The Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  I pick up another egg in the kitchen, I break its shell and shape. And from this precise moment there was never an egg. It is absolutely essential that I be a busy and distracted person. I am necessarily one of those people who refuse. I belong to that Masonic society of those who once saw the egg and refused it as a way to protect it. We are the ones who abstain from destroying, and by doing so are consumed. We, undercover agents dispersed among less revealing duties, we sometimes recognize each other. By a certain way of looking, by a way of shaking hands, we recognize each other and call this love. And then our disguise is unnecessary: though we don’t speak, neither do we lie, though we don’t speak the truth, neither must we dissemble any longer. Love is when we are allowed to participate a bit more. Few want love, because love is the great disillusionment with all the rest. And few can bear losing the rest of their illusions. There are people who would volunteer for love, thinking love will enrich their personal lives. On the contrary: love is ultimately poverty. Love is not having. Moreover love is the disillusionment of what you thought was love. And it’s no prize, that’s why it doesn’t make people vain, love is no prize, it’s a status granted exclusively to people who, without it, would defile the egg with their personal suffering. That doesn’t make love an honorable exception; it is granted precisely to those bad agents, those who would ruin everything if they weren’t allowed to guess at things vaguely.

  All the agents are granted several advantages so that the egg may form. It is no cause for envy since, even certain statuses, worse than other people’s, are merely the ideal conditions for the egg. As for the agents’ pleasure, they also receive it without pride. They austerely experience all pleasures: it is even our sacrifice so that the egg may form. Upon us has been imposed, as well, a nature entirely prone to much pleasure. Which makes it easier. At the very least it makes pleasure less arduous.

  There are cases of agents committing suicide: they find the minimal instructions they have received insufficient, and feel unsupported. There was the case of the agent who publicly revealed himself as an agent because he found not being understood intolerable, and could no longer stand not being respected by others: he was fatally run over as he was leaving a restaurant. There was another who didn’t even have to be eliminated: he was slowly consumed by his own rebellion, his rebellion came when he discovered that the two or three instructions he had received included no explanation whatsoever. There was another, eliminated too, because he thought “the truth should be bravely spoken,” and started first of all to seek it out; they say he died in the name of the truth, but in fact he was just making the truth harder with his innocence; his seeming bravery was foolhardiness, and his desire for loyalty was naive, he hadn’t understood that being loyal isn’t so tidy, being loyal means being disloyal to everything else. Those extreme cases of death aren’t caused by cruelty. It’s because there’s a job, let’s call it cosmic, to be done, and individual cases unfortunately cannot be taken into consideration. For those who succumb and become individuals there are institutions, charity, comprehension that doesn’t distinguish motives, in a word our human life.

  The eggs crackle in the frying pan, and lost in a dream I make breakfast. Lacking any sense of reality, I shout for the children who sprout from various beds, drag the chairs out and eat, and the work of the breaking day begins, shouted and laughed and eaten, white and yolk, merriment amid fighting, the day that is our salt and we are the day’s salt, living is extremely tolerable, living keeps us busy and distracts us, living makes us laugh.

  And it makes me smile in my mystery. My mystery is that being merely a means, and not an end, has given me the most mischievous of freedoms: I’m no fool and I make the most of things. Even to the point of wronging others so much that, frankly. The fake job they have given me to disguise my true purpose, since I make the most of this fake job and turn it into my real one; this includes the money they give me as a daily allowance to ease my life so that the egg may form, since I have used this money for other purposes, diverting the funds, I recently bought stock in Brahma beer and am rich. All this I still call having the necessary modesty to live. And also the time they have granted me, and that they grant us just so that in this honorable leisure the egg may form, well I have used this time for illicit pleasures and illicit pains, completely forgetting the egg. That is my simplicity.

  Or is that exactly what they want to happen to me, precisely so the egg can carry out its mission? Is it freedom or am I being controlled? Because I keep noticing how every error of mine has been put to use. My rebellion is that for them I am nothing, I am merely valuable: they take care of me from one second to the next, with the most absolute lack of love; I am merely valuable. With the money they give me, I have taken to drinking lately. Abuse of trust? But it’s because nobody knows how it feels inside for someone whose job consists of pretending that she is betraying, and who ends up believing in her own betrayal. Whose job consists of forgetting every day. Someone of whom apparent dishonor is required. Not even my mirror still reflects a face that is mine. Either I am an agent, or it really is betrayal.

