Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  Priest: Many years has it been since a saint was born. Many years has it been since a child prophesied from the cradle. Many years has it been since the blind man has seen, the leper was cured, ah what a barren time. We exist beneath the burden of such a mystery to be revealed that at the first sign, in a bolt of lightning, Thy hoped-for miracle must be sealed.

  1st guard: Everyone speaks and no one listens.

  2nd guard: Everyone is alone with the guilty woman.

  Enter the Lover.

  1st guard: The comedy is complete: behold the lover, I am overjoyed.

  People: Behold the lover, behold the lover and behold the lover.

  Sleepy child: Behold the lover.

  Lover: Irony that makes me laugh not: to call lover he who burned with love, to call lover he who lost it. No, not the lover. But the lover betrayed.

  People: We do not understand, we do not understand and we do not understand.

  Lover: Because this woman who in my arms deceived her husband, in the arms of her husband deceived the one deceiving him.

  People: So then she hid her lover from her husband, and her husband from her lover? Behold the sin of sins.

  Lover: But I laugh not and for a moment I do not suffer. I now open the eyes I have kept closed out of pridefulness, and I ask of you: who? who is this foreign woman, who is this solitary woman for whom one heart was not enough.

  Husband: She is the one for whom I would bring back brocades and precious stones from my travels, and for whom all my commerce of value had become a commerce of love.

  Lover: For in her candid joy she would come to me so singularly mine that I never would have guessed she was coming from a home.

  Husband: There was no jewel she did not covet, and for her the bareness of her neck did not choke. Nothing existed that I did not give her, since for a humble and weary traveler peace is in his wife.

  Priest: “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

  Husband: But in the transparency of a diamond she was already foreseeing the arrival of a lover. He who tells you this is one who has tasted venom: beware a woman who dreams.

  Lover: Ah wretched woman, for she dreamed beside me too. What more therefore did she want? who is this foreign woman?

  Priest: She is the one to whom on holy days I would offer in vain words of Virtue that might with a thousand cloaks have covered her nakedness.

  Woman of the people: All these words have strange meanings. Who is this woman who sinned and seems instead to receive praise for her sin?

  Lover: She is that unrevealed woman whom only pain revealed to my eyes. For the first time, I love. I love you.

  Husband: She is that woman whom sin belatedly proclaimed to me. For the first time I love you, and not my peace.

  People: She is that woman who in truth gave herself to no one, and now is completely ours.

  Invisible angels: For harmony is terrible.

  People: We do not understand, we do not understand and etc.

  Invisible angels: Even here on this side of the edge of the world we hardly understand, much less you, the starving, and you, the sated. May the generative sentence be enough for you: what must be done shall be done, this is the one perfect principle.

  People: We do not understand, we are hungry and we are hungry.

  1st guard: This tiresome people, if summoned to a feast or a funeral, might just sing . . .

  People: . . . we are hungry.

  2nd guard: They always lay the same trap that consists of a single chant . . .

  People: . . . we are hungry.

  Priest: Do not interrupt with your hunger, rather be calm, for yours shall be the Kingdom of Heaven.

  People: Where we shall eat, and eat and eat, and get so fat that through the eye of a needle at last and at last we shall not pass.

  Priest: What did this people come to do? and wherefore did the husband, the lover, and the guards come? For alone with me, this woman would be set afire.

  Lover: What did this people come to do? Alone with me, she would love again, again would she sin, repent again — and thus in a single instant Love would again be fulfilled, the thing that carries its own dagger and end. I would recall to you those messages at nightfall . . . The impatient horse would wait, the lamp on the terrace . . . And then . . . ah earth, thy fields at daybreak, a certain window that already in the dark was starting to dawn. And the wine that I in joy would then sip, until sinking with drunken tears into gloom. (Ah then it is true that even in happiness I already sought in tears to know the foretaste of misfortune.)

  Invisible angels: The foretaste of terrible harmony.

  Sleepy child: She is smiling.

  People: She is smiling, she is smiling and she is smiling.

