The Besieged City

by Clarice Lispector

  Everything she was seeing was becoming real. Looking now, without uneasiness, at the horizon sliced by smokestacks and rooftops.

  The difficult thing is that appearance was reality. Her difficulty in seeing was as if she were painting. From every wall with a pipe something irreducible was being born — a wall with pipe. The pipes: how obstinate. When it was a heavy pipe it would be: wall with heavy pipe. There was no possible error— everything that existed was perfect — things only started to exist when perfect.

  Opening now the storeroom, seeking a place to put the broom, looking. Some thing was happening over there: a rubber tube connected to a broken faucet was happening, an old coat hanging in the back, and electrical cord wrapping around an iron.

  The materials of the city!

  She was looking at the things that cannot be said. Certain arrangements of form would awaken that hollow attention in her: her merciless eyes looking, the thing letting itself be looked at mercilessly: a rubber tube connected to a broken faucet, the coat hanging behind it, the electrical cord wrapping around an iron. Seeing things is what things were. She was stomping her hoof, patient. Trying, as a way of looking at them, to be somehow stupid and solid and full of wonder — like the sun. Looking at them almost blind, obfuscated.

  After years of stubbornness, whatever was crudely spiritual in her way of looking had been accentuated.

  She was brutish, standing, a beast of burden in the sun. This was the deepest kind of meditation of which she was capable. Anyway all she had to do was think a little, and she’d become impermeable, the drowsy eye as an open way of seeing the things. Just the way of doing it, not the possessing; moving every once in a while the position of her legs.

  I know what you’re trying to do: you’re trying to see the surface but your voice is hoarse, she thought so deep and unfamiliar that she seemed to have gone to an open field in order to think, quickly returning from there in order to go on.

  You could think everything as long as you didn’t know it. Though that was still risky. Oh, but she was careful.

  Her caution would consist of having no idea what she was doing; she’d call her gaze “I’m putting away the broom”; and that precaution was enough. “Putting away the broom” was looking at the void of the little storeroom while, when a trolley passed, the entire house would shake with its trinkets, walls, clear windows and darkness.

  Even error was a discovery. Erring would make her find the other face of objects and touch their dusty sides.

  Spying. Because some thing wouldn’t exist except under intense attention; looking with a severity and a hardness that were making her not seek the cause of things, but just the thing. Severe, brief, hoarse, real, immersed in dream.

  Suddenly, as if ruffling her feathers, getting spooked: because they were untransformable things! rigid! unconsumable by paying attention! “The thing that’s there” was the final impossibility.

  And behind, the whitewash of the wall.

  What a city. The invincible city was the ultimate reality. Beyond it there would be only dying, as a conquest.

  But in the name of what king was she a spy? her patience was horrible. Her fear was that of surpassing whatever she was seeing. She was spying on the pipes, the coat and the electrical cords: they had the beauty of an airplane. Beautiful as eyeglasses — she blinked.

  At the same time she was barely aware, sometimes scratching herself almost ironically — she had nothing to do until she found a husband. Leaning on one hip. Oh, she’d just briefly landed there. None of this had anything to do with her; she was looking around unburdened, a bit insolent.

  And, if anyone thought the time had come to shout in order to scare her — he’d be the one frightened off when he saw her turn her head and peer calmly, slightly sarcastic, straight into the eyes of whoever wanted to frighten her. That’s how Lucrécia Neves was, blinking.

  And drawing away now with an indecipherable memory. Toc, toc, toc, she was walking erect. Toc, toc, toc, — that was her way of reducing all exterior things to a childish and mechanical noise with the heels of her horseshoes. The vision of the storeroom had had the same character as her taking a trolley one day! Or going to the dentist. Lovely as a motorcycle — she was clapping.

  She then went to the back balcony, hung out the dishrag, looked at the yard — nobody could savor a deserted city like Lucrécia Neves, and without taking a crumb for herself. Without touching, without transforming: looking at the yard of the store, leaning her whole body forward. Among the ruins she saw the lizard running off and kicking up dust!

