Free The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector Page B

powerful, bloody . . . Its brilliance shimmers over the little wood. And now its whispering is the ever so gentle lilt of a transparent flute, extended toward the heavens . . .
    He sits up in the chair, a little surprised, dazzled. Frenzied thoughts suddenly collide in his head . . . Yes, why not? Even the fact of the dark girl . . . Is the entire fever dream rising up before his eyes? Like a painting . . . Yes, yes . . . He gets excited. But what poetic material does it contain . . . “The Earth is bearing children.” And the dance of those beings upon the open wounds? Heat returns to his body in faint waves.
    “Do me a favor,” he says eagerly. “Get Dona Marta . . .”
    She comes.
    “Will you bring me the notebook on top of my desk? And a pencil too . . .”
    “But . . . Sir, you can’t work now . . . You’ve hardly left your bed . . . You’re thin, pale, you look like someone sucked all your blood . . .”
    He stops, suddenly pensive. And most importantly if she only knew how much effort it took him to write . . . When he began, every fiber in his body stood on end, irritated and magnificent. And until he covered the paper with his jittery scrawl, until he felt that it extended him, he didn’t stop, depleting himself until the very end . . . “The Earth, her arms contracted in pain . . .” Yes, his head’s already hurting, heavy. But could he contain his light, to spare himself?
    He smiles a sad smile, a little proud perhaps, apologizing to Dona Marta. To the girl, for the frustrated escapade. To himself, above all.
    “No, the Earth cannot choose,” he concludes ambiguously. But later she takes revenge.
    Dona Marta nods. She goes to get pencil and paper.
     

Jimmy and I
    (
“Eu e Jimmy”)
    I still remember Jimmy, that boy with the tousled chestnut hair, covering the elongated skull of a born rebel.
    I remember Jimmy, his hair and his ideas. Jimmy thought that nothing is as good as nature. That if two people like each other the only thing to do is love each other, simple as that. That everything else, in mankind, that gets separated from this simplicity belonging to the start of the world, is affectation, and froth. Had those ideas sprung from another head, I wouldn’t have even put up with listening to them. But there was the excuse of Jimmy’s skull and there was, above all the excuse of his bright teeth and his clear smile of a contented animal.
    Jimmy walked with his head up, his nose stuck in the air, and, while crossing the street, would take me by the arm with a very simple familiarity. I was unsettled. But the proof that I was even then imbued with Jimmy’s ideas and above all with his bright smile, is that I would scold myself for being unsettled. I’d think, unhappily, that I had evolved too much, getting separated from the prototype—animal. I’d tell myself it was pointless to blush because of an arm; nor even at an arm of clothing. But these thoughts were diffuse and presented themselves with the incoherence that I am now transmitting to paper. Honestly, I was just looking for an excuse to like Jimmy. And to go along with his ideas. Little by little I was adapting to his elongated head. What could I do, after all? Since I was a little girl I had seen and felt the predominance of men’s ideas over women’s. Mama, before she got married, according to Aunt Emília, was a firecracker, a tempestuous redhead, with thoughts of her own about liberty and equality for women. But then along came Papa, very serious and tall, with thoughts of his own too, about . . . liberty and equality for women. The trouble was in the coinciding subject matter. There was a collision. And nowadays Mama sews and embroiders and sings at the piano and makes little cakes on Saturdays, all like clockwork and cheerfully. She has ideas of her own, still, but they all come down to one: a wife should always go along with her husband, as the accessory goes along with the principal (my