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He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life.
The certainty that evil is my calling, thought Joana. What else was that feeling of contained force, ready to burst forth in violence, that longing to apply it with her eyes closed, all of it, with the rash confidence of a wild beast? Wasn’t it in evil alone that you could breathe fearlessly, accepting the air and your lungs? Not even pleasure would give me as much pleasure as evil, she thought surprised. She felt a perfect animal inside her, full of contradictions, of selfishness and vitality.
Goodness was lukewarm and light. It smelled of raw meat kept for too long. Without entirely rotting in spite of everything. It was freshened up from time to time, seasoned a little, enough to keep it a piece of lukewarm, quiet meat.
As if she were watching someone drink water only to discover her own thirst, profound and ancient. Maybe it was just a lack of life: she was living less than she could and imagined that her thirst required floods. Maybe just a few sips
she was afraid of not being present in all of her thoughts.
She didn’t need me. Nor I her, it is true. But we were always together.
Just as the space surrounded by four walls has a specific value, provoked not so much because it is a space but because it is surrounded by walls. Otávio made her into something that wasn’t her but himself and which Joana received out of pity for both, because both were incapable of freeing themselves through love, because she had meekly accepted her own fear of suffering, her inability to move beyond the frontier of revolt. Besides: how could she tie herself to a man without allowing him to imprison her? How could she prevent him from developing his four walls over her body and soul? And was
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“Otávio,” she’d suddenly say to him, “has it ever occurred to you that a dot, a single dot without dimensions, is the utmost solitude? A dot cannot even count on itself, as often as not it is outside itself.”
As if she had tossed a hot coal at her husband, the phrase flipped about, wriggling through his hands until he rid himself of it with another phrase, cold like gray, gray to cover the interval: it’s raining, I’m hungry, it’s a beautiful day.
Inside her it was as if death didn’t exist, as if love could weld her, as if eternity were renewal.
The impression that if she could remain in the feeling for a few more instants she’d have a revelation—easily, like seeing the rest of the world just by leaning from the earth towards space.
“It’s not being worth more to others, as regards the ideal human being. It’s being worth more inside yourself.
“Animal life boils down to this pursuit of pleasure after all. Human life is more complex: it boils down to the pursuit of pleasure, to fear of it, and above all to the dissatisfaction of the time in between. What I’m saying is a little simplistic, but it doesn’t matter for now. Do you understand? All yearning is pursuit of pleasure. All remorse, pity, benevolence, is fear of it. All despair and seeking alternative routes are dissatisfaction.
“Those who deny themselves pleasure, who act like monks, in any sense, it’s because they have an enormous capacity for pleasure, a dangerous capacity—hence even greater fear. Only he who is afraid of shooting everyone keeps his guns under lock and key.”
“Good is living . . .” she stammered. “Bad is . . .” “Is . . .?” “Bad is not living . . .” “Dying?” he asked. “No, no . . .” she groaned. “What, then? Say it.” “Bad is not living, that’s all. Dying is something else. Dying is different to good and bad.”
“Never suffer because you don’t have an opinion on this or that topic. Never suffer because you are not something or because you are.
I have discovered a miracle above the rain, thought Joana. A miracle split into chunky, serious, twinkling stars, like a stationary warning: like a lighthouse. What are they trying to say? In them I sense the secret, the twinkling is the impassive mystery I hear flowing inside me, crying in broad, desperate, romantic notes. Dear God, at least allow me to communicate with them, satisfy my desire to kiss them. To feel their light on my lips, feel it glow inside my body, leaving it sparkling and transparent, cool and moist like the minutes before dawn. Why do these strange thirsts grip me? The
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I am also surprised, eyes open at the pale mirror, that there are so many things in me besides what I know, so many things always silent.
Freedom isn’t enough. What I desire doesn’t have a name yet.—I
Many years of her existence she had spent at the window, watching the things that passed and those that stayed still. But in fact she didn’t see so much as hear the life inside her.
“The personality that ignores itself fulfils itself more completely.” True or false? But in a way she had avenged herself by casting her cold, intelligent thoughts over that woman swollen with life.
Again she was gripped by restlessness, pure, without reasoning. Ah, maybe I should walk, maybe . . . She closed her eyes a moment, allowing herself the birth of a gesture or a sentence without logic.
