and the girl lived down the street. They had only been there three years. When they moved in the girl was really young, she looked like a child; in summer she always wore a white dress with a red flower embroidered on the bodice. I don’t know why, but after that day I felt like I needed to wait for my husband by the gate. He’d arrive around two, and as soon as I glimpsed his little shadow at the end of the street, I’d run inside. As I waited I sometimes thought about my father: he used to send me to the druggist when I was little, and he’d lean against the railing on the balcony, waiting for me. I hated it. I could hardly walk, because I knew my father’s eyes never missed a gesture of mine. That’s why, before my husband could see me, I’d run back into the house and slip into bed, or take up my sewing. If he found me sewing, I’d tell him I’d stayed up because it was something urgent. Then one night I saw him walking with the girl; after that they always returned together. There’s nothing strange about it, of course, living as we did right beside each other. I didn’t think anything of it. My husband wasn’t like other men; since the day we married, he’d loved only me. They would stroll along slowly. I never, ever, saw her take his arm. Absolutely not! But then I started to agonize. If I hadn’t seen them together, maybe the strange change in me would never have happened. I began to feel like I was a nuisance to my husband; something was different, and without wanting to, I started to distance myself from him. I hardly said a word to him, for fear I’d let slip that I waited for him by the gate. One day I ran into the girl in the bakery. She didn’t notice me. I would’ve liked her to recognize me, greet me, tell me she and my husband were friends. ‘Your husband and I work at the same place, and since we take the same route home, we come back together at night.’ My old friend Roser, who sometimes helped me sew, used to say, ‘The more you do for men, the worse it gets. When you grow old and worn down, they look for a young girl. Best not to be upset.’ I felt like telling her, ‘My husband’s not like other men; that’s why I chose him. When we look at each other, we don’t see what we are, but what we were.’
“One night my husband stormed in, not like himself at all. ‘What will Maria think when she discovers you wait for me every night? One of her brothers sees you from his bedroom window and told me today. He says when you see us, you run inside. Can’t you understand my embarrassment?’ The following day I went to the bakery at noon to see if I’d run into the girl again. I didn’t catch up with her until the third day. She had curly black hair and very dark, moist eyes. When she asked for bread, her teeth looked like rows of pearls. I never waited for him by the street again, but inside with my face glued to the window, the room completely dark. When he opened the gate, I’d jump into bed. I kept thinking while I waited that one night he wouldn’t return, and I’d never see him again. Obsessions of mine, I know. Because you see, when a woman stops being a woman, her head fills with obsessions. Sometimes, on my way to deliver some sewing, I’d walk past the café where my husband worked and, if I saw him, I’d wave without stopping. After that, I avoided the café, but it was an effort. I’d ask myself, ‘What’s happened to us? We’re like strangers; he thinks about things that I can’t know.’ I felt abandoned. But just wait. Without knowing why, I switched from never uttering a word to complaining all the time. One night I cried because I was in such agony. I’m sure he hadn’t fallen asleep yet, was just pretending he didn’t hear me. I lay there till the sun rose, filled with sadness, no one to console me. I cried a lot in those days, and my eyes hurt when I sewed. I was consumed by a terrible unhappiness. I had grown so thin the doctor told me I needed rest and should leave town that summer. We rented a little house in Premià de Mar. After lunch, I would fix supper, and we’d eat it on the beach. I felt calm, didn’t think about the girl. I missed the house, though, and my garden full of jasmine blossoms, the kind that have little stars. My husband missed the house too, but he went to the café every night to play a game of manille, and right away made a group of friends.
