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

the boys and girls would retain what she was teaching them for later, when they could understand it. So she told them that arithmetic came from “arithmos” which means rhythm, that number came from “nomos” which means “law” or “norm,” norm from the child’s universal flow. It was too early to tell them all that, but she took pleasure in saying it, she wanted them to know, through their Portuguese class, that the taste of a fruit is in the contact of the fruit with the palate and not in the fruit itself.

There was no apprenticeship for new things: it was only rediscovery. And it was raining a lot that winter. So she used another allowance from her father and looked for — what pleasure to wander through the shops looking until she found — and looked for and bought red umbrellas and red woolen socks for all her boys and girls.

That was how she was setting the world on fire.

Ulisses rarely looked up. On the phone, but not by way of justifying his behavior, he said that his class that year was exceptional, that it was asking for answers to everything, and that it was forcing him to get down to the hard pleasure of thinking more and studying more.

But one Saturday morning, while she was lying in bed without the courage to face the temperature outside the sheets, the phone rang. She leapt out of bed, but femininely let the phone ring a few times, as she always did in order not to look too eager, in case it were Ulisses.

It was Ulisses and he asked if she’d like to have lunch in Tijuca Forest. She forced herself not to shout yes. Dissembling, she said:

— Today?

— I’ll come by in the car at one.

She didn’t even need to think about what to wear, she already knew so well: she’d go in her plaid woolen skirt and the red sweater she’d bought for herself too, when she was buying them for the children. She wouldn’t need her own red umbrella, since Ulisses was picking her up at the door. Which was too bad. Her red umbrella when it was open looked like a scarlet bird with transparent wings wide open. So she decided to go out at a quarter to one, to wait for him with her red umbrella open.

And that’s how he found her and looked at her with wonder: she was extravagant and beautiful.

In silence they drove through the streets until they reached the forest, whose trees were more vegetal than ever, enormous, wrapped in vines, covered with parasites. And when the organic density of the plants and high grasses and trees seemed to be closing in, they arrived at the clearing with the restaurant, lit up because it was such a dark day.

They still hadn’t spoken. He took her to a room where a fire was burning in the hearth, then went to order in the main dining room. Soon he was already coming back, he himself holding two glasses of red wine.

— Look, he said, there on the windowsill, a swallow that’s split away from its flock.

Its black had a gleam to it shot through with shimmering green, and its breast and the underside of its wings were white. It was perched on the tiled sill of the window.

— Swallows, he said, emigrate and then return, like seagulls. It’s unusual to see one alone. This one has split away from its flock, but surely knows where to find it.

And he’d hardly spoken when a bird flew into the room as if crazed for having inadvertently flown through the window, scaring the swallow and scaring itself in the hot prison of the room where it was flying around without knowing where to stop.

— That’s a sabia that’s flown its nest, he said, to look for food.

She saw that the sabia was darker on its wings and had a yellowish breast. But it wasn’t singing. Maybe it was a female.

Slowly drinking their wine, they were waiting for their waiter to tell them lunch was ready. The two of them were the only guests, nobody else seemed to have ventured out in the cold and the drizzle that was falling without any letup. Looking at the fire, she said to him:

— Isn’t it strange that I’ve never asked you where you live?

— You’re asking now. I live in Rua Conde Lage, in Glória, in a little old house that’s been in the family since my great-grandfather’s day. It’s called Vila Mariana. It has a rusty wrought-iron gate that screeches every time you open it, and then some steps because in Glória the streets all slope up toward Santa Teresa. Do you know where I mean?

— No.

— It’s near the Glória clock. When I’m home, I hear every fifteen minutes a kind of translucent ringing from the clock that sings slowly as it marks the time. It’s very nice.

— Isn’t that a red-light district?

He smiled:

— So you do know things. It is, has been for ages. But its glory days are over. And, in case you were wondering, no prostitute has ever entered Vila Mariana.

Then they were called to table and went into the dining room. He must have phoned beforehand, because the dish of the day was hen in black sauce. They ate and drank in silence, unhurried. It was nice.

Then they returned to the lounge, which was empty, and sat on the sofa in front of the hearth. There he smoked. When she thought about how, besides the cold, the rain was falling as if onto the whole world, she couldn’t believe she’d been given so much good. It was the pact between the Earth and something she’d never realized she needed with so much hunger in her soul. It was raining, raining. The flames were blinking.

He, the man, was busy poking the fire. She hadn’t even thought to: it wasn’t her role, since she had her man for that. Not that she was a tender maiden,