The Complete Stories (4 page)

I listened to them, for nearly two hours. My staring eyes hurt and my legs, frozen in place, had fallen asleep. When Daniel looked at me. He later told me that the burst of laughter that so wounded me, to the point of making me cry, was caused by the days-long delirium he found himself in and above all by my pathetic appearance. My mouth gaping stupidly, “my foolish eyes, attesting to my animal ingenuity” . . . That’s how Daniel spoke to me. Clawing at me with easy and colorless remarks that he tossed off but that dug into me, swift and piercing, forever.

And that’s how I met Daniel. I don’t recall the details that brought us closer. I only know that I was the one who sought him out. And I know that Daniel took me over gradually. He regarded me with indifference and, I imagined, would never have been drawn to my person if he hadn’t found me odd and amusing. My humble approach to him was my gratitude for his favor . . . How I admired him. The more I suffered his scorn, the more superior I considered him, the more I separated him from the “others.”

Today I understand him. I forgive him for everything, I forgive everything in people who can’t get a hold of themselves, people who ask themselves questions. People who look for reasons to live, as if life alone didn’t justify itself.

Later I got to know the real Daniel, the invalid, the one who only existed, though in perpetual radiance, inside himself. Whenever he turned toward the world, now groping and spent, he realized he was helpless and, bitter, bewildered, he discovered that all he knew was how to think. One of those people who possess the earth in a second, with their eyes closed. That power he had to deplete things before getting them, that stark premonition he had of “afterward” . . . Before taking the first step toward action, he had already tasted the saturation and sorrow that follow victories . . .

And, as if to compensate for this impossibility of achieving anything, he, whose soul so yearned to expand, had invented yet another path suited to his inactivity, where he could expand and justify himself. To make the most of oneself, he’d repeat, is the highest and noblest human objective. To make the most of oneself would mean abandoning the possession and achievement of things in order to possess oneself, to develop one’s own elements, to grow within one’s own form. To make one’s own music and hear it oneself . . .

As if he needed a scheme like that . . . Everything in him naturally reached the maximum, not by objectification, but in a state of capacity, of exalted strength, from which no one benefited and of which everyone, besides him, was ignorant. And this state was his summit. It resembled something that might precede a climax and he burned to reach it, feeling that the more he suffered, the more alive he was, more punished, nearly satisfied. It was the pain of creation, yet without the creation.

Because when everything melted away, only in his memory was there any trace.

He never let himself rest for long, despite the sterility of this struggle and no matter how exhausting it was. Soon he would once again be revolving around himself, sniffing out his nascent desires, concentrating them until they were brought to a breaking point. Whenever he managed it, he’d vibrate with hatred, beauty or love, and felt nearly compensated.

Anything was an excuse to set him off. A bird flying by, reminding him of unknown lands, breathed life into his old dream of flight. From thought to thought, unconsciously driven toward the same end, he’d reach the notion of his cowardice, revealed not only in this constant desire to flee, not to align himself with things so as not to fight for them, as in his incapacity to achieve anything, since he himself had conceived it, pitilessly dashing the humiliating good sense that kept him from flight. This duet with himself was the reflex of his essence, he discovered, and that was why it would go on all his life . . . That was why it became easy to sketch out the distant, gasping, faltering future, until the implacable end—death. That alone and he would attain the goal toward which his inclination guided him: suffering.

It seems mad. However, Daniel also had his reasons. Suffering, for him, the contemplative, was the only way to live intensely . . . And in the end it was for this alone that Daniel burned: to live. Only his means were strange.

He surrendered so much to the feeling he created and therefore it grew so strong that he’d eventually forget its induced and nurtured origin. He’d forget that he himself had forged it, would imbibe it, and lived from it as if from something real.

Sometimes the crisis, with nowhere to vent, became so painfully dense that, submerged in it, exhausting it, he finally longed to free himself. He would then create, so as to save himself, an opposing desire that would destroy the first. Because at those times he feared madness, felt he was ill, far from all humans, far from that ideal man who would be a serene, animalized being, with an easy and comfortable intelligence. Far from that man he could never become, whom he couldn’t help but scorn, with that haughtiness gained by those who suffer. Far from that man he envied, nonetheless. When his suffering overflowed, he sought help from that kind of man who, in contrast to his own misery, seemed beautiful and perfect to him, full of a simplicity that for him, Daniel, would be heroic.

