Near to the Wild Heart Read Free

remain silent in order just to see beneath all the realities, the one irreducible reality, that of existence. And beneath all the doubts — the chromatic study — I know that everything is perfect, for it has followed from scale to scale its fatal path in relation to itself. Nothing escapes the perfection of things, that is the history of all things. But this does not explain why I am moved when Otávio coughs and puts his hand to his chest, like this. Or when he smokes, and the ash falls on his moustache, without his even noticing. Ah, pity is what I feel at such moments. Pity is my way of loving. Of hating and communicating. Pity is what sustains me against the world, just as one person lives through desire and another through fear. Pity for the things that happen without my knowing. But I am tired, despite my happiness today, a happiness which comes from who knows where, like that of a summer dawn. I am tired, I am now desperately tired! Let us weep together, softly. At having suffered, and let us continue to suffer sweetly. Weary sorrow reduced to a tear. But now it's a craving for poetry, this I confess, dear God. Let us sleep holding hands. The world goes round and somewhere there are things unknown to me. Let us sleep on God and on mystery, a quiet, fragile ship floating on the sea, there you have sleep.
    Why was she so ardent and light, like the air that comes from the stove when it's uncovered?
    The day had been like any other, which might explain this upsurge of life. She had woken up filled with the light of day, inundated. Still in bed, she had thought about sand, the sea, the time she drank sea-water at her aunt's house before the old woman died, about feeling, especially about feeling. Lying there, she waited for several moments and since nothing happened she lived an ordinary day. She had not yet freed herself from the desire-power-miracle that had been with her since childhood. The formula had succeeded so many times: to feel the thing without possessing it. All it required was that everything should come to its assistance, leave it light and pure, in a state of fasting in order to receive imagination. As difficult as flying and, without anywhere to support one's feet, to receive something extremely precious in one's arms, a child for example. Even so, only at a certain point in the game did she lose the feeling that she was telling lies — and she was afraid of not being present in all her thoughts. She loved the sea and could feel the bed-sheets covering her. The day advanced and left her behind, alone.
    Still lying in bed, she had remained silent, almost without thinking, as sometimes happened. She superficially observed the house filled with sunshine at that hour, the window-panes high and shining as if they were light itself. Otávio had gone out. There was no one in the house. And no one inside her so that she was able to have thoughts as detached from reality as she pleased. If I were to see myself there in the land of the stars, I would remain only for myself. It was not night-time, there were no stars, impossible to see oneself from such a distance. Distracted, she suddenly remembered someone — large teeth with great gaps, eyes without lashes — saying, with every confidence of being original, yet sincere: my life is tremendously nocturnal. Having spoken, this person remained still, quiet, like an ox at night; from time to time the head moved in a gesture without meaning or purpose only to go back to being engulfed in stupidity. Filling the entire world with fear. Ah, yes, the man belonged to her childhood and connected with his memory there was a moist bunch of enormous violets, trembling with luxuriance... Now fully awake, should she so desire, Joana could relax a little, and relive her entire childhood... The brief period spent with her father, the removal to her aunt's house, the teacher instructing her how to live, puberty, surfacing mysteriously, boarding school... her marriage to