Marta and Maria, sisters, tidy away the toys that are spread around the sewing room. They tidy away the final remnants of the day. Marta bends down with difficulty, places the palm of her left hand on her knee, and sweeps her other hand in an arc across the floor. The blankets are piled up on the bench in front of the sewing machine. These are the blankets, folded, which my daughters will arrange as mattresses. On top of the blankets, on the bench, are the sheets and the pillows. When they finish arranging the beds, Marta will walk to her room and get ready to sleep. Her husband won’t have arrived yet, but Marta will know it’s Saturday and it’s not worth waiting for him. She will think of other things. On the sewing-room floor, their heads on the pillows, their bodies covered by the sheets, Maria and her mother will keep breathing — the silence, the darkness, their breathings. My wife will think of Francisco. Maria will think of her husband and she will be sure that he will ask her, tomorrow, for forgiveness, and he will ask her, please, please, to come back. My wife will be asleep in minutes. Maria will fall asleep later. On the black floor of the sewing room she won’t know whether moments have passed, or hours, since she lay down to sleep.
I was lying in my room. I wasn’t sleeping, and I wasn’t awake. I was lying in my room — windows closed, darkness. I had the covers over my head, but I didn’t feel them. I was just breathing in the rotten smell of illness. I existed in a world that was made up of nothing but hopeless pain — constant pain, bones bending, bones coming away from the flesh and no hope that I’d go back to walking the streets, unworried, light, unaware. My wife, shadowless, took steps across the kitchen floor and boiled pans of water when she didn’t know what to do.
I held my voice in, within me, I tangled it up with my black pain. It was deceiving my whole body. I held out against the sharp pains like death itself before crying out. I called my wife’s name. It was morning, or it was afternoon. Bits of my voice went through the bedroom door, landed on the floor of the hallway and some of them made it to the kitchen. Maria spent her days with my wife. The two of them came into the room. Hanging in the middle of the ceiling, the lamp lit its yellow light — the glowing filaments, the image of a red-hot heart. In the first months my wife tried to follow the timetable for my medication. Later, in silence, the doctor told her she could give me my medication whenever I asked for it; it would no longer do me any harm.
Maria went back home when Francisco arrived from the workshop. She made her way down the streets, holding on to Ana, her little steps, and a basket with dinner already prepared. Morning and afternoon dissolved along the way, but they never disappeared, they never disappeared. At all times there was the weight of a closed fist squeezing her heart. Even when she thought about other things, when she almost forgot, there was always the weight of a closed fist squeezing her heart.
It was one of those late afternoons. The night was beginning. Maria went into the house and let go of Ana’s arm. Her husband had already arrived, he was leaning on the sink, and when Ana rushed over to him he didn’t bend down to caress her, nor to smile at her, nor to speak to her in that voice people use to speak to children. Maria went into the kitchen, spoke a syllable and he didn’t reply, didn’t look at her, didn’t ask after me. They remained silent. Maria took the pan — the lid tied down with strings — from out of the basket. Her husband was still leaning on the sink, closed in the impossible thoughts he had, which covered his face. Ana put down the doll she was carrying and sat down next to a chair. Time seemed to be just like on every other day.
Cutting through time, Maria’s husband, crossing the kitchen, knocked into her with his elbow.
‘You hurt me. .’
‘It wasn’t on purpose, was it?’ he said rudely.
Maria was going to reply to him in the same manner, when he — shorter than her — stopped right in front of her, chin raised, lips pursed and eyes burning. After a pause, Maria saddened, and said:
‘You don’t love me any more.’
Her husband repeated this phrase until it became ridiculous, even more ridiculous, until it was just those words and no longer that phrase. She kept looking at him, with the same sadness. He raised his voice even further:
‘Don’t look at me like that. I know where you get those ideas. .’
And as though stuttering, nervous, as though giving up halfway through what he was going to say, as though not giving up right after that, he held her wrist, squeezed her wrist and began to talk, as though talking to himself, in phrases he interrupted and resumed and continued and interrupted.
He pulled Maria by the arm. And took her down the corridor. And they went. Into the room. Where they slept every night. And he pointed. At the bookcase. Filled with romance novels. That Maria had kept since. Childhood and which she organised. In alphabetical order and. All the stories. She knew by heart and which she. Could have recounted in every detail and. He pointed at this full bookcase. Clean and dustless. And said:
‘Because of this. This rubbish. It’s because of this. All of it. Because of this rubbish.’
And nervously. Choking on. His words. And as though. Stuttering. He threw an arm against the bookcase and knocked it over. All the romance novels on. The bedspread and as though. He was crazy and as though he was. Crazy. He began to tear them with. Both hands while he repeated.
‘Rubbish. It’s all because. Of this rubbish.’
On the bed a heap of torn pages and torn jackets, titles — dreams of, passion wedding in, spring the heart’s flames stronger, than prejudice triumph, of destiny in love with the man, a certain girl and woman loving for the first, time and unkn, own irresistible flo, wers to, o late be, yond de, sire cru, el smi, le da, wni, ng o, f em, o t, i, on, s.
And at last Maria’s husband stopped his arms. His quick breathing filled and emptied his chest.
And through the tears that hung from Maria’s eyelashes, the heap of torn pages on the bed — torn Sabrinas, torn Biancas, torn Júlias — was a shapeless, dazzling mass.
And leaning on the doorpost, her doll hanging by the end of her arm, Ana was watching. Her eyes were huge.
My uncle was saying every word that came into his head. It was morning. My uncle interrupted a word after the first syllable when my neighbour came running in:
‘Da. .’
I dropped my tools on the bench, gave the workshop keys to my uncle and went out past my neighbour. The way home was quick and it was slow. The front door was ajar. In one corner of the kitchen, Marta was small, sitting in a chair, serious, feet in the air, and there was a woman taking care of her. The other women walked past one another, muddled with one another, tangled with one another. I passed through their shadows — the steps of my boots digging into the floor. The bedroom walls were the opposite of vast, eternal fields, they were the opposite of landscape. My wife with her eyes closed. She opened her eyes when I touched her hair, closed them again when the pains submerged her. I tried to go into that world beneath her eyelids. I had her head in my arms. A time passed that was made up of pains that moved away for moments that were shorter and shorter, and that returned ever stronger. All the women gathered round her. She began to push. All the women encouraged her to push. I held her hand and felt all her strength. Her face turned red, and then purple. Her face was strong, and at the same time it was fragile. The whole universe stretched, all life, and it was about to burst. Like an elastic that stretches, stretches, and when it snaps will hit us in the face. Then the women’s faces were lit up by a miracle. The midwife put two fingers to the roof of the baby’s mouth and pulled it out in one go. It was in her arms, a girl covered in blood, beautiful, attached to an umbilical cord. She passed her into my wife’s arms. Together, inseparable, we looked at her and it was impossible to control the tears that burst on to our faces. Maria had just been born. Something vast had just been born in our hearts.