possibility of returning, or half of a fiction that might never be completed. From then on resignation would work its magic and hence the amazed onlookers (Doña Zelma and Demetrio), for this was how they understood things. I don’t think we should keep watching her or we’ll get sad, the aunt said as she reached out her hand and gently pulled her nephew into the shop. Inside, the repackaging of ideas, though first a request: Give me a hug, Demetrio. I want to feel that you love me as much as you love your mother and Renata. The big guy resisted. At that moment, a hug would mean he’d shudder, so no, too cloyingly sweet, this setting things right—what for?, or due to something much simpler: he couldn’t make light of his regrets, he had no reason to make a fuss about what still hurt, and so he plainly said: Not now, Aunt. Maybe I’ll give you a hug tomorrow. Thus he spared himself the explanations and created distance and reserve and threw a little salt upon that sweetness that threatened to drive him mad. In a redundant show of respect, Doña Zulema took (three) steps back, for she also couldn’t tolerate such a rejection; which led, in fact, to a side effect: I ask you please not to go sleep in the hills while you’re staying with me. How to respond to that? with a bemused smile? Not even! Rather—as it happened—with a glance at the reed-covered roof, where—with squinting glances—Demetrio discovered three swallows’ nests: already abandoned and on the verge of a collapse whereby clods would fall, perhaps—one day yes and one day no? To feel—what?—a slow disconnect. Anyway! What Demetrio did as he made his way slowly to his refuge was to keep watching the scattered treasures on the roof. Absentminded madman, though purposeful! To cap it off: seclusion. A masturbation was on its way … Cursed suspicions … Solitary sanctity, on the other hand, though his regrets didn’t lend themselves to pleasure brought about by mechanical means, mere animal rewards, and even worse: no subconscious dejection. But Doña Zulema’s intuitions were sharpening and—what good would it do? More merry harm, of course—or was that incorrigible amusement? What she did was knock on the door, trying to be quite gentle (pleasant knocks, pleasant voice): Demetrio, I’d like you to share my bed with me tonight. I won’t touch you. I just want to feel that I can replace your mother. From inside came a “we’ll see” and let’s say that here concludes an episode of confusing endearments.
21
Solitude might be a threat of everlasting terror. It might advance then run out of steam. It might swell so much it frightens itself away. Be what it may, it is not desirable. A great effort is required to feel it as anything but a burden, so, what good is it? When she was young, Doña Zulema opened her heart to love, and she was struck by lightning. A cousin once removed was the indirect cause. This cousin bore gifts; he was kind. He: fire that mends by sharpening countless emotions; he was generous; he was complacent, he forever spoiled his cousins with wrapped and ribboned gifts. Pleasure. Selflessness, though to be precise, his favorite was Zulema, who didn’t know how to respond as the gifts piled up. Without meaning to (what can one do?) she fell in love, a fall indeed, especially because this impulse had to be immediately checked, the brakes put on decisively, but no, because it was impossible to calculate such a natural and benign affection. Be that as it may, she took the prudent path: the obvious one, sans the audacity of flustered excitement; she chose to conceal from her cousin even the subtlest hint of romantic interest. Restraint upon restraint whenever she was with him: never look him straight in the eye. A radical reversal, an intentional detour: such was her choice; her goal, to banish any hint of coquetry. True, one time she dared look at him and even puckered her lips (somehow or other) to see if her cousin would catch a whiff of love, a discreet insinuation, but—nothing! Their kinship was a ceiling whose luminosity could barely be discerned, an inflexible notion of arid affection, as constrained as grace itself.
And so time passed and so Zulema’s fruitless passion grew. Her cousin, named Abelardo, who never realized what he had awakened in the lass, went to study medicine at a faraway university, without