  The most difficult part of the house was missing: the parlor, the garrison.

  Where each clever thing would exist as if so that others wouldn’t be seen? such was the great defense system. She began carefully, protecting herself with the thought that she was going in there to rest a little, mama, because I washed all the dishes, I’m exhausted.

  The balcony was open. And in the middle the small table upon its legs. The chairs on guard. Oh, the infinite positions of the room, as if someone were lying on the floor and looking at the ceiling lamp sway . . . you could get dizzy on the rim of a trinket. And they were always the same things: towers, calendars, streets, chairs — yet camouflaged, unrecognizable. Made for enemies.

  The things were difficult because, if they explained themselves, they wouldn’t go from incomprehensible to comprehensible, but from one nature to another. Just the gaze wouldn’t alter them.

  Beneath the wheels of a wagon, the mirror on the wall reflected itself in clarity and light. But gradually the wounded room stopped making sounds, while Lucrécia was calming down. Looking at her nails: that’s what she was doing, those nails dulled by soap.

  And, everything that had withdrawn with so much reserve upon her entrance, started breathing again full of wood, porcelain, worn varnish and shadow. In the mirror was floating the knowledge of the entire room.

  The flower! the flowers were expressing themselves with petals, the curtain advancing to the middle of the room. Ana would remove the dust every day but couldn’t dust the calm penumbra — and the room was growing old with the frozen trinkets.

  Since Lucrécia Neves didn’t understand them, she didn’t know how to look at them: she was seeking one way, some other, and suddenly: there were the trinkets. Almost the word: the trinkets.

  How to say that the trinkets were there? ah! she stared with brutality at those things made from the things themselves, falsely domesticable, hens that eat out of your hands but recognize you not— only borrowed things, one thing lent to another and another lent to another. Remaining on the shelves or staying indifferent on the floor and on the ceiling — impersonal and proud as a rooster. Since everything that had been created had at the same time been loosed.

  Then Lucrécia, she herself independent, beheld them. So anonymously that the rules could be upended without a problem, and she’d be the thing seen by the objects.

  It wasn’t for nothing that she’d displayed herself so often on the hill in the pasture awaiting her turn.

  Because now she seemed finally to have attained in herself the peak of those peaceful things beneath one’s gaze. Moving her own stupidity forward with majesty to the highest point of the hill, her head dominating the township.

  What you don’t know how to think, you see! the maximum accuracy of imagination in this world was at least seeing: who’d ever thought up the daylight? at least Lucrécia was seeing and stomping her hoof.

  Experiencing such exterior joy that it was already other people’s joy that she was feeling, impersonal god for whom the clouds were a way for him not to be on earth and the mountains his way of being farther off.

  The girl’s joy was like this:

  The flowers in the pitcher. One was red. It had a weak stem. One was pink. The table. It was small. On the dusty floor its legs touching down. A flower was sagging under the weight of the flo
wer’s corolla. The rectangular window. Empty on the wall. The trinket holding out the flute. The larger flower was pale, with a thick corolla.

  Lucrécia might not have been reaching whatever was around her, and was just taking a step when faced with the fact of the room — but this is the place where the things are. The corner of the dark room. The wall leaning back. The roof made of light wooden planks, dirty. The bookcase. The door. The floor. The angle. The clock. Flower, pitcher, ceiling, floor, blinds. And, hurled from afar, a confused object that in front of her face took shape clear and enlarged: the perfect chair.

  Lucrécia Neves looked at it and made with her face, imperceptibly, the expression of the chair.

  Her thought just then was after all very innocent and visible: a thought with four legs, a seat and a back. With this reflection she seemed to have grasped to the very end the perfection of things.

  If she hadn’t been able to pierce the city’s walls, at least she was now part of those walls, in whitewash, stone, and wood.

