The Apple in the Dark

by Clarice Lispector

  order to write he had to start by abdicating strength and heading

  into the chore as one who has nothing to wish for. The dark

  smoke rose up from the lantern and enveloped the picture of St.

  Crispin and St. Chrispinian. Every so often the sound of the

  piano reached the woodshed and the silence made it far away.

  Ermelinda was playing. Time was passing.

  But in the near darkness of the woodshed, without the

  advantage of the afternoon's intoxication, the man seemed to be

  disappointed because he had lost the meaning of what he had

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  The Birth of the Hero

  wished to write. And he hesitated and bit the end of the pencil,

  like a farmhand who was embarrassed because he had to translate the growth of wheat into figures. He twisted the pencil again and he kept on doubting, captured by an unexpected

  respect for the written word. He thought that what he would

  put down on the piece of paper would become something

  definitive, he did not have the nerve to scribble the first word.

  His defensive feeling was that as soon as he wrote the first word

  it would be too late-so treacherous was the power of the

  simplest word over the broadest thought. ActuaIIy, the only

  thing about that man's thought was that it was broad, and that

  did not make it very useful. At the same time he seemed to feel

  a curious repulsion toward making it concrete, a little offended

  even, as if something dubious had been proposed to him.

  And he bravely made ready to get started and wet the point

  of the pencil with his tongue.

  And deflated, with his glasses on, he found that everything

  that had seemed ready to be said had evaporated now that he

  wanted to say it. What had fiIIed his days with reality had

  turned into nothing face to face with the order to describe it. It

  was obvious that the man could not accomplish anything and

  that, like so many others, aII he could feel was the intention, and

  Hell is paved with intentions. But when it came to writing he

  was as naked as if they had not let him bring anything along.

  Not even his own experience. And that man with his glasses on

  suddenly just felt humiliated as he faced the blank piece of

  paper, as if the chore was not just jotting down what already

  existed, but was the creation of something that would exist.

  Had there been something wrong in the way he had sat

  down on the bed, or maybe in the way he held the pencil; some

  mistake that had placed him face to face with a greater difficulty

  than he had deserved or had aspired to? He seemed to be

  waiting more for something to be given him than for something

  to come out of himself, and so he kept on waiting painfully. He

  shifted his position on the edge of the bed a bit and took austere

  care to reduce himself to just a man who was sitting down and

  was about to take some notes on what he had been thinking.

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  T H E A PPL E

  I N T H E D A RK

  And he became surprised once more; there was no denying that

  he did not know how to write. He smiled self-consciously. Like a

  docile illiterate, there he was in the situation of asking someone :

  write a letter to my mother and tell her what I am thinking

  about. "What the devil is happening to me?" He suddenly

  became upset. He had picked up the pencil with the modest

  intention of jotting down his thoughts so they might become

  clearer. That was all he had meant to do! he claimed in irritation, and there was no reason why he should be having so much trouble.

  But just as in the fables in which the distracted prince

  happens to touch the one forbidden rose in the garden and to his

  astonishment has disenchanted the whole garden, so Martim

  had carelessly executed among a thousand innocuous gestures

  some familiar act that involuntarily had brought him face to face

  with something greater. The lantern was giving off a thread of

  black smoke. He looked at the woodshed as it wavered in the

  dim light. The walls were hesitating. The wind was beating at

  the door. And around him there blew the emptiness in which a

  man finds himself when he is about to create. Desolate, he had

  brought on that great solitude.

  And like an old man who had never learned to read he

  measured the distance that was separating him from the word

  and the distance that was suddenly separating him from himself.

  Between the man and his own nakedness was there some possible step that could be taken? But if it was possible there was still the strange resistance that he was offering. Because there

  had just been awakened in him that inner fright of which a

  person is made.

  Because he did not believe in what could not be explained he

  creased his brows as if that would help to thread the needle.

  What was he waiting for with his hand at the ready? Well, he

  had an experience, he had a pencil and a piece of paper, he had

  the intention and the desire-no one ever had more than that.

  And still it was the loneliest thing he had ever done. And he

  could not do it that way, and not being able to do it had taken

  on the grandeur of a Prohibition.

