Sometimes she secretly rebelled: life is so drawn-out... She feared the days, one after another, without any surprises, days of total devotion to one man. To a man who would use up all his wife's resources for his own passion, in a tranquil unconscious sacrifice of everything except his own individuality. It was a sham rebellion, a bid for freedom which left her terrified, above all, of victory. She tried for several days to assume an attitude of independence, something which she could only achieve with limited success in the morning when she woke up and before setting eyes on the man. It only required his presence, even its anticipation, to annihilate her completely, and reduce her to waiting. At night, alone in the room, she longed for him. Every nerve and muscle in her body aching. Then she became resigned. Resignation was sweet and fresh. She had been born for resignation.
Otávio examined her dark hair, discreetly combed back behind her large unsightly ears. He examined her body as firm and compact as the trunk of a tree, her hands firm and attractive. And, once more, like the bland refrain of a song, he asked himself again: 'What binds me to her?' He felt sorry for Lídia, he knew that even without any motive, even without knowing any other woman, even if she were the only woman, he would abandon her at some point. Perhaps even tomorrow. Why not?
— Do you know something! — he said — I dreamt about you last night.
She opened her eyes, glowing from head to foot:
— Did you really! Tell me about it.
— I dreamt that we were strolling together through a meadow filled with flowers, that I was gathering lilies for you and that you were dressed all in white.
— What a pleasant dream...
— Yes, most pleasant...
— Otávio.
— Yes?...
— I hope you won't mind my asking? When are we going to get married! There is nothing to stop us... I must know in order to start making preparations.
— Is that the only reason?
She blushed, happy to be able to speak of something that might make her appear more attractive. She made a clumsy effort to appear coquettish:
— Yes for that reason and... besides, I'm tired of waiting. It's all so difficult.
— I understand. But I can't say when.
— But why not immediately? You should have decided... It's a long time since...
Otávio stood up abruptly and said:
— Can't you see that I'm lying? That I wasn't dreaming about you?
She looked at him in dismay, her face drained of colour.
— You're making fun of me...
— No, I'm serious. I didn't dream about you.
— What did you dream about?
— About no one. I slept soundly without dreaming about anything.
She went back to her sewing.
Joana ran her hand over the bitch's swollen belly, stroking it with slender fingers. She paused, quickly paying attention.
— She's pregnant — she said.
And there was something in her expression, in those hands fondling the bitch's body that linked her directly to reality, laying it bare; as if both of them formed one continuous mass. The woman and the bitch were there, alive and naked, with something ferocious in their communion. She speaks in such precise terms that it is terrifying, Otávio thought uneasily, suddenly feeling himself to be useless and effeminate. And this was when he was seeing her for the first time.
He observed that there was a brittle, crystalline quality about her that attracted and repelled him at the same time. Even the way she moved. Without showing any feeling or liking for her own body, but hurling it dispassionately like an insult for all to see. Otávio watched her move and reflected that not even physically was she the type of woman he fancied. He preferred neat little bodies, perfect in every detail, unsensational. Or big bodies, like that of his fiancée, set and mute. What he might say to them would suffice. Those lines of Joana, so fragile, barely outlined, were disquieting. Those lines were so suggestive, her big eyes incandescent. She was not pretty, much too thin. Even her sensuality must be different from his, because it was much too luminous.
Otávio tried, from the first moment he met her, not to lose any of her details, saying to himself: let no tender feelings crystallize inside me; I must study her carefully. But, as she knew she was being watched, Joana turned to him at that very moment, smiling, cold, not exactly passive. And foolishly he reacted, he spoke, confused and anxious to obey her. Instead of obliging her to drop her mask and so destroy herself in his power. And despite that air of someone who is ignorant of the simplest things, as at their very first meeting, she had thrown him back within himself! She had thrown him back into his own intimacy, coldly forgetting the little, comfortable formulae that sustained him and helped him to communicate with people.
Joana told him...
... The old man drew near, his enormous body swaying, his head completely bald. He came up to her with pouting lips and bulging eyes, his voice tearful. He said, affecting a childish stammer:
— I've hurt myself... It's sore... I rubbed on some ointment, it's getting a little better...
He rolled his eyes and those flabby mounds of blubber began to quiver, the shine on his wet pouting lips gleamed softly. Joana leaned over ever so slightly and saw his bare gums.
— Won't you say you feel sorry for me?
She looked at him gravely. He betrayed no surprise:
— Aren't you going to say 'poor little thing'?
The sight of this short man with his protruding bottom and plaintive eyes that spoke of timid continence left her amused and bewildered. She said nothing. Then slowly, in the same tone of voice:
— Poor little thing.
He laughed, considered the joke over and done with and turned and made for the door. Joana's eyes followed him, she leaned slightly forwards to get a better look the moment he withdrew from the table. She confronted him erect and aloof, her eyes wide open and bright. She looked at the table, rummaged for a second, picked up a small, thick book. No sooner had he put his hand on the latch than he received it on the back of his neck, with full force. He turned round at once, his hand on his head, wide-eyed with pain and fright. Joana remained in the same position. Well, she thought, at least he's lost that nauseating expression. It's only right that an old man should suffer.
