The Complete Stories

by Clarice Lispector

  The beasts never abandoned their secret life that goes on in the night. And if in the midst of their wild roaming a white colt appeared—it was a ghost in the dark. All would halt. The extraordinary horse would appear, it was an apparition. It showed off rearing for an instant. The animals would wait motionless without watching one another. But one would stamp its hoof—and the brief blow shattered the vigil: riled up they’d spring into motion suddenly merry, crisscrossing without ever colliding and in their midst the white horse would be lost. Until a neigh of sudden rage alerted them—attentive for a second, they soon fanned out again trotting in a new formation, backs riderless, necks lowered until their muzzles grazed their chests. Manes bristling. Cadenced, ungoverned.

  The deep of night—while men slept—found them motionless in the dark. Stable and weightless. There they were, invisible, breathing. Waiting with slow-witted intelligence. Below, in the sleeping town, a rooster was flapping and perching on a window sill. The chickens were watching. Beyond the railway, a rat ready to flee. Then the gray stamped its hoof. It had no mouth with which to speak but gave a little signal that resounded from space to space in the darkness. They were watching. Those animals that had one eye to see on either side—nothing needed to be seen head-on by them, and this was the great night. A swift contraction rippling over the flanks of a mare. In the silences of the night the mare gazed ahead as if surrounded by eternity. The most restless of the colts still bristled its mane in inward neighing. At last total silence reigned.

  Until the fragile luminosity of dawn revealed them. They were separate, standing atop the hill. Exhausted, fresh. They had passed in the darkness through the mystery of the nature of beings.

  Sketch of the Demon Horse

  Never again shall I find rest, for I stole the hunting horse of a King. I am now worse than myself! Never again shall I find rest: I stole the King’s hunting horse on the enchanted Sabbath. If I fall asleep for an instant, the echo of neighing awakens me. And it is no use trying not to go. In the dark of night the panting makes me shudder. I pretend to be asleep but in the silence the stallion is breathing. Every day it will be the same thing: at dusk I begin to feel melancholy and pensive. I know that the first rumbling on the mountain of evil will make it night, I know that the third will have already enveloped me in its thunder. And by the fifth rumble I shall already covet the ghost horse. Until at dawn, at the final faintest rumblings, I shall find myself without knowing how by a cool brook, without ever knowing what I did, beside that enormous weary horse head.

  But weary from what? What did we do, I and the horse, we, those that trot through the hell of the vampire’s joy? He, the King’s horse, calls to me. I have been resisting in a crisis of sweat and won’t go. The last time I dismounted from his silver saddle, my human sadness was so great at having been what I should not have been, that I swore never again. The trotting nonetheless goes on inside me. I chat, clean the house, smile, but I know the trotting is inside me. I long for it like one dying.

  No, I cannot stop going.

  And I know that at night, when he calls to me, I shall go. I want once more for the horse to guide my thought. He was the one who taught me. If thought is what this hour between the barking is. I grow sad because I know with my eye—oh not on purpose! it’s not my fault!—with my eye unintentionally already glinting with evil glee—I know I shall go.

  When at night he calls me to the attraction of hell, I shall go. I descend like a cat down the rooftops. No one knows, no one sees. Only the dogs bark sensing the supernatural.

  And I present myself in the dark to the horse that awaits me, royal horse, I present myself mute and flaring. Obedient to the Beast.

  Fifty-three flutes chase after us. In front a clarinet lights our way, we, the shameless accomplices of the enigma. And nothing more is given me to know.

  At dawn I shall see us exhausted by the brook, not knowing what crimes we committed before arriving at the innocent dawn.

  On my mouth and on his hooves the mark of the great blood. What did we immolate?

  At dawn I shall be standing beside the now-silent stallion, the remaining flutes still coursing through my hair. The first bells of a faraway church make us shudder and flee, we vanish before the cross.

  The night is my life with the diabolical horse, I enchantress of the horror. The night is my life, it grows late, the sinfully happy night is the sad life that is my orgy—ah steal it, steal that stallion from me because with each theft until dawn I have already stolen for myself and my fantastical mate, and of the dawn I have made a premonition of terror of demoniacal unwholesome joy.

  Relieve me, quick steal the stallion while there’s still time, before dusk falls, while it is shawdowless day, if there really still is time, for in stealing the stallion I had to kill the King, and in murdering him I stole the death of the King. And the orgiastic joy of our murder consumes me with terrible pleasure. Quick steal the dangerous horse of the King, rob me before night falls and calls to me.

  Where Were You at Night

  (“Onde estivestes de noite”)

  Stories have no conclusion.

  —Alberto Dines

  The unknown is addictive.

  —Fauzi Arap

  Sitting in an easy chair, mouth full of teeth, waiting for death.

  —Raul Seixas

  What I shall present is so unheard of that I dread lest I have all men as enemies, so much do preconceived notions and doctrines take root in the world, once they are accepted.

  —William Harvey

  The night was an exceptional possibility. Well into a moonless night of a scorching summer a rooster crowed at the wrong time and just once to announce the start of its ascent of the mountain. The crowd below waited in silence.

