Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  One Hundred Years of Forgiveness

  (“Cem anos de perdão”)

  If you’ve never stolen anything you won’t understand me. And if you’ve never stolen roses, then you can never understand me. I, as a child, used to steal roses.

  In Recife there were countless streets, rich people’s streets, lined with mansions set amid extensive gardens. A little friend and I would often play at deciding whose mansions they were. “That white one’s mine.” “No, I already said the white ones are mine.” “But that one’s not all white, it’s got green windows.” Sometimes we’d stop for a long time, our faces pressed to the wrought-iron fence, staring.

  That’s how it started. During one of those games of “that’s my house,” we stopped before one that looked like a small castle. Behind it you could see an immense orchard. And, in the front, in well-tended beds, the flowers were planted.

  Yes, but standing apart in its bed was a single rose, only partway open and bright pink. I was dumbstruck, staring in admiration at that proud rose that wasn’t even a fully formed woman yet. And then it happened: from the bottom of my heart, I wanted that rose for myself. I wanted it, oh how I wanted it. And there was no way to get it. If the gardener had been around, I’d have asked for the rose, though I knew he’d have kicked us out the way they do with street kids. There was no gardener in sight, nobody. And the windows, because of the sun, were shuttered. It was a street where no trams passed and cars rarely ever appeared. In between my silence and the rose’s, was my desire to possess it as my very own. I wanted to be able to pluck it. I wanted to sniff it until I felt my vision go dark from so much heady perfume.

  And then I couldn’t take it any longer. The plan formed in me instantaneously, full of passion. Yet, like the good schemer I was, I coolly devised a plan with my little playmate, explaining her role: to keep watch on the windows or for the gardener’s still-possible approach, to watch out for the odd passerby on the street. Meanwhile, I slowly opened the slightly rusty gate, already anticipating the slight creaking. I cracked it just enough for my slender girlish body to slip past. And, treading lightly but quickly, I walked over the gravel surrounding the flower beds. The time it took to reach the rose was a century of my heart pounding.

  Then I’m standing before it at last. I stop for a second, dangerously, because up close it’s even more beautiful. Finally I start to break its stem, scratching myself on its thorns, and sucking the blood off my fingers.

  And, all of a sudden — it’s completely in my hand. The dash back to the gate also had to be noiseless. I slipped through the gate I had left cracked open, clasping the rose. And then both pale, the rose and I, we literally ran away from the house.

  What was I doing with the rose? I was doing this: it was mine.

  I took it home, put it in a glass of water, where it stood magnificent, its petals thick and velvety, in several shades of pale pink. Its color grew more concentrated at the center and its heart looked almost red.

  It felt so good.

  It felt so good that I simply began stealing roses. The process was always the same: the girl on the lookout, while I went in, broke off the stem and fled with the rose in my hand. Always with my heart pounding and always with that glory that no one could take away from me.

  I used to steal pitanga berries too. There was a Presbyterian church near my house, surrounded by a tall, green hedge so dense that it blocked the church from view. I never managed to catch sight of it, except for one corner of the roof. The hedge was a pitanga shrub. But pitangas are fruits that hide: I couldn’t see a single one. Then, looking around first to make sure no one was coming, I stuck my hand between the iron bars, plunged it into the hedge and groped around until my fingers felt the moisture of the tiny fruit. Several times in my haste, I smashed an overripe pitanga with my fingers, which ended up looking bloodstained. I picked several that I ate right there, even a few that were too green, which I tossed aside.

  No one ever found out. I don’t regret it: rose and pitanga thieves get one hundred years of forgiveness. It’s the pitangas themselves, for example, that beg to be picked, instead of ripening and dying on the branch, virgins.

  A Hope

  (“Uma esperança”)

  Right here at home a hope landed. Not the classic kind that so often proves illusory, though even still it always sustains us. But the other kind, very concrete and green: the cricket.*

  There came a muffled cry from one of my sons:

  “A hope! and on the wall right over your chair!” His excitement also unites the two kinds of hope, he’s already old enough for that. The surprise was mostly mine: a hope is a secret thing and usually lands right on me, without anyone’s knowing, and not above my head on a wall. A minor fuss: but it was undeniable, there it was, and as skinny and green as could be.

  “It hardly has a body,” I complained.

  “All it has is a soul,” my son explained and, since children are a surprise to us, I realized in surprise that he was talking about both kinds of hope.

  It was walking slowly on the threads of its long legs, among the pictures on the wall. Three times it stubbornly attempted to find a way out between two pictures, three times it had to backtrack. It was a slow learner.

  “It’s pretty dumb,” the boy remarked.

  “Don’t I know it,” I answered somewhat tragically.

  “Now it’s looking for a different way, look, poor thing, how it’s hesitating.”

  “I know, that’s just how it goes.”

  “It seems like hopes don’t have eyes, Mama, it uses its antennae.”

  “I know,” I went on, unhappier still.

  There we sat, for I don’t know how long, looking. Keeping watch as they kept watch over the first sparks in the hearth in Greece or Rome so that the fire wouldn’t go out.

  “It forgot it can fly, Mama, and it thinks all it can do is walk slowly like that.”

