The Apple in the Dark

by Clarice Lispector

  repeated, "Today must be Sunday."

  Apparently it must have been more an indirect testimony to

  himself than to the day of the week, since without stopping for a

  second, he ended the radiant and dry glance at what he had just

  called "Sunday" with a listless feel through his pockets. For no

  reason at all, if not because of his own fatigue, he kept walking

  faster and faster. It was really getting harder now to keep up

  with himself. And excited in that competition with his own pace

  he looked around in innocent fascination, his head burning in

  the sun.

  Unless he had counted the days gone by there was no reason

  to think it was Sunday. Martim stopped then, a little embarrassed by the need to understand from which he still had not freed himself.

  But the fact is that the wasteland had a clean and foreign

  existence. Every single thing was in its place. Like a man who

  shuts the door and leaves, and it is Sunday. Besides everything

  else, Sunday is a man's first day. Not even woman had been

  created yet. Sunday was the wasteland of a man. And thirst,

  freeing him, gave him a power of choice that made him drunk.

  "Today is Sunday!" he decided categorically.

  Then he sat down on a stone and, very stiff, kept on looking

  about. His look did not run into any obstacle, and it wandered

  about an intense and peaceful noontime. Nothing was stopping

  ( 1 8 )

  How a Man Is Made

  him from transforming his flight into a marvelous trip, and he

  was set to take advantage of it. He was looking.

  But there is something in the expanse of the countryside that

  makes a man alone feel alone. Sitting on a stone, the final and

  irreducible fact-the fact that he was there. Then, with a

  sudden zeal, he carefully brushed the dust off his jacket. In an

  obscure and perfect way, he himself was the first thing put into

  that Sunday. It made him as precious as a seed; he picked a

  thread off his jacket. On the ground the black outline of his

  shadow delimited his favorable delusion to where he was. He

  himself was his own first frame.

  The truth was that in addition to trying to clean himself up,

  as a mere matter of cleanliness, the man did not seem to have

  the least intention of doing anything with the fact of existing.

  There he was, sitting on the stone. Nor did he attempt to think

  the least bit about the sun.

  All this, then, was where freedom came from. His body

  groaned with pleasure; his woolen suit was itchy in the heat.

  Limitless freedom had left him empty; each one of his gestures

  echoed like a distant applause : when he scratched himself, that

  gesture rolled directly on toward God. The most dispassionately

  individual thing can happen when a person finds freedom. In the

  beginning you are a stupid man with greater loneliness than you

  need. Then a man who gets a slap on the face and can still smile

  beatifically, because at the same time the slap has revealed to

  him a face he had not suspected. After a while you begin craftily

  to build a house and take the first lewd intimacies with freedom;

  The only reason you do not fly is because you do not want to,

  and when you sit down upon a stone it is because instead of

  flying you sat down. And after that?

  After that, as now, what the sitting Martim experienced was

  a mute orgy, in which there was the virginal desire to debase

  everything debasable; and everything was debasable, and that

  debasement would be a way of loving. To be content was a way

  of loving; sitting down, Martim was very content.

  And after that? Well, the only thing that would happen

  ( l 9 )

  T H E A P P L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  after that is that he would say what would happen after that.

  For the time being, the fugitive man kept sitting on the stone,

  because if he had wanted to, he might not have been able to sit

  down on the stone. All of that gave him the eternity of a

  perching bird.

  When that was all over, Martim stood up. And without

  asking himself what he was doing, he knelt down in front of a

  dried-up tree to examine its trunk : it did not seem that he had

  to give any deep thought to the problem in order to resolve it; he

  had disengaged himself from that too. Then he picked off a

  piece of half-hung bark, rolled it between his fingers with an

  attention that was a little affected, moving it about as if he were

  in front of an audience. His study was done in the peculiar

  fashion that comes when what is unknown becomes organized,

  and Martim arose as if by command, and continued on his way.

  It was farther along that he stopped short in front of the first

  bird.

  Set off against the great light there was a bird. Since Martim

  was free, that was the question : a bird in the light. With the

  minute care to which he had become accustomed, he immediately began to work on this fact greedily.

  The black bird was perched on a low branch, at eye-level.

  And, unable to fly, paralyzed by the bestial look of the man, she

  moved about with less and less volition, trying to face up to

  what was going to happen and shifting her weight nervously

  from one foot to the other. There they were, the two of them,

  facing each other-until the man grabbed her with a heavy and

  powerful hand, which with the physical kindness of a heavy

  hand did not hurt.