  Husband: And her eyes glisten damply as in a glory . . .

  Woman of the people: In the end how does it come to pass that this woman about to be burned is already becoming her own story?

  People: What is this woman smiling at?

  Priest: Perhaps she is thinking that, alone, she would already have been set afire.

  People: What is this woman smiling at.

  1st and 2nd guards: At sin.

  Invisible angels: At harmony, harmony, harmony that tarries not.

  Lover: You smile, inaccessible, and the first burst of wrath seizes me. Remember how in the chamber where I met you your smile was different, and the way your eyes glistened, your only tears. Through what strange grace did abject sin transfigure you into this woman who smiles filled with silence?

  Husband: Impotent fury: behold her smiling, yet more absent from me than when she belonged to another. Why has this people heard me so much more than my words wished to be heard? Ah cruel mechanism I unleashed with my wounded laments. For I have rendered her unattainable even before she dies. The incitement for the burning was mine, but the victory will not be: it now belongs to the people, to the priest, to the guards. For you, wretches, cannot hide that it is upon my misery that you shall live in the end.

  Lover: You smile because you used me so that even while alive you might yet blaze in the fire.

  Husband: Hear me once more, wife . . . (How strange it is, perhaps she heard, but it is I who can no longer find the former words. Doubt that now exceeds bounds: when was it I and when was it not I? I was the one who loved her, but who is this person being avenged? He who in me was speaking until now, fell silent as soon as he achieved his aims. What is happening for me not to recognize the former face of my love? Perhaps she heard me, but speaking has ended for me.)

  Invisible angels: Remove your hands from your face, husband. He who was no longer is, the opening of the curtains has revealed: that you are the lowliest, lowliest, lowliest wheel of the terrible, terrible harmony.

  Lover: I thought I had lived, but she was the one who was living me. I was lived.

  Husband: How can I recognize you, if you are smiling utterly sanctified? These chaste arms are not the arms that deceivingly embraced me. And could this hair be the same that I used to let down? I have interrupted you all, and the one who says so is the same who incited you. For I see an error and I see a crime, a monstrous upheaval: behold, the woman sinned with one body, and you burn another.

  Priest: But “Lord, thou art always the same.”

  1st guard: All regret what is too late to regret, and disagree for the sake of disagreeing, knowing full well they came here to kill.

  2nd guard: Behold at last the moment that will grant us the taste of war.

  Priest: Behold the moment when, by the grace of the Lord, I shall sin with the sinner, I shall blaze with the sinner, and in the infernos to which I shall descend with her, by Thy name shall be saved.

  Invisible angels: Behold the moment has arrived. Already we feel a difficulty of dawn. We are on the threshold of our initial form. It must be good to be born.
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br />   People: May she who is about to die speak.

  Priest: Leave her be. I fear from this woman who is ours a word that is hers.

  People: May she who is about to die speak.

  Lover: Leave her be. Don’t you see how alone she is.

  People: May she speak, may she speak and may she speak.

  Invisible angels: May she not speak . . . may she not speak . . . since we hardly need her . . .

  People: May she speak, may she speak and may etc.

  Priest: Take her death as her word.

  People: We do not understand, we do not understand and we do not understand.

  1st and 2nd guards: Get ye away, for the fire may spread and through ye garments set all the city ablaze.

  People: This fire was already ours, and the whole city burns.

  1st and 2nd guards: Behold the first radiant light. Long live our King.

  People: Under the sign of the Salamander.

  1st and 2nd guards: Under the sign of the Salamander.

  Invisible angels: Under the sign of the Salamander . . .

  1stand 2nd guards: See the great light. Long live our King.

  People: Well then hurrah, hurrah and hurrah.

  Invisible angels: Ah . . .

  Priest: Ave Maria, how far shall I descend?, “though I have nothing for which to be reproached, that is not enough to absolve me,” “Lord deliver me from my need,” pray, pray . . .

  Invisible angels: . . . tremble, tremble, a plague of angels now darkens the horizon . . .

