VI

By the esplanade the river vaulted underground, creating a wave; but the water by the canes was calm. I sat down on a bench, my arms on the table, my head on my arms. I shut my eyes as if I were dead. I was dead. I would have stayed there all my life, until the wind scattered my dust. I could envisage my body, no longer flesh, turning first into sulphur dust that caught on the underside of bees, then into earth, and finally breathing new life into flowers. Once my existence unraveled, it became death and flew about; from spring to spring only winter’s death would live. All of me was weighted down. As I was feeling the weight, I heard a splash and raised my head. Rings had formed in the water, giving birth to other rings, as if someone had hurled a flat rock. The rings kept spreading until they reached the point where they died. The days-old water was green on the opposite bank, where I had watched the Festa years before. When all the rings stopped, I glimpsed a hand by the canes. A hand above the water, as if supported from below, tiny and white and flat like a fearless spider. The hand rose, then fell furiously, striking the water. I approached the canes and hid. I caught sight of a girl who climbed out of the water and got dressed; she reappeared from behind the canes, tucking her bodice into her skirt, her back to me, the hem of her skirt almost grazing my knee. Her feet were pale. And the lower part of her legs. Her heels were rose-colored, like the pink houses in spring. When the bodice was tucked in, she took a few steps, stopped, looked at the sky, then dashed back to the water she had just abandoned and began waving her hand from one side to the other as she blew away the illusion of fog that wasn’t really there. Just a bit of smoke. She returned to where she had been standing, but faced me this time and, raising her arms, she grasped her hair with both hands, pulled it up and tied it. As she lifted her arms, her bodice again escaped her skirt, and again she tucked it in. At that moment, without giving it a thought, without wanting to, I got to my feet. We looked at each other. She stood in front of me, her hands still raised, I in front of her. Both of us standing. Eye to eye, mouth to mouth, our hearts troubled. Not wanting to, not thinking, I stretched out my open hand, wishing to touch her because she was alive, yet wondering if she was real. As if I had passed on to her the wish to do what I had done, she extended her arm toward me, her hand open. That was enough. The two of us standing, our fingertips on the verge of touching, barely separated by what might have been the thickness of a leaf. We remained like that as the morning mist grew thinner, as if the water in the middle of the river had swallowed it, instead of spitting it out. And she departed. I stood there with my hand outstretched. I jumped with a start when her hair abruptly came loose and fell like sudden night down her back. You, you are a hand, the blacksmith’s son had told me. I stepped forward, placing my feet on the water spots she had left on the ground and pressed the soles of my feet as hard as I could against the earth, my body weightless. Her short, wet hair, was swept up, away from her neck. This is what I most remembered about her, before her hair fell loose. All the women in the village have long, fine hair. Her husband takes hold of her hair, a strand of which dangles free. I felt the birth of desire as I had never felt it, desire alone, violent and solitary as a rock. Look at them, their eyes like horses’, never knowing when they live, when they die.

I gathered some canes and was heading back when I encountered a group of men leaving the village. I didn’t look at them. As I was approaching the first street, I had a glimpse of the blacksmith’s son running toward me. His father wanted to see me right away. I handed him the canes, told him to take them home, and hurried to the blacksmith’s.