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
( 2 7 7 )
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 :
"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
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
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
( 2 8 0 )
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
( 2 8 1 )
T H E A P P L E
I N T H E D A R K
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
( 2 8 2 )
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