  Then, possessing the gesture learned on the rainy night, with her left hand outstretched and her foot advancing — she performed it delicate, rigid. Pointing with grace and precision.

  Oh, just one of those pirouettes of a girl ready to marry. They’re so happy. Sometimes they even do somersaults right in front of other people, and burst out laughing afterward.

  But this time Lucrécia learned even less than the cashier: finishing up cleaning her nails, she rubbed them on the leather of the seat, checked the shine that the soap had dulled, yawned and left.

  7 The Alliance with the Outsider

  But in the morning, at breakfast, everything was yellow and when a daughter was drinking coffee and the steam was coming out of the cup, yellow flowers had spread over the table, and a mother seated at the head of the table was the lady of this house: Ana reigned.

  The floral wallpaper how it would start the day old. When Ana was sitting, her badly braided hair would get tangled in the wallpaper with pink daisies, green on the stems, purple at their tips — but everything was auburn. In the dewy night air there had grown throughout the rooms bushy trees that were shaking in a wet park fragrance— the steam was coming from the coffeepot blackening the house in a dream.

  Ana was grabbing the cookie crumbs around the cup and shoving them greedily into her mouth, clumsily as in a hospital. You couldn’t tell that, by concentrating on small acts, she was enjoying the morning in the house, applying herself with nearsightedness to things, handling the cookie, blowing her nose, washing herself with care; her life would sometimes have this delicateness.

  Meanwhile, outside, the noises of the street were growing more excited, the smell of the stable stirring at the first winds, and the sounds intertwining the way walls are constructed: the city was imperceptibly rebuilding itself.

  But Lucrécia was hardly helping the widow’s morning joy. The short cloak, taking her back to the time when she was growing up, the girl was relaxing with her elbows leaning on the table, disheveled, big.

  And if they spoke, in every thought a delusion and a dream were almost palpable, from the coffeepot blackened vapors were emerging; but they were the mother and the daughter, offering themselves to one another as hands are offered to one another; and, though they thought themselves to be exceptionally sharp, they’d never tried to prove it.

  “You’re not going out today, are you, Lucrécia.”

  “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “You’re getting bored, why not keep busy?”

  “If it were just once and that was it,” the girl answered suddenly intimate, her strength slipping away — “but to keep busy every day!”

  She needs to get married, Ana thought, and it was the truth.

  “You need to calm down,” Ana said voluptuous from having her to herself for a whole morning, “you were always like this, for as long as I can remember, if I’d kept a diary you’d see, my dear girl.”

  A diary, she was saying like someone who kept up with what was going on in the world . . . Lucrécia looked at her with astonishment.

  But before long she was lowering her eyes to the coffee cup thinking about what Ana hadn’t said, maybe guessing her plans for marriage.

  The subject, brought on by the girl’s understanding, then became easy to broach.

  “You’ve gone out with lots of people, Mateus is the only one you haven’t seen, isn’t that right, my dear girl . . . it’s true he’s much older . . .”

  “That’s not why . . . to the contrary . . . Ah, Mateus is from another milieu, mama! he comes from another city, he’s got culture, knows what’s going on, reads the paper, knows other people . . .”

  “. . . does good business,” Ana said weakly.

  “True,” Lucrécia granted, “true . . .”

  “And since I’m not going to live my whole life . . .”

  What whole life was she referring to if not her own? and how could she not live her own whole life even if she were to die at any moment? Lucrécia Neves was reflecting.

  “If you married him you’d have lots of things, hats, jewels, live well, get out of this hole . . . have a nicely furnished house, . . .” Ana continued horrified by the path she’d finally taken, her hand rising to her neck.

  Lucrécia Neves looked at her with fright, feigned, as if too innocent to grasp — soon laughing disagreeably, while her desire would be to finally turn her back on São Geraldo. Without noticing she was already sketching the movement of freedom, when she met Ana’s gaze.

