People in the Room Page 8

  Then I fell asleep. I awoke with a start when it was already late, and just as I almost always collected the faces exactly as I’d left them at the last minute, as my eyes were closing, I suddenly remembered they were dead. I got up, frantic; I quickly put something on, and ran to the drawing-room window. The others were already out in the street. I saw many people pass by; children walking slowly, men doffing their hats. I pressed close to the window and looked at the house across the way, but I couldn’t see them; I thought it was my tears, but no, it was the three funeral carriages in procession past my house. For a few seconds, I glimpsed over the glistening horses’ backs, the door standing open—something that never happened. I began to shake. Didn’t anyone know? Could no one have told me? Then, not knowing where to flee, I began to cry, “No! no! They can’t have died! They can’t be dead!” and then someone came running, and held me in her arms.

  “Who do you think has died? Those are the three little children who died in the fire,” and she tried to take me to her room.

  “Thank God she didn’t realize,” I thought at first. “Thank God they’re not dead. Thank God they’re not dead. Thank God I’ll see them again. Thank God, thank God,” I thought as I dressed, promising nothing was wrong with me, that it had only been a dream, and I needed go for a walk, to forget about the three carriages.

  I left hurriedly and walked around the block, so I could pretend not to be going to the other house. When I came back the street was deserted. I reached the door of the house across the way, which still stood open, and ran into the drawing room. They were already there, and they weren’t surprised to see me. They looked forlorn, as if they had squandered a chance. I didn’t have time to be angry, though I sensed they’d already taken possession of the three burials; as if that tragedy hinted at their own mournful presences.

  “Thank goodness! Thank goodness you’re not dead!” I cried as I looked at them, trying to hold back my tears.

  None of them answered me, but it no longer mattered, and I left quietly, respectfully, as she lowered her face into her hands.

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  ‌13

  There were many times I could have cried, but it was that afternoon, when I ran back across the street and locked myself in my bedroom, where no one could see me, that I burst into uncontrollable sobs. There was no new reason to cry. Perhaps I noticed too many things, hung on certain words they spoke, which they thought unimportant. I didn’t know why I focused so intently on their every movement—the way they prepared themselves for what would always remain in the room like a long, strange conversation, free of laments—when I wasn’t planning to describe them, when the most important thing, back then, at least for me, was for them to stay at the table, two on one side, and she always alone on the other, facing her two companions.

  The important thing was for them to stay as they were. Many things could happen to them, but not as long as they sat around the table—crafting their dialogues laden with secret words, familiar, unlabeled pill bottles, selfless calendars—and I could watch them as I pleased, with all the events I could foresee floating over them as if in a precise obituary: the mourning cards with black borders, their fear of flowers, their dresses ever blacker. “As long as they’re here, nothing will happen,” I often thought. “I’ll have time to talk of other things,” I kept saying to myself, hoping nothing would force me to rush, before the time came to cross the street to my house.

  That afternoon I sensed something would happen, or begin to happen. It was hard to explain. It would have been necessary—as always happened—to think of it the night before, and wake up, preparing myself from far away, from some half-remembered dream. But the day before she had said, “I found a spider on my dresser this afternoon.”

  I thought of the bundle of letters and forgot all about my preparations for what might happen the next day, or perhaps a few days later, when someone might tell me, “There’s someone in the drawing room.”

  But that no longer mattered as much, and might never even happen. What mattered was that she had found a spider, and granted it the exact significance a spider should be given. It was as if someone had forgotten that something was missing, and just at the moment she began to believe nothing would change, that missing something failed to return to its place, because a date was recalled, a name forgotten, or a beautiful fire spoiled the peace of an afternoon when she’d planned to pay no heed to anything, and now she must think of countless things, until she felt a little guilty, as if she could’ve prevented the fire, or as if she sensed the reproach of those who would return from the city to find the afternoon ruined, disquieted, full of changes.

  I didn’t think she’d done anything to deserve a spider at the beginning of the night. It was as if she were only now being punished for something she’d done years ago. It made me feel rather annoyed. I thought I should speak to her in a resentful tone, but whenever I planned to do so I always remembered the first time I’d imagined her dead from my own house, and the evening she first spoke of death, without naming it. I too would become accustomed to not saying that word. She was standing in her bedroom, putting her hair up. It was the only time I ever went into her room. Willing her to sense the words I left unsaid, the bitterness that remained inside of me, I kept saying to myself, “Don’t try to explain. You don’t have to explain it all,” since I knew that behind the pinned-up hair that exposed the palest patch of her cool neck, and her raised arms, drained of blood but tingling, she must be thinking the same thing as always. That didn’t prevent me from feeling vexed. So I had to make a great effort, and turn to what helped me when I lost my patience or felt excessively sad (it made no difference with her, to lose my patience, or feel sad, or pity her). To calm myself down, to smile, or to speak of anything else, I needed to imagine her dead, constantly dead.

