The Apple in the Dark

by Clarice Lispector

  woman blinked her eyes, upset. The man's stolidity and calm

  did not transmit any stolidity or calm to her; they only irritated

  her.

  As for the man, his muscles worked with exactitude, slowness, and certainty. And nothing bothered him, as if he were carrying in himself the great silence of the plants in his Tertiary

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  plot as a defense that could not be transferred to others. Where

  he would return every afternoon, the way a man returns home.

  And where he would remain sitting on a stone.

  And it was good there. There no plant knew who he was; and

  he did not know who he was; and he did not know who the

  plants were; and the plants did not know who they were. And all

  of them in the meantime were just as alive as it is possible to be

  alive. This was probably that man's great meditation. Just as the

  sun shines, and just as the rat is only a step beyond the thick flat

  leaf of that plant-this was his meditation.

  Martim had blue eyes and heavy brows; his hands and feet

  were large. It was a question of a heavy man with an idea in his

  head. He had a lively, attentive look, as if he would only answer

  when he had heard all sides. That was his real side and also his

  external side, visible to other people. Inside-much more difficult to reach than his exterior form that had preceded it-inside he was a man of slow comprehension, which was basically a kind

  of patience, a man with a confused way of thinking, who sometimes with the embarrassed smile of a child would feel himself intimidated by his own stupidity, as if he had not deserved so

  much. It was true that inside he was also wise, always ready to

  take advantage of a possibility. In the past this had led him to

  ignore certain scruples and do certain things that would have

  been sinful had he been a person of importance. But he was one

  of those people who die without really knowing what happened

  to them.

  As he sat on the stone in his realm his thoughts, so to speak,

  reduced him to nothing more than a man with big feet sitting on

  a stone. What he had not noticed is that he was already

  beginning to take some care in being exactly just what he was.

  Sometimes a thought would glisten in him in his alert torpor the

  way the chip off a rock would. "This region is dry," he thought

  profoundly. "You can still see charcoal around," he seemed to

  think, sitting upright on the stone. The statement had a dull

  virility about it. It was like a man sitting on a stone knowing

  how to hope, of course! If a man sitting on a stone knew how to

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  hope, then the humidity would help the roots, nuts, fruit, and

  seeds to rot. That obscure piece of logic seemed to suffice him

  perfectly.

  Sitting on the stone, he also felt satisfied at the fact that he

  now knew how to work so well in the country. His knowledge

  was slight but his hands had gained a wisdom. "A man is slow,

  and it takes him a long time to understand his hands," he

  thought looking at them. His thoughts were almost voluntarily

  enigmatic, and in his plot he felt the pleasure that one gets from

  certain empty moments, as if everything in truth had been

  created out of pleasure. The plant, for example, was nothing but

  pleasure.

  It was true that sometimes the intense stillness of the plants

  now seemed to bother him in a dull sort of way, and to bring on

  the beginnings of unrest. Then he would patiently change the

  position of his legs without understanding. He did not realize

  that there he was slowly making his first arrow and sharpening

  his first spear.

  Nor did he realize that he was now completely different from

  that man who had looked out at the plot at dawn. Nor did he

  realize that by changing the position of his legs so many times he

  was becoming impatient for the first time, looking out upon a

  world that was ready to be hunted. He was dimly upset as he

  began to feel himself superior to the plants, and to feel himself

  in some way a man in relationship to them-because only a man

  could be impatient. Then he changed the position of his legs

  again. And furthermore-only a man was proud of his own

  impatience. Changing the position of his legs once more he was

  proud. It was that generalized vanity which sometimes came

  over him and which had no trouble existing side by side with the

  prudence of not risking himself beyond that reassuring somnolence of the plot by the woodshed. Reassuring but no longer sufficient. The man was growing and he was uncomfortable.

  But that restlessness, which was almost only physical, would

  only happen for moments at a time. And it was still happening

  so far away from him that it had not yet affected the wholeness

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  of the world in which he moved. And soon, with the great

  p�easure that there is in the restraint of one's own energy, he put

  himself once more into a state of "not knowing very much."

  Beca�se that was the condition essential to his plot. In not

  knowing the man had an unsmiling happiness, just the way the

  plant grows thick.

  Sometimes that man, who was always missing important

  links, would grab the land like a person who owned land.

