She sat to drink her coffee. Maybe she was thinking how burlesque their lives would be if they spoke to each other? and how São Geraldo would be destroyed if, instead of watching it keeping it beyond the reach of the voice — someone finally spoke. If she and Ana had talked, she’d have so often before broken resistance itself with a sincerity. But among people without intelligence there was no need to explain yourself.
“Ah, Lucrécia, oh my daughter, I haven’t slept well,” Ana said forsaken by the independence of Lucrécia, whom the quick surrender no longer seemed to alter.
“Dear mama, you need to get out of the house a bit more.”
“God forbid, darling daughter, ah, my God.”
Before Ana could go on, tying her down for a long conversation, the girl stood, crossed the hallway and entered the living room. Where the lights of other houses were making it pointless to turn on the lamp. She then grabbed the pair of shoes and started shining them slowly in the half-light.
At first a bit unrecognizable, after an instant the room was regaining its old position having as its center the flower. The spirit was the wind, the northwesterly wind was blowing insistently, broken by the houses on the street.
The room was replete with pitchers, trinkets, chairs and crocheted doilies, and cluttering the floral-papered walls were cut-out pages of magazines and old calendars. The suffocated and pure air of forever closed-off places, the smell of things. But would the auction soon begin and the objects be put on display? nothing would really keep the door from opening — the wind was foreshadowing doors roughly thrown ajar.
Rubbing the shoes more slowly, the daydreaming girl was examining with pleasure her fortress, not peeking at it but looking at it straight on: she was getting ready to face things with loyalty. Remaining perched just as on the hill in the pasture — that’s how she was looking around. In this girl, who knew little more of herself than her own name, the effort to see was the effort to give herself outward expression. The mason building the house and smiling with pride — everything that Lucrécia Neves could know of herself was outside her: she was seeing.
Courage however was deciding to start. As long as she didn’t begin, the city was intact. And it would be enough to start looking to smash it into a thousand pieces that she could never put back together afterward.
It was a patience of constructing and demolishing and constructing again and knowing she might die one day right when she’d demolished in the process of building.
Amidst her ignorance she’d only felt that she needed to start with the first things of Sāo Geraldo — with the living room — thus remaking the whole city. She’d even planted the first stake of her kingdom looking at: a chair. All around however the void had continued. Not even she herself could draw near to that created area that a chair had made unapproachable. She’d never been able to go beyond the serenity of a chair and head toward second things.
Though, while she was looking, had some time passed that would one day be called perfecting? those long years that were passing through scattered moments: through rare instants Lucrécia Neves possessed a single destiny. Since she was slow, things by dint of being anchored were gaining their own shape with definition — that was what she’d sometimes manage: to reach the object itself.
And to be enthralled: because behold the table in the dark. Raised above itself by its lack of function. The other things of the room engorged by their own existence, whereas anything that at least wasn’t solid, like the small hollow three-legged table — didn’t have, didn’t give — was transitory — surprising — perched — extreme.
Telegram signals. Behold the raised shape of the small table. When a thing didn’t think, the form it had was its thought. The fish was the fish’s only thought. What about the smokestack. Or that small page of the calendar that the wind left trembling . . . Ah, yes, Lucrécia Neves was seeing everything.
Though she gave nothing of herself — except for the same incomprehensible clarity. The secret of things was in that, by showing themselves, they showed themselves exactly as they were.
That’s how it was. And rubbing her shoe, the girl looked at this dark world replete with trinkets, the flower, the single flower in the vase: this was the township — she was polishing furiously.
Behold the flower — showing its thick stem, the round corolla: the flower was showing off. But atop the stem it too was untouchable, the indirect world. No point being motionless: the flower was untouchable. When it started to wilt, you could now look at it directly but by then it would be too late; and after it died, it would become easy: you could throw it away touching it all over — and the room would shrink, you’d wander among diminished things with firmness and disappointment, as if whatever was mortal had died and the rest were eternal, without danger.
Ah, ah, the familiar air of the room was vibrating. Ah, the girl with four shoes was watching. The desire to go to a dance would sometimes emerge, grow and leave sea-foam on the beach. Shoes in hand Lucrécia Neves twisted her head and sneakily tried to peer at the living flower. She even came closer, sniffed it warily. She grew dizzy from breathing so deeply, the flower itself growing dizzy from being breathed in — it was giving itself! But once a certain moment arrived, — the sudden blow of the hoof! — and the fragrance became impenetrable. There was the exhausted flower yet with the same amount of fragrance as before . . . What was the flower made of if not of flower itself.
That’s how it was. And beside her, the porcelain boy playing the flute. A sober thing, dead, as fortunately could never be imagined.
Oh, but things were never seen: people were the ones who saw.
And nearby the solid door of the room. And farther beyond the porcelain woman was bearing on her back the small stopped clock.
All this was the miniature version of the church, the square and the clock tower, and on this map the young woman was making calculations like a general. So what would she say if she could go, from seeing objects, to saying them . . . That was what she, with the patience of a mute, seemed to desire. Her imperfection came from wanting to say, her difficulty in seeing was like that of painting.
