Complete Stories Read online

  “Do me a favor,” he says eagerly. “Get Dona Marta . . .”

  She comes.

  “Will you bring me the notebook on top of my desk? And a pencil too . . .”

  “But . . . Sir, you can’t work now . . . You’ve hardly left your bed . . . You’re thin, pale, you look like someone sucked all your blood . . .”

  He stops, suddenly pensive. And most importantly if she only knew how much effort it took him to write . . . When he began, every fiber in his body stood on end, irritated and magnificent. And until he covered the paper with his jittery scrawl, until he felt that it extended him, he didn’t stop, depleting himself until the very end . . . “The Earth, her arms contracted in pain . . .” Yes, his head’s already hurting, heavy. But could he contain his light, to spare himself?

  He smiles a sad smile, a little proud perhaps, apologizing to Dona Marta. To the girl, for the frustrated escapade. To himself, above all.

  “No, the Earth cannot choose,” he concludes ambiguously. But later she takes revenge.

  Dona Marta nods. She goes to get pencil and paper.

  Jimmy and I

  (“Eu e Jimmy”)

  I still remember Jimmy, that boy with the tousled chestnut hair, covering the elongated skull of a born rebel.

  I remember Jimmy, his hair and his ideas. Jimmy thought that nothing is as good as nature. That if two people like each other the only thing to do is love each other, simple as that. That everything else, in mankind, that gets separated from this simplicity belonging to the start of the world, is affectation, and froth. Had those ideas sprung from another head, I wouldn’t have even put up with listening to them. But there was the excuse of Jimmy’s skull and there was, above all the excuse of his bright teeth and his clear smile of a contented animal.

  Jimmy walked with his head up, his nose stuck in the air, and, while crossing the street, would take me by the arm with a very simple familiarity. I was unsettled. But the proof that I was even then imbued with Jimmy’s ideas and above all with his bright smile, is that I would scold myself for being unsettled. I’d think, unhappily, that I had evolved too much, getting separated from the prototype — animal. I’d tell myself it was pointless to blush because of an arm; nor even at an arm of clothing. But these thoughts were diffuse and presented themselves with the incoherence that I am now transmitting to paper. Honestly, I was just looking for an excuse to like Jimmy. And to go along with his ideas. Little by little I was adapting to his elongated head. What could I do, after all? Ever since I was a little girl I had seen and felt the predominance of men’s ideas over women’s. Mama, before she got married, according to Aunt Emília, was a firecracker, a tempestuous redhead, with thoughts of her own about liberty and equality for women. But then along came Papa, very serious and tall, with thoughts of his own too, about . . . liberty and equality for women. The trouble was in the coinciding subject matter. There was a collision. And nowadays Mama sews and embroiders and sings at the piano and makes little cakes on Saturdays, all like clockwork and cheerfully. She has ideas of her own, still, but they all come down to one: a wife should always go along with her husband, as the accessory goes along with the principal (my analogy, the result of Law School classes).

  Because of this and because of Jimmy, I too became, little by little, natural.

  And that’s how one fine day, after a hot summer night, during which I slept as much as I am writing right now (they are the antecedents to the crime), that fine day Jimmy kissed me. I had anticipated this situation, in all its variations. I was disappointed, it’s true. So it’s “that” after so much philosophy and buildup! But I liked it. And from then on I slept soundly; I no longer needed to dream.

  I would meet Jimmy on the corner. Very simply I’d offer him my arm. And later, very simply I’d tousle his messy hair. I sensed that Jimmy was amazed at my forwardness. His lessons had produced a rare effect and the student was diligent. It was a happy time.

  Later on we took exams. Here is where the actual story begins.

  One of the examiners had gentle, deep eyes. His hands were quite lovely; dark.

  (Jimmy was pale as a baby.) Whenever he spoke to me, his voice got mysteriously husky and warm. And I’d make an enormous effort not to close my eyes and die of joy.