Tired of being tortured, he’d seek him out, imitate him, with a sudden thirst for peace. It was always that opposing force that he introduced in himself whenever he reached the painful extreme of his crisis. He granted himself some balance like a truce, but one that boredom soon invaded. Until, from the morbid desire to suffer anew, he would solidify this boredom, transforming it into anguish.

He lived in this cycle. Perhaps he’d permitted me to get closer during one of those times when he needed that “opposing force.” I, perhaps I’ve already mentioned this, was the picture of health, with my restrained gestures and upright posture. And, I now know, the reason he sought to crush and humiliate me so was because he envied me. He wanted to wake me up, because he wanted me to suffer too, like a leper secretly hoping to transmit his leprosy to the healthy.

However, unsuspecting as I was, for me his very torture blurred things. Even his selfishness, even his spitefulness made him seem like a dethroned god—a genius. And besides, I already loved him.

Today, I feel sorry for Daniel. After feeling helpless, not knowing what to do with myself, with no desire to go on with the same past of tranquility and death, and not succeeding, the habit of comfort, at mastering a different future—now I realize how free Daniel was and how unhappy. Because of his past—obscure, filled with frustrated dreams—he hadn’t managed to find a place in the conventional world, more or less happy, average. As for the future, he feared it too much because he was well aware of his own limits. And because, despite knowing them, he hadn’t resigned himself to abandoning that enormous, undefined ambition, which, when later it had already become inhuman, was directed beyond earthly things. Failing to achieve the things right in front of him, he’d turned toward something that no one, he guessed, could ever achieve.

Strange as it seems, he suffered from unknown things, from things that, “due to a conspiracy of nature,” he would never touch even for an instant with his senses, “even just to learn about its material, its color, its sex.” “About its qualification in the world of perceptions and sensations,” he said to me once, after I went back to him. And the greatest harm Daniel did me was awaken within me that desire that lies latent inside us all. For some people it awakens and merely poisons them, as for me and Daniel. For others it leads to laboratories, journeys, absurd experiences, to adventure. To madness.

I now know a thing or two about those who seek to feel in order to know that they are alive. I too ventured upon this dangerous journey, so paltry for our terrible anxiety. And almost always disappointing. I learned to make my soul vibrate and I know that, all the while, in the depths of one’s own being, one can remain vigilant and cold, merely observing the spectacle one has granted oneself. And how often in near-boredom . . .

Now I would understand it. But back then I only saw the Daniel without weaknesses, sovereign and distant, who hypnotized me. I know little about love. I only remember that I feared him and sought him.

He made me tell my life story, which I did, fearfully, choosing my words carefully so I wouldn’t seem so stupid to him. Because he didn’t hesitate to talk about my lack of intelligence, using the cruelest expressions. I’d tell him, obediently, small facts from the past. He’d listen, cigarette in his lips, eyes distracted. And he’d conclude by saying, in that singular way of his, a blend of the suppressed desire to laugh, of weariness, of benevolent disdain:

“Very well, quite happy . . .”

I’d blush, not sure why I was furious, wounded. But I wouldn’t reply.

One day I talked about Jaime and he said:

“Interesting, very normal.”

Oh, the words are common, but the way they were uttered. They revolutionized me, made me ashamed of what was most hidden inside me.

“Cristina, do you know you’re alive?”

“Cristina, is it good to be unconscious?”

“Cristina, there’s nothing you want, is that so?”

I’d cry afterward, but I’d seek him out again, because I was starting to agree with him and secretly hoped he’d deign to initiate me into his world. And he knew just how to humiliate me. He started to dig his claws into Jaime, into all my friends, lumping them together like something contemptible. I don’t know what it was that, from the start, kept me from revolting. I don’t know. I only recall that for his ego it was a pleasure to dominate and I was easy.

