The Besieged City

by Clarice Lispector

  At sunset invisible roosters would still crow. And mingling with the metallic dust of the factories the smell of the cows would nourish the dusk. But at night, with the streets suddenly deserted, you could already breathe in the silence with uneasiness, as in a city; and on the upper floors blinking with light everyone seemed to be seated. The nights would smell of manure and were cool. Sometimes it would rain.

  The tumultuous life of Market Street was out of place in those surroundings where an old-fashioned taste reigned over the wrought-iron balconies, over the flat facades of the houses. And in the little church whose modest architecture had been erected in the old silence. Slowly, however, the stone square got lost amidst the cries with which the cart-drivers would imitate the animals in order to talk to them. Due to the increasingly urgent need for transport, waves of horses had invaded the township, and in the still-rustic children the secret desire to gallop was being born. A bay colt had even given a boy a deadly kick. And the place where the daring child had died was looked at by people with a reproach that they didn’t really know where to direct.

  With their baskets under their arms they would stop and look around.

  Until a newspaper found out about the matter and with a certain pride an article was read — in which there was no lack of irony about the slowness with which a number of townships were becoming civilized — with the title of: “The Crime of the Horse in a Township.”

  This was the first clear name in Sāo Geraldo, and someone finally being called, the residents were looking with resentment and admiration at the big animals that were invading the flat city at a trot. And that would suddenly halt with a long neigh, hooves upon the ruins. Inhaling with wild nostrils as if they’d known another era in their blood.

  But at two in the afternoon the streets would grow dry and almost deserted, the sun instead of revealing things would hide them with light: the sidewalks were stretching indefinitely and Sāo Geraldo was becoming a big city. Three stone women were holding up the portico of the modernist building still obstructed by some scaffolding: it was the only place with shade. A man had posted himself underneath. Ah! a bird was saying cutting sidelong the intense light. In reply the three women were holding up the building. Ah! the bird was crying while moving off over the rooftops. A dog was sniffing the sunlit sewers. Widely spaced men — card-players in straw hats with toothpicks in their mouths — were watching. A black face with white eyes came out of Iron Crown Charcoal Works. Lucrécia Neves stuck her head into the coolness of the charcoal works; she looked around a bit. When she drew it back — there was the sidewalk . . . Such reality, the girl was seeing. Each thing. She twisted her head as a way of looking. Each thing. But suddenly, in the silence of the sun, a team of horses ran out from a corner. For a moment they froze with raised hooves. Sparkling at their mouths.

  Everyone watched from their posts, hard, separated.

  Once the dazzle of the apparition had passed the horses curved their necks, lowered their hooves — the vagrants in straw hats moved off quickly, a window slammed shut. Reactivated Lucrécia entered the store.

  When she left with her packages, the streets had already been transformed. Instead of the emptiness of the sun each thing was moving along the path of its own forms utilizing the slightest shadows. The township was now insignificant and painstaking: the afternoon had begun. Wherever there was water, the breeze was ruffling it. Iron shutters rolled up with the first jangling and the variety shop was revealed: the shop of things. The older an object, the more denuded it became. The form forgotten during its use was rising now in the shop window for the incomprehension of eyes — and that’s how the girl was watching, coveting the little box of pink china.

  There were two flowers painted on the lid.

  Until the shadow of the mango tree stretched across the sidewalk. Once it reached that point the afternoon became immutable. Some folks thought about a picnic. But they didn’t get around to it: one stayed standing on the corner — another was looking through the curtain of a window— another counted the stitches of her needlepoint one more time.

  On that same day, when the sun was about to set, gold spread over clouds and over stones. The inhabitants’ faces became golden like armor and that’s how their rumpled hair was shining. Dusty factories were whistling continually, the wagon wheel gained a halo. In that pale gold in the breeze was an ascension of an unsheathed sword — that’s how the statue in the square was rising. Passing through the streets more softly the men in the light seemed to come from the horizon and not from work. The township of charcoal and iron had transported itself to the top of a hill, the branches of the almond trees were swaying. Horses, the black earth and the dry cistern in the square had lent a certain arrogance to the residents of Sāo Geraldo. And a boldness that recalled anger without rage. The men would often say to one another: what’s up! don’t you recognize me! it was common to have eyes gray and shining like plaques.

