Then she changed clothes and lay down. A gentle joy was already starting to circulate in her blood with the first warmth, her teeth were once again sharpening and her nails hardening, her heart finally becoming precise in beats hard and curt. She succumbing to an extreme fatigue that no man would love. Fatigue and remorse and horror, insomnia that the lighthouse was haunting in silence.
She didn’t want to take the path of love, it would be a too-bloody reality, the rats — the lighthouse lit her in a flash and revealed the unknown face of lust. In the phosphorescence of the darkness she was seeing once again the ballrooms immobilized in the light, and the horrified people dancing completely still, an automaton reality and pleasure — the woman withdrew pale, ah! she was saying surprised.
But gradually, the lighthouse illuminating and darkening her, she started losing her mind imagining a conversation in which Doctor Lucas would seem even more severe, she even humbler, asking him, to buy time, a thousand questions that would be a dance around him, destined to confound the man’s strength: sir, do you like big houses? sir, do you believe in me? if I were about to die would you save me, sir? do you speak many languages, sir? that’s wonderful! and quickly showing him her things: here’s my house for the time being, this city looks so much like São Geraldo! That’s my window.
So much shyness didn’t come from shame, it came from beauty, from fear, she back again with the great frogs.
But suddenly humble, hard, smoothing out the tablecloth to make the vision come easier: I’ll give you my life and nothing more. Doctor Lucas, one couldn’t make up the expression he’d have just then, crying out: I want less than your life, I want you! Her responding with pain, with modesty: when it comes to love it’s undignified to ask for so little, buddy.
Once the tensest moment of the night had passed some streak of humidity was finally broken, the waves were beating softly. The woman nodded off and Doctor Lucas mumbled a bit ridiculously with his somber face: so you don’t know how to be free. And her answering: ah, I can’t, you know, and she ended up free, so much that she fell asleep.
The next day she was waiting for him on the sidewalk in front of his office.
When he saw her he stopped short with the key in his hand, his lips pressed tight. He was irritated.
But she was looking at him patient, modest; night was falling.
Without speaking Lucas closed the door of his office and they went off together. They were walking around the small city immersed in shadow. The woman would sometimes walk ahead, and Doctor Lucas would stop. She’d then go on ahead fatigued in the park, making sure with a quick glance that he was still observing her; she’d go on, stumble, lean in perdition on the stone eagles running her fingers over the reliefs . . . He was watching mute — while Lucrécia Neves was displaying herself, trying to make herself understood in the only way she had to speak, displaying with monotonous perseverance; he becoming a harder man while watching; she carrying on silently, spinning around in front of him, working him with patience in order to form her counterpart in this world, looking at the low sky.
Until, already out of the center of town, they saw a closed house. The dry ivy was climbing the columns, the blinds covered in dust were shut. Near the counter the broken pitcher. Lucas wanted to go ahead, but what did she wish to show him in the abandoned house? the woman didn’t know and persisted trusting in her own ignorance; the ground of dry leaves was muffling her steps. She ended up pushing the wooden gate. But Lucas had halted stubbornly. Don’t be afraid, she was saying with a protective glance, it was just a silent dwelling. There was the crack in the wall. Could that be the house’s horror?
They went on. He belonging to his wife while, without getting discouraged, Lucrécia Neves was spinning around him; and the more the man was catching on, the more inscrutable he was becoming. Sometimes the woman would realize he was feeling the urge to get rid of her, he was so annoyed. But she’d keep on gently provoking him, with a resignation that would sometimes make her think she’d been walking in the dust for years without a single breeze to bring relief to the air. She was very tired. Eventually there was established between them at last a short and brusque relationship whose possibilities they wouldn’t know how to measure: Lucas would take out a cigarette, she’d remove with insufferable gentleness the lighter from his hand, Lucas holding back a movement of repulsion; she’d light the small flame conquering him, he conquered but increasingly gruff: when she’d give him back the lighter, they’d go on.
