FELISBERTO HERNANDEZ
387
ing between the two women. One morning he saw Mary singing while
she dressed Daisy : she was like a girl playing with a doll. Another time,
when he got home in the evening, he found Mary and Daisy seated at a
tabl e with a book open in front of them. He had the fee ling Mary was
teaching a sister to read, and said:
" It must be such a relief
to
talk to someone who can keep a secret!"
"What do you mean? " said Mary, springing up in anger and
leav ing the room.
But Daisy went on staring at the book, like a friend maintaining a
tactful silence. And that same night, after dinner, to keep him away
from her, as they shared their usual sofa, Mary put the doll between
them. He glanced at Daisy's face and disliked it again: it was cold and
haughty, as if
to
punish him for slighting her. A bit later, he went into
the showroom. At first he strolled back and forth along the glass cases.
Then, after a while, he opened the big piano top , removed the stool,
rep laced it with a chair-so he cou ld lean back-and started
to
walk his
fingers over the cool expanse of black and white keys. He had troubl e
combining the sounds, like a drunk trying to unscramble his words.
But meantime he was remembering many of the things he knew about
the dolls. Slowly he'd been getting to know them, almost without
realizing it. Until recently, he' d kept the store that had been making his
fortune. Alone, after closing hour every day, he liked to wander
through the shadowy rooms, looking at the dolls in the how windows.
He went over their dresses, with an occasional almost casual glance at
their faces. He observed the show windows from an angle, like a
direc tor watching his actors in a play. Then he started finding
express ions similar
to
those of his salesgirls in the dolls' faces. Some
inspired the same distrust in him ; others, the certainty that they were
against him. There was one with a snub nose that seemed
to
say: "Who
cares?" Another, which appealed to him , had an enigmatic face : just as
she loo ked good in either a summer or a winter dress, she could also be
thinking a lmost anything, and accepting or rejecting him, according
to
her mood. In any case, the dolls had their secrets. Although the
window decorator knew how to display each of them to her best
advantage, at the las t moment she always added a touch of her own.
It
was then that he started to think the dolls were full of portents. Day and
night they received countless greedy looks ; and those looks formed
nes ts and bred warnings. S9metimes they settled on the doll s' faces like
clouds on a landscape, shadowing and blurring their expressions; or
lingered and tainted their innocence. Then the dolls were like creatures
in a trance, on unknown missions, lending themselves to ev il designs.
On the night of his quarrel with Mary, he reached the conclusion that
