He often arrived late, when Rebecca was already in the studio. It might be ten minutes, or it might be an hour. He did it deliberately. He liked to find that she had already disappeared to herself in David Barber’s sound river and in that light—when he, instead, was still immersed in the crudeness and the rhythm of the world outside. Then he entered, making as little noise as possible, and on the threshold stopped, searching for her with his gaze as if in a giant birdcage: the instant he found her—that was the image that would remain most distinct in his memory. In time she got used to it, and didn’t move when the door opened, but just stayed where she was. For days now they had been omitting any useless liturgy of greeting or farewell, in meeting and parting.
One day he came in and Rebecca was sleeping. Lying on the bed, slightly turned onto one side. She was breathing slowly. Jasper Gwyn silently approached a chair at the foot of the bed. He sat down and watched her for a long time. As he had never done before, he scrutinized the details from close up, the folds of the body, the shadings of white in the skin, the small things. He didn’t care about fixing them in his memory, they wouldn’t be useful in his portrait, but by means of that looking he gained a secret closeness that in fact did help, and carried him far. He let the time pass without rushing the ideas he felt arriving, scattered and disorderly like people coming from a border. At some point Rebecca opened her eyes, saw him. Instinctively she closed her legs. But slowly she reopened them, returning to the position she had abandoned—she stared at him for a few seconds, and then closed her eyes again.
Jasper Gwyn didn’t move from the chair, that day, and he got so close to Rebecca that it was natural to end up where she was, first passing through a torpor full of images, then sliding into sleep, without resisting, slumped in the chair. The last thing he heard was the voice of the woman in the rain scarf. Fine way of working, she said.
On the other hand it seemed normal to Rebecca, when she opened her eyes—something that was bound to happen. The writer asleep. What a strange sweetness. Silently she got off the bed. It was past eight. Before getting dressed she approached Jasper Gwyn and stood looking at him. She walked around him, and since one elbow was resting on the arm of the chair, the hand hanging in space, she brought her hips close to that hand, almost touching it, and stood motionless for a moment—the fingers of that man and my sex, she thought. She got dressed without making any noise. He was still sleeping when she left.
As she did every evening, she took her first steps on the street with the tentativeness of a newborn animal.