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October 8; I wake before the rooster, as if the night, that twisted mother, had delivered me out of season; the room holds a light still undecided, a gray of watered milk, and yet I feel, from the first blink, that something has kept watch with me, that I did not sleep alone though no one moved the latch; the linen cord is still on my wrist, but it dawns tighter, as if in the dark my blood had tried to flee and someone, with a shepherd’s patience, had brought it back to the fold; I sit up slowly, I listen to the murmur of the house, that wooden breathing, that creak that resembles a prayer without words, and then I hear it, not as an outer sound but as an idea learning to walk, a step in the corner that has no door.

I do not turn at once; prudence, when it is true, is not cowardice, it is the economy of the soul; I do first what a woman does who wishes to go on belonging to the day, I wash my face with cold water, I gather my hair, I straighten my skirt; the mirror, which yesterday let fall a pollen of shadow, today returns to me a steadier look, as if my eyes had been touched by a finger that leaves no mark and yet leaves direction; I light the candle beside the clay cup, and the flame, instead of rising straight, leans for an instant toward the dark angle of the room, as if greeting a guest of ancient rank.

I have already seen you, I say, and my voice comes out lower than I expected, not from fear, but from involuntary respect, that respect one keeps for what does not understand manners and yet knows the secret name of things; in reply there comes no blow and no scream, but a silence that has weight, a silence with hips, with shoulders, with a way of being that takes its place; and then, as if the air rose from a chair, the shadowman appears. He does not enter, he takes shape; he does not cross the threshold, he draws it; he is taller than the gentleman and, all the same, he does not seem large, it is the largeness of the inevitable, not of muscle; his outline does not quite close, as if his body were smoke disciplined by a will; where the eyes should be there is a depth that looks, and that look is neither cold nor hot, it is exact; I feel at the nape of my neck the old breath, the one from the first night, but now it does not announce itself as aggression, but as familiarity; the animal that used to bite me from within now smells my hand, curious, waiting to see whether I strike it or stroke it.

You hide behind suits, I manage to say, and my own clarity surprises me, because the sentence is not born of panic but of evidence; the shadow inclines its head, a minimal gesture, and in that gesture there is irony, yes, but also a kind of patience, as if it granted me the pleasure of believing I am discovering something; then the strangest thing happens, the shadow speaks, but not with sound, it speaks with thoughts that arrive already spoken, like letters someone had set on my table before I was born. Do not be mistaken, it says, I do not dress myself up as a suitor, I am what the suitor covers; your father did not choose a man, he chose a form of order, and order, when it fears, calls me; after that sentence comes a sensation, I see, without seeing, yesterday’s drawing room, the gentleman with his impeccable perfume, his reverence of angles, and behind, pressed to him like a second skin, the sharpened shadow that did not match his voice; I understand with a spasm of lucidity that the shadow not only walks through my house, it also strolls through the city, attends markets, sits on church pews, learns the names of the saints, and when it suits it puts on gloves, so as not to stain the hands of day with night.

I tighten the bread wrapped in linen, I hold it as a tool; I prayed, I say, I tied the cord, I made the tea, I embroidered my initial, I… and my list breaks because I realize that pride, too, can be a badly made prayer; the shadow does not mock, it steps forward, and the room grows narrower, not for lack of air, but for presence; I feel that the edge of my bed is no longer a piece of furniture, but a border, that the lamp does not illumine, it negotiates, that the clay cup has the eye of a witness. I have not come to break you, it says, I have come to claim what you offer me each time you pretend you do not desire; your knots are beautiful, but they bind only the surface; you occupy the day, you leave me the night as if it were a stable; and I, I am not a stable, I am the horse. I tremble, yes, but I do not run; there is a trembling that is flight, and there is another that is the recognition of one’s own body when truth brushes it; I sit on the edge of the bed, without fainting, without dramatics, ready to hear a sentence; the shadow stops a step from me, and that step is a well-mannered abyss; between his body of smoke and my skin there is a distance that burns.

I think of St Michael, of the cold stone, of the linen cord for those who learn to tie; I think of my father writing man of mettle as if mettle were a lock; I think, with a stab of bitter tenderness, how small the world is when it believes it owns a woman; and I realize that my fear was not only of being attacked, but of being known, because the shadow, with its pupil-less gaze, does not look at my clothes or my surname, it looks at my hunger. What do you want of me, I ask, and the question comes weighted, not with submission, but with an ancient weariness, the weariness of always defending the door of a house that has dark corridors on the inside; the shadow inclines itself, and I feel, like a handless caress, the brush of something at my throat, right where the words a decent woman does not say get stuck; in my memory a secret room opens; desire does not appear as sin, but as a hungry animal that has spent years living on crumbs. I want you to stop praying me as if I were a thief, it says, I want you to look at me without insult, I want you to accept that not everything in you that trembles is an enemy; and if you are to surrender, if you are to yield, let it be by choice, not by ambush.

That last sentence hurts me in a strange way; it offers me dignity in the very gesture that tempts me, and I, who have spent days trying to be exact, humble, orderly, yet I feel that order is not enough to live; order serves for the table, for the embroidery, for the tea, but there is a river very deep beneath my planks, and the river does not obey my father’s handwriting. I do not know at what moment I rise to my feet; I only know that I am standing, facing him, and that my body, that body I have treated like a guilt, suddenly becomes a lawful house; the candle sputters, and the flame leans again, this time toward me, as if it absolved me of the shame of being alive. The shadow lifts a hand, if it is a hand, and the air grows cold around my waist; it does not touch me the way a man touches, it touches me the way night touches, wrapping, insisting, making the boundary into something soft; and I, in an impulse that is not madness but decision, untie the linen cord from my wrist, I let it fall upon the bed as one lets fall a rule that no longer serves to measure the fire. If you enter, I say, do not enter as a lie, do not enter with a borrowed face; the shadow comes closer, and the distance breaks without sound; my breath finds another breath that is not air but depth; his presence surrounds me like black water that does not drown, but holds; I feel the gentle pressure on my shoulders, the invisible weight at my hips, the cold that turns warm by repetition, by consent; my belly opens in a slow wave, and in that wave fear and delight mingle like two animals that at last drink from the same bowl. There is no violence; there is a force that asks, and my flesh, for the first time in a long while, answers without begging pardon; my hands seek and do not find skin, they find shadow, yet the shadow, strangely, has texture, it is velvet of smoke, it is mist with memory; the candle falters, and I, with a new obedience, not to my father, not to the gentleman, not to the sacristan, not even to guilt, but to something older and truer, let the shadow take me the way one takes an oath, without haste, with gravity, with a care that resembles ceremony; my mouth opens for a name I do not know how to pronounce, and yet I pronounce it with my body; I incline toward that darkness I always wanted to cast out, and I receive it the way one receives a necessary storm.

And when the room is no longer room but altar, when my skirt weighs like a surrendered flag, when my breathing turns into a broken canticle, I understand, with a lucidity that almost makes me laugh, that the night did not want my defeat, it wanted my consent, it wanted me to stop calling it monster so I might call it, at last, by its true office, that which completes me, that which reveals me; in the end, the candle goes out by itself, as if someone had blown from inside my chest; and in the total darkness, where the mirror and the market and the embroidered letter no longer exist, I surrender to the shadow with a fierce tenderness, with a sensuality that asks no excuses, with that lucid abandonment that only happens when the soul, tired of war, decides to make peace with its own depth. Compline; I do not write I conquered nor I occupied this time; I write, groping, with the hand still trembling, I have opened; and, beneath, I leave a sign for the next day, a single sentence, small and dangerous, the horse drank from my hand.