The Apple in the Dark

by Clarice Lispector

  eyes, for example, Martim saw a slightly amber circle, which he

  would have missed had he not been in love. He noticed also that

  the beginning of the hair on the nape of her neck was soft and

  that those strands which were too short to be wound up into a

  braid were a light that fluttered in the air. The light hair on her

  arms gilded the girl as if she was not to be touched. Once she

  had been loved, she had a rare delicacy and beauty. He looked at

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  her curiously, fondly. She was capable of making a man happy;

  but for some reason, it had been necessary for her to trick him

  with wiles before she could make him happy-only then had she

  showed him that she had not tricked him and that the happiness

  she was giving him was real.

  The man vaguely noticed all of that, and he looked at her,

  feeling the gentle energy that emanated from her and which he

  himself had aroused in her, the gentle energy that she herself

  had obliged him to arouse in her-so that in return, as now, she

  could give him back that gentle energy. In the whole web that

  Ermelinda had woven until she had captured him, she had used

  dubious, false, and unpleasant methods; as if life had been

  revealed by means of some kind of dirty trick. He owed the love

  of both of them to her and to the wise lack of scruples of the girl

  who, having got what she wanted, was there, made completely

  innocent by her own prize. All of this the man considered with

  tranquillity and wisdom because they had stopped embracing,

  and, completely engrossed though they were, he felt meditative

  and tranquil.

  Then she asked, with her face showing the innocence of very

  curious people, "Have you ever enjoyed another woman like

  this?"

  And he, within the cloudiness that feminine repose was

  giving him, with his eyes half-closed and almost not having

  heard her, continued along in his own thoughts about the other

  woman and said this : "She came to me, not because I was who I

  was or because she was who she was. She came to me out of her

  own laziness. She was very lazy," he said with the pleasure of

  remembering. "And she would interrupt me to tell me that

  she'd gone to the dentist. She spent her whole life asking me

  what time it was. Every so often she would ask me-'What time

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  "Oh, I'm just as lazy!" Ermelinda said. "I'm a lazy one. I

  only want to be happy but I don't want to have all the horrible

  work that goes into being happy. I'm such a different person!

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  The Birth of the Hero

  I'm very lazy, but I want things. What are you thinking about?"

  she asked him then, with sudden anguish-because there he

  was, lying down, suddenly inaccessible, as if surrounded by an

  inch of isolation. "What are you thinking about?" she implored,

  accusingly.

  "Nothing," he said simply.

  She sighed softly, pacified and dreamy at the same time; and

  she isolated herself immediately, secure within her own circumference. "I always wanted something for forever, so to speak,"

  she said.

  In comparison to other people he was very sensible, and he

  used an offensive adult tone when he said, "That's absurd."

  "Of course it is," she said, agreeing only so that she would

  not be alone-because when she spoke the truth she always

  came upon the defensive wall of other people. "It's absurd," she

  agreed, telling a sensible lie.

  They had not asked themselves what they meant by the

  word "absurd," nor had they realized that they had put untouched, to one side, the very thing they had been talking about.

  That is how the conversation about "forever" went-they would

  think about it later on, when each one again would have the

  assurance of being alone.

  "Vas she pretty?" Ermelinda suddenly asked, greedily.

  A little frightened and half-offended, because a man's wife

  must never be touched by a man's mistress, he came to slightly

  and looked at her.

  "I don't know," he said mistrustfully, trying to guess

  whether Ermelinda was defiling something sacred. "I don't

  know," he said, and then he became relaxed and the lucidity of

  sleep returned. "I don't know, we haven't seen each other for a

  long time. We were already talking directly to one another as if

  all we had were a soul-What time is it, she would ask me. She

  would say: what time is it? I went to the dentist today. That's

  what she talked to me about-I went to the dentist today."

  "I haven't been to the dentist for a long time. Thank God I

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  have good teeth ! But I like to go because I can take advantage of

  it and spend a few days in Vila; I take advantage of it and do

  some shopping and go to the movies. I miss the movies terribly."

  "She had good teeth too," he said, a little annoyed.

  "Well, I didn't mean she didn't. I was only talking about

  myself, because after all, I don't know who 'she' is," she said,

  trying to offend him with her sudden formality.

  As the sweet and monotonous tone of the girl filled the

  woodshed from the depths of the half-light where he was hovering, he said to her, "Try to think of a person who needs an act of violence-an act which will make people reject him, simply

  because he did not have the courage to reject himself-a cowardly person, perhaps?" He stopped in anguish and sat down on the bed.

