At this moment, inspiration sends pain throughout my body. One more second, and it will need to be something greater than inspiration. Instead of this suffocating happiness, as if there were too much air, I shall experience the clear impossibility of having more than inspiration, of surpassing it, of possessing the thing itself — and really be a star. Look where madness, madness leads one. Nevertheless, it is the truth. What does it matter that to all appearances I am still in the dormitory at this moment, the other girls fast asleep in their beds, their bodies quite still. What does it matter what it really is? Truly I am on my knees, naked as an animal, beside the bed, my soul despairing as only the body of a virgin can despair. The bed gradually disappears, the walls of the room recede, collapse in ruins. And I am in the world, as free and lithe as a colt on the plain. I rise as gentle as a puff of air, I raise my sleepy head like that of a flower, my feet agile, and cross the fields, further than the earth, the world, time, God. I sink only to emerge, as if from clouds, from lands still inconceivable, ah, still inconceivable. From lands, still beyond my powers of imagination, but which will appear one day. I roam, I wander, I go on and on... Always without stopping, distracting my weary desire to reach some final resting-place. Where did I once see a moon high in the sky, white and silent? Livid clothing fluttering in the breeze. The mast without a flag, erect and mute, rooted in space... Everything awaiting midnight — I am deceiving myself, I must return. I feel no madness in my desire to bite into stars, but the earth still exists. And the first truth resides in the earth and in the body. If the brilliance of the stars causes internal pain, if this remote communication is possible, it's because something almost resembling a star glimmers inside me. Here I am, returned to the body. To return to my body. When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent. Why silent? Do these curves beneath my blouse exist with impunity? Why are they silent? My mouth, still somewhat childlike, so certain of its destiny, remains true to itself, despite my total distraction. Sometimes, upon making this discovery, there comes this love for myself, constant glances in the mirror, a knowing smile for those who stare at me. A period of interrogation addressed to my body, a time of greed, sleep, long walks in the open air. Until some phrase or glance — like that in the mirror — unexpectedly reminds me of other secrets, those which remove all limits. Enthralled, I plunge my body to the bottom of the well, I penetrate all its sources and walking in my sleep I follow another path. -To analyse moment by moment, to perceive the nucleus of each thing made from time or space. To possess each moment, to link them to my awareness, like tiny filaments, barely perceptible yet strong. Can this be life? Even so, it might elude me. Another way of capturing it would be to live. But the dream is more complete than the reality; the latter plunges me into unconsciousness. What matters in the end: to be alive or to know that one is alive? — The purest of words, crystal drops. I feel their moist and gleaming form struggling inside me. But where can I find what I must express? Inspire me, I have almost everything: I possess the outline awaiting the essence; is that it? — What is someone to do who doesn't know what to do with himself? To utilize himself as body and soul to the advantage of his body and soul? Or to transform his strength into an alien strength? Or to wait for the solution to come from himself as a consequence? I can express nothing, not even within form. All I possess lies much deeper inside me. One day, after finally speaking, shall I still have something on which to live? Or will everything that I might say be beneath and beyond life?
— I try to distance myself from everything that is a form of life. I try to isolate myself in order to find life in itself. Nevertheless, I have relied too much on the game that distracts and consoles and when I distance myself from it, I suddenly find myself defenceless. The moment I close the door behind me, I instantly detach myself from things. All that has been distances itself from me, quietly sinking into my remote waters. I can hear it drop. Happy and tranquil, I wait for myself, I wait for myself to rise and to emerge as I really am before my own eyes. Instead of securing myself with my flight, I see myself abandoned, solitary, thrown into a cell without dimensions, where light and shadows are silent phantoms. Within my inner self I find the silence I am seeking. But it leaves me so bereft of any memory of any human being and of me myself, that I transform this impression into the certainty of physical solitude. Were I to cry out — I can no longer see things clearly — my voice would receive the same indifferent echo from the walls of the earth. So without experiencing things, should I not find life? But, even so, in the white and limited solitude where I fall, I am still trapped amidst impenetrable mountains. Trapped, trapped. Where is my imagination? I walk over invisible tracks. Prison, freedom. These are the words that occur to me. But I sense that they are not the only true and irreplaceable ones. Freedom means little. What I desire still has no name. — For I am a toy they wind up and once this has been done it will not find its own, much deeper life. To search tranquilly, to concede that perhaps I may only find it were I to look for it in secondary sources. Otherwise I shall die of thirst. Perhaps I have not been made for the pure, expansive waters, but for those which are small and readily accessible. And perhaps my craving for another source, which gives me the expression of someone in search of food, perhaps this craving is a whim-and nothing more. Yet surely those rare moments of self-confidence, of blind existence, of happiness as intense and serene as an organ playing — surely those moments prove that I am capable of fulfilling my quest and that this longing which consumes my whole being is not merely some whim? Moreover, that whim is the truth! I cry out to myself. Such moments are rare. Only yesterday, I suddenly thought in class, almost out of the blue, apropos of nothing: movement explains form. The clear notion of the perfect, the sudden freedom I felt... That day, on my uncle's farm, when I fell into the river. Before I was impenetrable and opaque. But when I clambered out, it as as if I had been born from water. I got out soaking wet, my clothes clinging to my skin, my hair shining wet and straggling. Something stirred inside me and it was almost certainly only my body. But a sweet miracle can make everything transparent and this was certainly my soul as well. At that moment I was truly inside my inner self and there was silence. Only I realized that my silence was part of the silence of the countryside. And I did not feel abandoned. The horse, from which I'd fallen, was waiting for me beside the river. I remounted and sped along the slopes where refreshing shadows were gathering. I pulled up the reins, stroked the animal's fevered and throbbing neck. I rode on at a slow pace, listening to the happiness inside me, as high and limpid as a summer sky. I stroked my arms where there were still trickles of water. I could feel the live animal close to me, an extension of my body. We both breathed, throbbing and youthful. A somewhat sombre colour had settled on the plains, warmed by the last rays of sunlight and the gentle breeze slowly died away. I must never forget, I thought, that I have been happy, that I am happy, happier than anyone could hope to be. But I forgot, I was always forgetting.
