These I had never seen before-the earring, the tooth they were too particular to be repeated. I saw a turquoise earring, rather vulgar, in the lobe of her ear, between two stiff, distinct wisps of hair and a golden tooth gleaming at the dark, inward turn of her smile- throwing an entirely new light on the matter. Yet fear, miles in advance, already made me cling to the one little thread which could have attached that face to some known context. Watching her smiling contentedly, with her hair well behind her, I thought of that other woman I had once known and said: “How strange, I could have sworn she was in America.” But I was pretending I knew this was not the same face. while reserving herself the right not to bother about the results. I recognized not so much the color and texture of the hair as the casual negligence with which it was worn - a negligence that contained not a trace of arrogance or waywardness-a good-tempered negligence which allowed this woman to do all the things women are expected to do to their hair - going to the hairdresser’s, etc. The hair was rather short, a greenish yellow like unripe cornstalks, straight on the crown and unevenly, suddenly frizzy at the ends: a bad permanent wave.
The resemblance, I think, lay in the shape of the head, especially at the back. So at first it seemed as if the face had not come out of the blue, but out of the past. A resemblance - that’s what it was a vague resemblance to a woman I had once known. Thus I remember that there had been something after all: an idea, a notion, at the time of the face’s appearance although I must admit that it was not prior to the event, but simultaneous with it. and now I remember, now I realize how frivolous it is to say there had been nothing before the event. I first saw it at a party, in late summer. Out of this nothing the face appeared suddenly it was there. Perhaps that will in part explain what followed later: from the very first, that face owed nothing to me I had no part in its creation.Īnd so there was nothing. There was not even - as is sometimes the case before a face appears - a name, an announcement, some borrowed adjective or distant report to throw a seed of reality before the event, no matter how arbitrary.