Previous version of the secret of clarice lispector by Marcus Deminco

Marcus Deminco

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

Prohibited the total or partial reproduction by any means or process, including graphic characteristics and/or editorials. Copyright infringement is a crime (Criminal Code, art. 184 and Paragraphs, and law nº 6,895, of 12/17/1980) subject to search and seizure and claims several (Law No. 9,610/98).

Marcus Deminco

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If you seek a pleasant, mild and serene reading, which makes time pass quickly like a gentle evening breeze, I recommend you read any other writer, milder and more affectionate. I don't write for readers defined by letter, nor for eyes subordinated to words. For those with no imagination, who can only see what the eyes can show, I believe that postcards, photographs and colorful magazines are worthier than my visceral search for expressing in words what I truly feel. (Marcus Deminco) ___________________________________ _________________

The Secret of Clarice Lispector CLARICE She came from a mystery, and has gone to another. And we were left behind the essence of the mystery. Or was the mystery not essential, since Clarice traveled in it. It was Clarice dabbling in deeper, where words seem to find a reason to be and to portray men. What Clarice has said, what Clarice lived for us in form of story, in form of dream of story in form of dream of story (in her way, was there a cockroach or an angel?) We cannot repeat or invent. Those things are Clarice's unique jewelry sometimes we borrow. She owns everything. Clarice did not stand in commonplace, did not have ID, could not be portrayed. Has Chirico painted her? And so it is. The purest portrait of Clarice can only be found behind the clouds a plane has cut, so it can no longer be seen. From Clarice we keep gestures. Gestures, an attempt of Clarice to leave Clarice to be equal to us all in courtesy, care, arrangements. Clarice did not leave, even smiling. Inside was halls, stairwells, phosphorescent ceilings, long steppes, bridges in Recife surrounded in mist forming a country where Clarice lived, in loneliness and flames, building fables. We could not retain Clarice in our floor full of commitments. The papers, the arrangement demanded the present, editions, possible cocktails on the edge of an abyss. Lifting up from the abyss, Clarice scratches a red and gray groove in the air and fascinated. Fascinated us. And that is it. We chose to understand her later. Later, someday later... We will learn to love Clarice. Vision of Clarice Lispector - Carlos Drummond de Andrade (Jornal do Brasil, 12/10/1977).

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PREFACE.................................................................................................................... 08 CHAPTER 1 – Torment............................................................................................ 13 CHAPTER 2 – A Choice She Did Not Make......................................................... 20 CHAPTER 3 – In Another World............................................................................ 32 CHAPTER 4 – The Unknown Luck........................................................................ 39 CHAPTER 5 – The Awakened Fantasy................................................................... 46 CHAPTER 6 – The Ritual Of Jovino....................................................................... 49 CHAPTER 7 – The Old Gypsy................................................................................. 55 CHAPTER 8 – The Prophecy.................................................................................... 66 CHAPTER 9 – A Whole New World....................................................................... 77 CHAPTER 10 – Her First Book................................................................................ 83 CHAPTER 11 – February, 2nd ................................................................................. 90 CHAPTER 12 – The Contradiction Of Life............................................................ 95 CHAPTER 13 – Absorbed From Reality................................................................ 104 CHAPTER 14 – The Old Wizard............................................................................. 109 CHAPTER 15 – Hallucination.................................................................................. 117 CHAPTER 16 – End.................................................................................................. 126 Clarice Lispector Returns (A Psychographic Message) ........................................ 132 The First Enigma......................................................................................................... 134 The Second Enigma..................................................................................................... 137 The Third Enigma........................................................................................................ 146 About The Author........................................................................................................ 157 Credits............................................................................................................................. 159

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

would like to express my sincere thanks to the then unknown

Pedro de AlcĂ˘ntara Andrade, who - among many famous and well-known writers - chose me to transcribe this whole story about his grandfather, Mr. Jovino Andrade, Helen Palmer and the writer Clarice Lispector. I truly hope that the book has lived up to your expectations, and honored the trust you have placed in me.

Marcus Deminco

Rio de Janeiro â&#x20AC;&#x201C; December, 9th 1977 10:30 a.m. It was only a day before her fifty-seventh birthday, when, due to cancer, the prodigious Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector departed from this transitory universe of humans to perpetuate her existence through some precious writings which overflowed her complex feminine soul. The numerous connoisseurs of her pulsing nature and her intrepid-sensitive force became orphans of her epiphanic words and literary world. Although enriched by an immortal legacy that would remain in tales, chronicles and novels, all of her work would be unfinished for sharing and even her posthumous works and her unpublished stories faded along with Clarice. Meanwhile, long after her death, numerous controversies concerning her private life came to public notice when the Clarice Lispector Archive was inaugurated in the Museum of Brazilian Literature at the House of Rui Barbosa Foundation in September 1987, exhibiting a collection of personal documents of the writer donated by her son, Paulo Gurgel Valente. After a closer look at some postcards, letters exchanged between friends/ relatives, snippets of literary writings, and so many written papers about

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

events, it was clear she was the one who signed a column under the pseudonym Helen Palmer in the Correio da Manhã newspaper published between August 1959 and February 1961. Surely, that was not one her biggest secrets. In fact, it was not even a fact to hide. Many of her friends, especially the closest ones, knew that Clarice chose Tereza Quadros as a pen name to sign a column writer Rubem Braga invited her to write, from May to October 1952, in a tabloid called Comício. They were also aware that, as of April 1960, she was the hand behind the column entitled ‘Just for Women’, published in Diário da Noite, signed by the model and actress Ilka Soares. Undoubtedly, Clarice kept something far beyond her introspective lyricism, something that would exhaust the interpretation of her hermetic texts and the revelation of her aliases. It was a mystery that challenged logic, a puzzle that persisted out of her oblique melancholy eyes. It is believed that she had only accepted to participate in the First World Congress of Witchcraft, held in Bogota, Colombia, in August 1975, because she was already fully convinced that the cyclical capacity for renewal came from a supreme force, far more intricate than the religious conflicts she felt. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps that was not. Maybe more about that inexplicable feeling could have been noted if, under the guise of a sudden malaise, she had not given up reading the text about magic she had written for her presentation instead of having written a different speech.

