pushed her bedroom door, inhaled distractedly its sultry perfume. In the shadowy room the snowy bedsheet was popping out fresh, embroidered, surprising. She sat with care and lightness on its edge looking around in the twilight. A long woolen shawl was wrapping her round shoulders and her bosom, making her look sensitive to the cold. She suddenly stood, walked to the window, opened it, the brightness entered. No, for her Quiet Farm hadn’t changed. She could close her eyes and she’d see the hard violence of the naked trunks, the sweetness of the light clusters of acacia in the wind; so often she’d already sought with her gaze that same stopping-place cut out by the windowpanes, which she herself cleaned, she herself — like jabs of confession and redemption in her chest, she herself! — so often she’d made out the landscape broadened all the way to infinity when her gaze would free itself beyond the heavy curtains that she herself, she herself had embroidered. She bent forward for an instant as if to try on reality one more time — yes, after the garden the countryside was being disclosed. Grasping with one of her hands the thick cord of the curtain she was pulling herself together with haughtiness and with her back turned to the interior of the mansion she was watching over it on the lookout, coldly. In the distant kitchen the wild cat that she herself, she herself had tamed, was eating the ground beef while the black woman was talking to herself and washing the dishes. The rooms empty of guests; just a day ago she’d gone over them carefully, checked that everything was silent and in order. The hallway stretching out full of shadows, the deep staircase, the carpets extending to the bedrooms. She sighed. No, she was seeing everything as she’d seen it all these years. In the garden the figure of Virgínia was moving — Esmeralda bent over slightly, followed her with her gaze. It was a simple body, tall and well-fed, Virgínia’s; she was leaning down picking up something off the ground and looking at it closely, her hair falling in her eyes, while even from afar you could feel that strange defect in her face, a watchful inconsistency, a bit cross-eyed. With interest Esmeralda was observing her, with a certain benevolence, which she had never been able to feel toward Daniel. But Virgínia had brought nothing from the city. She, Esmeralda, could live better and bigger than Daniel, Virgínia, their father or their mother, she, she was the one who possessed an exceptional and bitter strength, a concentration of life that had given her that inaccessible patience down through the years. She was really bigger than all of them and hadn’t hurried toward life and toward the city because she’d been scared. Her fear was as proud as her strength. She set out almost quickly, froze. Outside Virgínia had sat on the rock in the garden looking at her light legs with determination. Esmeralda made a rough, firm movement with her hand and the cord of the curtain burst, fell with a small cheerful noise on the dark wooden floorboards. She looked at it a little, perplexed, hard, bad. Suddenly she sighed closing her eyes quickly; more calm she picked up the fringed cord, opened the sewing drawer and sat down to fix it.
She was holding herself back however within her final degree of strength. And that same night she got lost. She was looking at herself in the mirror; she was still quite pretty with her virgin wrinkles of hope. In her motionless face the yellowish color was sweet as on an almost-decomposing fruit; her movements were still lively at a tense height that only daily despair and menace could manage to create. Virgínia’s arrival had introduced to the mansion a bit of the invisible life of the city; without feeling Esmeralda was shining with more asperity in her bedroom; waiting with new reserves. And as if she’d gone too far in this new gulp of danger she couldn’t stop the urge of her own body and jumped over the abyss, grew old as if she’d already loved. That same night she’d dined with a troubled appetite and laughed agitated showing her white and pointy teeth, Virgínia had appreciated her, Daniel unexpectedly had also been friendly, Mother was leaning into the back of the chair with contentment, while she was explaining to them with a penetrating and ironic wit little unimportant facts. They were laughing benevolently, drinking small sips of an old wine that Father had brought from Upper Marsh. And though that was never what she could expect — no, by God! — she gained in life almost violently, lived hours of somber glory, heavy with promises. Her radiant eyes were shining moistly at her own body, so much at herself, her movements easy and rough — what was happening to her? she was giving in. They said good night, she went to sleep so tired that her body stumbled deadened onto the big smooth bed. She was asking slowly wondering almost for no reason: anyway why? for what? As if suffocating, her face feverish, she took off her clothes and for the first time lay down naked. She fell asleep with a childlike pleasure, awaking in quick and vague moments almost frightened, her heart beating without rhythm, her being swollen. She’d curl up then beneath the sheets in a cold that seemed to come from her own innards, beneath the furious clinking of an indecipherable memory. At the sound of the beings and things may God open her heart, allow her to see inside herself and, fear expelled, at last say to death, I lived. Ah, ah, she was groaning almost awake. The moonlight was whitening the lowered windowpane, cutting the room in deep shadow and blue brightness. Almost unconsciously she was running her fingers over the fine embroidery of the pillowcase that she herself, she herself, she
