Please Talk to Me: Selected Stories

GEORGINA REQUENI OR THE CHOSEN ONE

A coach drawn by four white horses is turning the corner. The decorated gentleman inside, astonished at the sight of a six-year-old girl walking alone and not afraid along a dark street, leans out of the window, and with a dry monosyllable, orders the coachman to stop.

‘Who are you, beautiful child?’

‘I’m Georgina Requeni, Sir.’

‘And I? Do you know who I am?’

Georgina doesn’t know. The gentleman is the President of the Republic, the most important person in the entire country. When the President tells her this, Georgina isn’t taken aback and looks him straight in the eye. That is when the President realizes he’s facing the most extraordinary child in the world and takes her to live with him in a palace surrounded by gardens. He gives her French dolls and real ponies as big as a big dog, and allows her to wear frilly dresses inside the house. From that day, Georgina appears in all the papers and newsreels. She always travels in a crystal carriage. People greet her with deep bows.

‘She looks like a bear in the zoo,’ she hears someone say behind her.

Then she wants to die. She, who at that very moment is smiling to her subjects from the window of her carriage, appears to others a rather stupid girl smiling to herself as she turns and turns in the empty patio. From that day on, her mother and her grandmother entertain visitors with stories of how Georgina walks back and forth across the patio like a bear in its cage. When they find her swirling round and round, they call her to ask why she won’t play like the other six-year-old girls. I do play, Georgina says to herself, I play in my head. And then one day she’s avenged by the President of the Republic, who orders that her entire family be sent to the dungeon.

How wonderful I was! Georgina feels her eyes glisten. She’s thirteen and the memory enthrals her. She takes one small dance step. The window of her room is open, which makes her behave in a very particular way. She lives on the ground floor, and she is certain that some day a handsome young man will stop without her noticing him. He will fall madly in love with the enigmatic girl who does such beautiful things when she is alone. From the corner of her eye she looks towards the window and something happens: a small bird has just landed on the windowsill. Intermittently it preens its feathers, examines with apparent interest the interior of the room and chirps briefly. He likes me, Georgina thinks. She feels observed; this troubles and delights her. She places her hands on her chest and casts a tragic look on the bird: ‘What has brought you here?’ she asks it. ‘Go away. Are you not aware that my husband has found us out?’ The bird flies away in fright. How very funny. Georgina jumps up and hugs herself for joy. ‘How wonderful I am!’ she says. ‘How wonderful I’ll always be!’ Today is a very important day for her: about three hours ago, she went to the stationery store and bought an exercise book with red covers. She’ll keep a diary, like Maria Bashkirtseff, because there’s something that concerns her. One day she’ll appear in a book such as the Wonderful Lives of Famous Boys and Girls. How will the author know the extraordinary things that happened to her unless she writes everything down very carefully? You see, my child, here are the lives of all the children in the world who one day became famous: this is Pascal, the young enlightened genius, and this is Bidder, the marvellous little mathematician, and this is Metastasio, the infant troubadour of Rome, and this is Georgina Requeni, the girl who… The world collapses around her. She is already almost fourteen years old, and she still doesn’t know what she’s going to be. Her father has promised her that when she turns fifteen she’ll be able to take classes of Elocution and Dramatic Art with the teacher who lives on Santander Street, but that is a long time away. Sometimes she remembers that at the age of seven Mozart dazzled a prince, then she feels like ending it all and throwing herself out of a window. But she lives on the ground floor, she’s out of her mind, she’ll be famous and the world will love her. She looks at herself in the mirror. And I will also be very beautiful. She lifts her hair, lets it fall over one eye, half-lowers her eyelids, sees a pimple on her chin and wrinkles her nose, oh well, she’ll be very beautiful and have lovers, thousands of lovers strewn at her feet. How they’ll suffer because of her! No, dear Sir, don’t do it! Don’t kill yourself for my sake! The man kills himself; she is dancing in front of the mirror. She doesn’t know what is happening to her; what she does know is that no one, ever, was as happy as this. She goes up to her image and gives it a kiss. This makes her laugh out loud. She runs to the window and looks up at the sky. ‘God is blue,’ she whispers. The November air, the smell of leaves, of tides; she wants to hug someone very hard and tell him all about her. No, there’ll be no need to talk; he’ll look her in the eyes and know everything, the tragedies she’s been through, her fears, the incredible things she still must do. My God, life is so wonderful. Then she makes up her mind: today is the day to begin. It’s been almost a year since she bought the exercise book. Since she bought it, she’s been waiting for the perfect moment; she believes that every event should be made up of perfect moments. She goes to the night table, opens the small drawer and takes out the exercise book with the red covers. She sits at her desk, and with coloured crayons, she writes on the first page: The Diary of Georgina Requeni. Then she turns the page, takes her fountain pen and writes, ‘I’m fourteen years old. No one can know the feelings in my heart. My heart is wild, and on this day, the whole world is like my heart. Yes! I feel as if my life is going to be wonderful. I feel.’ She stops because she doesn’t know how to carry on. She reads what she has written, and she approves.

