The Chandelier

  “One has the impression that one has known someone for quite some time upon seeing them for the first time, when one manages at a glance to perceive the harmony of their features with their soul” — that had been more or less what he’d said explaining to her the reason he’d felt attracted to her person. But something didn’t let him carry on in that tone. And a few minutes later, at the first opportunity he’d transformed himself, trying another approach, asking smiling about some phrase: “and you? how much do you know? . . .” expecting the smiling, mischievous answer of someone who gets it. With a clumsy and quickly disguised start he watched her respond with mystery and seriousness, almost ridiculous, making him blush and not know which direction to impress upon his bothered eyes:

  “I myself don’t know.”

  And when he’d decided that everything was impossible and resigned himself without the least pain, the situation much later figured itself out with ease, and this time more serious he watched her, simple, surrendering to him with little emotion. He himself still didn’t know how everything had slid into that state. One day he’d run into her on the street, they’d walked together a little way without having much to say, the beginning of the mischief that they’d started off more than a year before seemed very much to have ended. The conversation had been spinning, spinning, they’d said goodbye without regret as if forever, with a certain unease. And two days after that meeting, they, who before hadn’t seen each other for so long, ran into each other again with surprise as they were crossing the street, he was grabbing her arm avoiding a car, whisking her away pulling her by the elbow as if hoisted onto the sidewalk, she was looking like a scared chicken whose wing someone was trying to tear off, they were laughing a little at the coincidence and looking at each other attentively while laughing. He’d walked with her through the streets, they’d sat down in a garden. With a certain irony toward himself and with a daring lacking great pleasure he’d invited her back to his apartment, she’d accepted, came quickly, returned another day without his having invited her, the conversation was spinning on, spinning without much point. And afterward when he’d think about her his eyebrows would furrow, his eyes would drift amused, comfortable, and cheerful. The way she’d say while looking out the window: there’s a smell of swimming in the sea, at first didn’t make him lose patience. He’d try to correct her: swimming in the sea doesn’t smell, if you really want to say sea smell instead of salt air, which would be correct. But she, though she didn’t answer back, took on a silent and impenetrable expression. And now, for example, why wasn’t she coming? He thought that actually he’d never come looking for her, that he could have gone to her building, asked the doorman; he shrugged with a curious gaze. He wanted to see her face again and since before he’d thought of Adriano, he saw a mixture of Adriano with others and in the background just a vacant fleeting face of Virgínia’s, a plea whisked off by memory. Could it be that for me she’s a “person”? How glum and untidy she was at Irene’s dinner. With Vera, everything so brief, yet she wasn’t even “she” inside him when he’d remember her. He’d think about Vera with a small internal signal, with something that pointed her out without wounding her with a word. And when he’d speak of her with someone he’d do so with difficulty and repugnance, pronouncing: Vera, with hardness, coldness. Virgínia was always Virgínia — he felt as if they’d robbed her, saw her then with clarity, her brown eyes, her delicate nose, that indecision in her face as if she might be frightened; almost with emotion as if he were staring at an old portrait. He felt sympathy for Virgínia, that feeling that was making him a bit ashamed of himself, that same sympathy that made his sister say to him: you’re so good, Vicente! When she’d come today with big open eyes, smiling without power, he’d have to get up very quickly and — not stretch out his arms, of course — but say: darling, you took forever! which was true. Yes, yes, it was true. He was already seeing her looking right at him pleased. Pleased? would she be pleased? or surprised . . . or what? Virgínia . . . she’d laugh. No. Right now he was wanting her to come in also to see her reacting, living. He paced a little excited: why didn’t she just come? That was when an instant of astonishment and raw solitude attacked him, ah, he squeezed his flank bending over, the feeling of amazed tang when biting into an unripe fruit — ah, that side, for an instant life was losing its careful everyday meaning, his singed face was spinning showing a fresh, new, terribly incomprehensible surface — he clenched with one of his hands and with his whole life his right side where the pain had developed into a moving arrow; he tolerated it with closed eyes, his pale mouth shut: that’s where death would come from one day: his grandmother had died from the same side, his father had died from the same side, he’d die from the same, something shrinking into an unknown liver. Gradually the pang faded. He slackened his lips, cracked his eyes; took off his glasses, his whole physiognomy transformed without them, he acquired an innocent and silly look like a child’s; blinking he wiped his wet forehead with a handkerchief, gave a sigh of relief that recalled a gasp; in that instant father, mother, siblings, and women were lost, he was looking around his naked body at the nascent world. A few moments more and a calm and inexplicable power would overtake him again; he was lighting another cigarette, his replaced glasses giving him with the familiar sensation the old train of thought. He vaguely noted it, thought: what would I be without them. But why wasn’t she coming — the longer she took the harder it would be because he would have lost the urge. The reborn impatience tired his heart — once again that sharp certainty that today was the anniversary of something difficult and heavy. He was astonished that he’d agreed to spend the day so alone . . . When he was small he’d answer: I am too lazy to be alone. So if she wasn’t coming yet also demanding . . . yet also expecting him to say . . . Oh yes, he drove her off quickly. That was it. No, no, not quite that either . . . He smiled inexplicable, lighting another cigarette.