  In the palm of his hand the bird trembled and dared not

  make a peep. The man looked at her with vulgar and indiscreet

  curiosity, as if he had imprisoned a handful of living wings. In a

  little while the bird's small, dominated body stopped trembling,

  and she closed her minute eyes with feminine softness. Now

  only a faint, rapid heartbeat against the man's extremely sensitive fingers showed that the bird had not died and that the snugness had at last lulled her to rest.

  ( 2 0 )

  How a Man Is Made

  �tartled by the irrevocable perfection of what was happening

  to him, the man snorted and looked at the little creature. The

  satisfaction made him laugh aloud, his head turned back, his

  face looking at the great sun. Then he stopped laughing, as if

  that had been a heresy. And deeply concerned with his task and

  with his hand half-closed, he let just the hard, sharp head of the

  bird show; the man began to walk again with greater strength,

  aware of his companion. The only thing he thought about was

  the noise his own shoes made echoing softly in his sun-fired

  head.

  And soon, in cadence with his steps, the physical pleasure of

  walking once more started to take hold of him-and also a

  pleasure faintly sensed, as if he had taken some aphrodisiac that

  made him desire not a woman, but a response to the thrill of the

  sun. He had never been so close to the sun, and he was walking

  faster and faster holding the bird in front of him as if he were

  running to the post office with it before it closed. The vague

  mission was getting him drunk. The lightness born of thirst had

  suddenly put him into a
n ecstasy.

  "That's it, yes ! " he said aloud and without meaning, and it

  seemed more and more glorious, as if he were going to fall down

  dead.

  He looked around at the perfect circle of light that the

  heavens were holding in an awe-inspiring horizon; an horizon

  which drew closer to the land, softer and softer, softer and

  softer, softer and softer . . . The softness upset the man with

  the pleasure of a tickle. "That's it, yes!" and he was free, freed

  by his own hands-he had suddenly realized that this was what

  had happened two weeks before.

  Then he repeated with unexpected certainty, "That's it, yes! "

  Every time he said those words he was convinced that he �as

  referring to something. He even made a gesture of generosity

  and largess with the hand that held the bird, and he thought

  magnanimously, "They don't know what I'm talkin� about."

  Then-as if thinking had been reduced to seeing, and that

  the confusion of the light had quivered in him as it does on

  water-it occurred to him in a confused refraction that even he

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  T H E A P P L E

  IN

  T H E D A R K

  had forgotten what he was talking about. But he was so obstinately convinced that it was something of the greatest importance, something so vast that it was no longer conceivable even to him, that he haughtily respected his own ignorance and gave

  himself savage approval, "That's it, yes."

  "Can't you say anything else?"

  The man stopped short, surprised. As if she had been put

  before him, he saw again the face of that impatient woman, who

  once before had asked him that just because he had not answered. From the very first, the phrase had sounded like so many others-as streetcars dragged along and the radio kept right on

  playing without interruption and the woman listened to the

  radio without interruption and hope, and one day he would

  break the radio as streetcars dragged along, and meanwhile the

  radio and the woman had nothing to do with that careful rage of

  a man who most likely already held within himself the fact that

  someday he would have to begin at the exact beginning. He was

  now beginning with Sunday.

  But this time the simple irritating phrase, ringing in the red

  silence of the wasteland, made him stop short, so perplexed that

  the bird woke up and wiggled its imprisoned wings inside his

  hand. Martim looked at it bewildered, frightened at having a

  bird in his hand. The sun's drunkenness was suddenly over.

  Sober, he looked with modesty at the thing in his hand.

  Then he looked at the Sunday wasteland with its silent stones.

  He had been sound asleep as he had been walking, and for the

  first time he was now waking up. And as if a new wave from the

  sea were breaking against the rocks, clearness took over.

  Calmly the man looked at the bird. Without any command

  his now innocent and curious fingers let themselves obey the

  lively movements of the bird, and passively they opened. The

  bird flew off in a flash of gold, as if the man had flung it. And it

  perched anxiously upon the highest stone. From there it looked

  down at the man and peeped incessantly.

  Paralyzed for a moment, Martim looked up at it and then

  down at his own empty hands, which looked back in astonishment. Recovering, however, he ran furiously toward the bird and ( 2 2 )

  How a Man Is Made

  �ollow.ed it for so.me. time, his heart beating with anger, his

  impatient shoes tnpp1ng over stones, his hand grasping out in a

  fall that made a small stone bounce along with several dry jumps

  until it was quiet . . .

  The silence that followed was so hollow that the man still

  tried to hear the last thud of the stone so he could calculate the

  depth of the silence into which he had knocked it.

