Finding the pillow meant finding the place where my head should have been. But just when I thought I had, I found myself touching the other end of the bed.
I felt battered, full of shadows and confusion, unable to wake up altogether, unable to fall back asleep.
Until the window loomed into view, scarcely lighter than the dark walls. And I would slowly pronounce my own name, as if reassuring myself, adrift in the vast expanse of my bed, that I was still the same person.
I would remember, in the distant, distant past, the moment when my father left the room and I wasn’t able to stop him, filled with a sleepiness more powerful than my desire to bid him to stay. And, clutching the pillow so as not to lose myself, I would finally drift off, in the knowledge that when I woke I would see my father once again.
Awake the next morning, I’d postpone the actual moment of rising from bed. Out in the corridor the goldfinches chirped in their cages and the curtains and walls held a drowsy clarity.
As if inside a luminous sphere, I traveled within the day that brightened my room and, all eyes, would observe from bed the things that surrounded me, feeling an arousal of these things in myself.
In that clarity I could hear my mother’s footsteps, the maids’ voices, the flight of insects … And all of a sudden the house would fall silent, as if everyone had left, except the light.
I did not want to speak. An immense shyness hid the words from me. Moreover, I would think and rethink a sentence so many times that the moment for saying it passed, or it lost its meaning after so much repetition.
I felt fine within myself, and to explain or discuss anything implied a certain decanting of that self and was as tiring as taking a lengthy walk without water. I didn’t need to convince or be admired. I was happy as I was, keeping quiet, watching the sun illuminate the grainy, whitewashed walls and the frayed broom in the backyard.
It was difficult to emerge from myself. To express one wish entailed a long journey, as did the exposition of an idea or having to supply answers to questions put to me. Shyness made me twist inside like a rope, until I reached such extremes of pain that it was impossible to give it one more turn. My face burned scarlet, my features were overpowered by the heat, the ground gave way, my eyes betrayed my helplessness. I did not know where to turn and, ablaze with shame, took refuge in my own interiority like an armadillo in its carapace.
I’d remain within myself, inert, as if walled in, until my mother would say, “Come on, let’s go.”
And if there were others around, I followed her, anxious to disappear, like an actor who has made an entrance on the wrong stage and the audience, noting his bewilderment, discovers his mistake because he panics, and in his haste makes his exit all the more difficult and is unable to find the right door.
Thus was I bewildered by anyone who sensed my shyness, while I hid behind my mother, trying to not be seen, not be there.
From the moment we’d arrive at the home of one of her friends, and the woman or her daughters took notice of me, my main concern was to discourage everyone from addressing me in any way, for my mother was the best person to provide information about my tastes and reply to questions; even those which referred to my age, name, mood, and so forth, were best answered by her. I tried to prevent their curiosity from catching me off guard by feigning interest in a girl’s face or a dog in the room, which would lead inevitably to, “Do you want to play with Anna?” or, “Do you like the dog?”
I was surrounded by a magic circle, which no one should enter. This circle protected my intimacy, with its baggage of thoughts, fears, and desires. What I felt mattered only to me. To reveal my thoughts would mean revealing myself, to exhibit my desires meant exhibiting myself. And if I asked for something and it was denied me, my entire self felt rejected, for I had disclosed one of my soul’s necessities and placed it at someone else’s mercy. For this reason I did things on my own. And if someone went off because I didn’t show my interest, I would let that person go: their being remained within my being, in my thoughts.
I liked going for walks alone and being alone, traveling through the day as through a reality as wondrous as the imagination, where the mountain was beautiful at every instant, shaped like a bird flying over its nest, and where the people I saw transmitted something divine through their very existence.
But when someone spoke to me, I soon felt overwhelmed and listened without listening, tired of having to think about each sentence said; with one word I would run off, or remain there absently, isolated by the curtain of my thoughts.
But when I couldn’t find the words to slip away, or a view to distract me, then, unmoving and subdued, I would summon up my forces to hide my boredom or my secret desire to slap that person in the face and depart.
And if, when with friends, I grew excited by the sight of some sunflowers or an ash tree, or if I discovered the shadow of a cloud cast onto the mountain, or if, gazing at a chestnut tree, I saw a drop of water on a slanted leaf sliding from center to edge, slowly descending as if on a slope, I would realize, thanks to the near deafness with which they listened to me, that I was moved by things that did not interest them, and that my words to them made a pointless journey, as pointless as an elevator in which someone has pressed all the buttons so that it stops at every floor and opens its doors without anyone ever getting on or off.
Whenever my parents left on a trip I’d do nothing but wait for their return. In vain I told myself they would be back in a few days, I felt their absence in my very being, in the house and in the village, and in my brother’s face, as if they were never going to come home. Every act of mine was carried out without them. Every thought missed them. I played knowing they weren’t around. I wandered the streets with a sense of all that was lacking. And if I went with my friends to the orchards to pick fruit or throw stones at lizards, from the hill, amidst the trees, I would hear the midday train and the afternoon train, telling me that today was Wednesday and that my parents would not return until Saturday, that there were still Thursday and Friday to get through.
Like a sleeper who suddenly feels the void surrounding him and instinctively throws himself towards the edge of the bed to hold on and not fall out, I trusted in the movement that from darkness and solitude made its way towards my father, for he circumscribed my body like the black line that outlines a colored-in figure in a drawing, and nothing could happen to me while I was magically surrounded by him. Due to this attachment, I despaired each time he went away and believed I’d never see him again.
The night was full of noises. I could hear the silence of the corridors, the moisture on the walls, the roof’s decrepitude, women’s moans traveling through the air, foxes springing from the rooftops onto the plants below, yelping, and the barking of dogs, which would start far off, then be taken up by dogs nearer by. The darkness weighed down on me as if it were physical. I had to thrust aside the shadows to move. And if I felt oppressed and wanted to turn on the light, I had to push away the night as though heaving a great stone.
I’d pluck leaves from the trees or collect them from the ground; some were still swollen with rain, others perforated by insects; some were like green stars in a puddle and others had withered, their edges ochre like wounds. Somehow, these leaves let me bring the entire tree indoors, as their forms stood for the tree and one leaf was enough to recall it, and all of a sudden a miniature oak was there in the palm of my hand.