  Yet I sleep the sleep of the righteous because I know that my futile life doesn’t interfere with the march of great time. On the contrary: it seems that I am required to be extremely futile, I’m even required to sleep like one of the righteous. They want me busy and distracted, and they don’t care how. Because, with my misguided attention and grave foolishness, I could interfere with whatever is carried out through me. It’s because I myself, I properly speaking, all I have really been good for is interfering. What tells me that I might be an agent is the idea that my destiny surpasses me: at least they really did have to let me guess that, I was one of those people who would do their job badly if they couldn’t guess at least a little; they made me forget what they had let me guess, but I still had the vague notion that my destiny surpasses me, and that I am an instrument of their work. But in any case all I could be was an instrument, since the work couldn’t really be mine. I have already tried to set myself up on my own and it didn’t work out; my hand trembles to this day. Had I kept at it any longer I would have damaged my health forever. Since then, ever since that thwarted experiment, I have tried to consider things this way: that much has already been given me, that they have granted me everything that might be granted; and that other agents, far superior to me, have also worked solely for something they did not know. And with the same minimal instructions. Much has already been given me; this, for example: every once in a while, with my heart beating at the privilege, I at least know that I am not recognizing anything! with my heart beating from emotion, I at least do not understand! with my heart beating from trust, I at least do not know.

  But what about the egg? This is one of their ploys: while I was talking about the egg, I had forgotten the egg. “Talk, talk!” they instructed me. And the egg is fully protected by all those words. Keep talking, is one of the instructions, I am so tired.

  Out of devotion to the egg, I forgot it. My necessary forgetting. My self-serving forgetting. Because the egg is an evasion. In the face of my possessive adoration it could retreat and never again return. But if it is forgotten. If I make the sacrifice of living only my life and of forgetting it. If the egg becomes impossible. Then—free, delicate, with no message for me—perhaps one last time it will move from space over to this window that I have always left open. And at dawn it will descend into our building. Serene all the way to the kitchen. Illuminating it with my pallor.

  Temptation

  (“Tentação”)

  She was sobbing. And as if the two o’clock glare weren’t enough, she had red hair.

  On the empty street the cobblestones were vibrating with heat—the little girl’s head was aflame. Sitting on the front steps of her house, she endured. Nobody on the street, just one person waiting in vain at the tram stop. And as if her submissive and patient gaze weren’t enough, her sobs kept interrupting her, making her chin slip off
the hand it was resting on in resignation. What could you do about a sobbing red-haired girl? We looked at each other wordlessly, dejection to dejection. On the deserted street not a sign of the tram. In a land of dark-haired people, being a redhead was an involuntary rebellion. What did it matter if one day in the future her emblem would make her insolently hold erect the head of a woman. For now she was sitting on a shimmering doorstep, at two o’clock. What saved her was an old purse, with a torn strap. She clutched it with a long-familiar conjugal love, pressing it against her knees.

  That was when her other half in this world approached, a brother in Grajaú. The possibility of communication appeared at the scorching angle of the street corner, accompanied by a lady, and incarnated in the form of a dog. It was a basset hound, beautiful and miserable, sweet inside its fate. It was a red-haired basset hound.

  There he came trotting, ahead of his owner, stretching his body out. Unsuspecting, nonchalant, dog.

  The girl widened her eyes in amazement. Mildly alerted, the dog stopped in front of her. His tongue quivered. They looked at each other.

  Of all the beings suited to become the owner of another being, there sat the girl who had come into this world to have that dog. He growled gently, without barking. She looked at him from under her hair, fascinated, solemn. How much time passed? A big sob jangled her. He didn’t even tremble. She overcame her sobs and kept staring at him.

  Both had short, red hair.

  What did they say to each other? Nobody knows. All we know is they communicated rapidly, since there was no time. We also know that without speaking they were asking for each other. They were asking for each other urgently, bashfully, surprised.

  Amid so much vague impossibility and so much sun, here was the solution for the red child. And amid so many streets to be trotted down, so many bigger dogs, so many dry gutters—there sat a little girl, as if she were flesh of his ginger flesh. They stared at each other deeply, immersed, absent from Grajaú. Another second and the suspended dream would shatter, yielding perhaps to the seriousness with which they asked for one another.

  But both were already committed.

  She to her impossible childhood, the center of the innocence that would only open once she was a woman. He, to his imprisoned nature.

  His owner waited impatiently beneath her parasol. The red-haired basset finally pried himself away from the girl and went off sleepwalking. She sat there in shock, holding the event in her hands, in a muteness that neither her father nor mother would understand. She followed him with black eyes that could hardly believe it, hunched over her purse and knees, until she saw him round the other corner.

  But he was stronger than she. He didn’t look back once.

  Journey to Petrópolis

  (“Viagem a Petrópolis”)

  She was a withered little old lady who, sweet and stubborn, didn’t seem to understand that she was alone in the world. Her eyes were always tearing up, her hands rested on her dull black dress, an old document of her life. On the now-stiff fabric were little bread crumbs stuck on by the drool that was now resurfacing, recalling the cradle. There was a yellowish stain, from an egg she’d eaten two weeks before. And marks from the places where she slept. She always found somewhere to sleep, at someone or other’s house. Whenever they asked her name, she’d say in a voice purified by frailty and countless years of good manners:

  “Missy.”

  People would smile. Pleased at sparking their interest, she’d explain:

  “My name, my real name, is Margarida.”

  Her body was small, dark, though she’d been tall and fair. She’d had a father, mother, husband, two children. All had died one after the other. Only she remained, with her rheumy, expectant eyes nearly covered by a velvety white film. Whenever anyone gave her money it was very little, since she was small and really didn’t need to eat much. Whenever they gave her a bed to sleep in they gave her a hard, narrow one because Margarida was gradually losing mass. Nor did she offer much thanks: she’d smile and nod.

