Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  For how long? I’d go to her house daily, without missing a single day. Sometimes she’d say: well I had the book yesterday afternoon, but you didn’t come till this morning, so I lent it to another girl. And I, who didn’t usually get dark circles under my eyes, felt those dark circles deepening under my astonished eyes.

  Until one day, when I was at her front door, listening humbly and silently to her refusal, her mother appeared. She must have been wondering about the mute, daily appearance of that girl at her front door. She asked us to explain. There was a silent commotion, interrupted by words that didn’t clarify much. The lady found it increasingly strange that she wasn’t understanding. Until that good mother understood. She turned to her daughter and with enormous surprise exclaimed: But that book never left the house and you didn’t even want to read it!

  And the worst thing for that woman wasn’t realizing what was going on. It must have been the horrified realization of the kind of daughter she had. She eyed us in silence: the power of perversity in the daughter she didn’t know and the little blond girl standing at the door, exhausted, out in the wind of the streets of Recife. That was when, finally regaining her composure, she said to her daughter firmly and calmly: you’re going to lend that book right this minute. And to me: “And you can keep that book for as long as you like.” Do you understand? It was worth more than giving me the book: “for as long as I liked” is all that a person, big or small, could ever dare wish for.

  How can I explain what happened next? I was stunned, and just like that the book was in my hand. I don’t think I said a thing. I took the book. No, I didn’t go skipping off as usual. I walked away very slowly. I know that I was holding the thick book with both hands, clutching it against my chest. As for how long it took to get home, that doesn’t really matter either. My chest was hot, my heart thoughtful.

  When I got home, I didn’t start reading. I pretended not to have it, just so later on I could feel the shock of having it. Hours later I opened it, read a few wondrous lines, closed it again, wandered around the house, stalled even more by eating some bread and butter, pretended not to know where I had put the book, found it, opened it for a few seconds. I kept inventing the most contrived obstacles for that covert thing that was joy. Joy would always be covert for me. I must have already sensed it. Oh how I took my time! I was living in the clouds . . . There was pride and shame inside me. I was a delicate queen.

  Sometimes I’d sit in the hammock, swinging with the book open on my lap, not touching it, in the purest ecstasy.

  I was no longer a girl with a book: I was a woman with her lover.

  Remnants of Carnival

  (“Restos do Carnaval”)

  No, not this past Carnival. But I don’t know why this one transported me back to my childhood and those Ash Wednesdays on the dead streets where the remains of streamers and confetti fluttered. The occasional devout woman with a veil covering her head would be heading to church, crossing the street left so incredibly empty after Carnival. Until the next year. And when the celebration was fast approaching, what could explain the inner tumult that came over me? As if the budding world were finally opening into a big scarlet rose. As if the streets and squares of Recife were finally explaining why they’d been made. As if human voices were finally singing the capacity for pleasure that was kept secret in me. Carnival was mine, mine.

  However, in reality, I barely participated at all. I had never been to a children’s ball, they’d never dressed me up in costume. To make up for it, they’d let me stay up until eleven in the front stairwell of the house where we lived, eagerly watching others have fun. I’d get two precious things that I saved up greedily so they’d last all three days: some party spray and a bag of confetti. Ah, it’s getting hard to write. Because I’m feeling how my heart is going to darken as I realize how, even barely joining in the merriment, my yearning was such that even next to nothing made me a happy little girl.

  And the masks? I was afraid but it was a vital and necessary fear for it went along with my deepest suspicion that the human face was also a kind of mask. In my front stairwell, if someone in a mask spoke to me, I’d suddenly come into indispensable contact with my inner world, which was made not only of elves and enchanted princes, but of people with their mystery. Even my fright at the people in masks, then, was essential for me.

  They didn’t dress me up: with all the worry about my sick mother, no one at home could spare a thought for a child’s Carnival. But I’d ask one of my sisters to curl that straight hair of mine that I so hated and then I’d take pride in having wavy hair for at least three days a year. During those three days, moreover, my sister gave in to my intense dream of being a young lady — I could hardly wait to leave behind a vulnerable childhood — and she painted my lips with bright lipstick, putting rouge on my cheeks too. Then I felt pretty and feminine, I was no longer a kid.

