I awoke feeling expectant and noticed the piece of paper on my table. I wasn’t afraid of the paper, after reading what I had written. It seemed a little sad and absurd for my mind to be crowded with so many thoughts, and for no one to notice. But there was the knocking at the door, and I couldn’t recall the stern voice, which might speak again any minute. I was afraid of having to explain something difficult, although, stated plainly, it was simple, so sadly simple, “I went to visit the people in the house across the way.”
Or, “I was at the house across the way.”
“People?” they would object, “What people?” and this last question allayed my fears, because it meant the others didn’t know them. I reread what I’d written, parsed as well as I could the two hours I’d spent in their house the evening before, unable to glean anything that could have caused such hatred or such affection. I turned the key in the lock, so the others could come in without knocking. I felt relieved, convinced something was going to happen; that I’d have to explain myself, that I might expose the three faces to danger. Perhaps it was better that way. If nothing happened now, it would soon be lunchtime, when someone—my God, who was it who knocked?—might ask, “What was wrong with you last night? Why wouldn’t you open the door?”
I still had time to think of an answer, but the tone, the shape of the resentment that might well up at any moment, those I couldn’t know. And they’d probably only knocked to ask for some lotion, or a book. Perhaps someone wanted to talk to me, the way we used to talk before the house across the way began. I couldn’t remember what I ought to ask them, and perhaps I’d only written those pages to put on airs. But if I couldn’t remember what had stirred me to write them, or the knocks at my door, then perhaps I hadn’t imagined the question, or the flour and the gloves. Because the flour and the gloves couldn’t be a sign of my putting on airs. And then I had no time left to think about it, because suddenly everything crowded in on me: the house, the courtyard, the geraniums, the dining room, my family in my room, questioning me.
“What was wrong with you last night?”
And now there they were, each wearing a different expression, with nothing to do but stare at me. I saw them approach my table, indifferent, not looking for anything in particular, but I had hidden the pages I’d written. I sat on my bed. The light shone weakly through the half-closed shutters. Everything happened as I’d expected. While the others tried to act unconcerned, someone asked me, “What was the matter with you? Why did you lock yourself in?”
I kept quiet. As long as they didn’t ask me if I’d been out, I could invent plenty of reasons for having locked myself in, but I needed to be quick; I couldn’t allow them enough time to think up their own, or give them a chance to scold me. I thought of telling them that I had been crying, but I stopped myself, because suddenly it all seemed unnecessary.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I was feeling strange. I barely heard the door.”
“You were feeling strange? We’ve noticed,” but I didn’t let her go on. That wasn’t the tone I wanted their questioning to take. I couldn’t seem strange to them—it was dangerous, almost a confession of the three faces, the wine, so cool and recent.
“I felt ill, as if I had a fever. I heard the knock at the door, but I couldn’t answer.”
“But why did you lock yourself in? What if something had happened to you?”
Then someone else interrupted and I was scared, and began to suspect how this would end.
“She wasn’t feeling ill,” they said. “She was telling the truth the first time. She was feeling strange, just as we thought. And it would be interesting to know why.”
I’d never been so frightened. It was as if they’d suddenly decided to undress me. Then I saw them pursuing me into the drawing room, spying on me, discovering the three faces at dusk, learning their names, their possible professions, the dates of their memories, the last of their dead; if indeed they were patient, if indeed they were patient enough to wait until I left and walked around the block, before returning to the house across the way; if they were patient, they should venture with me into countless nights without brightly lit passages, or staircases; only a drawing room with three faces learned from the street; if they were patient, they should hate them and love them and feel strange; if they were patient, if they were patient, my God, they should stare at me, and detect the three faces inside my own, intact, perfect, easy to bear, so terribly easy to bear.
But they weren’t patient, and another voice, the one I expected, murmured, “Leave her alone. It’ll pass. Anyway, it’s hardly a crime to lock yourself in.”
