The Chandelier

by Clarice Lispector

  “You didn’t learn much in the city, Virgínia,” Esmeralda said to her again.

  “Yes . . .”

  Again they fell silent without waiting, without fright. The living room was large and deep, the table was stretching out darkly with one of Mother’s small embroideries in the center.

  “I found everything so changed . . . ,” said Virgínia as if in a sigh.

  Esmeralda looked around slowly. Virgínia got up, went to the window.

  “I’m going upstairs,” said Esmeralda and Virgínia didn’t turn around.

  Esmeralda pushed her bedroom door, inhaled distractedly its sultry perfume. In the shadowy room the snowy bedsheet was popping out fresh, embroidered, surprising. She sat with care and lightness on its edge looking around in the twilight. A long woolen shawl was wrapping her round shoulders and her bosom, making her look sensitive to the cold. She suddenly stood, walked to the window, opened it, the brightness entered. No, for her Quiet Farm hadn’t changed. She could close her eyes and she’d see the hard violence of the naked trunks, the sweetness of the light clusters of acacia in the wind; so often she’d already sought with her gaze that same stopping-place cut out by the windowpanes, which she herself cleaned, she herself — like jabs of confession and redemption in her chest, she herself! — so often she’d made out the landscape broadened all the way to infinity when her gaze would free itself beyond the heavy curtains that she herself, she herself had embroidered. She bent forward for an instant as if to try on reality one more time — yes, after the garden the countryside was being disclosed. Grasping with one of her hands the thick cord of the curtain she was pulling herself together with haughtiness and with her back turned to the interior of the mansion she was watching over it on the lookout, coldly. In the distant kitchen the wild cat that she herself, she herself had tamed, was eating the ground beef while the black woman was talking to herself and washing the dishes. The rooms empty of guests; just a day ago she’d gone over them carefully, checked that everything was silent and in order. The hallway stretching out full of shadows, the deep staircase, the carpets extending to the bedrooms. She sighed. No, she was seeing everything as she’d seen it all these years. In the garden the figure of Virgínia was moving — Esmeralda bent over slightly, followed her with her gaze. It was a simple body, tall and well-fed, Virgínia’s; she was leaning down picking up something off the ground and looking at it closely, her hair falling in her eyes, while even from afar you could feel that strange defect in her face, a watchful inconsistency, a bit cross-eyed. With interest Esmeralda was observing her, with a certain benevolence, which she had never been able to feel toward Daniel. But Virgínia had brought nothing from the city. She, Esmeralda, could live better and bigger than Daniel, Virgínia, their father or their mother, she, she was the one who possessed an exceptional and bitter strength, a concentration of life that had given her that inaccessible patience down through the years. She was really bigger than all of them and hadn’t hurried toward life and toward the city because she’d been scared. Her fear was as proud as her strength. She set out almost quickly, froze. Outside Virgínia had sat on the rock in the garden looking at her light legs with determination. Esmeralda made a rough, firm movement with her hand and the cord of the curtain burst, fell with a small cheerful noise on the dark wooden floorboards. She looked at it a little, perplexed, hard, bad. Suddenly she sighed closing her eyes quickly; more calm she picked up the fringed cord, opened the sewing drawer and sat down to fix it.