  But there was one Carnival that was different from the rest. So miraculous that I couldn’t quite believe so much had been granted me, I, who had long since learned to ask for little. What happened was that a friend’s mother had decided to dress up her daughter and the costume pattern was named the Rose. To make it she bought sheets and sheets of pink crepe paper, from which, I suppose, she planned to imitate the petals of a flower. Mouth agape, I watched the costume gradually taking shape and being created. Though the crepe paper didn’t remotely resemble petals, I solemnly believed it was one of the most beautiful costumes I had ever seen.

  That’s when simply by chance the unexpected happened: there was leftover crepe paper, and quite a bit. And my friend’s mother — perhaps heeding my mute appeal, the mute despair of my envy, or perhaps out of sheer kindness, since there was leftover paper — decided to make me a rose costume too with the remaining materials. So for that Carnival, for the first time in my life I would get what I had always wanted: I would be something other than myself.

  Even the preparations left me dizzy with joy. I had never felt so busy: down to the last detail, my friend and I planned everything out, we’d wear slips under our costumes, so if it rained and the costume melted away at least we’d still be somewhat dressed — the very idea of a sudden downpour that would leave us, in our eight-year-old feminine modesty, wearing slips on the street, made us die of anticipated shame — but oh! God would help us! it wouldn’t rain! As for the fact that my costume existed solely thanks to the other girl’s leftovers, I swallowed, with some pain, my pride, which had always been fierce, and I humbly accepted the handout destiny was offering me.

  But why did precisely that Carnival, the only one in costume, have to be so melancholy? Early Sunday morning I already had my hair in curlers, so the waves would hold longer. But the minutes weren’t passing, because I was so anxious. Finally, finally! three in the afternoon arrived: careful not to tear the paper, I dressed up as a rose.

  Many things much worse than these have happened to me, that I’ve forgiven. Yet I still can’t even understand this one now: is a toss of the dice for a destiny irrational? It’s merciless. When I was all dressed in the crepe paper and ready, with my hair still in curlers and not yet wearing lipstick or rouge — my mother’s health suddenly took a turn for the worse, an abrupt upheaval broke out at home, and they sent me quickly to buy medicine at the pharmacy. I ran off dressed as a rose — but my still-bare face wasn’t wearing the young-lady mask that would have covered my utterly exposed childish life — I ran and ran, bewildered, alarmed, amid streamers, confetti and shouts of Carnival. Other people’s merriment stunned me.

  When hours later the atmosphere at home calmed down, my sister did my hair and makeup. But something had died inside me. And, as in the stories I’d read about fairies who were always casting and breaking spells, the spell on me had been broken; I was no longer a rose, I was once again just a little girl. I went out to the street and standing there I wasn’t a flower, I was a brooding clown with scarlet lips. In my hunger to feel ecstasy, I’d
sometimes started to cheer up but in remorse I’d recall my mother’s grave condition and once again I’d die.

  Only hours later did salvation come. And if I quickly clung to it, that’s because I so badly needed to be saved. A boy of twelve or so, which for me meant a young man, this very handsome boy stopped before me and, in a combination of tenderness, crudeness, playfulness and sensuality, he covered my hair, straight by now, with confetti: for an instant we stood face to face, smiling, without speaking. And then I, a little woman of eight, felt for the rest of the night that someone had finally recognized me: I was, indeed, a rose.

  Eat Up, My Son

  (“Come, meu filho”)

  “The world seems flat but I know it’s not. Know why it seems flat? ’Cause, whenever we look, the sky’s above, never below, never to the side. I know the world’s round ’cause people say so, but it would only seem round if we looked and sometimes the sky was below. I know it’s round, but to me it’s flat, but Ronaldo only knows that the world is round, it doesn’t seem flat to him.”

  “. . .”

