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

— You are so ancient, Lóri, he said and to her surprise there was tenderness in his voice. You’re so ancient, my flower, that I should give you wine in an amphora, he said now without tenderness and he’d called her “my flower” the way she’d heard him call his secretary, that time they’d run into her on the street. It was a fake way of seeming like friends, just as Lóri was treating him with a certain dryness. But there was tenacity in Ulisses, there was tenacity in Lóri.

Ulisses was now looking at her with curiosity:

— Lóri, can’t you at least feel what there is of profound and risky adventure in this thing we’re attempting? Lóri, Lóri! We’re attempting joy! Do you at least feel that? And feel how we’re venturing into danger? Do you feel that there’s more safety in dull pain? Ah Lóri, Lóri, can’t you recover, at least hazily, in your flesh’s memory, the pleasure that at least in the cradle you must have felt at being alive? At being? Or at least some other time in life, no matter when, nor why?

Lóri didn’t reply, knowing that he could sense that the answer was negative.

— Do you prefer pain?

She didn’t reply to that either, knowing he could sense that the answer would once again be: no.

— What is it? To learn joy, do you need every guarantee?

She remained silent, because Ulisses’s tone had changed and instead of passionate had become sardonic and meant to wound her. He leaned back in his chair a bit tired and said:

— You’re the type who needs guarantees. Do you want to know what I’m like in order to accept me? I’ll let you get to know me better, he said with irony. Look, I’ve got a verbose soul and use few words. I’m irritable and easily hurt people. I’m also very calm and forgive immediately. I never forget. But there are few things I remember. I’m patient but quickly fly into a rage, like most patient people. People never really annoy me, no doubt because I forgive them in advance. I like people a lot for selfish reasons: it’s because in the end they resemble me. I never forget an offense, that’s true, but how can it be true, when offenses escape my mind as if they’d never come in?

Lóri was starting to think Ulisses was mocking her. And she pursed her lips in anger. Yet she couldn’t help wanting to hear him out, her curiosity was increasing since, though she knew he was joking, he was also speaking the truth.

— I possess a deep peace, he continued, only because it is deep and cannot even be reached by myself. If I could grasp it, I wouldn’t have a minute’s peace. As for my superficial peace, it is an allusion to the true peace. Another thing I forgot is that there’s another allusion inside me — to the wide and open world. I’m a professor of Philosophy because that’s what I studied most and basically I like to hear myself talk about things that interest me. I have a feel for teaching that makes my students fall in love with the subject and look me up outside of class. This feel for teaching, which is a desire to impart knowledge, is something I have with you too, Lóri, even though you’re my worst student. Anyway, though I look tough, which by the way partly comes from having such a straight nose, though I look tough, I’m full of so much love and that’s no doubt what gives me a kind of grandeur, the grandeur you see and which scares you.

As if he’d suddenly realized that he’d been speaking seriously, he stopped and laughed in order to undo everything he’d said:

— My love for the world is like this: I forgive people for having a misshapen nose or lips that are too thin or for being ugly — every flaw or error in others is an opportunity for me to love. You see, I don’t let anyone order me around, yet I don’t mind for example simply following the teaching plan the university sets out for each class.

Ulisses finally saw Lóri’s mute rage. So he said simply and sincerely:

— I know I was joking, but I didn’t tell a single lie, everything I said was true. And if I confessed something, it doesn’t matter, especially if it was to you. Though, by the way, I’d confess to others too, without any danger: nobody can make use of what other people are, not even mental use, that’s why, this kind of confession is never dangerous. Maybe you know me even less now. The best way to throw someone off your scent is to tell the truth, though I’ve never tried to throw you off, Lóri, he said.

In some pain Lóri then realized that Ulisses, despite his claims to the contrary, didn’t want to give himself to her. And she would respond with like for like. Maybe before he’d spoken, she’d intended to give herself to him one day, since she knew that she’d have to give what she was to someone, otherwise what would she do with herself? How to die before you give yourself, even in silence? Because by surrendering she’d finally have a witness to herself. And because Ulisses must also have thought of death, he said:

— Before dying you live, Lóri. It’s a natural thing to die, to be transformed, to be transmuted. Nothing beyond dying has ever been invented. Just as no one’s ever invented a different kind of bodily love which, nonetheless, is strange and blind and nonetheless each person, not knowing about anyone else, reinvents the copy. Dying must be a natural pleasure. After dying you don’t go to paradise, dying is the paradise.

They sat in silence for a long time, a silence that wasn’t heavy. Until he,