A metal placard, dulled and ravaged by the passage of time, barely visible among the vegetation, belatedly announced that there was “Land for Sale.” Actually, the announcement was more primitive than belated; the land had clearly not been for sale for a long time. These places were full of signs just like it; there was no need for Delia to tell me so. At one point, we found ourselves on that corner. She showed me the placard, which was obviously still there, and the exact spot where G had stood, waiting for a sign. To see it, one had to press into the brush, almost colliding with the ancient piece of metal, which had evidently been used for target practice. It was easier to see from a distance when there was a breeze, since the movement of the bushes, and especially their crests, would intermittently reveal it. For some reason I still do not understand, its lettering seemed to Delia to be a proof, presumably of G’s opportune presence that afternoon. Seeing G, discovering the sign, not seeing G, forgetting the sign; this had been the succession of Delia’s thoughts that afternoon, on this topic, at least. The placard had become the only object that confirmed her version of the story. The land to which the notice referred could have been as vast as the planet itself. Its limits were not visible, at least, not at the time. And so the two of us, but not only us, were at the mercy of contradictory signs in which the recent and distant past intermingled with the long-term and the immediate future, the ephemeral present, and an intolerable perpetuity. I should say that I’ve never again felt the presence of time so deeply. Sometimes it seemed as definitive as the heavens: implacable, permanent, and constant. Other times it could slip, or string itself out like a lie, a hurried vertigo of contradictory associations. Time was a black hole; it tore us apart and then consumed us, only to leave us — though there was no way to prove this — in the same place from which we were taken.
I could imagine Delia’s sadness when she returned to find that G wasn’t on the corner anymore. While other people saw the two of them like siblings forced toward the factory by destiny, as I indicated before, Delia saw it differently, though of course with the same intensity. She sensed that something united them, though she didn’t know whether it was their age, or another condition. In any event, she was certain that the factory, in banishing him, was responsible for breaking this harmony. And so a set of contradictory feelings was stirred that, resurfacing more intensely at times, stayed with her for a long while. Delia and her peers could feel somewhat responsible for G’s absence, but they knew that the ultimate cause was not their factory in particular. The problem lay with the world of the factory as a whole, which did whatever it took to make the workers feel a collective debt for the slightest deviation from the norm, even though in reality it was a world that did as it pleased, followed its own laws, and used machines and workers alike as props in the staging of its own truth. I don’t want to abuse the simile, but just as the night was a black hole to those who walked through it, the factory was a black hole to the worker. After isolating, evaluating, and determining what profit could be drawn from them, it hired them, consumed them, and returned them to a life of repetitive actions. One word gives a particularly good sense of it: “exploitation,” hiring someone in order to subject them body and soul to a job and, in so doing, squeeze every last drop from them. Delia remembered a gesture: G would unconsciously run his hand through his hair, which meant that something was bothering him. It could be an unusual noise coming from the machine, a lack of coordination among the other workers, or a sudden loss of power: in any event, before looking up or directing his body toward a response, he would lift his right hand — the same one he used to search for crumbs in his breast pocket — and run it through his hair as though he were trying to fix it. And precisely because he was so absorbed, he was making the same gesture when he caught Delia’s attention as she passed him on the corner. It’s strange that the people closest to Delia, the ones I know, at least, like her friend, should all make that same distinct gesture. Her friend, for example. It was a fluid, rolling movement meant to make the serious less so, to smooth out complexity, and to push affliction, or at least worry, quickly out of mind. It was also a movement meant to conceal surprise. And yet, it was a gesture to which Delia only occasionally resorted.
I’ve come back from the bathroom, from the mirror in which I observe my belly, indifferent and marked by the years, not unlike the trunk of an old tree. I believe that other people’s gestures cling to us like stains, figures left at random on a surface and preserved in our memory through coincidence, unlike the many that are not. I returned to my room with a glass of water; my battered wardrobe faced me from the estuary that opened up at the foot of my bed. I thought about Delia, about the people who were near her, or at least as near to her as I was, and without realizing it, I ran my hand through my hair. What was I after, with this movement? Was I was hoping to uncover something hidden? It’s strange; I find that action to be extraordinarily sweet, now. Before, I saw only impatience, vacillation, the urgent sort of nervousness that can be resolved with a gesture, and a theatrical one, at that. Now, though, I see this automatic and therefore invisible movement as an effect of feelings as trite, but from another point of view, as true, or at least lasting, as shyness, pride, humility, and innocence. I see an automatic movement by which the species defends itself, brandishing, shall we say, its dignity. Delia’s friend lifted her hand that same way when I found her drawings, and then time and again when she thought, as we waited for Delia, that some indiscretion of mine might slip in through the silence; this was why it was necessary to speak: to keep me from scrutinizing her home. But, as I said earlier, she couldn’t find the words. G, too, lifted his hand as he stood alone on that corner: to forgive the afternoon hours that insisted on not passing, to momentarily forget the nothingness that invaded him from below, from the roots under the weeds and the expressionless landscape to every side of him. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but now I see that it would have been a miracle if things had been otherwise, if the two of them had not lifted their hands that way in response to something that overwhelmed them, I mean, to something that set them outside themselves, not in the sense of being unaware of their actions, but rather the opposite: of holding those actions up against the awareness that they were acting while only gradually realizing what was happening around them. It should be said that Delia, too, lifted her hand that way, though only a few times, and for a different reason, one somehow less direct and, like everything about her, more complex, sinuous, delicate, and certainly wise.