  "Lie down," Ermelinda said with worried authority because

  she had never had him at her disposal for so long, and there was

  still so much she had to tell him.

  He looked at her suspiciously for a moment; but then he

  laughed, at ease again.

  "There's no danger in what I've been telling you," he said,

  enjoying the fact that she did not understand him-"because

  I'm telling you what I am, and no one can denounce what other

  people are. No one can even make any mental use of what other

  people are." Martin found it so funny to use the ancient word

  "mental" that he laughed; it was a strange and empty word, and

  he was a little off course. "After I stop talking, you won't know

  me any more. That's the way it always happens. When people

  reveal themselves, the others stop knowing us."

  "What?" she asked, intrigued, interrupting her own

  thoughts for an instant.

  He perceived then that he had said too much-to the point

  of getting her interested-and he looked away quickly. But

  either she had not heard or she was not interested. Then,

  stimulated by her unimportant presence, he said, "Try to think

  of a person," and he repeated everything.

  Then, like a rooster who had proudly crowed alone in the

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  The Birth of the Hero

  yard, he grunted with pleasure and nodded his head in agreement several times.

  "But when I do get to Vila," she said, "I have so many

  things to buy that there isn't much time. I'd love to spend a

  whole wee
k in Vila, but Vit6ria wouldn't like it."

  "You don't like women very much, do you?" he said with

  curiosity.

  "Well," she said reluctantly, concentrating-"on a desert

  island I'd rather be with a man."

  Only after she had spoken was she aware of the implicit hint,

  and she smiled, excited and modest about her own capacity. He

  chuckled a little too, and examined her with a fondness that also

  came from cold curiosity. At that moment Ermelinda was peacefully swallowing a pill she had taken out of the picnic basket.

  "Why do you take so many tranquilizers?" he asked her,

  smiling.

  "Oh," she said simply, "it's this way. Let's say somebody

  was shouting and then somebody else put a pillow over her

  mouth so they wouldn't hear the shout. Well, when I take a

  tranquilizer I can't hear my own shouting. I know that I'm

  shouting, but I can't hear it-that's why," she said, smoothing

  her skirt.

  Embarrassed at the painful confidence she had shared painlessly with him, he laughed. Ermelinda suddenly noticed his look; she stopped herself, she became aware of herself-"I'm

  somebody who can make another person look at me" -and she

  put on a falsely animated face, playing the role that he certainly

  expected of her. But unexpectedly, as if that time she had heard

  her own shout, she said to him, intense, hard, hopelessly:

  "I love you."

  "Yes," he said, after a pause.

  Both of them remained silent for an instant waiting for the

  echo of what she had said to die out.

  Then, as she bent over for a moment, some apple peels fell

  out of her blouse. And before he could even understand, in some

  way it confirmed the sweetness of that girl. He smiled, picking

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  up the peels, rolling them around between his fingers, and then

  he began not to understand: there was no doubt, they actually

  were apple peels. Without stopping her babbling, she looked at

  him with the peels in his hand and she said, "Perfume is so

  . ,,

  expensive.

  "But these peels are all dried out," he said, scrutinizing her

  attentively.

  "So soon?" she was surprised and examined the peels with

  great curiosity. "Look at them. I'll put some fresh ones in

  today."

  She was simple and a woman, and he could laugh at herand as another way of laughing, he caressed her face for the first time. With great tenderness he pushed aside the strands of hair

  that framed her thin face. And the face that appeared, naked

  and strong, made him suddenly withdraw his hands, as if he had

  stepped on the tail of an animal.

  Up to what point had she been lying? Up to what point had

  she been pretending to be woman? Because the jaws of that girl

  were much broader than he had supposed, and they gave her a

  harsh look of beauty that he had not wanted in her. Had she

  feigned being weak? Because with her jaws showing, like those

  of a beast of prey, she gave a picture of herself as if she were

  supreme and on the scent. He began to be frightened in his

  depths, like a child who is startled when he touches something

  moving and it looks at him, accusing him.

  Having withdrawn his hands in his fright, however-the

  locks immediately fell back into place, and a face that once more

  was indecisive denied the involuntary vision he had had. And

  now, without the strength of the chin, her eyes lost the horribly

  victorious expression that had come to confirm certain vague

  thoughts Martim had, subsequently rejected, that the girl was

  using him for some end-which irritated him. He had created

  the freedom to be alone and flee entanglements, but more and

  more the invisible circle was tightening around him. How we

  devour each other! Vit6ria more attentive, her strange way of

  demanding something from him; Ermelinda with her ambitious

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  The Birth of the Hero

  fangs revealed for an instant. And facing those strong women, he

  felt himself abjectly innocent; the fright seemed to make him

  the purest of them all . And he slipped away so as not to be

  contaminated; everybody's lives began to become obscurely

  intertwined with his. But himself? Himself, disguising his anxiety? How many times had he tried to find the mulatto woman's daughter, without even knowing why he wanted the contact

  with a child so much, as if she were the only one as pure as he?

