Complete Stories Page 4

  Anything was an excuse to set him off. A bird flying by, reminding him of unknown lands, breathed life into his old dream of flight. From thought to thought, unconsciously driven toward the same end, he’d reach the notion of his cowardice, revealed not only in this constant desire to flee, not to align himself with things so as not to fight for them, as in his incapacity to achieve anything, since he himself had conceived it, pitilessly dashing the humiliating good sense that kept him from flight. This duet with himself was the reflex of his essence, he discovered, and that was why it would go on all his life . . . That was why it became easy to sketch out the distant, gasping, faltering future, until the implacable end — death. That alone and he would attain the goal toward which his inclination guided him: suffering.

  It seems mad. However, Daniel also had his reasons. Suffering, for him, the contemplative, was the only way to live intensely . . . And in the end it was for this alone that Daniel burned: to live. Only his means were strange.

  He surrendered so much to the feeling he created and therefore it grew so strong that he’d eventually forget its induced and nurtured origin. He’d forget that he himself had forged it, would imbibe it, and lived from it as if from something real.

  Sometimes the crisis, with nowhere to vent, became so painfully dense that, submerged in it, exhausting it, he finally longed to free himself. He would then create, so as to save himself, an opposing desire that would destroy the first. Because at those times he feared madness, felt he was ill, far from all humans, far from that ideal man who would be a serene, animalized being, with an easy and comfortable intelligence. Far from that man he could never become, whom he couldn’t help but scorn, with that haughtiness gained by those who suffer. Far from that man he envied, nonetheless. When his suffering overflowed, he sought help from that kind of man who, in contrast to his own misery, seemed beautiful and perfect to him, full of a simplicity that for him, Daniel, would be heroic.

  Tired of being tortured, he’d seek him out, imitate him, with a sudden thirst for peace. It was always that opposing force that he introduced in himself whenever he reached the painful extreme of his crisis. He granted himself some balance like a truce, but one that boredom soon invaded. Until, from the morbid desire to suffer anew, he would solidify this boredom, transforming it into anguish.

  He lived in this cycle. Perhaps he’d permitted me to get closer during one of those times when he needed that “opposing force.” I, perhaps I’ve already mentioned this, was the picture of health, with my restrained gestures and upright posture. And, I now know, the reason he sought to crush and humiliate me so was because he envied me. He wanted to wake me up, because he wanted me to suffer too, like a leper secretly hoping to transmit his leprosy to the healthy.

  However, unsuspecting as I was, for me his very torture blurred things. Even his selfishness, even his spitefulness made him seem like a dethroned god — a genius. And besides, I already loved him.

  Today, I feel sorry for Daniel. After feeling helpless, not knowing what to do with myself, with no desire to go on with the same past of tranquility and death, and not succeeding, the habit of comfort, at mastering a different future — now I realize how free Daniel was and how unhappy. Because of his past — obscure, filled with frustrated dreams — he hadn’t managed to find a place in the conventional world, more or less happy, average. As for the future, he feared it too much because he was well aware of his own limits. And because, despite knowing them, he hadn’t resigned himself to abandoning that enormous, undefined ambition, which, when later it had already become inhuman, was directed beyond earthly things. Failing to achieve the things right in front of him, he’d turned toward something that no one, he guessed, could ever achieve.

  Strange as it seems, he suffered from unknown things, from things that, “due to a conspiracy of nature,” he would never touch even for an instant with his senses, “even just to learn about its material, its color, its sex.” “About its qualification in the world of perceptions and sensations,” he said to me once, after I went back to him. And the greatest harm Daniel did me was awaken within me that desire that lies latent inside us all. For some people it awakens and merely poisons them, as for me and Daniel. For others it leads to laboratories, journeys, absurd experiences, to adventure. To madness.

