“Sleep, baby.”
She realized seconds later that he’d fallen asleep. A silence of fire extinguishing itself in ashes. She still kept her eyes open. For a moment she missed the cricket. Having a cricket lodging in your bedroom wasn’t having a pet, it didn’t mean much but you’d always remember; it was an insoluble memory, hard and shining like the cricket itself singing — she’d miss it when she went back to the Farm. And because she’d thought about the journey she reached out her hand in the dark for a caress and with a start, her eyes suddenly flung into the air, she found his belly cold, limp, and throbbing like a toad’s. Vicente. She waited a bit, tense, sharp; then gave herself over to an almost joyful resignation. He was breathing peacefully. Indistinctly snoring. She smiled while sinking her head into the pillow with secret mischief and new courage for the coming days. One day . . . , she was thinking pursing her lips in an incomprehensible threat directed at Vicente, one day . . . He kept breathing loudly almost snoring, unconscious. And she in a movement of retreat and self-reproach ended up avoiding her own future, with a sigh. She could no longer disguise the broad well-being that was sinking her into her own body, thoughtful, her whole being bent toward one same, difficult and delicate sensation. She was blinking her eyes in the darkness with pleasure. And a new hope. But not for the future, more like a hope for living that very instant. Then, amidst the vast space of the world in which her body was wavering content, she remembered her father, of whom she’d once been ashamed not wanting to be seen in his company in front of her classmates. She remembered her mother, sometimes sweet like a grazing animal and from whom she’d separated forever at birth with a glance, a reproach, and an unforgivable watchfulness. She remembered the center of her own heart that seemed made of fear, vanity, ambition, and cowardice — that had been her past life. She felt isolated amidst her sin; and from her extreme humility, her eyes moist, suddenly with ardor she’d be better just to please God. But from her own awareness of her evil was also coming a dark and lively pleasure, a deaf and innocent sensation of having won, of having with inevitability and depravity lived heroically. She was on guard, lost in a half dream where reality was arising deformed and smooth, without thoughts, in visions. Sometimes she’d sink further into a sensation and that was sleeping. Then she’d be startled, an instant on the level of the room hearing Vicente breathe in a warm and wound-up sleep. She’d get closer to him, nestle her body against that tepid and serene spring from which a very pleasant smell of tired skin was coming. Again she’d get lost in sweet and extraordinary mists, pursuing an intimate pleasure that wouldn’t be defined. She halted brusquely upon hearing him speak.
“. . . because I didn’t turn off the light . . . but I . . . that my pain . . . my pain . . .” — his voice was thick and slow.
“What, baby?” Virgínia asked with her heart trembling in fear. She was feeling like she was talking to someone who didn’t exist and her own voice had frightened her sounding hoarse and curt in the darkness. Above all something was a lie. What, Vicente? she forced herself to ask again and remained attentive; the silence was thick as if the question had fallen into the sea itself, she felt that no reply would come. Though she didn’t expect it, the air between them was however barely a pause and only slowly melted into silence and disappeared with effort into the night. He had squeezed his right side and said: my pain. Could he be sick? she shivered with a certain repugnance and pride; even with Daniel she’d experienced disgust for illness, feeling alone and cold beside someone suffering. The rain was falling softly. He was calm and whispering, she finally gave herself over to the pillows with a sigh. It seemed horrible to her to ask a question and not receive an answer; the person would connect to some invisible thing that would cling to the voice; she sighed again. She was trying to reconstruct the little life whose threads he had broken with his voice. She turned her head toward Vicente. How to blame them both? everything was so hard, there were so many forms of offenses between people who loved each other and so many forms of not understanding each other; nothing essential had been reached with their love; she was breathing slowly, sweating sweetly, her hand resting on her chest where a heart was beating that was made of surprise, fatigue, and wine. Slowly she started seeing herself awake as if she’d drunk fresh water. It seemed strange to her to be watching the darkness; she remembered with certain fear her own apartment in that night abandoned to the dark, the suitcases open to the wind — a vague fervor was lifting her for an instant above herself and powerless letting her impalpably fall into her own destiny. She remembered the afternoon with Vicente; the happiness was so violent, shaking her so; those horrible instants had taken her outside herself, unfamiliar, odd and broken off from her interior; so you could perish of happiness, she’d felt so abandoned; another minute of joy and she’d have been tossed out of her world because of her daring desires, full of an intolerable hope. No, she wasn’t desiring happiness, she was weak when faced with herself, weak, drunk, tired; she quickly found out that exaltation wore her out, that she preferred to be hidden in herself without ever trembling, without ever rising; for the first time she realized how she really seemed inferior to several people she knew, that brought a sensation of indisposition and
