The Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  Our movements were sluggish, the scarcely uttered words—vague, random, under the bar’s dim lights that lengthened faces into shadows. Around us, a few people were playing cards, drinking, talking, in louder tones. The torpor turned people slack, with no sparks. Maybe that’s why it was so hard for him to talk. But something told me he wasn’t all that drunk and was keeping silent simply so he wouldn’t have to acknowledge my superiority.

  I drank slowly, elbows on the table, scrutinizing him. As for him—he’d slumped into his chair, feet outstretched, all the way to mine, arms flopped on the table.

  “So?” I said impatiently.

  He seemed to wake up, looked around and rejoined the conversation:

  “So . . . so . . . nothing.”

  “But, sir, you were talking about your son!. . .”

  He stared at me for a second. Then smiled:

  “Ah, yes. Right, he’s sick.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Angina, the pharmacist said angina.”

  “Who does the boy live with?”

  “His mother.”

  “And you don’t live with her?”

  “What for?”

  “My God . . . At the very least to suffer with her . . . Are you married to the young lady?”

  “Nope, I’m not married.”

  “How disgraceful!” I said, though not knowing what exactly was so disgraceful. “We need to do something. Imagine if your son dies, she’s left all alone . . .”

  He wasn’t moved.

  “Imagine her, eyes burning, at the child’s side. The child wheezing painfully, dying. He dies. His little head is contorted, his eyes are open, staring at the wall, obstinately. Everything is silent and the young lady doesn’t know what to do. The boy is dead and all of a sudden she has nothing to do. She collapses onto the bed, sobbing, tearing at her clothes: ‘My son, my poor son! It’s death, it’s death!’ The household rats take fright and start to race around the room. They crawl up your son’s face, still warm, gnaw at his little mouth. The woman screams and faints, for two hours. The rats visit her body too, cheerful, nimble, their tiny teeth gnawing here and there.”

  I got so caught up in the description that I’d forgotten the man. I looked at him suddenly and caught his mouth open, his chin resting on his chest, listening.

  I smiled triumphantly.

  “She wakes up from her fainting spell and doesn’t even know where she is. She looks around, gets up and the rats scatter. Then she happens upon the dead boy. This time she doesn’t cry. She sits in a chair, next to the little bed and stays there not thinking, not moving. Wondering why there hasn’t been any news, the neighbors knock at her door. She opens it to everyone very delicately and says: ‘He’s better.’ The neighbors come in and see that he’s dead. They’re afraid she doesn’t know yet and prepare her for the shock, saying, ‘Maybe you should call the pharmacist?’ She replies: ‘What for? since he’s already dead.’ Then everyone gets sad and tries to weep. They say: ‘We have to deal with the funeral.’ She replies: ‘What for? since he’s already dead.’ They say: ‘Let’s call a priest.’ She replies: ‘What for? since he’s already dead.’ The neighbors are scared and think she’s lost her mind. They don’t know what to do. And since it’s not their problem, they go off to bed. Or maybe this is how it goes: the boy dies and she’s like you, numbed of feeling, not concerned about anything. Practically in a state of ataraxia, without knowing it. Or don’t you know what ataraxia is, sir?”

  Resting his head on his arms, he wasn’t moving. I got scared for a second. What if he was dead? I shook him forcefully and he lifted his head, barely managing to fix his bleary eyes on me. He’d fallen asleep. I glared at him furiously.

  “Oh, so . . .”

  “What?” He drew a toothpick from the dispenser and put it in his mouth, slowly, completely drunk.

  I burst into laughter.

  “Are you crazy? Since you haven’t eaten a thing!. . .”

  The scene seemed so comical to me that I doubled over laughing. Tears sprang to my eyes and ran down my face. A few people turned their heads in my direction. Once I no longer felt like laughing I continued anyway. I was already thinking about something else and laughed without stopping anyway. I suddenly broke off.