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In fact, Clarice wanted to be buried in St. John the Baptist Cemetery. In deference to her Jewish customs concerning the Shabbat, she could only be buried on Sunday. It is known that her body rests in tomb #123, row G, in Israeli Communal Cemetery, located in Caju, a neighborhood in the Northern Zone of Rio de Janeiro. Coincidentally, it is located next to the place where her character MacabĂŠa used to spent her spare time. However, like all the extraordinary people who make their lives a journey, it is assumed that Clarice had surely taken a fraction of irrevocable lessons with herself. Perhaps the most obscure cases, such as the most secretive episodes and unfinished writings, were left behind, shrouded in shadows, waiting to be unraveled â&#x20AC;&#x201C; for instance, it is unknown the real reason she had created those aliases. Clarice has an unfathomable existence, and her interests were the antagonistic as they were voracious: faith and skepticism walked alongside fear and anguish of living. She felt happy not to cry in the face of sadness, and claimed that crying gave her comfort. She was indifferent, but humanist. Tedious and intriguing; reserved and intimate; foreign and native; Jewish and Christian; lesbian and housewife; man and mother; witch and saint.

Ukrainian,

Brazilian,

Northeasterner

and

Carioca.

Authorities asserted that she was right-wing, others claimed she was a communist. She spoke seven languages, but her nationality was always questioned. At birth, she was registered Chaya Pinkhasovna, and died Clarice Lispector.

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

After all, why was the most studied Brazilian writer in the world known as The Great Witch of Brazilian Literature? What kind of bond Clarice have possibly established with the universe of witchcraft? One of her closest friends, journalist and writer Otto Lara Resende always warned readers: ‘You should be careful with Clarice. This is not just literature, it’s witchcraft.’ Certainly, even today, many of her readers are completely unaware of her close involvement with occult practices, either ignore her deep interest in Kabbalistic magic. Her participation in the Witchcraft Convention could be just another rumor among many others surrounding the fanciful imagery of her name. In spite of this rumors, it is noted that Clarice had different mystical habits, mainly linked to her beliefs in the power of certain numbers. For her, numbers 5 (five), 7 (seven) and 13 (thirteen) represented a magic symbolism, a kind of karmic identity. In her creative process was coffee, cigarettes and a typewriter in her lap, and she always marked 7 (seven) spaces before each opening paragraph. On several occasions she did not hesitate to ask her friend Olga Borelli to finish the last few paragraphs of her texts judiciously marked on page number 13 (thirteen). Once, she wrote: ‘Seven is the number of men. The deepest wound heals in seven days if the destroyer is not around [...] Number seven was my secret, Kabbalistic number. There are seven notes with which you can compose all the songs that exist 11

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and that will exist.’ There is a recurrence of ‘theosophical additions,’ numbers that can be summed up to reveal a magic amount. The year 1978, for example, has a sum that results equal to seven: 1 + 9 + 7+ 8 = 25, and 2 + 5 = 7. ‘I assure you that 1978 will be the one true Kabbalistic year. Therefore, I commanded to polish the instants of time, to shine the stars, to wash the moon with milk, and the sun with liquid gold. Every year, I start to live another life.’ Even though she died only few weeks before the beginning of that Kabbalist year, all these ritualistic customs undoubtedly clarified the real reason she had accepted with care and enthusiasm the unexpected invitation from the Colombian writer and occultist Sorcerer Simon to participate as a guest in the First World Congress of Witchcraft he was organizing.

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

December 14th, 1958. 8:15 p.m.

Satin night dress, messy hair, blurred make-up. A tense body facing the typewriter. Restless breathing, furrowed brow, stiff neck, and a turgid look trying to sidestep the letters, numbers, and signs marked on dirty keys, cleared by the low yellowish light of a small porcelain lamp placed on a rustic dresser with four closed drawers. Dilated pupils, rapid heart rate, increased frantic blood pressure and adrenal glands secreting copious quantities of adrenaline. Muscles of legs contracted, minimisation of blood flow in the intestines, feet tingling on the cold floor, a line of pain in the abdomen. One trembling hand repeatedly taking a cigarette from the ashtray and bringing it to the edges of her lips moistened with a non-expensive wine. It was not the first time Helen had that unpleasant feeling of mediocrity, and even having predicted that after a lasting feeling inertia, everything would return to normal, a fearful thinking coerced her that time was going to be different. She felt 13

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unable, incapable of exceeding the limit of her embarrassment. She had the disgusted impression of having turned into a perpetual prisoner of her own story. She saw herself completely tied when that damn thirteenth chapter got her stuck as if some obstacle or some future negative motivation in that plot was preventing her to keep on writing. Exasperated, she took a sip from the bottleneck and a drag on a cigarette. Behind the cloud of smoke continually exhaled, she glimpsed the blank page, waiting for the next words that had disappeared with her quiet. Nothing seemed to make sense. In her disturbed mind, now roamed whirls of disconnected thoughts. Her ideas became inaccurate, her intentions and faculties were as disorganized as that huge mess accumulated in pieces and piles of papers on that filthy floor of the room in a modest pension where she had chosen to hide. With the mind exhausted, emotions disturbed and nerves touched, she felt a dreadful will to cry, but hold the tears pressing the jaw with the teeth. Magnified and inert, she wanted scream her agony until her throat exploded out. Instead, she swallowed the anger, and kept quiet. Anguish suffocated her thoracic cavity walls, making it difficult for air to go into her lungs. This gave her an undefined grief, an unknown anxiety for something which fatally was about to happen and there was nothing she could do to stop. That feisty and tormenting angry was spreading in a 14

