A Heart so White

by Javier Marías

watching the other person’s mouth, pouring the wine, being polite, lighting cigarettes, laughing, sometimes laughter is the prelude to a kiss and the expression of desire, its mode of transmission, without one quite knowing why, laughter disappears afterwards during the kiss and the fulfilment of the desire, there’s rarely any laughter when two people lie awake in one another’s arms, their heads on the pillow, no longer watching the other person’s mouth (the mouth is always full, abundance itself), there’s a tendency to seriousness, however full of laughter the prologues and interruptions might have been, or the delay, the waiting, the prolongation and the pauses, a breathing space, laughter stops, sometimes voices do too, the articulated voice falls silent or speaks only in vocatives or interjections, there’s nothing to translate.