Now she reads it again as if she were another fourteen-year-old girl reading the words she has written. The other girl can’t believe that, at her same age, someone wrote such beautiful lines and cries over the diary which has become a book with Georgina’s picture on the cover. The whole world is crying. She has died. Hidden among piles of paper, they have found the exercise book with the red covers, the confession of so many thwarted ideals. It doesn’t seem possible that someone like her should die at the dawn of so much promise, she who could have soared so high. Georgina blows her nose, she’s such a fool. She crosses out the last ‘I feel’ and writes ‘I wish.’ ‘I wish to soar very, very high.’

Amazing. She rereads the last sentence, she is truly impressed. For the past two hours she has been trying to get started on what is for her one of the most terrifying jobs in the world: sorting out her papers. She is eighteen and says that sorting out your drawers is like cleaning out your soul. Her soul is full of astounding junk, tatters of stories, but she only needs to rescue whatever is concerned with the relentless destiny she has chosen for herself. She hates being sentimental; she knows that the chosen ones are cold and strong; she has read a lot. The exercise book with the red covers is a real find. She has opened it on the first page and has felt that God is speaking in her ear. The wish to soar very high, amazing; only those who’ve been predestined can write a sentence like that at the age of fourteen. For an instant she can imagine the exercise book, under a glass cover, in the Museum of the Theatre Arts. She turns the pages but nothing. Here, on the very first page, the diary ends. A few lines of verse copied out, the drawing of a large heart with her name and another name pierced by an arrow, some notes taken in class, and no more. How unsettled one was at fourteen, she thinks with adult insight. She smiles. She has remembered the absurd idea she had that day when she thought of starting the diary. Heroic and premature deaths! At eighteen, she has understood that true heroics lie in the act of living. She rolls up the exercise book and throws it into the garbage. It is like a signal. With unaccustomed energy, she spills out the contents of drawers, throws papers away and tears faded photos of once fashionable stars off the wall. She sighs with relief: now everything is in order. Now she can, at last, do what she has been promising herself she will do all afternoon. She takes a huge poster with the portrait of Sarah Bernhardt and fixes it to the wall with four thumbtacks. The two women stare at each other. Now Georgina knows what she wants.

‘You want me,’ he says. ‘It’s as simple as that.’

They are leaning against the riverside wall, waiting for the sun to come up. Georgina sighs with resignation and somewhat loudly, because she’s just realized that Manuel has not understood a single word of what she has been saying. Very carefully she begins to smooth out a green and golden candy wrapper. ‘No,’ she says. Yes, of course she wants him, she loves him, but it’s something else. Theatre, of course. Something else.

‘Why something else?’ Manuel asks, but a ship’s foghorn is heard in the distance.

Georgina has finished smoothing out the wrapper and now rolls it around her index finger. He looks at her hands.

‘What will you do?’ he asks.

Her face brightens.

‘Well,’ she replies, ‘it’s all a bit complicated, I don’t know. I could just tell you that I’m going to be a great actress, but it’s something more, I don’t know how to explain it.’

‘No,’ he shakes his head. ‘With the candy wrapper. I mean what are you going to do with the candy wrapper?’

‘Ah,’ she stares at her finger. ‘A little cup. Daddy always used to make one for me. You twist the paper here, then you take out your finger and there: see?’

Manuel pushes the hair away from her face.

‘Georgina,’ he says. ‘Why something else?’

She lifts her eyebrows with a look of surprise. ‘Theatre, I mean. Why does it have to be something else?’

She laughs and points a finger at him.