She said in a loud, ingratiating voice:
— Forgive me. There's a tiny lizard there, right over the door. — A brief pause. — I missed my aim.
The old man continued to stare at her without understanding. Then a vague terror gripped him, confronted by that smiling face.
— Goodbye... It was nothing... My God!
— Goodbye...
When the door closed, she lingered there with that smile on her face. She gave a little shrug. She went up to the window, her expression weary and vacant:
— Perhaps I should listen to some music.
— Yes, it's true, I threw the book at him, Joana replied in answer to Otávio's question.
He tried to get the upper hand:
— But that's not what you told the old man!
— No, I lied.
Otávio stared at her, looked in vain for some remorse, for some sign of confession.
— Only after having lived more or better, shall I succeed in discounting what is human, Joana sometimes told him. Human — me. Human — people taken separately as individuals. I must forget them because my relations with them can only be sentimental. If I go in search of them, I demand or give them the equivalent of those familiar words we are always hearing, fraternity and justice. If they have any real value, it's not because they constitute the apex but rather the base of a triangle. They are the condition and not the fact in itself. Yet they end up by swamping our every thought and emotion because fraternity and justice are unattainable, they are contrary to nature. Despite everything, they are fatal, given the state of promiscuity in which we live. In this state, hatred transforms itself into love, which never really goes beyond a search for lo
ve, never realized except in theory, as in Christianity.
— Oh, spare me, Otávio cried out. She would have liked to stop but weariness and the excitement provoked by the man's presence stimulated her mind, and the words poured out endlessly.
— Discounting what is human is difficult, she continued, difficult to escape this atmosphere of frustrated revolt -adolescence — this solidarity with men who share the same sense of frustration and failure. Yet how nice it would be to build something pure, free from false, sublimated love, free from the fear of not loving... The fear of not loving, worse than the fear of not being loved...
Oh, spare me, Joana could hear in Otávio's silence. But at the same time she liked to think aloud, to reason things out spontaneously, simply following her intuition. Sometimes, even for sheer pleasure, she invented arguments: if a stone falls then that stone exists, there was a force that caused it to fall, a place from which it fell, a place through which it fell — I believe that nothing has escaped the nature of the fact, save for the mystery itself of the fact. But now she was also talking because she did not know how to surrender and, above all, because she merely foresaw, without understanding, that Otávio could embrace her and bring her peace.
— One night, no sooner had I settled down, she told him, when one of the legs of the bed broke, throwing me on to the floor. After a moment of anger, for I was not even sleepy enough to dispense with comfort, I suddenly thought to myself: Why should a bed be intact and not be broken? I got back into bed and was soon asleep...
She was not pretty. Sometimes it was as if her spirit were abandoning her only to reveal — Otávio suspected — what could never be discovered, even by some superhuman vigilance. On the face that then emerged, the limited and unfortunate traits had no intrinsic beauty. Nothing remained of her former mystery except the colour of her skin, milky, sombre, elusive. If the moments of abandon prolonged themselves and succeeded each other, then he was amazed at her ugliness, a kind of abasement and brutality, some blind and irrevocable thing that took possession of Joana's body as if it were decomposing. Yes, I know, Joana continued. The distance that separates feelings from words. I've already thought about this. And the most curious thing of all is that the moment I try to speak, not only do I fail to express what I am feeling, but what I am feeling slowly transforms itself into what I am saying. Or at least what makes me act is certainly not what I am feeling but what I am saying.
He had no sooner met her than she told him about the old man, told him about the bitch expecting pups and, suddenly alarmed, he had felt as if he had just made a confession, as if he had revealed to that stranger the story of his entire life. What life? The one that struggled inside him and that was nothing, he repeated to himself, afraid of appearing before his own eyes as being self-important and burdened with responsibilities. — He was nothing, nothing, and was therefore free to do nothing, he repeated to himself, his eyes mentally shut. — As if he had told Joana what he could only perceive in the dark. And most surprising of all: as if she had listened and then laughed, pardoning him — not like God, but like the devil — opening wide gates to allow him to pass.
Especially when he had touched her, he had understood: whatever might follow between them would be irremediable. For when he had embraced her, he had felt her come alive in his arms like running water. And seeing her so alive, he had understood, overwhelmed and secretly pleased, that if she loved him, there was nothing he could do... At that moment when he had finally kissed her, he had felt himself to be suddenly free, pardoned beyond what he knew of himself, pardoned in what lay beneath everything, he was...
From then onwards there was no choice. He had plunged giddily from Lídia to Joana. Knowing this helped him to love her. It was not difficult. On one occasion she had become distracted looking through the window-pane, her lips parted, oblivious of herself. He had called her and the gentle, forlorn manner in which she had turned her head and said: eh?... had made him fall into himself, sinking into a foolish and obscure wave of love. Otávio had then turned his face away, anxious to avoid looking at her.
He could love her, he could accept the new and incomprehensible adventure she was offering him. But he continued holding on to the first impulse which had thrown him against her. It was not as a woman, it was not like this, submissive, that he wanted her... He needed her cold and assured. So that he could say as he used to say when he was a little boy, protected and triumphant: It's not my fault...
