And what she knew within undeniable reality is that, now, sitting with everyone on the sofas, she was saying: ah yes!, I think so too, thanks, smiling, seeing Vicente tall, strong, and friendly curiously living independent of her, feeling in her legs a benevolent heat; and where, where was her sweet power? now she was feeling inside herself a metallic and harsh insect, of stinging flight. And where was her own brand on Vicente’s face; one of the guests was saying while smoking:
“. . . and it was at that same time that I read The Problem of . . .”
. . . she in vain sought some spot in her body that might attest to the reading of The Problem of . . . And inside herself — who would have thought that that insignificant creature had just felt like someone who had to hold herself back in order not to be loved by everyone? and who would have thought that the white dress, the dinner, the flowers were a high point in her days. She was paying attention to the conversations trying now to show that she was intelligent and different. What was enriching her was knowing obscurely that by saying: “it was I who did” instead of “it was me who did” would impede intimacy, earn a certain calm way of being looked at. She was feeling indecisive among all those people who were so natural, so well-dressed, their teeth shining. Sometimes she would remember herself dressed in white and in a light stiffening she’d straighten up; that was the most intimate sensation of the party. She was also remembering the Farm, her unkempt mother walking through the middle of the house with neither pleasure nor strength. She was remembering Esmeralda with her fancy clothes, her eyes tender and impatient. Her father, silent, dominating the house and unheeded, going up the stairs. And Daniel now, how to recall him? it was darkened inside him the way she would look at him. She was remembering the days spent in the small apartment, that familiar feeling of tired and expectant misery that she in an end-point of degradation was coming to love getting emotional.
The door opened once again and Maria Clara entered.
The furniture was becoming intelligible, the arrangement of the greenish room quaked beneath the light, a vase of flowers began — even those who were still seated were headed in her direction. What was making her difficult was the crystalline part of her body: her eyes, her saliva, her hair, her teeth and dry nails that were sparkling and isolating. Maria Clara was drinking, her lips blood-red and opaque, the cold shine on her skin and her silken neck; she was greeting people with a half-smile, her pupils open without fear. In Vincent’s pupils the smiling black was always mixed with a certain haste — nothing essential had been attained with his love . . . — that was the impression. Yet he was laughing through his eyeglasses like a grown-up student. Maria Clara’s pink camel-hair dress was reminding her of a motionless river and the motionless leaves of engravings. With a movement of her leg, with the breathing of her breasts the river would move, the leaves flutter. How clean and brushed she was. Except unlike the other women she was forgetting that she’d put on perfume and done her hair and like a child was playing without worrying about getting dirty. Her intimacy was rich and impassable, a secret life filled with details, whereas Virgínia could almost live publicly, beneath a tree. With Virgínia you’d never risk overstepping boundaries and ridiculously trespassing over what was permitted — her intimacy even if violated didn’t seem to be possessed, useless to inhale her perfume, see her clean underwear, watch her bathe; only she herself would use her surroundings. Poor Esmeralda, embroidering chambray trousers, burning perfumes in her bedroom, her body exacerbated like a lemon — her femininity was almost repugnant to another woman. Whereas Maria Clara had more humid thoughts, she kept that mysterious and dry quality, clear as a number. It was horrible to feel how nice she was. Pretty, mutable, weak, intelligent, understanding, brutish, selfish, there was no point pretending she wasn’t lovely, she would penetrate in your heart like a sweet knife. The thin, confident women were chatting — they seemed easy for the men and hard for the women; and why didn’t they have kids? my God, how disconcerting that was. And if they did they treated them like friends, yes, like friends. She remembered that one day she’d seen Irene at the entrance to a cinema with her son, yes, yes, now she was remembering. He was a red-headed, thin boy, the kind who didn’t get surprised and who’d be joyful and hapless when he was a teenager. But you aren’t unlikable either, honey. She was surprised by the worn-out affection and was touched in her solitude almost to the point of crying. She was careful nevertheless with a fearful self-confidence never to go beyond certain liberties with herself because whatever there was that remained unexplored could lead her to lose