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

turbulent challenge to hold back the impulse to throw the typewriter out of the window. That made her express a passive feeling. She wielded a pencil sharpener blade, and even though it was unbending, she gave up that almost uncontrollable urge to nail it in her chest. She wanted to mutilate herself, to punish herself, and desperately needed to take out this wrath to express her anger. Swept away by an indistinguishable fury, she collected the fingers and thought of punching it in one of her eyes, but she soon could control herself. She thought of scratching the side of her face with her nails, tried to pull her hair, to slap and bite herself. Then, sunk in ambiguous impulses and taken by wild drives, she was not able to curb her right hand holding a glowing tip cigarette upside down, moved steadily toward her legs and slowly rubbed that red ember on her left knee, unburdening all her wrath. Little by little, the shoulder joints relaxed the arms resting on the chair, while all the frenzy gradually decreased: the brain and the forehead slowly cooled, and the ears relaxed in snaps of decompression. The pain became a kind of subterfuge disguised as a relief, a medicine a greater inner disease. It was a warning that yet completely disoriented, her flesh was still acting to external stimuli. Being happy or being sad was indifferent. Having the publishers rejected her books and kept them on shelves for years 15

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did not affect her to any less discouragement. There was an infinite reason greater than a cheap wish for being appreciated. She did not write for ideology, nor to be judged by the punitive perspectives of literary critics. Nor to ogle over varied temptations of fame or a vanity. She wrote for urgency, for an almost vital necessity to stay lucid. She did it to scare away the bitterness, to exorcise old demons. The letters worked as understandable words, and become the only remaining sobriety of introspection. Without a correct perception of time afflicted by sleepless nights, Clarice no longer remembered of having contracted that condition to a phobia. Aversion was spontaneous, and panic attacks were hideous just to imagine herself wandering in the streets full of people. She had a grudge to fairs, trembling and perspiring cold just thinking about that trite commotion of downtown area. She did not use to go to the masses, and never, under any circumstances, was near beaches for she strongly disliked the sea. The waves brought of a past so nefarious that she would rather erase it from memory. Doubtful and without any prospect of improvement, she chose to be confined and started living alone, hidden from everyone and everything. She did not have any friends, did not visit relatives, and did not got involved in any love affairs possibly because of her animosity or of obedience to her physical instincts. Apart from the characters she created, anyone else knew

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

about her daily life. In a barren experience on the continuous solitary act of writing was found a way to beat her biggest traumas. She was not rich or lived in poverty either, her financial situation was reasonable financial. The good economic conditions of his foster father allowed her to live some whims. She could travel the world, meet different civilizations, connect with interesting and well-educated people. However, she knew that nothing and nobody could fill that vast emptiness, that deep displeasure. Wherever she goes, her mind was not there. She had a life inside herself, and rather enjoyed reality of her lies than watched the made-up truths of her transitional shelters. Out of social interaction, she sporadically sought for refuge. Most of the time after having finished a book, she moved to a different place to avoid the risk of being mocked or found. For so, anonymously cloistered, she stayed in hostels, hostels and pensions, hotels, without anyone - not even Jovino Andrade suspect that behind that indistinct figure holed up in different streets and neighborhoods in the capital of Bahia was, in fact, a secret identity of a bizarre writer. A few months later, however, all that isolated eccentricity made her turn into a silent hostage of her own creations. Her monotony blended with the plots of her writings, the inviting adventures of intrigues seduced her overshadowed routine, and her unpleasant impressions confused with the intimate sensation 17

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with which she described to designed her characters. Thus, as much as her unusual behavior challenged normality, and as much as her nomad action challenged the pragmatic governing sense, there was - at least for her - a coherent meaning to act that way: bordering insanity and dueling against all logic.

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

_________________ ___________________________________ â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Ladies, be yourselves! Study carefully what is positive or negative in yourself and take advantage of that. A smart woman takes advantage even of the negative. A mout h too torn, eyes too small and a nose not very correct can serve to mark your type and make you more attractive. As long as they are yours.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Helen Palmer) ___________________________________ _________________

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The thin skin of her knee bone was still burning when those same confusing voices of the previous night were noticed. Terrified, she jumped up in instinctive defense. Her heel kicked the chair and, as she crept in short steps, the wall frowned her back. A cold wind rushed on her head, teasing every single hair of her body. Her heart was beating strong, her heavy breathing was broken by sobs. She was threatened by an invisible danger, intimidated by an imaginary enemy. Expecting that something terrible was about to happen made her stiff, half-hearted. In the total silence on that quiet Sunday night, she noticed a babble apparently coming from inside the dresser. Fearful and hesitant, she intended out running down the hall to the exit door and ask for help, but new shuffled noises, now resonating inside the bathroom, elevated her rage, and gave her a sudden challenging stimulus. ‘Who are you? What’s going on?’ she asked restless, approaching the table and pulling a bottle of wine, the typewriter and the lamp on the floor. ‘What do you want from me?’ she

