presence. "Just imagine !" she said almost bellowing. "She humiliated me once, you know?" Without stopping his work, he took a quick look at her.
"Then she said she hadn't meant to," Ermelinda added in a
lower tone, now that she was sure the man had noticed her.
Then she added, hesitant whether she should continue the lie,
since he had finally looked at her, "Maybe she didn't mean
to."
"I said that she said she didn't mean to!" she repeated when
she saw that he was not paying attention to her anymore, "But I
don't think that's true! She really did humiliate me! " she
shouted at him attently, watching to see how her words would
make the man's face react.
But her fruitless attempts had not discouraged Ermelinda.
"That's just how it was," she thought, because "time wasn't ripe
yet." When time would be ripe she could not say. Perhaps when
she had been a child she had heard tell that it was when the
moon was full. Perhaps too she might have known how animals
need a minimum of security when put together so that at least
they will have that primary guarantee of not being interrupted.
Maybe she had heard more tales than she had been able to
understand-and what had been left with her, disquietingly
incomplete, was the notion of a time that was ripe. Oh, her
plans were vague, very vague. She did not even have a plan; her
plans were so vague that, embarrassed, she closed her eyes a little
and smiled. If perchance her plans could have become just a
little clearer for a moment she would have felt offended and
sincerely startled. The fact was she was so very susceptible.
When had Martim finally begun to individualize her? She
was almost ugly even though she was cute. Her short and dark
( l l 3 )
T H E A P P L E
IN
T H E DARK
lashes outlined eyes that could be perceived even from a distance
in the midst of the brightness of a skin in which not even her
mouth had any color. Her eyes were alway blinking, knowing or
maybe afflicted, as if the girl was always calculating the distance
between herself and other things. Her eyes were the only positive thing about her. Her other features were so indistinct that one could imagine how they could lose their shape and come
together in some new combination which would be just as
undefined as the first one. She was an aging adolescent and if
there had been troubles they had not been the kind that had
given her wrinkles or hardness, but the kind that had smoothed
and squelched her. The scattered rapid moments in which the
man had looked upon her face had been useless for he had not
found support for any point he could remember, whether ugly or
pretty. Even in the certain moments when she had been unprotected there had appeared to him a certain expectant frankness on her face, which gave her the kind of beauty which one saw on the patient face of a dog. Then her face could be seen in
all its nakedness, like the face of a blind man.
It was that weak face, expectant and trusting, without the
lies of expression that the girl had used so much to beautify
herself, that the ma11 finally came to see. And he went on "not
to think about her," as a way of thinking.
"When I was married I had everything. There wasn't anything I ever lacked! " she came back to say the following day, persevering in her encirclement of him and opening up the
basket of hard-boiled eggs to have a picnic while he worked.
Speaking without cease the girl saw again that face with its
hard lines; and again she was touched by the stability of the man
and it seemed in vain for the wind to try to wear him down.
And, who can tell, if she were to cling to him maybe the wind
would not shake her either. Then the girl was so filled with a
strong and malignant hope that without stopping talking she
took a tranquilizer out of the basket and gulped the dry pill
down with a little bit of trouble.
"How long are you going to stay here?" she asked him.
( l l 4 )
How a Man Is Made
And when he said he did not know, and the empty and
painful sense of speed whirled about her, time was short-time
was short; she did not know why it was, she only knew she had
to hurry. Then she began to talk with such volubility that the
man felt his work become easy as if his strokes now had some
kind of counterpoint, and the girl was the repercussion of a man
filling up the distance. Martim then looked up at the sun and
spat far with pride. Ermelinda lowered her eyes in shame.
Chapter 11
ON THAT AFTERNOON when Martim and Vit6ria rode out so that
the mistress of the farm could show him where the irrigation
ditches should be dug-on that afternoon when they rode up
the same slope down which the man had come alone-then he
stood out MATURE from the darkness of the cows.
High up on the crest the woman was looking over the
ground. Then suddenly, innocent and unwarned, he rocognized
the landscape that he had seen when he had first come to the
farm-that first time, when drunk with flight and exhausted, he
had relied upon that vague thing which is the promise made to a
baby at birth.
