h e said then. He looked a t the darkness around him and since
every other person was at last in his own house and there was no
one in the world would guide him in his jaundiced flesh he then
invented God. It was enough to invent Him so that out of the
depths of centuries of fear and abandonment a new force would
become gigantic in a place where nothing had existed before. A
man in the dark is a creator. The great bargains are made in the
( 2 3 7 )
T HE APPLE
I N T HE
D A R K
dark. It was by saying "Oh God" that Martim felt the first
weight of relief in his chest. He breathed slowly and carefully:
growing hurts, becoming hurts. He breathed very slowly and
carefully. Becoming hurts. The man had the painful impression
that he had gone too far.
Perhaps. But at least for one instant of truce he was no
longer afraid. It was only that he felt an unexpected loneliness,
the loneliness of a person who creates instead of being created.
Standing there in the dark, he succumbed to the loneliness of a
complete man, the loneliness of the great possibility of choice.
The loneliness of having to make his own tools. The loneliness
of having already chosen. And then having chosen the irreparable : God.
At last, all alone before his own greatness, Martim could not
bear it any longer. He knew that he would have to shrink before
what he had created so that he could belong to the world, and
shrink until he became the son of the God he had created be·
cause only in that way would he receive tenderness. "I am
nothing," and thn one fits inside the mystery.
And with a frightened look, with a reborn fear, he now
wanted only one thing from this world : to belong. But how?
The wind filled his mouth with dust, the wind that he had
noticed only now and that suddenly frightened him. He began
to tremble again; he passed his hand across his dry and avid
mouth. The fear of never reaching the kindness of God overtook
him. He had called on the strength of God, but he still did not
know how to incite His kindness. It was then that he suddenly
said inside of himself, "I killed, I killed." He finally confessed.
Was it because of this, perhaps, that they were waiting for
him to free him from his fear? He offered his crime as a
pawn.
But-he rebelled immediately then, justifying himself to
God-someone had to sacrifice himself and bring unconsoled
suffering to its ultimate term and then become the symbol of
suffering! Someone had to sacrifice himself. "I wanted to sym·
bolize my own suffering! I sacrificed myself! I wanted the symbol
( 2 3 8)
The Apple in the Dark
because the symbol is the true reality and our life is symbolic of
the symbol, just as we ape our own nature and try to copy
ourselves ! Now I understand the imitation. It's a sacrifice! I
sacrificed myself! " he said to God, reminding Him that even He
had sacrificed a son and that we also had the right to imitate
Him. We had to renew the mystery because reality is getting
lost! "Oh God," he said in justification-"don't you even respect our indignation? My hatred always saved my life. I did not want to be sad. If it were not for my rage I would be all softness
and sadness; but anger is born out of my purest joy, and out of
my hope. And You want me to give up the best part of my
wrath. You who had Your own," he accused. "That's what they
told me, and if they told me they were not lying because they
must have sensed Your wrath in their flesh," he accused.
Then, what happened was that Martim was afraid of his own
wrath as one is afraid of his own strength. Darkness surrounded
him, and the silence that enveloped him replied that this was
not the way to the world, this was not the way to free himself
from himself. And he-he wanted to belong. But how? It would
really be so simple. If animals were nature itself, we are the
beings to whom things are given. It would be so simple just to
receive them. It was enough to receive, just that! So simple.
"How? How is it done?" he asked himself. The wind left his
mouth dry with dust. A total "fear, greater than the fear that the
professor would tum him in to the police, finally made him want
to give in. He no longer really knew whether he wanted to
accept because there was no other way out, or because accepting
was accepting a great and obscure meaning that came from
meeting with the unknown creature that he was. It no longer
even mattered to him if, in the act of accepting, he felt that he
was betraying the most worthy thing about himself; his revolt
-not only his own revolt alone but also the revolt of other
people. He who had made himself the repository of the wrath of
others, he who had needed a great crime to prove something knew
that he was betraying his own sacrifice. Even then, he wanted it.
( 2 3 9 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E
D ARK
Even though, aware of his betrayal, he would become a very old
man. He could never again be understood by an adolescent.
Never again, never again would he be understood-not even by
himself. More than that he knew, just as if he had taken a blood
oath, that no thought of his would ever be free of the limits of
the cowardice now revealed, the cowardice that is the necessary
submission and the experience of a man. He realized that never
again would he be able to begin to be free without remembering
the fear that he felt now.
