The Complete Stories (33 page)

Invisible angels
: Remove your hands from your face, husband. He
who was no longer is, the opening of the curtains has revealed: that you are the
lowliest, lowliest, lowliest wheel of the terrible, terrible harmony.

Lover
: I thought I had lived, but she was the one who was
living me. I was lived.

Husband
: How can I recognize you, if you are smiling utterly
sanctified? These chaste arms are not the arms that deceivingly embraced me. And
could this hair be the same that I used to let down? I have interrupted you all, and
the one who says so is the same who incited you. For I see an error and I see a
crime, a monstrous upheaval: behold, the woman sinned with one body, and you burn
another.

Priest
: But “Lord, thou art always the same.”

1
st guard
: All regret what is too
late to regret, and disagree for the sake of disagreeing, knowing full well they
came here to kill.

2
nd guard
: Behold at last the
moment that will grant us the taste of war.

Priest
: Behold the moment when, by the grace of the Lord, I
shall sin with the sinner, I shall blaze with the sinner, and in the infernos to
which I shall descend with her, by Thy name shall be saved.

Invisible angels
: Behold the moment has arrived. Already we
feel a difficulty of dawn. We are on the threshold of our initial form. It must be
good to be born.

People
: May she who is about to die speak.

Priest
: Leave her be. I fear from this woman who is ours a word
that is hers.

People
: May she who is about to die speak.

Lover:
Leave her be. Don’t you see how alone she is.

People:
May she speak, may she speak and may she speak.

Invisible angels
: May she not speak . . . may she not
speak . . . since we hardly need her . . .

People
: May she speak, may she speak and may etc.

Priest
: Take her death as her word.

People
: We do not understand, we do not understand and we do
not understand.

1
st and 2nd guards
: Get ye away,
for the fire may spread and through ye garments set all the city ablaze.

People
: This fire was already ours, and the whole city
burns.

1
st and 2nd guards
: Behold the
first radiant light. Long live our King.

People
: Under the sign of the Salamander.

1
st and 2nd guards
: Under the sign
of the Salamander.

Invisible angels
: Under the sign of the Salamander
. . .

1
st and 2nd guards
: See the great
light. Long live our King.

People
: Well then hurrah, hurrah and hurrah.

Invisible angels
: Ah . . .

Priest
: Ave Maria, how far shall I descend?, “though I have
nothing for which to be reproached, that is not enough to absolve me,” “Lord deliver
me from my need,” pray, pray . . .

Invisible angels
: . . . tremble, tremble, a plague of
angels now darkens the horizon . . .

Lover
: Woe is me who am not burned. I exist under the sign of
the same fate but my tragedy will never blaze.

Angels being born
: How good to be born. Look what a sweet
earth, what sweet and perfect harmony . . . From what is fulfilled we are
born. In the spheres where we used to alight it was easy not to live and to be the
free shadow of a child. But on this earth where there is sea and foam, and fire and
smoke, there exists a law prior to the law and still prior to the law, and that
gives form to the form to the form. How easy it was to be an angel. But on this
night of fire what furious, turbulent and abashed desire to be boy and girl.

Husband
: She sinned with one body and they set fire to another.
I was hurt in one soul, and behold I am taking vengeance in another.

People
: What a beautiful tawny color burnt flesh has.

Priest
: But not even the color is hers any longer. It is from
the Flame. Ah how purification blazes. At last, I suffer.

People
: We do not understand, we do not understand and we are
hungry for roast meat.

Husband
: With my cloak I might still smother the fire on your
garments!

Lover
: Not even her death does he understand, he who shared
with me the woman who belonged to no one.

Priest
: How I suffer. But “ye have not yet resisted unto
blood.”

Husband
: If with my cloak I were to smother your
garments . . .

Lover
: You could, yes. But understand: would she have the
strength to extend over a long life the pure fire of an instant?

Priest
: Behold, she who will become ashes and dust. Ah, “verily
thou art a God that hidest thyself.”

1
st guard
: I tell ye, she burns
faster than a heathen.

Priest
: “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.”

2
nd guard
: I tell ye, the smoke is
such that I can hardly see the body.

Husband
: I can hardly see the body of what I was.

