The Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  I don’t want this house. I want a justice that would have given a chance to something pure and full of helplessness in Mineirinho—that thing that moves mountains and is the same as what made him love a woman “like a madman,” and the same that led him through a doorway so narrow that it slashes into nakedness; it is a thing in us as intense and transparent as a dangerous gram of radium, that thing is a grain of life that if trampled is transformed into something threatening—into trampled love; that thing, which in Mineirinho became a knife, it is the same thing in me that makes me offer another man water, not because I have water, but because, I too, know what thirst is; and I too, who have not lost my way, have experienced perdition. Prior justice, that would not make me ashamed. It was past time for us, with or without irony, to be more divine; if we can guess what God’s benevolence might be it is because we guess at benevolence in ourselves, whatever sees the man before he succumbs to the sickness of crime. I go on, nevertheless, waiting for God to be the father, when I know that one man can be father to another. And I go on living in my weak house. That house, whose protective door I lock so tightly, that house won’t withstand the first gale that will send a locked door flying through the air. But it is standing, and Mineirinho lived rage on my behalf, while I was calm. He was gunned down in his disoriented strength, while a god fabricated at the last second hastily blesses my composed wrongdoing and my stupefied justice: what upholds the walls of my house is the certainty that I shall always vindicate myself, my friends won’t vindicate me, but my enemies who are my accomplices, they will greet me; what upholds me is knowing that I shall always fabricate a god in the image of whatever I need in order to sleep peacefully, and that others will furtively pretend that we are all in the right and that there is nothing to be done. All this, yes, for we are the essential phonies, bastions of some thing. And above all trying not to understand.

  Because the one who understands disrupts. There is something in us that would disrupt everything—a thing that understands. That thing that stays silent before the man without his cap or shoes, and to get them he robbed and killed; and stays silent before Saint George of gold and diamonds. That very serious thing in me grows more serious still when faced with the man felled by machine guns. Is that thing the killer inside me? No, it is the despair inside us. Like madmen, we know him, that dead man in whom the gram of radium caught fire. But only like madmen, and not phonies, do we know him. It is as a madman that I enter a life that so often has no doorway, and as a madman that I comprehend things dangerous to comprehend, and only as a madman do I feel deep love, that is confirmed when I see that the radium will radiate regardless, if not through trust, hope and love, then miserably through the sick courage of destruction. If I weren’t mad, I’d be eight hundred policemen with eight hundred machine guns, and this would be my honorableness.

  Until a slightly madder justice came along. One that would take into account that we all must speak for a man driven to despair because in him human speech has already failed, he is already so mute that only a brute incoherent cry serves as signal. A prior justice that would recall how our great struggle is that of fear, and that a man who kills many does so because he was very much afraid. Above all a justice that would examine itself, and see that all of us, living mud, are dark, and that is why not even one man’s wrongdoing can be surrendered to another man’s wrongdoing: so that this other man cannot commit, freely and with approbation, the crime of gunning someone down. A justice that does not forget that we are all dangerous, and that the moment that the deliverer of justice kills, he is no longer protecting us or trying to eliminate a criminal, he is committing his own personal crime, one long held inside him. At the moment he kills a criminal—in that instant an innocent is killed. No, it’s not that I want the sublime, nor for things to turn into words to make me sleep peacefully, a combination of forgiveness, of vague charity, we who seek shelter in the abstract.

  What I want is much rougher and more difficult: I want the land.

  COVERT JOY

  (“Felicidade clandestina”)

  Covert Joy

  (“Felicidade clandestina”)

  She was fat, short, freckled, and had reddish, excessively frizzy hair. She had a huge bust, while the rest of us were still flat-chested. As if that weren’t enough, she’d fill both pockets of her blouse, over her bust, with candy. But she had what any child devourer of stories would wish for: a father who owned a bookstore.

  She didn’t take much advantage of it. And we even less: even for birthdays, instead of at least a cheap little book, she’d present us with a postcard from her father’s shop. Even worse, it would be a view of Recife itself, where we lived, with the bridges we’d seen countless times. On the back she’d write in elaborately curlicued script words like “birthday” and “thinking of you.”

  But what a talent she had for cruelty. She was pure vengeance, sucking noisily on her candy. How that girl must have hated us, we who were unforgivably pretty, slender, tall, with flowing hair. She performed her sadism on me with calm ferocity. In my eagerness to read, I didn’t even notice the humiliations to which she subjected me: I kept begging her to lend me the books she wasn’t reading.

  Until the momentous day came for her to start performing a kind of Chinese torture on me. As if in passing, she informed me that she owned The Shenanigans of Little Miss Snub-Nose, by Monteiro Lobato.

  It was a thick book, my God, it was a book you could live with, eating it, sleeping it. And completely beyond my means. She told me to stop by her house the next day and she’d lend it to me.

