Oh no, it was not that. What was it, then? Had it been
illness in childhood that had made that girl grow up in the
shadows? that sickly childhood that Ermelinda guarded as if it
were her only treasure?
But none of that could explain it. Just as soon as one began
to think about Ermelinda, without even seeing her, she would
seem to slip off into other people's thoughts. And no sooner
would Vit6ria accuse her of something, even just a mental
accusation, than Ermelinda would suddenly appear innocent
and frightened. How could one ever get to know her? Any direct
contact was impossible. It was amazing how if Ermelinda was
thinking about the inexplicable hatred she felt for birds, and
someone asked her what she was thinking about, she would
simply answer "birds." It was amazing how the only solution
had to be never asking her. Ermelinda would act as if a tree were
blue-but if Vit6ria were to ask her what color the tree was she
would reply immediately, glowing like an expert, that the tree
was green. What Vit6ria was attempting to find out was
whether Ermelinda really knew that the tree was green or
whether she merely knew that Vit6ria thought the tree was
green. The wisest thing would be not to ask her anything. How
could one ever get to know her? "What makes me, never
comrnitting an evil act, be evil? and Ermelinda, never committing a good act, be good?" The mystery that makes things as we know they are had left the woman quite deep in thought.
During all the time that Ermelinda had been on the farm,
Vit6ria had not been able to interest her in the daily work or
eliminate that calculated sweetness with which the other one
would keep on waiting. And for all of that, Ermelinda had never
once said "No." The fact that she had had "a bed-ridden
childhood" seemed to have awarded her the perpetual right to
wander, which she would only do with a certain touch of
ritual-for only those who possess a vice are privy to its secret
( 6 5 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
delights. Vit6ria, fascinated, would watch the other one take
care of her idleness with precision and loving indolence.
Paralyzed at first by the ways of the other one Vit6ria had let
herself be dragged along through everything the visitor had
brought to the place, almost changing it over. Fear of the dark,
that peaceful darkness, had taken on some shapeless power after
her cousin's arrival. And the disguised allusions to death, as if it
were a secret never to be admitted. And her waiting. Fear, death,
waiting-a waiting that took a concrete form in her expecting
things to happen, as if the unforeseen were within hand's reach.
"Something might happen any moment now" -it was all of
that, perhaps, that had infiltrated the farm and which had
infected Vit6ria for a time. But then she had finally awakened
with a sudden rage and had picked up her own life again.
Even so it had been impossible to get away completely from
that air of sneakiness which the other one had, and to stop
hearing those obscure and joyful phrases that said nothing, but
hung like echoes in the air. "A horse can sense when its rider is
afraid," Ermelinda would say. "A ring around the moon is a sign
of rain," she would say-and the night would become broader
and deeper. "A person should start to worry if a dog doesn't like
him," she would say smiling, as if that was only a sample of
something inexplicably expectant. Ermelinda had something of
the spiritualist about her.
Although she could not make her work, Vit6ria at least had
learned how to defend herself from her. And no sooner had the
first disruption of life that the other one had brought to the farm
passed, than Vit6ria had hastened to instruct her about the
essentials regarding herself: the first thing she had to put a
severe halt to in her cousin was the tendency to seek physical
support and contact, rest her hand on Vit6ria's shoulder, look
for her arm when they would be walking together, as if both of
them were sharing the same delightful misfortune. After that
initial physical distance had been established a kind of absence
of relations developed. From the time that Ermelinda had come
there after being widowed Vit6ria and she had never gone into
the matter deeply. Until some time had passed, the way dust
( 6 6 )
How a Man Is Made
falls and settles; and whatever it was that might have happened
had already and irremediably happened. Ermelinda had ended
up by clinging to her trunks and the useless objects she had
brought with her, and unable to pull Vit6ria along with her
through her fears and waiting, she had taken refuge in laughter
with the mulatto cook. From her previous life there had re·
mained the waiting for mail from Rio, in which she would
periodically receive from a candy store a small box of Jordan
almonds, which she would carry about with her for days dreamily rationing them out nut by nut.
Only once on an excessively hot afternoon that held ·the
threat of a storm had awareness finally exploded in Vit6ria, but
never again. And it had calmed down when the rain started to
fall, breaking branches and drenching the fields. And then, when
a fine rain had turned the farm all peace and quiet, Vit6ria had
asked herself, astonished, why had she decided so unexpectedly
to reveal to Ermelinda that years before, back in Rio still,
through a half-open door she had seen Ermelinda throw herself
into the arms of the man she had later married.
