structure and he had been thrown into the center of the woman, there where was pulsing the blood of the world. That was the secret of life, then. She was then loving Vicente just as the days run. In fact she was going astray from any desire and her only refuge was the pure thoughts of humanity, the serene dry things, compact — the construction sites near which she would stop short in the streets like a pregnant woman gripped by a weird desire and a new sensibility. At that time she had no sooner eaten than she’d seem repulsed by the food in which still pulsed the memory of a previous life. Without knowing, she’d repeat to herself as in a perfect prayer: whitewash iron sand silence and purify herself in that absence of man and God. Encouraging words, honesty, the need to get close to intelligent and noble people, the need to be happy, almost the need to speak before dying, all of that would seem to lift her through space as if she were bearing a rush of smooth air beneath her body and she herself were a frightened, grateful, tired bubble, “arranging her life in the best possible way.” At the moment when the rush would stop — and would it ever stop? she didn’t know that she was wondering while moving through disgust and through darkness — she would fall violently in-what, suddenly walking fast after the fall, guiding herself without wasting time to make up for the lost life, guiding herself to-where, eyes open, alive, without cruelty toward herself and without pity or pleasure because she would no longer need to punish herself, without a single word, that was it, without a single one, by God, washed as if after a great rage. To free herself from maternity, from love, from intimate life and in the face of other people’s expectations to refuse, to land hard and closed like a rock, a violent rock, who cares about the rest — as she knew how to be Daniel, without even knowing with precision what she was thinking, feeling darkly resentful. Only the first time had she really liked the sea; later she was uneasy so she’d lean against the wall to look at it, forcing herself be moved. She’d feel like a liar, without thoughts but as if she were touching something dirty, her shriveled soul was avoiding, avoiding. Every once in a while, breaking her fear, she was liking it again so strongly that that made her as if forever comprehensible to herself. Amidst these new feelings she’d find herself in some way close to Daniel. But against what? her fake power was waning with disappointment and slowly a troubled sadness was overtaking her, she wanted to rejoin right now the movement shared by everyone, being happy with them, accusing-offended very quickly with humility, without any power so that nobody could refuse her now, quickly, after she in a thoughtless gesture had sought, crazy, to free herself.
Daniel had taken Rute to Upper Marsh and they married there. Virgínia hadn’t gone to the wedding; simply, without a fuss, she told Daniel without looking him straight in the face, she’d understood that she didn’t need to go and had stayed in the city not like someone saying: I’m staying; she’d remained behind without remembering to go or stay. Father knew she was studying; and who knows? she might find a husband. But she didn’t know anyone besides the old cousins, Vicente barely existed, she’d stayed in the city alone, in the bedroom suspended on a third floor. That had been when she’d gone through a period, yes, you certainly could call it very sad. Suddenly like a vein that starts to pulse she’d started living the reality of the apartment abandoned by Daniel and as if empty of herself because her narrow movements and her frayed life weren’t enough to fill the quarters with noise and confusion. Until she had the recollection to accept living with the two cousins. On that morning she got ready, washed, packed her suitcases with the dark permission to enter at last the boarding school with which they’d threaten her when she was small. She hired a taxi and blowing her nose cast one more look toward the square, bright, and old building where she and Daniel had for the last time been brother and sister. The car was bouncing, the suitcases were threatening to fall on her and injure her — she was thinking about how she’d taken care of the apartment for Daniel, of how she would wait for him for supper, of how that memory now had strangeness and little familiarity and how she now was rushing into some thing so new like a new body and where she wasn’t feeling she would exist for much time. With secret horror, pensive, she was seeing herself more and more similar in a certain way to Esmeralda — imitating the destiny of their mother; the old car was finally entering the dusty street. Morning was rising. Soon she’d see that poor house that she had only visited quickly afraid it was contagious, just twice in all the time she’d been in the city. It was one of those houses where you’d try to sit on the edge of the chair, where you’d catch yourself trying not to touch the flower vases and drinking carefully a glass of water only halfway to the bottom. There was in the somber and by no means extraordinary rooms something that would stand out and alarm because it contained an involving and unfamiliar intimacy — like a strangers’ dirty bathtub where you had to strip and abruptly place yourself in contact. Her cousins Arlete and Henriqueta increasingly seemed to her an error and a lie — now that she was getting so close to their reality. Poverty and age. She rang the bell as if arriving from a long journey. Good, now the fun was