He knew. But, in the darkness of the woods, all he wanted to
do was set himself free. How? With no training, he did not
know how to accept-as if there were some kind of ritual he did
not comprehend which not only symbolized submission, but also
brought it about. Oh, it did not even matter that after his
acceptance a new lack of sense would immediately take shape in
the kaleidoscope, a harmonious and intangible lack of sense in a
system closed off again, where he would again be unable to
enter. What was really important was becoming part of a system
and freeing himself from his own nature, which suddenly made
him tremble all over from head to toe. Oh, it did not matter,
because he had already gone too far. And being afraid was
already too late; it already meant belonging to salvation, whatever that might mean. What did it matter if it were the word or not? We who make allusions only make allusions.
At night, in the woods his enormous fatigue made the man
lose his lucidity, and instinctively his blind thought made him
want to look for the most remote source. He guessed that in that
dark source everything would be possible, because in that source
law was so primary and vast that within it the great confusion of
a man would also fit. Except that before being admitted into the
first law a man would humbly have to lose his own name. That
was the condition. A castaway has to choose between losing his
heavy riches or s
inking with them into the sea. To be admitted
into the vast source ( of natural law ) , the man knew that he had
to believe only in light and dark. That was the condition. After
( 2 4 0 )
The Apple in the Dark
that step he would become a defeated part of what he did not
know and what he loved.
The wind was blowing stronger through the trees. In the
dark the loosened leaves swatted his face. With a soft and
wounded chest, he breathed in the humidity that was approaching. He wondered, curious, whether it would rain that night.
Because he did not have the courage to leave the festival of the
forest he knew that the rain would come and find him there,
defenseless. And with that thought he again began to tremble
with fear of the dark and the rain. He too trembled, just like the
others-because he had been told that it even happened to the
strongest, and sailors knew all about it.
One day in a rage he had brought his strength to fruitionjust like other people. And in his regret, he had brought his sweetness up to the limits of honey, until, transfigured by his
own nature, he said nothing and saw nothing in the dark. But to
be blind is to have a continuous vision. Could that be the
message perhaps?
But first rage and repentance. Until in extreme unction a
man would come, and in order to be saved, he would implore
you with a menacing face and a shout of summing up with
which we try to understand what belongs to us : "Say yes ! Just
once! Now! Right now! Say yes once before you die! Don't die in
damnation, don't die in rage! The miracle of blindness is nothing but this-saying yes ! "
Was that what they wanted him to do then? To say "Yes?"
In exchange for everything he knew, what did they demand of a
man? In exchange they asked a man-to believe, to eat mud
until he bursts with it, but to believe. The man himself might
have stolen the bread of others but they ask him, horrified with
him, to believe. He may have never done an act of kindness-but
they ask him to believe. He may have forgotten to answer his
woman's letter, begging for money for her sick child-but they
ask him to believe.
And he believes. "I believe," Martim said, terrified with
T H E
A PPLE
I N THE
D AR K
himself. "I believe, I believe! I don't know what truth is, but I
know that I would be able to recognize it! " He justified himself.
"Give me a chance to know what I believe!"
But it was not given. And then, because he did not know
what truth was, he said to himself in the woods : "I believe in
truth. I believe-just as I see in this darkness. I believe-just as I
do not understand. I believe-just as we murder. I believe-just
as I never gave bread to someone who was hungry. I believe that
we are what we are; I believe in the spirit; I believe in life, I
believe in hunger; I believe in death !" he said, using words that
were no longer his. And because they were not his, they had the
value of a ritual which was only waiting to free him from fear,
words passed on to him : "I believe."
The man sniffed, ashamed. A new and painful dimension
had opened up in him, that which "God" must have silently
foreseen in His strange vision of us. The man really seemed to
have lost his relativity for an instant, just as a horse sometimes
becomes completely abandoned. Could that have been what
God had patiently waited for him to understand? That was what
he had promised him. But even if God could have spoken He
would have told him nothing, because if it had been told it
would not have been understood. Even now the man did not
understand.
Humiliated, the man sniffed, wiping away his tears-a little
intimidated. The first flash of lightning broke across the sky.
The tall main house lit up and turned dark again. After a
moment of silence the dry thunderclap rolled across the mountains in reply, until it unwound, in the grumbling murmur of silence. Sniffing, the man thought that this was harmony.