  Her mother’s simplicity embarrassed her — if she married Mateus what would she do with Ana, so inexperienced and wistful, and so delicate, in the luxurious milieu they’d inhabit? her mother would be “afraid.”

  “You didn’t eat anything . . .” Ana was saying offended while looking at the intact cookie.

  Instead of answering, Lucrécia had stood and was already climbing the three cement steps, crossing the hallway and pene­trating the living room lowering her head in order to pass beneath the doorway, though it was taller than she was: imitating, in obscure compensation, the habit of her dead, tall father.

  She’d hardly sat down with her embroidery in her hands, when the door was opening and half of Ana’s face appeared, smiling confusedly like the man you see in the moon . . .

  “. . . you didn’t even drink your milk . . .”

  “I did already,” she lied. Ana knew it, but would never get near her lies.

  “Fine,” she answered — she was hesitating at the door hoping Lucrécia would want her.

  But Lucrécia smiled drawing things to a close, and Ana repeated: fine, my girl, closing the door with a sigh.

  The poor woman hated São Geraldo and they would have already moved if, she’d say with reproach, Lucrécia weren’t such a patriot. Even the house carried a whiff of the city, and both of them smelled it, Lucrécia rejoicing, Ana wanting to talk all day long in order to escape.

  Because once or twice they’d both been deeply moved by some misfortune that didn’t concern them — which would spark enormous interest in Ana, as long as it hadn’t happened in São Geraldo — now the mother would come always with newspaper in hand, looking her daughter straight in the eye: a child in F . . . , eighteen months old, had swallowed a white bean and choked. Poor child, she was sighing with watchfulness, at least it won’t suffer anymore. Lucrécia would stir afflicted.

  And now again the door was opening, interrupting her embroidery. Ana said ironically: Perseu again . . .

  He showed up immediately as if he’d been listening at the door.

  He came in looking around with indiscretion; his beautiful eyes were moving but his mouth was shut as if he were holding something back for later. It was true that in the morning he was always lovely and clever. But Lucrécia, quite distrustful, noticed that this time it was because he’d decided to change his approach. In what way, she didn’t
know; neither did Perseu for that matter.

  “Good morning,” said the young man only when the door closed, as if Ana shouldn’t hear this secret.

  Nobody answered him. Lucrécia Neves was looking at him letting him know, that if he changed his approach, he’d be alone. Perseu Maria didn’t seem bothered, pulled out a chair and sat straight up in front of her — transforming the peaceful room into a knot.

  Then, with insulting calm, he looked at everything a bit, even stared at Lucrécia’s legs, which filled her with rage — he however feigned disinterest and quickly examined the girl’s ears. They were emerging from her dark hair as donkey ears and seemed to hear from afar with insolence.

  But not a single word was spoken. She wasn’t even looking at him. Perseu, without getting distracted, kept examining his surroundings, resting his gaze on one trinket or another as if all of a sudden surprised by them and at the same time knowing how to deal with them — he had an aptitude for mechanical things and wanted to apply his heavy hands to everything. Finally he noticed that Lucrécia was observing him and he was bothered:

  “They’re yours . . .” he asked pointing with his face.

  “They belong to the room.”

  He looked at her with surprise and joy:

  “Nonsense! things belong to people!”

  “They belong to the room,” Lucrécia Neves grumbled.

  “And the room, sweetheart?”

  “It belongs to the house, the house belongs to São Geraldo, don’t annoy me.”

  “Ah. And São Geraldo?”

  “It . . . It belongs to São Geraldo, leave me alone.”

  “Fine, fine! no need to yell.”

  So it was true: he’d changed his approach.

  “They belong to the room, I already told you,” she repeated firm but more cautious.

  Again he seemed to keep his cool and only made himself more comfortable in the chair.

  “Yesterday we went for a walk.”

  “Who’s we,” doubted the girl.