  And he would sit with the fistful of earth in his hand. Crude,

  with the earth in his hand; the best way to be. What were that

  man's thoughts? Satisfactory and substantial they were thoughts

  that were scarcely profound. One afternoon he came to the point

  of thinking along these lines:

  "Extinct animals are legion."

  That was the kind of thought that had no possible answer.

  And on that very same day he thought like this:

  "Once, more than a billion years ago." Martim did not know

  exactly how much time there was behind him, but since there

  was no one there to stop him from making a mistake, he puffed

  up, impassive and great. And he continued making statements of

  greater importance. Another time, for example, this was his

  thought : "Maybe there is the head of a mastodon somewhere

  here under six feet of rubble." Thinking had now become transformed into a method of scratching on the ground. And then one afternoon, with the most legitimate pleasure that comes

  from meditation, he remembered nothing more except that

  "buffaloes exist." That gave the plot great space, because buffalo

  move slowly and in the distance.

  Anyone who might have looked at him, so satisfied and

  dominating, would have shaken his head in envy at his good

  fortune in having been born when the global ice caps had

  already melted. He was enjoying a favorable land. Sometimes,

  for example, he would get the desire to eat-and he would note

  it with approval. Now he had all of the senses of a rat and one

  more by which he verified what was happening-thought. This

  was the least corrupt way to use it. He was letting himself be

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  cured by that complete thing there is
in plants. With a feeling of

  relief he placed his singed portions into the coolness that

  existed. It was damned fine not to lie. Well, sitting on the stone,

  that was exactly what he was doing: he was not lying.

  For example, Martim was not sad-Martim who was finally

  to be free of the whole moral duty of tenderness. That man had

  come from a city where the air was filled with the sacrifices of

  people who were unhappy and therefore searched for an ideal.

  "I'll bust in the face anybody who messes with me! " he said

  aloud, making use of his soul and perhaps trying to provoke a

  rage in himself which in some way would put him in tune with

  that quiet energy around him.

  Then he stood and looking up at the sky he calmly urinated.

  High up the clouds were passing by. He stood there, stupid,

  modest, haloed. His unity seemed to be a unity.

  "This region is dry," he thought again. And it gave him a

  very satisfactory pleasure. He looked up at the dry sky. The sky

  was there-high up. And he was underneath. It was impossible

  to imagine greater perfection.

  When he slept, he slept. When he worked, he worked.

  Vit6ria gave him orders, he gave orders to his own body. And

  something was growing with a shapeless sound.

  Chapter

  THEN during those first days there was the feeling that there was

  a man on the place. And moreover one could guess that the

  person in charge was a woman; for despite the threat of drought

  and the fundamental necessities of that poor attempt at a farm,

  what suddenly was worrying Vit6ria most was the appearance of

  the place. It was as if she had not noticed the neglect of the

  fields until his arrival . Now she was trying furiously to transform

  them. She appeared to be facing some set date for a festival,

  before which everything had to be in readiness. A feverish

  precision took control of her. And the minutiae to which she

  had descended had the air of a fly in motion. There she was in

  the middle of the morning, pointing at the twisted fence. And

  the man's calm strength straightened the fence. Off in the

  distance Francisco, distrustful and skeptical, watched the

  woman pointing at the disorder of the few flower beds and

  smiling, he watched in silence as Martim dug, cleaned, and

  pruned. Between Martim and Vit6ria a mute relationship had

  been established that was already mechanized and in full swing.

  Its basis was the coincidence of the facts that the w01nan

  wanted to command and that he acquiesced in obeying. The

  woman was avidly the mistress. And something in her had

  become intensified : the happy severity with which she now

  stood on what was hers, disguising the glory of possession with a

  challenging look at the passing clouds.

  "And what about the cowshed?" she asked attentively one

  day. "You never did clean up the cowshed! " she said impatiently

  with that blinking her eyes the way one does who no longer

  knows what she wants; but time was pressing.

  Thus it was that Martim-as if he had been imitating in his

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  task of becoming concrete a fateful evolution whose traces he

  felt groping-thus it was that his new and confused steps led

  him one morning out of his realm in the plot into the half-light

  of the cowshed, where cows were more difficult than plants.

  His contact with the cows was a painful effort. The light of

  the cowshed was different from the light outside, to the point

  that at the door some vague threshold was established. The man

  stopped there. Used to figures, he recoiled at the disorder. Inside

  there was an atmosphere of entrails and a difficult dream, full of

  flies. Only God does not feel disgust. He stopped at the entrance

  and did not want to go in.