  It really was walking slowly — could it be hurt? Ah no, if it were it would be bleeding, that’s how it’s always been with me.

  That was when, catching a whiff of a world that’s edible, out from behind a picture came a spider. Not a spider, but it struck me as “the” spider. Walking along its invisible web, it seemed to glide softly through the air. It wanted the hope. But we wanted it too and, oh! God, we wanted less than to eat it. My son went to get the broom. I said weakly, confused, not knowing whether the time had unfortunately come to lose this hope:

  “It’s just that we’re not supposed to kill spiders, I’ve heard they’re good luck . . .”

  “But it’ll pulverize the hope!” the boy answered fiercely.

  “I need to speak to the maid about dusting behind the pictures,” I said, sensing that the statement was out of place and catching a certain weariness in my voice. Then I daydreamed a little about how I’d be curt and mysterious with the maid: I’d only say: would you please clear the way for any hope.

  The boy, once the spider was dead, made a pun, on the cricket and our hope. My other son, who was watching television, heard it and laughed with pleasure. There was no doubt: hope had alighted in our home, soul and body.

  But how lovely the hope is: it alights more than it lives, it’s a little green skeleton, and so delicately formed that it explains why I, who like catching things, never tried to catch it.

  Once, incidentally, I remember now, a hope much smaller than this one, landed on my arm. I didn’t feel a thing, light as it was, I only noticed its presence when I saw it. I grew bashful at its delicateness. I didn’t move my arm and thought: “Now what? what should I do?” I did nothing. I held extremely still as if a flower had sprung up inside me. I no longer remember what happened next. And, I think nothing happened.

  * * *

  * Esperança means both “hope” and “cricket.”

  The Servant

  (“A criada”)

  Her n
ame was Eremita.* She was nineteen. A confident face, a few pimples. Where was her beauty? There was beauty in that body that was neither ugly nor pretty, in that face in which a sweetness eager for greater sweetnesses was its sign of life.

  As for beauty, I don’t know. There may not have been any, though indefinite features attract as water attracts. There was, indeed, living substance, nails, flesh, teeth, a mixture of resistances and weaknesses, constituting a vague presence that nonetheless immediately solidified into an inquisitive and readily helpful head, as soon as someone uttered a name: Eremita. Her brown eyes were untranslatable, at odds with her whole face. As independent as if they’d been planted in the flesh of an arm, and were peering at us from there — open, moist. She was made entirely of a sweetness bordering on tears.

  Sometimes she’d answer with a servant’s ill-breeding. She’d been like that since childhood, she explained. Not that it stemmed from her character. For there was nothing hard about her spirit, no perceptible law. “I got scared,” she’d say naturally. “It made me hungry,” she’d say, and whatever she said was always indisputable, who knows why. “He respects me a lot,” she’d say of her fiancé and, though it was a borrowed and conventional expression, whoever heard it entered a delicate world of animals and birds, where all respected each other. “I’m embarrassed,” she’d say, and smile, entangled in her own shadows. If her hunger was for bread — which she ate quickly as if it could be taken away — her fear was of thunder, her embarrassment was of speaking. She was kind, honest. “God forbid, right?” she’d say absently.

  Because she had her absent moments. Her face would get lost in an impersonal and unwrinkled sorrow. A sorrow more ancient than her spirit. Her eyes would pause, vacant; I’d even say a bit harsh. Whoever was next to her suffered and could do nothing. Except wait.

  Because she was devoted to something, that mysterious infant. No one would have dared touch her right then. You’d wait a little solemnly, heart constricted, keeping an eye on her. There was nothing you could do for her except hope for the danger to pass. Until in an unhurried movement, almost a sigh, she’d rouse herself as a newborn goat rises on its legs. She had returned from her repose in sorrow.

  She would return, you couldn’t say richer, but more reassured after having drunk from some unknown fount. What you could see is that the fount must have been ancient and pure. Yes, there was depth in her. But no one would find a thing if they descended into her depths — except depth itself, as in the dark you find the dark. It’s possible that, if someone pressed ahead, they’d find, after walking miles through the shadows, the hint of a path, guided perhaps by a beating of wings, by some trace of an animal. And — suddenly — the forest.

  Ah, so that must have been her mystery: she had discovered a trail into the forest. Surely that was where she went during her absences. Returning with her eyes filled with gentleness and ignorance, eyes made whole. An ignorance so vast that inside it all the world’s wisdom could be contained and lost.

  That was Eremita. Who, if she rose to the surface with everything she had found in the forest, would be burned at the stake. But what she had seen — on what roots she had gnawed, on what thorns she had bled, in what waters she had bathed her feet, what golden darkness held the light that had shrouded her — she didn’t speak of all this because she didn’t know about it: perceived in a single glance, too fleeting to be anything but a mystery.

  Thus, whenever she emerged, she was a maid. Who was constantly being summoned from the darkness of her trail for lesser duties, to do the laundry, wipe the floor, serve someone or other.