  Up until the next day I was transformed into the very hope of joy itself: I wasn’t living, I was swimming slowly in a gentle sea, the waves carrying me to and fro.

  The next day I went to her house, literally running. She didn’t live above a shop like me, but rather in a whole house. She didn’t ask me in. Looking me right in the eye, she said she’d lent the book to another girl, and that I should come back the next day. Mouth agape, I left slowly, but soon enough hope completely took over again and I started back down the street skipping, which was my strange way of moving through the streets of Recife. This time I didn’t even fall: the promise of the book guided me, the next day would come, the next days would later become the rest of my life, love for the world awaited me, I went skipping through the streets as usual and didn’t fall once.

  But things didn’t simply end there. The secret plan of the bookseller’s daughter was serene and diabolical. The next day, there I stood at her front door, with a smile and my heart beating. Only to hear her calm reply: the book hadn’t been returned yet, and I should come back the next day. Little did I know how later on, over the course of my life, the drama of “the next day” with her would repeat itself with my heart beating.

  And so it went. For how long? I don’t know. She knew it would be for an indefinite time, until the bile oozed completely out of her thick body. I had already started to guess that she’d chosen me to suffer, sometimes I guess things. But, in actually guessing things, I sometimes accept them: as if whoever wants to make me suffer damn well needs me to.

  For how long? I’d go to her house daily, without missing a single day. Sometimes she’d say: well I had the book yesterday afternoon, but you didn’t come till this morning, so I lent it to another girl. And I, who didn’t usually get dark circles under my eyes, felt those dark circles deepening under my astonished eyes.

  Until one day, when I was at her front door, listening humbly and silently to her refusal, her mother appeared. She must have been wondering about the mute, daily appearance of that girl at her front door. She asked us to explain. There was a silent commotion, interrupted by words that didn’t clarify much. The lady found it increasingly strange that she wasn’t understanding. Until that good mother understood. She turned to her daughter and with enormous surprise exclaimed: But that book never left the house and you didn’t even want to read it!

 
And the worst thing for that woman wasn’t realizing what was going on. It must have been the horrified realization of the kind of daughter she had. She eyed us in silence: the power of perversity in the daughter she didn’t know and the little blond girl standing at the door, exhausted, out in the wind of the streets of Recife. That was when, finally regaining her composure, she said to her daughter firmly and calmly: you’re going to lend that book right this minute. And to me: “And you can keep that book for as long as you like.” Do you understand? It was worth more than giving me the book: “for as long as I liked” is all that a person, big or small, could ever dare wish for.

  How can I explain what happened next? I was stunned, and just like that the book was in my hand. I don’t think I said a thing. I took the book. No, I didn’t go skipping off as usual. I walked away very slowly. I know that I was holding the thick book with both hands, clutching it against my chest. As for how long it took to get home, that doesn’t really matter either. My chest was hot, my heart thoughtful.

  When I got home, I didn’t start reading. I pretended not to have it, just so later on I could feel the shock of having it. Hours later I opened it, read a few wondrous lines, closed it again, wandered around the house, stalled even more by eating some bread and butter, pretended not to know where I had put the book, found it, opened it for a few seconds. I kept inventing the most contrived obstacles for that covert thing that was joy. Joy would always be covert for me. I must have already sensed it. Oh how I took my time! I was living in the clouds . . . There was pride and shame inside me. I was a delicate queen.

  Sometimes I’d sit in the hammock, swinging with the book open on my lap, not touching it, in the purest ecstasy.

  I was no longer a girl with a book: I was a woman with her lover.

  Remnants of Carnival

  (“Restos do Carnaval”)

  No, not this past Carnival. But I don’t know why this one transported me back to my childhood and those Ash Wednesdays on the dead streets where the remains of streamers and confetti fluttered. The occasional devout woman with a veil covering her head would be heading to church, crossing the street left so incredibly empty after Carnival. Until the next year. And when the celebration was fast approaching, what could explain the inner tumult that came over me? As if the budding world were finally opening into a big scarlet rose. As if the streets and squares of Recife were finally explaining why they’d been made. As if human voices were finally singing the capacity for pleasure that was kept secret in me. Carnival was mine, mine.

  However, in reality, I barely participated at all. I had never been to a children’s ball, they’d never dressed me up in costume. To make up for it, they’d let me stay up until eleven in the front stairwell of the house where we lived, eagerly watching others have fun. I’d get two precious things that I saved up greedily so they’d last all three days: some party spray and a bag of confetti. Ah, it’s getting hard to write. Because I’m feeling how my heart is going to darken as I realize how, even barely joining in on the merriment, I thirsted so much that even next to nothing made me a happy little girl.

  And the masks? I was afraid but it was a vital and necessary fear for it went along with my deepest suspicion that the human face was also a kind of mask. In my front stairwell, if someone in a mask spoke to me, I’d suddenly come into indispensable contact with my inner world, which was made not only of elves and enchanted princes, but of people with their mystery. Even my fright at the people in masks, then, was essential for me.