  I now know a thing or two about those who seek to feel in order to know that they are alive. I too ventured upon this dangerous journey, so paltry for our terrible anxiety. And almost always disappointing. I learned to make my soul vibrate and I know that, all the while, in the depths of one’s own being, one can remain vigilant and cold, merely observing the spectacle one has granted oneself. And how often in near-boredom . . .

  Now I would understand it. But back then I only saw the Daniel without weaknesses, sovereign and distant, who hypnotized me. I know little about love. I only remember that I feared him and sought him.

  He made me tell my life story, which I did, fearfully, choosing my words carefully so I wouldn’t seem so stupid to him. Because he didn’t hesitate to talk about my lack of intelligence, using the cruelest expressions. I’d tell him, obediently, small facts from the past. He’d listen, cigarette in his lips, eyes distracted. And he’d conclude by saying, in that singular way of his, a blend of the suppressed desire to laugh, of weariness, of benevolent disdain:

  “Very nice, quite happy . . .”

  I’d blush, not sure why I was furious, wounded. But I wouldn’t reply.

  One day I talked about Jaime and he said:

  “Interesting, very normal.”

  Oh, the words are common, but the way they were uttered. They revolutionized me, made me ashamed of what was most hidden inside me.

  “Cristina, do you know you’re alive?”

  “Cristina, is it good to be unconscious?”

  “Cristina, there’s nothing you want, is that so?”

  I’d cry afterward, but I’d seek him out again, because I was starting to agree with him and secretly hoped he’d deign to initiate me into his world. And he knew just how to humiliate me. He started to dig his claws into Jaime, into all my friends, lumping them together like something contemptible. I don’t know what it was that, from the start, kept me from revolting. I don’t know. I only recall that for his ego it was a pleasure to dominate and I was easy.

  One day, I saw him suddenly get excited, as if the inspiration struck him as both fortuitous and comic:

  “Cristina, do you want me to awaken you?”

  And, before I could laugh, I already saw myself nodding, in agreement.

  So began the strange and revelatory outings, those days that marked me forever.

  He’d have hardly condescended to look at me, he made me realize, if I hadn’t decided to be transformed. As mad as it sounds, he’d repeat several times: he wanted to transform me, “to breathe into my body a little poison, that good and terrible poison” . . .

  My education had begun.

  He spoke, I listened. I learned of dark and beautiful lives, I learned of the suffering and the ecstasy of those “privileged by madness.”

  “Meditate on them, you, with your happy middle ground.”

  And I would think. The new world that Daniel’s persuasive voice made me glimpse horrified me, I who had always been a docile lamb. It horrified me, yet was already pulling me in with the magnetic force of a fall . . .

  “Get ready to feel with me. Listen to this passage with your head thrown back, eyes half-closed, lips parted . . .”

  I’d pretend to laugh, pretend to obey as a joke, as if begging pardon from my former friends. And from myself, for accepting such a heavy yoke. Nothing, however, was more serious for me.

  He, impassive, preparing me as if for a ritual, insisted, solemnly:

  “More languor in your gaze . . . Relax your nostrils more, get them ready to absorb deeply . . .”

  I would obey. And above all I woul
d obey while trying not to displease him with any single thing, placing myself in his hands and begging forgiveness for not giving him more. And because he asked nothing of me, nothing that I’d hesitate any longer to offer him, I fell even further into the certainty of my inferiority and of the distance between us.

  “Let yourself go even more. Let my voice be your thought.”

  I would listen. “For those who remain incarcerated” (not only in prisons, Daniel would interject) “tears are a part of daily experience; a day without tears is a day in which the heart has hardened, not a day in which the heart is happy.” “. . . since the secret of life is to suffer. This truth is contained in all things.”

  And little by little, really, I was understanding . . . That slow voice ended up burning in my soul, stirring it profoundly. I had been wandering through grottos for many long years and was suddenly discovering the radiant passage to the sea . . . Yes, I once shouted to him barely breathing, I was feeling! He merely smiled, still not satisfied.