  “Are you making fun of me, sir? Do you think I’ll leave you alone, just like that, peacefully? Let you go your merry way, even after bumping into me? Oh, never. If I have to, I’ll make some confessions. There’s a lot I’ll tell you . . . But maybe you don’t get it: we’re different. I suffer, inside me feelings are solidified, differentiated, they’re born already labeled, self-conscious. As for you . . . a nebula of a man. Maybe your great-grandson will be able to suffer more . . . But it’s all right: the harder the task, the more appealing, as Ema said before we got engaged. That’s why I’m going to drop my fishing hook into you, sir. Maybe it’ll latch onto the seed of your suffering great-grandson. Who knows?”

  “Right,” he said.

  I leaned over the table, trying furiously to get through to him.

  “Listen up, pal, the moon is way up in the sky. Aren’t you scared? The helplessness that comes from nature. That moonlight, think about it, that moonlight, paler than a corpse’s face, so silent and far away, that moonlight witnessed the cries of the first monsters to walk the earth, surveyed the peaceful waters after the deluges and the floods, illuminated centuries of nights and went out at dawns throughout centuries . . . Think about it, my friend, that moonlight will be the same tranquil ghost when the last traces of your great-grandsons’ grandsons no longer exist. Prostrate yourself before it. You’ve shown up for an instant and it is forever. Don’t you suffer, pal? I . . . I myself can’t stand it. It hits me right here, in the center of my heart, having to die one day and, thousands of centuries later, undistinguished in humus, eyeless for all eternity, I, I!, for all eternity . . . and the indifferent, triumphant moon, its pale hands outstretched over new men, new things, different beings. And I Dead!”—I took a deep breath. “Think about it, my friend. It’s shining over the cemetery right now. The cemetery, where all lie sleeping who once were and never more shall be. There, where the slightest whisper makes the living shudder in terror and where the tranquility of the stars muffles our cries and brings terror to our eyes. There, where there are neither tears nor thoughts to express the profound misery of coming to an end.”

  I leaned over the table, hid my face in my hands and wept. I kept saying softly:

  “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die . . .”

  He, the man, picked at his teeth with the toothpick.

  “But you haven’t eaten a thing, sir,” I said again, wiping my eyes.

  “What?”

  “‘What’ what?”

  “Huh?”

  “But, my God, ‘huh’ what?”

  “Ah . . .”

  “Have you no shame, sir?”

  “Me?”

  “Listen, I’ll tell you something else: I’d like to die while still alive, descending into my own tomb and shutting it myself, with a dull thud. And then go mad from pain in the earth’s darkness. But not unconsciousness.”

  He still had the toothpick in his mouth.

  Then I felt really good because the wine was kicking in. I took a toothpick too and held it between my fingers as if about to smoke it.

  “I used to do that when I was little. And it gave me more pleasure than it does now, when I really do smoke.”

  “Obviously.”

  “The hell it’s obvious . . . I’m not asking for approval.”

  The vague words, meaningless phrases dragging along . . . So good, so smooth . . . Or was it drowsiness?

  Suddenly, he took the toothpick from his mouth, eyes blinking, lips trembling as if about to cry, said:

  FAMILY TIES

  (“Laços de família”)r />
  Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady

  (“Devaneio e embriaguez duma rapariga”)

  Throughout the room it seemed to her the trams were crossing, making her reflection tremble. She sat combing her hair languorously before the three-way vanity, her white, strong arms bristling in the slight afternoon chill. Her eyes didn’t leave themselves, the mirrors vibrated, now dark, now luminous. Outside, from an upper window, a heavy, soft thing fell to the street. Had the little ones and her husband been home, she’d have thought to blame their carelessness. Her eyes never pried themselves from her image, her comb working meditatively, her open robe revealing in the mirrors the intersecting breasts of several young ladies.

  “A Noite!” called a paperboy into the gentle wind of the Rua do Riachuelo, and something shivered in premonition. She tossed the comb onto the vanity, singing rapturously: “who saw the lit-tle spar-row . . . go flying past the win-dow . . . it flew so far past Mi-nho!”—but, wrathful, shut herself tight as a fan.

