She’d moved to the boardinghouse; she was going through the dark, dirty, and vague memory of the boardinghouse while leaning against the wall, escaping, running with her heart pale from relief to take refuge in the memory of the apartment where she’d finally ended up. It was a new building, a narrow box of damp cement, thin and tall, with square windows. Yes, it had been a very sad period and without words, without friends, without anyone with whom she could exchange quick and friendly insights. The impression that she was alone in the world was so serious that she was afraid to go beyond her own understanding, to rush into what. It would be easy, with no one beside her and without a model of life and thought by which to guide herself. She discovered that she didn’t have good sense, that she wasn’t armed with any past and with any event that she could use as a beginning, she who had never been practical and had always lived improvising without a goal. Nothing of what had happened to her until now and not even any previous thought were committing her to a future, her freedom was growing, pensive, by the instant, cold air invading and sweeping an empty room. Her life was made of one day putting on her dress inside out and saying with curious surprise as if when hearing some news: wow, that hasn’t happened to me for such a long time, wow. She wanted to stay busy with little things that would fill her days, she was seeking but had lost the lithe charm of childhood, she’d broken with her own secret. Yet she was getting more and more meticulous. Before putting out a cigarette she’d think about whether she should. Then she’d even feel the need to tell someone about it somehow and didn’t know how. It would seem to her then that she was swallowing the little fact but that it would never entirely dissolve inside her. She’d work at her day tolerating it deeply. One afternoon, when her money was starting to run out, she took a piece of cheese from a store without paying, without stealing — the cashier noticed nothing, she put the catch as if forgetfully into her red purse, walked out slowly, alone in the world, her heart beating hollow and clean inside her chest, a painful squeezing in her head, almost a thought. She got home, sat down, and remained motionless for a while. She wasn’t hungry. And the little money she had would allow for buying some groceries until her allowance came from her father. So why had she stolen? She was unwrapping the piece of cheese, starting by biting it slowly. The cheese was white, full of holes, and old, the kind that’s only good for grating and strewing over pasta, ah, the kind you use on pasta . . . She started to cry, her lips cold, without innocence. She went to the dresser, looked at herself in the mirror, saw her red face, anxious and sad. She started crying again then without thinking about the cheese, feeling herself profoundly silent, without managing to drag a single thought out of herself. Sitting, she was looking at the kettle. Her small kettle on the windowsill, shining where it met the dusty and opaque blinds; throughout the little room the muffled air was holding back the fire as when it’s sunny outside and someone closes himself up in the shade. A dark chair was reflected in the paunch of the kettle, convex, stretched, motionless. Virgínia kept looking at it. The kettle. The kettle. There it was shining, blind. Wanting to expel herself from the mute astonishment into which she’d slid, one of those deep meditations into which she’d sometimes fall, she pushed herself brutally: say something, say it. It seemed to her that she ought to halt now in front of the kettle and figure it out. She was forcing herself to look at it deeply but she’d either cease to see it as in a swoon or she wouldn’t see anything but a kettle, a blind kettle shining. Through the numerous closed walls a clock caught in an apartment sounded inside the little room stirring in the air a certain dust — yes, yes, she was thinking in a sudden whirl of joy, relief, and anguished hope as she dangled her crossed leg for an instant and stayed quiet. She would like to connect with the people in the building but by herself was unable to approach strangers; and meanwhile she was starting to look more like a spinster every day; an appearance of
