The Chandelier Read online

  “Well then.”

  Virgínia loved him so much at times like this that she’d want to weep into her plate out of hope and confusion. Mother would sigh with thoughtful eyes:

  “Who knows, my God.”

  But she’d spend the days like a guest in her own house, she wouldn’t give orders, taking care of nothing. Her flowery, worn-out dress would cover her floppily, allow a glimpse of her long breasts, fat and bored. She’d once been alive, with small decisions every minute — her tired and angry eye would shine. That’s how she’d lived, married, and caused Esmeralda to be born. And then a slow loss had supervened, she didn’t encompass her own life with her gaze, though her body kept living, separate from other bodies. She was lazy, tired, and vague, Daniel had been born and then Virgínia, shaped in the lower part of her body, uncontrollable — a little skinny, hairy, their eyes actually even beautiful. She was clinging to Esmeralda as to the remains of her final existence, from that time when she’d breathe forward telling herself: I’m going to have a daughter, my husband’s going to buy an upholstered living room set, today is Monday . . . From the days before she married she lovingly kept a nightgown thin from use as if the days without a husband or children were glorious. That’s how she’d protect herself from her husband, from Virgínia, and from Daniel — her eyes blinking. Her husband bit by bit had imposed a certain kind of silence with his cunning and still body. And bit by bit, after the heyday of prohibiting purchases and spending, she had found out with brooding joy, in one of the greatest urges of her life, that she wasn’t living in her own home, but in her husband’s, in her old mother-in-law’s. Yes, yes; before she’d connect with joyful threads to whatever was going on and now the threads were fattening stickily or breaking and she’d bump abruptly into things. Everything was so irremediable, and she was living so cut off, but so cut off, Maria — she’d turn her thoughts to one of her little schoolmates, one she’d lost touch with. She was simply going on, Maria. She’d look at Daniel and Virgínia, calmly surprised and haughty; they’d been born. Even the birth had been easy, she couldn’t even remember the pain, her lower parts were nice and healthy, she’d think while confusedly glancing quickly at herself; they weren’t connected to her past. She’d say meekly: eat, Virgínia . . . — and come up short. Virgínia . . . She hadn’t even been the one who chose the name, Maria. She liked names shiny and ironic like someone waving a fan to turn something away: Esmeralda, two waves, Rosicler, three quick waves . . . And the girl, like a branch, was growing without her having decorated her previous features, always young, strange, and serious, scratching her dirty head, being tired, not much of an eater, drawing silly things on pieces of paper. Yes, Mother didn’t eat much but her abandoned way of being at the table gave the impression she was wallowing in food. She did almost nothing but somehow, she seemed to feel so wrapped up in her own life that she could hardly even shake loose an arm and gesture. Seeing her stranded atop the table; her father chewing with staring eyes; Esmeralda sharp, rigid, and keen saying: where am I supposed to walk?! through those swamps?!; Daniel darkening proud and almost stupidified by so much contained power; and, when she closed her eyes, seeing inside herself a small dense feeling, full of joy, firm, mysterious, and undefined, Virgínia would never know that people wondered whether one quality in a person excluded the possibility of others, if whatever there was inside the body was alive and strange enough that it was also its opposite. As for herself she couldn’t even guess what she could do and what she couldn’t, what she’d manage to get just by batting her eyelids and what she’d never obtain, even by giving up her life. But to herself she granted the privilege of not demanding gestures and words in order to show herself. She was feeling that even without a thought, a desire, or a memory, she was imponderably whatever she was and that consisted in God knows what.

