22
PARTISAN REVIEW
"Yes, don't you see visions when you're asleep, like people or
stories?" Sebastiin patted his mother's hands while answering.
"No, I guess not. I don't remember. ....
Adela was exasperated. "Then why do you sleep so much if you
don't get anything out of it?"
"It's just that I like to, mama ......
Hearing this, Adela got really angry. She was obliged to work
and sacrifice herself to support him. She was still young and pretty,
and yet for her son's sake she didn't accept the propositions of the men
who were after her in the office. For his sake, for his sake ... thousands
of deprivations and sorrows, while he indulged himself in the plea–
sure of sleeping all day long. And he slept because he liked to, no
other reason. She regretted having allowed Sebastiin to develop the
habit of doing things just because he felt like it: it was a dangerous
attitude, immoral even.
In
the beginning, she had to admit, she
obscurely intuited some mysterious function in her son's sleeping, as
if those dreams held a treasure, something that, although neither he
nor she understood it, might reveal itself in the future as something
useful or important. This vague hope had kept her silent with some
trepidation. But if it was just a whim, it was indecent! She had her
whims too and would have been glad to indulge them .
"Well, mama," said Sebastian, intimidated by his mother's fit
of temper, "if you want me to,
I'll
sleep only at night."
Adela's heart stopped, as if she were on the verge of falling into
a well. After a long pause, she asked him in a very serious and
deliberate voice: "Then it's something you do when you want, just
because? You can control it?"
"Yes, I sleep when I feel like sleeping ......
And seeing her son standing in front of her, so strange, dedi–
cated to something neither of them understood, gazing at her with
his poor, serious blue eyes, she felt love overflow inside her and she
couldn't stop hugging and kissing him and squeezing him hard
against her body.
"No, no, baby," she said. "You just sleep as much as you
want.
..
She reflected bitterly that Sebastiin was the spitting image of
his father, handsome, but perhaps a little on the slow side. At least
he wasn't as smart as Carlos Zauze, her department head at the
