with the bird in his hand, he felt pleasure in treating her
carelessly. And if he were careless for one minute more, he
would bring back in one gush his whole previous existencewhen thought had been a useless act and pleasure only shameful. Unprotected, he shifted about on the hot stone; he seemed to be searching for an argument that might protect him. He
needed to defend the thing that with such enormous courage he
had conquered two weeks before. With this enormous courage
the man had finally stopped being intelligent.
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
Or had he ever really been intelligent? That happy suspicion
made him blink his eyes with great shrewdness, because if he
could manage to prove that he had never been intelligent, then
it could also be shown that his own past had been some other,
and it could be shown that something in his very own depths
had always been complete and firm.
"The fact is," he then thought, using great care as he tried
that defensive trick, "the fact is that I was only imitating intelligence, as if I had been able to swim like a fish without actually being one!" The man moved about contentedly : "I was imitating, of course! " Well, if imitating meant having taken first place in statistics, he had taken first place in statistics! The fact is, he
concluded with great interest and the essential lack of respect
which is what makes a person imitate, I have only imitated
intelligence. And along with him millions of men were copying
with great effort the idea of what it was to be a man, along with
him thousands of women were copying with great care the idea
of what it was to be a woman, and along with him hundreds of
people of good will were copying with superhuman effort the
very face and idea of existence with the anguished concentration
with which acts of good or evil are imitated, the daily fear of
committing an act that is true, and therefore incomparable, and
therefore inimitable, and therefore disconcerting. And all the
while there was something old and rotten in some unidentifiable
place in the house, and people slept restlessly-discomfort is the
only warning that we copy, and we listen to ourselves attentively
between the sheets. But we have been carried so far away by
imitation that the thing we hear comes to us with such slight
sound that it could be a vision, just as invisible as if it were in
the darkness that is so deep that hands are useless. Because a
person will even imitate comprehension-comprehension which
never would have been invented except for the speech of others
and words.
But there was still disobedience.
Then-by means of the great leap of a crime-two weeks
before he had taken the risk of having no security, and he had
reached a point of not understanding.
( 2 6 )
How a Man Is Made
And under the yellow sun, sitting on a stone, without the
least bit of security, the man was now rejoicing, as if not understanding were a kind of creation. The caution that a person uses to transform one thing into another thing comparable and
subsequently approachable; and only after that moment of security, will he look about and let himself be seen, because fortunately it is already too late not to understand-Martim had
lost that precaution. And not understanding had suddenly given
him the whole world.
The whole world, which to tell the truth, was completely
empty. The man had rejected the speech of others and did not
even have a speech of his own. And in the meantime, hollow,
mute, he was rejoicing. Things were fine.
Then, just as at the beginning of the conversation, that
person was sitting on a stone on Sunday.
And so the man now felt himself so far removed from the
speech of others, that with a perverse pleasure and a daring that
had come to him out of the same security, he attempted speech
again. It puzzled him, as it puzzles a man who brushes his teeth
in the morning and does not recognize the drunk of the night
before. And as he fooled around now, still cautious, albeit
fascinated with that dead language, as an experiment he tried to
give the ancient and so familiar name of "crime" to that so very
nameless thing that had happened to him.
But "Crime"? The word resounded emptily in the wasteland, nor did the voice that spoke the word belong to him.
Then, finally convinced that he would not fall captive to the
ancient speech, he tried to go a little further; had he perhaps felt
horror after his crime? Horror? Nevertheless, that was what the
language expected of him.
But horror too had come to be a word from that time before
the great blind leap he had taken along with his crime. The leap
had been taken. And he had jumped so far that it had ended up
becoming the only event he was able to or cared to cope with.
And even the motives of the crime had lost their importance.
The truth is that the man had wisely abolished the motives.
And he had abolished the crime itself. Having had certain
( 2 7 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
practice with guilt he knew how to live with it without discom·
fort. He had committed crimes before that had not been recog·
nized by law, so that he most likely considered it just a piece of
bad luck that two weeks before he had committed one that had
recognition. A good upbringing and long experience in life had
made him expert at being guilty without betraying himself; no
ordinary torture would make his soul confess its guilt, and a
great deal would be necessary to make a hero cry in the end. And
when this does happen it is such a depressing and repugnant
spectacle that we cannot bear it unless we feel ourselves be·
trayed and offended; our surrogate must be unpardonable. It so
happens that by special circumstances, that the man had be·
come a hardened hero in two weeks : he represented himself.
