One Out of Two by Daniel Sada Page A

I’m doing it because I know that my presence would only complicate your relationship with Oscar, and then he’d wonder which of the two was truly his wife. I don’t want to be in the way, that’s not what I was born for … And since there have never been any stupid accusations or tit-for-tats between us, I’ve decided that you should keep everything, that is, the shop, the house, the furniture, everything except our savings, which I’ll take. It’s the best way to make us square. Don’t you think?”
    “Yes, I agree.”
    “So, I’ll leave tomorrow.”
    “Fine by me.”
    For the moment there was nothing left for them to do but switch off the lights and get into bed and good night. Happiness? Anguish? Irreproachable maturity?
    Darkness, interior ruminations, a lively flame: left lit: by both: possibly for very different reasons. And it trembles if the sighs of nearby words bend it and make it flicker. If it spoke: what would it say? To merely illuminate such a confined space expresses enough. It is perpetual resolve that speaks by blinking, and only rarely, if ever, lets itself be caressed, and abruptly returns to its own shape when left alone: then remains, immaculate.
    Because here the silences crown that flame as queen: a lone reality surrounded by myriad mysteries, lively plenitude requiring a fixed gaze, yes, Constitución’s, who has yet to fall asleep, whereas the other is already deliriously dreaming.
    Dream and gaze are leisure and faith. Throbbing terror, anticipation that conjures paths and precipices. Everything is halved. It’s comforting to look back, whereas the future might be diffuse. And those eyes wide open: what hopes do they hold? Desires lasting but an instant, and under the circumstances merely melancholic: what began then ended: that sameness that can be no longer because the Devil has come to settle down right smack in between them, disguised as a magician, and how to get rid of him now? With words? The other half leaving forever and the Devil playing the role of the one who lost: is that a solution? Though if one half chooses what best suits her, any imprecision becomes whimsy or destiny; to seek wholeness, to wish to preserve it, maybe that’s just faith that hasn’t anywhere much to go.
    Or does it?
    Constitución needed light. Yes and no were both dissembling.
    Because the flame—given to dalliance—flickers when it feels that someone within its illuminated sphere cannot find a simple and conclusive idea.
    At that moment, however, the fiancée wanted to go to the dining room, switch on the electric light, and serenely count beans: the good and the bad: how many?: in order to likewise sort her thoughts, but just as she was about to begin, she stopped. Convinced the act was futile, she understood that right there in her bed, in the semidarkness, she could find the remedy that would allow her to sleep like her other half. In other words, she didn’t need beans to see sense, or light, or any damn thing at all.
    Constitución decided to think about her fiancé, Oscar, her rancher and dreamer. His conversation. His life: like a predictably preterit respite: happiness admitted for stretches and much-too-subtle dissatisfaction. His spirit of struggle limited to surveying what is closest at hand. In him, there’s no emancipation, no adventure. Would the man be worth it? She cannot imagine how the weaning of she-goats and the raising of swine can so fully occupy his lucid thoughts. In the meantime, the lively flame seemed to smile, as if to ask sardonically: and what about you? Your sewing: what’s that? Your identity: what can it presume?
    Such well-delineated lives, where longing is neither an ascent nor an earthly fire. Lives in purgatory, which are, after all, what others think they are, and if that makes sense then let that sense continue, culminate, so many lives draw together and so many move apart. To seek similarities: what for?, there are loads of them in some way or