Then the wind began to blow stronger, making the windows
bang. And Vit6ria sat up in her bed.
No thought had occurred to that lady yet, but her heart had
certainly heard the thunder. It was rain that was coming. It was
rain that was coming! She recognized it in the stifling air and in
the wrath of the imprisoned wind. It was rain that was coming.
( 2 4 2 )
The Apple in the Dark
Her heart became ferociously happy. Triumph, her triumph, she
had known how to wait.
Only then did she understand with a certain remoteness that
she was awake. It was cold and yet she felt stifled, with her heart
all puffed up in her breast, perhaps because no drop had fallen
yet.
Then, sitting in the dark as if there had been no interruption, she once again recaptured the thought she had had when she had seen Martim for the first time by the porch : a man
standing, his face showing the gross beatification of having
satisfied his thirst-but even then she could not tell whether she
had found it beautiful or ugly. And as if it were quite natural to
be thinking about the man in the middle of the night, the lady
once more seemed intrigued with that indifference of his face
whose physical traces were at the same time those of pure
malice. But it was like a tiger who seems to be laughing and then
it becomes obvious with a sense of relief that it is only the cut of
his mouth. Which did not pacify her, however, because physical
things also have their intention. What softened the danger in
the man was the contradictory duality of his physical face and an
expression that did not conform to it. From malignant curiosity
the woman imagined that along with the maleficent features,
the expression had also become malicious, then-then she must
have seen the face of laughter and of evil. Then she trembled
with pleasure.
The pleasure startled her and she drew back in fright. Perhaps her fright had come from being awake in the middle of the night or from thinking about the man. She immediately
smoothed the sheets, preparing herself severely to go back to
sleep.
She knew, however, that it was a lie and that she was not
getting ready for sleep. Therefore, then, she remained quiet in
the dark. The compact darkness permitted everything because
her face could not be seen even by the walls. And, as happens,
the night seemed to whisper to her that she could think any
( 2 4 3 )
T H E A P P L E
IN
T H E D A R K
thought at all, as if the animals had been turned loose in the
black field before the storm broke and the lady could take
advantage of the wind to mingle furtively among them. "I love
you," she tried with care giving a first cautious show of herself in
the darkness to see if it was true that nothing would happen to
her. And nothing happened. The lady seemed disappointed, as if
she had really hoped that after the audacious phrase the darkness would turn into day, or that it would finally start to r
ain, or that she would suddenly be transformed into a different person.
Then the phrase echoed and echoed in the temporarily
docile wind.
Nothing had happened. A tranquil sadness filled the room. It
was love that lady felt in her body warm with sleep. It was love,
that sadness of a beast mixed with rage in the dark; the darkness
was her love. It could not be love, that thing, as if she were the
only person alive in the dark. She had never heard love spoken
about like that. But the wind was blowing . . . And uncertain
she looked for love the way the darkness looks for darkness, the
way the flame of a candle seems to go out, finally conquered by
what is so much greater than the small flame of a candle. If it
was not love the man owed that to her before he left; the lady
had suddenly become stubborn the way one does when plunged
into the middle of the night.
The window was open to the opaque night, that opaqueness which would become a trembling transparency when the darkness finally would get wet. And the lady, trying to calm
down, said to herself that she would certainly go to sleep when it
began to rain. "That's the only reason I couldn't sleep." All the
while, as sharply as her eyes pierced the dark, they found
nothing and there was no obstacle to stop them from going on
forward. She was looking for an impediment out of habit; until
now obstacles had served her as a great support. But surrounded
by love now, by wind in the trees, by permission, it could no
longer be the embrace that had symbolized that woman's love.
Sitting there she had already come to the point of using her soul,
which was the darkest part of her body, and the saddest part. "I
( 2 4 4)
The Apple in the Dark
love you," she tried again, with a hard and haughty voice. But
love could not be that. Loving like that was melancholy. "The
animals are loose," she thought then, soft, soft, melancholy.
"What animals?" she was startled when she realized what
she had thought, and the little flame of the candle tried to give a
last justification before it succumbed. "What animals?" she
asked herself, forcing herself austerely into a logic that would
make her be "puzzled," and being puzzled would be defending
herself. But she herself replied with the stubbornness of pleasure; "The animals out of which the dark is made."