Guilt no longer touched him.
"Crime?" No. "The great leap?" These did not sound like
his words, obscure, like the entanglement of a dream. His crime
had been an involuntary, vital motion, like the reflex of a knee
when it is tapped : the whole organism had joined together so
that the leg suddenly gave the irrepressible kick. And he had not
felt any horror after the crime. What had he felt, then? Stun·
ning victory!
That was it-he had felt victory. Astonished, he saw that the
thing was working unexpectedly : that an act still had the value
of an act. And furthermore with a single act he had made the
enemies he had always wanted to have-other people, the
others. But even further he himself had finally become incapable
of being that former man, for if he returned to that self, he
would be obliged to become his own enemy-and, to use the
speech by which he had lived, he simply could not be friendly to
a criminal. Therefore, in one fell swoop he was no longer a
collaborator with other people, and in one fell swoop he had
ceased to collaborate with himself. For the first time, Martim
had found himself incapable
of imitating.
Yes ! In that moment of stunning victory the man had
suddenly discovered the power of a gesture. The good thing
about an act is that it reaches beyond us. In just one minute
Martim had been transfigured by his own act. Because after two
( 2 8)
How a Man Is Made
weeks of silence it had become quite natural for him to call his
crime an "act."
It is true that the feeling of victory had lasted only a fraction
of a second. There was no time after that; in an extraordinarily
perfect and well-oiled rhythm there followed that deep stupefaction in which there had been such need for this, his present intelligence, to be born. And it was as crude and wily as that of a
rat. Simply that, and nothing more. But for the first time it had
been a tool. For the first time his intelligence had had immediate consequences. And he had come into such total possession of it that he had been able to guide it with great skill so that it
would make him secure, make his life secure. So much so that he
immediately knew how to flee, as if, up until then, everything he
had done in his daily life had been just an indistinct attempt at
action. And then that man had finally become real, a real rat,
and any thought from within that new intelligence was just an
act, even if it was rough like a voice that never had been used.
Right now he was not very much of a rat. But even if a rat there
was nothing in him that could not be utilized. The thing was
fine and deep. That man had fit himself entirely within the
dimensions of a rat.
Yes. All this had followed upon the crime to such a point of
perfection that Martim had not even had time to think about
what he was doing. But before-for a fraction of a second before
the conquest. Because one day a man had had that one great
rage.
He had had that rage. And for the first time, with candor, he
had admired himself, like a child who discovers himself in the
mirror. Apparently, with the accumulation of kindness without
the act of kindness, with the thought of love without the act of
love, with heroism without heroism, not to mention a certain
growing imprecision about existence which had ended up as the
impossible dream of existence-apparently that man had come
to forget that a person is able to act. �nd to have discov�red t�at
he really had already acted involuntarily had suddenly given him
a world so free that he was stunned at his victory.
That man had not even asked himself if there was someone
( 2 9 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
who could act by means other than a crime. What he knew in
fear was only that a man had to have a great rage one day.
"I was like any one of you," he said very suddenly to the
stones at that point because they looked like sitting men.
Having said that Martim sank back into complete silence,
something like a meditation. He was surrounded by stones. The
strong wind that blew passed over him the same way it was
passing over the wasteland. Empty and peaceful he looked at the
empty and peaceful light. The world was large enough for him
to sit down. Inside he felt the resonant emptiness of a cathedral.
"Try to imagine," he began again suddenly, when he was
sure that he had nothing more to say to them. "Try to imagine a
person who has had to have an act of rage," he said to a small
stone that was looking at him with the calm face of a child.
