Neither earth nor sky. Outside, always the same dark, dull, dizzyingly still night, which had been like that for nearly three hours. An abstract, unreal night, impossible to fill with ordinary, everyday images. Or so at least he thought. Frighteningly pure. Intangible. And so solitary.
He had always liked solitary places: vast deserted beaches where his were the only footprints—such a sense of ownership!—the long horizons of empty plains, cities at that same late hour, gentle and yet slightly angst ridden too, in which people sleep or toss and turn calling out for a sleep that refuses to come. Now, however, those glimpses of old scenes seemed crude, terrestrial imitations of this unsullied solitude, so large and perfect, through which he was traveling. Beyond the double panes of the window everything was possible, even the soft, white hand of a protective God reaching out to him. Even a little wandering ectoplasm. Even the angel of death, yes, even that. But nothing vulgar or probable.
If, as the flight progressed, a screw—a tiny but important, not to say, vital, screw—were to break or gradually come loose and fall into space, or if a needle were suddenly to go crazy, and the plane begin to rise and rise until it disintegrated (wasn’t that the word the newspapers used about the satellite, that it had disintegrated?), or if the pilot suddenly died—which was perfectly possible—what would happen or, rather, how would it be?
He found himself repeating an old definition lost, he thought, in the dark night of time. “We give the name ‘celestial sphere’ to the majestic vault whose center appears to be occupied by the Earth and on whose inner surface we see the stars.” And at that moment, he was a speck of dust traveling through that celestial sphere, albeit very low down. But did that actually count as the celestial sphere? Of course, that’s what the definition said: “whose center appears to be occupied by the Earth…” That’s the advantage of definitions… There is always something to be found in the midst of all the rubbish. Lavoisier’s law, Archimedes’ principle, Mendel’s laws…
“Do you know where we are?” he asked the woman. “In the celestial sphere.”
She jumped, slightly embarrassed:
“Where?”
Ramiro laughed softly, that rather arrogant laugh of his, the laugh of someone older than his years, and he took her small hand, with its stubby fingers (her stupid hand, he thought). Then he shrugged and said:
“It’s really of no importance, none whatsoever. What were you thinking about?”
Branca smiled at him with genuine fondness and, after a moment’s thought (she always paused to think before opening her small round flower of a mouth), said gravely that she was thinking about their luggage. What if it hadn’t all been put on the plane? What if the blue suitcase had been left behind? It was so small; that could easily happen…
The same could be said of her. She was full of such homely thoughts, and the last idea she had was always the most important. As for the others, where did they go? He placed his other hand on the warm, round knee revealed by her skirt and reassured her as he would a child:
“It’ll all be there, don’t you worry. I hate to see you upset; it makes you look ugly…”
She pulled a funny face and brushed her cheek against his shoulder.
“Ugly? Do I really? You cruel thing…”
Ramiro turned abruptly away and gazed out of the window again, where the night was still uniformly black, with no moon and no stars. A square of black cloth, an empty square. He slowly, gradually released the woman’s hand. Her hand was left, forgotten and unhappy, slightly open and slightly pink on her green tweed thigh, as if it didn’t know where to go or what it had done to be banished like that.
He was looking out at the night and thinking that the woman, who had been his since yesterday—and who would be his for who knows how long—filled him with disgust. Disgust. She had taken so long to accept him, saying she wasn’t sure she loved him, that she was still very young, and so on and so forth, and then there were the copious tears she had shed during the ceremony and the way she had clung to her mother as if he were intending to kill her, and now she was like a cat in heat. A stupid cat in heat. With certain fixed ideas. A cat’s ideas of course. And after just one night. She was quite simply disgusting.
If such a thing happened… The screw coming loose, the needle going crazy, the pilot dying… That would be a good joke… He had nothing to lose—how long would he last with that heart of his?—but she, she had her whole life ahead of her, and what a life! Given how pretty she was, how attractive, and once he died, she would be both free and rich, and stupid too (an essential quality if one is to be entirely happy), yes, her future was full of possibilities. And full of other men too, of course. Not that he minded—what did he care—but, on the other hand, it wasn’t nice to think that she would stay here having a high old time while he would be rotting in some cemetery with a wreath of flowers on top of him. Because she was very dutiful. She would be sure to take him flowers every week or at least every two. Initially, that is. Before he died completely.
If the plane was suddenly to burst into flames… He hadn’t thought of that as a hypothesis. And yet a fire… All it took was for someone to hold a lighter to one of the curtains… Or drop a cigarette butt… Or not, because cigarettes only work when you don’t want them to. You can’t count on them. They have no sense of solidarity at all.
He hadn’t spoken to the woman about his illness nor to his doctor about the marriage. He hadn’t told his friends either. He had demanded a simple ceremony: just her parents, the best man, and a maid of honor. He had made it appear that the idea came not from him, but from Branca. She was so easily influenced, poor love!