  Mist rose from the animals and slowly enveloped them. He

  looked deeper inside. In the dim filth there was the sense of a

  workshop and of concentration, as if from out of that shapeless

  entanglement little by little one more form were taking shape.

  The crude smell was one of wasted raw materials. Cows were

  made there. Out of disgust the man had suddenly become

  abstract again like a fingernail tried to retreat; he wiped his dry

  mouth with the back of his hand like a doctor facing his first

  wound. Nevertheless, on the threshold of the stable he seemed to

  recognize the dim fog that came out of the animals' snouts. That

  man had seen that vapor before rising from sewers in certain

  cold dawns. And he had seen it emanating from warm garbage.

  He had also seen it like a halo around the love of two dogs; and

  his own breath was that same light. Profound cows were made

  there. A man of little courage would have vomited at the foul

  smell, and seeing the attraction that open sore had for the flies, a

  clean person would have felt ill watching the tranquillity with

  which the cows stood heavily wetting the ground. Martim was

  that person of little courage who had never before put his hands

  on the intimate parts of a stable. Nevertheless, even though he

  turned his eyes away, he seemed to realize with reluctance that

  things had been so arranged that once in a stable a child had

  been born. That great smell of matter was right. Only Martim

  was not ready for such a spiritual step. More than fear, it was a

  kind of delicacy. And he hesitated at the door, pale and

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  offended, like a child to whom the root of life has suddenly been

  revealed.

  Then he disguised his cowardice in sudden rebellion. He

  resented Vit6ria's having pulled him away from the silence of

  the plants to that place. There with disgust and curiosity he

  suddenly remembered that there had been a dead era in which

  reptiles had wings. There a person could not escape certain

  thoughts. In that place he could not escape feeling with an

  objective horror and joy that things are always fulfilled.

  Could it have been that realization, by chance, that had

  turned his stomach, or was it just the warm stench? He did not

  know. However, all that was needed was a step backwards, and

  he would have found himself in the full fragrance of morning,

  morning-a thing already perfected in the smallest leaves and

  smallest stones, a finished work without fault at which a person

  can look without any danger because there is no place to enter

  and lose one's self. A step backwards would have been all he

  needed.

  But he took a step forward. And he halted, confused. At first,

  as when one enters a cave, he did not see anything. But the

  cows, used to the darkness, were aware of the stranger. And he

  felt in his whole body that his very substance was being tested by

  the cows. They began slowly to moo and moved their feet

  without even looking at him-with that ability that animals

  have of knowing without seeing, as if they had already tran..,

  scended their own subjectivity and had reached the other side :

>   that perfect objectivity that no longer need be shown; while he

  in the cowshed had been reduced to weak man-that dubious

  thing that could never transcend anything.

  With a resigned sigh the slow man understood that "not

  looking" might also be the only way to enter into contact �ith

  the beasts. Imitating the cows with an almost calculated mimicry, he stood there not looking at anything, in fact making an effort not to look at anything. And with an intelligence brought

  on by the very inferiority of his situation, he l�t himse�f re�ain

  submissive and attentive. Then, sacrificing his own idenbfica-

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  tion, he almost took on the form of one of the animals. And by

  doing just that he suddenly seemed to understand, with surprise,

  what it was like to be a cow.

  Quite motionless and somehow understanding, he allowed

  himself with profound insight to accept the cows' recognition.

  Without the exchange of a single glance he gritted his teeth and

  allowed the cows to recognize him with an intolerable slowness.

  It was as if hands were exploring his secret. Uneasily he felt that

  the cows saw in him only that part of him which was like a cow;

  just as a thief would see in him that part which was avid for

  theft, and as a woman would want of him what a child would

  not even understand. Except that the cows chose something in

  him that he himself did not understand-but which was growing little by little.

  This had been a great effort on the man's part. Never until

  that moment had he become such a being. To make himself like

  the cows had been a great work of intense concentration. The

  fingernail finally hurt.

  For a moment in which faith had deserted him, the man had

  had the certain feeling that he would lose and never attain the

  admission to the cowshed. He was confronted by one long look

  after another, followed by a long moo from a heavy raised head;

  he was rejected. In the midst of the intense smell of the

  cowshed, the cows had sensed the acid human smell about him.

  But it was also true that in that moment joie de vivre had

  already come over him, the delicate joy that sometimes comes

  over us in the midst of our own lives, as if a same musical note

  had been intensified. That joy took hold of him and guided him