  They didn’t dress me up: with all the worry about my sick mother, no one at home could spare a thought for a child’s Carnival. But I’d ask one of my sisters to curl that straight hair of mine that I so hated and then I’d take pride in having wavy hair for at least three days a year. During those three days, moreover, my sister gave in to my intense dream of being a young lady—I could hardly wait to leave behind a vulnerable childhood—and she painted my lips with bright lipstick, putting rouge on my cheeks too. Then I felt pretty and feminine, I was no longer a kid.

  But there was one Carnival that was different from the rest. So miraculous that I couldn’t quite believe so much had been granted me, I, who had long since learned to ask for little. What happened was that a friend’s mother had decided to dress up her daughter and the costume pattern was named the Rose. To make it she bought sheets and sheets of pink crepe paper, from which, I suppose, she planned to imitate the petals of a flower. Mouth agape, I watched the costume gradually taking shape and being created. Though the crepe paper didn’t remotely resemble petals, I solemnly believed it was one of the most beautiful costumes I had ever seen.

  That’s when simply by chance the unexpected happened: there was leftover crepe paper, and quite a bit. And my friend’s mother—perhaps heeding my mute appeal, the mute despair of my envy, or perhaps out of sheer kindness, since there was leftover paper—decided to make me a rose costume too with the remaining materials. So for that Carnival, for the first time in my life I would get what I had always wanted: I would be something other than myself.

  Even the preparations left me dizzy with joy. I had never felt so busy: down to the last detail, my friend and I planned everything out, we’d wear slips under our costumes, so if it rained and the costume melted away at least we’d still be somewhat dressed—the very idea of a sudden downpour that would leave us, in our eight-year-old feminine modesty, wearing slips on the street, made us die of anticipated shame—but oh! God would help us! it wouldn’t rain! As for the fact that my costume existed solely thanks to the other girl’s leftovers, I swallowed, with some pain, my pride, which had always been fierce, and I humbly accepted the handout destiny was offering me.

  But why did precisely that Carnival, the only one in costume, have to be so melancholy? Early Sunday morning I already had my hair in curlers, so the waves would hold longer. But the minutes weren’t passing, because I was so anxious. Finally, finally! three in the afternoon arrived: careful not to tear the paper, I dressed up as a rose.

  Many things much worse than these have happened to me, that I’ve forgiven. Yet I still can’t even understand this one now: is a toss of the dice for a destiny irrational? It’s merciless. When I was all dressed in the crepe paper and ready, with my hair still in curlers and not yet wearing lipstick or rouge—my mother’s health suddenly took a turn for the worse, an abrupt upheaval broke out at home, and they sent me quickly to buy medicine at the pharmacy. I ran off dressed as a rose—but my still-bare face wasn’t wearing the young-lady mask that would have covered my utterly exposed childish life—I ran and ran, bewildered, alarmed, amid streamers, confetti and shouts of Carnival. Other people’s merriment stunned me.

  When hours later the atmosphere at home calmed down, my sister did my hair and makeup. But something had died inside me. And, as in the stories I’d read about fairies who were always casting and breaking spells, the spell on me had been broken; I was no longer a rose, I was once again just a little girl. I went out to the street and standing there I wasn’t a flower, I was a pensive clown with scarlet lips. In my hunger to feel ecstasy, I’d sometimes started to cheer up but in remorse I’d recall my mother’s grave condition and once again I’d die.

  Only hours later did salvation come. And if I quickly clung to it, that’s because I so badly needed to be saved. A boy of twelve or so, which for me meant a young man, this very handsome boy stopped before me and, in a combination of tenderness, crudeness, playfulness and sensuality, he covered my hair, straight by now, with confetti: for an instant we stood face to face, smiling, without speaking. And then I, a little woman of eight, felt for the rest of the night that someone had finally recognized me: I was, indeed, a rose.

  Eat Up, My Son

  (“Come, meu filho”)

  “The world seems flat but I know it’s not. Know why it seems flat? ’Cause, whenever we look, the sky’s above, never below, never to the side. I know the world’s round ’cause pe
ople say so, but it would only seem round if we looked and sometimes the sky was below. I know it’s round, but to me it’s flat, but Ronaldo only knows that the world is round, it doesn’t seem flat to him.”

  “. . .”

  “’Cause I’ve been to lots of countries and I saw how in the United States the sky’s above too, that’s why the world seems totally straight to me. But Ronaldo’s never been out of Brazil and he might think the sky’s above only here, that it’s not flat in other places, that it’s only flat in Brazil, that in other places he hasn’t seen it gets rounder. When people tell him stuff, he just believes them, things don’t even have to make sense. Do you like bowls or plates, Mama?”