Two old women were fighting in the street, pinching each other like a pair of angry black lobsters. One or two nighthawkers watched them appreciatively.
Nobody knew how the quarrel had begun.
A young woman on the other side of the street also observed the fight but she was more absorbed in the windows above, which went dark one by one. It was the hour of sleep, and with the extinction of each light the night became longer.
People had given up staring at her, she had been standing there for so long. She was like a familiar ghost, but she was strange looking; her clothes were too long and her hair much too untidy, like those of a person barely saved from drowning. Somebody, a little earlier, had quickened his step and looked away because a winged creature was clinging to her mouth and she had not stirred.
Now the creature had flown away on its own mysterious business, leaving the red on her mouth slightly smudged.
She wondered how it was that the people in the street were not dancing, dancing to the monotonous rhythm in her head. It was loud and dangerous and it made wonderful music.
A tall woman came striding around the corner and stopped near her. On a leash she had two big blonde dogs the same colour as her hair, itself like a separate animal sitting on her head.
The dogs were excited and pulled her over to the young woman.
"What are you doing?" she said. "At this hour..."
She bent down and seemed to address the dogs.
"They have been dancing for hours you know, the hounds...they led me here."
"I am waiting for Fernando."
"And you have no tears left?"
"No, I haven't any more," admitted the young woman. "Although I tried pinching my breasts and thinking of death, it was no good. So I came out here."
The blonde woman took a sheepskin off her arm and wrapped it around the other. "Come," she said, "you must get free, free to kill and scream, free to tear out his hair and free to run away only to come back laughing."
"His hair is so long and straight and almost blue, blue grey, I love it so much."
She relapsed into infatuated silence.
"Be careful; I shall slap you..." said the blonde woman irritably.
"You can't love anyone until you have drawn blood and dipped in your fingers and enjoyed it."
They were being pulled along by the big blonde dogs and occasionally dragged zigzagging across the street to another fascinating stink.
"My name," said the blonde woman, "is Elizabeth...a beautiful name which suits me admirably."
"Margaret," said the young woman sadly, "is my name. Margaret."
"Musical Margaret," said Elizabeth, giving a loud triumphant laugh, which sent the dogs bounding forward.
"Not yet!" screamed Elizabeth. "Not yet...But they always obey me in small things, although I am directed in others...They lead me, my trust is implicit."
They were pulled into a small square, charming with trees and elegantly windowed houses; the dogs went straight to Number 7. In they went and up a rather bleak marble staircase. Up and up to the highest landing and finally in through a small blue door to a diminutive hall littered with beautifully coloured and rather soiled clothes. Their entrance provoked a flight of large moths, which had been grazing peacefully amongst the more mature fur coats.
Somewhere a musical box played a ver old song.
"The past," said Elizabeth, unleashing the dogs. "The adorable living past. One must wallow, just wallow in it. How can anybody be a person of quality if they wash away their ghosts with common sense?"
She turned on Margaret ferociously and laughed in her face.
"Do you believe," she went on, "that the past dies?"
"Yes," said Margaret. "Yes, if the present cuts its throat."
"Those little white hands could cut nobody's throat."
Elizabeth laughed so much that she reeled around the room.
"How old is Fernando?" she asked suddenly. "Older than you?"
"Yes," said Margaret, who looked ill. "Fernando is forty-three."
"Forty-three, that makes seven...a beautiful number."
The dogs rolled about voluptuously amongst the silks and furs.
Elizabeth pulled Margaret into the kitchen, where the long-dead stove was littered with cooking utensils or half full of what looked like green food; but Margaret saw that the greenness was a fluffy growth of fungi. Most of the crockery on the floor was covered with the same feathery vegetation.
"We just had dinner," said Elizabeth. "I always cook too much...You see, I don't like meals, I only eat banquets."
She dipped a spoon into the nearest dish, after having examined it closely...
"It dropped into the lavatory the other day," she explained, "while I was washing up. Hungry?" she asked.
Margaret said that she was not hungry.
"Then come..." said Elizabeth. "We will talk."
The musical box started to play again and Margaret remembered the tune because Fernando had always hated it. He had once said that he preferred to pour boiling oil into his eardrums than listen to that tune; it was called "I Will Always Come Back."
The third bedroom was a bedroom whose dark strawberry walls were stained with age. The disorder was possibly greater than that in the kitchen and hall and the bed was rumpled and looked as if it was still warm from lovemaking.
Elizabeth stood at the door smiling and looking at the bed, then she bent down and picked up a satin shoe and threw it across the room. Margaret screamed as two mice jumped out of the wrinkled sheets and scuttled down the counterpane with the smooth legless rapidity that terrified women.
"There has been so much love in here that even the mice come back," said Elizabeth. "It is like the ticking of a clock; you have to listen to hear and then when you listen you can't stop hearing."
"Yes," said Margaret. "Yes, that's right."
She kept wiping her hands on her skirt, they were damp. The two dogs were sitting near the end of the bed, they were listening.
"I always wear cotton wool in my ears," Elizabeth went on. "Otherwise the sounds outside distract me. I am only human, not like them..." She looked at the dogs.
"I cut his toenails myself. And I know every inch of his body and the difference between the smell of his hair and the smell of his skin."
"Who?" whispered Margaret. "Not Fernando?"
"Yes, Fernando," answered Elizabeth. "Who else but Fernando."
-Leonora Carrington
