THE GYPSIES install themselves on the velvety lawns that surround the house. From a window, high above them, the widow watches as the performers step out from their caravans. Here they are, in the sunlight, on the grass; there they were, in the candlelight, on the carpet. The sight wounds her, fills her with pleasure: yes, those are the same bodies, the same gentle souls. How could that be? How could the child tumbling along the shrubbery be the child who wielded her misshapen hands with such stimulating results? How could the man brushing out his coat be the man who flinched, and shivered, and moaned? And she, is she the same, standing with a Sèvres cup, looking out the window of her house?
As a very small child, she was told the story of a tailor who, for fear of losing his shadow, secured it to himself with stitches. This is how she imagines it: a woman sitting in a chair, in the candlelight, cupping her ear, is stitched onto the woman standing here with a Sèvres cup in her hand. And she knows that, as with all things sutured, the two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both. She is certain of it. Yet she persists in picking at the edges; she delights in seeing how the wound seeps, where the scab has been lifted away by a fingernail.