I thought they would never be done with my room, with the newspaper on my chest, but I was prepared for anything so long as they didn’t reach through my face, or through my habits, and find the faces across the way, and just as I thought their faces would pass unnoticed, the voice that never did anyone any harm suddenly added, as if forgetting I was still there with the three defenseless faces watching me from the night before, from many nights, “She hardly goes out anymore. She spends hours watching the street. She must be under a bad influence.”
Then I felt as if someone was beating me without warning, shattering a piece of something that was mine, strictly and patiently mine. Also, I thought, honestly mine. I understood I was now in the midst of danger, and it would be better to pass through it all at once. I thought of that saying, “Love soon turns to hate,” and that perhaps I could hate her, cry that she didn’t understand, that she was incapable of feeling her own face, incapable of committing a crime, incapable of looking the part. I saw the faces across the way, beside clumps of torn-out hair, long red scratches across impassive cheeks while my fingernails ached, while my fingernails waited for me to cry, “Bad influence? What bad influence?” and the three faces nodded, becoming passive and precise. What did they mean by a bad influence? How could three faces that scarcely stirred be a bad influence on me? Was it possible for a face to set a bad example? The example of stillness, of respecting a storm, of grieving for oneself alone? But they never asked for anything. But they liked to gaze at portraits hung at the height of their chairs … Ah, but the wine! They meant the slow and deliberate wine, or their conversations about death. But they had no idea what their conversations were about.
There was a long silence, my question hung in the air and filled with splinters, with stitches, with every awkward and insignificant pain, becoming larger and more unnecessary by the minute. I thought if they answered, “The three women across the way,” I’d kiss my parents and leave the house, without saying where I was going, until they returned the three faces to me unchanged, with nothing added or stripped away, asking for my forgiveness. But there was no need for that. It was even worse.
“How would I know? Books. She always has a book in her hand. Something she’s seen outside. There must be some reason she no longer reads in her bedroom. She’s changed. She hardly speaks to us anymore … ”
And that moment, that very instant, was the beginning of the end, as clear as a ship’s siren (though it might still be a few minutes away); though neither I nor anyone foresaw it; though it still seemed easy, possible to delay, if only I could cure myself of seeing them. It was as if something still distant was beginning to stretch its limbs, to clear its throat, pointing out episodes to a memory that didn’t yet want to remember, since it wasn’t prepared; changing me, changing my seventeen years, forcing me to forget my bedroom, the courtyard, my still-unworn dress, tormenting me, urging me to turn a deaf ear to voices I loved, to my favorite, fleeting corners. But I could do nothing, I swear, other than watch their faces closely, follow their complicated, disjointed conversations, so I could position them in my room before going to sleep, and wish—sometimes I had to admit—that someone else might be able to share them, arrange them, and not be afraid of them.
I stayed quiet, a little resentful, awaiting the sentence that would send me away.
“I think a change would do you good; you could spend a few days in Adrogué. Let’s think about it. They’re always asking me when you’ll go. You used to like going, before … ”
Before, I liked going to Adrogué. Before, I liked black velvet, playing card games, riding in carriages. Before, I liked my favorite tree. Before, I didn’t live among those faces, or my altered days. I decided I would go to Adrogué, even if only so this possible “before” might also be of use to me with them. So that I could say, “Before I went to Adrogué, you told me about prepared deaths. What have you been doing, while I wasn’t watching you?”
But I also thought, and it seemed pleasant, almost an adventure, that I would come back four days later, scan their faces and find them identical, a little less watched, but identical to my nostalgia; perhaps more mysterious and determined. What would their faces be like after four nights without anyone’s gaze?
But I was still in the “before,” and I was sure. Sure their faces belonged to me, that they endured because I watched them; sure no one else had ever shown them such patience, that no one else was capable of sharing them so much, of being so addicted to them; even of glimpsing them, seeing them shift inside my face, which must express—it was impossible that it shouldn’t express—their three faces behind my own, expressionless.