Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  If you are not brave, you mustn’t enter. Wait for the remaining darkness faced with the silence, only your feet wet from the foam of something that sprays from inside us. Wait. One unsolvable for the other. Side by side, two things that do not see each other in the dark. Wait. Not for the end of the silence but for the blessed help of a third element, the light of dawn.

  Afterward you will never again forget. There’s no use even fleeing to another city. For when you least expect to you may recognize it — suddenly. While crossing the street amid cars honking. Between one phantasmagoric burst of laughter and another. After a word uttered. Sometimes in the very heart of the word. The ears are haunted, the vision blurs — here it is. And this time it’s a ghost.

  A Full Afternoon

  (“Uma tarde plena”)

  The marmoset is as small as a rat, and the same color.

  The woman, after sitting on the bus and casting a peaceful, proprietary glance over the seats, choked back a scream: beside her, in the fat man’s hand, was something that looked like a fidgety rat and that in fact was the liveliest marmoset. The first seconds of woman versus marmoset were spent trying to feel that it was not a rat in disguise.

  Once this was accomplished, some delightful and intense moments began: observing the animal. The whole bus, as it happened, was doing nothing else.

  But the woman had the privilege of sitting right beside the main character. From where she could, for example, study the itty-bitty thing that is a marmoset’s tongue: a stroke of a red pencil.

  And there were its teeth too: you could almost count close to thousands of teeth inside that brushstroke of a mouth, and each tiny shard smaller than the next, and whiter. The marmoset didn’t close its mouth a single moment.

  Its eyes were round, hyperthyroid, complementing a slight underbite — and this combination, though it lent a strangely shameless expression, formed the somewhat cheeky face of a street kid, the ones with a permanent cold and who sniffle while sucking on candy.

  When the marmoset leaped onto the lady’s lap, she held back a frisson, and the bashful pleasure of someone who’d been singled out.

  But the other passengers looked at her in a friendly way, approving of the event, and, blushing a little, she accepted being the shy favorite. She didn’t pet it because she didn’t know if that was the right gesture to make.

  And the animal didn’t suffer from the lack of affection. In fact its owner, the fat man, bore it a solid and stern love, like a father’s for his son, a master’s for his wife. He was a man who, without smiling, had a so-called heart of gold. The expression on his face was tragic even, as if he had a mission. A mission to love? The marmoset was his dog in life.

  The bus, whipped by the breeze, as if streaming with banners, drove on. The marmoset ate a cookie. The marmoset rapidly scratched at its round ear with its dainty hind leg. The marmoset squealed. It clung to the window, and peered out as fast as it could — startling faces in passing buses that looked astonished and had no time to verify whether they’d really seen what they’d seen.

  Meanwhile, near the lady, another lady told another lady that she had a cat. Whoever had something to love, mentioned it.

  It was in that happy familial atmosphere that a truck tried to cut off the bus, there was nearly a fatal collision, the screams. Everyone rushed off. The lady, running late, for an appointment, took a taxi.

  It was only in the taxi that she recalled the marmoset.

  And she regretted with an awkward smile that — the days so full of news in the papers and so little concerning her — that events should be so poorly distributed that a marmoset and a near-disaster could happen at the same time.

  “I’ll bet,” she thought, “that nothing else will happen to me for a long time, I’ll bet I’m in for a dry spell.” Which was generally how things went for her.

  But that same day other things did happen. All of which even fell under the category of goods to declare. They just weren’t communicable. That woman was, moreover, a bit silent with herself and didn’t understand herself very well.

  But that’s how it goes. And no one’s ever heard of a marmoset that failed to be born, live and die — just because it didn’t understand itself or wasn’t understood.

  In any case it had been an afternoon streaming with banners.

  Note to Erico Verissimo

  I don’t agree when you say: “Sorry, but I am not profound.”

  You are profoundly human — and what more can you want from a person? You have a greatness of spirit. A kiss to you, Érico.

  Such Gentleness

  (“Tanta mansidão”)

  So the dark hour, perhaps the darkest, in broad daylight, preceded that thing that I don’t even want to attempt to define. In broad daylight it was night, and that thing I still don’t want to define is a peaceful light inside me, and they call it joy, gentle joy. I am a bit disoriented as if a heart had been torn from me, and in its place were now the sudden absence, an almost palpable absence of what before was an organ bathed in the darkness of pain. I am not feeling a thing. But it’s the opposite of a torpor. It’s a lighter and more silent way of existing.

  But I am also uneasy. I was prepared to console my anguish and my pain. But how do I deal with this simple and peaceful joy. I’m just not used to not needing my own comfort. The word comfort occurred without my sensing it, and I didn’t notice, and when I went to seek it, it had already transformed into flesh and spirit, it now no longer existed as thought.

  I’ll go to the window then, it’s raining hard. Out of habit I’m searching the rain for something that at another time would have served as comfort for me. But I have no pain to be comforted.

