The Apple in the Dark

by Clarice Lispector

  fully wide in his chest. And if that was the way it was, it was

  because since he had created himself he had come to need

  much, much more than he was. So that when the woman

  pointed her outstretched hand at that distant mountain it no

  longer mattered to the man whether it was she or a stone or a

  bird who had done it. What mattered was that the gesture had

  been made. He admitted that without reluctance-except t;at

  as a vindication he wanted to pick up the job at the point where

  the woman had left it, and he demanded that from now on the

  determination should fall upon his shoulders. And in that in·

  stant it was as if a whole future was being sketched out up there,

  and he could only come to know the details as he went along

  creating them. Martim had begun to belong to his own steps.

  He belonged to himself.

  What had happened in that interim was just that the

  woman was looking around for good land where the trenches

  could be dug without much trouble. And to bring truth down to

  pure reality-what was happening to Martim?

  What had really happened to Martim had simply been a

  ( l 2 l )

  T H E A P P L E

  IN

  T H E DARK

  most acute physical consciousness that had been heightened on

  both sides by the horses, and with an even more acute perception he had felt the horses loose in the air. And this had given him a vague feeling of beauty, the way one gets that restless

  feeling of beauty where something seems to say something and

  there is that obscure encounter with a meaning. As far as real

  perception was concerned, one might honestly say that Martim

  had not perceived anything. So while the horses whinnied, they

  simply turned toward each other, and without there even having

  been a single moment of interruption in the dialogue about the

  trenches the woman went on to talk about the drought; and he

  listened to her and agreed. And just as if there had been a

  reincarnation of the spirit after death and the law ordained that

  there be no memory of having lived the moment of contact that

  Martim had had with "that which is" had passed by, unperceived by him. The only clear thing that remained was the thought that it was a place where he could well spend more

  time. Martim was very satisfied with himself.

  And it turned the satisfaction, even if it was no longer

  enough for him, into some kind of hard tenacity which, like the

  first universal step, was becoming his measured attitude toward

  the slow descent down the hill. They were erect; the horses were

  twitching their flanks.

  � Part II

  T H E B I RT H O F

  T H E H E R O

  Chapter 1

  BUT THAT VERY NIGHT, walking back and forth in the narrow

  confines of the woodshed, Martim found it difficult to restrain

  himself because of what he had gained. It was joy. As if he had

  just heard some news and there was no one to pass it on to, he

  did not know what to do with himself. He was very happy to be

  a person; that was one of the great pleasures in life. At the same

  time it seemed to him, unconsolable, that he would never get his

  reward.

  And for the first time since he had fled he felt the need to

  communicate with somebody. He sat down on the edge of the

  bed and put his happy head in his hands. He did not know

  where to start thinking. Then he remembered his son, who had

  said at meal-time one day, "I don't want to eat this ! " His

  mother had retorted, "What do you want to eat, then?" The

  child had ended up saying, painfully afraid of being found out,

  "Nothing!"

  Then he, Martim, had said to him, "It's quite simple. If

  you're not hungry you don't have to eat anything."

  But the child had begun to cry, "I'm not hungry, I'm not

  h ungry . . ."

  And as the radio was turned on the man had shouted, "I

  already told you that if you're not hungry you don't have to eat

  anything! What are you crying about?"

  And the child had replied, "I'm crying because I'm not

  hungry."

  "I can promise you that you'll be hungry by tomorrow. I can

  promise you that! " Martim had told him, upset, using love to

  enter into the truth of a child.

  Sitting on the bed with his head in his hands Martim closed

  his eyes and laughed, filled with emotion. It was joy. His joy

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  T H E A PP L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  came from the fact that he was hungry, and when a man is

  hungry he gets happy. In the last analysis a man is measured by

  his hunger; there is no other way of figuring things out. And the

  truth was that on the hill the great lack had been reborn in him.

  It was strange that he had not had anything to eat and that he

  was rejoicing in his hunger. With his heart beating from his

  great hunger Martim lay down. He heard his heart pleading, and

  he laughed aloud, bestially, unprotected.

  Ermelinda returned on the following day, and she was

  getting more and more systematic. "You may think I'm crazy,"

  she said to him in that persistent way one sees in blind people­

  "but there's a place inside of me where I go when I want to

  sleep! Oh, I know it's all very queer, but just the same-if that

  place were nearby I could say that it's in the left side of my

  head-I sleep on my left side," she explained to him in passing,

  licking her lips-"but that place is so much farther away, it's as

  if it were way beyond where I leave off-and yet, it's inside of

  me. I'm still myself, you understand?"

