I know it was my fault, but I was always afraid any incident concerning the three people in the house across the way would happen without a premonition, without any sign to allow me to savor the sudden encounter, the unfamiliar custom, before it happened. Nothing was any help, not even the gestures I devised for the day I would finally meet them, the various ways I plotted of approaching them. It was all so difficult! Even the trick of dropping a book, or brushing against an arm as I turned the corner, then begging their pardon so they’d be forced to acknowledge me, was useless if they never went out into the street. They’d stayed indoors since the night of the storm, and it seemed to me that even to see them in profile or peering out of their doorway would be momentous, almost a miracle. Of course, to have come to think that way, I’d had to watch them at length, and no one would believe me if I claimed that for twenty days their faces had known the same careful, somber routine. But what was I to do with those three faces in a distant, renewed portrait that lasted until midnight?
I know it was my fault. I was always to blame for everything. I shouldn’t have gone out that afternoon without making sure there was no chance of surprise, of some change in their habits. I hadn’t been out in a long time either, and when I spied them there so still, I decided to leave the window.
I opened the door to the street and looked towards the house across the way. I was vaguely worried not to find her face beside the others. After a moment of uncertainty, I thought it was absurd not to trust her, that I was sure to find her in the drawing room as soon as I came home, so I headed in the direction of Avenida Cabildo, planning to stroll a few blocks before going to the post office. It felt strange to be walking alone, free, as if emerging for the first time after a long illness. The faces didn’t encumber me; I even felt like running with their faces inside, but at no time, I remember well, did I breathe any sigh of relief. I knew I was far from their window, that anything could happen to them while I was away, but their faces didn’t weigh on me. I was almost saddened to feel so free while the three faces, as if in persistent, unceasing penance, did not stir from the drawing room.
I arrived at the post office and went up to the counter. I was about to leave when a voice—my voice, could another voice be mine?—asked slowly, as if she had already composed her condolences, and needed only to write them down; as if she led a cloistered existence, and lacked only a voice, “A telegram form, please … ”
“I won’t turn around,” I thought. “I mustn’t turn around. I can’t turn around to find out who’s using my voice, or if I’m someone else, or if I’m not myself and I am mistaken, and what I really want isn’t to wait, but to send a telegram.”
“Your change, miss,” I heard, while a sudden, almost rheumatic tingling crept up my arms. I picked up the coins, not knowing which way to turn to avoid confronting my voice, my own voice, myself, repeated. I remember thinking no one could identify their own voice, or hear how it sounded to others, but I must have thought it hurriedly, because I needed to turn around or leave. And if no one could identify the sound of their own voice, then how had I heard mine? And if it wasn’t my voice, then why had I suddenly felt that fear in my skin, my nerves?
I looked warily to my right, and took a few steps. There was no one on that side. I went up to a table to stick the stamps on my letters. I thought about going back to the employee and asking, in my own voice, “A telegram form, please … ” to see whether the other voice would recognize itself or show any sign of surprise. I was already approaching the counter when I lost my nerve. I was afraid the employee, without so much as looking at me, would protest with a smile, “I already gave you two … ” Then I would have to burst into tears, or die of fear, since it would mean I endured in another voice, that another voice was leading me down unfamiliar streets, past the portrait-less dead, over a cradle, entering smoky kitchens smelling of fat, boarding ships, saying sorry without my knowledge or knowing I hated to say sorry; imagining new places for me, derelict and beautiful, hearing desperate, anxious music, or uttering countless “I love you”s, and perhaps, though I minded less, a single “I hope you die.”
I thought I ought to do something, telephone my house and ask someone to come and get me, to see if they noticed the likeness. It would be bravest to say something, so the other voice would realize, and not believe it was alone. I too possessed that voice, and thought it was beautiful. Perhaps there was such a thing as identical voices that met only once, but I was convinced it would be impossible to tell, and I also knew—could swear—that my voice was incapable of making its way through so many coincidences, to request a telegram form.
