The Complete Stories (14 page)

She no longer knew whether she was on the side of the blind man or the dense plants. The man had gradually receded into the distance and in torture she seemed to have gone over to the side of whoever had wounded his eyes. The Botanical Garden, tranquil and tall, was revealing this to her. In horror she was discovering that she belonged to the strong part of the world—and what name should she give her violent mercy? She would have to kiss the leper, since she would never be just his sister. A blind man led me to the worst in myself, she thought in alarm. She felt banished because no pauper would drink water from her ardent hands. Ah! it was easier to be a saint than a person! By God, hadn’t it been real, the compassion that had fathomed the deepest waters of her heart? But it was the compassion of a lion.

Humiliated, she knew the blind man would prefer a poorer love. And, trembling, she also knew why. The life of the Botanical Garden was calling her as a werewolf is called by the moonlight. Oh! but she loved the blind man! she thought with moist eyes. Yet this wasn’t the feeling you’d go to church with. I’m scared, she said alone in the living room. She got up and went to the kitchen to help the maid with dinner.

But life made her shiver, like a chill. She heard the school bell, distant and constant. The little horror of the dust threading together the underside of the oven, where she discovered the little spider. Carrying the vase to change its water—there was the horror of the flower surrendering languid and sickening to her hands. The same secret labor was underway there in the kitchen. Near the trash can, she crushed the ant with her foot. The little murder of the ant. The tiny body trembled. The water droplets were dripping into the stagnant water in the laundry sink. The summer beetles. The horror of the inexpressive beetles. All around was a silent, slow, persistent life. Horror, horror. She paced back and forth across the kitchen, slicing the steaks, stirring the sauce. Round her head, circling, round the light, the mosquitoes of a sweltering night. A night on which compassion was raw as bad love. Between her two breasts sweat slid down. Faith was breaking her, the heat of the stove stung her eyes.

Then her husband arrived, her brothers and their wives arrived, her brothers’ children arrived.

They ate dinner with all the windows open, on the ninth floor. An airplane went shuddering past, threatening in the heat of the sky. Though made with few eggs, the dinner was good. Her children stayed up too, playing on the rug with the others. It was summer, it would be pointless to send them to bed. Ana was a little pale and laughed softly with the others.

After dinner, at last, the first cooler breeze came in through the windows. They sat around the table, the family. Worn out from the day, glad not to disagree, so ready not to find fault. They laughed at everything, with kind and human hearts. The children were growing up admirably around them. And as if it were a butterfly, Ana caught the instant between her fingers before it was never hers again.

Later, when everyone had gone and the children were already in bed, she was a brute woman looking out the window. The city was asleep and hot. Would whatever the blind man had unleashed fit into her days? How many years would it take for her to grow old again? The slightest movement and she’d trample one of the children. But with a lover’s mischief, she seemed to accept that out of the flower emerged the mosquito, that the giant water lilies floated on the darkness of the lake. The blind man dangled among the fruits of the Botanical Garden.

If that was the oven exploding, the whole house would already be on fire! she thought rushing into the kitchen and finding her husband in front of the spilled coffee.

“What happened?!” she screamed vibrating all over.

He jumped at his wife’s fright. And suddenly laughed in comprehension:

“It was nothing,” he said, “I’m just clumsy.” He looked tired, bags under his eyes.

But encountering Ana’s strange face, he peered at her with greater attention. Then he drew her close, in a swift caress.

“I don’t want anything to happen to you, ever!” she said.

“At least let the oven explode at me,” he answered smiling.

She stayed limp in his arms. This afternoon something tranquil had burst, and a humorous, sad tone was hanging over the house. “Time for bed,” he said, “it’s late.” In a gesture that wasn’t his, but that seemed natural, he held his wife’s hand, taking her along without looking back, removing her from the danger of living.

The dizziness of benevolence was over.

And, if she had passed through love and its hell, she was now combing her hair before the mirror, for an instant with no world at all in her heart. Before going to bed, as if putting out a candle, she blew out the little flame of the day.

A Chicken

(“Uma galinha”)

She was a Sunday chicken. Still alive because it wasn’t yet nine in the morning.

