44- Of course you can do it

44- Of course you can do it
Alejandro never understood her eagerness to take a bath, her immediate need to change her clothes, to wash off the old make up. The pain of dislocation and division abated, the shame dissolved as Serena passed into Alejandro’s mood of contentment.
At this moment she feels impelled by a force outside of herself to be the woman he demands, desires, and creates. Whatever he says of her, about her, she will fulfill. She no longer feels responsibility for what she has been. There is a modification of her face and body, of her attitudes and her voice. She has become the woman Alejandro loves. The feelings which flow through her and which carry her along are of love, protection, devotion.
These feelings create a powerful current on which she floats. Because of their strength they have engulfed all her doubts, as in the case of fanatic devotions to a country, a science, an art, when all minor crimes are absolved by the unquestioned value of the aim. A light like a small diamond facet appeared in her eyes, fixed in a narrower precision on her intent. At other times her pupils were dilated, and did not seem to focus on the present, but now their diamond precision was at work on this laborious weaving of lifegiving, lies, and it gave them a clarity which was even more transparent than that of truth. Serena wants to be the woman whom Alejandro wants her to be.
At times Alejandro is not certain of what he wishes.
Then the stormy, tumultuous Serena waits in incredible stillness, alert and watchful for signs of his wishes and fantasies. The new self she offered him: created for him, appeared intensely innocent, newer than any young girl could have been, because it was like a pure abstraction of a woman, an idealized figure, not born of what she was, but of his wish and hers. She even altered her rhythm for him, surrendered her heavy restless gestures, her liking for large objects, large rooms, for timelessness, for caprice and sudden actions.
Even her hands which were sturdy, for his sake rested more gently upon objects around her. “You always wanted to be an actress, Serena. It makes me happy that you’re fulfilling this wish. It consoles me for your absences.” For his pleasure she began to reconstruct the events of the last For his pleasure she began to reconstruct the events of the last week of her absence: the trip to Provincetown, the behavior of the cast, the problems in the play, directing errors, the reactions of the public, the night when the fuses burnt out, the night when the sound track broke down.
At the same time she wished she could tell him what had actually happened; she wished she could rest her head upon his shoulder as upon a protective force, a protective understanding not concerned with possession of her but a complete knowledge of her which would include absolution. Wishing he might judge her acts with the same detachment and wisdom he applied to others’ acts, wishing he might absolve her as he absolved strangers from a knowledge of their motivations. Above all she wished for his absolution so that she might sleep deeply.
She knew what awaited her instead of sleep: an anxious watch in the night. For after she had reconstructed the events of the last week for Alejandro’s peace of mind, after he had kissed her with gratitude, and with a hunger accumulated during her absence, he fell into a deep sleep in utter abandon and confidence in the night which had brought Serena back, while Serena lay awake wondering whether among her inventions there might be one which could be exposed later, wondering whether her description of the Provincetown hotel might be proved false, being based on hearsay. Wondering whether she would remember what she had said about it, and what she had said about the other members of the cast. Wondering if Alejandro might meet one of the actors in the cast some day and discover Serena had never worked with them at all.
The night came merely as a dark stage upon which invented scenes took on a greater sharpness than by day.
Scenes surrounded by darkness were like the scenes in a dream, heightened, delineated intensely, and all the while suggesting the abysses surrounding the circles of light. Outside of this room, this bed, there was a black precipice. She had escaped danger for a day, that was all. Other dangers awaited her tomorrow. At night too she puzzled over the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind. Why should she have had such a need of kindness? Was she a cripple? What if instead she had married aan of violence or a man of cruelty? At the mere word “cruelty” her heart started to beat feverishly.
The enormity of the dangers she had averted was so great she did not even dare picture them. She had desired and obtained kindness. And now that she had found it she risked its loss every day, every hour, on other quests! Alejandro slept so peacefully.
Even in sleep he maintained a serenity of gesture. The firm design of his nose, mouth and chin, the angular lines of the body, all sculptured from some material of rectitude that would not slacken. In moments of desire even, he did not have the wildness of the eyes, disordered hair of others. He would never grow almost delirious with pleasure or utter sounds not quite human, from the jungle of man’s earlier animalism.
Was it this quietism that inspired her trust? He told no lies. What he felt and thought he could tell Serena. At the thought of confession, of confiding in him, she was almost asleep when out of the darkness the image of Alejandro appeared vividly and he was sobbing, sobbing desperately as he had at his father’s death. This image awakened her with horror, with compassion, and again her feeling was: I must always be on guard, to protect his happiness, always on guard to protect my guardian angel… In the darkness she relived entirely the eight days spent in Provincetown.