Jose Donoso
THE CLOSED DOOR
Adela de Rengifo often complained that destiny had dealt
her all the blows of life: she had been widowed at twenty-five, she
was poor and had to work to support herself with some dignity, and
she had a sickly little son-well, not actually sickly, but weak, one
of those children who sleeps twice as much as normal children.
In
fact, from the time he was born, Sebastian had slept a lot.
He closed his eyes
as
soon as his head touched the pillow his mother
had embroidered with such care, and in a second he was sleeping
angelically .
"He's such a good and quiet child, the poor thing," his mother
would say to the women at the office. "He doesn't wake up crying
in the middle of the night like most children."
Adela and Sebastian lived in two rooms on the second floor of a
slightly damp and dark boarding house. The rooms weren't too bad,
although the windows opened on a light well. When Adela went to
work in the morning, Mrs. Mechita, the landlady, took care of
Sebastian . But since the child was so quiet, he didn't need much
care; he never bothered anybody with the noise and games with
which other five-year-olds make life impossible. As soon as Mrs .
Mechita began her morning chores, Sebastian would slip back to his
room, climb into bed and sleep like a log. Mrs. Mechita would go
look at him, because it gave her "a funny feeling" that a boy of his
age liked to sleep instead of amusing himself with things that were
more . .. well, more normal. One afternoon, deciding it was her duty
to point out the boy's peculiarity to Adela, she played the innocent,
and never raising her eyes from the crocheting that always kept her
freckled fingers busy, said : "That child's quite the one for sleeping,
