People in the Room Read online

  I dressed slowly. I put on my black dress. Then I took it off again, since it was new and I was afraid they might notice. I knew I’d never wear it again if things didn’t go well that first time. I didn’t want to look as if I was dressed for a special occasion, but like a neighbor who’d decided to visit them after they’d told her they were “always at home.” I peered out of the window. They looked exactly as they had the day before; at once blurred and sharply defined, as if they couldn’t prevent the backs of their armchairs from obscuring their silhouettes. I went back to my bedroom. I put on some dark clothes, combed my hair, put on some lipstick, and looked at my hands. I don’t know why, but I thought they wouldn’t be able to find fault with my hands. Then I found myself pacing around my room, unable to decide whether to go, or to postpone the visit. But the man had said, “Tomorrow would be better,” as if they would need some distraction; perhaps, if I was bold enough to intervene in time, she wouldn’t rob her of the bundle of letters again. As soon as I sat down, I could say, “The man who visited yesterday wants you to give me the letters.” Then she would get up without saying a word, disappear for a few moments, and come back with the envelope, and as I looked at it, glimpsing old-fashioned letterheads, a slanted, disconsolate calligraphy, she would leave again so as not to witness a recurring final scene.

  I began to feel vexed with myself for devising such lofty ways of meddling, as if I had any part to play in their destinies. I thought it was stupid, it was absurd to get so worked up about something I’d never promised to do, or could at least put off until later. I put my coat over my shoulders, and looked at my room, as if the next time I saw it I would be different, transformed, having learned so much—the room and I both longing for something—and went out into the street. Without even looking towards the balcony, I crossed the street and rang the bell of the house across the way. A long time passed. I had an urge to run away while there was still time, but then I heard footsteps, the same footsteps, though she was coming towards the door alone. She opened it and stared at me. We stared at each other. I forgot the line I’d prepared, and she made no attempt to speak. She stared at me. She seemed not to recognize me. I thought we might stay there a long time, sheltered in the doorway, that perhaps we’d start crying, or I might end up insulting her if she didn’t say something, if she didn’t say, “You have the wrong house, this isn’t it … ”

  I thought vaguely that I should concentrate harder and not be so careless, when she finally said, “Come in, please. I was wondering, was it you who read the telegram?”

  “Yes. I wanted to visit you … ” I murmured, feeling distant, as if several voices at once were telling me what to say, and all I could manage to utter was, “Good evening, good evening … ”

  When she stepped aside and we walked through the vestibule, she asked me hurriedly, in a voice that sounded accustomed to hiding things, “I beg you not to mention the telegram. It was a very painful visit … ” and those words (which the night before had seemed beautiful and fitting along with the horse and the streetlamp and the voice with its unrequited love hidden inside the carriage) were immediately filled with shame, like a face buried in a pair of hands. Perhaps they weren’t love letters? But there was still that gaze and, when I remembered it, I was frightened to think I was coming closer to her, to the way she gazed, which would surely be different, though some trace of it must be left; its outline, its origin, its least desperate part.

  When we reached the drawing room the other two stood and held out their hands. Then I turned to her and said, “I forgot to shake your hand. I was so afraid to come … ” and offered her mine, thinking that if I didn’t, something terrible might happen. Then I regretted having said the word afraid, when I should have saved it for another time, for when I wasn’t afraid. Our hands touched, and I was glad when she gave me hers willingly in a brief, firm handshake, because she didn’t graze my skin, but let go decisively, and her fingers didn’t brush flaccidly against mine, then try to slip away.

  She invited me to sit down, and they returned to the places I recognized from outside. In fact, everything went on as it had before, except I was no longer at my window, but face to face with them in their own drawing room, and now, though we weren’t yet speaking, the possibility of our voices had been added to the way I watched them. I didn’t dare study the room around me. I looked only at them, hoping the youngest—I was sure she was the youngest—would look back at me, and meanwhile, though I couldn’t say why, I felt emboldened by the certainty that, in the end, I needn’t come back.

  “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time,” I told her, the one it was easiest to hurt, imagining her in deserted streets, hiding letters, as if trying to look guilty. “I always see you through the window,” I added, to see whether they were troubled by the idea of being watched.

  “We never close the shutters. We’re of no interest to anyone,” she said, then after a brief silence she rose and added, “Shall we have something to drink?” and left me alone with the other two.

  I thought the moment had come when the youngest would look at me as if I had something to do with the bundle of letters, and this would help her gaze seem a little like it had the night before. But when she looked at me it was gone. I began to want the eldest to come back soon, since I felt more at ease with her, perhaps because she was the one who defended them, who truly watched over them—or perhaps she had been the one to suggest or demand they be kept there, secluded, with a view of the street. I murmured something about the neighborhood, and she came back with everything ready on a tray she placed beside her seat, and then, after taking my coat, though I assured her I wouldn’t stay long, she returned to her place, took the decanter, and poured four small glasses.

  “A drop of white wine,” she said, holding a glass out to me. I soon noticed the other two taking a sip. I did the same, then paused, as if waiting. They too seemed to be waiting for the gentle thrill in their blood.

