Modesto hesitated. He was wondering if it was necessary to proceed with making the young Bride literate, or if it was a useless effort, if not actually imprudent. He remained silent for a moment, then gave two coughs, rather dry and close together.
Do you think you could memorize what you just heard?
The coughs?
They aren’t coughs, they are a warning. Kindly consider them my respectful system for alerting you, if necessary, to possible errors.
Let me hear them again…
Modesto produced an exact replica of the laryngeal message.
Two dry coughs, close together, I understand. Pay attention.
Exactly.
Are there many others?
More than what I am willing to reveal to you before your marriage, signorina.
All right.
Now I really must go.
You’ve been very helpful, Modesto.
It was what I hoped to be able to be.
May I repay you in some way?
The old man looked up at her. For an instant he felt he might express one of the childish requests that surfaced in his mind unchecked, but then he remembered that distance was a measure of humility, and of the nobility of his office, so he lowered his gaze and, with an almost imperceptible bow, confined himself to saying that an occasion would surely arise. He left, taking the first steps backward and then turning around as if a gust of wind, and not a disrespectful choice, had decided for him — a technique of which he was a peerless master.
But there were also different days, obviously.
Every other Thursday, for example, early in the morning, the Father went to the city: often accompanied by his trusted cardiologist, Dr. Acerbi, he was welcomed at the bank, visited his trusted tradesmen — tailor, barber, dentist, but also suppliers of cigars, shoes, hats, walking sticks, and, occasionally, confessors — had at the proper time a substantial lunch, and finally allowed himself what he usually called an elegant walk. The elegance came from the pace he assumed and the route he chose: the former never careless, the latter along the streets of the center. He almost always ended the day at the brothel, but, keeping in mind the imprecision of his heart, he interpreted the practice as something hygienic, so to speak. Convinced that a certain release of bodily fluids was necessary to the equilibrium of his organism, he had found women available there who were able to provoke it almost painlessly, meaning by pain any excitement that could crack the glass of his heart. Insisting on such prudence from the Mother would have been vain, and, besides, the two slept in separate rooms; although they loved each other deeply, they hadn’t chosen each other, as will become clear, for reasons having to do with their bodies. The Father came out of the brothel in the late afternoon. On the way home he reflected: his fierce decisions often had their origins there.
Every month, but on different days, Comandini, the firm’s business manager, arrived, announced by a telegram forty-eight hours in advance. Then every custom was sacrificed to the urgency of business, the guests put off, the breakfasts pared to the bone, and the life of the House handed over to the torrential narrations of that little man with nervous gestures who knew, by unfathomable means, what people would want to wear the next year, or how to get them to want the fabrics that the Father had decided to produce the year before. He was rarely mistaken, he could negotiate in seven languages, he squandered everything gambling, and he had a fondness for redheads. Years before, he had emerged unhurt from a frightful train wreck: since then he had stopped eating white meat and playing chess, but had given no explanation.
During Lent the spectacle of the breakfasts was reduced, on holidays everyone wore white, and they skipped the night of the Patron Saint, which fell in June, by gambling. The first Saturday of the month there was music, a gathering of amateurs from the neighborhood and, occasionally, professional singers remunerated with English tweed jackets. On the last day of summer the Uncle organized a bicycle race open to everyone, while at Carnival they had for years hired a Hungarian magician who, with age, had become little more than a good-natured entertainer. At the Immaculate Conception they killed a pig under the guidance of a butcher famous for his stutter, and in November, in years when the fog thickened to an offensive consistency, they organized — often making a sudden decision, dictated by exasperation — a rather solemn ball, at which, with contempt for the milky darkness outside, they burned a number of candles surprising in every respect: it was as if a quivering late-summer-afternoon sun were beating down on the parquet-floored room, unleashing dance steps that returned everyone to a kind of South of the soul.
Normal days, on the other hand, as has been said, adhering to the facts, and speaking concisely — those were all marvelously the same.
The result was a sort of dynamic order that, in the family, was considered flawless.
In the meantime June came in, gliding on English telegrams that put off the Son’s return almost invisibly, but after all sensibly, reasonable and precise as they were. In the end, the Great Heat arrived first — oppressive, pitiless, punctual every summer, in that land — and the young Bride felt it, as she struggled to remember it after her Argentine life, recognizing it finally, conclusively, precisely one night, in the damp-filled darkness, while she tossed in her bed, sleepless for once, she who, uniquely in that house, fell asleep as if it were a blessing. She tossed and turned and, with a gesture that surprised her, irritably took off her nightgown, dropping it carelessly, and then lay on her side, bare skin against the linen sheets, to receive the gift of a temporary coolness. I did it spontaneously, because the darkness in the room was thick, and with the Daughter, in her bed a few steps away, I had by now established a sisterly intimacy. Once the light was out we usually talked long enough for some comments, some secrets, then we said goodnight and entered the night, and now, for the first time, I wondered what that sort of faint sonorous song was that rose from the Daughter’s bed every night, once the light was out and the secrets and the words had been exhausted, after the usual goodnight — it rose and hovered in the air for a long period whose end I never heard, for I always slipped into sleep, I alone, in that house, without fear. But it wasn’t a song — there was a hint of a moan, almost animal — and on that oppressive summer night I wished to understand it because the heat was keeping me awake and my unclothed body made me different. So I let the song hover for a while, to comprehend it better, and then, in the dark, point-blank, I asked calmly, What is it?
The song stopped hovering.
For a moment there was only silence.
Then the Daughter said, You don’t know what it is?
No.
Really?
Really.
How is that possible?
The young Bride knew the answer, she knew the exact day when she had chosen that ignorance and could have explained in detail why she had chosen it. But she said simply, I don’t know.
She heard the Daughter laugh softly, and then some faint noises, and a match that scraped and flared and approached the wick — for a moment the light of the oil lamp seemed very bright, but soon everything took on cautious, precise outlines, everything, including the naked body of the young Bride, who didn’t move, remaining just as she was, and the Daughter saw it, and smiled.
It’s my way of entering the night, she said. If I don’t do it I can’t fall asleep — it’s my way.
Is it really so difficult? asked the young Bride.
What?
Entering the night, for all of you.
Yes. You think it’s funny?
No, but it’s mysterious, it’s not easy to understand.
Do you know the whole story?
Not all of it.
No one has ever died during the day, in this family, you know that.