train that was running; while near her heart it was as if she’d swallowed a black and immobile object. A skinny child was crying in the restaurant in front of a glass of milk, always, always. When she’d come to the city, with her wide-awake body distanced from the back of the seat, her heart dizzy with curiosity and youth, a child was crying too; and an aroused smell of food, perfume, coal, and cigarettes lending her eyes a mysterious and hushed respite; her serious and sensitive face beneath the long ribbons of that hat excessively childish for the advanced girl she was, a few fine wrinkles. But now it was as if she’d swallowed some resistant spark, her eyes burning. She was remembering the journey to the city — on that day a momentum was coming from the hot coal breath and damp grass and from that continuous noise that seemed to push her toward adventure, toward adventure, adventure; beneath the old hat ribbons she was swallowing the dust happily and observing the aroused fatigue of the travelers bouncing benevolent, the women’s bright large eyes; it seemed like a picnic. The noise of the wheels was then preventing conversation and the passengers were looking at one another isolated by the atmosphere gray with noises; and it was good as in a home, she herself sitting with Daniel who was reading newspapers hiding his heart. It was good as in a home. People were eating sandwiches without getting too close to the backs of the seats, as she herself was doing, and chewing busily assessing the distance. And now . . . Now came the coffee, a little bread with butter and she was alone. She wasn’t feeling unhappy. Especially she was feeling a haughty and cold sensation that nobody could take from her everything she’d lived; she was paying a certain intimate and dark attention to whatever was happening and that later, perhaps impossible to remember, would nonetheless be part of her history. She looked out the window: an isolated bar amidst the scraggly bush, built of brick and whitewash, was foreshadowing a village; it was just two doors, a dog lying down chasing away flies and everything passed swiftly, the settlement itself in shadows, in quick strokes, long, unfinished. The train was moving along the clearing in the dark bush, wet from the last rain; the smell of sugary water, the tracks were shining sinuously, disappearing beneath the train. She started to think about how in reality she could have not left; and the idea that she’d be at that very moment in the city waiting for the next day in order to see Vicente awoke a new muffled scream in her heart. She’d never had a more precise and strange notion of two places existing at the same time, of one same hour unfolding all over the world, and that instantaneous feeling brought her closer than ever before to everything she didn’t know. How I know how to make things up all the way to the end — she was leading herself through an unwitting stubbornness to a point where in fact she was reaching whatever she’d wanted and yet couldn’t stand the thing she herself had created. It would be so much easier to be better for herself; people took care to have company during every moment of life, even Daniel; and she, mysteriously detached, had managed to end up alone. She was remembering how shortly before going to live in the city with Daniel she’d agreed to spend a month on a ranch far from the Farm, even when she’d feel boredom and wariness because of what was about to happen; remembering how she couldn’t eat dinner on that ranch of old ladies and offended servants, her chest seized in tears, her body burning in silence; and how she hadn’t been able to sleep, lying in the strange low bed, hearing big rats passing by; and how she wouldn’t have been surprised then if the door had opened and a being had come in and branded her with sweet purple fingers, without anyone to save her, far from her lax-limbed family but who would circle around her and prevent fatal things from approaching; how had she been able to forget that month of fear and meditation? only now had the memory returned. And then, her eyes staring at the darkness through the window of the train, she remembered how she hadn’t gone to the Farm with Daniel when he’d been engaged and how nevertheless it would have been easy not to end up alone; then she’d lived with the cousins . . . and yes, before she found an apartment she’d stayed at the boardinghouse. With a sigh she finally approached the memory of the boardinghouse. It was a religious holiday; when she’d come in for dinner for the first time — the little tables covered with red checkered tablecloths, a little jar of wilting roses, nobody was looking at her, she’d already acquired a distinct and calm demeanor — once again she couldn’t eat anything, her throat constricted by a disturbed and nervous solitude. Her hands were trembling and she was looking at them astounded. Then she’d gone up to the bedroom with its grimy partition screen; put on her nightgown and with a single movement discovered herself in the long mirror, her thick body appearing in a sad voluptuousness through the fine fabric — those horrible spinster nightgowns before Vicente. She was seeing her face red with tears, her hair arranged in a discreet bun of a woman who’s alone; a misshapen and odd child who would arouse looks of curiosity. Ah yes, God didn’t exist, that was becoming so clear, the cheerful fresh wind was saying so as it entered the bedroom, the red flowers in the jar were repeating it and everything was contented with secrecy and terror. Without knowing what to do with the long night she’d taken off the nightgown, got dressed once
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