  Lover: Woe is me who am not burned. I exist under the sign of the same fate but my tragedy will never blaze.

  Angels being born: How good to be born. Look what a sweet earth, what sweet and perfect harmony . . . From what is fulfilled we are born. In the spheres where we used to alight it was easy not to live and to be the free shadow of a child. But on this earth where there is sea and foam, and fire and smoke, there exists a law prior to the law and still prior to the law, and that gives form to the form to the form. How easy it was to be an angel. But on this night of fire what furious, turbulent and abashed desire to be boy and girl.

  Husband: She sinned with one body and they set fire to another. I was hurt in one soul, and behold I am taking vengeance in another.

  People: What a beautiful tawny color burnt flesh has.

  Priest: But not even the color is hers any longer. It is from the Flame. Ah how purification blazes. At last, I suffer.

  People: We do not understand, we do not understand and we are hungry for roast meat.

  Husband: With my cloak I might still smother the fire on your garments!

  Lover: Not even her death does he understand, he who shared with me the woman who belonged to no one.

  Priest: How I suffer. But “ye have not yet resisted unto blood.”

  Husband: If with my cloak I were to smother your garments . . .

  Lover: You could, yes. But understand: would she have the strength to extend over a long life the pure fire of an instant?

  Priest: Behold, she who will become ashes and dust. Ah, “verily thou art a God that hidest thyself.”

  1st guard: I tell ye, she burns faster than a heathen.

  Priest: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.”

  2nd guard: I tell ye, the smoke is such that I can hardly see the body.

  Husband: I can hardly see the body of what I was.

  Priest: Praised be the name of the Lord, “Thy grace suffices me,” “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire,” was spoken at the Apocalypse, praised be the name of the Lord.

  People: Well amen, amen and amen.

  Priest: “She took her delight in the slavery of the senses.”

  Husband: She was no more than a common, common, common woman.

  Lover: Ah she was sweet and common. You were so very mine and common.

  Priest: I suffer.

  Lover: For me and for her began something that forever must be.

  The newborn angels: Good morning!

  Priest: “Waiting for the day of eternal brightness to rise and the shadows of the symbols to disperse.”

  1st and 2nd guards: All speak and none listen.

  Priest: It is a melodious uproar: I already hear the angels of the dying.

  The newborn angels: Good morning, good morning and good morning. And already we do not understand, we do not understand and we do not understand.

  Husband: Cursed be, if you think you have freed yourself from me and that I have freed myself from you. Beneath the weight of brutal attraction, you shall not leave my orbit and I shall not leave yours, and with nausea we shall spin, until you overtake my orbit and I overtake yours, and in a superhuman hatred we shall be one.

  Priest: The beauty of a night without passion. What abundance, what consolation. “Great and unfathomable are His works.”

  1st and 2nd guards: Just as in war, when evil is committed to the flames, the good is not what remains . . .

  The newborn angels: . . . we are born.

  People: We do not understand and we do not understand.

  Husband: I shall return now to the dead woman’s house. For there is my former wife, awaiting me in her empty necklaces.

  Priest: The silence of a night without sin . . . What brightness, what harmony.

  Sleepy child: Mother, what has happened?

  The newborn angels: Mama, what has happened?

  Women of the people: My children, it went like this: etc. etc. and etc.

  Member of the people: Forgive them, they believe in fate and are therefore fated themselves.

  Profile of Chosen Beings

  (“Perfil de sêres eleitos”)