  There were no inner battles. I fell asleep dreaming of the examiner at six in the evening. And I was enchanted by his voice, speaking to me of ideas that were utterly un-Jimmyesque. All this suffused with twilight, in the silent, cold garden.

  I was utterly happy back then. As for Jimmy he went on being tousled and with the same smile that had made me forget to tell Jimmy about the new situation.

  One day, he asked me why I’d been acting so differently. I answered lightheartedly, employing terms from Hegel, heard from the mouth of my examiner. I told him that a primitive equilibrium had been disrupted and a new one had formed, with a different basis. Needless to say Jimmy didn’t understand any of it, since Hegel was an item at the end of our syllabus and we never got there. I then explained to him that I was madly in love with D—— and, in a marvelous stroke of inspiration (I regretted that the examiner couldn’t hear me), told him that, in this case, I was incapable of unifying the contradictory elements, making a Hegelian synthesis. The digression was useless.

  Jimmy looked at me blankly and could only ask:

  “What about me?”

  I got irritated.

  I don’t know, I answered, kicking an imaginary pebble and thinking: look, figure it out for yourself! We’re simple animals.

  Jimmy was upset. He launched a series of insults at me, that I was no more than a woman, fickle and flighty like all the rest. And he threatened me: I’d come to regret this sudden change of heart. In vain I tried to explain myself using his theories: I liked someone and it was natural, that was all; that if I were “evolved” and “thinking” I’d have started out by making everything complicated, showing up with moral conflicts, with the foolishness of civilization, things that animals know absolutely nothing about. I spoke with a charming eloquence, all owing to the dialectical influence of the examiner (there goes Mama’s idea: the woman should go along . . . etc.). Jimmy, pale and undone, told me and my theories to go to hell. I shouted anxiously, that those crackbrained ideas weren’t mine and that, in fact, they could only have sprouted from a tousled and elongated head. He shouted, even louder still, that I hadn’t understood anything he’d been explaining to me up till then so graciously: that with me everything was a waste of time. It was too much. I demanded another explanation. He told me to go to hell again.

  I left in confusion. To mark the occasion, I got a bad headache. From some vestiges of civilization, remorse welled up.

  My grandmother, a loveable and lucid little old lady, to whom I recounted the incident, tilted her little white head and explained to me that men have a habit of constructing certain theories for themselves and others for women. But, she added after a pause and a sigh, they forget them right when the time comes to act . . . I answered Granny that I, who could successfully apply Hegel’s law of contradictions, hadn’t understood a word she said. She laughed and explained good-naturedly:

  My dear, men are a bunch of animals.

  Were we back, then, at the starting point? I didn’t think of it as an argument, but I felt a little consoled. I went to sleep somewhat sad. But I awoke happy, purely animal. When I opened the bedroom windows and looked out onto the cool, calm garden in the first rays of sunlight, I was certain there was nothing to do but live. Only, the change in Jimmy continued to fascinate me. It’s such a good theory!

  Interrupted Story

  (“História interrompida”)

  He was sad and tall. He never spoke to me without making it understood that his gravest flaw lay in his tendency toward destruction. And that was why, he’d say, stroking his black hair as if stroking the soft, hot fur of a kitten, that was why his life amounted to a
pile of shards: some shiny, others clouded, some cheerful, others like a “piece of a wasted hour,” meaningless, some red and full, others white, but already shattered.

  I, to be honest, didn’t know how to answer and regretted not having some backup gesture, like his, of stroking her hair, to slip out of the confusion. Nevertheless, for someone who’s read a little and thought quite a lot during nights of insomnia, it’s relatively easy to make up things that sound profound. I’d answer that even by destroying he was creating: at the very least this pile of shards to look at and talk about. Perfectly absurd. He, it seems, thought so too, because he wouldn’t reply. He’d get very sad, looking at the ground and stroking his warm kitten.

