The Apple in the Dark

by Clarice Lispector

  presence. "Just imagine !" she said almost bellowing. "She humiliated me once, you know?" Without stopping his work, he took a quick look at her.

  "Then she said she hadn't meant to," Ermelinda added in a

  lower tone, now that she was sure the man had noticed her.

  Then she added, hesitant whether she should continue the lie,

  since he had finally looked at her, "Maybe she didn't mean

  to."

  "I said that she said she didn't mean to!" she repeated when

  she saw that he was not paying attention to her anymore, "But I

  don't think that's true! She really did humiliate me! " she

  shouted at him attently, watching to see how her words would

  make the man's face react.

  But her fruitless attempts had not discouraged Ermelinda.

  "That's just how it was," she thought, because "time wasn't ripe

  yet." When time would be ripe she could not say. Perhaps when

  she had been a child she had heard tell that it was when the

  moon was full. Perhaps too she might have known how animals

  need a minimum of security when put together so that at least

  they will have that primary guarantee of not being interrupted.

  Maybe she had heard more tales than she had been able to

  understand-and what had been left with her, disquietingly

  incomplete, was the notion of a time that was ripe. Oh, her

  plans were vague, very vague. She did not even have a plan; her

  plans were so vague that, embarrassed, she closed her eyes a little

  and smiled. If perchance her plans could have become just a

  little clearer for a moment she would have felt offended and

  sincerely startled. The fact was she was so very susceptible.

  When had Martim finally begun to individualize her? She

  was almost ugly even though she was cute. Her short and dark

  ( l l 3 )

  T H E A P P L E

  IN

  T H E DARK

  lashes outlined eyes that could be perceived even from a distance

  in the midst of the brightness of a skin in which not even her

  mouth had any color. Her eyes were alway blinking, knowing or

  maybe afflicted, as if the girl was always calculating the distance

  between herself and other things. Her eyes were the only positive thing about her. Her other features were so indistinct that one could imagine how they could lose their shape and come

  together in some new combination which would be just as

  undefined as the first one. She was an aging adolescent and if

  there had been troubles they had not been the kind that had

  given her wrinkles or hardness, but the kind that had smoothed

  and squelched her. The scattered rapid moments in which the

  man had looked upon her face had been useless for he had not

  found support for any point he could remember, whether ugly or

  pretty. Even in the certain moments when she had been unprotected there had appeared to him a certain expectant frankness on her face, which gave her the kind of beauty which one saw on the patient face of a dog. Then her face could be seen in

  all its nakedness, like the face of a blind man.

  It was that weak face, expectant and trusting, without the

  lies of expression that the girl had used so much to beautify

  herself, that the ma11 finally came to see. And he went on "not

  to think about her," as a way of thinking.

  "When I was married I had everything. There wasn't anything I ever lacked! " she came back to say the following day, persevering in her encirclement of him and opening up the

  basket of hard-boiled eggs to have a picnic while he worked.

  Speaking without cease the girl saw again that face with its

  hard lines; and again she was touched by the stability of the man

  and it seemed in vain for the wind to try to wear him down.

  And, who can tell, if she were to cling to him maybe the wind

  would not shake her either. Then the girl was so filled with a

  strong and malignant hope that without stopping talking she

  took a tranquilizer out of the basket and gulped the dry pill

  down with a little bit of trouble.

  "How long are you going to stay here?" she asked him.

  ( l l 4 )

  How a Man Is Made

  And when he said he did not know, and the empty and

  painful sense of speed whirled about her, time was short-time

  was short; she did not know why it was, she only knew she had

  to hurry. Then she began to talk with such volubility that the

  man felt his work become easy as if his strokes now had some

  kind of counterpoint, and the girl was the repercussion of a man

  filling up the distance. Martim then looked up at the sun and

  spat far with pride. Ermelinda lowered her eyes in shame.

  Chapter 11

  ON THAT AFTERNOON when Martim and Vit6ria rode out so that

  the mistress of the farm could show him where the irrigation

  ditches should be dug-on that afternoon when they rode up

  the same slope down which the man had come alone-then he

  stood out MATURE from the darkness of the cows.

  High up on the crest the woman was looking over the

  ground. Then suddenly, innocent and unwarned, he rocognized

  the landscape that he had seen when he had first come to the

  farm-that first time, when drunk with flight and exhausted, he

  had relied upon that vague thing which is the promise made to a

  baby at birth.

