“In any case smile a little,” Vicente had said playing, “it’s the best stance in the face of life.” He’d always loved to talk about the face of life. She was looking at him inexplicable.
“I cannot laugh,” she’d said trying to be intelligent and serious, and had spoken about something “deep” or “profound.” Vicente’s eyes were slightly shining, amused:
“Ah, so whatever is deep is tragic . . .” — He had the gift of jolting others people’s words by merely repeating them, his lips unhurried, delicate, she’d find out later. “Deep.” She’d looked at him, found it difficult and useless to respond, smiled flirting with exhaustion and excitement. She’d never seen him again, as if forever. Deep was neither tragic nor comic, it was a tree, a fish, she herself — that was the impossible and serene sensation. Her life had gone on as if she hadn’t met anyone. Then lots of time had passed until the door had opened, she’d interrupted some thought forever, forever, had waited with her sewing in her hands, Daniel had said:
“Virgínia, this is my fiancée.”
For long and hollow minutes the room was seeming empty, the house silent and full of wind. But Daniel, Daniel, how could you . . . Above all she barely knew Vicente and love seemed to her unfamiliar, so it meant a sudden break with the past. She was a tall body, well-made and compressed, topped by an oval, hard, and limpid face, a feminine ivory laugh. From the sight of her clothes a memory came to her of the smell of a recently printed magazine, some pages still closed. But Daniel . . . An air of intimate hygiene, of pureness achieved at the price of antiseptics and amidst the difficult conversation that bright and new phrase, new like a new object, that had left a silence of eyes lowered in the air: I was always busy, I never had time to feel bored. Daniel and Virgínia weren’t looking at each other. Perhaps when she grew old, who knows, Virgínia had thought while serving too-strong tea in broken cups, perhaps when she grew old, with some wrinkles and a more concentrated color . . . Yes, yes, who knows? for now she was so horribly free from loving herself. Not like Vicente whom she was just now getting to know. No, he wasn’t free from loving himself, with him love was like the inside of closed eyes, dragged quickly in incomprehension, in dark satisfaction full of unease, she was realizing this now. And he was beautiful, besides. He wore glasses. There were moments in which his lines would become so full as if about to say something — his body was big and strong but as if made of a single newborn muscle flexible with freshness, he could wrap her up like an octopus and yet his flesh was firm and Virgínia could crash into it. Except his eyes were excessively wide, sometimes silly behind the glasses opening a pause in his face, without merging completely into it. And his lips would come together sometimes distracted and floppy in a horrible expression of fullness and abandon, something like a decomposition — she was turning away, her heart beating quickly, wanting to take refuge in the sight of an inanimate thing, ah go quickly into a perfect region where cold is mixed with light. Certain gestures of his, some words were brutally alive and almost blind, rushed him into a slow center of blood and greed, filled her with nausea and dread — where was that intelligent goodness of his face? She would watch him fascinated, her heart hot after a few instants; yet she could barely manage to free her gaze, she would gain an almost painful coldness, her body would stiffen in its fibers as if wanting to escape as much as it could from that warm life underneath bearing a sincere, almost base perfume. — One day Mother was having lunch, she’d received some sad news and was crying while in her teeth you could see bits of what she’d eaten! — oh everything that happens is innocence, at the same time that’s what she was feeling and forgiving. Fullness would stuff her then. If she’d pick up a book she’d find inside it the same viscous movement, souls ingratiating themselves in forgiveness, love seeking love, sacrifices laughing, cowardice and extreme warm pleasure. By God, that was man. Even if she were flipping through an essay on traction machines in a bookstore, in the quality of reasoning she would find feminine and masculine perfume, words falling into line blushing and excited, the path in search of an idea winding around, ascending, living . . . love, love, piety, remorse, kindness permeating even freshness, sticking it inside the same heat. She was now understanding Daniel’s expression, that vaguely terrorized face that he was wearing during the period of nights out from home. Also inside him the tissues would cross in a vegetal
