speak with great freedom and his mood was brightening, he was showing himself to be likable and cheerful. She was easily focusing and even told him how much she’d liked and understood what he’d said one day, maybe at the dinner at Irene’s. He was astonished that she’d recalled the phrase, understood above all, and almost extended his hand to her not out of vanity but in a kind of apology mixed with a confused premonition that they could have lived better, that he could have lived better with Vera, could have been nicer to Irene. She was feeling so peaceful that she even said: Maria Clara was so pretty at that dinner of Irene’s! But the simple way that he replied: she’s one of the most attractive women I know — depressed her; she smiled yet had imperceptibly changed the level on which she was existing as if the living room had darkened in its brightness. She was constantly remembering the journey, remembering her grandmother, surprised to be thinking so much about her. Confusedly, because death was seeming to her an act of life, death in old age was a fresh extemporaneous fruit and a sudden revivification. For her practically only now was her grandmother starting to exist. She was seeing again her fixed and moist eyes, her eyelids blinking in a powerless indecency, that rumpled brown farm skin, so much greater than her hard, blind, childlike body. She imagined her cunning and funereal saying: while I existed I ate a lot. How old, heavy, and dead was that thin grandmother who was suddenly remembering to die. She shuddered lightly at that thought that had blossomed in her cruel and free, shrugged with disregard yet a vague anguish that was mingling also with that final afternoon with Vicente contracted her eyes in fright, made her heart squeeze in well-spaced and empty beats; she moved away from the thought in a run. She’d usually slip past the old woman at a run, giving her a quick kiss and going on. Sometimes she’d open her eyes really wide while looking at her grandmother as if truly to notice her and couldn’t manage to see her as if it were a first time — her grandmother wasn’t existing with the difference that her not existing was incomplete; just a face you’d kiss the way you kissed a paper package; and suddenly this woman was dying like someone who says: I lived. She was surprised to spend her last afternoon with Vicente thinking about the dead woman, but out of some dark and stubborn desire was still stuck to the horrible old lady — which in some strange way was meaning the farewell she was giving Vicente without his realizing it. No, she wasn’t going to speak of the journey to the Farm. But in an attraction that was mysteriously giving her a taste of a forbidden, low, exciting thing she was trying to speak of her grandmother, yes, and not even say she’d died . . . Her excitement was growing, she was telling details, recounting facts that were almost becoming revealing, almost, yes, but still secret — and the vileness, some irremediably nasty and clever thing was spreading through the clear and salty air of the room. Vicente was interested in her grandmother! He was joking: it must be nice to live in an old lady’s shadow. But like a suddenly rung bell, echoing violent through a city, he added:
“maybe i’ll meet her some day?”
And suddenly all her mad desire to mistake life and subjugate it at the price of the wickedness she was inventing, all her desire that was making her just then in some avid way happy was cut with a slow and cold knife and the world fell into reality with a pale sigh. She felt the fatigue of her whole game. Why not be simple, nice, understanding, attentive, and natural? she was wondering full of reproach; anyway, with another sigh, she was thinking she was scared. He went to the refrigerator and brought meat, milk, pudding; she made coffee, they sat for a little dinner. She’d never felt so good with Vicente. Even when he’d embraced her she’d understood that he was blinking, ready to forgive in the future the misfortunes that would overcome him. Even if she hadn’t been able to understand him, she’d greet him as a woman knows how to greet a man, as a mother. And while they were eating, the light on, she was despising all the happiness she’d had with Miguel. Vicente was speaking of someone so witty, so . . . In a daring move she was saying to him: “it sure is easy to say funny things; you close your eyes and don’t think . . . and are stunned by what you say . . .” He smiled:
“Well darling, then close your eyes whenever you want . . .”
She laughed too, closed her eyelids courageous and simple, her heart fluttering; she wavered a bit:
“World . . . great world, I don’t know you but I’ve already heard and that bothers you . . . bothers me like a rock in my shoe!”
He gave a frank and happy guffaw and while laughing was looking at her attentive, surprised:
“Keep going, baby . . .”
She was gaining confidence like a dog grooming itself; she closed her radiant eyes, went on with her blushing and hot face:
“The body . . . from back then died . . . beneath the windows that . . . were opening . . . opening onto the pink, Vicente!” — she herself was laughing. Should she stop? she was wondering, because she’d end up saying something excessive, good morning, so-and-so, ruining even the past. But he was laughing extremely amused and she couldn’t help it, so fascinating it was to feel herself loved. He was laughing without embarrassment, getting uglier, his face open — suddenly like brother and sister, like from the same family, like people who expect nothing from each other, my God. If she’d only known that to win him over she had to close her eyes and
