Near to the Wild Heart (4 page)

She climbed down from the rocks, walked unsteadily along the solitary beach until she felt the water on her feet. Crouching down, her legs shaking, she drank a little sea-water. And there she lingered, resting. From time to time, she half closed her eyes, kept them level with the sea and she faltered, the vision was so sharp -just that long, green line, attaching her eyes to the water
ad infinitum.
The sun broke through the clouds and the glints of light that sparkled on the waters were tiny flares going in and out. The sea, beyond the waves, watched from afar, silent, without tears, without breasts. Mighty, mighty. Mighty, she smiled. And, suddenly, without any warning, she felt something powerful inside her, something strange which caused her to tremble a little. But it was neither cold nor sad, it was some mighty thing which came from the sea, which came from the taste of salt in her mouth, and from her, from her herself. It was not sadness, but happiness close to horror... Every time she looked at the sea and its tranquil brilliance, she felt a sudden tightening then slackening throughout her body, around her waist and her bosom. She didn't really know if she should laugh for it was no laughing matter. On the contrary, oh, on the contrary, behind that thing lay the events of yesterday. She covered her face with her hands, almost ashamed, as she waited, feeling the heat of her laughter and her exhalation as it was sucked in once more. The water trickled over her feet which were now bare, gurgling between her toes, escaping as clear, as clear, as some transparent animal. Transparent and alive... She felt an urge to drink it, to bite it slowly. She caught it with cupped hands. The tiny quiescent lake glistened calmly in the sun, became warm, trickled away, escaped. The sand absorbed it quickly, quickly, went on absorbing it as if it had never experienced a trickle of water. She wet her face, passed her tongue over the empty, salty palm of her hand. The salt and the sun were like tiny, shining arrows which appeared here and there, stinging, stretching the skin of her wet face. Her happiness increased, gathered in her throat like a sack of air. But it was now a solemn happiness, with no desire for laughter. It was a happiness close to tears, dear God. Gradually, the thought occurred to her. Without fear, no longer grey and tearful, but naked and silent beneath the sun like the white sand. Daddy is dead. Daddy is dead. She breathed slowly. Now she really knew that Daddy had died. Now, beside the sea where the sparkling light was a shower of fishes made out of water. Her father had died just as the sea was deep. Suddenly she understood. She felt that her father had died just as one cannot see the bottom of the sea. She had not been defeated by her grief. She understood that her father had died. Nothing more. And her sadness was exhausting, heavy, without hatred. She carried that exhaustion with her as she walked along that endless beach. She looked at her dark, slender feet like twigs gathered from the quiescent whiteness where they sank and lifted rhythmically, as if breathing. She walked and walked and there was nothing to be done: her father had died.

