Fariha’s Reviews > Near to the Wild Heart > Status Update

She looked at him without seeing him, her eyes clouded, her body martyred. They had to make their farewell. She withdrew abruptly and went off without turning back, without any nostalgia.

When Otávio had kissed her, he had held her hands, pressing them against his chest, Joana had bitten her lips, at first enraged, because she still didn't know with which thought she should clothe that violent sensation, like a cry surging from her breast and making her feel dizzy.

To rise above himself, above his past, above the petty villainies which he had committed with cowardice and to which he was still attached in a cowardly way. Otávio thought that on Joana's side he would be able to go on sinning.

From then onwards there was no choice.
They would marry, they would see each other at every moment and he would recognize that she was worse than him. And strong, in order to teach him not to be afraid. Not even to be afraid of loving... He wanted her not in order to make a life together, but so that she might allow him to live.

At that moment when he had finally kissed her, he had felt himself to be suddenly free, pardoned beyond what he knew of himself, pardoned in what lay beneath everything,

Especially when he had touched her, he had understood: whatever might follow between them would be irremediable. For when he had embraced her, he had felt her come alive in his arms like running water. And seeing her so alive, he had understood, overwhelmed and secretly pleased, that if she loved him, there was nothing he could do...

— He was nothing, nothing, and was therefore free to do nothing, he repeated to himself, his eyes mentally shut. — As if he had told Joana what he could only perceive in the dark. And most surprising of all: as if she had listened and then laughed, pardoning him — not like God, but like the devil — opening wide gates to allow him to pass.

He had no sooner met her than she told him about the old man, told him about the bitch expecting pups&, suddenly alarmed, he had felt as if he had just made a confession, as if he had revealed to that stranger the story of his entire life. What life?The one that struggled inside him & that was nothing,he repeated to himself,afraid of appearing before his own eyes as being self-important&burdened with responsibilities

Sometimes, even for sheer pleasure, she invented arguments: if a stone falls then that stone exists, there was a force that caused it to fall, a place from which it fell, a place through which it fell  — I believe that nothing has escaped the nature of the fact, save for the mystery itself of the fact.

—Discounting what is human is difficult, she continued, difficult to escape this atmosphere of frustrated revolt — adolescence — this solidarity with men who share the same sense of frustration and failure. Yet how nice it would be to build something pure, free from false, sublimated love, free from the fear of not loving... The fear of not loving, worse than the fear of not being loved...