The Apple in the Dark

by Clarice Lispector

  her imprisoned hair as if it had been turned loose in curls.

  Martim took a quick look at the tree, as if he and the tree

  were exchanging a furtive glance.

  "I even started a poem once," she said, frightened, forcing

  herself to go on because she thought that talking consisted in

  saying everything, and at the same time she saw herself slipping

  into nothingness with her shame being sacrificed uselessly. "The

  poem began like this : 'The queens who ruled in Europe in the

  year 1 790 were four.' "-He was going to know everything, and

  she would not have anything left . . . "But the poem wasn't

  going to be about queens, you understand?"-but she knew that

  he did not understand, she knew that there was only success and

  failure, and that between them nothing existed, and that because of that she would never come out of her limbo to prove that through the phrase about the queens the poem would take

  its subtle drive; and since she knew that she would never prove

  to other people the infinite beauty that can take flight with a

  simple phrase, then she, who believed only in success, did not

  believe in the very truth of what she felt; and there she was, all

  tangled up in the inexplicable phrase of the poen1, and after she

  had said it she had been left with four queens in her clumsy

  hand. "It was just for the sake of beauty!" she said with violence.

  They remained silent. The woman was breathing heavily.

  But what she could not tell him, what she could not say, was

  that she was a saint. Opening her mouth several times in agony,

  she tried to, but she could not. That, that could not be told to

  anyone.

  "You need to fall in love," he said with a grave air, and he

  found it so funny that he had to put on a mask to stop himself

  from laughing.

  She looked at him unbelieving, with her mouth open.

  ( 2 7 6)

  The Apple in the Dark

  "What do you know about me or anything else?" she finally

  said, and she was so surprised at his boldness that she did not

  quite know what to say in return.

  "That's right, I don't know anything," he agreed softly. "But

  I can try. You, for example, just asked me why I came here. And

  you," he inquired, half amused and half cynical-"why did you

  come here?"

  "That's stupid," she said furiously. "What a stupid question !

  Just plain stupid ! It's as if I-as if I were to ask you something

  like, as if I were to ask you : why are you alive!"

  "Because I have a certain instant in mind," he said with soft

  rapidity.

  She faced him, perplexed and affronted. The man, satisfied

  with himself, looked at her, smiling brazenly. But something on

  the woman's face made him blink with an uncomfortable feeling. Like addicts who recognize each other, he had just seen himself in her. Which was disagreeable. There was in her that

  thing which also existed in him, and which he did not accuse her

  of because it also hurt within himself, and because a person who

  had it suffered with it. Martim averted his eyes.

  "In any case," she said, recovering, "if it's going to be a

  question of 'who,' and of 'why' someone came here, I'm the one

  who should be asking the questions and not you. You're in no

  position at all to ask questions; you're in a position to answer

  them."

  Martim made a tired gesture of assent that revealed how

  near his patience was to an end. And because he had opened his

  mouth at the same time, the woman judged with surprise that

  the man was at last going to answer her and say why he had

  come to the place . . . It was then that she made an energetic

  movement with her hand, stopping him from going on. As

  Martim had not had the slightest intention of giving an answer,

  he did not understand what she had meant by such a sudden

  movement, and he looked at her intrigued.

  She had also been startled at the unexpected automatism of

  her own arm. The gesture had come before her understanding of

  the gesture. She looked at Martim, surprised and attentive, as if

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  T H E A P P L E I N T H E D A R K

  in his face their might be an explanation for what had only just

  now been revealed : that she did not want to know his reasons

  for coming to the place. It was as if by learning facts she might

  only at that instant lose the direct knowledge that she realized

  she had of the man-because with surprise she discovered that

  she knew him deeply. It was only on the surface that she did not

  know him. But deep inside his skin she knew him, and had

  known him from the moment she had seen him for the first time.

  The way in which she had known him had been the way she had

  preened herself when she saw him; one of the most profound

  ways of knowing was in the way one responded to what was

  being seen. And now, looking at Martim, the woman was afraid

  of losing that irreplaceable contact which was telling her all

  about the most inner nature of that man standing there; and

  about whom, not knowing anything, she possessed the limitless

  knowledge that comes from watching and seeing. Facts so often

  disguise a person; if she knew the facts, she might lose the whole

  man.

