Near to the Wild Heart (8 page)

The Woman with the Voice and Joana

Joana didn't pay all that much attention to her until she heard her voice. That low, arched tone, without any vibrations, roused her. She stared at the woman inquisitively. She must have experienced something that was still unknown to Joana. She could not grasp that intonation, so remote from life, so remote from the days...

Joana recalled how on one occasion, a few months after being married, she had turned to her husband to ask him something. They were in the street. And before actually finishing the sentence, to Otávio's surprise, she had paused — looking worried and distracted. Ah — I had discovered -then she affected one of those voices she had heard so often before getting married, always vaguely perplexed. The voice of a young woman at the side of her man. Like her own voice speaking at that moment to Otávio: sharp, empty, raised to a high pitch, with clear, even notes. Something incomplete, ecstatic, somewhat blase. Straining to call out... Bright days, limpid and dry, a voice and days that were sexless, choirboys singing at an open-air service. And something lost, heading for mild despair...The timbre of a newly-wed woman had a history, a fragile history that went unnoticed by the woman with the voice, but not by this one.

Ever since that day Joana heard the voices, whether she understood them or not. Probably at the end of her life, with every timbre she heard, a tide of personal reminiscences would come flooding back Joana would say: how many voices I've possessed...

She leaned towards the woman. She had approached her when looking for a house to live in and was glad that she had gone without her husband because, on her own, she could observe her with greater freedom. And there, yes, there she found something she had not anticipated, a pause. But the other woman didn't as much as look at her. Thinking as Otávio might, Joana surmised that he would think of the woman as being simply coarse, with that big nose, pale and calm. The woman explained the conveniences and inconveniences of the house she was offering to rent while casting her eyes over the floor, the window, the view, without haste, without interest. She was clean and tidy and had dark hair. Her body, ample and sturdy. And her voice, her voice was of the earth. Not colliding with any object, soft and distant as if it had travelled lengthy paths beneath the soil before reaching her throat.

— Married? -Joana asked, leaning over her.

— Widowed, with one son. — And she went on distilling her song over all the lodgers in the district.

— No, I don't think I'm interested in the house, it's much too big for two, Joana said briskly, even a little harshly. But added — softening her tone, concealing her eagerness -would you mind if I called from time to time to have a chat?

The other woman showed no surprise. She ran one hand over her waist, grown thick with pregnancy and the slowness of her movements:

— That might be difficult.. .Tomorrow, I'm leaving to visit my son. He's married. I'm going away...

She smiled without happiness, without emotion. Simply: I'm going away... What did interest that woman? -Joana asked herself. Could she have a lover...

— Do you live alone? — she asked her.

— My younger sister has gone off to be a nun. I live with my other sister.

— Don't you find life rather sad without a man around the house? -Joana went on.

— Do you think so? — the woman retorted.

— I'm asking you, if you don't find it sad, not me. I'm married, Joana added, trying to bring a note of intimacy into the conversation.

— Ah, no, I don't find it sad, not in the least — And she gave her a wan smile. — Well, since the house obviously isn't what you're looking for, I must ask you to excuse me. I have to wash a few clothes before having a little rest by the window.

Joana went on her way feeling nettled. The woman was clearly moronic... But that voice? It haunted her throughout the entire afternoon. She tried to recall the woman's smile, her ample, lethargic body. The woman had no history, Joana slowly realized. For if things happened to her, they were not part of her and did not merge with her true existence. The essential thing — including past, present and future — is that she was alive. That is the nucleus of the narrative. Sometimes this nucleus seemed blurred, as if seen with one's eyes shut, almost non-existent. But it only needed a brief pause, a little silence, for it to become enormous and to loom up with open eyes, a soft and constant murmur like that of water trickling among pebbles. Why elaborate on this description? It is certain that things happened to her which came from outside. She lost her illusions, suffered an attack of pneumonia. Things happened to her. But they only served to consolidate or weaken the murmur of her centre. Why narrate facts and details if no one dominated her in the end? And if she were merely the life that flowed constantly inside her body?