“One afternoon my husband had gone to the beach a good bit earlier than me, and when I arrived I found him lying near a girl. The girl got up and went in the water. My husband said he didn’t know her, and he’d lain beside her just to see the face I’d make. I went swimming before we ate, and when I sat back down on the sand, I realized my knees were no longer young. You see, I used to have white, round knees. While the honeymoon lasted, my husband would kiss them, tell me they seemed like silk. That afternoon, as the sun was setting, I stretched out my legs and saw all the wrinkles around my kneecaps. I realized then, truly realized, that I was no longer young. Before, when I would catch sight of an old man, I saw him as he was, I mean, without ever thinking that he’d been young at one point, as if old folks were just a certain kind of people who were born ugly, wrinkled, toothless, hairless. From another world. At that moment, I missed the blood, the same blood that had made me weep the first time I glimpsed it, believing I was flawed and no one would want to marry me because of the flaw. Every month I used to be grumpy for a few days, but when it was over I was in heaven, like I’d been remade. Whereas, without the blood, I was always the same, which is to say mostly not good. Or neither good nor bad, if you prefer. That’s the way I put it to the doctor.
“When I started to feel like my husband didn’t love me as much, I started to feel the same way about him, because he couldn’t possibly like me the way I was, and everything that happened—not that anything in particular did—was all my fault. Whenever I stopped to think that it was my fault, a sense of tenderness came over me and I wanted to love him like I had twenty years before. The tenderness ended the day I realized my knees were old. Once again, I lay awake all night, stretched out in bed, facing the sky. When a woman feels these things, she wants a hand to hold hers, a voice to whisper, ‘I understand.’ But how could a woman like me find a voice that spoke the words I needed if I can hardly understand the way I am myself? See what I mean? The last days by the sea . . . life is strange, isn’t it? Instead of fretting about the girl on the beach and what my husband had told me with that mischievous little smile of his, I started agonizing over the girl down the street. I thought if there was something between my husband and her, it was my fault. Instead of spending my evenings sewing dresses by hand, embroidering leaves and daisies and little animals on children’s clothes, I should have dropped it all and gone to meet my husband—like so many women do—the first day I saw them together. I don’t mind telling you now that one night I did. Around midnight I combed my hair—mid-afternoon that day I’d washed my hair and curled it—put on a white blouse I hadn’t worn for years and a pleated skirt. I headed straight for the Rambla and planted myself on the sidewalk opposite the café. The first thing I caught sight of—partially concealed by people either seated at tables or entering and leaving—was the girl at the cash register. She was so young! Her hair falling across her shoulders, like an angel. I realized then that the moment had passed for me to be doing what I was doing. It was too late. I started to feel that my blouse wasn’t properly washed, the skirt too old. I went home.
“I had a dream. I dreamed that my father was coming to the house, followed by a young girl that I thought was me, and my husband was saying, ‘Let him come, he’s amusing, so fat.’ My husband and the girl suddenly disappeared, only my father and me were left. We walked down a stone staircase, till we reached a sandy beach where short, square, wooden stakes had been driven into the ground. A dead fish lay on top of each of them. My father knocked one of the fish off with his hand; it looked dead, but it was breathing. I could hear it. My father said, ‘We’ll eat them for supper.’ Then we started climbing a ladder, like in a circus, straight with bars for steps. I was carrying a bottle of water under each arm and was terrified I’d fall off. My father was in front and kept ordering me, ‘Up, up.’ Once we reached the top, we had to leap onto a roof. One of the bottles dropped when I jumped, and my heart stood still. ‘I’ve killed someone,’ I thought. I guess you can say that my father faded away then, because I found myself in the middle of a village square, at the market. ‘I have to buy fruit for my father,’ I said as I stood before an apple stand. The saleswoman took a long time to serve me, and I was terribly anxious that I’d be late. I turned around, and my husband was right behind me, laughing like mad. ‘You see,’ I told him, ‘if I have you for a friend, I don’t need anything else. But I have to take the fruit to my father. If it wasn’t for that, we could go for a stroll.’ Then we were walking across a low bridge, and I threw out the wrapping to the apples. The water beneath the bridge was clear as glass, still as sleep. On one side you could see rows of fish of every color