Near to the Wild Heart (7 page)

— Has Armanda not come? — Joana's voice accelerated the tick-tock of the clock, provoked a sudden rapid movement at the table.

Her uncle and aunt eyed each other furtively. Joana sighed aloud: was she afraid of her then?

— Armanda's husband isn't on duty today, so she isn't coming to dinner, her aunt finally replied. And suddenly, as if satisfied, she began eating. Her uncle chewed more quickly. Silence returned without dissolving the distant murmur of the sea. So, they didn't have the courage.

— When am I being sent to boarding-school? — Joana asked.

The soup tureen slipped from her aunt's hands, the dark, cynical broth spread rapidly over the table. Her uncle rested his knife and fork on his plate, anguish written all over his face.

— How do you know that... he stammered in confusion... She had been listening at the door...

The drenched tablecloth gave off gentle fumes like the dying embers of a fire. Immobile and mesmerised as if she were confronting something beyond remedy, the woman stared at the spilled soup which was rapidly getting cold.

The water, blind and deaf, but happily not mute, sparkling and bubbling as if splashed on the bright enamel of the bathtub. The bathroom was filled with warm vapours, the mirrors covered in steam, the naked body of a young girl reflected on the damp mosaic walls.

The girl laughs softly, rejoicing in her own body. Her smooth, slender legs, her tiny breasts emerge from the water. She scarcely knows herself, still not fully grown, still almost a child. She stretches out one leg, looks at her foot from a distance, moves it tenderly, slowly, like a fragile wing. She lifts her arms above her head, stretches them out towards the ceiling lost in the shadows, her eyes closed, without any feeling, only movement. Her body stretches and spreads out, the moisture on her skin glistening in the semi-darkness — her body tracing a tense, quivering line. When she drops her arms once more, she becomes compact, white and secure. She chuckles to herself, moves her long neck from one side to another, tilts her head backwards -the grass is always fresh, someone is about to kiss her, soft, tiny rabbits snuggle up against each other with their eyes shut. — She starts laughing again, gentle murmurings like those of water. She strokes her waist, her hips, her life.

She sinks into the bathtub as if it were the sea. A tepid world closes over her silently, quietly. Small bubbles slip away gently and vanish once they touch the enamel. The young girl feels the water weighing on her body, she pauses for a moment as if someone had tapped her lightly on the shoulder. Paying attention to what she is feeling, the invading tide. What has happened? She becomes a serious creature, with wide, deep eyes. She can scarcely breathe. What has happened? The open, silent eyes of things went on shining amidst the vapours. Over the same body that has divined happiness there is water — water. No, no... Why? Creatures born into the world like water. She becomes restless, tries to escape. Everything — she says slowly as if handing over something, as if probing herself without understanding. Everything. And that word is peace, solemn and enigmatic, like some ritual. The water covers her body. But what has happened? She murmurs in a low voice, she utters syllables that are lukewarm and jumbled.

The bathroom is hazy, almbst extinct. The objects and walls have caved in, melt and dissolve into fumes. The water feels a little cooler on her skin and she trembles with fear and discomfort.

When she emerges from the bathtub she is a stranger who doesn't know what she should feel. Around her there is nothing and she knows nothing. She is weak and sad, she moves slowly, unhurried, for some considerable time. The cold runs down her back with icy feet but she is in no mood to play, she huddles up, wounded and unhappy. She dries herself without love, humiliated and miserable, wraps herself in the dressing-gown as in a warm embrace. Shut up in herself, unwilling to look, ah, unwilling to look, she slips through the passageway — that long throat, crimson, dark, and discreet-sinking down into the belly, into everything. Everything, everything, she repeats mysteriously. She closes the window in the room — reluctant to see, hear or feel anything. In the silent bed, floating in the darkness, she curls up as if she were in the last womb and forgets. Everything is vague, uncertain and silent.

Lined up behind her were the dormitory beds from the boarding-school. And in front, the window opened onto the night.

