While the Women are Sleeping Read Online Free PDF Page A

too, each in her respective room and double bed, perhaps lying diagonally across the bed because neither Viana nor I was by her side. Maybe they missed us in their sleep. Or maybe not, maybe they felt relieved.
    ‘But all that efforts over now, it no longer matters. What matters is my adoration, my immutable adoration. That’s so identical to what it was sixteen years ago that I can’t see it changing in the near future. And it would be disastrous if it did change. I’ve been devoted to her for too long now, devoted to her growing up, to her education, I couldn’t live any other way. For her, though, it’s different. She’s fulfilled her childhood dream, her childhood fixation—five years ago, she was as happy or even happier than I was when she came to live with me, because my house had been entirely designed around her and there was nothing she wanted that she didn’t have. But her character is still developing, she’s still very dependent on novelty, she’s drawn to the outside world, she’s looking around to see what else there is, what awaits her beyond me, and she’s a little tired, I think. Not just of me, but also of our strange, anomalous situation, she misses having a conventional life, misses the close relationship she had with her parents. Don’t think I don’t understand that, on the contrary, I foresaw it would happen, but the fact that I understand doesn’t help one iota. We all have our own life to lead, and we only have the one life, and none of us is prepared not to live that life according to our own desires—apart from those who have no desires, they’re the majority actually. People can say what they like, and speak of abnegation, sacrifice, generosity, acceptance and resignation, but it’s all false: the norm is for people to think they desire whatever comes their way, whatever happens to them, what they achieve as they go along or what’s given to them, and they have no original desires. But whether those desires are preconceived or not, we each care about our own life and, compared with that, the lives of others matter only insofar as they’re interwoven with and form part of our own life, and insofar as disposing of those lives without consideration or scruple could end up affecting our own; there are, after all, laws, and punishment might follow. My adoration is excessive—that’s what makes it adoration. The length of time I had to wait was excessive too. And now I continue to wait, but the nature of that waiting has been turned on its head. Before, I was waiting to gain something, now all I can expect is for all this to end. Before, I was waiting to be given a gift, now I expect only loss. Before, I was waiting for growth, now I expect decay. Not just mine, you understand, but hers too, and that’s something I’m not prepared for. You’re probably thinking that I’m making too many assumptions, that nothing is entirely foreseeable; as I said before, the order of our dying is equally unforeseeable. You’re probably thinking that life is unforeseeable too, and that maybe Inès won’t tire of me or leave me. You’re thinking that I might be wrong to fear the passing of time, that perhaps she and I will grow old together, as you suggested earlier and as you’re convinced that you and your wife will, because I heard what you said, your words weren’t lost on me. But if that were the case, if all those years together did lie ahead of us, my adoration would still lead me to the same situation. Or do you imagine that I could allow my adoration to die? Do you think I could watch her age and deteriorate without resorting to the sole remedy that exists, namely, that she should die first? Do you imagine that, having known her as a seven-year-old (a seven-year-old), I could bear to see Inès in her forties, much less her fifties, with no trace of childhood left? Don’t be absurd. It’s like asking some particularly long-lived father to endure and celebrate the old age of his own