The Chandelier by Clarice Lispector

Author:Clarice Lispector
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811226707
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2018-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

Maybe she’d come back for good but nobody knew it and around her the instants weren’t connecting themselves to the future, just temporary and unattached — they were saying all the things to her and she was understanding. Her grandmother had died and her father was going up the stairs upright, the steps were creaking. Virgínia was putting off to the next day keeping the promise to find out if he was suffering and to help him. Her mother had dealt with a slight indisposition, her teeth were starting to look old and unwell. And as soon as she got out of bed everything could be ready for Virgínia to return. That period at Quiet Farm was so placid and unconquerable that she was allowing without surprise the possibility of going back without even walking through the fields a single time, without sitting for a moment peacefully beside the river.

She was looking. In vain she was seeking clues to her childhood, to the vague air of complicity and fear that she’d breathed. Now the mansion seemed to get more sun. The limestone chippings from the gnawed-at walls had lost their sad sweetness and were only showing a tired and happy old age. Her father, though still the same, had now inexplicably become a type, his own type. And her mother had transformed. Her skin had dried up, acquired a peevish tone; she was still well-preserved from her forehead to the beginning of her mouth, but after that old age was rushing in as if it had been hard to hold itself back. She’d wake up with a rested, swollen face, eat well, embroider, her chin double and firm, her head half-erect with satisfaction and dignity, making a perfect story of her life. The features of her face and body had become distinguished and domestic; a pale fatness was spun around her figure that now, so aged and rigid, would acquire for the first time a kind of beauty, a familiarity and a pleasantness, a certain air of fidelity and power like that of a big dog raised inside the home. She seemed to have discovered a new secret from which to live; she was interrupting herself for a second, running her tongue over her teeth:

“When I’d go to Upper Marsh . . . ,” she was saying . . .

Because for fifteen days her husband had driven her every day in the buggy to town until her new dentures were ready. It had even been necessary to sew in a hurry a blue linen dress with several rows of buttons. All she’d have to do was run her tongue across her teeth and the small, calm town would come back to her in a disturbance that would make her blink, her tongue forgotten on her upper teeth, her lip curled. It had become a habit to seek her teeth for a quick contact. And by now the caress would be unwittingly followed by an irresistible tic that no longer seemed

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