Private House Read Free

girls’ sexuality was openly celebrated, not covered up as a problem—that would be the theme. Their dresses— which all seemed cut from the same pattern, as if to emphasize what the girls now had in common—always left their shoulders bare; everything was symbolic in that way. The girl in white was truly lovely, the white of her dress setting off her golden skin and shining black hair; and her hands, lifting her hem, already possessed a languid, womanly grace.Mathilde eyed her. Almost from the day of her arrival, she’d begun noticing women in a way she would never have done in Paris. It wasn’t that she compared herself to them, but rather that they appeared, here, as more clearly a separate sex, their own sex; and it was almost a question whether she belonged to it, too. It wasn’t only a quality of Cuban women, she’d decided, but her own state, something to do with being alone. True, she would be thirty next year, and she’d lived on her own for five years; but to visit her parents was only one change on the Métro, she still saw many of her school friends, and she shared the day with the same colleagues, day after day. Here, she knew no one. She didn’t speak a word of the language and the place itself, a strange Atlantis with palm trees and blacks, had surprised her completely. She watched the photographer as he manoeuvred for his angles. A contrast to the girls, he was dressed in blue jeans and a brown checked shirt that was coming untucked. He was good, though, quick. He motioned: the girl turned. Mathilde smiled. She was thinking of Jacques, an old hand at the agency—“Photographers are as bossy as doctors.” The girl obediently stretched her arms behind her, so her breasts were subtly presented; the poses were all like that, emphasizing innocence on the brink of something else. The photographer got what he wanted; and when he took his camera away from his eye, he glanced up; the sun was already very high. He motioned the girl away from the fountain. Mathilde knew what would happen next. In an area behind the back wall of the basilica, near the statue of Father Juniper, the girl sank down on the cobblestones, spreading and smoothing the folds of her dress all around her. When she was settled, the photographer’s assistant, an older woman, began scattering bread crumbs. Pigeons, as familiar with this ritual as everyone else, were already hovering; now they descended. The woman motioned and the girl hesitantly stretched out her arms: two of the pigeons perched obligingly. And as a special favour one even dropped down on her head.Soon, they were all over her . . . and they were doves , Mathilde realized. The woman kept tossing crumbs, until, at a signal from the photographer, she clapped her hands sharply and in a flapping, fluttering cloud the pigeons rose . . . heavenward. Or so you had to assume. But it was hard to know if there was any religious significance to the ceremony at all. This was the Plaza de San Francisco de Assis but that was probably just an excuse for the birds. Mathilde smiled to herself and watched the white girl tidy up. Her next stop would be around the corner, where several statues were used as props. Meanwhile, the blue girl was already arranged by the fountain. . . .
    â€œIt is interesting, don’t you think?”
    Only as she spoke did Mathilde realize that a short, slight, dark young woman had been standing at her elbow for a minute or so. Without thinking, Mathilde smiled politely and said, “Yes,” realizing too late what was happening.
    â€œYou are from—?”
    â€œI am from France. Paris.”
    â€œYou have been in Cuba long?”
    All their approaches began in exactly this way, as ritualized as the quinces girl’s photo session. “A few days.”
    â€œYou will be staying for long?”
    â€œA week.”
    The woman smiled; like most Cubans she had beautiful teeth, unspoiled by candy and