  On horseback, with a flash of incomprehension worthy of a

  genius, he saw the countryside. Stupefied and attentive he saw

  that at the top of the rise there was that same freedom as if

  something had been unfurled in the wind. And like that first

  time the glory of the open air brought something to him that hit

  him hard on the chest and pained him with the extreme upset of

  happiness that one sometimes feels.

  But with a new and unexpected hunger he wanted to give it

  a name this time.

  The idea of wanting something more than just a feeling

  seemed to affiict Martim; that confused sign of a transition

  toward the unknown bothered him, and his unrest was passed

  along to the horse who kicked up as if he had been touched

  somehow and had that dazzled look that horses have.

  As he faced that enormous extension of empty land Martim

  made a suffocated effort at painful approach. With the difficulty

  of someone who is never going to arrive he was approaching

  something that a man on foot might humbly call the desire of a

  man, but which a man on horseback could not resist the tempta-

  ( l l 6 )

  How a Man Is Made

  tio� to call the mission of a man. And the birth of that strange

  anxiety was now provoked by the vision of an enormous world

  which seemed to be asking a question, as it had been when he

  first walked upon the slope. And which seemed to be asking for a

  new god, who, as far as could be understood, would in that way

  complete the work of the other God. Confused there on a jumpy

  horse, jumpy himsel f, in just that second necessary for a glance,

  Martim had emerged totally and was a man.

  In the same moment he had also felt himself completely

  unrewarded.

  As his face was beaten by the wind which then went off to

  symbolize something Martim looked down below at the animals
>
  loose in the pasture. As he had come to understand the cows,

  now for the first time he found himself higher up on the slope.

  And this too was beating in his breast. With the beating of his

  heart, Martim remembered then and unexpectedly what a man

  normally is : it was what he was being now! With an agonizing

  sensation he felt himself a person.

  Martim was humble in some way, if being humble was that

  involuntary and triumphant way he rode astride the horse-the

  way which gave him height and fright and determination and a

  longer vision. With that unexpected humility he seemed to

  recognize another sign that he was coming out of it-because

  only animals are proud and by the same token a man is humble.

  He also wanted to give a name to that defenseless and at the

  same time audacious thing, but he had none.

  In some way it was good that he had none as he was

  unable to find a name that had imperceptively increased the

  restlessness he was now enjoying. The fact was that even though

  he was intimidated he was deriving something from his own

  restlessness as if the tension in which he found himself had

  '

  been the measure of his own resistance, and he had been making

  use of the first fruits of the difficulty just the way a man's

  muscles become more intense as he starts to lift a weight. He, he

  was his own weight-which means that, that man had made

  himself.

  ( I I 7 )

  T H E A P P L E IN

  T H E D A R K

  Meanwhile the impatience of the horses was hard to hold,

  and it increased Martim's instability and pulled him toward a

  decision of which he was still not aware. The wind was bringing

  Vit6ria's outlined figure close to his; the pure air made the

  horses blacker and larger. The air was so light that the man

  could not suck it all in at once. After breathing it a while, after

  being alive for a while, he was breathless because he could not

  take in more air. And meanwhile "not being able" intensified his

  happiness; the enormous vastness surrounded him, and he could

  not dominate it; his heart beat large, generous, restless; the

  horses moved their feet with nobility and skill. The constant

  wind had ended up by giving the woman's face a physical

  rapture that did not match the words she spoke about the

  opening of the trenches, and there was an agreement between

  their solitary bodies, the way bodies will agree on the same

  ultimate destiny. That his man's heart beat large and confused,

  recognizing things. To be a person was to be all of that.

  It was then that it occurred to him that the promise which

  had been made to him was his own mission, even if he could not

  understand why it is incumbent upon us to fulfill a promise that

  had been made to us somewhere.

  It was particularly good to be alive at that moment because

  there was also that clean afternoon air. And at that moment the

  mounted woman suddenly laughed because her horse had drawn

  back and startled her. With certain surprise he heard the laugh

  from that woman who never laughed. Everything was probably

  opening up for Martim; just as flowers open up in some determined moment, and we are never close enough to see. But he was. For the first time he was present when something that was

  happening was happening. And he! he was that man who for the

  first time had come to a realization not just from having heard

  tell, but at first hand, and that upset him. He was precisely that

  man. He was puzzled, therefore, at the impulsive way in which

  he had recognized himself. He had simply decided to be not just

  anyone, but that man.

  And more than that he himself had suddenly become the

  ( l l 8 )

  How a Man Is Made

  sense o� the land and the woman; he himself was the goad for

  everything he saw. That was what he felt, even if the only thing

  he was receiving from his thought was just the throb. And as he

  held b.ack, aroused, he remembered that this is a commonplace

  on which a man can finally tread: the wish to give a destiny to an

  enormous emptiness that evidently only a destiny can fill.

