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Rachel brusquely folded the pages of the newspaper. Below her very white forehead, her eyes withdrew into their dark, light-spotted depths. On her oval face, framed by black curly hair, two lines that radiated at an angle, on both sides of her slightly aquiline nose, creased even more, in apparent contradiction to her voluptuous lips, to the animal whiteness of her teeth and to the sensual curves of her body, which in middle age had not changed. An air of absence, of a present that became undone at each invocation of memory, was enveloping her being. Suddenly, she got up from the small sofa where she had been lying and made her way to the bedroom. It was an ample apartment in which quadrangular furniture and large mirrors suggested a modern style; its clear geometry of crossing reflections were dimmed by the semidarkness of the cold and gray afternoon that filtered through the curtains, affixing more gloom to the two oriental daggers that decorated the wall. Approaching the vanity, Rachel cast her eyes on the faceted bottles of perfume and the porcelain accessories on display in front of her, stopping at a small easel on which one saw, delicately outlined, almost in miniature, the figure of an old Jew with his tallith over his shoulders and his eyes raised in fervent prayer. She lingered a few seconds contemplating it. A slight shiver passed through her body. A tinge of anguish clouded her gaze. In a nervous gesture she opened a small drawer built into the piece of furniture from which she took out an album of photographs. She touched its surface as if reconnecting with an old friend and fell upon the vanity’s little bench. Opening the album at random, she began to leaf through the pages without stopping. As though cast under an enchanted spell, she began to transport herself in images that were Jacó Guinsburg Figures in the Darkness 54 jacó guinsburg coming to her, not from the album but from inside her very self. From the lost folds of her memories, there appeared figures frayed by time, images of a life erased by the past. How much had changed! Who was seated there, in the midst of all that luxury and comfort? Was it really her? The question, as a dissonant note of objectivity, disrupted her self-absorbed invocation. Almost instinctively her attention turned to one of the photos in the album. Who would have said? Twenty-three years had passed. Nevertheless, she was that shriveled adolescent. It really was her. That little girl with long braids, a poorly fitted dress, wide-eyed, and a frightened expression, a family picture. Father, mother, those brothers and cousins who were there in that yellowish sepia of old photograph paper, seemed to jump back into their lives, circling her, entwining her, touching her, screaming, crying and imploring, in mute voices that agonized in their silence—figures of the darkness who had been and stopped being. Rachel felt that she was suffocating. She seemed to be drowning in a feeling of deprivation and impotence. She wanted to scream her despair. Everything around her had plunged into indistinctness, leaving her all alone, released to the spectral solitude of her memory. ...

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