  But would she really serve? For if anyone paid attention they’d see that she did the laundry — in the sun; that she wiped the floor — wet from the rain; that she hung the sheets — in the wind. She found ways to serve much more remotely, and other gods. Always with the wholeness of spirit she had brought back from the forest. Without a thought: just a body moving calmly, a face full of a gentle hope that no one can give and no one can take away.

  The only sign of the danger through which she had passed was her furtive way of eating bread. In all else she was serene. Even when she pocketed the money her mistress had forgotten on the table, even when she took her fiancé supplies wrapped in a discreet bundle. Pilfering was something else she’d learned in her forests.

  * * *

  * “Hermit.”

  Boy in Pen and Ink

  (“Menino a bico de pena”)

  How can you ever know a little boy? To know him I have to wait until he deteriorates, and only then will he be within reach. There he is, a dot in the infinite. No one will ever know his today. Not even he himself. As for me, I look, and it’s no use: I can’t manage to understand something that’s solely in the present, completely in the present. What I do know about him is his setting: the little boy is the one whose first teeth have just started coming in and the same one who’ll go on to be a doctor or a carpenter. Meanwhile — there he is sitting on the ground, made of a reality that I must call vegetative to understand. Thirty thousand of these boys sitting on the ground, might they have the chance to construct another world, one that takes into account the memory of the absolute present to which we once belonged? There would be strength in numbers. There he sits, starting all over again but for his own future protection, with no true chance of really getting started.

  I don’t know how to sketch the boy. I know it’s impossible to sketch him in charcoal, for even pen and ink bleed on the paper beyond the incredibly fine line of extreme presentness in which he lives. One day we’ll domesticate him into a human, and then we can sketch him. Since that’s what we did with ourselves and with God. The boy himself will aid in his domestication: he’s diligent and cooperates. He cooperates without knowing that this aid we seek of him goes toward his self-sacrifice. Lately he’s even been practicing a lot. And that’s how he’ll keep progressing until, little by little — through the necessary goodness with which we save ourselves — he’ll go from present time to routine time, from meditation to expression, from existence to life. Making the great sacrifice of not going mad. I haven’t gone mad out of solidarity with the thousands of us who, so as to construct what’s possible, have also sacrificed the truth that would be a kind of madness.

  Yet for now he’s sitting on the floor, immersed in a profound emptiness.

  From the kitchen his mother checks on him: are you sitting still over there? Summoned to work, the boy struggles to get up. He wobbles on his legs, his full attention turned inward: all his balance is internal. Now that he’s managed this, his full attention turns outward: he observes what the act of getting up has provoked. For standing brings all sorts of consequences: the ground shifts uncertainly, a chair looms over him, the wall delimits him. And on the wall there’s the portrait of The Little Boy. It’s hard to look at the portrait high up there without leaning on a piece of furniture, he hasn’t practiced this yet. But here’s where his very difficulty gives him something to lean on: what keeps him standing is precisely focusing on the portrait high up there, looking hoists him like a crane. But he makes a mistake: he blinks. Blinking cuts him off for a fraction of a second from the portrait propping him up. He loses his balance — in a single complete motion, he falls into sitting. From his lips, slightly parted from the force of life, clear drool slides and drips onto the floor. He looks at the droplet up close, as if it were an ant. His arm rises, extends in an arduous, multi-stage mechanism. And suddenly, as if to pin down something ineffable, with unexpected violence he flattens the drool with the palm of his hand. He blinks, waits. Finally, once the time it takes to wait for things has passed, he carefully unclamps his hand and looks at the fruit of experience on the floorboards. The floor is empty. In another abrupt stage, he looks at his hand: so the drop of drool is stuck to his palm. Now he knows this too. Then, eyes wide open, he licks the drool that belongs to the boy. He thinks very loudly: boy.

  “Who’s that you
’re calling?” asks his mother from the kitchen.

  With effort and kindness he looks around the living room, looks for whomever his mother says he’s calling, turns and falls backward. While crying, he sees the room distorted and refracted by his tears, its white mass expanding until reaching him — Mother! absorbs him with strong arms, and now the boy is high in the air, deep in the warmth and goodness. The ceiling is closer, now; the table, below. And, since he’s too tired to go on, his pupils start rolling back until they plunge into the horizon of his eyes. He shuts them on the last image, the bars of his crib. He falls asleep exhausted and serene.

  The moisture has dried up in his mouth. The fly knocks against the windowpane. The boy’s sleep is streaked with brightness and heat, his sleep vibrates in the air. Until, in a sudden nightmare, one of the words he’s learned occurs to him: he shudders violently, opens his eyes. And in terror sees only this: the hot, bright emptiness of the air, without his mother. What he’s thinking bursts into sobs throughout the whole house. While crying, he begins to recognize himself, transforming into something his mother will recognize. He nearly collapses into sobs, urgently he must transform into a thing that can be seen and heard or else he’ll be left alone, he must transform into something comprehensible or else no one will understand him, or else no one will go to his silence no one will know him if he doesn’t speak and explain, I’ll do whatever it takes to belong to others and for others to be mine, I’ll give up my real happiness that would only bring abandonment, and I’ll be like everyone else, I strike this bargain to be loved, it’s absolutely magical to cry in exchange for: a mother.