  He-she was already there atop the mountain, and she was personalized in the he and he was personalized in the she. The androgynous mixture created a being so terribly beautiful, so horrifically stupefying that the participants couldn’t take it all in at once: as a person adjusts little by little to the dark and gradually starts to discern things. Gradually they discerned the She-he and when the He-she appeared before them in a brightness that emanated from him-her, they paralyzed by the Beautiful would say: “Ah, Ah.” It was an exclamation that was allowed in the silence of the night. They gazed upon the frightening beauty and its danger. But they had come precisely in order to suffer danger.

  Vapors wafted from the swamps. A star of enormous density guided them. They were the contrary of the Good. They climbed the mountain mingling men, women, elves, gnomes and dwarves—like extinct gods. The golden bell tolled for the suicides. Besides the great star, not a single star. And there was no sea. What there was atop the mountain was darkness. A northwest wind blew. Was He-she a beacon? The worship of the damned was about to proceed.

  The men wriggled on the ground like fat and spineless worms: climbing. Risking everything, since they were fated to die one day, perhaps in two months, perhaps seven years­—this was what He-she was thinking inside them.

  Look at the cat. Look at what the cat saw. Look at what the cat thought. Look at what it was. At last, at last, there was no symbol, the “thing” was! the orgiastic thing. Those climbing were on the verge of the truth. Nebuchadnezzar. They resembled 20 Nebuchadnezzars. And in the night they disbanded. They are awaiting us. It was an absence—a journey outside of time.

  A dog howled with laughter in the dark. “I’m scared,” said a child. “Scared of what?” asked the mother. “Of my dog.” “But you don’t have a dog.” “Yes I do.” But then the little child also laughed while crying, mingling tears of laughter and fright.

  At last they arrived, the damned. And they gazed upon that eternal Widow, the great Solitary Woman who fascinated everyone, and men and women couldn’t resist and wanted to get
closer so as to die loving her but she with a gesture kept them all at a distance. They wanted to love her with a strange love that vibrates in death. It didn’t bother them to love her while dying. The cloak the She-he wore was an agonizing shade of violet. But the mercenary women of the feasting sex tried to imitate her in vain.

  What time could it be? no one could live in time, time was indirect and by its very nature forever unattainable. Their joints were already swollen, their excesses rumbled in their earth-filled stomachs, their lips swelling yet cracked—they climbed the slope. The shadows were of a low and dark sound like the darkest note from a cello. They arrived. The Ill-fated, the He-she, before the worship of kings and vassals, gleamed like a gigantic illuminated eagle. The silence swarmed with panting breaths. The vision was of mouths parted in the sensuality that nearly paralyzed them, so crude was it. They felt saved from the Great Tedium.

  The hill was a scrap heap. When the She-he stopped for an instant, men and women, surrendering to themselves for an instant, said to themselves fearfully: I don’t know how to think. But the He-she was thinking inside them.

  A mute herald proclaimed the news with a strident clarinet. What news? about bestiality? Though perhaps it was this: starting from the herald every one of them began to “feel himself,” to feel his own self. And there was no repression: free!

  Then they began to murmur but inwardly because the She-he was scathing when it came to not disturbing one another during their slow metamorphosis. “I am Jesus! I am a Jew!” the poor Jew cried in silence. The annals of astronomy have never recorded anything like this spectacular comet, recently discovered—its vaporous tail will drag millions of miles through space. Not to mention time.

  A hunchbacked dwarf was hopping like a frog, from one crossroad to another—the place was full of crossroads. Suddenly the stars appeared and were gems and diamonds in the dark sky. And the dwarf-hunchback kept leaping, as high as he could to reach the diamonds that awakened his greedy desire. Crystals! Crystals! he cried in thoughts that bounded like his leaps.

  Latency pulsated light, rhythmic, ceaseless. All were entirely latent. “There is no crime we have not committed in our thoughts”: Goethe. A new and inauthentic Brazilian history was written abroad. Furthermore, domestic researchers complained about the lack of resources for their work.

  The mountain had volcanic origins. And suddenly the sea: the crashing revolt of the Atlantic filled their ears. And the salt smell of the sea fertilized them and tripled them into little monsters.

  Can the human body fly? Levitation. Saint Teresa of Avila: “It seemed as if a great force was lifting me into the air. This put a great fear in me.” The dwarf levitated for a few seconds but enjoyed it and was not afraid.

  “What’s your name,” the boy said mutely, “so I can call you for the rest of my life. I’ll shout your name.”

  “I have no name down there. Here I have the name Xantipa.”

  “Ah, I want to shout Xantipa! Xantipa! Look, I’m shouting on the inside. And what’s your name during the day?”

  “I think it’s . . . it’s . . . it seems to be Maria Luísa.”

  And she shuddered as a horse bristles. Then fell bloodless to the ground. No one was killing anyone because they had already been killed. No one wanted to die and indeed no one died.