  “’Cause I’ve been to lots of countries and I saw how in the United States the sky’s above too, that’s why the world seems totally straight to me. But Ronaldo’s never been out of Brazil and he might think the sky’s above only here, that it’s not flat in other places, that it’s only flat in Brazil, that in other places he hasn’t seen it gets rounder. When people tell him stuff, he just believes them, things don’t even have to make sense. Do you like bowls or plates, Mama?”

  “Bow . . . — plates, I mean.”

  “Me too. It seems like bowls can fit more, but it’s just on the bottom, with plates everything gets spread out so you can see everything you’ve got right away. Don’t cucumbers seem inreal?”

  “Unreal.”

  “Why do you think?”

  “That’s how you say it.”

  “No, why did you also think that cucumbers seem inreal? Me too. You look at them and you can see part of the other side, it’s got the exact same pattern all over, it’s cold in your mouth, it sounds kind of like glass when you chew it. Don’t you think it seems like someone invented cucumbers?”

  “It does.”

  “Where did they invent beans and rice?”

  “Here.”

  “Or at that Arabian place, like Pedrinho said about something else?”

  “Here.”

  “At the Sorveteria Gatão the ice cream tastes good because it tastes just like the color. Does meat taste like meat to you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Yeah right! I bet: does it taste like the meat hanging in the butcher’s shop?!”

  “No.”

  “And not even like the meat we’re talking about. It doesn’t taste like when you say meat has vitamins.”

  “Don’t talk so much, eat up.”

  “But you’re giving me that look, but it’s not to make me eat, it’s because you’re liking me so much, did I guess it?”

  “You guessed it. Eat up, Paulinho.”

  “That’s all you ever think about. I was talking a lot so you wouldn’t only think about food, but you just can’t forget about it.”

  Forgiving God

  (“Perdoando Deus”)

  I was walking along down Avenida Copacabana and looking distractedly at buildings, patches of sea, people, not thinking about anything. I still hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t actually distracted, my guard was just down, I was being something quite rare: free. I saw everything, and at random. I was gradually starting to notice that I was noticing things. My freedom then grew slightly more intense, without ceasing to be freedom. It wasn’t a tour du propriétaire, none of it was mine, nor did I want it to be. But I seemed to feel satisfied with what I saw.

  I then had a feeling I’ve never heard of before. Out of pure affection, I felt I was the mother of God, I was the Earth, the world. Out of pure affection, really, without any arrogance or glory, without the least sense of superiority or equality, I was, out of affection, the mother of whatever exists. I also discovered that if all this “really was” what I was feeling — and not a potentially mistaken feeling — that God without pride or pettiness would let someone show affection toward Him, and with no obligation to me. The intimacy with which I felt affection would be acceptable to Him. The feeling was new to me, but quite assured, and it hadn’t occurred before only because it couldn’t have existed. I know that we love whatever is God. With serious love, solemn love, respect, fear, and reverence. But I’d never heard of maternal affection for Him. And as my affection for a son doesn’t reduce him, it even expands him, in this way, being mother of the world was my merely free love.

  And that was when I almost stepped on a huge dead rat. In less than a second I was bristling from the terror of living, in less than a second I was shattering in panic, and doing my best to rein in my deepest scream. Nearly running in fright, blind in the midst of all those people, I wound up on the next block leaning on a pole, violently shutting my eyes, which no longer wanted to see. But the image stuck to my eyelids: a big red-haired rat, with an enormous tail, its feet crushed, and dead, still, tawny. My boundless fear of rats.