I prepared myself slowly to face the danger alone—I turned around again—waited a moment before looking to the other side, and saw three figures hunched over the counter; one had her back turned to me, between the others, who were watching her write. I couldn’t see their faces, except for a patch of cheek on either side of the one who wrote, of whom all I saw was her neatly done hair and the lowest patch of the nape of her neck, just above her collar. I preferred not to see their faces, not to confirm the presence of my voice in an unknown face, impossible to follow.
I turned around not knowing what to do, and soon heard another voice ask:
“How long will it take to arrive?”
“About an hour … ”
“Thank you. We’d like to pay for the reply.”
It seemed that my voice, the one using my voice, had dared only to ask for the form and compose the telegram, a slow and desperate message in a mysterious hand, perhaps concealing a death or a discreet love.
I left the post office, and paused in front of a shop window. I was beginning to tire of gazing at the same lace trim when I saw them leave quickly, without looking at anyone. I felt ashamed that someone with my voice might spy me staring into a shop window, so I began to walk. They kept moving; I might almost say they floated, motionless, as if on invisible wheels, towards Avenida Juramento.
When I saw them that way, moving serenely, each at an equal distance from the other, the irreversible act accomplished, the message and the reply unmediated, it occurred to me for the first time that those hazy, solemn, passive figures might be the three people in the house across the way. It seemed easy to attach those faces to them, to think of them in the street. I remember it made me happy not to have seen their faces, not to have found the faces hunched over forms, or to have met them, suddenly, over the sound of my voice, forgetting storms, twenty days of keeping watch, a dead horse, my life bound to those people in the room … I needed to make sure, to see the room bereft of their presences—lonely and respectable, or hurt and discouraged. I needed to see them arrive, almost floating beneath the chinaberry trees, and take their places among the shadows. When I guessed it was them, I don’t know why but just then they seemed heroic; heroic and defenseless in the face of the brief, measured wording of a telegram. I remembered them hunched over the form and convinced myself they couldn’t possibly write a letter, couldn’t possibly sign those belated, requested, or promised words, with sincere regards or an indifferent embrace. Perhaps they could only write to a distant guardian, and I granted them the necessary strength and pride to reach the end and draft in a sad and neatly penned new line, “We await your response, sincerely yours … ” But the telegram was something so different, so decisive and urgent, that I almost forgot my need to hurry, to see whether they really were the three people from the house across the way.
I took Calle Echeverría home, so they wouldn’t see me running. It would take them a while to arrive, if they really were the occupants of the drawing room and of my persistence. I approached my house slowly, and looked over at theirs. The drawing room was empty. I felt like crying, like I would have given anything for it to be them. The voice didn’t matter. Later I would think of the voice, about what to do when faced by my voice in that room I would one day enter—I was sure of it—to sit down in their company.
I settled in by the window and waited a few minutes. After a while I saw three shadows, slender as poplars, strikingly lengthened by the streetlamp on the corner, and soon afterwards, they took the place of their shadows. They paused for a moment at the door, as if it were necessary to cross the threshold by other means, and then she disappeared inside, followed by the others. A few seconds passed—long enough for them to take off their coats—and the drawing-room light came on as usual. I could see the three faces resume their usual positions with ease, without any needless delay. It seemed to me that each, as if answering a mysterious calling, was returning to her place in her own portrait, and that perhaps they might be able to relive a portrait from their past, bearing garlands of flowers, a long, pale arm reaching out tirelessly, gazing at the same marble flight of stairs as they had twenty years before.
It was them, the three faces of my vigil, my voice, the clover of their faces upon an arduous reply-paid telegram. I thought that I would never again be as happy as in that moment, that many things would have to happen before I would forget it. I kept watching them as if someone had returned them to me slightly improved, as I remembered the reply-paid telegram. I supposed the reply might come before they retired from the drawing room. It was already six o’clock. I could keep watch over the street until half past eight. I decided to wait; to not let them out of my sight.
I spent almost two hours in the drawing room. Then, not knowing what I was about to do, I took some money and stepped out into the street. After a few minutes, I saw a telegram boy coming along our block. I crossed the street and stopped in front of the door to the house across the way. When the telegram boy arrived, he checked the number of the house and removed a telegram from his satchel.
