“What you said just now.”
Virgínia took a while to understand and finally disguising her surprise repeated:
“The city lights go out . . .”
“Yes, yes,” said Esmeralda with coldness, “go on.”
“You didn’t go to theaters?” she was asking her still.
“Not one,” Virgínia was saying.
She’d gone one night to a concert in the company of Vicente and Adriano; they’d had a light dinner at a small restaurant and she was feeling comfortable, simple, and cheerful. In the lobby of the theater she’d stopped short in the presence of the sultry furs, the noses silken with powder, a cold made of light, clean and frozen movements. The women were sparkling calmly amidst whispers. She herself was feeling grotesquely human with her blue woolen dress and her cream shoes, her hair parted at the side and loose. In a small pocket mirror she was furtively observing her serious face, long, pale and large — a failed nun with hard and martyred eyes. The stuffy concert hall was panting and the piano notes were stumbling solitary amidst the hand-held fans. She couldn’t quite take pleasure in the music but was sheltering in the sound with a certain anguish, her white face leaning toward the distant stage, her body contained and still. While Adriano was losing himself in the depths of the loge, while Vicente was running his natural eyes over that superior world; of which nobody knew that she and Esmeralda could be raised to serve, with joy and curiosity.
“No, to almost none.”
“What did you talk about with people?”
“Oh, I don’t know . . . Of course I didn’t talk to them the way I’m talking to you . . . You try to say pleasant things, show that you’re well-educated, that you know how things are done, the customs of other lands . . . Show that you’re not just anyone” — she was getting excited with moving eyes, the foam of saliva appearing in the corners of her mouth — “There in the city if you don’t stand up for yourself you get left behind . . . You think with all those people I’d speak the way I’m speaking now? No! try not to make mistakes, to say things . . .”
Esmeralda was agreeing. Whereas she, with her eyes still steady, was remembering herself threatening with a finger: if I ask for a cigarette don’t give it to me, okay? and then she’d ask, the person would decline, she’d ask, the person would decline, just like that, just like that — she glanced around slightly oppressed. Gradually however she reclaimed a smiling strength. Esmeralda was agreeing examining her with more interest.
“Did you date?”
“No,” said Virgínia — the two women looked at each other firmly in the eyes.
“Did you take walks by the sea?”
She told her about the sea, really thinking about Vicente, about his apartment. She might have been cold to men but how sensitive she was to the sea. Waves would form on the surface of the water without altering the hushed, thick mass — and that would stir in her a serious urge, dangerous. The bigger waves would burst salty smells of foam into the air. After the water would strike the rocks and return in a rapid reflux, a desert resonance would linger in her ears, a silence made of small words scratched and short, made of sands.
“And did you go swimming?”
Vicente had often invited her but she’d been ashamed. Wavering, hesitating in her lack of direction, she seemed to fear the pleasure she would feel. The idea that the sea could surround her made her eyesight darken while in a deep sigh she’d show herself how much she’d like to feel it and Esmeralda stayed back thoughtful, hearing her silence without understanding. Finally she’d decline because she was afraid of the sea, afraid of drowning. And that’s what she told Esmeralda and that was almost the only thing that she herself knew.
“No, I didn’t. One is afraid.”
“I know,” said Esmeralda.
She was asking again and asking like someone fumbling around distressed, without ever finding the question she really wants to ask. Virgínia was understanding her without words while they were looking at each other sincerely deep and speaking of various things. She knew that Esmeralda would like to hear that one day she was sitting on a bus distracted and tired; suddenly the unmoving faces atop the bodies, the heat of the wheels, the dust shining dry as it met the sun, all of a sudden a movement of her own arm grazing the seat or her breast awoke in her the understanding of the lust that was vibrating in soft uninterrupted sounds in the air and connecting creatures with fragile and quavering threads. Over there the mouth of a woman was quavering, almost in a wail or almost laughing perhaps; and another woman’s neck, smooth and thick, immobilized by repressed and closed movements; and that white man’s hand leaning as if at last on the railing of the seat, full of rings that were imprisoning his broad old fingers . . . another instant and the moment would come together in a muffled scream, in fury, fury and mire. But gradually the bus had started moving again, everyone had penetrated with it a shadowy and silent street, the branches of the trees swaying serenely. Virgínia was vaguely aware that this was what Esmeralda was hoping to hear, aware that she should tell her what had happened on a certain bus; but she kept seeing without understanding the faces traveling and could only think and say: it was so hot! everyone was so tired, it was two in the afternoon — just that. And Esmeralda wouldn’t understand.
“Are there a lot of no-good women over there?” Esmeralda was asking morosely drawing close to the question.
“Yes there are.”
“Ah . . .”
The two were holding back thoughtfully, waiting.
“How do they do it?” she asked Virgínia again.
“One day I was sitting in a café and one of them was drinking a soft drink while looking all around her. She