One night they were standing on the hill that so resembled the hill in the pasture — until the dawn took on a sharp stained-glass tone; he with his dark face.
It was at this time that Lucas began to be scared. When the light of the lighthouse would pass over them it revealed two unknown faces. Lucrécia Neves unknown, yes, but at peace, concentrated on her utmost surface. Sometimes a rapid contraction would pass over her face as if a fly had landed upon it. Then she’d move her hooves, patient. He unknown but already anxious, looking around, placing his hand on the trunk of the chestnut . . . Then Lucrécia placed her hand on the trunk of the chestnut. Through the tree Lucrécia was touching him. The indirect world.
Loving him, returning to the necessity of that gesture that was pointing things out and, with the same single movement, creating whatever there was of the unknown inside them — all of her was on the verge of that gesture when she was touching the trunk his hand was touching — just as she’d looked at a household object in order to reach the city: humble, touching whatever she could. For the first time she was tempting him through herself, and through the overvaluation of that small part of individuality that until now had not surpassed itself nor brought her to love of herself. But now, with a final effort, she was tempting solitude. Solitude with a man: with a final effort, she was loving him.
Then she returned by the footpaths that were dawning. She’d never seen the house of roses at sunrise. At that hour it was brittle, not very intimate. And so superficial. Every corner was visible.
The days moreover were marvelous at that time of year. Autumn was beginning and in the windows spider webs were shining. Distances had become much greater though easy to cover. To the woman it really seemed like living on the line of the horizon. It was from there that she would see each small thing with its lights, this strange world where you could uselessly touch everything. The roosters would crow behind the houses. As for the mornings, they were for throwing a shoe into the distance — and the dog running after it barking. It was hunting season.
In fact restless bitches were advancing without owners among the bamboo on the beach.
While Lucas was working, Lucrécia would go on lots of walks. The countryside dotted with small gleamings, with black streaks — and the cow . . . The cow looking at an expanse with one eye, the opposite expanse with the other eye; head-on would be so easy, but the cow never saw. Lucrécia Neves Correia, the butterflies — and the cow. On a bigger rock she could make out the ants quite nicely. They were black. And later the cloud.
The woman’s head was peering at the field. There was a thing that her mind didn’t grasp and that a horse would see — this was the easy name of things. Even the grottos were green . . . there was no darkness in which to hide. Everything was expelling her from solitude — the ripe sapodillas.
And in the morning, opening the window, how inhospitable the brightness was. Piles and piles of wood were burned and smoke emerged; the bees. Near the beach Lucrécia’s skin was turning green in the light of the waves. The woman was then sneezing. There was no other way to be.
Until one afternoon she decided to take a walk in the prairie. That silence. But fear was substituted by hope. And not even her solitude could keep itself going because . . . why was the corn already high? she was searching with her eyes for whatever was keeping her from being alone — farther on the ears of corn were shaking, heavy: the corn in the field was her most interior life. The field stretche
d out silent; there was the other life.
But looking at those lands where the spirit still was free, “what! unutilized plots in this day and age!” on top of it the practical woman thought with stubbornness: “Here. Here I would build a great city.”
There really was room and, tearing out the weeds and the corn, the ground would be so to speak ready. Then, in her other life, with effort, she’d make houses arise, bridges crisscross heaving, ghost factories function. A city she’d call São Geraldo? beginning it again with patience, this time without abandoning it for an instant with her attention — until reaching the point where the township was, in order to recognize, beneath the sedimentation, the true names of things.
But at dusk the sun would pale. And over the imagined city the wind started to blow stronger and to whirl around the ears of corn wrapping them in shadow. Is it going to rain? the woman thought hurrying back, she’d barely have time to meet Doctor Lucas — but the wind was running faster than her steps, pushing her skirt ahead, uncovering her nape blinding her face with her hair, she, for whom it hadn’t been enough for the corn to grow.