  I couldn’t be sure if things seemed easier from that moment on, but I am sure as my agitation began to wane, I ceased to think of them separately. I no longer strained to listen to one in particular, but collected all three of their voices at once, as if I would have believed anything they said. I also felt ready to tell them many things, and that they wouldn’t be surprised, and I even concluded that perhaps she’d been right to return the letters. I felt cheered, and asked them if they knew how long I had known of them.

  “Since the evening you brought the telegram,” answered the youngest, the one who ought not to mention it, since mentioning it was like approaching the letters.

  I took a sip of wine and remembered the carriage. I needed to know whether she’d kept the letters. I needed to know, but first I had to answer her. Then I told them about the night of the storm, when their faces had crossed the street for the first time. I even told them about the flash of lightning in the mirror, since the pale, cool wine made me brave enough for anything, except to confess that I’d wanted to see her dead. They each listened differently, and I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me if I said too much. As I spoke, I began furtively to collect their first casual gestures, and arrange them separately, as if their story had only begun that afternoon.

  The eldest lit a cigarette, and kept smoking until it burned out. She held her glass with the same hand as the cigarette, while the other rested in her lap, still, abandoned, doing nothing. The smoke left her lips so slowly and effortlessly that for a long time it floated by her cheek, and swirled about her eyes. The second didn’t smoke; she drank slowly, watching me almost constantly, taking brief little sips, calm, her head erect, like a large, dignified bird. When she ceased to watch me, she would turn to her younger sister, but not to speak, since to do so she needn’t have looked at her. When the eldest spoke, the two younger sisters observed her intently, but when they spoke to each other, they didn’t even turn their heads; each of their voices would change imperceptibly, and had no need to say a name, so sure was it of being heard by
the other. The eldest knew her two sisters’ habits, and never interrupted them. She, on the other hand, had to turn to address them, and so, perhaps to avoid discomfort, she’d grown used to speaking to them while still facing forward, onto the street. I thought it would have been easier for them, instead of sitting in a row, to sit so they could see one another without having to turn, but then only one of them would’ve been able to face the street. The youngest seemed to do everything daintily, little by little, though she didn’t take any longer than the others. Each time she took a sip of wine she placed the glass on the small table she shared with the second, and she did the same with her cigarette. Instead of holding it between two fingers after each puff, and even before she’d exhaled, she placed it in the ashtray. Her hand moved back and forth but it didn’t disturb anyone, since after each puff on her cigarette, or sip of her drink, she would rest it on the arm of her chair or in her lap next to—but not touching—the hand kissed so slowly the night before, which seemed to still live in that kiss, as if her skin hadn’t ceased to remember it.

  When I told them about the voyage their faces had made in the storm, and how the lightning—which was more captivating—had suddenly extinguished them, all three of them looked at me. I felt as if I wasn’t there but in my own house, discovering them, holding the pale clover of their faces in my hand for the first time—their faces, to which I always wanted to add, their distinguished faces. But no one would understand why I liked to describe them that way, or they might laugh, assuming it implied gravity and respect, when all I wanted was to put generations of expressions into words, the deliberate and perfected expressions that bore a likeness to those faces … But I would have time to explain, if I kept visiting them.

  I didn’t want to talk about the afternoon I’d seen them at the post office, since I needed to avoid the subject of the telegram, and first I would have to mention how her voice sounded like mine. But that was the strange thing. The likeness was gone, or at least no one noticed it. Perhaps it would happen again, and then I could ask them what we should do about it, work out where the likeness might have come from, and why her voice, precisely her voice, sounded so much like my own. Perhaps I was the one who was changing, imagining likenesses because their faces weren’t enough. I decided to leave the voice for later, and instead I told them how their faces had appeared above a dead horse in the middle of the street. No one knew where it had come from, or to whom it belonged. I sensed they were listening to me more carefully, and questioning me so as to help me follow their faces.

  “Did you see when they moved it?” she asked me.

  “I was the first to see it. The street was empty. I saw it before you did, since I had to watch your window. At first, I used to watch your house in the morning, and that’s when I saw it lying in the middle of the street.”

  “But you weren’t there,” she said immediately, as if I’d done something wrong.

  “I was spying on you, over the dead horse. First, I saw all three of you behind the curtain, and couldn’t make out your faces, but then you opened it.” As I said this I thought, “I’m glad I didn’t know them,” since I kept the horse’s death in a special place, with no room for discussion, or any mistaken details, with no room for a single one of those three faces. The faces had their own place, and I needed to keep them separate, in case they came to an end. Then I’d be able to choose between the space occupied by the dead horse, and the one occupied by their faces. What’s more, since I didn’t yet know them, I could concentrate hard on every detail, on the horse’s velvety neck, its thick, just-groomed mane, the sudden, shifting sunlight glinting on a horseshoe, and above its head, with its enormous sad eyes, and the curve of its back, the three faces across the way. Back then, the dead horse had been enough; now I needed the horse and their faces.