  She lay down, fanning herself impatiently with a rustling newspaper in the bedroom. She picked up her handkerchief, breathing it in as she crumpled the coarse embroidery in her reddened fingers. She went back to fanning herself, on the verge of smiling. Oh, dear, she sighed, laughing. She envisioned her bright still-young lady’s smile, and smiled even more closing her eyes, fanning herself more deeply still. Oh, dear, came from the street like a butterfly.

  “Good day, do you know who came looking for me here at the house?” she thought as a possible and interesting topic of conversation. “Well I don’t know, who?” they asked her with a gallant smile, sorrowful eyes in one of those pale faces that so harm a person. “Why, Maria Quitéria, man!” she chirped merrily, hands by her side. “And begging your pardon, who is this young lady?” they persisted gallantly, but now without distinct features. “You!” she cut off the conversation with faint resentment, what a bore.

  Oh what a succulent bedroom! she was fanning herself in Brazil. The sun caught in the blinds quivered on the wall like a Portuguese guitar. The Rua do Riachuelo rumbled under the panting weight of the trams coming from the Rua Mem de Sá. She listened curious and bored to the rattling of the china cabinet in the parlour. Impatiently, she turned onto her stomach, and as she lovingly stretched out her dainty toes, awaited her next thought with open eyes. “Finders, seekers,” she chimed as if it were a popular saying, the kind that always ended up sounding like some truth. Until she fell asleep with her mouth open, her drool moistening the pillow.

  She awoke only when her husband came home from work and entered the bedroom. She didn’t want to have dinner or go out of her way, she fell back asleep: let the man help himself to the leftovers from lunch.

  And, since the children were at their aunties’ farm in Jacarepaguá, she took the opportunity to wake up feeling peculiar: murky and light in bed, one of those moods, who knows. Her husband emerged already dressed and she didn’t even know what the man had done for breakfast, and didn’t even glance at his suit, whether it needed brushing, little did she care if today was his day to deal with matters downtown. But when he leaned over to kiss her, her lightness crackled like a dry leaf:

  “Get away from me!”

  “What’s the matter with you?” her husband asks astonished, immediately attempting a more effective caress.

  Obstinate, she wouldn’t know how to answer, so shallow and spoiled was she that she didn’t even know where to look for an answer. She lost her temper:

  “Oh don’t pester me! don’t come prowling around like an old rooster!”

  He seemed to think better of it and declared:

  “Come now, young lady, you’re ill.”

  She acquiesced, surprised, flattered. All day long she stayed in bed, listening to the house, so silent without the racket from the little ones, without the man who’d have lunch downtown today. All day long she stayed in bed. Her wrath was tenuous, ardent. She only got up to go to the lavatory, whence she returned noble, offended.

  The morning became a long, drawn-out afternoon that became depthless night dawning innocently through the house.

  She still in bed, peaceful, improvised. She loved . . . In advance she loved the man she’d one day love. Who knows, it sometimes happened, and without guilt or any harm done to either of the two. In bed thinking, thinking, about to laugh as at a bit of gossip. Thinking, thinking. What? well, what did she know. That’s how she let herself go on.

  From one moment to the next, infuriated, she was on her feet. But in the faintness of that first instant she seemed unhinged and fragile in the bedroom that was spinning, was spinning until she managed to grope her way back to bed, surprised that it might be true: “come now, woman, let’s see if you really are going to get sick!” she said with misgiving. She put her hand to her forehead to see if she’d come down with fever.

  That night, until she fell asleep, she fantasticized, fantasticized: for how many minutes? until she passed out: fast asleep, snoring along with her husband.

  She awoke behind in the day, the potatoes still to be peeled, the little ones returning from their aunties’ in the afternoon, oh I’ve even let myself go!, the day to get the wash done and mend the socks, oh what a trollop you’ve turned out to be!, she chided herself curiously and contentedly, go to the shops, don’t forget the fish, behind in the day, the morning hectic with sun.

