And as if everyone understood that she’d finally come back, the dinners became calm and cheerful; they’d stay at the table talking, laughing, taking their leave late heading slowly to the bedrooms, faces still smiling and thoughtful. Only Daniel would leave earlier or even stop turning up at meals. The next day everyone would meet, laugh, live as if on shipboard. They’d ask her what she’d seen in the city; she and Esmeralda would chat crossing words that didn’t contradict one another. Esmeralda would lean her big breasts on the table and smile shaking them with kindness and sparkle; Father would chew without looking at them and yet would listen. The food was more abundant than in the past, there was talk of closing the stationer’s, of turning the Farm into a ranch for guests. Mother would listen while eating with pleasure, her eyes thinking about the idea; Daniel was cutting the meat with precision and indifference, Virgínia listening to their father in a silent distaste. All at once she’d looked at Esmeralda. Without realizing she was being observed, Esmeralda had broken off her meal, teeth closed, chin rudely pointed in a forced smile while her narrowed eyes were looking at no particular place, hard with hope, almost with revenge. Yes, guests, guests, guests — her full and excited bosom seemed to be saying. What can you tell us about the city? she was still asking. The two were still at table after everybody else had retired; they looked a bit alike, both were almost tall and large. What could she tell? — Virgínia was leaning her face on the back of another chair, remembering when she’d felt fever and nausea, the bedroom getting rough and her solitude growing with pain while she was leaning off the bed toward the ground looking vaguely at the scratches and dust on the floorboards, asking God to let her vomit at last. And if she spoke of love, what could she tell her? the sensation was that of having been abandoned while sleeping, she’d looked to the side, Vicente wasn’t there and still now her heart would clench in fright, regret, and astonishment: she’d overslept. Yes, she could tell about a woman she’d seen one day; she described to Esmeralda her clothes, just that, how luxurious she was. But she could never forget that woman she’d met on a bus — a true lady, Esmeralda — almost the strongest thing in the city. How lovely she was — Esmeralda was listening with an embittered face, her youth lost — how lovely she was. But she didn’t know how to say the rest. How to explain to her those lively and worried eyes, her keen mouth, her neck bent forward introducing a face that was horribly selfish and distracted from others. She’d come from the street — you could tell — was taking the bus home, lips hard with disappointment, but she didn’t want help, nobody could help her, she was despising everyone else with alarm. She had clearly come from a place important to her life. The hat covered with little black and soft feathers was ridiculously elegant. In her large, slender ears, of a very washed brown color, were luxurious earrings surrounded by instantaneous rays of luster, and lending her whole face a harsh and menacing life. On her fingers the rich rings and the wedding band; she was sitting on the bus, shaking along with it, her hand firm on the back of the seat in front, her memory faraway, her face proud, serious, hard, and ardent but that would be brutally humble, violent, and disheveled for someone — for someone she was still looking for now. She was extending the hand with the wedding band and the rings thinking with her face that would know so well how to humiliate and that was in love; she was married and wounded, you could tell, you could tell. Esmeralda was listening, her eyes wandering while imagining, an acrid and intolerable envy drying out her lips. Virgínia was observing her, with surprise guessing to what extent both were made of something ingratiating, fearful, and low, how both in the end were sisters. With distaste and dismay she was changing the subject, telling her that her small apartment had its own staircase, that the general stairs also passed by her door, that all day long she’d hear the steps of people going up and down. She told her that one day, returning from somewhere at the hour when the city lights were going out . . . — Esmeralda interrupted her:
“How?”
Virgínia didn’t understand:
“How what?”
Esmeralda
