The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

her mouth and say:
    — I am alone in the world. I don't believe in anyone for they all tell lies, sometimes even when they're making love. I find that people don't really communicate with each other. The truth comes to me only when I'm alone.
    Maca, however, never expressed herself in sentences, first of all, because she was a person of few words. She wasn't conscious of herself and made no demands on anyone. Maca even thought of herself as being happy. She was no idiot yet she possessed the pure happiness of idiots. She did not think about herself: she lacked self-awareness. (I can see that I've tried to impose my own situation on Maca: I need several hours of solitude every day, otherwise I die.)
    Speaking for myself, I am only true when I'm alone. As a child, I always feared that I was about to fall off the face of the earth at any minute. Why do the clouds keep afloat when everything else drops to the ground? The explanation is simple: the gravity is less than the force of air that sustains the clouds. Clever, don't you think? Yes, but sooner or later they fall in the form of rain. That is my revenge.
    She didn't confide any of this to Glória because on the whole she told lies: she was ashamed of the truth. A lie was so much more acceptable. Macabéa believed that to be well-educated was the same as knowing how to tell lies. She also lied to herself in daydreams that reflected her envy of her work-mate. Glória, for instance, could be so imaginative. Macabéa watched her saying goodbye to Olímpico. Glória would put her finger-tips to her lips and blow a kiss into the air like someone giving a bird its freedom. Such a gesture would never have occurred to Macabéa.
    (This story consists of nothing more than some crude items of primary material that come to me directly before I even think of them. I know lots of things that I cannot express. Besides, where does thinking come into it?)
    Glória, perhaps because she was feeling remorseful, said to Macabéa:
    — Olímpico is mine, but you are sure to find yourself another boy friend. I know that Olímpico is mine because the fortune-teller told me so. I mustn't ignore what she told me for she's a clairvoyante and never makes mistakes. Why don't you pay for a session and ask her to read your cards?
    — Does it cost much?
    I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it's because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I longed to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood. I think about Macabéa's vagina, minute, yet unexpectedly covered with a thick growth of black hairs — her vagina was the only vehement sign of her existence.
    She herself asked for nothing, but her sex made its demands like a sunflower germinating in a tomb. As for me, I feel weary. Perhaps of keeping company with Macabéa, Glória and Olímpico. That doctor made me feel quite sick with his talk about beer. I must interrupt this story for three days.
    Now I awaken to find that I miss Macabéa. Let's take up the threads again.
    — Is it very dear?
    — I'll loan you the money. Madame Carlota has the power to break any spells that might be worrying her clients. She broke mine on the stroke of midnight on Friday the thirteenth of August over at San Miguel, on a pitch where they practise voodoo. They bled a black pig and seven white hens over me and tore my bloodstained clothes to shreds. Can you pluck up enough courage?
    — I don't know if I could stomach all that blood.
    Perhaps because blood is everyone's secret, that life-giving tragedy. But Macabéa only knew that she could not stomach the sight of blood, the other reflections were mine. I am