  She lowered her arms—I almost felt the pleasant, delicate flow of blood returning to ease the tingling—and then she asked me, “Is this the first time you’ve had that thought?”

  “No,” I answered, since I was no longer sad, and now I could speak to her differently, allow her to suppose that I also thought of such things. I knew, too, that she might ask me anything, and that she was sure the answer wouldn’t surprise her.

  But there was the spider. The night must begin with the spider. I had no idea where its stealthy, maleficent presence might take us. I was vexed that she of all people had been the one to find it, paused in its lonely second of velvety flight, then stiffened, almost suspended in the air, stopped in its tracks on the dresser. The others wouldn’t even have mentioned it. But she spoke of it—she spoke of everything this way—as if someone was guilty and she didn’t care to find out who, but only to confirm their guilt. Guilty of the buzzing fly at the hour of the siesta, of the creaking door, of the recommended book, of the hopeless years, and, of course, the spider. I only believed in hopeless lives, but even so, the only life that to me sometimes seemed hopeless—in moments like this—was hers, and I had no way of telling her. I didn’t know if she thought so too, but, sooner or later, whether because of a spider or because someone refused to describe a farewell or because the street hadn’t changed since the dead horse, perhaps she might realize it was hopeless, would always be hopeless for her to live that way—except when, from her lonely side of the table, she confronted the other two silently, reserving some subject for when they rose from their chairs, or for some other time, or uttered a question that often sounded like a cry that must’ve been heard some time long ago in the past.

  I knew I would have to go on with the spider, mention it when one of them said as she got up, “Shall we go into the drawing room?”

  By then it would be impossible to think nothing could happen to them. Only the dining table seemed to provide that safety, since there she didn’t speak of certain things. It was in the drawing room, once they’d settled into their places, which always seemed new, where she would rehearse the phrase that always led to others, the one that might contain a promise or a
threat. Sometimes it was something that concerned only her, like when she announced, “I’ll never give up smoking.” Then the others answered, as they always answered, in a voice so precise, a voice that seemed to me, suddenly, so respectable, that I felt an urge to run away or keep watching them until I cried with fear, because I sensed that she might one day let them down. The first time she said, “I’ll never give up smoking,” one of them spoke of premature ventricular contractions, and she seemed to grow pensive and obstinate, as if taking pleasure in the idea, as if reflecting on something that required much courage; as if turning the pages, slowly, of a great blue heart.

  On that occasion, however, when we went into the drawing room, which had begun to resemble the room where so many things would befall them—the years with their single, destitute date, the misread palm lines, the inevitable horoscopes, the longing for ghosts—she said nothing. The younger sister told of a pleasant, uneventful dream. As she described it, the drawing room grew distant, ceased to be that foretold room accustomed to hearing voices that didn’t dare cry out in accusation of other voices. But even that didn’t soothe me. It seemed as if everything was slowly being prepared, and I felt like I should leave. But running away would change nothing. The next day, or a few days later, when I came back to sit with them in the drawing room, she would say, “You haven’t been to visit since I found the spider.”

  I thought it would be better not to leave something unexplained, and to wait to be done, once and for all, with the spider. But even that would be hopeless. Later there’d be something else; a numberless card, a mirror turned to face the wall. So I decided to wait, and felt calmer after we each lit a cigarette, and she inquired, “Aren’t we having a drink today?” and got up to fetch the glasses and the bottle herself.

  When she came back with the tray we were all so quiet none of us dared to mention the bothersome dripping faucet, since if anything annoyed them it was for someone to rise again once the drinks were poured, as if they wanted to monitor the course of the first sip together, its hidden convulsion in their veins. We seemed to be preparing—they more than me, since I was busy watching them closely—for conversations already rehearsed, or for long, beautiful silences that might have begun in another house, which perhaps we’d visited one evening. I would often stay just to remain in their company, to lose them sometimes and then recover them through the smoke, over the rims of tilted glasses, while the room remained in darkness and no one said anything resembling a habit, and when I looked at them it seemed to me that happiness might almost be as ordinary and newly invented as this—like the brief story of a life told quickly in mid-afternoon, which we might then abandon, abruptly, to go on as before—because the alcohol prepared them meticulously for those two hours filled with a mystery that might be solved only if they were impatient, if they could say the bravest word that held no needless promise. But she was incapable of saying that word. Perhaps she hoped the others would say it, since she always approached any conversation and made it hers with just one sentence, transforming it into a portrait. She seemed to possess many portraits, as if constantly adding them to the hidden gallery of her own face; as if arranging, on the four walls of the drawing room, in order, the story of her face. Her own face was surely the one she preferred, or perhaps was easiest to alter, at least in moments like those. I saw it too, as infinite, reflecting everything unsuited to other faces. She seemed to like to portray herself, for us to confirm the possible portraits of her fearlessness, her groundless patience, her inexhaustible selfishness, her life sketched out ever since she was a girl, awaiting the correction of only one final line.

