At one point she felt cold, in a way that otherwise only a person abandoned by God and the world can feel cold. She was freezing, wretchedly, from inside out. Had she been abandoned by God and the world? “No.” Little by little, the inhabitants of the village came to mind. Although she had seen them for only a few seconds, upon the bus’s nighttime arrival, on the way to the parking lot in the orchard and to the Milano Real, an image had remained with her. And as she thought of the images, she felt warm again.
She had been in Pedrada several times before. Each time there had been some small change or other. But this time almost everything seemed new, and not merely the tent colony at the confluence of the various tributaries of the Tormes. In the crowd of nocturnal roamers outdoors, the natives were clearly in the minority. For one thing, most of them, as quasi-mountain-dwellers, were unaccustomed to a corso and had long since withdrawn into the few ancestral stone houses. And then, since her last sojourn here, the last stop before any crossing of the Sierra, the population had evidently increased considerably. A mighty influx had occurred.
And the new residents were apparently all still up and about, despite the lateness of the hour, outside the tents, which in general had long since ceased to be provisional housing. And what was special about all this bustle: though elbow to elbow, cheek by jowl with the others, each person seemed entirely alone. This movement also no longer had anything in common with a corso. Not that those walking side by side and those coming toward them paid each other no mind: it was a given that for all the individuals, there were no others, or, rather, he or she, that particular man or this particular woman, existed for and mattered to no one but him- or herself (and even that was questionable).
Each person in the crowd was making his own circuit? — and at the same time followed attentively in the tracks of the person just ahead of him; paid attention to the space between those next to him and behind him. Every one of them must have moved to Pedrada from a different place, an entirely different place. And every one of them was afraid of all the others who had moved there from entirely different places. Here he was far more foreign to them than they to him. He could not allow himself, or could not allow himself yet, to be intimate with any of them, no matter whom.
And so each person, when it happened, as it repeatedly did, that someone made eye contact, would instantly look away from the other, as if he had just done something improper, something that he, of all people, had no right to do. So when one person bumped into another, as was inevitable with all the shuffling and shoving, each jerked back as if a crime had been committed, by him, one of the untouchables. Yet no one in the hordes of people who had moved to Pedrada since her last time here resembled in the slightest a pariah, or a refugee, or an expellee. Each had come voluntarily to this area, and also to the new groups of people here, and more than merely voluntarily: of his own free will; had made the decision almost confidently or proudly.
The tents were no refugee tents. (So what was the source of the mutual timidity?) The garment of each of the new arrivals was not merely appropriate, without defects, neither too new nor threadbare, but also seemingly made to measure, his alone, so that it was less his suit that seemed elegant than the person. And they were all dressed very differently, by no means in the latest styles, their clothes suggesting ever so subtly, almost imperceptibly, all the parts of the world from which they might have set out for this region: America, Africa, Arabia, Israel, China, India, Russia, but neither were they wearing the traditional dress or costumes of those places.
And although each of them moved through the mountain village completely alone, by himself, stumbling, shyly brushing past the others, and although each of them looked so unique, in his clothing as well as his hair color, the form of his eyes and skull, and although each of them obviously also thought of himself as infinitely alone and unbridgeably different from all the others, nonetheless in that crowd they all expressed the same thing, both in the gestures and grimaces with which one and all talked to themselves or to some invisible, absent third person, and in their actual subdued, constant conversations with themselves, which often coincided word for word — for by now they all spoke the Sierra vernacular — with the murmuring of those in front of and behind them: “Never to be alone again, never to lock a door behind oneself,” and so on. So in the image these newcomers generated they belonged together as much as any of the established residents. (But how did they get themselves into the image?)
Yet they also came together now and then outside of the image: it happened whenever something like a transaction, an offer, an inquiry, an exchange, a purchase developed between two of them, serendipitously, as they were pushing past each other: they would then stand still for a moment, and although they hardly opened their mouths to negotiate, for that moment things were pretty lively between the seller and the buyer. And only then the actual exchanging, step by step, of wares and money (for anything but cash was out of the question here): a relieved smile on both sides, without reservations and suspicion, openhearted and at the same time with a reserved ceremoniousness, with almost more pleasure at handing over the money than at receiving it, mutual agreement and affection brought about by the money, the bills and coins, which made her recall why she, of all people, with her village childhood, had once wanted to study the manifestations — rather than the so-called laws — of commerce and economic activity.
And she, too, wanted to lay in cash for the following day and the rest of the journey. Was the way in which the new people of Pedrada had revealed themselves to her that night in the Sierra a fact, or was it only her gaze that made them appear so? Only? Only her gaze? A gaze could create (and destroy, and declare null and void). The gaze, hers — that was how she wanted it to be for the book — created something.
She kept watch until daybreak. Or did she merely stay awake? No, she kept watch. She kept watch over the whole area, over those who were sleeping there. Although she remained alone, she felt as though someone were watching with her and keeping her company, invisible but no less palpable, all night long.
For a while she also read again, in the glow of her flashlight, in her vanished daughter’s Arabic book. “It is all right to read,” she told herself, “all right to read on.” And then, in the middle of reading: “She is alive. My child is alive! And tomorrow I will inquire about her here. And I will receive information.”
She also watched over herself. If she were to lie down — this was her thought — she would die then and there.
Not until she made her rounds through the hostel did she enter the sleeping tent of the youthful parents. The infant was sleeping quietly between the two of them. They were turned toward him, and each had placed a hand on him, one on top of the other. At the same time they were talking to the sleeping baby, their eyes closed, an almost incomprehensible murmuring and muttering that merged into a stammered duet, without a single distinct word, and finally into a twofold whimpering, as when in a dream one is supposed to speak a magic word and cannot get it out, no matter how one tries.
The one who was sleeping deeply and peacefully was the infant. His sleeping penetrated the dream lamentations of his adolescent parents and finally silenced them. The entire tent filled with the breathing of the three sleepers, peaceful at last, and a scent wafted forth, only from the tiny child, the niño, the tifl (without any effort on her part the Arabic word came to her): the child’s unique, intensified sleep scent. A perfume unlike any that had been produced and marketed anywhere. What a coup that would be. How such a perfume would stimulate the senses — she told herself — sharpening all the senses into one; into the most sensual of the sensual.