trees. He swung me, so strongly that the trees shuddered and my skirt flew up over my head. He sat on the lawn and watched me; from time to time he took a sip. Now, finally, he was looking at me like a man. Avidly. He sat and contemplated me, in ecstasy. But then the painter in him woke up and his look took on an edge that was more analytic, aesthetic, and dreamy. I threw one shoe at him and then the other; he caught them in midair, waking up from his dreaminess. I jumped to the ground to run back to the house with him behind me. I went up the stairs, we chased each other through the corridors. Then I entered the alcove of my bedroom and sat on the sofa. He lay down there, resting his head in my lap.
“I am completely drunk!”
I caressed his disheveled hair with the palm of my hand.
“What are you going to do with a drunk?” he shouted.
I put fingers over his lips so that he fell silent. He still wanted to say something. He didn’t stop laughing, but I didn’t take my hand away. I pressed against his lips with my fingers. I released the pressure as he calmed down. Suddenly I felt something wet in my palm: it was his lips which were taking me, all of me. At length, avidly. Insatiably.
When, after a long time, I opened my eyes, my bedroom was full of sunlight.
“Drunks have to sleep. Come on, get out! Sleep off your hangover!”
I pushed him into the corridor, drunk as he was, and not just with wine. I locked the door. That unexpected happiness did not allow me to sleep anymore.
There was no sign of him all day. He didn’t turn up for dinner.
I went to bed, but could not get to sleep. I tried to make out all the sounds I could hear. I lit the candle.
Then the door opened. I pretended to sleep. I know that he observed me for quite a while. Then, delicately, he took off my summer nightgown, and looked at me once more. I felt him kissing my feet; he started at the toes. He did so slowly, like a drunk eager for more wine. Interminably, as he had done with the palm of my hand the day before. I dug my nails into the bed. He took a long time to reach up from my feet to my lips.
Every day in the evening we went to look at the sunset on the coast of Sanlúcar. I dressed like a maja; Francisco wore peasant’s trousers, a shirt and a waistcoat, and always brought along a sketching block and a pencil. He drew the fishermen and the majas who flirted with them, children with their mothers, people’s faces. He was beautiful when he drew, and happy. I let myself be charmed, looking at him framed in the last rays of the sun which dyed his hair an orange color, and watching the people from the village who, in the twilight, looked like orchids. I enjoyed the present moment, looking forward to the evening, the night, the awakening. I didn’t think about what would happen afterward, the future had ceased to exist. I didn’t want to spoil those moments thinking about the meaning of my life and about what I could give people and the world. In this way, I was able to be happy. The awareness that I was filling the man drawing beside me with happiness was enough for me. There is no other happiness, I knew it, I know.
After the sun had set, we walked along the harbor, out of the town, in silence, absorbed in the nature around us that was preparing to sleep, and we listened to the tranquility. Amid the silence and the hot, dark air, we were visited by desire. Oh, that southern air, salty and sweet at the same time, which at nighttime still holds the perfume of the sun and decomposing fish and seaweed! That air would revive me, even now when death surrounds me. In that air I would be cured, yes, but only if he were there, if everything could be as it was then.
One day, in the evening, Francisco complained about the mugginess. I told him that women do not suffer so much: the light and transparent cloths that we wear uncover us and let the air run along our skin. Francisco, in his obtuseness, didn’t understand anything, so