  But on Saturday night they went to the tavern in the Praça Tiradentes at the invitation of that ever-so-prosperous businessman, she in that new little dress that while not quite showy was still made of top-quality fabric, the kind that would last a lifetime. Saturday night, drunk in the Praça Tiradentes, drunk but with her husband by her side to vouchsafe her, and she ceremonious around the other man, so much classier and wealthier, attempting to engage him in conversation, since she wasn’t just any old village gossip and had once lived in the Capital. But it was impossible to be more hammered.

  And if her husband wasn’t drunk, that’s because he didn’t want to be disrespectful to the businessman, and, dutifully and humbly, let the other man rule the roost. Which well suited the classy occasion, but gave her one of those urges to start laughing! that scornful mocking! she looked at her husband stuffed into his new suit and thought him such a joke! It was impossible to be more hammered but without ever losing her ladylike pride. And the vinho verde draining from her glass.

  And when she was drunk, as during a sumptuous Sunday dinner, all things that by their own natures are separate from each other—scent of olive oil on one side, man on the other, soup tureen on one side, waiter on the other—were peculiarly united by their own natures, and it all amounted to one riotous debauchery, one band of rogues.

  And if her eyes were glittering and hard, if her gestures were difficult stages of finally reaching the toothpick dispenser, in fact on the inside she was even feeling quite well, she was that laden cloud gliding along effortlessly. Her swollen lips and white teeth, and the wine puffing her up. And that vanity of being drunk enabling such disdain for everything, making her ripe and round like a big cow.

  Naturally she kept up the conversation. For she lacked neither subject nor talent. But the words a person spoke while drunk were like being gravid—words merely in her mouth, which had little to do with the secret center which was like a pregnancy. Oh how peculiar she felt. On Saturday night her everyday soul was lost, and how good it was to lose it, and as a sole memento from those former days her small hands, so mistreated—and here she was now with her elbows on the red-and-white checked tablecloth as if on a card table, profoundly launched into a low and revolutionizing life. And this burst of laughter? that burst of laughter coming mysteriously from her full, white throat, in response to the businessman’s finesse, a burst of laughter coming from the depth of that sleep, and the depth of that assurance of one who possesses a body. Her snow-white flesh was sweet as a lobster’s, the legs of a live lobster wriggling slowly
in the air. And that urge to feel wicked so as to deepen the sweetness into awfulness. And that little wickedness of whoever has a body.

  She kept up the conversation, and heard with curiosity what she herself was replying to the wealthy businessman who, with such good timing, had invited them out and paid for their meal. Intrigued and bewildered she heard what she herself was replying: what she said in this condition would be a good omen for the future—already she was no longer a lobster, she was a hard sign: Scorpio. Since she was born in November.

  A searchlight as one sleeps that sweeps across the dawn—such was her drunkenness wandering slowly at these heights.

  At the same time, what sensibility! but what sensibility! when she looked at that nicely painted picture in the restaurant, she immediately brimmed with artistic sensibility. No one could convince her that she really hadn’t been born for other things. She’d always been partial to works of art.

  Oh what sensibility! now not only because of the painting of grapes and pears and a dead fish glittering with scales. Her sensibility was uncomfortable without being painful, like a broken nail. And if she wanted she could allow herself the luxury of becoming even more sensitive, she could go further still: because she was protected by a situation, protected like everyone who had attained a position in life. Like someone prevented from a downfall of her own. Oh I’m so unhappy, dear Mother. If she wanted she could pour even more wine into her glass and, protected by the position she’d achieved in life, get even drunker, as long as she didn’t lose her pride. And like that, drunker still, she cast her eyes around the restaurant, and oh the scorn for the dull people in the restaurant, not a single man who was a real man, who was truly sad. What scorn for the dull people in the restaurant, whereas she was swollen and heavy, she couldn’t possibly be more generous. And everything in the restaurant so remote from each other as if one thing could never speak to another. Each one for himself, and God for all.