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The Apple in the Dark

Page 14

by Clarice Lispector


  instinctively into battle. Martim no longer knew if he were

  merely obeying that indefinable ability with which cows, having

  it, can force a cowboy to look and act in a certain way. Or

  whether, really, it was he himself who was trying with a painful,

  spiritual effort, to free himself finally from the realm of rats and

  plants and rise to the mysterious breathing of higher animals.

  He barely understood-since he had just now acquired the

  intelligence essential to a cow-a simple law. He must not

  How a Man Is Made

  offend their inherent rhythm. lie must give them time, their

  own time, their time that was completely dark, while they

  chewed their cud. Little by little, moreover, this became the

  man's rhythm. Indolently, slowly, immeasurable by the calendar; that is how a cow crosses a field.

  Then, since things tend to come to an end and to rest in a

  phase, the cowshed at last became peaceful. The warmth of the

  man and the warmth of the cows mingled in a single ammoniated warmth. The man's silence had naturally changed. And the cows, pacified by Martim's apology, had stopped worrying about

  him.

  With trembling joy he felt that something had happened

  finally-but then it gave him an intense loneliness, as when one

  is happy and there is nothing to use the happiness on, as when

  he looks around and there is no way to share the instant of

  happiness-which until now he had usually felt on Saturday

  night.

  Something had happened. And though something else still

  escaped him, he at last had something in his hand, and his chest

  filled up with subtle victory. Martim took a deep breath. Now

  he belonged to the cowshed.

  And at last he could look at it in the way a cow would see

  it.

  The cowshed was a warm and good place which pulsated like

  the beating of a heart. This is why men and beasts have offspring. Martim sighed, exhausted at the enormous effort: he had just found himself. This is why a large animal crosses a stream

  and splashes sparkling water. The man had seen that. However

  he had had only a slight concept of the beauty which now was

  rested on a deeper understanding. This is why mountains are far

  away and high. This is why cows wet the ground so loudly.

  Because of a cowshed ti1ne is indefinably replaced by time. This

  is why birds migrate from cold regions to warm. This-this

  cowshed was a warm place and it was pulsating.

  Perhaps he felt all this, because, satisfie.d, he spa� ?n th.e

  ground. After which, with a sad determination and h1d1ng his

  ( 9 7)

  THE APPLE

  IN

  THE

  DARK

  emotion, he put out his hand and gave the dry cow a few pats. A

  great and peaceful empathy had sprung up between him and the

  animals.

  "You have to cultivate the corn ! " Vit6ria said to him irritatedly.

  Then-he went to cultivate the corn. But the cows were

  waiting for him, and he knew it.

  Chapter 9

  OUTSIDE of the orders and the execution of those orders there

  was little to be said. And what was not being said began to be

  missed. Ermelinda was surrounding him without coming close;

  just barely looking, he guessed. And Vit6ria rode out through

  the fields.

  To her Martim still had the air of one who was ready to

  laugh from one moment to the next, like the inexpressive face of

  a clown looking at a dirty picture; Vit6ria was restless. And she

  was exasperated with Martim's silence. The stupidity of the man

  suffocated her, but she had nothing to complain about for his

  work, in spite of being slow, was perfect. Vit6ria was restless.

  Her own strength was growing in a certain way; the woman

  seemed to be developing more and more and becoming more

  sure of herself.

  And in the afternoon, as the heat lessened, she would stand

  on the porch and look out at the things that little by little were

  changing into what she wanted them to be. Then her ambition

  would grow without any objective like a heat-wave. And the

  desire would arise in her to invent new orders to be given, just to

  find out what would happen; she was the disturbed owner of all

  of that, and she was getting disturbed. She would become

  enraged because nights would intervene and during that time

  there would be no progress in the work; the man's sleeping in

  the woodshed seemed to her such an insolence that she tolerated

  it because there was nothing else that she could do. In the

  daytime too, at a certain time, she would get irritated knowing

  that the man was in the cowshed taking endless care of the cows,

  complying with an excess of docility to an order she had only

  thrown at him once. And then again night would come on with

  its exasperating interruption. She could barely wait for the

  ( 9 9 )

  T H E A P P L E

  IN

  T H E D A R K

  following day, and her feeling of power was already so great that

  it had become uncomfortable and useless.

  That was the dull way in which the work was progressing

  little by little. At the sound of the plow Vit6ria would close her

  eyes, her breast would become agitated. Under a heat that was

  becoming stronger and stronger the work was progressing. But it

  seemed to be going too slowly for her: the woman standing on

  the porch would unbutton the neck of her blouse because she

  could not breathe. Coming out of nowhere the menace of a

  drought was approaching, surrounding them with brilliant heat.