‘He’s jealous,’ she says in a singsong. ‘Manuel is jealous.’ She looks at him in the face and becomes serious. ‘Not at all, you fool. It is the same thing. Love, theatre and… I don’t know how to explain, it’s as if I were fated. I mean, as if with everything I do, I’m supposed to rise higher and higher… Who knows? To be in decline must be something terrible. Haven’t you ever thought about that? I’m always thinking about these things, it’s awful.’

Manuel whistles admiringly.

‘It’s true,’ says Georgina. ‘The problem is that you don’t take me seriously, but that’s how it is. What’s more, long before I turn into one of those old actresses who go on living God-knows-why—’ She stops and looks at him with determination. ‘I’ll kill myself,’ she says.

Manuel puts his palms together and mimics a jump into the river.

‘Splash,’ he says.

No, no, Georgina shakes her head desperately. Not in the river, what a philistine, he doesn’t understand a thing. She’s talking to him about a luminous ascent towards the loftiest heights, she means putting an end to all, cleanly, at the very top, and he comes out with something as unaesthetic as drowning oneself. Virginia Woolf, of course, but does he imagine her a few moments before the end, thrashing about and swallowing water and probably retching? And then what? A bloated half-rotten corpse drying out on a slab in the morgue. Lovely posthumous image. No, never, nothing like that. A beautiful death, Georgina means. Like her life.

He has watched her as she speaks. Lightly, he touches the tip of her nose.

‘Do me a favour,’ he says. ‘Don’t ever kill yourself.’

They can’t bear persistence, she thinks from high above a pedestal.

‘But yes, you fool. Don’t you realize?’ she says. ‘They must remember me beautiful. Beautiful for ever and ever.’

As soon as the words are out, she has the disagreeable impression of having said too much. She glares at Manuel and then covers her face with her hands.

‘No, not now, what an idiot you are,’ she says. ‘At six in the morning anyone looks awful,’ as she uncovers her face and places her hands on her hips, aggressively. ‘Anyway, I’m twenty, right? I still have my whole life to get what I want.’

‘Get what?’ he asks.

‘Everything.’

Manuel arches his eyebrows. He sits on the wall. Georgina stands as if waiting for something, and then finally she sits down as well. They sit with their legs dangling towards the river, the sun is about to rise and all is well.

‘See, that’s what I was telling you,’ Georgina says. ‘We come into the world with these things, who knows why. Strange, isn’t it? Imagine: I was only fourteen and already I wrote it down on the very first page of my diary.’

Manuel slaps his forehead with a wide open palm.

‘No!’ he says. ‘Don’t tell me that you also keep a diary!’

Georgina is about to explain something to him. She shrugs.

‘Of course,’ she says.

‘Of course?’ he laughs. ‘Women are out of this world. Okay, tell me.’

‘Tell you what? What have women to do with this?’

‘What you write in your diary, all that stuff. Let’s see if I can finally get to understand you.’

Georgina pulls a face as if she’s bothered: curiosity seems to her an unworthy and irritating sentiment. She can’t imagine Ibsen worrying about what people write in their diaries.

‘Well… I don’t know,’ she says. ‘It makes no sense if you tell it.’

‘Tell what?’

Georgina turns around, her feet on the wall. The sun has started to come out, and the glimmer hurts her eyes. She crumples the green and golden cup, makes it into a ball and throws it into the water. Then she regrets having done it: Manuel mustn’t believe that something has put her in a bad mood. It’s a good thing the sun is coming out: they’ve been on the riverside for an hour now waiting for it to rise. And it does. The sky is blue, red and yellow. That’s good.

She turns and sits as before.

‘I don’t know where to start,’ she says. ‘Because it turned out to be a very long diary. I would write in it every day… And there was always something to write about. I was a terrific adolescent, you know. I mean it, don’t laugh. I mean the theatre and all that. I was always talking about the theatre, and about the actress I was going to become. About my idols and about how I was going to work harder and harder until I’d be even greater than all my idols… Because unless you reach the highest peaks, life has no sense at all… I would also write about that, of course. And my thoughts about life, about fate… I don’t know… that one’s fate isn’t written down anywhere. I mean, there’s no star carrying a sign saying “Georgina Requeni Will Be The Greatest.” That’s it, you make up your own fate; that’s the thing. See my hand? Look! Even the lines of your hand change. You change them, see? Really, a palmreader explained it to me once… So, well, that’s what I wrote about. I felt, I don’t know—’ She stops and looks at him. ‘Happy now?’ she asks.