The hard thing is that appearance was reality.
Now the rain was falling in great sheets.
Meanwhile some time had passed. And if nothing had been transformed, the night already had lost its date, and was smelling of moist whitewash.
The girl opened the magazine distractedly, and in the dark could barely make out the figures. But there were the Greek statues . . . Could one of them be pointing? . . . but it no longer had an arm. And they’d even displaced it from the spot that it was indicating with the remaining piece of marble; each one should stay in his own city because, transported, he would point to the void, such was the freedom of travel. There was the piece of marble. In the dark. What a sight! the girl put down the magazine, got up — what would she do until getting married? except walk back and forth — and she opened the doors of the balcony with curiosity.
She’d hardly cracked the doors when the great night entered with the wind throwing them ajar — but after the first gust you only felt the pulsing of the darkness, the lights of the street almost erased beneath the rain.
On the corner a wagon with a lit lamp was dragging along, spurred on. When the wheels vanished in the distance nothing more was heard.
There was the city.
Its possibilities were terrifying. But it never revealed them!
Only every once in a while a glass would shatter.
If at least the girl were outside its walls. What a painstaking work of patience it would be to encircle it. To waste her life trying geometrically to lay siege to it with calculations and resourcefulness in order to one day, even when she was decrepit, find the breach.
If at least she were outside its walls.
But there was no way to besiege it. Lucrécia Neves was inside the city.
The girl leaned out, listening, looking, ah, rain with wind, her calm blood was saying, she was leaning, listening, ah! Lucrécia was breathing, breaking off her encounter with the great darknesses beyond the Gate: it must have been raining upon the deserted tracks.
You could even make out the bathed lights of the station. On the hill in the pasture, in the storm, what would the wet horses be doing?
The bolts of lightning opening clearings and illuminating for a second the dripping coat, the pupils dangerous with humiliation. The equines! then the thunderclaps rolling patiently and closing the hill in darkness. Lucrécia Neves’s face was making an effort, curious, beyond its own figure, listening. But you could only hear the streets flowing with rain . . .
Leaning then on the blinds she murmured: ah, I’d love to have the strength of a window, she murmured to herself quietly, and through these words she was perhaps disguising other older words, seeking a lost rite. Inexplicably more hopeful, she was now trying to provoke her wrath until reaching her own strength, trotting watchfully, venturing to touch the objects — until happening upon whatever would be the key to things, touching the door with a delicate hand and with a serenity that this too would never burst its own limit — such was the extraordinary balance everything was keeping.
Some news, she thought with other words, outdoing herself in new rage — and listening hopefully: but the night, the night encircling the clock tower was the reply.
She advanced slumbering, yawning furiously without self-delusion, sniffing up close the smell of chairs, the smell the wind was lifting and scattering — she was already disheveled as if from rough work. Come to me, she essayed while blushing . . . A new burst of thunder rolled with sadness, the girl purred with pleasure. Come to me, she said with other words. Not even she herself answered. The rain was singing in pipes.
Yawning she kneeled before the sofa, sank her face into the cushion: she’d always rest after dinner.
And the mustiness coming from the furnishing’s well-cared-for old age.
Yet I’ve been patient, she thought running her fingers over the ridges of the leather; her patience came from so many walks and brimmed hats.
The news, she was making an effort, empty. The motionless horses in the rain. Ah, she said with rage and humility, her sleepy hands braiding a lock of hair.
She didn’t know where to start hoping again, the room covered her in a wave, but she kept her eyes open inside the cushion, a severed head in the Museum: she was dreaming curious in the dark, the horses were advancing on the hill, the positions of the game were switched.
That’s when she heard steps on the sidewalk.
Trying one more time to pay attention, she started hearing them on the stairs.
They were getting closer. The girl was waiting with her narrow intelligence, her senses on edge. Her left shoulder was stroking her ear slyly, her head in the cushion . . . Finally the steps halted near the room. With difficulty hearing, Lucrécia Neves invented hearing the door creak.
She paused, the ostrich feather in her hand and the half-written page on the desk. Trying one more time to invent something, and her hand was resting on wide skirts. She leaned her pale face forward now framed by two plaits of hair: her aspect was ennobled by patience. With the raised feather in her hand, she finally looked. The door was opening and the wind was penetrating making the room waver. A man appeared and water was streaming down his cape. When she thought he’d never speak, the visitor said above his drenched beard:
“It’s here, Lucrécia. The ship’s already here.”
For the first time they were pronouncing her name emphasizing her destiny.
It was a name to be called from afar, then from nearer by, until they handed her the letter, breathless. She took her handkerchief from one of her cuffs, covering her mouth with the lace to hide her trembling:
“Well-laden?”
The man looked with a certain hesitation.
“Always the same. Coal. Always coal.”
Lucrécia Neves remained rigid.
“You can go then,” she said to him with eyes full of cold tears, “you can go, it doesn’t matter.”
