The Apple in the Dark
Page 18
so that Martim was already starting to get upset-he was a man,
but something worrisome remained : what does a man do?
Chapter 2
To THE POINT at which, that afternoon up on the hill, Martim
began to judge himself. The unpleasant time for explanations
had arrived.
There, before he went any farther, he had to be innocent or
guilty. There, he had to know whether his mother, who would
never have understood him if she had been alive, would love him
without understanding him. There, he had to know whether his
father's ghost would hold out his hand to him without fright.
There, he would judge himself-this time using the speech of
other people. Now he would have to call what he had done a
crin1e. The man was trembled, afraid he would touch himself on
the wrong spot; he was still covered with wounds.
But because he knew deep down that he would even resort
to farce so as to emerge whole from his own judgment-that if
he was not cleared, he would remain perplexed, with a crime on
his hands-the fact that he knew that he would not let himself
emerge unless he came out whole gave him the courage to face
up to it and, if necessary, be horrified.
And furthermore : because he would only let himself win,
because at the point at which he found himself he had a fierce
need for himself, he had already thought in advance that after
the necessary judgment he would have his great task ahead of
him. Because it would be then that he would have to remember
what a man wants.
It occurred to him that he was reversing the order of what
had happened, that he had not committed a crime in order to
give himself the opportunity to find out what a man wants, but
that the opportunity had been born casually along with the
crime. He tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling of mystifica-
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The Birth of the Hero
tion; he needed that mistake to go forward, he needed it as an
instrument. Willingly he put his confusion off in the distance
and finally made an attempt to come to grips with things. With
a sigh, he came to grips in clear terms, and he thought along
these lines-He had not committed an ordinary crime.
He thought that with that crime he had executed his first act
as a man. Yes ! Courageously, he had done what every man has
to do once in his life : destroy life in order to rebuild it on his
own terms.
"Had that been what he had wanted out of the crime,
then?" His heart beat heavily, irreducibly, illuminated with
peace. Yes, in order to rebuild it on his own terms.
And if he could not succeed in rebuilding it? Because in his
rage he had broken what had existed into pieces that were too
small. What if he could not succeed in rebuilding it? He looked
out at the perfect emptiness of the clarity, and the strange
possibility that he might never succeed in rebuilding it came to
him. But even if he did not succeed it did not matter. He had
felt the courage to take a big gamble. A man must risk everything one day. Yes, he had done just that.
And proud of his crime, he saw the world in ruins. Ruined by
him and at his feet-the world tumbled down by a crime. And
only he, because he had made himself the great perpetrator of
it, could put it together again, give it meaning, and raise it
back up.
But on his own terms.
That was what it was, then. And Martim asked himself with
intensity and pain, "could that be all it was?" Because his truths
did not seem to be able to bear attention for a long time before
they became deformed. And for an instant the truth might just
as well be one thing as another; only the countryside was
immutable. It was at the cost of a certain control, then, that
Martim stuck to one truth only and with difficulty erased all
others. ( Without his realizing it, his reconstruction had already
begun to gasp. )
It made no difference to him that the source of his present
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T H E A P P L E
I N T H E DARK
strength had been a criminal act. What mattered was that from
it he had received the impulse toward a great revindication.
That was how it was, then, that Martim emerged whole
from the judgment-a little tired from the effort.
Well, now it would be a matter of remembering what a man
wants. That was the real judgrnent-and Martim lowered his
head, confused, in penance.
Oh Lord, it was not easy for that man to express what he
wanted. He wanted this : to rebuild. But it was like an order that
one receives and does not know how to fulfill. Free as he might
be, a person was used to being commanded, even if it was only
by what other people were commanded. And now Martim was
on his own.
One had to have a lot of patience with him; he was slow.
What did he want? Whatever it was that he wanted had been
born far away inside of him, and it was not easy to bring the
stammering murmur to the surface. And it happened that what
he wanted was also strangely mixed up with what he already
was-what, in the meantime, he had never attained.
His obscure task would have been easier if he had allowed
himself the use of words that had already been created. But his
reconstruction had to begin with his own words because words
were the voice of a man-not to mention the fact that Martim
possessed a sense of caution that was merely practical. The
moment he accepted alien words he would automatically be
accepting the word "crime," and he would become nothing but
a common criminal in flight. It was still too early for him to give
himself a name-and give a name to what he wanted. One step
further and he would know. But it was still too early.