I've discovered a miracle in the rain — Joana thought — a miracle splintered into dense, solemn, glittering stars, like a suspended warning: like a lighthouse. What are they trying to tell me? In those stars I can foretell the secret, their brilliance is the impassive mystery I can hear flowing inside me, weeping at length in tones of romantic despair. Dear God, at least bring me into contact with them, satisfy my longing to kiss them. To feel their light on my lips, to feel it glow inside my body, leaving it shining and transparent, fresh and moist like the minutes that come before dawn. Why do these strange longings possess me? Raindrops and stars, this dense and chilling fusion has roused me, opened the gates of my green and sombre forest, of this forest smelling of an abyss where water flows. And harnessed it to night. Here, beside the window, the atmosphere is more tranquil. Stars, stars, zero. The word cracks between my teeth into fragile splinters. Because no rain falls inside me, I wish to be a star. Purify me a little and I shall acquire the dimensions of those beings who take refuge behind the rain.

At this moment, inspiration sends pain throughout my body. One more second, and it will need to be something greater than inspiration. Instead of this suffocating happiness, as if there were too much air, I shall experience the clear impossibility of having more than inspiration, of surpassing it, of possessing the thing itself — and really be a star. Look where madness, madness leads one. Nevertheless, it is the truth. What does it matter that to all appearances I am still in the dormitory at this moment, the other girls fast asleep in their beds, their bodies quite still. What does it matter what it really is? Truly I am on my knees, naked as an animal, beside the bed, my soul despairing as only the body of a virgin can despair. The bed gradually disappears, the walls of the room recede, collapse in ruins. And I am in the world, as free and lithe as a colt on the plain. I rise as gentle as a puff of air, I raise my sleepy head like that of a flower, my feet agile, and cross the fields, further than the earth, the world, time, God. I sink only to emerge, as if from clouds, from lands still inconceivable, ah, still inconceivable. From lands, still beyond my powers of imagination, but which will appear one day. I roam, I wander, I go on and on... Always without stopping, distracting my weary desire to reach some final resting-place. Where did I once see a moon high in the sky, white and silent? Livid clothing fluttering in the breeze. The mast without a flag, erect and mute, rooted in space... Everything awaiting midnight — I am deceiving myself, I must return. I feel no madness in my desire to bite into stars, but the earth still exists. And the first truth resides in the earth and in the body. If the brilliance of the stars causes internal pain, if this remote communication is possible, it's because something almost resembling a star glimmers inside me. Here I am, returned to the body. To return to my body. When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent. Why silent? Do these curves beneath my blouse exist with impunity? Why are they silent? My mouth, still somewhat childlike, so certain of its destiny, remains true to itself, despite my total distraction. Sometimes, upon making this discovery, there comes this love for myself, constant glances in the mirror, a knowing smile for those who stare at me. A period of interrogation addressed to my body, a time of greed, sleep, long walks in the open air. Until some phrase or glance — like that in the mirror — unexpectedly reminds me of other secrets, those which remove all limits. Enthralled, I plunge my body to the bottom of the well, I penetrate all its sources and walking in my sleep I follow another path. -To analyse moment by moment, to perceive the nucleus of each thing made from time or space. To possess each moment, to link them to my awareness, like tiny filaments, barely perceptible yet strong. Can this be life? Even so, it might elude me. Another way of capturing it would be to live. But the dream is more complete than the reality; the latter plunges me into unconsciousness. What matters in the end: to be alive or to know that one is alive? — The purest of words, crystal drops. I feel their moist and gleaming form struggling inside me. But where can I find what I must express? Inspire me, I have almost everything: I possess the outline awaiting the essence; is that it? — What is someone to do who doesn't know what to do with himself? To utilize himself as body and soul to the advantage of his body and soul? Or to transform his strength into an alien strength? Or to wait for the solution to come from himself as a consequence? I can express nothing, not even within form. All I possess lies much deeper inside me. One day, after finally speaking, shall I still have something on which to live? Or will everything that I might say be beneath and beyond life?

