Mr. Gwyn by Alessandro Baricco

wasn’t possible to read in his face any satisfaction or a hint of distress. Only the traces of a feverish but peaceful concentration. Some pieces of paper picked up from the floor—then he crumpledthem up and put them in his pocket. His gaze on the light bulbs, the instant they gave up.
    But at a certain point he came and sat next to her, on the bed, and, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he began talking to her.
    â€œYou see, Rebecca, there’s one thing I seem to have understood.”
    She waited.
    â€œI thought that not speaking was absolutely necessary, I have a horror of chat, I certainly couldn’t think of chatting with you. And then I was afraid it would end up as something like psychoanalysis, or confession. A terrible prospect, don’t you think?”
    Rebecca smiled.
    â€œHowever, you see, I was wrong,” Jasper Gwyn added.
    He was silent for a moment.
    â€œThe truth is that if I really want to do this job I have to agree to talk, even just once, twice at most, at the right moment, but I have to be capable of doing it.”
    He looked up at Rebecca.
    â€œJust barely talk,” he said.
    She nodded yes. She was sitting completely naked next to a man in mechanic’s pants, and it seemed to her utterly natural. The only thing she wondered was how she could be useful to that man.
    â€œFor example, before it’s too late, I’d like to ask you something,” said Jasper Gwyn.
    â€œGo on.”
    Jasper Gwyn asked her. She thought about it, then answered. It was a question about crying and laughing.
    They went on talking about it for a while.
    Then he asked her something about children. Sons and daughters, he explained.
    And something else about landscapes.
    They talked in low voices, without hurrying.
    Until he nodded and got up.
    â€œThank you,” he said.
    Then he added that it hadn’t been so difficult. He appeared to say it to himself, but he also turned toward Rebecca, as if he expected some sort of response.
    â€œNo, it wasn’t difficult,” she said then. She said that nothing, there, was difficult.
    Jasper Gwyn went to regulate the volume of the music, and David Barber’s loop seemed to disappear into the walls, leaving behind little more than a wake, in the fragile light of the last six light bulbs.

39
    They waited for the last one in silence, on the thirty-sixth day of that strange experiment. At eight o’clock, it seemed to be taken for granted that they would wait together, because the only time that counted anymore was written into the copper filaments produced by the mad talent of the old man in Camden Town.
    In the light of the last two bulbs, the studio was already a black sack, kept alive by two pupils of light. When the last remained, it was a whisper.
    They looked at it from a distance, without approaching, so as not to defile it.
    It was night, and it went out.
    Through the darkened windows came just enough light to mark the edges of things, and not right away, but only to eyes accustomed to the darkness.
    Every object appeared finished, and only the two of them still living.
    Rebecca had never known such intensity. She thought that at that moment any movement would be unsuitable, but she understood that the opposite was also true, that it was impossible, at that moment, to make a wrong movement. So she imagined many things; some she had begun to imagine long before. Until she heard the voice of Jasper Gwyn.
    â€œI think I’ll wait for the morning light in here. But you can go, of course, Rebecca.”
    He said it with a kind of tenderness that might also seem to be regret, so Rebecca came over to him and when she found the right words she said that she would like to stay and wait there with him—just that.
    But Jasper Gwyn said nothing and she understood.
    She got dressed slowly, for the last time, and when she was at the door she stopped.
    â€œI’m sure I should say something special, but,