  He was a being who chose. Among the thousand things he might have been, he had gone along choosing himself. In work for which he wore glasses, discerning whatever he could and using his damp hands to grope at whatever he couldn’t see, the being kept choosing and therefore would indirectly choose himself. Bit by bit he had gathered himself into being. He kept separating, separating. In relative liberty, if one discounted the furtive determinism that had acted discreetly without naming itself. Discounting this furtive determinism, the being chose himself freely. What guided him was the desire to discover his own determinism, and to make an effort to follow it, since the true line is very faded, the others are more visible. He kept separating, separating. He would separate the so-called wheat from the chaff, and the best, the best the being ate. Sometimes he ate the worst. The difficult choice was to eat the worst. He separated dangers from the great danger, and it was the great danger that the being, though afraid, would keep. Just to measure by fear the weight of things. He pushed away all the lesser truths that he never ended up learning. He wanted the truths that were hard to take. Since he ignored the lesser truths, the being seemed shrouded in mystery; since he was ignorant, he was a mysterious being. He had also become: an ignorant savant; a naive sage; forgetful but well aware; an honest fake; an absentminded contemplative; nostalgic for what he had neglected to learn; wistful for what he had definitively lost; and courageous because it was already too late. All this, paradoxically, gave the being the wholesome joy of the peasant who only deals with the basics, though he has no clue what movie is currently playing. And all this gave him the involuntary austerity that all vital work gives. Choosing and gathering had no proper start or end time, indeed it lasted a lifetime.

  All this, paradoxically, increasingly gave the being the kind of profound joy that needs to be revealed, displayed, and communicated. In this communication the being was helped by his innate gift for liking. And this was something he hadn’t even gathered or chosen, it was a gift indeed. He liked the deep joy of others, through his innate gift he discovered the joy of others. Through his gift, he could also discover the solitude that other people had in relation to their own d
eepest joy. The being, also through his gift, knew how to play. And from birth he knew that gestures, without wounding through offense, transmitted the liking he felt for others. Without even feeling that he was using his gift, the being expressed himself; he would give, without realizing when he was giving, he would love without realizing that this was called love. His gift, in fact, was like the lack of a shirt on a happy man: since the being was very poor and didn’t have anything to give, the being would give himself. He would give himself in silence, and give what he had gathered of himself, like someone calling others over so they can see too. All this discreetly, for he was a shy being. It was also discreetly that the being saw in others what others had gathered of themselves; the being knew how difficult it was to find the faded line of one’s own destiny, how difficult it was to be careful not to lose sight of it, to go over it with pencil, erring, erasing, getting it right.

  That was how the mistake came to surround the being. The others believed almost simplemindedly that they were seeing a static and fixed reality, and viewed the being as you view a picture. A very rich picture. They didn’t understand that for the being, pulling himself together, had been a labor of paring down and not of wealth. And, by mistake, the being was chosen. By mistake the being was loved. But feeling loved would mean recognizing oneself in this love. And that being was loved as if he were another being: as if he were a chosen being. The being shed the tears of a statue who at night on the square weeps without moving atop his marble horse. Falsely loved, the being ached all over. But whoever had chosen him wasn’t giving him a hand to get off the horse of hard silver, nor did they want to mount the horse of heavy gold. Aching stone was what the being felt while breaking to pieces alone in the square. Meanwhile, the beings who had chosen him slept. In fear? but they slept. Never had the darkness been greater in the square. Until dawn came. The rhythm of the earth was so generous that dawn came. But at night, when night fell, it grew dark again. The square enlarged again. And again, those who had chosen him slept. In fear, perhaps, but they slept. Were they afraid because they thought they would have to live in the square? They didn’t know that the square had merely been the being’s place of work. But that, in order to wander, he didn’t want a square. Those who slept didn’t know that the square had meant war for the chosen being, and that the war had been intended precisely to conquer what lay beyond the square. They thought, those who slept, that the chosen being, wherever he went, would throw open a square the way someone unrolls a canvas to paint on. They didn’t know that the canvas, for the chosen being, had merely been the way to survey on a map the world where the chosen being wished to go. The being had been preparing his whole life to be suitable for what lay beyond the square. It’s true that the being, upon feeling as ready as someone bathed in oils and perfumes, the chosen being had seen that there hadn’t been any time left to learn how to smile. But it’s true that this didn’t bother the being, since it was at the same time his great expectation: the being had left an entire land to be granted him by whoever wanted to grant it. The calculation of the being’s dream had been to remain deliberately incomplete.