  Nowadays she was sleeping, no one remembered why, in a room behind a big house, on a broad, tree-lined street in Botafogo. The family thought Missy was quaint but forgot her most of the time. It was because she was also a mysterious old lady. She rose at the crack of dawn, made up her dwarf’s bed and darted out nimbly as if the house were on fire. Nobody knew where she went. One day one of the girls of the house asked her what she was doing. She answered with a pleasant smile:

  “Strolling around.”

  They thought it quaint that an old lady, living off charity, would stroll around. But it was true. Missy was born in Maranhão, where she had always lived. She’d come to Rio not long before, with a very nice lady who’d been planning to put her in a nursing home, but it didn’t work out: the lady went to Minas and gave Missy some money to set herself up in Rio. And the old woman strolled around getting to know the city. All you had to do anyhow was sit on a park bench and you’d already be seeing Rio de Janeiro.

  Her life was going along smoothly, when one day the family from the Botafogo house was surprised that she’d been in their house so long, and thought it was too much. In a way they were right. Everyone there was very busy, every so often weddings, parties, engagements, visits came up. And whenever they rushed busily past the old lady, they’d start as if they’d been interrupted, accosted with a swipe on the shoulder: “hey!” In particular one of the girls of the house felt an irritated distress, the old lady annoyed her for no reason. In particular her permanent smile, though the girl understood it was just an inoffensive rictus. Perhaps because they didn’t have time, no one brought it up. But as soon as someone thought of sending her to Petrópolis, to their German sister-in-law’s house, there came a more enthusiastic consensus than an old lady could have provoked.

  So, when the son of the house took his girlfriend and two sisters for a weekend in Petrópolis, they brought the old lady along in the car.

  Why didn’t Missy sleep the night before? At the idea of a trip, in her stiff body her heart lost its rust, all dry and skipping a beat, as if she’d swallowed a large pill without water. There were moments when she couldn’t even breathe. She talked all night long, sometimes loudly. Her excitement about the promised outing and the change in her life suddenly cleared up some of her ideas. She remembered things that a few days before she’d have sworn never existed. Starting with her son who was run over, killed by a tram in Maranhão—if he had lived amid the traffic of Rio de Janeiro, then he’d really have been run over. She remembered her son’s hair, his clothing. She remembered the teacup Maria Rosa had broken and how she’d yelled at Maria Rosa. If she had known her daughter would die in childbirth, of course she wouldn’t have needed to yell. And she remembered her husband. She could only recall her husband in shirtsleeves. But that couldn’t be, she was sure he went to the office in his clerk uniform, he’d go to parties in a sport coat, not to mention that he couldn’t have gone to the funerals of his son and daughter in shirtsleeves. Searching for her husband’s sport coat tired the old lady out further as she tossed and turned lightly in bed. Suddenly she discovered that the mattress was hard.

  “What a hard mattress,” she said very loudly in the middle of the night.

  What happened is that all her senses had returned. Parts of her body she hadn’t been aware of in a long time were now clamoring for her attention. And all of a sudden—oh what raging hunger! Hallucinating, she got up, unfastened her little bundle, took out a stale piece of buttered bread she had secretly kept for two days. She ate the bread like a rat, scratching up the places in her mouth that had only gums until they bled. And thanks to the food, she felt increasingly reinvigorated. She managed, though fleetingly, to catch a vision of her husband saying goodbye on his way to work. Only after the memory vanished did she notice she’d forgotten to check whether he was in shirtsleeves. She lay down again, scratching her searing body all over. She spent the
rest of the night in this pattern of seeing for an instant and then not managing to see anymore. Near dawn she fell asleep.

  And for the very first time she had to be roused. While it was still dark, the girl came to get her, kerchief tied around her head and suitcase already in hand. Unexpectedly Missy asked for a few seconds to comb her hair. Her tremulous hands held the broken comb. She combed her hair, combed her hair. She’d never been the kind of woman who went out without first combing her hair thoroughly.

  When she finally approached the car, the young man and the girls were surprised by her cheerful manner and sprightly step. “She’s healthier than I am!” the young man joked. The thought occurred to the girl of the house: “And to think I was even feeling sorry for her.”

  Missy sat by the car window, a little cramped by the two sisters crowded onto the same backseat. She didn’t say anything, smiling. But when the car jerked into motion, launching her backward, she felt pain in her chest. It wasn’t just from joy, it was tearing at her. The young man turned around:

  “Don’t get sick, Granny!”

  The girls laughed, especially the one who’d sat in front, the one who occasionally leaned her head on the young man’s shoulder. Out of politeness, the old lady wanted to answer, but couldn’t. She wanted to smile, she couldn’t. She looked at everyone, teary-eyed, which the others already knew didn’t mean she was crying. Something in her face somewhat deadened the joy the girl of the house felt and lent her a stubborn expression.