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

Sleep would sometimes come to her but she was afraid to wake up, be again the former woman. The precariousness of the true life inside her was devastating. She reached out her arm in the dark and in the dark her hand touched the naked chest of the sleeping man: she was creating him by her own hand and making sure her hand would forever carry the imprint of life on its skin. “God,” she thought, “so this is what you seemed to be promising me.” And her eyes closed in a semi­sleep, in a semivigil, for she was keeping vigil over the sleep of her great love.

It was in this dream-glimmer state that she dreamt seeing that the fruit of the world was hers. Or if it wasn’t, that she’d just touched it. It was an enormous, scarlet, and heavy fruit that was hanging in the dark space, shining with an almost golden light. And that right in the air itself she was placing her mouth on the fruit and managing to bite it, leaving it nevertheless whole, glistening in space. For that’s how it was with Ulisses: they had possessed each other more than seemed possible and permitted, and nevertheless he and she were whole. The fruit was whole, yes, though in her mouth she felt as a living thing the food of the land. It was holy land because it was the only one on which a human could say while loving: I am yours and you are mine, and we is one.

Until Lóri fell asleep more deeply and the darkness was all hers.

After a little while they awoke and both Ulisses and Lóri reached a hand out to the other’s hand.

— My love, she said.

— Yes?

But she didn’t reply. Then he said:

— We both know we’re at the threshold of a door open to a new life. It’s the door, Lóri. And we know that only the death of one of us will separate us. No, Lóri, it won’t be an easy life. But it’s a new life. (Everything seems like a dream to me. But it’s not, he said, reality is what’s unbelievable.)

Ulisses, wise Ulisses, had lost his tranquility upon finding love for the first time in his life. His voice was different, it had lost its professorial tone, his voice now was that of just a man. Had he wanted to teach Lóri through formulae? No, for he wasn’t a man of formulae, since no formula would do: he was lost in a sea of joy and of the menace of pain. Lóri could finally speak to him as an equal. Because finally he was realizing that he didn’t know anything and the weight was making his voice catch. But he wanted the dangerous new life.

— I always had to fight my tendency to be the servant of a man, Lóri said, so deeply did I admire men compared to women. In men I feel the courage to be alive. Whereas I, woman, am a bit more refined and for that very reason weaker — you are primitive and direct.

— Lóri, you are now a super-woman in the sense that I’m a super-man, just because we have the courage to go through the open door. It’s down to us whether we manage painstakingly to be what we really are. We, like all people, have the potential to be gods. I don’t mean gods in the divine sense. First we must follow nature, not forgetting its low moments, since nature is cyclical, it’s rhythm, it’s like a beating heart. Existing is so completely out of the ordinary that if we were aware of existing for more than a few seconds, we’d go mad. The solution to this absurdity called “I exist,” the solution is to love another being who, this someone else, we understand does exist.

— My love, she said smiling, you seduced me diabolically. Without sadness or regret, I feel as if I’ve finally bitten the flesh of the fruit I thought was forbidden. You transformed me into the woman I am. You seduced me, she smiled. But there’s no dirtiness inside me. I am pure like a woman in bed with a man. A woman is never pornographic. I wouldn’t know how to be, though I’ve never been as intimately with anyone. Do you understand?

— I understand and know that. But I don’t like to say everything. You too should learn to keep silent so you don’t get lost in words.

— No. I kept silent all my life. But all right, I’ll say less. What I’d like to know is whether in your eyes I’m the unfortunate heroine who sheds her clothes. I’m naked in body and soul, but I want the darkness to wrap around me and cover me, no, don’t turn on the light.

— Yes.

Ulisses had previously lacked a certain humility. But in love, out of awe, he had become humble and serene.

— I love you, Lóri, and I don’t have much time for you because I work a lot. It was always an effort to find time to have a whiskey with you. I’m going to have more work, you’ll have to be patient, more work because I finally have to write my essay. And I’ll write without any style, he said as if talking to himself. Writing without style is the most anyone who writes can desire. It will be, Lóri, like that thing you said which I memorized: it will be the world with its haughty impersonality versus my individuality as a person but we shall be one. You’ll often have to be alone.

— I don’t mind. I’m a different woman now. And a minute of certainty about your love will last me for weeks, I’m a different woman. And I even want to be busier: teaching is becoming a passion, I want to clothe, and teach, and love my students, and