  On Sunday morning the air would smell of steel and the dogs would bark at people leaving Mass. And in the afternoon, in the first anxieties of a city Sunday, the clean people on the street would look up: in a house someone was practicing the saxophone. They’d listen. As in a city, they already didn’t know where to go.

  Despite the progress the township retained almost deserted places, right on the border of the countryside. These places soon took the name of “promenades.” And there were also people who, invisible in the former life, were now gaining a certain importance simply for refusing the new age. Old Efigênia lived an hour’s walk past the Gate. When her husband had died she’d kept up the small corral, not wanting to get mixed up with the nascent sin. And though she only went to Market Street to deposit her milk bottles, she’d become a bit the boss of Sāo Geraldo. She’d stop by a store, with her dry gaze that didn’t seem to need to see, they’d ask her laughing from embarrassment how things were going, as if she could know more than everyone else. Since from Sāo Geraldo’s own development a timid desire for spirituality had been born, of which the A.F.Y.S.G. was one of the results. When Efigênia would say she awoke at dawn, she created great unease in the merchants who, in their capacity as employers, were already starting to say: Sāo Geraldo needs a guideline. Though the spiritual life they’d vaguely attribute to Efigênia seemed to boil down to her neither agreeing or disagreeing, in not getting caught up even in herself, her austerity had reached that point. Of being silent and severe as happened to people who’d never had to think. Whereas in Sāo Geraldo people were starting to talk a lot.

  It was at that time of breeze and indecision, at that moment of a still barely built city, when the wind is an omen and the moonlight horrifies with its sign — it was in the clearing of this new age that the Association of Feminine Youth of Sāo Geraldo was born and died. Initially devoted to charity, the group — whipped up by the engines of the power plant, interrupted by the traffic of the horses and by the sudden whistles of the factories — unexpectedly came to have its own anthem, and in a turnaround that frightened even the members — its aim was now that of ennobling beautiful things. The Association would have perhaps stuck to organizing raffles and recreational activities if not for Cristina who would light a fire that was void and destined for the void, in which the members would be consumed in the name of the soul that must progress. Gradually the young women would gather with an ardor that in fact already had no cause. In the afternoon you’d see entering the meetinghouse hurried groups of small young women, with low hips and long hair, the feminine type of that area. In the name of an already frightening hope they’d spur themselves on and express themselves in the anthem that spoke with barely contained violence of the joy of flowers, Sundays and goodness. They were afraid of the city that was being born. On the sung Sundays they would sew, at noon breaking off suffocated, running their hands over their lips that soft hair would darken; they went to bed early. And in the great night of Sāo Geraldo at last some thing was happening whose confused and
dusty meaning they vainly were trying by day to sing with open mouths. Listening in their sleep, squirming, summoned and unable to go, disturbed by the irreplaceable importance that each thing and each being has in a city being born. But Cristina would goad them at the next meeting. Her presence was enough to agitate the group and, soon enough, amid projects of purity and love for the soul, without a brighter word able to be uttered in the gloomy meeting room, they’d all be excited toward the path of goodness: Cristina is our vanguard, they’d say smiling. It was a sneaky attempt at wit where it was least expected. While Cristina with an ease of intelligence was establishing new principles: the life that you carry within is not worldly, she’d say, the sacrifice of the flesh is to be fulfilled as flesh, she’d say. The factories would whistle announcing the end of work. Soon you’d also hear the stores’ iron gratings coming down — but the girls were having trouble separating from each other and in the already dark room were moving about not knowing what to do.

  Cristina was a young woman short as a woman should be, a little fat as a woman ought to be. She was the most advanced girl in the township. Which didn’t mean she attracted the attention of men. These, more innocent and loyal than the women of Sāo Geraldo, would approach her out of a certain curiosity: she smelled of milk, sweat, clothes of the body — they’d just sniff and walk away.