On horseback, with a flash of incomprehension worthy of a
genius, he saw the countryside. Stupefied and attentive he saw
that at the top of the rise there was that same freedom as if
something had been unfurled in the wind. And like that first
time the glory of the open air brought something to him that hit
him hard on the chest and pained him with the extreme upset of
happiness that one sometimes feels.
But with a new and unexpected hunger he wanted to give it
a name this time.
The idea of wanting something more than just a feeling
seemed to affiict Martim; that confused sign of a transition
toward the unknown bothered him, and his unrest was passed
along to the horse who kicked up as if he had been touched
somehow and had that dazzled look that horses have.
As he faced that enormous extension of empty land Martim
made a suffocated effort at painful approach. With the difficulty
of someone who is never going to arrive he was approaching
something that a man on foot might humbly call the desire of a
man, but which a man on horseback could not resist the tempta-
( l l 6 )
How a Man Is Made
tio� to call the mission of a man. And the birth of that strange
anxiety was now provoked by the vision of an enormous world
which seemed to be asking a question, as it had been when he
first walked upon the slope. And which seemed to be asking for a
new god, who, as far as could be understood, would in that way
complete the work of the other God. Confused there on a jumpy
horse, jumpy himsel f, in just that second necessary for a glance,
Martim had emerged totally and was a man.
In the same moment he had also felt himself completely
unrewarded.
As his face was beaten by the wind which then went off to
symbolize something Martim looked down below at the animals
>
loose in the pasture. As he had come to understand the cows,
now for the first time he found himself higher up on the slope.
And this too was beating in his breast. With the beating of his
heart, Martim remembered then and unexpectedly what a man
normally is : it was what he was being now! With an agonizing
sensation he felt himself a person.
Martim was humble in some way, if being humble was that
involuntary and triumphant way he rode astride the horse-the
way which gave him height and fright and determination and a
longer vision. With that unexpected humility he seemed to
recognize another sign that he was coming out of it-because
only animals are proud and by the same token a man is humble.
He also wanted to give a name to that defenseless and at the
same time audacious thing, but he had none.
In some way it was good that he had none as he was
unable to find a name that had imperceptively increased the
restlessness he was now enjoying. The fact was that even though
he was intimidated he was deriving something from his own
restlessness as if the tension in which he found himself had
'
been the measure of his own resistance, and he had been making
use of the first fruits of the difficulty just the way a man's
muscles become more intense as he starts to lift a weight. He, he
was his own weight-which means that, that man had made
himself.
( I I 7 )
T H E A P P L E IN
T H E D A R K
Meanwhile the impatience of the horses was hard to hold,
and it increased Martim's instability and pulled him toward a
decision of which he was still not aware. The wind was bringing
Vit6ria's outlined figure close to his; the pure air made the
horses blacker and larger. The air was so light that the man
could not suck it all in at once. After breathing it a while, after
being alive for a while, he was breathless because he could not
take in more air. And meanwhile "not being able" intensified his
happiness; the enormous vastness surrounded him, and he could
not dominate it; his heart beat large, generous, restless; the
horses moved their feet with nobility and skill. The constant
wind had ended up by giving the woman's face a physical
rapture that did not match the words she spoke about the
opening of the trenches, and there was an agreement between
their solitary bodies, the way bodies will agree on the same
ultimate destiny. That his man's heart beat large and confused,
recognizing things. To be a person was to be all of that.
It was then that it occurred to him that the promise which
had been made to him was his own mission, even if he could not
understand why it is incumbent upon us to fulfill a promise that
had been made to us somewhere.
It was particularly good to be alive at that moment because
there was also that clean afternoon air. And at that moment the
mounted woman suddenly laughed because her horse had drawn
back and startled her. With certain surprise he heard the laugh
from that woman who never laughed. Everything was probably
opening up for Martim; just as flowers open up in some determined moment, and we are never close enough to see. But he was. For the first time he was present when something that was
happening was happening. And he! he was that man who for the
first time had come to a realization not just from having heard
tell, but at first hand, and that upset him. He was precisely that
man. He was puzzled, therefore, at the impulsive way in which
he had recognized himself. He had simply decided to be not just
anyone, but that man.
And more than that he himself had suddenly become the
( l l 8 )
How a Man Is Made
sense o� the land and the woman; he himself was the goad for
everything he saw. That was what he felt, even if the only thing
he was receiving from his thought was just the throb. And as he
held b.ack, aroused, he remembered that this is a commonplace
on which a man can finally tread: the wish to give a destiny to an
enormous emptiness that evidently only a destiny can fill.
