Near to the Wild Heart (11 page)

She carried her diseased body with her, a troublesome wound by day. Lightheartedness was replaced by gloom and fatigue. Satisfied — an animal that had quenched its thirst, filling its body with water. Yet anxious and unhappy as if despite everything there were still lands without water, arid and parched. Above all, she suffered from misunderstanding, alone, dumbfounded. Until leaning her head against the window-pane — the street peaceful, the evening drawing in, the world outside there — she felt moisture on her face. She wept freely, as if this were the solution. Large tears ran down her cheeks, without her moving a single facial muscle. She wept so profusely that she couldn't speak. Afterwards she felt as if she had reverted to her real proportions, tiny, shrunken, humble. Serenely empty. She was prepared.

She then looked for him. And her new glory and suffering were now more intense and somehow more unbearable.

She got married.

Love came to confirm all the familiar things of whose existence she only knew without ever having accepted and experienced them. The world revolved beneath her feet, there were two sexes among humans, a thin line linked hunger to satisfaction, the love of animals, torrential waters coursed towards the sea, children were creatures in the process of growing up, in the soil the bud would transform itself into plant. She would no longer be able to deny... what? — she asked herself in suspense. The luminous centre of things, the affirmation dormant beneath everything, the harmony that existed beneath what she did not understand.

She awoke to a new morning, blissfully alive. And her joy was as pure as the sun's reflection on the water. Each event vibrated in her body like little glass needles that were splintering. After some moments, fleeting and profound, she lived tranquilly for a long time, understanding, accepting, resigning herself to everything. It seemed to her that she formed part of the real world and that she had mysteriously distanced herself from other human beings. Notwithstanding that during this period she was able to extend her hand to them with a fraternity whose vital source could be felt. They spoke to her of their own sorrows and she, although she might not hear, think or speak, wore a kind expression — shining and mysterious like that of a pregnant woman.

What was happening then? Miraculously she was alive, relieved of all memories. Her entire past had evaporated. And even the present was one of mists, sweet, fresh mists, separating her from solid reality, preventing her from touching it. Were she to pray, were she to think, it would be to give thanks for having a body made for love. The only truth became that tenderness into which she had sunk. Her face was vague and ill-defined, floating among all the other opaque and confident faces, as if it were not yet able to find support in any expression. Her whole body and soul lost their boundaries, they merged and fused into a single chaos, gentle and amorphous, relaxed and with uncertain movements, like matter that was simply alive. It was perfect renewal, creation.

And her union with the earth was so deep and her certainty so firm — about what? what? — that she could now lie without surrendering. All this left her thinking at times: Dear God, perhaps I am making more of this than of love?

She gradually became accustomed to her new state, she became accustomed to breathing, to living. Little by little, she started becoming older in herself, she opened her eyes and once more she was a statue, no longer plastic, yet defined. From afar, disquiet was reawakening. At night, between the sheets, the slightest movement or unexpected thought awakened her to herself. Mildly surprised, she opened her eyes wide, perceived her own body plunged into reassuring contentment. She wasn't suffering, but where was she?

— Joana... Joana... she softly called to herself. And her body scarcely responded, quietly echoing: Joana.

The days sped by and she wished to confront herself more closely. She now summoned herself in a loud voice, and it was not enough that she should be breathing. Happiness was effacing her, effacing her... She now wanted to know herself again, even with sorrow. But she became increasingly submerged. Tomorrow she put it off, tomorrow I shall confront myself. But the new day skimmed over her surface, light as a summer evening, barely unsettling her nerves.

The only thing she had not got used to was sleeping. Each night, sleep became an adventure, to fall from the effortless clarity in which she lived into mystery itself, sombre and fresh, to cross darkness. To die and to be reborn.

So I shall never have any mandate, she thought to herself after she had been married for several months. I slip from one truth to another, always forgetting the first one, always dissatisfied. Her life consisted of tiny, complete lives, of perfect circles, that became isolated from each other. Except that at the end of each of them, instead of dying and beginning life on another plane, inorganic or organically deficient, Joana recommenced on the human plane itself. Only the fundamental notes were different. Or was it only the supplementary ones that were different while the basic ones were eternally the same?