Her probings never became agitated in their search for an answer—Joana continued to make discoveries. Her questions were still-born, they accumulated without desire or hope. She attempted no movement outside herself.

Many years of her existence were spent at the window, watching the things that passed and those that stood still. But in fact she didn't so much see the life inside her as hear it. Its sound had fascinated her — like the breathing of a new-born infant — its gentle glow — like that of a new-born plant. She had not yet grown weary of existing and she was so self-sufficient that sometimes, out of sheer happiness, she felt sadness cover her like the shadow of a mantle, leaving her as fresh and silent as nightfall. She expected nothing. She was in herself, her own end.

Once she divided herself, became restless, she began to go out in search of herself. She went to places where men and women were gathered. They said to themselves: fortunately, she has woken up, life is short, one must make the most of it. Previously, she was spiritless, now she's a real person. No one realized that she was being unhappy to the point of needing to go in search of life. That was when she chose a man, loved him and love came to thicken her blood and mystery. She gave birth to a son, her husband died after impregnating her. She carried on and thrived very well. She gathered together all her belongings and no longer went looking for people. She rediscovered her window where she settled, enjoying her own company. And now, more than ever, there was no thing or creature more happy and fulfilled to be found. Despite all those people who looked at her condescendingly, believing her to be weak. For her spirit was so strong that she had never neglected to have an excellent lunch or dinner without, however, any excessive indulgence. Nothing they could say bothered her or whatever happened to her, and everything slid over her and vanished into waters other than those inside her.

One day, after having patiently experienced many such days, she saw herself different from herself. She felt weary. She paced to and fro. She herself didn't know what she wanted. She began to hum quietly without opening her mouth. Then she tired of this and began to think about things. But she didn't quite succeed. Inside her something was trying to call a halt. She waited but nothing came from her to her. She slowly grew sad from a lack of sadness, and was therefore twice as sad. She went on walking for several days and her footsteps sounded like withered leaves falling to the ground. She herself was lined inside with greyness, and she could see nothing within herself other than a reflection of her ancient rhythm, now slow and leaden. Then she knew that she was drained and for the first time she suffered because she really had become divided in two, one part facing the other, watching it, desiring things that it could no longer give. In fact, she had always been two, the one who superficially knew that she was, and the one that truly existed in depth. Until now both parts functioned together and merged. Now the one that knew that she was, functioned on its own, which meant that that woman was being unhappy and intelligent. She made one last effort to try and invent something, some thought that might distract her. In vain. She only knew how to live.

Until the absence of herself finally made her fall into the night, and pacified, darkened, and refreshed, she began to die. She then embraced sweet death, as if she were a ghost. Nothing more is known because she died. One can merely surmise that in the end she, too, was being happy as only a thing or creature can be. For she had been born for the essential, to live or die. And for her, the intermediary was suffering. Her existence was so complete and so closely bound to truth that she probably thought at the moment of surrendering and reaching her end, had she been in the habit of thinking: I never was. Nor is it known what became of her. Such a beautiful life must surely have been followed by a beautiful death. Today she is certainly grains of earth. She never ceases to gaze up at the sky. Sometimes when it rains, her grains remain full and rotund. Then she dries up in summer and the slightest breeze disperses her. She is now eternal.

After a moment's hesitation, Joana saw that she had envied her, that half-dead creature who was smiling and had spoken to her in an unfamiliar tone of voice. Above all, she went on thinking, she understands life because she is not sufficiently intelligent not to understand it. But what was the use of trying to reason things out... Were she to reach the point of understanding her, without going mad in the process, she wouldn't be able to preserve knowledge as knowledge but would transform it into an attitude, into an attitude of life, the only way of possessing knowledge and of fully expressing it. And that attitude would not be very different from the one in which the woman with the voice reposed. The paths of action were so impoverished. She made a quick, impatient movement with her head. She grabbed a pencil, and on a piece of paper scribbled decisively in bold letters: 'The personality that ignores itself achieves greater fulfilment.' True or false? But in a sense she had taken her revenge by casting her cold intelligent thought over that woman swollen with life.

Otávio

'De Profundis'. Joana waited for the idea to become clearer, for that tenuous and luminous bubble, the germ of a thought, to rise from the mists. 'De Profundis'. She felt it vacillate, almost lose its balance and sink forever into unknown waters. Or at certain moments, push back the clouds and tremulously grow, emerging almost completely... Then silence.

She closed her eyes, gradually she began to rest. When she opened them again, she received a tiny shock. And during the intense, prolonged moments that followed, she recognized that stretch of life as the combination of what she had lived and what remained to be lived, fused together and eternal. Strange, strange. The amber light on the stroke of nine, that impression of an interval, a distant piano being played with emphasis on the sharp notes, her heart beating furiously as it met the morning heat, and behind everything, the throbbing silence, ferocious and menacing, dense and impalpable. Everything began to fade. The piano interrupted its insistence on those final notes and after a momentary pause gently resumed with some middle notes, producing a vivid straightforward melody. And soon she wouldn't be able to tell whether her impression of the morning had been real or simply an idea. She lingered, attentively trying to place it... A sudden weariness confused her for a moment. Her nerves forgotten, her face relaxed, she felt a gentle gust of tenderness for herself, almost of gratitude, even though she couldn't explain why. For a second, it struck her that she had lived and that her life was coming to an end. And immediately afterwards, that everything had been blank so far, like an empty space, that she could hear, remote and muffled, the clamour of life approaching, dense, torrential and violent, its mighty waves rending the sky, coming closer and closer ... to submerge her, to drown her, suffocating her...

She went up to the window, stretched her hands outside and waited in vain for a little wind to come and caress them. And there she remained, oblivious of everything, for some considerable time. She blocked her ears by contracting the muscles of her face, her closed eyes barely allowing the light to penetrate, her head leaning forward. Little by little, she managed to isolate herself completely. This semi-conscious state, where she had the impression of plunging deeply into grey, lukewarm air... She stood in front of the mirror and muttered to herself, her eyes burning with hatred:

— And now what?

She couldn't fail to notice her own face, small and flushed. This distracted her momentarily, helping her to forget her anger. Some little thing always occurred just in time to divert her from the main torrent. She was so vulnerable. Did she hate herself for this? No, she would hate herself more if she were already an immutable tree-trunk until death, capable only of yielding fruits but not of growing within herself. She craved for even more: to be constantly reborn, to cut away everything she had learned, that she had seen, and to make a fresh start in some new terrain where even the most trifling act might have some meaning, where she might breathe air as if for the very first time. She had the feeling that dense life was flowing slowly inside her, bubbling like a sheet of hot lava. Perhaps if she were to fall in love... And if the thought seemed remote, the piercing blast of a trumpet might suddenly sever that mantle of night and leave the fields empty, green, and vast... And then excitable, white horses rebelliously craning and rearing, almost flying, might cross rivers, mountains, valleys... Thinking about them, she felt the fresh air circulate inside her as if it were escaping from some hidden grotto, damp and fresh in the middle of the desert.

But she soon returned to her senses, in vertical descent. She examined her arms and legs. There she was. There she was. But she must first distract herself, she thought, with firmness and irony. With urgency. For might she not die? She laughed aloud and took a quick glance at herself in the mirror to observe the effect of that laughter on her face. No, no it didn't make it brighter. She looked like a wild cat, her eyes burning above her red cheeks, covered in dark freckles, her brown hair dishevelled over her eyebrows. She perceived in herself a sombre and triumphant purple. What was she doing that she should glow like this? Weariness ... Yes, despite everything, there was fire beneath her weariness, there was fire even when it represented death. Perhaps this was the taste of living.