  Since particular details of her body, her eyes, hers and no one

  else's, were being turned toward him she made an effort, as she

  described her special traits, to prove to the man that she was

  herself alone. Since Martim had not looked at her she went a

  step farther, "It's a place that exists out there after my death,"

  she said finally, and she suddenly became so pale that her

  unexpected silence made him look; he stopped smiling, without

  knowing why.

  But Ermelinda knew quite well that it was still too early for

  her to stop lying and stop enticing him. She knew that it was too

  early to show herself to him and that he might chase her away if

  she was real; people are so afraid of the truth about others. She

  could only do it indirectly. The idea that if she did not amuse

  him she might drive him away filled her with fear for now she

  had progressed so far that she had got him to listen to her, even

  if he did not look at her! Then, suspicious that she might have

  gone too far and might have frightened him, she started to laugh

  a lot, and said, as if it was a joke, "I know that in order to get to

  ( I 2 6 )

  The Birth of the Hero

  that place I go when I 'm asleep I turn to the left. Just thinkthat's how I fall asleep. Sometimes, so I won't be nervous, I try to bring something into sleep with me, something from the day

  that has just passed-understand?-a handkerchief I can twist

  in my hand or the missal, just to give myself some assurance so I

  won't be alone. I
'm really silly, aren't I?" she said with tenderness directed at herself. "But you can't take anything with you or you won't be able to go. It seems to be a place where you go

  just to sleep or to think. Of course I'm not one who wants to go

  back there! But" -she said helplessly-"but after you've been

  there once, you get the habit. Believe me," she added greedily,

  "believe me, I haven't been able to stop thinking what I think."

  But she did not tell him what she was thinking, and she felt the

  pleasure of one who confesses when there is no one to listen, as

  if her confession had been stolen from her while she slept. "Did

  you ever manage not to think about what you're thinking about?

  It's what they call an obsession! A real obsession ! " she said very

  playfully, not forgetting for a moment that she always had to

  take patient and perfect pains to flatter the man.

  But she did not forget that she was in a hurry. It occurred to

  her, while she was speaking to him, that she might unwillingly

  let out what she was; and then the man would see how much

  she needed him, and therefore he would no longer want her-as

  happens with people. Ermelinda gave a lonely shiver at the

  simple possibility of his never getting to like her, and she looked

  at the flying birds. Her work on the man was always so delicate

  and called for so much precision that she would not have been

  able to do it had it only been a simple decision, or if she had

  been ordered to do it. It was work that called for infinite

  caution; where one step too far and the man would never love

  her, where one step too far and she herself might stop loving

  him : she was protecting both of them against the truth.

  "It's like an obsession ! Do you think I'm crazy?" she asked

  him, because she knew that she was living off an idea and that

  was not "normal."

  "No."

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  T H E A PP L E

  I N T H E D A R K

  "But other people don't seem to think that death-" Ermelinda quickly covered the revealing words with an ostentatious smile. "You don't think so?" she added coquettishly. "I'm not

  crazy then? I'm so silly you have no way of knowing! " she told

  him, as if she were promising a whole future of attractive silliness which he would only lose if he wanted to.

  "You're crazy because you talk so much," he finally said

  heavily.

  "Aha ! " she said with the wise air of someone who will not let

  herself be tricked. "I see it all, then; you do think I'm crazy! I

  see it all now; you can't fool me! " she said, all smiles, intentionally addressing him in the familiar form-but his open eyes were thinking about something else.

  Martim was remembering a man he had known who had

  traveled all alone through the interior for a long time and when

  returning he had lived talking about trees and snakes and birds,

  to the absolute boredom and incomprehension of everybody;

  until the man realized that a person did not talk about trees and

  birds and snakes, and he stopped talking.

  "No," he said, looking at her with the first softness of

  curiosity in his voice and using the familiar form. "You're not

  crazy. You live a very isolated life, and you no longer know what

  should be told to other people and what should not." He

  stopped and looked at her, perplexed at having talked so much.

  He had never talked so much, and the girl's heart began to

  beat. "I guess so," she said in a spritely way.

  With an instinctive wisdom Ermelinda did not let on that

  she had spotted his first step in her direction, just as one does

  not give a shout of joy when a child begins to walk because he

  might get startled and not do it again for months.