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

repeatedly asked loudly, out of control, as she pulled out drawer by drawer. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Please! Say something!â&#x20AC;&#x2122; she claimed, pulling the mattress from the box spring, dropping the cases from the pillows, and desperately looking for the voices. No sign, no response. Nothing, nobody. She was alone, indeed: surrounded by piles of scattered notes and with the head fizzing in disturbances. In a fleeting moment of calmness, after searching every corner, the mad screams stopped, the excessive movements suspended, on the toilet she sat with her clothes on. She realized the sounds were gone. Not a single call nor those intriguing and unusual breathing could be heard. Through the window, she heard only the sound of shoes of people walking Carlos Gomes street. Less dysphoric, therefore a little more quiet, she went back to the room ready to pretend that any of it had even happened. She took a box of matches, lit another cigarette, and concentrated in her confusing thoughts - never knowing what was about to come -, and stood there smoking. Then, denoting serenity and looking partially restored, she picked up bottle shards, put the objects into the dresser, restored the drawers and, trying not to enhance more of that paranoia, decided to take a shower. She stripped slowly as turning on the shower for long minutes in nice cold water dripped on her shoulders, licking her legs and running down the narrow drain below her feet. 21

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Trusting that the worst was over, she slightly refreshed so she hung up the sieve in the valve, parted the plastic curtain to the left corner, stepped on the piece of carpet near the bidet, pulled the towel from the rack and wiped herself without hurry, dissembling intrepidity. However, when she was naked, facing the round mirror above the sink, she confronted an extraordinary vision: instead of her face reflected was a thin dirty unknown man with a huge scar keloids from mouth to ear staring her eerily without saying a single word. She was so speechless to sketch a reaction. Her forged bravery faded quickly. Pale and scared, she stood still, remained static and mute, face to face with that obscure, macabre man reflecting on the mirror. Wishing to somehow escape from that hallucinatory image, she chose not to look again: closed her eyes tightly and kept them closed for some time. Fumbling, wearing a satin dress, she covered the edges of the mirror with the towel, left the bathroom in a hurry, crossed the hall, slammed the door, turned the key, and went down barefoot three flights of stairs to the porch on the ground floor. After that, she crossed the yard, ignoring the group of four guests talking loudly and playing cards on a coffee table. Entirely upset, she did not care if they were watching her, so she walked to the anteroom of main entrance, and took the phone - the only one available in the pension - and still agitated, she rotated the numbers with her index finger to dial one by one Jovinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

number. ‘Thank God you’re awake!’ she exclaimed, and copiously raved: ‘It’s the end! Enough! I can’t stand this anguish anymore! It’s over! I can’t take this curse!’ ‘What curse? What is going on?’ ‘They are chasing me.’ ‘They, who?’ wondered Jovino on the other end of the line, without any understanding. ‘They, who’ he added. ‘The voices...’ ‘Voices? What voices? What are you talking about?’ ‘They are everywhere.’ ‘What do these voices say? What do they want? What madness is this?’ ‘They seem to be calling a name.’ ‘What name?’ ‘I don’t know! I can’t hear it properly. It’s a babble, it’s nagging...’ ‘What nonsense!’ Jovino sighed softly. ‘It’s been days I’ve been hearing these noises, these callings. 23

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They’re barfing on my mind.’ ‘Why didn’t you call me before?’ ‘You wouldn’t understand.’ ‘I never stopped believing in you.’ ‘I just had a vision.’ ‘A vision?’ Jovino inquired more tangled, denoting total seriousness. ‘What kind of vision?’ ‘I’ve seen an unknown man.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Inside the bathroom mirror.’ ‘Inside the mirror?’ he repeated with stupor, trying to stay aware of all about that abnormal situation. And continued: ‘Did he tell you anything? Did he tell you want he wants? Or did he ask you anything?’ ‘Nothing! Absolutely nothing!’ ‘What did he look like?’ ‘Kind of thin, not very tall, with a scar keloids from mouth to ear...’ Helen reported in phonic gasping. ‘Does it have any connection with what you’re writing?’ he 24

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questioned randomly trying to establish a logical connection to that delusion. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Your new book...’ ‘What about it?’ she asked. ‘What is it about?’ ‘It’s a novel, it’s about the kidnapping of a nun. So what?’ she replied reflective. ‘Where you going with this?’ ‘Haven’t you got too involved with this plot?’ ‘Maybe I have!’ she agreed. ‘But is there any way to write without getting involved? Without being haunted? Without donating yourself, without diving in?’ ‘Maybe being less passionate...’ he pondered before recommending: ‘For now, calm down! Try to get some rest!’ Then, and without hostility he continued: ‘You don’t look well.’ ‘Indeed.’ she admitted. Demonstrating the exaggerated contradiction between her frantic folly and the confines of her conscious faculties, she said: ‘I can’t do it, I can’t do it anymore...’ ‘Can’t do what? Can’t do what?’ ‘Create, produce, invent. Not one single paragraph. Not 25

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even a line. It’s been more than three weeks I’ve been in the same chapter.’ ‘The process of creation is fickle, is shaky. You know that better than I do,’ he comforted her with evasive tricks to calm her down, to tranquilize her. ‘These bad moments... are just common obstacles to many writers.’ ‘I don’t think you understand. When the letters slip through my fingers, when words run the machine, when the ideas disappear from paper, I feel like a priest without voice in a mass.’ ‘You need a few days off, you need to relax. Try to get some fresh air. It’s been days since you last called me.’ ‘Damn Jovino!’ she yelled in more rabid tone, with the bottom of the phone almost glued to her mouth. ‘I am not complaining about a damn lack of inspiration. I’m talking about something much more serious.’ ‘More serious?’ asked astounded. ‘More serious how? What is going on?’ ‘I got lost and I can’t find myself anymore.’ ‘What do you mean, you got lost, you can’t find yourself?’ ‘I don’t have a will of my own. I don’t know who I am or what I want. I barely feel hungry, thirsty, sleepy...’