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  The Birth of the Hero

  And only when he thought about breaking the Prohibition

  did he retreat, opposing again the immaterial resistance to a hard

  instinct, cautious again, as if there was a word that said what a

  man is. . . . That missing word which sustained him nonetheless. That nonetheless was he. That nonetheless was the thing that would die only because the man had died. That nonetheless

  was his own energy and the way he breathed. The word that was

  the action and intention of a man. And which he not only could

  not babble, but somewhere in himself did not even want to

  . . . With vital prudence he kept it safe inside himself. And by

  only imagining that he could say it he closed himself up in

  austerity, insurmountable, as if he had already risked himself too

  far. Susceptible all of a sudden he had fallen into that sacred

  zone a man will not let a woman touch, but where two men at

  dusk will sometimes sit in silence on the stoop. Within that

  solitary zone the choice would be to let hi1nself be touched by

  humility and debasement-or shelter the integrity of a man who

  does not speak or act. He had fallen into the thirst that had

  always made something personal out of his life. And which had

  made the act of "doing," giving himself perhaps, the one impossible action. A coward before his own greatness, he balked.

  With no word to write Martim meanwhile resisted the

  temptation of imagining what would happen to him if his

  strength might be stronger than his prudence. "And if I suddenly had the strength?" he asked himself. But he could not fool himself; whatever he wrote would only be something he had

  written because he could not write "the other thing." Even

  within his own ability what he would say would simply come

  from the impossibility of saying something else. The Prohibition

  was that much deeper . . . Martim had surprised himself.

  Obviously that man had ended up by falling into a depth

  that he
had always sensibly avoided.

  And the choice became deeper yet; either keep the sacred

  zone intact and live off it, or betray it by what he certainly would

  come to do, and it would be simply this : the unreachable, like

  one who could not drink the water of the river except by filling

  up the hollow of his own hands-but it would not be the silent

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  T H E A P P L E

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  waters of a river; it would not be the frigid movement, or the

  delicate greed with which water tortures stones; nor would it be

  the thing a man is in the afternoon beside the river after he has

  had a woman. It would be the hollow of his own hands. He

  would rather have the silence intact then. Because little can be

  drunk; and one lives off what is left abandoned.

  So from painful approach to painful approach-because

  Martim had in his progress a feeling of suffering and conquesthe ended up wondering if all that he had finally come to think, when he had been thinking, might not also have come simply

  from his incapacity to think about something else; we overuse

  allusions as the end point of objectivity. And maybe his whole

  life had been nothing but an allusion. Could that be the end

  point of our making things concrete : trying to allude to what we

  silently know? Martim thought about all of that, and he did a

  lot of thinking.

  And there he was. What he had just meant to do was take

  some notes, nothing else. And the unsuspected difficulty of it all

  was that he had had the presumption to try to put into words

  the blink with which two insects can copulate in flight. But who

  can tell-he asked himself then in the absolute darkness of the

  absurd-who can tell if that is not the ultimate expression, the

  way we describe insects coming to glory in the air. Who can tell

  whether the high point of that description is only and precisely

  in the wanting of it . . . ( And so he was saving the value of his

  intention, the intention he had not known how to transform

  into action. ) Who can tell whether our objective was the fact

  that we are the process itself? Then the absurdity of that truth

  enveloped him. And if that is how it is, oh God-the great

  resignation one must have in order to accept the fact that our

  greatest beauty escapes us, if we are only the process.

  In that way then, sitting there quietly, Martim had failed.

  The paper was blank. His brow was furrowed and attentive.

  But who knows what happens in a person? Because he was

  failing and he could not call his failure suffering, even if the

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  The Birth of the Hero

  disillusion and the offense he had received had flowered right

  under his nose, the flesh allows so few feelings? But how can one

  call suffering the fact that he was passing through the truth of

  the Prohibition as through the eye of a needle? How could he

  even revolt against the truth? He was his own i1npossibility. He

  was he. He had arrived at that point of great and tranquil

  anguish : that man was his own Prohibition.

  Suffering? He thought as his face was irremediably offended

  opposite the blank paper. But how was it possible not to love the

  Prohibition itself since he had driven it as far as he could go,

  since he had pushed it even to that last resistance, where . . .

  where the only irrational solution was the great love? When a

  man is cornered, the great love is the only thing that occurs to

  him. Suffering? A man can know only by being unable. A man is

  measured by his lacks, after all. And to touch the great lack was

  perhaps a person's aspiration. Would touching the lack be an

  art? That man enjoyed his impotence in the way a man recognizes himself. He was taking frightful advantage of what he was.

  Because for the first time in his life he knew how much he was.

