The first time I called on them they assured me they never went out, so I needn’t tell them when I was going to visit. I would let two or three days pass by, then decide, at dusk, to cross the street. It had already become a routine for me to cross the street and, without knocking, enter a house where perhaps I was loved, or where, at least, I had the right to sit in the drawing room as if it were my own. Sometimes I would bring them a book, but since they never mentioned it, I never knew whether they’d read it. Perhaps they accepted it so as not to hurt my feelings, so as not to admit they didn’t read anymore, since after they’d kept the book for a few days, the second—usually the second—would follow me into the vestibule and return it, saying, “Here’s your book,” and before I had a chance to say anything, she’d go back into the drawing room.
It was always the eldest who showed me out and, without peering into the street, waited for me to leave once I was sure no one from my house could see me. Only once did I see two figures at my door, and we had to wait for a while in the gloom of the vestibule. But she wasn’t surprised, and she accepted—though unhappily—that I kept that part of my life a secret.
I often found them absorbed in a silence that seemed to thicken around them, through which they would have to wade, with great effort, before uttering a word, but I almost always caught a remnant of some sentence, or, as if unaware of my presence, they would resume their conversation while I took my seat. Nothing, on those occasions, seemed to disturb them, and I hardly ever felt I was in their way—even if they drifted inexplicably into a cloud of rare and desultory sweetness—rather, they accepted me as if that was my place, and they trusted me completely.
One afternoon, as I was taking my coat off, I heard the second say, “Waking her up was always difficult; she would want to tell me everything before she had her breakfast … ”
I enjoyed listening to them talk that way, mentioning no names, not saying of whom they were speaking, since I wanted to gather all the details without having to pry; to simply grow familiar with them as the evenings went by; to find out one of them had smiled to herself unexpectedly; that they had turned down invitations to dance; that the eldest pronounced English so badly she preferred for no one to know she spoke it; but for them to allow me to enter deeply into those distinct episodes that brought them closer, granting them an intermittent clarity, even if nothing more, I had to be discreet, and to pay careful attention, since it was essential to spot the details, even the cut of a dress, at once; it didn’t matter if they’d mentioned it only in passing, since if I didn’t, they would soon reproach me, and I was afraid that would be enough for them to shroud everything I wanted to know in silence.
“How could you not remember? We’ve already told you,” one of them would say, as I struggled to recall the vague image of a blouse; the precise night there was a high wind (not to be confused with the night she went out so late); the time the second took so long to do her hair that the others grew impatient, and I was sure—though they denied this—that she’d been braiding it.
During these calm conversations, they never lingered over a particular subject or episode, but instead moved from scenes in their remote past to others perhaps more recent, between which I could find no connection. Rather than voicing their feelings or opinions, they almost always spoke of tangible incidents, of circumstances or attitudes, and if I wanted to know if the three of them were good, if they’d been happy, if they yearned for days that were less serene, I had to glean the answer from the way they returned to a street, or contemplated a door, or described, without alteration, a faded portrait. When they spoke among themselves, sitting in a row, without turning, glancing at me once in a while, they seemed to be listing, from memory, everything they held more or less dear, in a catalogue known only to them. But I couldn’t say they were complicated, or reserved, or overly meticulous, and if someone had asked me to be specific, I wouldn’t have been able to call them mysterious, either; I would have ventured, barely, to say they spoke as if I already knew everything, or had missed only a few hours, the days the most important things had happened—which, despite everything, I should have known about too.
I was often confused, at first, by the way they referred to each other, like the time one of them remarked, “She looked pretty that night,” and I assumed she was remembering someone she liked, but when I inquired who it was, she pointed at one of her sisters, who accepted the compliment without looking away or blushing, as if she were different now and could hear it freely, since that night belonged to the past.
Although I let them speak without interruption, so they wouldn’t suspect I was hanging on their least significant words, I was sometimes so intrigued by them that I became reckless, like the evening I arrived in the drawing room just as the youngest was protesting, “I think it’s unfair and inconsiderate. They should be left in peace,” and only when the eldest contradicted her did I understand what they were talking about.
“Tapping the table to commune with a spirit is no different from always thinking about, or longing for it. They might be just as troubled by the persistence of a memory. You were wrong to refuse … ”
I know I was clumsy, and squandered yet another opportunity to discover something momentous and essential, and that what mattered wasn’t what I believed or thought of them, but that I should hear them, should prompt them to entrust to me their failed attempts, their lonely, solemn scenes. I’d never imagined them capable of such things, and though the reproach might have a ten-year history, and they, a frustrated taste for mysterious practices of which I knew nothing, I understood they had returned, without a single startled tear, to a time when they’d tried to commune with the dead. I remember resolving on that occasion to find out, definitively, whether they had managed to move the table, whether the rhythmic taps had sounded a yes, or spelled out the name of the person they missed so dearly—but they were so painstakingly solemn and vague that as soon as they mentioned “moving the table,” I forgot what I had resolved; I forgot about everything as I watched them, and all I could see were the three faces in a silent circle, above their white hands, striking and unfamiliar without their cigarettes; each positioned like a picture of a saint on a holy card, against a dark background that ended, sharply, just below their faces and the golden light around them. Then I imagined the flies that would crawl over their faces, and imagined that one day, as they arranged their favorite stories for the hours they would spend in the drawing room, I would be forced to wipe a damp cloth over their faces to remove the stains. Beneath the gold, now spotless too, the three faces would seem new for a while. It occurred to me that they would look better against blue, but then I remembered kitchens painted that color, and it seemed so inadequate that I preferred to clean them, even if I had to do it over and over. I imagined, too, that one evening when they were very quiet, I would discover the first threads of a spider’s web, spun from their eyes to their chests or hands without their noticing—convinced as they were that it was just another way of being tired, since their lashes felt heavy, weighed down by the spider pulling on its tiny elastic threads.
