JOS{OONOSO
21
isn't he, Adelita! Is he ill?"
Adela answered, very stiffly: "What's so odd about a child
sleeping when he feels like it?"
"Well, it was just a remark ... " Mrs. Mechita replied. When
Adela left, Mrs. Mechita set her mastifflike jaw, reflecting that
young widows were too high-strung and in the future she would
be
careful not to take another into her boarding house.
Mrs. Mechita's remark mirrored Adela's own anxieties, and she
couldn't put it out of her mind.
It
was a fact that
Sebasti~n
slept too
much.
It
wasn't that he was half asleep all day long, but that
suddenly, for no good reason, he seemed to feel it would be nice to
sleep for a while, and so he did, like a person concentrating on a
highly amusing hobby, curled up on his small bed with brass bars or
sitting on a chair. Uneasy, his mother would sometimes watch him
sleep. This quieted her fears, because surely nothing bad could
happen to a being who slept with such a blissful face, as if behind his
eyelids scenes from a magical life were floating by.
But much as she tried not to get upset, Adela could not deny
that
Sebasti~n
was different. How could she help feeling uncomfort–
able? Diffident and solitary, he didn't seem to have any connection
with what happened around him, neither to people nor things, nor
to cold nor heat, nor the constant winter rain splashing on the
dust-covered glass of the vestibule skylight. Like the moon, Sebas–
tian only showed half of himself to the world.
It
was a little
frightening. The other boarders were kind to him, more than any–
thing else to please Adela, who was a respectable lady even though
she had had a tough life. But she didn't fool herself: she knew
nobody liked Sebastian.
It
did pain her soul, but she knew they
were partly right, because it was too odd that a child of five slept so
much and didn't like to do anything else.
It
wasn't that he dozed off
because he was sleepy or tired; instead, picking the right time, he
would start in sleeping, the way ordinary children start in playing
marbles or singing. He didn't have playmates his own age. Books,
magazines, and movies bored him. He didn't like to play games.
The only thing he seemed to want to do was give up everything and
curl up in his bed and sleep.
One day Adelia asked him: "What do you dream about, Sebastian?"
"Do I dream?"
