Panic Signs

24. What is happening?

would be big like a mother and she small like a newborn son) and at last she could take my place. Each time she got closer to me in her threatening espionage, I trembled and drew back, uneasy in the water. I thought she was going to throw herself on top of me or that she would get inside the jar, anxious, though her legs or her arms might remain outside. Nevertheless, I hid my fear and she calmed her impulses, endured her tiredness, and she used up a bit more of her patience waiting for me to be old enough and for her to be small enough. When I turned forty-five, I leaned on the green glass, I firmly grasped the rim of the bottle with my nails, and I jumped on the table. She, small like a raisin, was waiting on a chair. So small she could barely be seen. As soon as she saw me outside, without saying a word, she sprang up on the jar’s lip and made it to the water. Since then she has been swimming there. She doesn’t wave to me anymore, when I come into the house or when I leave, and each day that goes by I notice her smaller, but at last she’s resting . Floating in the bottle’s water, she looks like a fallen animal, a tiny roving insect. But I know that she’s happy now. I went to the market today and bought a red fish. I’ll put it in the jar so it can keep her company. She won’t be alone then, although it’s possible the fish might eat her. —— 29 —— —— 30 —— Hell is bloody birds, their guts shattered, and still wailing. 18 —— 31 —— “You are very beautiful,” the man said to the young woman who had undressed for him, “but I am tired of ploughing.” 19 ...