TE17 Mysterious Montenegro

Franca Mancinelli

what they would learn and how they should behave. It was said that they would be in a classroomall the time, every one seated at a desk with books and notebooks, as they did now for a few hours whenever they were drawing or filling in figures with colors. A sudden thought entered her forehead, like one of those insects that enter houses and then remain prisoners of the rooms for a long time, sometimes dying before returning to where they came from. She wondered if it would be noticed, when they all stood outside of the swarm, within a rectangle from which each one replied to his or her name, that she was different . In that orderliness, in that linearity facing an adult, perhaps she would have to hide. But her guilt had already sunk so deep inside her that it was blended with her quietness. The many butterflies that she had taken between her fingers were buried, by now the white pebble borders were invisible, the wings dissolved in the earth, beneath the stairs. Something inus plummets intoa bottomless place. Small bubbles rise to the surface: slight ripples then nothing, nothing more. A sacrifice that someone carries out for us by fulfilling our vow or that we ourselves make, blindfolded and unaware, driven by invisible hands. I write because I have yielded my words. I yield my words to others’ mouths. I yield my words until I lose them, until I find myself struck dumb, gagged, at a fraction of a second from the possibility of coming back. But that second is decisive; in that second, the vision of things has already been agreed upon, the 130 Yielding Words