Then Martim went back down the hill to tell Vit6ria that
the following morning he would start digging the trenches. He
went to the porch and waited for Vit6ria to finish talking to
Francisco.
The fact that he had finally managed to think had not given
him any plan. But he had accepted his crime, in his way; and he
felt himself a whole man, tall and serene. Standing on the porch,
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The Birth of the Hero
not in any hurry, he listened to Vit6ria's harsh voice and Francisco's agreement as it blended into the rhythm of the woman's voice. Then, almost without being aware of it, he began to hear
the words too.
" . . . you have to pick the tomatoes too. And this time do a
better job of packing them, Francisco. Better and quicker-this
time the German will get to the Vila sooner."
Martim was listening and waiting patiently. And then he
understood what he had heard.
So she was going to meet a German. The German. So she
was going to see the German. Stupefied, attentive, Martim
turned the phrase over in his head to see if he could make it lose
its meaning. But any way that he repeated it, it was always the
same, "the woman was going to see the German." She was
probably going to sell him some of the produce from the place!
he thought, suddenly recovering that old voracious intelligence
he had had in his flight. And every moment he became dominated by an expert power of reason that went beyond his normal ability, as if now he was capable of shedding his bodily weight,
sinking low, and losing himself among the shadows on the wall.
His memory took on a catlike sharpness and he instantly recalled
seeing Francisco cleaning the truck.
"To go to Vila Baixa or just for the sake of cleaning it?" He
remembered that he had already heard Vit6ria talking about the
German-but when? when ! Or hadn't he ever heard? No, he
had never heard her-And Francisco had already cleaned the
truck! But the trip would not be today. Would it be the next day
maybe? Then she will see the German, he thought with the care
of one who might have been handling something treacherous
that could suddenly rebel within his fingers and take on a life of
its own. Then she will see the German, he thought carefully.
But the thought, even though it was quite clear, did not take
him anywhere or lead him on to another thought. Trapped, he
moved his head fiercely from one side to the other to calculate
the distance of a leap off the porch. "She will see the German,"
he repeated rapidly and meanly, like a rat, and even his head
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T H E A P P L E
IN
T H E D A R K
seemed hairier to Vit6ria who looked at him for an instant without interrupting her orders to Francisco. "He looks like a filthy beast," the woman concluded as she kept on talking to Francisco.
But soon the intimate darkness that had enveloped Martim
and in which he was already beginning to move with some skill
began to dissipate. His head was coming back into place little by
little. And when Francisco left and Vit6ria began to talk to him
and give him orders Martim forgot that he had come to tell her
about the ditches, and he looked intensely into her eyes. And he
tried to guess, with the help of that rare element that was composed of dark eyes, whether Vit6ria was the kind of woman who would chatter on about what was happening on her own placeabout a new worker, a stranger in the region. Even if she did not mention him directly she might make some casual reference
about him, and the German would guess that he was the one
who had fled in the night from the hotel.
"I wonder how well she knows the German?" Martim tried
to guess, probing avidly with his eyes. But he found no answer at
all in that face which had one day become tired and had shut
itself off forever. "Maybe she wasn't the kind of woman who
chattered-but maybe the German himself would talk about
that night when the guest had run away-and then she would
know ! " Martim became. enraged with himself for never having
paid attention to that woman whom he did not know and whose
acts, therefore, he was incapable of predicting. Out of practical
necessity he examined her for the first time. Hers was a hard and
thin face, the bones of which seemed to speak more than the
flesh. Hers was a lofty head. More than that he could not tell.
And when would she leave? How much time did he have left
to run away? "She can't be leaving too soon ! " he thought,
suddenly more lucid, "because Francisco won't have had time to
pick the tomatoes and pack them ! The tomatoes still have to be
picked because just now Vit6ria told Francisco to do it! " he
remembered with a fury of joy. "Or have they been?" -suddenly
he became confused.
"When are you going to Vila?" he asked, unable to stand the
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The Birth of the Hero
doubt any longer; and the question that he had not planned but
had wanted to be casual sounded brusk and imperative, suspect
to his own ears.
Vit6ria interrupted herself, her mouth opened with surprise.
It was the first time the man had said a word to her without
being prompted.
"I don't know," she said finally, frowning.
Then Martim, with the same sudden perspicacity which was
reaching beyond him and beyond logic, realized that Vit6ria had
found him out. He lowered his shoulders and let the tension
unwind, and as if the first instant of certainty had given him
only the relief of not doubting, a calm took control of him. He
looked at the woman with contempt.
Her face blushed nakedly under that undisguised and peaceful look. Stared at so openly her face contracted into a quick attempt at an expression, and finally resolved itself into an
impassive look which the determination had only increased the
blushing.
Then the man understood even more, from the moment he
had set foot on the farm she had decided to send him away. The
only new element that he could see on top of that was that she
had finally found the way.
Why had he not seen before what was now so clear? he
thought, surprised. Why had he not noticed that day after day
the woman had been fighting to make a decision, and that the
accumulation of it all had brought it out. The man quickly
remembered certain looks the woman had given him while he
had been working, and which he had scarcely noticed; he remembered the tone of voice in which so many times she had asked him how long he was going to stay on the farm. But why
had she asked him that question? Was it that each time she was
suggesting the idea of his voluntary departure, giving him a
chance to flee, and in that way freeing herself from the difficult
decision? He understood now that she had guessed his need
from the moment he had set foot on the farm. She had guessed
everything as far as one can guess without knowing anything.
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T H E A P P L E
I N T H E DAR K
There was just one thing he could not understand yet, and he
looked at her with curiosity : she still had not turned him in.
Vitoria could not bear the simple stare of the man and she
averted her eyes.
"That was her last reply, then," he thought. "And therefore
there wasn't much time left," he determined next.
Chapter
AT NIGHT, sitting erect on his bed and not having lighted the
lantern, Martim finally understood what he had meant when he
had said that there was not much time.
Frightened, he realized that he had not really thought about
the time that was left for him to plan his flight. From 'the
moment he had spoken to Vit6ria on the porch he had acted as
if it were obvious that the flight would have to come that very
night, before Vit6ria used the truck-if he wanted to, he could
be far away by the time she met the German. But as if the
darkness of the woodshed had led him into his own darkness, he
finally understood : it was not because of his flight that there was
not much time. He had been so busy planning his escape that he
had not realized that he was not thinking about running away.
"He had to possess everything before the end and he had to
live a whole life before the end." That was why time had
become short. With a dazzled fright-beca
use the fact was that
up to that moment he still had not become serious or even been
aware of how far he had gone toward accepting the seriousness.
Startled, he saw now that he had not been fooling-saw with
dazzled fright that it was not because of his flight that there was
not much time. His courage then made him mistrustful. He was
suspicious of himself.
And that was not all that the man perceived with surprise.
With the suddenness of the present ultimatum, Martim realized
that the idea that he had no time to lose had been with him
constantly, even before the ultimatum, masquerading as daily
work, patiently lying under the sleep in which a person slowly
moves. Then suddenly very excited and walking back and forth
in the dark limits of the woodshed, Martim became aware that
now he was only the guardian of a small amount of time that did
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not belong to him. And that his task was greater than the time
left to him.
Now that he had emerged far enough to reach the point of
the man on the hill, now that he had emerged enough to understand his crime and know what he wanted-or enough to invent what was happening to him and know what he wanted? what
did he care whether truth already existed or whether it had been
invented, because even if only invented, it still had value as the
act of a man-now that he had come to judge himself, he had to
continue. And as he faced the approaching end, continue toward
the-the rebuilding of the world.
Yes. Rebuilding the world. The fact is that the man had just
completely lost all shame. He did not even feel ashamed at
going back to using words out of his adolescence; he had to use
them because the last time he had possessed speech of his own
had been in adolescence; adolescence was risking everythingand now he was risking everything.
He had little time and he had to begin right then, in a
manner of speaking. "From the rebuilding of the world within
himself he would proceed to the rebuilding of the City, which
was a form of life and which he had repudiated with a murder;
that was why time was short." "I don't think I'm the least bit
stupid ! " he thought, fascinated.
Having come to understand himself finally, he was dominated by an enormous calm. He was not even startled by the wild enormity of his plans. Once he had destroyed the order he