— I try to distance myself from everything that is a form of life. I try to isolate myself in order to find life in itself. Nevertheless, I have relied too much on the game that distracts and consoles and when I distance myself from it, I suddenly find myself defenceless. The moment I close the door behind me, I instantly detach myself from things. All that has been distances itself from me, quietly sinking into my remote waters. I can hear it drop. Happy and tranquil, I wait for myself, I wait for myself to rise and to emerge as I really am before my own eyes. Instead of securing myself with my flight, I see myself abandoned, solitary, thrown into a cell without dimensions, where light and shadows are silent phantoms. Within my inner self I find the silence I am seeking. But it leaves me so bereft of any memory of any human being and of me myself, that I transform this impression into the certainty of physical solitude. Were I to cry out — I can no longer see things clearly — my voice would receive the same indifferent echo from the walls of the earth. So without experiencing things, should I not find life? But, even so, in the white and limited solitude where I fall, I am still trapped amidst impenetrable mountains. Trapped, trapped. Where is my imagination? I walk over invisible tracks. Prison, freedom. These are the words that occur to me. But I sense that they are not the only true and irreplaceable ones. Freedom means little. What I desire still has no name. — For I am a toy they wind up and once this has been done it will not find its own, much deeper life. To search tranquilly, to concede that perhaps I may only find it were I to look for it in secondary sources. Otherwise I shall die of thirst. Perhaps I have not been made for the pure, expansive waters, but for those which are small and readily accessible. And perhaps my craving for another source, which gives me the expression of someone in search of food, perhaps this craving is a whim-and nothing more. Yet surely those rare moments of self-confidence, of blind existence, of happiness as intense and serene as an organ playing — surely those moments prove that I am capable of fulfilling my quest and that this longing which consumes my whole being is not merely some whim? Moreover, that whim is the truth! I cry out to myself. Such moments are rare. Only yesterday, I suddenly thought in class, almost out of the blue, apropos of nothing: movement explains form. The clear notion of the perfect, the sudden freedom I felt... That day, on my uncle's farm, when I fell into the river. Before I was impenetrable and opaque. But when I clambered out, it as as if I had been born from water. I got out soaking wet, my clothes clinging to my skin, my hair shining wet and straggling. Something stirred inside me and it was almost certainly only my body. But a sweet miracle can make everything transparent and this was certainly my soul as well. At that moment I was truly inside my inner self and there was silence. Only I realized that my silence was part of the silence of the countryside. And I did not feel abandoned. The horse, from which I'd fallen, was waiting for me beside the river. I remounted and sped along the slopes where refreshing shadows were gathering. I pulled up the reins, stroked the animal's fevered and throbbing neck. I rode on at a slow pace, listening to the happiness inside me, as high and limpid as a summer sky. I stroked my arms where there were still trickles of water. I could feel the live animal close to me, an extension of my body. We both breathed, throbbing and youthful. A somewhat sombre colour had settled on the plains, warmed by the last rays of sunlight and the gentle breeze slowly died away. I must never forget, I thought, that I have been happy, that I am happy, happier than anyone could hope to be. But I forgot, I was always forgetting.

I sat waiting in the Cathedral, distracted and vague. I inhaled the overpowering odour, purple and cold, that emanated from the holy statues. And suddenly before I knew what was happening, like some cataclysm, the invisible organ burst out into rich tremulous strains of the utmost purity. Without any melody, almost without any music, almost without any vibrations. The lengthy walls and high vaults of the church received and returned those strains, sonorous, naked, and intense. They penetrated my body, criss-crossed inside me, filled my nerves with tremors, my brain with sounds. I thought no thoughts, only music. Impassively, under the weight of that canticle, I slid from the bench and knelt down without praying, annihilated. The organ fell silent with the same suddenness with which it had started up, like an inspiration. I went on breathing quietly, my body still vibrating to the final strains that hovered in midair in a warm, translucent buzzing. And the moment was so perfect that I felt neither fear nor gratitude and did not invoke God. I want to die now, something called out inside me, a cry of freedom rather than suffering. Any moment following upon that one would be less exalted and empty. I wanted to rise and only death, as an end, could grant me the summit without the descent. People were getting up around me, were stirring. I stood up and made for the exit, weak and pale.