  And it pained him like the root of a tooth.

  A great sweetness enveloped him, the way it does when one

  suffers. He could not face the blank paper without feeling pain.

  Where had his action failed?

  But had it really failed? Because compensation was also

  predestined. He could not get over the admiration he had for the

  perfection of the Prohibition. Because, in a perfect balance, it

  happened that if he did not have the words, he did have the

  silence. And if he did not have the action, he did have the great

  love. A man was not meant to know anything; but he knew

  which way to turn, toward the sunset, for example. A man had

  the great resource of position. If only he was not afraid of being

  silent.

  Oh, not suffering. Because in the impossibility of his creating

  he had not been through the worst; he had not been plundered.

  In everything else, that man had been mistaken or had been

  swindled; they had robbed him or expertly he had done the

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  T H E A PPLE

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  robbing. But in his passage through the great emptiness, for the

  first time in his life, he had not tricked or been tricked. The

  thing was clean. Because it was a question of a person the neat

  result had been the completion of the experience of not being

  able. It even seemed to him that there were few people who had

  the honor not to have been able. Then, with a feeling of genius,

  born out of his pain perhaps, he knew that the most accurate

  result was to fail. "Suffering?" he thought with an offended face.

  But how can we not love the Prohibition since its fulfillment is

  our task? The involuntary writer reflected on this painfully.

  Martim had now begun to get enmeshed in a curious feeling

  that he had attained something extraordinary. He had passed

  through the mystery of wanting. It was as if he had touched the

  pulse of life. He was startled at the spontaneous miracle of his

  body's being enough body to want a woman, and his body's

  being enough body to want food-now he had touched the

  source of all that, and of life. He had wanted . . . In a deep

  and general way, he had wanted.

  In a way that was a little too deep, to his disadvantage.

  Because there he was, confused, not understanding why he had

  the feeling of having fulfilled himself without having taken a

  step outside his own personal terrain. He looked at the empty

  paper. Kindness then came over Martim as it comes over one

  who suffers. In his abandonment he felt the temptation to call

  upon God. But as he did not have the habit or the belief, he

  feared provoking so great a presence, more careful now not to

  touch the forbidden rose in the garden.

  "I don't know how to write," he said thereupon.

  He had stopped. He had the impression that he had escaped

  by just a trice. His relief was great that he had escaped un·

  scathed out of the empty darkness, even if he also felt that none

  of his future thoughts would be untouched by this real coward·

  ice of his, which had only been revealed just now. No heroic act

  of his would be completely free of that experience, which had

  immediately become old, like wisdom.

  H
e took off his glasses, he rubbed his tired eyes; he put his

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  The Birth of the Hero

  glasses back on. And relieved, finally abandoning what his spirit

  had refused to give him, he felt ready for a humbler task.

  Modest, applied, near-sighted, he simply made a note of:

  "Things I must do."

  Writing that phrase he was not the same person who had

  faced up to possibility and its frightening promise. He was

  someone who had withdrawn from the truth-and which one

  could it have been? never more now! oh, he would never know

  again!-and he had dedicated himself to a truth that was so

  small that already it had found its limits in talent; but it was the

  only truth within his reach, the only action within his reach.

  Humble, knowing with remote surprise that he had been "near,"

  but that he had managed to escape, the man became even more

  humble. So that even a phrase as modest as "Things I must do"

  seemed too ambitious to him. And with an act of contrition he

  took the risk. He wrote further: "Things I must try to learn:

  Number 1."

  Then it happened that Martim came to know what the first

  thing was that he must try to learn, but he could not give it a

  name. He even thought that he would only get to know the

  name the instant when he would obtain the thing, as if a person

  found out what he was looking for only when he found it.

  Good, the much simpler reality is that it had taken effort for

  that man to try to keep himself at the level he had reached that

  afternoon beside the river. Now he was reduced to his own

  proportions and without the help of the greatness of the sun. He

  had lost the faith and the motive. And he looked at the poor

  woodshed as if it were something strange. Even then he insisted

  on continuing, and next to "Number 1" to try to learn, he wrote

  "That," because what he was managing to do was to allude. And

  he read the phrase over again.

  And then it was-then it was he had his first great emotional

  pleasure, the kind that fate brings on when it makes one love

  what he has done. The phrase was still wet and had the grace of

  a truth. And he liked it with the excitement of creation. He

  recognized in it everything that he had wanted to say! Besides1

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