The men insisted until the woman agreed, thinking that they had both gone mad. She left dressed as she was with her headscarf on. The men were on either side of her, walking hurriedly. The morning was very quiet; it was Sunday. They arrived at the beach, and the woman, after thinking it over for a long time, undressed behind a boat. Those men who never brought her with them, who never paid her any mind except to ask for food or something else, what was going on with them now?

The woman forgot the shame she felt in the bathing suit and her fear of the waves: an overpowering joy drew her toward the sea. She wet her feet first, slowly, while the men reached out their hands so she wouldn’t fall. That woman, who was so strong, grew flimsy cotton legs in the water as they watched her, amazed. That woman who had never put on a bathing suit looked so much like the swimmer in front of the mirror. She felt the sea for the first time against her breasts and leapt into water that from afar had frightened her with its big waves, its small waves, and its undertow, crashing over the breakwater, sinking ships. She felt that she would never be afraid of anything again, now that she was no longer afraid of the sea.

As they returned, from far away they could already hear the little boy’s crying that awaited them. The woman cradled him in her arms. The men didn’t leave the house that day. Circuitous arguments took over; an obscure hatred began to invade them, growing, rising gradually like a high tide. They lived in a knotty tangle of gestures, words, and mysterious silences.

After some time passed, it was believed that dark spirits had taken hold of the House of the Swings. The swings rocked back and forth on their own. One night the neighbors heard screams and thuds; after a long silence, they believed they saw the shadow of a woman running with a small child and a bunch of clothes in her arms. She was never heard from again. At daybreak the next day, as usual, the two men left with a fishing net. They walked one behind the other, one behind the other without saying a word.

Forgotten Journey

She was trying to remember the day she was born, and she frowned so much that every few minutes the grown-ups came over to make her smooth her brow. Which is why she could never reach back to the memory of her birth.

Before they were born, children were stocked in a big department store, mothers ordered them, and sometimes went to buy them directly. She would have liked to see them unwrap the package and open the box that held the baby, but they never called her over in time in the houses with newborns. It was hot and they could barely breathe inside the box, and that’s why they arrived so red and cried all the time, curling their toes.