He is about to speak. She anticipates what he is about to ask.

‘It was a beautiful diary,’ she says. Then, in a mysterious tone, she adds, ‘The ceremony was really impressive.’

‘Ceremony?’ he asks. ‘What ceremony?’

His expression is very funny. Georgina is about to laugh.

‘The ceremony,’ she says. ‘Death. Everything must have its ceremony.’ She laughs like someone who has just remembered something hilarious. ‘You know what I did when I was eighteen?’ she asks.

He shakes his head.

‘I wrote the last page,’ Georgina is glowing. ‘A fabulous page, you should have seen. In my opinion, the best page in the entire diary, I mean it… The days of small gestures were over; one couldn’t help it. Now was the beginning of the real struggle… I didn’t cry or anything like that. I put the diary on a blue tray. A tray with little angels painted on it, I’ll show it to you when you come to the house. I lit a match and pfff. It became a blazing bonfire. I stared at it for as long as it took, and then the ashes… I bet you can’t guess? I threw them to the wind. Don’t laugh… Just a game, I know. But wasn’t it a beautiful ending?’

Manuel looks at her and says nothing. She’s in despair because she can’t figure out whether he’s truly moved (and by what) or whether he’s making fun of her.

‘I mean it,’ she says. ‘Everything must end in the same way it lived. What else could I have done? Thrown it into the garbage?’

Imposter, she thinks. A Hedda Gabler who shoots herself then throws kisses around is an imposter. Doesn’t anyone notice? No one notices. The applause increases, followed by an ovation. Georgina must admit that, speaking in general terms, the public is stupid: they call out the name of the star because they are fans, not because they understand anything about the theatre. The young woman on the proscenium throws one last kiss with an ample movement of the arm. Georgina, back in the wings with the rest of the cast, sees only her back but imagines her starlet’s smile. She looks at the woman’s nape with scorn. Now Doctor Tesman and Councillor Brack advance and stand on both sides of Hedda Gabler. A new wave of applause; the two actors bow their heads slightly. Now: this is the moment when they are all meant to come forward. What for? Hear them clap, no need to take a bow. The applause becomes weaker. What do they expect? A miracle? Georgina would have liked to know how Sarah Bernhardt herself would have managed to make something decent out of the role of Berta. Yes, Madam. It’s morning already, Madam. Councillor Brack is here to see you, Madam. No, she can’t take it any longer. Today she’ll give it all up. She thinks about it hard, as hard as a tombstone, and the clearness of her decision makes her feel better. She’s certain that only a privileged spirit is able to be as inflexible as she is: the spirit of a great artist. She lifts her eyes and smiles haughtily at the public. Dear Lord, she thinks. Grant them a minute of greatness to allow them to understand this smile. The curtain falls for the last time. Georgina heads for the dressing-rooms. She feels that one day, this too will be part of her history. Alone and unknown at the age of twenty-four, making her way through a throng of people who embrace and congratulate one another and ignore her, crossing dark corridors without paying attention to anything, without greeting anyone, without thinking about anything except—

‘Oh no, it never concerned me,’ she’d smile condescendingly. With exquisite good manners, she’d overlook the fact that several young men, out of sheer admiration, have brought up the subject of her nebulous beginnings.

‘But it was something outrageous. A talent like yours… Wasted on unbearable minor roles. How were you able to put up with it? Did the thought of giving it all up ever cross your mind?’

‘Never,’ she’d answer indignantly. ‘Do you think that with displays of false pride I’d have become who I am? Learn the lesson well, my children: nothing, nothing at all is ever achieved without struggle. One must start from the bottom, bear every blow and never falter.’

How true! she thinks, reaching the end of the corridor. She has at last understood the meaning of this moment, the greatness locked in all those anonymous years. She opens the door to her dressing-room. The other two women have taken off their costumes. The last performance of the Three-Penny Opera is over. In their slips, the two women, both perched on the only chair in the room, are smoking cigarettes. Georgina sees them, steps back and closes the door.

‘Come in,’ she hears. ‘If we try, all three of us can fit.’

Inside the room, they laugh.

‘What can you do,’ she hears. ‘The inconvenience of not being a star.’

Georgina makes a grimace of distaste.

‘Let her be,’ she hears. ‘That’s how she is.’

