And a yellow Mercedes, as huge as an ocean liner, knocked her down. At that very moment, in some remote corner of the world, a horse reared and gave a loud neigh, as if in response.
As she fell to the ground, Macabéa saw in time, before the car sped away, that Madame Carlota's prophecies were starting to come true. The yellow Mercedes was truly luxurious. Her fall was nothing serious, she thought to herself, she had simply lost her balance. Her head had struck the edge of the pavement and she remained lying there, her eyes turned towards the gutter. The trickle of blood coming from the wound on her temple was surprisingly thick and red. What I wanted to say was that despite everything, she belonged to a resistant and stubborn race of dwarfs that would one day vindicate the right to protest.
(I could turn the clock back and happily start again at the point when Macabéa was standing on the pavement — but it isn't for me to say whether the fair-haired foreigner looked at her. The fact is that I've already gone too far and there is no turning back. Just as well that I did not, nor do I intend to speak of death. I will simply call it an accident.)
Macabéa lay helpless by the side of the road. She felt drained of all emotion as she looked at the stones around the sewer and sprouting blades of wild grass; their greenness conveyed the most tender hope. Today, she thought, today is the dawn of my existence: I am born.
(Truth is always some inexplicable inner contact. Truth is unrecognizable. Therefore, doesn't it exist? No, for men it doesn't exist.)
Returning to the grass. For a creature as meagre as Macabéa, abundant nature was offering itself in a few sparse blades of grass growing in the gutter — were she to be offered the mighty ocean or lofty mountain peaks, her soul, even more chaste than her body, would hallucinate and her organism would explode, arms and intestines scattered here and there, a round, hollow head rolling at her feet — like a dismantled wax dummy.
Suddenly, Macabéa paid a little attention to herself. Could this be some muted earthquake? The land of Alagoas had opened in gaping cracks. She stared, just for the sake of staring, at the blades of grass. Grass in the great Metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. Adrift. Who knows if Macabéa had ever felt at some time that she, too, was adrift in the great unconquerable city? For her, Destiny had decreed a dark cul-de-sac and a street gutter. Was she suffering? I believe she was. Like a hen with its neck half-severed, running about in a panic and dripping blood. Except that the hen escapes — as one flees from pain — clucking in desperation. Macabéa struggled in silence.
I shall do everything possible to see that she doesn't die. But I feel such an urge to put her to sleep and then go off to sleep myself.
There was a gentle drizzle. Olímpico was right: all Macabéa was good for was for making sure that it rained. The fine drops of freezing rain gradually soaked into her clothes, making her feel extremely uncomfortable.
I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?
Some people appeared from nowhere in the cul-de-sac and gathered round Macabéa. They just stood there doing nothing just as people had always done nothing to help her; except that these people peered at her and this gave her an existence.
(But who am I to censure the guilty? The worst part is that I must forgive them. It is essential to arrive at an absolute zero so that we indifferently come to love or not to love the criminal who kills us. But I am no longer sure of myself: I must ask, without knowing whom I should ask, if it is really necessary to love the man who slays me; to ask who among you is slaying me. My life, stronger than myself, replies that it wants revenge at all costs. It warns me that I must struggle like someone drowning, even if I should perish in the end. If it be so, so be it.)
Is Macabéa about to die? How can I tell? Not even those onlookers could tell. Although someone from a nearby house, suspecting that she might be dying, placed a lit candle beside her body. The luxury of that generous flame appeared to sing of glory.
(I give the bare essentials, enhancing them with pomp, jewels and splendour. Is this how one should write? No, not by accretion but rather by denudation. But I am frightened of nakedness, for that is the final word.)
Meanwhile, Macabéa, lying on the ground, seemed to become more and more transformed into a Macabéa, as if she were arriving at herself.
Is this a melodrama? What I can say is that melodrama was the summit of her life. All lives are an art, and hers inclined towards an outburst of restless weeping with thunder and lightning.