  The days on Quiet Farm were breathing as long and empty as the mansion. The family didn’t receive guests all together. Mother would rarely cheer up for the arrival of two neighbor ladies, she’d whisk them to her own bedroom as if trying to protect them from the long hallways. And Esmeralda would brighten with excitement and a certain brutality when her girlfriends, pale and tall under corn-colored hats, came to see her. She’d quickly put on shoes and, flushed, lead them to her room locking the door, time passing. And sometimes some member of the paternal family came from the south to visit Grandmother and Father. Uncle would sit at the table, smile at everyone with his deafness and eat. And also Aunt Margarida, skinny, her skin flaccid, her sharp dry bird face but her lips always pink and moist like a liver; she’d wear on a single finger the two rings of widowhood and three more with stones. Father would be reborn on those days and Virgínia would watch him frightened, with a worried disgust. He himself wanted to serve the table, he excused the black servant from the kitchen — Virgínia would look at him restless and mute, her mouth full of a water of nausea and attention. With wet eyes he’d bring Grandmother up to the table, saying:

  “The lady of the house must dine with her children, the lady of the house must dine with her children . . .” — and you hardly noticed that this was a joke. Virgínia would laugh. Aunt Margarida’s gaze was hasty and in the fraction of a second it lasted she seemed to smile. When it was over, however, and her face was already turned the other way, something would float in the air like the aftermath of a revealed fear. With her head like a little bird’s with combed feathers, slanted to the plate, she’d eat almost without speaking. You could tell she’d die someday, you could tell. Uncle was saying with a profound and calm mien:

  “But this is so tasty.”

  “Have some more!” her father was shouting blinking with joy.

  Uncle was looking her father right in the eye with an unmoving smile. He was kneading a ball of bread and answering with tact and bonhomie as if needing to mollify his own deafness:

  “Well then, well then.”

  Father was looking for a moment with surpassing astonishment. He was suddenly grabbing his brother’s plate, filling it with food and pushing it back, emotive and happy:

  “Go on, eat it all at once.”

  Uncle was slightly gesturing by jerking his hand in front of his own head in a military salute. Father was watching him with his arms outstretched like a doll’s, overstating his happiness.

  “Ah what a sad life, what a sad life,” he was saying laughing a lot.

  When after a few days the guests would depart, life in the mansion was once again sucked up by the country air and the flies would buzz louder, shining in the light. Father would resume his solitude without sadness, push away his tablecloth and silverware, bring over a lamp, read the paper and never open his book. He’d later go up to sleep, climbing the stairs slowly as if in order to hear the whinny of the steps, a dark and calm hope, almost a lack of desire. On occasion, in his rolled long johns — he’d suddenly transform into a funny man and Virgínia had trouble falling asleep on those nights — in his rolled long johns he’d go about living and stay until two, three in the morning watching the birds lay their small, small eggs. With his body covered in chicken lice he’d then get into a tub full of water and kerosene placed in the courtyard and, lit weakly by the lamp, wash himself, rinse himself silently, the darkness was sprinkled by wet and abrupt noises, he’d go to sleep. Mother would ask amidst the forgetfulness of the dinner, in the heart of the mansion:

  “How’s the stationer’s?”

  “Fine,” responded her father.

