THERE is much of life passed on the balcony in a country where the
summer unrolls in six moon-lengths, and where the nights have to
come with a double endowment of vastness and splendor to compensate
for the tedious, sun-parched days. And in that country the women
love to sit and talk together of summer nights, on balconies, in
their vague, loose, white garments, - men are not balcony sitters,
- with their sleeping children within easy hearing, the stars
breaking the cool darkness, or the moon making a show of light -
oh, such a discreet show of light - through the vines. And the
children inside, waking to go from one sleep into another, hear the
low, soft mother-voices on the balcony, talking about this person
and that, old times, old friends, old experiences; and it seems to
them, hovering a moment in wakefulness, that there is no end of the
world or time, or of the mother-knowledge; but, illimitable as it
is, the mother-voices and the mother-love and protection fill it
all, - with their mother's hand in theirs, children are not afraid
even of God, - and they drift into slumber again, their little
dreams taking all kinds of pretty reflections from the great
unknown horizon outside, as their fragile soap-bubbles take on
reflections from the sun and clouds. Experiences, reminiscences,
episodes, picked up as only women know how to pick them up from
other women's lives, - or other women's destinies, as they prefer
to call them, - and told as only women know how to relate them;
what God has done or is doing with some other woman whom they have
known - that is what interests women once embarked on their own
lives, - the embarkation takes place at marriage, or after the
marriageable time, - or, rather, that is what interests the women
who sit of summer nights on balconies. For in those long-moon
countries life is open and accessible, and romances seem to be
furnished real and gratis, in order to save, in a languor-breeding
climate, the ennui of reading and writing books. Each woman has a
different way of picking up and relating her stories, as each one
selects different pieces, and has a personal way of playing them on
the piano.
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