“Come by my room before you go to sleep,” said Esmeralda.
She looked tired and sluggish.
“And what’s wrong with you?” asked Virgínia.
“Nothing . . .” the other responded. “I just woke up like this. I actually slept well last night.”
“But how do you feel?”
“I don’t know, I told you!” Esmeralda got irritated, “leave me alone.”
Father was eating, his glasses on his forehead, staring at the plate. Daniel was cutting the meat, putting it in his mouth and leaning toward the folded newspaper.
“I don’t know how you can read in this light,” said Virgínia — she was wanting to touch each person with a word.
He quickly lifted his head, annoyed, distracted. He said: “yes . . . ,” went back to his reading, his face lowered, chewing.
“Papa, do you want more corn?” she asked blushing. Because she remembered right away how he couldn’t stand being uncomfortable, that he was the boss at the table, the one who would invite and force others to eat. The old man didn’t reply, didn’t hand over his plate. Without knowing how to proceed, she said one more time, darkly offering herself as a daughter, disturbed to keep pushing but not knowing what course to take:
“And rice?”
“Nobody has to order me to eat,” he said at last, “I know all by myself what’s good for me,” he concluded resistant.
Surprised, but that was Father — she looked timidly at her family . . . Papa, Papa, that’s how you are, don’t ever die . . . How dumb she was, she said to herself a bit suddenly, straightened up and set to eating with resolve. At the end of the dinner some thing seemed to diminish like disappearing mists and reality was emerging almost like the reality before her walk. The scene had already been seen, it was that of the daily dinner — she felt calmer, more indifferent. She was remembering the walk through the night, feeling it inside her like a still aching and tender spot, like an inexplicable place to which you could return; she was pushing away the thought immediately with a gesture but already reflecting: maybe I overdid it, maybe I’m sick. Yet suddenly the electric power started to fade rapidly, the lamp was almost going out and in the half-shadow full of wind they all halted with their forks in hand, their eyes looking up. The interrupted dinner. Later, in a single surge, the light rekindled with power a shining brightness spread over the long table and over the faces . . . reality emerged whole, some thing was coming to an end — the family was starting dinner again. Contrite, angry with herself, Virgínia couldn’t help noticing how calm and emotionless she was. But she’d stay at the Farm forever! she thought with ardor and harshness, wounding herself. It was strange that she loved them so much, that she couldn’t stand the pain of imagining them dead and nevertheless wanted, yes, she wanted to leave. Then they got up, the old people went upstairs, Daniel went out, Esmeralda and she sat in the rocking chairs in the parlor without speaking. That room that was at the end of the dining room would only get a bit of the brightness of the other room and was growing quiet almost in shadow; it was the mansion’s hottest room, the smallest and most comfortable. Virgínia saw Esmeralda close her eyes and huddle clasping the corners of the dark shawl on her chest. She herself began to rock herself gently, her hands on the curved arms of the chair, her eyes fixed on the ceiling unconsciously watching the back-and-forth movement. She was loving and understanding people more and more and nevertheless more and more was realizing that she ought to isolate herself from them. But she needed to stay, stay . . . Esmeralda looked so old to her . . . how hadn’t she noticed it before? the wide eyelids closed in an abandon that was bothersome, the legs curled atop the chair, all of her nestled as if she were cold or had a fever, so wilted, so much smaller than she really was. But if she called her she’d hear an irritated exclamation. Yes, stay, watch the end of those lives with which she’d been born, reconstruct her forgotten childhood with the help of the memory of the place, live at the Farm where she’d had her greatest instants, take back, take back. She was rocking herself quickly, quickly, gently. But with the stubbornness of a world that warns with impotent eyes of the danger, she was feeling without even comprehending that the place where one was happy is not the place where one can live. She was closing her eyes while rocking herself quick and smooth and intimately she had to go on, deeply she was wrapping herself in anxiety and sweetness, deeply she had to go on in that ineffable perfecting that never would go to a higher point but was in the continuation of instants itself. What would be the intimate understanding of that slow succession without hope? why wasn’t it living off a single time . . .? She was lulling herself in search — obscurely whatever it was that always remained exactly equal to itself, through the instants was already imponderably something else — in a confused way it was from there that her most pent-up hope was coming. Deeply hidden and discreet she was rocking herself — and that was the meaning of living second by second breathing in and out; you couldn’t breathe right away everything you had to breathe, you couldn’t live all at once, time was slow, unfamiliar to the body, you could live off time. And it would be an instant just like the lost instant that would bring an end. That’s what she was experiencing extraordinarily entangled, with open and thoughtful eyes; without feeling cold beneath the shirt ripped by thorns she was saying to herself