  Virgínia would walk past her grandmother’s door, stop happily for a second to listen to her snoring. She didn’t snore in a straight sharp line but on a pair of wings. The sound would start off broadly, gather in a narrow center and flare out again. Her satisfied and strange snore was a flying wing. Virgínia would enter her room with closed eyes, feel surrounded by a flutter of tender, hoarse, and rapid wings, as if the old lady were releasing a scared little bird with each breath. And when she’d awaken — she’d alway
s awaken suddenly, look around terrorized as if they could have transported her to another world while she was sleeping, and look at Virgínia with spite — when she’d awaken the sound would snap in a straight line, a little bird half-free in a mouth would hesitate trembling and luminous and was swallowed in a murmur. Grandmother no longer left the bedroom where the black servant she’d raised would bring her meals. She only came down when the relatives from the south were visiting. Esmeralda, Daniel, and Virgínia were required to go into her room at least once a day to receive her blessing and give her a sort of quick kiss on the face. And they’d never visit her more than that one time. When the black servant would get sick they’d send Virgínia to stay in her room and attend to her. She’d go in good spirits. Her seated grandmother wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t laugh, would hardly even look as if now living was enough for her. Sometimes she’d be reborn in a quick expression of a cunning and indecent face. Virgínia would speak to her in a low voice so she wouldn’t hear and get annoyed. Her greatest gesture of rage or contempt was spitting to the side; with her dry mouth, she had trouble mustering enough saliva; and by then, distracted from her anger, all she tried to do was spit — propped against the door, her face deeply still and thin, Virgínia would peek. The old lady would seem to meditate for a second, her head bent to the side, in the position to which her rage had brought her; then she’d back down with a satisfied and agile look as if she’d saved up enough saliva for everyone; she’d freeze up again, her shining eyes blinking in their slits every once in a while. Virgínia would shake from distaste and fear. She’d watch her move her hand leisurely and with a shaky slowness scratch her dry nose. “Don’t you die, damned old woman,” she’d repeat the servant’s phrase angrily to herself. But her grandmother would suddenly let out a sneeze of a cat in the sun and something would mix with Virgínia’s fear, an ashamed and irritated pity would weigh on her chest. “Don’t die, darling little old lady,” she’d repeat. The bedroom would darken in her open and staring eyes while she’d press her whole body against the door. And suddenly a movement of life would seem to hurry and fall onto the same level — the feeling of falling when you go to sleep. Immutable, immutable.

  But sometimes her life was so fast. Lights wander around, Virgínia peers at the sky, colors shine beneath the air. Virgínia wanders around, the brightness is the air, Virgínia breathes brightness, leaves shake unawares, Virgínia isn’t thinking, the lights wander around, Virgínia peers at the sky . . . Sometimes her life was so fast. Her small girlish head was dizzy, she was staring at the field in front of her, peering at Quiet Farm already lost in the distance and looking without trying to understand. In Upper Marsh there was no sea, yet a person could look quickly at the broad meadow, then close her eyes, clutch her own heart and like a child, like a child being born, smell the sweetly rotten odor of the sea. And even if just then the day were hard and new, the plants dry with dust, red and hot summer clouds, the rough sunflowers shaking against space at the end of their thick stalks, even without the happy moistness of the lands beside the waters . . . once a bird blossomed from the meadow to the air in sudden flight, made her heart beat quickly in a pale fright. And that was free and light as if someone were walking along the beach. She had never been near the sea but knew what the sea was like, neither would she force her life to express it in thoughts, she knew, that was enough. When you least expected it night arrived, the owl would cry, Daniel could at any moment call her to take a walk, someone could show up at the door delivering some message, she and Daniel would run to find out what it was about, the servant could fall ill, she herself might wake up once a bit later — she was so finely simple during that time. The unexpected didn’t exist and the miracle was the revealed movement of things; had a rose blossomed in her body, Virgínia would have plucked it with care and with it adorned her hair without smiling. There was a certain amazed and tenuous joy without comic notes — where? ah, a color, the cold plants that seemed to give off small, vacant, and bright sounds in the air, tiny breaths, tremulously alive. Her life was painstaking but at the same time she was living just a single streak sketched without strength and without end, flat and terrified like the trace of another life; and the most she could do was cautiously follow her glimpses of it. Could everyone know what I know? she would wonder with the stubborn and unintelligent look that was a shared characteristic of the family, her head drooping. She’d stop for an instant at the edge of the field and grow still lying in wait paying close attention to her own possibilities. A long minute would unfurl, of the same color and on the same level as a point emerging from itself in a straight and sluggish line. As long as it lasted everything that existed outside of her was seen only by her eyes in a clean and curious realization. But from one moment to the next, without any warning, she’d shudder delicately gathering all at once the movements contained in the things around her. She’d instantaneously transmit her own movements outside of her mixed with the load received; before long in the country air there was one more element that she was creating by emitting with small mute smiles her own strength. She’d move ahead and freely penetrate the wet grass, her narrow legs would get wet. Everything would spin lightly around itself, the wind on the leaves of the courtyard. Every once in a while, like a little almost inaudible cry and then silence denying it, she’d quickly gain the feeling of being able to live and then she’d lose it forever in a dizzy surprise: what happened? Though the feeling was fleeting as a perfume while you run, almost a lie, it had been exactly that, being able to live . . . She said to Daniel:

  “What’s good and what scares us is that . . . for example, I can do my things . . . that I’ve got ahead of me a thing that still doesn’t exist, you know?”