She seemed calm. Since Saturday she’d been huddling in a corner of the kitchen. She looked at no one, no one looked at her. Even when they selected her, feeling up her intimate parts indifferently, they couldn’t tell whether she was fat or skinny. No one would ever guess she had a yearning.

So it came as a surprise when they saw her flap her wings made for brief flight, puff up her chest and, in two or three bursts, reach the terrace railing. For a second she wavered—long enough for the cook to cry out—and soon was on the neighbor’s terrace, from which, in another awkward flight, she reached a roof. There she stood like an out of place ornament, hesitating on one foot, then the other. The family was urgently summoned and in dismay saw their lunch by a chimney. The man of the house, recalling the dual need to engage sporadically in some kind of sport and to have lunch, gleefully donned a pair of swim trunks and decided to follow in the chicken’s path: with cautious leaps he reached the roof where she, hesitant and trembling, was urgently determining a further route. The chase intensified. From rooftop to rooftop they covered more than a block. Ill-adapted to a wilder struggle for life, the chicken had to decide for herself which way to go, without any help from her race. The boy, however, was a dormant hunter. And inconsequential as the prey was, the rallying cry had sounded.

Alone in the world, without father or mother, she ran, panting, mute, focused. At times, mid-escape, she’d flutter breathlessly on the eave of a roof and while the boy went stumbling across other roofs she’d have time to gather herself for a moment. And then she seemed so free.

Stupid, timid and free. Not victorious as an escaping rooster would have been. What was it in her guts that made her a being? The chicken is a being. It’s true you couldn’t count on her for anything. Even she didn’t count on herself for anything, as the rooster believes in his comb. Her sole advantage was that there were so many chickens that whenever one died another emerged that very instant as alike as if it were the same.

Finally, on one of her pauses to revel in her escape, the boy reached her. Amid cries and feathers, she was caught. Then carried triumphantly by one wing across the rooftops and placed on the kitchen floor with a certain violence. Still dizzy, she shook herself a little, clucking hoarsely and uncertainly.

That’s when it happened. Completely frantic the chicken laid an egg. Surprised, exhausted. Perhaps it was premature. But right after, born as she was for maternity, she looked like an old, experienced mother. She sat on the egg and stayed there, breathing, her eyes buttoning up and unbuttoning. Her heart, so small on a plate, made her feathers rise and fall, filling with warmth a thing that would never be more than an egg. The little girl was the only one nearby and watched everything in terror. Yet as soon as she managed to tear herself away, she pried herself off the floor and ran shouting:

“Mama, Mama, don’t kill the chicken anymore, she laid an egg! she cares about us!”

Everyone ran back into the kitchen and wordlessly surrounded the youthful new mother. Warming her offspring, she was neither gentle nor standoffish, neither cheerful nor sad, she was nothing, she was a chicken. Which wouldn’t suggest any special feeling. The father, the mother and the daughter had been staring for quite some time, without thinking anything in particular. No one had ever petted a chicken’s head before. The father finally made up his mind somewhat abruptly:

“If you have this chicken killed I’ll never eat chicken again for the rest of my life!”

“Me neither!” vowed the girl ardently.

The mother, tired, shrugged.

Unconscious of the life she had been granted, the chicken began living with the family. The girl, coming home from school, would fling her binder down without missing a beat in her dash to the kitchen. Occasionally the father would recall: “And to think I made her run in that condition!” The chicken had become queen of the house. Everyone, except her, knew it. She carried on between the kitchen and the back terrace, employing her twin talents: apathy and alarm.

But whenever everyone in the house was quiet and seemed to have forgotten her, she would fill up with a little courage, vestiges of the great escape—and roam the tiled patio, her body following her head, pausing as if in a field, though her little head gave her away: vibratory and bobbing rapidly, the ancient fright of her species long since turned mechanical.

Every once in a while, though increasingly rarely, the chicken would again recall the figure she had cut against the air on the edge of the roof, about to proclaim herself. That’s when she’d fill her lungs with the kitchen’s sullied air and, even if females were given to crowing, wouldn’t crow but would feel much happier. Though not even then would the expression change on her empty head. Fleeing, resting, giving birth or pecking corn—it was a chicken’s head, the same one designed at the start of the centuries.