  Later then she came in the white party dress . . . the hat with the wide brim atop her long face . . . she was halting for an instant with pleasure trying watchfully to arise in a vision . . . for what? as if commemorating the day . . . Vera popped up in his memory dressed in white. Something bristled inside his body. And when he looked at Virgínia’s pale cheeks, her as if childlike lips, that calm manner, he felt that it would be absurd to say anything in a different tone. Despite everything, wanting to try he said out of sympathy:

  “That sure took a long time, Virgínia!”

  She replied in a delicate tone, almost flowery:

  “You know how those buses are.”

  Smiling. For what? then as if that were more than he could stand, almost the most understandable moment of the day, he sketched a gesture of loss and despair that at first vague immediately became conscious and excessive. And since she was looking at him with open eyes, he thought: but my God! really it was more than he could stand after that day and he could almost say it was setting off a kind of sob, not tears, by God, helping himself with the memory of his dead mother to whom he still felt so bound by a certain forgotten yearning, of the women he’d slept with gathered in a single exclamation, of that day when by working he’d kept busy and let himself stay alone, of the now renewed pleasure of waiting for the future, of his feeling for Virgínia, desperate, enraged, childish the way a man cries, Virgínia noticed. And right after the observation, suddenly stunned, she concluded: he was crying! Unable to come closer, unable to speak, she was looking at him. But what was happening? since everything was so good between them until now . . . they liked each other so much and suddenly . . . She was looking at him. He didn’t know where to turn, his face still disconcerted in the middle of the room, astonished with himself; if he were to interrupt the expression of pain he’d have to transform his physiognomy then and there while Virgínia would observe him silently; if he kept looking bitter he’d be in the middle of the room as if crying, as if naked; why hadn’t he leaned beforehand on a window or sat down hiding his face? but the stro
ngest sensation of that moment was relief: if any woman besides Virgínia saw him in the middle of the room . . . for Virgínia, he was guessing, it was natural to cry and maybe that’s why, with rage at himself and at her, he’d given in to the easy opportunity. A certain peace came rising from some place in his body, maybe from his side; it was a peace with an onset of a good mood, of a light joy, he was feeling like laughing a little and joking about his own stupidity but didn’t know how to tack the laughter onto the previous movement and kept his contrite face on. Virgínia could speak:

  “Vicente, what’s this all about?”

  He detested her for a new, quick, and sparkling second; he saw all the defects of that pale face where the different eyes would always seem indecisive. But once again the warm and dark wave was rising through his chest and since Virgínia was moving a bit closer he clasped her hands and since she gave in, he pulled her close to him, made them both sit down. That still meant: darling, you took so long!, even without reaching out his arms. But there was something light and comical in that scene — he thought of it as if already telling it to someone, to Adriano, and getting from him the vivifying vacancy of his smile; but wondered whether that type of scene wouldn’t be depressing for himself. Right then, with furrowed eyebrows, he’d give quite a lot for an instant of true tragedy because that way he’d rid himself of the weight of that day. Clasping Virgínia’s hands, he realized that for some time he’d been feeling two pieces of cold and rigid flesh between his own hands and looking at her quickly saw a bright face, frigid, luminous and tense, with frozen lips. So he’d scared her that much? so everything really had been that serious? the discovery was worth a proud smile, interested. He immediately felt a more protective inclination than the “he finally exploded” one. But she, with a slight touch — a gesture of holding him back — in a subtle and sudden display of will, showed him that she was still wanting him to stay as he was. And he, surprised to be led exactly by Virgínia, thinking about somehow telling it to Adriano, Adriano who just then was seeming to him to be his hidden power and the only ardent connection in his life, surrendered, kept the same tone in his face, desperate, abandoned. At the same time he wasn’t pretending, on the contrary; something in him was still aching in expectation and his body was burning in a nice desire for nobility, for exaltation, yes, for exalted nobility.