The Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  Angela Pralini had thoughts so deep there were no words to express them. It was a lie to say you could only have one thought at a time: she had many thoughts that intersected and were multiple. “Not to mention the ‘subconscious’ that explodes inside me, whether I want it to or you don’t. I am a fount,” thought Angela, thinking at the same time about where she’d put her head scarf, thinking about whether the dog had drunk the milk she’d left him, Eduardo’s shirts, and her extreme physical and mental depletion. And about elderly Dona Maria Rita. “I’ll never forget your face, Eduardo.” His was a somewhat astonished face, astonished at his own intelligence. He was naive. And he loved without knowing he was loving. He’d be beside himself when he found out that she’d left, leaving the dog and him. Abandonment due to lack of nutrition, she thought. At the same time she was thinking about the old woman sitting across from her. It wasn’t true that you only think one thought at a time. She was, for example, capable of writing a check perfectly, without a single error, while thinking about her life, for example. Which wasn’t good but in the end was hers. Hers again. Coherence, I don’t want it anymore. Coherence is mutilation. I want disorder. I can only guess at it through a vehement incoherence. To meditate, I took myself out of me first and I feel the void. It is in the void that one passes the time. She who adored a nice day at the beach, with sun, sand and sun. Man is abandoned, has lost contact with the earth, with the sky. He no longer lives, he exists. The atmosphere between her and Eduardo Gosme was filled with emergency. He had transformed her into an urgent woman. And one who, to keep her urgency awake, took stimulants that made her thinner and thinner and took away her hunger. I want to eat, Eduardo, I’m hungry, Eduardo, hungry for lots of food! I am organic!

  “Discover today the supertrain of tomorrow.” Selections from the Reader’s Digest that she sometimes read in secret from Eduardo. It was like the Selections that said: discover today the supertrain of tomorrow. She positively wasn’t discovering it today. But Eduardo was the supertrain. Super everything. She was discovering today the super of tomorrow. And she couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand the perpetual motion. You are the desert, and I am going to Oceania, to the South Seas, to the Isles of Tahiti. Though they’re ruined by tourists. You’re no more than a tourist, Eduardo. I’m headed for my own life, Edu. And I say like Fellini: in darkness and ignorance I create more. The life I had with Eduardo smelled like a freshly painted new pharmacy. She preferred the living smell of manure disgusting as it was. He was correct like a tennis court. Incidentally, he played tennis to stay in shape. Anyway, he was a bore she used to love and almost no longer did. She was recovering her mental health right there on the train. She was still in love with Eduardo. And he, without knowing it, was still in love with her. I who can’t get anything right, except omelets. With just one hand she’d crack eggs with incredible speed, and she cracked them into the bowl without spilling a single drop. Eduardo was consumed with envy at such elegance and efficiency. He sometimes gave lectures at universities and they adored him. She attended them too, she adoring him too. How was it again that he’d begin? “I feel uncomfortable seeing people stand up when they hear I’m about to speak.” Angela was always afraid they’d walk out and leave him there alone.

  The old woman, as if she’d received a mental transmission, was thinking: don’t let them leave me alone. How old am I exactly? Oh I don’t even know anymore.

  Right afterward she let the thought drain away. And she was peacefully nothing. She hardly existed. It was good that way, very good indeed. Plunges into the nothing.