She lay prostrate on the sand, her hands protecting her face, leaving only a tiny gap for air. It was starting to get dark, so dark, and little by little there emerged circles and red stains, round, quivering bubbles, growing and diminishing. The grains of sand pricked her skin, became embedded. Even with her eyes shut, she could sense that on the beach the waves were being sucked in rapidly, so rapidly, by the sea, the waves, too, with lowered eyelids. Then they gently returned, to the palms of her open hands, her body completely relaxed. It was consoling to hear that sound. I am a person. And many things were about to follow. What? Whatever might happen would depend on her. Even if no one should understand: she would think of something and then find herself unable to describe it accurately. Especially when it came to thinking, everything was impossible. For example, sometimes an idea occurred to her and, surprised, she would reflect: why didn't I think of this before? It wasn't the same thing as suddenly seeing a tiny gash in the table and saying: Now then, I didn't notice that before! It wasn't... A thing thought did not exist before being thought. Like this, for instance: Gustavo's fingerprints... What was being thought became something thought. Furthermore: not all things thought came into existence from that moment onwards... For if I say: Auntie is having lunch with Uncle, I don't bring anything to life. Or even if I decide I'm going for a stroll; that's fine, I go for a stroll... and nothing exists. But if I say, for example: flowers on the grave, there you have something which did not exist before I thought of flowers on a grave. It's the same with music. Why didn't she play on her own all the pieces of music that existed? — She looked at the open piano — all the pieces of music were stored inside there.. .Her eyes widened, grown dark and mysterious. 'Everything, everything.' That was when she began to tell lies. For she was a person who had already begun. All of this was impossible to explain, like that word 'never', neither masculine nor feminine. But even so, didn't she know when to say 'yes'? She knew. Oh, she knew more and more. For example, the sea. The sea was immense. Just to think of the sea made her want to sink into the sand, or to open her eyes wide, to stay there watching, but then she found there was nothing to watch. At her aunt's home, they would almost certainly spoil her with sweets during the first few days. She would bathe in the blue and white bathtub, once she was living in the house. And each night, when it turned dark, she would slip on her nightdress and go to bed. In the morning, coffee with milk and biscuits. Her aunt always baked large biscuits. But without salt. Like someone dressed in mourning watching from the tram. She would dip her biscuit into the sea before eating it. She would take a bite, then dash home to swallow a mouthful of coffee. And that is how she would go on. She would play in the yard, where there were sticks and bottles. But where, above all, there was that old chicken-coop without any chickens. The place smelled of lime and excrement and of things drying out. But she could sit in there, right down on the ground, looking at the soil. Soil formed from so many bits and pieces that it gave you a headache trying to guess just how many. The chicken-coop had netting and everything, and this would be her home. And there was still her uncle's farm which she scarcely knew, but where she would spend her holidays from now on. There were lots of nice things to look forward to, weren't there? She buried her face in her hands. Oh, such fear, such fear. But it wasn't only fear. It was like someone who has finished something and says: Please, Miss, I've finished. And the teacher says: Just sit there and wait for the others. And you sit there quietly as if you were in church. Inside a tall church and without saying a word. Those slender, fragile saints. When you touch them they feel cold. Cold and divine. And everything remains silent. Oh, such fear, such fear. However, it was not simply fear. I don't have anything to do and I don't know what to do. Like looking at something pretty, a fluffy chick, the sea, a lump in one's throat. But it wasn't only that. Open eyes blinking, and confused with the things behind the curtain.

Joana's Pleasures

The freedom she often experienced did not come from lucid reflections, but from a state that seemed to consist of perceptions, much too organic to be expressed in thoughts. Sometimes at the heart of that sensation there was the glimmering of an idea which made her vaguely aware of her species and colouring.

The state she slipped into when she murmured: eternity. The very thought acquired the nature of eternity. It deepened as if by magic and expanded, without any proper content or form, but also without dimensions. She had the impression that if she could manage to retain that sensation for a few more seconds she would experience a revelation — effortlessly, like seeing the rest of the world simply by leaning away from the earth and out into space. Eternity was not only time, but something akin to the deeply-rooted certainty of not being able to hold it in one's body because of death; the impossibility of suppressing eternity; just as an almost abstract feeling of absolute purity was eternal. But the clearest suggestion of eternity stemmed from the impossibility of knowing how many human beings would succeed her own body, which would one day distance itself from the present with the velocity of a shooting-star.

She defined eternity and explanations were inevitably born like the pulsations of the heart. She would not change a single word for they were her truth. They no sooner appeared, however, than they became devoid of any logic. To define eternity as a quantity greater than time and greater even than the time the human mind can sustain thought, would not permit her, even so, to perceive its duration. Its essential quality was not to have any quantity, not to be measurable and divisible because everything which could be measured and divided had a beginning and an end. Eternity was not that infinitely great quantity that exhausted itself; eternity was succession.

Then Joana suddenly understood that the greatest beauty was to be found in succession, that movement explained form — there was something so elevated and pure when one cried out: movement explains form! — and in succession one also discovered sorrow because the body was much slower than the movement of uninterrupted continuity. Imagination captured and possessed the future of the present, while the body remained at the beginning of the road, living in another rhythm, blind to the experience of the spirit... Through these perceptions — by means of them, Joana made something exist — she connected with a happiness that was self-sufficient.