And now, cleaning the gun with mechanical concentration,
Vit6ria again asked herself what had possessed her to come to
the point of telling her cousin. Could it have been the rain that
had been threatening but had not yet begun to fall? Or maybe
the insistence of that face which specialized in waiting had
finally exasperated her-Ermelinda sitting and fanning herself,
waiting, perspiring, and eating the almonds that had the scent of
an old handkerchief about them-the rain threatening, and the
smell of the almonds making the air intolerably soft, filling the
room with that sweetish odor of a letter hidden deep in a
brassiere, and the waiting . . . And then, as if the surface of
things had to be scratched, Why? Vit6ria told her that "she
knew quite well how it was that she, Ermelinda, had become
engaged" : that she had seen the man running after her around
the table in a ridiculous chase, she had seen Ermelinda suddenly
stop her running and throw herself into the arms of the man,
who was startled and had not hoped for so much . . .
"And now that you know finally that I saw you, don't ever lie
( 6 7 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
again ! " she had told her, and she herself did not know for
certain what she was accusing the other one of; and she looked
at her, startled.
"But I was running away from him! . . .
" the other one had
&
nbsp; tried to defend herself. She had thrown herself into his arms,
yes-she couldn't deny that-but it wasn't because she was in
love with him.
And why had Ermelinda found it necessary to defend herself
against the accusation that she was in love with him?
"And did you fall into his arms because you didn't love
him?" Vit6ria had inquired, and it no longer occurred to her
then that she had accused her cousin of having loved him since
the other one had defended herself by saying that she had not
loved him. And it did not occur to either of them that one did
not have the right to demand justifications from the other. The
heat had been getting stronger and, at the point of tears,
Ermelinda had wiped away her perspiration and tried to get rid
of the uncomfortable almond in her mouth. She had ended up
by spitting it into her handkerchief with stingy care, and after
tying a knot had put it gently into her pocket-after which, at
the point of tears, she had tried to explain that "she had felt so
alone with him, so unprotected with a man chasing her, that
therefore she had thrown herself into his arms." It was then,
perhaps inspired by the violence of the wind, which had already
knocked some fruit off the trees and was blowing leaves and dust
about, that Ermelinda had discovered with enchantment the
word "executioner." For days after, out of sheer pleasure and
vanity, she had begun to use it quite frequently, with various
meanings, some of them quite forced. Gripping the box of
almonds, she had tried to explain with pleasure that she had felt
so alone with that man "that her executioner had to become her
support and her misfortune had to be her refuge." And facing
Vit6ria, who by then had already become drunk with her own
unleashed rage, Ermelinda had stammered that "if a person
came at me with an ax, I would lower my neck to him so that
the one who killed me would at least not be my enemy" -she
( 6 8 )
How a Man Is Made
had had the courage to say all that, and it was courageous to say
what simply made no sense to either one of them.
It was possible that if Ermelinda had managed to explain the
absurd thing she had been trying to say, and if the other one had
managed to understand, peace might have grown up between
them-or at least weariness. But Vit6ria had answered that a
bed-ridden childhood had not prevented Ermelinda from being
really as strong as an ox; to which the other one, unexpectedly,
had lowered her modest eyes, and that had intrigued Vit6ria,
who after a moment of surprise, had gone back to even more
serious accusations. Ermelinda, confused by the lowing of the
cows frightened by the wind, had begun to talk about executioners which had brought Vit6ria to remark with great irony that "from what she could make out" her husband had not by
any manner or means been any executioner-"that he had given
her everything, that there had been nothing Ermelinda couldn't
have had when the man had been alive." All of which made
Ermelinda say that he had been the best of husbands, and that
she would not let anyone speak ill of someone who was dead-to
which Vit6ria had added that it had never occurred to her to say
anything bad about a man who for years had tolerated his wife's
calling him "my flower"; which had made Ermelinda cry in her
memories. Both women had been made desperate by the unbearable wind, by the dust that had been blowing into the room as the clouds had closed in lower and had brought on a sudden
darkness.