  She was holding herself back however within her final degree of strength. And that same night she got lost. She was looking at herself in the mirror; she was still quite pretty with her virgin wrinkles of hope. In her motionless face the yellowish color was sweet as on an almost-decomposing fruit; her movements were still lively at a tense height that only daily despair and menace could manage to create. Virgínia’s arrival had introduced to the mansion a bit of the invisible life of the city; without feeling Esmeralda was shining with more asperity in her bedroom; waiting with new reserves. And as if she’d gone too far in this new gulp of danger she couldn’t stop the urge of her own body and jumped over the abyss, grew old as if she’d already loved. That same night she’d dined with a troubled appetite and laughed agitated showing her white and pointy teeth, Virgínia had appreciated her, Daniel unexpectedly had also been friendly, Mother was leaning into the back of the chair with contentment, while she was explaining to them with a penetrating and ironic wit little unimportant facts. They were laughing benevolently, drinking small sips of an old wine that Father had brought from Upper Marsh. And though that was never what she could expect — no, by God! — she gained in life almost violently, lived hours of somber glory, heavy with promises. Her radiant eyes were shining moistly at her own body, so much at herself, her movements easy and rough — what was happening to her? she was giving in. They said good night, she went to sleep so tired that her body stumbled deadened onto the big smooth bed. She was asking slowly wondering almost for no reason: anyway why? for what? As if suffocating, her face feverish, she took off her clothes and for the first time lay down naked. She fell asleep with a childlike pleasure, awaking in quick and vague moments almost frightened, her heart beating without rhythm, her being swollen. She’d curl up then beneath the sheets in a cold that seemed to come from her own innards, beneath the furious clinking of an indecipherable memory. At the sound of the beings and things may God open her heart, allow her to see inside herself and, fear expelled, at last say to death, I lived. Ah, ah, she was groaning almost awake. The moonlight was whitening the lowered windowpane, cutting the room in deep shadow and blue brightness. Almost unconsciously she was running her fingers over the fine embroidery of the pillowcase that she herself, she herself, she herself had made. Ah, ah, she was groaning staring like a madwoman at the frozen and motionless air of the bedroom. She was falling asleep aching, sinking into the pleasure of sleeping with her mouth dry from sleep. She woke up later the next morning — suddenly an old and quiet woman. She was listening to herself while she dressed, wounding herself out of habit with the same words from the night before but without hurting. She’d slipped toward a dark calm made of solitude and the lack of martyrdom. She went down for breakfast. Her breasts were looking modest under the blouse that just yesterday had squeezed them with anguish. Her legs were peaceful in their stride, her heart had distended. Did I oversleep? she was wondering without understanding. She was trying in vain to open wider her eyes with their swollen and deadened eyelids. With horror she had already lived her life.

  She sat benumbed for breakfast at the deserted table. Everyone had already left. She interrupted herself with difficulty — the gate was creaking, somebody was crossing the garden. Virgínia entered the room with a bright and shining face. She was carrying enormous dry branches for the hearth.

  “I broke everything . . . I scratched myself, look!” she almost shouted in a laugh, wounding the other woman’s fatigue.

  “You’re cheerful,” said Esmeralda.

  Yes, she was cheerful. She laughed while sighing: cheerfulness was lending an unfamiliar and awkward appearance to her long face. While she was depositing the branches in a corner of the room it seemed to her that that night she’d truly slept at the Farm. They’d laughed so much, Esmeralda, even Daniel had listened smiling, Mother chewing while blinking her eyes with love for Esmeralda. And then the wine . . . she was drinking it and remembering Irene’s dinner party — how happy she’d been then! she thought, dizzy. She’d said goodbye at the foot of the staircase but her desire was to go out and start walking until exhausting the power of the wine. She’d lain down sleepless, bright and light on the bed as if she’d never slept, as if she’d never sleep. Our family can be so happy! she was thinking. The world was spinning inside her chest gently and she couldn’t say whether sweet joy or smooth sadness was now circulating in her blood with the wine. They’d laughed so much . . . even Daniel had listened smiling . . . , she wa
s going over the scene one, two, multiple times. Even Daniel had smiled, even he had smiled. She was tossing and turning in the bed. Ah, how she’d already lived . . . , she was burying her head in the pillow with an absurd feeling of happiness and disturbance, smiling without surprise. One more instant though and the sensation was vanishing, in its place an expectant darkness was lingering inside the pillow as if she were expecting to remember from one moment to the next some unusual and fleeting thing. She lifted her forehead, her big body leaning on her elbows, watchful like a dog that senses a stranger. Her tired head fell over again and she sat thinking for a long while about nothing. When she’d reopen her eyes she’d notice that she really had been thinking, thinking and rethinking with stubbornness, lightly and without noise, about this strange scene: a man walking and meeting another man, both stopping in the darkness, looking at each other peacefully and saying goodbye beside a white, tall wall; the men meeting, exchanging a glance, saying goodbye beside the white wall, the men meeting . . . An underlying tone was emerging and with it she was accentuating little meanings without words, dotting herself with emphasis or doubt and that after all was her attitude and “her way of being.” She was almost always feeling well. Water was running trembling in the interior of the house, vibrating in the air. Bit by bit distant and dry despair came from motionless well-being itself and from the void of the night without future, she was seeming to feel that she could never mix it with the following days, even with new insomnias. A useless clearing was opening, she was stopping in the middle of the journey without meaning to, perhaps forever. But the night was long like a life that falters. She fell asleep because some thing never would be reached with open eyes. She dreamed that she was lying in the field, her skin beneath the wind feeling a prolonged, high, rosy, deeply diffuse pleasure, a leisurely enjoyment in the powerless body as if she were living exactly the instant that was forming and fading away, that was forming . . . fading, that was forming . . . fading, breathing in and breathing out, marking time with the bright, full, and fresh beating of her heart. In the dream she possessed with abundance something that, when awake, would be an elongated and imponderable sensation, needing to vanquish so many impossibilities that it would only arise as a foreboding, in some forgetfulness, in a silence, almost the air all around her. What she’d dream so large at night, would be during the day just the flutter of an ant in the field. She was sleeping, her head sunken in the pillow; and from her pale-lipped abandon the face of a girl was emerging, the vacant and sharp features like the sound of a small bugle in the limpid distance.

