A Heart So White Read Online Free PDF

brandishing her bare arm and her impetuous fingers at him, perhaps because, unlike me, when she thought I was him, he'd spoken to her and said her name. The woman's expression changed: a look of relief, just for an instant, and then promptly - almost gratefully, a gratitude aimed at no one in particular — with more elegance in her step than she'd shown up until then (as if she were walking barefoot and her legs were not so stiff), she crossed the stretch of esplanade still separating her from the hotel and went in carrying her large black bag, which apparently weighed less heavily now, thus disappearing from my field of vision without addressing another word to me, reconciled to the world again with those few short steps. The balcony doors on my left closed and then opened again to stand ajar, as if the breeze had blown them open or the man had simply thought better of it a second after closing them (there wasn't any breeze) and wasn't sure how he'd want to have them when the woman was upstairs with him, any minute now (the woman would be coming up the stairs). And then finally (although very little time had passed and Luisa must have felt that she'd still only just woken up), I left my place at the window, switched on the bedside lamp and went solicitously over to our bed, a somewhat delayed solicitude.
    I STILL FIND that delay inexplicable and even then I sincerely regretted it, not because it might have any consequences, but because of what, in an excess of scruple and zeal, I thought it might mean. And whilst it's true that I immediately linked that marital tardiness with the first feeling of unease I mentioned, and with the fact that since our wedding it had become increasingly difficult for me to think about Luisa (the more corporeal and continuous her presence, the more removed and remote she seemed), the appearance of the second feeling of unease, which I've also mentioned, was due not to my laconic contemplation of the mulatto woman and to my brief moment of negligence, but to what happened once I had ministered to Luisa and dried the sweat from her forehead and her shoulders and undone her bra so that it wouldn't cut into her, leaving her to decide whether to keep it on, even though it was unfastened, or to take it off. With the light on, Luisa brightened up a little and wanted to drink something, and once she had, she felt better, and once she felt better she was in the mood to talk a little, and when she'd calmed down and saw that the sheets were less clammy and that she felt more composed with the bed in order and, above all, understood and accepted the idea that it was now night and that for her, whether she liked it or not, the day had ended and there was no possibility of resuming anything and all she could do now was to try and forget about her illness and bury it in sleep until the next morning, when, presumably, everything would return to the somewhat anomalous normality of our honeymoon and her body would have sorted itself out and would once more be fully corporeal, then she remembered my moment of inattention, which she'd certainly not perceived as such or, rather, what she remembered was that I'd said: "No problem" to some unknown person in the street below and that voices and shouts heard in dreams or in half-sleep had risen up from the street and woken her and possibly frightened her.
    "Who were you talking to earlier on?" she asked again.
    I saw no reason not to tell her the truth and yet I had the feeling as I did so that I wasn't doing so. At that moment, I was holding a towel one corner of which I'd moistened with water and was busy cooling her face, her throat, the back of her neck (her long, dishevelled hair clung to her skin and a few stray hairs lay across her forehead like fine lines sent by the future to cast a momentary shadow over her).
    "No one, a woman who mistook me for someone else. She mixed our balcony up with the one next door. She must be very shortsighted, because it was only