Once when Ofélia was sitting there, the door-bell rang. I opened the door and came face to face with Ofélia’s mother. Protective and unbending, she had come in search of her daughter.
— Is Ofélia Maria here by any chance?
— Yes, she is, I said, excusing myself as if I had abducted her.
— Don’t do that again — she said to Ofélia with a tone of voice that was meant for me: then turning to me, she suddenly sounded peevish: I’m sorry if you’ve been troubled.
— Not at all, your little girl is so clever.
The mother looked at me in mild surprise — but suspicion flickered across her eyes. And in her expression I could read: what do you want from her?
— I have already forbidden Ofélia to come bothering you, she now said with open distrust. And firmly grabbing the little girl by the hand to lead her away, she appeared to be protecting her from me. Feeling positively degenerate, I watched them through the half-opened spy-hole without making a sound: the two of them walked down the corridor leading to their apartment, the mother sheltering her child with murmured words of loving reproach, the daughter impassive with her swaying plaits and flounces. On closing the spy-hole, I realized that I was still in my dressing-gown and that I had been seen like this by the mother who dressed the moment she got up. I thought somewhat defiantly: Well, now that her mother despises me, at least there will be no more visits from the daughter.
But naturally, she came back. I was much too attractive for that child. I had enough defects to warrant her advice, I was apt terrain for exercising her severity, I had already become the property of that slave of mine: of course, she came back, lifted her flounces and sat down.
As it happened, Easter was approaching, the market was full of chicks and I had brought one home for the children. We amused ourselves with it, then the chick was put in the kitchen while the children went out to play. Soon afterwards, Ofélia appeared for her daily visit. I was typing and from time to time I would express assent, my thoughts elsewhere. The girl’s monotonous voice, the singsong of someone reciting from memory, made me feel quite dizzy, her voice infiltrating between the words typed on the paper, as she talked and talked.
Then it struck me that everything seemed to have come to a sudden standstill. Aware that I was no longer being tortured, I looked at her hazily. Ofélia Maria’s head was erect, her plaits transfixed.
— What’s that? she asked.
— What’s what?
— That! she said stubbornly.
— What?
We might have remained there forever in a vicious circle of ‘that!’ and ‘what?’, were it not for the extraordinary will-power of this child, who, without saying a word, but with an expression of intransigent authority, obliged me to hear what she herself was hearing. Forced into attentive silence, I finally heard the faint chirping of the chick in the kitchen.
— It’s the chick.
— The chick? she said, most suspiciously.
— I bought a chick, I replied submissively.
— A chick! she repeated, as if I had insulted her.
— A chick.
THE PRINCESS (IV)
And there the matter would have rested had I not seen something which I had never noticed before.
What was it? Whatever it was, it was no longer there. A chick had flickered momentarily in her eyes only to disappear, as if it had never existed. And a shadow had formed. A dark shadow covering the earth. From the moment her trembling lips almost involuntarily mouthed the words: ‘I want one, too’ — from that moment, darkness intensified in the depths of her eyes into remorseful desire which, if touched, would close up like the leaf of the opium poppy. She retreated before the impossible, the impossible which had drawn near, and which, in a moment of temptation, had almost become hers; the darkness of her eyes changed colour like gold. Slyness crept into her face — and had I not been there, she would slyly have stolen something. In those eyes, which blinked with cunning knowledge, in those eyes there was a marked tendency to steal. She gave me a sudden look betraying her envy: you have everything; and censure: why are we not the same, then I would have a chick? and possessiveness — she wanted me for herself. Slowly I slumped into my chair, her envy was exposing my poverty and left my poverty musing: had I not been there, she would have stolen my poverty as well. She wanted everything. After the tremor of possessiveness subsided, the darkness of her eyes revealed her suffering. I was not only exposing her to a face without protection. I was now exposing her to the best of the world: to a chick. Without seeing me, her moist eyes stared at me with an intense abstraction, which made intimate contact with my intimacy. Something was happening which I could not understand at a glance. And desire returned once more. This time her eyes were full of anguish, as if they had nothing to do with the rest of her body, which had become detached and independent. And those eyes grew wider, alarmed at the physical strain as her inner being began to disintegrate. Her delicate mouth was that of a child, a bruised purple. She looked up at the ceiling — the dark shadows round her eyes gave her an air of sublime martyrdom. Without stirring, I watched her. I knew about the high incidence of infant mortality. The great question she was asking concerned me as well. Is it worthwhile? I do not know, my increasing composure replied, but it is so. There, before my silence, she surrendered to the process, and if she was asking me the great question, it must remain unanswered. She had to surrender — and without anything in return. It had to be so. And without anything in return. She held back, reluctant to surrender. But I waited. I knew that we are that thing which must happen. I could only be her silence. And, bewildered and confused, I could hear her heart, which was not mine, beating inside me. Before my fascinated eyes, like some mysterious emanation, she was being transformed into a child.
Not without sorrow. In silence, I watched the sorrow of her awkward happiness. The lingering colic of a snail. She slowly ran her tongue over her thin lips. (Help me, her body said, as it painfully divided into two. I am helping, my paralysis replied.) Slow agony. Her entire body became swollen and deformed. At times, her eyes became pure eyelashes, avid as an egg in the process of being formed. Her mouth trembling with hunger. Then I almost smiled, as if stretched out on an operating table, and insisting that I was not suffering much pain. She did not lose sight of me: there were footprints she could not see, no one had passed this way before, and she perceived that I had walked a great deal. She became more and more distorted, almost the image of herself. Shall I risk it? Shall I give way to feeling? she asked herself. Yes, she replied to herself, through me.
And my first yes sent me into rapture. Yes, my silence replied to her, yes. Just as when my first son was born and I had said: yes. I had summoned the courage to say yes to Ofélia, I who knew that one can die in childhood without anyone noticing. Yes, I replied enraptured, for the greater danger does not exist: when you go, you go together, you yourself will always be there: this, this you will carry with you whatever may become of you.
The agony of her birth. Until then I had never known courage. The courage to be one’s other self, the courage to be born of one’s own parturition, and to cast off one’s former body. And without being told whether it was worthwhile. ‘I’, her body tried to say, washed by the waters. Her nuptials with self.
Fearful of what was happening to her, Ofélia slowly asked me: