made-up and affected, lying about her age and all the
rest, her hands always clenched, she’s the hand-clenching variety of liar. Getting
drunk in private. Oh, what I learned from her. I don’t drink but I could write a thesis
on alcoholism and drugs. I never had a man and yet I know the arts and blunders of
making love.
“ Ni ange ni bête ,” Lorena murmured, bending her body and sliding deeper into the bathtub. She lathered
her hair until it was enclosed in a thick helmet of soapsuds, then looked at her reflection
in the mirror. With her fingertips she smeared the white suds downward until they
reached her eyebrows. In a cap and mask like this M.N. performed operations. The yellow
surgical gloves breaking the white, “Ah, how sensual!” If he could make love to her
right in the operating room. She would go in on a stretcher like Ana Clara. In the
background, the Seducer Angel in his immaculate robes, still immaculate. And masked.
“Lena, give me your hand,” Ana Clara asked. She took her hand, constrained: She knew
Ana Clara’s hands perspired terribly and she had a horror of sweat. A sweat as cold
as the operating room, as cold as the spotlight. The doctor’s eyes were cold too in
the narrow space between the cap and mask. Ana Clara’s white voice seemed to come
filtered through layers of cotton: “One, two, three, four, five, six, ss—” The metallic
struggle of the instruments tapping against each other. The weight of blood in the
gauze. The ether smell dissolving into the air. Not to be .
“Oh Lord,” groaned Lorena rolling herself up in the towel. She jumped out onto the
bathmat and rubbed her feet on it to dry them. She could see her unreal reflection
in the steam-covered mirror. Was she loved? No, certainly not. But she would continue
loving, loving, loving, until—not until she died, no, until she came to life with
love. She went to the phonograph and turned up the volume. The harsh, intractable
sound grewstronger. She turned the button farther and the music expanded, pushing back the furniture,
the walls. Dizzy with a fit of laughter, she doubled up, ah, the desire to run naked
through the door, grab people and dance with them, play at boxing, make love, eat,
oh, how hungry she was!
“How hungry I am!” she yelled, pinching the felt duck perched on the bookshelf. “Quack,
quack,” she said along with the duck. She took a small sip of milk and sighed. It
would be nice to be able to like other things, bloody steaks, soups with fish and
octopi swimming between ropes of onions at volcano temperature, blop, blop, blop.
Setting down her glass she dressed in a white bikini and a too-big shirt with rolled-up
sleeves, and after perfuming herself with lavender and dusting her feet with talcum,
she gathered onto a plate things that appealed to her appetite: an apple, a raw carrot
scrupulously cleaned, some soda crackers and a triangle of cheese. She settled herself
on the sunbathed marble step, opened her napkin on her lap and set the plate to one
side. Viewing the garden through the iron grillwork of the stairway she began to chew
on the carrot. Would sex afford her as much pleasure as the sun? “I stay here taking
the sun because I can’t take the man I love,” she thought chewing more energetically.
And Ana Clara? The things she was taking, were they to substitute the leopard coat?
The Jaguar? Suppose it were simply because she didn’t know the sun, childhood, God?
“Everything I had and still have; it’s so sad to go looking outside for what should
be within one.”
A little red ant passed by about a centimeter from Lorena’s foot. It was carrying
a piece of leaf cut out with a certain symmetry along its undulating edges, the sail
of a sailboat getting its balance during a difficult crossing. She leaned over to
see it better. Now the ant had stopped to talk with another one which was coming from
the
rest, her hands always clenched, she’s the hand-clenching variety of liar. Getting
drunk in private. Oh, what I learned from her. I don’t drink but I could write a thesis
on alcoholism and drugs. I never had a man and yet I know the arts and blunders of
making love.
“ Ni ange ni bête ,” Lorena murmured, bending her body and sliding deeper into the bathtub. She lathered
her hair until it was enclosed in a thick helmet of soapsuds, then looked at her reflection
in the mirror. With her fingertips she smeared the white suds downward until they
reached her eyebrows. In a cap and mask like this M.N. performed operations. The yellow
surgical gloves breaking the white, “Ah, how sensual!” If he could make love to her
right in the operating room. She would go in on a stretcher like Ana Clara. In the
background, the Seducer Angel in his immaculate robes, still immaculate. And masked.
“Lena, give me your hand,” Ana Clara asked. She took her hand, constrained: She knew
Ana Clara’s hands perspired terribly and she had a horror of sweat. A sweat as cold
as the operating room, as cold as the spotlight. The doctor’s eyes were cold too in
the narrow space between the cap and mask. Ana Clara’s white voice seemed to come
filtered through layers of cotton: “One, two, three, four, five, six, ss—” The metallic
struggle of the instruments tapping against each other. The weight of blood in the
gauze. The ether smell dissolving into the air. Not to be .
“Oh Lord,” groaned Lorena rolling herself up in the towel. She jumped out onto the
bathmat and rubbed her feet on it to dry them. She could see her unreal reflection
in the steam-covered mirror. Was she loved? No, certainly not. But she would continue
loving, loving, loving, until—not until she died, no, until she came to life with
love. She went to the phonograph and turned up the volume. The harsh, intractable
sound grewstronger. She turned the button farther and the music expanded, pushing back the furniture,
the walls. Dizzy with a fit of laughter, she doubled up, ah, the desire to run naked
through the door, grab people and dance with them, play at boxing, make love, eat,
oh, how hungry she was!
“How hungry I am!” she yelled, pinching the felt duck perched on the bookshelf. “Quack,
quack,” she said along with the duck. She took a small sip of milk and sighed. It
would be nice to be able to like other things, bloody steaks, soups with fish and
octopi swimming between ropes of onions at volcano temperature, blop, blop, blop.
Setting down her glass she dressed in a white bikini and a too-big shirt with rolled-up
sleeves, and after perfuming herself with lavender and dusting her feet with talcum,
she gathered onto a plate things that appealed to her appetite: an apple, a raw carrot
scrupulously cleaned, some soda crackers and a triangle of cheese. She settled herself
on the sunbathed marble step, opened her napkin on her lap and set the plate to one
side. Viewing the garden through the iron grillwork of the stairway she began to chew
on the carrot. Would sex afford her as much pleasure as the sun? “I stay here taking
the sun because I can’t take the man I love,” she thought chewing more energetically.
And Ana Clara? The things she was taking, were they to substitute the leopard coat?
The Jaguar? Suppose it were simply because she didn’t know the sun, childhood, God?
“Everything I had and still have; it’s so sad to go looking outside for what should
be within one.”
A little red ant passed by about a centimeter from Lorena’s foot. It was carrying
a piece of leaf cut out with a certain symmetry along its undulating edges, the sail
of a sailboat getting its balance during a difficult crossing. She leaned over to
see it better. Now the ant had stopped to talk with another one which was coming from
the
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