His friends…but what friends? He had always been a sickly child, and children don’t like ill people, especially those who stay ill for a long time. They get bored, irritated. And they are extremely cruel. That’s why he loathed them all. All of them. From his bedroom window he would watch them playing football in the street, and what he felt then was hatred. Hatred. What if that boy slipped and broke his leg? What if that other one broke his spine? What if a car passed and…? He had only to walk more quickly or speak more loudly for his mother to say, “Now don’t wear yourself out, Ramiro. Don’t overdo it, Ramiro. Remember your heart…”
But his mother was dead now, and yesterday he had married. Was it yesterday or much longer ago? He was twenty-three and she was eighteen. Eighteen healthy years. She was perfectly at liberty to get married and overdo things. She had firm flesh and a fireproof heart.
If the plane were to burst into flames… He began imagining the disaster in all its details. Everyone dead, no survivors. Branca’s lovely body forever still, silent, useless. The man he had seen sit down in the seat behind him, a man wearing an English-style overcoat and a diplomat’s hat, the sort of man you don’t see much these days, but who was clearly convinced of his importance in the world. A banker on a business trip? A well-known politician (he could be; he didn’t know any well-known politicians) going abroad to sign some treaty? And suddenly, farewell treaty and farewell business deal. Perhaps all that would remain—as a symbol of ridiculous mediocrity—would be that diplomatic hat. Nothing else. Otherwise, just bits and pieces scattered all over the place. Mortal remains was the phrase. Including the very blonde stewardess, with her very blue eyes and very white teeth… “My name is Marina Vaz.” Poor Marina Vaz!
He started laughing, forgetting that the woman next to him could hear. Only when the sound of his own laughter resounded in his ears did he shoot her a sideways glance, grown suddenly serious again. Branca, though, was absorbed in studying the cracked nail polish on the index finger of her left hand. “What dreadful nail polish,” she must be thinking. Indeed, she was so taken up with this that she clearly found it a fascinating subject.
How stupid of him to get married! But he was in a hurry; he couldn’t wait. Besides, what is life but a series of increasingly stupid incidents? Why not marry if she wanted to and this was the only way he could get her? She knew he was ugly, boring, and disagreeable. No woman had ever taken any interest in him. His one quality, which he had always made use of, was his money. He had always bought women. Those others had been bought by the hour; this one was for life. And he had spent his entire fortune on Branca. For her, it was, after all, a very good deal. Because his life would not be a long one.
Again he thought of the needle going crazy, the screw coming loose, the fire, the pilot dying… What would happen? The floor would shake violently. Then the plane would doubtless plummet earthward or perhaps flip over. It would certainly be interesting. Branca wouldn’t be able to cope with such a situation. The poor girl wasn’t born to be a heroine. When she married again…
“When you marry again, Branca…”
He was going to talk to her about death, to tell her he was a hopeless case, to ruin her journey completely and, more importantly, crush any illusions she might have of present happiness. That would be a plus. He saw, though, that she had fallen peacefully asleep, her dark head turned slightly toward the window. The effects of the motion-sickness pill she had insisted on taking.
Outside, the velvet-black night had lost its former purity. Its atmosphere seemed dense and difficult to penetrate, suffocating. “We’re flying through clouds,” he thought. “I am flying through clouds.”
Suddenly the plane shook violently, and Ramiro thought it was about to nosedive. He had often dreamed of such a thing. It wasn’t a nightmare exactly nor was it part of a story. Just a sensation. He and a precipice. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was a precipice. And he would plummet vertically downward in small, repeated impulses. He never reached the end of the dream, so he didn’t know what the end would be like. Or he would wake up or simply forget the rest or change dreams. But he had never found out what it was like down below.
Nor did he now. Were they flying over the sea or the land? He wasn’t going to ask the stewardess or the flight attendant; they might think he was afraid. If only the woman would wake up, then he could explain that it was all because of her… He looked at Branca again, but she was still deep in the same peaceful, almost childlike sleep that made her small, round chest rise and fall. The sleep of the blessed. Or of the simpleminded?
An air pocket, then another and another. The worthy gentleman behind him yelled out loud enough to be heard above the noise of the engines. Then Ramiro saw a bright flash light up the darkness outside, but all that brief flash showed him was the darkness itself. Where were the clouds they had just flown through? He looked in the other direction but saw only a brilliant line of light zigzagging across the dark backdrop. The plane was ascending, fleeing from the storm, then descending again and shaking in the angry air, battered by contrary winds.
Just as Ramiro was about to wake the woman, he felt a sharp pain in his chest that wouldn’t let him breathe. The lightning flashes continued to illuminate the squares of night, but the engines drowned out the thunder. Was the storm near or far?
At this point, and this coincided with a still more intense pain, unbearable now, he saw some little fluttering fingers tapping on the glass. He reached out to them with his heavy hands and suddenly he was outside, falling down and down as he did in that familiar dream. He felt cold and thought vaguely about people who’d had a leg amputated and remembered too that he had left something behind on a seat somewhere, beside someone, something that was part of his daily existence. Probably nothing of any importance.