  In this way the hours passed. Sometimes I’d order a cup of coffee, which he’d drink greedily and with plenty of sugar. And I’d think a very funny thought: that if he really did think he went around destroying everything, he wouldn’t take such pleasure in drinking coffee and wouldn’t order more. A slight suspicion that W. . . was an artist, crossed my mind. To justify himself, he’d answer: one destroys everything around, but cannot destroy one’s own self and desires (we have a body). Pure excuses.

  One summer day I flung the window wide open. It seemed to me that the garden had entered the living room. I was twenty-two and felt nature in my every fiber. That day was beautiful. A gentle sun, as if it had risen that very instant, covered the flowers and grass. It was four in the afternoon. All around, silence.

  I looked back at the room, soothed by the calm of those moments. I wanted to tell him:

  “It seems to me that this is the very first hour, but afterward, no more will ever follow.”

  Mentally I heard him reply:

  “That’s merely an indefinable sentimental tendency, mixed up with modish literature, very subjectivist. From which arises this confusion of sentiments, which doesn’t truly have any substance of its own, except for your psychological condition, very common in unwed young ladies your age . . .”

  I tried to explain it to him, to resist him . . . Not a single argument. I turned back desolate, looked at his sad face and we were silent.

  That was when I had that terrible thought: “Either I destroy him or he’ll destroy me.”

  I had to prevent at all costs that analytical tendency, which ended up reducing the world to mere quantitative elements, from affecting me. I had to react. I wanted to see whether the grayness of his words could cloud my twenty-two years and the bright summer afternoon. I made up my mind, ready to start fighting that very moment. I turned to him, placed my hands on the windowsill, narrowed my eyes and hissed:

  “This seems to me the very first hour and also the last!!”

  Silence. Outside, the indifferent breeze.

  He lifted his eyes to me, raised his languid hand and stroked his hair. Then he started tracing his nail over the checked pattern on the tablecloth.

  I closed my eyes, let my arms drop alongside my body. My lovely and luminous twenty-two years . . . I ordered coffee with plenty of sugar.

  After we parted ways, at the end of the avenue, I went home very slowly, chewing on a blade of grass and kicking every white pebble along the way. The sun had already set and in the colorless sky the first stars could already be seen.

  I was reluctant to get home: invariably dinner, the long, empty evening with the family, a book, embroidery, and, finally, bed, sleep. I took the longest side path. The long grasses were downy and when the wind blew hard they caressed my legs.

  But I was worried.

  He was dark-haired and sad. And always wearing black. Oh, there was no doubt I liked him. I, so white and happy, by his side. I, in a floral dress, clipping roses, and he wearing black, no, white, reading a book. Yes, we made a lovely couple. I considered myself frivolous, doing that, imagining scenes. But I justified myself: we must please nature, adorn her. For if I would never plant jasmine next to sunflowers, how would I dare . . . All right, all right, what I needed to do was figure out “my situation.”

  For two days I thought incessantly. I wanted to find a formula that would bring him to me. I wanted to find the formula that could save him. Yes, save him. And that idea pleased me because it would justify the means I’d use to catch him. Yet everything seemed fruitless. He was a difficult man, distant, and the worst thing was that he spoke candidly of his weaknesses: where could I attack him, then, if he knew himself?

  The birth of an idea is preceded by a long gestation, by a process unconscious in the person conceiving it. That’s how I explain my lack of appetite during that magnificent dinner, my agitated insomnia in a bed with fresh sheets, after a busy day. At two in the morning, at last, it was born, the idea.

  I sat up in bed excitedly, thinking: it came too quickly to be any good; don’t get all worked up; lie down, close your eyes and wait until you calm down. I got up, though, and, barefoot so as not to wake Mira, started pacing back and forth across the room, like a businessman awaiting stock market results. Yet more and more it seemed that I’d found the solution.

