“But what’s going on?” Virgínia inquired.
Esmeralda opened her eyes, stared at her with sullen rage:
“To hell with it, it’s nothing.”
Thus Virgínia felt she’d entered the family. She sighed.
“Well if you’re practically crying . . . ,” she said.
“What do you want? for me to laugh? Fine life I’ve got, don’t you think? it really does make you want to laugh” — with a hard smile she added — “Or do you want me to go listen to little idiot Vicentes? Fine life I’ve got . . .”
Virgínia blushed surprised, hesitated an instant.
“But who has a better life?” she said with unease, slightly vexed and suddenly sleepy.
“The bishop. Leave me alone, damn you.”
“And damn you too. You spend all your time eating yourself alive, you think I don’t know? that I’m blind? torturing poor Mama, other people, accusing, gnawing at yourself like a maggot . . . So you leave me alone too. I never had anything to do with your life. Nor you with mine.”
“Poor Mama . . . So you feel sorry for her?”
They exchanged a wordless glance, without translatable meaning. Of cold curiosity, of imminent hatred, of mutual support and pleasure.
“So much so that I sacrificed myself, this is my reward,” said Esmeralda.
“You sacrificed yourself because it’s your nature to sacrifice yourself, just like it’s mine and Daniel’s not to suffer. I never suffered because I didn’t want to. Because you want an excuse for your fear, that’s why . . .”
“And if it was how would that be my fault?” gushed Esmeralda’s voice violent and muffled.
“Please don’t scream and wake everybody up,” said Virgínia.
She left the kitchen: the clock in the little dark hallway was striking two. Yes, how would it be her fault? A slow and meditative feeling was seeming to overtake her for all time. How had she not foreseen everything that was creeping around the mansion? how could she have left the city? The weak light in the kitchen was still on; and Daniel still hadn’t returned. She was slowly climbing the stairs grasping the hem of her robe, stepping barefoot on the sleeping and silent velvet. At the top of the staircase she stopped and looked at the darkness of the room below. She waited an instant. Then she remembered: she used to cross the shadowy corridor feeling the carpet on her bare feet, her neck rigid with fear . . . with each step, the hand could grab her clothes, her hair; when she’d see from the top of the staircase the sultry brightness of the living room she’d fling herself uncontrollably down the black steps, her eyes scratched and dry; in the faltering and secluded light of the oil lamp she’d breathe softly, her heart beating wide, hollow, livid; she’d touch objects with light hands, seeking deeply their intimacy; Mother was sewing, Father was reading, Esmeralda sweeter back then was looking out the window at the half-brightness of the courtyard, Daniel was scratching in a notebook; the unoppressed living room; nobody was looking at her and that was the protection they could give; unnoticed, she was walking slowly among them, inhaling again the familiar and strange fluid, feeling that she was safe from the empty, black, and whispering countryside, from the hallway closed with darkness; behind the window the violet fireflies were lighting up and leaving no traces.
In an inexplicable desire she now wanted to go back down the staircase. She stretched out her hand in the dark and in contact with the cold banister almost took leave of whatever was natural in her decision; she hesitated for an instant as if awakened by the freezing marble; finally beneath her hot hand the banister was seeming to come to life, she gathered with her other hand the skirt of her long dress; as she was going down the steps, she was unconsciously straightening her ample bosom in a majestic, slow posture, feeling inexpressibly like another person, someone indefinable yet extremely familiar like an old desire that no longer needs words in order to be renewed. A diffuse and vivid memory. She stopped for an instant. Then she clutched her robe, walked to her room.
The next day first thing in the morning she opened with seriousness and leisure the photo album. There were relatives with hats all the way down to their foreheads, deep dark eyes, affected poses, so difficult. And again ridiculousness would touch her, make her fall into a confused and sweet feeling that had perhaps always been the strongest one of her life. You couldn’t be ashamed to like family — that was the inexplicable sensation. She felt she was touching portraits of the dead and yet she was seeing her mother as a girl, her father with tense whiskers and a man’s face, her aunts still alive even now; her heart closed in an anxious and sad yearning. My loves, she was thinking with damp eyes, aware of the fakeness of the expression, deepening it still more with pleasure. A real love, painful and broad, was escaping her chest and she was smiling moved and benevolent with the power of her own feelings. Anyway life, she thought in a cheerful and shy burst, in a sigh. Now she was gazing without focus at the pictures where her mother in old, elegant clothes was revealing the dark rings under her eyes — she was feeling mixed and hopeful, her heart so bristling and tender as if the season had changed, as if suddenly she had begun to love for the first time a man.
When she sat for lunch with everyone, she who still hadn’t grown unused to eating alone, carefully with Vicente or with courteous strangers in restaurants — with a repressed shock saw, repeating the impression she’d had during the first lunch after her journey, the way they ate, chewing with