  It was in those moments, however, that I loved her most. She almost didn’t need to speak. It was enough for her to say a number. I would imagine her interrupting the silence by uttering “thirty-two,” and I understood only she could say such a thing, out of nowhere, and capture our attention at once. But the very moment I thought I couldn’t love her any more intensely was often the moment the end began, with its shadows and urgently refilled drinks. Someone, in the dining room, was setting the table. Soon it would be time to say goodbye. And then I was already standing, but I couldn’t take my leave because she still hadn’t said anything about the spider and she might say it to the others, who already had their share of clear and necessary memories.

  Then she too stood up. The light from the street made her seem to tremble briefly. I don’t know why I was afraid. Perhaps I sensed what she was about to say. But that wasn’t what terrified me. I was afraid she would shout it and we wouldn’t know what to do with her lonely cry, other than wish her dead. But instead she said it as if she’d decided to face a night without memory, a house on which, suddenly, darkness would fall.

  “I’m thirty years old and I found a spider … ”

  Then I opened the door and ran across the street.

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  ‌14

  Despite their excuses, I tried many times to convince them of how easy and convenient it would be for them to communicate, and even call for help, if they had a telephone.

  “The afternoon I saw you at the post office, it was reassuring to know I could call home and ask someone to come and get me. What if one of you happened to be alone one night, and needed something? … You need only call me, or call someone else … ”

  “None of us is ever alone,” they would answer, but when I noticed the second showing enough interest to persuade the others, I persisted. Except for the lack of calls, and perhaps its dubious usefulness since few families in that part of Belgrano had a telephone, I hardly suspected the reason behind their resistance and misgivings. Since no one ever visited them, the chances of anyone calling were so slim that perhaps they preferred to shield themselves from this new way of being forgotten. Someone might, on seeing their names in the directory, discard what was left of an old memory, and return, puzzled, to the habit of forgetting them.

  I knew my efforts came only from wanting to telephone them myself, to get closer to them, to force them to be precise and at least say who they were; but so as to hide my intentions, I offered my own experience, explained how for us the telephone had been a novelty, and described how keenly we’d tried to guess at the owner of the still-courteous voice uttering the words in a careful tone, as if fearing, as it passed through houses, courtyards, and side streets, that a stranger might listen in on what it didn’t quite dare say. I also told them that at first the telephone was so entertaining that one of us would call our house from a local store, to make sure the crucial voice was still in its place at the other end of the line, traversing wires, accepting its movement through the air, grazing the treetops, saying, “Who is it?” It was almost like opening a letter, except the voice would disappear, and afterwards one was left with the pleasure of the voice and the way it changed.

  Perhaps my eagerness made her reflect on remembered streets, where her first call might ring out and return her to familiar places, even if she only asked to be put through and didn’t say a word. That afternoon, though, the second made up her mind, and, with a serious look, as if I were experienced in the matter and could give her advice, she asked, “Will our last name have to be in the directory?”

  I don’t know why it occurred to me that I should take this chance to provoke her, to compel her, for once, to be precise.

  “You could give your maiden name,” I suggested, hoping any answer she gave might bring me closer to her past, explain her stubborn, unchanging evenings.

  “I can’t,” she murmured quickly. “I can’t,” she said again, as if she had to live in hiding, or hesitated to use her name, because in fact she was married, or because some burning resentment or some strange sense of shame prevented her from confessing her widowhood. The eldest turned towards her, unsurprised. I thought I’d been left with another chance in ruins, confronting another mystery I’d never be able to solve, but I didn’t dare persist. I also thought her answer couldn’t have been meant for me, since she never told me anything about her l
ife. Unwilling to write a name on the usual applications, she seemed to me to be looking, through a half-open door, at a house she used to visit in company, since she was loved by many, sure she would return to its long table, where on Sunday nights they played cards, promising, as they said their goodbyes, that there would be other such Sundays, as she felt the hand of a man on her arm for the walk home, waiting for him to open the front door, and she, later, would turn on the bedroom light, perhaps pulling aside the mosquito net from the wide bed, her eyes falling briefly on the cushions with white covers—she had always been fond of those square, slightly stiff cushions—with their halting conversations in the safe and peaceful bedroom, where she might lie awake a while longer, since she liked to hear his breath so close before turning over in the dark, and not to pray, since it was late, and she loved him, and she couldn’t pray that she loved him.