Clarice Lispector - Selected Cronicas

All the agents enjoy many advantages in order to ensure the egg is formed. There is no cause for envy, because even the worst of the conditions imposed on some agents happen to be the ideal conditions for the egg. As for the satisfaction of the agents, they receive that, too, without conceit. They quietly savour any satisfaction. This is the sacrifice we make so that the egg may be formed. We have been endowed with a nature which has a considerable capacity for satisfaction, which helps to make satisfaction less painful. There are instances of agents who commit suicide: they discover that the handful of instructions at their disposal are insufficient and sense a lack of support. There was the case of the agent who publicly revealed his identity because he could not bear not to be understood, just as he found it intolerable not to be respected by others. He died after being run over as he was leaving a restaurant. There was another agent who did not even need to be eliminated: he slowly burned himself up in disgust, a disgust which overwhelmed him when he discovered that the few instructions he had been given explained nothing. Another agent was also eliminated because he thought ‘the truth should be spoken courageously’, and he set about searching for that truth. People say he died in the name of truth, but in fact he simply obscured truth, he was so ingenuous. His seeming courage was mere folly and his desire for loyalty was naïve. He had failed to understand that loyalty is not something pure, that to be loyal is to be disloyal to all the rest. These extreme cases of death are not provoked by cruelty. There is a job to be done which one might term cosmic, and unfortunately individual cases cannot be taken into consideration. For those who succumb and become individuals, there are instructions, there is charity, there is an understanding which does not discriminate between motives — our human life, in short.

The eggs sizzle in the frying pan and, lost in a dream, I prepare breakfast. Without any sense of reality, I call the children who jump out of bed, draw up their chairs and start eating and the work of the day which has just dawned begins, with shouting and laughter and food, the white and the yolk, happiness amidst squabbles, the day is our salt and we are the salt of the day, life is quite tolerable, life occupies and distracts, life provokes laughter.

It makes me smile in my mystery. The mystery of my being which is simply a means, and not an end, has given me the most dangerous freedom of all. I am not stupid and I use it to my advantage. I even do considerable harm to others. I take advantage of the phoney job they have given me to conceal my identity and turn it into my real occupation. I have even misused the money they pay me on a daily basis to make life easier while the egg is being formed. Having changed the money on the black market, I have misused it and only recently bought shares in a brewery which has made me a rich woman. I still refer to all this as the essential modesty of living. They have also allowed me time so that the egg may form inside me at its leisure but I have frittered away my time in illicit pleasures and sorrows, completely forgetting about the egg. That is my simplicity as a human agent.

Or is this precisely what they wanted to happen so that the egg may be formed? Is this freedom a coercion? For I am now beginning to see that every error on my part has been exploited. My grievance is that in their eyes I count for nothing, I am simply useful. With the money they pay me I have started drinking.

No one knows how you feel inside when you are hired to pretend you are a traitor and you end up believing in your own betrayal. A job which consists of forgetting day after day. Being expected to feign dishonour. My mirror no longer reflects a face which can even be called my own. Either I am an agent or this is truly betrayal. But I sleep the sleep of the just in the knowledge that my futile existence does not impede the march of infinite time. On the contrary: it would appear that I am expected to be utterly futile, that I should even sleep the sleep of the just. They want me occupied and distracted, by whatever means. For with my wandering thoughts and solemn foolishness I might impede what is happening inside me. Strictly speaking, I myself have only served to impede. The notion that my destiny exceeds me suggests that I might be an agent. At least, they might have allowed me to perceive as much, for I am one of those people who do a job badly unless I am allowed some Insight. They made me forget what I had been allowed to perceive, but I still have this vague notion that my destiny exceeds me and that I am the instrument of their work.

In any case, I could only be the instrument because the work could never be mine. I have already tried to establish myself in my own right without success; my hand has never stopped trembling to this day. Had I insisted a little more, I should have lost my health for good. Since then, after that abortive experience, I have tried to reason as follows: I have already received a great deal and they have made me every possible concession. And the agents, far better than me, have also worked only for what they did not know. And with the same meagre instructions and, like me, they were modest civil servants or otherwise. I have already received a great deal. Sometimes overcome with emotion at being so privileged yet without showing any gratitude! My heart beating with emotion, yet without understanding anything! My heart beating confidently, yet leaving me baffled.

But what about the egg? This is precisely one of their little ruses. As I was talking about the egg, I forgot about the egg. ‘Keep on talking, keep on talking,’ they told me. And the egg remains completely protected by all those words. ‘Keep on talking’ is one of their guiding rules. I feel so weary.

Out of devotion to the egg I forgot about it. Forgetfulness born out of necessity. Forgetfulness born out of self-interest. For the egg is an evasion. Confronted by my possessive veneration, the egg could withdraw never to return and I should die of sorrow. But suppose the egg were to be forgotten and I were to make the sacrifice of getting on with my life and forgetting about it. Suppose the egg proved to be impossible. Then perhaps — free, delicate, without any message whatsoever for me — the egg would move through space once more and come up to the window I have always left open. And perhaps with the first light of day the egg might descend into our apartment and move serenely into the kitchen. As I illuminate it with my pallor.

This story could be called The Statues. Another possible title would be Murder. Or even How to get rid of Cockroaches. So I shall tell at least three stories and all of them true, because none of the three will contradict ihe others. Although they constitute one story, they could become a thousand and one, were I to be granted a thousand and one nights.

The first story, How to get rid of Cockroaches, begins like this: I was complaining about the cockroaches. A woman heard me complain. She gave me a remedy for killing them off. I was to mix together equal quantities of sugar, flour and plaster of Paris. The flour and sugar would attract the cockroaches, the plaster of Paris would dry up their insides. I followed her advice. The cockroaches died almost immediately.

The next story is really the first, and is called Murder. It begins like this: I was complaining about the cockroaches. A woman heard me complain. The remedy is prepared. And then murder ensues. The truth is that I had only complained in abstract terms about the cockroaches for they were not even mine: they came from the ground floor and climbed into our apartment through the pipes in the building. It was only when I prepared the mixture that they became mine, too. On our behalf, therefore, I began to measure and weigh the ingredients with somewhat greater concentration. I was gripped by a vague sense of rancour, by a sense of outrage. During the day the cockroaches were invisible and no one would have believed in the hidden evil that was invading our tranquil household. But if the cockroaches, like some dark secret, slept by day, there I was preparing their nightly poison. Meticulous and eager, I prepared the elixir of prolonged death. A nervous fear and my own guilty secret guided me. Now I chillingly desired only one thing: to kill every cockroach in existence. Cockroaches crawl up the pipes while weary humans dream. And now the mixture was ready, white as white could be. As if I were dealing with cockroaches as wily as myself, I cautiously spread the powder which seemed to have become part of my nature. Lying there in bed in the silence of night, I could imagine those cockroaches climbing up one by one into the kitchen where darkness slumbered, a solitary towel watching from the clothes-line. I awoke hours later, startled at having overslept. Dawn had broken. On a nearby hill a cockerel crowed.