Here I am with nothing more to do, my arms hanging at my sides, the sudden weight of my useless words on my shoulders. The man follows my example and rises.
"I shall go away, very far away. Don't mind. That's the good of being a woman who works; you're not afraid. You may be at the mercy of misfortune, which is always lurking, but not at the mercy of human beings....
"That's all, I'll go now...."
In the silence that cuts in I feel how this man is wishing I'd never go—wishing it so strongly that for a moment he touches love and a path is opened along which I could take a step, but only a single step, no more.
My eyes stare into space. I hear the mournful, eternal good-bye you say to things—this table at which I worked, the afternoon sunlight laughing through the window, all the familiar objects, which reel slightly from the separation now beginning, from the nascence of everything that is to be....
He presses my hand. And I think of all the men you could convince if you wanted to take the trouble....
If you had the time....
If life were not a choice.
XIV
Her head is nodding and dropping lower and lower, her fingers are gently loosening their hold on the square of embroidery: my mother has gone to sleep.