‘How?’ Georgina cries. ‘How am I?’

Santiago, his back towards her, lying by her side in the bed, isn’t startled. In the seven years he has known her, he has learnt not to be bothered by her sudden questions.

‘You’re Georgina,’ he says simply.

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But. I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain.’

She remains silent for a moment. Then she says, ‘Why are you here, with me?’

He laughs half-heartedly.

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit late in the day to ask me that?’

‘You don’t understand,’ Georgina says. ‘In the early days… Don’t you see? In the early days it was different. It was… I don’t know. There was a time when everything was crazy, vertiginous. Each time we were together it was something new, something unpredictable. The joy of sin, remember? As if we had things to teach, as if. It was so lovely, Santiago. So lovely. Wasn’t it? It was. Wasn’t it? It was as I just said, yes? Santiago? Was it?’

He’s silent. He looks up at the ceiling and smokes. He seems eternally tired. Or sad.

Georgina speaks again. Her voice is anxious and afraid.

‘Was it like that? Tell me, Santiago. Was it?’

Santiago touches her hair.

‘Yes, Georgina, yes,’ he says.

‘I too, you know,’ Georgina says. ‘I too always felt that way and would think, I don’t know, would think, please don’t laugh, that every day I’d be more beautiful and more, I don’t know, and then. Of course, it’s so absurd if you say it yourself, but that’s how it is, understand? I thought one day we’d die of too much love.’

Santiago laughs, but it is not a happy laugh.

‘Don’t laugh. As with all the rest, you know. But I don’t. Now… Of course, nothing can be repeated. Isn’t there…? Isn’t there anything, Santiago? How am I?’

‘It’s okay, Georgina. It’s okay. Be quiet.’

‘No, no. It’s awful. As if I were denying myself, don’t you see? Sinking. You know what I should do now if I were the way I imagined myself? You know what? I should say, Goodbye Santiago, goodbye my love, it was all very beautiful but it’s all over now for Georgina. And put an end to it all.’

The silence that follows frightens her. She doesn’t dare move. At last, he puts his hand on her waist. She relaxes, it’s fine. Now everything will be the way it was. And it will be beautiful. Won’t it be beautiful? Words are such nonsense. She feels a great calm. This is not being vulnerable, no, it’s all right, everything is all right like this.

He still has his hand on Georgina’s waist but makes no movement, says nothing. This troubles her. She sighs and curls up against Santiago, suddenly tender and fragile. She laughs.

‘I’m a fool,’ she says. ‘Words are so foolish, you know. Don’t ever believe what I say, Santiago. Never believe anything I say.’

He lifts his hand away. Then, with so little violence that the change of position seems rather a thought than an act, he draws away from Georgina.

‘No,’ Georgina says. ‘Why? Everything’s okay, silly. Everything will always be okay.’

Santiago is barely smiling. Georgina speaks again: he must believe her when she says it’s all a lie.

‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘That’s exactly it. You’ve got to understand.’

Before leaving, he touches her face. Georgina sees him leave, without making sense of what is happening.

‘Go!’ she shouts. ‘I never want to see you again, you heartless man!’

Then the door slams shut. The part is over.

Another of the extras, a rather fat man with a stupid face, stares at her inquisitively.

‘Why did you make that grimace?’ he asks.

‘Grimace?’ Georgina looks at him with studied indifference. ‘When?’

‘Just now,’ the man says. ‘As you closed the door.’

‘It wasn’t a grimace,’ Georgina says, reflecting that the tone of her voice had been far more violent than what the scene called for. ‘I was laughing.’

‘Ah.’

The man yawns. He plays with the signet ring on his finger.

Georgina waits a few seconds, impatient and uncomfortable not to be asked anything.

‘Because once, years ago,’ she laughs inexplicably, ‘What madness. I kicked a man out, with more or less the same gesture.’

A model in a leotard crosses the studio.

The man follows her with his eyes.

‘Yes, of course,’ he says.

‘I loved him, you know.’ Georgina shrugs. ‘And all the same, I kicked him out.’

The woman in the leotard turns. She balances a tin of wax in her hand. The man watches her, amused.

‘Really,’ he says.

‘No,’ Georgina says. ‘No need to be surprised. It was necessary.’

Now the woman in the leotard is half hidden by a gigantic pudding made out of cardboard. The man stares down at his shoes. Georgina follows his stare. They’re horrible shoes, an indefinite mustard colour. She wonders what would make a human being choose such ugly shoes.

