Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  Then.

  Then?

  Then she decided to read old magazines, something she hadn’t done in a while. They had been piled up in her mother’s room, ever since her death. But they were a bit too dated, some from back when her mother had been single, the fashions were different, all the men had mustaches, ads for girdles to perfect your waistline. And in particular all the men had mustaches. She lost her enthusiasm, once more lacking the nerve to throw them out because they’d been her mother’s.

  Then.

  Yes and then?

  Then she went to boil some water for tea, still not forgetting that the phone wasn’t ringing. If only she had coworkers, but she didn’t have a job: the inheritance from her father and mother covered her few expenses. Anyway she didn’t have nice handwriting and thought they didn’t accept applicants without nice handwriting.

  She drank the boiling-hot tea, chewing small pieces of dry toast that scratched her gums. They’d be better with a little butter. But, of course, butter was fattening, besides raising your cholesterol, whatever that modern term meant.

  Just as her teeth were tearing into the third piece of toast — she usually counted things, due to a certain obsession with order, ultimately innocuous and even amusing — just as she was about to eat the third piece of toast . . . IT HAPPENED! I swear, she said to herself, I swear I heard the phone ring. She spit out the bite from the third piece of toast onto the tablecloth and, so as not to give the impression that she was impatient or needy, she let it ring four times, and each time was a sharp pang in her heart because what if they hung up thinking no one was home! At this terrifying thought she suddenly lunged for that fourth ring and managed to say in a rather offhand voice:

  “Hello . . .”

  “If you please,” said the female voice that must have been over eighty judging by its drawn-out hoarseness, “could you please call Flávia to the receiver” — no one said receiver anymore — “for me? My name is Constança.”

  “Madame Constança, I regret to inform you that there’s no one in this house by the name of Flávia, I know Flávia’s a very romantic name, but the thing is, there aren’t any here, so what can I do?” she said with a certain despair due to Madame Constança’s commanding voice.

  “But isn’t this Rua General Isidro?”

  That made matters worse.

  “Yes, it is, but which phone number did you ask the operator for? Which? Mine? But I assure you that I have lived here for exactly thirty years, since birth, and there’s never been any girl named Flávia!”

  “Girl, my foot, Flávia’s a year older than me and if she’s lying about her age that’s her problem!”

  “Maybe she’s not lying about her age, who knows, Madame Constança.”

  “If she’s lying about it, that’s fine with me, but at least do me a favor and tell her I’m waiting on the receiver for her and hurry up!”

  “I . . . I . . . I’ve been trying to tell you that our family was the first and only ever to live in this little house and I assure you, I swear to God, that no Senhora Flávia ever lived here, and I’m not saying that Senhora Flávia doesn’t exist, but here, ma’am, here — she does not e-x-i-s-t . . .”

  “Now stop being rude, you hussy! By the way what’s your name?”

  “Margarida Flores do Jardim.”

  “Why? Are there flowers in your garden?”

  “Ha, ha, ha, you’ve got a sense of humor, ma’am! No, there aren’t any flowers in my garden but I just have a flowery name.”

  “And does that do you any good?”

  Silence.

  “Well, does it or doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what to say because I’ve never thought about it before. I can only answer questions I’ve already thought about.”

  “Then make a little effort to imagine the name Flávia and I bet you’ll find the answer.”

  “I’m imagining, I’m imagining . . . Aha, I’ve got it! The name of my childhood nanny is Augusta!”

  “But, sweet child of the Lord, I’m running out of patience, it’s not your childhood nanny I want, it’s Flá-vi-a!”

  “I don’t want to seem rude, but my mother always said that pushy people are impolite, sorry!”

  “Impolite? Me? Brought up in Paris and London? Do you at least speak French or English, so we can practice a little?”

  “I only speak the language of Brazil, ma’am, and I believe it’s time for you to hang up because my tea must be cold by now.”

