CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST PORTRAITS

The photograph has swollen slightly. It seems about to burst around the edges... Now it bursts. And the Girl, raising a foot into the air, jumps onto the bed.

This bedroom air, where a smile has long been fluttering, is lantern-bright. A dull buzzing grows louder, and you might say a shuddering swarm of bees is passing by, or that, drop by drop, they've squeezed the juice of the sun into this air.

Later on the golden points begin to go out until all that is left are a few stragglers, lit here and there among the folds of the curtain or the undulations in the sheets. Scattered golden points, pinpricks, ashes of a burnt-out smile...

But the Girl is still on the bed; now she is lying down, with a mountain of blankets and covers on top of her. She must have a fever, because sweat is dripping down her forehead; a forehead that is trying to escape, a forehead where damp hairs sketch strange symbols.

We lose the Girl from sight in the great four-postered bed with four onyx spheres atop the four corner posts. A mother stands there, looking at her in the way we look at things we cannot look at for very much time.

The window is open. We thought it couldn't be opened, but it is; the great trunk of the almond tree has not yet grown beside it, and the doors, thrown wide like arms of light, allow us to see the trembling, warble-filled morning, glittering with sunlight.

The sweetness of the sun, the sweetness of our morning, left on our windowsill by the birds, brought by the birds like a golden veil...

A beautiful morning for playing ring-toss, for hiding Laura's glasses in the rosebushes!

Suddenly a lot of sad faces enter, frown, and close the window...

The Girl turns to face the wall. She is a sad Girl, and she doesn't even know yet how many doors are going to be closed in her life... She is a sad Girl. The floor is covered with medicine stoppers, opened silently and ceaselessly all night long.

White medicine of white magnesia, greenish oily medicine that smells of broom, yellow medicine and white medicine of hypophosphite, iron medicine, reddish, burnt, sad medicine...

Granulated medicine in earthenware pots, medicines in bottles with mysterious labels, consoling labels with a man carrying a giant fish on his back.

Medicine, medicine, medicine...

The acids smell harsh. The salts are full of melancholy... Cough Syrup of Maritime Pine...

"Drink it, darling, drink it... Look: once upon a time they caught all the pines in the sea and they squeezed all their green needles into a bowl the size of the sky..."

"If you take one teaspoon, I'll give you the doll with the curly blond hair that says Mamá and Papá..."

"Sweetheart, my dear little heart..."

Medicine...

Sad faces piling up by the bedside, looming between the bed curtains and the posts... Talking in whispers and not daring to touch the Girl...

Beyond the closed door is the trembling, warble-filled morning, glittering with sunlight... (Is it still out there?)

The Girl doesn't know. She doesn't know anything, and she looks up at the ceiling, at the fiery-eyed dragons that seem about to pounce on her.

She doesn't look, no, at the toys that cover her bed: not at the pink doll with round porcelain cheeks, not at the miniature red-roofed farmhouse, sprinkled with birds with real feathers, not at the felt cat with yellow glass eyes... She doesn't look at the boat with smoke stacks that give off real smoke; the wonderful boat that lies gathering dust on the table, with which she has never been able to play... (They don't let the Girl play with water.)

She doesn't want to see the fat man putting a glass needle under her arm.

She doesn't want to see the sad faces growing pale in the shade of the closed room.

The Girl lies motionless, watching the figures of the frieze in fascination, and no one will ever discover the root of the vague terror that will always remain in her eyes...

(The other night, that dragon on the left, the one with the broken wing, pounced on her bed and bit her on the chest; that's why it hurts so much there, and why she has a kind of bruise...)

(Knight in armor, hold the dragon tight; hold it with your symbol-laden shield, so that it cannot pounce on the Girl again... And you, too, the one with the horse rearing up on its hind legs, come, come quick to hold the bad dragon that bites sick girls. Hold the dragon...)

The fat man holds only the glass needle; he holds it in the air, and a gold chain sways and crosses his agitated belly.

The sad faces bend lower and lower... The glass needle trembles in his fingers and falls to the floor, breaking into bits of stars...

The fat man frowns, and suddenly seems to be suffocating in his stiff-starched collar.

The sad faces also fall onto the bed sheets.

The glass tube lies broken on the floor.

Hold the dragon, hold the dragon!...

2

The next portrait is the same Girl, a little older: six scant years and smiling artificially under an enormous feathered hat... It suddenly seems they have taken a picture of a hat.

It is only later that, under the dense plumage, you begin to see a starched dress, an expressionless little face (a little face, starched along with the dress...), and a pair of tiny legs, bound in a pair of patent leather shoes with buckles and laces. A lot of shoe for a girl who will walk so little...

The backdrop for the portrait is a curtain where you can see, painted in pastels, a lovely sea with cresting waves, with sailboats all lined up nicely.

You can also see, far off, a rocky promontory, a castle on the promontory, a flag over the castle... And birds flying!...

Bárbara's smile lights up again... It flies higher than the birds... Golden arrows crisscross the air, riddle it with sparkles of white, pale yellow, bright yellow... And the sea begins bit by bit to move.

The wave grow, the waves crash against the cliff and reach the promontory, splashing the castle flag and the pensive face that examines the horizon!

The waves grow, the wind blows... (The feathered hat is blown from her head and goes flying off...)

Crabs crawl out of the sea; the wind tries in vain to stir the starched dress and the starched smile; but the long braids do flutter out straight in the peace of the afternoon.

Sea. Deep, bitter sea. The sea of her eyes, perhaps?

The sea that shines like fantasy in her eyes, that grows cold in her eyes, that attracts, that swallows up, that drowns in her eyes?...

Ay, no! The sea of the photograph; a sea installed in the studio of the photographer who owns the sea and owns the thousand and one doves that fly out of their little black cage every day for the nice little children who let their pictures be taken without moving.

Here is a Girl who doesn't move very much and who can look, without even blinking, at the round lens; and can look straight at the sun, as they say eyes can do that have never cried.

The Girl is wearing a gold medallion. (The feathers on the flying hat in the distance are a little pink cloud...)

The Girl is wearing a gold medallion, and her little patent leather shoes serve as the border for the immense sea.