Clarice Lispector - Selected Cronicas

And so much suffering, sometimes even unawares, because one is in pursuit of pleasure. I do not know how one can make pleasure come of its own accord. And it is so dramatic: you need only look at others in the semi-darkness of a night-club: the pursuit of pleasure which does not come alone or of its own volition. The pursuit of pleasure has brought the taste of rank water: I put my lips to the rusting tap. Two drops of lukewarm water come trickling out: the tap is dry. No, real suffering is better by far than forced pleasure.

Fanning herself, the fat matron is lost in thought. The fan helps her to think as she sits there fanning herself rigorously. Then with a sudden click, she abruptly arrests her thoughts. Empty, smiling, rigid in her tight corset, she looks distracted. The fan reclines distracted and open on her ample bosom. ‘No doubt, they’ll all find a husband’, she concedes like a visitor being received in a drawing-room. But suppressing her agitation, there she is fanning herself with a thousand sparrows’ wings.

After I discovered in myself how people think, I was no longer able to believe in the thoughts of others.

What has often saved me has been to improvise some gratuitous act. If any reasons exist for such an act, they are unknown. And if there are any consequences, they are unforeseen.

A gratuitous act is the opposite of our struggle for life. It is the opposite of our frantic pursuit of money, work, love, pleasure, taxis, buses, our daily existence in short. And there is a price to be paid for all of this.

One afternoon, not so long ago, I was typing away under a blue sky flecked with tiny clouds, white as white could be, when suddenly I felt something inside me.

A sudden weariness of this perpetual struggle.

And I realized I was thirsty. A thirst for freedom had stirred inside me. I was simply weary of living in an apartment. I was weary of extracting ideas from myself. I was weary of listening to my typewriter. And then this strange, deep thirst had appeared. I suddenly felt an urgent need to make a bid for freedom. An act which needs no justification. An act capable of showing, quite independently of me, what I was really like inside. And this called for an act which would have to be paid for. I do not mean paid for in money, but paid for in broader terms, at the high price it costs to live.

Then my own thirst guided me. It was two o’clock on a summer’s afternoon. I interrupted my work, quickly changed, went downstairs and hailed a taxi. I told the taxi-driver: Drop me off at the Botanical Gardens. ‘Where is that?’ he asked. ‘You don’t understand’, I explained, ‘It’s not a street or district. I mean the Botanical Gardens.’ This was enough to make him peer at me for a second.

I left the taxi windows open as it gathered speed and sat back to enjoy my freedom as a sharp gust of wind blew my hair about and grazed my grateful cheeks, my eyes half-closed with happiness.

Why had I chosen the Botanical Gardens? Just to look. To see things. To feel them. Just to live.

I leapt out of the taxi and went through the wide gates. Into the welcoming shade. I stood there motionless. Green life in those gardens was so abundant. I could see no meanness there: everything gave itself completely to the wind, to the atmosphere, to life, everything reached for the sky. And what is more: also surrendered its mystery.

Mystery surrounded me. I looked at the delicate shrubs which had just been planted. I gazed at a tree with its dark, gnarled trunk which was so wide my arms would never be able to embrace it. How could sap flow inside this solid wood, through those heavy roots, hard as claws? Sap, this almost intangible substance which is also life. For there is sap in everything just as there is blood in our veins.

I shall not describe what I saw there. Everyone must discover it for themselves. All I will say is that there were swaying, secret shadows. In passing, I shall touch briefly on the freedom of the birds. And on my freedom. But that is all. The rest was a moist green rising inside me through unknown roots. I walked and walked. Sometimes I would pause. I had left the main gates far behind me, and they were already out of sight as I explored a labyrinth of tree-lined avenues. I felt pleasantly apprehensive — the tiniest tremor in my soul — the nervous thrill of perhaps being lost and of never, but nevermore, being able to find the exit.

There was a fountain where water played incessantly. The water spouted from the mouth of a head carved in stone. I drank some water and got completely drenched. This did not worry me. Such nonchalance seemed in keeping with the abundance in those Gardens.

Here and there the ground was covered with tiny pods from the pepper-trees, those pods one found scattered on the pavements as children and instinctively trampled with the greatest satisfaction. As I trampled them again after all these years, the same sense of satisfaction came back to me: mysterious yet such a comfort.

I began to feel pleasantly tired. It was time to go home. The sun was no longer warm.

I shall return one day when there is heavy rain, just to see that dripping garden submerged.

I got into a taxi but before it could drive off, a young man appeared, young but with thinning hair which was already flecked with grey. He popped his head through the window and inquired:

— Are you by any chance going my way?

I told him I was heading for Copacabana. He then asked me in a plaintive voice: Would you mind giving me a lift? I live in the same direction and at this hour it’s impossible to find a taxi. I told him to get in. He sat beside the driver. Turning round in his seat, he then proceeded to bombard me with endless chatter: he was married and extremely happy; he did not mind in the least that his wife was beginning to age because he still loved her dearly, and he had sent her some roses that very morning. No, it was not her birthday or some special anniversary, simply to tell her that he loved her … Well, well — I thought to myself — here is one man who deceives his wife at the first opportunity.

All this talk about conjugal love was beginning to get on my nerves, not to mention that unctuous voice of his, as he lied through his teeth about his private life, oblivious to my lack of interest. Suddenly he announced: You can drop me off right here. The taxi came to a halt, he got out, popped his head through the window and had the affrontery to whisper in my ear:

— The lady is a perfect gentleman.

I have a lovely picture in my mind, which I can conjure up at will, and it invariably comes back to me in its entirety. It is the image of a forest, and in that forest I can see a green clearing, enveloped in semi-darkness and surrounded by tall trees. And in the midst of this pleasing darkness there are many butterflies, and a tawny lion is reclining, while I sit embroidering on the ground nearby. The hours pass like countless years, and the years pass in reality; the large butterflies have decorative wings and the tawny lion is speckled but the speckles are only there to show that he is tawny, and from the speckles one can see what the lion would look like if he were not tawny. The nice thing about this image is the penumbra, which demands nothing beyond my powers of vision. And there I sit with butterfly and lion. My clearing has a wealth of minerals: these consist of colours. There is only one danger: the dread knowledge that outside the clearing I am lost. For it will no longer be the forest (something love has already taught me) but only an empty field (which fear has taught me): so empty that I might just as easily go in one direction as in the other, a wilderness so devoid of cover and concealment that I should never be able to find an animal there to call my own. I put my fears aside, take a deep breath to regain my composure and settle down to enjoy my intimacy with the lion and the butterflies; we do not think, we simply enjoy ourselves. In this image-cum-refuge I am not black and white. Even without being able to see myself, I know that to these creatures I am coloured; without exceeding their powers of vision for that would unsettle them and we are in no sense unsettling. I am speckled with blue and green simply to show that I am neither blue nor green. Just look at what I am not! The penumbra is dark green and moist. I know that I have mentioned this already, but I am repeating it out of happiness: I want to repeat it over and over again. Until we actually feel that we are there. And really enjoying ourselves. Truly, I have never been so contented. Why? What does it matter? Each of us is in the right place, and I am perfectly happy with mine. I cannot resist repeating myself for things are getting better all the time: the tame lion, and the butterflies flitting quietly as I sit on the ground embroidering. We are thoroughly enjoying our clearing in the forest. We are contented.