Read Online Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector - Free Book Online

the naked body of a young girl reflected on the damp mosaic walls.
    The girl laughs softly, rejoicing in her own body. Her smooth, slender legs, her tiny breasts emerge from the water. She scarcely knows herself, still not fully grown, still almost a child. She stretches out one leg, looks at her foot from a distance, moves it tenderly, slowly, like a fragile wing. She lifts her arms above her head, stretches them out towards the ceiling lost in the shadows, her eyes closed, without any feeling, only movement. Her body stretches and spreads out, the moisture on her skin glistening in the semi-darkness — her body tracing a tense, quivering line. When she drops her arms once more, she becomes compact, white and secure. She chuckles to herself, moves her long neck from one side to another, tilts her head backwards -the grass is always fresh, someone is about to kiss her, soft, tiny rabbits snuggle up against each other with their eyes shut. — She starts laughing again, gentle murmurings like those of water. She strokes her waist, her hips, her life.
    She sinks into the bathtub as if it were the sea. A tepid world closes over her silently, quietly. Small bubbles slip away gently and vanish once they touch the enamel. The young girl feels the water weighing on her body, she pauses for a moment as if someone had tapped her lightly on the shoulder. Paying attention to what she is feeling, the invading tide. What has happened? She becomes a serious creature, with wide, deep eyes. She can scarcely breathe. What has happened? The open, silent eyes of things went on shining amidst the vapours. Over the same body that has divined happiness there is water — water. No, no... Why? Creatures born into the world like water. She becomes restless, tries to escape. Everything — she says slowly as if handing over something, as if probing herself without understanding. Everything. And that word is peace, solemn and enigmatic, like some ritual. The water covers her body. But what has happened? She murmurs in a low voice, she utters syllables that are lukewarm and jumbled.
    The bathroom is hazy, almbst extinct. The objects and walls have caved in, melt and dissolve into fumes. The water feels a little cooler on her skin and she trembles with fear and discomfort.
    When she emerges from the bathtub she is a stranger who doesn't know what she should feel. Around her there is nothing and she knows nothing. She is weak and sad, she moves slowly, unhurried, for some considerable time. The cold runs down her back with icy feet but she is in no mood to play, she huddles up, wounded and unhappy. She dries herself without love, humiliated and miserable, wraps herself in the dressing-gown as in a warm embrace. Shut up in herself, unwilling to look, ah, unwilling to look, she slips through the passageway — that long throat, crimson, dark, and discreet-sinking down into the belly, into everything. Everything, everything, she repeats mysteriously. She closes the window in the room — reluctant to see, hear or feel anything. In the silent bed, floating in the darkness, she curls up as if she were in the last womb and forgets. Everything is vague, uncertain and silent.
    Lined up behind her were the dormitory beds from the boarding-school. And in front, the window opened onto the night.
    I've discovered a miracle in the rain — Joana thought — a miracle splintered into dense, solemn, glittering stars, like a suspended warning: like a lighthouse. What are they trying to tell me? In those stars I can foretell the secret, their brilliance is the impassive mystery I can hear flowing inside me, weeping at length in tones of romantic despair. Dear God, at least bring me into contact with them, satisfy my longing to kiss them. To feel their light on my lips, to feel it glow inside my body, leaving it shining and transparent, fresh and moist like the minutes that come before dawn. Why do these strange longings possess me? Raindrops and stars, this dense and