“Hmm?” he asked.
He’d never known how to ask or to listen, that was true. She was thinking: we have nothing in common, nothing. And in a calm apathy she was looking at the transparent air. It was almost the end of the afternoon.
“You’ve been well?” she asked him at last.
He looked at her quickly and answered nothing. She filled up with a difficult and cold feeling, saw his white suit so starched and narrow at the shoulders, his hair nice and straight, kept at him just to be obnoxious:
“You’ve been well?”
“All you managed to do was get fat but you’re still the same Virgínia: so vulgar and clueless that I feel sorry for you. Screw you, kid.”
They stood pensive for a moment. He finally said:
“I’m going.”
She stayed bent over the balcony; she saw him leave, shrugged. He was walking hard and clean. Walking, walking, one footstep following the next in the silence of the road stepping on damp, thick leaves. He went into the side trails; unhurried he went on, went on. The mansion had been lost, he was walking. He took a shortcut, crossed the new road, went into the first streets of Upper Marsh. On the narrow lane covered in grass a few hens were scratching in the twilight. He walked on stepping on the dry stone. The dark sloped street opened onto a luminous, colorless, and cold slice of the river; all the garbage of Upper Marsh was piled up black upon its bank; he put his hands in his pockets, wrinkled his eyes as if affronted by the evidence of things. He was now in a square with high walls, calm and full of clear air like the courtyard of a convent. At that hour the windows were closing, the odd open one revealed on the parapet an uncollected cushion. Upper Marsh seemed constructed of pale stone, wrought iron and damp wood. The houses were stooping old and blackened as after a fire, weeds were growing in tufts on the sloping roofs — he went on, smoothed his black hair, fine and combed went into the business district; from the shops that were still open was coming a suffocating smell of a gloomy place where old cockroaches, ashen and sluggish, are walking, a barn smell. From the telegraph wires dirty rags and papers were hanging. He saw the church. With a quick movement he took his hands out of his pockets; entered the shadowy humidity stepping with careful and peaceful feet on the brick slabs. A lit candle was burning on the altar of St. Louis, thin and delicate. He read: Do Not Put Paper on the Floor and then left, hands in his pockets; the air was still bright; he walked on. Suddenly he saw: there were five people approaching. He stopped short, pressed against the wall. The woman was dry, her neckline excessively wide, a shoulder peeping through a rip; she was wearing blue slippers and her hair was disheveled in an enormous design around her dark, thin face. She was clasping the hand of a little kid who was shuffling along with a piece of bread in her closed fist, whimpering. In front of the mother a girl of about twelve was coming, tall and serious inside a large black dress, the face of a widow. A skinny, lively girl was skipping all around her mother, grabbing a stone, gnawing at a piece of bread wiping with her forearm her broad runny nose. And behind them all a boy of about nine, cap pressed halfway down his forehead, a bag threaded through his arm at shoulder height. Five people, he said in a low voice. The group stopped in front of the row of identical houses. The little girl stopped crying, licked the butter from her fingers. The boy approached, took off his cap with fatigue. He, the girl in black, and the mother were looking at the houses with faces creased by the remains of the foggy brightness. The mother, holding the hand of the little girl who had sat on the ground, was hesitating. The houses painted pink. She pointed her eyes to a terrace, examining. A fat white woman was knitting while swaying. The boy with the cap and the girl in black were looking at the mother waiting. She ran her eyes over the houses one more time, over the swaying woman. Then she pulled the little kid by the arm and said low, her voice coarse:
“Not here.”
But why not? wondered Daniel disturbed, almost enraged. The girl in black started walking again. The mother dragged the little girl who was rubbing her sleepy eyes. The boy adjusted the bag on his shoulders, put the cap back on, straightening it. The skinny, lively girl was skipping along in a run and waiting to gnaw on the roll or lingering beside some gate. The group got smaller and smaller and disappeared. He’d seen, he’d seen. He sighed deeply as if waking up and his eyes really had the blind luminosity of eyes that returned from sleep. A weak lamp started blinking in the colorless and sharp air of dusk. Before he averted his gaze he heard a noise at the top of the street. He turned around and saw nothing at first because another group was approaching against the light. Gradually he started making things out and with a muffled exclamation recognized two soldiers leading a prisoner, pushing him, halting every once in a while to beat him up. The group was getting closer, he stitched himself to the wall. A feeling of nausea filled his mouth with a saliva redolent of blood. The prisoner kept going between the two soldiers with his red eyes blinking, his mouth open, his face marked by the hands of the policemen. Daniel shrank back: they were passing right beside him, the prisoner let out a groan and one of the soldiers pushed him with a punch in his back. Daniel
