“You went out early,” murmured Esmeralda pulling over the coffeepot with a sigh.
“I didn’t even have breakfast!” Virgínia was saying with a piercing and unpleasant voice.
“Keep your voice down, for the love of God!” — Esmeralda was furrowing her eyebrows and face as if she’d been scratched. She was gradually undoing her wrinkles, smoothed her face into a tired expression, reopened her eyes slowly. — “Well I no longer have the nerve to wander through those swamps,” she said, rapt, pouring the coffee into Virgínia’s cup.
And then everything had been easier. Daniel was lying on the ground and the tree above was the being closest by, dominating the sky. Virgínia had sat on a rock and with a dry branch was tormenting the ants. He sneezed and the sneeze cut the air in every direction into small arrows that gleamed under the sun and broke with a delicate noise. Virgínia sought with her eyes something she was feeling glowing uninterrupted all around, singing somewhere. It was a quavering thread of water from the tap flowing toward the earth. She turned around, tried to forget. But she knew that the glow was going on and the uncomfortable and vivid certainty was seeming to hurt her eyes. She got up to turn off the faucet. When she returned, Daniel’s face was peaceful in the shade, his muscles relaxed, maybe thinking deeply. But he wasn’t saying anything and she too stayed silent pursing her lips because they’d agreed as children never to rush each other. Then, since long empty moments were passing, the instant almost arrived when it wouldn’t hurt to start talking. She chose and murmured little easy things, quick questions, with furrowed brows and an indifferent air; the answer was coming dry and ready. And suddenly she almost made a mistake because she wandered off excessively from the beach into the sea by asking him:
“And old Cecília? have you seen her?”
He looked at her quickly in an almost rasping surprise, in an anguished smile she looked at him so he’d understand that the memory was possible, Daniel; it was possible, it was their own, the question didn’t simply mean “how’s old Cecília doing,” think about it, Daniel . . . He hesitated for an instant, swayed his head in understanding, almost smiling. Virgínia breathed with hope, remembered herself the visit they’d paid Cecília on an afternoon that had been lost to memory. My house! this is the house! . . . , the woman was saying with a strident voice, the blinds were flapping dryly three quick times and the air was getting so cool, it was so nice and excited living-all-of-a-sudden, the air had a strange sharpness, frozen and pure, they were feeling cold and stimulating, quite odd, able to make with irony and the most delicate intelligence someone notice little eccentric matters unobserved by anybody else — they were hardly holding in some thing with balance, flashing, and laughter. She herself was wearing a thick, dark woolen shirt. They were wanting to get along well with the old lady, seeking common ground, speaking only of things all three would like and the woman with an aroused pleasure was nodding her head a lot, listening, agreeing while they were speaking, she was laughing allowing them to see her broken teeth — but by God, quick, quick, about a mother, about a daughter, about a sister, about someone who’d been born and was going to die. The curtain was flying halfway across the poor living room, rushing life into a rhythm of abundance and pleasure, Virgínia had felt the desire to travel, a sharp will, almost cheerful and piercing, already desperate. But darkly she was needing not to distance herself from Daniel for a solitary dream and got to thinking about how the journey was something with stages and days, with time, with many observations and not just a single sensation, a single flight and a single satisfaction in response to a single desire.
“Poor Cecília must be fine,” said Daniel in a vague smile.
“And Rute?” asked Virgínia quickly without looking, twisting her lips with indifference.
“She’s with her mother,” said Daniel with simplicity.
“She doesn’t want children?” inquired Virgínia catching a luckless and raving ant under the dry branch.
He was silent and she without looking at him felt he’d become even more mute. She blushed, didn’t push, was thinking: but I didn’t want to pry . . . , horrified, hurt, with a touch of burning hatred. But he said suddenly:
“When I ask her that, she laughs and just says: you still don’t want to” — he waited a bit and then continued with a certain surprise that seemed to be renewing itself right then — “that’s all she says, I can’t get anything else out of her.”
Virgínia agreed several times with her head:
“I know, I know.”
Daniel looked at her with interest:
“What?”
But exactly what she’d understood had been lost in an instant, she searched with attention, only managed to say with a shrug:
“I don’t know, I think women when they’re not rivals understand one another.”
Love isn’t everything that produces children, Vicente had said one day with brutality at the beginning of a fight whose cause she’d forgotten, so upset and sad she’d get because she forgot them. But why wouldn’t Rute want children? the reason she’d just grasped had entirely escaped her. She pictured Rute again — that was someone who knew how to keep a secret. She didn’t seem to have any need to talk about her life. And that would almost offend people. She was smooth and fresh and would look quite like a picture of a saint if not for the intelligence of her imperceptibly
