Read Online The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector - Free Book Online

imperceptibly neglected Daniel. And no longer accepted his dominance. I was just resigned to it.
    What good is it to narrate trivial events that demonstrate my gradual progression toward intolerance and hatred? It’s well-known how little it takes to transform the mood in which two people live. A slight gesture, a smile, snag like a fishhook onto a feeling coiled in the depths of calm waters and bring it to the surface, making it clamor over the others.
    We went on living. And now I savored, day by day, mingled at first with the taste of triumph, the power of gazing directly upon the idol.
    He noticed my transformation and, if at first he retreated in surprise at my courage, he took up the old yoke with still greater violence, prepared not to let me escape. Yet I would find my own violence. We armed ourselves and were two forces.
    It was hard to breathe in the bedroom. We moved as if in the thick of danger, waiting for it to materialize and crash down on us, behind our backs. We grew cunning, seeking a thousand hidden intentions behind every word offered. We hurt each other at every turn and established victory and defeat. I grew cruel. He grew weak, showed what he was really like. There were times when he was a hair’s breadth away from begging me for help, confessing to the isolation in which my freedom had left him and which, in my wake, he could no longer bear. I myself, my strength quickly flagging, sometimes wanted to reach out to him. Yet we’d gone too far and, proud, couldn’t turn back. It was the struggle, now, that kept us going. Like a sick child, he grew increasingly capricious. Any word of mine was the start of a harsh quarrel. Later we discovered yet another recourse: silence. We hardly spoke.
    So why didn’t we separate, given that no serious ties bound us? He didn’t suggest it because he’d grown used to my help and could therefore no longer live without someone to wield power over, to be a king over, since he had no other subject. And perhaps he really did love my companionship, he who’d always been so solitary. As for me—I took pleasure in hating him.
    Even our new relations were invaded by habit. (I lived with Daniel for almost two years.) Now it wasn’t even hatred. We were tired.
    Eventually, after a week of rain that had trapped us together for days on end in the room, fraying our nerves to the limit—eventually the conclusion came.
    It was a late afternoon, prematurely dark. Rain dripped monotonously outside. We’d hardly spoken that day. Daniel, his face white over the dark “scarf” of his neck, was looking out the window. Water had fogged the windowpanes; he pulled out his handkerchief and, attentively, as if this had suddenly become important, started wiping them, his movements painstaking and careful, betraying the effort it took to contain his irritation. I watched him while standing next to the sofa. The clock went on ticking in the room, heaving.
    Then, as if I were continuing an argument, I said to my own surprise:
    “But this can’t go on . . .”
    He turned and I met his cold eyes, perhaps curious, definitely ironic. All my rage solidified in that moment and weighed on my chest like a stone.
    “What are you laughing at?” I asked.
    He kept staring at me and went back to wiping the windowpanes. Suddenly, he recovered and answered:
    “At you.”
    I was astonished. How brave he was. I was afraid of how boldly he challenged me. I answered haltingly:
    “Why?”
    He leaned slightly closer and his teeth gleamed in the half-darkness. I found him terribly handsome, though the realization didn’t move me.
    “Why? Ah, because . . . It’s just that you and I . . . indifferent or hateful . . . An argument that has nothing really to do with us, that doesn’t exhilarate us . . . A disappointment.”
    “So why laugh at me, then?” I continued obstinately. “Aren’t there two of us here?”
    He wiped a droplet that had trickled onto the windowsill.
    “No. You’re