She got up, walked along with the noise of the wheels, her movements leaning against the direction of the train; somehow was thinking that the effort she was making was funny and maybe that’s why she smiled as if carrying out some purpose; she entered the dining car, ordered coffee while arranging her dusty hat, vaguely taking on the attitude of a tall, large, and good-humored person. She was feeling a bright peace open like a disregarded and tranquil field; eventually she forgot about herself and started observing with docile interest the things on the train, a woman chewing. The odd spark would cross the windows with fast violence, that now-now-now of the wheels that seemed like an internal murmuring. The sun was setting, the train was running through the already colorless fields. The restaurant was almost empty, atop the stained tablecloths flies were landing, everything was rough and dry with dust. It was with a jolt that she noticed her own abandonment. She scrutinized herself with slight anxiety. Some imperceptible thing had nonetheless already transformed itself. With a bit of concern she was listening to herself, the awakened being, deeply uneasy. She was slightly paying attention; the naturalness of things around her had vanished, like the final trace of warm sleepy pleasure when you wash your face, now existence itself was shaken, hard and broken several times. She herself was feeling intimately without comfort, her entrails awake as if her shoes were wet or her sweaty clothes stuck to her back — in a disquieted distaste she moved away from the back of the seat. She was understanding in a powerless and stupefied disappointment, already a beginning of deep fatigue flickering in her eyes, understanding that she hadn’t reached any ownership, that the departure for the city wasn’t symbolic. And the sensation she’d experienced a few minutes ago? she was searching hopefully. But no, no — and she wasn’t up to understanding her own thoughts — in fact whatever there was that was untouched, awake, and confused inside her still had enough strength to cause to be born a time of waiting longer than that from childhood up to the present day, so little had she arrived at any point, dissolved while still living — that was frightening her tired and desperate from her own unstable flowing and that was something horribly undeniable, and that nonetheless was soothing her in a strange way, like the sensation every morning of not having died during the night. With an unnoticed movement of discouragement she was confusedly wondering whether she’d forget forever what she’d felt in the end that was so firm and serene and whose kind she could no longer quite pinpoint with clarity, in a beginning of forgetting. No, she wouldn’t forget, she was clinging to herself without realizing it, but how to use it? how to live from that? she could never wear it out and that was also something undeniable, the train was carrying her forward as if losing her from herself, the wheels were wheezing, the fellow from the restaurant was leaning his body along with the movement of the car, finding his balance, losing his balance, the coffee was hot, yes, certainly the first time in the world that in a dining car somebody was managing to drink hot coffee, which was a thing to slightly shake your head about, surprised, as she was doing now wagging the red ribbon of the brown hat.
With her suitcase resting on the ground she waited for a moment on the corner. Yes, take now a taxi, find Miguel, ask for the money from the sale of the furniture, yes, yes. But she sighed motionless and alert. The dusty face beneath the hat slightly out of place on her head was looking dark and oppressed by a vague fear. What was happening! because all of her past was fading and a new time was horribly beginning? Suddenly she began to sweat, her stomach clenched in a single wave of nausea, she was breathing terribly oppressed and panting — what was happening to her? or what was going to happen? In an effort in which her chest seemed to endure a viscous weight, with an unsurpassed malaise, she crossed the street pale and the car turned the corner, she took a step back, the car hesitated, she advanced and the car came into light, she perceived it with a shock of heat over her body and a fall without pain while her heart was looking astonished at nothing in particular and a man’s shout was coming from somewhere — it was speedily the same day three years ago when she’d halted ahead avoiding by a hair’s breadth stepping on a rigid and dead kitten and her heart had retreated while, with her eyes for an instant deeply closed out of disgust, all her body was saying toward the inside of itself in a dark and concave moment, deep in the sonorous hollow of a silent church: arrh! in deep vivifying