There were lots of pleasant sensations. To climb a mountain, to linger on the summit and, without looking round, to feel the presence of that conquered territory she had left behind, her uncle's farm way off in the distance. The wind catching her clothes, her hair. Her arms free, her heart closing and opening savagely, but her face bright and serene beneath the sun. And knowing, above all, that the earth beneath her feet was so deep and secret that there was no need to fear the invasion of understanding dissolving its mystery. This sensation had the hallmark of glory.

Certain moments of music. Music belonged to the same category as thought, both vibrated in the same movement and species. It possessed the same quality of a thought so intimate that upon hearing that music, the thought itself was revealed. A thought so intimate that upon hearing someone repeat the subtle nuances of those sounds, Joana found herself surprised, as if she had been invaded and dispersed. She no longer even heard the harmony once it was diffused — for then it was no longer hers. Or even when she listened to it a number of times, which destroyed the analogy: for her thought never repeated itself, while music could be played over and over again and sound exactly as before — thought was only equal to music creating itself. Joana did not identify herself closely with all the sounds. Only with those that were pure, and what she loved here was neither tragic nor comic.

There was also much to see. Certain moments of seeing were as valid as those 'flowers on a grave'. What one saw passed into existence. Joana, however, was not expecting some vision in a miracle announced by the Angel Gabriel. She was as astonished at what she had already perceived, suddenly seeing something for the first time, suddenly realizing that that something was constantly alive. Like a barking dog outlined against the sky. That was something apart that required no further explanation... An open door swinging to and fro, creaking in the evening silence... And suddenly, yes, there was the real thing. An old portrait of someone whom you don't know and are never likely to recognize because the portrait is old or because the person in the portrait has turned to ashes — this little distraction brought a moment of welcome respite. Also a mast without a flag, erect and mute, fixed into position on a summer's day — both the face and body blind. In order to have a vision, the thing did not have to be sad or happy or to manifest itself. It was enough to exist, preferably still and silent, in order to feel its mark. Dear God, the mark of existence... But this was not something to be pursued, since all that existed, perforce existed... The vision, in fact, consisted in surprising the symbol of things in the things themselves.

She found these discoveries confusing. But this also lent a certain grace. How to clarify herself, for example, what long, sharp lines did the mark clearly have? They were sharp and thin. At a given moment they were nothing but lines, ending up exactly as they had started. Interrupted, constantly interrupted not because they were likely to come to an end, but because no one could terminate them. The circles were more perfect, less tragic, and did not move her sufficiently. A circle was the work of man, completed before death, and God Himself couldn't improve on that finish. While straight, thin, free lines-were like thoughts.

There were other things that confused her. She remembered Joana as a little girl looking out to sea: the tranquillity that came from the eyes of an ox, the tranquillity that came from that sprawling expanse of sea, from the sea's deep womb, from the cat lying rigid on the pavement. All is one, all is one... she had chanted. The confusion stemmed from the entwinement of the sea, the cat and the ox with Joana herself. The confusion also arose because she did not know whether she had discovered 'all is one' when she was still a little girl standing looking out to sea, or later, when she remembered those moments. Meanwhile, the confusion didn't only confer a certain grace, but also a sense of reality. It struck her that, if she were to order and clearly explain what she had experienced, she would have destroyed the essence of 'all is one'. In her confusion, she was unwittingly truth itself, which probably gave her a greater capacity for life than knowledge of life. This truth, even though revealed, would be of no use to Joana, because it didn't form her stem but her root, fastening her body to everything that was no longer hers, imponderable and elusive.

Oh, there were motives for happiness, happiness without laughter, serious, profound, fresh. Whenever she discovered things about herself, the very moment she spoke, her thoughts were running parallel to the words. One day, she had told Otávio about Joana's childhood and the housemaid who invented more games than anyone she had ever known. And how she pretended to be dreaming.