  Oh, it was a blind knowledge, hers was. So blind that while

  knowing him, she still did not understand him. It was one step

  before really knowing, as if she were passing over everything that

  she did not know about him and going directly to the patient

  throbs of that heart. " I know you in my skin," she thought with

  an uncomfortable shiver, and her body drew back, resentful at

  the intimacy she was using it for. It was just that she was making

  someone else out of herself. That other person . . . Suddenly

  she was afraid that she would never know herself, because in her

  flesh she understood in silence that the night of the rainstorm

  had been more than a nightmare. That Sunday night had been

  the dark opening to a world of which we can barely guess the

  first joy; and she knew that a person dies without knowing it,

  and that there were hells to which she had not descended, and

  ways of holding that her hand still had not guessed, and ways of

  being that we ignore with great courage-and that she herself

  was the other person who had never been used. In over fifty

  years of life she had learned nothing essential that could be

  ( 2 7 8 )

  The Apple in the Dark

  added to what she already knew and what had been kept intact

  during those years had been exactly what she had not learned.

  And one of the things that nobody had taught her was that

  strange way of hers of knowing a man.

  "And you, why did you come here?'' Martim repeated,

  resigned to wasting time now that she had held him back. His

  tame tone came from the fact that he knew that if he repeated

  the question several times that woman who was only waiting for

  an imitation of insistence would end up talking.

  Vit6ria made an impatient gesture, her face got ready to

  answer the insolence. But suddenly she calmed herself and said :r />
  "There was nothing for me to do in Rio. I came here to build

  a life, to make my life."

  "And did you build it?" he asked, irritated.

  "But I do know one thing! " she exploded. "That only sainthood can save someone! That you have to be a saint through passion or a saint through action or through purity-that only

  sainthood can save you !"

  White with rage, trembling without knowing why, Martim

  looked at her.

  "What's it all about?" she asked vigorously. "I'm only taking

  advantage of your freedom ! What's it all about, can't you tell?"

  she asked with great severity.

  She did not know exactly what she was referring to, and he

  understood without knowing exactly what she was referring to.

  But if it were not that way, how poor our mutual understanding

  would be, our comprehension made with words that are lost and

  words that have no meaning; and it is so hard to explain why one

  person was happy and why the other one despaired-we do not

  keep in mind the miracle of words that are lost; and for that

  reason it has always been so worthwhile living, because many

  have the words been that were spoken and that we scarcely

  heard, but they had been spoken.

  For an instant neither hesitated to understand the other

  within their incomprehension.

  "I can see that, yes," he replied then, entering for a brief

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  second a world more nearly perfect in understanding; we who

  have a keenness of understanding that escapes us. From there

  Martim immediately emerged to look with puzzlement at that

  woman who had said nothing and yet with whom he had just

  agreed. He looked at her, and as always, it seemed to him that

  he was not grasping her essential part or that of other peopleeven though it was with that essential part that he was blindly fighting.

  "Well, then," the woman said, "don't be surprised at what

  you yourself brought out : my freedom," and then she was

  puzzled because she realized that she did not know what she was

  saying and that she had become lost, playing with words.

  Then they remained silent as if to give that thing, which had

  the fragility of an undiscernible mistake, time to be reabsorbed

  into forgetfulness.

  But when she saw the man's somber face, the lady did not

  know how to interpret it and she was afraid that she had startled

  him. Even though she was cruel she had always managed to have

  the mindful pity not to startle other people with the truth.

  "No, no," she then said quickly and imploringly. "You

  mustn't think that I meant that I was pure or a saint," she

  explained to him the way a mother assures a child that she is

  nothing but a mother so that he will not feel that he is the child

  of a stranger and become a stranger himself. "You didn't get

  what I meant when I mentioned sainthood. Don't think I meant

  by that that I was good," she continued, because more than

  anything she did not want him to judge her as "superior" and

  then admire her with contempt.

  "I didn't mean that I was good," she repeated, forcing herself into a frankness that was painful but which almost immediately gave her relief and resignation. "I never did anything for the poor people in Vila Baixa, all I do is feel for them. Don't

  think that I'm saying I 'm a saint . . .

  " Her chest pained with

  joy because at least, in a negative way, she was telling the

  truth-and what other way was there to tell the truth except by

  gracefully denying it? What other way was there to tell the truth

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  The Apple in the Dark

  without running the risk of giving the emphasis that destroys it?

  And how can we tell the truth if we feel sorry because of it?

  More than being afraid, we feel sorry.

  The woman felt tranquil, knowing that she had not confessed simply because the man had not received her confession-because nothing had been said. She needed to talk, yes; but she was tactfully avoiding being understood. From the

  moment in which she would be understood, she would no longer

  be that deeply untransmissable thing which she was and which

  made every person be that very person he was-because Vit6ria

  thought that this was what was happening in the communication. Could it be that surrender of herself was making her hold back? Or was it fear of the imperfection with which souls touch

  each other? But it was not only that of which she was afraid.