Then, with an impulse like the urge to want to name something, he tried to remember what gesture was used to express that instant of wind and mention of the unknown. He tried to
remember what he had done one day when he had been up on
Corcovado with a girl he loved. But even if he could remember,
there was no way to express it. In that first impotence of his, for
an instant, Martim felt the anguish of restriction.
But to feel the anguish of restriction was being a person too;
he could still remember that well ! Oh how well he could
remember! With anguish he remembered that it was the anguish
of being a person, and up on Corcovado he had kissed the girl he
loved with the ferocity of love. He remembered just in time that
there had never been a way to express the joy; and therefore he
had built a house, or had taken a trip, or had loved. With the
apprehensive air of someone who can make a mistake; he too
was mounted on a horse, and he was attentively trying to copy
for reality the being that he was, and in that birth he was creating his life. The thing was done in such an impossible way-for in impossibility there was the harsh claw of beauty. They are
moments that cannot be narrated; they happen between trains
that pass or in the air that wakes up our face and gives us our
final shape, and then for an instant we are the fourth dimension
of what exists; they are moments that do not count. But who
knows whether it is the anxiety that a fish has with his open
mouth, the one a drowning man has before he dies? They say
that before going under forever a man ca.n see his wh?I� li�e pass
before his eyes-if in just an instant one is born, �nd .1f in 1ust an
instant one dies an instant is enough for a whole hfehme.
The man fi�ally remembered then what he had done with
his girl friend in the winds of Corcovado. In order to express
( 1 1 9 )
T H E A PP L E
IN
T H E D A R K
himself, perhaps he would have to overpower Vit6ria; now that
he was a man again, she had become a woman. But not just the
fact that she was indocile for that would make it a gratuitous act
and it would not have the perfect weight of fatality that desire
for the body gives. He remained silent, embarrassed, not knowing what to do with that whole thing into which he had suddenly become transformed. Then it was that, out of nowhere, out of pure recklessness, he wanted to be "good" as a way of solution. He wanted to be good so much that once more he
began to feel a kind of impotence.
It was true that the fugitive thought he had got about the
woman had not become completely lost in the air. The woman
felt the remains of it, obscurely offended the way cats on the
roof are offended. Vit6ria turned toward him, and while she
talked about the trenches she faced him; and there was no doubt
but that he was that man : in him she saw him. And that was
unexpected. With the curiosity of one in whom an
artery has
burst and unsuspected blood comes gushing out she looked at
him, with repugnance and great pride-and he was that man,
never any other, but he himself, and it made her avert her eyes
severely. She remembered how one night she had passed by the
woodshed and had heard the man snoring. The memory of that
had made him undeniable. The reasonable possibility that he
did not know that he was snoring had turned him over to her
again with all his unconscious weight, the way an unconscious
dog had once before belonged to her.
Until-until another wave of breeze extinguished everything.
Leaving as reality only the man and the woman on horseback.
Out of everything the man had only the somewhat useless
feeling of having finally emerged with the heart of a living
person which, small as it was, gave him great power; as a person
he was capable of everything. That was what he felt, perhaps.
And just to show him to what point everything was converging
toward a fertilization, as when grace exists, Vit6ria at that
moment stretched out her arm to point out a mountain in the
distance, the slopes of which took on a certain softness from the
( l 2 0 )
How a Man Is Made
impossibility of being touched. Then Martim had a kind of cer·
tainty that this was the gesture that he had been looking for, just
as distances seemed to need someone to determine with a
gesture what they were. And therefore the man decided to con·
elude that it was this human gesture which is used for purposes
of allusion-pointing.
Nor did it make any difference to him that the woman had
done it unconsciously. Nor even that it had been she and not he
who had done it. In the mute potency in which he found him·
self anything that was spoken would have been considered by
him as his own voice, and anything that moved would be his
own movement; and maybe he would be able to say "the great·
est moment of my life was when Napoleon's troops marched
into Paris," and he might have said "the greatest moment of my
life was when a man said, 'Give bread to those who are hungry' ";
and once more his work had become most difficult and most
dazzling. The growth of trees, the width of the world grew pain·
The Apple in the Dark Page 16
