The Chandelier

whatever it was that had not quite become a thought. She’d go home tired as if leaving the party where she’d been crowned. She’d spend days reading; she read like a painted prostitute, full of keenness and of a boredom that burned her soul and quickly dried her out. What worried her most then was being able to go to bed so early. From the moment she woke up she’d start thinking about the instant of going to bed. The way the hours passed seemed to have transformed irremediably and she was living among them pushed by the duty they’d suggest. Nobody would stop her from going to bed at seven at night. The only reason she still ate dinner was because then she’d go to bed at five in the afternoon. She’d get herself completely together with calculation and care and then stay on the lookout breathing. In the afternoon she’d gone by tram to a pretty and calm street and met with horror the worst old lady from Upper Marsh, who had been in the city for a few months with her sick sister. The tram was going fast and she couldn’t see anything. The old lady had hardly started speaking, however, instead of the irritation she expected to feel some thing reduced her simply to herself in a quick weakening of desires. With humility she spoke with the old lady, easy with herself, almost giddy, even exchanging impressions about matters of apartments and shopping, censurable ways of leading life. Inexplicable already she then cozied up to the woman as if she were a girlfriend, suddenly showing herself to be feminine and busy feeling without displeasure on her bare legs the scratching of that long skirt; she was obscurely trying with sensual pleasure to win her friendship and sympathy. The old lady was withdrawing her thin face, somehow offended and dominated because she’d barely managed to open her mouth and speak, she who always had leaned over others with narrowed eyes, asphyxiating them with news.

“You can well imagine what a big city is,” Virgínia was shouting surpassing the noise of the tram on the tracks, “it simply wears a person out! And apartments are so expensive, right? And sometimes so small! And I live in a relatively cheap building, thank God, but the others are a horror. I’m telling you: a horror! you can’t hear me because of the tram.” — The vehicle was halting for an instant at the stop and the old lady again attempting with dryness to take charge of the conversation was asking her if she lived alone. — “Yes, yes, but the building is of the best possible morality,” Virgínia was saying to her frightened. “Just think that in the city, from what I heard said in a boardinghouse where I lived, the girls with the best appearance are actually the worst possible — horrible, isn’t it?” she was laughing. “You really only learn stuff like that by living here.”

When the old woman said goodbye with haste and coldness, frustrated in her own news, Virgínia squeezed her hand, effusive as if she were abandoned:

“Best wishes, you hear? best wishes, ma’am, to you and your sister!” — the old lady went off with surprise, now charmed and smiling and Virgínia sat an instant with open eyes, watchful, thoughtful. Daniel . . . How Daniel would look at her judging; but judging what? she wondered. And whatever had happened was reducing itself thus to just a silence and a sensation that she understood she hardly could transmit to Daniel; therefore she didn’t want him beside her, she preferred to be alone — she huddled in the corner of the tram; alone was the way she could wear herself out; the most alive things didn’t have so much as a movement to dress them, it was impossible to fulfill them; if you tried not only could you not do it but they themselves would die confounded. And two people no matter how quiet would end up talking. When however three days a week would come she would rise with joy because at last she was caught.

Sometimes a sharp desire wrapped in a wave of fresh and propelling happiness, a sharp desire to sculpt would give a small shout of surprise in her heart. She’d open the small suitcase of the clay things, without hesitation plunge them into hot water in order to dissolve them and obtain material for new figurines. She would work in a happy concentration that lent her face the old nervous transparency. The figures however were in the same line as the ones erected back in childhood. Grotesque, serious and motionless, with a delicate and independent touch, Virgínia would obstinately keep saying the same thing without understanding it. She would bend her head and seem to continue to grow.

With the passing of time a secret watchful life had been born in her; she would communicate silently with the objects around her in a certain tenacious and unnoticed mania that nonetheless was being her most interior and truthful way of existing. Before carrying out any act she would “know” that “something” would go against it or that a light wave would allow it; she had so much desire to live that she had become superstitious. She had entered her own reign. The rooms that smelled like tunnels, the things lightly dislocated from themselves as if they had just been alive. Superstition was the most delicate thing she had known; through the slipping of a second she could surpass that warm and mysteriously vehement affirmation that the thing, understand? is there, right there and therefore is like that, objects, that small pitcher for example, knows itself profoundly; and even that half-open window, the little table perched on the points of three legs beneath the roof, understand? knows itself profoundly; and then there’s also whatever isn’t present (and which helps, which helps, and everything moves forward) (even that (power)) (an instant that follows itself and from it is