  “Tea at three in the afternoon? It’s quite clear you don’t have the least bit of class, and here I thought you might have studied in England and would at least know what time people have tea!”

  “The tea is because I didn’t have anything else to do . . . Madame Constança. And now I beg you in the name of God not to torture me any longer, I’m begging you on my knees to hang up so I can finish having my Brazilian tea.”

  “All right, but there’s no need to whine, Dona Flores, my sole and absolute intention was to speak to Flávia to invite her over for a little game of bridge. Ah! I’ve got an idea! Since Flávia’s out, why don’t you come over for a couple rounds of low-stakes cards? Hm? How about it? Aren’t you tempted? And how about entertaining a lady of a certain age?”

  “My God, I don’t know how to play any games.”

  “But how can that be!?”

  “I just don’t. That’s how.”

  “And to what do you owe this lapse in your upbringing?”

  “My father was strict: in his house the vice of card-playing was never allowed.”

  “Your father, your mother and Augusta were very old-fashioned, if I may say so and I think that . . .”

  “No! You may not! And now I’m the one hanging up, beg your pardon, Madame.”

  Wiping her eyes, she felt relieved for a moment and had an idea so novel it didn’t even seem like her own: it seemed demonic like the lady’s ideas . . . It was to take the phone off the hook so that, should Madame Constança be as constant as her name, she wouldn’t call back for that miserable Flávia. She blew her nose. Ah, if it weren’t for her manners, what she would have said to that Constança woman! She was already regretting everything she hadn’t said because of her manners.

  Yes. The tea was cold.

  And tasting distinctly of sweetener. The third little piece of toast spit out onto the tablecloth. The afternoon ruined. Or the day ruined? Or her life ruined? Never had she stopped to consider whether or not she was happy. So, instead of tea, she ate a slightly tart banana.

  Then.

  Then. So then it was four o’clock.

  Then five.

  Six.

  Seven: dinnertime!

  She would have liked to eat something else and not yesterday’s chicken but she’d been taught not to waste food. She ate a dried-out thigh along with the little toasts. Truth be told, she wasn’t hungry. She only sometimes perked up with Augusta because they’d talk and talk and eat, ah, they’d break their diets and not even gain weight! But Augusta would be gone for a month. A month is a lifetime.

  Eight o’clock. She could already go to bed. She brushed her teeth for a long while, pensive. She put on a tattered, somewhat threadbare cotton nightgown, one of those nice cozy ones that her mother had made. And got into bed, under the covers.

  Eyes wide open.

  Eyes wide open.

  Eyes wide open.

  That was when she remembered the vials of sleeping pills that had been her mother’s. She remembered her father: careful, Leontina, with the dosage, one too many could be fatal. I, Leontina would answer, don’t want to leave this good life behind so soon, and I’ll take just two little pills, enough to sleep soundly and wake up all rosy for my little husband.

  That’s right, thought Margarida das Flores no Jard
im,§ to get some nice, sound sleep and wake up rosy. She went to her mother’s room, opened a drawer to the left of the big double bed — and indeed found three vials full of tablets. She was going to take two pills to start the day rosy. She didn’t have bad intentions. She went to get the pitcher and a glass. She opened one of the vials: took out two little pills. They tasted like mold and sugar. She didn’t notice the slightest bad intention in herself. But no one in the world will know. And now no one will ever be able to tell whether it happened due to some sort of imbalance or ultimately due to a great balance: glassful after glassful she swallowed each and every pill from the three big vials. But on the second vial she thought for the first time in her life: “I.” And it wasn’t merely a rehearsal: it was in fact a debut. All of her was debuting at last. And even before they ran out, she was already feeling something in her legs, better than anything she’d ever felt. She didn’t even know it was Sunday. She didn’t have the strength to go to her own room: she let herself collapse on the bed where she’d been conceived. It was one day less. Vaguely she thought: if only Augusta had left me a raspberry tart.

