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clothes responded with a lifelike shiver. She lay down and buried her face in them—no smell. Unlike everything else, animate or inanimate, Maria had no smell. The clothes were tender, caressing, but they smelled of nothing. Or maybe nothing smelled like Maria.
    Then Margarita tried to put something on; she didn’t know exactly what it was. A piece of clothing. She struggled for a while with the dark violet folds. Just when she thought she could glide her arms or her head in it, she realized there was no hole but only new layers of fabric unfolding in different directions. She persisted, slid her legs and arms blunderingly, without being able to put the thing on. Maria’s clothes also persisted, slipping off of her body to the ground. Margarita crumpled them furiously, grabbing them with both hands and pouring them over herself like water. They rolled down like streams, spreading when they reached the flat floor.
    Suddenly Margarita stopped and looked down. She was standing ankle-deep in a moving, rippling mass. She lifted one foot, then the other—the fabric filled the empty space as soon as it appeared, then it settled back into stillness. Margarita sat down again and started crying, she was not strong enough to fight the clothes. And she couldn’t put them back where they came from, either. She sat in the middle of the lake of fabric, her tears trickling down her cheeks and over the cloth. Gradually, she quieted down as something interesting began to draw her attention. The fabric did not absorb her tears; the water drops from her eyes rolled over and disappeared into the folds like translucent pearls. Margarita tried to catch them but they vanished too quickly, without leaving a trace. Then the tears stopped, and Margarita stayed on the floor, gazing absently. Her mother found her still sitting there. She lifted her up without a word and took her out of the room.
    Then there was a period when Margarita refused to change her clothes. She would feel great anxiety whenever Maria tried to force her. Her mother let her be. It was painful, Valentin remonstrated, it was unacceptable, but, as with everything in which Maria was involved, the problem reached its own resolution. Margarita stopped paying attention to clothes, she somehow forgot about them. She would put on and take off her clothes again. End of story.
    But then something else happened. Margarita saw herself for the first time. Until then she had only felt herself from within, she had learned a thing or two, but somehow one-sidedly, as if under an umbrella hiding half the world from sight.
    She began to make up her face, or more precisely, to paint her face. Her face was like a clean porcelain bowl and invited all kinds of painting. She usually stopped after doing one eye. And that’s how she went about for a long time—with one eye that was her own, and an eye that wasn’t.
    Maria was never bothered, Valentin was not happy. What now? His sister was a Cyclops. His sister was a clown. On top of that, she did it well. And sometimes snuck out of the house with only one eye painted like this.
    One day it was he who stopped her in the middle of putting on her make-up. He had come to pick her up to visit some friends. She was just finishing one eye. When he dragged her to the taxi, he couldn’t say if she had managed to finish with it or if he had interrupted her. Her eye was made-up perfectly, even Valentin couldn’t deny it.
    Margarita entered their friends’ house without the slightest embarrassment. He was walking close by her side and everyone began to turn around. Then a mirror made him stop short in his stride. He and Margarita. He and his sister. The two of them together.
    Half of her face was identical to his. As if she had merely borrowed it. For the time being. The other half… the other half was something Valentin felt unable to describe. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Names of stones dashed