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 worrying 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