They would marry, they would see each other at every moment and he would recognize that she was worse than him. And strong, in order to teach him not to be afraid. Not even to be afraid of loving... He wanted her not in order to make a life together, but so that she might allow him to live. To rise above himself, above his past, above the petty villainies which he had committed with cowardice and to which he was still attached in a cowardly way. Otávio thought that on Joana's side he would be able to go on sinning.
When Otávio had kissed her, he had held her hands, pressing them against his chest, Joana had bitten her lips, at first enraged, because she still didn't know with which thought she should clothe that violent sensation, like a cry surging from her breast and making her feel dizzy. She looked at him without seeing him, her eyes clouded, her body martyred. They had to make their farewell. She withdrew abruptly and went off without turning back, without any nostalgia.
Back in her room, lying undressed on the bed, she was unable to sleep. Her body felt oppressive, existed beyond her like some stranger. She felt it throbbing, feverish. She put out the light and closed her eyes, she tried to escape, to sleep. But she lay there for many hours, examining herself, watching the blood creep sluggishly through her veins like an inebriated animal. And thinking. How little she had known herself until now. Those light, slender forms, those delicate lines of adolescence. They were opening up, breathing as if they were suffocating and ready to explode.
As dawn broke, the gentle breeze caressed her bed and ruffled the curtains. Joana gradually calmed down. The freshness of early morning consoled her aching body. She was slowly overcome with weariness and, suddenly exhausted, she fell into a deep sleep.
She woke up late and felt happy. She imagined that every cell in her body had burst into flower. Miraculously, all her resources of strength were aroused and ready for battle. When she thought of Otávio, she breathed cautiously, as if the atmosphere might be harmful. During the days that followed, she neither saw him nor attempted to see him. She avoided him as if his presence were superfluous.
And she was so completely physical, that she was pure spirit. Incorporeal, she passed through events and hours, weaving between them with the swiftness of an instant. She scarcely took any nourishment and her sleep was as tenuous as a veil. She woke up frequently during the night, unconcerned, preparing to smile before giving it any thought.
She went back to sleep without changing her position, simply closing her eyes. She often searched for herself without vanity. Her smooth complexion, her bright lips made her turn her back on her image almost out of shame, without the strength to go on confronting that woman's gaze, fresh and moist, so subtly open and assured.
The happiness ceased.
Plenitude became sad and oppressive and Joana was a cloud ready to turn to rain. She breathed with difficulty as if there were no room inside her for air. She paced up and down, perplexed by the change. How? — she asked herself and felt that she was being ingenuous. Were there two sides to this? Was she suffering for the same reason that had made her terribly happy?
She carried her diseased body with her, a troublesome wound by day. Lightheartedness was replaced by gloom and fatigue. Satisfied — an animal that had quenched its thirst, filling its body with water. Yet anxious and unhappy as if despite everything there were still lands without water, arid and parched. Above all, she suffered from misunderstanding, alone, dumbfounded. Until leaning her head against the window-pane — the street peaceful, the evening drawing in, the world outside there — she felt
moisture on her face. She wept freely, as if this were the solution. Large tears ran down her cheeks, without her moving a single facial muscle. She wept so profusely that she couldn't speak. Afterwards she felt as if she had reverted to her real proportions, tiny, shrunken, humble. Serenely empty. She was prepared.
She then looked for him. And her new glory and suffering were now more intense and somehow more unbearable.
She got married.
Love came to confirm all the familiar things of whose existence she only knew without ever having accepted and experienced them. The world revolved beneath her feet, there were two sexes among humans, a thin line linked hunger to satisfaction, the love of animals, torrential waters coursed towards the sea, children were creatures in the process of growing up, in the soil the bud would transform itself into plant. She would no longer be able to deny... what? — she asked herself in suspense. The luminous centre of things, the affirmation dormant beneath everything, the harmony that existed beneath what she did not understand.
She awoke to a new morning, blissfully alive. And her joy was as pure as the sun's reflection on the water. Each event vibrated in her body like little glass needles that were splintering. After some moments, fleeting and profound, she lived tranquilly for a long time, understanding, accepting, resigning herself to everything. It seemed to her that she formed part of the real world and that she had mysteriously distanced herself from other human beings. Notwithstanding that during this period she was able to extend her hand to them with a fraternity whose vital source could be felt. They spoke to her of their own sorrows and she, although she might not hear, think or speak, wore a kind expression — shining and mysterious like that of a pregnant woman.
What was happening then? Miraculously she was alive, relieved of all memories. Her entire past had evaporated. And even the present was one of mists, sweet, fresh mists, separating her from solid reality, preventing her from touching it. Were she to pray, were she to think, it would be to give thanks for having a body made for love. The only truth became that tenderness into which she had sunk. Her face was vague and ill-defined, floating among all the other opaque and confident faces, as if it were not yet able to find support in any expression. Her whole body and soul lost their boundaries, they merged and fused into a single chaos, gentle and amorphous, relaxed and with uncertain movements, like matter that was simply alive. It was perfect renewal, creation.