A scrawny fellow appeared on the street-corner, wearing a threadbare jacket and playing the fiddle. I should explain that, when I was a child and living in Recife, I once saw this man as dusk was falling. The shrill, prolonged sound of his playing underlined in gold the mystery of that darkened street. On the ground, beside this pitiful fellow, there was a tin can which received the rattling coins of grateful bystanders as he played the dirge of their lives. It is only now that I have come to understand. Only now has the secret meaning dawned on me: the fiddler's music is an omen. I know that when I die, I shall hear him playing and that I shall crave for music, music, music.
Macabéa, Hail Mary, full of grace, serene land of promise, land of forgiveness, the time must come, ora pro nobis. I use myself as a form of knowledge. I know you through and through, by means of an incantation that comes from me to you. To stretch out savagely while an inflexible geometry vibrates behind everything. Macabéa remembered the docks. The docks went to the heart of her existence.
Macabéa ask for pardon? One must always ask. Why? Reply: it is so because it is so. Was it always so? It will always be so. And if it were not so? But I am saying that it is so. Very well.
It was quite obvious that Macabéa was still alive, for her enormous eyes went on blinking and her flat chest heaved and fell as she struggled for breath. But who can tell if she was not in need of dying? For there are moments when one needs a taste of death without even realizing it. Personally, I substitute the act of death with one of its symbols. A symbol that can be summarized by a deep kiss, not up against a wall, but mouth to mouth in the agony of pleasure that is death.
To my great joy, I find that the hour has not come for the film-star Macabéa to die. At least, I cannot divine if she gets her fair-haired foreigner. Pray for her and interrupt whatever you're doing in order to breathe a little life into her, for Macabéa is presently adrift, like a door swinging in a never-ending breeze. I could resolve this story by taking the easy way out and murdering the infant child, but what I want is something more: I want life. Let my readers take a punch in the stomach to see how they enjoy it. For life is a punch in the stomach.
Meantime, Macabéa was nothing but a vague sentiment lying on the dirty paving stones. I could leave her lying there and simply not finish the story. But no. I shall go on until I reach that point where the atmosphere finishes, where the howling gale explodes, where the void makes a curve, where my breath takes me. Does my breath deliver me to God? I am so pure that I know nothing. I know only one thing: there is no need to pity God. Or perhaps there is?
Macabéa had enough life left in her to stir gently and take up the foetal position. She looked as grotesque as ever. Reluctant to surrender, yet avid for the great embrace. She embraced herself, longing for sweet nothingness. She was damned and didn't know it. She clung to a thread of consciousness and mentally repeated over and over again: I am, I am, I am. Precisely who she was, she was unable to say. She had searched in the deep, black essence of her own being, for that breath of life granted by God.
As she lay there, she felt the warmth of supreme happiness, for she had been born for death's embrace. Death is my favourite character in this story. Was Macabéa about to bid herself goodbye? I don't believe that she is going to die, for she has so much will to live. There was even a suggestion of sensuality in the way she lay there huddled up. Or is this because pre-death resembles some intense sensual longing? Macabéa's expression betrayed a grimace of desire. Things are ever vesperal and if she is not dying no
w, then like us, she has reached the vigil of death. Forgive me for reminding you, for I find it difficult to forgive myself for this clairvoyance.
A sensation as pleasurable, tender, horrifying, chilling and penetrating as love. Could this be the grace you call God? Yes? Were she about to die, she would pass from being a virgin to being a woman. No, this wasn't death. Death is not what I want for this girl: a mere collision that amounted to nothing serious. Her struggle to live resembled something that she had never experienced before, virgin that she was, yet had grasped by intuition. For only now did she understand that a woman is born a woman from that first wail at birth. A woman's destiny is to be a woman. Macabéa had perceived the almost painful and vertiginous moment of overwhelming love. A painful and difficult reflowering that she enacted with her body and that other thing you call a soul and I call — what?
At that instant, Macabéa came out with a phrase that no one among the onlookers could understand. She said in a clear, distinct voice:
— As for the future.
Did she crave a future? I hear the ancient music of words upon words. Yes, it is so. At this very moment Macabéa felt nausea well up in the pit of her stomach and almost vomited. She felt like vomiting something that was not matter but luminous. Star with a thousand pointed rays.
