The Passion According to G.H. (New Directions Paperbook) by Clarice Lispector

Author:Clarice Lispector [Lispector, Clarice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2012-06-13T03:00:00+00:00

No longer even fear, no longer even fright.

Had I vomited my last human remnants? And I was no longer asking for help. The diurnal desert was before me. And now the oratorio was starting up again but in another way, now the oratorio was the deaf sound of the heat refracting off walls and ceilings, in rounded vaults. The oratorio was made of the tremblings of sultriness. And my fear too was different now: not the fear of someone about to enter, but the much broader fear of someone who has already entered.

So much broader: it was fear of my lack of fear.

Since it was with my rashness that I then looked at the roach. And I saw: it was a creature without beauty for other species. And as I saw it, the little former fear returned for just an instant: “I swear, I’ll do everything you want! but don’t leave me imprisoned in the roach’s room because something enormous is going to happen to me, I don’t want the other species! I just want people.”

But, at my slight cringing, the oratorio just intensified, and so I kept still, no longer trying to make a movement to help myself. I’d already abandoned myself — I could nearly see there at the beginning of the path already traveled the body I’d cast off. But I was still sometimes calling for it, still calling myself. And it was because I could no longer hear my answer, that I knew I’d already abandoned myself beyond my reach.

Yes, the roach was a creature without beauty for other species. The mouth: if it had teeth, they would be big, square and yellow teeth. How I hate the light of the sun that reveals everything, reveals even the possible. With the edge of my robe I wiped my forehead, without taking my gaze from the roach’s eyes, and my own eyes also had the same lashes as well. But no one touches yours, unclean thing. Only another roach would want this roach.

And me — who would want me today? who had already become as mute as I was? who, like me, was calling fear love? and want, love? and need, love? Who, like me, knew that I had never changed my form since they had drawn me on the stone of a cave? and next to a man and a dog.

From now on I could call anything by the name I invented: in the dry room I could, since any name would do, since none of them would. Within the dry sounds of the vault everything could be called anything, because anything would be transmuted in the same vibrating muteness. The roach’s much greater nature made anything, entering there — name or person — lose its false transcendence. So much so that I was seeing only and exactly the white vomit of its body: I was only seeing facts and things. I knew that I was in the irreducible, though I was unaware what the irreducible is.

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