Raquel's evolution

Regret is a rare luxury…

One day a year she allowed herself to be sad for a few hours. A few hours where she surrendered with reckless abandon to the feeling of abandonment and melancholy. One day a year; her birthday!

On the other side of the street, the grass lay like a veil. There was only silence. All sound seemed muffled in the softness of spring. This was only an imaginary silence, for the laughter of a child at play floated through it.

The sky shone so divinely bright above the grey outline of the city. Something seemed trapped in that clarity. Everything seemed so unreal, like the elusive images in a dream. In the air was the dreamy scent of hyacinths.

Raquel was thinking about many things: the work ahead, a dress she was sewing, and her mother. The smell of hyacinths seemed to want to suppress memories: Edward.

Edward: with his beautiful eyes that she knew she could never forget. Even after eight years, she remembered how, compared to Edward, all other men were pushed into the shadows. For Raquel, since Edward, there was no room for other men.

However, there was someone who encroached on the hallowed ground of her reverie. Someone who, admittedly, was wonderfully considerate, with whom she had spent long friendly evenings and who was almost too nice.

As the months passed, a sense of discouragement dampened her enthusiasm. The differences between them, which initially she considered superficial, were fundamental to her, to him 

Him they were just the accidental variants of life. And he probably would remain so. Trying to change him, was beyond her power.

She would be the last to deny him his virtues, but she realized how little alloy there was in the gold of his nature. Arthur was generous, kind, and courageous, but like his personality, his virtues were flamboyant and without shades, as was his uncultivated preference for red geraniums. He possessed a sincerity incompatible with human intentions or achievements, and according to her mother, he was a gentleman.

Arthur had no taste or education, and yet a vague realization dawned on Raquel that he did possess qualities greater than the superficial flaws of his nature. He was even-tempered, moderate, and restrained: graceful qualities, which she had come to appreciate in the past, as well as his ugly facts, beautiful ideals, and crooked deeds of puny lives and heroic deaths. A bright present and a smoky future.

-"Raquel, look at this! “a voice cried out from under her window in the garden. "aren't these lovely?" Raquel was startled out of her reverie. Molly, her housekeeper stood under her window with a large basket full of primroses.

-"From Mr. Arthur." she giggled half-aloud behind her hand.

-"Good morning!" Arthur said, leaping from behind a bush. "I wanted to be the first to wish you a happy birthday." he began awkwardly, his face flushed with pleasure. He seemed to be part of the unreality of the outside world, in which everything was imprisoned. He radiated a glowing consciousness of success, of an incalculable joy of life.

There he stood: smiling and robust, his dark hair still wet from his morning shower. The sunshine warmed the ruddy brown of his face and made his eyes reflect spring. Raquel was amused by his childish vanity.

-"Come upstairs." Raquel waved.

-"Thank you for the beautiful flowers." she said sincerely when he appeared in the doorway of her room.

-"I have never bought them flowers for a woman." Arthur said shyly, "You are the first.”

Though his words reached Raquel in vain, she became aware of a force that made her feel an impulse to flee. She understood more than ever that she had to keep this relationship with Arthur superficial.

-"Then you certainly don't have many female friends." she smiled nervously. "Wasn't there an Anette?" She tried to sound firm and friendly. He had to understand how aloof she was from his sentimental advances.

-"Anette?" his reaction was shrouded in a fog of bewilderment. With an air of dispelling a cloud, he made a strong gesture of denial. "Do you think there's someone else?"

The joy on Arthur's face made Raquel shut up.

-"There is no one else, there never has been, and certainly not an Anette." He moved a little closer to her. He seemed powerless to retreat.

-"When I was a child, I had a schoolteacher named Annie. I once told her in an overconfident mood that she should wait until I grew up to marry me. We were going to live together in America, somewhere in the far west." Arthur babbled ecstatically. His voice was exuberant. Raquel sensed that what she feared was coming. 

-"Now you know it." Arthur laughed awkwardly. Raquel backed off:

- "No!" she exclaimed.

He had moved towards her and kissed her on the lips. The tenderness of his arms was relentless. For a moment, her unwavering loyalty to the love of her youth seemed suspended. It seemed as if her soul suddenly caught fire. A shiver of anger ran through her.

-"I do not love you." Raquel said firmly. Arthur let go of her and let his arms fall. He stood there as if he had turned to stone.

-"You do not love me?" he stammered.

-"I liked you as a friend, but I'm not in love with you." she said with a bitter undertone.

The cheering spirit of spring had faded from his gaze. After a minute of silence, he said gravely:

-"I do not believe you!"

-"I never thought of you except as a friend. I've loved another man all my life." Raquel's voice sounded triumphant.

-"Sorry." Arthur said softly, "I made a mistake." There was a dull flatness to his voice.

Raquel still felt his kiss on her mouth, and the vividness of the sensation drove her into a passionate rage. She no longer felt reasonable and competent. The Raquel who had lived her life so successfully had been transformed into a primitive woman in the grip of a fit of imbalance. Restraint had flown from her soul. A relentless sense of insult began to burn in her being.

When he got to the door he turned and for a moment it looked like he was about to smile.