  Every day it was becoming more difficult for the sun to die. It

  was an agony that the woman would bear standing all alone.

  Even after the sun had disappeared, the farm would keep on

  reverberating for an indeterminate and unquieting time. During

  the day it was that sparkling, those hammer-blows, sweat. But

  night-she knew it well-would be no truce. Night during a

  drought always hid in its belly a bright profundity which was like

  a light imprisoned in the hard shell of a nut.

  The woman on the porch bit her hand distractedly until she

  looked at her own injured hand with suddenly severe eyes. That

  night she stayed up late on the porch, and apprehensively

  examined the thousands of stars that the strange cleanness of

  the dark would let be seen. Restlessly she checked her hearing,

  and it was true; every night there were fewer toads to be heard,

  they were deserting . . .

  At least while she was on the porch, fighting with the stars

  and scrutinizing the vibrant dryness of the night, she was still

  powerful because she was working, working coldly, and calculating. But when it was time to go to sleep she would be overcome by misery, a proud misery that asked for nothing. And no matter

  how strong she might have been during the day she lessened

  then, quiet and unfathomable. Poverty came over her like a

  meditation. The small woman was stretched out on her bed,

  calm, looking at the ceiling. And since no one would be able to

  understand her, she was calculating in vengeance, with her eyes

  open, wounded-calculating, woun
ded like a prisoner in his cell.

  ( 1 00 )

  How a Man Is Made

  And every night her step went farther, every night her obscure

  menace went out to watch over the indecent sleep of the happy

  man.

  With the vigor of the morning her feeling of discomfort in

  relation to the man would disappear as soon as she discovered

  another field of action : an ant hill that had to be destroyed, the

  open well that did not seem to be deep enough and beside which

  she tapped her foot impatiently. And then she would not seem

  to know for sure what order she wanted to give; she felt that she

  had at her disposition that silent man who sparkled in the sun,

  silent, with his eyes wide open. Then her own power would

  weigh on her, and she would gallop from one side of the field

  to the other giving more orders, staring in an authoritative and

  questioning way at the mysterious and dried-out horizon-she

  who could not give herself the luxury of not being powerfulspreading her severe efficiency about between gallops. And there was no solution; her blouse clung to her sweating body, and she

  feared that the more powerful she became the more she would

  someday have to see herself free of her own power. But was

  there no way to escape the situation into which things had fallen

  and to escape before she would bear down excessively upon the

  passive man and the malleable farm-before the man would

  suddenly laugh, or the ground on the place would suddenly

  break out in arid cracks? Then rage would take hold of her:

  someday she would find out what the man had come to do upon

  the place.

  In that interim the farm was becoming beautiful.

  The farm was becoming beautiful, and with the heat the

  tension grew with excessive happiness; the days followed each

  other clear and long. There the only sign of danger was the

  agreement under which they all seemed to be living-and happiness. Vit6ria had never been so happy, and the one who suffered was the horse she whipped those mouth hung open in surprise.

  It was when he was spurred that the horse kicked and ran

  away-the woman, taken by surprise, lost her balance and

  fiercely clutched the horse's neck. A chill ran up the woman's

  ( l 0 l )

  THE APPLE

  IN

  THE

  DARK

  sides, and she panted in terror. Without the courage to let go of

  that heavy neck her legs trembled; she stayed motionless; and

  with her eyes closed she gave the bay free rein to take her to his

  food and let him lower his unconquered head to eat. The

  woman's whole body humbly accompanied the head of the horse

  down to the hay and with her eyes closed she could feel him

  eating; it was a strange peace, being led by the disorientation of

  the horse. The farm was becoming beautiful, the wind was

  blowing, tears of rage ran down Vit6ria's face.

  "How long are you going to stay around?" she asked the man

  then, ready to discharge him without knowing why.

  "I don't know," he replied, continuing to dig.

  "What do you mean, you don't know?" she asked rigidly.

  Having forgotten that she had been ready to send him away,

  she looked at him insulted. It was an insult, that man's playing

  with time and bringing doubt into the mechanical passage of

  days, bringing a frightening freedom to them as if on each day

  he might suddenly say yes or no. Bringing indecision to her,

  when if he had been asked how long he was going to stay there,

  and had replied "I don't know," meaning unlimited time, time

  beyond her control-and not, as it was for him, a short time.

  Yes, a short time. Without tying one idea to the other

  Vit6ria now seemed to want the man to work fast and twice as

  hard, and the well, the digging of which she had obliged him to

  interrupt so he could start working on the line fences, should be

  started up again at once.

  "But why doesn't he know if he's going to stay or not?"

  Ermelinda asked in surprise.