  Until a great wave of light unwound the waiting tension, and

  Martim could look down at his hand. It was burned, and there

  was a trickle of blood. He had forgotten about the chase and was

  very much involved with himself now; his dry lips sucked on the

  scratch with the loving voracity of a lonely person. At the same

  time thirst had awakened him and the blood in his mouth had

  given him a warlike attitude that quickly went away.

  When the man finally lifted up his eyes the frightened bird

  was waiting for him, as if it had been resisting only because it

  had wanted to give up. Martim held out his injured hand and

  took it up with forceless firmness. This time the bird wiggled

  less, and recognizing its old shelter, snuggled up to sleep. Carrying its light weight, the man continued on his way among the stones.

  "I can't say anything else," he said to the bird, trying out of a

  certain sense of shame not to look at it.

  Only afterwards did he seem to understand what he had said,

  and then he looked the sun in the eye. "I have lost the speech of

  other people," he then repeated slowly, as if the words were

  more obscure than they were, and in some way more praiseworthy. He was serenely proud; his eyes clear and satisfied.

  Then the man sat down upon a stone, straight, solemn, and

  empty-keeping the bird firmly secure within his hand. Some

  thing was happening to him, and it was something that had

  meaning.

  Even so he had no words for what was happening.

  A man was sitting down. And he had no words for anything.

  Therefore he was sitting down. That is how it was. The best part

  is that it was indisputable. And irreversible.

  The truth is that what had been happening to him had a

  ( 2 3 )

  T H E A P P L E

  IN

  T H E D A R K

  weight that had to be borne. It was easy for him to recognize the

  familiar weight. It was like his own weight, even though it might

  be something quite the opposite something he could not seem

  to balance on a scale. He was vaguely aware of that. Sometimes

  in his old apartment, he would get that uncomfortable feeling

  that was a mixture of pleasure and anxiety; it had always ended

  up in some decision that had nothing to do with his troublesome

  feeling. True, he had never felt it with that final, clean feel that

  the wasteland gave-the wasteland where he was aided by the

  very shadow which unmistakably delimited him upon the

  ground.

  That thing that he was feeling must have been, in the last

  analysis, himself and nothing else-the pleasure that the tongue

  has of being in its own mouth, and the lack of a name, like the

  name of pleasure the tongue has in its mouth. That is all it was,

  after all.

  But a person was always a little aware of what was, and being

  aware was to be. That is how, then, that on his first Sunday, he

  was.

  In the meantime he had become fairly intense. He moved

  about uncomfortably upon his stone with a physical answer to

  the immateriality of his own tension, the way a person does who

  is disturbed. And if he did that it was because, even if he had not

  known himself, he knew enough about himself for a reply. That

  was not enough, however. He looked about, like a person lo
oking for a woman's counterpoint, but there was no synonym, unless it was a man sitting down with a bird in his hand.

  Then he waited, patient and upright, for the thing to pass

  away without its even touching him.

  The fact was that the man had always had a tendency to fall

  into profundity, which some day still would lead him to an

  abyss : that is why he wisely took the precaution to abstain. His

  contention, superficial and easily separated from the depth, gave

  him the pleasure of a contention. His had always been a difficult

  balance, one of not falling into the voraciousness with which

  every new wave awaited him. A whole past lay just a step away

  ( 2 4 )

  How a Man Is Made

  fr.om the c�ution with w?ich that man was merely trying to keep

  himself ahve, and nothing more-the way an animal will light

  up only in its eyes, keeping behind it that vast, untouched

  animal soul. Then, without touching it, he set himself to wait

  impassively until the things should go away.

  Before it went away he involuntarily recognized it. That

  thing-that thing was a man thinking . . . Then, with infinite

  displeasure, physically confused, he remembered in his body

  what a man thinking was like. A man thinking was that thing

  which, when it saw something yellow, would say with dazzling

  elan, "Something not blue." Not that Martim had really arrived

  at thought-he had recognized it in the way one recognizes the

  possible movement in the shape of motionless legs. And he had

  recognized more than that: that thing had really been with him

  all through his flight. It had only been through neglect that just

  now he had almost let it spread itself out.

  Then, startled, as if in alarm, he had recognized the insidious

  return of a vice; he had such a repugnance for the fact that he

  had almost been thinking that he clenched his teeth in a painful

  mask of hunger and abandonment-he turned around restlessly

  toward all sides of the wasteland, looking among the stones for a

  means by which he could regain his former powerful stupidity,

  which for him had come to be a source of pride and command.

  But the man was disturbed. Why should he not be then a

  person able to take two free steps and not fall into the same fatal

  error? Because the old system of useless thinking and of even

  delighting in thinking had tried to return? Sitting on the stone