  Indeed, men like W—— spend their lives in search of the truth, entering the narrowest of labyrinths, reaping and destroying half the world under the pretext of eliminating errors, but when the truth rises up before their eyes it always happens unexpectedly. Perhaps because they’ve fallen in love with the scholarly pursuit itself, and they become like the miser who merely accumulates, accumulates, having forgotten the original goal for which he first began to accumulate. The fact is, when it came to W—— I could only achieve anything by putting him into a state of “shock.”

  And here’s how. I’d say to him (in the blue dress that made me much blonder), my voice tender and firm, looking him in the eye:

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about us and I’ve decided that the only thing left for us to do is . . .”

  No. Simply.

  “Shall we get married?”

  No, no. No questions.

  “W—— we’re getting married.”

  Yes, I knew what men were like. And above all, I knew deep down what he was like. He wouldn’t be able to resort to his favorite gesture. And he’d stand there frozen, amazed. Because he’d be facing the Truth . . . He liked me and perhaps I was the only one he hadn’t managed to destroy with his analyses (I was twenty-two).

  I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night. I was so wide awake that Mira’s snoring irritated me, and even the moon, very round, cut in half by a branch with delicate leaves, looked defective to me, swollen on one side and excessively artificial. I wanted to turn on the light, but I could already hear Mira’s complaints to Mama the next day.

  I awoke feeling like a girl on her wedding day. My every act was preparatory, full of purpose, like part of a ritual. I spent the morning in extreme agitation, thinking about the decor, the clothes, the flowers, phrases and dialogues. After all that, how could I make my voice tender and firm, serene and mild? If I kept on so feverishly, I’d risk greeting W—— with nervous cries: “W—— let’s get married immediately, immediately.” I grabbed a sheet of paper and filled it from top to bottom: “Eternity. Life. World. God. Eternity. Life. World. God. Eternity . . .” Those words killed the meaning of many of my feelings and left me cold for several weeks, so insignificant was I finding myself.

  But in fact I didn’t want to cool down: what I desired was to live the moment until I wore it out. I just had to make my face less fiery. I sat down to a long stretch of sewing.

  Calm returned little by little. And with it, a deep and thrilling certainty of love. But, I thought, there’s nothing, really, nothing, for which I’d trade these coming moments! You only have a feeling like that two or three times in your life and the words hope, happiness, longing are connected to it, I discovered. And I closed my eyes and imagined him so vividly that his presence became almost real: I “felt” his hands upon mine and a slight headiness dazzled me. (“Oh, my God, forgive me, but blame it on
summer, blame it on him for being so handsome and dark and on me for being so blonde!”).

  The idea that I was being happy filled me so much that I had to do something, perform some act of kindness, in order not to feel guilty. And what if I gave Mira my little lace collar? Yes, what’s a little lace collar, even if it’s pretty, in the face of . . . “Eternity. Life. World . . . Love”?

  Mira is fourteen and overly excitable. That’s why, when she breathlessly burst into the room and closed the door behind her, gesturing dramatically, I said:

  “Have a drink of water and then tell me how the cat had thirty kittens and two black puppies.”

  “Clarinha said he killed himself! He shot himself in the head . . . Is it true, is it? It’s a lie, isn’t it?”

  And suddenly the story splintered. It didn’t even have a smooth ending. It concluded with the abruptness and lack of logic of a smack in the face.

  I’m married and I have a son. I didn’t name him after W——.And I don’t tend to look back: I still bear in mind the punishment God gave Lot’s wife. And I only wrote “this” to see whether I could find an answer to the questions that torture me, every once in a while, disturbing my peace: did the passage of W——through the world have any meaning? did my pain have any meaning? what connects these facts to . . . “Eternity. Life. World. God.”?

  The Escape

  (“A fuga”)

  It was getting dark and she was scared. The rain was pouring relentlessly and the sidewalks glistened under the streetlamps. People were passing by with umbrellas, in raincoats, in a hurry, their faces weary. Cars were skidding on the wet asphalt and a horn or two sounded faintly.