14. Windows

If outside there were iron and bronze and sometimes porcelain doorknobs, inside there were curtains and silence, entrenched and almost never placid silence because there must be speech and almost certainly fury and vengeance, tempers that ricochet off children like another lofty secret to be ascertained as they grew into ostentatious gentlemen and haughty ladies, although they hoped to be svelte horsemen who went to war and damsels with wreaths of flowers in the parks with waterspouts, fountains, arbors, cobblestone paths, and murmuring sounds, which does not mean that silence exists or that it could be called anything other than absence; curtains still as marble, silk-like shields, a pretense and defense against the light, buckler and protection against indecent stares, and above all, vestments. To put up curtains has been a science since ancient times no less intricate for being domestic. When Madame Helena renovated the house on Scheller Street to take in boarders, Mr. Frenzen showed her workshop tables covered with all variety of poles, brackets, clasps, rings, tassels, hooks, cornices, pins, swags, overlap carriers, pulleys, and cords, to say nothing of fabric and cloth, the wares and textiles he kept pulling out of cabinets and unrolled from its bolts soft or heavy to the touch, mere ideas, a vision that she held and had yet to take form, standing because who wants armchairs and footstools while creating a solid exterior that at the same time must be friendly, a place one would wish to enter and live. Curtains in the boarding house of Madame Helena and the other houses on Scheller Street disrupt the windows more than they dress them up, some that only serve as veils and through which can be seen the light of a match at night or the shadow of every hero or villain hung on the gallows throughout history; curtains for nursing children and the faded mornings of illness but still luxurious, opulence and splendor to spare, hands that slide through pleats and which hide ever-equal folds and the slippery bodies of the dead who do not return but Luduv himself appears summertime sharp climbing grassy steps, where opaque desires and impassioned tears slide down, where in autumn grain is sown in the fields that imitate the wrinkles of old women, lines from the edge of the nose to the corner of the lips, the cracks of the dry hungry mistreated and still resentful earth that throws its children aside and sends them to serve a gigantic ill-tempered god; enveloped by winds of storm and war, bodies struck down by death’s diligent blow, gray creatures from the center of the earth, catastrophe-sized headlines in newspapers, the source of other machines, still others, salt-cellars and violins smashed to bits, unrecognizable picture frames of portraits and perhaps a barely audible moan, a splash of blood fresh from arteries, daily and difficult, an improbable and kindly bud, a breeze, madame, from lost gold. In the salons, dining rooms, libraries, and music rooms, the curtains overlap and overlay each other, they hide and protect, wool, silk, crepe, satin, velvet, golden cords, fringes, straps, and braids held by the inner frame; the brightest bedrooms try to reduce the shadow and dim the day, and children’s rooms display curious backlit figures with flutes, tambourines, sensible animals, and landscapes; the bathrooms have leaded or etched glass instead of curtains filling round or oval windows set high up whose only sash pivots and is held open by a hook on the wall with a chain that tarnishes with time; in kitchens the curtains are smooth and easy white cotton; and in the maids’ rooms they depend on rank, almost immobile hierarchies: if they exist, they are linen, without pleats, purpose, pampering, and if possible without sin.