  Had the former man returned? The former man who seemed to

  need a pureness he would not know what to do with? Had he

  strayed from his path again, at some undetermined point, and

  had he become the former man again?

  "What do you like about me?" Martim asked demandingly.

  "Oh," said Ermelinda voluptuously, as if at last he had

  touched on the main point at issue, and her whole attitude now

  became that of one who was finally going to have a good

  conversation between women. "I just don't know!" she said

  intimately, and the man had the unpleasant feeling that she was

  not speaking to him but was talking about the two of them to a

  third person. "It began," she said, "with a kind of curiosity, and

  then it kept growing and growing, and when I saw that it was

  not curiosity, it wasn't anything any more. It was you and me! "

  "But," he said, a little irritated, "what did you like about

  me?"

  Ermelinda looked at him a little startled, almost resentful.

  Something immediately closed up tight inside of her, and she

  looked at him without any love at all. Into her head came the

  temptation to offend him with the truth that he was dangerously seeking, as if the truth was that she did not love him. But she knew quite well that she did love him, and she laughed with

  relief, as if the subject had been changed.

  "I had a kind of tremendous fascination with what you are!"

  she said as if she had made up a story, because she had chosen a

  different truth that was just as true except that she could join in

  this one without lying. "I really don't know what you are, but

  I'm terribly fascinated by it. It happened little by little, in a

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  short time. I can't tell you what I like about you; I can't separate

  you into pieces. I think you' re a whole person," she said very

  precisely.

  "But how did you happen to like me?" he asked, as if the girl

  had left him shapeless.

  "I don't know-certain little things-I don't know. Little

  things, I don't know what they are any more."

  The demanding stare of the man made her retreat, and

  because she was wounded by the lack of care with which he

  asked such a dangerous question the girl suddenly became insolent and ironical. "If I fall in love again, I'll make a note every day of what I felt so that I can give a report! But one thing I'm

  sure of," she said with a generalized disdain for people-"when I

  take a look at my notes, I'll just have a handful of dust."

  Because a handful of dust was what she had right now. And

  what the girl had right now was a past so full of dis
illusion that

  it made her ironic.

  But in the afternoon, her body being more knowing than

  she, she got a headache which expressed it all perfectly. In the

  afternoon, lying down in her room, fighting at last with a good,

  solid, satisfactory headache, like someone who has had a good

  nutritious meal.

  Things did not always turn out the same way. Because the

  next time they were together, they were enveloped in perfection.

  There in the dirty woodshed, Ermelinda was irradiating. Vit6ria

  was far away; the countryside was completely cut off by the

  closed door of the shed. And the girl was the way she wanted to

  be : having forgotten about her fear, crackling with happiness,

  talking without cease. Everything seemed so secure to her on

  that afternoon that she was able to enjoy daydreams. Imprisoned

  and concrete at last she was no longer afraid of going too far and

  not having any place to come back to. She was anchored; and

  she was finally taking a chance at freedom, without any fear of

  the possibility of going beyond the almost non-existent dividing

  line between her and the countryside. So secure, in a word, that

  she could even lie. And if she just wanted to she could do what

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  she was doing now-inventing some type which, even though it

  did not symbolize her, did please her as a choice. In this way, she

  talked to Martim, leaning her head back, which gave her an air

  that was somewhere in the neighborhood of daring, ambitious,

  and cruel. She really did not have any of those three attributes,

  nor did she want to have them.

  Or she would pretend to be absent and thoughtful, even

  though in fact she was as attentive to her task of pretending as a

  seamstress is to the details of her sewing. Living with Vit6ria,

  who knew her too well, was horribly restricting. Vit6ria knew

  too well how to cope with her. While Martim did not know her

  and with him she could invent a new life. And above all, an

  engineer, "an educated man" -who knows, before he left he

  might even say the word that would take away her fear forever.

  She had hope in him because she had known several educated

  men who did not believe in God and did not believe that one

  lives after death.

  Oh, he would leave. Yes! But she would not care. As long as

  he left the word behind with her, perhaps one of disbelief, which