  Then, with an impulse like the urge to want to name something, he tried to remember what gesture was used to express that instant of wind and mention of the unknown. He tried to

  remember what he had done one day when he had been up on

  Corcovado with a girl he loved. But even if he could remember,

  there was no way to express it. In that first impotence of his, for

  an instant, Martim felt the anguish of restriction.

  But to feel the anguish of restriction was being a person too;

  he could still remember that well ! Oh how well he could

  remember! With anguish he remembered that it was the anguish

  of being a person, and up on Corcovado he had kissed the girl he

  loved with the ferocity of love. He remembered just in time that

  there had never been a way to express the joy; and therefore he

  had built a house, or had taken a trip, or had loved. With the

  apprehensive air of someone who can make a mistake; he too

  was mounted on a horse, and he was attentively trying to copy

  for reality the being that he was, and in that birth he was creating his life. The thing was done in such an impossible way-for in impossibility there was the harsh claw of beauty. They are

  moments that cannot be narrated; they happen between trains

  that pass or in the air that wakes up our face and gives us our

  final shape, and then for an instant we are the fourth dimension

  of what exists; they are moments that do not count. But who

  knows whether it is the anxiety that a fish has with his open

  mouth, the one a drowning man has before he dies? They say

  that before going under forever a man ca.n see his wh?I� li�e pass

  before his eyes-if in just an instant one is born, �nd .1f in 1ust an

  instant one dies an instant is enough for a whole hfehme.

  The man fi�ally remembered then what he had done with

  his girl friend in the winds of Corcovado. In order to express

  ( 1 1 9 )

  T H E A PP L E

  IN

  T H E D A R K

  himself, perhaps he would have to overpower Vit6ria; now that

  he was a man again, she had become a woman. But not just the

  fact that she was indocile for that would make it a gratuitous act

  and it would not have the perfect weight of fatality that desire

  for the body gives. He remained silent, embarrassed, not knowing what to do with that whole thing into which he had suddenly become transformed. Then it was that, out of nowhere, out of pure recklessness, he wanted to be "good" as a way of solution. He wanted to be good so much that once more he

  began to feel a kind of impotence.

  It was true that the fugitive thought he had got about the

  woman had not become completely lost in the air. The woman

  felt the remains of it, obscurely offended the way cats on the

  roof are offended. Vit6ria turned toward him, and while she

  talked about the trenches she faced him; and there was no doubt

  but that he was that man : in him she saw him. And that was

  unexpected. With the curiosity of one in whom an
artery has

  burst and unsuspected blood comes gushing out she looked at

  him, with repugnance and great pride-and he was that man,

  never any other, but he himself, and it made her avert her eyes

  severely. She remembered how one night she had passed by the

  woodshed and had heard the man snoring. The memory of that

  had made him undeniable. The reasonable possibility that he

  did not know that he was snoring had turned him over to her

  again with all his unconscious weight, the way an unconscious

  dog had once before belonged to her.

  Until-until another wave of breeze extinguished everything.

  Leaving as reality only the man and the woman on horseback.

  Out of everything the man had only the somewhat useless

  feeling of having finally emerged with the heart of a living

  person which, small as it was, gave him great power; as a person

  he was capable of everything. That was what he felt, perhaps.

  And just to show him to what point everything was converging

  toward a fertilization, as when grace exists, Vit6ria at that

  moment stretched out her arm to point out a mountain in the

  distance, the slopes of which took on a certain softness from the

  ( l 2 0 )

  How a Man Is Made

  impossibility of being touched. Then Martim had a kind of cer·

  tainty that this was the gesture that he had been looking for, just

  as distances seemed to need someone to determine with a

  gesture what they were. And therefore the man decided to con·

  elude that it was this human gesture which is used for purposes

  of allusion-pointing.

  Nor did it make any difference to him that the woman had

  done it unconsciously. Nor even that it had been she and not he

  who had done it. In the mute potency in which he found him·

  self anything that was spoken would have been considered by

  him as his own voice, and anything that moved would be his

  own movement; and maybe he would be able to say "the great·

  est moment of my life was when Napoleon's troops marched

  into Paris," and he might have said "the greatest moment of my

  life was when a man said, 'Give bread to those who are hungry' ";

  and once more his work had become most difficult and most

  dazzling. The growth of trees, the width of the world grew pain·