“This is it,” I said in a low voice, holding out the money before he had a chance to ring the bell, then signing the receipt. The telegram boy went off whistling.
I stood for a moment with the telegram in my hand, almost at the edge of their faces, in their own doorway. It was impossible not to read it. Perhaps someone one day would forgive me, or perhaps the memory would fade and I would change. I stepped towards the light. The street was deserted. Then I opened it, but not even then did I pay any attention to the recipient’s name. No signature followed the dull words, “Will come Thursday evening.”
That day was Tuesday. It would be two days until he burst in, nameless, arrogant, without even saying hello; but I could already imagine him, armed with belated marriage certificates, leaving his house unseen; as a respectable man with a son, shunning memories (the three bothersome faces); devoted to his Sundays with silver cufflinks, to his handkerchiefs, to his rain shoes, to his son, so precocious at drawing and idiocy, his house-proud wife … Until I was amazed by how much I hated him.
I remembered the open telegram and managed to regain my composure. I urgently needed to seal it. I ran back to my room, stuck down the edges, and sat on my bed, not knowing what to do. I tried to convince myself I wasn’t the one who should deliver it, until gradually the task became impossible to put off.
I looked at myself in the mirror and, while combing my hair, tried to get used to the idea that soon, that very evening, in just a few minutes, the three faces would come close to my own. Perhaps it would be terrible to see them up close, and I’d be left with nothing but my twenty days of keeping watch across from their shadowy faces, their wan lips, while a shrill voice said over and over, “Thank you so much, thank you so much, we were waiting for it,” when I already knew they’d sent a reply-paid telegram, and now my only solace was to cry at them, with all my wasted hours, with their ruined faces, “Don’t be so foolish! Don’t make such a fuss just because someone is coming on Thursday without daring to sign his name. Is that all? Is that why you spend all day in the drawing room?” I wouldn’t be as angry with her, the eldest, but would advise her to live alone, and not to misuse my voice. But no. It was impossible that their lips should be wan and shapeless—their smiles a mere slit from one cheek to the other—and, distractedly, I ran some lipstick across my lips, so they wouldn’t imagine that I was anything like them.
From my doorway, I spied them in the drawing room, unchanging and beloved. I let a moment pass so I could keep loving them, as if saying farewell to loving them before anything could change; only loving them, without needing to watch them or delve into their pasts; saying farewell to their precise faces, whose details I’d learned by heart, that so willingly accepted the destinies I assigned them from my window, except for that Thursday, its promise ruined by urgency and hatred.
The street was still deserted when I crossed over towards the house across the way. The doorbell looked full of meaning, as if it were spying on me. The whole house seemed to have placed its hope in the message. Finally, I rang the bell, and stood there motionless, holding the telegram to my chest. I soon heard the shuffle of steps, many steps, as if all three were coming through the vestibule. The door opened slowly, and she appeared between the others. She looked at me for a moment; I was sure she saw only the telegram. I had prepared the first thing I would say so it wouldn’t all be ruined, and if it were, it wouldn’t be my fault. I looked at her for a while and said, “This telegram isn’t for us. Is it for you, by any chance?”
She held out her hand and I passed it to her, placing it carefully in her palm. Then she folded it in two without looking at it, and said, with my voice, “Yes. It’s for us.”
Behind her face, I saw the other two watching me. I didn’t know what to do. I had to leave. Then, if only so as to look at them, look them up and down in the almost darkness, I began to murmur “Good night,” while the others, as if obeying an order, withdrew until they disappeared into the shadows, and she murmured, “Do you remember the message?”
“Yes,” I answered, as if I’d been simply awaiting her patience: “‘Will come Thursday evening.’”
“Thank you. We are always at home,” she added gravely, in no hurry, closing the door as I crossed the street, trying to deserve her, willing her not to forgive me.
When I arrived in the drawing room at home, the younger two had already taken their places. She slid towards her own, towards her eternal self-portrait, as if my voice, her face, my hand holding the telegram, had never happened. My face might be worthless, and perhaps I was wrong about the voice, but not about the visit, or her immediate hatred.
Though I couldn’t make out the telegram, I could already see Thursday evening in their faces.