  As for him, he did not spot anything. As for him, he was

  waiting with patient anxiety for the time when his work would

  be through, for the time when he could go-not to the plot

  where the plants were nor to the cows in the cowshed-but to

  the hill again to recapture every day with the uncertain determination of living jelly the moment of his formation on the day ( 1 2 8)

  The Birth of the Hero

  before. There he would remain standing; all he needed was to be

  standing without knowing what to do. The need a person has to

  climb a mountain-and look. That was the first symbol he had

  touched since he had left home : "climbing a mountain." And

  with that obscure act he was fertilizing himself. That place was

  an old symbol that had never been formulated, as if his father's

  father had breathed it in, and as if that reality had been born out

  of the invention of an ancient legend. That place had already

  happened to him before, it did not matter when, if only in a

  promise and in an invention.

  And only God knows that Martim did not know what he

  went to do up on the hill. But it was so much of a fact that

  something objective must have been happening to him there

  that, now that he had formed the habit of re-evaluating his own

  nature by means of the final argument of the nature of animals,

  it was enough for him to recall how a bull stands on the top of a

  hill. Looking! That objective thing which is like an act : looking. Sometimes a dog looks too, even though rapidly, and he immediately becomes restless-because a dog has no tin1e; he

  needs lots of love and he is nervous, and he has an afflicted

  feeling of the time that passes by, and in his eyes he has the

  weight of an in transmissible soul : only love can cure a dog. But

  it so happened that, that man, by circumstance of fate, was

  closer to the nature of a bull, and he was looking. If it was true

  that if someone had asked him why, he would not have been

  able to answer, it was also true that if a person only does what he

  understands, he will never take a single step forward.

  Oh, maybe nothing had happened when he was up on the

  hill, and even he had still not demanded that something should

  happen. It seemed enough for him to have the extended light of

  the afternoon or the naked air or the empty space. Even a word

  that did not go beyond being thought would have scuttled the

  air. He abstained. Up there, existing had now become an emphasis, as if it were audacious and a step forward for a person to be standing in the clearness. It was as if Martim had become the

  symbol of himself, as if he had at last become incarnated in

  ( 1 2 9 )

  T H E A P P L E

  IN

  T H E D A R K

  himself. The birds, avoiding the light, kept inside the darkness

  of the heavy branches. The clearness was resting, solitary, blue,

  delicate. It was afternoon. And Martim was looking, as if looking meant being a man. He was enjoying his state. I t was a generous gift the world was giving him. He received it without

  shyness because he no longer felt any shame-it was difficult to

  tell why.

  Until one day, as he faced the inhospitable clarity without

  any emotion, he finally thought, a little anxious but moving

  forward, "My God, if we did not create a world, then this world

  which is only divine would not receive us." I t had begun to get

  dark. Dogs appeared in the distance, attentive. Birds came out of

  the foliage,
and each one took a little greater chance. After a

  while the air became thick, and his feelings finally began to show

  their nature, which was not very divine, a deeply confused desire

  to be loved which was mixed in with the human smell of the

  night. A slow sweat began to sppear on him, spreading that good

  and bad smell he had of earth and cows and rat and armpits and

  darkness-that furtive way we have of noticing the earth after a

  while : we have finally created a world and given it our will. The

  maximum of clarity had given way to our habitual darkness : was

  that what Martim was waiting for perhaps as he stood there? As

  if with that submission to the clarity he had been shown just

  how the harmonious union is made harmonious-not intelligible, not with any finality, but harmonious-as if in that submission of the light before the darkness there had finally come about the union of the plants, of the cows, and of the man that

  he had begun to be. Each time that day turned into night the

  man's dominion would become renewed and a step forward

  would be taken, blindly-blindly in the end, like the advance of

  a person who desired something.

  Martim was not able to discover why it was that on the hill

  he could complement himself so well, be harmonious himselfunintelligible but harmonious-while he looked out at the immortality of the countryside. For the time being that was all he needed. A man who has walked far has the right to an inexplic-

  ( l 3 0 )

  The Birth of the Hero

  able pleasure, a harmony even if he does not understand it, does

  not understand it for the time being. Because with tranquil

  presumption he said to himself, "It's still early." It was not

  however just presumption. It was that now he had learned to

  rely upon the ripening of time, just like the tactics that cows use

  to live by. He seemed to understand now that one could not

  brutalize time and that its broad movement could not be replaced by any voluntary movement.

  Thus, each day, when he was free from Vit6ria's orders he

  would go up on the hill to wait for the return of that instant

  when, stupefied, he had approached the farm for the first time,

  and for the first time had been alerted. And it would come back

  again and again. Repetition seemed essential to him. Every time

  it was repeated, something seemed to have been added. So much