Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector

Author:Clarice Lispector
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780811227933
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2018-06-26T00:00:00+00:00

The Solution

(“A solução”)

Her name was Almira and she’d grown too fat. Alice was her best friend. At least that’s what she told everyone woefully, wanting her own vehemence to compensate for the lack of friendship the other woman devoted to her.

Alice was pensive and smiled without hearing her, typing away.

The more nonexistent Alice’s friendship was, the more Almira’s grew. Alice had an oval, velvety face. Almira’s nose was always shiny. Almira’s face held an eagerness she’d never thought to hide: the same she felt for food, her most direct contact with the world.

Why Alice put up with Almira, no one understood. The two were typists and coworkers, which didn’t explain it. The two ate lunch together, which didn’t explain it. They left the office at the same time and waited for the bus in the same line. Almira always looking after Alice. The latter, distant and dreamy, letting herself be adored. Alice was small and delicate. Almira had a very wide face, sallow and shiny: her lipstick never stayed on, she was the sort who ate off her lipstick without meaning to.

“I just loved that show on Ministry of Education Radio,” Almira would say trying somehow to please. But Alice took everything as if it were her due, including the Ministry of Education opera.

Only Almira’s nature was delicate. With that whole big fat body, she could spend a sleepless night over having spoken a poorly chosen word. And a piece of chocolate could suddenly turn bitter in her mouth at the thought that she’d been unfair. What she never lacked was chocolate in her purse, and alarm at what she might have done. Not out of kindness. It might have been feeble nerves in a feeble body.

On the morning of the day it happened, Almira left for work in a rush, still chewing on a piece of bread. When she reached the office, she looked over at Alice’s desk and didn’t see her. An hour later she showed up with bloodshot eyes. She didn’t want to explain or answer Almira’s nervous questions. Almira was practically crying over her typewriter.

Finally, at lunchtime, she begged Alice to have lunch with her, her treat.

It was precisely during lunch that the incident occurred.

Almira kept wanting to know why Alice had shown up late and with bloodshot eyes. Dejected, Alice barely replied. Almira ate eagerly and kept pressing the issue, her eyes welling with tears.

“You fatso!” Alice said suddenly, pale with rage. “Can’t you just leave me alone?!”

Almira gagged on her food, tried to speak, started stammering. From Alice’s soft lips had come words that couldn’t go down with the food in Almira G. de Almeida’s throat.

“You’re a pest and a busybody,” Alice exploded again. “So you want to know what happened, do you? Okay I’ll tell you, you pest: what happened is that Zequinha took off for Porto Alegre and he’s not coming back! happy now, fatso?”

Indeed Almira seemed to have grown even fatter in those last few seconds, and with food still stuck in her mouth.

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