I sat waiting in the Cathedral, distracted and vague. I inhaled the overpowering odour, purple and cold, that emanated from the holy statues. And suddenly before I knew what was happening, like some cataclysm, the invisible organ burst out into rich tremulous strains of the utmost purity. Without any melody, almost without any music, almost without any vibrations. The lengthy walls and high vaults of the church
received and returned those strains, sonorous, naked, and intense. They penetrated my body, criss-crossed inside me, filled my nerves with tremors, my brain with sounds. I thought no thoughts, only music. Impassively, under the weight of that canticle, I slid from the bench and knelt down without praying, annihilated. The organ fell silent with the same suddenness with which it had started up, like an inspiration. I went on breathing quietly, my body still vibrating to the final strains that hovered in midair in a warm, translucent buzzing. And the moment was so perfect that I felt neither fear nor gratitude and did not invoke God. I want to die now, something called out inside me, a cry of freedom rather than suffering. Any moment following upon that one would be less exalted and empty. I wanted to rise and only death, as an end, could grant me the summit without the descent. People were getting up around me, were stirring. I stood up and made for the exit, weak and pale.
The Woman with the Voice and Joana
Joana didn't pay all that much attention to her until she heard her voice. That low, arched tone, without any vibrations, roused her. She stared at the woman inquisitively. She must have experienced something that was still unknown to Joana. She could not grasp that intonation, so remote from life, so remote from the days...
Joana recalled how on one occasion, a few months after being married, she had turned to her husband to ask him something. They were in the street. And before actually finishing the sentence, to Otávio's surprise, she had paused — looking worried and distracted. Ah — I had discovered -then she affected one of those voices she had heard so often before getting married, always vaguely perplexed. The voice of a young woman at the side of her man. Like her own voice speaking at that moment to Otávio: sharp, empty, raised to a high pitch, with clear, even notes. Something incomplete, ecstatic, somewhat blase. Straining to call out... Bright days, limpid and dry, a voice and days that were sexless, choirboys singing at an open-air service. And something lost, heading for mild despair...The timbre of a newly-wed woman had a history, a fragile history that went unnoticed by the woman with the voice, but not by this one.
Ever since that day Joana heard the voices, whether she understood them or not. Probably at the end of her life, with every timbre she heard, a tide of personal reminiscences would come flooding back Joana would say: how many voices I've possessed...
She leaned towards the woman. She had approached her when looking for a house to live in and was glad that she had gone without her husband because, on her own, she could observe her with greater freedom. And there, yes, there she found something she had not anticipated, a pause. But the other woman didn't as much as look at her. Thinking as Otávio might, Joana surmised that he would think of the woman as being simply coarse, with that big nose, pale and calm. The woman explained the conveniences and inconveniences of the house she was offering to rent while casting her eyes over the floor, the window, the view, without haste, without interest. She was clean and tidy and had dark hair. Her body, ample and sturdy. And her voice, her voice was of the earth. Not colliding with any object, soft and distant as if it had travelled lengthy paths beneath the soil before reaching her throat.
— Married? -Joana asked, leaning over her.
— Widowed, with one son. — And she went on distilling her song over all the lodgers in the district.
— No, I don't think I'm interested in the house, it's much too big for two, Joana said briskly, even a little harshly. But added — softening her tone, concealing her eagerness -would you mind if I called from time to time to have a chat?
The other woman showed no surprise. She ran one hand over her waist, grown thick with pregnancy and the slowness of her movements:
— That might be difficult.. .Tomorrow, I'm leaving to visit my son. He's married. I'm going away...