And when the storm had finally broken, the rain had made
so much noise that they could not have gone on talking unless
they had shouted. With a cooler and more peaceful wind, the
perspiration had begun to dry off pleasantly-and a sudden
peace had come about between the two of them as if they had
arrived at some conclusion. Haughty, drenched with shame,
Vit6ria had left the room. And she had started to avoid her
cousin. Only a few people could have managed to do that to her:
make her hate them and hate herself. Vit6ria had never pardoned them. People like that were in her way. Afterwards, as if ( 6 9 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
everything that could happen between them had already happened, they did mot need each other anymore.
But that one direct contact had happened a long time back.
And the memory she did not understand was of no help to
Vit6ria as she sat in the kitchen in finding some way to tell
Ermelinda that another hand had arrived. With a stoical expression she held onto the shotgun, bearing up under everything she knew. "With the cold key by my breast I shout from out my
castle," she thought prettily, because if she did not show the
world magnificence, she would be lost. She was making what she
knew magnificent-but what she knew had already become so
vast that it resembled ignorance more. She gave in to the latter
for a moment.
"If I could only shoot up and make the rain come down,"
she thought for a moment when her brain failed her from
fatigue.
Because out of the memory of the scene with Ermelinda, all
that she had left was the vision of the blessed rain coming down.
And another big rain was needed so much now, she thought
with the strength she had taken on again, as if by command or as
if she had again touched the key she had within. The cornfield
might dry up before harvest time . . . And the pasture might
dry up. Maybe not, she questioned the sky with her eyes.
But the lofty sky and the sunset's daily reluctance to tum
into night promised nothing but the probability of another
drought. The ground was still damp, it was true. And the
vegetation was lush. But for how long? For some days now Vit6-
ria had been pretending not to have noticed that there were
fewer toads around : they were already deserting . . . And that
little by little the locusts had been persistently filling the evening sky. But the woman threw a challenge at the air: the birds had not left yet! That lengthened her glance on into the difficult
regions of expectation, as if the authority of her faith would stop
the birds from deserting. As long as they were around she would
keep herself silently ready for battle.
"I suppose," she suddenly sighed dispiritedly, "the sooner I
( 7 0 )
How a Man Is Made
talk to Ermelinda, the better, so she doesn't find out for herself
and come running up all pale to tell me 'There's a man in the
woodshed ! ' " She would not be able to bear a stupid phrase like
that. And only imagining that she had heard it her impulse now
was to dismiss her cousin the way one dismisses a maid.
Passing through the living room on her way up to Erme
Iinda's room, however, she saw her through the window kneeling
by the new rosebush. She stopped for a moment to look at her
before going out on the terrace with that useless habit she had of
examining people when they were not aware that they are being
examined. She spied for a moment, sighed heroic once again,
a
nd as if she had been obliged to come to some conclusion, now
that she had looked at her, she thought : "She's young, that's
why she's still afraid. She's young, that's why she's afraid of
death." "But I have a right to be afraid too!" she said to herself
darkly, recovering. It was as if the other one could still be
offended. And she, she never would be again.
She stopped next to Ermelinda. She knew that the other one
had already seen her approaching, even if she had not even
raised her eyes-as if that was the way that someone who is
afraid of the dark or has been initiated into spiritualism and the
secrets of a way of life ought to act.
The girl, making believe that she had only then heard the
steps, finally raised a crafty face of surprise. And it was as if the
sweetness of the lie had made her face take on an expression that
was at the same time one of both abandonment and boon-and
all of it all of it was fake. Vit6ria clenched her fists inside the
'
pockets of her slacks :
"What are you doing?" she asked calmly.
"Pruning the wild rosebush."
"Doesn't the rosebush frighten you?" she asked softly. She
felt the need to wound that kneeling girl, as if she had been to
blame for her own absurd action in hiring the man.
"Not this one; this one has thorns."
Vit6ria frowned :
"And what difference does it make if it has thorns?"
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
"I'm only afraid," Ermelinda said with a certain voluptuousness, "when a flower is too pretty with no thorns, just too delicate and pretty all over."
"Stop being silly," Vit6ria said brutally, "it's all caused by
something in your body! And if you helped out with some of the
work, you wouldn't have time to be frightened by pretty roses or
hate this farm! "
"And are you s o fond o f this farm?" the other one asked
smoothly.
"There's a man in the woodshed!" Vit6ria blurted out.
And, as she had said something that until that moment not
even she herself had known how to say, she stood there with a
startled and wounded look. She came to immediately.
"He says that he's an engineer. The reason he's around is
that he's evidently out of work. I'm going to use him for a
thousand little jobs. Francisco will keep an eye on him."
The Apple in the Dark Page 10