Until one day they killed her, ate her and years went by.

The Imitation of the Rose

(“A imitação da rosa”)

Before Armando got home from work the house had better be tidy and she already in her brown dress so she could tend to her husband while he got dressed, and then they’d leave calmly, arm in arm like the old days. How long since they had done that?

But now that she was “well” again, they’d take the bus, she gazing out the window like a wife, her arm in his, and then they’d have dinner with Carlota and João, reclining comfortably in their chairs. How long since she had seen Armando at last recline comfortably and have a conversation with a man? A man’s peace lay in forgetting about his wife, discussing the latest headlines with another man. Meanwhile she’d chat with Carlota about women’s stuff, giving in to Carlota’s authoritative and practical benevolence, receiving again at last her friend’s inattention and vague disdain, her natural bluntness, and no more of that perplexed and overly curious affection—and at last seeing Armando forget about his wife. And she herself, at last, returning gratefully to insignificance. Like a cat who stayed out all night and, as if nothing had happened, finds a saucer of milk waiting without a word. People were luckily helping her feel she was now “well.” Without looking at her, they were actively helping her forget, pretending they themselves had forgotten as if they’d read the same label on the same medicine bottle. Or they really had forgotten, who knows. How long since she had seen Armando at last recline with abandon, forget about her? And as for her?

Breaking off from tidying the vanity, Laura looked at herself in the mirror: and as for her, how long had it been? Her face held a domestic charm, her hair was pinned back behind her large, pale ears. Her brown eyes, brown hair, her tawny, smooth skin, all this lent her no longer youthful face a modest, womanly air. Would anyone happen to see, in that tiniest point of surprise lodged in the depths of her eyes, would anyone see in that tiniest offended speck the lack of the children she’d never had?

With her meticulous penchant for method—the same that compelled her as a student to copy the lesson’s main points in perfect handwriting without understanding them—with her penchant for method, now taken back up, she was planning to tidy the house before the maid’s day off so that, once Maria was gone, she wouldn’t have to do anything else, except 1) calmly get dressed; 2) wait for Armando ready to go; 3) what was three? Right. That’s exactly what she’d do. And she’d put on the brown dress with the cream lace collar. Already showered. Back at Sacré Coeur she’d been tidy and clean, with a penchant for personal hygiene and a certain horror of messiness. Which never made Carlota, already back then a bit original, admire her. Their reactions had always been different. Carlota ambitious and laughing heartily: she, Laura, a little slow, and as it were careful always to stay slow; Carlota not seeing the danger in anything. And she ever cautious. When they’d been assigned to read the
Imitation of Christ
, she’d read it with a fool’s ardor without understanding but, God forgive her, she’d felt that whoever imitated Christ would be lost—lost in the light, but dangerously lost. Christ was the worst temptation. And Carlota hadn’t even wanted to read it, she lied to the nun saying she had. Right. She’d put on the brown dress with the real lace collar.

But when she saw the time she remembered, with a jolt that made her lift her hand to her chest, that she’d forgotten to drink her glass of milk.

She went to the kitchen and, as if in her carelessness she’d guiltily betrayed Armando and her devoted friends, while still at the refrigerator she drank the first sips with an anxious slowing, concentrating on each sip faithfully as if making amends to them all and repenting. Since the doctor had said: “Drink milk between meals, avoid an empty stomach because it causes anxiety”—so, even without the threat of anxiety, she drank it without a fuss sip by sip, day after day, without fail, obeying with her eyes closed, with a slight ardor for not discerning the slightest skepticism in herself. The awkward thing was that the doctor seemed to contradict himself when, while giving a precise order that she wished to follow with a convert’s zeal, he’d also said: “Let yourself go, take it easy, don’t strain yourself to make it work—forget all about what happened and everything will fall back into place naturally.” And he patted her on the back, which flattered her and made her blush with pleasure. But in her humble opinion one order seemed to cancel the other, as if they’d asked her to eat flour and whistle at the same time. To combine them she’d recently resorted to a trick: that glass of milk that had ended up gaining a secret power, every sip of which contained the near-taste of a word and renewed that firm pat on the back, she’d take that glass of milk into the living room, where she’d sit “very naturally,” pretending not to care at all, “not straining herself”—and thereby cleverly carrying out the second order. “It doesn’t matter if I gain weight,” she thought, looks had never been the point.

