July 6, 1968
The Discovery of the World
What I want to tell you is as delicate as life itself. And I want to use the delicacy that exists inside me along with the peasant coarseness that is my saving grace.
As a child and, later, as an adolescent, I was precocious in many things. In sensing an atmosphere, for example, in picking up on someone else’s personal atmosphere. On the other hand, far from being precocious, I was incredibly backward as regards other important things. Indeed, I continue to be backward in many areas. And there’s nothing I can do about it: it seems there is a childish side of me that will never grow up.
For example, until I turned thirteen, I was very backward in learning what Americans call “the facts of life.” The expression, “facts of life,” refers to the profound love relationship between a man and a woman out of which children are born. Or did I understand, but deliberately muddied my potential for understanding so that I could, without feeling too shocked at myself, continue innocently to dress myself up for the benefit of boys? Dressing myself up when I was eleven consisted in washing my face until my taut skin gleamed. I would feel ready then. Was my ignorance a sly, unconscious way of keeping myself innocent so that I could guiltlessly continue to think about boys? I believe it was. Because I always knew about things that I didn’t even know I knew.
My school friends knew everything and even told stories about it. I didn’t understand, but I pretended to understand so that they would not despise me and my ignorance.
Meanwhile, unaware of what the reality was, I continued, purely instinctively, to flirt with the boys I liked, and to think about them. My instinct preceded my intelligence.
Until one day, when I had already turned thirteen, as if only then did I feel mature enough to receive some shocking real-life news, I told my secret to a close friend: that I was ignorant and had only pretended to be in the know. She found this hard to believe because I had pretended so well. However, finally convinced that I was telling the truth, she took it upon herself, right there on the street corner, to explain the mystery of life to me. Except that she was equally young and didn’t know how to talk about it in a way that would not wound the sensitive soul I was at the time. I stood staring at her, open-mouthed, paralyzed, filled with a mixture of bewilderment, horror, indignation and mortally wounded innocence. Mentally I was stammering: but why? what for? The shock was so great — and for a few months really traumatizing — that right there on that street corner I swore out loud that I would never marry.
Some months later, though, I forgot my oath and continued my little romances.
Later, when more time had passed, instead of feeling shocked by the way a man and a woman come together, I thought it perfect. And extremely delicate too. I had, by then, been transformed into a young woman, tall, thoughtful, rebellious, with a large dose of wildness and more than a pinch of shyness.
And yet before I became fully reconciled to the way life works, I suffered a lot, something I could have avoided had a responsible adult taken it upon themselves to explain about love. That adult would have known how to approach a childish soul without tormenting her with that unpleasant surprise, without obliging her, all alone, to come to terms with it in order, once again, to accept life and its mysteries.
Because what is truly surprising is that, even when I did know all the facts, the mystery remained intact. Even though I know that a plant produces flowers, I am still surprised by nature’s secret paths. And if, today, I still retain my modesty, it is not because I see anything shameful in the facts — it is merely female modesty.
And life, I swear, is beautiful.
. I don´t travel much these days, but I suppose you´ll come again to SPaulo sometimes.
