An Apprenticeship or the Book of Pleasures Page 4

— 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 a great, the greatest obstacle for me to make progress: I myself. I’ve been the greatest hindrance along my path. It’s with enormous effort that I manage to impose myself on myself.

  She’d never spoken so many words at a stretch. That’s why she wanted to avoid the main thing. Suddenly however she realized that if she didn’t say the last thing, she wouldn’t have said anything, and spoke:

  — I’m an insurmountable mountain along my own path. But sometimes through a word of yours or a word I read, suddenly everything becomes clear.

  Yes, everything sometimes would become clear and she’d emerge from herself almost with splendor.

  — Yes, said Ulisses. But you’re wrong. I don’t give you advice. I just — I—I think that what I’m really doing is waiting. Waiting perhaps for you to give yourself advice, I don’t know, Lóri, I swear I don’t know, sometimes it seems like I’m wasting my time, sometimes it seems that on the contrary, there’s no more perfect, though worrisome, way to use time: the time of waiting for you. Do you know how to pray?

  — What? she asked with a start.

  — Not pray the Lord’s Prayer, but ask something of yourself, ask the maximum of yourself?

  — I don’t know if I know, I’ve never tried. Is that a piece of advice? she asked with irony.

  He looked flustered:

  — I think it was. Forget what I said.

  But she didn’t forget.

  She was washing her face slowly, combing her hair slowly, already in her nightdress. She was putting it off, putting it off. She brushed her teeth one more time. Her brow was wrinkled, her soul trembling. She knew she’d try to pray and was frightened. As if whatever she was going to ask of herself and of the God required great care: because whatever she asked, she would be given. She went to the fridge, drank a glass of water: acting as if she’d been hypnotized by Ulisses. And a tiny gesture of revolt against the hypnotism to which she’d apparently been subjected was making her delay whatever was coming.

  Ask? How do you ask? And what do you ask for?

  Do you ask for life?

  You ask for life.

  But don’t you already have life?

  There’s a more real life.

  What is real?

  And she didn’t know how to answer. Blindly she would have to ask. But she wanted, if she had to ask blindly, at least to understand what
she was asking. She knew she shouldn’t ask for the impossible: you can’t ask for the answer. The big answer was not granted us. It is dangerous to meddle with the big answer. She preferred to ask humbly, not on her level, which was enormous: Lóri was feeling that she was an enormous human being. And that she should be careful. Or not? All her life she’d been careful not to be big inside herself so as not to be in pain.

  No, she shouldn’t ask for more life. For the time being that was dangerous. She knelt trembling beside the bed for that was how you prayed and said quietly, severely, sadly, mumbling her prayer with a bit of shame: relieve my soul, make me feel that Thy hand is holding mine, make me feel that death doesn’t exist because in truth we are already in eternity, make me feel that loving is not dying, that the surrender of yourself doesn’t mean death, make me feel a modest and daily joy, make me not ask Thee too much, because the answer would be as mysterious as the question, make me remember that there is also no explanation as to why a son wants his mother’s kiss and yet he wants it and yet the kiss is perfect, make me receive the world without fear, since I was created for this incomprehensible world and I myself incomprehensible too, so there’s a connection between this mystery of the world and our own, but that connection isn’t clear to us as long as we hope to understand it, bless me so that I can experience with joy the bread I eat, the slumber I sleep, make me show kindness to myself because otherwise I won’t be able to feel that God has loved me, make me lose the shame of wishing that at the hour of my death there will be a beloved human hand to hold mine, amen.

  Not for nothing did she understand those who were seeking a path. How arduously she was seeking her own! And today how impatiently and roughly she was seeking her best way to be, her shortcut, since she no longer dared speak of a path. She was hanging on ferociously to her hunt for a way of walking, for the right steps. But the shortcut with refreshing shade and light flashing between the trees, the shortcut where she’d finally be herself, that she’d only felt in a certain indeterminate moment of the prayer. But she was also aware of something: when she was most ready, she’d move from herself to other people, her path was other people. When she could fully feel the other she’d be safe and think: here is my port of arrival.

  But first she needed to reach herself, first she needed to reach the world.

  When they next met on the terrace of the bar, a week later, Ulisses had his sluggish and uninterested look about him. But Lóri was familiar with it: he looked like this because he was calmly practicing instant by instant a way to clear a path. Whenever he returned from this distant gaze it was to look at her with a vague desire that didn’t seem to want to grow stronger.

  Lóri kept quiet, letting him drink in silence, without looking at him. So it gave her a little fright to she hear him address her, and she didn’t know how long he’d been contemplating her before saying:

  — 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, as if wanting to give her something, said:

  — Look at that sparrow, Lóri — he ordered — it keeps pecking the ground that looks empty but its eyes surely see food.

  Obedient, she looked. And suddenly the sparrow took flight, and in her surprise Lóri forgot herself and like a child said to Ulisses:

  — It’s so pretty that it flies!

  She’d spoken with the innocence she used in her lessons with the children, when she wasn’t afraid of being judged. Anxiously she then glanced at Ulisses. He was looking at her. With a fright Lóri noticed: was it a look . . . of love?

  A week later Lóri was still thinking about that last meeting. She hadn’t seen Ulisses since, nor had he called her. She’d been embroidering a tablecloth all week, and keeping her skillful hands busy she’d managed to pass the long days of the vacation. Embroidering, embroidering. Sometimes, when night fell, she’d take a long time making herself up and go to the movies.

  But inside she was feeling an urgency, was in a hurry: there was something she needed to know and experience, and she didn’t know what and never had. And somehow time was getting short, it wouldn’t be long before the schools reopened. She was afraid Ulisses would get tired of her pachydermic resistance to letting the world enter her, and give up. And despair would overtake her. She knew she wasn’t yet ready to surrender to him or anyone else, and in this interim he might leave her. During one of those sunny afternoons her despair grew. Suddenly she let herself lie face down on the bed, her face almost buried in her pillow: the pain had returned.

  The pain had returned almost physically, and she thought about praying. But she immediately discovered that she didn’t want to speak to the God. Maybe never again. She remembered that once, on holiday on a farm, she’d lain face down in a clearing in a grove, resting her chest on the earth, her limbs on the earth, only her face turned toward the ground was protected in the crook of her arm.