minimum destiny that the brief insect also needs.
It was with an obedient and thankful air, like that of a
woman, that she told Martim she was going to mend his
clothes. Stubborn above all, what she wanted was to project
herself into the safe environment that the man had ultimately
( 1 7 1 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
created by living in the woodshed-spurs on the floor, the
scythe, muddy boots, a world that could be touched. As she
calmly picked up the clothes to be mended, she felt a happiness
much too minute for her capacity to feel, but it was a question
of what she wanted to be : concrete. Then she looked at him.
Thank you for being real, her open eyes said.
The man did not understand, but he puffed out his chest a
little. As for her, now she could use the word love without lying,
and with ingenuous hope, as if she did not know what it was.
Because in one perfect moment, the world had become whole
again, even with its ancient mystery-except that this time,
before the enigma had closed, Ermelinda had put herself inside
of it, just as enigmatic as the enigma. Then the girl got up, as if
giving the man an order to go away and leave her alone.
"I belong to you," was what was being said in the proud and
mute way in which she stood, serene and without any humility.
He seemed to understand; he did not want to have anybody
belong to him, and he whistled as a cover-up, then he looked
down at his own shoes. A woman was always more brazen than a
man; he became embarrassed. She was noble. "She got what she
wanted," Martim thought, offended in his own chastity, and
covering up again with a listless whistle. "I belong to you," was
being said tyrannically in the way she was standing; he grunted
in agreement, uncomfortable, wanting to be free of her. Her
shoulders were slender and fragile; her skin was like a child's,
and as if he had shattered the girl's present, there was something
of the past in her. She was soft around the waist. "My God," the
man said to himself-"she's a ghost." He was comically embarrassed at her fragility. "Delicate, but a virago like the rest of them," he thought with malice, but he did not think that what
he had said was funny, not even fun; what he really felt was a
kind of pride in her-he admired her. Women always stretched
things out longer than necessary and right away would start
raising a family. And he was proud to be her victim : that was the
constrained homage that the man succeeded in paying her.
"Thank you for my liking you," the girl's look also said; but
( 1 7 2 )
The Birth of the Hero
that the man did not understand, and he only blinked his eyes.
Then, as if he had had time to sense it better, he nodded in
agreement, now that for one instant she had taken charge of
both their destinies.
And perhaps because his submission to her was the way in
which he had made her submit, Martim became powerful and
alive as he left the woodshed, with a touch of insolence.
Chapter 7
MARTIM SIGHED DEEPLY, as if until now he had been wearing a
gag. It was sweet and powerful for a man to go out and for a
woman to stay behind. That was no doubt the way things should
be. Going down to the water of the river to wet his face he felt
pride and calmness. Now that he had had a woman it seemed
natural to him that everything should become understandable
and within reach. The meadow was broad : a multitude of brilliant points against an obscure and uncertain background.
Within his reach was the water, which the sun had turned into a
hard mirror, and that was how it should be. He approved of the
way the land was. Without modesty, like a man who is naked,
he knew that he was an initiate. Facing the water, which was
cutting him down with its scythe-like brilliance, everything was
his, and a stupid happiness filled his head; in his arms he could
still feel the weight that a submissive woman has. Initiated as a
man who is alive. Even if he did not have time to be anything
more than a man who is alive. It was a rare instant, and with no
feeling of vanity he recognized it as such; before it vanished he
touched it with all his soul so that his soul might at least have
touched the enormous reality.
"I wonder what the woman is doing all alone in the woodshed?" he thought, and he wondered what she wanted of him.
The lucidity that was exaggerated by happiness made him
understand that she was waiting for a word from him, and that
she was tied to him by the last hope. And who was she? That had
suddenly become important, who was she? Because if he had
been locked in a cell with just a blade of grass in his hand, that
blade of grass was everything that a whole field could tell him.
And if he had taken a woman who was ugly and ignored, a
woman among thousands of women, the whole world was in her,
( l 7 4 )
The Birth of the Hero
hoping for hope in him. But what could he give her except
mercy? It was at that instant that uncertain and badly orchestrated, there crept into him for the first time the ancient word
"mercy." But he had not heard it clearly.
