The Chandelier

a medium pitch. How easy everything is with drink, Vicente — otherwise how could she be doing so well, feeling the shine of her own eyes floating between her and other objects? an almost indecent impression in her legs sweetened by wine. They were living off the knowledge they had, using whatever could be used. Irene was shimmering above the dark fabric, her husband’s bald spot was happy to ask: aren’t you feeling a draft?, though a bit sad, Irene was attentive, eager, lively, and tough with her short hair whereas he was more made of people. All his life he must have been a son, a brother. And now a father. All of them, including the women, had some specialty in their character, their past or their job — and it was through that specialty that they were addressing one another and laughing. They were speaking about their own difficulties with pleasure. Only Maria Clara, whose stories she would be happy to hear, wasn’t referring to her job of painting flowers on clay pitchers and exhibiting them in salons where she invited friends, only Maria Clara with her slightly wide face, the broad circles of the lilac, painless bags under her eyes, was smoking even at table, damp teeth on display. Vicente, where’s Vicente?! like a child who wakes up in the night sitting in the dark, calling mommy, mommy, scratching its body with sleepy hands. There he was! he was embarrassed by her not being like him, ah mystery — Vicente headed toward Irene’s body and Maria Clara with that controlled reverence used with women not yet possessed: a respect, Virgínia was thinking absorbed, as if he thought that possessing them made them unworthy. But no, no: the same word that now had almost been spoken inside her, mystery, would explain it. Feminine mystery, mystery of a woman whose son in the striped pajamas was now sleeping, mystery of a woman who without such shiny lipstick might not be able to laugh out loud throwing her smooth head back in a laugh or in a fatigue — and while her head was still thrown back and her throat was shuddering in laughter, her eyes surely were starting to think about something else that certainly was far away because she would cock an almost tense ear in space. Without preventing her laughter from reaching its own conclusion:

“Oh no!” said Maria Clara shaking her head, laughing with her slightly big and pronounced teeth sparking with saliva. But Virgínia didn’t want to notice them, she was heading toward a conclusion to the feeling, getting upset: not big, she thought hurting herself and observing Vicente’s smiling gaze, but bright, fine. It was horrible to feel that she was so penetrating and to know that if Vicente were not attracted by her existence, she herself, Virgínia, would despise him, happy. If he fled toward that fat woman she wouldn’t suffer and wouldn’t take him back . . . yes, she thought with a disguised surprise, yes, she’d at last be free. If he went to Maria Clara she’d wait suffering and take him back upon his return. She was feeling her unhappiness grow by the instant. At the same time she was smiling as if it were calm to endure it. With a deep feeling of irony that could never rise to her lips as a smile, through a deep feeling of irony and self-martyrdom she thought about the two of them with tenderness, delivering one to the other and at the same time despising them with a sincerity that freed her from them. She wanted to see them together and happy and her repulsion for Vicente grew as he was laughing and smoking at the dinner table — so this was the man with whom . . . She drank a glass of sweet and acid needles that rose through her nose. Drunk, drunk, she was saying to herself with hot shame, smiling now. She was surprised that no wish to do foolish things was coming to her; the most she desired was to say low and mysterious, almost with fury, to all the particles of that warm, intimate, and shining air: farewell, farewell. And in that there was a captive anguish, a dark and opaque blot.

“Thank you, I’ll have another glass . . . ah of course . . . ,” she said shaking her body with the politeness of someone expecting a tip.

“Virgínia,” laughed Vicente, “you don’t think it’s too much . . .”

He had a way of speaking with her in public . . . Clear and cold, for everyone to hear, play a role in and for nothing to be settled between them. Nothing essential had been reached with her love, nothing?! Maria Clara had been possessed by many things, hence her mature and satiated appearance; she’d tried everything lightly, very full, her manner relaxed and tired. But suddenly her face was starting to grow more refined, slightly passive and desperate, very innocent as if it were trying to isolate itself inside itself. Some thought was giving her a surrendered look, her mouth was transforming into an almost-ugly and intimate expression as if she were alone. Yet you couldn’t trust her and be forward because that same gesture was coming together in a calm and free woman who painted flowers on clay pitchers. Maria Clara was laughing, becoming more vulgar, older and more attractive and Virgínia, part serious and part scared, was clinging to the sound of her laughter. She was more and more afraid of growing fascinated by her as she’d been by Daniel in childhood and becoming her slave. Yet Maria Clara wouldn’t even give her orders and needed Virgínia so little that she offended her. With his lips wet with butter her neighbor for the first time spoke to her:

“Beautiful dinner, don’t you think?”

She looked at him fixedly, protractedly, running her eyes over his lips — asked with hardness and rough joy despite having heard:

“What . . .” — but the moment dissolved and she inquired with delicateness — “What?”

Between