What do I see now, that is so terrifying? I see that she has vomited a little blood, a great spasm, essence finally touching essence: victory!
And then — then suddenly the anguished cry of a seagull, suddenly the voracious eagle soaring on high with the tender lamb in its beak, the sleek cat mangling vermin, life devouring life.
Et tu, Brute?
Yes, this was the way I had hoped to announce that — that Macabéa was dead. The Prince of Darkness had triumphed. Coronation at last.
What was the truth about my Maca? It is enough to discover the truth that she no longer exists: the moment has passed. I ask myself: what is she? Reply: she is not.
But don't grieve for the dead: they know what they're doing. I have been to the land of the dead and after the most gruesome horrors I have come back redeemed. I am innocent! Do not devour me! I am not negotiable!
Alas, all is lost, and the greatest guilt would appear to be mine. Let them bathe my hands and feet and then — then let them anoint them with the holy, perfumed oils. Ah, such a longing for happiness. I try forcing myself to burst out laughing. But somehow I cannot laugh. Death is an encounter with self. Laid out and dead, Macabéa looked as imposing as a dead stallion. The best thing is still the following: not to die, for to die is not enough. It fails to achieve my greatest need: self-fulfilment.
Macabéa has murdered me.
She is finally free of herself and of me. Do not be frightened. Death is instantaneous and passes in a flash. I know, for I have just died with the girl. Forgive my dying. It was unavoidable. If you have kissed the wall, you can accept anything. But suddenly I make one last gesture of rebellion and start to howl: the slaughter of doves! To live is a luxury.
Suddenly it's all over.
Macabéa is dead. The bells were ringing without making any sound. I now understand this story. She is the imminence in those bells, pealing so softly.
The greatness of every human being.
Silence.
Should God descend on earth one day there would be a great silence.
The silence is such, that thought no longer thinks.
Was the ending of my story as grand as you expected? Dying, Macabéa became air. Vigorous air? I cannot say. She died instantaneously. An instant is that particle of time in which the tyre of a car going at full speed touches the ground, touches it no longer, then touches it again. Etc., etc., etc. At heart, Macabéa was little better than a music box sadly out of tune.
I ask you:
— What is the weight of light?
And now — now it only remains for me to light a cigarette and go home. Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me?
Don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes.
Acknowledgements
I SHOULD like to express my gratitude to Michael Schmidt, Robyn Marsack and the staff of Carcanet Press; also to the following colleagues and friends who offered useful advice and criticism: Paul Berman, Eudinyr Fraga, Patricia Bins, Carlos Sachs, Teresa Nunes, Amelia Hutchinson and Arnold Hinchliffe; and finally to Stefanie Goodfellow for valuable material assistance, and to Nancy Stalhammer, who typed the manuscript with scrupulous care.
Giovanni Pontiero Manchester, June 1985
Afterword
Clarice Lispector died of cancer at the age of fifty-six on 9 December 1977. The Hour of the Star was published that same year and acclaimed by the critics as 'a regional allegory' of extraordinary awareness and insight. The tale of Macabéa, however, can be read at different levels and lends itself to various interpretations. The book's subtle interplay of fiction and philosophy sums up Clarice Lispector's unique talent as a writer and her lasting influence on contemporary Brazilian writing.
Shortly before she became seriously ill, Clarice Lispector began to experience an almost obsessive nostalgia for Recife in the North-eastern State of Pernambuco, where she had spent her childhood. This nostalgia resulted in a sentimental journey to renew contact with scenes and locations associated with her earliest perceptions. Back in Rio, she also began to make regular trips to the street market specializing in crafts and wares from North-eastern Brazil, that takes place every Sunday in the Sao Cristovao district of the city. It was here that the author could observe at her leisure the lowly immigrants from the North-east who came to buy and sell or simply to watch, re-enacting for a day the customs and traditions of their native region. The Sao Cristovao market evoked the sights and sounds Clarice Lispector had savoured as a child and the unmistakable physical traits of the North-easterners who gathered there provided her with mental sketches for the principal characters in The Hour of the Star.