‘You can’t understand, can you?’ she asks. ‘Of course you can’t understand. Life in the theatre, you know.’ She looks up at the man guardedly. ‘It demands many sacrifices.’

The man chuckles softly.

‘That’s rich,’ he says. ‘People like us.’ He looks at the front of his shirt. He chuckles again. ‘That’s really rich.’

Georgina looks at her nails.

‘How could an idiot understand,’ she says.

The man does nothing in particular. He looks around the studio at the TV cameras, the sets. Then he looks at Georgina.

‘How old are you?’ he asks.

Georgina lifts her head, as if in defiance.

‘Thirty-four,’ she replies.

Now the man stares at her from head to foot.

‘You’re still young,’ he says.

A blow. As if the meaning of the words were exactly the opposite. I shouldn’t mix with people like that. Georgina is about to explain something, but the man is no longer there. She shrugs and goes out into the street. It’s a cold, bright night. Momentarily, she feels relieved. I can’t bear this life. She’s startled. No: it’s just the noise. I was never able to bear it. She lifts her head haughtily. Nothing so distant from art as all this stupid cackling, yes sir. She doesn’t realize how fast she’s walking. A man with a little feather in his hat says something to her that she doesn’t quite understand. She feels a sweet sensation of pleasure. I’m still young, she thinks. But as soon as she has the thought, she’s overcome by uneasiness. Someone once said these words to her. When? Oh well, better not think about it. The man in the hat wasn’t old. Everything’s fine once again, isn’t it? Of course it is. After all, no one ever said it was going to be easy. What matters is carrying on: reaching the end without stopping. One day, they’ll know the whole truth. The Memoirs of. Of course it was difficult, but one had to keep climbing. Higher, understand? Higher and higher each time. So that life itself becomes one luminous ascent. That’s something you carry within, do you hear? It’s as if a light had been lit somewhere inside.

Georgina laughs, ecstatic. It’s been a while since she’s felt so joyful. The young men laugh with her. One of them fills her glass again; this promises to be a night of great rejoicing. Guitar music, young poets, meat rolls and gallons of wine. The noise doesn’t allow one to listen very carefully, can you hear? As if one were God and forced to do everything. The hand, look, even the lines of the hand can be changed. Through sheer will. Will to be beautiful, will to be great. Because nothing is written, don’t you realise, destiny isn’t written on a star, and where, where does it say that Georgina Requeni will be a great actress, will be beautiful?

Joy! Joy! There’s much laughter here, many young voices. Another samba, they say. I love you. More wine. Have you noticed? Have you noticed there’s always an old bag getting pissed at these parties? But Georgina can’t make out the voices very clearly and goes on laughing, drinking wine, talking. Because there’s no Santiago, there’s no one to tell her to shut up, to tell her everything’s fine, to tell her she’s fumbling over the words and is about to fall down. ‘Never fall, never ever fall,’ she says. Because a woman grown old is a monster. And before reaching that stage, Georgina will kill herself.

Now they’re no longer laughing. ‘It’s pathetic,’ they’re saying. And also that life is cruel.

And Georgina Requeni, who is still holding her hand in front of her and has just shouted something, even though she can’t remember what, looks around, terrified, as if her own cry had woken her and sees, as one sees the end of a dream, that all the faces are strange and are staring at her. And that the hand stretched out in front of her is the hand of an old woman.

Then she says ‘Goodnight,’ and leaves.

She walks away unsteadily. Every so often she holds on to the sides of houses so as not to fall down. Then the houses come to an end, but all the same she crosses Libertador, heading towards the riverside. Wavering but on her own two feet, she reaches the wall. She thinks that at six o’clock in the morning, the colour of the river is somewhat depressing. They were laughing. Now Georgina can remember it distinctly. She looks down, almost tenderly. Tomorrow they’ll read about it in the papers. It’s so easy: all you need is a little push and then allow the body to fall all on its own, through its own weight. Splash. The word comes unbidden to her head, like a small explosion. She brushes the hair away from her face. Santiago had joined his palms over his breast and was clowning around. Georgina leans over the wall and vomits into the river. Now she feels better. The important thing is to live.

In front of her, the sky is turning red. She reckons that in just a few minutes the sun will come out. It’s going to be a beautiful morning.