Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories by Silvina Ocampo

Author:Silvina Ocampo [Ocampo, Silvina]
Language: swe
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Short Stories (Single Author), Psychological, Literary
ISBN: 9781590177990
Google: _wQ3BAAAQBAJ
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: 2015-01-27T04:33:33+00:00

THE PRAYER

LAURA was in church, praying:

Oh, my God, won’t You reward the good deeds of Your servant? I know that sometimes I wasn’t good. I’m impatient and deceitful. I lack charity, but I always try to merit Your forgiveness. Haven’t I spent hours kneeling on the floor of my room before the image of one of Your Virgins? This horrible child I’ve hidden in my house, to save him from those who wanted to lynch him, won’t he bring me any satisfaction? I have no children, I’m an orphan, I’m not in love with my husband: all this You know well. I don’t hide anything from You. My parents led me to marriage as one leads a girl to school or to the doctor. I obeyed them because I thought everything would turn out all right. I can’t hide it from You: love can’t be forced, and even if You Yourself had given me the command to love my husband, I wouldn’t be able to obey You unless You inspired the love in me that I need. When he embraces me I want to run away, to hide in a forest (ever since childhood I’ve imagined an enormous forest where even in distress I can’t hide because it’s covered with snow). He tells me, “You’re so cold . . . it’s like you were made of marble.”

I much prefer the ugly box-office attendant who sometimes gives me tickets so I can see movies with my little sister, or the rather repulsive salesman in the shoe store who caresses my foot between his legs when I’m trying shoes on, or the blond bricklayer at the corner of Corrientes and 9 de Julio, next to the house where my favorite student lives, the one I like, the one with dark eyes who sits on the ground eating a steak sandwich, onions, and grapes, the one who asks me, “Are you married?” and then says, without waiting for an answer, “What a shame.”

The one who made me navigate scaffolding to see the apartment soon to be occupied by newlyweds.

Four times I visited the apartment under construction. The first time was in the morning—they were laying bricks for a partition. I sat on the pile of lumber. It was the house of my dreams. The bricklayer (whose name is Anselmo) took me to the highest part of the house so I could see the view. You know that Your servant had no desire to stay so long at the construction site and that it was only because she twisted her ankle that, without wanting to, she had to stay with the men for a long time, waiting for the pain to subside. The second time I arrived in the afternoon. They were installing the windows and I went to look for a change purse I had forgotten. Anselmo wanted me to see the terrace. It was six o’clock in the afternoon when we came down and all the other workers had left. While passing a wall I got whitewash on my arm and cheek.

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