  Then she murmured, as if it had just occurred to her, “What a pity we didn’t meet sooner,” but I paid little attention to her words, since I had no “What a pity” to offer in return; it was all so beautiful that I’d already stood up to say my goodbyes, before anything could be ruined or undone, or any mistake made in the shadows. I had no “What a pity” to offer. Not even when I reached the vestibule and paused to put on my coat, and saw, as if someone had just left them there to be put away later, a pair of long, white kid gloves that had never been worn, perhaps with powder still in their fingertips. I wouldn’t say anything, I thought, or ask what they were doing there, forgotten, no, not forgotten, but left to gather dust, uncourted, with their long-ago, useless, light sprinkling of talcum powder; but I couldn’t help myself, and I said, almost touching them, “Such lovely gloves!”

  “Oh, the white gloves,” murmured the youngest. “We never get around to putting them away … ”

  And then I asked them not to walk me out, since I wanted to take their three faces—which until then I had collected only through the window—away with me; I wanted to take them away just once, clear, close, and tangible, leaning in a concerned slant over the white gloves they never got around to putting away.

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  ‌10

  Was I sitting facing them, or was it from my window that I gazed across, the faces not suspecting I was keeping watch, not suspecting the special care I took in waiting for her to die? How dreadful! But no. They were in the drawing room and no one spoke of death. I was the only one leaning, as if pushed forward by clinging arms, towards an unknown balcony, to see them dead. It wasn’t my fault.

  “Why don’t you just die? It might be terrible at first, but it would be so bold and final … ” I sometimes thought of saying, but someone, at that moment, would dust off a memory, and I understood that to die, one needed to forget. She was to blame, for her temperament, the slow intensity with which she approached a seemingly trivial subject, then addressed it as if her whole life depended on the words left floating in the air when she fell silent.

  We were in the drawing room, and something might happen to them at any moment. It wasn’t essential for it to happen that very evening. Nor was it necessary for it to happen in my presence. I began to feel vexed, to feel a restless impatience creeping up my arms, urging her to say something, to say anything, it needn’t be momentous or irrevocable. But she was incapable of speaking that way; even if she said, “Stop coming so often,” or simply, “I’m going to get some more cigarettes,” it would always be as if she was gathering memories beside a plot reserved for a grave.

  We sat in silence, and it was her fault. Only after a while did I realize, when one evening she disappeared from the room for an hour. I sat across from the other two, thinking something might happen to lighten the mood; that perhaps one of them would make a simple, sudden gesture, like crossing her legs or sighing. But they remained quiet. I remember speaking two or three times; only the air seemed to hear me. It also seemed that my trivial words—and I felt ashamed—left the drawing room and made their way to her bedroom in the darkness. Perhaps she laughed to herself. When she came back she was gazing at her hand, as if she’d just noticed a blemish. I thought she must be examining the accuracy of one of the lines on her palm. The others watched her, and it occurred to me that they would prefer to be left to themselves, so she could tell them if anything new had happened.

  But she sat down as usual and took a sip of wine while I heard the cries well up at them from inside me, “Say something! Say something!” I felt an urge to get up and tell them they didn’t deserve my presence, or ask them to say something while I insulted them silently. I would’ve liked to cry that they couldn’t possibly keep watch over each other so much, that was what I was there for, and that death always comes when it’s least expected. But I knew they wouldn’t die, and my words would be accepted with a wounded smile.

  “Why don’t you stay a while longer? We like it when you visit,” and the “We like it” would hold so many foreseeable things: a book closed very cautiously, no cause for fright, the flattened gloves, a desire to smoke … I knew it was hopeless, that I would only leave if they
asked me. Meanwhile, as long as they didn’t demand my departure, perhaps I could add something to their unchanging days, and even wait for them to stop keeping watch over one another. But I didn’t know whether they were keeping watch, or waiting for something. Perhaps, simply, they were three women who liked to pass the time in their drawing room. But that didn’t prevent me from studying the reasons behind this habit.

  No, I wasn’t waiting for them to die, but for a face, the least beloved, to emerge from their almost furtive coexistence, and for it to begin to contrive something possessed by other women, men, and abandoned houses; something that might easily be added to certain days and certain nights; something that might exist without a why; for them to be able to say, “Let’s sit at the table,” without it implying yet another sorrow, as if the decision to go to the table had to be studied at length; for it to be less important for them to sit at the table only for nothing to happen, or to just return to the drawing room and wait calmly, all too calmly, until she began to speak after the first glass of wine, the other two waiting for her to utter a distant, “Enough,” and begin her short sentences, laden with memorable scenes, inevitable refusals, torturing them perhaps, maybe troubling them, scarcely brushing against them. But that soon seemed impossible, because when she announced, “We won’t go out tomorrow,” even I felt—and I was only there to watch them—that her voice bore enough likeness to many things for me to long for a destiny identical to hers.

  But they kept sitting there, in silence, and I wondered (it was impossible not to wonder), “Who will mourn for them?” until with great effort, I murmured, “Have you been smoking long?” and then I stayed quiet, hoping for something to rise from that simple question that might define them, might grant them the solace of an exact date, even if nothing more.