  When Lucrécia joined the A.F.Y.S.G. she already found the members allowing themselves so much spiritual liberty that they no longer knew what to be. From exteriorizing themselves so much they’d ended up like the flowers they sang of, gaining a meaning that went beyond the existence of each one, getting worked up like the already restless streets of Sāo Geraldo. They’d finally formed the type of person adapted to living at that time in a township.

  Lucrécia had approached attracted by the idea of dances but Cristina and she looked at each other from the first moment as enemies; except Lucrécia wasn’t intelligent and was defeated. Moreover everything there seemed strange to the girl, and the word “ideal,” which the others used so much, sounded unfamiliar to her. “The ideal, the ideal!” but what did they mean by the ideal! she said to them stubborn and even haughty. The girls, confused, exchanged glances spitefully. Lucrécia didn’t take long to retreat while Cristina was gaining in strength, becoming crueler and happier. And soon the disturbance caused by Lucrécia was forgotten. Just as the population had already stopped blaming the horses.

  The horses, now unnoticed out of habit, were nonetheless the cunning power over Sāo Geraldo. And Lucrécia too, ignored by the Association.

  The girl and a horse represented the two races of builders that had initiated the tradition of the future metropolis, both could figure on its coat of arms. The measly function of the girl in her time was an archaic function that is reborn every time a town is formed, her history formed with effort the spirit of a city. You couldn’t know which kingdom she’d represent at the new colony since her work was all too brief, and almost unexploitable: everything that she was seeing was some thing. In her and in a horse the impression was the expression. Really a very crude function — she would indicate the intimate names of things, she, the horses and a few others; and later things would be looked at by that name. Reality was needing the girl in order to have a shape. “What is seen” — was her only inner life; and what was seen became her vague history. Which if revealed to her would only give her the recollection of a thought that crossed her mind before falling asleep. Despite not being able to recognize herself in the revelation of her secret life, she really was directing it; she was aware of it indirectly as the plant would be touched if its root were wounded. It was in her small irreplaceable destiny to pass through the greatness of spirit as if through a danger, and then decline in the wealth of an age of gold and darkness, and then disappear from view — that’s what happened to Sāo Geraldo.

  The idea of “progressing,” the Association’s, had found Lucrécia with already awakened attention, wanting to get out of the difficulty and even use it — because difficulty was her only tool. Until reaching the extreme docility of vision. Wagons were going by. The church was ringing its bells. Enslaved horses were trotting. The tower of the power plant in the sun. All this could be seen from a window, sniffing the new air. And the city started taking the shape that her gaze was revealing.

  At this opportune moment in which people were living, each time something was seen — new extensions would emerge, and one more meaning would be created: that was the hardly usable intimate life of Lucrécia Neves. And this was Sāo Geraldo, whose future History, as in the memory of a buried city, would be just the history of what had been seen.

  Even Spiritist centers were starting to form diffidently in the Catholic township and Lucrécia herself made up that she’d sometimes hear a voice. But in fact it would be easier for her to see the supernatural: touching reality is what would make her fingers tremble. She’d never heard a voice, or even wished to hear one; she was less important, and much busier.

  And that’s how Sāo Geraldo was heaped up with creaky wagons, houses and markets, with plans for building a bridge. You could hardly make out its radiant and peaceful moistness that on certain mornings would come from the mist and emerge from the nostrils of the horses — the radiant moistness was one of the most difficult realities to distinguish in the township. From the highest window of the Convent, on a Sunday — after crossing downtown, the Gate and the train depot — people would lean out and discern the moistness through the dusk: there . . . there was the township extended. And what they were seeing was the thought that they could never think. “It’s the loveliest promenade in Sāo Geraldo,” they’d then say nodding. And there was no other way to get to know the township; Sāo Geraldo was exploitable only with the gaze. Lucrécia Neves too standing was watching the city that from within was invisible and that distance was turning into a dream once again: she’d lean out without any individuality, trying only to look directly at things.