Priest
: Praised be the name of the Lord, “Thy grace suffices
me,” “I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire,” was spoken at the
Apocalypse, praised be the name of the Lord.

People
: Well amen, amen and amen.

Priest
: “She took her delight in the slavery of the
senses.”

Husband
: She was no more than a common, common, common woman.

Lover
: Ah she was sweet and common. You were so very mine and
common.

Priest
: I suffer.

Lover
: For me and for her began something that forever must
be.

Th
e newborn angels
: Good morning!

Priest
: “Waiting for the day of eternal brightness to rise and
the shadows of the symbols to disperse.”

1
st and 2nd guards
: All speak and
none listen.

Priest
: It is a melodious uproar: I already hear the angels of
the dying.

Th
e newborn angels
: Good morning, good morning and
good morning. And already we do not understand, we do not understand and we do not
understand.

Husband
: Cursed be, if you think you have freed yourself from
me and that I have freed myself from you. Beneath the weight of brutal attraction,
you shall not leave my orbit and I shall not leave yours, and with nausea we shall
spin, until you overtake my orbit and I overtake yours, and in a superhuman hatred
we shall be one.

Priest
: The beauty of a night without passion. What abundance,
what consolation. “Great and unfathomable are His works.”

1
st and 2nd guards
: Just as in war,
when evil is committed to the flames, the good is not what remains . . .

Th
e newborn angels
: . . . we are born.

People
: We do not understand and we do not understand.

Husband
: I shall return now to the dead woman’s house. For
there is my former wife, awaiting me in her empty necklaces.

Priest
: The silence of a night without sin . . . What
brightness, what harmony.

Sleepy child
: Mother, what has happened?

Th
e newborn angels
: Mama, what has happened?

Women of the people
: My children, it went like this: etc. etc.
and etc.

Member of the people
: Forgive them, they believe in fatality
and are therefore fatal themselves.

Profile of Chosen Beings

(“Perfil de sêres eleitos”)

He was a being who chose. Among the thousand things he might have been, he had gone along choosing himself. In work for which he wore glasses, discerning whatever he could and using his damp hands to grope at whatever he couldn’t see, the being kept choosing and therefore would indirectly choose himself. Bit by bit he had gathered himself into being. He kept separating, separating. In relative liberty, if one discounted the furtive determinism that had acted discreetly without naming itself. Discounting this furtive determinism, the being chose himself freely. What guided him was the desire to discover his own determinism, and to make an effort to follow it, since the true line is very faded, the others are more visible. He kept separating, separating. He would separate the so-called wheat from the chaff, and the best, the best the being ate. Sometimes he ate the worst. The difficult choice was to eat the worst. He separated dangers from the great danger, and it was the great danger that the being, though afraid, would keep. Just to measure by fear the weight of things. He pushed away all the lesser truths that he never ended up learning. He wanted the truths that were hard to take. Since he ignored the lesser truths, the being seemed shrouded in mystery; since he was ignorant, he was a mysterious being. He had also become: an ignorant savant; a naive sage; forgetful but well aware; an honest fake; an absentminded contemplative; nostalgic for what he had neglected to learn; wistful for what he had definitively lost; and courageous because it was already too late. All this, paradoxically, gave the being the wholesome joy of the peasant who only deals with the basics, though he has no clue what movie is currently playing. And all this gave him the involuntary austerity that all vital work gives. Choosing and gathering had no proper start or end time, indeed it lasted a lifetime.

All this, paradoxically, increasingly gave the being the kind of profound joy that needs to be revealed, displayed, and communicated. In this communication the being was helped by his innate gift for liking. And this was something he hadn’t even gathered or chosen, it was a gift indeed. He liked the deep joy of others, through his innate gift he discovered the joy of others. Through his gift, he could also discover the solitude that other people had in relation to their own deepest joy. The being, also through his gift, knew how to play. And from birth he knew that gestures, without wounding through offense, transmitted the liking he felt for others. Without even feeling that he was using his gift, the being expressed himself; he would give, without realizing when he was giving, he would love without realizing that this was called love. His gift, in fact, was like the lack of a shirt on a happy man: since the being was very poor and didn’t have anything to give, the being would give himself. He would give himself in silence, and give what he had gathered of himself, like someone calling others over so they can see too. All this discreetly, for he was a shy being. It was also discreetly that the being saw in others what others had gathered of themselves; the being knew how difficult it was to find the faded line of one’s own destiny, how difficult it was to be careful not to lose sight of it, to go over it with pencil, erring, erasing, getting it right.