“You looked like a curtain in that dress,” the youngest was saying, addressing the second, but then I listened carefully when they told me she’d waited for someone, standing by a side table so as not to crease her dress with its ruffled hem. I sensed that something important had happened that evening, and thought about asking if she’d ever married, but then the youngest added, “No one heard the knocks on the door,” when it was a lie, when it was impossible that no one had heard his knocks, no matter how few there had been. They knew they were lying, while her portrait was fixed forever with the frozen transparency of a curtain left undrawn since it was still early, and the light was too bright, and she had to wait by the table, certain of being spied on, wishing it would cool down so she could wrap something around her shoulders since she didn’t need to be brave, and the time for misfortune had come, or the time to be comfortable and requited, even if she was no longer waiting for him, since no one had heard the knock at the door, and he left in anger, repeating, perhaps, the words the eldest had dared to cry, “Over my dead body!” and perhaps he was so stunned, and loved her so eternally, that he didn’t care if he left the church, stepping away from the hem of her long dress to avoid the red carpet, since they were all watching him and knew he was trampling her body, and, absurd though it seemed, he couldn’t avoid the carpet, but had to walk across it, stepping lightly, almost unwillingly, on small, brittle bones full of tiny holes, or swerving slightly, to avoid her quickly pinned braids, since he had got married and must walk over her dead body, but his love was so strong he would eventually forget it all, except the minor details, the closed door, the knocks resounding all along the street, the wind, the woman peering out from the neighboring balcony, pretending to water her geraniums, and he wagered that no one would open the door to him, he wagered he would be capable of walking over her dead body, but he couldn’t abide the closed door, even if she was waiting for him, even if she was brave.
When they told me what had happened, in fragments—while I added his anger, the wind, the knocking at the door, the laughing woman—they didn’t say whether the second had accepted, calmly, the truncated visit, or whether she sought him out again, to help him walk over the dead body of her sister, who had also lied, because she wasn’t willing to die so soon.
“What letter?” I asked on another evening, after the eldest murmured, “What might the letter have said? To think we’ll never know!”
“You don’t deserve to keep secrets,” I told her, displeased, but when she saw my disappointment, she told me she’d received a letter she’d burned without reading. That was the only time I was ever truly angry. “It was unforgivable to do that. You’re so selfish!” I cried, in front of the others. Then, as if handing me what little she had left, still smooth, unwounded, but truly chastened and useless, she answered, “The letter was addressed to me. I assumed it was mine to do with as I liked.”
I retorted that she should have read it, or, if she was too afraid, if her disdain really was so great, her love so proud, she should have put it in another envelope and returned it intact to its sender.
“You shouldn’t say such things,” remarked the second, and after a moment she said, “she’s still with us,” as if I ought to suppose that she, the eldest, had vowed to leave, to disappear.
They also enjoyed remembering empty houses, which they’d visited for pleasure, even though they had no intention of moving. I listened to them speak of the maps they’d sketched of each one so they could arrange the furniture as they liked, studying spacious dining rooms, measuring the distance from a table to a window, but without too much heed, since the important thing was the drawing room with its two portraits and the three of them sitting, almost in a row, looking out on the street. But whenever one of them hinted at something that brought a certain house too close to mind, or, instead of saying “Where we used to live,” made the mistake of mentioning Calle Bulnes, I would get up to leave, to avoid that moment of sorrow. Only once did I stay to see what would happen, but I never dared to be so bold or curious again, because it was a painful episode, and didn’t even help me find out if, in those moments, they loved one another as before, or if they’d been happy in that house, because then the second asked the eldest, without looking at her, “Did you do that on purpose?” and the eldest got up silently, and went to lock herself in her room.
Each time their conversation drew near that house, I would get ready to leave, or ask them something that I wanted to know, and which, at the same time, would cause the street to recede.
“Have you always lived together? Did none of you marry? Why don’t you practice making the table move?” And I would say my goodbyes before the refusal, or the explanation, or the “It’s too late now” could begin to appear in their faces, which would then be placid, as if swaying above a polished table onto which their hands sank in dull reflection of their three faces seeking a name, their three blurred faces asking no perfunctory questions, or anything of the kind.