“Sometimes I spend my days with a hope so . . . you know . . . and suddenly I have no hope at all . . .”
“Hope for what?” he asked interested.
“Not quite for something . . .”
“But what do you mean?” he’d insist, “you must know . . .”
She didn’t know how to explain and was surprised by Vicente’s incomprehension. Later she learned that he’d understand if she said; I spent half the day in a good mood and the other half in a bad mood. She started to change into Vicente’s words and sometimes would feel that it was more than words that were transforming. That same afternoon she’d finally met Vicente’s sister, who lived with their aunt and uncle. The big breasts, the pure face without makeup where the nose was fine, pale, and curved; the bare arms, the dark and calm eyes — but she’d be impure when it was her turn. She read mystery novels and her voice was slightly hoarse. Virgínia looking at her was feeling an intolerable envy, staring at her with avidity and cold. Rosita was despising her with eyes without curiosity. Virgínia refused the cigarette pleasing her with nausea and baseness. She sat with them in the tea house but Rosita wasn’t even an eater; she was staring at Vicente’s “friend” with naked eyes while Virgínia was trying to smile into the cup while holding in a difficult pang of fear, thinking about her own nose that was shining, her unkempt and frightened hair reflected in the fancy black-framed mirror. She had a few dresses of indefinable color, light hazel, cream, bluish, the neckline somewhere between round and oval swimming at her neck, made of a silk that neither plunged nor protected, wrinkled as if just taken out of a suitcase — she would wear old clothes, as if in order not to exist, feel good in them, not betraying Upper Marsh. Because whenever she’d wear them “she ran into someone of circumstance” — and the fact seemed to her to have some extraordinary and invincible inevitability, some thing that would almost demand a respectful deference — there wasn’t even any point in no longer wearing those clothes, such was the force of things. And that added to the unease that she and Vicente would experience when they ran into each other on the street. As if one were surprising the other. She was drinking the tea in little gulps, she’d refused toast secretly in order still to please Rosita and as a sacrifice. She was feeling guilty alongside Vicente — in front of both of them was the virgin dressed in white linen and with bare arms, her big and well-made nose, her pale gardenia skin. How dare I live. She’d always been envious, the truth had to be told. They got up, accompanied Rosita to the aunt’s car where the driver was waiting. They said goodbye, Virgínia sighed out of relief and sadness, the street suddenly had so few people, it was quickly looking like an empty and calm Sunday. She walked with Vicente through the streets without looking at him until they reached the apartment. He too seemed somehow touched, was addressing her with an excitement interrupted at intervals — in the elevator he touched her waist with his hand and she ducked almost rudely. But in the bedroom she became sad, looked peaceful, resigned, loved him with a strange and wistful tone that she herself didn’t know, loving in him the inaccessible sister, the dead father and mother. As the end of the three days a week closed the door behind them, the heat of Vicente’s apartment brusquely isolated itself behind its walls, soon in front of her the ground, quiet and fragrant in its coolness, would stretch. The lights were blinking in trembling halos and that’s how a golden lamppost was communicating with another across the distance. She was crossing the dry street, the walls in darkness, taking the bus and the wind was light whipping her cheek. In the bright, warm, and shaking interior of the vehicle the faces beneath the hats were condensing in the silence of the journey through the night and behind each one life for an instant would seem tossed to the back of the stage, the theater seats empty in the half-light — the bus was moving forward. The driver kept his hand on the steering wheel, almost still, slow, the illuminated cabin was apparently moving all by itself. Virgínia was getting off, walking with large useless rain boots squeezing her feet. On the deserted street her footsteps were slapping sonorous and expectant on the sidewalk. The moonlight was pouring over the construction sites. The Farm livid and sleepless was coming to her in a wave amidst the fog, she was hurrying her dark pace, going forward. She was placing the key in
