“Ridiculousness is so nice, isn’t it?” she managed with sudden strength to bring herself together with the right words, discreetly elbowing Vicente’s back, feeling again a disturbance that was bringing her extraordinarily close to the fact of being a woman, of having lived, a sensation of herself. — “It’s so nice sometimes, isn’t it?” — the wine was making her light for herself, Vicente looked at her surprised, withdrew his body with delicateness as if he needed to direct it to the chair he was leaning on, maybe she should shake him, say to him: you don’t recognize me, you don’t know who I am, you don’t remember? but he smiled at her a little with his eyes, exactly enough to take away her strength; he’d always make sure “the thing” couldn’t be used; now, after that half-smile, though both knew it was fake, she couldn’t shake him, tell him who she was, not even with a glance; but ridiculousness was funny, Daniel would approve. And she knew how to walk between the beautiful dark furnishings with her white dress, she was understanding them at a glance, seeing with closed eyes her own harmony with things in a perception that was coming from outside in through a grace conceded by strange vibrations. Scanning the room with her eyes it became clear, as if it explained the whole night, it became clear that she didn’t like Adriano; he awoke in her an unease and surprise like the warning you get when faced with an evil nature. He’s my friend, Vicente was saying succinct and curt, interrupting some question that she was posing leaning over him, her eyes blinking in a curiosity that he detested. She didn’t like him. For an amazing reason — she discovered excitedly at that very instant — because he’d been nearby when she’d met Vicente . . . and that had excluded him. But . . . no, no it couldn’t be that . . . But yes, it really was. Sometimes Adriano would help her imperceptibly to live. Across from her, for example, in some mysterious way Vicente seemed to be more interested in her. And Virgínia’s attitude was a difficult understanding of that favor. She looked at him. He himself was cold and delicate — yes, his hands were cold — and was observing her with an attention that nonetheless didn’t wound her. As if for that reason inexplicably when she was with him she emphasized herself rude and ironic trying with a certain astonishment and pleasure to show herself to be worse than she was, chewing with her mouth open at dinner, even like now scratching her head, with a dark joy.
“Your flowers might fall,” he was saying.
“Ah . . . thank you, my dear, Vicente gave them to me.”
“I know. I was with him when they were bought.”
Oh really? and now she was becoming aware that, without Adriano, Vicente would never remember to send flowers. Yes — and she disguised the intensity of her gaze containing herself, red — she needed to establish forever that they couldn’t stand each other. Just as she and Daniel’s wife mustn’t tolerate each other. She stared at him without however managing to contain that bemused impulse that was coming from the little man. Small, clean, and slim he was expanding a dry light around him. He didn’t seem to have come from any place in particular; when he’d say goodbye his hand with bright fingernails would cut invisible connections and when detached he didn’t seem to go exactly anywhere. The little man, she called him. Without being very tall she nonetheless seemed to surpass him and that humiliated her; but he wouldn’t let on that he’d noticed. Instead of sensuality like Vicente — she looked at Vicente who was laughing taking off his glasses and cleaning them with a handkerchief — instead of sensuality he seemed to have a quiet persistence. When they were sitting around a table in a bar he didn’t give the impression of participating but of waiting, without leaning his thin body on the back of the chair, smiling with regular and clean teeth; he’d pay the bill, nobody ever objected, he was rich and above all had something impossible to hold back in his light and direct approaches. He didn’t smoke and drank quickly. With unease Virgínia would watch Vicente let him pay, inviting him whenever they went out — placing the little man between the two tall ones. And above all Vicente’s joyful and voluptuous manner, as if infantilized, when he was with Adriano, making observations and living with buoyancy near the other who would listen without ferocity, watching with that strange absence of confusion of his. What he didn’t have within him was sleep.
Within her was the concern to laugh whenever it was necessary and that gave him an afflicted face like that of a deaf man’s, Adriano was thinking with a painstaking look as if finding something among the sands of the beach; but that difficulty in following the lecture, a tendency toward a certain calm inexpression as if she were then thinking about nothing; the most he could surprise in her was a certain sincerity that was unconscious but not childish; as if
