subtlety and weakness, she had said to a boy she liked, "I'm
going to give you a stone I found in the garden" -and he had
understood that she liked him and had given her in exchange a
matchbox with a cookie inside. And then, following her vocation
for subtlety along that torturous road of delicacy which had
saved her from becoming offended with the truth-truth to
Ermelinda may have seemed an inferior form, primary and
"styleless," so to speak-then she would thank her husband for
having given her a new dress by telling him, "It's a nice day
today, isn't it?" Because of some mystery in her process of
realization she always avoided being completely understood.
In the meantime there was no exclamation of horror as she
brought herself to face the simple crudity with which she
wanted that man. Perhaps that delicateness of hers, incomprehensible to other people, came from the very delicateness of her reasons for wanting him. Her reasons for wanting him were
those of a woman who wanted love-which seemed terribly
subtle to her. And as if that reason was not enough, she had
woven in a still more subtle reason : saving herself-which is a
certain stage that love can sometimes reach. It was all of that,
then, that had turned her into someone who could not be
understood. It did not really make her suffer, because it was part
of the order of things. Since she did not understand other people
it was not for her to be understood either.
She did have a practical problem however that was quite
intense : the way she lived did not give her just anything that she
wanted. And the result was that, against her wishes, she seemed
to be pure without really wanting to be-just to avoid the
vulgarity of becoming clear. For example, she had never confessed to a priest that she was afraid of dying; instead of that she had told him with all sorts of hints and allusions : "I think a
stone is so much prettier than a bird." Perhaps by that she had
meant to say, who knows, that to her a stone seemed closer to
( l 5 7 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
life than a bird which in its flight reminded her of death, or that
it naturally meant she was afraid of dying. The priest had not
understood her and she had gone away without having confessed, frightened at not having got an answer. For so many years that girl had never had the satisfaction of success.
"Look at that fem ! " she may have said to the man because a
person cannot say "I love you."
The man's face was warm and red, covered with grime. She
looked at the warm face of the man, and the strength she had
was the frail strength of a woman; but she had talked about
ferns and the man had not understood her, and his face had kept
on being simple and unreachable. The girl began to despair
because she had already begun to convince herself that one did
not summon a man by talking about ferns. She did not know
how to summon him and she wondered about the empty
urgency the man was communicating to her as he pounded.
Then, on the following morning-as soon as Vit6ria had
mounted her horse and before the dust from its hooves had
settled back onto the ground-Martim noticed Ermelinda by
the cowshed where he was washing the cows, standing there like
a schoolgirl.
She was standing there not saying anything. I n a desperate
way the girl was trying to be simple for the first time : not saying
anything. Martim put on a curious mask that he himself probably could not have interpreted. The fact was, without really knowing how, he had just understood. Maybe because Ermelinda' s mute face had the intensity of what she was not saying.
When Martim understood, he became happy. She was funny,
with that fragile air and her audacity of not speaking; her
tremulous courage of just standing there so that he would
know.
"When is Dona Vit6ria coming back?" he finally asked.
The girl tried to answer, but her voice failed her. Her
emotion at being understood was strong, as if someone had
finally crowned that only way she had of expressing herself. At
that moment she was at last getting recognition for her way of
( l 5 8)
The Birth of the Hero
life. The instants had gone by, but her heart, as it calmed down,
had not been able to give her back her voice. But from the
experience of past failures she knew that if she did not fling
herself forward with her eyes closed everything would be lost
again and she would have to go back and exhaust the talk about
ferns. Then, bracing herself against what she would have liked to
have been, much more obscure and pretty and not so blunt, she
answered aloud, closing her eyes, and made a bridge of herself.
"Vit6ria will be away a long time. Because Francisco isn't
going to meet her in the cornfield until noon, she won't be back
until two o'clock for lunch-I heard her say so myself! "
She stopped, amazed. For the first time in her life she had
said something straight out. Her heart retreated into her breast,
as if to avoid the touch of a disaster.
The man looked at her, curious, attentive, patient. It was
true that "not thinking about her" had really been a way of
thinking. But until that moment he had managed to keep her
inside of him, surrounded by a clear and neutral element, while
he himself kept busy at other things. And even if he was not
really surprised when the girl proved herself as now, he looked at
her with a certain coldness. He seemed to be accusing her of not
knowing enough to wait until he himself would summon her to
be the focus of his attention. Once more he was being pushed
before it was time, just as when Vit6ria had sent him to the
cowshed.