Because when he was thinking about Ermelinda he had
begun to think about his own wife, listening to the radio as time
slipped away, and receiving presents with a sigh. "Never look a
gift horse in the mouth," she had said with a sigh. And thinking
about his wife he thought about his son, about whom he had
never wanted to think directly. He thought about his son with
that first and happy pain, as if having Ermelinda in his arms had
finally given him his son. That son he had produced with such
care, and who had turned out so handsome, and who was quite
tall for his age. And he thought of going to the mulatto
woman's daughter the first time he spotted her spying on him,
he needed a child so much.
And with his son a love for the world had assaulted him. He
now became quite moved by the richness of what existed; he
became moved with tenderness toward himself. How very much
alive and powerful he was ! How kind he was! Strong and
muscular! "I am one of those people who understand and
pardon ! " that was exactly what he was, yes, wrought up, missing
his son. The sun had halted and was getting deeper and deeper
into him; love for himself . gave him a grandeur he could no
longer contain and which stripped him of the remains of his
modesty. Next to the sparkling water, nothing seemed impossible
to him. Now that he had taken the first step and through his son
had reached that point at which pain was mixed with fierce joy,
and joy was painful because that rapid point must have been the
goad of life and his meeting with himself-then, just the way a
dog's soul barks, irrepressible, he said : Ah l to the water.
Ah ! he said with love and anguish and ferocity and pity and
admiration and sadness, and all of that was his joy.
But why was it not enough for him, then? Why w
as it not
enough just to exclaim? Because it happened that he wanted the
word. As long as he was who he was he would be prisoner of his
( 1 7 5 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
own breathing, waiting for the word to carry him to the image of
the world, waiting for it to join him to himself, living with that
word on the tip of his tongue, with understanding about to be
revealed, in that tension which ends up becoming confused with
life, and which really is life itself; it happened that he wanted
the word.
And now that he knew the oscillation of a human love; he
had never been as close to it. The weeds trembled it. The water
sparkled it. The black sun expressed it in its own way. And the
meadow became more tense under the man's gaze.
Why did he not say the word, then? The sun had halted.
The water was cloudy. Martim was facing it. Why did he not say
it? The fact was that everything was perfect and he was not
needed. The hard glass of the water looked at him and he was
looking. And everything was so splendid and motionless, so
complete in itself, that the man did not wet his face; he did not
dare touch the water and interrupt the great stasis with a
gesture. Everything was bursting with silence. With the smell of
warm grass that the wind brought from far off he breathed in the
revelation, uselessly trying to think about it. But the word, the
word, he still did not have it. The foot, the foot with which a
man takes a step, he did not have it. He knew that it had been
done. But he lacked the knowledge of what it is that a man does.
If not, what good would he get from the freedom he had
attained?
The twisted sun was burning his head, leaving him tranquil
and mad. It was then, under the truth of the sun, that he was
finally not embarrassed to want the maximum. And through his
love for his son, he decided that the maximum could be reached
through mercy.
Could that be the word? If it was, he did not understand it.
Could that be the word? His heart beat furiously, dispirited.
Not mercy transformed into kindness, but the deep mercy
transformed into action. Because just as God wrote directly by
means of crooked lines, in the same way great pity and love
flowed through the lines of mistakes in action. Once a person
( l 7 6 )
The Birth of the Hero
had that strange capacity : that of having pity for another man,
as if he himself were of a separate species. Because at that point
he did not seem to want to rebuild only for himself alone. He
wanted to rebuild for other people.
Martim had just "drawn back the curtains."
Had he just discovered gunpowder? It makes no difference;
every man is his own opportunity.
But through what action would love flow? From monstrous
thought to monstrous thought, he calculated with lucidity that
if he could obtain a new way of loving the world, he would
transform it in smne way. The most important thing that could
happen in a world made up of people-would it not be the birth
of a new way of loving, the birth of an understanding? It was.
Everything for Martim was unexpectedly coming into harmony . • .
Then, intoxicated with himself, dragged along by the madness to which logical thought can lead, he calmly thought the following : if he could reach that method of understanding he
would change men. Yes, he was not ashamed of that thought
because he had already risked everything. "Would it change
men even if it took a few centuries?" he thought without
understanding himself. "Am I a preacher?" he thought, halffascinated. The fact was that in the meantime, however, he really had nothing to preach-which embarrassed him for an
instant. But just for an instant, because a moment afterwards he
was again so full of himself that it was a pleasure to see.
