Clarice Lispector - Selected Cronicas

I went out to play, only to find myself alone with the useless reward of having been the first to finish, raking the soil with my foot, waiting impatiently for my classmates who, one by one, emerged from the classroom.

In the midst of our rowdy games, I decided to look for something or other in my satchel to show to the park-warden, my friend and protector. Dripping with perspiration, flushed with an irrepressible happiness which, had I been at home, would have earned me a few slaps — I fled in the direction of the classroom, crossed it at a run, so flustered that I did not see the teacher leafing through the notebooks piled on his desk. The object I had gone to fetch was already in my hand and I was just about to run out again — when my eyes met his. Standing alone by his desk, he looked at me.

It was the first time we had come face to face on our own. He was staring at me. My steps faltered almost to a standstill.

For the first time I found myself alone with him, without the whispered support of my classmates, without the admiration that my insolence aroused. I tried to smile, feeling the blood rushing to my cheeks. A bead of sweat ran down my forehead. He was looking at me. His look was like a soft, heavy paw resting on me. But if that paw was soft, it froze me like a cat’s paw as it quickly catches a mouse by the tail. The bead of sweat ran down over my nose and on to my mouth, cutting my smile in half. Just that: his face drained of any expression, he was staring at me. I began to skirt the wall with lowered eyes, taking refuge in my smile, the only feature left in a face which had otherwise become blurred. I had never noticed before just how long the classroom was; only now, at the slow pace of fear, could I judge its real dimensions. Lack of time had not allowed me to perceive until that moment just how bare and high and solid those walls really were. I could feel the solid wall against the palm of my hand. In a nightmare, in which smiling played some part, I scarcely believed that I could reach the doorway — from where I would run, oh, how I would run! and hide amongst the other children. As well as concentrating on my smile, I was most careful not to make any noise with my feet, and thus I adhered to the intimate nature of a danger about which I knew nothing more. With a shudder, I caught a sudden glimpse of myself as if in a mirror: a perspiring thing pressed against the wall, advancing slowly on tiptoe, my smile becoming brighter. My smile had frozen the room into silence and even the sounds that came from the park reverberated on the outer shell of silence. I finally reached the door, and my unruly heart began to beat so loudly that it threatened to awaken the immense world from its sleep.

That was when I heard my name.

Suddenly rooted to the spot, my mouth parched, I stood there with my back to him, much too scared to turn round. The breeze which came from the open door had dried the perspiration on my body. I turned round slowly, restraining within my clenched fists the urge to run.

At the sound of my name the room had become dehypnotized.

And very slowly I began to see the teacher in his entirety.

Very slowly I saw that the teacher was huge and ugly, and that he was the man of my life. A new and greater fear. Small, sleep-walking, alone, I confronted what my fatal freedom had finally brought me to. My smile, which was all that remained of my face, had also been obliterated. I was a pair of numbed feet too paralysed to move, and a heart so parched that I might die of thirst. There I stood, out of the man’s reach. My heart was dying of thirst, yes. My heart was dying of thirst.

As calm as if he were about to commit a murder in cold blood, he said:

— Come closer…

How did a man avenge himself?

Was I about to receive like a smack in the face, the ball of the world which I myself had thrown to him and which none the less I did not understand?

Was I about to retrieve a reality which would not have existed if I had not rashly perceived it, thus giving it life? To what extent was that man, a mountain of compact unhappiness, also a mountain of fury? But my past was too remote now. A stoic repentance kept my head erect. For the first time ignorance, which until then had been my faithful guide, abandoned me. My father was at work, my mother had been dead for several months. I was the only me.

— Take your notebook, he added.

I looked at him suddenly in surprise. Was this all, then? The unexpected relief was almost more alarming than my former fear. I took a step forward, and hesitantly held out my hand.

But the teacher remained still and made no attempt to hand over my notebook.

To my sudden distress, without averting his gaze the teacher slowly began to remove his spectacles. He looked at me with naked eyes fringed with thick eyelashes. I had never noticed his eyes before. Those thick eyelashes made them look like two sweet cockroaches. He stared at me. And I did not know how to react in the presence of a man. Evasively I gazed at the ceiling, the floor, the walls, and kept my hand outstretched because I did not know how to withdraw it. He looked at me gently, inquisitively, eyes bleary as if he had just woken up. Would he crush me with an unexpected hand? Or demand that I kneel and beg forgiveness? My thread of hope was that he might not know what I had done to him, just as I myself no longer knew, and, indeed, had never known.

— How did you get the idea of the hidden treasure?

— What treasure? I murmured sheepishly.

We stood there looking at each other in silence.

— Oh, the treasure! I blurted out, not really understanding, anxious to admit some fault, imploring him that my punishment should be simply to feel foreverguilty, that eternal torture should be my punishment, anything but this unknown life.

— The treasure which is hidden where you least expect to find it. That is only waiting to be discovered. Who told you that?

The man has taken leave of his senses, I thought to myself, for what has all this got to do with the treasure? Stunned, unable to understand and passing from one surprise to another, I sensed, nevertheless, that I was on less dangerous ground. In our school races I had learned to carry on running after a fall, however serious, and I regained my composure at once: ‘It was the composition about the treasure! So that was my mistake!’ Feeling weak, and still treading carefully on this new and slippery re-assurance, I had recovered sufficiently from my fall to be able to toss, in imitation of my former arrogance, this hair of mine which one day would have a permanent wave.

— Gosh, nobody…, I replied haltingly. I made it up myself, I said nervously, but already beginning to sparkle once more.

If I felt some relief at having something concrete to battle with at last, I was also aware of something much worse. The teacher’s sudden lack of anger. Puzzled, I looked at him askance. And little by little, with deep suspicion. His lack of anger began to frighten me, it implied new threats which I could not fathom. His staring eyes refused to leave me — eyes devoid of anger… I was perturbed, and for no good reason I was losing my enemy and my support. I looked at him in surprise. What did he want from me? He made me feel uneasy. And those eyes without anger began to irk me more than the brutality which I had feared. A gentle fear, cold and moist, gripped me by degrees. Slowly, lest he should notice, I backed away until my shoulders touched the wall, and then drew back my head until I could go no further. From the wall where I had embedded my entire body, I looked at him furtively.

And my stomach filled with waves of nausea. I cannot describe it.