He put the pail of water down on the ground to say something. And Martim's way of telling her that he had understood did not compromise him completely.
"I'll be back from the hill at noon."
But at eleven o'clock Ermelinda was already standing in the
sun, serious, her heart beating, the birds flying, and the large tree
swaying.
She had finally reached a certain point. What seemed to
alarm her was that now there was no question of turning
back-too late finally, and it left her heroic. And besides that
there was that excited and happy uneasiness, a certain pernicious
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
happiness, that secret she held against the world : nobody knew
what was happening to her, what a secret.
More than anything else, however, with her heart all dry and
painful, she-she, she was playing for high stakes.
If she failed she would come back torn to shreds, holding her
shoes in her hands. That was the picture Ermelinda had of how
a person failed, even if she did not know what failure was, for
she was fighting against immaterial things-she had fallen into
the habit of considering as immaterial "things of the spirit" and
she did not have a very clear idea of what the spirit was, and it
seemed to her that something was happening to her now that
was more
or less of the spirit and in things like that a person
never knew for sure whether he would fail or not; it was a matter
of thinking one way or another. But at the same time that she
saw herself with her shoes in her hands, she had that intimate
warning that she would not fail; that with a sure hand she was
going to touch life in one of its vulnerable spots, even if the
hand was trembling. The trembling that came from the importance of that moment which was after all-after all-impossible to be substituted by any other. Few times in her life had she had
the opportunity to come face to face with what cannot be
replaced. "At last I am going to live," she said to herself. But the
truth was that it seemed more like a threat.
That did not mean that she was not mistress of herself.
Because, even if she was looking neutrally at the importance of
that happening, she had time to assume various poses that
seemed to reflect that importance. She arranged her hair, as if
having it a certain way were indispensable; she made her mouth
small and her eyes large, a sketch of an innocent and beloved
woman; and she re-created great love affairs with much emotion.
All the while she grew perplexed and weak inside. The fact was
that she knew she was risking much more than it seemed on the
surface; she was gambling with what later on would be a past
that would be forever impenetrable.
In order to distract herself, she quickly went over what she
would say to him. What, exactly, would she say to him? Some-
( 1 6 0 )
The Birth of the Hero
thing like this, "Fate is a very funny thing." She would say that
to him. Not because she was an artificial creature, but because of
an experience that could no longer be broken down into facts,
she had ended up by knowing that "at least in her case" naturalness did not always hit the mark. When she relied on naturalness, truth was not what came out. Naturalness was for someone who had unlimited time which would give certain words a
chance to be spoken eventually. But a person who had just the
space of one lifetime would have to condense herself by means
of artfulness and tricks. That girl was dying of the fear that she
would spend her whole life without ever having had the chance
to say certain things that no longer seemed important to her, but
they still carried the obstinate idea that one day she would utter
them.
After going over what she would say about fate she could not
escape returning to the idea that she was playing with what later
on would be a past that would be closed to her understanding.
Having had some experience, she knew that at the moment
things seemed certain and that afterwards they would no longer
seem so. And she was already vaguely asking herself-while her
restless heart was beating all across the field and her look seemed
to share its apprehension and go along-she was vaguely asking
herself if later on, when she would have returned to the common days that judge us, if later on she would be capable of understanding herself and would have to pardon herself perhaps.
Even now she was already asking herself what her future and
inscrutable memories would be like. Because she knew that she
was petty: she was not a person who could forgive easily.
Yes, all of that would happen. But she had to risk everything.
Since time was short that fearful girl had to know whether love
can save, as if she had to tell somebody afterwards. Martim-as
Vit6ria had said in a moment of rage-did not seem to have
anything to lose. But-Ermelinda guessed as she suddenly found
out in herself-there was no such thing as having nothing to
lose. What there was, was risking everything; because underneath the nothingness and the nothingness and the nothingness ( 1 6 1 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
there we are, and for some reason we cannot lose that. She
discovered that right there as she was standing. How that man
had managed to push her into the problem of playing for high
stakes and risking what we are Ermelinda was fated never to
know. Perhaps the very sight of him, for eyes know much more
than we do. All that Ermelinda knew was that as a last chance
she had to take a gamble. It was then she thought, with a feeling
of great uneasiness, that the world is malignant. It gave, yes, but
at the same time it said, "Don't come to me afterwards and say
that I never gave you anything." What was given was not given
through friendship but through hostility.