-"When I came here, it was to propose to you. I thought you knew how I felt. I was foolish enough to think you'd want to marry me." He turned around and said:

-"You are a free woman, if you ever feel like you have made a mistake, just come to me. Always!

He went outside and closed the door behind him. Raquel watched Arthur walk through the gate, cheerful as ever.

-"Who would have thought?" Raquel said to herself, "I just had a love scene for my birthday."

-"One has to see the humor in that, it couldn't have been more romantic."

A feeling of tightness came over her. She grabbed her handbag and walked downstairs, out of the house.

By the time she had walked down the street, her anger had died down, but that tight feeling that she had just been smothered was still there in her throat. Why was she so indignant?

There had come a subtle change in the spirit of spring. It was no longer jubilant, but languorous, wistful, and ghostly. Life was no longer caught in the magic of the sunshine, but grey, monotonous, and utterly hopeless, just like the faces of the people who passed her.

Her feet dragged and she had a vague feeling that she had lost her vision. A sense of loss came over her as if something were missing.

Her morning work was unusually hard, and around 1 PM she decided to have lunch.

-"What's the matter with you?" she asked herself in an almost imperceptible degree of anger.

-"Edward, Edward." she whispered pensively. "What a wreck I became. What an incredibly stupid wreck."

- "Hey... Raquel." she heard behind her, "What are you doing here?"

For a minute, Raquel held on to a lamppost in sheer amazement. She recovered quickly and with keen willpower she said:

-"I did not recognize you at first. How are you, Flora?"

Flora, of all the people she had to meet today in the flesh, was sparkling and prosperous. Above all: victorious. Her radiant figure: according to the latest fashion. Her shiny hair was like molten gold in big loose waves, and she did not look a day older than twenty-five, though she was three years older than Raquel.

She refused Flora's outstretched hand and became aware of an urge to laugh. She did not hold a grudge against Flora, but against an abstract, that had allowed Flora to what belonged to Raquel.

Flora was a sensualist whose sensuality made her sparkle. What had Edward ever seen in her? What did that woman have that she did not?

-"Are you shopping?" Flora asked curiously. Raquel nodded.

"Do you still harbor malice towards me?" Flora burst out. Her frankness, like her sensuality, was elemental in her brutality.

-"You shouldn´t." Flora continued convincingly. "We've always been friends, weren´t we? Long before we got interested in men or even thought about them. I didn't want to hurt you, it´s just that Edward just cares more about me."

- "You are not to blame." Raquel began, "You have not harmed me in any way."

-"I have always known you were open-minded. There's no reason why we couldn't be friends like we used to be."

Raquel began to shake her head inexorably and raised her hand, signaling Flora to shut up.

-"You have done me no wrong. I have long since forgiven you for running off with my fiancée." Raquel said politely but firmly, "But you´re no good! You are simply not a good person"

A quick blush colored the pearly white balance of Flora's face.

-"I just thought maybe you don't have many friends, and you are lonely." 

Flora babbled nervously. Her insolence reignited Raquel's anger.

-"There is nothing you can do for me, Flora." Though Raquel's voice sounded clear and determined, her face suddenly looked older and small lines appeared in the corners of her eyes, marked by weariness and regret. Her cheeks burned.

-"The audacity." she thought to herself as she walked away. "The unashamed insolence."

The encounter with Flora had left her in a state of complete despondency. The oppressive languor of the day had exhausted her strength. She felt indifferent and spiritless. As she wandered listlessly through the streets, she felt that tightness in her throat again.

With the fleeting sweetness of white hyacinths, the feeling that her life was slipping past her again, and that she was missing something overwhelmed her again. Something precious. Something infinite. Something desirable. Perhaps it was the panic of her biological clock that was dissatisfied.

-"Heaven! What happened to you?" cried Molly, who was watering the flowers, when Raquel walked through the gate.

-"Nothing." she replied, "I'm tired. It's been a hard day."

-"You look ten years older than you did this morning." Molly said worriedly.

-"Thanks, Mol, that makes me feel so much better. I've seen Florence." 

Raquel replied.

-"Say no more." Molly shook her head.

-"She looked prettier than ever. She did not look a day older than..."

-"Wait for it! Wait it out" Molly interrupted Raquel's wailing. She put down the watering can: "Shall I massage your back?" she asked Raquel, who shook her head but burst into tears. Molly was shocked, she had never seen Raquel cry.

- "Are you in pain?" the concerned housekeeper asked. Raquel shook her head again.

-"I'm just tired, that's all." Raque said in a strange way. Molly pondered for a minute or two, then said firmly:

-"I believe a visit to your mother would do you good. It has been a long time since you saw her."

Raquel dried her tears and gave Molly an enigmatic smile. Her eyes suddenly lit up. She stretched her arms above her and made a gesture like someone escaping from bondage.

-"No dear Molly." she said, "I'm not going to mommy...”

Molly looked at her with a puzzled look.

- “I have wasted enough time trying to fix myself and my flaws, whatever I imagined them to be. I could have spent that time laughing and being happy. I´m going to switch to audacious. It´s time I start living. I´m going to make space for the unimaginable and live. Be alive!”