That wasn’t the shipment, that wasn’t the news! The large man was blocking the doorway. He looked like he might topple over, and the girl wondered if he might be wounded. But the man was now staring forcefully at the trinkets, and without a smile despising the fresh whiteness of the porcelain.
“It’s coal,” he repeated shrugging with irony, “it’s coal . . .”
“Go away,” she ordered firmly.
The door finally closed. Lucrécia Neves rested the quill atop the desk and grew thoughtful.
Blinking inside the cushion.
Oh, she’d been free to invent the news she was awaiting and yet had sought once again with her freedom fateful things, such was the balance. The night was heavy with rain.
The girl finally lifted her head from the sofa and looked out all drowsy. Under the water the living room was floating before eyes that had just arrived from the darkness. The trinkets were gleaming in a brightness of their own like deep-sea animals. The room was intimate, fantastic, the interior suffocated with dreaming . . . Throughout the chamber innocent things were scattered keeping a lookout.
The girl’s face too was brutalized and sweet. Her body could barely support her heavy head.
She rose sleepily to the window, and in fact, just as she was touching the sill, she heard the sound of wings. From the invisible balcony next door the dove rose terrified amidst the rain and flying off disappeared.
As if the wing had struck her face, with her heart beating awakened: “it even looked like the dove had taken off from your hands, just think!” The error of vision went up in a firework, the window opened and slammed down again, the wind crossed the room making it shiver — at the back of the wide-awake house other windows were opening in reply — dryly the blinds kept banging and the whole house was pierced with cold and height: the fragile second floor was shuddering in the wet windows and in the mirrors, and all around the flower large sleepy wasps were fleeing in fright, the intimate horror of the flower was freeing itself in a thousand lives — the township invading the living room in a rhythmic trot? . . . The lightning. The chamber was revealing itself in brightness, the porcelain flashing — these things provoked at great length were gleaming in the eye: not that either! she was saying shuddering beneath the mechanism she herself had unleashed. After the lightning the living room went dark.
The rain was running fast dragging antlers and bits of rotten tree trunks.
The girl was looking at the widened corners of the room, trying to clasp the first solid lifeline: she stared at the confused keyhole that beneath her fixed gaze was perfecting itself into a smaller, smaller keyhole, until reaching its own delicate size.
Feeling more lucid, she’d nonetheless lost a certain amount of uncountable time — she who had come so close that for an instant she’d feared being sanctified — by reality? And now she wanted to go ahead but the void was encircling her and in the void the keyhole was grabbing her — she wanted to hoist herself above the keyhole but what a bird’s cry of effort it was to hoist herself again, only someone who flew could know how heavy a body was — the living room lit up in a silent flash, closed up calm and throbbing in the dark; the last candle snuffed out. Tranquil thunderclaps resounded beyond the Gate. In the silence the drops were running down the window.
The girl quickly yawned, out of time. She was standing, hunched, humble. Everything seemed to be waiting for her too to stomp firm and fast with her hoof.
And amid incessant yawns she too would have liked to thus express her modest function which was: to look. What an inexpressive living room, she thought from afar chewing her thumbnail. The waters were running to the sewers, liquid, abundant . . . The scattered animals were waiting.
An instant when she’d express her
self and place herself on the same level as the city. An instant when she’d show herself, and have the shape she needed as an instrument.
Then, austere, she tried with honesty to say. Angrily chewing her nail, she leaned her head forward: as an expression.
But no, nothing had been said . . . She looked at wood, table, statuette, the true things, trying to perfect herself in imitation of such a palpable reality! but she seemed to be missing, in order to say, greater destiny. The girl was searching for it: leaning her torso forward and scrutinizing herself with hope. But again she’d made a mistake.
So she erased everything and started over. She hoisted herself this time on tiptoe; listened. Surprising herself by discovering, through the freedom of choosing her movements, the hardness of small bones, of irrevocable and delicate little laws: there were gestures you could carry out and others that were prohibited.
She’d fallen into an ancient art of the body and this body was seeking itself out fumbling along in ignorance.
Until seeming to find the simple subtlety of the body, transformed at last into the thing that acts.
So she stretched out one of her hands. Hesitant. Then more insistent. She stretched it out and suddenly twisted it showing her palm. In the movement her shoulder lifted crippled . . .
But that’s really how it was. She stuck out her left foot. Sliding it across the floor, the tips of her toes diagonal to her ankle. She was somehow so twisted that she wouldn’t return to her normal position without wreaking havoc on her whole body.
With her palm cruelly exposed, her outstretched hand was asking and at the same time: Pointing. Lifted by such a fast intensity that she balanced on the unmovable — like the flower in the pitcher.
Behold the mystery of an untouchable flower: the rejoicing intensity. What crude art. She’d reduced herself to a single foot and a single hand. The final motionlessness after a leap. She seemed so poorly made.
Expressing with the gesture of the hand, atop the single foot, both gracefully bent in an offering, her only face shaking in pantomime, behold, behold, all of her, terribly physical, one of the objects. Responding at last while awaiting the beasts.
The Besieged City Page 8
