“One day I’ll break every bone in your body! One day I’ll beat you to a pulp, do you hear? Just don’t push me!”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“You…” and a particularly filthy word emerged from his lips.
Justina said only:
“You’re not insulting me but yourself, because that’s how you see all women.”
Caetano’s heavy body swayed stiffly like that of a robot. Fury and impotent rage sent words up into his mouth, but there they stumbled and died. He raised his clenched fist as if to bring it down on his wife’s head. She didn’t flinch. His fist, defeated, slowly descended. Justina’s eyes resembled two burning coals. A humiliated Caetano vanished from the room, slamming the door.
The cat, who had been observing his owners with glaucous eyes, slipped away along the dark corridor and lay down on the doormat, silent and indifferent.
19
Isaura, unable to sleep, had been tossing and turning in bed for two hours now. The whole building was quiet. Occasionally, from outside in the street, she heard the footsteps of some night owl returning home late. The pale, distant light of the stars came in through the window. In the darkness of the bedroom she could just make out the still-darker shapes of the furniture. The wardrobe mirror vaguely reflected the light from the window. Every quarter of an hour, as inflexible as time itself, the clock in the downstairs apartment reminded her of her insomniac state. Everything was silent and asleep, except for Isaura. She did all she could to get to sleep. She counted to a thousand, then counted again, she relaxed her muscles one by one, she closed her eyes, tried to forget about her insomnia and slip past it into sleep. In vain. Every single one of her nerves was awake. Despite the effort required to make her brain concentrate on the need to sleep, her thoughts were leading her along vertiginous paths into deep valleys from which arose the dim murmur of voices calling to her. She was hovering high up on the powerful back of a bird with wide wings, which, after soaring above the clouds, where it was hard to catch her breath, fell like a stone into the misty valleys in which she could make out white figures so pale they appeared to be naked or covered only by transparent veils. She was tormented by an objectless desire, by a desire for desire and by an equal fear of it too.
At her side, her sister was sleeping peacefully. Isaura found her quiet breathing and her stillness exasperating. She twice got up and went over to the window. Random words, half-finished sentences, vague gestures were going round and round in her head. It was like a scratched record that repeats over and over the same lovely musical phrase, which becomes odious with endless repetition. Ten times, a hundred times, the notes recur and mesh and meld until all that remains is a single, obsessive sound, terrible and implacable. You feel that just one minute of that obsession will bring madness in its wake, but the minute passes and madness does not come. Instead you grow still more lucid. Your spirit embraces far horizons, travels here, there, everywhere, with no frontiers to contain it, and with each step you take you become more and more painfully lucid. To forget about it, to stop the sound, to crush it with silence would mean peace and sleep, but the words, the phrases, the gestures rise up from beneath the silence in a dumb, endless spiral.
Isaura told herself that she was mad. Her head was burning, her forehead too, and her brain seemed to have grown so large it was about to burst out of her skull. It was her insomnia that was to blame, and it would not leave her until those thoughts left her as well. And what thoughts, Isaura! What monstrous thoughts! What repellent aberrations! What subterranean furies were pushing at the trapdoors of her will!
What diabolical, malicious hand had guided her toward that book? And it was supposed to serve a moral purpose too! Of course, said cold reason, almost lost in the whirlwind of sensations. Why, then, this turmoil of unchained instincts erupting in her flesh? Why had she not read it coolly, dispassionately? Weakness, said reason. Desire, screamed her long-buried instincts, for years shunned and ignored as being shameful in the extreme. And now those instincts had risen to the surface, and her will was drowning in a pool darker than night and deeper than death.
Isaura gnawed at her wrists. Her face was drenched in sweat, her hair clung to her scalp, her mouth was twisted into a violent grimace. Close to madness, she sat on the edge of the bed, ran her hands through her hair and looked around her. Night and silence. The sound from that scratched record was rising from the abyss of silence. Exhausted, she fell back on the bed. Adriana shifted slightly, but continued to sleep. Her indifference felt like a recrimination. Despite the suffocating heat, Isaura pulled the sheet up over her head. She covered her eyes with her hands, as if the night were not dark enough to hide her shame, but the darkness behind her eyelids filled up with red and yellow lights, like the sparks from a bonfire. (If only dawn would break, if only the sun would miraculously leave the other side of the world and burst into the room!)
Slowly, Isaura’s hands moved toward her sister. Her fingertips could feel the heat of Adriana’s body from a centimeter away. They stayed there for several long minutes, neither advancing nor retreating. The sweat had dried on Isaura’s forehead, but her face was scalding hot as if a fire were burning inside her. Her fingers advanced until they touched Adriana’s bare arm, then withdrew as if they had received an electric shock. Isaura’s heart was beating dully. Her wide, dilated eyes could see nothing but blackness. Again her hands advanced. Again they stopped. Again they moved forward. Now they were resting on Adriana’s arm. With a slithering, sinuous movement, Isaura moved closer to her sister. She could feel the heat emanating from her body. Slowly, one of her hands ran along Adriana’s arm from wrist to shoulder, where it slipped in beneath her hot, damp armpit and insinuated itself beneath one breast. Isaura’s breathing became rapid and irregular. The hand slid beneath the light fabric of Adriana’s nightdress as far as her stomach. Adriana turned abruptly onto her back. Her bare shoulder was on the same level as Isaura’s mouth, which sensed the proximity of flesh. Like iron filings drawn to a magnet, Isaura’s mouth fixed itself on Adriana’s shoulder. It was a long, fierce, hungry kiss. At the same time, her hand grabbed Adriana’s waist and drew her closer. Adriana woke with a start. Isaura did not release her grip. Her mouth was still planted on her shoulder like a sucker and her fingers fastened on her thigh like claws. With a cry of terror, Adriana pulled away and leapt out of bed. She ran to the bedroom door, then, remembering that her mother and aunt were sleeping on the other side, turned back, taking refuge by the window.
Isaura had not moved. She tried to pretend she was asleep, but Adriana still did not come back to bed. She could hear her sibilant breathing. Through half-closed lids, she could see her sister’s body silhouetted against the opalescent backdrop of the window. Then, abandoning all pretense at sleep, she said softly:
“Adriana.”
Her sister’s tremulous voice answered:
“What do you want?”
“Come here.”
Adriana did not move.
“You’ll get cold,” insisted Isaura.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“You can’t stay there. If you don’t come over here, I’ll come to you.”
Adriana approached, sat down on the edge of the bed and reached out to turn on the light.
“Don’t,” said Isaura.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you to see me.”
“Why ever not?”
“I’m ashamed…”
These words were spoken in a murmur. Adriana’s voice was becoming firmer, but Isaura’s trembled as if she were about to break into sobs: