Free Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector

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.
     

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