Then he dropped the rest of his prudence, and without any
shame at all he thought more or less the following: even if he
spoke about his "drawing back the curtains" to just one person,
that person would tell another, as in a "chain of good will." Or
then-he thought boldly-that person, transformed by the
knowledge, would be observed by another, and that one by
another, and so on. And in a while there would be surreptitious
news in the air, the way fashion spreads without anyone's being
obliged to follow it. Because what are people if not the consequence of a way of understanding and loving that belongs to ( l 7 7 )
THE
A P P L E
IN
T HE
DARK
someone already lost in time? "That was the way he lived." One
person would tell another, as if it were the password he had been
waiting for. "That was the way he lived," the rumor would pass
around.
Martim had finally made a pronouncement-except that he
was constrained a little by the sudden ease with which it had
come. But who could tell if that was not the way it was : that
after it has been spoken, truth is easy? The obscure plan then
seemed perfect to him, like a perfect crime.
And full of himself, bursting with sun like a toad, the task
seemed grand and simple to him-as now he mixed water and
cement, preparing mortar for the well. The cauldron of the
on the sandals. His urgency was tranquil. Not an urgency that
would make him want to skip stages, but an urgency like that of
nature: without the loss of one instant, when a pause is in itself
an advance. He mixed the cement with exactitude, with an
uninterrupted urgency, just as the thousand shudders make up
the vastness of the silence and the silence goes along. "The thing
is progressing," he thought.
He found that thought of his fine and his feelings fine too.
He became emotional and serious; he stopped working for an
instant. "I offer this thing I feel in homage to my mother," he
thought vaguely, already a little absentminded. Then, having
come by chance into closer contact with what he had thought,
he found it "silly." But then he was very sorry that he had found
it silly and said to himself, offended, "Let's not tum into such a
beast that we think everything is foolishness." Since foolishness
was a very long word which quickly lost its meaning he was
finally left with nothing but a taste of nothingness in his mouth.
That alerted him to how necessary it was to be careful not to be
vague, which was a legitimate temptation-but if a person did
not specialize, as they say about doctors, he would never get
anywhere. It was very difficult to be global and at the same time
try to maintain a shape. He could not afford to lose sight of
himself.
The Birth of the Hero
As he began to concentrate, a certain plan began to take
shape; the cement was taking on consistency. He applied himself
with perfection to his work, peaceful hours passed.
And the first cooler breeze finally blew.
So when Ermeli
nda pushed open the door of the woodshed,
afternoon had arrived. Like a continuation of the shadows of the
room the whole afternoon had fallen apart and could be smelled
in the quivering shadow of roots with ants upon them. The girl's
eyes were broad, tranquil, avenged. She had managed to absorb
the security of the man to use against the countryside, and
armed with her talisman she looked out with a serene challenge;
the countryside was nothing but a larger woodshed where a
thousand trees had room to lose themselves in the distance. The
world was a place-only that and nothing more. And the countryside had lost is lack of limits. Without any effort she passed across the multitude of grasses; the flowers had now been tamed.
There were no wrinkles showing on her face. She looked like an
Indian woman carrying a jug on her head, balancing herself so
she could balance the jug. Nothing contradicted her. There are
moments like that too.
( 1 7 9 )
Chapter 8
THAT NIGHT Martim had an excellent idea that would end up
being just the opposite. What really happened was that later on
the man had occasion to compare the excellence of his idea and
its subsequent disillusionment with a round fruit that he had
once eaten-a pomegranate-and which had proven hollow to
his teeth. And as the only reward it gave him, an instant of
absorbed meditation and a contact with experience.
On that night, then, he lit the lantern, put on his glasses,
took a sheet of paper, a pencil; and like a schoolboy he sat down
on the bed. He had had the very sensible idea of putting his
thoughts in order, summing up the results that he had reached
that afternoon-there had been a time that afternoon when he
had finally understood what he wanted. And now, just as he had
learned to calculate with numbers, he got ready to calculate with
words. The exaltation that had come to him with the afternoon
sun had already left him now. Now he was a slow man who
applied himself, the slow face a woman has when she threads a
needle. His face concentrated on the trouble at hand.
It came to him with some surprise that his thought proved to
be as crude as the thick fingers gripping the pencil. As a start of
the conversation, the pencil seemed too slim for his resolution,
because that was too fat with decision. He did not know that in