Synopsis

Teresa has always kept a secret of which she is now the sole custodian. She is old, stubborn, and when she senses that her mind and memory have become fragile, she decides not to jeopardize what she has kept hidden for a lifetime. So one evening she lies down in bed and never gets up: for ten years, "silent and motionless, she stared at what others called emptiness and which she had learned to interpret." Her family, however, stubbornly moves the bed to the center of the living room and the exuberant life of the house, which is all female: in addition to Teresa, there are her daughters, Irene and Flora, her cousin Rusì, the Peruvian caregiver Pilar, and Nina, her granddaughter. It is she who tells their story, which begins as her grandmother is dying and the five women gather around her to watch over her. Before leaving, Teresa gives them four oracles—one carried by the wind (like the one that showed Ulysses the way home), one written on her skin (as tradition says happened to Epimenides), one made of fog and poetry (as in the presence of the Pythia of Delphi), one that becomes lightning (according to the tradition of the Erythraean Sibyl)… These are oracles that untie the knot blocking their lives, freeing them from fear, guilt, the past, and the inability to face their future. And, by freeing their lives, Teresa finally frees herself.