Collages Read Online Free PDF Page B

skin,
amazed at the whiteness, and expressing what a pleasure it would be to mark it
up. He dug his nails into my arm. When we got to the clearing and cut down the
branches, I was roused by the boy’s anticipation of pleasure and I turned upon
him and beat him. We did not notice some peasants who were walking to work.
They spotted us first and silently surrounded us. They were at first amazed by
the spectacle of two naked boys, and then they were angry. I was holding the
bamboo. I saw them standing in a circle looking at me. All their eyes looked
fiercely angry. I panicked and said the first thing which came to my mind, out
of fear: ‘I’m beating him because he stole my watch.’ The boy was put in jail
for three years. As they took him away he shouted at me: ‘When I come out I
will kill you!’ I had to leave Mexico.”
    Renate took the pages, folded them as tightly
as they had been folded to fit into the compartment, pushed them into the
opening, and slipped the various slats back into place, as if she would bury
the story forever. She walked down the hill with the box. She stood on the edge
of the rock, and threw it in a wide, high arc, into the sea. Then she returned
home, placed the pyramid of boxes inside the fireplace and set fire to them.

    RENATE GATHERED TOGETHER ALL THE LINEN of the
house stained with marks of love, dreams, nightmares, tears and kisses and
quarrels, the mists that rise from bodies touching, the fogs of breathing, the
dried tears, and took it to the laundromat at the foot of the hill.
    The man who ran it mystified her. He was tall,
dark-skinned, dark-eyed. He wore a red shirt which set off his foreign
handsomeness. But it was not this which made his presence there unexpected. It
was the pride of his carriage, and his delicate way of handling the laundry. He
greeted Renate with colorful modulations of a voice trained to charm. He bowed
as he greeted her. His hands were long-fingered, deft.
    He folded the dry sheets as if he were handling
lace tablecloths. He was aloof, polite, as if laundry were a country
gentleman’s natural occupation. He took money as if it were a bouquet. He
returned change as if it were a glass of champagne.
    He never commented on the weather, as if it
were a plebeian interest. He piled up the laundry as if he were merely checking
the contents of his own home’s closets. He was proud and gracious. He pretended
not to see the women who came in hair curlers, like a high born valet who
overlooks his master’s occasional lapse in manners.
    For Renate he had a full smile. His teeth were
strong and even but for one milk tooth which gave his smile a touch of humor.
    Renate also handled her bundle of laundry as if
it were pastry from a fashionable shop.
    The rhythm of the machines became like the
opening notes of an orchestra at a ball. She never mentioned the weather
either, as if they both understood weather was a mere background to more
important themes. They agreed that if human beings had to attend to soiled
laundry, they had been given, at the same time, a faculty for detaching
themselves, not noticing, or forgetting certain duties and focusing on how to
enhance, heighten, add charm to daily living.
    Renate would tell him about each visitor who
had come to see her, describe each costume, each character, each conversation,
and then hand over the bundle as if it were the discarded costumes which had to
be re-glamorized for the next party. While she talked they both handled the
guest towels from Woolworth’s as if they were lace tablecloths from Brussels.
    He looked over the bundles lined up on the
shelf and ready to be called for as if he were choosing a painting in an art
exhibition and said: “I always recognize yours by its vivid colors.”
    As his brown, fine-bred hand rested on the blue
paper around the package, she noticed for the first time a signet ring on his
finger. It was a gold coat-of-arms.
    She bent over it to examine the symbols. The
ring was divided into