The Chandelier

communicating with the world through windows without curtains. From the high windowpanes you saw besides the garden of tangled plants and dry twigs the long stretch of land of a sad and whispered silence. The dining room itself, the largest room in the mansion, extended below in long damp shadows, almost deserted: the heavy oak table, the light and gilded chairs of an old set of furniture, a console with thin twisted legs, the quick air on the shining latches, and a long sideboard where a few glass and crystal pieces were shimmering translucently in smothered cries, asleep in dust. On the shelf of that fixture lay the washbasin of pink china, the cold water in the half-light refreshing the bottom where a fat, crooked, and sensual angel was struggling, captive. Tall murals were rising from the walls scratching vertical and silent shadows over the floor. On afternoons when wind would roll through the Farm — the women in the rooms, her father at work, Daniel in the forest — on smooth afternoons when a wind full of sun would blow as if over ruins, stripping the walls eaten in the rubble, Virgínia would roam in abandoned brightness. She’d walk while looking, in a serious distraction. It was daytime, the fields were stretching out brightly, without stains and she’d go ahead wakefully. She felt a diffuse nausea in her calm nerves — small and thin, her legs marked by mosquitoes and falls, she’d stop next to the staircase looking. The steps rising sinuously would achieve a firm loveliness so light that Virgínia would lose her perception almost upon grasping it and stop short just ahead seeing only dusty wood and incarnadine velvet, step, step, dry angles. Without knowing why, she’d nonetheless halt, fanning her bare thin arms; she lived on the verge of things. The parlor. The parlor filled with neutral spots. The smell of an empty house. But the chandelier! There was the chandelier. The great spider would glow. She’d look at it immobile, uneasy, seeming to foresee a terrible life. That icy existence. Once! once in a flash — the chandelier would scatter in chrysanthemums and joy. Another time — while she was running through the parlor — it was a chaste seed. The chandelier. She’d skip off without looking back.

At night the parlor was lit up in a flickering and sweet brightness. Two lamps were resting on the buffet available for anyone ready to retire. Before entering the bedroom the light should be put out. At dawn a rooster would sing a clean cross in the dark space — the humid scratch was spreading a cold smell all around, the sound of a little bird was scraping the surface of the half-light without piercing it. Virgínia would hoist her dull senses, her closed eyes. The bloody young cries of the roosters were repeated throughout the neighborhood of Upper Marsh. A red crest would shake in a shiver, while delicate and decided legs were advancing slow steps on the pale floor, the cry was released — and far off like the flight of an arrow another tough and living rooster was opening his ferocious beak and responding — while the still-sleeping ears were awaiting with vague attention. The enraptured and weak morning was radiating outward like a bit of news. Virgínia was getting up, getting into her short dress, pushing open the tall windows of the bedroom, the mist penetrating slow and oppressed; she was dunking her head, her face sweet like that of an animal eating from your hand. Her damp nose was moving, her cold cheek sharpened in brightness was moving forward in a searching, free, and frightened thrust. She could only make out a couple of metal posts from the garden fence. The barbed wire was pointing dryly from inside the frozen fog; the trees were emerging blackly, with hidden roots. She was opening wide eyes. There was the stone streaming with dew. And beyond the garden the land disappearing abruptly. The whole house was floating, floating in clouds, disconnected from Upper Marsh. Even the unkempt brush was moving off pale and still and in vain Virgínia was seeking in her immobility the familiar line; the loose kindling beneath the window, near the ruined entryway arch, was resting neat and lifeless. But then only seconds later the sun was coming out bleached like a moon. Then only seconds later the mists were disappearing with the speed of a scattered dream and the whole garden, the mansion, the plains, the forest were shining even brighter setting off small thin, brittle, still-tired sounds. An intelligent, clear, and dry cold was traversing the garden, blowing itself into the flesh of the body. A cry of fresh coffee was rising from the kitchen mixed with the smooth and breathless smell of wet grass. Her heart was beating in a painful and moist flutter as if pierced by an impossible desire. And the life of the day was beginning puzzled. Her cheek tender and frozen as a hare’s, her lips hard from the cold, Virgínia lingered for a vacant second at the window listening with some spot of her body to the space before her. She was hesitating between disappointment and a difficult charm — like a madwoman the night would lie during the day . . .

Like a madwoman the night would lie, like a madwoman the night would lie — she’d go down the dusty stairs barefoot, her steps warmed by the velvet. They were sitting at the table for breakfast and if Virgínia didn’t eat enough she’d get slapped right then — how nice it was, his flattened hand would quickly fly and crack with a joyful sound on one of her cheeks cooling the somber parlor with the lightness of a sneeze. Her face would awake like an anthill in the sun and then she’d ask for more cornbread, filled with a lie of hunger. Her father would keep chewing, his lips wet with milk, while along with