  * * *

  * “Daisy Funeral Flowers.”

  † “Daisy Garden Flowers.”

  ‡ “Daisy Flowers of the Flowering Woods.”

  § “Daisy of the Flowers in the Garden.”

  .

  Appendix: Useless Explanation

  Clarice Lispector rarely commented on her own writing, or on anyone else’s. Here, presumably in response to a query, she describes the genesis of Family Ties. This text appears in the “Back of the Drawer” section of The Foreign Legion.

  It is not easy to remember how and why I wrote a story or a novel. Once they detach from me, I too find them unfamiliar. It’s not a “trance,” but the concentration during the writing seems to take away the awareness of whatever isn’t writing itself. There is something, however, that I can try to reconstruct, if it really matters, and if it answers what I have been asked.

  What I remember of the story “Happy Birthday,” for example, is the impression of a party that was no different from other birthdays; but it was a stifling summer day, and I don’t think I even put the idea of summer in the story. I had an “impression,” from which a few vague lines resulted, set down just for the enjoyment and necessity of deepening a feeling. Years later, when I came across these lines, the whole story was born, with the speed of someone transcribing a previously witnessed scene — yet none of what I wrote happened at that or any other party. Much later a friend asked me whose grandmother that was. I answered that she was someone else’s grandmother. Two days later the true answer came to me spontaneously, and with surprise: I discovered that the grandmother was my very own, and all I had known of her, as a child, was a picture, nothing more.

  “Mystery in São Cristóvão” is a mystery to me: I went on writing it calmly like someone unwinding a ball of yarn. I didn’t encounter the least difficulty. I believe that the absence of difficulty arose from the very conception of the story: its atmosphere may have needed this detached attitude of mine, a certain non-participation. The lack of difficulty might have been an internal technique, an approach, delicateness, feigned distraction.

  Of “Daydream and Drunkenness of a Young Lady” I know I had so much fun that it really was a pleasure to write. While the work lasted, I was always in a good mood unlike usual days and, though others never quite noticed, I would speak in the Portuguese style, making, it seems to me, an experiment with language. It was great to write about the Portuguese woman.

  Of “Family Ties” I recall nothing.

  Of the story “Love” I remember two things: one, while writing, the intensity with which I unexpectedly ended up with the character in an uncalculated Botanical Garden, and from which we nearly didn’t manage to get out, from being so surrounded in vines, and half-hypnotized — to the point that I had to make my character call the guard to open the gates that were already shut, or else we would still be living there to this day. The second thing I remember is a friend reading the typed story to critique it, and I, upon hearing it in a human and familiar voice, having the sudden impression that only at that instant was it born, and born fully made, as a child is born. That was the best moment of all: the story was given to me there, and I received it, or there I gave it and it was received, or both things that are one.

  Of “The Dinner” I know nothing.

  “A Chicken” was written in about half an hour. Someone had commissioned a column from me, I was trying without exactly trying, and I ended up not turning it in; until one day I realized that it was a fully rounded story, and felt with what love I had written it. I also saw I had written a story, and that in it was the fondness I’d always had for animals, one of the accessible forms of people.

  “Beginnings of a Fortune” was written more to see what would come of trying out a technique so light that it merely gets interspersed with the story. I dove right in and was guided only by curiosity. Another practice scale.

  “Preciousness” is a little irritating, I ended up disliking the girl, and then asking her forgiveness for disliking her, and at the moment of asking forgiveness feeling like not asking after all. I ended up sorting out her life more to unburden my conscience and from responsibility than from love. Writing like that isn’t worth it, it gets you caught up in the wrong way, tests the patience. I have the impression that, even if I could make this story into a good one, it intrinsically wouldn’t be worthwhile.

