The Young Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

and she continued to tremble until the sonorous song broke off. She closed up like a clam, turning on her side, hugging her legs and pulling her head down between her shoulders—I saw her transformed into a child, all curled up, her hands hidden between her legs, her chin resting on her chest, her breath returning.
    What did I see, I thought.
    What should I do now, I thought. Not move, not make noise. Sleep.
    But the Daughter opened her eyes, sought mine, and, strangely firm, said something.
    I didn’t understand, and so the Daughter repeated what she had said, in a louder voice.
    Try.
    I didn’t move. I said nothing.
    The Daughter stared at me, with a gentleness so infinite it seemed like malice. She stretched out an arm and lowered the light of the lamp.
    Try, she repeated.
    And then again.
    Try.
    Just then the young Bride was struck by the memory of an episode from nine years earlier, which I have to recount now, just as I happened to reconstruct it recently, at night. I specify
at night
, because this thing happens, where I wake up suddenly, at a certain hour of the morning, before dawn, and with great lucidity calculate the collapse of my life, or at least its geometric rotting, like a fruit left in a corner: I fight it, in fact, by reconstructing this story, or other stories, which sometimes takes me away from my calculations—other times it takes me nowhere at all. My father does the same thing, imagining he is playing a golf course, hole after hole. He specifies that it’s a nine-hole course. He’s a nice guy, he’s eighty-four. Although it seems incredible to me at this moment, no one can say if he’ll be alive when I’ve written the last page of this book: in general ALL those who are alive while you’re writing a book should still be alive when you finish it, and this for the elementary reason that writing a book is, for those who do it, instantaneous, even if it’s very long, hence it would be unreasonable to think that someone can dwell within it alive and dead, at the same time, especially my father, a nice guy, who at night, to chase away the demons, plays golf in his mind, choosing the clubs and measuring the force of the stroke, while I, unlike him, as I said, dig up this story, or others. Which means, if nothing else, that I can say with assurance what the young Bride remembered, suddenly, while the Daughter stared at her, saying a single word,
Try
. I know that what struck her was a memory she had never set aside, that in fact she had jealously guarded for nine years, specifically the memory of when, one winter morning, her grandmother had summoned her to her room, where, not yet old, she was trying to die in an orderly way, in a sumptuous bed, stalked by an illness that no one had been able to explain. Although it seems ridiculous, I know precisely what the first words she said to her were—the words of a dying woman to a child.
    How small you are.
    Just those words.
    But I can’t wait for you to grow up, I’m dying, and this is the last time I’ll be able to speak to you. If you don’t understand, listen, and impress it in your mind: sooner or later you’ll understand. Clear?
    Yes.
    It was only the two of them in the room. The grandmother was speaking in a low voice. The young Bride feared her and adored her. She was the woman who had given birth to her father, so she was unassailable, and solemnly remote. When she ordered her to sit down and push the chair next to the bed, she thought she had never been so close to her, and with curiosity she noticed that she could smell her odor: it was the odor not of death but of sunset.
    Listen carefully, little woman. I grew up like you, I was the only girl among a lot of boys. Not counting the ones who died, they were six. Plus one: my father. Ours are a people who work with animals, challenge the earth every day, and seldom allow themselves the luxury of thinking. The mothers grow old quickly, the