  Trembling all over, I managed to keep on living. Utterly bewildered I kept walking, my mouth made childish with surprise. I tried to sever the connection between the two facts: what I’d felt minutes earlier and the rat. But it was no use. At least contiguity linked them. The two facts illogically had one nexus. It shocked me that a rat had been my counterpart. And suddenly revolt seized me: so couldn’t I surrender heedlessly to love? What was God trying to remind me of? I’m not someone who needs to be reminded that inside everything is blood. Not only do I not forget the blood inside but I allow and desire it, I am too much blood to forget blood, and for me the spiritual word has no meaning, and neither does the earthly word. There was no need to throw a rat in my bare naked face. Not right then. What could easily have been taken into account was the terror that has hounded me and made me delirious since childhood, rats have mocked me, in the past of the world rats have devoured me quickly and furiously. So that’s how it was?, with me roaming through the world not asking for a thing, not needing a thing, loving out of pure, innocent love, and God shows me his rat? God’s coarseness hurt and insulted me. God was a brute. As I walked with my heart closed off, my disappointment was as inconsolable as disappointment was only when I was a child. I kept walking, trying to forget. But the only thing that occurred to me was revenge. But what sort of revenge could I wreak on an All-Powerful God, on a God who even with a crushed rat could crush me? My vulnerability of a solitary creature. In my craving for revenge I couldn’t even face Him, since I didn’t know wherein He most resided, in what thing He most likely resided, and would I, glaring angrily at this thing, would I see Him? in the rat? in that window? in the stones on the ground? Inside me is where He no longer was. Inside me is where I no longer saw Him.

  Then the revenge of the weak occurred to me: ah, that’s how it is? then I won’t keep any secret, and I’m going to tell. I know it’s low to enter Someone’s private life, and then to tell his secrets, but I’m going to tell — don’t tell, strictly out of affection don’t tell, keep the things He’s ashamed of to yourself — but I’m going to tell, yes, I’m going to tell everyone what happened to me, he won’t get away with it this time, just for this, I’ll tell what He did, I’ll ruin His reputation.

  . . . but who knows, maybe it happened because the world too is a rat, and I had thought I was ready for the rat too. Because I imagined myself stronger. Because I was making an incorrect mathematical calculation about love: I thought that, in adding up everything I understood, I loved. I didn’t know that, adding up everything you don’t understand is the way to truly love. Because I, just from having felt affection, thought that loving is easy. It’s because I didn’t want solemn love, not understanding that solemnity ritualizes incomprehension and trans
forms it into an offering. And also because I’ve always tended to fight a lot, fighting is my way of doing things. It’s because I always try to handle things my way. It’s because I still don’t know how to give in. It’s because deep down I want to love the thing I would love — and not what is. It’s because I’m still not myself, and so the punishment is loving a world that’s not itself. It’s also because I offend myself for no reason. It’s because I might need to be told brutally, since I’m so stubborn. It’s because I’m so possessive and therefore was asked with some irony if I’d also like a rat for myself. It’s because I can only be mother of all things once I can pick up a rat with my hand. I know I’ll never be able to pick up a rat without dying my worst death. So, then, let me resort to the Magnificat that chants blindly about whatever is not known or seen. And let me resort to the formalism that pushes me away. Because formalism hasn’t wounded my simplicity, but my pride, since it’s through the pride of being born that I feel so intimate with the world, but this world that I nevertheless extracted from myself with a mute scream. Because the rat exists as much as I do, and perhaps neither I nor the rat are meant to be seen by our own selves, distance makes us equal. Perhaps I have to accept above all else this nature of mine that desires the death of a rat. Perhaps I consider myself too refined just because I haven’t committed my crimes. Just because I’ve restrained my crimes, I think I’m made of innocent love. Perhaps I cannot look at the rat as long as I don’t look without outrage upon this soul of mine that is merely restrained. Perhaps I must call “world” this way I have of being a bit of everything. How can I love the greatness of the world if I cannot love the extent of my nature? As long as I imagine that “God” is good just because I am bad, I won’t be loving anything: that will merely be my way of denouncing myself. I, who without even at least searching myself thoroughly, have already chosen to love my opposite, and I want to call my opposite God. I, who will never get used to myself, was hoping the world wouldn’t scandalize me. Because I, who only ever got myself to submit to me, since I am so much more inexorable than I, I was hoping to compensate myself for me with an earth less violent than I. Because as long as I love a God just because I don’t want myself, I’ll be a loaded die, and the game of my greater life won’t be played. As long as I invent God, He doesn’t exist.