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

‘But you chose this way,’ Jovino said it so she could remember her own choices. ‘You chose to leave home to write.’ ‘I know, and I had a reason for so. As a matter of fact, you know perfectly that it wasn’t really an option,’ she emphasized. ‘I had died. I needed to reinvent life, to embellish daily life. And it was with my imagination diving in imaginary distant worlds I could find one single reason to stay alive,’ she justified. After a few seconds of silence, she added: ‘But I’m paying a high price for that.’ ‘Why don’t you just give up?’ ‘Give up?’ Helen repeated angry, biting her lips and exhaling air through the nostrils. ‘How can I give up with so many books stored in me? With so many stories crying out to be told?’ ‘But look at yourself! Look at you. Do you really think it’s worth to keep on doing this?’ ‘I don’t know, and I guess it’s useless to find out now. Now it’s late. Late and impossible,’ she stated and continued: ‘I’ve reached a stage where there is no turning back. My head has become a library, a library full of unpublished tales. As long as I don’t spit them out, don’t rip them off inside of me, I won’t have peace.’ ‘Why don’t you come back? I miss you so much. It’s been

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more than four months since you left.’ ‘Because it wouldn’t do me much good’, she argued. ‘I can’t escape from myself.’ ‘A part of me was also gone with your mother...’ ‘Please, don’t!’ she claimed. ‘Don’t mention that subject. You know how much talking about it still hurts me.’ ‘But, you are all I have left.’ ‘I am sorry. I’ve changed a lot since I left.’ ‘Changed?’ Jovino argued misunderstanding. ‘Changed how?’ ‘I’m not the same person’ she warned in a mystery tone, whispering afraid that somebody would hear her talking: ‘I lied when I left home.’ ‘You what?’ ‘I haven’t told you everything...’ ‘I don’t understand! You told me you needed to travel, said you needed new scenery to your writings.’ ‘And I really did. But I haven’t been away.’ ‘Excuse me?’ 28

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‘I haven’t left the city. I was here, wandering from one place to another.’ ‘You’re saying that you hid from me for all this time?’ asked Jovino as disappointed as surprised. ‘Forgive me. I... I’m sorry, my father.’ ‘Why did this to me?’ ‘For respect.’ ‘Respect?’ ‘Yes...I wanted to preserve you. I was afraid you didn’t understand or didn’t accept me anymore...’ ‘Why wouldn’t I? What are you hiding from me? Why have you been away all these months?’ ‘I think it’s about time you know...’ ‘What the hell is going on?’ ‘Meet me in half an hour and I’ll tell you the truth’ asked Helen decided to reveal everything at last. ‘I’m in room 301 at Benny’s Pension, St. Carlos Gomes.’ ‘Wait for me,’ he asked stunned. ‘I’m on my way.’ ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

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Jovino hung up the phone totally worried. Apart from being shocked with that revelation, he noticed that something very serious was going on. While Helen enjoyed the power to decide and act according to her determination, intuition or will, she seemed to become a perpetual prisoner of an irreversible choice. Maybe it has not been a deliberate choice as she had confessed, much less a simple attitude taken by impulse or legitimate desire. Perhaps writing was really the only way to escape. Still, to understand a little more about the mysteries that disturbed her senses, and to, later, unravel some of the rantings that question her sanity, it is important to get back to past. More precisely to the year of 1934, when two juxtaposed facts occurred almost simultaneously: one tragically, and the other unpredictably. Despite being so divergent and apart of each other for a short time, both of them would be intertwined forever in a rambling incoherent and divine rule: while Jovino Andrade buried his wife and son in Campo Santos cemetery in the in city of Salvador, JoĂŁo Bento Gabriel was ready to come to life in the backwoods in Bahiaâ&#x20AC;Ś

_________________ ___________________________________ â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a sad trend which has been worsen in recent years, and that is to standardize beauty and feminine. Influenced by cinema, the young lady chooses an artist of renown and becomes her carbon copy. (...) Depersonalized, these poor imitations never get success because what makes those stars famous is not their hairstyle, the pinky finger in the mouth when they smile, nor is that look full of invitations. It was their personality, talent, grace; and no hairdresser, no make-up artist, no pose rehearsed in front of a mirror will make it. (...)â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Helen Palmer, April 1960). ___________________________________ _________________

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February 1934. Barroqueira of Agreste - Bahia

The great distance of reality of urban centers, away from any trace of progress and immensely away from everything that could be understood as a civilization, Lea Leopoldina was another poor maladroit pregnant woman about to give birth to another predestined unlucky country baby. Around her was very little story to be told and no ornament to decorate her poor mud house: three bowls of brackish water, some sprouts of charred palms, a bag of cassava flour, it all shared the cramped space in a wooden table with raw saponin soap, macambira leaves, and a pestle topping a rounded stone shed which still had remains of rapadura brought by peddlers from the surrounding sugarcane fields. Above the rafters and the sticks on the walls, there was a roof made awkwardly with a thick strip of brass tied in a single knotted to the center of the ridge which loosely held a sconce in 32

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

the direction of an old wood stove. And trapped in the memory of her meagre belongings scattered around those four corners of extreme filth was a sad memory of her partner: Nestor had abandoned her inexplicably, after finding out her unexpected pregnancy. Outside, where not roses but smoke bloomed and where nothing germinated on the spiky cracks in that narrow surface of a

sterile

lasting

ground,

there

was

not

much

left

after

that

drought. In that place: xiquexiques, quipas, boulders,

flints, juazeiros and mandacarus; ants, beetles and lizards hide in a devastated, pale and cushioned bush. Around them, rocky sands from dry rivers, empty tanks, crops and undefeated, decolored bugs flying over bones of dead animals. It was another afternoon and the sky was reddening entirely, taking those scrawny shadow of resistant Umbu, Jataí and Jericho trees. It could have been an inexpressive afternoon like any other in that lifeless small town, the sound of voices hummed louder than the regular crickets whistles on the rocks, even louder than the modest twitter of the thin gray birds flying toward that endless horizon of woods: ‘We’re the traditional midwives, and in group we work! Altogether, always together, many lives we’re gonna save... Let’s work with dedication, let’s take children with our hands!’ Those voices were Zulmira and Cassandra, her neighbors and comrades in penury. Incessantly singing a ditty off-key, two 33

