The Chandelier

her own dissolved matter and in the milky and translucent darkness she herself were gliding as a pure fish swinging her serenely resplendent tail. Yes, vicente. She was moving ahead without fear and without hurry, her big limpid eyes closed through herself while the man was moving away with another man inside a taxi through the city accompanied by the way that she was missing both of them squeezing her and insulting her, leaning on her in the back of the car. The neighbor’s clock, suddenly moved, struck three transparent notes on three levels of sound, the first high and scared almost solidifying her in the beginning of a vigil, the second containing itself between the first and the one to come, the last, lower, pacifying, pacifying, each separated from the next and brilliant like diamonds separated from one another and brilliant — but the three notes were liquid and diamonds would never fear breaking in a single confusion; she went on undone in a great thick sea and crossing it filled with a calm that was made of satisfaction, of the feeling in the deep car, of hope, of memories scattering — with a beating of eyelids she was changing the level of her inner existence. A little child dressed in a long nightgown and very slowly was standing like a target at the back of her sight but she was scarcely trying to see her better everything was disappearing into its own sea — she was always experiencing short visions and when she’d close her eyes over her already-closed eyes she’d see in the darkness shapes made of darkness itself. Each little wave was passing on to another like a message: vicente and with each vicente everything was much more real and it would be useless to deny. For a second she was feeling that she was atop the white bed, excessively fast since she wasn’t the one who was feeling it but just a section of her arm pressed beneath the pillow — with each vicente she was sinking more and more into her own nature. And also more, more, almost to the point of seeing from the other side something dusky green lighting up like a lantern that was the immobile memory of a party lantern in Upper Marsh, ah Upper Marsh. One last vicente like a sigh before dying and sleep closed in a single unhappy rock, Virgínia held onto herself like a black stain. She could see no more through the sleep and if she dreamed she’d never know.

These were the moments when she suffered but loved her suffering. She’d go through the day, the necessity of doing little tasks, tidying the bedrooms, waiting, reality and the streets — part-serious, part-anxious, scrutinizing herself and space as if she were already mysteriously linked to Vicente through the distance. Because she’d scarcely woken and she knew that today was a day she’d see him. Perhaps it wasn’t so sudden — she was offering herself the small surprise in order to give herself happiness even at the price of keeping her conscience closed and locked inside there the dark and stimulating lie. The first hours burned out difficult and slow but near ten in the clean morning time was hurrying along happy and fleeting, bright with the day and in a smile she was watching herself moving ahead easy and gentle. She was hardly having lunch, it was hard to cook just for herself and anyway today she’d have a nice dinner with Vicente — she was eating a fruit to satisfy her distant mother. And that’s how she was getting ready to live-daily, eager to transform herself into what she wasn’t in order to get along with things around her. If Vicente had woken up shapeless and abrasive she would keep herself in waiting, her hands delicate, not expressing herself in any direction so that he could change all by himself, free of her existence. If he stayed mute and nervous she’d try to be ample and though she couldn’t quite manage it — neither her slightly absorbed eyes nor her body with little gestures would help that approach — Vicente would notice her effort to appease him; and that so often was enough for him to smile and improve with goodwill.

After lunch she’d quickly tidy the house because by the time she got back it would already be late. It had been hard to get used to the new empty apartment since Daniel had married, gone to the Farm, and she’d had to move. She tolerated a quick shower, she’d always had a certain repugnance toward taking baths; undressing, exposing herself to the jet of blind and excessively happy water frightening the silence. The cold and then drying off with the towel that was never quite dry from the day before in the dirty bathroom where everything that couldn’t be shown in the little living room was squeezed — the longer she lived the more she accumulated useless things that she couldn’t get rid of without pain. After the shower she’d close the windows, shut the kitchen into its old smell of frying, coffee and cockroaches, put on her hat, lock the front door and go out with her red purse in hand — before closing it for good she’d stop for an instant, glance at the already-asleep house, immersed in warm darkness, smile at the things that were already now vacant in a farewell — for a moment she was feeling lightly hesitant and pensive between closing the door and going out gloriously to Vicente’s house and going back in, taking off her so high heels, keeping herself in bed and hearing nothing, absolutely nothing. And if frightened Vicente came looking for her — he never would — she’d announce with closed eyes, intense: I died, I died, I died. But that was just a second of swirling error because in an immediate truth she was pulling the door toward herself with