  Angela Pralini, to calm down, told herself a very calming, very peaceful story: once upon a time there was a man who liked jabuticaba fruit very much. So he went to an orchard where there were trees laden with black, smooth and lustrous globules, that dropped into his hands in complete surrender and dropped from his hands to his feet. There was such an abundance of jabuticaba fruit that he gave in to the luxury of stepping on them. And they made a very delicious sound. They went like this: pop-pop-pop etc. Angela grew calm like the jabuticaba man. There were jabuticabas on the farm and with her bare feet she’d make that soft, moist “pop-pop.” She never knew whether or not you were supposed to swallow the pits. Who would answer that question? No one. Perhaps only a man who, like Ulisses, the dog, and unlike Eduardo, would answer: “Mangia, bella, que te fa bene.”* She knew a little Italian but was never sure whether she had it right. And, after what that man said, she’d swallow the pits. Another delicious tree was one whose scientific name she had forgotten but that in childhood everyone had known directly, without science, it was one that in the Rio Botanical Garden made a dry little “pop-pop.” See? see how you’re being reborn? The cat’s seven breaths. The number seven followed her everywhere, it was her secret, her strength. She felt beautiful. She wasn’t. But that’s how she felt. She also felt kindhearted. With tenderness toward the elderly Maria Ritinha who had put on her glasses and was reading the newspaper. Everything about the elderly Maria Rita was meandering. Near the end? oh, how it hurts to die. In life you suffer but you’re holding on to something: ineffable life. And as for the question of death? You mustn’t be afraid: go forward, always.

  Always.

  Like the train.

  Somewhere there’s something written on the wall. And it’s for me, thought Angela. From the flames of Hell a fresh telegram will arrive for me. And never again will my hope be disappointed. Never. Never again.

  The old woman was anonymous as a chicken, as someone named Clarice had said talking about a shameless old woman, in love with Roberto Carlos. That Clarice made people uncomfortable. She made the old woman shout: there! must! be! an! exiiit! And there was. For example, the exit for that old woman was the husband who’d be home the next day, it was the people she knew, it was her maid, it was the intense and fruitful prayer in the face of despair. Angela told herself as if furiously biting herself: there must be an exit. As much for me as for Dona Maria Rita.

  I couldn’t stop time, thought Maria Rita Alvarenga Chagas Souza Melo. I’ve failed. I’m old. And she pretended to read the newspaper just to gain some composure.

  I want shade, Angela moaned, I want shade and anonymity.

  The old woman thought: her son was so kindhearted, so warm, so affectionate! He called her “dear little mother.” Yes, maybe I’ll spend the rest of my life on the farm, far from “public relations” who doesn’t need me. And my life should be very long, judging by my parents and grandparents. I could easily, easily, make it to a hundred, she thought comfortably. And die suddenly so I won’t have time to be afraid. She crossed herself discreetly and prayed to God for a good death.

  Ulisses, if his face were viewed from a human perspective, would be monstrous and ugly. He was beautiful from a dog’s perspective. He was vigorous like a white and free horse, only he was a soft brown, orangish, whiskey-colored. But his coat is beautiful like that of an energetic rearing horse. The muscles of his neck were vigorous and people could grasp those muscles in hands with knowing fingers. Ulisses was a man. Without the dog-eat-dog world. He was refined like a man. A woman should treat her man well.

  The train entering the countryside: the crickets were calling, shrill and hoarse.

  Eduardo, every once in a while, awkwardly like someone forced to fulfill a duty—gave her an ice-cold diamond as a present. She who was partial to sparkling gems. Anyhow, she sighed, things are the way they are. At times she felt, whenever she looked down from high in her apartment, the urge to commit suicide. Ah, not because of Eduardo but from a kind of fatal curiosity. She didn’t tell anyone this, afraid of influencing a latent suicide. She wanted life, a level and full life, very laid-back, very much reading Reader’s Digest in the open. She didn’t want to die until she was ninety, in the midst of some act of life, without feeling anything. What are you doing? I’m waiting for the future.

  When the train had finally started moving, Angela Pralini lit a cigaret
te in hallelujah: she’d been worried that, until the train departed, she wouldn’t have the courage to go and would end up leaving the car. But right after, they were subjected to the deafening yet sudden jerking of the wheels. The train was chugging along. And old Maria Rita was sighing: she was that much closer to her beloved son. With him she could be a mother, she who was castrated by her daughter.

  Once when Angela was suffering from menstrual cramps, Eduardo had tried, rather awkwardly, to be affectionate. And he’d said something horrifying to her: you have an ouchy, don’t you? It was enough to make her flush with embarrassment.