  The fact was, that lacking any training in c01nmunication, she

  had the instinctive delicacy to abstain.

  "I did not mean by that that I'm pure" -she tried to pacify

  the man. "My soul is dirty, my life is quarrelsome. I'm not good,

  I'm . . .

  " Sainthood was a violence for which she would not

  have the courage; in a certain way a bad person was more

  charitable than a saint, sainthood was a scandal for which she

  did not have the courage. "I'm no good, you understand? I'm no

  good like . . . I'm no good like a disappointed woman !" she

  suddenly said with a certain coquetry.

  "Disappointed?" he said, bowing like a gentleman, and accepting but not feeling the dignity that the woman wanted to give to her confession.

  "With myself," she finished gloriously, shaking her imprisoned hair.

  "Oh God, how you bore me," Martim thought.

  "Can't you see," Vit6ria thought then trying to communicate with her eyes; Martim could only perceive the effort and not the meaning. "Can't you see that if I wanted to be ready for

  everything my life would have to be pure? And I did want to be

  ready for everything and I got ready every day. Not for moral

  purity!" she thought. And at that moment Vit6ria realized that

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  by mistake she had ended up falling into moral purity and that

  she would never attain purity as a way of life . . . That was

  more or less what she was thinking; and then, a little startled,

  she said to him,

  "I' m t

  no pure . . ."

  "How you bore me," Martim thought. "That complexity of

  a woman who's afraid to die-could that be it?" he wondered,

  because Ermelinda was so very alive the way a flower is alive,

  and the duality confused him. "And the complexity of a woman

  who's afraid to live-could that be it?" he also wondered, confused, because in her gray wrinkles that woman had more of death than life about her, and yet it was life that she was afraid

  of; "and the confusion of a man who . . . of a man who did not

  want to be afraid?" Yes, and all the while the sacred cows. Was

  that it? But having given words to facts that were not even facts

  was unsatisfactory for the man. Then, unable to define what was

  happening to them, and because Martim wished, even without

  her hearing it, that there would not be the least doubt about his

  feelings, he thought quite clearly: "You bore me. I know all this

  and it doesn't interest me. It may be that there isn't anything

  behind that anxiety, but I've had enough. I just simply want you

  to go to hell," he concluded somberly. "It doesn't interest me

  any more." He looked at her. An impoverished body that probably was trying to ta
ke refuge in thoughts? A body that when it became exicted could turn into spirit.

  The confused woman was being so sincere that the veins on

  her neck were bulging from the effort of telling the truth-or of

  lying, Martim did not care which. He did not have anything to

  do with all of this. And he was tempted to tell her absurdly: "I

  know that you're telling the truth, but to be frank with you, I

  don't have any faith in it." Oh, the boring female. At times he

  could get so sick of women that the feeling strengthened his

  whole being in his own clean masculinity. And now, because he

  had had all he could take, if that woman was at one extreme, he

  wanted to be exactly at the opposite extreme.

  With sudden fatigue, entrapped by the woman, all that

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  The Apple in the Dark

  Martim asked of men and women at that moment was that they

  be unconscious of themselves, with just that little light necessary

  for them not to be in the dark, the light of a dog's eyes in a dog's

  darkness : that was all he wanted now, tired as he was. "You tire

  me," he thought heavily, rudely. Indifference made him look at

  her with the raw precision with which one might watch an ant

  twisting about. "At the point I'm at now, silent and tired, I'm

  sick of the twistings of the soul and I'm sick of words," he

  thought. At the point he was at, he was large and his hands were

  covered with calluses, and the soul is large, the trees are large.

  The sun was large and the land extensive. All that was lacking

  was a different race of men and women-the race that he would

  create if he could. With sudden brutality, the man thought that

  living was the only thought that one should have, and that the

  rest was just the words of women like Vit6ria, and living was the

  maximum conquest and was the only way to give a worthy

  answer to a tall tree. Because, remembering the noble decency

  there had been in his Tertiary plot of land, that very moment

  was what Martim wanted to have.

  And there was the woman . . . He looked at her as if she

  were a stranger. Mouth, teeth, stomach, arms, all the things that

  had had the opportunity to be a clean plant. But all of it

  corroded and damaged and elevated by the spirit. "You bore me,

  you're a mistake, you're the mistake a plant made." "From now