In the boys, who are more solemn, kindness is a kind of ardor. With my husband, kindness makes him gruff and severe, which we’re used to he crucifies himself a bit.

Surrounding the woeful chick, we were kind and anxious. Soon-as the same water is already different when the sun turns it clear, and different when it gets riled up trying to bite a stone, and different over a submerged foot-soon our faces no longer held only aura and illumination. Yet feelings are the water of an instant. But Christmas is tomorrow, my older boy said bashfully. Well, well, said my husband, and now look at that. A thing peeping on its own rouses that ever so gentle curiosity that beside a manger is worship. Tomorrow is Christmas, but the moment of silence I await all year came a day before Christ’s birth. As soon as we released the chick, its charm took us by surprise. It was brought by a hand that wanted the pleasure of giving me something born.

My unexpected consent to know was provoked today by the fact that a chick turned up in the house. I am trying to talk about that family that disappeared years ago without leaving a trace in me, and of whom all I’ve retained is an image tinged green by distance. Yet sometimes I awake from a long slumber and I meekly turn to the delicate abyss of disorder. Before the same jury I’d answer: I hardly know myself-and to every face in the jury I’d say with the same clear-eyed look of someone hypnotized into obedience: I hardly know you. If anyone asked me about Ofélia and her parents, I’d have answered with the decorum of honesty: I hardly knew them.

Chillzee completed stories