To restore order to the world, he answered.
The next day, he instructed that the mourning should last for nine days from the day of the burial. On the tenth day he announced his marriage to the girl, and on the first day of summer it was celebrated with unforgettable joy. Three months later the girl gave birth, without dying, to a son, whom you will soon marry: since then, we’ve all called her the Mother. In the house you know, she became a woman, diligently, and she is the light who allows that man whom we all now call the Father to live in shadow, while he fiercely keeps the world in order. There is something that binds them, but obviously the word love, in this case, explains nothing. The secret they share is stronger, and the task they have chosen. One day, when they had been living together for a year, without ever sharing a bed, they felt strong enough to challenge together the two fears they were accustomed to associating with sex: he of dying, she of killing. They locked themselves in a room and didn’t come out before they were sure that if a spell had been cast on them, they had broken it. That’s why the Daughter, who was conceived during those nights, exists: if fate wanted her crippled and very beautiful, it’s no doubt in order to write a coded message that no one has yet been able to understand. But it’s only a matter of time, sooner or later it will be known. When you put the world in order, the Father says, you can’t decide the speed at which it will let you do so. He wanted me to tell you this story, I don’t know why. I’ve done it. Now don’t look at me like that, and finish your wine, girl.
But the young Bride sat motionless, her gaze fixed on the elegant Woman. She seemed to listen, with absorption, to words that had been delayed along the way and now were piling up, stragglers, soundless. Instinctively she greeted them with annoyance. She wondered what had happened to that day to make it so weak that it released every secret and shattered the gift of ignorance. She didn’t understand what these people wanted from her, so suddenly avid and generous with truths that seemed dangerous to her. Without thinking about it, she threw out a question, biting into the words.
If the story is secret, how do you know it?
The elegant Woman didn’t lose her lightness.
I was born in Portugal, I teach sex to society girls, she said.
You.
Do you need some lessons?
I don’t need anything.
You don’t need anything, no.
Or maybe one thing.
Tell me.
Would you mind leaving me alone for a little?
The elegant Woman didn’t answer. She merely raised her eyes toward the room, but as if she had lowered them onto a chessboard where someone had started a game whose outcome she was able to foresee, with no uncertainty. Then what she did was to take off, very slowly, the splendid red silk gloves she wore, which went up to her elbow, and place them on the young Bride’s lap.
You want to be alone, she said.
Yes.
All right.
The elegant Woman rose, not disappointed, not hurried, not anything. She must have risen like that from many couches, many beds, many bedrooms, many lives.
L., too, got up, but not with the same tranquility, she wasn’t familiar with tranquility, as far as I knew. She got up and looked at the time.
Fuck.
You have to leave?
I had to leave a long time ago.
You did leave a long time ago.
Not in that sense, idiot.
When you left you forgot a pack of cigarettes on the bed, half empty. I carried them around for months. Every so often I smoked one. Then they were gone.
Don’t try anything.
I’m not trying anything.
And stop killing yourself in this shitty place that seems like a maniac’s lair.
Shall I call you a taxi?
No, I have the car.
She put on her jacket, and in the reflection of a window smoothed her hair. Then she stood for a moment, looking at me, I thought she was deciding whether to leave with a kiss, but in fact she was thinking about something else.