Near to the Wild Heart (17 page)

— I, too, could have a child, she said aloud. Her voice sounded clear and pleasing.

— Yes — Lídia had murmured in amazement.

— I, too, could have a child. Why not!

— No...

— No? But yes... I could give Otávio a child, not now, but whenever it suited me. I could have a child and then give you back Otávio.

— But this is monstrous! — Lídia had screamed.

— But why? Is it monstrous to keep two women? You know damn well it isn't. I suppose it feels good to be pregnant. But is it enough for someone to be expecting a child or is that still too little?

— It's a nice feeling, Lídia had said wearily, her eyes open.

— So?

— You also feel nervous about childbirth at times, the other replied mechanically.

— Don't be frightened, there isn't an animal that doesn't breed. You'll have an easy delivery and so shall I. We've both been blessed with a broad pelvis.

— Yes...

— I also want everything life has to offer. Why not? Do you think I'm sterile? Not one little bit. I haven't had any children because I didn't want them.

I can feel myself holding a child, Joana thought. Sleep, my baby, sleep, I tell it. The child is warm and I am melancholy. But it's the melancholy of happiness, that peace and reassurance that leaves you looking calm and unperturbed. And when my child touches me he doesn't rob my thoughts like others. But after I've given him milk from these delicate and attractive breasts, my child will thrive on my strength and crush me with his life. He will distance himself from me and I shall become his useless old mother. I won't feel cheated. But simply defeated and I shall say: I know nothing, I'm capable of conceiving a child yet I know nothing. God will accept my humility and say: I was capable of conceiving the world and I know nothing. I shall feel closer to Him and the woman with the voice. My child will stir in my arms and I shall tell myself: Joana, Joana, this is good. I shall utter no other word for truth will bring comfort to my arms.

The Man

Between one instant and the next, between the past and the future, the white uncertainty of an interval. Empty as the distance from one minute to another on the dial of the clock. The core of events arising silent and dead, a fraction of eternity.

Perhaps no more than a quiet second separating one stretch of life from the next. Not even a second, she couldn't calculate it as time, yet drawn out like an endless straight line. Profound, coming from afar-a black bird, a dot growing on the horizon, approaching one's conscience like a ball thrown from the end to the beginning. And exploding before eyes perplexed in essence by silence. Leaving behind the perfect interval, without knowing how to merge it with life. To carry forever that tiny dot — blind and intact, much too swift to allow itself to be revealed.

Joana felt it as she walked across Lídia's tiny garden, not knowing where she was going, only that she was leaving behind all that had lived. When she closed the little gate, she was leaving Lídia and Otávio behind, and, once more solitary in herself, she walked away.

The beginning of a storm had abated and the fresh air circulated pleasantly. She climbed the hill once more and her heart was still beating without any rhythm. She sought the peace of those paths at that hour, between afternoon and evening, an invisible cicada humming the same melody. The old damp walls in ruins, invaded by ivy and creepers sensitive to the wind. She halted and without her footsteps she could hear the silence stir. Only her own body disturbed that calm. She imagined it without her presence and divined the freshness which those dead things must have when mixed with others, precariously alive as in the beginning of creation.

The tall, shuttered houses, guarded like towers. One of the mansions was reached by a long drive, sombre and quiet, the end of the world. Close by, there was a descent, the starting point of another road, and it became clear that this was not the end. The mansion was squat and wide, its windows broken, the shutters drawn and covered in dust. She was familiar with that garden where soft tufts of grass were interspersed with crimson roses and old, rusty tins. Under the flowering shrubs of jasmine she would find faded newspapers, splinters of damp wood from previous graftings. Amidst the heavy, old trees, the sparrows and pigeons scratching at the soil as usual. A little bird interrupted its flight, hopped around before disappearing into one of the thickets. The mansion proud and serene in its ruined state. To die there. One could only reach that house when the end had come. To die in that damp earth so suitable for receiving corpses. But it wasn't death she craved. She was also afraid.

A thread of water seeped incessantly through the dark wall. Joana paused for a moment, looked at it with a vacant, impassive expression. During one of her strolls she had already sat beside the rusty little gate, her oval face pressed against the cold railings, trying to sink into the dank, murky smell of the yard. That impenetrable quietness, that odour. But this had been a long time ago. Now she had separated herself from the past.

She carried on walking. She no longer felt that feverish heat which had been provoked by her conversation with Lídia. She was pale and utter exhaustion now left her almost weak, her features more delicate and refined. Once again she waited for an end, an end that never came, to complete her moments. If only something inevitable would descend upon her, she wanted to give way, to surrender. Sometimes her feet took the wrong direction, weighed her down, her legs scarcely able to move. But she forced herself on, saved herself for that fall further ahead. She looked at the ground, the straw-coloured grasses which humbly sprang up again after each trampling.

She raised her eyes and saw him. That same man who often followed her without ever accosting her. She had already seen him many times along these same roads, during her evening stroll. She wasn't surprised. She knew that something would happen somehow. Sharp as a knife, yes, even the night before, lying beside Otávio, not knowing what would happen the following day, she had remembered this man. Sharp as a knife... Almost in a daze, as she tried to catch a glimpse of him from a distance, she saw him multiplied into innumerable faces, trembling and formless as they crammed the road. When her vision cleared, her forehead covered in perspiration, she saw him by contrast as a poor, solitary dot coming towards her, lost on that long, deserted road. She felt sure he would only trail her as on other occasions. But she was tired and came to a halt.

The man's figure drew nearer and nearer, got bigger and bigger, and Joana felt herself sink ever more deeply into the inevitable. She could still withdraw, she could turn tail and go away, thus avoiding him. Nor would she be escaping, for she divined the man's humility. There was nothing to keep her there, immobile, waiting for him to approach. Not even if death were now to approach, not even villainy, hope or suffering once again. She had simply come to a halt. The veins were severed that connected her with living things, assembled into a distant block, exacting a logical sequel, however outdated and spent. Only she herself had survived, still breathing. And before her, a fresh field, the colour of the rising dawn still neutral. She must penetrate its mists in order to be able to make it out. She couldn't retreat, she saw no reason for doing so. If she still hesitated before that stranger who came closer and closer, it's because she feared the life which implacably approached once more.

She tried to cling to that interval, to remain suspended there, in that cold abstract world, without mingling with its blood.

He arrived. He stopped a few paces away from her. They stood there in silence. She with staring eyes, wide and weary. He was shaking, nervous and uncertain. All around the leaves rustled in the breeze, a bird chirped monotonously.

The silence dragged on, waiting for them to recover their speech. But neither of them could discover in the other some opening word. They both merged in that silence. Little by little he stopped shaking, his eyes focused more intently on the woman's body, they gently took possession of it and its weariness. He looked at her, oblivious of himself and his shyness. Joana could sense him penetrating her and offered no resistance.

When he spoke, she imperceptibly straightened up. She felt as if she had been there for ages, but when he uttered his opening words without attempting to start up a conversation she knew that she had truly distanced herself incom-mensurably from the beginning.

— I live in that house, he said.

She waited.

— Would you like to rest?

Joana nodded and he watched in silence the luminous aura traced out by the tousled hairs around her small head. He walked ahead and she followed him.

When he spoke, she imperceptibly straightened up, he lowered the blinds and the shadow extended across the floor as far as the closed door. He pulled up a comfortable, old armchair which she sank into, drawing in her legs. The man himself sat on the edge of the narrow bed which was covered with a crumpled sheet. He remained quite still, his hands joined, watching her.

Joana closed her eyes. She could hear sounds, muffled and remote, pervading the house, an infant's cry of mild surprise. As if from another world, there rang out the vigorous crowing of a distant cockerel.

Behind everything, water flowing gently, the laboured and rhythmic breathing of the trees.

An anticipated movement nearby made her open her eyes. She couldn't see him at first in the semi-darkness of the room. She began to recognize him little by little kneeling by the side of the bed, his hands covering his face as it swayed to and fro. She wanted to call out to him but didn't know how. She was reluctant to touch him. But the man's anguish began to affect her more and more, Joana stirred uneasily in the armchair, waiting for him to look at her.

He lifted his head and Joana was surprised. The man's parted lips were moist and shiny as if a light were illuminating them from within. His eyes were bright, it was impossible to say whether because of sorrow or some strange happiness. His head was thrown back, he could scarcely keep his balance in his efforts to get a grip on himself, to stop shaking.

— What is it? — Joana whispered in fascination. He looked at her.

— I'm afraid, he said finally.

They stared at each other for a second. And she was not afraid, but she felt a deep happiness, more intense than fear, possess her and inundate her whole body.

— I shall return to this house, she said.

He confronted her, suddenly terrified, unable to breathe. For a second she waited for him to shout or invent some mad gesture which she couldn't even begin to explain. The man's lips quivered for a second. And scarcely able to rid himself of Joana's gaze, running from it like someone demented, he buried his face abruptly in his long, thin hands.

Under the Man's Protection

Joana. Joana, the man thought, awaiting her arrival. Joana, a simple name. Saint Joana, so chaste. How innocent and pure she was. He saw her childlike features, her eloquent hands like those of a blind man. She was not pretty, at least never since manhood had he dreamed of that creature, never awaited her. Perhaps that is why he had pursued her so often in the road, without even waiting for her to look, perhaps... He couldn't say, he had always enjoyed seeing her. She was not pretty. Or perhaps she was? How could one tell? It was so hard to decide, as if he had never seen her before or never embraced her so often. There was a threat of transformation in her expression, in her movements, from one moment to the next. Even in repose she was something on the point of raising itself. And what did he now understand and feel so miraculously, as if she had explained it to him? — he asked himself. He closed his eyes, his arms outstretched along the sides of the bed. But only until he heard the sound of Joana's footsteps outside. For he had never dared to relax in her presence. He bent over her, waited upon her every moment, absorbing her. But he never tired and that attitude didn't make him any less spontaneous. It simply threw him into another kind of spontaneity, hitherto unknown. He was now two different persons, but little by little his new state of being grew and overshadowed the past of the other. He pursed his lips. He felt there was some strange logic in having experienced certain tortures, serene indignities, the careless lack of any route where he might receive Joana at long last. Not that he had ever been pushed into the mire against his will, not that he considered himself a martyr. He had never awaited a solution. Even with the women whom he guarded, guarded and abandoned. Even with that woman in whose house he had now idly installed himself, even though he could scarcely tolerate her presence, an exhausting and fragile shadow. He had walked on his own feet, his body conscious, experiencing and suffering without any affection for himself, coldly and ingenuously conceding everything to his own curiosity. He even considered himself happy. And now Joana had come to him, she, Joana who... He wanted to add one more word to this muddled thought, the right word, the difficult one, but once again he was struck by the idea that he no longer needed to think, that he needed nothing, nothing... she would soon be here. But listen: soon... It was like this: Joana had liberated him. Increasingly he needed less in order to live: he thought less, ate less, slept very little. She always existed. And she would soon be here.

He closed his eyes more tightly, bit his lips, suffering without knowing why. He opened his eyes immediately and in the room — the empty room! — suddenly he could find no sign of Joana having been there. As if her existence were a lie... He straightened up. Come, something ardent and mortal called out inside him. Come, he repeated in a low voice, overcome with fear, looking forlorn. Come...

Footsteps, almost silent, were treading the dry leaves outside. Once more Joana was coming... once more she could hear him from afar.

He remained standing beside the bed, his eyes vacant, a blind man listening to distant music. She was drawing closer ... and closer.. .Joana was coming. Her footsteps became more and more real, the only reality. Joana. With the suddenness of a stab wound, the pain exploded inside her body, illuminated her with happiness and bewilderment.