Closing the door

Literary Review, Summer, 1995 by Clara Pinto Correia, Richard C. Zimler

Within that undefined galaxy of stellar dust which makes up the volatile and inconsequential essence of what was usually called the human soul, she used to often think that there existed a comet with a periodic return. When she traveled in its course, she felt the quivering which now and again urges us to close, with all our strength, a door behind us when nobody is watching and then, in the same movement, to look ahead for the first time and measure ourselves as we breathe in the new landscape revealed to us - a landscape which as yet has neither fire escape nor stairs, columns nor signposts, references nor memories. All because this quivering is part of the disquietude that keeps our souls alive, she used to think. We all desire a moment when we grab the trapeze and jump, without the net below us - to be totally unencumbered, without past or future. Our back turned to what was ours and what's already dispersed, and facing ahead into the emptiness that now awaits us and where we haven't designed any contours as yet. The moment when the old incantation has reached its end and we don't yet have the least idea of what the new incantation will be. Yes, she thought, the exact moment of rupture, a moment that is absolute and authentic because we haven't yet reached it.

After the closing of the door it must seem that - in the end - it wasn't that hard to do. And that great ocean on the other side, that amorphous but softly luminous limbo that awaits our leap. . . . It must really be scary. It must be wonderful.

At the time when they were going to take their trip she thought about this a lot. She and he both surely felt the clear sensation that their relationship wasn't going to fulfill even half of the promises as yet unfulfilled, and they also had the absolute certainty that the fire of passion wasn't burning anywhere anymore. But there's something very restful and seductive in reading the Sunday newspaper in a quiet restaurant high above Azenhas do Mar without saying even a single word, the foam in the surf and the sky very dense and stormy above. You could say that nobody had anything more to say. Whatever the case, neither of them had illusions about what is determined by the force of inertia. Maybe it wasn't the most stimulating of forces, but it is often the only one left to us. So they were letting things go on like that. Pretty much just like everybody else. She thought about the image of closing the door behind her and facing an empty future, bathed in a white light, waiting for colors and contours to form. She regarded it as nothing more than an innocent fantasy, one of those into which we let ourselves drift in bed. She still snuggled up close to him before going to sleep.

Of course, the trip went really badly. In retrospect, it seemed to her it couldn't have gone any other way. You don't head into miles and miles of forested Scandinavian roads with the declared goal of only relaxation and pleasure with the same simplicity with which you read your usual newspapers in your usual restaurants. It was a mistake. A big mistake. And there was still a while before they'd be heading back home. The time was going to pass slowly. It was going to be stressful and awkward and so totally useless. It was this last thought which released the spring of that white future inside her.

"It's over!" she screamed at him, from deep in her gut. "I don't want to see you ever again!"

She slammed the car door and he took off with the tires screeching - just as if he'd studied his role as well as she'd studied hers. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. When she opened them, she'd be looking ahead into a future newly budding, one which would really frighten her and which would be wonderful.

In that moment, she remembered that she was on the North Cape and that the tourist season had ended months before, that she wouldn't find a soul for tens of miles around.

He came back to get her after exactly seven minutes and they never discussed what happened.

Translated by Richard C. Zimler

Clara Pinto Correia, a biologist and writer born in Portugal, is currently preparing a book on theories of reproduction at Harvard University. She has published numerous children's books and essays, in addition to six novels.