While the Women are Sleeping Read Online Free

in anyone’s life is important.’
    ‘Of course,’ I said, looking at his foot. ‘You’re just being cautious; she might have an accident, for example.’ And I thought (but only briefly) that if Luisa were to die in an accident, I wouldn’t have many images to remember her by, hardly any pictures at all. There was the odd photo around the house—ordinary photos, of course, not artistic ones—but only a few. I certainly didn’t have any videos of her. Without thinking, I glanced up at the balcony from which I had observed Viana. There were no lights on in any of the balconies or rooms. Nor, therefore, in the room belonging to Inès and Viana. I wasn’t there on our balcony now, no one was.
    Viana was again immersed in thought, although now he had removed his foot from the water and placed it again—with the tip of the sock wet and dark—on the grass. I began to think that perhaps he didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken, and again I considered saying goodnight and going up to my room, yes, I suddenly wanted to go up and see again the image of Luisa asleep—not dead—wrapped in her sheet; one shoulder might have come uncovered. But once begun, conversations can’t be abandoned just like that. They can’t be left hanging, by taking advantage of a distraction or a silence, unless one of the two people involved is angry. Viana didn’t seem angry, although his alert eyes did seem even more alert and more intense; it was hard to tell what colour they were in the light cast by the moon on the water: I think they were brown. No, he didn’t seem angry, just slightly self-absorbed. He was saying something, not in a whisper now, but as if muttering.
    ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’ I asked.
    ‘No, it’s not that I think she’ll have an accident,’ he replied, his voice suddenly too loud, as if he had miscalculated the shift in tone between talking to himself and talking to someone else.
    ‘Lower your voice,’ I said, alarmed, although there was no reason to feel alarmed, it was unlikely anyone would hear us. I again glanced at the balconies, but they all still lay in darkness; no one had woken up.
    Startled by my order, Viana immediately lowered his voice, but he wasn’t startled enough not to continue what he had begun to say so loudly. ‘I said it’s not that I think she might have an accident. But she’ll definitely die before me, if you see what I mean.’
    I looked at Viana’s face, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was gazing up at the sky, at the moon, avoiding my eye. We were on an island.
    ‘Why are you so sure of that if she isn’t ill? You’re much older than her. The normal thing would be for you to die before her.’
    Viana laughed again and, stretching his leg out still further, dipped his whole stockinged foot into the water this time and began to move it slowly, heavily around, more heavily than before because now his whole foot—that fat, obese foot—was submerged.
    ‘Normal,’ he said, laughing. ‘Normal,’ he repeated. ‘Nothing is normal between her and me. Or rather, nothing is normal as regards my relationship with her, and never has been. I’ve known her since she was a child. Don’t you see, I adore her.’
    ‘Yes, I see that. It’s obvious that you adore her. I adore my wife, Luisa, as well,’ I added, in order to counter what he clearly considered to be the extraordinary nature of his adoration of Inès. ‘But we’re more or less the same age, and so it’s difficult to know which of us will die first.’
    ‘You adore her? Don’t make me laugh. You don’t even own a camera. You’re not even much interested in remembering her exactly as she was—were you to lose her—in being able to see her again when it will no longer be possible for you to look at her.’
    This time, fat Viana’s remark did bother me a little, I found it impertinent. I noticed this because there was something wounded and involuntary about my ensuing silence, and