  Meanwhile—delicately, delicately—the He-she was using a certain emblem. The color of the emblem. For I want to live in abundance and would betray my best friend in exchange for more life than one can have. That seeking, that ambition. I scorned the precepts of the wise men who counseled moderation and poverty of the soul—the simplification of the soul, in my experience, was saintly innocence. But I struggled against temptation.

  Yes. Yes: to fall until hitting abjection. That is their ambition. The sound was the herald of the silence. Because none could let themselves be possessed by That-nameless-he-she.

  They wanted to revel in the forbidden. They wanted to praise life and didn’t want the pain that is required to live, to feel and to love. They wanted to feel dreadful immortality. Because the forbidden is always the best. They at the same time were not bothered by possibly falling into the enormous pit of death. And life was only precious to them while they were shouting and moaning. To feel the strength of hatred was what they most wanted. I call myself the people, they thought.

  “What must I do to be a hero? Because only heroes can enter the temples.”

  And in the silence suddenly his howling cry, hard to say whether of love or mortal pain, the hero smelling of myrrh, frankincense and resin.

  He-she covered his-her nudity with a cloak that was beautiful but like a shroud, a purple shroud, now cathedral-red. On moonless nights She-he became an owl. Thou shalt devour thy brother, she said in the thoughts of others, and at the savage hour there shall be a solar eclipse.

  So they wouldn’t betray themselves they ignored the fact that today was yesterday and there would be a tomorrow. A transparency wafted through the air the likes of which no man had ever breathed. But they sprinkled pepper on their own genital organs and writhed in ardor. And suddenly hatred. They weren’t killing one another but felt such implacable hatred that it was like a dart launched at a body. And they rejoiced damned by what they felt. The hatred was a vomit that released them from a greater vomit, the vomit of the soul.

  He-she with seven musical notes achieved the howl. Just as with the same seven notes one can create sacred music. They heard inside themselves the do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti, the “ti” soft and extremely high. They were independent and sovereign, despite being guided by the He-she. Death roaring in dark dungeons. Fire, scream, color, vice, cross. I remain vigilant in the world: by night I live and by day I sleep, elusive. I, with a dog’s sense of smell, orgiastic.

  As for them, they carried out rituals that the faithful execute without understanding their mysteries. The ceremonies. With a light gesture She-he touched a child striking it down and everyone said: amen. The mother let out a wolf howl: she, completely dead, she, too.

  But it was in order to have super-sensations that people went up there. And it was a sensation so secret and so profound that jubilation sparkled in the air. They wanted the superior power that has reigned over the world through the centuries. Were they afraid? They were. Nothing could substitute the richness of the silent dread. Being afraid was the accursed glory of the darkness, silent like a Moon.

  Gradually they adjusted to the dark and the Moon, previously hidden, all round and pale, had smoothed their ascent. It was pitch dark when one by one they had climbed “the mountain,” as they called the somewhat elevated plain. They had leaned against the ground so as not to fall, treading on dry and rugged trees, treading on prickly cactuses. It was an irresistibly attractive fear, they would rather die than abandon it. The He-she was like their Lover. But if anyone was ambitious enough to dare touch her he was frozen in place.

  He-she told them inside their brains—and everyone heard her inside themselves—what happened to a person when that person didn’t heed the call of the night: what happened was that in the blinding light of day that person lived in open flesh and with eyes dazzled by the sin of the light—that person lived without anesthesia the terror of being alive. There is nothing to fear, when you have no fear. It was the eve of the apocalypse. Who was the king of the Earth? If you abuse the power you have conquered, the masters will punish you. Filled with terror of a fierce joy they prostrated themselves and amid shrieks of laughter ate poisonous weeds off the ground and the echoes of their laughter resounded from darkness to darkness. The air was heavy with the suffocating scent of roses, roses
damned in their strength of nature gone mad, the same nature that invented snakes and rats and pearls and children—the mad nature that now was night in darkness, now bright day. This flesh that moves merely because it has a spirit.

  From their mouths drooled saliva, thick, bitter and slick, and they urinated on themselves without feeling it. The women who had recently given birth violently squeezed their own breasts and from their nipples a thick black milk gushed. One woman spit hard in the face of a man and the harsh spittle slid down his cheek to his mouth—eagerly he licked his lips.

  They were all unleashed. The joy was frenetic. They were the harem of the He-she. They had fallen at last into the impossible. Mysticism was the highest form of superstition.

  The millionaire was shouting: I want power! power! I want even objects to do my bidding! And I’ll say: move, object! and it will move all by itself.

  The old, disheveled woman said to the millionaire: want to see how you’re not a millionaire? Well I’ll tell you: you do not own the next second of your life, you could die without knowing it. Death will humiliate you. The millionaire: I want the truth, the absolute truth!

  The journalist working on a magnificent story about raw life. I’m going to be internationally famous like the author of The Exorcist which I haven’t read so it won’t influence me. I’m looking directly at raw life, I’m living it.

  I am a solitary person, said the masturbator to himself.

  I’m waiting, and waiting, nothing ever happens to me, I’ve already given up on waiting. They were drinking the bitter liquor of the rough weeds.