  Ah, I know. I’m now searching the rain for a joy so great that it becomes acute, and which puts me in contact with an acuteness akin to the acuteness of pain. But the search is no use. I am at the window and this is all that happens: I see the rain with benevolent eyes, and the rain sees me in harmony with me. We are both busy flowing. How long will this state of mine last? I realize that, with this question, I am taking my pulse to feel where that painful throbbing from before will be. And I see that there is no throbbing of pain.

  Only this: it is raining and I am watching the rain. What simplicity. I never thought that the world and I would reach this point of wheat. The rain falls not because it needs me, and I watch the rain not because I need it. But we are as united as rainwater is to rain. And I am not giving thanks for anything. If I, just after being born, hadn’t involuntarily and forcibly taken the path I did — and I would always have been what I truly am now: a peasant in a field where it is raining. Not even thanking God or nature. The rain doesn’t give thanks for anything either. I am not a thing that gives thanks for being transformed into something else. I am a woman, I am a person, I am an awareness, I am a body looking out the window. As the rain isn’t grateful for not being a rock. It is rain. Perhaps that is what we could call being alive. No more than this, but this: alive. And just alive with a gentle joy.

  Soul Storm

  (“Tempestade de almas”)

  Ah, for all I know, I wasn’t born, ah, for all I know, I wasn’t born. Madness is neighbor to the cruelest prudence. I swallow the madness because it calmly makes me hallucinate. The ring you gave me was made of glass and broke and love didn’t end, but in its place, hatred of those who love. The chair for me is an object. Useless while I’m looking at it. Tell me please what time it is so I can know that I’m living at this time. Creativity is unleashed by a germ and I don’t have that germ today but I have the incipient madness that in itself is a valid creation. I have nothing more to do with the validity of things. I am freed or lost. I’m going to tell you all a secret: life is fatal. We keep this secret in muteness each faced with ourselves because it’s convenient, otherwise we would make every instant fatal. The chair object has always interested me. I look at this one which is old, bought at an a
ntique shop, Empire style; you couldn’t imagine a greater simplicity of line, contrasting with the red felt seat. I love objects all the more when they don’t love me. But if I don’t understand what I write the fault is not my own. I must speak because speaking saves. But I don’t have a single word to say. The words already spoken gag my mouth. What exactly does one person say to another? Besides “how’s it going?” If they allowed the madness of candor, what would people say to one another? And the worst is what a person would say to himself, but that would be salvation, though candor is determined on a conscious level and the terror of candor comes from the part that exists in the utterly vast unconsciousness that joins me to the world and to the creative unconsciousness of the world. Today is a day with many stars in the sky, at least that’s what is promised by this sad afternoon that a human word would save.

  I open my eyes wide, and it’s no use: I merely see. But the secret, this I neither see nor sense. The record player is broken and not to live with music is to betray the human condition that is surrounded by music. Besides, music is an abstraction of thought, I’m speaking of Bach, Vivaldi, Handel. I can only write if I am free, and free from censure, otherwise I succumb. I look at the Empire chair and this time it’s as if it too had looked and seen me. The future is mine while I live. In the future they’ll have more time to live, and, to haphazardly write. In the future, they say: as far as I know, I wasn’t born. Marly de Oliveira, I don’t write you letters because I only know how to be intimate. Besides I only know how to be intimate whatever the circumstance: that’s why I tend to be quiet. Will everything that’s never been done, be done one day? The future of technology threatens to destroy all that is human in mankind, but technology doesn’t reach madness; and so that’s where the human part of mankind has sought refuge. I see the flowers in the vase: they are wildflowers, born without being planted, they are beautiful and yellow. But my cook said: what ugly flowers. Just because it’s hard to understand and love something spontaneous and Franciscan. Understanding something hard is no advantage, but loving something easy to love is a great step up the human ladder. I am forced to tell so many lies. But I’d like not to have to lie to myself. Otherwise what do I have left? Truth is the final residue of all things, and in my unconscious is the truth that is the same as the world’s. The Moon is, as Paul Éluard would say, éclatante de silence.* Today I don’t know whether we’ll be able to see the Moon because it’s already getting late and I don’t see it in the sky. Once, I looked up at the night sky, circumscribing it with my head leaning back, and I got dizzy from all the stars you see in the countryside, since the sky in the countryside is clear. There is no logic, if you think about it a little, to the perfectly balanced illogic of nature. Of human nature too. What would become of the world, of the cosmos, if mankind didn’t exist. If I could always write the way I’m writing right now I’d be in the middle of that tempestade de cerebro that means brainstorm. Who invented the chair? Someone with love for himself. So he invented a greater comfort for his body. Then centuries passed and never again did anyone really pay attention to a chair, since using it is merely automatic. You need courage for a brainstorm: you never know what might come frighten us. The sacred monster has died: in its place was born a little girl who was alone. I am well aware that I’ll have to stop, not for lack of words, but because these things, and above all those I only thought and didn’t write, don’t normally get published in newspapers.

  * * *

  * French: “exploding with silence.”

