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

was no longer an option. She hadn’t told Ulisses out of a sense of shame: he was, as far as she’d understood, a socialist and wouldn’t without disgust or scorn let himself be friends with her without contempt.

— Why did you come to Rio? Aren’t there primary schools in Campos?

— Because I didn’t want . . . didn’t want to marry, I wanted a certain kind of freedom that wouldn’t have been possible there without a scandal, in my family for starters, there everyone knows everything, my father sends me an allowance because with the money from the school I couldn’t—

— How many lovers have you had? he interrupted.

She was silent. Then she said:

— They weren’t quite lovers because I didn’t love them.

— During the holidays, like now, don’t you feel alone? Before me, I mean.

— I have some company because I can always chat a little with the maid I’ve had forever who spends hours tidying up the house and preparing lunch and dinner. And there’s a fortune-teller I visit now and then.

He didn’t laugh:

— And girlfriends, don’t you miss not having them?

Since he hadn’t laughed, she was able to say:

— But the fortune-teller is my friend, she doesn’t even charge me. And I was tired of living with four brothers and my father and everyone we knew. I only had girlfriends when I was still in college. Now I prefer to be alone.

— Listen, Lóri, you know very well how I met you and I’d like to recall it for a reason: you were waiting for a taxi and I, after taking a long look at you, because I liked you physically, simply went up to you with some small talk about how hard it was to find a taxi at that time of the day, offered to drive you wherever you wanted, and after we’d been on the road for five minutes invited you to have a whiskey with me and you without any reluctance accepted. Did your lovers approach you in the street?

She was offended and replied harshly and sincerely:

— Of course not. I don’t want to talk about them. They were of no importance, or just a relative and fleeting one. And I’m not even asking if you have a lover right now.

Neither said a word. He perhaps cautiously thinking that this was their first jealous scene. She happy, thinking it was their first jealous scene.

— How many lovers have you had? he asked abruptly.

She making an effort to control herself said quickly:

— Five.

He swallowed the pain and changed the subject:

— But on your travels it’s impossible that you were never among orange trees, sun, and flowers with bees. Not just the dark cold but the rest too?

— No, she said gloomily. Those things are not for me. I’m a big-city woman.

— First of all, Campos isn’t what you’d call a big city. And anyway those things, as symbols, are for everybody. You’ve just never learned to have them.

— And that can be learned? Orange trees, sun, and bees on flowers?

— It can when you no longer have your own nature as a powerful guide. Lóri, Lóri, listen: you can learn anything, even how to love! And the strangest thing, Lóri, is that you can learn to have joy!

— Tell me what you want me to learn, she said with unexpected irony. The Song of Songs?

— Maybe, why not? he’d replied more seriously.

— You say that because you’re ready.

— I’ll never be ready in every way, Lóri, I’m under no illusions about that.

They fell silent, Ulisses asked for another whiskey.

— Why, he asked, do you give me the impression that you’ve separated from other people voluntarily?

— One day I might tell you, if I pluck up the courage to talk a lot.

It was rare for him to show clearly that he was serious. Lóri recognized that he had concentration, intensity, delicacy and discretion, though all that was almost always wrapped in a light tone in order not to show his feelings.

— You know, Lóri, he said smiling now. After I’d met you three or four times — God, it might even have been the very first time I saw you!—I thought that I could treat you with the method of some artists: conceiving something and carrying it out at the same time. Because at first I thought I’d found a naked white canvas, and all I needed was to use my brushes. After that I discovered that if the canvas was naked it was also blackened by thick smoke, from some nasty fire, and that it wouldn’t be easy to clean. No, to conceive and carry out is the great privilege of a few. But even so I didn’t give up. No, he kept speaking as if she weren’t there, with good intentions you really can’t make literature: or life either. But there’s something that isn’t a good intention. It’s a gentleness toward life that also demands the greatest courage to accept it.

Lóri didn’t say anything. She realized that he was thinking aloud and that she didn’t need to understand. But it was so good to listen. She also wanted to make herself heard and said with a certain voluptuousness in her voice, which didn’t suit her and made him raise his eyebrows questioningly:

— I was reading a philosopher one day, you know. Once I followed a bit of his advice and it worked. It was more or less this: it’s only when we forget all our knowledge that we begin to know. So I thought of you who speaks not a word of philosophy to me and when we’re together, yes, when we’re together you even seem like a wise man who no longer wants to be wise and who even, you know, even surrenders to the luxury of disguised worrying like any one of us.

Ulisses was watchful, motionless. Lóri went on:

— It seems so easy at first glance to follow someone’s advice. Yours, for example.

Now she was speaking seriously:

— Your advice. But there’s