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from the sea's deep womb, from the cat lying rigid on the pavement. All is one, all is one... she had chanted. The confusion stemmed from the entwinement of the sea, the cat and the ox with Joana herself. The confusion also arose because she did not know whether she had discovered 'all is one' when she was still a little girl standing looking out to sea, or later, when she remembered those moments. Meanwhile, the confusion didn't only confer a certain grace, but also a sense of reality. It struck her that, if she were to order and clearly explain what she had experienced, she would have destroyed the essence of 'all is one'. In her confusion, she was unwittingly truth itself, which probably gave her a greater capacity for life than knowledge of life. This truth, even though revealed, would be of no use to Joana, because it didn't form her stem but her root, fastening her body to everything that was no longer hers, imponderable and elusive.
    Oh, there were motives for happiness, happiness without laughter, serious, profound, fresh. Whenever she discovered things about herself, the very moment she spoke, her thoughts were running parallel to the words. One day, she had told Otávio about Joana's childhood and the housemaid who invented more games than anyone she had ever known. And how she pretended to be dreaming.
    — Are you sleeping?
    — I'm fast asleep.
    — Then wake up, it's morning... Did you dream?
    At first she dreamed of sheep, of going to school, of cats drinking milk. Little by little she dreamed of blue sheep, of going to school in the middle of the woods, of cats drinking milk from golden saucers. And her dreams became increasingly dense and acquired colours that were difficult to dilute into words.
    — I dreamed that white balls were rising inside...
    — What balls? Inside where?
    — I don't know, only that they were coming...
    After listening to her, Otávio had remarked:
    — I'm beginning to think that they abandoned you much too soon — your aunt's house... strangers... the boarding school...
    Joana had thought: but there was the teacher. However, she replied:
    — No... What else could they have done with me? Surely having had a childhood is everything one could wish for? No one could take that away from me... — and at this moment she was intrigued to discover that she was starting to listen to herself.
    — I wouldn't like to go back to being a child, not even for a second, Otávio had continued, distracted, no doubt thinking back to the days of his cousin Isabel and sweet Lídia. Not even for a second.
    — Nor me, Joana had hastened to reply, not even for a second. I feel no nostalgia, do you understand? — And at that moment she declared in a loud, deliberate tone of amazement — It isn't nostalgia for I now enjoy my childhood more fully than I did as a child...
    Yes, there were many happy things mingled in her blood.
    And Joana could also think and feel in various different ways simultaneously. And so, while Otávio had been speaking, even as she listened to him, she had been looking out of the window at a little old woman in the sun, grubby, frail and nimble — a branch quivering in the breeze. A dry branch where there was so much femininity, Joana had thought, that the poor woman might have had a son if life had not dried up in her body. Later, even as Joana was replying to Otávio, she remembered the lines her father had written specially to amuse her during one of those what-is-there-for-me-to-do outbursts:
    Margarita befriended Violeta
    the one was blind, the other mad,
    the blind girl knew what the mad girl was saying
    and ended up seeing what no one else saw...
     
    Just like a wheel turning and turning, disturbing the air and creating a breeze.
    Even to suffer was good because while the basest suffering unfolded, one also existed — like a river apart.
    And one could also await the instant that came... that came... and suddenly precipitated into the present only to dissolve... and