What happens next surprises everyone. For, you see, Rosa begins to sink. But not down. Rosa remains in exactly the same place she had been. She does not recede or shrink but also does not stay the same. In some way she begins to . . . fade? To lose her features? As if light snow were falling over her. Or as if very thin, nearly transparent ice were forming and covering her. Or is it more like gauze? Or a clouded glass surface, or a sarcophagus made of thick, transparent plastic that slightly distorts the features inside? However, there does not appear to be anything in between. Shlomith is the one who checks, boldly sticking her osteoporotic, bony hand (which could have been broken with one quick snap) toward Rosa but touching nothing, and let it be emphasized: nothing. She encounters no ice or snow or gauze or glass or plastic, nothing of the sort, and nothing of any other sort, not even Rosa, although Shlomith pushes her hand deeper and deeper. And yet Rosa is there! Like a pillar of salt, frozen but real. Very close. Shlomith continues pushing, and her arm keeps sinking. Everyone sees it, the hand, and everyone also sees faded Rosa, the hand and Rosa at the same time, and it isn’t possible, but nevertheless it is.
Can you feel her?
Shlomith answers Polina’s whispered question with a shake of her head and pulls her hand away: Rosa Imaculada’s form hasn’t caused so much as a tickle against the skin of her arm.
So there they sit around Rosa, as if horrified by the carcass of a hare crushed on the road, silent, unable to avert their eyes, unable to leave the scene of the accident, because there is a feeling that this is far from over. No one knows how to act in a situation like this. Should they mourn? Should they organize a small devotional? Light a candle (in their minds), bring flowers (in their thoughts)? And more generally—is it so horrible now? Is Rosa Imaculada’s vanishing, fading, partial disappearance something to cry over at all?
There are a number of facts they have to hold onto. So says Polina suddenly. The women give a start when they hear her voice. They had each sunk into their own slack, unfocused thoughts, thoughtlessness, a state that wasn’t ultimately that bad to be in, where they could have perfectly well remained, staring dumbly at pale Rosa. But Polina wanted to begin collecting thoughts. They can’t stay here! They have already begun to move away, haven’t they? Have they begun to grow pale too? To cloud over? Is it only a matter of time before the next one’s turn? Does the word Rosa said have the power to destroy them as well?
It is a fact, Polina says solemnly, that Rosa Imaculada’s pigmentation has suddenly begun to fade. The strident magenta of her piqué shirt first changed to a gentle flamingo red, then to a washed-out porcine pink, and then to white. The same had happened to Rosa’s red lips. Her black hair, on the other hand, had gone gray by way of dark brown, light brown, and the color of a field of grain, and the darkish, pockmarked skin of her face had gone pale. Her beige shorts had gone white all at once, while the red fabric belt threaded through the loops had lost its redness the same way as the shirt and the lips: magenta, flamingo red, piggy pink, and white. It is also a fact, Polina continues, that this change occurred after Rosa said a word which she had never said before, which no one here has ever to their knowledge said, a word whose meaning will remain an eternal mystery since Rosa is no longer able to give any answers.
They can’t be sure of anything else. Rosa has become unattainable, closed-off, displaced. Perhaps the most dead of all the dead or maybe returned to life. Who knows?
Ulrike moves like an insect awoken from dormancy: with an almost imperceptible flinch. With helium lightness she remembers the horror that waking up to not breathing had caused in her before Rosa began to fade. She remembers the cursed matter of which Rosa had tried to speak. She remembers being in Rosa’s lap, the comfort of Rosa’s feather-light embrace around her body. And then: the feeling of horror had disappeared. She had found comfort in the strange woman’s arms as she listened to her confused explanations. That did not fit the image Ulrike had of herself. She was not easily comforted. Even as a child she had cried inconsolably if she was ever injured, if someone had caused her distress. And it was not, as others imagined, demonstrative weeping. If it had been that, she would have enjoyed it when whoever had wronged her came begging for forgiveness. But the more the people who had offended her asked forgiveness, the more deeply she sank into disconsolation. And no one
