Selected Cronicas

WORDS FROM THE TYPEWRITER

I feel I have almost achieved my freedom. To the point of no longer needing to write. If I could, I would leave my space on this page blank: filled with the greatest silence. And readers, on seeing this blank space, would fill it with their own desires.

To be frank, this can scarcely be called a column. It is simply what it is. It does not correspond to any genre. Genre no longer interests me. What interests me is mystery. Is there some ritual attached to mystery? I believe there is. In order to adhere to the certainty of things. Meanwhile, I somehow already adhere to the earth. I am a daughter of nature: I want to hold things, feel them, touch them, I want to exist. And all this is part of a totality, of a mystery. I am but one being. Before there was a difference between the writer and me (or am I wrong? I cannot be certain). But no longer. I am but one being. And I leave you to be yourself. Does that frighten you? I believe it does. But it is worthwhile. Even if it hurts. For the pain soon passes.

And now I want to tell you about certain realities which leave me astonished. These refer to animals.

An acquaintance once told me that when you catch a crab by a claw, the claw comes away so that its body can escape. And a new claw soon grows to replace the one which has been discarded.

Another acquaintance was once staying with friends and she opened the fridge to get some iced water.

She saw something strange inside.

It was something white, stark white. Headless but breathing. Like a lung. Moving up and down, up and down. My friend got the fright of her life and slammed the door shut. And she stood there, paralysed, her heart pounding.

Then she discovered what it was. Her host was an experienced deep-sea diver. And he had caught a turtle. After removing its shell, he had cut the head off and put the turtle in the fridge, with the intention of cooking and eating it next day.

But until it was cooked, that headless, denuded turtle was in there wheezing away like bellows.

I have already written about turtles. I wrote the following: ‘I have little or nothing to say about the sluggish turtle with that rock-hard shell on its back, covered in dust. This dinosaur which dates from the Tertiary Period is of no interest to me (when I called it a dinosaur, I did not know that I was right. I was merely guessing). I find the turtle exceedingly stupid. It does not relate to anything, not even to itself. It is an abstraction. Sexual contact between two turtles must be devoid of any warmth or life. And while I am no scientist, I can confidently predict that the species will disappear within the next few thousand years.’

I forgot to add that I find the turtle completely immoral.

An acquaintance of mine, suspecting that my lack of interest in turtles was insincere, loaned me a little book about them which was written in English. Here is an extract I have copied out:

‘The turtle is any land or marine chelonian which is descended from a rare and ancient species of reptile. Its ancestors appeared for the first time two hundred thousand years ago, long before dinosaurs. While these large animals became extinct a long time ago, the turtle with its strange and ugly appearance, managed to survive and has remained relatively unchanged for at least the last one hundred and fifty thousand years.’

Without its shell, headless, and panting up and down. Alive.

How can one comprehend a turtle? How can one comprehend God?

The point of departure must surely be: ‘I do not know’. Which means total surrender.

My typewriter carries on typing. It types out the following: Anyone who achieves a high level of abstraction has reached the frontiers of madness. Perhaps those great mathematicians and physicians might be able to confirm this. I know a great man who is very abstract but acts as if he were just like everyone else: he eats, drinks, sleeps with his wife and has children. In this way he prevents himself from turning into an X or a square root. When I recall that as a girl I used to give private tuition in Mathematics and Portuguese to other children, I can scarcely believe it. Because now I could not work out a square root to save myself. As for Portuguese, I used to get terribly bored explaining rules of grammar. Fortunately for me, I eventually.