Standing there startled at eleven o'clock on April 1 7, she
was receiving just as if there had been no kindness in the way the
offer had been thrown at her. She who had worked so hard to
receive what now she herself did not seem ready to understand.
But nothing more depended on her now. She was experiencing
that rare instant in which "it still hasn't happened," "it's still
going to happen," "it's almost happened already" and which she
called, with an effort at understanding, "the instant before the
man appears." By giving it a name, she was attempting to
appease the world.
The girl passed her hand over her head, her heart all clogged
up. From what she was feeling she gathered that her face must
be ugly and red; she was deeply sorry that she was not beautiful
enough to correspond to the instant when she would belong to a
man. "That's not my face! " she rebelled-"that isn't I." I n the
despair that perhaps she would not be accepted by a man who
person than she, she tried once more to make her eyes larger and
her mouth heart-shaped. In her opinion they did not make an
"ideal couple," and not only was she unable to get that idea out
of her head, but she was bothered by it to the point at which she
had to hold back her tears; it seemed to her that nature did not
approve of them. The day was so beautiful that it just increased
her unhappiness.
Oh, if she only had more time. "Nothing should be as quick
( l 6 2 )
The Birth of the Hero
as that! " she thought in desolation, shaking her head. She might
even have sent for some material from Vila to make a new dress.
But how long was that man going to stay on the place? And
death? No, she had no time; time was short. The birds flying in
the distance seemed to be waiting unhurriedly for her to join
them. They were not in any hurry; they were sure. And they flew
about, waiting. Waiting for her to join their serene and disturbing freedom . . .
The girl, her feet tight in their shoes, was trembling with fear
of herself. She was afraid that she would purify herself so much
that she would never need anything else. How do you think
about a person who does not need anything? It was monstrous.
"I don't want progress," she said fearfully, remembering the
phrase of a spiritualist who was all in favor of progress. But what
would be left of her if progress were taken away? There would be
a whole body; there would be desires-and so much dust. What
would her
liberated soul do without a body to exist in? She
would wail at the windows until living people would say, "What
a windy day." And at night she would be the uneasiness of
nights imprisoned in the gardens.
It was then, standing there among the thousands of unperceived beats of a heart that did its proper function so well, that she heard that deeper throb which she knew the way one knows
a person; a deep and empty throb, as if her heart had tumbled
into an abyss. And as always she asked herself, "But is it sickness
or life?" Among a thousand butterfly palpitations that tragic
throb . . . "I'm going to see a doctor," she decided with the
desire of a glutton-"I'm going to see a doctor." The cold
within the sun had chilled her.
Oh, just the same, up until now life had not been serioussince she possessed a body that complained it all went to her heart; she had monthly cramps, she had a body in which she was
happening. But afterwards? After? The spiritualistic girl was not
sure that she was pure enough to just shake off her leaves and be
nothing but a thought that someone could sense in the air and,
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T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
according to her, would call it inspiration. It would not be
enough for her in her liberation to peer impatiently at the dawn
and take sneaky and crafty advantage of that materialization of
light-and be. Nor would it be enough for her to look up at the
dry sky for days on end hoping to become one with the rain so
that she would be able to cry. She had become too accustomed
to life; she was used to certain minimal comforts; she needed
some place where she could hurt, could bleed if she cut her
finger. "Oh dear God, why did you pick me to be a medium and
understand and know?" she thought burdened by the weight of
her calling. "I'm only human; don't give me tasks that are
beyond my capacity." And death was clearly beyond her
capacity.
Oh, and if it was just to be a ghost-if they expected her to
be one, and she did not know for certain what they expected of
her-then she would need a whole house at least and more than
one story, she calculated with detail. And with doors that would
open to her lack of hand, with halls that would sound beneath
her lack of feet-but-but would all that just be set in action by