It was on that night that while looking at Lucas — maybe because she needed him once again — she imagined the man was finally starting to yield. Just for a second: because in the dark and wind wouldn’t that animal face be impassioned?
But would it be passion or hunger for mercy? Since in the dark she was seeing him the way she’d see an animal — it was a bull’s head or a dog’s — the head of a man. Of a man who grazed in the field and chewed grass, and who bit off high leaves along the way — and who at night would stop in the wind — empty, potent, king of the animals — the head in the dark.
Could this be the dementia of solitude? king of the animals. Nauseated, she’d have wanted to turn around and leave, such did she still prefer the promising confusion of words to this nudity without beauty, to this truth of hospitals and war. Never had her back been so against the wall.
Averting her eyes with distaste: she didn’t even love him, the wind was murmuring in the trees. But an instant later, from weariness, growing heavy and without a will of her own: oh a woman for that man. She was strong, crude, patient — without expecting anything in return she belonged to that resigned head of a beast, and from this other animal she would await without curiosity the order to go ahead or halt, dragging herself sweaty, resisting as best she could. In order at night to raise her head beside the animal’s head, both chewing in silence in the dark, both surviving as an obscure victory.
Maybe even this was to belong to God. For they had said that man would eat bread with the sweat of his brow and that women would have children in pain. You couldn’t even say she loved him, it was so lacking in glory. Standing face to face, without malice, without sex, clinging to the somber joy of subsisting.
Though that woman’s strange response was still: I prefer to live in the city. And there was no way to criticize her for not seizing the chance to belong to a man, and not to things. In fact he’d offered nothing, he’d just been a head expressing itself in the dark. They would make concrete every thought about bridges, every idea about a railway. One was however waiting for the other to guess it, the utmost of giving and accepting, there’d never been such a need to be understood. Nothing was being demanded but this instant of survival, that’s how it was, that’s how it would be.
The next night — she awaiting him at his office door, both spent by insomnia — Lucas finally said it was impossible.
Lucrécia was shocked as if unaware what this was all about, and he seeing so much fake innocence got mad. The woman started to cry, softly at first — she really did seem surprised by his haste — saying she’d been forever wounded, that everything had been ruined forever, though both hardly knew what “everything” she was referring to; that she’d expected from him “some enormous thing, oh Doctor Lucas,” and that he’d wounded her forever, she was repeating amidst tears and syllables swallowed by sobs. The man was looking at her with brutality, seeing her crying mixing up her words; she seemed pure and puritan. He said severely like a doctor: calm down. The weeping subsided immediately. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
But without tears she was horrible to look at. Her mouth so painted. Her face in the darkness was anonymous, repugnant, fantastic. The doctor fell silent confronted with this truth that had taken, to the surprise of his eyes, the form of a face. He wanted to ask how he’d wounded her but this no longer mattered; when he saw her face without disguise he knew he’d wounded her somehow. He also noticed that the woman hadn’t complained about any single fact. Except about himself, which was as vague as it was serious and accusatory; he’d been struck.
Lucrécia was now keeping absent in the shadow, he couldn’t see her nor did he know whom to address when he said in an empty and dry tone:
“I don’t know what I’m to blame for but I ask forgiveness.” — The light of the lighthouse revealed them so quickly that they couldn’t see each other. — “I ask forgiveness for not being a ‘star’ or ‘the sea’ ” — he said ironic ally— “or for not being something that gives itself,” he said blushing. “I ask forgiveness for not knowing how to give myself even to myself — until now I’ve only been asked for kindness — but never to . . . — in order to give myself in this way I’d lose my life if necessary — but again I ask forgiveness, Lucrécia: I don’t know how to lose my life.”