  At dawn she opened her eyes as if waking up were slowly taking shape inside her without her knowledge and then blossoming ripe, perfect, and incomprehensible. She saw around her the bedroom being born from the darkness in silence. A cold breeze was blowing. She pushed away the sheets with her legs, without impatience, in a movement so full and balanced that it was exhausting the limbs’ reason for being. The chamber was floating in the half-light and the frozen shadows were deepening their edges, distancing the white walls veiling them in a confusion that was promising a foggy abyss beyond it. She walked barefoot to the window, lifted it, and a rested freshness touched all her body as if the short, thick nightshirt wasn’t even there. Below, in the vacant and sleeping garden, each stalk was emerging from a halo of cold, whitish smoke. She was paying heed in the silence of the morning as if listening inside herself to the resurrection of a symbol.

  “You went out early,” murmured Esmeralda pulling over the coffeepot with a sigh.

  “I didn’t even have breakfast!” Virgínia was saying with a piercing and unpleasant voice.

  “Keep your voice down, for the love of God!” — Esmeralda was furrowing her eyebrows and face as if she’d been scratched. She was gradually undoing her wrinkles, smoothed her face into a tired expression, reopened her eyes slowly. — “Well I no longer have the nerve to wander through those swamps,” she said, rapt, pouring the coffee into Virgínia’s cup.

  And then everything had been easier. Daniel was lying on the ground and the tree above was the being closest by, dominating the sky. Virgínia had sat on a rock and with a dry branch was tormenting the ants. He sneezed and the sneeze cut the air in every direction into small arrows that gleamed under the sun and broke with a delicate noise. Virgínia sought with her eyes something she was feeling glowing uninterrupted all around, singing somewhere. It was a quavering thread of water from the tap flowing toward the earth. She turned around, tried to forget. But she knew that the glow was going on and the uncomfortable and vivid certainty was seeming to hurt her eyes. She got up to turn off the faucet. When she returned, Daniel’s face was peaceful in the shade, his muscles relaxed, maybe thinking deeply. But he wasn’t saying anything and she too stayed silent pursing her lips because they’d agreed as children never to rush each other. Then, since long empty moments were passing, the instant almost arrived when it wouldn’t hurt to start talking. She chose and murmured little easy things, quick questions, with furrowed brows and an indifferent air; the answer was coming dry and ready. And suddenly she almost made a mistake because she wandered off excessively from the beach into the sea by asking him:

  “And old Cecília? have you seen her?”

  He looked at her quickly in an almost rasping surprise, in an anguished smile she looked at him so he’d understand that the memory was possible, Daniel; it was possible, it was their own, the question didn’t simply mean “how’s old Cecília doing,” think about it, Daniel . . . He hesitated for an instant, swayed his head in understanding, almost smiling. Virgínia breathed with hope, remembered herself the visit they’d paid Cecília on an afternoon that had been lost to memory. My house! this is the house! . . . , the woman was saying with a strident voice, the blinds were flapping dryly three quick times and the air was getting so cool, it was so nice and excited living-all-of-a-sudden, the air had a strange sharpness, frozen and pure, they were feeling cold and stimulating, quite odd, able to make with irony and the most delicate intelligence someone notice little eccentric matters unobserved by anybody else — they were hardly holding in some thing with balance, flashing, and laughter. She herself was wearing a thick, dark woolen shirt. They were wanting to get along well with the old lady, seeking common ground, speaking only of things all three would like and the woman with an aroused pleasure was nodding her head a lot, listening, agreeing while they were speaking, she was laughing allowing them to see her broken teeth — but by God, quick, quick, about a mother, about a daughter, about a sister, about someone who’d been born and was going to die. The curtain was flying halfway across the poor living room, rushing life into a rhythm of abundance and pleasure, Virgínia had felt the desire to travel, a sharp will, almost cheerful and piercing, already desperate. But darkly she was needing not to distance herself from Daniel for a solitary dream and got to thinking about how the journey was something with stages and days, with time, with many observations and not just a single sensation, a single flight and a single satisfaction in response to a single desire.

