An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures, Clarice Lispector [story books to read .TXT] 📗

change her life in order to survive. She’d live right there where she’d got lost: it was rare for a person to touch their own perdition. In order to eat would she prostitute herself? Because of the way she was it seemed easier and less distressing than working a shop counter.

She’d lost all sense of how much time she was there that night. It had grown so cold that some men had lit a fire that was the color of intense flames in a barrel on the sidewalk. She too drew close and, like the men, in order not to feel the growing numbness in her freezing feet, she would sometimes stamp her feet imitating them and, again imitating them, rubbing her gloved hands together — until suddenly the unexpected: the empty taxi passing.

She hailed it. And the hotel’s name? “Keep going,” she said to the driver. “Going where?” he replied grumpy like all Parisian taxi drivers. “Keep going,” she replied with feigned sternness. Had she really forgotten the hotel’s name? She felt as she had when as a child she’d taken part in plays, and in the wings, before going on stage, she’d shiver with fright because she’d simply forgotten the first lines of what she was supposed to say. Although, once she took to the stage, she’d suddenly talk like a sleepwalker, and only later would gradually become aware of herself and of the audience and manage to perform her role.

It was the taxi’s sudden braking, accompanied by the driver’s swearing, that gave her the shock she needed and suddenly she remembered the name of the hotel. She said it to the driver and immediately collapsed into a muffled sob of relief and suffering.

Ulisses had listened with a knitted brow. And then said:

— And so you didn’t want any more of that. And you stopped the possibility of pain, which no one gets away with. You just stopped and found nothing beyond it. I’m not saying I have much, but I still have intense searching and violent hope. Not that quiet and sweet voice of yours. And I don’t cry, if I need to one day I’ll scream, Lóri. I’m in the middle of a struggle and much closer to whatever people call a poor human victory than you, but it is a victory. I could already have you with my body and soul. I’ll wait for years if I must for you too to have a soul-body in order to love. We’re still young, we can waste some time without wasting our whole lives. But look at everyone around you and see what we’ve made of ourselves and considered our daily victory. We haven’t loved, that most of all. We haven’t accepted what we don’t understand because we don’t want to look stupid. We’ve hoarded things and reassurances because we don’t have each other. We don’t have any joy that hasn’t already been catalogued. We’ve built cathedrals, and stayed outside because the cathedrals we ourselves built, we’re afraid they’re traps. We haven’t surrendered to ourselves, because that would be the start of a long life and we’re afraid of that. We’ve avoided falling to our knees in front of the first one of us who says, out of love: you’re afraid. We’ve organized smiley clubs and associations where you are served with or without soda. We’ve tried to save ourselves but without using the word salvation in order to avoid the embarrassment of being innocents. We haven’t used the word love so as not to have to recognize its contexture of hate, love, jealousy and so many other contradictories. We’ve kept our death a secret in order to make our life possible. Many of us make art because we don’t know what the other thing is like. We’ve disguised our indifference with false love, knowing that our indifference is disguised anguish. We’ve disguised with a small fear the greatest fear of all and that’s why we never speak of what really matters. Speaking about what really matters is considered a blunder. We haven’t worshipped because we have the sensible pettiness to remember on time the false gods. We haven’t been pure and naive in order not to laugh at ourselves and so that at each day’s close we can say “at least I didn’t do something stupid” and that way we don’t feel confused before putting out the light. We’ve smiled in public about things we wouldn’t smile about alone. We’ve called our candor weakness. We have feared each other, most of all. And all this we consider our daily victory. But I escaped that, Lóri, I escaped with the ferocity of someone escaping the plague, Lóri, and I’ll wait until you too are more ready.

Lóri was always amazed at how well Ulisses knew her. But despite his ability to understand, she feared his criticisms or that he might lose heart and abandon her, and had never told him that the “trouble” often returned: the air inside her would then smell of damp dust. Is it going to start up again, dear God? She’d then wonder. And gather all her strength to stop the pain. What pain was it? Of existing? Of belonging to some unknown thing? Of having been born?

And later, the pain staunched as if it had never been, exhausted, after having swum for miles in the empty universe, she’d throw herself panting on the shining sands of a planet, immobile, face down.

She also hadn’t told Ulisses how the painful sensation of being unattached was less intense once she really was unattached: her father having lost most of his fortune, she’d moved on her own from Campos to Rio, bought the little apartment where she lived, provided for regally by an allowance from her father. With four brothers, and she the only daughter, her father sent her whatever she wanted. With a third of the fortune left over there was enough to live like the rich but luckily for her nonstop travel in Europe