  Daniel looked straight ahead inflexible:

  “And then what? the future . . .”

  “Yes, but it’s horrible, isn’t it?” she’d say fiery and smiling.

  Profoundly ignorant she’d do little exercises and comprehensions involving things like walking, looking at tall trees, waiting on a bright morning for the end of the day but just waiting for an instant, picking out one ant just like all the rest from many, strolling slowly, paying attention to silence by almost grabbing on to a slight sound with her ears, breathing quickly, placing an expectant hand over the heart that didn’t stop, looking emphatically at a stone, at a bird, at her own foot, swinging about with her eyes closed, laughing out loud when she was alone and then listening, dropping her body onto the bed without the least strength almost aching all over from such an effort to annihilate herself, trying coffee without sugar, looking at the sun until she cried without pain — space would then turn woozy as before a terrible rain —, carrying in the palm of her hand a little bit of river without spilling it, placing herself beneath a flagpole in order to look up and grow dizzy with herself — changing with care the way she lived. The things that would inspire her were so brief. Vaguely, vaguely, if she’d been born, plunged her hands in the water and died, she’d exhaust her strength and her forward movement would have been complete — that was her impression without thoughts.

  In the afternoon the palm trees had been knocked down for some reason and great palm leaves hard and verdant were covering themselves nervously with ants that went up and went down mysteriously carrying out a mission or having fun for a reason. Virgínia kneeled down peering at them. She lifted her eyes and saw white smoke rising in the distance, amidst the black kindling. A quick kaleidoscope movement and a still image was taking shape, insoluble and nothing beyond: grasses standing in the sun, hot and calm sun, warm rows of ants, thick stalks of palm, the earth pricking her knees, her hair falling in her eyes, the wind piercing through the rip in her dress and coolly brightening her arm, veiled smoke dissolving in the air and all this connected by the same mysterious interval — an instant after she raised her head and made out the smoke in the distance, an instant before she lowered her head and felt new things. And she also knew vaguely, almost as if she were making it up,
that inside that interval there was yet another instant, small, pallid, and placid, without having inside her any of the things she was seeing, like that, like that. And how poor and free were she and Daniel. The whole world could laugh at both of them and they wouldn’t do anything, wouldn’t find out a thing. People said they were sad but they were happy. Sometimes Daniel would come talk to her about running away someday — both knew that they didn’t quite want that. She’d lift her head from the ground and see above her lips trembling from nascent imagination a badly drawn arc of already-dried coffee-with-milk! She’d turn aside eyes suddenly wounded in the most tender spot in her heart and haughty, frightened, stumble amidst repugnance, tears, and contempt, at wit’s end, living, living. She’d finally fall into a deep and intolerable devotion, brutal with herself and that eventually drove her to a kind of intimate glory, a bit miserable too. During that time she’d feel quite sorry for herself, with an almost voluptuous violence, feeling in her mouth a flashing taste of blood. In secret, she felt sorry for everything, for the most powerful things. Sometimes, terrified by a scream from her father, her eyes low and frightened would light on those thick boots where a gray shoestring was hesitating to be of use. And suddenly, without warning, all her flesh hurting as if a sweet acid were covering her all at once, she’d slide toward a martyrdom of understanding and her eyes would be covered with moist tenderness. People were so ridiculous!, she felt like crying from joy and shame at being alive. That was her impression. Father was coming in the wagon, asking: