But I couldn’t make it past the same sentence. Okay—I thought impatiently looking at my watch—and what is it now? I sat there interrogating myself halfheartedly, seeking within myself for what could be interrupting me. When I was about to give up, I recalled an extremely still face: Ofélia. Something not quite an idea flashed through my head which, at the unexpected thought, tilted to better hear what I was sensing. Slowly I pushed the typewriter away. Reluctant, I slowly moved the chairs out of my way. Until I paused slowly at the kitchen door. On the floor was the dead chick. Ofélia! I called in an impulse for the girl who had fled.
From an infinite distance I saw the floor. Ofélia, I tried in vain to bridge the distance to the speechless girl’s heart. Oh, don’t be so afraid! sometimes we kill out of love, but I swear that some day we forget, I swear! we don’t love very well, listen, I repeated as if I could reach her before, giving up on serving the truth, she’d haughtily serve the nothing. I who hadn’t remembered to warn her that without fear there was the world. But I swear that is what breathing is. I was very tired, I sat on the kitchen stool.
Where I am now, slowly beating the batter for tomorrow’s cake. Sitting, as if for all these years I’ve been waiting patiently in the kitchen. Under the table, today’s chick trembles. The yellow is the same, the beak is the same. As we are promised on Easter, in December he will return. Ofélia is the one who didn’t return: she grew up. She went off to become the Hindu princess her tribe awaited in the desert.
BACK OF THE DRAWER
( Fundo de gaveta)
The Burned Sinner
and the Harmonious Angels
(“A pecadora queimada e os anjos harmoniosos”)
Invisible angels: Behold us nearly here, coming down the long path that exists before you all. But we are not tired, such a road does not require strength and, were it to require vigor, not even that of your prayers would lift us. Dizziness alone is what makes us whirl round shouting with the leaves until the opening of a birth. Is dizziness all it takes, as far as we know? if men hesitate over men, angels know nothing of angels, the world is wide and may whatever is be blessed. We are not tired, our feet have never been washed. Screeching at this next diversion, we came so as to suffer what must be suffered, we who have yet to be touched, we who have yet to be boy and girl. Behold us in the web of true tragedy, from which we shall extricate our primary form. When we open our eyes to become those who are born, we shall remember nothing: babbling children we shall be and we shall wield your very weapons. Blind on the path that precedes footsteps, blind shall we push onward when we are born with eyes that already see. Nor do we know what we have come to. All we need is the conviction that what is to be done shall be done: an angel’s fall is a direction. Our true beginning precedes the visible beginning, and our true end will follow the visible end. Harmony, terrible harmony, is our only prior destiny.
Priest: In love for the Lord I have not lost my way, always secure in Thy day as in Thy night. And this simple woman lost her way for so little, and lost her nature, and behold her possessing nothing more and, now pure, whatever remains to her they will yet burn. The strange paths. She sealed her fate with a single sin to which she surrendered entirely, and behold her on the threshold of being saved. Every humble path is a path: crude sin is a path, ignorance of the commandments is a path, lust is a path. The only thing not a path was my premature joy at taking, as a guide and so easily, the sacred path. The only thing not a path was my presumption of being saved halfway through. Lord, grant me the grace to sin. It weighs heavily, the lack of temptation in which thou hast left me. Where are the water and fire through which I never passed? Lord, grant me the grace to sin. This candle I was, burning in Thy name, was always burning in the light and I saw nothing. Yet, ah hope that will open the doors of Thy violent heaven to me: now I see that, if thou hast not made of me the torch that will blaze, at least thou hast made the one who fans the flames. Ah hope, in which I can still see my pride in being chosen: in guilt I beat my breast, and with joy that I would like to mortify I say: the Lord sought me out to sin more than she who sinned, and at last I shall seal my tragedy. For it was my wrathful word that Thou didst employ so I might perform, more than the sin, the sin of punishing the sin. So that I might descend so far beneath my dangerous peace that the total darkness—where neither candelabras nor papal purple exist and not even the symbol of the Cross—the total darkness might be Thee. “The darkness shall not blind thee,” it was said in the Psalms.
People: For days we have gone hungry and here we are in search of food.
Enter sinner and two guards.
Priest: “She took her delight in the slavery of the senses,” by the sign of the Holy Cross.
People: Behold her, behold her, and behold her.
Sleepy child: Behold her.
Woman of the people: Behold her, she who erred, she who in order to sin required two men and one priest and one people.
1st guard: We are the guardians of our homeland. We suffocate in airless peace, and of the last war we have already forgotten even the bugles. Our beloved King distributes us to posts of extreme responsibility, but in keeping useless watch we have nearly put to sleep our virility. Created to die in glory, behold us ashamedly living.
2nd guard: We are the guardians of a lord, whose domain seems rather confusing to us: sometimes extending to the borders established by habit and use, and our spears then rise at the cries of the heralds. At other times this domain penetrates into lands where there exists a much older law. So behold us this time guarding something that on its own will always be guarded, by the people and by fate. Under this sky of strangled tranquility, bread may be lacking, but the mystery of achievement never will. For what are we imaginarily watching over? if not the destiny of a heart.
1st guard: How your last words recall the longed-for thundering of a cannon. What desire to keep watch at last over a smaller world, where our spears deal the death-blow to whatever is going to die. But here we are guarding a woman who in a manner of speaking has already been set afire of her own accord.
Invisible angels: Set afire by harmony, bloody sweet harmony, which is our prior destiny.
Enter the Husband.
People: Behold the husband, he who was betrayed.
Husband: Behold her, she who will be burned by my wrath. Who spoke through me, giving me such fatal power? I was the one who incited the word of the priest and gathered this troop of people and roused the spears of the guards, and granted this public square such an aspect of glory that crumbles its walls. Ah still-beloved wife, I would like to be relieved of this invasion. I dreamed of being alone with you and reminding you of our past joy. Leave her alone with me, for since yesterday I live and do not live, leave her alone with me. Before you all—strangers to my former happiness and to my present wretchedness—I can no longer see in this woman she who was and was not mine, nor in our past celebration she who was and was not ours, nor can I taste the bitterness that is mine and mine alone. What will happen to this heart of mine that no longer recognizes the offspring of its Vengeance? Ah remorse: I should have brandished the dagger with my own hand, and then I would have known that, as the one betrayed, I took vengeance myself. But this spectacle no longer belongs to my world, and this woman, whom I took in modesty, I lose to the sound of trumpets. Leave me alone with the sinner. I want to regain my former love, and then be filled with hatred, and then murder her myself, and then worship her again, and then never forget her, leave me alone with the sinner. I want to take possession of my disgrace and my vengeance and my loss, and you are all preventing me from being lord of this fire, leave me alone with the sinner.
Pr
iest: Many years has it been since a saint was born. Many years has it been since a child prophesied from the cradle. Many years has it been since the blind man has seen, the leper was cured, ah what a barren time. We exist beneath the burden of such a mystery to be revealed that at the first sign, in a bolt of lightning, Thy hoped-for miracle must be sealed.
1st guard: Everyone speaks and no one listens.
2nd guard: Everyone is alone with the guilty woman.
Enter the Lover.
1st guard: The comedy is complete: behold the lover, I am overjoyed.
People: Behold the lover, behold the lover and behold the lover.
Sleepy child: Behold the lover.
Lover: Irony that makes me laugh not: to call lover he who burned with love, to call lover he who lost it. No, not the lover. But the lover betrayed.
People: We do not understand, we do not understand and we do not understand.
Lover: Because this woman who in my arms deceived her husband, in the arms of her husband deceived the one deceiving him.
People: So then she hid her lover from her husband, and her husband from her lover? Behold the sin of sins.
Lover: But I laugh not and for a moment I do not suffer. I now open the eyes I have kept closed out of pridefulness, and I ask of you: who? who is this foreign woman, who is this solitary woman for whom one heart was not enough.
Husband: She is the one for whom I would bring back brocades and precious stones from my travels, and for whom all my commerce of value had become a commerce of love.
Lover: For in her candid joy she would come to me so singularly mine that I never would have guessed she was coming from a home.
Husband: There was no jewel she did not covet, and for her the bareness of her neck did not choke. Nothing existed that I did not give her, since for a humble and weary traveler peace is in his wife.
Priest: “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
Husband: But in the transparency of a diamond she was already foreseeing the arrival of a lover. He who tells you this is one who has tasted venom: beware a woman who dreams.
Lover: Ah wretched woman, for she dreamed beside me too. What more therefore did she want? who is this foreign woman?
Priest: She is the one to whom on holy days I would offer in vain words of Virtue that might with a thousand cloaks have covered her nakedness.
Woman of the people: All these words have strange meanings. Who is this woman who sinned and seems instead to receive praise for her sin?
Lover: She is that unrevealed woman whom only pain revealed to my eyes. For the first time, I love. I love you.
Husband: She is that woman whom sin belatedly proclaimed to me. For the first time I love you, and not my peace.
People: She is that woman who in truth gave herself to no one, and now is completely ours.
Invisible angels: For harmony is terrible.
People: We do not understand, we do not understand and etc.
Invisible angels: Even here on this side of the edge of the world we hardly understand, much less you, the starving, and you, the sated. May the generative sentence be enough for you: what must be done shall be done, this is the one perfect principle.
People: We do not understand, we are hungry and we are hungry.
1st guard: This tiresome people, if summoned to a feast or a funeral, might just sing . . .
People: . . . we are hungry.
2nd guard: They always lay the same trap that consists of a single chant . . .
People: . . . we are hungry.
Priest: Do not interrupt with your hunger, rather be calm, for yours shall be the Kingdom of Heaven.
People: Where we shall eat, and eat and eat, and get so fat that through the eye of a needle at last and at last we shall not pass.
Priest: What did this people come to do? and wherefore did the husband, the lover, and the guards come? For alone with me, this woman would be set afire.
Lover: What did this people come to do? Alone with me, she would love again, again would she sin, repent again—and thus in a single instant Love would again be fulfilled, the thing that carries its own dagger and end. I would recall to you those messages at nightfall . . . The impatient horse would wait, the lamp on the terrace . . . And then . . . ah earth, thy fields at daybreak, a certain window that already in the dark was starting to dawn. And the wine that I in joy would then sip, until sinking with drunken tears into gloom. (Ah then it is true that even in happiness I already sought in tears to know the foretaste of misfortune.)
Invisible angels: The foretaste of terrible harmony.
Sleepy child: She is smiling.
People: She is smiling, she is smiling and she is smiling.
Husband: And her eyes glisten damply as in a glory . . .
Woman of the people: In the end how does it come to pass that this woman about to be burned is already becoming her own story?
People: What is this woman smiling at?
Priest: Perhaps she is thinking that, alone, she would already have been set afire.
People: What is this woman smiling at.
1st and 2nd guards: At sin.
Invisible angels: At harmony, harmony, harmony that tarries not.
Lover: You smile, inaccessible, and the first burst of wrath seizes me. Remember how in the alcove where I met you your smile was different, and the way your eyes glistened, your only tears. Through what strange grace did abject sin transfigure you into this woman who smiles filled with silence?
Husband: Impotent fury: behold her smiling, yet more absent from me than when she belonged to another. Why has this people heard me so much more than my words wished to be heard? Ah cruel mechanism I unleashed with my wounded laments. For I have rendered her unattainable even before she dies. The incitement for the burning was mine, but the victory will not be: it now belongs to the people, to the priest, to the guards. For you, wretches, cannot hide that it is upon my misery that you shall live in the end.
Lover: You smile because you used me so that even while alive you might yet blaze in the fire.
Husband: Hear me once more, wife . . . (How strange it is, perhaps she heard, but it is I who can no longer find the former words. Doubt that now exceeds bounds: when was it I and when was it not I? I was the one who loved her, but who is this person being avenged? He who in me was speaking until now, fell silent as soon as he achieved his aims. What is happening for me not to recognize the former face of my love? Perhaps she heard me, but speaking has ended for me.)
Invisible angels: Remove your hands from your face, husband. He who was no longer is, the opening of the curtains has revealed: that you are the lowliest, lowliest, lowliest wheel of the terrible, terrible harmony.
Lover: I thought I had lived, but she was the one who was living me. I was lived.
Husband: How can I recognize you, if you are smiling utterly sanctified? These chaste arms are not the arms that deceivingly embraced me. And could this hair be the same that I used to let down? I have interrupted you all, and the one who says so is the same who incited you. For I see an error and I see a crime, a monstrous upheaval: behold, the woman sinned with one body, and you burn another.
Priest: But “Lord, thou art always the same.”
1st guard: All regret what is too late to regret, and disagree for the sake of disagreeing, knowing full well they came here to kill.
2nd guard: Behold at last the moment that will grant us the taste of war.
Priest: Behold the moment when, by the grace of the Lord, I shall sin with the sinner, I shall bl
aze with the sinner, and in the infernos to which I shall descend with her, by Thy name shall be saved.
Invisible angels: Behold the moment has arrived. Already we feel a difficulty of dawn. We are on the threshold of our initial form. It must be good to be born.
People: May she who is about to die speak.
Priest: Leave her be. I fear from this woman who is ours a word that is hers.
People: May she who is about to die speak.
Lover: Leave her be. Don’t you see how alone she is.
People: May she speak, may she speak and may she speak.
Invisible angels: May she not speak . . . may she not speak . . . since we hardly need her . . .
People: May she speak, may she speak and may etc.
Priest: Take her death as her word.
People: We do not understand, we do not understand and we do not understand.
1st and 2nd guards: Get ye away, for the fire may spread and through ye garments set all the city ablaze.
People: This fire was already ours, and the whole city burns.
1st and 2nd guards: Behold the first radiant light. Long live our King.
People: Under the sign of the Salamander.
1st and 2nd guards: Under the sign of the Salamander.
Invisible angels: Under the sign of the Salamander . . .
1st and 2nd guards: See the great light. Long live our King.
People: Well then hurrah, hurrah and hurrah.
Invisible angels: Ah . . .
Priest: Ave Maria, how far shall I descend?, “though I have nothing for which to be reproached, that is not enough to absolve me,” “Lord deliver me from my need,” pray, pray . . .
Invisible angels: . . . tremble, tremble, a plague of angels now darkens the horizon . . .
Lover: Woe is me who am not burned. I exist under the sign of the same fate but my tragedy will never blaze.
Angels being born: How good to be born. Look what a sweet earth, what sweet and perfect harmony . . . From what is fulfilled we are born. In the spheres where we used to alight it was easy not to live and to be the free shadow of a child. But on this earth where there is sea and foam, and fire and smoke, there exists a law prior to the law and still prior to the law, and that gives form to the form to the form. How easy it was to be an angel. But on this night of fire what furious, turbulent and abashed desire to be boy and girl.
The Complete Stories Page 32