  The Sunday pilgrimage to the Convent now over, the houses lighting up one by one — the more you penetrated the center of a city the less you’d know what a city is like.

  Ah, if I could go this very day to a dance, the girl was thinking on that Sunday night, gently touching the little table in the living room. She really liked having fun. Content, standing beside the little table, laughing at the idea of a dance, her yellow teeth innocently showing.

  But at least she’d take walks as much as she could, among the things in the Market, in her hat, with her purse, the odd run in her stockings. She’d come in and out of the house, or keep busy for hours with clothes, transforming, mending; she had a few boyfriends and got tired a lot; with her hat and old gloves she’d cross the Fish Market.

  And she’d take walks. Even with Doctor Lucas, when they’d bump into each other, their relationship almost that of patient and doctor, his wife ill in the Sāo Geraldo Sanatorium, and Lucrécia Neves proud to walk around with a man with a degree — they’d go down six cement steps toward the park that stretched out beneath the township’s level. Moist leaves were lying on the ground — they’d walk looking at the ground. And from the plants a new smell was coming, of some thing that was being built and that only the future would see.

  The park of Sāo Geraldo was yellow and gray with long blackened stalks — and butterflies. And that was her friendship with a young and austere man. If Lucrécia Neves wasn’t sensual the difference between the sexes gave her a certain happiness. In the park was some playground equipment, black lampposts, soldiers with their girlfriends — it was one of the promenades of Sāo Geraldo. Doctor Lucas had lent her a book once but she had a hard time taking it in, as if out of stubbornness and excessive patience. Anyway she’d never needed intelligence. They sat on a slope and because he wrote for the “Socio-Medical Journal” the girl said maybe one day he’d write the story of his life! she said and looked up to the sky with haughtiness. Everything was a lie and it was getting cold, the doctor was advisin
g her — and she deep down possessing that happy unease that was mistrust about whatever might come from a man: the girl was very mistrustful. And slow. For she’d talk and talk with the doctor and couldn’t convey anything to him. But at least she was peering at everything with such clarity: she was seeing soldiers and children. Her form of expression boiled down to taking a good look, she so enjoyed going on walks! — and that’s how the inhabitants of Sāo Geraldo were, perhaps inspired by the sharpness of the air throughout that region, prone to heavy rains and to high summers. Even when she was little Lucrécia would already keep her eyes open for hours in bed, listening to the noise of the odd wagon that passing by would seem to mark her earthly destiny. While in other places happier children, daughters of fishermen, were going out to sea. Later, having grown, the children in the early morning were no longer home — they’d return dirty, ragged, with some thing in their hands.

  Perhaps summoned by the beginning of the vision she’d had from the window of the Convent, on Monday the girl was seeking Sāo Geraldo’s other promenade: the stream. She’d pass through the Gate and cross the rails, quickly descend the slope while peering at her feet. For an instant immobilized she’d seem to reflect deeply. Though she wasn’t thinking about anything. And suddenly, irrepressible, she’d go in the opposite direction — climb the hill in the pasture, tired from her own persistence. As she’d climb she’d make out on the left a ruined section of the township, the blackened houses . . . Up ahead you couldn’t see anything but the same ascending line that would finally settle on the hill.

  Where she’d stand peering out. Still breathless from the climb. Serious, obedient. Finding only the clouds that were passing and the great brightness. But she didn’t seem disappointed.

  Despite the clear sky the air on the hill was blustery and, at times unrestrained, would violently drag a piece of paper or a leaf. The tin cans and the flies couldn’t quite populate the field. At this time of day you’d trample ardent weeds and couldn’t subjugate with a glance the dryness and the wind of the plateau — a wave of dust rising with the gallop of an imaginary horse. The girl was waiting patiently. What sort of resemblance had she come seeking on the hill? she was peering out. Until the end of the afternoon started awakening the blinking moisture that the afternoon makes rise in the countryside. And the possibility of murmuring that darkness favors.