That Glimpse of Truth

by David Miller

  Not only were the words that I had read last night there, new words were added, a whole paragraph:

  Look up the Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 5, verses 1 to 10. See what happened to Ananias and Sapphira his wife. You’re not getting on very fast with your scribbling, are you, Susan? Elaine and I were under the impression you were going to write Chapter Eleven. Why don’t you take a cup of cocoa and get on with it? First read Acts, V, 1–10.

  – Your affec Uncle

  Well, I shoved the book in the drawer and looked round the dining-room. I looked under the table and behind the curtains. It didn’t look as if anything had been touched. I got out of the room and locked the door, I don’t know how. I went to fetch my Bible, praying, “O God omnipotent and all-seeing direct and instruct me as to the way out of this situation, astonishing as it must appear to Thee.” I looked up the passage:

  But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession.

  And kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy to it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet.

  But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the land?

  I didn’t read any more because I knew how it went on. Ananias and Sapphira, his wife, were both struck dead for holding back the portion of the sale for themselves. This was Uncle getting at me for holding back his manuscript from the Foundation. That’s an impudence, I thought, to make such a comparison from the Bible, when he was an open and avowed sinner himself.

  I thought it all over for a while. Then I went into the dining-room and got out that last notebook. Something else had been written since I had put it away, not half an hour before:

  Why don’t you get on with Chapter Eleven? We’re waiting for it.

  I tore out the page, put the book away and locked the door. I took the page to the fire and put it on to burn. Then I went to bed.

  This went on for a month. My uncle always started the page afresh with “Chapter Eleven”, followed by a new message. He even went so far as to put in that I had kept back bits of the housekeeping money, although, he wrote, I was well paid enough. That’s a matter of opinion, and who did the economising, anyway? Always, after reading Uncle’s disrespectful comments, I burned the page, and we were getting near the end of the notebook. He would say things to show he followed me round the house, and even knew my dreams. When I went into Edinburgh for some shopping he knew exactly where I had been and what I’d bought. He and Elaine listened in to my conversations on the telephone if I rang up an old friend. I didn’t let anyone in the house except Mrs Donaldson. No more Jaimie. He even knew if I took a dose of salts and how long I had sat in the bathroom, the awful old man.

  Mrs Donaldson one morning said she was leaving. She said to me, “Why don’t you see a doctor?” I said, “Why?” But she wouldn’t speak.

  One day soon afterwards a man rang me up from the Foundation. They didn’t want to bother me, they said, but they were rather puzzled. They had found in Uncle’s letters many references to a novel. The Witch of the Pentlands, which he had been writing just before his death; and they had found among the papers a final chapter to this novel, which he had evidently written on loose pages on a train, for a letter of his, kindly provided by one of his many correspondents, proved this. Only they had no idea where the rest of the manuscript could be. In the end the witch Edith is condemned to be burned, but dies of her own will power before the execution, he said, but there must be ten more chapters leading up to it. This was Uncle’s most metaphysical work, and based on a true history, the man said, and he must stress that it was very important.

  I said that I would have a look. I rang back that afternoon and said I had found the whole book in a drawer in the dining-room.

  So the man came to get it. On the phone he sounded very suspicious, in case there were more manuscripts. “Are you sure that’s everything? You know, the Foundation’s price included the whole archive. No, don’t trust it to the mail, I’ll be there tomorrow at two.”

  Just before he arrived I took a good drink, whisky and soda, as, indeed, I had been taking from sheer need all the past month. I had brought out the notebooks. On the blank page was written:

  Goodbye, Susan. It’s lovely being a speck in the distance.

  Your affec Uncle

  THE SMALLEST WOMAN

  IN THE WORLD

  Clarice Lispector

  Like Joseph Conrad, the great Brazilian author Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) was born in Ukraine. Her family fled to Romania and then Brazil. Her first novel, Near to the Wildheart, was published when she was twenty-three. She married a diplomat, unhappily, and lived in the UK, Italy, Switzerland and the USA before returning to Brazil. She burned herself badly after falling asleep smoking a cigarette. Colm Tóibín said of her “Lispector had an ability to write as though no one had ever written before.”

  In the depths of Equatorial Africa the French explorer, Marcel Pretre, hunter and man of the world, came across a tribe of surprisingly small pygmies. Therefore he was even more surprised when he was informed that a still smaller people existed, beyond forests and distances. So he plunged farther on.

  In the Eastern Congo, near Lake Kivu, he really did discover the smallest pygmies in the world. And – like a box within a box within a box – obedient, perhaps, to the necessity nature sometimes feels of outdoing herself – among the smallest pygmies in the world there was the smallest of the smallest pygmies in the world.

  Among mosquitoes and lukewarm trees, among leaves of the most rich and lazy green, Marcel Pretre found himself facing a woman seventeen and three-quarter inches high, full-grown, black, silent – “Black as a monkey,” he informed the press – who lived in a treetop with her little spouse. In the tepid miasma of the jungle, that swells the fruits so early and gives them an almost intolerable sweetness, she was pregnant.

