Selected Cronicas

SO SENSITIVE

This was when she went through a crisis which seemed to have nothing to do with her life — a crisis of deep compassion. Her head was so narrow, her hair so neatly combed, that it could scarcely support all that compassion. She could not bring herself to look at a tenor while he was singing. She would turn her face away, pained, unable to bear it, unable to watch the singer being applauded. And sometimes she would press her gloved hands to her bosom, overcome with remorse. She suffered without recompense, without so much as feeling sorry for herself. Until one day she was cured like a wound which had healed.

It was this same woman, who suffered from sensitivity as if it were a disease, who chose a Sunday when her husband was away from home to go out and look for a seamstress who could do fine embroidery. It was more of an outing. What could anyone have against it? Besides, she often took a stroll. As if she were still a little girl walking along the pavement. Especially when she felt her husband was betraying her.

So off she went one Sunday morning to look for a seamstress. She found herself walking down a muddy track full of chickens and naked urchins. The seamstress lived in a house with a brood of starving children and a husband dying of tuberculosis. She told the seamstress what she wanted but the seamstress refused to make her a blouse that needed cross-stitching. She hated doing cross-stitching!

The woman left, outraged and puzzled by the seamstress’s refusal. She felt almost unclean in the morning heat. And ever since childhood, she had always liked to think of herself as being scrupulously clean.

Back in her own house, she had lunch, then lay down in the semi-darkness of her bedroom, thinking mature thoughts devoid of any resentment. At least for once she was not feeling anything. Apart from this waiting. In semi-darkness.