  “Poor Cecília must be fine,” said Daniel in a vague smile.

  “And Rute?” asked Virgínia quickly without looking, twisting her lips with indifference.

  “She’s with her mother,” said Daniel with simplicity.

  “She doesn’t want children?” inquired Virgínia catching a luckless and raving ant under the dry branch.

  He was silent and she without looking at him felt he’d become even more mute. She blushed, didn’t push, was thinking: but I didn’t want to pry . . . , horrified, hurt, with a touch of burning hatred. But he said suddenly:

  “When I ask her that, she laughs and just says: you still don’t want to” — he waited a bit and then continued with a certain surprise that seemed to be renewing itself right then — “that’s all she says, I can’t get anything else out of her.”

  Virgínia agreed several times with her head:

  “I know, I know.�
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  Daniel looked at her with interest:

  “What?”

  But exactly what she’d understood had been lost in an instant, she searched with attention, only managed to say with a shrug:

  “I don’t know, I think women when they’re not rivals understand one another.”

  Love isn’t everything that produces children, Vicente had said one day with brutality at the beginning of a fight whose cause she’d forgotten, so upset and sad she’d get because she forgot them. But why wouldn’t Rute want children? the reason she’d just grasped had entirely escaped her. She pictured Rute again — that was someone who knew how to keep a secret. She didn’t seem to have any need to talk about her life. And that would almost offend people. She was smooth and fresh and would look quite like a picture of a saint if not for the intelligence of her imperceptibly watchful eyes, keeping her impressions to herself. She’d say good-morning like a postcard, smiling full of cold life. Was that it? She was picturing Rute again and thought strangely that she was calm and good — yes, that had been the sensation in the Grand Hotel, in the city, there where Daniel’s fiancée, her parents, and her two sisters were staying for a while and where Daniel had met her. But she’d hidden the sensation from herself and was then thinking lying to herself: she’ll make Daniel’s life something with lunchtime, dinnertime, bedtime, with sexual regularization, healthy, clean and almost noble, like in a sanitarium. Daniel had brought Virgínia to introduce her to the girl’s parents. In the vast hotel room they’d gathered for a great perplexing visit, without having anything to say. Rute was wearing a pearl-gray silk dress, her face without makeup, pale and peaceful. Yes, from that point on there was something in her that Daniel wouldn’t understand. And that she never would show him — smiling, looking at him, loving him, her head raised without any support. How had she not confessed to herself from that point on what she was seeing? Virgínia was thinking; maybe out of stinginess. She’d talked with Daniel’s future mother-in-law, a short little woman, lively, squeezed into a girdle, her tight breasts suffocating her neck; her grayish hair done by a hairdresser. Between frightened and almost pensive smiles and glances, they were gradually disclosing the family. Rute had always been a clean, careful, and studious child who lacked the courage to caress and please. And suddenly she’d chosen a boy and would have to live far away! that seemed to be what she’d always plotted against the family — her defenseless mother was looking at her from afar while the daughter was serving tea while smiling at what her father and Daniel were saying — but at the same time how to feel sorry for herself, the mother was saying still following her with her eyes, how could she feel sorry for herself if she also seemed to have plotted against Daniel? With surprise and almost disdain for her decision, so unfeminine — the mother was seeming to fear for her future as a woman — with surprise and almost disdain, with joy and emotion they heard her decide to live for six months at the Farm with her husband and six months with her parents and those sisters she seemed to love with proprietorship, severity, and tenderness. The sisters, dressed like rich girls, were getting bored beneath their curled hair enduring with almost comic eyes the visit of Virgínia and the “fiancé”; of such fast matter the girls were made. — She looked at Daniel, the fluctuating shadow of the branch darkening and lightening his face, she guessed without surprise that he had fallen in love with Rute. Love isn’t everything that produces children! The phrase came back to her again without meaning, nagging and tiresome. And then not just the phrase but moving itself, her own feelings, Rute’s smiling silence, difficulty, peace, everything mingling in the same slow and thick matter and she breathed the air, pure existence, with a vanquished sigh, almost enraged.