Clarice Lispector - Selected Cronicas

There is something different about tonight. It is three o’clock in the morning. I am having one of my bouts of insomnia. I made myself some coffee since sleep seemed unlikely. I put in too much sugar and the coffee tasted horrid. I can hear the waves beating against the shore. Tonight is different because as you sleep I am talking to you. I break off, go out on to the terrace, look down on to the street, the long, narrow strip of beach and the sea. It is dark. So dark. I think of my favourite people: they are all asleep or out enjoying themselves. Some of them might even be drinking whisky. My coffee tastes even sweeter and becomes quite undrinkable. The night turns darker. I am sinking into painless melancholy. It is not so bad. Only to be expected. Tomorrow I might experience some happiness, not exactly ecstasy, just happiness. And that is not so bad either. True, but I am scarcely enjoying my pact with humdrum existence.

How does an untidy person become tidy? My papers are in disorder, my drawers need sorting out. (I must have a secretary because I am suffering from nervous exhaustion, according to my doctor.) This would not matter so much in my opinion if I had some inner order. But people who are over-preoccupied with external order are precisely those who are suffering from inner disorder and need some counter-balance to give them some reassurance. I need reassurance and this could be achieved if my drawers were to be put into some kind of order. Well, merely thinking of tidying out those drawers made me feel weary and lazy. The laziness that comes at weekends. I hope my laziness will strike a chord in some of my male and female readers so that they will not feel too superior. Frankly, when it comes to tidiness, what I should like is for someone to take it upon themselves to provide me with some semblance of order. My absurd idea of luxury would be for some sort of governess-cum-secretary to take care of my external life, even to the extent of going to certain parties and receptions on my behalf. Naturally, this person would have to adore me — but with the utmost discretion, because naked worship is more than I can bear. It is inhibiting and kills any spontaneity. It deprives us of our right to have those faults, innate or acquired, which we jealously hold on to for support, because it is not only our virtues which serve as crutches.

What else could this governess-cum-secretary do for me? She should not look at me too often so as not to embarrass me. She should speak to me quite naturally but also know when to be silent and leave me in peace. She should decide what to prepare for lunch and dinner — then meals would be a constant and pleasant surprise. And, of course, she would keep my papers in order. She would also understand my moments of sadness but be sufficiently discreet not to show that she had understood. And naturally, I would expect her to reply on my behalf to publishers with tact and diplomacy. As for my children, I myself would take care of them. But she could act as a surrogate mother whenever I want to work or go to the cinema. A surrogate mother has the advantage of not embarrassing children with too much affection. As children grow up, their mother has to become smaller. Alas, mothers tend to go on being enormous. If my sons ever read this, they will be amused. When mothers of Russian descent start to kiss their children, instead of being content with one kiss they want to give them forty. I tried to explain this to one of my sons but he told me I was just looking for an excuse to justify all those kisses.

A friend of mine who is a doctor has assured me that right from the cradle, children sense their surroundings, and want things. Right from the cradle the human being has started to exist.

I am certain that right from the cradle my first desire was to belong. For reasons of no importance here, I must have somehow felt that I did not belong to anything or anyone. That my birth was superfluous.

If I first experienced this human hunger in the cradle, it continues to accompany me throughout life, as if predestined. So that I feel pangs of envy and desire whenever I see a nun: for she belongs to God.

Precisely because of this deep longing to give myself to something or someone, I have become rather aloof: I am afraid of revealing how much I need and how poor I am. Yes, poor. Very poor. All I possess is a body and a soul. And I need something more. Perhaps I started writing so early in life because, at least by writing, I belonged to myself to some extent. Which is a pale imitation.

Over the years, especially of late, I have lost the knack of being like other people. I no longer know how it is done. And a whole new kind of ‘solitude through not belonging’ has started to smother me like ivy on a wall.

If I have always wanted to belong, why then have I never joined any club or association? Because that is not what I mean by belonging. What I want and cannot achieve, is to be able to give the best of myself to whomever or whatever I might belong. Even my moments of happiness can be so solitary at times. And solitary moments of happiness can be so moving. It is like holding a gift in your hands, beautifully wrapped, but with no one to whom you can say: Here, this is for you, open it! Not wishing to find myself in moving situations and somewhat inhibited and reluctant to strike a tragic note, I rarely parcel up my feelings in gift wrapping.

Belonging does not simply come from being weak and needing to unite oneself to something or someone stronger. An intense desire to belong often comes from my own inner strength — I wish to belong so that my strength will not be useless and may serve to strengthen some other person or thing.

But I do get some satisfaction out of life: for example, I belong to my country and, like millions of others, I belong to Brazil in the sense that I am Brazilian. And I, who in all sincerity have never desired or could desire fame — I am far too much the individualist to tolerate any invasion of my privacy — I, who do not seek fame, nevertheless enjoy being associated with Brazilian literature. No, no, not out of pride or ambition. I am happy to be associated with Brazilian literature for reasons which have nothing to do with literature, for I am not even what might be called a bluestocking or intellectual. I am happy simply ‘to participate’.

I can almost visualize myself in the cradle, I can almost recreate inside me that vague yet pressing need to belong. For reasons which not even my father or mother could control, I was born and remain: simply born.

Yet my birth was planned in such a pleasing way. My mother was in poor health and there was a well-known superstition which claimed that a woman could be cured of illness if she gave birth to a son. So I was deliberately conceived: with love and hope. Only I failed to cure my mother. And to this day I carry this burden of guilt: my parents conceived me for a specific mission and I failed them. As if they had been relying on me to defend the trenches in time of war and I had deserted my post. I know my parents forgave me my useless birth and forgot that I had frustrated their great hopes. But I have not forgiven myself or forgotten. I wanted to work a miracle: to be born and cure my mother. Then I should truly have belonged to my father and mother. I could not even confide my solitude of not belonging because, as a deserter, I kept the secret of my escape which shame forbade me to reveal.

Life has allowed me to belong now and then, as if to give me the measure of what I am losing by not belonging. And then I discovered that: to belong is to live. I experienced it with the thirst of someone in the desert who avidly drinks the last drops of water from a flask. And then my thirst returns and I find myself walking that same desert.