Clarice Lispector - The Complete Stories

ALSO BY CLARICE LISPECTOR

AVAILABLE FROM NEW DIRECTIONS

gua Viva

A Breath of Life

The Foreign Legion

The Hour of the Star

Near to the Wild Heart

The Passion According to G. H.

Selected Crnicas

Soulstorm

Contents

Copyright 1951, 1955, 1960, 1965, 1978, 2010, 2015 by the Heirs of Clarice Lispector

Translation copyright 2015 by Katrina Dodson

Introduction copyright 2015 by Benjamin Moser

Published by arrangement with the Heirs of Clarice Lispector and Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells, Barcelona.

New Directions gratefully acknowledges the support of

MINISTRIO DA CULTURA

Fundao BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

First published in cloth by New Directions in 2015

Manufactured in the United States of America

New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper

Design by Erik Rieselbach

eISBN 978-0-8112-2453-6

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue. New York 10011

FIRST STORIES

The Triumph

(O triunfo)

The clock strikes nine. A loud, sonorous peal, followed by gentle chiming, an echo. Then, silence. The bright stain of sunlight lengthens little by little over the lawn. It goes climbing up the red wall of the house, making the ivy glisten in a thousand dewy lights. It finds an opening, the window. It penetrates. And suddenly takes possession of the room, slipping past the light curtains standing guard.

Lusa remains motionless, sprawled atop the tangled sheets, her hair spread out on the pillow. An arm here, another there, crucified by lassitude. The heat of the sun and its brightness fill the room. Lusa blinks. She frowns. Purses her lips. Opens her eyes, finally, and leaves them fixed on the ceiling. Little by little the day enters her body. She hears a sound of dry leaves crunching underfoot. Footsteps in the distance, tiny and hurried. A child is running out on the road, she thinks. Once more, silence. She amuses herself a moment listening to it. It is absolute, like the silence of death. Naturally since the house is remote, rather isolated. But... what about the domestic noises of every morning? The sound of footsteps, laughter, the clattering of dishes that announce the start of the day in her house? Slowly the idea crosses her mind that she knows the reason for the silence. She pushes it away, though, stubbornly.

Suddenly her eyes widen. Lusa finds herself sitting up in bed, a shiver coursing throughout her body. She looks with her eyes, her head, her every nerve, at the other bed in the room. Its empty.

She props her pillow up vertically, leans against it, head tilting back, eyes closed.

Its true, then. She thinks back to the previous afternoon and night, the tortured, long night that followed and dragged on until dawn. He left, yesterday afternoon. He took his bags with him, the bags that just two weeks ago had come home festively covered in labels from Paris, Milan. He also took the manservant who had come with them. The silence in the house was explained. She was alone, since his departure. They had fought. She, silent, before him. He, the refined, superior intellectual, yelling, accusing her, pointing his finger at her. And that feeling shed already experienced during their other fights: if he leaves, Ill die, Ill die. She could still hear his words.

You, you trap me, you annihilate me! Keep your love, give it to someone who wants it, someone who has nothing better to do! Got it? Yes! Ever since I met you I havent produced a thing! I feel tied down. Tied down by your fussing, your caresses, your excessive zeal, by you yourself! I despise you! Think about that, I despise you! I...

These explosions happened often. There was always the threat of his leaving. Lusa, at that word, would transform. She, so full of dignity, so ironic and sure of herself, would beg him to stay, with such pallor and madness in her face, that hed given in every other time. And happiness would flood her, so intense and bright, that it compensated for what shed never imagined was a humiliation, but that hed make her see with ironic arguments, which she wouldnt even hear. This time hed lost his temper, as he had every other time, for almost no reason. Lusa had interrupted him, he said, right when a new idea was stirring, luminous, in his brain. Shed cut off his inspiration at the very instant it was springing forth, with a silly comment about the weather, and concluding with a loathsome: isnt it, darling? He said he needed the proper conditions in order to produce, to continue his novel, nipped in the bud by an absolute inability to concentrate. Hed gone off somewhere to find the atmosphere.

And the house had been left in silence. She, stuck in the bedroom, as if her entire soul had been removed from her body. Waiting, to see him reappear, his manly form framed in the doorway. Shed hear him say, his beloved broad shoulders shaking with laughter, that it was all just a joke, just an experience to insert into a page of the book.

But the silence had dragged on infinitely, punctured only by the monotonous hiss of the cicadas. The moonless night had gradually invaded the room. The cool June breeze made her shiver.

Hes gone, she thought. Hes gone. Never had this expression struck her as so full of meaning, though shed read it many times before in romantic novels. Hes gone wasnt that simple. She dragged around an immense void in her head and chest. If anyone were to bang on them, she imagined, theyd sound metallic. How would she live now? she suddenly asked herself, with an exaggerated calm, as if it were some neutral thing. She kept repeating and repeating: what now? She cast her eyes around the gloomy bedroom. She switched on the light, looked for his clothes, his book on the nightstand, traces of him. Nothing left behind. She got scared. Hes gone.

Shed tossed and turned in bed for hours and hours and sleep hadnt come. Toward dawn, weakened by wakefulness and pain, eyes stinging, head heavy, she fell into a semi-unconsciousness. Not even her head stopped working, images, the maddest kind, ran through her mind, barely sketched out and already fleeting.

It strikes eleven, long and leisurely. A bird lets out a piercing cry. Everything has stood still since yesterday, thinks Lusa. Shes still sitting up in bed, stupidly, not knowing what to do. Her eyes fix on a marina, in cool colors. Never had she seen water give quite that impression of liquidness and movement. Shed never even noticed the painting. Suddenly, like a dart, wounding sharp and deep: Hes gone. No, its a lie! She stands. Surely he got angry and went to sleep in the next room. She runs, pushes the door open. Empty.

She goes to the desk where he used to work, rifles feverishly through the abandoned newspapers. Maybe hes left some note, saying, for instance: In spite of everything, I love you. Ill be back tomorrow. No, today! All she finds is a piece of paper from his notepad. She turns it over. Ive been sitting here for two solid hours and still havent been able to focus my attention. Yet, at the same time, Im not focusing it on anything around me. It has wings, but doesnt land anywhere. I just cant write. I just cant write. With these words Im scratching at a wound. My mediocrity is so... Lusa breaks off reading. What shed always felt, only vaguely: mediocrity. Shes absorbed. So he knew it, then? What an impression of weakness, of faintheartedness, on that simple piece of paper... Jorge..., she murmurs feebly. She wishes she hadnt read that confession. She leans against the wall. Silently she cries. She cries until she feels limp.