She sat on the sofa like a guest in her own house that, so recently regained, tidy and cool, evoked the tranquility of someone else’s house. Which was so satisfying: unlike Carlota, who had made of her home something akin to herself, Laura took such pleasure in making her house an impersonal thing; somehow perfect for being impersonal.

Oh how good it was to be back, really back, she smiled in satisfaction. Holding the nearly empty glass, she closed her eyes with a sigh of pleasant fatigue. She’d ironed Armando’s shirts, drawn up methodical lists for the next day, minutely calculated how much she’d spent at the market that morning, hadn’t stopped in fact for even a second. Oh how good it was to be tired again.

If a perfect person from the planet Mars landed and discovered that Earthlings got tired and grew old, that person would feel pity and astonishment. Without ever understanding what was good about being human, in feeling tired, in giving out daily; only the initiated would comprehend this subtlety of defectiveness and this refinement of life.

And she’d finally returned from the perfection of the planet Mars. She, who had never cherished any ambition besides being a man’s wife, was gratefully reencountering the part of her that gave out daily. With her eyes shut she sighed in appreciation. How long since she had got tired? But now every day she felt nearly exhausted and had ironed, for example, Armando’s shirts, she’d always enjoyed ironing and, modesty aside, had a knack for it. And then she’d be exhausted as a reward. No longer that alert lack of fatigue. No longer that empty and wakeful and horribly marvelous speck inside her. No longer that terrible independence. No longer the monstrous and simple ease of not sleeping—day or night—which in its discreet way had made her suddenly superhuman compared to a tired and perplexed husband. He, with that bad breath he got whenever he went mute with worry, which gave her a pungent compassion, yes, even within her wakeful perfection, compassion and love, she superhuman and tranquil in her gleaming isolation, and he, whenever he’d come to visit timidly bearing apples and grapes that the nurse would eat with a shrug, he paying formal visits like a boyfriend, with his unfortunate bad breath and stiff smile, straining heroically to comprehend, he who had received her from a father and a priest, and had no idea what to do with this girl from Tijuca who had unexpectedly, as a tranquil boat bursts into sail on the waters, become superhuman.

Now, no more of this. Never again. Oh, it had just been a bout of weakness; genius was the worst temptation. But afterward she’d returned so completely that she’d even had to start being careful again not to wear people down with her old penchant for detail. She clearly remembered her classmates at Sacré Coeur saying to her: “You’ve told it a thousand times!” she recalled with an embarrassed smile. She’d returned so completely: now she got tired every day, every day her face would sag at dusk, and then night would take on its former purpose, it wasn’t just the perfect starlit night. And everything lined up harmoniously. And, as with everyone else, each day wore her out; like everyone else, human and perishable. No longer that perfection, no longer that youth. No longer that thing that one day had spread brightly, like a cancer, to her soul.

She opened her sleep-laden eyes, feeling the nice solid glass in her hands, but closed them again with a comfortable smile of fatigue, bathing like some nouveau riche in all her particles, in that familiar and slightly nauseating water. Yes, slightly nauseating; what did it matter, since she too was a bit nauseating, she was well aware. But her husband didn’t think so, and so what did it matter, since thank God she didn’t live in an environment that required her to be more clever and interesting, and she’d even freed herself from high school, which had so awkwardly demanded that she stay alert. What did it matter. In fatigue—she’d ironed Armando’s shirts, not to mention she’d gone to the farmers’ market that morning and lingered there so long, with that pleasure she took in making the most of things—in fatigue there was a nice place for her, the discreet and dulled place from which, so embarrassingly for herself and everyone else, she had once emerged. But, as she kept saying, thank God, she’d returned.

And if she sought with greater faith and love, she would find within her fatigue that even better place called sleep. She sighed with pleasure, in a moment of spiteful mischief tempted to go along with that warm exhalation that was her already somnolent breathing, tempted to doze off for a second. “Just a second, just one little second!” she begged herself, flattered to be so drowsy, begging pleadingly, as if begging a man, which Armando had always liked.

