Silence and Darkness

Silencio y oscuridad

Silvina Innocencia Ocampo

Luminous letters on the front of the building announced: “SILENCE AND DARKNESS.” The sign demanded attention. Those older than fifty were not allowed to enter; the spectacle could bring on depression or a heart attack. Those younger than fourteen weren’t allowed either, for they could throw noisemakers, cause a ruckus and bother the audience. In the fresh, celestial theatre, seated on cushioned seats, spectators closed their eyes according to the instructions handed out at the theatre’s entrance; later – always according to the instructions – so that the shock wasn’t too great upon opening their eyes, they leaned their heads back to contemplate what they hadn’t seen in a long time: absolute darkness; and to hear what they also hadn’t heard in a long time: total silence.

There are different gradations of silence just as there are different gradations of darkness. Everything was calculated so as to avoid startling the public too much. There had been suicides before. At first, one could hear the infinitesimal singing of crickets, which gradually diminished until the ear got used to it, and then it would surge once again from silence’s terrifying depths. Then, the subtlest whisper of leaves could be heard, rising and falling until arriving at the chromatic scales of wind. After that, one could hear the whisper of a silk skirt, and finally, before arriving to the abyss of the silence, the murmur of pins falling on a tile floor. The silence and darkness technicians had managed to invent noises analogous to the silence in order to arrive, gradually, at silence. A light rain of broken glass over cotton served these ends for a time, but without satisfactory results; the far-off crumpling of silk paper seemed better but wasn’t quite right either; sometimes the first inventions are the best ones.

At the theatre’s entrance, colored markings on enormous maps of the world showed the sites where silence could best be heard, and the years in which it was distorted, according to statistics. Other maps indicated the places where one could obtain the most complete darkness, with important historical dates up to its extinction.

Many people didn’t want to see the spectacle, as important and fashionable as it was. Some said that it was immoral to spend so much money in order to see nothing; others said that it didn’t make sense to readjust to what they’d lost so long ago; others, the stupidest of them all, exclaimed, “Let’s return to the age of cinema.”

But Clinamen wanted to go to the theatre of darkness and silence. She wanted to go with her boyfriend to find out whether she really loved him. “The world has become aggressive for lovers,” she exclaimed, dressed in a miniskirt. Light passed through the doors, sounds came from various distances.

“Only in the ancient darkness and silence will I know to tell you whether I love you,” Clinamen said to her boyfriend. But Clinamen’s boyfriend knew that everything his girlfriend did she did out of timidity. He didn’t take her to the theatre of silence and darkness, and they never found out that they did love one another.