  The train sped along as fast as it could. The happy engineer: that’s how I like it, and he blew the whistle at every curve in the rails. It was the long, hearty whistle of a moving train, making headway. The morning was cool and full of tall green grasses. That’s it, yessir, come on, said the engineer to the engine. The engine responded with joy.

  The old woman was nothing. And she was looking at the air as one looks at God. She was made of God. That is: all or nothing. The old woman, thought Angela, was vulnerable. Vulnerable to love, love for her son. The mother was Franciscan, the daughter was pollution.

  God, Angela thought, if you exist, show yourself! Because it was time. It’s this hour, this minute and this second.

  And the result was that she had to hide the tears that sprang to her eyes. God had her. She was satisfied and stifled a muffled sob. How living hurt. Living was an open wound. Living is being like my dog. Ulisses has nothing to do with Joyce’s Ulysses. I tried to read Joyce but stopped because he was boring, sorry, Eduardo. Still, a brilliant bore. Angela was loving the old woman who was nothing, the mother she lacked. A sweet, naive, long-suffering mother. Her mother who had died when she turned nine. Even sick but alive was good enough. Even paralyzed.

  The air between Eduardo and her tasted like Saturday. And suddenly the two of them were rare, rarity in the air. They felt rare, not part of the thousand people wandering the streets. The two of them were sometimes conspiratorial, they had a secret life because no one would understand them. And also because the rare ones are persecuted by the people who don’t tolerate the insulting offense of those who are different. They hid their love so as not to wound the eyes of others with envy. So as not to wound them with a spark too luminous for the eyes.

  Bow, wow, wow, my dog had barked. My big dog.

  The old woman thought: I’m an involuntary person. So much that, when she laughed—which was rare—you couldn’t tell whether she was laughing or crying. Yes. She was involuntary.

  Meanwhile there was Angela Pralini effervescing like the bubbles in Caxambu mineral water, she was one: all of a sudden. Just like that: suddenly. Suddenly what? Just suddenly. Zero. Nothing. She was thirty-seven and planning at any moment to start her life over. Like the little effervescent bubbles in Caxambu water. The seven letters in Pralini gave her strength. The seven letters in Angela made her anonymous.

  With a long, howling whistle, they arrived at the little station where Angela Pralini would get off. She took her suitcase. In the space between a porter’s cap and a young woman’s nose, there was the old woman sleeping stiffly, her head erect beneath her felt hat, a fist closed on the newspaper.

  Angela left the train.

  Naturally this hadn’t the slightest importance: there are people who are always led to regret, it’s a trait of certain guilty natures. But what kept disturbing her was the vision of the old woman when she awoke, the image of her astonished face across from Angela’s empty seat. After all who knew if she had fallen asleep out of trust in her.

  Trust in the world.

  * Italian: “Eat, pretty girl, it’s good for you.”

  Dry Sketch of Horses

  (“Seco estudo de cavalos”)

  Stripping

  The horse is naked.

  False Domestication

  What is a horse? It is freedom so indomitable that it becomes useless to imprison it to serve man: it lets itself be domesticated but with a simple movement, a rebellious toss of the head—shaking its mane like flowing locks—it shows that its innermost nature is forever wild and limpid and free.

  Form

  The form of the horse represents what is best in the human being. I have a horse inside me that rarely manifests itself. But when I see another horse then mine expresses itself. Its form speaks.

  Sweetness

  What makes the horse that shining satin? It is the sweetness of one who has taken on life and its rainbow. That sweetness becomes concrete in the soft coat that suggests the supple muscles, agile and controlled.

  The Eyes of the Horse

  I once saw a blind horse: nature had erred. It was painful to sense its restlessness, attuned to the slightest murmur provoked by the breeze in the grasses, its nerves ready to bristle in a shiver running the length of its alert body. What is it that a horse sees to the extent that not seeing its like renders it lost as if from itself? What happens is—when it does see—it sees outside itself whatever is inside itself. It is an animal expressed by its form. When it sees mountains, meadows, people, sky—it dominates men and nature itself.