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strong caboclas, dressed in all white scrap and slippers and carrying their stuff, crossed the door made of straw of caroá. While the highest one quickly lit the lamp to disinfect the scissors and heat up some towels, the thinnest one, demonstrating greater skill and care, rapidly prepared the parturient: ‘Take it easy, Miss lady! We’re here to help.’ Moaning inarticulate, without relaxing her back, and with the belly inflated pointing up, Leopoldina was twitching, trying her best to find some comfort on a mat of parched foliage, entwined by stalks of nicuri. A cold sweat flooded her mongrel skin - burned by the merciless sun and marked with early wrinkles as deep as the cracked soil of caatinga -, and run down on the piece of cloth covering her hair. Her breathing panted with the increasingly strong and enduring cramps. Her muscles contracted, and from the cervical canal came blows passed by physical exhaustion and by the wish to give birth. Her uterus completely dilated, compressed top to bottom and front to back. ‘C’mon, lady! It’s coming out! Push!’ said the midwife with andiroba oil in her hands, massaging the upper part of her abdomen in the direction of a hot water basin placed below her pelvis: ‘Get that kid out! Go! C’mon! Go!’ she shouted again, without abandoning the traditions and customs of her beliefs. The 34

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

other

woman

stood

there

saying

her

prayers

Saint

Bartholomew: ‘Saint Bartholomew got dressed, and his way he blessed. Where are you going, my Saint? I’m in search of You, my Lord. You are not coming with me, for you are staying with Leopoldina. In the house where you are, either a woman in labor or a child in birth will die. Peace, gift, mercy!’ Those almost unbearable twenty minutes of suffering and perforating sense were ridiculously attenuated with a gag in her mouth and with the palliative effect of an herbal tea the midwives made her drink. In a final retraction of air, as she desperately attempted to expel life she kept in her womb for months, Leopoldina felt a rigid head abruptly distending the tissues of her genitals. She felt tearing in half, dividing in two separate pieces. Her vision slowly darkened, and the noises she heard before fled from her ears because of the ante violent feeling of numbness that took all her stiff and sweaty body. She fainted and some seconds later woke up hearing the midwives screaming in excitement: ‘It’s a miracle! A miracle!’ they stated loudly, barely believing in that glorious coincidence: that child, brought to the world by her hands, was born at the exact moment in which, after months and months of waiting, the nature showed all his inconsistency and made it in the Northeast backwoods at last.

Marcus Deminco

‘Blessed be this child!’ the other woman said and continued: ‘They say, when a child is born in a rainy day is a sign that the angels are sad up there in heaven. This rain, Miss lady, is the tears of the celestial spirits for being split from a brother. This boy is blessed and must have a name of an angel.’ Lying in that same position, Leopoldina watched her umbilical cord being cut. The heart slowed, as the uterus gradually reduced in size. Her placenta detached along with a solitary tear of relief that ran through all her indecisive countenance. The retracted joy of giving birth hurt with her primiparous fear. Her shy smile of happiness to see her baby weakly crying was a clear picture of all her conflicting feelings. And pain of childbirth reduced before a gently holding her son for the very first time, and transferred all those churning thoughts to chance. Appreciating the abundant rain, she thanked the Zulmira and Cassandra for their readiness, prayed in silence for Our Lady of Good Birth, carefully placed the child on her shoulder, and expressed gratitude to the two caboclas midwives. Without disputing that sacred legend they remembered, she proudly baptized her: ‘His name is João Bento Gabriel.’ Despite the few witnesses, it is how they say that scrawny boy in weak body and orphan of father was born and named after an archangel, in that small forgotten village. It is also said that, after that day it never rained again: 36

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drought continued to devastate, sun continued to destroy lives and chances of survival, and just like the breast dryness Leopoldina suffered from, nothing more could grow on the floor, and nothing more came down to the ground.

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_________________ ___________________________________ ‘(...) perfume is something that announces for itself: everyone can notice you are wearing perfume, there is no way to deny it. Thus, this is not about hiding reality. It is about creating an elusive mystery. To wear perfume in front of a man is, so to speak, like offering him a bottle of perfume. And what the perfume has to do for you is to blend with yourself so that its presence is immaterial and becomes part of your personality. And personality is also a subtle thing. Personality, although indefinable, is what makes you a presence. Surround your presence with a halo of perfume, and you will be surrounding yourself with your own mystery; you won’t be lying, you will be telling the truth in a beautiful way.’ (Helen Palmer, April 1960). ___________________________________ _________________

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

In the progressive wear and tear of that routine indigence without water, light or news from other places, the days were like a war for survival. In an endless tedious drudgery one wakes up to anguish, so it was better to fall sleep and never to wake up. Without notion of day, month or hour â&#x20AC;&#x201C; chronological time, weather or seasons did not make the slightest difference. Since variety was absent, a Sunday in spring could be a Wednesday in autumn, a Monday in the winter could be a Sunday in the summer, no one would notice the difference. It was as if those nordestinos did not exist for the civilized world, or as if the entire civilized world was invisible to them. And in that same way, just like so many punished people in the semiarid region were devoid of instructions and vanities, Leopoldina too would end her days in that invincible burden. Afflicted by her badly lived twenty-nine years old, she could tolerate the lack of hope, the announced misery, and unavoidable misery. Without any resistance, she was willing to fulfill everything what she thought was her ordeal: living with little food, extreme poverty and faithless daily life. 39