  So there she stood, the smallest woman in the world. For an instant, in the buzzing heat, it seemed as if the Frenchman had unexpectedly reached his final destination. Probably only because he was not insane, his soul neither wavered nor broke its bounds. Feeling an immediate necessity for order and for giving names to what exists, he called her Little Flower. And in order to be able to classify her among the recognizable realities, he immediately began to collect facts about her.

  Her race will soon be exterminated. Few examples are left of this species, which, if it were not for the sly dangers of Africa, might have multiplied. Besides disease, the deadly effluvium of the water, insufficient food, and ranging beasts, the great threat to the Likoualas are the savage Bahundes, a threat that surrounds them in the silent air, like the dawn of battle. The Bahundes hunt them with nets, like monkeys. And eat them. Like that: they catch them in nets and eat them. The tiny race, retreating, always re-treating, has finished hiding away in the heart of Africa, where the lucky explorer discovered it. For strategic defense, they live in the highest trees. The women descend to grind and cook corn and to gather greens; the men, to hunt. When a child is born, it is left free almost immediately. It is true that, what with the beasts, the child frequently cannot enjoy this freedom for very long. But then it is true that it cannot be lamented that for such a short life there had been any long, hard work. And even the language that the child learns is short and simple, merely the essentials. The Likoualas use few names; they name things by gestures and animal noises. As for things of the spirit, they have a drum. While they dance to the sound of the drum, a little male stands guard against the Bahundes, who come from no one knows where.

  That was the way, then, that the explorer discovered, standing at his very feet, the smallest existing human thing. His heart beat, because no emerald in the world is so rare. The teachings of the wise men of India are not so rare. The richest man in the world has never set eyes on such strange grace. Right there was a woman that the greed of the most exquisite dream could never have imagined. It was then that the explorer said t
imidly, and with a delicacy of feeling of which his wife would never have thought him capable: “You are Little Flower.”

  At that moment, Little Flower scratched herself where no one scratches. The explorer – as if he were receiving the highest prize for chastity to which an idealistic man dares aspire – the explorer, experienced as he was, looked the other way.

  A photograph of Little Flower was published in the colored supplement of the Sunday papers, life-size. She was wrapped in a cloth, her belly already very big. The flat nose, the black face, the splay feet. She looked like a dog.

  On that Sunday, in an apartment, a woman seeing the picture of Little Flower in the paper didn’t want to look a second time because “It gives me the creeps.”

  In another apartment, a lady felt such perverse tenderness for the smallest of the African women that – an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure – Little Flower could never be left alone to the tenderness of that lady. Who knows to what murkiness of love tenderness can lead? The woman was upset all day, almost as if she were missing something. Besides, it was spring and there was a dangerous leniency in the air.

  In another house, a little girl of five, seeing the picture and hearing the comments, was extremely surprised. In a houseful of adults, this little girl had been the smallest human being up until now. And, if this was the source of all caresses, it was also the source of the first fear of the tyranny of love. The existence of Little Flower made the little girl feel – with a deep uneasiness that only years and years later, and for very different reasons, would turn into thought – made her feel, in her first wisdom, that “sorrow is endless.”

  In another house, in the consecration of spring, a girl about to be married felt an ecstasy of pity: “Mama, look at her little picture, poor little thing! Just look how sad she is!”

  “But,” said the mother, hard and defeated and proud, “it’s the sadness of an animal. It isn’t human sadness.”

  “Oh, Mama!” said the girl, discouraged.

  In another house, a clever little boy had a clever idea: “Mummy, if I could put this little woman from Africa in little Paul’s bed when he’s asleep? When he woke up wouldn’t he be frightened? Wouldn’t he howl? When he saw her sitting on his bed? And then we’d play with her! She would be our toy!”

  His mother was setting her hair in front of the bathroom mirror at the moment, and she remembered what a cook had told her about life in an orphanage. The orphans had no dolls, and, with terrible maternity already throbbing in their hearts, the little girls had hidden the death of one of the children from the nun. They kept the body in a cupboard and when the nun went out they played with the dead child, giving her baths and things to eat, punishing her only to be able to kiss and console her. In the bathroom, the mother remembered this, and let fall her thoughtful hands, full of curlers. She considered the cruel necessity of loving. And she considered the malignity of our desire for happiness. She considered how ferociously we need to play. How many times we will kill for love. Then she looked at her clever child as if she were looking at a dangerous stranger. And she had a horror of her own soul that, more than her body, had engendered that being, adept at life and happiness. She looked at him attentively and with uncomfortable pride, that child who had already lost two front teeth, evolution evolving itself, teeth falling out to give place to those that could bite better. “I’m going to buy him a new suit,” she decided, looking at him, absorbed. Obstinately, she adorned her gap-toothed son with fine clothes; obstinately, she wanted him very clean, as if his cleanliness could emphasize a soothing superficiality, obstinately perfecting the polite side of beauty. Obstinately drawing away from, and drawing him away from, something that ought to be “black as a monkey.” Then, looking in the bathroom mirror, the mother gave a deliberately refined and social smile, placing a distance of insuperable millenniums between the abstract lines of her features and the crude face of Little Flower. But, with years of practice, she knew that this was going to be a Sunday on which she would have to hide from herself anxiety, dreams, and lost millenniums.