She smiled without happiness, without emotion. Simply: I'm going away... What did interest that woman? -Joana asked herself. Could she have a lover...
— Do you live alone? — she asked her.
— My younger sister has gone off to be a nun. I live with my other sister.
— Don't you find life rather sad without a man around the house? -Joana went on.
— Do you think so? — the woman retorted.
— I'm asking you, if you don't find it sad, not me. I'm married, Joana added, trying to bring a note of intimacy into the conversation.
— Ah, no, I don't find it sad, not in the least — And she gave her a wan smile. — Well, since the house obviously isn't what you're looking for, I must ask you to excuse me. I have to wash a few clothes before having a little rest by the window.
Joana went on her way feeling nettled. The woman was clearly moronic... But that voice? It haunted her throughout the entire afternoon. She tried to recall the woman's smile, her ample, lethargic body. The woman had no history, Joana slowly realized. For if things happened to her, they were not part of her and did not merge with her true existence. The essential thing — including past, present and future — is that she was alive. That is the nucleus of the narrative. Sometimes this nucleus seemed blurred, as if seen with one's eyes shut, almost non-existent. But it only needed a brief pause, a little silence, for it to become enormous and to loom up with open eyes, a soft and constant murmur like that of water trickling among pebbles. Why elaborate on this description? It is certain that things happened to her which came from outside. She lost her illusions, suffered an attack of pneumonia. Things happened to her. But they only served to consolidate or weaken the murmur of her centre. Why narrate facts and details if no one dominated her in the end? And if she were merely the life that flowed constantly inside her body?
Her probings never became agitated in their search for an answer—Joana continued to make discoveries. Her questions were still-born, they accumulated without desire or hope. She attempted no movement outside herself.
Many years of her existence were spent at the window, watching the things that passed and those that stood still. But in fact she didn't so much see the life inside her as hear it. Its sound had fascinated her — like the breathing of a new-born infant — its gentle glow — like that of a new-born plant. She had not yet grown weary of existing and she was so self-sufficient that sometimes, out of sheer happiness, she felt sadness cover her like the shadow of a mantle, leaving her as fresh and silent as nightfall. She expected nothing. She was in herself, her own end.
Once she divided herself, became restless, she began to go out in search of herself. She went to places where men and women were gathered. They said to themselves: fortunately, she has woken up, life is short, one must make the most of it. Previously, she was spiritless, now she's a real person. No one realized that she was being unhappy to the point of needing to go in search of life. That was when she chose a man, loved him and love came to thicken her blood and mystery. She gave birth to a son, her husband died after impregnating her. She carried on and thrived very well. She gathered together all her belongings and no longer went looking for people. She rediscovered her window where she settled, enjoying her own company. And now, more than ever, there was no thing or creature more happy and fulfilled to be found. Despite all those people who looked at her condescendingly, believing her to be weak. For her spirit was so strong that she had never neglected to have an excellent lunch or dinner without, however, any excessive indulgence. Nothing they could say bothered her or whatever happened to her, and everything slid over her and vanished into waters other than those inside her.
One day, after having patiently experienced many such days, she saw herself different from herself. She felt weary. She paced to and fro. She herself didn't know what she wanted. She began to hum quietly without opening her mouth. Then she tired of this and began to think about things. But she didn't quite succeed. Inside her something was trying to call a halt. She waited but nothing came from her to her. She slowly grew sad from a lack of sadness, and was therefore twice as sad. She went on walking for several days and her footsteps sounded like withered leaves falling to the ground. She her
self was lined inside with greyness, and she could see nothing within herself other than a reflection of her ancient rhythm, now slow and leaden. Then she knew that she was drained and for the first time she suffered because she really had become divided in two, one part facing the other, watching it, desiring things that it could no longer give. In fact, she had always been two, the one who superficially knew that she was, and the one that truly existed in depth. Until now both parts functioned together and merged. Now the one that knew that she was, functioned on its own, which meant that that woman was being unhappy and intelligent. She made one last effort to try and invent something, some thought that might distract her. In vain. She only knew how to live.
Until the absence of herself finally made her fall into the night, and pacified, darkened, and refreshed, she began to die. She then embraced sweet death, as if she were a ghost. Nothing more is known because she died. One can merely surmise that in the end she, too, was being happy as only a thing or creature can be. For she had been born for the essential, to live or die. And for her, the intermediary was suffering. Her existence was so complete and so closely bound to truth that she probably thought at the moment of surrendering and reaching her end, had she been in the habit of thinking: I never was. Nor is it known what became of her. Such a beautiful life must surely have been followed by a beautiful death. Today she is certainly grains of earth. She never ceases to gaze up at the sky. Sometimes when it rains, her grains remain full and rotund. Then she dries up in summer and the slightest breeze disperses her. She is now eternal.