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Approximately two years after the birth of Bentinho, something bigger and more magnanimous than her lasting passivity would intrepidly change the course of that ominous fate: the brave nobility of his maternal spirit would urge her to fight against all the infatuated foreheads of his sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fate. Therefore, if her trajectory seemed permanently unthrifty, she was hoping to write her sonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fate differently. She was convinced that her choices and indifference would directly influence the future of Bentinho. They were intertwined, close in consanguineous ties. She understood she coexisted through his steps, but believed that his movements were subject to her decisions. She knew some unlucky misfortunes would later cower him and the ruthless mishaps would be lords of his wills, as well as they have somewhat been domineering harmfully her moderate ambitions. She found herself in an awkward situation with few exits, and knew she needed to act. In fact, for the first time in her life, she felt it was really necessary to do something, and not to rebel now would be even worse than to accept her own tedious and slow death. That would be, for obvious consequences, to deliver the soul of her son to disease and unhappiness. She was free of any personal appeal that could make her to retract the slightest attitude, so she did not stall to decide taking him away from that via crucis, away from that cursed place. She needed to give him a chance, other than the one he already had, even if that chance

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

meant to leave. She could re-start with him another story. Never before was she determined and diverted from the majority of incarcerated agrestinos, so she preferred to risk in an uncertain road far from there than to stay trapped in that corrosive misery already installed: at the dawn of a day in January, she woke up before the sun. Without much have to carry, she put her the few clothes in an old bundle, cooked some rapadura in two gourds with water, picked up some money she barely saved with the selling of the loaves of macambira. She put on her sandals with leather straps, and without saying goodbye to anyone, grabbed Bentinho asleep in her chest, and left behind her past. Her way were long but with no regrets. She walked for long miles until the closest city. Regardless of her act of bravery, it was not easy to get to Mairimeam Batista. When they were tired of wandering and she felt a strong cramping in the calves, they stop to rest in a shelter among the branches of the stubborn trees on a trail of gravel and cactus. In those shadows where she partially protected from the burning sensation of warmth, she put her bundle and took a long breath. After squatting on the blisters of the heels, she took the rag off the head of Bentinho, and, before they left, she feed him with some gooey syrup made of rapadura to fill his belly and fool the hunger. The sun was already shining when at last she could see a cluster of rural residents and boias-frias waiting by the side of a 41

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small grocery store closed. Some meters to the corner, an open hatch in the side wall of a plywood bank revealed half of a long mustache of an old, swarthy, good-looking man - although he did not have one of his ears – who was smoking rope tobacco as placing the tickets on a small counter. Shy, she slowly approached him, and without a destination, she asked: ‘Sir, please, I wanna leave this place’ ‘Leave? Where d’ya wanna go?’ ‘It don’t matter. Take me to the farest place you can’ ‘Holy!’ exclaimed the land owner and continued: ‘So ya lucky.’ ‘Why d’ya say that?’ ‘There is a convoy of cart fixin’ to the capital.’ ‘There is water in the capital?’ ‘Yes, ma’am!’ he guaranteed. ‘There’s water, light, and a lot of great things. It seems it’s not the real world. It seems like heaven...’ ‘This is where I go then’ said Lea hopefully, giving the man almost all the money she had. Then, she looked at Bentinho with a smile of satisfaction. ‘Good trip’ wished the man politely with his country accent 42

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

and smell of smoke. ‘Don’t worry, the journey is long but faith might should be stronger.’ ‘It should!’ she shyly responded, crossing with her head down to the side behind the bank, hugging the child even harder, and obeying that line early placed in an improvised stirrup. She climbed the old cart wagon covered with filthy canvas hiding the rust iron of its structure. Four quadruped animals carried some despicable migrants, little luggage and much anticipation. Few minutes later, the coachman sitting in a harness of steed put on the hat on his head and his blunderbuss on his shoulder. After a horned horn honked loudly to the back roads, he spat on the ground holding the reins in his hands with the spur of the boot. The rib of the first mule, the weakest in line, rose up without force, whilst the other mules turned them all back in the same feeble tone, making all the carriages lined up after him, marching to the promised city. Inside those three carriages was a collective muteness trudged for long miles travelled in slow paces. Now and then, they stopped to drop off and pick up, and expressionless faces blurred thoughts. Apprehensive looks went through the darkness inside the boxes, discontinued when the moonlight penetrated the torn awnings or when the teamsters descended to feed the animals with palm meal. And the sweet lullaby Leopoldina sang to calm Bentinho from the uncomfortable grinding of the wheels softly diminished her own anxiety. She was so exhausted, the 43

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sound of her own verses made her also fall asleep. As a free manifestation of the unconscious, when she dreamt with the slightest chance of being more audacious, she felt like she could be entirely free of all the bitterness. Sleeping or drowned in brief superfluous thoughts, images of shape absorbed her since for she had no colorful thoughts registered in her memories, neither smug ideas to imagine. She could never presume all the incredible nonsense that would happen during those four days.

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

_________________ ___________________________________ â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Modern times brought the emancipation of women in almost all fields. This is a good gift. However, there is a lot of confusion about this emancipation, and what you see is many women felling that being emancipated and having a remarkable personality is to imitate men in all their qualities and defects. Aggression, behaving indistinctly in public, and many other attitudes have been damaging the beauty of women, taking away the distinctive feature that men appreciate the most: femininity. The power of being different from men in attitudes, words, mentality. In our hands, we have a list of essential qualities to women, not only to make them charming, but most importantly, to make them more attractive to men. A woman must be, first, feminine. A woman must be able to control herself in a way that other people may become more important than her in her own strict relationship circle. Intelligence and common sense must be two qualities essential to women. A woman must have sense of humor and dignity, and must protect her individuality. The only quality that a woman does not need to have is... Logic.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Helen Palmer, April 1960). ___________________________________ _________________