nausea, her heart retreating white and solid in a dry fall, arrh! And since she was thinking darkly about Vicente she saw Adriano, Vicente, Miguel, Daniel — Daniel, Daniel! in a bright and dizzying race through the streets of the city like a wind through flowing hair, she entered the Farm for an instant, she rocked herself quick, quick in the chair and with absolute amazement looked at herself white and with dark eyes in a mirror — long corridors were taking shape inside her, long tired corridors, difficult and dark, doors closing one after the next without noise with fright and care while a moment of Daniel’s rage was thought by her and the instants were brightly following one after the next — she and Daniel chewed the last of the fruit that was running down their chins and were looking at each other with shining and intelligent eyes, almost one of them enjoying what the other was eating, it was cold, her red and painful nose in the courtyard of the Farm; she directed a shiver at Daniel. She who’d never wasted time — confused, deaf, fast, bright, dissonant, the noise that comes from the orchestra tuning and tuning itself for the concert and a movement of well-being seeking comfort, the unaccustomed heart. What was happening was so simple that she didn’t know from where to understand. In the frozen twilight black corridors, narrow, empty and damp, a dormant and numb substance: and suddenly! suddenly! suddenly! the white butterfly fluttering in the shadowy corridors, getting lost at the end of the darkness. She was obscurely wanting to cut herself off, she was obscurely wanting to cut herself off. The street was steaming cold and sleepy, her own heart was being taken by surprise, her head heavy, heavy with stunning grace — while the streets of Upper Marsh were heading fast and flickering inside their smell of apple, sawdust, import and export, that lack of sea. And suddenly ravished by her own spirit. It was an extremely intimate and strange moment — she was recognizing all of this, how often, how often had she rehearsed it without realizing it; and now, extraordinarily hushed, purified of her own sources of energy, surrendering even future possibilities — ah, not to have recognized then that type of gesture, almost a position of thought, the head leaning to one side, like that, like that . . . not to have paid attention to it then . . . how frightened she would have been if she’d understood it — but now she wasn’t frightened, the urge was inferior to the most secret quality of being, in the frozen twilight a new exactness being born; no! no! it wasn’t a decaying sensation! but wanting obscurely, obscurely to cut herself off, the difficulty, the difficulty that was coming from the sky, that was coming. The first real event, the only fact that could serve as a beginning to her life, free like throwing a crystal glass through the window, the irresistible movement that could no longer hold itself back. She’d also tried to rehearse when she would seek to distinguish the smell in the construction sites, had rehearsed the smell in the half-twilight, whitewash, wood, cold iron, fallen dust watching. - - - how could she have forgotten: yes - - - , - - - . The field empty of weeds in the wind without her, entirely without her, without any sensation, just the wind, unreality approaching in iridescent colors, at high, light, penetrating speed. Mists fraying and uncovering firm shapes, a mute sound bursting from the divined intimacy of things, silence pressing down on particles of earth in darkness and black ants slow and tall walking atop thick grains of earth, the wind running high far ahead, a limpid cube dangling in the air and the light running parallel to every point, was present, thus it had been, thus it would be, and the wind, the wind, she who had been so steady.
The people then gathered around the woman while the car sped off.
“But I really saw how the car arrived just then, but just then, and ran her over!”
“Those drivers are crazy, my s
on almost got hit one day but luckily . . .”
“He said that just then, but really just then . . .”
“Nobody’s calling the paramedics?”
“Why don’t you call then, sir? what a crazy . . .”
“Step aside because I’m going to check that woman’s pulse, I’m a medical student . . .”
“I’m not calling because I’m not from here, could you, sir . . .”
“Ah, he’s a medical student, he said he’s going to check the woman’s pulse . . .”
“The driver sure was clever and got out of here, didn’t he . . .”
“Get the paramedics, nobody move . . . I’m not from here, I don’t have experience with those things! call the paramedics!”
“But I’m a medical student and even a child can see that the woman’s dead! call the police if you want, do that!”
“Poor thing, but it doesn’t hurt to call the paramedics, maybe it . . .”