  Yet it was the truth. I, so simple and primitive, who had never desired anything with intensity. I, unconscious and cheerful, “because I possessed a cheerful body” . . . Suddenly I was awakening: what a dark life I’d led up till then. Now . . . Now I was being reborn. Lively, in pain, that pain that had been lying dormant, quiet and blind in the depths of my self.

  I grew nervous, agitated, but intelligent. My eyes always uneasy. I hardly slept.

  Jaime came to visit, spending two days with me. When I got his telegram, I went pale. I walked as if dizzy, figuring out how to keep Daniel from seeing him. I was ashamed of Jaime.

  Using the excuse that I wanted to try a hotel, I booked a room. Jaime didn’t suspect the real motive, as I expected. And this brought me closer to Daniel. I distantly yearned for my husband to react on my behalf, to snatch me from those hands. I don’t know what I was afraid of.

  Those were two awful days. I hated myself because I was ashamed of Jaime yet did everything possible to hide with him in places where Daniel wouldn’t see us . . .

  When he left, finally, I, somewhere between relieved and helpless, granted myself an hour of rest, before returning to Daniel. I was trying to put off the danger, but it never occurred to me to flee.

  I had faith that sometime before I left Daniel would want me.

  However, news that Mama had fallen ill called me back to Rio before that day arrived. I had to leave.

  I spoke with Daniel.

  “One more afternoon and we may never see each other again,” I ventured fearfully.

  He laughed softly.

  “You’ll come back for sure.”

  I got the distinct impression that he was trying to suggest that I return, as if it were an order. He’d said to me one day: “Weak souls like yours are easily led to any kind of madness simply at a glance from strong souls like mine.” However, blind as I was, I rejoiced at this thought. And, forgetting that he himself had already affirmed his indifference to me, I clung to this possibility: “If you’re suggesting that I track you down one day . . . isn’t it because you want me?”

  I asked him, trying to smile:

  “Come back? Why?”

  “Your education . . . It’s not yet complete.”

  I came to my senses, fell into an intense gloom that left me slack and empty for several moments. Yes, I was forced to recognize, he had never even been disturbed in the least by my presence. But, again, that coldness of his somehow excited me, built him up in my eyes. During one of those sudden exaltations that had become frequent with me, I wanted to kneel near him, abase myself, worship him. Never again, never again, I thought, frightened. I dreaded not being able to bear the pain of losing him.

  “Daniel,” I said to him softly.

  He raised his eyes and, seeing my anguished face, narrowed them, analyzing me, comprehending me. There was a long minute of silence. I waited and trembled. I knew that this was the first truly alive moment between us, the first to link us directly. That moment suddenly cut me off from my entire past and in a singular premonition I foresaw that it would stand out like a crimson spot on the whole arc of my life.

  I was waiting and as I did, all my senses on edge, I’d have wanted to freeze the whole universe, afraid that a leaf would stir, that someone would interrupt us, that my breathing, some gesture would shatter the spell of the moment, make it vanish and cast us back into the distance and into the void of words. My blood beat muffled in my wrists, in my chest, in my forehead. My hands ice-cold and clammy, almost numb. My anxiety left me extremely tense, as if on the verge of flinging myself into a maelstrom, on the verge of going mad. At a slight movement from Daniel, I nearly exploded into a scream, as if he had shaken me violently:

  “And what if I come back?”

  He met this phrase with displeasure, as always when “my animal intensity shocked him.” He fixed his eyes on me and his features underwent a gradual transformation. I flushed. My constant concern with piercing his thoughts hadn’t granted me the power to penetrate the most important ones, but I had honed my intuition for the minor ones. I knew that for Daniel to take pity on me, I would have to be ridiculous. Another person’s hunger or misery moved him less than a lack of aesthetics. My hair was down, damp with sweat, falling across my flaming face and the pain, to which my physiognomy, calm for years and years, was still unaccustomed, was probably contorting my features, lending them a touch of the grotesque. At the gravest moment of my life I had become ridiculous, Daniel’s punishing look told me as much.

