The Chandelier

make use of her though, beauty seemed so lost to itself, it remained somehow intact and thoughtful like a flower with an unconquerable nature; nobody, nobody could see her — silence and solitude were reaching her from afar in a limpid breath. The light instant would flee without touching the memory of any man of the earth and she could never entrust it to anyone because it would escape gestures and gaze. Only she herself would keep it like a violent spot, a hot, white star in the center of her body. And other human eyes would be useless because only she herself could comprehend that in reality, beneath the final sun, in the long green meadow, in the deepest reality she was almost moving toward the distant light a finally naked being, her legs erasing themselves at the root of her body, her breasts advancing high, translucent, cold — that was the pure urge that was nonetheless false. Only she herself would understand. And because she was creating inside herself, that was where the grace with which she was stepping just then was coming from. She tried to laugh by herself since she was wanting to hear herself and right then might still be able to invent a new laugh. Her light laughter scared her with strange mischief, she shuddered in the air like rosebuds that open in silence, the singularity of cold air atop the flesh of her face. She turned around, the wind covered her cheek with her rough hair, she saw that the road had moved off in a red thread lost forever, her heart took fright, watchful, prudent. The mountains ahead were still unreal and she would never reach them. At large in the field she then felt a slow and serious fear mingled with the joyful event, fear of leaping over the line of pleasure and suddenly sinking into the breadth, deep, dark like the sea . . . and atop that sea was floating the cold pleasure that was sharpening into needles of ice and that would break like a gleam that goes out — then she closed her lips that with great difficulty were ceasing to smile, dry and limpid. She lowered her eyes for a second. When she raised them she wanted to look at the field with solemnity and sadness to hold back the excess of fullness so hard to endure and that’s how she looked at it because she was solemn and sad.

The way back was hard going, without momentum and without ecstasy. She felt like she was crawling along in the dust, night was falling, she was halting with hurting feet, desperate. She was sitting for a while on the side of the road, the clouds were darkening, the branches were swaying in calm murmuring; she was squinting afraid to start crying. She was thirsty, saw a little stream flowing nearby but the liquid was tired and warm, giving in her thirsty mouth a harsh impression instead of prickling her with cold shudders. Everything was starting to refuse itself, everything was putting away its qualities of being, night was closing. It was seeming more and more impossible for her to reach the Farm, she was hoisting her heavy, sweaty body and seeing nothing but the road going round and round, shutting itself up like a goal that she was trying to reach hopefully but that wasn’t a goal, that was opening onto a new already-dark road, slow and staggering like a nightmare. Darkness was falling bluish over the mountains; in the twilight the fireflies were existing in a colorless instant of flight, the shrill and fearless song of a bird was penetrating like a sidelong flight far away. Did I go the wrong way? she was wondering extremely disturbed . . . Arrh, she was saying deafly, going ahead inexpressible and at large, arrh! Her bare feet were burning and her little toe was bleeding black with dust. She was stumbling out of dismay and fright, stopping at times for a second, just to listen — nothing could be heard, the crickets were buzzing unsteady, hard, incessant, the dizzy twilight, so vacant, it seemed to be some error of vision, she was running her hand over her eyes but again finding the gray and cold air, full of the new rumblings of the forest, the trees creaking. Intimately she was still the one who had dared lift herself beyond what she could do, again she had been the one who had created the moment of pain, dreading herself surprised by the coldness with which she was directing herself to live, and how she was regretting it, how she was regretting it! don’t dare, don’t dare, have less courage and even less strength than she did, that’s it, that’s it! She was thinking softly encouraging herself, her eyes open with difficulty in the half-dark of the night, her body moving ahead unsteady at a speed that kept on giving out. It seemed to her that with every moment a pause was being born in which she was fleeing backward, backward, having to travel back over the road already traveled. Invisible branches were catching on her clothes, thorns tearing apart the fabric, scratching her skin with sharp violence and blood was blossoming like drops of sweat. She wasn’t groaning, no, she wasn’t groaning, she was saying with rage and mettle like a beast of burden whose steps falter: ah! ah!, her voice was coming out hoarse and intense, she was getting excited, almost running, never, never had her body existed so much, never had living weighed so heavy upon her — her spirit was breathing a fragile and hesitant breath, enraptured she was inhaling the cold air with violence but wasn’t bringing it beyond the surface of her being, suffocated. I promise, I promise not to go back to Vicente, my God! Carried by a veiled foreboding, expending the new sensation as the memory of the past unfurls, she was thinking of the sin