It had been his longest speech to date, and the most embarrassing. He’d spoken with difficulty and now was withdrawing into the dark. Was he understanding, more than she did, that Lucrécia might have been wanting just a gesture? asking for a feeling and nothing more? he was afraid that this was so little. Fear, beside this weak being who didn’t die: because he was so paltry that, when his strength ran out, he himself would die. He looked at his hands in the dark. He was making out thick fingers, the bones, the wide back of his hand. Sensitivity was only in the web of veins. What is she asking of me? he was wondering looking at the hands that were his strength, what’s she asking of me? and his austerity was as insufferable as the night air seemed free. He loosened his collar, moved his neck toward the sky. Coolness was blowing amongst the trees, he’d grown used to understanding just the words; now, whatever had no words was understood with square hands, and with steps that wouldn’t halt even if his heart were struck, he who never was mortally struck, such was his impotence.
Thus, walking down the footpaths back to town — he wasn’t thinking about Lucrécia Neves. He was also hardly feeling the humidity of the night; he was walking serious, without future.
And Lucrécia too . . . But no, beneath her futility she was working with time running out as in war. He wasn’t feeling sorry for himself or for Lucrécia. He was calm, strong. Because he was a man — if you wanted with effort to sum him up, not counting his unknown nights and his work — he was a slow, sincere man and didn’t feel sorry for himself. That had never helped anyway. It would make things easier to think he was weak. But no, he was strong. Which hadn’t stopped Lucrécia from rattling him, making him wonder now where his own guilt lay. Which became so great that there was no longer any punishment.
Individual life? the dangerous thing is that each person was dealing with centuries.
Several generations before him had already been expelled from a colony and delivered to solitude; and, if the man had cut off the self-love that this solitude would bring him, that was because his awareness, and more than awareness, a memory, was still making him at least hide the joy of being alone. Now however it was no longer a question of protecting himself. It was a question of losing himself until reaching the minimum of himself, throbbing spot that Lucrécia Neves had almost awoken — and at last he’d no longer need to be anonymous in order to conceal his pride, at last, maybe, he’d no longer need to be such a good doctor — because in that minimum of himself he would already be there entire . . . what danger. The doctor coughed pretending. Those who wer
e yet to come might assail him with a new way of laughing . . . Everything he was telling himself would come to pass, the man was trembling without feeling sorry for himself. The frogs were croaking, he wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.
What to make of Lucrécia, what to make of his wife who was embroidering in the sanatorium and would ask for red thread and lift her head hopefully when her husband arrived. And of Lucrécia? some tiny emphasis seemed to be Lucrécia’s only destiny, vehemence her only strength. Even before dying she was one of the raptured souls who even a tough man inhales in the air of the nights.
And Lucrécia’s, was that the true surrendered life? the one that gets lost, the waves that rise furiously over the rocks, the mortal fragrance of flowers — and there was the sweet evil, the boulders now submerged by the waves, and in Lucrécia’s innocence was evil, she waiting far away in the wind from the hill, waiting, sweet, dizzying, with her impure breath of roses, her neck crushable by one of his hands — she, waiting down through the centuries, decrepit and a child, for him to heed at last the plea of the waves over the rocks and, leaping over the tallest escarpment of the night, unleash a howl, the long neigh with which he’d respond to the beauty and perdition of this world: who hadn’t seen on windless nights how cruel and murderous the silver flowers were?
Stopped on the path, the man’s gaze was withdrawing cunningly, and he himself was moving forward with extreme caution among the branches — hunched, ready to leap. He wanted to reply, no longer to Lucrécia who was calling him — quickly he’d surpassed her, and if he were to speak he’d finally have managed to reply to a venetian blind flapping in the silence of a street, to a mirror that reflects, to everything that up till now we leave without an answer.
A breath of wind almost woke him. Lucas was startled as he looked at his big hands that were turning in front of his bestialized face, his naïve hands that had created the metamorphosis — with a certain horror he was staring at them, reduced to whatever sufficed of himself, and he’d cry out in victory and pain because it was the first vertigo of a man.
The Besieged City Page 16