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Except for the three drivers, no one in the convoy was surprised. They were used to commuting to the capital, and the landscape was not a surprise anymore. For some passengers, that trip disturbed their sleep with some sort of hallucination, of mirage. However, for the vast majority of those travelers with no documents and limits, the feelings of seeing the sea for the first time was with a sad consideration: if God really exists, He was too unfair with them. The blue water in abundance in contrast with their misery hurt the rules of logic, the laws of consistency. It was an insult, a freak, a metaphorical yet hurtful slap in the face. They were amazed and

speechless, felt humiliated, outraged, felt smaller

than they were. And as those old wagons from the crudest region of the state were walking by the side of Red River beach and were sovereign as the expression they had in their faces, all the passengers felt an eager to carry all that sea on their back, to take it to agreste and build a beach in every dry damn in the caatinga. Weariness slightly disappeared, giving space to a collective euphoria. 46

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

One hour later, as they finally entering the downtown area of Salvador, the carriages were opened like barred gates in stockyards for those bronco pilgrims acted like cattle eager for grass, not like people looking for decency. As if the world instantly ended up or as if in fractions of seconds their frustrated lives were about to change from starvation to plenty, all of them got off the wagons with no idea of what to do. Either alone or subdivided in small groups, they followed their instincts and their urgency. Each of them carried a hoe, a borer, a scythe and a wish: to take a chance to stay in that overwhelming world. Leopoldina was the last one to leave the wagon, but was not the least to be impressed with that myriad of extraordinary things to handle. While her eyes enjoyed a fabulous new scenario, some pondering flooded her tiny brain. Holding in chest a small bundle of rags, a frightened child, and all the weight of the risk, she descended from the wain wagon hesitant bringing her wicked, undefined ambition to the middle of that place where people were coming and coming. Despite her lack of cleverness and her naivety of not knowing how things work in that city of hypnotic airs, she believed that any place would be infinitely better than where she was. And if a brief of irrational optimism made her think she was lost in the middle of that vast urban place, she knew that it was luck which had smiled at her for the very first time and that 47

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unforeseen situation could stimulate an ephemeral prospect.; and if for a transitory moment of excitement, an unreasonable thought made her believe that her expectations seemed possible from that moment on, then all the adversity would quickly remind her that anything could be as simple as her first assumptions... She ran out of rapadura, and had starved for at least twelve hours - Bentinho was surely much starving more. She decided, then, to feed him and to eat something before taking any decision. It took only a few hurried bites in two pieces of bread with butter and a quick sip from a small glass of passion fruit refreshment to make her fleeting delight disappear and bring back a harsh reality full of obstacles. Disoriented and now without money, she was convinced to think about something fast. By nightfall, the lack of food and dry throat would bother them once more.

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

_________________ ___________________________________ â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Should women read more? - I would add, more and better. (...) There are books for all tastes. There are novels, biographies, books of economy and politics that we believe are not of great interest to women. Books about family and guides to educate children and how to deal with husband are considered highly important to women. Another group of books that may be useful are the ones about theater for adults and for children.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; (Helen Palmer). ___________________________________ _________________

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I f you liked this preview, find out the rest of The Secret of Clarice Lispector in: http://a.co/dCC1hGe __________________________________________ ______________________

The Secret of Clarice Lispector

Marcus Deminco (Salvador-BA. Set, 28 1976). Brazilian writer and psychologist; Doctor Honoris Causa in Attention Deficit Disorder/ Hyperactivity Disorder; Practitioner and Tutor of Neurolinguistic programming (NLP); Portal of Psychologists Newsletter Subscriber. Wrote several texts, phrases and thoughts shared on numerous websites and social networks. Author of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Why read Paulo Coelho?â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Praised and shared by Paulo Coelho himself among his readers. Marcus Deminco is author of: 1) Me and My Friend ADD - Autobiography of a guy with Attention Deficit Disorder. 2) The Secret of Clarice Lispector 3) VERTYGO - The Suicide of Lukas (Portuguese Edition)

Marcus Deminco 4) VERTYGO - The Suicide of Lukas (English Edition) 5) Neuro-Linguistic Programming: beginning by the beginning. 6) Messages to Post, Like and Share. Vol. 1 7) Messages to Post, Like and Share. Vol. 2 8) Messages to Post, Like and Share. Vol. 3 9) E-cards text collection. Vol. 1 10) E-cards text collection. Vol. 2

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Awards and Tributes ___________________________________

1.1. Author of ‘Estafeta Sem Rumo’ − Cecilio Barros Barros Pessoa Awards of Anthology − Academy of Letters, Arts and Sciences of Arraial do Cabo - RJ. 1.2. Doctor Honoris Causa in ADHD by the Brazilian Association of Psychosomatic Medicine in recognition of the scientific contribution and social relevance of the book: Me & My Friend ADHD − Autobiography of a guy with Attention Deficit Disorder. 1.3. One of the winners of Além da Terra, Além do Céu prize of contemporary Brazilian poetry awarded by Chiado Editora.

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Talk to Marcus Deminco ___________________________________________________________

E-mail: marcusdeminco@gmail.com Website: http://marcusdeminco.com/ Blog: http://marcusdeminco.blogspot.com.br/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marcusdeminco Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcus.deminco Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/marcusdeminco/

The Secret of Clarice Lispector Instagram: @marcusdeminco Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRu8yfSoLewjuX6GO6o7Nmw G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/114858320913983491464 Tumblr: http://deminco.tumblr.com/ Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/143729713@N06/with/28004881736/ GoodReads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7792932.Marcus_Deminco/ Pensador: https://pensador.uol.com.br/autor/marcus_deminco/

Marcus Deminco

– English Version – Luís Rodolfo Cabral luisrodolfocabral@gmail.com – Formatting, Diagramming and Conversion to e-book – Arabutã Santos criacao@arabutan.com.br – Cover Creation – Erick Cerqueira (Marketing and Design) Http://esc3d.com.br