Pure music developing in a land without men, mused Otávio. Movements as yet without adjectives. As unconscious as the primitive life that pulses in the blind and deaf trees, in the tiny insects that are born, fly, die and are reborn without witnesses.
What am I, at this moment? A flat, silent leaf that has fallen to the ground. No gust of air swaying it. Barely breathing so as not to awaken itself. But why, first and foremost why not use proper words and curl up, seek comfort in images? Why call myself a dead leaf when I am just a man with his arms folded?
He’d always be separated from her and they’d only communicate in the remarkable moments—when there was lots of life and when there was a threat of death. But it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough . . . Life together was necessary precisely to live the other moments, she thought frightened, reasoning with effort.
“A strong man’s torture is greater than a sick man’s,” she said, trying to get him to speak.
“The sick imagine the world and the able-bodied own it,” Joana went on. “The sick don’t think they can just because they are infirm and the strong feel their strength is useless.”
“That is why the poetry of the poets who have suffered is sweet, tender. And that of the others, of those who have never been deprived, is blazing, suffering and rebellious.”
“A certain degree of blindness is necessary in order to see certain things. This is perhaps the mark of an artist. Any man might know more than him and safely reason, according to the truth. But those things in particular cannot be seen with the light on. In the darkness they become phosphorescent.”—He
“It is not the degree that separates intelligence from genius, but the quality. Genius isn’t so much a question of intellectual power, but of the form in which this power presents itself. As such one can easily be more intelligent than a genius. But the genius is him. This ‘the genius is him’ is childish.
There is nothing else to be but what you are, the rest is useless embroidery and as uncomfortable as the one, in relief, with angels and flowers, that cousin Isabel used to decorate my pillows.
my negative side is beautiful and concave like an abyss. What I am not would leave an enormous hole in the earth. I don’t nourish my errors, while Joana doesn’t err, there’s the difference.
“The modern tragedy is man’s vain attempt to adapt to the state of things that he has created.”
If he left, if he loved another woman, he’d leave and love another woman only to share it with her afterwards, even if he told her nothing. Lídia would take part in his life anyway. Certain things don’t happen without consequence, she thought gazing at him.
She thanked him with a little squeeze of the arm. They had looked at once another with a smile and suddenly felt blindingly happy . . . They had quickened their pace, open eyes dazzled.
Now she suddenly understood that love could make you desire the next moment in an impulse that was life . . .—She felt the world palpitate softly in her chest, her body hurt as if she bore the femininity of all women in it.
Why refuse the things that happened? Have lots at the same time, feel in a number of ways, recognize life in a range of sources . . . Who could stop someone from living amply?
On what poetry might her life be based?
How poor I am compared to her, so self-assured. Either I light up and am wonderful, fleetingly wonderful, or I am obscure, wrapped in curtains. Lídia, whatever she is, is immutable, always with the same bright base.
All of me swims, floats, crosses what exists with my nerves, I am nothing but a desire, anger, vagueness, as impalpable as energy. Energy? but where is my strength? in imprecision, in imprecision, in imprecision . . . And bringing life to it, not to reality, just the vague impulse forward.
She spoke of love with such simplicity and clarity because doubtless nothing had been revealed to her through it yet. She hadn’t fallen into its shadows, she still hadn’t felt its profound and secret transformations. Otherwise she’d be, like herself, almost ashamed of so much happiness, she’d stay vigilant at its door, protecting from the cold light that which couldn’t be scorched in order to stay alive.
The two of them sank into a solitary, calm silence. Years passed perhaps. Everything was as limpid as an eternal star and they hovered so quietly that they could feel future time rolling lucid inside their bodies with the thickness of the long past which instant by instant they had just lived.
Joana didn’t even know his name . . . She hadn’t wanted to know it, she had told him: I want to know you through other sources, seek your soul along other paths; I desire nothing of your life that has passed, not even your name, not even your dreams, not even the story of your suffering; the mystery explains more than the light; you will not ask anything about me either; I am Joana, you are a body living, I am a body living, nothing more.
The ship floated lightly on the sea like on gentle open hands. She leaned over the railing on the deck and felt tenderness rising slowly, enveloping her in sadness.
De profundis? Something wanted to speak . . . De profundis . . . Hear herself! Catch the fleeting opportunity that danced light-footedly on the verge of the abyss.