  He remained silent. And, as if at the end of a long explanation, he added, in a slow and serene voice:

  “And besides, you know me far better than you’d need to live with me. I’ve already said too much.” Pause. He lit his cigarette unhurriedly. He looked deep into my eyes and concluded with a half-smile: “I would hate you the day I had nothing more to say to you.”

  I’d already been so downtrodden that I wasn’t hurt. It was the first time, however, that he’d openly rejected me, myself, my body, everything I had and was offering him with my eyes closed.

  Terrified by my own words that dragged me along independently of my will, I proceeded with humility, trying to please him.

  “Won’t you at least answer my letters?”

  He had an imperceptible moment of impatience. But he answered, his voice controlled, softened:

  “No. Which doesn’t mean you can’t write me.”

  Before I took my leave, he kissed me. He kissed me on the lips, which didn’t ease my worry. Because he was doing it for me. And I wanted him to feel pleasure, to be humanized, to be humbled.

  Mama recovered quickly. And I had gone back to Jaime, for good.

  I resumed my previous life. Yet I moved like a blind woman, in a kind of stupor that shook itself off only when I wrote to Daniel. I never received a word from him. I no longer expected anything. And I kept writing.

  Once in a while my state worsened and every instant grew painful like a small arrow lodged in my body. I thought of fleeing, of running off to Daniel. I would fall into feverish fits that I tried in vain to control through household chores so as not to alert Jaime and the maid.

  A state of lassitude would follow in which I suffered less. Yet, even during that phase, I never relaxed completely. I carefully scrutinized myself: “would it return?” I would refer to the torture with vague words, as if I could hold it off that way.

  In moments of greater lucidity, I’d remember something he once told me:

  “You must know how to feel, but also how to stop feeling, because if an experience is sublime it can equally become dangerous. Learn how to cast the spell and then break it. Pay attention, I’m teaching you something valuable: the magic that is the opposite of, ‘open, Sesame.’ The best way for a feeling to lose its perfume and stop intoxicating us is to expose it to the sun.”

  I had tried to think about what ha
d happened clearly and objectively so as to reduce my feelings to a rubric, with no perfume, no subtext. It seemed vaguely like a betrayal. Of Daniel, of myself. I had tried, nevertheless. Simplifying my story in two or three words, exposing it to the sun, seemed really laughable to me, but the coolness of my thoughts didn’t spread to me and it rather seemed an unknown woman with an unknown man. Oh, those two had nothing to do with the oppression that was crushing me, with that painful longing that made my eyes go blurry and troubled my mind . . . And even so, I had discovered, I was afraid to free myself. “That” had grown too much inside me, leaving me full. I’d be helpless if I were ever cured. After all, what was I now, I felt, but a reflection? Were I to eradicate Daniel, I’d be a blank mirror.

  I had become vibratory, strangely sensitive. I could no longer stand those agreeable afternoons with the family that once amused me so.

  “Sure is hot, huh, Cristina?” said Jaime.

  “I’ve been going over this stitch for two weeks now and I just can’t get it right,” said Mama.

  Jaime broke in, stretching:

  “Imagine that, crocheting in weather like this.”

  “The hard part isn’t the crocheting, it’s racking your brain trying to figure out that stitch,” Papa replied.

  Pause.

  “Mercedes will end up engaged to that boy,” Mama announced.

  “Even as ugly as she is,” Papa replied distractedly, turning the page of his newspaper.

  Pause.

  “The boss has now decided to use that delivery system of . . .”

  I would disguise my anguish and make up some excuse to step away for a moment. In the bedroom I’d bite down on my handkerchief, stifling the cries of despair that threatened my throat. I’d collapse onto the bed, my face buried in the pillow, hoping that something would happen and save me. I was starting to hate them, all of them. And I longed to abandon them, to flee that feeling that was growing by the minute, intermingled with an unbearable pity for them and for myself. As if together we were victims of the same, inevitable threat.