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

— You’re the same as you ever were. You’ve just bloomed into a blood-red rose. I threw away the two dozen roses because I have you, a big rose and with moist and thick petals. Lóri, I’m going to be so busy that we might need to get married in order to be together.

—Maybe that would be better. Maybe it’s best to—

He interrupted her kissing lingeringly her scented flesh. And she again fell into the vertigo that overtook her, and again was happy the way a being can die of happiness. And again for the fourth time they loved each other.

Afterward he asked if she minded if he turned on the lights because he wanted to see her. She said he could. Then they looked at each other. Both were pale and both thought they were beautiful. She covered her body with the sheet. Soon they were smoking with cigarettes in one hand and with the other holding hands. For a long time they sat in silence. Even Lóri wasn’t following her own thoughts until she reached somewhat unexpectedly the sudden question:

— What is my social value, Ulisses? These days, I mean.

— That of a woman who isn’t integrated into the Brazilian society of today, into its bourgeois middle class.

— As I see it, you don’t belong to any class, Ulisses. If you only knew how exciting it is for me to imitate you. I learn from you but you think that I learned from your lessons, yet that wasn’t it, I learned something you weren’t even dreaming of teaching me. Do you think I’m offending my social structure with my great freedom?

— Of course you do, thankfully. Because you’re leaving prison as a free being, and no one will forgive you that. Sex and love aren’t forbidden for you. You finally learned to exist. And that unlocks many other freedoms, which is a risk to your society. Even the freedom to be good to yourself frightens others. You’ll see how much better you’ll teach. But the two of us, if we have a child, we’re ready.

— I’d have liked to get pregnant tonight.

— Be patient. Anyway, next time, you should be careful because we’ll wait for the right moment to have a child. First, not least to make that easier, we really should marry.

She got up wrapped in the sheet and turned off the lights. There was already a predawn shade. And the even darker shade, since they’d seen each other, was good to them. They sat in silence for so long that for an instant, in the moment of greatest darkness that precedes the dawn, she didn’t realize where she was. There was such a wonderful chaos and nebula that she squeezed his hand so that someone could keep her on earth. They remained silent and let go of each other’s hands and stubbed out their cigarettes. She no longer felt the jealousy she’d felt when she entered the bedroom and noticed that he had a double bed, with two bedside tables and two ashtrays. Now she’d never be jealous again.

Minutes later she said:

— I still find no answer when I ask: who am I? But I think I now know: profoundly I am the one who has her own life and also your life. I drank our life.

— But you can’t ask that. And the question should have a different answer. Don’t pretend you’re strong enough to ask a human being’s worst question. I, who am stronger than you, can’t ask myself “who am I” without getting lost.

And his voice had sounded like that of someone lost.

She wasn’t startled when she felt his hand rest on her stomach. The hand was now caressing her legs. In that moment there was no sensuality between them. Though she was full of wonders, as if full of stars. She then reached out her own hand and touched his sex which was immediately transformed: but he stayed quiet. They both seemed calm and a little sad.

— Could love be giving your own solitude to another? Because that’s the ultimate thing you can give of yourself, said Ulisses.

— I don’t know, my love, but I know that my path has reached its end: I mean I reached the door of a beginning.

— Woman of mine, he said.

— Yes, Lóri said, I am your woman.

Dawn was opening in faltering light. For Lóri the atmosphere was miraculous. She had reached the impossible of herself. Then she said, because she was feeling that Ulisses was once again caught by the pain of existing:

— My love, you don’t believe in the God because we erred by humanizing him. We humanized Him because we didn’t understand Him, so it didn’t work. I’m sure He isn’t human. But though not human, nonetheless He still sometimes makes us divine. Do you think that—

— I think, the man interrupted and his voice was slow and muffled because he was suffering from life and from love, this is what I think:

Afterword

A human being is a creature who is lost, who is singular, who merges with and is like everything in existence, who knows and doesn’t know God, who has been steeped in pain and who is afraid to love and wants to love and be loved by another person more than anything else in the world. That is the quest of this book: to love and be loved. But in order to truly love and be loved, one must first find one’s way to the most difficult thing, which is a joyful relationship “with the mightiness of life.” And while most love stories do away with this requirement and don’t even recognize it — just have the lovers hurtling toward each other — this love story is a question about this requirement, and can it even be won?

Who is this man, this Ulisses, who asks of Lóri that she become somehow different before they come together