The Chandelier

— she leaned into her own interior thoughtfully, while Daniel seemed to be falling asleep under the tree — Virgínia was a name full of watchful peace like that of an alcove behind a wall, there where thin weeds grew like hair and where nobody existed to hear the wind. But after losing that perfect, skinny figure, as small and delicate as the mechanism of a watch, after losing transparency and gaining a color, she could be called Maria Madalena or Hermínia or even any other name except Virgínia, of such fresh and somber antiquity. Yes, and when she was small she also could have easily been Sibila, Sibila, Sibila. Virgínia . . . She sighed with a movement of her head. As if she couldn’t stand Virgínia’s and Daniel’s past. Sitting on her legs, she looked at him — there had been a time when he’d thought it was essential to possess a magnet. Certain people to whom it seemed to have been given the destiny to live life over again. He stirred, divined his sister’s presence, she flapped her hands, they looked so alike in that moment, they’d always been the same. A long path had brought them to that instant. They felt so sincere that they looked at each other quickly with apprehension. He closed his eyes; she stared at the distant air, so painful was her tense breathing, they were feeling so much brother and sister, so ready to look at the world together, with interest and mockery as on a journey or something, with little chatting and absorbed silences, yes, making everything a joke, everything, the journey was so impossible, they were so full of love forever, forever . . . And which would be buried in seconds beneath the passing of the instants greater than eternity. Oh, grant him an instant of true life, his beautiful face expanded in color and hope! She leaned against the tree with staring eyes. She was urgently needing to say something with rage, with joy, for violence to smash the air into fire, to revolt, understand herself!, for a galloping horse to emerge running through the meadow, for a bird to shriek. As if a stone started to speak, he said and she heard him with a surprised heart — had it been a foreboding? — beating hollowly already in a beginning of tranquility, he said calm, eyes still closed, in such a vulgar tone:

“What devil makes me want to resemble myself.”

Never would he say “we.” She sat looking at the ground, the hard and brittle stick was leaving gray pieces of rotten wood in her hands. The sun was opening pale over the garden, the ants running without noise, almost without touching with their thin legs the resistant ground. A low and insinuating wind was blowing the dry leaves around the tree. She said, the stick lightly scratching the ground:

“If you only knew how delicate life can be.”

They stayed with inexpressive and suspended faces in an indecisive and watchful tranquility. The light feet of a little bird stepped on some leaf that stirred, the shadows were taming and deepening the old garden. She penetrated into a good silence until Daniel asked, suddenly pushing an icy tack into her heart:

“What about you?”

“I am Vicente’s lover,” she heard herself answer.

“Happy?”

She waited a bit.

“You know, always the same, I couldn’t be happier than I am, I couldn’t be unhappier than I am.”

He nodded in agreement. And since she couldn’t stand it a second longer, she stood with a small harrowing shout:

“Let’s walk!?”

He said:

“No, I’m going in” — he got up and walked away from her and as on the day of the drowned man, once again she wouldn’t know how to call out to him, how to cry for him not to leave her alone right then — she sat on the little patch of grass under the tree with open eyes, her heart beating calm, dry, bloodless. Yes, maybe it was better that way. From the dirty earth a smell of dust was coming, a breath that was not born of whatever was always alive but of whatever was seeming continually to die. There was an extremely pleasant, gray, and cold silence beneath the weak sun. But the trees were rustling, green, dark, and leafy. She closed her eyes letting herself almost waver. The day long like an arrow heading nowhere. Gradually, under lowered eyelids, some thing was running ahead like a hare, but sluggish, it kept running and getting lost like a wounded hare losing blood and running until weakly reaching the end of blood. She could say while acknowledging — that’s it, that’s it, with assurance. How sweet it was to run along and get lost in weakness, but it hurt and frightened; she could dread the dark room from outside in yet it was horrible to be the dark room and she was the dark room itself. It was so sweet because you couldn’t understand it; in the middle of everything she sighed and that sigh had been a sensation that the instants were going forward. When she’d possessed a watch she wouldn’t sigh; she’d look at it; but it had broken. It was just that she was feeling tired, leaning against the tree, women tired more easily than men, tired as if from an invisible wound blood were flowing uninterruptedly like air, like thought, like things existing without respite, the hare running. How perturbing lightness was. She was so happy. To live one time was always, always. Except she wasn’t proud and that was as good as being solitary, without sharing oneself with the world — you had to be proud, establish victory and piety. How incomplete it was to live! she shouted at herself sharply in a clarion that suddenly snapped. She slid down the tree, lay atop the sparse grass, covered her eyes with her bare forearm. How incomplete it was to live. What was she fighting against? because in the deepest part of her being, beneath