It was ever futile to have been happy or unhappy. And even to have loved. No happiness or unhappiness had been so intense that it could have transformed the elements of her matter, giving her a unique path — as one's true path ought to be. I perpetually go on inaugurating myself, opening and closing circles of life, throwing them aside, withered, impregnated with the past. Why are they so independent, why don't they merge into one solid mass and provide me with ballast? The fact is that they were far too integral. Moments so intense, red, condensed within themselves that they needed neither past nor future in order to exist. They brought an awareness that did not serve as experience, a direct awareness, closer to feeling than perception. The truth then revealed was so true that it couldn't endure save in its recipient, in the very fact which had provoked it. So true, so fatal, that it only existed in function of its origin. Once the moment of life is over the corresponding truth is also exhausted. I cannot mould it, make it inspire other such moments. Consequently nothing compromises me.

Meanwhile, the justification of her short-lived glory perhaps had no value other than that of affording her a certain pleasure in reasoning things out, such as: if a stone falls, that stone exists, that stone fell from somewhere, that stone... She was often so mistaken.

Part Two

The Marriage

Joana suddenly remembered, without any forewarning, herself standing at the top of the stairs. She did not know if she had once been looking down from the top of a staircase, crammed with lots of people, dressed in satin, with large fans. Most likely she had never actually experienced this. The fans, for example, had no material consistency in her memory. If she tried to think of them, she didn't really see fans, but shiny blotches swimming back and forth amidst words in French, whispered carefully through pursed lips, pouting like this as if a kiss were being blown from afar. The fan began as a fan and ended with words in French. Ridiculous. So it was a lie.

Yet despite everything, the impression persisted as if the most important thing lay beyond the staircase and the fans. She stopped moving for a moment and only her eyes blinked rapidly, in pursuit of some sensation. Ah, yes. She descended the marble staircase, feeling in the soles of her feet that cold fear of slipping, her hands hot and perspiring, the ribbon tightening round her waist, pulling her up like a hoist. Then the smell of new clothes, the bright inquisitive glance of a man eyeing her up and down and leaving her, as if a button had been pressed in the dark, lighting up her body. She was pervaded by long, integral muscles. Any thought descended through those smooth tendons only to tremble there in her ankles whose flesh was as tender as that of young fowl.

She paused on the bottom step, securely and without danger, she placed the palm of her hand gently on the cold, smooth banister. And without knowing why, she felt a sudden happiness, almost painful, a weakness in her heart, as if it were soft pulp and someone was poking fingers into it, kneading it gently. Why? She raised her hand weakly in a gesture of refusal. She did not wish to know. But now the question had surfaced and in absurd reply came the shining banister impulsively tossed from on high like a glossy streamer during carnival time. But it was not carnival time, for there was silence in the room, a silence through which everything could be seen. The humid reflections of the lamps over the mirrors, the ladies' brooches and the buckles on the gentlemen's belts communicating from time to time with the chandelier, through subtle rays of light.

She began to perceive the ambience. Between the men and women there were no hard spaces, everything blended softly. Vapour, humid and exciting, rose from some invisible heater. Once again, she felt a slight pain in her heart, and she smiled, her nose wrinkled, her breathing faint.

She paused for a moment's rest. She began recovering slowly, regaining some sense of reality, despite her efforts to the contrary, her body once more insensible, opaque and strong, like something that has been alive for some considerable time. She could make out the room, the curtains waving ironically, the bed obstinately still and useless. She anxiously tried to take herself to the top of the staircase and to descend once more. She could feel herself walking, but no longer felt her legs shaking, or her hands perspiring. Then she saw that her memory had drained.

She waited near the bookcase, where she had gone to look for... what? She frowned, not really interested. What? She tried to derive some amusement from the impression that in the middle of her forehead there was now a gaping hole where they had extracted the notion of whatever she had gone to look for.