“Here comes the guard . . .”
“He said he was a medical student and that even a child could see . . .”
“Will you look at that, will you look at that!” a fat woman shouted astonished and victorious, “I can’t believe I’m seeing that I know this . . . that . . . I was just about to say a name the dead no longer deserve!” she slapped her mouth shut.
“But what? how?” various interested people were asking.
“God forgive me, but that woman was carrying on with my husband — and there’s the punishment! My husband is the doorman of the building where she was living and that . . . that . . . started seeing my man in her room! just imagine! shameless! I warned my husband to cut it out and I almost strangled this . . . But will you look at that, of all people to see die . . . ,” the poor woman was suffocating, choking.
“Ma’am, are you sure?” an old woman in black asked quietly and interested shaking the hard rose on her hat.
“And how!” screamed the woman opening her arms.
A few people were laughing, others murmuring something about the inappropriateness of the conversation.
“Poor thing, but if she’s dead like that man says there’s no paramedic that can save a dead woman, call somebody at the morgue, I’m not from here, I don’t know . . .”
“Since nobody’s moving I’ll call, I’ll call! But there’s no need to push, madam, there’s no hurry now, right? I’ll call . . . Ah, no need, it’s all right, here’s the guard!”
A pallid and shaky brightness reeled in his chest, he saw her lying on the ground with white and peaceful lips, the bun in her hair undone, the brown straw hat smashed. So it really was her.
“And who are you, sir?” the guard was shouting at him taking up his duties and seeing him standing, pale, calm, small. He hesitated for an instant. Then slowly he looked at the guard and with courtesy responded:
“I’m . . .”
“Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I know! Wait . . . wait. Ah, of course, from the Edifício São Tomás! How could I forget?! I gave you a ticket for going the wrong way down a one-way street a long time ago, right?” laughed the guard remembering — all the wrinkles in his face were stretching out kind and innocent.
He laughed too, dabbed the handkerchief on his lips politely.
“So she’s dead?” he asked.
“She sure is and the damn driver got away from me. I already sent someone to call for an ambulance to the morgue. Anyway so glad, really, so glad to see you again!”
So she’d see men in her room. And so she’d see men in her room! Prostitute, he sighed. Death had unfinished forever anything that could be known about her. The impossibility and the mystery tired his heart with strength. Adriano sat on a garden bench, barely leaning on the backrest. His squinting eyes were looking into the distance, he was breathing with difficulty out of surprise and rage. With his handkerchief he slowly smoothed his hard, cold forehead. And all of a sudden he wasn’t sure if it was out of frozen ecstasy or intolerable suffering — because in that single instant he’d won her and lost her forever — all of a sudden, in a first experience of the shame, he felt inside him a horribly free and painful movement, a vague urge to shout or cry, some mortal thing opening in his chest a violent clearing that might have been a new birth.
rio, march 1943
naples, november 1944
Copyright © 1946 by the Heirs of Clarice Lispector
Translation copyright © 2018 by Benjamin Moser and Magdalena Edwards
Originally published as O lustre. Published by arrangement with the Heirs of Clarice Lispector and Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells, Barcelona.
New Directions gratefully acknowledges the support of
MINISTÉRIO DA CULTURA
Fundação BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
First published clothbound by New Directions in 2018
Manufactured in the United States of America
New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper
Design by Erik Rieselbach
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lispector, Clarice, author. | Moser, Benjamin, translator. |
Edwards, Magdalena, translator.
Title: The chandelier / Clarice Lispector ; translated by Benjamin Moser
and Magdalena Edwards.
Other titles: Lustre. English
Description: First edition. | Portuguese editions published in 1946, 1967, and 1982.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017051736 | ISBN 9780811223133 (alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Women — Fiction. | Social isolation — Fiction. |
Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.) — Fiction.
Classification: LCC PQ9697.L585 L813 2018 | DDC 869.3/42 — dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051736
eISBN: 9780811226707
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
The Chandelier Page 29