  “Imitation of the Rose” made use of several fathers and mothers to be born. There was the initial shock of the news that someone had fallen ill, without my understanding why. On that same day there were roses sent to me, and that I shared with a friend. There was that constant in everyone’s life, which is the rose as flower. And there was all the rest that I don’t know, and that is the fertile ground of any story. “Imitation” gave me a chance to use a monotonous tone that satisfies me very much: repetition pleases me, and repetition happening in the same place ends up digging down bit by bit, the same old song ad nauseam says something.

  “The Crime of the Mathematics Teacher” used to be called “The Crime,” and was published. Years later I understood that the story simply hadn’t been written. So I wrote it. I nevertheless have the lingering impression that it remains not written. I still don’t understand the mathematics teacher, though I know that he is what I said.

  “The Smallest Woman in the World” reminds me of Sunday, springtime in Washington, child falling asleep on my lap in the middle of an outing, the first heat of May — while the smallest woman in the world (an item read in the newspaper) was intensifying all this in a place that seems to me the birthplace of the world: Africa. I think this story too came from my love of animals; it seems to me that I feel animals as one of the things still very close to God, material that didn’t invent itself, a thing still warm from its own birth; and, nonetheless, a thing already getting up on its feet, and already living fully, and in each minute living all at once, never just bit by bit, never sparing itself, never wasting itself.

  “The Buffalo” reminds me very vaguely of a face that I saw on a woman or on several, or on men; and one of the thousand visits I’ve made to zoos. That time, a tiger looked at me, I looked at him, he held the gaze, I did not, and I got out of there until today. The story has nothing to do with all that, it was written and put aside. One day I reread it and felt a shock of distress and horror.

  .

  Translator’s Note

  Reading Clarice Lispector is a disorienting experience. There are the startling faces and eyes that appear in mirrors, in windows, in crowds, eyes peering out from animal masks or resembling cockroaches fringed with cilia, faces exposed like the viscera of a body on an operating table. There are the intense feelings that explode inside her characters in shifting constellations — nausea, distress, shock, fright, rag
e, joy. And the moments of grace punctured by jarring intrusions, as when a rat shatters a woman’s communion with the divine.

  Translating Clarice has meant growing attuned to the ways her sly surrealism, which can veer into the absurdist or fantastical, is embedded in her style. The logic of a deceptively simple narrative or series of declarations becomes distorted or ends in non sequiturs. “The general law for us to stay alive: one can say ‘a pretty face,’ but whoever says ‘the face,’ dies; for having exhausted the topic.” Or: “Brasília is slim. And utterly elegant. It wears a wig and false eyelashes. It is a scroll inside a Pyramid. It does not age. It is Coca-Cola, my God, and will outlive me.” The most dizzying feature in Clarice’s writing are the surprises on the level of the sentence. Certain combinations seem contradictory or disproportionate like “delicate abyss,” or “horribly marvelous.” The usual expression takes a detour, as when an elderly matriarch scornfully calls her offspring “flesh of my knee” instead of “flesh of my flesh.” A comma trips up the pace where it doesn’t seem to belong, like a hair in your soup.

  Over and over, these stories find their force in a pivotal encounter, one that forever changes a character, drastically or in the form of a subtle but lasting imprint — a single white hair or wrinkle #3. And the language ripples along the contours of these events, lyrical or hypnotic in a moment of rapture, fragmented or puzzling when a character apprehends something previously unseen. The story “Love” hinges on one such encounter. It occurs when the housewife Ana sees a blind man on the street as she’s riding the tram home from errands. He’s chewing gum in a way that seems to mock her, toppling her contentment with her seemingly picture-perfect domestic life. Just as Ana is thrown into a crisis, the words start revolting against common sense. Subject and object don’t match up: “everything had gained strength and louder voices.” The sentences become as choppy and jumbled as Ana’s consciousness: “Next to her was a lady in blue, with a face. She averted her gaze, quickly. On the sidewalk, a woman shoved her son! Two lovers interlaced their fingers smiling . . . And the blind man? Ana had fallen into an excruciating benevolence.”