She turned towards the door and asked in a low voice, eyes closed:

— What was it you wanted, Otávio?

— The one about Civil Law, he said, and before getting back to his notebook, he gave her a quick look of surprise.

She brought him the book, distracted, her movements slow. He waited for it with outstretched hand, without lifting his head. She lingered for a moment, holding the book out in his direction, keeping it at a distance. But Otávio didn't notice the delay and with a tiny shrug she put the book into his hand.

She sat down uncomfortably in a nearby chair, as if about to depart at any moment. Gradually, since nothing was happening, she leaned back submissively, her eyes vacant, thinking of nothing.

Otávio continued reading about Civil Law, pausing over some line and then impatiently biting his nail and quickly turning several pages at a time. Until he stopped once more, absorbed, passing his tongue over the edge of his teeth, one hand gently pulling the hairs of his eyebrows. Some word or other immobilized him, his hand in mid-air, his mouth open like that of a dead fish. Suddenly he threw the book down with a thud. His eyes bright and eager, he wrote hastily in his notebook, stopping for a moment to take a deep breath, and, with a gesture which startled her, began tapping on his teeth with his knuckles.

What an animal, she thought. He interrupted what he was writing and looked at her in terror, as if she had thrown something at him. She went on staring at him unintentionally and Otávio stirred in his chair, simply reflecting that he was not alone. He smiled, diffident and annoyed, and held out his hand to her across the table. She leaned forward in her chair and offered him in turn the tips of her fingers. Otávio squeezed them rapidly, smiling, and then suddenly, before she even had time to withdraw her arm, he returned abruptly to his notebook, almost burying his face in it and writing furiously.

He was the one who was feeling now, Joana thought. And suddenly, perhaps out of envy, without any thought, she hated him with such brute force that her hands were gripping the arms of the chair and her teeth were clenched. She panted for a few seconds, reinvigorated. Fearing that her husband might sense those seconds, force her to disguise her hatred and so diminish the strength of her feelings. He was to blame, she thought coldly, looking out for a fresh wave of anger. He was to blame, he was to blame. His presence and more than his presence: the knowledge that he existed robbed her of any freedom. Only on rare occasions now, in some fleeting escapade, was she able to feel anything. That's right. He was to blame. How had she not discovered it before? — she asked herself in triumph. He was robbing her of everything, everything. And as if the phrase were still weak, she thought with intensity, her eyes closed, everything! She felt better, she could think more clearly.

Before he appeared she had always had her hands outstretched and how much, oh how much she received to her surprise! To her overwhelming surprise, like a ray of sweet surprise, like a shower of tiny lights... Now all her time was devoted to him and she felt that any minutes she could call her own had been conceded, broken into little ice-cubes which she must swallow quickly before they melted. And whipping herself into a gallop: look, that time is freedom! Look, think quickly, look, pull yourself together quickly, look, it's gone! Now — only much later, the tray of ice-cubes once more and yourself looking at it in fascination, watching the drops of water already trickling.

Then he came. And she rested at last, with a heavy sigh. — But she didn't want to rest! — Her blood ran more slowly, its rhythm domesticated, like an animal that has trained itself to fit into a cage.

She remembered that she had gone to look for something — what? Ah, Civil Law — in the bookcase at the top of the stairs, such a gratuitous memory, so free, even if imagined ... How young she was then. Clear water running within and without. She missed that sensation, felt the need to experience it once more. She looked anxiously up and down, searching for something. But everything was as it had always been. Old. I'll leave him, was her first thought, without any premonition. She opened her eyes, watching out for herself. She knew that that thought might bring consequences. As happened in the past, when her resolutions didn't require great facts, merely some trifling idea, some meaningless vision, in order to be formed. I'll leave him, she repeated, and this time tiny fibres broke away from her thought, attaching it to herself. From now on the thought was inside her and the filaments thickened until they formed roots.