But she didn’t really have time to sleep now, not even for a quick nap—she thought vainly and with false modesty, she was such a busy person! She’d always envied people who said “I didn’t have time” and now she was once again such a busy person: they were going to Carlota’s for dinner and everything had to be orderly and ready, it was her first dinner party since coming back and she didn’t want to be late, she had to be ready when . . . right, I’ve already said it a thousand times, she thought sheepishly. Once was enough to say: “I don’t want to be late”—since that reason sufficed: if she had never been able to bear without the utmost mortification being a nuisance to anyone, then now, more than ever, she shouldn’t . . . No, there wasn’t the slightest doubt: she didn’t have time to sleep. What she ought to do, familiarly slipping into that intimate wealth of routine—and it hurt her that Carlota scoffed at her penchant for routine—what she ought to do was 1) wait till the maid was ready; 2) give her money to get meat in the morning, rump roast; how could she explain that the difficulty of finding quality meat really was a good topic of conversation, but if Carlota found out she’d scoff at her; 3) start meticulously showering and getting dressed, fully surrendering to the pleasure of making the most of her time. That brown dress complemented her eyes and its little cream lace collar gave her a childlike quality, like an old-fashioned boy. And, back to the nocturnal peace of Tijuca—no longer that blinding light from those coiffed and perky nurses leaving for their day off after tossing her like a helpless chicken into the abyss of insulin—back to the nocturnal peace of Tijuca, back to her real life: she’d go arm-in-arm with Armando, walking slowly to the bus stop, with those short, thick thighs packed into that girdle making her a “woman of distinction”; but whenever, upset, she told Armando it was because of an ovarian insufficiency, he, who took pride in his wife’s thighs, replied rather cheekily: “What would I get out of marrying a ballerina?” that was how he replied. You’d never guess, but Armando could sometimes be really naughty, you’d never guess. Once in a while they said the same thing. She explained that it was because of an ovarian insufficiency. So then he’d say: “What would I get out of marrying a ballerina?” He could be really shameless sometimes, you’d never guess. Carlota would be astonished to learn that they too had a private life and things they never told, but she wouldn’t tell, what a shame not to be able to tell, Carlota definitely thought she was just uptight and mundane and a little annoying, and if she had to be careful not to bother other people with details, with Armando she’d sometimes relax and get pretty annoying, which didn’t matter because he’d pretend to be listening without really listening to everything she was telling him, which didn’t hurt her feelings, she understood perfectly well that her chatter tired people out a bit, but it was nice to be able to explain how she hadn’t found any meat even if Armando shook his head and wasn’t listening, she and the maid chatted a lot, actually she talked more than the maid, and she was also careful not to pester the maid who sometimes held back her impatience and could get a little rude, it was her own fault because she didn’t always command respect.

But, as she was saying, her arm in his, she so short and he tall and slim, but he was healthy thank God, and she a brunette. She was a brunette as she obscurely believed a wife ought to be. To have black or blonde hair was an excess to which she, in her desire to do everything right, had never aspired. Therefore, as for green eyes, it seemed to her that having green eyes would be like keeping certain things from her husband. Not that Carlota exactly gave her reason to gossip, but she, Laura—who if given the chance would defend her fervently, but never got the chance—she, Laura, grudgingly had to agree that her friend had a peculiar and funny way of dealing with her husband, oh not that she acted “as if they were equals,” as people were doing nowadays, but you know what I mean. And Carlota was even a bit original, she’d even mentioned this once to Armando and Armando had agreed but hadn’t thought it mattered much. But, as she was saying, dressed in brown with her little collar . . .—this daydream was filling her with the same pleasure she got from tidying drawers, sometimes she’d even mess them up just to be able to tidy them again.

She opened her eyes, and as if the room had dozed off instead of her, it seemed refreshed and relaxed with its brushed armchairs and the curtains that had shrunk in the last wash, like pants that were too short while the person stood comically peering down at his legs. Oh how nice it was to see everything tidy and dusted again, everything cleaned by her own skillful hands, and so silent, and with a vase full of flowers, like a waiting room. She’d always found waiting rooms lovely, so courteous, so impersonal. How rich normal life was, she who had returned from extravagance at last. Even a vase of flowers. She looked at it.