  In another house, they gave themselves up to the enthralling task of measuring the seventeen and three-quarter inches of Little Flower against the wall. And, really, it was a delightful surprise: she was even smaller than the sharpest imagination could have pictured. In the heart of each member of the family was born, nostalgic, the desire to have that tiny and indomitable thing for itself, that thing spared having been eaten, that permanent source of charity. The avid family soul wanted to devote itself. To tell the truth, who hasn’t wanted to own a human being just for himself? Which, it is true, wouldn’t always be convenient; there are times when one doesn’t want to have feelings.

  “I bet if she lived here it would end in a fight,” said the father, sitting in the armchair and definitely turning the page of the newspaper. “In this house everything ends in a fight.”

  “Oh, you, José – always a pessimist,” said the mother.

  “But, Mama, have you thought of the size her baby’s going to be?” said the oldest little girl, aged thirteen, eagerly.

  The father stirred uneasily behind his paper.

  “It should be the smallest black baby in the world,” the mother answered, melting with pleasure. “Imagine her serving our table, with her big little belly!”

  “That’s enough!” growled father.

  “But you have to admit,” said the mother, unexpectedly offended, “that it is something very rare. You’re the insensitive one.”

  And the rare thing itself?

  In the meanwhile, in Africa, the rare thing herself, in her heart – and who knows if the heart wasn’t black, too, since once nature has erred she can no longer be trusted – the rare thing herself had something even rarer in her heart, like the secret of her own secret: a minimal child. Methodically, the explorer studied the little belly of the smallest mature human being. It was at this moment that the explorer, for the first time since he had known her, instead of feeling curiosity, or exhaltation, or victory, or the scientific spirit, felt sick.

  The smallest woman in the world was laughing.

  She was laughing, warm, warm – Little Flower was enjoying life. The rare thing herself was experiencing the ineffable sensation of not having been eaten yet. Not having been eaten yet was something that at any other time would have given her the agile impulse to jump from branch to branch. But, in this moment of tranquility, amid the thick leaves of the Eastern Congo, she was not putting this impulse into action – it was entirely concentrated in the smallness of the rare thing itself. So she was laughing. It was a laugh such as only one who does not speak laughs. It was a laugh that the explorer, constrained, couldn’t classify. And she kept on enjoying her own soft laugh, she who wasn’t being devoured. Not to be devoured is the most perfect feeling. Not to be devoured is the secret goal of a whole life. While she was not being eaten, her bestial laughter was as delicate as joy is delicate. The explorer was baffled.

  In the second place, if the rare thing herself was laughing, it was because, within her smallness, a great darkness had begun to move.

  The rare thing herself felt in her breast a warmth that might be called love. She loved that sallow explorer. If she could have talked and had told him that she loved him, he would have been puffed up with vanity. Vanity that would have collapsed when she added that she also loved the explorer’s ring very much, and the explorer’s boots. And when that collapse had taken place, Little Flower would not have understood why. Because her love for the explorer – one might even say “profound love,” since, having no other resources, she was reduced to profundity – her profound love for the explorer would not have been at all diminished by the fact that she also loved his boots. There is an old misunderstanding about the word love, and, if many children are born from this misunderstanding, many others have lost the unique chance of being born, only because of a susceptibility that demands that it be me! me! that is loved, and not my money. But in the humidity of
the forest these cruel refinements do not exist, and love is not to be eaten, love is to find a boot pretty, love is to like the strange color of a man who isn’t black, love is to laugh for love of a shiny ring. Little Flower blinked with love, and laughed warmly, small, gravid, warm.

  The explorer tried to smile back, without knowing exactly to what abyss his smile responded, and then he was embarrassed as only a very big man can be embarrassed. He pretended to adjust his explorer’s hat better; he colored, prudishly. He turned a lovely color, a greenish-pink, like a lime at sunrise. He was undoubtedly sour.

  Perhaps adjusting the symbolic helmet helped the explorer to get control of himself, severely recapture the discipline of his work, and go on with his note-taking. He had learned how to understand some of the tribe’s few articulate words, and to interpret their signs. By now, he could ask questions.

  Little Flower answered “Yes.” That it was very nice to have a tree of her own to live in. Because – she didn’t say this but her eyes became so dark that they said it – because it is good to own, good to own, good to own. The explorer winked several times.

  Marcel Pretre had some difficult moments with himself. But at least he kept busy taking notes. Those who didn’t take notes had to manage as best they could:

  “Well,” suddenly declared one old lady, folding up the newspaper decisively, “well, as I always say: God knows what He’s doing.”

  THE WEDDING RING

  Mavis Gallant

  Mavis Gallant (1922–2014) was born in Montreal but left Canada for Europe and lived most of her life in Paris, where she died. She wrote a number of novels, Green Water, Green Sky and A Fairly Good Time, and many stories, most of which appeared first in The New Yorker. Her advice to any author was simple, and brief: “Read Chekhov.” She refused to analyze her own work saying, “I want a story to be perfectly clear and I don’t want it to be boring. C’est tout.”