“But doctor . . .”
He had moved off for a second looking at her with a severe appearance, imitating her solemn and hoarse voice: “— but doctor! . . .” A weight was lightly squeezing her neck, her arms, she was feeling a shapeless taste of blood in her throat and in her mouth as always when she’d feel fear and hope — she could overturn some idea and accept the adventure, yes, the adventure that he wasn’t offering her. From a new center in her body, from her stomach, from her reborn breasts a sharp thought, desperate and profoundly happy, was radiating outward, without words she was wanting him, in an instant he was becoming some thing prior to Vicente. Without sadness, as if on holiday, to rush into the future! and since he was coming even closer, she awkwardly, quick, brushed her mouth against that cheek rough like a man, near the ear . . . He looked at her fast shocked and odd! she was wavering with open eyes, the office was spinning around red, a heavy and grave blushing rose to her neck and face while she was trying to make excuses with a difficult and foolish smile. He looked at her attentively for an instant, with wisdom touched upon certain common words and suddenly everything was dissolving into a simple joke. She looked at him dry and ardent, extended her hand to him, he said leading her: don’t get mad, nausea means nothing, you can tell your boyfriend . . . , she exited the office entered the dark, crimson, somber, luxurious and so cool elevator. When she received the dusty, luminous, and strident air of the street she walked fast, free. Little by little she went more slowly through the afternoon, choosing broad streets. A certain indifferent and opaque serenity was making her movements easy and the rest of the day simple — she’d forget, Virgínia, she’d forget. But she’d passed a woman beside her with a perfume of lemon, water, and grass, frightened and penetrating, a smell of lemon and grass — like a horse her legs gained a nervous, happy, and lucid power. Quiet Farm. She was inhaling the mysterious perfume that nonetheless was emerging. Because it was so . . . so alive . . . so . . . , she gave up, pulled back her head feeling herself lacking the courage to go on so strong was her hope. The sun shone pale on the sidewalk, a cold wind pierced the whole afternoon, she hurried her body clenched with power, her heart trembling as if a pure feeling had passed through it . . . a great fatigue that was made of ecstasy, bemusement, permission, and perfume seized her and without being bothered, softened, she felt that her eyes were filling with tears because of the doctor and that they were starting to run warm and radiant down her cheek. She went onto a staircase and blew her nose; she was wanting to alight on the same fluctuating, iridescent, and hard feeling but didn’t know which thought to focus the sensation on, so incomprehensible and fleeting was the world.
She later understood that the doctor had assured her that she wasn’t pregnant . . . How Vicente would laugh. She herself thought she’d never have children. She’d never even feared them as if through some quiet understanding of her most secret nature she knew that her body was the end of her body, that her life was her last life. Ah she liked children; life with them was so rich . . . so . . . — the rest was being lost in a gesture without force, almost inexpressive. But how to watch a life weaker than her own? she’d avoid children with care and when faced with them a desire would quickly possess her, the desire to escape, to seek out people to whom she could give nothing. Above all she wasn’t one of those women who have children. And if someday she made them be born, she’d still be one of those women who don’t have children. And if all the life she’d live should diverge from the one she ought to have lived, she would be as she ought to have been — what she could have been was herself profoundly, ineffably, not out of courage, not out of joy, and not out of awareness but out of the inevitability of the power of existence. Nothing would rob her of the unity of her origin and the quality of her first breath, though these might be entombed beneath their own opposite. In reality she knew little about whatever was hiding beneath her undeniable life. But not dissolving herself, not giving herself, denying her own errors and even never erring, to keep herself intimately glorious — all that was the fragile initial and immortal inspiration of her life. She’d touched her neighbor’s child one day; the child lay its little hand in hers, looking out the window. Little by little, with a hard and playful gaze, with light emotion in her body, she grasped his small flesh full of little sightless and soft fingers, squeezed it between her hands, the child didn’t notice, he was looking out the window. Virgínia would stop for an instant so that she wouldn’t get overconfident and go too far. She was getting progressively more excited, telling a story, made up something funny, but really funny, the child laughed a little, his own face reflected in a windowpane broadened shining, flushed, unaware of itself, moving around living and shy. Afterward the child left as if nothing had happened. A fertile woman was so vulnerable, her fragility came from her being fruitful. She herself would sometimes feel an ecstasy made of weakness, fatigue, of a deep smile and of a difficult and superficial
