’d slid, one of those deep meditations into which she’d sometimes fall, she pushed herself brutally: say something, say it. It seemed to her that she ought to halt now in front of the kettle and figure it out. She was forcing herself to look at it deeply but she’d either cease to see it as in a swoon or she wouldn’t see anything but a kettle, a blind kettle shining. Through the numerous closed walls a clock caught in an apartment sounded inside the little room stirring in the air a certain dust — yes, yes, she was thinking in a sudden whirl of joy, relief, and anguished hope as she dangled her crossed leg for an instant and stayed quiet. She would like to connect with the people in the building but by herself was unable to approach strangers; and meanwhile she was starting to look more like a spinster every day; an appearance of good behavior, of serene and dignified withdrawal. But sometimes she’d lose her grip and talk too much, eyes open, mouth full of saliva, surprised, drunk, afflicted, and with a certain vanity about herself that would arrive hot with humiliation. She’d write long letters to Daniel, sometimes in a single vivid and grim burst. She’d reread them with contentment before sending them and it seemed to her that they were truly inspired because though they discussed reality she hadn’t noticed it at the time she was dealing with it. She’d doubt whether they were sincere since what she felt had never been as harmonious as what she was telling him, but syncopated and almost fake. No, it wasn’t unhappiness that she was feeling, unhappiness was a moist thing on which someone could feed for days and days finding pleasure, unhappiness was the letters. She started taking a base and voluptuous pleasure in writing them and since she’d send them as soon as they were written and try to remember them in vain, she thought of copying them, which would fill her days. She’d reread them and really weep as if weeping over someone who wasn’t her. How insufferable was that new sensation that was overtaking her, anxious, petty, luxuriating. Between the letters what she’d feel was suffocating and dusty, unbreathable, in a flurry of sand and strident sounds. But was she being sincere in writing to Daniel? Don’t lie, don’t lie — she was inventing — accept the thing as it was, dry, pure, daring — she was trying out the feeling; for a while she’d lose the need to be friendly though she really didn’t have anyone to be friendly to. And when she’d reach that arid purity she didn’t know that she was seeking with seriousness the true things without finding a thing. What would make her despair distantly was in most cases the uselessness of her lucidity; what to do with the fact of listening in the garden to a man refer to his journey and, looking at the ring on his finger, figuring out with a calm clairvoyance — and one that could be mistaken — that he must have visited a place with women and that he kept discussing business and his wife? what to do with that? She wasn’t seeing what she needed but what she was seeing. She didn’t want to force herself to take a walk, go to movie theaters but without compelling herself her day was dizzyingly aimed at that unknown past and, placid, she’d keep herself in an unhappy silence of acts. — And hadn’t it been by compelling herself that she’d gone out once and met Vicente again? rebinding the vague acquaintance perhaps forever. At that time it was already easy to love. Love really was old, the idea had been exhausted at the beginning of her life in the city; she was already feeling experienced and calmed by the long meditation of waiting. She was remembering the first night. Vicente’s body leaning on her shoulder was weighing like earth; for him it had never been tragic to live. A bit before she’d tried to joke around, asked him to lend her his glasses; in the middle of everything, she’d thought then not looking at him quickly, in the middle of everything he’s afraid I’ll break his glasses. And that had given her a certain resignation about the rest. — So who could she hang around with? Who if not the doorman. She’d stop to chat a bit at the main entrance of the building, on the wide street with few trees where the general staircase ascended. Then she’d turn the corner, take a few steps into the little narrow and rustling street, open her own door, with her own almost vertical staircase that ended in the bedroom, the sitting room, the bathroom, and the tiny kitchen. She’d stay at the window observing the long and poorly made street, a hard and bushy tree shivering; she could make out the construction sites rising on the corner. The doorman was a dark and thin man, married and with two children. He told her how he’d got the job. The owner thought that even in a poor building you had to keep up morality. Really families were asking: do proper people live here? And that had been why, he’d repeat as a shy excuse, he’d told Virgínia right at the start — as he did with all the tenants, with all the tenants — that it was forbidden to bring visitors of the opposite sex to the apartments, except brothers or fathers, of course. He wore his belt low and loose, had small eyes, close together. He’d tell her how he lived, how he’d gone to the movies, how he had a little garage at home, of which he’d made an “Office.” Only on Sundays did he go home substituted by a hasty and asthmatic old man who wasn’t unpleasant but who somehow didn’t want anyone’s friendliness. Miguel and Virgínia liked each other; since the nights were long for both of them he’d sometimes come up for a cup of coffee. She’d arrange the sitting room with joy as if playing seriously, one day she even bought some flowers. He’d sit and while she was making coffee in the kitchen they’d talk louder without seeing each other, hearing with pleasure and attention their own voices. She’d come in with the tray, both would bring chairs to the table and drink the strong and fresh coffee with a concerned pleasure, exchanging glances of approval. When winter came and rains fell, night in the apartment was good and warm with a young man sitting drinking coffee. She inquired suddenly frightened: