She sat in the steaming train with her brown hat now trimmed with red — she sought in her purse the pack of cigarettes abandoned since she’d entered Upper Marsh. She was feeling cheerful, as if cold and fresh inside her body. Alone again, she was starting to experience “the things,” to allow them. She was thinking about Vicente, with a bothered sigh taking out a cigarette and lighting it. What had happened anyway? that was the sudden question to which she was desiring secretly but firmly to reach a certain impossible-to-define answer; she was sighing intolerantly in the face of her impotence that nonetheless was making her better possess the very state in which she was finding herself. What had happened? she wasn’t sure what she was trying to learn with that question. She was smoking. The vague notion of what she’d always wanted seemed to have been constantly thrashing around inside her without ever taking shape. She was guessing however, by a mysterious assent to her own lie, that having lived so continually, with patience and perseverance as in a daily job, guessing that amidst all the lost gestures the true one must have escaped — though she could never get to know it. And that she’d resolved at some indistinct minute of her life, in some glance or a brief sensation, a bodily movement or a merely curious and unnoticed thought, who would ever know. A chain of confused and indecipherable instants seemed to have served as the ritual for a consummation. And whatever might be too delicate to be accomplished through the brightness of facts, had worn out the thick defense of an entire daily existence. She herself, against herself, might have secretly agreed to the sacrifice of the mass of her life, heaping upon herself lies, false love, ambitions and pleasures — just as she’d protect somebody’s silent escape by capturing everyone’s attention with uproar and confusion. She was feeling complete and a bit tired, smoking, but her eyes were shining calm and inexpressive. Before that indeterminable instant she had been imperceptibly stronger as if held up by a clouded thrust from an unknown direction; now she was just a weak and watchful woman, yes, starting secretly an old age that someone would call maturity. There was some clearer word that almost brought her closer to her true thought and then, without understanding herself, she looked at herself in the glass of the window, examining herself. Her own face had lost its importance. She sat better adjusting her position. She was smoking and thinking inexplicably, without reaching herself. And really how could she ever foresee whatever was happening without interruption inside the most being of her body? . . . Sensations had always held her up with a light continuous strength and that’s how she’d arrived at the present moment. Even at that instant, if she stopped deeply, she could still discover primal impressions flowing like delicate noises pure words ringing out, the sea bestowing foam upon the deserted beach, maybe in memory, maybe in foreboding, being itself, through the guile of its distraction, murmuring essential, disintegrating gathering getting up: wash, place in the sun, the damp thing loses its dampness, new skin shining smooth in the shade, wash, place in the sun, the damp thing loses its dampness, new skin shining smooth in the sun, wash, put in the sun, let it lose its dampness, skin brightens up, wash, put in the sun, let it lose its dampness, wash . . . Clouded by the cigarette she was refusing to go ahead. Maybe she was referring to some serious and deep thing that was worrying her; or that might not be worrying her, that was just carrying on its natural life as the heart that beats now simply continues the past moment. The meaning of that junk of sensations was obscure and carrying on with perfect mystery; her unfurling wasn’t giving her pleasure, wasn’t giving her fatigue, wasn’t making her happy or unhappy, it was the person herself living and she was looking out the train window calculating how long it would take to arrive at the next station, wanting at last to stand and move around a bit her legs tired by motionlessness. Ah, the chandelier. She’d forgotten to look at the chandelier. It seemed to her that they’d put it away or otherwise that she hadn’t had time to seek it with her eyes. Especially also she hadn’t seen many other things. She thought she’d lost it forever. And without understanding herself, feeling a certain void in her heart, it also seemed to her that in fact she’d lost one of her things. What a shame, she said surprised. What a shame, she repeated to herself with regret. The chandelier . . . She was looking through the window and in the lowered and dark glass was seeing mixed with the reflection of the seats
