The Great Weaver From Kashmir by Halldór Laxness Page A

wine.
    â€œJófí!” he whispered again. “Cuándo?”
    At first I said nothing, but red-hot currents flowed through me. Finally I straightened myself in my seat and turned toward him to look into his eyes. And we gazed for a long time into each other’s eyes in silent comprehension of everything. We knew that all of the walls had fallen down; all formalities were now in vain. The kiss broke every seal. I leaned back again in my seat and my whole being trembled. I closed my eyes; my breath fluttered. And the answer came involuntarily to my lips, from my innermost depths, like bubbles that ascend to the surface of a spring from far down below.
    â€œJosé, come to me, tonight, late.”
    We got to our feet and drove to town without saying another word, then parted with a silent handshake. I knew that his eyes were burning when we parted, but I did not look up. I showed him only my eyelids and fled in the next instant into the hotel.

26.
    I had done everything to gratify the whims of my soul; perfumed the cushions on the sofa; burned incense in a little brazier on the mantelpiece. Wine stood on the table in cold, clammy bottles with faded labels and dusty necks: this wine had waited for eager lips for a hundred years, and in a hundred years its spirit, its magic, and its fire had intensified in the dark cellar. Tonight the consecration was imminent.
    I had finished my perfumed bath and dressed myself in my softest silk, both outerwear and undergarments. I had put the boy to bed an hour earlier and instructed the maid to leave me alone. The clock struck ten; I threw myself down onto the soft sofa and waited. I listened motionless and silent to every sound that could be heard out in the hall, my senses as delicate and keen as an animal’s. Sometimes I tiptoed to the door and listened. But there was still no José.
    Was everything still safe?
    I peeked out into the hotel hallway, but no one was about. My maid was sleeping somewhere on the top floor. My guests usually rang at my apartment’s front door without the intercession of the staff, so everything should have been safe.
    But then I started thinking about the boy. Would he sleep through it? I thought. My goodness, what if the boy should wake up! This thought struck me immediately with terrible fear. The boy slept in my room, farther down the hall, and when I considered how sensitive he was to everything that happened around him I thought that there was nothing more likely than that he would wake whenI least expected it. Our whispering would wake him; the slightest tinkling of a glass or creaking of a chair would be enough to startle him awake. Maybe he would suddenly be standing between the portieres to check on his mother out in the parlor, standing there in his white nightgown, his eyes deep and blue, wide and inquisitive, like the sky itself, his golden locks a mess. He runs his eyes around the room and spies his mother; yes, spies his mother. No, my dear God, that must never happen! Never, never could the boy know that his mother was – that she was – no, never!
    I’ve got to double-lock the bedroom door, I thought, and stole into the bedroom to make sure that he was asleep. At his bedside burned a dull night-light, which cast a faint gleam on his innocent and beautiful face as he slept there with one palm under his cheek. My beloved little boy! His locks fell over his little hand; his sleep was deep and tranquil. I stood for several moments over his bed and lost myself in gazing at this angel face-to-face, this holy untouched being who was flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood, this, my little god, with which my womb had been graced. And when I forced myself to look back into the parlor where everything was prepared, like a chapel where I had planned to offer my body as a sacrament, I was suddenly seized by ice-cold terror. It was as if my heart frosted over in my breast; I thought that I would faint. My dear God, what