  Ermelinda was nervous with headaches and palpitations.

  "Why doesn't he know if he's going to stay or not?" And as if

  they had eliminated the possibility of waiting for a more favorable time and a natural ripening, the girl felt herself trapped, forced to define herself before the man left, and have that fruit,

  even if it was green, even if it was still incomprehensible. Whatever the obscure stages of love might be they would have to go along more rapidly now. Trying not to stumble over shame,

  ( l 0 2)

  How a Man Is Made

  Ermelinda had already forgotten what she had wanted from the

  man. She was only trying to bring back that instant in which

  love, beside the pail of corn, had been fateful and grand-there

  had only been that instant in an afternoon lost now forever. But

  in that instant death too had seemed to her to be a ritual of

  life-there had been that instant in which she had faced death

  with the same grandeur as one looking from a distance.

  But it was useless: with that lost instant she had lost contact

  with fatality. And again she only saw trickery and meanness in

  death. And she too became mean again to the point of fearing

  death; and she was avaricious and crafty, and she tricked because

  she felt that she was being tricked.

  In the meantime something told her that no one could die

  without first resolving his own death. She looked around,

  afflicted. The bee in some way had resolved it: she saw the bee

  fly off. And Francisco too, in the same way, standing mute in the

  concentration of watering the mule as if watering the mule in

  that silent way were some signal of preparedness. Ermelinda

  looked at him with envy. But she, she was mean : she did not

  forgive death. She would never know how to tell what she

  wanted from Martim. Obscurely, she wanted her life to take on

  a destiny through him. She was confused; she knew only that she

  had to hurry for time was growing short.

  And false, calculating, she tried to project herself in some

  way into a crisis of love, until finally, from so much looking at

  the man and so much pushing herself and demanding so much

  of herself, she began to feel that uneasiness once more. Then,

  radiant, weakened by the effort, she loved him. The countryside

  seemed empty to her, ashen. She looked at the sick grass beside

  the hen-house, and she looked at the dirty flock, the chickens

  running weakly and rapidly about, cackling; the dissonance of

  the wheels of the plow bothered her: it was love, yes. So much

  so that if the man were to appear in the distance with his hoethen-then it happened : there he was !

  There he was, wrapped up in the power he had over her, and

  which she herself had conferred upon him.

  T H E A PP L E

  IN

  T H E D A R K

  Until finally Ermelinda reached the point where she no

  longer asked whether she loved him. She was no longer ashamed

  of watching him as she hid behind the wall, and she rediscovered

  every feature of the man's face with an exclamation of recognition and surprise. And when, untiring, she discovered for the thousandth time that the man's e
yes were blue she was surprised

  that so much could be given to her, a woman. His mouth was

  thin, and he had that extraordinary beauty that only a man

  could have and which had left her mute with a desire to fleewhich made her spy on him in a bloodthirsty way. She trembled with the fear that she would stop loving him. She had never got

  close to him; between the two of them there had always been a

  distance. But after a while the girl had spiritualized the distance

  and had ended up by turning it into a perfect means of communication, up to the point at which now only distance was able to provide sufficient space for her to unfold her love and reach

  the man; near him she felt herself inconvenienced by him, and

  she did not know how to give him all her love.

  Which had not stopped the girl from becoming very active;

  she carefully calculated the steps she would have to take, feeding

  what she felt with the foresight of a murderer. She bathed with

  scented herbs, she took better care of her underwear, she ate a

  lot so she would put on some weight, she tried to feel emotion at

  the sunset, she intensively petted the dogs on the farm, she

  cleaned her teeth with charcoal, she protected herself against the

  sun so she would be quite fair, she was worried over how much

  times love would assault her unexpectedly, as when, shuffling

  too herself to see if she was right, "I want to be the shoe he

  wears, I want to be the axe he has in his hand" and then she

  waited very attentively; and she was so right that she lowered her

  modest eyes with emotion, confused, hiding a smile as best she

  could.

  But Ermelinda did not always have to arouse herself. Sometimes love would assault her unexpectedly, as when, shuffling through Vit6ria's writing desk in search of a pair of shears, she

  came upon the list of tools Martim had ordered for the mistress

  ( l 0 4)

  How a Man Is Made

  of the place. Even before she thought about it she was sure it

  was his writing. Because her heart was beating as if she had been

  reading the very secret of the man; "one shovel, two scythes,"

  she went on reading. And what he had written gave her such a

  feeling of ripeness that she felt ill. The words seemed full and

  painful, heavy with themselves. It was heartbreaking to feel the

  strength of the man in his words, a quiet and contained strength

  -and in the meantime, all of it right there in front of her, a

 

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