The nucleus of the narrative centres on the misfortunes of Macabéa, a humble girl from a region plagued by drought and poverty, whose future is determined by her inexperience, her ugliness and her total anonymity. Macabéa's speech and dress betray her origins. An orphaned child from the backwoods of Alagoas, who was brought up by a forbidding aunt in Maceió before making her way to the slums of Acre Street in the heart of Rio de Janeiro's red-light district. Gauche and rachitic, Macabéa has poverty and ill-health written all over her: a creature conditioned from birth and already singled out as one of the world's inevitable losers.
Her humdrum existence can be summarized in few words: Macabéa is an appallingly bad typist, she is a virgin, and her favourite drink is Coca-Cola. She is the perfect foil for a bullying employer, a philandering boy friend, and her workmate Glória, who has all the attributes Macabéa sadly lacks.
Macabéa's abrupt exit under the front wheels of a yellow Mercedes is as absurd and inevitable as all the other disasters that befall this hopeless misfit.
The grim social factors governing her bleak existence are all too familiar in the lower strata of Brazilian society. Factually summarized, Macabéa's history suggests a stereotype from a sociological survey. But the magic begins when Clarice Lispector starts to investigate the psychological consequences of poverty. The compounded effects of ignorance, fear, and privation result in perverse twists of fortune. Yet behind this unpromising facade there remain traces of resilience and the will to survive. Macabéa's faltering moments of self-recognition are registered by a series of explosions — both psychological and emotional. There is nothing forced or deliberate in Macabéa's aimless progress through life. Physically and emotionally stunted, this anti-heroine holds her breath and waits for destiny to do its worst. The girl's puzzled response to her alien surroundings reveals unexpected strengths: the brash metropolis and its pressures fail to diminish her will to live. Deprived of any material expectations, Macabéa makes a virtue of her emptiness by settling for the vagaries of faith. Judged objec
tively, faith in her situation seems unjustified and even perverse. Viewed subjectively, however, faith bestows a singular state of grace.
Macabéa's inner being is jolted by momentary perceptions — by sudden discoveries that outweigh her understanding and leave her perplexed and disorientated. First there is the shattering awareness of her own body, a discovery that aptly coincides with May — the month of love and nuptials. Then comes a short-lived romance followed by betrayal and rejection.
As Macabéa stumbles from one embarrassing exposure to another, one can virtually hear the author muse: 'there but for the grace of God go I'. This diary of a nobody gains in strength and meaning as a game of counter-reflections develops between the author and her protagonist. For, while it is true that Lispector would have us believe in a male narrator, she does not relinquish involvement. The advantage she claims to derive from this masculine alias is one of emotional detachment. Its validity and necessity, however, is debatable.
As in all her previous narratives, Clarice Lispector narrates from within. In The Hour of the Star her own unmistakable presence often merges with that of Macabéa. From the outset, she draws an interesting comparison between herself as the writer and the character she is creating, between reason and instinct, between knowledge and innocence, between the powers of imagination and unadorned reality. The creative writer is able to transform reality. Hence Clarice Lispector's compassionate attitude towards her unresourceful heroine 'who did not know how to adorn reality'. Macabéa is puzzled and frustrated by the enormity of the external world, but she enjoys one considerable privilege: inner freedom.
The Hour of the Star is comparable with Clarice Lispector's earlier work insofar as the central character provides a nucleus for a wider exploration of existential problems. Basic assumptions about human responses to truth, happiness, and integrity are challenged and reassessed. The traumas of the women — adolescent, mature, innocent, and experienced — that dominated the stories of Family Ties are resurrected in The Hour of the Star. Here, too, we find the same lucid perceptions about the perils of human existence: the same relentless thirst for 'spiritual catharsis'. Macabéa's 'inviolable secret' reflects the drama of every sentient creature. The frequent references to God and the supernatural attest to the mystical dimension here as in most of Clarice Lispector's narratives. Her Jewish-Slavonic ancestry is important in this context. A bond has crystallized between the presence of a divine spirit exacting justice and the creative process itself. Salvation ultimately comes in the form of self-discovery and authentic self-expression.