  Sensitivity

  Every horse is wild and skittish when unsure hands touch it.

  He and I

  Attempting to put my most hidden and subtle sensation into sentences—and disobeying my strict need for truthfulness—I would say: if it had been up to me I would have wanted to be born a horse. But—who knows—perhaps the horse him-self doesn’t sense the great symbol of free life that we sense in him. Should I then conclude that the horse exists above all to be sensed by me? Does the horse represent the beautiful and liberated animality of the human being? Does the human already contain the best of the horse? Then I renounce being a horse and in glory I’ll go over to my humanity. The horse shows me what I am.

  Adolescence of the Colt-Girl

  I have related perfectly to a horse before. I remember adolescent-me. Standing with the same pride as the horse and running my hand over its lustrous coat. Over its rustic aggressive mane. I felt as if something of mine were watching us from afar—Thus: “The Girl and the Horse.”

  The Fanfare

  On the farm the white horse—king of nature—launched high into the keenness of the air its prolonged neigh of splendor.

  The Dangerous Horse

  In the country town—which would one day become a small metropolis—horses still reigned as prominent inhabitants. Due to the increasingly urgent need for transport, teams of horses had invaded the village, and there stirred in the still-wild children the secret desire to gallop. A young bay had fatally kicked a boy trying to mount it. And the place where the daring child died was looked upon by the people with a disapproval that in fact they didn’t know where to direct. With their market baskets on their arms, the women stopped and stared. A newspaper looked into the affair and people took a certain pride in reading an item entitled The Horse’s Crime. It was the Crime of one of the town’s sons. By then the village was already mingling its scent of stables with an awareness of the pent-up power of horses.

  On the Sun-Baked Street

  But suddenly—in the silence of the two o’clock sun and with almost no one on the street in those outskirts—a pair of horses emerged from around a corner. For a moment they froze with legs slightly raised. Their mouths flaring as if unbridled. There, like statues. The few pedestrians braving the heat of the sun stared, hard, separate, not understanding in words what they were seeing. They just understood. Once the blinding glare of the apparition faded—the horses bowed their necks, lowered their legs and continued on their way. The glimmering instant had passed. An instant frozen as by a camera that had captured something words will never say.

  At Sunset

  That day, as the sun was already setting, gold spread through the clouds and over the rocks. The inhabitants’ faces were golden like armor
and thus glowed their tousled hair. Dusty factories whistled continuously signaling the end of the workday, the wheel of a cart gained a golden nimbus. In that pale gold blowing in the breeze was the raising of an unsheathed sword. Because that was how the equestrian statue on the square stood in the sweetness of sundown.

  In the Cold Dawn

  You could see the warm moist breath—the radiant and tranquil breath that came from the trembling extremely alive and quivering nostrils of the stallions and mares on certain cold dawns.

  In the Mystery of Night

  But at night the horses released from their burdens and led to pasture would gallop exquisite and free in the dark. Colts, nags, sorrels, long mares, hard hooves—suddenly a cold, dark horse’s head!—hooves pounding, foaming muzzles rising into the air in fury and murmurs. And at times a long exhalation would cool the trembling grasses. Then the bay would move ahead. He’d amble sideways, head bowed to his chest, at a steady cadence. The others watched without looking. Hearing the faint sound of horses, I’d imagine the dry hooves advancing until halting at the summit of the hill. And his head dominating the town, launching a prolonged neigh. Fear seized me in the shadows of my bedroom, the terror of a king, I wanted to answer, baring my gums in a neigh. In the envy of desire my face acquired the restless nobility of a horse’s head. Tired, jubilant, listening to the somnambulant trotting. As soon as I left my bedroom my form would start expanding and refining itself, and, by the time I made it outside, I’d already be galloping on sensitive legs, hooves gliding down the last few steps of the house. On the deserted sidewalk I would look around: in one corner and the next. And I’d see things as a horse sees them. That was my desire. From my house I would try at least to listen for the hilly pasture where in the dark nameless horses galloped reverting to a state of hunting and war.