One day, I saw him suddenly get excited, as if the inspiration struck him as both fortuitous and comic:

“Cristina, do you want me to awaken you?”

And, before I could laugh, I already saw myself nodding, in agreement.

So began the strange and revelatory outings, those days that marked me forever.

He’d have hardly condescended to look at me, he made me realize, if I hadn’t decided to be transformed. As mad as it sounds, he’d repeat several times: he wanted to transform me, “to breathe into my body a little poison, that good and terrible poison” . . .

My education had begun.

He spoke, I listened. I learned of dark and beautiful lives, I learned of the suffering and the ecstasy of those “privileged by madness.”

“Meditate on them, you, with your happy middle ground.”

And I would think. The new world that Daniel’s persuasive voice made me glimpse horrified me, I who had always been a docile lamb. It horrified me, yet was already pulling me in with the magnetic force of a fall . . .

“Get ready to feel with me. Listen to this passage with your head thrown back, eyes half-closed, lips parted . . .”

I’d pretend to laugh, pretend to obey as a joke, as if begging pardon from my former friends. And from myself, for accepting such a heavy yoke. Nothing, however, was more serious for me.

He, impassive, preparing me as if for a ritual, insisted, solemnly:

“More languor in your gaze . . . Relax your nostrils more, get them ready to absorb deeply . . .”

I would obey. And above all I would obey while trying not to displease him with any single thing, placing myself in his hands and begging forgiveness for not giving him more. And because he asked nothing of me, nothing that I’d hesitate any longer to offer him, I fell even further into the certainty of my inferiority and of the distance between us.

“Let yourself go even more. Let my voice be your thought.”

I would listen. “For those who remain incarcerated” (not only in prisons, Daniel would interject) “tears are a part of daily experience; a day without tears is a day in which the heart has hardened, not a day in which the heart is happy.” “. . . since the secret of life is to suffer. This truth is contained in all things.”

And little by little, really, I was understanding . . . That slow voice ended up burning in my soul, stirring it profoundly. I had been wandering through grottos for many long years and was suddenly discovering the radiant passage to the sea . . . Yes, I once shouted to him barely breathing,
I was feeling
! He merely smiled, still not satisfied.

Yet it was the truth. I, so simple and primitive, who had never desired anything with intensity. I, unconscious and cheerful, “because I possessed a cheerful body” . . . Suddenly I was awakening: what a dark life I’d led up till then. Now . . . Now I was being reborn. Lively, in pain, that pain that had been lying dormant, quiet and blind in the depths of my self.

I grew nervous, agitated, but intelligent. My eyes always uneasy. I hardly slept.

Jaime came to visit, spending two days with me. When I got his telegram, I went pale. I walked as if dizzy, figuring out how to keep Daniel from seeing him. I was ashamed of Jaime.

Using the excuse that I wanted to try a hotel, I booked a room. Jaime didn’t suspect the real motive, as I expected. And this brought me closer to Daniel. I distantly yearned for my husband to react on my behalf, to snatch me from those hands. I don’t know what I was afraid of.

Those were two awful days. I hated myself because I was ashamed of Jaime yet did everything possible to hide with him in places where Daniel wouldn’t see us . . .

When he left, finally, I, somewhere between relieved and helpless, granted myself an hour of rest, before returning to Daniel. I was trying to put off the danger, but it never occurred to me to flee.

I had faith that sometime before I left Daniel would want me.

However, news that Mama had fallen ill called me back to Rio before that day arrived. I had to leave.

I spoke with Daniel.

“One more afternoon and we may never see each other again,” I ventured fearfully.

He laughed softly.

“You’ll come back for sure.”

I got the distinct impression that he was trying to suggest that I return, as if it were an order. He’d said to me one day: “Weak souls like yours are easily led to any kind of madness simply at a glance from strong souls like mine.” However, blind as I was, I rejoiced at this thought. And, forgetting that he himself had already affirmed his indifference to me, I clung to this possibility: “If you’re suggesting that I track you down one day . . . isn’t it because you want me?”