She was about to set foot on a cultivated patch of land when she saw a log cabin rise up from the earth. The moon loomed above the squat, fragile dwelling as in an illustration for a fairy tale. The half-open door gave the cabin an inviting air in spite of its crude construction. The woman slipped in sideways so as not to give herself away with the creak of hinges and entered a space that appeared to have carved out its own slice of calm. For a few moments, she was unable to move. She could barely see the brighter shapes of the back windows, but she could hear the throbbing of a pair of lives, each with its own respiratory system. One was deep and intense, panting in tune with the forest; the other weak and stuttering, now and again coming to a complete stop in a kind of death rattle. Then there was an agonizing squeak, and the faltering breath began again, scrabbling at the air, clinging on by its fingernails. She followed this counterpoint of breathing right to the center of the room. Once her eyes had adjusted to the light, she was able to make out the sleepers. They were gone from this world, sleeping the sacred sleep of beasts of burden whose only respite is the collapse at the end of the day.
These sleeping creatures were the very embodiment of indifference, maybe the same indifference as that she had left behind in the forest, on the train, and in the streets, plazas, and stores of the city before that. An indifference she could invariably detect wherever she was. This time, however, she decided to take the initiative and lie down on the side where life seemed strongest, just to see what would happen.
The man hardly stirred. He turned a little to accommodate this new, unexpected triangle, one side of which came from another world. His lungs continued their work and she had to adapt to their rhythm. Every time he breathed in, sucking up almost all the air in the cabin, she accompanied the cyclone, struggling in the current like an insect caught in the plumbing. Then she was unceremoniously vomited out, only to be drawn back in again. This was a wonderful game, joined with the inertia of a light object floating on the tide. She could have played it all night long or for the rest of her life. But then it was ruined. She had started to touch the man’s naked chest, which was embedded with a strange mat of hair, rough and short, like horsehair.
“What is it, who’s there?” he mumbled in his sleep, his tongue prickling like it was swarming with ants.
“It’s me, Eve,” the woman whispered in the same strange, unfamiliar voice with which she had spoken to the trees.
The man tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt as heavy as lead weights.
“Antonia… leave me alone…” he said, his words hindered by something deep inside of him.
“How awful, whose name is that?”
“Yours, damn it. Come on… stop it… I’ve told you before…”
“No, that dreadful name doesn’t belong to me. Women shouldn’t have names that can be made masculine by changing a couple of letters. The truly feminine ones are unique unto themselves. Like all my names,” said the stranger, whispering warmly into his ear.
“And what are they?” he asked, growing accustomed to a dialogue that may or may not have been taking place in his mind.
“Eve, Judith, Semiramis, Magdala. And to a man who dreamed of a foot that was centuries older than he, my name is Gradiva, the woman who walks.”
“Eve, Gradiva,” he repeated; it was all he could do to remember the first and last of the series. “What the hell do you want? Tell me or I’ll throw you out of bed,” he added coarsely.
“I don’t know exactly,” she answered. “Come, touch me, I’m naked. I claimed my freedom and went outside. I have done without codes and the thorns cut me for it. The forest blew its breath in my face; the serpent tried to repeat that sordid old story with the fruit. It was all the same as before, when I belonged to them. But now you’re alone with me, even if she is over there breathing so strangely. She belongs to you but you don’t care about her; she is like so many of my own. I want to know how I would be, how all the women inside of me would be with you. What I am saying to you is so simple and yet so complicated, I know that, my poor darling. But you don’t need to understand. It will all be better that way, its full meaning beyond you.”
The woman’s voice came out hot and soft as newly shed ash. He could feel her physically at his ear but he also heard her inside of him, and this dual sensation gave rise to yet another: the wonderfully strange feeling of having someone inside your body.
“Woman… what… you’re always so quiet, and now you’re talking like this… This isn’t like you, Antonia…”
“No, no, no! If you touch me, you’ll see that I’m someone else. If you smell my hair, or underneath my arms, you’ll find that we’re two very different women,” she protested.
The man, like someone recovering from the effects of anesthesia, was now becoming dangerously agitated. He was going to end up ruining everything, both his woodsman’s peace and the dream of love that had descended upon his pillow. She started to feel anxious about their ill-advised encounter. It was going to be the same old story: possessions shared out of fear, deceit and thievery, repellant clothes covering her once more. She barely hesitated. Quickly, she placed her feet back on the ground and crossed the room, knocking something over as she went, and slipped back out into the night that had unleashed her madness.
The woodsman sighed, suddenly awake. He was sweating from head to toe, his mouth was dry, and his blood was pounding rebelliously, like a slave uprising in a tunnel. He turned over and touched a skinny body with clumsy fingers. As always, his wife was there and yet only present in the most basic sense of the word: cold and entirely unresponsive. But now the man’s desire had swelled like a river after the rainy season.
“Antonia,” he begged in a thick voice, “give me your body face up. It’s come back, give it to me, give it to me.”
Even though she was awake, she didn’t obey.
He brutally turned her over, forcing his wife into position like an animal. She didn’t have the strength or will to resist.
“Eve, Eve, damn you and your dreams. What were the other names you said? Yes, look: now I want to. Now I can. Open those legs or I’ll chop them off. Let me do this. Now, I can’t stand it,” he whined, his body writhing in anguish, taking control of the withered human form before him.
“Have you lost your mind? My God!” Antonia choked, her throat tied up in knots.
“Yes, yes, I have,” he panted without stopping. “That’s what you said to me one night, remember? Thirty years ago, when you put the bouquet of flowers on the table and I tore off your tight, white dress. That time you tricked me, pretending to be so stupid. You didn’t want it then either, you said, but you had a fire inside of you. It didn’t last long, of course. But it was real fire, you old bitch, you hid the flames under the surface, you fucking whore. Get moving, just once, like that time… I’d kill to get you to do it one more time before we die… but now I have to beg you for it like a fool. I’d lick your bones where I’ve dug in my nails just to get you to act a little like that day…”
A pristine memory, thought the poor trembling woman superstitiously, that should never be profaned, not even by them. She struggled weakly to defend it: she still had the moth-eaten flowers and torn dress. But he held her more firmly, taking even that lost moment protected from the folds of time away from her. He hacked away at her as if she were a tree trunk. The deathly, living trance was terrible for the woman to bear. She was as impervious to the flames as sodden wood. It was all she could do to smoke a little in protest.
“No, Nathaniel, stop! You’re hurting me! Stop it, you bastard!” She was amazed to hear herself scream, as though her voice had been taken over by somebody else.