That was how the mistake came to surround the being. The others believed almost simplemindedly that they were seeing a static and fixed reality, and viewed the being as you view a picture. A very rich picture. They didn’t understand that for the being, pulling himself together, had been a labor of paring down and not of wealth. And, by mistake, the being was chosen. By mistake the being was loved. But feeling loved would mean recognizing oneself in this love. And that being was loved as if he were another being: as if he were a chosen being. The being shed the tears of a statue who at night on the square weeps without moving atop his marble horse. Falsely loved, the being ached all over. But whoever had chosen him wasn’t giving him a hand to get off the horse of hard silver, nor did they want to mount the horse of heavy gold. Aching stone was what the being felt while breaking to pieces alone in the square. Meanwhile, the beings who had chosen him slept. In fear? but they slept. Never had the darkness been greater in the square. Until dawn came. The rhythm of the earth was so generous that dawn came. But at night, when night fell, it grew dark again. The square enlarged again. And again, those who had chosen him slept. In fear, perhaps, but they slept. Were they afraid because they thought they would have to live in the square? They didn’t know that the square had merely been the being’s place of work. But that, in order to wander, he didn’t want a square. Those who slept didn’t know that the square had meant war for the chosen being, and that the war had been intended precisely to conquer what lay beyond the square. They thought, those who slept, that the chosen being, wherever he went, would throw open a square the way someone unrolls a canvas to paint on. They didn’t know that the canvas, for the chosen being, had merely been the way to survey on a map the world where the chosen being wished to go. The being had been preparing his whole life to be suitable for what lay beyond the square. It’s true that the being, upon feeling as ready as someone bathed in oils and perfumes, the chosen being had seen that there hadn’t been any time left to learn how to smile. But it’s true that this didn’t bother the being, since it was at the same time his great expectation: the being had left an entire land to be granted him by whoever wanted to grant it. The calculation of the being’s dream had been to remain deliberately incomplete.

But something had gone wrong. When the being caught sight of himself in the picture the others had taken of him, he was humbled in astonishment at what the others had made of him. They had made of him, no more, no less, than a chosen being; that is, they had besieged him. How to undo the mistake? To simplify things and save time, they had photographed the being. And now they no longer referred to the being, they referred to the photograph. All they had to do really was open the drawer and pull out the picture. Anyone, in fact, could get a copy. It was cheap, in fact.

Whenever people said to the being: I love you (but what about me? what about me? why not me too? why just my picture?), the being would get upset because he couldn’t even at least thank them: there was nothing to thank. And he didn’t complain, since he knew that the others weren’t making the mistake out of ill will, the others had given themselves to a photograph, and people don’t joke around: they have a lot to lose. And they couldn’t risk it: it was the photograph, or nothing. The being, for the sake of kindness, sometimes tried to imitate the photograph in order to validate what the others possessed, that is, the photograph. But he couldn’t remain at the simplified height of the picture. And sometimes he got all mixed up: he hadn’t learned to copy the picture, and had forgotten what he was like without it. So that, as they say of the laughing clown, the being sometimes wept beneath his whitewashed painting of a court jester.

Then the chosen being undertook a covert operation to destroy the photograph. He did or said things so counter to the photograph that it would bristle in the drawer. In the hopes of becoming more current than his own image, and causing it to be substituted by something less: by the being himself. But what happened? What happened was that everything the being did just ended up retouching the picture. The being had become a mere contributor. And an inevitable contributor: it no longer mattered what the contributor gave, it no longer mattered that the contributor didn’t give at all, everything, even dying, embellished the photograph.

And so it went. Until, profoundly disillusioned in his sincerest aspirations, the chosen being died as people die. He ended up making a great effort to get off the stone horse by himself, fell several times, but finally learned how to walk around by himself. And, as they say, never had the land seemed so beautiful to him. He recognized that this was precisely the land for which he had prepared himself: he hadn’t been mistaken, then, the treasure map held the right directions. Walking around, the being touched everything, and with a smile. The being had learned all by himself how to smile. One fine day, . . .