  Natural Life

  (“Vida ao natural”)

  So in Rio there was a place with a hearth. And when she realized that, besides the cold, it was raining in the trees, she couldn’t believe that so much had been given her. The harmony of the world with whatever it was she didn’t even realize she needed as in a hunger. It was raining, raining. The crackling fire winks at her and at the man. He, the man, takes care of things she doesn’t even thank him for; he stokes the fire in the hearth, which for him is no more than a duty he was born with. And she — constantly restless, doer of things and seeker of novelties — well she doesn’t even remember to stoke the fire: that’s not her role, since that’s what your man is for. Since she’s no damsel, let the man carry out his mission. The most she does is sometimes goad him: “that log,” she tells him, “that one hasn’t caught yet.” And he, an instant before she finishes the sentence that would clarify things, he’s already noticed the log on his own, being her man, and is already stoking the log. Not at her command, she who’s the wife of a man and who’d lose her status if she gave him orders. His other hand, the free one, is within her reach. She knows, and doesn’t take it. She wants his hand, she knows she does, and doesn’t take it. She has exactly what she needs: she could do it if she wanted.

  Ah, and to say this will end, that on its own it cannot last. No, she doesn’t mean the fire, she means what she feels. What she feels never lasts, what she feels always ends, and might never return. So she pounces on the moment, devours its fire, and the sweet fire burns, burns, blazes. Then, she who knows that all will end, takes the man’s free hand, and as she clasps it in hers, she sweetly burns, burns, blazes.

  THE VIA CRUCIS

  OF THE BODY

  (“A via crucis do corpo”)

  My soul breaketh for your desire.

  (Psalms 119:12)

  I, who understand the body. And its cruel demands. I have always known the body. Its dizzying vortex. The grave body.

  (A still-unnamed character of mine)

  For these things I weep. Mine eye runneth down with water.

  (Lamentations of Jeremiah)

  And let all flesh bless his holy name for ever and ever.

  (Psalm of David)

  Who has ever witnessed a love life and not seen it drowned in tears of disaster or regret?

  (I don’t know who said this.)

  Explanation

  (“Explicação”)

  The poet Álvaro Pacheco, my Publisher at Artenova, commissioned three stories from me about things that, he said, really happened. The facts I had, what I lacked was imagination. And it was a dangerous subject. I replied that I didn’t know how to make up stories on commission. Yet — as he was talking to me on the phone — I was already feeling inspiration strike. The phone conversation was on Friday. I started on Saturday. On Sunday morning three stories were ready: “Miss Algrave,” “The Body,” and “Via Crucis.” I myself was amazed. All the stories in this book hit hard. And I myself suffered the most. I was shocked by reality. If there are indecencies in the stories it’s not my fault. Needless to say they didn’t happen to me, my family and friends. How do I know? Knowing. Artists know things. I just want to say that I write not for money but on impulse. They’ll throw stones at me. Big deal. I don’t play games, I’m a serious woman. Anyway it was a challenge.

  Today is May twelfth, Mother’s Day. It didn’t make sense to write stories on this day that I wouldn’t want my sons to read because I’d be ashamed. So I said to my editor: I’ll only publish under a pseudonym. I’d even chosen a pretty nice name: Cláudio Lemos. But he wouldn’t have it. He said I should be free to write whatever I wanted. I gave in. What could I do? except be my own victim. I only beg God that no one commissions anything else from me. Because, apparently, I just might rebelliously obey, I the unfree.

  Someone read my stories and said that’s not literature, it’s trash. I agree. But there’s a time for everything. There’s also the time for trash. This book is a bit sad because I discovered, like a silly child, that this is a dog-eat-dog world.

  This is a book of thirteen (13) stories. But it could have been fourteen. I don’t want that. Because I’d be betraying the trust of a simple man who told me his life story. He drives a cart on a farm. And he told me: “To avoid bloodshed, I split from my wife, she went astray and led my sixteen-year-old daughter astray.” He has an eighteen-year-old son who doesn’t even want
to hear his own mother’s name spoken. And that’s how things are.

  C. L.

  P. S. — “The Man Who Showed Up” and “For the Time Being” were also written that same accursed Sunday. Today, May 13, Monday, the day the slaves were freed — and therefore me too — I wrote “Blue Danube,” “Pig Latin,” and “Praça Mauá.” “The Sound of Footsteps” was written days later on a farm, in the darkness of the vast night.

  I once tried to look at a person’s face up close — a girl selling tickets at the movies. To learn the secret of her life. In vain. The other person is an enigma. And with the eyes of a statue: blind.

  .

  Miss Algrave

  She was liable to be judged. That’s why she didn’t tell anyone anything. If she did, people wouldn’t believe her because they didn’t believe in reality. But she, who lived in London, where ghosts exist down dark alleys, knew the truth.

  Her day, Friday, had been like all the rest. It didn’t happen until Saturday night. But on Friday she did everything as usual. Though an awful memory tormented her: when she was little, about seven, she’d play house with her cousin Jack, in Granny’s big bed. And they’d do everything to make babies, without success. She had never seen Jack again nor did she wish to. If she was guilty, so was he.

  Single, of course, a virgin, of course. She lived alone in a top floor flat in Soho. That day she’d gone grocery shopping: vegetables and fruit. Because she thought eating meat was a sin.