“One afternoon my husband had gone to the beach a good bit earlier than me, and when I arrived I found him lying near a girl. The girl got up and went in the water. My husband said he didn’t know her, and he’d lain beside her just to see the face I’d make. I went swimming before we ate, and when I sat back down on the sand, I realized my knees were no longer young. You see, I used to have white, round knees. While the honeymoon lasted, my husband would kiss them, tell me they seemed like silk. That afternoon, as the sun was setting, I stretched out my legs and saw all the wrinkles around my kneecaps. I realized then, truly realized, that I was no longer young. Before, when I would catch sight of an old man, I saw him as he was, I mean, without ever thinking that he’d been young at one point, as if old folks were just a certain kind of people who were born ugly, wrinkled, toothless, hairless. From another world. At that moment, I missed the blood, the same blood that had made me weep the first time I glimpsed it, believing I was flawed and no one would want to marry me because of the flaw. Every month I used to be grumpy for a few days, but when it was over I was in heaven, like I’d been remade. Whereas, without the blood, I was always the same, which is to say mostly not good. Or neither good nor bad, if you prefer. That’s the way I put it to the doctor.
“When I started to feel like my husband didn’t love me as much, I started to feel the same way about him, because he couldn’t possibly like me the way I was, and everything that happened — not that anything in particular did — was all my fault. Whenever I stopped to think that it was my fault, a sense of tenderness came over me and I wanted to love him like I had twenty years before. The tenderness ended the day I realized my knees were old. Once again, I lay awake all night, stretched out in bed, facing the sky. When a woman feels these things, she wants a hand to hold hers, a voice to whisper, ‘I understand.’ But how could a woman like me find a voice that spoke the words I needed if I can hardly understand the way I am myself? See what I mean? The last days by the sea. . life is strange, isn’t it? Instead of fretting about the girl on the beach and what my husband had told me with that mischievous little smile of his, I started agonizing over the girl down the street. I thought if there was something between my husband and her, it was my fault. Instead of spending my evenings sewing dresses by hand, embroidering leaves and daisies and little animals on children’s clothes, I should have dropped it all and gone to meet my husband — like so many women do — the first day I saw them together. I don’t mind telling you now that one night I did. Around midnight I combed my hair — mid-afternoon that day I’d washed my hair and curled it — put on a white blouse I hadn’t worn for years and a pleated skirt. I headed straight for the Rambla and planted myself on the sidewalk opposite the café. The first thing I caught sight of — partially concealed by people either seated at tables or entering and leaving — was the girl at the cash register. She was so young! Her hair falling across her shoulders, like an angel. I realized then that the moment had passed for me to be doing what I was doing. It was too late. I started to feel that my blouse wasn’t properly washed, the skirt too old. I went home.
“I had a dream. I dreamed that my father was coming to the house, followed by a young girl that I thought was me, and my husband was saying, ‘Let him come, he’s amusing, so fat.’ My husband and the girl suddenly disappeared, only my father and me were left. We walked down a stone staircase, till we reached a sandy beach where short, square, wooden stakes had been driven into the ground. A dead fish lay on top of each of them. My father knocked one of the fish off with his hand; it looked dead, but it was breathing. I could hear it. My father said, ‘We’ll eat them for supper.’ Then we started climbing a ladder, like in a circus, straight with bars for steps. I was carrying a bottle of water under each arm and was terrified I’d fall off. My father was in front and kept ordering me, ‘Up, up.’ Once we reached the top, we had to leap onto a roof. One of the bottles dropped when I jumped, and my heart stood still. ‘I’ve killed someone,’ I thought. I guess you can say that my father faded away then, because I found myself in the middle of a village square, at the market. ‘I have to buy fruit for my father,’ I said as I stood before an apple stand. The saleswoman took a long time to serve me, and I was terribly anxious that I’d be late. I turned around, and my husband was right behind me, laughing like mad. ‘You see,’ I told him, ‘if I have you for a friend, I don’t need anything else. But I have to take the fruit to my father. If it wasn’t for that, we could go for a stroll.’ Then we were walking across a low bridge, and I threw out the wrapping to the apples. The water beneath the bridge was clear as glass, still as sleep. On one side you could see rows of fish of every color imaginable, pale colors. A man said, ‘Take a close look, they’re all dead. They started dying tonight, one after the other.’ Finally I found myself in a hotel-like house where they were having a party, the corridors bustling with people and waiters carrying trays of food. It was so crowded I couldn’t take a step. I pushed my way into the dining room where I discovered Roser seated at a table — she’s the friend I told you about who worked with me sometimes — and I asked her, ‘Have you seen my father?’ Just then my husband passed by, quick as lightning. ‘No, I haven’t seen him, he was tired, I don’t know where he’s gone.’ I heard a loud voice urgently calling out my father’s name, repeatedly, and suddenly saw a cripple — a stout man with a cardboard nose — tottering toward me. As he approached, I could see his tiny hands, like a child’s, all purple with little swollen fingers. I don’t know how, but as I gazed at the hands, I realized the cripple was my father. Somehow I managed to remove the cardboard nose. I held him against me, like a baby. He didn’t seem heavy at all as I carried him along the corridors of the hotel. Then I woke up. No one knew how to interpret the dream, but it troubled me terribly.
“The garden looked dreadful when we returned from our holiday. Roser had watered it occasionally, but the sun had scorched the more delicate plants that needed water every day. My husband and I set about redoing the garden, fixing it all up. We had them bring compost, planted dahlias — not the right time to do that, if you ask me — and a couple of weeks later it looked like a garden in some fine house. That year, the last, the dahlias bloomed so large that each flower looked like a child’s head. Lots of different colors. Blood red, yellow, white, also rose-colored, with a pink so delicate that each petal was like a silk ribbon. The day the first dahlia bloomed — the bud had been hard as a rock — I learned from the baker that the girl down the street was getting married. By chance I caught a glimpse of the wedding because I happened to be sweeping the sidewalk in front of the house. She was wearing a navy blue suit, white gloves and shoes, and carrying a bouquet of lilies tied with lots of ribbons that dangled down. Don’t laugh at me now, but I ran into the garden, singing, filled with joy, running my hand over each dahlia, caressing them like they were my children. I was happy all day, a happiness no words can describe. I couldn’t sew, just moved from room to room tidying up. I changed the sheets, put on the silk bedspread, fixed a late snack for when my husband got in, put the embroidered tablecloth on the little table near the window, made some pudding.