"That person went on living, living, and other people too took
pains to imitate him. Until it all began to get very confused with
the independence of every stone in its place. And there wasn't
even any way for him to flee from himself because the others
had become a concrete image and gave off an impassive insistence of just what that person was; every face that person saw would bring back the peaceful nightmare of his deviation. How
can I explain it to you-you who have the peace that comes with
not having any future-that every face had failed, and that the
failure had in itself a perversion, as if a man had gone to bed
with another man, and of course there was no issue. 'The
company was so boring,' as my wife used to say," the man
remembered, smiling and extremely curious. There was some
mistake, and it was hard to tell just where it lay. "Once I was
eating in a restaurant," the man said, getting lively suddenly.
"No, no, I'm changing the subject! " he discovered to his surprise-his father was the one who always had a certain tendency to change the subject; and even when he was dying he had
shifted his face over to one side.
"Try to imagine a person," he continued then, "who did not
have the courage to reject himself. Therefore he needed an act
which would make other people reject him, and he himself
would not be able to live with himself after that."
How a Man Is Made
The man laughed with parched lips at the way he had used
the trick of hiding himself behind the name of some other
person, which had seemed very good to him at the moment, a
stroke of genius. Then he had that satisfaction that he always
had when he had managed to trick somebody. He might have
had the feeling that he was play-acting and strutting, but pretending was a new door which, as he squandered himself for the first time, he could afford the luxury of opening or closing.
"Try to imagine a person who was small and had no
strength. Of course he knew very well that all of his strength,
piece by piece, would only be enough to buy a single act of rage.
And of course he also knew that such an act would have to be
quite quick before his courage petered out, and it would even
have to be hysterical. That person, then, when least expected,
executed that act, and in it he invested his whole small fortune."
Quite startled at what he had just thought, the man interrupted himself with curiosity. "Is that what happened to me after all?" It was the first time it had occurred to him.
The truth is that up until then he had not even taken time
to think about his crime. But coming to grips with it finally at
this moment he faced it in a way that no court of law would ever
recognize. Could he be describing his crime the way a man
might paint a table in a picture, and no one would recognize it
because he was painting it from the point of view of someone
underneath the table?
What had that man done to his crime in barely two weeks
time?
He still asked himself with an aftertaste of scruples, "Was
that what happened to me?" But a second later it was too late; if
this were not the truth, it was going to be the truth. With a
certain graveness the man felt that this moment was very serious : from now on this was going to be the only truth that he would have to fight with.
What escaped him was whether he had explained his crime
that way because it had really happened like that, or .whether his
whole being had been prepared for that type of reality. Or even
whether he had been giving false reasons because he possessed
( 3 l )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E
D A R K
the simple skill of a fugitive defending himself. But even a long
period of tendentious dullness would not let him know where
it was in him that his fingers could feel a sail respond as it
responds when touched in the reality of a dream. And for the
time being he was somebody still quite recent, so that everything
he said not only sounded fine to him, but also amazed him by
the very fact that he had been able to walk alone.
Actually at that moment his only direct connection with the
concrete crime was a thought of extreme curiosity, "Why did it
have to happen to me?" He felt himself beneath the happenings
he had created with the crime. Then and there he had broken
with his habits of life, with the misfortune that usually only
happens to other people. And suddenly it was not just words
that had happened to him. Martim was quite sincerely startled
by the fact that misfortune had also caught up to him, andmore than that-that he had been, in a manner of speaking, ready for it. He had acquired a certain vanity from the fact that
in the end the crime had happened to him, that until that point
it had only been for other people.
The man continued to look at the table from undemeathand what was important was that he recognized it. It is true that hunger was fixing it so that any effort on his part would be
difficult; the stones, meanwhile, were waiting unmoved for a
continuation. Then, so as to give him a little rest, his head was
wise enough to blur a little.
After that Martim began again more slowly, and tried to
think with great care because the truth can be different if it is
spoken with the wrong words. But if the right words are used,
anybody will see that this is the table from which we eat. In any
case now that Martim had lost his speech, just as if he had lost
his money, he would be forced to invent what he wanted to
have. He remembered his son's saying to him, "I know why God
created rhinoceroses. It's because He'd never seen a rhinoceros,
and He created rhinoceroses so He could see one." Martim was
creating truth so he could see it.
Oh, it is quite possible that he had been lying to the stones.
( 3 2 )
How a Man Is Made
The only innocence he possessed besides his tendentious habit
The Apple in the Dark Page 5
